Remembering Cincinnati's 12 TALL TALES

Granted, it's an odd name for a horror film package, but WKRC-TV's short-lived 12 TALL TALES is a fond memory for those of us who oversaw its brief timespan. The name of the show was derived from the then-ABC affiliate's nickname of "Tall 12," which was owed to it having the tallest transmission tower in the Greater Cincinnati tri-state area.

One receptive May night, at 11:55pm, 12 TALL TALES suddenly appeared, with probably the moodiest, creepiest horror montage I've ever seen cut for a local television station. I wish I could link you to it, but I'm assuming the footage no longer exists - unless it's tucked away in a WKRC archive over at Union Terminal. I have select memories of this opening, but MONSTER KID HOME MOVIES producer Joe Busam - who, unknown to me at the time, was watching every broadcast along with me - committed it to his memory much more vividly. I offer his reconstruction in orange bold with my own fine-tuning inserted:

The opening started with a twilight shot of the Cincinnati skyline as Glenn Ryle intoned sinister happenings taking place and mentioning specific Cincinnati locations... A lightning flash then CUTS to the turrets of the old Castle façade entrance to Eden Park beside Cincinnati's old Museum of Natural History...

..., followed by a CUT to a subjective view as we pass through its archway to a wooded path... CUT to a POV of  an unidentified character wearing rubber monster glove hands prowling through a thicket in Eden Park. Then CUT to a wide exterior of the opening to the Cincinnati subway along I-75 near Central Parkway...

CUT to a closeup of the gate as two monster hands open the gate... The camera zooms into the darkness... As the darkness fills the screen, MATCH CUT to footage of Steven Ritch's character in THE WEREWOLF popping up from lower screen, transforming and drooling...

This was then followed by a montage of stills (one of which I recall as being Bela Lugosi in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN) accompanied by a woman's scream on the soundtrack finally DISSOLVING to a night shot of the 12 tower...

... and maybe a final flash of lightning and the words 12 TALL TALES. 

Once Cincinnati's Monster Kids got a load of this, we were hooked. What was especially wonderful about this opening, with its crude 16mm B&W newsreel photography and its incorporation of classic monster images and local landmarks, was its creepy suggestion that there might be scary things lurking just under the surface of the city where we lived. The show also struck at just the right time for me, personally - I was 9 years old when it started, going on 10, summer vacation was nigh, and what better excuse than 12 TALL TALES to arrange a Saturday night camp-out with a friend on your, or their, living room floor? Also, as I recall, because these films were being shown in a 90-minute time slot, they came with a promise of limited commercial interruption after an initial 5-minute cluster of commercials at the top, ensuring that the films themselves began at the Witching Hour.

I recently became a subscriber to THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER's online Archive, and it has more or less swallowed me whole. I've been using its various ads and listings to identify and chronologize the movie-viewing of my childhood at favorite haunts like the Plaza Theater in Norwood, the Mariemont and Keith's (where the Disney films played), and the weekend triple bills at the Twin and Oakley Drive-Ins. One of the easier tasks for me to complete was the following complete chronology of 12 TALL TALES broadcasts:

Basil Rathbone in THE MAD DOCTOR.

1966

May 21 - THE MAD DOCTOR (1941)
May 28 - AMONG THE LIVING (1941)
Jun 04 - THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953)
Jun 11 - THE ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU (1957)
Jun 18 - THE WOMAN EATER (1956)
Jun 25 - VOODOO WOMAN (1957)
Jul 02 - Unlisted
Jul 09 - Pre-empted by THE AMERICA GAME

Jul 16 - I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN (1957)
Jul 23 - I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN (1957)

Since each of the broadcasts from May 21 through June 18 were from a Columbia TV syndication package, the unlisted July 2 broadcast was very likely Fred F. Sears' THE WEREWOLF (1956), which is conspicuous in its absence from the list - particularly considering its contribution to the show's opening montage. Furthermore, I feel certain that I saw the entire film one night on 12 TALL TALES. As for the recurrence of that last title, I sense a misidentification in the scheduling; I suspect that the July 16 listing was in fact I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF, otherwise there would have been no need to repeat the TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN listing. Also, I have a memory of seeing I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF around this time.

I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN.

For some reason, 12 TALL TALES then vanished from the WKRC-TV Saturday night line-up. I remember checking the newspaper TV Magazine listings for that time slot in vain, week after week, until I finally gave up. Coincidentally, the Cincinnati area's only other horror-themed movie block, the long-running SHOCK THEATRE on WCPO-TV (Channel 9), lasted only another six weeks and was then replaced by the Cleveland-based rock 'n' roll show UPBEAT. The Monster Kids, I guess, were growing up.

About seven months later, if the listings are correct, 12 TALL TALES returned to Channel 12 on the evening of February 11, 1967. The name of the program is there but the page doesn't otherwise identify the inaugural feature; it simply resumed without fanfare. The fact that the first two return broadcasts didn't specify a feature, that the program was again soon pre-empted by network content, and that its starting time soon became unpredictable, suggests that different factions at the station may have disagreed about the show's value. The 11:55pm start time held firm until the April 15 broadcast, from which time the show's start time alternated between 12:45 and 1:00am, once going as late as 1:45am, until it expired for the second and last time. This irregularity in itself would have proved destructive to the ratings because an important part of 12 TALL TALES charm is that its original timeslot guaranteed that the movie would end in time for you to switch over to WCPO-TV in time to catch the opening of Bob Shreve's SHOENLING ALL-NITE THEATRE, which always reliably started at 1:30am.

Allison Hayes in ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN.

1967

Feb 11 - Unlisted
Feb 18 - Unlisted
Feb 25 - ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN (1958)
Mar 04 - CALTIKI THE IMMORTAL MONSTER (1959) - my first-ever Mario Bava movie!
Mar 11 - INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN (1956)
Mar 18 - Pre-empted by Basketball
Mar 25 - FROM HELL IT CAME (1957)
Apr 01 - HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1958)
Apr 08 - THE DISEMBODIED (1958)
Apr 15 - THE PHANTOM OF CRESTWOOD (1932)

Apr 22, 12:45 - WORLD WITHOUT END (1958)
Apr 29, 12:45 - THE PHANTOM OF CRESTWOOD (1932)
May 06, 1:00 - THE LEOPARD MAN (1943)
May 13, 12:45 - EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS (1954)
May 20 - Pre-empted by another movie running overtime
May 27, 12:45 - THE GIANT BEHEMOTH (1959)
Jun 03, 12:45 - THE TINGLER (1959)
Jun 10, 1:45 - CURSE OF THE DEMON (1957)
Jun 17, 12:45 - Unlisted

THE GIANT BEHEMOTH.

Fortunately, the second round of Unlisteds aren't too much of a brain-teaser. These almost certainly included Roger Corman's THE WASP WOMAN (1959), Edgar G. Ulmer's DAUGHTER OF DR JEKYLL (1957), Bert I. Gordon's THE CYCLOPS (1957), and Monte Hellman's BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE (1959) - there's your four Unlisteds right there! - as these were all part of the same Allied Artists TV package as the other titles shown in the first half of the program's 1967 slate. The TV prints of these B-pictures were padded for telecast - in some instances with additional footage, but also with interminable introductory scrolls that, in those days, were a charmingly hokey way to psych yourself up to watch a horror movie. Check out this 2006 Video WatchBlog entry for an example.

Looking back from a nearly 50-year vantage, it's startling for me to realize what a short-lived thing 12 TALL TALES actually was. Seen - lived through - at that time, when many of these movies were still new to me, or being viewed for the second time for the first time, when I was a sponge soaking up all this information, the experience seemed quite vast and its souvenir images of Vincent Price's suave menace, Butcher Benton's baggy eyes, Caltiki's blobby rampage, and a giant Allison Hayes howling her libidinous lust for two-timing Harry would only swell to greater proportions in the cathedral of my memory.

But a couple dozen movies. That's all it was - plus the anticipation and the living and the ritual sharing of 12 TALL TALES. How starved for this stuff we must have been!

10 Years A Blogger, 30 Years A Watchdog

You may have noticed that I've been busily adding new material to Video WatchBlog all week. And with good reason! My sudden show of industry was all building up to today, when I can remind my followers with some sense of accomplishment that it was 10 years ago tonight that I first launched this eclectic blog - which now extends to 1,172 postings that have enjoyed well over 1,165,000 page views.

It was also 30 years ago this month that Video Watchdog itself was first launched as a regular column on the last page of the October 1985 issue of VIDEO TIMES magazine. Illustrated at left is that very first column, which was inspired by a coincidental viewing of HERCULES with Steve Reeves on home video and a cable television broadcast. "Tipper," a goof on then-self-styled media watchdog Tipper Gore and Nipper, the RCA Records mascot, was dreamed up by someone on staff at the magazine and did not tag along for the idea's subsequent residences at OVERVIEW, GOREZONE or VIDEO WATCHDOG.

Due to the construction of the Digital Archive and subsequent digital editions and books, it's been a couple of lean years for the print magazine. We're not happy about it, and we apologize - two-person operation, and all of that. I have now edited nearly all the contents of VIDEO WATCHDOG 180, which has shaped up to be an issue of concentrated quality, much like 179, as we've been able to cherry-pick from a rich accumulation of material. We intend to be at the printer by the end of the month.

In closing, if you follow this blog, if you enjoy the material I freely post here, please consider investing in some of the amazing products at our website! Thank you.

Years 11 and 31 start here.

Things From the Attic: THE LOVE REBELLION (1967)

PORNOSPIELE MIT STOCK UND PEITSCHE
"Porno Games with Stick and Whip"
1967, Candybox, 79m 58s, E21.71, DVD

Reviewed by Tim Lucas

This German import is a lovingly restored release of Joseph W. Sarno's THE LOVE REBELLION, evidently the first film ever distributed by Cannon Films and long considered lost. Unusually, it resurfaced a year or two ago as a dubbed German-language print released in a strictly limited, numbered edition of 500 copies. The upswing of this anomaly is that the spoken dialogue plays with more dramatic inflection than Sarno's live soundtracks usually have. It's a shame the original track is lost, but in this case certainly not detrimental to the film.

The story begins with one of Sarno's trademark "returns," as Wendy Fletcher (Gretchen Rudolph acting as "Ginger Stevens") returns to New York City after completing college to live with her widowed mother Jo (Melissa Ford), who runs an industrial supplies shipping company. Jo is having a guilt-ridden affair with her head of sales, Don Halleck (Nick Linkov as "Nick Dundas"), which becomes more difficult to manage once Wendy occupies the other bed in her oddly barracks-like bedroom. Jo's employee Barbara (who conveniently occupies the apartment above hers) soon invites the friendless, sullen Wendy upstairs to her parties, which unabashedly feature dancing, stripping and orgiastic lovemaking. Wendy is soon deflowered on a bed full of gawkers by young, orphaned artist Bill Carpenter (Jeremy Langham), but she catches the eye of beefy, goateed Hank Wiggins (Alan Hoff), who's in an intense sadomasochistic relationship with Nancy Near ("Cleo Nova" aka Peggy Steffans - Sarno's future wife) and won't accept Wendy's lack of interest. Unrequited love proliferates as the needy Bill succumbs to the dusky maternal charms of Jo, affecting both Don and Wendy, who seem poised to embark on their own adventure when the deranged Hank shows up at the office to terrorize his heartthrob with a gun.

While this DVD represents an important and exciting recovery, the film itself is not one of Sarno's best. Like his other 1967 pictures, BED OF VIOLENCE (presently lost) and MY BODY HUNGERS, it underplays his trademark psychological content in favor of some uncharacteristic and not particularly persuasive "roughie" content. It's also economically produced to a fault, with nearly every scene's camera set-up having an exact counterpart somewhere else in the picture. While it's hard to judge the performances in this context, the cast is generally attractive and intriguing. Bruce Sparks' shadow-mottled monochrome cinematography, on the other hand, is properly moody and Pir Mirini's dance music works well. This German print credits only "Ginger Stevens" (Rudolph, who bears a mild resemblance to Rebecca Brooke, had made a half dozen earlier films with Sarno, sometimes acting under the name "Jan Nash") and the erotic content shows Sarno still harping on the burlesque aspects of earlier 1960s Adults Only cinema, with topless twist parties, while starting to move toward the sexual candor and experimentation of his post-INGA pictures.

Packaged in a nifty clamshell case designed to resemble a sordid paperback, this DVD (which unfortunately does not include the original English track as an alternative) is available from Amazon.de. A copy or two may yet linger at Diabolik DVD, priced at $28.99.

Things From the Attic: I, MARQUIS DE SADE (1967)

I, MARQUIS DE SADE
1967, Baywater, 69m 30s, $19.99, DVD-0

Reviewed by Tim Lucas

Long feared lost, this penultimate feature from writer-director Richard Hilliard (THE LONELY SEX, screenwriter of Del Tenney's VIOLENT MIDNIGHT aka PSYCHOMANIA) supports his reputation as one of the stranger 1960s poets of dark erotic obsession.

A kind of roughie version of Buñuel's THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ, it stars Sheldon Pearson (who looks remarkably like the young Roger Corman) as Donald Marquis (an allusion to the creator of Archie and Mehitabel?), a translator of the Marquis de Sade's works who, while awaiting and fearing the results of a biopsy test, indulges in fantasies of abandoning the bookish life and acting out the more violent philosophies of Sade on a series of women. He meets a wealthy, overweight yacht-owner (Cindy Ellis) and becomes her gigolo, setting his sights on amassing enough money to have "all the girls." One fateful afternoon, intending to find and torture a beautiful stranger, he meets an English woman (Ann Grant) on the beach, who responds to his philosophical regurgitations and picks him up, but soon proves herself the more experienced Sadist. After returning to his cashcow, he invites two other women back to her place, only to discover that their lesbian proclivities exclude him. He then attempts to exact more control by hiring a rented soundstage for an afternoon stripshow-cum-tryst with Russ Meyer starlet Babette Bardot (was this the only time a known actress portrayed herself - as a prostitute?), but even she finally snubs him after an unexceptional hump. After this, Donald becomes more violent, attacking his benefactor and determining to avenge himself against the earlier dolly bird, who he sights in the parking lot of the bank where he's cashing one last forged check.

Opening with credits lipsticked onto the body of a compliant model, this movie is consistent with Hilliard's earlier themes about the disadvantages of sensitive, creative men in the face of abusive female sexual power, but it is unusual for the ways it blends such dark bitterness about male-female relationships with passages of experimentalism and surrealism and puckish humor. It's also pre-Cronenbergian for the way it subtly suggests that Donald's derangement could be based in a tumor that produces extreme fantasies disassociable from his reality, and certainly pre-VIDEODROME in that it includes scenes the viewer likewise cannot readily identify as fantasy, dream or reality. But nowhere else are you likely to find a film that sabotages its protagonist's sexual self-image quite so viciously, with Ann Grant's psycho tease revealed as the far more dangerous character.

According to internet reports, a 35mm print of this film was recovered in Scandanavia. This clean-looking, if not entirely sharp 1.66:1 release (copyrighted by Retromedia Entertainment) runs somewhat shy of that print's reported running time of 73m, indicating that it may stem from a PAL tape conversion master; it does not appear to be missing any footage. An unrelated nudie short, "Hollywood Beauties", rounds out the package.

Things From the Attic: THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN (1982)

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN
Der Zauberberg
1982, Koch Vision, 624m, DVD-1
included in THE THOMAS MANN COLLECTION

Reviewed by Tim Lucas

Included in the seven-disc box set THE THOMAS MANN COLLECTION (2007, now out of print) with Franz Peter Wirth's epic 10-hour miniseries of BUDDENBROOKS and Franz Seitz's three-hour feature of DOCTOR FAUSTUS (starring Jon Finch as composer Adrian Leverkuhn) is this frustrating but nevertheless remarkable three-part miniseries directed by Hans W. Geissendorfer, based on Mann's splendid 1924 novel.

It's the story of Hans Castorp (Christoph Eichhorn), a young engineer who ascends a mountain to a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland where his cousin Joachim is being treated for tuberculosis. Intending to stay for only three weeks, impressionable Hans finds himself affected by the elevation, which diverts him from his schedule to undergo treatment himself; various characters who undertake the reshaping of his malleable personality; and the reassuring routine of the place, which abstracts time, each day following the pattern of those previous, and causes him to become passive and detached even when confronted with the first, and possibly only, great love of his life, a fellow patient named Clavdia Chauchat (Marie-France Pisier, miscast but not fatally so). As the story continues - with Hans remaining at the sanitorium a full seven years, until the outbreak of World War I - the clinic becomes an increasingly surreal metaphor for the European passivity, decadence, morbidity and surfacing territorial hatreds that climax in an almost biological need to purge itself through a declaration of war.

Even at slightly under seven hours, this epic can't begin to cover all the ground as the novel and inevitably disappoints, obviously cutting back the tense philosophic and political debates between Settembrini (SUSPIRIA's Flavio Bucci) and Naphta (Charles Aznavour) and sometimes rewriting character interactions to the detriment of its suspense. (In the novel, Hans and Clavdia have no direct interaction prior to the Mardi Gras party; here, she actually reprimands him for gazing soulfully at her.) However, approached as a complement to the novel, the film reproduces more scenes and settings with fidelity than one would ever believe possible and, by virtue of some serendipitous casting, allows some of Mann's fuzzier characters blossoming into unforgettable characters. Particularly noteworthy in this regard are Ann Zacharias as the luminous medium Elly Brand (in Prt 3's séance sequence, one of the most convincing possessed women ever filmed), Fassbinder favorite Kurt Raab (THE TENDERNESS OF WOLVES) as the closet occultist Dr. Krokowski, and most of all, Gudrun Gabriel as Marusja, Joachim's unspoken love. (Her moment at the end of Part 2 is heart-rending, and made me think Marusja went on to marry Mr. Crich, becoming the character Catherine Willmer played in Ken Russell's WOMEN IN LOVE.) Rod Steiger also turns up in the final third as the pivotal Myneer Peeperkorn, but what appears to be an inspired performance is undercut by German dubbing and English subtitles that complete what should be a chronic inability to form coherent sentences.

Lensed by later Scorsese collaborator Michael Ballhaus, THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN is preserved by this 2007 release in a dated, standard, analog transfer that stutters during panning shots, yet it remains the definitive release to date. A 2010 stand-alone, two-disc release from E1 Entertainment, which looks worse, also condenses the production to feature length (153m) with disastrous results. A four-disc edition, with supplementary materials, was issued in Germany last year that I've heard renders a more definitive presentation and includes a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer of the feature version - alas, it's not English friendly.

F.W. Murnau, Michael Mark and... Charles Lane?

Last night, while making overdue acquaintance with F.W. Murnau's charming CITY GIRL (1930), I was surprised to notice a familiar face hovering in the background of the second café scene. As this centrally placed customer leaves his seat at the bar, waitress Kate (Mary Duncan) slips her new friend Lem (Charles Farrell, seen beside her) into that slot - to the annoyance of the mustached man in the background. That is actor Michael Mark, who would score a major speaking role in 1931's FRANKENSTEIN as the father of the tragically fated child, Maria. Though released in 1930, CITY GIRL was actually filmed in the latter part of 1928, so Mark had a few years between in which to ascend from extra to speaking parts. While at Universal, Mark would also appear in THE BLACK CAT (1934 version), SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, TOWER OF LONDON, HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES, THE MUMMY'S HAND, FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE, THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN, SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET WEAPON and HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (as "Herr Strauss"). During that time he also slipped away to MGM where he worked on MAD LOVE with Peter Lorre and to Columbia for THE BLACK ROOM with Boris Karloff. In later years, he ended up with bit parts in THE RETURN OF THE FLY, ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE, and the movie with which the IMDb identifies him, Roger Corman's THE WASP WOMAN! Busy guy.

I thought I'd made an important catch but someone on the IMDb had already caught Mark's cameo, but it still hasn't been added to the site's official list of uncredited players.

Since they'll need to do that anyway, I believe I may have caught another one for them. During the scene when Lem returns to the café and bends over to peer through the window in search of Kate (who has, in fact, followed him to the train station and will soon end up in his arms), there is a cutaway to a group of pedestrians walking nearby, with some crossing the street. The man in the light-colored suit and hat caught my attention. There was something familiar about him, not just his face but his adroit, tightly-wound body language was familiar.

Then it struck me. This was the young Charles Lane.

Charles Lane lived to be 102 and acted in more than 360 motion pictures, according to the IMDb. Anyone who loves movies and television has seen him countless times, usually as a snappy, tightly-wound, hectoring old man - a part he had evidently played for more than half his professional life.

His earliest known roles, again re the IMDb, were in a spate of Warner Bros. pictures where he was uncredited, beginning with Alfred Green's SMART MONEY in 1931. In 1928, when CITY GIRL was made, he had a job with the Pasadena Playhouse, where he trained stage actors to work onscreen.

If this is Charles Lane - and I believe it is - this appearance would predate the earliest known screen work of America's most ubiquitous actor by several years, and inaugurate a screen acting career that bests even that of John Carradine by a couple dozen titles.

Audio Commentaries by Tim Lucas - A List

I've been receiving some requests of late for a complete list of the audio commentaries I've done for DVD and Blu-ray. I compiled such a list a couple of years ago, which appeared as a sidebar to an article I wrote about my commentary work for GOREZONE #29, but there have been quite a few more in the meantime. The list is presently up to 38 commentaries, but only 37 are listed here. I recently completed another for Kino Lorber, for a release that hasn't yet been announced.

I update this list, as needed, on the Notes page of my Facebook account.

1999
• Black Sunday, Image Entertainment / Anchor Bay Entertainment (2007), Kino Lorber (2013), Arrow Video (2013, UK)
• Kill, Baby... Kill!, Image Entertainment (unreleased), Dark Sky Films (2007, withdrawn)

2000
• Blood and Black Lace, VCI Entertainment (reissued 2005)
• The Whip and the Body, VCI Entertainment, Kino Lorber (2014)

2005
• Danger: Diabolik, Paramount DVD (with John Phillip Law)
• Monster Kid Home Movies, "The Gentle Old Madman" , PPS Productions (with Tom Abrams)

2007
• The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Anchor Bay Entertainment, Arrow Films (UK, 2014)
• Black Sabbath, Anchor Bay Entertainment, Arrow Video (2013, UK)
• Rabid Dogs, Anchor Bay Entertainment, Arrow Video (2014, UK)

2008
• Baron Blood, Anchor Bay Entertainment, Arrow Video (2013, UK)
• Lisa and the Devil, Anchor Bay Entertainment, Arrow Video (2013, UK)
• Bay of Blood, Anchor Bay Entertainment, Arrow Video (2012, UK)
• Erik the Conqueror, Anchor Bay Entertainment (with Cameron Mitchell)

2009
• Thriller: The Grim Reaper, Image Entertainment (with David J. Schow and Ernest Dickerson)
• Thriller: The Premature Burial, Image Entertainment (with David J. Schow and Ernest Dickerson)

2012
• Das Geheimnis des Doktor Z (The Diabolical Dr. Z), Subkultur Entertainment (Germany)
• Hatchet For The Honeymoon, Kino Lorber

2013
• Five Dolls for an August Moon, Kino Lorber
• The Awful Dr. Orlof, Redemption
• Nightmares Come At Night, Redemption
• A Virgin Among the Living Dead, Redemption

 2014 • Trans-Europ-Express, BFI (UK)
• Successive Slidings of Pleasure, BFI (UK)
• Pit and the Pendulum, Arrow Video (UK)
• Dr. Phibes Rises Again, Arrow Video (UK)
• The Man Who Lies, BFI (UK)
• L’Immortelle, BFI (UK)
• Eden And After, BFI (UK)

• The Whip and the Body - new revised commentary, Odeon Entertainment (UK)
• Planet of the Vampires, Kino/Scorpion Releasing

2015

• Tales of Terror, Kino Lorber
  
• Blood and Black Lace - newly recorded commentary, Arrow Video (UK)
• The Evil Eye with The Girl Who Knew Too Much - newly material added to 2007 commentary, Kino Lorber
• X - The Man with X-Ray Eyes, Kino Lorber
• The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, Redemption
• Videodrome, Arrow Video (UK)
• Eyes Without a Face, BFI (UK)
• ?

NOTE
Some of my audio commentaries have appeared on other releases of these films in other countries. These releases may be properly licensed, but my commentaries were neither licensed from me nor compensated. Except for the BFI releases, which are exclusively licensed for a five-year period, my commentaries are available for licensing in other territories.

21 Drops of BLOOD

Sometimes a film comes along to make words seem almost superfluous, and if images alone could ever persuade someone to buy a Blu-ray disc unseen, wouldn't that film be... Andy Milligan's BLOOD?

Made in 1974, it was Milligan's first feature to be shot in 35mm at his place on Staten Island. As these frame grabs from Code Red Releasing's new limited edition BD attest, it is an absolutely hallucinatory shot of bargain basement Grand Guignol, made all the more irresistible by its dollops of soap. It's about the miserable arranged marriage of an incognito Lawrence Talbot (who has an understandably wandering eye) and Dracula's daughter (who is not only a vampire, but jealous, condescending and relentlessly needy). She's basically bedridden as Lawrence and a team of literally rotting, pustulent assistants use the blood of a halfwit donor to raise a crop of carnivorous plants with the capacity to wean the Countess from traditional forms of feeding. But is she appreciative? "Oh, go to Hell!" she tells her husband at bedtime. "We're there already," he says, rolling over - and that scenario is made riotously literal in the film's closing moments, as vampire and werewolf try their best to strangle each other in the midst of a raging inferno.

BLOOD is now available as the second half of a delightful Bryanston Double Bill from Code Red Releasing, a limited edition Blu-ray available from Screen Archive Entertainment and other outlets. Collectors should be advised that Code Red's print in nearly a full 10 minutes longer than the only other home video release, a VHS from Iver Film Services taken from a PAL master - but collectors will want to hang onto the earlier one too because it has bolder color and unmattes the framing to open aperture. The restored footage consists mostly of dialogue, but oh! what dialogue! Be aware that there is one unfortunate scene of mouse abuse, at least part of which appears to be faked - so let's pretend it all is.

RIP Wes Craven (1939-2015)

Wes Craven with a recreation of a certain celebrated Edvard Munch painting.

Early this morning, when the unexpected news of Wes Craven's death at age 76 from brain cancer began to circulate, Kim Newman made this perspicacious observation on Facebook: "Wes Craven reinvented horror at least four times - most directors don't even manage it once."

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972) was superficially a trespass of true crime on horror movie turf, but in retrospect it can more easily be seen as the introduction of urban myth into horror, a genre up to then predominated by legends, superstitions and campfire stories. While nightmares have always been depicted in horror cinema, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984) was the first film since CALIGARI to extend a story's landscape into the slippery terrain of the unconscious. When success turned Craven's creepy creation into New Line Cinema's flagship title, and revised the nightmare figure of Freddy Kruger into a comic monster of ceremonies for the FANGORIA generation, he explored other variations of horror franchise misfires (CHILLER, SHOCKER) until returning to the franchise with the brilliantly recursive WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE (1994), which provided not only a metaphor for how the series' success had affected its various participants, but seemed to add a new wing onto the genre that might be termed an alternate reality. Then, with SCREAM (1996), he applied the principles of deconstruction to the genre and found that something still new could be created in the act of taking the traditional constructs of genre apart.

As is true of most artists whose work in the genre achieves such levels of potency, Craven was playing the hand that life had dealt him. He had been born to a reportedly dysfunctional family consisting of a fanatically religious mother (so strong a personality that she left him fearful of women till he moved away to go to college) and an abusive, violent father who died when Wes was only four. He also drew knowledgeably on earlier work in the genre; for example, I noticed him drawing from Mario Bava's BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964) in a pivotal scene in NEW NIGHTMARE (when a prop disappears from a film set) and in the revelation that the white-masked SCREAM killer was not one perpetrator, but two individuals working in concert. But most importantly, he made films that reflected the world as he perceived it, and he worked hard at extending that perception for the sake not only of his art, but for himself. Important works like his 1985 TWILIGHT ZONE episodes "Shatterday" and "Her Pilgrim Soul", and more significantly his 1988 voodoo opus THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW, reflect his private side as a voracious reader of texts pertaining to psychology, perception and mysticism, not to mention the literature of the fantastic. 

After a very strong beginning with LAST HOUSE and THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977, arguably the best of his horror films - which, like all of his best movies, seemed to contrast the reality and myth of the American family), Craven's career seemed to follow a patchwork pattern alternating strong work with weaker material. So far, I've mentioned only the home runs, but his filmography also carries the weight of THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART II (1984), A VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN (1995) and DEADLY FRIEND (1986), a film whose level of disaster actually spills over into hilarity - a hilarity that one suspects its creator shared - as the end credits roll. Craven also directed a few of the better made-for-television horror offerings (1978's STRANGER IN THE HOUSE, 1984's INVITATION TO HELL) and some features that fell between his usual extremes without succumbing to mediocrity, like DEADLY BLESSING (1981), SWAMP THING (1982), THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS (1991) and three SCREAM sequels, almost always spinning out at least one sequence that wouldn't look at all out of place in a Best-Of reel.

One of the few horror directors of his generation to earn name-above-the-title status and to stand out from the pack as a genuine creator and innovator, Wes Craven's volatile spark will be much missed.

Steele Crazy After All These Years

Barbara Steele and Rik Battaglia in Mario Caiano's NIGHTMARE CASTLE.

A Barbara Steele bonanza, Severin's triple-feature NIGHTMARE CASTLE Blu-ray ($29.98) is a splendid-looking, must-have disc. In the audio commentary he shares with the film's star, David Del Valle opines that the main feature is somewhat burdened by a tedious plot and could have used a few more delirium sequences - but if you're fishing for delirium, look no further than the extras allotted to this disc. Beginning with said commentary, which repeatedly describes the film as a valentine to its star Barbara Steele - whose name is actually misspelled onscreen. The track ends with an aghast Steele asking if something can't be done to change this. (You mean, like actually monkey with Severin's beautiful 2K restoration?)

Two bonus Steele films are also included - and frankly, they're the better ones. TERROR CREATURES FROM THE GRAVE's direction is credited to Ralph Zucker, someone who was real but who didn't direct it. The real director (Massimo Pupillo), or so claims one of the film's stars (Riccardo Garrone), was known among the cast and crew as "The Wanker." Garrone can't stop laughing at the fact that someone has taken this film seriously enough to want to interview him - about Pupillo, of all people! - and his sides really split when the suggestion is made that the film possibly had some additional US financing. When we hear an excerpt from an audio interview with Pupillo, he comes across as the first completely informed person on topic - and to make the circumstances more surreal, we are told that the interview was conducted at a time he was widely presumed to be dead! 

Then there is CASTLE OF BLOOD, the real gem of this set, whose featurette informs us that director Antonio Margheriti's original screen name Anthony Daisies was changed because someone told him that "Anthony is picking daisies" was a popular American expression to point out someone who is gay. Over the course of its 16 minutes, the CASTLE OF BLOOD featurette somehow fails to mention the vital presence in the film of Steele's BLACK SUNDAY co-star Arturo Dominici, or that Silvano Tranquilli (who plays Edgar Allan Poe) was also her romantic lead in THE HORRIBLE DR HICHCOCK, or that it was the first Italian Gothic to imitate Italian horror rather than the popular English and American varieties of that period. Perhaps Dominici's alias prevented his identifcation. Nearly all of the credits on all three films are aliases, except for that of Barbara Steele - who alone stands exposed, with or without the final E. Defiant. Unquestionably iconic. The Queen of all this auteur-directed misdirection.

People have asked me how the two bonus features look. Well, they look gorgeous too - but in that splicey way that a friend's 35mm print might look gorgeous if you were treated to a private screening. They are presented in high definition, but they have not been restored. Somehow, their flaws are forgivable. Interestingly, at the same time, in its 2K restoration, NIGHTMARE CASTLE somehow becomes a little less forgivable. Which is interesting because NIGHTMARE CASTLE (presented here in its significantly longer, original English export version titled THE NIGHT OF THE DOOMED) may now look a little too real, a little too perfect. The more filmic, dupey element sampled in the accompanying featurette somehow looks more like the film's intended ambiance. Granted, any opposing arguments - for example, that it deserves restoration because it is an early film scored by Ennio Morricone (make that "Ennio Morigone") and shot by Enzo Barboni (who, as "E.B. Clucher," later directed the Trinity westerns) - would be at least as valid. 

But I feel that something important about these films could be lost if we were to do away with all the scratches and splices that heralded our first acquaintance with them - some evidence of prior use and wear which connects us to the place of otherness and mystery where these imitation Gothics have always worked their strongest magic - inferring, at 3:00am on a distant broadcast signal, that they have come to us from a great distance and that we are not alone in our love for them.

RIP Yvonne Craig (1937-2015)

As a young BATMAN fan, I didn't know what to expect when Season 3 commenced (after a second season whose wobbliness even my 11-year-old self noticed) with the promise of introducing Batgirl. But long before puberty struck, I had learned who Yvonne Craig was, from a series of feature film roles I had seen: GIDGET, the Elvis vehicles IT HAPPENED AT THE WORLD'S FAIR and KISSIN' COUSINS, SKI PARTY (AIP's indoor beach picture, also well remembered for featuring James Brown and His Famous Flames), and the MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. movie ONE SPY TOO MANY (in which she is unforgettable as the sunbathing U.N.C.L.E. receptionist), as well as a lot of television. I must have seen some of her many appearances on THE MANY LOVES OF DOBIE GILLIS and 77 SUNSET STRIP, or on PERRY MASON, WAGON TRAIN or I'M DICKENS, HE'S FENSTER (all of which I watched regularly in those pre-teen days). I can't remember a time when I didn't know who she was.

If I had seen her in THE GENE KRUPA STORY as a kid, she might have started me shaving sooner; in her brief time onscreen, she turns up the heat on the 1950s standards of sexy. In her autobiography FROM BALLET TO THE BATCAVE AND BEYOND, she mentions that she and co-star Sal Mineo also played a make-out scene that turned out to be too hot for the studio to release; it was cut from the film - but what a nice Blu-ray supplement if would be, if the footage could be found.


I've never been a STAR TREK fan, but even I can't overlook the iconic value of the green girl she played.

Yvonne Craig was almost an anomaly in her time: a pert brunette. Her hair was one of the most interesting things about her, because it rarely fell to her shoulders; she wore it up, sprayed into a configuration that was complementary to her sculpted cheekbones and bright eyes. She could be sexually obvious, in that busty, lip-chewing Anne Helm way, but there was something conservative about her too - in several of her early cheesecake shots, she affects a surprised expression as if your gaze has somehow made her shockingly aware of how gorgeous she is.


But suddenly, she was being introduced to my favorite show as Batgirl. I wasn't too pleased, but I was pleased even less that the show was being diluted with this new character at the time it was being cut back from two weekly episodes to one.

The first Batgirl episode is magical, if you can overlook the theme song that Yvonne described as "the most awful thing I'd ever heard!" She was perfectly cast as Barbara Gordon, the librarian daughter of Commissioner Gordon, who lived with her pet bird Charlie in a ritzy Gotham City apartment - which she had somehow managed to modify with a secret passage into a garage that allowed her to change and pilot her ruffled Batgirl Cycle right into the streets, off a ramp disguised as a brick-framed advert. It was my first stab of Feuillade. Other stabs followed as Batgirl engaged in action not with her fists, but with a pair of shapely killer legs swathed in starry purple fabric and trained from top to bottom with the Ballets Russe. Those stabs were more in the neighborhood of Georges Franju. Perhaps more surprising than her nimble, dancerly showing as Batgirl, Yvonne Craig was a plausible librarian.

Another impressive thing about Batgirl? She had the smarts to incorporate the fall of a red wig into her disguise. It was the first - and it remains one of the only - gestures toward the keeping of a secret identity that struck me as a ruse that might possibly work. Though they were never put in the situation of having to outsmart each other, I never felt that Batman's encyclopedic intelligence (encompassing a thorough knowledge of fishing lures, foreign languages, and the ability to quote English poet John Donne) was really the equal of Batgirl's smarts. Yvonne Craig is far and away the best thing about an otherwise dismal season that introduced adversaries like Louie the Lilac and Lola Lasagna while putting the favorites like the Joker in surfer's baggies.

In the late 1980s, when I was writing my novel THROAT SPROCKETS, I conceived a movie theater called The House of Usherettes where the cashier, ticket-tearer, concession hostess and the usherettes were all young women hired for their resemblances to Sixties actresses. I mention four by name, singling out the four who made the most indelible impressions on me as a kid: Pamela Franklin, Stella Stevens, Barbara Steele and Yvonne Craig. I got to tell Yvonne about this one day at Wonderfest in Louisville, Kentucky back in 2006 - and, to add a meaningless detail that seems significant, it happened to be my 50th Birthday. Yvonne was charmed by the tribute and when I offered her an affectionately inscribed copy of my novel, she asked me, "Do you have my book?"

"Actually, I was going to buy a copy from you," I said.

But she wouldn't hear of it. "We'll trade books!" she said brightly, already signing a copy to me. As she finished, she looked at her charming sister Meridel, who was conducting the business at her table - all the proceeds of which went to Yvonne's favorite charities - and said, "Look, we're two authors swapping our books!"

Her book turned out to be a good read, in the way it feels good to get to know someone you've always admired. Dipping into it again might be a good way to bid her farewell.



  

The VW Digital Edition: Teaching An Old Dog New Tricks

I want to announce here, for those of you who don't follow us on Facebook or Twitter, that we have recently posted the digital edition of our 25th Anniversary issue, VIDEO WATCHDOG #179, for free downloading on our website. Just go to www.videowatchdog.com/vw and you should easily find it, in whatever format you need.

Since we debuted our digital editions and archive last year, we have been able to digitally publish only two further issues before this, VW 175 and 176; Donna is presently working toward having the two interim issues - 177 and 178 - posted in the very near future. During our Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns, we stated that only the current issue would be available free for the period it was being sold on newsstands, but we realize our schedule with these has been amiss (obviously!), so we will be offering more than one free digital issue at a time, at least until we get onto our intended track.

In talking and exchanging notes with some of you, we're aware of a couple of prevalent attitudes about digital issues in general. One is that our readers love the print edition and are wary of looking into anything that might endanger it. Another is that people find a lot of digital advertising annoying.

To take the second matter first... so do we! I personally hate reading trying to read articles online and finding myself triggering one pop-up ad after another. So our approach to incorporating digital ads is willfully different - we will never disrupt or intrude upon your reading with a digital ad. Our digital ads will simply appear on digital pages not found in our print edition.

Which brings me to the other point. The VW digital edition is not intended as a replacement for, or a threat to, our print edition. Indeed, the additional revenue we can gather from the digital edition and sales of the digital back issues and archive are our best bet to keep the print edition going. It is, also importantly, a way of extending our reach because there are readers (or want-to-be readers) all over the world who have complained to us regularly that they simply can't find us - the distribution business being what it is, today. In fact, since launching the digital edition, we have noticed a bump in new subscribers for the print edition - and we were especially pleased to receive an order from the library at Yale University for our entire run of back issues! As a couple of autodidacts, Donna and I were honored that VW was considered a necessary addition by the librarians at one of the most widely recognized institutes of learning anywhere in the world. It's even sweeter, realizing that Yale was Vincent Price's alma mater too!

Furthermore, our digital edition serves as a wonderful supplement to each print edition, including trailers and other bonus content pertaining to our coverage. In the digital edition of VW 179, for instance, we have a five-page addendum to my Vincent Price Blu-ray coverage that extends an already lengthy article with additional reviews of Shock Factory's VINCENT PRICE COLLECTION II offerings HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, THE RETURN OF THE FLY and THE LAST MAN ON EARTH. The DVD review section also includes a bonus review of the UK release SLEEPWALKER, reviewed by Lloyd Haynes.    

Number 179 was a particularly rigorous project for Donna. A good deal of her time and attention was applied to creating a new, exclusive digital feature she has dubbed the "Now Playing Showcase." It's an ingenious device for inviting those of our readers who may be filmmakers, authors, publishers, painters, cartoonists, even musicians to bring their creations directly to our select target demographic - namely, the real connoisseurs of fantastic culture, a good number of whom work professionally within these fields. Check it out and I think you'll see its great potential. Creating its template took months of concentrated work, and we believe it's just what we needed to make VIDEO WATCHDOG more of a thriving communications hub for all of the talent out there among our readership. In this issue, special messages from Sara Karloff, Victoria Price and the Soska Sisters are just the beginning of the fun.

In short, if you haven't checked out our digital edition yet, we urge you to download it to your iPad, Kindle, Android or computer and give its unique special features a spin! 

SKETCHY THINGS reviewed

Though it has been fashioned with an eye toward scaring us and upsetting our sleep, it is fair to say that the horror film has inspired more loving devotion than any other genre. Much of this devotion has been manifested in the form of representational art. There is no doubt that a lot of artists - and not just those who continued to pay homage to the genre - got their start by drawing monsters, by using pencil and paper to gird themselves against what frightened them and to better understand what it was about monsters that attracted them. The specifically great thing about such art, in its highest expression, is what another pair of eyes can tell us about different faces and moments on film that we - though decades, even lifetimes, of exposure - have convinced ourselves we have completely seen. The marvelously craggy, garishly colored paintings of Basil Gogos, the almost clinically precise portraiture of Daniel Horne and, more recently, the boldly realistic lifesize sculptures of Mike Hill form a testimony to how much more there is to experience from any single horror film image passed down to us.

Then there is the field of what is called "fan art" - art that is produced without a professional goal, though very often with professional chops. It sometimes appears in fan magazines and is sold from tables at conventions. The dean of such work, certainly where the world of monsters is concerned, is Frank Dietz, whose restless and varied professional career has included stints as a film director, actor, Disney animator and award-winning documentarian. Frank is accomplished at any number of things, but he is beloved for his Rondo Award-winning fan art - pencil drawings, charcoals and acrylic paintings that are now proudly collected in an irresistible softcover compendium entitled SKETCHY THINGS: THE ART OF FRANK DIETZ (sketchythingsart.com, $50.00).

Dietz's art is remarkable for its own innate restlessness, encompassing and lampoons, as well as some portraits of stunning sobriety and profundity. And then there are the occasional pieces, the real pinnacles of this book, in which all of his available styles come home to roost. His Edgar Allan Poe is done in his cartoon style, ever so slightly heightened with limnings of realism, and he stares back at you, somewhat lopsidedly as was his want, with such clarity you can almost read the insolent thought at the back of his mind and the fears foregrounding it. Equally impressive is his rendering of Roddy McDowall as Caesar in CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, where his love for the film, for the actor, for the performance, for animals and matinees invite the eye to linger over its layers and layers of textured devotion.

Elsewhere, he delights in showing us the lunacy of the genre, from Lon Chaney as Quasimodo ringing the bells at Notre Dame to the the dolefully-eyed Brain balloon from Planet Arous. To see his drawings of the various heroes of these horrors - from Lon Chaney Jr to Kevin McCarthy, from a shrieking Elsa Lanchester to a post-BATMAN Adam West, from a Tingler-examining Vincent Price to a poodle-haired Boris Karloff surrendering to a pool of quicksand - is to have a lifetime of cinema flash before our eyes, and to laugh at revelations buried in the tenor of his draughtsmanship about the actor's individual pride or shame. The caricatures on display are sometimes mercillessly (but always lovingly) observed, telling us how much the actor was likely paid for their performance, how many drinks they had for lunch, and who was directing them.  The more you know about such films, the more richly Dietz's work repays your attention.

It's not all horror and sf-related art. The most ambitious piece in the book is a mind-boggling panorama entitled "The Last Call," which depicts several dozen memorable Western stars from film and television, in costume, scattered around the tavern from the John Wayne feature THE SHOOTIST. Set aside a good half hour to fully appreciate everything buried in it, and then begin to ponder the months of work that must have gone into its creation.

Opening with a Foreword by Greg Nicotero and an Introduction by comedian Dana Gould, SKETCHY THINGS presents its portfolio in themed chapters, ranging from silents to early talkies, "The Big Guys", the Fifties, the Black Lagoon, Hammer horror, Harryhausen, Apes, jungle girls, Vincent Price and so forth. Going through it all is an almost overwhelming experience because it's not just a book about a man and his art; it's about the emotions aroused by this supposedly repellant genre of horror, the splendid creativity that so many other artists have brought to it, and so many little twinkles we were so sure that only we saw when they passed by on the silver screen.

There are any number of books about the genre that have more to say, but few books about the cinema of imagination are as articulate, affectionate and altogether stimulating as SKETCHY THINGS.

RIP Coleen Gray (1922-2015)

The beautiful, talented and ever stimulating Coleen Gray - one of my favorite actresses of the 1940's and '50s - has died at the age of 92, according to her good friend David Schecter. Best remembered for her roles in such films as NIGHTMARE ALLEY, RED RIVER, KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL (pictured) and Stanley Kubrick's THE KILLING, she was also treasured by horror fans for her lead role in Universal's THE LEECH WOMAN, in which she played a middle aged woman who discovers an unpleasant means of retaining her youth and beauty. One might have suspected Ms. Gray herself of such untoward behavior, as she continued to look remarkably youthful and attractive well into her advanced years.

RIP, dear lady.