Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great double bill, 8 Feb 2009
Along with Chamber of Horrors/Brides of Fu Manchu, this is a very welcome release from Warner Brothers of two films that have long been unavailable. IT is a wonderful piece of nonsense - so many gaps in logic, but who cares! Roddy McDowall plays a gloriously deranged museum curator who stumbles across a way to bring an ancient golem to life. The golem itself is quite well realized apart from the curious fact that its neck seems to change length from shot to shot for some reason. The director probably thought no one would notice! THE SHUTTERED ROOM is the class work here - it has a wonderful air of menace and threat with some terrific direction by David Greene. The use of Basil Kirchin's esoteric jazz score was an inspired choice, which instantly separates the film from other horror efforts which usually have blaring music. Carol Lynley gives a nice performance as a girl with a haunted past and Gig Young is just fine as her Karate expert hubby. Oliver Reed is a hoot. The print for IT is superb and looks to be from the negative but the one used for THE SHUTTERED ROOM is not so good and is quite speckly.
|
|
|
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Region Free, 11 Dec 2008
Just A Quick Note For Interested Customers,Is That This Release Seems To Be Region Free,Picture Quality Is Excellent.I've Noticed That A Few Stated Region 1 Disc's Seem To Coming Through Region 0.I'm Not Sure Why?Maybe With Blu-Ray Becoming So Popular Company's Like Sony And Warner Bros Are Putting Less Importance On Region Codes Which Is Better For British Viewers Without Multi-Region DVD Players.Hope This Review Helps British Customers.
|
|
|
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reed and McDowall: Suitable Cases For Treatment., 14 April 2009
It's worrying to think that there must be some mad, straddling genius squirreling deep in the vaults of WB who has the sheer, premeditated temerity to put these two extraordinary films together on one disc.....
'The Shuttered Room' is a nasty thriller exploiting psychiatric disorder: if you have a mad murderous relative, don't bother with doctors - chain her up in a disused mill and get Oliver Reed to be the care-taker! When an unexpected relative and her husband (Carol Lynley and Gig Young) turn up and - surprise, surprise - much unpleasantness sets in motion; sit in a draughty tower and watch Reed roaring in a field.
Dame Flora Robson plays the aunt of the mother of all dysfunctional families and how she got roped in to this insanity is any-ones guess; and Reed - you've never seen a performance like his in your life.
He plays the same kind of thug he did in Joseph Losey's 'These Are The Damned' only with a laughingly hokey American accent: "I like the taste of your wife's ears.." he drawls at Young "what d'you think about that, huh?"
Young thinks he should knock him into the sea off a pier - and does just that.
'The Shuttered Room' is a bad day-dream and nowhere near the sum of its parts (it has a superb score by jazz legend Basil Kirchin and is based on a Lovecraft short), but it's engaging in a brute-force way, savage, and never ever boring.
'It' is a stranger film again. Roddy McDowall plays Pimm; a lowly museum curator consistently passed for promotion and shunned romantically by delicious Jill Howarth, but who discovers that a Golem statue the museum has just taken delivery of is actually alive and takes control of it.
Howarth has formed a relationship with smug American (is there any other kind !?) Paul Maxwell, and mad as a wart-hog McDowall uses the Golem to kidnap her; steal his long-dead mothers corpse (and a hearse!) from a funeral parlour and head off to a leafy cemetery - Sexton: Miss Swanson (!!).
On realising the Golem is impervious to bullets and bazooka shells, the resourceful but completely hat-stand British Army decide to nuke it! Maxwell is then involved in some no-thrills-at-all motorcycle action to save juicy Jill, but what of McDowall and the Golem..?
Now, I've seen some bonkers movies in my time and 'It' is right up there with the best of 'em. McDowall is loco, camp and megalomaniacal all at the same time. The Golem is about as scary as sild and the whole bizarre concoction is brewed with no cinematic nous or dramatic charge whatsoever.
You may be wondering then, how this disc gets the 5 hallowed big ones. Well, Ollie Reed's (fresh from his role as a Muslim tyrant in 'Brigand of Kandahar'(!) ) bull-like performance, intensified by his continual racing about bellowing is a treat in itself, as is the barking spectacle of the Royal Artillery nuking Roddy McDowall - so as some-one with an insatiable thirst for schlock, I'm left with little option:
You won't see a more satisfying couple of complete cults anywhere individually - but together...
The guy in the dusty WB dungeon who paired these two is obviously a 'special' person, and either needs immediate promotion to the upper echelons or fitted for a straight-jacket!
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
![The Shuttered Room/It! [DVD] [2008] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ztOyHzplL._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
![From Beyond The Grave [DVD] [1973]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51LwpsBP3KL._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
![The Man Who Could Cheat Death [DVD] [1959] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51BZlnq1Z9L._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
![The Oblong Box/Scream and Scream Again [DVD] [1970] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51F8XB62APL._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
![The Man Who Could Cheat Death [DVD] [1959] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51BZlnq1Z9L._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
![Chamber of Horrors/Brides of Fu Manchu [DVD] [2008] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QaRzl4zCL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
![Icons of Horror: Hammer Films [DVD] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/518321QvSOL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
![The Skull [DVD] [1965] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51YJ5HqDwbL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
![The Oblong Box/Scream and Scream Again [DVD] [1970] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51F8XB62APL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
