Recent Viewings: THE BRIDES OF FU MANCHU (1966)

With the second film in producer Harry Alan Towers' series, the key participants appear to have studied their previous effort closely, taken note of all the minor mistakes therein and corrected them, though the new work makes a few missteps of its own. Nevertheless, THE BRIDES OF FU MANCHU is an appreciably more assured film and perhaps the series' high point. 

Rather than filming in Dublin as before, the production occupied Bray Studios, where all of Hammer's best-loved films had been made. As Fu's subterranean headquarters is secreted this time far below an Egyptian temple, the set flats and decorations are right out of a Mummy series rummage sale and feel familiar in the best way. Again, the budget didn't allow for a Hammer-level composer, but Towers was able to recruit Bruce Montgomery (a veteran of the Doctor in the House and Carry On series), who is described by the IMDb as "a hopeless alcoholic" and whose work here was likely far more than simply buoyed by its credited conductor, Philip Martell - Hammer's musical supervisor since 1962). It was Montgomery's last credited score (though he did not die until 1978 at age 56) and it has the authority of a genuine, if minor, Hammer score. Also significantly, returning director Don Sharp had done another Hammer film with Christopher Lee in the interim, presiding over one of his more celebrated performances in RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK (1965), and he makes immediately clear that he has learned how to use this instrument onscreen to its fullest. Lee's Fu Manchu is a more expressive characterization here, swathed in emerald silks and taking charge of people's minds by wrapping their heads in his large hands. The opening sequence, which drops us immediately into the middle of the action (not to be confused with the needless memory-refreshing excerpts from FACE that open the American version) - reintroducing Fu and his daughter Lin Tang (Tsai Chin) as well as their latest abductees, Michele Merlin (Carole Gray) and her scientist father Jules (Rupert Davies) - may be the most bravura filmmaking in the entire series. Acting, direction, camera blocking, wardrobe, set design, and score - it feels like a foretaste of classic Hammer.

Howard Marion-Crawford and Douglas Wilmer, our heroes.

Then come the aftertastes, which unfortunately include the less satisfactory heroics of Douglas Wilmer as the new Nayland Smith; he hasn't much of the dramatic gravity that Nigel Green brought to the role. Howard Marion-Crawford is back as his stuffy associate Dr. Petrie, with somewhat less to do, and this time the guest German actor slot is handed over to the reliable Heinz Drache (THE MYSTERIOUS MAGICIAN), who gets several opportunities to demonstrate his flair for fisticuffs - which look good but sound like someone off-camera was asked to clap his hands together every time a punch was thrown, the better that we can hear them connect. The primary heroine is surprisingly not Carole Gray (who's a bit far down the cast list for one of her screen time and credentials), but rather a French ingenue, Marie Versini - who isn't remotely equal to Gray but had the advantage to the film's German investors of having been a cast member in several of Rialto Film's Karl May adventures. The Peter Welbeck (Towers) script is a basically a more needlessly complicated retread of the previous story, built to accommodate a fifth-wheel supporting role for another of Rialto's krimi men, Harald Leipnitz.

Carole Gray and Tsai Chin, center stage.

One of the surprising highlights of the film is an abduction staged in a crowded theater during an opera performance - which must have been scripted in expectation of a more opulent budget and had to be pared down to barest essentials as the day of shooting finally came. Technically, it's a tour de force of getting away with murder: we see an audience not particularly dressed for a night at the opera, at least a few rows of faces, all looking at the stage as if they have been asked to imagine it while smelling something awful; we never see a glimpse of performance - we don't even see the stage! - and yet the scene, remarkably, works.

The wonderful character actor Bert Kwouk, best-remembered as Cato in the Pink Panther films, is a marvelous added resource to the Fu Manchu team as their star engineer Feng, but his addition is also problematical. First of all, Kwouk is simply too good an actor; we can see Christopher Lee upping his game when they share scenes together, which has the unwelcome effect of making them interact as equals - something the imperious Fu would never permit. Not only do the two men banter and bicker (!) over important details, but Feng actually questions and ultimately refuses orders. But the primary error of the Welbeck script, also present in the first, is that the reasons for Fu's dreams of world conquest are never explained - as are his intentions for what to do when and if he attains such power. With his goal left so nebulous, the film limits itself to a lower level of entertainment than it might have achieved. Also, when the stakes are raised to their highest in the final reel, Fu blithely ignores numerous danger signs arising between himself and absolute success, which causes him to look crudely sociopathic, insane rather than a villain with a vision. Sharp also does no favors to Fu's dignity when he allows us to see father and daughter scurrying like ordinary mortals on the lam, accessing their executive escape hatch as all Hell breaks loose around them.

In preparing this film, Towers plucked a feather from the cap of American director William Castle, who had recently chosen the cast of his 1965 thriller 13 FRIGHTENED GIRLS from among the discoveries of an international beauty contest for teens. Having a knack for making other people's ideas a little spicier, Towers announced this film by holding a similar pageant for continental starlets above the age of consent! Whether or not the competition was a real contest or just ballyhoo, he got some quick ink in European magazines by having the "brides" pose while tearing off each others' clothes on set, though there is no erotic content in the film whatsoever.

My review is based on a viewing of Momentum's UK disc, dated 2001, though the film has since (2008) also become available domestically as half of an MGM Midnite Movies double feature with 1967's CHAMBER OF HORRORS. I have heard this version (which includes the aforementioned US prologue) also has an anomaly of presentation that causes  a slight vertical stretching of the image, which is reportedly soft to begin with; I have seen grabs online that confirm this. No such anomalies are present on the Momentum disc, which looks infinitely better than the copy of FACE OF FU MANCHU included in the same FU MANCHU TRILOGY box set. There are no extras on the disc. As with the other films in the series, BRIDES is included in its shorter, alternate German cut with music by Gert Wilden in the German box set THE DR. FU-MAN-CHU COLLECTION.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved. 

Recent Viewings: THE FACE OF FU MANCHU (1965)

"The world shall hear from me again."

When Christopher Lee agreed to portray Sax Rohmer's popular Emperor of Crime in this, the first of what became five adventures for producer Harry Alan Towers, he was graduating to the role in a couple of different ways. Firstly, he was stepping away from his essential homebase at Hammer Films to extend his range of portrayals of the great roles in horror and fantasy, having already played Frankenstein's creature, Count Dracula, and the Mummy - and in doing so, he was extending his reach as an international actor, as the film was to be an international co-production between Towers and Constantin Films of West Germany, who would ultimately release their own different cut (with a different score, to boot), Ich, Fu Manchu ("I, Fu Manchu"). Furthermore, he had already approached this role from two oblique angles; one might even say he had auditioned for it, by having played a very similar character, Chung King, in TERROR OF THE TONGS (1961) for Hammer, as well as Ling Chiu, the Chinese detective in THE DEVIL'S DAFFODIL (1961), a krimi made for West Germany's Rialto Film, the home of the celebrated Edgar Wallace thrillers. It was here that those two lines had to converge.

Nigel Green and Karin Dor.

This first entry in the series opens with the ceremonial decapitation of Fu Manchu for his crimes, with his nemesis Sir Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard (Nigel Green) in attendance - an impressively ceremonial yet understated pre-credits sequence that underlines Lee's entrance with the flicker of light that precedes approaching thunder and concludes with the rain finally breaking and pouring down on an open courtyard abandoned by all save his headless body. The script by Peter Welbeck (Towers' pseudonym), based on no particular Rohmer novel, borrows a cliffhanger from the first Fantômas novel by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain to explain the villain's resurrection: he hypnotized a great Chinese actor into taking his place on the headsman's block. Then, we're off and running in a new plot, which concerns Fu's cold-blooded quest to acquire the research that has gone into the development of a new mass-murder drug distilled from the seeds of the black poppy. In a scene recalling the early scenes of VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, Smith and his associates Dr. Petrie (Howard Marion-Crawford) and Carl Jannsen (Joachim Fuchsberger) visit a small town that has been used as an example of Fu's power, and the camera lingers mercilessly over the images of women, children, and animals who dropped dead in the street. 

Like Father, Like Daughter: Tsai Chin and Christopher Lee.

Jannsen is engaged to Maria Muller (Karin Dor), the daughter of the scientist (Walter Rilla) working in this area of research, who must be abducted and threatened with torturous death to get him to do what is wanted. It's a pleasure to see Fuchsberger and Dor, the stars of the Wallace krimis, acting together in English and they both figure in outstanding suspense scenes. Tsai Chin also makes a strong impression as Fu's sadistic and diminutive daughter, Lin Tang - whose name was Fah Lo See in the novels; she subsequently became a Bond girl in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967). Her father has the power and authority, but she is shown actively working in the trenches of crime, disguising herself and chomping at the bit to deal out more punishments. In short, she seems potentially the more formidable foe, though she would never transcend her increasingly sullen, second banana status.

Director Don Sharp (KISS OF THE VAMPIRE, DEVIL-SHIP PIRATES, WITCHCRAFT) directs the film capably and without a hint of self-consciousness or humor, and the vaguely defined period setting is well-sustained. There is a sense about the film that it might have been whittled down from something of more epic length - there are references to key scenes glossed over or not shown - but it moves along at an able, indeed variable, pace that holds one's interest. The one source of disappointment is the score by Christopher Whelen, which seems present only to punch-up the action scenes, doing little to inject the film with identifiable flavor and personality. In this department, the film might well be improved upon by the German version (even shorter), which was rescored by Gert Wilden and is available as part of a comprehensive 5-disc box set released in Germany.

In case you're wondering, the film efficiently shrugs away any quarrel about this escapist material's inherent "racism" when one character's color-conscious observation is shut down by his companion's wise and friendly admonition: "It takes all kinds to make a world." 

Available as a DVD-R from Warner Archive, with no extras.  It's actually your best bet. Various import options exist, including a British DVD box set including the sequels THE BRIDES OF FU MANCHU (1966) and THE VENGEANCE OF FU MANCHU (1967) which includes bonus trailers; however, the quality of this version leaves much to be desired, looking somewhat noisy and overbright - evidently a not-very-skilled attempt at overcoming the limitations of 2-perf Techniscope.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Recent Viewings: SINFONIA EROTICA

SINFONIA EROTICA (1979, 84:39)

Before I say anything about the film itself, grateful thanks must be extended once again to David Gregory's Severin Films for its continued support of Jess Franco's film legacy. In this case, said support extends to paying for the 4K restoration of the only known surviving print of one of his more obscure titles (reportedly donated by the Instituto de la Sexualidad Humana in Madrid); mind you, this is a film never before released in America and known to circulate before now primarily as an Italian-language bootleg. Such a release is nothing short of heroic, as counter-commercial as the film itself, and therefore fully deserving of our custom. What makes the gesture still more appreciable is that the film in question is so very odd, even within its niche; it's the only period film Franco shot in the seven-year spread between JACK THE RIPPER (1976) and El Hundimiento de la Casa Usher (1983), and his penultimate Sade adaptation, followed by THE SEXUAL STORY OF O in 1983-84.

Shot in Sintra, the magical area of Lisbon where A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD (1971) was filmed, this is a very personal, very cheap, yet remarkably sustained period adaptation of the Marquis de Sade. It's more akin to the Jean Epstein and Ivan Barnett adaptations of Poe than anyone could have expected from a 1980s feature, and also Franco's only attempt after 1968's JUSTINE to film Sade in an other than contemporary setting. It's based on the "Marquis de Bressac" portion of the novel JUSTINE, involving the characters more decorously portrayed by Horst Frank and Sylva Koscina in JUSTINE. 

Inhabiting these roles in this telling are Armando Sallent as the Marquis de Bressac, an unrepentant sadist and sexual anarchist who has taken a gay lover (Mel Rodrigo) in the wake of his wife's placement in a mental sanatorium, a deed he has arranged by blackmailing a corrupt doctor (Albino Graziani) - named Louÿs in honor of the French erotic poet. The discharging of the wife, Martine (Lina Romay, in her blonde-wigged "Candice Coster" persona), prompts the two male lovers to contrive a plan to murder her for her vast fortune, but their plot unexpectedly coincides with the discovery of a violated novice nun (Susan Hemingway of LOVE LETTERS OF A PORTUGUESE NUN) on their castle grounds. The pleasure of corrupting the nun (in which Martine hungrily takes part) unexpectedly exposes the captive's nascent sadistic personality, and the subsequent revels ultimately prove punishing to all... as well as liberating to some.

 

 

 

The film is scored with excerpts from "Concerto No. 4" by Franz Liszt (a composer whose "Liesbestraum" figures in other Franco films, notably 1968's SUCCUBUS) and stabby washes of glacial electronic keyboard by Franco himself. Musically, the film is unusual though not entirely unfamiliar as Franco's work. However, it was shot (evidently in 16mm) in a fractured style and general vagueness that - Romay's surreptitious but transparent involvement aside - doesn't fully evoke the involvement of its director. Its use of Victorian dresses and hats, its shots of gay men gamboling in nature over canned classical music sometimes brings the work of Andy Milligan to mind; while, on the other end of the spectrum, Franco sometimes appears to be deliberately emulating (if not satirizing) the technique of Walerian Borowczyk, sharing his attention to period clothing, to rooms and furnishings, to antiquity, and indeed the eccentric off-kilter framing that we so often find in Borowcyk's work. Only in the film's subject matter and its numerous sideways glances into abstraction and lens-flexing is Franco's hand apparent. It's interesting that Franco would attempt something so unlike his usual self (no self-references, no humor), particularly at the same time Romay was going so far as to deny her own screen persona, and that these attempts to forge new creative identities would coincide with their return to Madrid after decades of self-exile. 

It should also be noted that (depending on exactly when it was made) the film may have represented an under-the-radar reunion for the couple, who had gone their separate ways around 1976-77, at least onscreen - with Romay making films with other directors (Erwin C. Dietrich, Carlos Aured and Jorge Grau), while Franco occupied himself either by shooting films without Lina (SEXY SISTERS, DEVIL HUNTER) or creating new films out of older footage like THE SADIST OF NOTRE DAME.

 

 

 

SINFONIA EROTICA may not be a major title in Franco's canon, but it also lacks the personal characteristics of a minor or malign one. It's a film that doesn't appear to have been made for the usual reasons of ambition, to do with ego, but in response to a deeply personal challenge to do something one has not done, to be someone one has not been. There are, admittedly, points of aggravation when the opening shots of the boughs of trees (which seem to quote the album cover art of Bruno Nicolai's original soundtrack for JUSTINE) are not sustained as long as they need to be held under the opening titles, and splice, and splice, wrecking the mood of the Liszt music; likewise, there is the climactic moment when the last thing a dramatic scene needs is for Lina's blonde wig to come off... and it does. Cut, print. One looks in vain for a reason why Franco would have retained an error so severe. Perhaps he didn't notice at the time and was stuck with what he had, perhaps he saw it as a Brechtian injection of distance into the moment - a reminder that these are all actors, like the ones we are surprised to find applauded in the opening scenes of many of his films. Perhaps it was a bit of both.

 

 

 

The film has a high degree of grain in some shots, which is one reason to suspect a 16mm origin. There are also occasional markings onscreen but, this being the only known print in the world, there is little room to find fault that wasn't there to begin with. The Region ABC Blu-ray disc presents the film in its original post-synchronized Spanish audio with English subtitles. There is some male and female frontal nudity, but the sexual activity never crosses the line into hardcore. 

Franco authority Stephen Thrower (MURDEROUS PASSIONS: THE DELIRIOUS CINEMA OF JESÚS FRANCO) is on hand with a 22:22 talk; while clearly bemused about the film, in a good way, he quickly runs out of compliments for it and spends most of his time on its literary origin and Sade's influence on Franco's work generally. There is also a touching 6:34 reminiscence of Nicole Guettard, Franco's first wife (credited with set decoration here), filmed during Severin's last visit to Franco's apartment in 2013.

Available directly from Severin Films, where it is available as a no-frills bundle with Franco's THE SADIST OF NOTRE DAME or in a deluxe bundle with the bonus feature, a special limited edition one-sheet, and an enamel pin.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

     

Recent Viewings: THE SECT, GIANT LEECHES, FIRECREEK

THE SECT (1991)
Michele Soavi's follow-up to THE CHURCH (1989, itself intended as a follow-up to DEMONS), derived from a Dario Argento story, actually plays more like the third "Three Mothers" story than THE MOTHER OF TEARS: it too has a young protagonist in a strange place (rural Germany), surrounded by young students, cultish colleagues and weird elders, with a mysterious watery recess far beneath her house. Soavi has, by far, the best directorial chops of anyone working in Italy during this period, and the movie begins with a soberingly sure-handed prologue that makes one feel there is an actual filmmaker is in the pilot seat, rather than someone with more flamboyance than a clue. Once we get down to brass tacks, after a fine part for Herbert Lom as a mysterious tramp with a purpose, the movie succumbs to the usual Argento foolishness: our heroine (Kelly Curtis, whom I actually prefer to her sister Jamie Lee) lives with a rabbit she calls Rabbit; she meets cute with a young doctor (Michael Hans Adatte) with an aversion to rabbits that results in unpersuasive banter; there are flashy deaths for anyone tenuously attached to the story; and we get the tail end of Argento's fascination with bugs. None of it makes any sense and, if a lot of it is silly in either execution or principle, some of it is also weirdly beautiful. The occasional scene commands respect - even if the visual allusions to THE BIRDS, EYES WITHOUT A FACE and ROSEMARY'S BABY and character names (Martin Romero, Mary Crane) are rather more brazen than they would be in the Maestro's hand. Available on Blu-ray from Scorpion Releasing.
 

ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES (1959)
1950s horror doesn't come much grislier than this salty slice of cryptid horror pulp. Executive produced by Roger Corman and produced by brother Gene Corman, this is Bernard L. Kowalski's pursuant feature to NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST (1958), scripted by none other than Leo Gordon. Ken Clark (future star of Mario Bava Westerns) is a game warden in a sleepy, backwoods Southern town whose job consists mostly of patrolling local swamps for illegal traps - until the sighting of a bullet-proof mutation and the abduction of some locals raises the pressure on him to dynamite the area. The barely hour-long running time contains a fair amount of conversation about the ecological disadvantages of such a response, which is unusual and interesting, and there are an unseemly number of opportunities for Clark to bare his hairy chest, but the real stars of this show are Bruno ve Sota and PLAYBOY's July 1959 Playmate Yvette Vickers, as a bickering couple out of BABY DOLL whose sexual antagonism builds to an extended scene of Vickers and her lover Michael Emmet being chased through the woods by a shotgun-firing ve Sota - "just to scare them" - till something really scary happens. The scenes of the abductees having their blood sucked by the garbage bag monsters are unforgettable. Historically speaking, it's been hard to find a decent-looking copy of this film since it left TV syndication, but it's now available from Retromedia Entertainment as half of a nice-looking Blu-ray double feature with TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first time this traditional 1.33:1 title has been released to home video in a widescreen format.

FIRECREEK (1968)
Slow-cooking, even-burning Western from director Vincent McEveety finds James Stewart and Henry Fonda delivering earnest portrayals where we might least expect them. This was not one of the better eras of the American Western, which is not to say that fine work in the genre wasn't still being done, just that audiences weren't as responsive to it. The Calvin Clements script gives us a hero and villain who are early examples of the two being mirror images of each other: Stewart is an underpaid honorary sheriff and family man in charge of a sleepy little town of self-described losers, who is bullied into defending it by the irresponsible actions of an outlaw gang led by a tired and wounded Fonda, who would rather hang his hat and make peace with the world but can't because these men represent his ability to lead. Neither man is actually leading; they're just wearing different kinds of badge, but as the sun goes down, night falls - night "when things happen" - and the men are forced to bring their images of who they are to the test. In 1968, this would have stood out as a searing indictment of what was then called "the Silent Majority," and its message still stands today. Far more thought-provoking than the usual American Western of this period, with strong supporting work by Gary Lockwood, Jack Elam (acting alongside Fonda before the two of them went into Leone's ONE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST), James Best, Louise Latham, Ed Begley, Dean Jagger, Brooke Bundy and, in one of the most potent performances she ever gave, Inger Stevens.  Available for streaming from Amazon Video, iTunes and YouTube. Also on Warner Home Video DVD.

(C) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
 

Dreams of My Peter Van Eyck Room

"Was zur Hölle ist das?"

I don't need to be rich, but I would like very much to live in a house large and comfortable enough to permit me the luxury of a Peter Van Eyck room. 

While I can't claim that Peter Van Eyck (1911-1969) was my favorite actor - therefore, it goes without saying that any house permitting me a Peter Van Eyck room would also have to allow me a number of other shrines - there is something about him and his screen persona that I find curious, compelling and fascinating. He doesn't have what you would call a warm vibe, but if you're looking for someone with cool reserve and urbane efficiency, he's your guy.

He first stood out for me when I discovered Henri-Georges Clouzot's THE WAGES OF FEAR, when he shaves on the morning of driving a treacherous stretch of road with his explosive cargo because, should he happen to meet God that day, he intends to look "presentable." Unfortunately I have never found him featured in any of the advertising art for this classic film, so I am not sure how I would go about representing it or many of his other important early films (HITLER'S CHILDREN, HITLER'S MADMAN) on the walls of my private temple. I've seen many of his films since but his shaving speech in THE WAGES OF FEAR continues to stand out for me as his great screen moment. It gave him a claim to a special compartment in my brain and such a compartment should also exist in my very large house, the one I own outright in my dreams.

The items I would include would have to adhere to a very strict and particular criteria, much as I expect things would have had to pass muster before Peter Van Eyck's aptly discriminating eye would have led him to adopt them for his own home. This magazine cover from BRAVO would require understated yet distinctive placement as it is the only Van Eyck magazine cover I have seen. Had VIDEO WATCHDOG continued, I could guarantee you a Peter Van Eyck cover. So this much is a certainty, perhaps in a humble but sturdy frame above the light switch.

Another essential accent piece would be a nearly wall-sized poster enlargement of this still from the 1958 film Das Mädchen Rosemarie, depicting a debonair Van Eyck in the divine company of Nadja Tiller. The magic of this still would be reflected in the great care with which I would furnish my Peter Van Eyck room with items as close to those seen in the photograph as possible.

The mainstay of the room's decorations, of course, would be Peter Van Eyck film posters, posters from every country around the world, each demonstrating in its own way how Peter Van Eyck is perceived and celebrated in different places and cultures. For instance, this British quad poster for the Hammer thriller THE SNORKEL (also 1958) which, incidentally, is newly released on Blu-ray in the UK from Indicator. This is a spectacular Van Eyck image because his accoutrements demand an expression which he is simply too cool to yield.

Somewhat more forthcoming is this Spanish poster for the British-German co-production known in English as either THE BRAIN or as VENGEANCE, starring Peter Van Eyck under the direction of Freddie Francis. The poster's tagline translates as "A Dead Man Discovers His Killer," which gains resonance in the light of Van Eyck's perplexed expression as it hovers with thwarted purpose over this aquarium with all manner of tubes and wires affixed to a submerged human brain. This would be ideal for framing above a comfortable reading chair, where one might tackle crossword puzzles and crypto-quips.


For sheer provocation, this Italian fotobusta for 1963's SEDUCTION BY THE SEA would also be a must, though Peter Van Eyck can barely be seen in it. But that is one of the challenges proposed by this fantasy; very often, Van Eyck is aggravatingly secondary to the artwork.

When it comes to the most desirable Peter Van Eyck items, the criteria of these pieces is dependent upon those items that would best capture - and, to some degree, even fetishize - his particular expressions, expressions found on no other face in cinema. I am also very fond of this Belgian poster for BLIND JUSTICE (1961), enticingly retitled "Black Nylons, Hot Nights." I like the way the artist has captured his expression here; you could almost believe that someone had tapped him on the shoulder unexpectedly. He's like "Huh? What?"

One of Peter Van Eyck's great latter-day claims to fame is that he starred in several of CCC's "Dr. Mabuse" films, including Fritz Lang's THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR. MABUSE (1960), a series that ran parallel to Rialto's long-running series of Edgar Wallace krimis. My Peter Van Eyck room would need something special to hang above its fireplace, and I don't think there is any reason to overthink which poster that might be - not when this superb example  exists. Somehow, in this French poster for SCOTLAND YARD VS. DR. MABUSE (1964), the artist succeeded in perfectly capturing the suavity, furtiveness, the exoticism, and the capability of this most acerbic Mensch of Action and Mystery. 

One could ponder that expression for hours and never satisfy yourself that you knew what set of situations might have produced it. Fortunately, a still exists that answers this question, while at the same time doing nothing to damage the persistent allure of the artwork.  

I would also want to include this picture and find a place for it near where I or my guests felt most comfortable as we made our devotions.




 



But the pièce du résistánce of my Peter Van Eyck room would, of course, be my life-sized Mike Hill sculpture based on his pose in this photograph. From a special corner of the room, he could survey all that I had done to honor his memory - and his expression would deem it... presentable.




  
I don't know how many people remember Peter Van Eyck today, but this photo shows him signing a great many autographs for his fans, so they must be out there somewhere. Someday, I will spring for one and it will likewise be shown the appropriate respect. Sadly, his memory holds a certain obstacle in that he did die so young, at the age of only 57 - from sepsis, Wikipedia tells us, "due to an untreated, relatively small injury." Had he lived, I feel certain that he would have opposed Roger Moore's James Bond at the very least, and given him a tough time with his mad dreams of world domination. 

Admittedly, some of what I have said here is silly, but it is meant with sincere affection. I do admit to a strange reverence for Peter Van Eyck, that something about him causes my imagination to race. If I had endless room in which to externalize my dreams, I can guarantee that his shrine would be one of the more interesting and amusing to visit. 

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
 

Continuing with Fantômas

Back in 2011, I posted some notes about three of the first four Fantômas novels by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain, as they exist in English translation, in acknowledgement of the character's first centenary. Regrettably, I didn't take notes on the third Fantômas novel, MESSENGERS OF EVIL, as I was reading it - and it turned out to be my favorite of those four. Also now available in translation as THE CORPSE THAT WALKS, it's the one in which Fantômas commits a series of hideous crimes attributed to a dead man by using the peeled skin from a dead man's hands as a pair of form-fitting gloves!

Since that time, I've gone on to read the fifth novel in the series, A ROYAL PRISONER, and more recently the sixth and seventh, THE LONG ARM OF FANTOMAS (UK title: A LIMB OF SATAN) and  SLIPPERY AS SIN - which, for many years, was the last of the Souvestre/Allain translations, though twenty-five further titles remained to be translated.

Thankfully, in recent years, a couple of fresh translations have welcomely emerged, published by Black Coat Press: THE DAUGHTER OF FANTOMAS (translated by Mark B. Steele, which directly follows SLIPPERY AS SIN and introduces the major character of Héléne, who is Fantômas'... well, you get the idea) and THE DEATH OF FANTOMAS (translated by Sheryl Curtis, this is a conflation of the last two Souvestre-Allain titles). This abrupt leap to the end of the saga offers little hope that the remaining twenty-two volumes will ever be made available in the English language.  

There was still more after the supposed end of that original 1911-13 saga. A decade or so following the premature death of his co-author (and the series' principal creator) Pierre Souvestre in 1914, Marcel Allain revived the series for eleven further books of his own. Five of these made it into English translation between 1925-28 under the titles THE LORD OF TERROR, JUVE IN THE DOCK, FANTOMAS CAPTURED, THE REVENGE OF FANTOMAS and BULLDOG AND RATS. Long the exclusive province of antique book collectors with deep pockets, these are now available as paperback reprints. I've not read them, but these books tend to be described as disappointments that reveal M. Souvestre to have been the real motivating genius behind the character.

Italian edition cover.

A ROYAL PRISONER (UN ROI PRISONNIER DE FANTOMAS, "A Royal Prisoner of Fantomas") is the great disappointment of the translations. The original French edition, Le Roi Prisonnier de Fantômas, ran 318 densely-packed pages of text, while the English translation from Brentano's runs 277 pages of larger-than-usual type with an uncommon lot of air between the lines. One need only look at the pages to feel short-changed, but to actually compare the English translation to the French original page by page is to see entire paragraphs scattered to the winds. As presented, the storyline feels sparse and incomplete, a reckless job of paraphrasing with little of the picaresque flavor of the earlier books. There is no shortage of new editions of these books, and at least one such reprint series boasts of correcting and modernizing some of their wording, but what this book seriously needs is a new, more thorough, translation. Reading it angered me so much that I didn't return to reading Fantômas for another few years.

Italian edition cover.

Fortunately, THE LONG ARM OF FANTOMAS (LE POLICIER APACHE, "The Crooked Cop") is a conscientious return to form. While there remains a notable discrepancy between the two lengths - 384 pages in French, about 320 in English - neither the story nor its storytelling feel pared down in conversion. Alternately amusing, exciting and appalling, it picks up the ongoing scenario with the hero Inspector Juve in prison, accused of being Fantômas, while his indicted partner, the journalist Jérome Fandor, eludes the authorities by infiltrating the criminal underground and tracing the felonious activities of Père Moche and his gang to the Genius of Crime. Just when things are not looking so good for Fandor, who should announce his arrival in Paris to clean up this unholy mess but the famous American detective Tom Bob (you heard right). Juve is off-stage for the bulk of this novel, which frees the authors considerably to get at the real meat of these adventures, which is the murkier cat-and-mouse game being played out by the resourceful (but still learning) Fandor and the perversely honorable Fantômas himself, who is so much more advanced than his adversary and seems to be grooming him toward a greater destiny. Though a direct continuation of where things were left off in A ROYAL PRISONER, LONG ARM also reactivates narrative threads dropped at the end of A NEST OF SPIES, reintroducing the tragic character of Fandor's star-crossed love interest Elisabeth Dollon (introduced in MESSENGER OF EVIL). The novel is also a feast of malefic highlights, starting out with a brutal hammer murder and continuing with police shootings, the discovery of dead bodies buried in the walls and under the floorboards of various French residences, a masquerade ball at which several different Fantômases appear, an elaborate blackmail scheme, a gruesome hiding place for a treasure in gold, and a lake set afire.    

Italian edition cover.

I was so pleased with this one that I proceeded directly to the next Fantomas translation, SLIPPERY AS SIN (LE PENDU DE LONDRES, "The Hanged Man of London") - which, to my surprise, represents a curious rebooting of sorts, though the story itself remains continuous. First of all, there is a two year gap between this and the previous novel, and much of the action takes place in and around London. To explain in too great a detail would spoil some essential surprises, so just let me say that, while THE LONG ARM OF FANTOMAS concludes most satisfactorily with an important character exposed as one of Fantomas' many artful disguises, SLIPPERY AS SIN continues at a distance with that disguise still in active operation - as if the previous case had never concluded, Fantomas continues to wear this highly public disguise after two years, in plain sight! Furthermore, we learn that, while Fantomas himself has taken a two year vacation from active criminal duty, he has also taken up a third identity as a doctor and dentist who has tempted the ire of Fantomas' vindictive mistress Lady Beltham (who has her own alternate identities) by taking another lover. In a funny way, SLIPPERY AS SIN conjures less the image of a Genius of Crime or Lord of Terror than a man who really thrives on overcomplicating his life!

Alas, for a reader familiar with Souvestre/Allain's dense, paid by-the-word prose style, it is all too easily seen that this English translation is less a faithful translation than another paraphrasing of the original text. There are a great many paragraphs here consisting of single, declarative sentences - and these men never wrote a single sentence paragraph unless it was to exclaim "Standing before them was none other than... Fantomas!" I checked the book against a copy of the original French edition and found the translation ran 133 pages shorter and the text was also much airier on the page, so it might well represent a shortage of 150 pages or more. While not as insultingly severe a condensation as A ROYAL PRISONER, the translated prose feels less than genuine, and sometimes glosses over incidents that have happened in the interim; one can't help imagining that these asides were originally colorfully described and presented with characterization and dialogue.

Ultimately, SLIPPERY AS SIN is a moderate disappointment, more focused on private deceptions and intimate betrayals than public crimes, but there are enough gaps in the tale it recreates that one cannot help but wonder how much of its disappointment is due to the original or a too hasty transliteration. It's a peculiar criticism to address to a translation of a book that was, itself, generated inside a single month. 

I will continue with my notes on the two Black Coat Press volumes when the time comes.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

50 Years Ago: Seeing IN COLD BLOOD

It seems it was right around this time, 50 years ago, that my mother - for a reason I no longer remember - treated me one night to any downtown movie of my choice. We took a taxi downtown and everything.

After seeing that the International 70 was showing CUSTER OF THE WEST and the Albee was showing GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER?, I chose the feature showing at the Times. It was advertised as being inappropriate for children my age, but I was accompanied by a parent. In retrospect, it was the best choice on the table, but it was also kind of like walking into an explosion. Black-and-white. Panavision. Docudrama. Two unknown leads. Shotguns and rubber gloves. No "The End."

I'd been going to horror films most of my life, most often alone, but I had never been so frightened by a movie. I didn't know movies could do that to a person, emotionally. I wasn't really yet aware that there were people like that. I walked out of the theater into a different world, with a different comprehension of the world. I was shaken up for days, even though I'd hidden my eyes during the murder scene - the last time I ever hid my eyes at the movies.

I saw IN COLD BLOOD twice more within the next year or two (until I finally saw all of it), and I also read Truman Capote's book - trying to get a handle on the experience.

If a lifetime of watching movies has taught me anything, it's that you don't get a handle on the combination of Richard Brooks, Conrad Hall, and Quincy Jones.

You light the fuse and run.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

New Fiction from VW's Tim Lucas Coming This September

Very pleased to announce that I've placed a new short story, "The Migrants," in the second volume of Mark Morris' enthusiastically-received NEW FEARS anthology, which Titan Books will be releasing this coming September. I'm honored to be one of this estimable line-up of contributors:

MAW -- Priya Sharma
THE AIRPORT GORILLA -- Stephen Volk
THUMBSUCKER -- Robert Shearman
BULB -- Gemma Files
FISH HOOKS -- Kit Power
EMERGENCE -- Tim Lebbon
ON CUTLER STREET -- Benjamin Percy
LETTERS FROM ELODIE -- Laura Mauro
STEEL BODIES -- Ray Cluley
THE MIGRANTS -- Tim Lucas
RUT SEASONS -- Brian Hodge
SENTINEL -- Catriona Ward
ALMOST AUREATE -- V.H. Leslie
THE TYPEWRITER -- Rio Youers
LEAKING OUT -- Brian Evenson
THANATRAUMA -- Steve Rasnic Tem
PACK YOUR COAT -- Aliya Whiteley
HAAK -- John Langan
THE DEAD THING -- Paul Tremblay
THE SKETCH -- Alison Moore
PIGS DON'T SQUEAL IN TIGERTOWN -- Bracken MacLeod

I'll be reminding you again and again about this collection as the time draws nearer, but for now, it's just very heartening for me to share this good news. I don't write many stories - in fact, this is only the second I've publshed - so I'm delighted this one resonated with Mark. In the meantime, I encourage you to bide your time with NEW FEARS Volume 1, which features VIDEO WATCHDOG's own Ramsey Campbell. You can find print and ebook editions at a very nice price at Amazon, here.

I've had another piece of fiction accepted for publication, but I can't say anything about it till the publisher makes their announcement - hopefully soon! And there is another fiction project in the works, so stay tuned.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Roll Out the Nominees for the 16th Annual Rondo Awards!

A big CONGRATULATIONS to all my friends and colleagues whose good works have been nominated for the next round of Rondo Awards! Though she’s not named as such on the ballot, I was particularly pleased to see Donna Lucas’ cover for the Farewell Issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG on the ballot - her only solo cover creation since the Rondos began! (Of course, she’s up against THREE Mark Maddox covers, two of them wraparounds!) Also very pleased to see that producing VW’s final issue allowed for the nominations of Larry Blamire (Best Columnist) and John-Paul Checkett (Best Article) and, of course, our final shot at Best Magazine!

I wasn’t anticipating much in the way of nominations for myself this year, other than maybe one for Best Commentary, and I was very happy to be acknowledged for my work on Arrow’s CALTIKI THE IMMORTAL MONSTER - but I was also very pleased and surprised to be reminded of other work I’d done (Best Article for my CALTIKI piece for SCREEM and Best Columnist for my “Shot in the Dark” piece for DIABOLIQUE)! I’m also thrilled for Neil Snowdon’s Best Book nomination for his WE ARE THE MARTIANS: THE LEGACY OF NIGEL KNEALE, to which I contributed - and finally, a nomination for the work I do here at Video WatchBlog, now in its 12th big year - and rapidly approaching its 2,000,000th page view!

It's both wonderful and heartening to see how many projects of real passion and value are represented on the ballot this year. Competition will be stiff!

Please celebrate the very best work being done in horror and fantasy journalism and criticism by perusing the ballot, finding your favorites, and casting your votes! And a Big Thanks to Mr. David Colton and his wife Eileen Colton for all the work that goes into organizing and hosting this occasion each year - from all concerned!

You can find a ballot listing all this year's nominees at the Rondo Awards website.

A postscript which I feel compelled to add, given some Facebook reaction to the ballot about how few female creators and contributors made the the final selection. I agree it's an unfortunate oversight but, I hasten to add, not a biased or malicious one; it's just an indication of some of the important work going on that missed the radar of the Classic Horror Film Board's nominations forum. I was very pleased to see Laura Wagner's work finally acknowledged in the Best Columnist category, as well as the Soska Sisters' Blood Drive PSA's for Women In Horror Month, but there are some blind spots. Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger did a slew of superb audio commentaries this past year - admittedly some for the UK market only, and they also figure notably in the podcast realm with Daughters of Darkness and Kat's Hell's Belles podcast with Heather Drain. (Speaking of podcasts, I miss seeing Bill Ackerman's Supporting Characters on the ballot, too!) Heather Buckley's production work on the DVD supplements for RAWHEAD REX were also worthy; she's such a force of nature and so prolific and passionate about horror, her name should be all over this ballot.

If you agree, one thing you can certainly do to advance awareness is to take into consideration the fine work being done in the service of the genre by all these ladies as you cast your votes in the Write-In categories - as well as Kimberly Lindbergs, Kier-La Janisse, Anne Billson, Emma Westwood, Alexandra West, Maura McHugh, Thana Niveau, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Marcelline Block, Stacie Ponder, and many more. (My apologies to anyone I have inevitably left out in my haste to add these words.) These women are bringing so much of importance to the table and their works will thoroughly reward your attention!


(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Cutting Remarks: A Look at Arrow's SCALPEL

In the Image Gallery of Arrow Video's new Blu-ray of John Grissmer's SCALPEL (1977), there is photographic evidence that the film's original distributor, unable to put the PG film across as a horror picture, tried to pass it off (under its original title FALSE FACE) as a comedy. To add water to the bonfire, they listed its top-billed stars thusly: "Robert Lansing (TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH), Judith Chapman (AS THE WORLD TURNS)." Never mind that, by 1977, TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH had been off the air for a full 10 years and that Lansing himself had not been associated with it since 1965. The best thing any movie of this period could have done to hurt their business would have been to proclaim, "Hold the presses, folks - we've got TV actors!"

What is interesting about all of this is that it points to what a unique film SCALPEL really is. There are considerable reasons to doubt that SCALPEL is a horror picture (as audio commentator Richard Harland Smith notes), and if you're going to call it a horror picture, you might just as well call it a comedy because some of it is darkly funny. The sad fact is, there is a commercial imperative to help a picture find its audience, and this one rolled the dice two different ways without packing them in. Horror movie or comedy, it's probably commercially preferable to telling people it's a Southern Gothic romantic thriller about a plastic surgeon (Lansing) who gives a disfigured stripper the face of his runaway daughter (Chapman) so that he can 1) collect a $5,000,000 inheritance and 2) sleep with her. All goes well with the incest fantasy until the real daughter returns home, suspicious about the present arrangement and much, much more attractive to Daddy. 

Though opportunity was ripe for visual quotations of Franju's EYES WITHOUT A FACE, Grissmer - whose background was in NY theater - was too grounded in drama and performance and supporting his narrative to get sidetracked in such cosmetic film school touches; it takes awhile before the viewer even cottons to the idea that there might be a VERTIGO hommage in here somewhere. What we get is a fairly compelling thriller, made on location in Atlanta by big city principals, which is made compelling by its even-handed direction, a surprisingly sumptuous if understated visual style (the cinematographic debut of Edward Lachman - LIGHT SLEEPER, THE LIMEY, I'M NOT THERE), and the utterly surprising performances of Lansing and Chapman, not to mention a bevy of local talent obviously having the time of their lives. Lansing seems to play his mad surgeon in an understated way, but he can also be quite bold; he comes across, most of all, as a real guy - warm, funny, dedicated, talented - whose selfishness is the key to his chilling sociopathology. (As he relates the story of his wife's tragic accidental death by drowning, we cutaway to a shot of a woman about to drown in a lake, as Lansing blithely circles her cries in a paddleboat.) It's not much of a surprise when we learn from the supplements that Lansing considered his work here as probably the best performance he ever gave. Chapman's two characters are essentially the same girl - as she would be had she been born without advantages, and with every possible social advantage. Though the film isn't a comedy, what bonds these two characters, these three performances, is a sly shared sense of humor - the kind sometimes observed between people who share deep personal secrets, as indeed they all do.

Arrow's generously packed Blu-ray disc offers two different 2K restorations of the 1.85:1 film from its best surviving source material, a 35mm color reversal internegative. There is the Arrow version, which gives us the film as it was preserved on the internegative, which the director has approved; and then there is the Lachman version, which was tweaked by the film's director of photography to reflect the color adjustments he made in the original release prints, which emphasize the citrus colors of the palette to evoke a more humid, Southern atmosphere. Taken together, the two versions provide the viewer with an unexpected lesson in how a film's mood and atmosphere can be adjusted in post-production, and Arrow is to be commended for welcoming such a discussion. Interview featurettes with Grissmer, Chapman (the younger sister of Spanish horror film starlet Patty Shepard!), and Lachman are also included, as well as the good companionship of a typically well-researched Richard Harland Smith commentary. His talk not only benefits from a further interview with Grissmer, but from his own past jobs as a theater actor and hospital attendant. When we are shown Jane Doe in her hospital bed, Smith tells us why its protective rails would never pass code today - and its such welcome jolts of the real world that lend resonance to his later stories about the real Robert Lansing, the one who was known to some of his old acting buddies. The first pressing is accompanied by an exclusive illustrated booklet featuring substantial writing about the film by Bill Ackerman and David Konow. 

In short, this disc does honor to a deserving, modest, well-crafted film that has certainly waited long enough for it.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.