Few people seem to remember this British made H.P. Lovecraft adaptation from 1967, and I say that’s for the best. It has some inspired moments, but the film overall is a lot of agonizingly dull and protracted ado about very little.
“The Shuttered Room” is among the least known H.P. Lovecraft stories. It’s actually a tale Lovecraft outlined but never got around to writing, with Lovecraft’s longtime admirer and literary executor August Derleth ultimately penning the tale. It seems appropriate that this film adaptation (released in the US as BLOOD ISLAND) is quite obscure in its own right, taking until 2008 to be released on DVD, and unknown to even the most dedicated Lovecraft fanatics.
It features the young and attractive Susannah returning to her childhood home, located in a secluded New England fishing village, after several years of big city living. She arrives with her husband Mike to the apparently abandoned house she’s inherited, all the while suffering horrific childhood flashbacks involving an unseen something loose in the place.
A band of lowlifes accost Susannah and Mike almost as soon as they step off the boat. The scumbags are understandably smitten with Susannah, who likes parading around in miniskirts and high heels. Another problem is that Susannah’s inherited home is currently inhabited by her aunt Agatha, who zealously guards a shuttered room in the house where a horrible something is confined.
Then there are the lowlifes, who are growing restless. They manage to abduct Susannah, but Mike forcibly intervenes before they can do any real damage. This only inflames the toughs, and they make another, more concentrated assault, this time engaging Mike in a car chase while one of them stalks Susannah through her house…
This isn’t a badly made film, just an extremely dull one. It has all the hallmarks of a short story stretched to feature length, with endless scenes of actors walking, getting in and out of cars, tying shoes, etc. (it takes the protagonists a full twenty minutes to get to the house where the main action take place, and then another twenty to venture inside). As for the monster in the shuttered room, it doesn’t show up until the very end, and then doesn’t do much.
To be fair, director David Greene, a veteran TV hack, does manage to create a suitably Lovecraftian atmosphere of encroaching doom, and makes good use of his coastal locations. Here, though, is another irritant: the setting is supposed to be Lovecraft’s home base of New England, yet the film was actually lensed in old England, and looks it.
So too the actors, who affect patently fake American accents—this includes Oliver Reed, who munches even more scenery than usual as the ringleader of the island lowlifes. The lead actress Carol Lynley is among the very scant American cast members, and she’s at least easy on the eyes, ensuring the film isn’t entirely without interest from a visual standpoint.
Vital Statistics
THE SHUTTERED ROOM
Seven Arts Productions
Director: David Greene
Producer: Philip Hazelton
Screenplay: D.B. Ledrov, Nat Tanchuck
(Based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth)
Cinematography: Kenneth Hodges
Editing: Brian Smedley-Aston
Cast: Carol Lynley, Gig Young, Oliver Reed, Flora Robson, William Devlin, Bernard Kay, Judith Arthy, Robert Cawdron, Celia Hewitt, Ingrid Bower, Anita Anderson, Charles Lloyd Pack, Peter Porteous