{"id":13793,"date":"2021-03-11T13:23:04","date_gmt":"2021-03-11T18:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=13793"},"modified":"2025-10-03T09:07:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T13:07:06","slug":"the-dunwich-horror-1970-a-science-fiction-and-fantasy-move-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/11\/the-dunwich-horror-1970-a-science-fiction-and-fantasy-move-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dunwich Horror (1970) \u2013 A Science Fiction and Fantasy Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

(War Pig loves really bad sf&f movies.\u00a0 This one\u2019s for you War Pig.<\/strong>)<\/p>\n

This movie is so monumentally bad that I feel compelled to dissect its awfulness so that we can learn something from it.\u00a0 First of all, look at the date.\u00a0 1970 is something of a low water mark in American cinema.\u00a0 Now granted this was produced by American International Pictures and they only ever made really cheap and schlocky movies.\u00a0 But that sets the stage for how this movie became what it was.\u00a0 Next, the story is an old H.P. Lovecraft story so the cost of buying the movie rights must have been pretty close to zero.<\/p>\n

Next take a look at the actors.\u00a0 Sam Jaffe and Ed Begley were actual actors at one time but their careers were coming to an end and they probably really needed the money.\u00a0 Dean Stockwell was a young guy whose career had begun as a child actor in the big studio system but with that system now a thing of the past he would earn his daily bread working in schlock and it suited him.\u00a0 Sandra Dee was a product of the post war teen movies of the late fifties and early sixties.\u00a0 She had played all the Gidget and Tammy parts and was now too old to be the girl next door.\u00a0 This was what was next on her ride to oblivion.\u00a0 It\u2019s also funny to see that before she got some big screen parts in movies like the Godfather and Rocky, Talia Shire had a small role in this stinker.\u00a0 So, there are some actual actors in this movie.\u00a0 But what can they do with this thing?<\/p>\n

And finally, what is the plot?\u00a0 Well, in the original Lovecraft story Wilbur Whateley, played by Dean Stockwell, and his monstrous twin are the product of some kind of bizarre ritualistic impregnation of their mother by one of the Great Old Ones, Yog-Sothoth.\u00a0 The book chronicles the attempt by Wilbur to use the Necronomicon to allow Yog-Sothoth to break through from his own dimension and conquer Earth and eat all the humans for lunch.<\/p>\n

But the geniuses at American International Pictures decided that what Wilbur wanted was to go for another generation of Yog-Sothoth baby making and Sandra Dee would be the baby mama.\u00a0 The monster brother is still in the plot but it seems like a sort of dangling appendage that nobody knows what to do with.<\/p>\n

Ed Begley is Dr. Henry Armitage, a university professor who has a copy of the Necronomicon and is Sandra Dee\u2019s boss.\u00a0 He will try to save her life and foil Whateley\u2019s diabolical plan.\u00a0 And to round out the cast Sam Jaffe is \u201cOld Whateley,\u201d Wilbur\u2019s grandfather who seems to have inexplicably changed his mind about being an evil servant of the Great Old Ones and now just runs around warning everyone about how dangerous everything is.\u00a0 Comically they\u2019ve painted thick black eyebrows on his face.\u00a0 He sort of looks like Groucho Marx in that sense.<\/p>\n

Well, before you know it Wilbur convinces Sandra Dee to come to his groovy farmhouse and drink some tea and after he pulls the distributor cap off her car\u2019s motor, she has to spend the night.\u00a0 She has dreams that look like they were filmed with my kid brother\u2019s super 8 movie camera.\u00a0 Semi-naked hippies who look like rejects from the Manson family hopped up on hair tonic and looking for love chase her around.\u00a0 It\u2019s quite ridiculous.\u00a0 When she wakes up, she shares these dreams with Wilbur and we can see that it\u2019s all having the hoped-for result.\u00a0 She\u2019s looking for some Yog-Sothoth action.\u00a0 So, Wilbur brings her up to an oceanside cliff with an altar where she will wear some kind of poncho-like garment that allows the cameraman to show us the side of her leg and butt for what seems like hours.\u00a0 And Wilbur spreads her legs apart and props the Necronomicon against her groin while he reads passages to Yog-Sothoth.<\/p>\n

At some point Wilbur\u2019s brother breaks out of his room and eats about five people including Talia Shire.\u00a0 We never really get a good look at him.\u00a0 He\u2019s got tentacles and eyes and I don\u2019t know what else.\u00a0 He makes guttural noises and he has problems with his adenoids for sure.<\/p>\n

Finally, Ed Begley shows up at the cliff and he and Wilbur posture and spout meaningless syllables at each other.\u00a0 Begley\u2019s babbling proves to be the stronger and Wilbur\u2019s head bursts into flames and he jumps off the cliff.\u00a0 We briefly see what might be Yog-Sothoth appear as a cartoon character suspended over Sandra Dee\u2019s groin before he disappears.\u00a0 Then Ed Begley helps her off the altar and the movie ends but as it ends, we see an image of a fetus near Sandra Dee\u2019s belly.\u00a0 Yog-Sothoth scored again!<\/p>\n

So, there it is.\u00a0 It\u2019s embarrassing to admit I even made it to the end of this awful waste of time.\u00a0 As far as I know Talia Shire is the only living victim of this terrible thing.\u00a0 I imagine it still haunts her.\u00a0 Maybe her rich brother Francis Ford Coppola can buy the rights to the movie and destroy every copy so their family\u2019s shame can end.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never been a big fan of Lovecraft\u2019s prose.\u00a0 His imagination was fertile and the images he came up with were vivid.\u00a0 But his prose style was lackluster.\u00a0 But even he deserves better than this.\u00a0 The Dunwich Horror was one of his better stories.\u00a0 Maybe someday someone will do a decent job of making a movie of it.\u00a0 This was not that movie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(War Pig loves really bad sf&f movies.\u00a0 This one\u2019s for you War Pig.) This movie is so monumentally bad that I feel compelled to dissect<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237,4,243],"tags":[2953,255,354,70,43,38,1355,2952,2951,44,265,2954],"class_list":["post-13793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-movie-reviews","tag-dean-stockwell","tag-h-p-lovecraft","tag-horror","tag-lovecraft","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-sam-jaffe","tag-sandra-dee","tag-sci-fi","tag-science-fiction","tag-yog-sothoth"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Dunwich Horror (1970) \u2013 A Science Fiction and Fantasy Movie Review - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/11\/the-dunwich-horror-1970-a-science-fiction-and-fantasy-move-review\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Dunwich Horror (1970) \u2013 A Science Fiction and Fantasy Movie Review - Orion's Cold Fire\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(War Pig loves really bad sf&f movies.\u00a0 This one\u2019s for you War Pig.) 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