HOPE EMERSONÂ (Caged 1950, House of Strangers 1949, Thieves Highway 1949, Adam’s Rib 1949) is a pretty formidable lady. Hope Emerson is 6’2″, 230 pounds of actress as she reprises her fluent ‘vicious & sadistic’ characterization of larger-than-life-evil incarnate-much in the vein of her cruel bon bon eatin’ prison matron Evelyn Harper who tortured poor Eleanor Parker inCaged 1950.Oh that hair shaving scene just sticks with ya…
In Robert Siodmak’s sublime noirCry of the City 1948Emerson plays Madame Rose Given who runs a massage parlor, loves to cook, is a pancake eatin’ -looming ‘heavy’… who loves jewels and just wants a little place in the country where she can cook, eat pancakes and fresh eggs… yeah that’s livin’. From her brawny swagger to her grumbling yet leisurely voice, Emerson is the highlight of the film!
“Hmmm…It is good, isn’t it? I have the touch. It’s only given to a few. It’s a matter of knowing the currents of the body. Why waste this on fat old women who think they can lose a few pounds and be beautiful again… Fat old women who have too much money and too many jewels. They think the jewels make them beautiful and they fight to keep them like they fight the years that make them ugly.”
That’s why she didn’t even break a sweat when she strangled old lady DeGrasia for her jewelry. Darn old gal had the nerve to put up a struggle! And does she give self-serving on lam career criminal Marty Rome (Richard Conte) some neck rub while he’s hiding out at her place trying to make a deal. Rose finally gets the jewels as a trade for money and some wheels to get out of town with his girl Debra Paget…
Marty-“Pearl choker with a Ruby pendant. Seven rings. Diamond bracelet with the clasp broken. You must have been in a hurry ha?”
Rose-“Where are they?”
Marty- “In a locker in the subway station… I thought if you went to all that trouble to get ’em once you may wanna get ’em again.”
Rose chuckles-“You’re a cute little man Martin..”
Rose ‘massaging’ Martin- “Hmmm…It is good, isn’t it? I have the touch. It’s only given to a few. It’s a matter of knowing the currents of the body. Why waste this on fat old women who think they can lose a few pounds and be beautiful again… Fat old women who have too much money and too many jewels. They think the jewels make them beautiful and they fight to keep them like they fight the years that make them ugly.”
Rose ain’t someone I’d want giving me a rub down, and I sure wouldn’t want to meet her at the door as the Avon Lady either- Gee wiz.. that woman could scare the horns off the devil- She’s got a smirk & leer that makes her seem like she could eat small children. This pistol-packing, masseuse whose hands should be registered as lethal weapons- is one menacing lady who has earned her place here at The Last Drive Inas Fiend of the Day!
Rose Given (Hope Emerson) gives Marty Rome (Richard Conte) a massage he’ll not soon forget!!!
Just look at that mug! Nah, I bet she was really a pussycat. I mean she was the voice of Borden’s Else the Cow after all! Sadly-Hope Emerson died of liver disease in 1960… Here’s to you Hope Emerson-and your bigger-than-life acting style!-Love Joey
PS: Cry of the City is perhaps one of my new favorite film noirs in Siodmak’s collection. I’m going to have to cover it, because of the great acting, from the entire cast-small parts even for Shelley Winters to the gritty dialogue and sensational cinematography so stay tuned!- Your ever-lovin’ MonsterGirl in the city.
You could say that Evelyn Ankers is still the reigning queen of classical 1940s horror fare turned out by studios like RKO, Universal, and Monogram. But there was a host of femme scream tales that populated the silver screen with their unique beauty, quirky style, and/or set of lungs ready to wail, faint, or generally add some great tone and tinge to the eerie atmosphere whenever the mad scientist or monster was afoot. Some were even monstrous themselves…
For this upcoming Halloween, I thought I’d show just a little love to those fabulous ladies who forged a little niche for themselves as the earliest scream queens & screen icons.
I’m including Elsa Lanchester because any time I can talk about this deliriously delightful actress I’m gonna do it. Now I know she was the screaming hissing undead bride in the 30s but consider this… in the 40s she co-starred in two seminal thrillers that bordered on shear horror as Mrs. Oates in The Spiral Staircase1945 and a favorite of mine as one of Ida Lupino’s batty sisters Emily Creed in Ladies in Retirement 1941
I plan on venturing back to the pre-code thirties soon, so I’ll talk about The Bride of Frankenstein, as well as Gloria Holden (Dracula’s Daughter, Frances Dade (Dracula) and Kathleen Burke (Island of Lost Souls) Gloria Stuart and Fay Wray and so many more wonderful actresses of that golden era…
Elsa Lanchester as Mrs.Oates in director Robert Siodmak’s The Spiral Staircase 1945The Sister Creed in Ladies in Retirement 1941 starring Elsa Lanchester, Ida Lupino, and the wonderful Edith Barrett (right)
the playfully pretty Anne Nagel.Anne Nagel & Lon Chaney Jr in a promo shot for Man Made MonsterAnne Nagel was strapped to the slab and at the mercy of the ever-mad Lionel Atwill. Here comes the glowing Lon Chaney Jr! in his electric rubber suit in Man Made Monster!
The depraved mad scientist Lionel Atwill working with electro biology pins gorgeous red-headed Anne Nagel playing June Lawrence, to his operating slab in Man Made Monster 1941. Lon Chaney Jr. comes hulking in all aglow as the ‘Electrical Man’ which was his debut for Universal. He carries Anne Nagel through the countryside all lit up like a lightning bug in rubber armor. Man Made Monsterisn’t the only horror shocker that she displayed her tresses & distresses. She also played a night club singer named Sunny Rogers also co-starring our other 40’s horror heroine icon Anne Gwynne in the Karloff/Lugosi pairing Black Friday in 1940.
She played the weeping Mrs.William Saunders, the wife of Lionel Atwill’s first victim in Mad Doctor of Market Street 1942. And then of course she played mad scientist Dr Lorenzo Cameron’s (George Zucco’s) daughter Lenora in The Mad Monster 1942. Dr. Cameron has succeeded with his serum in turning men into hairy wolf-like Neanderthal monsters whom he unleashes on the men who ruined his career.
Anne Nagel and Lionel Atwill Mad Doctor of Market Street.
Poor Anne had a very tragic life… Considered that sad girl who was always hysterical. Once Universal dropped her she fell into the Poverty Row limbo of bit parts. Her brief marriage to Ross Alexander ended when he shot himself in the barn in 1937, and Anne became a quiet alcoholic until her death from cancer in 1966.
Dr. Cameron’s daughter Lenora (Anne Nagel) discovers the wolf-like man in his laboratory in The Mad Monster.Glenn Strange as Petro the Hairy man in The Mad Monster 1942.
the sultry Anne Nagel and Bela Lugosi in Black Friday 1940 photo courtesy Dr. Macro.
Martha was in noir favorites The Big Sleep 1946 & Alimony1949. This beauty played an uncredited Margareta ‘Vazec’s Daughter’along side Ilona Massey as Baroness Elsa Frankenstein and the marvelous older beauty Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva the gypsy! in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man 1943.Then she played heroine Dorothy Coleman in Captive Wild Woman 1943 and Miss McLean in The Mummy’s Ghost 1944.
Originally Martha MacVickar she started modeling for photographer William Mortenson. David O Selznick contracted the starlet but Universal took over and put in her bit parts as the victim in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and in other ‘B’ guilty pleasures like Captive Wild Woman &The Mummy’s Ghost. She was also the pin-up girl for WWII magazines.
Martha also starred in other noir features such as Ruthless 1948 and The Big Bluff 1955. She was Mickey Rooney’s third wife.
Martha Vickers and Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep photo courtesy of Dr. Macro.Martha Vickers and Lon Chaney in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.Martha Vickers and John Carradine in Captive Wild WomanI just can’t resist Vicker’s sex appeal here she is again… Wow!
Though Logan made very few films including Opened By Mistake 1940, her contribution to women who kick-ass in horror films and don’t shrink like violets when there’s a big bald baddie coming after you with a net and a bottle of chloroform, makes you a pretty fierce contender even if you are only 7 inches tall! As Dr. Mary Robinson (Janice Logan), Logan held it all together while the men were scattering like mice from the menacing google eyed Dr. Cyclops played superbly by Albert Dekker.
Fay Helm as Nurse Strand with John Carradine in Captive Wild Woman.
Fay Helm played Ann Terry in one of my favorite unsung noir/thriller gems Phantom Lady1944 where it was all about the ‘hat’ and she co-starred as Nurse Strand alongside John Carradine in Captive Wild Woman. Fay played Mrs. Duval in the Inner Sanctum mystery Calling Dr. Death with Lon Chaney Jr. 1943
Ella Raines and Fay Helm in Phantom Lady.
Fay Helm plays Jenny Williams in Curt Siodmak’s timeless story directed by George Waggner for Universal and starring son of a thousand faces Lon Chaney Jr in his most iconic role Larry Talbot as The Wolf Man 1941
Fay as Jenny Williams: “Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”
Fay was in Night Monster 1942. Directed by Ford Beebe the film starred Bela Lugosi as a butler to Lionel Atwill a pompous doctor who falls prey to frightening nocturnal visitations. I particularly love the atmosphere of this little chiller with its swampy surroundings and its metaphysical storyline.
Dr. Lynn Harper (Irene Hervey- Play Misty For Me 1971) a psychologist is called to the mysterious Ingston Mansion, to evaluate the sanity of Margaret Ingston, played by our horror heroine Fay Helm daughter of Kurt Ingston (Ralph Morgan) a recluse who invites the doctors to his eerie mansion who left him in a wheelchair.
Fay gives a terrific performance surrounded by all the ghoulish goings on! She went on to co-star with Bela Lugosi and Jack Haley in the screwball scary comedy One Body Too Many (1944).
Irene Hervey as Dr. Lynn Harper –Night Monster 1942.
Fay Helm in Night Monster.Fay Helm with Bela the gypsy in The Wolf Man.
Bela Lugosi as half ape half man really needed a shave badly in The Ape Man 1943, and Louise Currie and her wonder whip might have been the gorgeous blonde dish to make him go for the Barbasol. One of the most delicious parts of the film was its racy climax as Emil Van Horn in a spectacle of a gorilla suit rankles the cage bars longing for Currie’s character, Billie Mason the tall blonde beauty. As Bela skulks around the laboratory and Currie snaps her whip in those high heels. The film’s heroine was a classy dame referred to as Monogram’s own Katharine Hepburn! She had a great affection for fellow actor Bela Lugosi and said that she enjoyed making Poverty Row films more than her bit part in Citizen Kane! And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that she appeared in several serials, from both Universal & Republic like The Green Hornetand Captain Marvel.
Tom Weaver in his book Poverty Row HORRORS! described The Ape Man as “a Golden Turkey of the most beloved kind.”
Louise Currie followed up with another sensational title for Monogram as Stella Saunders in Voodoo Man 1944 which again features Lugosi as Dr. Richard Marlowe who blends voodoo with hypnosis in an attempt to bring back his dead wife. The film also co-stars George Zucco as a voodoo high priest and the ubiquitous John Carradine as Toby a bongo-playing half-wit “Don’t hurt her Grego, she’s a pretty one!”
Pat McKee as Grego, Louise Currie, John Carradine, and Bela Lugosi in Monogram’s Voodoo Man 1944.the outrageous Voodoo Man 1944
Act of Violence 1948 directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Van Heflin, Robert Ryan and Janet LeighLon Chaney in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1923What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? 1962 Directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Bette Davis and Joan CrawfordBedlam 1946 directed by Mark Robson Produced by Val Lewton and starring Boris Karloff and Anna LeeBette Davis and Bette Davis in Dead Ringer (1964) directed by Paul Henreid and co-starring Karl Malden and Peter LawfordJoan Blondell and Tyrone Power in Nightmare Alley 1947 written by Jules Furthman for the screen and directed by Edmund GouldingCabin in the Sky 1943 directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Lena Horne and Ethel WatersCrossfire 1947 directed by Edward Dmytryk starring the Roberts- Robert Young, Robert Mitchum and Robert RyanThe Day the Earth Stood Still 1951 directed by Robert Wise and starring Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal and Hugh MarloweThe Devil Commands 1941 directed by Edward Dmytryk and starring Boris Karloff and Anne Revere written for the screen by Robert Hardy AndrewsTHE OLD DARK HOUSE, THE (1932) GLORIA STUART and BORIS KARLOFF Dir: JAMES WHALEDr JEKYLL AND MR HYDE 1931starring Frederick March & Miriam Hopkins and directed by Rouben MamoulianThey Live By Night starring Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell. Directed by Nicholas RayJoan Fontaine and Judith Anderson in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca 1940Phantom of the Opera 1925 starring Lon Chaney and Mary PhilbinTod Brownings Freaks 1932Gloria Grahame Odds Against Tomorrow 1959 directed by Robert Wise Josette Day in Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast 1946Judith Anderson in Rebecca 1940Janet Leigh and Phyllis Thaxter in Act of Violence 1948Joseph L. Mankiewitz directs Louis Calhern & Marlon Brando in Julius Caesar 1953Fritz Langs’ Metropolis 1927William Castle’s Mr Sardonicus 1961 Starring Guy Rolfe and Audrey DaltonWilliam Wyler directs Shirley McClaine in Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour 1961co-starring Audrey Hepburn and James GarnerMary Astor and Van Heflin Act of Violence 1948Odds Against Tomorrow Shelley Winters and Robert Ryan 1959Gregory Peck in Robert Mulligan’s To Kill a Mockingbird 1962 written by Harper Lee with a screenplay by Horton FooteRobert Ryan in Robert Wise’s The Set-Up 1949Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss 1964 starring Constance TowersCecil B DeMille’s Samson and Delilah 1949 -starring Hedy Lamarr and Victor MatureRobert Stevenson directed Bronte’s Jane Eyre 1943 starring a young Elizabeth Taylor and Peggy Ann GarnerThe Children’s Hour Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaineJulie Harris and Claire Bloom in Robert Wise’s The Haunting 1963George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead 1968Barbara Stanwyk as Jo in Walk on the Wild Side 1962 directed by Edward DmytrykWhat Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962 Bette Davis and Victor Buono
HAPPY FRIDAY THE 13th- Hope you have a truly lucky day-MonsterGirl
Directed by Kurt Neumann (The Fly 1958)and starring Johanna Matz as Eve Ullmann a young girl who answers an advertisement for international models, whose fashion shows are just fronts for men to buy what they ‘like.’
What unfolds is the dark underbelly of international white slave trafficking. The film was shot on location in Hollywood but created as the playground of Rio De Janeiro.
Scott Brady is Richard Lanning, a guy who works for Jaime Coltos a rich Brazilian mine owner (Raymond Burr) Jaime invites Richard to his country estate for a little romp, but one of the new ‘models’ Eve isn’t playing the game, and breaks a bottle over his head when he tries to get ‘friendly.’ Once Eve finds out the real operation she works for, she begins to make trouble. Also starring Ingrid Stenn ( Bewildered Youth 1957) as Connie Voorhees.
Also co-starring Gisela Fackeldey as Mme. Lansowa, Katharina Mayberg as Felicia, Erica Beer as Elise LeFevre, Hanita Hallan as Lena, Gert Fröbe as Lobos.
The camera frame evolves into a most simplistic line drawing, a chubby caricature of Alfred Hitchcock’s endearing profile which then converges with Charles Gounod’s“Funeral March for a Marionette” as suggested by Bernard Herrmann. Bernard Herrmann had scored so many of Hitch’s feature films, as well as John Williams and Dimitri Tiompkin. Hitchcock appears at first in a shadowy silhouette from the corner of the screen, then stepping prominently into the outline, filling his place as the master of the evening’s suspenseful ceremonies.
Now, I offer a brief snapshot of my oeuvre featuring some of my very favorite episodes of both Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. They never stale, they always tickle and cause that most delicious little shudder, from some of the finest mystery and suspense writers and re-experiencing the delight of seeing how the show had given some of the best acting talents their very first start…right here.
Jim Whitely (William Shatner) and Dorothy (Rosemary Harris) begin cleaning out the apartment of his dead Cousin Julia (Jessica Tandy), Jim comes across a small wooden box that contains a mysterious glass eye and starts to relate the strange and macabre story to his wife of why it remains in Julia’s possession.
The proper, lonely, and romantically repressed Julia had fallen in love with a famous ventriloquist named Max Collodi (Tom Conway)Becoming obsessed with the performer she saw all his performances, sending him letters requesting to meet him. Eventually quitting her meager job, in order to follow his show around Europe, Max agrees to meet Julia, setting forth certain conditions upon their first encounter.
Once she arrives at his hotel room, she finds him sitting in a dimly lit atmosphere of mystery, surrounded by shadows and subterfuge. The darkness envelopes him, and he asks her to keep her distance. He sits at a table with his small dummy George.
Overcome with passion as the two begin to talk, Julia tries to reach out and touch the object of her undying passion -Max Collodi, but it comes along with grave consequences.
Nurse Killer-“You’re Such a Pretty Nurse, Freda” cackle, cackle.
Over the course of two weeks, a psychotic maniac is on the prowl, being reported all over the television and radio. The police are baffled by this madman who is preying exclusively on live-in nurses.
Set the stage for a dark and stormy night, where Nurse Stella Crosson (Dana Wynter) and Nurse Betty Ames (T.C. Jones) are held up by the storm at the house of the man they are taking care of (John Kerr) He’s got a bad heart and lives in a creepy old mansion on the outskirts of town.
Suddenly, the women get a phone call from the murderer telling them that he knows they’re alone, and is on his way over to kill them both. Stella goes around the house making sure all the windows and doors are locked tight, but discovers that they overlooked a small window in the basement that is flapping open from the storm. Is he already in the house?
Maude Isles-“I read a book about a man who only killed trombone players, he beat them to death with their own trombones.”
The prolific Robert Bloch, a genius writer of the horror suspense genre
John Cassavetes plays Rusty Connors who tricks his prison cellmate Mike Krause (Rayford Barnes) into telling him every detail about his gorgeous girlfriend Helen Cox (Ann Sothern). On his deathbed, Mike reveals to Rusty that he’s got a stash of $56,000 hidden away with the help of his dead accomplice, Pete Taylor.
Once Rusty is released, he goes in search of the epic Helen and finds her in the small town of Hanesville working as a waitress in a greasy spoon diner slinging hash and, and not quite as divine as Mike had related in his verbal memoirs.
Rusty pretends to be enamored with the voluptuous Helen, in order to enlist her in helping him find the stashed cash from the robbery. The journey leads them to a ramshackle boat house on a lake, inhabited by a sea of hungry rats.
From Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Directed by Alfred Hitchcock himself with teleplay and story by the great darkly humorous British writer Roald Dahl.
Produced by Joan Harrison and associate producer/actor Norman Lloyd.
British writer of the darkly comedic fairy tale world, Roald Dahl
Barbara Bel Geddes plays the dutiful Mary Maloney, a devoted wife and housekeeper. Husband police chief Patrick Maloney comes home and coldly tells her that there’s another woman he wants to marry and that he wants a divorce. Oh, yeah and Mary’s pregnant with his child, but he’ll let her have the child, they’ll probably be okay.
The usually composed and polite Mary erupts in a moment of rage killing him by way of blunt force trauma to the head with a giant frozen leg of lamb.
She then calmly calls the police, giving them her quick alibi, a story that she’d been out shopping, while the murder occurred. Lieutenant Noonan is the investigating officer on the case. He is bewildered by the lack of a murder weapon missing from the scene of the crime.
Mary being the ultimate hostess and good cook invites the hard-working detective Noonan and the other police officers to stay for dinner. Noonan says while stuffing his face with Mary’s fine meal, “For all we know, it might be right under our very noses.”
“Old Mrs. Keating gave me the ring test today… dangled it over my tummy, and it’s a boy.”“I want a divorce…now we’ve got to be calm and sensible about it.” “You must have your supper darling, I wouldn’t ever let you go without your supper.”
”I won’t let you leave, you can’t… you can’t.”“Try and stop me.”
From Alfred Hitchcock Presents directed by Stuart Rosenberg, teleplay by Bill S. Ballingerfrom a story by Harold R. Daniels. Produced by Joan Harrison and associate producer/actor Norman Lloyd.
The world of academia is occupied by intellectual types, social misfits, and radical thinkers. At one such particular local college, there is a fiend ravaging women while they walk home through the neighboring woods. At a social gathering of faculty, they speculate the motives of the madman, using their knowledge of criminal psychology and floating theories around while drinking cocktails and fawning over the beautiful Daphne. Is Daphne going to be the maniac’s next victim?
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour directed by Arnold Lavin and based on a short story by Davis Grubb.
Peter Fondais Verge Likens a simple, respectable farmer’s boy whose father is murdered by a ruthless politician again perfectly befitting the acting chops of Robert Emhardt as Riley McGrath who thinks he can get away with anything. George ‘Goober’ Lindsay plays D.D. Martin, McGrath’s cutthroat flunky in a role that is quite a contrast from the oafish and good-natured Goober Pyle.
But Verge is smart, patient, and not impetuous when it comes to laying the blueprints for his master plan of revenge.
This is perhaps one of the most disturbing pieces of suspense television, that would quite aptly fit onto the larger screen adaptation as a major motion picture. The cinematography is stunning and Teresa Wright and Bruce Dern’s acting is so distinctively nuanced that it lifts the narrative beyond mere television drama. The theme of isolation, dread, and psychological/physical abuse by Emery and Jesse is stunning and at times nightmarish. Teresa Wrightplays the meek Stella, a woman who has been so beaten down by her obnoxious and domineering cretin of a husband Emery played by Pat Buttram. Stella is a gentle soul, who loves animals, befriending a little squirrel who becomes her only source of joy. Along comes the menacing Bruce Dern as the mysterious Jesse who is willing to work for $5 a day picking peaches, knowing all too well that Emery is exploiting his labor. He proceeds to terrorize Stella, kill her pet squirrel, and turn the ineffectual and spineless Emery against her, as he is unwilling to protect or defend his own wife, being a cowardly quasi-Neanderthal himself.
Dern inhabits one of the most striking performances as a vicious socio-pathic drifter, so transcendent for its day that it’s utterly chilling to watch the narrative come to force. Dern’s Jesse makes his sleazy character Keeg in Cycle Savages1969 pale in comparison.
Billy Wilder’s Ace in The Hole (1951) Starring Kirk Douglas and Jan SterlingJules Dassin’s prison noir masterpiece-Brute Force 1947 starring Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, and Charles BickfordOrson Welles- Citizen Kane (1941) also starring Joseph CottenWilliam Dieterle’s The Devil and Daniel Webster 1941Directed by John Brahm-Hangover Square 1945 starring Laird Cregar , Linda Darnell and George SandersFritz Lang’s House By The River 1950 starring Louis Hayward, Lee Bowman and Jane Wyatt.I Cover the Waterfront 1933- Claudette Colbert, Ben Lyon and Ernest TorrenceRobert Aldrich’s Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte 1964 starring Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotton, Mary Astor, Agnes Moorehead and Cecil KellawayJohn Huston’s Key Largo 1948 Starring Edward G Robinson, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren BacallStanley Kubrick’s Killers Kiss 1955 Starring Frank Silvera and Irene Kane.Orson Welles penned the screenplay and stars in iconic film noir The Lady from Shanghai 1947 featuring the sensual Rita Hayworth, also starring Everett SloaneLady in a Cage 1964 directed by Walter Grauman and starring Olivia de Havilland, James Caan, and Jennifer Billingsley.The Long Dark Hall 1951 Starring Rex Harrison and Lilli PalmerFritz Lang’s chilling M (1931) Starring Peter LorreMark Robson directs, Val Lewton’s occult shadow piece The Seventh Victim 1943 Starring Kim Hunter, Tim Conway and Jean BrooksKirk Douglas in Ace In The Hole 1951 written and directed by Billy WilderAkira Kurosawa’s film noir crime thriller Drunken Angel (1948) starring Takashi Shimura and Toshiro MifuneElia Kazan’s socio-noir Panic in The Streets 1950 starring Jack Palance, Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes and Zero MostelIngmar Bergman’s Persona 1966 starring Liv Ullmann and Bibi AnderssonThe Queen of Spades 1949 directed by Thorold Dickinson and starring Anton Walbrook, Edith Evans and Yvonne MitchellDirector Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s beautifully filmed Mother Joan of The Angels 1961 starring Lucyna Winnicka.Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express 1932 Starring Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook and Anna May WongThe Devil and Daniel Webster 1941Robert 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 TamblynMichael Curtiz’s The Unsuspected 1947 starring Claude Rains, Joan Caulfield and Audrey TotterLuis Bunuel’s Viridiana 1961 Starring Silvia Pinal, Fernando Rey and Fransisco RabalRobert Aldrich’s cult grande dame classic starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford-What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? 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!
Sal Mineo(Rebel Without A Cause 1955 The Young Don’t Cry 1957) plays yet another troubled youth, this time he’s a busboy at a disco. His name is Lawrence Sherman, who has had a turbulent childhood manifesting into an obsessive sexually disturbed young pervert.
His object of desire is aspiring actress/disc jockey Nora Dain, at the club where he buses tables. He makes obscene phone calls, partakes in a bit of voyeurism, frequents porn shops and XXX movie theaters with the rest of the heavy breathing raincoat crowd!
A very sleazy exploitation goodie from the 60s utilizing that gorgeous high contrast black and white and Charlie Calello’s perfect soundtrack of raunchy cheese horns that make you want to flail your hips in Satan red high heel shoes, digging holes in the carpets, while you twist til dawn!
Mineo exudes angst and a bottled up sexual repression so well that his role as obsessive stalker , makes the scenes with his sweaty bare chest, creep me out til Tuesday of next week!
Normally I just adore a sweaty bare chest, don’t get me wrong… but these are ‘pervert beads of sweat’ we’re talkin’ here…! Now JUST TO BE CLEAR! I am not drawing connections between Mineo’s real life self proclaimed homosexuality and the film’s perceived character of Lawrence Sherman whose so-called ‘perversion’ and sexual proclivities lead him down a dangerous path.
Sal Mineo, teen idol, extraordinary actor playing the street kid against the established order of things, and publicly gay man in the 70s, was very brave to wear his identity out in the open.
But that’s why I love these exploitation gems from the 1960s so much. They run counter-intuitive to The Cleavers ( which I LOVE so, no disrespect there.)But it’s important to muddy up the good clean mythos of the American dream once in a while….!
Added to the plot line is the obsessive cop who has his own fixations, like listening to crime tapes with graphic confessions!
The film is directed by Joseph Cates, Written by Arnold Drake and has an interesting cast including not just Juliet Prowse, but Jan Murray as Lt. Dave Madden another obsessed male animal, the great Elaine Stritch as Marian Freeman , Nora Dain’s fur coat stroking, club owning dyke…
I love how they get these older dames like Gypsy Rose Lee in Screaming Mimi and Elaine here as Marian Freeman to play lurking coded lustful lesbos / adult club owners on the hunt for fresh meat!
Wow…I think that there’s a pattern forming here. Hhhm…I’ll have to look back at Naked Kiss and reconsider that scene where club owner (Virginia Grey) Candy is shoving that dirty money into Constance Tower’s mouth… Hhm.
Elaine Stritch predatory lesbian club owner and Sal Mineo very sexually troubled young man…
Margo Bennett as Edie Sherman Lawrence’s sister.
Lawrence’s sister in the closet. Ah the wholesome American home life breeds so many happy youngsters!
“I never thought you’d put me down, but I’m walkin’ around with no place to go!”
There are thousands of films like these in my collection, this is just one of them, so curl up with your own ‘teddy bear’ if it’s not psychotic and see it for yourself!-MonsterGirl!
The immortal Joan Crawford is Lynn Markham, a widow who longs to be left alone at her beach house, where the previous tenant, Eloise Crandall (Judith Evelyn) had fallen to her death. Lynn’s neighbor turns out to be the gorgeous male specimen in the form of Jeff Chandler, playing Drummond Hall (Drummy), who might have had something to do with Eloise’s fatal fall off the porch. Of course, Drummy starts to move in on Lynn. Along for the ride are the marvelous duo of Natalie Schafer and Cecil Kellaway who play Drummy’s crafty aunt and uncle, Osbert and Queenie Sorenson. And then there are the frequent visitations by realtor Amy Rawlinson played by the always effervescent Jan Sterling who is of course gaga over Drummy, the slick and sleazy gigolo with a rough past. Directed by Joseph Pevney (prolific in great television series’ spanning the 1960s-80s, not to mention THE STRANGE DOOR 1951, and PLAYGIRL 1956 starring Shelley Winters.
The film is filled with the right amount of 50s kitsch and camp and delicious vulgarity under the sensationalized surface. An obscure Crawford goodie that enthusiasts of the actress and genre should add to their ‘must see’ list!
Lynn: ” I have a nasty imagination, and I’d like to be left alone with it!”
Lynn: "You must go with the house "” like plumbing."
“I don’t hate women, I just hate the way they are.”Amy Rawlinson played by the always effervescent Jan Sterling.
There are thousands of films in my collection. this is just one of them!-See it for yourself!-MonsterGirl Â
A night of tension… a moment of madness… and now he is at the edge of fury.
Michael Higgins plays a very disturbed young man named Richard Barrie who after being released from an institution, insinuates himself into the Hackett family. Edge of Fury is a very taut and disturbing thriller based on the book “Wisteria Cottage” by Robert Coates. Higgins plays a remorseless young beachcomber with psychopathic tendencies who assumes the guise of a friend to a mother and her two daughters who reside in their summer cottage.
“Edge of Fury” (1958) is a crime /noir film that takes viewers on a twisted journey into the mind of a psychopathic young man named Richard, brilliantly portrayed by Michael Higgins. who is a beachcomber with a troubled past, cunningly befriends a mother and her two daughters who are enjoying their summer at a picturesque seaside home.
Under the guise of friendship, Richard insinuates himself into their lives, gradually revealing his sinister intentions. As his true nature begins to surface, tensions rise, and a deadly game of manipulation ensues. The once-idyllic summer home becomes a battleground where survival is at stake.
Driven by a chilling performance from Michael Higgins, “Edge of Fury” delves into the dark recesses of the human psyche, exploring the depths of Richard’s psychopathy and the unsuspecting family’s fight for survival. With each twist and turn, the film keeps audiences on the edge of their seats, weaving a thrilling tale of suspense, deception, and the terrifying consequences of crossing paths with a disturbed mind.
Directed by Irving Lerner, “Edge of Fury” stands as a classic noir thriller, offering a gripping exploration of the disturbing complexities of human behavior and the destructive power of a psychopath’s manipulation.
Directed by Irving Lerner & Robert J Gurney Jr. Also stars Lois Holmes as Florence Hackett, Jean Allison as Eleanor Hackett, and Doris Fesette as Louisa Hackett.
“If anything should happen tonight, if anything should happen, don’t blame me…if anything should happen, darling.”
![Title: OLD DARK HOUSE, THE (1932) "¢ Pers: STUART, GLORIA "¢ Year: 1932 "¢ Dir: WHALE, JAMES "¢ Ref: OLD005AA "¢ Credit: [ UNIVERSAL / THE KOBAL COLLECTION ]](https://i0.wp.com/thelastdrivein.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/the-old-dark-house.jpg)
