Remembering Dick Smith (1922-2014)

Dick Smith - the cinema's most important makeup artist since the immortal Lon Chaney - has passed away at the age of 92, leaving behind him a treasure trove of character and horror makeups whose imagination and scientific detail were truly indistinguishable from magic: LITTLE BIG MAN, HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS, THE GODFATHER, THE EXORCIST, ALTERED STATES, THE SENTINEL, GHOST STORY... and so many more. As many of the stories being repeated today confirm, he was also one of the great gentlemen of the business. This - I'm happy to say - I got to experience, a few times, by telephone.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dick a couple of times, back in the 1980s and 1990s - first in relation to an uncredited favor he did for his protégé Rick Baker in relation to David Cronenberg's VIDEODROME (in the basement of his home, he and Steve Johnson took a full body cast of Deborah Harry for a scene that was ultimately not filmed), and then again as Donna and I were preparing VIDEO WATCHDOG's sixth issue, devoted to THE EXORCIST - an issue whose impact directly led to the publication of Mark Kermode's BFI Modern Classics books on the film, his documentary on the making of the film (which appears on the DVD and Blu-ray of the film, and William Friedkin's own "The Version You Thought You'd Never See" recut.

While interviewing Dick for a VW piece about the film's subliminal imagery, I asked him about this now-famous facial makeup done for THE EXORCIST. At that time (in 1990), he had - or, I briefly suspected, pretended that he had - no recollection of it, because the moment had the aura of a secret that wanted to be kept, and no one had really explored this aspect of the film in it's nearly 20 years of release. I explained that it was a subliminal image, something I had first seen pop out at me in a darkened theater the day before the film officially opened in December of 1973; I promised to send him a copy of the image to examine and comment on. To get one, I had to freeze-frame my VHS of the film, sit in front of my analog television set, and shoot a whole reel of film of the image, hoping to get just one that wouldn't have "roll bars" interfering with it - this was long before digital frame grabs. It worked - and I was later also able to pull some other shots of the makeup (not in the film) from a rare 16mm reel of withdrawn TV spots.

When Dick saw the images, he remembered doing the makeup and - something I'll never forget - he congratulated me on the acuity of my vision, one of the nicest compliments I've ever received, considering from whom it came. William Friedkin separately had identified the actor wearing the makeup to my co-author Mark Kermode as Eileen Dietz - this was something not previously known, though Eileen's participation elsewhere in the film was well-known at the time; Friedkin said that the "Apparition" image, as he called it (which I dubbed "Captain Howdy" because this is how Regan identifies the voice inside her elsewhere in the picture), was actually that of a demon test makeup that "didn't work" in its intended use on Linda Blair, but which he later decided might have power if used onscreen briefly.

Mark and I were not at all sure, given its crude, high-school theatrics look, that Dick had done the makeup, but he did admit to doing it, explaining that it was something done in relative haste and not really agonized over. It wasn't anything meant to be seen clearly. He remembered it appearing in the film only once, in a brief scene where the Apparition was double-exposed onto the face of the rotating head model, giving it the brief appearance of literal possession as Regan's room was shaking and quaking - which he considered "probably the most terrifying image in the picture." He was genuinely surprised to learn that it had appeared elsewhere in the movie.

We published the Captain Howdy image for the first time anywhere back in June 1991, and it has since gone on to be paused on countless VCRs and DVD players, to appear on T-shirts and even album covers. But seeing it linger in a still frame is quite different to having it flash out of you in the dark of a big-screened theater. Though it was a makeup that Dick Smith had literally done so quickly that it was instantly forgotten as he pursued some other on-set challenge, it has gone on to become one of the most famous horror images of all time, and I'm sure - in retrospect, and rightfully so - one of his proudest accomplishments.

See also this earlier blog entry about the origins of Captain Howdy.

Per Mario

The Proust Questionnaire

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Those moments when I feel outside of time - when I'm engrossed in reading a book, watching a film, looking at a painting, or gazing at the ocean; when I feel lost (and found) in conversation, or kissing; when I'm caught up in the urgency of writing something beautiful and true.

What is your most marked characteristic?
Productive.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
MARIO BAVA: ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK.

What is your greatest fear?
Losing my wife. That, and being conscious during my cremation.

What historical figure do you most identify with?
Tim Lucas.

Which living person do you most admire?
Donna Lucas.

Who are your heroes in real life?
Writers and artists and filmmakers too numerous to mention; their fabulous muses; good mothers; people who care for animals and the aged.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Need.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Dishonesty.

What is your favorite journey?
A correspondence.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Success.

Which word or phrases do you most overuse?
Hello. What?

What is your greatest regret?
Not believing enough in myself; not speaking French.

What is your current state of mind?
Impatient.

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
My parents... but this would also change me - and so, having already survived the hand I was dealt, maybe not.

What is your most treasured possession?
My manuscripts.    

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Unrequited love.

Where would you like to live?
A clean and spacious house, large enough to hold everything without a hint of clutter, conveniently located in a cheerful, interesting neighborhood, in a country with a good health care system.

What is your favorite occupation?
Writing.

What is the quality you most like in a man?
Reliability.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Reliability.

What are your favourite names?
Van Neste Polglase, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Paul Vaguely, Dolores Haze.

What is your motto?
Never give up.

On UNDER THE SKIN (2013)

This new science fiction film from the UK was way oversold to me. There is quality here, a very watchable, occasionally engrossing technique of style and subtraction, but the serial monotony of the story - a female of extraterrestrial origin lures a series of men into an apartment that traps and absorbs them (think the scenes in Adjani's apartment in Zulawski's POSSESSION played out on black Astaire-Rogers studio floor) - should have more substance or purpose. The old saw about the alien who finds themselves becoming more human after prolonged wearing of their human skins also gets played again, and the film is basically reducible to an abstract remake of JAWS in which the shark ultimately gets eaten. Jonathan Glazer's directorial stance withdraws from the story to a point that initially seems godly but is ultimately atheistic. I've heard this described as Kubrickian, but there is absolutely none of the poker-faced humor that is Kubrick's hallmark. If anything, there are moments reminiscent of Lynch's ERASERHEAD and these are the moments that make this movie so pleasingly environmental and demanding of larger screen immersion. I did not think Scarlett Johansson was exceptional, but I've always found her competent. Worth a look, but hardly the Second Coming.

Soledad Miranda: Born 71 Years Ago Today

Scorsese's NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS Documentary

New York Review of Books editor Robert B. Silvers in his office, as seen in THE 50 YEAR OLD ARGUMENT.

I got to see Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi's documentary feature THE 50 YEAR OLD ARGUMENT (about THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS) last night - I had to go looking for it online, as it has so far aired only on the BBC. The film's onscreen commentators surprisingly favor the British and Irish contributors to the venerable newsprint journal, and it may well be too intellectual to qualify for broadcast on PBS here in the States - and where else would you find it? But it's a surprising, welcome and often engrossing study of the leading role played by one publication in a time when American life was more involved and stimulating, when our culture was being actively determined by books and writers, by intellectualism, literacy and worldliness - as well as revealing yet another facet of Scorsese's love for the New York of his own life and times. In the 1970s, I was a regular reader of the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS and probably a happier person for it; Scorsese and Tedeschi made me feel guilty for falling off the wagon. One speaker in particular reminded me of the importance of reading and responding to the work of one's own time, because literature is a dialogue; it is involvement and interaction that keeps literature vital and moving forward. No one should ever fear of writing the first book to be read by no one.

I found particularly engrossing a segment concerning Joan Didion's NYROB essay about four young black men arrested in connection with a series of Central Park rapes, and how they were subliminally pre-judged in the mainstream press by the introduction of the biasing term "wilding." So well did this word work on the fears of the city's influential white populace that the suspects were identified in the press with their full names - including that of one 14 year old later forensically proved innocent. Didion recalls that working with NYROB editor Robert B. Silvers increased the length of her essay by three-fold. I only vaguely recall the case, but I found this almost scary in its prescience, as our politicians now use similar tactics all the time in the press, against one another and against other countries, biasing the public with their loaded lingo. Didion is not only interviewed but shown reading from her essay.
 
When the film ends, you may feel appalled at the emptiness of our time, how our lives have become engulfed not only by ungrounded images, but images taken at face value in media that continually grows more tyrannical without context and without that grounding in an engaged and informed, conscious dialogue. Life should not be processed in clicks. 
__________

Updates:

According to VARIETY, THE 50 YEAR OLD ARGUMENT will debut on HBO on October 6. Not a likely outlet for this sort of programming, but bravo to them.

Also, reader John Seal writes:

"In light of your blogpost today, you may be interested to know the CP5 [Central Park 5] were finally (FINALLY!) exonerated... http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/nyregion/5-exonerated-in-central-park-jogger-case-are-to-settle-suit-for-40-million.html?_r=0

"There's a very fine documentary about the case that I highly recommend: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2380247/?ref_=nv_sr_1. "

 

 

The Hell of It

In today's mail, I received a copy of Culture Factory USA's limited edition high-definition CD of Paul Williams' soundtrack for PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE, which I've heard is on the verge of exhausting its 3000 print run. I'm glad I snagged it (from Amazon); the soundtrack album hits the listener differently than the music heard in context, even on the 5.1 Blu-ray discs; as I listened to this CD, I could hear the instrumentation deployed as a means of complementing the lyrics, of couching the lyrics; the placement of a Hammond organ here or an electric guitar there stands out more as an element of composition - as the official statement of this musical idea - than it does when there is a visual element also in play. For these reasons, I found "Upholstery" - in some ways the wittiest of its musical satires if one of the score's less compelling songs - is in some ways the most revelatory cue from a production angle. But listening to this collection of songs again confirmed for me all the more that this is Williams' masterpiece. The libretto cuts deep into matters of life and love and metaphysics, not in the least shying away from the film's satirical basis in FAUST, but also the forces of irony that bring us all to our knees at one time or another. In some ways, it's more than De Palma's film warranted, and the primary key to its greatness.

Here's a song that I think could stand as an epitaph for almost anyone who's been around the block, in the arts, in business, in life or love - which I think gives its vaudevillian/music hall trappings a real sting, one that says that all stories must come to an end because the show must go on.

THE RED HOUSE (1947)

Caught Delmer Daves' THE RED HOUSE late last night on Hulu Plus, almost in the spirit of emergency after failing to find anything else acceptable to the two of us. It's a bit overlong, helpless to resist adding loving brushstrokes to secondary characters, but so much of value to savor here... It's not exactly a horror movie, but its mystery and suspense are of a high order, conveyed within an unusual but effective atmosphere that is hard to peg, somewhere between a Lewton RKO and a Disney Hardy Boys serial. (It's beautifully shot by DP Bert Glennon, who had earlier pictures like the 1933 ALICE IN WONDERLAND, Sternberg's THE SCARLET EMPRESS and John Ford's STAGECOACH under his belt.) Had this movie been presented to me without credits, I would have thought it was the work of Jacques Tourneur, if only for its deceptively mild, delicate handling of young romantic leads Lon McCallister and Allene Roberts -- whom I remembered from a couple of ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN appearances, notably the (again) similarly pitched episode "The Haunted Lighthouse." The scenes between a very young but quickly ripening Rory Calhoun and Julie London look ripped from the pages of LIL' ABNER and have the snapping, lusty vitality of early Russ Meyer -- in fact, the entire film, while superficially wholesome, contains a surprising number of fairly forthright sexual references in its dialogue; this serves to foreshadow the romantic obsession/mental ilness that's finally revealed as the prime motivator behind the mystery, which builds to a surprising, semi-giallo intensity given Edward G. Robinson's somewhat fetishized dread "The Red House."

Some VIDEO WATCHDOG (P)updates

I neglected to mention that, on June 15, VIDEO WATCHDOG marked the 24th anniversary of the printing and delivery of its very first issue. So VW is now officially in its 25th year of publication. It's hard to believe that we're not only still doing this after all these years, but still evolving it.

You're surely wondering what has happened to the Digital Edition of VW 176, especially since 177 is already in the hands of our first-class subscribers. It is coming, but Donna has been very tied up with other duties - sending out the new issue, prepping the next one (which I'm programming and editing now) and also working with associates to get our back issue inventory digitized and digitally restored so that we can keep our Indiegogo promise to deliver that Digital Archive before the end of the year. But all the digital bells and whistles are in place for 176 - she just has to find the time to drop everything into its proper place and upload it.

For those of you who keep track of my audio commentaries, we're now in the midst of a virtual epidemic of them. Since last fall, I've recorded an even dozen commentaries for various companies, most of them in the UK. My most recent ones for Kino Lorber/Redemption have been out for awhile now, the three Jess Franco titles (A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD, NIGHTMARES COME AT NIGHT and THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF) and Bava's 5 DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON. Available now, or in the immediate future, are two from Arrow Films: Roger Corman's PIT AND THE PENDULUM (also available as a steelbook) and Robert Fuest's DR PHIBES RISES AGAIN in their box set THE COMPLETE DR PHIBES. The cherry on top of the cake (or is it the cake on top of the cherry) will be the release of the BFI's ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET 1963-1974 box set which includes a new commentary from me on each of the five main features; as audio commentaries go, I have to say this is my proudest accomplishment. I've also delivered a commentary for one of my favorite movies, Georges Franju's EYES WITHOUT A FACE, for the BFI's upcoming release of that title. I've agreed to do another commentary for an upcoming US release which hasn't yet been announced, and still another is being discussed.

Donna and I also intend to be adding some material to our digital edition of MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK in acknowledgement of Mario's centenary on July 30 of this year. If you've already bought and downloaded the book's digital edition, your copy will be automatically updated. And if you haven't, what are you waiting for?

Donna tells me that we are now officially down to our last 100 copies of MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK. The book will never again be published in this same deluxe, unexpurgated format and there are no plans for us to reprint it in any form at present. Remember, this is not just a critical biography of Mario Bava; it also tells the entire story of Italian cult cinema from its silent origins till its climactic crisis in the 1980s. It also encompasses the careers of many other important players in Bava's filmography, notably those of Aldo Fabrizi, Gina Lollobrigida and Steve Reeves. If you want to own a copy, I'll tell you, in all seriousness, that this would be the time to start seriously pooling your resources to do so. We're not going to do a countdown or anything; we'll  just be suddenly announcing one day that it's no longer available from us. And then -- as you and I will both sadly see -- the going price will shoot up even higher as it falls under the control of secondary sellers. But the digital edition will remain available - with all the advantages of the tangible edition (save tangibility!) and none of the disadvantages. It's even easy to read in bed!

I've got some other projects in progress as well. I've been editing and revising an unpublished novel of mine, THE ONLY CRIMINAL, which I've mentioned here before, in the hope that it might soon see the light of day. My BOOK OF RENFIELD appeared some ten years after THROAT SPROCKETS, and it's now going on ten years since BOOK OF RENFIELD appeared, so I'm due to return as a novelist. I also completed a novelette last year that we expected to bring out this year, but which got pushed aside by the imperatives of the Digital Edition project... I got some fabulous advance blurbs on it and am looking forward to its release sometime next year as well.

What else? Oh yes, don't forget that I'm writing a column for GOREZONE called "Tales From the Attic." In their next issue, I offer my own personal list of the Ten Best horror cinema-related books I've read, along with another ten back-up recommendations. Till now, GOREZONE has been available by subscription only, but I understand this is now changing and the next issue will receive some limited newsstand circulation. Check it out!

DOCTOR ORLOFF'S MONSTER: From Germany, In English

Just watched the new German release of DR. ORLOFF'S MONSTER (1964) called Die Lebenden Leichen des Doktor Jekyll ("The Living Corpses of Doctor Jekyll"), released by Edition Tonfilm. English-speaking Franco fans will be interested to learn that it runs a bit longer than the Image Entertainment release (85m 18s as opposed to 84m 53s; I'm not sure what was added) and offers the English soundtrack (previously limited to a French Mad Movies release), as well as German and French tracks. To see the film uncut and in English is something special, as the US release didn't include any of the nude scenes.

Seeing the film again for the first time in several years, I found myself looking at some scenes I had completely forgotten (like Dr. Fisherman's visit to an opium den) and more impressed with it than previously, perhaps a result of the English track. Another thing that took me by surprise with this viewing were the similarities of Melissa's homecoming to her uncle's castle and Christina's advent into the same predicament in A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD (1971). The character of the aunt played here by Luisa Sala is very similar to Rose Kienkens' character in VIRGIN and, of course, both families consist of killers and corpses! Though not a complete success, this is an ambitious film of its station and a stylistic advance beyond THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF (1962, with which it shares some exteriors and interiors), with Perla Cristal's nightclub performance a particular standout of staging and the tender relationship between Melissa (Agnes Spaak) and the robotized corpse of her late father (Hugo Blanco) looking forward to another important Spanish horror film yet to come: Victor Erice's THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (El espíritu de la colmena, 1973). 

The disc includes the 11 minutes of nude outtakes that Image included, and as a nice bonus, it adds on the French and Italian trailers (content is identical) and a pinkish Super 8 sound version of THE AWFUL DR ORLOF called THE DEMON DOCTOR, which runs 16m 41s and includes the original (non-nude) surgical sequence. For some reason, though it's in English and opens with the film's BBFC certificate, the Super 8's main titles are from the Italian version, the one with the fake Anglicized credits like "Regia di Walter Alexander." It makes for quite a happy, nostalgic, if pleasingly dirty package.

I obtained this fine product from the good folks at Diabolik DVD. Here are some frame grabs from the main feature and the Super 8 film: 

I had forgotten it's a Christmas picture! Here is Franco's idea of how to decorate a tree!

Farewell, Mater Tenebrarum

Word reaches us today of the passing of the striking Romanian actress Veronica Lazar, at the age of 75. Lazar, who settled in Rome and was married to actor Adolfo Celi (Valmont in DANGER: DIABOLIK), is perhaps the only actress to have been directed by three generations of the Bava family. She was a featured player in Dario Argento's INFERNO (pictured), playing the Nurse/Mater Tenebrarum; in this role, she was directed by Mario Bava for the final special effects reveal of her character and also by the film's credited assistant director Lamberto Bava on the days when Argento was hospitalized for hepatitis, and she more recently appeared in the "Gemelle" episode of the 2012 Italian miniseries 6 PASSI NEL GIALLO directed by Lamberto's son Fabrizio Bava. She worked again with Argento in THE STENDHAL SYNDROME, and also played Martha in Lucio Fulci's THE BEYOND. She was also a recurring cast member for Michelangelo Antonioni and Bernardo Bertolucci, appearing in IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN and BEYOND THE CLOUDS, as well as LAST TANGO IN PARIS, LUNA and THE SHELTERING SKY.

Delphine Seyrig's Feminist Acting Documentary

Barbara Steele, among the interviewees in Delphine Seyrig's SOIS BELLE ET TAIS-TOI.

Finally caught up today with a film I've long wanted to see: SOIS BELLE ET TAIS-TOI ("Look Pretty and Shut Up," shot 1970-76, released 1981), a documentary directed by actress Delphine Seyrig. Shot on prehistoric videotape in grainy B&W, the film finds her interviewing a number of actresses (including Jane Fonda, Ellen Burstyn, Maria Schneider, Anna Wiazemsky, Candy Clark, Cindy Williams, Millie Perkins and others) about the cruel realities of their profession and how unrealistically women were depicted onscreen, at a time when many of the most popular films were about male relationships.

I can't say it's a well-made film - Seyrig doesn't use videotape too differently than audio tape, and the interviews are crudely assembled - but what it contains is of terrific interest as a time capsule of what the female artists of this period were coping with professionally. You might expect it, but there is zero discussion of sexual harrassment - the Seventies weren't that outspoken. 

Jane Fonda, speaking impeccable French in footage added to the film in 1976, talks about filming JULIA (1977) with Vanessa Redgrave and how the men who wrote, produced and directed it were paranoid about telling the story of a close friendship between two women, actually counting how many times they touched in each take, fearing that too much touching would make them appear like lesbians. Fonda is the only woman interviewed who had ever been asked to play the friend of another female character, and none of the women interviewed could recollect ever playing a scene in which they were required to show warmth toward another woman.

Also revealing is a clip of Barbara Steele (pictured), lamenting her work onscreen, which she insists is the absolute opposite of who she is. She admits to having been a cult actress in "Grand Guignol, outrageous kind of horror flicks" and that she's "done a lot of films I didn't want to do" and that she's now [1970] actually stopped working because she hated what she was being offered so. "I have bad karma also, you know," she says. "I think that you should really try and stick with what you want to do, what makes you LIKE yourself. I mean, I have this incredible shyness about it. I feel like hitting people in the head, when people come up and say 'Hey, we loved you in...' and I say 'But THAT'S not me... it's somebody else's image... screw THAT!' Don't tell me that you liked me in THAT because I wasn't even THERE! That was somebody else!"

First Look: VIDEO WATCHDOG 177

The next issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG - now at the printer - will be a Eurocrime special with extensive coverage of the poliziotteschi (po-leet-zio-tess-ky, or Italian cop movie) genre. I'm always a little sensitive about publishing too many photos of firearms in a given issue, but this issue has so many that the NRA should have taken out an ad. So what do the poliziotteschi films have to do with fantastic cinema? you may ask. Well, these films are over the top, for one thing; secondly, they share with Italian horror and fantasy cinema many of their most familiar directors (Sergio Martino, Fernando Di Leo, Umberto Lenzi, etc), and they also share with the best horror cinema a means of using entertainment to reflect socio-political realities that could not be addressed more directly. We have a feature article by George Pacheco offering a concise overview of the genre, and also John Charles reviewing the two Fernando Di Leo Italian Crime box sets from Raro Video as well as a preview of Mike Malloy's forthcoming DVD documentary EUROCRIME! THE ITALIAN COP AND GANGSTER FILMS THAT RULED THE '70s.

Furthermore - and this was pure synchronicity - Larry Blamire weighs in with a Star Turn column devoted to a memorable guest star appearance on Patrick McGoohan's DANGER MAN (aka SECRET AGENT) series. No, not gonna tell you which one - it's a secret! But he's written a remarkable appreciation of a guest star and you'll want to be the first person on your block to know her identity. (Oops! gave you a little hint there - forget I said that!)

But maybe you're only in it for the horror? Well, we have a lengthy review I've written of the German BLOOD AND ROSES DVD that compares the European and English-language versions of the movie, as well as additional coverage of BYZANTIUM, THE CHILDREN, THE HAUNTING, FANTASTIC VOYAGE, HOUSE OF WAX, THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE, SECONDS, SCHLACKEN THE PAINTER (like BLOOD AND ROSES, another J. Sheridan LeFanu adaptation), TERRORVISION, THE VIDEO DEAD, THE UNSEEN, VAMPIRA AND ME... and THE DISCO EXORCIST! Furthermore, back in gun territory, we have John Charles on Grindhouse Releasing's THE BIG GUNDOWN and Kim Newman on the most recent Charlie Chan releases. It's a great, variety-packed issue, if I do say so myself.

It will ship to subscribers and retailers around the second week of June.

A number of you have been asking where the new Digital Edition is. Well, it's coming. The way we are liking to do things is to publish and ship an issue, create the next one, create the previous digital edition once people have had a chance to digest the print version, and so on. Donna is preparing the Digital Edition now, as a matter of fact. We think you're going to love what Larry is doing with the digital version of his column. We're so glad we asked him aboard.

VW 177 Nearing Completion

Donna, John and I are putting the finishing touches on VIDEO WATCHDOG 177, which is going to be a special Italian Crime issue consisting of new contributor George Pacheco's overview of the "poliziotteschi" films of the '70s and John Charles' detailed coverage of Raro Video's two Fernando Di Leo box sets, as well as his review of Mike Malloy's documentary on the subject, EUROCRIME! My own contributions to this issue include an in-depth review and comparison of the Euro and US versions of Roger Vadim's BLOOD AND ROSES and a lengthy look at Jess Franco's 1974 kinkfest THE HOT NIGHTS OF LINDA. Also SECONDS, THE BIG GUNDOWN, THE HAUNTING, FANTASTIC VOYAGE, Kim Newman on the latest Charlie Chan releases, and (I mean it) much more!

10 Cultish Reasons to Vacation with MR. HOBBS

Twilight Time, the extra-mile label that issues limited pressings of major studio films on Blu-ray with isolated music tracks, recently issued Henry Koster's comedy MR. HOBBS TAKES A VACATION (1962) in a limited edition of 3000 units. Scripted by Nunnally Johnson (who squeezes in a winking reference to Nabokov's LOLITA without mentioning the nymphet's name) from a novel by Edward Streeter, the film stars James Stewart and Maureen O'Hara as a pair of kissy grandparents (she's "36-24-36, and still operational," we're told) who, through her orchestrations, arranges for them to spend yet another vacation in the privacy-cancelling company of their entire unhappy family. As the grown kids and their respective families arrive, we  begin to understand why O'Hara is doing everything she can to avoid another vacation of erotic abandon with her martini-mixing husband.  

I recommend this film to anyone who enjoys wry, low-key situation comedy from this period. The Twilight Time disc has some sync issues that may be inherent in the film itself, but it's nevertheless a handsome presentation. Revisiting the film helped me to better appreciate what a cognizant film it was about the pop culture of its times, and how influential a work it became within certain spheres. So here are some reasons, beyond the obvious, why you might want to splurge on a copy or, if your standards aren't so high, to stream it from Amazon.
    

1.) When the Hobbs family - Mr. (Roger), Mrs. (Peggy), teenage daughter Katey (Lauri Peters) and TV-addict son Danny (Michael Burns, later the star of Robert Altman's breakthrough picture THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK) - arrive at their holiday destination, they find themselves faced with a heavily weathered beachfront manse with the mange. As he's about to venture inside for the first time, Hobbs says "If it was good enough for Edgar Allan Poe, it's good enough for us!" (or words to that effect), which - because I'd recently seen and recorded a commentary for Roger Corman's PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961) - helped me to see that this was indeed another House of Usher posited on the Pacific coastline! Thus, this throwaway line is very likely the first major studio acknowledgement of the great commercial success then being enjoyed by American International Pictures.

2.) I also strongly believe that MR. HOBBS TAKES A VACATION was one of the seminal influences on AIP's then-forthcoming and highly popular BEACH PARTY series. It was made only one year before the first BEACH PARTY (1963), and according to published sources like Mark Thomas McGee's history of AIP, Lou Rusoff's original script for that film was about young people much closer to Fabian's Beatnik-bearded hot-rodder Joe than the homogenized Italian-American twenty-somethings we finally got in Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. Here we also get the delicate generational conflicts between the young and the once-young, with Roger Hobbs taking an almost anthropological look askance at the problems and pastimes of his children and the families they've begun, not to mention the voluptuous blonde neighbor who flounces over to his towel to be friendly.

3.) This is Valerie Varda as Marika Carter, a heavily-accented buxom beauty who in essence lays the groundwork for Eva Six and particularly Bobbi Shaw in the BEACH PARTY series. 

4.) MR. HOBBS also clearly influenced certain William Castle films yet to come (notably THE SPIRIT IS WILLING, 1965), especially in the way Henry Mancini's wholesomely lazy score (isolated for heightened enjoyment on Twilight Time's Blu-ray) lends ironic gracious-living shadings to the baroque eccentricities of the beach house. This facet also points the way to TV's THE ADDAMS FAMILY which, like THE SPIRIT IS WILLING, was scored by the great Vic Mizzy in a manner that was, I believe, influenced by what Mancini did here but took his principles in an altogether more instrumentally byzantine direction.

  
5.) It's got Minerva Urecal playing a Swedish maid. Minerva (who must have been out-prettied at auditions by Marjorie Main for years) had been haunting B-movies since the 1930s. She was Bela Lugosi's housekeeper in THE APE MAN (1940), among other things, so this was a step up - and she used her leverage from this film to land a key role in George Pal's THE 7 FACES OF DR. LAO (1964).

6.) If you watch this film without knowing anything about it, you are guaranteed to be startled when the name JOHN SAXON dances out onscreen in multicolored lettering during the animated main titles. It's just not a name that lends itself to multicolored dancing letters, but there he is - playing Stewart and O'Hara's academic son-in-law - a guy so far-fetchedly intellectual, he has actually read WAR AND PEACE, and MOBY DICK to boot.

7.) Fabian, whose character inexplicably begins to sprout a beatnik bead part-way through the movie, has a preposterous pop song number ("Cream Puff," co-authored by Mancini and Johnny Mercer - the men who wrote "Moon River," for crying out loud) with co-star Lauri Peters. The playback is riotously out-of-sync with their lip movements, which raises the question of how much better than the live take could the dubbed track possibly be? The song requires Peters to caress Fabian with the term of endearment "Jelly Roll."

8.) I defy anyone to watch Stewart's "beguiling" (NEW YORK TIMES) performance in this film without frequently flashing back to the work he'd done for Alfred Hitchcock, particularly VERTIGO. The dichotomy thus proposed is an object lesson in an actor intent on demonstrating his range and his willingness to please audiences. His performance here is not exactly subversive, but there is something subversive-lite about the film as a whole - the way it gives family life "a gentle poke in the ribs" (VARIETY) - that would not work so well without Stewart (of whom we began to see a much darker side in the post-war work that began with Anthony Mann's WINCHESTER 73) in the driver's seat.

9.) One of the Hobbs daughters is played by Natalie Trundy. PLANET OF THE APES series regular, 'nuff said.

10.) Yes, that's Beaver's grade school principal Doris Packer serving as the dance hostess, and your eyes do not deceive you: the band's trumpet player is none other than Herb Alpert.

   

He Introduced Spider-Man to the World

RIP Dick Ayers, the great Silver Age pencil and ink man who contributed most importantly to the Marvel Age of Comics, who has passed away at the age of 90. Ayers did his own work for titles as illustrious as TALES TO ASTONISH, STRANGE TALES, GHOST RIDER and an impressive 10-year run on SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS, but he may be best remembered as one of Jack Kirby's most beloved inkers in a fruitful run of monster, western and superhero comics including STRANGE TALES' unforgettable "Fin Fang Foom!" and some of the earliest issues of THE AVENGERS and THE FANTASTIC FOUR. Though the interior art was turned over to one of Marvel's most distinctive artists, Steve Ditko, Ayers inked Kirby's art on the issue of the magazine that introduced the Amazing Spider-Man to the world - his single-most iconic assignment in a career spanning 70 years.

Quick Look: SORCERER on Blu-ray

Still an editing nightmare that spends its first hour elliptically globe-hopping to introduce four losers we never get to know, William Friedkin's SORCERER arrives on Blu-ray with jungle foliage newly the color of a Jelly Belly Green Apple bean. Unlike Clouzot's original THE WAGES OF FEAR, this not-a-remake isn't an exercise in unbearable suspense so much as an attempt (to paraphrase Franju) to "twist the audience's head off" with extended scenes of miserable cyphers enduring the worst a South American Mother Nature can deal out as they run a fool's errand. Hardly the best film Friedkin ever made, as he claims, but probably not the worst film ever made by someone pretending they were Werner Herzog. The harrowing bridge scene still makes the misguided trip moderately worth taking, and the original emerges from its shadow all the more impressive. No extras, but the BD Book packaging includes a 40-page chapter about the film from Friedkin's autobiography. There is also a letter from the director, in which he basically admits that the film came about because his new house in Bel Air was getting to him. (Warner Home Video, $27.98)

My First Animated Skeleton

This bizarre artwork is a detail from the dust jacket of the US hardcover edition of Ngaio Marsh's 1949 mystery novel A WREATH FOR RIVERA. When I was a kid, my mother and grandmother sometimes took me to Salvation Army thrift stores in our neighborhood, where I was turned loose in the used book department while they did their own foraging and rummaging. One day, they took long enough at their shopping that I exhausted the store's supply of comics and children's books and began browsing outside my usual perimeters.

I found this.

A WREATH FOR RIVERA became the first adult novel I ever owned - the beginning of a life-long collection. I remember having to talk Mom and Granny into it; they said it was too grown-up for me, but something in me responded to this cover art and I had to have it. I'm sure I saw this before I ever saw Ray Harryhausen animate skeletons in JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS - and I didn't see 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD until its 1970s reissue - so this was the first animated skeleton, so to speak, in my experience.

Long story short, I was allowed to have it - it was only a quarter or something. As it happens, I never did read it, probably because I couldn't find any passages about a skeleton drummer inside, but I kept it for a long time. from that day forward, whenever we returned to the local Salvation Army store, I went straight to the book department in search of more cool covers. As a result, I acquired a fairly sophisticated collection of fiction (mostly paperback) at a young age; one of my favorite childhood memories dates back to a visit from my out-of-towner Uncle Larry, who looked through my collection and called out to my mother, "Hey, Bones! This boy of yours has good taste!" I think I must have become a critic then and there. (Yes, my mother's nickname was Bones. Interesting, isn't it?)

I remembered this old book and its cover art out of nowhere a couple of nights ago and went looking for a scan of the dust jacket. The picture isn't exactly how I remembered it - for some reason, what I told myself in memory was that the cover showed a dozen or so skeletons firing Lugers at each other - but nope, this is definitely the book that nudged me into the wonderful world of vintage used hardcovers at the age of five or six.

Pow!
_______________

Update April 2, 2014:

Reader John Seal writes: "You may be interested to know that LA art punks Monitor cribbed the Marsh book cover for their 'Beak/Pet Wedding' single in 1979. Great band – I saw them open for Cabaret Voltaire in late 1980."

Some Forbidden Swedish Cinema

An instance of PERFORMANCE-like decadence from Mai Zetterling's NIGHT GAMES.

Last night I treated myself to an evening of forbidden Swedish cinema (forbidden in the sense that it's not commercially available here), beginning with Mai Zetterling's bizarre NIGHT GAMES (Nattlek, 1966), a film which won some stateside notoreity when Shirley Temple resigned from the board of the San Francisco Film Festival when they refused to bar the film - which she considered obscene - from exhibition. It's a garish film to be sure, aggressively weird in that faux-Fellini way, and it contains at least one scene (between Ingrid Thulin and the young actor playing her pre-pubescent son) that would never be permitted today, but as the point of the story became clearer, I found it winning me over to its side. This started happening when I realized that the film had been the missing visual link - in my own cinematic education - between Losey's THE SERVANT and Cammell and Roeg's PERFORMANCE; like those films, NIGHT GAMES is about people who don't get enough sunshine, whose homes fester into a second skull housing their increasingly baroque and dangerous games of cat and mouse. Made pretty much exactly between those two films, we can clearly see ordinary decadence becoming both sick and psychedelic here.

Secondly, I watched Joseph W. Sarno's YES (shot 1966, released 1968) - which I believe was shot under the title THE MANNIKIN but was later retitled TO INGRID, MY LOVE, LISA (under which title it's actually available from Something Weird Video). It's the story of Lisa, a bisexual fashion designer who falls a bit too conveniently in love with Ingrid, the shy, lanky blonde farm girl next door after moving into a new house. She lures her into a modelling job in an effort to seduce her, but Ingrid is so pleased to be away from her inexperienced boyfriend in the country that she starts sleeping with every man she can find. In the end, Lisa does have her way with Ingrid, but afterwards, as if having repaid her gratitude to Lisa, Ingrid gets up, gets dressed and flees the scene, leaving Lisa in tears - and then goes outside, where (in view of a church, no less!), she takes the hand of the first man she meets, as if desperate to prove to herself that she's not queer.

YES turned out to be conspicuously different to the Swedish-language version I'd seen before. Kvinnolek (which I'm told means "Girl on Girl" - not to be confused with his 1974 Marie Forsa film GIRL MEETS GIRL) is not just different in the musical way that INGA (made immediately before it) is different to its Swedish version. It's nearly a 10 minute difference. Kvinnolek includes several scenes that weren't in the copy of YES I watched:

1) In the first party scene, a blonde guest on the dance floor strips down to her panties and dances until one of the male guests carries her off and throws her on a bed;

2) Ingrid visits Lisa's office and makes the acquaintance of one of her male business associates, whom we subsequently see (even in the YES version, with omits their meeting) dating and making love;

3) After Ingrid seduces a member of a rock band and tires him out, she redresses and takes to the street in frustration where she meets another man within view of a church, who takes her to his apartment, removes her dress and begins making love to her (if this sounds familiar, it's because the US version removed this portion and used the first part to create a more conservative finale);

4) Kvinnolek includes a brief night exterior of Ingrid running toward camera down a street, but omits the set-up for this shot found in YES, where she is accosted by two drunken men after leaving the previous man's apartment - the scene humorously plays itself out with two louts deciding they are happier with each other than chasing a broad;

Finally, the climactic lesbian scene between Ingrid and Lisa unfolds differently in the two versions. In Kvinnolek, their initial standing kiss cuts to a full length shot of the two women, covered by a white sheet, then the scene cuts to them in bed, Lisa kissing Ingrid's face everywhere but on the mouth. Then, the scene fades to white (a most unusual touch for 1966) and we see the two women waking together and having what appears to be - it's in Swedish, so I can't tell for certain - a happy, conciliatory conversation which then fades to black as the exit music plays.

The scene, as it plays in YES, adds in roughly a full minute of graphic yet non-explicit footage of two body doubles sucking and grinding away, and then fades to black before fading in to Ingrid's awakening and furtive departure. I couldn't help wondering if this was the only instance where Sarno recut the US version of one of his Swedish films to make it both more sexually explicit, yet at the same time, more sexually conservative?

Catching Up With Five Mean Years

Last week, I decided to fill a gap in my Greil Marcus collection by acquiring his book THE DOORS : A LIFETIME OF LISTENING TO FIVE MEAN YEARS, which I was able to pick up in hardcover from an Amazon Market seller for the princely sum of one penny, plus $3.99 postage. Though I was cautioned that the book was used, upon opening the package, I found the book not only in mintish condition but the dust jacket bore an "Autographed Copy" sticker. I couldn't believe it, but I looked inside and, sure enough, there was the great man's signature, looking for all the world like a length of pliered wire.

Last night, I finished it. Like a number of its readers, I was somewhat disappointed. The entire book, short as a lark, appears to have been prompted by Marcus' listening to the now-out-of-print 4-CD Rhino Handmade set BOOT YER BUTTS!, which I don't have and have never heard; it was widely condemned for its poor sound quality but he makes it sound spottily appetizing and in some instances astounding - so he put me on the scent for a copy. As always, Marcus is a stimulating thinker (when he makes the otherwise unacceptable comment that "Not To Touch The Earth" is "musically incoherent," I have to stop and evaluate precisely what he's saying) and I admire all that he ropes into the discussion, but though Marcus has always lead me on topics like Bob Dylan, I felt he had less to teach or offer me about these guys. And his project is further handicapped because he only seems to admire certain aspects of the Doors' recorded works whereas I find much to value in those middle albums he has no use for. If anything, I much prefer those to the drunk tank blues of L.A. WOMAN, which he likes more than I do. I was glad we were agreed on the Oliver Stone film, though, which he made me want to watch again.

Good deal for a penny, though. Try your luck.