A trio of thieves absconds with some diamonds and jewelry, robbing a safe at the beginning of the movie and heading out into the deep dark countryside in the middle of the night. It seems the leader of the heist knows about an abandoned old house far from any prying eyes. They plan to hole up there for the night until the heat dies down and then take off with their booty. What none of them know is that the house itself is very haunted by the family that used to reside there, and what’s worse is that the graveyard next to the house is haunted as well, and this ghost is much more dangerous. What follows is a night of terror and laughs, the bumbling ghosts holding meetings on who to kill next and how to do it and the robbers fighting to stay alive. By morning’s light, there might not be anything living left in the area.
The Dismembered is a super-low budget indie flick filmed in Philadelphia back in 1962 and never really released before this blu ray came out from Garagehouse Pictures. The movie is at once stupid and silly and scary as hell. The cast is a bunch of amateurs, friends of the director of the film (Ralph Hirshorn), including former teachers of his and his old housekeeper. The crew behind the film was taken from a local TV station children’s show. What the movie mostly consists of are gags, from the comedic musings of the killer ghosts in the house, to the drifting surrealism of the lady in white outside in the graveyard. All of them have it out for the gang of thieves, who haplessly don’t know the trouble they’ve stumbled into. This is really a cusp film, as it plays like something from the innocent 50s but also has a whole Carnival of Souls sheen to it. Some of the scenes are actually creepy and effectively scary. Also, kudos to the kooky score, weird and jazzy and spooky.
Mostly what you have is a lost oddity from another time and place. This one is for fans of old, old Roger Corman pics and for that bridging gap between the 50s and 60s, back before the Beatles and Helter Skelter but just after Elvis and in the midst of Fabian and the like. There’s plenty of noir chills to go along with the campy screams, and it only clocks in at about an hour long. Fun for the kids and the adults.
Two and a Half Stars out of Four