TWO ON A GUILLOTINE

If you're going to name a movie Two on a Guillotine, it's fairly genius to call up fresh-faced darlings Dean Jones and Connie Stevens and make the movie in 1965.  Already your medieval images of death and dismemberment have gone by the wayside, and you're all set for a weirdly fun time.  I guess "weirdly fun" is an apt description for most of the movie, but the sad truth is that parts are really slow, or really lame, or a little too wholesome to be as scary or funny as they're intended to be.

After the death of her father, Cassie Duquesne (Connie Stevens) returns to Los Angeles for the reading of his will...at a card table...set up onstage...at the deserted Hollywood Bowl.  He was, after all, an eccentric magician, and theatricality is to be expected.  At the reading, Cassie learns that she has been left everything with the stipulation that she stay in her father's house for at least seven nights, pending his return from the dead.

Though Cassie has been living with an aunt since the age of two and knows little of her mother or father, she is quick to oblige.  Her whole life has been spent wondering about the disappearance of her mother and pining for the love of her parents.  The house is really the only way she can get closer to them.

Happily, Cassie is accompanied to the house by Val Henderson (Dean Jones).  He claims to be interested in the property, but sticks around when scary things start happening.  It simply wouldn't be decent to leave a nice girl like Cassie all alone in a haunted house.  The thing is, the house isn't actually haunted.  All of the scary things are special effects, and none of them are very special.  For example, one of the light switches triggers a skeleton on fishing line to swing across the room.  Creepy phone calls are made...by recording.  A severed head rolls down the stairs, but turns out to be wax.  Wah wah.

Adding to the strangeness is the magician's white rabbit, who seems to have the run of the place.  It can often be found on tabletops, stacks of boxes, and various other places a rabbit could never negotiate.  No one ever feeds it over the course of the movie, but perhaps this is just as well, for if they did, the entire house would be peppered with rabbit droppings.  But wait, could there be someone else in the house?  Someone who still plans to rise from the dead?

Every single time something happens, Cassie is TERRIFIED.  She runs screaming into Val's arms or calls him all emergency-like, when really the effects are pretty annoying once you know they're coming.  Most of us would roll our eyes and give the next rolling head a good kick, but Cassie never seems to catch on.  Val realizes that it's all smoke and mirrors, although he's not quite clever enough to figure out that a snip of the scissors would shut down that skeleton rig.  They make an endearing couple, but it's entirely possible that Cassie and Val are not very bright.

The movie tends to drag from one point to another, and there's a tedious subplot where Cassie discovers that Val isn't exactly who he says he is.  If we could somehow pare the whole thing down to one hour, we'd have a goofy but lively story about two likable young people falling in love under the oddest of circumstances.  The ending itself isn't entirely surprising, but it's just weird enough to warrant watching the movie.  The camp factor is high here, but keep in mind that it's always hit and miss.