Sorry, this movie sucks

good back-story, and good acting

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

You think that the Munsters and Addams Family were the only ookie and creepy families on screen in 1964? Wait until you meet the Marley's, a weird British family consisting of a wacky inventor great uncle, the bedridden patriarch who finds odd places to hide his will, his son who keeps death masks of all the relatives who have darkened the family name (a good thing in their family bible), a niece who drinks only Bloody Mary's, and is more dour than Wednesday Addams, and the seemingly normal daughter (Erica Rogers) who is engaged to American traveling salesman Pat Boone. After a car accident that doesn't seem quite so accidental, Boone must walk to the home of his fiancee where he is greeted by pops (Dennis Price), a dour fellow who warns him in bits and pieces about the characteristics of their family. In addition to those I mention above is an odd uncle who is quiet but dastardly and another uncle once held prisoner by head hunters who believes that he has the skull the size of a pear and seems to be cannibalistic himself. Yes, this is a badly written movie, but it was written with so much tongue in cheek that it is impossible to hate. Boone's acting is, well, just bland, but the other actors seem to get that they are spoofing the horror genre and put their all into having fun just overplaying everything. The best sequence comes when Boone chit-chats with the inventor uncle who keeps coming up with ideas of things that have already been invented, like electricity. His idea of a horseless carriage is hysterically funny, and just wait until you learn what he uses in place of gasoline. Andree Melly makes every moment she is on screen unforgettable, with her deadpan manner extremely funny. When Boone suddenly breaks into a very bad horror themed song, you are laughing so much at it all that it comes to you that in spite of how silly it all is that you are actually having a good time.

I have to disagree with the poster who suggested that "Horror of It All" is neglected because it was filmed in black and white. "Dr. Strangelove" and "A Hard Day's Night," two black and white films which came out the following year, didn't seem to suffer from the lack of color. "Horror of It All" is neglected because it's a stinker. Pat Boone was never a threat to Olivier, and here he is encouraged (or allowed) to overact embarrassingly. The sets are cheap, the costumes are cheesy and the script is awful. And Terence Fisher, a first-rate director of horror films, seemed to have no flair for comedy (and got no help from the script). Neglect in this case is benign.

It's even more depressing when you consider the talent behind the camera--Terence Fisher did this??? I won't bother to get into the plot. It's a "horror comedy" (I use both terms very loosely) about an old, dark house and a bunch of idiots running around doing lame slapstick and unfunny jokes. Badly acted, directed and written. Go see "Hold That Ghost" or "An American Werewolf in London" or "The Howling". Even the remake of "The Old Dark House"! They're all prime examples of how to do horror and comedy.

This film, almost impossible to find today, has received a bad rap since its day of release, and maybe before, since the distributors put it on the bottom of a double bill with Lon Chaney's "Witchcraft." The temptation to dismiss this film is strong, but its pedigree is impossible to ignore. Genre master Terence Fisher is at the helm, during his unofficial banishment from Hammer Films; Ray Russell wrote the script; and the cast includes Valentine Dyall from "Horror Hotel"/"City of the Dead", Andree Melly, one of the "Brides of Dracula" and British stalwart Dennis Price, just beginning his flirtation with the horror genre.So what went wrong?The film's greatest offense is undoubtedly that it was made in black & white during the era when movies were going all-color in a big way. It's co-feature likewise; and that was a film that everyone liked and it still slipped into obscurity.The casting of Pat Boone has stuck in the craws of many horror fans but, truthfully, he's as palatable as Tom Poston is in "Zotz" and 1963's "The Old Dark House". And Boone's boyish screen persona is just right for the kind of hapless hero he plays here. He does sing a totally unnecessary song, however.Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this film is its similarity to two other films made about the same time: Hammer's "The Old Dark House", made the same year, and "What A Carve Up" (AKA "There's No Place Like Homicide") from 1962. The plot similarities, especially with the Hammer film, are so strong that it's a wonder how the persons concerned avoided lawsuits.