Thursday, March 7, 2024

Comparing Houses of Usher....

 

This October, I somehow managed to watch multiple versions of The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe. This is not a bad thing. All in all, they all have something to offer...

The three versions in question are Corman's version from 1960 staring Vincent Price (The House of Usher), which kicked off his cycle of Poe films and revitalized the Gothic film tradition in the US, The Fall of the House of Usher from 1979, staring Martin Landau, Robert Hays, Charlene Tilton, and Ray Walston, and finally Mike Flannigan's Netflix series The Fall of the House of Usher from 2023. 

All of these are, of course, based to lesser or greater degrees on the Edgar Allan Poe story of the same name.

Lets start out with the Corman version from 1960... and here the main selling point is the presence of Vincent Price as Roderick Usher. I'll be honest, its not my favorite of Corman's Poe films. Or, Price is great, but... they didn't seem to quite know what to do, and while this DID kick off the successful Poe series, its one of the weaker entries. Price doesn't really cut loose and chew the scenery enough in this one, but it does a nice job of establishing a somewhat offputting atmosphere. You can't help but feel things are WRONG in this house... and in a way that was Corman's point. He was famously asked by the producers where the monster was in this film (given his past history of low budget creature films) and he quickly responded "The HOUSE is the monster..." in order to sell the idea to them. 

And indeed, everything from Price's oddly dyed hair, to the discordant music he plays, to the weirdly lit rooms, the burnt landscape, and artificial outdoor sets glimpsed through the windows keeps the production just offkilter enough to make the viewer incredibly uneasy. One of the things however, that makes this so strange is that Roderick claims her and Madeline have tremendously enhanced senses, which cause them great pain.... but we never SEE that. For someone who can touch only the softest of cloths without pain, and the slightest sound supposedly wracks him in agony, he loves to play his guitar and shout a lot. 

The Usher's visitor in this case, and the audience PoV character, is Philip Winthrop (Mark Damon) who is portrayed as Madeline Usher's fiancee rather than Roderick's old school friend in the story. This seems odd to mey, and seems to have been done to sort of capitalize on Price's usual role as a villain, to make one suspicious of him and his motives, and to thrust an unwanted romance into the storyline, as seemed to be deemed 'necessary' by the filmmakers and audiences of the time. 

Moving on to the 1979 film, I had always heard of this film, but had never gotten a chance to see it, until I found it on YouTube during this last Halloween. The cast is more than promising; Martin Landau as Roderick, Dimitra Arliss as Madeline, Robert Hays as Jonathan Cresswell (An architect, engineer, and Roderick's old friend), Charlene Tilton as Jennifer Cresswell (Jonathan's new bride) and Ray Walston as Thaddeus, the Usher family's loyal retainer. 

It was produced as a TV Movie by NBC as part of their 'Classics Illustrated' line of films. It wasn't actually aired until 1982. Its not seen often, which is a pity, because its actually really well done. Landau is excellent as Roderick, and you can feel his pain in every scene he's in. Madeline is a frightening presence that lurks just out of sight most of the time. Cresswell is given a reason to visit the house here because Roderick believes that his ailments stem from damage to the house that has gone unrepaired, and Cresswell's skills as an architect and engineer, used to shore up the house, is a deperate attempt on Usher's part to save he and his sister. While Jennifer is not given a great deal to do, she does move the plot along at times in ways that Jonathan cannot due to his job in repairing the house. Thaddeus is a great addition, as a loyal and protective servant of the Ushers, who acts as a proxy for Roderick in scenes where it simply would not make sense for the sickly and ailing master of the house to be present. 

And even more than in the Corman version, the House itself is the final character. Its rot is reflected in its inhabitants, and when repairs are made, those too are reflected in the Ushers. It has a tangible presence, and just when it seems one thing is repaired, something else crumbles, which gives the whole proceeding a sense of urgency which is missing in the Corman version. If there is a criticism to be made, it is that Robert Hays and Charlene Tilton are much too 'light' as actors to carry the gravitas of the story.... but that is perhaps intentional. They are not the gothic icons that Roderick, Madeline, and even Thaddeus embody, and this perhaps helps to make the Ushers household more extreme in their darkness and decay by contrast. 

What is more, we get a backstory of the Usher family, and the dark deeds of the previous generations which grounds the "curse" of the family in a satanic and supernatural history that seems to effectively infect the very walls of the House. This is alluded to, and implied in the Corman version, but it doesn't quite feel as well documented and 'earned' as here. 

The visuals are not as striking as the Corman version, but it still works as a Gothic period piece.

Mike Flannigan's 2023 The Fall of the House of Usher feels in comparison almost like a record scratch. Rather than adapting the familiar story yet again, Flannigan instead took Poe's entire body of work as inspiration, and wove an intricate story around the rise and fall of the Usher Family ('House' in this case being more a bloodline than a physical location), a wealthy and morally bankrupt family made wealthy from controversial pharmaceutical development and sales. 

Here, Roderick and Madeline are played by Bruce Greenwood and Mary McDonall in an 8 episode miniseries that aired on Netflix. Poe references both subtle and obvious are sprinkled throughout. For those seeking the closest connection to the original story, you will find it in the final episode, which takes place in the crumbling family home of Roderick and Madeline, and which follows the original story after a fashion. However, the episodes up to that point tend to more closely allude to other Poe stories, and their titles will clue you in to which.... with the peculiar exception of the first, which is titled 'A Midnight Dreary', but which ultimately seems more like Poe's The Premature Burial. 

As the show progresses, each member of the family meets a grisly and supernatural end, seemingly due to the manipulations of the mysterious 'Verna'. Unlike so many other adaptations, you see that the Ushers absolutely deserve their fate... but oddly, you also see the way paved for good in their passing wake. Decisions and choices made lead to consequences... for good or ill. And even the worst choices can prove fertile ground for future growth and good.

Flannigan's House of Usher feels like it has weight, and the characters feel quite true to life. The side characters are also fully fleshed out.... in this, Usher's guest is Charles Auguste Dupin, the crusading legal figure who sought to bring the Usher family to justice, and who Roderick confesses his sins to over the course of the series. He is not entirely faultless, and you can see what the entire lifetime of work against Usher has brought him. And there is his dark counterpart, Arthur Gordon Pym, played with gruff gravitas by Mark Hamill, who is the Usher family lawyer and 'Fixer' who covers up their legal and personal missteps. Both Dupin and Pym are two sides of the same coin... both good at what they do, but to opposite ends, and both accept the consequences for their actions in the end. Its hard to admire ANYONE in this show, but these two come closest. 

These are three different takes, and all excellent in their own ways. Check them out.




Thursday, February 22, 2024

Rogue's Tavern (1936)

 


In his essay "The Simple Art of Murder", Raymond Chandler is dismissive of mystery novels that depend on overly complex schemes, and indicates that a murder where someone tries to get clever in how to pull it off is fundamentally easier to solve than one planned a moments before the fatal event. 

 "The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cute with; the one that really bothers them is the murder somebody thought of only two minutes before he pulled it off. But if the writers of this fiction wrote about the kind of murders that happen, they would also have to write about the authentic flavor of life as it is lived. And since they cannot do that, they pretend that what they do is what should be done. Which is begging the question—and the best of them know it."

There is nothing "authentic" in Rogue's Tavern (1936), but it is a bit of fun to watch, and Chandler would be rolling his eyes at the convoluted murder mystery in this cheap little program filler. In fact, it checks off about all the boxes he lists in that essay for how NOT to write a mystery. 

We start off with Joan Woodbury, looking beautiful and exotic as mystic Gloria Robloff is telling the fortune of another guest at the hotel they are staying at with a deck of cards. A plain, ordinary, deck of cards, with the ace of spades as the "death card", naturally. I found this a nice little touch. Tarot wasn;'t terribly popular at the time, and standard card decks often stood in for them among fortune tellers. This changed over time, as the iconography of Tarot became more familiar, but here, it is a nice little "down to earth" touch. 

I love Joan Woodbury... she is one of my favorite B-list actresses of the time, and shows up in unexpected places in the 30s and 40s. She was uncredited as Dr. Praetorius' miniature Queen in The Bride of Frankenstein and shows up as the under-utilized love interest in a film previously covered in this blog, King of the Zombies. Sadly, she is under utilized here as well, and spends most of the film wringing her hands and making pronouncements of inevitable doom and death. 

Our leads are introduced shortly thereafter.... Jimmy Kelly and Marjorie Burns, played by Wallace Ford and Barbara Pepper. They are engaged and trying to get married through the whole film. Both are detectives... Jimmy being a police detective and Majorie being a Department Store detective, which leads the clerk giving them their wedding license to quip "Well, at least the two of you should be able to keep track of each other..."  Which I have to admit is one of the funnier lines in the film.

Marjorie is played as smart, pretty, and charismatic... and I spent most of the movie wishing should would just slap the heck out of Jimmy, because he is played as smart, arrogant, and patronizing. Seriously, she could do better. Often she comes across an important clue or reaches an important conclusion JUST BEFORE Jimmy does.... but he finds out or is told by someone else before she can relay the information to him... so he just sort of verbally pats her on the head when she tells him and sends her away. Or worse, mocks her. 

Marjorie.... you can do better than this. 

The two of them have arranged to meet a Justice of the Peace at The Red River Tavern so they can marry, which happens to be where Miss Robloff is staying, along with a large and unlikely group of other suspects.

Suspects?

Yes, because they start dropping like flies pretty quickly, with many seemingly killed by a wild dog, or wolf, or something. And you've got the standard assortment of murder fodder, red herrings, and "colorful" characters to choose from. Miss Robloff and the other men are awaiting a mysterious final visitor, we have the endearingly grandmotherly tavern keeper Mrs Jamison and her wheelchair bound husband, you have the slow-witted handyman... you know the tropes.

And there are tropes a plenty. As the bodies pile up, we get storms, lights going out, cut phone lines, strange murder weapons, jewel smuggling, revenge, and some of the most hilariously over the top and outrageous plot elements you're likely to find. Seriously, the denoument of the film comes out of left field, and seems hysterically overcomplicated for its intentions... not to mention HIGHLY improbable, and our final murderer turns out to be the one person it really shouldn't have been... because they were on screen when several of the murders took place OFF screen.

Its NOT a great film, but it entertaining provided you expect NOTHING from it, and don't look too carefully at whats going on. Just enjoy the ride. 

And the literal closing scene will make you want to punch Jimmy in the face again.... as when he and Marjorie FINALLY manage to get married, Jimmy will not even allow her to say her OWN "I do" AT HER OWN WEDDING.....

Marjorie, Marjorie.... you could have done so much better....




Thursday, November 30, 2023

The Damned (1961)

 Hammer films are, of course, rightly known for their revival of the Gothic monsters of the early film and literature through the late 1950s and into the 1970s. Less well known are their forays into science fiction, which tend to be, if I'm honest, hit or miss. While Quatermass and the Pit (1967, aka 5 Million Years to Earth) is a classic, something like Four Sided Triangle (1953) is justly forgotten. Somewhere between these, in both time and quality, is 1961's The Damned (released in 1963, and known in the US as These are the Damned

Which isn't to say its a bad film. Its just... puzzling. 

You would be forgiven for not recognizing it, at first, as a science fiction film. It begins as something of a street punk drama with an element of illicit romance thrown in. There is a second storyline involving children which seems slightly sinister going on at the same time, and it is not until these two stories converge later in the film that you get the whole picture.

The entire opening scene had me scratching my head, as its just... bizarre. Its like red flags hadn't been invented in 1961. 

Our 'hero' is American tourist Simon Wells (Macdonald Carey) who is a wealthy, American divorcee and tourist in England, wearing a really questionable hat. He ogles, creepily follows and flirts with English teenager Joan (Shirley Anne Field), not deterred in the slightest by either her age, or the switchblade she wears proudly displayed tucked into the front of the waistband of her jeans. Was that kind of open carry even legal? She is also not deterred by the fact that he is at least twice her age, if not more, and suggests they go off together. Again, he seems oblivious to the fact that she is softly singing along with the .... "lyrics" to the theme song which has otherwise been blaring:

"Black Leather, black leather, smash smash smash

Black Leather, black leather, kill kill kill...

Black Leather, black leather crash crash crash."

...

yeah. Not a warning sign at all. Nor is the fact that they walk near a motorcycle gang who march off whistling the same tune.... 

Lets talk about this song for a minute. It appears to have been written, at least musically, by Hammer music master James Bernard. One thing can definitely be said about Bernard is that he never actually had his finger on the pulse of modern music, and it really shows here. I've heard people joke about the swinging young people of Dracula AD 1972 being eager to go see a "hot jazz" concert, but to my mind this is worse, because this song, Black Leather Rock, is conceived AS a rock and roll song... by someone who only knows Rock and Roll as a theoretical concept.

Returning to the story, it ends exactly as you would expect... Our "Hero" is of course set on by the biker gang, led by a staggeringly well dressed Oliver Reed, beaten to a bloody pulp, and robbed. I ask you, who could have POSSIBLY suspected the switchblade carrying Lolita singing the same song as the biker gang was a honey pot trap? Who?!

Wells is helped to a nearby pub by some locals where he meets  artist Freya (Viveca Lindfors) and her mysterious government friend Bernard (Alexander Knox). We are told that Simon was assaulted by a gang of 'Teddy Boys'.... which they weren't. Little history lesson for those in the US... The Teddy Boys were a youth subculture in the 50s and 60s in England, which generally loved rock and roll, R&B, and old fashioned Edwardian Style fashions. They were also pretty violent, attacking other youth gangs, staging riots when the film The Blackboard Jungle (1955) was shown, engaging in race riots, and attacks on immigrants.... so.... not good people in general. In this film, Oliver Reed's character of King is shown wearing a tweed jacket, thin tie, fashionable leather gloves, and carrying an umbrella... clearly inspired by more modern aristocratic fashions rather than the Edwardian finery of the Teddy Boys. The rest of his gang are in standard black biker leathers, with the exception of Joan. 

The next day, Simon and Joan meet up again, and clearly Simon has not learned a single thing from his previous encounter with her, and STILL attempts to make time with her. She informs him that King (Oliver Reed) is her brother, and to say that he is overprotective of her is something of an understatement.... he borders on incestuous obsession. King and his gang again chase Simon, only this time Simon and Joan give him the slip. Joan is looking to escape from King, and feels Simon is her best chance, so she's willing to sleep with him to get out of town. 

Meanwhile.... Bernard (remember Bernard?) spends a lot of his time talking to children on a TV monitor. these children seem bright, but bored and lonely. 

Simon and Joan again end up fleeing from King and his gang, and while trying to hide, meet up with these children in a cave on the shoreline, and the children decide to help them and hide them. King manages to fall into the ocean, and another boy finds him, and also brings him into the cave. While the whole drama with Simon, Joan, and King plays out, they all notice that these kids are WEIRD. They are icy cold to the touch, and apparently this cave and their adjoining dormitory are all attached to a military installation above, and the military are VERY interested in keeping them locked away.

I won't go into too much detail about what goes on from that point, but I will say that if you want a downer of a film, this one may just fit the bill. No one did bleak films like the British in the 50s and 60s. 

The performances are solid across the board. This is an early film for Oliver Reed, but you can see his screen presence and power here. There is a quiet menace to him in the opening scene, where he leans casually against a sculpture adjusting his gloves while his gang moves around him with barely contained energy. He carries his role with intensity and a slightly psychotic edge. Joan is played as world weary for her young age.... jaded, bored, and worldly beyond her years. Vivica Lindfors is quite charming and may be the least despicable character in this film, even if she is the mistress of an evil bureaucrat. And as for Macdonald Carey as Simon.... the actor is fine, but MAN does the script go out of its way to make Simon a borderline pedophile creep. Joan may be of age, but she is WAY too young for him, and he should know it. 

Honestly, when you watch this film, enjoy the bizarreness of that opening scene and its ridiculous music... by the end, you will look back on its anarchic cheerfulness fondly.

Here it is:




Monday, December 5, 2022

The Savage Bees and TV Movies

 There was a time, reader, when the major networks used to produce movies. The golden age of the TV movie was in the 1970s, of course, and for a content starved horror fan, in addition to the horror hosts, I would scan the 'Movie of the Week' on the major networks to see if they were airing a genre piece that might interest me. And there were some gems in the lot too... The Night Stalker (1972) and  The Night Strangler (1973) introduced my childhood hero, Carl Kolchak... a little vampire film in 1982 called I, Desire (aka Desire, the Vampire) staring David Naughton of An American Werewolf in London sticks in my head. Steven Spielberg's debut, Duel was a made for television film in 1971. Gargoyles first creepily graced the small screen in 1972 while Trilogy of Terror appeared in 1975. These are not lightweight throwaway films but some of the most memorable horror of the era. 

That being said, for every one of those, there was a dog of a film, whether it was Devil Dog: Hound of Hell (1978) or The Cat Creature (1973). However, one thing could be relied on, the TV Movie of the week tended to have its hand on the pulse of the American Pop Culture zeitgeist. You could usually be assured that if some topic was trending in the population it would find its way into a TV movie. So, it was not unusual to see environmental horror or disaster films showing up. These might be about ozone depletion or pollution, such as Where Have All the People Gone? (1974) or... the subject of today blog entry, The Savage Bees (1976).

There will, of course, be spoilers....

Like quicksand, growing up in the 70s made 'killer bees' seem like it was going to be a much bigger issue in the future than it turned out being. I remember earnest and fearful discussions among my gradeschool class members about the speed of the 'killer bee' invasion and how long it would be before they reached us in distant Ohio, and the swath of devastation they could cut across America with their passage. I also remember that even then I couldn't really take the threat seriously and I remember the shocked and surprised look on a classmates face when he asked what I would do when the bees arrived, and I simply shrugged and said "Go inside and close the windows". He was appalled that I undermined such a serious threat so easily!

The Savage Bees is set at Mardis Gras in New Orleans, and has a pretty standard setup for killer bee films. It also plagerizes borrows from the plot of Jaws (1975). A ship from Brazil carries the swarm of bees to the waters around the Port of New Orleans, where they disembark just in time for Mardi Gras. One of the first victims happens to be the beloved dog of Sheriff Don McKew (Ben Johnson) who vows vengeance. 

No, really.

He is convinced some ne'er-do-well has poisoned his dog, and so takes the dog to be autopsied... so that he can determine the poison, so that he can then track down the source of the poison, and hunt down the villain who killed his dog in order to apply some police brutality to him. Wow. 

It is perhaps worth noting that this is by far the MOST police work that is done in this film. Human victims do not get this sort of deep investigation. Only the Sheriff's dog. 

Ok, I'll buy it.

However, bees are discovered in the dog's stomach, and we are off and running. No, they didn't find stingers in the poor dogs hide, which would have been a far less gross discovery. The coroner, Dr Jeff DuRand (Michael Parks) links these bees to a pair of dead sailors, and suddenly everyone in law enforcement and the medical community are on board with the danger of killer bees....

However, as it is Mardi Gras, the Mayor and the City Council are NOT happy about this, and make various threats to the Sheriff's job as he tries to lessen the danger by clamping down on Mardi Gras celebrations. It threatens business and tourism, after all.... now... where have we seen that before? At any rate, Sheriff Brody McKew does not tolerate any political interference in his quest for vengeance for his poor dog, and so that particular subplot goes nowhere. 

I am making the film sound much worse than it really is. There actually are some effectively tension ratcheting moments in it. There is a scene where a little girl wanders close to the swarm, and its genuinely sort of unnerving as you see the girl from the bees perspective. The stories of former bee attacks help set an atmosphere of growing dread and fear. 

However, the bad moments... they REALLY stand out.

We have a scene where the Sheriff's department has found out where the swarm is, and block off the roads to give bee-expert Dr Jorge Mueller (Horst Buchholz) time to dispose of the swarm... though his plan is more than a little vague... These terribly professional deputies blockade a road and leave a wide open field right next to them, where, of course, an open convertible with a pair of drunken revelers dressed as pirates speed through without even glancing at the roadblock. The deputies just sort of stare at one another and wonder what they should do now that the perimeter has been breeched by wily alcoholics. These two naturally pull up directly to the place where the bees are, and are instantly attacked. The driver of the car inexplicably decided to accessorize his pirate costume with a REAL SWORD with which he attempts to DUEL the swarm of killer bees.... about as effectively as you'd expect. He DOES manage to slash open the protective suit of Dr Mueller, causing both of their deaths. 

The ending of the film also had me scratching my head, as they somehow coax the swarm to land on a red VW Beetle... because.... its RED, and that makes the bees mad... and then drive said Beetle 

 * V E R Y   S L O W L Y * to the Superdome. Meanwhile the police drive ahead and broadcast some of the funniest warnings I've ever heard on film in order to clear the street:

"Y'all are in danger! You have 60 seconds to clear the street! We're bringing through a swarm of killer bees! We have an emergency! You're in danger! You have 60 seconds to clear the street! I repeat: killer bees! Any loud noise is gonna rile 'em! Absolute quiet is necessary! Turn off all radios, all machinery, and get off the street!"

Unrealistically, the inebriated Mardi Gras revelers actually listen to these warnings and go indoors, rather than remaining to drunkenly point and laugh at the Volkswagon with a beard of bees. I also note that these bees are remarkably considerate, and leave a small window on the windshield open in front of the driver so she can see where she is going. Killer bees they may be, but they are SAFETY CONSCIOUS killer bees!

Once in the Superdome, our heroes turn on the air conditioning. This takes MOMENTS to cool the entire Superdome down to 45F. That is some AMAZING HVAC action there. My AC won't even reach to the upstairs of my house. And like magic, the second it hits that special temperature, the bees all fall off the car. Roll credits.

Don't laugh! That was a MAJOR CRISIS averted through the intersection of reasonably priced cars, modern sporting arenas and the power of HVAC. 

Honestly, it IS better than it sounds, but there really is a lot to laugh at here. 

Interestingly, there was one point I noted that was NOT really funny, but quite an interesting moment for non-Christian representation in mid-70s horror. Two of the deputies are cruising through the parish back roads looking for signs of the swarm, and spot something white lying in a field. They go to investigate and find a dead chicken. Next to it is a peculiar figure in chalk. They radio the sheriff about this discovery and he advises them that the figure is a Veve and not to touch or disturb ANY of it, because its sacred. This is the remains of a voodoo protection ritual, and he tells them they need all the help they can get. Its a throwaway scene. It doesn't really add anything to the film overall... but its a POSITIVE image of a NON-CHRISTIAN belief system in a HORROR movie. And it goes out of its way to demonstrate how to respect it. That's amazing. With that scene alone, I came to respect this film a little.

A little.

I am a little leery of how they might have treated the bees. Which is not to say that they necessarily MIS-treated the bees. The fact is, they had a professional bee-handler on set with them, and he helped them safely use them. There were almost no bee-related injuries among the cast and crew, apparently. But I don't have any data on how many bees might have been killed in the course of the film. Some scenes very obviously use real bees... others, such as the final scene in the superdome, when the bees are sliding in clumps off the car? I don't know if those are real or not. 

Actor-wise, the notables here are Ben Johnson, Horst Bucholz, and James Best, giving this a sort of Western flavor, and Michael Parks who has had a late career revival in the films of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez in films like Death Proof and Kill Bill

Johnson was in such high profile Westerns as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande (1950), and The Wild Bunch (1969), as well as genre classic Mighty Joe Young (1959) and not so classic Cherry 2000 (1987). Horst Bucholz is of course best known to American audiences as being the odd man out in the star-packed The Magnificent Seven (1960), though he is better known in his native Germany and Europe. James Best hardly needs an introduction, as he is well known as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coletrane from the long running Dukes of Hazzard TV series, and of course beloved genre stinker The Killer Shrews (1959), as well as guest appearances on practically every Western TV series from the 1950s through the 1970s. 





Friday, October 28, 2022

The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1961)

 Continuing my trend of confusing films I've not seen with films I've seen, I'm bringing you this time the 1961 British film The Day The Earth Caught Fire. What did I confuse this with? Two staples of Saturday Afternoon, Crack in the World (1965), and possibly Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961). All of these films are Science Fiction\Disaster fare, but the most dramatic treatment of it, and the most ambiguous in its outcome is The Day The Earth Caught Fire.

The opening of the film is stark and eye-catching. Done with an orange filter, a sweaty and exhausted looking Edward Judd staggers through an abandoned looking London to a newspaper office where he phones an equally tired and sweaty Janet Munro and they talk briefly about a countdown. The orange tinted and empty newsroom dissolves to a much cooler looking and traditional black and white footage of the same newsroom, now crowded and busy, as the flashback begins and the story unfolds as to what has happened.

This is a slow burn, and that's not a bad thing at all. Its something of a character study. We meet our main characters; Edward Judd plays burned out newspaper reporter Peter Stenning, Janet Munro plays a temporary office worker and typist in the British Met Office (the Office of Meteorology) Jeannie Craig, and the late great Leo McKern as gruff science reporter Bill Maguire. What follows is a slow, but increasingly tense and desperate story... reports come in that the United States and the Soviet Union, in aggressive shows of one upsmanship, have simultaneously detonated nuclear tests at opposite poles. This is wearily shrugged off by the reporters as 'just another thing' and they go on with their lives. Stenning is divorced, and the breakup of his marriage has led him to drinking too much and being given fewer and less important assignments... sending his career into a downward spiral. He struggles to maintain at the very least, a good relationship with his 7 year old son. Over the next few days or weeks, odd weather patterns start to emerge globally, and Bill Maguire starts to suspect something has altered the climate and thinks it may have been the nuclear tests... and he asks Stenning to gather some information for him at the Met Office where he meets Jeannie Craig... they trade a few insults, but are attracted to one another anyway. As conditions worsen, and the temperatures steadily rise, it is discovered that something far worse that climate change has occurred... the Earth itself has been knocked out of its orbit, and is slowly moving toward the Sun. 

We see the gradual unravelling of society, as first weather conditions make everyday life difficult, and then more serious things begin happening, including riots, looting, bandits, criminal activity, and disease ramps up. Having just come through the pandemic (which is still going on), its a bit curious to see that the people in the film had a great deal more patience before fraying and fighting back against the public health and safety measures than what has happened in real life. I suspect it was in part due to the nearness in time of WWII and the fact that people still remembered the sacrifices they had to make during that time in order to keep themselves and their neighbors and their country safe. 

It DOES however touch on Government Cover-ups, and it is a plot point that the governments of the world DID try to conceal how serious the situation really was, and it is left to the Press to reveal the truth of it. There are no cries of 'Fake News' here... this is the old days, the golden era of the press as fighting to get the true facts out to the people and let the people take it from there. The press here is shown as heroic champions of the people. That would be considered rather innocent and naive these days I'm afraid, but I for one believe that's what the press ought to be. Its aspirational, I suppose.

But while all this is going on, there is genuine human drama going on as well. The complexities of human relationships are on full display here. Stenning's self-destructive tendencies are stemmed as he and Jeannie grown closer... and their relationship is strained when he uses information she provides in confidence to break a big story. Stenning's devotion to his son is put to the test as the situation becomes more dire, and he has to make decisions to protect the boy which hurt him personally, by sending him out of the city to someplace 'safe' with the boy's mother and stepfather, with no guarantee of ever seeing him again. And, he discovers what it means to him to be a reporter again, and tries to rebuild his shattered reputation.

Edward Judd is excellent here. He has a lot of emotional baggage he has to bring to the character, and he has to balance the character's negative personality traits carefully with the positive ones. He can't make you hate him entirely, or you wouldn't be invested in his story. But, he 's also not a saint either, and his struggle between those poles of his character are fascinating to watch. He reminded me a bit of Richard Burton in this role. Charismatic, but also, deeply flawed. He doesn't abruptly change his personality... you SEE him make every decision to change, for better or worse. 

Janet Munro only has a handful of credits, but what credits they are. In addition to this film, she also played Anne Pilgrim in The Crawling Eye (1958) (also known as The Trollenberg Terror) and Katie O'Gill in Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) among other things. Here she has some remarkably risque scenes for 1961... in one instance, walking around completely topless and wet, with only a loose towel draped around her neck to cover her breasts for an entire scene. I'm not sure I've ever seen something that explicit in a film this old. The sexual tension between her and Edward Judd in the scene that follows is something to behold. She is more or less the moral center of the film, and also to victim of some of the only violence in it, which is hard to watch, even though it is not explicit at all. 

And what do we NEED to say about Leo McKern other than he is as amazing as he ever is? For those who don't know off the bat who he is, I will direct you to his multiple appearances in The Prisoner (1967) in which he played the mysterious Number 2 on several occasions, and most memorably in the last couple episodes, as well as brilliant but curmudgeonly barrister Horace Rumpole in the Rumpole of the Bailey series, his turn as Thomas Cromwell in A Man For All Seasons (1966) and of course Father Imperious in LadyHawke (1985). While the character of Jeannie Craig may be the moral center of the film, Bill Maguire is the heart. He's the gruff, veteran newspaperman with a heart of gold... self deprecating but driven by the truth, and while he's willing to support Stenning, he can't abide self pity or self-destruction, and gently encourages (and later almost orders) Stenning to continue his relationship with Jeannie when he sees that she's a good influence on the other man. While he talks like a cynic, and says its not his problem when the girl gets arrested for leaking information to Stenning, its all talk (possibly talk to get Stenning to do something about it himelf), and when push comes to shoves its HE who goes and gets her and gives her a new job at the newspaper. I really expected something bad to happen to him, as that seems to be the fate of mentor figures in films of this era. However, he remains until the bitter end. 

And its quite the ending. 

Stenning is waiting in the newspaper offices for the official announcements from the world governments as to the success or failure of their plans to push the Earth back into its orbit with more nuclear detonations. The two printing presses are set, each with its own headline, depending on what the outcome is: Plan Succeeds, Earth Saved, or Plan Fails, Earth Doomed. We never find out which runs.

The imagery is quite something in this. We see London and Brighton slowly drying out, bleaching out, and falling apart as the heat increases. One particularly striking image was of the Thames river dried to a mere trickle of water through a parched and cracked set of mud flats... a single tiny police boat barely managing to navigate it. Or earlier, when a dense, low-hanging mist rolls in and closes down much of Brighton, so low-hanging that you can see above it if you are on the second level of a double-decker bus, but impenetrable below that. 

And again, we return to the pandemic and the fears that brings. At one point it is discovered that black-market obtained water may be contaminated with Typhus, and even one of the newroom figures collapses from the disease. And in the next scene we are shown a huge group of nihilistic young people, partying and rioting, and splashing water all over themselves and other people, and you cannot help put wonder if that water is some of the disease contaminated water we just heard about, and wonder how many of those people are doing to die because of it. I was reminded of the filled beaches and public venues during the early Covid era, when so many people refused to wear masks. 

This is not an entirely easy film to watch. It asks some tough questions, and really its almost more about what kind of person you are in a crisis than about a science fiction disaster. I was trying to think of more recent films that might have similar themes, but there aren't any that leap to mind. There are disaster movies aplenty, as well as many science fiction and horror movies that have a similar apocalyptic arc to them... but they seem to fail to examine the way people react to it. The closest may be something like various Zombie Apocalypse films, or a TV Show like The Walking Dead, which, unfortunately but maybe realistically, don't so much depict people rising to become better people in a crisis, but watching them abandon the trappings of civilization and become something feral in order to survive in a feral world. That's a cynical take on it... unfortunately, watching the behavior of people during the pandemic, and the post-2020 election, I despair of anyone attempting to remain moral and ethical in an apocalypse.



Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory (1961)

 I'll be honest, I hadn't seen this film before this week. I THOUGHT I had seen it, but I think I was getting it confused with 1957's Blood of Dracula which has a similar setting and a somewhat similar aesthetic. However, this is far more engaging that the other, and has a mystery element to it that works well. This is one of the first times I recall seeing the werewolf used in a 'whodunnit' scenario. This gets more common in later films, most prominently I think it The Beast Must Die (1974) and The Howling V: Rebirth (1989), among others.

Made in Italy in 1961 and released under the title Lycanthropus, this film seems somewhat transitional, positioned somewhere between gothic horror and giallo. I've seen it mentioned that it has a lot in common with the West German krimi films of the 50s and 60s, but I'm not familiar enough with those at this time to do more than note it. 

The plot centers on a girls reformatory/school, where a new professor has arrived. We quickly see that there is a somewhat seedy side to this place. One of the girls sneaks out at night, to meet with one of the male professors and we learn she's been trading her affections for his assistance in getting released. She then proceeds to blackmail him. The plot kicks off when she returns to the dorm and is attacked and killed. The autopsy concludes it was an animal attack, most likely from the wolves that seem to abound outside the walls of the place, but our main character Priscilla (Barbara Lass) is convinced it was murder and sets out to expose the unknown person responsible. In doing so, she uncovers the blackmail plot and the criminal or at least unethical activities of many of the staff. And gradually, rumor comes out that there is a werewolf at large...

As werewolf movies go... this isn't great. But it is engaging enough as a murder mystery, albeit a REALLY unusual murder weapon. 

What's more, it continues a trend I'm seeing of a lot of films of the late 50s and early 60s that push the envelopes of what we generally consider 'acceptable' subject matters. This film not only contains a rather graphic looking corpse, but also deals in a lot of very 'mature' subjects, ranging from blackmail to student-teacher sexual relationships, and sometimes bordering on the inappropriate. The girls in this reform school are supposed to be teenagers, and yet one of them clearly has an affair with an older teacher in order to get blackmail on him, and another one, possibly less predatory relationship, seems to kick off between Priscilla and the new professor (apparently to the envy of the other girls). This film, at times, FEELS a little grimy, but manages to keep it sort of classy, and only bits and pieces are shown, told, or hinted at. 

Part of the reason behind the confusion I had about this film is that it does continue the trend at this time of applying pseudo-science to supernatural legends. We've seen this before in I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957), the aforementioned Blood of Dracula (1957), and How to Make a Monster (1958). Here, the acknowledgement of Lycanthropy as an actual medical condition, and the search for a cure for it is pivotal. 

All in all, I was surprised by this, and I need to go back and watch it again. 




Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Halloween Season




 Its the most wonderful time of the year...

Well, sort of. Its the one time of the year when it seems to be ok to be a horror fan. Its the one time of the year when networks and cable channels seem to recognize that we exist, and program towards us. Halloween, and October, tend to be a magical time for fans of horror films and scary movies, and its often then only time of the year we get to see screenings of obscure gems that otherwise languish in network vaults or are exiled to 2 AM programming slots.

Mind you... Christmas keeps on creeping backwards, and has come to threaten Halloween. Last year, I heard my first Christmas carols the DAY AFTER Halloween.... and that doesn't even begin to approach the terror that is 'Christmas in July'... I think in fairness that if you are going to have 'Christmas in July' then you need a 'Halloween in May', but I digress...

I've been thinking of films that put me in a Halloween mood. As is no surprise, many of these are vintage horrors of the Golden Age of Hollywood... but not all.  I had an idea of posting one for each day in October, but... maybe I'll just post them all here.

These are not in any particular order, or theme... just films that are listed as they come to me. I'll maybe put a little note as to why this one speaks to my Halloween spirit...

1) I'll start by listing all these together: Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of FrankensteinThe Wolf Man, and possibly to a lesser extent: The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Dracula's Daughter, House of Dracula, House of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Ghost of Frankenstein, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Ghost, and Son of Dracula. All of these are like comfort food. The atmosphere of all of them just put you in the frame of mind to go walk in the fog. I didn't put EVERY one of the Universal Monster cycle here, because some just don't work for me on Halloween, despite being great films. I LOVE The Creature from the Black Lagoon, but its not an October kind of film. As an added bonus, these are all pretty short, with most clocking in right around an hour... so you can get 2 of these for every modern film.

2) Silent films tend to lend themselves to October. One year, I put these on a screen while I was handing out candy to the kids, and it seemed to be a hit. Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, and Haxan are the best for this, but you could also throw in Der Golem and The Phantom of the Opera for good measure. I know for a fact the Nosferatu is a good choice... I had Nosferatu playing on my porch one Halloween, and one little girl, maybe 5 years old, and dressed as a princess, peeked cautiously around the corner before approaching me, and asked if the music was from a movie. When I told her it was, she breathed a sigh of relief and told me "Good.... I thought it was a werewolf." Because of course, you can always tell when monsters are nearby because you can hear their theme music.

3) Some other Golden Age horrors, that are perhaps lesser known: The Black Cat by Edgar Ulmer pairs Karloff and Lugosi in what I consider their finest film. Its creepy, atmospheric, and visually stunning. What more could you want? Mad Love with Peter Lorre is also an appropriate journey into the macabre, with some wonderful acting and just … Lorre-flavored weirdness. I might throw in Mark of the Vampire which, for my money, is Tod Browning's best directorial effort (Yes, even over Dracula and Freaks). 

4) Because Halloween is also FUN as well as scary, we need to throw in a bit of humor, and there are no two better horror comedies from this era than Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and Arsenic and Old Lace. Its really a shame that Boris Karloff couldn't reprise his role in Arsenic and Old Lace, because I would have loved to have seen him do it. Raymond Massey is fine, but, Karloff would have made the whole role so much funnier. Abbott and Costello are at the top of their game in this feature too... more so than the other films where they meet the monsters. To push it out a bit later, maybe include Bell, Book, and Candle with Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, for a fun and romantic piece of horror comedy (or if you wish to keep in in the black and white era, I Married a Witch with Veronica Lake and Frederic March, which is much the same story). 

5) Because I can, I will throw out a couple Val Lewton pictures that help the season along.... I Walked With a Zombie, Isle of the Dead, and Cat People. These require paying a bit more attention, but they are full of an atmosphere of dread.

6) Because Hammer Studios managed to reboot things in the 50s and 60s, its only appropriate to throw those films into the mix too. My choices from the Studio That Dripped Blood are: The Horror of Dracula, The Curse of Frankenstein, Plague of the Zombies, Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed. If you have extra time, and want more, maybe Brides of Dracula and Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter would be good additions. 

7) The 50s and 60s in general brought a number of worthy films to the screen that fit this list: The Haunting, Night of the Demon, and The House on Haunted Hill are the top of the Halloween heap here. However, also worthy of a Halloween look is, of course, Night of the Living Dead. I mean... a house besieged by hungry weirdos? That's obviously Halloween... the fact that in the film they are after human flesh while in real life its kids after sugary treats is really all the difference....

8) Corman's Poe cycle of films with Vincent Price is also quite appropriate. I would recommend... Masque of the Red Death. That is simply the best of them. Its like the best Halloween party ever, too. Throw in the anthology film Tales of Terror, and finally another Horror Comedy, The Raven, and maybe round it out with The Haunted Palace (Though despite the title, that was based on Lovecraft and not Poe.)

9) Speaking of Anthology films, there are a couple that would work well for the season. My suggestion is Mario Bava's Black Sunday, and the stellar Amicus production The House that Dripped Blood and maybe 1980s The Monster Club and those will serve you well I think. All of those have a wonderful Halloween atmosphere to them, and Monster Club is practically a perfect Party film, with some fun music as well. 

10) It may seem obvious, but I'm going to throw out there the original Halloween. I'm not a slasher fan, but I cannot deny that this film captures the holiday well, and its probably the very best of the slasher films anyway. I'd pair it up with the criminally underrated Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Both of these films are simply perfect for the holiday. 

And that's about as far as I can go.... Most modern films just don't FEEL like Halloween to me, but these I've listed.... when I watch them I can feel the chilly wind and hear the rustle of leaves against the streets. I can smell wood smoke, dead leaves,  and pumpkins, and the taste of maple and cinnamon.... These films ARE Halloween to me. 

I know I'll get criticism for not including later films, or 'scarier' films.... but this isn't about special effects, or scariness... this is about the FEELING of Halloween. I'll get criticism for most of this list being Black and White films... I actually know people who refuse to watch a film if its in black and white, and that's a shame to me...  There's nothing particularly earth-shaking or ground breaking, or even controversial in this list... its just Holiday favorites for me.