The Horror of It All

Another of the movies that started showing up in the FXM rotation a couple of months back is The Horror of It All. It was running in advance of Halloween, being a horror movie, if a more comic horror movie, so I didn't know if it would keep showing up. But it's on again tomorrow (Nov. 30) at 9:40 AM and again Wednesday (Dec. 1) at 4:40 AM. So I watched it recently to do a post on it here.

One of those low-budget movies made in the UK and distributed by Fox which is why they're able to have it in their rotation now, the movie stars Pat Boone as Jack Robinson. Jack is an American in Britin who has fallen in love with British woman Cynthia Marley (Erica Rogers). He wants to marry her, but he also wants the family's permission, so he's going to see her at the old family place, which is one of those isolated manor houses that seem far too isolated for a densely-populated place like England, but are a staple of the movies. Unfortunately, Jack also has an incident with the car that puts it out of action.

When he gets to the house, surprisingly not realizing that it's the Marley place, there's a door-knocker that doesn't work, and a doorbell that shoots bullets at whoever presses it. Apparently the Marleys don't want any guests, and are surprised to have a guest like Jack. Jack is welcomed, shall we say, into the house by Cynthia's uncle Reginald, and told that the doorbell is an invention of another uncle, Percival.

Cynthia, it turns out, is the only normal person in the family. Percival's inventions all turn out to be 50 years behind the time. Cynthia's cousin Natalia acts like she might be a vampire or something, while Reginald and even more so Uncle Cornwallis (Dennis Price) act like they've got something to hide. This is especially true considering that another cousin has very recently died and the family is nominally in mourning.

And well they do. At tea time, Cornwallis takes sugar with his tea, the only one to do so, and he summarily drops dead. It tastes as though the sugar has been poisoned, which implies that somebody is trying to poison the Marleys. But who, and why? Well, in takling with bedridden Grandpa, it's learned that Grandpa has written a will that is going to bequeath the house, which is worth quite a bit, to the members of the family. Obviously one of the relatives wants it all for themselves.

The Horror of It All is, as I said, more of a comic horror movie, although the comedy may be rather groan-inducing at times. The Marleys are written as way too nutty and unrealistic, to the point that one wonders how Cynthia turned out so normal. But parts of it work. With Pat Boone as the star, you know he's going to have the opportunity to sing a song, although it's not anything particularly memorable.

In short, The Horror of It All is decidedly a B movie, in line with the other B movies from the UK that Fox was getting distribution rights to, with the only real distinction being the comic nature of the horror. It's as watchable as the others, which means mildly watchable, but certainly nothing great.