Tim Lucas / Video WatchBlog: August 2021

Monday, August 30, 2021

ALIAS NICK BEAL: An Overlooked Fantasy Classic

ALIAS NICK BEAL (1949, 92:35; Kino Lorber Studio Classics): Amid Kino Lorber's monthly torrent of new releases last month was John Farrow's ALIAS NICK BEAL, a film about which - I'm ashamed to admit - I knew nothing till the other night, when I was intrigued by its trailer, included with several others on their disc of THE WEB (reviewed previously on this blog). At first glance, this Paramount picture is a sinister noir story with rote characters (heavy, tramp, bartender), a seafront locale, and lots of dense fog; its trailer presents the title character - played by Ray Milland four years after his Oscar-winning role in Billy Wilder's THE LOST WEEKEND (1945) - with heaps of mystique. He's identified as "A Man of Many Names... Many Charms... Many Victims!" but his alias is emphasized. Who IS this man, whom the hyperbole promises us we'll never forget?

Even film noir czar Eddie Muller (who does the commentary, breaking a four year "retirement") admits that he didn't get to see this film for the first time till sometime earlier in this century, and there is nothing about Kino Lorber's packaging to make potential customers more aware of what kind of film lurks behind this teasing title. Their cover makes use of the bland caricatures of Paramount's original nondescript poster art ("No Man Ever Held More Terrible Power Over A Woman!") when what it really cries out for is a more frank, more contemporary assertion of its fantastique street cred. Having seen the film and been knocked out by it, I could pout when I think of the cover an artist like Mark Maddox might have created for this release, something that would have brought its supernatural implications completely up to date.

I can't write about this film without "spoiling" the big surprise Paramount didn't want anyone to know, an astonishment that actually becomes readily apparent the first time Milland oozes onscreen: Nick Beal is the alias of Old Nick, the Devil Himself. Knowing this in advance won't spoil anything; in fact, it should only make you more conscious of layers of this film you wouldn't otherwise begin to notice till your secondary viewings - and it goes without saying that you'll want them.

Milland may be the star of the film, but he's more accurately a supporting character who puts the plot into motion and somehow stands in the background throughout by standing in our full view as a kind of slick connoisseur and enabler of human frailty. The real star of the film is third-billed Thomas Mitchell, who plays San Francisco District Attorney Joseph Foster, a baggy-faced, paunchy, happily married man of 48 (Mitchell was actually 56 but could have passed for someone ten years older) who is presented with his unspoken wish of becoming Governor and tested with moral quandaries that soon have his closest friends and even his devoted wife (the unglamorous Geraldine Wall) falling away, replaced by connected goons and a former prostitute, Donna Allen (Audrey Totter), whom Beal literally lifts out of the gutter and costumes in "sapphires, satin, and sable'" as a kind of dark knight to assail the fortress of Foster's middle-aged libido and raise his self-esteem.

Just a few years before this, Mitchell had played perhaps the most pivotal character in Frank Capra's acknowledged fantasy classic IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946): Uncle Billy, whose innocent mistake at the bank causes George Bailey (James Stewart) to lose his only chance to see the world, chaining him to Bedford Falls as its last wall of defense against it becoming Pottersville. In some ways, ALIAS NICK BEAL is very much the flip side of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE; instead of George being shown the proof of his importance by an angel, Foster is tempted by another fallen angel - THE fallen angel - with the achievement of all his personal desires as a feature-length test of character.

As fine as Mitchell is in this role, it's really the people around him that give the picture its life. George Macready, whose facial scar and raspy voice cast him as many a villain, gets a rare opportunity here to play an earnest man of the cloth and steals the film's most decisive moment with an action maneuver that would have done Peter Cushing's Van Helsing proud. Geraldine Wall has the difficult assignment of portraying a neglected wife whose love for her husband keeps her strong and civil and ever-supportive, and Audrey Totter is magnificent, the impressive focus of almost every scene she inhabits. (She reminds me a lot of Jennifer Blaire, who showed a real knack for acting in the mode of this era in Larry Blamire's mystery spoof DARK AND STORMY NIGHT.) Of particular note is a scene she plays twice - first with Milland, then with Mitchell - as Nick coaches Donna in what to say during her imminent meeting with Foster in order to keep him on the hook, with Nick somehow knowing Foster's lines in the as-yet-to-occur scene as well as the ones he's feeding to her. An impressively meta moment for its time, the scene deconstructs the acting and directing process while keeping the story in forward motion and, and when the time comes for the rehearsal to be played for real, with Nick spying on them (and seeming to conduct their actions) with one upraised eyebrow from the bedroom door, Totter manages to convey Donna's true conflicted emotions as she mouths the phony dialogue.

Milland approaches the role of Nick Beal with real élan - each and every one of his appearances comes as a startlement and, in a brilliant piece of script construction, his plan is first put into action by a young emissary who similarly appears and vanishes without a trace. His poise, his Mephistophelean pride, his slinky bearing, his austere refusal to be touched are brilliant brushstrokes and - now that I've seen and appreciated his work here - I can appreciate on an entirely new level why he was a good choice to play the leads in Roger Corman's PREMATURE BURIAL (1963) and X - THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES (1963). The supporting cast includes a number of welcome faces, ranging from Fred Clark and Nestor Paiva to Philip Van Zandt (unbilled, happy to deliver a single line) and Percy Helton (ditto - maybe the straightest line reading he ever had).

Much of this film's brilliance is due to screenwriter Jonathan Latimer, a mystery novelist who wrote a few of the books upon which Universal's CRIME CLUB programmers were based, and later went on to become one of PERRY MASON's top TV scribes. The previous year, Latimer had worked with director John Farrow and Ray Milland on the noir classic THE BIG CLOCK (1948) - but this is their real masterpiece. The atmospheric cinematography is the work of Lionel Lindon, whose achievements include CONQUEST OF SPACE, AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, THE BLACK SCORPION and numerous classic episodes of THRILLER ("Well of Doom," "Pigeons From Hell"), ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS and THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR, and NIGHT GALLERY (the entire second season). The score by Franz Waxman is doled out only in brief bursts but is impressive nonetheless, and in a way that complements most particularly the audacious décor given to the apartment Nick provides to Donna, where the fireplace and bed are heralded by panoramic Dalíesque murals.

Anyone with a love of fantastic cinema should feel an obligation to know this film, and know it well. This is a picture to be shelved alongside Mitchell Leisen's DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY (1934), William Dieterle's THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER (ALL THAT MONEY CAN BUY, 1941), Maurice Tourneur's CARNIVAL OF SINNERS (La main du diable, 1943), and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.

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

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Friday, August 27, 2021

Kino Lorber's THE WEB Reviewed

THE WEB (1947, 87:10; Kino Lorber): The cast alone summons up almost anything we might wish from a film noir - Edmond O’Brien, Ella Raines, Vincent Price, William Bendix, with John Abbott and Fritz Leiber among the second ranks - but the screeenplay (by William Bowers, who would later write Jack Webb's -30-, and Bertram Millhauser, a frequent writer on Universal’s Sherlock Holmes series) has a boyish, resilient brightness about it that seems ultimately disqualifying of film noir. In an interesting twist, the protagonist (O’Brien) is a bold but highly principled lawyer who has his guileless qualities used against him by a cold-blooded millionaire industrialist (Price, clean-shaven) who hires him as a temporary bodyguard then frames him into committing murder - so he's shown to be fundamentally heroic and naïve before having to plead (and even question) his innocence.

O'Brien falls in love with the boss’s slinky secretary (Raines - who wouldn’t?) and their sly, flirtatious banter almost makes the film intermittently bouncy. Price's amiable yet quietly psychotic role (the man is doing everything he can to destroy his own company!) shows him playing off his prior performances in the stage success ANGEL STREET (filmed as GASLIGHT) and the previous year's SHOCK (1946), a trajectory that guided him toward the more extreme villainy that kept him working and top-billed for the rest of his years. Bendix is particularly interesting as a smarter, more polished character than he usually plays: a chess-playing police lieutenant and old friend of O’Brien’s family who does his best within delicate, almost Dostoevskian boundaries to establish the shooting as murder without incriminating the man who actually pulled the trigger.

Thanks to the capable work of Irving Glassberg (his first proper DP credit, though he had been the camera operator on 1931's seminal THE PUBLIC ENEMY), it looks like film noir, though not consistently; it's worldview is neither damned nor existential, but rather ultimately clever, wholesome, and enterprising - if flecked with moral tests and pitfalls. The film's only stumble is the necessary scene wherein O'Brien tracks down a former journalist, now an effete successful novelist (Howland Chamberlain), who offers up a vital clue; the character comes off as a fugitive from a Preston Sturges picture. Otherwise, Michael Gordon’s direction is persuasive, and Ms. Raines makes a point of turning her back to give us generous views of both sides of her various Yvonne Wood gowns, far beyond the reach of most secretaries’ budgets, sure to please either sex.

Worth seeing, this release - released separately on BD and DVD - is apparently the film’s first availability on any home video format. Region A, with optional English subtitles. Extras include a useful commentary by Prof. Jason A. Ney (who frames the picture, pun intended, as film noir) and a brace of trailers for other interesting Kino Lorber releases along similar lines you may have overlooked.

Wednesday, August 18, 2021

50 Years Ago Today... New In Cincinnati Theaters

As you can see, the Cincinnati ENQUIRER had a problem with running the full title of Jess Franco's EUGENIE ... THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION, and it also looks like they had a stab at censoring the tagline for Mac Ahlberg's NANA ("The modern making of Emile Zola's master piece" - at least it looks like an added space there). Yes, this look (below) at the film's one-sheet confirms my suspicion... This double feature shows that Swedish sexploitation was still a box office draw five years after Ahlberg's I, A WOMAN was released in the States, partly due to Marie Liljedahl's arrival in Joe Sarno's INGA in 1968. I don't always load up a movie on its 50th anniversary but in the case of EUGENIE, I just might have to.

And then we have this nifty little sequel...

As you can see, they really had to squeeze mention of this new release into the paper - Dan Curtis' NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS. No Jonathan Frid in this one, which focuses instead on the characters of Quentin (David Selby) and Angelique (Lara Parker), who are here shoehorned into a brazen retelling of Roger Corman's THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963), itself based on H.P. Lovecraft's 1941 tale "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward." It could have been much better than it is; Curtis signed a contract with MGM to deliver a 90 minute picture and went way over length, and the studio punished him by giving him literally 24 hours to deliver what was promised. So the movie, as it finally plays, is like scenes from a larger canvas, and the music score hits a brick wall every time the film cuts from one scene to another. An attempt was made to restore the film to its original length some years back, but it didn't come off.

In light of the recent success accorded to Questlove's SUMMER OF SOUL, this unjustly overlooked documentary, covering a concert held in Ghana in March 1971 on the anniversary of its independence, deserves rediscovery. James Brown was invited but didn't attend; Wilson Pickett with a powerful horn section steals the show. Directed by Denis Sanders (ELVIS - THAT'S THE WAY IT IS), it was restored (insomuch as it could be - Roberta Flack requested that her performances be removed) and given a DVD release back in 2004.

This G-rated (yawn) Russian/Italian co-production about the attempts to rescue the survivors of a crashed zeppelin near the North Pole was finally arriving in the States two years after its world premiere, after sacrificing more than half an hour of its running time. Ennio Di Concini (Bava's BLACK SUNDAY) was credited with the screenplay, and the score was by Ennio Morricone. It had the peculiar distinction of being nominated for a Golden Globe Award for "Best English Language Foreign Film," which it lost to SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY.

Friday, August 13, 2021

Arrow's DAIMAJIN TRILOGY Reviewed

THE DAIMAJIN TRILOGY

(1966, Arrow Video), containing:

DAIMAJIN, 84m

THE RETURN OF DAIMAJIN, 79m

THE WRATH OF DAIMAJIN, 87m

Reviewed by Tim Lucas

We may feel that the movies being made today have a patent on redundancy but, believe it or not, back in 1966, just one year after belatedly entering the kaiju ("monster") competition with DAIKAIJU GAMERA (US: GAMERA, THE GIANT MONSTER, 1965), Daiei Film of Japan actually introduced a new kaiju character and promptly starred him in three full color adventures, all of which featured pretty much the same story. It was in April of that year that they released DAIMAJIN, directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda. In August followed DAIMAJIN IKARU, then in December came DAIMAJIN GYAKUSHU - and then there were no more.

The story they all share goes something like this: In 16th century Japan, an evil warlord conquered a village and enslaved its people. The village was nestled in a valley below a large, impassible mountain held sacred by the locals as a shrine to the god Majin, whose giant likeness was erected there at some point in the past. Word had been passed down through the centuries that the mountain is sacred ground, never to be crossed. In despair, one or more of the enslaved people break away to throw themselves on the mercy of the god, begging for their people to be liberated from their oppressors. This transgressor is caught and tortured by the warlord and his evil minions, which awakens the dormant god, who then presides over a stunning climax of stone cold, apocalyptic retribution.

Whereas Daiei's GAMERA films were made for young audiences, the DAIMAJIN films are likely to pose a problem for many younger viewers (and, indeed, some adults) in that they maintain a rigorously realistic, dramatic stance for maybe 80% of their running time, withholding the "monster" and its righteous path of destruction for the last 10-18 minutes. But the films hold great rewards for the patient; you might reach for these wanting a monster, but you'll also see some splendid, poignant performances, some of the best Japanese cinematography of the period, and the most formidable giant city-crushing behemoth Toho never made. Everything Majin does is spectacular and he's not onscreen long enough to wear out his welcome.

In English, these films are known as MAJIN - THE MONSTER OF TERROR (that's the AIP TV title by which it was known in televised syndication back in the 1960s and '70s), THE RETURN OF MAJIN, and THE WRATH OF MAJIN. All these titles have been updated to DAIMAJINs now - the combination word meaning "Devil Name." Majin is a god, and is only mentioned as such by those who believe in him, who are fundamentally good. But the villains of each piece, who are evil and lead lives of avarice and violence and criminality, meet someone quite different when they face the avatar of all they believe in.

DAIMAJIN prepares to avenge a crucified member of his flock.

In the manner of folk tales passed down through the millennia, this basic story mutates in the DAIMAJIN series with each retelling. In the first film, the story begins with a coup as the evil warlord Hanabasa seizes power by assassinating the king; the slain ruler's two children are smuggled into hiding atop the mountain, where superstition forbids them to be followed - and the bulk of the story takes place eighteen years later, when they come of age and vow to reclaim their birthright. In the second, directed by Kenji Misumi (known for his ZATOICHI and LONE WOLF AND CUB films), Majin's sacred shrine is on an island between two coastal villages which are attacked by an evil lord's army on the occasion of a celebration when their defenses are low. A chosen group of representatives flee to the island to pray to their god, and troops are sent in their wake to destroy the statue - which angers the god into activity. In the third, directed by Kazuo Mori, a village with a strong logging community is overseen each day by the benign spirit of Majin, poised on a nearby mountaintop, a peak said to be impassible. When a warlord conquers the village and enslaves its men to convert their land into a fortress suitable for him, one man volunteers to escape and make the trek to the mountain top - but fails. This task is then secretly undertaken by three of the loggers' sons, who are secretly followed by another child much too young to face such dangers - whose presence doesn't make himself known till the journey is well past the point of return.

An impressive wink at Cecil B. DeMille in THE RETURN OF DAIMAJIN.

Also with each film, there is also a change of season and milieu. The first film evokes summer, the second autumn, and the third winter. Likewise, the first film is set well inland and is lush with forest greenery; much of the the second takes place in and around water; and the the third encompasses a sudden snowstorm. All three films qualify as serious fantasy, yet the basic character of the three films also differs in subtle but interesting ways. In the first two films, female characters are significant to the stories, but the third film features almost none. The first is a very sober historical drama - up to a point; the second has the most contemporary pacing and is a bit lighter, more focused on spectacle, which makes it the closest of the trilogy to the feel of a classic kaiju tale; and the third recalls classic Walt Disney adventure drama as its young cast prove their mettle by surviving against nature and other dangerous odds to achieve their goal. I think it's important to watch the films in sequence. Despite their redundancy, it's an interesting redundancy - one that seems to say something about how stories change when told by different storytellers. The same thing goes for Akira Ifukube's scores for all three, which all share the same gargantuan hallmarks but find opportunities to accentuate the time period and the personalities of the characters with singular melodic touches and accents. They are all beautifully made and each has its own unique strengths. Speaking for myself, I find the first film the most viscerally powerful, the second the most visually thrilling, and the third (which features almost no female characters) the most heart-rending.

They have been available on disc before, even on Blu-ray, but the English-friendly releases have been slight in terms of extras - until now. Arrow Video has now assembled a definitive, meticulously well-curated box set, THE DAIMAJIN TRILOGY, which includes each film in 1080p on its own disc (already breaking new ground). All three films are presented in their original 2.35:1 screen ratio and with 1.0 mono audio. They are packaged with a choice of reversible sleeves, offering either wonderful film-specific original art by Matt Frank (who also gave this set a beautiful outer cover) or original Japanese poster art, along with a tastefully designed 100-page book with new essays by Jonathan Clements, Keith Aiken, Ed Godziszewski, Raffael Coronelli, Robin Gatto, and Kevin Derendorf. The book should not be passed off as mere decoration, but used as a sturdy and valuable companion toward a greater understanding of the films' historical timeframe and geographies, production challenges, theatrical distribution in Japan and abroad, and the man mostly responsible for for their impressive spectacle, Fujio Morita, who worked on all three films.

THE WRATH OF DAIMAJIN.

For many collectors, the three new audio commentaries will be another main draw. I've only had time to sample them but Stuart Galbraith IV (DAIMAJIN), Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp (RETURN OF MAJIN), and Jonathan Clements (WRATH OF MAJIN) are all well-established names in the study of Asian cult cinema and they know their stuff. You can trust them to enrich your own appreciation of what's being offered here. Each film is also accompanied by one or more trailers and image galleries, as well as postcards featuring Japanese artwork, but each disc also seems to have its own special feature(s). These range from a rollicking Kim Newman overview of the entire series (ideal for entry-level viewers); Ed Godziszewski's video essay on the series' special effects; a marvelous interview with Prof. Yoneo Ota, a Japanese film historian who was present on the set and is a source of engrossing information about the films, their inner workings, and their unique appeal; and a feature-length interview/master class with Fujio Morita (who died in 2014) in which he discusses his career and deconstructs the special effects highlights of each film, as well as some others. He's very sharp and lucid in his information, but it should be noted that the English subtitles for this interview have their eccentricities; I believe the Maestro means "mist" or "fog" when the subtitles say "gas," and the machine he describes as a "double reel camera" appears to be what we know in English as an optical printer. Minor terminology gaffes aside, this is a fabulous opportunity to peer behind the curtain of his art and science.

We now live in an age when even Herschell Gordon Lewis, Al Adamson, Andy Milligan, and Bill Rebane have their own box sets. As wonderful and unlikely as these chimera are, it's a different thing to hold a box set of films like this one, which curate a thorough documentation of the very best of a certain niche of filmmaking. THE DAIMAJIN TRILOGY may not be an auteur set, but when you hold it in your hand, it has the heft and authority of a kind of Bible. Pick it up and dream about smiting the warlords in your own life.

Wednesday, August 11, 2021

50 Years Ago This Week... in Cincinnati Theaters!

Saturday, August 07, 2021

Thoughts on ATMP 50

Amazon Music Unlimited made the 50th Anniversary release of ALL THINGS MUST PASS available a couple of midnights ago. Unfortunately the surround mixes are not included, but the other five discs were all accounted for. The 2020 remix of the album did not impress me; I don’t think there is much anyone can do to unclutter a Phil Spector production, least of all this one. Also, I think it’s difficult to recapture the original coup de theâtre of George Harrison releasing his first post-Beatles solo album as a three-disc box set; it was a powerful gesture then, but - my own opinion - I don’t think many of the songs have aged particularly well; it’s the proud, bluff production that bolsters the album as a whole.

I love the sinuous, inviting, seductive pull of the opening track, “I’d Have You Anytime”; the strangely irresistible clamor of “Wah Wah”; the lilting warnings of “Beware of Darkness”; the title track; and what is (for me) the most haunting track of all, “The Ballad of Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll).” It sounds like a lot to love, and would be for any single album, but this three disc set is now greatly expanded to include demos (which sometimes reveal how slight the original compositions were), jams, attempts at songs that once didn’t make the final cut. The advantage of these sparer performances is that, being relatively uncluttered, they sound much better, clearer, detailed than the Spector cues. Even so, if "If Not For You" is a major Harrison track, it's still Dylan at his most meagerly, and I don’t need to study “I Dig Love” from different angles.

Despite my criticisms, I’d still like to hear the surround mix at some point, which might make the Wall of Sound more like a Pool of Sound.

Wednesday, August 04, 2021

ENTERING THE EUROCRYPT OF CHRISTOPHER LEE Part 6 (Finale)

I have a peculiar relationship to Polish cinema. It's not a niche of filmmaking I tend to seek out, and yet - almost without exception - whenever I have ventured outside my general incuriosity, I've found myself (literally, found myself) taken to the brink of some uncanny discovery, a feeling of fabulous illumination and a sense almost like homecoming. A number of my most profound moviegoing experiences have been the work (I would also have to say the companionship) of Polish filmmakers; in the order of their appearance to me: Andrzej Wajda (KANAL, ASHES AND DIAMONDS), Roman Polanski (KNIFE IN THE WATER, REPULSION, CUL DE SAC), Jerzy Skolimowski (DEEP END, MOONLIGHTING), above all Krzysztof Kieslowski (everything!), Walerian Borowczyk (DR. JEKYLL AND MISS OSBOURNE, THE STORY OF SIN), Andrzej Zuławski (again, everything!), and most recently, Lech Majewski (THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS). While I've sought out as much as I could find by all these directors, I've never become inexhaustibly obsessed with Polish cinema in general, as I have with so many other niches of international filmmaking - perhaps because much of the work I've loved had to be made by Polish artists in exile, but also because self-discovery can be exhausting.

Your host - the only man who could say "I'm Christopher Lee" and convince you of it.

The same qualities of craft, personality, fatalism, irony, metaphysics, humor and taste that I've consistently found in the works of all the filmmakers named above is something I also derived in small but sweet doses from almost every episode of THEATRE MACABRE, the 24-episode series of short Polish films hosted by Christopher Lee for broadcast in 1971-72, which compose the last discs in Severin Films' box set THE EUROCRYPT OF CHRISTOPHER LEE. It must be noted that the films making up this series were never intended to be shown as such; in Poland, they were originally televised on Telewizja Polska between 1967-69 as individual shorts, when they could only be shown in black-and-white - and it is only in this recorded form that they have ever been repeated. The films were originally produced by Film Polski - Iluzjon Film Unit and subsequently collected and repackaged for English export by Murray B. Silverman and Trans World Television Productions, Ltd. Unfortunately, the films all originally ran in the neighborhood of 27 minutes, which left little room for export modification, so the credits for these productions are here grievously incomplete; no cinematographers or editors of the original material are mentioned, only the creators of the Lee wrap-arounds and the composer of THEATRE MACABRE's lurching main theme, Ron Goodwin.

As I mentioned, these star Christopher Lee - sporting the lavish mustache he grew for 1973's HORROR EXPRESS - who presents the episodes in a variety of settings with disarming warmth and good humor. Scripted by Jesse Lasky, Jr., I found these to be some of the most enjoyable of this particular genre, not quite up there with Boris Karloff's host duties for THRILLER or Rod Serling's stewardship of TWILIGHT ZONE, but well above the likes of Sebastian Cabot (GHOST STORY), James Coburn (DARKROOM), or even Serling's curation of NIGHT GALLERY. They are short, sweet, and first-rate; Lee appears to be enjoying himself immensely - even when one introduction requires him to arise from a coffin. This complete presentation, a 2K restoration from the original camera negatives of the English-language versions, is included on two discs in their first-ever availability on home video. Aside from the series' very limited run in America, these films have never been available in color before now. Though the English dubbing is well-cast and acceptably done, one is certainly left curious about how the stories played in their original language.

Lovely period composition in "First Love."

What most viewers are likely to notice about the stories off the bat is that, for the most part, they are not all that "macabre" - not the majority of them, anyway. This is not the fault of the original productions, which were never intended to be such a thing. The title imposed on the series by Trans World was surely suggested by Lee's presiding, but THEATRE MACABRE inspires expectations that most of these stories never set out to fulfill - indeed, the very first episode ("First Love," scripted by one of my Polish masters, Andrzej Wajda) is so singularly unsuited to the given theme that some viewers may be angered by it, as they are left wondering how the hell it qualifies. However, several others do accommodate the strange, the bizarre, the exotic, the unusual - and there are several real gems, including two stories adapted and directed by another of my masters, Andrzej Zuławski, at the outset of his career. I opened this review as I did to help others understand why the overall scope of these stories may have found in me a more receptive viewer than most. From the very beginning, I found myself consistently charmed and intrigued by the actors (the pretty actresses and the wonderful character players), impressed by the humble but sincere craftsmanship enriching all levels of an understated production, and pleased by all their varied approaches to storytelling. Without exception, I found myself happy to watch three episodes at a time.

The Greek peasant parents of a child who is about to learn
an unpleasant life lesson in the absorbing story "Mateo Falcone."

Severin Films doesn't provide an enclosure to help us identify the stories, to tell us which stories they are or who wrote them, or indeed who wrote and directed them, and at present, the IMDb isn't much more helpful. So I took the trouble of going through every episode and jotting down the pertinent information. Alas, the cast acknowledgements are usually limited to only two names and we are not told who these actors played.

Disc 1:

1. First Love. 10-01-71. Directed by Sylvester Checinski. Based on Ivan Turgenev's "First Love" by Andrzej Wajda. With: Magdalena Zawadzka, Wojciech Szymanski.

2. The Man Who Demoralized Hadleyburg. 10-08-71. Directed by Jerzy Zarzycki. Adapted from Mark Twain's "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg" by Zdzislaw Skrowronski. With: Leon Niemczyk, Bronislaw Pawlik.

3. The Tortures of Hope. 10-15-71. Directed and scripted by Ewa and Czeslaw Petelsky from the story by F.A. Villiers de L'Isle-Adam. With: Henryk Boukolowski, Wladyslaw Hancza.

4. Mateo Falcone. 10-22-71. Directed by Jan Budkiewicz. Adapted by Jan Budkiewicz and Jerzy Szeski from the story by Prosper Merimée. With: Bogomil Simeonov, Iwailo Simeonov.

"The Vampire" is one of the rare straight horror episodes,
from the author of BLACK SABBATH's "The Wurdalak."

5. The Vampire. 10-29-71. Directed by Stanislaw Lenartowicz. Dapted from A.K. Tolstoy's story by Ziemowit Fedecki. With: Jadwiga Chojnacka, Aleksandra Zawieruszanka, Jan Machulski.

6. The Swashbuckler. 11-05-71. Directed by Stanislaw Lenartowicz. Adapted from the story by Ivan Turgenev. With: Aleksandra Zawieruszanka, Tadeusz Lomnicki.

7. The Actress. 11-12-71. Directed and adapted by Stanislaw Lenartowicz from the story by A.K. Tolstoy. With: Anna Ciepielwska, Gustaw Lutkiewicz, Zdzislaw Maklakiewicz, Zdzislaw Kuzniar.

8. The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Feather. 11-19-71. Directed and adapted by Janusz Majewski from the story by Edgar Allan Poe. With: Jerzy Przybylski, Krzysztof Kalczynski.

9. The Rajah's Diamond. 11-26-71. Directed by Sylwester Chechinski. Adapted by Andrzej Jarecki from the stiory by Robert Louis Stevenson. With: Wladyslaw Hancza, Jerzy Karaszkiewicz.

10. The Nose. 12-03-71. Directed and adapted by Stanislaw Lenartowicz, from the story by Nikolai Gogol. With: Elzbieta Goralczyk, Zdzislaw Maklakiewicz.

Olgierd Lukaszewicz stars in one of the set's most impressive episodes,
a magnificent retelling of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart."

11. Tell Tale Hearts. 12-10-71. Directed by Jan Laskowski. Adapted by Jan Laskowski and Jan Borkowski from "The Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe. With: Olgierd Lukaszewicz, Wladyslaw Jarema.

12. Markheim. 12-17-71. Directed and adapted by Janusz Majewski from the story by Robert Louis Stevenson. With: Aleksandr Bardini, Jerzy Kamas.

Czeleslaw Wollejko as Oscar Wilde's "Canterville Ghost."

Disc 2:

13. The Barrel Organ. 12-24-71. Directed by Stanislaw Jedryka. Adapted by Zdzislaw Showronski from the story by Bolesaw Prus. With: Tadeusz Fijewski, Iza Nowocin.

14. The Canterville Ghost. 12-31-71. Directed by Ewa and Czeslaw Petelsky. Adapted by Zdzislaw Skrowronski from the story by Oscar Wilde. With: Czeslaw Wollejko, Witold Debicki.

15. Decameron. 01-07-72. Directed by Jan Budkiewicz. Adapted by Jan Budkiewicz and Andrzej Czalbowski from "The Decameron No. 40" by Giovanni Boccaccio. With: Marzena Trybala, Peter Slabakov.

16. A Matter of Conscience. 01-14-72. Directed and adapted by Ewa and Czeslaw Petelsky, from the story by Ambrose Bierce. With: Andrzej Lapicki, Wieslaw Golas.

17. The Husband Under the Bed. 01-21-72. Directed by Stanislaw Rozewicz. Adapted by Stanislaw Rozewicz and Tadeusz Rosewicz, from the story by Fyodor Dostoevski. Bronislaw Pawlik, Roman Wilhelmi.

Piotr Wysocki and Beata Tyszkiewicz in Andrzej Zulawski's "The Song of Triumphant Love."

18. Pavoncello. 01-28-71. Directed by Andrzej Zuławski. Adapted by Miroslaw and Andrzej Zuławski, from the story by Stefan Zeromski. With: Stefan Friedman, Joanna Kasperska.

19. The Song of Triumphant Love. 02-04-72. Directed by Andrzej Zuławski. Adapted by Miroslaw and Andrzej Zuławski, from the story by Ivan Turgenev. With: Beata Tyszkiewicz, Piotr Wysocki.

20. The Postmaster. 02-11-72. Directed by Stanislaw Lenartowicz. Adapted by Jerzy Stawinski, from the story by Alexander Pushkin. Andrzej Lapicki, Teresa Tuszynska.

21. A Terribly Strange Bed. 02-18-72. Directed and adapted by Witold Lesiewicz from the story by Wilkie Collins. With: Maria Ciesielska, Wieslaw Golas.

22. The Fatalist. 02-25-72. Directed by Stanislaw Lenartowicz. Adapted by Ziemowit Fedecki, from the story by Mikhail Lermontov. With: Gustaw Holuobek, Andrzej Hrydzewicz.

23. Resurrection of the Offland. 03-03-72. Directed by Jerzy Zarzycki. Adapted by Zdzislaw Skowronski, from the story by Alexandre Dumas. With: Wanda Koczeska, Andrzej Antkowiak.

24. The Boarded Window. 03-10-72. Directed and adapted by Janusz Majewski, from the story by Ambrose Bierce. Ewa Krzyzewska, Jsef Duriasz.

Jerzy Jogałła as the Malayan servant in "The Song of Triumphant Love."

If I remember correctly, all but two of the episodes are period pieces, which lends itself quite well to a storytelling anthology. One of the rare modern episodes is Janusz Majewski's unorthodox adaptation of Poe's "The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Feather," which is more creative than satisfying; another is Ewa and Czeslaw Petelsky's go at Wilde's "The Canterville Ghost," which isn't as witty as the original story but makes inventive use of color in the same manner as David Lean's film of Noël Coward's BLITHE SPIRIT (1945).

Unsurprisingly, the very best episodes collected here are the two by Zuławski, which he scripted with his father. Both tales involve music and love as their themes, but only the second is fantastic (even "macabre") in nature. "Pavoncello" (1967) is the story of a young violinist, impoverished and still a virgin, who is taken out of himself by the untouchable beauty of a young woman present at one of his performances. His rising ambitions are dashed when he learns that she is married to an older man of title, but she later approaches him with a whispered invitation to a night of love - a sublime encounter that leads to a bitter disclosure. On the whole, "Pavoncello" is minor Zuławski but there is one remarkable moment that makes it essential: at one point in the story, when the two principals entwine during a putative violin lesson, Zuławski achieves a single galvanizing visual that realizes everything the story means to impart, materially and symbolically - an extremely rare achievement. A nice companion piece to the THEATRE MACABRE version is the original broadcast version, in Polish but without subtitles, which can be found on YouTube.

However, "The Song of Triumphant Love" vaults well beyond it; this one is full-strength Zuławski and, I believe, a genuine masterpiece of the short form. A full-blown Gothic, it's the story of a love triangle between a man and his wife and a long-lost friend, who arrives unexpected one night on a foam-flecked horse in the company of his mute Malayan servant. The friend has returned after his journeys have taken him to most of the countries and mysteries around the globe - an itinerary that began when his host's wife made her choice of which of the two men was to be her husband. During their dinner together, the Malayan performs a song with magical properties as their entertainment... and strange things begin to happen. As I was watching "The Song of Triumphant Love," I was wondering how I might best describe the power and magic it wields without spoiling it - and it came to me: Imagine if THE REPTILE had been directed by Terence Fisher at the peak of his powers rather than John Gilling. This is not a precise analogy because it's nothing to do with reptiles or transformations, but I believe the analogy is sound. From the moment she first appeared, Beata Tyskiewicz seemed to me Poland's answer to Veronica Carlson, and then everything else gradually fell into place. For me, this one episode transcends everything else in this box set. Thankfully available for comparative purposes is the original Polish broadcast version, which can be found on Vimeo, again without subtitles - though I must say, this one loses much more soul than the other when deprived of color.

Wladyslaw Jarema in Jan Laskowski's "Tell Tale Hearts."

Also worthy of particular praise is Jan Laskowski's adaptation of Poe's much-filmed "The Tell-Tale Heart," though the plurality of its given title is incomprehensible. From the very opening, Laskowski weaves a spell of eerie malignancy with the central performance of young, handsome Olgierd Lukaszewicz as his youthful narcissism is offended by the genuinely hideous eye of the elderly Wladyslaw Jarema. Unfortunately the story builds to the inevitable arrival of the suspicious police, portrayed so many times in more familiar films, and here Laskowski loses his tight grip on the story's reins and commits the artistic crime of closing with a freeze-frame instead of giving us one last macabre image worth striving for.

Also notable are two adaptations of tales by the much-overlooked Alex Tolstoy, whose "Family of the Wurdalak" inspired both Mario Bava's "Wurdalak" episode of BLACK SABBATH and Giorgio Ferroni's NIGHT OF THE DEVILS. "The Vampire" is the tongue-in-cheek story of a prospective groom who is approached by a stranger at a gathering honoring his engagement who is warned that his prospective mother-in-law is a literal blood-sucker. There is a streak of Gogolian humor in the story, as well as some Expressionistic touches, and it touches on some of the same slippery pleasures as Polanski's THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS - definitely worth a look. As for the other A. Tolstoy adaptation, Stanislaw Lenartowicz' "The Actress," it is the only story in the set that didn't work for me on any level.

Considering how many television anthology series, even the most classic, are guilty of passing out a few duds, THEATRE MACABRE - though composed of materials not meant to assume this form - is remarkably consistent and enjoyable. My only disappointment in the presentation is the lack of an original language option, though it's certainly understandable. As far as I know, the original versions of these films still await their color debuts on Polish television.