The success of William Castle's low budget/high impact shockers for Columbia and Universal Pictures spawned a host of imitators looking for the maximum yield from the minimum investment. At Warner Bros., veteran Hollywood actor turned producer/director William Conrad was entrusted with a trio of genre titles making economical use of contract players and standing sets. Two on a Guillotine (1965) was Conrad's second feature as a director-for-hire and tells the story of the orphan daughter (Connie Stevens) of a famed magician (Cesar Romero) who is obliged, in order to collect her inheritance, to spend a week in her dead father's creepy mansion. Fresh from his brief run as TV's Ensign O'Toole and prior to signing on as a regular leading man for Walt Disney, Dean Jones costars as a reporter who keeps Stevens company through her ordeal but who is always out of eye and earshot when things (not the least of which, a severed head) go bump in the night. With the majority of the film confined to the Warners backlot, Conrad maximizes his production value by shooting exteriors at eye-catching area locations, including Riverside, California's Benedict Castle, the Hollywood Bowl, and Santa Monica's Pacific Ocean Amusement Park (where Conrad contributes a Hitchcock-style cameo during a walk through the Mirror Maze). A throwback to the Old Dark House thrillers of the pre-Code era, Two on a Guillotine marked the final feature film credit for three-time Academy Award-winning composer Max Steiner.

By Richard Harland Smith