Roger Corman
The Terror (La vergine di cera)

Some time ago I came across this beautiful albeit dated horror film from 1963, directed by the filmmaker Roger Corman, who is notoriously associated in his cinematic production with horrific themes and the atmospheres evoked by the works of the great Edgar Allan Poe (some of whose stories he also adapted for the screen). The cast includes two true icons of cinema, in a sort of passing of the torch between the old generation of actors and the new: the legendary Boris Karloff ("Frankenstein") and a very young Jack Nicholson in his first leading role.

The story revolves around the dark events whose memory lingers in the old castle of Baron Von Leppe (played by a masterfully expressive and convincing Boris Karloff), situated atop a picturesque cliff in an unspecified coastal location on the Baltic Sea. The young Napoleonic officer André Duvallier (Jack Nicholson), isolated from his unit, becomes involved in the search for a mysterious and elusive, ethereal young woman, an arcane instrument of revenge of an old witch: the pursuit of the attractive girl, believed by the baron to be the spirit of his deceased young wife, leads him to uncover a far more macabre reality about the nobleman and the girl herself, with whom he has fallen in love, amidst a whirlwind of witchcraft, superstitions, and dire omens.

But what matters even more than the plot in this film is certainly the beauty of a set design that, while lacking special effects, successfully conveys the dark and misty atmospheres of the story, thanks largely to the admirable and perfect choice of director's shots: Corman, like a true master, makes the succession of images almost like a sequence of illustrations by the sublime engraver Gustave Doré, each brimming with the same sense of mystery one might find among the pages of a Poe tale (although the story does not draw from any of his stories). It is the gothic novel atmosphere, in my opinion, not the plot, which is the film's true winning card, underscored by a classic yet engaging and empathetic soundtrack complete with sighs and violins.

A film definitely worth rediscovering, a classic of horror cinema that I unequivocally recommend to all enthusiasts, but also to those curious to see what a horror film from 1963 could be like without digital special effects and the rivers of fake blood to which splatter films of recent years have accustomed us.