Postcards From Shadowland’s Big Fat No.10

Alexandra Schmidt in Mother Kraus' jounrey to happiness mutter-krausens-fahrt-ins-gluck-schmidt
Alexandra Schmidt in ‘Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness’ (1929)
all-about-eve-anne-baxter-bette-davis-marilyn-monroe-richard carlson-george sanders-celeste holm
Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s brilliant satire- All About Eve (1950) starring the inimitable Bette Davis as Margo Channing and Ann Baxter as the cunning Eve Harrington.
All's Quet on the Western Front
Director Lewis Milestone’s All’s Quiet on the Western Front-(1930) starring Lew Ayres
anatomy of murder scene
Otto Preminger’s riveting court room noir Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
battleship-potemkin-odessa-steps-sergei-eisenstein
Battleship Potemkin (1925) Sergei Eisenstein’s masterpiece about the great Russian naval mutiny.
Brute Force
Jule’s Dassin’s brutal noir masterpiece Brute Force (1947)
Cat-on-a-Hot-Tin-Roof-elizabeth-taylor-scene
Richard Brooks adaptation of Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
DameJudith:MrsDanvers
Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca 1940
janet-leigh-touch-of-evil-charlton-heston
Orson Welles’ film classic Touch of Evil (1958)
notre-dame-hunchbackLaughton
William Dieterle’s adaptation of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1939
kiss of death
Henry Hathaway’s disturbing noir classic Kiss of Death 1947
Laura
Otto Preminger’s quintessential noir Laura (1944)
Lee Remick in Experiment in Terror 1960
Blake Edwards Experiment in Terror 1960
Earth Vs The Spider
Bert I. Gordon’s Earth Vs The Spider 1958
Dracula's Daughter
Lambert Hillyer’s understated yet powerfully erotic horror classic Dracula’s Daughter 1936
Linda darnell no way out
Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s taut and thought provoking social noir No Way Out 1950
little-caesar-edward-g-robinson
Mervyn LeRoy’s gangster odyssey Little Caesar 1931
Day the earth stood still robert wise
Robert Wise’s Science Fiction masterpiece The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
long dark hall
Reginald Beck and Anthony Bushell’s suspenseful The Long Dark Hall 1951
loretta-young-lon-chaney-laugh-clown-laugh
Herbert Brenon’s beautiful Laugh, Clown, Laugh 1928
m-peter-lorre-
Fritz Lang’s notorious psychological thriller M (1931)
Monday Nights with Oscar
Otto Preminger’s noir masterpiece about addiction The Man with the Golden Arm 1955
allison hayes Attack of the 50 foot woman
Nathan Juran’s iconic 50s campy sci-fi romp Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)
marsha-hunt-actress-raw-deal-john-ireland
Anthony Mann’s noir classic Raw Deal (1948)
Mother Joan of the Angels
Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s surreal and transcendent Mother Joan of the Angels 1961
Nancy Kelly in The Bad Seed
Mervyn LeRoy’s naughty tale about a child psychopath. The Bad Seed (1956)
naked kiss2
Samuel Fuller’s irreverent noir gem The Naked Kiss (1964)
odd+man+out+1947
Carol Reed’s intense noir thriller Odd Man Out (1947)
Norma Desmond
Billy Wilder’s iconic film noir masterwork of grand proportions Sunset Blvd (1950)
orphee-jean-marais
Jean Cocteau’s stunning Orpheus (1950) Orphée
outofthepas
Jacques Tourneur’s hauntingly mesmerizing noir Out of the Past (1947)
Peggy Cummings Gun Crazy
Joseph E. Lewis Gun Crazy or Deadly is the Female (1950)
penny_serenade
George Steven’s sadness and joyful Penny Serenade (1941)
frankenstein
James Whale’s campy take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 1931
the+black+cat
Edgar G. Ulmer’s sadistic and transgressive journey into horror The Black Cat 1934
vampyr
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s masterful vision of quiet uncanny horror Vampyr (1932)
prowler-tale
Joseph Losey’s titillating noir The Prowler ((1951)
photo-Les-Diaboliques-1954-3
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s brilliantly chilling Les-Diaboliques-1955
Seance
Bryan Forbes’ compelling suspense thriller Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)
Seven Chances
Buster Keaton’s fantastic Seven Chances (1925)
SCARFACE (1932)
Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson’s SCARFACE (1932)
sparrows-mary-pickford
William Beaudine’s haunting Sparrows (1926)
Bride of Frankestein
James Whales even campier and finest work The Bride of Frankenstein 1935
streetcar-named-desire-leigh-brando
Elia Kazan’s volatile theme of desolation and passion based on Tennessee William’s play A Streetcar Named Desire 1951
SUNSET BOULEVARD
some more divine SUNSET BOULEVARD 1950
the nymph ward shock corridor
Samuel Fuller’s edgy Shock Corridor (1963)
old-dark-house-karloff-stuart
Jame’s Whale’s The Old Dark House 1932
They-Live-By-Night
Nicholas Ray’s incredibly beautiful film noir journey They Live By Night (1948)
Theo and Eleanor
Robert Wise’s uncompromising ghost story adapted from Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting (1963)
white-heat-james-cagney-600x450
Raoul Walsh’s iconic crime thriller White Heat (1949)

The Night God Screamed (1971) – Leave Your Faith, Fear and Sanity at the Water’s Edge. Part II

“Scream – So they’ll know where to find your body!”

THE NIGHT GOD SCREAMED (1971) 

The-Night-God-Screamed

Directed by Lee Madden (Angel Unchained 1970, The Manhandlers 1975) he offers us another cult hippie psycho drama feeding off the unsettling vibe and turbulence of the Charles Manson hysteria.

Charles Manson
The notorious mass murderer Charles Manson.

No matter how often I think I’ve uncovered the most obscure cult thriller there’s always another lurking under a rock somewhere for me to feast my wide eyed stare upon, mouth agape and mind working over time to integrate the confluence of cultural debris that emerges like the dregs when you roil the sediment secretly settled on the bottom of the cinematic barrel. This is one such obscure film.

jeanne-crain-the-night-god-screamed

Starring screen beauty Jeanne Crain (Leave Her To Heaven (1945), Pinky (1949) A Letter to Three Wives (1949). The Tattered Dress (1957)

Jeanne Crain
the beautiful Jeanne Crain.

the-night-god-screamed-1971-jeanne-crain-

who probably would have rather been given a better role and script, plays the frail and persecuted Fanny Pierce. Alex Nicol plays Fanny’s husband the man in search of his own prosperous church in a better neighborhood. Preacher Willis Pierce (How could we ever forget Nicol’s wonderfully grimy, pathetic, and bizarre character Mickey in 1958s The Screaming Skull, or his dizzying performance as the drunken loser husband Jay Fowler in Look in Any Window 1961) No… he’s gotten to play a man’s man plenty, but he is sort of a victim magnet.

Alex Nicol Ruth Roman Look in Any Window
Alex Nicol and Ruth Roman in the provocative Look in Any Window 1961.
Alex Nicol as Mickey in the-screaming-skull
Alex Nicol as soiled oddball Mickey in one of my favorite cult classics The Screaming Skull 1958.

Dan Spelling plays the bourgeois Judge Coogan’s son and irritatingly preppie Peter. Barbara Hancock plays sister Nancy Coogan, Dawn Cleary plays sister Sharon and very busy actor and stuntman Gary Morgan plays little brother Jimmy.

The judges son

judges daughters

The Night God Screamed opens with a foreboding shape floating as if gliding on top of water, through the eerie sylvan landscape wearing a monk’s robe, his large draped cowl-like hood obscuring the man’s face altogether. He grips an arcane cruciform staff. He approaches a small pond inhabited by the frolicking free love rejects, society’s much-reviled flower children of the 60s & 70s sub subculture. In other words, as South Park’s irreverent and outrageous Eric Cartman would say ‘dirty hippies’ having lots of random sex and getting high.

CapturFiles_55

The pervasive cut-off tone reveals that they belong to a Manson-esque cult, who is led by the vitriolic Billy Joe Harlan, a fanatical cult leader who baptizes a few followers and then proceeds to spout a trippy fire and brimstone rant, his own distorted anti-socially virulent version of the Gospel. Much like Manson, his rhetoric engenders a lot of animosity toward the establishment, law enforcement or if you will ‘pigs’, citizens squares, and anybody who doesn’t see the world through Billy Joe’s lens.

Billy Joe is a violent sociopath who commands his fledgling minions to destroy any phony preachers, combat pigs and try and bring his new version of the Gospel to the youth of America.

Hung up on how Christ was betrayed, he riles his flock of murderous flower children to manifest the power to punish those who do not follow his gospel. To make an example of the dangers of dissension and betrayal he chooses a young girl who has refused to be baptized. And so he gives the word to his faceless hooded angel of death named ‘The Atoner’ to drown her in front of the flock.

the man with the power 2

“They was all just a bunch of sinners, Lord, fighting and bothering each other…but I saved them, Lord! I showed them that using dope was the way to turn on to You!”

“We got trouble! The Heat won’t leave us alone! They want to bust us for being hooked on You! Them pigs is watching us, Lord…they don’t dig our kinda thing!”

As this soldier of God, known as THE ATONER executes the young girl in front of the mindless youth, the rest of the nasty flock watches without doing a single thing to help the poor girl as she is submerged under the baptismal waters, causing her to drown.

CapturFiles_71

CapturFiles_69

CapturFiles_76

The film cuts away, to a scene where the wife and good Christian Fanny Pierce (Jeanne Crain) is bringing groceries to the mission where her preacher husband (Alex Nicol) is feeding a hungry collection of bums and down and outers. Right before she can make it inside with her bag of groceries, a very unsavory bum with quite an unattractive tongue, mugs her for the brown paper bag of food, leaving her standing ironically empty-handed and assaulted right outside the very soup kitchen where she and her husband have been trying to bring the good works of Jesus to these poor destitute men.

CapturFiles_10

CapturFiles_21

Fanny starts to have her own crisis of faith and becomes disillusioned with her husband and his mission. Preacher Willis Pierce appears more worried about the loss of the groceries than concerned for his own wife’s safety. He possesses a resolute patriarchal hubris with his grandiose dreams of bringing the gospel to his people, much like Billy Joe, yet not imbued with vengeful and malevolent fortitude.

Willis wants to build a sizable church in ‘better areas of town’, which would mean more money, more offerings, and more notoriety to his name. This is the kind of man Billy Joe despises and is on a crusade to annihilate with his cult of venomous sycophants.

CapturFiles_54

Fanny tells Willis- “God isn’t going to make our house payment!”

In a ridiculous gesture, Willis’ scheme is to erect his new mammoth wooden cross at the revival meeting he plans on holding later on that night. He believes that this will help bring in enough cash for ‘offerings’ to start up his new church. So, without consulting Fanny, Willis spends an enormous amount of money on the large, ludicrously enormous artifact that symbolizes Jesus’ sacrifice but smacks of Preacher Willis’ own egoism. He has used all their savings on this religious ‘manstrosity’, that he will erect in the revival hall which he has rented in a more affluent part of town.

As they haul the large wooden totem across the countryside on top of their old truck, the tension between Fanny and Willis grows. Fanny tells Willis that she’s sacrificed over twenty-five years of her life in service to his cause. Willis tries to convince her that the giant cross will be their ‘meal ticket.’

CapturFiles_62

While stopping at a gas station, Billy Joe and one of his religious biker culties Izzy (Richard Smedley Brain of Blood, The Abductors 1972, The Naughty Stewardesses 1975 ) espy the Pierces and their truck with the cross-tied on top and pull in alongside them with their motorcycle. It’s here that sets forth the moment of confrontation with fate, and the narrative’s tragic and violent relinquishment of faith sparks.

Billy Joe begins to question Preacher Willis, fascinated with his sizable wooden cross, and wants to know what he plans to do with it, asking about the plans for the revival meeting.

CapturFiles_77

It is a moment that points out the deliberate contrary notions of religion, while simultaneously forging an ironic relationship between the extreme zeal, and the unfettered fanaticism of the two very self-styled evangelists.

Willis is prideful and avidly enthusiastically offers his fund-raising motivations for his ‘mission’. Billy Joe begins to formulate his vexation, and sets out to dispense Willis with his wrath for his being a false and ‘plastic prophet’. And so as the Pierces continue on their road trip to the revival meeting, Billy Joe summons his nefarious apostles and unleashes his craving to destroy Preacher Willis.

CapturFiles_100

“We’re going to a revival meeting tonight… We’re going on a crusade! Just you, and me Izzy… And the Atoner!”

At the College Lecture Hall, Preacher Willis gives his sermon. Unfortunately, it does not bestow upon him the funds needed for his plans to build up his church in a ‘good’ neighborhood. After the sermon, Fanny and Willis’ assistant Paul go outside, leaving Willis by himself in the revival hall.

CapturFiles_141

CapturFiles_142

In a scene that is quite disturbing as the events happen mostly in an utter bluish darkness or diverted to the realm off camera, the cult attacks Willis. They are draped in shadow. Billy Joe begins to persecute Willis, pronouncing him a ‘ false prophet’ and demanding that he be put to death. And so while Billy Joe’s followers restrain and torture poor Willis, the Atoner slowly and painfully nails Willis to his own mundanely magnificent cross.

Fanny is startled by the screams of her husband who is crying out in agony. She comes back inside the hall, but shrouds herself in the darkness, afraid for her own life, As he cries “Fanny Help me For God’s sake Help me.’ She remains motionless, doing nothing to help him"¦ he is left to die alone now a Christ-figure of the film.

The scene switches to a courtroom, where Billy Joe and his cult followers are all on trial for the murder of Willis Pierce. Judge Coogan pronounces a death sentence on the hippie messiah. Billy Joe explodes into a tirade.

Billie Joe in Court

“You son of a bitch! You DUMB son of a bitch! YOU’RE MAKING ME A MARTYR! AHAHAHAHAHA!”

Jesus Freakery

While Billy Joe is convicted and sentenced to death, the remaining cult members encircle and besiege Fanny vowing revenge for Billy Joe. Fanny who was already starting to devolve in her encumbered world, now anguished with guilt for not having helped her husband Willis in his moment of horrific need, wanders away in a somnolent haze.

She remains in this state of disassociation for the rest of the film. The judge hires Fanny as a sort of matron to help with his two sons and teenage daughters who need to be kept in line, shown morals, and keep from acting too wild while their parents go away on a weekend vacation. The Judge grounds the kids and makes them stay in the house with Fanny who is still wholly uptight and out of her mind with guilt over her husband’s brutal death.

This breathes even more agitation into the film which is saturated with male hubris and female hysteria, the archetypal hysterical woman lives once again in the embodiment of Fanny Pierce.

On the way to bringing Fanny to his house for the weekend, the Judge dismisses her worries about the two hippies on motorcycles who seem to be following them and then goes on to instill some social relevance in the bigger picture. “Those kids, like the ones who murdered your husband… they come from broken homes… poor education… they’re just dropouts! Not like ‘my’ kids!”

Of course, we are to understand that this is a cue of foreboding irony, reflexive and dilating, as Fanny is charged to take care of the Judges adult teens, who inadvertently become mixed up in the nightmare, as the Atoner and remaining worshipers take siege of the household and terrorize Fanny and the teenagers. Fanny becomes even more unhinged, amidst an ensemble of entitled youths who are the binary figures of the film’s contemporary youth culture. One set of outliers rebelling against a system that reviles them, and the other is just as combative and anti-social, yet given the opportunities to reflex their personal freedoms because of affluence, and social capital. Dan Spelling as Peter Coogan, the judge’s eldest son, is a bit of a social superior, a quiet sociopathic teen whose poison is brewing under the surface of his perfectly pressed pants and yuppie tennis sweater.

Continue reading “The Night God Screamed (1971) – Leave Your Faith, Fear and Sanity at the Water’s Edge. Part II”

A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! Dracula’s Daughter (1936)

“She gives you that weird feeling!”

DRACULA’S DAUGHTER 1936

Dracula's Daughter film poster

One of the truly great classic horror films packed with atmosphere and a Gothic undercurrent of sensuality Dracula’s Daughter directed by Lambert Hillyer (The Invisible Ray 1936, Convict’s Code 1939) stars Gloria Holden as the imposing Contessa Marya Zeleska and Edward Van Sloan who reprises his role as Professor Van Helsing. Irving Pichel plays the menacing Sandor and Otto Kruger is Doctor Jeffrey Garth, Marguerite Churchill is Janet Blake, and Nan Grey is the bewildered Lili, also co-starring Hedda Hopper as Lady Esme Hammond. Jack P. Pierce did the special make up effects and Vera West was responsible for the fabulous wardrobe.

Dracula's Daughter poster 2

Based on Bram Stoker’s story, ‘Dracula’s Guest’ this film is an unsung sequel to the 1931 Universal classic starring Bela Lugosi.

Dacula's Daughter lobby card

Dracula's Daughter lobby card 2

Dracula's Daughter poster 3

Gloria Holden

Dracula’s Daughter takes up where Dracula ends off, opening within the walls of the dark and somber mansion.

CapturFiles_14

The mysterious Countess Marya Zaleska is indeed Dracula’s daughter, she is faithfully accompanied by her attendant Sandor. They burn her vampiric father’s body during a Black Mass. Though Dracula has been reduced to ashes, Zaleska is is still not free of her father’s curse. She is still bewitched with his blood lust, and a sexual longing, which is only hinted at as an artistic murmur, yet the story never quite rhapsodizes the true nature of her sapphic proclivities.

1936_draculasdaughter Gloria Holden

CapturFiles_6

CapturFiles_5

CapturFiles_7

At first her gaze is set on the beautiful blonde streetwalker Lily, who is hired as a model, but soon after Lili discovers the secret of this curious and enigmatic woman who wants the young girl to do more than merely pose for her. The scene where Zaleska hypnotizes Lili is enthralling. ‘Do you like jewels Lili? These are very old and very beautiful.’

Zaleska reaches out for help from a psychoanalyst Doctor Jeffrey Garth who she feels might be able to help with her unholy cravings. Zaleska becomes obsessed with Garth, and she eventually kidnaps his assistant and fiancée Janet Blake who is taken to Dracula’s Castle in Transylvania where she is held hostage as bait to get Garth to come to her.

Holden who has a dark, unearthly and stunningly swarthy looks, works well as the believable bloodline to Lugosi’s eastern European mannerisms that imbued the classic character of Universal’s Dracula. Dracula’s Daughter is quite an unsung classic, and should be seen by all fans of the genre, it’s a jewel, very old and very beautiful!

CapturFiles_20

CapturFiles_2

CapturFiles_8

CapturFiles_15

CapturFiles_24

CapturFiles_19

CapturFiles_17

CapturFiles_16

CapturFiles_1

Your very old and very beautiful-MonsterGirl

Postcards From Shadowland no. 9

1933 das testament der dr. mabuse
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse 1933 Fritz Lang
Ace In The Hole
Ace in The Hole – Billy Wilder
Aroused 1966
Aroused 1966 Anton Holden
Bayou 1957
Poor White Trash aka Bayou 1957-Harold Daniels
Blues in the night
Blues in the Night 1941-Anatole Litvak
Edward G Robinson-Little-Caesar with Douglas Fairbanks jr. and Glenda Farrell
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy-Edward G Robinson is Little-Caesar (1931) with Douglas Fairbanks jr. and Glenda Farrell
Experiment in Terror Ross Martin as Red Lynch
Experiment in Terror – Blake Edwards directs -Ross Martin as Red Lynch
Gene Tierney Tobacco Road 1941
Gene Tierney Tobacco Road 1941 directed by John Ford
George Pujouly  Brigitte Fossey Forbidden Games Jeux interdits 1952 René Clément
George Pujouly Brigitte Fossey Forbidden Games (Jeux interdits) 1952 directed by René Clément
Granny-The Southerner
Granny-The Southerner-Jean Renoir
Jeux Interdits
Jeux Interdits
knock on any door
Knock On Any Door 1949 Nicholas Ray
Lena Cabin in The Sky
Lena Horne-Cabin in The Sky 1943- Vincente Minnelli
Lon Chaney in He Who Gets Slapped
Lon Chaney in He Who Gets Slapped 1924 Victor Sjöström
Modern Times Charlie Chaplin
Modern Times Charlie Chaplin 1936
Never Take Sweets From A Stranger
Never Take Sweets From A Stranger 1960 Cyril Frankel
Night of The Demon-Tourneur
Curse of The Demon- 1957 Jacques Tourneur
Peter Lorre in The Man Who Knew Too Much1956
Peter Lorre in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much 1956
Rashomon
Rashomon 1950 -Akira Kurosawa
Repulsion
Roman Polanski’s Repulsion 1965 Catherine Deneuve
The Cobweb
The Cobweb-1955- Vincente Minnelli
The Last Laugh-letzte mann and emil-jannings in
The Last Laugh 1924-with emil-jannings directed by F.W Murnau
the sweet smell of success
The Sweet Smell of Success 1957-directed by Alexander Mackendrick written by Clifford Odets
Viva Zapata with Marlon-Brando and Jean Peters-
Viva Zapata 1952 with Marlon-Brando and Jean Peters-Elia Kazan directs

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) & The Night God Screamed (1971)-Leave Your Faith, Fear and Sanity at the Water’s Edge. Part I

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” — Edgar Allan Poe

CapturFiles_1

CapturFiles_20 take me to the water's edge
‘Leave Your Faith, Fear, and Sanity at the Water’s Edge – Jo Gabriel

As quoted in W. Scott Poole professor of history at Charleston South Carolina University’s remarkable book Monsters In America he opens his chapter MONSTROUS BEGINNINGS with “There are terrible creatures, ghosts, in the very air of America.” -D.H. Lawrence

Monsters in America

Taken from his chapter The Bloody Chords of Memory, which I think is very appropriate for this discussion, Poole states that, “it would be too simplistic to view monster tales as simple narratives in service of American violence. The monster is a many-headed creature, and narratives about it in America are highly complex. Richard Kearney describes the appearance of a monster in a narrative, in a dream, or in sensory experience ‘as a signal of borderline experiences and unattainable excess.’

The isoloation of madness

In 1971 two films were released with a sort of queasy verisimilitude, using a monochromatic color scheme and protracted themes of insanity, fanaticism and self-annihilation. One drawing more of its flicker from the time of cult murders by religious fanatics, and an anti-establishment repudiation reflected in the cult fringe film. The Night God Screamed utilizes as its anti-hero the motorcycle gang who hates ‘citizenship’ and phony institutionalized prophets. These outliers are dirty, rebelliously dangerous hippies, who are hyped up and deluded into following a charismatic cult leader, a Neanderthal named Billy Joe Harlan performed with a Shakespearean griminess by Michael Sugich.

CapturFiles
Michael Sugich as the maniacal Mansoneseque cult leader Billy Joe.

He’s quite a Mansonesque figure with his malefic unibrow. This offering aptly called The Night God Screamed, even boasts a scene where the cult actually crucifies the clean-cut minister Willis, a man of the tradition gospel played by Alex Nicol. They essentially nail him to his own pridefully giant wooden phallic cross. Leaving his wife Fanny (Jeanne Crain) to scramble in the darkened halls, conflicted as to whether to try and help her husband or save herself from the cult’s ferocious blood lust, driving her into a numb moral and cognitive stasis of unresponsiveness, reason, and human connection. I will talk about this film in Part II.

CapturFiles_1
the beautiful Jeanne Crain.

Let’s Scare Jessica To Death (1971) is a film that hints at a post-modern Americana Gothicism permeated by a rustic folksy style of vampirism, with its small town coteries, paranoia, and the archetypal hysterical woman in a sustained level of distress and adrift on a sea of inner monologues and miasma of fear. I’ll begin in Part I with my much-loved classic horror…

LET’S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH 1971

“Leave your insanity at the door.”

CapturFiles_3

Unfriendly Locals

Let’s Scare Jessica To Death 1971, is not only the far better film but probably unintentionally the more iconic 70s trope for what was so extraordinary about the special clutch of horror films that were birthed in the 70s epoch.

Continue reading “Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) & The Night God Screamed (1971)-Leave Your Faith, Fear and Sanity at the Water’s Edge. Part I”

The Film Score Freak Recognizes iconic 70s songwriter-Paul Williams

PAUL WILLIAMS

Paul Williams

Paul Williams sings

Paul and Kermit

Growing up in the 7os, a lot of what inspired me to follow my journey as a singer/songwriter had much to do with the brilliant, evocatively poignant and memorable compositions by artists like the great Paul Williams. I still can’t listen or sing one of his iconic songs without becoming a fountain of tears, melting into an emotional puddle of ‘feelings.’ His contribution to the world as a singer/songwriter has been so immense, that I feel inadequate just showing a little love here, instead of doing one of my long winded posts.

But I am too agitated with excitement about the documentary Paul Williams Still Alive, and to have found him  alive and well on Twitter. I love you, We love you Paul Williams.

You have given us a magical, alchemical concoction of music that will forever flare up like molten gold in our hearts. It’s so good to see you again.

So here’s a just a little reminder of SOME of the things this beautiful, brilliant man has brought us from his heavenly throne where he sits with the other musical angels.

From the new documentary, here’s the official trailer for Paul Williams Still Alive

Karen Carpenter sings Rainy Days and Mondays

Kermit the Frog sings The Rainbow Connection from The Muppet Movie

Karen Carpenter sings We’ve Only Just Begun

Barbra Streisand sings Evergreen from A Star is Born

Jessica Harper sings Old Souls from Phantom of The Paradise

Here’s to the immortal genius! – With love Jo Gabriel the little singer/songwriting MonsterGirl

Coming next to The Last Drive-In: A Chilling Double Feature

I feel like it’s time to show some love to one of my most very treasured classic horror films of the 1970s, a film that I’ve placed within my top 25 best horror films of all time. I’m talking about the atmospheric and illusory!

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) Starring Zohra Lampert

Let's Scare Jessica To Death

at the water's edge

Let's Scare Jessica

Zohra Lampert Let's Scare Jessica

I’ll be covering this chilling gem in the next week and have decided to couple it with another rare oddity of the obscurely horrific 70s genre that is quite brutal and I feel works well as a companion piece. Starring Silver Screen beauty, Jeanne Crain in The Night God Screamed (1971).

Jeanne Crain The Night God Screamed

Alex Nicol Night God Screamed

Jesus Freakery

So keep your genre fan eye’s peeled for my upcoming-

Let’s Scare Jessica To Death (1971) & The Night God Screamed (1971)- Leave Your Faith, Fear and Sanity at the Water’s Edge.

Jessica at the water's edge

See ya at the water’s edge-MG

A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! Goodbye Gemini (1970)

“Jacki and Julian have evil twins. Each other.”

GOODBYE GEMINI (1970)

Goodbye Gemini film poster

Based on the screenplay by Edmund Ward and the novel ‘Ask Agamemnon’ by Jenni Hall, the film stars British cutie Judy Geeson as Jacki and Martin Potter (Fellini Satyricon (1969),Satan’s Slave 1976) as brother Julian, who play incestuously menacing twins that wear flashy clothes and travel with a creepy black teddy bear in tow, whom they talk to. They insert themselves into high society circles, scheming and submerging themselves in the underground Swinger scene in London.

Jacki and Julian

The murderous siblings kill their landlady right before they get themselves invited to a party where all the ‘swingers’ hang out. Bi-sexual brother Julian is a little too enamored of his sister Jacki, and is quite possessive of her affections. Once they attract gambler Clive Landseer (Alexis Kanner) who is heavily in debt, the deadly sequence of events unfold, as Clive manipulates Julian into helping him concoct a plan of blackmail and ultimately murder. The film’s flash and trash derives it’s sensationalism from the inhabitants of ornamental transvestites, swingers, and the beautiful people of London’s counter-culture.

A little romp

It’s and obscure film from director Alan Gibson who worked on Journey To Midnight (1968) and a few of the episodes in 1968-1969 for the resulting tv series that followed called Journey to the Unknown Gibson directed another psycho-sexual thriller Crescendo (1970) Of course there’s also his, The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) and Dracula A.D. (1972)

Dracula+AD+1972+1

Goodbye Gemini party

Goodye Gemini lobby card 4

Goodbye Gemin lobby card 5

Goodye Gemini lobby card 6

Goodbye Gemini

It’s an interesting moody and untempered piece of psycho-sexual 70s fare, that also co-stars veteran British actor Michael Redgrave as James Harrington-Smith, Mike Pratt as Rod Barstowe, Marian Diamond as Denise Pryce-Fletcher and Freddie Jones as David Curry. Peter Jeffrey plays Detective Inspector Kingsley, and Daphne Heard is Mrs. McLaren.

The film features songs from the soundtrack, “Nothing’s Good and Nothing’s Free”, “Forget About the Day” with music by Christopher Gunning and lyrics by Peter Lee Stirling. Both performed by Peter Lee Stirling. Plus “Goodbye Gemini” Written by J. Alexander Ryan and Rick Jones , performed by Jackie Lee and “Tell the World We’re Not In” Written by Denis King and Don Black , performed by The Peddlers

Goodbye just for now, from your Cancerian MonsterGirl

Postcards from Shadowland No. 8

Ace in The Hole 1951
Billy Wilder’s Ace in The Hole (1951) Starring Kirk Douglas and Jan Sterling
Brute Force
Jules Dassin’s prison noir masterpiece-Brute Force 1947 starring Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, and Charles Bickford
citizen kane-
Orson Welles- Citizen Kane (1941) also starring Joseph Cotten
devil and daniel webster
William Dieterle’s The Devil and Daniel Webster 1941
hangover square
Directed by John Brahm-Hangover Square 1945 starring Laird Cregar , Linda Darnell and George Sanders
House by The River
Fritz Lang’s House By The River 1950 starring Louis Hayward, Lee Bowman and Jane Wyatt.
i cover waterfront-1933
I Cover the Waterfront 1933- Claudette Colbert, Ben Lyon and Ernest Torrence
Jewel Mayhew and Wills Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte
Robert Aldrich’s Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte 1964 starring Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotton, Mary Astor, Agnes Moorehead and Cecil Kellaway
Key Largo
John Huston’s Key Largo 1948 Starring Edward G Robinson, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall
Killers Kiss
Stanley Kubrick’s Killers Kiss 1955 Starring Frank Silvera and Irene Kane.
Lady from Shanghai(1947)
Orson Welles penned the screenplay and stars in iconic film noir The Lady from Shanghai 1947 featuring the sensual Rita Hayworth, also starring Everett Sloane
lady in cage james caan++billingsley
Lady in a Cage 1964 directed by Walter Grauman and starring Olivia de Havilland, James Caan, and Jennifer Billingsley.
long dark hall
The Long Dark Hall 1951 Starring Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer
lorre M
Fritz Lang’s chilling M (1931) Starring Peter Lorre
Mark Robson The Seventh Victim
Mark Robson directs, Val Lewton’s occult shadow piece The Seventh Victim 1943 Starring Kim Hunter, Tim Conway and Jean Brooks
Meeting leo-Ace in the hole with leo 1951
Kirk Douglas in Ace In The Hole 1951 written and directed by Billy Wilder
mifune-and-yamamoto in Drunkin Angel 48
Akira Kurosawa’s film noir crime thriller Drunken Angel (1948) starring Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune
Panic in the Streets
Elia Kazan’s socio-noir Panic in The Streets 1950 starring Jack Palance, Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes and Zero Mostel
persona
Ingmar Bergman’s Persona 1966 starring Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson
Queen of Spades
The Queen of Spades 1949 directed by Thorold Dickinson and starring Anton Walbrook, Edith Evans and Yvonne Mitchell
Saint Joan of the Angels 1
Director Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s beautifully filmed Mother Joan of The Angels 1961 starring Lucyna Winnicka.
shanghai express
Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express 1932 Starring Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook and Anna May Wong
The Devil and Daniel Webster
The Devil and Daniel Webster 1941
The Haunting
Robert Wise’s The Haunting 1963. Screenplay by Nelson Gidding based on the novel by Shirley Jackson. Starring Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, and Russ Tamblyn
the Unsuspected_1947
Michael Curtiz’s The Unsuspected 1947 starring Claude Rains, Joan Caulfield and Audrey Totter
Viridiana
Luis Bunuel’s Viridiana 1961 Starring Silvia Pinal, Fernando Rey and Fransisco Rabal
What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?
Robert Aldrich’s cult grande dame classic starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford-What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? 1962

Twelve Neglected Characters from Classic Film.

nightmare-alley-edmund-goulding1947
1) The tragically poetic Pete Krumbein in Edmund Goulding’s Nightmare Alley 1947 played by Ian Keith.
Franzi
2) The flamboyant Franzi Kartos in Caught 1949 portrayed by Curt Bois ‘darling’
Fred Foss- The Dark Corner 949
3) Stauffer, alias Fred Foss in The Dark Corner 1946-played by the wonderful William Bendix in the white linen suit…
Jan Sterling in Women's Prison -Brenda
4) Good-hearted kite hanger, Brenda Martin in Women’s Prison 1955 – the eternal pixie Jan Sterling.
Brute Force Jeff Corey Freshman Stack
5) Jeff Corey, as the cringing, cowardly informer ‘Freshman’ Stack in Brute Force 1947.
Granny Tucker
6) Beulah Bondi as spiittin’ Granny Tucker in Jean Renoir’s The Southerner 1945 ‘Ah shuckity’
Ma Stone- Jane Darwell, The Devil & Daniel Webster
7) Ma Stone in William Dieterle’s The Devil and Daniel Webster 1941– the grand Jane Darwell.
Wills and Jewel talk at tea-Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte
8) Cecil Kellaway as Harry Wills and Mary Astor as Jewel Mayhew in Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte 1964.
Elisha Cook Jr. Jazz wild drummer Cliff-phantom ladyjpg
9) Cliff the jazz sexed drummer in Phantom Lady 1944– the ubiquitous Elisha Cook Jr.
(Ladies in Retirement)
10) Quirky sisters Louisa and Emily Creed in Ladies in Retirement 1941Edith Barrett & Elsa Lanchester.
11) The wonderful stoolie Mo whose saves for her headstone and plot out on Long Island played with that razor-sharp wit of Thelma Ritter in Pickup on South Street (1953).
12) Jack Oakie as Slob in Jules Dassin’s realism masterpiece Thieves’ Highway (1949).

Â