A highly flawed H.P. Lovecraft adaptation for reasons of age, budget, and clumsy direction that still has some qualities that make it worth checking out. The action primarily consists of watching an awkward, bookish, and virginal college coed get manipulated by a creepy small-town cultist with a twisted family history. This is an area where the bad acting should have been a huge problem as it's hard to believe Dean Stockwell could seduce anyone given how unsettlingly he plays his role. It only ends up adding to the tragedy of the situation though by really selling how, despite Sandra Dee being far from unattractive, much of a lonely loser her character must be to fall for his ruse. The more eldritch horrors of the Cthulhu mythos rear their heads most strongly in the creature feature of a final act. While certainly more traditionally exciting than anything that comes beforehand, this portion of the film suffers a bit from the constraints of the time period as well as likely the amount of money supporting it. We never actually get to see the monster so moments like its rampage through a forest are limited to simply watching people fall over while stock growl sound effects play and bright neon colors flash onscreen. It's that kind of stuff, along with how drawn out some scenes (particularly the occult ritual ones) can be and the hallucination sequences where it's not always clear who is even having the visions, that makes the whole experience feel amateurish and cheap. Still, the movie is fairly engaging regardless, and for more than just the already inherently interesting nature Lovecraftian fiction has to begin with. The psychedelic visuals create some legitimately haunting imagery and lend a sense of artistic merit to the project. There's also far more sexuality than I would have expected from something that came out back in 1970. I mean, heck, Gidget pops out a freaking titty. You're going to need a particularly high appreciation for horror that is both old and by today's standards outdated as this doesn't hold up to the same degree as other aged alternatives I've seen like The Legend of Hell House or even the original 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers do, but I'd say it doesn't deserve the fate of being allowed to completely disappear from our collective memory with the passage of time quite yet.