Die, Monster, Die!

Plot

Stephen Reinhart, an American scientist (Nick Adams), pays a visit to the estate of his British fiancée's family. He finds a scorched area of countryside near an enormous crater. Local townspeople are hostile toward him and refuse to either drive him to his destination or talk about the family that lives there. The source of all these problems is later revealed to be a radioactive meteorite kept hidden in the basement by his girlfriend's father, Nahum Witley (Boris Karloff), who has been using the radiation to mutate plant and animal life, with horrific consequences to his subjects and to members of his family. Nahum's wife, Latetia, mutated by the meteorite and driven insane, dies in an attack on Steve and Susan. After Helga, a maid who has been mutated and driven mad by radiation, comes after Nahum, he is mutated after his attacker falls on the meteorite and is killed. The Nahum monster attacks Steve and Susan, but falls from a balcony and bursts into flame when he hits the floor, setting the entire Witley mansion ablaze. Steve and Susan escape the burning mansion, and never look back.

Cast

Release

In the USA, American International Pictures released the film on 27 October 1965 as the first feature on a double bill with Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires (1965). In the UK the film was trade-shown on 4 February 1966 and released on the 20th, supported by Roger Corman's 1963 film The Haunted Palace (also based on a Lovecraft story).

Critical reaction

In their book Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft, Andrew Migliore and John Strysik call Die, Monster, Die! a "textbook example of the walking-around-endlessly-in-a-big-house school of filmmaking." G. Noel Gross, writing for the DVD review website DVD Talk, writes: "The plodding plot would be more painful if the flick were longer, but the intriguing meld of gothic horror and contemporary sci-fi is hard to pass up."

Comic book adaption