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Horror, Movies

[August 18, 1968] The Horror is Real (Targets)

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by Jason Sacks

I’ve reviewed some frightening movies in this magazine before – the existential middle-aged angst of Seconds, the gothic horror of Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf and the eerie uncanny feeling of Planet of the Vampires, among others. But I’ve never reviewed a movie that’s scary in quite the same way as the new movie Targets.

Targets is frightening because it’s so real. It’s loosely based on the story of the Texas Tower Sniper. This real-life horror happened on August 1, 1966, when a seemingly ordinary man, a Marine veteran named Charles Whitman, climbed the long stairs of the Main Building at the University of Texas with rifles and a sawed-off shotgun and then began indiscriminately opening fire during a class break on campus.

Whitman killed 14 people that day, students walking on the campus mall and people shopping along distant Guadalupe Street, people cowering and people walking innocently. 31 more were injured, stark and frightening numbers we all hope will never be reached again.

A news photo from that terrible day in Austin, Texas.

As subsequent news reports shared, Whitman was a man with a bit of a broken life. He was an orphan who was adopted by an exacting family in which the father was never satisfied. He served in the Marines but never saw battle, instead studying engineering. At the time of his shooting, it seems he was in an unhappy marriage and struggling with mental health. And though we might try to guess what caused Whitman to snap that day, in the end, the inner life of Charles Whitman will always be a mystery. And in that lack of closure lies perhaps the greatest horror of all, because Whitman is a Rorschach test, a person onto whom we can project our own confusion, our fears and our worries about the modern world.

The blurry line between fiction and reality

In Targets our killer has the banal name of Bobby Thompson, played by Tim O’Kelly. Thompson lives in the quiet and peaceful San Fernando Valley. He’s in his 20s, lives with his parents and seems like an ordinary young man who suddenly seems to get into his head to… murder his family brutally.

Director Peter Bogdanovich, in his feature debut, does a fantastic job of creating that shock value for viewers, as we are lulled into a calm, false sense of security. Everything at the Thompson house seems very calm and serene on the surface, very 1968 you might say, in which everything seems quite placid on the surface of things.

And just like in our terrible year of assassinations and wars and riots in the streets, below the surface of a seemingly peaceful existence is an unbelievable amount of roiling turmoil desperately trying to escape.

But in this movie, Bogdanovich also brings in another element, one that really gives this film a smartly designed feeling of tension. Because there’s another plot in this film. Boris Karloff essentially plays himself in this movie, in documentary-like scenes in which washed-up old horror actor Byron Orlok decides he is out of step with the times. Nobody likes his outdated style of horror anymore. His work and his style are no longer relevant, so Orlok has decided to return to London to retire.

Mr. Bogdanovich on the left, Mr. Karloff on the right.

But Orlok’s companion, film director Sammy Michaels – played by director Bogdanovich! – persuades Orlok to make one final public appearance in Los Angeles. They decide to attend a premiere of his final film at a drive-in in LA suburb Reseda and arrange his appearance there.

As the day goes on, we witness two parallel threads. In one, we see Orlok make his preparations to attend the premiere and hear him talk about the changes in modern society from his time in the limelight. In the other, deeply chilling thread, we witness Thompson on top of an oil tank in the San Fernando Valley, assassinating innocent people who are just driving down the freeway.

Those assassination scenes feel like they take an eternity because of the smart ways Bogdanovich, designer Polly Plott and cinematographer László Kovács compose the scene: with bland, sun-washed colors, an alienating sense of distance, the random way Thompson seems to be sprawled on the tanker floor. And his escape is also presented in an equally powerful, equally bland way. Though an oil company employee discovers him, that man is dispatched in an un-cinematic manner and Thompson’s escape does not present him in a light that makes the assassin heroic in any way.

Eventually Thompson flees to a movie theatre, the same theatre where Orlok’s film will be premiering. In an ironical fulfilment his own fears, Orlok’s is rendered irrelevant by the real-world horrors of 1968. We see a few scenes of the film. It looks like a Roger Corman adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story, and ten years ago that film would have fit the times well. But 1968 requires sterner horrors. ‘68 requires Rosemary’s Baby and The Hour of the Wolf and the more existential fears of Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey.  It perhaps requires a different type of horror as in The Devil Rides Out. And it requires the profoundly upsetting horror of Targets.

Targets is not a perfect film. It’s a bit fannish feeling, no surprise because Bogdanovch is a prominent writer for film journals and reportedly is working on a documentary of the great director John Ford. Orlok is named after the lead character in the classic 1922 German expressionistic vampire film Nosferatu – a film student reference if I ever heard one – and the slightly postmodern feel of the Orlok scenes take away from the horror of the massacre.

The drive-in before it was full.

But despite that, in this year of Kennedy and King, when Cronkite is talking over scenes from Vietnam every night at 6:00 and American cities are on fire, Targets hits close to the bone. I had real trouble overcoming my sheer personal horror at the events on the screen. In other words, I appreciated the artfulness of this movie but it took every force of will to keep myself in my seat and not walk out on it. Sometimes horror is too difficult to face, or maybe it’s too pervasive to face directly. Maybe we need something more indirect to allow ourselves to appreciate the fear. Poor innocent pregnant Rosemary isn’t like us. But Bobby Thompson? Any of us can snap, for no reason. That evil within every one of us is the most frightening thing I can imagine.

3½ stars – but again, be warned this is a very upsetting film.




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Horror, Movies

[August 14, 1968] The World, the Flesh and Charles Gray (the horror movies Torture Garden and The Devil Rides Out)

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by Fiona Moore

Courtesy of my friends at Royal Holloway’s student and staff film club, I’ve been able to see two horror films recently released in the UK, which will soon have their stateside debut. One is a little patchy but still provides entertainment for the horror fan; the other is already being rightly hailed as a classic of British horror cinema.

Torture Garden

Torture Garden is an anthology movie, a subgenre I quite like as it allows the chance to show shorter, more compact narratives along a particular theme. This one, also, is written by Robert Bloch, a master of short, wickedly pointed, stories.

Burgess Meredith as Doctor Diabolo. Can you guess who he really is?
Burgess Meredith as Doctor Diabolo. Can you guess who he really is?

Through the framing device of a carnival horror-show hosted by Doctor Diabolo (Burgess Meredith), who offers customers a glimpse of their possible sinister fates, this film brings us four narratives linked by a common theme of people being driven by desire or ambition to commit horrible deeds. In the first, a man (Michael Bryant), desperately in debt, murders his uncle (Maurice Denham) to get his hands on his inheritance, only to find out that his uncle’s source of income is more supernatural and sinister than he believed. In the second, an ambitious film starlet (Beverly Adams) learns that Hollywood is, in fact, run by literal immortals, and is given the chance to join them. In the third, a celebrity pianist (John Standing) becomes the object of a rivalry between his fiancée (Barbara Ewing) and a possessed piano. In the final story, a Poe collector (Jack Palance) finds that a rival enthusiast (Peter Cushing) has managed to capture the ultimate piece of Poe memorabilia—the undead writer himself.

As the above should indicate, the film has an excellent cast, and is produced by Milton Subotsky, whom readers of this journal should remember from the two Doctor Who movies. Amicus, the production company, has form on producing anthology movies, having put out Doctor Terror’s House of Horrors three years ago. The strongest segments are the first and last, with the first story featuring a credibly demonic cat, and the final one providing a wry metaphor for the way in which collectors—and fans—enter into exploitative relationships with writers.

Peter Cushing is of course one of the best things in the movie.
Peter Cushing is of course one of the best things in the movie.

The film unfortunately lacks the cohesion of the best anthology movies. While, as I noted, there’s a linking theme between the episodes, it doesn’t particularly connect to the framing story, and, while it shares the concept with Doctor Terror’s House of Horrors of people being shown how to avoid a disastrous fate, the “twist” at the end is nowhere near as clever as the one in the earlier movie. The Hollywood segment is poorly characterised, full of excuses to show women in their underwear, and has an antisemitic subtext that made me rather uncomfortable (I suspect that Bloch, himself of Jewish ancestry, was trying to satirise the idea of a Jewish cabal running Hollywood, but it doesn’t quite manage to convey the right tone). While I quite like the concept of a sentient piano becoming attached to its owner, it’s difficult to find its attacks on its human rival anything other than ridiculous. Two and a half out of five stars.

The Devil Rides Out

Based on a novel by Dennis Wheatley, produced by current kings of the UK horror scene Hammer Films, and starring Christopher Lee, The Devil Rides Out is a much more polished and focused production.

Lee plays Nicholas, Duc de Richelieu, who, together with his friend Rex van Ryn (Leon Greene) has come to the UK to visit his late friend’s son Simon (Patrick Mower), in whom he takes an avuncular interest, only to learn that Simon has fallen in with a Satanic cult. The story follows de Richelieu and van Ryn’s efforts to rescue Simon and a young female cultist named Tanith (Nike Arrighi) from the clutches of Satanic priest Morcata (Charles Gray). Adapted by Richard Matheson, the plot is a fairly straightforward one of (supernatural) good versus (supernatural) evil, without any of the twists and ironies of many recent horror movies, and, much as I enjoy those, I also found the narrative here refreshing and satisfying.

Christopher Lee is horrified at a Satanic orgy
Christopher Lee is horrified at a Satanic orgy

Simon is played by a newcomer on the scene, Patrick Mower, who is certainly one to watch; although handsome and strong-jawed, he has a sinister quality which makes the idea of him falling in with Satanists believable. It’s good to see Christopher Lee playing a hero for once, escaping his usual typecasting as a monster, even if the chemistry between him and Charles Gray isn’t quite as compelling as that between him and Peter Cushing. There is a very well-done giant spider effect at one point, and fans of vintage cars will be delighted by all the 1920s and 1930s roadsters on display. There are elements of the new folk-horror genre in the scenes of English cultists cavorting in the woods of Hampshire.

Less positively, the film draws some associations between non-White people and Satanism that left me rather uncomfortable: the heroes are all English (and upper-class), but the cult boasts African and Indian members, and, when a demon is summoned at one point, it takes the form of a grinning, pop-eyed and semi-clad Black man. The spider aside, some of the effects are rather unconvincing, and the cult has so many members that one wonders how it manages to keep itself secret. There’s a slight hint of the exploitation genre that seems unfortunately popular now, and the fact that the youth in question aren’t inherently evil but are being led astray by an older person (and need to be rescued by another older person) doesn’t do much to mitigate that.

Charles Gray as cult leader Mocata
Charles Gray as cult leader Mocata

Nonetheless, this is Hammer on good form, providing a strong narrative with a satisfying conclusion and a lot of credible shocks and tension. The combination of good source material with a competent screenplay and plenty of talent behind and in front of the camera is a sure winner. Four out of five stars.



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Movies

[June 22, 1968] The Devil, you say (Rosemary's Baby)

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by Amber Dubin

It seems appropriate to mention expectations when discussing a film with such a pregnant subject matter (pun intended). Mine were fairly low to start because I am not a fan of horror movies. This is because the scares from horror films usually suffer two major foibles: the ridiculous and the cliché. Outside of Halloween festivities, I have little patience for silly looking, poorly costumed monsters. I also dislike when a film relies too heavily on violent/grotesque imagery to get a rise out of its audience. It was through this biased lens that I viewed Rosemary's Baby; though I went in expecting disappointment, predictability and lack of inspiration or fear, I was proven wrong on all counts. Rosemary's Baby has a spine chilling relatability that creeped into my psyche and won me over, despite my pessimistic attitude toward it. It has the uniqueness and incontrovertibly high quality writing that give it all the makings of a timeless horror classic.

The slow boil of discomfort begins as we open to an off-putting lullaby, mournfully serenading the viewer as we zoom into a gloomy, dismal, old city skyline. The first couple of scenes increase the viewer's sense of unease by limping along at a clunky and awkward pace into a world that just barely makes sense. The young newlywed couple at the center of the story, Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes), are introduced as they enthusiastically acquire an apartment even though it's clearly run down, overstuffed and not move-in ready at all. Their reactions continue to be disjointed from reality in the subsequent scenes as we are introduced to their old and new friends. They proceed to have very awkward and/or inappropriate conversations with each of them, starting with Hutch (the family friend who brings up some very odd subjects over dinner) and ending with a first meeting with their neighbor Terry (who wastes absolutely no time launching into her sordid past of drug abuse with someone she has not even known for a full hour over laundry with Rosemary). The couple proves to have similar lack of social grace around each other, when their first night they spend at their creepy new apartment, they are eating off a blanket on the floor because they have no curtains or furniture and Rosemary awkwardly declares, "Say! Let's make love" completely apropos of nothing. Personally, I think the subsequent silent disrobing and intertwining of bodies to be not only shocking, but (and deliberately) decidedly un-sexy.


Not the models for marital bliss

It comes to pass that all this awkwardness is by design, as it serves to innure the viewer for strangeness that piles on with every scene and every new character introduced. Like the proverbial frog that gets cooked alive in slowly boiling water, both Rosemary and the viewer are slowly made comfortable with painfully uncomfortable circumstances, and we don't realize what's happening until it's too late.

In the first shock of the movie, the couple go on a late night stroll in order to avoid over-hearing what sounds like chanting coming through the paper-thin walls. As they return from their ramble, they are shocked to find a crowd surrounding the bloody corpse of Terry, the overly chatty girl Rosemary met earlier at the laundry. The elderly couple that Terry was living with react normally to her sudden "suicide" at first: expressing shock and grief when they introduce themselves to the Woodhouses as their neighbors, the Casavets. The next day, however, when Mrs. Casavet appears at Rosemary's door, her behavior is anything but normal. The older woman barges into Rosemary's place and goes through it like she owns it, speaking in nonsensical run-on sentences that are off putting and yet Rosemary doesn't react at all. Yet most unnerving is when she casually mentions having Terry cremated and bequeaths Rosemary with Terry's foul-smelling "good luck charm" that must not have been lucky enough because Terry was still wearing it when she died.


Dead women's necklaces make great house-warming gifts

It is with this bizarre house-warming gift that the Casavets begin their campaign to integrate themselves into every waking moment of Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse's lives. Guy is initially reluctant to even meet them, but once he and Mr. Casavet bond over cigars they become fast friends. Bizarrely, Guy becomes so close with the septuagenarian at one point that he begins going over their neighbor's house even without Rosemary with him. It is important to note here that, for me, the most upsetting part about this movie is the way the Woodhouses talk to each other. Like many couples, they at first appear to be hopelessly in love, but as you get to know them throughout the film, their relationship is rotten to its core. Guy proves himself to be a selfish, mean, horrible man. Rosemary, in her desperate attempt to justify her continued adoration of him, consistently makes excuses for his bad behavior. The most egregious example of this dynamic comes when they decide to start trying for a baby (basically so that Rosemary will have something to do when Guy is off auditioning for roles). By apparent coincidence, the first night they are set to start trying, Rosemary's neighbor gives her a homemade dessert that makes her almost collapse afterwards.


If you ever find yourself waking up like this, it's time for a divorce

The following night Rosemary is in a fitful sleep where she dreams of being assaulted by the devil while all of her neighbors stand around her naked and chanting. She wakes up naked and sore with her back scratched up and when questioned, her husband says he 'didn't want to miss the baby-making night.' I had an almost identical level of revulsion as Rosemary when faced with the realization that her husband would take such liberties over her body without her knowledge or consent. It turns out that night marked the conception of a very difficult pregnancy, one which not only sees the steep decline in their marriage, but also Rosemary's sanity and health, while she slowly becomes completely subjugated by the incessant presence of the Casavets in her life. Bounced between her husband and her intrusive neighbor, her self-esteem is whittled down to nothing as she is constantly insulted and isolated from her own family and friends. Her husband refuses to look her in the eye for weeks, and when she gets an adorable haircut to feel more fashionable, the first thing out of his mouth is "You look horrible! This is the worst decision you've made." Ever the non-supportive, selfish man she married, Guy uses her new "hideous" hairstyle to ignore her even more as her pregnancy progresses, throwing himself into his acting career as if nothing else matters.


Despite being thoroughly mod, this look deeply displeased Rosemary's husband

Rosemary's husband and neighbors add insult to injury when they convince her to change the doctor she goes to for regular check ups, and he repeatedly ignores her pleas for help when she has unusual pains, telling her every concern she has is in her head. At one point, she rebels, throwing a huge house party with friends she hasn't seen in years, against the wishes of her oppressors. Her friends are appropriately horrified to see what she looks like, seeing how pale she is and how sunken her eyes. Breaking down into tears, she confesses that she's been in horrible pain since the beginning of her pregnancy and can't believe this level of agony is normal.

Her friends literally lock her husband out of the room and validate all of her fears, telling her how her husband and Doctor are treating her is not at all normal and she needs to get out of there as soon as possible. It appears to already be too late, however, as when the pain lessens the next day, she second-guesses her friends and settles into the routine set by everyone else in her life. The way this party resolves reveals itself to be the first in a trend of stranger and stranger happenings in the background of Rosemary's pregnancy. Little by little, every contradictory voice in her life is silenced, beginning with the party go-ers and ending with Hutch the family friend from the beginning.


A desperate call for help that goes unanswered

Hutch's re-entry into Rosemary's life triggers a headlong fall down a rabbit hole of conspiratorial theories and occult explanations for the increasingly bizarre behavior of Rosemary's doctor, neighbors and husband. Within hours of his visit to Rosemary's house, he vows to do research on her neighbors and then almost immediately falls into a coma he never wakes up from. Speaking from beyond the grave, he wills her a book about witches, filled with secret messages implying that the Casavets belong to a well established coven that's been in the area for ages. Thus ensues a Rosemary's frantic bout of research, which leaves the viewer wondering whether she's actually figuring out what's going on or completely losing her mind.

The moment of truth comes when she finally presents her findings to a new doctor, only for him to turn her over to the custody of her original doctor and her husband, as a raving lunatic. She is instantly proven right in her suspicions, though when she gets home and the entire coven is in her apartment and descends upon her, pinning her to her own bed by sheer force of numbers. Horrifyingly, she is induced into a coma by her mad-scientist doctor, and when she wakes again she is told she birthed and lost the baby. Because she rightfully believes no one around her at this point, she starts deceiving her captors by pretending to take the "medicine" they feed her and feigning ignorance as to why they take her breast milk "to be thrown in the trash." After days of placating them, she arms herself with a huge kitchen knife and follows the crying noises she's been overhearing sporadically through the walls. She finds an entrance to the neighbor's apartment in the back of one of her closets and stumbles into a room full of people gathered for a baby shower that she wasn't invited to.


Mia Farrow out-doing herself

In the performance of a lifetime, Mia Farrow approaches the black curtained bassinet adorned with an upside down cross in the center of the room. Leaning over its side, her eyes absolutely bulge out of their sockets in an expression of pure, abject terror. Recoiling, she screams, "what did you do to its eyes?!" The gathered crowd enthusiastically exclaim that her child has its father's eyes and erupt into a cacophony of "Hail Satan"s. Dazed, Rosemary stumbles around the room, receiving no comfort from the callous scheming coven as they alternatively mock and jeer at her. Her husband even has the nerve to come up to her and tell her why he signed them up to this whole situation, explaining that "it'll just be as if you lost the baby" and "this will be so good for my career." I believe Rosemary speaks for all of us by promptly spitting in the man's face and shutting him up. In the end, she tentatively approaches the bassinet again because one of the other party guests is shaking it too hard and causing the infant within to cry. You can see the heartbreaking mixture of confusion, fear and motherly love play across Rosemary's face as she resigns herself to some level of acceptance of this situation and the same creepy lullaby that began the film croons over us as we fade to black.


A movie for the ages

This film had so many iconic moments and scenes. If this isn't Mia Farrow's break-out role, then I know nothing of quality acting. I expect great things from her in the future. The script, score and plot were also a cut above. I began my viewing thinking it bizarre and ungrounded and within 15 minutes, I was enthralled, on the edge of my seat and just as anxious to find out what fresh Hell Rosemary was going to be subjected to, even as I was disgusted and disturbed by what she had already endured. Rosemary's Baby is a true tribute to the horror genre and made a believer out of this skeptical critic.

5 stars.




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Movies

[May 22, 1968] Finding a New Way: Witchfinder General

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by Fiona Moore

Witchfinder General is a real game-changer not just for British horror but for horror films in general. This is a movie without monsters, ghosts, psychopathic killers or, even, witches (at least real ones). The terror comes from people’s belief in witches, and what that belief makes them do to other people, and, in making that change, this film is an artistic statement that transcends genre.

The story is set, as a clunky (and rather unnecessary, since the same information is conveyed in the first few scenes) voiceover at the start tells us, in 1645, the height of the English Civil War. It is ostensibly based on the life of a genuine historical figure of the time, Matthew Hopkins, the so-called “Witchfinder General”. He is a minor landowner who made his career travelling around Southeastern England identifying witches using bogus techniques and confessions extracted under duress. In fact, the story bears almost no resemblance at all to the known facts of Hopkins’ life, barring his name, that of his assistant Stearne (in real life their roles were reversed), the location (East Anglia) and the methods used to extract confessions from witches. This is a minor complaint, however—and might not even be a complaint, as the story the movie tells is possibly more disturbing than Hopkins’ actual biography.

Vincent Price and Robert Russell as Hopkins and Stearne

The film’s main positive figure, at least at the outset, is Richard Marshall, a young Roundhead soldier engaged to Sarah Lowes, the niece of a small-town Church of England priest. Sarah’s uncle is accused of witchcraft by his neighbours (we never learn the specific reason for this, which chillingly suggests that it’s a fairly banal local conflict that escalates to horrific extremes) and Hopkins and Stearne arrive, arrest and torture the accused. Sarah, desperate to save her uncle, sleeps with Hopkins; when Stearne, envious and sadistic, rapes her, Hopkins discards his promises to Sarah and has her uncle executed. Richard, hearing of the tragedy but arriving too late to stop it, marries Sarah and swears vengeance on Hopkins. Matters escalate, leading eventually to a bloody confrontation which clearly brings home that violence only begets more violence, and that no one in this story is going to escape without severe damage.

Ian Ogilvy (right) as Richard Marshall

The civil war backdrop is sketched in matter-of-factly. Perhaps surprisingly, given that subsequent British popular culture tends to dislike the Parliamentarians (in Sellars and Yeatman’s phrase, the Cavaliers were Wrong but Wromantic, and the Roundheads Right but Repulsive), the film resists the temptation to lay the blame for the witch hysteria at Cromwell’s door. Richard and his men are more or less positively portrayed, as is Cromwell himself when he turns up for a brief cameo after a successful military campaign. Some of the film’s power arguably lies in the fact that they, and Hopkins, are all ostensibly on the same side, and, while we see very little of the atrocities of the war itself, it is clearly part of what is fueling the communities’ drive to turn on their own. The viewer is also left to fill in some details themselves: for instance, the absence of a lord of the manor in the village where Sarah and her uncle live suggests he was a Royalist, possibly also hinting at why relationships have broken down between the villagers and why Sarah’s uncle is now accused of heresy.

Hilary Dwyer as Sarah Lowe

In casting terms, Vincent Price is credibly chilling as Hopkins, largely because of the way he underplays his role: he talks about torture and murder in the same banal tones as one might discuss a land boundary dispute, and he pretends hypocritically to be serving the public interest. Robert Russell as Sterne is a much more familiar figure from horror films, loathsome and sadistic, but provides a necessary contrast to Price, acting as a kind of expression of Hopkins’ id. Newcomers Ian Ogilvy and Hilary Dwyer, as Richard and Sarah, are very pretty to look at, but they also have the acting chops to handle their characters’ descent as they are subjected to increasing torment and degradation.

Sarah in a beautiful landscape

Michael Reeves’ direction works well, contrasting the beautiful scenery of Southeast England with the awful behaviour of its inhabitants. His best, albeit hardest to watch, efforts come in the film’s climactic scene. In it, Hopkins escalates his method of execution from simply hanging witches to burning them—not at the stake, but strapped to a ladder slowly lowered into the fire. As this takes place, the camera turns its pitiless gaze around the crowd, showing a variety of different reactions: from religious rapture, to horror, to fear, to pleasure. Most horrifyingly, it also shows children absorbing the violence around them. We later see the same children roasting baked potatoes in the execution fire, a detail that is terrifying in its matter-of-fact presentation.

Child spectators at an execution

The story’s contemporary relevance is also clear. Sexism visibly fuels the witch-hunting activities, and prejudice against women and fear of their sexuality in the wider culture allows the likes of Hopkins and Stearne to flourish. Desensitisation to war, as we are seeing in America and elsewhere, allows people to condone and commit acts of violence in their own communities. Revelations after the collapse of the Nazi regime, and reports from behind the Iron Curtain, show clearly how petty grievances between neighbours can, under totalitarian rule, lead to arrests and torture. The viewer can’t leave the cinema thinking it could never happen here: clearly it not only can–it has.

The witch-burning scene

The film makes the most of its economical 86 minutes, and is definitely not for the faint-hearted. By mining British folk culture and history, and by focusing on human evil itself rather than monsters and spirits, Reeves has opened up the possibilities of a whole new kind of horror movie and paved the ground for a new, artistic subgenre; I can’t wait to see what this new pioneer of British cinema will come up with next. Five out of five stars.




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Movies

[April 24, 1968] Terrifying Psychological Horror (Hour of the Wolf, by Ingmar Bergman)

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by Jason Sacks

Ingmar Bergman is back in the cinemas at last! His last movie, 1966’s Persona, received rave reviews of its release, including by me. Persona is a fascinating, deeply haunting film about identity and personality. It is a demanding film in its style, pace and plot but is also an intensely rewarding viewing experience.

Hour of the Wolf continues exploration of many of the ideas he presents in Persona.

Again Bergman films his new feature in his usual black and white, a stark palette which gives his films a kind of painful emotional resonance. Again Bergman sets his film on a remote Swedish island far from most people. And again Bergman provides a meditation on identity, on memory and on the nature of personality.

There’s also one key difference between Persona and Hour of the Wolf that might interest the Galactic Journey audience: Hour is a horror film.

The film stars Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullmann as a married couple who go off to live on a small island off the Swedish coast. The Von Sydow character, named Johan Borg, is a painter who decides to travel to the island with his wife to find some peace and to do his work. He also wants to help his wife, Ullman as Alma Borg, find peace from what appears to be a recent psychological breakdown.

At first everything seems calm and ordinary on the little island, as the couple find happiness in their togetherness. But it soon becomes clear that Johan is fighting his own inner demons. He is a man of the bourgeoisie who does not belong in society, who has pain and torment from his previous life. It’s clear he has been sexually abused and is tortured by his own sexual inclinations. He becomes distant from Alma and seems to fall apart emotionally.

When the couple is invited to a party held by some other island dwellers, all of this angst comes to the surface in a phantasmagoria of psychological fear. At their castle, he is gawked at and treated like a freak by snobbish and condescending people who are also psychologically broken in their own ways.

The banal madness of the castle dwellers sends Johan into paroxysms of breakdown, imagining the castle dwellers laughing at him (delivered by Bergman in a beautifully componsed, tremendously spooky medium shot which could come out of  last year's terrifying Japanese film The Face of Another). From there we get a whole series of terrifying moments – a woman takes off her face like plastic and eyes like they're balls, a man crawls up walls, a man has wings, a character attacks Johan and we see blood. It all builds and builds with anguish and pain.

With all that, somehow there are two moments of deeply contrasting feel which nevertheless each create dread and fear in the viewer. During the dream sequence, Johann’s face is lathered in makeup and he is painted to be a frightening in-between of man and woman. He’s not quite one or the other, and that profound personal ambiguity makes the scene feel full of dread. His identity is nullified, and without identity what are we, anyway?

In the other terrible moment, Johann has a fateful encounter with a young boy while fishing, and the whole scene comes to a dreadful end, and it’s not clear if this is parable or actual, a distorted memory or a moment of terrifying breakdown.

Those scenes, together with the intense feelings of fear and confusion Alma displays on her face, describe a journey into madness and pain that help elevate this film above mere melodrama into something transcendently terrifying.

Though Bergman has never been known as a genre director, Hour fits comfortably in his oeuvre of work. Bergman has always displayed a deep fascination with the elusive nature of human psychology, exploring the nature of relationships in elliptical, often dreamlike ways which expand out perceptions of personality and truth. We see those ideas explored throughout Hour of the Wolf.

Tied to that is his attention to the nature of human relationships and individualism. Each of us is an island, but each of us has deep effect on our loved ones, Johann's breakdown affects Alma's breakdown, and each works in a cycle of cause and effect on each other. Bergman dwells on this topic frequently, and Wolf is no exception.

I've indirectly priased Von Sydow and Ullmann several times here, but I should also take a moment to single out the brilliant cinematography of Sven Nykvist. Nobody shoots a film with the austere beauty of Nykvist. He's the perfect collaborator for Bergman, and I'm so happy to see their collaboration continue with this powerful, starkly beautiful film.

Hour of the Wolf seems to elude meaning on a purely intellectual level. Bergman gives us a narrator whose intentions seem unreliable, so we never quite have a grounding in exactly why he takes the actions he does.

But who among us is always honest with themselves?

On the emotional and psychological levels, however, Bergman’s latest film displays his deep interest in the mysteries of the human soul. The darkest nightmares come from within, and those nightmares are on full display in this remarkable film.

4 stars




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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 18, 1967] We Are The Martians: Quatermass and the Pit, Bonnie and Clyde, The Day the Fish Came Out and The Snake Pit and the Pendulum

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by Fiona Moore

This month sees the release of a film I’ve been anticipating for a long time: Quatermass and the Pit, the final instalment in Hammer Film Productions’ adaptations of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass trilogy. With a whole new cast of actors and a very different look and feel to Hammer’s earlier movies starring Brian Donlevy, The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and Quatermass 2 (1957), this represents a concerted effort to bring Quatermass into the 1960s.

While reportedly this film was considered as another outing for Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, Andrew Keir as Quatermass and Julian Glover as Breen provide great interpretations. Keir is the most likeable of the Quatermass actors, while still managing a bitter world-weariness in keeping with the character. Rising star Glover is a bold choice as Breen, being considerably younger than Anthony Bushell in the TV serial, but this casting shifts the interpretation from an old officer too set in his ways to acknowledge the impossible, to an immature, overpromoted man falling back on rigid denials to cover the fact that he is out of his depth. Barbara Shelley as Barbara Judd is more sexy than the usual Quatermass women, wearing outfits that one would think not very sensible for an archaeologist.

Likeable: Andrew Keir as Quatermass and Barbara Shelley as Miss Judd

The basic narrative has had only a few updates. For instance, rather than a new building, the construction work which revives the ancient horrors is the digging of a new Underground extension, something which many Londoners are having to put up with right now. The story has been compressed from six half-hour episodes to a lean 97 minutes, meaning that the plot cracks along at a ripping pace without every feeling overpadded, and we lose most of Kneale’s excruciating working-class stereotype characters. On the more negative side, the film lacks the slow buildup of tension that the TV serial had. Crucially, the themes of the original are all present. Perhaps because Kneale is here adapting his own screenplay, we do not lose the sense of anger at military proliferation, colonialism, and humanity’s self-destructive tendencies.

Colonel Breen, representing humanity's negative side.

One aspect which remains unchanged, however, leads to a rather specialised criticism I have of this movie, speaking as an anthropologist. While in 1959 the dominant theory about human evolution was, indeed, that large brains would precede upright walking, more recent discoveries by Louis and Mary Leakey in East Africa are starting to move the consensus more towards the idea that the opposite was true.

The colour film and production values give the film a much more lavish feel than the austere Donlevy movies, but are a mixed blessing. The alien spacecraft is a thing of beauty compared to the crude cylinder of the serial, but this makes the idea that it could be initially thought to be a German V-weapon less credible. The simple ground-shaking effect in the TV serial when Sladden (played here by Duncan Lamont) accesses his primitive side was somehow more terrifying than the wild poltergeist activity seen here. However, the climax of the film uses its production values to build on the sense of terror as humanity succumbs to the Wild Hunt: we have a chilling scene where a group of people surround a man and beat him to death telekinetically with stones and masonry. Rather than concluding with an explanatory speech by Quatermass, the film simply lingers on the image of Quatermass and Barbara sitting among the ruins, shattered by what they’ve experienced.

Hammer's take on the Martians.

Quatermass and the Pit provides evidence both that the themes of the original Quatermass stories remain fresh and relevant almost a decade later, and that Hammer are still capable of producing a decent horror film without relying on gore and nudity to bring in the shocks. It’s a shame there’s unlikely to be a Quatermass 4.

Four out of five stars.


by Jason Sacks

Bonnie and Clyde

And while Fiona praises Quatermass and the Pit for its lack of gore, I have to praise Bonnie and Clyde for its copious use of gore.

You're probably aware of this newest film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. In the two months since its New York premiere, perhaps you've seen the numerous newspaper articles focusing on the highly violent nature of Bonnie and Clyde, or articles which have condemned the idea that the film makes heroes of its bankrobbing protagonists.

Or perhaps you've read the rhapsodic review of Bonnie and Clyde in the latest issue of The New Yorker by their new critic Pauline Kael and possibly dismissed it because of your annoyance with Kael's now legendary condemnation of The Sound of Music three years ago in McCall's.

I've had the most amazing experience since I saw Bonnie and Clyde last weekend after it premiered at the Northgate Cinema: I've been raving nonstop to my friends about this film.

Like Kael, I was thrilled to see a film which is so bold, so intense and somehow so contemporary feeling. Despite–or perhaps because of–its setting in during the Great Depression, this film feels like a deconstruction of the myths we have told ourselves about the past. Bonnie and Clyde makes villains out of the brave federal men who chase our heroic criminals. This isn't an episode of The FBI. This is an inversion of what it means to be a hero. And in that inversion I saw myself in the faces of people who lived and died 35 years ago.

Because the world in which Bonnie and Clyde live feels like a real world. It's dusty and ugly and people wear worn clothes. Some banks have collapsed and others are near collapse and peoples' lives are miserable. In that misery, ordinary people are desperate for someone, anyone, who is able to triumph against all odds, even if the fate of those heroes seems horribly preordained.

Like all of us, the characters in Bonnie and Clyde are deeply flawed. I was especially swept up in Clyde's foibles. We're all used to seeing Warren Beatty as the smooth handsome lover in movies like Promise Her Anything and Splendor in the Grass, but here Beatty plays a man who's just not interested in love, or maybe more truthfully Clyde is a man who gets his thrills from robbery and not from women. Faye Dunaway is thus not quite Beatty's girlfriend on screen as much as she is his accomplice, fascinatingly contrary to what we expect.

With its echoes of the French New Wave and its shattering of cliche and audience expectations, Bonnie and Clyde feels like a revolution–a harbinger of the types of films I hope to see as the new decade dawns.

4½ out of 5 stars


by Victoria Silverwolf

Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts

Filmmaker Michael Cacoyannis had an international hit with Zorba the Greek a few years ago, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won three. With that success behind him, I guess he figured he could do just about anything he wanted. He decided to do something different.

The Day the Fish Came Out

The film starts with an unseen narrator telling us about the tragic incident last year when a B-52 bomber collided with a tanker during mid-air refueling, killing most of the crew. Four nuclear bombs fell out of the doomed aircraft, three of them landing near the Spanish village of Palomares and one falling into the sea. Since this movie is a black comedy, this frightening story is accompanied by three flamenco dancers.


They also have the ability to sing with subtitles, giving away the plot.

In the future year 1972, a plane carrying a pilot, a navigator, two atomic bombs, and a mysterious metal box crashes near a tiny Greek island. The unfortunate pair of flyboys lose their clothing, and spend most of the film in their underpants.


Colin Blakely (left) and Tom Courtenay (right) offer a little beefcake.

A bunch of military types, pretending to be folks interested in building a hotel on the island, search for the bombs and box. They get the bombs back, but it seems a local fellow found the box and thinks it has a treasure inside. Unfortunately for him, it's sealed tight and can't be opened except by a laser or a special chemical. (Keep that latter possibility in mind.)

Meanwhile, a bunch of tourists, attracted by the rumor of an upcoming hotel, flock to the island. Like almost everybody else in this movie (not including the locals or the barely dressed airmen), they wear clothes that would be rejected by Carnaby Street as too extreme. They also dance a lot.


In fact, if you get a chance to watch the trailer for this movie, you'll think it's a beach movie.

After more than an hour of this stuff, the plot gets going with the arrival of Electra Brown, played by Candice Bergen, the beautiful daughter of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. She's supposed to be an archeologist, but the way she behaves with one of the military guys makes me think she's more interested in human biology. Bergen made her film debut as a lesbian in the classy soap opera movie The Group, but here she is very heterosexual indeed.


Electra Brown in one of her more conservative outfits.

Electra has this weird device that uses a special chemical (sound familiar?) to cut through metal in order to make replicas of ancient objects. (No, that didn't make much sense to me either.) Long story short, the guy who found the box steals the gizmo, opens the box, and . . .

Well, without giving away too much, let's just say that the depressing ending finally explains the title. This movie badly wants to be Dr. Strangelove and it fails miserably. The comedy isn't funny, the satire falls flat, and there are long stretches where nothing much is happening.

Two stars, mostly for the wacky costumes.


Designed by the director, who also wrote and produced.

Stay away from this one unless you want to laugh at it. Read a book instead.


Maybe not this one.


by Cora Buhlert

Horror in the Real World

1967 is certainly turning out to be a year of disasters.

Belgium has barely recovered from the devastating fire at the À l'Innovation department store in May and now two express trains and a local passenger train collided near the village of Fexhe-le-Haut-Clocher in the French-speaking part of Belgium on October 5, leaving twelve people dead and 76 injured.

FEXHE LE HAUT CLOCHE traincrash
Aftermath of the train crash of Fexhe-Le-Haut-Clocher in Belgium.

The photos of the wrecked trains bring back memories of another terrible railroad disaster that happened only three months ago in East Germany. A barrier at a railroad crossing near the village of Langenweddingen malfunctioned. As a result, a passenger train crashed into a tanker truck, setting the train on fire. 94 people died, 44 of them school children en route to a holiday camp. The Langenweddingen train crash is the worst railroad accident not just in East Germany, but in all of German history.

Langenweddingen train crash
Aftermath of the devastating railroad crash in Langenweddingen, East Germany. Note the burned out train cars.

Horror on the Silver Screen: Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel (The Snake Pit and the Pendulum)

Compared to the many horrors of the real world, watching a spooky movie in the theatre feels almost cathartic. And so I decided to get away from the real world by watching the new West German horror movie Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel (The Snake Pit and the Pendulum) at my local cinema.

As the title indicates, the film is a (loose) adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum". Of course, we already had a very good (loose) adaptation of that story by Roger Corman only six years ago. And indeed, The Snake Pit and the Pendulum intends to be West Germany's answer to Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, the UK's Hammer horror films and the lurid horror films from Italy, all of which are popular, if not necessarily critical successes in West German cinemas. So how does The Snake Pit and the Pendulum hold up?

Snake Pit and the Pendulum 1967
Judge Richard von Marienberg (Lex Barker in a wig) setnences Count Regula (Christopher Lee) to death.

Pretty well, it turns out. The movie starts with a bang, as a bewigged judge and a scarlet-masked executioner visit Count Regula (Christopher Lee) in his cell. The judge informs Count Regula that he is sentenced to death for murdering twelve virgins in his quest for immortality. However, the immortality elixir requires the blood of thirteen virgins and the final virgin managed to escape the Count's clutches and alerted the authorities.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
The bodies of the twelve murdered virgins are arranged in a censor-friendly way, covering up any stray breasts.

The death sentence is to be executed immediately and a most bloody sentence it is, too. First, a bronze mask lined with spikes is nailed onto Count Regula's face – reminiscent of Mario Bava's 1960 horror movie La Maschera del Demonio a.k.a. Black Sunday. Then Count Regula is led onto the market square of the fictional town of Sandertal – portrayed by the Bavarian town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, which is famous for its medieval architecture – where his body is torn apart by four horses. Of course, we have seen similar scenes in Italian and French historical and horror movies many times, but by the rather tame standards of West German cinema, this is a remarkably bloody opening.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
The judge (Lex Barker) and the thirteenth virgin (Karin Dor) oversee the execution of Count Regula.
Snake Pit and Pendulum
The executioner is ready for action.

The movie continues in the same vein. For true to form, Count Regula has vowed bloody vengeance from beyond the grave, not only on the judge who sentenced him to death and that pesky virgin who escaped his clutches, but also on their descendants.

Snake pit and the pendulum
A creepy extra in "The Snake Pit and the Pendulum"

Vengeance from Beyond the Grave

The story now jumps forward by thirty years, from the early nineteenth century into the 1830s. A mail coach is traveling to Sandertal. The passengers are the lawyer Roger Mont Elise (Lex Barker), Baroness Lilian of Brabant (Karin Dor), her maid Babette (Christiane Rücker) and Fabian (Yugoslav actor Vladimir Medar), a highwayman masquerading as a priest. Roger and Lilian have both been summoned to Castle Andomai via mysterious letters. Roger, who is an orphan, is supposed to learn more about his parentage, while Lilian is supposed to receive the inheritance of her late mother. Both letters are signed by Count Regula, the very same Count Regula whose bloody execution we just witnessed.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Lilian of Brabant (Karin Dor) and Roger Mont Elise (Lex Barker) compare the latters they received from Count Regula.
Snake Pit and the Pendulum
The mail coach makes a pit stop in the woods, so Lilian of Brabant, her maid Babette (Christiane Rücker), Roger Mont Elise and Priest Fabian (Vladimir Medar) disembark
Schalngengrube und das Pendel
The woods around Sandertal are certainly spooky.

En route to the castle, the coach and its passengers must not only travel through a spooky forest where the bodies of hanged men are dangling from every tree, but are also assailed by bandits intent on kidnapping the two women. Roger and Fabian manage to fight off the bandits. But even more trouble awaits them at the castle, where the undead Count Regula and his equally undead servant Anatol (played by the delightfully creepy Carl Lange) are about to make good on the Count's dying threats.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
The undead servant Anatol (Carl Lange) is about to revive his master Count Regula.
Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Roger Mont Elise meets the undead Count Regula (Christopher Lee) and his equally undead servant Anatol (Carl Lange).
Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Anatol harrasses Lilian.

For unbeknownst to them, Roger and Lilian are the descendants of the judge who sentenced Count Regula to death and the virgin who escaped the Count's clutches (and clearly did not remain a virgin). A gruesome fate awaits them at the castle, a fate that involves a pit full of snakes and a razor-sharp pendulum.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Roger and Lilian explore the spooky dungeons of Castle Andomai.
Snake Pit and the Pendulum
The ladies' maid Babette (Christiane Rücker) is about to meet an unpleasant end.
Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Count Regula and Anatol don't just employ pits and pendulums. Here they are about to guillotine Lilian.

The Snake Pit and the Pendulum is not quite up to the high standards set by Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe adaptations on the one hand and the Hammer movies from the UK on the other. However, it is an enjoyably spooky film that will send a shudder or two down your spine.

Harald Reinl is a veteran of the Edgar Wallace, Dr. Mabuse and Winnetou movie series and probably the best director working in West Germany right now. His skills are on full display in this movie and he uses existing locations such as the medieval town of Rotenburg ob der Tauber or the Extern Stones in the Teutoburg Forest to great effect.

The cast is excellent. Christopher Lee has graced many a Hammer movie and now brings his horror skills to West German screens. Carl Lange has specialised in playing dubious characters and outright villains for a long time now and his performance as a hangman forced to execute his own son in Face of the Frog is unforgettable. I'm always stunned that Lex Barker never got to be the A-list star in Hollywood that he is in Europe, but their loss was our gain. That said, at 48 Barker may be getting a little too hold for hero roles. Finally, I'm very happy to see the always reliable Karin Dor back in a West German production and with her natural brunette hair after the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice wasted her talents on a cliched femme fatale role and foisted a terrible red wig on her, too.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Lex Barker and Karin Dor are enjoying themselves on the set of "The Snake Pit and the Pendulum".

Almost fifty years ago, the horror film genre was born in Germany. But like so many other things, horror film making in Germany died with the Weimar Republic. Let's hope that The Snake Pit and the Pendulum heralds a revival of a film genre that was pioneered here.

Four stars

Snake Pit and the Pendulum



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Movies

[May 14, 1966] Seeing Double (The She Beast and The Embalmer)

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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.

After your trip to the movies, tune in to KGJ, our radio station! Nothing but the newest hits!




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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 4, 1966] Sanguinary Cinematic Surgery (Blood Bath and Queen of Blood)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Holiday for Hemophiles

A rather lurid double feature showed up at my local movie house a few days ago. Naturally, I had to go see it.


Nothing says Fun For The Whole Family like Shrieking Mutilated Victims.

Besides being released by (or escaping from) the same production company, these two films would seem to have little in common other than the prominent use of the word Blood in the title. This shouldn't come as a surprise, since American International also brought us Blood of Dracula (1957), Night of the Blood Beast (1958), and A Bucket of Blood (1959).

One is a black-and-white supernatural thriller, the other is a science fiction melodrama, full of bright colors. Quite different, right?

Actually, they resemble each other closely in a very specific way. Both make extensive use of footage from other movies. The scenes are chopped up, rearranged, and slapped back together, like making a Frankenstein's monster from random body parts. I'll go into detail as I discuss each film.

Art in the Blood

Let's start with Blood Bath, a confusing story that began as an ordinary crime drama.


Nothing like this actually happens in the movie. That's advertising for you.

Take a deep breath, because the path to the final product on screen is a long and tortuous one. (You may also find it torturous. Please note the distinction between these two terms.)

According to Hollywood gossip, this thing started life as a tale of murder filmed in Yugoslavia. It had something to do with a painting by the great artist Titian. None of this remains in Blood Bath.


Not a Yugoslavian crime film.

In fact, all we've got left are some nice scenes of Yugoslavia and the presence of actor William Campbell, familiar to me for his work in the psychological shocker Dementia 13 (1963). It was a pretty decent scare flick, written and directed by a newcomer named Francis Coppola.


Campbell stars in Blood Bath as an insane artist who lives in an old bell tower.

The next stop in the convoluted road to Blood Bath was to dump the plot and turn it into a horror movie involving a crazed painter. He imagines that he's possessed by the spirit of an ancestor, also an artist, who was condemned as a sorcerer way back in the bad old days. He kills his models and dumps them into a vat of wax.

Apparently this wasn't creepy enough for the producers. More new footage establishes that the madman is also a shapeshifting vampire. I don't mean that he turns into a bat or a wolf. I mean that he turns into another actor.

You see, Campbell was no longer available. Some other guy, who looks nothing at all like Campbell, plays the artist when he changes into a bloodsucker.


Not William Campbell.

I previously mentioned the movie A Bucket of Blood, which was an enjoyable black comedy about a guy who becomes an acclaimed sculptor when he accidentally kills a cat and covers the body in clay, creating his first masterpiece. He goes on to murder people and turn them into works of art in the same way. (I said it was enjoyable, not in good taste.)

Anyway, that film contains a great deal of biting satire concerning the pretentions of arty beatnik types. Blood Bath tosses that into the mix as well, resulting in a movie with wild shifts in mood from grim to comic.


Beatniks!

One artist produces what he calls quantum art by loading a pistol with a packet containing paint and shooting it at the canvas. Another applies paint directly to the face of a model, then shoves her into the canvas. (I felt sorry for the actress playing this tiny role, who had to put up with getting some kind of goop on her face.)

All this makes the movie seem like a real mess, and I can't deny that it's even less coherent than I've made it sound. And yet it's not without interesting moments. As I've mentioned, there are some fine scenes of Yugoslavia. (The film actually takes place in Southern California, so there are some inconsistencies. Notably, the bell tower is supposedly from medieval times.) The cinematography, in general, is quite good, creating an eerie mood, full of darkness and shadows.

The vampire attacks, although they stick out from the rest of the film like sore thumbs, are done with some imagination. There's one at a merry-go-round, and another in a swimming pool.

In particular, I was very impressed with a hallucinatory sequence. The artist imagines himself in a desert landscape full of strange objects, while his ancestor's mistress dances and laughs at him.


It reminds me of a Salvador Dali painting.

The ending, which I won't give away here, doesn't make much sense, but is strangely effective in its own way. That pretty much describes the whole movie, really.

Red Planet, Green Vamp

Let's leave Yugoslavia/California and head for outer space, in order to meet the Queen of Blood.


The portrait of the Queen is pretty accurate, but the movie does not feature tiny people floating in a giant spider web.

We start with some really nifty abstract art under the opening titles.


Painting by John Cline. He gets on screen credit, too.

Our helpful narrator tells us that it's the year 1990. People have settled the Moon, and are planning voyages to Mars and Venus. Space travel is under the auspices of the International Institute of Space Technology.

The IIST receives signals from another solar system, indicating intelligent life. We then cut to scenes of the alien world.  These are quite impressive, and show a great deal of visual imagination.


Looks like something Chesley Bonestell might have dreamed up, doesn't it?

Let me back up a bit and explain why some parts of this movie look quite lovely, and others look, well, cheap. Queen of Blood takes much of its footage from a Soviet film, Mechte navstrechhu. My Russian is a little rusty, but this seems to mean something like To the dream.

Similar things have happened in the past. The Noble Editor and the Young Traveler have already told us how the Soviet film Nebo Zovyot (The sky is calling, more or less) emerged as Battle Beyond the Sun in American theaters.

Last year, Planeta Bur (Storm planet) showed up as Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet. I'm sure more of this kind of thing will go on in the future. Why? Simply because the Soviet SF films are so visually impressive.


Take a look at this scene from the alien world in Queen of Blood, for example.

Back at the IIST, we meet our heroes, about to take a lunch break. Their meal is interrupted by the announcement that the alien message has been translated.


From left to right, John Saxon as Allen, Judi Meredith as Laura, Dennis Hopper as Paul, and Don Eitner as Tony. For a supposedly international organization, the IIST is sure full of Americans.

All four are astronauts, and Laura is also the communications expert we saw listening to the alien broadcast. She and Allen are romantically involved, but that doesn't prevent them from acting in a fully professional manner when on the job. I'll give the film credit for making Laura a vital character in the plot, rather than simply the Girl.

The leader of the IIST tells a huge crowd of listeners (more Soviet footage) that an alien spaceship is on its way to our solar system.


Very special guest star Basil Rathbone, everybody's favorite Sherlock Holmes, as the director of the IIST.

A small device, containing a record of the voyage, falls into Earth's ocean. This reveals that the aliens suffered an accident and crash landed on Mars.


The beautiful alien spaceship, before it leaves its home planet.

By the way, the scene in which the crowd listens to the announcement is visually stunning. It features a statue of heroic proportions, symbolizing humanity's exploration of space.


Seriously, isn't that monument gorgeous?

Naturally, the IIST sends astronauts to Mars to contact the aliens. Aboard the oddly named spaceship Oceano are Laura and Paul, along with a Dutch-accented commander. (OK, not everybody in the IIST is American or British.) The vessel is launched from the Moon, which allows us to see some very nice Soviet models of a lunar base.

The Oceano gets hit by a so-called sunburst on the way to Mars, forcing them to use extra fuel and causing some damage. They find the alien spaceship, occupied by one dead extraterrestrial. They figure out that some sort of lifeboat must have carried away the survivors of the crash.


In other news, home sales increase.

Because the Oceano II isn't ready yet — couldn't they think of another name? — Allan and Tony volunteer to take the much smaller Meteor to help with the search for the lifeboat. They can't land the tiny vessel on Mars and then take off again, due to limitations on how much fuel they can carry, but they can land on Phobos, due to the lesser gravity. (Hey! Some real science!)


The view from Phobos. Nice work, comrades.

The logistics of the space voyages get pretty complicated here. After the guys on the Meteor find the sole surviving alien on Phobos, thanks to pure dumb luck, it turns out that Allan can travel to Mars to join the crew of the Oceano with his extraterrestrial passenger aboard the Meteor's own lifeboat, but that Tony has to stay on Phobos and wait to be rescued by the Oceano II when it shows up in a week.

We finally get to meet our title character. She's well worth waiting for. Looking very much like a human woman, except for her green skin, she remains mute throughout the film. This makes her all the more intriguing.


Czech actress Florence Marly as the Queen of Blood.

Communicating with the Earthlings strictly through facial expressions and gestures, she clearly coveys a sense of friendship for the males, but dislike for Laura. Paul soon teaches her to drink water from a bottle, but she refuses all offers of food. She also reacts violently when Laura tries to take a blood sample from her, knocking the syringe to the floor in anger.


Paul demonstrates how to use a squeeze bottle. The Queen of Blood is more interested in another liquid.

Well, given the title, you can probably guess what comes next, and who the first victim will be. Suffice to say that the Queen of Blood was quite right to be suspicious of Laura, who turns out to be the film's real hero.


Queen of Blood eggs, suggesting that there should be a question mark at the end of the above phrase.

A Bloody Good Time

I won't claim these two films are masterpieces. Both have serious flaws.

Blood Bath is incoherent, to say the least. It does have some moody scenes, however, and its lack of plot logic gives it a dream-like feeling that may be appealing.

Queen of Blood suffers from the cheapness of the American scenes, obviously filmed on small stages, as opposed to the sweeping vistas of the Soviet scenes. On the other hand, Florence Marly's performance is compelling.


Oh, that's where the question mark went.

If you enjoy these movies, maybe you'll be inspired to do a good deed of some sort once you leave the theater.

The Journey is once again up for a Best Fanzine Hugo nomination — and its founder is up for several other awards as well! If you've got a Worldcon membership, or if you just want to see what Gideon's done that's Hugo-worthy, please read his Hugo Eligibility article! Thank you for your continued support.




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Movies

[April 8, 1965] Twisted but Classy (Mario Bava's "Blood and Black Lace")

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By Rosemary Benton

I’ll be the first to admit that my tastes do not run toward mysteries. I much prefer modern science fiction with its hopefulness and cautious approach to new realms of science. Horror, either written or filmed, has likewise fascinated me. But unlike science fiction's surety that logic can always triumph, horror focuses on the deep human fear of things unknown and mysterious.

Thrillers are a territory that I'm developing a growing appreciation for due to their usually modern setting with heavy horror elements. As such, when I heard about the new Mario Bava film "Blood and Black Lace" I thought I would give it a look. Not being one to pay much heed to what magazine or newspaper critics have to say about horror films, I thought I would go ahead and check it out. Now having seen it, I wonder if I should have taken the critics more seriously.

"Blood and Black Lace"

The film opens upon the glamorous life of the people working within a successful avant garde Italian fashion house. In short order one of the models is strangled by a faceless masked killer. Upon her death one of her coworkers discovers the victim's diary. In short order the killer returns to take out one model after another as the diary switches hands and the knowledge held within it comes to light.

Despite leading charmed lives, each victim of the killer is revealed to have been involved in one way or another with drug addictions, infidelity, scandal and extortion. All of which ties back to the records within the diary. Ultimately the identity of the killer is revealed upon completion of their grisly work. But it soon becomes apparent that in order to cover their tracks the killer's work is not done yet. At the end the final murder proves to be their undoing when the most jealously guarded manipulation comes to light.

Initial Thoughts

"Blood and Black Lace" is a windy road of secrets and twisted loyalties. The mystery element of the plot is very entertaining to watch as it unfolds, but unfortunately there are a few things that made the film nearly impossible to finish. Put simply, the acting is so good and cinematography so dramatic that it makes the violence very disturbing to take in.

The brutal beatings rained down on the female victims are all uncomfortably real looking (with the exception of one suffocation death that is acted and shot in a way that makes the victim’s writhing weirdly sexual). One expects there to be struggling as the masked killer corners each of the models and proceeds to dispatch them in different ways, but the camera time given to each death is obscene.

The sexualization of each victim before and after their death is likewise unsettling. Clothing is ripped open to expose undergarments, and bodies are dragged away with lingering looks at long legs and breasts. Worst of all is the suspenseful buildup in several deathblows. During the murders of house models Nicole and Peggy the camera zooms in on the slow approach of the murder instrument before the frightened victim is killed.

It's effective, but even I, horror film connoisseur that I am, thought that this was a bit much. It's frightening, but that kind of violence taken with so much anticipation and pleasure by the killer slides well into the realm of just being gross.

Why? Why is any of this necessary artistically or plot-wise? Extremely violent eroticism with dramatic execution was my conclusion. Is this something new in horror? Well, not really. It's new to see Italian filmmakers taking a crack at the thriller film category, but Germany has long been producing adaptations of mysteries and pulp thrillers.

The works of Edgar Wallace, Agatha Christie, and Erle Stanley Gardner all contain a potent mix of scandal, sex, drugs and murder. Understandably, this scintillating content could very easily be adapted to film. Although virtually unknown in the U.S, the studio Rialto Film has been churning out film adaptations of Edgar Wallace's works for years now.

"Blood and Black Lace" is no mere sleazy mystery/thriller story, however. Mario Bava, perhaps looking to outdo himself following "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" (1963), really stepped up the psychologically twisted elements in this film. With each new movie of his, the thrill of seeing beautiful guilty women "pay" for their misdeeds with a kind of vigilante justice seems to be a common element. It’s an element that, I hope, has a limited appeal.

The Mario Bava Method

What did Mario Bava hope to achieve in this film? The deep dive Bava takes into the psychological camera work is admittedly astounding. His experience as a cinematographer is undeniable. The panoramas of beautiful architecture and the creative closeups and camera angles show far more suspense than mere dialogue could ever achieve. The vibrant neon lighting and clever placement of artwork and statues helps the audience to really feel the fear and anxiety of the characters.

Bava has shown a distinct flair as a writer, director and cinematographer who can bring new life to a project that either due to budget or well-trodden story, could be mired in mediocrity. In his directorial debut "Black Sunday" (1960), his ability to bring together his experience as a cinematographer and writer resulted in a unique gothic vampire story. Despite its critical success, the special effect and violence of the film actually got it banned in several countries. Clearly Bava's controversial love affair with gore is not anything new.

I hesitate to describe "Blood and Black Lace" as a revolutionary addition to the horror genre because the violence that advances it in the genre unfortunately also works against it. Thankfully "Blood and Black Lace" has more than that to offer as an example of modern horror film. Its modern setting, contemporary high fashion aesthetic, and refreshingly riveting musical score all speak to progress away from the stale hallmarks of recent horror films. It is a stark departure from the horror themes which have dominated theaters in the last half century.

In Conclusion

"Blood and Black Lace" demonstrates an advanced approach to camera work and lighting that push it beyond the flat panoramas and muted colors of most other horror films that have made their way to American theaters. This movie is certainly not your grandparent's book-to-film adaptation of a Victorian melodrama. As a sensory experience Mario Bava's "Blood and Black Lace" is exceptional. It grips its audience and pulls them along until the very end. The escalation of Bava's focus of violence against women is deeply troubling though. Is it cheap thrills or thoughtful social commentary that spur someone like Bava on? Only continued analysis of Bava's future films will tell.

We had so much success with our first episode of The Journey Show (you can watch the kinescope rerun; check local listings for details) that we're going to have another one on April 11 at 1PM PDT with The Young Traveler as the special musical guest.  As the kids say, be there or be square!

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TV

[September 10, 1964] Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered (September 1964 Television Debuts)

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[We have exciting news!  Journey Press, the publishing company founded by the team behind Galactic Journey, has just launched its first book.  We know you will enjoy Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), a curated set of fourteen excellent stories introduced by the rising stars of 2019. 

If you enjoy Galactic Journey, you'll want to purchase a copy today — available physically and virtually!]


by Rosemary Benton

Roll 'em!

Television this year has been a dry well in terms of new programming. With the exception of Jeopardy on NBC and the extremely fun variety show Hollywood Palace there haven't been any new programs to really dig into. Granted, most networks don't add new material until September and October roll around, but ever since the finale of The Twilight Zone and with the impending finale of Outer Limits next year, September could not get here fast enough. Given the wealth of new science fiction and horror programs scheduled to debut this month one can only hope that one of these new series will fill the void of these two departing titans of science-fiction/horror TV.

Since the beginning of the year when TV Guide's first January 1964 issue came out there has been significant buzz circulating about this year's September lineup. In particular five shows premiering this month promise to be a real thrill: the action-adventure cartoon Jonny Quest, undersea science fiction adventure series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, the charming and fantastical Bewitched, and the kooky horror-themed family sitcoms The Addams Family and The Munsters.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, premiering Monday 9/14

This might not be the best example of quality science fiction television coming out this Fall, given its direct connection to the poorly written 1961 nautical science-fiction movie of the same name. But Irwin Allen (writer, director and producer of the 1961 film) is convinced that this is a worthwhile premise for an ongoing adventure series on ABC, and since most of the sets from the movie were apparently still in storage I'm sure that saved the production companies (Cambridge Productions, Inc. and 20th Century Fox Television) a ton of money. The fact that the show will be in black and white certainly can't hurt the budget either.

As Irwin is a director infamous for his liberal use of stock footage, and given that the movie sets are going to be reused for the TV show, I am hesitant to put much faith in the further low-budget adventures of the S.S.R.N. Seaview and her crew. I wouldn't say that Irwin Allen is a stellar talent as a writer, either, the abysmal plot and bizarre science of the 1961 movie being the most concerning threats to the success of this show. But I can at least rest easy knowing that Voyage is just one of this Fall's science fiction, fantasy and horror show lineup.

Bewitched, premiering Thursday 9/17

Bewitched is a lighthearted sitcom centered around the misadventures of newly married witch Samantha (played by Elizabeth Montgomery) to well meaning but insecure Darrin Stephens (played by Dick York). Situational comedy will abound as Samantha tries to adapt to living in the mortal world, and we will surely get a good laugh out of Darrin's attempt to reconcile with a wife who is not only more powerful than him, but whose mother is determined to make his life miserable. 

As if the versatile, powerful acting of Agnes Moorehead as the nosy and witchy mother of Montomery's character wasn't reason enough to tune into this show on the 17th, Bewitched's executive producer is the highly successful network executive and program developer Harry Ackerman. His time as the executive producer on the wildly popular family shows Dennis the Menace and Leave it to Beaver has surely given him invaluable experience managing sitcoms. And with his legion of connections within the entertainment industry I would be shocked if the best and brightest talents weren't brought on board for Bewitched. This show, although advertised as rather fluffy, will undoubtedly become a family favorite.

Jonny Quest, premiering Friday 9/18

Jonny Quest is the next science-fiction themed show of note set to premier this month. Upon its 9/18 release on ABC at 7:30 PM EST Jonny Quest will be the 11th animated television series (closely preceded by their 10th series debut The Peter Potamus Show on September 16th) from the powerhouse duo William Hanna and Joseph Barbera of Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. From the look of the artwork provided to advertise for the show, this is going to be a very different series in tone and direction compared to earlier Hanna-Barbera creations.

It isn't unfair to characterize the vast majority of Hanna-Barbera shows as goofy looking and brimming with slap-stick humor. Their characters are usually bulbous and colorful with expressive, over the top movements clearly designed to be amusing to young children. Jonny Quest, on the other hand, looks like a comic book come to life!

If one is familiar with science fiction-fantasy anthologies like Alarming Tales from Harvey Comics and DC Comics' Tales of the Unexpected, or any number of western titles from Atlas Comics, then you might recognize the tell tale heavy shadowing and strong jawlines signature to veteran comic book artist and writer Douglas Wildey. To develop the cast and tone for the series Hanna-Barbera brought in this perfectly suited talent to work some artistic magic. It is my sincere hope that this series, with its crisp art and larger budget, will be to Hanna-Barbera what Superman was to Fleischer Studios.

Since writers in comic books are unfortunately not often credited, it's not really feasible to point to a significant number of Wildey's writing assignments in order to predict what type of voice he will bring to the scripts for the show. However, given William Hanna and Joseph Barbera's comments on the upcoming series in their TV Guide interview with Dwight Whitney, I imagine it's safe to say that the signature wacky antics of Hanna-Barbera Productions' earlier works will be tamped down in favor of more gripping story telling. Barbera did say, “If a kid leaves his seat, I'll eat the chair”, after all.

The Addams Family, premiering Friday 9/18

The 18th is going to be a red letter day. Not only do we get Jonny Quest at 7:30 EST on ABC, but at 8:30 EST we get the show I am personally the most excited for – The Addams Family! At long last Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoon about an eccentric and socially clueless gothic family is going to make the jump to film!

Charles Addams did not flesh out his individual characters too much following their initial appearance in 1938. The single panel comics instead focused on the odd juxtaposition of the grandiose macabre behavior of the Addams clan and the astonishment expressed by their wholly average neighbors. Despite the chaos or discomfort that follows in their wake, the Addams' always proceed with unconcerned or oblivious confidence. If the writers can maintain this aloof quality to the central cast of the Addams household then they will have done their job well.

In terms of casting I couldn't think of anyone more fitting to play Morticia Addams than the slim, angularly beautiful Carolyn Jones. John Astin, with his similarly angular face, large eyes and overly enthusiastic smile, is the perfect choice for Gomez Addams. Visually the black and white filming of the show will be right at home with both the macabre fashion sense of the titular family, but it will allow for possible satire of the horror genre as it is now – with Victorian motifs coming off as cliché, and a nostalgic pining for the Universal Studios monsters of the early-mid 20th century.

The Munsters, premiering Thursday 9/24

“Science-Fiction Times” issue 418 sneeringly describes the simultaneous September release of The Addams Family and The Munsters as proof of “just how derivative things can get on TV”. Undeniably, The Munsters is CBS' rival programming to The Addams Family. The main characters in The Munsters are also an extended family of morbid weirdoes living in a crumbling towering manor that is out of place in the nice suburban neighborhood surrounding it. And true, there is a witchy mother figure, along with an eccentric uncle and a Frankenstein's monster-type character.

What immediately stands out between the two shows is one glaringly different character. While the Addams family is unanimous in their attire and foreboding nature, the Munsters' household includes a young conventionally attractive woman. Marilyn Munster (played by Beverly Owen) is a white sheep among dark horses. In sitcoms such a character serves the role of showing contrast and causing plot conflicts. I predict that the main way that this show will stand on its own against The Addams Family by readily acknowledging what the Addams do not – that they are different and that not all of society can coexist harmoniously with theirs.

In some ways this could be viewed as a more mature route to take a sitcom, but I don't think TV audiences need to be worried about The Munsters getting too heavy. After all, the makeup on Herman Munster (played by Fred Gwynne) more closely resembles layered blocks of acrylic paint than makeup designed to look gaunt and sickly. Gwynne's constant dopey grin and hooded eyes also lend a comedic air to his character. Al Lewis' grandfather character is likewise hilariously designed to look like an elderly Dracula ala Bela Lugosi who has really let himself go in the last hundred or so years. Yes, it is superficially similar to The Addams Family, but unless the evidence proves otherwise I think we can safely assume that the two shows will be distinct enough to warrant recognition for their own individual strengths.

Final Thoughts

It seems that for now science-fiction and horror on television will be predominantly paired with a heavy helping of comedy. The use of these genres to critique social concepts will continue unhindered in Bewitched, The Addams Family, and The Munsters, but if the most “serious” science-fiction we can expect this fall is coming from Irwin Allen then it seems like we will need to wait a little longer for the spiritual successor to Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. In the meantime young viewers can enjoy the adventures of the Quest family, and the whole family can tune in to the antics of three new paranormal families trying to make their way in American suburbia. It may be a campy, kooky, and spooky year of TV, but at least it will be fun.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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