Category: Edgar Allan Poe

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #136 Spirits of the Dead 1968

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD 1968

When I first experienced Spirits of the Dead, I fell into an altered state of consciousness, a door opening to another kind of poetic and haunting beauty that would come to define horror in the 1960s—the era when darkness found its lyricism, and fear was woven through with elegance, dreamlike dread, and a poignant gaze into the human soul’s shadows in vivid color. This was a time when horror shed classical fright, timeless, a primal kind of fear, one that relies on mood, silhouette, and suggestion for something more baroque: a sensibility that was simultaneously unsettling and exquisitely atmospheric, a symphony of surreal visions and psychological torment whispered through a colorful prism.

I am irresistibly pulled by Spirit of the Dead’s intricate psychological depths and its exploration of human darkness rather than any straightforward ghost story. Instead, Spirits of the Dead draws you into a haunting elegy of the human psyche, carved into three distinct yet interconnected vignettes. Each segment—Metzengerstein, William Wilson, and Toby Dammit- unfolds a complex meditation on obsession, self-destruction, and the inescapable shadows within.

In Metzengerstein, the Countess Frédérique’s obsession consumes her like a wildfire that devours the soul’s landscape, her decadent yearning collapsing into ruin. In William Wilson, the doppelgänger is a spectral conscience, a psychic torment doubling the soul in ruin at the heart of the story’s cruelty until self-annihilation becomes inevitable. Toby Dammit plunges into the fragmented delirium of a shattered mind, where reality and hallucination twist together in a dance of doom, with all psychological shadows and internal specters stalking the tale’s damned fallen idol.

I want to wander deeper into each segment’s extraordinary imagery: and believe me I’ll be paying careful attention to construct a visual narrative to help me convey Spirit of the Dead’s psychological twists and turns tracing how the film’s distorted characters embody the corrosive weight of guilt, desire, and madness; the black stallion as a symbol of unchecked passion and fatal destiny; the mirrored double reflecting the fracturing of identity; the cityscape of Rome turned surreal stage for a descent into oblivion.

So, plan on reading my journey at The Last Drive In soon as I wander deeper into these phantasmal realms, reading Spirits of the Dead as a dark requiem for the fractured human condition, a confrontation with the ghostly forces of desire, guilt, and decay that haunt us all from within.

In the Company of Ghosts: Exploring Death’s Liminal Realm in Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead (1968) feels like a haunting journey through three of Edgar Allan Poe’s most eerie imaginings. It is a triptych of Poe’s uncanny tales seen through the visionary eyes of three masterful European directors: Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini. Each segment feels like stepping into a vivid dream, where reality blurs with the spectral worlds that breathe in the air of existential dread, moral decay, and the strange, unsettling beauty found in the darker corners of the mind.

Known in France as Histoires extraordinaires and in Italy as Tre passi nel delirio, Spirits of the Dead is a seamless blend of Poe’s classic dark Gothic sensibilities and the boldly poetic art-house aesthetics of European cinema. It is not an ordinary horror film; it’s a mysterious dance between shadow and light, sanity and madness. Each vignette is a vivid, otherworldly brushstroke on the canvas of fear and fascination that Poe so masterfully conjured.

Spirits of the Dead brings together Vadim’s lush Gothic decadence, Malle’s cold psychological precision, and Fellini’s feverish surrealism, merging their distinct signatures into a hallucinatory anthology where visual excess, existential torment, and playful nightmare gather in a single flame within a single cinematic vision.

The first vignette, Metzengerstein, directed by Roger Vadim, immerses you in a tale steeped in old-world decadence, doomed aristocracy, and fatal obsession. Jane Fonda having electrified cinema screens that same year as the eternally iconic Barbarella, practically rocketed from outer space straight into Poe’s Gothic hall of mirrors, trading her ray gun for a riding crop, but losing none of that star-power spark, She commands the screen as the cruel, self-indulgent Countess Frédérique de Metzengerstein, whose icy detachment unravels into madness with her volatile affection for her cousin, Baron Wilhelm (Peter Fonda). Countess Frédérique, aloof, spoiled, and icy until her cool exterior starts to crack and give way to chaos.
Her dangerous obsession becomes a catalyst for doom, captured in the eerie arrival of a spectral black horse, a symbol of guilt and retribution. The horse stalks the characters and the edges of the story in a way that transcends the natural world, like fate itself.

Vadim’s segment thrums with lush, baroque cinematography by Claude Renoir, (Blood and Roses 1960, Barbarella 1968, The Horsement 1971, French Connection II 1975, The Spy Who Loved Me 1977) draping the narrative in dramatic shadows, rich velvety colors, like were wandering through a painting where every brushstroke echoes the inescapable grip of fate.

The story’s roots lie in Poe’s tale of the same name, an early Gothic masterpiece that explores themes of inherited sin and supernatural vengeance, whispering through the film. Yet, Vadim’s adaptation is bathed in a kind of extravagant grand theatricality, and gives us a world that’s beautiful, corrupt, and teetering on the edge of collapse, mirroring the countess’s moral decay and decadent indulgence. This decadence is vividly portrayed through scenes that exude a sense of uninhibited excess and dark, sensual power. Fonda’s character, Countess Frédérique, reigns over her vast estate with a cruel and self-indulgent spirit. The imagery of hedonism comes alive in her lavish surroundings, where she lives free of restraint, reveling in orgies and commanding her servants with icy detachment.

A striking element of this baroque excess is how she interacts with her leopard, an exotic and dangerous symbol of her wild and untamed nature. The leopard lounges in opulent settings, perfectly at ease amidst her drinking deeply of pleasure, underscoring Frédérique’s dominion over both people and beasts. The scenes include orgiastic gatherings rich in sensuality and excess, where Fonda’s character fully embraces her sexuality, cool, commanding, and unapologetically corrupt. The costuming– revealing and luxurious– amplifies this portrait of a woman enthroned in her own cruel pleasures.

Two key scenes in the Metzengerstein segment of Spirits of the Dead stand out for vividly capturing its Gothic atmosphere and supernatural tension.

The first is when Countess Frédérique becomes trapped in a forest snare and is rescued by her cousin, Baron Wilhelm. This moment sparks her obsessive and destructive infatuation with him, an obsession that turns deadly when Wilhelm rejects her because of her debauchery. This scene sets the stage for her vengeful wrath and the unraveling of her sanity, anchoring the narrative in the toxic dynamics of literally a consuming fire and rejection.

The second crucial scene unfolds after Baron Wilhelm perishes in a stable fire set by Frédérique’s orders. The mysterious, wild black horse, implied to be supernatural, escapes the fire and finds its way to Metzengerstein Castle. Frédérique’s fixation on taming this horse mirrors her growing obsession with her surrendering to desire, power, and control. The eerie discovery of a damaged tapestry depicting a horse identical to this spectral beast deepens the story’s sense of ancestral curse and fate. The haunting climax comes during a thunderstorm when Frédérique, mounted on the horse, is swept away into a fiery blaze caused by lightning, with a sense of eerie inevitability, symbolizing her ultimate downfall, consumed by the very forces she sought to command.

Moving from Gothic excess to psychic torment, we shift gears from the lush and decadent to something more chilling and psychological. Louis Malle takes us deep inside the mind of a man trapped by his own cruelty and guilt.

Malle’s William Wilson delves into the ritual of inhumanity and the haunting conscience embodied by a doppelgänger. Alain Delon is honestly hypnotic as the titular William Wilson, a man consumed by corruption and menace, whose shadowy double relentlessly thwarts his darkest impulses. Wilson can not escape the part of himself that is a higher reach of his nature.

The tension reaches its climax with a chilling duel that symbolizes the final eclipse of Wilson’s better self, a poignant allegory of self-destruction and lost redemption. The duel that feels less like a fight and more like Wilson’s last chance for salvation slipping away. Brigitte Bardot turns up as Giuseppina, infusing the whole thing with a kind of smoldering energy; she’s mysterious and sharp, adding a glamorous, sensual darkness to the mood.

Tonino Delli Colli’s cinematography employs cold, harsh lighting and tight framing that accentuates the film’s claustrophobic and oppressive fictional air, framing the narrative within a hall of mirrors that distorts identity and morality, making spaces feel like fragmented hallways or mirrored chambers where the self is endlessly duplicated and distorted. This visual motif deepens the sense of psychological horror and the supernatural battle within Wilson’s soul.

Delli Colli, the renowned Italian cinematographer, shot Sergio Leone’s iconic spaghetti westerns: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s films, with whom he made twelve movies, including Mamma Roma (1962). He worked with Fellini, Polanski, Jean-Jacques Annaud, and Roberto Benigni on Life Is Beautiful (1997), for which he won a David di Donatello Award for Best Cinematography.

This segment draws directly from Poe’s story, William Wilson, a profound meditation on identity, duplicity, and the eternal struggle between good and evil within the self. You’re left questioning where the real William Wilson begins, and whether he ever stood a chance against himself.

The final story, Toby Dammit, is Federico Fellini at his wildest and surreal. The anthology culminates in Fellini’s macabre fantasia of nightmarish decadence. A mirage of the mind that feels both dazzling and sinister.

Terence Stamp gives a mesmerizing performance as Toby, a burnt-out, washed-up British actor wandering through a delirious, phantasmal, carnival-like Rome, haunted by ghosts and temptations that never seem to let up. Stamp’s performance captures the tormented exhaustion of a man lost in the hollow, glittering world of fame and the sweet abyss of seduction. His restless energy and haunted demeanor reflect Toby’s inner disintegration, dragging you into his spiraling nightmare of artistic torment and existential despair.

This segment transcends Poe’s original inspiration, “Never Bet the Devil Your Head,” by conjuring a whirl of fractured beauty, a montage of fame’s hollowness, temptation, and the inescapable grip of the devil, or perhaps the demon of inner immaturity, and self-sabotage manifested hauntingly as a childlike figure. Fellini turns it into something stranger and deeper, where the devil isn’t horns-and-brimstone, but a bizarre little girl with golden hair and a bouncing ball—creepy, innocent, and inexplicably powerful.

Giuseppe Rotunno’s cinematography and Fabrizio Clerici’s art direction construct a vivid dreamscape where the boundaries between reality and illusion dissolve into a hallucinatory fever. The visuals, shot by Rotunno and designed by Clerici, are pure nightmare logic: flashing neon, endless tunnels, surreal parties, a carnival of living caricatures, their faces painted by excess, their garments aflame with impossible fashion. A masquerade of beautiful monstrosities, swaddled in fabrics that burn with surreal bravado. All blur together until you can’t tell if Toby’s lost in a dream or losing his mind for real.

Nino Rota’s score pulses beneath the delirium, augmenting the sequence’s hypnotic disorientation. His music throbs through it all, making the whole experience feel like it’s drifting between heaven, hell, and high art.

Key moments: The frantic high-speed Ferrari race through the neon-lit streets of Rome is unforgettable. It metaphorically expresses Toby’s reckless ride toward doom, speeding headlong toward his own ruin, with no control over where he’s headed—or should I say beheaded?

Toby speeds recklessly through distorted, shadowy tunnels and eerie empty highways that feel like the twisted corridors of his own fractured psyche. The scene pulses with frenetic energy, capturing Toby’s spiraling descent into chaos and self-destruction. The dazzling, almost hallucinatory visuals combined with Nino Rota’s driving score create a nightmarish carnival ride that feels both thrilling and terrifying as Toby hurls headlong toward his doom.

Through these vividly surreal metaphors—the phantom city, the child-devil, the high-speed race, and the beheading—Fellini captures Toby Dammit’s existential despair, fame’s hollow seduction, and the tragic consequences of a life consumed by decadence and inner turmoil. This powerful segment becomes a hallucinatory allegory of self-annihilation wrapped in the grotesque splendor of a nightmare. The neon-lit cityscapes, endless tunnels, and bizarre, carnival-like parties form a phantasmagoric dreamscape where nothing is quite stable or certain.

The supernatural showdowns with the ‘devil’ and the final shocking moment when Toby pays his price with the chilling loss of his head serve as a blunt metaphor for the ultimate price of his decadent lifestyle: the climax is a literal severing that symbolizes the loss of identity, sanity, and life itself. This vivid, macabre image serves as a stark reminder of the devastating consequences of excess, fame, and inner demons dominating Toby’s fate and underscores the segment’s allegorical critique of celebrity culture and existential despair.

Under Fellini’s vision, the story becomes an almost hypnotic warning about how easy it is to get lost chasing illusions, haunted by demons both real and imagined. Through his feverish lens, Fellini transforms Poe’s original cautionary tale into a potent blend of surrealism, a bold, visionary exploration of fame’s emptiness, human frailty, and artistic torment.

One of the most striking metaphors in Fellini’s Toby Dammit is the creepy golden-haired demon child with the bouncing ball. Unlike traditional images of evil, this innocent yet sinister child symbolizes the seductive yet destructive temptations that haunt Toby internally. This unsettling, haunting presence represents the grip of the devil not as an external force but as an intimate demon of decay that Toby cannot escape.

The little blonde girl in Toby Dammit is widely acknowledged as a surreal echo and clear homage to Mario Bava’s iconic spectral child in Kill, Baby, Kill (1966).

In Bava’s film, the ghost of Melissa Graps terrorizes the village. The figure is a Victorian-dressed little girl (actually a boy actor) whose slow-motion bouncing ball and knowing, malevolent smile similarly haunts the story with an eerie, disturbing way of showing up everywhere all at once, drifting into every space, like smoke seeking every crack and crevice—a haunting face at the window, or crouching in Bava’s colorful darkness.

Both figures embody a disturbing blend of a heart unstained by shadow and a serpent in the garden, untouched purity and sheer menace, innocence and evil, serving as spectral symbols of supernatural dread and subconscious fears that linger and unsettle throughout their respective films. This motif of the sinister child becomes a powerful visual metaphor for the uncanny and the intrusion of otherworldly forces into everyday reality.

Fellini himself admired Bava’s film and imagery, and after seeing Spirits of the Dead, Bava commented that Toby Dammit used “the same ideas as in my film, exactly the same!” He recounted mentioning this to Giulietta Masina, Fellini’s wife, who just shrugged with a smile, saying, “Well, you know how Federico is…”

When you take all three stories together, Spirits of the Dead really feels like wandering through a gallery of dreams, each one a window into Poe’s twisted imagination, yet each shaped and colored by the directors’ unique styles. It’s more than just a trio of horror tales; to me, it’s like stepping inside a living piece of art where the familiar Gothic darkness morphs into something almost lyrical. Every segment catches a slightly different part of human nature, our longing, our fears, the secret shadows we don’t talk about, and lets them bounce and refract in strange, beautiful ways.

Together, these three vignettes were forged in the fires of a poetic exploration of the uncanny, bound by Poe’s dark imagination and the distinctive cinematic artistry of their directors. All three ghostly or eerie stories invite us into surreal realms where light and shadow, color and space, and symbolic imagery all work together to evoke feelings of dislocation, dread, and otherness.

Spirits of the Dead is not merely a collection of tales but an immersive experience where Gothic horror is transmuted into a visual language that voices a haunting lamenting, each story a prism refracting the shadowed facets of desire, identity, and doom. The imagery is just astonishing. Between cinematographers — Claude Renoir’s lush, decadent colors, Tonino Delli Colli’s chilly, psychological starkness, and Giuseppe Rotunno, each crafts distinct visual palettes that heighten the film’s dreamlike quality; feverish, surreal landscapes, you’re constantly tossed between psychological landscapes, opulence, ruin, and the uncanny.

The ensemble cast is a dream team: Jane Fonda, Peter Fonda, Alain Delon, Brigitte Bardot, and Terence Stamp, they’re all magnetic, each one owning their piece of this haunted world of these ethereal narratives with performances that balance intensity and subtlety, embodying Poe’s tortured characters with haunting realism.

Ultimately, Spirits of the Dead becomes a kind of waking nightmare, a vivid, strangely beautiful, oneiric reflection on fear, longing, the unknown spaces in our minds, the supernatural, and the psyche that remains haunted. It’s a cinematic reverie where the boundaries of reality waver and the specters of the human soul emerge in their full, unsettling glory.

#136 down, 14 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey, formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #102 The Masque of the Red Death 1964

Crimson Revels: Pageantry of Delirium and Decay: A Masque in the House of Death’s Dominion

Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death 1964 unfurls like a rapturous pageant, each tableau, each reveler, each mask and costume soaked in decadence, dread, and the lushest hues of Gothic imagination that thrums beneath the masque.

What I love about Corman’s Masque of the Red Death is just how completely he pulls us into this world where death isn’t just lurking in the background—it’s practically running the show. Every inch of Prospero’s castle feels loaded with dread, like the walls themselves are telling part of the story. In this adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s tale, Corman—working at the height of his creative powers—conjures a world where death is both guest and master, and every corner of the castle pulses with the promise of doom. The film’s narrative drifts through a plague-ridden Italian countryside, where Prince Prospero, played with silken malice by Vincent Price, presides over a world on the brink of collapse. Prospero transcends the usual archetype of the twisted tyrant; he’s this mix of sadistic philosopher and Satanist, a philospher of cruetly who feels safe in his convictions that his fortress walls and infernal profane rituals can hold death at bay, even as the Red Death is tearing through the countryside, ravaging the world outside the decadent one he has built within. Prospero clings to the idea that he is untouchable. Corman manages to make you feel like doom is seeping in from every corner, no matter how much silk and gold Prospero cloaks himself in. Within the opulence, nestled amid a fortress of gilded indulgence — death still awaits.

Vincent Price’s portrayal of Prince Prospero in The Masque of the Red Death is the very embodiment of the film’s themes, bound together by death and decadence. With every arch smile and languid gesture, Price radiates a sense of aristocratic rot—a man who has built his world atop suffering and believes himself immune to the decay that devours the world outside his castle walls. Prospero’s belief in his own invincibility, his pact with Satan, and his devotion to cruel games and philosophical debates about evil are all rendered with Price’s signature blend of theatricality and subtle menace. He dispenses executions and burns villages to the ground with such a chilling brand of calm, not with a passion but like an ancient monarch dispensing coin, as if cruelty were a grim tribute paid to the darkness that governs his domain.

Jane Asher’s character, Francesca, winds up at Prince Prospero’s castle after a brutal encounter in her plague-stricken village. When Prospero arrives and is confronted by Francesca’s father, Ludovico, and her lover, Gino, he responds with characteristic sadism. Despite Francesca’s pleas for mercy, Prospero orders the village burned and forcibly takes Francesca, along with her father and Gino, back to his castle as prisoners. His intent is not only to use them for his own entertainment and dark intellectual games, but also to corrupt Francesca’s innocence within the decadent walls of his fortress. Once inside, Francesca is separated from her loved ones, dressed in fine gowns by Prospero’s mistress Juliana, and thrust into a world of masked revelers, Satanic rituals, and moral peril, her fate entwined with the prince’s sadistic whims and the looming threat of the Red Death.

Below features tributes to Jane Asher and Hazel Court!

BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 2

BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! Part 1

Price’s Prospero is not merely a villain but a decadent philosopher-king, convinced that his worship of darkness and his fortress of pleasure can shield him from the Red Death’s reach. His obsession with control and his fascination with innocence—particularly in his predatory fixation on Jane Asher’s Francesca—underscore his desperate attempts to stave off the chaos and mortality he secretly fears.

Price’s Prospero circles Francesca with the predatory grace of a dark star drawn to a flicker of light he’s determined to keep shrouded in shadow. One he cannot seem to extinguish. It’s a truly Gothic dance. His obsession with her is both contemplative and sensual—a fascination with the innocence and faith that Jane Asher’s Francesca radiates, so alien and alluring within his indulgent, yet dying world. He debates her, tempts her, and threatens her, compelled by a need to unravel her convictions and claim her purity for his own shadowed cause. It’s something I always find both unsettling and strangely compelling in Price’s performances.

In Prospero, Price gives us a man who is both the architect and the victim of his own decadence and debauchery, a figure whose every attempt to master death only hastens his ruin.

Francesca’s presence clearly unsettles Prospero; her courage and compassion are a direct rebuke to his cruelty, and yet he cannot help but orbit her, mesmerized by the possibility that her light might either be smothered by the night, or, impossibly, maybe just maybe, survive the crimson darkness he commands.

The castle’s riot of color, the masked revelers, and the endless pageantry of excess all swirl around Price’s performance, which gives the film its center in a world where the threat of annihilation shadows every pleasure. As the Red Death inevitably enters his domain, Price’s performance shifts from icy confidence to a dawning realization of his own powerlessness, perfectly capturing the film’s central truth: that death is the ultimate equalizer, indifferent to wealth, cruelty, or pacts with darkness.

From the first moments, the film immerses us in a nightmare: a red-cloaked figure—Death itself—haunts the periphery, while Prospero’s soldiers burn a village infected by plague, abducting the innocent Francesca (Jane Asher), her lover Gino (David Weston), and her father Ludovico (Nigel Green).

It’s hard to shake the image of the village mired in desperation; where Francesca and her father live is a portrait of despair. All its people hollow-eyed and gaunt, with their faces drawn with the pallor of starvation and the look of fear. The Red Death leaves its unmistakable mark: villagers stagger through muddy lanes, clutching their bellies as if pushing against sharp, unseen pains, and their skin all clammy and streaked with sweat. Some collapse in sudden dizziness, while others bleed from the pores—dark, crimson stains seeping through their ragged clothes and sickly flesh, the telltale sign that the plague has claimed them.

There are children huddled in doorways, eyes wide with terror as the cries of the dying echo through the air. There’s an old woman, her hands trembling, as she clutches a white rose that suddenly turns red and splotchy with blood—a detail that really sticks with you and a grim omen of what’s to come. When Prospero arrives, the village is already a ghost of itself, with every one of its people marked for death, their bodies bearing the gruesome symptoms of a plague that shows no mercy or hope and promises no deliverance.

Inside the castle, the air is thick with intrigue, temptation, and the ever-present shadow of mortality. Prospero’s mistress, Juliana (Hazel Court), yearns for initiation into his Satanic cult, while the dwarf jester Hop-Toad (Skip Martin) and his beloved Esmeralda (Verina Greenlaw) navigate the cruel games of the nobility.

The Masque of the Red Death is saturated with symbolism, particularly through its use of these colors and visual cues, which serve as more than mere decoration—they are woven into the very fabric of the film’s meaning. The castle feels like a character all its own, coming alive—it’s this maze of color-coded chambers: Each one feels like you’re crossing into a new theater or mood, each a symbolic threshold, painted in the vivid palette of Nicolas Roeg’s cinematography.

Nicolas Roeg’s cinematography makes those colors pop in an almost hypnotic way. He, who’d go on to do legendary work as a director (Walkabout 1971, Don’t Look Now 1973 ), bathes the film in richly saturated reds, blues, and golds, transforming every corridor into a living hallucination, as if you’re wandering through a dream.

The use of color is more than just an aesthetic flourish; it’s visual poetry that hints at psychological ritual, echoing the stages of life and the inevitability of death. From the birth-like blue to the funereal black, a visual motif drawn from Poe’s original story and heightened by Nicolas Roeg’s lush cinematography. The most striking example is the sequence of colored rooms within Prospero’s castle, each chamber bathed in a different hue: blue, purple, green, yellow, white, violet, and, finally, black.

This progression is a direct visual echo to Edgar Allan Poe’s original vision, where the rooms represent transformation, culminating in the black chamber of death. The journey through these rooms becomes a symbolic passage from birth to oblivion, with the masked revelers dancing ever closer to their doom, unable to escape the final, funereal space.

One of the more obviously colorful cue is the color red, of course. Red dominates the film—both as the literal mark of the plague and as a symbol of forbidden desire, violence, and the inescapability of mortality.

The Red Death itself, cloaked in scarlet, haunts and stalks the periphery of every scene, a living spirit in the flesh so to speak, of the blood that will ultimately stain every reveler and every soul at the masque.

The castle’s opulent costumes and masks, designed to dazzle and distract us, also serve as symbols of the denial and self-deception of Prospero’s chosen, privileged few; behind every one of their masks is a face that cannot hide from the fate awaiting them.

Visual cues like billowing curtains, ornate Gothic windows, and the ever-ticking, mournful ebony clock, with its pendulum shaped like an axe, reinforce the passage of time and the certainty of death and contribute to a sumptuous and sinister atmosphere. Every chime that interrupts the masquerade and reminds the revelers of their mortality. The recurring motif of doors and thresholds—rooms within rooms, like secrets behind curtains—suggests the layers of denial and the inevitable, unavoidable moment when everyone will be crossing into the unknown.

The art direction, officially credited to Robert Jones, with David Lee, was made striking by sets left over from Peter Glenville’s Becket 1964 starring Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole, giving the castle its grandeur, and labyrinthine quality, both beautiful and menacing, that’s perfectly befitting Prospero’s twisted danse macabre.

The elaborate art design and set pieces in The Masque of the Red Death are crucial to conjuring the film’s intoxicating, Gothic atmosphere. The production design was led by Daniel Haller, whose work, though uncredited to meet British co-production requirements, is widely recognized as the creative force behind the castle’s haunting interiors.

These sets are more than mere backdrops—they are immersive environments that reflect and amplify the film’s themes of decadence, dread, and the inescapability of death.

In every detail, from the riotous masquerade to the stark contrast between the gilded interiors and the suffering outside the castle walls, the film’s art design and cinematography transform visual elements into a language of fear and excess, doom and delight. These symbols not only deepen the Gothic atmosphere but also echo the film’s central themes: the futility of power, the seduction of excess, and the relentless advance of death, no matter how elaborate the mask or how dazzling the pageant.

The castle is a maze of beauty and menace, its opulence masking the rot at its heart, and every tableau—whether a torture chamber, a masked ballroom, or the infamous black room—serves as a stage for the film’s pageant of mortality. Its grandeur and claustrophobia heighten the sense of isolation, trapping Prospero and his revelers in a gilded cage as the Red Death draws nearer.

In every detail, from the lavish masquerade costumes to the surreal, color-drenched corridors, the film’s visual design weaves together spectacle and suspense, making the Gothic world of The Masque of the Red Death unforgettable.

Key scenes shimmer with surreal menace. Juliana’s initiation into Satanism is a delirious montage—she drinks from a chalice, suffers a barrage of hallucinations, and is ultimately slain by a falcon, her death a marriage to the infernal.

Beyond the castle walls, we find the desperate villagers gathering outside the gates, begging for mercy and sanctuary as the Red Death sweeps through the land. They plead to be let inside, grasping at the smallest hope of protection from the plague’s relentless grip. Prospero looks down upon them, unmoved by their agony; his cold heart is as unyielding as the stone battlements that surround the castle that he commands. With a disdainful wave of his hand, he orders them to leave. But when they persist, he answers their cries with violence – his guards cut them down without hesitation. It is a quicker death than the plague, at least.

For Prospero, pity is for the weak, and mercy is a luxury he refuses to grant. His castle becomes a gilded tomb, sealed tight against the suffering outside, every act of cruelty within its walls speaks to the indifference with which he answers the world’s pain.

The masquerade ball, the film’s centerpiece, unfolds as a riot of masked celebrants and decadent spectacle. In the midst of these ceremonies, Alfredo (Patrick Magee) reveals his cruelty when Esmeralda, the little dancer, accidentally spills his wine. In front of the entire court, Alfredo lashes out and whips her, humiliating her publicly; wounded and shamed, Esmeralda runs off in tears. This act of brutality does not go unanswered. Later, Hop-Toad, the jester, exacts fiery revenge: in a grotesque parody of carnival justice, the sadistic Alfredo is hoisted aloft in a gorilla costume and burned alive—a fitting vengeance for his cruelty to his beloved Esmeralda.

But it is the arrival of the Red Death—silent, implacable, robed in scarlet—that brings the revels to a halt. Prospero, believing this figure to be an emissary of his dark master, follows him into the Black Room, only to discover that Death serves no god but itself; beneath the mask is Prospero’s own blood-smeared face, and his end is as inevitable as that of the peasants he scorned.

The performances are as stylized as the visuals. Vincent Price’s Prospero is a study in aristocratic evil, his every gesture laced with irony and menace, while Hazel Court’s Juliana and Jane Asher’s Francesca embody innocence and corruption in their own ways. The supporting cast—Magee’s oily Alfredo, Martin’s tragic Hop-Toad, Greenlaw’s delicate Esmeralda—populate the castle with grotesques and victims, each playing their part in the film’s ritual of doom.

Corman’s direction, influenced by European art cinema and Freudian symbolism, weaves together horror and philosophy, spectacle and allegory. The film’s pacing is itself like a ball, at times dreamlike, allowing us to wander through its nightmare corridors and absorb the full weight of its themes: the futility of power, the universality of death, and the thin line between revelry and ruin. The final procession of plague-figures—each cloaked in a different color, each representing a different death—underscores the film’s central truth: “And darkness and decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”

The Masque of the Red Death is not merely an adaptation but a transformation, Poe’s story filtered through the prism of Corman’s imagination and Roeg’s lens.

The Masque of the Red Death is one of Corman’s triumphs and endures as one of his best Gothic visions. A film where the colors just spill everywhere—like paint poured from a fever dream —each masked waltz feels like it’s leading everyone to circle the edges of fate, closer to the abyss of endless sleep and decadence is part of the language the movie speaks, all in deep crimson reds and gilded golds. – Its pageantry both beautiful and perilous.

#102 down, 48 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #78 HOUSE OF USHER 1960 & PIT AND THE PENDULUM 1961

HOUSE OF USHER 1960

Crimson Shadows and Haunted Walls: A House Built on Sorrow: The Gothic Spell of Corman’s House of Usher

There is a peculiar chill that settles in the bones when one first glimpses the House of Usher, rising like a fever dream from the ashen wasteland- a mansion not merely built of stone and timber, but of lurid memories, madness, and ancestral rot, and a portrait of decay and destiny.

Roger Corman’s House of Usher (1960), the first and perhaps most iconic entry in his celebrated Poe cycle, stands as a masterwork of American Gothic cinema- a feverish, color-drenched torrid vision of decay, madness, and familial doom. Corman, drawing inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and working from a screenplay by Richard Matheson, transformed Poe’s atmospheric tale into a lush, psychologically fraught chamber drama, setting the template for a series of films that would define his career and leave an indelible mark on the horror genre.

Where the House Remembers: Roger Corman’s Fever Dream of Poe

From the opening frames, Corman’s vision is clear: this is not a world governed by natural law, but one ruled by the logic of nightmares and the tyranny of the subconscious. The film’s art director, Daniel Haller, crafts the Usher mansion as a living, breathing entity- its walls festooned with grotesque portraits (painted by Burt Shonberg), its corridors warped and claustrophobic, its very structure creaking and groaning as if in sympathy with the tortured souls within.

The lurid poetry of the landscape surrounding the house is a blasted wasteland of dead trees and swirling mist, shot on location using the charred remains of a real forest fire, and rendered in lurid Eastmancolor by cinematographer Floyd Crosby. Crosby’s camera bathes the film in sickly reds, bruised purples, and funereal blues, heightening the sense that the house and its inhabitants are trapped in a perpetual twilight between life and death.

It stands at the edge of a tarn, its reflection wavering in black water, as if the house itself is uncertain of its own reality. The air is thick with the scent of decay and the unspoken dread of secrets too heavy to bear. In Roger Corman’s vision, Poe’s haunted estate is not just a setting, but a living character-a mausoleum of sorrow, its corridors echoing with the footfalls of the doomed and the sighs of the dead.

To enter this world is to surrender to a waking nightmare, where color itself seems infected with fever, and every shadow hints at a legacy of suffering. The Usher name is a curse whispered through generations, and within these walls, time coils and unravels, trapping its inhabitants in a dance with oblivion. Here, Vincent Price’s Roderick wafts as gently as a sigh, his voice trembling with the weight of prophecy, while Madeline’s beauty is as fragile as the last rose of summer, doomed to wither behind velvet drapes. The house watches, waits, and remembers- its every crack a testament to the sins of the past, its every tremor a warning that no one, not even love, can escape the fate that festers at its heart.

It is into this world of spectral grandeur and suffocating dread that we descend, following Corman’s fevered imagination through halls lined with haunted portraits and rooms thick with the perfume of ruin. House of Usher is not merely an adaptation; it is an invocation- a Gothic lament rendered in crimson and shadow, inviting us to linger at the threshold of madness and bear witness to the final, fiery collapse of a dynasty cursed to remember, forever.

The story unfolds with the arrival of Philip Winthrop (Mark Damon), a determined young man who journeys from Boston to the Usher estate to fetch his beloved fiancée, Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey). What he finds is a mansion on the brink of ruin, presided over by Madeline’s brother, Roderick Usher (Vincent Price, in one of his most iconic performances), and their loyal but haunted servant, Bristol (Harry Ellerbe).

Roderick, with his spectral white hair, crimson robes, and whispery voice, is the embodiment of Poe’s fallen aristocrat: hypersensitive to sound, light, and sensation, he claims the Usher bloodline is cursed, plagued by madness, disease, and a fate inextricably bound to the house itself. He drifts from room to room, an echo in his own home, each word barely disturbing the silence. A ghost among the living, he haunts the corridors, his voice little more than a murmur in the gloom. His solitary musings ripple faintly, barely catching air, all of it laced with dread and fatalism. His pale features and haunted eyes suggest a man already half in the grave. Price reportedly altered his appearance or the role, dying his hair and losing weight to evoke the “wasting elegance” of Roderick Usher.

Price’s performance leads with a brilliant flair of controlled hysteria. Price inhabits Roderick Usher with a spectral grandeur that is both mesmerizing and deeply unsettling, and his every gesture is a flourish of doomed aristocracy and trembling sensitivity. With his shock of bleached hair and pallid, haunted features, Price glides through the decaying halls like a living ghost, his words silken threads weaving between melancholy and menace.

He plays Roderick as a man both tyrant and victim, suffused with an exquisite fragility, flinching from the world’s harshness, yet burning with a feverish conviction that the Usher bloodline is cursed beyond redemption. In his hands, every line is weighted with sorrow and sinister intent; he radiates a theatrical intensity that borders on the operatic, yet never loses the tragic humanity at the character’s core. Price’s performance is a baroque tapestry of fear, obsession, and longing, so vivid and flamboyant that the very walls seem to tremble in response, making Roderick Usher unforgettable-not merely as a villain, but as a soul consumed by the darkness he cannot escape.

His scenes with Damon’s Philip are electric, as Roderick alternates between pleading for his sister to stay and warning Philip to flee before the house’s curse claims them all.

Myrna Fahey’s Madeline is both delicate and determined, torn between her love for Philip and her brother’s suffocating protection. She is not merely a passive victim; her struggle to break free from the Usher legacy is palpable, and her eventual fate- buried alive in the family crypt, only to rise again in a frenzy of madness- remains one of the most chilling sequences in Corman’s oeuvre. Harry Ellerbe’s Bristol, meanwhile, provides a note of tragic loyalty, his every action shaped by decades of servitude to a doomed family.

Key scenes abound, each suffused with Corman’s signature blend of baroque style and psychological horror. The first dinner, where Philip is forced to don slippers so as not to disturb Roderick’s hypersensitive nerves, sets the tone of stifling ritual and decay. The portrait gallery, with its haunted visages of Usher ancestors, becomes a visual motif for the inescapable weight of the past.

The distinctive, haunting portraits featured in Roger Corman’s House of Usher (1960) were painted by Burt Shonberg. Corman specifically commissioned Shonberg, an artist known for his mystical and otherworldly style, to create the ancestral portraits that fill the Usher mansion and visually embody the family’s cursed legacy.

The house itself seems to conspire against Philip: a chandelier nearly crushes him, the bannisters groan and threaten to give way, and the very walls crack and bleed as the family curse tightens its grip. The most harrowing sequence comes after Madeline’s apparent death from catalepsy. Roderick, convinced she is doomed by the family curse, entombs her in the crypt. Philip, suspecting foul play, descends into the tomb and discovers the truth- Madeline has been buried alive, and her return is a scene of Gothic terror as she staggers through the burning house, her white dress stained with blood and madness.

The climax is a conflagration of both body and soul: as Madeline, driven mad by her ordeal, confronts her brother, the house itself erupts in flames. The siblings perish in each other’s arms, the house collapsing into the tarn as if the very earth is reclaiming the cursed bloodline—only Philip and Bristol escape, bearing witness to the annihilation of a family and its legacy.

Corman’s House of Usher is as much a triumph of style as of substance. Les Baxter’s brooding score weaves through the film like a funeral dirge, amplifying the sense of doom. Daniel Haller’s sets, Floyd Crosby’s cinematography, and Burt Shonberg’s paintings combine to create a world where every detail is charged with symbolic meaning, mirroring the psychological fissures of the characters themselves.

The film’s success launched a cycle of Poe adaptations that would become Corman’s greatest achievement, each exploring the interplay of repression, desire, and death with a visual and emotional intensity rare in American horror.
Ultimately, House of Usher is a film about the inescapability of the past, the rot at the heart of privilege, and the terror of the mind unmoored. It is a haunted house story in the truest sense- the house is not merely a setting, but a living embodiment of the Usher family’s curse, a place where walls remember, and the dead do not rest. Corman’s vision, Price’s unforgettable performance, and the film’s lush, claustrophobic beauty ensure its place as a cornerstone of Gothic cinema, a nightmarish reverie, a mind-bending fantasy from which neither its characters nor its audience can ever fully awaken.

PIT AND THE PENDULUM 1961

Pendulums and Paranoia: Roger Corman’s Cinematic Descent into Madness in Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

Roger Corman’s Pit and the Pendulum (1961) is a delirious descent into tempestuous Gothic terror, a film that transforms Edgar Allan Poe’s slender tale into a lush, waking nightmare of guilt, madness, and the inescapable grip of the past. Corman, working from a screenplay by Richard Matheson, expands Poe’s premise into a labyrinthine story of family trauma and psychological torment, set within a Spanish castle whose very stones seem to pulse with dread. The result is a work of visual and emotional excess, where every corridor hides a secret and every shadow threatens to swallow the living whole.

From the opening moments, the film envelops the viewer in its somber, candlelit world. Art director Daniel Haller’s sprawling, multi-level castle set, assembled ingeniously from scavenged studio backlots and dressed with gallons of cobwebbing, becomes a character in itself, a mausoleum of memory and menace. Floyd Crosby’s cinematography is a study in color mood lighting: the castle’s interiors are rendered in bruised purples, sickly greens, and funereal blues, with the camera gliding through passageways and chambers in long, unbroken takes. The sense of claustrophobia is heightened by Crosby’s use of low-key lighting, particularly in the film’s second half, where the darkness presses in and the only relief is the flicker of torchlight or the glint of steel.

The story unfolds in 16th-century Spain, as Francis Barnard (John Kerr) arrives at the Medina castle to investigate the mysterious death of his sister, Elizabeth (Barbara Steele). He is greeted by Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price), a man haunted by grief and guilt, and by Nicholas’s sister Catherine (Luana Anders), whose quiet concern hints at deeper family wounds. Nicholas claims Elizabeth died of a blood disorder, but Francis is unconvinced, especially as strange occurrences- a harpsichord playing by itself, Elizabeth’s ring appearing on bloodied keys- suggest that she may not rest easy. Dr. Leon (Antony Carbone), the family physician, offers little comfort, and as Francis digs deeper, he uncovers the castle’s true horror: Nicholas’s father, Sebastian Medina, was a notorious agent of the Inquisition, whose brutality left Nicholas traumatized and the castle forever stained by violence.

Vincent Price delivers a performance of operatic intensity and tragic grandeur – his Nicholas is a man unraveling at the seams, by turns gentle and tormented, his voice trembling with fear as he recounts childhood memories of witnessing his mother’s torture and his uncle’s murder at the hands of his father. Price’s transformation in the final act, from haunted widower to raving madman who believes himself to be Sebastian, unleashes his full flamboyance and emotional power. He stalks the castle with wild eyes and trembling hands, his descent into inherited madness both terrifying and deeply pitiable. Barbara Steele, though her screen time is brief, leaves a spectral impression as Elizabeth, her wide, haunted eyes and ethereal beauty making her both victim and avenging spirit. John Kerr’s Francis is a forceful presence, his skepticism and determination anchoring the story’s wildest turns, while Luana Anders brings a quiet resilience to Catherine, the last hope for the Medina line.

The mood of Pit and the Pendulum is one of relentless dread, heightened by Les Baxter’s swirling, romantic score, which swells from mournful strings to shrieking crescendos as the story careens toward its climax. The set design is pure Gothic excess: cavernous halls, secret passages, and, at the heart of it all, the torture chamber- a museum of medieval cruelty, dominated by the titular pendulum. The pendulum set, a marvel of practical effects, occupies an entire soundstage, its eighteen-foot blade suspended from the rafters, swinging lower and lower with every tick of the infernal clockwork.

That swinging pendulum scene in Pit and the Pendulum is pure, nerve-rattling suspense—the blade gliding lower with every swing, making my heart race like I’m the one strapped to the table about to be cut in two. Even after all these years, it’s a nightmare that keeps me teetering right on the edge, half-expecting that razor-sharp arc to come for me after John Kerr!

Key scenes are etched in the memory: the exhumation of Elizabeth’s tomb, where her corpse is found twisted in agony, confirming Nicholas’s greatest fear-that she was buried alive; the storm-lashed night when Nicholas, haunted by voices and visions, wanders the castle’s corridors, his sanity fraying with every step; and the final revelation, when Elizabeth, very much alive, emerges from the shadows, her apparent death a ruse concocted with Dr. Leon to drive Nicholas mad and claim his inheritance. The film’s finale is a tour de force of Gothic horror: Nicholas, now believing himself to be his own father, hurls Elizabeth into the iron maiden and straps Francis to the stone slab beneath the descending pendulum. The blade swings closer and closer, its metallic hiss underscored by Baxter’s shrieking score, until Catherine and the loyal servant Maximillian burst in, saving Francis and sending Nicholas plunging to his death in the pit below. The final, chilling image- Elizabeth, still alive and gagged inside the iron maiden, her eyes wide with terror as the chamber is sealed forever- lingers like a curse. Steele’s enigmatic eyes, her steel gaze fever-bright and fathomless, seem to reach from the abyss, freezing time as they lock onto yours through the iron maiden’s cruel opening.

Corman’s Pit and the Pendulum is a triumph of style and atmosphere, a delirious nightmare rendered in velvet shadows and lurid color. The film’s production design, inventive camerawork, and bravura performances- especially those of Price and Steele- combine to create a world where the past is never dead, and where the sins of the fathers are visited upon the living in the most terrifying ways. It is a film that lingers long after the final scream, a Gothic hallucination from which it is deliciously difficult to escape.

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MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #73 The Haunted Palace 1963

THE HAUNTED PALACE 1963

The Haunted Palace (1963) is a swirling mist of Gothic horror and cosmic dread, a film that finds its haunted heart in the dual performance of Vincent Price and the eerie vision of director Roger Corman. Though marketed as part of Corman’s celebrated Poe cycle, the film is in fact a bold adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, with only a Poe poem lending its title and a sense of poetic doom.

This fusion of literary titans sets the stage for a story where the boundaries between sanity and possession, past and present, are as porous as the fog that curls around the cursed village of Arkham.

Vincent Price commands the film in a bravura dual role as both the gentle Charles Dexter Ward and his ancestor, the warlock Joseph Curwen. His performance is a dark waltz in transformation between menace and melancholy: with a mere shift of posture or the glint in his eye, he glides from kindly innocence to fiendish malevolence.

Price’s energy is magnetic yet controlled, never tipping into parody, and his voice, by turns silken and sibilant, makes the supernatural possession feel chillingly plausible.

Watching Price, one marvels at how he can summon both sympathy and terror, often within the same scene. The film’s most unsettling moments come as Charles, standing before Curwen’s portrait, is slowly overtaken by his ancestor’s will – a psychological duel rendered with nothing but Price’s expressive face and the camera’s hungry gaze.

Corman, ever the resourceful auteur, brings a starker, surreal visual palette to Lovecraft , aided by the atmospheric cinematography of Floyd Crosby. The muted blue and brown hues, drifting ground fog, and looming sets evoke a world where the past refuses to stay buried.

Daniel Haller’s art direction, honed on earlier Corman films, gives the palace itself a brooding, labyrinthine presence, its secret passageways and shadowed corners as much a character as any of the villagers. Ronald Stein’s score, lush and occasionally bombastic, heightens the film’s sense of mounting dread and otherworldly pull, like a tide tugging at the edge of reason..

The supporting cast is a gallery of horror icons and character actors: Debra Paget brings both vulnerability and resolve to Anne Ward, the wife caught in the crossfire of ancestral evil; Lon Chaney Jr. is memorably sinister as Simon, Curwen’s loyal henchman, his mournful eyes masking monstrous intent; Frank Maxwell, Elisha Cook Jr., and others round out the cursed townsfolk, each bearing the weight of Curwen’s vengeance.

The story unfolds with the precision of a nightmare: in 1765, Joseph Curwen is burned alive by Arkham’s villagers for his occult crimes, but not before cursing them and their descendants. Over a century later, Charles Dexter Ward inherits the palace and is inexorably drawn into Curwen’s legacy. As Charles succumbs to possession, the film becomes a study in psychological horror. Curwen’s revenge is visited upon the villagers through a series of grotesque murders, while Anne desperately tries to save her husband from the grip of the past.

Ted Coodley’s makeup effects deliver the villagers of Arkham to a state of grotesque deformity, transforming their faces and bodies into unsettling, crumbling statues of Curwen’s lingering curse. Visages warped by ancestral sin. Masks of suffering, their features melting like wax, twisted by generations of Curwen’s retribution, they wander the mist-shrouded streets with faces warped and features askew, their bodies bearing the tragic poetry of nightmare-living testaments to a legacy of unnatural evil.

Joseph Curwen’s dead mistress, Hester Tillinghast- played by Cathie Merchant- is resurrected by Curwen (in control of Charles Dexter Ward’s body) and his fellow warlocks. Once revived, Hester joins Curwen and his followers in their sinister rituals and is present for the climactic attempt to sacrifice Anne Ward to the creature in the pit, making her an active participant in the film’s final horrors.

Key moments linger in the mind: the torch-lit mob scene where Curwen, defiant to the end, promises vengeance “until this village is a graveyard”; the hypnotic power of Curwen’s portrait, a silent sentinel of evil; the chilling sequence where deformed villagers surround Charles and Anne, their presence a living testament to the curse; and the final conflagration, as the palace burns and the boundaries between the living and the dead dissolve.

The climax of The Haunted Palace erupts in a frenzy of fire and supernatural reckoning. As the villagers, torches in hand, storm the cursed palace to end Joseph Curwen’s reign once and for all, Anne is chained and offered as a sacrifice to the monstrous Lovecraftian creature lurking in the pit below. In the chaos, Dr. Willet and Anne discover the secret dungeons and are ambushed by Curwen and his resurrected cohorts. The villagers set the palace ablaze and, crucially, destroy Curwen’s portrait, breaking his hold over Charles Dexter Ward. Freed from possession, Charles rushes to save Anne, urging Dr. Willet to get her to safety as the inferno consumes the palace. Though Charles and Willet narrowly escape the flames, the film closes on an unsettling note: a glimmer in Charles’s eyes and a sinister tone in his voice hint that Curwen’s evil may not have been vanquished after all.

The Haunted Palace stands as a bridge between Gothic melodrama and cosmic horror, its atmosphere thick with dread and its themes as old as original sin. With Price particularly mercurial, Corman at his most atmospheric, and Lovecraft’s shadow looming over every frame, the film is a haunted house of the mind, where the past is never truly dead, and evil waits patiently for the door to be opened.

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BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 4: The Dark Goddess-This Dark Mirror

BARBARA STEELE- BLOODY WELL BELOVED –

The role Barbara Steele plays in the legacy of Italian Gothic cinema of the 1960s achieving cult status, is arguably her most recognizable contribution to the sub-genre of the horror film. She’s been christened The High Priestess of Horror, Queen of Horror, and The Dark Goddess, the latter, the implication being her prowess is proof there’s a link between beauty (a woman’s power) and evil. Steele’s persona is suitable as a femme fatale, and the sum of her work is extremely feminist.

According to journalist Maitland McDonagh, she is The Face that Launched a Thousand Screams. She is the sadomasochistic Madonna of the “cinefantastique”; the queen of the wild, the beautiful, and the damned.”

“Of all the stars of horror cinema, Barbara Steele may have come the closest to pure myth {“¦} she suggests a kinky and irresistible sexual allure” – (David J Hogan)

“With goldfish-bowl eyes radiating depraved elfin beauty, and what she calls her ‘old, suspicious Celtic soul burning blackly within, Steele played the princess in a dark fairytale.” ‘They sense something in me’ she once said of her fans, but surely it was true of her directors also. Steele followed with ‘Maybe some kind of psychic pain. The diva Dolorosa of the 1910s, reincarnated as a voluptuous revenant.’ – (from David Cairns and Daniel Riccuito for Sight and Sound)

“Angel Carter (1982) named the three surrealist love goddesses as Louise Brooks first and foremost followed by Dietrich and third Barbara Steele. With regards to Steele however, not all the following descriptions emanate from surrealists caught in the grip of amour fou” (obsessive passion).- (The Other Face of Death: Barbara Steele and La Maschera Del Demonio by Carol Jenks from NECRONOMICON edited by Andy Black)

“The very symbol of Woman as vengeful, alien and “˜other’.” (Nicholls 1984)

“Steele perfectly embodies both the dread and the desire necessary to imply alluring and transgressive sexuality.” (Lampley-Women in the Horror films of Vincent Price)

“It’s not me they’re seeing. They’re casting some projection of themselves, some aspect that I somehow symbolizes. It can’t possibly be me.” Barbara Steele quoted-(Warren 1991)

“You can’t live off being a cult.” Barbara Steele

“When did I ever deserve this dark mirror?”

 

Continue reading “BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 4: The Dark Goddess-This Dark Mirror” →

Chapter 4 – Queers and Dykes in the Dark: Classic, Noir & Horror Cinema’s Coded Gay Characters:

CODED CLASSIC HORROR THEORY “The Uncanny & The Other”

“Scenes of excessive brutality and gruesomeness must be cut to an absolute minimum.”

“As a cultural index, the pre-Code horror film gave a freer rein to psychic turmoil and social disorientation because it possessed a unique freedom from censorship… the Hays Office admits that under the Code it is powerless to take a stand on the subject of ‘gruesomeness.‘(Thomas Doherty)

Horror films in particular have made for a fascinating case study in the evolving perceptions of queer presence; queer-horror filmmakers and actors were often forced to lean into the trope of the “predatory queer” or the “monstrous queer” to claim some sense of power through visibility and blatant expressions of sexuality.- Essential Queer Horror Films by Jordan Crucciola-2018

Though Hollywood execs refused to show explicit queerness, they were willing to pay for scripts that dealt with characters who were social outcasts and sexually non-normative. The horror genre is perhaps the most iconic coded queer playground, which seems to have an affinity with homosexuality because of its apparatus of ‘otherizing’ and the inherent representation of difference. The horror genre crosses over boundaries that include transgressions between heterosexuality and queerness. The villain, fiend, or monster plays around with a variety of elements that, while usually separate, might merge male and female gender traits.

The horror film, in particular, found its place asserting a queer presence on screen. The narratives often embraced tropes of the “˜predatory queer’ or the “˜monstrous queer’ in order to declare themselves visible while cinematic queers were elbowed out of the way. Filmmakers had to maneuver their vision in imaginative ways to subvert the structure laid out for them by the Code.

As Harry M. Benshoff explains in his book Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality in the Horror Film, “Immediately before and during the years of World War II, Universal Studio’s horror films began to employ a more humanistic depiction of their monsters,” and the films of Val Lewton, like Cat People, reflected “a growing awareness of homosexuality, homosexual communities, and the dynamics of homosexual oppression as it was played out in society and the military.” So even though Hollywood execs refused to show explicit queerness, during the first true horror boom in American cinema, they were willing to pay for stories about social outcasts and sexually nonnormative figures. Horror fans thus found themselves awash in some of the genre’s most iconic queer-coded characters of all time.

On a Greek Island, Boris Karloff plays Gen. Nikolas Pherides in Val Lewton/Mark Robson’s Isle of the Dead, 1945. Driven insane by the belief that Thea (Ellen Drew), who suffers from catalepsy, is the embodiment of an evil vampiric force, is a demon called a vorvolaka. Lewton drew on collective fears, and all his work had an undercurrent of queer panic and a decipherable sign of homophobia.

The Vorvolaka has beset the island with plague. Thea- “Laws can be wrong, and laws can be cruel, and the people who live only by the law are both wrong and cruel.”

The Pre-Code era was exploding with American horror films that reflected the angst, social unrest, and emotional distress that audiences were feeling. Personified in films that used graphic metaphors to act as catharsis, the images were often filled with rage, as Thomas Doherty calls it ‘the quality of gruesomeness, cruelty and vengefulness’. Think of the angry mobs with their flaming torches who hunt down Frankenstein’s monster, eventually crucifying him like a sacrificial embodiment of their fury. James Whale’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 1931 was a smash hit for Universal. Other studios were trying to ride the wave of the awakening genre of the horror picture. Paramount released director Rouben Mamoulian’s adaptation of the novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, published in 1886. The film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which was released in 1931, stars Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins. During the Pre-Code period, many horror films proposed grisly subject matter that would shock and mesmerize the audience. For example, actor/director Irving Pichel’s The Most Dangerous Game (1932) starring Joel McCrea, Leslie Banks, and Fay Wray.

In 1932 Michael Curtiz directed Doctor X starring Lionel Atwill who would become one of the leading mad scientists of the genre.

Michael Curtiz’s macabre horror/fantasy experiment of homosocial ‘men doing science’, crossing over into profane territories and embracing dreadful taboos!

All scenes below are from Dr. X (1932).

Fay Wray is Atwill’s daughter who is the only woman surrounded by a group of scientific nonconformists.

The adaptation of Bram Stoker’s story of the Eastern European incubus was interpreted by Tod Browning in Dracula 1931, immortalized by Hungarian stage actor Bela Lugosi with his iconic cape and mesmerizing stare. While his nightly visitations were blood-driven and cinematically sexual in nature, there is a very homoerotic element to his influence over Renfield (Dwight Frye) and his gaze of gorgeous David Manners as John Harker.

Bela Lugosi looks down upon David Manners in a scene from the film ‘Dracula’, 1931. (Photo by Universal/Getty Images)

Robert Florey directed the macabre Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe. And a film that has no connection to Poe’s story but in the name is one of the most transgressive, disturbing horror films, rampant with vile taboos, such as necrophilia, incest, sadism, satanism, and flaying a man alive, is the unorthodox The Black Cat (1934). The film stars Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, one of four pictures they would do together. A pair of enemies who have a score to settle, ghosts of a past war, and stolen love all take place against the backdrop of a stylish Bauhaus set design and high-contrast lighting.

Paramount released Murders in the Zoo (1933) with Lionel Atwill, a sadistic owner of a zoo who uses wild animals to ravage and kill off any of his wife’s (Kathleen Burke) suitors. Kathleen Burke is well known as the panther girl in Erle C. Kenton’s horrifically disturbing Island of Lost Souls 1932, an adaptation of master fantasy writer H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau. Incidentally, Welles, Laughton, and his wife, Elsa Lanchester, had been good friends earlier on, before the filming of Lost Souls. The film stars Charles Laughton as the unorthodox, depraved scientist who meddles with genetics and nature. He creates gruesome human/animals, torturing them with vivisection in his ‘house of pain.’ The film also stars Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams, and Bela Lugosi as The Sayer of the Law.

In 1933, King Kong showed a giant ape grasping the half-naked object of his affection, with unmentionable connotations of bestiality between the ape and Fay Wray. With scenes of Wray writhing in his gigantic paws, he lusts after her until his desire kills him. It’s almost like fantasy noir: the object of your desire will ultimately kill you!

The 1930s and 1940s Fear the Queer Monsters:

Re-assessing the Hitchcock Touch; by Wieland Schwanebeck -As Rhona Berenstein asserts, the horror genre “provides a primary arena for sexualities and practices that fall outside the purview of patriarchal culture, and the subgeneric tropes of the unseen, the host and the haunted house.”

By the same token, Kendra Bean concludes that Mrs. Danvers is portrayed as “a wraith; a sexual predator who is out to make Mrs. de Winter her next victim.”

Queer characters in horror films during the early period, reveal similarities between Mrs. Danvers and the staging of earlier sapphic characters, such as Gloria Holdens’s well-known portrayal of Countess Marya Zaleska in Dracula’s Daughter 1936. Yet, similar to the self-discipline of Mrs. Danvers, Dracula’s Daughter remains a figure of primacy and pity Ellis Hanson argues Dracula’s Daughter presents “the possibilities of a queer Gothic” early on in Hollywood history, “rich in all the paradox and sexual indeterminacy the word queer and the word Gothic imply.

There was a revival of the horror craze during the period of WWII. The Hollywood studios, both major and ‘Poverty Row” like Monogram and Republic, realized that horror movies were a lucrative business. The studios began to revisit the genre, looking for not only fresh formulas but they resurrected the classic monsters, dropping them into new plots. They also envisioned uniting gangster films with horror films, and this homogenizing led to a ‘queering’ of the two styles that demonstrated phallocentric ( guns, scientific penetration) and homoerotic themes and images into a sub-genre.

Public awareness of homosexuality reached a new height during these years, primarily due to the new set of social conditions wrought by war. Slowly , the love that dare not speak its name was being spoken, albeit in ways almost always obscurantist, punitive and homophobic. The linkage of homosexuality with violence and disease remained strong. Monsters in the Closet -Harry Benshoff

Rhona Berenstein, in her insightful book Attack of the Leading Ladies points out that films featuring the mad scientist trope operate with the homosocial principle, which speaks of the homoeroticism of males working together in consort subverting science together as a group of men who hide behind their objectification -the female object of their gaze, are in fact, figures of objectification themselves. They are simultaneously homosocial, homoerotic, and homophobic in aspect; … potentially possessing an extra-normative commitment between the two men.

Mad Doctor movies are homosocial in nature. The Mad Doctor movie is a subgenre that, below the surface, glorifies intimate male camaraderie and male homosexuality, and by the close of the picture, society, the prevailing culture, must, in turn, annihilate that which is repressed. However, it is not exclusively a vehicle to express homosexuality through homosocial interactions. There is a component not only of male bonding, but also a world without women; the thrust is a synthesis of misogyny and patriarchal tyranny and oppression of women. Homosocial relationships between men in these science horrors show the man’s desire for connection to other men, even one created by his own hand.

According to Twitchell in his Dreadful Pleasures and Attack of the Leading Ladies, Rona Berenstein, Colin Clive as Dr. Frankenstein in all three Universal pictures, was at least performing bisexuality. Whale’s 1933 Frankenstein might give way to the homosocial realm of the mad scientist trope of ‘homoerotic indulgence’ as these men exclude women from the pursuit of their fulfillment. Twitchell views the scientist’s fluid sexuality in order to examine the concept of a man controlling women’s primacy of giving birth. This might explain Dr. Frankenstein’s venture into unnatural reproduction—a process he wants to divert to himself without women’s exclusive right to motherhood. In the scene where he is as close to giving birth to a full-grown man, he seems to display sexual arousal when his creation comes to life. Henry Frankenstein provokes nature and defies his heterosexuality. As Whale was an openly gay director in Hollywood, it can be pondered whether he knew exactly what he was suggesting. Thesiger’s sexually ambiguous, or okay, not so ambiguous Dr. Pretorius, the mad scientist who pressures Henry Frankenstein to revitalize his experiments and create a mate for the monster. Pretorius is the scientist who insists that Henry continue his creative efforts in Bride of Frankenstein. Vitto Russo called Thesiger, a “man who played the effete sissy”¦ with much verve and wit.”

George Zucco, like Lionel Atwill, often portrayed the unorthodox scientist who flirted with taboos. He plays mad scientist Dr. Alfred Morris in The Mad Ghoul (1943) As a university chemistry professor, he exploits medical student Ted Allison (David Bruce) with his experimental gas that transforms Ted into a malleable, yielding macabre ghoul, whom Morris directs to kill and remove the victim’s hearts using the serum to temporarily bring Ted back from his trance like death state. David Bruce’s character is represented as a ‘queer’ sort of young man. He is not quite masculine and is unable to get his girlfriend, Evelyn Ankers, to fall in love with him. As the Mad Ghoul, he becomes a monstrous queer.

In 1932, director Tod Browning’s Dracula was based on Bram Stoker’s story of a fiendish vampire who, in a sexually implicit way, violates his victims by penetrating them with his fangs. The story pushed the boundaries of storytelling, and there was an inherent subtext of ‘queer’ ravishment when he sucks the blood of Dwight Frye to make him his loyal servant.

In Jonathan Harker’s Journal, the protagonist recounts his impressions of his interaction with the vampire, Dracula “As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which do what I would, I could not conceal.” For (Noël Carroll) the entry in his diary conveys revulsion by the Count’s closeness and offensive presence, which causes him to become sickened.

But it also could be read that Harker’s ‘shudder’ is not about his revulsion, but rather, an uncontrolled sexual response to the vampire’s looming over him, which could be interpreted not just as hunger for his ‘blood’ but an expression of repressed sexual desire and the fear it causes.

Horror movies have always pushed the boundaries of normalcy, by virtue of the fact that these films are inhabited by ‘monsters’, something ‘queerly’ different. And it is natural to observe two diverging responses to the impact of the horror genre and often, its persecution of what is ‘different’ and the source of what causes our anxiety.

Dracula may appear as the image of a man, but the count is far from human. While monsters in classical horror films are based on systems of maleness, they are split from being actual men. Although there are physical interactions and suggestive contact with the heroine, there isn’t the foundation of heterosexuality, but something quite deviant within their aggressively erotic encounters and/or assaults. The understanding of sexuality and the most narrow identifications that are assigned to varying orientations in a large sense is not translatable for the deeper layers of the monster and their relationship to their victims. In Hollywood, horror films can be seen as heterosexuality being invaded by an abhorrent outside force; inherent in the underlying message could be racism, classism, sexism, and gay panic. Though it can be interpreted as a landscape of heterosexuality that is in the full power of its universal presence, horror films are perfect platforms that can illustrate the collapse of heterosexuality and the subversion of sexuality.

The horror genre is a breeding ground for portrayals of the shattering of heterosexual power. This can be seen in Lambert Hillyer’s Dracula’s Daughter (1936) starring Gloria Holden as the sapphic vampire who lives in a New Village-type artist’s den, which signals her outsider status from domesticity and normalcy.

In White Zombie (1932), Bela Lugosi plays the eerily menacing Legendre. He turns men into lifeless workers who run the sugar mill. Legendre also begins to turn the plantation owner, Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer), into one of his zombies. His motivation for his control over people is ambiguous, though there seems to be sexual reasoning for both the beautiful Madeline (Madge Bellamy) and Beaumont. In the scene where Beaumont is nearly paralyzed, Legendre’s control over his male victim parallels the sexual entrapment of the movie’s heroine.

MAD LOVE (1935) I have conquered science! Why can’t I conquer love?

Karl Freund’s Grand Guignol Mad Love (1935) shifts from gazing at the female to gazing at the male. Here, the focus is on Peter Lorre in his American screen debut as Dr. Gogol, who has an obsession with Frances Drake as Yvonne Orlac, an actress who works at the Grand Guignol Theatre. To Gogol, she is the typified defenseless heroine whom he tries to lure away from her husband, Stephen (Colin Clive), using his knowledge of scientific alchemy.

Though Gogol tries to become Yvonne’s master, his Galatea, there are critics who read the struggle between the two men as not just a rivalry for Yvonne’s love but Gogol’s desire for Stephen as well. Gogol is responsible for grafting new hands onto Stephen’s mangled body after a train crash. Mad Love could fit the criteria for the subgenre of science/horror films where the male gaze is diverted from the female object toward other men, in this case, what connected the two was the preservation of Stephen’s hands. Why, then, is it not possible that the focus could shift from Gogol’s attraction to Yvonne to the homosocial dynamics between Gogol as a doctor and his subject, Stephen?

Mad Love possesses some of the horror genre’s most tenacious performances of gender play. (Carol Clover) asks us to take a closer look at Freund’s film. It is less about the “suffering experienced by women, but at a deeper, more sustained level, it is dedicated to the unspeakable terrors endured by men.”

In a similar fashion to Waldo Lydecker’s (Laura) and Hardy Cathcart’s (The Dark Corner) pathology of objectifying Laura and Mari, Gogol worships Yvonne – his Galatea, with a measure of scopophilia that lies within his gaze upon the perfection of female beauty. To control and possess it. The pleasure is aroused by the mere indulgence of looking at her.

Gogol pays 75 francs to purchase the wax statue of Galatea. The seller remarks, “There’s queer people on the streets of Montmartre tonight.”

Gogol’s maid, Francoise, talks to the statue, “Whatever made him bring you here. There’s never been any woman in this house except maybe me… “I prefer live ones to dead ones.”

A Time Magazine review of Mad Love in 1933 notes this queer appeal directly, even comparing Lorre’s acting skills to those of another homosexual coded actor: I find the comment about their faces rude and insulting to both Lorre and Laughton, both of whom I am a tremendous fan.

Mad Love’s insane doctor is feminized throughout the film… In fact, the same reporter who noted Gogol’s sadism argues for his feminine demeanor: “Lorre, perfectly cast, uses the technique popularized by Charles Laughton of suggesting the most unspeakable obsessions by the roll of a protuberant eyeball, an almost feminine mildness of tone, an occasional quiver of thick lips set flat in his cretinous ellipsoidal face. This reviewer came closer than any other to articulate the subtext of mad doctor movies. He seems on the verge of noting that Lorre, Like Laughton is an effeminate madman obsessed by unspeakable homosocial desire. – Attack of the Leading Ladies: Gender Sexuality and Spectatorship in Classic Horror Cinema by Rhona Berenstein.

Frances Drake’s heroine masquerades as a wife who deludes herself into believing that her husband is more masculine than he really is. Gogol has a curious empathy with Stephen, whom he touches frequently and prolonged. Although Gogol pursues the heroine, Yvonne, at the theater, forcing a kiss on her, his focus is primarily manipulating Stephen’s body, rejoining his hands and massaging them to stimulate life back into them. When he realizes that Stephen’s hands cannot be grafted back successfully to his wrists, he turns to another man, the hands of a knife thrower who was executed as a notorious murderer. Once Stephen recovers from the surgery, he can no longer continue as a concert pianist, but does develop the desire to throw sharp knives.

On the surface, the plot of Mad Love appears to be a heterosexual obsession; the most unspoken context is the connection between Gogol and Stephen. “As is true of Frankenstein’s labor of love in Whale’s first film, Gogol sews men’s body parts together, and the result is a monster of sorts. (Berenstein)

In the film’s climax, Yvonne hides in Gogol’s bedroom and pretends to be the wax statue of Galatea. When Gogol touches the statue, she lets out a scream. In a euphoric daze (as in the original story), he believes that he has the power to bring Galatea’s statue to life. Yvonne begs him to let her go as he tries to strangle her.

Stephen then rushes to his wife and holds her in his arms. With his eyes fixed on the offscreen space in which Gogol’s body lies, he croons: “My darling.” The homosocial desire is destroyed when Stephen murders Gogol who intones, “Each man kills the thing he loves”“” echoing on the soundtrack.

In the film’s closing moments, the secret desire is finally spoken out loud…Has Stephen killed the man he loves? Given that the phrase that Gogol mutters was written originally by Oscar Wilde, whose homosexuality scandalized the British social and legal system in 1895, reading the homosocial desire into Mad Love within the very last moments, we are left to decipher the suspended cues. We are left with Stephen’s gazing at Gogol’s face and his knifed body as he lay dying, he speaks the words, “˜My darling” while the camera frames the two men sharing that moment in the closing scene.

The mad doctor narrative is particularly predisposed to homosocial impulses. “intense male homosocial desire as at once the most compulsory and the most prohibited of social bonds” – Epistemology of the Closet (Sedgwick)

Sedgwick investigated early fantasy/horror novels, Shelley’s Frankenstein 1818, Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1886, and Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau 1895. At the beginning of the 1930s, these stories centered around mad doctors who delved into unorthodox, profane explorations and were all adapted to the screen. All of these nefarious or scientific, inquisitive men cultivated secret experiments, challenging the laws of nature. What Sedgwick found was that the Gothic literary representations of men performing homosocial collaborations were ‘not socially sanctioned and shunned.’

It was considered a necessary narrative element as well as a monstrous possibility that threatened to subvert the status quo. The combination of these two attitudes is expressed in homosocial narratives- male bonding is both horrifying and guaranteed, entailing the simultaneous introjection and expulsion of femininity. (Sedgwick)

“My darling”…

James Whale was a gay auteur who often imbued his work intentionally or with the ‘intentional fallacy’ of a ‘queer’ sense of dark humor. This comical, campy absurdity was always on the edge of his vision of horror and subtle profanity. His picture, The Invisible Man (1933), adapted from H.G. Wells’s story and starring Claude Rains, was classified as a horror film by the Code.

Dr. Jack Griffin (Rains), the antihero, is a frenzied scientist addicted to his formula as he seeks the ability to make himself invisible. His sanity begins to ‘vanish’ as his hunger for power, delusions of grandeur, and bursts of megalomania grow out of control. He plans on assassinating government officials, and he becomes more belligerent the longer he turns invisible. The idea that he displays radical ideas and runs around in the nude didn’t seem to arouse the censors; in 1933, a letter from James Wingate to Hays states, “highly fantastic and exotic [sic] vein, and presents no particular censorship difficulties.”

What’s interesting about the presentation of the story is that the coded gay leitmotifs were paraded out, right under the Code’s noses, and didn’t stir any indignation for its ‘queer’ humor.

Gloria Stuart and Claude Rains in James Whale’s The Invisible Man 1933

The Invisible Man perpetrates campy assaults on all the ‘normal’ people in his way, with intervals of sardonic cackles and golden wit and, at the same time, a menacing reflection of light and shadow. Claude Rains is a concealed jester who makes folly of his victims.

“An invisible man can rule the world. Nobody will see him come, nobody will see him go. He can hear every secret. He can rob, and wreck, and kill.” –Dr. Jack Griffin (The Invisible Man)

Claude Rains plays Dr. Jack Griffin, an outsider (a favorite of James Whale’s characters) who discovers the secret of invisibility, which changes him from a mild yet arrogant scientist into a maniacal killer. The film bears much of Whale’s campy sense of humor, with Griffin’s comic shenanigans abound until things turn dark and he becomes uncontrollably violent. “We’ll begin with a reign of terror, a few murders here and there, Murders of great men, Murders of little men, just to show we make no distinction. I might even wreck a train or two… just these fingers around a signalman’s throat, that’s all.”

According to Gary Morris (Bright Lights Film Journal), ‘The film demands crypto-faggot reading in poignant scenes such as the one where he reassures his ex-girlfriend, who begs him to hide from the authorities: “the whole world’s my hiding place. I can stand out there amongst them in the day or night and laugh at them.”

Though Griffin’s (Claude Rains) character is unseen at times, there are potent moments when he is animated as he skips to the tune, “Here we go gathering nuts in May,” flitting around like a fairy.

It is suggested that The Invisible Man is a metaphor for the way homosexuals are seen/not seen by society – as “effeminate, dangerous when naked, seeking a male partner in “crime,” tending to idolize his fiance rather than love her, and becoming ‘visible’ only when shot by the police…monitored by doctors, and heard regretting his sin against God (i.e., made into a statistic by the three primary forces oppressing queers: the law, the medical establishment, and religious orthodoxy” (Sedgwick)

The Invisble Man [undressing] “They’ve asked for it, the country bumpkins. This will give them a bit of a shock, something to write home about. A nice bedtime story for the kids, too, if they want it”

Continue reading “Chapter 4 – Queers and Dykes in the Dark: Classic, Noir & Horror Cinema’s Coded Gay Characters:” →

The Mystery of Marie Roget (1942) “Every man knows what sort of a woman she is!”

This post is celebrating Hollywood’s Hispanic Heritage Blogathon hosted by Once Upon a Screen on Oct. 12, 2015

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“When I look at myself, I am so beautiful… I scream with joy!”-Maria Montez

Maria Montez the Queen of Technicolor

The Queen of Technicolor!….   Maria Montez!

"You must always act as if you are the most beautiful desirable woman in the world, you must always be treated like a queen and you must not let any directors intimidate you, because the public has the last word!"

Mystery of Marie Roget

BEAUTIFUL BEAST! MADDENING"¦ WITH HER SOFT CARESS! MURDERING WITH STEEL-CLAWED TERROR!

"The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" was originally published in 1842 a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, it was his first fiction story that played out like a true-detective tale about an unsolved murder that he placed in Paris rather than in New York. This was Poe’s follow up to his Murders in the Rue Morgue and follows the exploits of crime solver detective Paul Dupin. Incidentally the detective had been named Pierre Dupin in Rue Morgue 1932.

Adapted to the screen by Michael Jacoby (Doomed to Die 1940 with Boris Karloff, The Undying Monster 1942, The Face of Marble 1946).

The Beautiful Cigar Girl murder mystery

Loosely based on an infamous story that made the headlines in New York during the 19th century, it concerns the murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers who earned the nickname “Beautiful Cigar Girl” who disappeared once, only to find out that she had run off with her sweetheart, a naval officer. The next time Marie showed up was three years later, floating in the Hudson River. Because of the notoriety Marie had become a national conversation piece for quite a while. Until the inquest, where her fiancé had committed suicide, leaving a remorseful note next to an empty bottle of poison. An unsolved mystery that still haunts New York.

This wonderfully atmospheric film is directed by Phil Rosen (The Crooked Road 1940, I Killed that Man 1941, Sidney Tolar/Chan films, Spooks Run Wild 1941 with Bela Lugosi) Patric Knowles play’s Poe’s detective Dr. Paul Dupin. Also part of the marvelous cast is the great Maria Ouspenskaya as Mme. Cecile Roget, John Litel as M. Henri Beauvais, Edward Norris as Marcel Vigneaux, Lloyd Corrigan as Prefect Gobelin, Nell O’Day as Camille Roget, Norma Drury Boleslavsky as Madame De Luc and Charles Middleton (Emperor Ming in Flash Gordon) as the zoo curator.

Patric Knowles as Paul Dupin and Lloyd Corrigan as Prefect Gobelin truly steals the show as their banter is marvelous and they succeed in playing a team of the straight man and the comic foil.

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Maria Montez with her black hair as shiny as a raven's wing, the most sensual full shaped lips, and a creamy complexion Montez was considered The Reigning Queen of Technicolor in the 1940s– A Diva on and off the set. She had a single-minded professional drive and wouldn’t settle for anything less than being a star.

Peter Rubie who wrote Hispanics in Hollywood claims that the beauty of the Dominican Republic- Montez learned English by reading magazines and listening to American pop songs. After her short-term marriage in 1939, she dumped her husband left for New York and decided to become a model. Creating an incredible wardrobe for herself and hiring several maids to keep up with her trousseau.

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She'd go out at night with her dazzling wardrobe flirting and flitting about at all the ‘in’ places to dine and dance, until a talent agent from RKO saw her and signed her. Later on Universal saw the screen test she made and they scooped her up with a better offer.

Montez arrived in Hollywood in the summer of 1940 and started working on becoming a star"¦.

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Maria Montez in Sirens of Atlantis (1949).

Universal could promote her easily because the camera loved her. They did these promotional stills of her. She was so sensational to photograph and had a presence that just leaped off the page.

She was loaned out to 20th Century Fox to be in a film with Carmine Miranda, Don Ameche, and Alice Fay called That Night In Rio 1941
Ameche, Montez and Miranda

Though she was only in the film for less than a minute, LIFE magazine took so many photos of her, she could not become anything but a STAR"¦.

Now about the suspense film where she plays a Parisian beauty who goes missing twice, the second time having been murdered. It’s called The Mystery of Marie Roget (1942)

A slick Universal mystery with all the eerie trappings to attract the horror trade. "Who is the Phantom Mangler of Paris?

This is an effective Universal chiller, though a "˜B' movie in the ranks, what elevates it to a higher level of macabre deliciousness isn't just that it's based on a Poe short story, the means by which the murderer mutilates his victim's faces is rather horrible and grotesque for the time period it was released. One could see sparks of competition with RKO's master teller of chilling tales, Val Lewton due to its device of using a real leopard, i.e. The Leopard Man (1943) and Cat People (1942).

Even Mme. Cecile’s (Maria Ouspenskaya ) pet Leopard might be a suspect as the murderer in this mystery chiller.

In The Mystery of Marie Roget, the killer has a fetish for using a steel claw as the murder weapon, which is how he destroys the women's faces beyond recognition. It also might remind you classic horror fans of the underrated SHE-WOLF of LONDON (1946) starring June Lockhart.

Cinematographer Elwood Bredell –Man Made Monster (1941) The Strange Case of Dr. X (1942) Christmas Holiday 1944, Phantom Lady 1944, The Killers 1946 The Unsuspected 1947 Female Jungle 1956.

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MAN MADE MONSTER 1941.

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The Strange Case of Dr. X (1942).

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Robert Siodmak’s The Killers 1946.

Murders in the Rue Morgue 1932

In Murder in the Rue Morgue (1932) Poe’s detective Dupin is played by actor Leon Ames. Reprising the role, his name is changed to Paul Dupin as the forensic expert in this film with actor Patric Knowles ( THE WOLF MAN 1942 & FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN 1943.)

Maria Ouspenskaya has more presence in this film than in The Wolf Man 1941,

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playing off the Prefect of Police's Lloyd Corrigan as Gobelin, the gesticulating police chief, whose marvelous facial expressions make for great comedic relief.

To capitalize on Montez's growing popularity she became the Universal attraction in this mystery chiller, based on Edgar Allan Poe's short follow-up to his Murders in the Rue Morgue. Montez receives star billing in the film's opening credits!

Jacoby who adapted the screenplay also imbued the story with a bit more sensationalist pulp from the original tale, adding veritable Poe-esque elements of the macabre, also using ‘B’ movie red herrings necessary to throw us and Dupin off the scent of the truth.

When the story opens in late 19th century Paris, we are thrown into the middle of the frenzy concerning the missing popular musical comedy star of Comédie Française -the beautiful Marie Roget.

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A real character reading the paper with her husband laughs- "Every man knows what sort of a woman she is, I'll wager she has gone off with one of her sweethearts."

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during the argument when Beauvasi threatens to have the perfect relieved of his commission.

Gobelin-"Believe me I haven't slept for the past ten days, I have every gendarme in the city on the case now what more can I do? "

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Henri Beauvais (John Litel), a friend of the Roget family is in the office of Police Prefect Gobelin (Lloyd Corrigan The Manchurian Candidate 1963, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World 1963 ) whose facial expressions are delightfully droll and add such great comedic relief to the dark and dreary mystery. Henri is harassing Gobelin to find Marie who has been missing for over ten days, that it is of the utmost importance.

Gobelin introduces chief medical officer Dr. Dupin to M. Henri Beauvais (John Litel) the minister of naval affairs, a very close friend of the Roget family.

Beauvais " Dupin?"¦ you had something to do with those murders in the rue morgue didn't you?"
Gobelin says- "He practically solved those murders single-handedly."
Beauvais barks- “Yes then why haven't you done something about this Marie Roget case!?"

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Beauvais threatens both Gobelin and Dupin that they better solve it quickly
They are interrupted when come in an reports that a woman's body has been found floating in the river Seine at the wharf below the second bridge, believed to be Marie Roget… It has been mutilated beyond recognition as her face has been completely destroyed. "She has no face!”

Gobelin says-"Good Good Marie Roget You see we found her! I told you we would"
Beauvais "Why are you so sure it's Marie Roget?"
Dupin " Why that's easily decided Monsieur, You yourself can identify her.. will you come with us now?"

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"˜Her face! (he winces) -Dupin " Steady Monsieur can you identify the body?” Beauvais-“I don't know… About the same size as Marie Roget, same shaped head and color hair." Dupin " Does it look familiar Monsieur?" He says “Yes, yes it must be she. But it has no face."

Gobelin asks "Who could have done it, Dupin?" Beauvais says it's the “work of a fiend.”
Dupin answers"¦ "Or a beast. It looks as if the face had been torn to a pulp by the claws of an animal.”

Gobelin and Dupin go to the Roget home to tell Madame Cecile who is Marie’s grandmother.

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Mme Cecile Roget (Maria Ouspenskaya) is in her wheelchair feeding scraps to her pet leopard. Camille says "Oh Granny even if we heard anything definite.”

Mme Cecile "My child.. the police are doing everything possible to find your sister.

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Beauvais and Gobelin enter, Camille asks if they found Marie"¦ He tells her that she must be brave. Granny Cecile says "Speak up. Where is she? Come come what have you found?"

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When he tells her that unfortunately there is nothing more they can do for her granddaughter. “We found her body in the river."

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Camille doesn't believe it"¦ as Beauvais tries to calm her"¦ suddenly sweeps in like a gust of dressed-up wind"¦ But Marie Roget!

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sister Camille about the news, suddenly Marie Roget enters the house as lit up as a string of paper lanterns, acting as if nothing has happened. When they tell her that her disappearance has been a sensational news story and ask where she has been.

“The police found a body in the river that they thought was yours."

Cecile "Marie where in heaven's name have you been?" Camille just happens she's home, but Beauvais says she owes them an explanation. Gobelin tells her that she's had the whole city in an uproar. Cecile hands her the paper.

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Marie remarks about the news headline and asks who Gobelin is- "What an awful picture of me"¦ Who is the little man?"

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“Madamoiselle I happen to be the Prefect of Police" Marie "hhm how nice!"

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Granny Cecile insists on knowing where she's been-"Oh Granny You too!"

Gobelin goes on that she doesn't understand he must make a full explanation to the public.
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”Oh you must, well I'll explain to you. It is nobody's business where I go, what I do"¦ "
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Beauvais tells him to consider the case closed. Granny Cecile says "You heard him"¦ there's no more need for the police monsieur. "

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As Gobelin leaves Grandmother Cecile’s leopard growls he is comically frightened and asks "What's that?"

"A leopard, what's the matter with you! (Granny Cecile barks at him) "¦. Haven't you ever seen a leopard before?"
Beauvais remarks "It's perfectly harmless I assure you."

Gobelin shaken mumbles to himself- "Yes, of course."

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Gobelin puffs on his cigar tell his clerk to file the case away, and Dupin comes in and tells him that the murderer did a thorough job. Gobelin says it's the most curious case, "A woman without a face." Dupin has different means of identification and he will not quit"¦

Gobelin also has a hunch that there's a definite connection between the mutilated body and the Roget case.

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"Maybe it's too fantastic to mention but you yourself said that the claws of an animal could have done it!" Dupin answers "Yes but I said could of I didn't say did. What's on your mind?"Â  "The Old Lady old Madame Roget! now there's a queer customer. She's eccentric. She's a little bit twisted I think. She's got scads of money and yet she lives in an old-fashioned house in the Latin quarter. And listen to this. She's got a pet cat. (Dupin just sits quietly calmly listening to Gobelin as if he had lobsters crawling out of his ears- Gobelin leans in -) Only it's a leopard!" Dupin remarks quizzically- "A Leopard?"

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"A full-grown leopard" "That's very interesting Gobelin but it's a blind alley" "Well I"m not so sure…" Dupin tells him… " You can forget it!"
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Dupin walks out of his office"¦ Gobelin still trying to talk to him, "I can, well wait.." Dupin slams the door on him"¦

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Camille (Nell O'Day) is sitting in the parlor with Marcel Vigneaux (Edward Norris–They Won't Forget 1937, The Man with Two Lives 1942, Decoy 1946 ) She's telling him that she wants Marie to be the first to know of their engagement. Marcel wants to elope and surprise everyone. "But I'd have to tell Marie Marcel I've never had any secrets from her" "Well does she tell you everything?"¦ Do you know where she's been for the past ten days?"

"No, but it's been the first time she hasn't. For that matter you haven't told me where you've been yourself for nearly two weeks" She pouts"¦

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Marie comes into the room, telling Camille that it's nearly 8 O' Clock and they're going to be late. Then she notices Marcel"¦ and acts happily surprised. Camille tells Marie that they are going to be married. She wishes them “all the happiness in the world," She says she will be late, then she turns and tells Camille that she forgot her purse. "Would you be an angel and get it for me" Marie walks Camille out thanks her touching her back gently then slams the door and turns around as if she were a python about to strike! "Our plans didn't include you marrying Camille!" "I don't intend to marry her. (the cad, the scoundrel) "Then why did you propose to her?"

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“Now take it easy Marie don’t let your temper spoil all our plans!”

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Just then Grandmother Cecile walks down the stairs with a cane in each hand. The shadow on the wall could be a frame right out of a Val Lewton shadowplay film. She overhears the two arguing. Marie threatens to tell them everything. She doesn't care if anyone hears"¦

"You're not going to change my mind!" Marcel tells her "Don't be a fool Marie" "A fool is what I'm not going to be. I won't let you marry her. I'll tell her everything. That you promised to marry me.

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"Are you going to let petty jealousy ruin all our plans?" "Our plans did not include you marrying Camille. I won't let you. I won't!" " I have no intention of marrying her." "Then why did you propose to her?" the scene cuts to Cecile behind the door listening to the couple conspire. Marcel tells her "It should be very obvious to you. It's only to cover us. Who would possibly suspect me her fiance when she disappears tomorrow night can't you see!"Â 

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"Marcel, darling you're so clever! And I am stupid, you do love me don't you?" "Nothing can ever change that if you'll just believe in me." "Then we'll go through with our plans at the party. Once Camille is gone, we'll have everything." The two embrace. The scene cuts to Cecile who has now stumbled onto the nefarious plan to kill her other granddaughter.

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Marie's half-sister Camille’s fiancé, Marcel (Edward Norris), who is on the staff of the Navy is secretly having an affair with Marie. Marie is also toying around with a flirtation but the non-committal relationship with M. Henri Beauvais (John Litel), Marcel's boss. Maria Ouspenskaya as the wonderfully crafty Cecile the grandmother overhears Marie's plan to kill Camille before she turns the age of 21. And so she hires Dupin the grave-robbing, brain-extracting forensic scientist hero to keep a close eye on Camille when she goes to Marie's welcome home party.

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Gobelin goes to Dupin's lab where he has determined that the dead girl is English. "You see we are what we eat" They can consult with Scotland Yard"¦.

He also decides that Gobelin might be right that there is a connection between the dead girl and the Roget case. He decides to work on the case unofficially even if the case has been closed. He's working on a few angles. Dupin asked Gobelin to arrange for him to meet Marie Roget. Since there's a party given in her honor that night he will go. Then a gendarme brings a message for Dupin.

"My dear Dr Dupin it is imperative that you see me immediately. Do not waste time it is a matter of the utmost importance. You'll come alone and at once”–Signed Madame Cecile Roget"¦"

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Dupin and Gobelin arrive at Mme. Cecile’s home-Elwood Bredell’s photography creates street scenes that are set up like wonderful postcards.

“Exactly what is her relationship to Marie?" "The grandmother," Dupin asks him to come along, and jokes that Gobelin is afraid of the pet cat"¦ "I'm very fond of animals really, but it's not so little really."

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Madame Cecile tells Dupin that she made it clear she wanted to see him alone. He apologizes but Gobelin is his most trusted friend.

"Trusted friend my foot there's no such animal" She wanted to avoid policemen. She invites them to sit down. There is something she wants him to do. Then she barks at Gobelin. "Well why don't you sit down" It's hilarious how she bullies the poor Prefect as if he were a little boy being scolded.

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“And it's worth fifty thousand francs"Â  "Well that's quite a sum of money Madame," Gobelin says. She replies, "You keep out of this!"

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"I don't believe I'd be interested in that sort of money Madame" but she tells him that's all anyone is interested in"¦ money. She will give Dupin fifty thousand francs to escort her granddaughter Camille to Madame De Luc’s party given for Marie that night.

When Dupin asks why she is having her granddaughter escorted in such a curious manner Mme Cecile tells him "I happened to know that she is going to be murdered tonight!"¦ And I want you to prevent it" Gobelin says "Madame"¦ do you know what you're saying?" "Of course I know you fool and I don't want any police notoriety about it!"¦ Do you hear?"

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Dupin asks. "Why did you select me, Madame?" "For your work on the Murders of the Rue Morgue"¦ my memory's even sharper than my ears" "Your ears then you heard something?" Gobelin asks. "That's none of your business. I am speaking to Dr Dupin as a private individual and not as a member of your fine police department" She says sarcastically.

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"Madame"¦ I have the honor of being the Prefect of Police!

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"Go have yourself stuffed!" Cecile says with audacity!

Gobelin asks how she knows Camille is to be murdered tonight.
" let me remind you that this is no concern of yours," Dupin tells her. "In that case madame I'm afraid I can't do as you ask." "You're not fooling me. Do you want to know what she is to be murdered? She comes into her grandfather's fortune tomorrow"¦ it's better than a million and a half francs. Now do you see?" Gobelin ires her once again by asking who benefits from her death. She reprimands him once again, "Don't ask me fool questions." Gobelin finds it hard to believe that if Cecile suspects Camille to be murdered at Madame De Luc’s party why she'd let her go?

"Who cares what you believe? That's why you're nothing more than a gendarme" He looks offended again. His facial expressions of stupefied are very effective in the midst of the serious suspense melodrama. He rises to defend himself.

Dupin understands Cecile's logic. That if an attempt on Camille's life the party would be the logical time to try and catch the killer before they try it again …

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Dupin asks. "I trust you don't allow your little pet to roam the streets at night Madame?" "Certainly not, she's never out of  my sight"

Gobelin comments that those claws are dangerous. Cecile acts curious as to what he is talking about but changes the subject and asks Dupin, why he's not interested in earning fifty thousand francs. But then…

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Camille comes into the room. Granny Cecile introduces her to Dr. Dupin. “You were saying, Dupin?" "I was saying Madame that it would be indeed a pleasure" after he sees the beautiful Camille"¦

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Madame De Luc (Norma Drury Boleslavsky-Stage Door 1937, That Hamilton Woman 1941) is furious about having to give a party for"”"Making me the talk of all my friends"¦ giving a party for that notorious creature, bringing her into her own home!" "But it's business my new show's a big hit thanks to her"¦ She's sensational, every man in Paris is interested in her."Â  Madame De Luc "That's just what I'm afraid of…"

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Beauvais meets Marie out on the terrace, longing for her attentions he jokes that he could send Marcel to Indochina for a year. "He's nothing to me, it's Camille he's going to marry"¦ they can have a honeymoon in China for all of me."

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"Whom do you think you're fooling"¦ You know you once gave me to understanding"¦ " she interrupts him"¦ "Oh you take everything so seriously" "And you never do" "I could make you very happy I could give you everything"¦ won't you reconsider?" She laughs at him"¦ "Henri you're a dear and I love you but let's go in before you overwhelm me."

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Inside Camille shows up with Gobelin and Dupin. Marie reprimands her "Camille what kept you?" The host Madame De Luc introduces Dupin to Marie Roget and Beauvais whom he met at the Prefect's office earlier.

Then Marcel walks in and apologizes to Camille for being late. Marie says "Have you met the famous Dr. Dupin?" Montez looks exquisite in her Vera West gown and beautiful jewelry. Marcel compliments Dupin on his success with the murders in the Rue Morgue. Marie shoots a knowing look at Marcel. Then Marcel asks Marie to dance, and Dupin asks Camille. A waltz is playing.

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"What are the police doing here" "I wish I knew" "We can't go on with our plans it's too dangerous" "We'll never get a better chance than this" "We'll go through with our plans despite this"

Dupin is dancing with Camille there is an obvious chemistry between the two"¦

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Once they stop waltzing, Marcel takes Camille to get a drink and Marie asks Dupin out onto the terrace. "You know there's something very mysterious about you. Very becoming too."

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"Every woman is mysterious until the man marries her," " It isn't just any woman who creates a sensation just when she disappears and returns mysteriously as you did" "Is that an official inquiry monsieur?" "Oh no I didn't mean it that way." Marie gets angry and turns away from him"¦ "Please I don't wish to discuss it any further."

"She we drink to a mutual understanding and a lasting friendship?" he raises his glass.

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Marie is asked to sing one of her new songs.

As she is escorted off the terrace a phantom hand reaches up and puts something into both glasses, while Dupin has his back turned. But Gobelin rushes out to ask him about his impression of her. He tells him it's too early to classify her yet. Then he notices that both glasses have been taken away by the same mysterious hand. Dupin asks where Camille is"¦

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" There she is. I told you nothing would happen to her. That old lady was talking a lot of nonsense, you know she oughta to be in an asylum where she belongs, I mean it."

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The orchestra begins to play"¦ Marie is ready to entertain the party"¦ She begins singing (overdubbed by Dorothy Triden singing ‘Mama Dit Moi’ written by Everett Carter and Milton Rosen).
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Marcel is worried that the old lady found out, he's concerned about Dupin being there as Camille's bodyguard. Marie thinks it's impossible that the old lady had found out about their plans "Oh you're just making a mountain out of a molehill, why don't you just say you don't want to go through with it" "Oh don't be silly" "It would only take a few minutes after you get her out here"¦ delivery is so near, it could look like an accident" "Yes, maybe the police being here is just what we need, we'll do it under their very noses" "You know Marie, sometimes you're very clever."
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A strange set of gripping hands grab Marie’s neck.. she screams.

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Dupin is out on the balcony when Gobelin tells him that it's nearly midnight and they should be taking Camille home. First Dupin wants to smoke a cigar and offers him one"¦ Marie smiles and begins to walk toward Dupin when a pair of hands reach out of the brush and pulls her in"¦ she screams.

Dupin and Gobelin react instantly! He runs into the house, and sees that Camille is perfectly safe talking with Madame De Luc -Gobelin tells Dupin that the scream came from the garden and points in that direction. It’s a fabulous noir shot. Dupin discovers Marie Roget's purse. Gobelin goes back into the house looking for Marie and meets Madame De Luc. who tells him that she went into the garden the last time she saw her. "She's a sort of an illusive sort the men tell me."

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Dupin continues to search the garden and finds Marie's scarf"¦

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Beauvais wants to take charge of the body. But Dupin hasn't finished his examination.

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A couple in the street are reading the headlines"¦ "Marie Roget is missing for the second time" "What do you suppose she's up to" "That my lady is what the police would like to know"

Another body is fished out of the Seine. Gobelin exclaims "My goodness Dupin this one doesn't have a face either!"

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In a twist, Marie not Camille once again disappears during the party and is found as the other body had been, floating in the Seine with her face mutilated. By modern standards of criminal psychology, I would say it was not only a case of personal, overkill, it has everything to do with obliterating her identity as a way of demeaning her beauty. But for this 1942 film’s purpose, her face was smashed to a pulp… And I’m not spilling the beans about why.

Mme. Ouspenskaya who has the pet leopard in the film had said that she loved all animals. They could see she was not afraid of the big cat. Though she appeared so vulnerable in her wheelchair, it was the rest of the crew who always looked worried.

The wonderful music is composed by Hans J. Salter and the spectacularly mesmerizing allure of Montez adds another layer of flamboyant mystique as she flits around in Vera West gowns"¦!

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The film is just around an hour long, and the sensual Montez is brought in to give her a desirable appearance, though it may not count as a leading role, her presence adds the right seductiveness to the plot.

What we do come to learn is that Marie is considered a wicked woman. Dupin (Knowles) uncovers and becomes the judge of her character. As a forensic scientist, he ghoulishly extracts her brain in the morgue to study it at lengths, which invokes the profane ideals of Frankenstein 1931. He announces that the lady had a twisted criminal mind… Dupin has no desire to resurrect the dead woman as did Henry Frankenstein, he merely aspires to understand the workings of the criminal brain. But it’s still a creepy passion…

Whatever the truth, The Mystery of Marie Roget is an easy surrender to an hour, a nifty little programmer that uses Maria Montez's aloof sensuality perfectly in the role of the missing/found/missing/murdered girl.

It would have been my wish to have had time to do a companion post to this one in tribute to the Hispanic Heritage Month Blogathon… by paying tribute to yet another sensually volcanic actress Lupe Vélez who terrorized poor Virginia Bruce in the ‘B’ chiller Kongo 1932!

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It’s no mystery gang, I’ll always be your everlovin’ MonsterGirl

💀 Halloween’s creeping up like that chill on the back of your neck!

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THE AVENGING CONSCIENCE (1914)

Directed by D.W.Griffith based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Tell Tale Heart!

Here’s Henry Walthall descending into madness…

We’re getting to Halloween in a heart pounding way! Your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl

THE BEACH PARTY BLOGATHON- CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) & Night Tide (1961) : Gills-A LOVE STORY!!!

THE BEACH PARTY BLOGATHON hosted by the fabulous Speakeasy & Silver Screenings

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CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) directed by Jack Arnold

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There have been sympathetic monsters that elicit our understanding, who cause you to care about them and their ordeal whether they’re the focus of a rampaging mob of villagers with flaming torches and pick axes or scientists armed with spear guns at the ready as surrogate penises –okay maybe I didn’t think about that surrogate penis thing when I was 9, but I see it so clearly now!

Back in the day of the musty cool matinee theatre’s air smelling of buttered popcorn and old leather shoes, you could slink down in your good ‘n plenty and Milk Dud encrusted red velvet seat and wish that the monster would not only get away… but that just maybe he’d get the girl– instead of the self righteous hyper-science macho hero who objectifies everything! After all, the creature is not the one invading their territory, he’s prevailed in that environment for ions, before these macho nerds came along!

As a little monstergirl, I used to think, and still do… just leave the ‘Gill Man’ alone!

We can sympathize with monsters, like Victor Frankenstein’s creation, due in large part to Karloff’s complex and poignant interpretation of the monster, & The Gill Man from Creature From the Black Lagoon. We can find our involvement (at least I can), as one viewed with empathy toward the monster’s predicament. Embedded in the narrative is a simultaneous pathos that permits these monsters to express human desires, and then make sure that those desires are thwarted, frustrated, and ultimately destroyed.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon embodies the seductive mystery of the unknown, a restless ripple in the waters from the murky depths of classic horror, a synthesis of primal fear and awe,  of human and waterborne beast, blending horror, adventure, and myth into one unforgettable creature feature.
The Gill-Man stands as a potent symbol of nature’s raw, untamable force, and the era’s fascination with scientific discovery teetering on the edge of hubris. Whether it intended to do so or not, The Creature from the Black Lagoon isn’t shy about exploring themes of colonial arrogance and the ruthless plundering of indigenous lands, as well as colonial extractivism. The film touches on the harsh reality of greed, the tragic cost of intrusion, the taking, destroying, and plundering of Indigenous lands and their resources.
What really stays with me about Gill-Man is what a sympathetic hero he is, how he captures the tragic cost of human arrogance; he’s an innocent force of nature caught in the unsettling squeeze between man’s devouring hunger and the tightening grip of primal threat, making him less a monster to be feared and more a silent victim of a world that refuses to understand him.
Unlike typical ’50s monsters who are villains by design, he feels like a displaced guardian, more victim than villain, struggling to survive against relentless exploitation. His haunting presence resonates as a poignant reminder of what is lost when curiosity crosses into invasion, making it less a creature to be feared and more a symbol of nature’s misunderstood and mistreated majesty.
Behind this iconic figure lies a lesser-known story: Milicent Patrick, a brilliant artist whose visionary design shaped the Creature’s unforgettable silhouette but whose name was largely erased from the credits. The Gill-man drifts between worlds—horror, myth, and adventure—beckoning us into those shadowy waters where curiosity, fear, and Julie Adams, and us, swim side by side. Milicent Patrick, a pioneering artist and makeup designer who created the iconic Gill-Man design for The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Unfortunately, her groundbreaking work went largely uncredited at the time, overshadowed by Bud Westmore, her jealous supervisor, who took credit and effectively ended her Hollywood career. Her story has only recently been reclaimed and celebrated as an important chapter in horror film history

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Richard Carlson, Julie Adams, Richard Denning, and Whit Bissell as Dr. Edward Thompson study the fossil of an amphibious man found near the Amazon.
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The crew catches something in their net… and whatever it was… has ripped a giant Gill Man size hole in it leaving behind a claw!

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?” -Friedrich Nietzsche

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Mr. ‘It’s mine all mine” and Kay and Mr. “But think of the contribution to science!” looking at the poor trapped Gill Man-a lonely prisoner of scientific hubris and egocentric men.
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The creature trapped in a bamboo cage… floats, quietly thinking deep thoughts–while the three look on, pondering what to do with him..

“The Outsider Narrative” can be seen so clearly in Jack Arnold’s horror/sci-fi hybrid, Creature From The Black Lagoon. Film monsters like The Gill Man form vivid memories for us, as they become icons laying the groundwork for the classic experience of good horror, sci-fi, and fantasy with memorable storytelling and anti-heroes that we ‘outliers’ grew to identify with and feel a fondness for.

As David Skal points out in The Monster Show, he poses that films like Creature From the Black Lagoon …are the “most vivid formative memories of a large section of the {American} population…{…} and that for so many of these narratives they seem to function as “mass cultural rituals.”

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Creature From The Black Lagoon is quite a perfect film, as it works on so many different levels of examining human nature and nature as human.

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When belligerent scientists and their relentless pursuit of expanding control over the natural world invade a unique creature’s habitat, forcing their domination of him, naturally, he’s compelled to fight back.

In the midst of this evolves a sort of skewed Romeo and Juliet. The Gill Man never intends to threaten Julie Adam’s character Kay Lawrence, he seemingly wants to make her his love object and maybe just maybe (idealizing of course while I imbue the ‘creature’ with a higher consciousness) the Gill Man seeks to free Kay from the dangerous men she is surrounded by. An amphibious knight in scaly armor, a rugged green scaly Adonis with limpid eyes and full lips.

The arrival of the expedition creates chaos and swampy mayhem due to the intrusion of the two opportunistic men who tote phallic harpoons around and fight with each other over questions of ethics, how to conduct scientific research, and naturally who will conquer Kay– acting like spoiled children-the both. Only the Gill Man sees her beauty from a place of primal hunger and desires her above all else, perhaps with an innate sense of possessing her, but without all the cocky male posturing.

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THE LOVABLE HUGGABLE GILL MAN!! 
 “I promise to keep my claws trimmed and never come to bed with cold, clammy feet!”

“Yes, yes,” said the Beast, “my heart is good, but still I am a monster.” –Among mankind,” says Beauty, “there are many that deserve that name more than you, and I prefer you, just as you are, to those, who, under a human form, hide a treacherous, corrupt, and ungrateful heart.”
“• Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont

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“What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster.”
“• John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it.”
“• Caitlyn Siehl, Literary Sexts: A Collection of Short & Sexy Love Poems

In trying to capture the amphibian man he is driven out of his home in the mysterious upper Amazon by these otherizing anthropologists. And so the Gill Man–being shot at by spears and besieged by sweaty men in bourgeois khakis and unfashionable swim trunks blech! –must defend his realm.

He who is just lazing around, dreaming through the sun’s rays which sparkle upon the surface of the water amongst the little fishes and coral… bothering no one. Suddenly surrounded by intruders with weapons and nets, poison, and cages.

But wait, one of them is leggy and soft and looks divine in her one-piece bathing suit designed by Rosemary Odell... (Brute Force 1947, It Came from Outer Space 1953, This Island Earth 1955, To Kill a Mockingbird 1962) and what a pair of eyes!

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The Gill Man goes on a mission to get the girl, and so endures his attackers because he has fallen for the simple beauty of Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams).

Though his world has become disordered, the presence of the beautiful Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams) has awakened his sexual desire.

The film stars Richard Carlson as David Reed and Richard Denning as Mark Williams. The two men invade The Gill Man’s quiet life and argue about what should be done with the subject of their research findings, to exploit, study, or bring back to the states to gain notoriety and get paid lots of clams! without an ethical thought in their curly scientific brains, forcing themselves on the creature and making him an object of entrapment & exhibition.

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“I think I love you, so what am I so afraid of? I’m afraid that I’m not sure of a love there is no cure for I think I love you isn’t that what life is made of? Though it worries me to say that I’ve never felt this way”— Insert music from The Partridge Family –
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“There’s just something about an Aqua Velva Gill Man!”

The Gill Man watches from below the surface, as Kay Lawrence casually smokes a cigarette, taking long sensual puffs and throwing the butts upon the lagoon like trinkets for him to worship. He feels compelled to reach out to her, but decides to be a voyeur for a bit longer.

Later the Gill Man sees Kay on the beach, the camera catches a notable deep sigh when he lays those deep green eyes on her. He moves closer. She lets out the obligatory monster movie scream queen shriek, that siren squeal, you know the kind, with the carefully place hands cupping her face in shock.

One of the men from the expedition takes a machete and tries to attack the creature, but he is killed for his efforts. Dave and Mark hear Kay scream and approach just in time for the knock-out powder they’ve placed in the lagoon to finally take effect and subdue the creature, who is now out cold. He falls flat on his green-gilled face down in the sand.

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Kay passes out. The Gill Man places her down gently on the sand...
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Mark (Richard Denning) can’t wait to beat the fish guts out of the creature!

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David (Carlson) has to intervene before Mark (Denning) bashes the creature’s head in “Stop, you’ll kill him!…”

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Once Williams (Denning) sees that the Gill Man has fallen down, he says, “Got him!” then begins brutally smashing at him with his rifle, until David (Carlson) tells him to stop before he kills him. They throw a net over the unconscious creature. The scene shows the level of ferocity that man is capable of, and with this violent overkill, we, on the other side of the evolutionary scale, become monsters as well. It is a not-so-subtle contrast with the main character, who is considered the ‘creature.’

Ricou Browning portrayed the creature in the underwater scenes, and Ben Chapman played the creature on land. There’s wonderfully engaging cinematography by William E. Snyder. (Flying Leathernecks 1951, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt 1956)

The Gill Man has dwelt in the warm existential depths of the water, the lagoon, his endless cycle of existence, thriving until he is invaded by scientific hubris. While in the lagoon, he is connected to the creator of his world, remaining bound to a body of water that is symbolic of the eternal maternal womb. He is then forced out of his quiet, habitual life, where he becomes otherized. With an ‘Outsider’ narrative, the familiar then becomes monstrous.

Our perceptions are focused on how this creature’ shatters the mold of normalcy. He transforms the ordinary world into something provocative and forces the outside world to define him, once again, as with Frankenstein’s monster, he is perceived as a thing… a creature.

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A film like Creature from the Black Lagoon can suggest to us the recognition of our notions of conventional sexuality and gender as well. The Gill Man is similar to a frog, yet walks upright and has the stance of a man, and possesses that archetypal ogling that shows he has sexual designs on our heroine, Kay.

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Kay Lawrence: “And I thought the Mississippi was something.”

While he is placed in a role that sees Kay as the “˜object’ of his affection, he’s sort of an androgynous amphibian, and yet he suggests that  “alternatives can exist which may be more desirable”-Mark Jancovich Rational Fears American Horror in the 1950s. Jancovich goes on to say that the film is “unremittingly sexual” The film has sexual symbolism throughout, as the outside world intrudes on an ambiguous sexual being living in the womb of the water, now unleashed as a sexual peril to women. The water scenes between the water ballet swimming Kay unaware that the creature is also swimming very near to her–are absolutely visual foreplay.

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Sweaty men baring their chests, wielding shotguns and Phallic harpoons as much as possible.

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Need I say more???

The most significant scene of the film is when The Gill Man swims a slight distance away from Kay, under the murky lagoon while Kay unaware, simultaneously moves through the water embracing its import with pleasure and liberation. She whirls above him, barely hinting at an erotic intimacy between the two.

Under the water the creature is not a threat to Kay, he’s almost shy, as he barely touches her leg, he swims away as if he’s conflicted with uncertainty about this new experience. William E Snyder is responsible for the striking underwater footage, that creates an erotic spacial world of shimmering light.

It’s almost a type of Eden, that those pesky aggressive scientific males spoil…

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We know that the creature shows a fascination toward Kay, but she sort of shares a kind of bond with him, as both are threatened by the domination of the two male scientists Mark and David. She tells the men to leave the creature alone, that it won’t bother them. Mark wants to capture the creature as proof of his discovery, rather than just study him in his own habitat. Mark also wants to possess Kay, both of them are treated as ‘objects’. There are several scenes where Kay and the creature stare at each other as if they see something in common within themselves. Harry Essex wrote the screenplay, but hated the script at first so he added the Beauty and the Beast theme, to give the creature more of a sense of humanity.

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The Creature from the Black Lagoon is relentlessly sexual. Inhabited by mostly male characters, scientists have traveled to the deep Amazon in search of undiscovered animal life. What they find instead of more fossils is the Gill Man who refuses to give up his freedom. And why shouldn’t the creature react violently to their intrusion into his quiet domain? What’s more interesting is how he quickly becomes attracted to the gorgeous Julie Adams and her gutsy character Kay, the only female on the expedition who once again looks smashing in a one-piece white bathing suit and swims like she’s in the water follies. Jancovich quotes Biskind from his Seeing is Believing – claiming that the creature is “driven into a frenzy by the proximity of Julie Adams in a one-piece bathing suit.” That sounds about right to me!

The Gill-Man evokes our sympathy who has become an object’ to be controlled, dominated and assaulted by the outside world. It’s the ‘men doing science’ who become the “˜aliens’ the bad guys, the human monsters, and the creature another existential anti-hero who we identify with. It’s just a different slant on the theme of unrequited love in the lagoon…

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Continue reading “THE BEACH PARTY BLOGATHON- CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) & Night Tide (1961) : Gills-A LOVE STORY!!!” →

A Trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away! – The Haunted Palace (1963)

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In honor of the upcoming Chaney Blogathon …

I thought it appropriate to offer you this peek into Roger Corman’s slant on H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”,using an Edgar Allan Poe title…Starring Vincent Price and… screenplay by Charles Beaumont!

Co-staring our very special man of the month Lon Chaney Jr. as Simon Orne.

“Carrying on a family tradition of masterful motion picture horror!”

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Photo courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art Lon Chaney Jr with Vincent Price in The Haunted Palace 1963

THE HAUNTED PALACE 1963

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Haunting you all month- MonsterGirl