Two on a Guillotine is a 1965

1965 in film

The year 1965 in film involved some significant events, with The Sound of Music topping the U.S. box office.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:...

 American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 horror/thriller film

Horror film

Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

 produced and directed by William Conrad

William Conrad

William Conrad was an American actor, producer and director whose career spanned five decades in radio, film and television....

. The screenplay

Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 by John Kneubuhl and Henry Slesar

Henry Slesar

Henry Slesar was an American author, playwright, and copywriter. He was also known as O.H. Leslie and Jay Street.-Early life:...

 is based on a story by Slesar.

Plot synopsis

A prologue introduces the audience to John Harley Duquesne, a psychotic

Psychosis

Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...

 magician who accidentally beheads his wife Melinda with a guillotine

Guillotine

The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...

 during a performance. Twenty years later he dies, and his will

Will (law)

A will or testament is a legal declaration by which a person, the testator, names one or more persons to manage his/her estate and provides for the transfer of his/her property at death...

 requires his daughter Cassie (the mirror image of her mother) to spend seven nights in his apparently haunted mansion

Mansion

A mansion is a very large dwelling house. U.S. real estate brokers define a mansion as a dwelling of over . A traditional European mansion was defined as a house which contained a ballroom and tens of bedrooms...

 in order to inherit

Inheritance

Inheritance is the practice of passing on property, titles, debts, rights and obligations upon the death of an individual. It has long played an important role in human societies...

 his estate. Reporter Val Henderson offers to stay with her when he learns Duquesne promised to return in spirit

Ghost

In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to...

 form during Cassie's week-long vigil

Vigil

A vigil is a period of purposeful sleeplessness, an occasion for devotional watching, or an observance...

. As the days pass, the two encounter a number of spooky happenings, leading to a climax in which the not-really-dead Duquesne attempts a recreation of his guillotine trick, this time with his daughter as an unwilling assistant who hopefully won't lose her head.

Principal cast

• Connie Stevens
  Connie Stevens
  Connie Stevens is an American actress and singer, best known for her roles in the television series Hawaiian Eye and other TV and film work.-Early life:...
  
   ..... Cassie/Melinda Duquesne
• Dean Jones
  Dean Jones (actor)
  Dean Carroll Jones is an American actor. Jones is best known for his light-hearted leading roles in several Walt Disney movies between 1965 and 1977, most notably The Love Bug.-Early years:...
  
   ..... Val Henderson
• Cesar Romero
  Cesar Romero
  Cesar Julio Romero, Jr. was an American film and television actor who was active in film, radio, and television for almost sixty years...
  
   ..... John Harley Duquesne
• Parley Baer
  Parley Baer
  Parley Edward Baer was an American actor in film, television, and radio.-Radio:Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Baer had a circus background, but began his radio career at Utah station KSL...
  
   ..... Buzzy Sheridan
• Virginia Gregg
  Virginia Gregg
  Virginia Gregg Burket was an American actress best known for her many roles in radio dramas.Born in Harrisburg, Illinois, Virginia Gregg was the daughter of musician Dewey Alphaleta and businessman Edward William Gregg.-Radio:Gregg was a prolific radio actor, heard on such programs as The...
  
   ..... Dolly Bast
• John Hoyt
  John Hoyt
  John Hoyt was an American film, stage, and television actor.-Early life:Hoyt was born John McArthur Hoysradt. Before becoming an actor with Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre, the Yale University graduate worked as a history instructor, acting teacher and even a nightclub comedian...
  
   ..... Carl Vickers

Principal production credits

• Original Music
  Film score
  A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
  
   ..... Max Steiner
  Max Steiner
  Max Steiner was an Austrian composer of music for theatre productions and films. He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures, and as...
  
  
• Cinematography
  Cinematography
  Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
  
   ..... Sam Leavitt
• Art Direction
  Art director
  The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
  
   ..... Art Loel

Critical reception

In his review in the New York Times, Howard Thompson

Howard Thompson (film critic)

Howard Thompson was an US journalist and film critic whose career of forty-one years was spent at the New York Times....

 called the film "a dull, silly, tedious clinker" and "an old-fashioned, haunted-house spooker."

TV Guide

TV Guide

TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...

rates it two out of a possible four stars, calling it "a standard haunted house thriller."