Unquiet
Things

The Dunwich Horror opens with titles so sweeping and swanky and groovy they could’ve come straight out of a James Bond movie, all swirling psychedelic Op Art animation and bewitching theme music that apparently won the film some praise (I looked it up later and discovered it was composed by Les Baxter). We meet Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell with shaggy curly hair and a commitment to playing ’70s occultist creeper), who wants to get his hands on the Necronomicon so he can open a portal and bring back the Old Ones. He meets college student Nancy Wagner (Sandra Dee) at the Miskatonic University library, and she immediately trusts him because of his eyes, which – if you ask me – are exceedingly creepy.  I think she’s a very bad judge of character. Oh, Nancy.

Nancy lets Wilbur read from the forbidden book until her professor, Dr. Armitage, interrupts and discovers Wilbur is a Whateley, as in, descended from the Oliver Whateley who was publicly hanged in Dunwich’s town square for unsavory occult goings-on. Somehow, this leads to an awkward dinner where Wilbur charms everyone, then conveniently “misses his bus” home, and Nancy offers to drive him all the way back to Dunwich despite every single creepy-eyed red flag waving in her face.

He invites her back to his colorful gothic mansion for tea. (Don’t drink the tea. The tea is drugged, Nancy!) What’s particularly hard to watch is that, early on, when Nancy is alone with Wilbur, her nervousness and hesitation are palpable, telegraphed in every look and gesture. She doesn’t want to drive him home. She doesn’t want to go inside the house. She doesn’t want to stay for tea. She doesn’t want to freshen up in the bathroom. But she does all of it anyway, out of what all women know too well that ingrained need to be polite, to not make a scene, to override every instinct screaming at you because you don’t want to seem rude or difficult.

And then Wilbur drugs her tea a whole bunch, and she spends the rest of the movie in a hazy stupor, moaning suggestively while lying on a cliffside altar waiting to be sacrificed, plagued by nightmares of orgiastic hippie people who are presumably the Old Ones? Actually, there’s a lot of uncomfortable suggestive moaning in this movie – Lavinia giving birth in the opening, Lavinia gibbering in her padded cell at the asylum, Sandra Dee drugged on the altar. It all felt really creepy, in an extra-gross sort of way.

The film does have atmosphere on its side. The eerie seaside town filmed at night with its whistling wind feels properly unsettling. The jarringly psychedelic film-negative sequences showing the monster’s POV, complete with thudding heartbeat and inhuman breathing, are actually kind of freaky. The whippoorwills catching the souls of the departed is a nice Lovecraftian touch.

But the pacing is glacial, especially once you realize what’s happening, and we’re just waiting for the inevitable sacrifice. By the time we get to the rushed ending where Dr. Armitage shows up and defeats Wilbur, mostly by yelling at him until he bursts into flames, I’d already mostly stopped paying attention.

The whole thing is mired in a sloggy lethargy that mirrors Sandra Dee’s drugged state, and despite the psychedelic visuals and occult aesthetic, the execution just never lands. I found myself mocking Wilbur as he chanted. “SLOG-sothoth!” Hehehehehe.

And that’s 31 Days of Horror! Today is Halloween, and we are headed to my brother-in-law’s tonight. We’re having a little finger-food buffet (I am making these Red Devil Meatballs; my Feet-Loaf suggestion was soundly rejected), and I believe we are watching Love At First Bite. Which isn’t a horror film at all, but aside from me, this isn’t exactly a horror crowd. However! When I was 6 years old, in 1982, staying overnight with my aunt and uncle in their apartments that sat on top of a funeral home, they put a movie on, and it scared the crap out of me. I ran out of room and started crying! That movie was Love At First Bite, and along with the Scooby Doo monsters, it was one of the very first things that scared me. I am looking forward to finally facing it again!

Thanks as always for following along with this annual horror-viewing tradition! And because I always overindulge, I urge you to check back in tomorrow for one last 31 Days Of Horror bonus post…!