Beystiman
It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
FuzzyTagz
If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
Michelle Ridley
The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity
morrison-dylan-fan
With a poll being held on IMDb's Classic Film board for the best titles from 1965,I started looking round for films to view from that year,and I spotted on Ebay a fun sounding Horror starring Lon Chaney Jr. and John Carradine,which led to me getting ready to enter the house of death.The plot:Fighting over the family fortune,warlocks Andre & Belial Desard battle over who controls the fortune.Falling in love for Valerie Desard, Eric Campion and his friend Dr. Kate Mallory decide to go and try to help end the feud between Andre and Belial.Arriving at the Desard's,Campion and Mallory soon discover that they have entered the house of black death.View on the film:Getting passed along between 3 directors, Harold Daniels, Jerry Warren & Reginald Le Borg contributions are each cut in with a hacksaw,as the jarring pause of dialogue and abrupt change in scenes are spread across the movie.Whilst this pulled apart approach does lead to Richard Mahoney's adaptation of Lora Crozetti's novel to feel rather hazy,it also gives the title a peculiar dream-logic atmosphere,thanks to satanic chants being joined by monks and beautiful dancing girls,
dbborroughs
Sue me I liked this. perhaps seeing it late at night with the lights out and being half a sleep the film came across as a twisted dream. Perhaps I had to eventually like a film that Jerry Warren was involved in. What ever the reason I liked the film. (Actually I think its the fact that Sinister Cinema's print is dark and shadowy and very moody) The plot has a white magician getting involved with two warring brothers who are black magicians. Lon Chaney is one John Carradine is the the other.Its a strange film that has a rhyming opening intoned by Satan, a plot that wanders all over the place and plot holes that you could drive a rampaging demon through. Its not by any real normal sense a good film, but it has mood and a sense of place and a reality that is sort of bent, I liked it.I have no idea if anyone else will but its a dark tale that clicked with me.
Michael_Elliott
House of the Black Death (1965)* (out of 4) Two warlocks, one good (John Carradine) and one evil (Lon Chaney, Jr.) battle over human souls. I really don't have the faintest idea what this film is about because there are three story lines going on and none of them make any sense on their own so mixing them together is even more confusing. One of the stories deals with the warlock's other brother who's a werewolf but we never actually see the wolf. Again, here's a film that you hang onto because you're expecting something to happen but nothing ever does happen so in the end you've just wasted your time. To make matters even worse Chaney and Carradine don't share any scenes together.
Zontar-2
Relatives returning to their ancestral home tangle with warlocks and a family curse.If this was based on an actual novel, as the credits claim, it has to be filmdom's sorriest screen adaptation. (Then again, the book angle could have been fabricated by crudmeister Jerry Warren, whose cinematic transgressions include bogus credits.) Like MONSTER A GO GO ('65), this plays like an unfinished film. You pity old hands Tom Drake and Andrea King, clueless that they'll "star" in what amounts to a series of barely connected scenes.On the other hand, Lon Chaney and John Carradine probably knew exactly what type of muck they were standing in. Carradine hams his role of family patriarch so badly, Hormel could sue for product defamation. Chaney, possibly hired because the plot includes a werewolf, plays a horned satanist who limps with an (unseen) cloven hoof...or did he just drop a hooch bottle on his foot? Familiar TV face Jerome Thor is screendom's most pitiful lycanthrope, though he gives it what I guess is his best shot.Master film mangler Jerry Warren attempted to finish the film by randomly inserting new scenes that add nothing but running time. Sparse music cues contribute to the lethargy.
