No less a writer than Stephen King has called the novella "Sardonicus" perhaps "finest example of modern gothic horror ever written." I have delighted and relished the novella and the movie all my life, and I saw and read these when they first came out (1961). YES, the movie is "hokie". Yes, the movie is directed at the juvenile set, as all of William Castle's pictures were. But for those of us who were around in the William Castle era, the entertainment provided by his movies was supreme (consider the homage, "Matinee"), Everything anyone could want in a 19th century gothic horror appears in Sardonicus--including villains, heroes, beautiful virtuous maidens, Transylvania, leeches, hypo-dermic needles (my hyphen), and even a deformed Igor-type (herein called Krull), played to PERFECTION, PERFECTION, PERFECTION by the late great Oscar Homolka. This movie was thought of so highly by the writers of "Wiseguy" the TV series, that they used it as a sub-plot for a multi-episode "mini-series" within the series.
Review of Mr. Sardonicus
