MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #83 I Walked with a Zombie 1943 & Isle of the Dead 1945

A Symphony of Dark Patches- The Val Lewton Legacy 1943

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE 1943 

As I embark on the modest yet ambitious “150 Days of Classic Horror” project, I aim to delve more deeply into the remaining Val Lewton films that have yet to be explored in my work – Bedlam, Cat People, The Body Snatcher, and Isle of the Dead. I’m drawn to the shadows and subtleties that have made his work a touchstone for generations of cinephiles and scholars alike. To cover these films extensively isn’t just an academic exercise—it’s an act of cinematic devotion, a way of tracing the delicate threads Lewton wove between fear and beauty, suggestion and revelation. His films are not simply stories; they are poems in motion, each frame layered with meaning, mood, and unspoken longing. In the more extensive continuing series, (refer to the link above where I cover I Walked with a Zombie, The Ghost Ship, The Seventh Victim and The Leopard Man) I want to move beyond the surface chills and explore the artistry of Lewton and his collaborators: the directors who shaped the atmosphere, the actors who breathed life into haunted characters, the cinematographers who painted with shadow, and the composers who underscored every heartbeat of dread. These films deserve a careful, thoughtful analysis, for they are not only milestones in horror but also windows into the anxieties and desires of their era. To understand them fully is to appreciate the power of cinema to unsettle, to enchant, and to reflect the world’s complexities back at us through a glass darkly.

Val Lewton’s I Walked with a Zombie: A Hypnotic Dance Between Colonial Shadows and Gothic Desire

In 1943, Val Lewton—Hollywood’s poet of the unspeakable—crafted I Walked with a Zombie, a film that transcends its B-movie trappings to become a haunting meditation on colonialism, cultural dislocation, and the fragility of reason. Directed by Jacques Tourneur, whose collaborations with Lewton (Cat People, The Leopard Man) redefined horror as a genre of psychological suggestion, the film transforms Inez Wallace’s pulpy article about Haitian “zombies” into a dreamlike trance of repressed desires and historical guilt. With its chiaroscuro cinematography, Roy Webb’s primal score, and a narrative steeped in the legacy of slavery, I Walked with a Zombie is less a horror film than a séance, summoning the ghosts of a past that refuses to stay buried.

The story unfolds through the eyes of Betsy Connell (Frances Dee), a Canadian nurse whose wide-eyed idealism masks a quiet determination. Hired to care for Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon), the catatonic wife of sugar plantation owner Paul Holland (Tom Conway), Betsy arrives on the Caribbean island of Saint Sebastian—a name heavy with martyrdom—to find a world where the line between science and superstition blurs like sweat on skin. Jessica, once Paul’s vibrant bride, now sits motionless in a tower, her condition unexplained by Western medicine. “There’s no death here,” Paul tells Betsy, his voice dripping with colonial fatalism. “Only life that shouldn’t be lived.” The plantation, a relic of the Dutch slave trade, is haunted by the specter of Ti-Misery, a statue of Saint Sebastian repurposed as the figurehead of a slave ship, its arrow-pierced body a silent witness to centuries of exploitation.

Tourneur and cinematographer J. Roy Hunt cloak the island in shadows that seem to breathe. The sugarcane fields, shot in ethereal moonlight, sway like a chorus of restless spirits, while the houmfort (Vodou temple – meaning “abode of spirits” In Haitian Vodou, the hounfour is the sacred space where rituals, ceremonies, and veneration of the spirits (lwa) take place, pulsing with the rhythm of drums that echo the island’s fractured heartbeat. In the film’s most iconic sequence, Betsy leads Jessica through these fields at night, past animal skulls and hanging hides, to seek “better doctors” at the houmfort.

The walk is a descent into the subconscious: the camera glides alongside them, the wind whispering through cane stalks as Darby Jones’ Carrefour—a towering, silent guardian with eyes like polished obsidian—emerges from the darkness. His presence, neither fully human nor wholly supernatural, embodies the film’s central tension: the white characters’ fear of the “primitive” and the Black community’s resilience in preserving their traditions under colonial rule.

In the garden of the Holland estate stands Ti-Misery, the sorrowful figurehead salvaged from a slave ship, arrows bristling from its wooden flesh. It is both relic and warning, a mute witness to centuries of suffering. The moonlight glances off its face, catching the anguish carved there, and the air around it seems to shimmer with the weight of unspoken history. This is the island’s true heart: a place where beauty and pain are forever entwined, and every shadow is thick with memory.

There is the unforgettable midnight procession through the sugarcane fields, where Betsy, in her pale nurse’s dress, leads the somnambulistic Jessica on a pilgrimage for hope. The moonlight weaves silver threads through the whispering cane, and the air is thick with the pulse of distant drums and the hush of the wind—a world suspended between waking and dream Animal skulls and ritual talismans hang like omens in their path, and then, from the shadows, Carrefour appears: an imposing watchman, his eyes wide and unblinking, as if he is both gatekeeper and ghost. The very earth seems to hold its breath as the women pass, the scene unfolding with the logic of a half-remembered nightmare, each footfall a step deeper into the island’s mysteries.

At the houmfort, Betsy witnesses a Vodou ceremony that Tourneur films with a documentarian’s curiosity and a surrealist’s eye. The Vodou ceremony unfolds in a fever of rhythm and color. The dancers move in trance-like unison, their bodies answering the call of the drums, while the congregation’s voices rise and fall like a tide.

While the houngan (priest) slashes Jessica’s arm with a saber, when she fails to bleed, the crowd gasps: “Zombie!” This moment crystallizes the film’s critique of the colonial gaze. Jessica’s condition—a product of Mrs. Rand’s (Edith Barrett) desperate invocation of Vodou to stop her from destroying the family—becomes a metaphor for the zombification of Black bodies under slavery. The film doesn’t romanticize Vodou; instead, it frames it as a lived resistance, a language of power that the Hollands dismiss as “superstition” even as it dismantles their illusions of control.

The camera lingers on faces caught between ecstasy and terror, and when Jessica’s bloodless arm is revealed, the word “zombie” ripples through the crowd like a chill wind. The ceremony is both spectacle and sacrament, its power undeniable, its meaning layered with centuries of resistance and longing.

Elsewhere, the restaurant scene becomes a stage for another kind of ritual: Sir Lancelot’s calypso song, with its sly lyrics, exposes the Holland family’s secrets to the island’s gaze. The music is gentle, almost mocking, and the words cut deeper than any knife, turning private shame into public lament. The Holland brothers’ faces flicker with anger and humiliation, and the air is charged with the knowledge that nothing can remain hidden for long.

Finally, the torchlit climax by the sea: Paul’s half-brother Wesley, driven by guilt and grief, carries Jessica’s unresisting body toward the surf, the flames of the villagers’ torches flickering in the night. Carrefour follows, implacable as fate, and the waves close over the doomed lovers. The scene is at once an exorcism and a requiem, the island reclaiming its dead, and the past refusing to be laid to rest.

Each of these moments is woven from shadow and suggestion, from the poetry of what is seen and what is only felt. Lewton and Tourneur conjure a world where every breeze and every silence carries meaning, and where the boundaries between the living and the dead, the beautiful and the damned, are as thin and fragile as moonlight on water.

The performances are studies in restraint. Frances Dee’s Betsy oscillates between Florence Nightingale resolve and trembling vulnerability, her crisp nurse’s uniform a stark contrast to the island’s humid sensuality. Tom Conway, Lewton’s recurring leading man, plays Paul with a weary magnetism, his colonial guilt masked by a sardonic wit. Yet it’s Darby Jones’ Carrefour—wordless, spectral, and endlessly imitated—who lingers in the memory, a monument to the film’s unspoken subtext: the Black body as both feared and fetishized.

Roy Webb’s score is a character in itself, weaving calypso melodies (courtesy of Sir Lancelot’s haunting vocals) with dissonant strings that mirror Betsy’s unraveling sense of security. The film charts her psychological journey from confident professionalism to a state of deep uncertainty and emotional vulnerability. At the outset, Betsy arrives on Saint Sebastian with a sense of purpose and optimism, but as she becomes enmeshed in the island’s mysteries and the Holland family’s tragic history, her rational worldview is steadily eroded. The failure of conventional medicine to cure Jessica and Betsy’s subsequent decision to seek help from the Vodou houmfort marks a pivotal moment where her “professional carapace is shattered, and she enters a liminal state”. She is shaken by the island’s atmosphere, the eerie rituals, and the supernatural possibilities that challenge her belief in science and order.

The music peaks in the climax, as Wesley Rand (James Ellison), Jessica’s tormented brother-in-law, carries her body into the sea, pursued by Carrefour. Their deaths, framed against Ti-Misery’s arrow-riddled form, offer no catharsis—only the grim acknowledgment that the sins of the past are as inescapable as the tide.

Lewton and screenwriters Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray infuse Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre with a postcolonial ache. The mansion’s secrets—a madwoman in the attic, a brooding patriarch—are reframed through the lens of racial and cultural collision. When Mrs. Rand confesses to using Vodou to “kill” Jessica, she embodies the film’s central irony: the colonizer’s reliance on the very traditions they despise.

I Walked with a Zombie was dismissed by some critics as schlock, but its legacy lies in its audacity. Lewton, working under RKO’s constraints, turned a sensational title into a poem of light and shadow, where horror emerges not from monsters, but from the rot festering beneath imperialist façades. In an era when Hollywood reduced Black cultures to exotic backdrop, the film grants them a gravity that still feels radical. Tourneur’s camera doesn’t exploit; it observes, finding in the houmfort’s flames and the cane fields’ whispers a truth more unsettling than any zombie: that the real horror is the silence of history, and the stories we refuse to hear.

ISLE OF THE DEAD 1945

Whispers Among the Cypress: Shadows and Superstition on the Isle of the Dead

In the haunted hush of Isle of the Dead (1945), Val Lewton’s gift for conjuring dread from the unseen and the unspoken reaches its most elegiac form. Directed by Mark Robson, who had apprenticed under Robert Wise and Jacques Tourneur within the Lewton unit, the film unfolds like a fevered meditation on mortality, superstition, and the thin, trembling veil between reason and terror. Lewton, ever the poet of shadows, draws from an Arnold Böcklin painting for his title and from the horrors of war and plague for his atmosphere, creating a work that is as much a lament as it is a ghost story.

The film is set during the Balkan Wars of 1912, on a desolate Greek island whose marble tombs and cypress silhouettes seem carved from the very marrow of myth. General Nikolas Pherides, played by Boris Karloff with a stony, haunted gravity, arrives with American war correspondent Oliver Davis (Marc Cramer) to visit the grave of his long-dead wife. The island is already a place of the dead, but soon becomes a prison for the living as a mysterious plague—called septicemic fever—descends upon the small group sheltering in the villa of Swiss archaeologist Dr. Albrecht (Jason Robards Sr.).

Boris Karloff moves through Isle of the Dead like a figure carved from ancient stone, his presence both commanding and mournful, as if he carries the weight of centuries within his bearing. As General Pherides, Karloff’s every gesture is measured, his voice a low, deliberate rumble that seems to echo from the crypts themselves. There is a haunted dignity in the way he surveys the island’s marble tombs, a man who has seen too much death to believe in easy comfort, yet who clings to order with a desperate, almost childlike tenacity. His eyes, at once cold and searching, betray the slow unraveling of certainty as superstition seeps into the cracks of his rational mind. In moments of doubt and fear, Karloff’s face becomes a landscape of sorrow and suspicion, the stern lines softening into something achingly human. When he succumbs at last to the very terror he sought to banish, it is with a tragic grandeur that lingers long after the final frame—a performance that feels less like acting than like an invocation, calling forth the restless spirits of both the living and the dead. This is where Boris Karloff’s true mastery lies—summoning a quiet ache from deep within, he delivers a performance so nuanced it shimmers at the threshold between reason and terror, inhabiting a narrative that trembles with both intellect and dread.

Lewton and Robson paint the island not just as a setting, but as a state of mind: the air is thick with the scent of cypress and decay, the moonlight is cold and pitiless, and the marble mausoleums cast shadows that seem to move of their own accord. The cinematography by Jack MacKenzie is a study in chiaroscuro, each frame sculpted from darkness and uncertain light. The camera lingers on the faces of the trapped guests as fear and suspicion take root; the villa becomes a crucible where rationality and superstition are forced into collision.

As the fever claims its victims, the group fractures along lines of belief and doubt. Dr. Drossos, the Greek military doctor, insists on quarantine, while Pherides, a man of rigid discipline and secular faith, finds himself increasingly drawn to the island’s folklore—particularly the legend of the vorvolaka, a vampiric spirit said to rise from the grave and spread pestilence. The superstitious housekeeper, Madame Kyra (Helen Thimig), fans these fears, her whispered warnings and furtive glances fueling the sense of encroaching doom. The American, Davis, clings to his journalistic detachment, but even he is not immune to the island’s spell.

At the heart of the film is Thea (Ellen Drew), the young Greek woman whom Madame Kyra accuses of being a vorvolaka.

Ellen Drew, who brings a heavenly vulnerability to her role as Thea in Isle of the Dead, was a versatile actress whose career spanned both film and television. Among her other notable roles are Betty Casey in Preston Sturges’ Christmas in July (1940), Huguette in If I Were King (1938), and Sofia de Peralta in The Baron of Arizona (1950) alongside Vincent Price. She also starred opposite Bing Crosby in Sing You Sinners (1938), George Raft in The Lady’s from Kentucky (1939), and Dick Powell in Johnny O’Clock (1947). Drew’s beauty was the kind that seemed to catch and hold the light—a delicate, sculpted face framed by soft waves, her eyes deep and expressive, with both longing and resolve. On screen, she radiated an ethereal grace, a gentle yet magnetic presence.

Thea’s luminous innocence and quiet strength stand in stark contrast to the mounting hysteria around her. Drew’s performance is all trembling vulnerability and quiet dignity, her wide eyes reflecting both terror and compassion. As the deaths mount and the survivors grow ever more desperate, Thea becomes both scapegoat and symbol—a living vessel for the group’s collective dread.

Karloff’s Pherides is a portrait of authority undone by the very forces he seeks to control. His transformation from stern rationalist to a man possessed by fear is rendered with tragic inevitability. The moment when he, convinced of Thea’s supernatural guilt, stalks her through the crypts with a lantern, his face gaunt and wild-eyed, is one of Lewton’s most chilling set pieces. The crypt itself is a masterpiece of set design and lighting: marble slabs gleam in the darkness, and the air is thick with the silence of centuries. The suspense is almost unbearable as Thea, entombed alive by Pherides’ paranoia, claws her way out of her marble prison, her white dress torn and her eyes wide with terror—a living ghost staggering into the moonlight.

The supporting cast is a gallery of haunted souls: Jason Robards Sr. as Dr. Albrecht, the humane skeptic; Katherine Emery as Mrs. St. Aubyn, whose own brush with premature burial years before has left her fragile and haunted; and Skelton Knaggs as the consumptive Andrew Robbins, whose death is marked by a wind that rattles the shutters and a silence that presses on the heart. Each character is drawn with the economy and empathy that mark Lewton’s best work, their fates entwined with the island’s inexorable pull.

Leigh Harline’s score is a mournful tapestry of strings and woodwinds, weaving Greek motifs with the universal language of unease. The music swells and recedes like the tide, underscoring the film’s rhythms of hope and despair. The script, by Ardel Wray and Josef Mischel, is spare but eloquent, its dialogue laced with philosophical inquiry and fatalistic poetry. “Laws can be wrong and laws can be cruel, and the people who live only by the law are both wrong and cruel.” In Lewton’s world, death is everywhere: in the wind that rattles the olive trees, in the shadows that pool around the crypts, in the fear that turns neighbor against neighbor.

The film’s climax is a symphony of terror and release. Mrs. Mary St. Aubyn is “resurrected” from the crypt—not in a supernatural sense, but because she was mistakenly entombed alive due to a cataleptic trance. Mary St. Aubyn, who suffers from catalepsy (a condition causing death-like trances), is believed to have died during the plague quarantine on the island. Despite her fears of premature burial, the others—except for Thea—think she is dead and entomb her in the family crypt. This act is driven by the mounting panic, superstition, and the threat of plague, with the General and Kyra convinced that supernatural forces (the vorvolaka) are at play.

As the sirocco winds finally arrive, signaling hope for the end of the plague, it is too late for Mary. She awakens in the tomb, driven mad by her ordeal, and escapes. In a state of insanity, she returns to the house, kills Kyra (who had tormented Thea with accusations of being a vorvolaka), and stabs General Pherides (who is already showing signs of the plague) as he attempts to kill Thea. Ultimately, Mary flees and leaps to her death from a cliff. The tomb is both literal and symbolic—a triumph of life over superstition, but also a reminder of how easily fear can turn the living into the dead.

Pherides, consumed by his own demons, succumbs to the plague, his authority and certainty dissolved in the moonlit ruins. The survivors emerge, changed and chastened, as dawn breaks over the cypress groves—a fragile hope trembling on the edge of despair.

Isle of the Dead is filled with atmosphere and suggestion, of the horrors that bloom in silence and shadow. It is a meditation on the limits of reason, the persistence of myth, and the ways in which fear can become its own contagion. Lewton, with Robson as his sensitive collaborator, crafts a work of haunted beauty—a requiem for the dead, and a warning to the living. In the end, the isle is not just a place, but a state of being: a liminal space where the living and the dead, the rational and the irrational, are forever entwined in a dance as old as time.

#83 Down, 67 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

Postcards from Shadowland Halloween 2019

Nature’s Fury Blogathon: 🐜 Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) Melanie Daniels as Metaphor: Wanton With Wings-“What are you? I think you’re the cause of all this, I think you’re evil!”

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The clever & cheeky Barry of Cinematic Catharsis has summoned this great and powerful idea for a Summer Blogathon! Whether it’s the weather, or giant mutant bugs, blood hungry sharks, large animals run amok, or the elements gone awry–Nature’s Fury can be seen in so many fascinating and awe inspiring feature films and those lovable B movie trends that showcase the natural world in chaos. I immediately thought of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds as it is a film that has stayed burned in my mind since I first saw it as a child. Certain scenes will never lose their power to terrify.

And in celebration of this event, I’ve actually written a song and made a film/music mash up to tribute Tippi Hedren in The Birds, with a montage from the film featuring my song Calling Palundra

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“The Birds expresses nature and what it can do, and the dangers of nature. Because there’s no doubt that if the birds did decide, you know, with the millions that they are, to go for everybody’s eyes, then we’d have H.G.Wells Kingdom of the Blind on our hands.”-Alfred Hitchcock

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“Why are they doing this? They said when you got here, the whole thing started. Who are you? What are You? Where did you come from? I think you’re the cause of all this… I think you’re evil EVIL!” Actress Doreen Lang playing the hysterical mother in the diner!

This tribute video features my special song written just for this blogathon…. Here’s Melanie Daniels & the birds– with my piano vocal accompaniment, ‘Calling Palundra’

The children’s song “Risseldy Rosseldy” heard at the school when the crows began to unite as a gang is the Americanization of an old Scottish folk song called “Wee Cooper O’Fife”

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Image courtesy of: Jürgen Müller’s colorful Movies of the ’60s

On it’s face The Birds can be taken literally as a cautionary tale about the natural world fighting back against the insensitivity & downright barbaric treatment of nature’s children and the environment at the hands of humankind. Is it a tale of simple unmitigated revenge against the town for the killing of a pigeon? Or is there something more nefarious & psycho-sexual at work? Once you peel back the top layer of the visual narrative there are multi metaphors at work.

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From Dark Romance: SEXUALITY IN THE HORROR FILM by David J. Hogan- “Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) is probably the ultimate expression of this sort of nameless dread. It is a film that cheerfully defies description: it is horror, it is science fiction, it is black comedy, it is a scathing look at our mores and manners. It is a highly sexual film, but in a perversely negativistic way.”

Before the release of The Birds in 1963, Tippi Hedren made the cover of Look Magazine with the heading “Hitchcock’s new Grace Kelly.”

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Tippi Hedren in Marnie (1964) What Grace Kelly had in pristine beauty and sophistication, Hedren possesses an undertow of sensuality that pulls you into that gorgeous mystique.

As with Hitchcock’s other, worldly beautiful blonde subject — the strong-willed socialite Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly) in Rear Window (1954) The Birds features the stunning Tippi Hedren as the coy, confident, and a bit manipulative Melanie Daniels a San Fransisco socialite who descends upon Bodega Bay with a similar uncompromising will. Stiff, stolid, and cocky Lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) meets Melanie in a pet shop where the two share shallow, faintly romantic barbs and repartee. Mitch is shopping for a pair of love birds for his sister Cathy’s eleventh birthday and Mitch pretends in a condescending manner to mistake her for the clerk.  Melanie goes along with the mistaken identity as a way to flirt until his slightly mean-spirited joke backfires when she accidentally lets a canary loose while it lands in an ashtray Mitch throws his hat on it and places it back in its cage smugly saying “Back in your gilded cage Melanie Daniels.” revealing that he not only knew who she was from the very beginning and has quite a snotty preconceived notion about this socialite whom he appears to judge as running with a ‘wild’ crowd and is amoral. He manages to make a bit of a fool out of Melanie. The contrast between the flirty glib and calculating Melanie Daniels and the less interesting, judgemental, and arrogant Mitch Brenner kicks off a chemistry that really isn’t as vital to the story as what the two personalities represent. 

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As Melanie is about to enter Davidson’s Pet Shop, she hears and sees a tremendous gathering of Seagulls in the sky. It is a foreboding moment of things to come…

Continue reading “Nature’s Fury Blogathon: 🐜 Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) Melanie Daniels as Metaphor: Wanton With Wings-“What are you? I think you’re the cause of all this, I think you’re evil!””

A Symphony of Dark Patches- The Val Lewton Legacy 1943

This post is a feature…As part of the CLASSIC MOVIE HISTORY PROJECT BLOGATHON hosted by the fantastic gang over at- Movies Silently, Silver Screenings & Once Upon a Screen– Visit these wonderful blogs during this historic event and fill your head with a collection of fascinating movie memories.

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From Dreams of Darkness-Fantasy and the films of Val Lewton by J.P. Telotte:
“{The audience} will populate the darkness with more horrors than all the horror writers in Hollywood could think of… if you make the screen dark enough, the mind’s eye will read anything into it you want. We’re great ones for dark patches.” – Val Lewton

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Jane Randolph as Alice Moore in Val Lewton’s Cat People 1942 directed by Jacques Tourneur.
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A scene from Bedlam (1946) directed by Mark Robson.

During the 1940s Val Lewton and his ‘Lewton Unit’ used the essential vision of fantastic darkness to recreate a very unique style of horror/fantasy genre, one which challenged Hollywood’s notion of the tangible monsters Universal studios had been manufacturing. Lewton, while working at RKO Studios, produced an exquisite, remarkable and limited collection of films that came face to face with a ‘nightworld.’ Lewton used our most deepest darkest psychological and innate fears that dwell within the lattice of shadows of our dreams and secret wish-fulfillment.

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“Our formula is simple. A love story, three scenes of suggested horror and one of actual violence. Fade out” -Val Lewton

Lewton worked at MGM between 1926 and 1932 and then served eight years under David Selznick. He had published nine novels and a number of short stories. In addition he produced regular radio show versions of MGM films. He also had ties in the industry as his aunt was the very influential silent actress Alla Nazimova.

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the great stage and silent screen actress Alla Nazimova-Val Lewton’s very influential aunt…

But Lewton had left his mark with Selznick and in 1940 rival company RKO was interested in hiring him..It was actually Selznick who negotiated Lewton’s contract.

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“My task is to initiate a programme of horror pictures to be made at the comparatively low cost of 125,000 each. Which should compete successfully with Universal horror films. Which cost anywhere from 300,000 to a million dollars. I feel I can do this quite easily and the Universal people spend a lot of money on their horror product. But not much on brains or imagination.”-Val Lewton

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Lewton put together a team of collaborators with whom he would work closely. He chose Mark Robson to edit. Robert Wise and Lewton worked together on Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. DeWitt Bodeen had worked with him during his time with David O’ Selznick was to write the first screenplay for Cat People. His old friend Jacques Tourneur whom he became friends with while working on A Tale of Two Cities. was brought on board to direct. He chose Nicholas Musuraca as his director of photography and Roy Webb to compose the musical scores. They all worked on countless RKO films. It was Lewton’s intention to create quality pictures though he was constrained by a low budget. Jacques Tourneur had said that Lewton was an idealist who had his head up in the clouds and would come up with impossible ideas. However for Tourneur, his feet were planted firmly on the ground, yet somehow they complemented each other perfectly, Tourneur claims it was a very happy time in his life, and that Lewton’s gift to him was the filmic poetry that he was able to carry with him forever.

Jacques Tourneur is perhaps one of my favorite directors, with his use of shadow and all together dreamy lens of the world, he’s responsible for one of THE best classic horror films Curse of the Demon & film noir tour de force Out of the Past.

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Jacques Tourneur directs Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer in Out of the Past 1947.
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Jacques Tourneur’s moody horror with Niall MacGinnis and cat Curse of the Demon 1957.
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Part of the Lewton Unit- image from the documentary The Man in the Shadows from top left Roy Webb composer, Val Lewton, Nicholas Musuraca Cinematographer, Mark Robson editing/directing, DeWitt Bodeen writing, and Robert Wise-director.

“Horror is created in the mind of the spectator. It’s necessary to suggest things. In all my films you never saw what caused the horror. I saw people screaming in the theater when there was a young girl in a swimming pool, but you never saw the black leopard. The lights blaze up at the end. And there’s Simone Simon. Something has definitely happened. -Jacques Tourneur

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Jacques Tourneur looking over the film sketches.
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Jacques Tourneur on location for Berlin Express 1948.

“Lewton gave us something quite different than what’s known as Hollywood craftsmanship you can say that he presented us with a parallel world in which everything feels both real and a little unreal-familiar but strange. The characters and the viewer slip into a mysterious, troubling gray zone. Where real life and dream life come face to face. And where beauty and destruction merge. Lewton and Tourneur really created a new kind of cinematic beauty”-from The Man in the Shadows Val Lewton documentary

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the golden boy from Bedlam

Learning from his last employer Selznick he made sure to supervise absolutely every aspect of the film’s production, from casting, set design, costumes, direction, and editing. He even rewrote every script himself without taking credit or under a pseudonym. In this way he developed his own visual style of storytelling, having prepared each detail before shooting.

“My feelings are generated, however by more than my gratitude for that first opportunity. They come from the warm and highly stimulating creative experience I had working with Val. He taught me so much about directing and filmmaking in general…Val Lewton was one of that fairly rare species, a truly creative producer. As such, he was able to achieve an outstanding reputation for the high quality, unusual and interesting “B” pictures he produced at RKO Studios starting in the early 1940s” Robert Wise, March 1994

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Robert Wise behind the camera
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Robert Wise, Mark Robson & Val Lewton

“I remember him staying up until all hours of the night working on screenplays. He enjoyed having his hand in the writing. I used to that that he went out of his way to pick inept writers so that he’d have to redo their work. He used to write on a Royal typewriter;he used only two fingers but he was very fast. He’d talk out the different parts as he wrote them and, since my bed was just on the other side of the wall, I’d fall asleep listening.”Nina Lewton Druckman from the Reality of Terror by Joel Siegel

Robert Wise was part of the Lewton Unit, one of my favorite directors who would go on to direct some of the most outstanding films in a variety of genres, from musicals like West Side Story 1961, and Sound of Music 1965, to Lewton’s Curse of The Cat People 1944 and The Body Snatcher 1945, noir masterpieces, Born To Kill 1947, The Set Up 1949 and The House of Telegraph Hill 1950, I Want to Live! 1958, Odds Against Tomorrow 1959, to sci-fi and Gothic ghost story masterpieces Day the Earth Stood Still 1951, The Haunting 1963, and The Andromeda Strain 1971.

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Michael Rennie and Gort in Robert Wise’s Sci-Fi masterpiece The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
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Robert Wise’s boxing noir The Set-Up 1949

Lewton drove himself very hard trying to achieve something beautiful and of high quality. He and his team were given a very small budget, a cast of veritable unknowns, and evocative titles that were sensationalist and lurid in nature and did not truly represent an accurate account of the narrative. There were no gruesome fiends nor even evidence of malevolent forces at work in his ordinary everyday environments. Yet RKO’s studio head Charles Koerner dictated such titles as Cat People 1942, Curse of the Cat People 1944, Bedlam 1946, Isle of the Dead 1946, The Body Snatcher 1945, I Walked With A Zombie, The Ghost Ship, and The Leopard Man in 1943 and The Seventh Victim.

“If you want to get out now, Lewton told Bodeen, I won’t hold it against you.”

Continue reading “A Symphony of Dark Patches- The Val Lewton Legacy 1943”

Postcards From Shadowland: Huge Halloween Edition! 2013

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Metropolis 1927
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Earth vs the Flying Saucers 1956
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The Uninvited 1944
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Bedlam 1946
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The Mad Monster 1942
masque-du-demon-1960-15-g
Black Sunday 1960
Annex - Veidt, Conrad (Cabinet of Dr. Caligari)_01
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920
Tales From the Crypt
Tales from the Crypt 1972
1941_Wolfman_img5
The Wolf Man 1941
a NightMonster2
Night Monster 1942
Bela Island of Lost Souls
Island of Lost Souls 1932
carnival-of-souls
Carnival of Souls 1962
Annex - Chaney Jr., Lon (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man)_05
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man 1943
Annex - Chaney Sr., Lon (Hunchback of Notre Dame, The)_01
The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1939
Annex - Chaney Sr., Lon (London After Midnight)_05
London After Midnight  1927
Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein
Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein 1948
Annex - Chaney Sr., Lon (West of Zanzibar)_02
West of Zanzibar 1928
una O'Connor
The Invisible Man 1933
Annex - Cushing, Peter (Daleks' Invasion Earth - 2150 A.D.)_02
Daleks’ Invasion Earth -2150 A.D. (1966)
The Man from Planet X
The Man from Planet X (1951)
Annex - Karloff, Boris (Bride of Frankenstein, The)_05 2
The Bride of Frankenstein 1935
Chaney in the unknown
The Unknown 1927
amityville_horror
The Amityville Horror 1979
Annex - Karloff, Boris (Man They Could Not Hang, The)_NRFPT_03
The Man They Could Not Hang 1939
Corridors of Blood
Corridors of Blood 1958
Annex - Krauss, Werner (Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The)_01
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920
Annex - Lugosi, Bela (Ape Man, The)_01
The Ape Man 1943
Annex - Lugosi, Bela (Chandu the Magician)_01
Chandu the Magician 1932
time-of-their-lives
The Time of Their Lives 1946
Annex - Lugosi, Bela (Ghost of Frankenstein, The)_01
The Ghost of Frankenstein 1942
Invisible-Man
The Invisible Man 1933
Annex - Lugosi, Bela (Raven, The)_03
The Raven 1935
Annex - Churchill, Marguerite (Dracula's Daughter)_02
Dracula’s Daughter 1936
bloody-mama
Bloody Mama 1970
Annex - Lugosi, Bela (Son of Frankenstein)_02
Son of Frankenstein 1939
Annex - Lugosi, Bela (White Zombie)_01
White Zombie 1932
Annex - Marshall, Tully (Cat and the Canary, The)_01
The Cat and the Canary 1927
Annex - Naish, J. Carrol (Dr. Renault's Secret)_NRFPT_02
Dr. Renault’s Secret 1942
black sunday
Black Sunday 1960
Kill Baby Kill
Kill Baby Kill 1966
Annex - Price, Vincent (Abominable Dr. Phibes, The)_01
The Abominable Dr. Phibes 1971
Bela-Dracula_04
Dracula 1931
Annex - Price, Vincent (Dragonwyck)_01
Dragonwyck 1946
Annex - Price, Vincent (House of Wax)_01
House of Wax 1953
Annex - Price, Vincent (Raven, The)_01
The Raven 1963
Dracula's+Daughter
Dracula’s Daughter 1936
Annex - Rathbone, Basil (Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The)_01
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1939
annex-karloffborisbrideoffrankensteinthe_03
the Bride of Frankenstein 1935
Beauty and Beast
Beauty and the Beast 1946
shrinking man
The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957
32093_Invasion-of-the-body-Snatchers-1
Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1956
tarantula
Tarantula 1955
village-of-the-damned-original
Village of the Damned 1960
catandcarary2
Cat and the Canary 1927

Bates Motel sign

silent-night-bloody-night
Silent Night, Bloody Night 1972
Freaks wedding-feast
Freaks 1932
west-of-zanzibar
West of Zanzibar
Chaney He Who Gets Slapped
He Who Gets Slapped 1924
Family Plot Karen Black RIP
Family Plot 1976  (rip Karen Black)
Curse-of-the-Demon-5
Curse of the Demon 1957
Devil_Girl_From_Mars03
Devil Girl From Mars 1954
Doctor Cyclops still
Dr Cyclops 1940
evelyn-venable-doubleWeb
Double Door 1934
rosemarys-baby-1968-
Rosemary’s Baby 1968
barbara-steele-and-vincent-price-pit-and-pendulum
Pit and the Pendulum 1961
experiment-in-terror
Experiment in Terror 1962
eyeswoaface
Eyes Without a Face 1960
demon fireball its in the trees
Curse of the Demon 1957
a behemoth PDVD_000
The Giant Behemoth 1959
frankenstein bride Mae Clarke
The Bride of Frankenstein 1935
ghost-of-frankenstein
The Ghost of Frankenstein 1942
haunted_palace_23
The Haunted Palace 1963
night of the demon true believers
Curse of the Demon 1957
he_who_gets_slapped
He Who Gets Slapped 1924
Hitchcock's Blackmail
Blackmail 1929
House on Haunted HIll -Nora-Mrs.Slydes
House on Haunted Hill 1959
house
House of Frankenstein 1944
images
The Haunting 1963
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead 1968
Island of Lost Souls
Island of Lost Souls 1932
Metrópolis
Metrópolis 1927
it-came-from-beneath-the-sea
It Came From Beneath the Sea 1955
The-Crawling-Eye
The Crawling Eye 1958
itcamealien2
It Came from Outer Space 1953
it-came-from-outer-space-07
It Came from Outer Space 1953
Lifeboat
Lifeboat 1944
lionelatwill8
Man Made Monster 1941
Lon Chaney in The Monster
The Monster 1925
Murnau's Faust 3
Faust 1926
night-demon-macginnis
Curse of the Demon 1957
NightMonster1
Night Monster 1942
Poster - Day the Earth Stood Still, The_30
The Day the Earth Stood Still 1951
r2 d2  4The Thing-0
The Thing from Another World 1951
The Devil Commands
The Devil Commands 1941
stepford wives
The Stepford Wives 1975
screaming-skull2
The Screaming Skull 1958
Smoking Frankenstein friends are good
the Bride of Frankenstein 1935
Swimming with Julie
The Creature from the Black Lagoon 1954
The Black Cat Karloff and dead wife
The Black Cat 1934
The Black Cat Ulmer Karloff & Lugosi
The Black Cat 1934
fly
The Fly 1958
The Ghost Ship Lewton
The Ghost Ship 1943
The Invisible Ray
The Invisible Ray 1936
the leopard man
The Leopard Man 1943
freaks
Freaks 1932
The Man They Could Not Hang Karloff in Lab
The Man They Could Not Hang 1939
The Man They Could Not Hang
The Man They Could Not Hang 1939
The Mummy Karloff
The Mummy 1932
psycho
Psycho 1960
The Thing From Another World
The Thing from Another World 1951
The-Mummys-Ghost
The Mummy’s’ Ghost 1944
the undying monster
The Undying Monster 1942
jane_eyre-
Jane Eyre 1943
The Woman Who Came Back
The Woman Who Came Back 1945
the-amazing-colossal-man-pic-4
the Amazing Colossal Man 1957
the-incredible-shrinking-man
The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957
the-seventh-seal-
The Seventh Seal 1957
The+Haunting
The Haunting 1963
The Devil Commands
The Devil Commands
thing-from-another-world-pic-3
The Thing From Another World 1951
UndyingMonster+%2836%29
The Undying Monster 1942
Unholy 3 Lon Chaney
The Unholy 3 (1925)
Vampyr
Vampyr 1932
I walk with a zombie
I Walked with a Zombie 1943
the exorcist
The Exorcist 1973
carnival-of-souls-
Carnival of Souls 1962
White Zombie
White Zombie 1932
Zita JohannIsland-of-Lost-Souls-3
Island of Lost Souls 1932
Zounds-Herman Munster
Munster, Go Home! 1966

Special appreciation for several of the fabulous images courtesy of Dr. Macros High Quality photos!

HAVE A VERY SAFE & HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM YOUR EVERLOVIN’ MONSTERGIRL!!!!!!

Heroines & Scream Queens of Classic Horror: the 1940s! A very special Drive In Hall–ween treat!

Evelyn Ankers
promo shot for The Wolf Man- Evelyn Ankers

THE WOMEN OF CLASSIC HORROR: THE 1940S!

You could say that Evelyn Ankers is still the reigning queen of classical 1940s horror fare turned out by studios like RKO, Universal, and Monogram. But there was a host of femme scream tales that populated the silver screen with their unique beauty, quirky style, and/or set of lungs ready to wail, faint, or generally add some great tone and tinge to the eerie atmosphere whenever the mad scientist or monster was afoot. Some were even monstrous themselves…

For this upcoming Halloween, I thought I’d show just a little love to those fabulous ladies who forged a little niche for themselves as the earliest scream queens & screen icons.

ELSA LANCHESTER 1902-1986

I’m including Elsa Lanchester because any time I can talk about this deliriously delightful actress I’m gonna do it. Now I know she was the screaming hissing undead bride in the 30s but consider this… in the 40s she co-starred in two seminal thrillers that bordered on shear horror as Mrs. Oates in The Spiral Staircase 1945 and a favorite of mine as one of Ida Lupino’s batty sisters Emily Creed in Ladies in Retirement 1941

I plan on venturing back to the pre-code thirties soon, so I’ll talk about The Bride of Frankenstein, as well as Gloria Holden (Dracula’s Daughter, Frances Dade (Dracula) and Kathleen Burke (Island of Lost Souls) Gloria Stuart and Fay Wray and so many more wonderful actresses of that golden era…

Elsa Lanchester in The Spiral Staircase
Elsa Lanchester as Mrs.Oates in director Robert Siodmak’s The Spiral Staircase 1945
Annex - Lupino, Ida (Ladies in Retirement)_01
The Sister Creed in Ladies in Retirement 1941 starring Elsa Lanchester, Ida Lupino, and the wonderful Edith Barrett (right)

ANNE NAGEL  1915-1956

Anne Nagel
the playfully pretty Anne Nagel.
Anne Nagel & Lon Chaney Man Made Monster Promo photo
Anne Nagel & Lon Chaney Jr in a promo shot for Man Made Monster
Anne Nagel, Lon Chaney & Lionel Atwill Man Made Monster
Anne Nagel was strapped to the slab and at the mercy of the ever-mad Lionel Atwill. Here comes the glowing Lon Chaney Jr! in his electric rubber suit in Man Made Monster!

The depraved mad scientist Lionel Atwill working with electro biology pins gorgeous red-headed Anne Nagel playing June Lawrence, to his operating slab in Man Made Monster 1941. Lon Chaney Jr. comes hulking in all aglow as the ‘Electrical Man’ which was his debut for Universal. He carries Anne Nagel through the countryside all lit up like a lightning bug in rubber armor. Man Made Monster isn’t the only horror shocker that she displayed her tresses & distresses. She also played a night club singer named Sunny Rogers also co-starring our other 40’s horror heroine icon Anne Gwynne in the Karloff/Lugosi pairing Black Friday in 1940.

She played the weeping Mrs.William Saunders, the wife of Lionel Atwill’s first victim in Mad Doctor of Market Street 1942. And then of course she played mad scientist Dr Lorenzo Cameron’s (George Zucco’s) daughter Lenora in The Mad Monster 1942. Dr. Cameron has succeeded with his serum in turning men into hairy wolf-like Neanderthal monsters whom he unleashes on the men who ruined his career.

Anne Nagel and Lionel Atwill Mad Doctor of Market Street
Anne Nagel and Lionel Atwill Mad Doctor of Market Street.

Poor Anne had a very tragic life… Considered that sad girl who was always hysterical. Once Universal dropped her she fell into the Poverty Row limbo of bit parts. Her brief marriage to Ross Alexander ended when he shot himself in the barn in 1937, and Anne became a quiet alcoholic until her death from cancer in 1966.

Anne Nagel Lon Chaney Lobby Card

Lon Chaney Jr and Anne Nagel Man Made Monster

the-mad-monster-glenn-strange-left-everett

anne
Dr. Cameron’s daughter Lenora (Anne Nagel) discovers the wolf-like man in his laboratory in The Mad Monster.
Hairy beast The Mad Monster
Glenn Strange as Petro the Hairy man in The Mad Monster 1942.

black-friday-bela-lugosi-anne-nagel-everett

Annex - Lugosi, Bela (Black Friday)_01

1940 UNIVERSAL
the sultry Anne Nagel and Bela Lugosi in Black Friday 1940 photo courtesy Dr. Macro.

MARTHA VICKERS- 1925-1971

Martha Vickers
the beauty of Martha Vickers.

Martha was in noir favorites The Big Sleep 1946 & Alimony 1949. This beauty played an uncredited Margareta ‘Vazec’s Daughter’along side Ilona Massey as Baroness Elsa Frankenstein and the marvelous older beauty Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva the gypsy! in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man 1943. Then she played heroine Dorothy Coleman in Captive Wild Woman 1943 and Miss McLean in The Mummy’s Ghost 1944.

Originally Martha MacVickar she started modeling for photographer William Mortenson. David O Selznick contracted the starlet but Universal took over and put in her bit parts as the victim in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and in other ‘B’ guilty pleasures like Captive Wild Woman & The Mummy’s Ghost. She was also the pin-up girl for WWII magazines.

Martha also starred in other noir features such as Ruthless 1948 and The Big Bluff 1955. She was Mickey Rooney’s third wife.

Annex - Bogart, Humphrey (Big Sleep, The)_04
Martha Vickers and Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep photo courtesy of Dr. Macro.
Martha Vickers and Lon Chaney in Frankenstein Meets the wolf man
Martha Vickers and Lon Chaney in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.
Martha Vickers and John Carradine in Captive Wild Woman
Martha Vickers and John Carradine in Captive Wild Woman
Martha VIckers
I just can’t resist Vicker’s sex appeal here she is again… Wow!

JANICE LOGAN 1915-1965

Though Logan made very few films including Opened By Mistake 1940, her contribution to women who kick-ass in horror films and don’t shrink like violets when there’s a big bald baddie coming after you with a net and a bottle of chloroform, makes you a pretty fierce contender even if you are only 7 inches tall! As Dr. Mary Robinson (Janice Logan), Logan held it all together while the men were scattering like mice from the menacing google eyed Dr. Cyclops played superbly by Albert Dekker.

FAY HELM  1909-2003

johncarradine14
Fay Helm as Nurse Strand with John Carradine in Captive Wild Woman.

Fay Helm played Ann Terry in one of my favorite unsung noir/thriller gems Phantom Lady 1944 where it was all about the ‘hat’ and she co-starred as Nurse Strand alongside John Carradine in Captive Wild Woman. Fay played Mrs. Duval in the Inner Sanctum mystery Calling Dr. Death with Lon Chaney Jr. 1943

Ella Raines and Fay Helm in Phantom Lady
Ella Raines and Fay Helm in Phantom Lady.

Fay Helm plays Jenny Williams in Curt Siodmak’s timeless story directed by George Waggner for Universal and starring son of a thousand faces Lon Chaney Jr in his most iconic role Larry Talbot as The Wolf Man 1941

Fay as Jenny Williams: “Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”

Fay was in Night Monster 1942. Directed by Ford Beebe the film starred Bela Lugosi as a butler to Lionel Atwill a pompous doctor who falls prey to frightening nocturnal visitations. I particularly love the atmosphere of this little chiller with its swampy surroundings and its metaphysical storyline.

Dr. Lynn Harper (Irene Hervey- Play Misty For Me 1971) a psychologist is called to the mysterious Ingston Mansion, to evaluate the sanity of Margaret Ingston, played by our horror heroine Fay Helm daughter of Kurt Ingston (Ralph Morgan) a recluse who invites the doctors to his eerie mansion who left him in a wheelchair.

Fay gives a terrific performance surrounded by all the ghoulish goings on! She went on to co-star with Bela Lugosi and Jack Haley in the screwball scary comedy One Body Too Many (1944).

night-monster-1

Irene Hervey as Dr. Lynn Harper –Night Monster 1942.

Night Monster
Fay Helm in Night Monster.
Fay Helm with Bela the gypsy in The Wolf Man
Fay Helm with Bela the gypsy in The Wolf Man.

LOUISE CURRIE 1913-2013

ape-man-1943-g

Ape Man Bela and Louise Currie

Ape Man and Louise stairs

Bela Lugosi as half ape half man really needed a shave badly in The Ape Man 1943, and Louise Currie and her wonder whip might have been the gorgeous blonde dish to make him go for the Barbasol. One of the most delicious parts of the film was its racy climax as Emil Van Horn in a spectacle of a gorilla suit rankles the cage bars longing for Currie’s character, Billie Mason the tall blonde beauty. As Bela skulks around the laboratory and Currie snaps her whip in those high heels. The film’s heroine was a classy dame referred to as Monogram’s own Katharine Hepburn! She had a great affection for fellow actor Bela Lugosi and said that she enjoyed making Poverty Row films more than her bit part in Citizen Kane! And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that she appeared in several serials, from both Universal & Republic like The Green Hornet and Captain Marvel.

Tom Weaver in his book Poverty Row HORRORS! described The Ape Man as “a Golden Turkey of the most beloved kind.”

Louise Currie followed up with another sensational title for Monogram as Stella Saunders in Voodoo Man 1944 which again features Lugosi as Dr. Richard Marlowe who blends voodoo with hypnosis in an attempt to bring back his dead wife. The film also co-stars George Zucco as a voodoo high priest and the ubiquitous John Carradine as Toby a bongo-playing half-wit “Don’t hurt her Grego, she’s a pretty one!”

Voodoo Man
Pat McKee as Grego, Louise Currie, John Carradine, and Bela Lugosi in Monogram’s Voodoo Man 1944.
Voodoo Man
the outrageous Voodoo Man 1944

Continue reading “Heroines & Scream Queens of Classic Horror: the 1940s! A very special Drive In Hall–ween treat!”

Postcards From Shadowland No.2

BORN TO KILL (1947) Directed by Robert Wise starring Claire Trevor and Lawrence Tierney
CAGED (1950) Starring Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead and Ellen Corby
The Cape Canaveral Monsters 1960
The Spiral Staircase 1945 directed by Robert Siodmak, Starring Dorothy McGuire, George Brent and Ethel Barrymore
Phantom Lady 1944 Directed by Robert Siodmak, starring Ella Raines, Franchot Tone and Elisha Cook Jr.
I Walked With A Zombie 1943 Produced by Val Lewton, directed by Jacques Tourneur, edited by Mark Robson, written for the screen by Curt Siodmak and starring Frances Dee, James Ellison and Tom Conway.
MAN HUNT 1941 directed by Fritz Lang, starring Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett and George Sanders
QUICKSAND 1950
The Naked Kiss 1964
PUSHOVER 1954 directed by Richard Quine, starring Kim Novak and Fred MacMurray
The Seventh Victim 1943 Produced by Val Lewton and directed by Mark Robson, starring Kim Hunter, Tom Conway and Jean Brooks.
THE BURGLAR 1957 Directed by Paul Wendkos and starring Dan Duryea, Jayne Mansfield and Martha Vickers
Sunset Blvd. 1950 directed by Billy Wilder, starring Gloria Swanson and William Holden.

Postcards From Shadowland No.1

A Cry In The Night 1956 starring Brian Donlevy,Edmund O’Brien and Natalie Wood.
Among The Living 1941 starring Albert Dekker, Susan Hayward and Francis Farmer.
Cape Fear 1962 starring Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Polly Bergen-Directed by J.Lee Thompson
Crime Without Passion 1934 starring Claude Rains, Margo, and Whitney Bourne
I Walked With A Zombie 1943 starring Frances Dee, Tom Conway and James Ellison. Directed by Jacques Tourneur and scripted by Curt Siodmak
Stanley Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss 1955 starring Frank Silvera, Irene Cane and Jamie Smith
Ann Margaret in Kitten With A Whip 1964 directed by Douglas Heyes
Mambo 1954 starring Silvana Mangano, Michael Rennie, Vittorio Gassman and Shelley Winters.
The Naked Kiss 1964 directed by Sam Fuller and starring Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley and Michael Dante.
Fritz Lang’s The Secret Beyond The Door (1947) starring Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave and Anne Revere.
No Orchids for Miss Blandish 1958, starring Jack La Rue, Hugh McDermott, and Linden Travers
Night and The City (1950) starring Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney. Googie Withers and Hugh Marlowe. Directed by Jules Dassin

That’s it for now from the shadows-MonsterGirl