Let's Kill Uncle (1966)

Young Barnaby Harrison's (Pat Cardi) father has died in a car crash--and Barnaby is set to inherit 5 million dollars. Barnaby's uncle Kevin (Nigel Green) is next in line and is prepared to kill Barnaby to get the money. The two are stuck on an island and try everything they can do to kill one another. By the way--this is aimed at kids!! I never caught this as a kid on TV like most people seem to have. I can see how a kid might enjoy this cause it's FAR too silly to take seriously and some of the "games" are fun (in a sick sort of way). Seeing it as an adult I found it slow, stupid and somewhat disturbing about having a movie where an adult is trying to kill a kid whose father has just died! To make it worse it throws in an ending which comes out of nowhere and renders the entire film pointless. This only gets a 2 because Cardi, Green and Mary Badham (as Chrissie) aren't that bad in their roles. But this is a pretty sick and dull little item that is almost impossible to see today--for good reason!

This is one of the weirdest films I've ever run into. Not great or even good, but totally strange.Young Pat Cardi's multi-millionaire father dies in a car crash and he inherits the wealth, but has to go to live with his uncle Nigel Green, a most mysterious individual who lives on an island that sharks abound in the waters around. It wasn't always so, at one time the island wherever it is was a tourist spot. But the multiplying sharks did drive the tourists away and then the natives of the island whose living depended on the tourist trade.Cardi's whose wealth and new position even merits a policeman accompanying him in the person of Robert Pickering. Also on the ship is Mary Badham, a young girl going to live with an aunt on the island played by Linda Lawson.These two have not had Beaver Cleaver childhoods and they fight a lot, but are drawn to each other, especially when it turns out that Nigel Green is trying to kill Cardi and grab his brother's money for himself. When he doesn't succeed the kids decide to do it to him before he does it to them.Directed by horror specialist William Castle, Let's Kill Uncle marked the nadir of his career. It's a black comedy that simply doesn't work. In fact the two kids are so annoying and obnoxious one is wishing Green actually did kill them. As for Nigel Green he saunters through the whole procedure with a twinkle in his eye and the satisfied look of a man knowing paycheck had already cleared the bank.No frights in this film even with the menacing sharks who even turn up in the swimming pool. Just a lot of guffaws.

William Castle was losing touch with his audience around this time and the cheap and efficient producer side of him was clearly winning over the carny style director side of him.The concept of a black comedy geared for kids was a bit novel but Pat Cardi is just too annoying as the little boy and some of the plot devices and effects are real eyeball rollers even for a vintage Castle movie.Nigel Green clearly knows what he's doing and refuses to play down to the material.It may seem like he's going over the top at times but his character is supposed to enjoy outwitting and doing away with the boy that stands in the way of his inheritance.As others have stated the scenes with the shark in the pool are pure hokum guaranteed to illicit peals of laughter as they shift from one scene of a rubbery fin by the diving board to an old and grainy shot of a shark in the ocean.The basic concept of who's killing who? Child or adult? could be remade quite effectively today but this is largely a flop, Stick with The TIngler Or House On Haunted Hill.

One of Castle's oddest entries concerns an orphaned boy who is due to get an inheritance. However, his evil uncle has plans to kill the boy before he can collect. Between the boy and a girl he meets on the island where he's staying with friends, they cook up a plan to thwart the uncle's plans. There is a long sequence near the end involving hypnotism, a shark and a pool that is too strange for words.