1.19.2011

Dungeon of Harrow (1962)

A guy ends up shipwrecked with his captain on a mysterious island. Soon they will find themselves guests of Count de Sade and his tough guy servant.

The biggest problem with this movie is the acting. Sure, everyone is awful, especially some ghost guy that shows up during the movie who is apparently some kind of horror host. But beyond that, everyone talks so slowly. It's consistent enough that you wonder if the director was telling people to put spaces in between all their words so that he could hit his targeted running time. By the time people were finishing their sentences I was forgetting what they were talking about! On top of that you have to put up with the main character's constant narration. It's one of those things where he will just describe to you what is going on in the movie, like the most boring commentary track in the world.

It's not totally awful, just mostly. Outside of a great "toy ship in a bathtub" stormy sea effect at the beginning and the twist ending that is actually pretty clever there is not much going on in this one. There is some sudden violence involving a torch somewhere in the middle that is nearly effective but it is pretty much off screen so I guess it's barely worth mentioning. Just like this movie.

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