Val Lewton’s “I Walked With A Zombie” (1943) Elements of Jane Eyre, Colonialism and The Synergy of Sound

Val Lewton’s Masterpiece on a low budget for RKO. Directed by Jacques Tourneur and story by Curt Siodmak

Jo Gabriel’s “Sway” appears on my album The Amber Sessions

I will be doing a major feature on the work of Val Lewton in the coming months, his masterworks in shadow are some of the most evocative films ever screened.

MonsterGirl (JoGabriel)

The Film Score Freak recognizes: Firefly by Jo Gabriel * Les Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes Without A Face) 1960

Firefly by Jo GabrielÂ from my album Fools and OrphansÂ & ***Eyes Without a Face* (1960) directed by *Georges Franju***

This is my song Firefly which appears on my album Fools & Orphans, featuring the upright bass of Mark Urness, originally recorded at Coney Island Studios in Madison Wisconsin by Wendy Schneider. My tribute to a hauntingly beautiful horror story!

Thursday morning film score: Wuthering Heights 1939 & Jo Gabriel’s Of Love and Ether

Here’s to those immortal lovers Cathy and Heathcliff.

Of Love and Ether appears on my album Fools and Orphans

Wuthering Heights 1939

Starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier

MonsterGirl (Jo Gabriel)

Boris Karloff’s Thrilling: Another Visit with Boris Karloff’s Cinematic Television Masterpiece

When I first started blogging on The Last Drive In, I chose one of my most beloved memories, a thing of nostalgia for me, and what I consider to be one of the greatest television programs that contained not only the classic crime mystery drama, but Gothic horrors based on some of the most prolific writers of these genres back then, such as Cornell Woolrich , Robert Bloch and August Derleth.

I recently covered episodes like The Hungry Glass, The Hollow Watcher, The Grim Reaper, The Cheaters, The Incredible Doktor Markesan and Pigeons From Hell.

This time I will be blogging about a few more interesting tales such as The Ordeal of Dr Cordell starring Robert Vaughn. The Remarkable Mrs. Hawk starring Jo Van Fleet and John Carradine, The Premature Burial starring Sidney Blackmer (the piercing Roman Casstavette in Rosemary’s Baby) and Boris himself as Dr. Thorne. And finally Rose’s Last Summer starring Mary Astor since I’m on a Mary Astor kick what with working on my Aldrich series and Hush…Hush Sweet Charlotte post that’s giving me an infarction, it’s so detailed, yet I don’t know how to write any other way.

I’ll be periodically choosing other great episodes from the series,but these were the ones I thought would be really interesting to cover right now.

I am talking about Boris Karloff’s television series that ran from 1960-1962: Thriller: The Complete Series.

Also the contributions by directors like John Brahm, Ida Lupino , Herschel Daugherty, Arthur Hiller and Paul Henreid who had a unique visual perspective that created creepy landscapes and lighting that would fit the noir canon very well.Also very notable for me as a musician are the musical scores by Mort Stevens, Pete Rugolo and Jerry Goldsmith that were nothing short of stunning, evocative melodies that tore at your soul and fit the mood of each episode,adding another vivid dimension to the atmospherics.

I have written earlier about some of my favorite episodes from Boris Karloff’s anthology series Thriller, which was an unusual collection of mixed genres. The series seems to be a very popular one here at The Drive In, so I’ve decided to write about a few more that have stayed with me over time, not that I didn’t absolutely love every single episode, all 67 of them. I only wish there had been more, or that someone would discover lost episodes that were never released. I have virtually watched each episode hundreds of times, not only catching little details for the first time with each reviewing, but never do I grow tired of them. That is the sign of something timeless, and masterful. And the more time goes by, I realize even further how preeminent this body of work truly is.

I can only imagine how excited fans like me were when they finally released the box set.I cried, I am not even kidding you. I, like many other devotees, waited a very long time for them to release this masterpiece on DVD. I used to have to wait up until 3am back in the day so that I could set my VCR to record when the Sci-Fi Channel had the good sense to run the episodes. Although I’d always get hocked off that the commercials were ads with nude girls telling me to “pick up the phone” while they were sliding up and down a pole. I know that boys and men love sci-fi and horror, but news flash! girls and women actually can have an avid appreciation for all things scary, thrilling and wondrous like the marvels of science, just as much. We can have a visceral passion for action and frightmares just like anyone else. So having to endure the “babes” of late night Sci-Fi Channel commercial land was irksome. Now I can watch Boris with some undisturbed dignity and I don’t have to be told to “pick up the phone” by some bimbo jutting her tongue over her shiny lip gloss, as if that were sexy to me. I’d rather watch Marisa Mell or Barbara Steele sitting under a tree reading a book. But again I digress as by now you know I am apt to do. Forgive MonsterGirl her little occasional rants.

So anyway, not only was there unmistakable atmosphere to each of Thriller’s episodes, but the stories themselves were lensed in a unique way that was very ahead of it’s time. The actors brought a serious attitude to their characters and the plot development, and didn’t treat them as merely short pulp stories as fodder for the tv masses. This was an intelligent show, and the presence of Boris Karloff only added a charming sage fabulist narration that was like being tucked in by your remarkable grandfather who loved to tell a good spooky tale to you right before bedtime. I’ve said this plenty, I wish Boris Karloff had been my grandfather.

MonsterGirl

MonsterGirl’s Quote of the day: The Bellero Shield/ The Outer Limits 1964

The Outer Limits; The Bellero Shield airdate Feb 10th, 1964

This sweet visitor from space is one of my all-time favorite Outer Limits creatures. You can spot him in The Theatre Ephemera!

this episode is loosely inspired by Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth.”

Control Voice: (opening narration) There is a passion in the human heart which is called aspiration. It flares with a noble flame and by its light man has traveled from the caves of darkness to the darkness of outer space. But, when this passion becomes lust when its flame is fanned by greed and private hunger, then aspiration becomes ambition by which sin the angels fell.

Judith Bellero: “Someone spoke of the trembling way: a bridge between earth and heaven. When I grew up, I found it in the mythology book. Scandinavians call it the “Bifrost.” I thought of this as our “Bifrost.” A trembling way to what for me would be heaven–power, far-flung holdings, undiminishable authority!”

Bifrost Alien: ” I cannot speak your language. I analyze your eyes. In all the universes, in all the unities beyond the universes, all who have eyes, have eyes that speak, and all speak the same language.”

Control Voice: (closing narration) When this passion called aspiration becomes lust, then aspiration degenerates becomes vulgar ambition by which sin the angels fell.

The Films of Jack Arnold: Visions of Giant bugs, sympathetic monsters and little men danced in his head.

Good Afternoon folks!

Just a little note. It’s Sunday. that always gives me a feeling of nostalgia as does Saturday afternoons. Those were the times when I would sit quietly in front of the television set. All the other kids were outside scrambling around getting sweaty and dirty and doing well, what most kids do be mean to each other. Me, I chose to inhabit the mysterious worlds that Roger Corman, Jack Arnold, William Castle, Universal and RKO pictures had the good sense to give us “outliers” of society. Those of us who Identified with the monster. Thus the nickname Monster Girl. A name the neighborhood kids used to taunt me with, not realizing that eventually I would wear it as a badge of honor.

JACK ARNOLD

I owe much of my creativity as a songwriter and artist, to these films that validated my existence. These monsters were my true friends, because they helped me cope with the awkward phases of childhood when you just don’t fit in, and never will. These films are more than just nostalgic memories for me, they were my epiphany into the real world as an imaginative, compassionate, empathetic and yes a visionary in some ways. With my music and my writing. I plan on doing extensive individual posts about some of these great films.

Like Incredible Shrinking Man. Creature From the Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space. It’s Sunday, so I thought I’d share a little tidbit of the old days, when Jack Arnold bestowed upon us Giant Spiders and one little guy who had to fight one off in the basement of his house, a common environment turned sinister and dangerous, where it takes a whole day of strategizing to get a moldy crust of bread the size of a small crouton to us.

During the years of 1950’s horror and sci-fi films made by the great Jack Arnold there was a sympathetic, symbiotic lens that Arnold used towards aliens and “The Other” and the outsider. While working at Universal along side the production of William Alland, he gave us our first venture into the genre offering us benevolent yet mystifying aliens who crash land near a small town, inside a mountain and merely need time to fix the spaceship in order to leave earth.

It Came From Outer Space (1953) based on a story by Ray Bradbury the prolific science fiction writer of that era, as did Richard Matheson who told of bizarre, inscrutable and very advance race of one eyed amorphous creatures who could assume the form of any human in order to facilitate the uninterruptedÂ repair of their ship. The aliens were not here to seize the planet to enslave earth people, nor destroy earth in order to be the ultimate life form in the universe, threatened by the advancement of our weaponry, fear of the bomb in that age engendered many bomb, cold war scare films.

Like Invaders From Mars (1956) and Don Siegel’s Invasion of The Body Snatchers (1956),fear of Communism and losing our individual identity as well as the patriotism and national prowess. The visionary writers and film makers knew how to frame this message in their flights of fantasy films. The last major film that Arnold did was the sublime and metaphysical masterpiece The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). A film that still inspires chills up the back of my neck when Grant Williams realizes that he isn’t disappearing, merely becoming greater as he is subsumed by the vast universal heart beat of the unknown yet interconnectedness and essence of life force itself.

The Incredible Shrinking Man was based on Matheson’s novel and actually scripted by him as well. Shrinking Man and It Came from Outer Space are still considered two of Arnold’s best work. The film that has really become his most iconic as an enduring classic is Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)

Creature From The Black Lagoon had no involvement from either writer. In fact, it was because this film was so successful for Universal, that it prompted them to direct their attentions specifically in more productions that involved Sci-Fi and Horror films after 1954 many of which were directed by Jack Arnold.

In a lot of ways, aside from the money that these films made for Universal, it’s really the charm of Arnold’s films that make this specific moment in history for the genres to remain in the hearts of those of us who remember watching them on rainy Saturday afternoons, or like I said the sunny ones when you didn’t fit in with the nasty jerk heads in the neighborhood, so you’d rather hang out with the sort of cute green scaly guy who could stay underwater for days at a time.

David J Skal who’s a hell of a writer, I recommend The Monster Show refers to Creature as the “most vivid formative memories a large segment of American population”

Like The Twilight Zone, Serling’s compact morality plays tied up in fantasy story telling, for a lot of us these offerings became the rituals that were quickly picked up on by the “mass media” The desire for these type of stories became the contemporary trend that inspired great writers and film makers like Stephen King, John Carpenter and even Steven Spielberg.

Much the same way that H.G Wells fantastical tales inspired a hunger for films about science marvels and other worlds.Edgar Wallace, Edgar Allen Poe and HP Lovecraft and Hawthorne inspired the Gothic horror, horror mythos and crime thriller.

Arnold’s films evoke formative memories not only of being frightened by the elements of horror, but it brings you right back to the feeling of being that child again. At least if you’re like me and rail against growing older and losing your imagination. King and Carpenter have spoken about the individual films of Arnold that gave them their first cinematic experience which like for me, changed their lives forever. You could say that Arnold’s films could be used as a benchmark and cultural reference or jumping off place for teenagers to identify with feeling alienated by society. The 50’s were a period where the generation of teenagers were influenced by these types of films. Later on filmmakers would self consciously pay homage to Arnold’s films. And every decade or so, we also see a revived interest in the use of 3D, which make movie going a sort of ritual collective event. The glasses, the group experience.

Anyway, I plan on going in depth about Arnold and several of my most memorable beloved films of his. I just wanted to write a little Sunday hail to the king of giant bugs and little people, (not like the munchkins in The Wizard of Oz) I mean people who were once big enough to drive a car, and can now sleep in a match box for shelter.

Have a great Sunday, I think I’ll watch Tarantula (1955) . I’ve got my hot cocoa and it’s raining outside. The cats are all purring and I think it’s a perfect time to watch a little arachnid suddenly growing as large as a Semi and ambushes a whole town. I’m still kind of traumatized by the woman who’s skirt get’s stuck in the car door!