Two on a Guillotine
Two on a Guillotine is a 1965 American dark horror film produced and directed by William Conrad and starring Connie Stevens. The screenplay by John Kneubuhl and Henry Slesar is based on a story by Slesar. It features the last music score by Max Steiner who said "it wasn't a picture, it was an abortion... The guillotine was placed in the wrong place... they should have cut off William Conrad's head for producing the thing." It was the first in a series of low budget suspense dramas for Warner Bros, the others being "My  Blood Runs Cold" and "Brainstorm". (There was meant to be a fourth, "The Thing at the Door", but it ended up not being made). These were inspired by the success of William Castle films. Plot. John Harley Duquesne, a psychotic magician accidentally beheads his wife Melinda with a guillotine during a performance. Twenty years later he dies, and his will requires his daughter Cassie (the image of her mother) to spend seven nights in his apparently haunted mansion in order to inherit his estate. Reporter Val Henderson offers to stay with her when he learns Duquesne promised to return in  spirit form during Cassie's week-long vigil. As the days pass, the two encounter a number of spooky happenings, leading to a climax in which the very-much-alive Duquesne attempts a recreation of his guillotine trick, this time with his daughter as an unwilling assistant. Henderson fights Duquesne, trying to prevent him from activating the guillotine, but accidentally releases the catch; a dummy's head falls from the guillotine causing Duquesne to break down thinking his daughter has been killed. Henderson rescues Cassie as the police come to arrest Duquesne. Production. The film was one of a series  of movies Warner Bros financed by television directors, in this case William Conrad.(Other such directors included Lamont Johnson and Jack Smight.) Filming started June 1964 and took place over three weeks. Stevens was under contract with Warner Bros. She said "I thought the script was stupid when I read it but I came away thinking, 'yeah, it could have happened.' That's the challenge, to make something like this believable." Stevens made the film right before her series "Wendy and Me". She said the film "could have been a class A thriller if they'd spent more money on it ." However she noted it got Conrad a seven year contract with the studio. Critical reception. In his review in "The New York Times", Howard Thompson called the film "a dull, silly, tedious clinker" and "an old-fashioned, haunted-house spooker." The "Los Angeles Times" called it "an unusually appealing love story" with "genuinely spine-tingling suspense." "TV Guide" rates it two out of a possible four stars, calling it "a standard haunted house thriller." Home media. The film was released via DVD on June 22, 2010.