The Three Investigators and the Secret of Terror Castle

Like many movies based on a book, this one takes many liberties with the story. That is understandable considering that the plot of the original book would not have worked in the 21st century. However, being a fan of the books saying that this movie has a great Scooby-Doo ending isn't exactly a glowing compliment. The biggest lure of the books is the intelligence written into them. The science in the books has an air of plausibility, especially for the time when they were written. The movie does have glimmers of that, but it falls apart at the end like the stereotypical cartoon. Not a bad movie at all, as long as you aren't expecting a Three Investigators quality story.

My 11 year old grandson, a recently initiated fan of the books, was much more receptive. He was excited to see many of the book aspects come to life, and he was happy with the 21st century updates. He was clearly the target demo for this movie, and he loved it. My rating is a combination of his 10 and my 5.

I watched this movie yesterday, it was aired by an Italian network. As an ancient reader of Three Investigators novels...what to say ? Something didn't work, in my opinion. What ? Chiefly the depiction of Pete and Bob characters. In the movie the authors made them muddlers, goofy and for what concerns Pete in particular, too much frightful. In a word, the movie shows comical personas...you don't find anything similar in books, where the humour is 'between the lines' and almost completely limited to Jupe's meetings with Hitchcock. Speaking of Jupe, I don't know, maybe it's just me, but reading novels I never imagined him always so frowned and pensive. Besides these considerations, the movie is not bad at all and can be viewed, but surely it will be enjoyed, as it was already remarked, more by young viewers than old readers.

Jupiter has a surprise birthday party given by his relatives at his junkyard meeting place of the boys who investigate, Jupiter the leader, Pete and Bob.

The relatives bring a cake, he does not like this. His parents died around his birthday years ago in an accident. A clown that no one invited grabs a video, drops it in liquid and runs out. The tape is partially destroyed but Jupiter sees his mother and father on the tape. They were investigators. He did not know that and they died 2 days after that tape was made. They give clues about a man they were investigating Steven Terrill. Jupiter intends to find out what happened.

The 3 investigators travel to land near where his parents talked about on the tape. They were investigating Steven Terrill and this was his "terror" castle. The kids find Terrill was skilled at what he did. There are amazing things the movie creators made work in this movie.

The owner used steam heat to run the things he created. A elevator, lights, fireplace, moving shelves and more. The story is very scary at times. The kids go into Terror Castle and meet Caroline who thinks she is psychic and believes in ghosts. The boys don't know what to make of her. The girl's father is a Sheriff and does not like these kids. Later Caroline helps them.

A couple of things I did not like about this movie was the inflation of physic stuff, ghost and curses. Also the scary scene with running, darkness and background stuff in the dark just lasted too long.

In the end the the belief in ghost in the goings on in the castle are put to rest until they hear a suspicious noise at their meeting place but you might say the psychic stuff and the ghost end up dead and buried.

The story has a nice ending.

Many, many years ago, just before my friends and I entered out teens, The Three Investigator series of books were almost required reading. This was well before the days of Harry Potter and iPads and, indeed, the Internet. Play Stations and the like did not exist. Even Frogger and Pacman were many years away. I don't remember how many of the books there were, but it sure seemed like a lot of them. I would finish one book and then look for the next, hoping that one of my friends hadn't borrowed it from the library already. Fortunately, our school library seemed to have a good supply. I did not realize that someone had decided to make a couple of movies based on the characters and scenarios found in The Three Investigator books till I stumbled across this one. I am now well past the target age for the books (are they even still available???) and, therefore, for this movie but nostalgia and curiosity got the better of me and I just had to watch and, hopefully, rekindle some old childhood memories.

I admit, I didn't have really high expectations for this movie, but I hoped that maybe I would be pleasantly surprised and find that the movies are actually quite enjoyable and a worthy reminder of my youth. Sadly, I was not pleasantly surprised. My initial low expectations were proven correct. These movies use the characters from the books but that's about where any familiarity with the books stops. Admittedly, my memory of the books has faded somewhat, but I have no recollection of them containing as much action and mayhem as the movie does. There was not the use of technology that appears at times in the movie. Heck, we didn't even have technology back then! And Jupiter Jones wasn't such bad as he appears to be here.

So, if you're a nostalgic adult, you can safely give this a miss. This isn't the Three Investigators you remember. If you're a pre-teen though, at the age I was when I read the books, and you have no familiarity with the books, you'll probably enjoy this. There are some adult themes and an unfortunate lack of tension, but there are enough explosions and secret passages and dumb sheriffs to keep preteens amused. I hope so. They may even be inspired to look for the books, although I suspect they'll be quite dated by now.

This movie appears to be the second in a Three Investigator series. It seems to have set itself up for a sequel. I don't think any more were made and, sadly, I don't care.

I am a teenager, and the movie is surely for teenagers. I read three investigators book a lot of. I think this movie has almost all the things three investigators have included theirs card,rocky beach, sulvage yard and much more. But this movie's plot is not completely full. It is missing some three investigator's action and thriller. But overall i am happy to see them !! xD I wish there will be some more movie like this by three investigators.The previous one is not so good. This is better than the previous one.Jupitar jones character is very awesome, on other hand bob's character is not so good. But a true fan of the three investigators will surely like it.