Fresh As Ever: MARRIED TO THE MOB

Not sure how or why I missed it all these years, but finally caught up with Jonathan Demme's MARRIED TO THE MOB (1988) last night and loved it. I tend to think of the 1980s as a period of uncomfortable transitions, for both the cinema and fashion in general, but everything about this film remains light, tight and refreshing. It has a comic/romantic verve to it that reminded me a lot of Preston Sturges, but it was less to do with the writing than the cast - all bright, all attractive, all inspired,and touched by an ethnic diversity that feels happy and genuine rather than forced as it so often does today. It also does something with its end titles I've never seen done elsewhere; it tells the film's story a second time, chronologically, using only outtakes - glimpses of a dozen or more scenes we didn't see, yet we instinctively know where they would have fit; it seems to fill in the lives of all the characters, lending further color and dimension to everyone and thus making the whole confection seem doubly real.

Seeing the film now is also a sobering reminder of how much can change in 30 short years. All the principals (including Alec Baldwin and Oliver Platt) look like kids; Michelle Pfeiffer and a remarkably athletic Matthew Modine (neither of them seen much anymore) were never better; Dean Stockwell (now 80-something) is 50-something and still looking flashy and virile; Mercedes Ruehl (who won the New York Film Critics Award for her performance as the insanely jealous wife, but would now rate a "Who?" from one or two generations further on) burns up the screen; and Demme (now dead) comes across as the most alive young director on the block.

A movie that is not only good to see, but which seems genuinely happy to see you in return. Warmly recommended - on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.

2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

RIP: Carolyn Zeifman Cronenberg (1950-2017)

David Cronenberg's wife Carolyn Zeifman has died at the age of 66, due to an undisclosed illness. She was a production assistant on RABID and contributed to the editing of both RABID and FAST COMPANY before giving birth to their son Brandon, who has since become a filmmaker. In 2006, she returned to filmmaking with two documentaries pertaining to the production and promotion of her husband's film A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE: ACTS OF VIOLENCE and TOO COMMERCIAL FOR CANNES.

This sad news brings back a rush of personal memories. Back in the day, when I was covering the production of David Cronenberg's 1980s films, he invited me into his home on a few occasions - for interviews, for lunch, for dinner. Carolyn was always a warm, attentive and gracious hostess; attractive, easy-going, very much a homemaker. She told me she had "always known David," even before his first marriage (if I remember correctly, he and her brother had been friends at school). I remember once showing up to do an interview there, and without me saying a word, she intuited that I wasn't feeling well, got something for my stomach, invited me to stretch out on the couch and told David to wait till I felt better. She also liked to poke fun at how he and I found conversation difficult outside an interview context. David once told me that Carolyn was "a natural editor," that he could show her a scene and she would know instinctively when to cut and where to cut to. Of course, the grounding that she, their family and home provided made his finest work possible. What I knew of her was only good, but having known him somewhat better, I suspect she was a more extraordinary woman than most people knew.

My deepest sympathies to David, their family, and loved ones.

(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Surprise! One Last VIDEO WATCHDOG

Are you ready for another anniversary?

It was twenty-seven (27) years ago today that Donna and I shipped out the first issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG to subscribers all over the globe. It's not every magazine that gets launched with a subscriber base already in place, but between my "Video Watchdog" column for GOREZONE and ads placed in FANGORIA, we were fortunate to be one of that elite number. 350 subscribers before our first issue was printed, Donna tells me.

As symmetry would have it, today we find ourselves mirroring that occasion by making public our Farewell Issue - VIDEO WATCHDOG #184! You may have seen it discussed by some lucky early recipients on message boards and social media, but now it's available to everyone - both in its printed form, and as a free digital edition. This final issue does not play by the usual rules; it was produced in strictly limited quantity, and it is not being sold on newsstands. You can only secure your copy from us directly at www.videowatchdog.com.

This issue was made possible when the rights to VIDEO WATCHDOG (concept and business) was returned to us last May, along with the balance of my intellectual property, by the trustee of our bankruptcy case. But it would not have happened without the particular kindness of our subscriber Richard Kaufman, the editor of GENII, the Conjuror's Magazine. Richard told us that, as a fellow print man, he was aware of how much of our soul and guts we had invested in each and every issue of VW, and that it rubbed him the wrong way to see it denied its proper closure - especially when he learned that we had been obliged to shut down with our next issue roughly 90% ready to go to press. He asked if we had any objection to him seeking the production costs we needed, on our behalf. We told him that our hands were tied, but when we were granted the legal freedom to move ahead, we gave him the green light. Within a single week, he found a couple of illustrious patrons (noted on our inside front cover) who helped prestidigitate it into being.

We're very proud of this issue. First and foremost, it contains the second half of John-Paul Checkett's engrossing and rewarding overview of Carmilla on the screen, this portion encompassing such titles as LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH, THE BLOOD-SPATTERED BRIDE, ALUCARDA, THE MOTH DIARIES and THE UNWANTED. We also have Ramsey Campbell's thoughts on David Robert Mitchell's IT FOLLOWS, Larry Blamire's appreciation of the classic TWILIGHT ZONE episode "And When the Sky Was Opened," Douglas E. Winter's Audio Watchdog column (covering THE REVENANT, EX MACHINA and more), as well as (by my count) 40 reviews in all - written by such illustrious contributors as Kim Newman, Budd Wilkins, John Charles, Bill Cooke, Shane M. Dallmann, Michael Barrett, Chris Herzog, Eric Somer, Lloyd Haynes and yours truly. I'm glad that I was able to get one last Jess Franco review in there.  In our final Letterbox department, we present five (5) pages of comments and reminiscences from readers about what VIDEO WATCHDOG has meant to them over the years.

The front cover depicts Lily Cole in Mary Harron's film of THE MOTH DIARIES (Mr. Checkett's account of Rachel Klein's 2002 novel and its 2012 film adaptation are an issue highlight), and in hindsight, I see it as something of a symbolic gesture on our part. For the first time ever, our cover image is no longer framed by a video screen proscenium; we've finally come out the other end of the baptism of blood this past year has been, and broken through our formatting to freedom - the freedom to get this last issue to you. And, as someone pointed out to us, our back cover image of Maika Monroe looking over her shoulder in IT FOLLOWS seems to embody a backward glance at the 27 years of achievement trailing behind us. Cool.

In closing, Donna has asked me to inform everyone that this Farewell Issue includes a very special sale offer on page 17. All the more reason to reserve your hard copy while they still last.


(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Five Naschys on Blu-ray Velvet

I recently cracked open the shrink-wrap on Scream Factory's new release THE PAUL NASCHY COLLECTION. It offers five Naschy vehicles on Blu-ray for the first time: HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB, VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES, BLUE EYES OF THE BROKEN DOLL, HUMAN BEASTS and NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF, complete with alternate and deleted scenes, trailers, stills galleries, Spanish credit sequences, a 24-page illustrated booklet featuring production notes by The Mark of Naschy's Mirek Lipinski, and three audio commentaries by Rod Barnett and Troy Guinn, the hosts of the Naschycast podcast.

I have generally positive feelings toward all of the films in this set, but I went directly to Carlos Aured's BLUE EYES OF THE BROKEN DOLL (Los ojos azules de la muñeca rota, 1974), which received a theatrical release in this country (in somewhat censored form) as HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN. I've seen the film many times and primarily wanted to check the commentary, because Rod and Troy are personal friends and I was curious to see how well they adapted their podcast approach to a more formalized commentary presentation. I'm pleased to say that I don't have to take a diversionary "they're both great guys" approach because the commentary managed to be relaxed and entertaining, well-synchronized to the onscreen action and educational. The pronunciations of a name or title or two get slaughtered along the way, but I'm not exactly innocent of this myself; the important thing is that they've done the reading to know these people and topics and they pay them the proper respect. Bottom line: I enjoyed the commentary a great deal, and I came away from it with a deeper appreciation of the film itself - so top marks!

In fact, I'll go that compliment one better in that Rod and Troy's discussion of BLUE EYES OF THE BROKEN DOLL stimulated my own thinking and made me repeatedly wish I could have been a third wheel in their commentary (as I have been a couple of times on their podcast). But therein lies the beauty of still being a blogger at this belated day and age: I can round up some of those thoughts here!

At one point early in the commentary, Rod points out that this film, while Spanish, is actually a giallo and that he won't brook any argument on this subject because it's such an obvious fact that it would be foolish to contradict. To contradict, perhaps; but to discuss, I think not. I personally would argue that BLUE EYES OF THE BROKEN DOLL is a giallo more by design (or imitation) than birthright - by which I mean that it's analogous to a film like Jess Franco's DEATH PACKS A SUITCASE (1970), which was officially part of the West German Bryan Edgar Wallace series of thrillers but didn't quite feel a perfect fit. (Indeed, Dario Argento's THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE was released in Germany as part of Rialto's Edgar Wallace series, which it wasn't properly part of, and I daresay BLUE EYES OF THE BROKEN DOLL wouldn't be, either.) That said, the film has every outward sign of being a giallo, from its abstractly decorative title to its eroticized murder scenes and flaunted cinematographic techniques. But I truly feel that these are present because Naschy was imitating what was then a commercial trend in European cinema, much as he had imitated the Universal Monsters series for so many films. Much as we tend to distinguish between the Spaghetti Western and the Paella Western, BLUE EYES is a different creature from its Italian counterparts; Spain had no giallo tradition because its national censorship forebade this. You  can find paperback counterparts to the Mondadori gialli in Great Britain and France, but not in Spain.

The beauty of BLUE EYES OF THE BROKEN DOLL not belonging at the giallo table proper is that it is therefore free to use its ideas toward becoming its own thing, and Naschy embraces this prospect with anarchistic enthusiasm. I was impressed to notice on this viewing that Naschy and Aured's imitation had some noticeable influence on the giallo itself. Naschy casts himself as Gilles, an ex-convict, hitchhiking through the French countryside following his release from prison, who takes a job as a handyman in a secluded house inhabited by three very different sisters, each of whom is disfigured or disabled in some way. Aside from the obvious value of a "three sisters" concept to Dario Argento, even before Gilles reaches the house, we are privy to a series of red-tinted reveries or fantasies or possibly memories that depict him strangling different women - which don't recall much that existed within the gialli at that point in time, but look very much ahead to the way Argento filmed the roaring headaches suffered by his shadowy killer in TENEBRAE, made almost a decade later in 1981. Likewise, the death shrine exposed in the final reel looks forward to the room reserved for Nicholas in Argento's TRAUMA (1993).

Given these subjective cutaways to the inside of Gilles' mind, by the time he meets his three beautiful co-stars (Maria Perschy, Diana Lorys and Eva Leon), the viewer is somewhat indoctrinated into viewing the sisters less as three distinct women than as three facets of all women, as interpreted by his fractured psyche. There is a sister who is purely physical (because she's a nymphomaniac), one whose disfigured arm and hand cause her to wear a prosthetic, and a third who is more purely intellectual (because she is bound to a wheelchair). The middle sister, the most self-consciously damaged of the three, is thus equal parts mental and physical - and the sisters, as a trinity, can be viewed as semi-mechanical and thus doll-like (though it is not their blue eyes that give the film its title). This being a Naschy film, Gilles gets to assert his bare-chested, axe-wielding masculinity toward two of the sisters; this being a horror film, he suffers to some extent from each conquest.

Which brings me to another important point of reference, namely Don Siegel's THE BEGUILED (1970), a film recently remade by Sofia Coppola and based on a novel (well worth reading) by Thomas Cullinan. In this Civil War-based story, Clint Eastwood played an injured deserter who is found and taken in by the students of a Southern school for young women. There he is furtively cared for by the girls, and his personal charm becomes a lightning rod for arousing their nascent sexual feelings and sparking petty jealousies, until his presence is made known to the adult instructors, whose sexual feelings are more mature and ultimately more deadly. Once the man is properly nursed back to health, he wants to leave, and the women amputate his leg to keep him there - a form of castration that unleashes the worse side of his male character in compensation for his loss.

There is a somewhat complementary scene in BLUE EYES in which Gilles is stabbed in the abdomen by the handyman he's replaced, and his seeping wound is tended by two of the sisters (Lorys and Léon) and Michelle (Inés Morales), the pretty blonde nurse who tends to the needs of the third sister. The close-ups of the seeping and frankly labial injury recall the subversively erotic imagery of Caravaggio's 1603 religious painting "The Incredulity of St. Thomas." Considering Naschy's own recorded comments about his belief that making horror films in Spain at this point in history was a revolutionary act, the comparison isn't far-fetched.

SPOILER: The meaning of the film's baroque title is ultimately revealed when it is learned that the eye-gougings from a rash of murders surrounding the sisters' property are the doing of a local doctor (Eduardo Calvo) determined to reconstruct the corporeal form of his late daughter. This revelation - which follows the surprising death of Naschy's lead protagonist as the film continues for another reel - would seem to wrest the film away from its giallo pretensions back to its fundamentally Spanish origins, as the conceit of a determined doctor working to restore/reconstruct a damaged female form - despite originating in Georges Franju's EYES WITHOUT A FACE (Les yeux sans visage, 1959) literally extends from Jess Franco's seminal THE AWFUL DR ORLOF (Gritos en la noche, 1962) to Narciso Ibańez Serradór's THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED (La residencia, 1970). The irony of the film's finale resides in the fact that the doctor's selfless (albeit criminal) attempts to make his daughter whole again mirror Gilles' more selfish manipulations of the three sisters, each of them incomplete in some way, which are genuinely curative until the sole unconquered sister brings everything crashing down.

Like its companion feature VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES (directed by Léon Klimovsky), THE BLUE EYES OF THE BROKEN DOLL is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, while the others in the set are framed at the more expected 1.85:1.  It is fairly unusual to see a 1974 film lensed this way, not least of all one involving the precepts of the giallo, a genre almost always composed for anamorphic widescreen lensing. This was almost certainly the choice of cinematographer Francisco Sánchez (who, interestingly, also shot VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES) and perhaps made this decision to better accommodate the high-ceilinged, split-level interiors of the villa in Madrid where they were filming, as well as the tall-treed locations where Naschy's character makes his last run toward freedom. (Sánchez did not always opt for 1.33:1, as his earlier 1.85:1 CURSE OF THE DEVIL with Naschy shows.) I looked very closely at the framing for fault but could find absolutely none; in fact, certain shots - like the overhead climactic shot inside the house - appear ideally composed.

If this first dip into THE PAUL NASCHY COLLECTION is just a taste of its pleasures, it ought to be well worth the purchase price indeed.

(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.  

TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS reviewed

Teri Tordai as Marguerite of Burgundy.

A title like TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS conjures up a certain set of preconceptions, most of which this 1968 German/French/Italian co-production (originally titled Der Turm der verbotenen liebe, or "The Tower of Forbidden Love") quickly dispatches. 

There is no screaming, per se; there is only one virgin in the scenario, and he's male; however, there is a tower - a not very convincing scale model of one, not unlike those we see under the main titles of Hammer films. The direction, credited to François Legrand, was actually a collaboration between Franz Antel and Fritz Umgelter. Now comes the real surprise: it's a swashbuckler, which the English credits vaguely inform us was based on a novel by Alexandre Dumas; that novel was in fact a play entitled La Tour de Nesle, which Dumas only revised from an original text by Frédéric Gaillardet, based on the stories of debauchery concerning Marguerite, daughter of the Duke of Burgundy, and other members of the royal families of France and England, who were said to use an old guard tower on the edge of the river Seine for their adulterous revels in 14th century France. In 1955, the great Abel Gance adapted the play into a fantastic and erotic adventure concoction, La Tour des Nesles, starring Pierre Brasseur (EYES WITHOUT A FACE) as the heroic swordsman Buridan and Silvana Pampanini as Marguerite de Bourgogne. In Gance's telling, Marguerite was the kinky ringleader of a scheme in which new young men were serially invited to the Tower for a night of bliss, with either her or one of her handmaidens, dressed in a mask and nothing else, after which they were slain by the armed guards and tossed into the Seine.

Jean Piat as the dashing Buridan.

 If it surprises some that something called TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS is a remake of an Abel Gance film, it's still more surprising that it's not a bad one. It's actually a good deal like Gance's film (alas, only available as a French DVD without English options), including an abundance of bare breasts, but without any of the shock value accrued by being made in 1955. Made in 1968, which accounts for some of the punches it pulls in terms of violence, it is beautifully photographed by Oberdan Trojani - whose screen credits include Orson Welles' OTHELLO, THE GIANT OF METROPOLIS, HERCULES AGAINST THE MOON MEN and THE LEGEND OF BLOOD CASTLE - a brace of marvelous titles I've never suspected of sharing such patrimony. 

Jacques Herlin and Uschi Glas. 

And yet there is something delightfully off-kilter about it all: despite its dark subject matter, it's an exuberantly happy swashbuckler, thanks to an irresistibly charming, sometimes fourth-wall-breaking lead performance by Jean Piat (who made his screen debut playing Gaston Leroux's detective character Joseph Rouletabille and was featured in Sascha Guitry's 1955 remake of Gance's NAPOLEON, along with Orson Welles); the women (led by Teri Tordai and Uschi Glas) are just as relentlessly beautiful, garbed in a kind of kinky fantasy version of 14th century dress - half fairy tale, half Roger Vadim/Barbarella fantasy; it boasts some extremely grand production design by Peter Rothe, which extends to a giant chessboard obsessed over by the King (THE WHIP AND THE BODY's Jacques Herlin); it's scored (by Mario Migliardi, Margheriti's BATTLE OF THE WORLDS) against its historical setting with music that seems to have escaped from an Edgar Wallace krimi, with lots of blood-icing organ and skulking electric bass; and it's dubbed with those bright, uber-contemporary voices you may remember from the English versions of the SCHOOLGIRL REPORT pictures. It may be a mutt, but so is Spumoni ice cream.

TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS was first released on home video, decades ago, as a scratchy, washed-out, poor quality VHS from Video Yesteryear. Seeing the film on this limited edition BD-R disc from Snappy Video, with its rich - if often fluctuating and overly hot - color intact, is a pleasant surprise, a delicious and sometimes delirious sensual experience. It was originally announced as having a limited run of only 100 copies, but after these sold out from Snappy's website, the title reappeared at Amazon. The disc is sourced from a surviving 35mm release print from its US distributor Maron Films Limited - the same company that released Luís Buñuel's TRISTANA, Sergio Martino's THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS WARDH as NEXT!, and the Fima Noveck-doctored version of Harry Kumel's DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS, so I presume the actual rights to this film are held by some overseas company, as is the case with those other imports. I'll leave it to others to decide how authorized a release this Region A/B/C disc is, with its "M" (Mature) rating (it was rated X and reduced to an R rating in its US theatrical release) - but I will say that, while it's the very definition of a no-frills package, with no extras, no subtitles, and no color timing (there's a bit too much magenta in this Spumoni), it's a nice souvenir of a mostly forgotten and diverting picture, which you may find worth seeking out.

(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

RIP Adam West (What A Way to Go Go)

RIP Adam West, age 88, the only real Batman of all the Batmen, and one of the very few American actors I can think of who could give both a genuine performance and a surrealist wink at the same time. Who could wear both a Bat-suit AND a pair of clown-colored baggies in a surfing competition with the Joker, or awkward with a sexy lady, or be up to his cowled neck in a giant Frosty Freeze sno-cone and still walk away with his dignity intact. He caught my attention even before BATMAN, playing Captain Quick in a series of TV commercials for the chocolatey milk supplement, as astronauts in ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS and the OUTER LIMITS episode "Invisible Enemy" and as the dashing young hero of a Three Stooges feature, THE OUTLAWS IS COMING - and he shone in later roles as well (THE MARRIAGE OF A YOUNG STOCKBROKER is one of his more unfairly overlooked performances) - but few of my childhood icons were as completely and originally realized as his Batman. His resourcefulness was played for laughs, but his intelligence never was, and he was the first crime fighter in my experience to tap into the outré to solve crimes - meditation, mysticism, that side of himself that knew that nothing awakened such fright in the criminal element as the shadow of a bat. I suppose my childhood will never be dealt a bigger ZOWIE! of a death blow till the Big One comes along.

I'm so glad he was able to make his final bow in his definitive role, alongside once-youthful ward Burt Ward's Robin, as the voice of Batman in THE RETURN OF THE CAPED CRUSADERS - and with a BATMAN '66 comic doing well wherever fine comics are sold. 

Speaking of comics, Adam's loss - reportedly due to a short battle with leukemia - brought back some potent memories of that time of life when he loomed largest.As a nine year-old, I had some DC Comics in 1966 (I've recently been feeling a strong pull toward re-acquiring some of those 80-Page Giants) but I was a Marvel kid from roughly 1963 on. However, when the BATMAN show premiered on ABC-TV in January 1966, I had to start adding BATMAN and DETECTIVE comics to my monthly pile. This was the first issue I bought, #178, January 1966. Cover art by Gil Kane. As I recall, the art inside was attributed to "Bob Kane" - bland, stiff, not half as exciting. But the next issue had The Riddler on the cover, art by Carmine Infantino. Those Infantino covers would have been worth the 12 cents without ANYTHING inside.

For reasons unknown to me, when the series first went on the air, 20th Century Fox was caught short in terms of releasing an authorized soundtrack album - so the breech was filled by a lot of cover albums, including one by an anonymous outfit calling themselves The Bat Boys. (Does anyone know their story? Any moonlighting jazz legends in this ramshackle combo? I'm told it was a product created for Pickwick, so it's not impossible that Lou Reed or John Cale were involved. Hey, I wouldn't admit it either. ) Anyway, I remember playing this one a lot before the Neal Hefti and Nelson Riddle albums came along to replace it. One thing that endeared it to me was a noticeably wrong chord on the electric organ - an honest-to-God mistake - around the 1:32 mark... which the uploader of this track has apparently taken the time to fix after all these years. Or was it exclusive to the mono version? Or was a bum take accidentally released on the first pressing?

(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Of WonderFest, Drive-Ins and Legacy

This past weekend, Donna and I made our annual trek down to Louisville, Kentucky to attend WonderFest. The fact of the matter is that neither of us really ended up attending WonderFest, per se - aside from going out for meals, we didn't get downstairs at all! We hear there are good people and good things going on down there, but the reason we go is to spend time with our friends and we couldn't break away from our duties in what has come to be known as The Kogar Suite. Named in respectful deference to our friend and mentor Bob Burns, each year the Kogar Suite grants sanctuary to those nearest and dearest to us, while observing a different room theme. One year, it was Kogar and other assorted apes; then it was DARK SHADOWS... and this year, Donna and Lisa Herzog came up with the idea for a Drive-In theme. It proved to be pretty popular among the attendees, especially once it was decided to include a free concession stand - complete with taste-tempting hot dogs, mouth-watering popcorn, delicious candy, and a host of sparkling soft drinks! Traditionally, the Suite is a place where we all gather to discuss the most important topics of the day (for example, FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD) as Donna plays hostess, welcoming people and mixing up something she calls a Vodka Sunset. This year, something called a Re-Animator was added to the cocktails menu (or is that a Reanna-mator?) and our special guests included actor Brian Howe and Nashville's own diabolically rockin' The Exotic Ones.

Yes, even The Exotic Ones (and John Davis) enjoy Kogar Suite Hot Dogs!

This must have been our fifteenth year of attending, as it was also the fifteenth year that David Colton has presented the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Film Awards down there. VIDEO WATCHDOG and I were nominated in several categories but we didn't end up in the Winner's Circle anywhere on the ballot. So you can imagine our surprise when host David Colton suddenly announced "something new" - a new award, not necessarily to be given every year, but in consideration of "special achievement" - and then proceeded to present Donna and I with the first-ever Rondo Legacy Award for having produced 27 years of VIDEO WATCHDOG.

Donna and I with David Colton and our new addition.

There is video of our acceptance - apparently too large a file to share here (thanks, Blogger) - but, trust me, the award came as a complete surprise. I was genuinely speechless and grateful to Donna for meeting the moment with some eloquence. I am especially pleased that her name is on the award. I've often had to remind her that all of our Rondo wins for Best Magazine and Best Book are shared by her, but this is the first Rondo Award that actually bears her name. It's now my hope that Jim & Marian Clatterbaugh will win one of these next year for their many years of producing that beautiful magazine, MONSTERS FROM THE VAULT.

I want to close this entry with a special word of thanks to David Colton... not just for creating this special award that brings a touch of blessed closure to something that had to end much too suddenly, but for bringing the Rondo Awards each year to WonderFest. Had he not done this fifteen years ago, I might never have discovered this convention or met so many amazing people who have become some of my dearest friends. You've made a real difference in my life, David - Donna's too. Thank you.


(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved. 

All About THE GENE KRUPA STORY

I have a new essay premiering today on the New Beverly Cinema blog, promoting this weekend's screenings of THE GENE KRUPA STORY (1959) as part of their month-long tribute to actor Sal Mineo. Be there or be square!

RIP Daliah Lavi (1942-2017)

Daliah in THE WHIP AND THE BODY.

Israeli singer-actress Daliah Lavi passed away last Wednesday, May 3, at the much-too-young age of 74. She was a good friend to us at VIDEO WATCHDOG and we will miss her terribly.

Long years ago, I located this feline goddess of the silver screen - in, of all places, Asheville, North Carolina - and she agreed to be interviewed for my Mario Bava book about her important work on THE WHIP AND THE BODY (1963). I found her to be wonderfully warm, funny, and down-to-earth. Talking about her past put her into an expansive mood and we ended up also talking a bit about her early life and how she ended up becoming an actress, the farthest thing from her thoughts.

She had been an impoverished kid in a kibbutz when Hollywood came calling in the form of a Kirk Douglas picture called THE JUGGLER (1953). She and her little friends kept sneaking into the pool area to gawk at the stars - the cast included future HOGAN'S HEROES star John Banner who became a valued friend for years after. By the end of production, the actors became so fond of Daliah and her antics, they arranged a future for her. 

On her birthday, they presented her family with an opportunity for her to study ballet and reside with a family in Sweden. She eventually became too tall for ballet but she lived with the right Swedish family to pursue acting; it was the family of Volodja Semitjov, the screenwriter of Arne Mattsson's ONE SUMMER OF HAPPINESS (1951), one of the most successful Swedish films ever made. Daliah never acted in a Swedish film (she insisted) but did appear in one; her first proper film was her first starring role, in a picture called BLAZING SAND (1960), which she took pride in noting was the first Israeli-German co-production. (It's available as a DVD-R or download from Something Weird Video, if you'd like to see it.)  She felt that her best film was Brunello Rondi's IL DEMONIO (1963); I had to break the news to her of her co-star Frank Wolff's suicide. She admitted to being distracted (in love with the man who became her first husband) during the making of the Bava film, but when she looked at the copy I sent her, she could understand its value. Her Nevenka - a character created by another friend, Ernesto Gastaldi - is one of the great performances in Bava's catalogue, powerfully intuitive and decorative. She considered most of her films to be "garbage" and didn't like to talk about the really bad ones that came after the Bava film - she frankly included CASINO ROYALE (1967) under that heading and told me that it put her to sleep every time she tried to watch it. She finally retired from films in 1971 (her last was CATLOW with Yul Brynner) and gave her creativity completely to music. She released several albums and many singles, including songs about unification such as "Jerusalem," which became huge hits in Germany. She retired from live performance around 1987, but this is who Daliah most essentially was: a woman who had been a dancer who became an actress who became a singer whose ultimate purpose was to be nurturing, healing, a unifying link of good will between people and countries.

After our interview, Donna and I set about completing the Bava book and presented Daliah with a copy (and an extra one for one of her sons), as well as a copy of IL DEMONIO I had located - she told me she was so excited to receive it and share it with her loved ones. If I remember correctly, it was around this time that she told me that she had been approached to perform a new series of concerts in Germany, which she would agree to do only if it was presented as a farewell tour. I saw reports, even some of her television appearances, during this 2008 tour, which became a tremendous success. Her last concert was recorded digitally and was released as a bonus DVD in a collection of re-recordings of her most popular songs; she got a Gold Record for it. "What a nice way to retire from the record business," she wrote to me. If you look at the YouTube videos, you'll get some idea of how much her music and curing presence was adored by the German public.

It was a couple of years after her homecoming - and about five years after the publication of the Bava book - that I emailed her to ask if we might continue our interview and make it a proper feature in VIDEO WATCHDOG. She hated to send emails so she asked me to call her - and she immediately agreed. We talked at wonderful length - frankly, I don't think she ever learned how to tell stories concisely! - and the interview became the centerpiece of VW 170.

Daliah on her first film set with Kirk Douglas, 1952.

In the course of preparing that issue, I was successful in finding on eBay a photograph taken on the set of THE JUGGLER that showed Kirk Douglas sitting among the film crew, with a very recognizable child standing directly behind him. It was indeed Daliah. We scanned the photo for use in the interview and sent her the original, which she had never seen before, and she told me that she had it framed to be displayed in her home. She told me that seeing it gave her a feeling, much like her farewell tour, of having come full circle. We sent her copies of VW 170 that she gave to the guests attending her 70th birthday party.

After this, we kept in touch intermittently - when I had a question, when someone was trying to reach her through me, when it was her birthday. I urged her to write her autobiography, but she told me that she had too many secrets to keep for other people; she believed that such books were usually written only to spread dirt and she wasn't going to do that. (In fact, if I ever asked her what she thought about a colleague, she rarely said more than "He was nice" or "She was nice" for that very reason.) As time passed, she told me that she had taken a bad fall while walking around her property and had to spend some time in bed; then she injured her shoulder and had to receive a titanium implant. She complained about the way it conducted cold; it was an unpleasant companion to her in the wintertime. But she would laugh as she said this, marveling that she was now part-bionic. She had come a long way from that kibbutz in Shavei Zion, and we both agreed that she had lived a very blessed life.

Daliah in concert, 2008.

I became a fan of Daliah's music as a result of being her friend. She was a wonderful woman - incidentally, she was the first person I interviewed for my book who took an active interest in me and my devotion to Bava, who asked me questions. The essence of the woman I knew is in her music, not in her films, as she would have been the first to agree. She was such a warm and vibrant spirit, I can't believe she's gone. It hurts a little now to have her telephone number.

Rest in everlasting peace, dear lady.

(c) 2017 Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Remembering Ella, Now 100

They called her "The First Lady of Song." Ella Fitzgerald, born 100 years ago today. Since her death in 1996, she has ascended to a level she was said to occupy in life, that of a genuine musical legend; she is now interred in box sets with celestial collaborators.

It's hard for me to believe now, but I was once in her presence - backstage at Cincinnati's Music Hall in September 1977 - and even touched her shoulder, which was covered in heavy mink, in hello and farewell. I don't think she felt it, and she might have looked askance at me or clobbered me if she had. But it's what I came away with from our brief encounter, rather than an autograph or a conversation. I stood beside her as she talked with another fan. She had a charmed music even in her speaking voice, but she also had the staunch aura of a warrior, of someone who had endured a lot of ugliness to bring a little beauty into the world.

(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved. 

New Books and Music

Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain in THE RIFLEMAN.

Classic TV aficianados will be excited to learn that Laurel Records has just released MUSIC FROM THE ORIGINAL TELEVISION SERIES "THE RIFLEMAN," a generous two-disc set of Herschell Burke Gilbert's original music cues. This is some of the most readily identifiable, and long coveted, ever withheld for so long from the public reach, and it has finally been brought to disc in stunning fashion by the composer's son John G. Gilbert. The first disc of the set includes 35 different original cues by Gilbert, totalling 57:48 in length, and there is also a bonus disc of 26 additional library tracks heard on the show that Gilbert accessed from the MUTEL music library, totalling 61:44! Rounding out the package is an informative, 22-page illustrated booklet that offers a biography of Gilbert, a history of the series and its music (all of which - surprise! - was originally recorded in Munich, Germany!), and a list of feature films in which the MUTEL tracks can also be heard (for example, RIOT IN CELL BLOCK ELEVEN, WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS, THE THIEF and BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT). The original Gilbert tracks are a sonic revelation, yielding up charming, colorful instrumentation details often lost in playback on the show's 16mm syndication prints.

Just released by McFarland is Roberto Curti's RICCARDO FREDA: THE LIFE AND WORKS OF A BORN FILMMAKER, a most welcome 376 page critical biography of the Egyptian-born filmmaker, an Italian swashbuckler specialist who is sadly almost entirely known in this country for a handful of horror films he barely took seriously (I VAMPIRI, CALTIKI THE IMMORTAL MONSTER, THE HORRIBLE DR HICHCOCK, THE GHOST, TRAGIC CEREMONY). The joy of Curti's text is that he has sought out and screened as much of Freda's work as can presently be found, and made sense of Freda's overall career for the first time in English - vital in itself, as many of the films either do not exist in English or can no longer be found in the English-dubbed versions that once circulated (as in the case of the 1940s adventure THE GAY SWORDSMAN or the 1950s thriller TRAPPED IN TANGIERS). Indeed, it was brave of McFarland to undertake this book because it covers a number of features that American readers simply have no way of seeing. Curti has interviewed a number of former Freda associates, including his daughter Jacqueline, and manages to shed new light on facets of his life and career that all other references based in repeated misinformation; for example, he reveals that Freda and his muse Gianna Maria Canale were never actually married and that 1957's I VAMPIRI (their most famous collaboration) actually marked the end of their romantic relationship. The history of the Italian popular cinema is something of a slippery slope; indeed, there are also many cases in the book when the memories of different participants are found to be at odds with one another. Generally, Curti acknowledges them all and allows them to reader to choose the truth for themselves. I am a rare exception to this rule, often cited by Curti as a source of misinformation, even when said information was given to me by Freda himself or responsibly culled from published interviews. This would annoy me less if I didn't have such respect for Curti's own contributions; he proves himself a vigorous and passionate champion of Freda, adding insights and discoveries of consequence to the existing literature, in highly readable English. As for the feeling of the reader, it is one of privilege and great liberty, to actually read at length, and in depth, about Freda (indeed, this sphere of filmmaking) without reaching for the Italian/English Dictionary with each new sentence. If the history of the Italian popular cinema is a subject near and dear to your heart, as it is to mine, you must have this book. One hopes that its existence will help to spur a resurgence of interest in Freda's work and its resurrection on Blu-ray. Also available from McFarland directly at www.mcfarland.com (or by calling 800-253-2187).

Donna and I were recently sent a lavish book by rock historian Douglas Harr, which he was kind enough to tell us had been inspired in its presentation by MARIO BAVA - ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK. Although it's a bit outside my usual scope here, I would like to recommend this book - ROCKIN' THE CITY OF ANGELS: CELEBRATING THE GREAT ROCK SHOWS OF THE 1970s IN CONCERT, ON RECORD, AND ON FILM - both for the historical record it represents, and as a magnificent objet of the book-making art. Taking a different approach to the subject of 1970s rock than other books, Harr uses the lavish coffee table book model as a means of documenting - in near-cinematic terms - how in-concert performances during this period evolved from the raw extended performances by groups like Led Zeppelin, Emerson Lake and Palmer, and The Who into something more ambitious and theatrical with the arrivals of Alice Cooper, David Bowie, and KISS, culminating in such classic conceptual stagings as Genesis' THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY and Pink Floyd's THE WALL. Harr's essays describe in vivid detail the experience of being a Los Angeles audience member (hence "THE CITY OF ANGELS") at each of these shows, then explore how successfully these live events were subsequently preserved on record and on film. The text is richly complemented with more than 600 luscious images, predominantly color, showcasing the various acts in performance, taken by photographers Richard E. Aaron, Jorgen Angel, Martyn Dean, Ian Dickson, Armando Gallo, Stacey Katsis, Neal Preston, Jim Summaria, Lisa Tanner, Brian Weiner and Neil Zlozower. This book is clearly a labor of love and a marvelous tool for evoking memories of long-ago venues, and I would imagine equally valuable to fans of the various bands who were not around to see these tours when they originally took place. In its determination to be encompassing, the book doesn't allow itself any musical snobbery, which is the approach most fair to the subject at hand. King Crimson fans may resent the fact that Harr also finds room for the less cerebral Supertramp and AC/DC, but they may also learn a thing or two by reading those chapters outside their usual habit trails. I was astounded to discover that this book is priced under $100; I don't know how they managed it, but you get a lot of book for your money and you might even get high off the printer's ink. In addition to the highlighted link, you can also find ROCKIN' THE CITY OF ANGELS here.

As always, the bolded blue links will take you to sales pages for the item under review.

(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

   

Fun at the New Beverly

Elvis sings "Bossa Nova Baby" in FUN IN ACAPULCO.

I have a new 3500-word essay about Elvis Presley's 1960s films that is now posted over at the New Beverly Cinema website, which you can find right here. The primary focus is on two films - FUN IN ACAPULCO (1963) and CLAMBAKE (1967) - which will be playing there for one night only on Tuesday, April 18, in stunning IB Technicolor 35mm prints. I'm hoping to pack the house.

The Elvis films were as central to my early movie-going experience as monsters or anything else, yet this is the first really substantial thing I've ever written about them. I hope you'll enjoy it.

The Week In Review

Rihanna as Marion Crane in BATES MOTEL.

This week's BATES MOTEL episode "Marion" reminded me of what a profound and ultimately humane, sympathetic, inexhaustibly complex work of art PSYCHO is. In attempting to do something different/unpredictable/audacious, the makers of this show, I fear, may have critically misjudged their mission - which I've always hoped was to broaden and deepen the essential tragedy of the story, to make the original film that much more heartbreaking. Donna predicted that tonight's events might happen last week. I thought, "They wouldn't dare." They did. (No dialogue credit for Joseph Stefano either, but perhaps they were doing him a favor.) As with all things, time will tell. Four more episodes to go.

Copies of CALTIKI THE IMMORTAL MONSTER hit the Arrow Video offices today and will be shipped to retail outlets presently. It doesn't appear to be mentioned on the packaging, but - at my urging - Arrow generously decided late in production to present CALTIKI THE IMMORTAL MONSTER on the Blu-ray disc in both its theatrical aspect ratio of 1.66:1 and, for the first time ever, in full aperture 1.33:1. There is absolutely no doubt that the film was intended to be screened only at 1.66:1 because the unmatted version is intermittently hard-matted. Of course, the 1.33:1 TV prints prevailing in circulation over the years represented a cropping of the hard-matted release print. However, all of Bava's special effects footage in the original dupe negative was filmed unmatted, so this disc makes available for the first time a far more generous view of these effects than have ever been seen publicly! Additionally, I believe the intermittent in-camera matting offers some exciting eurekas into how the film was originally shot and assembled by Bava and Freda. In addition to my audio commentary, I wrote an essay for the accompanying booklet about this astounding artifact and what it seems to reveal to us about the secrets of this two-fathered film.

Also in Mario Bava-related news, this week Kino Lorber announced their plans to release Bava's masterpiece KILL, BABY... KILL! (Operazione paura, 1966) for the first time on Blu-ray in June. The disc will include a brand-new 2K restoration, a newly-recorded audio commentary by yours truly (Tim Lucas, the author of MARIO BAVA, ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK), a 20m documentary visit to the film's original locations with assistant director Lamberto Bava, and more!

I've been thinking a lot today about my friend (I consider him a friend) Richard Harland Smith, who has announced on his FB page that his new audio commentary for Robert Wise's A GAME OF DEATH (1945, Kino Classics) is his last. Of course he's not dead, just retiring from a particular beat, but this leads me to eulogistic thinking. I understand that lives change as individuals change and grow, as families change and grow, and I can appreciate what he says when he explains that it's time he started focusing more on life and less on movies. But it also bugs me because Rich is one of the very best audio commentators around; he has always had a rare gift for writing about the movies with respect and appreciation while writing about the personalities involved that makes them seem warmer, more grounded, and approachable. He's grounded too, the cinema has never been a church for him, so what made him such a unique commentator is now leading him to hang up that hat. THE DEVIL BAT, THE DEATH KISS, DERANGED, BURNT OFFERINGS, TWICE-TOLD TALES (with Perry Martin), DONOVAN'S BRAIN, MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD, BLOOD AND LACE, BEWARE OF THE BLOB, PANIC IN YEAR ZERO!... I don't know how many commentaries Rich has recorded but every single one I've heard has given me real enjoyment, taught me something, painted a picture or two that I felt I could step into. This is all too rare, especially among writers and commentators embracing genre films. His ARBOGAST ON FILM blog was a brilliant thing that turned blogging sideways. Who else would even think of using Halloween as an excuse to write prose poems describing 30 different horror movie screams, and then make it an annual event? There ought to be a book of his collected work, so it can dwell somewhere more upscale than in old magazines, some of which I edited. Rich was one of my favorite writers from my years of editing VIDEO WATCHDOG, and I was always honored to present his writing. I guess I'm wrestling with these feelings because I sense that he probably feels, on some level, sorrow because the work could never be as sustaining as it was uplifting. This could well be a projection of mine. But here's to you, my friend; if you never write another word, your voice is always going to linger somewhere in my own regard for film. Carpe diem.

Elvis and director Norman Taurog.

Considering how central and important Elvis Presley was to my early movie-going experience, it's odd that, at my present age, there still remain several of his films that I've still never seen. I can trace the break in our contract to an afternoon in 1969-70; I was about 13 years old and went to see an Elvis movie (CHARRO), but due to an unannounced change in the running times, ended up seeing a Sergio Leone film (ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST) instead. It changed my life, and realizing afterwards that the Elvis movie could add nothing of greater substance to my day, I got up and left without seeing it - and, to this day, I still haven't seen it. I've always looked back on this as the first adult decision of my life. However, this decision had a residual result, in that - especially after the wounding disappointment of Elvis' death - I rarely went revisited his movies, even after they became available letterboxed. But now, as serendipity would have it, I find myself taking a short break in my Leone commentary duties to whip up a little essay about Elvis. And perhaps, I find myself thinking, the time has come to finally seek out the rest of those Elvis movies. Funny how life works all of this out. How much funnier to notice.

Now reading Henry Green's CAUGHT. I haven't read Henry Green since the late 1980s but the first 35 pages of this make me want to go back and swallow the other books whole. This particular novel, a postwar reverie about his time in the London Auxiliary Fire Brigade during the Blitz, is one I was always discouraged from reading by an essay I read that described its storytelling as unusually straightforward, but it's anything but. The early chapters (no fire-fighting yet) are consistently surprising, with sudden startling injections of space and shadow, color and vertigo, and frequent are the paragraphs and sentences I reread for the multiplicity of layers in them, which is both dazzling and disorienting, and for the sheer pleasure of going back to see exactly how he managed this or that stylistic effect. The last paragraph I just read before closing the book for the night described the lead character leaving a house and walking to the front gate to return to town, but in that walk he was simultaneously a self-absorbed child, a doting newlywed, and the neglectful father of a young son. Such a great writer.

RIP to Tony Russel (b. Anthony Russo - seen above at left), the Gamma I commander from THE WILD WILD PLANET, one of the standout heroes of Italy's sword and sandal era (THE SECRET SEVEN, REVOLT OF THE SPARTANS), and a familiar voice from the dubbing industry. Tony was a great guy; Michael Barnum interviewed him for a retrospective feature article in VIDEO WATCHDOG 128 (still available, even digitally). He was 91.

RIP German-French actress Christine Kaufmann, whose films included MADCHEN IN UNIFORM, THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII (1959, pictured), TOWN WITHOUT PITY, TARAS BULBA (starring her one-time husband, Tony Curtis), Gordon Hessler's MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1972), and BAGDAD CAFE. She died after a long battle with leukemia at 72.

And, last but not least, RIP to the great Alessandro Alessandroni, the man who whistled, played guitar and led the Cantori Moderni choir on most of Ennio Morricone's scores for Sergio Leone's Westerns. He also composed a number of scores in his own right, including those for THE DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE (a particular favorite) and LADY FRANKENSTEIN, and performed vocally and instrumentally on many others, including Mario Bava's DANGER: DIABOLIK and the mono film SWEDEN HEAVEN AND HELL (Alessandroni and his wife Giulia provided the voices for the classic novelty song "Mah Na Mah Na"). The particular tenor of his Leone performances - gentle, ragged, weathered, rollicking, acoustic and electric - forever changed many young lives. Mine included. He was 92.

(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.