Notes on Recent Viewings

THE ELECTRICAL LIFE OF LOUIS WAIN (2021)

This Amazon Prime offering is an exquisite biopic of the British cat caricaturist of the early 1900s, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and THE CROWN's Claire Foy. Though its pacing is anything but frenetic, it captures something of Ken Russell in its approach to the material, which is charming but also winningly eccentric, and ultimately psychedelic and abstract - and quintessentially British. Russell's influence is tacitly acknowledged by the casting of Phoebe Nicholls, the child in WOMEN IN LOVE, who is cast all these years later as the Wain family mother. This may be the only new movie I've seen this year that I would call a masterpiece; it's sweet and cute, caustic and tragic, surreal and unabashedly romantic. I even liked the CGI work in it, and the old age makeups are perfectly done. Donna and I were also thrilled by a strange coincidence: the day we watched this, we mailed a copy of my new SECRET LIFE OF LOVE SONGS book to Nick Cave (who helped inspire it); I was also working on an H.G. Wells-related audio commentary at the time and, when Wells turns up as a character late in this story, he was played by - of all people - Nick Cave. (This was actually a double whammy, as we last saw him turn up unexpectedly in WINGS OF DESIRE on the day the first copies of my book arrived from the printer.) I appreciate and always take note of coincidences like this, as they make me feel I must be on the right track.

TAKING OFF (1971)

I find myself on a 1971 jag, trying to catch up on the 50-year-old films I've somehow missed seeing over the years, because they are almost always worthwhile - plus, they give me the feeling there's at least another 50 years to look forward to! This early film by Milos Forman, a generation gap story of sorts, was photographed by Miroslaw Ondricek, who subsequently shot Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! (1973), and it's enlightening to see how they both tell their respective stories while cutting away to people performing live music. In the case of O LUCKY MAN!, Alan Price's songs represent a kind of Greek chorus to the story, while in this film the emphasis of the songs and storyline is on communication, the need and failure to communicate, to express oneself. I was also surprised to recognize an instrumental version of Mars Bonfire's "Faster Than the Speed of Life" playing in the luncheonette scene. It had previously been covered by Steppenwolf on their second album, so I guess this counts as Steppenwolf muzak!

LITTLE MURDERS (1971)

Alan Arkin's directorial debut was a first time viewing, courtesy of the Criterion Channel. I liked this one very much for the most part; it feels a bit overlong, and has a few gratingly self-indulgent scenes in the last half hour particularly (one featuring the director, though playing this part was probably helpful in terms of allowing him to direct), but there's a whole feature length chunk of it that's brilliantly written and played, smart and sardonic and very funny. Elliott Gould, Lou Jacobi, Donald Sutherland, Vincent Gardenia - all wonderful. As is Elizabeth Wilson, who has been turning up in a lot of my viewing this year - she was also a regular on EAST SIDE WEST SIDE episodes, which I've been watching. I've always enjoyed her as a comic actress so I've been impressed to see what she can do as a serious dramatic actress. I'm acquiring a funny sort of crush on her. She's perfect in this.

NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950)

Another Criterion Channel discovery. How on earth has this eluded me till now? A masterpiece, top to bottom, with a killer cast: Richard Widmark (at his very best), Gene Tierney (in a small but key role), the delectable Googie Withers, Herbert Lom (at his most villainous AND moving), Mike Mazurki, Hugh Marlowe (it felt like the first time I've ever seen him play a real human being), Francis L. Sullivan in a touching tragic role, and the incredible ex-wrestling champion Stanislaus Zsybyzko. Based on a 1936 novel by Gerald Kersh, the film is set in a highly expressionistic, near surrealistic postwar London, featuring a number of Dickensian characters and intrigues. I was under its spell from the very first shot and the spell was never broken. I want to check out Glenn Erickson's audio commentary (from 2004!) very soon, which is also on offer at Criterion.

DESIRE (1936)

This Frank Borzage film, produced by Ernst Lubitsch, is an utterly winning reunion of the two stars of 1930's MOROCCO, Gary Cooper and Marlene Dietrich. Cooper's a guiless American taking his first vacation abroad in Spain (he's read every book about Spain there is) and Dietrich is introduced as an accomplished jewel thief, a kind of female Fantômas (her actual backstory, which comes out later, is somewhat different to that) - the two of them perfectly aligned for the proverbial "cute meet." The story may be far-fetched but it's told with such humor, flair, and style, who cares? Inexhaustibly charming entertainment, and there is nary a shot in which Dietrich looks anything less than a goddess. A couple of times I couldn't help but laugh because her Travis Banton costumes were such outrageous "lounge about the villa" wear. The supporting cast includes a dark-haired William Frawley, a young and impeccable Akim Tamiroff, and Colonel Sebastian Moran himself, Alan Mobray. My favorite Borzage now. Available as a beautiful Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.

RED NOTICE (2021)

This exotic heist thriller from Netflix stars Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot, and Ryan Reynolds, whom I quickly wanted to gag. A $200,000,000 international production, at least as lavish as the latest Bond, but thin, jokey stuff patently made for 18-20 year olds who favor the kind of wit that involves trivial references you need to be at least 50 to understand, if not impressed or amused by. As often happens in today’s action movies, no one can fall from a high precipice without 10 other fast things happening on their way down. I hate that. There was a 30 minute stretch of excitement that was so monotonous we both fell asleep. The ending warns us they are thinking sequel.

DEVIL GODDESS (1955)

I finally completed a memory-refreshing viewing of my three-volume JUNGLE JIM COLLECTION from Australia's Umbrella Entertainment. For the last three films in the set, producer Sam Katzman chose not to renew his contract with King Features (which held the rights to the JUNGLE JIM comic strip) and had Johnny Weissmuller play a fantastic version of himself, living in the jungle and working as a guide for various scientists, archeologists, and n'er-do-wells. Sad to say, this last title in the series finds Johnny leading a compact expedition in search of a lost scientist, who is found living on a dormant volcano (obviously, it eventually wakes up) and misrepresenting himself to a native tribe as a lightning-throwing god to be worshipped. Though only 68 minutes long, the film is shamelessly constructed around recycled scenes and stock footage from at least five of the previous JUNGLE JIM movies, all of them made within recent memory given that the first film in the series was released in 1948!

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

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Revisiting THE TIME TRAVELERS

Writer-director Ib Melchor’s THE TIME TRAVELERS (1964) is a former American International Pictures release that I first discovered on local commercial television some 50 years ago. It's the story of four workers (DOCTOR X's Preston Foster, Philip Carey, Merry Anders, Steve Franken) in a scientific installation who are studying time travel and inadvertently open a window that takes them "through the looking glass" into the far-flung year of 2071, when the few survivors of an atomic catastrophe (led by ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE's John Hoyt) war with a splinter society of mutants while erecting a starship to escape their oppression and the slow death of Mother Earth. 

I revisited the film a couple of nights ago, courtesy of Kino Lorber's recent Blu-ray release. Going back to it was a joy, refreshing my appreciation of its appealing personality and the sense of wonder it achieves on such a small budget. Just the opening shot - a slow zoom into a color slide of the galaxy - is surprisingly powerful on a big screen, especially when wedded with Richard LaSalle’s literally awe-inspiring music - I assume, a library recording.

The movie's real masterstroke of execution is that, with the exception of a few opticals, the bulk of the special effects were done either live on set (in the manner of magicians’ illusions) or in-camera, and some - like the removal and replacement of a living android’s head, filmed in a single sustained shot - impress no matter how many times you rewind and replay them. 

Each time I see it, I’m impressed that Melchior, while crafting an essentially wholesome work, found a means of remarking on what might become of mating habits and sexual interplay in a future time of duress. I've always particularly loved the scene where time seems to stand enchantingly still: Steve Franken's first date with a girl from the android assembly line, who serenades him with a "Lumichord," a kind of luminous abstract keyboard instrument that emits a glittery, otherworldly, romantic instrumental that is nearly the equal of “Telstar.” Aside from a few trailers, there are no extras on the disc, but it’s well worth having. It always entertains, and the new 2K restoration is lovely - and I also believe the mind-blowing finale may have inspired Stanley Kubrick’s approach to his Stargate sequence.

Melchior was the heart and soul of 1960s science fantasy. He also wrote and directed THE ANGRY RED PLANET, in addition to scripting Byron Haskin's ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS and Mario Bava's PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (as well as REPTILICUS and JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET, though these failed to take full advantage of his talents). These works are very much a bridge between 1950s pulp science fiction and what science fiction would become in the immediate wake of 2001, before STAR WARS hijacked the genre for decades to follow. THE TIME TRAVELERS may just be the best and purest distillation of his many talents.

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

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Severin Films' MIDNIGHT reviewed

MIDNIGHT

aka BACKWOODS MASSACRE

1980/82, 93m 56s

Severin Films BD / Region ABC/CC

Written and directed by the co-author of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, John Russo's MIDNIGHT was one of the last films I remember seeing at a drive-in, when drive-ins could still be trusted to present real, honest-to-goodness drive-in movies. (Unlike today, when most of the straggling survivors run the same multi-million dollar blockbusters that are playing indoors elsewhere.) I remember being seduced by Independent-International's radio campaign, which was not quite Brother Theodore but approximated that same wavelength: "MIIIIIIIIDNIGHT! When the DEAD drink the BLOOD of the LIVING!" intoned a raspy voice. Deal me in.

As signalled by Russo's proprietary credit, MIDNIGHT is an example of what George A. Romero's team could conjure up with Romero himself off the playing field. Based on a "best-selling" novel by Russo (which I suppose means it's the best-selling of his many novels), MIDNIGHT (whose working title was THE CONGREGATION) is the story of Nancy, a teenage girl who runs away from home to escape the overbearing sexual advances of her patrol cop step-father, hitchhikes a lift to Florida with two guys who are stealing food from convenience stores along the way, and ends up running afoul of a family of Satan worshippers trying to revive their dead mother with sacrificial blood while unwittingly camping on their woodsy property. 

For all I know, this out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire story may be a real page-turner, but the film Russo made from it rolled out slowly. He was initially approached by an investor who offered him $35,000 toward a production; he then approached Samuel M. Sherman of Independent-International who offered him that same amount (as well as free 35mm film stock, the free use of an Arriflex camera, and the services of actor Lawrence Tierney) in exchange for the US distribution rights. 

The film stock tended to arrive three cans at a time, and irregularly, and somehow Russo - with a little help from his friends, including special makeup effects artist Tom Savini and MARTIN star John Amplas - managed to keep things moving forward over a leisurely pace. You've heard of films made in eight weeks? Six weeks? Four weeks? Two? Over a weekend? Six months later, Russo had his rough cut. According to the stories gathered in the interesting extras of Severin's new Blu-ray, Russo sent his cut to Sherman, who was reportedly pleased with the result... but not entirely satisfied. He suggested an alternate ending bringing Tierney back into the story, which Russo filmed to order, and the film's completion coincided with 1980's glut of serial killer gore pictures. Feeling that "it's time will come," Sherman shelved MIDNIGHT till the summer of 1982, by which time it was pretty obvious that he had waited too long. By then, drive-ins were starting to die and splatter movies (of which this is a fairly dry example) were starting be co-opted by major studios as their franchise value began to be recognized. Even changing the film's title to the more-to-the-point BACKWOODS MASSACRE proved ineffectual. In short, the unlucky picture never had too much exposure.

In all honesty, MIDNIGHT is nothing to get too excited about. It doesn't really add anything to what filmmakers like Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven had brought to the genre in far scarier form in the 1970s, though Russo did have certain ambitions for the project. It was his intention to depict a world in which even the good people were compromised; where he could ironically contrast the evil family's Satanic beliefs with Nancy's reawakened-under-stress Catholic beliefs, both of them equally misguided in his view; however, in the script that developed, these are no more than shown in parallel without achieving a true synthesis of contrast and ironical comment. Russo's intentions are most effectively expressed in the film's score, which consists in large part of what sounds like Christian rock ballad instrumentation wedded to dark, Satanic lyrics. 

According to Russo's 22m interview in this set, the production was beset by trouble with the film stock, which was somehow inadvertently (and repeatedly) exposed to light before use, rendering most of his best takes (and even some entire scenes) unusable - which they didn't know until they screened them, and at which point the opportunity to reshoot was gone. The cinematography is no more than serviceable and offers very little in terms of atmosphere. Dead characters are repeatedly misframed so that their breathing torsos remain in full view. The primary performances are mostly okay, with Melanie Verlin (our resilient Final Girl) and Amplas standing out, while the supporting roles are mostly amateurish. As with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, there are some African-American actors in the mix, allowing the film to shuffle in some mild editorializing about lingering racism in small town America, but it makes so little impact on the whole that it seems almost obligatory rather than a hard confirmation of the picture's world view. Curiously for a 1980s R-rated film, there is no nudity and only the mildest of cursing, though in one climactic scene Verlin can be seen silently mouthing the F word and the S word while repeatedly failing to light a match to set her gleeful pursuer ablaze. Independent-International actually added some elegance to the film in post-production with the title sequence design of their trusty expert, Bob Le Bar. Ultimately, this is one of those movies that are probably less entertaining as films than they are useful and instructive reference for people with an interest in regional, grass-roots filmmaking, which makes its supplementary content all the more valuable.

Michael Felsher's Red Shirt Productions brings to the set a fine series of interviews with Russo, Sherman, Amplas, and Savini, most of whom mention that the film was largely brought together by "Point Parkers" - the local nickname for faculty, students, and alumni of Pittsburgh's Point Park University. Savini actually recalls little about the production, as his services were keeping him especially busy during this period, but he itemizes the props he brought over from previous jobs, like the trick machete used in DAWN OF THE DEAD and the mask used for the mother's dead body in MANIAC, which is recycled here for much the same purpose. Also included are isolated score selections composed by Mike Massei (who comments on them between cues), and an alternate title card and radio spot for BACKWOODS MASSACRE. Alas, the MIDNIGHT radio spot I remember so fondly is not included.

The region-free disc presents the film in its OAR of 1.66:1, with audio in optional 5.1 surround or 2.0 stereo, and it looks infinitely better, razor-sharp with well-defined color, than the print I remember seeing at the drive-in back in the day. Alas, that rough-and-ready presentation probably did this punch-pulling film some favors, as the clarity of Blu-ray makes it more of a through-the-window look back at the younger days of some ambitious Point Parkers, using their off-time to have a little fun while rolling the dice at the Big Time.  

For what it's worth, though MIDNIGHT wasn't fated to become any kind of a classic, we're told that it eventually earned back its money and then some.  

    

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

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Severin's AN ANGEL FOR SATAN reviewed

AN ANGEL FOR SATAN 

Un Angelo di Satana, 1966

92m 20s

Severin Films 

Barbara Steele's last Italian Gothic is one of her best and long the least accessible. As her films often are, it's a rumination on her uncanny beauty, but this time it's a love/hate rumination as well as one that asks us to consider things from her side, as the bearer of that beauty. While it certainly takes the viewer to some horrific extremes of human nature and frailty, it seems less a horror film than a romantic tragedy, streaked not only with tears but with aspects of witchery, folk superstition, and hypnosis. The direction is by Camillo Mastrocinque (TERROR IN THE CRYPT aka CRYPT OF THE VAMPIRE) and the storyline - which involves the salvaging and restoration of a life-sized female statue said to be cursed, which coincides with the homecoming of the original model's twin descendant (Steele) - is indebted to Prosper Merimée's 1835 fantasy VENUS D'ILLE, which in 1980 would become the source of Mario Bava's final film, completing the pas de deux they forged in their separate but metaphysically joined careers. Ultimately, the film cops out with a practical explanation of events, which is then given another last-minute, more risible surprise twist, but the best of the film stands out in memory. The cast also includes Anthony Steffans (as the handsome sculptor/restorationist, an archetype that would also appear in Avati's THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS), the husband-and-wife team of Claudio Gori and Marina Berti, as well as TERROR IN THE CRYPT's Ursula Davis in a touching performance, and the villa exteriors are familiar from Bava's BLOOD AND BLACK LACE. Soundtrack enthusiasts will be drawn immediately to the tender, heart-wrenching score by Francesco de Masi, one of the production's outstanding elements.

Though not an explicit film, AN ANGEL FOR SATAN pivots on the idea of how physical beauty, romantic longing, and sexual hunger can drive a person mad. Steele is once again cast in a divided role, sometimes the innocent heiress Harriet Montebruno, and sometimes seemingly possessed by her narcissistic ancestor Belinda, whose beauty is like an altar others must die upon. While filmed with the utmost taste and gentility, the story encompasses jealousy, narcissism, schizophrenia, sexual obsession and manipulation, sado-masochism, lesbianism, and rape. Steele models a unusually sheer white nightgown in one scene, rubbing her hands repeatedly over her breasts, so this isn't something American International could have picked up for the kiddie trade. The picture's adult nature is surely what prevented it from ever gaining a US release, which has resulted in its relative obscurity. It did have a brief UK release, with an X rating, after which the much-sought English language version then disappeared off the face of the earth... till now. 

Severin's handsome Region A Blu-ray release marks its first official home video release in either country and the the first time the English dub has been accessible in more than half a century. This is a major recovery, for which Severin Films is especially to be thanked. It's also a well-done track with a cast of familiar voices (Steele is dubbed by Carolyn de Fonseca), which - for those of us who first experienced Italian Gothics at weekend matinees or TV spook shows - restores the film to its proper niche with a warmly nostalgic charge. The original Italian dub is also included with optional English subtitles.

The extras include an amusing audio commentary by Steele, moderated by David Del Valle and David Gregory, which naturally touches on many other subjects besides the movie at hand; a thoughtful and probing commentary by Kat Ellinger; a visit with cast member Vassili Karas, who tells us how he hates horror films; and a 9m short adaptation of VENUS IN FURS starring Steele and directed by noted Surrealist and film historian Ado Kyrou. The latter can be viewed with or without Steele's explanation of how this languid day shoot came about. It's basically formless, an overlong fashion shoot with the star rolling around in furs like so much catnip as passages from Sacher-Masoch are intoned. She calls it "ridiculous" and bemoans that she didn't take the job more seriously - but it's not like she was given anything of substance to do. Nevertheless, as a heretofore elusive bauble of Steeleiana, it is not without value.

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

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