The Dungeon of Harrow (1962) BOMB (out of 4)Aaron Fallon (Russ Harvey) survives a shipwreck and washes up on an island. He wonders around before reaching a castle owned by Count Lorente de Sade (William McNulty) who is hiding some dark secrets about his family.THE DUNGEON OF HARROW is a really awful movie that has somewhat gained a cult following over the years. This was apparently a very popular film on television back in the 1970s, which means that a lot of kids would watch it and keep its memory alive through the years. Today the film is basically remembered for how bad it is and it really does deserve that reputation because there's really not too many good things you can say about it.The biggest issue with the film is that it's deadly dull to the point where most people aren't going to be able to stay with it. The film basically has the Aaron character narrating the whole thing so we have to hear his non-stop thoughts and there's no question that the screenwriter got a major workout because there's pretty much nothing but dialogue here. It's poorly written and the narration of it is so dull that it just kills the film even more.Another problem is that it's clear the director didn't know how to make a movie as scenes drag on for no reason, often times you feel as if you're watching an outtake and just take a look at the opening shipwreck! This here has to be one of the worst looking special effects ever used for a film. The performances are also just as bad but for some strange reason I think they're the best thing in the movie. Yes, they are quite awful but at the same time they're so numbing that you almost can deal with them.I will say that there are some "so bad they're good" looking make-up effects at the end but by the time they show up most people will be bored to the point where they've turned the film off. THE DUNGEON OF HARROW is a really cheap attempt at trying to make a Corman-Poe picture but it pretty much fails on every level.

For many years, my wife has marveled at my ability to finish any movie I watch...even if they are really horrible. Well, truth be told, I've met my match with "The Dungeon of Harrow" as I found myself unable to finish it, as the movie is just amateurish and stupid. I can clearly understand why they allowed this film to pass into the public domain.The film was made in the filmmaking Mecca, San Antonio, Texas and is about a family of weirdos that our boring hero meets after becoming shipwrecked. From the second he and the Captain of the ship land, you hear the hero's thoughts...and they sound EXACTLY like a 12 year-old trying to write a Gothic horror story...and a not particularly talented 12 year-old at that! The film is incredibly talky and has some of the worst narration and dialog I can recall. It comes off, like the acting, as very amateurish and silly. In fact, that is about the nicest thing I can say about the film...amateurish and silly. Not especially frightening...just boring and very poorly made in every possible way.

Why can't a movie be rated a zero? Or even a negative number? Some movies such as "Plan Nine From Outer Space" are so bad they're fun to watch. THIS IS NOT ONE. "The Dungeon of Horror" might be the worst movie I've ever seen (some of anyway. I HAD to fast forward through a lot of it!). Fortunately for the indiscretions of my youth and senility of my advancing age, there may be worse movies I've seen, but thankfully, I can't remember them. The sets appeared to be made with cardboard and finished with cans of spray paint. The special effects looked like a fifth grader's C+ diorama set in a shoebox. The movie contained unforgivable gaffs such as when the Marquis shoots and kills his servant. He then immediately gets into a scuffle with his escaping victim, who takes his flintlock and shoots him with it, without the gun having been reloaded! This movie was so bad my DVD copy only had name credits. I guess no company or studio wanted to be incriminated. Though I guess when you film in your garage and make sets out of cardboard boxes a studio isn't needed. This movie definitely ranks in my cellar of all time worst movies with such horrible sacrileges as "The Manipulator", the worst movie I have ever seen with an actual (one time) Hollywood leading man-Mickey Rooney. The only time I would recommend watching "The Dungeon of Harrow" (or "The Manipulator" for that matter) would be if someone were to pay you. (I'm kind of cheap) I'd have to have $7 or $8 bucks for "Dungeon" and at least ten for "Manipulator". phil-the never out of the can cinematographer

My bad film guru (and the president of the Exposed Film Society) sprang this one on us last week. There was no denying the demented gleam in his eye as he pulled it out of its brown paper bag and announced what he had in store for us: "The Most Dangerous Game", filmed on a budget of about $2.95.Of course, $2.95 went a lot further back in 1962, but still...Anyway, there is certainly a lot to dislike about this film. It abounds with serious technical gaffes (my favorite was the 'repeating musket' that fired twice in two minutes without benefit of a reload). The hero is a wuss who stands by while his wounded friend fights the henchman and gets killed. More? OK -The plot is a shambles with no continuity to speak of. The movie wastes five minutes with a 'special guest star' who serves as the physical embodiment of the villain's madness and paranoia, but never shows him again. The hero is choked unconscious by the henchman but makes no mention of it when he wakes up and first meets his host. The mute servant girl is captured, put on the rack...and then the movie (and the hero, who put her in this predicament) just sort of "forgets" about her. More? Well, the sets are cheap, and the special effects are cheaper (the makeup is an exception to this). Much of the plot is carried by the narrator's droning, monotonic voice-over, which carries less dramatic impact than the menu recital at Denny's. Most of the dialog is simply ridiculous and stilted , as if it was translated from Japanese. ("I demand that our conversation be pleasant!!!") And the color values tended to shift violently from shot to shot, as if cheap film stock and problematic lighting equipment were the order of the day. (Note - this last may have been the fault of a bad print, rather than the camera crew). But there were a couple of nice moments here and there. The makeup effects were startlingly good in contrast to the rest of the film, the actors were LOOKED interesting, especially the mute servant girl and the Countess. And in spite of everything, there was a definite creepy atmosphere to be found, very nasty and disturbing.So what was the deal with this movie? I thought about it a bit, and realized that director/writer Pat Boyette basically tried to put a story from of the old "EC" horror comics on film. That would account for the stilted dialog, the sketchy character development (in a comic, physiognomy = character even more than in film), the loopy interior logic of the story ("EC" horror stories went out of their way to include a nasty "shock" ending and weren't big on psychological realism), the over reliance on the narrative voice (which belongs in captions over the panels), and the interesting makeup effects that mimicked the grisly pictures that the old EC artists did so well.In fact, I'd be willing to bet that when Boyette saw his leading man during casting, he instantly saw that the fellow was as close to being the equivalent of the lanky, shambling figures and caved in faces that artists like Johnny Craig and Jack Davis drew as an actual human could be and still exist in the real world.. He used costumes and lighting to emphasize the cartoony aspect of the visuals and turned everyone into living EC comics characters. (See: the leading lady's blank beauty, the Count's strong bony features, oddly bronze skin and sharp chin, the platinum 'do on the tall, bony black henchman, etc.) This would explain the movie's failings. Boyette knew how to 'frame' things, but he didn't know how to deal with three dimensions and moving bodies. Boyette knew how to tell a creepy story within the confines of a comics page, but the nuances of film and live actors escaped him. He wouldn't be the first person with this problem of course - look at what Joel Schumacher did to "Batman". But he didn't have a big budget to hide behind.In any case, I'm imagine that Boyette walked away from this train wreck and probably spent less time thinking about "Dungeon of Harrow"than the folks who post on this film's message boards. He did, within certainly vague boundaries, what he set out to do, and you have to respect him for it...even if you don't care for "Harrow".