A scene from David Cronenbergs The Brood 1979

It’s a psycho-sexual smorgasbord of cinematic thrills & filmic frissons! As women are in peril and perilous are some women!

RACHEL, RACHEL 1968 directed by Paul Newman

Rachel Cameron: “I’m exactly in the middle of my life. This is my last… ascending summer. Everything else from now on is just rolling downhill into my grave.”

Joanne Woodward is the dowdy looking emotional time bomb Rachel a 35 year old school teacher who lives with her mother and needs to either break free or break down. Kate Harrington is fabulous as her mother, James Olson who was often cast as the male figure of desire in 60s & early 70s psycho-sexual thrillers plays her lover Nick. The marvelous Estelle Parsons is her well intentioned by misguided friend Calla who has a budding lesbian attraction for her and Donald Moffat plays her dad.

I almost included this film with my compendium of cult films, though it is more melodrama than a crossing of noir, or psycho-sexual horror. The film works on the underlying premise that establishment culture has become like a sort of imprisonment to Rachel, reinforcing a repressive landscape and marginalizing the character of Rachel thus creating her own counter-culture reflecting the eroding of the American Dream and crumbling Idealism. (source American Cinema of the 1960s Themes and Variations Edited by Barry Keith Grant)

Rachel is the archetype of the repressed New England girl form a small town. Where everyone knows your business and it becomes impossible to breathe. One reviewer on IMDb called it “deep-level collective cultural phantoms” I particularly like that phrase. A suffocating lifestyle or stasis of life more aptly, Rachel is trapped by caring for her overbearing mother. and pulled to one side by the desire she has for Nick. Haunted by memories and collected damage over the years, she carries her emotional baggage til it is too heavy to bear.

Kate Harrington in Rachel, Rachel

A few very memorable scenes come to mind. Of course when Calla has the awkward revelation that she is in love with Rachel. But there is the bizarre church scene, and several flashbacks that allude to her childhood trauma.

Will Rachel decide to free herself from the shackles of stifling conformity and become a liberated individual

The film also co-stars the great Geraldine Fitzgerald as Rev. Wood.

Who was she? Sometimes she was a child skipping rope. Sometimes she was a woman with a passionate hunger. And one day the woman and the child came together..

who cares about a 35 year old virgin?

Joanne Woodward and James Olson in Rachel Rachel 1968

VENUS IN FURS 1969 directed by Jesús Franco

In Istanbul a jazz trumpeter Jimmy Logan (James Darren) finds the corpse of a beautiful woman named Wanda Reed (Maria Rohm-House of 1,000 Dolls 1967. The Blood of Fu Manchu 1968, Eugenie… Her Story into Perversion 1970, Count Dracula 1970) washed up on the beach.

Jimmy remembers her from the night before, when he saw her at a party and then later as she was assaulted by the party’s host and two of his friends.

He winds up in  Rio where he hooks up with Rita, played by Barbara McNair a singer who invites him to live with her and help him shake the nightmare off and stop thinking of Wanda.

Jimmy Logan: “She was beautiful, even though she was dead.”

Suddenly a woman appears who looks exactly like Wanda. Jimmy becomes obsessed and pursues her trying to get to the bottom of this mysterious woman.

The woman returns from the dead to take revenge on the group of wealthy sadists responsible for her death. The film also stars Margaret Lee, Dennis Price and Klaus Kinski

Frenzied, dream like colorful excursion into the psycho-sexual mind of Jess Franco.

The coat that covered paradise, uncovered hell!

A Masterpiece of supernatural sex!

THE MINI SKIRT MOB 1968 directed by Maury Dexter

Driven by jealousy, Diane McBain plays Shayne the jilted leader of a female motorcycle gang who’s socio-pathic and ruthless nature instigates a sadistic reign of terror against her ex-lover Rodeo Cowboy Jeff Logan and his new bride Connie (Sherry Jackson)

Stars Jeremy Slate, Diane McBain, Sherry Jackson, Patty McCormack and Harry Dean Stanton.

Diane McBain plays Shayne the head of The Mini Skirt Mob Patty McCormack plays her little sis… and the ruthless Shayne only has eyes for Jeff Logan (Ross Hagen)

They’re hog straddling female animals on the prowl.

Patty McCormack not beating a little boy to death with her tap shoe

THE SORCERERS 1967 directed and screenplay by Michael Reeves (Castle of the Living Dead 1964, Witchfinder General 1968)

Set in the atmosphere of the mod 60s of London –Boris Karloff is a subtly imposing looking more time worn elderly Professor Marcus Monserrat scientist and hypnotist extraordinaire who has discovered the secret of mind control, and the ability to become empathic with the object of their desire.

Monserrat and his wife Estelle (Catherine Lacey-stage actress who was a regular performer with the Old Vic Company from 1951-went on to play eccentric spinsters-) can literally share sensations, thoughts and feelings of the subjects they wish to control.

Ian Ogilvy is the shady swinger Mike Roscoe who falls into their trap and allows them the excitement of experiencing what he does, virtually enjoying the self-indulgence of being young again. But as usual power corrupts and greedy Estelle begins to crave devouring Roscoe and the pleasure it gives her. Roscoe begins to lose control of himself, mind and body as the battle of wills ensues with the power hungry old bird trying to experience ‘kicks’ vicariously through the unlucky chap. Co-stars Elizabeth Ercy and Susan George.

 Boris Karloff He Turns Them On…He Turns Them Off…to live…love…die or KILL!

PRETTY POISON 1968 directed by Noel Black

When a mentally disturbed young man Dennis Pitt (Anthony Perkins) tells a pretty girl that he’s a secret agent, she believes him, and murder and mayhem ensue. Anthony Perkins character of Dennis Pitt is every bit more an emotional enigma as the young man with the pathological imagination who is an outlier of society. Released from an institution he gets a regular job at a lumber yard. But he meets the All American Cheerleader squeaky clean blonde apple pie Sue Ann Stepaneck (Tuesday Weld) who just might be even more disturbed than Dennis. He informs her that he’s working undercover for the CIA and enlists her in helping him on his case. Dennis cannot help live in his fantasy world, and Sue Ann is as aggressive as a giant creek carp, if you ever seen one of those canoeing you’ll know what I mean.

As she manipulates his vulnerabilities into committing acts of dangerous vandalism and eventually murder, she is in control of this Folie à deux

Co-stars Beverly Garland as Sue Ann’s Mama.

PEEPING TOM 1960- directed by Michael Powell-

Powell had been known for his very barbed visual style.

The background story behind Mark Lewis’ madness/murder compulsion.

Mark Lewis-focus puller on Arthur Baden’s new film The Walls Are Closing In-he also moonlights as a photographer of racy pictures on the West End. He is smitten with 21 year old Helen Stephens (Anna Massey) and they are carrying on a very civil and sweet courtship. Almost child-like which is probably what kept Helen safe from Mark’s darker side.

What Helen doesn’t know is that Mark, has a blade hidden in the armature of his tripod, and stabs the object of his desire, filming their deaths, as a surrogate to his past abuse. When he was a young boy his father, a biologist researching the effects of fear on children, ‘the physiology of fear’ used to film Mark continuously like a mouse in a maze, through out his childhood, subjecting him to various fear inducing incidents as his experimentation.

Voyeurism and psycho-sexual compulsion drive this very startling horror/suspense film starring Karl Böhm, as Mark Lewis who works as a camera-man at a British film studio. His fetish is to kill women with his camera tripod while filming their death. It’s not hard to envision that the tripod is a surrogate for his phallus, and the act of stabbing them with it is his act of penetration. A mirror is fixed to the tripod so that the women can see the expression of their own faces right before death, to witness their own fear.

Unfortunately in the way Psycho with its subversive themes propelled Hitchcock’s status to  auteur, the controversial Peeping Tom ended Michael Powell’s career with all the reviled reviews.

Nothing, nothing nothing… has left me with such a feeling of nausea and depression as I got this week while sitting through a new British film called Peeping Tom… Mr Michael Powell (Who once made such outstanding films as Black Narcissus and A Matter of Life and Death) produced and directed Peeping Tom and I think he ought to be ashamed of himself. The acting is good. The photography is fine. But what is the result? Sadism, sex and the exploitation of human degradation- Daily Express

Mark has had a very traumatic upbringing by his father who used his own son in experiments of the effects of fear and self loathing. Well, they produced a son who is a sexual sadist who makes his female victims watch their own deaths-specifically the expression of terror on their faces right before death. Co-stars Moira Shearer, Anna Massey and Brenda Bruce as Dora. Absolutely chilling for 1960. Bohm’s Mark Lewis almost elicits sympathy due to his childhood psycho-trauma. Much like Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates and his fateful childhood.

The gist of why this film shook up the British film industry in a time when they were trying to tone it down was the idea of this gruesome ‘snuff’ film maker getting off on sublimating his own sexual impotence by finding victims to penetrate with his camera or gaze. The way Otto Heller sets up our participation as voyeurs makes it doubly uncomfortable to watch the killings. For example. Mark takes a red bloused prostitute up to her room. His camera it’s several lens eyes like an insect about to prey is concealed, the whirring is cloaked inside his duffel bag. See they even had kill bags back then. As she leads him upstairs he throws an empty box of Kodak film in the garbage. Not cigarettes, or a box of condoms, but still the very sexual instrument in his mode of arousal + fixtion+ object  / spectacle +gaze =murder. Also turning their own destroyed images back on themselves is quite disturbing–It’s a kinky and interesting little detail. Otto Heller also added a wonderful detail to the film as Mark’s private ‘viewing room’ was bathed in a sanguinary red tone.

Director of Photography was Otto Heller, Art Director- Arthur Lawson, Editor Noreen Ackland.

Anna Massey plays Helen Stephens, Maxine Audley is Helen’s mother Mrs Stephens who while blind senses that there is something off about Mark, Moira Shearer is Vivian, Nigel Davenport is Sergeant Miller.

Can you see yourself in this picture? Can you imagine yourself facing the terror of a diabolical killer? Can you guess how you’d look? You’ll live that kind of excitement, suspense, horror, when you watch “Peeping Tom”.

Karl Böhm and Anna Massey in the skin crawling thriller Peeping Tom 1960 directed by Michael Powell

THE WOMAN EATER 1958 directed by Charles Saunders

Oh those silly Colonialist white dudes get to have all the fun — feeding young native girls to those flesh eating plants!

A mad scientist Doctor Moran (George Coulouris) captures women and feeds them to his carnivorous tree with tentacle like branches that only has a taste for the ladies preferably young ones, this in turn gives him a serum that helps bring the dead back to life.

Because the tree gets fed it’s nourishment, it provides the evil doctor with a liquid that restores life to the dead. So naturally the first woman you would want resuscitated would be a good housekeeper right! No… She goes all Rochester’s crazy wife Bertha on the place, you know the violently insane first wife of Edward Rochester; moved to Thornfield and locked in the attic and eventually commits suicide after setting fire to Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre., that sort of way! and ruins everything….

It’s really just a silly B movie from the 50s that finds unique ways to destroy beautiful women by way of mad science or mad obsession.

The film also stars Robert MacKenzie, Norman Claridge, Marpessa Dawn as a ‘native’ girl. Jimmy Vaughn as Tanga, Sarah Leighton as Susan Curtis and Vera Day as Sally.

Vera Day in The Woman Eater 1958

Your Everlovin’ MonsterGirl saying hope you stay on the good side of the camera and watch out for those strange large plants at Home Depot!

“Have you ever noticed it… for some reason you want to feel completely out of step with the rest of the world, the only thing to do is sit around a cocktail lounge for the afternoon?”-Lizabeth Scott’s Mona Stevens to Dick Powell’s John Forbes in Pitfall (1948)

PITFALL 1948

“Her love was a Pitfall… to the only man she didn’t want to hurt…”

Directed by André De Toth,(Dark Waters 1944, House of Wax 1953, Crime Wave 1954) this is a slick piece of film noir with some great camera work from Harry J Wild.

Pitfall stars Dick Powell as John Forbes a disaffected insurance agent working for Olympic Mutual Insurance who needs more umph in his life when the daily grind begins to get to him. He’s married to Jane Wyatt who needs more than just his boring kiss on the cheek. But she’s the good wife in this crime story!

Lizabeth Scott is one of the ultimate noir femme fatales. In Pitfall she plays the sultry Mona Stevens –And when Forbes comes to recover the embezzled loot that her boyfriend bad boy Bill Smiley (Byron Barr) absconded with and lavished on her, she tells Forbes- “You’re a little man with a briefcase.”

Next thing you know it’s late afternoon and Mona’s sobbing in her gin at the dimly lit cocktail lounge, and Johnny Forbes is just a sucker for those dreamy eyes and that wispy voice of hers…

Boyfriend Smiley’s got pinched and is spending a year in the slammer thinking that Mona’s gonna wait for him but she and Forbes begin spending time together. She even tells him about the motorboat Smiley gave her, and it get’s conveniently omitted from his report. I mean after that sea sprayed, whirling, bumpy, ride with her blonde hair blowing alongside the mighty wakes from her untamed steering style, it seems to get him just a bit unraveled– I’m surprised he didn’t lose his hat!

But Mona’s not all fatal and when she finds out he’s married she lets him off easy telling him though she’s the kinda girl he’s always dreamed of she’s gonna let him go ‘without an angle… I could be nasty, but I’m not going to be.”

And besides he doesn’t want to tempt fate any more than he already has…

BUT!!!!!

Raymond Burr who plays the sinister private detective J.B. MacDonald who, Forbes hired to find Mona in the first place, is a tad unstable. He’s got a growing psychotic fixation on Mona and starts stalking her in the shadows. When Forbes confronts MacDonald– he wants revenge, so he visits Smiley in jail and tells him that the two are having an affair setting in motion an even bigger pitfall!

Watch out for those pitfalls… Your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl

IT’S HERE AGAIN… THAT TINGLING ON THE BACK OF YOUR NECK BECAUSE THERE’S FOUL DEEDS AND MURDEROUS MACHINATIONS AFOOT…HOSTED BY SPEAKEASY… SHADOWS & SATIN… AND SILVER SCREENINGS… THE GREAT VILLAIN BLOGATHON OF 2015!

“Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.”
― Stephen King, The Shining

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”
― Werner Herzog

“Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: ‘Here are our monsters,’ without immediately turning the monsters into pets.”
― Jacques Derrida

DRAGONWYCK  (1946)

Vincent Price -had said- “I don’t play monsters. I play men besieged by fate and out for revenge…”

Vincent Price is perhaps one of THE sexiest men in film. Eventually type cast albeit an icon of the horror film industry… enough of us are aware of his range of talent and his sophisticated manner. If I were to have met him, I would have swoon… and that’s not a lie. He possessed a unique sensuality both tragic and dynamic that just drew you in.

Price always could play ONE of the most cultivated, enigmatic and beguiling villains any time….

-Secret thoughts… That led to secret love… That led to rapture and terror!-

Gene Tierney as Miranda Wells: “Nicholas – you do believe in God?”

Vincent Price as Nicholas Van Ryn: “I believe in myself, and I am answerable to myself! I will not live according to printed mottoes like the directions on a medicine bottle!”

The chemistry between Price and Tierney is authentic and captivating. When Miranda Wells feels humiliated by the gaggle of high class snobbish debutantes because she’s from the wrong end of the river, not from the Hudson but The Connecticut River bottom, and Nicholas tells her she’s better then all of them and asks her to dance. He seems so gentle and human… but he has a dark and villainous side!

“You couldn’t help yourself any more than I”-Nicholas

“What makes you think you’re so much better than I am!”

DRAGONWYCK 1946 was Vincent Price’s 18th film, after having appeared in The House of the Seven Gables 1940 as Shelby Carpenter opposite Gene Tierney in Laura 1944, Leave Her to Heaven 1945, right after he appeared as the cold blooded Dr. Richard Cross in Shock 1946.

Produced by Ernst Lubitsch uncredited and overseen by one of my favs– Writer/Director Joseph L Mankiewicz. this Gothic & dark romance is based on the novel by Anya Seton… With cinematography by Arthur C. Miller (The Ox Bow Incident 1943,The Razor’s Edge 1946, Whirlpool 1949, The Prowler 1951), Art Direction by Lyle Wheeler and Russell Spencer, Set Direction by the great Thomas Little. The lighting alone is a mixture of noir chiaroscuro and offers dramatic shadings of the best classical elements of horror. The narrative speaks of familial secrets, and twisted vengefulness not unlike Lewis Allen’s spooky debut masterpiece The Uninvited  1944.

Added to the moodiness is the eerily haunting score by Alfred Newman with Orchestral arrangements by Edward B Powell. Edited by the keen eyes of Dorothy Spencer (Stagecoach 1939, The House Across the Bay 1940, Lifeboat 1944, The Ghost and Mrs.Muir, The Snake Pit 1948.) 

Costumes by Rene Hubert and Make Up by Ben Nye. The film bares shades of Hitchcock/de Maurier’s Rebecca 1940 and Robert Stevenson’s/Charlotte Brontë‘s Jane Eyre 1943. Even a bit of de Maurier’s tautly suspenseful My Cousin Rachel 1952 directed by Henry Koster and starring Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton. The book is a hell of a good read if you enjoy Gothic melodrama.

Gene Tierney and Vincent Price reunite after having appeared in Otto Premingers‘ memorable film noir masterpiece Laura in 1944.

Otto Preminger brings together these two fine actors in his noir masterpiece Laura 1944

Here-Gene Tierney plays Miranda Wells, Walter Huston is her devoutly christian working class father-Ephram Wells.

Walter Huston as Ephram Wells reading from his bible to Miranda

Miranda takes a drink of wine. Her father reproaches her-“I thought so, it’s got spirits in it. A little bit. Even a little bit of evil cannot be good Miranda”– Her stifling life with her religious father pushes her further into the arms of Nicholas Van Ryn

This scene foreshadows the dangerous path the Miranda is willing to wander through, as she starts to break free of her puritanical upbringing and reach for a life of being a free spirit. Believing that Nicholas represents that freedom. But there is a hint of evil that her father can sense.

Vincent Price once again manifests a passionate yet conflicted antagonist Nicholas Van Ryn with a magnetism you cannot escape, yet you may despise his cruelty and his self indulgent murderous arrogance.

“I must not feel like my life is finished as long as you are with me”-Nicholas

“You must never be afraid when you’re with me Miranda”

Glenn Langan is the handsome yet vanilla Dr Jeff Turner, Anne Revere adds a depth of nurture as Abigail Wells-Miranda’s mother who is weary of her daughters intentions to marry such a powerful man.

Spring Byington is one of the maids-Magda. Connie Marshall is the young melancholy Katrina Van Ryn, Henry Morgan is Bleeker one of the farmers who challenges Van Ryn and fights back against the antiquated laws.

Vivienne Osborne plays wife-Johanna Van Ryn. Jessica Tandy gives a marvelous performance as Miranda’s maid the feisty Peggy O’ Malley. Trudy Marshall is Elizabeth Van Borden. Reinhold Schunzel is Count de Grenier, Jane Nigh is Tabitha. Ruth Ford is Cornelia Van Borden, David Ballard is Obadiah. Scott Elliot is Tom Wells and Boyd Irwin is Tompkins.

DRAGONWYCK is a Gothic suspense melodrama in the grand classical style. It even brushes against the edges of the classic horror film not only because of the way it’s filmed, but there are certain disturbing elements to the story. The shadows and darkness that are part of the psychological climate work almost reminiscently of a Val Lewton piece. There’s even a pale reference to that of a ghost story that is concealed or I should say unrevealed, with the first Mrs.Van Ryn’s spirit playing the harpsichord, and the eerie phantom chords that add to the mystery and gloom that hang over the manor house.

Katrine-“I don’t like it now The singing’s getting louder now, I’m afraid I’m afraid”

With swells of atmospheric tension and darkly embroidered romance there’s just the right tinges of shadows and danger. A lush and fervent tale that combines tragic Gothic romantic melodrama with the legitimate themes of social class struggle wrapped within dark secrets and suspense.

As always, Price conveys a tragic pathos even as the story’s villain, he is a man who manifests layers upon layers of feeling. Brooding, charming, sensual, intellectual, menacing, passionate, conflicted, self-loathing, and ego-maniacal all at once.

One of my favorite roles will always be his embodiment of Corman/Poe’s Roderick Usher in House of Usher 1960.

The film also offers us the sublime acting skill and divine beauty of- Gene Tierney as the heroine or damsel in peril, a simple farm girl living near Greenwich Connecticut, who dreams of the finer things in life, swept up by the allure of a fairy tale existence only to find out that her dream has become a nightmare.

Once Miranda receives a letter inviting her to come and visit Dragonwyck, she is perhaps at once young and naive when she arrives at the austere place to be a companion to Van Ryn’s despondent daughter Katrine, a lonely sort of isolated child. First triangulated by Van Ryn’s over-indulgent wife Johanna, after her death, the two begin a whirlwind romance that leads Miranda to marry the imposing Nicholas Van Ryn.

Almost in the style of a Universal monster movie, the central focus is the mysterious mansion, surrounded by volatile thunderstorms and restless villagers who want to take action against their oppressor. The film works as a period piece seeming to possess an added heaviness due to the provincial settings and underpinnings of class unrest, which lends itself to the bleak mood.

DRAGONWYCK’S villain or very human boogeyman is the inimitable & urbane Vincent Price who holds sway over the locals as the patroon–lord of the land, as well as master of all he surveys, and of course his new wife. Driven by his obsession to have a son. He is a brooding dark figure whose dissent into drug addicted madness comes to light like a demon who has escaped from a bottle.

Van Ryn is vain and contemptuous, scornful, condescending and cruel. Eventually driven by his immense pride, love and desire… to murder his first wife who is in the way of his ultimate legacy.

DRAGONWYCK is an interesting film that belies any one genre. And as I’ve pointed out, beyond the dark melodramatic suspense elements, it’s every bit a horror film. And it is also the directorial debut of Joseph L. Mankiewicz 

Set during the Nineteenth Century when parts of New York were still founded as feudal Estates. It’s a fascinating portrayal of the history of the 19th century Upstate New York Dutch colonies and their struggles between the rich and poor against the reigning yet dying tradition of aristocratic rule over the small family farms which were overseen by ‘Patroons’  A Patroon is the owner of the large land grants along the Hudson River. They are descendants of the original Dutch patroons… “and they’re terribly rich and elegant.“ -Miranda

Yet as in the case of Nicholas, they can be brutal and self-opportunistic land lords who collected the rent from these hard working, exploited and poor farmers.

This is what first impresses Miranda about Nicholas, his power and station in life. Tibby her sister tells her that she’s not anxious to leave home.

Miranda says “That’s not fair, you know that I love you and pa, all of you and my home it’s just that I try to be like everyone else… and want what I’m supposed to want. But then I start thinking about people I’ve never known and places I’ve never been. Maybe if the letter hadn’t come I’d…. Oh I don’t know I must be loony.”

Nicholas Van Ryn is a brooding and powerful aristocratic patroon who runs all matters with an iron hand. In the Nineteenth Century the upstate New York counties were still dealing with a system run by these Patroons. There began a social uprising of the surroundings farmers who wanted more power over their land and a rule that would abolish the aristocracy that was a tribute to a dying past practice. Soon there would be an end to these ruling Estates.

As seen in Van Ryn’s maniacal demonstration of his being seated in an elaborate throne he remains poised while collecting the farmers rent. Henry Morgan plays the tough and prideful farmer Klaus who has brought nothing with him. “Not rent– nor tribute.”

“I’m a free citizen I take my hat off for no one”

When Nicholas’ first wife cannot bare him a son as heir to carry on the Van Ryn name, the wealthy and wicked Nicholas Van Ryn secretly plans to poison her with the help of an Oleander plant. Setting his sights on the younger, more beautiful cousin Miranda.

He then invites Miranda (Gene Tierney just naturally exudes a uniquely dreamy eyed splendor) to come and visit Dragonwyck. She is an innocent girl fascinated by the urbane Nicholas but by the film’s climax she becomes entrapped in the foreboding and bleak atmosphere of Dragonwyck, a place of secrets, sadness and insanity.

Nicholas-“The Breeze must feel wonderful indeed on a face as beautiful as yours I imagine.”

Miranda is so taken with the idea of dancing the waltz and how fine a gentleman cousin Nicholas seems. Her father always reading passages from the bible, she hungers for adventure. Miranda craves the freedom to experience a better life.

Vincent Price is incredibly handsome as Nicholas. Mysterious, his deep blue eyes crystallize   through the stark black and white film. He has a strong jawline, and possesses a vitality… at first he is so charming. Nicholas-“The Breeze must feel wonderful indeed on a face as beautiful as yours I imagine.”

The first meal at Dragonwyck, is a grotesque scene in which his wife Johanna (Vivienne Osborne) shows herself to be a lugubrious sow, a glutton and a spoiled child who now bores and disgusts her husband. He tells Miranda, “To my wife, promptness at meals is the greatest human virtue.” 

Nicholas is already starting to reveal his cutting tongue by commenting on how his wife over eats and is not refined. A hint of his cruel nature.

“I think I’ll have the bon bons before going to bed”

Look at the detail of this frame. It’s almost the perfection of a Late 19th century painting

Miranda meets the despondent Katrine… a hapless child

At dinner, Johanna begins to nag him about bringing home the pastries from New York, the Napoleons, she appears to be a glutton, and though very pretty, a most unattractive portrayal of her character is given for the narrative’s purpose of Nicholas justifiably ridding himself of her so that he might pursue Miranda. In contrast to Johanna’s piggishness, Miranda is given a clear bowl of broth for her supper. the scene is set up so we feel a bit of sympathy toward Nicholas.

As Johanna shoves another bon bon into her mouth…

Cinematographer Arthur C. Miller frames the shot as Johanna is placed in between Nicholas and Miranda. His wife Johanna appears like a fairy tale character–the over-exaggerated plump wife who gorges herself on sweets while Nicholas and Miranda talk of love and loss. Miranda is wildly curious. He is withdrawn and pensive.

Nicholas plays the harpsichord. Miranda listens contentedly then asks who the woman in the painting is. He tells her it’s his grandmother Aziel –“That’s a strange name… she looks like a frightened child.”

Miranda asks him to tell her more about his grandmother. Was it love at first sight?

Nicholas-“No Van Ryn does anything at first sight” Miranda-“Oh but she must have been happy to live here” Miranda smiles, her face a glow. Nicholas adds, “As it turned out it didn’t matter, soon after her son was born she died. She brought this harpsichord with her from her home. She played it always.”

Johanna “If you listen to the servants they’ll have you believe she still does!“ she laughs. But Nicholas quickly turns around to look at her, a dark shadow creeps along his brow. His eyes raised.

Nicholas-“fortunately we don’t listen to either the servants or their superstitions.”

Magda (Spring Byington) tells Miranda about Nicholas’ grandmother from New Orleans, the woman in the portrait. That his grandfather never loved her, he never wanted her at all. he wanted their son. he kept her from him… He forbid her to sing and play. He broke her heart. And drove her….” Magda stops short…. “She prayed for disaster to come to the Van Ryns and she swore that when it came she’d always be here to sing and play… She killed herself in this room.”

Magda asks-“Miss Wells why have you come here? Do you think Katrine is in need of a companion? Miranda answers her, “Well that would be for her father and her mother to decide.”
Magda says, “Don’t you think she’s in need of a father and a mother… that was a silly question wasn’t it?” 

The meddling maid pierces Miranda’s innocence with her honesty like venom–causing a bit of shock on Miranda’s face that usually seems as tranquil as a quiet lake of sparkling water.

“You like it here?” Miranda answers–“Of course I do” Magda comments- “Course you do, you like being waited on, I could see tonight it was the first time. You like peaches out of season. You the feel of silk sheets against your young body. Then one day, with all your heart you’ll wish you’d never come to Dragonwyck…”

The handsome young Dr. Turner (Glenn Langan) comes to take care of Johanna who has taken sick to her bed.

He and Miranda sit and talk by the fire. He tries to imply that living at Dragonwyck has changed her, he tells her that the last time he met her he felt like they had so much in common.. “Frankly right now I doubt you have any idea about the slightest thing to talk to me about.”

Johanna’s illness gets worse, of course we know Nicholas has poisoned her. Lying in bed she tells him that sometimes she thinks he hates her, but asks if they can go away together once she’s better. He says yes because he knows she’ll never get better. In fact she will never leave that bed alive.

That night she dies. Doctor Turner feels bad that he can’t know why. “It’s funny the way she ate… almost passionately as if she wanted from meat– what she couldn’t have…

Once his wife mysteriously sickens and dies, Nicholas begins to woo his cousin who quickly becomes his second wife. Miranda’s father Ephram Wells, a righteous farmer (Walter Huston) naturally has a great mistrust of Van Ryn.

Later Nicholas comes to Miranda and tells her that she must of known their love was inevitable. He tells of how Johanna could have no more children. That she could never give him a ‘son.’

His wife has just died and yet he compels her to realize that they were drawn to each other from the beginning. That they are meant to be together. He seems genuinely in love with Miranda.

Her father can’t believe that she’d be married to any man since she’s always had her nose up in the air for so long. But then Nicholas shows up and asks for her hand, and takes her back to Dragonwyck.

Mother Abigail (Anne Revere)- Miranda child do you love him very much?” “Course I do”. “Are you sure?” “Why do you ask that?”  “It’s just maybe I shouldn’t have let you go. Maybe Dragonwyck shoulda stayed something to read about and dream about.” “My dreams came true Ma. Can you see. Ever since I was a little girl and built a castle and in that apple tree.” “But you can’t marry a dream Miranda. What about him? Do you love him?“ “It’s all Nicholas, Nicholas is all of it!… You’re acting so strangely almost as if you were afraid.”

“Yes Miranda I dance the waltz but never in a public place”

“On an occasion we dance the waltz at Dragonwyck”-Nicholas

Now living at Dragonwyck–(Jessica Tandy) Peggy comes in to Miranda’s room to force her to eat. Her ironing is worse than her cooking… but she cares about Miranda. Nicholas asks “And what was that strange little creature?” “That was Peggy, Peggy O’Malley” “I assumed it had a name, what was it doing here?” “I’ve engaged her as my personal maid.” “A maid that untidy little cripple” “She’s not untidy and her leg’s no fault of hers… she’s had a miserable life.” That’s the strangest recommendation I’ve ever heard” “She’s bright and willing and good to me and Nicholas I want her as my maid.“

Nicholas-“I shall have McNab give her some extra money and a good character. “

Miranda-“It’s so little to ask please”

Nicholas-“Deformed bodies depress me….”

He tries to divert her attention by offering her a wrapped package from Tiffany’s.

“How dare you say that!” Miranda grows much stronger and less naive as time goes on.

Nicholas indignant replies, “How dare I?” Miranda fights to make her point her voice strengthens, “You speak as if her crippled leg was a weakness on her part, rather than merely God’s will…” Nicholas sarcastically submits-“We’ll agree then that it is God’s will.”

They were planning a ball to celebrate their betrothal. But all the society people are sending their refusals. All because he married a simple farm girl.

Miranda brings up the night Johanna died. How they started to talk about their future together. God knew. Nicholas doesn’t care about gossip…

“I’ve never heard you speak so childishly Miranda you might as well be on his knee. Do you believe there is a god who spends eternity snooping on human behavior. And punishing all violators of the pastors latest sermon.”

“That’s not what I mean at all”

“Then what do you mean?”

“Well I believe that God has a put a sense of right and wrong in all of us. And that when we do wrong. NO matter if no one else knows. We do.”

“And you’ve remembered that ever since your Sunday school days haven’t you… that’ a good girl…”

“Nicholas You do believe in God?”

“I believe in myself and am answerable to myself … I will not live according to printed mottoes like the directions on a medicine bottle!”

But Nicholas’ growing drug habit and the ghostly happenings real or imagined a manifestation of a long dead ancestor who is driving him to either suicide or to rid himself of his second bride. Miranda is pregnant. She gives birth to a baby boy.

Dr. Jeffrey Turner is so in love with her. He tries to tell Van Ryn that his son is not well. Nicholas tells the priest who baptizes his son that in a few months he will be properly baptized in a Dragonwyck church. But Miranda tells him that it’s a good thing they did it just in time. With tears in her eyes she looks up at her husband. The baby has perished.

His son tragically dies soon after birth. This drives Nicholas further away.

Nicholas takes to his secret tower room … staying in there weeks at a time.

Miranda decides to go up and check on him. Peggy doesn’t want her to go up there alone.

She finds him laying down on a bed in his silk robes. A dirty growth of beard on his face and a woozy sort of swagger, he stands up and confronts her.

“this is an unlooked for pleasure I wasn’t expecting you Frankly I almost succeeded in Forgetting you”

“Oh it’s you” Miranda-“Yes Nicholas” Nicholas lazily comments, “This is an unlooked for pleasure. I wasn’t expecting you… Frankly I almost succeeded in forgetting you. Don’t be frightened of me.”

Miranda assures him-“I’m not frightened” Nicholas– “I’m sure you’re not. You have courage Miranda, I  like that about you. It must have taken a great deal to make this pilgrimage up to the mysterious tower room. I assume your twisted little friend is offering up suitable prayers for your safe return.”

Miranda answers him, “I see no reason why that should be necessary” He asks her, “Tell me are you disappointed in what you found here? I’m sure you expected velvet drapes and heathen idols an altar for human sacrifice at least.” She asks him plainly-“Nicholas what do you do here?” He answers cryptically-“ What do I do?… I live.”

Miranda-“Nicholas what do you do here?” Nicholas “What do I do?”

“I live…” Miranda-“I’m sure you mean a great deal by that but…”

Miranda-“I”m sure you mean a great deal by that but it isn’t very clear to me” Nicholas- “I Didn’t expect you to understand… how could you. Don’t be offended by ordinary standards you’re quite intelligent-but I will not live by ordinary standards. I will not run with the pack. I will not be chained into a routine of living which is the same for others. I will not look to the ground and move on the ground with the rest. So long as there are those mountain tops and clouds, limitless space. I’m sure you’re still unable to understand.“ Miranda-“I want to try if you’ll help me...” Nicholas-“Shall I Shall I tell you what you want to know. Brace yourself. Prepare to have your god fearing farm bred prayer fattened morality shaken to it’s core. See I’ve become what is vulgarly known as… a drug addict.” Miranda-“Why?” Nicholas- “No tearful reproaches, no attempts to save me to regenerate me?”

Miranda-“Why do you find it necessary?” Nicholas-“That is what you could not hope to comprehend. Tis because I have set free something within me, something that ever since I can remember it’s been like a rock caught in my heart, in my brain… pushing at me, choking me.” Miranda- “I know you better than you think I do.” Nicholas- “Perhaps I’ve underestimated your intelligence” Miranda- “No it’s pretty ordinary and farm bred. I couldn’t follow everything you said but I think it’s pretty simple… You’re just plain running away!” Nicholas- “Is it as simple as that?” Miranda-“I’ve seen farmers with their crops ruined and their cattle dead and most of them just go to work. But some of them blame their troubles on God and get drunk, to forget, to run away, to run away and hide. That’s what you are doing Nicholas. Whenever you come up against something unpleasant you couldn’t change like the rent law.”

“Or the death of my son…” “Our son…” “Get out of here!” “Nicholas let me help you..” “I don’t need to be helped!” “Please don’t shut me out like this. Let me be unhappy with you and happy again. Let me be part of you. Let me love you and love me too.“

Nicholas turns and walks away….

Will Nicholas try to murder Miranda for not being able to give him a proper son. Does the suspicious young doctor Jeffrey Turner (Glenn Langan) save her? Or does justice reach out it’s ironic hand to Nicholas and have him die as he lived– elevated in his reigning chair of state, surveying his tenants and the vast lands lost in his clouded drug induced unconsciousness.

Vincent Price has always been flawless as the villain as he seems to embody that brilliantly threatening grin with ease. In DRAGONWYCK he personifies the very physical stature of the type of figure a contemptuous patroon would possess. Price has both the aesthetically striking features and charisma of a Lord or Patroon. No one quite delivers a line, packed with innuendo, sarcasm, highbrow insult and swiftness quite like Vincent Price. I’ve always felt that he was an underrated actor who should have been considered a great leading man.

Here’s a description from Anya Seton’s novel–

“He was tall, over six feet and of a slender build… His hair, nearly as black as his boots, was abundant and waving… As of his face, it was so nearly the embodiment of the descriptions of heroes in Miranda’s favorite books that she was awed. Here were the full flexible mouth, the aquiline nose with slightly flaring nostrils, the high and noble forehead accented by stem black brows… And eyes of a particularly vivid light blue.”

In an interview on the set, LOOK Magazine described Vincent Price as “Lean, razor jawed and romantic” I would agree. Though Price became known for the horror pictures he would become iconic for, in particular the Roger Corman adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories, Price to me always had the striking sensuality to play a leading man.

All 6 Foot 4 inch razor jawed, wildly romantic and vivid blue eyes and all. Price actually lost 30 pounds for the role of Nicholas Van Ryn. And it’s marvelous when the antagonist of the film is still someone you feel compelled to watch and at times empathize with. Though Van Ryn was truly a despicable villain a wife murderer–indeed. It was a perfect role for Vincent Price who brought an unyielding passion to every part he played.

He could carry off with ease the great arrogance and scorn, as he held rigidly to the inviolability of his god given birthright. Haunted and tortured by the demons of weakness, his pathological self-loathing and discontent that drives him to become a drug addicted fiend who hides in the shadows of his locked tower room. Tormented by the fierce love he has for his new and beautiful young bride, yet conflicted because she has failed to give him a son.

In preparation for his role as Nicholas Van Ryn, Vincent Price found it difficult to manifest the persona of a character who could not tolerate imperfection in his life or anything that contradicted his inflexible standards. After reading the preface of Anya Seton’s novel which began with Edgar Allan Poe’s poem called “ALONE” Price gained insight into Van Ryn’s personality and the terrible isolation and alienation he had felt.

Ironically or perhaps like an augury–it is this very type of personality that would immortalize Price forever through the A.I.P/Corman does Poe collaborations that awaited him!

I happen to have a small needle pointed cross stitched version of Poe’s ALONE that my mother had made for me. Perhaps a morbid little message to have hanging in your bathroom, but mom was melodramatic and being a fan of Poe myself… it stays….!

“Alone”

By Edgar Allan Poe

REVIEWS

Variety, February 20, 1946 (trade-show screening)
“…its box office chances are assured… {a} grade A production in every detail … It is one of Vincent Prices best roles to date, and he handles it for all it’s worth.”

NEW YORK TIMES . APRIL 11, 1946 BOSLEY CROWTHER

“VINCENT PRICE GIVES A PICTURESQUE PERFORMANCE CLEAN SHAVEN AND ELEGANTLY TAILORED. HE STILL MAKES A FORMIDABLE BLUEBEARD, AND HIS MOMENTS OF SUAVE DIABOLISM ARE ABOUT THE BEST IN THE FILM”

LOOK MAGAZINE, MAY 5, 1946

“AS DRAGONWYCK HOMICIDAL ARISTOCRAT WHO TRIES TO MURDER TWO WIVES PRICE SETS A ROMANTIC PACE WHICH WILL E A REVELATION TO FEMININE MOVIEGOERS. ONE OF HOLLYWOODS SOUNDEST ACTORS, THIS SOFT SPOKEN FORMER MEMBER OF ST LOUIS SOCIETY DOMINATES THE PICTURE”

Vincent Price comments during a lecture on his role as Van Ryn, “The Villain still pursues me”

“Aristotle wrote a theory of drama that is really quite extraordinary in it, he says that the villain, the man who has to pay for his sins, should be preferably a man of great intelligence, great charm, great wit, noble birth… preferably rich, well liked- because then if this man has to pay for his sins, you and I we understand that we have to pay for ours too. Well… the character of Nicholas Van Ryn is an Aristotelian Villain”

“Words-so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”

-Mary Wollstonecraft

NIGHT MUST FALL (1937)

Robert Montgomery as Danny: –“I forgot it was Sunday. They’re goin’ to church down in the villages. All got up in their Sunday best. And the organ is playin’ and the windows are shinin’. Shinin’ on holy things because holy things isn’t afraid of the daylight. But all the time, the daylight’s movin’ across the floor. And by the end of the sermon, the air in the church is turnin’ gray and the people isn’t able to think so much of holy things anymore but only of the terrible things that’s goin’ on outside. Because they know it’s still still daylight and everything is ordinary and quiet and the day is the same as all the other days. And it’ll come to an end. And it’ll be night.”

Night Must Fall 1937 is the film adaptation of Emlyn Williams’ stage play. Williams created the character of Danny based on a series of murders in Cleveland called The Mad Butcher. He also played the role of Danny on stage. In this moody superior version of the story director Richard Thorpe ( Black Hand 1950, The Prisoner of Zenda 1952, Jailhouse Rock 1957) creates an almost confined space immersed in the atmosphere of fable and impending dread.

Night Must Fall opens with the dark and eerie silhouette of figure hunched down under a giant oak… a hat box resting beside him.

With a carefully detailed eye cinematographer Ray June   (The Secret Garden 1949, Shadow on the Wall 1950) creates the perfect at times elegant landscape for secrets and indulgences. June might have fit right in as photographer in the Val Lewton or Jean Renoir camp of visionaries. Danny is a virile working class fellow, a waiter at the Tall Boys Pub who has an air of underdog quality to him. The intrusion of his presence creates the sense of downfall to the languid elitism of the upper class.

Starring Robert Montgomery as the dapper and cocksure Danny a certifiable psychopath with a fetish for carrying around his female victims’ heads in a locked hatbox which are-“much too heavy for a hat.” Montgomery was nominated for an Academy Award for his adept performance as the charming & menacing fetishistic sexual-psychopath!

He steals into the lives of the wealthy crotchety, churlish–verbally abusive old dowager Mrs. Bramson (Dame May Whitty) who is a neurotic lonely old gal feigning the need to be tootled around in her wheelchair. Both egotists Danny & Auntie Bramson belong together fueling each others pathological need for self importance.

Edward Ward (The Women 1939, Phantom of the Opera 1943, The Strange Door 1951) lends his musical score that is a dark and melancholy accompaniment to this psycho-sexual thriller ahead of it’s time, and sorely underrated.

The ensemble cast includes Merle Tottenham giving a wonderful performance as the dippy maid Dora who is his latest girlfriend as she takes Danny with all his faults. Kathleen Harrison is the counter-weight to Dora’s scatterbrained persona, as the wise cracking Emily Terence, cook, housekeeper and all around comic relief. Harrison has some of the best lines in the story.

Alan Marshal is just right as the handsome stout fellow Justin, who is madly in love with Olivia no matter how many times she turns his marriage proposals down. Olivia is so intellectually driven by her need to experience something more than her dull life permits and she herself has a secret longing for a more dangerous kind of passion that her heart just isn’t geared toward their normal relationship.

Justin warns Mrs. Bramson about keeping so much money around the house. She berates him for meddling and distracting her while she counts her piles of pound notes. She also insists as her lawyer that he revise her will yet again in order to cut Olivia’s inheritance in half, leaving her devoted but deeply trampled upon niece penniless.

E. E. Clive (Dracula’s Daughter-Sgt. Wilkes) has a small part as the guide.

Dame May Whitty reprised her role as the cranky Mrs. Bramson on the stage in both London and New York, making her film debut at age 72!–She is one of my FAVORITE character actors… (The Lady Vanishes 1938, Suspicion 1941, Mrs. Miniver 1942, Gaslight 1944)

Then there’s her niece/companion Olivia played by the audacious Rosalind Russell. Who manifests a sexy frumpiness and at first takes a strong dislike to the dapper Danny who is starting to work his charms on the difficult old lady. The repressed yet curious Olivia sees past his light-hearted act and suspects there lurks a darker side to this smiling schemer yet she too has a dark side and develops a dangerous fixation on him.

Russell’s role in Night Must Fall couldn’t be more of an antithesis to her character as the wicked Mrs. Howard Fowler (Sylvia) in George Cukor’s The Women (1939) Who’s venom drips off every word and her claws are always sharpened, unlike the yearning Olivia love isn’t a dangerous adventure it’s a gossip headline, a friends secret to divulge and a chance to kick someone when they’re down.

Night Must Fall was remade in 1964 starring the amazing Albert Finney, and while the film has it’s stark moments of terror and dark psychological entrenchments. Karel Reisz’s version is stark and brutal and has a pervasive atmosphere that is gruesome because of the tightly wound performance by the masterful Finney who’s Danny conveys more of an alienated psychopath filled with both destructive and childish rage. Both characters of Danny seem to possess a childlike complexity that exhibits animosity toward women and a strange attachment to them, most likely being a warped mother fixation. 1964 contains some incredible camera work by the gifted Freddie Francis and the film itself stands out as a psycho-sexual gem, still I prefer the more moody and Gothic version with Montgomery’s more lyrical and macabre ‘bad boy’ with a grotesque secret. Just the mere image of the hat box is more chilling to me, then watching Finney actually wield the axe!

Robert Montgomery had boyish good looks and a certain unique sex appeal

A Year of Fear: A Day-by-Day Guide to 366 Horror Films–By Bryan Senn. “By 1936, MGM contract star Robert Montgomery was fed up with the prim leading roles given him by the studio. Montgomery had begun to complain to the Metro brass incessantly about his endless stream of light comedy characters, insisting that he break out of this tepid ‘happy-go-lucky’ mold…{Montgomery considered Danny the favorite of his many screen roles.”

Montgomery really earns his place as a memorable cinematic villain… who straddles his world between intensely dangerous to endearingly guiltless or so he would appear to the more naive. “I’m the one who watches!”-Danny (Baby Face) To the more alert he gushes a mysterious yet menacing charm, and he also loves to whistle Mighty Lak a Rose, which was the tune heard the night a figure was spotted by an old oak tree most likely burying something. Perhaps a headless body?

As Phil Hardy says “While the play endows the contents of the mad axeman’s cherished box with some mystery, Reisz’s version has Danny wielding the axe from the start and there is little subtlety in his relation with the resultant severed head.”  Hardy also takes note of Freddie Francis’ cinematography which did endow the 1964 version with a sense of doom and danger. This later version tends to be less atmospheric and more laden with the impulse to be an exploitation work.

While Danny’s presence becomes a whirlwind around the house, the police have been searching for the missing Mrs. Shellbrook in the woods and along side the river. This kicks up quite a lot of excitement in the isolated village as the gory sensationalism hits the newspapers and sends the town out hunting in the brush.

The inspector asks Olivia if she’s noticed anything. “Oh yes I did see some men beating the undergrowth.”

The cantankerous old gal asks the inspector “What’s all this fuss about?” He answers -“Oh yes I’m coming to that.”

“There’s a lady missing from the Tall Boys. A Mrs Shellbrook”

Emily gets excited -“Shellbrook…! oh yes dyed platinum blonde… A regular red hot mama from what I’m told.”

Mrs Bramson snaps at Emily-“And what’s a red hot mama?” Emily has no fear of the old lady’s bite-“Don’t you go to the picture shows?”

Danny is introduced by Dora the maid who just isn’t herself lately. He tells Mrs. Bramson that she reminds him of his own mum. He manipulates the old woman into giving him a job as her caretaker, telling her that he can marry Dora once he makes good money.

When Olivia voices her concerns over this enigmatic stranger to her aunt, she is quickly rebuffed and it’s clear that auntie Mrs. Bramson has fallen under Danny’s charming spell. The relationship becomes an odd sort of chemistry between the two, as he dotes on her and she eats it up like her box of chocolates. She could be his mother but it’s obvious that she finds his attractive child like charisma flattering as well as titillating. Olivia can’t deny that she too finds Danny attractive, which is a large part of the underpinnings of this psychological thriller. Is Olivia an accomplice to the dark goings on? You might very well ask that question once you’ve seen the film, for she at times stays silent when she catches Danny in a lie, or suspects that he is responsible for the missing, most likely murdered woman.

Like the newly purchased shawl he tells the old lady was his own mothers, when Olivia spots the price tag and hands it to him behind her back, it’s as if she allows her true suspicions -not the gossiping sort she shares with Emily and Dora to sit idle at times, holding her secret knowledge about Danny mostly to herself, as a) she legitimately is emotionally and verbally abused by her aunt and probably has a primal desire to see her punished for being so cruel, and b) has stumbled onto an adventure that has sparked something in her, something that Danny gets a ‘nif’ of right away.

The film opens in murky blackness. The sky is a moonlit smudged darkness and yet the sparkling tones of the score pokes through the eerie twilight night. Suddenly we hear the sound of someone whistling the melody of Mighty Lak a Rose— the darkness eases up a bit. There’s a large tree, and the vague figure of that someone (Danny) digging up the ground. He seems to be wearing a cap and there’s a hat shaped box next to him. A voice calls “Who’s there?” and the figure begins to take off. A flashlight aimed by a man with a hunting dog comes to investigate the goings on. The shadowy figure (Danny) takes the box and scrambles to hide behind the great oak tree, as the dog barks, the flashlight searches onward and the chorus frogs and crickets sing their night song. Danny finishes burying what ever it may be… which we learn later of course is the missing woman’s body without a head–he scampers away into the dark night.

I just had to include this contrasting early morning light shot from the shadowy night shot because it’s so darn ethereal it brings us into the hauntingly private world that’s about to get a jolt of scandal and morbid circumstance.

Night fades into day by the same grand tree. The music changes it’s mood and enjoys the sunlight, Dora is riding along on her bicycle as she comes upon several men in row boats. She asks them what they’re doing. “Looking for something” “A lot of nonsense”  “Haven’t seen anything have ye?”
‘What ya mean. seen anything” “Oh nothing, nothing” He barks at her and continues to tread the water with his paddle. “Mysterious Aren’t you.”

so many frames… a postcard — from the set design to the photography

Dora-“What am I going to do?”

Once Dora makes it back to the house, she’s confronted by Emily who tells her “It’s trouble for you me girl” “that the madam has been complaining about finding two broken cups and saucers from her best tea set buried in the rose bed. When Dora asks what the old lady said Emily answers swift and sarcastically, “She said it doesn’t matter, I should kiss ya and tell ya she loves you all the better for it!… What do ya think!”

Dora broke the dishes the day before, and doesn’t know what’s come over her. Emily tells her she’s been acting strange all week. She’s been losing things and dropping things. We hear Mrs. Bramson calling for Dora.

Dora skulks into the parlor. Olivia tells her aunt to leave her alone. “Leave her alone!!!, that little sneak thief… Oh there you are…. I suppose you think that the china came from the penny bazaar. Thought if you planted them in the rose bed I should never see them I suppose… well I have seen them!”

She then yells at Nurse. “Don’t be so clumsy do you want to break my arm?”

Olivia bespectacled and busily knitting looks over at her –short of rolling her eyes. Dora breaks into tears, but Olivia tells her it’s not as bad as all that. “Not as bad as all that… It’s worse!… Mrs. Bramson insists on interrogating Dora-“What about that chicken you stole on Monday?” “ I never stole it” “Well I don’t know what else you’d call it, borrowed it perhaps.”

Olivia tries to stop her aunts tirade, but she tells her to keep out of it. “I don’t know what’s come over you. I really don’t. Clumsy, thieving, deceitful. You can leave. You’re sacked my girl” Dora cries even harder. She can’t even lift her head. “Oh stop that sniveling and squeaking, you’ll bring my heart on again. “Oh mum please don’t turn me away.” “You should have thought of that before you broke my china.”

Olivia gets up and puts her arms around Dora. Ask if she’s in trouble, and Dora tells her yes in a “manner of speaking” Old lady Bramson doesn’t skip a beat. “Oh… a man ay… so that’s the game… Men too!”

“Not men, just my friend. He promised to marry me but he keeps making excuses and I know he isn’t keen” “Who is he” “a boy I know. A page boy at The Tall Boy” “The good for nothing scoundrel” “ Oh no he isn’t. He’s nice really, if you know what I mean.”

“They call him Baby Face”

Danny has gotten maid Dora in the family way. Mrs. Bramson sends for him in order to pressure him to do his duty and marry the dippy girl. Instead, she is so taken with his wily ways that she hires him as her personal caretaker. Whitty as the steely Mrs Bramson measures just the right balance of feisty, haughty and at times tenderhearted, well at least exclusively toward Danny that is. One minute lambasting Dora, then taking charge of her indelicate situation. As much as she depends on Dora and Olivia, she regales in pretending to fire Dora (Merle Tottingham) accusing her of stealing and breaking the fine china and how she has a sharp and nasty tongue for her niece Olivia just never a kind word–Whitty is marvelous as usual playing at being the stern battleaxe and yet so exploitable.

“I’m going to make that young man realize what his duty is”

Mrs Bramson once again attacks her niece-“A lot of good you are to look after an invalid.”

“You’re looking pale too”

“Pale.. did you say pale?” Danny coyly tells her, “I Shouldn’t have said that, I am sorry.” “But it’s true… as true as your my witness. But nobody else seems to realize… Now look here young man, about Dora.”

“Do you mind if I ask what your ailments are.” “Well I have the most terrible palpitations” “Palpitations (whistles) and the way you get about” “Oh” “There a very bad thing to have you know. Do you realize that 9 out of 10 women in your condition would be lying down and giving way” “Would they?” “Indeed they would” “I knew somebody once who had palpitations once and… somebody very near to me… they’re dead now”

“Oh” “My own mother.” “Oh??” “I can just remember her… as a matter of fact, Oh no it’s a daft thing.” “Come come out with it.” “It’s just my fancy I suppose but you remind me a bit of her.” “Of your mother?”

“I don’t like to talk about my mother… makes me feel sort of sad. She had the same kind look as you have. The same eyes, very wide apart. And the same very good hands.” She asks-“And the same palpitations?” “And the same palpitations… you don’t mind my talking about your health do ya?” “No” for the first time she actually says a word that comes out of her mouth, with a genuine softness. “You ought to get used to letting other people do things for ya” “Yes” “You ought to be very careful” “Yes, you’re a strange sort of boy to be a page boy.” “Am I?” “You seem so much too sensitive and understanding.” “Well I’ve never had any advantages you know but I’ve always tried to do the right thing.”

I won’t go off about his flinging that adorable black cat around and stroking it with such sinister undertones as a ploy to create the illusion that he’s a gentle soul…

“Excuse me Ma’am is that your cat? May I pick him up? “Do you like cats?” “I’m fond of all animals especially cats. I bet he’s a good companion to ya” “He’s about the only one who is.”

“Well I think you deserve better… talking of the right thing. What about Dora?”

He shivers with a little chuckle.. “I’m going to marry her… I’d marry her now but I hardly make enough now to keep myself. If I could get a job with a bit more money I’d marry her like a shot.”

“How would you like to work for me?”

“Indeed I would. I hardly think of anything better id rather do than to live in a beautiful house like this with a kind lady. Taking care of her.”

“Well we’ll see.”

Danny gets up. She asks if he’s got to go back. She invites him to stay to lunch..

He always manages to speak with long pauses in between each personal and flattering revelation he conjures, and so he manages to insinuate himself into the household.

Once the socio-pathic Danny arrives he starts working his chameleon like radar honing in on what each person needs to hear and what he needs to be for them. He knows what questions to ask in order to solicit his intended emotional response.

He tells the old lady that she looks pale. And so he’s already figured out that she’s a vain hypochondriac who needs coddling, yet she’d never be satisfied, until now… He loves to manipulate women.

Emily asks Dora “Has he said anything more about marrying you?” Dora tells her-“Not since he moved in here…”

Mrs Bramson says to Danny-“You know I”ve takin a liking to you” as Olivia looks on.

Danny schemes to shop for a gift for Mrs. Bramson as a ruse to gain her affections. He tells her that it was the only thing left from his own dear old mother.

Danny even charms Beryl Mercer the saleslady who tries on the shawl for him…

Danny goes into town to buy the old gal a shawl. He rides back on his bicycle like a child. bouncing with purpose as he gets to the house with his luggage in particular his locked hat box, which is photographed to appear truly sinister when shot by Ray June.

Mrs. Bramson counts her money like a miser. She doesn’t trust banks. Justin mentions that a woman disappeared and that foul play is suspected. She tells him it’s nonsense they’d put anything in the newspapers.

Alan Marshal who plays the handsome Justin Mrs Bramson’s lawyer and Olivia’s tepid romance figure-tells her he’s worried for she and Olivia to be alone in the house.

She tells him to put his mind to rest that there’s a man coming to live. Justin says “A servant?” “Yes a servant so there’s no need to be jealous.”

She’s changed her will so many times, Justin can’t keep track, but she tells him that she remembers it all. She’s leaving Olivia 200 pounds. She’s been thinking it over and she’s come to the conclusion it’s too much. She tells him that she want’s to cut it in half. He tries to argue that she hardly has any money of her own, but she yells at him. that he should do what he’s told and take down her instructions.

“Aren’t you afraid of being robbed or burgled?”

Justin says “A servant?”She snaps at him– “Yes a servant so there’s no need to be jealous.”

Danny sees her putting her metal box of money in the safe. He is framed by the window, the look on his face puckishly ominous.

He knocks on the door. Dora greets him. Mrs Bramson quickly closes up her safe. Dora asks if he spoke to her, referring to them getting married. He combs his hair neatly in the mirror without looking Dora in the face, and tells her “soon.. soon…”

Danny asks Dora-“Is the old lady in?” Dora lugubriously tells him- “She’s always in”

“Olivia why won’t you marry me?” “Because I told you before I don’t love you that way.” “Even if you don’t, aren’t I better than the old lady?… I wouldn’t bully you and treat you like a servant… Story book romance does happen.” He looks at her adoringly.

Justin meets Danny. Mrs. Bramson tells him that he’s a very nice boy, very superior.

Olivia walks Justin to the car and tells him exactly what she thinks of Danny He’s seems a friendly sort of chap…

She thinks he’s “common and insolent and conceded and completely double faced…”

Justin is a very nice guy. He asks why she puts up with Mrs Bramson’s treatment. She’s got no money, so he pushes once more for them to marry. “Olivia why won’t you marry me?”

“Because I told you before I don’t love you that way.”

“Even if you don’t, aren’t I better than the old lady?… I wouldn’t bully you and treat you like a servant.”

He tells her that she “wouldn’t be in the woods where nothing ever happens.”

“Still there’s a chance that something might happen” she tells him with longing in her voice.

Olivia is looking for danger. The thing about Danny’s double-face intrigues her as much as it repels her. It’s better than her nothing life.

Olivia’s a fool and Justin is dear and sweet but it’s very natural to be drawn to things that are taboo or dangerous. Rosalind Russell is absolutely gorgeous in her glasses and downplayed bookish attire. She’s smart and independent and there’s definitely something brewing below the surface of her pathology too… a dark side waiting to be unleashed perhaps?

Olivia uses the excuse that Danny’s left his wool cap in the hallway, so that she can meet him in his room.

“Can you imagine me doing a thing like that, hanging it up just like I was a visitor I am sorry”

He shows her the print of Napoleon pinned to the wall. “He did things”

“You know you wouldn’t be bad lookin’ without them glasses.”

Olivia looks for an excuse to talk to Danny. She finds his wool cap in the hall and suggests that he keep it in his room.

“Can you imagine me doing a thing like that, hanging it up just like I was a visitor I am sorry”

She’s drawn to him, curious about him, frightened of him. She asks if he’s comfortable– he tells her he’s been hanging up a few pictures that make it feel more like home. She’s interested and comes in to look around. Then he asks. “Do you ever go to the movies? Real life’s better though.”

He has a photo of Napoleon on the wall. “He did things” Then he asks if Justin is her “chap”

She tells him that he’s Mrs Bramson’ lawyer. “What’s she gone to the law about?” Olivia tells him,“Well he manages her affairs.” Danny begins to get personal-“Oh I see, I thought by the way he looked at you, he was a bit gone on you.”

The comment makes her uncomfortable. She changes the subject. “It’s rather stuffy in here why don’t you open a window.”

He smiles because he knows he’s hit a nerve. He goes to help with the window and gets so close to her that she just about jumps out of her angora, so shaken to be that near him. He leans into her up close and tells her…

“You know you’d be attractive without them glasses.”

“Thank you but it doesn’t interest me very much what I look like” She storms out of his room.

“Don’t you believe it” he says. She turns around. “Why do you say that?”

He postures for her. “I understand you alright…”

She looks at him sternly, more composed–angora cardigan pearl buttons and glasses like a lovely owl. Shocked and fascinated at the same time.

“Don’t you think young man, that you’re rather forgetting your place?”

He smiles beguilingly as she tells him to see if Mrs. Bramson needs anything. Slamming the door she appears for a moment to be struck down with heart pangs. She takes a deep breath and tugs on her glasses.

Something is finally happening to her…

The duality of Olivia’s nature questioned in this visual iconography of the mirror image.

The glasses come off…

“You agree with me now don’t you?”

He catches her shaking her hair and looking at herself in the mirror. He tells her “So you agree with me about you don’t ya?… You don’t like me being here.”

“It doesn’t really matter what I think I’m merely a servant here myself.”

“Not a very ordinary servant though.”

“No I suppose not”

He tells her… “Neither am I.”

Mrs Bramson begins calling for Olivia asking where she’s been, while she has been reading the newspaper with the sensationalist rubbish headlines about the missing woman. Olivia takes the paper and begins to read…

Olivia comments-“ It’s a bit of a thrill for a small place like this” “Have they found any clues?” “Keeper in the Sheffley woods reported that on the night in question about 2am in the morning he heard someone moving mysteriously in the woods and whistling ‘Mighty Lak a Rose” inquiries are being pursued.”

Mrs Bramson “That shows how hard up they are for something to print. Mighty Lak a Rose indeed, I never heard such rubbish in all my life” She mumbles the rest while eating a chocolate.

Danny comes in with the shawl behind his back. She asks what it is. He tells her it’s “just something he brought along that she might like. It’s a shawl tis my mothers matter of fact I thought I’d like to see you wear it if you didn’t mind.”

“Danny, that’s a very sweet thought”

“Can I put it on for you” “yes” “I’ve always kept it Now that I see ya wearing it like that it’s — almost as if herself was still here.”

Olivia spots the price tag still on it. She catches him in a lie.

She stands up, “Wait a minute it’s not quite straight. There” she adjusts the shawl at the same time she takes the tag off, and shows it to Danny behind the old lady’s back to let him know that she’s no fool… Dropping it into his hand. Is Olivia complicit in his charade partly because the old woman is so cruel to her, it’s satisfying to watch her be taken…

She shoots him a look, like I’m not naive, I know what you’re doing…He loves it.

To him it’s now a game.

He lavishes Mrs Bramson with boyish attentions. Wheels her over to the mirror to inspect the shawl. She tells him it’s very pretty.

“Thank you Danny… You are a good boy” She is beaming.

Olivia offers to take her in for her nap, but Danny takes over with his syrupy talk gushing over her like a doting child.

“it’s the only thing of my mothers I’ve got left”

Like the newly purchased shawl he tells the old lady was his own mothers, when Olivia spots the price tag and hands it to him behind her back, it’s as if she allows her true suspicions -not the gossiping sort she shares with Emily and Dora to sit idle at times, holding her secret knowledge about Danny mostly to herself, as a) she legitimately is emotionally and verbally abused by her aunt and probably has a primal desire to see her punished for being so cruel, and b) has stumbled onto an adventure that has sparked something in her, something that Danny gets a ‘nif’ of right away.

Danny tucks her into bed before he oils her wheels

He begins to oil the wheels of the chair, Olivia sits at the window seat reading the newspaper But Danny starts whistling Might Lak a Rose… Of course it occurs to her the connection.

There isn’t a single moment where auntie Bramson is kind to Olivia.

Olivia is doing the bills, she realizes her cigarette is wafting while the old bird is playing solitaire-“I’m sorry is my cigarette annoying you?” She screeches at her-“Oh not at all I like it!”

Danny enters the room, puffing on his cigarette sideways, the cocky gesture he adopts.

Danny reads one of Olivia’s poems. She grabs it but auntie Bramson insists on seeing it and berates her for such nonsense.

“A Sonnet-The Flame of passion is not red… but white… not quick but slow.”

“What do you know of passion anyway?” Olivia crumples the paper and answers her aunt without any fight left in her- “Not much…”

Danny says “I like a bit of poetry I really do, but I don’t see how you think of those things I really don’t…She is a dark horse isn’t she.…” Once again she criticizes her niece-“Writing poetry did you ever hear of such nonsense.”.

Emily says as she and Olivia look out the window. “Look at that -Mother and child both doing well” Olivia asks her what she thinks of Danny. “Oh he’s alright, a bit of a mystery” “You think that too?” “A terrible liar of course, whoo. But then a lot of us are.” “No more with Danny..” “What’d you mean?” “There’s something more the matter with him… something he’s hiding

Dora fills Olivia in on what she knows about Danny. That he acts like he doesn’t care but all the time he’s looking for what you’re thinking about him. Sometimes she trusts him and sometimes she doesn’t His past is ever so romantic. Olivia says I”m sure. she seems inspired-“That incredible vanity… they always have it, always.” Emily asks “Who? Olivia-“Murderers…” she says very slowly and casual.. without an ounce of terror in her voice..

The three go to search his room. Olivia finds it extraordinary that he’s been there a week and hasn’t unpacked. They find a letter. Olivia at first says no about looking at it, but Emily wants to read it. She smells it. “Don’t be silly his wife will do it to him hundreds of times. Oh what a nif”

She reads. “Dear Baby Face my own-signed, Lil” They find some racy photos of a girl in bathing suit .Then Olivia discovers a photo with the woman who’s missing. “Look look there she is the woman who’s missing remember that photograph in the paper.” Dora says-“it’s awful to think she may be dead.”

“There was another bag wasn’t there” Olivia asks. They pull the old fashioned hat box from under the bed,. Emily hefts it. “Hhm too heavy for a hat” The black humor is rich and fluent throughout the narrative. Olivia says-“Looks extraordinary doesn’t it?” “What is it miss?” “I was just thinking. supposing there’s something inside of it” Emily drops it quickly… like it’s radioactive…, the timing is hilarious. There are so many clever and witty moments in the film. You can see how it must have made a wonderful stage play.

Danny walks in and sees them. “I left the lady’s pills in the pocket of my other coat” The funny moment turns dark. He reveals intensity for a brief second. He shows a bit of his sinister side. It cuts through the dark comical banter. But he readjusts himself and says “Silly of me wasn’t it” as if he isn’t bothered at all that they are snooping in his room.

He asks Olivia for his wallet back. “It’s the only one I’ve got” He stares at it’s contents. “How did you like the letter?” “Letter?” “You’ve got it in your hand”

He tells her that Lil used to spy on him. “If there’s anything I hate worse it’s a spy-Don’t you agree?” He stares through her, she looks frightened of him for the first time. “I’d sooner have anything than a spy…bar a murderer of course. “ “What did you say?” “I said bar a murderer of course”

“Talking of murder. Do you know anything about Mrs Shellbrook?” He reacts confused-“Whereabouts at the present moment?” The camera quickly focuses on the hat box — “You’re not going to pretend you’ve never even heard of her.” “Oh Mrs Shellbrook’s whereabouts” He acts all flustered and silly that he got the name wrong first. He tells her that he’s got nothing to go on but he thinks she’s been murdered. she asks “Who by?” Suddenly Mrs. Bramson calls for Danny. He stares directly into Olivia’s eyes with his wicked smile… he looks at the hat box.

Mrs. Shellbrook’s decapitated body is finally discovered in the woods and the police are closing in. Olivia confronts Danny accusing him of the murder. He tries seducing her with his odd yet enigmatic sensuality and his hunch that she is drawn to him. So when…

Olivia arrives home, and in order to control Danny’s murderous intent, she stalls him by confessing that she was once attracted to him, but since she has learned of his deeds no longer finds him desirable. He insists that she’s returned because she, like him desires adventure, that she has come back because of him, and not because she feared for the old lady.

Danny breaks down while he’s alone. Panicked because the photographers and police have been searching the grounds and are getting close to linking him to the murder.

Danny goes into the kitchen and finds Olivia making tea. He gives her a smoke. The air is thick with tension. He asks her what she told the chap, meaning Justin that afternoon. She’s very measured in her body language. Conflicted…

“That they found that woman.”

A strange look comes over his face.

“Is that all” Yes of course that’s all… what else is there to tell.”

“Nothing. Nothing”

He asks if she likes that chap. Why isn’t she married. She gets upset that he asks that question. He tells her it was only a civil question.

“Why aren’t you married. Hasn’t he asked you yet” “Yes he’s asked me”” “There there you see you don’t like him, and you’re right you know. He’s not the sort of a chap for you… you want adventure don’t you… and it’s here, right in this house. Here now in this kitchen…

The two of us. Alone here. At this time of night. It’s exciting isn’t it. Something that’s never happened to you before. Being alone at this time of night with a chap like me. You’re not frightened. You’re excited. I can tell you are. Your eyes are shining. You’ve got color in your cheeks. And you’re beautiful … the way he’s never seen you. “

“No no I’m frightened of you.”

“And you feel as light as air. Same as anybody else who’s been out for the first time without their overcoat. And you haven’t had a drink but you feel as if you had. And you never knew there was such a secret part inside of you.”

I will leave you with that much. The end you might know already, chance to guess or as I would imagine, wouldn’t want me to spoil it for you.

He tells her of his meager childhood and how he has been considered lower class being a servant. There is definitely an element of classism to the film. Does the nasty rich old dowager hording her money, get her come uppance by the angry poorer class? A story of a psychopath created by a bourgeois society and lazy narcissistic old women who are suckled on lavishes and too needy to mother their sons appropriately.

I will tell you this much…Danny threatens to kill Olivia, and she tells him that she understands… Do the police get there in time…? see Night Must Fall

“I’ll hang in the end, but they’ll get their money’s worth at the trial.”

From the wonderful book by Edmund G. Bansak – Fearing the Dark: The Val Lewton Career– Bansak points out something that I discovered when looking more intensely at this gem. I couldn’t find many sources that covered or categorized the film by any genre, in particular what I would have expected, the suspense thriller, leaning toward grim horror story. As Bansak writes so insightfully- he calls it an “uncharacteristically gruesome thriller.”

At the time between 1937 and 1938 there seemed to be a void of classical horror pictures. Perhaps Night Must Fall wasn’t considered a typical horror film because it lacked a supernatural narrative. Even though Lewton’s films were considered horror films, though devoid of any concrete monster or supernatural occurrence, more the mere mental suggestion of primal fears and taboos. Night Must Fall even without the presence of formulaic elements that entitle it to be called a horror film, it’s story is every bit a shocking one as Bansak points out, in the way that —“Lang’s M, Whale’s The Old Dark House, and Hitchcock’s Psycho and Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs are considered influential films in the horror genre, then surely the same must apply to Night Must Fall, a film about a charming psychopathic rapist who decapitates his victim and proceeds to carry her head about in a piece of luggage.”

VILLAINY VILLAINY VILLAINY BLASTED VILLAINY… I ADORE YOU! YOU’RE EVERLOVIN’ MONSTERGIRL SAYING BEHAVE!

Carnival of Sinners 1943

Directed by the silent film era auteur Maurice Tourneur, (father of Jacques Tourneur Curse of the Demon 1957, Cat People 1942, I Walked With a Zombie 1943, Out of the Past 1947 ) this fantasy- horror film creates a tumultuous Mephistophelean voyage of surreal and striking imagery.  This film has fast become one of my favorite fantasy/horror films….

Carnival of Sinners or La Main Du Diable (The Devil’s Hand) is a brilliant and hilariously dark morality play about being careful what you wish for and what is the meaning of life and the pursuit of physical pleasure and earthly desires, if you must lose your eternal soul in the end.

With an incredible score by Roger Dumas, that lends a magical sound track to the story!

Based on Gérard de Nerval’s novel, the film creates a hallucinatory world of monochromatic imagery, with noir like edges & shadows, Gothic & theatrically macabre masks and a gruesome narrative about a disembodied charmed left hand. Palau’s amiable little grinning devil is perhaps one of my favorite portrayals of Old Nick as he reveals himself to others as a mild mannered civil servant in a bowler hat, when he is actually on a duplicitous mission to abscond with the soul’s of desperate men.

As synchronicity often rears it’s playful head when I do companion posts Carnival of Sinners also frames a gathering of people, much like the later post’s ‘angry women villagers’ who set the tenor for both films as something fantastical

It opens with a small village tavern filled with people who have been detained by an avalanche. These characters are comical and colorful as they all want to eat, and are suspicious of Roland, who we haven’t been introduced to yet. As they wait to be fed, a strange man dressed in black carrying a wrapped package under his left arm, his immovable hand gloved in stiff black leather storms into the tavern with a gust of secrets and urgency at this back. They immediately have mistrust of this man, as he is not amiable and does not wish to mix with them at all. He acts as if he is being pursued by the devil himself.

Well maybe he is… hhm. He is called to the phone by someone asking for him by name. Once at the phone, the lights go out, and when they come back on and the chaos settles, the package is missing. He panics of course.

As it is a tradition at this tavern to be told unbelievable stories by Monsieur Notary. They plead with Roland Brissot to tell them what has brought him here. And so he begins to relate an incredible story…

Pierre Fresnay  (The Man Who Knew Too Much 1934, Le Corbeau -The Raven 1943) is french artist Roland Brissot, who can’t get the girl or sell a painting until one night after Irène (Josseline Gaël) storms out of the little cafe frustrated with him for not being a success and a bore,  Mélisse the cook (Noël Roquevert ) brings over a bottle of wine and offers to help the down and out painter. He tells Roland that he possesses a Talisman that he’d like to sell him for merely one sous. That it would bring him great riches, love and success!

When Roland follows him up to his room, he shows him a small wooden box, inside the curious box is an animated severed left hand. Mélisse explains to Roland that he purchased the Talisman a while ago, but he fears going to hell, and wants to save his eternal soul, so he must pass this gift onto another man who is willing to buy it full knowing the contract. Desiring to make Irène his own, and stop doing portraits of dogs. Roland agrees and pays the sous to the cook. At that moment, Mélisse’s left hand is severed and mysteriously wedded to Rolands left forearm, and he is now the new owner of the Talisman. Of course all his wishes come true and Irène comes back in total awe of her man. He becomes a great renowned painter and has riches beyond his wildest dreams. But with all these cautionary fables there is a kink in the chain. A chain that I will get back to in a short while.

Brissot goes to a palm reader who immediately sees that he is damned… She insists that he leave… never to return

A peculiar little man (Le petit homme– who is wonderfully enacted by Palau (Children of Paradise 1945, The Devil in the Flesh 1947, Le Corbeau 1943) is actually the devil himself who has been offering this deal for quite a while now and since it has been a year to the day that Roland made the wager of his immortal soul for the Talisman, he has come to collect.

From the moment Roland obtains the Talisman, women flock to him, his dog runs away in fear, and Irène cannot resist him to the point that he no longer can stand her smothering love by the end.

The little man shadows his every move, playing little tricks on Roland so that he couldn’t possibly buy back his soul. He changes the time on the clock, he steals money so that Roland must scramble to put the fee together which doubles with every day that it’s come due. His life falls apart, his wife becomes less desirable to him and they become strangers, and all he wants is to be free of his left hand which is the harbinger of doom for him.

Will Roland Brissot find the next sinner to buy the Talisman from him… or will the Devil get his due?

As the he relates his story, it unfolds like a marvelous dark fairytale, lensed with visual splendor dipped in a wonderful folkloric narrative and marvelous characters… including the other souls who lost their left hands and formed a special chain in the links of fate.

We, the links in the chain-Joined like the fingers of a hand.

Roland’s journey is whimsical and harrowing, beautifully filmed by Arman Thirard  who photographed such masterpieces as Henri Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique 1955 and The Wages of Fear 1953 two of the best thrillers of all time!

Carnival of Sinners 1943 belongs with some of the great fixtures of ‘wagering your soul to the devil’, with William Dieterle’s The Devil and Daniel Webster 1941, and F. W. Murnau’s Faust 1926,

Roland has an enormous painting of Goya’s nightmarish diversion into hell hanging in his palatial mansion. It is the one of Colossus devouring his son. You would have to watch this film several times to catch all the wonderful details and devilish black humor!

Daughter of Darkness 1948

Directed by Lance Comfort (Bedelia 1946 with Margaret Lockwood) from the novel Max Cato  (Bad Blonde 1953, Fire Down Below 1957, Seven Thieves 1960)

With cinematography by Stanley Pavey  who lenses a beautiful but at times treacherous landscape. A haunting and surreal atmosphere where the possibility of the supernatural world usurps the ordinary one beneath the knowing shadows. He paints an ordinary and bucolic portrait of simple life which has become otherworldly and dangerous. Daughter of Darkness has a striking visual application of shadow, light and eerie dread that cause us to realize the natural environment is being seized by something uncanny. Much like the films of Val Lewton, where the uncanny held the reigns and psychology was offered as a way out. Similarly Simone Simon’s unearthly sensuality causes women to fear her and men to want to capture her in Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People 1942.

We are not quite sure whether Emmy possesses dark thoughts or a dark essence. The narrative creates a world where the two are indistinguishable.

While Pavey isn’t well known keep in mind that he did the lighting for the ghostly masterpiece Dead of Night 1945.

Daughter of Darkness showcases elements of Val Lewton as the ominous narrative is vague in its proving out the presence of a supernatural force of evil. The use of shadow touches upon the best of Gothic Suspense and Noir’s femme fatale stalking the darkness, but leaving open questions of a conflicting psychological neurosis against a darker more malevolent supernatural presence…

Siobhan McKenna (Dr.Zhivago 1965, Of Human Bondage 1964 with Kim Novak & Laurence Harvey) plays Emily Beaudine or Emmy, a strange young girl, while plain and without wile on first look, holds a mysterious draw for the local men. Mckenna bares a resemblance to Sarah Miles.

Emmy is the conflicting force of innocence and sexual awakening yet she harbors within her a growing sense of devouring hunger. First she mysteriously attracts men, then she denies them, then she gruesomely destroys them.

Is Emmy like a Banshee of Irish folklore, or the Lorelei or perhaps even a type of Succubus. The film definitely earns it’s right to be considered a classical melodramatic-horror film with it’s Gothic shadowy edges, inexplicable power of attraction that Emmy exudes, dogs snarl and bare their fangs at her, and toward the end she does seem to become transformed into a dangerous psychotic serial killer. And a pretty creepy cinematic female character that might actually predates this kind of psycho-sexual female killer, if you don’t consider Gene Tierney in Leave Her To Heaven in 1945.

Either created from years of persecution, repression and abuse, by the time Emmy does find a place that she feels safe, the darkness finds her and she is driven mad by the events, or you can decide to believe she is an evil soul. You can also consider the horrible behavior that Emmy brings out in both men and women. Either way it’s a pure example of the ‘Monstrous Feminine.’

Is this a type of supernatural story or a morality tale about innate hatred and persecution that creates this monster because she is constantly assaulted both physically and mentally by hatred and fear.

Is this how she eventually loses her mind? At times the young Emmy seems so fragile, filled with a deep sadness and vulnerability. Is she a Banshee who has extraordinary pheromones…. She continues to play diabolical music on the pipe organ even after she moves to England. She visits the church each night and pounds out a mysterious opus that haunts the locals…

The Local boys try to solve the mystery behind the nightly organ music that rings out like a sinister -diabolical dirge…

She frightens the dogs… most women sense her darkness, but is it jealousy? Again the dynamic reminds me of the struggle between Irena– manifested beautifully by Simone Simon in Cat People 1942 and the insecure and mistrustful Jane Randolph as Alice Moore…

Jane Randolph finds her robe shredded to pieces while she takes a dip in the community pool… was it Irena? She thinks so

It seems that most all women persecute her for her free almost feral nature, she tells Father Cocoran that something wells up inside her belly that she’s doesn’t understand or can control and it frightens her as well. She becomes wild at times but playing mercy to the devout hypocrisy that surrounds her, I tend to believe that she is literally driven mad by the endless witch hunt she’s subjected to.

Is she a representation of the lower class, seen like an animal to the aristocracy that holds them down and persecutes them as dirty sinners? Or is she the wicked girl these old maids perceive her to be?

THE PLOT

“It’s a scandal… a cryin’ shame it is… not a foot will I set in this church til that creature’s gone”

From the very beginning of the film we are dropped into a claustrophobic scene that over-indulges us with religious reflection. The congregation of a small Irish village let’s out after the night’s sermon. There’s a huddle of vicious faced women scowling at the young Emmy (Siobhan McKenna) who has her hair modestly covered by a shawl. She is a very plain looking girl, with a simple expression of virtue in her eyes, as she prays to the Mother Mary. The women gathered exude a feverish sort of blood-lust for the poor child.

They confront Father Cocoran (Liam Redmond) about the young girl and insist with a zealous panic that he send this evil wanton girl away from their village for good. He almost looses his composure with them but must decide about the welfare of his entire congregation. He has taken Emmy into his church as his assistant and is very protective of her, but he can no longer ignore the entire parish’s wish to see the girl run out of the village. In particular the women who consider her to be a sinful harlot ‘a creature’ who tempts their men. Father Cocoran has tried to protect Emmy by imploring her to stay close to the church and think of only pure thoughts.

Emmy tries to give flowers to a little girl in the village when the mother comes and rips them out of her hands and yanks the girl away, as if she truly were a monster. Murdocks Mammoth traveling fair happens to be passing through the town, and handsome but smarmy Dan (Maxwell Reed), jumps out of his truck and in Emmy’s defense kicks down the door to the shop the woman’ owns. He then takes Emmy by the arm and persuades her to come see him box that night. He is Battlin’ Dan, the main attraction. Oddly his dog takes an instant dislike to her and bares his sharp fangs and snarls at her as if he too senses something wrong about the girl.

Battling’ Dan shows off that night and beats his opponent to a pulp when the fight was supposed to be fixed, which angers the fair’s manager, but strokes his masculinity as a seduction for Emmy who is in the audience mesmerized by his prowess. He grabs hold of her and they walk through the night to the grassy hills near the fair grounds where he pulls her down and tells her how there’s something about her…When he tries to push himself on her, she scratches his face so badly that he screams in agony and stumbles away holding his bloody face in his hands. Emmy runs through the grounds like a wild animal escaping a hunter –back to the church, and leaves the incident behind her….

By now Father Cocoran makes the decision to send her to his friends The Tallents who own a vast amount of land in England where they raise sheep. George Thorpe plays the patriarch. Barry Morse (With a full curly head of hair! plays Dan Stranforth, he is married to Bess (Ann Crawford who takes a dislike to Emmy right away. Much like the women in Emmy’s village she gets a nif of something unorthodox about the queer young girl. Honor Blackman is younger sister Julie Tallent. Grant Tyler plays the young brother Larry. And Julies boyfriend Saul is played by Denis Gordon.

When the father goes to tell Emmy about his plans, he finds her playing the pipe organ half in a trance as she sweeps the keys. Emmy strokes the octaves creating a dark and sinister lamentation, as she caresses the chords it’s almost masterbatory in the way she is filmed. The music is provocative as if the organ were an extension of her own secret world, of her body and her sexual desire or hunger for release. Pretty reminiscent of Candace Hilligoss’s Mary Henry who would enact a similar musical and macabre prelude to threat and death in Carnival of Souls 1962.

It is a question of conflicting perspectives as to whether Emmy is menacingly flirtatious or that she becomes a victim of her own sexual attraction.

Emmy truly seems to love the Tallent farm, and working as a maid to the family. But right from the start Bess, has an eerie intuition about the young Emmy and is immediately disturbed at the sight of her. She catches her younger sister’s beau trying to kiss Emmy in the barn. She calls him a ‘turnip’ and tells him to make up a story that Julie will believe. Meanwhile she confronts the Emmy…

Saul tells Emmy that he doesn’t know what comes over him, but he can’t seem to keep his hands off of her… That seems to be the case with a lot of men in this story

Bess confronts Emmy-“Just a minute Emmy I haven’t finished with you. You’re by way of being a little bit of a flirt aren’t you? Emmy-“You shouldn’t say that” “Well I do say it. And you needn’t look so pious —butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. I know…. Well you don’t bring those habits to this farm!”

“It’s terrible those things you say”

A year later–the carnival comes around by The Tallent’s farm, the same Murdock’s Mammoth traveling fair. And Dan has a kisser that is now a scarred up mess where Emmy nearly had scratched his eye out.

The Tallents’ insist that Emmy come along with them to the fair. She doesn’t want to go, yet they force her into the car and then proceed to go off and leave her to wander, even leaving her there when they decide to leave, assuming she’ll find her way home.

There are several moments in Daughter of Darkness, where fate takes a very harsh stance for Emmy’s future. What if the women in the village didn’t feel so threatened by the girl’s mysterious yet enigmatic sex appeal? What if Dan was kind and didn’t try to force himself on her? What if the Tallents’ had listened to her and not practically kidnap then abandon her at the fair?

Who’s crimes are these anyway? And the larger question, who created the mental disturbance, that might have even begun from childhood abuse? Where was Emmy’s mother and father? And can I say that the film doesn’t seem to address the fact that Dan tries to rape Emmy. He might suffer a punishment by the laws of fate, but by man’s justice he seems to escape judgement and is treated more like the victim… So the pretty boy winds up with a bad permanent gash across the eye and cheek. It was self defense! but I digress…

This time he hunts her down to an isolated barn and tries to inflict revenge and take his lust out on her, still strangely drawn to her. But he is found mutilated, and Bess gets the idea that Emmy had something to do with it, she continues to show suspicion and hostility toward the girl til Emmy does start to act like a cornered animal.

Emmy is either at the mercy of a burgeoning sexual desire that she must keep to herself because it has a negative effect on the women folk, or she truly is an awaking she-fiend, a female jekyll and hyde who’s dark side begins to take over more and more until she is a force of death and destruction when ever her desire needs satisfying.

Emmy returns to the Tallent farm in a fugue. The next morning Dan is found dead in the barn, his dog wandering aimlessly looking for his master, now yowling for the culprit to come and face their fate.

There are so many interesting elements to this obscure little gem, that I wonder why it’s not more popular amongst classical melodramatic horror enthusiasts. Even the use of the carnivalesque milieu that borders around the edges of quiet society. As if hell were awaiting the damned. As if Emmy herself were damned from the beginning, conflicted by the over-powering strength of her sexual desire that frightens the women and contaminates the men with lust. Emmy is an insurrectionary figure who invades the quiet spaces of society and stirs up sensuality and suffering both.

I won’t give away any of the fantastic dialogue, various chilling scenes nor the build up of the story as you must see it, and I don’t wish to give up any of it’s scenes or the ultimate finality of Emmy’s journey, poetic as it is…   

Hope you’re all lucky in love and good fortune and please… never buy a Talisman for a sous even if an affable little man tells you it’s worth the price of your soul-Your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl

Joey at the Drive In here… thinking it would be such a nice treat to offer up a brief yet deliciously fun post from the snack bar. What better way to enjoy an intermission between my long winded writing than to just get to the point and tickle your vintage TV taste buds with a little amuse-bouche!

TEN TASTY TELEVISION TRIVIA TID BITS TO TANTALIZE!

1) Lt.Columbo (Peter Falk) loves loves loves chili and he’s very fond of health cookies!

Eating chili that’s usually served up by Timothy Carey

A scene from Double Shock co-starring Jeanette Nolan as Mrs Lesh who offers Columbo some health cookies and milk

2) Chief Ironside (Raymond Burr) eats chili and they all like rum crunchy ice cream

Here’s the Chief eating chili with Mark Sanger (gorgeous Don Mitchell) and the perky Officer Eve Whitfield (Barbara Anderson)

3) The Fugitive’s Richard Kimble (David Janssen) only drinks black coffee… he’s usually on the run

in Moon Child Richard Kimble (David Janssen) barely gets to drink his cup of joe and crumble a few crackers into his bowl of chili before he’s in trouble…. again

4) The Golden Girls Dorothy Blanche, Rose and Sophia eat cheesecake.

Betty White, Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty and Rue McClanahan are those Golden Girls eatin’ a cheese cake and talkin’ sex

5) Carroll O’ Connor is the inimitable Archie Bunker who likes either chicken croquettes or a tuna sandwich with an orange on the side and a Twinkie for desert!… in his lunch box.
And lovable Edith (Jean Stapleton) buys him Hhm hhm hhm ( Cling peaches) in heavy syrup when they’re on sale or serves up rice pudding with a drop of milk on top unless he doesn’t ask for it. Dingbat!!!! And of course there’s always beer…

6) Jim Rockford (James Garner) eats Tacos for breakfast… with no apologies!

7) Andy and Opie enjoy anything Aunt Bee cooks as long as it isn’t those kerosene cucumber pickles. from The Andy Griffith Show

8) Beaver Cleaver will just not eat brussels sprouts but then again I think I’m the only one who loves them…

9) Harry Morgan as Officer Bill Gannon concocts the weirdest food combinations ever. Especially his recipe for BBQ sauce the secret ingredient is…- from Dragnet

10) The sublime chemistry of the Odd Couple’s Oscar Madison (Jack Klugman) eats anything with ketchup on it, and Felix Unger (Tony Randall) doesn’t like pits pits pits in his juice juice juice… uh oh!

“MeTV Remembers the M*A*S*H Finale” Exclusive Broadcast Event
With Series Cast and Creators, Airing on Sunday, May 3
In honor of MeTV’s tribute to M*A*S*H here’s Hawkeye crying a river of liver!

And why say…. as long as we’re on the snacking subject if you’ve got any great additions to add, drop by The Last Drive In’s snack bar and let me know.

Your Everlovin’ Joey (MonsterGirl) saying hope you always enjoy the show!

Nobody does still waters run deep kind of tough more than George Raft.

In Roy Del Ruth’s (The Maltese Falcon 1931 with Bebe Daniels and Ricardo Cortez, Du Barry Was a Lady 1943, yes tis true The Alligator People 1959, Why Must I Die? 1960) Noir morality play Red Light, Raft plays Shipping boss Johnny Torno, who catches Nick Cherney (Raymond Burr in one of his most sinister roles) embezzling funds. Torno gets Cherney a term in San Quentin with just enough time to build a psychotic grudge.

Arthur Franz who’s not being attacked by a giant dragonfly or turning into a pants monster in Monster on the Campus 1958

Arthur Franz as Jess tells his big brother Johnny as his last dying words that he’ll find the answer to his death in the hotel bible

But instead of planning to kill Torno, he decides to hit him where it will hurt more, he pays fellow inmate Rocky who’s getting out in a few days (Harry Morgan in one of the most menacing roles I’ve seen him play, he deserves a place at the bad boy table with Dan Duryea and Frank Lovejoy) to kill Torno’s younger brother, war hero and chaplain brother Jesse played by Arthur Franz.

Driven mad by the mystery of who shot his beloved baby brother down in a hotel room, Torno goes on a quest to find the bible where the name of Jesse’s killer is written. The cinematography and shadowy framework by cinematographer Bert Glennon ( The Red House 1947, House of Wax 1953) is tense and chilling, and all the performances are stellar. Including Gene Lockhart who plays co-owner of the 24 hours a day shipping company. The film also co-stars Virginia Mayo as Carla North who Torno enlists to help him track down his brother’s killer. There are some of the most brutal and uniquely violent moments in the film which is tempered by the question of vengeance and faith.

Arthur Shields as Father Redmond. He was a wonderfully complicated anti-hero in Daughter of Dr Jekyll 1957

Virginia Mayo as Carla wants to help George who exudes the ‘tormented man’, but he is too driven by revenge for having lost the only thing he truly loved… his kid brother Jess.

I couldn’t help but love Warni’s shared wisdom when he tells Torno who’s drinking himself into an angry stupor to let Jesse’s death go and move on with his life.

Gene Lockhart as Warni Hazard tells Johnny Torno (George Raft)- “My old man used to say liquor doesn’t drown your troubles… just teaches them how to swim.”

Gene Lockhart as Warni Hazard “My old man used to say liquor doesn’t drown your troubles… just teaches them how to swim.”

Your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl

SWEET CHARITY (1969)

Shirley MacLaine  is Charity Hope Valentine a dance hall girl who always seems to get the short end of everything or as she puts it… the fickle finger of fate…

But she never loses faith that she will meet the right guy to take her away from her dreadful life. Based on Federico Fellini’s sublime Nights of Cabiria 1957 starring Giulietta Masina.

The lush colors and masterful photography by Robert Surtees (The Graduate 1967, The Last Picture Show 1971) create a visual kaleidoscope, surrounded by the incredible choreography by Bob Fosse who also directed the film. With memorable music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by Dorothy Fields.

Sweet Charity is a musical dream dressed up in Edith Head’s stunning and stand out fashions.

The film also stars the wonderful Paula Kelly as Helene, Chita Rivera as Nickie… the dance numbers are just too smokin’, and there’s a particular mod party dance sequence that is probably the closest thing for me to dropping acid… phantasmagorically chic….

Nickie (Chita Rivera) to Charity-“You know what your problem is… You run your heart like a hotel… You got guys checking in and out all the time.”

One of the best moments of the film: Enter Sammy Davis Jr and The Rhythm of Life!

May the fickle finger of fate never find you! Your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl

THE BEACH PARTY BLOGATHON hosted by the fabulous Speakeasy & Silver Screenings

CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) directed by Jack Arnold

There have been sympathetic monsters that elicit our understanding, who cause you to care about them and their ordeal whether they’re the focus of a rampaging mob of villagers with flaming torches and pick axes or scientists armed with spear guns at the ready as surrogate penises –okay maybe I didn’t think about that surrogate penis thing when I was 9, but I see it so clearly now!!!!

Back in the day of the musty cool matinee theatre’s air smelling of buttered popcorn and old leather shoes, you could slink down in your good ‘n plenty and Milk Dud encrusted red velvet seat and wish that the monster would not only get away… but that just maybe he’d get the girl– instead of the self righteous hyper-science macho hero who objectifies everything! After all, the creature is not the one invading their territory, he’s prevailed in that environment for ions, before these macho nerds came along!

As a little monstergirl I used to think, and still do… just leave the ‘Gill Man’ alone!

We can sympathize with monsters, like Victor Frankenstein’s creation, & The Gill Man from Creature From the Black Lagoon. We can find our involvement (at least I can), as one viewed with empathy toward the monster’s predicament. embedded in the narrative is a simultaneous pathos, that permits these monsters to express human desires, and then make sure that those desires are thwarted, frustrated and ultimately destroyed.

Richard Carlson Julie Adams Richard Denning and Whit Bissell as Dr. Edward Thompson study the fossil of an amphibian man found near the Amazon.

The crew catches something in their net… and whatever it was… has ripped a giant Gill Man size hole in it leaving behind a claw!

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?” Friedrich Nietzsche

Mr. ‘It’s mine all mine” and Kay and Mr. “But think of the contribution to science!” looking at the poor trapped Gill Man-a lonely prisoner of scientific hubris and egocentric men.

The creature trapped in a bamboo cage… floats, quietly thinking deep thoughts–while the three look on pondering what to do with him..

‘The Outsider Narrative” can be seen so clearly in Jack Arnold’s horror/sci-fi hybrid Creature From The Black Lagoon. Film monsters like The Gill Man form vivid memories for us, as they become icons laying the groundwork for the classic experience of good horror, sci-fi and fantasy with memorable story telling and anti-heroes that we ‘outliers’ grew to identify with and feel a fondness for.

As David Skal points out in The Monster Show, he poses that films like Creature From the Black Lagoon …are the “most vivid formative memories of a large section of the {American} population…{…} and that for so many of these narratives they seem to function as “mass cultural rituals.”

Creature From The Black Lagoon is quite a perfect film, as it works on so many different levels of examining human nature and nature as human.

When belligerent scientists and their relentless pursuit of expanding control over the natural world invade a unique creature’s habitat, forcing their domination of him- naturally he’s compelled to fight back.

In the midst of this evolves a sort of a skewed Romeo and Juliet. The Gill Man never intends to threaten Julie Adam’s character Kay Lawrence, he seemingly wants to make her his love object and maybe just maybe (idealizing of course while I imbue the ‘creature’ with a higher consciousness) the Gill Man seeks to free Kay from the dangerous men she is surrounded by. An amphibious knight in scaly armor, a rugged green scaly Adonis with limpid eyes and full lips.

The arrival of the expedition creates chaos and swampy mayhem due to the intrusion of the two opportunistic men who tote phallic harpoons around and fight with each other over questions of ethics, how to conduct scientific research and naturally who will conquer Kay– acting like spoiled children-the both. Only the Gill Man sees her beauty from a place of primal hunger and desires her above all else, perhaps with a innate sense of possessing her, but without all the cocky male posturing.

THE LOVABLE HUGGABLE GILL MAN!! 
“I promise to keep my claws trimmed and never come to bed with cold clammy feet!”

“Yes, yes,” said the Beast, “my heart is good, but still I am a monster.” –Among mankind,” says Beauty, “there are many that deserve that name more than you, and I prefer you, just as you are, to those, who, under a human form, hide a treacherous, corrupt, and ungrateful heart.”
― Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont

In trying to capture the amphibian man he is driven out of his home in the mysterious upper Amazon by these otherizing anthropologists. And so the Gill Man–being shot at by spears and besieged by sweaty men in bourgeois khakis and unfashionable swim trunks blech! –must defend his realm.

He who is just lazing around, dreaming through the sun’s rays which sparkle upon the surface of the water amongst the little fishes and coral… bothering no one. Suddenly surrounded by intruders with weapons and nets, poison and cages.

But wait, one of them is leggy and soft and looks divine in her one piece bathing suit designed by Rosemary Odell... (Brute Force 1947, It Came from Outer Space 1953, This Island Earth 1955, To Kill a Mockingbird 1962) and what a pair of eyes!

The Gill Man goes on a mission to get the girl and so endures his attackers because he has fallen for the simple beauty of Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams.)

Though his world has become disordered, the presence of the beautiful Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams) it has awakened his sexual desire.

The film stars Richard Carlson as David Reed and Richard Denning as Mark Williams. The two men who invade The Gill Man’s quiet life and argue about what should be done with the subject of their research findings, to exploit, or study, or bring back to the states to gain notoriety and get paid lots of clams!, without an ethical thought in their curly scientific brains, forcing themselves on the creature and making him an object of entrapment & exhibition.

“I think I love you so what am I so afraid of? I’m afraid that I’m not sure of a love there is no cure for I think I love you isn’t that what life is made of? Though it worries me to say that I’ve never felt this way”— Insert music from The Partridge Family –

“There’s just something about an Aqua Velva Gill Man!”

The Gill Man watches from below the surface, as Kay Lawrence casually smokes a cigarette, taking long sensual puffs and throwing the butts upon the lagoon like trinkets for him to worship. He feels compelled to reach out for her but decides to be a voyeur for a bit longer.

Later the Gill Man sees Kay on the beach, the camera catches a notable deep sigh when he lays those deep green eyes on her. He moves closer. She lets out the obligatory monster movie scream queen shriek, that siren squeal, you know the kind, with the carefully place hands cupping the face in shock.

One of the men from the expedition takes a machete and tries to attack the creature, and he gets killed for his efforts. Dave and Mark hear Kay scream and approach just in time for the knock out powder they’ve placed in the lagoon to finally take effect and subdue the creature who is now out cold. He falls flat on his green gilled face down in the sand.

Kay passes out. the Gill Man places her down gently on the sand...

Mark (Richard Denning) can’t wait to beat the fish guts out of the creature!

David (Carslon) has to intervene before Mark (Denning) bashes the creatures head in “Stop you’ll kill him!…”

Once Williams (Denning) sees that the Gill Man has fallen down, he says “Got him!” then begins brutally smashing at him with his rifle, until David (Carlson) tells him to stop before he kills him. They throw a net over the unconscious creature. The scene shows the level of ferocity that man is capable of, and with this violent over-kill we on the other side of the evolutionary scale become monsters as well. It is a not so subtle contrast with the main character who is considered the ‘creature.’

Ricou Browning portrayed the creature in the under water scenes, and Ben Chapman played the creature on land. There’s wonderfully engaging cinematography by William E. Snyder. (Flying Leathernecks 1951, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt 1956)

The Gill Man has dwelt in the warm existential depths of the water… the lagoon his endless cycle of existence, thriving until he is invaded by scientific hubris. While in the lagoon he is connected to the creator of his world, remaining bound to a body of water that is symbolic of the eternal maternal womb. He is then forced out of his quiet habitual life where he then becomes ‘otherized’. With an ‘Outsider’ narrative the familiar then becomes monstrous.

Our perceptions are focused on how this ‘creature’ shatters the mold of normalcy. He transforms the ordinary world into something provocative and forces the outside world to define him, once again as with Frankenstein’s monster, he is perceived as a thing… a creature.

A film like Creature from the Black Lagoon can suggest to us the recognition of our notions of conventional sexuality and gender as well. The Gill Man is similar to a frog yet has walks upright and has the stance of a man and possesses that archetypal ogling that shows he has sexual designs on our heroine Kay.

Kay Lawrence: “And I thought the Mississippi was something.”

While he is placed in a role that sees Kay as the ‘object’ of his affection, he’s sort of an androgynous amphibian, and yet he suggests that  “alternatives can exist which may be more desirable”-Mark Jancovich Rational Fears American Horror in the 1950s. Jancovich goes on to say that the film is “unremittingly sexual” The film has sexual symbolism throughout, as the outside world intrudes on an ambiguous sexual being living in the womb of the water, now unleashed as a sexual peril to women. The water scenes between the water ballet swimming Kay unaware that the creature is also swimming very near to her–are absolutely visual foreplay.

Sweaty men baring their chests, wielding shot guns and Phallic harpoons as much as possible.

Need I say more???

The most significant scene of the film is when The Gill Man swims a slight distance away from Kay, under the murky lagoon while Kay unaware, simultaneously moves through the water embracing it’s import with pleasure and liberation. She whirls above him, barely hinting at an erotic intimacy between the two.

Under the water the creature is not a threat to Kay, he’s almost shy, as he barely touches her leg, he swims away as if he’s conflicted with uncertainty about this new experience. William E Snyder is responsible for the striking underwater footage, that creates an erotic spacial world of shimmering light.

It’s almost a type of Eden, that those pesky aggressive scientific males spoil…

We know that the creature shows a fascination toward Kay, but she sort of shares a kind of bond with him, as both are threatened by the domination of the two male scientists Mark and David. She tells the men to leave the creature alone, that it won’t bother them. Mark wants to capture the creature as proof of his discovery, rather than just study him in his own habitat. Mark also wants to possess Kay, both of them are treated as ‘objects’. There are several scenes where Kay and the creature stare at each other as if they see something in common within themselves. Harry Essex wrote the screenplay, hated the script at first so he added the Beauty and the Beast theme, to give the creature more of a sense of humanity.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon is relentlessly sexual. Inhabited by mostly male characters, scientists who have traveled to the deep Amazon in search of undiscovered animal life. What they find instead of more fossils is the Gill Man who refuses to give up his freedom. And why shouldn’t the creature react violently to their intrusion into his quiet domain. What’s more interesting is how he quickly becomes attracted to the gorgeous Julie Adams and her gutsy character Kay, the only female on the expedition who once again looks smashing in a one piece white bathing suit and swims like she’s in the water follies. Jancovich quotes Biskind from his Seeing is Believing – claiming that the creature is “driven into a frenzy by the proximity of Julie Adams in a one piece bathing suit.” Sounds about right to me!

The Gill Man evokes our sympathy who has become an ‘object’ to be controlled, dominated and assaulted by the outside world. It’s the ‘men doing science’ who become the ‘aliens’ the bad guys, the human monsters and the creature another existential anti-hero who we identify with. It’s just a different slant on the theme of unrequited love in the the lagoon…

 NIGHT TIDE 1961

“Sensual ecstasy becomes supernatural terror!”

‘And so, all the night tide, I lie down by the side of my darling – my darling – my life and my bride, in her sepulchre there by the sea, in her tomb by the sounding sea.’ Edgar Allen Poe (from ‘Annabel Lee’)

“I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.”-T.S.Eliot from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Directed by Curtis Harrington also being his first feature film-wrote the screenplay from his short story called The Secrets of the Sea.

I was saving this film for my Curtis Harrington feature, but couldn’t resist the chance to companion it with The Gill Man for the Beach Party Blogathon!

I must admit I was so proud of myself for having come up with the phrase “horror of personality’ as a way to describe Curtis Harrington’s work. Until I was reading a book by critic/historian Charles Derry and was shocked to find out that it was a phrase he had adopted.

Oh well… humbled by the respectful epiphany– I now defer to Derry and still stand by his assessment of Harrington’s collective body of work. I’ll at least give myself a smidgen of credit for accidentally thinking it was my theory, perhaps it’s the collective consciousness, my sharp eye or just an embarrassing coincidence.

Curtis Harrington masterfully blends a sense of grotesqueness with his narratives that are sustained mental harassments… using visually bizarre cues or post cards from our collective psyches… From 1966’s Queen of Blood also starring Dennis Hopper to Games in 1967 with an opulent NYC apartment decorated like a macabre funhouse- to Ruby in 1977 featuring the dilapidated drive in theatre haunted by a gangster.

There are few films that tighten the jaw and spine with it’s macabre sense of irony and human frailty and also invokes the archetype of ‘the monstrous feminine’ as with Harrington’s, How Awful About Allan 1970, What’s the Matter with Helen 1971, The Killing Kind 1973, and Games 1967 starring the incredible Simone Signoret and Katherine Ross. And of course because of my love for Piper Laurie and Stewart Whitman Ruby 1977 is one hell of a grotesque yet spellbinding classic 70s horror gem.

These particular films showcase a horror that is based not on the supernatural world with the exception of Ruby, but the fractured world of the damaged mind and the violence that gets conjured up in the fruit cake factory. In short they’re about The Human Monsters.

Harrington’s films have fascinated me for years. He’s like the Tennessee Williams of auteur classic horror (leaving out his Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell 1978 eh it’s fun but not brilliant) Living as a gay man in Hollywood, he showscases a certain pathos for the struggle by women for recognition and respect.

His leading ladies wore a pair of brass balls, even if some were a bit on the mad side. I still get shaken up when watching What’s the Matter with Helen? I saw it’s theatrical release with my mom and left the theater feeling really queasy and deeply wounded on that unknowable psyche level- because Harrington creates a world where violence and affection, annihilation and desire get muddled together and we’re left with an uncomfortable set of feelings for the protagonist who’s descent into madness is oddly passionate and ferocious. And…Shelley Winters does brutal just about the best as any other actress I can think of….

from IMDb facts:-Writer/director Curtis Harrington had a lifelong obsession with the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, which surfaced in many of his films. The story was inspired by, and the title “Night Tide” was derived from, Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee.”

Night Tide remains such a memorable cult film because of it’s ultra moody atmosphere. A dark romantic nightmare as two worlds crash together like the waves of the unquiet sea, the truth is ambiguous, but the danger is real.

It’s a hallucinatory journey of alienation, otherness and a female object that is surrounded by a saturnine cloud of mystery. The film is also a highly psycho-sexual piece of poetry which weaves through it , a mythological motif and a substance of Freudian paranoia. The pacing and performances are cautious and awkward, creating a disorienting and offbeat quality to the sense of mystery. Night Tide with it’s eerie and vague allusions to ‘the sea people’ becomes uncanny as reality and otherworldly elements intersect, and dream sequences become nightmarish as Johnny falls asleep on the couch and dreams Mora as a mermaid whose metamorphosis into a great octopus with tentacles that entrap him–as it tightens its grip he begins to scream. Perhaps this is symbolic of Johnny’s latent fear of female oppression, or female empowerment.

Also traces of the use of ‘otherness’ appear particularly when the old woman in black continues to plague and frighten Mora, beckoning her to come back to the sea. The sea witch comes from an old world culture that threatens the mythological American dream.

People have compared it to Val Lewtons‘ Cat People 1942,  Linda Lawson as Mora the mermaid also embodies a dangerous feminine power that frightens and transforms her into a ‘creature.’ Lewtons’ work also dealt with the idea of an ethnocentric America that feared people of a different culture. The dread of difference essentially.

Using Lewton’s principles of laying out a realistic landscape, with it’s vivid and arousing depictions of the funhouse pier and it’s pleasure-seeking attractions, centered around mysterious forces that are mostly explained by rational answers. (Mora’s guardian, Capt. Samuel Murdock had planted the siren story in her young impressionable mind) And digging even deeper, you might even feel that Capt. Murdock has an unhealthy love for the girl he raised, and this is why he discourages men from spending time with Mora. He wants her all for himself. It’s the ambiguity of the narrative that gives the film it’s eerie unsettled experience.

Both characters, Mora and Johnny are archetypal ‘loners’ and outsiders, both experiencing life through the lens of alienation…

Other comparisons have been made to Carnival of Souls 1962 due the atmosphere of a decadent and broken down carnivalesque landscape. Night Tide feels odd and surreal in the way that Carnival of Souls is painted, which incidentally was actually released a year later.

David Raskin (Raskin did the score for film noir masterpiece Laura 1944) is responsible for the musical journey that accompanies the fabulist tale, creating a stark and meditative score that is both haunting and poignant. At times incredibly whimsical as in a reverie. The use of flute, bells, and other percussive instruments like the delicate xylophone to enhance the fantastical moments– all these instruments help tell the story. It creates a post-modern symphony underscoring the mystique of Night Tide.

Dennis Hopper is a lonely sailor, Johnny Drake who is fresh scrubbed soft spoken and squeaky clean– yet he wears a very tight fitting white naval uniform (made for Hopper specifically for the film.) Johnny is on leave in the seedy coastal town of Little Venice.

He comes to a small beach community where he falls for a mysterious young Greek girl named Mora played by Linda Lawson (Let’s Kill Uncle 1966, Sometimes a Great Notion 1970) who earns a living as a side show attraction at an amusement pier as a living mermaid in a tank of water.

The main premise of the story focuses on ‘otherness’ and alienation and an unattainable longing–the meat of the story relates to Johnny who is drawn into a strange hallucinatory journey where he is told that the mysterious Mora is a siren who will inevitably lure him to a watery death. Night Tide also addresses the theme of the monstrous feminine.

Luana Anders   (A.I.P. & Corman regular) is Ellen Sands the nice girl next door who falls for Johnny and is horrified and jealous by his attraction to Mora. Marjorie Eaton plays Madame Romanovitch the fortune teller and Marjorie Cameron plays ‘the water witch.’ Gavin Muir is the quirky, constantly heavily stewed Capt. Samuel Murdock who relates the strange tales to Johnny Drake and warns him of the danger he is in.

The film has a very striking opening sequence with vivid tones of bleached out white, at times a white as soft as milk, as Johnny explores Venice beach while on leave. The first scene is quite unique as he stops into a photo booth to take a series of selfies. The contrasting use of bright light and utter blackness is an imaginative way not only to bring us into the story but to show Johnny’s lightness of being, his facial expressions manifesting his youthful adventurous spirit.

“Sea-Noir” or “Fish-Noir”

He goes into a jazz club, the film takes on then–the appearance of noir, with the musicians pouring forth a modern rhythm, hip people in black sit around in a room filled with smoke and modern noise. Johnny notices Mora sitting by herself, her long wavy hair gives her the look of a regal otherworldly figure. He tries to strike up an awkward conversation.

Suddenly the sinister women in black credited as ‘the water witch’ comes over to the table speaking a different language Mora becomes truly frightened. Johnny wants to know what the old woman has said but Mora gets up and leaves the bar, running through the night streets. Johnny stares at the woman in black first, then he pursues Mora. He asks to see her again, she says it’s impossible. Johnny in his genuinely soft spoken voice convinces her. She asks “Would I be safe with you?”

Mora lives in the Merry Go Round, upstairs. When Johnny sees where she lives, he gets as excited as a little boy. Hopper does an extraordinary job playing an innocent.

There are such strong elements of Noir in Night Tide which are folded into the fantastical story of modernity meets myth

Before she goes inside he says, “Do you live inside a wooden horse?” the comment aimed at showing that Mora might be too good not to be a fantasy.

Flutes and the fairy tale tintinnabulation (love that word-couldn’t resist) of a toy piano sparkles behind the darkness-a lyrical love song that belongs to the night, as Johnny balances on the rails of the Merry Go Round like a tight rope walker… this solitary young man is filled with joy and new found love.

Night turns into day, and we’re back at the Merry Go Round costs 15c by the way.

Again the day light is a bleached out white. A striking contrast from the interior shots masterfully shot on a very low budget -by cinematographer Villis Lapenieks. The lighting and the camera work are exquisite. Touching upon so many elements of the noir sensibility of shadow and light. With the uncanny and queer atmosphere that accompanies the best classic cult horror films.

The Carousel attraction opens up and Johnny meets the Merry-Go-Round Operator, Ellen’s granddad (Tom Dillon) He tells Johnny that nobody realizes how special the horses are. Hand carved from Bavaria. Ellen shows up (Luana Anders) she seems to be fixated on Johnny. The love triangle begins, though Johnny is already enchanted by Mora.

When Johnny mentions that he’s there to meet Mora, Ellen’s grandfather reacts strangely. But Johnny ignores him and walks up the stairs looking for her apartment. If you look closely you’ll see Bruno VeSoto smoking a cigar as the guy bumping into Johnny, he grunts on the way down the stairs.

Upstairs where Mora has her room, she has prepared an interesting breakfast for Johnny. One very unappetizing fresh killed mackerel- head included on a bed of seaweed.

Too bad Johnny is starving but he’s too polite to say anything he just picks at his plate. He asks her what she does for work. “I’m an attraction… a mermaid…. half woman half fish…”
“I wear an artificial fish tail and I lye in a tank that looks like it’s filled with water and people pay 25c and come and look at me…. and that’s how I make my living.”

She shows him some shells and things, telling him that she collects things from the ocean.

Then he tells Mora about his childhood. That his father left him and his mother when he was very young. He was very close to her. And when she died it gave him the chance to see the world, so he joined the navy.

Seagulls start hovering over their breakfast. Mora tells him that they get bolder every day. One day, one will get too close. And sure enough a seagull lands on her lap, it allows her to hold it as she gently strokes it’s feathers and tells it that she won’t hurt it. Johnny is just amazed. He asks her where she learned how to tame animals like that. She says probably on the Island where she was born.

The scene fades, and the carnival music plays, as the camera pans around several gold gilded mythological automatons in order to accentuate the atmosphere of the fantastical, a motif that is resurrected in Harrington’s Games 1967.

“The Strangest creature in captivity!!!”

When Mora goes to change into her costume, Johnny is introduced to Captain Samuel Murdock, who wants to exchange sea stories from one sailor to another. Murdock tells him that he was with the British navy until he retired and got his own ship. It was on one of his voyages that he ‘found her.”

“You know you may be interested in that story it’s a very unusual one.” says Capt Murdock

Murdock might not be Mora’s biological father, but he’s the one who found her as an orphan on the Island of Mikonos and brought her back to the states and cared for her. She knows he’s lonely and is her only real friend and father figure.

Johnny goes in to the exhibit and watches her seemingly under water as she combs her hair that covers her breasts. The mood, the lighting and the mystical melody that is pervasive through out the film create a very evocative and quite original story. Seeing Mora thrills him, as the camera lowers itself to her glittering scaly mermaid tail…

Fade to black

Later… Johnny and Mora go out to the beach near the rocks. She tells him that she loves the sun, the moon and the stars and the sea but she is also afraid of the sea.

“I guess we’re all a little afraid of what we love” -Johnny tells her.

There’s a beach party that night One of the musicians playing the bongos asks Mora if she’s going to dance for them. And so she begins to move so fluidly, as sensual as an ethereal spirit moving with the moonlight, with a primal energy and a feminine force. Johnny doesn’t seem to like it at all, since the other boys and men just appear simply mesmerized by her.

Here the camera begins a dizzying spinning viewpoint as Mora moves faster and faster. The mysterious woman in black draws closer…. it’s a very chilling scene.

The woman in black or sea witch wears a veil around her face that seems almost like a shroud of seaweed. Her eyes like two piercing slits -unemotional-they sit in her eyeliner blackened sockets. As the musical score’s use of quickening bells and bongos strike with such force. Mora sees the woman in black, instantly shudders as she collapses, then the old woman disappears like a wraith in the night.

Johnny has coffee with Ellen and the fortune telling gypsy Madame Romanovitch (Marjorie Eaton.) Lt. Henderson comes to ask Ellen and her grandfather if they’ve seen anything new or unusual. Ellen’s granddad asks if he’s come across any new clues.

When Johnny asks what that exchange was all about, she tells him that it was Lt. Henderson of the Venice Police who had come to ask about Mora.

Ellen “You’re a stranger here and I guess you don’t know what everybody here…” Suddenly Madame Romanovitch breaks in, “Ellen. dear you’re meddling.”

She defends herself, “But I think he oughta know, I think somebody oughta tell him don’t you dad?” He answers, “Why sure certainly no secret… in the past two years Mora’s had two boyfriends and they’re both dead now!”

Johnny asks if the police think it has something to do with Mora, but Madame Romanovitch tells him that there’s nothing to prove it not a shred of evidence and that it’s probably a most unfortunate coincidence.

Ellen who is obviously smitten with Johnny, interjects that they were both nice boys. They hung around with her and then they disappear until a few days later when their bodies washed up on shore… drowned. Ellen is obviously jealous of Mora’s ability to attract men. She tells Johnny that even if she didn’t cause their deaths Mora still brings bad luck.

Madame Romanovitch tells Johnny to stop by so she can read the tarot cards for him, for they will tell him a great deal.

Once again, Johnny chases the woman in black… the music suddenly stops and we are left with only silence. The quiet is really effective and spooky. He spies a rocking chair moving by itself, eerie as no one is sitting in it, yet it keeps tipping back and forth. Johnny continues to search for the woman in black. He comes across a little girl in the streets playing with her dolls. He asks if she has seen the old woman in black but tells him ‘no.’

THIS LITTLE INDEPENDENT GEM, DESPITE THE LOW BUDGET IS METICULOUS TO DETAIL, QUIRKY IN ALL THE RIGHT PLACES AND BEAUTIFULLY FILMED!!

Johnny meets with Captain Murdock (Gavin Muir) who is Mora’s stepfather and subsequently is told tales of the Sirens which is a scene with wonderful little details like being shown a dismembered Arab hand, one of many trophies of the Captains.

Captain Murdock is well versed in Greek mythology, literature and the origins of language. Murdock had found Mora on a Greek island and gave her the name which is derived from the Greek name ‘Moira” who was one of the Fates… which translates to a destiny that is doomed by fate. The Sirens of myth having lured their lovers upon the rocks to their deaths.

Johnny goes to Captain Murdock’s home. Murdock says “What I want to tell you is difficult to put into words, certainly into words that you would understand. However I can put the basic fact quite bluntly. You are in grave and serious danger as long as you continue to see Mora.” “I’m in danger from you?” Johnny asks

Captain Murdock answers -“No certainly not.” Johnny starts to get frustrated-“Then what are you talking about?”

“Mora my dear friend… Mora” Johnny angry -“You must be crazy!” Murdock is getting potted as he drinks bottle after bottle, he downs his booze. “On the contrary I’m quite sane and Mora is quite dangerous to you.”

“In what way?”

Murdock tells him -“Well, should we say that she suffers from a certain compulsion, which might cause her to take your life”

Johnny-“You trying to tell me that she’s insane?” Murdock continues-“Not precisely but it might be if you thought she were…Oh I wish you’d take my word for it. Break off this acquaintance before it’s too late… you’re a nice young fellow I wouldn’t like to see you get hurt.”

Murdock sends him to the cabinet to get him more liquor. As he directs him to where it is, Johnny sees a hand preserved in a bottle. He nearly falls as he is stunned.

“Oh don’t be alarmed that’s just a little Arabian souvenir… the hand of a thief…. rather gruesome but logical don’t you think?”

Murdock says he got it from “a sultan in Marrakesh who knew he liked to collect odd things….”  (a hint… Like Mora?)

Murdock proceeds to ask Johnny if he’s read the Greek Myths and that he must certainly know the legend of the Sirens.

“Well the sirens were a strange race of sea people -half human half creatures of the sea. The female of the species were known popularly as mermaids. That means women of the sea.”

Johnny tells him, it’s like the show he and Mora put on. He says exactly but that’s a fake a side show illusion. “You wouldn’t believe that they may actually exist.”

“Where do you think myths come from? Do you think they’re just made up? They spring from truth.”

“What does this have to do with Mora?” Johnny losing his patience. Capt Murdock says, “She was a sweet little thing, she lived here with me… I found her on an island  I didn’t know then what she was to become.“

Curious Johnny asks-“Become?”

“I didn’t know then that she belonged to that ancient race… She’s a monster!”

He warns him to stop seeing her…

We are left to wonder as the narrative is so ambiguous as to whether Capt. Murdock is simply a jealous old man who covets Mora’s affections– warding off any other man who would take her away from him? Or is he telling the truth about her origin. There are so many other people who believe the story to be true. Can it be collective paranoia or does Capt. Murdock’s expertise in world travel and knowledge of mythology support the feasibility of Mora being one of the race of sea people?

“Look just tell me one thing, Captain Murdock, there’s a woman that’s been bothering Mora, now I think she’s here. I just want to talk to her that’s all.”

“Women, there isn’t any woman.” he says in a drunken stupor his eyes closed., mouth hanging lazily open– “I’m all alone.”

Mora tells Johnny that the story is true, that the old woman in black is waiting for her to re-join them. But he tells her things like that just don’t happen. Mora insists, “You think you’ve discovered reality but you don’t even know what it is” Johnny-” Then you mean that everything Sam told me is the truth?”

Mora tells him somberly, “Almost everything.” Johnny asks her “Will you just tell me how you know!”

Mora “Because I feel the sea water in my veins. Because I listen to the roar of the sea and it speaks to me like a mother’s voice. The tide pulls at my heart and the face of the moon fills my soul with a strange longing.”

While Johnny is deeply in love with Mora… Ellen has fallen in love with Johnny.

Johnny is warned throughout the film of mysterious drowning deaths, that seemed to be linked to Mora, since two past boyfriends drowned when they were with her. Even Madame Romanovitch pulls the tarot card The Hanged Man, and tells him he is in great danger.

This does not discourage Johnny Drake as he falls deeply in love with the mysterious and intoxicating girl, who herself –believes she is truly a descendent of an ancient race of sirens who must return to the ‘sea people’

Notice the outstanding use of light that seems to be fluid– as if the walls are reflecting back water...Lapenieks and Floyd Crosby do such a sensational job of framing the eerie story.

When Johnny goes to Mora’s apartment we hear water running. She tells him that she is taking a bath and that he should rest on the couch. He lies down and falls asleep.
Mora walks out in a towel dripping wet, she walks slowly to the couch where Johnny is resting. She touches his face and runs her hand through his hair. He begins to look down and sees that she no longer has two legs but one large shiny scaly mermaid tail
then johnny becomes engulfed by tentacles as Mora has now transformed into a giant octopus. Hallucination or dream?

He wakes up in a sweat, the bath water is still running but Mora is missing. He follows a trail of wet footsteps down the corridor until he’s outside by the ocean. She calls for him, frightened by the incoming tide. He picks her up and carries her to safety. Mora tells him that they were calling to her….

Playing out the dynamic of the doomed sailor Johnny Drake is a figure whose love of Mora might very well doom him to a watery grave.

Johnny Drake is filled with innocence and a shy and wholesome kindness. Hopper’s performance is more restrained than his more iconic roles like acid dropping biker/hippie Billie in Easy Rider 1969 to the more volatile 1989 Blue Velvet’s psychotic bad boy Frank Booth!

Night Tide is a film you must experience if you’re fascinated by early 60s horror/fantasy that started to break out of the Hollywood mold. I won’t give away the ending either… for now let Johnny and Mora walk off beyond the hungering sea.

Is Mora from a lost clan of sea people, an imaginary mermaid that Johnny might of dreamed up or hallucinated or maybe she actually is a siren…!

Source Edited by Amy Greenfield -From Curtis Harrington: Cinema on the Edge-From the chapter Rembrandt Fucked the Maid

Hopper loved this black and white, filmed in the streets fantasy/horror picture. He praised the cinematography by Villis Lapenieks  (The Hideous Sun Demon 1959, The Little Shop of Horrors 1960, Queen of Blood 1966)

Dennis Hopper had said that Harrington was great to work with, and since he was in every scene he actually helped with the blocking so aside from his performance as Johnny Drake he helped with the creative process as well.

A creative process that had much to do with the cinematography and the use of light. The very first scene when Johnny goes into the photo booth the scene frames how his face is lit up and then darkness overtakes his face and then he’s lit up and then dark eclipses his face again. Hopper mentions in his interview with Amy Greenfield “Within a man of light, there’s only light. Within a man of darkness there’s only darkness”  The use of the duality of spirit wasn’t a conscious decision but he attributed it to the process of making art.

Amy Greenfield in an interview tells Hopper –“You move so beautifully in Night Tide, on the commentary track when Curtis asks you why you wanted to do the underwater scene yourself you said your mother was a swimmer and ran a swimming pool in Kansas where you grew up.”

Hopper tells her that he isn’t a professional swimmer. Then she comments- “But you move like a dancer… you look like Gene Kelly when you run after Cameron.”

It’s true, to watch how Hopper moves through the film with ease, he does come across very rhythmic and agile, he’s sort of at his most attractive. Well… he ain’t so bad here either!!!

Harrington had been working inside the studio system as 20th century fox’s Jerry Wald’s assistant and he wanted to break out and do this art film.

Curtis Harrington and Dennis Hopper had been friends so Hopper sort of just fell into the role. On revisiting this incredible poetic film —Night Tide 1961 which was actually filmed three years before it’s release but didn’t find it’s distribution until ’61, is not only an artistic vision of hallucinatory horror/fantasy, but a breakthrough indie film that re-invents some of the best elements created by great auteurs like Lewton who understood the light and dark duality of the mind and the fine line between landscape of the uncanny and the real world…

Notes from Curtis Harrington’s fantastic biography Nice Guys Don’t Work in Hollywood: The Adventures of an Aesthete in the Movie Business.

Harrington had wanted Peter Lorre to play Captain Murdock but he didn’t feel the pay was worth it. He found Gavin Muir who had appeared mostly in B pictures, and did a fantastic job as a crusty old sailor and torrid history buff who’s superstitious and drunk most of the time.

Marjorie Eaton was filling the key role as the fortune teller. “Her own eccentricity as a person came across beautifully in film.”-Curtis Harrington

Cameron Parson who was the woman in black or sea witch inspired Harrington to say “She was such a striking visual presence…”

He chose the incredible composer David Raskin who had done the music to film noir essential Laura 1944 to score Night Tide. He managed to create an extra divine layer of oddness and whimsy to the film.

Time Magazine wrote about the film “emits an uncommon glow of freshness and imagination.”

Night Tide is an otherworldly fairy tale/ horror story which is both subtly disorienting and queerly romantic as a powerful female energy which might morph into a dangerous mythical / cryptozoological seductive menace to men both intoxicating and terrifying…

“Temptress from the sea…loving…killing!…Was she Human?-A Unique Experience in the Weird and Terrifying!–Lovers caught in a dark tide of sinister TERROR!

 Your Everlovin’ MonsterGirl –and that’s no myth!!!

‘

HOSTED BY THOSE BRILLIANT, PROLIFIC & WITTY WRITERS- FRITZI FROM MOVIES SILENTLY, RUTH FROM SILVER SCREENINGS AND AURORA FROM ONCE UPON A SCREEN!

THE 60S:THE BOLD & THE BEAUTIFUL: 1960-1969

bold |bōld|
adjective
1 (of a person, action, or idea) showing an ability to take risks; confident and courageous: a bold attempt to solve the crisis | he was the only one bold enough to air his dislike.
• dated (of a person or manner) so confident as to suggest a lack of shame or modesty: she tossed him a bold look.

“I am my own woman” –Eva Perón

(source edited)- by Jürgen Müller‘s for TASCHEN’s Movies of the 60s- “Like no other decade before or since, the 60s embodied the struggle against a jaded, reactionary establishment. As the Vietnam War dragged on, the protests grew in scale and intensity. Revolution ran riot, in the streets and on the silver screen. The movies of the epoch tell tales of rebellion and sexual liberation, and above all they show how women began to emancipate from their traditional roles as housewives or sex bombs…”

Drew Casper writes, “Some films still styled along classic lines while others simultaneously embodied both the old and new approaches… Stirred the placid waters of the classical with grittier degrees of realism with their accompanying darker sensibilities.” –Postwar Hollywood 1946-1962

Women like Jane Fonda, Anna Magnani, Simone Signoret, Audrey Hepburn, Ann Bancroft, Piper Laurie, Angie Dickinson,Bette Davis, Joanne Woodward, Patricia Neal and so many more became iconic for breaking the old mold and grabbing a new kind of individualism without judgement and new kind of self expression.

Barry Keith Grant writes in American Cinema of the 1960s-“The decade was one of profound change and challenge for Hollywood, as it sought to adapt to both technological innovation and evolving cultural taste.”

In the 1960s we began to see more films like The Group 1966, Valley of the Dolls 1967, Bunny Lake is Missing 1965, Who Killed Teddy Bear 1965, Mr.Buddwing 1966, Walk on the Wild Side 1962, A Patch of Blue 1965, The Explosive Generation 1961, The Young Savages 1961, Look in Any Window 1961, Pressure Point 1962, Claudelle Inglish 1961, One Potato Two Potato  1964, Lilith 1964, Butterfield 8,(1960), Cul de Sac 1966, The Pumpkin Eater 1964, Sanctuary 1961, Belle du Jour 1967, Lolita 1962, The Children’s Hour 1961, Breakfast at Tiffany’s 1961, Rachel Rachel 1968, Up the Junction 1968, Darling 1965, To Kill a Mockingbird 1962, A Rage to Live 1965, Kitten With a Whip 1964, The Naked Kiss 1964, The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone 1961, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962 , Juliet of the Spirits 1965, Psyche 59 (1964) ,Lady in a Cage 1964.  & Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte 1964

And of course the films I’m covering here. These films began to recognize an audience that had a taste for less melodrama and more realistic themes, not to mention the adult-centric narratives with a veracious Mise-en-scène…

PS: I would have included Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby but that is my favorite film and plan on doing a special post in honor of this brilliant timeless masterpiece… and Mia’s quintessential performance.

Though I’ve decided not to include Breakfast at Tiffany’s this is my little nod to Audrey Hepburn and cat…

As a little glance into a portion of cinematic history over the decade of the burgeoning sixties -The following are particular favorites of mine… Bold & Beautiful ‘as is’ and Beyond need of Redemption!

ELMER GANTRY with JEAN SIMMONS as Sister Sharon Falconer & Shirley Jones as Lulu

Shirley Jones as good time girl Lulu Bains!

Lulu Bains: “Oh, he gave me special instructions back of the pulpit Christmas Eve. He got to howlin’ “Repent! Repent!” and I got to moanin’ “Save me! Save me!” and the first thing I know he rammed the fear of God into me so fast I never heard my old man’s footsteps.”

Elmer Gantry is always chasing dreams and always telling dirty stories is the smooth talking traveling salesman, brought to life by Burt Lancaster who portrays his character with a bit more sensuality than Sinclair Lewis‘ cold predatory con man. Gantry is a hard drinking provocateur and a lady’s man. Raised by a father who quoted verse, he has a swift grasp of the Bible and uses it to insinuated himself into Sister Sharon’s hell fire traveling road show. Though he is a skeptic, he sees a great light in Sister Sharon and the potential to fill the coffers with riches!

The sublimely beautiful Jean Simmons is as ethereally angelic as she is a pure sensuality. Sister Sharon Falconer is a young revivalist in the style of Aimee Semple McPherson. Sharon is at first righteous and unwavering in her convictions, she begins to awaken unto the spell of the charming and bigger than life Elmer Gantry. Elmer starts out poetically ruthless as he insinuates himself into Sharon’s life, until she loses her firm grip on her faithful mission and their attraction blossoms into a physical one.

One night he craftily sweet talks Sharon’s virginity away from her, though she is a very willing participant ready to be freed from the confines of her stifling religious prison.

Sharon struggles with her identity as a pious figure and a sexually aroused woman. Simmons is an actress of fine distinction who can work with that duality bringing to the screen a role with great complexity. She is also stuck in between the conflict that ensues between Elmer and her manager Bill Morgan (Dean Jagger) who doesn’t like nor trust Gantry’s influence over Sharon.

Bill Morgan –“That’s pitchman’s talk, what do you know about the background of our work. The nature of revivalism is fertile it grew out of frontier life. Big city people are apt to be more cynical” Elmer Gantry “They’re more sinful too, and more lonely and more unhappy and Shara they need you more…” Bill Morgan “I’m against this!” Gantry “Bill Morgan you’re an old sourpuss. This is a passport to the promised land.” Bill Morgan- “I am not your boy, I don’t know how you deluded her but to me everything about you is offensive You’re a crude vulgar show off. And your vocabulary belongs in an outhouse” Gantry “Crude, vulgar, show off ha…you know something you’re right Bill. Let’s put it this way. You’re a five dollar text book, me… I”m a two cent tabloid newspaper… You’re too good for the people… I am the people…sure I’m common, Just like most people”. Sharon “The common people put Christianity on the map in the first place…Bill -“What are you saying that you want to go to Zenith?” Sharon says- “I wonder what God wants!”

Sharon tells Gantry,“You’re so outrageous! I think I like you. You’re amusing, and you smell like a real man.”

Sister Sharon created herself from nothing and is now pragmatic and independent with a vision to capture the world, by building a temple for the people so she can share the good word of God. No more traveling as a revival side show attraction. She is brave, dedicated and faithful to the end. And I won’t spoil the ending– at least I will say that she is a true believer and a real woman filled with passion on both sides of the coin. She allows herself to be seduced by Gantry, yet still is fiercely dedicated to building her own tabernacle so she may offer comfort and inspiration to those in need.

Sharon “ God chose me to do his work” Gantry-‘ Me Too Sharon “No I chose you…”

Shirley Jones is fabulous as Lulu Banes who was first seduced by Gantry while she was the Deacon’s daughter now…. a call girl from Elmer’s tawdry past, who tries to rake up a little gossip and cash as payback for Mr. Gantry ditching her. Okay, there’s some blackmail involved when she sees the opportunity because there’s sour grapes as Gantry left Lulu in the lurch, with a broken heart. But in the end, Lulu’s got integrity. She’s plucky, and has some of the best lines in the film and hey she’s not only a call girl… she a nice girl…

She’s so lovable that Shirley Jones won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress that year!

It’s interesting to hear that it took actor Author Kennedy to get Simmons potted on milk and gin before she felt comfortable enough to do the scene where the revival tent catches fire and flaming debris is falling around her head.

Both Jean Simmons and Shirley Jones caught the spirit in this film!

Elmer Gantry wound up being a very controversial film when it was released directed by Richard Brooks, adapted from the book by Sinclair Lewis with lush and pulpy cinematography by John Alton and a stirring score by the great André Previn. And terrific costume designed by the brilliant Dorothy Jeakins (The Sound of Music 1965, The Way We Were 1974).

THE FUGITIVE KIND with ANNA MAGNANI as Lady Torrance

“Let’s get this straight, you don’t interest me no more than the air you stand in.”-Lady Torrance to Val

Directed by Sidney Lumet, The Fugitive Kind is based on the play Orpheus Descending by Tennessee Williams who also penned the screenplay. At this point there’s shouldn’t be any doubt about my passion for Mr. Williams or Anna Magnani.

Anna Magnani is a primal force of sensuality winning an Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Serafina Delle Rose in the marvelous, The Rose Tattoo 1955. (“A clown with my husband’s body!”)

The Fugitive Kind has a gritty, allure not only due to the level of acting by Magnani and Brando or the evocative material it’s partly due to Boris Kaufman’s  (12 Angry Men 1957, On the Waterfront 1954) edgy cinematography.

Anna Mangani delivers another impassioned performance as Lady an equally potent role as a shop owner in Louisiana who is chained to a brutal marriage by her vindictive and dying husband Jabe (Victor Jory) when along comes Marlon Brando as Valentine “Snakeskin’ Xavier a guitar playing roamer who takes a job in the shop until Lady’s jaded loneliness and Valentine’s raw animal magnetism combust..

Brando plays the solitary Val, a drifter who’s presence is as commanding as a lion stalking. Val comes into the small town where Lady Torrance runs the shop, her husband Jabe is mostly bed ridden, dying of cancer, but also eaten up with jealousy and hatred toward his wife, foreigners and outliers. He’s vicious and controlling and Lady lives out her days caring for this angry and miserable man, until Val comes into her life, changing Lady’s stoicism awakening her heart releasing her desires.

Magnani gives a powerful performance of a woman starved from sexual pleasure, mentally abused by her husband and bemoaning the days when the wine flowed like a river at her father’s vineyard that was suspiciously burned to the ground.

Lady-“What are you doing with a snakeskin jacket?” Val-“It used to be a trademark I was a, I used to be an entertainer in New Orleans.” Lady-“It fits warm alright Val It’s probably warm from my body Lady You must be a warm blooded boy,,, what are you looking for around here?” Val-“You might have some work for me.” Lady-“Hhm boys like you don’t work Val-“What do you mean boys like me” Lady “Ones that play the guitar and go around talking about how warm they are. I can hire no stranger with a snake skin jacket and a guitar and a temperature like a dog”

Magnani manifests an authenticity that comes from a battered past and present, yet she exudes an enduring sense of love and passion. Lady dreams of fixing up the outside part of the store as a confectionery festooned with white lights and delicate atmosphere and Val can sing and play his guitar.

At first interviewing for a job is an awkward exchange. Once Lady and Val have a very intense and thoughtful conversation, she decides that she likes this strange talking boy and hires him to work in the store. The tension is visible even in the darkly lit scene and through the diffuse patch of light you can see their chemistry brewing.

Lady is taken with this strange talking boy who begins to tell her about people. “there’s two kinds of people in this world, the buyers and the people who get bought.” Then he tells her about a type of bird that has no legs so it can never land. It’s a meditative moment, and Brando is magnificent.
“…cause they don’t see ’em, they don’t see em way up in that high blue sky near the sun they  spread their wings out and go to sleep on the wind and they only alight on this world just one time, it’s when they die.”

Val is pursued by Carol Cutere, (Joanne Woodward) the quirky local tramp from a wealthy family, who worships his snakeskin jacket as well as his incredible ‘hot’ body. But, Val finds himself drawn to the evocative and more complex Lady. They begin an affair, fall in love and Lady gets pregnant. Will they be like the bird that can never land, only sleep on the wind and the day they land is the day they die…

Lady Torrance: Are you a lady’s man? Valentine ‘Snakeskin’ Xavier: It’s been said that a woman can burn a man down… But I can burn a woman down, if I wanted to.
Lady -“Let’s get one thing straight… You don’t interest me no more than the air you stand in”

A COLD WIND IN AUGUST with LOLA ALBRIGHT as Iris Hartford

If you care about love, you’ll talk about a teenage boy and a woman who is all allure, all tenderness… and too much experience! – tagline

“What’s more I don’t like to work in New York. I never have. I live here. I like it. I like this house. I like eating at home, I like living like a human being. Why should I knock myself out. this is my retreat you know.”

Directed by Alexander Singer  with a slick burlesque/modern jazz score by Gerald Fried. 

Lola Albright  stirs the libido as a very classy ex-stripper Iris Hartford a very intoxicating woman who seduces a naive and inexperienced working-class boy, Vito Pellegrino (Scott Marlowe) who falls deeply in love with her. Soon Vito begins to feel the disparate reality of their relationship. Once his reality is shattered, discovering that she is a stripper, Vito ends the affair with Iris, seeking out a neighborhood girl who is of his own age.

Lola Albright has a very sophisticated way of coming across on screen with a reserved yet palpable dignity. But Iris generates an undercurrent of provocative and alluring intelligence. Marlowe has always been great as a either a clever playboy or whiny young man, who isn’t quite getting what he wants.

A Cold Day in August examines an authentic journey for a young boy who experiences his first sexual awakening with an older woman. And their socially unorthodox relationship not only serves the film’s exploitative narrative it comes across quite genuine because of Albright’s very real sexual magnetism and the attraction by an impressionable boy.

“Hey you need a hair cut boy hasn’t your mother told you?”

Of course the film works on the level of titillation & taboo because Iris is not only older than Vito, she is ALL woman and then some for any man. She would be considered a tramp because she used to take her clothes off for a living. Her ex-husband comes back into the picture and pleads with her to fill in for a week in NYC, but that life was far gone by now.

When Iris first seduces Vito she feeds him a dish of ice cream after he fixes her air conditioner. It’s as if she’s rewarding a little boy for doing a good job. In the midst of these queer moments where she desires him yet infantilizes him, they do carry on a sexual relationship. Iris is a free sexual being who makes no apologies for who she is. It doesn’t take too long before Vito realizes that he’s way out of his league, but Iris does initiate him into the world of sex.

I have come to adore Lola Albright this year. In A Cold Wind in August she manifests a kind of existential sensuality as she can offer a nurturing kiss and then go on to take what she needs. She yearns for pleasure which is literally illustrated by her stripper costume of a sort of Queen of Outer Space gold lamé number complete with eye mask, it’s alluring and vulturous at the same time.

Iris strokes Vito’s face tenderly “You’re a baby… such a beautiful baby” 

THE HUSTLER with PIPER LAURIE as Sarah Packard

Robert Rossen (The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers 1946, All the Kings Men 1949, Billy Budd 1962 & Lilith 1964) wrote of all his films, they “Share one characteristic: The hunt for success. Ambition is an essential quality in American society.”

The Hustler is the story of Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) who has a penchant for self punishment and self destructiveness and in his cockiness likes to take on high stakes pool games. He has a dream of bumping Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) off the pedestal of fame. Eddie and Fats meet up and by the end of a very long marathon, Eddie is wiped out and whipped, which doesn’t help his enormous ego.

Eddie meets Sarah (Piper Laurie), a highly educated modern woman. She’s an independent loner, a bit morose, a bit jaded, but somehow she allows Eddie to work his charms on her until she is hooked. Still no matter what happens in the end, Sarah Packard speaks her mind and lives life on her own terms…

Sarah has a physical disability as she walks with a limp, and is referred to as a cripple.

Finally, as the film progresses, whether Sarah feels that she is perverted and twisted because she sleeps with the repugnant opportunist Bert Gordon (George C. Scott) or drinks too much, or has the need to be loved because of her physical disability, Sarah Packard is such a real character that it breaks your heart.

Tensions arise when manager Bert Gordon signs on to promote Eddie. He’s a shady predator who tries to drive a wedge between Eddie and Sarah, and takes advantage of her one night while Eddie’s away.

Sarah reads poetry and uses alcohol as a way to balm her loneliness, but there’s a strength in her honesty that is very endearing. Talk about guts, Piper Laurie wanted to get a feel of authenticity for her character and so she hung out at the Greyhound Bus Terminal at night.

IMDb fact: Piper Laurie didn’t make another film for the next 15 years, devoting the time to her marriage and raising her only daughter. She returned to the screen in 1976 in ‘Brian de Palma”s Carrie (1976), earning her second Oscar nomination.

And we all know how bold that performance was…. memorable & cringe-worthy!

At the party that Bert invites Sarah to come to, he whispers something in her ear that makes her toss her drink and run away in tears. The actress talked about this scene in her autobiography. She had met up with George C Scott many years later and “I finally asked him what he had whispered into my ear in the big party scene in The Hustler that elicits a violent response from me. We shot it perhaps three or four times and I could never figure out what he was saying… He told me he chose to use just gibberish, knowing he could never invent words or phrases as powerful as what my imagination could summon up. Probably true.”

That was a very cool approach to the scene which came off beautifully!

The words Sarah writes on the mirror are “perverted”, “twisted” and “crippled”.

Sarah Packard: I’m a college girl. Two days a week – Tuesdays and Thursdays – I go to college. Fast Eddie: You don’t look like a college girl. Sarah Packard: I’m the emancipated type. Real emancipated. Fast Eddie: No, I didn’t mean that… whatever that means. I mean you just don’t look young enough. Sarah Packard: I’m not. Fast Eddie: So why go to college? Sarah Packard: Got nothing else to do on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fast Eddie: What do you do on the other days? Sarah Packard: I drink..

THE MISFITS with MARILYN MONROE as Roslyn Tabor

Roslyn: “If I’m going to be alone, I want to be by myself.”

The Misfits was initially written as a short story by Arthur Miller who was actually waiting for his divorce in Reno to go through before he could marry Marilyn Monroe. Based on a short story in Esquire Magazine, he specifically wrote it for his then wife Marilyn Monroe.

A beautiful divorcée Roslyn Tabor (Marilyn Monroe) who has been put through hell, takes up with a faded cowboy Gay Langland who is still strutting like a lady’s man in early-sixties Nevada. He’s a rugged individualist who wants nothing to do with earning wages. At first she meets up with Isabelle Steers played by the inimitable Thelma Ritter who can throw out a one liner like no one else, anything out of her mouth is gold.

Roslyn is in Reno to divorce her husband Ray. She meets up with Guido (Eli Wallach) who is building his ‘unfinished’ dream house for a wife who died during child birth years ago, yet he still holds a candle to her memory and suffers from WWII bombing raids He sets his sights on Roslyn but his friend Gay Langland (Clark Gable) a crusty old cowboy moves in first and the two start a tenuous relationship. Roslyn is kind and loves all animals, and still thinks kindness is always just around the corner.

Montgomery Clift plays an ambiguously sexual bachelor who drinks to try and take the pain away. All four are non-conformists who begin to form a type of family. Roslyn is thoughtful and sensitive and Gay is a typical male on the prowl. Along for the ride is Perce Howland (Montgomery Clift) who is the most trusting and kind. He is not committed to trapping the horses for pet food, and wishes to stop it too. The horses that roam free are symbolic of the beautiful spirit that Roslyn possesses. A bit sad but tender and kind. Roslyn tags along on a trip up in the mountains with Gable, Eli Wallach and Monty Clift much to Roslyn’s horror that they are capturing horses in order to sell them for dog food.

Roslyn (Marilyn) meets Isabelle Steers (Thelma Ritter) right after her divorce is granted by the Washoe County Courthouse.

Roslyn: If I’m going to be alone, I want to be by myself.

Marilyn Monroe later said that she had hated both the film and her own performance. I feel like she is selling herself short. She managed to navigate around the incredible testosterone on screen and off. Perhaps it was her innate sadness that shone through, but she brought a tremendous sensitivity that was an inner sort of beautiful… The Misfits is probably one of my favorite performances by Monroe, it seems like a close look into her sad yet dreamy soul.

A RAISIN IN THE SUN with RUBY DEE as Ruth Younger, CLAUDIA MCNEILL as Mother Lena Younger and DIANA SANDS as Beneatha Younger

Lena Younger crying “Oh God, please, look down and give me strength! “

Lena Younger crying “Oh God, please, look down and give me strength! “

A RAISIN IN THE SUN, Claudia McNeil, Ruby Dee, 1961

Written by Lorraine Hansberry for the stage then adapted to film and directed by Daniel Petrie

Sometimes there are films and stories that I just immediately have to say “It’s some powerful good.” Maybe it comes from watching a lot of The Andy Griffith Show that has rubbed off on my conversational style. But regardless, A Raisin in the Sun is some powerful good! That’s what happens when an ensemble of incredible actors get together and tell a poignant story about family struggles, in particular, a Black family struggling in a privileged world that works very hard to keep Black people on the ‘outside’ of success, making them continually grasp at that mythical American Dream that just doesn’t exist, at least for most people.

Directed by Daniel Petrie  a story about racial oppression and assumptions. Illustrated vividly in the scene with the marvelous character actor John Fiedler who plays Mark Linder. from the Clybourne park un- “welcoming committee.”

The woman form a strong wheel that keeps the family moving even when Walter Lee Younger (Sidney Poitier) takes his time coming to terms with his pride.

Mama Lena lived in a time where Black folk had fought so hard during the Civil Rights movement to witness a generation of young Black people to demand and obtain their rights. But there exists in the home a generation gap between her and her children. Walter Lee is a very proud young man who is frustrated with just being a chauffeur. When Lena’s husband’s insurance policy comes to the family, they each have ideas of how to spend it. Three very strong female characters satellite around one man whose identity rests on false notions of success reflected back at him through the lens of a white social class. But Walter Lee is continuously grounded by the strength of the women around him.

Diana Sands as Beneatha (Dropping to her knees) “Well – I do – all right? – thank everybody! And forgive me for ever wanting to be anything at all! (Pursuing Walter on her knees across the floor) FORGIVE ME, FORGIVE ME, FORGIVE ME!” Beneatha sarcastically apologizes for having dreams. To Walter, her dream seems kind of far-fetched. However, Beneatha is determined and she stands up to her brother for her right to want to become a doctor.

Beneatha is a progressive woman who railed against being a traditional wife and mother. She was way too independent and a strong female figure for 1962.

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Cléo FROM 5 TO 7 with CORINNE MARCHAND as Cléo

Florence, ‘Cléo Victoire’: Everybody spoils me. Nobody loves me.

Cléo is a famous French Chanteuse awaiting the results of a biopsy. She is afraid that she will be told that she has cancer. We as are the spectators we watch Cléo spend two hours in her day until she finds out whether she is going to die. Sounds morbid, but director Agnès Varda (Varda herself was Bold & Beautiful– trained as a master photographer… and at the core or the soul of the French New Wave Cinema) weaves a whimsical visual dance as Cléo walks through the hours of her possibly tenuous life. The film is marvelous and Corinne Marchand as Cléo is a very captivating figure. In France it is said that the hours between five to seven are when lovers gather. Cléo wants to just keep moving in hopes of avoiding the results of her test. Throughout Cléo’s journey she is subtly restrained by the knowledge that she may be dying. Even as she sings torch songs, shops for hats and walks through the streets of Paris.

At 5pm she even visits a Tarot Reader. And just from experience, pulling The Hanged Man in a tarot reading is never really a good thing. And of course Death shows up as well. And the Death card should never be regarded as literal, but under the circumstances it would be frightening to a woman waiting for test results. She asks the woman to read her palm but she refuses, and so Cléo leaves frustrated.

Throughout Cléo wanderings, there are little interactions that lay on the periphery. Knowing that death could be looming overhead, Cléo seems to develop a heightened sense of awareness, even if the actions of  unessential characters are truly incidental surrounding Cléo while she is walking through her two hours.

Cléo wanders through out the streets of Paris with her maid in tow or her friend the nude model. The next stop is at the hat shop, where she proceeds to try on many fashionable hats. Several mirror shots showcase the use of iconography of the female image as seen reflecting back. Cléo looks magnificent in even the most outrageous of hats.

Cléo and her maid come back to her apartment, that has a nice vast playful quality to it, with a piano, and a wonderful swing, and of course an opulent bed. Cléo reposes in her bed like royalty, as two fluffy kittens toss each other around. José Luis de Vilallonga credited as The Lover comes to see her. There doesn’t seem to be much passion between the two.

great filmmaker Agnès Varda who fills the screen with photographic images so beautiful so rich… She too is bold & beautiful!

SATAN IN HIGH HEELS with GRAYSON HALL as Pepe

“You’ll EAT and DRINK what I SAY until you lose five pounds IN THE PLACES WHERE I SAY!” -Pepe

I couldn’t resist paying homage to at least one exploitation film seeing this is about the 60s! With a flavor and atmosphere of night club noir surrounded by decadence and the sordid lives of it’s inhabitants it comes across with a low budget appeal, Satan in High Heels was filmed in New York’s old La Martinique cabaret. This isn’t a film about immorality, it’s plainly just some high art sleaze that is so fun to watch, mainly because of Grayson Hall. Hall has a languid graveled voice that is almost intoxicating to listen to. Putting aside the other two leading ladies voluptuous Sabrina who plays herself, Meg Myles as Stacy Kane a second rate stripper whose wardrobe consists of various leather outfits and riding crop, it’s Grayson Hall (of Dark Shadows fame) that brings the story to a boil as the ultra domineering Pepe– as cool as the center seed of a cucumber.

She’s jaded and cynical and is a New York City kind of Marlene Dietrich with her quick asides and Sapphic strut. Even when she’s taking long drags of her cigarette she can deliver a curt line that cuts to the point, “Bear up, Darling, I love your eyelashes.”

After Stacy working the carnival circuit discovers her ex husband hanging around the dressing room with a load of cash, she grabs the doe and heads to New York City. Once she arrives she auditions at a night club as a singer, and is hired by the libidinous Pepe who wants to do a Pygmalion on the tramp. Belting out torch songs like “I’ll beat you mistreat you til you quiver and quail, the female of the species is more deadly than the male.”  Neither Stacy (Meg Myles) or Sabrina (Norma Ann Sykes) Yikes get points for being buxom.

Couldn’t resist this shot–Sabrina plays herself… Sabrina

It’s Pepe who is sophisticated and wicked that makes you quiver & quail? Hmmm I need to look that up!

THE L SHAPED ROOM with LESLIE CARON as Jane Fosset

“Everybody can’t wait to help me get rid of it!”-Jane

She is pregnant by this guy who offers her money to get rid of it!

When it’s Bryan Forbes (Seance on a Wet Afternoon 1964,The Stepford Wives 1975) directing you know to expect something deeper and quietly intense. In The L Shaped Room Leslie Caron plays Jane Fosset a melancholy unmarried woman who is pregnant and on her own. She takes a room in a boarding house in London. While there Jane meets all the inhabitants of the decadent house where there dwells a collection of various misfits and outliers of society. Two working girls of the night persuasion, Pat Phoenix as Sonia, the man-eating Landlady who isn’t quite friendly, and the lovely old lesbian Mavis (Cicely Courtneidge).

Cicely Courtneidge as Mavis the kind neighborly Lesbian

And then there’s the struggling on edge Toby (Tom Bell) who is a writer living on the first floor. The two strike up a relationship, as Jane decides whether to get an abortion or keep the baby. There’s also Johnny a black Jazz Musician ( Brock Peters) who gets upset when Jane and Toby start a sexual relationship. The story is human and moving and as deeply whimsical as the tenants who come and go. Leslie Caron is superb as a solitary girl with a serious dilemma, so much so that she was nominated for Best Actress. Caron is splendid as Jane who manifests a courage and striking dignity to live life on her own…

THE BIRDS with TIPPI HEDREN as Melanie Daniels

Mitch Brenner: What do you want? Melanie Daniels: I thought you knew! I want to go through life jumping into fountains naked, good night!

Alfred Hitchcock’s cautionary tale based on Daphne du Maurier’s best selling novel. The Birds was Hitchcock’s film , that not only demonstrated the precarious security of everyday life by contrasting a quaint California seaside town inexplicably besieged by angry birds. One of Hitchcock’s most frequent theme is the precariousness of social order and morality. And the introduction of Tippi Hedren as Melanie Daniels definitely shakes things up. There’s almost a supernatural connection, if not the mere symbolic one.

I couldn’t resist Tippi Hedren as Melanie Daniels who is no shrinking violet. She may be a relatively straightforward central protagonist – the rich spoiled girl from the big city whose complacency is then severely shattered. Melanie is still an independent woman who mostly keeps it together right up to the end. Okay once she’s trapped in the attic she sort of goes a bit fetal but come on people the natural world is attacking! –with beaks and claws!

Behind the scenes she might have had a mini melt down thanks to Hitchcock’s maneuvering to have her attacked for real. Melanie Daniels ascends into Bodega Bay like the birds, she is a warning of the dangers of strong, and non-conformist women, especially strong willed sexually free women. Are the people being attacked by just the birds or is the strength of Melanie Daniels presence to tear apart the claustrophobic relationship between son and mother and the quiet conventional community.

From Carol Clovers Men, Women and Chainsaws -Her Body, Himself.
in Poe’s famous formulation , the death of a beautiful woman is the “most poetic topic in the world.”

Hitchcock during the filming of The Birds said: “I’ve always believed in following the advice of the playwright Sardou”. He said ‘Torture the women.’

Clover comments that what the directors don’t reveal out loud about the women in peril theme is that “women in peril are at there most effective when they are in a state of undress” and assailed by a totally phallic enemy.

Melanie Daniels while trapped in the attic and justifiably shaken from the ordeal does not lose her ability to protect herself and give up and die.

In one of the most vivid and unforgettable scenes in film history (I would wager my one-of-a-kind Columbo doll that other people agree) is when Melanie is waiting outside the schoolhouse sitting on the park bench with the jungle-gym behind her. She sees a few birds gathering on it. As Hitchcock is known to do, he drags out the suspense until we are at the very edge. She sees a few more birds join in. She lights up a cigarette, as this extends the scene further. There isn’t the composed style of filming a scene where it would go right to the fright factor. Hitchcock manipulates Melanie and us the spectator. Once more she follows the movement of another crow heading toward the jungle-gym which now is revealed has hundreds of birds waiting to attack…!

Melanie Daniels: I have an Aunt Tessa. Have you got an Aunt Tessa? Mitch Brenner: Mm-mm. Melanie Daniels: Mine is very prim and straight-laced. I’m giving her a mynah bird when she comes back from Europe. Mynah birds talk, you know. Can you see my Aunt Tessa’s face when this one tells us one or two of the words I’ve picked up at Berkeley? Mitch Brenner: You need a mother’s care, my child. Melanie Daniels: [pause] Not my mother’s. Mitch Brenner: Oh, I’m sorry. Melanie Daniels: What have you got to be sorry about? My mother? Don’t waste your time. She ditched us when I was eleven and ran off with some hotel man in the East. You know what a mother’s love is. Mitch Brenner: Yes, I do. Melanie Daniels: You mean it’s better to be ditched? Mitch Brenner: No, I think it’s better to be loved. Don’t you ever see her? Melanie Daniels: [pause] I don’t know where she is.

Tippi Hedren and children in a scene from THE BIRDS, 1963.

HUD with PATRICIA NEAL as Alma Brown

“Boy… somebody in this car smells of Chanel No. 5, It isn’t me, I can’t afford it!”

Directed by Martin Ritt and based on Larry McMurtry’s novel. From -Drew Casper Postwar Hollywood from 1946-1962 “Ritt Caught the parched, circumspect, empty quality of a middle-class WASP life in a Texan cattle community.”

The raspy attractiveness of Patricia Neal can make any film worth watching. In Hud she conveys a weary yet wise housekeeper/mother figure for the elderly widower Rancher and the Bannon men Hud and Lonnie. She has to deflect all the lustful advances by Hud, but she has grown comfortable with the blueness of her isolation, and has made peace with her troubling past. She handles the volatile Hud (Paul Newman) and nurtures the impressionable Lonnie (Brandon deWilde)

Patricia Neal won an Academy Award for playing the housekeeper Alma in Martin Ritt’s Hud, although she only appears in the film for 22 minutes! James Wong Howe creates a desolate, moody sense of Americana with his cinematography and Elmer Bernstein contributes his magnificent score.

Patricia Neal was particularly proud of one unscripted moment that made it into the film. While talking to Hud about her failed marriage, a huge horsefly flew onto the set. Just as she says she’s “done with that cold-blooded bastard,” she zaps the fly with a dish towel. Martin Ritt loved it and printed the take.

Paul Newman is the cold blooded Hud Bannon. He’s a ruthless reckless cowboy and a heartless uncaring miscreant who hurts everyone in his life. He’s self confident, drives a pink Cadillac and when he’s not swaggering slow like he’s a meandering playboy, who still lives on the isolated farm with his elderly father and his nephew Lonnie (Brandon deWilde) who worships him, he’s sleeping around.

Melvyn Douglas plays Homer Bannon, his father whom he clashes with. His father is a righteous man, filled with principles but his son is a self-indulgent outlier of society who cares for nothing and no one. Life is just about having ‘kicks’ It was that time in film history that the youth archetype were all looking for those ‘kicks’

Hud’s amoral lifestyle and the struggle between the good people who satellite around him create a dismal world for everyone. Alma and Hud develop a sexual banter between them. She’s attracted to his prowess and his good looks, but Hud only sees her as the help. He want’s what he can’t have, so she is a challenge to him that’s all. But Hud is abusive to Alma, he even parks his Cadillac in her flower bed.

Alma has a hearty strength and takes all the masculine posturing with stride. She’s as laid back as a cat taking a nap in the sun. Alma too has a sensuality that lies open, on the surface as she flirts with Lonnie and is aroused by Hud’s beautiful torso. The theme that is underlying through out Hud or I should say Alma’s part in the narrative is that women like to be around dangerous men. Alma doesn’t expect anything from Hud, understanding his nature all too well. He possesses a merciless kind of sexual desire that cannot be satisfied. But Alma does create a conflict for him…

In his cynical exchanges with Alma, he is contemptuous toward women and boasts a sexual confidence, that makes him one cocky bastard. But Alma is not a child nor is she an inexperienced woman. she is equally world weary and is titillated by his sexual innuendos.

Hud Bannon: Man like that sounds no better than a heel. Alma Brown: Aren’t you all? Hud Bannon: Honey don’t go shooting all the dogs ’cause one of ’em’s got fleas. Alma Brown: I was married to Ed for six years. Only thing he was ever good for was to scratch my back where I couldn’t reach it. Hud Bannon: You still got that itch? Alma Brown: Off and on. Hud Bannon: Well let me know when it gets to bothering you.

Hud Bannon: I’ll do anything to make you trade him. Alma Brown: No thanks. I’ve done my time with one cold-blooded bastard, I’m not looking for another. Hud Bannon: Too late, honey, you already found him.

NIGHT OF THE IGUANA with AVA GARDNER as Maxine Faulk

Directed by John Huston based on the story by Tennessee Williams, Night of the Iguana.

John Huston loved placing a group of interesting people in a landscape that was inhospitable and sweltering.

Ava Gardner as Maxine Faulk is a sultry beauty that inhabits the tropical night like a panther moving through the brush.

A defrocked Episcopal clergyman the Rev. T Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton) working as a tout guide in Mexico leads a bus-load of middle-aged Baptist women and a teenage girl on a tour of the Mexican coast. It is there that he wrestles with the failure and doubts that haunt his wasted life. While temporarily stranded he takes respite with Maxine who runs the small out of the way hotel. Ava Garner wields heavy dose of sensuality as she burns up the screen with her raw and unbound sexuality. Surrounded by young men whom she swims with at night. And not taking any crap from the busload of repressed Baptists and Sue Lyon as a young Nymphomaniac.

Shannon was kicked out of his church when he was caught with one of his parishioners, and now Charlotte Goodall (Sue Lyon) is a troublesome nymph chasing after him provocatively. Her guardian is Judith Fellowes (Grayson Hall) an uptight lesbian who seems to hate all men, bus rides and humid weather besides. When Fellowes catches Charlotte in Shannon’s room she threatens to get him in trouble, so he enlists the help of his friend Maxine Faulk, and leaves the group stranded at her remote hotel.

Once Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr) and her elderly grandfather arrive, the atmosphere seems to shift and Shannon is confronted with questions of life and love. Everyone at the hotel has demons and the rich and languid air seems to effect everyone… Ava Gardner as Maxine waits patiently for Shannon to realize that they could have a passionate life together if he’d stop torturing himself..

Judith Fellowes: (Grayson Hall) [Yelling at Shannon] You thought you outwitted me, didn’t you, having your paramour here cancel my call. Maxine Faulk: (Ava Gardner) Miss Fellowes, honey, if paramour means what I think it does you’re gambling with your front teeth.

Hannah Jelkes: Who wouldn’t like to atone for the sins of themselves, and the world, if it could be done in a hammock with ropes, instead of on a Cross, with nails? On a green hilltop, instead of Golgotha, the Place of the Skulls? Isn’t that a comparatively comfortable, almost voluptuous Crucifixion to suffer for the sins of the world, Mr. Shannon?

Maxine Faulk: So you appropriated the young chick and the old hens are squawking, huh? T. Lawrence Shannon: It’s very serious. The child is emotionally precocious. Maxine Faulk: Bully for her. T. Lawrence Shannon: Also, she is traveling under the wing of a military escort of a butch vocal teacher.

From Ava Gardner: “Love is Nothing” by Lee Server
Ava Gardner loved the chance to work with director John Huston.

The play had opened on Dec 28th 1961 at Broadway’s Royale Theatre with Bette Davis, Margaret Leighton and Patrick O’Neal.

“A typical Williamsian study of desire, dysfunction and emotional crisis. set in a frowzy Acapulco Hotel where defrocked alcoholic horny minister now tour guide The Rev T Lawrence Shannon haphazardly battles for his salvation aided and abetted by lusty innkeeper Maxine Faulk and wandering spinster Hannah Jelkes.”

Producer Ray Stark regarded the film’s formula should be a “mix of soul-searching, melodrama and lowlife exotica” which would capture Huston’s imagination.

Ava was cast to play the ‘earthy widow’ Maxine- Huston considered Gardner perfect as she was a Southern actress with ‘feline sexuality’. perfect to play one of Tennessee Williams’ ‘hot-blooded ladies!’

Ava Gardner wanted the role to be really meaningful. She did have several volatile scenes, for instance when she is exasperated by Shannon, to spite him Maxine impulsively rushes into the ocean to frolic with her two personal beach boys.

According to the book, “Ava had become sick with fear— of the physicality of the scene (how could she not look bad falling around in the water with her hair all soaked?), the sexuality of it (the two boys roaming all over her body as the surf rolled across them). and the physical exposure (the scene called for her to be wearing a skimpy bikini) Huston told her in that case, kid they would rewrite and shoot the scene at night and with minimal lighting. As she got more uncomfortable Huston suggested that she simply go in the water in her clothes (Maxine’s ubiquitous poncho too and toreador pants). ‘It’ll look more natural like that anyway’- Huston said.”

Houston even waded into the water with her, they had a few drinks, he held her hand and waited til she was ready to shoot the scene. And it came out beautifully with one take!.

THE KILLERS with ANGIE DICKINSON as Sheila Farr

Johnny -“Pretty Cool aren’t you Miss Farr”
Sheila “Only when there’s nothing to be excited about”

Directed by Don Siegel This remake of Ernest Hemingway’s taut thriller has been given a 60s sheen of vibrantly slick color. In contrast to Robert Siodmak’s masterpiece in 1946. The femme fatale in this Post-Noir film is Angie Dickinson as opposed to Ava Gardner.

Don Siegel’s 1964 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s short story The Killers is quite a horse of a different colour. first off the obvious is that it is not in haunting B&W… The double – crosses are still in the picture. the big heist and the hidden doe…

And we don’t have Ava Gardner, but we do get Angie Dickinson. Cassavetes is a race car driver Lancaster was a mechanic… we don’t have the primal sexuality of Burt Lancaster we have the pensive arrogance of John Cassavetes.

The viewpoint of the story is not seen through the eyes of the victim, but the Kiilers who want to understand why the protagonist just stands there and lets himself be gunned down in cold-blood “just stood there and took it.”

While Siodmak’s version is drenched in shadow and nuance, Siegel’s version is gorgeously played out like a taut violin string in the brightly mod colors of a 60s world. It was no longer the year of the dark and dangerous femme fatale that hinted at promises of a sexual joyride alluded to with suggestive dialogue and visual iconography. Now we have Angie Dickinson’s character Sheila Farr a modern sexually liberated woman who struts her stuff in the light of day.

In exchange for the two odd misanthropes —William Conrad and Charles McGraw as Al & Max who walk into the diner and make the first 12 minutes of the ‘46 classic incredibly memorable and a noir essential— now we have Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager as a snarling thug and a creepy neurotic. Henry Mancini scored the music for 1964 slick production which became a 60s cult classic and Miklós Rózsa scored the 1946 noir masterpiece

The two hit men Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager walk into a school for the blind and shoot down John Cassavetes. On the way back to Chicago Marvin’s character wants to know why he didn’t try to run when he had the chance. Also told in flashback, it pieces together the reason for him wanting to die. After Cassavete’s is washed up as a race car drive when he has a near fatal crash- he takes up with crime boss Ronald Reagan and tries to steal his woman- Sheila.

Johnny -“You have money written all over you what do you want with me?” Sheila- “A hamburger and a beer” Johnny “na na I’m serious” “You know my story…. I’m pretty” Johnny-“and what does that make me?” Sheila– “Somebody I admire somebody I’d like to know “ Johnny -“put it in English Sheila “Alright, you’re a winner and I don’t like losers cause I’ve been around them all my life. Little men who cry a lot. I like you do I have to write a book?

DEAD RINGER with BETTE DAVIS as Margaret DeLorca & Edith Phillips

Margaret: “Oh Edie I wanted to marry Frank so desperately” Edie “But you never loved him, you never made him happy… you ruined both our lives.”
Margaret “I’ll make it up to you. Remember remember when we were children? You were the one person I really loved.”

Edie–“LOVED!!!!! You never loved anybody but yourself. Margaret “You have all the time in the world to find happiness. You can get rid of this place. You can get rid of it and take a trip.” Edie-“To outer space!” Margaret- “Money’s no object. How much would you like?- “YOU haven’t got that much!” ( Edie smacks the money out of Margaret’s hand.)

Margaret DeLorca: You really hate me, don’t you? You’ve never forgiven me in all these years. Edith Phillips: Why should I? Tell me why I should. Margaret DeLorca: Well, we’re sisters! Edith Phillips: So we are… and to hell with you!

I simply couldn’t choose the 60s and not include a little psycho-melodrama, a bit of Grande Dame Guignol–without including my favorite of all… Bette Davis. Directed by actor/director Paul Henreid this extremely taut suspense thriller starring Bette Davis in two roles is a captivating story that grips you in the guts from beginning to end.

It’s 1964 Los Angeles and Bette plays twin sisters Margaret de Lorca and Edith Phillips.The film opens at Margaret’s husband’s funeral. The two sisters haven’t seen each other in twenty years.

Margaret has married very rich, with the man that Edith had planned on marrying. Edith lives a modest life and is dating a very fine police officer Sgt Jim Hobbson played by the wonderful Karl Malden. He loves his Edie who has a little jazz bar, is kind and simple and doesn’t share the arrogance and ruthless nature like Margaret. Margaret tricked Frank into marrying her, claiming she was pregnant.

One night Margaret comes to visit Edie and insults her by offering her some cheap clothes as a hand off plus Edie learns from the chauffeur that the pregnancy was all a lie. That Margaret ruined her chances of happiness. Adding to Edie’s troubles the property agent has give her the boot, since she’s 3 months late with the rent.

In a moment of rage with several ounces of premeditation -Edie shoots Margaret, assuming her identity, hopping into her sisters chauffeured limo and moving into the great house with servants and wealthy snobbish friends. Unfortunately it’s only a matter of time before Margaret’s smarmy lover Tony (Peter Lawford) shows up and discovers right away about the masquerade. Of course he blackmails Edie for his silence. Also Detective Jim Hobbson starts coming around thinking that Edith’s death was suspicious and not a suicide. What makes the film interesting is how Jim is the one person who could recognize Edie behind the elegant clothing, and at times there is a spark of awareness, but it just might be too late for Edie playing Margaret to turn things around. One particular exchange that is wonderful is the unspoken sympathetic relationship between Edie and Henry the quintessential Butler played Cyril Delevanti who has the most marvelously time worn face.

FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL KILL! with TURA SATANA, HAJI AND LORI WILLIAMS

“What attracts audiences is not sex and not really violence, either, but a Pop Art fantasy image of powerful women, filmed with high energy and exaggerated in a way that seems bizarre and unnatural until you realize Arnold Schwarzenegger Sylvester Stallone, Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal play more or less the same characters!”-Chicago Sun-Times

Russ Meyer’s exploitation film to end all campy exploitation films… When you got a formula that works! And what works for this trashy treasure is that black maned beauty Tura Satana she was a purely powerful figure in the 60s

From Jürgen Müller’s book on 60s cinema he mentions how: The American Film Institute catalogs all movies ever to receive an official U.S. release with a list of plot keywords. Those for Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! include-go go dancer, wheelchair, brother, voyeurism, drunk and disorderly, sadism, mental retardation, lesbian gang, rape, robbery, murder seduction, family affair, desert, gas station, sports vehicle, karate and race car driving!

Three go-go dancers go to the desert to race their sports car. Varla (Tura Satana) Rosie (Haji) (Loved her in Motor Psycho 1965 with Alex Rocco) and Billie (Lori Williams) And just so you know… There is no nudity in this Russ Meyer’s gem. As Müller points out the only set pieces are “plywood shanties and the California desert.” While tooling around out in the sun drenched sand, they meet a couple, Tommy a racing enthusiast (Ray Barlow) and Linda (Susan Bernard). The couple have come out to the desert to do some racing too.

When Varla challenges him to a race, she drives like a devil and one thing leads to another and she kills him. They kidnap Linda and drive into town to fill up on gas. Now they meet a huge muscle bound ape who takes care of his wheelchair bound father (Stuart Lancaster) The gas station attendant tells the women that the muscle bound son who he refers to as ‘the vegetable’ and that the old man is rich and has loads of money stashed away.

They decide to follow them and see if they can grab that supposed fortune. Forcing Linda to play a rich runaway, that they’re taking back home. Unfortunately, the old man is a psychopathic misogynist sexual sadist who kidnaps girls for his son, the vegetable.

Now these three strong and kick ass women must fight their way out of this deviant miasma! The film also casts three bold women who illustrate that women can be violent and forceful and self sufficient. The exploitation films often tantalize the audience with either explicit sex or violence, but if it’s done right, there’s always a subtle lesson and a squint at some sociological challenge to be gleaned. And say, before women were kicking ass in contemporary films, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! offers the idea of objectification in reverse as these three ogle a man’s body, and they can throw a great karate chop and kick to the solar plexus. It’s the ultimate in boldness…

Quotes from FPKK-Varla: I never try anything. I just do it. And I don’t beat clocks, just people! Wanna try me? Billie: (bisexual reference ) You really should be AM and FM. You one-band broads are a drag! Varla: Go get her! Rosie: So I have to get all wet because the Lady Godiva wants to swim?

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? with ELIZABETH TAYLOR as Martha

“You are cordially invited to George and Martha’s for an evening of fun and games.”

“I swear to GOD George, if you even existed I’d divorce you.”

The film is directed by Mike Nichols and based on the play by Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf shadows the poetic intensity of Tennessee Williams. All the characters spew biting blasphemous satire and are each neurotic in their own ways. George a history professor and Martha taunt each other with verbal assaults. The principles are two couples who live in Academia (shot on the campus of Smith College). One couple is tortured by being childless, the other Nick is impotent and Honey’s hips are too small to carry. Something told in confidence while playing games with George and Martha, oh what fun… what ‘camp’ As in the opening of the film Martha arrives home and does a nod to Bette Davis saying,“What a dump.” While Martha is taking off on an iconic symbol of Hollywood she is also condemning her own personal space and the state of her marriage. Only Davis herself could take on the role of Martha and bring it to a whole other level!

Elizabeth Taylor gave a tour-de force performance despite the ugly tagline:The Violet-Eyed Venus Becomes a Boozing, Tired, Greying “Virago”

From American Cinema 1960s Themes and Variations edited by Barry Keith Grant “The actors bite into Albee’s bitchy dialogue with relish, milking each line for it’s fullest release of irony and sarcasm.”

From Newsweek: “Albee is using his harrowing heterosexual couples as surrogates for homosexual partners having a vicious, narcissistic, delightedly self-indulgent spat. He has not really written about men and women, with a potential for love and sex, however withered the potential may be. He has written about saber-toothed humans who cannot reproduce, and who need to draw buckets of blood before they can feel compassion for each other”

Perhaps Albee might have actually been exuding a critical eye to a bourgeois heteronormative world and the majority of a culture that is homophobic, equally vicious and narcissistic. And if anyone could be campy and volatile on screen and still maintain a magnetism, strange poignancy and mesmerizing individual power… I would think it would be Elizabeth Taylor.

Taylor and Burton play a volatile middle aged couple who are marinated in alcohol and use verbal assaults brutal tirades and orgies of humiliation as a form of connecting to one and other. As Jurgen Muller puts it its a “sadomasochistic variation on marriage therapy.”

Elizabeth Taylor (Martha) and Richard Burton (George) steeped in alcohol (Burton in real life struggling with his drinking), use a hapless young couple George Segal (Nick) and Sandy Dennis (Honey) to fuel anguish and emotional pain towards each other, though somehow it is imbued in a mutual odd love. When alone they are miserable so they need an audience to perform their vicious marriage in front of. An American dream gets beaten up and shattered.

Martha capitalizes on using the successful Biology professor Nick as a trigger for George, a sort of vengeful insult to her impotent husband whom she hails misery down upon constantly casting him as a weakling.

George is an associate History professor and Martha’s father happens to be the President of the University which adds a layer or resentment to the dynamic of their turbulent relationship.

The film centers around this one night when Nick and Honey (George Segal and Sandy Dennis) are invited to come over for cocktails.

Nick is a professor in the Biology Department and his wife is a bit of a dormouse. During the course of the evening after having partaken in the Bacchanalian ceremony of getting potted, Nick and Honey become submerged in the hurt games…

Jurgen Muller “For Martha and George, their gruesomely playful dealing with their repressed terrors are part of a shared ritual, which is remarkably suggestive of a kind of psychotherapy. In essence the entire evening is nothing but a series of cruel games, each of which has a weird associative relationship to the real world. Nick and Honey are forced to join in and play by the existing rules.”

IMDb fun tidbit: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) reunites the four following people from Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘ Cleopatra (1963): actors Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, costume designer Irene Sharaff, and composer Alex North. All of whom received Academy Award nominations for their work on Virginia Woolf.

IMDB fun tidbit: In this film, Elizabeth Taylor does an exaggerated impression of Bette Davis saying a line from Beyond the Forest (1949): “What a dump!” In an interview with Barbara Walters, Bette Davis said that in the film, she really did not deliver the line in such an exaggerated manner. She said it in a more subtle, low-key manner, but it has passed into legend that she said it the way Elizabeth Taylor‘s delivered it in this film. During the Barbara Walters interview, the clip of Bette Davis delivering the line from Beyond the Forest (1949) was shown to prove that Davis was correct. However, since people expected Bette Davis to deliver the line the way Elizabeth Taylor had, she always opened her in-person, one woman show by saying the line in a campy, exaggerated manner: “WHAT … A… DUMP!!!”. It always brought down the house. “I imitated the imitators”, Davis said.

Martha: I disgust me. You know, there’s only been one man in my whole life who’s ever made me happy. Do you know that? [pause] Martha: George, my husband… George, who is out somewhere there in the dark, who is good to me – whom I revile, who can keep learning the games we play as quickly as I can change them. Who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy. Yes, I do wish to be happy. George and Martha: Sad, sad, sad. Whom I will not forgive for having come to rest; for having seen me and having said: yes, this will do.

Elizabeth Taylor as Martha: “You’re all flops. I am the Earth Mother, and you are all flops.”

Elizabeth Taylor was only 33 during the film of the movie. Martha in actuality was supposed to in her early 50s.

GAMES with SIMONE SIGNORET as Lisa Schindler  

“I tend to be too mystical.”- Lisa Schindler

Directed by Curtis Harrington, Games is a superb psychological thriller with an incredible cast. Simone Signoret enters the lives of a wealthy NYC couple who like to dabble in mind games. Shortly after her presence in the the house, things turn dark and dangerous. With perhaps a nod to Diabolique 1955 which also starred Signoret.

In Games, Signoret is an offbeat character with an air of mysticism to her. Mysterious, colorful and perhaps a bit dangerous. The set is sort of an important artifice in the film itself as it’s modern pop culture design in the 60s Manhattan brownstone. The set adds to the feeling of displaced reality in a contained world that the young couple have created for themselves. But the degree of danger is heightened once Signoret enters the picture.

IMDb tidbit: The part of Lisa Schindler was written for Marlene Dietrich. Producers vetoed the choice, and Simone Signoret was cast.

IMDb tidbit-According to director Curtis Harrington, the credited set decorator provided by the studio proved unusable so he was given a paid vacation during the production. Costume designer Morton Haack actually did the set decoration but, because this was against union rules, he was not credited for his work.

The claustrophobic fable-like dreaminess of the cinematography is credited to William Fraker if you consider his work on One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest 1975 and Rosemary’s Baby 1968, you can get an idea of how Fraker style with close spaces.

Katherine Ross is Jennifer Montgomery married to Paul (James Caan), socialites in the Manhattan scene. They own an exclusive art collection worth big bucks and throw opulent/decadent parties to impress their friends. One day a cosmetic saleswoman Lisa Schindler (Simone Signoret) shows up at their apartment pretending to know a friend of Jennifer. Once Jennifer realizes that it’s a scam, Lisa suddenly collapses as if from starvation or heat exhaustion. The Montgomery’s allow Lisa to rest at their apartment until she is feeling better.

While staying with the young couple, they show her a peak into their little parlor games. Lisa enters into this bourgeois constructed fancy seamlessly as she offers them a pair of guns. They are “Old but Valuable” she tells them.

When the delivery boy Norman (hunky Don Stroud -meow) comes to the apartment they use one of the guns, thinking it is loaded with blanks, and he is shot and killed.

Since this film is all about illusion and the art of misdirection I won’t give away too much of the plot. Let’s just say that Lisa begins to play a larger part in the couples lives now, and Norman winds up encased in a large plaster cast of himself from head to toe. Being art collectors it wouldn’t look odd for Paul to be crating and transporting a life size statue. The couple is also now fearful that Lisa has the goods on them to either go to the police, or even try blackmail.

Did I mention that Lisa is also a medium, tarot cards are a feature in the film. Oh yes, and now Lisa senses the presence of a restless disturbed soul who is now hanging around. Lisa contacts the spirit using a crystal ball and Jennifer winds up having a vision of Norman who had been shot through the eye. His bloody eyed ghost continues to torment Jennifer.

Games had been Curtis Harrington’s first big budget film. The interiors are spectacular with the pop art of the 60s and the apartment set up like a modern Gothic funhouse with candles and masks and Organ music, it sets a moody air of trickery and self-indulgence.

The film also possess quite a great cast with Estelle Windwood who plays the eccentric cat lady next door, Marjorie Bennett is the Montgomery’s maid, Ian Wolfe and Kent Smith.

An interesting theme that gives the story it’s almost fable-like quality is how at the moment Jennifer pricks her finger on a rose thorn, that’s the moment when Lisa appears. Lisa, who is a liar trying to gain access to her home is foreboding. Lisa has a mesmerizing presence as she may not be who she says she is, and there is a romanticism surrounding her because she is mysterious and her eyes and eternal pouty lips are so compelling. She appears as if she is an otherworldly fortune teller who knows the secrets of the world.

Though the couple enjoy their games, it is Lisa who tells them that their entertainments are juvenile and the stakes are too low, these things don’t interest her. She is a Virago, an elegant intruder who raises the stakes on the Montgomerys and forces them to stretch over the boundaries of morality.

Simone Signoret was wonderful in Les Diaboliques 1955 and won the Oscar for her performance in Room at the Top 1959. I loved her in “Thérèse Raquin” and her supporting role in Ship of Fools 1965 ( a film I’ll be covering in a special collection of 60s films I love)

Review from Bosley Crowther of The New York Times …{…} A strong enigmatically humoress performance from Simone Signoret who gives authority to the eerie make-believe -September 18, 1967

BONNIE & CLYDE with FAYE DUNAWAY  as Bonnie Parker

They’re young… they’re in love… and they kill people.

They met in 1930. She was stark naked, yelling at him out the window while he tried to steal her mother’s car. In a matter of minutes they robbed a store, fired a few shots and then stole somebody else’s car. At that point they had not yet been introduced.

Bonnie Parker: I don’t have no mama. No family either. Clyde Barrow: Hey, I’m your family. Bonnie Parker: You know what, when we started out, I thought we was really goin’ somewhere. This is it. We’re just goin’, huh? Clyde Barrow: I love you.

Directed by Arthur Penn this is a biopic of the notorious couple of thrill killers who went on a spree as they traveled across the country robbing banks and spreading violence in the wake of their criminal careers.

Faye Dunaway started a fashion trend with her magnificent wardrobe designed by Theodora Van Runkle. Thousands of berets were sold worldwide after Faye Dunaway wore them in this film.

Dede Allen did a fantastic job editing the film so it traveled like a car out of control keeping the pace as exciting as the story line itself. Dunaway is probably at her most sensual. That dangerous pout and ‘I dare you’ demeanor on her face is iconic.

During the early 30s, 1934 to be exact Bonnie Parker works as a waitress. Clyde Barrow has just been released from prison. With the instant magnetism that usually creates a ‘Folie à deux –they are drawn to each other at once, when they meet. Bonnie is drawn to Clyde’s criminal history and Clyde feels comfortable with the way Bonnie accepts who is he and how he lives his life.

There is a sexual problem between the two -though they feel kindred with each other, Clyde can’t seem to get it up. Clyde being impotent was also alluded to that he might actually bisexual. Well whether they’re hitting the sheets or not, they begin an onslaught of criminal activity and their sexual energy is channeled into hitting banks and living a life of crime. They form a little gang, which includes C.W. Moss (Michael J Pollard ) a mechanic who can take care of the getaway cars they steal and Buck Barrow played by Gene Hackman one of Clyde’s older brothers who’s heart really isn’t into wielding large guns and robbing banks. Buck’s wife, Blanche, tags along reluctantly. She is played by the wonderful Estelle Parsons.

Bonnie Parker: [to Clyde] You’re just like your brother. Ignorant, uneducated hillbilly, except the only special thing about you is your peculiar ideas about love-making, which is no love-making at all.

The story of Bonnie Parker smoking a cigar in a picture is accurate. She did it as a joke. But after the shootout at the bungalow in Joplin, MO, police found the photos the gang had taken and published the photo of Bonnie, thereby leading to her unearned rep as a “Cigar Smokin’ Gun Moll”.

BARBARELLA with JANE FONDA & ANITA PALLENBERG-as the Great Tyrant

Barbarella still maintains itself as one of the great cult sci-fi/fantasy films of all time!

Barbarella is a five star double rated astronautic aviatrix on a top secret mission- to find Durand Durand on the evil planet of Tau Ceti before he uses his new laser weapon!

The Great Tyrant: Hello, pretty pretty. Barbarella: Hello… The Great Tyrant: Do you want to come and play with me? For someone like you I charge nothing. You’re very pretty, Pretty-Pretty. Barbarella: My name isn’t pretty-pretty, it’s Barbarella.

Our Heroine who’s purity proves to be her greatest weapon-from
Jürgen Müller

Director Roger Vadim creates a psychedelic sci-fi Opera, acid trip exploitation frolic with his Barbarella who is an unflappable super-heroine! Based on a popular French comic series by Jean Claude Fores. And a screenplay by both Vadim and Terry Southern. The film showcases the best of the pop art, lava lamp, shag carpet, beads and free love era. Everything from the set design, visual effects art department, too many to mention here so check out the IMDb list –that allow Barbarella and (my heart beats faster –John Phillip Law) as the dreamy angel Pygar to romp in this violent and sexual wonderland of phantasmagoria and sin….

Barbarella opens with one of the most provocative scenes for it’s day, as Jane Fonda does a cosmic space aged weightlessness striptease. The film is painted with surreal fluff and pop art erotica… I get nostalgic when watching this gem, and I wish I could fly with Pygar too! (Oh my!)

She’s a 41st century astronaut with the BEST wardrobe by Gloria Musetta & Paco Rabane. Her mission is to find the mastermind Durand Durand in the city of Sogo, an interplanetary Sodom & Gomorrah. Barbarella may come off as casual but she is anything but. In a place where new sins and ways to torture people are created every hour, including a machine like a pipe organ that can pleasure you to death! Barbarella does find her sexuality awakened by all this chaos, as she comes from a world where sexual contact has been reduced to popping a pill and touching hands…

She must navigate this treacherous terrain and not be thwarted by the evil Durand Durand ( played mischievously by Milo O’Shea or The Great Tyrant pulled off to a tee by the sexy Anita Pallenberg who sleeps in a bubble like dream chamber and is lusting after Barbarella.

I must mention that the flesh eating dolls with teeth are almost as frightening as zombies and just for edification, they predate the film Doll 1987 which I adore from the bottom of my little MonsterGirl heart or any of Puppetmaster films using very similar reanimated souls in killer dolls with sharp teeth or grotesque weaponry.

“THERE’S MANY DRAMATIC SITUATIONS THAT BEGIN WITH SCREAMING!”

Lobby card stills and set photographs survive, showing footage of a seduction scene between Barbarella and the Black Queen on a bed. However this footage has never appeared in any print of the film.

THE BRIDE WORE BLACK with JEANNE MOREAU as Julie Kohler

Priest hears Julie’s confession– “Revenge is hopeless revenge is futile where does it end. it would be necessary to avenge too many wrongs, too many crimes. Too much ignorance. The evil thoughts of people. No you must give up this sinister mission  you’ve taken on yourself”

Julie-“It’s not a mission. It’s work. It’s something I must do”

Priest–“Give it up”
Julie–“That’s impossible, I must continue til it’s over”
Priest–“Have you have no remorse in your heart?… don’t you fear for your soul?”
Julie-“NO… no remorse, nor fear.”
Priest-“you know you’ll be caught in the end”
Julie-“The justice of men is powerless to punish, I’m already dead. I stopped living the moment David died. I’ll join David after I’ve had my revenge.”

François Truffaut directs the Cornell Woolrich novel. Using an absolutely fluid homage to Hitchcock, even using the great Bernard Herrmann for the musical score.

It’s no secret that Francois Truffaut admired Alfred Hitchcock’s work and with The Bride Wore Black it was his very complimentary homage to the director. Even the score was done by Bernard Hermann. Jeanne Moreau glides around with ease as the anti-heroine you care for. At least I do.

There are the typified plot devises as the use of cloaked identity, retribution and redemption. It is a superb crime thriller with striking imagery laid out by cinematographer Raoul Coutard. With some frames as beautiful as paintings, and at the central core is Moreau  beautiful, bold and earnest in her mission to exact revenge on the men who were responsible for killing her husband on their wedding day and ruining her life ever after.

But there is a dark humor that runs through the narrative, and the use of irony. Like a good mystery thriller it utilizes very classic iconographic motifs that run through out the film. The Bride Wore Black is enigmatic as Moreau’s presence antidotes the morbidity of the murders and the sense of calculated desire for revenge. She is a captivating figure of sadness and passion put out at the height of it’s flame. Once passion for her late husband, and now passion for revenge. It’s playful and sexy.

THE SWIMMER with JANICE RULE as Shirley Abbott

Shirley Abbott: Did you know I went to spy on you once in the lobby of the theater? Ned Merrill: [Surprised] Spy on me? Shirley Abbott: It was a long time ago… You were meeting your family to take them to the ballet. I saw your daughters in their white gloves and patent-leather slippers, and that aging Vassar-girl wife of yours in her understated little suit. And you… there you were, shaking hands with people, smiling, saying hello. One hour before that you had been in bed with me. *I* put that smile on your face, you DAMNED HYPOCRITE!… Listen, Ned, I want you to get out of here now. Swim the pool, do whatever you have to do, but get out!

THE SWIMMER, Janice Rule, Burt Lancaster, 1968.

Based on the story by John Cheever and directed by Frank Perry (David and Lisa 1962, Man on a Swing 1974) who deals very much with narratives that delve into the complex psyches of his characters. Janice Rule is yet another actress that I’ve come to appreciate of late. After Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster) who seems to be either running away from or running toward something, decides to swim home by way of every neighbors pool until he reaches his own house, one of his last and most meaningful stops is at Shirley Abbott’s house. They had carried on a very tumultuous affair and the scars are still very raw for her. This film is quite unique in the way that the story unfolds, as we know nothing really about Ned, yet we see him through the eyes of his neighbors and friends. As if they know things that they dare not say, and we the spectator have to wait until we finally understand what is happening or what has happened. Along the way he meets up with various characters, but none as potent or emotionally charged as when he visits Shirley, who is not ready to open herself up to him again.

Shirley Abbott: Did you know I went to spy on you once in the lobby of the theater? Ned Merrill: [Surprised] Spy on me? Shirley Abbott: It was a long time ago… You were meeting your family to take them to the ballet. I saw your daughters in their white gloves and patent-leather slippers, and that aging Vassar-girl wife of yours in her understated little suit. And you… there you were, shaking hands with people, smiling, saying hello. One hour before that you had been in bed with me. *I* put that smile on your face, you DAMNED HYPOCRITE!… Listen, Ned, I want you to get out of here now. Swim the pool, do whatever you have to do, but get out!

THE SWIMMER, Janice Rule, 1968

SWEET CHARITY  with PAULA KELLY as Helene AND SHIRLEY MaClaine as Charity & CHITA RIVERA as Nickie

Fandango Taxi Girls: “Hey Big Spender, Spend a little time with me. Fun! Laughs! Good times! Fun! Laughs! Good times!”

Directed by Bob Fosse this was his first major musical, written by Neil Simon for the stage. Based on Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria

Dance hall girl Charity Hope Valentine (MaClaine) is just barely making ends meet, always down on her luck. She patiently awaits the wealthy guy who will come along and rescue her from this sad and unsavory life.

Along side Charity for the struggle are Paula Kelly as Helene and Chita Rivera as Nickie.

The choreography is out of this world, I have been a sucker for Broadway ever since I was tiny, a gift my theatre mother bestowed on me. And the memorable music by Cy Coleman and costumes by Edith Head what else do you need to be BOLD…..

THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE with BERYL REID, SUSANNA YORK, and CORAL BROWNE

Robert Aldrich loves his collections of misfits and outliers of society. In this frank and uncomfortably funny story Beryl Reid plays a famous BBC soap opera character that they are killing off in the next season. She is a belligerent alcoholic and closet lesbian in a relationship with a much younger woman, who dresses in baby doll clothes. Until Coral Browne who plays BBC executive Mercy Croft comes sniffing around and has a strange fixation on George’s girlfriend Alice ‘Childie’ McNaugt (Susannah York) herself… The film has Aldrich’s inherent condemnation for the movie and show biz industry that he weaves into many of his films.

This is a frank and brave statement about being a lesbian in the 60s. During a time when being queer in cinema meant that they were emotionally disturbed, self-loathing, monstrous, perverted, and/or worthy of either suicide or death come knocking. Sister George examines the life of a belligerent, alcoholic older woman in show business who lives in a private hell of her own making, until she can no longer contain the situation and is at the mercy of a culture that has no use for older women let alone an older “butch dyke….”

Beryl Reid is extraordinary as she delivers barbs and vitriol but at the point of them are lasting poignant revelations, about a lonely woman who is about to lose everything.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Everett Collection / Rex Features ( 534946B )
THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE, (ctr) Susannah York, Beryl Reid, Coral Browne – 1968
FILM STILLS

CORAL BROWNE HAS THE PERFECT REPRESENTATION OF THE 60S CHIC LESBIAN- MAKE UP AND HAIR STYLE -WELL KEMPT CHILDIE IS BEAUTIFUL BUT THE INFANTILIZATION OF HER CHARACTER MAKES HER A RATHER DEVIANT FIGURE

The Killing of Sister George can be considered a kind of ground breaking film for the sixties. The original play by Frank Marcus starred Beryl Reid who won a Tony Award on Broadway, though the word lesbian was never mentioned. But it changed Reid’s career who had for many years been a popular actress on British Variety shows. Her agent warned her not to take a risk with such an “unwholesome” subject, but she did take a brave move to play a difficult character.

The film was the sixth to receive an X rating from the MPAA.

Reid wrote in her autobiography So Much Love “In Bath, we were deafened by the old chaps in their bath chairs being wheeled out by their nannies. Their urine bottles rattling as they went saying “disgusting, disgusting…”

After a long run in West End at the Duke of York in 1965 Reid went to America and opened at New York’s Belasco in October 1966, it was received with much praise. Robert Aldrich directed the film version with the screen play by Lucas Heller in 1968.

The story is about an aging closeted lesbian actress in a very popular BBC soap opera playing the sweet natured district nurse who’s joyful demeanor has her bouncing on her bicycle all around the little community touching everyone’s lives, spreading cheer and making sure all are healthy.

In private she stirs up trouble, by being hostile, loud and aggressive going into alcoholic tirades about this or that which cause her downfall. The very stylish predatory BBC executive Mercy Croft (Coral Browne) judges George and her crime is not so much that she is gay, it’s because she is being offensively BUTCH! Which is another layer of criticism and commentary about being a lesbian in the 60s.

George is rather vulgar and uncontrollable on and off the set, including the sexual assault of nuns in the back of a taxi and belligerence toward her fellow cast members.

But George’s private life has caused a commotion at the studio as well as her attack on two nuns in a taxi cab. It seems that George’s personal problems are spilling out into the real world. George is now going to be written out of the show and a polished BBC executive starts menacing and insinuating herself into Georgles life in order to ensure her demise, both personal and professionally. Mrs. Mercy Croft (Coral Browne) is sent to break the news to George.

No excuses, George is foul-tempered and inappropriate, but she’s also terrified, and so she takes it out on her girlfriend Childie (Susannah York) whom Mrs. Croft is all too ready to console. For authenticity there is a scene filmed at a famous lesbian club where Aldrich used patrons as extras, The Gateways, where Mrs. Croft angles herself in order to steal Childie away from George.

George loses her girlfriend and her job. And is demoted to impersonating a “flawed and credible cow.” The idea of her playing a “cow,” doesn’t get past my critical eye, that older women are all cows. Not that I think Aldrich believes this, in fact he’s been a director who shines light on that ugly picture of how women are perceived in the industry. It’s partly what drives most of his protagonists batty!

Anyhoo… George’s ‘moos’ bring down the curtain on a genuinely poignant moment that can escape the most cynical. Aldrich had a love scene written into the film but Reid flatly refused to do it,even if it meant losing the role. Now from reading Frightening the Horses Gay Icons in the Cinema by Eric Braun, he writes that the role was

… coveted by Bette Davis who had it put about as a fait accompli that she would do the film. Davis mad the mistake of saying to Robert Aldrich “I won’t be wearing those awful clothes Beryl Reid wears on stage” He replied “ No, you won’t” because she’ll be wearing them.” However Reid held firm about the sex scene. Ironically Coral Browne was more than happy to snog with Susannah York. if on a closed set. Reid saw that it would be a good publicity angle for the film but insisted that “I never did think all that nipple sucking was necessary”

People assumed that Reid was actually gay in real life. From her autobiography. She tells a story that while in New York, a cab driver asked “May I kiss you? I’ve never kissed a lesbian before” she replied “well, you may , if you like, but you still haven’t.”

Sister George’s heart-felt and ever cheery disposition onscreen is a complete departure from her impudent and puffed up uncivil temperament off camera. George is over bearing and controlling, and a foul mouthed alcoholic who is sadistically possessive of her much younger girlfriend, Childlie. A character who’s infantilization is explicitly displayed by her wearing skimpy baby doll night gowns and having a fetish for dolls. I suppose that George rather likes to keep her in that subordinate position so there won’t be a threat of Childie ever leaving her. .

The Studio executives ever watchful and her younger lover are all suggestive of George’s growing anxiety at the prospect of losing her hold on her job and the domestic life she has secretly contrived at home. Because of the fuss, the BBC decides to kills off her character. But George doesn’t leave quietly; At a studio going away party she verbally assaults the BBC execs. Especially the one who has had the nerve to offer her the part as the voice of Clarabelle the cow…  in a children’s series.

In the ironic unhappy ending, the film shows a semi-graphic sexual encounter or lesbian eroticism between Coral Browne and Susannah York, in George’s flat no less. Mercy Croft will now possess Childie as she takes her away to her fabulous apartment where she will be ever so much more discreet.

George eventually follows her fate as well… She commands the empty studio set and in her final act of rage, smashes the set with all the props that represented her career, now her death. In a powerful scene she quietly expresses her last thoughts… ‘moos’

The film shows how there’s such a painful struggle between repression and displaying or un-closeting George’s resistance against being marginalization by the conformist culture and domestic life.

“Sister George like the years other films The Sergeant with Rod Steiger show being gay as both torturing and tortured state.”-Eric Braun

The side of George who longs for acceptance and affection is rarely seen in the film, what has manifested as her desire became her misdirected crass humor, her overcompensation of the role of the man in the domestic partnership, she is seen as a “dyke” who bullies and intimidates, and who is so self-loathing that even her intimate dealings with Childie at times turn abusive, as when she makes Childie eat the butt of her cigar. Paging Dr Freud, we have a case of oral fixation and phallus envy!

Also as an older performer she must face her obsolescence as well. So there are two whammy’s operating in the film that condemn Sister George a) the fear of losing her star status and b) she has fears of being replaced by younger lovers… In private she is loud aggressive, butch who goes into alcoholic escapades and petty tyrades that precipitate her downfall. The interference of the predatory BBC exec Mercy Croft see her crime not from being queer but from being so offensively BUTCH

QUICK NOTE : BECAUSE I LOVE BARBARA STEEL SO MUCH I JUST HAD TO GIVE HER A SHOUT OUT FOR HER DANCE NUMBER IN FREDERICO FELLINI’S 8 1/2.  For it is that scene that inspired the exact performance of Uma Thurman and Travolta in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. As cool as that scene is, you saw it first in 1963

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Constance Powers as Kelly and Virginia Gray as Candy the madame in Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss

The Dolls, well not the pills, the actual dolls- Barbara Parkins, Sharon Tate and Patty Duke in Valley of the Dolls

Whether the women of cinema in the 60s were beginning to bare their wounds and show signs of a resilient empowerment, whether strippers, professional girls, nice women in their old maid 40’s (insert my laughter then my snarling nostrils), housewives or superheroes, women who chose to claim their bodies back and make choices based on their own sexual and individual freedom. It all started up again in the 60s. Even is the role itself was a risk taker for the actress that might bury their career or turn them into icons. You may see a pattern of rolls showcasing, women who are sexually liberated, hard working whores, crazy, outliers or dear lady they’re just past their prime which was what back then 35?. Again I snarl… but this is was the slim pickin’s for actresses and regretfully so, still seems to be the case.

In the past I’ve written extensively on a few BOLD women, the actresses themselves an particularly the roles they chose to inhabit. Of course I mean Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in Robert Aldrich What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) Even Maidie Norma as Elvira Stitt showed a pair of brass balls when it came to not taking any of Jane’s inevitably dangerous mischief. Add Mary Astor as the gusty Mayhew who doesn’t forget a grudge in the next Aldrich Grande Guignol offering Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte with Agnes Moorehead as Charlotte’s devoted maid Velma, and Olivia de Havilland as Charlotte’s ruthless cousin Miriam.

I’ve always talked about the incredibly subtle role of Lilith brought about by Jean Seberg who did a superb job as an emotionally disturbed sexually indulgent young girl living at a high end sanitarium.

Patricia Neal had hysterical blindness since the death of her child. Her husband flirting with her younger sister Sammatha Eggar. in Psyche 59 (1964). In a heartbreaking role Barbara Barrie chooses to marry Bernie Hamilton and must stand up to racism and the threat of her first husband trying to win custody of her little girl. And Carol Lynley didn’t shrink like a violet when her little girl Bunny went missing when no one else would believe her, in Bunny Lake is Missing 1965

I’ve shown my love of Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8,(1960) and Barbara Stanwcyk with Capucine in Walk on the Wild Side 1962. Kim Stanley is completely off the wall yet exhibits a queasy poignancy in Seance on a Wet Afternoon. I”ll always have my favorite lady who just bared her soul, took life as it came and showed she was better than anybody! Constance Towers as Kelly in Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss. Can’t forget the gang from Valley of the Dolls!

SPECIAL MENTIONS GO OUT TO THESE FINE FILMS I’ve either covered before from the 60s or THEY JUST DESERVE A MENTION!

1960
THE TRUTH OR LE VERITE WITH BARDOT “Suppose I’m a tramp… why can’t I be in love?”
*PSYCHO WITH JANET LEIGH **BUTTERFIELD 8 WITH LIZ TAYLOR *PLAYGIRL AFTER DARK WITH JAYNE MANSFIELD* CONSPIRACY OF HEARTS WITH LILI PALMER, SYLVIA SYMS AND YVONNE MITCHELL

1961
CLAUDELLE INGLISH WITH DIANE MCBAIN*THE SINS OF RACHEL CADE WITH ANGIE DICKINSON
*BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S WITH AUDREY HEPBURN *SANCTUARY WITH LEE REMICK AND ODETTA
*THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS STONE WITH VIVIEN LEIGH

1962