Postcards from Shadowland No. 8
Category: Directors and Filmmakers
Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ Celebrates 50 years of Winged Terror in 2013
-MonsterGirl
Hysterical Woman of The Week! Olive Deering as Thelma Tompkins from (1959)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents-
Season 4, Episode 25
The Kind Waitress (29 Mar. 1959)
Olive Deering (Caged 1950, Shock Treatment 1964) plays Thelma Tompkins a kind hearted waitress who toils in a hotel restaurant. She’s attentive and thoughtful doting on old Mrs.Sara Mannerheim (Celia Lovsky) who eats in the restaurant every evening.
Mrs. Mannerheim tells Olive that she is her only friend and has decided to leave her in her will, also bestowing on Thelma a brooch. But like all dark fairy tales, as the months creep forward, Mrs. Mannerheim becomes increasingly demanding,and Thelma becomes unhinged. You see…
Thelma’s musician boyfriend Arthur gets the idea to precipitate the old woman’s demise, instead of waiting for death to take her by inches, so, Thelma poisons old lady Mannerheim’s tea. Unfortunately for Thelma, the old woman has a constitution of stone and it doesn’t work.
Driven by an obsession to keep her boyfriend happy, and sick and tired of care taking, Thelma cracks and let’s loose her fury on the old lady.
Have some tea-MonsterGirl
the clip joint- Fourteen Hours (1951)
FOURTEEN HOURS (1951)
Directer Henry Hathaway’s (The Dark Corner 1946) taut film noir, about a desperately unhappy man who threatens to commit suicide by standing on the ledge of a high-rise building for 14 hours.
With an all star cast- Paul Douglas, Richard Basehart, Barbara Bel Geddes, Debra Paget, Agnes Moorehead, Jeffrey Hunter, Howard Da Silva, Grace Kelly, Martin Gabel and Jeff Corey.
“From the edge of the ledge he defied them all!”
Don’t jump off now…MonsterGirl, helping you down off the ledge
Just in time for Yule & Christmas… The Last Drive In warns: Beware of Bad Santas!
A moment from Freddie Francis’ Tales From The Crypt (1972)
Pay back is a psychotic escapee from the local asylum when Joan Collin’s whacks her husband with a fire iron to get his large life insurance policy. In the 1st segment called And All Through The House
Just one of the five stories told by the crypt keeper Ralph Richardson, to the five guests who learn of the ways in which they have met their deaths. Based on E.C. Comics, it’s Classic horror at it’s very best!!!!!
And remember…Don’t open the window, door or chimney flue to anyone in a red flannel suit and phoney white beard unless it’s your jolly uncle Stanislaw-MonsterGirl
A Moment From ‘A Christmas Story’ (1983) The Leg Lamp!
A Trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman Away! Between Two Worlds (1944)
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS (1944)
Produced by Jack L Warner and Mark Hellinger and directed by Edward A.Blatt, with a screenplay by Daniel Fuchs and based on Sutton Vanes play “Outward Bound” this story is a journey with an extraordinary ensemble cast, featuring John Garfield, Paul Henreid, Sydney Greenstreet, Eleanor. Parker, Edmund Gwenn, George Tobias, George Coulouris, Faye Emerson, and Isobel Elsom.
With an beautifully evocative score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Kings Row 1942,The Sea Wolf 1941)
The film begins with an air raid during WWII, in which several people are unable to seek shelter. As the film transcends it’s earthly boundaries, it emerges as a mystical and melancholy tale of lost souls thrown together on a mysterious ship, trying to grasp the meanings of their lives, as they reflect and react to each other.
Aboard this strange ship which acts as a traveling Pergatory the players must wait and see if their final destination will either be heaven or hell, as their paths become clear to them, and they awaken to their final destinies.
Tom Prior: I read a great epitaph once, I’m gonna steal it for myself.
Scrubby: Sir?
Tom Prior: Here lies Prior, died a bachelor. Wifeless. Childless. Wish his father’d died the same.
Here in this world, saying be happy-MonsterGirl
Twelve Neglected Characters from Classic Film.
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From The Vault: Picture Mommy Dead (1966)
“who hated Jessica enough to kill her “that” way?”
Picture Mommy Dead 1966
Susan Gordon plays Susan Shelley a demented child not unlike Jan Brady, just released from a convent/ institution run by nuns…where she’s been placed after suffering from the shock of seeing her mother, (the flamboyant Zsa Zsa Gabor) Jessica Flagmore Shelley be consumed by flames in her opulent bedroom.
Susan still traumatized by the haunting memories of her mother’s horrific death and surrounded by some of the creepiest toys in all tarnation, comes home to the palatial hearth with father Don Ameche as Edward Shelley and his new lusty, conniving second wife Francene played by sexy Martha Hyer. Edward is so blinded by his desire for Francene that he’d sell out the whole estate contents and all to give his conspiring hussy all the money, vacations, and furs she wants.
Francene starts sneaking around again with brother-in-law Anthony Flagmore played by Maxwell Reed. Flagmore’s face has been charred from that fateful night when Mommy went up in flames. His odd presence and faithfulness to his pet hawk, add an air of the macabre to the already heady script.
The brazen couple plot to drive little Susan over the edge, while trying to get her to reveal the whereabouts of her mother’s missing diamond necklace.
This Grande Dame horror film is a little gem from the vintage 60s, by director Bert I Gordon, and also boasts a great supporting cast with, Wendell Corey, Signe Hasso, and Anna Lee. It’s creepy, it’s campy and a wonderfully colorful psychosomatic romp. Cinematography by Ellsworth Fredericks, who was director of photography on Invasion of The Body Snatchers 1956 and the sublime Mister Buddwing 1966 which I’ll be writing about soon) The soundtrack includes The Hearse Song sung by Gordon…‘The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.’
Hedy Lamarr gets passed over by Bert I. Gordon.
“Through a Child’s Eyes You Will See Torment … Murder … And Flaming Passion!”
Be nice to mother now!- MonsterGirl
From The Vault: The Long Dark Hall (1951)
Directed by Reginald Beck, and Anthony Bushell. Written by Nunnally Johnson, Edgar Lustgarten is based on his book “A Case To Answer” and W.E. Fairchild. With cinematography by Wilkie Cooper (Stage Fright 1950, Jason and The Argonauts 1963), granting wisps of shadowy montages that are equally noirish, suspenseful, and simply splendid.
Yielding and obsessive Rex Harrison plays Arthur Groome a London gentleman married to the devoted and lovely Mary (Lilli Palmer.)Unfortunately, Arthur becomes consumed by a flirtatious showgirl Rose Mallory (Patricia Cutts), who winds up being brutally knifed in her boarding house room, and left for the credulous Groome to become suspect one. First gets the splatter of Rose’s blood on his jacket, but then fails to prove his innocence in a sea of circumstantial evidence.
Condemned to hang, this allows the real serial killer played by the tall and eerie Anthony Dawson who looks frightened all the time, a destroyer of wanton women who sees himself as ‘an instrument of justice‘, still lurking about, first at the trial spouting off about his obvious philosophy on sexually independent women, and then creepily shadowing poor Mrs. Groome, whom he idealizes as the perfect woman.
I’ll be up the long dark hall til next time! -Yours always- MonsterGirl