The Terror (1963) on Netflix
A French soldier separated from his regiment is saved by Helene, who resembles Ilsa Von Leppe, the baroness dead twenty years. He seeks her at the castle of Baron Von Leppe.
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Plot summary
Lieutenant André Duvalier has lost his regiment and his way, and thirst drops him from his horse on the beach. A young woman at a mountain spring gives him water and her name, Helene, then walks into the sea, where a falcon drives him under. He wakes in the shack of Katrina, who insists the girl was never there. Her servant Gustaf whispers that Helene is under a spell and does not govern her own mind, and he shows Duvalier how she steered him toward quicksand before telling him to seek her at the castle of Baron Von Leppe. The baron admits him and denies that a woman is in the house, then shows a portrait of his wife, the Baroness Ilsa Von Leppe, dead these twenty years.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Terror (1963)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Roger Corman wrote that The Terror began as a challenge to shoot most of a gothic film in two days on the leftover sets of The Raven, and grew into the longest production of his career, taking five directors and nine months.
- Boris Karloff said he was in every shot over his two days, sometimes just walking through before changing his jacket and walking back, and that Corman nearly killed him on the last day, keeping him in a tank of cold water for about two hours.
- Corman financed The Terror himself but used the castle sets American International Pictures had paid for on The Raven without permission; studio head Samuel Z. Arkoff grew suspicious when he saw the sets still standing at The Raven's wrap party.
- Jack Hill recalled that a major part of Francis Ford Coppola's script was day-for-night and Coppola never told the cameraman it was meant to be night, so it was shot for day and could not be used because it had to cut against real night scenes.
- In May 1966 Corman told Boris Karloff he would not receive his deferred $15,000 because The Terror had not earned $150,000, but paid it once Karloff agreed to appear in Peter Bogdanovich's Targets (1968).
- Corman asked writer Leo Gordon for a 60-page script to be delivered the following weekend and shot over two days, his only other requirement being that it end in a flood, since earlier Poe films had ended in fire.
- Jack Nicholson almost drowned shooting a scene in the ocean at Big Sur: a wave knocked him over and his uniform nearly dragged him under.
- Jack Nicholson suggested his then-wife Sandra Knight for the female lead and Corman agreed; The Terror was the only film the two ever acted in together.
