by Victoria Silverwolf

Two For The Price Of One

The tradition of double features in American movie houses goes back at least as far as the early 1930's. Under the old system, theaters were forced to purchase a lower budget movie (the B film) in order to be allowed to purchase a higher budget movie (the A film.) Often, there would also be cartoons, newsreels, short subjects, and so forth.

A typical double feature from 1934.

That began to change with the court case United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1948.) The United States Supreme Court decided that the practice of studios owning their own theaters, and having full power over what films a theater could show, violated antitrust laws.

As a result, major studios no longer had an incentive to produce B movies. Audiences still wanted double features, so smaller studios supplied low budget films that could be shown with A movies from the big companies. Eventually, theaters started showing two B movies together.

A typical double feature from 1955.

Doubled And Redoubled

Once I saw the trailer for a double feature of horror movies that opened early this month, I knew I had to rush out and see it. It turned out that each film was, itself, something of a double. I'll explain what I mean when I discuss them in turn.

Do you prefer Horror or Terror?

Nerves Of Steele

I've spoken elsewhere about the striking British actress Barbara Steele, who has appeared in a number of horror films, particularly in Italy. Her latest starring role is in The She Beast, a British/Italian co-production, filmed in Italy and Yugoslavia.

The Italian title, which even I can translate.

We begin with pretty simple opening titles, accompanied by the usual scary music.

Simple, but at least you know you're watching the right movie.

The words Transylvania — Today pop up, setting the stage. This helps, because the first thing we see is a nifty bright yellow motor car that looks like it rolled right out of the 1920's. Add to that the fact that the driver, an older, professorial type, with gray hair and beard, is wearing the kind of shortened trousers that I believe are known as plus fours, and which I associate with golfers of the same era.

This fellow drives up to a cave and enters, where he picks up a very old book and starts reading. (It turns out that this is the man's home, complete with a skull here and there to add the proper mood.) This conveniently gives us our back story in the form of a flashback.

Cut to the late 18th century. Some folks are at an open-coffin funeral, when a young boy rushes in to say that she has taken his brother. Everybody seems to know exactly who she is; the local witch, who looks more like a monster than a human being.

Jay Riley as the She Beast. Yes, she's played by a man, under very heavy makeup.

Depending on who's talking about her, the witch's name is either Vardella or Bardella; it's hard to tell. Anyway, a typical mob of villagers, carrying torches and pitchforks and such, grab the witch and strap her into the seat of a wooden thing that kind of looks like a catapult. After driving a long metal spike through her body, which you might think would be enough punishment, they dunk her into the adjoining lake several times.

A couple of guys watch the fun going on below.

Cut to 1966. A couple of young folks are driving around in a black Volkswagen. They're newlyweds, who have decided to spend their honeymoon in Transylvania. (Obviously, they've never seen a horror movie.) They discover that a highway to Bucharest shown on the map doesn't actually exist, so they're stuck here for the night.

Barbara Steele as Veronica and Ian Ogilvy as Philip.

A local fellow directs them to the only hotel in the vicinity. It's run by a creepy guy who gives them tea with garlic bulbs in it.

That bit of goofiness gives me the opportunity to explain what I mean by this movie having a double nature. It constantly makes wild changes in mood from deadly serious to silly, as if it can't make up its mind if it's a spoof or not. This goes far beyond the occasional touches of comedy relief often seen in this kind of film, and is rather disconcerting.

Mel Welles as Ladislav Groper, the innkeeper. Hey! He was in The Little Shop of Horrors, too!

The fellow we saw at the start of the film shows up and starts chatting to them. It turns out that he's Count Von Helsing, the scion of a local family of aristocratic exorcists. Veronica jokingly asks if he knows the Draculas, and he replies that his ancestors exorcised them. We'll find out later that he lives in a cave because the Communist government took away his ancestral castle.

John Karlsen as Count Von Helsing. Hey! He was in Crack in the World, too!

Mister Groper — the surname seems to be a deliberate reference to his lechery — gets his kicks by peeking at the newlyweds during a moment of intimacy.

What the butler — I mean, the hotelier — saw.

Philip beats the guy up badly — we even see a big blood stain on the wall after he bashes the voyeur's head against it — and the couple decides to leave early the next day. Apparently, Groper fiddled with their Volkswagen, because it doesn't start at first. Once they get it running again, it turns out that the steering wheel doesn't work. They nearly run into a truck, and wind up crashing into the lake where the witch was killed.

Von Helsing rescues Philip, but Veronica appears to be drowned. Dredging up what they expect to be her body, it turns out to be the witch instead. Barbara Steele fans, among whom I count myself, will be disappointed to find out that she disappears from the film until the very end. Rumor has it that she only worked on the movie for one grueling eighteen hour day.

If I was able to follow the plot correctly, it seems that the only way to bring Veronica back is to revive the dead witch, then exorcise her and drive her back into the lake, where the body exchange can take place again. Von Helsing brings the witch back to life, but she attacks him and escapes.

The witch starts killing people. In particular, she slices up Groper with a sickle. (We've just seen him attempt to rape his niece — see what I mean about changes in mood? — so you won't feel too sorry for him.) In the movie's most outrageous joke, the sickle falls to the floor, right on top of a hammer, forming a perfect image of the famous symbol of Communism.

Comrade!

Philip and Von Helsing drug the witch into a coma, then stick her in a refrigerator. The local cops find her, so it's up to our heroes to steal her back, while also absconding with a police van. The cops have to use Von Helsing's yellow roadster. At this point, the movie becomes pure farce, with the police acting as the Kommie Keystone Kops.

Our heroes in the police van.

The cops in the roadster. Note that the same guy on a motorcycle passes them both.

After this slapstick interval, Philip and Von Helsing dump the witch in the lake and Veronica returns, apparently without any knowledge about what happened, and surprised to find herself soaking wet. Then the movie concludes with one of those Is it really over? kind of endings.

Besides failing to decide if it's a comedy or a thriller, this movie suffers from a lack of Barbara Steele. Despite having top billing, she has less screen time than any of the other main characters. I just hope that the thousand bucks she reportedly earned for a hard day's work makes up for what this mixed-up little film might do for her reputation.

Canals of Carnage

Our second feature is The Embalmer, an Italian film from last year, just now making its way to the New World.

The original Italian title, which is also easy to translate.

After a brief introductory scene showing our title character at work, we get the opening titles.

Nice blood-dripping effect.

The movie establishes the basic premise right away. Some kook, disguised in a monk's robe and skull mask, kidnaps young women and drags them to his underground lair, where he embalms them with a secret formula in order to preserve their beauty. (We learn all this because the lunatic constantly talks to himself.)

One tube of embalming fluid, coming right up!

Because the setting is Venice, the way he does this is by swimming around in the canals while wearing a scuba diving outfit and pulling his victim into the water.

What the well-dressed maniac wears, when not scuba diving.

Lucky for him, there are plenty of young women walking along the canals all alone late at night.

She should have taken a taxi — I mean a gondola.

Even though more than one woman disappears this way, the police think they just fell into the canal. Only our protagonist, the usual heroic newspaper reporter, thinks there's a killer at loose. Meanwhile, the embalmer adds to his collection.

What the well-dressed victim wears, after embalming.

After all this scary stuff, the movie slows down for quite a while, as we introduce more characters. Besides the reporter, we've got his boss, the cops, a couple of comedy relief canal workers, and a few others. A group of young female tourists shows up. The reporter starts smooching on the very slightly less young chaperone of the group pretty quickly. There's also an older woman and her nephew, who is interested in antiquities.

In one of many time-wasting scenes, aunt and nephew do the Twist.

Along the way, we'll get a hotel worker who uses a one-way mirror to spy on one of the tourists while she's undressing, and an Elvis-like singer who starts his act by coming out of a coffin. The main reason we have so many minor characters is that somebody has to turn out to be the murderer.

That reminds me of why this movie also has a double aspect. The premise of a mysterious figure in disguise, who will later be revealed as somebody we've met before, is very similar to the sort of thing that comes up in the German krimi films adapted from the works of Edgar Wallace. (My esteemed colleague Cora Buhlert has discussed these movies a couple of times.)

On the other hand, the emphasis on horror rather than mystery suggests a new kind of Italian thriller, best exemplified by the recent shocker Blood and Black Lace. Although this is a very recent subgenre of horror, some folks are calling such movies giallo films. (The word just means yellow in Italian, and comes from the fact that mystery and suspense novels often have yellow covers in Italy.)

The Embalmer has aspects of both krimi and giallo, I think, and maybe it points the way to future combinations of the two.

Back to the movie at hand. In parallel plots, both the reporter, via the canal, and the chaperone, via a secret panel, make their way to the embalmer's lair. (I forgot to mention that the nephew also found it, but paid for the discovery with his life. Oops! I gave away the fact that he wasn't the killer. Sorry about that.)

The comedy relief guys help the reporter find the embalmer's hideout. At the risk of ruining the suspense, neither one of them is the killer either.

Near the end, the movie moves along at a rapid pace, as the chaperone finds herself trapped with the embalmer, and the reporter desperately tries to save her. After a surprisingly downbeat ending, the identity of the killer is revealed.

The chaperone with one of the embalmer's companions.

There's quite a bit of padding in the film, because the plot is very simple. There's some nice black-and-white cinematography, and the climax is exciting, if you have the patience to wait for it.

Coming Attractions

Although this wasn't the greatest double feature I've ever seen, I'm sure that I'll slap down my dollar (movie ticket prices are getting out of hand!) the next time a similar one comes around. Maybe it'll even be a new color film paired with an older black-and-white import, just like this time.

Coming soon!

I understand that this two-year-old German black-and-white film will show up on a double bill with the one above it.

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