Dark Patroons & Hat Box Killers: 2015 The Great Villain Blogathon!

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IT’S HERE AGAIN… THAT TINGLING ON THE BACK OF YOUR NECK BECAUSE THERE’S FOUL DEEDS AND MURDEROUS MACHINATIONS AFOOT…HOSTED BY SPEAKEASYSHADOWS & SATIN… AND SILVER SCREENINGS… THE GREAT VILLAIN BLOGATHON OF 2015!

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“Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.”
“• Stephen King, The Shining

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”
“• Werner Herzog

“Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: ‘Here are our monsters,’ without immediately turning the monsters into pets.”
“• Jacques Derrida

DRAGONWYCK  (1946)

Vincent Price -had said- “I don’t play monsters. I play men besieged by fate and out for revenge…”

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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…

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-Secret thoughts… That led to secret love… That led to rapture and terror!-

Gene Tierney as Miranda Wells:Nicholas – you do believe in God?”

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!

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“You couldn’t help yourself any more than I” – Nicholas

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“What makes you think you’re so much better than I am!”

DRAGONWYCK 1946 was Vincent Price’s 18th 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.

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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.) 

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‘s Jane Eyre 1943. 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.

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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.

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Walter Huston as Ephram Wells reading from his bible to Miranda.
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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.

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“I must not feel like my life is finished as long as you are with me”-Nicholas
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“You must never be afraid when you’re with me, Miranda.”

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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.

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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.

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Katrine-“I don’t like it now The singing’s getting louder now, I’m afraid I’m afraid.”

Ghostly Dragonwyck

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.

Vincent Price in House of Usher, 1960.

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The film also offers us the sublime acting skill and divine beauty of- Gene Tierney as 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.

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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.

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DRAGONWYCK’S villain or very human boogeyman is the inimitable & urbane Vincent Price who 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.

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Nietzsche quote

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.

Ghost Story

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’  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.

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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.”

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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“I think I’ll have the bonbons before going to bed.”
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Look at the detail of this frame. It’s almost the perfection of a Late 19th-century painting.

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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…

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Cinematographer Arthur C. Miller frames 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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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Continue reading “Dark Patroons & Hat Box Killers: 2015 The Great Villain Blogathon!”

Women-in-Peril – 4 Obscure Gothic Thrillers of the 1940s!

As a treat I thought I’d talk about 4 really interesting films that were released amidst the slew of suspense thrillers of the 1940s. Some Gothic melodrama and a few perhaps conveying an almost hybrid sense of noir with their use of flashback, shadow, odd camera angles and elements of transgressive crime. I’ll just be giving a brief overview of the plot, but no worries there are no spoilers!

I recently had the chance to sit with each film and said to myself… Joey, these would make for a nice collection of obscure thrillers so without further adieu, I offer for your enjoyment, The Suspect, Love From A Stranger 1947, Moss Rose & The Sign of the Ram!

THE SUSPECT 1944

The Suspect

Directed by Robert Siodmak (The Spiral Staircase 1945, The Killers 1946, Criss Cross 1949, The Dark Mirror, Cry of the City, The File on Thelma Jordan 1950) and adapted to the screen by Bertram Millhauser and Arthur T Horman from the novel This Way Out written by James Ronald. This film, very loosely based on Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen’s murder of his wife, was sensationalized at trial in 1910.

The Suspect stars the inimitable Charles Laughton (Dr. Moreau – Island of Lost Souls 1932, my favorite Quasimodo in William Dieterle’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1939, the most lovable ghost Sir Simon in The Canterville Ghost 1944, The Paradine Case 1947, The Strange Door 1951, Witness for the Prosecution 1957, Spartacus 1960, Advise and Consent 1962 and notably–director of two films–his masterpiece Night of the Hunter and his uncredited The Man on the Eiffel Tower 1949)

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The film also stars the underrated Ella Raines (Phantom Lady 1944, Impact 1949), Dean Harens, Stanley Ridges (Possessed 1949, The File on Thelma Jordan and No Way Out 1950) Henry Daniell, Rosalind Ivan and Molly Lamont (The Dark Corner 1946, Devil Bat’s Daughter 1946) Raymond Severn plays the delicious little urchin Merridew who works for Phillip as he tries to keep the little guy on the straight and narrow. Merridew would make the perfect name for a little tabby cat!

Charles Laughton gives one of his most subtle performances as a kindly man trapped by an abusive wife. Siodmak, as usual, creates a dynamic framework for this psychological thriller, lensed in shades of darkly ominous spaces that seem to shape themselves around Laugton’s comfortable face and Ella Raines’ intricate beauty.

Lux Radio Theater held broadcast of a 60-minute radio adaptation of the movie on April 9, 1945, with Charles Laughton, Ella Raines, and Rosalind Ivan reprising their film roles.

Music by Frank Skinner (Blond Alibi 1946, Johnny Stool Pigeon, The Brute Man, The Spider Woman Strikes Back, and way more ) with cinematography by Paul Ivano. Who did the camera work on director Hugo Haas’s treasures like Strange Fascination 1952, One Girl’s Confession 1953, and Hold Back Tomorrow 1955!

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And marvelous gowns and hats by Vera West. (The Wolf Man 1941, Shadow of a Doubt 1943, Flesh and Fantasy 1943, Son of Dracula & The Mad Ghoul 1943, Phantom Lady 1944, Strange Confession 1944, Murder in the Blue Room ’44, House of Frankenstein ’44, The Woman in Green 1945, Terror by Night 1946, The Cat Creeps, She-Wolf of London, Dressed to Kill, Danger Woman & Slightly Scandalous 1946.)

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In 1902 London, a respected middle-class Englishman but unhappily married shopkeeper Phillip Marshall (Charles Laughton) develops a loving and warm friendship with young and beautiful Mary Gray (Ella Raines), whose father has recently died, leaving her down on her luck and looking for a job. Phillip Marshall is such a kind and genteel man he stops to say a kind word about his neighbor Mrs Simmon’s garden, loves his son, and shows real affection. He is like a father to young Merridew, and beloved by the community. Even when he approaches Mary, and she hasn’t yet looked up from her tear-soaked hanky, thinking a lecherous man in the park is approaching her, “I’m not that sort,” tells her, only wanting to see if she needs help.

Mary, like Phillip, is lonely. The first night, Phillip begins to walk her home —“A cup of tea, a six-pence novel and a good cry.”
Mary- “I’m afraid you’ve been looking in my window.”

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Phillip’s dreadful wife Cora (Rosalind Ivan –ideally suited to play the emasculating harpy-she had a similar role tormenting Edward G Robinson in Scarlet Street 1945) is a reprehensible shrew who humiliates and demeans both her husband and her son (Dean Harens who had more room to act in Siodmak’s terrific noir Christmas Holiday 1944 which starred a very different kind of Gene Kelly and the self-persecuting Deanna Durbin) John is shown moving out of the house because his horrible mother has burned some important papers of his. She got into one of her rages, and before he could stop her, she burned a whole week’s work.

Cora Marshall is vicious and cruel, showing no maternal feeling and caring little that her son is leaving home.

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Cora-“That’s just what young hopeful did, he’s clearing out bag and baggage that selfish ungrateful good for nothing.”
Phillip-“What did you do to him?”
Cora- “What did I do to him… that’s right, put the blame on me. All I did was bring him into the world, nurse him, and make myself a doormat for him to walk on!… Go on, go to him and tell him from me that when he leaves this house, needn’t think he can come crawling back. Deserting his own mother!… And what do you think you’re doing now?”
Phillip- “I’m moving into John’s room.”
Cora- “Of all the indecent…we’re married, aren’t we?”
Phillip (deep sigh)- “Oh, we’re married, all right.”Cora –“Then how dare you! I forbid it do you hear me. I forbid you to treat me like this.” Phillip says, “Now Cora, that’s all over now that John’s gone. It’s all over and done with, do you understand me?… I’m moving out of here, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Cora- “Oh yes, there is. There’s plenty I can do!”

They wrestle with his clean, folded white shirts, which he’s busy moving out of the bedroom. She tries to grab them, but he finally loses his composure and yanks them away.

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Cora- “What’s got into you? I’d like to know what’s going on in your head.”
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Phillip- “It’s much better that you shouldn’t, Cora, it might frighten you…”

Saddened by John’s departure, whom he loves and will miss, Phillip prompts Cora to move into his son’s room. Cora, so bent on appearances, is driven to tirades of abusiveness toward the meek and genteel Phillip, harassing him at every turn. I might have thrown her down the stairs myself or given her one of those late-night glasses of milk!

The scene with Merridew tickles me and shows how kind, compassionate, and caring Phillip is. He calls Merridew over talking to him in a quite earnest and fatherly tone, all the while you can tell he’s quite fond of the little fellow and visa versa.

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Phillip- “Merridew, I have to bring a very serious matter to your attention. I regret to say there’s a shortage in your accounts there’s a penny missing from the stamp box.”
Merridew- “It… it was for a sugar bun this morning, but I’ll put it back on pay day, honest Mr. Marshall.”
Phillip- “And the tuppence the day before yesterday, what was that for?”
Merridew- “Acid drops, sir.”
Phillip- “Acid drops??? Quizzically… that’s very serious. And the hay penny the day before?”
Merridew- “For the monkey with the hurdy-gurdy, but I’ll put it all back Saturday every last farthing.
Phillip- “That’s what all embezzlers plan to do.”

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tears in Merridew’s voice make it quiver as the camera shows Mary listening in, she smiles and laughs at this whimsical inquisition.

Merridew- “But I’m not an embezzler.”

Phillip- “Yes, but you can get started that way. It’s the first step that counts… after that, it all becomes too easy. Six pence tomorrow, half a crown the day after… then a five-pound note… I know you’ll always mean to pay it back, but I’m afraid you’ll finish by paying it back in the Portland quarries.”

Merridew- “Don’t send me to no quarries, please, Mr. Marshall (sniffling).”

Phillip- “Well, not this time, Merridew. Now stop sniffling and wipe your eyes.” he hands him a hanky.

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Mary has come into the shop looking for employment. When Phillip tells her there isn’t a position available, he later finds her crying on a park bench. He takes her to dinner, gets her a job with a colleague and the two begin a very tender friendship.

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Phillip continues his platonic relationship with Mary, but once his wife finds out that he’s been seen supping with the young lady, he breaks it off, as he’s a gentleman who truly thought his wife would want out of a loveless marriage.

Still, Cora threatens him with scandal as well as making trouble for Mary. When Cora refuses to divorce him, worried that gossip will spread that she has failed to hold onto a husband, he is driven to the point of frustration and despair. She tells him the neighbors are all beginning to gossip about him coming in at all hours.

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Phillip- “None of that business, Cora.”

Cora- “Ha! Married people’s lives is everyone’s business, and I’m not going to be made an object of pity in front of my friends, do you hear!… I wonder what ever possessed me to tie myself up with a poor stink like you… walked through the forest and picked a crooked tree that’s what I did. A crooked, fat, ugly tree.”

Even after she’s been so cruel, he tries to reason with her about getting a divorce and face things honestly by admitting that they’ve never been happy together. He asks her to let him go. But she wants to punish him because she is a bitter and cruel woman, calling him immoral and indecent.

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Phillip is very decent; in fact, even though there’s only been friendship between him and Mary, he breaks it off with her so as to do what’s expected of him, telling Mary that he behaved badly, but he was afraid that she wouldn’t want to see him again. He was sure Cora would let him go… Phillip tells Mary, “And I couldn’t let you go once I’d met you.”

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But Cora won’t be happy til she drives them both ‘into the gutter where you belong!”

Because of his gentle nature, Laughton is affable and wonderfully believable as a romantic figure.

His murderous response is more to protect Mary from Cora’s wrath, who tells him with a face like a Victorian harridan spewing poisonous vitriol.

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“You better be afraid. As sure as the sun rises tomorrow, I’ll give her the Merry Christmas she’ll never forget.”
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Paul Ivano’s brilliant camera angle frames Laughton as somewhat diminished, seemingly trapped or rather oppressed by the space around him.

And so, Phillip murders his wife. We see him grab one of his canes and assume, though we don’t see him actually bashing her head in with it, that he has, in fact, brained her. The next morning, she is found dead at the bottom of the stairs, and it is deemed an accident.

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Added to the plot’s layering of Sturm & Drang is the always wonderful scoundrel in Henry Daniell’s Gilbert Simmons, Phillip’s neighbor a stumbling drunkard who also beats his wife (Molly Lamont) Mrs Simmons and Phillip also have a very sweet relationship, one that ultimately anchors Phillip to his integrity. But I won’t reveal the outcome of the story. The miserable Gilbert Simmons also has the distinction of turning to blackmail, adding to his other earthly vices.

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Amidst all these dreary, grim, and dark ideas, the film still emerges as a beautiful story, partly due to Siodmak’s ability to guide suspense along its way with an appealing cadence. As Foster Hirsch states in his must-read Film Noir-The Dark Side of the Screen, “Siodmak films like Christmas Holiday and The Killers have an extremely intricate narrative development…{…} the relative extremeness of Siodmak’s style is reflected in his obsessive characters.”

The Suspect works as a great piece of Melo-Noir mostly due to Laughton’s absolute perfection as the sympathetic, trapped gentle-man. As always, he is masterful with his intonations, sharpened wit, and ability to induce fellowship with the characters he’s playing… well, maybe not so much with Dr. Moreau, Capt. Bligh, Judge Lord Thomas Horfield or Sire Alaine de Maledroit in The Strange Door. But he’s a lovable sort most of the time, one can’t deny.

The Canterville Ghost-Margaret O'Brien & Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton and Margaret O’Brien in Jules Dassins’ The Canterville Ghost, 1944-based on the story by Oscar Wilde.

Ella Raines is just delightful as Mary. She’s such a treat to watch as you start to believe that this beautiful young woman genuinely has fallen for this older, portly, yet kind-hearted misfit. You find yourself hoping that he gets away with his wife’s murder and that the two find happiness together.

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Scotland Yard Inspector Huxley (Stanley Ridges) stalks Phillip Marshall, believing he killed his wife.

Phillip is staunchly pursued by Scotland Yard Inspector Huxley (Stanley Ridges), who has the tenacity of Columbo. Speaking of which, a poster of The Suspect appears in an episode of Columbo “How to Dial a Murder” in 1978.

LOVE FROM A STRANGER 1947

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On the darker, more sinister side of these suspense yarns, we find Sylvia Sidney as Cecily Harrington at the mercy of a very deranged bluebeard in John Hodiak as Manuel Cortez.

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The exquisite beauty of Sylvia Sidney.

Sylvia Sidney Love From a Stranger

Directed by Richard Whorf, who became more fluent in television directing. Written for the screen by Philip MacDonald (Rebecca 1940, The Body Snatcher 1945 for Val Lewton, The Dark Past 1948, Boris Karloff’s Thriller episode The Fingers of Fear 1961, The List of Adrian Messenger 1963) based on Agatha Christie’s short story Philomel Cottage. Hair Stylist Eunice Helene King is responsible for slicking back Hodiak’s swarthy and murderously Lothario hair, he’s almost Draculian. He definitely covets his slickety hair as he shows his first sign of deranged pathology when Cecily tries to stroke his locks, and he lashes out at her, telling her not to touch it.

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The marvelous costumes equipped with capes, sequins, and ostrich feathers are by Michael Woulfe (Blood on the Sun 1945, Macao 1952, Beware, My Lovely 1952).

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Isobel Elsom plays Auntie Loo Loo with her usual exuberance; Ann Richards is Mavis Wilson’s faithful friend. Anita Sharp-Bolster as Ethel the maid (wonderfully crabby Christine in The Two Mrs Carrolls)

And again, a terrific score by Hans J. Salter. This period piece is lavishly framed by Tony Gaudio (The Letter 1940, High Sierra 1941, The Man Who Came to Dinner 1942). Once the protagonist and her murderous husband honeymoon at their hideaway cottage, the lens turns the film into an almost chamber piece, becoming more claustrophobic as Manuel and Cecily begin to awaken to the revelation of his dangerous nature.

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Sylvia Sidney plays Cecily Harrington, an unassuming English girl in Liverpool who has just won £50,000 in the Calcutta Sweepstakes, which was a fortune in turn-of-the-century England. Cecily meets Manuel Cortez (John Hodiak) when he sees her name in the newspaper next to the headline of his latest murder. He follows her and then arranges to make it appear as if he’s looking to rent her flat. She is taken with this mysterious stranger and suddenly breaks off her engagement to her fiancee Nigel Lawrence (John Howard), rushing into marriage with the mysterious stranger, who turns out to be a Bluebeard who is after her money.

The swarthy Manuel Cortez has already alluded the police for the murder of three women believed to have drowned while trying to escape. He has changed his appearance, with darker hair and no beard. Dr Gribble (Philip Tonge), who is a crime connoisseur, collects journals and books, one with a drawing of him showing his beard. It also mentions his earlier crimes in South America and New York (Hodiak’s character is given several Spanish aliases- Pedro Ferrara and Vasco Carrera).

The newlyweds spend the summer at their secret honeymoon cottage, where he’s been planning to kill her and bury her body in the cellar.

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Isobel Elsom plays Auntie Loo Loo with her usual exuberance, Ann Richards is the faithful friend Mavis Wilson.
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Manuel Cortez pretends to be looking for a flat to rent, showing up at Cecily’s door; he has actually followed her from their ‘accidental’ meeting at the post.

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Cortez begins to work his Bluebeard charms on Cecily.
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The handsome John Howard as Cecily’s fiancee, Nigel Lawrence, is crushed to find her love has gone cold, as the swarthy Manuel Cortez now entrances her.
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Neither Nigel nor Mavis trust this mysterious stranger with the slickety hair and cape.
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Everyone around Cecily knows there’s something not quite right.

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Auntie Loo Loo is surprised at her niece’s impetuous behavior.

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Ethel and Billings, the gardener, greet the newlyweds at the cottage they’ve spirited off to.
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There’s a dark cellar with a lock on the door. That never bodes well!

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Digging the hole!
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Which poisons to use, decisions, and decisions.
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Manuel warns Cecily to stay away from his experiments in the cellar.
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Auntie Loo Loo and Mavis find out where the honeymoon cottage is and pay Cecily a visit to ensure she’s alright.
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The couple are going away on a long voyage soon, though Manuel hasn’t shown her the tickets.

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Auntie Loo Loo is worried!
Dr Gribble
Dr Gribble- Walking over to the book shelf- “Ah criminology are you interested in criminology Mr Cortez?”
Cortez- “Yes, it’s a sort of hobby of mine, doctor.”
Dr Gribble- “Well, we’re fellow enthusiasts”
Cecily: “Yes, I think it’s a horrid morbid pastime.”Dr. Gribble “But fascinating Mrs. Cortez. Here’s a great favorite of mine. Criminals and their mentality. That’s great psychology… Bless my soul, the latest journal of Medical Jurisprudence and the Criminal. I should have thought I was the only person within a hundred-mile radius who ever so much as heard of this publication.”
Manuel Cortez-“Really, I’ve subscribed to it for years”
Dr Gribble: “Let’s see, did I read this issue? Ah, yes, this is the one with the account of that South American Carrera. It’s a very interesting case.”
Manuel Cortez- “I don’t believe I’ve read it.”
Dr Gribble- “You should have. This fellow Carrera was a professional wife murderer. They caught him after he completed his third crime. Then he was drowned trying to escape.”
Manuel Cortez- “Oh yes, I remember. They never found the body, did they?”
Dr Gribble- “No, as a matter of fact, they didn’t. I don’t think there’s any real doubt he’s dead!”

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Manuel catches Cecily by the cellar door. Look, his hair has finally lost control!

Love From A Stranger is perhaps the more melodramatic and Gothic of all these films I’ve talked about in this post, but perhaps the most unrewarding in terms of its depth. While there are some truly terrifying scenes, the queer chemistry between Sidney and Hodiak creates a distance from the narrative. It’s still worth watching as part of the canon of 40s suspense melodramas.

Sylvia Sidney has a certain edgy sensuality to her that doesn’t make her performance thoroughly implausible for the story, but perhaps a different actress might have brought another style of vulnerability to the role. And Hodiak has an unctuous, gritty sort of sex appeal, which makes his part as a psychopath believable. He’s got intensely dark, focused eyes, sharply defined features, and an iron jawline that slams shut when he’s internally scheming. Toward the end, he brings it a bit over the top, but he’s sort of good at playing a surly mad dog.

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Told to read aloud from the Journal of Criminology- “There is no doubt at all that Vasco Carrera, the last name he was known by, is a truly remarkable character. “He posed as a great world traveler; women, even those from a cultured background, succumbed very quickly to his peculiar charms, possessed of a remarkable charm of manner, Carrera exerted an extraordinary fascination over women.”

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YOU AND ME 1938-Sidney, Sylvia and George Raft
YOU AND ME 1938- Sidney, Sylvia, and George Raft- Now that’s chemistry!

Perhaps the one issue I have with the casting is the chemistry between Sidney and Hodiak, which never truly rings authentic. He’s too internally frenetic to be romantic. It’s mysterious, but he’s not convincing in his wooing of Cecily. The character of Cecily doesn’t seem to have the layers that peel innocence away, unveiling a vulnerable yet eruptive sensuality that would be unconsciously drawn to the scent of a dangerous man. That’s why Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight and Joan Bennett in Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door 1947 work so well.

John Hodiak is a puzzle for me. I’ve been trying to decide whether he’s one of the most intriguingly sexy men I’ve come across in a while or if I find him completely cold and waxen in his delivery as a leading man. I’m leaning toward sexy.

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John Hodiak and Tallulah Bankhead in Alfred Hitchcock’s marvelous floating chamber piece Lifeboat 1944.

He had me going in Hitchcock’s Lifeboat 1944. I would have thrown my diamond Cartier bracelet over the bow to tumble under the tarp for a few hours with that sun-kissed, salt-sprayed crude adonis, sweaty, brash, unshaven -the whole deal. I just watched him in Somewhere in the Night 1946, and once again, I found Hodiak’s character of George Taylor compelling in his odd way of conveying vulnerability but faithful to the lure of the noir machismo. I felt sorry for a guy who can’t remember who he is or if he should stay forgetting- in case he was a rotten human being.

But as the cunning and psychopathic lady killer in Love From A Stranger, he sort of makes my skin crawl, which I suppose means he did a fabulous job of inhabiting the role of Manuel Cortez. Maybe he would have had better chemistry with someone like Alexis Smith or Audrey Dalton.

Now, I haven’t yet seen Basil Rathbone’s version in director Rowland V Lee’s 1937, also known as A Night of Terror with Ann Harding -still based on the short story by Agatha Christie but set in contemporary England, Rathbone plays the intrepid type of urbane gentleman who sweeps Ann Harding off her feet and plunges her into a sudden and dangerous marriage. Where he then plots to kill her and take her money. In the earlier version, the heroine gradually realizes that she’s in danger.

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Basil Rathbone and Ann Harding in the 1937 version of Love From a Stranger.

Sylvia Sidney looks stunning as the new bride who begins to notice her husband’s strange behavior and realizes once she goes down into the cellar that Manuel is hiding something. He spends hours locked away down there, preparing for the moment he will kill Cecily, and has forbidden her to go down there, claiming that he’s doing experiments that are dangerous. Well, that’s true since he’s mixing poisons and digging her grave.

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This version places it back in Victorian England, perhaps due to the success of the melodramatic thrillers that were proving to be so successful in the 40s like, Rebecca, Gaslight, The Lodger, Hangover Square, The Woman in White, Fritz Lang’s The Secret Beyond the Door 1947, and The Two Mrs Carrolls 1947.

The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) The ‘Angel of Death’ and a nice glass of warm milk!

Continue reading “Women-in-Peril – 4 Obscure Gothic Thrillers of the 1940s!”

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

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In honor of the upcoming Chaney Blogathon

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

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

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

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

THE HAUNTED PALACE 1963

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Haunting you all month- MonsterGirl

House on Haunted Hill (1959) “Only the ghosts in this house are glad we’re here”

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vintage house on haunted hill poster

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL 1959

Disembodied screams, rattling chains, and ghoulish groans amidst creaking doors- all a delicious mixture of frightful sounds that emanate from a jet-black screen.

Suddenly Watson Pritchard’s floating head narrates the evening’s spooky tale…

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“The ghosts are moving tonight, restless… hungry. May I introduce myself? I’m Watson Pritchard. In just a moment I’ll show you the only really haunted house in the world. Since it was built a century ago, seven people including my brother have been murdered in it, since then, I own the house. I’ve only spent one night there and when they found me in the morning, I… I was almost dead.” -Watson Pritchard

The marvelously dashing face of Vincent Price or for the film’s purposes, Frederick Loren’s head sporting a plucky mustache and highbrow tone introduces himself in front of the imposing Modern-Ancient structure.

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“I’m Frederick Loren and I’ve rented the house on haunted hill tonight so my wife can give a party. A haunted house party"¦ She’s so amusing. There’ll be food and drink and ghosts and perhaps even a few murders. You’re all invited. If any of you will spend the next twelve hours in this house, I’ll give you each $10,000. Or your next of kin in case you don’t survive. Ah, but here come our other guests…”
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“It was my wife’s idea to have our guests come in funeral cars… She’s so amusing. Her sense of humor is shall we say, original. I dreamt up the hearse. It’s empty now but after a night in the house on haunted hill"¦ who knows.”
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“Lance Schroeder a test pilot, no doubt a brave man but don’t you think you can be much braver if you’re paid for it?”
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“Ruth Bridges the newspaper columnist. She says the reason for her coming to the party is to write a feature article on ghosts. She’s also desperate for money. Gambling.”
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“Watson Pritchard a man living in mortal fear of a house and yet he’s risking his life to spend another night here"¦ I wonder why? He says for money.”
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“Dr. David Trent a psychiatrist. He claims that my ghost will help his work on hysteria. But don’t you see a little touch of greed there around the mouth and eyes?”
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“This is Nora Manning- I picked her from the thousands of people who work for me because she needed the 10,000 more than most. Supports her whole family… Isn’t she pretty?”
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“The parties’ starting now and you have until midnight to find the house on haunted hill.”

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Von Dexter’s music, a mixture of solemn strings, and a sustained and queasy Hammond organ & Theremin greet us with an eerie funeral dirge while the shiny black gimmicky funeral cars pull up in front of the quite sinister post-modern structure.

And this is just the opening fanfare of William Castle’s classic House on Haunted Hill!

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One of William Castle’s most beloved low-budget, fun-house fright ride through classical B movie horror and exquisitely campy performances. Distributed by Allied Artists and written by Robb White who also did the screenplay for Castle’s Macabre 1958, The Tingler 1959 13 Ghosts 1960 & Homicidal 1961.

written by Robb White

White’s story is quirky and wonderfully macabre as it works at a jolting pace delivering some of the most memorable moments of offbeat suspense in this classic B&W B-Horror morsel from the 50s!

The success of the film inspired Alfred Hitchcock to go out and make his own low-budget horror picture- Psycho 1960.

Much of the style and atmosphere can be attributed to the unorthodox detail by art director Dave Milton and set designer Morris Hoffman. The exterior of the house is actually The Ennis Brown House in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, built in 1924, and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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the house

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There’s a pervasive sense of dread in House on Haunted Hill, that makes the house itself a ‘spook.’
Whether the house is haunted or not, its forbidding presence tells us that it just doesn’t matter. The history of the house itself, its violent past is enough to give one chills. While not in the classic sense like that of Robert Wise’s diseased and imposing Hill House, William Castle does a fabulous job of inventing a parameter to tell a very cheeky and pleasurable little scare story. As David J Skal puts it succinctly “The real, if unintentional spook in House on Haunted Hill is postwar affluence.”

The narrative is fueled by the creepy atmosphere of the house itself. Not using a claustrophobic Old Dark House trope but rather a modern Gothic construction that swallows you up with odd motifs and a sense of malignancy within the fortress walls. The starkness of the wine cellar and it’s empty minuscule dark grey rooms with sliding panels is almost more creepy than black shadowy corners with cobwebs and clutter. Director of Photography Carl E Guthrie  (Caged 1950) offers some stunning and odd perspective camera angles and low lighting which aid in the disjointed feeling of the sinister house’s magnetism.

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Nora explores the house

The constant explorations into the viscera of the house by the guests is almost as titillating as the criminal set-up and conspiracy that is afoot propelled by Von Dexter’s tantalizingly eerie musical score with deep piano notes and eerie wispy soprano glossolalia.

House on Haunted Hill works wonderfully, partly due to the presence of the urbane master of chills and thrills, the great Vincent Price who plays millionaire playboy Frederick Loren. Vincent Price was a versatile actor who should not be pigeonholed as merely a titan of terror, given his too numerous layered performances in great films like Otto Preminger’s Laura ’44, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Dragonwyck ’46, etc. Vincent Price did however make his mark on the horror genre with House on Haunted Hill. The New York Herald-Tribune praised Price’s performance as having “waggish style and bon-vivant skepticism.”

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As David J Skal puts it in his, The Monster Show {Vincent Price} “Could bring an arch elegance to the most insipid goings-on…

The omnipresent Elisha Cook Jr. is superb as Watson Pritchard, the neurotic sot who is riddled with fear, spouting anecdotes about the house’s grisly history.

I adore Elisha Cook, from his cameo in Rosemary’s Baby, his performance as George Peatty in Kubrick’s masterpiece The Killing ’56 to his very uniquely intense role as Cliff the sexually jazzed up drummer in Phantom Lady ’44.

31 Flavors of Noir on the Fringe to Lure you in! Part 4 The last Killing in a Lineup of unsung noir

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Elisha Cook Jr as the doomed George Peatty in Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing ’56.

The strikingly beautiful Carol Ohmart plays Loren’s treacherously seductive wife Annabelle who is sick of her husband’s irrational jealousy. Has she already tried to poison him once but failed? The story alludes to as much. Annabelle wouldn’t be happy with a million-dollar divorce settlement, she wants ALL her husband’s money! Annabelle is Loren’s fourth wife, the first wife simply disappeared.

The supporting cast is made up of Richard Long, Alan Marshal, Carolyn Craig, Julie Mitchum, Leona Anderson, and Howard Hoffman as Mrs. & Mr. Jonas Slydes.

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And of course, the skeleton who is billed as playing ‘himself!’

Continue reading “House on Haunted Hill (1959) “Only the ghosts in this house are glad we’re here””

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror: #1 13 Ghosts (1960) & House on Haunted Hill (1959)

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror!

13 GHOSTS (1960)

13 ghosts lobby cardDirector/Showman extraordinaire William Castle brings us writer Robb White’s story centered around a quirky dilapidated mansion once owned by eccentric scientist/occultist Dr. Plato Zorba, who collected ghosts from around the world and invented goggles that enable you to see them. When Dr. Zorba dies, he wills the strange house and its ‘contents’ to his nephew Cyrus Zorba (Donald Woods) and family, wife Hilda (Rosemary De Camp), son Buck (Charles Herbert), and daughter Medea (Jo Morrow). The Zorba family is broke; the bank has even reclaimed the last bit of furnishings. While blowing out the candles on his birthday, Buck wishes for a house with furniture that can’t be taken away. So, the fortuitous inheritance comes just in time. Not long after moving in, they discover that the house is haunted. Cyrus finds Uncle Plato’s notes and learns about the 12 ghosts that inhabit the house, including Dr. Zorba himself, who also leaves his housekeeper Elaine Zacharides (Margaret Hamilton), whom Buck constantly refers to as a witch, not a subtle homage to her role in The Wizard of Oz. Hamilton adds a nice bit of nostalgic camp to the creepy environment: floating objects, hidden panels, a bed canopy that closes up like a vice grip to crush the person sleeping in it, and lurking cobwebby fiends who lunge from the shadows. Trapped within the walls of the house are the 12 manifested ghosties:  the crying lady, a feisty skeleton, a meat-cleaving Italian chef who murdered his wife and her lover in the kitchen, a roaring lion alongside its headless tamer, and Dr. Zorba himself. They need a 13th ghost to set them free. The family is in danger because of the fortune hidden in the house. Martin Milner plays Benjamen Rush, the lawyer who handles the estate for the Zorbas. Is there a flesh and blood killer among them looking for the hidden fortune? Well, you’ll just have to find out for yourself… A true William Castle fun house ride.

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL 1959

House on Haunted Hill (1959) “Only the ghosts in this house are glad we’re here”

William Castle’s House on Haunted Hill (1959) is a quintessential campy horror film that has become a cult classic. Starring Vincent Price as the eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren, the movie follows a group of strangers invited to a supposedly haunted mansion for a night, with the promise of $10,000 each if they survive until morning.

The film’s plot revolves around Loren and his wife, Annabelle (Carol Ohmart), who have a tumultuous relationship filled with suspicion and accusations of attempted murder. Loren even gives out guns, which are presented as little party favors set inside mini coffins. The guests encounter various terrors as the night progresses, including apparent ghosts, gliding white-eye-balled witches, mysterious attacks, a severed head, and unexplained phenomena, all while Elisha Cook Jr. revels in the violent history of the house while he drinks himself into a stupor.

Castle’s direction combines gothic horror elements with psychological tension, creating a unique atmosphere that blends genuine scares with campy theatrics. The movie is famous for its use of carnival-style haunted house props and effects, which contribute to its distinctive tone. And his infamous gimmicks like Emergo, which entails a floating skeleton that elicited laughs from theatergoers who threw popcorn boxes at it rather than shiver in their seats.

House on Haunted Hill is particularly notable for its twist ending, which plays with audience expectations about the nature of the haunting. The film keeps viewers guessing whether any of the major players elaborately staged the happenings or if it was supernatural in nature.

The movie’s impact extends beyond its initial release, influencing future horror films and inspiring remakes. Vincent Price’s iconic performance has cemented its place in horror cinema history.

1 down, 149 days to go… Your EverLovin’ Joey formally, affectionately known as MonsterGirl

Sunday Nite Surreal: The Last Man on Earth (1964): “Another day to live through. Better get started”

They want my blood. Their lives are mine. I still get squeamish.”

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964)

Directed by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow The Last Man on Earth is based on the best-selling sci-fi/horror novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson who unhappy with the script, used the pseudonym Logan Swanson for the screenplay. The film remains pretty close to the book, and keep in mind that Last Man on Earth predates Night of The Living Dead (1968) by 4 years.

Piero Mecacci ( Suspiria 1977, Hatchet For A Honeymoon 1970, The Young, The Evil and The Savage 1968, was responsible for the film’s make-up.

Matheson’s story is perhaps the first involving vampire-like beings whose origin is not rooted in the supernatural but stems from a scientific, biological nature, an actual medical condition. It is also the first of three adaptations of Matheson’s book, and stands alone as the most striking, although I will always have a special kind of 70s love for director Boris Sagal’s version of The Omega Man 1971

Heston as Neville and Rosalind Cash as Lisa in The Omega Man (1971) The 2nd adaptation of Matheson’s book. An even more modern reworking of a timeless story.
A victim of the plague in 1971.

Starring Vincent Price as Dr. Robert Morgan, Franca Bettoia as Ruth Collins, Emma Danieli as Virginia Morgan, Umberto Raho as Dr. Mercer, and Giacomo Rossi-Stuart as Ben Cortman. In 1971 it is the wonderful Anthony Zerbe as Matthias who reprises the role of the vengeful cult leader of ‘the family’ who craves Heston’s (Neville) lifeblood.

“Alive among the lifeless… alone among the crawling creatures of evil that make the night hideous with their inhuman craving!”

Synopsis:

“December 1965. Is that all it has been since I inherited the world? Only three years. Seems like 100 million.”

The year is 1968, Vincent Price in a somber fashion plays Dr. Robert Morgan who like Sisyphus is condemned to repeat his daily tasks of replenishing his stock of garlic and mirrors (the undead hate both), adding gasoline to his generators, collecting the dead bodies that lay strewn around his dismal and cluttered house, and throwing them into the enormous pit where he burns the remains while wearing a gas mask, which is effectively creepy on its own.

“I need more mirrors and this garlic has lost its pungency.”

For much of the film’s beginning, Morgan narrates his story for us as an inner dialogue, “An empty dead…silent world.”

“There was a time when eating was pleasurable now it bores me. just a fuel for survival, I’ll settle for coffee and orange juice this morning. But first, there’s my life to consider, I better replace that garlic I’ll need more lots more, better stop off and get ’em”

Morgan is the seemingly sole survivor in a global outbreak of an unknown bacterium. By day, he collects his needed supplies, tries to make contact by radio with any other survivors, makes repairs to his house, from the onslaught of undead who attack by night, and basically tries to maintain his sanity in the bleak environment of apocalyptic ruin.

Each day he wakes up, checks off the date on his primitively scrawled calendars, sharpens his wooden stakes, the weapons he uses to defend himself against a surviving race of Vampiric like undead that roams the night air calling out his name ‘Morgan, come out!’ pounding at his door. “Morgan! We’re going to kill you!,” they taunt him endlessly, led by his old colleague Ben Cortman.

Former colleague Ben Cortman taunts his old friend Morgan on a nightly basis…

Living Ben Cortman: There are stories being told, Bob.
Robert Morgan: By people who are out of their minds with fear.
Living Ben Cortman: Maybe. But there are too many to be just coincidental. Stories about people who have died and have come back.
Robert Morgan: They’re stories Ben, stories.

“I can’t afford the luxury of anger, anger can make me vulnerable. it can destroy my reason and reason is the only advantage I have over them. I’ve gotta find where they hide during the day. Uncover every one of them.”

Morgan tests the sharp point of his newly crafted wooden stake, a primitive weapon in the modern world.

“And how many more of these will I have to make before they’re all destroyed”

“More of them for the pit. tonight there’ll be more of them, they live off the weak ones., leave them for the pit.”

The use of the gas mask has a chilling effect visually

Less like a Gothic Hammer vampire epic or prior decades features from Universal and Bela Lugosi featuring swarthy eastern Europeans, The Last Man on Earth is set in a modern urban landscape and acts like a hybrid horror/science fiction morality play, as Morgan drudges on to persevere against the army of soulless humans that haunt his existence.

They have become inhuman things to hunt, and he has been transformed into a veritable Adam living in a post-nuclear anti-paradise with no companionship. It’s merely the primal need to survive that drives him. In this way, he has been reduced to a scavenging animal, living on instinct, with an inescapable mission to hunt and kill people who were once human like himself.

“I can’t live a heartbeat away from hell’

Morgan inhabits a world, where everyone else has been infected by the plague, they cannot tolerate sunlight, hate to see their own image in mirrors, and more likened to the ancient folklore of Vampires are repelled by garlic.

At night these undead civilians, try to get into Morgan’s house, they have a desire to kill him as much as he has to destroy every one of them.

Each day he gets in his large automobile in search of more lifeless bodies scattered around the city and seeks out those in hiding to use his wooden stakes to impale and then throw on the mass grave, fumes rising from the gasoline-soaked funeral pyre.

He finds a dead girl outside his house, and picks her up as she flops like a rag doll. He finds another one in his driveway. He loads them into the trunk of his car. He realizes that he’s out of gas. Dead bodies line the road.

Notice the legs and feet dangling out the back of the station wagon like rubbish being taken out to the dump…

“I can get rid of them later, right now I’m out of gas.”

As he drives over scattered bodies like human road kill he thinks to himself.

“They can wait too, I’ve got my life to worry about, those mirrors will have to be replaced before dark.”

The cinematography by Franck Delli Colli is stunning as it is stark. He paints an apocalyptic wasteland, with the addition of the mass graves and gas masks which to me, evoke the specter of war-torn Europe after WWII.

In flashback we see Morgan as a happily married man, with a beautiful wife and daughter. As the memory unfolds, we see that his wife and daughter have been effected by the plague. While his daughter is taken away to the public burning pit after she succumbs, Morgan secretly buries his wife, not knowing that the dead are coming back to life.

Once he returns home and is attacked by his dead wife, he realizes that he must dispose of all the plague victims before they reanimate themselves into zombies who can spread the plague. Morgan has a theory that his immunity to the bacteria is due to an infected bite he received from a vampire bat, while stationed in Panama. This prior exposure to the plague allowed his blood and immune system to build up a tolerance over time.

One day he finds a dog wandering and takes him home, joyous for the company the little guy will be, unfortunately he too has fallen ill from the plague and sadly, Morgan has to kill him too. Just to let you dog lovers know what to expect…

During one of his daylight excursions, he notices a woman moving around in the distance. It is Ruth Collins, who is terrified of Morgan when she first sees him, but he convinces her to come home with him. When Ruth becomes sickened by a string of garlic waved in her face, she claims she is just weak, but Morgan becomes suspicious of her.

Morgan catches Ruth trying to inject herself with the vaccine that he’s been working on, which seems to stave off the effects of the disease. At first, she attempts to point a gun at Morgan but eventually admits that she was sent to spy on him and that she is part of a secret group of people like her, who are infected by the plague but are using a treatment that restores their health while still in the bloodstream but wears off after a time only to be reinfected again.

Ruth tells Morgan that her group is trying to rebuild their wiped-out civilization, while destroying the remaining infected walking dead, also telling Morgan that many of the people he has killed were technical ‘still alive’

Morgan- “Your new society sounds charming.”

Ruth Collins: You can’t join us. You’re a monster to them. Why do you think I ran when I saw you, even though I was assigned to spy on you? Because I was so terrified, what I’d heard about you. You’re a legend in the city. Moving by day, instead of night, leaving as evidence of your existence bloodless corpses. Many of the people you destroyed were still alive! Many of them were loved ones of the people in my group.

Robert Morgan: I didn’t know.

Morgan transfuses his own blood into Ruth’s while she is asleep, and she is immediately cured.

This encourages Morgan as he sees hope that he can now cure the remainder of Ruth’s people, the surviving yet suffering group of humans between the living dead and Morgan, the last completely healthy survivor of the human race.

In the climatic ending, the hand of irony strikes Morgan’s triumph down, as Ruth’s people begin to attack, forcing Morgan to flee, leaving the band of Ruth’s survivors to kill off the rest of the undead who are aimlessly threatening, and menacing, and of course stalking Morgan’s house.

Ruth’s people see Morgan and begin chasing him, as he picks up tear gas and grenades from a police station arsenal, they exchange gunfire and Morgan is wounded.

He finds his way into a church, with Ruth begging her people to let Morgan live.

They finally impale him on the altar with a spear. Of course, a very Christ-like image the symbolism is not lost here, he has been sufficiently sacrificed, the only man who could truly save them.

Morgan’s last dying words are “You’re freaks, all of you! All of you, freaks, mutations!” and declares that he is “the last true man on earth.”

This is truly not the end my friends… -MonsterGirl

William Castle’s: The Tingler (1959) “There’s not a worm in your backbone when you get scared!”

Or the miracle of PERCEPTO! “We must have buzzed 20 million behinds!”-William Castle

THE TINGLER 1959

Directed by William Castle, written by Robb White, and starring Vincent Price, as Dr. Warren Chapin, Patricia Cutts as Isabel Stevens Chapin, Judith Evelyn as Martha Higgins, Philip Coolidge as Ollie Higgins, Darryl Hickman as David Morris, Chapin’s young assistant pathologist, and Pamela Lincoln as Lucy Stevens. Von Dexter’s ominous score helps paint the creepy and menacing atmosphere.

Urbane master of horror Vincent Price stars in one of William Castle’s atmospheric carnival rides as Dr. Warren Chapin, a pathologist whose milieu is the autopsies of executed prisoners from the State prison.

Chapin is driven by a curiosity to find out the source of the mysteriously evil force that creates the SENSATION of fear, and so he sparks a theory that there is an organism called… The Tingler manifests itself at the base of the spine when one is experiencing abject fear. The Tingler however is subdued by the act of screaming. This nightmare from the vertebral id looks like a giant centipede or a flat lobster with mandibles, lots of legs, and armored scales.

Each of us is inhabited by one of these creepy crawling death grippers, which grow larger as our fear expands, but because of our ability to scream, it lays dormant, incognito, and in repose at the base of our spines.

At first, Chapin locks himself in his lab, experimenting by taking doses of LSD and trying to induce fear first in stray cats and then in himself.

So it goes until Chapin meets Ollie and Martha Higgins who own a revival silent movie theater, and oh yes, Martha happens to be a deaf-mute, who also has an extreme phobia of the sight of blood.

As you know, I adore Judith Evelyn and am not very happy when it’s suggested that Chapin injects her with some LSD instead of a sedative in order to induce some nightmarish experiences, in which Martha will not be able to ‘scream’ therefore unable to suppress the little monster waiting to grip her when the moment of fear takes hold…

Click on the image, to see the ghostly chair at work…

In one of the most memorable classic horror movie sequences, Martha (Evelyn) during her presumed lysergic acid journey is stalked through her modest, bleak, and sinister apartment by a ghoulish phantom, who hurls a hatchet at her and then maneuvers her into the bathroom, where blood runs from the sink taps and the white porcelain tub fills with actual red-colored blood (the film is of course in B&W) An arm rises from the tub and clutches toward Martha, who is in the throws of primeval fear, made all the more brutal by the fact that she cannot utter a sound thus not… scream out!

Dying of fright on the bathroom floor, Ollie wraps her up in a sheet and brings her to Dr. Chapin’s house. Sensible, skip the police and straight to the autopsy I say!

Chapin had figured that Martha’s extreme fear would enable the Tingler to grow to its veritable actual size, and thus give him the opportunity to catch a living specimen, by slicing open Martha’s back and peeling the monster from her spinal column.

Having set out to try his experiment, he was unaware that husband Ollie equipped with a ghoul mask, axe, and tub filled with tomato red blood ( in a B & W film, using special focus lenses for the colored sequences) was plotting to scare his poor wife to death, and appropriate Chapin’s LSD inducing experiment to frighten Martha to death.

Once Chapin has the Tingler, Ollie takes his de-tinglered wife back home and Chapin’s wife Isabel (Price always seems to have a scheming hussy for a wife in these flicks) slips him a Mickey and lets loose the Tingler on her unconscious husband, which proceeds to clutch at his throat like a tick on a sunny august hound dog. Luckily sister-in-law Lucy arrives just in time to… SCREAM!

“Don’t you hate it when your neighbor’s dog fluffy humps your leg whenever he’s out for a walk!”

The Tingler lets go of its death grip, Chapin puts the thing in a pet carrier and goes off to Ollie’s apartment to put the darn thing back onto Martha’s backbone. He soon realizes that Ollie murdered his wife, a fight ensues, and the Tingler gets loose, slipping through the floorboards, and is now inside the movie house looking for someone to death grip!

From Guilty Pleasures of The Horror Film page 137- Article by Tom Weaver

William Castle had told Price that:

“Usually people who are frightened scream, and that keeps their Tingler from growing. Judith Evelyn will play a deaf-mute who runs a silent movie theater. Experimenting you scare the hell out of her, but because she can’t utter a sound she’s unable to scream-her Tingler grows, crushing her to death, you operate, remove the Tingler from her spine, but it escapes and gets into the silent movie theater. Well then, make believe that the theater is actually where the picture is playing…all hell breaks loose!”

In Weaver’s article, he discusses the waning horror movie genre after WWII and how Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique in 1955 was at the vanguard of cinema.

Vera Clouzot in her husband’s masterpiece Le Diaboliques 1955.

Castle was so impressed with how much the younger audiences had a hunger to be scared pantless, that supposedly it was this French thriller, that inspired Castle to try scaring the pants off audiences as well.

Many a Film Noir was tinged with elements of the horrific, with dark undertones and psychological angles that became very influential in American and British cinema. Where else did darker cinema have to go in order to funnel its often transgressive, unorthodox, taboo energies but through the Psychotronic, Cult, or B-Movie horror genres?

The very bizarre, disturbing, and surreal Shanks directed by William Castle.

Around the time of Clouzot’s macabre masterpiece, there were also some very unsettling dark-psychological themed offerings such as Autumn Leaves 1956, The Night Holds Terror 1955, The Three Faces of Eve 1957, A Cry in The Night 1956, Cast A Dark Shadow 1955, The Killer is Loose 1956, The Snorkel 1958, Edge of Fury 1958, Screaming Mimi 1958 and Tennessee William’s emotionally violent  Suddenly, Last Summer 1959 which suggested cannibalism, devouring motherhood and Oedipal rage.

From The Vault: Edge of Fury (1958)

Screaming Mimi (1958) Part 1: Ripper vs Stripper…

Screaming Mimi 1958 Part II: “The way he looks after her, you’d think a bossom was something unique”

Just a little later in the early 60s, I think of The Strangler with Victor Buono in 1964 or Grant Williams in The Couch in 1962, The Nanny in 1965, or The Naked Kiss 1964 which filtrated pretty grotesque narratives of, Pedophilia, deranged psychosis, incest and again, the Oedipus complex.

Aldrich had ushered in a whole new persona for Bette Davis and Joan Crawford with his Grand Dame Guignol tour de force,  What Ever Happened To Baby Jane 1962.

The trumpets were hailing for Castle to step up and create his own uniquely tacky ballyhoo! While not Freud in the inkwell, certainly at least some kitschy Schadenfreude.

Castle could see that young Americans were starving for entertainment that was part horrific and a little exhibitionist. He purchased a copy on the cheap of a horror/mystery novel called The Marble Forest and got television writer Robb White to put a screenplay together, and hey while they were at it, why not give it a french sounding title as a tout to Diabolique!

That’s when they released Macabre 1958 which actually didn’t come until 3 years after the release of Diabolique. Weaver doubts Castle’s accuracy about certain details in his relatings about the series of events but then again William Castle was admittedly a showman, a huckster, the PT Barnum of Horror films, and didn’t deny that he could tell big whoppers at times. It was all in fun…!

William Castle and Mia Farrow on the set of Rosemary’s Baby!

There are even conflicting stories as to how the project for The Tingler came about. White who also wrote the script for House on Haunted Hill claims that it was makeup man Jack Dusick who showed White a foot-long rubber worm that he had created. “This worm, it haunted you… it scared you!!!”

White thought about the idea and went to Castle and told him that they should find out “where fear comes from” and they’ll use the WORM!

Actually, the concept of FEAR itself becomes a vital character to the narrative of The Tingler, although I’m sure Castle couldn’t give a hoot about the real ‘why’ more likely it was the ‘how’ to go about doing the ‘how’! He was more of the discount provocateur than an auteur. He had vision, it was just in 3D.

According to Castle, he asked an artist at Columbia’s art department what a Tingler should look like, ” Sort of like a lobster but flat, and instead of claws, it has long slimy feelers!”

Of course, the cast thought the script preposterous, but Price always approached anything he did with style, and an urbane dignity.

For the promotion of The Tingler, some theaters even had boxes in the lobby, where a live Tingler was being held. You were warned not to panic, but to SCREAM if it breaks loose!

White had written that they couldn’t find anything to make the Tingler look more frightening until Castle (Bill) came in one morning with a small vibrator which eventually saved the picture.

It was his idea to take out all the motors from thousands of vibrators and screw them under the theater seats, then rig everything up at crucial moments so that the audience would suddenly begin vibrating in waves, six rows at a time!

Again, whether this is true or not, Castle claims he got the idea one night after he got a violent electrical shock from changing a light bulb on his bedside table. William Castle wrote in his Step Right Up! “I’m going to buzz the asses of everyone in America!” 

By installing little motors under the seats of every theater in the country, the projectionist would get the special cues on the film itself, then press a button once the Tingler appears on screen to ‘jolt’ the audience, leading them to believe that the Tingler was loose in the actual theater!

Dona Holloway the Associate to the Producer dubbed the process PERCEPTO!

Now that I’m back in the NYC area, I have to see if the Film Forum on Houston Street still runs their horror/sci-fi/fantasy Festivals. Years ago, I happened to catch a showing of The Maze 1953 where they passed out 3D glasses to the audience. At one time the Film Forum ran The Tingler complete with Percepto! I would love to have had my ass in one of those seats…

As far as Robb White, he considered these films dumb, “I hated ’em” and “And for years didn’t see some of the films I made with Bill Castle. I mean they’re so dumb God!- there’s not a worm in your backbone when you get scared.”

“You’ll Scream If You Value Your Life!”

It’s been a SCREAM!-MonsterGirl…!

The Film Score Freak recognizes Jo Gabriel’s ‘Fade To Black’ & the Poe/Corman/Price magic that is ‘The Pit and The Pendulum’ (1961)

Here’s another mash-up using my song Fade To Black which appears on my album The Last Drive In  

blended lovingly with the brilliance of Corman’s film style and Price’s epic performance!

The Pit and The Pendulum (1961) and Jo Gabriel’s ‘Fade To Black

Swing Low Sweet Pendulum!!!!!!! Lovingly Yours, Joey (MonsterGirl)

A trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away! House on Haunted Hill (1959)

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959)

One of William Castle’s

most memorable classics of horror featuring one of Castle’s Barnumesque  gimmicks dubbed Emergo! An inflatable glow in the dark skeleton attached to a wire which floated over the audience during the final moments of the film.

Unfortunately instead of causing shivers and screams, the audience would hurl candy boxes, soda cups or any other objects at the poor hard working skeleton. So much for the amazing miracle of Emergo! Still William Castle knew how to engage his audience, and as far as I’m concerned his work is as relevant and captivating today, setting the stage for remakes and copycats abound.

The film stars the ever urbane Vincent Price as Frederick Loren who is now on his 4th wife, Annabelle played by the sultry Carol Ohmart.

Loren has invited 5 unrelated guests to a rented house for a ‘Haunted House’ party. He dares them to stay the entire night, in which all of them desperate for money, will receive $10,000 clams. Each guest is offered charming party favors…guns displayed in little coffins, what fun!

The house has a violent history as owner Watson Pritchard (the very familiar face of character actor Elisha Cook Jr.) terrified and gradually sotted, relates the history of the house to everyone. At midnight the caretakers Mr and Mrs Slydes will lock the doors there by trapping the guests in this frightening and treacherous haunted house on a hill.

Will they survive a night of mayhem, ghosts, mystery and murder!!!!!

Also starring Richard Long as Lance Schroeder, Alan Marshal as Dr. David Trent, Carolyn Craig as Laura Manning, Julie Mitchum as Ruth Bridgers, Howard Hoffman as Jonas Slydes and Leona Anderson as the iconic image of the blind Mrs. Slydes.

“Consult your doctor! Bring your seat belts!”

“Acclaimed The Super-Shocker Of The Century!”

“First Film With the Amazing New Wonder EMERGO: The Thrills Fly Right Into The Audience!”

Happy Trailers MonsterGirl!

Roger Corman’s Masque of The Red Death(1964): Vincent Price’s Prospero & A Ball to Stave off Death

Roger Corman’s Superb Adaptation of Poe’s story. Vincent Price as always the Master of the Macabre as Prince Prospero.

Jo Gabriel’s song “Masque of The Red Death” appears on my album The Last Drive In

MonsterGirl  (JoGabriel)