It!

When a warehouse holding artifacts owned by an antique museum burns down, the only piece left standing is a rather crude looking statue. The curator, Mr. Grove, and his assistant, Arhur Pimm, come to the scene to look at the damage. Grove decides that the statue is to be displayed in the museum and as Pimm walks off, Grove puts an umbrella he bought along into the statues arms to have a closer look at etchings on the statues side. Then Pimm hears a scream, rushes back and finds Grove dead on the ground, his umbrella beside him but the arms of the statue have apparently moved.

In the museum, the statue is back to its original form but after an electrician makes fun of it and swipes a match on it, he too dies as the thing lands on top of him. Pimm starts to slowly realize that something about the statue is not quite right. But then, neither is Pimm himself. He lives with the embalmed body of his dead mother propped up in a chair, tells her about his day, makes her tea and brings home jewelry from the museum for her to wear.

An expert from New York is flown in to evaluate the piece and possibly acquire it for a museum there. Yes, of course the expert was from the States and handsome to boot. Back in the 1950's and 1960's them and scientists, too, were of the dashing, daring sort. They only apparently became nerds in the 1980's (long before it was cool).

Meanwhile, Pimm does his own digging into the origin and the writing on the statue. The statue is an actual golem. Pimm bullies an aging rabbi into giving him the information and scripture he needs to command the statue, at this point only half believing in its usefulness himself.

Back at the museum, he follows all steps that would give him commanding power over the golem. And, alsas!, it works! He has the golem kill the new curator (a job Pimm expected to be rightfully his) and then has him/it tear down a bridge to impress wide-eyes, blonde Ellen, Mr. Grove's daughter. She, of course, it already smitten by the American expert. That guy is the first besides Pimm to realize what they are dealing with and - what's more important - that Pimm has taken command of the statue.

When Pimm, who is at this point already losing control over the golem and tried to get rid of it by burning it or telling it to walk into the sea - to no avail -, is taken into custody, the statue runs rampant (walking through walls, breaking open doors) and frees him. Then Pimm takes the golem, his mother and the still wide-eyed, blonde Ellen (slightly terrified possibly, but who's to say whether the eyes got any wider than before) to a cloister that is to be acquired by the museum. There, the arrival of the golem and dead mother terrify the lone inhabitant, an elderly, matronly librarian. When the two women conspire to escape by setting fire to the roof, Pimm burns the poor old woman.

Outside, the British army has taken up shop to destroy the golem with ever larger weapons. As nothing works, it is decided to shoot off a 'small nuclear warhead' at the cloister, never mind the collateral damage. Pimm finally lets the whining Ellen go and is the only one besides the golem inside the cloister when the device destroys it. Out of the ruble rises the golem to walk off into the ocean.

Flawed and already outdated when it was made.

5/10