An old proverbial adage goes as follows: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Oscar (the grouch) Wilde penned another version of this (after he burned that hideous painting): “Mediocrity can pay to greatness!” However, if I had to go with one of these, I would go with the infamous phrasing Alfred Hitchcock described to director John Landis about those who paid homage to his work. Hitchcock looked at him (in that signature profile) and softly uttered: “You mean fromage.” In the early 60s, about the time American International Pictures was burning out on their double feature creature features, Roger Corman decided to turn his attention to a more colorful way to make horror films by adapting public domain properties of Edgar Allan Poe for the same price as it would cost for the two features and unleashed financial beasts that not only brought in classier clientele of actors like Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, and the original master of horror Boris Karloff (just don’t mention it to Bela Lugosi), but also did something Corman had never seen before – positive critical praise! Unfortunately, Corman had to be ‘Corman’ about it and, when he found out he had an extra two days of Boris Karloff, he decided to flatter himself by doing a sincere imitation of mediocrity even the toughest turophile had a hard time swallowing: he imitated his own version of a his Poe films my making The Terror, starring a young and up-coming Jack Nicholson and directed by Roger Corman, and Francis Ford Coppola, and Dennis Jakob, and Monte Hellmen, and Jack Hill, and Jack Nicholson, and (in full on Yul Brenner voice) et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…
Having just finished his production of The Raven (to say based on Edgar Allan Poe would certainly be a no gouda magical trick), Corman discovered that by filming super-fast (big surprise), he had Karloff for another couple of days. As he spoke about directly in his memoir How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime, “I was getting so familiar with the standard elements of Poe’s material – or at least our adaptations – that I tried to out-Poe himself and create a Gothic tale from scratch.” Armed with a script by Leo Gordon (Corman’s The Wasp Woman and The Cry-Baby Killer, the first starring role for future three-time Academy Award winning actor Jack Nicholson), a thousand cups of coffee, and sets left over from The Raven, Corman spent two days filming Nicholson, Karloff, Corman’s go-to everyman Dick Miller (A Bucket of Blood and Rock All Night), and (then Mrs. Nicholson) actress Sandra Knight moving all around the castle sets and trying their hardest to put sixty or so pages in the can before they lost Karloff. The true issue was everyone was lost long before they struck the lights and had a martini shot! Corman went on to supervise the post-production of The Raven and turned the duties over to his up-and-coming assistant Coppola (you might have heard of a movie he did later called The Godfather) after his impressive work editing together two films to make Battle Beyond the Sun, so three months later, the team got together and filmed a few scenes. Then, a few months later, they filmed more, but with a different director (Jakob). And a few months after that, with another director (Hellman). And another few months (Hill). It got to the point that Nicholson allegedly told Corman, “Everyone in Hollywood has directed this film. Why not let me give it a 
try!” After a year (and so many months), Corman finished the last day of shoots when the assembled footage “… didn’t make any sense!” giving Miller an entire ‘made up on the spot’ monologue to hopefully make the picture make sense… It did not. Even though Corman snuck the film behind the backs of AIP heads James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff for $800,000, they were not too concerned, knowing Corman would bring the finished acclimation (in whatever shape it eventually became) to their desk, and released it as a double feature with Coppola’s directing film debut Dementia 13 (two movies guaranteed to give you a headache to understand). Even though the film was pieced together via committee, Jack Nicholson reflected years later on the experience, “I had a great time. Paid the rent. They don’t make movies like The Terror anymore.” They certainly don’t… for good reason!
Okay. The plot… Um, keep in mind it’s complicated… to try to understand, but here we go (take a deep breath and some Advil). In the early years of the conflict of the Confederation of the Rhine (ask your history teacher), a French soldier (Nicholson) is saved by a mysterious woman named Helene (Knight) whom he falls in love with, but there’s a slight issue: she happens to look like the deceased wife of Baron Von Leppe (Karloff), who he murdered in a jealous rage two years earlier when she was caught having an affair. Upon visiting the Baron, the officer learns the ghost of his wife is haunting him, due to the curse from a witch who believes the Baron had killed her son as well. Will the curse be lifted so the officer can spend the rest of his life with Helene, or will the gates of Heaven be flooded with the soggy, cheesy residue of Corman’s Poe-etic licensing (Did we do it? Does it make sense? Anybody buying it?)!
Melting your way at a dismal eighty-one minutes, in the 90s, Corman did some reshoots with Miller in hopes that a new edit of the film would gain back some copyright royalties (Miller said it was the most Corman ever paid him), but it bombed (shocker). You can find the original 60s version on any streaming platform possible, but try to get your hands on Film Masters high-def restoration Blu-ray with special features (accompanied with a high-def transfer of The Little Shop of Horrors). So, if you ever have a successful career in adapting some of the greatest short stories of all time into feature length films (good luck), maybe do yourself a favor and make sure it’s a straight originals, because we all know what happens when we make a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…
