Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Hitchcoc I saw this as a child. The opening scene where a young innocent woman uses a pair of gift binoculars. As she looks through the eyepieces, spikes come shooting out, through her eyes and into her brain, killing her. Apparently, there have been a series of murders of women that the police have been unable to solve. A journalist who writes about gruesome murders harasses the police over their perceived incompetence. He is anathema to the authorities, but they don't have anything they can prove. He has a partner, a young man who follows his every wish, and they have their own black museum, which is a place where weapons used in murders and serious crimes are displayed. As things progressed, there are more and more hideous events. The journalist is always there when things happen. The ending is when it all falls apart. While the movie is good to look at, there isn't much to recommend this.

Leofwine_draca Is it forever Michael Gough's fate to play crippled characters? With his hand-less performance in DR TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS, his wheelchair-bound role in HORROR HOSPITAL, and now this cane-assisted stance in HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM, it seems this unfortunate actor always comes off the worst. But I digress. HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM is a classic example of an early exploitation film, produced by non less than Herman Cohen, responsible for loads of classic films of this type in the late '50s/early '60s. With an off beat and clever idea (crime writer commits murder to sell his stories) and a twist monster-on-the-loose ending (with Cohen involved, what else would you expect?), the film never fails to entertain.Chief entertainment comes from the series of murders, which, while not explicitly gory like the Friday the 13th films, are however all staged elaborately and decoratively, and also cleverly, with much relish, like the murders in THEATRE OF BLOOD and the PHIBES films (but never so campy!). Highlights include the memorable binocular death and a woman having her head cut off by an axe, but the best death (or tackiest) occurs when the doctor is electrocuted by a bad special effect, then has his skin boiled off and becomes a skeleton! This scene is a piece of classic horror and easily the best moment of the film.Although the monster makeup leaves something to be desired (it basically looks like grey paint), there is a good scene with the monster in a hall of mirrors, where he is taunted by a young couple before turning on them with a knife! While none of the acting is sub-par, with the likes of Shirley Anne Field involved (also, Geoffrey Keen has a role as a tough policeman), the film really belongs to Michael Gough as the criminal genius. He also sports the same ridiculous bleached hair as he did in the next year's KONGA! Gough is superbly civilised and a man of true evil, much like in his other films, and as always he's a delight to watch, I'm surprised that this prolific actor is overlooked so much and in the shadow of contemporaries like Cushing and Lee but he always puts in a solid, tongue in cheek performance and raises the level of the films he's in (much like Peter Cushing did). HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM is a typical piece of '50s exploitation, much in the style of CIRCUS OF HORRORS and is a film which is raised above average by the strength of Gough's performance alone. Definitely one for the collection.

Woodyanders Bitter, haughty, and cynical crippled crime journalist Edmond Bancroft (essayed with tremendous lip-smacking fiendish gusto by Michael Gough) commits a series of gruesome murders in order to create material for his writing and runs a museum showcasing the devices he uses for his heinous misdeeds. Director Arthur Crabtree, working from a tight, but overly talky script by Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel, stages the cheerfully nasty and gruesome murder set pieces with ghoulishly inventive glee (the infamous needles-in-the-binoculars scene rates as the definite grisly highlight), but alas allows the pace to drag and the story to meander in between said murder set pieces. The net result is a picture that fails to gain much momentum and hence only works in fits and starts. Luckily, things really perk up for the lively and exciting, but overly rushed and sloppy climax set at fair ground. Moreover, Gough's gloriously hammy eye-rolling histrionics are an absolute ball to watch; he receives sturdy support Graham Curnow as Bancroft's loyal brainwashed assistant Rick, ravishing redhead Sally Ann Field as Rick's sweet and charming girlfriend Angela Banks, June Cunningham as brash tart Joan Berkley, Geoffrey Keen as the no-nonsense Supt. Graham, Gerald Anderson as concerned psychiatrist Dr. Ballan, and Beatrice Varley as shrewd junk shop owner Aggie. Desmond Dickinson's vibrant color cinematography makes exquisite use of the sumptuous widescreen format. Gerard Schurmann's robust full-bore orchestral score does the rousing trick. A pretty fun, but flawed flick.

sossy65 As another reviewer mentioned, this film was horrifying to those of us who saw it as kids when it first came out. Horrors of the Black Museum was produced before technical effects became morph-driven and so fake they're not believable (even though they might be scary). Unlike Fiend Without a Face (also mentioned in these reviews) or The Blob, this movie doesn't rely on mechanically produced monsters. which means an imaginative child or paranoid adult could perhaps picture its horrors actually happening. A stretch, surely, but still . . .Pre-movie sequence demonstrating colors and hypnosis was funny and hokey even when the film was first released. The horrors, however, had many children (me included) suffering from nightmares for years. The binocular scene was particularly frightening, but not as frightening as the beheading scene. I cautiously checked the tall bedroom ceiling in the old farmhouse where I grew up for a long while after seeing this flick.Overall, after getting over the heebie-jeebies that lingered for years afterward, I have fond memories of this film. Anyone who is a fan of the 1950s chiller genre might enjoy the dated look and feel of it as well as the scare-factor it can generate in a viewer.