There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, you never know who’s on the other end of the line, of if they have anything going on upstairs in their attic…

Black Christmas (aka Silent Night, Evil Night) (1974)

Distributed by: Warner Brothers

Directed by: Bob Clark

Please note that this is not the film we teased last time; we are running this piece now and very much out of season in respect to Margot Kidder, who passed away suddenly this Monday

It seems every Christmas, for many years, we sit down and watch this movie directed by Bob Clark from 1983:

His earlier Yuletide-themed film from 1974, not so much:

Please note that there will be a few unavoidable spoilers in this piece; unlike most houses, we don’t judge you for peeking early at the presents…

We begin just before the holidays, at a sorority house at an unnamed university (the University of Toronto, for the curious who may ask where some of the scenes were shot as the film goes on).  We have scenes of the party at the Pi Kappa Sigma chapter, and get introduced to some of their members: Barb (Margot Kidder), the raging alcoholic; Phyl (Andrea Martin), the voice of reason and studious sufferer of a head cold throughout the film; Claire (Lynn Griffin), the “good kid” who doesn’t drink and party as hard as her sisters, and Jess (Olivia Hussey), who before we get to know her well enough has to take a phone call, a really, really nasty obscene phone call that the rest of the house listens in on.

We cut back and forth from these to other shots, on the outside of the building. It’s quickly established that what we are looking at are scenes from the direct point of view of someone who breaks into the house, climbs up the trellis and into the attic.

The sorority’s uninvited guest waits upstairs for Claire to go to her room and start packing to go to her family for the holidays. We cut back and forth between watching her normally and through the eyes of the break-in artist, who upgrades to murderer when he suffocates her with a plastic bag and drags her into the attic.

When Claire is late to meet her father (James Edmond) the next afternoon, he turns to her sorority sisters and their house mother Mrs. Mac (Marian Waldman), a woman with more places to hide sherry bottles around the Pi Kappa Sigma house than Al Capone could have dreamed up, for help finding her. He also briefly encounters Peter (Kier Dullea), who we learn as we follow is a conservatory student who is Jess’ boyfriend.

More like was, as she breaks up with him over the issue of her pregnancy; she wants to have an abortion, and he wants to marry her. His somewhat fragile sense of self goes completely awry in cut scenes between him losing his cool, Jess and friends trying to look for Claire, and Claire sitting in the attic undisturbed.

At least until Mrs. Mac, looking for her cat (and maybe a sixth bottle of sherry she had hidden somewhere) while a cab waits downstairs for her, finds Claire in the attic. Unfortunately, our killer’s there too, and he does away with her with a swung hook and tackle.

The police, ultimately, come into the picture, even as there is a missing girl case that’s drawn their attention. In the midst of all that’s going on, Detective Fuller (John Saxon) determines that there’s something going on, especially as the obscene phone calls keep coming, and getting more threatening as the person on the other end identifies himself as “Michael”:

Anxious to find the threat, Fuller gets a trace placed on the sorority’s phone, hoping to track where the caller might be. Which is of little value, as the killer in the house strikes again, taking out Barb who is sleeping it off just as carolers come to the door:

Ultimately, Fuller and the police are able to track the threatening phone calls to the killer: the calls are all coming from within the house! This leads to a final confrontation…

…after which the killer has escaped, and is alone in the house with the final survivor, Jess. There’s the ringing of the phone as we pull out and roll the end credits, Michael and Jess’ final confrontation never revealed…

Which actually makes for a more interesting ending, leaving us hanging not only as to what happens to Jess, but who Michael actually was. The best we get to see of him is one shot of a single eye on the other side of a door; because he displays no supernatural abilities beyond good luck and a strong back and set of hands, it’s his anonymity that gives him the our attention, as we try and fathom the unknowable.

Not that there’s nothing to inspire awe in the viewer, especially modern ones. The fact that we have women on screen being very frank in how they enjoy themselves, having control over their choices and bodies, is a stark statement to an age like ours when things seem to have gone backwards. The fact that the characters in the 2006 remake seem to have regressed, being forced to follow the rules of slasher films which did not exist in 1974, makes one very aware of how much has been lost over the years across the board.

As for getting to know people, the characters we get from the cast are compelling as their displayed facets draw us in. This alone is worth our attention, and becomes even more compelling watching this 40 years on and knowing what’s to come. Seeing Kidder’s Barb going balls-to-the-wall through life is compelling viewing in this strong early performance in her career, while watching Martin play a straight role so soon before joining SCTV and becoming a comedic actress icon makes you aware of a side of her you might not have considered.

As for historical consideration, an early fan of this film was John Carpenter, who started a correspondence with Clark after the film’s release. A few years after their conversations, when Clark discussed ideas for an abandoned sequel, Carpenter ultimately builds on those and comes up with what he felt was at least spiritually tied to the earlier film, Halloween. While many of the elements of the modern slasher film trace to Carpenter’s work, it’s Clark’s 1974 project that is the ur text from which all such movies originate.

Making the film for horror fans the gift that just keeps on giving…

NEXT TIME: Baring further surprise tragedies, we will finally try and make our way into orbit…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: The Festive Slasher Movie That Inspired John Carpenter’s Halloween appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, reaching for the stars can be a tricky business; still, stiff upper lip and all, eh wot…?

Satellite in the Sky (1956)

Distributed by: Warner Brothers

Directed by: Paul Dickson

One of the great themes of the 1950s was the “space race,” the effort to get into orbit and plant a flag on behalf of the people of Earth… through, of course, the efforts of your country, which was due all sorts of glory and honor for having gotten you up there, and was entitled to all the cred that bragging rights endowed. Technically, the prize was anyone’s to grab, though in reality the only two serious players at the game were the United States and the Soviet Union.

Though in the early days of it, before anyone had made any real progress IRL, on film, there were serious candidates from elsewhere, especially the British. Who were especially serious…

Our film opens with scenes around the fictitious British base Thunder Hill, where we watch a rocket fuel test overseen by Larry Noble (Jimmy Hanley) and Lefty Blake (Larry Keegan) finish up just as Commander Michael Hayden (Kieron Moore) arrives after test flying in what’s referred to as “his” plane, which we’ll look at more closely at later.

The reason they’re at the base is in preparation for Operation Stardust, an expedition to the outer reaches of the atmosphere, which thanks to the fuel test being a success means they can commence with the launch. They share this with the press, which includes World Press Service reporter Kim Hamilton (Lois Maxwell), whose views regarding the project are not shared with Hayden. Her arguments against the project sounding much like the arguments against the Apollo Project in the next decade, the two seem destined to be enemies, which even if we hadn’t seen enough “meet cute” moments in so many films before this we feel is not likely to last.

In fact, showing an absolute trust in her (and a horrible sense of operational security), Hayden takes Hamilton down to show her Stardust the night before the launch:

After the visit, Hayden and Noble are informed that the crew of the Stardust will be upped from four to five. In addition Hayden, Nobel, Blake, and Jimmy Wheeler (Bryan Forbes), the Stardust will now take off with American Professor Merrity (Donald Wolfit), who will oversee a late addition to the manifest. Merrity is going to be the payload specialist for the Tritonium Bomb, a device so powerful that they dare not set it off in the atmosphere, but will explode one in space to demonstrate that war with the west is now absolutely unthinkable.

Which is just one more thing atop all the other concerns. What with Noble’s wife Barbara (Thea Gregory in her last feature) feeling abandoned by her husband and leading on the flirtatious Tony (Peter Neil in his last feature), as well as Wheeler’s thwarted effort to properly propose to his girlfriend Ellen (Shirley Lawrence), it’s all rather much, you see. This is just making what should be a triumph for man’s effort to get into space such a bother, and it won’t do.

Well, despite it all, the chaps do make their way into the air, readying themselves to get on with it all…

…which of course bloody well doesn’t. The bomb they’re supposed to leave in orbit gets snagged to the hull of the Stardust, thanks to bad design of the device’s retro rockets. And to add to it all, the crew it turns out numbers six, as Kim stowed away on board a vessel that thankfully had thrust to spare and didn’t need to worry about excess weight throwing off the ship’s precise calculations.

Which brings up an interesting dichotomy in the film: The times the film makers paid serious attention to what they were doing, versus just going, “Sod it all, who gives a fig?” Having a craft trying to get into orbit without worrying about exact weight-to-thrust ratios, which would allow for a stowaway to not endanger the mission, is very much a part of the latter. (They even bring it up in the script when Kim gets admonished for her actions, telling her she should be grateful they had over-compensated for what they needed, something that probably would never happen.) The lax security that allowed her to just slip on board is also a good example of this, which no amount of in script discussion could ever justify, so this stays unmentioned. And really, naming your nuclear device after an abandoned genus of sea snails? Daft, that…

On the other hand, there are some decent sensible points brought up about, not only how to get into orbit, but why. American films about blasting off never seriously question whether the effort’s justified the way this film does, with good arguments made about whether the costs are worth it, with so much on the ground needed to get fixed. And a few minutes are actually taken by the characters to discuss the fact that as abhorrent as it is, that without a military component to the mission that the effort would never have gotten off the ground, literally.

Which brings up Hayden’s plane that he flies into the pic on, an Avro Vulcan. It can’t be an accident that the character is training for the mission, to fly a large craft into orbit to leave a nuclear device behind, on an aircraft the British designed for strategic nuclear strikes. It’s a subtle recognition of the reality of what’s behind the space race, and a very knowing subtext to give to the viewer as to both where the film makers are coming from and what they are bringing to bear.

Shot in color, with special effects by Wally Veevers, the film is gorgeous to look at, even if some of the model shots look badly dated, which might have served the film well enough even without the script’s inherent strength. You almost wish the film could have covered some things a little better and taken some of their ideas a step further than they did; for anyone who wants to imagine that this took place, you may want to run it as a double feature with 1961’s The Day the Earth Caught Fire.

The film itself, unfortunately, didn’t catch fire over in the US. And just over a year later Sputnik started sending radio signals as it circled the globe, which pushed the movie to an orbit further out from our memories. For the British, the real space race was lost soon after the film came out.

Though like the Americans with the Apollo Project, they did come back strong much later with 2001: A Space Odyssey…

NEXT TIME: If Master really loved Larry, he’d just feed Larry, and not make Larry watch this movie…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: Fancy a Very Proper British Space Adventure, Old Chap? appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, it’s hard not to draw the wrong conclusions if they don’t draw enough themselves…

Wizards (1977)

Distributed by: Twentieth Century Fox

Directed by: Ralph Bakshi

When last we took a look at 1977, when Fox released Star Wars (for which a tie-in film just opened), it was hard not to wonder about the studio’s devotion to Damnation Alley, the genre film that Fox felt would be superior to Lucas’ release.

It’s a bit more complicated than that when you look again and find, to quote Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, “There is another…”

We’re told in an opening exposition overfilled with static images and expositive narration (provided by an uncredited Susan Tyrell) that the Earth blew up in a nuclear war started by terrorists some two million years ago. Said war turned most humans into mutants who roamed the wastes, while at the same time in the non-radioactive areas “the true ancestors of man” as they call them, fairies, elves, and dwarves, reclaim the surface of the world.

It’s in the midst of this scarred/blessed world that one of the leaders of the fairies, Delia, gives almost instant birth to two wizards, the beautiful looking and good-hearted Avatar (voiced once the movie finishes this sequence and gets started already by Bob Holt) and the monstrous and evil Blackwolf (likewise voiced by Steve Gravers). The two grow up to fulfill their looks-based-determined destinies, and on Delia’s death there’s an inevitable contest for control. Avatar banishes Blackwolf to the charred land of Scortch, Blackwolf plots revenge, and the animation finally starts when it isn’t interrupted from time to time for reasons discussed later on.

As the narration finally ends, after we’re told of Blackwolf’s last invasion of the elves with mutants not going so well when his army dies, we see him sending out robotic assassins to kill the leaders of the lands he wishes to conquer. One of them, Necron 99 (voiced by David Proval), kills the president of Montagar, where Avatar was residing, tutoring the president’s daughter Elinore (voiced by Jesse Welles) in the ways of magic.

Avatar examines Necron 99, which he renames “Peace”, and learns through the former assassin that Blackwolf has a secret weapon(s). In addition to rediscovering the use of machine guns and tanks, he has an intact Nazi propaganda film, complete with the “Horst Wessel Song” blaring on the soundtrack, with which he intends to inspire his mutants to victory.

Which, considering how well it works when first tried, may well be the key to victory…

Stirred to action, Avatar and Elinore, along with Peace and the former head of security for Montagar, the elf Weehawk (voiced by Richard Romanus), start a quest to go to Scortch to put an end to Blackwolf’s plans of conquest. It’s a perilous journey, which includes a fateful meeting with a group of fairies led by Sean (voiced by Mark Hamill) and the forces of their enemy amassed against them.

Which makes it all the harder as the Fellowship tries to make its way to drop the One Ring into Mount Doom-

Before you scream, “But that’s The Lord of the Rings!” let’s keep in mind that Bakshi does his own version of that story a year later for Warner Brothers, reusing some of the footage from Wizards. Which, because Fox refused to give more money to the film at the same time they were making Damnation Alley add shots of the Landmaster, gets reused there too.

Bakshi’s solution to having to animate a large battle for two theatrical movies? Rotoscope the hell out of the classic Alexander Nevsky and hope the audience is too stoned to care.

Sure, it’s cost effective, and drawing over each cell of this Soviet masterpiece along with Nazi propaganda film can give your piece a distinct feel. But no matter how much you claim otherwise, redrawing over the work of Sergei Eisenstein and Leni Riefenstahl does not make you a major animation talent. It feels cheap and derivative, which considering how the film was originally going to be an adaptation of Vaughn Bode’s work with his characters from his Cheech Wizard strips but ended up here, was probably inevitable.

If anything, this feels like it’s a continuation of Bakshi’s campaign to shock audiences into compliance, much like Blackwolf’s use of the Nazi footage to cow his enemies. Bakshi endured some horrific production experiences while doing animated TV in the late ’60s on such projects as The Mighty Heroes, Rocket Robin Hood, and the second season of Spider-Man (on which, to save money, Bakshi once rotoscoped Spidey’s adventures over an episode of Rocket Robin to mind-numbing effect). Out of that crucible came such projects as Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic, and Coonskin, pieces of animation that used outrage and taboo to cover a lack of craft.

His approach is on full display in Wizards in a scene where the forces of Scortch try and give their prisoners to some priests to care for:

With limited inspiration and an even more limited budget, Bakshi has only shock to make his work click and stick. Having to settle on his second choice for subject, to retell the story of the Second World War in a ham-fisted manner, by evoking tons of outrage to keep people watching through static tableaus and overdrawing existing footage, doesn’t allow for non-fans of the animator much to find their way to appreciate him. The fact that after this film, his limitations became stylistic choices for all his work following this (especially in the musical-ish American Pop) makes it hard to fathom the long term appeal Bakshi enjoys today.

Other than the suggested target audience mentioned earlier (yes, this film did get wide play on the “midnight movie” circuit), the closest answer one gets to imagining how this achieved any sympathy, may have been a sense then, that animation was no longer a vibrant art form. With Walt Disney’s successors using xerographic scene fills in films like Robin Hood and The Rescuers and the declining quality of Hannah-Barbera output during the 1970s, the average audience might have assumed that no one was bothering to put in the work to do good animation anymore, and that even low quality work was better than nothing new to watch.

Unbeknownst to most of them, while this film was playing in theaters, Hayao Miyazaki was wrapping production on his first theatrical release, The Castle of Cagliostro, which gave us a much brighter future than what was being shown on screen…

NEXT TIME: What a happy couple they make, when they’re not trying to kill each other…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: An Enchanting Fantasy Or a Not So Magical Animation? appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, the love you take is far greater than the love you make…

I Married a Witch (1942)

Distributed by: United Artists

Directed by: Rene Clair

They say the universe was created in fury, all matter spewing forth from a point of singularity. Then when it came time for Earth to form, rocks of all sizes smashed into each other to build a planet. And then to reach this point, a series of catastrophic extinctions flayed the globe, killing of trilobites and dinosaurs to give us a chance.

All of which, had they thought about it, might have offered some comfort to the crew working on this film…

Our film opens during a time the title card describes as a “Long, long time ago, when people still believed in witches…” Here we find the smoke rising from the ashes of the burnt Jennifer, observed by the crowd to whom popcorn is sold as entertainment by plucky vendors. Among the crowd is Jonathan Wooley (Frederich March), who had denounced Jennifer as a witch after his having been enticed by her in a hayloft to pursue an engagement.

…and if that doesn’t strike you as a #MeToo moment, let’s unpack that for a second…

For having played with Jennifer, Master Wooley was cursed by her to never know happiness in love. With his wife-to-be Constance (Susan Hayward) threatening offering a firm hand to keep him in line, we see the curse has started to take hold before Jennifer’s father Daniel has been put aflame, after which an oak tree is to be planed upon their remains to insure that the witches’ spirits stay interned in the ground.

From there we see a sequence of Wooleys (all March) and their partners (all Hayward) having relationship issues right up until the 1940s, when we watch Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Wallace Wooley (March) at an engagement party-cum-campaign stop not getting along at all with his intended, Estelle Masterson (Hayward), daughter of Wooley’s biggest backer, JB (Robert Warwick). Centuries of the curse continue on unabated, with the latest Wooley a truly miserable creature despite his likely success.

And the misery just expounds when lightning cracks the old oak, releasing the witches. They manifest as puffs of smoke, with Daniel and Jennifer’s voices being provided by Cecil Kellaway and Veronica Lake. Jennifer, however, impatiently desires a body with which to better torture Wallace with. So, with Daddy’s help, she reforms corporally via a spell that allows her to manifest (into Veronica Lake herself) after setting fire to the Pilgrim Hotel, setting up the first meeting between the leads:

She tries hard to seduce Wallace and ruin his marriage and political career, but he keeps putting her off. Wanting to bump it up a notch, she brews a love potion to make him fall for her, but when she accidentally bumps her head and goes unconscious, Wallace gives her the draught instead. Which means that from now on, when she throws herself at him, it’s no longer part of a plot to get him in position to kill him or worse…

Which is certainly evidence of some kind of witchcraft, as Lake and March were hardly above wanting to do away with each other during the film, by the black arts or other means. Before production started, March was quoted as saying that Lake was, “a brainless little blonde sexpot, void of any acting ability.” Word got back to Lake, who made March’s life hell on the set by any means necessary, including sticking her foot into his groin in scenes they had together where the two were shot from the waist up.

There probably was some kind of curse on the film much like the ones the Wooleys suffered, considering the talent that came and left during production. Preston Sturges was originally attached to produce, with Dalton Trumbo to do the script adaptation (the original source being The Passionate Witch by Thorne Smith). But Trumbo could not get along with Sturges, and after Trumbo left Sturges abandoned the film after clashing with Clair, whom the studio backed over the producer.

And yet somehow, it came together. To some extent, March’s assessment of Lake’s abilities were not that far off the mark, and her looks make up for her deficiencies only to a point. Still, she manages to convince us that she does feel passion for her ex-victim, and March to his credit is very professional in getting us to believe that yes, he does have attraction for his tormentor. Without the two of them being able to sell us on this relationship, the film would have folded in on itself.

The rest of the cast is also quite good, especially Hayward and Kellaway. They have a good script from Robert Pirosh and Marc Connelly to work with, with some decent gags to keep the film moving. And the score from Roy Webb is a wonderful bonus atop everything else.

It’s ironic that the film contains a storyline that acts in the past would reverberate through the generations: In interviews about his career, writer and producer Sol Saks credited this movie, as well as the film Bell Book and Candle, with the inspiration for his best known work:

The success of Bewitched and the impact it had on not only television but the growing feminist consciousness of the time seems all the more amazing when one considers how hard a task it was for its inspiration to get to the screen.

Thankfully, this time, no dinosaurs were harmed in the making of this production…

NEXT TIME: FOR RENT: Brooklyn (Park Slope): 2 BR/1 B, blocks from 2 and 3 train, great views, quiet neighbor, enchanted setting…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: If You Thought Bewitched Was The First Witch-Mortal Marriage, Think Again… appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, having to guard our world from evil while looking for a place to live can be the lease of your problems…

The Sentinel (1977)

Distributed by: Universal Pictures

Directed by: Michael Winner

Believe it or not, once upon a time people were actively leaving New York in droves. The problems with urban living in the 1970s seemed even direr after President Ford let New York know how much he loved it. People threw around words to describe life in the city that included among more colorful phrases “hell hole.”

Which someone at Universal took a little too literally…

Note: Yeah, there are some minor spoilers that can be seen here, although a little drywall and some paint, then, maybe you won’t notice so bad…

During the opening credits we get look at our heroine at work. We see Alison Parker (Christina Raines) doing a set of gigs as a model and actress in commercials, seemingly enjoying her time in New York (where the film was mainly shot) as well as the company of her boyfriend, Michael Lerman (Chris Sarandon).

Her living her dream gets side tracked when she gets a call that her father died, and she reluctantly goes to the funeral. There, she relives a painful memory, of coming home early to catch her father with two sex workers in his bed, which drove her at the time to try and take her own life.

Shaken by reliving this moment when she tried to kill herself, Alison decides to move out Michael’s apartment on Central Park South, to try and find herself (which a lot of folks in the ’70s were desperate to do…). Because she needs to get out now and can’t wait 30 years for Zillow to get invented, she turns to real estate agents, and finds through Miss Logan (Ava Gardner) someone so anxious to get her listing in Park Slope rented, she casually cuts 20% of the monthly rent, something that would NEVER happen in Brooklyn now…

Soon after taking the keys, she meets her neighbors. There’s Charles Chazen (Burgess Meredith), who introduces himself while holding his cat Jezebel in his arms and showing considerable befuddlement. And there’s the couple downstairs, Gerde (Sylvia Miles) and Sandra (Beverly D’Angelo in her first theatrical role), a same sex couple where “sex” seems to be the operative word, as Sandra does in front of Alison what Louis CK did in front of plenty of other women.

And no, it’s not fun to watch…

Ultimately, Charles holds a party for Jezebel, where Alison meets the rest of the neighbors and hanger-ons, and things get a little weird very quickly…

Soon after, Alison finds out about the quirks of the place, the scraping and banging noises that wake her up and encourage her to investigate. Which, because this is a horror film, means that it’s not just a second-shift neighbor coming home late or a couple of rats in the walls…

All of this affects Alison’s work, with her fainting spells and reliance on prescription drugs to keep her going getting in the way. Alison is especially troubled when she reaches out to Miss Logan about the rest of the tenants in the building, and is informed by the agent that there are no other tenants there, save for a blind priest in the top apartment that she hadn’t met yet.

This so concerns Michael that he goes to the cops about it, although Michael’s involvement in his wife’s suicide makes the investigator, Detective Gatz (Eli Wallach) disinclined to help. Desperate, Michael turns to other means to determine what’s going on, when he uncovers the truth:

The building is a literal gate to hell, and there is a group within the Catholic Church that posts someone to keep watch over the building at all times. As the group chooses individuals for the position who attempted to kill themselves, for reasons that are hard to either fathom or buy, they have big plans for Alison as far as her helpfulness in keeping such evil at bay…

Thwarting malevolent machinations, mind you, is a lot harder than you’d think. What helped get this movie made, for example, was the fact that Jeffrey Konvitz was both the screenwriter (adapting his own novel from 1974) and the producer who had connections with Universal. That he could get Michael Winner almost immediately after he had directed the hot property Death Wish may have helped a lot in getting this off the ground. Getting for his leads Raines and Sarandon, who were also hot after doing Nashville and Dog Day Afternoon, respectively, allowed him plenty of leverage to see this one through.

The end result is a work that feels like less than the sum of its parts. There’s the extreme elements of the story where we are led to believe that the Catholic Church would be willing to abuse the suicidal and post them at such properties as the one depicted in the film. These cabalistic assertions would feel slanderous to the observant, and seem silly to anyone following the Katy Perry-Archdiocese of LA case for a convent in Los Feliz.

There’s also the heavy suggestion that in addition to suicide, that being a lesbian is a sure way to go to hell; it’s hard not to be appalled by the suggestion, especial at a time when the current Pontiff appears to being more open on the question.

On the other hand, there’s not a lot of center to this film being provided by Raines or Sarandon. Best guess is, they took to playing the characters in a low-key manner, whether with Winner’s direction or not, to make them seem like ordinary folks caught up in a fantastic threatening situation. Unfortunately, they turned it down so low, that with overly-vibrant hamming by the likes of Meredith, Gardner, and Wallach, aided and abetted by Martin Balsam as a classics professor who gives Michael a clue as to what’s up, they almost get lost in the flow of the film.

As a further indignity thanks to an accident of history, the leads had to contend with a number of smaller roles filled by actors who would go on to much bigger things. There’s Jeff Goldblum as Jack, a colleague of Alison who photographs her and is there at a few gatherings. There’s Jerry Orbach as a director on a commercial Alison does. There’s Christopher Walken as Detective Rizzo, Gatz’s partner. There’s even an uncredited Richard Dreyfus as a background character, showing up in this film the same year The Goodbye Girl comes out, for which he received an Oscar for Best Actor.

All of them suddenly appear, and the modern viewer gets jolted out of the film by their presence. It’s simply bad luck that the leads had no way of knowing they were going to be upstaged so thoroughly by folks getting day SAG rate for the shoot.

But that’s like real estate in New York, you know? How there’s always some hidden treasures you can find while going through the area, something that’ll appreciate and make a bad neighborhood hot some day.

Not that we had any of that here…

NEXT TIME: It may take me a while to come back here, but I will make it up to you with some great souvenirs from Pompeii…

…well, I think they’re from Pompeii…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: Fancy a Nice New Apartment? This One Comes With a Free Gateway to Hell! appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, we come back to try again, hoping that this time we will be successful…

Curse of the Faceless Man (1958)

Distributed by: United Artists

Directed by: Edward L. Cahn

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?

nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

[I hate and love; you ask me why I do this?

I don’t know, but what I feel is torturous.]

– Catullus

It may not have been the worst disaster to befall a community, but the sudden destruction of Pompeii in CE 79 certainly captured the imagination of the Western world.

The calamity took place at a Roman resort town, their equivalent of the Hamptons or Palm Springs, which meant a lot of people with education and free time would process their thoughts in writings that survived to the present. The destruction was unexpected and total in the communities affected, with Pompeii a lost city until 1738, after which continuous efforts to reclaim the art and artifacts buried under ash continued into the present.

The rediscovery of intact Roman decorations, alongside their graffiti and advertisements, surrounded by common everyday items, made the ruins feel more like a living city that just sent people away for a spell. The saga of its doom and the suggested stories of its residents found in a time frozen prompted many inspired works of art, visual as well as literal.

And, also, this…

Thanks to the odious continual narration provided by Morris Ankrum, we watch and have described to us in real time (badly) the events of the film. Which opens with a worker at the Pompeii site discovering both a box of gems and jewelry and a stone figure (Bob Bryant under the ‘suit’) that draws the attention of the head of the Pompeii Museum in Naples, Dr. Fiorillo (Luis Van Rooten).

The finding of such a specimen, a body mummified in rock, prompts him to call in a fellow scientist, Dr. Paul Mallon (Richard Anderson), who once had a thing with Fiorillo’s daughter Maria (Adele Mara), who is also in the sciences. Which means that when our stony subject comes to life and kills the driver of the truck taking him to the museum, there’s a lot of brain power on site, for all the good it does anyone…

We are soon introduced to Paul’s fiancé, Tina Enright (Elaine Edwards), who seems to have seen our titular terror in her dreams before she causes Paul a nightmare, the one where the current love and the ex get in the same room…

We get some important (if improbable) information from Dr. Emanuel (Felix Locher) who translates a Etruscan inscription on one of the pieces of jewelry in the box: We find that our stooge in the statue suit had a name, Quintillus Aurelius, who was a gladiator in Pompeii with a bad case of ardenti caritate for his master’s daughter. Who, we discover easily enough through assumption and bad narration, was reincarnated as Tina.

Despite the museum being closed until the driver’s killer is found, and all common sense as well, Tina sneaks into the museum to get some more sketches of Quintillus, who despite being stone does not stay still all that long like decent artist’s models are supposed to…

While Quintillus may have been willing to spend over a thousand years buried and waiting, the producer of this film was certainly in a hurry. Robert E. Kent, who started his career as a screenwriter doing B films at Columbia Pictures, got into producing in 1957 to cash in on the need for drive-in and TV fare. Ed Cahn, who had directed 97 films before he got this script, was an old pro at doing okay work on a quick turnaround. The fact that the film was shot in just six days and still managed to show considerable (if uninspired) craft shows how well-oiled the gears of the machine were.

They were certainly efficient enough to keep things going despite the lack of engagement with the material any of the actors had. There could not have been a worse pairing as leads than we got in Edwards and Anderson, and they got no help from anyone else in the cast. Most of the blame if pressed would have to go to Anderson, who doesn’t demonstrate a lot of comfort as a leading man; this might explain why later in his career, as Oscar Goldman on The Six Million Dollar Man, he spent most of his time at a desk while letting his bionic co-stars do all the heavy lifting (no pun intended)…

One big fault is something of a surprise, though, as the screenplay was written by Jerome Bixby. It’s not a great script, frankly; there’s the fact that the main motivation of a man returning from the dead to reunite with his reincarnated love is lifted from The Mummy, which is a horrid case of bad recycling, for use of a kinder term. And the word stew spewed by the characters evoking alchemy and radiation as needed to give the crew something to talk about (please, anyone other than that damn narrator) do the film no favors.

That said, there are circumstances to consider: This was one of Bixby’s first screenplays, likely written at the same time he wrote It! The Terror from Beyond Space. In fact, both films were directed by Cahn (both with six-day shooting schedules) and were paired together by the distributor and released simultaneously, which suggests that at the time his Roman horror-play was not getting the bulk of his attention compared to the other film.

Further, the fact that the envisaged creature shows signs of being inspired by the real life casts made of buried bodies found and produced in the 1800s shows that at least some thought went into the initial plotting. And the fact that after this script, Bixby would go on to write the much better script for “Mirror, Mirror” for Star Trek as well as the stories adapted by other writers for “It’s a Good Life” for The Twilight Zone and the film Fantastic Voyage, supports the idea that what they had to work with when they shot Curse of the Faceless Man was a rushed rookie effort from a writer trying his hand at a screenplay for the first time.

Which means what we’re treated to in this case is watching a screenwriter’s first steps in the industry It may not be great, and by Jove that’s a certainty here, but with every return to the set the hope is that the next time, the result will be better.

Much like being reincarnated, in fact…

NEXT TIME: Let’s sing along, shall we?

There goes the bride

Yes, it’s homicide

Watch this screen legend

On his downward slide…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: A Cult Horror That Couldn’t Have a More Stony-Faced Villain appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, when you get to the top of the slide, then you stop and turn around and go for a ride ‘till you get to the bottom, you have to ask how in hell you got here…

The Corpse Vanishes (1942)

Distributed by: Monogram Pictures

Directed by: Wallace Fox

There’s a reason Monogram Pictures used to be consigned to what had been called “Poverty Row.”

The studio, the forerunner of Canon Films and American International Pictures, produced B pictures and serials, the type of bottom card fare to turn a trip to the movies in the 1930s into an all-day event. (And when those days were over, its pictures gave television stations content for its late late shows.) Monogram’s main fare were Westerns, but it did quite a bit of work in the horror and suspense field as well.

Although the word “work” might be a bit misapplied here. Production values were cheap, and quality control often took the back seat to having something to ship out the door that met the requirement of being on film and running for the contracted time on the schedule. At best, you could call a Monogram Picture work product, the same way you’d look at plastic straws and cupcake wrappers.

In fact, looking at straws and wrapper might be better for you than watching this one…

We open with a wedding, where the bride says “I do,” before she cannot do, passing out at the altar. Word spreads quickly that the bride died, which excites the cub reporter on the society beat, Patrica Hunter (Luana Walters)…

…which, yeah, her name is a little too on the nose, as we’ll see, but anyways…

Tragedy gets heaped upon tragedy when it’s quickly revealed that the bride’s body has been spirited away before the coroner arrived. We get a good look at the unidentified body snatcher, played by Bela Lugosi, as he spirits her away for his nefarious purposes.

The unfortunate events at the society wedding (which we find out is the fourth such occurrence, even if she never gets named) leads to panic and concern from the family of Alice Wentworth (Joan Barclay), who is next scheduled to tie the knot.

She asks for protection from the authorities, who promise what they cannot deliver, as Alice herself swoons into a coma and likewise gets spirited at the ceremony to go somewhere other than where her honeymoon was likely to be. This makes the authorities look bad and the newspapers desperate for leads, which gives Miss Hunter all the motivation needed to rise above her being just a part of the news conglomerate and fight for the truth. She takes up the mantle of a crusading reporter, willing to get to the bottom of the news and provide an unvarnished truth, in the grand tradition of many news professionals.

Must. Resist. Obvious. Comment…

While we watch Hunter get herself girded for the truth and a Pulitzer, we follow poor Alice as her captor, who we learn is Dr. George Lorenz, takes her to his house outside of town. There, with the help of the devoted Fagah (Minerva Urecal) and her two children, the half-wit Angel (Frank Moran) and diminutive Toby (Angelo Rossitto), they prep Alice for harvesting her glands.

The reason the bride’s glands are so precious is because they are used to treat Countess Lorenz (Elizabeth Russell), who benefits from the procedure by keeping her youthful beauty well into her 80s. The Countess is part Joan Crawford and part Elizabeth Bathory, and is actually the central monster in this picture, as evident when our plucky reporter and her convenient hanger-on, Dr. Foster (Tristram Coffin), show up at the house to continue the investigation:

From there, it goes downhill, as our heroine digs deep enough to get herself into danger, goes from hunter to hunted and back again, and otherwise runs out the clock over a convenient-and-likely-contractually-obligated 63 minutes.

As we said, it’s more product than work, and this really doesn’t work by any stretch of the imagination. About the only reason to pop on over to see this is to catch Lugosi just as he’s cresting.

As the 1940s started, the second wind of his career was winding down. The attention he received when Emil Umann put the spotlight on the original Dracula had helped Lugosi get more work, with Universal in films like Son of Frankenstein and at MGM in Ninotchka. But tastes changed quickly, with audiences no longer demanding to see him and studios not giving him a chance to expand his range, and Lugosi’s bad spending habits put him in debt again, desperate for any work he could get. (His problem with opioids wouldn’t start until the late 1940s, but the groundwork that made him more susceptible was there by this time.)

As the only one taking the film seriously, he tries his best to do what he can with what he has. But there’s no support here, and like his later infamous work with Ed Wood Jr., he cannot get over everything against him to make this work.

Consider this: We never get an explanation why Lorenz needs to harvest glands from society brides on their wedding day. If anyone was smart about it, the good doctor would have sought glands for his wife from cigarette girls, taxi dancers, maybe more hardcore “professional women” ifyouknowwhatImean. He’d have gone where nobody cared, harvesting with abandon and avoiding Brenda Starr-wannabes, by being in the low rent part of town.

Then again, considering how well that worked out for Lugosi when he appeared in a Monogram release, well-l-l-l-l….

NEXT TIME: Never send a soldier to do a geologist’s job, especially if you have an auteur guiding him along…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: Bela Lugosi Swaps Dracula for Some Deadly Wedding Bell Blues appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, you can never be sure what’s going to happen in the future to what or whom you’re looking at now…

Countdown (1968)

Distributed by: Warner Brothers

Directed by: Robert Altman

Once someone had launched people into orbit, the next step was putting them on the moon.

As we saw before, the race for the ultimate high ground was being continually run both in fiction as well as fact. Many people looking back at Apollo 11 rightly think of it as a grand feat of technology; whether you thought it was worth it or considered it a waste of resources better used here on earth, that such a feat could be and was done still elicits wonder and amazement.

While those looking back and accepting it as history can assume that the result was inevitable, the finish line for this part of the space race was never really in sight until just before the end. Even then there were no guarantees of this being an unalloyed triumph, as disaster could have hit at any point from liftoff to the splash down.

A sense of which comes through in a film that came out less than two years before Armstrong and Aldrin set foot on the moon:

We open as we watch the crew of an upcoming Apollo mission deal with an emergency. While astronauts Rick (Michael Murphy) and Chiz (Robert Duvall) can bring to the task the calm that being officers in the US Air Force requires, for their colleague with a civilian background, geologist Lee Stegler (James Caan), the pressure gets to him as he starts to panic.

Thankfully, we find that this is an exercise, one that’s cut short by the brass, with nothing but worried looks on their faces. We get an answer as to why this happened later that night, when the guys come over to Chiz’s place and are told all about the sudden developments:

However, Washington has concerns that the first man on the moon being a military officer is going to send the wrong message to the rest of the world. They decide to put Lee into Pilgrim instead, which leads to an in-house row between project director Ross Duellan (Steve Ihnat) and project physician Gus (Charles Aidman):

They’re not alone in their bickering and talking over each other: Chiz is upset at being pushed aside for Lee for political purposes, and Lee has to keep talking himself into doing this, while assuring his wife Jean (Barbara Baxley) that everything’s going to be fine, honest, until the point where Lee gets the chance to back out but finds deep in his gut, he really does want to go through with this.

And if all the tension and tsuris between people on the team wasn’t enough, things get more complicated when the secrecy covering Pilgrim is blown away and word leaks out two days early. This prompts the Russians to send their landing team ahead of schedule to try and beat the Americans, while NASA’s press officer Walter Larson (Ted Knight) tries to get ahead of the story and turn what looks to be the first Americans on the moon, as opposed to the first humans, into something worth crowing about.

All of this is sound and fury that gives way as it must when Lee finally gets to the surface of the moon, the past made insignificant by the act of getting to the lunar surface…

Much the same can be said about the film too, where Altman’s adaptation of The Pilgrim Project by Hank Searls is a pain to sit through for most of the run time. The continual arguing and petty one-upsmanship is unpleasant to look at, even if Altman is very good at staging it, as we see later in his more maverick films MASH and Nashville.

The front end of the film, in fact, got him in trouble for his handling of people being upset with each other. Taking on his first film for a major studio after doing mostly TV the last decade, Altman thought actors acting over each other was very natural. But studio head Jack Warner hated it, and he asked the film’s executive producer William Conrad to remove Altman from the picture. Conrad would then do a few pick-up shots after Altman was removed to try and punch up the film to Warner’s satisfaction.

Let that sit for a minute: the director who was nominated for an Academy Award five times over his career, getting fired and having reshoots done to his film by the actor who would go on to star in Cannon and Jake and the Fatman…

But when we get to the moon, finally, the film actually starts to come to life. All of the technical assistance NASA gave the production gets a chance to show here, now that it’s one astronaut against the lack of a lunar atmosphere. It’s not flashy, and we still have to deal with the wildly out-of-place score from Leonard Rosenman that helped make the early part of the film a drag, but for the last act there’s now something fascinating to watch. And for someone who didn’t wander too often into genre work, his lunar survival tale manages to get anyone who didn’t walk out and left before now to pay closer attention with interest.

For his first real theatrical feature, we see some of what Altman promises is to come. Like his other films, it’s a bit of a mess that does manage to come together at the end, even if it’s far more conventional than his later work. You almost imagine that Altman could have done some interesting work in genre if he kept at it…

…until you remember that he goes on to do Quintet…

Of note is that the film overall shows us desperate people, straining as they messily struggle to get someone on the lunar surface, only to end up doing something worth recalling for its skill and for achieving its set of accomplishments.

Much like what happened in real life by July 20 of 1969…

NEXT TIME: You folk think you comin’ ‘round here, tellin’ us what a good film is? Damned Yankee city folk…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: Robert Altman Joins the Space Race in His Less Than Stellar Second Feature appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, it’s magic when the sparks fly between two people, or at least into the ground…

Squirm (1976)

Distributed by: American International

Directed by: Jeff Lieberman

To be blunt, the whole red-blue political divide didn’t start in 2016. And no, it was not something that had just been lying dormant between 1865 and then, either.

In fact, there were reflections of this in film during the 1970s. You had Deliverance in 1972, Macon County Line in 1974, and Moonrunners in 1975 (the last one having been the inspiration for the TV series The Dukes of Hazzard). All of them had good ol’ boys that din’ much care for them city folk coming on through, and each one built to differing levels on an antagonism between both sides where dem good ol’ boys oft got the better of ‘em folks on their land. Wasn’t lot of common ground ‘tween them in most of them pictures.

Save one, where both camps bonded over not being worm food…

The film opens with a silent crawl that suggests that there might have been a real-life incident that was the basis for the film:

Late in the evening of September 29, 1975, a sudden electrical storm struck a rural sea coast area of Georgia. Power lines, felled by the high winds, sent hundreds of thousands of volts surging into the muddy ground, cutting off all electricity to the small, secluded community of Fly Creek. During the period that followed the storm, the citizens of Fly Creek experienced what scientists believe to be one of the most bizarre freaks of nature ever recorded.

This is the story…

Not exactly The Legend of Boggy Creek-level of fake news pretending, but that was never the plan here…

After we get scenes of the action described in the crawl above, we watch as Geraldine Sanders (Patricia Pearcy) takes a shower to get herself cleaned up. She’s expecting a visit from Mick (Don Scardino), a gentleman caller from New York who’s in the area to do some picking for his antique business back in the city. Downstairs, her mother Naomi (Jean Sullivan in her last role) and sister Alma (Fran Higgins in her only role) are contending with the loss of power, while outside Roger Grimes (R. A. Dow in his only role), the neighbor who’s sweet on Geri, is doing yard clean-up for the Sanders to better get into their lives.

Mick has a bit of an adventure trying to walk through the woods to see Geri, with the roads washed out, but still manages to meet up with her.

While they are in town, Mick goes to the local luncheonette and orders an egg cream…

…yeah, explaining what one of those are is going to take a while, so pertinent info only: Most New Yorkers know better than to try and ask for one anywhere outside of the five boroughs, so everything that happens to him next, he had it coming…

…which included the first sighting of the menacing worms (which is played here by a millipede, but hey…) and getting an instant dislike from the sheriff, Jim Reston (Peter MacLean). Which is a great way to start your stay in Georgia if you’re a Yankee…

There’s not enough time for anyone to process any form of southern hospitality, however, as those worms driven to the surface by electricity (which, yes, can work) start eating the citizens of Fly Creek. They get particularly ferocious when taken to be used as bait by Geri and Roger, who himself gets a bit ravenous around Geri:

When they’re not starting to feel closer to each other (which crises can do for a couple), Geri and Mick ultimately figure out what’s happening, and how to keep the worms at bay with light and fire, just as the sun goes down. Unfortunately, they never get a chance to share this info with other townspeople, who learn just how bad the problem is when it’s too late:

In terms of the townsfolk, much of the cast were locals from Port Wentworth, GA, where the film was shot. Lieberman filmed his first feature film there, some 40 years before The Walking Dead would set up production in the state and before Marvel would film many of their superhero films around Atlanta. As noted above, two of his principals, Higgins and Dow, were among the locals who had but one taste of film work, and this was it.

For a first theatrical feature, shot on location by the Brooklyn born and bred writer/director, Lieberman shows considerable skill with what was estimated to be budget under $500,000 (about $2.5M in today’s dollars). He managed to get the best of the practical effects, which included actually crashing a tree into a set and hundreds of live worms for many shots, as well as being blessed with having the legendary Rick Baker as his makeup designer, but was well blessed with an amateur cast that seemed to give him little to worry about.

What also helped was having Pearcy and Scardino as his leads. There’s a decent chemistry between the two of them that gives the film something solid to hold it in place, even when the script calls for a few contrivances and big asks of the audience as we head past sundown. And each one comes to the other as an equal; they even share the same amount of time minute-for-minute in an unnecessary state of gratuitous undress in separate scenes.

You feel either of them could probably handle this crisis alone, but together they complement each other and enhance each other’s skill sets. It’s a level of equanimity that’s hard to find in most screen parings, genre or otherwise. The fact that it’s so rare and worthy of note says volumes about how badly we represent in film; that fact that this is a cheap genre shoot that does it better than a multi-million dollar tent pole screams it.

And in this case, the fact that you can have two characters, one “red” and one “blue” that are looking to work together, gives us hope for the future. It may not be tomorrow, and there may not be so many of them as we could use now, coming in dribs and drabs, but it’s a start.

And if we can get a few such pairings without an electromagnetic worm wave to bring it about, there may well be a better future to come…

NEXT TIME: The Reich might possibly have called this Operation Frostriese, but then they would have been getting ahead of themselves…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: A Slimy Creature Feature That Worms Its Way Into Your Heart appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, the whole plan crashes in flames when you lose your head…

The Frozen Dead (1966)

Distributed by: Warner-Seven Arts

Directed by: Herbert J. Leder

Remember when we thought Nazis belonged strictly to the past?

Among other things about which to get nostalgic for the 1960s was the belief that we were finished with fascism, and that there was no chance of that coming back anytime soon. Sure, there was Adolf Eichmann and George Lincoln Rockwell, but these were stuck to the fringe, with not a chance in hell anyone would openly say anything nice about them, let alone vote for them…

Ah, good times…

And remember how the only Nazis that were coming for us were in movies like this one…?

We open in the middle of a badly shot effort to pretend that day is night where we see seven men being exercised like dogs, their bodies as they stumble suggesting that their brains have atrophied. They are led along and whipped to move by their handler, Karl Essen (Alan Tilvern), who after finishing his duty reports to his boss, Dr. Norberg (Dana Andrews).

The scientist and his assistant can barely tolerate each other, as we find out during their discussions as they prepare another subject for their project. Which, we discover, involves reviving elite Nazi soldiers that were placed in suspended animation and surreptitiously shipped to England as the war ended, hoping to revive them to bring back the Third Reich.

It’s a period of exposition that extends further when Norberg’s patrons, former General Lubeck (Karel Stepanek) and Dr. Tripitz (Basil Henson) show up to see how the work’s going:

The old manor out in the English countryside gets a little more crowded when Herr Doktor’s niece, Jean (Anna Palk), shows up for a surprise return visit home from America. And she’s not alone, as she brings with her a friend from college, Elsa (Kathleen Breck), although the way these two interact with each other and trade a few coded phrases, you have to imagine they shared more than just a class or two, ifyouknowwhatImean…

Elsa’s visit is great for Dr. Norberg and Karl. The doctor shared results with his Furher boss, that up to now every “elite” they’ve revived had a horrible case of freezer burn of the brain, leaving the subjects without higher thought process, as we saw at the beginning. He states that the next phase of the project involves securing the head of an ape that he can keep alive after he removes it from the body, to observe the brain to better know how to revive it.

Karl’s inspired too, as an assistant with great initiative if not a lot of smarts, who sees an opportunity to bring Elsa in on the project as a subject.

Needless to say, for Elsa, it’s not so great for her …

And it’s at this point the film kind of loses its own head. There’s still the effort to revive the Frozen Master Race which draws in Dr. Ted Roberts (Philip Gilbert), an American who sees Nazi activity and is actually really cool with it…

Must. Resist. Obvious. Comment…

But the plan seems to fall apart as soon as Elsa becomes a lab subject. As Jean gets mental images from down in the lab, the mindless Nazis react like wolves smelling something threatening. Soon, the film seems to have lost all interest of following the original scenario, showing as much passion for this plot as Kraftwerk displays in performance.

The film instead becomes a tour of 1960s fringe science as Elsa’s head takes over, exerting itself on the manor and its inhabitants, as well as the movie. We abandon the whole look at cryonics as we allude to Vladimir Demikhov, play with telekinesis via cybernetic remote linking, and get deeper into telepathic projection. The strength of Elsa’s connection to Jean, allowing Elsa to warn Jean of attempts on her life, adds credence to the assumption of their relationship status, in addition to taking us further astray from the opening premise.

It’s a messy film, one that started out trying to be version of The Madmen of Mandoras, thought better of it, but couldn’t come up with a good Plan B. Poorly acted, written, and directed, the producers went deeper into chaos by messing up distribution as well, releasing black-and-white prints to theaters but offering a color version of the film for TV distribution. This just added to the general haphazard air that surrounds this film, one that promises frozen Nazis but fails to justify watching this movie for any reason.

If you really feel the need to see Nazis on ice, there’s always Dead Snow. And if you’re not picky about what temperature your Nazis come in, there’s too many choices IRL, sadly…

NEXT TIME: An existential threat to our country, depicted back when it could remain fictional…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: A Mad Scientist and Some Frosty Villains Equal Few Chills in This ’60s Horror appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, you should not ask “What were you thinking?” Trust me, you were better off NOT knowing that answer…

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Distributed by: United Artists

Directed by: John Frankenheimer

Sure, we’ve seen fiction sometimes get there before reality does, but this!

The film starts cold with a title card saying “Korea 1952” as we watch an army truck driven by Sargent Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) drive through the night, his commander Captain Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) beside him. The truck rolls up to a “party place” where the men of his unit are blowing off steam, where Shaw musters the men with a harsh whistle, earning yet more scorn from them.

The unit deploys on patrol and comes under heavy fire. Desperate, they take suggestions from their interpreter, Chunjin (Henry Silva), on how to get out from being pinned. We then watch as the unit gets ambushed, knocked out, and lifted out of the area by Soviet Spetsnaz troopers, who we see had set up the ambush with Chunjin’s help, before we get to the credits.

We then find out through narration provided by Paul Frees that Marco’s unit got home, and for his bravery and action Shaw is recommended by his commander for the Army Medal of Honor. This gets put to maximum use by Shaw’s ambitious and deviously savvy mother Eleanor (Angela Lansbury) on behalf of Raymond’s step-father, Senator John Iselin (James Gregory). The disgust Raymond feels for both parents is palpable, and the way she manipulates the press and her family doesn’t garnish her a lot of sympathy.

We hear through Frees’ narration that Marco has since then been promoted to Major, and now works in Army Intelligence. However, things are not going well for him, as we watch Marco have a recurring nightmare:

These horrific scenes include watching as Shaw personally murders the two men who supposedly were killed in action on the mission that got him his commendation. Marco is unable to shake what he goes through every night, and his constant anxiety forces the brass to reassign him to public relations, where on his first day on the job he gets flummoxed by Senator Iselin’s charges that there are Communists in the Department of Defense.

While Marco’s world crumbles, Shaw’s seems to be coming together: Nice job in New York, decent apartment on Riverside Drive. The only bad thing appears to be the way he can be manipulated with just a code phrase and a deck of cards:

Before he falls apart entirely, Marco meets and sweeps off her feet Eugenie Rose Chaney (Janet Leigh), although as he’s rather damaged by his experiences, she comes on strong after him and draws him out of his downward spiral. On the road to recovery, Marco starts to piece together what his nightmares mean: That he and his unit were part of a Soviet plot to install sleeper agents in the US, using brain washing to get them to do what they want.

This is something Marco figures out when Shaw accidentally gets his hands on a deck for a game of solitaire, and gets the suggestion to go jump in the lake after overhearing a bartender’s tall tale. Which Shaw does in front of Marco, literally.

As the investigation continues, Marco gets Shaw to open up about his life and his past. He reveals that before he entered the army and became a dislikeable Sargent, he had a love affair with Jocelyn Jordan (Leslie Parish), the daughter of a political rival of his mother’s. When his mother broke up the affair, that made Shaw the broken man Marco had always known.

So when his mother suggests that he reach out to Jocelyn again, every warning bell should go off in Shaw’s head that she may be doing it to get after Jocelyn’s father, Senator Jordan (John McGiver). However, tragedy is assured after one hand of solitaire, with horrific consequences:

By this point, the film’s premise of a brainwashed and easily controllable asset for the Soviets to destabilize the country during a presidential election hurtles forward at breakneck speed. Even if the science behind mental programming suggests it’s a lot harder than it looks, the pacing of the film and the tight script by Richard Condon and George Axelrod, based on Condon’s novel of the same name, keeps you riveted as new twists and turns come through.

The biggest shock comes as we follow the character of Eleanor Shaw Iselin. Lansbury’s manipulative and vicious manners makes her the perfect character to root against, and just when you think you can’t stand her any more, she has something new handed her in the script to make her even worse. She revels so deeply in playing such an antagonistic villain, that viewers that may only have seen her in Murder, She Wrote may have a hard time believing the actress is one and the same.

While Lansbury grabs our attention, the rest of the cast is equally worthy of note. There isn’t a weak performance in the film, and Sinatra’s giving Marco all sorts of shakes as he deals with his deep PTSD makes him a compelling lead as he plays against his brand. While his singing is the basis for his fame, he’s equally well known for his acting, and this is among Sinatra’s better regarded performances, alongside his work in From Here to Eternity and The Man With the Golden Arm.

Of special note as well is Frankenheimer’s directing. His use of extensive hand held and tracking shots to build the tension and immerse the viewer in the scene practically foreshadows most modern film making techniques used through the next century. His extensive and natural-feeling use of location shots, including the old Madison Square Garden built in 1925, gave the film considerable power.

In terms of the power of the film, it certainly left an impression on many viewers despite its limited distribution. There were rumors that Sinatra, as producer of the film, pulled it out of circulation after Kennedy’s assassination out of sensitivity concerning themes found in the picture (which was also assumed about Sinatra’s film Suddenly wherein he portrays a presidential assassin), but the film actually did have some distribution on network television during the 1960s. The main hiccup, however, was Sinatra getting distribution rights back from UA in 1972 and not having the means or wherewithal to keep the film widely distributed. The picture got such limited exposure that its getting a new theatrical release and syndicated TV presentation in 1988 was erroneously described as the “rediscovery” of the film.

As for its foreshadowing… In the past, there have been people who have suggested at times that a candidate running for office who was suspected of having a hidden agenda was copying this movie. However, with the disaster of the Helsinki summit still shaking millions of observers and the general sense that the American-built post-war world is being dismantled by the current administration, there’s every incentive to feel that had the Communist plan in The Manchurian Candidate been pulled off, that this would be what the end result of the film would look like.

And it’s very hard not to make an obvious comment here…

NEXT TIME: August is when Parisians usually flee the city for the month; pity those that ended up here…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: Sinatra, Lansbury and a Political Thriller That Continues to Resonate Today appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, you just have to laugh at le monde fou et modern a nous…

Playtime (1967)

Distributed by: Spectra Films (Distributed by Continental Distributing in the US)

Directed by: Jacques Tati

Sometimes, when you need to make a strong statement about the effects of technology on our lives, what you really need is a comedian.

How technology affects humans is one of the main themes found through most science fiction, yet some of the best works on the subject were comedies produced by masters in that field. Perhaps the best known film to look at that theme was 1936’s Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece and his ‘first’ talkie in that while he was silent and used title cards to relate what his character had said, there are human voices on the soundtrack, all obviously issued by a machine (say, a phonograph or an early teleconferencing device).

Other comedians from the silent era would also take on the subject. Buster Keaton would have his take on how mass communications affect the viewer through the power of cinema in Sherlock Jr. (and later take on technological change in the episode “Once Upon a Time” for The Twilight Zone), while Harold Lloyd would use the telephone to try and get the edge on his face-time-only rival for the girl in Number, Please?

Which of course meant that come the 1950s, when Jacques Tati emerges as the only heir apparent to the silent comedians, that the effects of technological change would play a role in his work as well.

Tati, who played in cabarets in France before the war, got into film production soon after liberation, and almost immediately went behind the camera, mainly thanks to the original choice for helming L’ecole des fracteurs having a schedule conflict. Soon after, Tati would develop his iconic silent clown, Monsieur Hulot, and portray the character in Les vacances des Monsieur Hulot and Mon oncle, where Tati first pits Hulot against the modern age, with an iconic encounter with a plastic pitcher:

But it’s with Hulot’s third film that Tati presents his masterpiece:

Our film opens at an airport, with no individual characters really the focus but all of them having moments that flow into each other, like a flock of birds flying into view, each one getting a chance to perform an aerial maneuver before going off camera. The airport’s antiseptic and cold, which allows each character’s humanity to stand out through their quirks.

We ultimately linger on a group of tourists from America, speaking random inanities (with their lines penned for the script by newspaper columnist Art Buchwald) as they get herded through by their guides. One of the tourist, Barbara (Barbara Dennek in her only credited role) seems more anxious than the others to actually get to experience L’esprit de Paris, but has to settle for the packaged atmosphere as the group is pushed along to the busy modern center of Paris.

As the Americans are forced to wander according to their schedule, we slide sideways into Hulot, who has business in town that’s not explained, but is frustrating to carry out as he can’t get his simple meeting to take care of the matter. Hulot’s effort to get things done gets undone when he gets lost while trying to get to his meeting through a cube farm:

Hulot ultimately gets lost at a trade fair that Barbara gets dragged to, where she makes a chilling realization after getting her only glimpse of the Eiffel Tower in a reflection in one of the glass doors she walks through, which says something depressing about globalization:

Later, the day is over and the tour is shuffled to the hotel. Hulot, finally getting his unexplained business resolved, is met by an army buddy. He invites Hulot to his home for a drink, which we watch through the floor-to-ceiling picture windows that are the side of the building, its inhabitants like observed rats in a lab:

There’s a lot to watch and take in as you follow these characters around through this modern nightmare. Each shot is busy with activity while the soundtrack rises and falls like waves at the beach. There’s overwhelming simultaneous stimuli to process as you follow and go in and out of the lives of these characters, especially after you leave them alone for a while.

For ultimately, the scene shifts to another part of town, where a new nightclub, the Royal Garden, is supposed to have it’s opening night. They are expecting their first customers, even though workmen are still laying tile and running the wires for the electrics. It’s a race of commerce versus deadlines, both trying to work against entropy as the crush of club-goers strains the not-well-thought-out decisions management made.

Ultimately, both Barbara and Hulot wander into the chaos, reminding us that, oh yeah, we were looking at them earlier, right…?

In fact, the whole Royal Garden sequence could easily have been a separate movie. It’s a wonderful segment in its own right, and less ambitious film makers might have settled just for this. But Tati, having already built momentum following his other characters, is able to keep the flow going even without his supposed leads. And this was his intention, to show how lost we’ve gotten in our modern surroundings, the fact that we really don’t need humans to tell a story anymore is part of the overall theme, really.

If there is a real star to the film, it was the set he constructed for the movie. Dubbed ‘Tativille’, the striking post-modern stylings his characters get lost in are some of the most impressive passive damnations of uncontrollable technology ever put on screen.  Used just for this film and a short subject on the art of comedy, Cour du Soir, the silver and steel colorings almost trick the eyes into thinking that it’s looking at a black and white film, with what interruptions to the pallets viewers catch coming from those annoying humans that insist on being present.

It’s a striking and effective set, one that Tati spent a lot of care and funds on. The sets, complete with electricity and running water, came to 17 million French francs in 1967, approximately 50 million dollars in today’s currency. Costs were high as the shooting schedule for the film ran for three years, requiring continuous upkeep during the shoot, and some repairs were necessitated after storms damaged pieces. When asked about the costs, Tati would point out that hiring a A-list talent for the film would have cost as much. And since the theme was the loss of humanity, to the point where even his Hulot was barely seen in the film, it made perfect sense to go this route.

The choices Tati made on the film may have been artistic statements, but they were also financial mistakes. Because of the overhead for the sets, along with Tati’s insistence that the film be shown only in 70 mm prints at a time when almost every theater was equipped to only run 35 mm film, the initial run of the movie was limited to only a few venues. Audiences that could come were disappointed that they got a Hulot film that barely had Hulot in it; as funny as it was, at over two hours in length and with no one (human) character to follow, they felt isolated and reacted coldly to the film. And when the movie finally came to the States, with 20 minutes of cuts and reduced to the smaller 35 mm prints, the film still lost money.

Tati made one of the worst mistakes you can make as a film producer: He put his own money into the production budget. When the film flopped, Tati went bankrupt; to get out of the hole, he’d ultimately have to give the audiences one more straightforward unassuming Hulot film, 1971’s Traffic, which once again put his character up against the machines.

Unfortunately, there is no device invented that can guarantee a successful film, even today with all the sell-proclaimed marketing merde du taureau out there. All we can do when we find ourselves at such a point is sigh, proclaim “Cest la vie,” and maybe laugh at it, too…

NEXT TIME: A film where colony collapse disorder might have been welcomed, preferably very early on in the picture…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: A French Auteur’s Magical and Masterful Take on the Modern World appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, the bad buzz is definitely deserved…

The Swarm (1978)

Distributed by: Warner Brothers

Directed by: Irwin Allen

By 1978, Irwin Allen had come a long way since doing a TV pilot that originally was a theatrical film.

With his return to theaters producing The Poseidon Adventure, Allen started a cycle of films that earned him the title of “the Master of Disaster.” He perfected a formula of getting as much recognized talent together as possible, then putting them into a situation where all of them were in danger and many of them would die. (The characters, not the talent; Allen was no Ruggero Deodato, after all…).

It worked well for him in such films as Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, both of those winning technical and song Oscars. It also allowed him to get back onto the tube part time with two made-for-TV films for NBC, Flood! and Fire!

Come 1978, however, the “disaster” that was this production proved itself immune to mastery…

We get right into it during the credits, which are superimposed over scenes of a US Air Force response team showing up at an ICBM base that went offline. The team finds dead missile men all around the base, but no obvious signs of an attack. Believing the situation under control, team leader Major Baker (Bradford Dillman) radios his supervisor, General Slater (Richard Widmark) that it’s safe for him to come and inspect the site.

To their surprise, as Slater starts to look around, his team discovers the very alive, very British, and very brown-on-brown attired Doctor Brad Crane (Michael Caine), who informs the airmen that they lost a missile base to a swarm of Africanized honey bees, aka “killer bees” that Crane had been tracking. He is sort of vouched for by the base’s physician, Captain Helena Anderson (Katharine Ross), who at the least confirms that Crane didn’t attack the base himself.

He tells them that he is an expert on the insects, and that he has authority from the President’s science advisor to be anywhere he needs to to deal with the crisis. The Air Force wants him locked up, but humor him by contacting Washington; the government’s reaction is to place Doctor Crane in charge of all operations to go after the bees, and to serve under Crane.

Which, under certain other circumstances, might not cause the viewer to refuse to believe that someone claiming to be a doctor with a British accent to get a military unit to be put under his command. However, Michael Caine is not sporting a twelve-foot-long scarf, and the USAF is no U.N.I.T., so we just can’t go forward with this, sorry…

But forward we hurtle, as the general sends a recon helicopter group to encounter the enemy, where we have our first contact. And no, it doesn’t go well for us mammals, sorry…

From there, things get worse for the humans. We watch the small town of Marysville, TX, get overwhelmed by the bees. We see the bees march (fly?) onto a nuclear plant in Armsworth, TX, and manage to make the plant blow up, taking the town with it, and then it’s on the Houston itself…

It’s a relentless plod for the bees as they mercilessly take us out, while we watch helplessly the schmaltz Allen lenses:

Even some of the biggest names in Hollywood that were willing to cash a check from Allen could not sell this. Yes, that is Olivia de Havilland in that clip, playing a school principal in Marysville unable to save her students. She’s soon a goner, as are the two men competing for her affection, retiree Felix Austin (Ben Johnson) and town mayor Clarence Tuttle (Fred MacMurray in his last role). Also shuffling off this mortal coil are Crane’s colleagues called in for the fight, Doctors Krim (Henry Fonda) and Hubbard (Richard Chamberlain). Popping in and out of the pic in roles underwritten for them are Patty Duke as a woman who gives birth during the onslaught, Lee Grant as a reporter offering superfluous scene settings, Jose Ferrer as the administrator of the doomed nuke plant, and Slim Pickins who has only one (actually kind of touching) scene, as a rancher who reclaims the body of his son, a missile man felled by the bees before the film started.

And these are just the principals who had head shots put on the bottom of the poster, as noted in the close-up here. There are way, way too many people who were in this film who either die horribly or run stupidly from the menace, and none of them fare any better with the script from Arthur Herzog and Stirling Silliphant (based on Herzog’s novel) than the main cast does.

Mind you, the humans aren’t the only ones made to act out of character. While Africanized bees are certainly something to worry about, they ultimately proved to not be as deadly as their rep made them to be. And accounts of their attacks, including a recent one in Lake Forest, CA, show them to be quite painful but not as devilish as this film painted them when they finally did get to the United States.

It really feels like when this was put together, there was no thought for what to give the human actors to do. It’s explosions! It’s carnage! It’s exposition THROUGH SHOUTING OVER EACH OTHER! It’s jumping too quickly to the next scene! It’s barely linear! It’s. An. F. N. Mess!

By the time we finally get towards the end run of the film, when much of the cast and most of the state of Texas are dead, the viewer just doesn’t care anymore. It feels like a waste of time to have tried to follow this for this long, and all one feels is a sense of waste incompetently put together.

With a reported $12M budget (around $98M in today’s dollars) that earned back only 58% of its budget at the box office, “waste” is certainly the key word here. Every shot of film, you can see the money that went into it before it all got pissed on. Allen supposed had on hand 100 bee wranglers, and 800,000 bees whose stingers were removed in order to allow the cast and crew to work with the bees without getting stung. At least when they were, it wasn’t the insects that they got stung by…

Off-screen, the biggest victim of the bees was Allen. The film was the first of his pictures he delivered to Warner Brothers after taking his production company to Fox, and it was not a good start to their working relationship. After The Swarm, Allen’s next two projects, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and When Time Ran Out…, did even worse business. Allen was out of the disaster biz and theatrical films altogether, and the disaster film genre itself pretty well lays dormant until Independence Day.

There may be “so bad it’s good” reasons to want to sit through this film, a continual contender on many “worst films” list, but really? With so much poor content to sit through, much of it many minutes shorter, why do that to yourself? Watching the film is an act of nihilism that threatens to kill whatever love you have of movies or storytelling in general.

By the end of the film, the only thing that could have made this seem even halfway worthwhile would have been Doctor Crane running for his TARDIS with a chosen survivor as a companion, dematerializing with the promise, the next time we’d see him, it’d be a much better story…

NEXT TIME: It’s always fascinating to see a master at work, even if he doesn’t have a lot to draw on…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: Does Michael Caine’s Killer Bee Movie Deserve Its Bad Buzz? appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, what you see is all you’re going to get; that, and not much else…

The Phantom Tollbooth (1970)

Distributed by: MGM

Directed by: Chuck Jones and Abe Levitow (with Dave Monahan doing live action sequences)

You must never feel badly about making mistakes … as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.

• From the book The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Junster

And never has the source material for a film better described the adaptation that came out of it than we have here…

We open pre-credits with long shots of San Francisco. Ultimately, we focus on Garfield Elementary School, where we see Milo (Butch Patrick) sitting in class while various factoids he supposedly got bombarded with echo in his head over the soundtrack. The kid’s face shows great perplexity, to the point of pain, which explains why he seems so detached on his walk home through various neighborhoods of the city…

…including through a few active construction zones; sure, kids could probably go to a lot more places back then than they can now, but really? Around all those heavy machines in operation in a “Hard Hat Required” zone, and no one gets on him for that…?

Milo survives his trip back from school, his body and ennui intact, where he gets a phone call from his friend Ralph (voiced on the receiver by the legendary June Foray). Milo relates to Ralph how he, like a lot of “latchkey kids,” is left to his own devices and bored out of his skull.

It’s a level of detachment that has a hard time surviving the arrival of a large wrapped box that pops into Milo’s apartment, with a convenient pull tab that turns the gift into the titular tollbooth, complete with a little toy car for Milo to drive in.

Not having anything better to do, he gets in the car and drives through the device, which gets him animated. Literally: For most of the rest of the film, we see a version of Milo drawn and animated by Chuck Jones, which Patrick voices.

And soon, our newly animated hero starts on his way to the Castle in the Air, which he almost doesn’t get to thanks to a side trip to the Doldrums.

Thankfully, he’s saved by Tock the Watchdog (voiced by Larry Thor in his last feature work), a dog with a large watch protruding out of his body. He’s there to save Milo from his own carelessness, and helps him get on his way to the Kingdom of Wisdom. Which hasn’t lived up to its billing in a while, as Milo discovers that the realm has been split asunder between Dictionopolis, ruled by two brothers,  King Azaz the Unabridged, and Digitopolis, ruled by the Mathmagician (both voiced by Hans Conreid). Both assume that their areas of ownership, words and numbers respectively, are the most important, although Milo points out that both need each other for anything to work properly.

They both give their blessing to Milo’s effort to head to the Castle in the Air, where the Princess of Sweet Rhyme (voiced by Patti Gilbert in her only feature work) and the Princess of Pure Reason (Foray) are held. Their release would bring order back to the realm, but is Milo up to the task of getting past the demons in the Mountains of Ignorance…?

The bigger challenge  seems to have been getting the film made to begin with. Junster’s 1961 children’s book – for which he got illustrations from his roommate Jules Feiffer by offering to cook him a few meals in exchange for drawings – was originally supposed to be a book about urban planning for children commissioned by the Ford Foundation. Junster’s patrons didn’t complain when this came out instead to rave reviews, which gave the architect with a side gig as children’s author some cachet at MGM.

In fact, Junster had a prior collaboration with the studio in 1965. An adaptation of his second book, The Dot and the Line, was produced by MGM with a script from Junster and directed by Chuck Jones with Maurice Noble. So ideally, the second collaboration on Tollbooth should have been a lot easier than it ended up being.

Certainly, Jones and the production unit he set up at MGM were ready for anything that could have come up. This period of Jones’ career was defined by his work on the Tom and Jerry cartoons from that decade, as well as How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 1966 for CBS. It was a brilliant time for him and a period that’s well remembered years later by animation fans.

And visually, the film is prime Jones. The angular character lines and knowing smirks on faces that were his trademark during the period are evident throughout the pic, samples of his style that endeared him to many for years to come. The fact that he has a more vibrant color pallet to work with here makes the visuals even more welcoming.

It’s the script and the music, however, that keep things from coming together for the film. The script that Jones did with Sam Rosen proved to be a poor adaptation of the source material. While condensation from a book into a screenplay tends to drop a lot from the work, Milo’s frustration with learning, as explained by Junster, gets lost entirely in the final work. The Milo we see doesn’t seem to have the same motivations as the one in the book; it’s so opaque that the modern viewer might just condemn the kid to a prescription of Ritalin and be done with him!

Likewise, the songs scored by Lee Pockriss, with lyrics for most by Norman Gimbel and Paul Vance, were pretty, well, forgettable. This disconnect between visuals and music is especially apparent in a song from the film entitled, ironically, “Noise”:

The film feels like its dragging no matter what’s going on on screen when the music swells, and no visuals, no matter how grand they are, going to save it here.

These would have been problem enough to get in the film’s way, with a script Juster would belittle when asked about it later on and some poor work by otherwise talented songwriters, but the studio decided there weren’t enough hurdles to overcome. MGM, which was in the process of imploding, gave the film spotty distribution. Despite the movie actually garnishing a few decent reviews, the box office was such a disappointment that MGM gave Jones and the animation unit he brought with him the boot.

Not that it slowed him down any; newly independent, he went on to produce for TV such fare as The Cricket in Times Square and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, which ultimately led Jones back to Warner Brothers for a whole new cycle of animated projects.

One possibility for the bad BO was the tastes of the time. While today’s audiences vigorously pursue Jones’ output, movie goers in 1970 might have wanted more than work that suggested cartoons that could be seen on TV back then. Anyone familiar with his animation during that period could see beats and themes his other TV work at the time had, and had they wanted something closer to the “Disney experience,” even if that wasn’t going to happen any time soon, they were not going to enjoy this film even if MGM made it easy for them to.

It’s a visual treat that shares one thing at least with the source material: Turn down the sound and just use your eyes, and there’s plenty to enjoy here. At least on that front, Jones can claim proudly to have been wrong for the right reasons…

NEXT TIME: There used to be a much thicker line between movies and television, and there was no which way to cross that. One show, however, had one witch way to break those rules…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: This Forgotten Animation is a Treat for Eyes But Not So Kind on the Ears appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

In 1952, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were asked to meet a young new blues singer. Little did they know it would inspire not just one of their greatest songs but one of the most important in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.

The budding songwriters were still teenagers and it’s fair to say that when they first met Big Mama Thornton she made a big impression. “We saw Big Mama and she knocked me cold,” Leiber told Rolling Stone in 1990. “She looked like the baddest, saltiest chick you would ever see.”

Meeting the colorful 25 year old singer with the big voice, big presence and big personality was all they needed and the pair jumped in their car already with ideas running through their talented young heads of the perfect song for Thornton. “We drove back to my house and then turned around, wrote the song, and then turned around, and rode it back to Big Mama,” Stoller recalled years later.

Amazingly it took them just minutes to write “Hound Dog” and the song would not only give Big Mama Thornton a #1 R&B hit but a few years later would become a massive hit for a young, handsome quivering lipped rock and roller: Elvis Presley.

While many may not realize that “Hound Dog” was originally a hit for another singer, notably a black woman, fewer still probably know it was written for her by two Jewish teenagers with an intense love of the blues.

Leiber and Stoller were both just 17 when they first met through a mutual friend in 1950. Although both lived in Los Angeles neither were California natives. Stoller grew up in Long Island, New York and started to learn piano after hearing the sounds of boogie-woogie for the first time while away at camp when he just eight years old.

Leiber on the other hand grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and, after originally being interested in the theater, had his Road to Damascus musical moment when he heard Jimmy Witherspoon’s “Ain’t Nobody’s Business” on the radio. “I can’t explain my reaction but at that moment I was transported to a realm of mystical understanding,” Leiber wrote in their autobiography, Hound Dog. “The light came on. Witherspoon turned on the light.” Suddenly Leiber knew that he wanted to be a songwriter, which led him to taking a part time job in a record store. One day he sang one of his new tunes for a visiting salesman from blues label Modern Records who was impressed enough to ask for sheet music. Problem was Leiber couldn’t write music but luckily he had a friend who knew someone who did.

At this point Stoller was playing in band and privately studying composition with composer Arthur Lange. When Leiber first called him asking if he was interesting in writing songs with him, Stoller wasn’t keen to say the least. “I said I wasn’t interested in writing pop songs,” he told Marc Myers of Jazzwax. “Less than an hour later, Jerry showed up at my front door with pages of lyrics. When I saw they were in the form of 12-bar blues, I agreed to write with him.”

The first song the new songwriting team of Leiber & Stoller got produced was “That’s What The Good Book Says,” released by The Robins (who later became The Coasters) released by Modern Records, the label that had inspired Leiber to seek out a writing partner. If this wasn’t impressive enough, just a month later they got their second sale for the song “Real Ugly Woman,” and it was none other than Jimmy Witherspoon himself who sang it.

Their roll continued when their third song, “Hard Times” gave them their proper first hit when popular blues singer Charles Brown took the song to #7 on the R&B charts. The pair were suddenly in demand when they got the call to visit a rehearsal with bandleader Johnny Otis at his house.

“We had worked with Johnny Otis on a couple of sessions with Little Esther and Little Willie doing duets with Little Esther, and so on,” Stoller recalled to The Blue Railroad. “ And [Otis] called me and said, “Are you familiar with Willie Mae Thornton?” I said, “No, I’m not.” He said, “Well I need some songs… Come over and listen to her and write some songs,” and that’s the way that happened. We went over and heard her and said, “Whoa!””

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton was born in Alabama in 1926, the youngest of six siblings, and, along with her mother who sang in the choir, was soon singing in the Baptist church where her father was a minister. As a young girl Thornton’s mother became sick and she often had to miss school to take care of her. But it was during these difficult times that music became important to the young singer, teaching herself to play harmonica by watching her older brother play.

In 1939, Thornton was just 13 when her mother died of tuberculosis and she had to leave the school she had barely attended to find a job. She ended up cleaning spittoons in a local tavern. The story goes that the tavern’s singer got so drunk one night he couldn’t perform. Thornton grabbed the opportunity, convincing the owner to let her sing instead thus beginning her career as a blues singer.

A year later Thornton was working on a garbage truck when singer and entertainer Diamond Teeth Mary (the half-sister of one of Thornton’s main influences, Bessie Smith) heard the 14-year-old singing as she passed by on the truck and was so impressed she ran after her to tell her of an upcoming audition to win a spot on Sammy Green’s Hot Harlem Revue. Thornton was soon traveling with the revue all over the South, singing, dancing as well as playing harmonica and drums.

By 1948 Thornton had left the Revue and was living in Houston, Texas working as a nightclub singer with Louis Jordan’s band. A trip to play the Apollo in New York had earned her the nickname “Big Mama” due to her booming voice and size (Thornton was by now six feet tall) and it stuck.

It wasn’t long before Thornton was offered a contract with Peacock Records and had recorded a couple of singles but none had become hits. It was during this time too that she first worked with bandleader Johnny Otis and it was on this fateful day in 1952 that Otis was working with the now 25 year old trying to work up some new material that hopefully would finally give her a long deserved hit.

When Leiber and Stoller met her they were so inspired the song came almost straight away. “Big Mama got up and she just blew everybody away. She was just such a great blues singer,” Leiber told WGPH. “We looked at each other and decided to take off immediately, and we jumped in Mike’s car and headed for his house. And I’d say about, maybe half way to his house I’d already gotten about 50 percent of the lyrics to the song. And we landed, and Mike went to the piano, and I started yelling, you ain’t nothing but a hound dog, and it all came together in about eight or ten minutes.”

The songwriting duo returned to Otis’ house with the newly written song in hand and gave it to Thornton to sing, who, after some persuasion from Otis, agreed to record it although her first instinct was to croon it like a ballad.

“On the way to the studio the following day, we said, “You know, she oughta growl it,” they told Tablet Magazine. “We mentioned it, and she said, “Don’t be telling me how to sing blues, white boy.” However, of course, it stuck in her head, and boom! It was a fabulous performance. She was really sensational.” The record also turned out to be Leiber and Stoller’s first as producers, with Otis playing drums. Only two takes were recorded. “The first take was incredible,” Stoller stated to The Independent. “The second was even better.” And that was the version that was eventually released.

Although the song was recorded in August, 1952, the single wasn’t released until February 1953. Thornton didn’t even realize the song had come out until she heard it one day on the radio while on the way to a show. “I was going to the theater and I just turned the radio on in the car and the man said, “Here’s a record that’s going nationwide: “Hound Dog” by Willie Mae Thornton.” I said, “That’s me!” I hadn’t heard the record in so long,” she later recalled. “So that evening I sang it on the show, and everybody went for it. “Hound Dog” just took off like a jet.”

The single made its debut on the Billboard R&B charts on March 28, 1952 and eventually made its way to the top spot, spending seven weeks at #1. It quickly became the biggest selling single in Peacock Record’s history and not only spawned numerous cover versions (Little Esther got there first, her version coming out less than a month after Thornton’s) but also a number of answer songs, the first being Rufus Thomas’ single “Bear Cat” released on Sun Records. Ironically Peacock Records later successfully sued Sun for copyright infringement and Sun’s founder Sam Phillips, in order to pay off his debts, was forced to sell Elvis Presley’s record contract to RCA, where Elvis of course later had a huge hit with “Hound Dog.”

The song had such an impact that the covers, and even some rip-offs, kept coming in the years after but the first real pop version came in 1955 courtesy of Las Vegas lounge act Freddie Bell and the Bellboys. Teen Records founder Bernie Lowe realized the song could have mainstream appeal with a lighter touch and asked the band to rewrite some of the racier lyrics. The innuendoes in the line “You can wag your tail but I ain’t gonna feed you no more” became the far more neutral “you ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine” and “snooping around my door” became “crying all the time.” The song was also given a trendy rock ‘n’ roll beat.

The record was the first release for Teen Records and although not a nationwide hit, proved successful in Philadelphia and was a radio hit on the East Coast of the US. The single was also popular enough to earn the group an appearance in the 1956 rock ‘n’ roll film Rock Around The Clock.

It was the Freddie Bell and the Bellboys’ version of the song that inspired Elvis Presley’s iconic version. Elvis first heard the group performing it when he and his band went to see Bell’s popular show at the Sands Casino in Las Vegas in 1956. He loved their performance of the song so much he immediately added it to his live shows and at once it went down a storm with his audiences. Scotty Moore recalled in his autobiography, That’s Alright: “He’d start out, ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a Hound Dog,’ and they’d just go to pieces. They’d always react the same way. There’d be a riot every time.”

Before recording the song, Presley decided to test it on a wider television audience by performing it during his second appearance on the Milton Berle Show, and by this point Presley had brought back some of the more bluesy elements of Big Mama’s original (Elvis was apparently already familiar with Thornton’s version), slowing down the song halfway throughout as well as bringing his own unique style to the song.

This performance was also notable for the controversy that came in its wake, with Presley’s suggestive hip gyrations (which now seem completely tame) proving shockingly sexual to some and causing outrage in the media (the New York Herald Tribune slammed his performance by calling him “unspeakably untalented and vulgar.”) Of course, young rock ‘n’ roll loving teens loved his energetic performance and the controversy only served to make Presley – now nicknamed Elvis the Pelvis – even more popular.

Just a few weeks later Presley returned to TV screens on the Steve Allen Show and this time was somehow persuaded to perform “Hound Dog” again but this time in a super family friendly comedic version, dressed up in a tuxedo and singing the song to a real hound dog (also smartly dressed in a small top hat).

The very next day, July 2 1956, Presley went into the studio and, although he had not planned to ever record “Hound Dog” (he also recorded “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Any Way You Want Me” the same day), the producer that RCA had assigned, Steve Sholes, insisted he build on the momentum from his TV performances of the song and get the track on vinyl.

Despite his initial reluctance Presley – co-producing for the first time – knew exactly how he wanted the song to sound on record, keeping it upbeat and more raucous, as well as losing the slower bluesy part heard in his live show. Driving the band through 31 takes, Presley took Steve Bell’s poppy parody of Thornton’s blues tune, and gave it a rock ‘n’ roll menace, aided by Scotty Moore’s fierce guitar. He chose take 28 from the session and this was the version unleashed onto the world with “Don’t Be Cruel” just over a week later on July 13, 1956.

Not surprisingly the single was an immediate smash and when the newly married Stoller returned from his honeymoon cruise he was met by Leiber at the boat who excitedly told him that “Hound Dog” was a huge hit. A confused Stoller thought he meant Thornton’s record, “No,” Leiber replied, “Some white guy named Elvis Presley.”

At first the songwriting duo weren’t impressed. “It’s a woman’s song and she’s singing about a freeloader, a gigolo. And Elvis is singing to a dog,” Stoller told Reuters. “After it sold seven or eight million the first week, we began to see some merit in it.”

Presley’s version got a further boost when he was invited on the hugely popular Ed Sullivan Show for three appearances and each time he sang “Hound Dog” (although for his third and final appearance, due to Presley’s scandalous hips, he was filmed above the waist).

Elvis’ version went on to sell over 10 million copies worldwide (with five million sold in the US) and spent an incredible 11 weeks at #1 – a record not broken until Boyz II Men achieved 14 weeks at the top with their hit “End Of The Road” in 1992.

Presley’s “Hound Dog” has had many detractors over the years including Elvis himself who considered it his most silly song, but its impact and influence has been immense shown by the huge amount of cover versions it has garnered (more than 250 times in fact) from fellow rock ‘n’ rollers such as Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard to later rock legends such as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison and John Lennon (Paul McCartney and Lennon’s early band the Quarrymen also regularly performed the song.)

In the wake of Elvis’ success with “Hound Dog” Big Mama Thornton’s original was also re-released but even then she saw little money from it. “Didn’t get no money from them at all,” she told Rolling Stone in 1984. “Everybody livin’ in a house but me. I’m just livin’.”

Although interest in Thornton began to fade after “Hound Dog” she continued to record and perform and when Janis Joplin famously covered Thornton’s “Ball ‘n’ Chain” at the legendary Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 it helped to revive her career, leading to the release of her most successful album Stronger Than Dirt in 1969. “I gave her the right and the permission to make “Ball ‘n’ Chain,” ” Thornton sadly told an interviewer after Joplin’s death. “She always was my idol before she passed away… and I thank her for helping me.”

Thornton herself died of a heart attack in 1984 aged just 57 years old, the result of years of alcohol abuse. In the last years of her life her illness had caused her to lose 255 pounds and with her skinny frame was no longer recognizable as the tall, brassy Big Mama of old but she still had that amazing voice right until the end.

Leiber and Stoller too hardly made any money from the almost two million copies sold of Thornton’s original version of “Hound Dog” but the cash that came from the Elvis release certainly made up for it. The song’s success led to them writing many hits for Elvis such as “Jailhouse Rock,” “Trouble,” “Loving You,” and “King Creole,” among others, and numerous hits for other artists such as The Drifters’ “There Goes My Baby,” “Yakety Yak” for The Coasters, and “Stand By Me” written with Ben E. King, to name but a few.

Presley’s version of “Hound Dog” though is not just one of his most famous songs but one of the best selling singles of all time. His iconic take on the song became one of the most important hits of the rock ‘n’ roll revolution, something that was recognized when it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1988 (Thornton’s version was only inducted in 2013).

But without Big Mama Thornton, who inspired and helped shape the song, “Hound Dog” would not exist in the first place and Thornton certainly deserves recognition for the important role she played. Which is why it’s puzzling that this talented and influential lady hasn’t been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame yet. She certainly deserves to be. We’re sure Elvis, Janis and many others would agree.

The post Songs That Made Rock ‘n’ Roll: Big Mama Thornton and Elvis Unleash a Howling Hit With “Hound Dog” appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, it’s amazing what happens on behalf of a bowl of cereal…

Pufnstuf (1970)

Distributed by: Universal Pictures

Directed by: Hollingsworth Morse

Hey kids! You ever ask your parents about Saturday morning cartoons?

Years ago, before content on demand, even before dedicated cable networks, audiences younger than 14 had only a few options where the TV was catering to their tastes. And the biggest premiere outlet was Saturday mornings, starting at 8 AM for network feeds (earlier in some local markets if the station put their own shows on), with cartoons and live action shows you could watch in your pajamas over a bowl of cereal. There, there were hours of content that would run for tykes, sponsored by commercials for toys and cereal, hoping to getting you to switch what was in your bowl next week for their product.

And sometimes, theatrical films would inspire tie-in series, such as Fantastic Voyage, Return to the Planet of the Apes, and the first Godzilla series. You almost never saw something from Saturday mornings make its way from on air to a theater screen.

Almost…

If you remember the opening theme of the  TV series, you know pretty well the first 20 minutes of the movie. After a cold open where the villain of the piece, Wilhelmina W. Witchiepoo (Billie Hayes), makes a horrible attempt to play on our sympathies in a direct appeal to the audience, we have Jimmy (Jack Wild) deep in song over the soundtrack, just out and enjoying the day before remembering he’s late for band practice. He finally shows up, where the kids tease him for his accent and frame him for busting a drum, which gets him expelled from band by its leader, Miss Flick (Jane Dulo).

Feeling alone and dejected, Jimmy talks to his flute… which then talks back to him, after making a radical transformation:

His flute, who calls itself Freddie (voiced by Don Messick) claims to be a valuable friend. Though admittedly, with most flutes coming in at about 13 ounces and gold going for around $1200 an ounce these days, before we even price out the gems and the whole sudden sentience, well…

Jimmy and Freddie find the boat to Living Island, which offers to take them on a trip; the boat’s a trap set up by Witchiepoo, who wants to possess Freddie for herself; to the rescue comes the mayor of Living Island, H. R. Pufenstuf (voiced by Alvin Melvin); Jimmy is saved, setting up him vs. the witch. In other words, basically the entire TV series in the 93 minute run time for the film.

There are some added features, such as more songs, to the point where the film gets to be in danger of becoming an opera. Also, more complex shots than the series had, with overhead dolly pans and added psychedelic light show scene bridges, which make it even harder for show creators Sid & Marty Krofft to deny that there was a subtle drug reference underlying the show.

And as an addition, there’s not just one witch here, but a whole convention of witches that figures into the plot, where we watch Witchiepoo vie for status among her peers through owning Freddie. We watch her scheme and flail about trying to impress her leader, Boss Witch (Martha Raye), while trying to one-up her major frenemy Witch Hazel (“Mama Cass” Elliot, her first role in her very short career as an actress and her only feature), who gets to do a solo track in the film, “Different”:

Basically, but more, pretty well sums up the film. The TV series on NBC’s Saturday morning lineup was such a hit that worked so well as is, that the Kroffts didn’t feel they needed to make that many big changes save for replacing Pufnstuf’s TV voice actor Lennie Weinrib, who couldn’t commit to the project. While the budget for the film was the same as for all 17 episodes for TV in total, most of it underwritten by Kellogg’s, the show’s sponsor on NBC, there was a conscious effort to keep things as close to the source material as possible.

The end result is something that feels like a condensation of the essence of the series, an effort to give people who go to the movies, but never turn on a TV, their own version to embrace. Fans of the series might quibble with a few changes and shortcuts, but otherwise have something to point to now and again as an expanded property to debate with friends. And if you never experienced the series on TV, this is just enough for you to sit through and get what it was all about, without committing nine hours to that project.

Which is probably why the film got as spotty a distribution as it did, with only a limited theatrical release when Universal dumped it in a few random markets. The studio assumed that no one would go to the movies to see a TV show, missing out on bringing the whole “small-to-big-screen” experience to people years before we’d see Star Trek, The Fugitive, and Mission: Impossible prove them wrong.

And if the only connection you’re ever going to get to this Kroffts property, or any of their projects, is this film, there’s plenty here to take from it. Like the fact that most of their earlier shows are built around the villain driving the plot manically; much like on the series, you can’t stop looking at Hayes grabbing the film the way her character grabs for the flute. Her pantomimes are exaggerations that are larger than life and make her one of the most brilliant physical comedians ever captured on film. It’s her energy that keeps things interesting, and even propels much of the film forward.

Speaking of connections, the film’s production certainly involved both the personal hands-on approach the Kroffts engaged in throughout their careers, and a few odd coincidences. Wild, who met the Kroffts at the Hollywood premier of Oliver!, owed his career to being discovered by talent agent June Collins, who was the mother of musician Phil Collins. Likewise, the Kroffts got the rest of their cast through such casual linkages, such as Cass Elliot happening to be Sid’s next-door neighbor.

Getting Raye as the Boss Witch involved a bit more work. Having been turned down by Bette Davis when they asked her to do the role, the Kroffts ended up being the first gig Raye was offered since her blacklisting for having enthusiastically done USO shows in Vietnam, an unpopular move in the late ’60s.

In fact, Raye got along so well with the Kroffts on the production, that she next took the role of Benita Bizarre, the Witchiepoo stand-in as the major villain on their next TV series for NBC, The Bugaloos:

Ironically, according to cast member John McIndoe, who played one of the bugs in the series that assembled performers for a pre-made band that tried to be The Monkees for the really young crowd, one of the finalists for his role who almost got the job instead of him was… Phil Collins.

Y’know, I think I need more milk for this cereal…

NEXT TIME: Come for the Verne-mania, stay for the fire sale…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: Saturday Morning Kids TV Turns Psychedelic With a Witchy Cass Elliot appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, though, a film can be a lot like its subjects: Both were better off not having been discovered…

Skullduggery (1970)

Distributed by: Universal Studios

Directed by: Gordon Douglas

Please note that this is not the film we teased last time; that review has been pushed back, in order to address more current events.

We almost failed to acknowledge the recent passing of Burt Reynolds. At first, it didn’t seem like we could, as he wasn’t really noted for his work in genre films during the Rebeat era; the closest thing that came to mind off hand was his playing a Marlon Brando-inspired actor in The Twilight Zone episode “The Bard,” unless you wanted to make some extremely generous interpretations of what constitutes genre to try and fit in any of the Smokey and the Bandit  films for review. (Most of his work in genre stayed in television and occurred much later on, such as his Troy Garland on the series Out of This World.)

However, our brilliant staff at Rebeat brought up the one genre film Reynolds was in during this time. We owe our thanks to them for coming through to keep this from being forgotten.

And our thanks will be given as soon as we can find forgiveness for making us watch this damned thing…

We open in Papua New Guinea (at least for a few establishing shots, as the rest of the pic was shot in Jamaica trying to pass, badly), where we are introduced to Dr. Sybil Greame (Susan Clark) who is readying an expedition to discover fossils of primitive human ancestors. Her expedition is supposed to include Father Dillingham (Chips Rafferty) and Doctor Spofford (Edward Fox) as the two main principals to accompany her into the field.

However, two ne’er-do-wells are at the airstrip spot Dr. Greame when she arrives. We’re quickly introduced to Douglas Temple (Reynolds) and Otto Kreps (Roger C. Carmel) who have a plan: They will pose as scientific colleagues and guides to  join up, in order to stake a claim in her area of examination on a large deposit of phosphorous, which it’s explained is an essential element in the manufacture of cathode ray tubes for color TVs and highly in demand. By going along, they can offer a little help with her effort while they do some prospecting on the side.

Having conned their way into the expedition, we watch as the group treks to their dig site, engaging in some of the worst elements of the “Darkest Africa” trope to ever be put on screen. And yes, they used these despite this being in (Jamaica trying to fool us into thinking that it’s) New Guinea; the sheer lack of giving one as they throw this at the audience is probably hoping that it can charm us with audacity, much the same way Reynolds’ characters would try and do to other characters later in the decade. (He, however, could make it work…)

After too long going through this, our story takes a sharp turn when the party discover the “Tropi,” a race of bipedals that may possibly be a missing human evolutionary step, maybe even the “missing link” that would give evolution a buttressing that it probably doesn’t need, but for our purposes, it couldn’t hurt, right? They look wild at first as they shy away from the party, but ultimately Kreps learns how to earn their trust, especially of one female, Topazia (Pat Suzuki).

The interaction progresses quickly as the Tropi start showing that they are willing to perform tasks for trade items, especially canned ham. This draws in Greame’s boyfriend and financial backer, Vancruysen (Paul Hubschmid), who when he partners with Temple and Kreps for their phosphorous claim convinces them to use the Tropi as miners. And the exchange between Kreps and Topazia… Well, let’s just say that since Carmel played Harry Mudd in Star Trek, that there was no better person to cast who would break this ‘Prime Directive,’ ifyouknowwhatImean…

This leads ham-fistedly into a courtroom scene where the fate of the Tropi get argued, forced by the result of Kreps and Topazia’s dalliance, that has Temple pleading to murder in order to establish that the Tropi are human, while facing prosecution by the state’s attorney general (William Marshall). It’s a sequence where meanings are forced to be examined and questions are raised without good answers…

…one of which wasn’t, “What the hell, man?” Based on the novel You Shall Know Them by Vercors, the book was adapted for the screen by Nelson Gidding, whose reputation as a master of print-to-screen adaptation had no reason to be challenged other than for this effort. In interviews about the film, Reynolds would claim that he liked the script, then put the fault on the film on the director’s shoulders.

And it’s an easy argument to make when looking at the production history. Originally, the film was offered to Otto Preminger to direct, but he passed in favor of other projects. When Saul David picked up the option as producer, his first choice to direct was Richard Wilson. It would have been his last feature work, had the project not gone into turnaround and ended up at Universal, which insisted on shooting as little in New Guinea as possible. Soon after the move to Jamaica, David had Wilson replaced with Douglas, which probably had a lot to do with why the pacing was so off and some of the shot choices were off-putting.

Whether the script can get a pass for the final film, however, doesn’t mitigate the mess left behind. It tries to have it both ways, by asking us to consider our basic humanity and the responsibility of civilized beings to work with less developed cultures, while throwing every f’n’ “Bwana” trope it could pull up before we get to the Tropi themselves. And even after we get there, there’s a few shockingly random lines about race brought up in the courtroom, tinged in the tensions of that time, that a better script with even a lesser director could have done without, thus not needing to bring the film to an uncomfortable halt for a few moments.

This, more than any other reason, including suppositions by Reynolds that Universal just could not figure out how to market the film, led to its being forgotten. It’s a leaden mess that tries to say something interesting, badly. It’s easy to see why the film so completely disappeared off almost everyone’s radar; acknowledging it exists invites pain when you think too much about it, so the less have to look at it through our memories, the better.

Interestingly, when discussing the film, Reynolds made no disparaging remarks about any of the actors who were on the project. On the other hand, there’s an unprovable supposition one could make here: This film sports a clean-shaven Reynolds, who desperate to get this as far behind him as possible, made him decide from then on out to sport his trademark facial hair. Again, it’s unprovable, but maybe the film has some value as the reason we get the famous Reynolds ‘stache…?

We will certainly miss Burt Reynolds, ‘stache and all. Not this movie of his, though; screw it!

NEXT TIME: A cigarette maker used to say to women, “You’ve come a long way, baby,” trying to co-opt the movement for equality; some would say that this film was just as guilty of that, too…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: Is This The Worst Film Burt Reynolds Ever Made? appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, no matter how bad it may seem, you have to keep in mind that it can always be a lot worse than this…

The Stepford Wives (1975)

Distributed by: Columbia Pictures

Directed by: Bryan Forbes

The struggle for equality between the sexes has been, and continues to be, a continual cycle of promoting awareness to lead to advances.

Hopefully this will help us to get us to the point where women would no longer be denied agency or treated as lesser beings.

The struggle has had fits and starts over the years, but the 1970s were certainly a period when the message was received by more listeners than at other times, and progress with awareness felt more positive than it had in a while. The idea of keeping women in their place as home makers and “objects of desire” was certainly not as attractive as it had been even 10 years earlier, when films like The Ambushers would roll into theaters unopposed.

Which makes this film so interesting, in that in trying to aid the agenda, it was accused of setting it back…

Please note that there will be unavoidable spoilers herein.

We open during the credits with scenes of Joanna Eberhart (Katharine Ross) doing one last sweep of her apartment on West End Avenue, checking to make sure that everything’s on the truck for her move to the suburbs. As she gets into the car, she spies and has to take a picture of a man carrying a naked female form mannequin around on the street:

Off she goes to Stepford, Connecticut, with her husband Walter (Peter Masterson) and her two children, Amy (Ronny Sullivan in her only role) and Kim (Mary Stuart Masterson, Peter’s daughter, in her first credited role). We discover over the course of the film that Walter has a tendency to act first before bringing Joanna in on the plan, and the move to the suburbs was no exception.

It’s a peeve that weighs on Joanna when she encounters and becomes fast friends with Bobbie Markowe (Paula Prentiss) who bond over a combo of two things bad for you when not done in moderation:

As bad as things feel for the two of them, it becomes worse when they realize that there’s something… different about most of the women in Stepford. The way many of them are obsessed with trying to keep the house clean and their men “happy,” ifyouknowwhatImean, seems odd to Joanna and Bobbie. The only other woman in Stepford who’s not so obsessed is Charmaine Wimpiris (Tina Louise), who proves to be an exception compared to the other wives in town.

A comparison that becomes rather stark when Joanna manages to get a consciousness raising group together among the women, where the differences become hard to ignore…

The hackles get raised for Joanna, however, when Charmaine starts becoming more like the rest of the women, and her isolation grows further when Bobbie also becomes “one of them” too…

Ultimately, Joanna ultimately traces her troubles to the Stepford Men’s Association, an old boys club that all the husbands belong to, even her own. It’s there that she discovers the truth about the organization, led by Dale “Diz” Coba (Patrick O’Neill): How the men who join gain through membership the replacement of their wives with “fembots,” an ‘upgraded’ version of their spouses who will devote themselves fully to their husbands.

Something Joanna realizes far too late, as she soon meets her replacement…

Interestingly, the word “replacement” can be thrown about pretty freely in the production history of the film, as there were the issues of getting the right women to play Joanna and Bobbie. As director Forbes claimed he saw the two women’s interaction being reminiscent of that between Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern, he first floated around the idea of getting the leads from these two shows for the parts, which producer Edgar Scherick quickly shot down. Tuesday Weld and Jean Seberg were both offered the role of Joanna, but passed on it, and Diane Keaton originally said yes to the part, but changed her mind within 24 hours of agreeing after her analyst advised her against it.

Meanwhile, Joanna Cassidy was originally hired to play Bobbie. She lasted a week on the set before differences between her and Scherick led to her being fired. When Prentiss took the role, she’d only a few weeks before given birth to her son Ross.

Not that things went so smoothly behind the camera. Sherick deciding on Bryan Forbes as his director and getting William Goldman to do the screen adaptation showed all the sensitivity of bringing a copy of Playboy to a discussion about The Feminine Mystique, and went just about as well. Goldman hated Forbes’ efforts to rework the script, especially having to re-imagine how the “fembots” attired themselves when Forbes hired his wife, Nanette Newman, to play Stepford-ized Carol Van Sant; the script called for the converted women to dress in miniskirts, but because Newman could not pull off the look, Forbes came up with the “flowing-June-Cleaver” wholesome look for the wives. Goldman considered a script change to accommodate the director’s wife one of many slights that could not be brooked.

With a production history so tumultuous, it was inevitable that the film’s reception would likewise keep this vibe going. Columbia Pictures tried to build good word-of-mouth by holding screenings for feminists, a supposedly sympathetic audience, but the target groups reacted negatively. Betty Friedan herself called the film “a rip-off of the movement” before storming out without watching the end of the film, and at a later screening Forbes was attacked by a viewer with an umbrella, despite his pleas that the film was actually casting the men of Stepford as plotting villains.

In terms of plots, Scherick didn’t seem to have that strong a plan for the property he got the rights to. Based on a novel by Ira Levin from 1972, he may have thought that having gotten ahold of a book from the writer whose book Rosemary’s Baby became the basis for a great film, that he could just mount his production and be happy with the outcome.

The film’s lackluster reception from audiences – which was a great disappointment to the financial backers, who were of all people Bristol-Meyers Squibb – left Scherick with a property he’d keep coming back to, trying to get what he could for all its worth. The result was a march from tragedy to farce that included three separate made-for-TV “inspired by” knock-offs and a 2004 comedic remake directed by Frank Oz.

As for the original itself, it’s hard to sit through this film. It tries for a slow burn sense of dread to evoke the existential threat of being a woman in a town that literally objectifies you, but the temperature is barely a simmer thanks to the plotting and set-up. Michael Small’s low-key score could have tried just a little harder to service the mood, but deserts its post and leaves it to others to try.

And try they do try, as the actresses in the film take the materials handed them and make for some effective performances. Ross ended up being the right woman for the job, effectively establishing who she is as she fights to keep it from being taken away from her. Special attention to Prentiss, whose Bobby is so compelling to watch when she blasts onto the screen, and whose conversion through the program is so heartbreaking to witness. If it weren’t for the actors breathing life into the production, this might not have become the feminist parable that later generations would come to remember. Without the actors giving us people to root for, as opposed to symbols to identify with, then Friedan would have been correct in calling it a “rip-off.”

Do note though, that the movement being approached by the film is second-wave feminism, with the inherent weakness therein evident here too. There are only two non-white characters that show up, and only briefly in the last scene, and not a single person below upper-middle-class gets any screen time. It’s strongly suggested that when the consciousness raising group convenes, that no invitation was extended to Charmaine’s maid, Nettie (Dee Wallace in her first feature).

Nonetheless, it’s the ideas behind the film, so well realized by the actresses working with the materials, that made the film part of the conversation, when not the subject itself. Even as the movie slipped out of view, the general idea of a nefarious group out in the suburbs wanting to keep someone down certainly struck a chord with many who viewed the film. (Among them, Jordan Peele cited the influence of The Stepford Wives on his first feature, Get Out.) The term “Stepford wives” being used to describe women who abandoned progress and took a few steps backwards, and even the use of “Stepford” as an adjective for someone or something seeming to regress, stayed in the vocabulary for decades after the film.

For years, the general idea of something as insidious as the Stepford Men’s Association being out there, willing to hold women down and keep them as lesser beings, was the default nightmare to evoke when opponents to feminine progress would rise up…

…at least it was, until the publication of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale…

NEXT TIME: Come for the Verne-mania, stay for the fire sale…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: Before “The Handmaid’s Tale” There Was This Feminist Flick… appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, it’s just too late for you to finally get started on that trip…

From the Earth to the Moon (1958)

Distributed by: Warner Brothers

Directed by: Byron Haskin

Not everyone gets credit for being there during the early days. Lots of Merseyside acts did not get even a tenth of the attention Gerry and the Pacemakers did, let alone the Beatles, despite playing the same venues then, and not every act playing San Francisco just as the Jefferson Airplane or the Grateful Dead got on stage got noticed beyond the Bay Area.

Likewise, not every early Verne-mania film got the same crowds that Disney drew with their Captain Nemo…

Our film opens (after a credit sequence consisting of a reader flipping pages of an oversized art book) on what’s referred to by the narrator as May 18, 1868, at the estate of Victor Barbicane (Joseph Cotten). Barbicane is a member of the International Armaments Club, a collection of industrialists who made fortunes recently during the American Civil War, and he’s called a meeting to discuss something that will make them all rich.

And no, it’s not the inside scoop on the upcoming Franco-Prussian War. It’s instead the announcement that he has developed “Power X”, an explosive that has such a high yield for so small an amount that cities could be eliminated with a single shell shot. And with that power, Barbicane proposes, he could shoot a shell to the moon and have a huge explosion up there, which would be a great advertisement for the new product.

It’s a claim that is hard to accept by Stuyvesant Nicholl (George Sanders), fellow weapon smith who we meet in his Virginia munitions plant, suggesting that the beef between these two has been going on for some time, with Barbicane usually getting the better of it. Nicholl challenges Barbicane to back up his claims, announcing that he’s developed a ceramic that could withstand anything, especially Power X. Barbicane accepts, and the test goes spectacularly for him, destroying Nicholl’s ceramic and the mountain it sat on.

This prompts a summoning of the victor by President Grant (an uncredited Morris Ankrum), who asks Barbicane to fake his product’s failure for the sake of national security. The President asks him to state that the product is a fraud, lest 22 nations who let the President know that they would declare war on America if they went ahead with the project actually did so.

Although to be honest, had the actual Ulysses S. Grant been better modeled for the film, he’d either have called these countries’ bluffs and gotten us into a nasty war with all of these folks, or botched up this effort like he did everything else when he was held the office, but hey…

Patriotism doesn’t trump Barbicane’s fear of being ruined or mocked, however, and soon he’s back on the project, with a modification: Instead of blowing up crap on the moon, he’s going to set foot on it, and try to come back afterwards. He hopes this more peaceful use of space will allow him to save face and use Power X for loftier purposes than just busting cities for pay.

Soon, his spaceship, the “Columbia”, is ready for take-off, and the crew, Barbicane, Nicholl, and Barbicane’s assistant Ben Sharpe (Don Dubbins), become the first three people to leave the surface of the Earth. Four, actually, as Nicholl’s daughter Virginia (Debra Paget) stows away to follow Ben and keep Daddy out of trouble. Which, this being an adventure into the unknown, wasn’t going to happen…

It’s nearly a miracle that this adventure happened at all, frankly. The film originally started out at RKO Pictures, the same studio that released King Kong and Citizen Kane, but just as production began, the studio was being dissolved by its last owners, General Tire, selling their assets to Desilu Productions even as this film was being shot. The project ultimately gets picked up by Warner Brothers, who met the letter if not the spirit of the agreement to finish the film.

And it shows. Based very loosely on the titular book and its sequel, Around the Moon, and less a story about going to the moon than a heavy-handed parable about the then-current arms race, the film feels under-completed, as though there was just filler for the effects shots and dialog stretches for unshot scenes. And there probably were; Haskin, who directed the classic The War of the Worlds for Paramount, probably expected to work on a much bigger film than what he delivered, and somehow stayed on this ship as it sank burned up on re-entry. There’s hinted ambition in every shot, trying not to let the lack of budget or spirit get in the way of the film and forcing him to use a “Scene Missing” card throughout the film.

While the principals are doing their damnedest, especially Cotten and Paget, there’s just nothing really coming from anyone else. Which makes sense, as this was probably a film shot where the cast and crew didn’t know if it would ever see the light of day, let alone if they still had gigs when they showed up that morning. Under these conditions, it’s expected that there would be very little energy coming out of the production.

The result is, what should have been an energetic work of fiction feels more like an educational film strip, one that fell sideways out of a steampunk-fueled universe. It does no favors to Verne or the story he’d written, which was a shame as the work deserved better. (At the very least, the use of the title for HBO’s miniseries about Project Apollo was certainly a decent effort at rehabilitation.)

The fact that the film could claim to, at least, have been on site when Verne-mania started may be the best accolade it could have hoped for. Which, I guess, counts for something, maybe…

NEXT TIME: Someone came up with a new spin on the old phrase, “You’ll die laughing…”

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: This Cinematic Trip to The Moon is Not as Stellar as it Sounds appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, you need a break from the unrelenting terror, just to have a laugh…

The Comedy of Terrors (1963)

Distributed by: American International

Directed by: Jacques Tourneur

On paper, it’s a hell of a group: Tourneur, the director of Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie, working off of a script from Richard Matheson whose I Am Legend was a classic that became an iconic film. And, they have to play with in the cast Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and Basil Rathbone.

It’s one hell of a cast and crew assembled on the same set. You get them all together and you’re going to have… a zany slapstick comedy?!?

We open cold before the credits on a funeral during the late 19^th century, where Waldo Trumbull (Price) and his assistant Felix Gillie (Lorrie) are the undertakers overseeing the solemn service of providing dignity as they bury a man. Said dignity flees after the family leaves the cemetery, however, when the two plop the deceased out of the casket (which we find later has been re-used over and over for 13 years) and in sped-up film bury him cold, having robbed the estate the cost of a coffin.

Waldo, an abusive drunk, comes home to his wife Amaryllis (Joyce Jameson) and father in law Amos Hinchley (Karloff), where he insults her and ignores him. We discover through the insults the couple lob at each other that he married into the family to get Amos’ business and doesn’t think much of her desire to be an opera singer. Amos, meanwhile, is of no help to her, being both deaf and senile; every appeal she makes, Amos responds to by passing her the sugar bowl.

Because he drinks away most of the profits, Waldo is just barely above water most of the time. This is an issue with his landlord, John Black (Rathbone), who informs Waldo that because he is a year in arrears on rent that he has 24 hours to pay up or be put out.

In response, Waldo does what he usually does: He takes Felix, a former break-in artist, out with him to a rich person’s home, where Felix lets Waldo in, and Waldo does in the occupant, drumming up business in the process. We watch as he does in a likely target (Buddy Mason in his last role) and eagerly chats up his young vibrant widow (Beverly Powers, credited in the film as “Beverly Hills” for… prominent reasons, shall we say…) to get her business, but then watch Waldo get double-crossed by the widow, who skips town with the family fortune without paying for the funeral.

Desperate, Waldo finally comes upon the idea of doing away with Black, hoping to do away with his debt while making a handsome profit at the same time. It’s a perfect plan; what could go wrong…?

Plenty, apparently. In addition to Waldo and Felix’s general ineptitude, there’s Black’s having catalepsy, which makes any effort to positively tell if he’s dead or not liable to get a false positive by most detection methods of the day. And when he’s up from the dead and quoting from his favorite work, The Tragedy of Mac– um, “That Scottish Gig,” things don’t go well for our, um, “heroes”…

As we watch these poor players that strut and fret their hour upon the stage, there’s a good question that comes up: Is this really a genre film? On the one hand, we have actors and talent who have done lots of work in horror, but the circumstances are more suggestive of being immersed in the genre than actually engaged in it. Trying to kill a man who plays dead and comes back now and then for laughs is hardly a recipe for a fright film.

And yet, the plot points and story beats as we watch Black come after Waldo and Felix could very easily make up a good slasher film. Black’s pursuit of his victims carries the same feel as we watch that we’d see when watching Halloween or The Shining, especially as he chops through doors and searches in the room for his prey. All we need is the axe to make contact with someone’s body, and we move from suggesting to being a slasher film.

Not that this needs to be one, as the film works well as a comedy with elements of horror at least painted upon it. Matheson’s script has some decent chuckles, and the cast gamely gives it a lot of care as they hurtle through the action. The casual viewer might be tempted to say that the crew certainly looked like they were having fun on this shoot, and it’s an infectious feeling that allows for people who are watching and want a laugh to find one easily enough.

While the production certainly felt happy to be together, the audience of the day supposedly wasn’t entirely happy to see them. Matheson as associate producer would claim that producer Samuel Arkoff told him that the production lost money, which seems hard to fathom considering how the usual release from AI were such sparse affairs. Whether for the stated reason or due to other concerns, this would be the last time Karloff, Lorrie, and Price would do an atmospheric comedy together, only their second after The Raven.

Which is a shame, as they managed to pair a decent comic script with a decent collected cast. The company even featured Ornagey the cat, credited as “Rhubarb” for this film, who actually worked opposite Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, whose role is to do double takes now and then and sit upon Black’s chest to get him to wake up.

So of course because he’s atop him in the film, it makes sense that he has billing in the credits over and atop Rathbone…

…well, I thought that was funny…

NEXT TIME: We stand still as we look at the past, and how it influences our present…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: Horror Legends Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff… in a Comedy? appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.