The Blancheville Monster (Aka. Horror) (1963)

The movie opens with Emily De Blancheville returning to her ancestral home after spending an extended time away at college.  Along with her she brings her best friend Alice and Alice’s brother John, whom she also is in love with.  Many things have changed at her home, including the absence of all of the old servants.  Emily’s brother Rodrigue also springs a big family mystery on her almost as soon as she arrives.  Their father, who she thought died in a fire, is actually alive and quite insane.  This news is made even worse because their father has broken loose and wants to kill Emily to prevent a terrible prophecy from coming true!  As twisted as this story seems is it the truth or is something even more sinister happening?  Rodrigue, their father’s nurse, and the family doctor all seem to be harboring secrets from Emily.   

This is one of those movies that is interesting to watch once.  The story is overly complicated and attempts to keep you watching by throwing plot twists at you, each one less likely than the one before.  But this actually works in a silly campy way, though after a while it did seem repetitive and slow.  The performances match the story and are perfect for the movie.  Meaning of course that they are also melodramatic and overwrought.  I’ve never met a woman that faints and screams as the slightest sense of danger as much as the Emily character does.  But again this works fits with the rest of the movie that is constantly hammering away and overdoing the drama. 

You can tell right away that this isn’t a big budget movie.  But given that they were going for a period piece the filmmakers didn’t do that bad of a job.  Everyone wears the same clothes for a week and the set dressing is pretty sparse, but that isn’t the end of the world.  There isn’t really aren’t any action sequences and just a bit of blood, so not much to talk about there either. 

Basically The Blancheville Monster is a really generic movie that is neither good nor bad.   Think one of the Corman Poe adaptations with a smaller budget and in black and white and this is what you would get.  But unlike the Corman movies that nearly always boasted a good cast of actors hamming it up and had some campy fun to the storyline, this movie lacks any of those charms.  After watching it once I will probably never take the time to check it out again.  The movie is available from Mill Creek on several of their sets.  Go to http://www.millcreekent.com/ for more information.

2 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2009 John Shatzer