The Terror - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of The Terror or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to The Terror

[jesse]

Roger Corman shot the castle scenes with Boris Karloff so quickly that he didn't even bother to use slates to mark the beginnings of shots. Once he just had the actors walk downstairs one after another in succession, figuring he could later cut the single shot into separate shots that he could probably use somewhere.

[oscar]

Youtuber & Filmmaker Gregory Austin McConnell bought the rights of the spanish dub version of the film and made a screening on his YouTube channel on March 19th, 2021

[harry]

Italian censorship visa # 43051 delivered on 29 May 1964.

[victoria]

Jack Nicholson, while being interviewed for the documentary Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011) insists that the finished movie has no cohesive plotline. He gleefully recounts the scene where his character throws Stefan (Dick Miller) against a wall and threatens him, to which the Stefan character attempts to explain where the story is through ham-fisted, probably last-minute dialogue additions.

[jessica]

Jack Nicholson claims to have nearly drowned while filming in the surf of Big Sur.

[lynn]

Dennis Jakob doubled for Boris Karloff during the climactic castle flood.

[willard]

Sets for The Raven (1963) and The Haunted Palace (1963) were re-used in this film. The tree, against which Sandra Knight rots, at the end, was the one to which Vincent Price was tied and burned in The Haunted Palace (1963).

[frances]

American International Pictures would frequently make use of frozen dollars and cheaper European facilities by sending composers Les Baxter and Ronald Stein to record their scores in London, Munich and Rome. In spite of The Terror having a very small budget, Stein was able to use the 90-piece Munich Symphony Orchestra to record the score. And whilst in Munich, Stein cut costs even further by juggling the recording sessions to squeeze in the scoring of Dementia 13 (1963).

[chad]

Roger Corman shot the bulk of the film in four days, but the second-unit work was filmed over a nine month period by five directors, Francis Ford Coppola, Dennis Jakob, Monte Hellman, Jack Nicholson, and Jack Hill.

[cassandra]

Having finished The Raven (1963), Roger Corman immediately shot this film using the same sets, and the same two lead actors. All of the scenes involving Boris Karloff were filmed by Corman in four days, but the finished film, which was largely improvised, required nine months to complete, the longest production of Corman's career.

[aaron]

A shot involving quicksand was directed by Jack Hill in his own backyard. The quicksand was originally planned for the death of Gustaf (Jonathan Haze), until it was decided to have him attacked by a falcon.

[linda]

Boris Karloff's and Jack Nicholson's second film together.

[riley]

The finale, with Duvalier rescuing Helene and passionately kissing her before she turns into a decomposing corpse, was similar in many ways to Jack Nicholson's scene in "The Shining", where he encounters a beautiful women in a bathtub who transforms into a repulsive, rotting, walking corpse when they begin kissing.

[cameron]

The original theatrical poster warned its patrons: "No one will be admitted while the coffin is being opened!"

[amber]

Roger Corman made this picture in the midst of a cycle of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations and considers it an "honorary member" of that cycle. The previous Poe pictures had ended with the castle or mansion being destroyed by fire (Corman's crew had some to look forward to "fire day") but with this one, Corman decided to change the formula and have the castle destroyed by a flood instead. Noting the abundance of second unit directors who had worked on the film, four, to that point, Jack Nicholson requested and received permission to direct the climactic flood sequence himself.