The Midnight Movie Monographers: JOHN LLEWELLYN PROBERT

As I announced here a few weeks ago, I have a new book coming out soon - a meaty monograph on the 1968 Edgar Allan Poe anthology film SPIRITS OF THE DEAD (Histoires extraordinaires). The book is being published by Electric Dreamhouse Press, through PS Publishing, under the editorship of Neil Snowdon. Writing a book for a series is an unusual undertaking, and as I went about determining my own writing process for my book, I found myself becoming more and more curious about my fellow monographers in the series. I thought it might be fun to address questionaires to each of them and learn something about them and their books in the process.

One of the first books to come out in the series was John Llewellyn Probert's study of Douglas Hickox's THEATRE OF BLOOD (1973), a film that has the curious distinction of having lured me out to the theater where I met my future wife. So the film has a certain significance to me, but I was curious to know what it meant to John. He first came to my attention as a fellow contributor to another Electric Dreamhouse book, last year's WE ARE THE MARTIANS: THE LEGACY OF NIGEL KNEALE, and also in the two WE BELONG DEAD collections, '70s MONSTER MEMORIES and UNSUNG HORRORS. However, writing about films is more of a hobby to John, whose principal writing is macabre short fiction. He's published several such collections, including THE FACULTY OF TERROR, THE CATACOMBS OF FEAR, THE NINE DEATHS OF DR. VALENTINE and THE HOUSE THAT DEATH BUILT. You can actually get a strong jolt of his filmic inspirations from those titles.

So here is my first Midnight Movie Monographs interview, highlighting John Llewellyn Probert's THEATRE OF BLOOD:

I think it takes a very special relationship between film and viewer for someone to commit to writing an entire book about a single movie. Do you agree?

Oh I do indeed! Considering how long it takes to write any book you have to have a very good reason for devoting that much time to such a project.

What is it about THEATRE OF BLOOD that made you choose it?

I was approached, actually, and I think that was for two main reasons. One was that it was widely known that THEATRE OF BLOOD is my favourite film, but also because I had written a British Fantasy Award-winning novella called The Nine Deaths of Dr Valentine in which a rich, resourceful and flamboyant maniac killed people in the style of the deaths in Vincent Price films. Nine Deaths was a book I had intended to write since I first put pen to paper, and when it eventually came out it turned out to be more popular than I was expecting. In fact the third in the series, The Last Temptation of Dr Valentine, is due out in October. So I was already known for writing about (and loving) the style of comedy-horror that typify both the Dr Phibes films and THEATRE OF BLOOD, so for me to write about that film at length seemed natural to others before it even occurred to me. 

What do you think your choice of this particular film tells us about you, personally? 

To people familiar with me it will just serve to reinforce what they already know! Is it a film I'd show to a stranger and say 'if you get on with this you'll get on with me'? Possibly. I remember talking to Reece Shearsmith (THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, INSIDE NO. 9) who said he and Steve Pemberton would judge the friendship potential of schoolmates as to whether or not they were fans of THEATRE OF BLOOD. Actually, I think I did the same thing. 

When did you first see the film? Was your enthusiasm for the film immediate?

Well, I actually go into that in the book so I wouldn't want to repeat myself. Suffice to say, I was very young but fortunately it was shown often enough by the BBC that I grew to love it more and more as I got older.

In the time that has passed since then, have you watched it often? Has it continued to grow, or perhaps evolve for you?

I was one of those kids who would make audio cassette recordings off-air of films I thought I might want to re-experience, so I must have listened to the film's soundtrack at least a hundred times when I was growing up. I could certainly perform the entire thing in front of you if you made the mistake of asking. I still watch it about once year and it doesn't get old. But that's probably because I still find every viewing of this, and other favourite films, to be slightly different each time, often because there's some tiny new snippet of information of which I was previously unaware that then helps reshape the viewing experience.

You happened to write one of the first Midnight Movie Monographs to be published. Therefore, you weren’t working in emulation of an existing earlier model, you were in effect helping to devise one. There are any number of ways that a movie can be written about. Do you recall how you came to decide on the approach that your book finally took?

Above all else, I very much wanted to convey my enthusiasm for this particular movie, and I thought the best way would be to write the DVD commentary track I would never get the opportunity to record. The film itself is split into 'murder vignettes', each based on a different Shakespeare play, so the chapter headings wrote themselves. I also thought including the specific Shakesperean quotations used in the film would be a nice frontispiece to each chapter.

How would you describe the approach you did take? Did you interview any of the film’s personnel directly, or rely on subjective analysis and documentation, or is it a purely personal appreciation and invocation?

I started by going through the film, minute by minute, and writing down my thoughts. By the time I'd finished I had used up more than half my allocated word count so then I started to look at what else could be included. It was my editor, Neil Snowdon, who put me in touch with Michael J Lewis, the composer of THEATRE OF BLOOD's score. It's music I've loved nearly all my life and, like reciting the dialogue, I could probably play the whole thing on the piano for you were you to ask. Because of time pressures I had to come up with all of my questions for Michael late one Monday evening after getting home from work but it was easy because many of them were questions I had wanted to ask for years & I never thought I would get the chance. I had a thorough grounding in music in my youth and Michael and I are both Welsh so with all that in common we got on very well indeed. Hopefully needless to say, our conversations are something I shall always treasure.

Did you find it difficult to write at length about a single film?

With some films it's difficult to drum up the enthusiasm to write a single sentence, and then there are others where you feel you could never stop writing about them. I'm not just talking about 'good' films, either. But to answer your question, no - I didn't find it difficult at all to write about THEATRE OF BLOOD. In fact it felt more like one of those things my life had been leading up to.

Did you learn (in effect, teach yourself) anything surprising about the film as a result of writing at such length about it? 

Well I learned I could hold my own talking musical theory, composition, and orchestral arrangement with one of my personal heroes, which both surprised and delighted me. In fact I jokingly suggested we do THE MEDUSA TOUCH next as I had just been to a screening in Bristol Cathedral where it was filmed. Who knows? That's another of my favourites films, and one of my favourite scores.

Director Douglas Hickox made other films but it generally not thought of as a horror auteur. Did you find otherwise, or did you prefer to focus on the one film alone rather than as one facet of a more collective vision?  

I do think THEATRE OF BLOOD is very much an ensemble piece rather than the result of one particular artist's 'vision'. I therefore also think that in this particular case Douglas Hickox was just the right man for the job. While I adore the work of Robert Fuest I think it was Hickox's grittier approach to the deaths themselves that gives THEATRE OF BLOOD an edge. But his grimmer, more serious approach to the material is greatly tempered by the script, the music, and the performances, especially of course Vincent Price. Hickox doesn't exactly hold his actors back, in fact I believe he went on record as saying he had to offer them very little direction at all and 'just let them go'. What he does so well, I think, is temper those performances with the realistic milieu he established. For example, Robert Morley's character is absurd (and played beautifully so) but you genuinely worry about him, and the others, because the deaths are so horrible. Likewise if the characters weren't such caricatures the film itself would be so grim as to be quite hard going. And of course, the music adds an extra layer by being neither funny nor grim but romantic and melancholy. You're making me want to watch it yet again, you know. 

Your next book in the series has been announced as being about the latter-day Amicus production FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. How did you make this selection?

I was introduced to the works of both Robert Bloch and R Chetwynd-Hayes through the Amicus anthology movies, and the style of both writers has always greatly appealed to me. Their blend of humour and horror remains my favourite kind of fiction and I've tried very hard to follow in their path with my own work. Chetwynd-Hayes perhaps had the edge over Bloch when I was young because most of his stories are set in the UK and thus they felt more 'real'. I would go for walks at night (you were allowed to do that at ten years old back then) and imagine the old lady who was actually a gorgon, the young man who had a coffin upstairs with his dead girlfriend in it, or the family who were actually ghouls, all living in my street. In a way I suppose you could say Chetwynd-Hayes was my Ray Bradbury, with instead of bittersweet. boyhood summers the constant sense that on some impending birthday your parents were going to call you to explain you were part of a family of ghouls, and that the noise in the attic was Great Grandad calling for his supper with his wooden leg. He certainly helped shape (or reinforce) my childhood view of Britain in the 1970s and when I read his work now it's with a great deal of nostalgia.

Is there a relationship between FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE and THEATRE OF BLOOD that makes them similarly durable for you, and tempting to this sort of extended appreciation?

Very much so. Both are superbly filmed and acted examples of films that combine horror with a genuine and very particular kind of wit, one which I adore. FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE was another one that little JLP made an audio cassette of so if you're not careful I can act the entirely of that one out, too. It's also a film that benefits from the frequently down to earth direction of Kevin Connor, who got the Chetwynd-Hayes world of bedsits, Surrey cottages and mad old ladies exactly right. I wish he'd been given the opportunity to do another one. I'll be talking a lot more about Chetwynd-Hayes in the book, too, especially as with any luck I'll have a few surprises to include.

John Llewellyn Probert's THEATRE OF BLOOD is available here. 


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

Mourning Becomes AYLA

Nicholas Wilder as Elton in AYLA.

I saw a very interesting psychological horror film last night called AYLA, about a troubled young man (Nicholas Wilder) who has never been able to accept the death of his hunger sister when she was only four years old. The film deals with the mourning process and the danger of arrested mourning, when we keep loved ones alive by binding with the pain dealt to us by their parting. Directed by Elias (GUT), it’s somewhat more of an art film than a shocker, so if you’re not interested in slow, methodical, even literary storytelling with poetical touches and ambiguous answers, this may not be your cup of tea. But it reminded me of the kind of horror film that Curtis Harrington might make were he around today.

Tristan Risk plays the title role of Ayla.

The title role is played by Tristan Risk, best-known for her work as Beatress in AMERICAN MARY; she is extraordinary in a silent yet highly disciplined physical performance that embodies the appeal of nostalgia as well as the unhealthiness of its excess. Dee Wallace is in it, too; in fact, I found all the performances strong and capable. It also serves up some memorable images. It's not yet available on DVD or Blu-ray, but it’s streaming here and there. If you're feeling in the mood for something eerie that will linger under your skin, seek it out.

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

Origins of INGA

Oh, the questions that sometimes assail the film historian. Like this one...

Above is a photograph by the British photographer Sam Haskins, included in his 1967 book NOVEMBER GIRL.

Now this is the Cinemation Industries poster for Joe Sarno's INGA, released in America in November 1968.

Questions: Is the image on the poster Haskins' work - an outtake, perhaps?

Is it actually INGA star Marie Liljedahl, who came to New York sometime in 1967-68 for some photo sessions, photographed by someone in homage to Haskins' work?

Could Jerry Gross of Cinemation have hired Haskins to take the photos of Liljedahl?

Unfortunately anyone who might know the answer to such questions is now either dead or forgetful.

Oh well, in 50 years time, I believe I'm the only person to have noticed that such a connection exists, so there is at least that. 

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

Joe Sarno's LOVE IN THE THIRD POSITION Reviewed

If you have ever read the IMDb reviews of Joe Sarno's LOVE IN THE THIRD POSITION (1971; available from Something Weird Video as a DVD-R and download), you might expect it to be pretty dire. While some of the criticisms ventured by those reviewers are reaonably well-founded, I seem to have derived more than the film than they did.

Also known as SIV, ANNE AND SVEN, this is one of Sarno's Swedish films and, when he filmed there, he filmed with live sound and had his actors speak English - phonetically, if need be. He couldn't afford to post-synchronize the dialogue with professional voice actors, but he also seemed to prefer the rough edges of authenticity rather than polish. Therefore, we get the actual stilted line readings that were recorded on the set, spoken by actors working, at the very least, in something other than their native language. (The lead actress, playing a photographer, repeatedly refers to her "photo serious," meaning her photo "series.") For some viewers, this can be a deal breaker, but YOUNG PLAYTHINGS - generally considered to be one of Sarno's major works - manages to survive those conditions, and I feel this one does too.

The synopsis is easily summarized in a line or two: Siv (Liliane Malmkvist), a fashion photographer, notices that her boyfriend Sven (Bosse Carlsson) is attracted to her young assistant Anne (Britt Marie Engstroem). An Iago-like friend (a Barbra Streisand lookalike), who has sensed Anne's sexual ambivalence, urges Siv to seduce her before Sven can, if she wants to keep her man. The game Siv chooses to play has unforeseen consequences that ultimately relegate her to a private Hell, as happens to many misguided Sarno heroines.

The line readings keep us well aware that we are watching a play being performed, as it were, but in the midst of this heightened artifice - which consists of a lot of shots of people walking in and out of doors into shadowy rooms, or conversing against plain wall backdrops like characters in  comic book panels - something real begins to take shape in the shy tenderness between the characters and is ultimately manifest during the sex scenes, which are for the most part girl-on-girl. These scenes are genuinely erotic - not due to the sort of shallow, air-brushed, bouncy imagery that typically defines softcore adult cinema but to a startling authenticity that is more clinical and intense in its attention to eye contact, heavy breathing, and the unexpected changes that can be seen as people are led to the brink of shattering the chrysalis of their inhibitions and become their true sexual selves. As usual during this period of his work in the early '70s, the sex is technically softcore on camera but Sarno permitted hardcore sex on the set (outside the frame) if the actors wanted or needed it. As the film develops, so do the performances on a more emotional, intuited level. Engstroem, in particular, steals the film with her convincing sexual confusion and vulnerability.

The IMDb reviews seem disappointed that the movie isn't more of a raunchy hoot, but Sarno was a serious filmmaker. It's basically wrong to look to him for that kind of movie, even in those few, like this one, that feature dated fashions and Swedish folk rock songs for ambiance. This is another Sarno melodrama about people exploring the freedoms of their time and discovering who they are by coming face-to-face with their deepest limitations.

Also available abroad as a bonus feature in Klubb Super 8's Swedish DVD of YOUNG PLAYTHINGS.

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

MANIAC and the Wonder of Wilkie Cooper

I had seen Hammer's 1963 thriller MANIAC only once before, long enough ago to have seen it only on VHS. I remembered liking it more than I expected, without remembering exactly why. Last night, I found myself gravitating back to it, company producer Michael Carreras' directorial debut, now beautifully revived as part of Indicator's HAMMER VOLUME ONE: FEAR WARNING! box set. Anamorphic black-and-white cinematography is one of my personal aphrodisiacs, and I found myself newly drawn in by Wilkie Cooper's Megascope cinematography in monochrome and its marvelously choreographed tendencies to mislead.

In the film's extras, someone on the film's camera crew remembers how Carreras and screenwriter Jimmy Sangster was standing on location in a fabulously picturesque quarry one day, trying to figure out how in the hell to end the picture. A young new member of the crew dared to make a suggestion - getting himself fired in the process - and the suggestion was taken anyway. Knowing that this sort of thing happened on the set makes one wonder if either of them approached this film with anything like an idea of what they were going to do, because the storyline - such as it is - is constantly changing its direction mid-course, in a way that may have been clueless but could pass for sly. And one of the principal reasons why it could is Cooper's compelling photography.

As Jonathan Rigby points out in a supplement, the film opens with wild jazz and shots of tall grass, which is soon identified as the playing field where a middle-aged man rapes a 15 year-old girl. Before we see the man, we see an enormous close-up of his eye, and at first we may think this eye belongs to the film's star Kerwin Mathews, whose billing and close proximity to the title embeds in one's subconscious the possibility that our handsome leading man may turn out to be the story's well-concealed psychopath. As the rape is in progress, a boy of the girl's age notices the attack and pedals his bike away like the devil, returning as a passenger in someone's truck. We don't see the driver; all we see is a firm arm marching past the girl's fallen form to the man hitching up his drawers. He is presumably clubbed unconscious and taken back to a garage where his vengeful attacker (the girl's father) prepares him for more lasting revenge, masking himself behind a metal visor and turning on his skin the full blast of an oxyacetylene torch. We expect the story will guide us through the traditional details of a cover-up, consequences, something to follow... but instead, we jump ahead in time by several years.

The rape victim (Annette Beynat, played by Liliane Brousse) is now an attractive young woman, who lives with her still young and attractive stepmother, Eve (Nadia Gray), the two of them running a bar in the same small village in the south for France. Kerwin Mathews' character Jeff Farrell, a professional artist, is passing through town with his girlfriend when he stops for a drink. (You could stage a drinking game around Mathews' drinking and smoking in this role, as if he was aggressively hoping to counter his wholesome Sinbad screen image.) Owing to an argument whose details we never fully grasp, he starts taking things out of his car, what we presume to be her gear - but when she hops into the car and speeds off, we realize it's his own. The next half hour details Jeff's budding relationship with Annette, from ordering drinks to visiting the sites to jukebox twisting to a first kiss. Then the next half hour details Eve's knowledgeable derailing of the relationship with her own more immediate sexual access. The film's meticulous chronicling of Eve's seduction is masterful - not too eager, but when she finally comes across it is with the full heft of unmistakable, fur-bearing adult female authority. This being a thriller, this track-jumping romance is but a prelude to criminal mischief.

Considering how much importance is placed on the development of the original relationship in the film's first half hour, it is startling how little it matters in the second, but not as starting as the last half hour, which suddenly resolves in this initial relationship coming back together. In case you haven't seen the film, I'll not spoil the surprises of the twists and turns, but don't give up and miss out on the superbly cinematographic climax, which takes place in one of the most astonishing of film locations - a kind of cave-enclosed rock - or is it chalk? - quarry. (If you've ever been mystified as to the origins of that astounding still on the back cover of Re/Search's INCREDIBLY STRANGE FILMS book, this is that film.) It was while reveling in the almost geometric abstractions of this scenery that I realized that the story, such as it was, was as ridiculous as anything, and that the direction was such that much of the cast had to be revoiced in post, but that the film had kept me riveted throughout, subsisting almost entirely on the consistently scenic and psychological values of its camerawork.

In fact, Kerwin Mathews had not gained that much distance from his 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD days, since Wilkie Cooper had been behind the camera on that show, as well. In fact, though Collins' professional career dated back to 1936 and such films as Anthony Kibbins' MINE OWN EXECUTIONER, Alfred Hitchcock's STAGE FRIGHT, and Edward Dmytryk's THE END OF THE AFFAIR (as well as the noted Joseph Losey short "A Man on the Beach"), he has become principally remembered for the epic grandeur he brought to Ray Harryhausen's beloved middle period work, from 7th VOYAGE through Hammer's ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. In those films he proved himself a master accommodator of illusion; in MANIAC, he performs a different form of sleight of hand that, to certain eyes, will shine just as impressively.

MANIAC isn't a great film, I grant you, but it's more wildly cinematic than a good many films that are deemed great.

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

Universal's Holmes Revisited, Part II

Basil Rathbone and Edmund Breon in DRESSED TO KILL (1946).

After Universal has guided Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson through a few WWII espionage thrillers, a few horror-tinged thrillers, and then a gothic mystery or two, some subtle changes were manifest in the series' subsequent releases. Someone in an executive position (above that of producer-director Roy William Neill) must have suggested, in the way executives tend to suggest, "Don't you think the Holmes films could stand to be... oh, I don't know... less brooding and a little more gay?" (Gay in the old-fashioned sense.) The next two films in the series, THE WOMAN IN GREEN and PURSUIT TO ALGIERS, represent a willful breaking away from the familiar tobacco-dense rooms at 221B Baker Street into the larger worlds of society, fashion and adventure.

THE WOMAN IN GREEN was, notably, the last of the films to be scripted by their most characteristic and clever scribe, Bertram Millhauser. The plot is itself a minor variation on its immediate predecessor THE HOUSE OF FEAR, as a number of murder victims - this time, women - are found around London with one of their fingers severed - "with the consummate skill of a surgeon." There is a peculiar disconnection between this "signature" aspect of the case (introduced as its principal mystery, it turns out to be nothing more than a grisly fetish applied to the murders by one of their lesser engineers) and the case that follows, which is a variation on THE SPIDER WOMAN, as a glamorous woman (Hillary Brooke) uses a form of cannabis, hypnosis and her own charms to persuade an innocent man of social prominence (Paul Cavanagh) that he is the actual perpetrator. The mystery seems more complicated than it need be even with just this much in play, but the script goes on to attach as mastermind the supposedly dead Professor Moriarty (Henry Daniell, formerly one of Moriarty's stooges in SECRET WEAPON, and a high-ranking member of British government in VOICE OF TERROR), who somehow cheated the hangman in Montevideo, though we hear him perish by different means in SECRET WEAPON. Disappointingly, most of these characters are introduced and incriminated in our eyes before Holmes even has a chance to deduce anything about them, and his final unravelling of the case is ultimately due to his having been in the right place at the right time and making a guess based on a hunch. Deduction plays not much of a role, and it seems to play a lessening role in the films from here on out. The script is somewhat familiar, even doubly so (which may account for Millhauser's departure), but the overall look of the film is new, with nightclub scenes and lots of Vera West dresses and gowns modeled by the alluring Brooke. Also, for the second time in the series (after THE SCARLET CLAW), the special photographic effects services of John P. Fulton were recruited to take the viewer within the seductive spells she weaves over Fenwick and, later, Holmes himself. Derivative it may be, but THE WOMAN IN GREEN is a B-picture made in unusually high style for its period, and Daniell is the most persuasive of the Moriarty actors. Owing to Dennis Hoey's unavailability (or perhaps it was decided to go for a more sober approach), the role of Inspector Lestrade was temporarily replaced by Matthew Boulton as the more serious Inspector Gregson - a character first introduced with Lestrade in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first Holmes novel, A STUDY IN SCARLET. This film also contains a shot that I found hair-raising as a child, as Holmes uses his binoculars to identify a cab passenger trailing a visitor to his digs, and sees just a sliver of the evil stranger’s eye peering around the edge of the rear window. I would include that shot on a list of the 10 scariest things I saw on TV as a kid. Brrr!

If THE WOMAN IN GREEN represents a move toward a brighter shade of escapism, PURSUIT TO ALGIERS is even brighter, taking place almost entirely aboard the S.S. Friesland as Holmes and Watson escort an endangered King, incognito, back to the safety of his home country. There is a spot of fog and footsteps in the dark, but mostly this film gives us daylit promenades on deck, sentimental songs around the piano, shuffleboard games, and a festive final night party. There are some initial suspects and the usual load of red herrings among the Neill eccentrics, but as with the previous film, the real villains are openly so from the moment they are introduced (one of them is Martin Kosleck - the screen's favorite Joseph Goebbels, as a former circus knife-thrower turned to homicide), so Holmes needs no process of concentration to identify them - and we do not share his vantage during his various escapes from death; they are presented as action set pieces and then conveniently explained later. Even so, there is a lot here to enjoy, not least of all a moving Nigel Bruce interpretation of the traditional Scottish song "Loch Lomand." 

Then we come to TERROR BY NIGHT, which is probably the least of all the films in this series, on a technicality, but it's nevertheless perfectly in character with the other films; it's lively, well cast, intermittently droll, and compulsively watchable. Another escort tale, this one finds Holmes and Watson aboard a train as they are hired by Lady Margaret Carstairs (Mary Forbes) to protect her priceless gem pendant known as the Star of Rhodesia. Also aboard the train and determined to have it is none other that Col. Sebastian Moran, a former high-ranking henchman in Moriarty's mafia, traveling in disguise (though no one involved in the story has apparently ever laid eyes on him). The problem with TERROR BY NIGHT is that it shoehorns Holmes into a situation that any mystery protagonist could handle just as well, and Holmes' genius is less here about his intellect than his ability to get out of deadly traps physically. Also, virtually every scene or sequence is punctuated with cutaway shots from a much older film, which the IMDb identifies as the British production ROME EXPRESS (1932) - though some of the later stock rail footage appears to have come from a picture of German origin.  a welcome touch of the macabre, Skelton Knaggs has a small part in the last reel as an essential piece of the puzzle. He fits so effortlessly into this universe of characters, it's perplexing to me that he appeared in only one of these, and for such a short period of screen time. The femme fatale of this story is one Vivian Vedder, the subject of a simply awful portrayal by Renee Godfrey.

The series' swan song, DRESSED TO KILL, has always been one of my favorites and it's a nice return to form after the previous two. Like the previous few titles, it opens with an extended bit of backstory about what lies at heart of the crime to come - which, in this case, is three homely wooden musical boxes manufactured by a prisoner in Dartmoor Prison and sent to an auction house where they are awaited for some reason by a criminal recipient - before introducing Holmes and Watson. They get pulled into this case rather ingeniously, through an old school chum of Watson's, Julian Emery (Edmund Breon) who happens to get himself knocked-out and robbed of a lookalike box (he relates the story to them) before he is visited a second time and murdered in a grab for the real item. Emery is one of the most touching, likable characters to get knocked-off in the series, and we can feel Watson's hurt thirst for vengeance, restrained as it is. Once again, a stylish woman, Mrs. Hilda Courteney (Patricia Morison), is his chief adversary here, and Morison has opportunities to flaunt her talent for disguise, and to charm Holmes as he attempts to beard her in his den (and vice versa), again à la THE SPIDER WOMAN - and, in a twist on the Creeper's lovesickness toward Naomi in THE PEARL OF DEATH, Hilda is the object of her burly chauffeur's romantic obsession, though this feels like the remnant of a more detailed draft. (The chauffeur is played by frequent repertory players Harry Cording.) Though the script is reduced to having Holmes escape from a death trap like Clark Kent in an ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN episode, Holmes' gifts of photographic memory, musical memory, and his powers of deduction are well brought to bear, but in a somewhat charming resolution of the series, he openly admits at the end that the most decisive breakthroughs in the case were brought about by the eurekas of his old friend, Watson.

As I noted previously, my revisitation of these films has been my first complete viewing of the Universal titles as included in MPI's COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES COLLECTION Blu-ray set, which followed their DVD version into release after some years. The versions included in this set were much ballyhooed as being faithfully restored at the UCLA Archives (a job said to have been partly funded by Hugh M. Hefner), and it appears they do reconstruct the films as they originally appeared in theaters - replacing the Realart reissue and TV syndication main and end titles that followed them into television in the 1950s - but this often means that inferior quality materials had to be referenced. That said, while some sequences pop with a never-before-seen lustre (the meeting scene between Rathbone and Evelyn Ankers in VOICE OF TERROR is one of the most memorably stunning improvements), there are just as many instances of such footage cutting away to other footage that looks excessively dupey. The irregularities of quality are particularly noticeable in TERROR BY NIGHT; and PURSUIT TO ALGIERS, as presented here, was evidently unable to recover its original end titles. On the positive side, these presentations include all of the original opening material leading into the stories, which to this day strikes me as odd and unfamiliar because it was snipped out of my initial viewings on local television stations, to help move things along. It's a miracle in some cases, seeing what was removed, that those broadcasts ever made sense!

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

Cracking the Spine of Holmes - Electronically

I am taking advantage of my current absorption in Sherlock Holmes to finally read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A STUDY IN SCARLET.

I know, I know.

Actually, I've read a fair number of the short stories over the years, but for some reason, never delved into the novels - and I am so impressed. Conan Doyle takes brilliantly to the larger canvas. In fact, I would say this is by far the best novel I've ever read that consists of a few men and the occasional woman just talking in three or four rooms and moving from one to the other.

But the jaw-dropper is when Holmes proves the ineptitude of Scotland Yard's best by solving the case, giving us the name of the murderer, and opening himself to questions regarding his deductive reasoning. I'm reading this in an ebook, Delphi's COMPLETE WORKS OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, so I imagined there was maybe one chapter left, and then I turned the page to see "Part II"... and Part II commences many decades earlier, in the most barren patch of the North American desert, another continent entirely, with no immediate sign of a living soul for miles around!

This is not just great writing, it is masterful showmanship. I daresay it is probably one of the literary forebears that led to the term Kubrickian.

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

Universal's Holmes Revisited, My Facebook Notes - Part 1

Nigel Bruce and Basil Rathbone as Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes.

Every so often, I have to revisit Universal's Sherlock Holmes series (1942-46), just for the love of the films - and to see how well they are continuing to hold up under time and familiarity.

Naturally I began with SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE VOICE OF TERROR and SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET WEAPON - the first of Universal's contemporary war-themed programmers about the great Baker Street detective. In some ways, what’s old is sadly new again. I'm not going to take the time to go back and copy out dialogue, but it was eerie to hear isolationist MAGA-like rhetoric coming from the mouths of Limehouse criminals. Also interesting that the villains of these two pieces turn out to be a wealthy war profiteer (Lionel Atwill as a creepily snake-eyed Professor Moriarty) and a Third Reich officer masquerading as a high-ranking member of the British government, who is attempting to dominate the empire with terrorist appropriation of the media. Same as it ever was?

The next film in the series, SHERLOCK HOLMES IN WASHINGTON, is more incidentally war-related, going under the surface of international relations to explore the subject of espionage. It boasts George Zucco presiding over various MUMMY props as an international spy ringleader living under the guise of an antiques store owner who just happens to be, once again,  one of the wealthiest, most respected men in town. Henry Daniell is in it too, though he’s thrown away in a bit part. The first of the series to be produced and directed by Roy William Neill (who effectively took over from this point), IN WASHINGTON introduces the series' hallmarks of droll humor, marvelous character actors, and a more successful accommodation of the Conan Doyle literary tropes within the contemporary setting.

It was followed by SHERLOCK HOLMES FACES DEATH, based on “The Musgrave Ritual.” This is one of the series’ best, a gothic mystery set in a convalescent home for shellshocked veterans (thus the contemporary element, and one critical of the emotional fallout of war), resulting in a bevy of memorably eccentric performances. Very often I remember moments from these films but cannot assign them to a particular title; this is the one in which Holmes, testing a man's reported alibi, upsets Mrs. Hudson (Mary Gordon) by firing a series of bullets into the lapels of a head and shoulders sketch of a man on his apartment wall. A very young, pre-MGM Peter Lawford appears briefly as a uniformed customer of the pub, The Rat and The Raven. We see the Raven, but are left to take the Rat on faith.

The next three films in the series - conveniently collected on one disc in MPI's Blu-ray collection - are  THE SPIDER WOMAN, THE SCARLET CLAW, and THE PEARL OF DEATH - veer away from wartime espionage to such fantastic foes they seem to filtered in from the edges of classic Universal horror. THE SPIDER WOMAN opens with a twist on "His Final Bow," with Holmes supposedly fainting and tumbling to his death near a falls. The ensuing mystery - about a series of "Pajama Suicides" - doesn't quite fit with this preamble, or explain why Holmes' death ruse was necessary; indeed, his disappearance seems to have given London's criminal element to embark on a crime spree, a story idea that is suddenly dropped with the arrival of Gale Sondergaard, a refined villainess who earns her creepy nickname by using a rare and maddeningly poisonous arachnid to drive various wealthy men to suicide, with her as their beneficiary. Child actor Teddy Infurh makes a curious impression as her fly-catching nephew, whose odd walk seems to pay tribute to Chuck Jones' Warner Bros.' Minah Bird cartoons, introduced in 1939's "The Little Lion Hunter." Angelo Rossitto pops up briefly as Obongo, the Prancing Pygmy - who himself seems inspired by Inki, the protagonist who hunted that same Minah Bird in the Warner cartoons, five in all. This one has quite a few enjoyable vignettes - both Rathbone and Sondergaard attempting to beard each other in their respective dens, a rooftop chase, and various escapes from certain death (including Holmes being tied up behind a shooting gallery target of Adolph Hitler!) - but they don't add up to a particularly cohesive story. But at an hour and change, this easily qualifies as diverting entertainment. 

In this round of re-viewings, I skipped THE SCARLET CLAW because I had watched it recently, independently of the others, when I first acquired this Blu-ray set ; it’s probably the best film of the series and it’s the one I reach for when I’m after a quick distillation of what’s best about these films. (“Quick, Watson! THE SCARLET CLAW!”) Perhaps tellingly, it is also the only film in the entire series scripted by its producer and director, Roy William Neill.

Immediately following CLAW, and rounding out what we might call the "Holmes Meets the Monsters" trilogy, is THE PEARL OF DEATH. Here, the detective's chief adversary is the Fantômas-like master of criminal disguise, Giles Conover (played by the very capable Miles Mander). His Lady Beltham, so to speak, is the equally versatile Naomi Drake (Evelyn Ankers, also memorable in THE VOICE OF TERROR), who must be kept in line by Conover’s sadistic reminders of the unrequited affection felt for her by the back-breaking Oxton Creeper, played by the towering Rondo Hatton. Hatton's acromegalic face is kept off-camera until the right psychological moment, his early scenes focusing instead on his silhouette or on his hands, which are shown encased in a pair of tight-fitting surgical gloves that make them look eerily other than human. In this one, Holmes’ own inclination to flaunt his powers of deduction gives Conover the break needed to steal the priceless Borgia Pearl, which ups the ante a bit for our hero, who accepts responsibility for recovering it. This is a very fine addition to the series.

Next is THE HOUSE OF FEAR, in which a grim-looking mansion by the sea plays host to the members of an exclusive club called the Good Comrades, whose deaths begin to be announced, one by one, in mail deliveries of a diminishing number of orange pips. The house set is the same used in SHERLOCK HOLMES FACES DEATH, and nearly all the players are returning repertory faces. The fact that Holmes is recruited to solve the case by an insurance agent tips the story’s hand prematurely, as does everyone’s almost willful neglect of questioning whether or not the putative murder victims (all found suspiciously dismembered) are in fact dead. Regardless, the film is tight, well made, and the gothic, sometimes stormy, atmosphere adds to its pleasures.

More to come!

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

My New Book Available for Pre-Order!

I'm happy to announce that PS Publishing is now accepting pre-orders for my Electric Dreamhouse "Midnight Movies Monograph" on SPIRITS OF THE DEAD (Histoires Extraordinaires), the Edgar Allan Poe anthology directed by Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini. It is my first book in ten years, since the release of my book on VIDEODROME in 2008.

PS Publishing/Electric Dreamhouse, of course, is the partnership that recently brought you the marvelous WE ARE THE MARTIANS: THE LEGACY OF NIGEL KNEALE, in which I was pleased to be involved. This new release is nicely timed to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of SPIRITS OF THE DEAD's first public releases in Europe in the Summer of 1968. I'm glad to say that the film seems very much to be "in the air" - just last night in Neuchatel, Switzerland, David Cronenberg introduced a stand-alone screening of Fellini's segment "Toby Dammit," starring Terence Stamp.

The previous releases in the MMM series have been about 112-118 pages in length, but editor Neil Snowdon encouraged me to follow my heart with this one, and the final result is more than twice the usual length at 232 pages - yet the cover price remains the same! The book is fully illustrated, draws upon interviews involving each of the principals, and for easy reference, it includes the three Edgar Allan Poe tales ("Metzengerstein", "William Wilson" and "Never Bet the Devil Your Head") that formed the film's basis, annotated by me. The text is a love letter of documentation, shot-by-shot commentary, criticism, biography, videography - and autobiography. Yes, I said "shot-by-shot"; I wrote my analysis of the film using much the same technique as I apply to my audio commentaries. I must say, I wrote this book in a white-heat of sustained enthusiasm, and I believe it ranks with my best work - and it may well be my most inspired.

For my money, "Toby Dammit" is one of the greatest films I've ever seen, but I don't follow the common line of thinking that the other two segments are without merit. The more I wrote about the three distinct episodes, the more I came to see that SPIRITS OF THE DEAD really does function as a whole and rewards being viewed in that way. I also discovered that each of the three directors who contributed to this film made their episodes at what was perhaps the most decisive points in their lives and careers, and I discuss these fascinating points as well. Significant space is also given to Orson Welles' rejected script for the film, a proposed amalgam of "The Cask of Amontillado" and "Masque of the Red Death."

In case you're wondering "Is there a definitive version I should watch before reading?," the answer is an emphatic YES! Buy this Blu-ray and watch the English version. (The discoffers French and Italian options, as well.) DON'T watch the French version currently circulating on Filmstruck's Criterion Channel and TCM. Well... actually, Louis Malle's "William Wilson" segment is safe to watch that way - definitive, in fact - but the other two framing episodes must be watched in English, as only this version preserves the vocal performances of Jane Fonda, Peter Fonda, and most importantly, Terence Stamp. Jane and Peter did their own voice work in French, but the French version now circulating bears the original export title TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION rather than Histoires Extraordinaires - meaning that the French sound has been synced to the English visual track. Briefly stated, the results are sometimes jarring and not to the film's benefit. I explain this in more detail in the book.

As I say, it's been a full decade since my previous book, so please consider pre-ordering your copy now. If my publishers see that I have a responsive and plentiful readership, they may just decide to bring you more books by me!

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

RIP Santiago Moncada (1928-2018)

RIP to Spanish screenwriter and producer Santiago Moncada, who was credited with writing Mario Bava's HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON (pictured), Claudio Guerin's A BELL FROM HELL, Jess Franco's SUICIDE GAMES IN CASABLANCA and ALONE AGAINST THE TERROR, Juan Antonio Bardém's THE CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER, Joaquin Luis Romero Marchent's CUT THROATS NINE, the Spanish version of Sergio Martino's ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, Manuel Cano's THE SWAMP OF THE RAVENS and much more.

Moncada was virtually alone among Spanish screenwriters specializing in the macabre who produced work that was unmistakably his own, regardless of the director. He had a wonderful, playful way with psychopaths tormented by their pasts and tormenting of their present - if you haven't seen it, THE CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER is particularly underrated and recommended. Undoubtedly, one of the most distinctive voices in Spanish horror, gone at the age of 90.

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

RIP Steve Ditko (1927-2018)

Many of us today are mourning the loss of Steve Ditko, who died this past week at the age of 90. His  greatest and most fertile period of work was produced half a century ago - in various horror comics (THE THING, OUT OF THIS WORLD, TALES OF THE MYSTERIOUS TRAVELER) of the 1950s, in science-fantasy and super-hero comics for Marvel (TALES OF SUSPENSE, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, DOCTOR STRANGE) and Charlton (BLUE BEETLE, CAPTAIN ATOM) in the 1960s, the remarkable black-and-white ink-wash horror stories he produced for the Warren magazines CREEPY and EERIE, and the experimental and emphatically philosophical material he contributed to WITZEND in the 1970s. However, he was active right up till the end, illustrating a series of unabashedly unique, and sometimes sketchy (uninked) comics for Robin Snyder with titles like THE HERO, THE MOCKER, DITKO PRESENTS, OH NO! AGAIN DITKO, and sometimes with just a succession of numbers, #25, #26, #27. Just a few days ago, on July 4th, the latest Ditko/Snyder fundraiser on Kickstarter ended having doubled its stated goal.

As Steve Bissette has noted on Facebook, regardless of this success, the public support of this material has actually been minimal considering how many people are now reminiscing with such reverence about Ditko's work and its impact. I understand these outpourings, and I don't doubt their sincerity. Ditko's work coincided with the pre-teen and teen years of the post-war generation, the Baby Boomers, and he and Jack Kirby largely carried the weight of Marvel Comics during its heyday years. For those of us who received that work when it was new, we were young and our mental chemistry was at its most vibrant and receptive, and it was being felt by a lot of people our own age simultaneously, so that if you met someone who knew Ditko's name, that was it: you became friends. Now that we're all a bit older, in our sixties a lot of us, we may still avail ourselves of the new material as well as the wealth of handsomely repackaged vintage work, but I don't find myself discussing it with anyone - certainly not in the depth of the old days. I think what largely constitutes the impact of this work is not only what it is or was, but how we shared it, how it enriched our lives.

A one-shot, but a great moment in comics.

Ditko was the first artist of any sort whose work I learned to recognize by its style and technique. The work made me pay attention to the name, and vice versa. This must be one of the very first steps anyone must undertake to engage in the appreciation of art. There are, and always have been, people who don't like Ditko's work; they find it stilted, disjoined, unnatural, eccentric, unrealistic. To me, this was the whole point: to break away from naturalism to create one's own world - and in his case, to break even from one's own world into universes beyond. It is true, I believe, that his work was not well-suited to every character he was asked to draw, but when he had a strong hand in inventing that character, there was no one better. He may have been the first artist to streamline Iron Man's armor, for example, but the character remained hopelessly metal-bound, as Ditko lacked the linear sensuality of that character's definitive artist, Gene Colan. Ditko wasn't a sensualist, but he more than made up for it as an expressionist.

Ditko was also essential to my education in cinema. His best work is not only proudly cinematic, it can be like a highly concentrated form of cinema in which all the variation that goes into the building of a sequence must be invested in a single frame. When I look at his work, I can intuit some of the questions he likely asked himself as he began building up those images, like: What is most essential about this facet of story? What do I most want this moment to express? What is the psychological truth of this moment? What am I not seeing that I am feeling, and how can I make that phantom feeling visual? I believe, without a doubt, that when Ditko's work most meaningfully came into my life with THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #13 - the first Mysterio story - the path was paved not only for my interest in Ditko (and thus comic book art itself) but for the work I discovered later by Mario Bava, whose films evoked a similar atmosphere of horror and mystery.

Original Ditko art for CREEPY #12's "Blood of the Werewolf."

Much has been written about Ditko's influence by the works of Ayn Rand, and how he lived a hermit's existence - because it's just about all the general world seemed to "know" about him. He always preferred to let his work speak for him. I know that the second point has been highly overrated; he was not a self-publicist, he didn't care about fame or fortune, but I know he got around, met people (I know several people who met or had brief encounters with him), and I have good reason to think he probably answered every letter he received from those people who took the trouble to look up his address and reach out. I mean, handwritten letters, stamped at his own expense. This is a civil and generous discipline that exists among very few people today. What I find especially remarkable, from evidence I've seen on eBay and elsewhere, is that he would sometimes write at length to a stranger to explain why his answer to their request had to be "No." On eBay at this moment (and think of this when you reach the end of this paragraph) is a Ditko letter of reply stating that he doesn't sign index cards, and pointing out that the person requesting such did not include a blank index card with their request! However, think about what that individual received - a personal explanation, returned at Ditko's own expense of time and materials, and signed twice, as was his custom - his signature underlined by his hand-printed name, as if his hand-printing had been typewritten. In essence, he was telling this correspondent, "No, I don't deal in the impersonal, but here is a reply you can take personally."

The trouble is, the few facts we know about him are evidently misleading, and there is much that we may never know. Besides Rand, which authors did he most admire? I think we can safely say Poe (what is his tale "The Terror of Tim Boo Ba" if not a retelling of "The Sphinx"?) and Lovecraft; I see a lot of Doctor Strange in Sax Rohmer's stories about Morris Klaw, collected in THE DREAM DETECTIVE. Was he inspired by music? I think his work makes it quite plain that he loved film noir - so much of his work seems to take place in the years and amid the urban scenery of his own youth in the 1940s and '50s. In his panels, you can find Dutch angles, wide angles, low-angled stage lighting, rooms turned upside down, close-ups that delve into a character's fear and perspiration, even images that seem to shout with a movie's brass sections - as in Betty Brant's nightmare about Peter Parker revealing himself to her as Spider-Man. His work is supremely cinematic, so he obviously loved movies - genre film perhaps moreso than the classics. The people I would identify as the most discerning Ditko fans seem to prize his ink-wash work for CREEPY and EERIE as his career best. Some of this is due to the unusual and highly polished medium he was working in, but it also comes from (I hesitate to say "the fact that") his sensibilities were forged in the black-and-white realm of film noir. A black-and-white he would elevate to new levels of meaning and morality in his Mr. A stories.  

This is how you draw a sock in the gut. 

I loved and admired his work deeply. I could write about it for days, but what is the essential facet of this blog entry? What do I want most at this moment to express? What is the psychological truth of this moment? What am I not saying that I am feeling, and how can I make that phantom feeling verbal?

From my heart - thank you, Steve Ditko.

More than most of the artists I've chosen as my masters, you made me who I am.

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