I am a big fan of classic horror cinema and I've been working through the entries in the magnificent book HIDDEN HORROR which spotlights "underappreciated" horror films from every era. This movie was one of those recommended in that book. I will admit, right off the bat, that I'm not as big a fan of Val Lewton's movies as other classic horror junkies. I would say my favorite of his work is I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, but in general I prefer just a little more action in my movies. I can enjoy a slow burn, or a movie built on atmosphere, certainly, but I prefer the action of a Universal monster movie over the understated chills of Lewton's work at RKO.
I say all of that to confirm that this movie had much the same effect on me as many of the other Lewton works that I've seen, namely, it was okay. Nothing special and nothing that I would go out of my way to view again. It's relentlessly bleak. Almost like Lewton making a film version of a Camus novel. While many of Lewton's movies revolved around the specter of death, this one just brings death forth and makes it a central character. Death is everywhere in this movie as the plague invades a small Greek island.
The real main character is Karloff as a brutal Greek general. The story revolves around him, mainly, and the war between science and superstition, created at a time when many of the old world superstitions still lingered around some.
The movie definitely gets more chilling towards the end and utilizes some film techniques and camera angles that were well-done for the time the movie was created. They bring things to a satisfying conclusion, but by that point in the movie, I had already lost a good deal of my interest.
The question you should ask yourself is how deep into classic horror cinema are you? If you've seen all of the most famous ones and you're looking for something new, this is worth the shot, but there are many classic films that would rank higher than this for the new initiate to classic horror or the Karloff filmography.
I say all of that to confirm that this movie had much the same effect on me as many of the other Lewton works that I've seen, namely, it was okay. Nothing special and nothing that I would go out of my way to view again. It's relentlessly bleak. Almost like Lewton making a film version of a Camus novel. While many of Lewton's movies revolved around the specter of death, this one just brings death forth and makes it a central character. Death is everywhere in this movie as the plague invades a small Greek island.
The real main character is Karloff as a brutal Greek general. The story revolves around him, mainly, and the war between science and superstition, created at a time when many of the old world superstitions still lingered around some.
The movie definitely gets more chilling towards the end and utilizes some film techniques and camera angles that were well-done for the time the movie was created. They bring things to a satisfying conclusion, but by that point in the movie, I had already lost a good deal of my interest.
The question you should ask yourself is how deep into classic horror cinema are you? If you've seen all of the most famous ones and you're looking for something new, this is worth the shot, but there are many classic films that would rank higher than this for the new initiate to classic horror or the Karloff filmography.