end, Corman was meant to play tennis but the game was washed out. Corman came up with the idea of shooting footage of a movie star on the sets of The Raven over two days, which could then be used as the basis of another movie. Corman contacted Leo Gordon, an actor and writer who had written several films for the director, including The Cry Baby Killer and The Wasp Woman, and asked him if he had a script with a castle in it. Gordon did not but went over to Corman's house for a "brainstorming" session. Corman asked Gordon for a sixty-page script written by the following weekend which could be shot over two days. Corman says his only other requirement was that the script finish with a flood, as several Poe pictures had finished with a fire sequence, and he wanted to do something new. Corman reportedly paid Gordon $1,600 for the script. According to Dick Miller's account of making The Terror, Corman "called Chuck Griffith and said, "Write me a bunch of scenes for Boris Karloff and this castle." Chuck said, "What's the story?" Roger said, "No story, just a lot of castle, you know, in and out of doors, very mysterioso." And that's exactly what he did." The main role in Gordon's script was that of the Baron, which was devised to be played by a star. All of Corman's Poe films except The Premature Burial had starred Vincent Price but that actor was unavailable, so Corman made a deal with Boris Karloff, who had been in The Raven, to be available for two days' filming for a small amount of money, plus a deferred payment of $15,000 that would be paid if the film earned more than $150,000. (Corman says he offered Karloff 10% of the profits above "a certain amount.") Gordon's script had three other characters, two male and one female. Corman hired Jack Nicholson and Dick Miller, with whom he had worked several times previously, to play the other male roles. Nicholson suggested his then-wife Sandra Knight for the female role and Corman agreed. (It would be the only time Nicholson and Knight would act together in a film.) The plan was to shoot sixty pages of script over two days, then shoot the rest at a later date when the rest of the script was completed and other sets were available. Shooting