Tim Lucas / Video WatchBlog: February 2022

Sunday, February 27, 2022

RIP Veronica Carlson (1944 - 2022)

The lovely and talented British actress Veronica Carlson has left us at age 77. She made other films (according to the IMDb, 25 in all); however, it is on the strength of her performances of two stand-out pictures—DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (1967) and FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED (1969)—that she is fondly remembered by many as the purest yet most alluring female icon of Hammer Films. (She was also featured in the company's 1970 spoof THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN, which at least didn't work against her.)

Many regard her as second only to Barbara Shelley as Hammer's finest actress, but I've always found it hard to compare them. Barbara Shelley, an undeniably great actress, was born to play character roles, while Veronica was born to play heroines. She also had an almost unique ability to project open access to the soul, spiritual strength, and innocence—the cherishability—of her characters despite a creamy, outward buxom package that would have fought against a deeper look at a lesser actress. She was that rare actress who could be wholesome without ever becoming boring.

I never met her, as many of my friends did, but she was a Guest of Honor at the first Fanex convention I ever attended back in 1991. I have an indelible memory from that weekend of seeing her walk past me in the downstairs corridor. She must have been going to dinner. That dress, along with her Florida tan, an easygoing smile, and a natural radiance... she was like seeing the sun itself pass by.

(c) 2022 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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Thursday, February 17, 2022

Severin Films' DELIRIUM reviewed

DELIRIUM (1979, 88:06) Severin Films BD

If I understood what director Peter Maris was saying in his supplementary interview, DELIRIUM (in the UK, one of the original Section 2 Video Nasties) started out as a salvaging job. He had been in the running to direct a feature film for St. Louis-based Worldwide Productions, they decided to go with a less competent director who made a mess of things, and he was subsequently invited back to make something releasable of it.

The result is indeed a somewhat schizophrenic film; it starts out to be the story of Charlie (Nick Panouzis), a Vietnam vet who returns home with a psychopathic streak and goes on a murder binge with a series of almost obliging young ladies: the first one gets impaled despite an obvious opportunity to defend herself with an ornamental spear wall-hanging; the second is a hitchhiker who is scared witless by his tendency to exceed the speed limit, but when he pulls over, she doesn't seize the opportunity to clear out—she decides to skinny-dip in front of him; when he assaults a farm girl before impaling her with a pitchfork, they fall to the ground near some neighboring dogs, who don't even bark—they just amble offscreen, bored to tears; and then there's the woman taking an inopportune bath, who shrugs off every downstairs noise he makes in the otherwise empty house. This main branch of the scenario bracket DELIRIUM thematically somewhere between Bob Clark's DEATHDREAM (1974) and Buddy Giovannazo's COMBAT SHOCK (1984). The scenes of homecoming mayhem, which are punctuated with flashback shots that attempt to pass off a wooded area in St. Louis as a Southeast Asian jungle (never mind the telephone poles), are the weakest in the film but nevertheless, it's competently assembled and modestly ahead of the turning point that would come along in the following year with FRIDAY THE 13th.

This story—and the ongoing police investigation of the murders—is the film's primary point of focus, so it comes as quite a surprise when it wraps up slightly less than an hour into the running time. A parallel storyline, which is where the movie really snares our interest, concerns a secret underground committee of "good Americans" (a board of the city's top businessmen, led by yet another Vietnam vet, played by Barron Winchester) who have dedicated themselves to ridding St. Louis of its street trash. How the two narrative threads eventually link I'll leave for you to discover, but it represents a clever and valid save of the unfinished picture.

I came to DELIRIUM (also known in some quarters as PSYCHO PUPPET) expecting no more than a graphic, grassroots psycho-thriller, but it surprised me. It was shot entirely on location in St. Louis on 16mm for $40,000 with a cast of locals, several of them without prior dramatic experience, yet it's a surprisingly functional film, competently shot (by Bill Mensch) and briskly edited (by HITCHHIKE TO HELL's Dan Perry). While no one would ever call it major league, the level of ambition and creativity it brings to a generally thankless task is impressive. In addition to the so-so psycho thriller, you get a chewable political subplot, a fairly persuasive police procedural (hard to pull off on this budget), lots of wince-worthy sexism, and a surprising number of downright impressive explosions, bullet squibs, and gore effects. There's even a romantic sidebar involving the assistant detective (Terrry TenBroek) and a murder victim's roommate (Debi Chaney), both of whom wear some preposterous 1970s fashions and look like Mr. and Mrs. High School Quarterback and Cheerleader. The gore effects by Bob Shelley, who subsequently went on to such projects as Oliver Stone's JFK and Robert Rodriguez' DESPERADO, are Savini-like (based on magician tricks and illusions) at a time when he was just beginning to break through as a celebrity in his own right.

The film's score is credited to composer David C. Williams, his first assignment in a screen career that has now amounted to more than 50 pictures, including CHILDREN OF THE CORN: THE GATHERING, THE PROPHECY II, WISHMASTER 2: EVIL NEVER DIES, and PHANTOMS. A good deal of the soundtrack makes use of library tracks, a couple of them pretty familiar—such as the alternately tense and sparkling keyboard cue that was often heard in '70s film and TV, from David Cronenberg's RABID to an Excedrin headache commercial. However, a few scattered cues sound homegrown, such as the one heard during the pitchfork attack, and briefly enliven the film with a synth-heavy, Goblin-like zest.

DELIRIUM (needless to say, not to be confused with Lamberto Bava's LE FOTO DI GIOIA, which now shares its title here in the States) isn't what anyone would call a horror sleeper; indeed, it's questionable whether or not this entirely qualifies as a horror film, on balance. Nevertheless, had you seen it as a drive-in co-feature in the '70s or early '80s, I suspect you would have sat it out, been reasonably entertained by it, and later perhaps felt some quirky sentimental attachment toward it. Seeing it fresh off the rack in 2022, I'd have to say it held my interest as a relic of a very creative time in American filmmaking.

Severin Films' Region Free BD represents the movie's first appearance on a home video disc and, according to their web page, it has been restored "from the only known 35mm print in existence." Being a blow-up from the 16mm camera negative, the 1.85:1 presentation carries some understandable grain, especially during the darker sequences, but it all goes toward reminding us of the technical limitations the film managed to overcome. There is an English mono soundtrack with closed captioning. There is no audio commentary but there are two extras, the first offering director Peter Maris' recollections of the production, and the other interviewing Atlanta-based special effects designer Bob Shelley, who revels in the art of blowing things up real good.

Thursday, February 10, 2022

A Peek At ELVIRA'S HAUNTED HILLS

Cassandra Peterson and Richard O'Brien (in TOMB OF LIGEIA mode).

Donna and I recently watched ELVIRA'S HAUNTED HILLS, which was directed in Romania by our friend Sam Irvin way back in 2001 and was released as a fully restored Collector's Edition Blu-ray by Scream Factory last October. Sam had recently sent us a copy as a gift and—missing our friends as we do—we decided to spend our most recent Pizza Night with him.

Truth be told, I've never really been on the Elvira wavelength, so I never sought this movie (nor the first one, ELVIRA MISTRESS OF THE DARK) out. Turns out to be my loss, because I found HAUNTED HILLS to be highly enjoyable. Behind the cleavage and the bawdy jokes, it's actually quite a knowledgeable, funny, and heartfelt tribute to Roger Corman's Poe pictures of the early 1960s—I wonder if it might have reached a wider audience had it been sold as such? I didn't laugh at everything in the film that was supposed to be funny (sometimes I did—I could say the same about almost any comedy), but it did have me laughing as soon as the first image faded up.

What most amused me, what made me laugh most heartily, were the many moments when the atmosphere just... clicked into that seemingly inimitable AIP vibe. The dialogue (written by Cassandra Peterson and John Paragon) plucks a number of familiar verbal bon-bons from the movies it honors, so it's smart as well as silly—and the film's fidelity is not just due to Sam's input (he was the creator of the much-respected fanzine BIZARRE in the early 1970s) but also to Ms. Peterson. Her finest moment in the film (and probably Sam's too) is the pay-off to a series of jokey references to Elvira's presumably low-brow music hall act: a genuinely remarkable explosion into skilled song-and-dance that rockets out of the screen with just the right mix of good and bad taste; I don't know that even Ken Russell could have done it much better. Richard O'Brien (the creator of THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW and Riff Raff in the celebrated film version, THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW) is also in the film and he's spectacular. I was also pleasantly surprised by Scott Atkinson, an actor with whom I wasn't familiar, who is cast as the film's suave Vincent Price surrogate and plays the part with a voice purloined from the late George Sanders.

In a supplementary interview, Sam mentions that he set out to make a Mel Brooks-style spoof of the Corman Poe films, and it really is the Roger Corman corollary to YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA—DEAD AND LOVING IT. It's humor is to a great extent derived from how precisely it mirrors the films it honors. It was made in Romania where I imagine the budget could be stretched farther, and also where old world artisan craftsmanship is still part of their culture—you can see it in the beautiful, lavish sets.

If you haven't seen this film, but have seen all of the Corman/Price/Poe pictures many times, and love what Mel Brooks did with his horror spoofs, give this one a chance. It goes well with pizza, and you're the audience it was really made for.

Saturday, February 05, 2022

Thoughts on LADY IN A CAGE (1964)

Last night, I watched Imprint's Australian import of LADY IN A CAGE with the Barry Forshaw/Kim Newman commentary, a vigorous listen that pays out in a refined appreciation of this still daunting, somewhat marginalized suspense thriller. As Britons, they have a somewhat different view of the film than we do in America, because the BBFC banned the film in England in 1964 and did not reverse their decision until 1967; I'm still not clear on why they reconsidered the ban, but their original concern about the film was that its violence might be imitable and unfavorably influence members of the audience. Between them, Barry and Kim make a sound case that Walter Grauman's film (based on a script by producer Luther Davis) was likely as much an influence on Wes Craven's THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972) as THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960, evident in the similar nature and names of their Sade/Sadie characters, and the physical profile of the home invaders) and point out that it remarkably manages to deliver about the same degree of graphic violence as the Craven film would. It's also a strongly-worded film at times, and may be the earliest film (at least the earliest studio film) to unambiguously use the word "gay" as code for "homosexual." (I know we all want Cary Grant's BRINGING UP BABY exclamation "I just went gay all of a sudden!" to mean what it means today, but non-gay uses of "gay" proliferated in films for years to come, so there will always be some ambiguity attached.) In summation, Kim and Barry concur that LADY IN A CAGE is probably the only horror film of its era that is just as shocking today as it would have been in 1964, and I can't argue with that. If you're one of those people who saw the film once and doesn't remember much about it, you probably saw it on commercial television where it was always cut; this is not the sort of film one forgets.

Olivia de Havilland, who replaced Joan Crawford in the lead role (she decided to do William Castle's STRAIT-JACKET instead) cautioned audiences from the poster "Do Not See It Alone!", is said to have disliked the final product, which she considered an egregious example of trends in filmmaking of which she did not approve, but as Kim says, "I don't think Olivia de Havilland ever walked through anything." She is flat-out great in this, giving a remarkably physical and emotional performance for an actress who is literally trapped in a box and unable to share scenes with her co-stars for much of the running time.

Home invaders James Caan, Jennifer Billingsley, Rafael Campos and Ann Sothern.

I agree with the commentators there is actually little to criticize in any of the performances; while one or two things about its essentially toxic world view might seem too "on the nose," is it really possible to be too "on the nose" if you're telling someone their house is on fire, or - it only follows - that their world is at an existential precipice?

Color would have destroyed this film, which was wisely shot in black-and-white, giving it a pseudo-documentary, true crime feel, and there is also some startlingly gory stuff in it; given the monochrome palette, even the scene in which Jennifer Billingsley marks up Rafael Campos with a lipstick looks like she's taking a straight razor to his bare skin. But what most resonates about the film is ultimately its blunt conclusion that "WE are the monsters." When Cornelia, the de Havilland character, finally realizes (as her home invaders have pointed out) that she is as monstrous in her own way as anyone else in the film. I was very pleased to see the film holding up so well to such sustained critical scrutiny, and there's still a Kat Ellinger commentary and a video essay by Chris O'Neill yet to go. It also has a slipcase with unique artwork limited to the first 2000 copies, so collectors be alert.

The Imprint release came out last December, around the same time as a stateside release from Shout! Factory, which replaces the Imprint supplements with a new commentary by David Del Valle and David DeCoteau, whose thoughts on the subject should also be of keen interest. It also has a featurette of Kim Newman solo, presumably enthusing about the movie at length.

Wednesday, February 02, 2022

DOUBLE DOOR (1934) reviewed

DOUBLE DOOR

1934, 75m 49s (Kino Lorber BD)

Not so much a horror film as a stagebound photo-play with a blood-chilling performance at its fore, this pre-code Paramount thriller is based on a highly successful play by Elizabeth A. McFadden and reunites two members of its original Broadway cast: Anne Revere (who went on to a successful film career) and Mary Morris, who, although she steals this film and single-handedly makes it a must-see, never made another movie. (She lived to the age of 74 in 1970.) Her Broadway performance struck such a popular nerve that she's introduced with perhaps the most prominent (nay, ogreish) screen credit I can recollect of any horror star of the 1930s, bursting through a pair of double doors to the menacing tune of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor."

The story takes place inside the New York family mansion of one of the state's richest clans, the Van Bretts, and begins on the occasion of dashing half-brother Rip Van Brett's (Kent Taylor) marriage to the lovely Anne Darrow (Evelyn Venable), an event which Rip's stone-faced, ice-veined older sister Victoria (Morris) does everything she can to spoil. With Anne's encouragement, the two young lovers escape to their honeymoon with spirits intact, but Rip is the product of a lifetime of psychological abuse and diminishment at Victoria's hands. When the couple return to the mansion after their vacation, he gradually slides back into his old spineless ways, which leads to Anne suffering similarly to the point where it becomes a her-or-me situation. When it looks like Rip just might side with his wife, Victoria ramps things up by descending into utter madness, kidnapping Anne - presumed to have simply left Rip - and holding her captive behind the double doors of a secret soundproof, airtight room behind one of the living room walls.

What makes DOUBLE DOOR stand out is not only the blood-and-thunder performance of Morris (whom the Brooklyn DAILY EAGLE likened to "a kind of female Frankenstein") but also its transfiguration of the secret, locked room trope into a Grand Guignol death trap, and also the cinematography of Harry Fischbeck (TERROR ABOARD), which is openly playful with non-realistic lighting effects as Morris' fuming histrionics edge into stark hysteria. It's also a pleasure to see Kent Taylor (so familiar to many of us from his end-of-the-road appearances in Al Adamson films) at his best, and he and Evelyn Venable - who made a number of films together - are so comfortable with one another as to look genuinely in love. Also present in a brief but key role as the family attorney is Halliwell Hobbes, known for his appearances in DRACULA'S DAUGHTER and other Universals.

An early directorial outing for Charles Vidor (best remembered for GILDA, and reputedly a co-director on MGM's 1932 THE MASK OF FU MANCHU), DOUBLE DOOR is to this day an obscure film, which makes its arrival on Blu-ray seem all the more uncanny and miraculous. Following its initial release, it disappeared (possibly due to the Van Bretts bearing too close a similarity to the members and pets of the wealthy and much-publicized Wendel family of that period) and remained in Paramount's vaults until MCA acquired the studio's pre-1948 titles and released it to television circa 1961. A few lucky horror fans of that period remember stumbling across it when it was booked into their favorite spook show, but nothing of any substance was written about it until William K. Everson included it in the "Horror As A Bonus" chapter of his MORE CLASSICS OF THE HORROR FILM, first published in 1986. Everson wrote that DOUBLE DOOR was "one of those films that is recalled with awe, affection, and not a few shivers from those who saw it on its original release." He spoke of Morris' performance in particular as "venomous" and "witchy," and also criticized it for going too far over the edge in the closing reel - but that's exactly what makes the film so scary and so much fun; it's like those precious few moments from SH! THE OCTOPUS rendered as a slow 75m boil. Until the arrival of Kino Lorber's Blu-ray just a couple of months ago, anyone who had seen the picture only knew it from a dark and poorly defined bootleg that was kicking around from an old 16mm source.

Kino Lorber's disc is further enriched in value with two highly informative audio commentaries, one by Tom Weaver (I enjoy his use of voice actors to bring more personality to quoted sources, but I wish he would leave the gratuitous comic sound effects at home), and another by David Del Valle and Stan Shaffer, who engage in a stimulating, sometimes rapid-fire discussion. At one point, David theorizes that Victoria's escalating evil is motivated by her incestuous longing for half-brother Rip, arguing there is "no other" motivation for all she does. I agree she's motivated by sexual resentment, but I prefer another explanation: that she's a deeply frustrated, past-prime spinster, now so undesirable in her character that not even her vast millions can entice any suitors to her door.

A half-dozen trailers are also included, alas none for DOUBLE DOOR itself. A must-see for Paramount horror and pre-code enthusiasts, and ideal viewing for a dark and stormy night.