On Boileau-Narcejac's DIABOLIQUE Novel

The ace mystery writing team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac were catapulted into international fame when their first collaborative novel CELLE QUI N'ETAIT PLUS... (1952) was filmed by Henri-Georges Clouzot as LES DIABOLIQUES/DIABOLIQUE, 1955), starring Simone Signoret, Pierre Meurisse, and Vera Clouzot. It was said that the novel was a deliberate attempt by the two writers to create something that would entice Alfred Hitchcock to acquire the screen rights - quite brazenly too, as the novel itself makes a tantalizing passing reference to a fishing lure known as the Hitchcock. Hitchcock didn't have a chance to fall into the trap set for him, but of course, he was Johnny-On-The-Spot when the team returned in 1954 with the novel D'ENTRE LES MORTS, which the Master of Suspense would famously bring to the screen as VERTIGO (1958), presently considered the greatest film of all time in the latest SIGHT & SOUND critics' poll. I like VERTIGO very much, but I would personally consider LES DIABOLIQUES the greater film.

D'ENTRE LES MORTS was translated into English, first appearing as THE LIVING AND THE DEAD, then reissued as VERTIGO at the time of the film's release. In recent years, after long unavailability, it has reappeared in paperback as THE LIVING AND THE DEAD. Long-term readers of VIDEO WATCHDOG may remember that I wrote a two-page article for our 40th issue titled "VERTIGO Before Hitchcock" [pp. 70-71], in which I described how very different yet fundamentally similar were the novel and film - an aspect I had not previously seen covered to any degree by known Hitchcock references.

It took me long enough to do it, but my recent renewed interest in Boileau-Narcejac and Clouzot's film led me to finally getting around to reading CELLE QUI N'ETAIT PLUS..., which first appeared in the UK as THE WOMAN WHO WAS, then was retitled THE WOMAN WHO WAS NO MORE for America, and also surfaced in Australia as THE FIENDS (my favorite of the titles and the closest to LES DIABOLIQUES). Both books were translated by the same author (Geoffrey Salisbury) and they are exquisitely crafted.

We all remember the basic plot of DIABOLIQUE, right? At a French elementary school, the headmaster's wife and mistress (one of the schoolteachers) conspire to murder the man they have in common, who is a sadistic brute who makes both their lives miserable. The wife is so abused that she's a nervous wreck suffering from heart problems. Together, with the mistress taking the lead, the two women knock the man unconscious, drown him in a bathtub and conceal the body in a swimming pool that has been covered up for the season. In time, the wife begins to see evidence that the husband is not so dead after all. In the end, it turns out that the husband and mistress have faked the murder to frighten the wife to death from cardiac arrest, so they take over the school (which she owns) and collect the insurance. In reading the novel, I was surprised to find out that Boileau-Narcejac's story was, once again, quite different to the film despite also being very similar. 

The current edition.

The novel is about the husband, Fernand Ravinel, a man in early middle-age who went to law school but somehow never did anything with his education; his lack of ambition instead led him into the career of least resistance, as a salesman of sporting accessories who travels out of town by car for week-long periods, during which his young wife Mireille is left alone at home. It is Ravinel's father, a gloomy figure that haunts his imagination whom he blames for the defeatist disposition he's inherited, who was a school master. As the book opens, Ravinel is already preparing to murder Mireille with his mistress Lucienne, who is a doctor. A brief mention is made of Ravinel having a weak heart, but there is no pay-off to the detail. The murder itself takes place in the second chapter. It is as it occurs in the film, but the victim in the wife, whose body is left in the tub for two days, weighed down by two heavy iron dogs used as fireplace sentries, before her body is wrapped in a ground-sheet and carried off to be submerged in the shallows outside what Ravinel calls his lavoir - meaning the shed where he cleans up after gardening, but in French lavoir also has the relevant double meaning "to see her," which is important because - shortly after the body's disposal - Ravinel begins to see Mireille and discovers that the body has disappeared from where they left it. He never sees her, but others do - like her brother, who recalls that Mireille, since she was a child, always had a kink of wandering off, disappearing for days at a time. Ravinel then begins to receive letters and notes from the dead woman, and the novel meticulously charts his psychological disintegration as he veers from rationality to believing that Mireille is a ghost and that he can see her because this haunting is part of a preparatory pas de deux that will culminate in their embrace and his own death.

Has the novel ever been filmed in this way? I am aware of several filmings of the novel - supposedly of the novel - including John Badham's REFLECTIONS OF MURDER, a 1974 TV movie starring Tuesday Weld and Joan Hackett; Pierre Koralnik's "Les Demoniaques," a 1969 episode of the French omnibus series LA GRAND COLLECTION; Mimi Leder's HOUSE OF SECRETS (1993), another TV movie, this one with Melissa Gilbert and Bruce Boxleitner; and of course Jeremiah Chechik's feature-length remake DIABOLIQUE (1996) with Sharon Stone and Isabelle Adjani. They all credit Boileau-Narcejac yet they adhere to the script for the Clouzot film, which was the invention of Clouzot, Jérôme Géronomi, René Masson and Frédéric Grendel - now mostly forgotten by the original film's many tributes.

Simone Signoret and Paul Meurisse in the classic Clouzot film LES DIABOLIQUES.

It was astounding for me to discover that the novel is so radically different to the film. Boileau-Narcejac became famous for their association with DIABOLIQUE; they must have felt like imposters when people praised them for it! And yet THE WOMAN WHO WAS NO MORE or THE FIENDS or whatever you want to call it is a superb novel. I would have to say the film is the greater creation and I understand why Clouzot probably considered the original story unfilmable as-is. So much of the novel is internalized - as my Australian paperback copy says, it's "a novel in the Simenon tradition, with all the eerie fantasy of a story by Edgar Allan Poe." It is set almost entirely inside the head of the husband (the character whom we learn least about in the film versions) and focuses mostly on the tightening vice of his ongoing internal monologue; that is aside from brief transcribed dialogues with other fleeting characters - the mistress of course, neighbors, postmen, bartenders, policemen, and the intriguing and humorous bit part of Desiré Martin, a seedy private detective formerly of the Surété (hinting at some past catastrophic failure or transgression), who tries to undertake an investigation of the missing wife. Perhaps most surprising is the book's final chapter, which gives us our first look at the relationship between Mirielle and Lucienne. Even if you've seen the film, it withholds its most unnerving surprise for the closing sentence of the book.

The novel has several engrossing sequences that have never been filmed, particularly a lengthy sequence set in a dense fog where Ravinel believes himself on the trail of his wife's ghost while at the same time being pursued by a shadowy man in squeaky shoes. Though it changes a great deal of its original story (even the names of the various characters - they could have kept at least those remnants!), the film is nevertheless an inspired analogy of how the novel goes to work on the reader; Clouzot and his team of writers found ingenious ways of externalizing its internalized landscape and ratcheting up the suspense with a subtle but meaningful alteration of the central criminal diagram, relocating its remote house settings to a public school full of children, and moving away from its looming phantasms toward the greater horror of a logical explanation.

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

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A Handy Guide to the GUNSMOKE TV Movies, Part 1

Donna and I recently completed our plan to watch GUNSMOKE in its entirety - some 20 Seasons and 635 episodes. I didn't know much about the show, as it had never appealed to me from afar, but my friend Larry Blamire sent me a small stack of his favorite episodes and they got me interested. What took me by surprise was the quality of the writing, the guest stars, even its cinematography. When I finally took the bait, the next step was predicated on buying the CBS complete series DVD box set, a pricey item. Fortunately I found a refurbished used set within our range (with no apparent problems other than a torn seam in the outer packaging), and it turned out to be one of our happiest entertainment purchases. We started seriously watching late last July, and we finished last night with postscript screenings of the five GUNSMOKE TV movies. Since finishing the series, I've been wrestling with regrets that I didn't take notes on each of the episodes. A few friends have even been nudging me to write a book about the show, which is a nice idea but my schedule is pretty much claimed for the near future. But it wasn't too late to write something about the TV movies, so here is my handy guide yet another surprising high quality body of work.

GUNSMOKE: RETURN TO DODGE (1989) - Though more than a decade had passed since the cancellation of the twenty-seasoned series, the first GUNSMOKE TV movie feels very much like an authentic continuation, thanks to a still-authoritative James Arness and two other series veterans: director Vincent McEveety (45 episodes) and writer Jim Byrnes (34 episodes). Milburn Stone had died in 1980 and Ken Curtis was insulted by the offer they made, so neither Doc nor Festus is present (save in flashbacks). It's hard to see how the story could have accommodated them anyway; it's too busy getting told to allow for much Old Home Week indulgences. That said, a measure of sentiment is allowed for the return of Amanda Blake as Miss Kitty, absent from the final season, who (we're told) left Dodge for New Orleans when Matt came too close to death in an earlier episode. (This actually happened in "The Badge" - Season 15, Episode 19 - four years and dozens of episodes prior to her real leave-taking of the series. Hey, artistic license.) Alas, their relationship appeared to be waning even as the series endured - both characters were given independent and ultimately tragic love stories in Blake's final season - and here, with a much-slimmer Blake audibly restrained by recent oral surgery - there is an air of inevitable defeat hovering over their relationship. Steve Forrest's Mannon (GUNSMOKE's most chilling villain, introduced in Season 14, Episode 17) and Earl Holliman (a three-episode veteran playing a new character, albeit one with past history of Dillon) also return, and with them there's a hell-yes feeling of recaptured thunder in their performances. Arness has lost none of his authority as Matt Dillon but he took the wrong advice about his hair, which frames his well-lined face like an anachronistic Elvis wig. Latter-day series regular Buck Taylor returns as Newly O'Brien, now Dodge City's newly-mustachioed sheriff, and he is a particular standout in impressive company; he has aged wonderfully into his role, and gives it everything he’s got. I was also pleased to spot Mickey Jones - former drummer for Bob Dylan, the Hawks, and Trini Lopez - in a supporting, rifle-toting role. If it’s rushed for time and a little too obviously written to accommodate flashback footage, RETURN TO DODGE comes much closer to hitting the bullseye than I would have predicted.

GUNSMOKE: THE LAST APACHE (1990) - The first feature-length sequel was written by Earl W. Wallace (the author of seven Season 20 episodes) and entrusted to fledgling director Charles Correll, a veteran cinematographer whose CV boasted the likes of NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE, THE WINDS OF WAR, STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK - and RETURN TO DODGE. Just as RETURN TO DODGE served as a sequel to Steve Forrest’s two superb "Mannon" appearances, this one adds a postscript to "Matt's Love Story" (Season 19, Episode 3) which chronicled an amnesiac Dillon’s surprising sudden romance with widowed rancher Mike Yardner (THE WALTONS' Michael Learned). Seventeen years after this one-night-stand (which featured Arness' only screen kiss in the entire series), Matt receives a letter from his lost love asking for a return visit. Once he gets there, quick - no time for hellos - he gets caught up in pursuing Wolf, an Apache son of Geronimo who has abducted Mike’s teenage daughter Beth (Amy Stoch) - whom Matt belated learns is his daughter, too.  Richard Kiley, another popular GUNSMOKE guest star, returns to essay a new character here, that of Chalk Brighton, an aging scout who’s been leisurely courting Mike for many years and, feeling a "loss of thunder," initially doesn’t take kindly to Matt Dillon’s arrival on the scene. The story of how their relationship matures through trial and error is as rich as any the story encompasses, with both Arness and Kiley in top form. All told, this is another success, with fine performances across the board (Matt's hair issues are under control) and handsome location photography by Jerry G. Callaway (Michael Mann's THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS). There are some breathtaking shots, and one can only regret that the medium had yet to go widescreen. The score by Bruce Rowland (THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER), which leans a little too heavily on synthesized instrumentation for a film of such natural settings, sounds like a budgetary concession and is the only department where things might have been improved. The end credits include a memorial dedication to Miss Amanda Blake and series writer Ron Bishop, the author of "Matt's Love Story." 

GUNSMOKE: TO THE LAST MAN (1992) - After a two-year hiatus, James Arness reunited with THE LAST APACHE’s writer Earl W. Wallace and his director on the TV series HOW THE WEST WAS WON, Jerry Jameson for this solid sequel - the first of the TV movies to stand on its own two feet without incorporating any flashbacks to scenes from the original series. In this story (set “in the 1880s” - perhaps less than 10 years after the final season), a lean and lanky Matt Dillon - now a rancher moving 100 head of cattle - gets involved in the crossfire of a bloody family feud after embarrassing the young hellraisers of one of the families, the Grahams, in a barroom showdown: they retaliate by stealing his herd and abducting his 18 year-old (!) daughter Beth (Amy Stoch). There is a complete dissociation from Dodge City (which one imagines would have looked artificial in the midst of all this western authenticity); I don’t even remember Dillon once referring to it as home. Nevertheless, the film maintains the series’ integrity with a strong script (if the dialogue is sometimes clichéd and predictable, they are welcome clichés), generally committed performances, and some returning faces from the series’ long history such as Morgan Woodward (as the morally waffling sheriff of another town) and Pat Hingle (no longer Doc’s temporary replacement, here the head of a KKK-like group of hooded lynchers calling themselves the Committee of 50). An especially happy sighting is young Jim Beaver as Woodward’s hapless deputy. If the film has any weakness at all, it has something to do with the then-present pool of available young talent not always having the natural grit that young Western actors seemed to acquire and wear naturally in the 1950s through the ‘70s, which I suspect has something to do with the Western losing its pride of place in filmed entertainment over the years since shows like GUNSMOKE left the air. Not that these performances are bad, but bad guys are more memorable, and cut deeper, when cast with character actors rather than pretty boys and GQ types. Also, the script invests so much of Dillon’s emotion in Beth and the memory of her (now late) mother Mike, one is left with the residual feeling that his long-term relationship with Miss Kitty was never as deeply meaningful to him as it was made out to be. The end credits include a memorial dedication to GUNSMOKE's creator and principal writer, John Meston.

TO BE CONTINUED

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Appreciating Jack

Don’t worry, this isn't a eulogy. He’s just on my mind. 

Sometimes I think he might have been the best movie star ever, but I know that he was (I put this in past tense because he’s now reportedly retired) at least the most interesting, charismatic American actor of my lifetime. He is also (as I can tell from having read a couple of his screenplays) a genuine intellectual, which you can’t readily see in his performances but which is often evident in the choices he made, at least until Hollywood’s production slate sold out. Even then, he could take something like AS GOOD AS IT GETS to the next level, and make something like ABOUT SCHMIDT (a tough sell that deserved to be made) commercially feasible.

I feel he’s probably underrated by generations now who only know him from BATMAN or THE SHINING.

Appreciate him now. It’s going to hurt when he goes.

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

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Give It A Spin: MURDER AT 45 RPM (1960)

Michel Auclair comforts Danielle Darrieux in MURDER AT 45 RPM.

A short update concerning my recent Boileau-Narcejac movie binge:

Though I was successful in locating Etienne Périer's MEURTRES EN 45 TOURS and English subtitles online, I remained very curious about the English dubbed version MURDER AT 45 RPM, which was briefly distributed here in the United States by MGM before everyone forgot it ever existed. Happily, I found a listing for it at Sinister Cinema and placed an order, which arrived just yesterday. 

Based on a novel (AU COEUR PERDU) translated into English as HEART TO HEART, the film stars Danielle Darrieux, Jean Servais (THE DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE) and Michel Auclair as the usual romantic triangle, this time with Servais as the sadistic husband, who doubles as composer for Darrieux's star vocalist. In the standard Boileau-Narcejac situation, one of them is murdered and taunts the surviving suspects through a series of anonymously mailed recordings. Servais is especially good, somewhat reminiscent of Paul Meurisse in DIABOLIQUE, but the plot is a little too familiar and Périer's uninspired direction makes the film almost appear to have been shot for television, with fades-to-black like commercial breaks after almost every key scene. There is also a preponderance of static shots of characters watching television and driving from one place to another; it's simply not very cinematic. To make matters still more stale, the musical aspect of the film was already somewhat old-fashioned even at the time it was made. Aside from the pop music angle, the basic score of the film by Yves Claoué is pleasingly white-knuckled.

Despite these glum factors, I'm glad I grabbed this dubbed version because the English print is like a deep, nostalgic immersion into what the Late, Late Show used to be like when I was a kid falling in love with all those mysterious European films in the 1960s. This one doesn't bill Titra but it was very much one of their jobs, with Bernie Grant and Joyce Gordon voicing the principals, with (I think) George Gonneau dubbing at least one of the men so that Bernie didn't have to dub them all. Just the strange, canned sound of this old movie gave me the warm and fuzzies.

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

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Download THE BIG, BAD WOLF

Here's your big chance to get a really cheap download of a really cheap movie - the original Childhood Productions release of THE BIG BAD WOLF (1966, but actually Peter Podehl's DER WOLF UND DIE SIEBEN JUNGEN GEISSLEIN/"The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats," 1957) - in SD, 720 or 1080p HD! You can do it - I did!

Here's the official pitch:

Download THE BIG BAD WOLF and help AGFA’s non-profit mission by purchasing a piece of home video history for a donation of $2.99 -- or pay-what-you-want!

Inflicting trauma on kids across the country during its original theatrical run, THE BIG BAD WOLF is a surreal and disturbing mid-century anthropomorphic nightmare that masquerades a children's film.

In the 1990s, Something Weird Video revolutionized the home video landscape by unleashing thousands of outlaw exploitation films on VHS. To this day, some of these mega-rare tapes include the best-available versions of movies that have fallen into a black hole of neglect. AGFA is thrilled to digitize and share some of our favorite titles from the Something Weird tape collection -- newly transferred from the original S-VHS masters.

This is a digital transfer of Something Weird’s vintage master tape, complete with supplemental trailers. It will not be released on home video by AGFA and is only available here.

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

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Coming Soon From Kino Lorber: CROSSED SWORDS (1977)

Mark Lester and Mark Lester as the Prince and the Pauper in CROSSED SWORDS.

If you've never seen Richard Fleischer's CROSSED SWORDS (1977), a retelling of Mark Twain’s THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER starring Charlton Heston (as Henry VIII), Oliver Reed, and numerous veterans from Hammer and Ken Russell films, you should pick up the imminent Kino Lorber Blu-ray (streeting March 23). This is very much an Ilya Salkind/Pierre Spengler production from their THREE MUSKETEERS/SUPERMAN heyday, and a resonant reminder of a time when the British film industry was second to none. It's a handsome thing, photographed by Jack Cardiff and scored by Maurice Jarre. There are minor faults - Mark Lester isn’t quite up to either of the two lead roles (he's an awkward 17 year-old, playing characters meant to be resourceful 8 year-olds) and there were apparently enough problems with the original script for George Macdonald Fraser to receive sole credit on the US release for “Final Screenplay” (a credit I’ve never seen before!) - so I would have to objectively rate it just a notch below excellent.

Nevertheless... I loved it.

The great Oliver Reed in his swashbuckling prime.

There’s a scene in which Reed (in top swashbuckling form as Miles Hendon) enters the royal palace and recognizes the doorman as someone he knew years earlier. The doorman, whom he greets with palpable warmth, is played by none other than Michael Ripper, clawed to death by Reed in CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (1961) many years previously, and this is just one of many magical scenes arranged through its exemplary casting. Rex Harrison, Ernest Borgnine, Raquel Welch, David Hemmings, Harry Andrews, Murray Melvin, Dudley Sutton, Sybil Danning (in a rare unglamorous role as the Pauper’s careworn mother!), so many more... I don’t know why I avoided this film for so long, but to see all these fine actors assembled, in their prime and giving their best, in what was - to me - a “new” movie was like having them all back again. As the end credits rolled, I felt pangs of gratitude. Bless them all. 

Charlton Heston as King Henry VIII.

Kino Lorber's disc also includes a standard-definition presentation of the “International Cut” - to help us determine the impact of that “Final Screenplay,” I suppose - and I intend to watch it. There's also a 20m interview with Mark Lester, in which he reminisces about the production, and a Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel Thompson commentary that will surely shed some light behind and in front of the scenes.

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Between DIABOLIQUE and VERTIGO: LES LOUVES (1957)

I find myself insistently drawn toward finding and watching more films based on the writings of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Last night's viewing was a remarkable yet seemingly forgotten (at least here in the US) thriller called LES LOUVES (“The She-Wolves,” 1957), which was given the cleverly resonant alternate title of DEMONIAC here in the States when United Motion Picture Organization released it in the summer-autumn of 1958. It was based on an early book in the authors' collaboration, which was translated into English as THE PRISONER - which J.F. Norris wrote about most persuasively for his blog Pretty Sinister Books.

It's set in occupied France during WWII and features Micheline Presle and Jeanne Moreau as two very different sisters, the daughters of a once prosperous family - the elder is very rigid and uptight and teaches piano, while the younger sister seems more amoral and empathetic and has a professed talent for communicating with the dead. But they aren't the primary characters: the film opens with two POWs who successfully escape and flee to the home address of a “godmother” pen pal whom one of them has arranged to marry, though they have never met. This POW doesn’t make it, so his partner (François Périer) assumes his identity to lie his way into the shelter of his dead friend's engagement. Add in a couple more complications that I won't spoil for you, and the story establishes a fantastic situation in which a bourgeoise household is occupied by one man and three women - each of them pretending to be someone or something they are not! It certainly keeps you guessing! 

Each of the performers is excellent: this is an early breakthrough role for Moreau, who makes the most of her spooky yet alluring character; Presle is a woman whose conservative comportment and poise becomes more worrisome as the film proceeds, and Robinson - a surprise curve ball reserved for the onset of Act II - makes a powerful impression in a role that threatens to unmask Périer. It is such a perfect follow-up to DIABOLIQUE - both so different and so much like it - that I can’t figure out why it’s not better known. 

Here's a review from the PITTSBURGH SUN-TELEGRAPH, September 7, 1958:

Click to enlarge.

Despite receiving reviews as enthusiastic as this, DEMONIAC has become forgotten as an American release and LES LOUVES is remembered only by an elite few. This needs to change. René Chateau holds the rights to LES LOUVES, while Gaumont controls MEURTRE EN 45 TOURS and MALÉFICES - they are all available on DVD from these links at Amazon.fr. In the meantime, as we pray for the refreshment of a much-needed domestic release, you can find an acceptable but not-so-hot copy of LES LOUVES on YouTube in French, and subtitles can be found elsewhere; it can also be found online with subs if you look around. Happy hunting!

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Internet Find: MALÉFICES

Juliette Gréco and friend Nyété in MALÉFICES (1962). 

This 1962 film from French director Henri Decoin tends to be regrettably overlooked by histories of the horror film. Based on a 1961 novel by that eminently filmable suspense team Boileau-Narcejac, it is a worthy addition to a filmography that boasts the likes of DIABOLIQUE (1955), VERTIGO (1958), and EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1960, the latter not an adaptation so much as a Boileau-Narcejac rewrite), though it is made with such subtlety that one is left somewhat mystified by the experience. What exactly happened here? What actually caused it? The natural or the supernatural?

After those three best-known film credits, the cold, contained thrillers of Boileau-Narcejac continued to be filmed, mostly abroad. 1960 alone saw the production of Serge Friedman's LES MAGICIENNES (based on their 1957 novel); their 1952 novel LE VISAGES DE L'OMBRE was nicely filmed in Britain by David Eady under the novel's translation title of FACES IN THE DARK (1960); and Étiénne Périer directed MEURTRE EN 45 TOURS ("Murder At 45 r.p.m.," based on their 1959 novel À COEUR PERDU, "A Lost Heart," translated into English as HEART TO HEART). These three were primarily exercises in mystery-suspense yet they (and DIABOLIQUE) were also very much the inspiration for the thrillers made by Hammer throughout the 1960s, which are always discussed as an essential chapter of their horror legacy - so why not these? 

The Kessler Twins are featured on this UK still for LES MAGICIENNES (1960).

Part of the reason may be their obscurity. LES MAGICIENNES (which starred Alice and Ellen Kessler, the Kessler Twins, who subsequently appeared in Mario Bava's ERIK THE CONQUEROR) was given a UK theatrical release as FRANTIC, while it was a no-show in American until it surfaced in a dubbed version titled DOUBLE DECEPTION circa 1966-1970, then disappeared. MURDER AT 45 R.P.M. fared only slightly better, achieving miserly US theatrical play in 1965 before briefly appearing in television syndication the following year through 1970.  For the bilingual, both films are available in France on Gaumont DVD under their original titles. 

The same circumstances roughly befell Decoin's MALÉFICES - based on the 1961 novel of the same name, translated as SPELLS OF EVIL - whose grandly evocative title was obliterated by Paramount when they issued the film to US theaters in the summer of 1963 as a B-title under the vague, bland moniker WHERE THE TRUTH LIES (not to be confused with the 2005 Atom Egoyan feature). I was very pleased to discover an excellent quality, widescreen French-language version with hard English subtitles available for viewing or downloading from the website Cave of Forgotten Films. 

It is the story of François Rauchelle (Jean-Marc Bory) - a mild, unassuming veterinarian who lives with his wife (Liselotte Pulver) on Noirmoutier Island, which connects to the mainland by a single road known as the Passage du Gois, which is erased at high tide each day. He spends his time tending to farm and domestic animals, until a stranger rouses him from his bed one night with a personal request that he venture out to a mainland address the next day and tend to an ailing leopard. (He has made the personal appearance so he will know the plea was made in earnest and not some sort of fantastic joke.) He makes the trip and finds the leopard domesticated in the care of an exotic-looking woman named Myriem Heller (Juliette Gréco of ORPHEUS and BELPHEGOR fame), who lives with her African servant Ronga (Maithé Mansoura). Rauchelle soon finds himself under the power of Myriem, who has acquired mystic powers after years of study under an African sorcerer, and his marriage - along with his will - begins to disintegrate. His only rudder through this turbulent adventurer is the stranger who introduced them, Vial (Jacques Dacqmine), an authority on black magic who is a rival for Myriem's love and therefore cannot entirely be trusted.

What I found most pleasing about MALÉFICES is that it perpetuates the pensive, off-kilter look of DIABOLIQUE and EYES WITHOUT A FACE and so feels very much part of their atmospheric unity. It is photographed in luscious anamorphic black-and-white by Marcel Grignon, also responsible for the memorable THE BLONDE WITCH (LA SORCIÈRE, 1956, with Marina Vlady), Roger Vadim's LES LIASONS DANGEREUSE (1959) and VICE AND VIRTUE (1963), and the first two entries in Andre Hunebelle's FANTÔMAS trilogy (1964-65). The opening aerial shots of the protagonist's Citroën 2CV puttering across the long stretch of the continental passage anticipate the main titles of THE SHINING, as the night shots of the insect-like vehicle flash us back to Franju - as does Rauchelle's first interaction with the leopard, which is remarkable and not at all what we are led to expect. Juliette Gréco - who was, of course, also a singer who received much publicity for her love life with various celebrities - is perfectly believable as the witchy femme fatale, fed up with living in the mausoleum-like castle of the last man she destroyed and exerting all her influence to tempt our unambitious, untravelled hero into abandoning his marriage and joining her on a romantic voyage to parts unknown. As in all of Boileau-Narcejac's work, we are led into believing many things about our story until its weird illusions are dismantled by cold logic in the final stretch, but this one leaves certain aspects of the uncanny open to question and even belief. Also notable is a nerve-scraping musique concrète score by Pierre Henry that keeps the nervous system leaning forward to the edge of one's seat with an ironic, admiring smile on one's face. In retrospect, MALÉFICES stands out as an antecedent of Damiano Damiani's eerily modernistic THE WITCH IN LOVE (LA STREGHE, 1966), based on Carlos Fuentes' novella AURA - another sometimes overlooked achievement that ranks with the best Euro Gothics. It deserves to be much better-known, so here is your chance. 

Danielle Darrieux at the wheel in MURDER AT 45 R.P.M.

Until recently, an acceptable copy of MEURTRE EN 45 TOURS (sans sous-titres) was available on YouTube, but a DVD-R of MURDER AT 45 R.P.M. - from a dubbed 16mm TV print - remains available from Sinister Cinema. All three of the French titles discussed here - LES MAGICIENNES, MEURTRES..., and MALÉFICES - are available from Amazon.fr on Gaumont DVDs. 

Nothing would please me more than to learn that a Blu-ray box set of BOILEAU-NARCEJAC movies was in the works. As Juliette Greco's Myriem would know, sometimes putting the thought out there can make it happen. 

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

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Recent Releases In Review

TALES OF THE UNCANNY (2021, Severin Films): This direct-to-video documentary - largely assembled from ZOOM interviews and trailer clips, with some more professionally shot interviews along the way - is a rousing and useful overview of the horror anthology in film and television, ranging from the German silent Poe adaptation EERIE TALES (1919) to SOUTHBOUND (2015) and beyond, to the very threshold of its centenary. Sixty-one filmmakers and authorities from around the world trace the primal allure of the horror short story back to our earliest memories of storytelling, as ourselves and as a species, then pick their favorites and comment on others. The result is a chronologically arranged symposium that covers a lot of ground with knowledge and sophistication. There's a nice middle section that offers up a lot of love for Amicus Films; the final third I found slightly less interesting but helpful in terms of narrowing down the profusion of DTV titles to a core of worthwhile work. Included as two bonus features are EERIE TALES (the film that started it all) and also Jean Faurez's 1949 film UNUSUAL TALES (Histories Extraordinaires à faire per ou à faire rire... - which means "Unusual Tales to Make You Scream and Laugh"). At the end, two polls are taken to arrive at the general favorite film and episode. I was frankly outraged by the final results, but at least it's democracy at work. 

DARK INTRUDER (1965, Kino Lorber): A miscast Leslie Nielsen stars in this fascinating mid-sixties oddity, a pre-KOLCHAK television pilot about a debonair 19th century occult specialist who lives in a library of forgotten lore, attended by a dwarf manservant, who is sometimes called upon by the police to solve murders of unusual mystery. It turned out so well that Universal decided to ship it out to theaters as a co-feature (it's no more than roughly an hour long), at just about the time B-pictures disappeared. Without giving too much away, the murders lead to a real freak of nature (one that Stephen R. Bissette ties into the lineage of David Cronenberg's THE BROOD in his recent book on that film) and some nicely eerie set pieces that will have you recalling HOUSE OF WAX and other period horror fare, while the main dramatic scenes feel very much like a citified version of THE WILD WILD WEST. Written by Barré Lyndon (THE MAN IN HALF MOON STREET, John Brahm's THE LODGER, George Pal's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, and the "Sign of Satan" episode of ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR), this was produced by future NIGHT GALLERY producer Jack Laird (it feels like his work), and photographed by John F. Warren (who shot eight THRILLERs and almost 50 HITCHCOCK episodes), so it has a fine pedigree.  Peter Mark Richman (who recently passed away), Judi Meredith (somewhat too modern an actress to be suitable for 19th century parts), and Werner Klemperer are also in it and, of all people, THE GODFATHER's Al Lettieri briefly turns up as a constable. Had I seen this when I was twelve, I'd probably feel a huge sentimental attachment for this, but I didn't, so I don't. Nevertheless, this is a nice bon-bon. I wish this release contained the original pilot version (a 16mm print of which recently surfaced on eBay) but it does include a fine commentary by FANTASTIC TELEVISION author Gary Gerani that will tell you anything you want to know about this peculiar one-shot. Not quite the outstanding rediscovery that Kino Lorber's 2018 release of Joseph Stefano's THE GHOST OF SIERRA DE COBRE was; it's a little corny and self-conscious in the way most pilots are, but the climactic makeup is good and Gerani's audcom turns a engaging hour into an interesting two.

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Get Swamped With "Wild Bill" Grefé!

Cover art by Twins of Evil.

HE CAME FROM THE SWAMP - THE WILLIAM GREFÉ COLLECTION

(1965-2020; Arrow Video)

This handsomely packaged box set proclaims "This Is Horror!" but it's actually a little bit of everything exploitative: it's got monsters, it's got swamp adventures, it's got cautionary tales about drugs and alcohol, it's got rock and country, it's got Rooney Kerwin, it's even got Rita Hayworth on her way down - and I would wager from the looks of it that at least some of it was 16mm blown up to 35. It's all presided over by the dean of Florida movie exploitation, William "Wild Bill" Grefé, whom Herschell Gordon called "a titan" and David F. Friedman (rarely a humble man) called "the best of us." Included here are such drive-in confections as STING OF DEATH (1965) and its original co-feature DEATH CURSE OF TARTU (1966), THE HOOKED GENERATION (1968), THE NAKED ZOO (1970, with Rita Hayworth), THE PSYCHEDELIC PRIEST aka ELECTRIC SHADES OF GREY (made 1971, unreleased until 2001), MAKO: JAWS OF DEATH (1976) and WHISKEY MOUNTAIN (1977), along with a newly "expanded" (now two hours plus) edition of Daniel Griffith's 2016 documentary, THEY CAME FROM THE SWAMP: THE FILMS OF WILLIAM GREFÉ (2020). 

A writer-director who got his start with Florida-made racing films like THE CHECKERED FLAG (1963) and RACING FEVER (1964), Grefé was one of the first filmmakers - if not THE first - from the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area to make a grab for the brass ring of national distribution, and the one most likely to be assimilated into the mainstream. While his fellow locals Herschell Gordon Lewis, Doris Wishman, and Brad F. Grinter were dabbling in the outlaw cinemas of gore, nudism, and WTF, Grefé's bottom line was always action, though he wrapped it in many different kinds of genre wrapping paper. His movies aren't always well-acted, but they are all at least competent within their framework and manage to leave most every viewer with one or two scenes worth savoring. As regional exploitation filmmaking goes, in terms of quality and consistency, he's up there with the best of them, short of George A. Romero. He's probably best-known for the second unit shark/stunt work he brought to the James Bond film LIVE AND LET DIE (1973), which was filmed in his general area, but the movies he made himself are humble but winning mixtures of ingredients that shouldn't mix - STING OF DEATH is an old-fashioned monster movie about a Jellyfish man with a Neil Sedaka musical number in it; STANLEY (1972, not included here) is about a Native American who trains rattlesnakes to do his bidding; WHISKEY MOUNTAIN (with Christopher and Lynda Day George) is a dirt-bike adventure inspired by DELIVERANCE. 

STING OF DEATH. 

Kim Newman reviewed DEATH CURSE OF TARTU and STING OF DEATH in detail back in VW 158. STING OF DEATH was made first, with DEATH CURSE necessitated by having to fill out a drive-in double bill for a guaranteed opening, and it plays the better of two. There are certainly later examples of men-in-suit monster pictures like OCTAMAN (1971) and SLITHIS (1978), but STING OF DEATH feels like the last-gasp of a certain kind of innocence in such a picture, replete with a silly monster, corny mock-science dialogue, and a pool party sequence with lots of attention paid to shaking bottoms in tight Capri pants and bikinis. It's also shot with a lot of bold primary colors and imagination. DEATH CURSE OF TARTU - "a transposition of the 'mummy's curse' formula to the Everglades," as Kim noted - was written at white heat by Grefé himself in a single night, but that urgency doesn't quite come through in its mostly humdrum execution. On the other hand, it does have a pretty great drive-in monster in Tartu, once again played by Hobart, and a brief cameo appearance by future BLOOD FREAK director/narrator Brad F. Grinter.   

DEATH CURSE OF TARTU.

Over the weekend, I took a deeper dip into the set. THE HOOKED GENERATION and THE PSYCHEDELIC PRIEST were previously released on DVD by Something Weird Video/Image Entertainment in 2012, with audio commentaries by Grefé conducted by Frank Henenlotter; these are also included here. Regardless of the title, this is not at all a generational story, but rather a tale of three surprisingly amiable drug dealers - Daisy (Jeremy Slate), Acid (John Davis Chandler), and Dum Dum (boxer Willie Pastrano) who turn murderous while negotiating a deal with Cuban smugglers, killing not only them but several Coast Guard officers before abducting a couple of witnesses (Steve Alaimo and Traci Lords-lookalike Cece Stone). It's a nesting doll: the drug movie becomes a kidnapping movie becomes a flight into Florida swamp lands not unlike GUN CRAZY. The movie as a whole is not so much, but it is absolutely worth seeing to enjoy Chandler's audacious and outrageous  performance as the stupid smack-head so needful of a shot - maybe ten minutes after he last had one - that he actually shoots up while crawling on the deck of a bot dodging a hail of bullets! Slate is memorable in his own way and its the oddball charisma of these two GUNSMOKE veterans and the suddenly-wide-awake feel of its action sequences that carries an otherwise flimsy picture. Fun note: briefly featured in this 1968 picture is a rock band calling themselves The Bangles.  

Jeremy Slate, Willie Pestrano and John Davis Chandler in THE HOOKED GENERATION.

 

Acid looking at acid.

John Darrell turns on and drops out in THE PSYCHEDELIC PRIEST.

THE PSYCHEDELIC PRIEST (made during a period when Grefé held an executive position at Ivan Tors Productions) doesn't carry Grefé's name other than his sole Director of Photography credit. The direction is credited to producer Stewart Miller, who directed one day before a nervous breakdown forced him to concede responsibility to his cameraman and technical advisor. Grefé introduces the film by explaining that he was tricked into making without a script, so it had to be almost entirely improvised - but he took the responsibility seriously and didn't throw the opportunity away. It starts with a simple premise: a holier-than-thou young priest, Father John (John Darrell), lectures a group of hooky-playing high schoolers, who thank him with paper cup of Coca-Cola laced with LSD. (Surprisingly, no one taunts him with "Are you sleeping, Father John?" as his shattered mind is rudely awakened.) He trips out, drops out of his church, and hits the road to "get his head together." Another Russian doll: Sanctimonious religious instruction becomes drug movie becomes road movie becomes EASY RIDER rip-off! Our humbled protagonist (wearing a bad wig and scruffy beard) sets out in his square sedan toward hippie mecca California, meets and shares and parts ways with various fellow young people along the way, and is given good reason to realize that it's America itself that's screwed-up rather than our Father John Quixote. It's crude, it doesn't make its points with much restraint or taste, and it's technically not very well made (the sound is on the raspy side), yet I've found myself haunted by it. Grefé won my respect for having turned a fool's errand into something that I believe might have offered a helping hand to certain confused members of his audience back in the day, had this film seen the light of day in its time. In 1971, there were lots of people in the midwest and southern drive-in crowds who wouldn't have been caught dead seeing EASY RIDER, and if they were tricked into seeing this by going to see THE HOOKED GENERATION, they might have seen reflections of their own parents, their own country, their own despair here. So, while I can't really say I admire the filmmaking here, I got caught up in it despite myself and am still thinking about it a couple of days later. Worth checking out, and both HOOKED GENERATION and PSYCHEDELIC PRIEST are the subjects of two on-camera interviews with film historian Chris Poggiali.  

Rita Hayworth and Stephen Oliver in THE NAKED ZOO.

The Daniel Griffith documentary shares the WHISKEY MOUNTAIN disc in this set, and includes talking head commentary from a number of his better-known colleagues and cast/crew people, including H.G. Lewis, Dave Friedman, actor/singer Steve Alaimo, and Florida-based monster maker Doug Hobart. For those who might be disappointed that HE CAME FROM THE SWAMP falls short of definitive by not including some of Grefé's most popular titles - STANLEY (1972) and IMPULSE (1974) - the documentary covers these in detail, as well as the once-lost THE DEVIL SISTERS (1966), his WILD ANGELS riff THE WILD REBELS (1967), the appallingly racist and unfunny Mickey Rooney-produced "comedy" THE GODMOTHERS (1973), and a good deal more. Highlights of the program include footage from Grefé's first (unfinished) film project, clips from industrial films, and some outstanding behind-the-scenes footage - especially a near-death experience for Harold "Oddjob" Sakata during the production of IMPULSE. To be found among the extras are five interesting outtakes from the final assemblage. The only thing I found at all lacking about the docu is a fuller accounting of the 1965 Del Tenney film ZOMBIES, for which Grefé served as second-unit director, which went unreleased until it was retitled I EAT YOUR SKIN for Cinemation's 1971 double-bill with David Durston's I DRINK YOUR BLOOD.  

I haven't yet seen THE NAKED ZOO, but it is presented in the original director's cut and also a "not-director-approved" Barry Mahon recut, which reportedly features nude inserts. Fay Spain also appears, as do HOOKED GENERATION vets Steve Alaimo, Willie Pestrano, and an actual name band: Canned Heat. 

The box copy informs us that all seven films have been newly restored from the best surviving elements, with original uncompressed mono audio. This is not always an endorsement; the sight and sound of these films are not their strongest calling cards. I'm not sure if any of these films was shot in 16mm and blown up to 35mm, but it wouldn't surprise me as they are frequently grainy or diffuse-looking, and the audio is sometimes harsh with not all dialogue quite coming across. (The optional subtitles on all films is a help for those who need the extra help.) WHISKEY MOUNTAIN is particularly surprising in this regard; it looks like a movie from the 1970s in every way, it's attractively lensed - the set demonstrates the solid learning curve of Grefé's frequent cameraman Julio C. Chavez - but the presentation here doesn't appear to have come anywhere near its camera negative or an interpositive. This also leads to projector wear on some of the sources, but apparently it can't be helped.

If a set as generous as this - laden with commentaries, trailers, alternate cuts, industrial films, stills galleries, and director introductions - can leave us wanting more, it's really quite a commendation. Arrow's packaging of these seven films (and variants) covers four BD discs, and there's also a hardcover booklet containing an illustrated text interview with Grefé and a two-sided reversible poster.

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

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