JUNGLE JIM On TV

Recently on Facebook, my pal Steve Bissette changed my world by asking his followers to name something they loved and collected but could not explain; for his part, he showed an assortment of things I never knew existed: a series of French magazines called JUNGLE FILM which included photo novels based on Columbia's JUNGLE JIM movies (1948-1955) starring Johnny Weissmuller. I immediately needed to have them all, but I've had to exercise some restraint as my spending had to be channelled elsewhere, at least for the moment. But in the midst of falling in love all over again with this sometimes ridiculous film series, I discovered something I never knew before - that there was a JUNGLE JIM television series, produced by Columbia's Screen Gems branch, which ran from 1955-1956. I found an eBay merchant who was selling the entire series of 26 episodes for $11 and received my copy yesterday. I immediately sat down to watch the first four. 

The series reunites Weissmuller with Tamba, his chimpanzee companion and comedic foil, as well as an unexplained son named Skipper (Martin Huston) and an eloquent Indian assistant named Kaseem (Dean Fredericks - who went on to play the title role in a 1958-1959 series based on Milton Caniff's comicstrip STEVE CANYON). There is no indication - at least not in the four episodes I watched last night - of who Skipper’s mother might be, or might have been. British actor Paul Cavanagh shows up as a semi-regular in eight episodes as Commissioner Morrison. He worked with Weissmuller as far back as TARZAN AND HIS MATE (1934) but will also be familiar from a few of Universal's SHERLOCK HOLMES films, as well as HOUSE OF WAX and THE FOUR SKULLS OF JONATHAN DRAKE.

Weissmuller with co-star Dean Fredericks.

JUNGLE JIM is a ridiculous show intended for kids, which is what I was secretly hoping for. There seems to be one encounter with wild animal stock footage in every episode, but already I've seen Jungle Jim tussle with a black panther and save a swimming dog from a near-miss encounter with a massive alligator, and Skipper has survived a near-death experience with a rhino AND a man intent upon shooting him in the back of the head (both in the same scene!). The stories are generally preposterous, and the dialogue even moreso; in "Safari Into Danger," two owners of a failing US circus travel to Jim’s jungle (wherever that is) with a fat bankroll (!), which they offer him if he will travel to Borneo (!!) with them (and Tamba and the kid - why not? !!) and bring back that rarest of all wild animals... the proboscis monkey! The proboscis monkey alone can save their circus! The words “proboscis monkey” are spoken at least 30 times in this episode, and we finally get to see stock footage of a family of these Durantesque creatures, which might be visible to paying customers in a zoo but never in a circus! In "Code of the Jungle," Tamba gets jealous when Jim returns from a trip with a pet dog for Skipper, and insanely clubs it with a stick until it scampers off into dangerous jungle territory and must be saved. 

"Code of the Jungle" was scripted by Malvin Wald, who later wrote the post-production narration for Jess Franco’s VENUS IN FURS, and the IMDb tells me that three other episodes still awaiting me were the work of Dwight V. Babcock, a former BLACK MASK contributor and Universal screenwriter whose screenplays included DEAD MAN'S EYES, THE MUMMY'S CURSE, HOUSE OF DRACULA, THE JUNGLE CAPTIVE, PILLOW OF DEATH, HOUSE OF HORRORS, SHE WOLF OF LONDON, THE BRUTE MAN, and two of the JUNGLE JIM features, JUNGLE MOON MEN and DEVIL GODDESS. 

A quick look at the IMDb's episode guide tells me that man-eating lizards, lost civilizations, pygmy tribes, and various taboo treasures are also in store. Picture quality is no more than acceptable and some are slightly better than others. All told, this is $11 well-spent toward entertainment, but be aware the episodes were assembled in haphazard order. This is a shame, but the discs can always be ripped at home and rearranged into IMDb chronology if you're that obsessed about it. I'm thinking I probably fall into that category.

(c) 2021 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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ENTERING THE EUROCRYPT OF CHRISTOPHER LEE, PART 5

The next offering in Severin Film's fabulous box set THE EUROCRYPT OF CHRISTOPHER LEE collects all 24 episodes of THEATRE MACABRE, a 1971-72 Polish anthology of classic offbeat stories hosted by Lee in disarming, amusing wraparounds. I'm still in the midst of viewing those, so I am going to proceed in my coverage with the final disc in the set, which you can see over there, at the left. 

It is fitting that a box set that opens with CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD should end with THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM or, to offer a proper translation of its original title, THE SNAKE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. Both of these Christopher Lee pictures emphasize natural European scenery and macabre art direction while telling stories - fables, actually - about picaresque characters who wander astray into haunted woods, have close scrapes with death, and emerge with their goodness intact. While CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD is essentially an American film made with Italian resources, THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM (a TV title imposed on a surprisingly mild and fanciful picture) is a German film that takes a lot of visual inspiration not just from the Italian Gothics (especially Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY and KILL, BABY... KILL!) but also Roger Corman's Poe movies, Bavarian architecture, and the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Marry all this to one of Peter Thomas' most unusual scores (I can imagine him, pen in hand, asking himself "Okay, what mood and instrumentation would be least appropriate for a period piece, for horror scenes, romantic scenes... oh yes, and the grand finale?"), and you've got a film whose pride in its own strangeness simply cannot be denied.

Lex Barker looks on as Christopher Lee prepares to wear the mask of punishment.

THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM - which, once upon a time, played in American theaters, mostly drive-ins, under the title BLOOD DEMON along with another "green blood" picture, MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND - was Constantin Film's bid at competing with other world markets in horror film production in the sputtering wake of various other one-shot German attempts like THE HEAD (Die Nackte und der Satan, 1959) and CAVE OF THE LIVING DEAD (Der flüch der grünen Augen, 1964). It was also the first such German production made in color, if we discount the more fantastic examples of the Edgar Wallace krimis. Though brazenly derivative, it is never so without its own special flair.  I find myself hard-pressed to nominate another tropes-in-a-blender horror film that does the job better, and this is largely because it also introduces its own personal and distinctly national signature touches. Though (despite the title hung on it) it's not at all a graphically violent film, its Bavarian scenery, period costumery, characterizations, and emphasis on antique torture devices strongly anticipate the MARK OF THE DEVIL films made a few years further down the trail.

The director here is Harald Reinl, who had done extensive work in the crime genre, including outstanding work in the Dr. Mabuse sequels and Edgar Wallace and Bryan Edgar Wallace krimis (THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE FROG, THE SINISTER MONK, THE STRANGLER OF BLACKMOOR CASTLE), the Karl May Westerns (TREASURE OF SILVER LAKE, etc), and a lavish, two-feature remake of Fritz Lang's DIE NIEBELUNGEN. Reinl was married to actress Karin Dor (29 years his junior), an adornment to most of his features who came to be known as "Miss Krimi", and he was very much a disciple of Fritz Lang with a marvelous eye for action, mood, and atmosphere. However, it took Alfred Vohrer to take the krimis to the next level - into horror, into color, into all sorts of baroque insanity. Reinl obviously grabbed hold of this horror project to show what he could do within Vohrer's ballpark, and his competitive drive is one of its many pleasures.

Christopher Lee, Carl Lange, and Lex Barker.

Manfred R. Kohler's script opens "in Olden Tymes" (to quote the film's publicity) as Count Frederic Regula (Christopher Lee) is sentenced by Judge Reinhold von Marienberg (Lex Barker) to be drawn and quartered for torturing and killing people at his castle. Before his main punishment, he has a bronze spiked mask forced onto his face by a hooded executioner - in obvious shades of BLACK SUNDAY. There is something extremely unnerving about the mask itself, which bears the metallic likeness of a smiling scarecrow; under floridly Gothic opening credits, the camera precedes the characters as the prisoner is marched through a maze of stone corridors to his place of execution, intermittent tricks of light causing Regula's eyes to glow and flash behind the mask's apertures. In one of the stranger narrative details, instead of picking up the story 100 or 200 years later, it picks up only 35 years later, when Roger Mont Elis (Barker, handsome and fit but clearly older than 35) - raised without knowledge of his family or true family name - comes to this same Bavarian village in search of answers about his origins. He has been brought here by a letter allegedly from the supposedly dead Count Regula, inviting him to learn all at his castle on Good Friday. Looking for directions to a castle that all the locals deny exists, he finally appeals to a Christ-like "saint" seen carrying a cross through town at the head of a large commemorative procession. Once the crowd disperses, Roger appeals to the elderly bearded man for information - and is told that Count Regula is long dead and that only great danger can await him at the castle. Of course, he has come to far to be discouraged.  

Karin Dor in the undead arms of Carl Lange. 

Shortly thereafter, he meets Father Fabian (Vladimir Medar - a dead ringer for Howard Kaylan), a lusty sort of priest - not unlike Andrew Kier's Father Sandor in DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1965) - who is en route to the same general vicinity as the castle to baptize a child and agrees to share his coach. On the way, a coach preceding them carrying the Baroness Lilian von Brabant (Karin Dor) and her assistant Babette (Christiane Rücker) is accosted by seven masked highwaymen known as The Seven Deadly Sins. They steal the entire coach but leave the women to be saved by Roger and Fabian. Continuing on, they come to a burnt-out shell of a house where a silent vagrant seems to appear in a puff of black smoke. He says nothing, but as the coach continues on, he strips away the pieces of his disguise to reveal himself as the man we will soon identify as Anatol (Carl Lange), the zombie henchman of Count Regula, formerly hung in a public square before his reanimation. The film doesn't make the connection too emphatic, but in addition to these two characters, Lange also plays the cross-carrying "Saint" from the town behind a long white beard and can be seen in retrospect as a malevolent master of disguise who ensures Roger's arrival at the castle - perhaps even the Devil Himself. Incredibly, the film spends very nearly its first half just getting to the castle, which allowed Reinl to make half of his film on natural locations and inside a simple rocking coach "set," while reserving the greater share of his budget toward the often stunning art direction awaiting us inside the castle. It should be sheer agony but it's not, especially once night falls and art director/set decorator Gabriel Pellon gives us a haunted forest for the ages, full of bare trees strewn with gallows and dead bodies - a grand tribute not only to contemporary atmospherists like Mario Bava but to the great artisans of the German silent expressionist cinema. Once our heroes reach the castle, they are greeted by Anatol who resurrects the still-quartered remains of Count Regula and demands the audience avert their gaze from a moment too sacred to be seen by unbelievers - the moment played out in the shadows they see on a gorgeous honey-colored wall, in a scene that appears to have been swiped directly for that heart-stopping moment of shadowplay in Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA (1977) when the mysterious and sonorous Elena Markus is put to bed among the students after the maggot attack. After that, the film is a non-stop procession of snakes, buzzards, ossuaries, dungeons, bubbling laboratories, ancient death traps (including a not-bad pendulum rig), and acid cocktails, with Christopher Lee - hole-faced à la Barbara Steele and painted blue-gray - just one virgin shy of the thirteenth who will guarantee his immortality. Why he goes after Karin Dor rather than her younger, more-likely-innocent companion is beyond me.

Naturally, both Barker and Dor turn out to be descendants of characters from the not-too-distant past, but during their travails at the castle, the robust Father Fabian is revealed to be someone other than who he pretends to be, which is also left for the eagle-eyed among us to discover in regard to the aforementioned "saint." In this way, Reinl appears to cast a suspicious eye at those who represent the Church, but he does so without denying the virtues of religion itself. The power of the Cross still prevails at the end of the story.  

That old crucifix trick again!

This film has long suffered from inadequate, even much butchered presentations - there was a particularly poor rendering included on the bonus disc in Severin's HEMISPHERE OF HORRORS box set (OOP) - so this 1.66:1 presentation, scanned in 4K from the original camera negative, is definitely the one to have. Both the German and English soundtracks are included, the latter featuring Barker's and Lee's own voices, and there are some quite striking musical variations between the two in the scoring of the main titles and ending.  The extras are also quite generous: a candid 25m audio interview with Karin Dor (in German with English subtitles, in which says a little about all of her movies EXCEPT the one at hand - headlines include identification of Hugo Fregonese as the true director of ASSIGNMENT: TERROR, and how Manfred Kohler's TARGET FOR KILLING was directed by its lead actors after he fell ill), an interesting locations featurette that finds many spots virtually unchanged, two different German Super 8mm digest shorts, German theatrical and teaser trailers, a short and quite incomplete poster gallery, a restoration sideshow, and a gallery of behind-the-scenes photos (behind the scenes of the restoration, not the movie). There is also an audio commentary by Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson, both keen enthusiasts of the film, who offer an effusive chat, a lot of trivia and, for some reason, an obsessive amount of time spent on identifying scenes not included in Interglobal's particularly egregious old VHS release under the title CASTLE OF THE WALKING DEAD.            

                     

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"SECRET LIFE OF LOVE SONGS" NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER

My detailed coverage of THE EUROCRYPT OF CHRISTOPHER LEE will continue next week. I'm in something of an audio commentary bottleneck at the moment - just delivered one, and other needs to start right away - but I must interrupt all this today with some big, long awaited news:

THE SECRET LIFE OF LOVE SONGS, my first new fiction of real length (and depth) since THE BOOK OF RENFIELD sixteen years ago, is now available for pre-order from PS Publishing. It's being published in both regular and signed/limited editions, and the first 300 copies sold will include a free advance CD of the novella's soundtrack album. 

The nine songs were written by Dorothy Moskowitz (formerly of The United States of America and Country Joe's All-Star Band) and I, and we perform them on the CD with the magnanimous and talented help of our special guests Gary Lucas (Jeff Buckley, Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, Gods and Monsters) and Mike Fornatale (Murderer's Row, and the reunited lineups of The Left Banke and Moby Grape). Dorothy and I co-produced the album, and the gifted Chris Harding of the popular local band Room For Zero served as our engineer, working miracles of mixing and making us sound like were actually all in the same room together. Mike - a remarkable multi-instrumentalist - produced and mixed his own two contributions, which make it sound like infinite numbers of him were in the same room at the same time.   

This link will take you to the PS Publishing Newsletter (do sign up for their weekly mailings) where I write at length about the novella, and then join Dorothy for a detailed look at how the soundtrack came about. If you want to place your pre-order - and I dearly hope you will - you can do so at this page.

Thank you for your interest... and patience. 

(c) 2021 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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Entering THE EUROCRYPT OF CHRISTOPHER LEE Part 4

Disc 4: SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE DEADLY NECKLACE

(Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes, 1962)

It was in 1964 that Christopher Lee first crashed into my consciousness, initially via photographs in FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND which presented him as something of a modern Man of a Thousand Faces, as well as a few television broadcasts - UNCLE WAS A VAMPIRE, and his ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR "The Sign of Satan" rush to mind. 1964 was also the year when THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and HORROR OF DRACULA were first theatrically reissued, and the first time I was old enough to catch them; surely a life-changing, game-changing experience. As I think back to that initial flood of images and my dawning awareness of this important figure, one particular image stands out because the film it represented took so long to see. It showed Lee, in period wardrobe and a mustache, raising the glass lid of a mummy lying in state. The caption said the film was called THE VALLEY OF FEAR, which I immediately committed to memory. Alas, no film of this title ever came to my local theaters; however, sometime in 1971, it appeared in the middle of the night on one of my local television stations as SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE DEADLY NECKLACE. I've enjoyed the film several times since and, to this day, when it reaches that scene in the museum, I get a real charge from seeing that memorized photo come to life - though now a big part of that charge comes from recognizing the influence of Louis Feuillade's FANTÔMAS serials in the moment when Holmes unwittingly releases a snake from a hidden compartment in the display case and must strangle it to death in his own hands like Inspector Juve. 

The photo I am talking about.

Directed by Terence Fisher, of all people, SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE DEADLY NECKLACE - which is indeed loosely based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's final Holmes novel, THE VALLEY OF FEAR (1915) - is one of the ultimate "neither fish nor fowl" pieces in the annals of fantastic cinema. Though directed by Fisher, it was made apart from his accustomed support system at Hammer Films by Artur Brauner's Central Cinema Company Film (CCC Filmkunst) in West Germany, so much of the flavor and atmosphere we associate with his masterly touch is missing - and slippery when found. The film does present two of Fisher's favorite actors, Christopher Lee and Thorley Walters, in the roles of Holmes and Dr. Watson, but - even though they both look terrific and comport themselves comfortably - they are dubbed by other actors in post-productions, which leaves them both present yet strangely absent. (Lee appears to have been dubbed by the same actor who voiced his role in Mario Bava's THE WHIP AND THE BODY - he's not bad really; he's just not Lee.) Though Fisher's 1958 THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, with Peter Cushing as Holmes and Lee as the male ingenue, gives both actors the greater measure of sumptuous support, I'm in the minority who find Lee a more convincing Holmes than Cushing. Cushing is eccentric, busy, and something of a show-off extrovert in the role, whereas Lee clearly has the most occupied inner life, not to mention a closer resemblance to the original Sidney Paget illustrations. In terms of his personal presentation, the film only errs when it dares to present him in the classic deerstalker cap and cape which, when added to his 6' 6" height, must make him the single most conspicuous sleuth on the continent, especially as the large check fabric of these accouterments lend his cape the unfortunate appearance of a shower curtain.

The story, which embeds a central nugget of the Doyle novel in a setting of relatively new invention by former Universal screenwriter Curt Siodmak, both is THE VALLEY OF FEAR and is not; and the story is situated in the same bizarre conflation of London, Berlin, the 1910s and the 1960s that we find in the West German Edgar Wallace krimis of this same period. The film's men all look and dress rather jovially old-fashioned but there is no mistaking the modernity of its women. In short, the sheer dodginess of the film gives it the jarring complexion of a waking dream, which is probably why I find it so difficult to dismiss. 

Thorley Walters with Christopher Lee.

In their lively audio commentary, Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw - both published Doyle/Holmes authorities - give much the same run-down and come up with similar totals: it's hardly perfect, but it packs immense eccentric charm and cannot be completely denied. On the whole, I'm pleased to say they like it. Aside from the two leads, the movie's greatest saving grace may be Hans Söhnker's winningly smug performance as Holmes' nemesis, Professor Moriarty - which nearly steals the picture. (The film actually gives our villain's name as Moriarity, extra syllable near the end, except on one printed sign and in the subtitles.) The somewhat untidy story finds Holmes and his most deadly enemy both in pursuit of a fabled jewel-studded golden necklace once owned by Cleopatra. One of the few proofs we're given that Fisher directed this film is a spontaneous after-dark meeting of Holmes and Moriarity, on a park bench near the docks, where the two rivals appear to have a spontaneous, defenses-down, yet highly suspenseful conversation - which anticipates the Satanic priest Mocata's unexpected visit to the defenseless Marie Eaton in THE DEVIL RIDES OUT/THE DEVIL'S BRIDE (1968). 

Hans Söhnker (center) as Professor Moriarity.

Senta Berger and Ivan Desny as the film's engaged young lovers. 

Adding to the film's enjoyment are supporting roles for Senta Berger (quite early in her career), Ivan Desny (who essayed the role of OSS 117 in 1957), and the marvelous character actor Leon Askin (whose intermittent work in US TV encompassed THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, THE OUTER LIMITS "The Inheritance", THE MONKEES, and a recurring role on HOGAN'S HEROES). DEADLY NECKLACE is also the most impressive looking of the set's first four discs, heroically vaulting out of public domain mediocrity into a revelatory 2K scan from the original German camera negative. It helps that the movie was shot by one of Germany's most distinctive lighting cameramen, Richard Angst - whose career spanned from the silent and later sound versions of THE WHITE HELL OF PITZ PALU to Fritz Lang's 1959 Indian diptych to THE PHANTOM OF SOHO. In some shots, you can actually see around Lee's nostrils the delicate puckers of a false nose appliance that accentuates his resemblance to Sidney Paget's original illustrations for THE STRAND magazine.

In addition to the Newman/Forshaw commentary, the disc includes a half-hour Zoom interview with Tony Dalton about his new book TERENCE FISHER: MASTER OF GOTHIC CINEMA, and a 12m audio sampling of one of Dalton's early interviews with the man himself.

Included in Severin Film's box set, available here.  

(c) 2021 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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Entering THE EUROCRYPT OF CHRISTOPHER LEE Part 3

THE EUROCRYPT OF CHRISTOPHER LEE 

Disc 3: THE CRYPT OF THE VAMPIRE (La cripta e l'incubo, 1963)

This film, based on a script by best friends Tonino Valerii and Ernesto Gastaldi, was the first horror film to be directed by Camillo Mastrocinque, whose directorial career had begun in 1937, more than sixty films previously. He was not much longer for this world - he would die in 1969 at the age of 67, after managing one more horror film, the extraordinary AN ANGEL FOR SATAN (Un angelo per Satana, 1966), starring Barbara Steele and Anthony Steffen. Mastrocinque was almost a decade older than most Italian directors of his era and he was primarily known for his romance, comedy (particularly those starring Totò), and opera films. The  shots, emotions, and scenery we associate with such pictures are the primary substance of THE CRYPT OF THE VAMPIRE (formerly known in TV showings as TERROR IN THE CRYPT), which presents its supernatural content with a modicum of style but with little discernible gusto.

However, this is not to say that the film is without interest. Valerii and Gastaldi based their creation on J. Sheridan Le Fanu's classic vampire text CARMILLA (which had received a more modern adaptation in recent memory by Roger Vadim as BLOOD AND ROSES, 1960) and also repurposed the opening of Stoker's DRACULA by having Count Ludwig Karnstein (Christopher Lee) summon historian Friedrich Klauss (José Campos) to his castle... in this case, with orders to search his family library for any and all information concerning his remote ancestor Siri of Karnstein, who was put to death by members of her own family for witchcraft centuries ago - and, if at all possible, locate some record of her image.

Ursula Davis and Audrey Amber.

The Count's interest in all this has been prompted by the fears of his neurotic housekeeper Rowena (Nela Conju) concerning his adult daughter Laura (Adriana Ambesi/"Audrey Amber"), who is suffering from nightmares involving a creepy black coach awaiting her in the woods. Rowena fervently believes these dreams have something to do with the curse Siri placed upon her family descendants at the time of her execution. Laura lives in relative isolation and secretly accedes to Rowena's occult rituals meant to protect her from Siri's beyond-the-grave reach - but they seem to have rather the opposite effect, as her dreams are soon fulfilled by a coach accident on the Karnstein property, which leaves in their temporary care a pleasant and lovely young companion for Laura, Ljuba (Pier Anna Quaglia/"Ursula Davis"). Klauss was beginning to have hopes of a future with Laura, but she becomes strangely inaccessible following Ljuba's arrival, wanting only to be with her and to gaze into her eyes. Of course, as we know from this now much-filmed story, Ljuba is a vampire summoned from Hell, but the only means available to the Count and to Klauss is to discover which of the hundred paintings in the ancestral castle covers the hidden portrait of Siri of Karnstein. So the film consolidates the classic trappings of a vampire story with the more modern provisions of a whodunit. 

José Campos and Christopher Lee.

CRYPT OF THE VAMPIRE is quite watchable but it falls considerably short of delivering all that a CARMILLA adaptation should. Aside from Lee's nicely coiffured and clothed presence (by night, he sports a monogrammed, quilted dressing gown that would have been the envy of Vincent Price), the casting is generally second (perhaps even third) rate, and much of the action dances dangerously near to dull. Perhaps to offset censorship problems, the necessary attraction between Laura and Ljuba is lacking any sense of passion, recklessness, or danger, much less eroticism; their magnetism is no more than cloying and sentimental. The film's saving graces are some nicely operatic set-pieces (one involving a Hand of Glory, a decade before THE WICKER MAN) and the supplanting of any lesbic vampirism with mysteries, murders, and discoveries almost as diverting. Some of the film's most interesting ingredients are postponed till quite late in the story, including a hunchback potion vendor (Marzio Martine, who evokes some of the fairy tale qualities found in CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD) and a practically last-minute pop-up by ever-reliable John Karlsen. The castle shown in the film was the Castello Piccolomini in Balsorano (also seen in BLOODY PIT OF HORROR, Il boia scarlatto, 1965), a nicely rounded, turreted edifice not to be confused with the blockier Castello Piccolomini in Campestrano. Viewers with an eye for props may recollect that the Karnstein family emblem, a large stylized letter K featured on everything from the family's coach to its handkerchiefs, previously adorned the corridors of Piero Regnoli's THE PLAYGIRLS AND THE VAMPIRE (L'ultima preda del vampiro, 1960, an earlier Gastaldi script), serving as the brand of the undead Count Gabor Kernassy (Walter Brandi).

CRYPT OF THE VAMPIRE makes a brief side tour into Mario Bava Land.

While it's hardly misspent time as is, CRYPT could have been much better had it been entrusted to a director with genuine feeling for the genre. This may be the earliest Italian horror film to pay homage to Bava's BLACK SUNDAY, made three years earlier, which must be the input of the screenwriters, as Mastrocinque presents these allusions with absolutely no consciousness of the original's visual impact or verve. (The scene pictured above, obviously indebted to BLACK SUNDAY's opening scene, is prevented from reaching for its heights by the narrative's need to keep the witch's face averted - and the men in the hoods just stand there, doing nothing.) This is also true of the various crude zooms into wide-eyed, gaping-mouthed dead faces, which - like the opening nightmare sequence - are lacking whatever idea or ingredient that might have brought these moments to more sinister life (fog, mist, lightning, a well-placed cantered camera angle). It should be noted that this was also a first horror film for producer Mario Mariani (experienced only at Totò comedies), composer Carlo Savina (whose alternately romantic and eerie score recalls Armando Trovajoli's work on WEREWOLF IN A GIRL'S DORMITORY or HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD), and also its director of photography, Giuseppe Aquari, who would re-team with Mastrocinque much more effectively on AN ANGEL FOR SATAN. 

The film was produced by Mariani for a company called Europrodis and most of its actors - with the exceptions of Lee, Campos, and Conju - worked under English aliases - even Signor Mastrocinque became "Thomas Miller." Severin Films presents it in its best showing ever, a new 2K restoration from a fine-grain 35mm master print in its intended 1.85:1 screen ratio. The contrast is a little soft and there is some visible streakiness at times which must be part of the original master. Aside from these negligeable birthmarks, the presentation is a revelation compared to the old 16mm TERROR IN THE CRYPT TV prints ("James H. Nicholson & Samuel Z. Arkoff present...") The audio options are particular points of interest: provided are  the English export dub (featuring the voices of Lee, Tony Russel as Klauss, and Nela Conju dubbed by whoever provided the voice for Baroness Graps in KILL, BABY... KILL!) as well as the original Italian track (with optional English subtitles in yellow, taken directly from the dubbing script - which means we sometimes see subtitles when nothing has been said). The native track, which brings us into closer contact with the original florid writing of the piece and the intended sound of its dialogue, is more effective but deal-breaking for most viewers as Lee's role is dubbed by another, less stentorian actor. 

This particular disc in Severin's EUROCRYPT OF CHRISTOPHER LEE box set offers only one extra: a nearly 4m trailer prepared for the English export market - which at least led to it being released in the UK as CRYPT OF HORROR. It's narrated by former SHADOW of the airwaves Bret Morrison, who promises the most terrifying role of Christopher Lee's career.         

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Entering THE EUROCRYPT OF CHRISTOPHER LEE, Part 2

Disc 2: CHALLENGE THE DEVIL

(Sfida al diavolo a.k.a. Katharsis, 1963) 

The second disc in Severin's box set THE EUROCRYPT OF CHRISTOPHER LEE is devoted to one of his most elusive continental appearances, in Giuseppe Veggezzi's CHALLENGE THE DEVIL. Filmed during the same Roman adventure that found Lee starring with Daliah Lavi in Mario Bava's THE WHIP AND THE BODY, this rarely-seen picture started out as an ambitious, avant-garde fantasy film called KATHARSIS which Vegezzi had mapped out in pretentious detail, with plentiful details for prospective investors as to what each character meant and represented, as well as specific camera movement plans with annotations to their own allusive double meanings. According to Roberto Curti's detailed 35m overview of Veggazzi and the production, things were going well until the production company began to bankrupt and the writer-director's unrequited love for one of the actresses led him to attempt suicide. During his recovery, after leaping to his fate from a high castle window, the unfinished film passed into other hands which added 20m of worthless, misleading framing story and, ultimately, very scant distribution of the excruciating result. Lee was brought aboard for only four days shooting, looking far too young to be playing an aged man (an illusion further hindered by high school play-level makeup), but his name was essential to the funding. He appears in the film for roughly 10m, but we - his fans - are accustomed to seeing him in modest roles which allow his presence to be felt immodestly during his extended absences. 

Veggezzi's original story involved six delinquent adults, probably meant to be much younger teens, who live for drinking and terrorizing the roads. After a random game of Chicken ends in a collision with an oncoming car and the apparent death of the driver, the gang - led by ERIK THE CONQUEROR's Giorgio Ardisson - moves on and breaks into a local castle - once again, the reliable and affordable Castello Odescalchi used in CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD. After looting the premises of food and drink, they start drumming on whatever is handy as Bella Cortez and the other women dance and strip to heat things up still more. But what their hedonism invokes is the arrival of Mephistopheles (Lee), an elderly spirit who pines to be reunited with his lost love. He compels them to see their way through various tests to free his beloved's soul from its imprisonment in the castle, and there is a surprise twist ending that throws us a final curve, forcing us to rethink all we have seen as an excursion on a more abstract, metaphysical plane. In its own not quite capable way, Veggezzi's parable crudely points toward some of the more metaphysical stories yet to emerge from Italian Gothic horror - CASTLE OF BLOOD, AN ANGEL FOR SATAN, CONTRONATURA, LISA AND THE DEVIL.

However, to get to this actually rather promising story (in intention, if not entirely in execution), one must endure a 20m preamble involving espionage, an attempted assassination, and a dying man's final words to a woe-begone monk (Piero Vida, the only actor to return for the "reparative" filming) who, in his younger and wilder days, was a member of a certain wolfpack. It is he who is compelled to confess the story we are told, which he entrusts to - to all people - former 1950s starlet and dancer Alma del Rio, who looks like Divine and is shown squeezed into what must be one of her old dresses as she attempts a torrid, exotic dance in cha-cha heels... after almost 15 minutes of even more miserable supper club entertainment. Truly, the first quarter of the film destroyed nearly all my will to watch the rest, but I persevered... with you in mind. 

Was it worth it? Not really, and most anyone will tell you I am open to some strange things. This is almost certainly the worst Christopher Lee film I've seen, and as I'm sure you know, there are some other big contenders. That said, I now find myself wondering how well Veggazzi's original footage might play, now that I know the climactic twist of the ending, if I were to zip past all the godawful nonsense upfront. Some day, I might just find myself bored enough to try - but I suspect the film was hobbled from the outset by lame casting, a not especially skilled crew, and a director who couldn't. 

It's no surprise that this film attracted no audio commentators, but the disc devotes an additional 35m to Roberto Curti's illuminating talk on the film and Veggazzi's subsequent adventures. We get to see (and hear translated) some interesting production plans, as well as footage of the enfant terrible himself, who seems no better grounded than before as he sits in a lawn chair and expounds on some slippery political rant. We're told that, after the fate of KATHARSIS, he moved away from cinema forever. I don't really need to say it, do I?

Though nothing he says touches on this film in any way, we are also treated - and I mean this, seriously - to 16m of interview outtakes, culled from two sessions many years apart, with actor Giorgio Ardisson, who died in 2014. What he says is candid, philosophical, humorous, fatalistic, and always of interest; a touching visit with (as he calls himself) "a wise old man."

Also included in this snapper case (but described on Severin's website as "Disc 8") is RELICS FROM THE CRYPT, an absorbing collection of interviews, brief visits, outtakes, and audio treats (even songs!) featuring Christopher Lee, covering some 50 years of public speaking - and in more than one language. There is a 16m excerpt from a 1964 Swiss television special called HORROR!, which also includes amazing footage of Boris Karloff in candid conversation, Lee amiably pontificating in French about his many screen deaths while pacing Roy Ashton's relic-strewn makeup room), as well as a set visit to Roger Corman's THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH with sound bytes from Corman and Vincent Price; 34m of Lee reminiscing about Karloff for an unfinished video project (he's speaking off the top of his head, so there's some repetition and faltering; it feels a bit too long, but just a bit); a 1975 interview with a young moderator Colin Grimshaw about TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER; an almost hour-long 1976 Belgian television interview conducted in French and subtitled in English (which I found the most fascinating and instructive piece of film on the disc - it's a revelatory introduction to a different side of Christopher Lee); a 1985 audio interview conducted by David Del Valle; a couple of vocal performances with optional commentary from collaborator Gary Curtis; a 15m visit with early British horror historian Alan Frank, which briefly touches on Lee; and a 2011 Q&A session with the venerable star held at University College Dublin. Not last but certainly not least, there is also a 34m featurette about the making of Camillo Mastrocinque's CRYPT OF THE VAMPIRE (aka TERROR IN THE CRYPT) with extensive reminiscences from the screenwriters, Tonino Valerii and Ernesto Gastaldi. Near the end, Gastaldi filled my heart with joy with a jovial reminiscence of the first time I approached him to be interviewed for VIDEO WATCHDOG about his "40 year old movies," way back in 1996! 

Set some time aside before you load this one up because it's hard to pull yourself away.  

Next up: The aforementioned CRYPT OF THE VAMPIRE, the Italian Gothic version of Le Fanu's "Carmilla."

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Entering THE EUROCRYPT OF CHRISTOPHER LEE, Part 1

Severin Films' new box set THE EUROCRYPT OF CHRISTOPHER LEE is another essential purchase from the King of esoteric horror boutique companies, a nine-disc set encompassing five or Lee's most-needed continental productions (most with audio commentaries) as well as his so-rare-as-to-be-unheard-of 1971-72 Polish television series THEATRE MACABRE (including work by Andrzej Zuławski and Andrzej Wajda!), a soundtrack CD of Angelo Francesco Lavagnino's score for THE CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD, and a whole disc's worth of video and audio miscellanea that commemorate the sheer versatility, knowledge, wit, and cosmopolitan spirit of the man. Given the encompassing title of the set, we may long for certain omissions from the content - like UNCLE WAS A VAMPIRE, THE DEVIL'S DAFFODIL, HORROR CASTLE aka THE VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG, and the distinct French and English versions of THE HANDS OF ORLAC, to name a few - but all of this and more is covered in commendable detail by the 88-page bonus book CHRISTOPHER LEE: THE CONTINENTAL CONNECTION by Lee biographer Jonathan Rigby, which provides rich and eloquent context and exact chronology for just about everything included and excluded.

Disc 1: CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD

(Il castello dei morti vivi, 1963)

I first saw this little gem of a movie - produced by Paul Maslansky and filmed in Italy by American writer-director Warren Kiefer - on local television just over 50 years ago in June 1971, well before David Pirie wrote so appreciatively about it in A HERITAGE OF HORROR, his enthusiasm fueled in part by Robin Wood's incorrect assumptions about Michael Reeves' role behind the scenes in an essay he wrote about the young director at the time of his death. Reeves is credited as an assistant director, a job that usually takes charge of things on a set; the actual director remembered him as a gofer, while Maslansky recalls giving the enthusiastic young lad some second unit work to do. I personally sense that the opening narration (so similar to that in WITCHFINDER GENERAL) and opening scenes of the two lovers being attacked and the ensuing coach robbery and murder might be his; they have the feel of a missing link between his home movies and the jagged direction of his directorial debut THE SHE BEAST - also, they have literally nothing to do with the rest of the picture. Reeves might have also been entrusted with some camera coverage, the shots of the Luciano Pigozzi stand-in climbing the castle wall, Mirko Valentin marching along or swinging his scythe, that kind of thing. But this material has nothing to do with what makes the film so special. 

Donald Sutherland, Philippe Leroy, and Christopher Lee.

In short, CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD is the story of an early 19th century traveling commedia rusticana company - consisting of supposed brother and sister Gianni and Laura (Ennio Antonelli, Gaia Germani) who play the lead parts; Dart (Luciano Pigozzi), a surly customer who serves as their Harlequin; Bruno (Jacques Stany), a mute strongman; and Neep (Antonio di Martino), a likable dwarf. After a local performance, the troupe's two alpha males get into a fight and Dart decides to quit - promising he will have his revenge later. He is then promptly replaced by Eric (FEMINA RIDENS' Philippe Leroy), a footloose ex-soldier in the recent Napoleonic wars who is attracted to Laura and decides to tag along. En route to the next village, their wagon passes through a forest that is strangely soundless and still; the only visible wildlife is a bird perched on a branch as stiff as a board. Hungry and thirsty, they seek overnight shelter in exchange for performance at the castle of Count Drago (Lee), a widowed recluse who is performing experiments in the preservation of natural beauty for all time. He soon begins to covet the beauty of Laura (Gaia Germani) and, with the help of his gaunt and creepy majordomo (Valentin), he sets about keeping his guests indefinitely. His ambitions conflict with those of Dart, who reappears to enact his vengeance around the time Act III commences.

For hungry actors, here's a pitch:
play the sergeant AND the witch!

This is that rare Italian Gothic that invites the influence of fairy tales and E.T.A. Hoffmann. Filmed in and around the Castello Odescalchi in Bracciano and the Parco dei Mostri in Bomarzo, the film's natural scenery is always captivating. However, the real strength of this film lies in its casting, which entices from the viewer more than the usual interest and good will. All the main players are excellent, and the supporting cast is literally outstanding with prime work by Pigozzi, Valentin, and Martino. As is now well-known, this was Donald Sutherland's first film, and he plays the dual role of a boorish police sergeant and a witch who speaks in baleful couplets, at one point interacting with himself. Kiefer's clever script introduces the the principal characters in the midst of a stage performance and thereafter, if we sometimes notice some technical or decorative shortcomings (like the theatrical exaggerations of Lee's almost silent movie villain-like makeup), we forgive and welcome them in the spirit of another theatrical diversion. The film is  often automatically praised for the camerawork of Aldo Tonti - once identified by Christopher Lee in an interview as "Fellini's cameraman," though in fact he only shot THE NIGHTS OF CABIRIA for him. It is far more apt to mention his earlier neorealist work Roberto Rossellini - OSSESSIONE and EUROPE '51 - when talking about his work here, which sometimes recalls the look of fairy tale woodcuts. Tonti obviously didn't have the indulgence here that Fellini could offer him at Cinecittà. The castle and natural settings are beautiful, yes, but they were beautiful to begin with; the camera framings and compositions are fairly hit-and-miss and the lighting is often flat because the interiors were actual locations rather than in studio, well below the standards of other Italian cameramen I could name. Again, the overall stance of theatricality helps, and Lavagnino's rustic, bittersweet score is also supportive and - in its emotional conveyance of character - warmly endearing.

Gaia Germani and Luciano Pigozzi.

In retrospect, I believe my early discovery of this film had a great deal to do with cementing my orientation as a Eurocult completist. First of all, it took me completely by surprise: CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD had had a UK release, second-billed with the disappointing THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR in 1967; however, it arrived on US television without prior theatrical play, arriving as part of an American International Television package as early as January 1970. (I found earlier listings of the title going back as far as August 31, 1968 but the synopsis described Antonio Margheriti's HORROR CASTLE instead!) It was unusual to discover such a quirky yet appealing film out of the blue, and it also added conspicuously to Christopher Lee's growing gallery of macabre characterizations, which was then making him a kind of "Man of a Thousand Faces" for my generation. So distinctive was he as an actor, as a presence, that the film makes its most conspicuous stumble when, supposedly, Count Drago's emerges from the curtained compartment of his coach to hand a written message to his driver. That hand could belong to anybody, except Christopher Lee. This was a actor whose performances extended to the tips of his fingers; he simply could not be hand-doubled. Fortunately, he and Sutherland dubbed his own performance here. The English dubbing track was directed by American then-expatriat Mel Welles (Gravis Mushnik in the original LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS), who also provided the English voice for Pigozzi and one or two other incidentals.

Presented here in 1080p from a 4K restoration of the original 1.66:1 camera negative, the movie has never looked better. This is its first official US release on home video and the crisp presentation underlines occasional lapses into soft focus and even some intermittent tonal differences which may indicate different kinds of film stock or even that the master had to fill some gaps with material taken from a lesser source. But there is absolutely no cause for complaint. For the better part of 50 years, it was only possible to see the film in cropped 16mm form, and it acquired a level of legend even from that. This is better. This is just grand.  

The disc also includes two audio commentaries, one by Kat Ellinger, the other by Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth. Double commentaries may give the appearance of good value but they are seldom a good idea. It's a rare movie (and a still rarer genre movie) that can stand up to three hours of discussion; of course, you can always save one for a rainy day. What is most essential to know about CASTLE is covered in less time and with most authority by Roberto Curti's incisive sidebar on Warren Kiefer, whose in-plain-sight authorship of the film has been erroneously in doubt for half a century - and also the pertinent pages in Rigby's excellent book. Also included are a bonus disc of Lavagnino's soundtrack (previously released) and a lengthy career interview with Paul Maslansky, whose section on this film is pretty much the epitaph it deserves. He admits its imperfections, "but to this day, whenever I see it on television... I'm still proud of it." 

Next up: The home video debut of Lee's long-rumored Faustian "art film" KATHARSIS aka SVIDA AL DIAVOLI (under the title CHALLENGE THE DEVIL) and the bonus disc of archival Lee interviews, outtakes, and arias. 

      

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Today Marks the Centenary of An Infamous Gathering

 

Another Criterion Channel Recommendation: A VERY CURIOUS GIRL (1969)

Bernadette Lafont's allure brings a village to its knees in A VERY CURIOUS GIRL. 

Once again, was lured in by Criterion Channel fare that kept me up very late, namely A VERY CURIOUS GIRL (1969), an inadequate retitling of Nelly Kaplan’s debut feature LA FIANCÉE DU PIRATE. Any attempt to describe this film will make it sound like an long misfiled, overlooked work of folk horror, but it’s more of a surreal, satirical fable of sexual politics wherein the horror element is visible only through the eyes of its foolish, hysterical supporting cast.

The story is set in a little village in rural France where the puritanism of the hypocritical locals has ostracized an old woman (a former prostitute) to a wretched shack out in the woods, where she lives with her grown daughter Marie (who works as a servant to the landowner) and their pet, a very Black Peter-like goat whom the vaguely witchy daughter Marie (played by the supremely alluring and sassy Bernadette Lafont) tends and talks to like a lover. When the old woman dies and the goat is killed, Marie quits her job and sets about rejuvenating the family business, whoring out of the shack, which her income from the men of the village (and several just passing through) gradually equips with most modern conveniences, presents, and new wardrobe options. Had the movie started out with a witchier Marie swearing to avenge her mother and goat by placing a curse on the townsfolk, the story would not be conspicuously changed. Instead, what we get here is a broad, ticklish exposé of how civilization, piety, and morality are mostly false constructs of the patriarchy, dedicated to controlling, containing, and owning the enormous sexual power all women are born with - which is proved again and again as mayor, grocer, and abbé alike try in vain to make Marie his own. A bizarre and vastly entertaining movie, as well as a defiant feminist statement from cinema’s most revolutionary era. 

Isn’t this a lovely Polish poster I found?

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