As time moved on and the 60's gave way into the 70's, drive-in kings American-International Pictures decided to dip back into the brackish New England waters of Lovecraft once more, and who better than the director of Die, Monster, Die!? This time focusing one of Lovecraft's better known stories, the Dunwich Horror told of the strange Whateley clan of Dunwich.
After seeing a woman give birth, and be hustled out of the ancient looking bedroom mere seconds after delivery, we jump some years to the infamous Miskatonic University in Arkham, Mass. Professor Henry Armitage (Ed Begley, Sr.) is finishing a lecture on the history of the local area, including the life and death of Oliver Whateley, a supposed warlock.
After wrapping up, he gives his graduate assistants Nancy Wagner (Sandra Dee) and Elizabeth Hamilton (Donna Baccala) the only known copy of the Necronomicon; which astute Lovecraft readers will recognize as a fairly big deal, and orders them to take it at once to the school's library. There they run across a man trying to obtain the book, Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell). Wilbur insists he needs it to research his family, specifically his great-grandfather Oliver, who also held a copy. Elizabeth is put off by him, but Nancy agrees. She's stopped only by the arrival of Professor Armitage. Wilbur seethes, but chats up the trio.
He's so engrossed that he missed the last bus back to Dunwich. Nancy quickly agrees to drive him out, but while there she falls under his spell. Literally, as Wilbur seems to take after his great-grandad in more ways than one. There she meets his grandfather, "Old" Whateley (Sam Jaffe) and is also drugged. There's also Wilbur's brother, who is locked in the attic. More on him later.
Nancy decides to spend the entire weekend there, which bothers Elizabeth and the Professor when they drive out the next morning. Digging around town, they find a few facts, mostly that Wilbur's mother Lavinia (Joanne Moore Jordan) has been in the local asylum ever since she gave birth. The town doctor, Dr. Cory (Lloyd Bochner), recalled that she gave birth to twins, but one was stillborn. He thinks so, anyway, as he wasn't there for the birth. Elizabeth, listening to local gossip, figures that Nancy is under some type of spell and breaks into the Whateley house to find her. She doesn't, but she does find that the rumor of Wilbur's brother being stillborn was somewhat exaggerated. She, and several townsfolk, find this out the hard way.
From there things rush to a climax, as Wilbur drags Nancy down to the Devil's Hopyard to begin an unholy ritual. Will Armitage be in time?
There are some things to recommend. The visual look is top notch. Haller had worked behind the scenes on Corman's Poe films and it shows. Wilbur's brother is wisely kept off camera and instead the visual cue of wind or moving grass is used.
The bad outweighs the good though. Stockwell is a fine actor, but even he can't save this turkey. The story is far too short to make a feature length film, so it resorts to padding, padding, and even more padding. It would be another fifteen years before Hollywood took interest in Lovecraft again.
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