The Shuttered Room starts with a family - mom, dad, daughter, and monster in the attic. I swear it seems like the monster is part of the family. Anyway, flash forward about 16 years. The little girl is grown up and going to visit her family homestead with her new, older, husband. The happy couple has to take a very scary looking (very small, barely able to fit the 1 car) ferry over to nowhere just to get there. Once they get across, the locals are very unfriendly. They even try to run over the couple's pretty new convertible with a beat-up pickup truck.
Susannah Whately Kelton (Carol Lynley) and Mike Kelton (Gig Young) stop and talk to some locals that aren't quite as mean. When they explain who Susannah is and why they are back there, they are told that they shouldn't go anywhere near her old home (the mill). The couple persists in reopening the mill that Susannah inherited on her 21st birthday to use as a summer house, much to the dismay of a certain local who is determined that one day that will be his mill.
Susannah and Mike are city folk. They don't understand the ways of country folk. After a "nice" stroll through the country (which ruins a perfectly nice pair of $10 pantyhose) to talk to her Aunt Agatha (Flora Robson), they just don't believe her when she tells them that if Susannah spends even one night in that house then she'll never be safe. No one else on the island will be safe either. She will release the evil that has been lying in wait in that house. Apparently no one (other than the monster in the attic) has spent a single night in the Whately house since Susannah's parents died from being struck by lightning. Supposedly, there is a curse on the house and the family.
After some nostalgic memories of when she was 4 that Susannah manages to dig up from the depths of her brain, Susannah starts cleaning and her husband goes off to find some supplies and food. It's really not a good idea to leave your young, pretty wife alone when there's a monster in the house and the locals are even worse. As Susannah starts to remember more of her childhood, will she figure out what to do about the monster and her family's curse before it's too late?
I found it pretty funny that if you watch The Shuttered Room first and It! second, then the first one ends with a huge fire and the second starts there. It's almost like they were meant to be together.
It! starts off with a burning warehouse full of art treasures. Everything is burned beyond recognition except for a single statue. Pimm (Roddy McDowell) doesn't want to go anywhere near It!. When he walks away to get a flashlight so that his boss Mr. Grove (Ernest Clark) can read the inscription, Grove is immediately murdered. The only one who could possibly have done it is the statue, whose arms are now in a different position. Is the statue alive?
To make matters even freakier, when Pimm gets back to his apartment, we find out that he is very much like Norman Bates and has been keeping his dead mother's skeleton with him, acting as if she is alive! He has even been stealing jewels and such from the museum for her to wear.
Anyway, with his boss now dead, Pimm assumes that he'll be next in line to be the curator of the museum. He is quite disappointed to learn that they don't believe he has enough experience, so someone else will be coming in to take care of the entire artifact collection, including the precious jewels that Pimm is so fond of borrowing for dear old mum. To make his misdeeds even harder to hide, the statue continues killing, which leaves cops in the museum asking questions. Pimm tells them that the statue is alive, but of course they aren't going to believe something as insane as that! The papers believe it though, which brings people to the museum in droves. When a man from New York, Jim Perkins (Paul Maxwell), shows up to possibly take the statue back with him, he also puts the moves on Grove's daughter Ellen (Jill Haworth), who Pimm also has a thing for.
Pimm discovers an inscription on the statue and finds out that according to the translation, the statue is the original golem, who was supposedly destroyed. It can be controlled by placing a certain scroll under the statue's tongue. The statue is invincible; it has untold strength and can do anything. Pimm is determined to find the scroll, control the statue and make all his dreams come true. Or something like that, we really don't know exactly what he plans on doing with the golem. Things don't always go as planned, though. Can Pimm control this force or has he doomed the world? What kind of drastic measures will the government take to put an end to the madness? Unlike the last Double Feature I reviewed, I really enjoyed both of these movies. They are very well done, and the acting is really good. While they might not be as terrifying as some of today's horror movies, they have both stood the test of time. If you've never seen them, you should go buy the Horror Double Feature: The Shuttered Room/It! today.
