Protraph
Lack of good storyline.
Smartorhypo
Highly Overrated But Still Good
CommentsXp
Best movie ever!
Michael_Elliott
The Dungeon of Harrow (1962) BOMB (out of 4)Aaron Fallon (Russ Harvey) survives a shipwreck and washes up on an island. He wonders around before reaching a castle owned by Count Lorente de Sade (William McNulty) who is hiding some dark secrets about his family.THE DUNGEON OF HARROW is a really awful movie that has somewhat gained a cult following over the years. This was apparently a very popular film on television back in the 1970s, which means that a lot of kids would watch it and keep its memory alive through the years. Today the film is basically remembered for how bad it is and it really does deserve that reputation because there's really not too many good things you can say about it.The biggest issue with the film is that it's deadly dull to the point where most people aren't going to be able to stay with it. The film basically has the Aaron character narrating the whole thing so we have to hear his non-stop thoughts and there's no question that the screenwriter got a major workout because there's pretty much nothing but dialogue here. It's poorly written and the narration of it is so dull that it just kills the film even more.Another problem is that it's clear the director didn't know how to make a movie as scenes drag on for no reason, often times you feel as if you're watching an outtake and just take a look at the opening shipwreck! This here has to be one of the worst looking special effects ever used for a film. The performances are also just as bad but for some strange reason I think they're the best thing in the movie. Yes, they are quite awful but at the same time they're so numbing that you almost can deal with them.I will say that there are some "so bad they're good" looking make-up effects at the end but by the time they show up most people will be bored to the point where they've turned the film off. THE DUNGEON OF HARROW is a really cheap attempt at trying to make a Corman-Poe picture but it pretty much fails on every level.
mark.waltz
Slow-talking non-actors make little attempt to turn this dreadful bore into a piece of art. Speaking from a script that unsuccessfully tries to be literary, they sound like an old Shakespeare acting troop reading his words for the first time. It all surrounds the discovery of evil goings on in the castle of a demented count and the horrific tortures he inflicts on his enemies. Cheaply made on ghostly looking sets, this needs more than that to be a decent macabre tale. Overlong and tedious, this seems to have a cult following, but who could make it through this more than once. The storyline makes little sense, and when it does, it reminds me of many horror classics which were done better. Yes, at times, there are a few genuine chills involving bats, snakes and cruelly violent activities, but that doesn't make at all for a satisfying movie. Bad sound makes it headache inducing. There have been better movies on the legend of the Marquis DeSade (particularly a ghost story with Mickey Shaugnessy), while here, he seems to be a parody of Boris Karloff. Having the hero being a shipwrecked captain is an obvious retread of other recent horror films which were nowhere as pretentious as this tried to be.
Woodyanders
Made on a painfully obvious breadcrumb budget, with an overly talky script, limp (non)direction by Pat Boyette (who also co-wrote the long-winded screenplay), a lethargic, uneventful, and meandering narrative, hit-or-miss acting, a dissatisfying downbeat ending, and cheesy (far from) special effects (the cruddy matte painting of a crumbling castle and the rinky-dink miniature of a ship that gets caught in a storm are both laughably hokey), this dreary dud about a sadistic count (robustly played by William McNulty) tormenting several folks on a remote island for the most part proves to be a boring chore to endure, but nonetheless manages to evoke a potently brooding gloom-doom Gothic atmosphere and delivers a couple of genuinely creepy and unsettling moments (Eunice Grey's regrettably brief appearance as the count's hideously disfigured and deranged wife who's stricken with leprosy rates as the definite flesh-crawling highlight). Moreover, both Helen Morgan as the sweet and helpful Cassandra and Michele Buquor as traumatized mute Ann manage to transcend the movie's pervasive mind-numbing mediocrity. Alas, Russ Harvey makes for a bland and underwhelming hero as the drippy Aaron Fallon, the excruciatingly poky pacing sucks all the energy and entertainment value from the picture, the slushy orchestral score is more obtrusive than effective, and the whole thing degenerates into the inevitable "The Most Dangerous Game" rehash in the last third. A deadly dull wash-out.
Peter_Bark
Some reviewers have called this a turkey, while others have tried to elevate it to a surrealist masterpiece. I found the film to neither be as bad nor as bizarre as they have made out.It brought to mind Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe adaptations (e.g. House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum) and Mexican and Italian Gothic horror films from the same period, but done on a shoestring budget. The story, which borrows loosely from The Most Dangerous Game, was actually pretty good, and with a clever twist ending; I'm not sure why some reviewers claim it is incoherent, because I had no problem following it. While there may have been a few draggy bits, I found Dungeon of Harrow to be fast paced overall, which is surprising for an almost completely dialogue-driven movie. The worst that you can say about it is that some of the acting was wooden and some of the props (like a giant spider) weren't exactly state of the art. Given the tiny budget he was working with, I think the director can be excused for not hiring Vincent Price to be the lead man or for using cheesy props.Some will think it's boring, but personally, I find obscure films like this that were made outside of the studio system and major cultural centers (Hollywood, New York, London, Rome, Paris, Berlin) to be fascinating.My true rating is 7 out of 10, but I'm giving it a 10 out of 10 because I find the current IMDb average of 2.8 to be unjustly low.
