CASTLE OF BLOOD (1964) / WEB OF THE SPIDER (1971)

Antonio Margheriti, billed as Anthony Dawson, made Castle of Blood in black & white and remade it very faithfully seven years later in color. The plot summary here covers both films. Edgar Allen Poe is drinking in a tavern, telling his drunken buddies a story about a dying woman and a man's obsession with her teeth. He seems to be passing this off as a real occurrence, but reporter Alan Foster recognizes it as the plot to his short story "Berenice," though Poe rebuts him by claiming all of his fantastic stories are pieces of reportage. When Foster is skeptical, another listener, Lord Blackwood, bets Foster that he can't spend a night in his abandoned and haunted castle. Blackwood and Poe drop Foster off and plan to pick him up in the morning, with the promise that Poe will give him an interview. As Foster wanders the dusty castle, he begins seeing visions of people dancing and hears harpsichord music. He soon discovers that the castle is not abandoned, but that Blackwood's sister Elizabeth still lives there, as does another woman named Julia. Also present is Dr. Carmus, an expert in metaphysics, who expresses his theory that the self has three distinct parts—body, spirit and senses—and the death of one part does not necessarily kill off the other two. As the evening goes on, a few more folks pop up, and a romantic tangle develops with Julia lusting after Elizabeth, Elizabeth cheating on her husband with the hunky stable boy, and Foster himself turned on by Elizabeth. But soon, these folks start killing each other in bloody ways, and Foster realizes that he’s witnessing the annual All Souls' Day return of damned souls of the undead who are doomed to replay the circumstances of their death. When another couple enters the scene, Foster learns they are a newlywed couple that Blackwood sent here last year who have joined the undead. Eventually, all the ghosts all turn vampiric and start chasing after Foster as they need fresh blood to finish their ritual. Elizabeth agrees to help him escape; will he defy tradition and make it to morning alive?

There's the potential for a really good ghost movie here, and the way the narrative is laid out in the first half-hour or so is promising. The shadowy, Gothic look of the castle is great and the fluid camerawork is impressive. Barbara Steele (pictured above), always an asset in 60s horror films, looks fabulous and gives a solid performance as Elizabeth. But style overwhelms substance; the plot and characters stop developing after a while and the events grow repetitious. Individual scenes are well done: the death of a man while he's making out with Steele; shots of the dusty, cobwebby sets; a dead body in a coffin that we suddenly realize is breathing. The predictable ending is handled well. But I still felt its overall force was blunted from a lackluster screenplay (and it doesn’t help that the film is supposedly based on a Poe story—it isn't), The notes I made while watching the remake were almost identical to the notes I made while watching the original. Anthony Franciosa (at right) gives a more solid performance as Parker than Georges Riviere did in the original, though the sexy Michele Mercier isn’t quite up to Barbara Steele's level. Klaus Kinski, a little less unhinged than usual, has the small role of Poe, and Peter Karsten makes a more effective Dr. Carmus than Arturo Dominici in Castle. Apparently, Margheriti regretted remaking the film in color, but I thought the color worked fine, even if the black & white imagery was more atmospheric, and the sets are more elaborate than in the original. Though I'd hesitate to call either film a classic, both would work nicely as Halloween season treats. [DVD/Streaming–the streaming version of WEB on Amazon is a fairly poor pan-and-scan print, but there is a lovely widescreen version available on YouTube]

RITUAL OF EVIL (1970)

After a wild party at the Wiley house, the family psychiatrist David Sorrell (Louis Jourdan) is called there in the dead of night by retired actress Jolene Wiley (Anne Baxter) because she's concerned that her niece Aline has disappeared. The next morning, Aline is found dead on the beach by folk singer and recovering addict Larry Richmond, who was living at a beach house rent-free thanks to Aline. The death is presumed a suicide, though Larry can't believe it. Aline's somewhat fragile younger sister Loey (Belinda Montgomery) feels guilty because she thinks that an attempt by her to conjure up demons caused Aline's death. Soon, demons start popping up all over. Larry mentions that Aline and her friends were involved in devil worship. David meets fashion photographer Leila Barton (Diana Hyland), who was present at the party and she possesses a small statue of a satyr (referred to as Priapus but looking more like Pan), and refers to herself as a witch. Loey starts having visions of a scraggly bearded man being sacrificed at the party. Then Larry dies when his small house goes up in flames, and we see someone using photographs of people in rituals involving the Pan statue whose eyes glow red before bad things happen. As David investigates, he begins feeling lustful urges toward Lelia, who is sure the two of them were lovers in a past life. There's also Jolene's partner and would-be fiancé Edward Bolander (John McMartin) who may be more involved in hedonistic parties and rituals than he has let on. Did I mention the dead dog? 

This TV-movie sequel to FEAR NO EVIL isn’t as interesting as the first film, but it has its pleasures. It takes its devil worship fairly seriously, though specific plot points are rather messy. As in FEAR NO EVIL, the Satanists seem to be in it for decadent fun, not realizing they may be tampering with things they can't control. It's unclear who is the driving force in getting the demonic rituals going, and even what exactly the point of the ritual is. Without going into spoilers, the connection between Leila and the Wileys remains murky. Loey is the focus of the story for a while, until she isn't. The movie's conclusion seems to be a case of the writer hitting a deadline and giving up, though in some ways, it's satisfying enough. Jourdan provides another anchoring performance as the relatively rational psychiatrist who also believes in occult powers. Hyland is quite good as a sexy witch and Anne Baxter is fine, if a bit underused. Wilfrid Hyde-White repeats his role from the first movie as Jourdan's mentor, though he only has one short scene. Georg Stanford Brown, later known for TV roles in The Rookies and Roots, is good enough to make you wish his character had stuck around a little longer. The tone of the proceedings borrows a bit from the Charles Manson vibe of the era. Not quite up to the standard of the first movie, but more than watchable. [DVD]

FEAR NO EVIL (1969)

It's around midnight on a big city street. We hear spooky voices chanting as a sweaty man races out of an apartment building and bangs on the door of a closed antique shop. The owner is still there so he lets the man in. Disoriented (the shopkeeper later describes him as "high on something"), the man heads for a large mirror. As he stands there, he sees a creepy image of himself dressed in black against an infinitely regressing background. He pays $300 for the mirror and has it delivered to his apartment. The next day, we learn the man (Bradford Dillman, pictured at right) is a physicist, he has a semi-live-in girlfriend (Lynda Day George), and is friendly with a coworker (Carroll O'Connor). The three go to a late-night cocktail party where psychologist Louis Jourdan touches on the topic of the occult, one of his areas of interest, and is surprised that Dillman has knowledge of an obscure demon named Rakashi. The party doesn't break up until dawn, and later that morning, Dillman and George are on the road when Dillman sees the black-clad image of himself in his car's side view mirror. He freaks out, wrecks the car and is killed. George moves in with his rich mother and takes the mirror with her. One night, while brushing her hair, time seems to stop (the clock stops ticking) and she sees the black-clad Dillman in the mirror beckoning to her. They embrace, seemingly with Dillman entering the real world, and make love, and afterwards there is blood on her neck. These experiences keep happening so she goes to see Jourdan. Though she's disturbed by them, she admits that she doesn't want them to stop. Jourdan investigates and discovers Dillman belonged to a Satanic group that bit off more than they could chew when they tried to conjure up Rakashi in order to find him, in the words of one character, a "chalice of flesh."

There is a general consensus that this was the first made-for-TV horror movie, and it was a pilot for a show called Bedeviled that would follow Jourdan's adventures in the paranormal. (His character name is David Sorrell, and there was a sequel, RITUAL OF EVIL, which I’ll review tomorrow, but no series ever came of it.) I have a great fondness for the horror TV movies of the 70s, and this one holds up pretty well with good performances, an interesting storyline, an inventive visual style, and one of the more memorable Satanic ritual scenes in any devil worship movie. Jourdan is handsome and oozes European charm as the doctor, and Dillman brings a nice intensity to his role. In our first glimpse of Lynda Day George (going by Lynda Day), she looks a bit like a human-sized Barbie, but she's fine as the confused girlfriend who doesn't quite want to lose contact with her fiancé. It's difficult not to see Archie Bunker in Carrol O'Connor, but eventually he disappears into his character and has a great scene near the climax. The wonderful Wilfrid Hyde-White is Jourdan's old friend and mentor. Marsha Hunt, a classic-era actress who died earlier this year at the age of 104, is very good as Dillman's mother, who has a surprise up her sleeve near the end. This would have to rank highly on any list of black magic movies of the 60s and 70s, TV or otherwise. [DVD]

I EAT YOUR SKIN aka ZOMBIES (1964/1971)

This film opens with a girl in a bikini doing some stripper moves around a campfire while voodoo revelers revel around her. Eventually a man with what I can only describe as a face drape (dangly strings that cover most of his face) orders the slaughter of a goat as the climax of the proceedings. Cut to Tom Harris (William Joyce, at left), a playboy writer of adventure novels whom we first see entertaining a gaggle of bikinied women poolside at a hotel in Miami Beach by narrating a scene from his latest book. When one horned-up fan gets into a kissing clinch with him, her husband menacingly intrudes. Luckily, Tom's agent Duncan arrives to spirit him away on a small plane, along with Duncan's ditzy wife Coral, to Voodoo Island, privately owned by the wealthy Lord Carrington. The natives practice voodoo, the women are mostly virgins as most of the males were lost at sea years ago, and a scientist is doing work on irradiated snake venom—and there may be zombies roaming about. Duncan thinks the visit will kickstart Tom on his next novel, but things go downhill quickly. First, the plane runs out of gas on the approach to the island and they land hard on a beach. Then while looking for help, Tom sees a bug-eyed monster man menace a beautiful young woman who is skinny-dipping in a pond. He manages to warn her away, then finds a fisherman who tells him of the zombie cult on the island, after which the bug-eyed man cuts his head off with a machete. Charles, the island overseer, comes upon Tom and takes him and the others to his house where they meet the scientist who is working with snake venom; the skinny-dipper is his daughter Janine. Janine, being blonde and a virgin (though with the horndog Tom around, she might not be for long), is thought to be wanted by the cult for a human sacrifice. The travelers prepare to leave the island with Janine, but a zombie carrying a box of explosives heads walks into the spinning propellers, blowing up himself, the plane, and the pilot. Soon we find out the secrets behind the snake venom experiments (which are causing the zombie plague) and the identity of the face-draped cult leader, but is it too late for our adventurers?

Information about the tangled background of this film can easily be found through a Google search. Suffice to say that Del Tenney, low-rent director of the notorious HORROR OF PARTY BEACH made this black & white cheapie in 1964 under the title Caribbean Adventure or Voodoo Bloodbath, but a distribution deal was canceled and the film gathered dust for years until it was dug up, retitled I Eat Your Skin—though in fact no skin is eaten, at least not on screen—and paired with a much grosser film called I Drink Your Blood for a fairly successful run at drive-ins around Halloween of 1971. (It later appeared on home video as Zombies.) By then, I imagine audiences were disappointed, not just because it's black & white, but because there is very little gore (just the split-second decapitation). But if approached as a mid-60s horror cheapie, it's fairly entertaining. The soap-opera handsome William Joyce does a nice job as the hero, and he's more fun if you imagine him as an Ian Fleming stand-in, but his performance is pitched a little higher than those of other cast members. Heather Hewitt (Janine) is lovely and pairs well with Joyce. Most everyone else, however, comes off a little amateurish in comparison. Dan Stapleton (Duncan) and Betty Hyatt Linton (Coral) are mostly obnoxious, and the overdubbed exaggeration of Coral's voice is downright grating. Walter Coy (Charles) is a rather bland villain, though the scenes of the cult rituals work up some atmosphere. The scene with William Joyce flirting with the ladies was filmed at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach where an early scene in the James Bond movie Goldfinger was shot. This feels a little long at 90 minutes, but I have to say I enjoyed it as a mid-60s B-movie. [YouTube; the widescreen print available here is in pristine condition]

CURSE OF THE UNDEAD (1959)

We're in a small Western frontier town where a plague seems to have settled in: black wreaths are present on several doors as young women are sickening and dying from some mysterious illness whose only physical sign is puncture marks on the neck. Dr. Carter, his daughter Dolores, and his son Tim are frustrated by their inability to save the victims, and also by the behavior of Buffer, a neighbor who is trying to get ahold of their land by damming up the water that would normally flow onto their property, hoping to drive them off their ranch (as it's a Western, there's also a touch of cattle rustling). The sheriff and Preacher Dan try to talk sense into Buffer but to no avail, and that night, Doc Carter is killed by the side of the road (with bite marks on his neck that no one seems to notice). Tim, sure that Buffer is to blame, gets drunk, confronts him, and in a showdown, is killed by Buffer. Dolores is fed up and advertises for a hired gun to take out Buffer. The man who responds is Drake Robey, dressed in black and claiming an allergy to sunlight (though practically speaking, being in the sun doesn't seem to bother him in the least). She hires him and invites him to stay at her ranch. His initial contact with Buffer and his men results in a brief gunfight in which bullets appear not to harm Drake. Preacher Dan, who is sort of dating Dolores, manages to work out a compromise with Buffer, but Drake stays around anyway to protect her, despite having a visceral reaction to a small crucifix badge that Dan wears that is supposedly carved from wood found in the Holy Land at Calvary. As Drake (who, if you haven't put the clues together, is a vampire), begins feeding nightly on Dolores, Dan finds some old documents that show Drake Robey is actually Drago Robles, a long-dead descendent of the family that used to own Dolores's ranch. From here, things move rather quickly to the final confrontation that you just know is going to end with Preacher Dan's Calvary cross being deployed as a weapon.

This B-film, the first vampire Western, doesn't get a lot of love from critics, but for me, it's another case of adjusting expectations. Go with the B-flow, remember that it was forging a new genre, and watch a restored widescreen print of it (new on DVD from Kino Lorber). In vampire movies, much depends on the actor in the main role, and Australian actor Michael Pate, with whom I was not familiar, is about perfect: he has the craggy face of a Western villain and the manner of a vampire. He even has just enough rough charm to pass as a potential romantic figure. Eric Fleming (a star of Rawhide, a long-running 1960s TV Western) is a less solid hero, though he's acceptable. I can't put my finger on why I feel that way; partly his looks, his uncertain manner, and the way the character is written. The always dependable John Hoyt is good as the doctor, but he's killed off too soon. Kathleen Crowley and Bruce Gordon are fine as Dolores and Buffer. As other critics have said, the film seems to be going for the feel of a Universal classic horror movie, but the direction is drab and the script could stand some punching up. For me, the biggest problem was the issue of sunlight. If they had already decided to shoot many scenes, including the climax, in broad daylight, why bother to even bring the issue up in dialogue? There is an excellent nighttime scene involving the shadow of a cross on a church steeple, so why Drake couldn't be confined to darkness is hard to understand. Still I found this generally enjoyable and a good October viewing choice. The audio commentary by Tom Weaver is good, even he can't resist an occasional silly snarky comment. Pictured above from left are Fleming and Pate. [Blu-ray]

TARANTULA (1955)

On the outskirts of a desert town in Arizona, we see a bloated, disfigured mutant collapse and die. The police identify the man as an associate of Dr. Deemer (Leo G. Carroll), a research scientist who works in relative isolation outside of town. Deemer tells Matt Hastings (John Agar), the local doctor, that the man had an advanced case of acromegaly, a progressive disease that causes body tissues to grow abnormally. Matt is suspicious because normally the disease takes years to progress whereas Deemer says the man's condition had begun only a week earlier. In Deemer's laboratory, we see giant animals (a rabbit, a hamster, a tarantula), all as big as or bigger than dogs, kept in cages. It's Deemer's work on a growth nutrient that has caused this, and also caused his assistant's condition, and we soon see that a second assistant, Lund, is suffering from the same problem. In a rage, Lund begins destroying the lab by setting a fire. Most of the animals are killed but we see the tarantula escape. Just before dying, Lund injects the growth serum into Deemer as he lies unconscious. The next day, graduate student Stephanie 'Steve' Clayton (Mara Corday), arrives as a live-in assistant to Deemer. Matt takes a shine to Steve, and vice versa, and soon, when people and cattle start dying, they investigate, with a sheriff and a local reporter, what Deemer has gotten up to. As per the title, there is a giant tarantula on the loose—electricity and guns can't stop it, but maybe the military can.

This is one of my favorite monster movies, partly because I saw it in my youth, and photos from it were featured frequently in the monster movie magazines I read—the tarantula is definitely scary, but Leo G. Carroll in what looked like flesh-melting make-up was even scarier. All these years later, it still holds up pretty well, with the effect of the giant tarantula stalking the desert still generating chills. Even the giant rabbit and hamster are done well. The screenplay doesn't get particularly philosophical in terms of the "God's domain" aspect of Deemer's experiments, and the characters aren't fully dimensional, but neither of those aspects harm simple enjoyment of the movie. Agar is a little stiff, Corday is quite appealing, Carroll is a little sluggish; in support, Nestor Paiva and Ross Elliott are good as the sheriff and the reporter. Clint Eastwood has a couple of lines of dialogue as a bomber pilot in the final scene. Even though it has its weaknesses, this is fun, and in my mind, along with the giant ant movie THEM!, the archetypal 50s monster movie. A must-see. [DVD]

CAULDRON OF BLOOD (1970)

On his way to a vacation in Paris, journalist Claude Marchand (Jean-Pierre Aumont) gets orders to fly to Spain to do a photo story on Franz Badulescu (Boris Karloff), a sculptor who toiled most of his life in obscurity until he was left blind and crippled from a car accident caused by his wife Tania (Viveca Lindfors). Claude uses Valerie, a local woman (with whom he eventually has an affair) to get access to Franz. The artist has continued to sculpt, using life-sized skeleton armatures, dug out of graves by his wife, who seems more concerned with her husband's career than his comfort. What we soon learn is that Tania, with some help from her lover, local bar owner Shanghai (Milo Quesada), is killing animals and humans, then dipping their bodies into an acid bath in the cellar to provide the skeletons for Franz. As young, attractive women continue to vanish, a local gypsy woman has a vision that Franz is behind the disappearances and predicts that someone close to Claude will die that night at 3 a.m. Since the only person close to Claude is Valerie, he goes rushing to the mansion to save her, where she is indeed about to become the latest person to take a bath in acid.

That plot summary is short and mostly coherent unlike the movie itself which, at nearly 100 minutes, is too long and often incoherent, And, frankly, not very interesting on any level. This is one of Karloff's last movies and he doesn't really have much to do, partly because, due to illness, he isn't very mobile. He keeps an aura of seriousness about him, but that doesn't make this cheap, messy movie any more entertaining. Plotwise, it's a riff on the Mystery of the Wax Museum/House of Wax story, except here the statue maker is unaware of the horrific deeds that are being performed in the name of art (and money). Aumont, Lindfors and Rosenda Monteros (as Valerie) have the most to do here and generally do it fairly well, but in service of a weak screenplay, for a rather incompetent director. Milo Quesada is handsome but he's stuck playing an unmotivated villain. Ruben Rojo is interesting for a while as a drunken former reporter (I think) who hangs around being obnoxious to everyone, but honestly I lost track of the character, and I couldn't tell you if he lives or dies. In a climactic battle between Tania and Valerie, the score suddenly turns into spy-movie music—I liked it, but it didn't fit. A mess you can avoid unless you're a Karloff completist. Not released in the States until 1971, after Karloff's passing. Pictured are Lindfors, Karloff and Aumont. [DVD]

ISLAND OF DEATH (1976)

I'll warn you: this is not the kind of movie I usually review here. First, because I generally consider the early 1970s a cut-off point for classic-era movies. Second, because it is a graphic sex and horror film. Though the sex is strictly soft-core and the violence is not especially graphic by today's standards, the combination of the two would surely have gotten this film rated X back in 1976; as it stands, it's unrated, and I can find no evidence that it ever got a theatrical release in the U.S. When it came out on video in England in the 80s, it was banned for twenty years. The reason I'm writing about it here is because of the Bob Behling connection--he is the actor whom I discovered had been miscredited in LAND OF THE MINOTAUR. Anyhow, be forewarned about the possibly offensive content below. Also there's a major spoiler in the last sentence.

Attractive young couple Chris (Bob Behling) and Celia (Jane Lyle, both pictured at left) arrive for a vacation on the Greek island of Mykonos. Chris likes the island because it's full of God-fearing people and Chris hates anyone he considers a "pervert." However, we soon discover some unsettling facts about these two. First, Chris insists on dragging Celia into a phone booth for a quickie while talking long distance to his mother and telling her what he's doing. Next, we learn that a British cop is after the pair for some reason. The next morning, when Celia refuses sunrise sex, Chris goes out and buggers a goat which he kills immediately afterward. Celia flirts with a hunky islander who is painting a small church, and when they have al fresco sex, Chris attacks him, nails his hands to the ground and pours paint down his throat, while the whole time the two are snapping pictures of the deadly incident—it doesn't matter to them that he was coerced into immorality. Later the two masturbate to the pictures of the man dying. And so on as Chris, clearly styling himself as an avenging angel, kills off anyone he thinks is a pervert (gay men, lesbians, hookers), while himself getting a sexual charge out of the killings. Celia gets tired of their spree but Chris insists they continue. In the end, they run into a grungy shepherd who rapes Celia and throws Chris into a lime pit. [SPOILER] When Chris cries out for help, Celia decides she likes the shepherd and leaves him to die. And then we find out that Chris and Celia are brother and sister.

This is definitely a movie for specialized tastes. As I noted above, the sex is soft-core and the violence is not as gory as it could be, though the death scenes are all rather prolonged and excruciating. Behling is good, I guess you could say, since he is believable as the misguided killer; Lyle is less evil but no more likable. The gay male character is portrayed as a shrieking, caftan-wearing stereotype, and there is virtually no one here who has our sympathies, except maybe the poor housepainter. An abrasive rock song is played periodically, the chorus of which is "Desperation, Understand, Destination isn't ending. Get the sword!" (Chris uses a sword in one killing). It was filmed on location, so the island backgrounds are nice, but "nice" is not a word I’d use for this movie. [Amazon Prime]

BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH (1967)

On the nighttime streets of Las Vegas, Arnold Kramer (Peter Arne) is creating a disturbance by lying on the sidewalk and listening to "them" moving around underground like ants (a callback perhaps to the classic 1954 giant ant movie THEM!). He's assumed by police to be a mental case and is institutionalized. Meanwhile over at the Office of Naval Research, Commander Jonathan Shaw (Kerwin Mathews, pictured at right) has seen the literal collapse of his ocean floor Sealab experiment when what he assumed was an earthquake destroyed the facility. Because a quake had not been reported, Shaw is assumed to be wrong, but a similar disaster in an Oregon mine in the absence of a detected quake (and the strange discovery of a Chinese coin in the rubble) make Shaw certain that something strange is going on. Kramer's sister Susan works at Shaw's office and when she asks Shaw for help, he is able to meet with Kramer and discovers that, with his own sensitive equipment, Kramer has detected traces of man-made activity under the Pacific Ocean. What could it possibly be? Why, it's Chan Lu (Martin Benson), a rebel Chinese general who has, with his small army of followers, managed to use laser-equipped vehicles to tunnel under the ocean and the United States mainland with a plan to set off atomic bombs under various sites. In this very Dr. Strangelove apocalypse, Lu and his men (who are doing this without the knowledge of the Chinese government) plan to live underground for years until aboveground is safe. In the craziest plot point of all 1960s SF, the American government gets all flights grounded and all construction projects and most transportation traffic stopped long enough to be able to detect where Lu's army is, so they can try to stop his progress and disarm the bombs. 

Most critics who enjoy this do so on a comic book/camp level like the Thunderbirds or Batman TV shows of the 1960s. Indeed, this approach does have its appeal. You can almost ignore the ludicrous plot points of tunneling under the ocean and of having an entire county go silent—the first point feels pulled from a 40s serial, and the second point seems very much like an event from a 1960s DC comic book story. But the movie's drab look and low budget don't allow it to have a colorful comic book look, and the special effects, such as they are, aren't very special. I'd like to be a champion of Kerwin Mathews because his 1962 movie JACK THE GIANT KILLER was one of favorites in my youth, but he lacks a certain energy that would make him and his situation believable. Two supporting players out act Mathews easily: Peter Arne as the slightly squirrely Kramer and Benson as the chief villain. Arne comes close to going over the top in his early scenes, but Mathews could have used some of his spark. Benson, a prolific British supporting actor, is in yellowface but he's an effective bad guy, a bit like a low-key Bond villain, even having a sinister-looking pet falcon (Benson played a minor baddie in Goldfinger). Viviane Ventura plays a geologist who becomes part of Mathews' team near the climax in the Hawaiian islands; she's good but doesn't have much to do. It’s a British movie with several British actors set in the U.S. with a handful of Chinese characters so there’s a hodgepodge of accents to go around. OK for a Saturday afternoon spin. [YouTube]

AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS! (1973)

In a REBECCA-like opening, Catherine casts her mind back to 1795 when she married Charles Fengriffen and moved into his large family estate. As she takes in the family gallery of portraits, she is spooked by a painting of Sir Henry, Charles' grandfather, with fierce glowing eyes. She thinks she sees a bloody hand burst through the painting, but Charles assures her she's just tired. After they leave, we see a disembodied hand fall to the floor from the painting and crawl toward their bedroom. As Charles prepares for their wedding night, Catherine is attacked in bed by a figure unseen in the dark except for its hand which presses against her mouth as it assaults her. As she tries to settle into life as mistress of the estate, things just get stranger: mysterious winds blow through the house, blood stains are found on the floor, and Catherine has visions of a man with empty eye sockets and no right hand. She is also unsettled by an encounter with Silas, an unfriendly woodsman with a disfiguring facial birthmark who lives in a small cabin on land bequeathed to him by Sir Henry. There are hints of family backstory but whenever someone seems about to explain things to Catherine, they wind up dead. Eventually, however, we do get the whole sordid story in which Sir Henry drunkenly raped the newlywed bride of Silas' father (also called Silas), then cuts off the man's hand as punishment for daring to try and stop him. Silas puts a curse on the family involving the next virgin bride brought into the house—and of course, that's Catherine, who by now is pregnant—but by whom (or what)?

This 70's British horror film is probably one of the few that might stand up to the expectations of current-day audiences, as it's full to the brim with death and blood and scares, though not quite as explicit as it might be today. The plot plays out nicely, but there is, to my mind, at least one fairly gaping plothole: Charles is not a bad guy, and he doesn’t really believe in the curse, so why didn't he try to set Catherine's mind at ease early on by telling her about the legend? Of course, it turns out the curse is real after all, but still, his refusal to share the story as his wife becomes more and more freaked out (and engages in a fair amount of the titular screaming) seems odd. Performances are a notch above B-horror standards. Stephanie Beacham, who later played Sable Colby on Dynasty and The Colbys, makes a top-notch scream queen; Ian Ogilvy is appealing as her husband; Geoffrey Whitehead is effective as both Silas and his father. Three name actors, though top-billed, have what amount to cameo roles: Herbert Lom makes the most of his few minutes as the sadistic Sir Henry in a flashback, the always welcome Patrick Magee plays a doctor, and Peter Cushing sleepwalks through a small part as a psychiatrist. Recommended for fans of the Gothic horror era of the 1970s. [Amazon Prime]

MURDER IN THE BLUE ROOM (1944)

Several years ago, Linda Kirkland's husband died, apparently by suicide (he may have been being blackmailed), in the Blue Room of their seaside mansion. There have been rumors that the house is haunted by the man's ghost, but since then Linda has remarried and her husband Frank has agreed to reopen the house for a big party. As the guests mingle, a newcomer arrives: a ghostly shape with a disfigured face. Surprise! It's just Larry, a young admirer of Linda's daughter Nan. Nan's stepfather Frank isn't especially happy that Larry refers to the mansion as the ghost house, since Frank wants to dispel any such rumors, but just as Larry makes a joking reference to claps of thunder and lights going out, there's a clap of thunder and the lights go out. Later as the party breaks up, Larry decides he wants to spend the night in the supposedly haunted Blue Room. Another guest, mystery novelist Steve Randall, decides he'll do the same the next night. The next morning, Larry has vanished and the police are called in. When Steve vanishes the next morning and Larry's dead body is found in the room, the ghost rumors don't seem so fantastical.

This B-film is a remake of the 1933 mystery SECRET OF THE BLUE ROOM. The plot is altered a bit, and the villain here is not the same character it was in the original. But the biggest change is that it's sort of a musical comedy, and the surprise is that it actually works. Despite the top billing that Anne Gwynne (Nan) and Donald Cook (Steve) get, the real stars are Grace McDonald, Betty Kean, and June Preisser who play a singing trio called the Jazzybelles. They are invited by Nan, who used to be a singer, to sing at the party and even though they don't stay the night, the police inspector (Regis Toomey) insists that they return to the house for the duration until they catch the killer. So the three gals end up being the audience-surrogate detectives, snooping around, seeing a ghost, and singing a sprightly tune every so often. My favorite number is "The Boogie-Woogie Man" which they sing in a darkened room to a frightened butler (the reliable Ian Wolfe, who almost gets to crack a smile here).

There are lots of nice spooky touches, like a secret passage, a piano that suddenly starts playing itself, and a creepy taxi driver. There is an actual ghost that pops in from time to time but has no real role in the story. A few lazy plot holes crop up, the biggest of which is that Toomey can come up with no real reason why the Jazzybelles should return to the house, just that the plot demands it. I also wonder why the Blue Room wasn't thoroughly searched by the cops after Larry vanished—again, a plot demand, because if the most cursory search had occurred, the movie would have been over in half an hour. A favorite line: when the taxi driver arrives for the Jazzybelles, he says, "I've come for the bags," and Betty Kean replies, "Not only is he gruesome, he's insulting!" The acting is fine, though Gwynne and Cook get overshadowed by the three singers. Bill Williams as Larry is handsome but a bit weak in the acting department, though he would go on to a long career in movies and TV (and he married Barbara Hale and is William Katt's father). I was surprised how enjoyable this was. Currently unavailable on region 1 home video, Universal should put this out on a DVD or Blu-ray with the original film. At top right are the Jazzybelles singing to the almost frightened Ian Wolfe. At left are Donald Cook, Bill Williams, and John Litel as Frank. A good October night choice. [YouTube]

INCENSE FOR THE DAMNED (1971)

Richard Fountain (Patrick Mower), a young respected Oxford don, is unofficially engaged to Penelope Goodrich, daughter of Walter Goodrich (Peter Cushing), a influential Oxford professor. But while studying ancient Minoan rites in Greece, Fountain cut off all contact back home and more or less disappeared, with ominous threats of scandal in the air. Penelope and two of Richard's friends, Bob and Tony, go to Greece and get a British military attaché named Longbow (Patrick Macnee) to help investigate Richard's disappearance. It seems that Richard had fallen under the spell of a cult led by a mysterious woman named Chriseis, whose followers take drugs and engage in orgies. Tensions percolate within the trio, primarily between Penelope and Bob, a Black student whom Richard had been mentoring (and maybe sleeping with). But we learn that Richard has not consummated his relationship with Penelope due to impotence, and in fact has never successfully had sex with anyone. They trace Richard to the ruins of an ancient temple, and somewhat implausibly carry out a midnight raid to save him from the cult. Discovering him in a catatonic state, they fight off the other cult members. As Longbow pursues Chriseis, he is caught in a rockfall and falls off a cliff to his death. Back in England, they put things together, with the help of an anthropologist (Edward Woodward), and figure out that Richard had joined a group of vampires, but psychosexual rather than supernatural ones, as the drinking of blood causes an orgasm which they cannot achieve any other way. A celebration is thrown for Richard's return at an official dinner, but he gives a rabidly anti-establishment speech, accusing the Oxford dons of being vampires themselves, leeching off of their students and society. When Chriseis shows up at Oxford, Richard seems doomed.

I watched this for its interesting title, though it's never explained, and in the States, it was released under the boring but more appropriate title Bloodsuckers. Frankly, it's a mess. The director, Robert Hartford-Davis, disowned the film when the producers changed the ending, throwing in a scene involving death by wooden stake which contradicts the non-supernatural explanation given earlier. But the ending (which I think works fine) is the least of this movie's problems. The storyline is murky, production and editing border at times on incompetent, and the direction of the actors is lackluster. Macnee is top billed, but his death halfway through feels almost improvised, as if he realized how bad the movie was and took off with little notice. Cushing's role amounts to a cameo. The handsome Mower (pictured) plays the same kind of role he did in THE DEVIL RIDES OUT as the passive would-be hero who needs to be rescued by his friends. He makes little impression until he gives his speech at dinner, but it's too little too late. Alex Davion (Ted Casablanca in Valley of the Dolls) is good as Tony but given little to do. The less said about the others, the better. Vampirism as sexual perversion is a unique theme—it has always had a sexual element, but here it effectively replaces sex—and had the movie been made a few years later, the sexual element might have given it a needed jolt. As it is, we only get one gauzy psychedelic scene of an orgy (which ends in bloody violence) and the barest hint of homoeroticism. An unusual movie, yes, but not a very good one. [YouTube]

TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER (1976)

In a brief opening scene, we see Father Michael Reynor (Christopher Lee, pictured) being excommunicated even as he insists that he is not a heretic. Twenty years later, Raynor has set up a kind of alternative abbey in Bavaria for his group the Children of the Lord, and he is sending his goddaughter Catherine, about to turn 18 (Nastassja Kinski) back to London to be with her father Henry. But before she arrives, Henry goes to occult novelist John Verney (Richard Widmark) and asks him to take charge of her. Henry acts dazed and frightened so Verney agrees and soon discovers that someone is trying to take control of her through supernatural methods. The big reveal (technically a spoiler I suppose but fairly obvious from early on) is that Reynor and his cult are Satanists who worship the demon Astaroth, and their plan is to sacrifice Catherine, who has been groomed since birth with the permission of her mother (who was sacrificed in childbirth) and father (who has since changed his mind), to bring Astaroth in the earthly realm. Can Verney and his friends subvert the diabolical plan?

I have a long history with Dennis Wheatley, the British author who wrote the book on which this is based. I read The Devil Rides Out in my impressionable teen years and loved it. I've read a handful more of his occult novels and been less impressed—they all tend to be padded out quite a bit. The movie of THE DEVIL RIDES OUT is a kind of guilty pleasure; the budget is too small for the movie to be as atmospheric and effective as it should be, and it occasionally borders on camp, but I enjoy it. I haven't read this book, but Wheatley essentially disowned this film, released the year before he died. It has, I imagine, the same problem that Rides Out has: a budget that is not adequate to the ambitions of the original story. It also may suffer a bit in comparison to movies like THE OMEN and the various 1970s Exorcist rip-offs. The set-up works fairly well, but as the movie goes on, the cheap effects and Richard Widmark's hammy performance hurt the film. (My handwritten notes tell me that at about the 75-minute mark, the movie pretty much stops making sense.) Lee is fine, Kinski (who, though only 14, has a brief scene of frontal nudity) isn't called upon to exercise her acting skills much; she seems to have been directed to just look sexy and vulnerable. Honor Blackman and Michael Goodliffe provide good support as friends of the hero in the same way that several supporting actors do in THE DEVIL RIDES OUT, and the best performance, because of its relative subtlety, is given by Denholm Elliott as Henry, the passive, frightened father. A particularly poor demonic special effect in the home stretch is laughable. This was the last Hammer horror film for many years, and it's telling that it doesn't feel much like a Hammer movie, maybe because Hammer's better movies (including DEVIL RIDES OUT) were set in the past and had colorful visuals—this one isn't and doesn't. [Streaming]

THE EYES OF CHARLES SAND (1972)

In a nicely creepy opening, we see Charles Sand (Peter Haskell) walking through a dark room, empty but for candles and a coffin. As he approaches the coffin, the body inside sits up, glares at him with white eyes and points menacingly. Charles wakes up in a cold sweat from this nightmare to a ringing phone. It's his aunt Alexandria (Joan Bennett) calling him at 3 in the morning to tell him his uncle Edward has died—and she knows about his nightmare. It turns out that with the death of Edward, Charles has inherited the psychic gift of "the Sight," a rather ill-defined ability to have paranormal visions. He has no control over it and can't avoid the visions. At his uncle's funeral, he sees a mummified corpse standing outside the mausoleum of the Parkhurst family. He also sees a frantic woman in a fur coat trying to get his attention. She's not a supernatural figure, but Emily Parkhurst, and Charles gets drawn into her family drama. She is convinced that her brother-in-law Jeffrey has killed her brother Raymond, but Jeffrey and his wife, Katherine, tell Charles that Jeffrey is in Europe. They're concerned enough about Emily to be on the verge of committing her to an asylum. What follows is a series of events that make us wonder if Emily really has gone off the deep end (especially when Charles meets Raymond at the Parkhurst house) or if she's being gaslighted. But as Charles keeps having spooky visions, he's sure that something's wrong, and that he can help Emily somehow.

Another October, another month of reviews of horror and sci-fi films (if I can dig enough up for the whole month). This TV-movie, from the classic era of such things, was a pilot for a show that didn’t get picked up. As a stand-alone, Emily’s story is wrapped up, but Charles' story is left open. If it had gotten a spot on ABCs schedule, it likely would have shown Charles using his sight to help a different person each week, with maybe some slight development of his character over time. Haskell, who resembles a more traditionally handsome Malcolm McDowell, is fine as Charles, generally a stoic figure in the face of his paranormal experiences. Sharon Farrell as Emily overdoes the hysterics a bit, but Barbara Rush and Bradford Dillman are effective as Katherine and Jeffrey. Adam ("Batman") West has a relatively small guest star role, but his first line of dialogue is to refer to Charles as a "boy wonder," which made me chuckle. Many boomers who saw this in their youth were mildly traumatized by its spooky opening, but overall it's got more of a thriller vibe than flat-out horror. The DVD from Warner Archive looks nice. I had a bit of a crush on Peter Haskell, pictured above, when he was on Bracken's World in the late 60s, when I was still young enough to not quite know what was going on with that, so it was especially fun for me to see this. [DVD]

A comment on audio commentaries

As a movie buff and home video collector, I heartily welcomed the laserdisc format. It was a bit unwieldy (phonograph record-size discs that had to be flipped over manually every hour—or half-hour, depending on the format) and expensive (at a time when VHS tapes were in the 20-30 dollar range, laserdiscs were 40-100, depending on the number of discs). But practically every laserdisc release of a widescreen movie was presented in letterboxed widescreen format, whereas VHS versions were still often panned-and-scanned to fit into a square screen format—widescreen TVs were not the standard yet. And laserdiscs could fit extra audio tracks on them, which allowed for the inclusion of audio commentaries on the movies that could be accessed while you were watching the movie. DVDs and Blu-Rays, basically more consumer-friendly versions of laserdiscs, are the standard for home video now. Most releases contain some "bonus features," ranging from short making-of featurettes to full-length documentaries, and audio commentaries continue to be included on many discs.

In my eyes, however, we are long past the golden age, if you will, of commentaries. When newer movies are released, usually the commentary is by one or more of the filmmakers; those may still be relevant and interesting, but I rarely listen to those. My focus is on the classic movie commentaries for films made long enough ago that most of the people involved are no longer with us. I have been a fan of commentaries ever since I started buying DVDs. For me, a good commentary should have the following elements: 1) it should be given in tandem with the movie as it plays so the commentator can talk about specific scenes or actors as we watch them; 2) the commentator should have some knowledge or expertise that the average movie fan may not have; 3) some description of the plot as it unfolds may be necessary, but most of the commentary should fill us in on the background of the production, the career of the actors, and relevant notes about the movie’s reception and influence; 4) while occasionally some humor and criticism are welcome, generally a respectful tone should predominate—in other words, the commentator should actually like the movie we're watching; 5) the best commentaries are ones that have been well planned in advance, with the person reading from a script of sorts or at least an outline.

These days, with the shrinking of the home video market, more classic movie releases include commentaries to attract the fans who may already own the movie on an earlier, bare-bones release. But the commentators are too often amateurs, or self-styled experts with blogs and podcasts, or academics with a narrow field of interest. My gold standard for commentaries are the ones done for the classic Universal horror films of the 30s and 40s by people like David J. Skal, Rudy Behlmer, Steve Hoberman, Tom Weaver, Richard Harland Smith, and Paul Jensen, authors and historians who knew what they were talking about and were enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge. Many of them also did commentaries for non-horror films as well; the late Behlmer spoke on discs of Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, and Laura, and always held my attention. Famous critic Roger Ebert did a couple, and his track for Citizen Kane is considered by some to be the best one ever. Tim Lucas, of the late lamented magazine Video Watchdog, also gives excellent commentary.

Lately, however, classic movie commentaries have taken a big dive in quality, with Kino Lorber being the worst offender. God bless them for continuing to issue new releases of classic films, sometimes long ignored ones, in very good restored prints. But the accompanying commentaries are often quite bad, mostly given by people who are amateurs (at least compared to people like Ebert, Behlmer and Skal, who all were published authors). They usually have little to no background information about the movies they discuss except what's available online at the Internet Movie Database—sometimes you can actually sense them pause as they consult their computer. Often losing track of what they are commenting on, they wind up drifting off topic for long minutes at a time. The track on the recent Blu-Ray of the Peter Ustinov Death on the Nile, by three "historians," is perhaps the worst I’ve ever heard, as they wind up hijacking the commentary to talk at tedious length about the film’s director, John Guillermin and let long, long stretches pass during which they ignore the film completely. I’ve read some complaints about commentators being anti-intellectual (which is true), but even actual academics can give poor commentary. I'm a fan of Jeanine Basinger as a writer, but her commentary on The Philadelphia Story is dry and boring. Emily Carman, on the Back Page disc, spends way too much time on social context, repeating the same points, and keeps getting the name of one the main actors wrong (it’s Claude Gillingwater, not Claude Gillingworth). An occasional snarky comment is OK, bur too much makes me wonder why the person is even interested in talking about the movie (even a pro like Tom Weaver is guilty of this). In the past couple of years, the only commentary I remember fondly is Alan K. Rode's for the WWII movie A Walk in the Sun, which is not a Kino Lorber disc. Even Criterion, a brand which can boast of many good commentaries, has moved away from them in favor of interviews and short featurettes. Kino Lorber should definitely take a lesson from them. Or they should start commissioning commentaries from professionals.

THE NIGHT HOLDS TERROR (1955)

Driving through the desert one day, engineer Gene Courtier picks up a hitchhiker named Victor and soon regrets it when he is terrorized by Victor and two other thugs: the tough boss guy Robert and the passive, occasionally sympathetic Luther. When he doesn't have enough money on him to satisfy the trio, they work out a plan whereby Gene will sign over his car to them and they'll sell it for cash. But due to office procedures, they won't be able to sell the car until the next day, so they make Gene drive them to his suburban home where they plan to spend the night with Gene, his wife Doris, and their two kids. Tensions arise not only between the crooks and the family but between the crooks themselves. Victor has a hair-trigger temper that Robert has to keep on eye on, and Luther, who gets cheated out of some of the money owed him, winds up trying to help Gene escape. The next day, when the men leave the house with Gene, Doris manages to call the police; meanwhile, when the thugs discover that Gene's father has some money, they decide to hold him hostage to get a better pay-off. The cops pair up with the phone company to try and trace the ransom phone calls. Nerves continue to fray until the nighttime climax.

I'm not a fan of the home invasion genre of crime film, claustrophobic B-movies which usually wind up as psychological thrillers. This one, for the most part, ignores psychology, but it also forgets to ratchet up the tension very often. The opening sequence when the crooks grab Gene plays out well, but as soon as the somewhat baroque car-sale plan goes into effect, things start to fall apart, for the crooks and the audience. When the thugs have center stage, things are interesting. Threatening hunk Vince Edwards (Victor) and tightly wound John Cassavetes (Robert) play off each other well, while David Cross (Luther) is a bit of a wild card, with his personality being the hardest to read. Hildy Parks, as Doris, is fine even if she has little to do except alternate between being nervous and being brave. Jack Kelly, as Gene, is a bit of a weak link, partly due to how the character is written. He swings from nervous to bold to foolish and back again throughout. One reason why the tension dissipates is that halfway through, when the police get involved, the movie goes to Dragnet-style docudrama, resulting in long sequences showing a kidnapping report going through police channels, the tracing of phone numbers, and the handling of the press—a major plotpoint is that the bad guys have a police radio in their car, so in theory they'll know if Doris calls the cops, but Doris doesn't realize this. The movie is well photographed, all on location which adds to the realistic tone. As others have pointed out, the title is not quite accurate—most of the action of the movie is set in bright, broad daylight. Some call this a film noir, but it's really just a crime film, watchable if rarely compelling. Nice line: Cassavetes telling the couple, "You've both seen too many crime thrillers." Pictured are Cassavetes and Edwards. [TCM]

THE KNACK... AND HOW TO GET IT (1965)

It's London during the swinging Sixties and it seems to poor Colin (Michael Crawford), a teacher and owner of a boarding house, as if everyone is having sexy fun except for him. He's particularly jealous of his downstairs tenant Tolen (Ray Brooks, below left)—Colin frequently sees dozens of foxy young women, all dressed in white turtlenecks, waiting in line for their snogging sessions with Tolen (though it's not quite clear how much of what we see in this movie is real and how much is imaginative exaggeration, both a strength and weakness of the film). When Colin seeks advice, Tolen tells him protein and good food are essential, but that largely it's intuition, a "knack" that any man can develop. Tolen's friend Rory, also a womanizer (the two men are hosting a reunion of their ex-girl friends at the Royal Albert Hall) is supposed to move in with Tolen, but he never shows up, so an artist named Tom (Donal Donnelly), who paints over the color brown with white whenever he sees it, moves in instead, and the three form a somewhat unbalanced friendship. Tolen is the sex expert, Colin is the desperate student, and Tom, who seems not interested in sex at all, becomes largely an observer. Tossed into this tinderbox is Nancy (Rita Tushingham, pictured at right with Crawford), a young woman new in town, looking to stay at the YWCA and start a new life. The rest of the movie follows their zany misadventures together until we learn that having the knack doesn't guarantee happiness, and not having it isn't fatal to romance.

Directed by Richard Lester, this is a very strange bit of 60s filmmaking. Based on a stage play set completely in the boys' flat, this has been opened up like crazy so you can never accuse it of being stagy. For my money, it spends too much time amping up the visual style at the expense of narrative coherence and characterization. On the plus side, the movie never stagnates, filled as it is with jump cuts, jazzy camera moves, and Greek chorus comments from bystanders. Many reviewers comment on the fantasy elements, such as the opening gaggle of women, but it soon becomes very difficult to tell what’s what. Is the Royal Albert Hall girlfriend meeting real? There is visual evidence that it is, but it also seems like it should be fantasy. There are no cues, visual or otherwise, that separate fact from fantasy so every story element becomes fodder for wackiness. People's actions and motivations are unclear; dialogue is rattled off quickly, like the actor is reading the lines off a teleprompter that is running at high speed. There are scenes inspired by silent slapstick (a lamppost falls on the street and a huge bed frame is transported through the crowded streets of London), there is door-slamming farce, and there is an oddly jarring note injected near the end when Nancy faints while off-and-on flirting with Tolen, then accuses him of rape. Some chuckles may be had in an innuendo-filled scene in which Tolen is engaged in woodworking and tells Colin things like, "I like the twist of a good screw," and "I'm bound to ask for a good finish." There is fun to be had in odd offhand scenes, such as the one in which a clerk compliments Tushingham on her looks, then repeats the exact same words to the next customer. I also like the odd moment or two when Tom seems to accuse Tolen of wanting him. It's hard to judge the acting because none of the characters are allowed to come to rounded life, but all the actors are appealing enough, especially Tushingham and Donnelly (whose role is particularly thankless). I liked a "mods and rockers" reference that is a call back to Lester's previous film, A HARD DAY'S NIGHT. Despite the movie's shiny 60s atmosphere, in the end Colin and Nancy walk down the street together into couplehood, more because the story demands it, not necessarily because we have a sense that they really belong together. Interesting as a period piece mostly. [TCM]

GOLIATH AGAINST THE GIANTS (1961)

After five years of battle, the Greeks (or, whatever people live near the Acropolis which is specifically referenced here) have been conquered by Goliath (not the Biblical figure) and his army. But there is no rest for the battle-weary, as Goliath discovers that back in his hometown (Beyrath?), the evil Bokan has 1) wrested power from the rightful king; 2) started a campaign of terror in which groups of helpless people who can't pay their taxes are tossed over a cliff—and if the fall doesn’t kill them, the brutal giants who live in the valley will; 3) and has sent assassins to take out Goliath. He and his crew take a ship back to Beyrath, and stopping at a desert island to stock up on fresh water, they find lovely blond Elea, bound and suffering. Goliath rescues her, but back on the water, they run into a nasty squall and an even nastier sea monster, leading to a wreck and the death of all except Goliath, his buddy Namath (not a football player), and Elea who all eventually wash up on the shore of Beyrath. Now things get complicated. Suffice to say that Elea is actually an assassin working for Bokan, but when she gets the truth about Bokan from Goliath, she joins forces with him. Also, a tribe of Amazons attack and one of them, Daina, joins up with Goliath. Also, there's another buddy of Goliath, Breseus, who is threatened with a huge torture wheel until Goliath saves him. Goliath and his merry band manage to spark a revolt, and finally in the last 10 minutes, we enter the valley of the giants to find that these fearsome creatures are barely taller than Goliath and look like scruffy cavemen from a grade-B science fiction movie from the 1950s.

As peplum movies go, this has a solid reputation. It's crammed with plot, which occasionally works against it. I’m not 100% sure of all the details in my summary, and I left out a few points I was especially confused about. For example, the opening invasion sequence is narrated in such a fashion that it seems like the invaders are the bad guys, which is par for the course, but then we find out it's our hero Goliath doing the invading. Why? When the men set sail for Beyrath, they discover a young lad named Antheus as a stowaway. The character seems ready-made to be mentored by Goliath, but before we've had time to get to know him, it seems he drowns at sea with most of the rest of the crew. I was sure he'd crop up again somehow, but he never did. So narratively, it's a bit of a mess. But story details are often secondary in these torch-and-toga flicks, and where it really counts, in beefcake and adventure, I give this pretty good marks. Brad Harris is not as beefy as some peplum heroes; he looks OK in a toga but he's not terribly convincing when pulling off feats of brute strength. Fernando Rey is also OK as Bokan, the chief villain, not really showing signs of going on to work in art movies with director Luis Bunuel and co-starring with Gene Hackman in The French Connection. For the record, Gloria Milland (pictured with Brad Harris) is Elea and Pepe Rubio is Breseus. The final revolt scene goes on a bit too long but is effective. The widescreen print on the region 1 DVD looks good. [DVD]

LADY FROM CHUNGKING (1942)

Set during the Japanese occupation of China, this WWII melodrama begins in a Chinese rice field where a small boy is threatened by a Japanese guard for playing rather than working. The laborers are mostly silent, though the kindly Kwan Mei (Anna May Wong, pictured) comforts him. She is also a leader of a local resistance group and when the guards aren't watching, she passes out smuggled weapons to the workers. When an American Flying Tigers plane is shot down, one wounded pilot, Rodney Carr, is taken prisoner but the other one, Pat O'Rourke, is saved and hidden by Kwan Mei and the resistance fighters, though they have to kill and hide the body of one Japanese guard. When the body is discovered, General Kaimura (Harold Huber) orders the execution of all the coolies from the rice paddy, but Kwan Mei talks him out of it by stressing their economic importance in providing rice for the Japanese to sell. Kwan Mei, an educated aristocrat before the occupation, becomes Kaimura's mistress. This causes some of the rebels to accuse her of collaboration even as she negotiates with Hans Gruber, a German hotel owner who is selling arms to the resistance (while predicting Nazi victory in the war). A half-American, half-Russian singer named Lavara (Mae Clarke) is enlisted by Kwan Mei to help the pilot Carr escape, while Kwan Mei, the American pilots, and the Chinese rebels try to destroy an incoming supply of weapons meant for Kaimura and his troops.

Anna May Wong has been made to carry a lot of symbolic weight; as one of the few Asian-Americans to have had lead roles in Hollywood movies in the classic era, her life story is often presented both as something to celebrate (she sustained a career in the 20s and 30s) and as something tragic (she was denied the parts that might have made her an even bigger star). I agree that she is an important symbol in movie history, but I also have my doubts that she could have handled the bigger roles to which she aspired. This, her last leading role, doesn't change my mind; she is attractive but bland here as the self-sacrificing heroine. [Spoiler: she is executed at the end but her spirit continues to speak to us.] Of course, this is a B-movie from Poverty Row studio PRC and B-director William Nigh (who cranked out over 70 movies between 1930 and 1948), so maybe working with grade-A talent might have made a difference in Wong's performances. Still, this is an appealing little war film with some interesting twists and turns (keeping track of the loyalties of both Gruber and Lavara keeps us on our toes) and good performances. As was the Hollywood norm, non-Asian actors play leading Japanese roles—Harold Huber as Kaimura and Ted Hecht as Shimoto, the general’s assistant—but both are very good, as is Ludwig Donath as Gruber, Mae Clarke as Lavara, and Rick Vallin as Rodney. An entertaining 40s B-film. [YouTube]

MEET DANNY WILSON (1952)

Saloon singer Danny Wilson (Frank Sinatra) and his pianist and manager Mike Ryan (Alex Nicol) are a small-time duo looking for a break. Danny has a tendency to be brash and get into fights that Mike has to finish for him, but they are truly the best of friends. One night as they skedaddle out of a cheap, noisy dive where Danny's caused trouble, they run into Joy (Shelley Winters), a dolled-up woman out for a night of drinking, so she gets the two to join her at a fancy bar, hoping their presence will protect her from unwanted male attention. The evening ends in a scuffle with a cop and the three wind up in jail. Their bail is paid by Joy's employer Nick (Raymond Burr), a gangster who runs the club where Joy sings. Sobered up, the three realize they've hit it off and Joy gets Nick to give the fellas a job. The one sticking point: Nick wants 50 percent of all of their earnings, present and future. They agree and Nick says no written contract is necessary, implying he has other ways of ensuring that they'll stick to the agreement. From then, it's a rocket to the top for Danny, always accompanied by Mike. Danny falls in love with Joy, but he is unaware that Joy and Mike are in love, and neither can bring themselves to tell him. Eventually, Danny becomes a big star and chafes under Nick's drain on his income. When Nick has to go into hiding, Danny's tempted to stop making payments to him. At the same time, he impulsively announces that he's going to marry Joy. Melodrama ensues.

This movie has a bit of a tone problem. The first third, and the most enjoyable part of the film, is basically a musical comedy, with Sinatra singing a number of standards ("How Deep is the Ocean," "I've Got a Crush on You") in the context of public performances. The energy between the starring trio is fun, and I especially liked Alex Nicol, who comes off as sort of a cross between Dan Dailey and Sterling Hayden; he's the person we most identify with. Sinatra and Winters are fine, but honestly I was most impressed by Raymond Burr, playing his usual 1950s menacing thug in a very low-key manner that made him all the more threatening. The tone becomes darker in the last half, to the point where I was worried that one of our leads might wind up dead. The screenplay has some nice dialogue. In the jail scene, a guitar player is there because he "hit a be-bop guy right in the goatee," which gets an approving nod from Sinatra. When, early on, Sinatra and Burr are discussing musical tastes, Burr says he prefers Crosby, and Nicol, wanting to get down to business, says, "Now that the byplay is over…" Near the end, when Burr comes out of hiding to get the money Sinatra owes him, Sinatra smarts off by saying, "Sue me." Burr pulls out a gun and says, dead seriously, "Meet my lawyer." The character of Danny Wilson seems obviously based loosely on Sinatra—apparently he was at a career low point when this was made, though the next year, things would turn around with his Oscar-winning role in From Here to Eternity. I knew this movie mostly because it was the inspiration for the one-hit wonder 80s pop band Danny Wilson ("Mary’s Prayer") but it was a short essay online in the New Yorker that made me look this one up. Pictured are Sinatra, Nicol and Winters. [TCM]

THE RETURN OF DR. FU MANCHU (1930)

At the end of THE MYSTERIOUS DR. FU MANCHU Fu (Warner Oland) was apparently dead, Inspector Nayland Smith (O.P Heggie) was victorious, and Fu's adopted daughter Lia (Jean Arthur) was free to marry her sweetheart Jack (Neil Hamilton) who, as the son of Sir John Petrie, one of Fu's primary enemies, was on Fu's most wanted list. Out of respect for Fu's religion, Smith orders that an autopsy not be performed, which turns out to be a big mistake. Fu wasn't actually dead but merely in a state of deep suspended animation, and at his funeral, Fu's henchmen sneak him out of his coffin, and awaken him so he can prepare to do battle again in revenge for the death of his wife and son at the hands of the British. The first clue that all is not well comes when, on the day of Jack and Lia's wedding, Lia gets that strange trance feeling that Fu's presence always had on her. Before the wedding can proceed, the servant Fai Lu enters, says Fu is alive, and drops dead holding a piece of paper with a blood-stained dragon, Fu's infamous calling card. That night, despite the house being guarded, Lia is kidnapped (along with her Aunt Agatha) and used as bait to get at Jack. Both Nayland and Jack wind up in Fu's clutches. Fu plans to inject Nayland with a brain-scrambling drug, and later, a seriously wounded and partially paralyzed Fu forces Jack to operate on him. Will our heroes prevail or will Fu get the upper hand?

This sequel to the previous Fu Manchu film from a year earlier is better made and a bit more exciting, though Oland's Fu is a little less sinister-seeming than Boris Karloff's later iteration. One critic, Mark David Welsh, has written that Oland comes off like a "cuddly uncle" here, and while that's a bit of an exaggeration, Oland does sometimes feel more like a cranky Charlie Chan than an evil mastermind. But overall, this is passable early sound entertainment. The tone and pacing are out of a B-movie serial, with the set for the abandoned dye works that has become Fu's headquarters truly impressive. Jean Arthur and Neil Hamilton (pictured) don't have much chemistry but individually they're both fine—though Arthur has to suffer through one scene being carried out against her will as she yells, "You beast!"—as is Heggie as Nayland Smith. The return of William Austin as the shrieking nelly butler Sylvester is unwelcome. This film was billed in some of its original engagements as The New Adventures of Fu Manchu. The print, from a home video restoration presented by Kino Lorber, is in good shape. [Blu-ray]

JIGSAW (1962)

In the bedroom of a coastal short-term rental house, a woman is trying to get her lover Johnny (whose face we don't see) to loll about in bed with her a little longer, then she tells him that she's pregnant. His reaction, clearly not the one she was going for, is to strangle her. Cut to a few days later when a real estate agent reports a break-in. The agent's mild-mannered associate (compared to the gruff impatience of his boss) came to work to find the office broken into; the only things taken were some rental leases. Eventually, as the police detectives (Jack Warner and Ronald Lewis) follow leads in the robbery, they discover the beach house, leased by a John Campbell, and the dead body inside, which the killer had started to cut up and put in a trunk. They also find luggage with J.S. initials on the outside and assume those are the dead woman's initials. So the hunt is on for the identities of the both the victim and the murderer. Despite some witnesses who met John Campbell, they have a hard time pinning anyone down until circumstantial evidence puts a vacuum cleaner salesman (Michael Goodliffe) at the scene of the crime. But was he there at the time of the crime? Despite the description on the DVD box, this is most certainly not a film noir—it's a straightforward police procedural, mostly set in broad daylight, which is at pains to humanize its characters, including the cops and the suspects. As such cop movies go, this is a bit above average, though it moves slowly and at almost 110 minutes feels too long. But the structure is interesting—as Warner spins possible scenarios, we see them presented as they might have happened. The older Warner and the younger Lewis make an amiable pair, Yolande Donlan is fine as one of the J.S. women, and Michael Goodliffe is especially good as the chief suspect. The location shooting adds to the realistic feel of the film, which is based on a novel which was itself based on the true story of the Brighton Trunk Murders of the 1930s. Pictured is Ronald Lewis. [DVD]

THE LAST HURRAH (1958)

Frank Skeffington (Spencer Tracy), long-time mayor of a New England city very much like Boston, is running for a fifth term despite being at an age when most people think about retiring. He's a controversial figure (for reasons that are not made crystal clear, except that it's rich folks and the clergy who tend not to like him), but he seems to truly care about his constituents and is energized by campaigning and by his old cronies who rally around for what is presumed to be his final go. Skeffington gets his nephew, sports reporter Adam Caulfield (Jeffrey Hunter) to cover his campaign. That pretty much summarizes this late-era John Ford movie, which is more driven by character than plot, but the characters are interesting and are played by a wonderful array of classic-era supporting players. Among them: Pat O'Brien (Skeffington's campaign manager), John Carradine (a newspaper publisher bitterly opposed to Skeffington), Donald Crisp (a cardinal), Edward Brophy (a comic relief pal called 'Ditto'), James Gleason, Ricardo Cortez, Anna Lee (in a highlight scene at a wake for an unpopular man), Frank McHugh and Jane Darwell. Some have substantial roles, some are just walk-ons, but it's fun to see them all. Adam is clearly a son figure for Skeffington, as his own son, a flighty gadabout, is a disappointment, although there is a core of family love between them. Adam's father-in-law (Willis Bouchey) despises Skeffington, and Adam's wife (Dianne Foster) is barely sketched out at all. Skeffington's opponents are also vaguely presented, with one becoming the butt for some mild satire of campaign advertising. The biggest problem for me is that even Skeffington remains allusive, which is a problem in a character-driven drama; it's also a problem in a movie about politics when we're not sure what people's politics are. Tracy is good in the role, but I think he would have been even better with more background to work with, though his last scene is a little gem. Despite a flat visual style (the abovementioned wake scene is the most dynamic in the movie) and a gauzy narrative, this is worthwhile viewing for classic movie fans. Pictured are Tracy and Hunter. [TCM]

THE WITCHES (1967)

The 1960s was a high time for foreign language anthology movies (Boccaccio '70, Spirits of the Dead, Black Sabbath), most of which featured short tales on a particular theme (love, horror). The title of this one might lead you to believe that these stories will involve the supernatural, but no, the only common thread here is the leading lady of each of the five short films, Silvana Mangano. (It could have been called The Bitches, as most of the tales involve bad behavior on the part of Mangano or other women; despite what Wikipedia says, the stories do not actually feature witches.) The first tale, The Witch Burned Alive, seems to be a commentary on vanity, lust and jealousy: Mangano is a reclusive movie star who shows up at a friend's ski chalet in the middle of a weekend party. The men want to sleep with her, and when she passes out, the women strip her and revel in the fact that her beauty is achieved by artificial means (make-up, skin tape, etc.). The second story, Civic Spirit, is a five-minute joke about a woman who appears to be a good Samaritan by offering to take a car accident victim out of a traffic jam and to a hospital, but her real motive is not so civic-minded. The Earth as Seen from the Moon, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, is a fun, slapstick, somewhat surreal tale of a man and his grown son searching for a woman to replace the man's recently deceased wife. They find her a beautiful deaf mute who cleans up their hovel of a home and joins their schemes to make money. The Sicilian Belle is another very short bit in which Mangano complains to her father about a suitor, leading to a killing spree.

The best is saved for last. An Evening Like the Others, directed by Vittorio De Sica, has Mangano and her husband (a young and handsome Clint Eastwood) going through the rituals of a typical boring evening as Mangano wants some excitement and Eastwood just wants to relax. Interspersed are her fantasy visions of what her life could be like, featuring costumed superheroes and Eastwood, mostly naked, flying through the air into bed with her. What this colorful segment has going for it are the elements of surprise and fun, even if ultimately the message, if there is one, is that life will never live up to our fantasies. Overall, I found this a fairly weak anthology film as the parts didn't hang together well. Mangano (pictured in the De Sica story) shows a nice acting range, from cold and unpleasant in the first film to subservient in the third film to a bored fantasizer in the last film. Eastwood is quite fun in this almost sit-com role, an outlier in his career. Italian comic Toto works well with Ninetto Davoli (at the time Pasolini's companion) in the Pasolini story. This and the De Sica segment both have a kind of fun comic-book look. The first story, directed by Luchino Visconti, uses light and color in interesting ways. I don't recommend this highly, but as this movie has been difficult to see for some time, check it out while you can. [Criterion Channel]