Postcards From Shadowland No.3
A trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away! Look In Any Window (1961)
LOOK IN ANY WINDOW 1961
In the 60’s Paul Anka was considered a dreamy teen idol. In Look In Any Window directed by William Alland (more known for his work as producer Creature From The Black Lagoon 1954, The Deadly Mantis 1957, Tarantula 1955, This Island Earth 1955 stop me I could go on and on!) , Anka plays the very distressed Craig Fowler, a troubled young man who is surrounded by inappropriate, over sexed adults, and very dysfunctional parents played by Ruth Roman and Alex Nicol as Jackie and Jay Fowler.
Craig’s world stinks, as his mother is an unhappy woman starved for attention, and he witnesses his father Jay erupt into a mess while on a drinking binge, after losing his job and his ‘manhood’.
It’s ever so angst ridden for the boy being crowded by so many pathetic adults and oh…the ‘Suburbia Traumatica’Â of it all! The film rips wide open the myth of clean suburban living and the even more mythic ‘All American Family.’
The entire neighborhood is on the prowl in this film. Carole Mathews plays Betty Lowell who’s lecherous husband steps out on her every chance he gets. Perfect for the role of the womanizing Gareth Lowell is the wonderfully slickety and smarmy Jack Cassidy.
While all the adult drama and provocative neighborly love is going on, an attraction starts to bloom between Craig and Betty’s daughter Eileen (Gigi Perreau).
And what about the secret compulsion that Craig is hiding!How about his naughty proclivity for peering into windows!
Anka sings the theme song, “Look In Any Window” with a breathy tone that makes your skin crawl…creepy yes, haunting… not so much.
“Nothing between their secrets and the neighborhood except a pane of glass!”
“The screen shocks with the truth about what goes on in the most ‘respectable’ neighborhoods in town!”
“It’s The Must-See Story Of Morals And Mistakes… Told With Unashamed Biting Frankness!”
From The Vault: The Queen of Spades (1949)
“The Dead Shall Give Up Their Secrets!”
THE QUEEN OF SPADES 1949
The Queen of Spades is a masterpiece if ever I saw one. Associate Producer Jack Clayton was on board for this film, directed by Thorold Dickinson (Gaslight 1940) who came onto the project last minute. Adapted to the screen by Rodney Ackland and Arthur Boys from the story written by Alexander Pushkin. The story could have easily been dreamt up by Aleksei Tolstoy, Ivan Chekhov -(The Drop of Water) Nikolai Gogol or even Oscar Wilde.
My partner Wendy even mentioned Edgar Allan Poe as she watched along with me. It brought to my mind, his short story Never Bet The Devil Your Head. Which of course was brought to life by Frederico Fellini in the segment of Spirits of The Dead 1968 called Toby Dammit, featuring the work of actor Terence Stamp.
It’s clear that Russians are very good at telling Ghost stories and notorious for telling tales about selling your soul to the Devil!
The Queen of Spades, stars Anton Walbrook, Edith Evans, Yvonne Mitchell and Ronald Howard.
The gorgeous music scored by Georges Auric  (Beauty and The Beast (1946), The Innocents (1961), and Wages of Fear 1953 just to mention a very few!) is as heart wrenching as it is heroic, drawing out the exquisite melody and chord changes to reach the soul and twist it into knots while it lingers.
What can I say about the gorgeous cinematography by Otto Heller.The odd camera angles are reminiscent of the great German Expressionist movement, something from Fritz Lang or the use of light and darkly dreamy angles like that of Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Even without any sound, the story would have emerged from the screen as a powerful cautionary tale, rife with grotesque and compelling characters.
The film is an arresting fairytale, that’s dreamy, and haunting in it’s imagery and perhaps, yes perhaps as visually stunning as I dare say Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête 1946 or Julian Duvivier’s Flesh and Fantasy 1943 and collaborative efforts of Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer’s Dead of Night 1945.
There are frames so masterfully conjured in shadow, that you might even think you’re watching Film Noir or an obscure Val Lewton production. Either way, The Queen of Spades sort of defies being labelled a specific genre.
It has it’s own melancholy fantasy that draws from many elements of the mystery/suspense crime/noir and supernatural horror gems of that golden age, when visual structure was as essential to the narrative as was the character development and dialogue.
Anton Walbrook  plays the bitter and venomous Capt.Herman Suvorin an army engineer, who is so poisoned by his resentments toward the ruling aristocracy , that he wants to gain his own wealth, and punish those around him who have benefited by their birthright and title. Suvorin does not want to take life as it comes, he wants to “Grab life by the throat and force it to give him what he wants!”-Suvorin.
This he conspires to do by trying to learn the secret of winning at a card game named Faro, from the Old Countess Ranevskaya, played by Edith Evans.
After a frustrating night of watching a few of his fellow army officers play Faro, taunting Herman as if he was not of the same class, he bursts out of his room in a self absorbed rage, and wanders onto the streets and into a dusty old book store, first picking up a book about Napoleon Bonaparte whom he admires (his portrait hangs in Herman’s humble room) because Napoleon came into his power at age 26!
Herman Suvorin possess a similar intensely maniacal quality that makes him a very unapproachable,manipulative and unlikable man. Looking at him was like “looking into the eyes of Satan!”
Fatefully placed next to Napoleon’s book is another book, suddenly and with a creepy alacrity, the old bookshop owner picks up the ancient bound leather and starts relating it’s contents to Herman, as if he’d been chosen the messenger… warning Suvorin about the secrets and dangers of tampering with the universe. The old man told Herman that he’d either wind up having riches… or lose his eternal soul!
In terms of appearance and demeanor I thought of Riffraff from Rocky Horror Picture Show, and wondered if this little bookish crypt keeper was an inspiration for Richard O Brien!
Herman purchases the book for 3 rubles, and starts reading aloud to us. This mysterious book, about people making deals with the Devil, and a certain mysterious Count d. Saint Germaine who lived in an isolated palace and molded wax images of his chosen victims, thereby trapping their souls forever in his power.
Herman Suvorin slowly and thoughtfully recites to us from the book:
Containing the true stories of people who sold their souls in return for wealth, power or influence"¦ Chapter IV The Secret of The Cards
Countess R"¦(Countess Ranevskaya )
In the year seventeen hundred and forty six, (60 years ago)
The Count d. Saint Germain arrived in St. Petersburg.
He chose for his residence, a palace on the outskirts of the city.
and soon there were strange rumors, about the weird dwelling and it’s mysterious occupant. It was certainly true that in the vaults of the palace. he had a curious collection of wax figures, which, so it was whispered, contained the souls of those who had fallen under his evil influence. He would derive intense please from modeling the wax figures from his intended victims, each one of whom was chosen.
with deliberate appreciation. Thus the countess Ranevskaya, acknowledged as the most beautiful woman in Russia came to excite his attention. He learned that in spite of a jealous husband, all the men had vied for her favors.
When the last of the guests had left. the countess went down the secret stairway.. To admits the young stranger she had promised to meet. She alone had the key to the hidden door. They had an amorous meeting. He was a cad and threatened her with scandal. Taking all her money. She was haunted by the fear of scandal. She needed to replace the money. In her despair she remembered the message from Saint Germain. she had no alternative but to answer the mysterious summons. She would sell her soul"¦ anything to save herself…
Continue reading “From The Vault: The Queen of Spades (1949)”
Postcards From Shadowland No.2
Boris Karloff’s Thriller: What Beckoning Ghost?
I like Judith Evelyn. There’s something well…Â solid and handsome about her. She also has a way of making you feel sympathy but not from a place of desperation,but an elegant, restrained kind of grace.
Consider a career in being scared to death (Angel Street tv 1946) She plays Mrs Manningham in a version of Gaslight, based on Patrick Hamilton’s stage play.
She’s always vulnerable you see. She has that kind of fragile appearance. It was nasty business the way Philip Coolidge playing Ollie frightens poor mute Martha (Evelyn) to death in William Castle’s The Tingler 1959.
And playing a Lonely Heart – Miss Lonely Heart as Stewart refers to her, as she is waiting for a love that may never come, in Hitchcock’s masterpiece Rear Window 1954.
I loved her as Mabel McKay in Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode Martha Mason, Movie Star aired May 19th, 1957. She was deliciously delightfully delusional, a murderess… yes, but sadly sort of lovable.
Evelyn has done a grand job of picking up the slack where starlets have left gaping holes for the less glamorous woman-in-peril to fill nicely. And here in What Beckoning Ghost? she is in top form, enunciating her words, drawing them out in sophisticated drones, no… not whiny. I didn’t say whining. Judith’s imploring is a secret little gesture that makes you want to protect her.
WHAT BECKONING GHOST?
What Beckoning Ghost? originally aired on September 18th, 1961, and started off Thriller’s second and only other season unfortunately.
It features aside from Judith Evelyn, Tom Helmore, and Adele Mara. The story was adapted by Donald Sanford, based on a short magazine story by Harold Lawlor (The Grim Reaper, The Terror in Teakwood), and adding to its threatening appeal, it was directed by Ida Lupino Ida’s Everywhere!
Here Evelyn plays concert pianist Mildred Beaumont (perhaps my particular affection for this character lies in the fact that I’m a pianist, and wouldn’t appreciate anyone fucking around using music in order to drive me crazy!)
Mildred suffered a serious heart attack, and now must convalesce at home, doing mostly bed rest, while her doting sister Lydia and patronizing husband Eric hover over her, like vultures shoving coffee and pills at her, scolding her for being restless, treating her like a muzzy child, all the while waiting to pick her bones dry, as they slowly drive her to her real death. Well, that’s what it looks like right… I won’t give away the story til you’ve seen it for yourself.
Mildred begins to see visions of her own funeral, downstairs in the drawing room. There begins a macabre harpsichord waltz by Jerry Goldsmith that becomes the leitmotif for the story. An almost maniacal, or should I say diabolical theme, music to be driven mad by one would say…
She sees herself laid out in a coffin with a large wreath of flowers bearing the platitude, Rest in Peace. Is she in such a weakened physical state, and so devoted to her scavenging, philandering husband Eric, that Mildred is too vulnerable to realize that there is a fowl plot underway? It’s almost Shakespearean with its glint of malevolence, madness, and sardonic revenge!
The episode opens with Mephistophelean violins serenading Mildred as she hugs a fur coat herself. She is transfixed in a three-way mirror. Mirrors are often used as symbolism, representational for the issue of ‘identity’ one in crisis, one that’s dubious of sanity, etc.
Enjoying her luxury Mildred is smiling. Waltzing around the room she begins to slip the fur off her shoulders As she sets it on the back of a chair, Eric enters the room with a glass of milk. She turns to greet him as he says, “Hey, why aren’t you getting ready for bed?” “Oh Eric, I feel so unbearably happy!” Eric has a smile like that of a viper about to strike, all fang and no heart.
Mildred sparkles a little, “Happy and whole"¦” She lets out a little exhausted sigh, her breath strained with a childlike glee, but not the energy to bring it forth.
” I can’t even remember what we saw at the theater tonight, I just sat there and felt the crowd all around me!” She’s ebullient, with a sense of having shed tremendous weight. After months of being ill and finally out on the town with her handsome husband on her satin and crepe-draped arm.
Gasping a little for air ” I kept thinking how wonderful it was to be with people again, to be out and ALIVE!!!” Her enthusiasm as she thrusts the word ‘alive’ out of her body seems so out of sync with Eric’s stoic blasé manner.
She asks him to dance with her, wrapping her arms around his shoulders to try and prod him. He becomes a little stern. “Oh no it’s way past your bedtime.” She begs him, “Oh please.”
“Absolutely not! you’ve had quite enough excitement on your first night out. You’ve got to give that heart of yours a chance to keep up with your feet you know.” Finally, a little whimsy comes to his staunch fatherly expression. Does he really love her? Does he really care about her health? It would appear so"¦but this is a Thriller. We know something unsavory is afoot.
“Oh, but you promised champagne in front of the fire before we went to bed"¦”
“You never forget anything do you?” An interesting clue is that Eric should remark about her impeccable memory.
She smiles in agreement and tells him, “I asked Lydia to put a bottle on ice before we went out.” She grins like a naughty child. Eric looks at her with his plasticine smile, “You could charm the birds, right out of the trees.”
Grabbing her chin and pinching it affectionately he tells her that he’ll get it. She says, “No, just like old times"¦I’ll go down and get the champagne and you light the fire.”
“Alright but take it easy on those stairs” ” I already got up them once tonight by myself"¦thank you.” She blows him a kiss.
Continue reading “Boris Karloff’s Thriller: What Beckoning Ghost?”
Coming this week to The Last Drive In: Boris Karloff’s Thriller episode ‘What Beckoning Ghost?’
The Dark Drawer: Four Obscurely Fabulous Film Noir Fare…
“Down this street raced dead-end violence!”
DOWN 3 DARK STREETS (1954)
“Down This Street Raced Dead-End Violence… Down This One Stretched Excitement Taut As Silk!”
Directed by Arnold Laven, this noir is part police procedural. It stars gruff he-man Broderick Crawford ( the pre-Tony Soprano alpha male, bull in the china shop cop) as FBI Agent John ‘Rip’ Ripley. Likable and mild-mannered Kenneth Tobey plays his partner agent Zack Stewart, who is gunned down from the shadows while juggling three cases that might be interrelated. John Ripley continues to hunt down the relationship between all these cases and find his partner’s murderer!
One connection involves gangster Joe Walpo as Ripley finds his hideout through Joe’s glitz and glamorous girl friend Connie Anderson played by Martha Hyer. Joe gets gunned down, and cleared of Stewart’s killing. Connie won’t be receiving anymore shiny things in the mail anymore!
The Second link involves a car theft ring. Ripley uses Vince Angelino’s (Gene Reynolds) wife to turn on his fellow thugs when Vince finds out that they have roughed up his gentle and blind wife, Julie, played by the beautiful Marisa Pavan.
The last and most disturbing case involves Kate Martell, the victim of an extortionist who says he’ll kidnap her little girl if she doesn’t fork over some cash. He calls using a creepy, threatening voice and sends her on wild goose chases, trying to break her down so she’ll pay the $10,0000 ransom.
Kate is played by the brassy Ruth Roman. There are a lot of dubious suspects surrounding her. The menacing uncle Max, played by Jay Adler, and the smarmy, drooling suiter Dave Milson, played by Max Showalter. How will this thriller play out in 3 dark streets!?
As the tagline says, it’s as taut as silk!
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THE MUGGER 1958
Directed by William Berke, Screenplay by Henry Kane, and based on the novel The Mugger by the great pulp mystery writer Evan Hunter as Ed McBain!
Starring again another likable actor Kent Smith who plays Dr.Peter Graham a psychiatrist who works for the police department, living in a dark city anywhere U.S.A.
“We need good cops, even if you are a psychiatrist now.”
There’s a mysterious masher stalking women, ritualistically slicing their left cheek and stealing their purses as a trophy. Pretty gruesome for 1958 filmgoers. The mugger escapes undetected until his last victim is actually murdered! The film stars Nan Martin, a cop who goes undercover as a dime-a-dance girl, James Franciscus, and Stefan Schnabel. With bit parts by Beah Richards as a ‘maid’ (god forgive Hollywood and their ever present stereotyping) a young George Maharis as Nicholas Grecco, a possible slime ball. And the first time appearance of Renee Taylor as a cheap hussy who is physically abusive to her wormy husband.
The film uncovers a lot of unsavory characters in the dark underbelly of a city that is diseased in a way that might breed a handbag, cheek-slashing maniac! As Dr.Graham tries to draw conclusions about the sort of man who would attack these women, we meet a handful of offbeat characters along the way as the likable police psychiatrist and his woman cop girlfriend are on the track of ‘the mugger’ terrorizing the city.
Very gritty and realistic slice of psycho=sexual aggression run amok in the city and hidden secrets within a small struggling American family!
“They all had one thing in common… The terrifying night they met!”
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PRIVATE HELL 36 (1954)
“There’s a price tag on this woman… A big one!”
Written for the screen by Collier Young ( Former husband to Ida Lupino and Joan Fontaine and written by Ida Lupino and directed by Don Siegel, starring Howard Duff, who plays detective Jack Farnham, an honest cop with a beautiful wife, Francey (Dorothy Malone), who loves him. His partner Cal Bruner,(Steve Cochran) is a little more dark and brooding and rough around the edges. He’s hungry for something better than suburban living with ‘pay on time’ furniture and a small backyard with a grill and a white fence.
Both detectives stumble onto the hot cash while staking out a robbery in which $300,000 was stolen. Of course, Farnham wants to turn it into Captain Michaels, played by the meditative Dean Jagger.
But Bruner has fallen hard for nightclub singer Lili Marlowe, played by the one and only Ida Lupino. She’s great as the unattainable woman who’s been burned once before and is now wearing asbestos lipstick. Cal is just too swarthy and smitten with Lili and soon, they go up in smoke!. Lily has very high expectations for herself and loves nice, shiny things. Cal wants to give her anything she wants but refuses to live like Farnham on a cop’s salary, playing a nice little suburban couple struggling to get by.
Number 36 refers to the locker where the money is hidden, while Farnham roils and ruminates over his dilemma.
Does he become a rat and turn in his partner, or should he do what’s expected and go to Captain Michaels with the missing money and the truth?
“These are the Night Faces…living on the edge of evil and violence…making their own.”
TRY AND GET ME or The Sound of Fury (1950)
A man down on his luck falls in with a criminal. After a senseless murder, the two are lynched.
Directed by Cy Enfield and written for the screen by Joe Pagano, based on his novel The Condemned.
It stars Frank Lovejoy as Howard Tyler and Kathleen Ryan as Judy Tyler. Two ordinary people in this allegory about how a decent human being can be directed to do a desperate or violent act in order to survive and protect their own family. Taken over by a fanatical young con man, petty thief, and psychopath named Jerry Slocum, played by Lloyd Bridges. Slocum preys on the Tyler’s need for money, Slocum convinces Tyler to be involved in a kidnapping scheme that goes horribly wrong and ends in murder.
The narrative unfolds more deeply as a condemnation of sensationalist journalism that can incite a mob mentality which feeds off the lurid details, culminating in a destructive force, almost worse than the original crimes committed.
Richard Carlson plays Gil Stanton a newspaper man who eventually has a pang of conscience, although much too late!
The ending is quite potent, powerful and remains a stunning commentary. The imagery holds a very powerful message in the final moments of the film…
PS: it seems that both The Sound of Fury 1950 and Fury 1936 Fritz Lang’s film starring Spencer Tracy are based on the same true events -from TRIVIA IMDb:
Based upon the 1933 kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart, son of the owner of Hart’s Department Store in San Jose, California. Two suspects were arrested and jailed, but a lynch mob broke into the jail, dragged out the suspects, and took them across the street to a city park, where they hanged them from a tree
I hope you get to see at least one of these lesser-known Noir/Thriller goodies!- Til next time!- Your EverLovin’ Joey
From The Vault: Who Killed Teddy Bear?(1965)
“Why with everybody else – why with every slob … and not with me?”
WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR? (1965)
Sal Mineo (Rebel Without A Cause 1955 The Young Don’t Cry 1957) plays yet another troubled youth, this time he’s a busboy at a disco. His name is Lawrence Sherman, who has had a turbulent childhood manifesting into an obsessive sexually disturbed young pervert.
His object of desire is aspiring actress/disc jockey Nora Dain, at the club where he buses tables. He makes obscene phone calls, partakes in a bit of voyeurism, frequents porn shops and XXX movie theaters with the rest of the heavy breathing raincoat crowd!
A very sleazy exploitation goodie from the 60s utilizing that gorgeous high contrast black and white and Charlie Calello’s perfect soundtrack of raunchy cheese horns that make you want to flail your hips in Satan red high heel shoes, digging holes in the carpets, while you twist til dawn!
Mineo exudes angst and a bottled up sexual repression so well that his role as obsessive stalker , makes the scenes with his sweaty bare chest, creep me out til Tuesday of next week!
Normally I just adore a sweaty bare chest, don’t get me wrong… but these are ‘pervert beads of sweat’ we’re talkin’ here…! Now JUST TO BE CLEAR! I am not drawing connections between Mineo’s real life self proclaimed homosexuality and the film’s perceived character of Lawrence Sherman whose so-called ‘perversion’ and sexual proclivities lead him down a dangerous path.
But that’s why I love these exploitation gems from the 1960s so much. They run counter-intuitive to The Cleavers ( which I LOVE so, no disrespect there.)But it’s important to muddy up the good clean mythos of the American dream once in a while….!
Added to the plot line is the obsessive cop who has his own fixations, like listening to crime tapes with graphic confessions!
The film is directed by Joseph Cates, Written by Arnold Drake and has an interesting cast including not just Juliet Prowse, but Jan Murray as Lt. Dave Madden another obsessed male animal, the great Elaine Stritch as Marian Freeman , Nora Dain’s fur coat stroking, club owning dyke…
I love how they get these older dames like Gypsy Rose Lee in Screaming Mimi and Elaine here as Marian Freeman to play lurking coded lustful lesbos / adult club owners on the hunt for fresh meat!
Wow…I think that there’s a pattern forming here. Hhhm…I’ll have to look back at Naked Kiss and reconsider that scene where club owner (Virginia Grey) Candy is shoving that dirty money into Constance Tower’s mouth… Hhm.
Margo Bennett as Edie Sherman Lawrence’s sister.
“I never thought you’d put me down, but I’m walkin’ around with no place to go!”
There are thousands of films like these in my collection, this is just one of them, so curl up with your own ‘teddy bear’ if it’s not psychotic and see it for yourself!-MonsterGirl!
A Trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away! The Haunted Palace (1963) & Die Monster Die (1965)
It’s 1865 in Lovecraft’s mythical town of Arkham. Charles Dexter Ward (Vincent Price) arrives at the small village to visit the house he inherited from his ancestor who died there 100 years ago.
In 1765, the inhabitants of the Gothic New England town are suspicious of the strange goings-on up in the grand ‘palace’ that overlooks the village. They suspect its inhabitant, Joseph Curwen, of being a warlock! What is the ghastly secret behind the mysterious afflictions of the town’s people, and the curse the Curwen name seems to hold over the place…what utter horrors lye in wait for this descendent of Joseph Curwen!
Released by American International Pictures, utilizing that rich Pathécolor director Roger Corman was becoming known for using lavish color to paint the movie frames in his Gothic adaptations of Poe. While they used Edgar Allan Poe’s name in touting this film it actually springs from H.P Lovecraft’s novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, with a screenplay by Charles Beaumont. The title is merely borrowed from a poem by Poe.
Starring the inimitable Vincent Price as the cursed ancestor, with Lon Chaney Jr. as caretaker Simon Orne, and Debra Paget as Charle’s wife Ann. Also appearing are Elisha Cook Jr. and Bruno VeSota.
“What was the terrifying thing in the PIT that wanted women?”
It’s Monday… Let’s show some more H.P. Lovecraftian  Love!!!!!!
DIE MONSTER DIE 1965
“Can you face the ULTIMATE in DIABOLISM!…can you face PURE TERROR!”
Boris Karloff is Nahum Witley a wheelchair-bound scientist who has uncovered a meteorite that emits radioactive rays which turn plants into mutants in his greenhouse. Freda Jackson plays Letitia Witley, Nahum’s wife who like the monstrous plants, becomes contaminated by the deadly glowing cosmic rays!
The wooden Nick Adams, plays Stephen Reinhart the customary combative fiancé to daughter Susan Witley (Suzan Farmer). Also co-starring Terence de Marney as Merwyn and Patrick Magee as Dr. Henderson. Directed by Daniel Haller who also directed The Dunwich Horror 1970.
Written for the screen by Jerry Sohl  and based on Lovecraft’s The Colour of Outer Space
I’ll just go crawl away now friends! Yours truly-MonsterGirl!
Postcards From Shadowland No.1
That’s it for now from the shadows-MonsterGirl