Die, Monster, Die! (1965)

In Die, Monster, Die!, based on H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out Of Space," smug American Stephen Reinhart visits his new girlfriend Susan Witley at her family's mansion in Arkham, England.  (It is unclear why the story's original New England location was moved across the pond.) There he finds Susan's wheelchair-bound (or is he?) father Nahum Witley (Boris Karloff) to be hiding a horrible secret that has to do with a maid's disappearance, Susan's mother's extreme sensitivity to light, and a charred, scarred, dead, and decaying area of land near the Witley house.

The vague descriptions of H.P. Lovecraft's unnamable, indescribable horrors make his stories notoriously difficult to adapt to the screen.  In the case of Die, Monster, Die! (as overblown a title as any movie has ever had), the screenwriter seems to have seized on the concept from the short story of plants growing overlarge near the Witley house and run with it.  Regrettably, this leaves us with a rather conventional plot that has more to do with irradiated plants and people attacking the innocent than the truly alien monster in Lovecraft's original story.

Still, the movie is atmospheric and creepy, especially when the main characters explore the enormous, mysterious Witley house.  The noxious green glow from the greenhouse that holds the family's twisted secret is chilling (and may have inspired a scene in John Carpenter's love letter to Lovecraft, In The Mouth Of Madness).  However, as is so often the case with Lovecraft movies, when monster makes its appearance, it is a bit of a letdown.

If you are a fan of 60s horror and don't mind a few hokey effects mixed in with your atmospheric cinematography, Die, Monster, Die! is worth a shot.  If you are looking for a faithful Lovecraft adaptation, however, you will be disappointed.