"Lang's almost musical control of violence deferred both apprehension and catharsis" –Carlos Clarens
"The "heat" in this instance is the appalling cruelty; but the "big heat" is criminal slang for a large-scale investigation and an allusion to the hellish state of the city." "”David Thomson
The Big Heat (1953) is perhaps one of Fritz Lang's most violent noirs. It is an explosive noir masterpiece filled with striking images of the urban milieu that is often the site of Lang's allegorical urban war. But here there are also themes of revenge, obsession, sexual hostility, and corruption. The nightmare exposed as realism in the everyday spaces of the city.
"Violence is the most consistent motif in the film noir; virtually no noir is without it. Its importance is complicated and often explained in sociological terms to justify its aesthetic power. As a statement in itself, violence in noir cinema a distinctive use. Whereas its purpose in the pure gangster film has often been to explain the sociopathic breeding and greed of thuggish personalities who reach power and control, violence in the noir is less explicable and more arbitrary less a matter of historical cause and effect than an unexpected and intense exercise of rage. ["¦] The Big Heat"”each has moments of violence that jar us by their cold-bloodedness, occasionally terrify us in their perverseness. suggest a darker cruel impulse."
"”From Violence In The Noir Street With No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir by Andrew Dickos
The film's cold dimensions come from Sidney Boehm's script (based on the novel by William P. McGivern) which conveys perhaps the most ferocious rage in the noir canon. It opens with a gunshot. A corrupt police records sergeant, Tom Duncan, blows his brains out, leaving a suicide note which reveals how gangster Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) "”a first-generation immigrant"” has risen to power, holding the city in the clutches of highly organized criminals. Just as Homicide Detective Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) who is a working class family man, Lagana is an upper-class family man, worshiping the memory of his mother and doting on his daughter. In contrast, Lagana made his money through shady dealings. Duncan's suicide sets forth a chain of events in where the narrative of the film pivots on it's violence.
JEANETTE NOLAN & GLENN FORD Film ‘THE BIG HEAT'(1953)Directed By FRITZ LANG 1Oct. 1953 CTJ27877Allstar/Cinetex COLUMBIA
Duncan's widow Bertha (Jeanette Nolan) shows no emotion over her dead husband's lifeless body and stashes the letter. She telephones Lagana, cleverly signaling the implications of her husband's suicide. Now that she possesses evidence that can expose the syndicate boss who runs the city from his palatial mansion, Bertha proceeds to blackmail Lagana. She is thinking of providing for herself a better lifestyle than a cop's salary.
When Bannion comes to the door she must pretend to be the grieving widow. Bertha gazes at herself in the mirror, the camera holding mirrors in the background as symbols of deceit. And it's a premonition of Bannion's fractured morality as he is about to go on a mission of retaliation. The noir iconography of mirrors depicts duplicity and fragmentation. Charles Lang's cinematography transforms the ordinary environment, texturing it with anxiety.
Lagana lives against skyscrapers and a starry city night scene, but in his home, there are antiques and expensive artwork, a hive of servants, and classical music: this riles Bannion. "Cops have homes, too. Only sometimes there isn't enough money to pay the rent, because an honest cop gets hounded off the force by your thievin' cockroaches for tryin' to do an honest job."
Bannion refuses to drop the investigation into Duncan's suicide. His domestic bliss is shattered when his wife Katie (Jocelyn Brando) first gets an obscene call. This leads him right to the door of Lagana's opulent home to threaten him. When Bannion insults Lagana's pride, he plants a bomb in Bannion's car that accidentally kills his wife. The violent act itself happens offscreen, but the brutal aftermath of such evil becomes the center of the film, a cautionary tale of human behavior and corruption.
The film juxtaposes scenes of the domestic innocence of Bannion's family yet with the explosive violence he is capable of when he is driven to bring people down. He's transformed into an avenging angel. He goes on a personal crusade against Lagana, resigning from the force after he's warned by corrupt Commissioner Higgins (Howard Wendell) to lay off. He tosses his badge, but not his .38, simmering "That (gun) doesn't belong to the department, I bought it."
Bannion's life is now bleak with his private war to expose Lagana's grip on the city and the corruption within the police. He leaves the wholesome suburban home he shared with his wife, now empty except for his daughter's baby carriage in a barren room. With no future before him, he leaves his former home without a trace of his once blissful life.
It is this desolation that springs the violence to come. Bannion rampages through the screen, threatening and intimidating poker-playing bullies as he invades with vigilante fantasy Lagana's corrupt landscape. Bannion, once an average man, turned into the bitter vision of a noir hero who is being pushed to his capacity for violence. Bannion becomes obsessed with vengeance against the Syndicate boss and his chief thug, the sadistic Vince Stone (Lee Marvin). He roughs up hired gunman (Adam Williams), just short of killing him.
Bannion hunts down Duncan's mistress, a B-girl Lucy Chapman (Dorothy Green) who knows where the bodies are buried and she tries to salvage Duncan's reputation. But Bannion accuses her of "a shakedown," walking out of the bar feeling morally superior to Lucy.
She is found the next day outside of town, tortured and murdered by sadistic criminals. The brutal murder takes place off-camera but we still hear the horrifying account in the coroner's report. The morgue attendant asks "You saw those cigarette burns on her body?", "Yeah, I saw them. Every single one of them." As he crushes his cigarette into the ashtray, a nod to his culpability in her death.
Hirsch claims that few film noirs can or even try to sustain the pitch of these intensely violent moments. "These privileged moments are isolated from the rest of the films in which they occur by their special intensity but not by their content: the best film noir thrillers "˜earn' and can absorb these moments of visual and theatrical virtuosity; the violence and mania that are highlighted in these passages of kinky vaudevillian cinema flow directly from the noir milieu." – From Film Noir The Dark Side of the Screen by Foster Hirsch
Vicious Vince Stone, a vicious deranged hoodlum who gets off on torturing women, using one of them as an ashtray, burning a cigarette into a barfly Doris' (Carolyn Jones) hand "” a disquieting show of cruelty. Gloria Grahame is sexy, incendiary, and delightful as Stone's girl, Debbie Marsh. Debbie is a smart-mouthed girl drifting amid the macho posturing of the gang. She becomes an ally of Bannion's after she realizes her life palling around with criminals is aimless and dangerous. Bannion gives her a gun for protection, "the big heat falls for Lagana, for Stone, and all the rest of the lice." The big heat purifies Debbie and Bannion in the climax.
As Debbie, Gloria Grahame possesses a sharp wit, moral ambiguity (half of her face is covered with bandages, two distinct profiles she presents), and enigmatic sensuality. "I'll have to go through life sideways"¦""I've been rich and I've been poor. Believe me, rich is better." Looking around Ford's hotel room, "I like this. Early nothing." Debbie's a positive counterpoint to the materialistic middle-class Mrs. Duncan, who pushed for her husband to lie down with Lagana, and eventually, kill himself.
Debbie becomes Bannion's agent of death, blasting open the whole corrupt system. She shoots Bertha Duncan at the same desk her husband committed suicide. In this pivotal moment, she exposes the depth of evil in the narrative by handing over the suicide letter.
Just before Debbie shoots Bertha, "You know Bertha, we're sisters under the mink." Hailing from the gutter, Debbie's only complicity with Bertha and her corruption is that they share the same symbol of greed and luxury. And they are both marked for a fall and a noir fate.
The Big Heathas some of the most virulently aggressive attitudes and scenes, not least of which is the iconic moment when Lee Marvin splashes a scalding hot pot of coffee in Gloria Grahame's face, scarring her for what's left of her life on screen. After she is savagely injured when in a jealous rage, Debbie retaliates at her ex-boyfriend by scalding his face the same way. In the escalating crescendo of Debbie's dramatic demise, Vince shoots her in the stomach. Debby dies looking for love and approval from Bannion, her gruesome scars are obscured by her beloved mink coat. As she dies, she is redeemed and her morality is restored.
Toward the end, Bannion can't look at Debbie's face until their one intimate moment before she dies. He confesses wanting to kill Bertha Duncan, acknowledging his rage and finally seeing her in himself. The shadow patterns projected onto them by the window suggest a symmetry in their relationship. Bannion maintains his moral superiority and doesn't submit to his murderous temptations.
All of the women in Bannion's life meet with a tragic end. Bannion is unselfconscious of the victims he leaves in the wake of his mission. Most are women, with four dying violent deaths during the film, suggestive of Lang's streak of misogyny.
"Lang's almost musical control of violence deferred both apprehension and catharsis. Quiet, intimate moments were invested with characteristic threat through the intrusion in the frame of a lampshade or even a potted plant, empty rooms seemed to lie in wait for people. The tension was so expertly set up that when the picture finally let go with the violence, the viewer was ready"”indeed rooting"”for it." "” From Crime Movies by Carlos Clarens
This is you EverLovin’ Joey sayin’ stay out of trouble, will ya!
BY NIGHT… A Screeching Devil Bat… BY DAY… A Beautiful Girl… BUT ALWAYS… A Blood-Thirsty VAMPIRE
Devil Bat’s Daughter (1946) Directed by Frank Wisbar with a screenplay by Griffin Jay and Ernst Jäger. Rosemary La Planche (Strangler of the Swamp) plays Nina MacCarron a patient of Dr. Elliot (Nolan Leary) who wants to get rid of his wife. He convinces Nina that she has a compulsion to kill, because of her legacy of her evil father–referring to Bela Lugosi in The Devil Bat (1940) A mad scientist develops an aftershave lotion that causes his gigantic bats to kill anyone who wears it.Â
Dr. Elliot drugs Nina and disposes of his wife, setting her up not only to believe she has committed the murder but to become the main suspect in the killing.
She Will GIVE YOU Nightmares…FOR EVER!
Blood of Dracula is a spin off of the cycle of teenage horror films of the 1950s–I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1958).
Directed by Herbert L. Strock with a screenplay by Ralph Thornton. Sandra Harrison plays Nancy Perkins and Louise Lewis is Miss Branding, a svengali virago who hypnotizes Nancy in order to see her experiment with primal feminine powers flourish. What all these films have in common is to tap into the burgeoning sex drives of teenagers and their will to explore their sexuality in a moral constrained society. These films also conflate teenage sexual desires with the monstrous. When Harrison is dumped off at the boarding school by her father and his new bride shortly after Nancy’s mothers death, she is disaffected and unpopular, a perfect vulnerable target for Miss Blanding’s the sinister chemistry teacher’s manipulation. She hypnotizes Nancy using an ancient amulet and manifests a grotesque vampiric persona that runs amok with help of the make up design by Philip Scheer. The film also co-stars Gail Ganley, Jerry Blaine and character actor Malcolm Atterbury.
This is your EverLovin’ Joey saying Happy October 1st! There’s a lot of tricks N’ treats coming up here at The Last Drive In…
Men are simpler than you imagine my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted, tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone."“Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
First off, while I cover a good deal of the film, I take it only as far as I can before giving anything away about the great Rebecca. My focus is on the mystery surrounding the first mistress of Manderley’s devoted servant Mrs. Danvers. So I will not be referencing any departures from du Maurier’s novel, nor Rebecca herself or Olivier and Fontaine’s marital outcome. I believe there are still fans of Hitchcock who have not seen the picture, and I want to leave them something to enjoy!
One of the most enduring classic thrillers, psychological thriller, suspenseful and intriguing in the realm of romantic Gothic mysteries. Considered a ‘woman’s picture.’ Brooding atmosphere, perfect pacing, and acting composition from the score to the set design to the cinematography. Manderley is a "˜castle of the mind.' It is too shadowy too remote too unreal because it IS in the mind. It exists now only in the heroine's mind. "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again"As these words are visualized on the screen, we don't see a real Manderley, but a Manderley of the mind, a nightmare, a ghost. So imperceptible and subtle, Manderley is one of the vital characters of the story.
As the archetype of the woman-in-peril, Joan Fontaine conjures up the timid young woman who marries the moody and brooding Maxim de Winter, though all actors are overshadowed by Anderson's on-fire performance.
As scholar Mary Ann Doane points out that Rebecca is “initiating the ‘paranoia’ strand of the woman’s picture, a sub-genre in which gullible women discover that the men they married possess strange and sinister intents. The cycle continued through the 1940s-Suspicion (1941) Gaslight (George Cukor 1944) and Secret Beyond the Door… (Fritz Lang, 1948).”
Rebecca was adapted from author Daphne du Maurier and brought to the Gothic paroxysm on screen not only by master Alfred Hitchcock but by the exquisitely low burning maniacal machinations of Dame Judith Anderson (Lady Scarface 1941, All Through the Night 1942, Kings Row 1942, Laura 1944, And Then There Were None 1945, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers 1946, The Red House 1947, The Furies 1950, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 1958, Inn of the Damned 1975) as Miss Danvers — the epitome of the word villainess.
Mrs. Danvers– That austere cold stare, the measured calculating rhythm of each syllable spoken like serpent-toothed silk cutting like finely sharpened knives to cut the jugular — a harridan — no, a harpy — no, a carefully slithering serpent of a woman in the vein of Angela Lansbury’s sinister housekeeper Nancy who helped the poor bedevil Ingrid Bergman feel gaslighted in Gaslight 1944 or the menacing Gale Sandaagard as Mrs. Hammond that same year in The Letter (1940), but Anderson has the benefit of du Maurier’s dialogue and Hitchcock’s direction at her command.
Interestingly enough, in reading the tensions that had developed over the autonomy in making du Maurier’s story on screen between two headstrong filmmakers, I imagined what the film might have been like in the hands of Val Lewton. Here is an excerpt from Leonard Leff’s book- “For Selznick who read a synopsis of the manuscript in late spring 1938, the story of the novel’s awkward and shy heroine seemed ideal. Selznick’s most impressive discoveries tended to be young women, including Ingrid Bergman, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Fontaine; furthermore, had had long been associated with the industry’s premier “women’s director” George Cukor. In certain respects a “woman’s producer,” attuned to the sensibilities and psychology of the American female (at least as purveyed by the era’s mass-circulation magazines), Selznick agreed with story editor Val Lewton that the second Mrs. de Winter “probably exemplifies the feeling that most young women have about themselves.”
From Hitchcock and Selznick: The Rich and Strange Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick-by Leonard J. Leff- Among the hundred of manuscripts, galley proofs, ad publish novels that poured into the East Coast offices of Selznick International every month, Kay Brown read only a few that she could enthusiastically recommend. Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca became one of them. Rebecca is “the most fascinating story I have read in ages,” Born wired Hollywood, a certain best-seller. In the novel, a plain and innocent young women (the first-person narrator, whose name du Maurier never reveals) serves as paid companion to a crass American dowager visiting the Riviera. Gossip has it that the aristocratic Maxim de Winter has fled England to Monte Carlo in order to elude painful memories of his recently deceased, much-beloved wife, the fabulously beautiful Rebecca; yet almost inexplicably he proposes marriage to the unglamourous paid companion. Following a honeymoon in Venice, the newlyweds return to Manderley, de Winter’s mansion. Here, the young bride confronts not only the memory of Rebecca-which seems to permeate the estate and to preoccupy and torment its owner-but also her morose husband and the forbidding Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca’s devoted housekeeper.”
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock with a screenplay by Robert Sherwood and Joan Harrison (who produced Alfred Hitchcock's anthology suspense crime television show.) Adapted by Philip MacDonald and Michael Hogan from the 1938 novel by Daphne du Maurier. Music composed by Franz Waxman (Suspicion 1941, Sunset Boulevard 1950, A Place in the Sun 1951.) whose score at times sounds like a classic B horror film by RKO with its eerie organ tremolos.
Cinematography by George Barnes. (That Uncertain Feeling 1941, Ladies in Retirement 1941, Jane Eyre 1943, Spellbound 1945, Mourning Becomes Electra 1947, Force of Evil 1948, The File on Thelma Jordon 1950, War of the Worlds 1953). Art Department/Interior Design -Howard Bristol, Joseph B. Platt, and Eric Stacey. Art director Lyle Wheeler. Film editor James Newcom. Supervising film editor Hal C. Kern. Interiors designed by Joseph B Platt. Fashions by Irene.
The lighting for Rebecca creates a forbidden sense of place. The shadows distinguish where the secrets lurk, with the Gothic architecture and repressed desire.
“She” is in the innocence of white and Mrs. Danvers is always advancing in black…
Rebecca (1940) is auteur Hitchcock’s Gothic style thriller that often delves into the realm of classical horror, ‘old dark house’Â or haunting ghost story triggered by the remnants of a beautiful dead woman’s hold on an ancestral manor house and the new marriage brought home to thrive in its shadow. As scholar Tania Modleski writes Rebecca is a ‘presence’ which is never actually present. The character of Rebecca is symbolic of a subversive female desire, and Maxim de Winter who represents the patriarchal rule is terrorized and bound by her presence though she cannot be seen, her power remains intact within the walls of Manderley.
There was tension and discord between director Hitchcock who wanted control over the project and producer David O. Selznick. Though Hitchcock is one of the directors who manages to shake off any solid labels on his work, Rebecca is considered his first film noir. It was Hitchcock’s first American/Hollywood film, although it exudes that distinctly British style from his earlier mysteries. The melancholy tone of Robert E. Sherwood and Hitchcock regular Joan Harrison’s screenplay captures Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 disquieting Gothic novel perfectly.
Behind the scenes of Rebecca 1940 Alfred Hitchcock and Judith Anderson photo by Fred Parrish
Rebeccastars Laurence Olivier as Maxim de Winter, Joan Fontaine as Mrs. de Winter, George Sanders as Jack Favell, Judith Anderson as the sinister chatelaine Mrs. Danvers Nigel Bruce as Major Giles Lacy, C. Aubrey Smith as Colonel Julyan Reginald Deny as Frank Crawley, Gladys Cooper as Beatrice Lacy, Philip Winter as Robert, Edward Fielding as Frith, Florence Bates (The Moon and Sixpence 1942, Whistle Stop 1946, Portrait of Jennie 1948, A Letter to Three Wives 1949, Les Miserables 1952) as Mrs. Van Hopper, Leo G. Carroll as Dr. Baker
The master Hitchcock and cinematographer George Barnes know how to create a moody, atmospheric landscape of suspense. In Rebecca, Joan Fontaine is given the role of an innocent and painfully shy young heroine who remains nameless throughout the film, as she is in du Maurier’s novel. I read that there were early drafts of the original script where the heroine’s name was Daphne as in the writer, but obviously, the decision to keep her without a given name. She meets the brooding aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter played almost too effortlessly by Laurence Olivier who is the master of Manderley. They marry and Maxim brings his new bride back to his ancestral home. At first, she is clumsy and awkward trying to find her way around as mistress of the house. The second Mrs. de Winter is bewildered and haunted by the unseen presence of the first Mrs. de Winter, the uncanny and beautiful Rebecca, who has died in a boating accident a year before. Mrs. de Winter is psychically tortured by the sinister Mrs. Danvers who was Rebecca’s faithful and adoring servant played by the always imposing Judith Anderson, who bombards Joan Fontaine with memories and tactile possessions of the dead woman, whom we never see. She is truly a phantom that haunts the film, the narrative, and our heroine.
Considered for the leading role in Rebeccawas Loretta Young, Margaret Sullivan, Anne Baxter, and Vivien Leigh who was restricted by her role in Gone With the Wind 1939. Director Alfred Hitchcock won the Oscar for Best Picture his first and only Best Picture Oscar. George Barnes also won the Academy Award for his Cinematography. Judith Anderson was nominated for Best Supporting Actress as the menacing Mrs. Danvers, the only time in her career she was ever nominated.
“A searching look into the innermost depths of a woman’s heart . . . and a man’s desires!”
The Hustler (1961)
Sarah to Eddie–“You’re too hungry.”
Director/Screenwriter Robert Rossenwrote the screenplay for Marked Woman (1937), They Won’t Forget (1937), Dust Be My Destiny (1939), Out of the Fog (1941), Blues in the Night (1941), Edge of Darkness (1943), The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), Johnny O’Clock (1947), Desert Fury (1947) and wrote the screenplay for Billy Budd. Rossen also wrote and directed All the Kings Men (1949), Mambo (1954), and The psycho-sexual Labyrinth set in a mental institution in the early 1960s starring Jean Seberg-Lilith (1964) perhaps Rossen’s most dark and nihilistic vision of the human spirit yet. He directed John Garfield and Lilli Palmer in Body and Soul (1947). Robert Rossen was a pool hustler himself as a youth. Based on the novel by Walter S. Tevis.
Music by Kenyon Hopkins (12 Angry Men 1957, The Strange One 1957, The Fugitive Kind 1960, Elmer Gantry 1960, East Side/West Side 1963-46, Lilith 1964, television movies, Dr. Cook’s Garden 1971, Women in Chains 1972, Night of Terror 1972, The Devil’s Daughter 1973 and tv’s The Odd Couple 1970-73).
Robert Rossen is one of the most fascinating unexplored American directors, for his interesting viewpoint on alienation in the world and that constant elusive souvenir of the spirit of one’s identity. Rossen has been quoted as saying that his favorite Shakespearean play was Macbeth. In it he said he found a “dramatization of the ambiguity of the human condition… man reaching for the symbols of his identity, rather than the reality, destroying yet finding himself in the tragic process.”Â
In Rossen’s collection of works, you can see the more aggressive symbols played out as the representations of male power, domination, and violence as physical love. He told The New York Sun in 1947 that “Real life is ugly… but we can’t make good pictures until we’re ready to tell about it.”
Body and Soul (1947) written by Robert Rossen and Directed by Abraham PolonskyShown: back: William Conrad (as Quinn), Joseph Pevney (as Shorty Polaski), John Garfield (as Charlie Davis)
After his gangster film Johnny O’Clock Rossen was directed with the conventions of the crime genre Body and Soul (1947). Then Rossen directed The Hustler which used a breakthrough in technique and stretched the boundaries of social realism in the way Kazan had. The film like his All the Kings Men is still about the corrupt influences of money but on a deeper level it is driven by a darker motivation-the and illusionary symbols of self-worth, with George C. Scott’s character playing at Eddie’s weakness as a gambler and a seeker, like a devil daring him toward damnation. He is a sadist and ultimately seeks Eddie’s dependency and ruination and Sarah’s self-destruction.
Sarah tells Eddie “We are all crippled.” Sarah has the insight to see into the future yet she is beyond all the wounds inflicted in her life and can not forestall what will happen outside the confines of their little world that is her cluttered apartment. Sarah and Bert battle it out for Eddie’s soul. It is an ugly power struggle, and there are so many brilliantly executed frames that represent Rossen’s complex themes within The Hustler.
The film also co-stars Michael Constantine, Vincent Gardenia, Murray Hamilton, and Myron McCormick who is always compelling in any role, plays Eddie’s devoted manager Charlie Burns who takes the journey with Eddie at first and winds up being pushed out by the hostile and rancorous Bert Gordon. Murry Hamilton is fantastic as he inhabits the coded gay character of the pretentious and effete gambler Findley.
The Hustler is a moral allegory about life and the inter-relationships of miscreants, losers, and lost souls struggling to find themselves in a gritty, unsatisfying world that permeates the world of the competitive underground sport of shooting pool. Fast Eddie has been working his way up to have a showdown with the reigning legend Minnesota Fats finally. The film is a restless contemplation merged with some dynamic scenes of maneuvering on the pool table.
The film opens with a smoke-filled pool palace in Pittsburgh with a sign ‘gambling not allowed’. It’s a hangout for pool sharks, called hustlers. Paul Newman plays Fast Eddie, a smug young man who was born to take suckers for a ride, feeling that wood between his anxious fingers he can spot a ripe table waiting for him to swoop in for the kill. But Eddie with all his mythological ambition just doesn’t know when it’s time to quit. Eddie goes 25 consecutive rounds with the legendary Minnesota Fats and it appears like he’s got the marathon match in his corner pocket when he starts knocking back the whiskey, and can’t just take the win with the dignity he has to demolish Fats and allow his ego to drive the rest of the rest of the way home. The scene is shot in a dynamic half-hour sequence using gorgeous black and white photography in cinemascope and Schüfftan‘s (who won an Oscar for his camera work) eye for detail he honed on Fritz Lang’s surreal Metropolis, the film he developed special effects for. The sequence of this film is nothing short of riveting. The setup is mesmerizing as we are drawn into a timeless expanse as the different approaches to the game unfold, as the pool stick meets the ball, the balls dance and fill the pockets like cannon fire, while the spectators whose expressions are glued to every move as if in a trance.
Fats who is way more graceful and composed manages to win back his loot and leave the cocky and exhausted Eddie practically penniless. Eddie’s got a keen skill for the game but he doesn’t have self-control or character. Bert Gordon played by actor George C. Scott tempts Eddie like Mephistopheles to sell his soul to him with the promise that he can not only make his dream come true of being the greatest but also avenge the ass-kicking that he took from Fats. As cock-sure as Eddie appears, he has no fortitude and winds up abandoning his honor and his love for Sarah in order to seek the rematch with the Fat man.
Piper Laurie’s character Sarah Packard is a liberated forward-thinking woman who while bares the damage of life, is independent though alienated from the rest of the world because of her open wounds. She is trying to be a writer and drinks too much. She wants to be loved, and Eddie wants to be the best.
And so he sells his soul to Bert Gordon, the film’s Faustian metaphor. The early 60s began an era of films that began to embrace controversial adult-themed narratives, that dealt with race, class dynamics, and the changing roles that were taking place with gender.
[Fast Eddie is bothered because Bert called him a born loser]
Fast Eddie: “Cause, ya see, twice, Sarah… once at Ames with Minnesota Fats and then again at Arthur’s, in that cheap, crummy pool room, now why’d I do it, Sarah? Why’d I do it? I coulda beat that guy, coulda beat ‘im cold, he never woulda known. But I just hadda show ‘im. Just hadda show those creeps and those punks what the game is like when it’s great, when it’s REALLY great. You know, like anything can be great, anything can be great. I don’t care, BRICKLAYING can be great, if a guy knows. If he knows what he’s doing and why and if he can make it come off. When I’m goin’, I mean, when I’m REALLY goin’ I feel like a… like a jockey must feel. He’s sittin’ on his horse, he’s got all that speed and that power underneath him… he’s comin’ into the stretch, the pressure’s on ‘im, and he KNOWS… just feels… when to let it go and how much. Cause he’s got everything workin’ for ‘im: timing, touch. It’s a great feeling, boy, it’s a real great feeling when you’re right and you KNOW you’re right. It’s like all of a sudden I got oil in my arm. The pool cue’s part of me. You know, it’s uh – pool cue, it’s got nerves in it. It’s a piece of wood, it’s got nerves in it. Feel the roll of those balls, you don’t have to look, you just KNOW. You make shots that nobody’s ever made before. I can play that game the way… NOBODY’S ever played it before.”
Sarah Packard: “You’re not a loser, Eddie, you’re a winner. Some men never get to feel that way about anything.”
Rossen wrote the screenplay and directed this gripping story of fast Eddie Felson, as he strives to knock Minnesota Fats down a peg and capture the title of best pool hustler in the country, taking Fats (Jackie Gleason who was perfect as he manifested the character of Fats, well-dressed, reserved and showed a deep reverence and concentration to the game.) on in a high-stakes game that challenges no only his keen gift for shooting pool but on the line is his self-respect and his nebulous masculine identity.
Fast Eddie to Fats: You know, I got a hunch, fat man. I got a hunch it’s me from here on in. One ball, corner pocket. I mean, that ever happen to you? You know, all of a sudden you feel like you can’t miss? ‘Cause I dreamed about this game, fat man. I dreamed about this game every night on the road. Five ball. You know, this is my table, man. I own it.
Along the way, he falls in love with Sarah Packford immortalized on the screen in an arresting performance by Piper Laurie (Kim Novak had turned down the role) who should have won the Oscar for Best Actress with her nuanced, and heart-wrenching interpretation of the vulnerable loner and self-loathing Sarah. Rossen has often dealt with the intricacies within the psychological landscape of his films.
Sarah Packard is a complicated woman who has a tenuous connection to the world but allows herself to fall in love with Eddie who is driven to succeed and land at the top as the greatest pool hustler. Sarah is a lost soul longing for someone who will love her. She receives a stipend from her wealthy father, but there is no sign of affection or acceptance from him, his is non-existent. Eddie awakens desire in her, but he cannot deliver anything but his hunger and ambition to beat Minnesota Fats and attain the title. Fast Eddie destroys everything he touches. In order to really throw herself into the role of Sarah Packard Piper Laurie actually hung out at the Greyhound terminal at night.
Piper Laurie (Has Anybody Seen My Gal 1952, The Mississippi Gambler 1953, Dangerous Mission 1954, Johnny Dark 1954, Ain’t Misbehavin’ 1955, and director Curtis Harrington’s Ruby 1977, Children of a Lesser God 1986, Dario Argento’s Trauma 1993, The Crossing Guard 1995, The Dead Girl 2006 and television series-Naked City, Ben Casey, The Eleventh Hour) discovered that Paul Newman was indeed down to earth – “He really didn’t believe in himself as an actor at all. He thought he had great limitations and owed everything to other people- the Actors Studio, Joanne- he seemed not to take credit for himself.”
Laurie didn’t make another film over the course of 15 years until she returned to the screen in Brian De Palma’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie (1976), which earned her a second Oscar nomination as the religious fanatic archetypal devouring mother a role that would ignite a new fire under the icons of horror movie fiends and villains.
Sarah and Eddie meet in the bus terminal. They both have a drinking problem, especially Sarah who drowns her self-pity in booze. She was born with a deformity in her foot which makes her limp and gives her a feeling of self-hatred and undesirability that Eddie breaks through with his smooth-talking swagger. He manages to reach in and touch her heart but his reckless abandon to win, overshadows Sarah’s cries for help and her self-destructive nature cannot withstand the competition for Eddie’s soul.
Fast Eddie: You know, someday, Sarah, you’re gonna settle down… you’re gonna marry a college professor and you’re gonna write a great book. Maybe about me. Huh? Fast Eddie Felson… hustler.
Sarah Packard: Yes, I need them very much. If you ever say them I’ll never let you take them back.
To achieve Sarah’s limp, Piper Laurie first experimented with walking around with pebbles in her shoes. “Finally, I just did it without anything, because Rossen didn’t want an obvious limp; he didn’t want it consistent because he felt he wanted the audience to be aware of it sometimes and not other times.”
The two shack up and set up house in Sarah’s apartment that is subsidized by her father’s money. Eddie is obsessed with winning. Their relationship is turbulent and dysfunctional, then enters George C. Scott as Bert Gordon a misanthropic snake in the grass who exploits Eddie and interferes with his relationship with Sarah. Once Bert Gordon slithers into the closed world of Eddie’s pool hustling and his love affair with Sarah, that world is corrupted, and Eddie begins to lose his way.
Ulu Grosbard later noted that the interior of Sarah’s apartment was built in a studio at 55th St. and 10th Ave. He said the actors’ dressing rooms there were very small and, in his memory, without windows, “like cells,” but that Piper Laurie furnished hers “as if she were going to live in it the rest of her life.” It was Grosbard’s impression that Laurie would sometimes spend the night there.
Bert Gordon: Eddie, is it alright if I get personal?
Bert Gordon: Sure you got drunk. You have the best excuse in the world for losing; no trouble losing when you got a good excuse. Winning… that can be heavy on your back, too, like a monkey. You’ll drop that load too when you got an excuse. All you gotta do is learn to feel sorry for yourself. One of the best indoor sports, feeling sorry for yourself. A sport enjoyed by all, especially the born losers.
Bert Gordon: You’re here on a rain check and I know it. You’re hangin’ on by your nails. You let that glory whistle blow loud and clear for Eddie and you’re a wreck on a railroad track… you’re a horse that finished last. So don’t make trouble, Miss Ladybird. Live and let live! While you can. I’ll make it up to you.
Fast Eddie: I loved her, Bert. I traded her in on a pool game. But that wouldn’t mean anything to you. Because who did you ever care about? Just win, win, you said, win, that’s the important thing. You don’t know what winnin’ is, Bert. You’re a loser. ‘Cause you’re dead inside, and you can’t live unless you make everything else dead around ya.
The Hustler is an extraordinary character study of how humans bang into each other like the balls on the table, and no one really wins. It’s got a slick rhythm to its movement and editing by the wonderful Dede Allen and Eugen Schüfftan (Metropolis 1927, Bluebeard (1944), Strange Illusion (1945), The Strange Woman 1946, The Bloody Brood (1959), Eyes Without a Face 1960, Something Wild (1961) Lilith (1964) Eugen Schüfftan’s style is uniquely dark and almost mythic in its visual abstraction of reality.
IMDb trivia –
The picture was shot by Eugen Schüfftan, who had invented an optical effects process that employed mirrors to create backgrounds. According to crew reports, many of the pool room shots employed this process to varying degrees. The picture was also shot in CinemaScope, a wide-screen process usually reserved for big epics and action pictures.
The camera descends like Orpheus into the seedy smoky hidden world of the American pool hall, gazing at the sweaty mercenaries who hunger to hear the clicking and smacking of the balls making contact as they encircle the pool tables like birds of prey.
According to editor Dede Allen, an entire scene from this film was omitted after much deliberation between Allen and her director Robert Rossen. Even though both agreed that the scene, an impassioned speech by Paul Newman in the pool room, was possibly the best part of his entire performance, they had to throw it out because “…it didn’t move the story.” Newman, though Oscar-nominated, later claimed that the deleted scene most likely cost him the Academy Award. Dede Allen liked working with Robert Rossen because he was the kind of director who shot scenes from every possible angle, providing her with a wide range of cover footage that allowed for various interpretations and possibilities.
American actress Piper Laurie as Sarah Packard in ‘The Hustler’, directed by Robert Rossen, 1961. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
The film was also somewhat autobiographical for Robert Rossen, relating to his dealings with the House Un-American Activities Committee. A screenwriter during the 1930s and ’40s, he had been involved with the Communist Party in the 1930s and refused to name names at his first HUAC appearance. Ultimately he changed his mind and identified friends and colleagues as party members. Similarly, Felson sells his soul and betrays the one person who really knows and loves him in a Faustian pact to gain character.
When it was necessary to show some of the trickier shots, 14 time world billiards champion Willie Mosconi (who was also the film’s technical advisor) would play the stunt hands.
Otherwise, Jackie Gleason who was already an accomplished pool player and Paul Newman had never held a pool cue before he landed the role of Fast Eddie Felson. He took out the dining room table from his home and installed a pool table so he could spend every waking hour practicing and polishing up his skills
This is your EverLovin’ Joey saying wrack ’em up and then join me for another go around here at The Last Drive In
Eventually, she settled in Queens, NY. King eventually found her way to Broadway at the age of 13 where she performed between 1935-36 in Fly Away Home with Montgomery Clift. At the age of 18, she went to Chicago and worked in the Lilian Gish company’s Life with Father for two years. It was in 1944, that Warner Bros. signed Andrea King to a contract, her first bit part was as a nurse in a scene with Bette Davis in Mr. Skeffington, then she appeared in The Very Thought of You whereas Molly Wheeler – she had to be bitchy to Eleanor Parker, which she joked she hated doing “Wait a couple of months baby and you’ll be making double dates with me just like we used to!”King was cast in small roles during the war. The Warner Bros. studio photographers voted Andrea the most photogenic actress on the lot for the year 1945, the year she starred in God is My Co-Pilot. Jack Warner who liked to name his new stars had wanted to change her name to Georgia King to Andrea’s horror she ran to friend director Delmer Daves and cried telling him it was awful, and sounded like a Mississippi burlesque queen!
Andrea King’s portrayal of the angelic and strong-minded Julie Holden in director Robert Florey’s Gothic horror The Beast with Five Fingers (1946) was perhaps my introduction to King’s beautiful persona. Co-starring with Robert Alda a year before they were to act together in The Man I Love (1947).
The Beast with Five Fingers (1946) starring Peter Lorre, Robert Alda, and Andrea King.
Sophie Rosenstein the acting coach had taken a strong liking to Andrea and when she left Warner Bros. and went to Universal, a lot of roles opened up for Andrea at Universal.
Andrea King’s first major role as Lisa Dorn whom Andrea in an interview with TCM said was a wonderful part, a real leading lady– “She was evil and she was kind. She was two people all in one” in Hotel Berlin (1945) afterward she played stylish often ‘mysterious’ leading ladies or supporting roles as the ‘bad girl.’
Finally, King got bigger, glamorous lead parts and appeared in a cross-section of genres throughout the late 1940s and 1950s. She is remembered for five significant film noir roles, Shadow of a Woman (1946), The Man I Love (1947) with the legendary Ida Lupino, Ride the Pink Horse (1947) starring and directed by Robert Montgomery, Dial 1119 (1950) with Marshall Thompson and the even lesser known Southside 1-1000(1950)with Don DeFore, that I decided not to cover at this time.
In 1965 she appeared in The House of the Black Death, Prescription Murder (1968) tv movie and Daddy’s Gone A -Hunting 1969. Andrea King made the transition to television, most notably she appeared in the original 1953 broadcast of “Witness for the Prosecution” for Lux Video Theatre (1950) co-starring Edward G. Robinson. She worked well into the 1970s, (appearing in genres- horror & exploitation- where so many beautiful starlets inevitably roam-a subject I plan on writing about extensively in my piece “From Glamour to Trauma: Deconstructing the Myth of Hag Cinema in the not-so-distant future here at The Last Drive-In) including appearing in the exploitation film Blackenstein 1973.Â
Directed by Joseph H. Lewis (Gun Crazy 1950, My Name is Julia Ross 1945 , So Dark the Night 1946) Screenplay by Philip Jordan, Director of photography John Alton who's haunting chiaroscuro and noir figures in silhouette fill out the landscape of entrapment, corruption and decadence.
From Film Noir: Reflections in a Dark Mirror by Bruce Crowthers
In The Big Combo (1955)“Alton's dazzling black and white photography starkly counterpoints the film's perverse sexuality which constantly strains against the limitations of the Hollywood code. Whether exploring the sado-masochistic violence of the hoodlums, two of whom, Fante and Mingo are clearly homosexual or the psycho-sexual domination wielded by gang boss, Brown over the young woman from the right side of the tracks, the scripts and the director’s needs are continually and effectively fulfilled by Alton's camera.”
Stars Cornel Wildeas Leonard Diamond, Jean Wallace(Jigsaw 1949, The Man on the Eiffel Tower 1950, Storm Fear 1955) as Susan Lowell, Brian Donlevy (The Glass Key 1942, Impact 1949, The Quatermass Xperiment 1955, A Cry in the Night 1956) as McClure, Richard Conte (The Blue Gardenia 1943, Cry of the City 1948, Thieves’ Highway 1949, Whirlpool 1949, Oceans 11 (1960), Tony Rome 1967, Lady in Cement 1968) as Mr. Brown, Lee Van Cleef as Fante and Earl Holliman as Mingo, Robert Middleton as Peterson, Helen Walker as Alicia, Jay Adleras Sam Hill, John Hoytas Dreyer, Ted De Corsia as Bettini, Helene Stanton as Rita.
Joseph H. Lewis  from Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia by Wheeler Winston Dixon-
Lewis abandoned westerns and began a "frenzied round of freelancing that took him from Poverty Row to the majors, with such films as the disquieting horror Universal film The Mad Doctor of Market Street (1942) and the astonishing Secrets of a Coed aka The Silent Witness 1942 for PRC.”
The Big Combo is considered a "˜syndicate' film noir, where a mob organization is running the urban landscape, in which the organization is "˜all' but with a difference. According to writer/historian Wheeler Winston Dixon, director Lewis was an "eccentric and he depicts a universe that is as out of kilter as his often imbalanced camera set-ups; the camera sweeps in on the protagonists in their most intimate moments, frames them as silhouettes in wide shots that effectively use fog and a few shadows to disguise the fact that seem to entrap his characters in even tighter compositions."
Brown- “I’m gonna break him so fast he won’t have time to change his pants. Tell him the next time I see him, he’ll be in the lobby of the hotel, crying like a baby and asking for a ten-dollar loan. Tell him that. And tell him I don’t break my word. Diamond –“You must have done something pretty fine to get as high as you are, Mr. Brown. I’m looking into that. I’m gonna open you up, and I’m gonna operate. I hate to think of what I’ll find.
At the police station, booked on a phony charge just to harass Brown. Joe McClure-“Mr. Brown is a very reasonable man. You don’t know him.” Leonard Diamond “Oh, is he? Well I’m not. I intend to make life very difficult for you Mr. Brown.”
Joe McClure-“You shouldn’t talk like that, Lieutenant. You’re overstepping your authority.” Mr. Brown-“Joe, the man has reason to hate me. His salary is $96.50 a week. The busboys in my hotel make better money than that. Don’t you see, Joe? He’s a righteous man.”
From FILM NOIR: THE DARK SIDE OF THE SCREEN BY FOSTER HIRSCH
"One of the eroding factors in the fifties thrillers surfaced in such films as the Big Combo and The Phenix City Story where crime no longer springs from the aberrant individual but is instead a corporate enterprise, run like a business. (Or like Murder Inc.) This view of crime is widespread, almost communal undertaking, counters the traditional noir interest in the isolated criminal whose actions are controlled not by an impersonal conglomerate but by a complex interweaving of character and fate." Hirsch also points out that it represents another level of decadence.
From The Lost World of Film Noir by Eddie Muller-“This gray area between old-school hoodlum and the new “organization man” was fertile turf for noir fables…)… in The Big Combo the gangster picture is distilled into a sexual battle between the saturnine, sensual Mr. Brown (Richard Conte) and dogged but frustrated flatfoot Leonard Diamond (Cornel Wilde) Both men covet the appetizing Susan Lowell (Jean Wallace), whom Diamond has been stalking for months as part of his investigation of Brown’s illegal Combination.”
I have read that Chiaroscuro is director Lewis' domain and that he also liked to use icy blondes the way Alfred Hitchcock did. In Gun Crazy (1950) Lewis had Peggy Cummins, and in The Big Combo it is Jean Wallace, yet Lewis' women are more overtly "˜sex-kittenish than high-class blondes.- From Film Noir: An Encyclopedia Reference to the American Style by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward
Cornel Wilde does a blunt job playing a righteous cop, Leonard Diamond who will do anything to take down Mr. Brown who represents everything he detests in the world.
“I know his name. The name of a man who will pick up a phone and call Chicago and New Orleans and say “Hey Bill, Joe is coming down for the weekend. Advance him fifty thousand,” and he hangs up the phone and the money’s advanced, protection money. A new all-night bar opens, with gambling outside city limits. A bunch of high school kids come in for a good time. They get loaded, they get irresponsible, they lose their shirts. Then they get a gun, cause they’re worried, they want to make up their losses. And a filling station attendant is dead with a bullet in his liver. I have to see four kids on trial for first-degree murder. Look at it. First-degree murder, because a certain Mr. Brown picked up a phone.”
Robert Middleton who happens to be one of my favorite underrated character actors plays Diamond’s boss, Police Lt.Peterson, who’s trying to convince Diamond not to pursue Brown through his girlfriend Susan Lowell and realizes that after tailing her for months, Diamond might have developed feelings for her. “You’re a cop, Leonard. There are 17,000 laws on the books to be enforced. You haven’t got time to reform wayward girls. She’s been with Brown three and a half years. That’s a lot of days… and nights.”
Richard Conte is particularly more brutal as Mr. Brown than in some of his other portrayals of the embodiment of the crime aesthetic, possessing the essential flair of the well-heeled mobster. The Big Combois one of the most bleak and perverse of all the mid-1950s film noirs. The pace of the film leaves us hanging in a world of perpetual threat and vexation.
Richard Conte infuses the role of Mr. Brown with an unusual intensity even for the enduring tough-guy Conte as he plays a ruthless mob boss who practically holds a society girl Susan Lowell (Jean Wallace) hostage by their odd attraction for each other. Susan has left a budding career as a pianist to be a trophy in Brown’s collections, seduced by his control, and the money he lavishes on her, yet ambivalent about her self-loathing and her attraction to his perverse power over her body and their sexual relationship. In a potent scene, he takes Susan to a secret room in her apartment filled with a hidden stash of money and ammunition. Brown to Susan- “This is my bank… we don’t take checks, we deal strictly in cash. There isn’t anybody I’d trust with so much temptation–except myself. Or maybe you.”
Mr. Brown- "Where'd you get that outfit?"Â Susan Lowell "What’s wrong with it?"Â Mr. Brown-"I like you better in white. You’ve got a dozen white dresses. Why don’t you wear them? " Susan Lowell-"White doesn’t please me anymore." Mr. Brown –"A woman dresses for a man. You dress for me. Go put on something white!"
Brown employs his two exploitable goons Fante (Lee Van Cleef) and Mingo (Earl Holliman) to stay close to Susan and watch her every move, acting as unwanted bodyguards.
Brown's far-flung organization is under attack by the overzealous hard-boiled detective Leonard Diamond (Cornel Wilde) who is determined to bring Brown to justice. All of Mr. Brown's associates are figures marginalized by society in some way, all defined by their "˜difference.' Brown gets his kicks pointing out what everyone else around him lacks while he pats himself on the back like a sadistic narcissist.
The film opens with Susan fleeing a boxing match, pursued by Mr. Brown’s two hired muscle heads, through dark alleys until she is finally caught by Brown, which only symbolizes his sexual dominance over her.
“It was for her I began to work my way up. All I had was guts. I traded them for money and influence. I get respect from everybody but her…”- Mr. Brown
Brown is so fixated on displays of dominance and strength that he fires his boxer after he loses his bout. First, he uses the opportunity to belittle his deputy McClure (Brian Donlevy) in front of the young boxer then he smacks Benny across his swollen bloody face waiting for his retaliation, but when it’s obvious the boy won’t hit him back, he cuts him loose.
Brown talking to Benny after the bout- “So you lost. Next time you’ll win. I’ll show you how. Take a look at Joe McClure here. He used to be my boss, now I’m his. What’s the difference between me and him? We breathe the same air, sleep in the same hotel. He used to own it!”
[yelling into McClure’s sound magnifier that is in his ear]
“We eat the same steak, drink the same bourbon. Look–same manicure, cuff-links. But we don’t get the same girls. Why? Because women know the difference. They got instinct. First is first and second is nobody…Â Now, Benny, who runs the world? Do you have any idea?” Bennie Smith "Not me, Mr. Brown." Mr. Brown "That's right, not you, but a funny thing, they’re not so much different from you, but they’ve got something. They’ve got it, and they use it. I’ve got it;[pointing to McClure] he hasn’t. What is it, Benny? What makes the difference…? Hate! Hate is the word, Benny! Hate the man that tries to beat you. Kill ’em, Benny! Kill ’em! Hate him till you see red, and you’ll come out winning the big money, and the girls will come tumblin’ after. You’ll have to shut off the phone and lock the door to get a night’s rest."
Brown lectures Benny- “You should have hit me back. You haven’t got the hate. Tear up Benny’s contract. He’s no good to me anymore.”Â
Brown cuts his fighter-Benny loose, telling him he just doesn’t have the killer instinct he needs. Brown is a narcissistic bully whose smooth philosophical meanderings taunt the people who work for him, women, and even the cop who is right on his heels.
Brown's two brawny side-kicks Fante and Mingo are obviously homosexual lovers, who thrive on violence as an enhancement to their sexual arousal like foreplay. Brown's former boss, the weakened and inadequate McClure must rely on a clunky portable radio-sized hearing aid in order to keep up with the gang's activities.
Lt. Diamond goes after the psychotic megalomaniac Mr. Brown trying to shut down his crime organization. There is conflict already within the organization as Brown is demeaning to McClure and verbally bates him constantly with put-downs, to try and get a rise out of him. McClure wants to get rid of Brown all together and take over as head of the mob once again, but in the end, he is too impotent, to smack down Brown’s power.
Brown has a prized possession "”his beautiful blonde girlfriend Susan who is watched over every minute of the day by his two thugs Fante and Mingo. When Susan finally has a breakdown and overdoses on sleeping pills as a way out, she finally asks Diamond for help.
Susan eventually attempts suicide by taking an overdose of pills, which puts her in Diamond's path. Diamond himself is attracted to Susan. Believing that the only escape from her amoral relationship with Brown is to die, Diamond tries to pull her away from his control.
First Diamond wants to expose Brown’s criminal organization and secondly, it would give him great satisfaction to take Susan away from Brown, as he also has developed feelings for her.
When Diamond harasses Brown by arresting him on false charges just to bring him into the station –he goes on a mission to persecute Brown, who retaliates as his credo is "First is first and second is nobody" Brown puts a contract out on Diamond, who is then kidnapped by his two vicious flunky's Fante and Mingo who are in a surreptitious relationship, with each other Mingo showing his sexual attraction and love for Fante in a rather covert yet palpable way. Though toward the end, while they’re hiding out, he does make mention that he’s sick of Salami. A thought, make of it what you will!
In a shocking scene Fante and Mingo torture Diamond, it is particularly brutal and vicious as they use McClure's hearing aid turned up to full volume amplifying sound to the point it could blow his ear drums out. The pain on Diamond's face is tangible. Then they begin pouring alcohol down his throat poisoning him, leaving him to appear as if he's been off on a bender, thank god his boss Peterson (Robert Middleton) is there to help Diamond recover.
Mr. Brown-“I think Mr. Diamond needs a drink. Got any liquor?” Fante-” How about some paint thinner?” Mr. Brown-“No, that’ll kill him. Anything else?” Fante- “Hair tonic, 40% alcohol.” Mr.Brown-“Fine.”
Once he recovers from his torture, Diamond is even more determined to bring Brown down. Diamond starts to put the pieces together and find clues that point to Brown's involvement in the murder of a racket boss who disappeared a while ago, and whose place he took over in the organization. He discovers some of Brown's old associates, Dreyer (John Hoyt) an Austrian who runs an antique and import business, and Bettini (Ted De Corsia)a nice Italian man who owned a pizza parlor in the city and is now hiding out, fearing for his life.
Fante and Mingo go to Diamond’s hotel room intending to kill him and wind up murdering his sometime lover night club singer Rita who went there to surprise him with a date but becomes an unfortunate casualty being at the right place at the wrong time she is caught in the fray. Even Rita had laid things out for Diamond about the reasons why Susan would stay with a creep like Brown- “Women don’t care how a man makes his living, only how he makes love.”
After Diamond finds Rita’s body gunned down in his apartment- “She came to see me in her best shoes!” I treated her like a pair of gloves. I was cold… I called her up.”
Brown tries to school Diamond in the ways of the world, “You’d like to be me… You’d like to have my organization, my influence, my fix. You think it’s the money. It’s not–it’s personality. You haven’t got it. You’re a cop. Slow. Steady. Intelligent. With a bad temper and a gun under your arm. With a big yen for a girl, you can’t have. First is first and second is nobody.Â
Brown- “You’re a little man with a soft job and good pay. Stop thinking about what might have been and who knows–you may live to die in bed.”
Brown starts to get paranoid and panicky, getting rid of McClure who is a weak link in the mob, and then his two henchmen who know too much about his double dealings and can be linked to McClure's murder. Adding to Brown's worries, his ex-wife Alicia (Helen Walker) comes back into the picture after hiding out in a sanitarium aiding Diamond in Brown's capture. Ultimately leading to a showdown at an airplane hangar where Diamond corners Brown. Alicia “I’d rather be insane and alive, than sane… and dead.”
When McClure tries to double-cross Brown by using his own thugs against him, Fante and Mingo pretend to go along and wind up turning their machine guns on him instead, while Brown sardonically watches grinning like the sadist he is. With a flair of evil embellishment, Brown walks over to McClure who has two machine guns trained on him, and takes out his hearing aid. Brown-"I"˜m gonna give you a break. I’m gonna fix it, so you don’t hear the bullets." It is a stunning scene we are watching from McClure's perspective the flashing lights and smokey tendrils from the gunfire happen at us, but it is all done in eerie quiet and darkness. We are experiencing the frightening moment when he is shot to death. We become McClure at that moment.
Later Brown wants to dispose of his two thugs so there is no evidence of murder, he hands them a package while they are hiding out in an old building in the basement that used to be a speakeasy, They think the package is filled with food, guns and their share of the money they heisted from the bank, but it's filled with dynamite. As the two men are blown up, leaving Mingo alive for a brief moment just enough to give a deathbed confession to exact revenge for his lover's death and point the finger at Brown.
Richard Conte is icily ruthless as the film's antagonist, Mr. Brown who is not known by any other name, signifying an enigmatic symbolism for abject violence and immorality. As Dickos states "his imaginative brutality, Lewis bridges violence to the audience's darker, vicarious desire to see pain inflicted on the screen"
There is a sense of noir fatalism and an underlying current of deviant and provocative sexual appetite within The Big Combo. Much of the violence is influenced by a strong element of sadism. The relationship between Susan and Brown is structured by fatalism, as she is sullen and submissive to his neurotic controlling fixation, while she wants to escape she shows no strength or determination other than to give in to it. Brown is obsessed with Susan as an object, preoccupied with her body. This is illustrated in one scene where he devours her with studied kisses, worships her , and objectifies her with salacious flattery in a way that perversely brings her to ecstasy. It might be this odd sexual attraction to Brown that keeps her passive to his controlling behavior toward her.
From Film Noir Encyclopedia: Edited by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward "The Homosexuality of Mingo and Fante is smothered in an atmosphere of murder and sadistic torture , as they refine the conventions of violence into a sexual ritual. Joseph H. Lewis's direction strongly points to a crude sexual bias throughout the film. Even Diamond appears to be sexually frustrated and compensating for impotence. Much in the same way as Lewis's classic Gun Crazy, there is an affinity between sex and violence.; and the exploration of futility presents an ambience strangely reminiscent of an earlier period of noir films, such as Scarlet Street and Woman in the Window. These attitude combine with John Alton's photography to create a wholly defined film noir, as striking contrasts between the black and white photography and Lewis's sexual overtones isolate The Big Combo's characters in a dark, insular universe of unspoken repression and graphic violence." -Carl Macek
From Street With No Name by Andrew Dickos
"The Homoerotic violence in the Mingo-Fante relationship, unencumbered by misguided sociological sentiments, is still stereotyped psycho-sexuality "”offensive enough on another score"”but it is raw and consistent with the noir world. The privilege of noir cinema, as distinguished from other genres, lies in the latitude these films were permitted in exploring sexual power and its ambiguity, and the reason is apparent; as the cautionary cinema of the great negation of a "healthy' puritanical American vision, the film noir almost mandates a depiction, however perverse, of those repressed impulses reigning hand-in hand with the anarchy that drives its protagonists to violence and paranoia. Unrepressed sexuality alongside these characteristics is far too messy to contain, so it must be vanquished. When it is particularly threatening, one may be sure that there is a woman involved."
Lewis's The Big Combo- "where it becomes almost pornographic to see Susan Lowell hopelessly submit to what is surely suggested to be an act of oral sex performed by her crime-lord boyfriend, Mr. Brown. But Lewis is no pornographer, he is a sensualist in the most serious way. No other works in American film until the 1960s broached the acknowledgment of these carnal hungers as a life-enhancing dimension of dangerous living"”indeed, in living a short, intense life unto quick death."
Both Lewis’ film noir masterpieces Gun Crazy and The Big Combo are sexually defined by the discursive violence of the external world"”so much a corollary for the violence of passion that Lewis and screenwriter Philip Jordan can barely mask the story of The Big Combo as merely another sensational example of the extent to which organized crime corrupted postwar American Life.
Your EverLovin’ Joey saying there’s an underlying current of shadows and light here at The Last Drive In, but no worries, you got what it takes to stick around -no need to turn up the volume for you to hear how much I appreciate you all!
“Five Characters in Search of an Exit” Season 3 Episode 14-Stars William Windom, Susan Harrison, Murray Matheson, Kelton Garwood aired December 22, 1961 Teleplay by Rod Serling.“The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine” Season 1 episode 4 aired October 23rd 1959-stars Ida Lupino and Martin Balsam, Jerome Cowan, Ted de Corsia and Alice Frost as Sally. Written by Rod Serling“Black Leather Jackets” Season 5 Episode 18 aired January 31st 1964-stars Lee Kinsolving, Shelley Fabares, Michael Forest, Denver Pyle, Tom Gilleran, Michael Conrad and Irene Hervey.“Elegy” Season 1 Episode 20 aired on February 19th, 1960 directed by Douglas Heyes and written by Charles Beaumont. Stars Cecil Kellaway, Jeff Morrow, Don Dubbins and Kevin Hagen“Eye of the Beholder” Season 2 Episode 6 aired on November 11th, 1960 directed by Douglas Heyes and written by Rod Serling. Stars Maxine Stuart, William D. Gordon, Jennifer Howard, George Keymas, Joanna Heyes, and Donna Douglas -revealedNOVEMBER 11: Twilight Zone episode ‘Eye of the Beholder’, written by Rod Serling. makeup by William Tuttle. Originally broadcast on November 11, 1960. Season 2, episode 6. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)“Nothing in the Darkness” Season 3, Episode 16 aired January 5th, 1962. Stars Gladys Cooper Robert Redford and R.G. Armstrong“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” Season 5 Episode 3 aired October 11th, 1963 directed by Richard Donner written by Richard Matheson, Starring William Shatner, and Christine White
“The Howling Man” Season 2 Episode 5 aired November 4, 1960 directed by Douglas Heyes written by Charles Beaumont and Rod Serling. Stars John Carradine, H.M. Wynant, and Robin Hughes
“It’s a Good Life” Season 3 Episode 8 aired aired November 3rd, 1961. teleplay by Rod Serling based on a short story by Jerome Bixby. Stars John Larch, Cloris Leachman, Don Keefer, Bill Mumy as Anthony, Alice Frost as Aunt Amy, Max Showalter, Jeanne Bates, Lenore Kingston and Tom Hatcher.
“A Most Unusual Camera” Season 2 Episode 10 aired December 16, 1960. Starring Jean Carson, Fred Clark and Adam Williams written by Rod Serling“Little Girl Lost” Season 3 Episode 26 aired March 16, 1962 directed by Paul Stewart and written by Richard Matheson. Stars Sarah Marshall, Robert Sampson and Charles Aidman“Living Doll’ Season 5 Episode 6 aired November 1, 1963 written by Charles Beaumont and Rod Serling. Stars Telly Savalas, Mary LaRoche and Tracy Stratford
“The Midnight Sun” Season 3 Episode 10 aired November 17, 1961 Written by Rod Serling. Stars Lois Nettleton, and Betty Garde“Mirror Image” Season 1 Episode 21 directed by John Brahm written by Rod Serling. Stars Vera Miles, Martin Milner, Joseph Hamilton and Naomi Stevens “Mr. Garrity and the Graves” Season 5 Episode 32. Aired May 8th, 1964 directed by Ted Post, with a teleplay by Rod Serling. Stars John Dehner, Stanley Adams, J. Pat O’Malley, Norman Leavitt, Percy Helton and John Mitchum“Mr. Denton on Doomsday” Season 1 Episode 3 aired October 16th 1959 written by Rod Serling Stars Dan Duryea, Martin Landau, Jeanne Cooper, Malcolm Atterbury, Ken Lynch, Arthur Batanides, Robert Burton and Doug McClure“A Stop at Willoughby” Season 1 Episode 30 aired May 6, 1960 directed by Robert Parrish written by Rod Serling. Stars James Daly, Howard Smith and Patricia Donahue, Jason Wingreen, and Mavis Neal Palmer. “Nick of Time” Season 2 Episode 3 aired November 18, 1960 Written by Richard Matheson and Rod Serling Stars William Shatner and Patricia Breslin“Night Call’ Season 5 Episode 19 aired February 7, 1964 Directed by Jacques Tourneur written by Richard Matheson and Rod Serling. Stars the great Gladys Cooper, Nora Marlowe and Martine Bartlett.“Nightmare as a Child” Season 1 Episode 29 aired April 29, 1960 written by Rod Serling. Stars Janice Rule, Sheppard Strudwick and Terry Burnham as Markie “Twenty Two” Season 2 Episode 17 aired February 10, 1961 Directed by Jack Smight written by Rod Serling from Famous Ghost Stories- Stars Barbara Nichols, Jonathon Harris, and Fredd Wayne“One for the Angels” Season 1 Episode 2 aired October 9, 1959 Written by Rod Serling. Stars Ed Wynn, Murray Hamilton as death, Dana Dillaway as Maggie“A Penny for your Thoughts” Season 2 Episode 16 aired February 3, 1961 Written by George Clayton Johnson and Rod Serling. Stars Dick York, June Dayton, Dan Tobin, Cyril Delevanti, and Hayden Rorke“People are Alike All Over” Season 1 Episode 25 aired March 25, 1960 Stars Roddy McDowall, Susan Oliver and Paul Comi“Long Live Walter Jameson” Season 1 Episode 24 aired March 18, 1960 Written by Charles Beaumont. Stars Kevin McCarthy, Edgar Stehli, Estelle Winwood and Dodie Heath“Queen of the Nile” Season 5 Episode 23 aired March 6, 1964 directed by John Brahm written by Charles Beaumont and Rod Serling. Starring Ann Blyth, Lee Phillips, and Celia Lovsky
“Spur of the Moment” Season 5 Episode 21 aired February 21, 1964 directed by Eliot Silverstein written by Richard Matheson. Stars Diana Hyland, Marsha Hunt, Philip Ober and Roger Davis. “The After Hours” Season 1 Episode 34 aired June 10, 1960 directed by Douglas Heyes written by Rod Serling. Stars Anne Francis and Elizabeth Allen“The Dummy” Season 3 Episode 33 aired May 4, 1962 directed by Abner Biberman teleplay by Rod Serling. Stars Cliff Robertson, Frank Sutton, George Murdock, John Harmon and Sandra Warner.“The Fear” Season 5 Episode 35 aired May 29, 1964 directed by Ted Post written by Rod Serling. Stars Hazel Court and Peter Mark Richman“The Grave” Season 3 Episode 7 aired October 27, 1961 Written and Directed by Montgomery Pittman Stars Lee Marvin, James Best, and Strother Martin, Elen Willard and Lee Van Cleef“The Hitch-Hiker” Season 1 Episode 16 aired January 22, 1960 Teleplay by Rod Serling based on a radio play by Lucille Fletcher. Stars Inger Stevens, Adam Williams, Lew Gallo and Leonard Strong as The Hitch-Hiker“The Invaders” Season 2 Episode 15 aired January 27, 1961 Directed by Douglas Heyes written by Richard Matheson. Stars Agnes Moorehead in a completely dialogue-less performance.“The Lonely” Season 1 Episode 7 aired November 13, 1959 Directed by Jack Smight written by Rod Serling. Stars Jack Warden, John Dehner, Jean Marsh and Ted Knight“The Man in the Bottle” Season 2 Episode 2 aired October 7, 1960 directed by Don Medford written by Rod Serling. Stars Luther Adler, Vivi Janiss, and Joseph Ruskin“The Masks” Season 5 Episode 25 aired March 20, 1964 Directed by Ida Lupino written by Rod Serling. Stars Robert Keith, Milton Seltzer, Virginia Gregg, Brooke Hayward and Willis Bouchey“The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” Season 1 Episode 22 aired March 4, 1960. Written by Rod Serling. Stars Claude Akins, Barry Atwater, Jack Weston, Jan Handzlik, Amzie Strickland, Burt Metcalfe, Mary Gregory, Anne Barton“The New Exhibit” Season 4 Episode 14 aired April 4 1963 Directed by John Brahm written by Charles Beaumont and Rod Serling. Stars Martin Balsam, Will Kuluva, Margaret Field William Mims“The Shelter” Season 3 Episode 3 aired September 29, 1961 directed by Lamont Johnson written by Rod Serling. Stars Larry Gates, Joseph Bernard, Jack Albertson, Peggy Stewart, Sandy Kenyon, Michael Burns, Jo Helton, Moria Turner, and Mary Gregory“Time Enough At Last” Season 1 Episode 8 aired November 20, 1959 Directed by John Brahm and teleplay by Rod Serling based on a short story by Lynn Venable. Stars Burgess Meredith as Henry Bemis“To Serve Man” Season 3 Episode 24 aired March 2, 1962 Teleplay by Rod Serling based on a short story by Damon Knight. Stars Lloyd Bochner, Susan Cummings and Richard Kiel“A Passage for Trumpet” Season 1 Episode 32 aired May 20, 1960 Directed by Don Medford written by Rod Serling. Stars Jack Klugman and John Anderson“Walking Distance” Season 1 Episode 5 aired October 30th, 1959 directed by Robert Stevens and written by Rod Serling. Stars Gig Young, Frank Overton and Irene Tedrow and a young Ronny Howard“Two” Season 3 Episode 1 aired September 15, 1961 directed by Montgomery Pittman written by Montgomery Pittman and Rod Serling. Stars Elizabeth Montgomery and Charles Bronson“Third from the Sun” Season 1 Episode 14 aired January 8, 1960 Teleplay by Rod Serling based on a story by Richard Matheson. Stars Fritz Weaver, Edward Andrews, Joe Maross, Denise Alexander and Lori March “What You Need” Season 1 Episode 12 aired Deccember 25, 1959 Stars Steve Cochran, Ernest Truex, Read Morgan and Alrene MartelSeason 1 Episode 1 aired October 2nd 1959. Written by Rod Serling. Stars Earl Holliman, James Gregory, and Paul Langton,“Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” Season 2 Episode 28 aired May 26, 1961. Directed by Montgomery Pittman written by Rod Serling. Stars John Hoyt, Jean Willes, Jack Elam, Barney Phillips, John Archer, William Kendis, Morgan Jones, Gertrude Flynn, Bill Irwin, Jill Ellis and Ron Kipling
Your EverLovin’ Joey saying The Last Drive In is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge!
Life's Rough: Three Strong Anti-Heroines of 1950 Film Noir
“You see kid, in this cage, you get tough or you get killed. Better wise up before it’s too late!" – Kitty Stark, Caged (1950)
The 1950 film, Caged!, The Damned Don't Cry, and The File on Thelma Jordon, contain three women performing female masculinity. A common thread these characters possess is "˜metamorphosis.' They are forged by male institutions and they must adapt to survive. Each woman is thrust into a noir narrative.
In Caged!, Eleanor Parker leaves innocence outside the prison bars and is transformed into a hardened, jaded criminal in order to survive. Joan Crawford, a poverty-stricken mother in The Damned Don’t Cry rises as a high-powered opulent underworld mistress to prevail and support herself. Barbara Stanwyck is predatory, manipulating a weak man to gain access to her Aunt’s fortune in The File on Thelma Jordon — Stanwyck ultimately becomes a fallen figure of remorse and redemption.
Like their noir male counterparts, they become anti-heroines as past actions come back to haunt them.
Film noir of 1950 desired realism, decadence, and transformation. Femme-fatales thrive using sexuality to claim independence from weak, damaged, sexually-obsessed men, unable to resist dangerous influences. These women master patriarchal organizations, taking control of their bodies and identities to avoid gender enslavement in a male hetero-driven society.
In most noir films men are the central figures–isolated from their surroundings, closed in by circumstances beyond control, but married to fatalistic visions with stoic passivity. By flipping this trope on its battered head, these women invoke female masculinity driving their characters. As anti-heroines, they adopt masculine armor to navigate masculine institutions. They're placed in situations that impose a definition of what a woman is and should be. They adopt feminine masculinity to survive.
"Female masculinity is framed as the rejected scraps of dominate masculinity in order that male masculinity may appear to be the real thing"¦ Masculinity in this society inevitably conjures up notions of power and legitimacy and privilege; it often symbolically refers to the power of the state and to uneven distributions of wealth." "” Halberstam, Female Masculinity
You don’t know women until you know them without men!
Directed by John Cromwell, Caged! is set in a women's prison and plays out like a savage dance with "unremitting pessimism" (Crowther) with the women performing masculinity to gain power. It is a "Dames in the Hoosegow" film (New York Herald Tribune), indicative of socially conscious 1950s noir. The women are demeaned in prison, and to prevail they appropriate masculine primacy.
Caged! boasts an incredible ensemble. Eleanor Parker's persuasive performance as Marie Allen, a delicate young woman subjected to cruelty by the sadistic degenerate Matron Evelyn Harper (punctuated to the hilt by imposing 6' 2" Hope Emerson).
Wonderful character actors include Betty Garde as Kitty Stark, Ellen Corby as Emma Barber, Jan Sterling as Jeta Kovsky (aka Smoochie who loves to kite checks, buys pretty shiny things, and can't stay out of prison), Olive Deering as June Roberts, Gertrude Michael as Georgia, and Lee Patrick as "˜vice queen' Elvira Powell.
American actress Eleanor Parker acting in the film ‘Caged’. USA, 1950 (Photo by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)
The film opens with the police van door swinging open "”"Pile out, you tramps. This is the end of the line""” to reveal the "˜new fish' in the fatalistic incarceration cycle. The central figure is a timid, pregnant, and nervous 19-year-old Marie who gets the book thrown at her for helping her husband commit armed robbery- "For that forty bucks I heisted I certainly got myself an education." Her role as an accomplice, sitting in the car waiting for the bum, lands her 15 years in prison. With a doe-eyed shocked gaze, she is thrown into a primal world. The intake nurse's examination reveals she is "˜expecting company' "” with her dead husband's child. Marie, number 93859, is sweet candy for the cold-blooded, menacing Matron Harper.
Marie doesn't fall for Harper's charms, thus she is subjected to dehumanizing torture by Harper, the bon-bon-eating, romance novel-reading dyke who enjoys personal comforts and flaunts luxuries (as a grotesque phony femme) to the women prisoners who don't have any privileges.
Harper brutally beats Marie causing her to lose her baby, thus her motherhood is taken away.
Removing her femininity, and her identity, Harper shaves Marie's hair. When vice queen Elvira distributes lipsticks at Christmas, Harper cruelly takes them away. Harper, embedded in the masculine system, creates an environment where the weakest women must become predatory cons, shedding their femininity.
Sympathetic warden Ruth Benton (Agnes Moorhead) allows them to keep cosmetics as a connection to the outside world. Believing in rehabilitation, Benton bucks bureaucracy, but her altruism blinds her from the vicious brutality.
The mood at the prison heats up and Kitty kills Matron Harper. Marie is worn down by the inhumanity of prison life and disillusioned by Harper's corrupting influence over inmates. She changes from a shivering innocent to a smart-mouthed hard-bitten con. Her efforts to go straight are sabotaged by the sadistic Harper. Marie learns the hard way how to earn parole, but she's already stigmatized and changed by the system.
Jan Sterling, Ellen Corby, Marjorie Crossland, Olive Deering, Betty Garde, and Eleanor Parker in Caged (1950).
Through Marie's eyes, we experience dehumanization and objectification, from the moment she is processed, to her release. Influenced by other miscreants and malcontents Marie evolves into a criminal by the system constructed to rehabilitate. She sheds her victimhood and takes on a powerful masculine approach, but not with the ruthlessness of a femme fatale. Marie becomes a criminal. She's independent, as only a man could be in 1950.
When released at the gates, she gets into a fancy sedan with shady characters. She's become a prostitute for her butch mentor Elvira who has given up on men completely. "If you stay in here too long, you don't think about guys at all. You just get out of the habit." –Elvira
Warden Benton keeps Marie's file open as she watches out the window "Keep it active, She'll be back" summarizing the Sisyphean absurdity of prison, hardening and transforming women without any hope.
“Call me CHEAP?” Nothing’s Cheap When You Pay the Price She’s Paying!
Directed by Vincent Sherman, with a screenplay by Harold Medford and Jerome Weidman. Cinematography by Ted D. McCord (The Treasure of the Sierra Madres 1948, Johnny Belinda 1948, I Died a Thousand Times 1955, The Sound of Music 1965) (wardrobe Sheila O’Brien who worked on all of Joan’s pictures, Sudden Fear 1952, Flamingo Road 1945, Female on the Beach 1955)
Stars Joan Crawford as Ethel Whitehead, David Brian as George Castleman, Steve Cochran as Nick Prenta, Kent Smith as Martin Blackford, Hugh Sanders as Grady, Selena Royle as Patricia Longworth, Jacqueline deWitt as Sandra, Morris Ankrum as Jim Whitehead, Edith Evanson as Mrs. Castleman, Richard Egan as Roy.
Joan Crawford is Ethel Whitehead/Lorna Hansen Forbes, a woman from harrowing poverty, who leaves her husband, Roy, after their son Tommy is tragically killed. She starts over in New York City first as a cigar store clerk and model for a cheap fashion wholesaler. She eventually climbs to the top of the high society/criminal underworld wearing a facade of respectability. While usually men abandon families, Ethel is the one to leave. Crawford perfectly performs the role of power and masculinity.
The Damned Don't Cry portrays a bleak, dark, corrupt world. The story is told in flashbacks. Directed by Vincent Sherman (All Through the Night 1942, Mr. Skeffington 1944, Nora Prentiss 1947, Affair in Trinidad 1952, The Garment Jungle 1957) The film co-stars Steve Cochran as Nick Prenta, David Brian as George Castleman, and Kent Smith as Martin Blackford, and Jacqueline de Wit as Sandra.
Ethel begins as an unsophisticated modest woman, married to an oil field worker, dirt poor, plain looking, and beaten down. An oppressed housewife and mother, judged harshly by her misogynist father, and husband Roy who says "You'll never do enough for her." She becomes an elegant ambitious society climber who dismisses suggestions her life is corrupt and immoral. Crawford manifests her signature cunning in the ferocious pragmatic transformation.
Ethel lives with her parents and beloved son Tommy, who wants a bicycle but Roy says it's too much money. Wanting her son to be happy, she makes a down payment on the bike. Furious, Roy demands it is returned. On his way to the store, Tommy rides down the road and is hit by a truck, and killed. His death ends their marriage, and Ethel leaves.
Roy says he's "done the best he could." Ethel answers "Well it ain't good enough."
Unlike male protagonists with more choices, in this narrative, Ethel can only be a model or prostitute. She performs female masculinity by adopting independence. Ethel creates the power to choose her own fate, possessing what Hirsch calls "˜a lonely man' trope.
Another model, Sandra, introduces Ethel to a new world, convincing her to go out with wealthy businessmen. She becomes the glamorous mistress of gangster George Castleman, showered with riches"” fur coats, diamonds, and haute couture. George helps Ethel's metamorphosis into a wealthy socialite, Lorna Hansen Forbes, and she enters the inner circle of gangsters.
Ethel now known as Lorna, exploits her beauty, relying on rich men to pay for the privilege of her company. She learns she must selfishly grab for herself. Negotiating her body for wealth is a means to an end. Lorna’s selfishness emerges.
Lorna surpasses Sandra's petty schemes to aim for the brass ring of ultimate luxury.
She befriends mild-mannered Martin Blackford, an account who falls for her. Encouraging him to become Castleman's bookkeeper, she uses him to get ahead. Martin brings a dark brooding presence into Lorna’s life which is visually actualized in a scene where Lorna is sunning herself at the pool, Blackford casts a symbolic dark cloud over her light-hearted sexually carefree embodiment. The closeup shows Ethel's face as the sun's rays emblematically reflect in her sunglasses. Taking them off, she turns off the sunlight and is confronted with Blackford's bitterness.
The jaded Lorna tells the neutered Martin "You're a nice guy, but the world isn't for nice guys. You gotta kick and punch and belt your way up cuz nobody's going to give you a life. You've got to do it yourself. Cuz nobody cares about us except ourselves"¦ It's that stuff you take to the bank, that filthy buck that everybody sneers at but slugs to get." Martin is afraid he'll lose self-respect. "Don't tell me about self-respect!"Ethel snaps. "That's what you tell yourself when you got nothing else!"
Her glamorous life ultimately comes at a price. Castleman wants to use Lorna to spy on Nick Prenta, as he suspects Prenta of killing one of his men Grady (Hugh Sanders), and making it look like a car accident by planting a bottle of alcohol at the scene. Castleman fears Nick Prenta is organizing the men against him. He sends Lorna to insinuate herself with Nick Prenta in order to find out what he is up to and report back to him. Setting him up for a hit. Instead, Lorna starts falling in love with the handsome rogue gangster who has a reputation for his womanizing. Lorna winds up defying Castleman by not staying in touch and actually falling for the guy instead.
Martin then shows up telling Lorna, (though he still refers to her as Ethel out of spite) that George Castleman has sent him to check up on her, he hasn’t heard from her in a while. The moment we see Martin’s scruples have eroded is during the pool scene which illustrates Martin’s own transformation from a nice decent guy to one of George’s thugs, with his smug tone and his dark sunglasses. He warns Lorna not to hold out on George. He boasts about how powerful he’s become and that people listen to him. He offers her some ‘sound advice’ “Has he promised you the world too!?” referring to Nick Prenta and sneaking in a good dig at how she used him at one time. “He means nothing to me, except he’s a human being.” “Don’t tell me that disturbs you.” Martin has become so jaded and embittered.
Later Nick Prenta asks Lorna to marry him, she is moved to tears as she embraces him. Lorna asks, “Do I really mean that much to you?” Nick tells her, “Everything, why is that enough?” Lorna –“Then get out of this, Nick, I’m scared about what you’re doing, what you’re planning, what it will lead to, if you don’t give this up.” “If that’s what it takes to get you, you’ve got a deal. I can get out of this inside a year” “No, it’ll be too late then” “But I can’t get out now Lorna, this is a big jump I’ve got to see it through.”
Lorna begs him to give it all up, but he kisses and sends her back to her hotel room where she finds Martin and Castleman waiting for her. Castelman is sitting in the dark, giving off a sense of menace from the shadows. “Hello Lorna” he puffs on his cigar then rises from the couch. “Aren’t you glad to see me?” Suddenly he begins grilling her about Nick Prenta’s meeting, but she tells him that she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Castleman tightens his fist and smacks Lorna across the face, his paranoia about the meeting and his gang aided by Prenta out to get him is driving him into a frenzy.
In his fury, even Martin gets worried about Castleman’s sudden violent outburst. Then he hits Martin and knocks him down, and begins beating Lorna brutally as she tries to convince him that she’s not in love with Nick Prenta, it’s just that she doesn’t want anyone to get hurt. She tells Castleman that she’s still in love with him. But he growls at her, “You’re lying, you’re so used to lying and cheating and double-crossing that you almost make it seem good.”
Castleman throws Lorna into the glass window that shatters. Martin tries to defend her, and calm Castleman down, telling him it’s enough. Castleman says “She’s no good, not even to you” yet Martin thinks fast on his feet, “But she is to you, she can still help, she can still be useful.” Castleman tells Martin looking down at the battered Lorna, “There’s only one thing to do with dirt, sweep it up.” Martin tells him, “Listen to me, you want Nick don’t you? She can get him” Castleman responds, “You got a brain Marty, best kind, the kind you don’t get to go out and buy.” As Castleman says this he looks disdainfully at poor Lorna lying in a pile of broken glass all bruised and sobbing.
Martin convinces Lorna to call Nick Prenta and get him over to the hotel room. Prenta shows up already knowing her true identity, he must have heard it from Eddie Hart. She is lost in shadow, beaten down and crying, Prenta sarcastically tells Lorna, “I want to apologize for busting in on you like this Mrs. Forbes, but a friend of yours, Eddie Hart said it would be okay, he said Castleman might not like it, but Ethel Whitehead would go for anything.” But when he sees how badly beaten Lorna is he comes to her side, until he is confronted by Castleman, who emerges out of the shadows and tells him that while Prenta likes to be in the headlines he’s gonna move him over to the obituary column. Prenta turns to Lorna, “You dirty tramp!”
A fight breaks out and Castleman shoots and kills Prenta. In the turmoil, Lorna takes off in her car. Castleman tells Martin that they’ll have to dispose of Prenta first and then “I want her.”
Once Lorna fails to stop Castleman she is transformed once again through resignation and redemption having gone full circle through her own journey of hell.
Martin tries to protect Lorna from Castleman, by telling the police that it was George Castleman who killed Nick Prenta. In the meantime, Castleman wants her dead. And he knows the truth about where Lorna comes from, where she was probably heading and he’s on his way there.
Lorna now home in Bakersfield, arrives at the broken shack with her fur coat and her Ray Foreman coif. Her parents first reject her. The bitter Martin has shed his anger by now, hopelessly in love with Lorna, and he shows up to try and protect her from the vicious Castleman. In the film’s ironic rhythm of fate, she symbolically comes full circle, winding up on the same road where her son died.
Martin tells her that she needs to move on and keep running before Castleman catches up with her, but she’s worried that he’s unfinished business now too since he’s turned on Castleman. He reminds her “We do what we do– what was it you once said?, because we can’t help ourselves.”Â
Castleman shows up at Lorna’s home. She quietly walks out of the house, so as not to endanger her mother and father and Martin who are talking in the kitchen.
In the brutal climax Lorna calmly, stoically and courageously confronts the vicious George Castleman.
He asks for Martin but Lorna lies and covers up for him, saying she hasn’t seen him. She boldly with new resolve walks right up to George Castleman. He asks if she’s been waiting for him. “Strangely enough George there was a time when I did wait for you. And no one else. but that’s over now.”
In a struggle to take the gun away from Castleman, Lorna gets shot and wounded, lying in the dirt wearing her fur coat, –hows that for symbolism! Then Martin comes out of the house and shoots Castleman down and his getaway car leaves without him, while he’s lying there dead.
The police and the press show up pushing for all the answers to Lorna’s (Ethel’s) involvement.
Two cops outside the house start talking about the case. Cop one-“Pretty tough living in a place like this” Cop two–”Tougher to get out” Cop one– “Wouldn’t you?” Cop two shakes his head “Yes!”
Having traveled through her journey performing the code of female masculinity she has reclaimed herself, found her empowerment, and emerged as her own woman again. We are left wondering what the future holds for Lorna/Ethel, now not only emancipated, if not redeemed, as the anti-heroine of The Damned Don’t Cry!
Thelma Jordon: "I’m no good for any man for any longer than a kiss!"
Directed by Robert Siodmak, written by Marty Holland with a screenplay by Ketti Frings. Cinematography by George Barnes (Rebecca 1940, Jane Eyre 1943, Spellbound 1945, Mourning Becomes Electra 1947, Force of Evil 1948, War of the Worlds 1953) Costumes designed by Edith head
Starring Barbara Stanwyck as Thelma Jordon, Wendell Corey as Cleve Marshall, Paul Kelly as Miles Scott, Joan Tetzel as Pamela Blackwell Marshall, and Stanley Ridges as Kingsly Willes.
Barbara Stanwyck plays Thelma Jordon who uses a gullible attorney to cover up her crimes of murder and larceny, secretly in cahoots with her sleazy husband. As in Double Indemnity,Stanwyck masterfully plays a "˜vice-ridden murderess.' She performs female masculinity, playing the aggressor"” pursuing lovers, greed, and power.
Directed by Robert Siodmak, the film opens with Thelma in a small-town district attorney's office reporting burglary attempts at the mansion she shares with her aunt. She begins an affair with DA Cleve Marshall (Wendell Corey), who is in a loveless marriage. Thelma is also married to the sinister Tony Laredo. An icy femme fatale who desires danger, she's drawn to Tony's equally nefarious nature and devours Cleve who is weakened by her magnetism. Thelma starts out the femme fatale, her fatal flaw is falling in love with Cleve, feeling remorse, and sacrificing herself to become redeemed in the end.
Thelma's aunt is murdered in an apparent robbery and her emerald necklace is missing. Fearing Tony will be implicated, she cleans up the evidence and calls Cleve to help. Thelma is cold and calculating, casting Cleve as her lover and accomplice known only as Mr. X. Cleve tells her to shut the lights and pretend she was asleep when the police arrive. Cleve leaves, making sure to be seen but unrecognized by the butler who discovers Aunt Vera's body.
When Tony's alibi checks out, Thelma is arrested for murder. While the police try unsuccessfully to prove her guilt, she and Tony plan to leave town. By now Cleve has uncovered Thelma's checkered past.
He accuses her of duplicity and Thelma admits he was part of the plot. When Cleve confronts her, Tony's dark presence looms. The camera shows both men juxtaposed in the room, Tony's dark presence looms"” he is too irresistible to let go. Cleve is too normal and unselfish to be stimulating for her deviant desires. With both men framed in contrast, Thelma realizes she belongs with the dark and dangerous Tony. Tony beats Cleve to a pulp, leaving with Thelma.
But driving down a winding mountain road, Thelma's pang of conscience gets the better of her, and she causes the car to plunge off the cliff. It's a darkly romantic gesture, suicide by a flaming car crash is her attempt at redemption. She hopes with her death, Cleve can repair the ruination of his life. But this is noir, and he cannot wake from the nightmare.
Tony dies but Thelma lives long enough to confess her crimes. She does not give away Cleve as Mr. X, but Miles (Paul Kelly) is suspicious. His career in shambles, Cleve walks off into the uncertain shadows of noir. Thelma dies, redeemed. It’s noir universal justice, Thelma cannot get away with her Aunt's murder and continue her affair. She must be brought down by fate's hand.
Miles: "She’s confessed everything except who her Mr. X is."
Cleve looks at her “Why don’t you tell him?"
Thelma: “I love him, that’s why. I couldn’t go on with him Cleve. You did that for me. I’m glad I told. All my life struggling, the good and the bad.”
Cleve: “Save your strength darling."
Thelma: "Willis said I was two people, he was right. You don’t supposed they could just let half of me die?"
This is your EverLovin’ Joey saying, it’s great to spend time in the darkness of noir’s shadows & under the influence of fate’s pointed finger, but you gotta come out into the light til the next time around!
“You’re so pretty it’s a shame you have to die, it will be quick, but it won’t be easy. You’ll die of fright.”
Tourist Trap (1979) A Charles Band Production. Written and directed by David Schmoeller, (Puppetmaster series) co-written by J. Larry Carroll, director of photography Nicholas von Sternberg, music by Pino Donaggio (Don’t Look Now 1973, Carrie 1976, Dressed to Kill 1980, The Howling 1981, Body Double 1984) Art direction by Robert A. Burns (who worked on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974, which like Tourist Trap also had minimal gore and no nudity), special effects by Richard O. Helmer and make-up by David Ayers, Robert A. Burns, Ken Horn, Ve Neill and and Karen Stern.
Stars Chuck Connors (The Rifleman, Soylent Green 1973, The Horror at 37, 000 ft. 1973, Nightmare in Badham County 1976 tv movie) as the creepy Mr. Slausen. Chuck Connors had actually sought out the part of Mr. Slausen stating that he wanted to be the Boris Karloff of the 1980s! It is a very good role for him indeed, as he is perfectly peculiarly menacing and off-beat.
Jocelyn Jones plays Molly-the virginal final girl who just happens to be the daughter of amazing character actor Henry Jones!
Jon Van Ness (The Hitcher 1986) as Jerry, Robins Sherwood (Death Wish II, Blow Out 1981) as Eileen, Tanya Roberts (Charlie’s Angels, Sheena: Queen of the Jungle 1984) as Becky, Dawn Jeffory as Tina, Keith McDermott as Woody, Shailar Coby as Davey and Albert Band and Linnea Quigley as Mannequins.
The reason I hold onto my VHS tapes (as sad and worn as they are), instead of buying the Blu-ray version with better quality and vivid colors, is unfortunately that the newer version is cut down making it a shorter version of the movie. I’ll wind up with the new release but I’ll never let go of my VHS unless it disintegrates into analog dust and goo in the Rubbermaid container!
Tourist Trapwith its sublime moments of terror will forever stay burned into my memory for its original brand of creepiness, partly due to the animated mannequins, the sense of isolation and dread, and Pino Dinaggio’s enigmatic melodically robotic score incorporating ghost town saloon tinny piano sounds, and wind up toys, that drives the story perfectly! This to me is undoubtedly one of THE scariest films of the 1970s decade of horror. Not just the mannequins that play a factor in the level of freakiness, it’s the fact that the victims themselves get transformed somehow into mannequins themselves. Yes, they do, indeedy they do!
A group of young people driving in one of those jeeps called ‘the Thing’ of the late 70s go for a trip out in the desert but of course, as it is with all these pictures in order to set up the chilling storyline, they must become stranded! Fortunately, they break down by Slausen’s Lost Oasis, a tourist-trap museum run by the deranged Mr. Slausen, which is filled with a collection of remarkable automatons and life like-mannequins and some who are even gunslingers (you’ll find out)
These unusually menacing figures can not only move, they also possess the powers of telekinesis. Slausen (Connors who is effectively creepy in this macabre dark fairy tale about getting lost and winding up at the wrong house) might be the one who has the power to move objects at will, but either way, the film becomes a manic fun-house ride that is incredibly frightening as well as suffocating because they are trapped at the Lost Oasis. One by one, Slausen dispenses with the group except for Molly who has caught his eye and animated his you know what, if you catch my drift. Actually, we get a little back story as Slausen tells Molly “You remind me of my wife.” whose likeness or life itself has been dedicated to wax in the museum.
The beauty of Tourist Trap is in its restraint to use violence or gore, it is intense, lurid, tacky, and wonderfully 70s-style horror. It’s the moodiness of the surroundings and the idea that wax dummies are dangerous, not to mention the paraffin masks that Slausen & Davey wear that are wholly imaginative and inject something incredibly spine-tingling into the non-human atmosphere. With screaming mannequins, their grotesque mouths gaping open in a choir of falsetto!
Don’t expect to learn the deep dark secrets of the mannequin’s powers or whether Slausen and Davey are the same man as you’ll never see them together at the same time, and Shailar Cobey is credited as playing Davey. There just are no signposts in this film, no clear explanation for any of the goings on, it is as ephemeral as a twisted dream. It is as I said, a Fun-house ride through creepy-ville. And Connors is spectacular as a hyper-sexual, lonely man-child who has too many toys to play with or I should say not enough living dolls. There are hints of House of Wax (1953)starring Vincent Price, though the narrative is different, the essence of what makes the story terrifying is the mania of the antagonist’s medium of sculpting wax over living bodies. Tourist Trap is nightmarish, deliciously campy, disorienting, frightening, and wickedly fun to watch as the mannequins invade the space, where there is nowhere else to run.
Mr. Slausen: “Oh sure, help yourself… but it doesn’t work. I got nobody to call.”
Davey: [deep, raspy voice] “We’re going to have a party!”
Davey: “My brother always makes me wear this stupid mask. Do you know why? Because I’m prettier than him.”
IMDb Trivia:
The script originally called for nudity, but Schmoeller said he was too bashful and embarrassed to bring it up with Tanya Roberts and the other actresses during casting. When they got to the lake scene, he finally asked them if they’d be willing. The collective answer was no.
Stephen King praised the film in his book Danse Macabre, especially its frightful opening scene.
Director David Schmoeller was startled when the film received a PG rating despite its disturbing subject matter. Schmoeller stated in an interview with TerrorTrap.com that he felt the film would have been more commercially successful had it received an R rating.
The mannequin who gives the female lead something to drink is actually Schmoeller’s then-wife. The mannequin originally had 2 lines, but Schmoeller had them edited out during post-production. She then never forgave him for that.
Tanya Roberts insisted on running through the woods barefoot in one scene. She thought it would help her better project a sense of pain and fear. The result was also that her feet were bloodied.
Pino Donaggio’s fee for composing the score was one sixth of the movie’s budget.
The plaster used in the death scene was actually dough.
Though the masked killer was called Davey, the production crew have since dubbed him “Plasterface”.
Tourist Trap was actually based on David Schmoeller’s senior film project at film school. (According to Schmoeller’s commentary on the 20th anniversary DVD)
Jon Van Ness did his own stunt when he jumps through the window.
Jocelyn Jones was a classically-trained actress, whereas Chuck Connors was self-taught. During filming, Connors would often ask Schmoeller why Jones would have to go through various routines before filming scenes (such as breathing exercises.) (According to Schmoeller’s commentary on the 20th anniversary DVD.) Shot in twenty-four days.
Irwin Yablans reportedly hated Pino Donaggio’s score for the film, as Yablans wanted another synthesized score in the same tradition as John Carpenter’s Halloween.
This is your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl saying If you happen to break down near a tourist trap anywhere USA, just wait for AAA!
I also couldn’t resist picking a film that has remained a very special little nostalgic gem that shines in my brain, as it left a kind of strange impression on me as a kid growing up in the early 70s. With made-for-TV movies on both ABC and CBS, we had a slew of fright films and chillers to choose from, and I’ll be doing a special Halloween tribute to The ‘CBSMovie of the Week year in Fright is 1973′ with 10 incredibly memorable picks.
For now, the topic is GARGOYLES (1972)and it’s a lasting impression on the imagination, the mind, and the senses.
It aired on CBS on 11/21/1972 with a teleplay by Stephen and Elinor Karpf (Terror in the Sky 1971, Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell 1978, The Jayne Mansfield Story 1980).
From TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen by Lorna Jowett and Stacey Abbott-“The made-for TV movie, or single play, is a production mode that saw its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s. In the USA it developed with ABC’s Movie of the Week, while in Britain it developed much earlier with ITV’s Armchair Theatre in 1956. In both cases, by the mid 1980s the made-for-TV movie was no longer a major television format, replace according to Creeber, by more tele-visual forms… The popularity of the TV movie in the 1970s, however led to the rise of the made-for-TV horror movie which experience its own golden age, with over 100 made-for-television horror movies… premiered on prime time [American] network television since 1968′ (Waller 1987) These films include adaptations of gothic novels such as Count Dracula (1977), Frankenstein (1973) and The Turn of the Screw (1974), or original contemporary horror such as Fear No Evil (1969), Duel (1971) and Gargoyles (1972) John Kenneth Muir argues that in this period television became increasingly graphic and that the ‘turn toward darkness’ in TV horror represented as with cinematic horror ‘a shift in national mood due, at least in part, to the shocking and graphic news footage coming back from the Vietnam War. It was as if for the first time American’s were aware of a darker worlds, and television reflected that shift in perspective… the tv format mimicking it’s cinematic counterpart.”
Gargoyles 1972is directed by Bill Norton who also directed Baby, Secret of the Lost Legend 1985, Three for the Road 1987, Angel of Death 1990 tv movie, Deadly Whispers 1995 tv movie, Gone in the Night & Vows of Deception 1996 tv movies, A Deadly Vision, Bad to the Bone, Our Mother’s Murder 1997 tv movies, and episodes of Angel and Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Medium, Ghost Whisperer, The Unit.
I’m already a fan of the busy television & film composer Robert Prince (You’re a Big Boy Now 1966, tv shows, The Wild Wild West 1968-69, Mannix, The Bold Ones 1969-71, Land of the Giants 1970, Night Gallery 1970-71, The Name of the Game 1971, Alias Smith and Jones, Mission: Impossible, The Streets of San Francisco 1972, The Sixth Sense 1972, Circle of Fear 1972-1973, Columbo – episode The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case (1977), The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, ABC Movie of the Week– A Little Game 1971, Scream Pretty Peggy 1973, The Strange and Deadly Occurrence 1974, Where Have All the People Gone? (1974), The Dead Don’t Die 1975, Snowbeast 1977, The Violation of Sarah McDavid 1981 starring the incredible Patty Duke, who we lost recently, and one of my favorite 70s feature horror films-the highly underrated Squirm 1976, and then there’s the blaxploitation horror – J.D’s Revenge 1976.
Robert Prince is responsible for the eerie and melodic soundtracks to so many favorites, and his musical contribution to Gargoyles is a slick job with its atmospheric odd brew of ancient Gothicism and modern outlaw culture. The special effects are by Milt Rice (Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1956, Queen of Outer Space 1958, Damnation Alley 1977, Nightwing 1979, and George Peckham.
The Cast: Cornel Wilde (Leave Her to Heaven 1945) plays a professor of anthropology who writes literature debunking supernatural legends, demons, and ancient mythology Dr. Mercer Boley, Jennifer Salt(Who has produced American Horror Story from 2011-2015, and starred in Midnight Cowboy 1969, Sisters 1972) as his halter top wearing daughter Diana (Di-Ana) she will come to hear her name called in a sensuous yet menacing tone by the Patriarch of the Gargoyles (Bernie Casey)-– Brian’s Song 1971, Cleopatra Jones 1973. Fans of Grayson Hall (Dark ShadowsDr. Julia Hoffman 1966-1971, as Pepe in Satan In High Heels 1962, The Night of the Iguana 1964) will love her portrayal of motel owner and full-time drunk Mrs. Parks. It was fine actress Grayson Hall who actually thought of her character always having a drink in her hand in every scene she appears.
James Reeger: [Scott Glenn] “So you and your old man, you’re not afraid of them gar-things, huh?”
Diana Boley: “Gargoyles are a scientific fact. And they’re no more dangerous than a high school drop-out on a motorcycle.”
Scott Glenn plays bad boy dirt biker James Reeger, William Stevens plays the sheriff, Woody Chambliss (The Devil’s Rain 1975) plays Old Uncle Willie, who is not selling butter and eggs this time around (see The Andy Griffith Show’s Aunt Bea’s, Invisible Beau).
Part of the charm and interesting vibe of the film is Bernie Casey’s charismatic portrayal of this incubus that dwells in the caves,(shot once again at Carlsbad Caverns) leading his clan of Gargoyles til their eggs have hatched before they migrate away from the desert, so they can reign another 500 years. I remember being mesmerized by Casey’s costume and make-up by Emmy Award winners Stan Winston and Ellis Burman Jr, his piercing eyes showing through, his broad jaw and high cheekbones, and the tone of his commanding voice.
From The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters-edited by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock’ Gargoyles is the first work to present gargoyles as a species as opposed to solitary creatures. A race of reptilian creatures created by Satan to harry mankind at centuries-long intervals hunts for a gargoyle skull found by an anthropologist in a roadside exhibit; gargoyle statues, the film explains, are folk memories and warnings. That same year the short story “Bleeding Stones” by Harlan Ellison depicted the gargoyles on St Patrick’s Cathedral suddenly brought to life by industrial pollution; they rapidly massacre New York City and fly east toward Rome. Less apocalyptically gargoyles appear as a species in the earliest 1974 Dungeons & Dragons rule-books. These cunning, reptilian, horned fanged monsters can only be hit with magic weapons. A similar rule obtains in Jim Wynorski’s film Gargoyle (2004): a face of demonic creatures driven almost to extinction in medieval times.”
The word Gargoyle in the classical art and literature sense is based on the French word "˜gargouille’ meaning "˜throat' or "water-throat' or water spouts, which were like wall fountains"” the gaping mouths allowing the runoff from the rain on the roofs. These spouts were constructive as they were decorative ornamental fixtures of grotesquely featured characters that were prevalent along the ornate façades, the flying buttress or have what is called tracery; rose windows, towers, spires, and pinnacle all part of the "˜Flamboyant style’ of 14th century Classical Gothic cathedrals in the late medieval period seen in Italy and France. The Gargoyle can also be seen as nocturnal guardians over the cathedrals they ornamented, coming to life at night and then back into their stone visages by day. This flies in the face of the idea that they were Satans's minions wreaking havoc among humankind "”if they were placed there to indeed guard the churches.
The film opens up with narration by Vic Perrin who I have a huge soft spot as he is the Control Voice for the 1963-65 anthology sci-fi/fantasy television show The Outer Limits. He also narrated each episode’s thought-provoking prologue with a tranquil tone and ended by signing off with some philosophical epilogue that touched the heart and reached inside us, dreamers and thinkers. Perrin also worked on a few episodes of Star Trek just to mention a few of the shows he lent his wonderful voice to. In Gargoyles he enlightens us in a Miltonesque lead-in about the fall from grace by the angel Satan and a montage of classical images of demons and gargoyles from medieval gargoyles from Gothic Cathedrals, plus demonic images by vintage film images & painters–images from director Benjamin Christensen Häxan (1922) appear as well as artists William Blake,Hieronymus Bosch, and Pieter Bruegel.
The winged leader of the gargoyles (Bernie Casey) makes it quite clear to Dr. Boley (Cornel Wilde) that the extinction of humanity is their ultimate goal. In a similar latex-looking mask, John Anderson played the Ebonite Interrogator in suitably scary prosthetic makeup in The Outer Limits episode entitled: Nightmare which aired December 2nd, 1963, with makeup work by Fred B. Phillips who also worked on House of Usher 1960 and Star Trek.
The prologue opens with its exquisite arresting soundtrack of percussive, harpsichord atonality and electronic sparks by composer Robert Prince contributes to the atmosphere right from the edge to set up the basis of the story as boldly recounted by the voice of Vic Perrin"”That the battle between good and evil has existed for eons. That this battle continues and man's own pride, curiosity and aggression will also bring him upon the devil's minions, those fallen angels, the gargoyles who wish to conquer the lord's favored human-kind. Begin the Milton prose from Paradise Lost.
"The devil was once the most favored of the host of angels serving the lord. But pride welled in his breast. He thought it unseemly for him to serve. The devil and his band of followers who likewise suffered the sin of pride were defeated in battle by the lord and his host, and were banished to the outer most depths of Hell, never to know the presence of the lord or look on heaven again. Smarting with his wounds but all the more swollen with pride the devil cried out from the depths, "˜it is better to rule in hell then serve in heaven.' The devil proclaimed what was lost in heaven, would be gained on earth. He said, "˜my offspring, the gargoyles will one day rule the lord's works, earth and man.' And so it came to pass that while man ruled on earth the gargoyles waited, lurking hidden from the light. Reborn every 600 years in man's reckoning of time the gargoyles joined battle against man to gain dominion over the earth. In each coming the gargoyles were nearly destroyed by men who flourished in greater numbers. Now it has been hundreds of so many years that it seems the ancient statues and paintings of gargoyles are just products of man's imagination. In this year with man's thoughts turned toward the many ills he has brought upon himself. Man has forgotten his most ancient adversary"¦ the gargoyles.!"
Every 500 to 600 years laying dormant the Gargoyle’s eggs hatch and the Gargoyle patriarch intimates in the heat of verbal sparring with Prof. Boley that they will rise up and wage war on the human race. The war between humans and Gargoyles in the film speaks more of self-preservation than ruthless pugnacity. They want to act before humankind tries to wipe them out and make their kind extinct"¦ People have never understood says the lead gargoyle. The gargoyles here come out as sympathetic anti-heroes.Â
After the formidably dark opening narration by Vic Perrin, the credits roll -Professor Mercer Boley (Cornel Wilde) an anthropologist is driving through the desert of New Mexico on his way to Mexico to finish his new coffee table book on demonology. Along for the journey is his daughter Diana (Jennifer Salt) who’s riding side saddle with her dad tracking down interesting stories and finding artifacts in his little creepy tourist trap to support his scientific research. As Diana gets off the plane and brings her dad a statue of a beast called Callamudre (no such demon in the list of demonology) who will complete his collection of demons. A harp plucks and wavers and pan pipes effervesce, it is the ethereal calm before the storm"¦ the two get into the wonderful yellow 70s station wagon.
Diana "I saw you on that talk show”
Professor Mercer Boley- "I'm glad kind of hoped you were watching. What do you think of that self styled witch they had on?”
Diana –"You were as always the cool intellectual. She got pretty upset when you started telling her she was just being superstitious about the devil"¦ Do you really think the world of evil is just fantasy? "
Professor Mercer Boley- "Who knows it sells my books You should have read some of the letters I got at the University after that one."
Boley’s book –5000 years of Demonology will trace man's conception of evil down through the ages. Boley-"More monsters for fun and profit"¦ something colorful and expensive for the coffee tables of America."
Diana-“Sure would hate to get stuck out here in the dark.”
He tells Diana he before they head to Mexico has to "˜check out this old guy’ referring to Old Uncle Willie. “I don't know he's got some wild story, maybe it's nothing, but it's only a bit out of our way." As they stop along the open expanse of the alienating desert landscape figuring out that they are lost, a large winged shadow watches them from atop a cliff. Diana says "Sure would hate to get stuck out here in the dark." Suddenly there’s the sound of giant wings flapping and another hint of a winged shadow moves over that delicious vintage yellow station wagon. It's a very chilling moment as are many of the scenes in this made for tv movie. The soft colors of the 70s create a dream-like atmosphere or maybe I'm just sentimental.
Boley and his daughter Diana joke about what they will see at Uncle Willies Desert Museum, they see a myriad of signs promising two-headed lizards and desert fish"¦ Boley wonders which strange item Willie will try to sell him, he's only enthusiastic about the sign he saw about cold beer.
Uncle Willie: “I saw yuh on that television talk show, perfesser, and yuh impressed me with yer knowledge and yer know-how.”
The two are shown a grotesque skeleton by this desert rat side, a sideshow peddler of oddities Uncle Willie, who wants money and credit for his discovery. Uncle Willy wants to co-write a book with Boley, calling it Uncle Willie's Tale of the Desert featuring stories about the devil monsters and the 2 headed calf and a Siamese twin chicken. "˜I pull them in off the road."Â
Willie "I gotta make sure you're not out here to steal my discovery"¦ now wait I'll show it to ya it's in the shack over there. “
Diana asks her skeptical dad-"Cant we just take a look."
Professor Boley-"Bones, I smell old bones" Willie- "I knew I picked a smart one" Diana “Sure is lonely out here" Willie- "Oh I like it like that"¦ I own this place now out right. Pass my time thinking about a book I'm going to write. You just wouldn't believe the things I know. Things I never told nobody. Just been saving up for the right moment. You'll see, You'll see you'll be glad you came to see Old Willie." Diana "What is it?" Willie- "I just got it put back together again.” Professor Boley- “What do you mean put back together again. That never was together"¦ hahaha. You assembled that out of a pile of old junk bones." Willie- " No! I found it whole over in the canyon. Carted it back in my pickup. You can't imagine how difficult it is to match them bones.” Professor Boley- "Oh come on Uncle Willie (He laughs) This is excellent work but it's a concoction of unrelated bones. Some animal some human. If I had more time I'd ask you how you managed the joints for the wings. That took real imagination. Coming up with wings." Willie- "No"¦ this is not a trick. This is not for them tourists. This is the REAL thing. (pauses) You don't believe me.”
Boley laughs again- "Willie your talent is wasted out here." Willie "no wait Dr. Boley. I never showed this to nobody. I thought you'd be the one smart enough to understand. Listen to me. The Indians named this place DEVILS CROSSING in their own language, back when they had a camp here. They lived here for hundreds and hundreds of years. The Indians told all about these devils, these spirits. They were real. I've got all the stories.” Professor Boley- "I'm sorry Willie.” Willie “Dr Boley, them devils used to live up there in the rocks. Came all of a sudden like. Just played hell with the tribes. Then they chased them off with their sacrifices and their offerings. An old Indian told me. It was his tribes main legend for hundreds of years. Now ain't that worth a book?"¦ ain't it!!!"
Diana snaps a photo and Willie gets riled "no free pictures! Now either you make a deal with me to write this book 50/50 with my picture on the cover or you just get out, get out!" Professor Boley tells him, "Alright Willie you're on"¦ let's hear the story"
Willie bolts the door and Boley starts the tape recorder. “I always bolt all the doors when the suns goes down.”
Professor –"Can you remember what the Indian word was for the devils in the legends?" Willie – (drinking a pint of whisky) Nak"”nakatekachinko,. That's it. This great chief saw the "˜nocitichincos in the desert and he had the tribe make costumes for all the elders, like the noci-tocichincos for the ritual of manhood called, “nonataya, “nonataya.” Professor Boley- "Uh what about, can you recall the ritual itself?""¨
Willie "Let me think, uh …“
Willie is interrupted by the flapping of giant wings and the sound of a great desert wind.
But Uncle Willie should not have challenged the nesting Gargoyles by threatening their existence with exposure and taking their skeleton which was a sacred object. -The music and soundtrack are fabulous before the gargoyles strike it's like electronic whirring and clanging with the sound of echoing crickets and chorus frogs They attack, the night Willie takes Dr. Boley and his daughter into his back shack where he keeps all the special goodies he finds, in particular the skeleton of a creature he found out in the desert that the Indians referred to as Devil’s Crossing.
