Reading the other user comments posted about this odd, compelling little shocker, you think someone had put a gun to the heads of the people who have written in and forced them to watch this under threat of death, like they had no choice or were unable to find a remote control and the OFF button. You'd also think that they were judging the movie based on it's merits, or lack thereof, and no critiquing the crummy little DVDs they glommed onto. One dollar for a DVD, and it STILL doesn't rise to your expectations? What were you expecting -- CITIZEN KANE? Maybe FITZCARRALDO? There is a reason why public domain movies always look like crap, and that is that nobody owns them, the transfers bopping around are all 30+ years old or older, and you're lucky to see the film at all or that it was ever even made. If you want quality, go buy yourself the remastered KING KONG DVD. Stop picking on stuff like DUNGEON OF HARROW.
The film was made over forty-three years ago for less money than an average year of college tuition costs these days. The cast consists of maybe seven people, of which six have lines. Most of the film consists of people talking, and while there is no direct literary chain of evidence the content speaks of Edgar Allan Poe, who would have adored this atmospheric, amoral and at times gleefully sadistic little chiller. The film looks unreal, or like a nightmare or dream, with distorted colors, bizarre lighting and a voice over narration like someone thinking to themselves, reciting a nightmare as it unwinds in their mind's eye. The film has a quality to it that borders on surrealism, like figures swimming against a backdrop of half recognized shapes and outlines that just happen to resemble rooms or torture dungeons.
I love movies like this, bizarre, obscure little morality plays that exist as chains of moments rather than a boringly predictable story. Not everyone can make Harry Potter movies and not every director is interested in the same agendas. Some directors work to make visceral documents of moods or atmospheres, and that is what I feel is going on here. The story is actually irrelevant, which is why I am not discussing it. What is relevant is the almost overwhelming sense of dread, decay and madness that the film cultivates. It is claustrophobic, deliberately paced, sonorous and perhaps even a bit boring. I wish it was even MORE boring and that even less happened: The atmospheric use of fog and torture racks and indentured slavery that make up the legend of horror that the film recites is still extremely potent even with the faded, tattered, color rotted fullframe TV print transferred to home video decades before it ended up as a DVD.
I am not defending this movie, mind you, I am praising it. I am praising the director for having had the audacity to make it with so very little, the producers for allowing it to be made when there were idiotic B or C grade Westerns that could have been made with the same money and done more at the box office, and even the DVD companies that managed to dig up the old master used for their stupid little DVD. God bless 'em all, and to hell with BATMAN BEGINS or whatever other overblown, self important and soulless garbage is being shoveled out the door on DVD today -- packed with seven hours of extra stuff to watch and distract you from how shallow, empty and uninteresting the film itself is. Here's one for a dollar and it is a marvel of imagination, ingenuity and invention by comparison. It doesn't have any stars, it isn't very exciting and hard to put out of the mind afterward. That's why it's a masterpiece of one sort or another, and I'd rather be shipwrecked on an island with a box full of stuff like this than the entire collected works of Peter Jackson, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg combined. Whats that, like 12 movies in all?
7/10, though sadly, you apparently need a brain to get it.
The film was made over forty-three years ago for less money than an average year of college tuition costs these days. The cast consists of maybe seven people, of which six have lines. Most of the film consists of people talking, and while there is no direct literary chain of evidence the content speaks of Edgar Allan Poe, who would have adored this atmospheric, amoral and at times gleefully sadistic little chiller. The film looks unreal, or like a nightmare or dream, with distorted colors, bizarre lighting and a voice over narration like someone thinking to themselves, reciting a nightmare as it unwinds in their mind's eye. The film has a quality to it that borders on surrealism, like figures swimming against a backdrop of half recognized shapes and outlines that just happen to resemble rooms or torture dungeons.
I love movies like this, bizarre, obscure little morality plays that exist as chains of moments rather than a boringly predictable story. Not everyone can make Harry Potter movies and not every director is interested in the same agendas. Some directors work to make visceral documents of moods or atmospheres, and that is what I feel is going on here. The story is actually irrelevant, which is why I am not discussing it. What is relevant is the almost overwhelming sense of dread, decay and madness that the film cultivates. It is claustrophobic, deliberately paced, sonorous and perhaps even a bit boring. I wish it was even MORE boring and that even less happened: The atmospheric use of fog and torture racks and indentured slavery that make up the legend of horror that the film recites is still extremely potent even with the faded, tattered, color rotted fullframe TV print transferred to home video decades before it ended up as a DVD.
I am not defending this movie, mind you, I am praising it. I am praising the director for having had the audacity to make it with so very little, the producers for allowing it to be made when there were idiotic B or C grade Westerns that could have been made with the same money and done more at the box office, and even the DVD companies that managed to dig up the old master used for their stupid little DVD. God bless 'em all, and to hell with BATMAN BEGINS or whatever other overblown, self important and soulless garbage is being shoveled out the door on DVD today -- packed with seven hours of extra stuff to watch and distract you from how shallow, empty and uninteresting the film itself is. Here's one for a dollar and it is a marvel of imagination, ingenuity and invention by comparison. It doesn't have any stars, it isn't very exciting and hard to put out of the mind afterward. That's why it's a masterpiece of one sort or another, and I'd rather be shipwrecked on an island with a box full of stuff like this than the entire collected works of Peter Jackson, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg combined. Whats that, like 12 movies in all?
7/10, though sadly, you apparently need a brain to get it.