Middle aged New Yorker Mike Kelton (Gig Young) accompanies his young wife Susannah (Carol Lynley) to the New England island where she was born, where they visit the old mill that was her childhood home. While there, they run into trouble with a gang of hooligans led by loutish lunk Ethan (a glowering Oliver Reed), and uncover the terrible family secret harbored by Susannah's Aunt Agatha (Flora Robson).
Although The Shuttered Room is billed as a horror movie, it is, for the most part, more akin to the rural thriller genre, Reed and his menacing cronies seeming to serve as inspiration for Sam Peckinpah's uncouth country ruffians in Straw Dogs. Only in its closing moments does the film enter genuine horror territory with that hoary old chestnut of a revelation, the deranged relative chained up in the attic.
Director David Greene goes for the slow burn approach, intent on generating an atmosphere of foreboding and menace (aided by a wild jazz score), but his best efforts are undone by a rather silly script that sees Susannah and Mike repeatedly failing to take the proper precautions given their precarious situation (when a group of lecherous thugs clearly have ill intentions, don't go out of your way to let them succeed by taking a lonely stroll across a remote beach or by giving one of them a lift in your car!).
Although The Shuttered Room is billed as a horror movie, it is, for the most part, more akin to the rural thriller genre, Reed and his menacing cronies seeming to serve as inspiration for Sam Peckinpah's uncouth country ruffians in Straw Dogs. Only in its closing moments does the film enter genuine horror territory with that hoary old chestnut of a revelation, the deranged relative chained up in the attic.
Director David Greene goes for the slow burn approach, intent on generating an atmosphere of foreboding and menace (aided by a wild jazz score), but his best efforts are undone by a rather silly script that sees Susannah and Mike repeatedly failing to take the proper precautions given their precarious situation (when a group of lecherous thugs clearly have ill intentions, don't go out of your way to let them succeed by taking a lonely stroll across a remote beach or by giving one of them a lift in your car!).