The Terror

A Napoleonic officer named Andre Duvalier is saved on the Baltic coast by a beautiful young woman who then disappears. Searching for her, he makes his way to the remote castle of Baron Von Leppe, where the young woman's striking resemblance to a portrait of the baron's long-dead wife draws him into the castle's dark secrets. Boris Karloff plays the baron, Jack Nicholson plays the lieutenant, and Sandra Knight plays the mysterious woman. Roger Corman directed the film, produced by American International Pictures, Roger Corman Productions and The Filmgroup, from a screenplay by Jack Hill, Leo Gordon and Corman.

The Terror was released in 1963 and runs just under eighty minutes. Its direction is credited to several filmmakers at early points in their careers: for Corman it belongs among the nineteen features he directed, between The Premature Burial and X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes; for Francis Ford Coppola it is the second of his twenty-six directing credits, following Dementia 13; Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, Dennis Jakob, Jack Nicholson and Jack Hale also worked on it as directors. Nicholson, who plays the lead, later directed Goin' South and The Two Jakes. On IMDb the film holds a critics' rating of 5 out of 10 from twelve reviews, while on TMDB its audience rating is 5.1 out of 10 from 187 votes.