Norman J. Warren’s Terror is like a cursed reel of celluloid that fell out of the back of a Soho porno house and got spliced together by a poltergeist on amphetamines. The Indicator Blu-ray doesn’t so much “restore” it as embalm it in hi-def formaldehyde — every grain, every smear of primary-colored lighting, every absurd shock cut preserved in crystalline delirium.
This isn’t polite horror. It’s not “let’s sit around and discuss Gothic metaphors.” No, Terror is pure grindhouse electricity: a fever dream stitched together from Eurotrash witchcraft, giallo scissors, Hammer hand-me-downs, and the nagging feeling you left the television on in a haunted bedsit.
Watching it on Indicator’s disc feels like sneaking into a midnight séance thrown by a failed magician who also happens to own a fog machine. The extras only deepen the curse: Norman himself, genial and soft-spoken, calmly explaining how he birthed this shrieking kaleidoscope of blood and neon, while scholars analyze it like a lost holy text of British exploitation.
What I love is how the film resists logic at every turn. Characters drift in and out, subplots evaporate, yet the rhythm builds like a punk band that can’t play but refuses to stop. It’s cinema as séance: you don’t follow the story, you submit to the possession.
The Blu-ray itself? Essential. A relic polished, yes, but still humming with that VHS-age static we crave. Watching Terror in this form is like plugging your veins into a London grindhouse circa ’78 and feeling the projector rattle your bones.
Final verdict (in Buzz terms): a psychedelic séance with blood under its fingernails. Throw it on at 2AM, let the colors wash over your cracked wallpaper, and remember: horror only works when it’s a little bit broken.
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