It! (1967)
Directed by Herbert J. Leder

Film Review

The Golem, a creature of Jewish folklore, is one of the few mythical beings not to be over-exploited by cinema.  In the early years of cinema, Paul Wegener made good use of the Golem's horrific potential in a series of silent films, the most famous being The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920).  Julien Duvivier's Le Golem (1936) and an obscure Czech comedy entitled The Emperor and the Golem (1951) just about completed the list of the Golem's screen appearances until Herbert J. Leder came along in the mid-1960s and gave the fearsome stone statue the unenviable task of enhancing Roddy McDowell's love life.  It was an encounter that killed off the Golem's screen career for good and had McDowell hiding behind a monkey mask for most of the next decade.  Somehow homicidal statues from Jewish mythology don't quite have the crowd-pulling potential of marauding mix-and-match cadavers, bloodsucking Goths or even men wrapped from head-to-toe in bandages.  Such a shame, because, as Wegener showed in his films, the Golem has so much untapped potential.

One of the reasons why Herbert J. Leder's film is so little known - apart from the fact that it is barking mad - is that it is stuck with a title that is hardly likely to impress itself on your memory, namely It!  As far as daft, gimmicky titles go this is probably the daftest and gimmickiest of the lot, and the alternative titles Anger of the Golem and Curse of the Golem do a far better job of selling the film, even if just about every British horror film of the 1960s had the words Curse of in it.  Imagine walking into your favourite DVD shop and asking for It!  You'd either be directed to the nearest public convenience or else dragged off by security before you knew what was happening. 

It!'s title suggests something grand and portentous, albeit with a slightly embarassing suggestion of B-movie cheapness, not the off-the-wall comedy laced with cheap horror thrills that Leder serves up with a careless lack of restraint.  This wasn't Leder's first foray into the fantasy/horror genre - he had previously scripted the neat little sci-fi shocker Fiend Without a Face (1958) featuring brain-sucking invisible monstrosities trying to take over the world with the help of nuclear power.  It! has far less shock value than this notorious B-movie romp and it feels more like a self-conscious send-up of Hammer's horror films of the '60s than a serious attempt at a horror movie.  It's hard to be terrified by a lumbering big lump of stone which you know you could easily outrun at the pace of a sedate stroll, and even when it is fancily lit Leder's rampaging killer Golem is as about as frightening as an umbrella rack.

Roddy McDowell is far scarier, but then he always was.  With his features hidden by an ape mask, McDowell could just about pass for a human being, and a rather amiable one at that.  Without the mask that made him a much-loved cultural icon, he just looks unutterably strange - weirder than a Body Snatcher facsimile of Norman Bates.  When we discover, at the start of the film, that Roddy lives with his mother, and that the dear lady is a partly embalmed skeleton, we are not remotely surprised.  What some unkindly regard as a gratuitous steal from Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) is actually how most of us envisage Roddy's home-life to be, and when he starts ordering a stone statue to kill people who annoy him and tries to impress his girlfriend by demolishing Hammersmith Bridge we couldn't be less surprised.  Even when Roddy heads off to his country retreat with his dead mother, reluctant girlfriend and a walking nine-foot statue in tow, our credulity is barely strained for a second.  The only thing that is hard to swallow are the assurances from the US military that the atomic bomb with which they intend to destroy the golem will only affect anything within a five mile radius.  It's the one obvious lie in another wise totally convincing production.

Film Synopsis

The only artefact to survive when the warehouse of a London museum burns down is a crude stone statue dating from the mid-16th century.  Mr Grove, the museum creator, is examining the statue when it suddenly comes to life and kills him.  For his assistant, 20-something Arthur Pimm, this is the best thing that could have happened to him.  His employers are bound to promote him to the post of curator and Grove's daughter Ellen will be so impressed that she will gladly consent to be his wife.  Things do not turn out as Arthur had hoped, alas.  First, another man is given the curator's job, and then Ellen starts going out with a smug-faced American, Jim Perkins, who intends shipping the grotesque stone statue to the US.  For a sensitive soul who still lives with his mother, or, more precisely, the mummified remains of his mother, since the old woman passed on several years ago, this really is too much.  But then Arthur soon discovers that things aren't so bad after all.  The stone statue is actually the mythical Golem of Judah Loew, created to protect the Jews from their persecutors four centuries ago.  No sooner has Arthur found a way to bring the statue to life than he is using it to get rid of the troublesome new curator and impress Ellen with a show of strength.  Maybe getting the statue to rip up Hammersmith Bridge in broad daylight was a bit over the top but love does tend to make young men do strange things.  Realising that the Golem is slowly turning him into a power-crazed lunatic, Arthur makes several attempts to destroy it, in vain.  Just how is he going to explain all this to his mother?