I’ll be covering two notorious true-life crimes involving folie a deux. First Truman Capote’s adapted story- Richard Brooks directs IN COLD BLOOD (1967) about the murder of the Clutters a Kansas family who were blitz attacked by psychopathic punks, two self-loathing homosexuals Perry & Dick portrayed phenomenally by Robert Blake and the remarkable character actor- Scott Wilson. Their embodiment of pure emotional sickness is burned into the screen like acid.
Then a more off-the-beaten path yet ruthlessly cruel and just as true and ghastly a tale about a couple- Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco as Ray Fernandez and Martha Beck who derive pleasure from luring wealthy, lonely older women to their deaths for money in director Leonard Kastle’s THE HONEYMOON KILLERS(1969)
In the spirit of this upcoming event, featuring all sorts of criminals & evil types, I thought I’d briefly pull out Evelyn as a kind of amuse-bouche to the huge Blogathon coming up in May! I felt like tossing out a crumb to entice those of you who will be titillated by the fantastic submissions by bloggers paying tribute to the villains, villainesses, and anti-heroes we love to hate/love… fear and cheer!
PLAY MISTY FOR ME (1971) is Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut, just coming off The Beguiled directed by friend Don Siegel.
Play Misty For Me is scripted by Jo Heims (The Girl in Lover’s Lane 1960, The Devil’s Hand 1961, uncredited Dirty Harry 1971, You’ll Like My Mother 1972) Heims has a gift for extracting the perfect essence of mental instability on screen and constructing an atmosphere of unease in otherwise beautiful settings.
Ahhh… The Enduring Derangement of Evelyn Draper:
Set in the cool quaint and laid-back atmosphere of 70s coastal California living, Clint Eastwood who makes his directorial debut, plays the smooth-talking late-nite Carmel Disc jockey, David ‘Dave’ Garver who winds up becoming the object of desire for a psychopathic stalker, the love-sick Evelyn Draper, brought to ‘too real’ life by extraordinary actress Jessica Walter.
Each night, she calls the radio station to lure David, her sultry voice like dark amber honey dripping on the other end of the phone, mysterious with that hint of perilous in flavor and tone. Evelyn epitomizes the deranged & obsessive fan who becomes so fixated on David that she keeps calling, asking David to play the classic torch song “Misty” sung, composed, and performed by Erroll Garner.
This iconic performance must be the catalyst for Glenn Close’s role as the demented stalker Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction (1987). Play Misty For Me set the tone, and sent the moralizing message, that it’s dangerous and amoral to folly with a random, casual one-night stand, and that having only ‘respectable relationships’ and monogamous or marital sex will keep you safe from being butchered into a puddle of blood splatter evidence…
All snarkiness aside, Eastwood has offered a beautifully painted– groovy, easy world, filled with jazz and seascapes that underscore this moral tale about the backlash of the sexual revolution and its warnings to beware. And to be fair to this symbol of female rage, Evelyn is no more than a ‘sexual object’ to David. As much as Evelyn has fantasized about a great romance with this very charismatic guy, that ‘love’ does not exist. David has used her to fulfill his own desires and needs, yet he is not seen as predatory, and she is. The difference is, he uses his penis and she must wield the nearest symbol, something else that penetrates, a knife or a good old-fashioned pair of large, sharp scissors.
David picks Evelyn up in a bar and has a one-night roll in the sheets after she tells him that she’s his ‘Misty’ girl. David warns her that he’s involved with someone (artsy painter, Donna Mills), but she assures him that she just wants one night with him, no strings attached. Unfortunately, those strings are like steel cables and they are tethered to David with a fierce homicidal grip. When he gets home the next night, Evelyn returns to his place with steaks and all the fixings for a romantic dinner. David definitely now senses something a bit ‘off’ with Evelyn, but what the hell, he sleeps with her again. Her inner machinations and jealous rage rears its ugly head when David’s neighbor responds to her rude and rowdy behavior while firmly (getting lost already) escorting her to the car. She blasts the horn and opens up a mouth like a trucker after a six-pack of Schlitz, “Yeah, Get lost Asshole!” David squints, that classic Eastwood glance when he’s containing his ‘miffed’, and his look is forever delivered on screen.
The refined Evelyn Draper loses her serene “Yeah, Get lost Asshole!”
Of course, the one woman David is truly in love with Tobie (Donna Mills) shows up soon after and they begin where they left off. Tobie had left for a while because of his womanizing. Evelyn starts shadowing David, following him to a bar where she gets belligerent, demanding he spends more time with her, after which she steals his car keys. She shows up at his house, fully naked under a smashing coat… but crazy, and of course David calls the police. No… David sleeps with her one more time. Naked trumps crazy with a smooth-talking womanizing squinting louse! He promises her that he’ll call her. Sure Dave sure…
But David does not call her. He also misses a special dinner she has planned. She calls into KRML to chastise him for missing their date. He drives to her place to break off the three– one night stands with her. Evelyn reveals her primal rage once more but calls David later on filled with regrets, but this time he is done with her. No really… No more naked trumps crazy.
Evelyn stalks David while he is busy rekindling his romance with Tobie. Evelyn shows up at his place once again, this time going into his bathroom and slicing her wrists. This suicide attempt prompts David’s sense of guilt, so he spends the night and the following day sitting with her, breaking a date he has with Tobie. The shot of David panicked and befuddled state while his hand holds Evelyn now resting in bed after her suicide attempt looks like this…
David ‘Dave’ Garver: Where does it say that I gotta drop what I’m doing and answer the phone every time it rings?
Evelyn: Do you know your nostrils flare out into little wings when you’re mad? It’s kinda cute.
David ‘Dave’ Garver: I’m just trying to tell you something. I’m trying to tell you there’s a telephone. I pick it up and I dial it.
Evelyn: “I should’ve known you’d never do anything to spoil it.” ‘Dave’ Garver: “To spoil what? Evelyn: What we have between us.” David ‘Dave’ Garver: “We don’t have a goddam thing between us.”
The film is a groovy and intense nail-biter as Evelyn spirals dangerously out of rational’s orbit, stalking, sneaking around, and ultimately going in and out of homicidal fits.
She sabotages a business lunch with a potential radio station executive Madge (Irene Hervey), insulting her with foul-mouthed accusations, trashes David’s house, takes a butcher knife and slashes to ribbons David’s maid Birdie (Clarice Taylor- Tell Me You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970), Such Good Friends (1971) and Five on the Black Hand Side (1973)).
The police come and take Evelyn away in the happy wagon, and David briefly gets a reprieve from the madness until he finds out that she has been released when he gets that familiar yet chilling request over the phone to “Play Misty” Evelyn assures him that she has gotten straightened out and is leaving for a new job in Hawaii. Leaving him with a creepy clue as she quotes a passage from Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Annabel Lee.’
Once again, Evelyn appears in David’s house, where she attacks him with a very large carving knife. Sgt. McCallum (John Larch) appears on the scene, tells David to change the locks, and wants to try and track Evelyn down, by luring her out with that memorable song Misty, by tracing the phone call.
Cleverly Evelyn manipulates Tobie into becoming her new roommate named of course, Annabel, thus abducting David’s sane and wholesome as pasteurized milk girlfriend Tobie, and ultimately tries to annihilate David’s cool world and himself her lover, who has spurned her affections. Evelyn as the ‘monstrous feminine’ power finally erupts into a climatic vengeful frenzy, as a vicious butcher who has a one-track libido for a guy who it takes half the film to finally see how sick she really is. It only took three one-night stands to get through to this smirking Lothario. Don’t get me wrong, I would have swooned for Eastwood myself back in the day of bell bottoms, guys with enormous sideburns, jazz festivals, and free love!
Sgt. McCallum (John Larch): “Why don’t you play some Montovani sometime?” David ‘Dave’ Garver: “Didn’t know you liked the show.” Sgt. McCallum: “I don’t. I like Montovani.”
The film also features one of the most memorable beautiful love songs sung by iconic songstress Roberta Flack (one of my all-time idols as a songwriter), who delivers a quiver inducing The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, which underscores a love-making scene in the woods between the naked Eastwood and Donna Mills. Groovy just watch out for poison oak and briars.
It’s 1971 and this hippie love-making scene ala Adam & Eve in the greening woods… set to Roberta Flack’s profoundly earnest and beautiful “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” David is seeing more than just Tobie’s face in this sexy 70s love-power scene!
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Mills who plays David’s pretty girlfriend Tobie gets in the way of Evelyn’s imagined love affair, and winds up–tied up at knife point while the immortal words are spoken out of that psychotically cold and emotionless voice saying… “God you’re dumb.”
Evelyn Draper is perhaps one of the most mystifying and intoxicating evil culprits of skin-crawling obsessive love, setting the pace for future female monsters, personifying the ‘monstrous feminine’ a knife ( yoohoo–CASTRATING!!) wielding threat to both male and female alike.
The incredible transformation that Jessica Walters performs for us is nothing short of brilliant as this sophisticated lady creates an otherwise appealing attractive single seductress into a predatory huntress with no sense of right or wrong. Just an obsessive blood lust to dominate and possess David, the savvy cool as the center seed of a cucumber DJ who spins records and turns on the ladies with his velveteen voice. Her menacing, neurotic, and unstable behavior builds perfectly creating unease as we watch her devolve into a disturbing feminine force (she uses many feminine social mechanisms to try and entrap David). Evelyn Draper is one powerful, memorable villainess, thanks to Jessica Walters’ incredibly believable manifestation of female rage, rage against a system of morals that aren’t the same for men!
Steve McQueen turned down the lead role, claiming that the female lead was stronger than the male.-IMDb tidbit
Horror cinema was at it’s spooky peak in the 1930s~ the era gave birth to some of the most iconic figures of the genre as well as highlighted some of the most beautiful & beloved heroines to ever light up the scream, oops I mean screen!!!!
We all love the corrupted, diabolical, fiendish and menacing men of the 30s who dominated the horror screen- the spectres of evil, the anti-heroes who put those heroines in harms way, women in peril, –Boris, & Bela, Chaney and March… From Frankenstein, to Dracula, from The Black Cat (1934), or wicked Wax Museums to that fella who kept changing his mind…Jekyll or was it Hyde? From the Mummy to that guy you could see right through, thank you Mr. Rains!
Last year I featured Scream Queens of 40s Classic Horror! This Halloween – – I felt like paying homage to the lovely ladies of 30s Classic Horror, who squealed up a storm on those stormy dreadful nights, shadowed by sinister figures, besieged by beasts, and taunted with terror in those fabulous frisson-filled fright flicks… but lest not forget that after the screaming stops, those gals show some grand gumption! And… In an era when censorship & conservative framework tried to set the stage for these dark tales, quite often what smoldered underneath the finely veiled surface was a boiling pot of sensuality and provocative suggestion that I find more appealing than most contemporary forays into Modern horror- the lost art of the classical horror genre will always remain Queen… !
Let’s drink a toast to that notion!
The Scream Queens, Sirens & Heroines of 1930s Classic Horror are here for you to run your eyes over! Let’s give ’em a really big hand, just not a hairy one okay? From A-Z
A British beauty with red hair who according to Gregory Mank in his Women in Horror Films, the 1930s, left England for Hollywood and an MGM contract. She is the consummate gutsy heroine, the anti-damsel Irena Borotyn In Tod Browning’s campy Mark of the Vampire (1935)co-starring with Bela Lugosi as Count Mora (His birthday is coming up on October 20th!) Lionel Atwill and the always cheeky Lionel Barrymore… Later in 1958, she would co-star with Boris Karloff in the ever-atmospheric The Haunted Strangler.
Mark of the Vampire is a moody graveyard chiller scripted by Bernard Schubert & Guy Endore (The Raven, Mad Love (1935) & The Devil Doll (1936) and the terrific noir thriller Tomorrow is Another Day (1951) with sexy Steve Cochran & one of my favs Ruth Roman!)
The film is Tod Browning’s retake of his silent Lon Chaney Sr. classic London After Midnight (1927).
The story goes like this: Sir Karell Borotin (Holmes Herbert) is murdered, left drained of his blood, and Professor Zelin (Lionel Barrymore) believes it’s the work of vampires. Lionel Atwill once again plays well as the inquiring but skeptical police Inspector Neumann.
Irena (Elizabeth Allan) and Professor Zelen (Lionel Barrymore) hatch an intricate plot to trap the murderers!
Once Sir Karell’s daughter Irena ( our heroine Elizabeth Allan) is assailed, left with strange bite marks on her neck, the case becomes active again. Neumann consults Professor Zelin the leading expert on Vampires. This horror whodunit includes frightened locals who believe that Count Mora (Bela in iconic cape and saturnine mannerism) and his creepy daughter Luna (Carroll Borland) who trails after him through crypt and foggy woods, are behind the strange going’s on. But is all that it seems?
Elizabeth Allan (below center) and Carroll Borland as Luna in Tod Browning’s Mark of the Vampire (1935).Elizabeth Allan and Carroll Borland in Mark of the Vampire (1935).
Directed by the ever-interesting director Maurice Elvey(Mr. Wu 1919, The Sign of Four, 1923, The Clairvoyant 1935, The Man in the Mirror 1936, The Obsessed 1952) Elizabeth Allan stars as Daisy Bunting the beautiful but mesmerized by the strange yet sensual and seemingly tragic brooding figure- boarder Ivor Novello as Michel Angeloff in The Phantom Fiend! A remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s first film about Jack the Ripper… The Lodger (1927) starring Novello once again.
Ivor Novello is the strange & disturbing Michel Angeloff. Elizabeth Allan is the daughter of the landlords who rent a room to this mysterious fellow who might just be a serial killer. Daisy Bunyon falls captivated by this tormented and intense young man…A.W. Baskcomb plays Daisy’s (Elizabeth Allan)father George Bunting and Jack Hawkins is Joe Martin the regular guy in love with Daisy.Michel Angeloff (Ivor Novello) to Daisy Bunting (Elizabeth Allan) “Stay away from me… don’t ever be alone with me…{…} -You trust me, no matter whatever I’ve done?”
There is a murderer loose in London who writes the police before he strikes with a sword cane, he signs his name X. It happens that his latest crime occurs on the same night that the Drayton Diamond is stolen. Robert Montgomery as charming as ever, is Nick Revel the jewel thief responsible for the diamond heist, but he’s not a crazed murderer. The co-incidence of the two crimes has put him in a fix as he’s now unable to unload the gem until the police solve the murders.
Heather Angel is a British actress who started out on stage at the Old Vic theatre but left for Hollywood and became known for the Bulldog Drummond series. While not appearing in lead roles, she did land parts in successful films such as Kitty Foyle, Pride and Prejudice (1940), Cry ‘Havoc’ (1943), and Lifeboat (1944). IMDb notes -Angel tested for the part of Melanie in Gone with the Wind(1939), the role was given to Olivia de Havilland.
Heather Angel possessed a sublime beauty and truly deserved to be a leading lady rather than relegated to supporting roles and guilty but pleasurable B movie status.
The L.A Times noted about her death in 1986 at age 77 “Fox and Universal ignored her classic training and used her in such low-budget features as “Charlie Chans Greatest Case and “Springtime for Henry.”
Her performances in Berkeley Square and The Mystery of Edwin Drood were critically acclaimed… More gruesome than the story-lines involving her roles in Edwin Drood, Hound of the Baskervilles or Lifeboat put together is the fact that she witnessed her husband, stage and film directer Robert B. Sinclair’s vicious stabbing murder by an intruder in their California home in 1970.
Heather Angel in Berkeley Square (1933) Image courtesy Dr. Macro
Heather Angel is Beryl Stapleton in this lost (found negatives and soundtracks were found and donated to the British Film Institute archives) adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes thriller Originally serialized in The Strand magazine between 1901 and 1902.
In this first filmed talkie of Doyle’s more horror-oriented story, it calls for the great detective to investigate the death of Sir Charles Baskerville and solve the strange killing that takes place on the moors, feared that there is a supernatural force, a monstrous dog like a fiend that is menacing the Baskerville family ripping the throats from its victims. The remaining heir Sir Henry is now threatened by the curse.
Douglass Montgomery as Neville Landless and Heather Angel as Rosa Bud in the intensely superior rare gem The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935)
Mystery of Edwin Drood (played by David Manners) is a dark and nightmarish Gothic tale of mad obsession, drug addiction, and heartless murder! Heather Angel plays the beautiful and kindly young student at a Victorian finishing school, Rosa Bud engaged to John Jasper’s nephew Edwin Drood. The opium-chasing, choir master John Jasper (Claude Rains) becomes driven to mad fixation over Rosa, who is quite aware of his intense gaze, she becomes frightened and repulsed by him.
The brooding & malevolent Rains frequents a bizarre opium den run by a menacing crone (Zeffie Tilbury), a creepy & outre moody whisper in the melody of this Gothic horror/suspense tale!
Valerie Hobson plays twin sister Helena Landless, the hapless Neville’s sister. (We’ll get to one of my favorites, the exquisite Valerie Hobson in just a bit…) When Neville and Helena arrive at the school, both Edwin and he vies for Rosa’s affection. When Edwin vanishes, naturally Neville is the one suspected in his mysterious disappearance.
Though I’ll always be distracted by Baclanova’s icy performance as the vicious Cleopatra in Tod Browning’s masterpiece Freakswhich blew the doors off social morays and became a cultural profane cult film, Baclanova started out as a singer with the Moscow Art Theater. Appearing in several silent films, she eventually co-starred as Duchess Josiana with Conrad Veidt as the tragic Gwynplaine, in another off-beat artistic masterpiece based on the Victor Hugo story The Man Who Laughs (1928)
Tod Browning produced & directed this eternally disturbing & joyful portrait of behind-the-scenes melodrama and at times the Gothic violence of carnival life… based on the story ‘Spurs’ by Tod Robbins. It’s also been known as Nature’s Mistress and The Monster Show.
It was essential for Browning to attain realism. He hired actual circus freaks to bring to life this quirky Grand Guignol, a beautifully grotesque & macabre tale of greed, betrayal, and loyalty.
Cleopatra (Baclanova) and Hercules (Henry Victor) plan to swindle the owner of the circus Hans, (Harry Earles starring with wife Frieda as Daisy) out of his ‘small’ fortune by poisoning him on their wedding night. The close family of side show performers exact poetic yet monstrous revenge! The film also features many memorable circus folks. Siamese conjoined twins Daisy & Violet Hilton, also saluted in American Horror Story (Sarah Paulson another incredible actress, doing a dual role) Schlitze the pinhead, and more!
Anyone riveted to the television screen to watch Jessica Lange’s mind-blowing performance as Elsa Mars in American Horror Story’s: Freak Show (2014) will not only recognize her superb nod to Marlene Dietrich, but also much reverence paid toward Tod Browning’s classic and Baclanova’s cunning coldness.
( BTW as much as I adore Frances McDormand, Lange should have walked away with the Emmy this year! I’ve rarely seen a performance that balances like a tightrope walker, the subtle choreography between gut-wrenching pathos & ruthless sinister vitriol. Her rendition of Bowie’s song Life on Mars…will be a Film Score Freak feature this Halloween season! No, I can’t wait… here’s a peak! it fits the mood of this post…)
“You Freaks!!!!”Gooba Gabba… I guess she isn’t one of us after all!
here she is as the evil Countess/duchess luring poor Gwynplain into her clutches The Man Who Laughs (1928).
THE SILENT YEARS: When we started not giving a damn on screen!
THE GODLESS GIRL (1929) CHAIR SMASH courtesy of our favorite genius gif generator- Fritzi of Movies Silently.
In celebration of our upcoming Anti Damsel Blogathon on August 15 & 16, I had this idea to provide a list of bold, brilliant, and beautiful women!
There was to be no indecent exposure of the ankles and no SCHWOOSHING! Not in this Blogathon baby!
From the heyday of Silent film and the advent of talking pictures to the late "˜20s to 1934 Pre-Code Hollywood, films were rife with provocative and suggestive images, where women were kicking up a storm on screen… The end of the code during the early 60s dared to offer social commentary about race, class, gender, and sexuality! That’s our party!
In particular, these bold women and the screen roles they adopted have become legendary. They sparked catchy dialogue, inspired fashion trends, or just plain inspired us… Altogether there are 111 of SOME of the most determined, empowered, and uniquely fortified femmes of classic film…!
First of course I consulted the maven of all things splendid, shimmery, and SILENT for her take on silent film actresses and the parts that made them come alive on the immortal screen…. Fritzi at Movies Silently has summoned up thesefabulous femmes…
1) Rischka (Pola Negri) in The Wildcat (1921) Ernst Lubitsch’s hyperactive Dr. Seussian comedy is worth seeing for the sets alone but the best part is Pola Negri’s Rischka, a young bandit queen who is terrorizing the mountains. She meets the local Lothario during a robbery and by the end of the scene she has stolen his heart. And his pants. 2) The Countess (Pola Negri) in A Woman of the World (1925) Anyone who thought going to Hollywood would tame Pola Negri’s wild side had another thing coming. In this film, she plays a countess whose skull tattoo causes an uproar in Anytown, USA. The film also features a romance between Negri and the stuffy local prosecutor, who soon finds himself on the receiving end of her bullwhip. Not a metaphor. 3) Lulu (Lois Wilson) in Miss Lulu Bett (1921) Independent women weren’t always given to violence and thievery. In the case of Lulu, she is a single woman trapped in two Victorian social conventions: spinster and poor relations. During the course of the film, she rejects both titles, learns her own self-worth, and empowers herself to enter into a healthy relationship with the local schoolmaster. Tasty feminism!4) Zaida (Bebe Daniels) in She’s a Sheik (1927) Silent movie audiences enjoyed reversals of gender tropes. The Rudolph Valentino vehicle The Sheik (1921) had been a smash hit and had spawned many rip-offs and parodies. (kidnapping = love = box office!) In this case, a warrior princess falls for a French officer and decides the most sensible course of action is to abduct him for the purpose of marriage. Sadly, this comedy seems to be one of many silent films that are missing and presumed lost.5) Eve (Leatrice Joy) in Eve’s Leaves (1926) Another gender reversal comedy, Eve’s Leaves features twenties fashion icon Leatrice Joy as a tomboy sailor who finds the perfect man while ashore on business. She ends up saving the day– and her favorite dude in distress– through quick thinking, a knowledge of knots, and a mean right hook.6) Ossi (Ossi Oswalda) in The Doll (1919) Ernst Lubitsch featured another feisty heroine in this surreal comedy. Our hero wishes to dodge marriage but cannot gain his inheritance without a bride. A plan! He will buy a lifelike doll from a famous toymaker and marry that. What he doesn’t know is that the doll was broken, the toymaker’s daughter has taken its place and she means to teach the reluctant bridegroom a lesson. Oswalda’s mischievous antics are a delight.7) Molly (Mary Pickford) in Sparrows (1926) Mary Pickford was America’s Sweetheart during the silent era and audiences adored her fearless heroines. Molly is one of her boldest. She’s an orphan raised in a Southern swamp who must rescue a kidnapped infant. The epic final race across the swamps– complete with alligators– is still harrowing to behold.8) Helen (Helen Holmes) in A Lass of the Lumberlands (1916) Helen Holmes was an action star who specialized in train-related stunts and adventure. In this 1916 serial, she saves the day on numerous occasions and even saves her love interest from peril on the train tracks. (It should be mentioned that the Victorian “woman tied to the train tracks” cliche was incredibly rare and usually treated with ridicule in silent films.) This is another movie that is missing and presumed lost.9) Diana Monti (Musidora) in Judex (1916) Not all the empowered women in classic films were heroines. In the case of Musidora, her most famous roles were as criminal. She was the deadly thief/hit-woman Irma Vep in Les Vampires and then took on the titular caped crusader in Judex. Smart, stealthy, and likely to slip a stiletto between the ribs… in short, a woman not to be trifled with.10) Helen (Miriam Nesbitt) in The Ambassador’s Daughter (1913) This short film from Thomas Edison’s motion picture studio features espionage and a quick-thinking heroine. She tracks down spies at the embassy, follows her suspect, and manages to steal back the documents that he purloined from her father. Not at all bad for a film made seven years before the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified.11) Cornelia Van Gorder (Emily Fitzroy) in The Bat (1926) It’s a dark and stormy night and a murderous costumed villain means to recover stolen loot in an isolated mansion. What is an elderly woman to do? Take up her trusty pistol and investigate, of course! She also wields a dry wit and keeps cool under pressure. The Bat doesn’t stand a chance.12) Catherine the Great (Louise Dresser) in The Eagle (1925) As mentioned above, Rudolph Valentino specialized in aggressive wooing but he finds the shoe on the other foot in this Russian romance. Louise Dresser is a kick as the assertive czarina who knows what she likes and goes for it.
Now to unleash the gust of gals from my tornadic mind filled with favorite actresses and the characters that have retained an undying sacred vow to heroine worship… In their private lives, their public persona and the mythological stardom that has & still captivates generations of fans, the roles they brought to life, and the lasting influence that refuses to go away…!
Because they have their own unique rhythm to the way they moved through the world… a certain kind of mesmerizing allure, and/or they just didn’t give a hoot, a damn… nor a flying fig!
“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud”-Coco Chanel
Stars like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, and Ida Lupino managed to keep re-inventing themselves. They became spirited women with an inner reserve of strength and a passion for following their desires!
Barbara Stanwyck posing with boxing gloves!
The following actresses and their immortal characters are in no particular order…!
13. Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) Double Indemnity (1944) set fire to the screen as one of the most seductive femme fatales"” a dame who made sunglasses and ankle bracelets a provocative weapon. She had murder on her mind and was just brazen enough to concoct an insurance scam that will pay off on her husband’s murder in Double Indemnity (1944). Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) is the insurance guy who comes around and winds up falling under her dangerous spell"¦ Walter Neff: "You'll be here too?" Phyllis: " I guess so, I usually am." Neff: "Same chair, same perfume, same ankle?" Phyllis:  "I wonder if I know what you mean?" Neff: "I wonder if you wonder?" 14. Marie "Slim" Browning in To Have and Have Not (1944) Lauren Bacall walked into our cinematic consciousness at age 19 when Howard Hawks cast her as Marie "Slim" Browning in To Have and Have Not (1944). A night club singer, (who does a smoking rendition of Hogie Carmichael's "˜How Little We Know") She's got a smooth talking deep voiced sultry beauty, possesses a razor-sharp wit to crack wise with, telling it like it is, and the sexiest brand of confidence and cool. Slim has the allure of a femme fatale, the depth of a soul mate and the reliability of a confidant, and a fearless sense of adventure. Playing across Bogart as the jaded Captain Harry Morgan who with alcoholic shipmate Eddie (Walter Brennan ) runs a boating operation on the island of Martinique. Broke they take a job transporting a fugitive running from the Nazis. Though Morgan doesn't want to get involved, Slim is a sympathizer for the resistance, and he falls in love with her, while she makes no bones about wanting him to with all the sexual innuendo to heat things up! Slim: “You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and… blow.”15. Margo Channing (Bette Davis) All About Eve (1950) In all Bette Davis' films like (Jezebel (1938) Dark Victory (1939) The Letter (1940) Now, Voyager (1942)), she shattered the stereotypes of the helpless female woman in peril. Davis had an unwavering strength, fearlessly taking on the Hollywood system and embracing fully the moody roles that weren't always "˜attractive.' Davis made her comeback in 1950, perhaps melding a bit of her own story as an aging star in All About Eve. Margo must fend off a predatory aspiring actress (Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington) who insinuates herself into Margo's territory. Davis manifests the persona of ambition and betrayal which have become epic… “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night." 16. Margaret DeLorca / Edith Phillips (Bette Davis) plays the good twin/bad twin paradigm in Dead Ringer (1964). Edith is a struggling working-class gal who owns a nightclub, and Margaret is her vein and opportunistic twin who stole her beau Frank away and married into a wealthy lifestyle. On the night of his funeral, Edith shoots Margaret in a fit of vengeful pique, then assumes her identity with ironic results. Davis again proves even though she commits murder, she can manifest a pathos like no one else"¦ Margaret DeLorca: You really hate me, don’t you? You’ve never forgiven me in all these years.” Edith Phillips: “Why should I? Tell me why I should.” Margaret DeLorca: “Well, we’re sisters!” Edith Phillips: “So we are… and to hell with you!”
17. Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) is a forgotten alcoholic former child star living in a faded Hollywood mansion with her invalid sister Blanche (Joan Crawford), herself an aging Hollywood star. They punish each other with vicious mind games, temper tantrums, and repressed feelings of revenge and jealousy. Jane is a tragic tortured soul whose life becomes "˜ugly' because she’s been shunned and imprisoned by a fatal secret to which sister Blanche holds the key. What makes Jane such an empowered figure are the very things that have driven her mad. Jane's itching for a comeback and is ready to dance and sing her way back into everyone's heart! Jane has a child-like innocence that gives her that ambition and pure drive to see herself back on the stage. She believes it. While other people might laugh at her behind her back, Jane's repressed rage also leaves room for joy. She's an empowered aging actress who refuses to give up the spotlight"¦ Good for you Jane, now put down that hammer and feed Blanche something edible"¦ Davis delivering yet another legendary line… Blanche: “You wouldn’t be able to do these awful things to me if I weren’t still in this chair.” Jane: But you *are*, Blanche! You *are* in that chair!” 18. Alma Brown (Patricia Neal), in Hud (1963): Playing against the unashamed bad boy Hud Bannon (Paul Newman), Alma is a world-weary housekeeper who drips with a quiet stoic sensuality and a slow wandering voice that speaks of her rugged womanly charm. The philandering Hud is drawn to Alma, but she's too much woman for him in the end… Hud Bannon: “I’ll do anything to make you trade him.” Alma Brown: “No thanks. I’ve done my time with one cold-blooded bastard, I’m not looking for another.”
19. Sugarpuss O'Shea (Stanny) in Ball of Fire (1941) is just that, a sexy ball of fire and a wise-cracking night club singer who has to hide out from the mob because her testimony could put her mobster boyfriend Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews) away for murder! Some nerdy professors (including Gary Cooper) want to exploit her to study slang and learn what it's like to speak like real folk and does she turn their world upside down? Sugarpuss O’Shea: [needing help with a stubborn zipper] "You know, I had this happen one night in the middle of my act. I couldn’t get a thing off. Was I embarrassed!" https://thelastdrivein.com/2013/07/21/edward-dmytryks-walk-on-the-wild-side-1962-at-the-doll-house-when-people-are-kind-to-each-other-why-do-they-have-to-find-a-dirty-word-for-it/
20. Jo Courtney (Barbara Stanwyck) in Walk on The Wild Side (1962). Jo runs the New Orleans bordello called The Doll House with an iron hand"” when anyone steps out of line she knows how to handle them. Stanwyck had the guts to play a lesbian in 1962, madly in love with Hallie Gerard (Capucine). Stanwyck's Jo Courtney is elegant, self-restrained, and as imposing as Hera in tailored suits. Having to be strong in a man’s world, her strong instinct for survival and the audacious will to hold onto Hallie brings her world to a violent conclusion"¦Â "Oh, you know me better than that Hallie. Sometimes I've waited years for what I wanted."   21. Marie Garson (Ida Lupino) in High Sierra (1941) Roy “Mad Dog" Earle has been pardoned from a long prison term. Marie, a rough around the edges taxi dancer, finds herself resisting her attraction to this brutal gangster, forming a very complicated dynamic with a second mobster who wants to pull off a high-stakes robbery. Marie is a force of nature that bristles from every nerve she purely musters in this tale of doom-fated bad boys, but more importantly here"¦ A woman can raise a rifle with the best of them! Marie Garson “Yeah, I get it. Ya always sort hope ya can get out, it keeps ya going.”
22. Lilli Marlowe (Ida Lupino) in Private Hell 36 (1954) This rare noir gem is written by the versatile powerhouse Ida Lupino who also plays Lilli Marlowe. Lilli has expensive tastes. After getting caught up in an investigation of a bank heist, she falls in love with the blue-collar cop Cal Bruner (Steve Cochran). Cal has secretly stashed away the missing money from that bank heist and then begins to suffer from a guilty conscience. Lilli's slick repartee is marvelous as Cal and his reluctant partner Jack Farnham (then husband Howard Duff) focus on her, hoping she'll help them in their investigation. Lilli's tough, she's made it on her own and isn't about to compromise now"¦ Cal may be falling apart but Lilli knows what she wants and she always seems to keep it together! Lilli Marlowe: “Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed I’d meet a drunken slob in a bar who’d give me fifty bucks and we’d live happily ever after.”23. Constance Porter (Tallulah Bankhead) in Lifeboat 1944. It's WWII and Connie is a smart-talking international journalist who's stranded in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with an ensemble of paranoid and desperate survivors. Eventually, her fur coat comes off, her diamond bracelet and expensive camera get tossed into the sea. But she doesn't give a damn, she can take the punishment and still attract the hunky and shirtless (yum) John Kodiak"¦ survival's just a state of mind"¦ and she does it with vigor and class and a cool calm! Connie Porter: “Dying together’s even more personal than living together.” 24. Berenice Sadie Brown (Ethel Waters) The Member of the Wedding 1952. Berenice doesn't take any crap. She’s in charge of the brooding, temperamental tomboy Franky Addams (Julie Harris) who feels like an outsider. Berenice’s kitchen is a place of wisdom as she tries to bestow some life lessons, to a child who is a wild and longing little soul"¦ Berenice is the only steady source of nurturing and a strong pair of shoulders to lean on"¦ Thank god Franky/Harris didn't start having her droning inner monologues until The Haunting (1963). Frances ‘Frankie’ Addams: [throws the knife into the kitchen door] “I’m the world’s greatest knife thrower.” Berenice Sadie Brown: [when Frankie threatens her with a knife] “Lay it down, Satan!” 25. The Bride (Elsa Lanchester) Bride of Frankenstein (1935) The Bride might be one of the first screen women to rabidly defy an arranged/deranged marriage. She's iconic,  memorable, and filled with glorious hiss!.. because The Bride may have come into this world in an unorthodox way, but she'll be damned if any man is going to tell her who to love! James Whale isn't the only one who brought about life in this campy horror masterpiece"¦ Elsa Lanchester manifested The Bride with a keen sense of fearsome independence. No matter whether the Monster demands a Mate, The Bride isn't ready and willing. Lanchester always took daring roles that were larger than life because she had a way of dancing around the edges of Hollywood conventions. Charming, hilarious, and downright adorable even with the wicked lightning-struck hair and stitches and deathly pale skin! the bride-"Hiss"¦Scream"¦”
26. Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) in His Gal Friday (1940) Hildy is a hard-bitten reporter for New York City's The Morning Post. She's just gotten back from Reno to get a divorce from her louse of a husband who happens to also be her boss Walter Burns (Cary Grant). Hildy's anxious to break ties with her manipulative ex-husband who just isn't ready to let her leave the job or their marriage so she can marry straight-laced Bruce (Ralph Bellamy)"¦ and he'll do so by any means. But she's nobody's fool"¦ and if she stays it's because she's made up her mind to embrace Walter's crazy antics"¦ Hildy Johnson: [to Walter on the phone] “Now, get this, you double-crossing chimpanzee: There ain’t going to be any interview and there ain’t going to be any story. And that certified check of yours is leaving with me in twenty minutes. I wouldn’t cover the burning of Rome for you if they were just lighting it up. If I ever lay my two eyes on you again, I’m gonna walk right up to you and hammer on that monkeyed skull of yours ’til it rings like a Chinese gong!” https://thelastdrivein.com/2014/04/23/when-the-spider-woman-looks-two-glorias-wicked-love-close-ups-old-jewels-the-sympathetically-tragic-villainesses-of-sunset-blvd-1950-and-draculas-daughter-1936/
27. Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in Sunset Boulevard (1950) There's just no one quite like Norma Desmond. It's 1950's decadent Hollywood, the heyday of the Silent Era long gone"¦ and a true screen icon, a sympathetic soul, fights her way to a comeback. brought to life by Gloria Swanson. Swanson, who knew very well what it was like to be a screen goddess railing against fading away, creates an atmosphere of fevered madness. She's a woman whose desires are punished by an industry and the men who hold the reigns. But Norma doesn't give a damn she'll always be ready for that eternal close-up"¦ Yet another memorable phrase is turned and a legend both on and off screen is reborn. Joe Gillis: “You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.” Norma Desmond: “I *am* big. It’s the *pictures* that got small.” 28. Karen Stone -(Vivien Leigh) in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) Karen Stone has the misfortune of being a 50-year-old actress. There's no place in the theatre for an old woman of 50. On the way to Italy with her husband who is much older than she, he dies of a heart attack on the plane. Karen decides to settle in Rome and live a quiet life of solitude in her magnificent villa. Contessa Magda Terribili-Gonzales (Lotte Lenya) is an opportunistic Madame who employs charming young gigolos to wine, dine, and bleed dry wealthy older women. She introduces Paolo di Leo (Warren Beatty) to Karen in hopes that it will bring about a showering of riches from this great American lady. Karen has no use for her old theatre friends, the status, and the game of staying on top. She enjoys the serenity of her life at the villa. Yet she is shadowed by a young Italian street hustler's mysterious gaze. At first, Karen is reserved and cautious but soon she allows Paolo to court her, and the two eventually begin an affair. Karen is aware Paolo is using her for her money, but her passion has been released. She is using him as well. But when his mood begins to sour and he turns away, Karen finds him with a younger wealthy upcoming starlet that he is already sizing up as his next meal ticket"¦ The fling ends but Karen has taken back the power of attraction and sexual desire, and turns the usual stigmatizing dichotomy on its head, while it was okay when she was a younger woman married to a much older man, she takes a younger male lover Karen Stone: “You see… I don’t leave my diamonds in the soap dish… and when the time comes when nobody desires me… for myself… I’d rather not be… desired… at all.” 29. Maxine Faulk (Ava Gardner) in Night of the Iguana (1964). Maxine is a personification of the loner. She is sexually, morally, and socially independent from opinion. When Ava was cast as the "earthy widow" the director said her "feline sexuality" was perfect for one of Tennessee Williams' "hot-blooded ladies." Maxine runs a quiet out-of-the-way tourist oasis in Mexico. When a busload of provincial middle-aged ladies break down, Maxine has to host Judith Fellowes (Grayson Hall) a repressed lesbian, her gaggle of ladies who lunch, and Sue Lyon, a Lolita who is chasing Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton) a defrocked alcoholic priest, that Maxine would like to become better acquainted with. Once Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr) and her elderly grandfather arrive, the atmosphere seems to shift and Shannon is confronted with questions of life and love. Everyone at the hotel has demons and the rich and languid air seems to effect everyone"¦ Maxine waits patiently for Lawrence to realize that they could have a passionate life together if he'd stop torturing himself"¦ Gardner’s scene dancing in the ocean with the two young men is daring and provocative and purely Ava Garnder- Judith Fellowes: [Yelling at Shannon] “You thought you outwitted me, didn’t you, having your paramour here cancel my call.” Maxine Faulk: “Miss Fellowes, honey, if paramour means what I think it does you’re gambling with your front teeth.” Ava Gardner | Maxine Faulk in Night of the Iguana 1964.30. Maude (Ruth Gordon) in Harold and Maude (1971) There is no one quite like Ruth Gordon. She's a sage, a pixie filled with a dreamy light that shines so bright from within. You can't help but believe that she was as effervescent off-screen as she was on screen. Maude has a transcendent worldview and a personal dogma to live life to the fullest and not waste time with extraneous matters. She believes everyone should be themselves and never mind what other people think"¦ What else can you say about a character that vocalizes as much wisdom as any of the great and insightful spiritual leaders? Maude and Ruth both have tenacity, vivacity, and perspicacity"¦Â Maude: “Harold, *everyone* has the right to make an ass out of themselves. You just can’t let the world judge you too much.” — Maude: “I should like to change into a sunflower most of all. They’re so tall and simple. What flower would you like to be?” Harold: “I don’t know. One of these, maybe.” Maude: “Why do you say that?” Harold: “Because they’re all alike.” Maude: “Oooh, but they’re *not*. Look. See, some are smaller, some are fatter, some grow to the left, some to the right, and some even have lost some petals. All *kinds* of observable differences. You see, Harold, I feel that much of the world’s sorrow comes from people who are *this.”
34. Catherine ‘Cay' Higgins (Ruth Roman) in Tomorrow is Another Day (1951). Catherine is a tough dance hall girl who isn't afraid to get herself dirty. She goes on the lam for the sake of self-preservation when her new love interest Bill Clark (Steve Cochran) is wrongfully accused of killing her abusive pimp"¦ and geez he's just gotten out of prison after a long stretch. Cay is ballsy, extremely earthy, and exudes an inner strength that is so authentic it's hard not to believe she could take one on the chin and still keep going. She embodies an indestructible sort of sex appeal, a powerfully passionate and self-assertive woman you'd want to be with you if you're ever on the lam"¦ Catherine ‘Cay’ Higgins: “You worked a whole day just to dance a minute at Dream Land? Bill Clark: It was worth it.” 35. Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott) Pitfall (1948) Mona is a sultry dewy blonde fashion model with a low simmering voice in the greatest tradition of the noir femme fatale. Forbes falls for her, and they begin to see each other, though she unwittingly starts the affair without knowing he's married. It's a recipe for disaster because ex-cop turned private dick J B MacDonald (Raymond Burr) is psychotically obsessed with Mona and will set things up so Forbes goes down. Mona is a tough cookie, who unfortunately keeps attracting the wrong men. But she can take on any challenge because she's got that noir frame of mind. She's a doll who can make up her own mind and can hold a gun in her hand as easily as if it were a cigarette. Mona "You're a little man with a briefcase. You go to work every morning and you do as you're told."36. Lady Torrence (Anna Magnani ) in The Fugitive Kind (1960) Lady is an earthy woman whose passions run like a raging river & her emotions and truths flow freely on the surface clear and forceful. She is a shop owner in Louisiana who is stoically existing in a brutal marriage to her cruel and vindictive husband Jabe (Victor Jory) who's bedridden and dying of cancer. Lady dreams of building a confectionary in the back of the store. Along comes Marlon Brando as Valentine "Snakeskin' Xavier, a guitar-playing roamer who takes a job in the shop. Lady's jaded loneliness and Valentine's raw animal magnetism combust and the two begin a love affair. And Lady suddenly sees possibility again and her re-awakened passion empowers her to live her dreams. Lady-"Let's get this straight, you don't interest me no more than the air you stand in."37. Egle (Anna Magnani) "¦ And the Wild Wild Women (1959) Egle is the toughest inmate at this Italian prison for women. When Lina (Giulietta Masina) is convicted of a wrong felony charge, Egle takes her under her hardened wing and tutors her in the ways of crime. Egle is an instigator, she's volatile and inflammatory and stirs up quite a riot at times. She's got no fear. She is a tougher-than-nails, armpit-washing dame who just could care less about anyone else's comfort or freedom. She's a woman who has built up a tough exterior long enough that she truly is made of steel. The only thing that may betray that strength is at times the past sorrow or suffering that swims in her deep dark eyes.38. Serafina Delle Rose (Anna Magnani) in The Rose Tattoo (1955) As the tagline states "˜Seething with realism and frankness!"You can't get any other kind of performance from Magnani, her passionate soul is right up front, on her face, and in her movements like a wild animal, she moves so freely. Serafina is a perpetual grieving widow filled with fire, playing against another actor (Burt Lancaster) whose bigger-than-life presence comes her way to bring about a lighthearted romance"¦ Serafina is a seamstress in a small New Orleans town. She lives with the memory of her dead husband as if he were a saint. She mourns and wears black to show she is still committed to her man, even after he's been killed by police while smuggling drugs for the mafia hidden in the bananas in his truck. With the presence of the local Strega or witch (Serafina gives deference to these things illustrating that she is of an older world of ancient feminine magic and empowerment), and her wandering goat, the town of fish wives & gossips who point, stare judge, wail and cackle with their unkind insults put Serafina it forces her to fight for every last bit of dignity. Serafina gives deference to these things illustrating that she is of an older world of ancient feminine magic and empowerment. Once she learns her dead husband Rosario Delle Rose (who had a rose tattoo on his chest) was having an affair, the spell that leaves her imprisoned by mourning, breaks and awakens her will to celebrate life once again. She is stubborn, & passionate, and she has a strength that commands the birds out of the trees. Serafina “We are Sicilians. We don't leave girls with the boys they're not engaged to!” Jack "Mrs Delle Rose this is the United States.” Serafina “But we are Sicilians, and we are not cold-blooded!”39. Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) Martha who is the archetypal Xanthippe and George (Richard Burton) are a middle-aged couple marinated in alcohol, using verbal assaults, brutal tirades, and orgies of humiliation as a form of connecting to one other. All the characters spew biting blasphemous satire and are each neurotic in their own ways. But Martha is a woman who spits out exactly what she wants to say and doesn't hold back. It's an experiment in at-home couple's therapy served with cocktails, as they invite Nick and Honey (George Segal and Sandy Dennis) to join the humiliating emotional release. In the opening of the film Martha arrives home and does a nod to Bette Davis while also condemning her own personal space and the state of her marriage, as she says "What a dump.""I swear to GOD George, if you even existed I'd divorce you.”– Martha: "You're all flops. I'm the Earth Mother, and you are all flops."
42. Julie Kohler (Jeanne Moreau) in The Bride Wore Black (1968) Julie Kohler is on a mission of revenge for the men who accidentally shot her husband on their wedding day outside the church. It was a short marriage"¦ Julie finds a maniacal almost macabre sort of presentation to her theater of revenge, she moves through the film with the ease of a scorpion. But there's dark humor and irony (in François Truffaut’s homage to Hitchcock) running through the narrative. Like a good mystery thriller, it utilizes very classic iconographic motifs. Julie is a captivating figure of sadness and passion put out at the height of its flame. Once passion for her late husband, and now passion for revenge. It's playful and sexy and Moreau is utterly brilliant as the resourceful Julie Kolher who creates a satirically dire & elaborate, slightly Grande Guignol adventure of a vengeful woman on a crusade to exact poetic justice where the system has failed. Coral: “Permit me to make an impossible wish?” Julie Kohler: “Why impossible?” Coral: “Because I’m a rather pessimist.” Julie Kohler: “I’ve heard it said: “There are no optimists or pessimists. There are only happy idiots or unhappy ones”. —Julie-"It's not a mission. It's work. It's something I must do" Priest"“"Give it up""¨ Julie"“"That's impossible, I must continue til it's over""¨Priest"“"Have you had no remorse in your heart?"¦ don't you fear for your soul?""¨Julie-"NO"¦ no remorse, nor fear.""¨Priest-"You know you'll be caught in the end""¨Julie-"The justice of men is powerless to punish, I'm already dead. I stopped living the moment David died. I'll join David after I've had my revenge." 43. Alraune ten Brink -Brigitte Helm as Alraune 1928. A daughter of destiny! Created by Professor Jakob ten Brinken (Paul Wegener) Alraune is a variation on the Shelley story about a man and his womb envy- which impels him to create a humanoid figure from unorthodox methods. A creation who does not possess a soul. He dared to violate nature when he experiments with the seed (sperm) of a hanged man and the egg of a prostitute. Much like James Whale's Frankenstein who sought the secrets of life, Alraune is essentially a dangerous female whose origin is seeded from this socially constructed "˜deviance’ of the hanged criminal and the whore (the film proposes that a whore is evil- I do not) Mixing the essence of sin with the magical mandrake root by alchemist ten Brinken he is seeking the answer to the question of an individual’s humanity and whether it be a product of nature or nurture. Alraune stumbles onto the truth about her origin when she reads the scientist's diary"¦ What could be more powerful than a woman who isn't born with the sense of socially ordered morality imposed or innate? Is she not the perfect femme fatale without a conscience, yet"¦ A woman who knows she is doomed to a life without a soul, she runs away with her creator’s love-sick nephew, leaving Professor ten Brinken, father figure, and keeper- alone.44. Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish) in Night of the Hunter (1955)"I've never been in style, so I can never go out of style."–Lillian Gish. There are certain images that will remain with you long after seeing masterpieces like Night of the Hunter. Aside from Harry Powell and Mitchum's frightening portrayal of an opportunistic sociopath, beyond the horror of what he is, the film is like a childhood fairy tale. It's a cautionary tale about the boogeyman but it's also a story about the resilient spirit and far-reaching imagination of children. And those who are the guardian angels of the world. One of the most calming and fortifying images- is that of Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish) protecting the children from harm, holding the rifle, and keeping watch like a wonderful fairy godmother elected by fate to guard those little ones with her powerful brand of love"¦ There's just something about Gish's graceful light that emanates from within and the character she manifests in the righteous Rachel Cooper"¦. Rachel Cooper: “It’s a hard world for little things.”
51. Carol Richman (Ella Raines) in Phantom Lady 1944 Carol Richman risks her life to try to find the elusive woman who can prove her boss (Alan Curtis) didn’t murder his wife. The unhappy guy spends a fateful evening with a woman he has picked up in a bar. He doesn't know her name but she wears an unusual hat, which might be a clue for Carol to try and track down. Carol's got so much guts, she puts herself in harm’s way so many times but she's fearless just the same. Even when she meets the super creepy jazz drummer Cliff Milburn, who obviously is manic and might just be a sadist in bed, (if his drumming is any indication.) Plus there's always the deranged sculptor Jack Marlow (Franchot Tone) who seems to be a menacing force. Cliff Milburn (Elisha Cook Jr) “You Like Jive?” Carol "˜Kansas' Richman "You bet, I'm a hep kitten." 52. Pam Grier is Coffy 1973 Okay okay tho I’m sneaking in past the 1970 cut-off"¦ I'm a woman who doesn't give a damn and nods to one of the greatest ’70s icons"¦ Pam Grier set the pace for strong female heroines that laid the groundwork for all the others to follow… so she gets a nod from me! She plays a nurse who becomes a vigilante in order to get justice against the inner-city drug dealers who are responsible for her sister's overdose"¦ Coffy sets the bar high for strong female characters who wouldn't back down, and who possessed a strength that is meteoric and a force to be reckoned with. A beautiful, resourceful, intelligent -a strikingly irrepressible image that will remain in the cultural consciousness for an eternity. Arturo Vitroni: “Crawl, n*gger!” Coffy: [pulls out gun] “You want me to crawl, white mother fucker?” Arturo Vitroni: “What’re you doing? Put that down.” Coffy: “You want to spit on me and make me crawl? I’m gonna piss on your grave tomorrow.” 53. Charlie (Teresa Wright), in Shadow of a Doubt (1943) Charlie is tired of small-town life with her parents and annoying younger sister. She's a girl starved for new adventures, longing for something exciting to happen, to stir up her life. Careful what you wish for"¦ She's overwhelmed with joy when her beloved Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton) decides to pay the family a visit. But something isn't quite right with her idol, he begins to exhibit a strange sort of underlying hostility and troubling secret nature"¦ Her mother's (Patricia Collinge) younger brother is actually a sadistic serial killer who preys on rich widows by marrying them, then strangling them! He's so charming and charismatic that women can't help being drawn to him. But young Charlie begins to see through his facade. Why would he cut out the news headline in the paper about a murderer who kills rich women? It all begins to take shape, and unfortunately, Uncle Charlie can't afford to have his favorite niece spill the beans. What's remarkable about young Charlie is that for a girl who fantasizes and indulges herself in things of a more romantic nature, she's pretty darn brave in the self-preservation department since no one else in the family believes her suspicions that he's The Merry Widow killer. And she might just have to go rogue and wind up killing him in self-defense"¦ Young Charlie: “Go away, I’m warning you. Go away or I’ll kill you myself. See… that’s the way I feel about you.” Constance Towers & Virginia Gray.
54. Kelly (Constance Towers) in The Naked Kiss (1964) The opening of the film is one of the most audacious entrances in early exploitation cinema, as Kelly confronts her pimp who has shaved off her hair and stolen her money. Kelly brutally pummels the rat with her handbag. Stripped of her hair she looks like a mannequin signifying her as the "˜object' She is introduced to us from the opening of the narrative as a fighter. Kelly manages to fit into the quaint new town of Granville she's made her home until the perverse true nature of Granville's benefactor is exposed. Grant (Michael Dante) possesses a dark secret that Kelly stumbles into and ultimately explodes into scandal. The story is a minefield of social criticisms and hypocrisy that allow Kelly to rise above her persecution by the local cop Griff (Anthony Eisley) who isn’t averse to taking Kelly to bed himself or frequenting Madame Candy's (Virginia Gray) high-class "cat house' yet he's above reproach. Griff tells Kelly it’s a clean town and he doesn't want her operating there. But Kelly wants out of the business. She's great with disabled children at the hospital and just wants a fresh start. Until she exposes the truly deviant secret about Grant and winds up accused of his murder. Kelly initially walks the fine line of being the "˜whore' of the story, the one who needs redemption only to have the narrative flip it around and more importantly it's the town that must be redeemed because of it is jaundiced complacency from the long-kept secrets of the wealthy Patriarchal family that owns and run it. Kelly is a powerful protagonist because she kicks down the door of hypocrisy and judgment. Kelly also shatters the limitations that are placed on women. There exists a displaced female rage that started to become articulated later on with ‘feminist parable’ films during the late 60s and 70s. In the end, she no longer is labeled or objectified, or persecuted. She is embraced as a savior. Kelly's got a reserve of strength and a great sense of self. To me, she ends up being a heroine who rather than redeems herself becomes the catalyst for cleansing the "˜white middle-class' town of its hypocrisy… Kelly (talking to Capt. Griff Anthony Eisley)"I washed my face clean the morning I woke up in your bedroom!"
55. Velma (Agnes Moorehead) in Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964) Velma is Charlotte's trusted companion. She shows a lot of gumption when Cousin Miriam (Olivia de Havilland) shows up trying to gaslight poor Charlotte who's suffered enough at the grotesque and tawdry way she lost her fiancee, and how she lived under the oppressive thumb of her father (Victor Buono). Velma wasn't nary shy a bit to face off with Cousin Miriam, that intimidating gold-digging she-devil in Park Avenue clothes. (From de Havilland’s own wardrobe) Velma always says it like it is, and tries to be a trusted friend to Charlotte even when the whole town shuns her as a crazy axe murderess. We all need friends who would either help you hide the body, or at least defend you against an accusing mob"¦ either way. I'm pretty sure Velma could have taken Miriam if she didn't have Joseph Cotton’s help on her side"¦ And we can't forget Mary Astor's firebrand performance as Jewel Mayhew"¦ Jewel Mayhew: “Well, right here on the public street, in the light of day, let me tell you, Miriam Deering, that murder starts in the heart, and its first weapon is a vicious tongue.”– Velma Cruther talking to Cousin Miriam: “O you’re finally showin’ the right side of your face. Well, I seen it all along. That’s some kinda drug you have been givin’ her. Isn’t it? It’s what’s been making her act like she’s been. Well, Ah’m goin’ into town and Ah’m tellin’ them what you have been up to.”
IT’S HERE AGAIN… THAT TINGLING ON THE BACK OF YOUR NECK BECAUSE THERE’S FOUL DEEDS AND MURDEROUS MACHINATIONS AFOOT…HOSTED BY SPEAKEASY… SHADOWS & SATIN… AND SILVER SCREENINGS… THE GREAT VILLAIN BLOGATHON OF 2015!
Vincent Price -had said- “I don’t play monsters. I play men besieged by fate and out for revenge…”
Vincent Price is perhaps one of THE sexiest men in the film. Eventually, type cast albeit an icon of the horror film industry… enough of us are aware of his range of talent and his sophisticated manner. If I were to have met him, I would have swooned… and that’s not a lie. He possessed a unique sensuality both tragic and dynamic that just drew you in.
Price always could play ONE of the most cultivated, enigmatic, and beguiling villains at any time…
-Secret thoughts… That led to secret love… That led to rapture and terror!-
Vincent Price as Nicholas Van Ryn: “I believe in myself, and I am answerable to myself! I will not live according to printed mottoes like the directions on a medicine bottle!”
The chemistry between Price and Tierney is authentic and captivating. When Miranda Wells feels humiliated by the gaggle of high-class snobbish debutantes because she's from the wrong end of the river, not from the Hudson but The Connecticut River bottom, Nicholas tells her she's better than all of them and asks her to dance. He seems so gentle and human"¦ but he has a dark and villainous side!
“You couldn’t help yourself any more than I” – Nicholas
“What makes you think you’re so much better than I am!”
DRAGONWYCK 1946 was Vincent Price's18th film, after having appeared in The House of the Seven Gables 1940 as Shelby Carpenter opposite Gene Tierney in Laura 1944, Leave Her to Heaven 1945, right after he appeared as the cold-blooded Dr. Richard Cross in Shock 1946.
Produced by Ernst Lubitsch uncredited and overseen by one of my favs– Writer/Director Joseph L Mankiewicz. This Gothic & dark romance is based on the novel by Anya Seton"¦ With cinematography by Arthur C. Miller (The Ox Bow Incident 1943, The Razor’s Edge 1946, Whirlpool 1949, The Prowler 1951), Art Direction by Lyle Wheeler and Russell Spencer, Set Direction by the great Thomas Little. The lighting alone is a mixture of noir chiaroscuro and offers dramatic shadings of the best classical elements of horror. The narrative speaks of familial secrets, and twisted vengefulness, not unlike Lewis Allen’s spooky debut masterpiece The Uninvited 1944.
Added to the moodiness is the eerily haunting score by Alfred Newman with Orchestral arrangements by Edward B Powell. Edited by the keen eyes of Dorothy Spencer (Stagecoach 1939, The House Across the Bay 1940, Lifeboat 1944, The Ghost and Mrs.Muir, The Snake Pit 1948.)Â
Costumes by Rene Hubert and Makeup by Ben Nye. The film bares shades of Hitchcock/de Maurier’s Rebecca 1940 and Robert Stevenson’s/Charlotte Brontë‘sJane Eyre1943. Even a bit of de Maurier’s tautly suspenseful My Cousin Rachel 1952 directed by Henry Koster and starring Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton. The book is a hell of a good read if you enjoy Gothic melodrama.
Gene Tierney and Vincent Price reunite after having appeared in Otto Premingers‘ memorable film noir masterpiece Laura in 1944.
Otto Preminger brings together these two fine actors in his noir masterpiece Laura 1944.
Here-Gene Tierney plays Miranda Wells, and Walter Huston is her devoutly Christian working-class father-Ephram Wells.
Walter Huston as Ephram Wells reading from his bible to Miranda.Miranda takes a drink of wine. Her father reproaches her-“I thought so, it’s got spirits in it. A little bit. Even a little bit of evil cannot be good Miranda”– Her stifling life with her religious father pushes her further into the arms of Nicholas Van Ryn.
This scene foreshadows the dangerous path Miranda is willing to wander through, as she starts to break free of her puritanical upbringing and reach for a life of being a free spirit. Believing that Nicholas represents that freedom. But there is a hint of evil that her father can sense.
Vincent Price once again manifests a passionate yet conflicted antagonist Nicholas Van Ryn with a magnetism you cannot escape, yet you may despise his cruelty and his self-indulgent murderous arrogance.
“I must not feel like my life is finished as long as you are with me”-Nicholas“You must never be afraid when you’re with me, Miranda.”
Glenn Langan is the handsome yet vanilla Dr Jeff Turner, Anne Revere adds a depth of nurture as Abigail Wells-Miranda’s mother who is weary of her daughter’s intentions to marry such a powerful man.
Spring Byington is one of the maids-Magda. Connie Marshall is the young melancholy Katrina Van Ryn, Henry Morgan is Bleeker one of the farmers who challenges Van Ryn and fights back against the antiquated laws.
Vivienne Osborne plays wife Johanna Van Ryn. Jessica Tandy gives a marvelous performance as Miranda’s maid the feisty Peggy O'Malley. Trudy Marshall is Elizabeth Van Borden. Reinhold Schunzel is Count de Grenier, Jane Nigh is Tabitha. Ruth Ford is Cornelia Van Borden, David Ballard is Obadiah. Scott Elliot is Tom Wells and Boyd Irwin is Tompkins.
DRAGONWYCK is a Gothic suspense melodrama in the grand classical style. It even brushes against the edges of the classic horror film not only because of the way it’s filmed but there are certain disturbing elements to the story. The shadows and darkness that are part of the psychological climate work are almost reminiscent of a Val Lewton piece. There’s even a pale reference to that of a ghost story that is concealed or I should say unrevealed, with the first Mrs.Van Ryn’s spirit playing the harpsichord, and the eerie phantom chords that add to the mystery and gloom that hang over the manor house.
Katrine-“I don’t like it now The singing’s getting louder now, I’m afraid I’m afraid.”
With swells of atmospheric tension and darkly embroidered romance, there’s just the right tinges of shadows and danger. A lush and fervent tale that combines tragic Gothic romantic melodrama with the legitimate themes of social class struggle wrapped within dark secrets and suspense.
As always, Price conveys a tragic pathos even as the story’s villain, he is a man who manifests layers upon layers of feeling. Brooding, charming, sensual, intellectual, menacing, passionate, conflicted, self-loathing, and ego-maniacal all at once.
One of my favorite roles will always be his embodiment of Corman/Poe's Roderick Usher in House of Usher 1960.
The film also offers us the sublime acting skill and divine beauty of- Gene Tierneyas the heroine or damsel in peril, a simple farm girl living near Greenwich Connecticut, who dreams of the finer things in life, swept up by the allure of a fairy tale existence only to find out that her dream has become a nightmare.
Once Miranda receives a letter inviting her to come and visit Dragonwyck, she is perhaps at once young and naive when she arrives at the austere place to be a companion to Van Ryn’s despondent daughter Katrine, a lonely sort of isolated child. First triangulated by Van Ryn’s over-indulgent wife Johanna, after her death, the two begin a whirlwind romance that leads Miranda to marry the imposing Nicholas Van Ryn.
Almost in the style of a Universal monster movie, the central focus is the mysterious mansion, surrounded by volatile thunderstorms and restless villagers who want to take action against their oppressors. The film works as a period piece seeming to possess an added heaviness due to the provincial settings and underpinnings of class unrest, which lends itself to the bleak mood.
DRAGONWYCK'S villain or very human boogeyman is the inimitable & urbane Vincent Pricewho holds sway over the locals as the patroon–lord of the land, as well as master of all he surveys, and of course his new wife. Driven by his obsession to have a son. He is a brooding dark figure whose dissent into drug addicted madness comes to light like a demon who has escaped from a bottle.
Van Ryn is vain and contemptuous, scornful, condescending, and cruel. Eventually driven by his immense pride, love, and desire… to murder his first wife who is in the way of his ultimate legacy.
DRAGONWYCK is an interesting film that belies any one genre. And as I’ve pointed out, beyond the dark melodramatic suspense elements, it’s every bit a horror film. And it is also the directorial debut of Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
Set during the Nineteenth Century when parts of New York were still founded as feudal Estates. It’s a fascinating portrayal of the history of the 19th century Upstate New York Dutch colonies and their struggles between the rich and poor against the reigning yet dying tradition of aristocratic rule over the small family farms which were overseen by "˜Patroons'Â A Patroon is the owner of the large land grants along the Hudson River. They are descendants of the original Dutch patroons"¦ “and they're terribly rich and elegant." -Miranda
Yet as in the case of Nicholas, they can be brutal and self-opportunistic landlords who collected the rent from these hard-working, exploited, and poor farmers.
This is what first impresses Miranda about Nicholas, his power and station in life. Tibby her sister tells her that she's not anxious to leave home.
Miranda says "That's not fair, you know that I love you and Pa, all of you and my home it's just that I try to be like everyone else"¦ and want what I'm supposed to want. But then I start thinking about people I've never known and places I've never been. Maybe if the letter hadn't come I'd"¦. Oh, I don't know I must be loony."
Nicholas Van Ryn is a brooding and powerful aristocratic patroon who runs all matters with an iron hand. In the Nineteenth Century, the upstate New York counties were still dealing with a system run by these Patroons. There began a social uprising of the surrounding farmers who wanted more power over their land and a rule that would abolish the aristocracy that was a tribute to a dying past practice. Soon there would be an end to these ruling Estates.
As seen in Van Ryn’s maniacal demonstration of his being seated in an elaborate throne he remains poised while collecting the farmer’s rent. Henry Morgan plays the tough and prideful farmer Klaus who has brought nothing with him. “Not rent– nor tribute.”
“I’m a free citizen I take my hat off for no one.”
When Nicholas’ first wife cannot bare him a son as heir to carry on the Van Ryn name, the wealthy and wicked Nicholas Van Ryn secretly plans to poison her with the help of an Oleander plant. Setting his sights on the younger, more beautiful cousin Miranda.
He then invites Miranda (Gene Tierney just naturally exudes a uniquely dreamy-eyed splendor) to come and visit Dragonwyck. She is an innocent girl fascinated by the urbane Nicholas but by the film’s climax, she becomes entrapped in the foreboding and bleak atmosphere of Dragonwyck, a place of secrets, sadness, and insanity.
Nicholas-“The Breeze must feel wonderful indeed on a face as beautiful as yours I imagine."
Miranda is so taken with the idea of dancing the waltz and how fine a gentleman cousin Nicholas seems. Her father always read passages from the bible, she hungers for adventure. Miranda craves the freedom to experience a better life.
Vincent Price is incredibly handsome as Nicholas. Mysterious, his deep blue eyes crystallize through the stark black and white film. He has a strong jawline, and possesses vitality"¦ at first, he is so charming. Nicholas-“The Breeze must feel wonderful indeed on a face as beautiful as yours I imagine."
The first meal at Dragonwyck is a grotesque scene in which his wife Johanna (Vivienne Osborne) shows herself to be a lugubrious sow, a glutton, and a spoiled child who now bores and disgusts her husband. He tells Miranda, “To my wife, promptness at meals is the greatest human virtue."Â
Nicholas is already starting to reveal his cutting tongue by commenting on how his wife overeats and is not refined. A hint of his cruel nature.
“I think I’ll have the bonbons before going to bed.”Look at the detail of this frame. It’s almost the perfection of a Late 19th-century painting.
Miranda meets the despondent Katrine… a hapless child.
At dinner, Johanna begins to nag him about bringing home the pastries from New York, the Napoleons, she appears to be a glutton, and though very pretty, a most unattractive portrayal of her character is given for the narrative’s purpose of Nicholas justifiably ridding himself of her so that he might pursue Miranda. In contrast to Johanna’s piggishness, Miranda is given a clear bowl of broth for her supper. the scene is set up so we feel a bit of sympathy toward Nicholas.
As Johanna shoves another bonbon into her mouth…
Cinematographer Arthur C. Millerframes the shot as Johanna is placed in between Nicholas and Miranda. His wife Johanna appears like a fairy tale character–the over-exaggerated plump wife who gorges herself on sweets while Nicholas and Miranda talk of love and loss. Miranda is wildly curious. He is withdrawn and pensive.
Nicholas plays the harpsichord. Miranda listens contentedly and then asks who the woman in the painting is. He tells her it's his grandmother Aziel –"That's a strange name"¦ she looks like a frightened child."
Miranda asks him to tell her more about his grandmother. Was it love at first sight?
Nicholas-"No Van Ryn does anything at first sight" Miranda-"Oh but she must have been happy to live here" Miranda smiles, her face a glow. Nicholas adds, "As it turned out it didn't matter, soon after her son was born she died. She brought this harpsichord with her from her home. She played it always."
Johanna “If you listen to the servants they'll have you believe she still does!"she laughs. But Nicholas quickly turns around to look at her, a dark shadow creeps along his brow. His eyes raised.
Nicholas-"Fortunately we don't listen to either the servants or their superstitions."
Magda (Spring Byington) tells Miranda about Nicholas’ grandmother from New Orleans, the woman in the portrait. That his grandfather never loved her, he never wanted her at all. he wanted their son. he kept her from him… He forbid her to sing and play. He broke her heart. And drove her"¦.” Magda stops short"¦. "She prayed for disaster to come to the Van Ryns and she swore that when it came she'd always be here to sing and play"¦ She killed herself in this room."
Magda asks-"Miss Wells why have you come here? Do you think Katrine is in need of a companion? Miranda answers her, "Well that would be for her father and her mother to decide."
Magda says, "Don't you think she's in need of a father and a mother"¦ that was a silly question wasn't it?"Â
The meddling maid pierces Miranda’s innocence with her honesty like venom–causing a bit of shock on Miranda’s face that usually seems as tranquil as a quiet lake of sparkling water.
“You like it here?" Miranda answers–"Of course, I do" Magda comments- "Course you do, you like being waited on, I could see tonight it was the first time. You like peaches out of season. You like the feel of silk sheets against your young body. Then one day, with all your heart you'll wish you'd never come to Dragonwyck"¦”
The handsome young Dr. Turner (Glenn Langan) comes to take care of Johanna who has taken sick to her bed.
He and Miranda sit and talk by the fire. He tries to imply that living at Dragonwyck has changed her, he tells her that the last time he met her he felt like they had so much in common. "Frankly right now I doubt you have any idea about the slightest thing to talk to me about."
Johanna’s illness gets worse, of course, we know Nicholas has poisoned her. Lying in bed she tells him that sometimes she thinks he hates her, but asks if they can go away together once she's better. He says yes because he knows she'll never get better. In fact, she will never leave that bed alive.
"Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways."
"• Sigmund Freud
"Ladies and gentlemen- welcome to violence; the word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favorite mantle still remains sex." "” Narrator from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965).
THE DARK PAGES NEWSLETTERÂ a condensed article was featured in The Dark Pages: You can click on the link for all back issues or to sign up for upcoming issues to this wonderful newsletter for all your noir needs!
Patricia Morán as Rita Ugalde: The Exterminating Angel 1962:“I believe the common people, the lower class people, are less sensitive to pain. Haven’t you ever seen a wounded bull? Not a trace of pain.”
Ann Baxter as Teresina Vidaverri Walk on the Wild Side 1962—“When People are Kind to each other why do they have to find a dirty word for it.”
The Naked Venus 1959–"I repeat she is a gold digger! Europe's full of them, they're tramps"¦ they'll do anything to get a man. They even pose in the NUDE!!!!”
Baby Boy Franky Buono-Blast of Silence (1961)“The targets names is Troiano, you know the type, second string syndicate boss with too much ambition and a mustache to hide the facts he’s got lips like a woman… the kind of face you hate!”
Lorna (1964)-“Thy form is fair to look upon, but thy heart is filled with carcasses and dead man’s bones.”
Glen or Glenda (1953)– “Give this man satin undies, a dress, a sweater and a skirt, or even a lounging outfit and he’s the happiest individual in the world.”
Ed Wood’s Glen or Glenda 1953
Johnny Cash as Johnny Cabot in Five Minutes to Live (1961):“I like a messy bed.”
Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton) Island of Lost Souls:“Do you know what it means to feel like God?”
The Snake Pit (1948): Jacqueline deWit as Celia Sommerville “And we’re so crowded already. I just don’t know where it’s all gonna end!” Olivia de Havilland as Virginia Stuart Cunningham“I’ll tell you where it’s gonna end, Miss Somerville… When there are more sick ones than well ones, the sick ones will lock the well ones up.”
Delphine Seyrig as Countess Bathoryin Daughters of Darkness (1971)– “Aren’t those crimes horrifying. And yet -so fascinating!”
Julien Gulomar as Bishop Daisy to the Barber (Michel Serrault) King of Hearts (1966)–“I was so young. I already knew that to love the world you have to get away from it.”
Susannah York (right) with Beryl Reid in The Killing of Sister George Susannah York and Beryl Reid in Robert Aldrich’s The Killing of Sister George 1960.
The Lickerish Quartet (1970)–“You can’t get blood out of an illusion.”
THE SWEET SOUND OF DEATH (1965)– Dominique-“I’m attracted” Pablo-” To Bullfights?” Dominique-” No, I meant to death. I’ve always thought it… The state of perfection for all men.”
Peter O’Toole asSir Charles Ferguson Brotherly Love (1970): “Remember the nice things. Reared in exile by a card-cheating, scandal ruined daddy. A mummy who gave us gin for milk. Ours was such a beautifully disgusting childhood.”
Euripides 425 B.C.–“Whom God wishes to destroy… he first makes mad.”
Bette Davis and Joan Crawford bring to life two of the most outrageously memorable characters in Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962.
WHAT DOES PSYCHOTRONIC MEAN?
psychotronic|ˌsīkəˈtränik| adjective denoting or relating to a genre of movies, typically with a science fiction, horror, or fantasy theme, that were made on a low budget or poorly received by critics. [the 1980s: coined in this sense by Michael Weldon, who edited a weekly New York guide to the best and worst films on local television.] Source: Wikipedia
In the scope of these transitioning often radical films, where once, men and women aspired for the moon and the stars and the whole ball of wax. in the newer scheme of things they aspired for you know"¦ "kicks" Yes that word comes up in every film from the 50s and 60s"¦ I'd like to have a buck for every time a character opines that collective craving… from juvenile delinquent to smarmy jet setter!
FILM NOIR HAD AN INEVITABLE TRAJECTORY…
THE ECCENTRIC & OFTEN GUTSY STYLE OF FILM NOIR HAD NOWHERE ELSE TO GO… BUT TO REACH FOR EVEN MORE OFF-BEAT, DEVIANT– ENDLESSLY RISKY & TABOO ORIENTED SET OF NARRATIVES FOUND IN THE SUBVERSIVE AND EXPLOITATIVE CULT FILMS OF THE MID TO LATE 50s through the 60s and into the early 70s!
I just got myself this collection of goodies from Something Weird!
There’s even this dvd that points to the connection between the two genres – Here it’s labeled WEIRD. I like transgressive… They all sort of have a whiff of noir.Grayson Hall -Satan in High Heels 1962.Gerd Oswald adapts Fredrick Brown’s titillating novel — bringing to the screen the gorgeous Anita Ekberg, Phillip Carey, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Harry Townes in the sensational, obscure, and psycho-sexual thriller Screaming Mimi 1958.Victor Buono is a deranged mama’s boy in Burt Topper’s fabulous The Strangler 1964.Catherine Deneuve is extraordinary as the unhinged nymph in Roman Polanski’s psycho-sexual tale of growing madness in Repulsion 1965.
Directed by J. Lee Thompson (Blonde Sinner 1956, Tiger Bay 1959, Cape Fear 1962, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud 1975) the outre surreptitious Eye of the Devil (1966) is an atmospheric smorgasbord of uncanny & haunting images encircled by the air of clandestine and provocative underlying forcefulness. With ease, the film pulls you into an esoteric world of ancient rites and beliefs and primal fears and urges to prevail against or more aptly in honor of the pagan notion of the rule & reign of the old ways, and the dominant elementals. It’s a bit of a cryptic occult meditation on reverence, immortality, sacrifice, and reaping what you sow.
Niven is urbane and resolute in his stature as Patriarch of the French family who comes home to the ancestral chateau to tend to the vineyards, (the past season’s crop has suffered) and take his rightful place during the rites of the ceremonial harvest. Phillipe must not only observe the deadly family secrets that have survived for centuries but more horrifying than that, it must continue to be passed down to his children.
Philippe’s Aunt Countess Estell “ Christian Caray is a very wicked boy and his sister Odile is no better”
Eye of the Devil works so well to capture our ideologies by the throat partly because of the convincing performances by the enormously talented cast who inhabit this secret world, Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Flora Robson (Beast in the Cellar 1970 ) as Phillipe’s Great Aunt Countess Estell, Donald Pleasence as a malefic cleric Pere Dominic with a shaved head and solemnity, David Hemmings, Sharon Tate, and Emlyn Williams.
Both Sharon Tate and David Hemmings play two beautiful yet sinister figures lurking about. David Hemmings went on to do Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Blow Up (1966) and Sharon Tate whose first movie this was, went on to do Roman Polanski’s originally called Dance with The Vampires, now called The Fearless Vampire Killers, a comedic romp through the classical vampire story, though a little numbing possessed a few hilarious moments.Â
The film is an adaptation of Philip Lorain’s novel Day of the Arrow.
Once again absolutely stunning visuals frame the picture by cinematographer Erwin Hillier.
Erwin Hilliercombined with director J. Lee Thompson’s directing style is a tense and well-focused gaze creating a closed world of authentic dis-ease. Beautifully photographed with slight suggestions of The Wicker Man. There is an intoxicating ambiance perfectly underscored by the simplistic yet alluring music by composer Gary McFarland. Hillier’s close-ups capture fertile images of evil & arcane sensuality.
David Niven is the Marquis Philippe de Montfaucon who is the owner of a historic Vineyard. When a dry season hits the harvest he is summoned to the castle Bellenac. Deborah Kerr plays his wife-Catherine de Montfaucon who is told to remain in Paris with the children, but she follows him anyway. And for her trouble, she is assailed in the woods by very ominous figures in hoods which make for a very potent scene… which does not cease even up to the end’s shocking climactic conclusion.
The opening frames are quick cuts that utilize the sound of a speeding train, cut away frames between reveal shots of a sharp arrow, we hear the train sirens, a lavish cocktail party in high society, an old world-looking bearded man on the train, the arrow is raised- it pierces the heart of a white dove, the woods are filled with hazy black hooded figures, eerie and ominous they stand by the trees. A cross of branches is set on fire. Close up on Sharon Tate then close up on Hemmings then the screen goes black and the credits roll"¦..
It's a post-modern and riveting way to open a film with an esoteric narrative "¦the film’s title is set against the speeding to train its windows like eyes themselves staring back at us.
When Phillippe the Marquis arrives in Bellenac the villagers all seem to revere him, lifted their hats to him, head downward, humbled and proud. He meets up with the cleric Pere Dominic (Donald Pleasence) the mood and furnishings give one the idea of an Orthodox Christian sect.
Some thought he would not return to Bellenac the butler knew he would return"¦ Phillippe asks how about your father?
"I’ve never doubted the path you have chosen" Phillippe-"What makes you think I've chosen it?"
Pere Dominic-"You came back didn't you."
The priest places an elaborate amulet on the table. Phillippe picks up the amulet Dominic tells him "I think you have chosen it Phillippe, my son."
Family friend Jean-Claude Ibert (Edward Mulhare) sits by the fireplace in Paris talking about Phillippe’s trip back to Bellenac. Catherine tells him the first time she was there after their wedding she says it was the most frightening place almost as though they were back in the Middle Ages. Jean-Claude tells her that Phillippe had always been obsessed with the place as if he was trying to solve its diabolical secret.
Once at the castle, Philippe seems distant as if he is following a mysterious compulsion guided by the pervading force of a cult that recognizes ancient pagan rituals, and perhaps sacrificing his own life in order to save the vineyard. Catherine can do nothing to change her somnolent husband’s mind to leave and come back with her and the children to Paris.
Both Sharon Tate as the luminous Odile de Caray and David Hemmings as the impish Christian de Caray play two beautiful yet otherworldly and sinister figures lurking about with bows and arrows. Turns toads into doves, and is fixated on the children.
Odile mesmerizes both Jacques and Antoinette. She asks if they believe in magic, then she demonstrates her powers by changing a frog on a lily pad into a dove. Could she be using the art of hypnosis to create an illusion?
Catherine does not want her brother Christian to kill any more doves on the property and isn’t happy to see her influence over her children. It begins to rain. But Odile tells her that they are not life-giving clouds and that they will pass quickly. Catherine asks why she is at Bellenac. Odile tells her that she and her brother come there often… Then Christian appears and shoots an arrow into a tree right next to Catherine. The siblings wander through the landscape like other-worldly minions.
Phillippe begins to pull away consciously from his wife and children, he tells her to take them and leave. She pleads with him to come home with her and that she can help him. In a sense, it’s all begun and even if she tries to make a fuss afterward, no one will either believe her or come forward to help her.
She says he must be mad, that he’s dying for nothing, walk away from this stupid evil.
“I’m dying for what I believe.”
“No one can help me, not even you. You don't understand you could never understand”
He is preparing for a glorious pilgrimage of the soul. He is beyond being reached. He is prepared for the festival of ‘The Thirteen Days” or rather The Thirteen Dancers…
Alain de Montfaucon (Emlyn Williams) tells Catherine that he expects to be a living God and that Pere Dominic is more than part of it… He is all of it. He is a Pagan. And Bellenac is… A Fortress of Heresy…
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IMDb fun fact:
Originally Kim Novak was cast in the role of Catherine de Montfaucon. Filming began in the fall of 1965 in France. Near every scene had been filmed when Kim Novak fell from a horse and wasn’t able to complete her scenes. Deborah Kerr was hired to take over and every scene that featured Miss Novak had to be re-shot with her replacement.
The film’s opening credits read-Introducing Sharon TateJ. Lee Thompson on the set with Sharon Tate
HAVE A SO-REAL SUNDAY NITE- FROM YOUR EVERLOVIN’ MONSTERGIRL!
Anne Bancroft is a lady who lunches and listens to gossip in The Pumpkin Eater – being held hostage by the intensely neurotic Yootha Joyce a lonely housewife sitting next to her while trapped under the hair dryer of life… The woman at the hairdresser-“It’s like I told you, my life is an empty place!” Jo-“Well what do you want me to do about it?”
"The question isn't who's going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."– Ayn Rand
Cognition–ËŒkägˈniSHÉ™n| (noun) the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. "¢ a result of this; a perception, sensation, notion, or intuition.
These 4 particular films seem to be part of a trend of films that deal with either women’s brewing emotional turmoil or in the case of Jean Seberg’s Lilith- a creeping organic madness, perhaps from childhood trauma that is not delved into.Â
Let’s consider women either in distress or the oft-used “hysterical’ trademark that summons every neurotic ill associated with women. With these 4 films it's the same root problem: Why should society determine what counts as an emotional problem? This is especially true for women as if she was the engendering source of a specific kind of female mayhem, the creator of the tumult itself… Capable of giving birth, does she also give birth to a certain kind of madness directed inwardly or aimed outward at society and its unyielding ethical questions?
It’s not that I think Barbara Barrie is troubled because she falls in love with a black man. It's that the world is troubled by her decision. Because of her choice -a society inherently cruelly punishes her by taking away the one thing she had personal power over, to remove her child from her life. Although, she has a wonderful relationship with Frank both are being judged and condemned.
The judge awards custody of her little girl to the biological father even though he is not the better parent. Not too long ago, women could be hospitalized just for being menopausal, based on what their husbands said.
Women were at the mercy of white male society's judgment. So if a white woman loves and marries a black man in the volatile climate of the civil rights 60s it would absolutely cause turmoil and quite the commotion.
All these women experience cognitive commotion but are not necessarily crazy. One Potato Two Potato is about the societal impositions forced upon an interracial couple and the strain of a child custody battle forcing her to qualify herself as a good mother. The sentiments of the time, the courts, and society, in general, are disempowering Julie through her motherhood.
This inflicts an agonizing torture on Barbara Barrie’s character Julie. Barrie’s performance as well as Bernie Hamilton as a man whose own masculinity is tested, tears me up inside…
A white woman, Julie Cullen falls in love with Frank Richards, a black man, against the will of everyone around them, including his parents who think he should stick with his own kind. Eventually, Frank’s mother and father come around and embrace Julie and her daughter who considers Martha and William her grandparents.
Julie has a son with Frank…and suddenly is being faced with a white judge deciding on who will gain custody of her little girl from a previous marriage to a man Joe Cullen who abandoned them years ago. Not til he finds out that she is being raised by a black man does he rise to take action and gain custody of his daughter.
This is a courageous story to relate to in 1964. Barrie’s anguish is one that is not self-inflicted, there is no mental disorder or neurotic dilemma yet it would challenge anyone who dares to be truthful and follow their heart in a world where many people must hide who they are. A beautiful love story that becomes tainted by the stain of ingrained hatred and ignorance. And causes ruination to a happy family.
Barbara Barrie’s performance as Julie Cullen Richards is nothing short of intuitively astounding.
Just for funzies, I wanted to paint some contrast into the mix, therefore pointing to films that truly deal with women and mental illness.More than cognitive commotion, they’re unstable, noncompos mentis, deranged, knife-wielding, murderous femmes, traumatized, delusional dames… or all out CRAZY NUTS!!!!!!!!!
And…
I’ll probably write about all these films mentioned–the women on the verge of a nervous breakdown or already on the shoulder of the weary road of life with all four tires flat at some point. I’ll Consider Charles Vidor’sLadies in Retirement 1941where Ida Lupino has to take care of her two dotty sisters Elsa Lanchester and Edith Barrett as the Creed sisters… They’re wonderfully Cukoo!!! I did a little piece on this gem a while back…
Robert Siodmak’sThe Dark Mirror 1946 with Olivia de Havilland playing twins Terry & Ruth Collins, Gene Tierney gorgeous yet cunningly homicidal in Leave her To Heaven 1945, Laraine Day is totally unhinged in The Locket 1946, Joan Crawford as Louise Howell has a nightmare filled flashback in Curtis Burnhardt’sPossessed 1947.
“she is shown as alienated and stricken with psychological torture”– {source Marlisa Santos The Dark Mirror; Psychiatry and Film NoirÂ
Then again in Anatole Litvak’s story actually set in a mental institution with Olivia de Havilland stuck in The Snake Pit 1948, Vivien Leigh is the consummate delusional Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams’A Streetcar Named Desire 1951… Marilyn Monroe gives a riveting performance as the deranged babysitter–(oh god kid just be quiet for Nell) in Roy Ward Baker’sDon’t Bother to Knock 1952, Joanne Woodward is in emotional conflict with three different personalities all herself…in The Three Faces of Eve 1957.
Eleanor Parker gives a stunning portrayal of multiple personality disorder in Hugo Haas’Lizzie 1957, I’ve written about Liz Taylor almost getting her frontal lobe sucked out at the request of her domineering Aunt -(Katherine Hepburn) just to hide her son’s sordid secret life in Suddenly, Last Summer 1959, Jean Simmons tries to find happiness in a loveless marriage that isn’t her fault in the engrossing Home Before Dark 1958, Ingmar Bergman’s Striking minimalist piece about mental turmoil in his beautifully photographed Through a Glass Darkly 1961, William Castle’s groundbreaking gender-bending Homicidal 1961.
Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve 1957.
Joan Marshall is Homicidal in 1961 in William Castle’s answer to Psycho.
Carroll Baker is a traumatized rape survivor in Something Wild 1961 and what I found to be a misogynist romp wasting several wonderful actresses who were offered these humiliating roles in The Chapman Report. In particular, Clare Bloom deserved better with her talent -as a nymphomaniac struggling with her sexual desires until she ultimately commits suicide in The Chapman Report 1962 and good old William Castle’s once again with his Strait-Jacket 1964 starring one of the ultimate Grande Dames Joan Crawford this time wielding an axe in addition to her nightmarish flashbacks.
Now… none of the 4 women I am covering here are homicidal or dangerous, all these women are experiencing a psychic struggle with issues that speak from their place in the world as women… who are defining somehow in their own way, what their identity means to them… Well, perhaps Lilith is a bit more volatile in terms of how she wields her sexuality and influences men & women! But she is a divine innocent albeit-nymphomaniac living in a dreamy world of her own –not a homicidal vamp who devours men and spits them out… She is innocent without malice. The men do the damage to themselves…
“And her eye has become accustomed to obvious ‘truths’ that actually hide what she is seeking. It is the very shadow of her gaze that must be explored”--Luce Irigaray
Max von Sydow,, Harriet Andersson, and Gunnar Bjormstrand in -(1961)-Through the Glass Darkly directed by Ingmar Bergman.
Kim Stanley gives an unnerving performance as a delusional and dangerous woman who plots to kidnap a child so she can claim her psychic powers and then locate her…
And of course the two titans of Grande Dame Guignol fêtes courtesy of Robert Aldrich…
Roman Polanski’s very post-modern almost Brechtian/Picassoesque ode to insanity starring Catherine Deneuve in his Repulsion 1965 –
There’s always Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964) showcasing an unstable female in distress brought on by childhood trauma. Considering Hitch’s lavish colors, and overt psychological embellishments that have created a pulpy romanticized landscape, that at times obfuscates the mental turbulence rather than letting it surface on its own. I chose to set this film aside and instead include the more off-the-beaten-path of psychological leaning-‘women’s pictures.’ 1964 seemed to be one hell of a year for Women in Distress by virtue of the female psychological crisis, once again to reiterate -not the ‘hysteria’ kind, mind you.”
Tippie Hedren and Louise Latham in Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964)
“From the socially conservative 1950s to the permissive 1970s, this project explores the ways in which insanity in women has been linked to their femininity and the expression or repression of their sexuality. An analysis of films from Hollywood's post-classical period (The Three Faces of Eve (1957), Lizzie (1957), Lilith (1964), Repulsion (1965),Images (1972) and 3 Women (1977)) demonstrates the societal tendency to label a woman's behavior as mad when it does not fit within the patriarchal mold of how a woman should behave. In addition to discussing the social changes and diagnostic trends in the mental health
profession that define "appropriate" female behavior, each chapter also traces how the decline of the studio system and rise of the individual filmmaker impacted the films' ideologies with regard to mental illness and femininity.”
— from FRAMING FEMININITY AS INSANITY: RE PRESENTATIONS OF MENTAL ILLNESS IN WOMEN IN POST-CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD by Kelly Kretschmar
WOMEN ON THE VERGE… OF A BREAKTHROUGH!
Curt Jurgens carries Samantha Eggar after she has fallen off her horse. There is more going on than Patricia Neal’s blind eye can see.
Ann Bancroft and Peter Finch are a married couple in crisis. Having perpetually popped out a myriad of children she is yet again pregnant. Will this keep him home this time…? The Pumpkin Eater (1964).
Barbara Barrie falls in love and marries Bernie Hamilton. Once her ex-husband realizes that his child is being brought up by a black man, times get even tougher for the couple.
Alison Crawford (Patricia Neal) –“Love has to stop somewhere along the line otherwise it's almost like"¦ like committing suicide “
PSYCHE 59 (1964) –Alexander Singer (A Cold Wind in August 1961 with Lola Albright and Scott Marlowe) directs the remarkable Patricia Nealas Alison Crawford, a woman struck down with a form of psychosomatic or hysterical blindness. Alison is aware that the affliction is all in her mind since the doctors can’t find anything organically wrong with her sight. Her ‘hysterical blindness’and memory loss of the events leading up to her accident follows a fall down the stairs while she is pregnant. When she awakens she is unable to see.
Alison “My Brain won't accept the images that my eyes make.”
What is happening for Alison is that she is subconsciously blocking out the truth about her husband and her younger, coquettish sister Robin.
She is now living a very quaint life with her husband played by the austere Curd Jürgens(I love him as the devilishly urbane concert pianist Duncan Mowbray Ely in The Mephisto Waltz 1971).
Aside from her intense husband Eric, Alison’s very sexually charged sister Robin (Samantha Eggar) has now come to live with the couple after a divorce. Robin hovers very close to Eric like a carrion bird waiting to pick the bones of Alison’s troubled marriage. While Alison doesn’t have any cognitive memory of what led up to her fall, it’s obvious to us that she can sense the strong attraction between her husband and younger sister. At one time, her younger sister Robin and Eric and been involved before Alison caught and married him. Robin hasn’t stopped lusting after him. Slowly Alison’s memory comes back as the flashes and images of what she experienced right before she lost her sight literally come into view.
Singer builds the tension in the air slowly, methodically until it all comes to a headset against the skillfully contained cinematography by Walter Lassally(The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner 1962, Zorba the Greek 1964, To Kill a Clown 1972).
IMDb tidbit-Patricia Neal was offered the lead in The Pumpkin Eater, but it was not 100% confirmed she would get the role. She then opted, to her later regret, to make Psyche 59 (1964) instead, since it was an official offer.
Neal gives a restrained yet powerful performance of a woman who is trapped in self-imposed darkness by her fear of the truth…
There is very subtle theme of self-brutality that exists for each of the characters, Alison’s self-imposed sightlessness, Eric’s indignant stoicism is palpable as he walks through the story like a trapped stray dog, He is agitated by Robin’s presence because he can not resist her.
Robin, her younger sister who must have been quite young at the time of her relationship with Eric begs the question of appropriate behavior on his part. Robin is constantly asserting a seductive influence on Eric right in front of the disadvantaged Alison.
She is both a hyper-sexual narcissist and a bit self-destructive at the same time, either way, she gets off on playing the seductress torturing Eric, right in front of her sister, dark sunglasses and delicate pout. Although Alison suffers from blindness, she maintains a certain dignity that although as all three characters seem like she is, one of the trapped animals in a psycho-melodramatic forest, we get a sense that she will one day regain her freedom and spread her wings and fly away from it all truth in hand.
Alison “We must be near the marshes” Robin “We just passed it "¦ Coming to the old windmill soon"¦ it’s still turning.. nothing's changed” Alison “There's a factory there now, Don't protect me, Robby. Don't makeup windmills.”
Based on the novel by Françoise des Ligneris, with a screenplay by Julian Zimet (who wrote Horror Express 1972 and one of the best atmospheric little horror obscurities The Death Wheelers 1973 formally called Psychomaniaabout a group of British motorcycle thugs and their pretty birds who dabble in the occult. Beryl Reid and George Sanders being one of their relatives, learn the secret of immortality. But you have to die first to obtain it.)
Psyche 59 is an interesting psychological mood piece, almost post-modernly impressionistic with its stark and polished black and white photo work. And Patricia Neal who had just won an Oscar for her role as Alma Brown in Hud 1963and gave a command performance in 1957 as Marcia Jeffries in A Face in the Crowdis just exceptional as Alison who is trying to navigate the dark world surrounding her.
The film is strange and at times subtly cruel yet Neal’s character relies on our visual journey which becomes quite painful at times yet beautiful as she begins to emerge. In the film, PatriciaNeal’srelationship with Curd Jürgens has an eerie parallel to real-life marriage to writer/spy Roald Dahl, but I don’t want to get into the sensationalized tidbits of public people’s wreckage.
The Film also stars Ian Bannen as Robin’s poor befuddled boyfriend, Elspeth March, and Beatrix Lehmann plays Alison’s staunch and science fiction reading grandmother-wish I had one of those!
Some of these episodes have been revised and updated to more extensive overviews including biographies of the big-screen actresses who transitioned from Hollywood the television! May 14, 2023, Please visit the links below!
Hitchcock: “To be quite honest, I am not interested in content at all. I don’t give a damn what the film is about. I am more interested in how to handle the material to create an emotion in an audience.”
As a child of the 60s, as soon as the emblematic theme song and opening credits started to play, I would feel chills running up my spine. I remember the reruns were still broadcast late at night, I understood that each story had something foul afoot, a shadow of the uncanny loomed over my tiny shoulders, and the room filled up with a sinister quiver. Even with its smart-alecky delivery and Hitchcock’s well-placed tongue-in-cheek humor to offset some of the more gruesome aspects of the show, I couldn’t wait til 10 pm, and the idea of watching a dreadfully good mystery even for such a young impressionable mind as my own! The timpani is intermezzo between each thrilling scene to raise the goose bumps and keep the heart pounding!
Alfred Hitchcock transported his brand of cheeky suspense narratives from the big screen to the advent of the intimate living-room television experience of the 60s where tv stations were fertile with playhouse theater melodramas, stage play-esque stories featuring some of the most emotive and original character actors who’s careers were vibrant with possibility.
Using some of the most well-known mystery writers, seriously cutting-edge and unorthodox directors, and the best actors who could bring forth the most nuanced performances from the riveting scripts.
The show premiered on Thursday, September 20, 1962, from 10 pm-11 pm on CBS. It ran opposite Alcoa Premier Theater on ABC and The Andy Williams Showon NBC. From 1963 -1964 it moved to Friday nites and then from 1964-1965 it found its slot on Monday nites opposite Ben Casey on ABC.
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour ranks among the top fifty longest-running series in television history!
Robert Bloch talks about his years working with Hitch, starting out on the program in 1959. He was summoned to Shamley Productions’ office and offered an assignment to write a script based on Frank Mace’s story “The Cukoo Clock.” Bloch began adapting his own published stories alongside the other writers on staff. Bloch’s work was only dramatized by other writers when his commitment to the competing anthology show wasn’t calling for his time. That show was Boris Karloff’s Thriller. Bloch recalls producer and part of the creative team Joan Harrison as a remarkable lady who went from secretary to screenwriter to independent producer with a unique vision.
Norman Lloyd had a certain style of speech and mannerisms which might designate him an Englishman when in fact–he was born in Jersey City, New Jersey! Starting out as an unbelievably talented actor who worked several times with Hitchcock in film. Lloyd played Fry in Hitch’sSaboteur 1942,& Mr. Garmes in Spellbound 1945.Â
Lloyd had been blacklisted and hadn’t been able to work in television for four or five years.
“Around 1955 they got Hitchcock to say he'd do television which was a big thing. And in '57 the order for the half hour show was amplified, with a new series called Suspicion. I think Suspicion had many shows. Hour shows. And MCA took ten of them. New York took ten and so forth. And with the ten he was adding on they used to do 39 half hour shows a series. It was his producer Joan Harrison, is how I really learned how to be a producer. Divine. She was beautiful, exquisitely dressed, in perfect taste for the set. She was divine. She was a writer for him, and she was now his producer. And they needed someone else to come in an help her because of the quantity of the work not for the half hours, but now the hour. So she and Hitch decided, they wanted me to do it. Cause I also knew Joan very well. And so they presented my name"¦ however"¦ And this was told to me by Alan Miller who headed television at MCA, he came back, Alan Miller from the network and says ‘there seems to be a problem about Lloyd' and Hitch said, "˜I want him!' that was the end of the blacklist!" -Norman Lloyd
“Hitch was a world-figure. He was a man of great humor, had a very definite view of the world. He saw the world a certain way and we have as a result what is known as the Hitchcock film. It became the Hitchcock story, so to speak, almost like an Edgar Allen Poe story." Directors try to imitate him but they never get the mixture right. Only Hitch had the mixture of the romance, the suspense, the humor, the twists" -Norman Lloyd
Joan Harrison started out as Hitchcock’s secretary, and began reading scripts, writing synopses, and actually contributing to the scripts. She followed Hitchcock to Hollywood in 1939 working as his assistant and then was hired by MGM in 1941 as a scriptwriter. In 1943 she became a producer for Universal Studios. To her film credits, she produced some of the most compelling film noir/ mysteries. One of my personal favorites is Phantom Lady 1944, and then… The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry 1945, Nocturne 1946 They Won't Believe Me 1947, Ride the Pink Horse 1947, Eye Witness 1950, and Circle of Danger 1951.
Director Robert Siodmak, producer Joan Harrison, Ella Raines and Franchot Tone on the set of Phantom Lady 1944
The cinematographers who worked on various episodes included Stanley Cortez, Benjamin Kline, Lionel Linden, WilliamMargulies, Richard Rawlings, John L. Russell, and John F. Warren. With art direction by John J Lloyd and Martin Obzina.
The magnificent musical contributions were offered by Hitchcock veteranBernard Herrmannand a personal favorite of mine,Lyn Murray, whose stirring melodies recycle themselves in several of the most poignant episodes. The brilliant and prolific Pete Rugolo can be heard as well as Stanley Wilson.
Florence Bush was the hairstylist for the show, and she was very active during the 60s! You’ll spot her name listed in the credits on so many television programs of that era. Including Leave it to Beaver and Hitchcock’s film Psycho!
THE DIRECTORS-Â Bernard Girard, John Brahm, Alan Crosland Jr., Alf Kjellin, Norman Lloyd, Sydney Pollack, Jerry Hopper, Joseph Pevney, Leonard Horn, Jack Smight, Charles F. Haas, David Lowell Rich, James Sheldon, Herschel Daugherty, Robert Douglas, Joseph Newman, Harvey Hart, Laslo Benedek, William Whitney, Leo Penn, Harry Morgan, Philip Leacock, Lewis Teague, Arnold Laven, David Friedkin, James H. Brown, Alex March, Herbert Coleman, William Friedkin, and Alfred Hitchcock…
Writer Robert Bloch- was a contributor to many of the shows spine chilling narratives!
Hitchcock first managed to develop an anthology series that drew from his magazine and radio stories of the macabre, suspenseful, crime drama and cheeky thriller, often lensed with a noir style. This show was of course Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Eventually in order to compete with the growing market of 50-minute teleplays, like Playhouse 90, Boris Karloff’s Thriller, The Twilight Zone etc, Hitchcock changed his format to meet an hour’s worth of programming, still employing Hitch’s classic introductory droll prologue. And where Karloff’s Thriller painted the stories with a more macabre brush stroke, Hitchcock’s anthology show presented these criminal acts in two parts in a most ironic and irreverent manner…
According to John McCarty, Hitchcock made the shift from half hour show to an hour format without much issue. “When we had a half-hour show, we could do short stories…{…} Now, in an hour, we have to go to novels.”His staff read through thousands of crime novels to find the right script. Yet frequently it became necessary to utilize a short story and expand it, in order to fill out the hour.
While Boris Karloff’s Thriller was pervasive with its stories of the macabre and the uncanny, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone with its more sociological morality with a heavy science fiction spin, Alfred Hitchcock maintained an ironic lens on very suspense/crime-oriented material that kept the focus on human nature as perilous. He always provided the same sort of ‘twist’ at the end as in its pithy precedent Alfred Hitchcock Presents!
While Alfred Hitchcock Presents might have provided a shorter more enlivened ride to the turn of the plot because it had to deliver the lightning in a more synoptic amount of time, the hour format allowed for more psychological background, with room to build the character study of the players involved.
Alfred Hitchcock is still the larger-than-life, Aesopsian voice of modern crime-infused with foul deeds springing from human nature and the darker sides of the mortal mind and how far it can reach when working under a compulsion, obsession or pathology. His vision created some of the most compelling little dramas for a ’60s audience to digest, still relevant after all these years.
Hitchcock’s brand of humor was dry and witty, ironic and fablist. Drawing from some of the finest mystery writers of the day, his little tour-de-force dramatizations showcased some of the best examples of theatre and acting even on the small screen. His first show which gave us a 25-minute sequence that the series featured premiered on October 2, 1955, after Alfred Hitchcock had been directing mesmerizing films for over three decades!
“GOOD EVENING…..”
The iconic opening title sequence for the show has become unforgettably imposed in our psyches and in popular culture, as the simplistic yet mirthful intro possesses the camera fading upon an easily recognizable caricature of Hitchcock’s porcine yet endearing profile. Set against one of the most memorable musical themes written by Charles Gounod’s– the piece is called Funeral March of a Marionette. A type of adult nursery song that tickles the funny bone’s comparable curious bone… the one that gets triggered when there’s a marvelous mystery afoot! The theme– suggested by Hitchcock’s musical collaborator, the brilliant Bernard Hermann.
As if it couldn’t get any more smashingly wicked and alluring, Hitchcock himself takes shape behind the silhouette from the right of screen, then in grand theatrical style walks center stage to eclipse the drawing. He commences with his nightly, “Good evening…” and we are in for an irresistibly gripping treat!
The opening set of each episode, Hitchcock is given props against an empty stage. At times he himself becomes the prop, or main focal point where he imparts either sage elucidation, comical warning or sardonic advice. A witty prelude to the evening’s tale or just a frivolous bit of shenanigans to put one in the mood for the evening’s program. As he drolly introduces the night’s story, his monologues were conceived of by James B Allardice. Many of his missives took shots at the sponsors, spoofing the popular American fixation on commercials and commercialism.
Always at the end of the show, Hitchcock would re-appear to lead the audience out of the evening’s events. To either enlighten them on the aftermath of a story, the scenes they did not see, and to reassure us that the criminals featured did get their comeuppance. To tie up any loose ends within the question of morality’s swift hand.
Originally 25 minutes per episode, the series was expanded to 50 minutes in 1962. The show was then renamed The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Hitchcock directed 17 of the 268 filmed episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Hitchcock did direct one of the hour long episodes called “I Saw the Whole Thing” starring John Forsyth who is accused of hit and run, while several witnesses swear they saw him leave the scene of the accident.
Here is how the show was syndicated back in the 60s:
Sunday at 9:30-10 p.m. on CBS: October 2, 1955"”September 1960
Tuesday at 8:30-9 p.m. on NBC: September 1960"”September 1962
Thursday at 10-11 p.m. on CBS: September"”December 1962
Friday at 9:30-10:30 p.m.on CBS: January"” September 1963
Friday at 10-11 p.m. on CBS: September 1963"”September 1964
Monday at 10-11 p.m. on NBC: October 1964"”September 1965
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, lasted three seasons from September 1962 to June 1965, There were 93 episodes in total. Alfred Hitchcock Presents had a total of 268 episodes.
Hitchcock directed two episodes of Presents that were nominated for Emmy Awards–“The Case of Mr. Pelham (1955) and one of the most popular stories with it’s fabulous dark humor, “Lamb to the Slaughter” (1958) starring Barbara Bel Geddes.
The episode that won an Emmy Award was one of my particular favorites as it is both poignant and eerie, “The Glass Eye” (1957) starring Jessica Tandy, Tom Conway and Billy Barty.Robert Stevens won for his direction.
Cinematographer John L. Russell’s incredible shots of Jessica Tandy in The Glass Eye
“An Unlocked Window” (1965) is one of the most starkly intense and transgressive in nature of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and won an Edgar Award for James Bridges writing in 1966. The episode stars Dana Wynter and Louise Latham, both wonderful unsung actresses!
Dana Wynter and T.C. Jones in An Unlocked Window–nurses in peril oh my!Louise Latham in An Unlocked Window
THE ACTRESSES–Â Martha Hyer, Vera Miles, Patricia Breslin, Angie Dickinson, Carol Lynley, Carmen Phillips, Isobel Elsom, Charity Grace, Susan Oliver, Kathleen Nolan, Peggy McCay, Adele Mara, Lola Albright, Dee Hartford, Gena Rowlands, Jayne Mansfield, Dina Merrill, Patricia Collinge, Jan Sterling, Elizabeth Allen, Anne Francis, Ruth Roman, Gladys Cooper, Inger Stevens, Zohra Lampert, Diana Hyland, Joan Fontaine, Irene Tedrow, Sarah Marshall, Nancy Kelly, Betty Field, Katherine Squire, Martine Bartlett, Phyllis Thaxter, Natalie Trundy, Linda Christian, Laraine Day, Anna Lee, Lois Nettleton, Madlyn Rhue, Patricia Donahue, Diana Dors, Claire Griswold, Mary LaRoche, Virginia Gregg, Anne Baxter, Jacqueline Scott, Sondra Blake, Ruth McDevitt, Katharine Ross, Patricia Barry, Jane Withers, Joyce Jameson, Teresa Wright, Linda Lawson, Jean Hale, Mildred Dunnock, Felicia Farr, Kim Hunter, Collin Wilcox, Jane Darwell, Jocelyn Brando, Joan Hackett, Gloria Swanson, Lynn Loring, Pat Crowley, Juanita Moore, Naomi Stevens, Marjorie Bennett, Jessica Walter, Gia Scala, Joanna Moore, Kathie Browne, Ethel Griffies, Sharon Farrell, Nancy Kovack, Barbara Barrie, Doris Lloyd, Lillian Gish, Maggie McNamara, Josie Lloyd, Tisha Sterling, Ann Sothern, Patricia Medina, Elsa Lanchester, Jeannette Nolan, Ellen Corby, Julie London, Margaret Leighton, Lilia Skala, Olive Deering, Kathryn Hays, Dana Wynter, Louise Latham, Sally Kellerman, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Fay Bainter, Jane Wyatt, June Lockhart, Colleen Dewhurst…
MY SELECTED EPISODES THAT FEATURE THE HITCHCOCK LADIES OF THE EVENING!….
Vera Miles as Daphne and devilishly handsome Jeff Hunter in Don’t Look Behind YouFear grips the campus and Vera Miles… Abraham Sofaer watches Daphne go out into the dangerous night woods
Actors Ed Nelson and Arnold Moss listen to the recordings sent by the plagued Warren Barrow. Is he a murderer? Angie Dickinson is the seductress and James Mason the tormented man
This episode is directed by actor turned director Alf Kjellin, based on the teleplay by Richard Levinson andWilliam Link of Columbo! from a story by John Bingham.
James Mason plays mystery writer Warren Barrow a pseudonym he uses to contact his publisher with a series of tape recordings describing what is either the outline for his latest murder mystery or the details of an actual murder he himself is planning to commit. Barrow describes a relationship with an alluring woman named Janet West (the sexyAngie Dickinson) who wants Warren to kill her husband so they can be together. Ed Nelsonplays another writer Tom Keller whom the publisher Victor Hartman (Arnold Moss) asks to review the tapes with him in order to help determine whether the impending murder is real or fictional. Angie Dickinson is so perfect as Janet West, the femme fatale Warren Barrow can’t resist.
Janet West- "You know there's one part of the Bible I know by heart. I saw unto the sun, that the race is not too swift nor the battle too strong, but time and chance happen to them all. Means you can be as clever as you like but you gotta have luck. You gotta work for it and grab it when it comes. I was very poor when I was young. Very poor"¦”
“Oh sister not tears again… you’ve cried a whole river these past weeks”-Sister Jem
Directed by Norman Lloyd, story and teleplay by mystery writer Henry Slesar (Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, Two on a Guillotine 1965, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. 1966, Batman 1966, Run For Your Life ’66-67 Circle of Fear 1972, McMillan & Wife 1974, Tales of the Unexpected 1981-1984) co-starring Clu Gulager  Isobel Elsom Carmine Phillips, Charity Grace.
Carol Lynley is Sister Pamela who on the eve of taking her final vows has a crisis of faith. Sister Pamela fears that she might just be hiding from the world. The Reverend Mother (Isobel Elsom) sends Pamela and Sister Jem (Charity Grace) on a mission to collect a valuable statue of Saint Francis that is being donated to the convent by reformed gangster William Downey (R.G. Armstrong).
On the way back to the convent, the lovely young novice is fooled by slick hoodlum/loser Jimmy Bresson (Clu Galager who is terrific at being smarmy) who stalks train stations stealing bags. Pamela is filled with guilt having let down her dying mentor Sister Lydia (Sara Taft) She leaves the order and submerges herself in the sleazy jungle where Jimmy works and socializes in order to find the statue and redeem herself. Lynley is another underrated actress who delivers an extremely poignant performance as a girl at the crossroads of her life. She has an endearing innocent beauty that is genuine and charismatic.
Sister Pamela-“Sorry Sister Jem, I have only myself to blame.”
Sister Jem-“You’re not thinking of… what we spoke of the other day?”
Sister Pamela-“I haven’t been thinking of anything Sister. I’ve tried not to think.”
Sister Jem-“Have you prayed?”
Sister Pamela-“Sister… I’ve prayed for humility and obedience. But there was no answer in my heart Sister Jem… only silence!
Dense browed Dean Stockwell plays research chemist David Kelsey who is hopelessly in love and obsessively fixated on Annabel (the wonderfulSusan Oliver). But Annabel is married Gerald Delaney (Hank Brandt) Kelsey assumes a phony identity William Newmaster and pursues Annabel with a blind devotion that is downright creepy. He purchases a beautiful home that he has filled like a shrine to his great love, a place tucked away in the country where they can sojourn in their own private world. Trouble is Annabel isn’t in on the romance. But David isn’t taking no for an answer. Added to the web of obsessive love is the fact that Linda Brennan (Kathleen Nolan) is as fixated on David as he is on Annabel. What a mess!
Directed by Joseph PevneyteleplayWilliam D Gordonand Alfred Hayesbased on a story by V.S.Pritchett as published in The New Yorker and co-starring Peter Falk in one of his most impressive roles as the psychotic revivalist Robert Evans.
Falk plays a fire and brimstone fanatic who yearns for his own church and will kill in order to achieve his life’s dream. First he woos Patricia Collinge(The Little Foxes 1941, Shadow of a Doubt 1943, The Nuns Story 1959)Â as the wealthy Naomi Freshwater, murdering her one night in order to take over her large house he claims she promised to him in order to help him build his tabernacle. The scene is quite disturbing and fierce. a well done scene that predates many psycho-sexual narratives to follow.
When her niece, the world traveling Laura (Dina Merrill) comes to get her aunts things in order, Robert begins to romance her with the same bombastic fervor as he did her aunt Naomi. As Robert discloses his past to Laura, she discovers that he might have killed his first wife as well and that he has visions of his calling to be a great evangelist. Evans is a deranged ego-maniacal woman hater who mistakes his visions of glory for the need to be in control!
Robbie-“Sure the whole world is filled with problems Miss Naomi. We’ve all got to puzzle over what we’re supposed to think. None of us. There’s nobody that’s gotta puzzle over what we’re supposed to do!”
Naomi-“Oh that’s so clear to me Robbie, you know what to do and you do it… I feel so free! No more aches and pains.”
Robert- "Burn it… burn it. Take your whole past and burn it out there in that fire pit. Start a new life with me" Laura- "I don't have your faith in new lives Robert." Robert-"But I told you once… I've got the faith."
Mrs Raydon (Gladys Cooper) " I think he's dead you've always wanted this to happen. You've done this to him. You've killed him!”
Directed by Jack Smightwith a teleplay by Henry Slesar, based on the story byMary Belloc Lowndes who wrote the novelette The Lodger, which was the inspiration for Hitchcock’s first suspense film in 1927 and of course the version with Jack Palance in 1953 called The Man in the Attic.Â
One of my favorite episodes due to the presence of Ann Francisas Eve Raydon and Ruth Roman as her companion Adelaide ‘Addie’ Strain. Eve is framed as a jezebel by her nasty vicious old mother in law.The storyline has a definite undertone of lesbian desire, akin to Lillian Hellman’sA Children’s Hour. Eve is married to a stuffed shirt named Howard ( Gene Lyons–the commissioner -Ironside) who resents Addie’s presence and is still tied to his mommy’s (the great Gladys Cooper Rebecca 1940, Now, Voyager 1942, The Song of Bernadette 1943) apron strings. Howard fires Addie who has been hanging around Eve in the position as ‘maid’ who also happens to have a little boy name Gilly who breaks a valuable antique sending Howard into a rage and prompting him to fire her. Addie who is desperate to stay with her mistress, poisons Howard’s night time glass of milk by spiking it with some K9 liniment. But Eve is accused of the murder instead and her intolerable mother-in-law is all too happy to see her pay for the crime. co-starring Michael Strong as defense attorney Malloy, Stephen Dunn as Jack Wentworth, Tim O’Connor as Prosecutor Halstead.
Addy talks to Eve about Howard finally firing her-“He means it this time… things could have been so different!”
Addy Strain to Molloy- "I can't believe that all this is happening it's all that woman's fault. That awful old woman"¦ Mrs Raydon. She hates Eve. She's always hated her. She hates Eve just because she married her son. That's why she accused Eve of killing him.”
Gertrude Flynn as Ethel Chesterman “I heard you David. You’re going to marry the maid. At least this afternoon you’re going to marry the maid. My wedding present to you will be my absence.”
Marie-“Your eyes shine in the dark David. I think you are part Cat”. David –“A tiger a leopard ready to pounce.”Marie-“I'm going to have to get a wonderful cage to put you in.” David-“Nobody is going to put me in a cage!! Marie-“Stop David you’re hurting me…”
Directed by Alf Kjellin, with a teleplay by writer/director James Bridges (When Michael Calls 1972, The China Syndrome 1979) based on a story by Nicholas Blake.
Zohra Lampertplays Marie a naÃve french maid who runs off with the wealthy son David (Robert Redford) who is actually a compulsive cat burgler/jewel thief. David’s wealthy mother throws a few coins at them to buy a toaster, goes to Europe and changes the locks on the door. And so for money David runs to his partner in crime Karl.And so begins a queer struggle with David’s odd accomplice, a flamboyant wig designer Karl Gault played to the hilt by Barry Morse.
David cannot change the way he is, although he is truly in love with Marie he only knows how to steal and scheme. Karl falls in love with Marie creating the immortal triangle. In order to get his rival out of the way, Karl creates an elaborate ruse in order to trap David in a robbery gone wrong and have him arrested for the murder of a guard. Co-starring Gertrude Flynn as David’s mother Ethel Chesterman.
Marie-“Your eyes shine in the dark David… I think you are part cat.”
John-"Alice have you ever read any fairy tales? There's one about a princess. She was very beautiful. She lived in a beautiful castle. Had a beautiful garden. But her fairy godmother warned her not to do one thing. There was a particular flower in that garden that she wasn't to pick. If she did"¦ she'd lose everything. Her beauty, her castle"¦ everything. Alice– "I don't get the point”. John –"Alice princess"¦ don't touch that flower please” Alice- "oh please don't be silly they only write fairy stories to keep children out of mischief.”
Directed by Jack Smight with a teleplay by Alfred Hayes and a story by Rebecca West.The Paragon allows screen legend Joan Fontaine to give what I feel is perhaps one of the most extraordinary performances of her career. As the infuriating perfectionist who meddles in everyone’s lives Alice Pemberton married to the beaten down John Pemberton played by the always wonderful Gary Merrill.
John loves his wife but is beginning to feel the strain from years of Alice’s intruding and dictating moral codes and her ideals to anyone within reach even the maid Ethel played with fabulous scorn byIrene Tedrow. All her friends and relatives cringe at the sight of Alice, for they know she will inject some sort of righteous advice and admonition. Alice is like a child who cannot see the damage she has done, or how she hurts the people around her. She believes that she is helping to improve themselves, though she alienates herself instead. John urges with a tender yet firm clue that she must stop her behavior before it’s too late. Even relating a fairy tale to her with a warning… Alice is very much like a character in a fable who does not heed the warnings or the signs that she is tempting the shadows to converge upon her!
Vera-"Michael and I are leaving now Mrs Henderson, I'm taking him home with me. Oh I am sorry for you because I think in your own way, you've grown really fond of my baby. But you see Michael is my child. I've known that from the very beginning"¦.”
Directed by Jack Smight with a teleplay by William D Gordon based on a story by Celia Fremlin.
Louise (Gena Rowlands) is a busy mother of two precocious young girls Jennifer Gillespie (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? young Jane) and a small infant boy. She rents the room upstairs to the mysterious Vera Bradley (Nancy Kelly) who is supposedly working on her thesis paper, but in fact has her eyes on Louise’s baby boy. She secrets him off each day to another room she is renting, that she has decorated for the little guy. She also calls him Michael. The child looks more like Vera as he has dark curly hair and both Louise and her husband are blonde. Is Vera there to steal the boy and claim him as her own? This is an extremely taut and well acted little story. The performances by both Kelly and Rowlands are stellar. The interplay between the two women brought me to tears, it was so poignantly played without being melodramatic or contrived. A truly heart wrenching experience, especially for fans of these fine actresses as well as one of the most effectively dramatic of all the episodes. Also watch for an appearance by the wonderful Juanita Moore as Mrs. McFarland and Joyce Van Patten as best friend Grace.
Dean Jagger tries to quiet Jennifer West after he tries to steal more than a kiss from the town hussy Alice.Betty Field plays George’s flakey nagging wife.Slamming the fridge door and shuffling her feet. Jenny confronts George’s peculiar behavior on the jury Jenny – "Would the star juror care to give me some justification for his behavior? George- “What behavior?” Jenny-" What behavior! The behavior that has brought down ridicule and scandal over our heads!" George-" What you talkin' bout Jenny? Jenny- "Have you gone deaf and blind?… Unplug your ears… open your eyes! George Davies the most respected highly thought-of citizen in this town protecting this infidel, this murderer… No wonder you get indigestion."
Although this is very much Dean Jagger’svehicle, Betty Fieldwho is a wonderful actress stands out as the blowsy, whiney wife to George Davies, who becomes so aroused by the town hussy Alice (Jennifer West) while out at the lake during a picnic. When she rebuffs his advances he strangles her and allows her boyfriend JJ Fenton (Will Hutchins) to take the rap for her murder. JJ has been known to knock Alice around, and soon the town is out for his blood. But the guilt of what he has done drives George to try and defend JJ to exasperating results. This is a quirky dark comedic episode that just seems to want to be kind to George. The show also co-stars Martine Bartlett as Flossie and the wonderful Crahan Denton as Sheriff Walter Watson who just won’t take George’s confessions seriously.
Nora’s inner monologue- “In heaven's name Jean, don't leave us here alone.”
Directed by Robert Douglas with a teleplay by William D. Gordon & Charles Beaumont based on a story by Hilda Lawrence.
Michael Rennie plays a con man Ralph Manson who marries Nora, (Phyllis Thaxter) for her money. When he screws up an elaborate scheme to embezzle funds from the bank, trying to pin it on her eldest son, he accidentally kills the boy. While trying to make it look like the young man hangs himself, Nora stumbles into this horrific deed she winds up taking a fall down the stairs that paralyzes her and leaves her in an apparent catatonic state. Which is good for Ralph, as he needs this witness to be silent. But Nora, might not stay silent for long… The well-crafted suspense yarn utilizes Nora’s inner monologue to help guide us through the tense narrative cues. This is such a tautly played suspense piece as Nora is conscious of her husband’s murderous nature, and his desperation to keep Nora quiet. It’s only a matter of time before he finds of way of making it look like she dies of natural causes. Enter the pretty Natalie Trundy as her attending nurse Jean Dekker who senses something is wrong and stays close by! This one’s a nail-biter!
Dianne-"Oh Nanny it's wrong, I didn't think he'd blame you" Nanny-"The important thing is that he isn't blaming you"Â Dianne–Â "Oh I'm letting you be hurt and I can't do that.. I didn't think he'd react this way. Nanny I"m going to tell him the truth” Nanny-"What are ya going to tell him. That you were with the baby holding a drink!"Â Dianne-“But you're not the guilty one, he mustn't blame you Nanny-“Dear in the past when things went badly you know what happened. You don't want that now You promised him that you'd give it up. Oh, when the baby was here it was better"¦ but better's not what you promised!”Lois Nettleton as Dianne and Doris Lloyd as Nurse Andrina Gibbs
Consuela- "She feels guilty, she feels responsible for the baby's death. and the drinking helps her to forget. so we'll see that she continues to drink. And when the bottle is all gone. We'll get more Vodka. Or whiskey or whatever she likes. She can hide it from Victor for a while I suppose. But he will find out and then he'll be terribly hurt. and disappointed in her. He'll need help and sympathy from someone else!"
Directed by Jack Smight with a teleplay by Alec Coppel and William D. Gordon, based on a story by William D. Gordon.
Lois Nettleton plays Dianne Castillejo who adopts a little boy, who drowns in their swimming pool while she is sitting out in the sun with a cocktail. Dianne is a recovering alcoholic and there is a question as to whether she was intoxicated when the tragic accident occurred. Dianne is visited by a mysterious woman, (Madlyn Rhue)Â Consuela Sandino who claims to be the little boy’s birth mother. She proceeds to blackmail Dianne about the circumstances of the little boy’s death. She convinces Dianne to allow to her stay in the house as a guest being an old-school friend. Here she plans on helping Dianne submerge herself in booze so she’ll pay out loads of money and eventually have to be taken away to a sanatorium where she can then work on the handsome (Anthony George) Victor. Co-starringDoris Lloyd as Nanny.Â
John Gavin as Dr. Don Reed and Tom Skerritt as friend Dr. Frank Farmer… Don is just smitten.Scott Brady as Nickie’s stands by her boyfriend BillNickie-singing Just One of Those Things-"So goodbye dear and amen"¦ Bill- “Where you going?" Nickie-“Maybe California. You know I came back just to have a look at you. You got really weak eyes Bill. Here's hoping we meet now and then.” Bill- "But you haven't asked me to come along “Nickie-“Well I came here thinking I'd have to, but I don't need you anymore the boomerang's broken baby' Bill-"You wanna bet!" Nickie “Uhuh, It was great fun, but it was just one of those things.”
Directed by Bernard Girard with a teleplay by James Bridges and a story by Henry Kane.
Doctor Don Reed (John Gavin) falls head over heels for a sexy nightclub singer, the slinky Nickie Carole,(Diana Dors) who is just no good. Both his father and Nickie’s own band leader boyfriend try to warn Don. Nickie accepts Don’s proposal of marriage, and then his father drops dead after hearing the news. The newlyweds use the inheritance money to take a honeymoon cruise, in which Don stumbles upon his bride getting all snuggly with another passenger. In a rage, Don causes the man to fall overboard. Of course, Nickie urges Don to keep his mouth shut. And he is now a murderer. Soon after Nickie grows tired of Don, as her old lover Bill warned would happen, and this hard-edged old boyfriend (Scott Brady) Bill Floyd of the Bill Floyd Trio shows up in the picture again… What will happen to this dangerous triangle of lust and obsession…
Natalie-"I understand, they're patients aren't they? Permissive therapy?” Dr. Fennick-“Yes that's it exactly. A new method, an experiment. I wanted to prove that my patients would act normally if treated like normal human beings."
Sarah-“Oh I feel fine doctor just fine. I always feel fine talking to you.”  Dr. Fennick-“That's what I'm here for' Sarah-“Yes I know but… what am I here for? Beatrice Kay as Sarah Sanders the aging film star.inmates Virginia Gregg as Miss Gibson and Ronald Long as The MajorThe real doctors are locked up in the attic!the deranged Ray Milland as Dr. Fennick who menaces Natalie (Claire Griswold ) in Home Away from Home- The Alfred Hitchcock Hour
Virginia Gregg as Miss Gibson-“The doctors told everyone about you. I know they’re just CRAZY to meet you!!!”
Directed by Herschel Daugherty with a teleplay based on his story by Robert Bloch from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.
This is one of those great ‘the inmates have taken over the Asylum’ narratives starring Ray Milland. Milland plays Dr. Fenwick a mentally disturbed doctor who believes in role-playing as a therapeutic means to unlocking a patient’s identity crisis and finding happiness. After he kills the director of the sanitarium, he assumes his identity! of course. He locks away the staff in the attic and allows the inmates to pick roles that would suit their desires. Things are going pretty well until the director’s niece Claire shows up to visit her uncle. At least she has never seen her uncle before so she quickly assumes that Milland is who he says he is. Unfortunately, Claire discovers the dead body of her real uncle and urges Fennick to call the police. Uh oh! What mayhem will ensue.
There are great little parts by Virginia Gregg as Miss Gibson roleplaying the nurse, Connie Gilchrist as Martha, Mary La Roche as Ruth… and Beatrice Kay as Sarah Sanders!
That’s actor Harry Townes lying dead under that shiny star pillow…
Janice referring to Larry (George Segal) –“He’s the kind of man who could make you do anything… anything at all…”
This episode is directed by Joseph Pevney with a teleplay by Mann Rubin
George Segal plays the young ambitious actor who wins over casting agent Anne Baxteras Janice Brandt. Janice falls deeply in love with Larry the cocky and short-tempered actor with whom she gets a screen test in Hollywood and turns him into an upcoming male lead.
She has given up everything for this strong-willed actor, including her career, and even sacrificed her marriage.
While back in New York, Janice calls Larry desperately telling him that her ex-husband Ed (Harry Townes) has tracked her down completely drunk and is now unconscious on the floor. Larry calming coaches Janice into finishing off the job by smothering him with a pillow, so she can finally be free and join him in Hollywood… But is that all there is to it?
Sheriff Will- "You can't think of anyone at all who might have had a grudge against Frenchie?” Katherine Squire as Mrs. La Font- "Only one person Will, Myself. He was my son, I loved him "¦ there was no harm in him he never hurt anyone but he was lazy. He would not accept responsibility. That's why he wanted me at the restaurant so I could do all the work of running it, while he'd play Frenchie La Font for the public. I used to get so angry with him. So angry… (crying)The creepy custodian of the library terrorized poor Susan with his tales of working the slaughterhouses
In Northfield, a rural community in northern California a teenage boy Tommy Cooley is found brutally murdered. His father R.G. Armstrong, who is a religious fanatic goes on a mission to avenge his boy’s murder. There is only one piece of evidence, a broken-off part of the car’s headlight found a the murder scene. First, believing that he is getting signs from God, he murders Frenchie La Font (Dennis Patrick) the person who owned the car. Then the car falls into the hands of an elderly librarian who considered purchasing the car and might have had access to it. The residents of Northfield become terrorized by the events and demand that (Dick York) Sheriff Will Pearce do something about it. Jacqueline Scott who plays Susan March a librarian and the Sheriff’s girlfriend is now the one who wound up with La Font’s car. Cooley now suspects her. He is on a mission from the lord to avenge his son’s death. Will Susan be next? Co-stars Katherine Squire as Mrs.La Font who turns out a tremendous performance as the mother of a good-for-nothing son who winds up being the victim of Cooley’s wrath.
Carol-“You don't talk much do you?” Terry-“I guess not” Carol –“Is the rest of your family like that? Quiet I mean? Terry- I don't know. I don't even know who they were. I was raised in a county home” Carol- “You mean like an Orphanage? Terry “Now what else could it mean? I'm sorry maybe we oughta start back, it's a long way” Carol -“We can take the subway Terry –“I wanna walk-you wanna take the subway go ahead if that's the way you feel about it “Carol-“Why did you come with me?” Terry– “I didn't mean it like that. It's just that it's the rush hour now"¦. Look I gotta thing about being closed up in places is all.” Carol- “Claustrophobia?” Terry- “Yeah” Carol- “So does Mr. Calucci"¦ He was a prisoner of war” Terry– “I was a prisoner once… No war though.” Carol –“You mean the home.” “Terry- “Home reformatory, state prison, take your pick. Anything else you'd like to know? Carol– “Some date huh?” Terry-Bet you don't have any boyfriends like me.” Carol-“ I don't have any boyfriends”Terry– “Come on” Carol- “I haven't dated since high school.” Terry- “Girl like you why not? Carol-“What do you know about me?” Terry– “I could learn.”
Three paroled ex-convicts stage a heist but inadvertently unleash radioactive cobalt on a small urban city street. Actors Chris Robinson,Norman Fell, and James Gregorywho are now garage mechanics decide to rob the payroll office. When they can’t crack open the safe, they take it to their garage, which is adjoined to the little shop next store run by Carol.
Terry who is acutely claustrophobic (Chris Robinson) begins a romance with Carol, as he struggles between self-preservation and his sense of humanity and love for this beautiful young woman. Katherine Rossis a particularly seductive pixie in this episode. Ross’s presence brings an element of realism and humanist equilibrium to the very nihilist tone of the story.
Lana/Peaches-"You and Snakebite are among the very few things that fail me in that respect.”
Directed by Robert Stevens with a teleplay byWilliam Fayand a story by Robert Arthur.
This is one of the cheeky mystery installments of the show, and Patricia Barryis just superb as the brassy dame with a secret past who’s looking out for number one. The night she wins the Oscar, movie star Lana Layne is visited by her old ex-convict husband George (Stubby Kaye), who, she thought had died in a prison fight. Rosemary ‘Peaches’ Cassidy had married the bum when she was only seventeen and didn’t know any better. But George has plans of letting Lana remain his wife since she’s so successful and wealthy, and if they did get divorced she’d owe him half of anything that was hers. She wants to marry handsome manager Harry Lawrence (Robert Culp). Lana clocks George on the head and accidentally kills him. Now Lana and Harry must try to hide the body while finding a place to have their honeymoon, assailed by gossip columnist Baila French (Alice Pearce- Bewitched’s neurotic neighbor Gladys Kravitz). It’s a comedy of errors!
Rosie "You've had a narrow escape. Well, life's given you another chance. And you should take it"¦ You should free yourself. When something's over it's over” The always delightful Joyce Jameson as Rosie Feather the ‘dancer’
Directed by Alf Kjellin story and teleplay by Robert Gould
Withers plays Edith Swinney the consummate nagging harpy who dominates her husband Gerald’s (Bob Newhart) mundane life. Gerald concocts a very elaborate plan to drive Edith mad using paranoia as he digs a grave-like hole for a fish tank, leaving empty boxes of rat poison around the kitchen. Edith is so convinced that Gerald is out to kill her that she shares her fears with her friends and neighbors. Gerald purchases a pair of rats from a pet shop and plants them in the kitchen. She falls for the bait and puts rat poisoning in his cocoa making it look like murder made to look like suicide. She calls the police the next morning, but they find a very alive Gerald. Edith is arrested for attempted murder… but is that the end of the story. Joyce Jameson stars as dancer Rosie Feather, always fabulous, perhaps playing the featherbrained blonde bombshell –but always endearing!
Marion Brown tells her husband- “You have been a bigamist 4 times. Now you can stay alive with me or be dead away from me!”
Directed by Joseph Newman with a teleplay by Arthur Ross and a story by Kenneth Fearing.
Dan Duryeais a gambler and a proud bigamist name Raymond Brown. He truly loves his wife… I mean all four of them. But something is going quite wrong. One by one his wealthy meal tickets are all turning up dead. At first, it appears that they are suicides. But the police start to suspect Brown of murder. Marion, (Teresa Wright) has been the long-time dutiful wife who has waited and suffered through heartache to finally have her philandering husband all to herself. Could she be the one who is bumping off all of Ray’s wives? Wright takes a much different approach from the gentle farm wife Stella and shows herself off to be quite resourceful when holding onto a cheating husband!
Grace Renford- “All men are rotten aren't they Minnie, as soon as they're interested in me they're no good!
Aunt Minnie-“If he’s a doctor at all he should be giving out pills not talking to dead people!”
Directed by Alf Kjellin with a teleplay by Alfred Hayes and William Gordon. Story by Miriam Allen de Ford.
Grace Renford (the haunting Diana Hyland) plays a wealthy and beautiful socialite who longs to meet the man of her dreams. Someone who will love her for who she is and not the money and status that is her legacy. The lonely Grace answers an ad in a spiritualist magazine where she begins to correspond with a young man named Keith Holloway (Jeremy Slate).
He is an engineer who does his work in Bolivia, or so he says. When he comes to the States to meet Grace for the first time, she has rented a modest apartment and pretends that she is just an ordinary working-class girl. Minnie (Mildred Dunnock) acts as guardian to the lost waif and knows something isn’t quite right with this man. But when Grace and Keith get engaged, she tells him about her true identity. Keith insists that he is not interested in her money and that he has his own business ventures in Bolivia. Keith returns to South America, planning on having Grace join him soon. But Grace gets a telegram saying that he has been killed in a mining accident.
Sent into the world of spreading grief, Grace turns to spiritualism and mysticism to find a way to contact her lost love. Thus appears Dr.Shankara (Abraham Sofaer) who can connect Grace with her dead love. Wanting to shed her worldly goods, she gives away her possessions to the Dr and his temple. But Minnie suspects that Keith is very much alive and that a scam has been going on with the doctor for years. Minnie tries to intervene with disastrous results!
Roy- "A string of men friends all the time Mrs. Fowler, a string of men friends, a string of men friends all the time ssh don't tell anybody Roy this is your Uncle Joe from Kokomo Roy, why don't you go outside in the yard for a little Roy huh!"¦ {"¦} There's a smell of death around women like you. Death and corruption. You corrupt people the way you go on all the time. So you better cut it out you understand that" Marcia Fowler-"Get away from me you're out of your mind. Nobody would blame me now if I shot you now with your filthy phone calls, breaking in here like this. How exciting am I now with a gun pointing at you?”
Felicia Farr plays the sexy Marcia Fowler who accuses the neighborhood thug Roy Bullock (Bruce Dern) of not only playing peeping tom but sexually harassing her. Roy is a tightly wound teen filled with angst and rage and could possibly be a psychopath while we’re at it. He denies it when confronted by Marcia’s husband. (David White)
Marcia does appear to be self-absorbed, neglecting to pay enough attention to her stepson. But when the obscene phone calls begin, Marcia convinces her hubby to confront Roy about it, who tells him she’s just looking for attention. When Roy Fowler goes away on a business trip he challenges Marcia calling her a tease and a lousy wife and mother, the way his own mother had failed. Okay, so the angry boy has mother issues. Things get out of hand when Marcia begins to feel threatened and takes out a gun. But is everything as it seems!
Kim Hunter is stunning as a ruthless woman who has no conscience and borders on the sociopathic. At the end of WWII, Adelaide exploits the grief and loss of surviving members of the family to act as a spiritual medium. She earns a nice living by taking money from these grieving people, claiming to ease their suffering by connecting them with their lost loved ones. Gene Lyons plays Adelaide’s bunko buddy Robert who helps set up the patsies for the taking.
The is nothing more heinous than bilking grieving families of soldiers killed in battle out of their money pretending that she can communicate with them.
Robert (Gene Lyons)-Â "I taught you everything there is to know about this racket.." Adelaide "Profession Robert.” Robert – "That's what you'd like to pretend, but it is a racket, a swindle a con game as any I ever did." Adelaide-" I only obtain the more crude aspects of the profession from you." Robert-"Everything and I want you to stop pushing me around." Adelaide-"You taught me a series of Halloween tricks. Carnival mumbo jumbo… I made it pay." Robert –“They’re still carny tricks.” Adelaide-“Science!” Robert- ‘And you took them from me…”
Directed by Joseph Newman with a teleplay by James Bridges and a story byMargaret Millar (Rose’s Last Summer-Boris Karloff’s Thriller starring Mary Astor).
Joan Hackett, (The Group 1966) a very underrated actress of the 60s & 70s plays Helen Clarvoe a woman who is being tormented by phone calls from a menacing woman named Dorothy who is threatening her life. Kevin McCarthyis lawyer Paul Blackshear who agrees to investigate and track the maniacal Dorothy down. The crazy woman blames Helen for the break up of her wedding engagement. Paul finds a photographer for whom Dorothy recently posed, though she has destroyed any negatives and photos of herself. Then the photographer is murdered! While in the midst of his investigation, Paul receives a frantic call from Helen that Dorothy has broken into her apartment and is holding her at gunpoint!
Directed by Robert Douglas with a teleplay by Henry Slesar and Joel Murcott. Story by Slesar.
When Dave Snowden (James MacArthur) and his new bride Bonnie (the lovely and underrated Lynn Loring) visit the estate owned by Bonnie’s late father, Dave finds a mysterious locked door and surmises that there must be something of value hidden there. Bonnie tells her mother (Gloria Swanson) that they’ve just been married, who instantly assumes that Dave is after her inheritance. Mrs.Daniels tries to give the young man money to go away and annul the marriage. Dave is hungry for money and gets Bonnie to go along with a plan for her to fake a suicide attempt by overdosing on sleeping pills. This they hope will get the mother’s sympathy. Things go badly when a childhood illness leaves Bonnie allergic to sleeping pills. The climax is stunning as the great ironic natural law of justice is served. Swanson is marvelous as always as the elegant and protective Mrs. Daniels!
Miss Emmy Rice –“I was just thinking of how awful it is when people are so mean to each other. That's one thing when you get to be seventy five, you see clearer than anything else. How mean people are to each other.”
Directed by Joseph Newman with a teleplay by James Bridges and a story by Veronica Johns.
The delightfulRuth McDevittplays Miss Emmy Wright, an elderly lady who sits in the park and is befriended by Gerald Musgrove (Roddy McDowall) who with his wife has just successfully robbed $100,000 but needs a good place to hide the doe ’til the heat is off.
Emmy is a known pack rat, who invites the couple over to her cluttered and quirky place for many social dinners. Gerald gets the bright idea of stashing the loot inside the old dust-covered magazines that Emmy has collected over the years. Gerald also convinces Emmy to draw up a will leaving him the beneficiary so that they can later kill her off and claim the clutter that holds their stolen cash. This is a dark comedic episode with stellar performances by both McDevitt playing off McDowell’s usual droll manner. Co-starring Juanita Moore as Mrs. Jones and Naomi Stevens as Mrs. Goldy.
Directed by Robert Stevens with a teleplay byAlvin Sargent and a story by Patrick Quentin.
Patricia Collingeis one of my favorite character actors. Here she turns in quite a moving performance as a woman trapped in a safe with time running out. And in this episode I’m particularly fond of her doting on her two Siamese cats, being a staunch advocate for cats, and someone who shares their home with let’s say a variety of pussycats, a Siamese rescue being just one of them!
In The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow Aunt Adelaide Snow is at the mercy of her scheming niece’s husband Bruce (Don Chastain) who is afraid that Auntie will go to the police about his check forging. While away on a weekend vacation, he locks Mrs. Snow inside the bank vault in her house, hoping she’ll suffocate and it will look like an accident. But he has also locked one of her cats inside as well. Thank god, because these little felines are very smart indeed. Mrs. Snow’s niece Lorna, (Jessica Walter) tries to call her aunt, worried that something is wrong, not realizing what her sneaky murderous husband has done… Don’t worry, the cats come to the rescue! Also co-staring George Macready as Adelaide’s dear friend Hillary Prine.
Sharon Farrell plays the seductive Melanie Rydell who doesn’t intentionally get men chasing after her. But her psychotic husband Lew Rydell (Frank Gorshin) gets off on a murder charge after Ned Murray (Martin Landau) successfully gets him an innocent verdict. To Ned’s horror, he learns that Lew is in fact a hot-headed jealous nutcase who was guilty of murder and is now accusing him of going after his sexy wife. Ned is conflicted by law, but wants to bring this loaded canon to justice but can’t get him prosecuted for the same crime twice. He solicits the help of an old gangster friend who owes him one but realizes that he has inadvertently put a hit out on the unstable Lew.
Directed by Alf Kjellin Teleplay by William Fay and Henry Slesar, from a story by S.B. Hough.
Again, the highly underrated Barbara Barrie, who has always given her all in any performance, notably several of The Naked City. Here she plays a very timid and unstable single woman, (I will not use the word spinster here, though most analysis makes use of the word, I find it offensive) Isabel wrongly accuses Howard Clemens (Bradford Dillman) of sexual assault. Howard Clemens is sentenced to two years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Once he is released, the first thing he does is steal a large amount of money. $13,000 which is the amount he would have drawn as a salary had he not been thrown in jail.
He comes back to the same town where Isabel teaches, and opens up a record shop. He purposefully manages to bump into Isabel until he finally gains her confidence. Eventually, the pair become engaged. While on their honeymoon, Howard tampers with the fuel ignition switch on the boat which will cause the boat to explode. He tells Isabel to take the boat out alone. A bit later he hears the blast and is finally satisfied that he has gotten his revenge on her at last.
Directed by Joseph Newman (The Outcasts of Poker Flats 1952, The Human Jungle 1954, This Island Earth 1955, The Twilight Zone ’63-’64) with a teleplay byHarold Swantonand story by Margaret Manners.
I’ve written about this marvelous episode for Movie Silently’s The Gish Sisters Blogathon! Here Lillian Gishplays the sassy Bessie who lives with her daughter Camilla (Maggie McNamara) Bessie is a staple of the town, and when her handyman falls to his death because of the arrogance of her neighbor Samantha Wilkins (Patricia Cutts-The Tingler 1959) and her whipped husband Henry (Peter Lind Hayes) Bessie goes on a mission to try and bridge the feud with the couple by inviting them over for supper.
Samantha refuses to break bread with the Carnbys, but Henry starts to insinuate himself into Bessie and Camilla’s life. One night Henry disappears and Bessie sees Samantha digging a hole in the barn. She accuses the woman of murder and eventually, Samantha is executed for killing her husband. But… Henry unexpectedly returns, claiming to have been on a long sea voyage not able to hear about his wife’s trial. Bessie suspects that Henry has staged the whole thing and begins to feel terrible guilt about what she has done. Will she be able to rectify the awful mistake she has made and bring Henry to justice?
Bessie-"To bring to the light of day the two lies that together make a truth. "
Elsa –“There's something wrong with this house, I lye awake at night and I can feel it. There's is something wrong with this house Something we don't know about.”Elsa-“That's the girl I saw at the beach, she's lovely” Keith- “What I want, what I really want. What I'm sure as sitting here want"¦ uh." Elsa –“Keith it may be, it just very well maybe I want the same thing”. Keith- “What are you talking about baby? What you were talking about"¦ Elsa-“How we rid ourselves of each other"¦ and when! Me of you and you of me.”
Michael Blodgett and Tisha Sterling do some mod dancing in Change of AddressElsa… do you really need to go down to the basement to see what your adolescent husband wants to show you? Can’t you guess!!!!
Elsa Hollands (Phyllis Thaxter) hates the new beach house. Keith Hollands (Arthur Kennedy) refuses to grow older and chases after the local beach hottie Tisha Sterling. The house gives Elsa the chills, and it doesn’t help that Keith starts digging a hole in the basement floor that he claims is for the new boiler. Elsa and Keith keep clashing over the strain in their marriage. She just wants to go back to her old apartment and senses something terribly wrong with the damp place.
While Keith is playing around with the young blonde beauty, Elsa contacts the ex-owners wife to discourage her from selling and perhaps finds out the truth about the place. When Keith can’t take Elsa’s complaints anymore, finding her an obstruction into his world of newfound vitamins, jumping jacks, young beach bunnies, hair dye, turtle necks, late nites out at the disco dancing alongside the dreamy blued-eyed Michael Blodgett, he kills her and buries her in that nice big hole he’s been digging. But will Elsa’s investigation come back to bite Keith in those awfully ugly jogging shorts?
Helen-“Funny you dreaming' about me and here we are. Life's a big surprise.”
Directed by Bernard Girardwith a teleplay by Alfred Hayes and a story by the great Robert Bloch!
Rusty Connors (John Cassavetes) is newly released from prison. While in prison his mate Mike Krause (Rayford Barnes) talks incessantly about the perfect blonde he left behind. Krause dies in prison, and so while Rusty gets out he decides to look up this gorgeous dish that was married to his former cellmate. Krause had been in prison for robbery and murder, but neither the money nor the body of his partner have ever been found. Could Krause’s wife Helen know where the loot is stashed?
Rusty comes to find Helen (Ann Sothern) slinging hash at a greasy spoon, but she is far from the pin-up that Mike Krause crooned about. Still Rusty plays up to her, thinking that she can lead him to the stolen money. The pair form a tumultuous sexual relationship, greedy to find the hidden cash. They stumble onto an abandoned boat house infested with starving rats. The two might just turn on each other, but you’ll have to see the episode and find out for yourself! This is a macabre and gritty story by the master of the suspense genre Robert Bloch author of Psycho…
Stella “I"m scared of Jesse… You scared of him too. You scared too. talking don't help Emery I heard you talking to Jessie in the orchard. You told him you married me to have someone to feed ya. Is that why we ain't ever have any children?”
Teresa Wrightis outstanding as poor Stella married to a horrible dolt of a husband who doesn’t appreciate her. Emory (Pat Buttram is a weak and unloving bumpkin who owns a peach farm. This is a dark Americana tale about a quiet woman named Stella who suffers in silence but has a few joys, like the love of animals, in particular her little pet squirrel. One day an ominous drifter asks if he can work the farm for a bit. Bruce Dernplays Jesse, in a role that surpasses so many of the psychopaths he’s had the opportunity to play. Jesse has a particular viciousness that is spine-tingling. While he helps harvest the peach crop, he secretly torments Stella with his fondness for his sharp knife. Stella feels threatened but her husband acts clueless, while at times we see that he is very aware of what is going on, he just chooses not to intervene out of cowardice. The episode is perhaps one of the most psychologically enthralling, and its climax will leave you breathless. The performances are absolutely stunning. Just as frightening as any modern thriller on the screen today! And Wright turns in a performance that tugs at your heart with so many levels of emotional reflection as a woman trapped by her circumstances. John F. Warren’s cinematography portrays a rural hinterland that is otherworldly and melancholy.
Eva-“You crying? You are crying Ha! What do you’ve got to cry about? If anybody’s gonna cry it should be me. Although I must say… You are a most unusual gasman!”
Directed by Joseph Newman with a story and teleplay by Lewis Davidson.
Eva (Lola Albright) is an adulterous wife to an unsuspecting businessman (George Kennedy) who is a penny pincher though he is quite well-to-do. One day a mysterious stranger (Barry Nelson) manages to work his way into the house by claiming to be the gas man. He acts very peculiarly, until finally, he gets her into bed. Colin convinces Eva that it would be easy to kill her husband… This zany and interesting episode has a lot of twists so I won’t give anything away! Just watch for great performances by Nelson and in particular the lovely Lola Albright who can do comedic mystery thrillers with ease!
Mary-"You are a vain man.” Brother Thomas-  "A minor vice." Mary-"There is no such thing as a minor vice." Brother Thomas "trimming a mustache harms no one." Mary-"It's so difficult for you to be the kind of missionary you should be." Brother Thomas- "I have a good reputation." Mary-"Because I have made sure of it." Brother Thomas–"Yes you have." Mary-"You begrudge me that recognition.” Brother Thomas-"I'm the first to admit it." Mary-“I have loved you.”
Mary- “I don't know if I still do. I've had to forget my needs and devote myself to your work.”
Directed by Harvey Hart with a teleplay by Arthur Ross and a story by Robert Branson.
This is a particularly intense addition to The Alfred Hitchcock Hour due to the fine performances by Ed Begley and one of my favorites Jeanette Nolan.Nolan plays Mary the enigmatic wife of a missionary medical man (Begley). The strong woman behind the man so to speak. Begley plays Brother Thomas Fitzgibbons who in actuality is an incompetent surgeon living in a primal world in the rugged terrain of India. Mary is ambitious and wants all the glory for her and her weak husband. When Tom Simcoxand Maggie Pierce –Brother John Sprague and his wife Lucy come to help the mission, Mary fears they will expose the truth about Brother Thomas’ work, as well as usurp their position there. Oh, what a tangled web we weave. Nolan almost reignites her Lady Macbeth with her role as the conniving and treacherous Mary Fitzgibbons– Her silver-tongued laments as always put her at the top of my favorite character actors!
“would you like to meet Mingo when she comes? She’s not very big. She’s big enough to live in a bird cage and big enough to have a frog for a horse!”“Do you believe me about Mingo?”
Eva-"Is it dark where daddy is?"-Nell " I hope not"¦ I don't know."Â -Eva "Numa knows"¦ Mingo says it's brighter than day!"¦ they have bumble bees there too."-Nell-Â "Who's Mingo honey?"-Eva-Â "My best friend!"
This is one of Alfred Hitchcock Hour’s most supernatural tales that breaks the mold of the crime/suspense drama. Along with The Sign of Satan, The Monkey’s Paw, and The Magic Shop by H.G Wells. Where the Woodbine Twineth could have fit nicely into Boris Karloff’sThriller anthology series. A haunting tale that will stay with you for a long time. Margaret Leighton is mesmerizing as Aunt Nell, a woman who just cant embrace her little niece’s wild imaginative tales. I’ve recently become acquainted with Leighton’s work and have fallen in love with the actress!
Directed by Alf Kjellin with a teleplay by James Bridges and a story by Davis Grubb (who wrote Night of the Hunter, The Cheyenne Social Club, and a few short stories for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery 1971.
Leighton is marvelous as she coldly, rigidly lacks understanding of her recently orphaned niece who talks about fey people who live under the Davenport and visit her at night. When Eva comes to live with the elderly Mississippi riverboat Captain Snyder, her grandfather, her aunt Nell just can’t break through.
Nell just believes the child to be willful and lazy trying to blame things on her imaginary friends like Mr. Peppercorn and Mingo… Aunt Nell just can’t handle the role of caretaker to a wily and free-spirited child and begins to crack under pressure. The conflict becomes very real when Nell challenges Eva at every turn.
When Eva (Eileen Baral) gets a wonderful Creole doll she names Numa from her riverboat King grandfather, tensions ignite and Nell comes face to face with the mystical world where the woodbine twineth. A nether region between life, death, and the realms you cannot see with the naked eye. To balance out the constant struggle between the suffering Nell and the precocious Eva is the calming and level-headed presence of Juanita Moore as Suse, who understands Eva and is more like a mother to the young girl than Nell can possibly manifest from her rigid identity.
Nell is obsessed with controlling Eva and catching her in lies. She fears the child’s freedom and resents how happy she can be. When she hears Eva chatting and playing with Numa, the doll her grandfather had given Nell suspects that it is a child from the neighborhood.
Eva warns that if Nell takes Numa away, Eva will have to trade places with Numa and go to dwell in “Where the Woodbine Twineth.”
But obstinate Aunt Nell defies Eva and puts Numa on top of the player piano, Eva steals Numa away and runs into the woods. Suddenly in an eerie haunting manner the player piano mysteriously starts up by itself. Nell desperately stumbles onto Eva in the backyard playing with a little black girl –they are dancing.
Nell chases the girl away, warning her to stay away but then Eva disappears. When Nell finds a doll in Numa’s box it looks exactly like a porcelain version of little Eva, Nell realizes that the magic was real and that she has lost her little niece forever to the ether world beyond the trees… A changeling in her place, never to return.
One of my all-time favorite episodes. Just effectively creepy yet magical stuff… with a haunting quality that lingers…
This piece was directed byJohn Brahmfrom a teleplay byClyde Ware& Lee Kalcheim. (Let’s Scare Jessica To Death 1971, All in the Family 1972) is a story based on Robert Bloch.
Roger Perryplays Cliff Allen a television writer on his way to Hollywood who picks up a pretty hitchhiker named Rosie. (Sharon Farrell) Later Rosie accuses Cliff of abducting her when he is stopped by the local police. Of course, Cliff denies the charges but the sheriff orders him to come back to town with him. Cliff’s car breaks down, and so he is forced to stay over in a very run-down motel.
Off-the-beaten-path Motels already smack of creepy so as you can imagine when it turns out that it is run by a washed-up vaudeville actor name Rudolph Bitzner or Rudolph the Great ( great –for what you’ll find out! )
Rudolph is played by the wonderful Franchot Tone, who dreams of a comeback someday, and Rosie is the daughter of his dead wife who used to be his partner. Now Rosie not only works at the cafe/motel but she’s being groomed to be part of the comeback act.
Rosie sneaks off to apologize to Cliff for lying but she is terrified of Rudolph who is forcing her to marry him once she turns 18 which is in a few days. Cliff agrees to help Rosie escape once his car is fixed. But when he goes to her cabin she is not there. Rudolph convinces him to sit out in the audience and watch his great comeback act with Rosie before he leaves for Hollywood.
One of the most subtly grotesque and atmospheric relics of the early 60s before psycho-sexual cinema hit the proverbial fan!
I won’t give it away, you must see this macabre and eerie installation in The Alfred Hitchcock Hour collection.
Dexter and Joyce Daily (Jeremy Slate and Kathryn Hays) hire Dexter’s old German nanny named Frieda (the inimitableLilia Skala) to come and take care of their newborn baby boy. She did such a good job with Dexter when he was just a tot. But Joyce becomes suspicious when she hears a radio broadcast about a nurse who is wanted in the poisoning death of an infant in San Francisco. Frieda does have some peculiar ways, but Joyce goes as far as to contact the murdered baby’s aunt played byOlive Deering. Christine Callendar only confirms Joyce’s greatest fears that Frieda is the one the police are looking for and that she is a dangerous baby killer!
As Maude’s husband reads the newspaper about the recent strangulation murders –she comments-“I read a book about a man who only killed trombone players, he beat them to death with their own trombones.”
Directed by Joseph Newman with a teleplay by James Bridges and a story by Ethel Lina White
Stella Crosson (Dana Wynter) is the nurse to an invalid heart patient (John Kerr) Stella needs help and is very happy to get some relief when Nurse Betty Ames (T.C. Jones) shows up to help. The large house is also inhabited by an alcoholic housekeeper Maude played by the wonderful Louise Latham. The night is fret-filled with storms and the news has reported that a maniacal nurse killer is on the loose! Oh, and the power has gone out, so they’re all in the dark.
Maude sends her husband out in the storm to get some medicine, and Stella goes around the house locking all the windows and doors. Except she fails to secure one that is in the creepy basement. The shocking ending will catch you off guard.
Directed by David Friedkin with a teleplay by Morton Fine and David Friedkin and a story by Avram Davidson
American Sally Benner is soon to marry London policeman Tommy Bonn (Ron Randall) While on a transatlantic cruise, they announce their engagement, but four hours before they are to be wed, Sally has pangs of doubt and goes out into the London fog. Â There have been a series of murders and her family grows weary for her safety. Tommy and his partner Stephen Leslie (Michael Pate) go in search of Sally.
They eventually stumble on an odd young man named Edward Clarke (David Carradine) who they suspect might be the strangler, and with the description of the woman he confesses to murdering they fear Sally’s fate. The episode also stars Kent Smith and Edith Atwater as Sally’s parents. This episode is very atmospheric andKellermanas usual does a wonderful job of manifesting a languid sensuality and longing that hangs like dew on the petal.
Directed by Harvey Hart with a teleplay by James Bridges and a story by Selwyn Jepson (Stage Fright! 1950)
Richard Johnsonis a smooth con artist Jarvis Smith posing as a stock expert who insinuates himself into the lives of the wealthy Mary Caulfield and her suspicious companion Agatha. It’s always wonderful to see Geraldine Fitzgeraldin any performance, and here is no exception. She has an elegant and stayed sensibility that can be as poignant as it is sophisticated. She works well againstFay Bainterwho is always enigmatic like a fine bit of silverware that is timeless and sturdy. Johnson sheds his kindly Dr. Marquay (The Haunting) persona here and plays the perfect cad. Jarvis eventually romances Agatha and takes over the handling of Mary’s sizable fortune, pretending that he is investing it for her. When it comes to light what Jarvis has done, the drama becomes a taut little mystery melodrama.
Directed by Joseph Newman with a teleplay by Robert Bloch from a story by Richard Deming
June Lockhartplays Martha Peters. Martha has answered a lonely hearts and becomes a mail-order bride she finally meets Luke Hunter (John Anderson) a miserly reserved sort of man who seems to have no joy in his life. Married once before, his first wife was a mail-order bride as well who died under mysterious circumstances. When Luke goes to visit his relatives, Martha’s fears begin to build when she finds a coffin-shaped box hidden in the garage. She also hears her husband digging all night down in the locked cellar.
Suddenly Luke insists that they go on vacation for the Christmas Holidays, and urges her to start packing so they can go visit his relatives. Before they leave the house, Luke unlocks the cellar door and insists that Martha go downstairs and see what he’s been working on!
Directed by Herbert Coleman with a teleplay by Gilbert Ralston and a story by Clark Howard, this is a stand-out story, with a sublime performance by the always-compelling Dewhurst.
Here Dewhurst plays a very compassionate nurse Ellen Hatch who is taking care of a cop-killer Jerry Walsh (Tom Simcox) on his way to death row. Jerry manages to melt Ellen’s tough yet kind exterior and lure her into believing that he’s fallen in love with her so that she can help engineer his escape.
“ONLY THE MAN WHO WROTE PSYCHO COULD JOLT YOU LIKE THIS”
Director Michael Anderson( The House of the Arrow 1953, The Dam Busters 1955, Chase a Crooked Shadow 1958, Conduct Unbecoming 1975, Logan’s Run 1976, Dominique is Dead 1979 ) creates a wavelength of dark tension and monochromatic extremes in this atmospheric post noir suspense yarn.
Adapted for the screen by Joseph Stefano’s (The Outer Limits 60s & Psycho 1960) based on the novel byMax Ehrlich (The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, The Glass Web, various dramatic television series)
The Naked Edge opens as the credits roll in a manner similar to Saul Bass, we are dropped into a gruesome stabbing in the darkly lit office building, where George Radcliffe (Gary Cooper)is the key witness.
Sadly, This would be Gary Coopers last film, after battling cancer. The Naked Edge was released a month after his death, but was not received well at the box office.
After Mr. Evan Wrack (the marvelous Peter Cushing) grills the only witness to murder in court Gary Cooper in his last role plays American George Radcliffe whose testimony helps bring a guilty verdict for murder and theft of his co-worker Donald Heath (Ray MacAnally) who then gets sent to prison.
There’s a question as to whether Heath actually committed the crime???
Years later…
George’s wife Martha, the always enchantingDeborah Kerrbegins to suspect her husband when various clues start pointing in his direction… Is she married to a cold blooded killer?
With a fantastic supporting cast, Peter Cushing, Michael Wilding, Eric Portman, Diane Cilento,Hermione Gingold, as Lilly Harris, Ronald Howard, Helen Cherry, Wilfrid Lawson and Diane Clare.
Dramatic musical score by William Alwyn (The Fallen Idol 1948, She Played with Fire 1957, I Accuse! 1958, A Night to Remember 1958, Burn Witch Burn 1962)
Most impressive is the offbeat cinematography by Erwin Hillier (The Mark of Cain 1947, The House of the Arrow 1953, Chase a Crooked Shadow 1958, and perhaps his best–the extraordinary Eye of the Devil 1966 again with Deborah Kerr, David Niven and Sharon Tate)
Hillier’s quirky angles and low lighting add an apprehensive atmosphere, and loads of key frames that are just beautifully shot as a refrain to the tension. Both Anderson & Hillier love to emphasize faces… it’s a touch that I love about their work together.
George Radcliffe:“Do you think a woman could live with a man and sleep with him and not know she was sleeping with a murderer?” Martha Radcliffe: “Do murderers make love differently?“
Lilly Harris-“He implied that the fear of talking, had something to do with the fear of giving… sexually that is”
There are thousands of films in my collection… this has been one of them! Your ever lovin’ MonsterGirl
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