User Reviews

This is one of those films from 1965 that my friends and I went to in our small-town movie theater. I remember it as being full of those jump-out-at-you moments with people in the theater screaming. Connie Stevens is the heir to her father's estate but must stay in the old house for seven days. He is one of the great magicians of his time and has promised, upon his death, to return to the house. The house itself is great fun, full of remnants of his magic world. There is a cabinet that opens when a switch is flipped, allowing a skeleton on a wire to come face to face with the unwary victim. The guillotine in question is part of the act that killed the man's wife and assistant. Stevens then was farmed out and never saw her father again. She also never knew what happened to her mother. It's full of fun stuff with a plot that shouldn't be too closely evaluated. There are two characters that are left out of the will who become suspects. What they really know is always in doubt. Connie Stevens was a cute TV star at the time and well worth watching and makes a good victim. She is stubborn on the one hand and terrified on the other. She can also scream with the best of them. Dean Jones (a long time Disney staple) plays the love interest.

Connie Stevens once again shows what a fine, natural actress she is, here playing a young lass from Wisconsin who must spend seven nights in her late father's house of horrors before she can receive her inheritance; Dean Jones plays a reporter who smells a story and befriends the easily-spooked girl. Terrific second-biller from Warner Bros., ostensibly aimed at kids ("Attention Guillotine-agers!") yet bolstered by a very strong script with nice attention to dialogue. The movie has good effects, a funny/spooky scenario and surprising chemistry between the two leads. Stevens is very good, especially in the prologue playing her own character's uptight mother. It all comes to a commendable ending, thanks to a very clever...EXECUTION! *** from ****

Like some others who've seen this film as children, I have fond memories of Two On a Guillotine when it played as a Friday night movie on network TV in the mid-1960s. The sight of a lifeless Cesar Romero being lowered into a grave in a glass coffin at the beginning sets the spooky tone for the rest of the story. His character, a famous magician, promised to one day perform his greatest feat of all by returning from the dead. His wife (identical to his daughter) died some years before when he botched the guillotine trick she was assisting with. Without giving anything away, a lot of the suspense is built on the anticipation of his re-materializing at any time, to the horror of his daughter. This is a movie which has many of the elements necessary for genuine horror. No spilled guts, no splatter. It works on a neater, more effective plane.

Not bad, lots of fun. Nice job by Dean Jones. I give it 6 stars Connie Stevens is very good and she looks great. Good movie for late at night. Nice to see the Joker out of makeup. Not too long, smart ending. Enjoy it.

"Two on a Guillotine" is an effective little BW chiller when aiming for the scares, but when that's not the case it becomes ponderous (the budding romance between the leads) and it in end too long-winded when it finally reach it very foreseeable conclusion. Still it's entertainingly solid with able performances by the ever delightful Connie Stevens and a charming Dean Jones. They work off each other rather well and the script stays compelling within its mystery building or trivial exchanges. Some slow spots, but never that distracting.

In order to inherit her recently deceased father's fortune, his only daughter (who hadn't seen her father in years after an incident during a magic trick featuring her mother in a guillotine) must stay seven nights in his mansion. If not, the fortune is split between his carer and manager. Things soon get weird, but it hard to tell if it's just games or the house is really haunted. Although he did promise to return from the dead.

The plot is a typical haunted house mystery (as nothing seems quite like what it is), but it's well presented and exemplary photographed. Director William Conrad mixes successfully the playful elements (an acceptable light-hearted funny bone) with the creepy moments (where it can draw some intensity). Cesar Romero is quite good as the illusionist too.

An earnest little spook drama.

Total camp, total cheese, but Two on a Guillotine is fun for a matinee with popcorn, candles, and preferably dark and gloomy weather. It starts showing the theatrical performance of magician Cesar Romero with his lovely assistant and wife Connie Stevens. He loves the thrill and enjoys coming up with new ways to scare the audience. Connie's tired of it; she'd rather raise her baby in peace.

Twenty years later, Cesar had died and reporters and friends are gathering for his funeral. He's vowed to return from the grave, and at the reading of his will, he leaves his entire estate to his daughter - on the condition that she spend seven nights in his house so that when he comes back to life he can spend time with her. Connie Stevens also plays the daughter, which is pretty cute. She's not frightened to stay in the house at first, until it starts acting haunted. Is it Cesar's return, his friends Parley Baer and Virginia Gregg, who were cut out of the will, out for revenge? It's a good thing she has the cute Dean Jones to keep her company and look out for her during her scary week. He's an undercover reporter out for a story, but soon they fall in love.

If you like Vincent Price's classic horror movies, you'll like this one. This isn't my genre of choice, but I found it entertaining. My compliments to Connie Stevens, who could have blown it off but instead gave her role as much realism as she could. She did a surprisingly good job!

Henry Slesar spent much of his outstanding career writing for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour," as well as innumerable soap opera hours. His skills are brought to bear here for that great ingenue, Connie Stevens. William Conrad's sensible, unpretentious direction inspires solid performances from the principals, especially Dean Jones, who is well cast and the supremely talented Virginia Gregg. Conrad even engages in a brief walk-on a la Hitchcock. Sam Leavitt's B&W photography and Max Steiner's excellent score keep interest alive for 107 minutes. The charming, persistent young man and the flirtatious but proper young lady are familiar characters in the Hitchcock canon as is, in film history, the damsel in distress chained to the railroad tracks. The talent here is sufficient to validate these old formulas.

A title like ''Two On A Guillotine'' leaves one expecting some first-class horror. Alas, in this glossy Warner Brothers programmer, that's not what you get. The plot, which is as old as the hills, deals with the long-estranged daughter of a magician (Connie Stevens, star of Television's ''Hawaiian Eye'') who is left her deceased father's fortune, with one stipulation-she must spend one week in his mansion in order to collect it. Years before, Dad's wife (Stevens again) disappeared without a trace, leaving his daughter to be raised by relatives. At her father's funeral, she is reunited with her one-time Nursemaid (Virginia Gregg) and her father's business manager (Parley Baer) both of whom will split the inheritance should Connie split before the week is up. Quickly befriended by an incognito reporter, (Dean Jones) Connie makes her way to the house for what should have been a living nightmare. But it goes (slowly) downhill from there.Producer/Director William Conrad had quite a showbiz career-he played Marshall Dillon on radio long before James Arness played the part on the TV series ''Gunsmoke''. In the 70's Conrad was ''Cannon'' the star of his own successful TV show, and he ended his run starring in another successful detective series ''Jake And The Fatman''.As the director of this film, however,( as well as the following year's ''My Blood Runs Cold''), he started with practically nothing, and did little more with it.Max Steiner contributes a suitably eerie score (his last) and the black and white photography is excellent. But neither can disguise the fact that very little is actually happening.Stevens and Jones are given insipid characters to play but do what they can with them which, sadly, isn't much. Poor Connie is also victimized by her unflattering hairstyles-including one that looks like she's wearing a raccoon (complete with tail)on her head. Both spend what feels like forever, plodding around the sadly unthreatening house, dodging an occasional plastic skeleton, and the usual rubber head bouncing down the stairs. Except for one or two ear-splitting shrieks from Stevens, neither seems all that concerned. Gregg (as usual) and Baer at least manage to make their parts interesting, even though they are merely red herrings. Connie Gilchrist is wasted in a bit as a housekeeper. Caesar Romero is properly pathetic as the mad magician, but he's not on screen enough.Worst of all, this film cries out for (but doesn't get) much more suspense, deeper characterizations and imaginative direction. Instead, Conrad tosses in a dull romantic subplot for Stevens and Jones,a visit to a local disco, an excursion to an amusement park and a song (?) from Stevens,who WAS recording for Warner Brothers Records at the time. But all this does is make an already overlong film that much longer. Even the supposedly ''shocking climax'' is dragged out unmercifully. Needless to say, this was a pretty weak wrap up to 50's starlet Steven's Warner Brothers contract.Incidentally, both she and Romero made personal appearances on behalf of the film (to no avail) when it opened in New York. Jones fared a bit better, going on to star in a few popular Walt Disney comedies. Romero, however, really triumphed the following year when he was perfectly cast as the flamboyant '' Joker'' in the ''Batman'' Television Series. Yes, there are so-called ''Horror Films'' out there a lot worse than this one. But there are much better ones as well.

I don't understand the low rating on this film at all. Although I can understand why people would be skeptical about a horror film starring Connie Stevens and Walt Disney leading man Dean Jones, these two really click in this one. John Harley 'Duke' Duquesne (Cesar Romero) is a magician whose wife (Connie Stevens in a dual role as wife Melinda/daughter Cassie twenty years later) is part of the act. Daughter Cassie has been living with an aunt that does not approve of her show-business parents ever since her mother disappeared when she was two. Neither father nor mother have ever tried to contact her in all of these years, and then one day she is notified of her father's death and comes to the funeral.

Thus Cassie returns to L.A. first for the funeral and then to take up residence in her father's mansion for a week, which is a condition of his will in which he promises to rise from the grave within that time. If he does not, Cassie is free to move out and take possession of her inheritance. In the meantime, reporter Val Henderson (Dean Jones) has taken an interest in the story and in Cassie. Complicating matters is the fact that if Cassie for any reason leaves the mansion between midnight and dawn during these seven days then her former nursemaid and her father's long-time care-taker and her father's former agent get to split the fortune instead. Let me also mention that the fact that Duquesne retired from show business twenty years before has left the two indigent. So when Cassie starts hearing and seeing things in the wee hours, is this Duke back from the dead, is it the two secondary heirs trying to drive her out of the mansion, or something else entirely? Watch and find out.

The big creepy mansion is full of tricks and traps that somewhat presage the ending, and then there's the movie's score that is about the creepiest thing I've ever heard, aptly done by Max Steiner. Take it from me, this is no mediocre six star horror film.

Fun, campy suspense/horror flick that fully satisfies, particularly if you don't take it too seriously. For continuity buffs note the sets in the foyer and library of Cesar Romero's house. Look familiar? Compare them with your copy of "My Fair Lady". No one ever said Jack Warner didn't know how to squeeze a nickel and recycle an expensive set!!

Forced to stay in her father's mansion for an inheritance, a woman and her friend find the entire estate rigged to allow him the chance at performing the greatest illusion of all time and forcing him to save her from his clutches.

Overall this one wasn't really all that bad but did have a few flaws. What really seems to lower this one is the rather blatant and obvious set-up this utilizes in dragging out the running time here far beyond necessary simply because of the set-up required. The first half here is basically built around the concept of her going out and spending the time here going around and inspecting the house, resulting in nothing but endless scenes of the two of them inspecting his mystical traps and holdings from his past but doesn't really generate anything in the form of highly suspenseful tactics. Likewise, the whole story is presented into the final act twist that doesn't really seem all that shocking or twisted at all but all seems built into such a logical conclusion that there's no suspense or shock to be derived from it, plays out exactly the way it's supposed to be and never comes off all that well anyway as it's so obvious from the start which seems to follow suit with the rest of the scenes here as this one tends to play through it's running time with really unsurprising and cliché motivations for everything within this. There's some rather fun times here still within this, which is mainly centered around the fun had here in the mansion waiting around for something to happen, which is quite elaborate, chilling and seemingly made for something like this and really provokes quite a dark air about itself that's quite appealing overall. As well, the final half here is fantastic with the plot twist bringing about more action in numerous chases and brawls around the house, a fantastically maniacal air about the different stage shows and really elevates this one by really playing with the twists logically throughout here into a fun and enjoyable part that makes the most of this one. While there's some flawed areas elsewhere that do lower this one, it's still enjoyable and highly watchable.

Today's Rating-PG: Violence.

Two On A Guillotine feels like a horror movie if it were made by Disney, partly due to its lightweight nature, and partly due to the fact that it features Dean Jones, star of The Love Bug and other Disney live-action films. Jones plays wise-cracking newshound Val Henderson, who, looking for a story, poses as a real estate agent to befriend beautiful heiress Cassie Duquesne (Connie Stevens), the young woman's inheritance being dependant on her staying in her late father's mansion for seven consecutive nights, after which the deceased magician has vowed to return from the grave.

While at the mansion, Cassie and Val experience a series of spooky occurrences, and Cassie begins to believe that her father really is going to come back from the dead; Val, on the other hand, is convinced that 'Buzz' Sheridan, the magician's manager, and his assistant Dolly (Virginia Gregg) are behind the strange happenings, trying to frighten Connie away so that they can inherit Duquesne's fortune. However, the truth is more bizarre than that...

With its creepy mansion, rigged with surprises by the dead magician, Two On A Guillotine is routine 'old dark house' fun that offers very few surprises, at least until the finalé, but the film is bolstered by enjoyable performances from its likeable leads, who share great chemistry. The scares are mild, and quite a bit of the running time is devoted to the blossoming romance between Val and Cassie, but the mystery is entertaining, with a satisfyingly deranged denouement that threatens to remove Cassie's pretty head from her shoulders.

The lovey dovey stuff might be a little too sappy for younger children, and the rather long running time could result in restlessness (15 minutes could have been removed with no real detriment); otherwise, this is a great film for family viewing at Halloween. 7/10.

Standard gothic plot of woman trapped and menaced in a haunted house. The only question here is who's the menace?

Little to nothing scary by today's standards. Connie Stevens and Dean Jones make a cute couple and most of the movie they spend being cute, falling in love and occasionally holding onto each other in terror, or what passed for it in '65.

An elegantly fiery Cesar Romero plays a psychotic magician, husband and father to his wife and daughter look-a-likes, both played by Miss Stevens. Got that? Obviously, that's what gives this particular gothic its own particular feel.

Early on in their relationship Jones propositions Stevens seductively "Let's get acquainted" to which Miss Stevens reacts with shock and outrage, until he adds impishly "with the {haunted} house." "Romance" should be added before "Mystery, Horror" under the title because the chemistry of the romance between Stevens and Jones, which takes up the vast majority of film footage here, is really the reason to watch this even today. Young Love , in the right persons, is always a pleasure to behold. That and Romero.

Magician John Harley Duquesne (Cesar Romero) is working on a guillotine trick despite his wife assistant Melinda Duquesne (Connie Stevens). She disappears and he retires at the height of his popularity. Twenty years later, he dies but vows to return from the dead. His estranged daughter Cassie Duquesne (Connie Stevens) inherits the entire estate with the stipulation that she must spend seven nights in his mansion. Val Henderson (Dean Jones) is a lying reporter interested in her family story.

It's got a big mansion. It's got silly scares. Some are meant to be silly like bad magic tricks. The problem with that is they make the whole movie rather cheesy. There are no actual scary moments and everything feels like bad magic tricks. The other issue is spreading the time out to seven nights. The horror would work better concentrated on one night. The days break up any scary situations and only serves the budding romance. The main problem with the romance is that he's a lying liar. It makes it hard to ship them. It doesn't work as a horror and it struggles to work as a romance. The movie takes turns trying to advance one side and then the other. The secret premise holds some promise. The romance almost works. The movie doesn't.

I found this kind of quirky but nostalgic. I wasn't sure what genre it was. Cute though I believed the steamy love between them. Wondered if the were lovers for real.

They say "Two on a Guillotine" is very reminiscent to the oeuvre of producer/director William Castle. (insert buzzer here) ...Wrong! The only thing William Conrad managed to correctly imitate from William Castle is his first name. With his witty, imaginative, playful but always spooky and atmospheric horror movies, Castle undeniably made school. I had high hopes that "Two on a Guillotine" would become a decent, second-rate Castle flick, but alas. The film nevertheless starts out promisingly, with the great Cesar Romero as the flamboyant magician Duke Duquesne testing out a brand-new trick with a guillotine in front of his gorgeous wife Melinda and his agent Sheridan. The plot then abruptly jumps forward twenty years, to Duke's funeral. He's being buried in a coffin with windows (!), the wife Melinda mysteriously vanished, but their estranged daughter Cassie (who looks exactly like her mother, of course) returned home for her inheritance.

So far still good, because to claim her inheritance, Cassie must spend seven whole nights in Duke's old mansion full of hidden tricks and sinister dungeons. Vintage William Castle plot, I'd say! For some inexplicable reason, however, "Two on a Guillotine" then becomes incredibly boring. Cassie falls in love with an undercover journalist, and the entire script is wasted on footage of the two of them strolling in the park and visiting the local carnival. There isn't any tension whatsoever, and the film doesn't use any props, scenery or interactive gimmicks. Only the last five minutes as worthwhile again, with finally a bit of use for the fantastic titular French execution device. The only thing that managed to pull me through the dull middle section of this film, were the heavenly looks of lead actress Connie Stevens. Fair is fair, she is incredibly cute.

Minor (and quite irrelevant) side note: when I was a young boy, during the early nineties, one of my mother's favorite TV-shows was "Jake and the Fatman". The oddly nicknamed "Fatman" is actually William Conrad; - director of this cheap 60s horror film.

Connie Stevens was a huge favorite in the 60's due to her appearances on Warner Brothers great hit TV show "Hawaiian Eye" Connie was also cast in WB hit films such as Parrish and Susan Slade both with her friend and WB's big male star Troy Donahue. Troy was announced for this film but rebelled and was placed on suspension. Troy finally came to his senses and retuned to WB and starred in "My Blood Runs Cold". Troy hd everything going for him at WB with hits like Parrish, Rome Adventure, Palm Springs Weekend but asked for his early release from his 7 year contract. Troy claimed JL Warner blackballed him in the Industry.

This suspense movie was I think Max Steiner's last film at WB. Steiner made many movies better with his music! An Artist!

Troy was replaced in this film by the very able Dean Jones and together with Ms. Stevens were very effective. The film with top notch WB production values was directed by William Conrad. Connie after 5 years at WB got first billing on a picture. Connie was a star at WB. Natalie Wood was the Queen of the WB Lot, but Connie drew more fan mail.

This is what I would have called a "studio picture" made with contract players at the studio: some example: Diane McBain, in "Claudelle Inglish" , Clint Walker and Edd Byrnes om "Yellowsyone Kelly" Troy Donahue on "My Blood Runs Cold". Ty Hardin in "Wall Of Noise" Troy Donahue, Connie Stevens, Ty Hardin and Bob Conrad in "Palm Springs Weekend". Troy Donahue and Diane McBain in "A Distant Trumpet", Diane McBain in "Black Gold". Shirley Knight in "House of Women"

Melinda Duquesne (Connie Stevens) finds out her father magician Duke Duquesne (Cesar Romero) has died. She was taken away from him at an early age because of his erratic behavior. In his will he leaves her his huge beautiful mansion on one condition--she must spend seven nights there. (Yes--the oldest plot in the book). She agrees but comes to realize someone may be after her...and her father may have returned from the dead.

It's well-made and has a few cute juvenile scares but this is pretty dull stuff. The plot is OLD and the script is terrible full of truly painful "funny" dialogue. This is slow-moving with tons of padding. It concentrates more on a love story between Melinda and Val Henderson (Dean Jones). Acting doesn't help. Stevens tries but she's pretty bad. Jones overacts so broadly it's embarrassing to watch. Cesar Romero briefly (very briefly) jump starts the movie to life but it's too little too late. The kids might get a kick out of this (it's G rated material all the way through) but nobody else. A 2 all the way.

This was one of my favorite movies when I was growing up. They just don't make movies like this anymore. I have been trying to find this movie on VHS or DVD for years, apparently it is not available to buy, which doesn't make any sense considering there are a ton of stupid movies out there by the billions and none of this one - which is one of the greatest movies ever! I really hope that Two On A Guillitine comes out on video really really soon, this movie mesmerized me when I was very young, it would be nice to go back to it again! It wasn't a gory type of movie, I am surprised it's considered a thriller actually. I never thought of it as scary. But it definitely should get a lot more credit, A LOT MORE!!!!