The movies takes place in the late 19th century. It opens with a shipwreck, as an unlucky toy ship comes to grief in somebody’s bathtub. It may be the lamest opening scene in movie history.
There were only two survivors of the wreck, the captain and Aaron Fallon (Russ Harvey). Fallon is the scion of an important aristocratic family. They think they’ve been washed up on an uninhabited island but that they weren’t so lucky. This island belongs to Count Lorente de Sade (William McNulty), and he’s both mad and bad. And severely paranoid.
Count de Sade has just received some kind of occult visitation, to remind him of his many sins. The visitation is accompanied by some incredibly cheap and crude social effects. Of course the visitation might be merely his own conscience.
Meanwhile the Captain and Fallon make a grim discovery. One of the female passengers had survived the wreck, only to be torn apart by savage dogs. That explains the woman they heard screaming the previous night.
Fallon and the Captain find themselves unwilling guests of the Count. Fallon makes plenty of unpleasant discoveries but the most unwelcome is that there is no way to leave the island. No ship ever visits this cursed island.
Count de Sade has something of an obsession with pirates and he has a tendency to assume that anyone who reaches his island by sea must be a pirate. He really doesn’t like pirates at all.
There are several other people on the island. There’s the Count’s slave, a black guy with white hair. He may be the sanest person on the island. There’s Cassandra, a young woman who had been nurse to the Count’s wife. And there’s Ann. She’s mute, as the result of an encounter with pirates. The Count is convinced that Ann is trying to poison him so he has her flogged regularly. She’s not the only one who ends up in the Count’s torture dungeon.
Fallon does find out the story behind the Count’s madness. It’s pretty unoriginal but it does explain things. Fallon of course is determined to escape. Maybe he can trust Cassandra? Maybe he can trust Ann? Or maybe not. But somehow he has to get off this island of madness.
Everything about this movie is pretty bad. The low budget isn’t the biggest problem (while the special effects are terrible the sets aren’t too bad). The acting is a major problem but there’s also the pacing.
Despite all this it does have a certain odd appeal. You can feel sorry for this movie but it’s hard to bring oneself to hate it. That would be like kicking a dog that just can’t help not being able to perform even the simplest tricks.
And maybe I’m being a bit hard on it. Russ Harvey as Fallon is the biggest single problem. He may be the dullest hero in cinematic history. With some halfway decent in that rôle the movie might have had a chance. While William McNulty as the Count has his moments he doesn’t quite have the necessary presence. With someone like Vincent Price the movie might have had a very good chance of succeeding. And the ending is very neat and is almost enough to redeem the movie.
This movie was probably intended to cash in on the success Roger Corman was having with his Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, the difference being that Corman could afford Vincent Price.
The Dungeon of Harrow has been released on a double-feature DVD by Vinegar Syndrome, paired with Death by Invitation. It’s obvious that not a great deal (if anything) has been done by way of restoration but let’s face it these are not movies that people are likely to want to shell out big bucks to buy as Special Edition Blu-Ray releases. The Dungeon of Harrow at least gets a reasonably acceptable anamorphic transfer. The colours don’t look too bad. Vinegar Syndrome do deserve credit for at least making such a movie available to us.
The Dungeon of Harrow is a movie you have to be in the mood for. If you can get in the mood it has a certain disreputable scuzzy charm. It certainly has the right atmosphere of madness and despair. So it’s worth a look.
Found "The Dungeon of Harrow" as a free YouTube film this past April. It's somewhat interesting because I had no idea what the secret of the island was until the final scene, so on that it worked for me. The cast, well, I figured this was a Spanish import that had been badly dubbed, so they need flogging too. ;)
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