With the Haunted Palace bringing in money, another Lovecraft tale seemed as inevitable as the tide. Going with the 1927 tale "the Colour Out of Space", this one would feature horror legend Boris Karloff.
Things begin with an opening already cliched when Dwight Frye did it back in 1931. American Steven Reinhardt (Nick Adams) arrives in the quaint English village of Arkham. The locals are an odd bunch. When Reinhardt makes it clear that he was invited to the Witley house, the entire town shuns him. He isn't able to rent a taxi, bike, or even get directions. Disgusted, he walks the few miles to the estate, ignoring how the landscape changes from scenic to sinister the closer he gets to the house.
The heath he passes through is dead; not simply rotting either, but rather charred and ash. There's a hole nearly a thousand feet deep and almost as wide scarring the ground. When he finally arrives at the Witley house, he's greeted with silence. The old mansion is almost as decayed as the land around it. He's also spied upon by a strange woman dressed in black. Forcing his way inside (and side stepping the bear traps that dot the main gate), Reinhardt encounters the master of the house, Nahum Witley (Boris Karloff). Old Nahum is most put out by the American's appearance, especially since he invited no one. Reinhardt counters that he was invited, by Mrs. Witley (Freda Jackson) and regarding the matter of their daughter Susan (Suzan Farmer). Nahum is distraught, but allows Reinhardt to spend the night.
Later that night, Reinhardt and Mrs. Witley talk. It seems she wired him for the sole purpose of taking Susan and getting her as far from the Witley house as possible. Reinhardt is confused, but the hideously deformed appendage that used to be Mrs. Witley's arm clues him in; also she fills him that the maid Helga suffered from her same disease and has been running loose on the estate, dressed in black. There's some mentioning of Nahum's father Corbin being behind the disease, but she stops the info dump.
While this is going on upstairs, Nahum and the butler (Terrance de Marney) are down in the basement. Judging from the pentagrams and pulsating green light, nothing good can happening. From there we learn that Corbin was involved in the worship of Outer Beings. When the green light fell from the sky, he took it as a sign. Nahum, however, tried to harness the light for good and started experimenting on the local animal and planet life.
The film tries, it really does. Karloff is aces as always, but Adams and Farmer have as much chemistry as potato seeds. The biggest annoyance is the reveal that the green light is in fact radiation and that all the mutants are simply deformed. Lovecraft described a color that the human mind could barely comprehend. Here, it's green. A let down all around.
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