Die, Monster, Die!

Nick Adams plays American Stephen Reinhardt who arrives in the remoth British town of Arkham at the invitation of his college sweetheart's mother. No one in Arkham will take Reinhardt out to the Whitley place and he has to walk there on foot, passing a massive area of devasted heath where everything is burnt and the trees turn to ash when he touches them. At the Whitley Manor, Reinhardt is greeted by Nahum Whitley( Boris Karloff), his girlfriend's elderly father. Nahum is antagonistic to Reinhardt but allows him to stay after his daughter, Susan, smoothes things over a bit. Susan's mother, who had invited Reinhardt in the first place, is ill and in bed, which is covered in a dark gauze curtain and her room is darkened. Highly suspicious of the whole place, Reinhardt and Susan go snooping around and find the greenhouse full of gigantic plants and even more frightenening, a horrible menagerie of mutant monsters locked in the potting shed behind the greenhouse. "It's like a zoo in Hell!" The monsters and giant plants were created by pieces of a radioactive uranium stone which Reinhardt finds in every plant's soil and in the monster room. Turns out ols Nahum has a huge radioactive meteor in the cellar and it is slowly mutating Susan's mother and himself. Susan's mother devolves into a hideous melted faced monster and attacks everyone until she falls over and dies, the radioactivity eating her away! Nahum implores Reinhardt to take Susan away but he refuses to go as he is going to destroy the meteor. In the cellar Nahum breaks the rock open with an axe which releases a huge dose of radiation, turning him into a metallic silver skinned glowing horror! He chases reinhardt and Susan around the manor until he falls from a staircase railing and shatters, the sparks and heat from his body catching the house on fire as Susan and Reinhardt escape.

I've had this disc for several years and have watched it before a few times, but I watched it today with my sons, and they both liked it-my older son even thought it was kind of scary and he's 12! Of course, it isn't as good as the HP Lovecraft story that inspired it-"The Colour out of Space", but i have always found this film to be very entertaining. Unlike AIP's other Lovecraft film of the same time period-THE HAUNTED PALACE, this one doesn't suceed in invoking that Lovecraftian atmosphere, but it's still alot of fun. Boris Karloff and Nick Adams are both great and the heroine-Suzan Farmer was also in DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS later that year. Susan's mother was played by Freda Jackson who was the insanely ranting keeper of the vampire girls in Hammer's BRIDES OF DRACULA. As usual formid 60s American International films, everything is top notch-great sets, photography, score and actors. The monster Karloff becomes at the end is impressive , but it's obviously not the 77 year old star in the make-up agilely running around the house. They also obscure the rubber mask make-up effectively by blurring his face and adding an optical glowing effect. As this movie and Nick Adams 3 Japanese films were all done in 1965, I wonder which were done first, or if he went back and forth? Nick is much the same as he is in his 2 Toho films here and just as likable. He's the only Oscar nominated actor to co-star with both Boris Karloff and Godzilla! Now that's one heck of a career!!