A lady called Mad Dolly is being chased by some mob in a forest who believe she is a witch. She gets captured and about to get burned at the stake, on order by Lord Garrick. Before they get the chance to lit her on fire, she gives her final speech with silly facial expressions, and summons some demonic forces that causes one of the executioners to catch fire, and then all hell breaks loose. Lord Garrick runs back to his mansion where an arm bursts through the wall and strangles him. Lady Garrick, who wanted to see Mad Dolly dead more than anyone else, finds her Lord dangling from the ceiling. The Lady is then confronted by a resurrected and vengeful Mad Dolly, who chops her head off and gives the most cheesy, evil laugh ever. And only eight minutes in it’s fairly okay to ask what the hell this is.
What we just saw was the ending sequence of the fresh, new supernatural horror film by James Garrick, which he screened for some of the cast members. What a load of rubbish, says one guy in the audience. The film is supposed to be based on true events that happened to James’ ancestors 300 years ago, and he has inherited the mansion from Lord and Lady Garrick. The inheritance includes the most important item of all: the sword that chopped the head off the Lord, hanging over the fireplace. While James is throwing a party in his inherited mansion, we meet Gary who can’t stop bragging about who great he is to hypnotize people. He gives a demonstration on Ann, a struggling actress who works for James. Things gets an unexpected turn when she slips into full trance, and picks up the sword and tries to attack James. Ok, party’s over! After she wakes up, she runs out the door and back to the hostel where her roommate sees her on the bathroom, washing her hands for what we can assume is blood.
And the morning after, James’ girlfriend Carol is found dead near the woods, knifed to death. James highly suspects that Ann did it after she tried to stab him with the sword the previous night and is determined to expose her.
This is an odd, little film, made by the English horror film director Norman J. Warren, known for his obscure low-budget exploitation flicks such as Satan’s Slave (1976), Outer Touch (1979), Inseminoid (1981) and Bloody New Year (1987). With Terror he wanted to make something new since the horror films at that time was pretty much the same, and he took a lot of inspiration from the new wave of Italian Giallo films and his new favorite, Suspiria. The inspirations are clearly visible for sure, with the use of colors, but as a whole there isn’t much new to behold here. And that’s a shame since there’s some potential here with its flexible camera work, gothic imagery and classic, gloomy atmosphere with fog machines and all. It has the visual package, but the script turns it into an unfocused mixed bag of supernatural horror, whodunnit mystery, slasher, cheese and sleaze and God knows what, stitched together frankenstein-style with several long and pointless scenes that drag on for too long.
One of the highlights is the scene with Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca in a certain film called Star Wars the year before. His appearance comes in the most unexpected moment, it took me completely off guard. And there’s also a scene with a nude stripper in a sleazy bar in London, a long and pointless filler scene. Director Norman J. Warren added this in to make the film more commercial. And he’s really determined to give us shots from all different angles and close-ups so we can enjoy some fresh nudity and forget the rest of the movie for some minutes. But it seemed to work, though, since Terror became a box-office success in England after its release, despite the censorship from Video nasty. A fun little nugget of trivia: the stripper in the film was a real stripper they had to hire because the other stripper who auditioned for the scenes seemed too tired and bored. “She was indeed sexy and scary“, Warren said, and her act was so outrageous, they had to cut part of it because there was no way the censors would let it through.
There’s some decent gory moments here, such the traditional knife stabbings, glass panels that falls and chops off a head, a drunk dude who gets fence stabbed and then crushed in a garbage truck. Awesome. And then we have…a flying car. Ok, I didn’t expect that one. The last four minutes is the best part which at least ends with a great, colorful and crazy climax. Not a terrible film, but not great either. As a 70’s oddity it works fine as a curiosity, I guess, and it has its moments. Terror is available on Blu-ray/DVD Combo on amazon.com
Director: Norman J. Warren
Country & year: UK, 1978
Actors: John Nolan, Carolyn Courage, James Aubrey, Sarah Keller, Tricia Walsh, Glynis Barber, Michael Craze, Rosie Collins, Chuck Julian, Elaine Ives-Cameron, Patti Love, Mary Maude, William Russell, Peter Craze
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0141897/
