Category: Classic Film Noir

From The Vault: Caught (1949)

“The Story of a desperate girl”

CAUGHT 1949

Director Max Ophüls ( Letter From An Unknown Woman 1948, The Reckless Moment 1949) offers a gritty and volatile film noir starring James Mason, Barbara Bel Geddes, and the imposing figure of Robert Ryan. With an uncredited assistant directorship by Robert Aldrich. Based on the book Wild Calendar by Libbie Block

Written by Arthur Laurents (The Snake Pit 1948, West Side Story 1961, The Way We Were 1973)

Interesting question: If Howard Hughes gained control of RKO in 1949, was Robert Ryan’s characterization of Smith Ohlrig truly based on Hughs?

A young Howard Hughes…Ryan was perfect for the part of Smith Ohlrig.

Also stars Frank Ferguson (regular on Andy Griffith Show) as Quinada’s partner Dr. Hoffman, Art Smith as Ohlrig’s psychiatrist who knows Ohlrig is a walking powder keg, Natalie Schafer as Dorothy Dale and Curt Bois as Ohlrig’s personal assistant, and like many a good Film Noir delivers, the snarky gay cipher – Franzi Kartos, who’s incessantly calling Leonora DARLING… that if subtitled would read ‘you bourgeois cow…’

One of the staples of the Noir catalog, Caught is a brutish and self-contained story about an egomaniac, hungry for power and consumed by a nasty possessiveness that borders on the psychotic.

Paging Dr. Freud… a classic case of overcompensation and oh yes… this man is a ticking time bomb.

Robert Ryan is chilling as the Neanderthal bigwig worth millions of dollars, with an explosive rage that rests on simmer until something sets him off when it doesn’t go his way. Oh, and Ohlrig also suffers from panic attacks, which he believes is truly a heart condition and not a nervous disorder.

Barbara Bel Geddes is the naive Leonora Eames, who has childlike fancies of marrying a wealthy man and living a life of luxury. Invited to a party on a boat one night, she meets Smith Ohlrig outside on the pier, near his yacht. Although Ohlrig could have any woman he chooses, something about Leonora sparks on him. From the very first encounter, we can see that it’s not a romantic chemistry that stirs Ohlrig, but something more forbidding and sinister.

Once he sets his sights on her, taking her for a ride in his car, he decides there and then, to marry this plain girl, whom he doesn’t love but knows he can possess easily.

Leonora soon realizes that her dream has become a nightmare and that Smith is a menacing character who treats her like part of the furniture and is not quite right in the head.

Ohlrig refuses to give Leonora a divorce, so she decides to leave her opulent home on Long Island and take a job as a receptionist in the city working for a doctor who runs a free clinic in a very poor neighborhood.

Perhaps this is Leonora’s way of cleansing her soul for making the mistake of marrying for money and not for love.

James Mason is Dr. Larry Quinada the absolute antithesis of Smith Ohlrig. He’s genteel and compassionate, and soon the two fall in love, though Leonora is held captive by her dominating husband.

Leonora Eames: Look at me! Look at what you bought!

Complicating matters is the fact that Leonora becomes pregnant by the sadistic Ohlrig who would rather see her a prisoner in the sterile palace that is her home rather than let her go free… Is the threat of financial security and the welfare of their unborn child that which will chain her to him forever…?

Smith Ohlrig: Is she coming down?
Franzi Kartos: [Stands silent, knowing that Leonora is not coming down]
Smith Ohlrig: [Getting angrier] Why the devil do you think I sent you up there, you dirty little parasite? Get her down here!
Franzi Kartos: [Long pause] I think I prefer to be a headwaiter again, Mr. Ohlrig.
Franzi Kartos: [Heads for the door, then stops] You know, you’re a big man, but not big enough to destroy that girl. Goodbye.

Franzi Kartos tinkling the ivories…darling.

There are thousands of fabulous films in my collection just as thrilling, this is one of them! Don’t you get caught-MonsterGirl

From The Vault: Portrait in Black (1960)

“They touched…and an evil spark was struck!”

PORTRAIT IN BLACK (1960)

Directed by Michael Gordon, Produced by Ross Martin, based on a play, and adapted to the screen by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, this crime melodrama is filled with all the right tawdry drama and campy dialogue that makes watching films from the fabulous 60’s so much fun!

Starring Lana Turner as Sheila Cabot a woman who is married to a dying shipping magnate Matthew Cabot ( Lloyd Nolan). Anthony Quinn portrays Dr. David Rivera, Matthew Cabot’s attending physician. The wealthy couple lives in a sumptuous home in San Francisco.

Sheila and the good Doctor, begin having an affair, and soon after their sparks fly, the lovers decide to murder Sheila’s nasty yet, terminally ill husband.

But as often the way these juicy tales of murder and passion go, someone knows the lovers have killed off the rich old Cabot, and begins blackmailing them.

Sandra Dee plays Cathy, Cabot’s daughter from his first marriage. Richard Basehart is Howard Mason, Cabot’s greedy business partner. John Saxon plays Blake Richards, the chauffeur, who is pursuing Cathy, and Ray Walston, Virgina Grey and Anna May Wong fill out the cast of dubious characters, all of whom might be the ‘one’ who knows about their crime!

Oh the flashy melodramatics, Oh Turner’s wardrobe! There are thousands of films in my collection, this is just one of those deliciously trashy ones.- MonsterGirl…

Postcards From Shadowland No.6

The 49th Parallel (1949) Directed by Michael Powell and starring Leslie Howard and Laurence Olivier
La Belle et la Bête 1946 directed by Jean Cocteau starring Jean Marais and Josette Day
Beggars of Life 1928 staring Wallace Beery, Louise Brooks and Richard Arlen. Directed by William Wellman
Bunny Lake is Missing 1965 Directed by Otto Preminger. Starring Carol Lynley, Laurence Olivier, and Keir Dullea
La Main du Diable or Carnival of Sinners 1943 Directed by Maurice Tourneur and stars Pierre Fresnay, Josseline Gael and Noel Roquevert
The Devil and Daniel Webster 1941 Directed by William Dieterle and stars Walter Houston as Old Scratch, and Edward Arnold, Jane Darwell and Simone Simon.
Dracula’s Daughter 1936 directed by Lambert Hillyer and starring Gloria Holden, Otto Kruger and Marguerite Churchill
Experiment in Terror 1962 directed by Blake Edwards and starring Lee Remick, Glenn Ford, Stephanie Powers and a raspy Ross Martin as ‘Red’ Lynch
Fallen Angel 1945 Directed by Otto Preminger and starring Linda Darnell, Dana Andrews and Alice Faye
Fedra The Devil’s Daughter 1956 Directed by Manuel Mur Oti and stars Emma Penelia, Enrique Diosdado and Vicente Parra
Joan Crawford is Possessed 1947 directed by Curtis Bernhardt, also starring Van Heflin and Raymond Massey
Diaboliques 1955 directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot and starring Simone Signoret, Vera Clouzot and Paul Meurisse
Never Take Sweets From A Stranger 1960 Directed by Cyril Frankel and stars Gwen Watford, Patrick Allen and Felix Aylmer
The Night Holds Terror 1955 Directed by Andrew L. Stone starring Jack Kelly, Hildy Parks, Vince Edwards and John Cassavetes
Robert Mitchum is Harry Powell, in Night of The Hunter 1955 Directed by Charles Laughton also starring Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish
Plunder Road 1957 directed by Hubert Cornfield and stars Gene Raymond, Jeanne Cooper, Wayne Morris and Elisha Cook Jr.
Seance On a Wet Afternoon 1964 directed by Bryan Forbes and stars Kim Stanley, Richard Attenborough and Margaret Lacey
Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers On a Train 1951 starring Farley Granger, Robert Walker and Ruth Roman
Gloria Swanson is Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard 1950 Directed by Billy Wilder and starring William Holden and Erich von Stroheim
Val Lewton’s The Seventh Victim 1943 Directed by Mark Robson and stars Kim Hunter, Tom Conway and Jean Brooks
Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi star in Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat 1934 inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s story.
The Killer Is Loose 1956 Directed by Budd Boetticher and stars Joseph Cotten, Rhonda Fleming and Wendell Corey
The Ox-Bow Incident 1943 Directed by William Wellman and stars Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Mary Beth Hughes and Anthony Quinn
The Prowler 1951 Directed by Joseph Losey and stars Evelyn Keyes and Van Heflin
The Queen of Spades 1949 Directed by Thorold Dickinson and stars Anton Walbrook, Edith Evans and Yvonne Mitchell
Lon Chaney stars in Tod Browning’s The Unknown 1927 also starring Joan Crawford and Norman Kerry.
Edward L. Cahn’s 1956 film The Werewolf
Jean Epstein’s The Fall of the House of Usher 1928 inspired by Edgar Allan Poe and adapted for the screen by Luis Bunuel
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932) Based on a story by Sheridan Le Fanu. Starring Julian West, Maurice Schutz and Rena Mandel

She’s Become Hysterical: The ‘Cassandra Complex’ in a Cinematic Moment.

SHE’S BECOME HYSTERICAL!!!!!!!!

The Cassandra Metaphor can have various invocations. Also called a ‘syndrome’, ‘complex’, ‘phenomenon’ ‘dilemma’ or ‘curse.’ This occurs when valid warnings are dismissed or ignored.

Originating from Greek Mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of Priam King of Troy. Apollo became obsessed with her beauty and so gave her the gift of prophecy. But once Cassandra rebuffed Apollo’s sexual advances, he cursed her making it impossible for anyone to believe her warnings. She could never convince anyone of her predictions.

Thus could be the origin of ‘the hysterical woman.’ Women often depicted in films as hysterical, to be dismissed, confined, calmed down, psychiatrically subdued and shut away.

The metaphor has been used in various contexts of psychology, philosophy and cinema.

"I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really." –Tennessee Williams

Rosemary’s Baby 1968
Women’s Prison 1955
Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte 1964
Airport 1970
The Snake Pit 1948
A Woman Under the Influence 1974
The Haunting 1963
The Devils 1971
House on Haunted Hill 1959
The Birds 1963
Strait-Jacket 1964
Repulsion 1965
Suddenly Last Summer 1959
Caged 1950

A trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away! The Night Holds Terror (1955)

“Three young, empty-eyed killers, without mercy or morals, turn a private home into a house of horror!”

The Night Holds Terror 1955

Based on a true crime, A nice suburban family man Gene Courtier makes the mistake of picking up a hitch-hiker who turns out to be dangerous escaped convict Victor Gosset, on the run from the police. 

His gang proceeds to hold Courtier’s family hostage at their home at gunpoint.

As time ticks on, the situation becomes more tense and volatile culminating into a living nightmare!

Directed and written by Andrew L. Stone as a crime noir thriller, it stars Jack Kelly and Hildy Parks as the Courtiers and Vince Edwards as the ruthless woman hungry Victor Gosset.

At first Gosset wants Courtier to sell his car for the cash, but Batsford (Cassavettes) wants to hold the family hostage for the ransom money instead…

Also stars John Cassavettes as Robert Batsford. and David Cross as Luther Logan the other two men in Gosset’s gang. A real gripping thriller!

“With a gasp in your throat… and a gun at your back!”

Don’t pick up any hitch-hikers, but of course you knew that by now-MonsterGirl cares!

Val Lewton’s Curse of The Cat People (1944) “God should use a Rose Amber Spot!” Seeing the darkness thru the ‘Fearing Child’ and ‘The Monstrous Feminine’ Part II

Begin ‘The Bagheeta’: Val Lewton’s fantasy/ reality world of Curse of The Cat People: fearing the female/feline monster and the engendering child. Part I

This post continues from Part 1 at the link above!

And now, Part II

FANTASY as REALITY, REALTY as FANTASY – From page 112, Chapter 7, J.P Telotte Dreams of Darkness

The Curse of the Cat People (1944)

The child per se makes us uneasy, ambivalent ; we are anxious about the human propensities concentrated by the child symbol. It evokes too much of what has been left out or is unknown, becoming easily associated with the primitive, mad and mystical. – James Hillman ” Abandoning the Child” in Loose Ends.

The evil little girl in Master of the Macabre Mario Bava’s Kill Baby Kill (1966).
The embodiment of evil in a little blonde girl from Federico Fellini’s segment Toby Dammit of 1968’s Spirits of The Dead.
In stark contrast to those two iconic evil imps of horror (above), Amy Reed is not supposed evil incarnate, but she does threaten the equilibrium of the ‘normal’ world her father inhabits.

To continue with this blog post about one of Lewton’s very precious stories, less dark than his others, and dealing with childhood, the fears of and by children.

All of Lewton’s works dealt with subject matters that forced us to push the boundaries of ‘the familiar.’ They challenged us to face a darker, more mysterious reality of the natural world and the incomprehensible landscape of the human psyche.

Curse of the Cat People (1944) acts as a cinematic continuum to Lewton’s Cat People 1942, featuring Simone Simon once again as the alluring and sensual Irena Dubrovna Reed, who may or may not have belonged to a race of beings that could shapeshift into the physical form of a large cat or black panther when sexually aroused.

The symbol of Irena synthesized the fear of women’s sexuality, sexual freedom, the women’s body, and often the correlation that is made with women’s emotional existence and madness. What is engendered in Cat People (1942) is far less about a woman who can morph into a predatory feline and more about the collective fear of ‘The Monstrous Feminine.’

Amy lashes out at the little boy who has crushed her beautiful friend, the butterfly. Fear the woman/child.

While Amy is not Irena’s biological daughter, Amy is truly more of a progeny to Irena and the mystique she embodies because they are both alienated figures who are frustrated and misunderstood. Who stand outside the social community which is pumped from the veins of ‘rational’, normative thoughts and behaviors. Amy is the figure of ‘The Fearing Child,’ an innocent who not only has ‘power’ but can wreak havoc in our ‘normal’ world.

Both characters are imaginative and rely on their senses. They are more connected to the natural world, to the darkness, which is associated with feminine energy, and less intellectual, which is considered a masculine marker. They are considered emotional, irrational, and dangerously unpredictable. The character of Oliver Reed is just as frightened and, moreover, threatened by his six-year-old little girl as he was of his beautiful and tragic wife Irena, who was more a victim than ever, the ‘monster’ she was perceived to be.

In Cat People, Curse of the Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie, The Leopard Man, The 7th Victim, and Isle of The Dead, there aren’t concrete Monsters as in Universal films, as in Frankenstein’s creation, Dracula, or The Wolf Man.

Universal’s Bride of Frankenstein 1935 Literal monsters in a corporeal world.

RKO studio heads had a mistrust of Lewton’s creative vision, his unconventional approach to some esoteric subject matter, or volatile subjects such as a woman’s sexual desires. Lewton, rather than using literal lumbering, fanged, or hairy monsters, used the powers of suggestion and shadow to tell the story.

Irena emerged from Lewton’s shadow world in Cat People 1942.
Little Amy is lost within the emerging shadows of the old dark house in Lewton’s Curse of The Cat People 1944.
Barbara Ferran always placed by a door like a bystander, she is bombarded by Lewton’s shadows.

Lewton disliked mask-like faces that were hardly human, the kinds of images that were expected from the horror genre he was infiltrating. Lewton liked to reveal the monsters that were lurking in the subconscious primitive recesses of our own imaginations. Shadows become the monster in these films, they are the mysterious layer that surfaces in world that only makes sense in the light of day. And Amy draws the shadows to her…

They do not have scary faces, they are quite human and in fact ordinary. He takes the ‘familiar’ and inverts it, subverts it, rattles the soundness of an accepted experience, and turns it into either an illusion, a nightmare, or a fit of paranoia. He taps into our childhood fears and sets those fears on the frightened characters in his shadow plays. Usually, the thing they fear is uprooting their own personal desires and the fear of coming face to face with them.

The tragic and tormented Irena in Cat People 1942.

Oliver couldn’t handle Irena’s sexual desires, nor her desirability; it triggered too much of his own primal urges, and so he demonized her, a fragile girl in a foreign country who believed in folklore from her very ancient set of beliefs handed down for centuries.

Oliver Reed has a fear of foreign Objects!-Cat People 1942.

A story which quite often itself was ambiguous as to whether the threat was real or imagined. RKO wanted to be in competition with Universal, so they added footage of a menacing Panther, which was inserted into several scenes of Cat People.

Continue reading “Val Lewton’s Curse of The Cat People (1944) “God should use a Rose Amber Spot!” Seeing the darkness thru the ‘Fearing Child’ and ‘The Monstrous Feminine’ Part II” →

Begin ‘The Bagheeta’: Val Lewton’s fantasy/ reality world of Curse of The Cat People: fearing the female/feline monster and the engendering child. Part I

Val Lewton –Master of Shadow.

Val Lewton’s short story ‘The Bagheeta’ appeared in Farnsworth Wright’s July 1930 issue of Weird Tales Magazine. Lewton was dabbling in concepts of terror, before he even got to RKO.

The story takes place in Ukraine (from which MonsterGirl’s people hail!) and is a coming-of-age story about a 16-year-old boy named Kolya who helps his Uncle forge armor. Someone comes into the village with a slaughtered sheep, who claims to have seen a Bagheeta, a monstrous black leopard that can change its form into a beautiful woman. Only one person can kill a Bagheeta,  and that is a virgin male, for he needs to be able to resist her seductive powers. If he is seduced, the woman will change back into the black leopard and kill the boy and eat him! Lewton would eventually adapt and produce his story for RKO in the form of Cat People in 1942 starring Simone Simon, the suggested embodiment of a Bagheeta.

The Panther

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful, soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly — An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Panther at the zoo, caged in Cat People 1942.

CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE 1944

Produced by Val Lewton and directed by Robert Wise and Gunther von Fritsch, scripted by DeWitt Bodeen, and stars Simone Simon as the ghost of Irena, Kent Smith as Oliver Reed, Jane Randolph as Alice Reed, Eve March as Miss Callahan, Julia Dean as Mrs. Julia Farren, Elizabeth Russell as Barbara Farren, Sir Lancelot as Edward, and Ann Carter as Amy Reed. Ann Carter played Beatrice Carroll in the riveting noir classic The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947)with Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Curse of the Cat People is filled with poignant original music by Roy Webb and with Cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca (Cat People 1942, The Fallen Sparrow 1943, The 7th Victim 1943, The Spiral Staircase 1945 Bedlam 1946 and Out of The Past 1947) It’s no wonder Curse of The Cat People has many of the elements of a classic film noir piece.

After the tragic death of his wife Irena, played by the beautiful Simone Simon, Oliver Reed, once again played by Kent Smtih, has remarried his co-worker Alice (Jane Randolph). They now have a very serious yet gentle six-year-old girl named Amy (Ann Carter) who is taken to daydreaming and being a loner.

She does not mix in well with the other children at school who do not understand her sensitivity or her private world of fantasy that she has built around her as a survival mechanism.

“My beautiful friend”

Symbolic of Amy’s free spirit, the little boy captures her ‘beautiful friend’ and crushes it. Thinking that this would make her happy, he destroys the very thing that symbolizes her own spirit and her connection to the natural world.
Amy is framed here in absolute alienation from the rest of the world.

Amy’s father, Oliver, constantly wields authoritative criticism of his daughter’s daydreaming and wants her to play with the other children and exist in the ‘real’ world. Amy has a birthday party for which she invites the children in her class, but no one shows up that day, and Oliver discovers that she has mailed out the invitations by placing them in the magic wishing tree, which is a hollowed-out knot of the large tree out behind the house.

Waiting for her classmates to share her birthday wishes. But no one ever comes.

Oliver reaches into the wishing-tree and pulls out the birthday invitations.

.

Amy is again admonished for believing that the tree was a real wishing tree. Something he himself had told her not too long ago.

Oliver had told Amy this was a magic spot when she was younger, and she remembers it, understanding it to be true because her father told her it was. She was taught to believe in magic and then, without preparation, was expected to denounce all things wondrous without any serious provocation on her part. She is only six years old, after all.

Saddened by her classmates’ absence at her party, Oliver, Alice, and Edward, the manservant from Jamaica, throw Amy a smaller party instead, complete with a birthday cake decorated with six little candles.

Amy is told to make a wish but not to tell anyone what it is, or it won’t come true. Again, Amy is conflicted by the mixed messages the adults in her life are giving her. She tells her father that wishes don’t come true. Oliver tells her, “Some do.” Her mother, Alice, embellishes by saying that you just can’t say it out loud, or it will nullify the magic wish.

Once again, there is a suspension of disbelief on their terms, disavowing Amy and her ability to develop a clearly defined sense of fantasy and reality. How can she properly order her world?

The children at school are furious with Amy for not inviting them as promised. As they shun her, they lead her to an old, sinister-looking mansion, where someone calls to her from the window. A voice calls out to her to come closer. Amy looks around, and the unseen person throws down a white handkerchief threading a gold ring.

Continue reading “Begin ‘The Bagheeta’: Val Lewton’s fantasy/ reality world of Curse of The Cat People: fearing the female/feline monster and the engendering child. Part I” →

Postcards From Shadowland No.5

A Cry in The Night (1956) Directed by Frank Tuttle, and starring Natalie Wood, Edmond O’Brien and Brian Donlevy
Curse of The Cat People 1944 directed by Robert Wise, produced by Val Lewton, and starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith and Ann Carter
The Sea Beast 1926 directed by Millard Webb, written by Herman Melville and starring Dolores Costello and John Barrymore.
La Belle et la Bête 1946 directed by Jean Cocteau starring Jean Marais and Josette Day.
The Big Heat (1953) directed by Fritz Lang and Starring Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford and Jocelyn Brando.
Body and Soul 1947 directed by Robert Rossen, starring John Garfield, Lilli Palmer and Hazel Brooks
Bury Me Dead (1947) directed by Bernard Vorhaus starring Cathy O’Donnell, June Lockart and Hugh Beaumont.
Curse of The Cat People 1944 directed by Robert Wise, and produced by Val Lewton. Starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith and Ann Carter.
Dead of Night (1945) directed by Alberto Cavalcanti,Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer. With stories by H.G.Wells, E.F.Benson, John Baines and Angus MacPhail.
Dracula’s Daughter 1936 directed by Lambert Hillyer, and starring Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden, Marguerite Churchill and Edward Van Sloan.
The Penalty 1920 directed by Wallace Worsley and starring Lon Chaney as Blizzard. With Charles Clary, Doris Pawn, Jim Mason and Ethel Grey Terry.
Eye of The Devil 1966 directed by J.Lee Thompson and starring Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Sharon Tate, Donald Pleasance, Flora Robson and David Hemmings.
Each Dawn I Die (1939) directed by William Keighley and starring George Raft and James Cagney.
Horror Hotel (1960) aka City of The Dead directed by John Llewellyn Moxey and starring Christopher Lee, Patricia Jessel, Dennis Lotis and Betta St. John
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Ivor Novello as the mysterious Lodger.
I Wake Up Screaming (1941) directed by H.Bruce Humberstone and starring Victor Mature, Betty Grable and Carol Landis.
Robert Aldrich’s 1955 Film Noir Kiss Me Deadly starring Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer.
MAD LOVE (1935) directed by Karl Freund starring Peter Lorre, Frances Drake and Colin Clive.
The Man Who Laughs 1928 directed by Paul Leni and starring Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine, and Mary Philbin as Dea.
Fritz Lang’s German Expressionist masterpiece of futuristic entropy blending element of Sci-Fi and hints of Film Noir to come. Metropolis (1927) Starring Brigitte Helm and Alfred Abel.
William Castle’s The Night Walker (1964) starring Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor, Judi Meredith, Lloyd Bochner and Marjorie Bennett.

A Trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away! The Girl in Black Stockings 1957

“High Society Dames For Hire!”

THE GIRL IN BLACK STOCKINGS (1957)

Howard W. Koch directed this bit of Film Noir/Thriller and stars Lex Barker, Anne Bancroft, Mamie Van Doren, Marie Windsor, John Dehner, Ron Randell, Stuart Whitman, and Diane Van der Vlis.

A party girl is murdered, and everyone at a Utah motel is a suspect, and they all have something to hide!

Lex Barker plays David Hewson, a lawyer passing through the small town in Utah, who finds the mutilated body of party girl Marcia Morgan, one of the guests staying at Parry Lodge.

The wonderfully dry John Dehner plays Sheriff Jess Holmes, who is looking at everyone at the motel as a possible suspect. While Holmes investigates, the killer strikes again!

WHO WILL BE NEXT?

“She’s every inch a teasing, taunting “Come-on” Blonde.”

“One Will Die Tonight!”

MonsterGirl's 13 Days of Halloween: Obscure Films Better Than Candy Corn! is back!

Double Exposure 1983

A photographer for a men’s magazine is disturbed by a recurring dream he has that he is killing his models by various gruesome means…Directed by William Byron Hillman and stars Michael Callan and Joanna Pettet.

Death Scream Made for Tv (1975)

A young woman is stabbed to death in an alley. The crime is heard and seen by some of the residents of a nearby apartment building, but not one of them tried to help and now they refuse to get involved with the police during the investigation.

Based on actual events. Directed by Richard T.Heffron with a stellar cast, including Raul Julia, John P Ryan, Edward Asner, Luci Arnez, Art Carney, Diahann Carroll, Kate Jackson, Cloris Leachman, Tina Louise, and Nancy Walker.

Neither The Sea Nor The Sand (1972) aka The Exorcism of Hugh

A troubled wife is having a midlife crisis. She meets a lighthouse keeper and they become lovers. They run off to Scotland. While making love on a beach, the lighthouse keeper dies, and that’s where the true story begins. True love never dies, Hugh comes back from the dead, to Anna’s wanting arms, but he’s not quite the same, and he’s decomposing! Directed by Fred Burnley, and starring Susan Hampshire, Frank Finlay, and Michael Petrovitch.

Anatomy of a Psycho (1961)

The crazed brother of a condemned killer sent to the gas chamber swears vengeance on those he holds responsible for his brother’s execution. Directed by Boris Petroff, and starring Ronnie Burns, Pamela Lincoln, and Darrell Howe.

36 Hours aka Terror Street (1953)

An American pilot AWOL from the States is framed for his wife’s murder and has just 36 hours to prove his innocence. Directed by Montgomery Tully, and starring Dan Duryea, Elsie Albin, and Gudrun Ure.

Trauma 1962

Emmaline, who, as a teenager, discovered the drowned body of her aunt (Lynn Bari), returns to the family mansion as a married woman. Eventually, she falls for the caretaker’s nephew and remembers who the real killer was. Directed by Robert M.Young, and starring Lynn Bari, John Conte, and Lorrie Richards.

The Exterminating Angel (1962)

The guests at an upper-class dinner party find themselves unable to leave. Everything starts to devolve as their pretenses fall away, and they start acting like desperate animals.

Directed by Luis Bunuel and starring Sylvia Pinal, Jacqueline Andere, Enrique Rambal, Claudio Brook,

Mirrors (1978)

A newlywed couple checks into an old hotel, and soon the wife finds herself having hallucinations and wandering the halls aimlessly. A voodoo priest has put a curse on Marianne and now wants to take her soul.

Directed by Noel Black and starring Kitty Winn and Peter Donat.

Madame Death 1969

Mad scientist teams with an evil, disfigured woman to kidnap and operate on young women to make them look beautiful again. Directed by Jaime Salvador starring John Carradine, Regine Torne, and Elsa Cardenas. Great Mexican horror thriller!

Master of Horror 1965

A trilogy of the Edgar Allen Poe stories, “The Case Of Mr. Valdemar,” “The Cask Of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” It starts with the housemaid sitting down to read some stories on a stormy night. Directed by Enrique Carreras, with a screenplay by the great Narciso Ibáñez Serrador (The House That Screamed 1069).

Starring Narciso Ibanez Menta, Osvoldo Pacheco and Ines Moreno.

THE BLOODSUCKER LEADS THE DANCE 1975

Directed by Alfredo Rizzo and starring the gorgeous Femi Benussi and Krista Nell, with Giacomo Rossi-Stuart

An obscure Gothic horror about a man who invites a theatrical troupe to his mansion, and of course the women start turning up dead.

QUINTET 1979

It is the future ice age, humanity is dying off.  So the survivors play a game called “Quintet” For one small group, this obsession is not enough; they play the game with living pieces … and only the winner survives. Robert Altman directed this sci-fi thriller, starring Paul Newman, Vittorio Gassman, Fernando Rey, Brigitte Fossey, and Bibi Anderson.

Scream Baby Scream 1965

A psycho-artist kidnaps models and slices up their faces to create his own grotesque form of art.

Directed by Joseph Adler, and starring Ross Harris, Eugenie Wingate, Chris Martell, Suzanne Stuart, and Larry Swanson. Written by Larry Cohen!

The Third Secret 1964

A prominent London Psychologist seems to have taken his own life, causing stunned disbelief amongst his colleagues and patients. Directed by Charles Crichton and starring Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Richard Attenborough, and Pamela Franklin.

The Strange One 1957

Ben Gazzara plays Jocko De Paris, a sociopathic cadet lead in a Southern military academy. He manipulates several of the people into various stages of duress, in particular a cadet that Jocko terrorizes into dating a girl from the town named Rosebud…hhm? Directed by Jack Garfein and also starring Pat Hingle, Peter Mark Richman, Paul Richards, and Julie Wilson as ‘Rosebud’

The Witch aka L Strega in Amore 1966

A historian goes to a castle library to translate some ancient erotic literature. While there he discovers what he believes to be supernatural forces at work. Directed by Damiano Damiani and starring Richard Johnson, Rosanna Schiaffino, and Gian Maria Volonte.

The Snorkel 1958

Although the police have termed her mother’s death a suicide, a teenage girl believes her step-father murdered her. Directed by Guy Green and a screenplay by Jimmy Sangster. Starring Peter Van Eyck and Betta St. John.

vij 1967

This is a Russian horror/fantasy film about a young priest who is ordered to watch over the wake of a witch in a small old wooden church in a remote village. He must spend three nights alone with the corpse with only his faith to protect him. Based on a story by Nikolai Gogol.

Bluebeard 1972

This is a 70s version of the infamous tale of Bluebeard. A World War I pilot Kurt Von Sepper (Richard Burton) whom everybody envies as a “ladykiller” actually is one – after he beds the women he’s after, he murders them. Directed by Edward Dmytryk, and starring Richard Burton, Raquel Welch, Verna Lisi, Natalie Delon, Agostina Belli, Sybil Danning, and Joey Heatherton.

Criminally Insane 1975

An obese woman recently released from an insane asylum kills anyone who attempts to get her to stop eating. Director Nick Millard casts Priscilla Alden as Ethel Janowski who lives with her Grandmother, and doesn’t want anyone taking away her food!

HEX 1973 aka The Shrieking

The film takes place in rural Nebraska after WW1, six veterans head out together on their motorcycles and ride into the little town of Bingo. When one of them beats a local kid in a drag race, they are driven out of town.

They hide out at a farmhouse run by two sisters. One of them tries to rape one of the girls, who is part Native American, and now her sister wants revenge by casting a hex on them!

Directed by Leo Garen and starring Christina Raines, Hilary Thompson, Keith Carradine, Mike Combs, Scott Glenn, Gary Busey, and Robert Walker Jr.

Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things 1971

Stanley and Paul are hiding out from the law, so they rent a house in the suburbs and decide that Paul should dress in drag, pretending to be Stanley’s Aunt Martha. Stanley brings a girl home one night, and since Paul is crazy and violent, he murders her. Now, Aunt Martha is a dangerous woman to approach! Directed by Thomas Casey and starring Abe Zwick as Paul and Wayne Crawford as Stanley.

Necromancy 1972

Orson Welles plays Mr. Cato, the head of a witches coven in the town of Lilith, where he needs the powers of Pamela Franklin to raise his son from the dead. Directed by the fun Bert I. Gordon. Also starring Lee Purcell and Michael Ontkean

Old Dracula 1973

A faulty blood transfusion turns Dracula’s wife black. Directed by Clive Donner and starring David Niven, Teresa Graves, Peter Bayliss, and Veronica Carlson.

Poor Pretty Eddie 1975

A wrong turn on a jazz singer’s road trip results in her car breaking down near an isolated lodge run by a faded starlet and a young, homicidal Elvis impersonator. Directed by Richard Robinson and David Worth, the film stars Leslie Uggams, Shelley Winters, Michael Christian, Ted Cassidy, Dub Taylor, and Slim Pickens.

The Mafu Cage 1978

Two strange sisters played by Lee Grant and Carol Kane, live in a decaying mansion where they keep their father’s pet ape locked in a cage. One of the sisters is descending into violent madness.

Directed by Karen Arthur also stars Will Geer.

Scalpel aka False Face 1977

A psychopathic plastic surgeon transforms a young accident victim into the spitting image of his missing daughter. Directed by John Grissmer and starring Robert Lansing and Judith Chapman. An interesting thriller in the ‘surgical horror’ genre.

The Flower in His Mouth 1975

A female school teacher is implicated in a murder in a Sicilian town only hours after her arrival. The dead man insulted her on the bus on the way into town. Directed by Luigi Zampa and starring the beautiful Jennifer O’Neill, sexy Franco Nero, and James Mason.
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The Terminal Man 1974

Hoping to cure his violent seizures, a man agrees to a series of experimental microcomputers inserted into his brain but inadvertently discovers that violence now triggers a pleasurable response in his brain. Directed by Mike Hodges and starring George Segal, Joan Hackett, and Richard Dysart.

The Woman Who Came Back 1940

After a bus accident, a woman comes to believe that she’s actually a 300-year-old witch. Stars John Loder, Nancy Kelly, and Otto Kruger.

A Taste for Women 1964 Aimez-vous les femmes

Directed by Jean Leon, this French black comedy thriller Roman Polanski has written another dark kinky story about cannibalism. It stars Sophie Daumier and comes across as a piece of Film Noir.

Lorna -a film by Russ Meyer (1964)

Starring Lorna Maitland, who’s married to Jim (James Rucker)but isn’t satisfied sexually. While Jim’s at work in the salt mine, she is raped by an escaped convict. (Mark Bradley) Strangely she finds him fascinating, as he has brought out her lustful side. One of Meyer’s best films! The cinematography is so starkly beautiful.

Home Before Dark 1958

Director Mervyn LeRoy’s darkly psychological drama starring the incredible Jean Simmons as Charlotte a woman recovering from a nervous breakdown. Once she leaves the safe hospital environment, she must return home to face the same demons that were haunting her there from the beginning. Also stars Dan O’Herlihy, Rhonda Fleming, Efrem Zimbalist Jr.and Marjorie Bennett.

Monsieur Verdoux (1947)

A suave but cynical man supports his family by marrying and murdering rich women for their money, but the job has some occupational hazards. Directed and starring Charlie Chaplin, Mady Correll, Allison Roddan, Robert Lewis, Audrey Betz, Martha Raye, Ada May, and Marjorie Bennett.

The Unseen aka Fear 1945

Directed by Lewis Allen and starring Joel McCrea, Gail Russell, Herbert Marshall, and Norman Lloyd. A mysterious figure is viciously killing people in a shadowy alley. Russell plays a Governess haunted by mysterious goings-on. Scripted by Raymond Chandler and Hagar Wilde. Gail Russell also played Stella in the wonderful ghost story directed by Allen, The Uninvited…

The Cat Creeps 1946

A black cat is suspected of being possessed by the spirit of a dead girl. Directed by Erie C. Kenton, starring Noah Beery Jr., Lois Collier, Fred Brady, Paul Kelly, Douglass Dumbrille, and Rose Hobart…

-MonsterGirl