Cinema Styles

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters Toerifc November

2009-11-23T07:15:00.004-05:00

If you've seen Mishima, Toerifc's November selection, recently or know it well enough already please head over to Crips and Mutes, the home of blogger Krauthammer, for a full discussion of the film starting at 10:00 a.m. this morning (or apparently, thereabouts. Let's call it "tennish" at this point) EST. Hope to see you there.

January 12, 2010

2009-11-19T09:30:00.007-05:00

In less than two months, on that date, Luise Rainer will be 100. I can handle the cake but could someone help with the cups, plates and napkins? Also, anyone know if this is on the Mayan calendar?

Seriously though, 100. Unlike Barbara Stanwyck, Katherine Hepburn (100 in 2007) and Bette Davis (100 in 2008) Luise will be around to celebrate it with us, God willing. Now Olivia DeHavilland and Joan Fontaine just have to make it to theirs, in 2016 and 2017 respectively. Kirk Douglas reaches his 100th in 2016 as well. Almost all of Classic Hollywood, and by the use of "classic" here I am referring to the first wave of sound productions in the thirties and forties before television took hold, is gone. There are only a few left. After they go, all of what is known to us as "Hollywood's Golden Age" will be academic.

TOERIFC November (plus other TOERIFC announcements)

2009-11-17T08:15:00.002-05:00

First and foremost, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is the selection for TOERIFC November and will be hosted by Krauthammer on Monday the 23rd. It is not, repeat NOT, available on i-tunes, Amazon Video on Demand or Netflix Instant which means you have to get the DVD itself. If you have not done so DO IT NOW! It will be upon us in only six days.

Second, I'd like to request that we bump everyone back a month and take December off. I know that pushes people back one more month who have been waiting a long time to host a selection but I think it's important that we give ourselves some downtime to avoid overload burnout and December is the perfect month for it in my opinion. If you've got kids it's the time where, starting around the middle of the month (which is usually when we post), school is school "in name only" and preparations are being made for the oh-so insufferable holidays as they quickly approach and so it'd be nice to just take a month off. Last December I took a whole week off from just before Christmas to after the New Year and it was great. I highly recommend it.

Third, I've still got everyone's e-mails who wants to be a part of it and I'm happy to put their link in the sidebar (which I will eventually) but if you are interested I ask two things only: Put "Toerifc" in the subject header of the e-mail for easy retrieval later and two, participate. I'm not calling anyone out you understand, I'm really not. I'm simply saying that I get e-mails asking how someone can be a member and write up a film. I write back and say all you have to do is watch the movie and join in and at a later date we can discuss when you can host a selection. Then, nothing. They never join in. Now we have several members who have trouble joining in due to work and time issues. I understand that and have noted that pretty much all of them still manage to chime in with at least one comment to offer praise on the write-up and apologize for not being able to take part. I've got nothing but thanks for anyone who takes the time to do that and if you go to the main site you will see their names on the selection list and they'll stay there. So if you've had trouble joining in due to work or time, believe me, I understand and I'm not referring to you. But for anyone thinking about e-mailing me whose only real interest is in drawing attention to their blog via a write-up, well, that's not really what we're about. We really are here to discuss the movie in question and if that's what you want to do then by all means you are welcome any time.

That's all and remember: Mishima, Monday, November 23rd at 10:00 a.m. EST. Hope to see you there. Below is the sidebar banner for anyone who wants to use it. Thanks.

At the River Crossing Edward Woodward 1930-2009

2009-11-16T10:27:00.012-05:00

"These are memories to be hoarded" - Harry "Breaker" Morant

The first time I had any real knowledge of who Edward Woodward was was in the 1984 Hallmark Hall of Fame version of A Christmas Carol starring George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge. In that version Woodward plays the Ghost of Christmas Present and in every version of A Christmas Carol I have ever seen (and I have damn near seen them all including several versions on stage) I stack up the actor playing that part against Woodward. They always come up short.

Edward Woodward was an actor of formidable ability. He enjoyed brief fame on television as the title character of The Equalizer, a show I enjoyed watching if only for him, but if one really wants to understand the depth of Edward Woodward the actor one need view only two films, The Wicker Man and Breaker Morant. He is brilliant in both.

I saw both films not upon their release but years later after seeing Woodward in A Christmas Carol and The Equalizer. In The Wicker Man Woodward plays the part of the self-righteous rigidly Christian policeman so well that I would have sworn that's who he was as a person had I not seen his other work that convinced me likewise in respect to their characters. When one thinks of the superb film that is The Wicker Man one has to wonder how effective the film would have been without the central character being utterly believable. In other words, I don't watch that film and see an actor playing a self-righteous man that the audience will lose sympathy for, no. I see a character filled with piety who believes in his principles and is trying in his heart and according to his religion to do the right thing and save an abducted girl. Woodward lets the rigid adherence to dogma show but never lets the audience off the hook by making his character despicable like a mad Christian zealot. The audience believes that his character would in fact abandon some of his beliefs if it meant saving that little girl and that's a hell of a feat on the part of Woodward.

And then there is Breaker Morant, a beautiful and fascinating film that is by all measure the final argument one needs in the case of Edward Woodward, underappreciated actor. As Harry "Breaker" Morant he blends the rugged militaristic rough edges of an Australian officer fighting in the Boer War with the soul of a poet. His performance is magnificent and the denial of an Oscar nomination underlined the lack of peer recognition this great actor would receive throughout his career.

Edward Woodward died on November 16 at the age of 79 from complications from various illnesses including pneumonia. He will be missed.

The Land Before CGI Raise the Titanic

2009-11-12T10:00:00.003-05:00

In 1980 Raise the Titanic was released to across the board pans from the critical community. The public too seemed dissatisfied with the film as it tanked at the box office. Even today all it can muster on IMDB is a rating of 3.9. So, were the original pans warranted? Yes and no. In all honesty, it's not a very good movie, granted, but it's not the worst thing ever made either. It's a cold war thriller and as far as that kind of thing goes it's decent but not without problems. The main problem of Raise the Titanic is a supreme lack of confidence in its story, taken from the novel of the same name penned by Clive Cussler. Directed without an ounce of flair by Jerry Jameson it plods through scenes that need not exceed seconds in length and exits quickly scenes that actually might hold interest. It's maddening watching someone direct a film counter to all common sensical instincts but by God that's exactly what Jameson does. To make matters worse the movie's third act is clearly truncated and rushed through. The tale of trying to extract a rare mineral thought to have been placed as cargo aboard the Titanic in 1912 spends 90 percent of the movie talking about what to do (raise the Titanic of course!) then 10 percent doing it in a race towards a climax and dénouement.

Critics and audiences were most likely reacting to the film's price tag of 40 million dollars at a time when the average film cost around eight. It is unfortunately fairly clear that 39 million went into the Titanic raising part of the movie and a million or so went to everything else. But again, as a cold war thriller with a twist ending it's not entirely bad but yes, one can find better thrillers elsewhere so why bother?

Well, because its Titanic raising sequence is pretty damn amazing for those of us who still appreciate great model work done in the most difficult setting imaginable for a miniatures/model artist to work: water. Water cannot be scaled down. It is the size it is, period, so when a big drop passes by the model it becomes clear that it's a model. High powered fans are often used to blow small thin ripples briskly across the surface while high-speed cameras shoot the action to be played back at a slower speed, hopefully simulating an ocean rather than a pool. Sometimes the effect works, sometimes it doesn't. Here, for the most part, it works. The model for the Titanic is fairly big as these things go, approximately 55 feet in length, so much of the miniature effects look good even in the water. Only a couple of shots, particularly an early one of the anchor, betray the model for what it is. The sequence was filmed in Malta and directed by Ricou Browning with superb sound editing by William Wistrom. Enjoy the clip and please remember this film was made in 1980, six years before Bob Ballard pinpointed the wreck and discovered it had broken in two before settling on the sea floor. I say this not to my usual informed readers but to anyone who may stumble across this piece by a random google search without possessing the proper historical knowledge since, remarkably, the ship coming up in one piece is criticized on many message boards I have come across for not being historically accurate. Most do not realize that unlike what is shown in the James Cameron film the ship most likely broke apart just beneath the surface hence the lack of eyewitness accounts of the ship's separation (although there were a couple of eyewitness theories along those lines based on the sounds they heard). At the time of this film's release the prevailing view was that the Titanic had gone down in one piece.

One last thing. If you are interested in the behind the scenes of the model work and filming done for this movie there is no more valuable place to go on the internet than this Raise the Titanic YouTube page where you can see great stills of the model in production here as well as a host of other interesting morsels for your consumption.

Order and Uncertainty Random Thoughts on A SERIOUS MAN

2009-11-09T06:30:00.006-05:00

This rambling piece of writing is an attempt to bring together various and disparate thoughts on A Serious Man. A month after the film's release it is, as the classic cliche states, a day late and a dollar short. Its position is clear enough, here on this blog, but its momentum, if any, cannot be determined with any degree of certainty.

Understanding physics is easy. I've been studying it as a layman since childhood and have found it fascinating, enlightening and useful. Where there are questions it provides answers. Where there are answers it provides questions. Like I said, it's easy. It's the math that's hard.

Religion works along the same lines. My father was a Brother in the Carmelite Order in the 1950s. He renounced his vows and left, which in turn allowed me to enter the world. While my father remains a believer he realized his belief ran in a more moderate direction and the strict seclusion of monastic life did not suit him. That life, he thought, provided too many rigid answers. He had too many questions that required more shades of gray than the black and white world of monastic life could provide. Besides, he found the strict adherence to ritual offputting. He never tires of telling me how strange it was to be told to be quiet when not a sound was being made. The head of the order would pass by his cell while he was engaged in the required contemplative prayer, stop, look in and say, "Brother Ferrara, please keep it down." That kind of bizarre ritualistic existence wasn't for him. But it is important because it represents the math, the nuts and bolts of the devotion to the monastic lifestyle. Trouble is he didn't want the math. He wanted the stories.

But do the stories mean anything? Do the parables of the Bible, the illustrative stories given in physics, the legends we create for our everyday lives - Do they mean anything, provide guidance in any way or are they just a way to comfort ourselves with eternal questions knowing if we ever arrived at an answer it would all be over? There are so many stories, so many examples, so many illustrations. How can solace be derived from such a confusing labyrinth of tradition, history and age old wisdom?

Let us approach this from a different angle.

Carl Sagan once illustrated how much reading one can do in a lifetime by using a row of bookshelves in the New York Public Library. He went by an average of two books a week for around seventy years. Were that the case one could hope to read 7,280 books in one's lifetime. This number took up only a few bookcases in the New York Public Library, a library that contains more books than one can read by factors of ten. Thus the library houses more books than anyone could ever possibly read. Even reading constantly for decades a person will come up extremely short given how much there is out there. No matter how hard one tries, no matter how much one reads, one will never read everything. "The trick," said Sagan, "is knowing which books to read."

But which books, or stories, do we read?

A Serious Man, the latest cinematic effort by Joel and Ethan Coen, is one of those illustrative stories in physics. It provides answers by asking questions and asks questions by giving answers. It takes the thought experiment of Schrödinger's cat and presents it in cinematic form. The characters are both dead and alive in the end and will only be one or the other if we the viewers open the box. Until we do, and we cannot, they will be both.

Or take the possible dybbuk of the prologue, a "dybbuk" being a wandering or evil spirit. A man is helped by a neighbor but his wife tells him the man who helped him died long before and that he was in fact a dybbuk. When the man/dybbuk shows up at their cottage and engages in polite conversation she stabs him with an ice pick. He continues to talk for a short while but soon after begins to bleed. He leaves before the couple can determine if he were a real man who would die from his wounds or indeed an evil spirit who would simply vanish. He is gone and his outcome is uncertain.

Larry Gopnik, the protagonist of the film, teaches physics and early in the film argues with a student about the very idea of uncertainty and how it can be understood through math, while stories only exist to help illustrate the math. The student says he understands the stories but not the math and doesn't think he should fail. Understanding the stories should be enough. Larry understands the math but not the stories even admitting as much to the student. Since the purpose of the class, and of physics, is the math, he must fail the student if in fact the student doesn't understand the math. The student leaves and an envelope of money appears on Larry's desk. Did the student leave it as a bribe? He says he didn't, Larry says he did. Schrödinger's cat is now in play as the envelope itself becomes the cat, both existing (alive) and not existing (dead) according to which observation one goes with.

None of this, none of it, is helpful to Larry. At the moment of our story Larry's life is falling apart. The problem for Larry is that he teaches math and the math of his own life - his wife leaving him, his brother's employment, physical and legal problems, his children's wandering existence - doesn't form a coherent equation. It does not follow that this decision or that experience equals this crisis or that tragedy.

Larry Gopnik needs a story to illustrate the math of his life. In an effort to find one he visits three Rabbis to speak of his troubles and hopefully receive an answer. The first visit provides simple-minded questions asked by a junior Rabbi who has not yet experienced enough of life to go beyond that parking lot outside his office. What would those cars look like to someone unfamiliar with them?

The second Rabbi provides an amazing story of a mystical experience that has no conclusion, no climax, no payoff. It just... ends. But that story isn't about an ending. It's not about payoff. It's about looking for an answer to a riddle and realizing there isn't one and that once that is accepted, one can move on. This is entirely unsatisfactory to Larry. He can only move on with an explanation. Without one the mysteries of life become overwhelming. Larry cannot accept that an equation can be formed but not produce an end product of rational design.

The third Rabbi has the answer but Larry never gets to hear it. The third Rabbi, Marshak, has the wisdom to help Larry but the answer that Larry needs from him will take too long to explain, on the order of decades. There's an old adage in the fitness world that says there is a magic pill that can help one lose weight and get in shape, the only catch is it takes thirty minutes to swallow. It's called exercise. Rabbi Marshak has the answer that Larry needs but can't tell him. Larry has to provide the answer for himself and can do so with the only catch being that it takes decades to provide it. It's called life.

But what if Larry dies before that answer comes?

That's why he has to know which books to read. He has to know and he has to find out now with the only problem being that he can only find out by exploring each possible outcome, none of which provide certainty.

And there are so many outcomes.

The most wonderful thing about physics and religion is that they provide stories to illustrate the nuts and bolts of equations and life but the stories are so simplistic as to render them pointless as adequate descriptions. The complexities of scientific and theological thought usually produce the unfortunate by-product that stories designed to explain them actually lead the student down an entirely different path. Take Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. It states that an the momentum or velocity of a particle and its position cannot be known simultaneously with certainty. Its momentum can be determined dependent upon how well defined is its wavelength but if its wavelength is not well-defined its position can be accurately measured but not its momentum. Essentially it is simply this: the requirements necessary to determine one run counter to the requirements for knowing the other. Thus, one can know with certainty only one at a time, never both simultaneously. And yet from this theory we get popular culture interpretations such as those found in Larry Gopnik's own class that we can never know anything. Heisenberg would be amused at how general and sweeping the explanations for his principle have become. His intricate model for stating the uncertainty in determining the position and momentum of a particle has been transmogrified into a nihilistic philosophy of life. So it goes.

Larry and indeed all of physics is as guilty as anyone for this oversimplification of the laws that order the universe. He too has come to believe that the stories provide more logic and understanding than the math. But they don't. Math provides the answers and in religion those answers come from the very mechanisms rejected by my father. It's the dull stuff, the rigid ritual, that gets one to a satisfactory conclusion. This is this. All else is masturbation.

But my Dad is no fool. He didn't want a pat sum to a pre-ordered equation. He wanted vagaries and ambiguities and all they can offer. He could only get this as a layperson, not a monk. The physicists and the Rabbis know the math. For them it's about measuring position and momentum. For the layperson it's about not knowing anything. From that position the layperson can then begin exploring their life and searching for answers that have no predetermined sum.

The Coen brothers know the stories of physics. They know the philosophies that have been born twisted and flipped around from what was originally a thesis filled with symbols and numbers, illustrative of nothing more than the laws of nature itself. They know that people look for answers that have soft edges and blurred lines. They don't like answers with visible definition. Tell the average Larry Gopnik that A + B = C and he's likely to want to know why it does and beyond that, what does it mean? Of course, it means nothing. It means that A + B = C. That's all. To find any further meaning requires a story, one that can illustrate why A and B come up with a C. And this quest for a story to explain the math is what tradition is all about. And this need to hear a story and tell a story is the meaning. It is the answer.

Carl Sagan was no fool either. He enjoyed playing the lay ideas of physics against the canonical ones of the experts in the field. He was often looked upon with resentment and suspicion by members of the physics community because it was felt he approached physics from too philosophical a position, one that played into the desires of the public to hear stories that illustrate the ideas because the math was simply too bewildering. But he knew that was how you got people interested in the math, by telling them a story. His illustration of how many books one can read in a lifetime was really a lesson on life. His remarkable conclusion that states, "The trick is knowing which books to read," is a paradox and Sagan knew it. One cannot read every book so one needs to know which books to read but one can only know which books to read by reading every book, which one cannot do. Thus one can never know which books to read. So live your life, and the answers you need will come and their meaning will be provided by you, exclusively. Who knew a physicist could be such a fine Rabbi?

And who knew a movie could so confidently illustrate a complex notion like uncertainty so concisely and so eloquently as does the last few minutes of A Serious Man? Position and momentum. Uncertainty and precise measurement. Actions with consequences, and actions without. Like the dybbuk in the prologue A Serious Man exits before an outcome is certain and that is what gives it all of its meaning. And beauty. And of that I'm certain.

On this Day, Gene Tierney

2009-11-06T11:30:00.012-05:00

At the end of October I put up a post saying, essentially, that I hadn't done all I wanted to do. In a month in which I had planned to delve fully into the emotional passions involved in horror I had, to my eyes, come up short. As such, I said I was going to extend October celebrations throughout the year. Well, here's the first holdover. Warning: SPOILERS ABOUND!

On this day in 1991 Gene Tierney died from complications arising from emphysema. She was 70 years old. Tierney was both a beauty and a fine actress with more than her share of personal tragedy. If you'd like to read about her personal life there are more than a few online biographies you can turn to for information. The reason however that I was going to write about her in October was for the 1945 film Leave Her to Heaven which is a sort of spiritual Godmother to Play Misty for Me and Fatal Attraction. Her character even commits suicide but makes it look like murder which is exactly how Fatal Attraction was slated to end before preview audiences stepped in and became screenwriters causing nutless Adrian Lyne to gleefully change the ending of his own movie. Not so with Leave Her to Heaven which must have turned some heads back in 1945 with its tale of a woman so possessed, obsessed and heartless that she watches the helpless paralyzed brother of her husband drown and doesn't bat an eyelash. She throws herself down a flight of stairs just weeks before giving birth to force a miscarriage ... just to get sympathy and attention from her husband who she suspects is falling for her sister (she's right). And in the end, as noted above, she kills herself by poisoning and frames it on her sister. Damn.

These kinds of movies have always been popular whether the obsessed party is male (King of Comedy, The Eyes of Laura Mars, The Fan) or female (the above mentioned Play Misty for Me and Fatal Attraction) there's just something really creepy about someone who won't stop thinking about you! In Leave Her to Heaven, one of the first of its kind, the same maddening and mystifying traits of the stalker/obsessor are examined. Ellen (Gene Tierney) has had relationships before so what is it about this one with Richard Harland (Cornell Wilde, and no, he doesn't blog at Movie Morlocks) that sends her over the edge? Her former fiance, played by Vincent Price, is clearly in love with her and wants her but she, for whatever reason, has locked her sights onto Harland and won't veer away. From the first unilateral decision she makes, announcing to everyone after only a single outing with Harland at her family ranch that they are to be married you know there's going to be trouble. Later, when Harland, a novelist, decides to dedicate his latest novel to Ruth (Jean Simmons), Ellen's sister, he is told by their mother, "Oh no. You should dedicate it to Ellen. You should dedicate all your books to Ellen." The mother knows what Richard is willfully choosing not to see and this is her way of warning him. Foolishly, he doesn't heed the warning and the events described above, leading to her suicide, begin to unfold. But does she win? Will Richard and Ruth go to prison for murder? Yes and no. I won't completely spoil the film for those who haven't seen it (although I've come pretty damn close) but it's compelling that the movie allows the murderous Ellen a even partial victory in the end. And on top of that, she went out at the hour and means of her own choosing effectively avoiding justice for her murderous deeds.

Leave Her to Heaven is a well told tale of murderous obsession and Tierney would never again have a role that demanded as much from her as an actress. She wasn't Ingrid Bergman or Katherine Hepburn it's true, but she was a damn good Gene Tierney and in this film, more than even Laura, she showed an impressive display of acting chops. This November 20th would have been her 89th birthday.

Calling All Krauthammers! A TOERIFC All Points Bulletin

2009-11-04T19:26:00.003-05:00

It occurs to me that the next TOERIFC movie, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, is coming up soon but...

I don't know when!

And I cannot locate any e-mail anywhere for the mysterious Krauthammer who is the one covering it. So, Krauthammer, please comment below or e-mail me as to when the hell we're doing this thing. The 16th or the 23rd would work best. Let me know which is preferable.

And until we all find out when this is going to happen, everyone please get a hold of a copy of Paul Schrader's Mishima and give it a look so you can join in the discussion. Thanks.

The Land Before CGISan Francisco

2009-11-03T09:15:00.007-05:00

One of the best parts of blogging is starting new features that are invariably forgotten, scuffed up, stepped on and finally, mercifully, left for dead. "I'm starting a new feature..." is bloggerspeak for "I'm bored and have an idea that I will stick with for one or two posts, maybe three, and then move on. Hope you're not expecting too much!" I've done it and most other film bloggers have done it too. Whether or not they want to own up to the whole sordid affair is their business. But here's the thing:

I'm starting a new feature!

And like a gambler convinced he's finally figured out a way to beat the system I am here to assure you it will not be forgotten. Why? Because in my feverish obsession with editing together images and effects and music I have already created enough clips for this feature to last well into 2011. I purposely held off starting it until I was absolutely positive I had enough clips to carry me through the lean years, as it were. And what is this new feature (hold for maximum reader letdown)? A celebration of miniature and effects work from before 1993, the year Jurassic Park all but effectively killed the miniature business in Hollywood. There are still great examples of miniature work done post 1993, like Independence Day, but not many. My feature will focus on the craftsmanship behind the work that went into creating these little worlds on the silver screen.

One very important point: The quality of the film is of no concern as evidenced by my mention of Independence Day. My concern is to celebrate great hands-on effects work from a bygone era, even if it is the only thing worth seeing in the whole movie. Also, if making fun of how "fake" miniatures and models look is your bag these posts will hold little appeal for you. I'm not here to poke fun at the amazing work done by craftspeople and artisans that the average person couldn't duplicate with a million dollars and all the time in the world if their life depended on it. I'm here to celebrate it. Each clip will start with the title and director but will end with the names of all involved in the production of the effects sequence, often uncredited on the movie itself but recognized today thanks to the complete credit listings for most movies found on IMDB. On the flip side I am also not here to deride CGI which I recognize is enormously important in the effects world today and has changed the industry immeasurably. It's just that celebrating the lost art of miniature and model work is the primary concern.

We start with San Francisco, a 1936 W.S. Van Dyke production with Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald and Spencer Tracy. Its story of romance and business rivalry is well told but ends on a much too sentimental note to really embrace all that came before. Nonetheless, it is worth a viewing and the effects sequences for the earthquake are terrific.

Two of the most difficult things to deal with in miniature work are fire and water. Getting them "to scale" is impossible. A drop of water instantly betrays the size of the model ship it graces just as the size of a flame gives away the game for a model building. In San Francisco, effects photographer Loyal Griggs got around the problem as best he could by optically printing flames from a larger fire behind the models and making the models themselves as big as they could but still manipulative as miniatures.

Another problem faced with miniatures is the speed at which debris falls. On a larger scale it appears to fall more slowly and so high-speed cameras are employed to shoot the footage at many more frames per second than is custom so that it will play back at a slower but graceful speed. This sometimes but not always works. Note the dynamiting of the Victorian house in the clip. It is shown twice being dynamited. The first time looks like a model, the second time it appears much more natural. Why? The fault lies not with the high-speed photography but with the fact that the house was designed as a breakaway house rather than letting the explosives blow it apart. Thus, after the first explosion, we see whole sections of the house suddenly make clean breaks from the rest of the house betraying its model status. But the second explosion deals only with debris and as we see it fly into the air and slowly cascade down it has the look of the real thing.

Unfortunately, even on IMDB, the model makers are not listed, only members of the special effects crew. I hope that means the model makers as well because I would hate to not credit them for their extraordinary work. Also, as with any special effects sequence, sound is very important but the only credit is for the famed Douglas Shearer, head of the sound department. While he was certainly involved in many films of the era it was also common practice to simply put the head of the department on the credits (like Cedric Gibbons or Edith Head) giving short shrift to the many technicians working beneath them that often did most of the heavy lifting. I'd like to list the technicians who did such great Foley work on these scenes but sadly their names are lost to the ages.

Finally, let's remember that all the special effects members listed did some amazing full-scale work as well as seen when the street splits in two or the opera house starts breaking apart with hundreds of people inside. Enjoy.

Saints be Praised!

2009-11-01T07:00:00.001-05:00

Cue The Four Tops.

Horror - But Once Each Year?

2009-10-30T10:15:00.005-04:00

Every year around this time I feel like an interloper. The great blogs with a focus on the darker side, from Arbogast on Film to Final Girl, from Frankensteinia to Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire and even Cinebeats and Coffee Coffee and more Coffee, not exclusively horror blogs as they cover all genres of films but are certainly comfortable tackling horror with precise expertise, must get annoyed at all the non-horror blogs suddenly joining the club for a scant 31 days and acting like they know anything at all on the subject. I must admit that with each post I write in October I imagine they are all out there shaking their heads thinking, "I've read about this topic about a million times before on horror blogs dude. If you read them too you'd know how stale this is." And I know that while my most paranoid visions may be false the general belief is true. For instance, I wrote a post on Peter Cushing this October. How many posts on Peter Cushing have there been on horror blogs? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? A million? And yet each October I feel compelled to celebrate horror despite my amateur standing in the community. I feel compelled because I love both horror and science fiction and the fantasy elements they bring to film. But why only once a year?

I cannot stick to one genre for very long I admit. I once tried to do a whole month of nothing but Sci-Fi banners and even that I abandoned after a mere week. I love Sci-Fi but the idea of not using so many other great banners from so many other genres gnawed at me until I caved. In another case, a couple of years ago I devoted a whole month to movies and events important in the history of the Production Code. By the end of the month I was so sick of it I've yet to broach the subject again. But that's not the real problem. The problem is that I foolishly avoid the genre for most of the rest of the year. There have been times, too many to count, where I have an idea for a horror post that I don't do because I think, "I'll save this for October." Then when October finally rolls around the post has disappeared into the cobwebbed recesses of my doddering mind.

This has all been swimming around my brain lately because this year in particular proved a difficult one for saying what I wanted. There were and are many obligations that stood in the way of a full scale celebration of horror, mixed in with a generous dose of blogger fatigue and an ever increasing captivation with photo blogging (three of the four places I blog at are photo blogs). And so many of the posts I had planned never materialized, including a video post where I narrate the images to express my thoughts on the subject. And frankly, I know if I wait until next year almost all the ideas I had for posts this year will be lost forever and I'd still like to write them.

So write them I shall.

If you'll forgive me, this year's October celebrations will spill over into November, December, January and on through to September and why shouldn't they? Why restrict myself to one month out of the year? I don't want to be the interloper anymore. I don't want to feel like the Johnny Come Lately showing up at a bar full of regulars and acting like I own the place. So I think I'll follow the lead offered by Kimberly Lindbergs and Peter Nellhaus and throw horror into the mix whenever I feel like it. I still don't have anywhere near the expertise of either of them, or of the great Arbogast on Film, but I have a love for the genre and a compulsion to express it. If I'm honest, I suppose this whole post is just a way of saying I'm sorry I didn't do more this year. I'm sorry I let you down.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Halloween and a safe one. This year it falls on a Saturday which, if you have children in their late teens and early twenties (and I do), is always a bit of a worry. Trick or treating is much less fretful than late night parties with kids who are under the delusion they're adults. No matter how much guidance you give, how many restrictions you enact, at some point, it's up to them and for a parent that's always a bit scary especially when you look back and realize you didn't figure anything out until around 40.

So have a safe one and a happy one boys and ghouls. Happy Halloween!

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P.S. - That's me in the blog banner (as well as the picture at the top of this post) by the way. It occurred to me that most people didn't know after I asked a couple about it. I don't look like that all the time, I just hadn't had my coffee yet.

P.P.S. - I would be remiss if I did not point out that both Bill and Arbogast made the decision to do a special post each day (31 posts on horror fiction for Bill and 31 posts on horror movie screams for Arbogast) and by God, they stuck to it! Spend some time reading through them all when you get the chance if you haven't already. I humbly bow before both of them.

Black Sabbath Poster Bonanza

2009-10-28T12:50:00.011-04:00

Look at the great posters below for Mario Bava's Black Sabbath. They're courtesy of a wonderful site entitled The Wrong Side of Art and I heartily recommend going there and browsing their immense archives. I put them up to remind everyone that there are still three days to go in Kevin Olson's Italian Horror Blogathon. It's final day is Halloween itself so submit your own entry today! This simple poster post will have to suffice for my entry as I am not prepared to do anything more unfortunately. I'll level with you: it's been pretty damn busy around here with our oldest daughter reaching her deadline for college applications (this Friday) and I've been researching, writing and editing towards those purposes which explains why things have been more on the video side around here than the writing side. No one is applying to college next year (we hope) so I should have more time to devote to Cinema Styles October 2010: 100 Acre Horror, in which I spend the entire month interpreting horror through the lens of Winnie the Pooh and friends. The post on Eeyore alone should send chills down your spine. Until then, enjoy these posters and submit your own entry to the Italian Horror Blogathon soon!

Creepy Moments:The Blood on Satan's Claw

2009-10-27T08:00:00.012-04:00

I've been leaning a little heavy on the video clips lately but I have many videos I want to show and there's only four days left until Halloween. Here's another creepy moment, this time from The Blood on Satan's Claw. Enjoy.

Alternate Dream Sequence fromThe ExorcistWhat Might Have Been

2009-10-26T10:45:00.004-04:00

The dream sequence from The Exorcist has become legendary: Father Karras trying to make contact with his mother, she turning away and that mask, the death mask that is Pazuzu. Most horror fans know it frame by frame. But what if the original version had made it into the film as seen in this newly discovered rough cut with it's unmatched lighting between the shots of Karras and his mother? Two famous actors were used for the mother and Pazuzu roles but later the shots were scrapped in favor of unknowns. The footage would never die however. A few years later Sidney Pollack would become intrigued with the footage shot of the famous actor as the mother and build a whole film around it, even using this original footage in that film. But what if William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist, had left it in? What might have been.

Scary Face #1

2009-10-23T10:30:00.006-04:00

Presenting the "Scary Face" series. Watch at your own risk. Images are terrifying. Small children should be gently but firmly escorted away from computer before playing. Not for the faint of heart. You've been warned.

Building the Scene: The Birds

2009-10-21T11:00:00.013-04:00

Alfred Hitchcock is a director so well known and beloved by both cinephiles and non-cinephiles alike that most writers on the art of cinema would prefer to talk about someone else should the opportunity arise. After all, hasn't Hitch been analyzed, critiqued, elevated and deconstructed ad nauseum at this point? Probably, but that's not going to stop me from doing it again. Why? Because sometimes a director is so well known and beloved that we take for granted just how skillful said director is behind the camera. For this extended edition of this October's "Creepy Moments" series I'd like to look at how effectively Alfred Hitchcock achieved extraordinary suspense and tension in the much misunderstood The Birds, a film considered at the time a lackluster follow-up to Psycho (but wouldn't most films ever made suffer from the same perception) but upon further reflection is as brilliant in many ways as Hitchcock gets.

One of the most effective elements of The Birds is its lack of music. Impressive and memorable musical scores are as associated with Hitchcock's films as Italians with guns are with Martin Scorsese's and yet The Birds is silent. It's music is the call of the birds themselves. It's opening credit sequence alone, with fleeting blurred images of crows flying in and out of the frame, their cacophonous caws the only sound we hear, is a marvel of tension filled disquiet. The film is in bold technicolor but without music it appears distant and faded, the conversations feel overheard, and the characters sans musical cues for heroism and courage seem all too human and all too vulnerable.

While there is much to admire here the setup for the attack on the schoolchildren is one of Hitchcock's finest hours as a director. Most documentaries on Hitchcock make the mistake of showing this scene from where Tippi Hedren sits down on the bench. This is wrong because Hitchcock begins the tension at the top of the scene with Hedren's convertible seen driving towards the schoolhouse. The audience doesn't know it yet but this opening shot is a psychological plant on the part of the director. He is fixing the image of the schoolhouse on the hill in the viewer's mind as a serene image of peacefulness. Nothing can go wrong here. Later when the children are fleeing we will see this same shot only with hundreds of birds rising up magnificently behind it. It's a visual strong enough on its own to signal extreme and imminent danger but combined with the memory of the peaceful schoolhouse planted in our minds just moments before it becomes something else entirely, something more unnatural and at odds with our perceptions of how the world should look and work.

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By the time Hedren walks into the school to warn the teacher and students the scene is essentially over. The attack follows and works because Hitchcock built up a lingering menace in the playground first but it's superfluous to the tension already achieved. And again, when you watch it, take note of how quiet the scene is. The birds make little to no noise and the children's singing is muted from inside the schoolhouse. The song they're singing provides a kind of tempo to the scene as well as a haunting quality, as if ghostly voices were singing in the distance.

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Next is the attack. The opening swarm from behind the schoolhouse echoes the earlier serene shot with the car approaching it. As I said, the thrust of this scene is done anyway with the setup but is mesmerizing to watch regardless and provides a terrific payoff to the initial setup.

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Finally there is the film's ending. I've talked to many a person unimpressed with this ending. "It just kind of... ends, you know." I don't know how to respond to that. It doesn't "just end" it fades out into quite possibly the end of the world, the beginning of an assault on humanity by nature or just the end of human settlement in Bodega Bay. Whatever the true "end" may be I find this conclusion to the story one of Hitchcock's ballsiest moments as a director. Note just near the end how the crows caws go from natural sound to heightened unnatural sound just before the fade out. What does that say? Again, no music, no credits, not even the words "The End." Note that the camera precedes the three principals making their way outside. For the camera to do this there can be no door, otherwise Rod Taylor would have to reach "through" the camera to get to it and then the camera would block it from opening. In a brilliant solution by the cinematographer Robert Burks, Rod Taylor simply mimes opening the non-existent door while a lighting effect fills in the rest. It works beautifully.

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If you haven't seen The Birds, and I can't imagine there are too many out there that haven't, it is readily available pretty much everywhere. Give it a look but be prepared to meet the movie halfway. The Birds is a movie that keeps its secrets closely guarded, under the wing.

Gently Johnny: A Picture Book Story

2009-10-20T10:30:00.003-04:00

"A picture of me arresting somebody would look soooo cool right here."
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The bacon trees are in bloom!
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and the manager gives me a smile;
'cause he knows that it's me;
they've been coming to see;
to forget about life for a while.
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"Excuse us please. Is this the Overlook?"
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Here comes the king, here comes the king, here comes the big number one.
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You're stupid!
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No you're stupid!
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Touchdown!!!
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Best tailgate party. Ever.
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For the real deal, go here. Best review of this film you'll read.

Kiss Me, Stupid

2009-10-19T08:15:00.001-04:00

I'll be at Illusions Travel by Streetcar today to discuss Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid for this month's TOERIFC selection but I'll be back for October festivities later. Come join us if you've seen it, admission is free.

One Last Reminder: TOERIFC Monday Approaches

2009-10-16T09:25:00.006-04:00

October 19th is TOERIFC Monday which means Tom Sutpen will be hosting this month's discussion at his place. No, not the well-manicured grounds of Sutpen's Hundred but the well-manicured blog Illusions Travel by Streetcar. The movie? Kiss Me, Stupid directed by the legendary Billy Wilder. Our discussions usually begin at 10:00 EST and I encourage everyone to check out the movie and join in the discussion. It is readily available on Amazon and i-tunes so there's no excuse not to. See you there!

Synthetic Flesh

2009-10-15T08:45:00.005-04:00

Continuing the "Creepy Moments" series for this month we move on to Doctor X from 1932, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray and Lee Tracy, none of whom are in this scene (but Preston Foster is). And yes, it's a scene not a moment. Furthermore, it's not very creepy with all the electronic gizmos and gadgets pulsating throughout the scene probably removing any sense of creepiness to the modern eye but I don't care because I love the movie, the whole damn ridiculous thing, and the scene. And if you've never seen Doctor X and would like to see it fresh DO NOT WATCH THIS SCENE. This scene is in fact the spoiler of the movie where the Moon Killer's real identity is finally revealed. Otherwise please do watch this entertaining and goofy scene in which the Moon Killer disguises himself before the kill by applying mounds of goopy synthetic flesh to his face (which is kind of funny because immediately following this scene he reveals who he is without hesitation to the other characters who have been trying to solve his identity).

Remember These Monsters?

2009-10-14T10:10:00.004-04:00

I've been blogging long enough now that I can actually feel comfortable pulling stuff from the archives that I want to highlight again. This is my favorite montage from last year by far, a short celebration of Lugosi, Karloff and Lanchester, the three "monsters" that put Universal horror on the map. Since I won't be covering any old-time Universal Horror or otherwise (sorry, but this year is all Hammer on up) I felt it apt to use this montage from last year as a substitute for any more in-depth posts on the subject. Enjoy.

The Middle Ground between Light and Shadow

2009-10-13T11:30:00.004-04:00

As a part of October celebrations I watched Twilight Zone: The Movie, a film I'd not seen since its debut on cable way, waaaay back in the day. Watching it again with older, maybe wiser, eyes revealed a film so inconsistent as to make one wonder why they bothered releasing it. Add on to that the fact that three actors ( Vic Morrow, My-Ca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi) were killed during filming due to questionable filming practices, ignored safety standards and violations of child labor laws and one really does get the feeling that out of respect alone they should have shelved it. But they didn't and I suppose Vic Morrow, the great character actor with such an extraordinary gift for playing the jerk, deserves recognition for his final performance, something too often overlooked in write-ups on the film.

Vic Morrow's performance comes in the first tale told (there are four in all, bookended by a mildly entertaining, and completely pointless, prologue and epilogue featuring Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks). The tale concerns a hateful bigot who, after spending his evening complaining about every non-white ethnic group under the sun controlling the world, walks out of a bar and into the Jewish ghetto in Nazi Germany. Get it? He's a Jew now, suffering divine retribution for his sins. Moments later he is a black man being held by the KKK (with a young John Larroquette as their leader) and then a Vietnamese man escaping American troops in Vietnam. This last sequence involved a scene where Morrow and two children (the actors named above) escape a helicopter attack which ended, in reality, horrifically as the helicopter lost control and descended upon and killed all three actors below. Whatever that scene entailed it was clearly vital to the sequence because without it the Vietnam sequence is so weak and meaningless that it honestly should have been left out. Editing out the helicopter scene, and the previous scene with the two children, but leaving in all that surrounded it seems both disrespectful and dishonest. Because the sequence is so weak and barely understandable (it's not even made clear that he is a Vietnamese man - that was made clear in the footage with the children apparently) it feels like it was left in just so they wouldn't lose any usable footage. If that is in fact the case then may I just offer up a huge "Fuck you" to John Landis and if it is not the case the "Fuck you" stands for filming at night with child actors illegally hired to avoid adherence to child labor laws, a fact that only Landis and first and second assistant directors Dan Allingham and Anderson House knew on the set. I won't go any further but if you would like to read more on this whole disgusting episode, go here. But back to Morrow. He is, as expected, excellent. Whether at the beginning of his career (Blackboard Jungle) or near the end (The Bad News Bears) Morrow could project hate and anger like few others. He is perfectly cast here and makes an otherwise unmemorable segment slightly better.

Then there's the second segment, directed by Steven Spielberg and without a doubt the weakest of all four segments. No, that's not right, it's much worse than weak. It's horrible, insufferable, unbearable. It is a ripe stinking piece of garbage. It's a story about a group of old timers who get the chance to be young again thanks to a magic man with a twinkle in his eye and... Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!! The music is goopy, the shots are sickly sweet, the child actors playing the old timers now young are AWFUL! Oh screw it, here just watch this Cinema Styles video review:

Moving on to the third segment things improve dramatically. The music still sucks for the most part (only because Jerry Goldsmith doing 'whimsical' is just about the worst thing the Earth has ever known) but the story and pacing are a hell of a lot better. Kathleen Quinlan stars as Helen, a woman taken to a strange house by a strange boy named Anthony who can make anything happen by wishing. He has, we find out, held four people captive that he reveals to outsiders as his family. A fifth hostage, and true relation - his sister, sits in the bedroom silently watching cartoons, her mouth long ago removed by the vindictive Anthony. The story races along at a clipped pace as we watch the immensely entertaining set of character actors, including Kevin McCarthy, wiggle and squirm through sycophantic tributes to Anthony. The biggest fault of this story is it pretends to have a nice ending with Anthony telling Quinlan he let everyone go as she smiles and says she wants to be his teacher. Thing is, it's alluded to by one of the characters early on that his parents met a horrible fate at his hands. No mention is made of this as we all hold hands and watch flowers grow alongside the road as the new teacher and homicidal student drive off into the sunset. Ugh. I guess when Steven Spielberg is your producer these kinds of endings are unavoidable (at least, I should qualify, the Spielberg of 1983).

That takes us to the fourth and final segment, a reworking of the original series classic Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. John Lithgow takes over the role William Shatner made famous as an airline passenger terrified of flying who sees a gremlin on the wing of the plane destroying the engine. No one else sees it of course and Lithgow does a tremendous job of playing full-bore hysterical throughout most of the segment. It's not any better or worse than the original (maybe slightly worse - it plays the hysterical angle a bit too long) but it's not a bad capper to an otherwise undistinguished affair.

In the end, the first two segments (the first for its banality, the second for its no-holds-barred awfulness) weigh too heavily on this enterprise for the movie to succeed. By the time we get to the good stuff we've already entered an advanced state of indifference to the whole damn thing and even Joe Dante's and George Miller's very good third and fourth segments can't resuscitate this comatose patient. When the credits roll we feel a mixture of depressed detachment and relief. The movie didn't really affect us one way or the other and yet we're glad it's over. Like Rod Serling's famous narration, it occupies the middle ground between light and shadow, never really venturing fully into either, staying the middle course, playing it safe and finally, and ultimately, failing as both.

It was always Peter

2009-10-12T12:00:00.005-04:00

I recently watched The Curse of Frankenstein again and was once again impressed with how boldly Hammer Film Productions, director Terence Fisher and write Jimmy Sangster all worked together to produce such a splendid reboot of a story (before they were called reboots and one year before their Dracula reboot) so familiar to so many fans. How they took the basic framework of the story and twisted it around just enough to make a story they could call their own while still enjoying the benefits that come from attaching the name "Frankenstein" to the end product. I was again impressed with how well Christopher Lee does in evoking sympathy for the pathetic creature he must play, much more pathetic than his original literary counterpart or the 1931 Universal creation. But more than anything I think I realized, or perhaps better put, finally let myself accept, that without Peter Cushing Hammer films would have never succeeded. That is high praise indeed and I intend it to be the highest praise I can give to an actor underrated by legions of non-horror fans and deified by those in the fold.

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are associated with Hammer more than any other two names but the two films that put Hammer on the horror map were this one and the previously discussed Horror of Dracula and in both, even Dracula, Lee is but a supporting player. It is Cushing that carries both films. It is Cushing that makes both films. Without Cushing neither film would have been the success it was and Hammer, perhaps, would have moved on to other things. Goddamit, it was Peter. It was always Peter.

And it's not just that this film, this Frankenstein, wouldn't have worked without Cushing. The 1931 Universal Frankenstein wouldn't have worked with Cushing in the role of the doctor. That role needed an actor who could exhort wildly that his creation had life and then recede into the framework while we follow the monster and his doings. Colin Clive played that role and did it well. But this Frankenstein is Cushing and nothing else. The creature is damn near an afterthought. In fact, he could have never succeeded in bringing the creature to life and it wouldn't have hurt the movie. He could have just kept on killing people and kept on trying and that would have been enough. With another actor it wouldn't have been but with Cushing? Yes, easily.

Peter Cushing had an intensity as an actor that few like him have possessed. Critics and actors like to use the word "intensity" to describe the Marlon Brandos or the John Garfields of the acting world (or any actor associated with Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler or Sanford Meisner), actors playing a brutal or brutalized working class American raised on the streets of Brooklyn. But Peter Cushing had an intensity that put all of them to shame - And NO, I am not just saying that for the sake of hyperbole, October celebrations or to give respect to a disrespected genre. I am saying it because it is true. How many people remember Peter Cushing in Star Wars? Everyone! He has but a few lines and yes, I know it's among the most popular films ever made so even minor characters are known, but still, with all the action and starfights and light sabers and Darth Vader roaming around all moody-like there's Grand Moff Tarkin, and he stands out. Now, think back to the movie, the whole saga in fact. There is no character working for the Empire, save the Emperor himself of course, who does not tremble in Vader's presence, except Tarkin. Cushing's intensity was such that he simply wouldn't have been believable fearing anyone.

It is that intensity that makes his Dr. Frankenstein such an astonishing creation. His face, his eyes, his build, his manner of speaking all signal to the audience far beyond the machinations of the script that this Doctor is mad. Homicidally mad. And that becomes our story, and would further become the story of more Hammer Films Frankensteins because fans couldn't get enough of this great yet sadly unheralded actor playing crazy. Peter Cushing changed the way horror fans thought of Doctor Frankenstein. There was the Doctor from the Universal films, the Doctor from the television productions that followed the novel more closely or even the Doctor from Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. They all had a madness to them, an obsession that drove their desire to create life from dead tissue. But they were all also, at their core, decent human beings who loved and felt guilt and revulsion at what they had wrought upon the world. And then there's Cushing's Frankenstein. No guilt, no revulsion. This Doctor is a bastard.

While the movie contains many scenes that make this clear, including a scene early on where the good doctor kindly ushers a brilliant scientist guest to his death over the second floor railings just so he can use his brain for his reanimated creature, the scene that projects it best and brilliantly is one of true horror and perversion. Frankenstein has dug up his first failed creature and brought him back to the lab where he has chained him to the wall and brought his former tutor and mentor to the lab to show him off. He orders him thuggishly to "Stand up!" "Sit down!" and so forth while the creature performs these rudimentary actions with oafish inexactitude. His mentor, and the audience, see a pathetic and horrifying display. A mentally disabled man, chained to a wall, clearly afraid, being yelled at to perform like an organ grinder's monkey. But one look at Frankenstein and the audience knows he's thinking, "Isn't this great?! Look at this! That son of a bitch does whatever I tell him - And he was DEAD before! Goddamn I'm good! Aren't you stunningly impressed?" Peter Cushing's Frankenstein cannot, will not, see that he has done something morally repugnant. He can only see personal glory no matter what the cost has been to others (Cushing would have been superb as Colonel Nicholson in Bridge on the River Kwai - not that Alec Guiness wasn't mind you).

The Curse of Frankenstein put Peter Cushing in the public eye but he never achieved the peer recognition that an actor of his immense talents should have. The Curse of Frankenstein is a fantastic reboot of the Frankenstein story but without Cushing it would have been so much less. The Curse of Frankenstein and The Horror of Dracula that followed set Hammer up for life but none of it would have happened like it did without Cushing. It was Peter. It was always Peter.

Young Frankenstein in Five Minutes

2009-10-09T06:45:00.001-04:00

Because I can and I was bored. Seen it a million times? Never seen it? Doesn't matter. Here it is in highly abridged form for your Friday enjoyment.

Burn Witch Burn!

2009-10-07T11:15:00.006-04:00

City of the Dead was released in September of 1960 in England and several months later in the United States, along with an unfortunate re-title Horror Hotel. The change in name didn't help its fortunes in the states and the movie quickly fell off the radar of horror fans the world over. It didn't help that it was released just months after Psycho (but began filming a full month before Psycho) which grabbed all the business and all the headlines with its shocker story and twist ending. Another strange turn of fate was that both films used a similar structure in setting up their respective stories. In both films the heroine goes off on her own to an isolated hotel/motel and around the halfway point of the movie is quickly and unexpectedly killed, both times by stabbing. But that's where the similarities end and one wishes the film had been given a better release because City of the Dead is an excellent tale of witchcraft, sorcery and sacrifice.

Tony Award winning actress Patricia Jessel plays Elizabeth Selwyn, a witch burned at the stake in 1692 but living on in the ghost town of Whitewood, Massachusetts, just the place our heroine, Nan Barlow (Vanetia Stevenson), decides to go to research a paper on the occult. She finds the town by way of her professor, played by Christopher Lee. He recommends it to her having grown up there and we soon suspect the Professor may in fact be a member of a coven intent on sacrificing two women every year, one on Candelmas Eve, and one on the Witches' Sabbath.

John Moxey, the film's director, displays a real gift for mood and atmosphere but don't look for any great list of cinematic achievements from him. Except for this feature film and two others he spent his entire career directing nothing but shows and movies made for television, including the original Night Stalker pilot. But here we can see his visual gifts were strong and he takes the rather drab set of the small town with its storefronts and sidewalks straight from the backlot and infuses it with a real sense of claustrophobia, isolation and creeping menace. And he does an admirable job of creating tension and suspense as our two heroes, Richard Barlow (Dennis Lotis) and the dim Bill Maitland (Tom Naylor), race in the end to rescue the second sacrifice before time runs out, in a climax a bit on the ridiculous side (the way the coven is disposed of is questionable for even the most forgiving viewer). Nonetheless, Moxey does a great job with it and it's a shame he didn't have a more successful career with theatrically released movies.

Christopher Lee, affecting an American accent satisfactorily, does well with a small role as does Valentine Dyall in the role of Jethro, Elizabeth's former lover. But the movie is dragged down in the first half by the lifeless Vanetia Stevenson as Nan Barlow, an actress simply lacking all charisma. It's not that she's bad with her delivery, it's that she's blank in her delivery and had the movie focused on her entirely it would have been a lost cause. Fortunately, many of her scenes are played with Patricia Jessel, an actress of commanding strength who rightly grabs our attention every moment she is on the screen.

City of the Dead isn't as famous as a movie with its sense of atmosphere and mood should be but perhaps that will change. It's in the public domain and has been released on a twofer DVD with William Castle's House on Haunted Hill for a dollar. Yes, a dollar for two movies and yes, believe it or not, it's a pretty good transfer. If you can find a copy of it somewhere for sale I recommend giving it a look.

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Here is the opening sequence to City of the Dead, an opening sequence I absolutely love. You might recognize the shadowy figures at the beginning as being the stars of my first "They're Coming" trailer for October. The last notes of an 'Ave Satani' type chant (16 years before The Omen) can be heard from the credit sequence as we go to 1692 Massachusetts and the burning of Elizabeth Selwyn. The scene ends by abruptly cutting us to the present as Christopher Lee lectures to his students. Enjoy.

One extra clip. This clip was a "WTF" moment for me when I first saw City of the Dead. Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson) has been relaxing in her bathrobe and decides to join the guests in the lobby dancing to jazz. In a completely gratuitous moment of "let's show off the blonde" she removes her bathrobe to reveal she is a... French whore! Enjoy.