A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

RELEASED IN 1965 and directed by Daniel Haller, "Die, Monster, Die" (aka "Monster of Terror") is a semi-Gothic horror about a young man (Nick Adams) who travels to the estate of his fiancé (Susan Farmer) in England. Unfortunately, her wheelchair-bound father (Boris Karloff) is curiously curmudgeonly and something strange is going on behind the scenes. The movie is based on HP Lovecraft's story "The Colour Out of Space."While this isn't a vampire flick, the opening is reminiscent of Dracula (young man visits old man's eerie chateau). I used to get this mixed up with "The Terror" (1963), probably because of Karloff, similarities in the plot, and they both came out in the early/mid-60s. Regrettably, "Die, Monster, Die" lacks the haunting fascination of "The Terror." It tries to work up a mysterious ambiance, and succeeds to a degree, but the story's mostly tedious and the characters dull. Susan Farmer is fine, but her part is too secondary and nothing interesting is done with her, like Venetia Stevenson in 1960's "City of the Dead," aka "Horror Hotel" (you know what I mean if you've seen that flick).Thankfully, there are some highlights, like the imaginative scene where the protagonist exclaims "It looks like a zoo in Hell," not to mention the impressive monster at the close.FYI: Two and a half years after the release of this movie in the US, a demoralized Nick Adams was found dead from an overdose, which might have been accidental, but it also could've been suicide.THE MOVIE RUNS 1 hour, 15 minutes and was shot in England (Surrey & Berkshire).GRADE: C

. . . DIE, MONSTER, DIE! Set in one of the quaintest vermillion oases of the Emerald Isle--Arkham--DIE, MONSTER, DIE! centers around naïve American "Stephen Reinhart's" first opportunity to visit the verdant homeland of his sweetie, and to meet her parents. Steve arrives just in the nick of time, as his Irish lass is a total orphan by the time he leaves a couple days later (due in no small part to the brace of battle axes Steve chucks at her Pop's noggin!). It turns out that the pot at the end of Ireland's rainbow is green--NOT gold--and Steve's hosts are living smack dab atop it. Thanks to this translucent chartreuse Ground Zero, everything grows greater and greener in Ireland. Of course, certain small sacrifices must be made within the family units, but this sort of thing has been the lot of the Irish since "Johnny Swift" reported on their substituting babes for taters during the Great Potato Famine of the 1700s. On the other hand, the famed "Luck of the Irish" plays out in spades during DIE, MONSTER, DIE!, at least for the local grave diggers.

Karloff rules, the story needs lots of help.Karloff was great in this movie. He's better here then in some of the other pile of crap movies he was in prior to this. The other actors are only decent. The actress playing the wife was also good. The male lead sucks. He just does nothing. The female lead was better but that's not saying much. The guy who played the butler dies, maybe of boredom, like some of the audience. He did OK in the dying role. Some of the townspeople were also OK. So, wait for Karloff, and unfortunately he's not given great dialogue or enough screen time. The cinematography was good, as well as the sets. Music was good too. FX sucked. The story sucks. It stars similar to Harker heading to the Dracula's castle. Beginning is handled well, with mystery of the family. Then we meet the family, like the Munsters, there's a beautiful normal daughter in a house with strange characters. She acts like everything is normal. So, the story goes down hill from here. After some time of boredom we find out that people and plants are being mutated from some meteor, and then everybody dies, places goes on fire and the young couple escape. Happy ending. This movie first needed a better story. The basics are there, but the scenes/actions/tensions are not there. It also needed a better male lead. The daughter was fine. And it needed more Karloff. So, as is. I can only give this C-, or 3 stars

...And since A.) the source material is a story by H.P. Lovecraft, and B.) the film was made in 1965, there's absolutely no way that anyone would expect a faithful adaptation, right? "Die, Monster, Die!" is so ridiculously un-Lovecraftian that it makes Roger Corman's Poe films look like exact replicas of the tales on which they were based, but you can't go wrong if you approach it in the spirit of fun. It's an AIP monster flick, after all, and the presence of Boris Karloff lends it considerably more dignity than it would otherwise have had. Nick Adams and Suzan Farmer are adequate as the obligatory young-couple-in-peril, while Frieda Jackson and Patrick Magee are on hand to bring an extra touch of British class to the proceedings. What remains of Lovecraft's classic story 'The Colour Out of Space' is the meteor and its frightening effects; everything else was concocted by screenwriter Jerry Sohl, but you'll have a good time anyhow (and that's coming from a staunch HPL fan). "Die, Monster, Die!" was Corman set designer Daniel Haller's first film as a director.