Review – The Shuttered Room

The awfulness of this production stands out even in the crowded field of bad adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction (though fans can at least take comfort that this time around the source story is a “collaboration” written by August Derleth based on some notes from Lovecraft). A May-September married couple (Gig Young and Carol Lynley) pay a visit to the village she left when she was a tot, where they encounter a gaggle of her bumpkin relatives (headed by Oliver Reed) up to no end of skullduggery. The story itself is nowhere near as good as the production’s attention-diverting technical flaws. In particular, the rear windows of the couple’s Thunderbird convertible appear to constantly roll themselves up and down, often appearing in several different states in the course of a single scene (just roll them down and be done with it, for crying out loud). Watching the car weave back and forth with Young behind the wheel is also a treat (though at least he seems sober for most of his acted scenes). The soundtrack music sounds like Miles Davis’s “Bitch’s Brew” performed by Keyboard Cat. And as if that wasn’t distraction enough, if you get bored you can try counting the number of times you’re called upon to watch a character go up or down the stairs. This picture was also released under the more sensational title Blood Island. See if desperate