cult film freak: CAROL LYNLEY IN 'THE SHUTTERED ROOM' WITH OLIVER REED

Title: THE SHUTTERED ROOM Year: 1967 Rating: ***1/2

A near clone of Sam Peckinpah's STRAW DOGS only five years earlier, during the psychedelic era, which is only apparent from the bare-bone jazz soundtrack orchestrating a married couple consisting of a beautiful blonde wife with an ordinary, unassuming husband returning to her small New England-based island home (yet obviously shot in the beautifully rustic exterior of England), part of an eerie Gothic mill that's its very own living/breathing character...

Making the inevitable climax of who's hiding within the titular SHUTTERED ROOM not that important a surprise-twist having been teased during a surreal, horror-trope prologue by mostly TV-director David Greene...

Oliver Reed in THE SHUTTERED ROOM

Featuring one-horse-town gang leader Oliver Reed (a redneck version of his THE DAMNED character), doing his usual American imitation he pulls out either satirically or in certain films (like later in REVOLVER), wielding the usual formidable prowess, making the couple's life hell, just like the Peckinpah classic, but with Reed the only interesting antagonist not including a sexy local and a spooky aunt (played by voluptuous Judith Arvy and semi-sinister Flora Robson respectively).

Compared to DOGS, this ROOM isn't as deep, fleshed-out or fulfilling... but for an H. P. Lovecraft adaptation, there's a sparse exploitation, drive-in body-count vibe where anything can happen. Yet at any given minute instead of moment, which SHUTTERED needed more suspenseful pieces of: Making what's left-over feel like half a puzzle albeit a pretty decent one... it's based on a short story, after all.