Terror (1978)

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Terror (1978)

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Royal ancestors feel the wrath of the curse of the condemned witch Mad Dolly, who spews forth her prophecy while she is burned at the stake. The victims suffer death by having their heads removed in various fashions, getting their limbs caught in animal traps, knife wounds, and other methods of medieval torture.

When Norman J.Warren (auteur of such shrill, purposely gruesome films as Inseminoid) and exploitation stalwart David McGillivray got together in the late seventies to create this low-budget shocker, the end result could only be a solid winner, and TERROR delivers the goods.

It's not for all tastes, but the effective atmosphere (Warren had obviously seen a few Dario Argento films, which helps) and the well-staged scenes of death and supernatural mayhem in the last half of the film are worth the price of admission alone. It's certainly head and shoulders above the 'typical' British horror films of the day - such as Alan Birkinshaw's atrocious KILLER'S MOON and THE LEGACY, a tedious schlock-fest in which Who vocalist Roger Daltrey dies during a trachaeotomy to remove a fishbone he never ate(!) - and the widescreen photography, coupled with appropriately garish colours courtesy of (one assumes) outmoded film stock, looks superb.

There's also a neat cameo from Milton Reid, one of those "I know his face, but what's his name?" actors if ever there was one, and a decapitation set-piece that curiously plays like a low-budget homage to David Warner's grisly death in THE OMEN, whilst pointing the way forward to the lift-shaft carnage in that film's lackluster sequel. This is a solid-gold classic example of the kind of film that would never get made nowadays, anywhere, and will undoubtedly bring back fond memories of late-night horror double features down at the local fleapit for British viewers of a certain age.

IMDB

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Terror (1978)

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Terror (1978)

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Terror (1978)

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Cast:
John Nolan … James Garrick
Carolyn Courage … Ann Garrick
James Aubrey … Philip
Sarah Keller … Suzy
Tricia Walsh … Viv
Glynis Barber … Carol Tucker
Michael Craze … Gary
Rose Collins … Diane (as Rosie Collins)
Chuck Julian … Phil the Greek

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