The Shuttered Room (1967)

This snooze fest stars a very beautiful Carol Lynley as Susan.  After the death of her parents Susan was sent off to New York to be raised far away from the isolated island that is her family home.  But on her 21st birthday she inherits her old home and returns to the island with her new husband.  Almost as soon as they arrive they are accosted by the locals and are repeatedly told that the house is cursed and they must leave.  Toss in a brute that has an unhealthy and incestuous interest in his cousin Susan and you would wonder why they would stay, but they do.  Eventually the mystery of the curse is revealed and turns out to be pretty lame. 

This movie is based on a book that H.P. Lovecraft wrote with a friend named August Derleth.  Many of Lovecraft’s works just don’t translate well to the movies and this is clearly one of them.  For the first seventy minutes of the movie we are treated to a mysterious figure watching from the mill next to the house in POV shots and creepy locals trying to attack and molest Susan (more than once!).   It isn’t until the last twenty minutes that we see who the mysterious figure is and why they are so dangerous.  It turns out that Susan had a retarded sister (who look just like her!) that is violent.  So instead of putting her in the hospital the family locked her up in the mill so that no one would notice.  I spent an hour and a half of my valuable time for this?  The performances are okay with veteran actor Gig Young karate chopping his way thru the locals and Carol Lynley looking beautiful and innocent.  But honestly the only interesting performance is from Oliver Reed who plays the cousin with an unnatural attraction to Susan.  As bad as the material is here he is still an effective villain. 

Technically this is a very well shot movie.  The camera work is interesting and uses the sets to good use.  There are a couple of shots where a staircase is used to frame a shot that I thought was particularly neat.  There isn’t any gore to speak of.  The only kill that happens on screen involves a girl getting scratched on the face, which I never knew could be fatal.  That and Oliver Reed’s character getting tossed out of the mill are the only kills in the movie.  There are several fight sequences in the movie, all of which are bad.  There is no way for one second that the limp karate chops that actor Gig Young delivers would knock a child down, much less someone the size of Oliver Reed! 

Sometimes there is a reason why something hasn’t been released on DVD.  The Shuttered Room is one of those movies that aren’t any good and don’t deserve a DVD release.  My only consolation is that this was on a double feature with a much better movie, Roddy McDowell’s golem movie IT. 

1 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2008 John Shatzer