SparkMore
n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.
jonwash
The ending of this movie has stuck with me to this day, over 50 years later. I was convince I was being talked to. For years I searched to this movie but never really knew the title. It is not the greatest movie ever but it is still fun to watch. Got the DVD
Hitchcoc
I can't help but imagine these "Old House" movies weren't decidedly tongue in cheek. Bela Lugosi, in typical fashion, is given a role that doesn't stretch him at all. The poor guy was barely making enough to live. He had one of the best marquee presences in the film world, but once Dracula was made he was sort of cast as a mere threat. There are greats scenes of secret doorways and people sneaking around in the gardens outside the house. We have a fellow who is stabbing people who goes by the name of The Maniac. In the house is a scientist who is trying to find a way to put people in suspended animation. And, of course, at the center is a young, sort of obnoxious man who is taken with the fiancee of the scientist. This is actually better than most of these kinds of movies.
calvinnme
A dark house chiller from Columbia with all of the usual ingredients - serial nutso killer running loose (called "The Maniac" by newspaper headlines), an isolated house in the countryside, with a (constantly) screaming heroine, mysterious servants, one liking to peer into crystal balls and go into trances and make proclamations of death coming soon, a wiseguy newspaper reporter who bursts out gleefully "Boy, what a story" every time another dead body turns up and a hard nose detective who doesn't have a clue.Oh, yes, "comedy relief" is supplied by a black chauffeur who gets scared really easily. When asked what he would do if he met "The Maniac," the chauffeur replies, "I would become famous. I would become the first man to fly without wings." (Truth is, that might be the best line of dialogue in the film).These kind of films are easy to poke fun at and also, on occasion, fun, if you happen to like this kind of film genre (which I do).This particular film benefits, though, from a pretty good cast, with Bela Lugosi top billed over the title. Bela plays Degar, a manservant, dressed all in black, including a black turban. Oh, he's mysterious alright, in that ominous Lugosi way, but is he just a red herring? He has a sister, Sika (played by Mary Frey in her only film role), and she's even spookier. She's the one going into trances (yes, at one moment in this film they do have a seance with Sika the star of the show). Guess what? One of the participants holding hands at the table won't make it through the seance without a knife in the back.It's pretty Sally Blane (Loretta Young's sister) as the screamer and Wallace Ford as the reporter with the snappy one liners and an overly pleased manner whenever a new corpse turns up. There's also Tully Marshall as the owner of the mansion (Bela keeps calling him "Master"). I remembered Tully getting knocked off in the silent version of the similar Cat and the Canary and kept counting the minutes before his character would do the same in this one."The Maniac" (who carries an oversized knife) keeps popping up throughout this film, peering through bushes with a scarred face and demented smile full of sharp teeth, climbing through windows and, generally, keeping everyone on their toes, until he lays a few of them out at their feet, that is.Night of Terror does have a bit of originality with one of the occupants of the house, a scientist (George Meeker) who plans on having himself buried alive in a coffin on their property in an experiment to see if, with an antidote administered eight hours later, he will still be alive. Fun kid. Needless to say, things don't go as expected, but the writing here at least fooled me a little. Nuff said.Night of Terror can be found if you scrounge around the internet - there's a chopped up version in installments on You Tube, but you're probably better to go to dailymotion.com for a one hour version of this thriller. So far not even Alpha Video has bothered with this one.
dbborroughs
Top billed Bela Lugosi has a minor role in this tale of a maniac on the loose. It seems a maniac is going around killing people (I think the count given at the start is 11 people)while at the same time a group of people gather at the family estate to hear the reading of a will and a séance...and people begin dropping like flies. This is a buy the numbers old dark house released by Columbia that suffers because there have been so many other similar films. To be certain the film has a higher budget thanks to the big studio infusion of funds, but its probably nothing you haven't seen before. As for Lugosi, he's good, but this was around the start of his march through the wilderness where he was hired purely for his name and given nothing to do. The film is good but not anything you haven't seen before.
