Die, Monster, Die! (1965)

Die, Monster, Die! (1965)
Watched April 4, 2009

SYNOPSIS
A man goes to an old mansion to see his love, but his visit is interrupted by his love's parents turning into mutants because of a glowing green meteor they keep in their basement.

SHORT REVIEW
You've seen better. You've seen worse. Overall, it's not a huge waste of your time, but it's not that great, either.

REVIEW
"Die, Monster, Die!" is a misleading title. If you sat down to watch a movie called "Die, Monster, Die" with no idea what the movie was about, you'd think there would be a monster and a courageous monster hunter that really wants said monster to die. But, no. There isn't anything close to a monster until the last 15-20 minutes or so, and even then there's no one yelling "Die!" It's all quite disappointing.

The vast majority of the movie is actually spent following some dude around who demands that someone tell him what is going on. I swear, this guy must tell everyone in the goddamn movie to tell him what's going on. It's actually quite annoying. And when he's not demanding answers, he's snooping around a mansion looking for answers. What is it with 60s horror movies and giant, creepy mansions? It's like every 60s horror had a checklist of things to have to make it good.
- A creepy mansion.
- A creepy dude that owns the creepy mansion.
- The creepy mansion burning down in the end.

And "Die, Monster, Die!" delivers all three of those in spades. But, I still don't understand where all the monsters were. There were only two "monsters" in the film (not counting the deformed rubber animals in a pretty laughable scene) and neither of them are that imposing. One is just a glowing dude who slowly walks towards his victims but never really does anything. The other is a old lady whose face melts as soon as it tries to attack anyone. Again, not exactly the most imposing creatures in cinema history. I have to say, the pretty poorly done face melting is pretty fun to watch though.

The movie is based on an H.P. Lovecraft short story, which I can't say I've ever read. I need to catch up on my Lovecraft. Interestingly, this film is made by the same company who distributed all of the Poe adaptations in the 60s. They must have felt that they were running out of good Poe stories to make films out of, so they decided to move on to Lovecraft. But, back to the subject, I can't vouch for how good of an adaptation of the story the movie is, so I'll move on.

"Die, Monster, Die!" is a little too slow-moving for its own good and takes too long to get to the not-even-that-amazing climax. But, I have to admit, the film kept me somewhat entertained its entire running time, so that's a good thing. It's one of those movies that I guess I went in some sort of "movie trance" while watching it, so I can't even remember that much about it. That's usually a sign that the film isn't that memorable and not that special, which is exactly how I feel about "Die!" I don't really have anything else to even say about it. I give "Die, Monster, Die!" an average score of:

3 out of 5 chainsaws (AVERAGE)