The Horror of It All
In this dark comedy, a Yankee goes to visit a family of British eccentrics to ask for the hand of one of their daughters in marriage. He soon finds himself in the midst of a really odd family. One of them talks like Bela Lugosi, another believes herself to be a vampire, while a third is locked away in a padded cell. Another family member is thrilled when he finally invents a horseless carriage (50 years after Ford), and the family grandfather is found reading Playboy just before he dies. Trouble begins when members of the family begin to be mysteriously murdered. The American suitor must then discover which member of the strange family is in line to inherit the family fortune.
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- Cast:
- Pat Boone , Dennis Price , Valentine Dyall , Archie Duncan , Erik Chitty
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Reviews
Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
I wanted to but couldn't!
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.
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.
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.
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).
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.