Price: $29.99 as of 03/22/2010 03:44 EDT
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 0883929039104
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Label: Warner Home Video
Languages: EnglishOriginal Language
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
MPN: WARD042977D
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: December 09, 2008
Studio: Warner Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2008
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 12/09/2008 Rating: Nr
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Saw this movie when it was first released. Waited a long time for it to come to DVD, as it was on my wish list. Happy to finally be able to purchase the DVD to add to my library. Unique and very interesting plot with a satisfying conclusion on all counts. Would recommend to any fans of Carol Lynley and/or Gig Young.
Rating: -
As I continue working my way through several old style horror films of the 1950s and 60s, I just have to weigh in on this double feature which I found to be among the best of the many retro horror twofers that are out there on the market. I somehow managed to miss both of these on their initial releases and never saw them on TV so they were brand new to me. Most of the previous reviews focus on THE SHUTTERED ROOM which got far more exposure and certainly boasts the stronger cast as well as the H.P. Lovecraft name (even though August Derleth wrote most of it). Very little Lovecraft/Derleth is left and what you essentially have is a tense little thriller that seems like a dry run for STRAW DOGS (1971) without all the ultra-violence. The real stars of the movie are not the performers (although Oliver Reed and Flora Robson know what to do with the material) but rather Ken Hodges striking cinematography and Basil Kirchin's modern jazz score which combine to make the picture a tense viewing experience until the ending which is singularly disappointing. The Norfolk (U.K.) locations, especially the abandoned lighthouse and old mill, are also very effective.
While THE SHUTTERED ROOM is clearly the better movie, I enjoyed IT a lot more because, as one U.K. website said, the film is absolutely "barking mad". What starts off as a deliberate PSYCHO ripoff evolves into a kooky film experience with Roddy MacDowell playing the script for all the dark humor he can get out of it. His Arthur Pimm is such a polite madman that he becomes a parody of every proper upright Englishman. He is actually fun to watch even more so after he really starts to lose it. Grafting PSYCHO onto THE GOLEM story deserves credit for chutzpah if nothing else. As for the statue itself, the real Golem was made out of clay not stone, was far from indestructible, and didn't resemble a petrified tree with a conehead. Details. IT was originally made back to back with a creepy Dana Andrews vehicle about resurrecting Nazis called THE FROZEN DEAD which was made for an outfit called Gold Star Productions. It has yet to make it to DVD. Both were written and directed by Herbert J. Leder and would have made an ideal double feature. THE SHUTTERED ROOM could have been coupled with another WB/Seven Arts feature THE ANNIVERSARY with Bette Davis or just released on its own.
Rating:  -
I feel nostalgic about certain old movies. This, along with Daughter of the Mind starring Ray Milland, is one of my sentimental favorites.
Carol Lynley is feminine and achingly fragile--Oliver Reed is chasing her down wth hillbilly lust, to no avail. There are real gothic touches here, and atmosphere. Baby boomers will probably love it. The atmosphere of the old house with the mill looks genuinely disturbing without being in the cheap "slasher" category. If you liked the Haunting of Hill House (the 1960's version) this movie might be for you!
Rating: -
It's worrying to think that there must be some mad, straddling genius squirreling deep in the vaults of WB who has the sheer, premeditated temerity to put these two extraordinary films together on one disc.....
'The Shuttered Room' is a nasty thriller exploiting psychiatric disorder: if you have loony murderous relatives, don't bother with doctors - chain 'em up in a disused mill and get Oliver Reed to be the care-taker! When an unexpected sibling and her husband (Carol Lynley and Gig Young) turn up and - surprise, surprise - much unpleasantness sets in motion; sit in a draughty tower and watch Reed roaring in a field.
Dame Flora Robson plays the aunt of the mother of all dysfunctional families and how she got roped in to this insanity is any-ones guess; and Reed... you've never seen a performance like his in your life. He plays the same kind of thug he did in Joseph Losey's 'These Are The Damned' only with a laughingly hokey American accent: "I like the taste of your wife's ears.." he drawls at Young "what d'you think about that, huh?"
Young thinks he should knock him into the sea off a pier - and does just that.
'The Shuttered Room' is a bad day-dream and nowhere near the sum of its parts (it has a superb score by jazz legend Basil Kirchin and is based on a Lovecraft short), but it's engaging in a brute-force way, savage and never, ever boring.
'It' is a stranger film again. Roddy McDowall plays Pimm; a lowly museum curator consistently passed for promotion, and shunned romantically by delicious Jill Howarth, but who discovers that a Golem statue the museum has just taken delivery of is actually alive and takes control of it.
Howarth has formed a relationship with smug American (is there any other kind !?) Paul Maxwell, and mad as a wart-hog McDowall uses the Golem to kidnap her; steal his long-dead mothers corpse (and a hearse!) from a funeral parlour and head off to a country cemetery - Sexton: Miss Swanson (!!).
On realising the Golem is impervious to bullets and bazooka shells, the resourceful but completely hat-stand British Army decide to nuke it! Maxwell is then involved in some no-thrills-at-all motorcycle action to save juicy Jill, but what of McDowall and the Golem..
Now I've seen some bonkers movies in my time, and 'It' is right up there with the best of 'em. McDowall is loco, camp and megalomaniacal all at the same time; the Golem is about as scary as sild and the whole bizarre concoction is brewed with no cinematic nous or dramatic charge whatsoever.
You may be wondering then, how this disc gets the 5 hallowed big ones. Well, Ollie Reed's (fresh from his role as a Muslim tyrant in 'Brigand of Kandahar' (!)) bull-like performance, intensified by his continual racing about bellowing is a treat in itself, as is the barking spectacle of the Royal Artillery nuking Roddy McDowall - so as some-one with an unrepentant and insatiable thirst for schlock, I'm left with little option:
You won't see a more satisfying couple of complete cults anywhere individually - but together...
The guy in the dusty WB dungeon who paired these two is evidently a
'special' person, and either needs immediate promotion to the upper echelons or fitted for a straight-jacket!
Rating: -
The Shuttered Room has been a favorite "b" movie since my childhood. It is an atmoshperic film
with a story taken from H.P. Lovecraft .
IT on the other hand is quite an awful film but seeing the DVD is inexpensive who cares.
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