The Dismembered (1962)
* (out of 4)
Three thieves take some valuable jewelry and on their getaway then end up stopping on a creepy old house. They plan to just stay there a few hours to let things cool down but they don't realize that the house is actually the home to some dead people.
THE DISMEMBERED was a film that was completed in 1962 but not released until 2017. That's right, this Philadelphia based horror film didn't find a theatrical screening back in the day, it was never released to any low-rent VHS, it skipped any sort of budget DVD release but it finally made its way to Blu-ray. I'm not going to life, this here is a pretty bad film but at the same time I'm a little shocked that it never got some sort of release until now since there are much worse films out there.
With that said, there's no question this is a pretty bad movie and I think the majority of its troubles start with the screenplay. This thing clocks in at 65-minutes and I'm really don't know what it was trying to do. Was it trying to be funny? The scenes with the old dead people commenting on the "younger people" is just so lame and boring. Nothing they say is funny nor is it at any level entertaining. The horror elements are just as worse because you've basically got a woman in white walking around. That's it. No ghouls. No real monsters. No major ghost scares. Nothing.
I'm not sure what they were trying to do with this film but I'm going to guess that the filmmakers simply liked the idea of making a movie and wanted to make one. The commentary track that is on the disc has the director talking about the experience and there's no question that the making of stories are a lot more entertaining than what's actually on the screen. The movie is shot quite flat and there's just nothing interesting going on. Thankfully it's only 65-minutes and thankfully it was found after all these years but I'm going to guess that had the film gotten a release back in 1962, it would have already been forgotten anyway.
