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Sunday, October 21, 2007Count Yorga, Vampire Release Year: 1970Country: United States Starring: Robert Quarry, Roger Perry, Michael Murphy, Michael Macready, D.J. Anderson, Judy Lang, Edward Walsh, Julie Conners, Paul Hansen, Sybil Scotford, Marsha Jordan, Deborah Darnell. Writer: Bob Kelljan Director: Bob Kelljan Cinematographer: Arch Archambault Producer: Bob Kelljan and Michael Macready Music: Bill Marx Alternate Titles: The Loves of Count Iorga, Vampire Availability: Buy it from Amazon  .So far, our examination of old fashioned vampires in modern day settings has covered Dracula, in the Hammer Studios films Dracula AD 1972 and Satanic Rites of Dracula, and some guy named Count Sinistre, from the previously obscure British horror film Devils of Darkness. But this trend of placing traditional vampires in a modern (well, 1970s) setting actually started in America, with a low-key film called Count Yorga, Vampire. At the time of Yorga's release, there were very few people making vampire movies. Hammer was pretty much the only game in town, and they were still setting their vampire films in the Victorian era. Devils of Darkness was one of the first vampire films to transport a vampire into the current era, at least since the 1932 Tod Browning production of Dracula, which was set in what was then modern-day London. However, one can argue that the differences between the London of 1870 and 1932 is markedly less than the difference between 1870 and 1970, and so for our purposes here, Devils of Darkness is more substantial to our little foray than Dracula. It's also less substantial because almost no one saw Devils of Darkness, and without a dedicated distributor or studio, it quickly faded from memory and was almost totally forgotten until it finally found its way to DVD (its first home video release) in 2007. Which means that Count Yorga, Vampire, is really where we can say this short-lived trend began. There was obviously still interest in vampire films. Hammer's late 60s Dracula films still made money, even if it was obvious that the foundation was beginning to crumble. All it would really take was finding a successful way to modernize the monster without completely divorcing it from its Victorian roots (that would come later, after this transitional stage). Leave it to American International Pictures to step up to the plate and take a swing. AIP is a familiar studio for anyone who follows the world of cult films. They were a B-movie behemoth, and a testing ground for a host of directors and actors who would go on to superstardom. But the real linchpin in their creative machine was a guy named Roger Corman. First as director, and later as producer, Corman proved to be amazingly adept at scouting talent, stretching a dollar, and compacting a shooting schedule. One of his specialties was shooting a film, wrapping it early, then realizing that he still had three days left on a rented set or a contract for Boris Karloff. So he'd make another movie, from concept to script, to final shooting, in those three days.
AIP's standard operating procedure was to crank out cheap, black and white, double feature movies, and it worked well for them. In 1960, however, most likely heavily influenced by the surprising success of Hammer's big three of Horror of Dracula, Curse of Frankenstein, and The Mummy, Roger Corman approached AIP executives and pitched them the idea for a more lavish color film with a longer shooting schedule and more ambitious scope. AIP didn't exactly jump at the prospect, but the combination of Hammer's success with serious, color horror films and Corman's proven track record as a director who could crank out decent films that always turned a profit for the studio eventually swayed them, and Corman was given a whopping three weeks and the services of Vincent Price to shoot The Fall of the House of Usher. It was designed very much in the style of the Hammer Gothics, full of vivid colors and costumes placed against a bleak and crumbling backdrop. It was a huge hit for AIP, so much so that Corman was given free reign to shoot a whole series of similar films, each starring Vincent Price and based --often extremely loosely -- on the works of Edgar Allen Poe. Despite their modest roots, Corman's Poe films remain some of the best written, most sumptuous American horror films ever produced. By 1970, however, the tables had turned. Hammer was starting to resemble one of the crumbling old castles they so loved to set their movies in, while AIP was increasingly nimble and able to adapt to changing tastes and trends in pop culture. When they felt their Hammer style horror films were becoming too old-fashioned, they started spicing things up with more cynical scripts and more liberal displays of nudity. They successfully branched out far beyond horror to produce a massive array of drive-in and B-movie fare, as well as a second series of Poe films, still starring Price but this time directed by Gordon Hessler. It was AIP that decided the vampire film could find new blood by being adapted to a modern setting, and this time, it was Hammer who ended up following AIP's lead. AIP, at least in the realm of horror, was a child of Hammer, but Dracula AD 1972 would never have existed if not for AIP's Count Yorga films. Of course, many would argue that we would have all been better off without Dracula AD 1972, but I'm not one of those people. Point is, this was a classic "student becomes the master" reversal.
Oddly, the initial idea for updating the vampire tale was to make it a saucy softcore film. Many people claim that the original version of Count Yorga, Vampire -- then bearing the title The Loves of Count Iorga, Vampire -- was meant to be a porno film. Not so, though it was meant to flaunt the bare breasts and other things you could get away with thanks to the increased liberalness of the 1970s. When AIP picked up the independently produced film for distribution, they demanded that the sauciness be trimmed in order to achieve a more teen-friendly GP (PG to you young bloods) rating. Some remnants remain, at least in the current version of the film (which is slightly longer than the original theatrical version), but there must have been a considerable amount left on a cutting room floor somewhere, though some production stills of the unused scenes remain in circulation. With increased sexiness out, Count Yorga's next and far cleverer method of updating the vampire film was to approach it with a more cynical attitude. All of these movies have to feature a variation on the, "Vampires? You must be joking! This is the 20th century!" line, but Count Yorga takes the line to heart. You really must be joking. A vampire, cape and all, in 1970's California? Ridiculous! And Count Yorga's attitude is basically, "Yes, isn't it?" even as the film is biting you on the neck. It's a tricky tightrope act, to both poke fun at and respect the classical vampire film, but what makes Count Yorga special is that it manages to pull it off.
We first meet Yorga, played with acerbic perfection by Robert Quarry, as he presides over a seance attended by a typical group of jaded young couples. As with Sinistre in Devils of Darkness, the long-lived vampire is able to adapt to modern times and fit in by traveling in small circles where quirkiness and strange behavior is easily dismissed. Yorga himself is a bit of a prick, though it's entirely understandable given the fact that the guy has been alive for hundreds of years and probably had to suffer all manner of fools. Quarry is great in the role, mixing this biting sarcasm with a world-weary melancholy to create a character that is undeniably a villain yet oddly sympathetic. Hammer attempted, with far less success, to inject this same sort of world-weariness into Dracula in The Satanic Rites of Dracula, but they didn't study Yorga's game plan close enough to really pull it off. Christopher Lee's Dracula was always a presence but rarely an actual character, even when he was on screen. Yorga, on the other hand, is much more complex and much more human, and thus his attitude is far more understandable. His disillusionment with pretty much everything around him in the "normal" world is an interesting counterpoint to the same disillusionment the modern couples have with the supernatural. "What a bunch of pointless nonsense," both sides seem to be thinking. Nonsense or not, the supernatural bears its fangs when one of the couples gives Count Yorga a lift. The movie's humor is very subtle, very dry, and best characterized by things like a vampire having to bum a ride home after a seance or Yorga's wonderful, "I believe I had a cape" line as he prepares himself to leave. These moments aren't entirely played for laughs, and the film doesn't desperately scream at you and point out things that are supposed to be funny. It's really up to you to decide whether or not you think it's amusing.
Yorga continues to chew his way through the women in the circle of friends, just as the men struggle to come to grips with the idea that there really could be a vampire praying upon them and their girlfriends. This culminates in a bout of verbal sparring in which our principal heroes, Michael and Dr. Hayes, visit Yorga at his estate and attempt to engage the count in one of those battles of double entendres and "I don't know what you really are...or do I?" types of conversations. Yorga is visibly bored and irritated by the whole thing, and the confrontation ends just before sunrise, with Yorga basically doing nothing more than kicking the guys out. The proper finale follows shortly thereafter, in which Yorga's home is raided in an attempt to recover the kidnapped and hypnotized Donna, and Michael and Dr. Hayes discover a bit too late that Yorga's pad is crawling with hungry vampire chicks. As with any low-budget productions, Count Yorga, Vampire has a number of obstacles to navigate in an attempt to turn budgetary limitations into assets. For starters, the concept of an old world vampire in a new world setting is very limited in its scope. There are no scenes of Yorga hitting the town or going to a club. Instead, the film is limited to a few sets, revolving around Yorga's mansion, creating a feeling of claustrophobia and timelessness despite the intrusions of modern trappings like vans and telephones. Yorga is keen to control his environment and keep himself in a setting over which he can exercise more effective control. In the same sense, it allows him to survive in modern times but surround himself with comfort items from his past, like an old fart sitting in his den listening to pre-Rollins Black Flag records and complaining about how punk rock is so crappy now. Yorga can survive because he has learned how to shrink the modern world into a controllable sphere where he can exist on the very fringes, reaching in to pluck out a victim every now and then but generally remaining below the radar of modern society. He relies additionally on the jaded nature of modern people -- obviously, a vampire attack is utterly preposterous. Like all vampires in these movies, though, he eventually screws up and picks on a group of people who are slightly more open to the possibility and also happen to have one of those doctor friends who happens to know a lot about the occult.
Despite the low budget, Count Yorga, Vampire manages to succeed based on the wit of the script and the strength of Robert Quarry in the lead. There are bumps in the road with the script, most likely because of the quick rewrite from softcore titillater to GP horror film, but overall they are pretty easy to ignore. As I said, some remnants of the softcore version remain. Yorga whiles away boring nights by sitting on a throne in his basement and watching his vampire brides make out with one another -- a scene that was probably considerably longer and didn't cut away right before the lip lock and fondling in the original vision of the movie. Additionally, there's a make-out session in the van, because what else are you going to do when you get your van stuck in the mud on someone's private property if not go at it in the back? I mean, that's what you got a van for in the first place, right? Ultimately, and despite erroneous claims that this was originally going to be a porno film, I assume The Loves of Count Iorga, Vampire would have ended up looking like Hammer's saucier 70s vampire fare like Twins of Evil and Vampire Lovers. It wouldn't have harmed the film any, I don't think, but ultimately, I think it works pretty well in the final form, as a very low-key, slow-moving, but hypnotically entrancing study of a jaded vampire that doesn't lapse into either self-indulgent pity or over-obvious satire. How you ultimately react to such a film depends entirely on how you feel about such movies, whether you consider them engrossing or just boring. I really liked it, and I thought that it was wonderful at creating a sort of weird, claustrophobic, and moody atmosphere.
Not that the movie is entirely comprised of guys sitting around debating vampirism. This is a low-budget horror film distributed by AIP, after all. So in between the soul-searching and pondering and Yorga sneering at the mere mortals around him, you get scenes like a woman eating her own cat and plenty of vampire attacks. It’s just that ultimately you come for Robert Quarry's performance as Yorga. Everything else is just dressing. Sweet, bloody dressing. Quarry was a steadily employed television actor before being cast in the role of Yorga, and he really shines here in what is probably his most triumphant role. Many people among the population of those who tend to rank such things, rank his portrayal of the bored and always somewhat irritated Count Yorga as one of the best on-screen vampires of all time. Casting an older, solid actor in the role is a prime example of what movies like this to right that so many modern movies do wrong. When Quarry plays Yorga as a long-lived and jaded vampire, he is able to lend the character the appropriate sighing surrender mixed with annoyance. Yorga has an abundance of life (or afterlife) experience, and Quarry communicates that in a way the current crop of much younger actors cannot. Quarry continued to work well through the 80s and 90s, often in low-budget horror and exploitation fare, before more or less retiring in 1999. however, it looks like his services are being called on once again, as he is apparently appearing in a movie called The Tell-Tale Heart, which also stars scream queen staple Debbie Rochon and another legend of 70s vampire films, Ingrid Pitt, who starred in 1970's Vampire Lovers from Hammer, which contained the nudity and softcore content that was nixed from Count Yorga.
Writer/director Bob Kelljan, whose only directing credit before Count Yorga was the naughtily titled Flesh of My Flesh (he had previously been an actor in both television and low-budget drive-in fare), crafted a tightly framed minor horror classic that manages to be well-paced despite the dearth of action. He used Yorga to become a successful television director, working steadily until his death in 1982. He makes Yorga into a creepy little film that never sacrifices its downbeat atmosphere and general creepiness in the pursuit of comedy, and yet manages to produce a number of -- if not funny, then certainly witty -- moments that will make you smile. It's wicked, and at times, it's even kind of scary, especially if you're watching it late at night -- which is more than can be said for most horror films. Count Yorga, Vampire ended up being a solid money-maker for AIP, and so a sequel was commissioned with a slightly larger budget. Kelljan and Quarry returned, as did some of the rest of the cast, despite the fact that the original's downbeat ending pretty much leaves everyone dead. The Return of Count Yorga is more or less the same movie, only with Craig T. Nelson as a cop. It's quite enjoyable as well, even if it is a rehash but with Craig T. Nelson. Count Yorga's greater effect was to launch that mini-revival of vampire fiction that saw everything from Hammer's two Dracula movies, Marvel Comic's Tomb of Dracula, and two Blacula films that put a blaxploitation spin on the modern vampire story (the second Blacula film was actually even directed by Kelljan). Although largely forgotten and relegated to the back waters of cult film fandom today, Yorga was influential and successful during its time, and DVD has helped a lot of new viewers rediscover this unique twist on an old tale. Labels: Horror: Vampires, Series: Vampires in the 70s, Studio: AIP, Year: 1970 posted by Keith at 2:46 PM | 3 Comments Sunday, July 23, 2006Beach Party Tonight!
Not really sure what was going through my mind when I puffed out my chest, slapped it in a hearty manly fashion, and proclaimed to the world that I was going to review not one, not two, but all of the Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello beach party movies from the 1960s. Maybe I was tired and delirious, Maybe the heady days of summer, with their swinging hammocks and nubile women wearing bikinis and running down white sand beaches with surf boards, with the sweet smell of honeysuckle wafting on balmy breezes as I lean back in my bamboo chair on my beachfront veranda and raise a tumbler of rum on the rocks to a passing surfer girl, who stops long enough to smile at me as she pushes a wave of sandy blonde hair from her face and motions with a subtle jerk of her head that I should join her in the water. Maybe I was one too many into my bottle of rum, which would explain why I was seeing surfer girls and beachfront verandas in the middle of Brooklyn -- and which would also explain why I thought sitting through all the beach party movies would be a keen idea.
As some of you may have gathered from the number of Elvis movies I've reviewed, I have a remarkably high tolerance for bubblegum sixties fare, especially if it involves car racing or surfing or go-go dancing. And the beach party movies include all of the above, and usually top it off with a couple musical numbers by surf guitar pioneer Dick Dale, plus a cameo from Vincent Price or someone else who was under contract to AIP. These movies are full of fake beatniks, "hep" lingo that is just a year or two out of date, and motorcycle gangs that wield all the imposing toughness of Paul Lynde. And the sad thing is, they were still hipper, sexier, and more daring than any of the movies starring Elvis. I mean, here he was, the king of rock 'n' roll, looking like a grade A square while teenie bopper chumps like Frankie and Annette got to shake their bums and smoke cigarettes and hang with beatniks. Elvis didn't meet any beatniks in his movies until 1968 or so, and by then beatniks were a good fifteen years past their prime. Who would have every thought that former mouse-keteers Frankie and Annette would be more daring and more cutting edge than Elvis? BEACH PARTY: 1963, United States. Starring Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Bob Cummings, Dorothy Malone, Morey Amsterdam, Harvey Lembeck, Eva Six, John Ashley, Candy Johnson, Jody McCrea, Dick Dale, Andy Romano, Jerry Brutsche, Bob Harvey, John Macchia, Alberta Nelson, Vincent Price. Directed by William Asher. Written by Lou Rusoff. Buy it now from Amazon.com  .The frolicking begins with Beach Party. Summer's here, and the kids are out of college with only one thing on their minds: the beach, and more specifically, surfing and sex. Yes, that's right. Though these films are very much in the "good clean American fun" vein, it behooves me to remind the prudes out there that surfing and sex are two of the best forms of good clean American fun (I've never been one to ascribe all that "grand spiritual union between two perfectly matched souls" mystic mumbo jumbo to sex). Other forms of good clean American fun include skateboarding, drinkin', hollerin', freakin' out the squares, checking out cheerleaders, and blowin' shit up. If you can work that all into one weekend, well then you truly do deserve that precious American citizenship. And if you also manage to jump a speedboat over a moving train or a muscle car through the open boxcar door of a moving train, well then you got my vote for President.
Frankie's into all of the above, but Annette? Well, she's kind of...you know. A drag. So while Frankie is looking forward to a nice holiday at the beach house with his sweetie, she invites along "the whole gang," which irritates Frankie to no end, at least until the surfing starts. Even then, while all the guys and gals are out having a blast, Annette sort of pouts around on the beach. How did these two end up together? While this little drama plays itself out -- interspersed with some great vintage footage (watch the film grain change!) of real California longboarders -- a perverted old scientist is hidden away in his bungalow watching the sexy young thangs cavort down on the beach. This ostensibly his anthropological research, working as he is on a thesis that popular youth culture is no different than the primitive pagan sex rites of old. Hey man, do you get grant money for researching that kind of thesis? I bet all those people who write their dissertations on the "Microstructural and Electronic Transport Properties of PtxSi/p-Si(100) Metal-Semiconductor Composite Films and Their Potential as IR Detection Devices in the 3-5 Micron Range" feel like world class suckers when they learn they could have written a thesis that required them to hide out in a beach bungalow with a gorgeous assistant and watch chicks in bikinis through a telescope all day. So Annette won't surf. She won't imbibe in the devil's brew. She doesn't smoke the reefer. She won't go-go dance or hang with the freaks at Big Daddy's. Who can blame Frankie when his eyes start to wander to other girls who will shake and shimmy and have a good time? I'm not sure if we're supposed to feel bad for her or what, but I don't think it's just because I'm a man that I sympathize with Frankie a little more. He wanted a romantic vacation with just her. She invited everyone else along, And when Frankie makes due and twists the night away, she's upset at that too. Women, huh? Can't a guy have a little fun? I mean, if she came to the beach to sit in the corner and huff at everything, what can you do? Even the professor eventually learns to stop analyzing the kids and just cut loose and have some fun. And then there's Eric Von Zipper's madcap slapstick biker gang. And Candy Johnson go-go dancing so furiously that you will actually fear for her well-being and marvel at the fact that her arms and head don't just go flying right off her body. Of course, no beach party movie is complete unless it ends in a big rumble with the bikers that turns into a pie fight. There's no defending Beach Party. It's corny. It's a crass cash-in on the popularity of surfing. It's full of ripe dialogue. And I love it. Truly, and not on an ironic level. It's got surfing. It's got Dick Dale and his big, weird pirate's earring. It's got lots of girls go-go dancing in bikinis and Capri pants. It's got fightin'. And for a family film, it's surprisingly sexual. Not really a big surprise. Folks were loosening up after the Eisenhower years drove everyone batty, and by the 1960s, films like the Doris Day bedroom comedies had turned innuendo and double entendre into an art form. Beach Party would, ironically, probably enrage modern parents. Not only do the leads drink and smoke and think about sex, there's even one scene where it's strongly hinted that Frankie and his buddies are partaking of what the kids at the time referred to as the reefer. Annette is a drag, but Frankie puts a lot of energy into his role, even when he crosses the line into just being sort of a prick. The supporting cast is really just there to yell, "Well shoot, let's go surfing!" or "Cuckoo, man, real cuckoo!" And then at the very end of the film we get to meet Big Daddy himself, which begins a long tradition in these films of AIP forcing their otherwise respectable old guard to appear in teenie bopper fare.
The film was a hit, needless to say, though Walt Disney was supremely pissed that his little Annette was cavorting about in such scandalous garb -- even though she spends the film in the most modest of swimwear. Walt felt that having his prize mouseketeer in such filth reflected bad on the title of mouseketeer and the Disney brand in general. Good thing he didn't live to see former Mouseketeer Britney Spears. The supporting cast is comprised mainly of character actor stalwarts and AIP workhorses, which helps a lot in making the movie tolerable, since you're not really going to have much to say about Jody McCrae's turn as Deadhead, the big guy with one of those weird crown-style hillbilly hats I think were only ever worn by characters in Archie and Li'l Abner. I don't know if any actual hillbillies ever wore them, just like I'm not sure any sexy hillbilly women ever wore those ratty dresses where the bottom was cut into a bunch of triangles. But I hope they did. Robert Cummings plays the creepy voyeuristic Professor Sutwell. As sleazy as his character tends to come off now that the veneer of "innocent curiosity and research" has been worn off forty-year-old men watching teenage girls on the beach through a telescope, his performance is fine -- though this movie is a long, long way from his roles in Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder or The Saboteur. Harvey Lembeck plays foppish leather-clad motorcycle gang leader Eric Von Zipper, predating Judas Priest's "Head out on the Highway" by a couple decades. I don't know why a teen motorcycle gang is being lead by a guy in his forties, but I guess that does mean he's the only rebellious young man actually old enough to have been a beatnik. His performance is ludicrous and over the top, which is about all he can do with the material, and he does it pretty well, though I wouldn't pretend that his shenanigans (Oh, he crashed his bike again! Eric Von Zipper, will you ever learn?) had me in stitches. The final elder statesman of the cast is Morey Amsterdam as Cappy, the beatnik-is manager for Big Daddy's. Morey was a former vaudeville performer and a recognizable face to anyone who watched comedy in the early half of the 20th century. Director William Asher's career up until this movie had been confined primarily to television, with his most notable accomplishment being a stint as a director of I Love Lucy. After this movie and its multitudinous sequels, his career would, not surprisingly, still be confined primarily to television, and teenie bopper television at that, including episodes of Gidget and The Patty Duke Show, The Paul Lynde Show, The Dukes of Hazzard, and Harper Valley PTA. He seemed to really be into directing spin-offs or television series adaptations of popular movies (back when it was done that way, instead of how it is now, where every television series gets a movie). Among his smattering of feature film work beyond the beach party movies is another Frankie and Annette movie, Fireball 500.
MUSCLE BEACH PARTY: 1964, United States. Starring Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Luciana Paluzzi, John Ashley, Don Rickles, Peter Turgeon, Jody McCrea, Dick Dale, Candy Johnson, Peter Lupus, Valora Noland, Delores Wells, Donna Loren, Morey Amsterdam, Stevie Wonder, Peter Lorre, Buddy Hackett. Directed by William Asher. Written by William Asher and Robert Dillon. Buy it now from Amazon.com  .A sequel was a foregone conclusion. So AIP rounded everyone up again for Muscle Beach Party. This follow-up follows pretty much the same format, with our intrepid band of sex-crazed surfers led by Frankie Avalon discovering that they are being muscled off the beach -- literally! Don Rickels, the man everyone thinks of when they think fitness trainer, arrives with his traveling band of bodybuilders, who hog the beach all day long as the flex and preen and oil up their biceps. Peter Lupus, a familiar face to anyone who might be familiar with some Italian Hercules movies or episodes of Mission: Impossible, is the top star. Meanwhile, a beautiful European heiress (Lucianno Paluuzi, from Thunderball) is moored just off shore with her sidekick Buddy Hackett. She takes a liking to Frankie, much to Annette's annoyance, since it is Annette's job to be forever annoyed in these films. Sadly, she doesn't hook up with either Rickels or Hackett to make Frankie jealous, and somehow, they got those two in a film and prevented them from making lots of penis jokes. Buddy and Don, I mean. Once again, I find that the film is pretty enjoyable for what it is, and sadly, a couple jokes got me to laugh out loud -- specifically Lupus becoming overjoyed about protein, and Lupus, upon discovering there is not enough room for a massive he-man like him in the heiress' private helicopter, grabbing onto the landing runners so he can just dangle off the copter as it flies out to the boat -- and then topping that by insisting on doing pull-ups for the duration of the ride. The rest of the film is the usual mash-up: Frankie and Annette snipe at each other, Candy Johnson go-go dances uncontrollably, and real-life surfers stand in for the cast in some nice old-school surfing footage. BIKINI BEACH: 1964, United States. Starring Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Martha Hyer, Don Rickles, Harvey Lembeck, John Ashley, Jody McCrea, Candy Johnson, Danielle Aubry, Meredith MacRae, Delores Wells, Donna Loren, Stevie Wonder. Directed by William Asher. Written by William Asher and Robert Dillon. Buy it now on Amazon.com .That same year, Frankie, Annette, and the whole gang returned in Bikini Beach, a film which features the truly genius tagline "Where every torso is moreso." Frankie really gets to flex his acting muscle this time around as he stars not only as Frankie, the ever-impish boyfriend of straight-laced but cute as a button Annette, but also as Potato Bug, the mop-topped sensation from England that has all the beach bunnies hearts a-flutter. Avalon's characterization of a British guy consists mostly of saying things like, "Smashing, old chap! I say, I could use a spot of tea!" in a really bad fake accent. Potato Bug is supposed to be a riff on the British Invasion that was exploding across America at the time, but I don't recall any of the Beatles saying things like, "Oh jolly good, sport!" Maybe Ringo, but that's it. The Brit-speak sounds like whoever wrote this knew as much about writing dialogue for British rockers as they knew about writing dialogue for hep teens and beatniks. At the same time, they do have the foresight to give Potato Bug bad teeth, predating the popular Austin Powers joke by a good thirty-plus years. And he does wear safari gear much of the time, and he's named Potato Bug, so as stupid as it is, some of the Potato Bug jokes are at least a little funny. Maybe he could tour with The Mosquitoes from Gilligan's Island. Eric Von Zipper is, naturally, on hand again to muck things up, as is another stuffy professor, this one trying to prove that the youth of today are no smarter than a trained monkey. So he has a monkey (the usual guy in a cheap monkey suit) following him around, going surfing, go-go dancing, stuff like that. The doctor should think less about proving kids are dumb and more about the fact that he has a hyper-intelligent chimp who can surf, perfectly understand English, and knows enough to know he should jump up and go-go dance with Candy Johnson. Whatever happened to Candy, anyway? I can only assume that she eventually severed her own spinal cord by dancing too furiously. For the most part, any of the first three beach party movies are all right on their own, though I'm beginning to seriously question the wisdom of watching them all in a block, especially in light of the fact that there are two more to go. You can really only take so much of Jody McCray wearing his Jughead hillbilly hat and shouting, "Shucks!"
But three wasn't enough for the sun, surf, and sex crazed teens of the 1960s, so therefore it wasn't enough for AIP. While they were busy making their truly classic Edgar Allen Poe films with Vincent Price and Roger Corman on one end of the lot, they had the beach party machine cranking furiously on the other. Beach Blanket Bingo: 1965, United States. Starring Frankie...oh come on! By this point you should have the cast memorized. Directed by William Asher. Written by William Asher and Leo Townsend. Buy it now on Amazon.com  .Beach Blanket Bingo hit screens in 1965, and if you can believe that a series like this can actually start to decline in quality, this is where it happens. Or maybe not. I guess it's no stupider than the others, but things really start to fray around the edges when you've watched so many of these things in a row. They are, sadly, still more cutting edge (for the time and audience) than the Elvis movies, and more daring with the amount of bare flesh, wiggle, and jiggle they're willing to put on screen. Once again Frankie and Annette head to the beach to act catty and petulant toward one another. You'd think that by now they'd either give up on each other, or all their friends would give up on them. I mean, for the most part, everyone is doing nothing but having fun and watching Candy Johnson flail about like a possessed woman at a voodoo ceremony, but then Frankie and Annette always have to start arguing and trying to make each other jealous, and well -- you'd think the rest of the bunch would start entertaining the thought of maybe going to the beach without the two endlessly bickering sweethearts. For this go-round, Frankie's ever wandering eye is caught by a skydiving bombshell, and the only way Annette can retain proper ownership of Frankie's heart is by finally doing something other than sitting on the beach and pouting. So it's into the air for Annette, as she skydives her way back into Frankie's love. The jokes were really starting to wear thin by this point, and the formula had been pretty much flogged to death. Having nothing better to do, director William Asher throws a decrepit Buster Keaton into the mix for absolutely no discernable reason. It's not like the kids were going to go, "Well, I'm pretty tired of beach party movies, but this one has 1920s superstar Buster Keaton in it! Cuckoo!" and it's not like any senior citizen was sitting around reading the papers and suddenly yelled, "Martha! There's a new Buster Keaton movie playing down at the bijou! Why, this is one of those movies that also stars Morrey Amsterdam. I loved his vaudeville act. 23 skidoo!"
HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI: 1965, United States. Starring Frankie...oh come on! By this point you should have the cast memorized. Directed by William Asher. Written by William Asher and Leo Townsend. Buy it now on Amazon.com .Apparently, I wasn't the only one growing tired of the retread antics in Beach Blanket Bingo. The next film, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini was the final film in the series, and rightfully so. By this point, even Frankie Avalon had lost interest, and while he and Annette rehash their never-ending lovers' quarrel in exactly the same fashion, the main story here, horrifyingly enough, focuses on Jody McRae's Deadhead character, who falls in love with a mysterious and beautiful woman who turns out to be a mermaid. Yep, that's right. A mermaid. Not that it's all that weird when you consider one of the previous films featured a hyper-intelligent go-go dancing ape. I have very little to say with regards to How to Stuff a Wild Bikini except that there's not much to say about it. The laughs are few and far between, if indeed there are any laughs at all. But don't mourn for the death of the beach party movies. AIP managed to sustain the series for several films, plus they managed to crank out a number of spin-offs. Annette returns to her beach party role in the film Pajama Party, which Frankie Avalon more or less opted out of (his character is said to have joined the Army, leaving Annette free to receive the advances of teen heartthrob Tommy Kirk, who here is a Martian. Look man, I didn't write it). Frankie shows up in Ski Party, which is basically just a beach party movie on the ski slopes. He also pops up in another goofball AIP bikini film, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, also starring Vincent Price at his absolute hammiest. And "the whole gang" returns years later for the 1980s film Back to the Beach, in which Frankie and Annette, now married, must content with being old squares while their kids discover punk rock. And yes, in case you're worried, the punk dialogue is every bit as on-target as the previously displayed beatnik and biker dialogue. Truth be told, any one beach party movie by itself can be fun. They're ridiculously campy, occasionally funny, and surprisingly freewheeling about the drinking, smoking, and sex. As a group, they're a little much to bite off all at once, but only an idiot like me would do that anyway. And they have much hipper music than you might think -- once again, much hipper than the Elvis movies, which is sad given Elvis' history. You know, as the king of rock and roll and all. The songs by Frankie and Annette are cornball bubblegum pop fare, but you can't beat appearances by Donna Loren, Dick Dale and the Del Tones, and even a very young Stevie Wonder. Plus the score for the films was created by AIP house composer Les Baxter, who always does good work. At the very least, you should see at least one beach party movie just to behold the phenomenon that is Candy Johnson's go-go dancing. Labels: Beach Party Tonight, Musicals, Studio: AIP, Year: 1963 posted by Keith at 7:51 PM | 0 Comments Saturday, September 18, 2004Murders in the Rue Morgue
1971, United States. Starring Jason Robards, Herbert Lom, Christine Kaufmann, Adolfo Celi, Maria Perschy, Michael Dunn, Lilli Palmer, Peter Arne, Rosalind Elliot, Marshall Jones, Maria Martin, Ruth Plattes. Directed by Gordon Hessler. Available on DVD from Amazon
Director Gordon Hessler is back for another AIP Poe adaptation, this one cleverer than most in the way it incorporates the Poe elements into the film. As we saw with The Oblong Box and many others, it was common to take the title of a Poe short story or poem, apply it to the film, then have not the slightest thing to do with the Poe story of the same title in the plot. Murders in the Rue Morgue takes the title from Poe's story, but instead of adapting it or discarding it, sets its action around a theatrical production of Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue that becomes plagued with murders and yet another vengeful disfigured madman who was buried alive. According to Hessler, this was done because Murders in the Rue Morgue had already been made into a movie, and everyone knew how it ended. Thus there was no suspense in the film - not that Hessler was all that great at creating suspense anyway. Murders in the Rue Morgue is also a good example of how important Vincent Price was to the success of these films. His special talent was making bad movies good, and making boring scenes interesting simply because he's so much fun to watch. Even The Oblong Box, which is heavy on Price sitting there and talking, is made more enjoyable simply by virtue of the fact that Price is doing the talking. By all accounts, he should have been the man in the lead for Murders in the Rue Morgue as well, but contract disputes led to him taking time away from AIP, or so the story goes. The contract dispute was settled, but Price came back and went to work on The Abominable Dr. Phibes rather than on this next Poe adaptation with Hessler. For all I know, though, he could simply have been to busy with Phibes to do this picture, and contract negotiations never came into it. Whatever the case, The Abominable Dr. Phibes is considered by many including myself to be a deliciously macabre horror classic. Murders in the Rue Morgue, on the other hand, is regarded as something less than classic, when it is regarded at all. It's another in that long line of "not bad, not great" films that manage to satisfy people who are predisposed to like a particular type of film (in this case, gothic horror) but certainly won't win over any new fans.
With Price unavailable, AIP went shopping for a new leading man and hooked Jason Robards, fresh off his stint with Sergio Leone in Once Upon a Time in the West. Robards was a real catch of a lead at the time, but he looks about as thrilled to be in this film as I would be to find myself the winner of Celine Dion's complete discography. That is to say, not very. I like Jason Robards a lot, but it seems that he considers Murders in the Rue Morgue to be the type of film that was beneath him. I'm never a big fan of the "this type of film is beneath me" attitude. Hey man, work is work, and it's not like the people who sport this attitude have artistically impeccable resumes. Instead of just giving it their all and turning in a memorable performance - the kind that can make a bad movie good, the kind we'd expect from a man like Vincent Price - too often these stars half-ass their way through the film just to collect the paycheck. Robards is never bad in this film, but neither is he ever engaging. He looks bored, and his performance lacks the conviction and enthusiasm it requires to work. He plays Cesar Charron, the most American Frenchman you'll ever hear. Didn't Robards know that when playing a foreigner -- any foreigner - you're supposed to fake a British accent? Cesar is the lead actor and manager of a Parisian theater troupe performing their stage version of Poe's ghoulish tale. Things get going quick. If nothing else, Hessler could make an interesting start of his films. The actors discover that the man who was supposed to be playing the ape in the play was murdered, and the murderer himself had donned the costume and done the entire performance himself. You'd think a backstage murder followed by the murderer going on stage to rave reviews would be enough to cause a postponement, but I guess the show must always go on. It's soon revealed that the murderer is Rene Marot, played by Herbert Lom, who starred in Mysterious Island and Hammer's version of Phantom of the Opera, which is fitting since this film has more to do with Phantom than with Poe's story. It could be that Lom got the role because he already had himself a mask. Yes, as with The Oblong Box, our murderer is an unhinged madman with a disfigured face. It turns out that Marot was once a member of Cesar's acting troupe, but after an accident resulted in real acid rather than prop acid being splashed on his face, he ended up killing himself. Or did he? Well, no, of course he didn't, because there he is a-killin' his former stage mates. But why? And how did he survive burial? And how does all this tie in to the bizarre nightmares Cesar's wife, Madeline (Christine Kaufmann) has been having, in which a masked man whirls an ax around and around before chasing her down a hall until she sees a corpse fall from the rafters? And what's with the midget? Answering these questions is how the film passes its running time.
As was often the case with Hessler's Poe films, the story is either complex or convoluted, depending on your mood, and there are a lot of disparate plot threads that have to be woven together by film's end. The film's ambitions perhaps outreach its ability to deliver, but it still makes for an interesting experiment and attempt to do something just a little bit different. There are a lot of dream sequences. Well, no. There's one dream sequence, repeated over and over, sometimes with a little more information added here and there as the film attempts to unravel the central mystery. Murders in the Rue Morgue has fewer scenes of people sitting around talking about the plot than previous Hessler Poe adaptations. The nightmare is effective, and the strange slow-motion scenes of the masked tuxedo-wearing killer whirling a giant medieval ax over his head is suitably spooky. Hessler also makes good use of the shadows and all the billowing cloaks and capes one is afforded in a period production, but overall the film is too brightly lit and lacks the chilling atmosphere of AIP's better Poe films or Hammer's gothic horrors. Outside of the dream sequence and a few shots around a carnival, Hessler's direction lacks direction, if you know what I mean, and it really fails to create any sort of impact or identity for the film. European genre regular Adolfo Celi (Thunderball, Danger: Diabolik!) is on hand as the captain of the most useless police force in France. I mean, Marot manages to stroll up and kill a man with a vial of acid while Celi and the the cops are standing not more than three feet away and looking right at him. Then they can't even catch the man, presumably because he does "billowing Jack the Ripper cloak" running to confuse them. One would think that an acid-scarred madman in all black and wearing a ceramic mask would attract attention, even in France. On several occasions, the police prove utterly incompetent at catching Marot, even though all it seems like they'd have to do is stick their hand out and grab him. He doesn't exactly keep a low profile. He keeps coming back to the theater. He keeps murdering members of the cast. How hard can it be? He even manages to evade police while dressed as a monkey despite the fact that they knew from the beginning of the play that he was on stage yet again as the ape, having murdered yet another cast member who was supposed to play the ape. And still he manages to escape. In another scene, police corner Marot and his assistant, the diminutive Pierre Triboulet (an excellent Michael Dunn) in an old crypt/theater. Marot escapes yet again, and then they just seem to sort of let Pierre go free despite the fact that he's obviously an accomplice, an accessory to murder, a kidnapper, and also guilty of perpetrating annoying Punch and Judy puppet plays on the citizens of Paris. If one is going to worry about the inability of the police to catch a dwarf who is standing right next to them or successfully nab an acid-scarred murderer kneeling before them, one may as well go on and wonder why, as monkey actors keep getting strangled, no one ever thinks to cancel the show or, for that matter, post any sort of security back stage even when they know Marot is going to be back there skulking about. I mean, it's really not that good of a play they seem to be putting on, so what's the harm in taking a few nights off while your cast is being stalked and killed?
You may be worried that the change of venue from England to Paris (although the film was actually shot in Spain) means no bawdy ale house shenanigans. Well, you'd be wrong. Have faith in AIP. Jason Robards still finds time to visit a brothel full of can-can dancers and, yes, patrons hollerin' and groping women and waving mugs around in the air. Unfortunately, the brothel scene showcases another of the film's many weaknesses, in this case it timidness. No gratuitous nudity? Not even in the bawdy ale-house scene? In France? Are you telling me those repressed Brits are willing to doff their blouses in the peasant pub, but those liberated French women are going to remain modestly clothed? What crazy kind of world is this? For that matter, Marot's murders are fairly tame in comparison to other AIP and Hammer films of the time. I guess there's only so much you can do with acid, but even when the ax comes into play, the camera is atypically shy in lingering over the grue. The goriest setpieces come in Cesar's stage show, where they're firmly established as Grand Guignol and "just part of the act, folks," thus lacking any real sense of shock. If I'm going to be pretentious enough to use the term Grand Guignol, then I want to apply it to the film itself, not to the play within the film. The film's twist ending is telegraphed about half an hour too early, but it's still a decently interesting ride before you arrive at the big revelation. Once again, the horribly scarred face of the killer is not all that terrifying, but it's not built up as such as much as Edward's face in The Oblong Box, so that's no real disappointment. No, the only real disappointment in Murders in the Rue Morgue is how substandard the whole thing ends up being, thanks largely to Jason Robards' disinterest in everything around him. His boredom infects the viewer and makes an already dubiously boring film even more so. As I said, this is the sort of film that could easily have been saved by Vincent Price, but without his services, and with a leading man who couldn't care less whether or not he was on screen, Murders in the Rue Morgue is dragged down by the weight of its own plot. With no conviction, with no sense of horror communicated by Robards, the movie is sapped of any tension it might have otherwise generated. All of Hessler's Poe films suffered from the same problem: his inability to pace a film or keep the entire thing interesting. With Vincent Price in the lead, you could cover, more or less, for that deficiency. Without Price, you mostly just spend the entire movie missing Vincent Price. It's a shame, too, because despite Robards throwing his little fit, the rest of the cast is pretty good. Celi is as he always is, only this time with one of those fake upturned Poroit mustaches the French so adored at the time. Michael Dunn is wonderful and mysterious as Pierre. He's actually more interesting than any of the principal characters, and one wonders more about his never-told back-story than the story that becomes central to the plot's resolution. The French period costumes are good, and the carnival-theater setting is sometimes interesting, but never as sinister or effective as is should be. Despite some promise and some quality moments scattered throughout more mundane events, Murders in the Rue Morgue is really nothing more than a good example of something that might have been. It's not good or bad enough to be striking in any way, and so remains a minor effort in AIP's Poe canon, and if it is remembered at all, it will be as "the one that would have been good if Vincent Price had starred in it." Labels: Director: Gordon Hessler, Horror: Poe, Netflix Diary, Studio: AIP, Year: 1971 posted by Keith at 11:38 PM | 0 Comments The Oblong Box
1969, United States. Starring Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Alister Williamson, Peter Arne, Hilary Dwyer, Rupert Davies, Uta Levka, Sally Geeson, Maxwell Shaw, Carl Rigg, Harry Baird. Directed by Gordon Hessler. Available on DVD from Amazon
Hessler and Price are together again (for the first time) for a Poe adaptation that actually has a little something to do with Poe, or at least as much as any AIP Poe film has to do with Poe. Poe's short story, "The Oblong Box," has to do with a man who witnesses the obsession of an artist friend on a ship with an oblong shipping crate. So committed is the man, seeming delirious and mad, to this box that when the ship is wrecked during a storm, he sinks to the bottom of the ocean with the box rather than abandon it. Not to spoil the surprise, but it was a coffin containing his dead wife, though no one knew of the contents lest they refuse to travel overseas with a corpse. Hessler's film does indeed contain a coffin that is referred to as an oblong box. And there is an artist, though he himself has no coffin. Beyond that, and this film has as much to do with Poe as does the average movie in which someone inherits a wily, diaper-wearing ape that solves a crime. Vincent Price stars as Sir Julian Markham, a wealthy member of the British gentry who we first meet in Africa as his brother, Edward, is strung up and disfigured in a voodoo ritual for some horrible transgression he has committed against the native peoples. Upon their return home, Edward's sanity deteriorates and Julian must keep his mad, hideous brother locked in an upstairs room while Julian himself attempts to lead a normal life with his bride-to-be, Elizabeth (Hilary Dwyer, once again). Edward, though losing his mind, is scheming with the family lawyer, Trench, to fake his own death using more voodoo so that he can be free of the confines in which his brother has placed him. Nothing goes as planned, however, and rather than being freed, Edward ends up buried alive and abandoned by Trench. Luckily for Edward, his grave is robbed by body snatchers working for the local surgeon, Dr. Neuharrt (none other than Christopher Lee), who is always in need of fresh cadavers for his experiments. Edward vows revenge on those who left him to die in the grave, just as he vows to find a black magic cure for his affliction and the truth behind why he was disfigured in the first place.
Hessler, working with a script from frequent AIP writers Lawrence Huntington and Christopher Wicking, has crafted a complex tale with multiple plot points that must be woven together. It's ambitious for a horror film and for AIP to launch into such a labyrinthine narrative, doubly so when it is injected with all the civil rights politics that surround the movie's African prologue. The Markhams are plantation owners in Africa, keeping a host of slaves. Upon his return from the so-called Dark Continent, Julian seems to have had some sort of social and racial awakening and comments on the evils committed by the white man in Africa. Horror and science fiction films have often been at the forefront of tackling tough social and political issues in the guise of a tale about some monster or invading aliens. Throughout the 1950s, much of the rhetoric was decidedly one-sided and conservative, motivated as it was by the Cold War and Red Scare. The Oblong Box is a product of its time, the late 1960s, and reflects a more liberal and open-minded view of race and the need to own up to the atrocities committed during the colonial era - which, remember, had really only ended twenty or twenty-five years earlier - and then only to pass from colonialism by a nation-state to a sort of pseudo-colonialism perpetrated by large businesses. The Oblong Box' more progressive politics are similar, then to the same director's more liberal take on good versus evil, Christianity versus Paganism in Cry of the Banshee. Of course, it's still an AIP gothic horror film, so whatever politics may be on offer are wrapped in a tale about a disfigured madman coving his face with a crimson mask as he slits the throats of those who wronged him. And now that you mention it, why yes there is a scene of drunken, bawdy revelry in a lower class inn where people wave beer mugs about and buxom wenches dance on the tables and have their bosoms revealed. After all, AIP knows what people want, and people want buxom wenches dancing on tables. AIP's gothic "Poe" films are often compared to Hammer Studio's gothic films, which obvious influence heavily the look of AIP's films. Those comparisons were bound to get more common in the late 60s, early 1970s when the two studios teamed up for the first time in what would seem to be an obvious good match. The result was Hammer's superior vampire film, The Vampire Lovers, the first in the Karnstein vampire trilogy (which continued with the vastly inferior Lust for a Vampire and wonderful Twins of Evil) and the first Hammer film to feature nudity. Apparently someone at AIP told the reserved Brits that hey, it's the 1970s and it's okay to show some boobs. AIP, for their part, found themselves with the services of Hammer legend Christopher Lee, and it doesn't take a genius to know that the first thing they should do with the man is team him up with Vincent Price. Unfortunately, AIP seemed lost as to exactly how to use Lee, and so this screen pairing of two of the great icons of horror is more an exercise is wasted opportunity than it is the celebration and masterpiece it should be. Lee's doctor possesses very little character. We know he pays to have corpses delivered to him so he can expand his craft, but considering the fact that just about every doctor in a gothic horror movie does the same, that's hardly a defining characteristic. All in all, he's very dull despite Lee bringing his usual air of authoritative dignity to the role. What's worse, however, is that he and Price have only a single scene together, at the very end of the film, and it lasts for but a few brief seconds. Really, now! Why put Lee and Price together in a film then not put them together in the film? Lee is wasted in a throw-away role, and the film fails utterly to capitalize on this historic meeting of horror superstars. Or lack of meeting, I suppose I should say.
The film's other major mistake is ever bothering to show Sir Edward's horrible disfigurement. I mean, I know they have to do the big reveal in the final showdown between he and Julian, but the result is decidedly less than it should be. When you build a character up throughout the entire film as being the very picture of nightmarish terror, you have to come up with something better than some oatmeal on the cheek and a silly piggy nose. He looks like the doctor in that episode of The Twilight Zone where the beautiful woman thinks she is ugly because she doesn't have a wretched piggy face. Up until this point, the crimson mask has been effective and even a bit eerie. It winds up being much more frightening than the face beneath it despite attempts at the contrary. I guess it's the old Lovecraft conundrum, meaning that any adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft tale is doomed to failure because his stories revolve around beings so absolutely horrifying that simply looking at them will drive the sanest man completely mad. There's no way to adequately realize that on screen, and so film adaptations are inevitably letdowns when the monster makes its appearance. Likewise for Edward's monstrous face. The film would have been better off to never show it. Cry of the Banshee was wise enough to never show the werewolf creature in its entirety, because it knew it looked silly. Wrapped in shadows, it was rather effective, however, and The Oblong Box should have kept Edward's face a mystery. The Oblong Box has some other problems, as most of AIP's post-Roger Corman films tended to have. It's a very talky movie, though unlike Cry of the Banshee, the conversation is more interesting if for no other reason than much of it involves Vincent Price. This is one of the more subdued films in the AIP gothic horror canon. The murders are directed with style and are fairly tame by the standards set in other films. There's blood, sure, but not much blood, and the camera lingers only slightly over the carnage. In addition, there are no torture scenes and, excepting one would-be robber-prostitute, the women of the film are mercifully free from the cruelty being perpetrated. Hessler's direction, like much of the film, is reserved. Maybe even a tad uninspired though perfectly competent. His biggest problem, as it would be in many of his AIP horror films, is the pace. The Oblong Box has several good moments. No great ones, but plenty to satisfy. Unfortunately the stretch between those moments seems much longer than it is or should be. There is also a fair amount of padding, more than one would want in a film that runs just over ninety minutes. The bawdy alehouse sequence goes on for too long, and conversations seem to drag on for a few minutes more than they need to. There are very few surprises in the film, so watching the lead-up get drawn out "in anticipation" is irritating at times. That said, the twist ending and revelation, though also not exactly a surprise by the time you get to it, is still effective. Though it has nothing to do with Poe, Poe probably would have approved. Both Price and Lee give good performances, but both of them also seem to betray a certain lack of enthusiasm. Price, in particular, is uncharacteristically subdued, playing as he is the more or less "straight" man. But it's not his fault. His character, like Lee's is given very little of interest to do. His job consists mostly of syrupy "let's begin our lives anew" scenes with his wife-to-be or moderately aghast, "but surely that can't be!" scenes that are never as urgent as they should be. Hessler simply can't sustain the film through the doldrums, where as a director like Hammer's Terence Fisher could make down-time in his films every bit as interesting as the parts where Peter Cushing was driving a stake through someone's heart. There is no real tension in the film.
With Lee is a tiny role and Price confined to looking forlorn in his country estate, the bulk of the film's action falls onto the shoulders of Alistair Williamson as Sir Edward. And since he spends most of the movie with a bag over his head, it's difficult to connect with him. The best scene involves his being taken awkwardly by two friendly drunks to the local brothel for the aforementioned rowdy alehouse scene that every AIP film had to have. It's a moment of humor in an otherwise humorless film. I didn't realize that so many beautiful women would be so willing to bed a guy walking around with a red sack over his face. Maybe it's worth trying sometime. Williamson, like Lee, appeared in a number of Hammer productions including The Evil of Frankenstein, Curse of the Werewolf, and The Gorgon. He also went on to a smaller role alongside Vincent Price in The Abominable Dr. Phibes. His character in The Oblong Box, like the movie itself, is too reserved to be fully effective. He manages to be a charmer even with a hood covering his wicked voodoo face, but his fits of homicidal rage are not effectively actualized. He ends up being rather dull for a hooded maniac suffering a voodoo curse. As you know by now, I have a soft spot for gothic horror films from this era of filmmaking, as well as for anything with Vincent Price. The Oblong Box is certainly not the zenith of his collaboration with AIP for the Poe cycle. That came in movies like Masque of the Red Death, Haunted Palace, and The Conqueror Worm (aka The Witchfinder General). Compared to those, The Oblong Box and Price's other outings with Hessler definitely fall well into the range of "lesser" works. That said, The Oblong Box is not without its charm. Price's character is complex even though he's more reserved that usual, and the revelation about what happened to him and his brother in Africa is a nice twist that makes the film's criticism of colonialism and racism something more intelligent than a simple black and white (if you'll excuse me) morality call. For most of the film, Julian is a likable character, though his willingness to snatch a body in order to hide the fact at a funeral that his brother was turned into a creature hints at a darker tendency that is further exposed in the film's excellent (minus the pigface make-up for Edward) finale. The supporting cast buoyed by Peter Arne (Khartoum, Murders in the Rue Morgue, Straw Dogs) as Trench is solid, and the music is effective. Set design and art direction is also typically good. AIP may not have been quite as good at this stuff as Hammer, but they were no slouches, and everything looks authentic and gorgeous. These positive elements conspire with my innate love of these kinds of movies to push The Oblong Box just into the lower end of my "like it" column. Seasoned fans and completists like myself will roll with the film's slower portions and appreciate the positive aspects. It's certainly not the first AIP gothic horror film I'd recommend, nor the first Vincent Price film. It's not a film about which one should get especially excited, but I certainly didn't mind spending some time with it. Labels: Director: Gordon Hessler, Horror: Poe, Netflix Diary, Stars: Vincent Price, Studio: AIP, Year: 1969 posted by Keith at 11:34 PM | 0 Comments Cry of the Banshees
1970, United States. Starring Vincent Price, Hilary Dwyer, Carl Rigg, Patrick Mower, Essy Persson, Marshall Jones, Elisabeth Bergner, Stephen Chase, Sally Geeson, Hugh Griffith. Directed by Gordon Hessler. Available on DVD from Amazon
I'm guessing child protection agencies today would cringe at the thought of a wee sprout staying up until two or three in the morning just so he can thrill as Boris Karloff lurks in some shadows or Vincent Price bugs out his eyes at some fantastic and horrible sight. But for you Teleport City readers, such behavior should be par for the course, and I figure its healthier than watching Nelly swipe a credit card through some stripper's ass cheeks. The first AIP horror films I remember seeing were Cry of the Banshee and The Terror. I would see Cry of the Banshee pop up once every couple of years, and then when I got cable television, The Terror seemed to pop up every other night. Cry of the Banshee, as I recounted back in my review of Plague of the Zombies, I first saw on a wildly enjoyable night that also boasted broadcast of the Hammer version of The Hound of the Baskervilles and Darby O'Gill and the Little People, from back when children's movies used to be fun and imaginative and sometimes even dark, scary, and not filled with sassy pre-teens driving go-carts and having sleepovers. Ironically - at least, I think it's ironic -- Darby O'Gill and the Little People not only featured the leprechauns you would expect, but also featured a banshee, and a fairly chilling apparition it was to my young eyes. Cry of the Banshee, however, did not feature a banshee, or even a regular ghost who simply fond of howling. It did feature some crying, but with a title like Cry of the Banshee one expects a banshee. That didn't stop me from loving the movie, however, and as the years passed I mistakenly thought that the banshee I was remembering was from Cry of the Banshee. I mean, that makes sense, right? After all, I was young and it was already pretty late. I also remembered a weird glowing dog that I assume was something out of The Hound of the Baskervilles, though now that I think about it, it probably wasn't. I guess I'll find out soon enough, since The Hound of the Baskervilles is coming up soon.
But anyway, a few weeks ago I was watching Darby O'Gill and the Little People on TV and well, what do you know? There was that banshee! I figured it was abut time, then, that I sat down and refreshed my memory as to the actual contents of Cry of the Banshee despite the fact that I'm always a bit hesitant to revisit childhood favorites - not because I'm afraid I'll realize how awful they are, but because I still won't realize how awful they are and will thus go right on praising the merits of a film like Cry of the Banshee even when the whole of the free world has pronounced it rather on the shabby side. But Cry of the Banshee doesn't just have nostalgia on its side. It also has Vincent Price, and a film has to phenomenally bad before Vincent Price can't make it watchable. He's one of my five favorite actors of all time, sitting on his thrown alongside the likes of Cary Grant, Peter Cushing, Robert Mitchum, and Michael Caine. In the case of Cry of the Banshee, he's sitting on his thrown while also wearing huge poofy Henry VIII robes. Price more than any other actor understood exactly how far over the top he had to go for every film he was in. Movies like Laura proved he was an accomplished and well-trained dramatic actor who, had he been given the chance, could have become known as such. But it was horror for Price, and horror is all the better for his participation. He knew when a film was could and thus could be played straight, but more importantly, he knew when a film was bad and required that he chew some scenery. The worse the film, the more Price would escalate his character, though he never crossed over into the realm of intentional wink-at-the-camera irony unless it was specifically called for. What made him so good was that even at the height of his hamminess he always made you believe the character. As we've discussed in relation to Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and all the actors at Hammer, Price goes about portraying each character with gusto and total conviction. He was also one of the most well-respected intellectuals that acting ever saw, which puts him in the company of Christopher Lee, among others. Believe it or not, there was a time when you could go through movies and still find some gentlemen who cherished intelligence, culture, and wit. Price was reportedly a startlingly well-informed man of the world who could discuss with authority any number of topics from art history to the arcane. It'd be nice if there were more stars around today like him, but I reckon the fact that there aren't makes men like Price and Lee all the more impressive. The fact that they were in movies like Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs and Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf respectively, didn't keep them from being men of dignity, refinement, and sophistication. So remember, when you get up in the morning, to try and live your life a little more like Vincent Price and Christopher Lee. Another similarity between Price and Lee is that both men were so, so damn good at being evil on screen, and in particular and playing evil figures of authority. Price was the defining figure in just about all of AIP's Poe films, and he spent much of the time relishing his role as a thoroughly horrible figure of menace who, despite how horrendous he is, you can't help but kind of like since Price injects each character with his own undeniable charisma and glee for the macabre. His most famously rotten villain is perhaps that of the witchfinder general in AIP's wonderful Conqueror Worm, a film that is criminally MIA on DVD at the moment. Following not too far behind is the vile Lord Edward Whitman in Cry of the Banshee, a character so totally devoid of even the faintest trace of likeability that he inhabits a film constructed entirely around the anticipation of seeing this right bastard get his comeuppance. Whitman and his aristocratic family lord over a small Scottish town with an iron fist. Whitman is particularly fond of tracking down Scotland's few remaining pagans and either forcing them to convert to Christianity or simply torturing them to death. It doesn't really matter which, as long as he gets to burn someone alive. As is par for the course, many innocents suffer at the hands of Whitman and his thuggish bunch, but when they cross an actual group of witches with actual dark and mysterious powers, the Whitmans find themselves suddenly under a curse that sees the family members dying off one by one in the most spectacularly gory of fashions, generally at the hands, or paws, or claws of a hideous werewolfy sort of thing played in human form by Patrick Mower, who we last saw on Teleport City in The Devil Rides Out. The guy just can't seem to keep himself from getting involved with witches, can he? He worms his way into the Whitman family by romancing young Maureen Whitman, played by AIP regular Hilary Dwyer (aka Hilary Heath), who also starred alongside Price in The Conqueror Worm and The Oblong Box. She plays the closest thing this film has to a sympathetic character in the Whitman family, though her willingness to turn a blind eye other father's brutality flaws her character, just as her more enlightened and educated brother, Harry (Carl Rigg, also in AIP's The Oblong Box), seems at first to be a sympathetic character, right up until he starts slitting witch throats in defense of his father's reign of terror. You may be asking yourself one of two questions. First, what does this have to do with banshees? Second, what does this have to do with Edgar Allen Poe? The answer to both is that it has about as much to do with banshees as it has to do with Poe, which is very little, if anything at all. The "Poe films" was the blanket term applied to all of AIP's period horror films, even though quite a few of them had nothing to do with the works of Poe. For that matter, the ones that did often did little more than borrow the title and maybe throw up a convenient quote from Poe. Sometimes it would even be from the same work as that used for the title of the film! But the plots rarely bore any resemblance to the source material. I'm not unfamiliar with the works of Poe, as any self-respecting fan of horror and chills should have read at least a portion of the man's work, but I'm no student of Poe. I don't think he ever wrote anything called "Cry of the Banshee," at least not that I could find.
So a Poe film that isn't a Poe film is par for the course when it comes to AIP gothic horrors. It was just easier to relate all the movies to Edgar Allen Poe and be done with it, sort of like making all Italian sword and sandal films about Hercules. But what about the whole lack of banshee thing? That just doesn't seem proper for a film whose title primes you for some serious banshee action, or as much action as a banshee can afford. I reckon for my non-Scottish brethren who are also unacquainted with the various types of spooks and spirits we have haunting the moors in our homeland, I should tell you what a banshee is. It's a ghost, a female ghost, who appears and howls out the name of some unlucky soul, signifying that within 24 hours of hearing the banshee's howl, that person will meet their demise. If banshees do much more than that and scare Darby O'Gill, then I missed that part of Scottish supernatural heritage class. But it doesn't matter so much for this movie, in which there are no banshees. One scene pays lip service to banshees when a howl of the damn arises from outside. Someone says, "Hmm, must be a banshee. That sucks." Maybe that isn't the exact quote, but it's close. Anyway, anyone who has ever been locked in mortal or immortal combat with the forces of the supernatural will recognize that the howl isn't from a banshee' it's a werewolf's howl, an identification seemingly confirmed by the fact that a killer wolf creature shows up to dispense witch's justice. The reason Cry of the Banshee is called Cry of the Banshee even though it doesn't have any banshees in it is because AIP was in the practice of coming up with a title, selling the film based on the title, then drumming up a script to go with the title after the fact. According to director Gordon Hessler, who shot many of AIP's most sadistic gothic horror films, the original script for Cry of the Banshee was awful, so he and an associate set about doing rewrites. By the time they were finished, it was an entirely different picture, and AIP was upset since there was no banshee in the film. Some more rewrites were done to work in a mention of the banshee, and that was that. How bad the original script was and what sort of banshee quotient it contained remains a mystery. But frankly, given his track record and the evidence of his rewriting, Gordon Hessler was hardly the guy to be criticizing scripts. I like a lot a Hessler films (The Oblong Box, Scream and Scream Again, Murders in the Rue Morgue, and even his foray into ninja cinema, Pray for Death), even love a few of them (Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park). But it's not like he was making high art. The script for Cry of the Banshee as it is filmed isn't exactly a stunner. As with lots of AIP films, there is a lot of talking. Some of it interesting, some of it less so. An uneven pace hampers the film, made worse by the fact that you either hate or don't care about any of the characters, meaning the only thing you have to look forward to is their inevitable death at the hands of Itchy the Werewolf Thing. Cry of the Banshee does manage to contain everything you need to have a successful "burn the witches!" movie. You have the dirty peasants. The rack. The hangings. The random accusations of witchcraft. And as was de rigueur for all AIP gothics, the random "bawdy ale house" scene where patrons shout a lot and spill their ale as busty wenches dance on the tables and have their blouses ripped open for the requisite gratuitous boob shot. What sets Cry of the Banshee apart from other similar period witchcraft movies is that, first, it ends up containing actual witches instead of just a bunch of hot but innocent women accused of being witches, and second, the witches are the nominal good guys. Oona the head witch, played by Elizabeth Bergner (who worked mainly in German and Austrian productions) looking kind of like Debbie Harry does now but with wilder "crazy witch woman" hair, wants nothing but to be left alone so her and her coven can frolic semi-nude in the woods like a bunch of rejects from some community theater production of Hair. As far as pagan rites go, theirs are pretty lame and consist mostly of sinewy extras thrashing about and doing "jazz hands!" The whole thing reminds me that I want to start a "take back paganism" movement meant to reclaim the Old Religion from the bunch of crystal-wearing hippies and new age sweetness and light freaks who have turned it into the most gutless and goofy pseudo-religion around. I mean, look at the old pagans. Scottish highlanders. Vikings. You think these cats pranced about all blessed out and talking about Goddess and greeting everyone with a hug and a "Blessed be!" Hell no! They ate each other, for crying out loud! Now I'm not saying that we need to start eating each other, but paganism really does nee dot get back to its pre-hippie roots. Except, umm, except for those cute goth girls who are into it. They can stay. Silly though they may be, Oona and her crew don't bother anyone. In fact, most of the villagers seem nominally Christian at best, forced into paying lip service to the belief but not-so-secretly still sympathetic to their native religion with its camping trips, drunken revelries and nudity. Who wouldn't be? You gonna willingly trade that in for a religion full of dour-faced old men with bulldog jowls barking on about how sinful you are as they whack your knuckles with a ruler and tell you to stop showing so much ankle in your dress? But the Whitmans and their sidekick priest will have no pagans in their territory. They harass Oona and even murder the guy who leaps about as if joyously proclaiming, "Behold! I am a fawn! A spriteful fawn!" Thus, you know, the curse and all.
None of the pagans save Oona have much of a character, so even though we're allowed to identify with the oppressed indigenous religion, we can't really identify with them. Even Oona is pretty one-dimensional, and you can't side with her entirely since she choreographed such lame pagan rites. Luckily, the Whitmans and The Church TM are so vile, so reprehensible, so thoroughly corrupt that Oona doesn't have to do much to be better than they. The casting of the witches and pagans as the good guys, and Christianity as the murderous oppressors seems bolder than it actually was for the time. Looking back from an era in which being negative about any organized religion is once again a taboo, Cry of the Banshee's pro-witch agenda seems daring. But remember that the 1970s were a time in which people were actually willing to make risky political and social statements. The late 1960s had paved the way via a series of films that cast Satanists in a more sympathetic, if not entirely heroic, light, and witch movies in which the church is portrayed as vicious and corrupt were a dime a dozen in the 1970s. Even so, it's nice to see the underdog represented and, for a change, even victorious over the wretched forces of the Inquisition. The other thing Cry of the Banshee has in common with the witch hunt movies that would come before and after it is a sadistic vicious streak a mile wide. Interrogations are extreme and the witches' vengeance doesn't stop to consider that some members of the Whitman family are not as evil as their father. Cry of the Banshee doesn't revel in or sexualize torture to the point of the most infamous title in the witch hunt sub-genre, Mark of the Devil, but the torture is still plenty explicit and manages to work in a couple gratuitous bare breasts. Everything is augmented by the film's nasty demeanor. The acting is uniformly good. Price's character lacks the depth and nasty appeal of his best villains, Matthew Hopkins from Conqueror Worm and Prospero from Mask of the Red Death, but he's suitably evil and Price is always a joy to watch as he scowls, sneers, and makes his bug-eyed "aghast" face. The supporting players are all good as well. Mower as the bestial Roderick shows suitable menace and, in line with the film's nasty streak of cruelty, never shows any remorse over the fact that he transforms into a hideous beast that claws out throats, even though he's mostly murdering the Whitman women before getting down to extracting a vague but undoubtedly deliciously gory vengeance on Lord Edward during the film's eerie finale. There's also a great score by famed exotica composer Les Baxter, who aside from writing tunes about pyramids and Polynesia and various sorts of globe-trotting adventure, was also an accomplished compose of music for films. AIP used him frequently either to score their own films or provide replacement scores for imported and dubbed films like Black Sunday, Baron Blood (both films by Mario Bava), and a pile of sword and sandal epics. Baxter's score sets the mood perfectly, as do the bizarre animated opening credits by none other than Monty Python's resident animator and future director Terry Gilliam. The main problem with Cry of the Banshee is that all of this should be a lot more interesting than it turns out to be. With naked witches, pagan rites, vengeful landlords, corrupt priests, witch burnings, and a ratty werewolf tearing out throats, Cry of the Banshee should be a thrilling, chilling, grotesque affair. It manages a few chills, a fair deal of grotesqueness, but definitely no thrills until perhaps the very final shot. As I said earlier, too much of the film is taken up with unlikable characters saying uninteresting things. If I was coming into this film without a bias toward Price and costumed gothic horror films, it would probably be less enjoyable and a whole lot more boring. But those biases are firmly in place, as well as my own nostalgia over watching the film as a kid, so Cry of the Banshee is still an entertaining film for me. Not Price's best, by far, and not AIP's best gothic horror or even their best witch hunter movie. But good enough and mean enough to satisfy the darker, more malicious parts of my brain. Labels: Director: Gordon Hessler, Horror: Poe, Netflix Diary, Stars: Vincent Price, Studio: AIP, Year: 1970 posted by Keith at 11:26 PM | 0 Comments Tuesday, September 14, 2004The Premature Burial
1962, United States.Starring Ray Milland, Hazel Court, Richard Ney, Heather Angel, Alan Napier, John Dierkes, Dick Miller. Directed by Roger Corman. Available on DVD (Amazon). After the runaway success of House of Usher and Pit and the Pendulum, Corman was growing dissatisfied with his AIP contract. He had proven to be a profitable director, and now he was a critically acclaimed director as well. His two films had more or less single-handedly lifted the reputation of AIP out of the realm of the drive-in circuit and established them as a genuine studio that made genuine movies with genuine class. Corman's two Poe films also lifted the flagging reputation of horror, which since its heyday at Universal during the 1930s had sunk lower and lower until it was basically considered schlock, then almost replaced entirely by science-fiction and Communist paranoia films. Hammer's Dracula and Frankenstein movies had gone a long way to revitalizing the horror genre, but Corman's Poe films undoubtedly contributed a great deal to solidifying the resuscitation, at broad but especially in the United States where theater owners were proud to see that yep, we could make 'em just as good here as they could over there. So while Corman was basically getting along with AIP head honchos Sam Arkoff and John Nicholson, he thought that maybe in light of his more or less revolutionizing the way he, the studio, and horror films were regarded in America, he might be entitled to a better contract. AIP politely disagreed with him, and so Corman took himself and his idea for the third Poe film elsewhere. Because Vincent Price was under contract to AIP, he couldn't cast Price in the lead role, and so he set about looking for a new actor to fulfill the spotlight in his production of The Premature Burial. Corman eventually came up with Ray Milland. Milland was blissfully ignorant of the fact that one day in the future AIP was going to graft his head to Rosie Grier, and so he agreed to take on the Poe-perfect role of a man obsessed with the belief that he will be buried alive, as was his cataleptic father. Because Richard Matheson was also under contract to AIP, Corman turned to screenwriters Charles Beaumont (7 Faces of Dr. Lao) and Ray Russell (X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes).
The essence of the films, however, came with Corman. Like the previous two films, The Premature Burial would come steeped in the signature atmosphere of the Poe films: billowing fog tumbling across eerie landscapes, tormented souls, a psychedelically-tinted nightmare sequence, creepy old houses, brooding characters, and as is obvious from the title, a thing or two about being buried alive. The day Corman was to begin principal photography, he was pleased to see Arkoff (or maybe Nicholson, or maybe both of them) show up on the set to wish him good luck despite the differences they'd had over Corman's new contract. Differences, hell! It turned out that AIP had just purchased the studio for which Roger Corman was making the picture, so it was going to be an AIP film after all. Granted it was too late to recast the lead, but Milland was still thought of as an Academy Award winning actor, and not as "the white guy from The Thing with Two Heads," so his casting in the lead was something to crow about, even if the part, like all other leads in the Poe films, was tailor-made for Vincent Price. Milland plays Guy Carrell, an upstanding and intelligent member of the gentry who has a small quirk in the form of a near crippling fear of being buried alive. Now no one wants to be buried alive, except maybe show-off escape artists and people competing for fifty bucks and a burger on the latest reality show, but Guy's fear of being entombed while still among the living goes way beyond the usual healthy fear of having dirt piled on top of you. So obsessed is he with the concept that it threatens to ruin his newly minted marriage to Emily Gault, who is played by Hammer Studios veteran Hazel Court (The Curse of Frankenstein, and she would appear later in two more Corman AIP Poe films, The Raven and The Masque of the Red Death) - and if you know Hazel Court, then you don't want to derail anything involving her in your bedchamber. Guy shuns his wife and friends in favor of building the most elaborate tomb ever devised. I'm not exactly certain what Guy's occupation is, but it must have something to do with being an architectural, engineering, and mechanical genius, because the failsafe tomb he constructs for himself is a marvel. If I set out to build my own premature-burial-proof tomb, it would probably end up looking like a couple of pieces of plywood nailed together with a hole cut in the back so I can crawl out if I should happen to find myself mistaken for a corpse. Buy Guy's tomb is utterly lavish. In fact, it's seems even nicer than his home. It's comes stocked complete with a break-away coffin so that should one wake up and find oneself in such a pine box, one need only tap the side to have the whole thing spring open or fall to pieces. A variety of levers sound various alarms to let everyone know he's been mistakenly buried, just in case the half dozen or so escape hatches don't open. And should that happen and he has to wait for someone to her the bells, he can while away the hours reclining in plush overstuffed chairs, drinking brandy, and flipping through the tomb's selection of reading material. And should these ten thousand redundant escape plans all fail, he's also stocked the tomb with poison, so that when he's finished all his sausages and books, he can just kill himself rather than be bored. I've seen fewer failsafe devices on the nation's nuclear arsenal! Not that I've seen the nation's nuclear arsenal, but I can't imagine it's as well thought-out as Guy's crypt.
You'd think that would be the end of it, but various things keep happening to keep Guy preoccupied with being buried alive. Additionally, his wife and the local quack think that if he's ever going to make any progress in combating his phobia, he needs to, among other things, ditch the tomb. You'd think that since the tomb has brought him an unparalleled peace of mind, they'd just let it be. I mean, it is a nice crypt, after all, so why not keep it around? Even if he isn't buried alive, it'll be a swell place to just be buried regular and dead. This being a Corman Poe picture, it's no great leap to figure out that someone is plotting to use Guy's fear of premature burial to drive him mad and thus achieve some small sort of financial or property gain that hardly merits such a lavishly complex and psychologically difficult scheme. Some people would just whack him on the head with a candelabra and blame it on Colonel Mustard, but these people always have to construct intricate "drive them mad" intrigues that are as complicated as Guy's crypt. Like the previous two Poe films, The Premature Burial has a tendency to get bogged down beneath the weight of its own exposition-heavy plot. Unlike the previous two films, however, it doesn't have Vincent Price on hand to liven up the material. Milland gives it the ol' college try, but he seems lost with this type of material. Where as Price would have had no problem taking the script and making it work for him, Milland's portrayal comes across as excessively whiny at times and dreadfully dull at others. Still, at least Milland put effort into the role and manages a few strong scenes, which is more than could be said for the shameful display put on by Jason Robards when, some years later, he too found himself filling in for Vincent Price in a Poe film, that one being Gordon Hessler's Murders in the Rue Morgue. If nothing else, The Premature Burial proves that it wasn't just fan bias toward Vincent Price that kept Milland and the movie from earning a more cherished spot. Price was more than a fan favorite: he was an integral ingredient in making the films successful. Without him, it wasn't just that "things just aren't same." His absence from the Poe films very nearly causes them to cease being Poe films. Exactly why Price is so indispensable to Corman's Poe pictures is a little difficult to explain, but if you see them, well then you just understand. Part of it, naturally, has to do with the fact that Price was a marvel at turning a bad script into a good movie, and while the script for The Premature Burial isn't bad per se, it is perhaps something much worse: dull. Corman pours on the atmosphere - there is more fog here than in the previous two films combined, and believe me those films had a lot of fog in them - but Ray Milland simply doesn't have Price's knack for making you want to listen to him talk even during the slow spells. He never manages to invest the character with any sort of spark, and as such no real sympathy for him or his story ever develops in the viewer. It's a perfectly serviceable performance, and Milland has nothing to be ashamed of (unlike you, Jason Robards!), but, well -- just watch the end, when Guy emerges from his inevitable getting buried alive scene and has thus gone completely bonkers and launches into a gleefully mad bout of revenge. Milland is OK, but you just can't help thinking how great the whole scene would have been if Price was given a chance to do it. The rest of the cast performs with the usual competency one has come to expect by this point from both AIP and Hammer films, though some of the characters seem to be involved in subplots that never really go anywhere or get fully explained (why was Guy out there helping steal a corpse in the beginning of the film anyway?). Besides Hazel Court, who gets more of a chance to act here than she did in Curse of Frankenstein (and has one of the best scenes in the movie, during which she explains to Guy that he's already dead, and his obsession with being buried alive has, in a way, already buried him alive), familiar faces like Alan Napier (Alfred the butler from the old Batman television series) and Dick Miller (The Terror, Truck Turner, Gremlins, and about ten million other movies) are on hand to round out the cast with their solid character acting. Unfortunately, the script tends to let the performers down, and almost all the characters are either undeveloped, underdeveloped, or just plain unlikable. Without Price around to liven things up, the weakness screams at you like one of those screaming skulls. You know the ones. The ones that scream. I don't know enough to know how closely the movie clings to the original 1844 story, but by all accounts, it sticks to the source material pretty tightly. Poe himself was possessed of a very similar fear of being buried alive, which is why it figures so frequently into his stories and thus so frequently into the Poe movies. Still, after seeing a buried alive plot in both of the previous films, one can't help but hope for something a little diffe |
