Stars: Jack Nicholson, Boris Karloff, Sandra Knight, Dick Miller, Dorothy Neumann, Jonathan Haze, William Campbell, Bart Patton, Mary Mitchell, Mel Welles, Jackie Joseph, Patrick Magee, Luana Anders, Myrtle Vail

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Summary: This horror collection features three films presented by Roger Corman: THE TERROR, DEMENTIA 13, and LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS.<BR>THE TERROR: Horror legend Boris Karloff and a young Jack Nicholson team up in this disjointed but enjoyable Roger Corman quickie. Nicholson plays Lieutenant Andre Duvalier, an officer under Napoleon who finds himself lost along a stretch of beach, where he is seduced by the beautiful Helene (Sandra Knight), who may or may not be a ghost. His obsession leads him to the gloomy castle of Baron Von Leppe (Karloff), a recluse haunted by the ghost of his dead wife, Ilse, who Andre suspects is actually Helene, or vice versa. <BR>DEMENTIA 13: Francis Ford Coppola's directorial debut is set in a spooky Irish castle where the family Haloran has gathered to memorialize the death of youngest sister Kathleen. Inheritance-seeking Louise Haloran (Luana Anders) is covering up the death of her husband, John (Peter Reed), from his mother, Lady Haloran (Ethne Dunn), while other son Richard (William Campbell) and his fiancee, Kane (Mary Mitchel), try in vain to plan their wedding. Third son Billy (Bart Patton) is tormented by nightmares of Kathleen's death. An ax murderer is haunting the grounds, and Kathleen's body shows up at just the wrong time. After Louise's disappearance, the family becomes suspicious of each other--as well as of the ghosts that haunt the castle. Then the sinister family doctor, Justin Caleb (Patrick Magee), is called in to help with the mystery.<BR>LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS: Director Roger Corman shot this crazy beat-era classic in a mere two days, but it packs plenty of inspired lunacy and clever bits in its 70-minute running time. Jonathan Haze stars as clumsy assistant florist Seymour, who saves his job in Mr. Mushnik's skid-row flower shop when he brings in a unique man-eating plant. The problem is, it's a very hungry plant; every night it opens its huge jaws and demands to be fed, forcing poor Seymour to take to the street in search of victims, lest he disappoint his boss and his adoring girlfriend, Audrey (Jackie Joseph). From a zingy script by Charles Griffith, this hilarious black comedy overflows with great ideas and characters: Corman regular Dick Miller plays a hipster who eats flowers, and a very young Jack Nicholson takes a memorable turn as a masochistic dental patient. DRAGNET-style detective Joe Fink (Wally Campo) narrates as he slowly begins to track the killer down. This oft-revived favorite still generates plenty of laughs and chills, deserving of repeat viewings.

This horror collection features three films presented by Roger Corman: THE TERROR, DEMENTIA 13, and LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS.
THE TERROR: Horror legend Boris Karloff and a young Jack Nicholson team up in this disjointed but enjoyable Roger Corman quickie. Nicholson plays Lieutenant Andre Duvalier, an officer under Napoleon who finds himself lost along a stretch of beach, where he is seduced by the beautiful Helene (Sandra Knight), who may or may not be a ghost. His obsession leads him to the gloomy castle of Baron Von Leppe (Karloff), a recluse haunted by the ghost of his dead wife, Ilse, who Andre suspects is actually Helene, or vice versa.
DEMENTIA 13: Francis Ford Coppola's directorial debut is set in a spooky Irish castle where the family Haloran has gathered to memorialize the death of youngest sister Kathleen. Inheritance-seeking Louise Haloran (Luana Anders) is covering up the death of her husband, John (Peter Reed), from his mother, Lady Haloran (Ethne Dunn), while other son Richard (William Campbell) and his fiancee, Kane (Mary Mitchel), try in vain to plan their wedding. Third son Billy (Bart Patton) is tormented by nightmares of Kathleen's death. An ax murderer is haunting the grounds, and Kathleen's body shows up at just the wrong time. After Louise's disappearance, the family becomes suspicious of each other--as well as of the ghosts that haunt the castle. Then the sinister family doctor, Justin Caleb (Patrick Magee), is called in to help with the mystery.
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS: Director Roger Corman shot this crazy beat-era classic in a mere two days, but it packs plenty of inspired lunacy and clever bits in its 70-minute running time. Jonathan Haze stars as clumsy assistant florist Seymour, who saves his job in Mr. Mushnik's skid-row flower shop when he brings in a unique man-eating plant. The problem is, it's a very hungry plant; every night it opens its huge jaws and demands to be fed, forcing poor Seymour to take to the street in search of victims, lest he disappoint his boss and his adoring girlfriend, Audrey (Jackie Joseph). From a zingy script by Charles Griffith, this hilarious black comedy overflows with great ideas and characters: Corman regular Dick Miller plays a hipster who eats flowers, and a very young Jack Nicholson takes a memorable turn as a masochistic dental patient. DRAGNET-style detective Joe Fink (Wally Campo) narrates as he slowly begins to track the killer down. This oft-revived favorite still generates plenty of laughs and chills, deserving of repeat viewings.

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Siren DVD's three-disc Roger Corman Collection contains The Little Shop of Horrors and The Terror, which Corman directed, as well as Dementia 13, which he produced. Though he has a reputation as one of the craftiest businessmen in Hollywood, Corman was too cheapskate in the 1960s to bother copyrighting a bunch of his films and so the same titles have been showing up on video and now DVD from many different distributors. All these films were thrown together in odd circumstances to take advantage of leftover sets, contracted performers or tied-up production funds. Little Shop of Horrors (a disguised remake of A Bucket of Blood) was famously made over a three-day weekend "because it was raining and we couldn't play tennis". The Terror exists because Boris Karloff owed a few days' work after completing The Raven and castle sets were still standing. Dementia 13 was written and directed by a young Francis Coppola in Ireland to take advantage of a European trip made for Corman's The Young Racers.

All the films are interesting, in themselves and as footnotes to distinguished filmographies. Little Shop of Horrors has a lasting cult reputation for its blackly comic tale of codependency between a skid-row botanist (Jonathan Haze, relying a bit too much on a Jerry Lewis impersonation) and a blood-drinking, flesh-hungry mutant plant voiced by screenwriter Chuck Griffith ("feed meeee!"), with a creepy cameo from a young Jack Nicholson as a masochist who loves to visit the dentist. The Terror, which has Nicholson as the bewildered lead, is a wilfully incomprehensible Gothic picture made up on the spot by Corman and a handful of other directors (including Coppola and Monte Hellman), climaxing with Karloff's bogus baron and a decaying spectre woman swept away by a flood in the dungeons. Dementia 13, a saga of axe murders and mad sculptors, is brisk grand guignol with a lot of creepy imagery to do with drowned children and family rituals.

On the DVD:The Roger Corman Collection limply claims the films are "digitally mastered" (note, not "remastered") as they are simply copies of low-quality video onto disc. Because these titles are public domain no one seems willing to take any care with transfers, and all three films are in terrible state. The Terror, the only colour film, looks especially atrocious (Vistascope cropped to full-frame) but the black-and-white films also suffer all manner of damage. The packaging is classy, but it's a shame more work wasn't done on the films themselves.--Kim Newman

Aspect Ratio:	1.33 Full Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 0
Subtitles:	None
Year:	1960
Release Date:	February 3, 2003
Runtime:	237 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	S I R E 1003
Keywords:	Collection, Terror, Little, Shop, Box, General, Horrors, Three, Set, Roger, Horror, Occult, Discs, Dementia, Sci, Fi, Corman
Genre:	Horror/Occult