When the Earth falls out of orbit, two women try to cope with increasingly oppressive heat in a nearly abandoned city.
Stay cool! – MonsterGirl
Directed by Herschel Daugherty adapted for television by writer William D. Gordon from a short story by crime novelist MacIntoch Malmar. Which was later adapted for television, again directed by Hershel Daugherty in an updated film called The Victim 1972Â starring the wonderful Elizabeth Montgomery and the always acerbic Eileen Heckart.
Starring Nancy Kelly as Janet Willsom (The Bad Seed 1956) The classic American horror-thriller film directed by Mervyn LeRoy won Kelly an Oscar for Best Actress that year as psychotic Rhoda Penmark’s (Patty McCormack) mother, Christine Penmark.
Walter Kerr of the New York Herald Tribune wrote of her "Tony Award-winning stage performance:
“Though Miss Kelly has done attractive work on Broadway before, she has never really prepared us for the brilliance of the present portrait” (Walter Kerr-New York Times, January 14, 1995).
The Bad Seed 1956 also stars Eileen Heckart and the quintessentially cranky Henry Jones)
The evil Rhoda strokes her mother. Scarier than clowns….!
The Storm also stars James Griffith as Ed Brandies the quirky lecherous and intrusive cab driver. David McLean as Ben T. Willsom and Jean Carroll as the voice of phone operator Drucie. Not to be forgotten, the beautifully sleek and ever-present Baba the black cat and real star of this episode…
Nancy Kelly plays Janet Willsom, a woman besieged by noises and bad weather, while isolated in her home, waiting for her husband Ben to arrive home in during a raging storm. Kept alerted and accompanied by her faithful black cat Baba, Janet must first fend off the nauseating advances of the cabbie who brings her home and wants to practically move in on her, while her husband is away on business.
When I originally posted this feature I had made a reference to Hitchcock in the post concerning the body of the dead girl in the trunk. The focus is on her lifeless finger, with the large diamond ring dangling as limp as a soggy carrot.
The Storm, in general, contains striking elements of a good old-fashioned Hitchcock thriller! As well as the framing of one hell of a good stage play!
I hadn’t been asked to join in the BEST HITCHCOCK MOVIE (THAT HITCHCOCK NEVER MADE)Â yet. So here it is once again, with a few little tidbits thrown in so that it can take its place in the wonderful blogathon that’s going on between July 7 -July 13!
The episode opens with a mysterious pair of man’s trousers assailing a beautiful blonde in the midst of the rainstorm. She is strangled and stuffed in a trunk in the cellar, as we are strategically shown the emphasis on a shiny diamond ring on her lifeless finger sticking out of the trunk. A very Hitchockian moment…
Is Janet now being stalked by the same mad killer? What’s behind every noise and flash of light and sweep of shadow?
I love this episode because it creates a perfectly creepy environment of isolation. Very much lit as a faithful crime drama Film Noir, the shear simplicity of each moment, each little task Janet undergoes to create normalcy and safety in her surroundings, what would usually be merely ordinary banal gestures become tautly drawn-out maneuvers in a darkly ominous, tweaked and dangerous landscape.
Invoking more of a sense of terror because of its bared-down realism, than a manufactured horror. As suggested by David Schow‘s wonderful commentary of this episode on the recently released DVD box set, the atmosphere of the isolated ‘woman in peril‘ who must fend off whatever is lurking, reminds us of Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark 1967
This is also a faithful psychological Film Noir piece, utilizing the very best in Nancy Kelly as the dame in danger and James Griffith as the lasciviously intrusive cab driver Ed whose quirky character is either a raving maniac or just a red herring to throw us off the scent of the true murderer.
Continue reading “As sure as my name is MonsterGirl, this is a Boris Karloff Thriller! “The Storm””
(Anthony Perkins) plays Dennis Pitt, a mentally disturbed young man recently released from an institution, who tells a pretty All-American girl Sue Ann Stepanek (Tuesday Weld) that he’s a secret agent working for the CIA.
She’s thrilled to feed into Dennis’ fantasy world and that’s when all hell breaks loose and subterfuge Folie à deux and murder ensue, in this dark thriller from the 1960s. Co-starring Beverly Garland as Mrs. Stepanek and John Randolph as Morton Azenauer
Directed by Noel Black and written by Stephen Geller based on his novel, and screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr.
Happy Trailers-MonsterGirl!
In the early 20th century, a Gorgon takes human form and terrorizes a small European village by turning its citizens to stone. This Gothic Hammer Horror of mythic proportions is directed by Terence Fisher and stars those British titans of terror Christopher Lee, as Prof. Karl Meister, Peter Cushing as Dr. Namaroff, and Barbara Shelley as Carla Hoffman.
Happy Trailers- MonsterGirl!
European Director/Provocateur Roger Vadim (And God Created Woman 1956, Barbarella 1968, Spirits of The Dead 1968, Pretty Maids All In A Row 1971) adapts Sheridan Le Fanu’s tale of sensuality, jealous Obsession, and Vampirism.
The Gorgeous Annette Vadim is ‘Carmilla’ Karnstein who is jealous of her cousin Leopoldo de Karnstein’s (Mel Ferrer) upcoming engagement to the beautiful Georgia Monteverdi (Elsa Martinelli).
Carmilla’s fixation manifests itself in the form of a female ancestor who is a vampire, which possesses her thus beginning a siege of terror at the family estate, culminating in a surreal and stunning bloodbath.
Stumbling onto the ancestral tomb! Is it real or imagined?
This is a beautiful cinematic horror film… a surreal journey that is at times told in dream-like sequences that are utter visual feasts for the Gothic soul. Blood and Roses has some of the most memorable imagery, and tastefully lensed eroticism, especially for ‘Lesbian Vampire’ aficionados. One of my favorite classic Euro horror films of the 1960s.
Happy Trailers- MonsterGirl
Season One Episode 32 Air date May 4th, 1964
Directed by Gerd Oswald and written by Joseph Stefano
Two women decide the only way out of an abusive relationship with a sadistic blackmailer is to poison him. In the midst of fleeing, they come upon an isolated house with an odd old caretaker and a solitary young man who dabbles with clocks, time travel, and raising the dead.
The dreamy David McCallum plays Tone Hobart, the man who can tinker with time, space, and soul revival. Vera Miles plays the self-assured Kasha, Barbara Rush is the slightly neurotic Leonora, Cedric Hardwicke is Colus, the stoic manservant and Scott Marlowe is the fiendish Andre. From one of the truly timeless series, with the advent of a social consciousness, The Outer Limits, is one of my favorite television series of all time!
As I’ve been known to write about Boris Karloff’s Thriller, I do plan on covering a few of my most treasured episodes in-depth and certainly with my usual long-winded overview and images of the original The Outer Limits!
For now… I couldn’t resist adding my musical voice to a ‘moment in time’ of one of the most poetic and haunting stories in the series. Here are edited scenes from The Forms of Things Unknown mashed up with my song ‘The Mistress of Time’ off my album The Amber Sessions.
Eternally Yours – Jo Gabriel – MonsterGirl
Carnival of Souls (1962): Criterion 60s Eerie Cinema: That Haunting Feeling
Herk Harvey’s one film masterpiece of the macabre, starring Candace Hilligoss.
I’ve taken scenes from the film and edited them together with my song called Vacant Little Stare off the album Fools and Orphans.
This cult classic is so incredibly atmospheric and the imagery so unique for its day, that I couldn’t resist melding it together with my song, of alienation, loneliness, and madness, which compliment Mary Henry’s persona very well I think! Enjoy!-Joey
MonsterGirl- Jo Gabriel
Here is a music/film mash-up tribute to Bava and Steele, using edited clips from the classic film and a song off my neo-classical lo-fi album The Last Drive In!
Mario Bava’s masterpiece of Gothic horror starring the legendary Barbara Steele is the vengeful witch Katia Vajda / Princess Asa Vajda who rises from the tomb to possess the body of her descendant!
BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 4: The Dark Goddess-This Dark Mirror
MonsterGirl (Jo Gabriel)
This obscure film surrounds a voodoo priestess who sends out zombies to bring back live victims for her sacrificial rituals. Also known as Blood of The Zombie! The filmed in vivid colors on location is New Orleans, which makes for a pretty atmospheric landscape for voodoo rituals and zombie making…even on an outre cheap budget!
Written and Directed by Barry Mahon who also brought us The Beast Who Killed Women 1965. Starring John Mckay and real-life wife Linda Ormand of… well…The Dead One 1961 and Monica Davis who had branched out into Test Tube Babies 1948, Rocket Attack USA 1961, The Hookers 1967 and for that ‘Sin in the Suburbs’ pleasure, The Swap and How They Make It (1966)
Happy Trailers! – MonsterGirl
Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal Horror/Thriller/Noir masterpiece transformed the meaning of the word ‘Mother‘ in cinema and devoted it to an entirely new significance. Starring Anthony Perkins as the molly-coddled Norman Bates, who couldn’t even hurt a fly. He runs The Bate’s Motel, while caring for his aged, dominating to the point of suffocating and devouring mother.
Janet Leigh plays Marion Crane, a frustrated office worker in Phoenix Arizona, who is tired of meeting her lover Sam Loomis played by the hunky John Gavin, during her lunch breaks to squeeze in quickies, and who can’t afford to marry her, because he is buried under by alimony payments to his ex-wife.
A woman doomed to a horrible fate for her sexual freedom and being in the wrong place at the right time!
In a fevered moment of revolt, she steals $40,000 that is entrusted to her to deposit in the bank and heads out for Sam’s place in California. Caught in a rain storm, she pulls off the main highway and comes upon The Bates Motel and the very dark and looming house that sits atop the hill overlooking the little motel.
Marion starts out wearing black lace undergarments while in the throws of lust and greed but is transformed in one night by a pang of conscience.
Having stopped at the Bate’s Motel for a respite, she meets the lonely and odd Norman who wants to share his cheese sandwich and a glass of milk, or perhaps his love of taxidermy with Marion. He’s definitely aroused by Marion’s kindness and curves, and that makes ‘mother’ VERY unhappy!
Marion decides to put the money back, symbolically she is adorned in virginal white underwear again…unfortunately for Marion, it’s too late for redemption…She winds up stabbed to death by a butcher while in the shower within the first 20 minutes of the film. It’s one of the most iconic scenes in horror film history that set the pace for slasher films to follow!
Though a stunning moment in film history, there is very little blood.
Killing off a major star at the beginning of a film had not been done before. The audience was also asked not to reveal the ending of the picture.
The scene is not only an iconic one but remains branded in the psyche, for its brutal tone of alienation and its savage simplicity.
During Marion’s murder scene, the camera frames the blood-stained water, draining out of the tub, as Marion’s life force is reckoned so insignificant as to be washed down the rusty pipes forever. The focus is on her one lifeless open eye, staring back at us. A death scene that is memorable… shocking… historically transformative.
Life down the drain…
At this point in our culture, I can’t imagine anyone not knowing the story, or not having used a reference to the Bates Motel or Norman. I still have a fear of small motels off the beaten path, somewhat like how I feared swimming in the ocean after having seen the theatrical release of Jaws in the 70s.
The story is based on Robert Bloch’s novel, and penned for the screen by Outer Limits writer, Joseph Stefano and acts as a sort of composite or embodiment of legendary Serial Killer Ed Gein, Norman remains truly one of the most infamous horror characters in film history for his sympathetic yet terrifying derangement.
The film also stars one of my favorite actresses Vera Miles as Marion’s sister Lila, who does not believe that Marion ever left the Bates Motel. She and Sam Loomis elicit the help of Martin Balsam as Detective Milton Arbogast. With appearances by Lurene Tuttle, the spirited Simon Oakland, and John McIntire.
Happy Mother’s Day – MonsterGirl!