The Horror of It All (1964) User Reviews

The temptation to dismiss this horror comedy is strong, but itspedigree is impossible to ignore.

[bella-6 · 5/10 · 25 October 2000]

This film, almost impossible to find today, has received a bad rap since its day of release, and maybe before, since the distributors put it on the bottom of a double bill with Lon Chaney's "Witchcraft." The temptation to dismiss this film is strong, but its pedigree is impossible to ignore. Genre master Terence Fisher is at the helm, during his unofficial banishment from Hammer Films; Ray Russell wrote the script; and the cast includes Valentine Dyall from "Horror Hotel"/"City of the Dead", Andree Melly, one of the "Brides of Dracula" and British stalwart Dennis Price, just beginning his flirtation with the horror genre.

So what went wrong?

The film's greatest offense is undoubtedly that it was made in black & white during the era when movies were going all-color in a big way. It's co-feature likewise; and that was a film that everyone liked and it still slipped into obscurity.

The casting of Pat Boone has stuck in the craws of many horror fans but, truthfully, he's as palatable as Tom Poston is in "Zotz" and 1963's "The Old Dark House". And Boone's boyish screen persona is just right for the kind of hapless hero he plays here. He does sing a totally unnecessary song, however.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this film is its similarity to two other films made about the same time: Hammer's "The Old Dark House", made the same year, and "What A Carve Up" (AKA "There's No Place Like Homicide") from 1962. The plot similarities, especially with the Hammer film, are so strong that it's a wonder how the persons concerned avoided lawsuits.

Uncredited remake of "The Old Dark House"

[nickshubby · 6/10 · 12 May 2020]

In 1963 Hammer films made their own version of JD Priestly's "The old dark House" and against all the normal practices of Hammer hired B Picture Horror legend William Castle to direct. Hammer Regular Terrance Fisher seems to have taken umbrage at this and the following year made this film independently. The budget is a fraction of the hammer version, music is added and famous crooner Pat Boone takes the lead the names are changed from Fem and Penderel but otherwise the story is the same (apart from one small and nonsensical twist at the end). Especially notable in this version are Valentine Dyall and British sit com regular Eric Chitty.

As an actor, Pat Boone is a great singer.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 6 August 2018]

You think that the Munsters and Addams Family were the only ookie and creepy families on screen in 1964? Wait until you meet the Marley's, a weird British family consisting of a wacky inventor great uncle, the bedridden patriarch who finds odd places to hide his will, his son who keeps death masks of all the relatives who have darkened the family name (a good thing in their family bible), a niece who drinks only Bloody Mary's, and is more dour than Wednesday Addams, and the seemingly normal daughter (Erica Rogers) who is engaged to American traveling salesman Pat Boone. After a car accident that doesn't seem quite so accidental, Boone must walk to the home of his fiancee where he is greeted by pops (Dennis Price), a dour fellow who warns him in bits and pieces about the characteristics of their family. In addition to those I mention above is an odd uncle who is quiet but dastardly and another uncle once held prisoner by head hunters who believes that he has the skull the size of a pear and seems to be cannibalistic himself.

Yes, this is a badly written movie, but it was written with so much tongue in cheek that it is impossible to hate. Boone's acting is, well, just bland, but the other actors seem to get that they are spoofing the horror genre and put their all into having fun just overplaying everything. The best sequence comes when Boone chit-chats with the inventor uncle who keeps coming up with ideas of things that have already been invented, like electricity. His idea of a horseless carriage is hysterically funny, and just wait until you learn what he uses in place of gasoline. Andree Melly makes every moment she is on screen unforgettable, with her deadpan manner extremely funny. When Boone suddenly breaks into a very bad horror themed song, you are laughing so much at it all that it comes to you that in spite of how silly it all is that you are actually having a good time.

View at your own risk...

[moonspinner55 · 2/10 · 28 October 2007]

American encyclopedia salesman working in England pays a surprise visit to his fiancée, who lives with her uncle and assorted relatives in an eerie countryside estate. Retread of "The Old Dark House" given curiously jaunty undermining, but these eccentric spooks are not very funny and one simply longs for the central character to get away. Pat Boone has the lead, and he does very well pretending to be interested in this ridiculous scenario; his intended is a colorless bird, and her family would certainly cause any sane person to head for the hills, but Boone proves to be quite capable here (he might have grown even more as an actor if Fox had given him some half-way decent roles). Talky, low-budget second-feature with flimsy-looking sets tries for a light touch but doesn't have the goods to keep it afloat. * from ****

Boone, Boone, shake, shake the room...

[matthewmercy · 3/10 · 6 May 2015]

A long-unseen comedy-chiller from 1964, The Horror of It All holds the dubious distinction of being one of Hammer horror doyen Terence Fisher's most obscure movies; certainly, amongst the post-1957 filmography that contains all of his most famous and influential directorial credits, it is matched only by the dead-on-arrival, German-produced Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962) in terms of all-round pointlessness. Both films, in fact, came at the midpoint in Fisher's run as British cinema's number one 'horror man', as after his initial run of trailblazing Gothic chillers that put Hammer on the international map, he appears to have been given a forced sabbatical from the fold following the box office failure of his weak-tea take on The Phantom of the Opera (1962); this resulted in him taking several 'director for hire' type assignments over the next few years, which he eventually started to slot in around his later Hammer efforts.

The very least of a glut of horror spoofs that appeared on UK screens in the 1960s (amongst them the excellent What A Carve Up and the legendary Carry On Screaming), The Horror of It All stars American singer-actor Pat Boone as a dopey everyman who turns up at the country home of his girlfriend Erica Rogers (yes, I'm drawing a blank too) intent on proposing, only to find out that not only are her family a decidedly odd bunch, but there's likely to be a murder there before very much longer as well...

Cheaply produced by Robert L. Lippert, whose stable would also be responsible for Fisher's The Earth Dies Screaming, this impoverished- looking quickie bears just about none of the classy hallmarks found in the director's better films. Certainly not at home with comedy, Fisher struggles to get anything at all funny out of the clichéd situations and very tired gags. The music (including a brief bit of singing by Boone in the middle of the picture) is nondescript, as are most of the supporting performances. The exceptions are reliable turns by Valentine Dyall and Dennis Price as two of the crackpot relatives; former alumni of the films of Powell and Pressburger, both actors would eventually slide much further down the movie industry totem pole than this, but that doesn't change the fact they are essentially wasted here.

Though unsurprisingly unavailable on DVD or any other home format, I finally managed to view The Horror of It All after some helpful individual put it up on YouTube, apparently recorded from an obscure Spanish TV channel (thankfully subtitled rather than dubbed), so if you are enough of a fan of Fisher's to want to see this misfire, you may still find it there.

Even color wouldn't help this turkey

[dafrieze · 1/10 · 28 October 2007]

I have to disagree with the poster who suggested that "Horror of It All" is neglected because it was filmed in black and white. "Dr. Strangelove" and "A Hard Day's Night," two black and white films which came out the following year, didn't seem to suffer from the lack of color. "Horror of It All" is neglected because it's a stinker. Pat Boone was never a threat to Olivier, and here he is encouraged (or allowed) to overact embarrassingly. The sets are cheap, the costumes are cheesy and the script is awful. And Terence Fisher, a first-rate director of horror films, seemed to have no flair for comedy (and got no help from the script). Neglect in this case is benign.

Funny, Silly Little Comedy

[EdgarST · 7/10 · 12 March 2016]

I recently finished Peter Hutchings' book on Terence Fisher, where the author studies the work of the British filmmaker, and avoids forcing him into the boundaries of the auteur theory, concentrating on his skills for delivering effective motion pictures. Unfortunately he did not pay too much attention to this funny title in Fisher's filmography, which has suffered from quick, unfair evaluation probably based on the presence of singer Pat Boone as the American leading man who is trapped in the big, dark, old house of his British girlfriend's family. Surprisingly this is a far better movie than what I had read about, if admittedly of the "silly" almost infantile kind of comedy, and Boone proves to be a more than adequate comic actor. I even had a big (silly) laugh when Boone so unexpectedly started to sing the title song, which is more a cultural joke than the obligatory Boone song in all his movies. Conceived as part of a double bill with Don Sharp's horror drama "Witchcraft", there is nothing original about the plot of "The Horror of It All". At first it resembles Richard Matheson's adaptation of "The Fall of the House of Usher", but it is just the beginning: the screenplay by Ray Russell also takes elements from other horror films and comedies, from "Frankenstein" and "The Old Dark House", to Oscar Wilde's "The Canterville Ghost", frequently making little jokes about Boone's nationality. All the members of the cast seem to enjoy what they are doing, especially Andrée Melly as the resident vamp lady and Jack Bligh as Uncle Percy, an inventor completely out of his time... in reverse. Fisher was an efficient director and here he proves it once again, handling everything in an adequate manner and never pretending he was making anything grand. If as Terence Fisher you take it for what it is, "The Horror of It All" works just fine.

Sheesh! What a dog!

[preppy-3 · 1/10 · 6 March 2002]

It's even more depressing when you consider the talent behind the camera--Terence Fisher did this??? I won't bother to get into the plot. It's a "horror comedy" (I use both terms very loosely) about an old, dark house and a bunch of idiots running around doing lame slapstick and unfunny jokes. Badly acted, directed and written. Go see "Hold That Ghost" or "An American Werewolf in London" or "The Howling". Even the remake of "The Old Dark House"! They're all prime examples of how to do horror and comedy.

Bad

[Michael_Elliott · 27 February 2008]

Horror of It All, The (1963)

* (out of 4)

Terence Fisher directed this incredibly bad "old dark house" film, which tries to blend the scares with laughs. The story is pretty simple as a man (Pat Boone) goes to visit his girlfriend and her uncle inside a strange house and soon mysterious activities start. This film borrows heavily from many of the old dark house films of the 1930's but it fails on pretty much every level. The laughs are never funny and the director never builds up any worthy atmosphere, which leads the horror elements very boring. Boone is horrible in the lead but the supporting cast does include Dennis Price and Valentine Dyall (Horror Hotel).

See it on a rainy day or late night party.

[jfarms1956 · 2/10 · 10 February 2014]

The Horror Of It All is a movie that would appeal to those 14 and older who like B rated comedies and/or horror movies. The movie is too comedic to be a true horror movie and contains too much horror type things to be a comedy. It is neither fish nor fowl. The movie is in black and white I suppose to add to the horror features of the movie. It is probably best enjoyed on a rainy afternoon or late at night. I could almost see the movie being watched at a teenage slumber party since it will not give anybody any real gruesome nightmares. The musical background is over the top horror type music. However, the acting is almost comedic since it too is over the top horror type. Popcorn all around here.

A KOOKY FILM FOR PAT BOONE FANS

[tcchelsey · 8/10 · 1 May 2022]

I had never ever heard of this film until I saw it run one late night on cable, and seems to be getting a lot of play time. THE HORROR OF IT ALL is obviously a comedy slash horror, more like a Disney feature or tv series episode (ie; the Addams Family!) Here a very young Pat Boone visits the eccentric family of his girlfriend, and with all the gags; secret rooms, mad scientist, female vampire, etc. If you are a big kid at heart you'll like this time killer which obviously pokes fun at itself. It's over the top silliness, but still worth a look and the photography is very good. Crisp black and white! Pat even sings a song! Directed by the master of chills Terence Fisher and veteran Dennis Price adds the quasi dramatic support. More fun if you see it late at night and with lots of pizza! OMG!

Terrible Old Dark House Comedy

[utgard14 · 4/10 · 28 August 2014]

American Pat Boone falls in love with Englishwoman Erica Rogers and goes to visit her uncle to ask permission to marry her. He meets her family, who turn out to be a bunch of weirdos that live in a gloomy mansion. This is a tired 'old dark house' comedy. It's not funny in the slightest nor is it very original. I generally like ODH movies, whether they're comedies or not. This one's full of clichés. Probably director Terence Fisher's worst film. I'm not sure what appealed to him about this. Pat Boone is typically bland and sings a corny song. The rest of the cast is mostly forgettable. The one exception being Andree Melly as the vampiric Natalia. My score is a 4 on the strength of her scenes alone. Otherwise I would give it a 1.

Fun at times

[malcolmgsw · 5/10 · 13 January 2020]

Neither comedy or horror film.However some decent performances from ,Dyall,Price and Andrew Kelly make up for the bland Boone.Also quite funny is the professor who is 50 years late with his inventions

Yup... that title sums up the film nicely: it's horrible.

[BA_Harrison · 2/10 · 5 September 2023]

When Hammer's version of The Phantom of the Opera flopped at the box office, director Terence Fisher found himself relegated to directing rubbish like this. Fisher was a stylish director, a master of atmosphere and suspense, so this puerile comedy/horror, with teeny-bopper pop idol Pat Boone in the lead, really wasn't his kind of thing, and it shows. Not that any director could have made the film work: the script is woeful, packed with stock characters, old dark house clichés and embarrassingly bad humour, with a terrible song clumsily shoehorned into proceedings to keep the Boone fans happy.

The tiresome plot concerns young American Jack Robinson (Boone) who travels to the British family home of Cynthia Marley (Erica Rogers) to ask for her hand in marriage. To Jack's surprise, Cynthia's relatives are an extremely eccentric bunch, but one of them is also a murderer, bumping off the others so that they can get their hands on the family fortune (£300K, which Jack says is almost $1m - how times have changed!).

The intended hilarity involves a crazy uncle whose gizmos have already been invented, a Wednesday Addams-style cousin who only drinks Bloody Marys, an insane relative who believes that his head is the size of an apple and that everyone is a head-hunter, and a house that comes complete with the obligatory torture chamber and booby traps. While this sounds like zany fun, it isn't - I somehow doubt that Fisher's heart was in it; Boone, on the other hand, gives it his all, overacting wildly. The result is hard to endure - as horror comedies go, The Horror Of It All is a massive failure, missing the mark almost every time.

It's fun not serious

[shoneyzs · 10/10 · 7 April 2019]

Oh plz why psychologically debate the madness accept it so much more fun