MovieChat Forums > The Thing That Couldn't Die (1959) Discussion > This movie scared the cr*p out of me as ...

This movie scared the cr*p out of me as a child

posted 14 years ago by leighpc
7 replies | jump to latest

I saw this movie late one Saturday night all by myself in the TV room in our basement. It scared the heck out of me! I recall one scene where there is a rap on a window and when the curtain is drawn back, there is the severed head held up -- it's eyes open and mouth moving silently, giving a spell-inducing command. Holy cr*p! I thought I would faint. I was so terrified, I could barely make it up to the second floor of the house to go to bed.

Seeing it again many decades later as an adult, the movie is laughable. It's amazing how something that confuses or scares you when you are a kid turns out to be so inconsequential when viewed from an adult perspective.

[–] rosapurpuraa 14 years ago

Jeez, I don't know... I'm 29 and I saw it on a MST3K episode, and still that head freaked the hell out of me, specially with the mouth moving silently like you pointed out. I think the villain is a powerful character, even later in the film when he "changes".
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
I liked the film, but I was a little disappointed at the end. I was expecting a bigger challenge after all that buildup. Also, Jessica's dress change was a bit too much, to me it would have worked better without that "visual clue" since she already was acting different. Fun movie! :)

[–] tdl797 12 years ago

Yes, once the head is reunited things end way too quickly and easily. One of the girls should have been controlled to get amulet away from the guy. Anything to at least make some kind of tension instead of the guy cowering twice and going straight back to his coffin.

Any idea why the Wikipedia entry alludes to the archeologist and Aunt Flavia having sexual relations? I have no clue why that is there. Did I miss something?

[–] matrix29 10 years ago

Well, the villain was a tad anti-climatic.
He got like 5 lines of threatening dialog, got scared by a cross, then fled into a coffin box and turned into a skeleton.

But... I always figured that this movie was a continuation of the theme of "The Undead" (1957) movie about the reincarnated prostitute and her "psychical" researcher, Doctor Quintus Ratcliff.
"The Undead" (1957) -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051128/combined

Here is the timeline.

Dr. Quintus gets interested in past lives while watching "The She Creature" (1956). So he hires a hooker and hypnotizes her to regress into her past lives.
"The Undead" (1957)
He screws up and becomes part of the story and inserts his soul directly into that portion of the timeline.
The Devil tells him that since Diana Love / Helene had her head chopped off (allowing her to reincarnate rather than ending her life in the Medieval ages) that he was stuck here forever since he no longer had a living mind to the "present day" of 1957.
So, logically Dr. Quintus Ratcliff decides to make the most of his time and gains power from The Devil in that time. He changes his name to Gideon Drew.
He gets his head chopped off for performing Witchcraft.
His body is buried separate from his head and is cursed to have his head never die.
The southern yokels dig up the head later in The Thing That Couldn't Die (1958).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052289/combined
They get hypnotized into reuniting the body & undead head. The vain doctor makes curses, blathers on about drinking blood, and is chased back into his coffin by a small cross necklace and is turned into a hanging Doctor's Office skeleton model (or reused in "Teenagers From Outer Space" in multiple roles).

See. It all makes sense now. A three-year time traveling hypno-Devil saga of lust, arrogance, and greed.

[–] paliazzar 12 years ago

Same here. I saw it in a theatre as part of a double feature with "The Monolith Monsters" and I was maybe 11 or 12. I just saw it on TCM for the first time since then and while it may be a bit cheesy, I still enjoyed it.

The severed head segments brought to mind "Re-Animator!"

[–] pnorris 11 years ago

I saw this movie in the theater in 1958 as part of a double feature with Walt Disney's The Littlest Outlaw......I was 9....it scared the sh*t out of me....while my friends were laughing, I was in the bathroom throwing up.....I have never been able to watch horror flicks to this day...

[–] lferrigon-1 10 years ago

I remember this movie on cable years ago and it scared me as well but it still stuck with me.

[–] whyme4567 9 years ago

My older sister used to take me shopping with her downtown in our city on Saturdays. When we were finished that, she would take us to the neighborhood movie theater for the rest of the afternoon. One Saturday, this movie was the first of three movies that day. I was ten years old. The movie scared me so bad that day. I never forgot it. The next week I was still so scared of this movie that I cried and begged not to see that week's films. I missed "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine" and "Thunderball". Needless to say my name was mud. Each of those movies are great. I always tell this story about the film.