The Shuttered Room (1967 film)

Still from The Shuttered Room (1967 film)...

The Shuttered Room, AKA Blood Island (1967 film)

Summary

Based on August Derleth's "collaboration" story "The Shuttered Room (fiction)". Close the doors. Nail the beams. What's inside must never be seen! A series of horrific murders is traced to a creature that inhabits a very strange house.

Details

• Release Date: 1967
• Country/Language: UK, English
• Genres/Technical: Horror
• Runtime: 1 hr 39 min
• Starring: Oliver Reed, Gig Young, Carol Lynley
• Director: David Greene
• Writer: August Derleth
• Producer/Production Co:
• View Trailer: (link)
• IMDB: (link)

Ratings

MPAA Ratings

• Rated: (unrated) (perhaps equivalent to a PG or PG-13 for Violence and Adult Content?)

Tentacle Ratings

A rough measure of how "Lovecraftian" the work is:

• SS___ (Two Tentacles: barely Lovecraftian)

Note: This rating is not intended as a measure of quality, merely of how closely related to Lovecraftian "Weird" fiction the work is.

Reviews

Review Links:

• Black Hole Reviews, (link) - "Very sixties, not very Lovecrafty, but a little Straw Doggy..."
• The Lurker: A Guide to the Cinema of HPL (link) - "...another ending in flames and all we are left with is a burned-out husk! Sort of like someone who, possessed by powers outside of all normal time and space, decided to sit through the entire running time of The Shuttered Room."
• Scott Ashlin at 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting (2.5/5 Stars) (link) - "All in all, I’d like to give The Shuttered Room a heavily qualified recommendation, but it does so much to defy so many of the wrong expectations (along with a few of the right ones, it’s true) that I’m not at all sure who the viewer most likely to appreciate it would be."
• Mitch Lovell at The Video Vacuum (1.5 Stars) (link) - "As low budget Lovecraft adaptations from the 60's go, this ain't no Dunwich Horror. Lovecraft was a master at stringing his readers along until the shit hit the primordial fan. What's pretty infuriating about this movie is that it strings us along for so long that when it finally goes to deliver the goods, it completely drops the ball."

Synopsis

Based on August Derleth's "collaboration" story "The Shuttered Room (fiction)". Close the doors. Nail the beams. What's inside must never be seen! A series of horrific murders is traced to a creature that inhabits a very strange house.

Notes

Associated Mythos Elements

• film: see also...
  • The Maze (1953 film) (makes use of similar themes, but from another author.)
• fiction: "The Shuttered Room (fiction)"