Lovecraftian Cinema: Die, Monster, Die! (Monster of Terror)

Here's yet another movie I was first introduced to do on AMC, specifically their Friday night programming block, AMC EFX, where they would play an episode of their documentary series, Cinema Secrets, before showing an old movie that featured visual effects in some way. What makes this one different, though, is that I had no precedent going into it. I had never heard of this movie but the combination of Boris Karloff (this was the first non-Frankenstein movie with him that I ever saw) and Nick Adams, whom I knew about since I was a really little kid because of Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, definitely intrigued me and I ended up watching the whole thing. I can remember liking it and thinking it was actually kind of freaky, compared to other such horror films I'd seen by that point. I had seen some of the Hammer horror films, either in full or in bits, by then and this reminded me of them at the time, with its Technicolor, being set in England, and fairly gruesome makeup effects; now, though, I can see that a more fitting comparison would be with the other color movies American-International Pictures was producing at that time, particularly Roger Corman's films. After I saw it, I then learned from other sources, like IMDB and that VHS documentary, The History of Sci-Fi and Horror, that the general consensus didn't share my like for it and that it was considered as either silly, dull, or both. Looking at it now, I will say that it's definitely not a dynamo by any means, with long stretches of creeping around that could be very dull to a lot of viewers, and some aspects of it, especially the final reveal of what's going on, are very hokey, but I like the actors, I think it has a very nice atmosphere and setting, and it's still surprisingly gruesome and freakishly weird in that Lovecraftian way at points.

Young American scientist Stephen Reinhart arrives in the small English hamlet of Arkham, intent upon visiting his girlfriend, Susan Witley, at her family's estate. However, he finds that nobody in the village is willing to help him get there, for reasons they refuse to reveal, and so, Stephen is forced to walk the whole way to the property in the woods, which is a very gloomy-looking old mansion, surrounded by haze and a genuinely unsettling atmosphere. Arriving there, he enters and comes across Nahum Witley, the wheelchair-bound patriarch of the family. None too pleased to find a stranger in his house, Witley demands that he leave, even after Stephen reveals who he is and that he was invited there by Witley's own wife. Stephen is then greeted by Susan, who takes him upstairs to meet her mother, Letitia, whom she says is unwell. Going into her bedroom, where she's completely confined, her bed shrouded in netting, Letitia speaks to Stephen alone, telling him of how their maid, Helga, recently came down with a strange disease, one that prompted her to try to hide her face from those around her, and has since disappeared; she also asks Stephen to promise to take Susan away. Meanwhile, Witley, who is clearly plotting something that's tied to the house's eerie, dungeon-like basement and the greenhouse on the grounds, still intends to get rid of Stephen as soon as possible, and speaking with his wife later, it's clear that something sinister hangs over the family, as they talk about how he's become like his father, who supposedly consorted with dark forces. That night, after Merwyn, the butler, suddenly collapses while serving dinner, Susan is horrified at the sight of a black, hooded figure creeping around the house, and after hearing a horrific shriek later on, they're told by Witley that Merwyn has died. Stephen then spies on Witley burying the body out on the grounds and also notices that the nearby greenhouse, which is padlocked, has an unearthly glow to it. The next day, still unable to get any answers from the villagers, save for the knowledge that the town doctor was not the good man he once was after Susan's grandfather, Corbin Witley, died in his arms, Stephen decides to find out what's inside the greenhouse, eventually uncovering a frightening secret that threatens to destroy everyone living on the property.

The film's similar aesthetic to Roger Corman's Poe films is no coincidence, as its director, Daniel Haller, worked as an art director and production designer on just about all of them, as well as many of the other films Corman made around that time, like A Bucket of Blood, The Wasp Woman, The Little Shop of Horrors, Premature Burial, The Terror, X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes, and The Haunted Palace, just to name a few. Die, Monster, Die!, or, as it's referred to England, Monster of Terror, was Haller's first shot at directing and he would go on to do Devil's Angels, The Wild Racers (both motorcycle movies), and The Dunwich Horror, another H.P. Lovecraft adaptation (and, from what I remember of the one time I watched it, not a very good one). 1970 was also the year that Haller made his first foray into television and, save for the 1979 Buck Rogers in the 25th Century movie (which itself was originally intended for television), that's where he spend the reminder of his directing career, working on shows like Night Gallery, Ironside, Kojak, Battlestar Galactica, Knight Rider, Manimal, and Matlock, as well as a number of TV movies, some of which were produced by Roger Corman. An episode of The Highwayman was Haller's last job before he retired.

Like I've said before, Boris Karloff was one of those actors who, no matter how hokey or lower tier a movie was, always brought his A-game and managed to come out as one of the best things about it; Die, Monster, Die! is no exception. The first time you see him as Nahum Witley, staring at Stephen Reinhart with a cold, unwelcome glare, Karloff comes across as menacing and intimidating as he ever did, despite the fact that he's in a wheelchair (this was to accommodate the elderly actor's growing back problems). Right off the bat, he makes Stephen aware of the fact that he can't stay, despite being invited by his wife and what Susan might say, and while Susan ruins any chance of getting rid of him right away, Witley is still adamant that he must not stay longer than a day. He's clearly hiding something, as seen when he first ventures down to the cellar, which houses a vertical door above something that's giving off a green glow, and when he makes sure to keep the greenhouse locked. Susan revealing that Witley has refused to allow his ailing wife, Letitia, to see a doctor, the way he continuously spies on the two of them, and his manner at dinner, where he coldly admits that they and the villagers have nothing to do with each other and is vague about there having been a fire at a charred part area where nothing grows, reinforces the sinister aura around him. It's hinted that he's engaged in something truly satanic when he speaks with Letitia and she mentions how much he's like his father, who is said to have consorted with demons, although Witley claims to not believe it; regardless, he reiterates that he will not allow Stephen to interfere in whatever it is he's up to. When Merwyn, the butler, suddenly dies in the night after collapsing while serving dinner, Witley refuses to let Stephen or Susan see his body, which he discretely buries outside in the yard, although unbeknownst to him, Stephen is watching (incidentally, Witley actually walks during this section but it's never brought up again and Stephen never reveals it to Susan). Sensing that he's being spied on, Witley makes his way up to Stephen's room, where the latter pretends to be asleep after running back up there, but he seems to know that he's faking and appears to be plotting to bash his head in with a candlestick, only to be distracted by something else and subsequently leave the room.

Try as he might to keep everything under his control, things start to unravel for Witley when he decides too late to take Letitia to see a doctor, as she completely loses her mind from her illness, and Stephen and Susan learn of the horrors he's hiding in the greenhouse (unusually large plants that attack anything that gets too close and hideous mutant creatures), with the former going down into the basement and discovering a large, glowing, green stone hidden by the vertical door. When Stephen says that the stone is the cause for the horrific mutations and illnesses that have befallen the people at the mansion, Witley insists that it's just an ordinary stone but it's soon revealed that he knows that isn't the case. After Letitia tries to kill Susan and subsequently disintegrates from her disease, Witley laments, believing that the curse his father unleashed has struck his family and reveals that the glowing stone is a meteorite that crashed down many years before. He tried to harness the power it contained and use it to beautify the countryside, restoring honor to the family name in the process, but now knowing about what a destructive force it is, he tells Stephen to take Susan away while he destroys it. He accepts the possible fate that may befall him when he does so and goes down to the cellar to smash it to bits, only to be attacked by Helga, the mutated and completely insane maid. The attack causes Witley himself to become exposed to the meteorite's radiation and turn into a glowing mutant that attacks Stephen and Susan, with the former trying to fight him off and the latter unintentionally causing him to fall to his death when he chases after her. The sparks that emit from his irradiated body after he falls then spark a fire that proceeds to burn the house down.

It's a shame that Nick Adams' acting career never really took off and that he died so young, at just 36 (it seems like he committed suicide), because I think he had a sincere energy and charisma to him. I'm not going to say that he was underappreciated master actor, because he wasn't, and he could sometimes be very cringe-worthy in his delivery, but I've always liked him in Godzilla vs. Monster Zero and Frankenstein Conquers the World and feel that, much like Boris Karloff, he always gave it his all, no matter the movie (plus, he really looks dapper in that trench-coat he often wears here). Here, as young American scientist, Stephen Reinhart, he feels relatable as a fish-out-of-water when he arrives in the small village of Arkham, coming across as pleasant and charming but utterly baffled when he finds that no one in the village will help him get to the Witley house. He ultimately has to walk the whole way, carrying his luggage, passing a spot on that's strangely charred, and when he gets there, he finds a very gloomy old mansion in the woods, surrounded by constant mist. When he makes his way into the eerily quiet house, he receives no warm welcome from the first person he comes across, Nahum Witley, who tries to get rid of him instantly but is deterred by Susan, his daughter and Stephen's girlfriend, whom he met in college in the United States. Happy to see a friendly and familiar face, Stephen is then brought to meet Susan's mother, Letitia, who tells him in private of the strange things that have been happening, like the maid, Helga, becoming diseased and subsequently disappearing, and she also asks him to take Susan away as soon as he can. Not sure what to think of this, but not telling Susan of it, Stephen becomes all the more suspicious when Merwyn dies and Witley refuses to let him or Susan see the body, and also starts to grow concerned for Susan when he continually sees a dark figure creeping around outside the house. Twice that night, he tries to get her to leave with him but Susan refuses, due to how weak her mother has become in her illness. Later, Stephen, after finding a charred, body-shaped outline in Merwyn's room, sees Witley burying the body outside and also notices how the greenhouse has an unearthly glow to it.

Unable to get much information out of the villagers, except that the local doctor was never himself after Corbin Witley died in his hands, Stephen decides to investigate the greenhouse, along with Susan, and learns of the horrific secrets Witley is keeping in there and that they're a result of continued exposure to an intensely radioactive element. Finding pieces of radioactive stone buried in the soil beneath the mutated plants, Stephen theorizes that they must be taken from a much larger piece and he decides to search down in the main house's cellar for it, as Susan says that would be a good place to hide it. Sure enough, he finds an enormous slab of the radioactive stone down there and tries to warn Witley that the radiation is the source of the diseases and mutations that have plagued those on the property. His point is then proven when the diseased Letitia, now horribly deformed and insane, attacks Susan upstairs and he has to defend her, with Letitia dying immediately afterward. Following that, Stephen learns that the stone was a meteorite and he tries to convince Witley that is has nothing to do with his father or a curse but, regardless, Witley decides to destroy it himself and tells Stephen to take Susan away. Just as they're about to leave, though, Witley himself falls prey to the stone's radioactivity and attacks them, with Stephen having to fight him off in order to protect Susan. Witley is ultimately killed and Stephen has to get Susan out of the house, which catches on fire and quickly becomes engulfed in flames. Before they leave, Stephen tells Susan that all this was her father's doing, a result of his selfishness in wanting to use the meteorite to restore his family's name rather than using it to help all people.

As Susan Witley, Suzan Farmer doesn't have much to do in the movie, at least during the first half, other than be Stephen Reinhart's lover and, while knowing instinctively that something is wrong, come across as unaware of just how sinister things are at her house. Unaware of what Stephen and her mother were talking about when they were by themselves, she's perplexed by all of his questions about what's been going on and, when he asks about the burned area near the house, she says that there was a fire, although she admits that she herself didn't see it, as her father never allowed her to go out there, and mentions that a few villagers disappeared there. Susan grows concerned about her mother, who refuses to eat anything, and for Merwyn when he collapses while serving dinner, subsequently dying a mysterious death, though Witley refuses to let her and Stephen see the body. She's also horrified at the sight of a dark figure creeping around and watching her from outside, and when Stephen doesn't see it, she begins to doubt if it was even there to begin with, telling him that there's something smothering about the house. Regardless of all of this, she refuses to leave when Stephen implores her to, saying that she can't leave her mother in her weakened condition, and is quite frightened when she's unable to get her to answer when she knocks on her room's door the next day. When Witley sends her away after this, she meets back up with Stephen and the two of them decide to investigate the greenhouse, as Susan is surprised when she learns of the glow and that it's padlocked. Using a side panel that she used to hide in there when she was a little girl, they enter and find the abnormally large and monstrous plants, as well as the hideous mutants being kept in the potter's shed, all of which horrifies Susan. When Stephen decides to investigate the house's cellar per her suggestion that that would be a nice place to keep the main piece of the radioactive stone whose chunks they found in the greenhouse, Susan is confronted by her father and is forced to tell him where Stephen is. She's then attacked by her deformed and maddened mother, who ultimately dies while chasing her and Stephen. Following that, Witley, after explaining everything, tells Stephen to take Susan away and, while she tries to get him to allow her to stay, he's insistent. Soon, however, it doesn't matter, as Witley falls prey to the radioactivity and becomes a mutant attempting to attack Susan and Stephen, dying in the process. The two of them escape the burning house and once they've gotten clear, Susan tries to make sense of what's happened, with Stephen explaining that it was all came down to the choice her father made.

It's never made clear exactly what Letitia Witley (Freda Jackson) knows of her husband's work or if she's aware the illness that's befallen her and the others is connected to it but she does know that it's bad news and, knowing of her daughter's connection to Stephen Reinhart, she arranges for him to come to the house from America. Bedridden, with netting completely surrounding her bed to keep her out of the light, which she's become very sensitive to, and obscuring her figure, Letitia tells Stephen about what happened to Helga, the maid, and how she's disappeared, showing him the earring she dropped in the room at one point. She doesn't tell Stephen what she believes her husband is up to, probably because she figures he wouldn't believe her, as she thinks it's tied to Satanism, but she implores him to take Susan away as soon as possible. Later, when her husband comes up to speak to her, Letitia tells him that she fears he's going down the same dark path that his father did and that she intends for Stephen to take Susan away. When Witley protests, Letitia threatens to show herself to the villagers and reveal what's going on. As her illness progresses throughout the story, Letitia begins to go mad from it, just like Helga, appearing to answer an inaudible voice in a scene between her and Susan, and the next day, her bedroom is shown to now be in shambles, as she sits over in the corner, moaning in pain and with her face half-deformed. She eventually gets out of her room and, her face now completely deformed, chases after Susan and Stephen before falling to the floor and melting into a bloody mess, exposing Witley to the horror of his experiments with the radioactive stones.

Despite suffering from the stone's ill-effects himself, the Witley family butler, Merwyn (Terence de Marney), remains loyal to his master, helping him get around so he can continue with his work and to keep the nature of it a secret. However, it catches up with him when he collapses while serving dinner that night, an episode that Witley tells Stephen and Susan has happened before and claims to know how to deal with. However, upon hearing a shriek that night, the two of them learn from Witley that Merwyn died, but he refuses to let them see the body. He takes the body outside and buries it in the yard, but Stephen spies on him, having found an outline of Merwyn's body in his room that seems to be made up of a burnt, smoking residue, which leads to him noticing the glowing greenhouse and eventually learning what's being hid in there. Helga, on the other hand (I can't find who played her), has by now reached the point that Letitia does the next day. Deformed and insane, she creeps around the property, still wearing the veil that she once used to hide her ugliness, and watches the family, keeping a particular eye on Helen and frightening her when she catches sight of her. She attacks Stephen with a knife when he heads out the next morning to try to find some information about the place, although he manages to fight her off; Nahum Witley, however, isn't so lucky when he gets attacked near the end of the film. Helga causes him to become affected by the radiation from the chunk of the meteorite, although what happened to her is never explained, as she just disappears afterward.

Of the few townspeople featured, there are only two that are really significant. One is Dr. Henderson (Patrick Magee), the village's bitter, out-of-practice, alcoholic physician who, like everyone else, absolutely refuses to speak on the matter of the Witleys and makes Stephen leave when he tries to question him about it. His assistant, Miss Bailey (Sheila Raynor), despite knowing that she probably shouldn't, does tell Stephen that Henderson was once a good man but, when he returned after Corbin Witley died in his hands, he was never the same again and gave up his practice. Speaking of Miss Bailey, it seems that there's a short, "American" version of the film that featured another actor in her role, as it is with the cab driver who refuses to take Stephen to the Witley house at the beginning of the movie. I haven't been able to find any information on this version but I do know that the version that I've always seen, and the one that's widely available, is the original UK version, which runs around 78 minutes, whereas the American one runs 72.

Truth be told, Die, Monster, Die! is a real mixed bag of a film, one where the pros and cons are about equal, but one example of the former is its Gothic setting and atmosphere. It's exactly what you'd expect of from a film based on H.P. Lovecraft: you have the tiny, quaint little village of Arkham, the few inhabitants of which are friendly enough until you happen to mention the Witley place. Once Stephen Reinhart makes that mistake, he finds that there's a pall of fear and contempt for that place hanging over the village, as every person he comes across refuses to aid him in getting there, with the owner of the bicycle shop refusing to let him rent one to get there, and no one will tell him what they're so afraid of, not even the village's retired doctor. Realizing that there's no way for him to get there other than to walk, Stephen makes the long trek to the Witley place (how he knows where it is is anyone's guess, as no one would give him directions) and as he does, the countryside becomes more and more sinister-looking. He comes a charred area with a large crater in the ground and finds that all of the plants are dead, before moving on into the eerie, mist-filled woods, walking the path that leads to the Witley property's padlocked main gate, which also has a bear trap next to the side wall to dissuade anyone who tries to slip in through a gap by the bars (fortunately for Stephen, he spots it in time). Crossing a small bridge over a stream, Stephen then comes across the Witley house, which is the quintessential creepy house in the woods: a large, gloomy mansion that's the very definition of the word "Gothic" in terms of its architecture and the ominous vibes it emits. These exteriors were shot at Oakley Court, which has been used in a number of films, including a fair amount of the horror films Hammer produced and other movies like Witchcraft (the 1964 movie with Lon Chaney Jr., that is), William Castle's remake of The Old Dark House, And Now the Screaming Starts!, and, probably most famously, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The inside of the Witley house is no less ominous than the outside, as it's an overbearing place, akin to a mausoleum, and there's no room that gives off any feeling of comfort, no matter how fancy-looking and nicely-colored it may be. The main hall has a twisting staircase in the center, a big grandfather clock, and a hanging chandelier, while the nearby dining room feels closed in, uncomfortable, and smothering, in spite of the large table where the food is served. The study especially feels like a tomb, with the pillars off to its right side, the weird patterns on the walls, and how, when Stephen is looking through the many books on the table, it's lit by a single candelabra. Letitia's bedroom has the potential to look nice but the dim lighting and the netting that surrounds her bed makes it just as creepy as every other place in the house, while Stephen's bedroom is definitely the most innocuous room but, nevertheless, has that same uncomfortable feeling as everywhere else. And as you might expect, the house is even creepier at night, when Stephen and Susan are walking around, searching for the source of an unearthly shriek they heard, using only a single candle to light the way and finding a dark corridor off the main hall that leads to Merwyn's room. Nothing up in the house, however, compares to the basement, a dark, dank, cobweb-filled catacomb, full of bats and spiders, that leads to the centerpiece of a large chamber, with a vertical door over the main piece of the meteorite, which glows an unearthly green and gives off a constant hum. The chains that raise that door up are attached to a large, skull-shaped carving above them, there are other such carvings and drawings on the walls, which look very satanic,  and chains and other such objects found in the corner. All of this sinister ambience also includes the glowing greenhouse on the property, connected to a potter's shed, both of which contain a horrific secret, and a small graveyard on the grounds.

The feeling of foreboding that hangs over the Witley house isn't just due to the way it looks but also the palpable atmosphere that fills it. From the moment Stephen arrives, you can feel that there's something not right about it, and the notion that many of its inhabitants have come down with a bizarre and sinister disease that seems to disfigure and madden its victims (which we know from what we learn about Helga and what little we see of Letitia, like her gnarled hand reaching out through her bed's netting in one shot), as well as Nahum Witley's cold, ever watchful presence and Letitia asking Stephen to take Susan away, reinforces it time and again. The first night there, Stephen and Susan hear bizarre, frightening shrieks that pierce the otherwise still night air, Susan herself twice sees a dark, hooded figure watching her and creeping around outside, and late in the night, their investigation into the wails that turn out to have been the sounds of Merwyn dying lead to Stephen finding the burned outline of his body in his room, seeing Witley carry the body outside to bury it, and noticing the glowing greenhouse. All the while, the film will sometimes cut back to the portrait of Witley's father, Corbin Witley, who we learn is said to have consorted with demons and, even in death, seems to be watching everything unfold as his son appears to be unknowingly following in his footsteps.

However, while the mystery of what's going on is definitely a high-point of the film, so much time is spent either watching the characters sit around and talk about the strange events that have occurred or Stephen and Susan creeping around the house and the property, trying to uncover what's going on, that some may find that the atmosphere only goes so far. I've never found those moments to be too hard to sit through but, after a while, it does get to the point where you wish the movie would get on with it. What's more, even though it's eventually revealed that what has happened is the result of the radiation from the meteorite and the chunks taken from it mutating everybody and everything, the film also tries to suggest that there may have been something supernatural to it as well. It's made clear that Corbin Witley was a satanist and it's believed that his acts have cursed the household, a notion that, by the end, appears to merely be superstitions held by Letitia and later by Nahum Witley, who sees the meteorite as being sent by Corbin from the other side to ensure that his curse took root. However, there are a couple of moments where seemingly unexplained things happen, like when Stephen appears to hear something behind him while looking through the books in the study and when Letitia seems to hear and speak to something that only she can, and in the film's last shot, which is of the painting of Corbin as it's consumed by the fire, it looks as if the image's expression very subtly turns into that of an evil grin, following a shimmering effect on it. At the same time, you can explain each of those moments away as the sound of Helga creeping around, Letitia's growing madness, and a trick of the light respectively, but they leave it all deliberately vague. It seems like they're trying to leave it up to the viewer to decide but the problem is that everything is kind of muddled, especially when it comes to Corbin and some of the mysteries surrounding him (such as what exactly happened between him and Dr. Brandon that made him the bitter man he is). What's more, the villagers having nothing to do with Witley house mainly stems from what Corbin did long ago and it's suggested that they also believe the meteorite is something evil but it all never quite gels, making it pretty meaningless.

On the technical side of things, the film is very well shot. Like those Corman Poe films, despite the low budget, the film's widescreen look (though, it wasn't originally shot that way but was converted to it) manages to give it scope and the Technicolor is quite lovely to look at, especially when you see a nice, HD version of it. Granted, the movie is devoid of really vibrant colors for the most part, save for the parts of the Witley house that do look really nice, but when you see them, they stand out, with the best examples being the green glow from the chunk of the meteorite down in the cellar, the colorful plants in the greenhouse, and the shimmering, colored lights coming from the stone in the potting shed. Daniel Haller also proves that he knows how to create images that are creepy and hard to forget, like the shots of Helga's silhouette, as she stalks around the outside of the house, and the atmospheric shots that involve the mist that surrounds it, both in the outdoor and indoor scenes, as well as the storm that's raging outside when Letitia disappears. One of the best things that Haller does with the camera and lighting is when Stephen and Susan first enter the potting shed: before Stephen illuminates them with the flashlight, if you look off to the left of the screen, you can see the mutated creatures in there moving around in the dark. However, one effect that Haller does that comes across as unintentionally cheesy is the glow effect that emits from Witley when he gets exposed to the radiation and becomes little more than an irradiated zombie (although, he goes back and forth from shuffling around to moving quite fast and agilely). Every time he's onscreen, there's this prism of light around him that's meant to be a result of the radiation but it looks more like the camera is out of focus and not capturing the glow properly (I thought it might have been in order to disguise the laughable makeup effect, as we'll get into presently, but you see that optical onscreen even which his irradiated head and hands aren't). Also, when Stephen watches Witley bury Merwyn outside, it's clearly daytime, even though it's supposed to be very late at night.

Where the film is truly mixed in terms of quality is in the mutations caused by the meteorite and the makeup and visual effects used to bring them to life: sometimes, they're effectively gruesome and nightmarish, but in other cases, they're more prone to cause snickers in how archaic they look. First off, matte paintings and optical effects are used to create the shots of the large crater in the heath that Stephen passes by on his way to the Witley place. You can tell that that's exactly what they are, especially in the second shot, as he walks away from it, into the woods, as the division between the live-action elements and the mattes are very clear, but they look good enough to where you can at least admire the artistry behind them. A similar effect is used in the potting shed, when Stephen and Susan are in the same frame as the mutant creatures being housed in there, and again, you make out the divide between the elements, but the dark lighting in that scene helps with the illusion a little more. Speaking of those creatures, they are the epitome of Lovecraftian and are one of a couple of aspects of the movie that made think, "Jesus Christ!" when I first saw them. They're these amorphous things with big, octopus-like heads, long, tentacle-like arms, and completely black eyes, and they're the source of the hideous shrieks that had been heard piercing the air of the property. They don't move much and seem to be executed through very simple puppets but that doesn't matter, as you see just enough to get the idea that what you're looking at is, as Stephen describes it, like a zoo in hell. Less effective, though, are the plants that attack and ensnare Susan in the greenhouse, with Stephen having to hack through them to save her. The effect of their tendrils slowly moving in and reaching for her looks fine but, as far-fetched and far from scientifically accurate as everything else in this movie is, the concept of plants that have been mutated to the point where they can actually attack people is really pushing it and is just downright silly.

A prelude to the deforming effects the meteorite's radioactivity has on people and their eventual, gruesome fates are given throughout the first half of the movie, when you see Letitia's gnarled hand reach out through her bed's netting at one point, the charred outline of Merwyn's body after he dies, and a brief glimpse of Helga's face when Stephen knocks her veil loose by flipping her to the ground when she attacks him while he's outside. Later, when Nahum Witley is trying to speak to Letitia from outside her room, you see her cowering in the corner and as she turns her head, it's revealed that the right side of her face is deformed. Not too long after that, Letitia completely loses her mind and, despite her diseased state and wobbling gait, begins rampaging through the house, chasing after Stephen and Susan and being strong enough to smash through doors, take a hit from a candelabra, and fall through some double doors before finally collapsing and disintegrating. Her face mainly looks like it's covered in clay when you do get a good look at it (which is rare) but it's still pretty gruesome to look at and so are her ugly hands, which look like they've been burned. After she collapses, the film cuts back and forth between everyone's shocked reactions and her face, as you see it get eaten away by the lingering radiation, until it's a grisly mess of blood and her skull. This was another effect that quite shocked me when I first saw it around the time I was twelve or thirteen. Witley's exposure to the meteorite and its effects, however, don't hold up so well. After he gets exposed as a result of Helga's attack, they use animation to show the green energy of the radioactivity coursing through the veins of his face and hands but the bad thing is that Boris Karloff slightly moves in these shots and the animation is revealed to be nothing more than an overlay that's attached to him at all. The makeup used to show his mutation looks just as bad, as it looks like a guy whose head and hands are completely covered in green-colored, phosphorescent paint. I used to think that the intention was for Witley's body to have become the same type of stone as the meteorite but I'm not sure if it's that or if the radiation is simply causing his body to glow like it, complete with the same humming sound from before. Either way, you get this laughable effect as a result, and I've once felt that it was the same character that Boris Karloff was playing, as the face now looking nothing like him (the glowing handprints he leaves behind and the sparks his body gives off after falling to his death do look nice, though).

As most of the movie is about atmosphere and the mystery of what's going on, there aren't many big setpieces until the third act, when things really start to unravel. When Witley catches Stephen down in the cellar with the chunk of meteorite, and Stephen, in turn, tries to make him understand the dangerous effects of its radiation, they suddenly hear Susan scream upstairs. Stephen rushes up there, with Witley following as well as he can, and he finds Susan unconscious on the floor outside of Letitia's bedroom. He brings her to and asks her what happened, to which she answers that she heard her mother smashing things in the room and when she tried to get her to come out, the door suddenly burst open; after that, she has no memory of what happened. Witley decides to look for his wife and Stephen and Susan begin searching as well. A storm is now raging outside, the winds of which blow open the house's front door, and Witley heads down there, calling for Letitia. Upstairs, Stephen and Susan don't have much luck in finding her either, only coming across the wind gusting through open windows, knocking over things and blowing doors closed in the process. But, when they open the door to one room (which they had already checked, I might add), Letitia suddenly lunges at them and chases them downstairs, into the study, which they quickly lock once they're inside. Letitia shakes and pounds on the door from the outside and manages to smash through the wood. Stephen has Susan duck out of sight, as Letitia enters the room and stalks towards him, ignoring the chair he puts in her path and swiping the books off the desk, as he backs behind it. He manages to knock her to the floor in front of the fireplace but she gets right back up and continues after him, chasing him up to the double patio doors and lunging at him, only to fall through them and end up outside in the rain. As Witley enters the room, Letitia staggers back inside before collapsing to the floor and disintegrating, as they all watch in horror. Witley then asks Stephen to take Susan out of the room.

Shortly afterward comes the climax, when Witley tells Stephen to take Susan away, while he goes down into the cellar to destroy the chunk of the meteorite. Once down there, he grabs an axe and, despite how weak is, stands up from his wheelchair and staggers over to the stone. Raising up the vertical door covering the stone, he begins smashing it, causing it to send out sparks, when he sees the hooded figure of Helga enter the room, brandishing a knife. She lunges at him and he tries to hit her with the axe, only for her to grab it, take it away from him, and begin using it herself. He backs away from her as she approaches, threatening him with the axe, as the stone continues sparking and the humming grows higher in pitch. They seem to go completely around the pedestal housing the stone and then, when they're back in front of it, Helga swings the axe at him... and I'm not sure what happens next. The axe clearly hits the stone, sending out more sparks, but it looks as if Helga fell forward, into the spot where the stone is, but after we cut back from seeing Stephen and Susan packing upstairs, when they hear Witley scream, Helga is nowhere to be seen and Witley has now been exposed to the stone's radiation (like I said earlier, Helga's ultimate fate is never made clear). In any case, Stephen rushes downstairs, into the cellar, as the radiation rapidly spreads throughout Witley's body. When Stephen arrives in the room with the stone, he finds no sign of Witley, and sees that the stone has been reduced to rubble. Hearing something in the next corridor, he finds glowing handprints on the wall and follows them into another room. He walks up to one handprint on a corner by the foot of the stairs that lead down into the cellar, when the irradiated Witley suddenly comes at him from around the corner. Stephen races up the stairs, throwing everything he can at Witley to try to slow him down, and heads up to the door, closing it behind him and locking it.

Stephen runs to the stairs, just as Susan comes down them, and he tells her to get back. Seeing the cellar door shaking and the glow that's coming through it, she heads back up, followed by Stephen, as Witley manages to rip the door open and begin up the stairs after them. Running up to her bedroom, Stephen has Susan hide in the corner and tells her to wait until he says to run for the door. Grabbing a blade off the wall, he stands ready, as Witley reaches the door and begins slamming his hands on it, eventually breaking through it. Stephen throws the blade but Witley dodges it and it sticks into the wall beside him. Stephen grabs an axe and another blade for weapons, as Witley slowly approaches him. He swings the blades at Witley but he manages to dodge them and even goes after Susan at one point, prompting Stephen to immediately throw the blade and get his attention again. Stephen prompts Witley to come after him and he does just that. He backs away from him until they're on either side of a small table and, smacking a candelabra off it, he swings the axe but only manages to chop the table in half and fall to the floor. Stephen yells for Susan to run and she peels out of the room, but her father chases after her, cornering her on the railing overlooking the house's main floor. Stephen gets up and rushes after Witley, who ends up going through the railing and crashes onto the floor below, his body sparking. Susan almost falls herself but manages to grab onto a banister and is helped back up by Stephen. The sparks from Witley's disintegrating body spread across the floor and ignite a fire that quickly engulfs the entire floor and even parts of the ceiling. It's so intense that, for a moment, it seems as though Stephen and Susan are trapped, but Stephen finds a clear way and is able to lead Susan through the flames and out the front door. The movie ends with Stephen telling Susan not to look back and, after explaining to her that everything that's happened is due to the choices her father made, the two of them walk away, as the house burns down.

While it's in line with Corman Poe films in terms of its style, the movie does have another connection to Hammer Films aside from the use of Oakley Court and that's through it's music, which was composed by Australian musician Don Banks, who did the music for The Evil of Frankenstein, Nightmare, The Reptile, Hysteria, and The Mummy's Shroud. If you've watched a lot of those movies, you should recognize the score here as being in the same vein of those bombastic, driving scores that they tended to have. The main theme, which plays over the opening credits (which themselves are done over a background of swirling colors), can be described as nothing less than a horrific concierto, with a distinctive core piece that has a memorable, climbing melody to it. While that's the only part of the score that's truly distinctive, the music does accentuate the action well, be it the attack scenes, the quieter, atmospheric and mysterious moments, and the climactic scene in the burning house. Truth be told, that's often all you can say in regards to the music in both Hammer movies and the Poe movies, so it fits in that way as well.

In terms of story, execution, faithfulness, and entertainment value, there are certainly much better H.P. Lovecraft adaptations than Die, Monster, Die! but, as much of a mixed bag as it is, it's definitely not without its merits. It has the benefit of a nice cast who gives good performances all around, including those in the really small parts; a well-executed Gothic setting that's bursting with the kind of atmosphere you'd expect from Lovecraft; a nice look to it and sets that are quite well done, despite the low budget; an interesting mystery and a sense of foreboding about it; optical effects that, while not great, get the job done, along with some makeup and creature effects that are quite startling; and a fair music score that does its job. All that said, though, there is a bit of a slowness to the story that could turn off some viewers, especially since there are no major setpieces until the third act, some of the effects and concepts are either painfully dated or downright laughable, and the film's attempt to suggest something truly supernatural and satanic along with the science fiction elements never pans out. It's not an overlooked classic that I could recommend to everyone but, if you like Lovecraft and Gothic horror in general, I'd say that if you stick with it, you'll find a movie that does do some things right.