“THE MARK OF A MADMAN WHO LIVES TO KILL!”
THE DIABOLICAL DR Z (1966)
THE BLACK PIT OF DR M 1959
THE 5000 FINGERS OF DR T. (1953)
Doctor X (1932)
THE RETURN OF DR X 1939
The H MAN (1958)
Category: Composers and Film Scores
Fiend of The Day!: Ross Martin is Garland Humphrey ‘Red’ Lynch
“You’ve got a small waist — measurements: 34-22-35 — right? Oh, I know a lot about you, Miss Sherwood.” — Red Lynch
EXPERIMENT IN TERROR (1962)
Lee Remick plays bank teller Kelly Sherwood who is being terrorized by ‘Red’ Lynch (Ross Martin) a psychopath with an asthmatic voice like sandpaper who schemes to use her in a plot to steal $100,000 from the bank where she works. Lynch kidnaps Sherwood’s younger sister Toby played by Stephanie Powers, and then threatens to kill her, if she tells the police. Enter Glenn Ford as F.B.I. agent Ripley who is now on the case… setting off a feverish game of cat & mouse between Remick, Martin and Ford.
Directed by Blake Edwards, this is one hell of a gripping Film Noir/ Thriller, with a screenplay by The Gordons, based on Mildred and Gordon Gordon’s 1961 novel Operation Terror.
I love Ross Martin’s portrayal of the murdering, smarmy crushed velvet jacket wearing, tv host art critic Dale Kingston in Columbo’s “Suitable for Framing”
… and Martin inhabits ‘Red’ Lynch giving him a most bizarre sort of vicious earning him the persona here as Fiend of The Day!
See you soon!-MonsterGirl
The Film Score Freak Recognizes Jo Gabriel’s ‘Savage Bliss’ & Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête 1946
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you would have figured out, that I’m a singer/songwriter & recording artist, because I’ve mentioned it, oh about a zillion times…So here I go again taking a song of mine ‘Savage Bliss‘ off my lo-fi neo classical album The Amber Sessions and mashing it up in the editing bowl with Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bete (1946) Starring Josette Day and Jean Marais.
I love working with the films that have inspired me, adding my musical voice to the images, not because I flatter myself as a couch surfing filmmaker, rather as a way of expressing my eternal gratitude for the release and fulfillment that film has given me since I was a little monster girl singer/songwriter. So without any further adieu…!
Here’s to the beauty and the beast in all of us… cheers-MonsterGirl
William Castle’s: The Tingler (1959) “There’s not a worm in your backbone when you get scared!”
Or the miracle of PERCEPTO! “We must have buzzed 20 million behinds!”-William Castle
THE TINGLER 1959
Directed by William Castle, written by Robb White, and starring Vincent Price, as Dr. Warren Chapin, Patricia Cutts as Isabel Stevens Chapin, Judith Evelyn as Martha Higgins, Philip Coolidge as Ollie Higgins, Darryl Hickman as David Morris, Chapin’s young assistant pathologist, and Pamela Lincoln as Lucy Stevens. Von Dexter’s ominous score helps paint the creepy and menacing atmosphere.
Urbane master of horror Vincent Price stars in one of William Castle’s atmospheric carnival rides as Dr. Warren Chapin, a pathologist whose milieu is the autopsies of executed prisoners from the State prison.
Chapin is driven by a curiosity to find out the source of the mysteriously evil force that creates the SENSATION of fear, and so he sparks a theory that there is an organism called… The Tingler manifests itself at the base of the spine when one is experiencing abject fear. The Tingler however is subdued by the act of screaming. This nightmare from the vertebral id looks like a giant centipede or a flat lobster with mandibles, lots of legs, and armored scales.
Each of us is inhabited by one of these creepy crawling death grippers, which grow larger as our fear expands, but because of our ability to scream, it lays dormant, incognito, and in repose at the base of our spines.
At first, Chapin locks himself in his lab, experimenting by taking doses of LSD and trying to induce fear first in stray cats and then in himself.
So it goes until Chapin meets Ollie and Martha Higgins who own a revival silent movie theater, and oh yes, Martha happens to be a deaf-mute, who also has an extreme phobia of the sight of blood.
As you know, I adore Judith Evelyn and am not very happy when it’s suggested that Chapin injects her with some LSD instead of a sedative in order to induce some nightmarish experiences, in which Martha will not be able to ‘scream’ therefore unable to suppress the little monster waiting to grip her when the moment of fear takes hold…
In one of the most memorable classic horror movie sequences, Martha (Evelyn) during her presumed lysergic acid journey is stalked through her modest, bleak, and sinister apartment by a ghoulish phantom, who hurls a hatchet at her and then maneuvers her into the bathroom, where blood runs from the sink taps and the white porcelain tub fills with actual red-colored blood (the film is of course in B&W) An arm rises from the tub and clutches toward Martha, who is in the throws of primeval fear, made all the more brutal by the fact that she cannot utter a sound thus not… scream out!
Dying of fright on the bathroom floor, Ollie wraps her up in a sheet and brings her to Dr. Chapin’s house. Sensible, skip the police and straight to the autopsy I say!
Chapin had figured that Martha’s extreme fear would enable the Tingler to grow to its veritable actual size, and thus give him the opportunity to catch a living specimen, by slicing open Martha’s back and peeling the monster from her spinal column.
Having set out to try his experiment, he was unaware that husband Ollie equipped with a ghoul mask, axe, and tub filled with tomato red blood ( in a B & W film, using special focus lenses for the colored sequences) was plotting to scare his poor wife to death, and appropriate Chapin’s LSD inducing experiment to frighten Martha to death.
Once Chapin has the Tingler, Ollie takes his de-tinglered wife back home and Chapin’s wife Isabel (Price always seems to have a scheming hussy for a wife in these flicks) slips him a Mickey and lets loose the Tingler on her unconscious husband, which proceeds to clutch at his throat like a tick on a sunny august hound dog. Luckily sister-in-law Lucy arrives just in time to… SCREAM!
The Tingler lets go of its death grip, Chapin puts the thing in a pet carrier and goes off to Ollie’s apartment to put the darn thing back onto Martha’s backbone. He soon realizes that Ollie murdered his wife, a fight ensues, and the Tingler gets loose, slipping through the floorboards, and is now inside the movie house looking for someone to death grip!
From Guilty Pleasures of The Horror Film page 137- Article by Tom Weaver
William Castle had told Price that:
“Usually people who are frightened scream, and that keeps their Tingler from growing. Judith Evelyn will play a deaf-mute who runs a silent movie theater. Experimenting you scare the hell out of her, but because she can’t utter a sound she’s unable to scream-her Tingler grows, crushing her to death, you operate, remove the Tingler from her spine, but it escapes and gets into the silent movie theater. Well then, make believe that the theater is actually where the picture is playing…all hell breaks loose!”
In Weaver’s article, he discusses the waning horror movie genre after WWII and how Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique in 1955 was at the vanguard of cinema.
Castle was so impressed with how much the younger audiences had a hunger to be scared pantless, that supposedly it was this French thriller, that inspired Castle to try scaring the pants off audiences as well.
Many a Film Noir was tinged with elements of the horrific, with dark undertones and psychological angles that became very influential in American and British cinema. Where else did darker cinema have to go in order to funnel its often transgressive, unorthodox, taboo energies but through the Psychotronic, Cult, or B-Movie horror genres?
Around the time of Clouzot’s macabre masterpiece, there were also some very unsettling dark-psychological themed offerings such as Autumn Leaves 1956, The Night Holds Terror 1955, The Three Faces of Eve 1957, A Cry in The Night 1956, Cast A Dark Shadow 1955, The Killer is Loose 1956, The Snorkel 1958, Edge of Fury 1958, Screaming Mimi 1958 and Tennessee William’s emotionally violent Suddenly, Last Summer 1959 which suggested cannibalism, devouring motherhood and Oedipal rage.
Screaming Mimi 1958 Part II: “The way he looks after her, you’d think a bossom was something unique”
Just a little later in the early 60s, I think of The Strangler with Victor Buono in 1964 or Grant Williams in The Couch in 1962, The Nanny in 1965, or The Naked Kiss 1964 which filtrated pretty grotesque narratives of, Pedophilia, deranged psychosis, incest and again, the Oedipus complex.
Aldrich had ushered in a whole new persona for Bette Davis and Joan Crawford with his Grand Dame Guignol tour de force, What Ever Happened To Baby Jane 1962.
The trumpets were hailing for Castle to step up and create his own uniquely tacky ballyhoo! While not Freud in the inkwell, certainly at least some kitschy Schadenfreude.
Castle could see that young Americans were starving for entertainment that was part horrific and a little exhibitionist. He purchased a copy on the cheap of a horror/mystery novel called The Marble Forest and got television writer Robb White to put a screenplay together, and hey while they were at it, why not give it a french sounding title as a tout to Diabolique!
That’s when they released Macabre 1958 which actually didn’t come until 3 years after the release of Diabolique. Weaver doubts Castle’s accuracy about certain details in his relatings about the series of events but then again William Castle was admittedly a showman, a huckster, the PT Barnum of Horror films, and didn’t deny that he could tell big whoppers at times. It was all in fun…!
There are even conflicting stories as to how the project for The Tingler came about. White who also wrote the script for House on Haunted Hill claims that it was makeup man Jack Dusick who showed White a foot-long rubber worm that he had created. “This worm, it haunted you… it scared you!!!”
White thought about the idea and went to Castle and told him that they should find out “where fear comes from” and they’ll use the WORM!
Actually, the concept of FEAR itself becomes a vital character to the narrative of The Tingler, although I’m sure Castle couldn’t give a hoot about the real ‘why’ more likely it was the ‘how’ to go about doing the ‘how’! He was more of the discount provocateur than an auteur. He had vision, it was just in 3D.
According to Castle, he asked an artist at Columbia’s art department what a Tingler should look like, ” Sort of like a lobster but flat, and instead of claws, it has long slimy feelers!”
Of course, the cast thought the script preposterous, but Price always approached anything he did with style, and an urbane dignity.
White had written that they couldn’t find anything to make the Tingler look more frightening until Castle (Bill) came in one morning with a small vibrator which eventually saved the picture.
It was his idea to take out all the motors from thousands of vibrators and screw them under the theater seats, then rig everything up at crucial moments so that the audience would suddenly begin vibrating in waves, six rows at a time!
Again, whether this is true or not, Castle claims he got the idea one night after he got a violent electrical shock from changing a light bulb on his bedside table. William Castle wrote in his Step Right Up! “I’m going to buzz the asses of everyone in America!”Â
By installing little motors under the seats of every theater in the country, the projectionist would get the special cues on the film itself, then press a button once the Tingler appears on screen to ‘jolt’ the audience, leading them to believe that the Tingler was loose in the actual theater!
Dona Holloway the Associate to the Producer dubbed the process PERCEPTO!
Now that I’m back in the NYC area, I have to see if the Film Forum on Houston Street still runs their horror/sci-fi/fantasy Festivals. Years ago, I happened to catch a showing of The Maze 1953 where they passed out 3D glasses to the audience. At one time the Film Forum ran The Tingler complete with Percepto! I would love to have had my ass in one of those seats…
As far as Robb White, he considered these films dumb, “I hated ’em” and “And for years didn’t see some of the films I made with Bill Castle. I mean they’re so dumb God!- there’s not a worm in your backbone when you get scared.”
“You’ll Scream If You Value Your Life!”
It’s been a SCREAM!-MonsterGirl…!
From The Vault: Corridor of Mirrors (1948)
Corridor of Mirrors (1948)
Directed by Terence Young, and starring Eric Portman, Edana Romney, and Barbara Mullen. Edana Romney co-wrote the script.
Eric Portman plays Paul Mangin, who thinks he is Cesare Borgia reincarnated and that Mifanwy Conway (Edana Romney) is his lost love from a previous life. Corridor of Mirrors also showcases appearances by Christopher Lee and Valentine Dyall. A table at a nightclub with Mifanwy and her companions offers a fleeting glimpse of an astonishingly young Christopher Lee in his film debut, marking the beginning of a legendary career.
Terence Young’s film is a masterpiece of exquisite British filmmaking, immersing us in a rich atmosphere and evoking a mood that rivals the best psychological suspense thrillers and horror films from the forties, like the shadow plays of Val Lewton and the Gothic dark romances such as Wuthering Heights 1939, Rebecca 1940, and Jane Eyre 1943.
Corridor of Mirrors evokes an atmospheric, hallucinatory spectacle akin to Henri Alekan’s cinematography as he follows Josette Day’s travels through the mansion in Cocteau’s 1946 fable-like masterpiece Beauty and the Beast, imbued with its baroque, gilded, and ornate set design. Andre Thomas’s poetic lighting and camera angles suffuse the landscape of labyrinthine corridors, creating a somber and otherworldly landscape that evokes traces of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as Edana Romney journeys through the dreamy complexity of the mansion, trying to break free of the spell, as she pursues the white cat, who is an emblem of Alice’s white rabbit.
Terence Young’s haunting directorial debut is one of those rare films that sweeps you straight into its opulent, unsettling dreams. It is a stunning and dreamlike gothic noir steeped in romantic obsession, sorrow, and psychological unease. At the center of it all is Paul Mangin, an enigmatic, larger-than-life artist absolutely obsessed with the past. The story spirals around this mysterious figure who cloaks his mansion and himself (in velvet capes), in Renaissance grandeur and holds the profound certainty that his soul has spent lifetimes, shaped by love and loss, echoing across centuries. Paul’s interest in Mifanwy is nothing more than a reflection of a cherished image, a portrait whose allure her appearance unsettlingly echoes, devoid of true understanding or affection.
Edana Romney wasn’t just cast as Mifanwy; she shaped the role herself, working closely with co-producer Rudolph Cartier to adapt Chris Massey’s novel into the screenplay. Watching her on screen, she moves almost like she’s sleepwalking, and while her acting is somewhat restrained, it actually adds to the film’s hypnotic, dreamlike quality. Throughout, she’s shadowed by a mysterious woman and a fluffy white cat, both quietly watching, which only deepens the sense of eerie voyeurism and subtle unease.
When Paul meets the beautiful Mifanwy Conway, lovely, possibly shady, and just curious enough to get drawn into the sinister spell, his fixation deepens. He’s convinced she’s the reincarnation of a long-lost lover from centuries ago and seeks to shape her to fit this spectral ideal. She rides beside Paul through shadowed London streets, the horse-drawn cab winding toward a vast, brooding mansion at the city’s heart. Paul, a forbidding aesthete veiled in grand delusions of a past life as an Italian noble, seeks to ensnare the sensuous Mifanwy in the dark embrace of his twisted reverie.
From its shadow-drenched corridors and warped reflections, the film blurs the boundary between reality and hypnotic fantasy. Corridor of Mirrors is a wild, shadowy fever dream drenched in mystery and illusion. It carries you from these dark, mirror-lined hallways and the lavish costume balls right into haunting galleries filled with faceless mannequins. Reality and fantasy melt together here; sometimes, you aren’t sure which is which. It’s like stepping into a twisted fairy tale. Each scene pulses with the quiet torment of lives trapped in mirrors, echoes of Pygmalion, Bluebeard, and Cocteau’s haunted fairy tales. It is as if the characters are caught in a maze of glass, unable to escape their own reflections and obsessions.
Paul Mangin’s obsession leads to madness, murder, and a shattering denouement amid wax effigies in Madame Tussauds, where the film’s onyx gloom gives way to truth and a tragic sense of justice.
The film’s Gothic atmosphere occupies a rare and haunting space, yet it draws subtle echoes from both Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and Fritz Lang’s eerie 1947 thriller, The Secret Beyond the Door. In the latter, a new bride, Joan Bennett, uncovers a chilling secret: her husband’s obsession with recreating rooms where murders have taken place, a macabre blurring of the lines between love and death, passion and violence.
André Thomas’s cinematography is a world unto itself, with its eerie, poetic visual style transforming the film into a hypnotic dreamscape. He plays with light and reflection brilliantly so that you almost lose track of where the real world ends and fantasy begins, those iconic mirrored corridors, where characters and their secrets multiply endlessly in flickering candlelight, and movement, fracturing reality and plunging the film’s characters into a labyrinth of shifting perspectives. Thomas’s cinematography exquisitely captures the film’s sumptuous costumes and intricate décor, draping each scene in a play of shimmering shadows and delicate highlights. His lens lingers on textured fabrics and ornate surroundings, bathing the opulence in a luminous glow that feels both intimate and grand, inviting us to step into a world where every detail is a visual feast. Thomas bathes the set in a chiaroscuro haze in key sequences, such as Mifanwy’s passage through the mansion’s long, mirrored hall lined with faceless mannequins. Nothing is quite what it seems. This approach blurs the line between fantasy and reality, uniting the film’s aching romantic longing and its creeping psychological dread. In every veil and distortion, the characters’ tangled obsessions and fractured selves mirror each other.
George Auric’s (who scored Cocteau’s La Belle et La Bête) score for Corridor of Mirrors flows like a dark, Gothic, melancholic river beneath the film’s haunting imagery, its melodies rising and falling with the rhythm of obsession and longing. The music is at once ethereal and grounded, shimmering with delicate strings that weave through shadowy passages and shadow-drenched ballrooms, while moments of brooding brass and subtle piano suggest the deep undercurrents of psychological unease and brooding desperation. The late moments, underscored by sweeping, delicate orchestration, evoke the grandeur and tragic beauty of the unfolding drama, making his score an essential part of the film’s haunting allure. Auric’s composition turns every whispered secret and silken touch into a symphony of passion and peril. The gowns were designed by Owen Hyde-Clark and constructed by French couturier Maggy Rouff.
“In projecting the slow abandonment of one’s identity, her third and final performance on the big screen evokes the pleasure, and the terror of romantic submission, Smith says — Mifanwy is a princess who, unlike Cinderella, who waits for a prince, or Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, immobile without the touch of a man’s lips, must break her own spell.” (Imogen Sara Smith for Criterion)
Corridor of Mirrors is a lush, visually extravagant meditation on identity and desire, where the past’s spectral grip suffuses every candle-lit room and character’s haunted gaze. The artistry of set and cinematography deepens its poetic melancholy, making the film a rare British gem, finely blended of exquisite and unsettling, and forever suspended between passion and despair, somewhere between the promise of love and the weight of memory.
See you in the mirror soon, MonsterGirl
From The Vault: The Queen of Spades (1949)
“The Dead Shall Give Up Their Secrets!”
THE QUEEN OF SPADES 1949
The Queen of Spades is a masterpiece if ever I saw one. Associate Producer Jack Clayton was on board for this film, directed by Thorold Dickinson (Gaslight 1940) who came onto the project last minute. Adapted to the screen by Rodney Ackland and Arthur Boys from the story written by Alexander Pushkin. The story could have easily been dreamt up by Aleksei Tolstoy, Ivan Chekhov -(The Drop of Water) Nikolai Gogol or even Oscar Wilde.
My partner Wendy even mentioned Edgar Allan Poe as she watched along with me. It brought to my mind, his short story Never Bet The Devil Your Head. Which of course was brought to life by Frederico Fellini in the segment of Spirits of The Dead 1968 called Toby Dammit, featuring the work of actor Terence Stamp.
It’s clear that Russians are very good at telling Ghost stories and notorious for telling tales about selling your soul to the Devil!
The Queen of Spades, stars Anton Walbrook, Edith Evans, Yvonne Mitchell and Ronald Howard.
The gorgeous music scored by Georges Auric  (Beauty and The Beast (1946), The Innocents (1961), and Wages of Fear 1953 just to mention a very few!) is as heart wrenching as it is heroic, drawing out the exquisite melody and chord changes to reach the soul and twist it into knots while it lingers.
What can I say about the gorgeous cinematography by Otto Heller.The odd camera angles are reminiscent of the great German Expressionist movement, something from Fritz Lang or the use of light and darkly dreamy angles like that of Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Even without any sound, the story would have emerged from the screen as a powerful cautionary tale, rife with grotesque and compelling characters.
The film is an arresting fairytale, that’s dreamy, and haunting in it’s imagery and perhaps, yes perhaps as visually stunning as I dare say Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête 1946 or Julian Duvivier’s Flesh and Fantasy 1943 and collaborative efforts of Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer’s Dead of Night 1945.
There are frames so masterfully conjured in shadow, that you might even think you’re watching Film Noir or an obscure Val Lewton production. Either way, The Queen of Spades sort of defies being labelled a specific genre.
It has it’s own melancholy fantasy that draws from many elements of the mystery/suspense crime/noir and supernatural horror gems of that golden age, when visual structure was as essential to the narrative as was the character development and dialogue.
Anton Walbrook  plays the bitter and venomous Capt.Herman Suvorin an army engineer, who is so poisoned by his resentments toward the ruling aristocracy , that he wants to gain his own wealth, and punish those around him who have benefited by their birthright and title. Suvorin does not want to take life as it comes, he wants to “Grab life by the throat and force it to give him what he wants!”-Suvorin.
This he conspires to do by trying to learn the secret of winning at a card game named Faro, from the Old Countess Ranevskaya, played by Edith Evans.
After a frustrating night of watching a few of his fellow army officers play Faro, taunting Herman as if he was not of the same class, he bursts out of his room in a self absorbed rage, and wanders onto the streets and into a dusty old book store, first picking up a book about Napoleon Bonaparte whom he admires (his portrait hangs in Herman’s humble room) because Napoleon came into his power at age 26!
Herman Suvorin possess a similar intensely maniacal quality that makes him a very unapproachable,manipulative and unlikable man. Looking at him was like “looking into the eyes of Satan!”
Fatefully placed next to Napoleon’s book is another book, suddenly and with a creepy alacrity, the old bookshop owner picks up the ancient bound leather and starts relating it’s contents to Herman, as if he’d been chosen the messenger… warning Suvorin about the secrets and dangers of tampering with the universe. The old man told Herman that he’d either wind up having riches… or lose his eternal soul!
In terms of appearance and demeanor I thought of Riffraff from Rocky Horror Picture Show, and wondered if this little bookish crypt keeper was an inspiration for Richard O Brien!
Herman purchases the book for 3 rubles, and starts reading aloud to us. This mysterious book, about people making deals with the Devil, and a certain mysterious Count d. Saint Germaine who lived in an isolated palace and molded wax images of his chosen victims, thereby trapping their souls forever in his power.
Herman Suvorin slowly and thoughtfully recites to us from the book:
Containing the true stories of people who sold their souls in return for wealth, power or influence"¦ Chapter IV The Secret of The Cards
Countess R"¦(Countess Ranevskaya )
In the year seventeen hundred and forty six, (60 years ago)
The Count d. Saint Germain arrived in St. Petersburg.
He chose for his residence, a palace on the outskirts of the city.
and soon there were strange rumors, about the weird dwelling and it’s mysterious occupant. It was certainly true that in the vaults of the palace. he had a curious collection of wax figures, which, so it was whispered, contained the souls of those who had fallen under his evil influence. He would derive intense please from modeling the wax figures from his intended victims, each one of whom was chosen.
with deliberate appreciation. Thus the countess Ranevskaya, acknowledged as the most beautiful woman in Russia came to excite his attention. He learned that in spite of a jealous husband, all the men had vied for her favors.
When the last of the guests had left. the countess went down the secret stairway.. To admits the young stranger she had promised to meet. She alone had the key to the hidden door. They had an amorous meeting. He was a cad and threatened her with scandal. Taking all her money. She was haunted by the fear of scandal. She needed to replace the money. In her despair she remembered the message from Saint Germain. she had no alternative but to answer the mysterious summons. She would sell her soul"¦ anything to save herself…
Continue reading “From The Vault: The Queen of Spades (1949)”
Special Note from Jo Gabriel alias MonsterGirl : The Film Score Freak had been ailing…
In the past few months I have been experiencing technical difficulties due to an issue with my music mash ups and Youtube. The problem has now been corrected, so I am inviting all to revisit posts from The Film Score Freak that feature movie/music mash ups that I conjured myself to pay tribute to some timeless masterpieces as well as tout little ole me’s singer/songwriting chops….
Thanks for your patience…
So now, without any further empty popcorn boxes in the aisles and pink glops of chewing gum under your theatre seats! I welcome you back to !!!!
THE FILM SCORE FREAK!
Yours Eternally-Joey
The Incredible DokTor Markesan-[Essay on Boris Karloff’s Thriller]
A sign reads “NO TRESPASSING ~VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT~DokTor Konrad Markesan”
The Incredible DokTor Markesan aired Feb 26 1962 perhaps the most creepy of all the Thriller stories, originally appeared in Weird Tales Magazine and was taken from a story written by August Derleth and Mark Schorer, and adapted by Donald S Sanford and directed by Robert Florey. The rotting corpse makeup by Jack Barron actually predates Romero’s 1968 Night Of The Living Dead, which I feel only made both effectively more creepy by the B&W film.
Mort Stevens’s score begins as gravely contemplative and daydreamy single notes on the piano beckon us into this episode, then begins the darker, deeper cello strings foreboding and ominous. As the piano resolves into more somber chords, the young Fred Bancroft and his new bride Molly drive up to the entrance of Oakmoor. What has happened to the broad green lawns and the servants in starched white uniforms? They proceed to enter the house, the door having been strangely left unlocked. Seemingly vacant, Oakmoor is crocheted in cobwebs, from years of neglect. There is no electricity. Fred lights a candelabra and the couple continue to search for Fred’s Uncle Konrad. As they start to ascend the staircase, suddenly a door creaks open, the music sways from ominous to severe, and a sallow, blank, expressionless, Konrad Markesan steps out of the shadows. Uncle Konrad stares up at them, ashen, emotionless, his right hand poised in a state of rigor, he stares off, silent. Fred trying to ingratiate himself awkwardly, remains smiling, excruciatingly strained in the midst of his Uncle’s peculiarly inhospitable behavior. Molly acutely more aware of his uncle’s bizarre presence stands there obviously horrified and uncomfortable while Fred still flounders to make a connection with his relative. Molly chirps out a “Hello” and from the moment Fred holds out his hand to shake his Uncle’s, Markesan turns away and says “Come with me” and proceeds to leave the grand hallway.
Continue reading “The Incredible DokTor Markesan-[Essay on Boris Karloff’s Thriller]”
The Film Score Freak recognizes The Outer Limits: The Forms of Things Unknown & Jo Gabriel’s Mistress of Time
The Outer Limits: The Forms of Things Unknown
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
The Film Score Freak recognizes The Phantom of The Opera starring Lon Chaney and Jo Gabriel’s ‘Bulldozer’
The Phantom of The Opera 1925 starring Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin
A mad, disfigured composer seeks love with a lovely young opera singer. Starring the man of a thousand faces Lon Chaney as Erik The Phantom and the lovely Mary Philbin as Christine Daae.
Here I’ve taken beautiful scenes from Phantom and edited them together with my song Bulldozer from my album Fools and Orphans.
For tragic love runs between both the song and the eternal story of undying and unrequited love!
the lovely Mary Philbin.
A tragic love…!
“A masterpiece of horror that shocked cinema for decades!”
JoGabriel the girl behind the mask of MonsterGirl!