But, I that am not shap’d for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass I, that am rudely stamp’d and want love’s majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform’d unfinish’d sent before my time Into this breathing world scarce half made up, and that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them-
-Shakespeare, King Richard III, I.I.14-23
Merry Anders plays the attractive and likable Nancy Campbell married to Scott Campbell (Ron Foster) an architect who is hired by their mutual friend Joseph Schiller( Richard Crane), to survey a castle up in the Hollywood hills. It’s more like a Hollywood Spanish fortress set in the middle of nowhere, for the reclusive Rochester’s who had it built for privacy.
Upon driving up to the Rochester Castle up on the isolated hill, it brought to mind the long opening driving sequence in House on Haunted Hill (1959), with its similar eccentric mansion, opulent… a monstrosity… Same with Eleanor Lance driving up to Hugh Crane’s twisted damned architectural fiend that was Hill House.
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 Tinglermanifests itself at the base of the spine when one is experiencing abject fear. The Tinglerhowever 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’sDiabolique 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.
Just a little later in the early 60s, I think of The Stranglerwith 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 1958which 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 hisStep Right Up! “I’m going to buzz the asses of everyone in America!”Â
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.”
The 49th Parallel (1949) Directed by Michael Powell and starring Leslie Howard and Laurence OlivierLa Belle et la Bête 1946 directed by Jean Cocteau starring Jean Marais and Josette DayBeggars of Life 1928 staring Wallace Beery, Louise Brooks and Richard Arlen. Directed by William WellmanBunny Lake is Missing 1965 Directed by Otto Preminger. Starring Carol Lynley, Laurence Olivier, and Keir DulleaLa Main du Diable or Carnival of Sinners 1943 Directed by Maurice Tourneur and stars Pierre Fresnay, Josseline Gael and Noel RoquevertThe Devil and Daniel Webster 1941 Directed by William Dieterle and stars Walter Houston as Old Scratch, and Edward Arnold, Jane Darwell and Simone Simon.Dracula’s Daughter 1936 directed by Lambert Hillyer and starring Gloria Holden, Otto Kruger and Marguerite ChurchillExperiment in Terror 1962 directed by Blake Edwards and starring Lee Remick, Glenn Ford, Stephanie Powers and a raspy Ross Martin as ‘Red’ LynchFallen Angel 1945 Directed by Otto Preminger and starring Linda Darnell, Dana Andrews and Alice FayeFedra The Devil’s Daughter 1956 Directed by Manuel Mur Oti and stars Emma Penelia, Enrique Diosdado and Vicente ParraJoan Crawford is Possessed 1947 directed by Curtis Bernhardt, also starring Van Heflin and Raymond MasseyDiaboliques 1955 directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot and starring Simone Signoret, Vera Clouzot and Paul MeurisseNever Take Sweets From A Stranger 1960 Directed by Cyril Frankel and stars Gwen Watford, Patrick Allen and Felix AylmerThe Night Holds Terror 1955 Directed by Andrew L. Stone starring Jack Kelly, Hildy Parks, Vince Edwards and John CassavetesRobert Mitchum is Harry Powell, in Night of The Hunter 1955 Directed by Charles Laughton also starring Shelley Winters and Lillian GishPlunder Road 1957 directed by Hubert Cornfield and stars Gene Raymond, Jeanne Cooper, Wayne Morris and Elisha Cook Jr.Seance On a Wet Afternoon 1964 directed by Bryan Forbes and stars Kim Stanley, Richard Attenborough and Margaret LaceyAlfred Hitchcock’s Strangers On a Train 1951 starring Farley Granger, Robert Walker and Ruth RomanGloria Swanson is Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard 1950 Directed by Billy Wilder and starring William Holden and Erich von StroheimVal Lewton’s The Seventh Victim 1943 Directed by Mark Robson and stars Kim Hunter, Tom Conway and Jean BrooksBoris Karloff and Bela Lugosi star in Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat 1934 inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s story.The Killer Is Loose 1956 Directed by Budd Boetticher and stars Joseph Cotten, Rhonda Fleming and Wendell CoreyThe Ox-Bow Incident 1943 Directed by William Wellman and stars Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Mary Beth Hughes and Anthony QuinnThe Prowler 1951 Directed by Joseph Losey and stars Evelyn Keyes and Van HeflinThe Queen of Spades 1949 Directed by Thorold Dickinson and stars Anton Walbrook, Edith Evans and Yvonne MitchellLon Chaney stars in Tod Browning’s The Unknown 1927 also starring Joan Crawford and Norman Kerry.Edward L. Cahn’s 1956 film The WerewolfJean Epstein’s The Fall of the House of Usher 1928 inspired by Edgar Allan Poe and adapted for the screen by Luis BunuelCarl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932) Based on a story by Sheridan Le Fanu. Starring Julian West, Maurice Schutz and Rena Mandel
The CassandraMetaphor can have various invocations. Also called a ‘syndrome’, ‘complex’, ‘phenomenon’ ‘dilemma’ or ‘curse.’ This occurs when valid warnings are dismissed or ignored.
Originating from Greek Mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of Priam King of Troy. Apollo became obsessed with her beauty and so gave her the gift of prophecy. But once Cassandra rebuffed Apollo’s sexual advances, he cursed her making it impossible for anyone to believe her warnings. She could never convince anyone of her predictions.
Thus could be the origin of ‘the hysterical woman.’ Women often depicted in films as hysterical, to be dismissed, confined, calmed down, psychiatrically subdued and shut away.
The metaphor has been used in various contexts of psychology, philosophy and cinema.
"I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really." –Tennessee Williams
Rosemary’s Baby 1968Women’s Prison 1955Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte 1964Airport 1970The Snake Pit 1948A Woman Under the Influence 1974The Haunting 1963The Devils 1971House on Haunted Hill 1959The Birds 1963Strait-Jacket 1964Repulsion 1965Suddenly Last Summer 1959Caged 1950
This post continues from Part 1 at the link above!
And now, Part II
FANTASY as REALITY, REALITY as FANTASY – From page 112, Chapter 7, J.P Telotte Dreams of Darkness
The Curse of the Cat People(1944)
The child per se makes us uneasy, ambivalent ; we are anxious about the human propensities concentrated by the child symbol. It evokes too much of what has been left out or is unknown, becoming easily associated with the primitive, mad and mystical. – James Hillman ” Abandoning the Child” in Loose Ends.
The evil little girl in Master of the Macabre Mario Bava’s Kill Baby Kill (1966).The embodiment of evil in a little blonde girl from Federico Fellini’s segment Toby Dammit of 1968’s Spirits of The Dead.In stark contrast to those two iconic evil imps of horror (above), Amy Reed is not supposed evil incarnate, but she does threaten the equilibrium of the ‘normal’ world her father inhabits.
To continue with this blog post about one of Lewton’s very precious stories, less dark than his others, and dealing with childhood, the fears of, and by, children.
All of Lewton’s works dealt with subject matters that forced us to push the boundaries of ‘the familiar.’ They challenged us to face a darker, more mysterious reality of the natural world and the incomprehensible landscape of the human psyche.
Curse of the Cat People (1944) acts as a cinematic continuum to Lewton’sCat People 1942, featuring Simone Simononce again as the alluring and sensual Irena Dubrovna Reed, who may or may not have belonged to a race of beings that could shapeshift into the physical form of a large cat or black panther when sexually aroused.
The symbol of Irena synthesized the fear of women’s sexuality, sexual freedom, the women’s body, and often the correlation that is made with women’s emotional existence and madness. What is engendered in Cat People (1942)is far less about a woman who can morph into a predatory feline and more about the collective fear of ‘The Monstrous Feminine.’
Amy lashes out at the little boy who has crushed her beautiful friend, the butterfly. Fear the woman/child.
While Amy is not Irena’s biological daughter, Amy is truly more of a progeny to Irena and the mystique she embodies because they are both alienated figures who are frustrated and misunderstood. Who stand outside the social community which is pumped from the veins of ‘rational’, normative thoughts and behaviors. Amy is the figure of ‘The Fearing Child,’ an innocent who not only has ‘power’ but can wreak havoc in our ‘normal’ world.
Both characters are imaginative and rely on their senses. They are more connected to the natural world, to the darkness, which is associated with feminine energy, and less intellectual, which is considered a masculine marker. They are considered emotional, irrational, and dangerously unpredictable. The character of Oliver Reed is just as frightened and, moreover, threatened by his six-year-old little girl as he was of his beautiful and tragic wife Irena, who was more a victim than ever, the ‘monster’ she was perceived to be.
In Cat People, Curse of the Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie, The Leopard Man, The 7th Victim, and Isle of the Dead, there aren’t concrete Monsters as in Universal films, as in Frankenstein’s creation, Dracula, or The Wolf Man.
Universal’s Bride of Frankenstein 1935 Literal monsters in a corporeal world.
RKO studio heads had a mistrust of Lewton’s creative vision, his unconventional approach to some esoteric subject matter, or volatile subjects such as a woman’s sexual desires. Lewton, rather than using literal lumbering, fanged, or hairy monsters, used the powers of suggestion and shadow to tell the story.
Irena emerged from Lewton’s shadow world in Cat People 1942.Little Amy is lost within the emerging shadows of the old dark house in Lewton’s Curse of The Cat People 1944.Barbara Ferran is always placed by a door like a bystander; she is bombarded by Lewton’s shadows.
Lewton disliked mask-like faces that were hardly human, the kinds of images that were expected from the horror genre he was infiltrating. Lewton liked to reveal the monsters that were lurking in the subconscious, primitive recesses of our own imaginations. Shadows become the monster in these films; they are the mysterious layer that surfaces in a world that only makes sense in the light of day. And Amy draws the shadows to her…
They do not have scary faces; they are quite human and, in fact, ordinary. He takes the ‘familiar’ and inverts it, subverts it, rattles the soundness of an accepted experience, and turns it into either an illusion, a nightmare, or a fit of paranoia. He taps into our childhood fears and sets those fears on the frightened characters in his shadow plays. Usually, the thing they fear is uprooting their own personal desires and the fear of coming face-to-face with them.
The tragic and tormented Irena in Cat People 1942.
Oliver couldn’t handle Irena’s sexual desires, nor her desirability; it triggered too much of his own primal urges, and so he demonized her, a fragile girl in a foreign country who believed in folklore from her very ancient set of beliefs handed down for centuries.
Oliver Reed has a fear of foreign Objects!-Cat People 1942.
A story that was quite often itself ambiguous as to whether the threat was real or imagined. RKO wanted to be in competition with Universal, so they added footage of a menacing Panther, which was inserted into several scenes of Cat People.
Val Lewton’s short story ‘The Bagheeta’ appeared in Farnsworth Wright’s July 1930 issue of Weird Tales Magazine. Lewton was dabbling in concepts of terror, before he even got to RKO.
The story takes place in Ukraine (from which MonsterGirl’s people hail!) and is a coming-of-age story about a 16-year-old boy named Kolya who helps his Uncle forge armor. Someone comes into the village with a slaughtered sheep, who claims to have seen a Bagheeta, a monstrous black leopard that can change its form into a beautiful woman. Only one person can kill a Bagheeta, and that is a virgin male, for he needs to be able to resist her seductive powers. If he is seduced, the woman will change back into the black leopard and kill the boy and eat him! Lewton would eventually adapt and produce his story for RKO in the form of Cat People in 1942 starring Simone Simon, the suggested embodiment of a Bagheeta.
The Panther
His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful, soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times the curtain of the pupils lifts, quietly — An image enters in, rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone.
Curse of the Cat People is filled with poignant original music by Roy Webb and with Cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca (Cat People 1942, The Fallen Sparrow 1943, The 7th Victim 1943, The Spiral Staircase 1945Bedlam 1946 and Out of The Past 1947) It’s no wonder Curse of The Cat Peoplehas many of the elements of a classic film noir piece.
After the tragic death of his wife Irena, played by the beautiful Simone Simon, Oliver Reed, once again played by Kent Smtih, has remarried his co-worker Alice (Jane Randolph). They now have a very serious yet gentle six-year-old girl named Amy (Ann Carter) who is taken to daydreaming and being a loner.
She does not mix in well with the other children at school who do not understand her sensitivity or her private world of fantasy that she has built around her as a survival mechanism.
“My beautiful friend”
Symbolic of Amy’s free spirit, the little boy captures her ‘beautiful friend’ and crushes it. Thinking that this would make her happy, he destroys the very thing that symbolizes her own spirit and her connection to the natural world.Amy is framed here in absolute alienation from the rest of the world.
Amy’s father, Oliver, constantly wields authoritative criticism of his daughter’s daydreaming and wants her to play with the other children and exist in the ‘real’ world. Amy has a birthday party for which she invites the children in her class, but no one shows up that day, and Oliver discovers that she has mailed out the invitations by placing them in the magic wishing tree, which is a hollowed-out knot of the large tree out behind the house.
Waiting for her classmates to share her birthday wishes. But no one ever comes.
Oliver reaches into the wishing-tree and pulls out the birthday invitations.
.
Amy is again admonished for believing that the tree was a real wishing tree. Something he himself had told her not too long ago.
Oliver had told Amy this was a magic spot when she was younger, and she remembers it, understanding it to be true because her father told her it was. She was taught to believe in magic and then, without preparation, was expected to denounce all things wondrous without any serious provocation on her part. She is only six years old, after all.
Saddened by her classmates’ absence at her party, Oliver, Alice, and Edward, the manservant from Jamaica, throw Amy a smaller party instead, complete with a birthday cake decorated with six little candles.
Amy is told to make a wish but not to tell anyone what it is, or it won’t come true. Again, Amy is conflicted by the mixed messages the adults in her life are giving her. She tells her father that wishes don’t come true. Oliver tells her, “Some do.” Her mother, Alice, embellishes by saying that you just can’t say it out loud, or it will nullify the magic wish.
Once again, there is a suspension of disbelief on their terms, disavowing Amy and her ability to develop a clearly defined sense of fantasy and reality. How can she properly order her world?
The children at school are furious with Amy for not inviting them as promised. As they shun her, they lead her to an old, sinister-looking mansion, where someone calls to her from the window. A voice calls out to her to come closer. Amy looks around, and the unseen person throws down a white handkerchief threading a gold ring.
A Cry in The Night (1956) Directed by Frank Tuttle, and starring Natalie Wood, Edmond O’Brien and Brian DonlevyCurse of The Cat People 1944 directed by Robert Wise, produced by Val Lewton, and starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith and Ann CarterThe Sea Beast 1926 directed by Millard Webb, written by Herman Melville and starring Dolores Costello and John Barrymore.La Belle et la Bête 1946 directed by Jean Cocteau starring Jean Marais and Josette Day.The Big Heat (1953) directed by Fritz Lang and Starring Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford and Jocelyn Brando.Body and Soul 1947 directed by Robert Rossen, starring John Garfield, Lilli Palmer and Hazel BrooksBury Me Dead (1947) directed by Bernard Vorhaus starring Cathy O’Donnell, June Lockart and Hugh Beaumont.Curse of The Cat People 1944 directed by Robert Wise, and produced by Val Lewton. Starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith and Ann Carter.Dead of Night (1945) directed by Alberto Cavalcanti,Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer. With stories by H.G.Wells, E.F.Benson, John Baines and Angus MacPhail.Dracula’s Daughter 1936 directed by Lambert Hillyer, and starring Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden, Marguerite Churchill and Edward Van Sloan.The Penalty 1920 directed by Wallace Worsley and starring Lon Chaney as Blizzard. With Charles Clary, Doris Pawn, Jim Mason and Ethel Grey Terry.Eye of The Devil 1966 directed by J.Lee Thompson and starring Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Sharon Tate, Donald Pleasance, Flora Robson and David Hemmings.Each Dawn I Die (1939) directed by William Keighley and starring George Raft and James Cagney.Horror Hotel (1960) aka City of The Dead directed by John Llewellyn Moxey and starring Christopher Lee, Patricia Jessel, Dennis Lotis and Betta St. JohnThe Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Ivor Novello as the mysterious Lodger.I Wake Up Screaming (1941) directed by H.Bruce Humberstone and starring Victor Mature, Betty Grable and Carol Landis.Robert Aldrich’s 1955 Film Noir Kiss Me Deadly starring Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer.MAD LOVE (1935) directed by Karl Freund starring Peter Lorre, Frances Drake and Colin Clive.The Man Who Laughs 1928 directed by Paul Leni and starring Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine, and Mary Philbin as Dea.Fritz Lang’s German Expressionist masterpiece of futuristic entropy blending element of Sci-Fi and hints of Film Noir to come. Metropolis (1927) Starring Brigitte Helm and Alfred Abel.William Castle’s The Night Walker (1964) starring Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor, Judi Meredith, Lloyd Bochner and Marjorie Bennett.
Kristina of the Speakeasy Blog and Stephen also know as Classic Movie Man will be co-hosting this marvelous event!
There’s just sooo much that can be said for Val Lewton’s contribution and influence on cinema. I have been dragging my feet with a feature, myself, but this years blogathon gives me a chance to talk a little bit about the man who truly created several masterpieces of cinematic history. So join Kristina, and Stephen and all the other bloggers who will be contributing their coverage.
Simone Simon
I am working on a piece for Curse of The Cat People 1944 which was the follow up to Cat People, still appearing is Simone Simon as the ghost of Irena. I’ll be discussing a few things, The Merging of Reality and Fantasy,
The Fear and Threat of Children, the corruption of their innocence, imagination and how their freedom of expression challenges us to either push the boundaries of belief or succumb to Christian myth that would crush it, deem it evil, or call it mental illness.
Also I’ll talk about the Fear of The Female Monster and The Feminine. Especially in this case, a female child….!
And of course being an avid cat worshiper I’ll address that absurd superstitious malarkey centered around fear of cats being servants of the Devil… in particular black cats. So, stay tuned for a very informative and beautiful ride through the Shadowlands of one of the greatest film makers of all time-
BAD BLONDE (1953) directed by Reginald Le Borg starring Barbara Payton, Frederick Valk and John Slater.Directed by Julien Duviveir – FLESH AND FANTASY(1943) starring Betty Field, Edward G.Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck, Charles Boyer, Robert Cummings, Anna Lee, Dame May Whitty and C.Aubrey Smith Cast A Dark Shadow (1955) directed by Lewis Gilbert and starring Dirk Bogarde, Margaret Lockwood and Kay WalshThe Hitch-Hiker (1953) Directed by Ida Lupino and starring Edmond O’Brien, Frank Lovejoy and William TalmanNight of The Eagle aka Burn Witch Burn (1962) directed by Sidney Hayers, written for the screen by Charles Beaumont, and starring Peter Wyngarde , Janet Blair and Margaret Johnston.Panic In The Streets (1950) directed by Elia Kazan and starring Jack Palance, Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas and Barbara Bel GeddesM (1931) Directed by Fritz Lang and starring Peter LorreThe Queen of Spades (1949) Directed by Thorold Dickinson and starring starring Anton Walbrook, Edith Evans and Yvonne MitchellROPE OF SAND (1949) Directed by William Dieterle and starring Burt Lancaster, Paul Henried, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre and Corinne Calvet.Edge of Doom (1950) directed Mark Robson and starring Farley Granger, Dana Andrews and Joan Evans.Joe Sarno’sSin In The Suburbs (1964)Stranger on The 3rd Floor (1940) Directed by Boris Ingster and starring Peter Lorre, John McGuire and Margaret Tallichet.Strangers on a Train (1951) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Farley Granger, Robert Walker and Ruth Roman.The 39 Steps (1935) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim and Peggy Ashcroft.The Dark Corner (1946) directed by Henry Hathaway and starring Lucille Ball, Mark Stevens, Clifton Webb and William Bendix.Director Robert Siodmak’s masterpiece of film noir adapted from Ernest Hemingway, 1946 The Killers. Starring Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien and Albert Dekker.Director Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) Starring Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer. Featuring a young Cloris Leachman…A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Director Elia Kazan’s exploration into Tennessee Williams’ iconic characters. Starring Vivien Leigh as Blanche Duboise, Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski, Kim Hunter as Stella…and Karl Malden as Mitch.The World, The Flesh and The Devil (1959) Directed by Ranald MacDougall, starring Harry Belafonte, Inger Stevens and Mel Ferrer.
