Connie Stevens! Dean Jones! Cesar Romero! A cute Disney flick? No! A twisted and taboo tale that will make you squirm. Heads will roll, the beautiful will be...well, you'll see, but it will be yucky. Betrayal, deceit, murder, and madness await this cast which is more suited for a family prime-time drama. Our feature today is 1965's "Two on a Guillotine," directed by William Conrad.
20 years ago The Great Duquesne (Romero) was this country's finest magician. He always had cutting edge and bloody tricks that made audiences gasp. They were just tricks, though. His beautiful assistant was his wife Melinda (Stevens). She'd be bloodied and impaled but always reappeared whole after the trick. Uh oh...something is wrong...but what? Melinda seems fed up and bordering on a breakdown as her two-year old seems more attached to the babysitter, Dolly (Virginia Gregg). Then poof! 20 years later. That two-year old is now 22 and the sultry Cassie (also Stevens). She arrives back in town just before the funeral of her dad. She had not seen him for 20 years after...after...after what? Now there he is in a coffin with windows and a weird will. The will? Cassie gets everything if she stays in his mansion for 7 days without being scared away...easy, right?
Enter Val (Jones). He's cute and pushy. A reporter who is also wondering about the aforementioned questions. Even better, in the will, The Great Duquesne promised to come back from the dead. Lying to Cassie, in order to get a story, Val says he's in real estate. After a horrific first five-minutes in the mansion, Val rushes in and saves Cassie and now she is sweet on him. Cassie, believing Val is in real estate, tells him all she knows about her dad but this just creates more questions. Oh, the locked room. There is a room at the top of the stairs that they have no key for. Strange screams, moans and flying skeletons play on Cassie's nerves. Val, at first, only wanted a story and used deception, now falls in love with Cassie. Uh oh, if Cassie finds out he is a reporter, he'll be thrown out. Then the mystery of what happened to Melinda. Cassie is a spitting image of her mom and no one knows where she went...though her harp playing often can be heard through the mansion.
Enough of the plot. The mansion is cavernous and spooky. Cassie is nubile and prone to scares. Val is quite taken by the blonde. What happened to Melinda? Will The Great Duquesne come back from the grave? Will Val ever level with Cassie and properly allow her to fall in love with him? Startling and unnerving, the final reveal eventually arrives and is frightening and heartbreaking. Forego any Disney garbage and see a real shocker, "Two on a Guillotine."
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