Enjoy!
In addition to Electric Dreamhouse's release of the hardcover first edition and ebook, we are also offering signed and personalized hardcovers here through VIDEO WATCHDOG!
Find out more here!
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| Maureen Arthur, dick clark, and Robert Walker in KILLERS THREE. |
Despite a talented cast that includes Robert Walker, Diane Varsi (between roles in WILD IN THE STREETS and BLOODY MAMA), Norman Alden, John "Bud" Cardos and Merle Haggard in his screen debut, it doesn't amount to much. It’s basically a BONNIE AND CLYDE rip-off about two homecoming soldiers (Walker, clark) who return to their impoverished town in North Carolina to work as moonshine runners and contrive to steal $200,000 and head off (with Walker’s wife Diane Varsi and young son) to California. Things go wrong and people die, causing them to become fugitives with Varsi's brother Haggard (who plays a highway patrolman) in visual pursuit of them as his rollicking three-verse ballad of their misadventure is played and played and played until we memorize it. I assume the film was meant to be a contemporary story but it’s set do deep in the south that it’s hard to tell if it’s the 1960s or twenty, thirty years earlier. Some local acting talent was employed but the resulting performances were evidently so thickly accented or mumbled that these scenes were overdubbed with selections from the Mike Curb soundtrack album, causing the country and rock tracks to merge uncomfortably. The rock tracks at least help to certify the time frame. Mr. clark, who was fine in 1959's BECAUSE THEY'RE YOUNG, again proves himself a capable actor as the deranged member of the trio, but there are moments in which he seems to drop the stitch of his character; he was wearing a lot of hats in this film, so it's understandable. The little boy, Tony, who was apparently cast for his ability to shed tears on cue, had to be dubbed by a voice actress at Titra; he sounds like an anime character. Here's a link to the film's trailer, should you care to gauge your interest.
Kevin Thomas of the LA TIMES, in a surprising rave review, noted that the film opened in theaters about 12-14 minutes shorter than the running time originally announced, and indeed it appears to have sacrificed some nudity and blood to give it a bigger audience grab. Were the film to be released to Blu-ray today, this deleted material just might find its way back into the picture, as has happened with numerous other AIP releases of this period. It just might make the difference between a hard-hitting picture and a mamby-pamby one.
(c) 2022 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
We've acquired some copies of the standard edition of THE MAN WITH KALEIDOSCOPE EYES from Electric Dreamhouse and PS Publishing that we're now making available. That's right—VIDEO WATCHDOG is now the exclusive source for signed copies!
If you missed out on the Limited Signed & Numbered Edition, here's your chance to obtain a signed copy, or to go one better with a personal inscription, or to order a signed copy inscribed to a deserving friend!
We expect the first batch might sell out quickly. Never fear: If this works out, we'll order more!
See the VIDEO WATCHDOG webpage for details!
I think Roger Corman’s first sf-horror production still plays very well—not as a SF or horror picture, necessarily, but certainly as a calling card for a new name in independent film production. The story, basically written as a means to get free promotional access to a one-man mini-sub (ie., production value), is really about the power of myths and legends to obsess and fixate us; it even ventures to suggest that everything we think we know about science can become its own self-limiting belief structure. By the end of the picture, the practical, science-loving hero (Stuart Wade) must not only acknowledge the possibility that his new girlfriend’s (Ann Kimbell) belief in the sea monster of local legend is well-founded, but he must literally reenact the myth of Ulysses and Poliphemus to save her from it.
For a picture that’s barely more an hour long, that’s a pretty neat trick of narrative layering: to present a nascent romantic relationship in terms of an essential conflict of world views and beliefs, and having the hero rather than the heroine be the one to capitulate to the other's stronger self and will; its climax shows him taking a giant step outside his core belief in science to literally occupy the realm of myth and legend (ie., his girlfriend's beliefs), and returning to a shared sense of reality in which their previously uncertain relationship suddenly clicks. Also, the extensive underwater photography by Floyd Crosby is about on par with most episodes of SEA HUNT, thus well above the norm for a picture of this kind from this era.
Because MONSTER isn't the scary movie it promises to be, the movie has always been viewed with condescension and even outright derision, but it's a more ambitious picture than it appears to be. Produced for roughly $35,000 (maybe even less), it was sold to Lippert for distribution for $110,000—$60,000 of which went to Corman and put the most durable of Hollywood careers on track. Robert Lippert was reportedly annoyed when he learned that the picture was made for considerably less than its professed cost of $100,000 but the picture ultimately earned $850,000 at the box office. Even today, almost 70 years after its humble release, its cost-to-profit ratio continues to put that of a good many more famous pictures to shame.
He asks me about all the different phases of THE MAN WITH KALEIDOSCOPE EYES: the original screenplay, its rewrites, the times it almost got made, and my new novel.
I also mention what I'd like to be working on next!
I said my farewell to him tonight by watching, belatedly, for the first time, Claude Lelouch’s Les plus belles années d'une vie (“The Most Beautiful Years of a Life,” 2019), the last of the sequels to A MAN AND A WOMAN (1966) and the final film to star Jean-Louis Trintignant. I read nothing about it at the time of its release and was under the impression that the reunion of Anouk Aimée and Trintignant had perhaps not worked out, so I was in no rush to see it. But last night seemed the sacrosanct moment, and indeed it was.
It's a very low-key film but a tremendous improvement over the intermediary A MAN AND A WOMAN: 20 YEARS LATER (1986). It basically tells the story of former script girl Anne Gauthier being approached by the son of former racing champion Jean Louis Duroc, asking her to visit her former lover at his assisted living residence; it seems his memory is fading as he loses interest in life, and all he can remember clearly seems to be the time he once spent with her.
Both actors have retained their ease and brilliance in these roles, and to jolt from the present tense to sepia footage from the 1966 film now stings in its sense memories of youth and beauty; the tears come as they do when you twease out nose hairs. The film coasts slowly along on fading memories, dreams, sly conversations, musings, and examples of some of the most profound poetry (Paul Verlaine, Boris Vian), and then—just when it seems to have run its course—it throws down the most stunning sequence I’ve seen in years. The penultimate stretch of the film straps the viewer into the driver’s seat for a high velocity POV shot of an urgent, instinctive journey—a mythic journey—indeed, a mythic one for anyone who knows and loves the original film. I don’t know the story behind this footage but we’ve never seen it before and yet it works as a heretofore missing but essential piece of the original film, something we have only experienced through narrative hearsay and through the window of a romanticized montage. As we accelerate dangerously through the streets of Paris, the windscreen is serially splashed with pure cinema: the rocketing journey through endlessly available avenues and occasional obstacles; the awed realization that we are seeing a real-time extended memory of a Paris of the past; and the overlays of images from the film’s past and present tenses become a momentous reflection on life, on passion, on how quickly we pass through this life and how little time it takes to profoundly change our life, and also a reflection on the way we turn to certain movies at certain times to reawaken a certain feeling, to weep in the dark. I felt I was watching the French New Wave analogy of the Stargate sequence.
Full disclosure: As far as I can tell, the film isn't available anywhere commercially in English, so I can’t point the way for you. There is a French Blu-ray, of course, but I believe it's only in French. I’ve had my copy for awhile, and its subtitles were almost 20 seconds out of synch and I couldn’t bear to watch it that way; another reason I put it off till now. It was a miracle but I looked again for English subtitles online after reading of Trintignant's death and Jean-Louis somehow guided me to the perfect fit. It’s a bittersweet film, as are the other two, but I’m so glad to have seen it, and so pleased for Lelouch and his actors that it’s a triumph.
I received my box of author's copies arrived today from PS Publishing. It's a beauty! Charlie Largent's dazzling cover art is almost three-dimensionally gorgeous!
By the way, I learned yesterday that the signed and numbered edition (limited to 100 copies) has now SOLD OUT. That particular rarity won't be coming back, however we are looking into what we can do to make copies, and even signed and personalized copies, available here in the States.
In the meantime, here's the link to PS Publishing's sales page. If you've already ordered, your copy should be arriving shortly if it hasn't already. If you ordered the signed and numbered edition, give it two or three weeks. I signed the signature pages last night and we shipped them back to PS on the fast track, so the finished copies should be shipping within a couple of weeks.
Now we need to publicize it. If you're a reviewer of quality fiction, especially fiction related to horror, science fiction and fantasy cinema, contact Electric Dreamhouse and request a review copy. I'm also open to podcast and print interviews; just drop me a line at tim@videowatchdog.com.
If you've already received the book, read it and enjoyed it (or once you do), please talk it up in social media and place reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and any other literary outlets you can think of. This novel was originally undertaken to lend an extra push to get the Joe Dante movie made, and this remains the goal - but before this can happen, the book must send out ripples of excitement... so ripple away!
Here's a look at the back cover, where two notable gentlemen (who KNOW their Roger Corman, and have lots of stories of their own) offer their feedback on an early reading of the manuscript:
(c) 2022 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
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| James Franciscus as Jefferson High School English teacher John Novak. |
This was a troubled season; a new producer (Leonard Freeman) with ideas of his own took over, and halfway through the season Dean Jagger retired his role as Jefferson High School principal Albert Vane and left the show. Jagger was the eccentric bedrock of the show in many ways; it was reported that a chronic ulcer was responsible, and it later came out that his leave-taking may have been prompted by his dissatisfaction with some of the upcoming scripts of the season under Freeman's supervision. Whatever the cause, it was a great loss. Replacing him as principal was Burgess Meredith as Martin Woodridge, a venerable English teacher at Jefferson chosen by Mr. Vane to fill his vacated office after he ascends to the head of the Board of Education. Meredith isn’t quite Dean Jagger, but he’s nevertheless top form Burgess Meredith. Eccentric and earnest in his own ways, he gives outstanding performances in several episodes and, like Jagger, forms a special educative alliance with series lead James Franciscus. It also needs mentioning that Franciscus is consistently excellent throughout the series, embodying a mid-level of life learning, equidistant between the chairs occupied by Jefferson's principal and students.
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| Franciscus with Burgess Meredith. |
So there's lots to savor here, including “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt”, featuring a powerful performance (“Introducing Susan Tyrell”) as a returning student found innocent in a court of law of killing her sleeping parents with a shotgun, who has yet to clear the lingering suspicions of her peers and faculty. Also “The Tender Twigs,” in which Jefferson High’s debate class, enacting current United Nations debates with their most effective debater challenged with representing the Soviet Union, captures the attention of a smug right wing extremist agitator (well-played by Robert Culp) who publicly accuses the school of pandering communist sympathies. There are a couple of weaker episodes (Walter Koenig in "The Firebrand" as a narcissistic student protest leader, and the finale, a graduation story featuring Don Grady, who tries much too hard as a class clown who's not making the grade), but the season's high points are several and as stimulating as ever, maybe even a bit darker. They certainly warrant a proper release.
Season 1, which I heartily endorse as near wall-to-wall great television, is available from Amazon and Warner Archive Collection.
Two weekends ago, my new novel THE MAN WITH KALEIDOSCOPE EYES had its launch at ChillerCon UK in Scarsborough (along with Ramsey Campbell's RAMSEY'S RAMBLES, his collected VIDEO WATCHDOG columns). I was told that copies of the unsigned edition started being mailed out last week, and on Facebook I've started receiving photos from friends who have already received it.
Today, I received this week's PS PUBLISHING NEWSLETTER and was very pleased and surprised to find the first review I've seen of the book. Here it is, with my thanks to reviewer Matthew Jones:
To see this Italian fotobusta for THE COUCH is like seeing it through new eyes. To audiences in America, it was a dark, psychological drama; however, when viewed in an Italian framework such as this, it is obviously a giallo—and a film whose own B&W atmospheric aggression is somewhat in advance of Bava’s reputedly seminal THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, which was released in the same year. (As I've noted before, the real template for the Bava film appears to be the tongue-in-cheek Miss Marple mystery MURDER SHE SAID, first released in September 1961.) Indeed, when considered as a giallo, THE COUCH stands out as prototypical of the 1960s-1970s gialli on several counts: it was one of the first films to posit a serial killer as the main protagonist, portrayed as an individual of great personal charm and noted for his fetishistic use of a specific weapon (an ice pick). The Italian title translates as "I'll Kill at 7:00," a reference to one of the killer's promises to the police, and also his great alibi in that he's known to be keeping an appointment with his psychiatrist at that particular hour and so cannot be out elsewhere committing a murder. As a title of murderous intent and fetishistic planning, it prefigures other giallo titles such as YOU WILL DIE AT MIDNIGHT (1986) and THE KILLER RESERVED NINE SEATS (1974)—not to mention how it sets up the echoing of the number seven in such titles as SEVEN BLOOD-STAINED ORCHIDS and THE RED QUEEN KILLS SEVEN TIMES (both 1972) and SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT'S EYE (1973). One of the most thrilling sequences in THE COUCH also takes place on a vacant floor in a hospital where the darkened space throbs with strobing light from an outside neon sign, a motif that Mario Bava would adopt to equally disturbing effect in both THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH and BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964).
In short, this item shows us that the history of the Italian giallo did not evolve solely from Italian films, but also from foreign films in Italian.
If you've never seen THE COUCH, you're missing an important, too-often-overlooked chapter in the evolution of the horror thriller. The original script by Robert Bloch (which he later filled-out into a nifty novelization) is quintessential Bloch—dark, sick, and served up with an avuncular twinkle.
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| Dana Andrews makes a homecoming to an America he wasn't fighting for. |
The film opens with a montage of a bearded, long-haired Andrews being beaten and tortured as a prisoner of war in North Korea—an under-the-titles sequence that now recalls the similarly disorienting pre-credits sequence of 2002's James Bond offering DIE ANOTHER DAY. After the titles, Andrew's character Alan Eaton is reintroduced shaved, well-groomed, but obviously affected by his ordeal on a flight back to his home base of Washington DC, where he intends to rejoin his partner in their public opinion polling business. He spends the long flight enduring another form of torture, the talkative seating companion, who in this case is of the "small world" variety: he's a professor affiliated with a committee for nuclear disarmament, who recommends a place to stay and quotes Shakespeare by way of saying goodnight with Eaton escapes into a nap. (The Shakespeare quotation is perhaps the only moment in the film when we feel the "vesperal" tone of Tourneur's films for producer Val Lewton, as described by J.P. Velotte in his book DREAMS OF DARKNESS—and it's used here to underscore a character's obnoxiousness.) Back on terra firma, Eaton goes to his former office, finds his former partner one year dead, and the business signed over to an overbearing stranger (Dick Foran as Dick McGinnis), who has taken this once-honest business in the "new" direction of designing pre-determined polling—a first step in proposing "alternative facts" in postwar America. After bungling into another room where Eaton finds an anti-Semitic poll in progress, he starts digging into his company's current affairs and finds them dedicated to fomenting fear in the general public to prime them for buying a peace that only their paying associates can assure them.
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| Marilee Earle, Dana Andrews, and Mel Tormé. |
The film is based on a 1945 novel of the same name written by Darwin L. Teilhet, which must have been quite a shocker in its day. Seen today, it's not the idea of rigged public opinion polls that startles, because these have become such a big part of American life; rather, the startling part is that the film so frankly depicts the people behind such scams as murderers, criminals, spies, and thugs—un-American to a man. It's hard to believe that in just 64 years, the brainwashing of Americans by predetermined polling and biased broadcasting has become accepted by a large share of the country as its fundamental source of news and information.
The casting of Dana Andrews (the homecoming star of William Wyler's early postwar masterpiece THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES) in the lead role lends Eaton a special resonance the character would not otherwise have had. Singer Mel Tormé has a rare dramatic role as a compromised employee in bottle-thick eyeglasses whose susceptibility to criminal overtures is psychologically tied to his sexual insecurities. The leading lady, Marilee Earle, isn't much of one; she has a completely inexpressive face and, when Tormé makes a sweaty pass at her, we get the impression she's the only woman he's ever been near. While Dick Foran plays his role competently, the only roles with any impact are those of the Loders, the husband-and-wife whose B&B is recommended to Eaton by his flight companion, and who turn out to be stooges of McGinnis. They are played by Kelly Thordsen (who, in his later scenes, appears to be wearing Orson Welles' clothes from TOUCH OF EVIL) and sultry Veda Ann Borg, who don't bother to conceal their beer-fueled fights from their guests.
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| A Hitchcockian climax at the Lincoln Memorial. |
If the main feature falls short of our expectations, the audio commentary by Professor and film scholar Jason A. Ney repays its debt as a whole. With his engaging energy and smooth delivery, Ney covers the film's fascinating production history (it passed through a number of other hands before reaching Tourneur's desk), its cast (with a startling sidebar on Veda Ann Borg), its historical situation, its adaptation and the omissions from the source novel, its critical reception, and its place on the margins of noir, all the while grappling with the ideas it puts across and the occasional flaws in its makeup and rhetoric. In the only book about Tourneur's films published to date (Chris Fujiwara's otherwise appetizing JACQUES TOURNEUR: THE CINEMA OF NIGHTFALL), THE FEARMAKERS gets six discouraging pages. Here you get a lot more to chew on.
(c) 2022 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
