Now this is a bit of an obscure oddity; my first experience
with this flick was tuning into it by accident one Sunday afternoon
while young - my best guess would place it sometime between 1968
to 1972 - and I was immediately grabbed by the image of a badly
disfigured man loading two people into a chamber and turning a valve
which filled the chamber with a gas that somehow turned them into
skeletons (perhaps he hung out with the villainous Dr. Bartell of
The Flesh Eaters). That was all
it took to engage my 12 year-old sensibilities. Years later, as
with so many other films, I tracked it down. To answer the obvious
question "Was it worth it?", the answer is a little yes,
a lot no.
It should be mentioned that the station in question
was the seriously underfunded NBC affiliate in 
Corpus
Christi. It was unusual for them to show any horror movies,
and when they did, they were usually of the caliber of Giant
From the Unknown and Frankenstein's Daughter. These are
apt companions for Castle of Evil.
First, we must understand that there is a particularly
unpleasant dude named Korvik who is some sort of electronic genius/unscrupulous
millionaire/owner of a castle somewhere in the Carribean (I guess).
Two years before the events of our story, one of Korvik's experiments
went awry and exploded, burning him with "phosphorus salts"
and condemning him to a slow and particularly painful death. In
the present day, six former associates arrive at the island (in
the midst of the requisite storm) to hear The Reading of the Will
(*snicker*).
Our cross-section of humanity includes a disagreeable
shyster lawyer (David Brian); a 
singer/former
Korvik love, Sable (Virginia Mayo, who is introduced to us singing
an a capella version of Frankie and Johnny, making
us all hope she dies quickly); Doc Corozal (Hugh Marlowe), sued
for malpractice after saving Korvik's life; Tunki (Ernest Sarracino),
a native chieftain whom Korvik ripped off; Matt (Scott Brady), two-fisted
hero; and Carol (Lisa Gaye), Matt's former love interest. They are
met by the enjoyably evil housekeeper Lupé d'Esperanza (Shelley
Morrison), who reveals that Korvik believed one of them was responsible
for his accident and resulting death. Nobody gets a chunk of his
estate unless they figure out who.
All this might have resulted in a sort of pared-down
Ten Little Indians, except that the whole 
thing
is part of a warped Korvik revenge scheme orchestrated by Lupe and
involving a Korvik look-alike robot intended to kill off our merry
band one by one, starting with the lawyer (huzzah!). Cropping up
where least expected, thanks to a network of secret passages, the
Korvikoid next attacks Lupé, much to her chagrin. Somehow,
after a few minutes, Lupé comes back to life just long enough
to explain the plot to Matt and Doc (she was the one responsible
for the accident, and was trying to get the money for herself by
offing everyone else, but alas, the robot's "brain is a computer...filled
with all the evil that is Korvik!").
The
gang barricade themselves into a bedroom (admittedly of limited
effectiveness
in a building riddled with secret passages) while Matt and Tunki
explore the bowels of the castle, discovering control rooms, labs,
and an extremely convenient laser that is used to put the Korvikoid
to rest while he's chasing Carol around in her gothic romance nightgown.
The end.
If there is one major thing wrong with Castle of
Evil (past the über-cliché setup), it
is the fact that the movie is determinedly unscary. It shows
its origins as the bottom half of a double bill that parents could
safely leave the kids at on a Saturday afternoon. It seems an odd
thing now, but it was 1966, and most of the fare that showed up
on these double bills were fairly innocuous - until 1968 and Night
of the Living Dead shook up that cozy little tradition.
*
The
only two people that die in Castle of Evil are the two that
really deserve it - the despicable lawyer and the evil Lupé
- no matter how much we pray for Sable's demise with each successive
wisecrack. The impressive Korvik makeup (the best half-face since
War of the Collossal Beast) and the Skeleton Gas are more
geared toward making a Jujube-besotted crowd go "Eeeeeew!"
than scream. There is, in fact, an odd lack of drama in the whole
enterprise - it all seems much more perfunctory than purposeful.
The structure is certainly there - things proceed
more or 
less
logically (except for the "You just saw a walking corpse? Better
put on your nightgown!" scene), and each character's back story
is introduced at a dramatically appropriate time. It's just that
there is a complete and total absence of zeal in any form
anywhere - and that is the Kiss of Death for a Bad Movie.
In fact, Castle of Evil would have worked much
better as a stage play - and that's about the worst thing you can
say about a movie.
