THE SHUTTERED ROOM Updated post, no longer Not On DVD!
PLEASE NOTE: the below screengrabs are from a 4:3 full-frame VHS and not from the new widescreen DVD.
As part of a short thread on early H.P. Lovecraft movies, I revisited this movie last year. This has been a favourite of mine ever since I got a special dispensation from my parents to stay up late to watch horror films on TV in the mid 1970’s. But despite my nostalgia, I’d say it’s still holding up strongly.
The Shuttered Room takes its name from H.P. Lovecraft, but is really only a distant relation, based on one of the ‘joint’ stories that August Derleth wrote from Lovecraft’s unfinished notes after his death. Though there are namechecks to Lovecraft favourites 'Dunwich' and 'Whately', there are few other nods to its origins. But once we’re past the disappointment that it's not very H.P. Lovecraftean, which is how most people discover the film, it’s still a strong and original horror thriller.
All the screengrabs are from an old UK TV transmission, NOT the new DVDSarah (Carol Lynley) brings her husband to visit her childhood home on a remote island. Even though the Old Mill is legally hers, the islanders try and warn her away, saying that the building is cursed, and anyone who goes in there is savagely attacked by a demon… But because Sarah is young and attractive, some of the young men, including her cousin (Oliver Reed) don’t mind if she stays a little longer. If only her husband (Gig Young) wasn’t around…
The hostile, closed community of the island, and their menacing treatment of outsiders is a weighty subplot to the story of the thing in the attic.
Watching it again, the film strongly reminded me of Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971) with it’s central theme of the threat of sexual assault in a remote village. Also shot in the UK with an American lead, Straw Dogs caused a storm of controversy with it’s heavy-handed use of sexual violence.
But The Shuttered Room isn't nearly as sexually obsessed as Straw Dogs, with most of the action serving the story. That's not to say that there isn't any gratuitous violence, or that Oliver Reed isn't gratuitously filling out his exceedingly tight blue jeans with a rolled up sock.
This time around, the film made a very strong impression, it's impressive and experimental in many ways, with a unique atmosphere. The cast is fifty percent of the film’s success. The music, location and photography makes up the rest.
The beautiful Carol Lynley appeared in a lot of American TV but didn’t make many films - but it was always a treat wherever she appeared. To me, her best roles were as damsels in distress, like in The Night Stalker pilot movie, The Helicopter Spies (a Man From UNCLE movie) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972).
The camera just has to point at her, wandering around with the sun in her hair, and movie magic is happening. Her performance occasionally shows a little strain, especially when she’s under duress. But that’s understandable because she’s on the set with Oliver Reed on heat.
She looks a little young to be playing Gig Young’s wife – there’s more than a touch of Baby Doll about her look. But the two of them together look convincing, Young showing a genuine and rapport with Lynley. Here he defends his onscreen wife with what looks like karate, and convincingly tackles Reed head on.
Gig Young’s screen career peaked shortly afterwards with an Oscar win for They Shoot Horses Don’t They? playing an alcoholic, which was a short stretch for an actor in a personal decline. Though even in one of his last roles, as Robert Culp’s dapper sidekick in Spectre (1977), his performance was likeable and witty. Sadly, he would commit suicide the following year.
Oliver Reed was still playing mostly supporting roles in 1967, his confidence severely knocked by the extensive scarring to his face from a pub brawl (he had been ‘glassed’). With his popularity rising, this was the last horror film he had to appear in until Burnt Offerings. That is, of course, if you don’t include the films of Ken Russell as horror…
One possible distraction here could be Reed’s American accent, which sounded okay to me, but it’s not for me to say. Yes, although the film is shot in England, it’s supposed to be set in Lovecraft’s usual New England. Many of the supporting actors look like they have been ‘looped’ by Americans, but Reed’s voice is his own.
After a pre-credit sequence that makes you think you’re going to get a traditional horror film (something ghastly living in the attic), the title sequence takes you somewhere else. With cleverly cross faded shots of Lynley's face shot through the reflections on a car windscreen, together with Basil Kirchin’s freewheeling jazz score – the effect is quite ethereal.
Besides the jazz cues, Kirchin also delivers some brooding menace with the familiar ‘bass string plucking’ that added menace to his score for The Abominable Dr Phibes.
The photography includes some expert handheld work, back when the camera was only handheld when it was someone’s (or something’s) point-of-view. The use of extremely wide-angle lenses, together with the fast moving camera, make for some dizzying action.
With extensive location work, cinematographer Ken Hodges takes the opportunities to connect Carol Lynley with the countryside where she grew up, fleshing out the plot by suggesting her strong ties with her family house, just by showing her hanging around.
The 'Old Mill' was an actual millhouse near Norwich in south-east England. It’s a huge, fantastic-looking building, the type of architecture that lingers in nightmares. Similarly, the lighthouse (that looks to me like it’s on the north Norfolk coast) also looks like a character in the film. There’s an amazing watermill website that chronicles the building and even has behind-the-scenes shots of the film being made, though it does contain photos of major plot SPOILERS!
After a year on my Not-On-DVD list, this has recently been a Best Buy exclusive in the US, but is now becoming widely available from December 9th. While it seemed perfectly framed on TV in a 1.66 aspect ratio, the other films in these Warner Bros DVD releases have been reframed at 16:9 widescreen. But they have also been doing excellent restorations. So expect the images you see here to be framed slightly differently on the new DVD.
Avoid the shorter version of the film that went under the title Blood Island (an old US VHS release), because it’s been edited down to a much shorter running time.
There's a great, original, colour lobby card from the movie here on the Drivepast website.
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3 comments:
The Shuttered Room just sounds so creepy. It was a movie I had to watch every time it came on. Knowing it had a connection to H.P. Lovecraft made the repetion almost a historical choice. My folks never blocked me even at a young age from watching it. My mother being a Hitchcock fan. I'd definetly purchase it if it comes out on DVD
Excellent review.
I agree with you that the film has common connections to STRAW DOGS.
The "locals lads", too, feel like they are from the same films.
All are threatening and single-minded.
One thing that struck me viewing the film as an adult was it's abundance of homoerotic imagery, doubly astonishing considering when it was made: a lingering close-up of Reed's tight-fitting denim-clad crotch, another of a scratched and bloodied male torso, finally one in which a guy rests his arms on Reed's propped-up leg. Again, this was years before "Cruising"('80), "Making Love"('82) or of course "Brokeback Mountain"(2005).
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