I Watch Films: Terror (1978)

Terror (1978)

The unhelpfully named Terror opens with a woman accused of witchcraft being hunted down and killed. This turns out to have been a film made by James Garrick, film-maker and descendant of Lord Garrick, who led the witch hunters. The party continues, and his cousin Ann is hypnotised, picks up a sword connected to the legend and lightly stabs James before waking and fleeing into the woods. Later another partygoer is found stabbed to death in the woods.

A variety of strange deaths occur; a cameraman is killed by a falling light at Garrick’s studio (while filming a sex film called Bathtime With Brenda). A patron of the stripclub where all the actresses in the actress hostel work as waitresses between acting jobs is thrown out after harassing Ann and on the way home is impaled on iron railings. Viv (who played Brenda) is stabbed to death in the hostel. And so on.

It never really explains what’s going on, which is fine I suppose, they tell us up front they’re from a family of witch killers who were cursed and then a lot of people die in weird, gory, and supernatural ways. The funny bits are amusing, the violent bits are quite visceral, the sexy bits probably haven’t aged especially well.

Watch This: For a horror film with plenty of gore and tension and other bits
Don’t Watch This: If you want the parts of the film to add up to something