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[June 24, 1964] Death Has No Master (Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death)

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by Rosemary Benton

I feel sorry for those who rely entirely on the words of critics to determine whether or not a film is worth seeing. It's so easy to miss out of some of the most absurd and fun movies out there if the viewer approaches them with too analytical a mindset. For instance, those who read The New York Time's review of The Comedy of Terror really missed out on the humor of seeing the iconic actors of horror from the 30s and 40s satirize their own legacies.

In anticipation of the June 24th release of Roger Corman's new movie, The Masque of the Red Death, I dared to take a look at an advanced review of the film from Variety Magazine. Since seeing the film after its premier in Los Angeles, I can sympathize with some of the negative points in the above mentioned article, but it still annoys me that there will be people who will avoid this new Edgar Allan Poe tribute film simply because the Variety review and others seem to be approaching it with a lukewarm reception. Yes, The Masque of the Red Death has its faults, but for a horror movie that takes itself seriously in a time when classic horror themes have become passé, this is a very competently done and memorable movie.

Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) is a malicious yet pragmatic and cuttingly frank man whose province in medieval Italy has all but succumbed to the fictitious disease, the Red Death. Although a proud and evangelical self proclaimed Satanist, the Prince is able to rationalize his beliefs in Satan as an all powerful living God by drawing direct inspiration from the morally dubious nature of humanity and the ever present suffering of the world. Taking a woman named Francesca (Jane Asher) from one of the nearby villages after she pleads for the life of her fiancé and father, Prince Prospero makes it his mission to convert her from a believer in God to a hand maiden of Satan, and consequently a hand maiden to himself as a sort of high priest to Satan.

His harsh lessons ultimately culminate in a grand celebration at his palace where his “friends” and followers within the Italian aristocracy plan to feast and revel in a masquerade. All must dress in any human like garb they wish, but per his orders none are allowed to wear red. When a lone figure arrives in towering red robes, Prince Prospero angrily pursues him. The intruder is nothing that he expected, however, and bears a message that he is horrified to hear.

Roger Corman has drawn inspiration from the dark elegance of Edgar Allan Poe's bibliography for years now. Since his production and direction of the 1960 gothic horror film House of Usher, Corman has had at least one Poe-themed film released every year, all of which have been financial successes, if not necessarily critically received. In The Masque of the Red Death Corman once again captures the grandiosity and bleak horror of Poe's writing with the aid of his favorite go-to villainous gentleman, Vincent Price.

The Masque of the Red Death is unique in Corman's work to date. In the 1950s the young and ambitious schlock producer gained a name for himself by churning out many of the low budget, drive-in titles that we grew up on – The Fast and the Furious (1954), Day the World Ended (1955), and Machine Gun Kelley (1958). Using his growing reputation as a Hollywood force who could corral the crew, shoot a film in as little as five days, and still present a profitable final product, Corman swiftly moved on to producing and directing.

His subject matter has included some very interesting forays into edgier territories within American film since the enforcement of the Hayes Code in 1934. Of particular note I would point to the agency of the female characters in The Wasp Woman (1959), the self-aware satire in A Bucket of Blood (1959), and the rage of white racists against school desegregation in The Intruder (1962). In The Masque of the Red Death the topics of the film's plot are not so much unique as they are distinct for being so well interwoven.

The screenplay is credited to Twilight Zone writer Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell (who wrote the screenplay for the 1957 film Man of A Thousand Faces). Their combined effort added an immense amount of humanity and depth to the original sparseness of Poe’s writing. Although the title clearly states that the movie is an adaptation of Poe's 1842 short story "The Mask of the Red Death: A Fantasy", the film is actually a merger of “Mask” with another Poe short story from 1849 titled, "Hop-Frog; Or, the Eight Chained Ourangoutangs". Given that the story of “Mask” is so sparse in characters outside of the protagonist Prince Prospero and the plague personification in The Red Death, the film was obviously in need of other characters to flesh it out into a feature film. The end result penned by Beaumont and Campbell is so perfect that it could easily be believed that the two stories were originally written as one.

The visuals in Corman’s Poe movies are likewise a stark departure from the static and clunky cinematography of his 1950s productions. Working with cinematographer Nicolas Roag (best known for his work on David Lean's 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia), The Masque of the Red Death kept the sharp colors and excellent sets of Corman’s earlier Poe movies. Roag's artistic eye brought it above and beyond that, however. The movement of the camera and the actors achieves a flowing and poetic feel that is new to Corman’s movies. The scene of The Red Death gliding through the revelers at the climax of the film is particularly gripping, as is the creative decision to have the end credits consist of a red and black dichromatic color scheme with the credits appearing in white around slowly placed tarot cards.

It’s a pleasure to see that as Roger Corman gains momentum in the film world he is readily making use of the network of talent opening up to him. Meanwhile, those he has relied upon for previous projects, particularly Vincent Price and R. Wright Campbell, seem to be flourishing under his more experienced directorship and heavier production budgets. My final thought on the film is that as a long time fan of Vincent Price I was thrilled to see that the poor performance I witnessed from Price in The Last Man on Earth was not indicative of a downward spiral for him. While he looked old and brittle in his role as Dr. Robert Morgan – a lonely, despondent, and disillusioned scientist – Price sprang to full vibrant life in a role that really allowed him to channel his inner devil – that of a swarthy, learned, arrogant, pompous and cruel classic villain. No matter what viewers might hear in the critical response to this film, it is a work that is absolutely worth the cost of admission. Of Corman's current bibliography this is a four and a half out of five stars. If Roger Corman continues to assemble and wield his creative team this well in his future projects then he is going to become a force to be reckoned with.

[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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Movies

[June 10, 1964] What washed up (Horror at Party Beach)

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by Gideon Marcus

Natalie Devitt, bless her soul, is a good sport.  When even my own wife and daughter won't come to the Drive-In with me, I can count on the Journey's resident film and TV expert to share the popcorn. I'd learned that Del Tenney had a new double-feature of schlock presenting at the local spot, combining The Horror at Party Beach and The Curse of the Living Corpse.  The newspaper even said you had to fill out a waiver so you wouldn't sue if the films gave you a heart attack (an old Castle Films gimmick).

When Natalie came over for our monthly record-listening date, I showed her the clipping.  How could she refuse?  So, we trundled down to San Diego (I understand they might build a Drive-In in Oceanside soon, which would be nice) and promptly became the one pair of moviegoers that wasn't necking. 

I'm shocked, I tell ya.  How could they fail to be entranced by Tenney's brilliant fusion of the beach and horror genres?  Well…it wasn't that hard.  Read on and find out.

First up, we get a jazzy soundtrack and the rumble of engines.  Our hero and his current flame are toodling along in a very nice convertible.  Main Man is not too thrilled by the biker gang escort, nor his girlfriend's making of the goo-goo eyes at the head cycle enthusiast.  A race ensues, which the car handily wins.


"Hey!  No passing on the right!"

Meanwhile, out to sea, we witness a conscientious barge crewman dropping canisters of clearly labeled radioactive waste into the water.  It turns out that he is not depth charging a German U-Boat but simply getting rid of the stuff in as cost-effective a manner as possible.  It's too bad we don't have laws against this kind of thing.  Maybe LBJ can make it part of his Great Society.


Making The Enemy Below.

Main Man and his +1 arrive at their destination, the swingingest beach party ever filmed in monochrome, without the benefit (liability?) of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.


Hey!  It's Hank Marvin of The Shadows


Just your typical beach party.

The movie was billed as "The First Horror Monster Musical", but it really just had a lot of beach band scenes played by a weird cross between the Beach Boys and the Shadows.  I was perfectly fine with this.  In fact, I probably would have watched the forty-five minute short film that could have been stitched together from the party footage; they looked like they were having fun.

At least until the bad guys showed up…


Beautifully choreographed entrance by the Charter Oak Motorcycle Club of Riverside, Connecticut.

Main Man's fickle flame does a passion dance for the leather jacketed biker hunk, and of course, a the male domination ritual ensues.


I know I packed my muscles in here somewhere.

The fight is soon over, brain having triumphed over brawn.  I guess.  Interestingly enough, the biker turns out to be a swell fellow about it. 


This is the most romantic tension in the film.

Fickle Flame (you can see how much of an impression the movie made on me — I can't remember any of the names) decides she can't compete with a couple of Real Men and goes off to swim on her own.  This is a Bad Idea.


As seen on The Outer Limits


Being smeared with chocolate syrup is painful and lethal.

This murder is big news.  The local law enforcement gets involved and quickly realizes this is above their pay grade, so they contract out to the local scientist, the Platonic ideal of an egghead.


Glasses and pipe, Eric Dolphy's latest hit.

Cecil the Seasick Sea Monster, in the meantime, somehow spawns a buddy, and they attack a local slumber party.


"Wanna come over and eat S'mores and hit each other with pillows?"


"NEVER MIND!"

And then three ladies get stranded on the side of road with a flat tire.  For some reason, the shortcut to New York City from Connecticut runs through a roadless forest.  Too bad for them.


"Is it the Auto Club man?"  No.

After that mauling, we get a romantic interlude between Main Man and Egghead's Daughter.  This scene is welcome because it features more music by the Pseudows.


"It's so good to just relax after all the mass murder that's been going around."

Cut to a hungry Sea Zombie who, after missing out on his chance to eat another pair of women, decides to try his luck on a store window mannequin.  Instead, the monster slices its arm off on the glass.  This proves fortuitous, for it gives Doc Egghead the opportunity to probe into the monsters' nature.  He determines that they are revived corpses, mutated from skeletons (!) by radiation.  As former humans, only one substance is sufficient to sustain them — human blood.  Apparently the array of sausages in the monsters' mouths is actually a set of suckers.  Not that this is ever made clear in the action.

Eulabelle, the superstitious, Voodoo-worshipping maid (because, of course she is), spills a beaker of sodium on the arm, and it bursts into flame.  It's all the water in its make-up, apparently.  Now the good guys have a defense against the Cecils!


"But how will we get the stain out, Eulabelle?"

But how to find them?  Despite being shambly and not terribly bright, they are somehow impossible to find.  That is, until Egghead's Daughter hatches (haha!) the idea to use geiger counters to track their radioactive trail.  With no time to lose, given that the population of the small town has already shrunk by about half, everyone disperses to track the Uranium traces.

Alone.


I generally have better luck with a jig or a spinner.

This puts Egghead's Daughter at risk.  In fact, she is soon assaulted by not two, but a full dozen monsters (but we never see more than two at a time close up, probably because Tenney only had two suits).


One fish, two fish, gray fish, gray fish.

Luckily for her, the MEN arrive in time, sodium grenades in hand, and torch the bad guys.


In a scene right out of Zulu!

The seven remaining townsfolk live happily ever, and the credits roll, made all the better by a return of the band.


No kidding — they're called the "Del-Aires"!

Post-mortem

That's the plot.  How was the movie?  From my sardonic description and the attached clips, I imagine the movie looks pretty bad.

That's good.  It was pretty bad.

However, schlock it might have been, but it wasn't entirely dreck.  Sure, it was no Psycho, but someone on their team was a decent editor, keeping the scenes and the overall movie trucking right along.  I was flabbergasted, I was made to roll my eyes, but I was never bored.  And while the film's score was no great shakes, consisting of one vibrato-laden underwater sting, the band was good in a "high school kids making ends meet over the summer" kind of way.  Plus, I got to see what all the kids were wearing to the beach last year (the movie has a 1963 copyright date).

If there was a disappointment it's that the film missed an opportunity.  At one point, the Cecils decide to prey on a pair of affable drunks (two of the three men slain in the film, as opposed to at least twenty women).  I had hoped they'd show the Sea Zombies stumbling around in a drunken stupor, but nothing doing.

Bugging Out

Anyway, neither Natalie nor I were enthused about watching the second flick of the double feature.  Luckily, the new Paramount technicolor flick, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, was playing on the Drive-In's other screen.  After a brief stop at the concession stand for more popcorn, we decided to give the bigger budget film a try.

But that's a story for another article…

(Note: you can buy the 8mm prints of both Tenney movies, with sound, here.)

Speaking of films, enjoy this latest appearance by the Traveler and Young Traveler — this time, we're talking about the Van Allen Belts!





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Movies

[June 4, 1964] Weird Menace and Villainy in the London Fog: The West German Edgar Wallace Movies

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by Cora Buhlert

The biggest phenomenon in West German cinemas in the past five years is none other than Edgar Wallace, Britain's king of thrillers.

The enduring popularity of Edgar Wallace in Germany may seem baffling, since Wallace died in 1932 and most of his thrillers were written in the 1910s and 1920s. American readers will probably best remember Wallace as the creator of King Kong and screenwriter of the eponymous movie.


Edgar Wallace

However, Germans have long loved Edgar Wallace, which is odd, since Edgar Wallace did not particularly like Germany, as many of his writings show. Nonetheless, his thrillers were hugely popular in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s, until the Nazis banned them along with the entire crime genre as "too subversive". In the 1950s, paperback publisher Goldmann started reissuing the Edgar Wallace thrillers to great success. And as always when something is successful, others took note. One of them was "Heftroman" publisher Pabel, whose Utopia Kriminal line of science fiction thrillers was directly inspired by the popularity of the Edgar Wallace novels.

German film producers also took note and indeed there were a few German Edgar Wallace adaptations during the silent and early talkie era. However, plans to adapt Edgar Wallace novels in 1950s repeatedly failed, because crime and thriller movies supposedly did not sell in postwar West Germany, since viewers allegedly demanded harmless musicals and romances set in beautiful landscapes rather than tales of crime and murder. In 1959, Danish film producer Preben Philipsen took a chance and adapted the Edgar Wallace novel The Fellowship of the Frog for German audiences. The result was a huge success and led to a wave of more or less faithful Edgar Wallace adaptations (nineteen to date) and copycats that show no sign of abating.


Poster for Face of the Frog (1959)

The Edgar Wallace movies are primarily crime thrillers, though there is nothing remotely realistic about them. Instead, the films are set in a fog-drenched England and particularly London that never was, full of dodgy harbour bars where nefarious crimes are plotted as curvy sirens sing torch songs, where the River Thames is used a convenient corpse disposal and where Scotland Yard is headed by a dim-witted gentleman named Sir John (played by Siegfried Schürenberg who serves as a sort of link between the various movies) with a taste for buxom secretaries. Inspectors are handsome and dashing, played by either Heinz Drache or Joachim Fuchsberger, unless they are played by the plump and balding Siegfried Lowitz, in which case he has a dashing Sergeant. There is always a comic relief character, often a bumbling butler, who is usually played by Eddi Arent.


Joachim Fuchsberger, Siegfried Schürenberg and Eddi Arent in The Squeaker (1963)

Women in Edgar Wallace movies come in three flavours, mysterious elderly ladies, usually played by veteran UfA actresses, who may or may not be involved in the villain's machinations, buxom femme fatales who are involved with the villain and often end up paying the ultimate price for their villainous ways (Eva Pflug in Face of the Frog was the best of them) and finally, young and pretty damsels in distress (often played by Karin Dor), who find themselves pursued and often kidnapped by the villain, before they are rescued and end up marrying the dashing Inspector.


Eva Pflug being admired by Jochen Brockmann in Face of the Frog (1959)

Occasionally, the Wallace movies manage to subvert expectations. And so the dashing detective is unmasked as the killer in The Red Circle (1960), while the wide-eyed ingenue is revealed to be the showgirl slashing killer in this year's Room 13.


Poster for The Red Circle

Wallace villains are never just ordinary criminals, but run improbably large and secretive organisations with dozens of henchmen. At least one of the henchmen is deformed or flat out insane, played either by former wrestler Ady Berber or a charismatic young actor named Klaus Kinski, who gave the performance of his life as a mute and insane animal handler in last year's The Squeaker.


Klaus Kinski threatening Inge Langen in The Squeaker

The crimes are extremely convoluted, usually involve robberies, blackmail or inheritance schemes and are always motivated by greed. Murder methods are never ordinary and victims are dispatched via harpoons, poison blow guns, guillotines or wild animals. The villains inevitably have strange monikers such as the Frog, the Shark, the Squeaker, the Avenger, the Green Archer or the Black Abbot and often wear a costume to match. Their identity is always a mystery and pretty much every character comes under suspicion until the big reveal at the end. And once the mask comes off, the villain is inevitably revealed to be a staunch pillar of society and often a member of Sir John's club.


The Frog kidnapping Eva Anthes in Face of the Frog (1959)


The Green Archer terrifies Karin Dor in The Green Archer (1961)


Eddi Arent attempts to apprehend the the Black Abbot in the eponymous film (1963)

The Edgar Wallace films are cheaply made, with Hamburg or Berlin standing in for London and German castles standing in for British mansions. Nonetheless, they have a unique visual flair, courtesy of directors Harald Reinl, Jürgen Roland and Alfred Vohrer. All films are shot in stylish black and white, using the widescreen Ultrascope process. Contrasts of light and shadow are used to great effect, such as the shadow of a dangling noose falling onto a stark white prison wall in Face of the Frog. Strange camera angles are common and scenes are shot through the eyes of an unseen killer, through the dial of a rotary telephone and in one memorable case, though the mouth of Sir John chomping on a carrot. The highly stylised look of the Edgar Wallace films is uncommon in contemporary German cinema. Instead, the Edgar Wallace films take their visual inspiration from the expressionist cinema of the 1920s and early 1930s, returning German filmmaking to where it was before the Nazis took over.


Karin Dor spies on The Terrible People (1960)

Are the Edgar Wallace films science fiction? Well, they are mainly crime thrillers, though they also include horror elements and take visual inspiration from the German horror cinema of more than thirty years ago. The Dead Eyes of London from 1961 is probably the closest the Wallace series has come to pure horror to date, largely due to the performance of Ady Berber as the blind and supernaturally strong killer Jack.


Program book for The Dead Eyes of London, featuring Ady Berber threatening Karin Baal

Science fiction elements also frequently appear in the Edgar Wallace movies, often in the form of death traps and complicated murder methods. The Green Archer (1961) uses the old standby of the underground chamber (in which the villain, played by the excellent Gert Fröbe, has kept the lover who spurned him imprisoned for decades) that slowly fills with water. The Strange Countess (1961) features a deadly electrified grid, which protects the jewels the titular villainess has stolen. The Countess, played with chilling haughtiness by silent era veteran Lil Dagover, is eventually electrocuted by her own death trap. Meanwhile, in The Dead Eyes of London, a domed glass tank in the basement of a church-run home for the blind is used to drown wealthy men before their bodies are thrown into the Thames, allowing the villainous Dead Eye gang to claim their life insurance. And in The Squeaker, the titular villain dispatches his opponents via a blow gun shooting crystals of snake venom. As mentioned above, the criminal plots and murder methods in the Wallace are always convoluted and often don't make a whole lot of sense. But that doesn't matter, because you're usually much too captivated by the going-ons on screen to worry about such little matters as logic.


Lil Dagover prowls her castle in The Strange Countess (1961)

The 1962 film The Door With Seven Locks even features a bona fide mad scientist, played by Wallace film regular Pinkas Braun, who conducts medical experiments such as brain transplants in a hidden vault underneath a country mansion. This makes the otherwise not particularly remarkable The Door With Seven Locks the most science fictional Edgar Wallace film to date.


Poster for The Door with the Seven Locks (1962)

Critics don't like the Edgar Wallace films, complaining about the lack of realism, the alleged predictability, the lurid and sensational nature of the crimes portrayed and the (by West German standards) high levels of violence. Those critics have a point, for the Edgar Wallace films are lurid and sensational, violent and completely unrealistic. However, the sheer artificiality is why I enjoy these movies so much and why I inevitably head for the neighbourhood movie theatre whenever a new Edgar Wallace movie premieres (and we currently get several of them every year). Even the lesser entries of the series are well worth watching and the standouts such as Face of the Frog, The Green Archer, The Dead Eyes of London, The Inn on the River, The Squeaker or The Indian Scarf provide excellent chills and thrills.


Poster for The Squeaker (1963) )

As for those who claim that the Edgar Wallace movies have nothing to do with real life, well, they're mistaken, for the Wallace films do reflect contemporary West German concerns, though through the distorted lens of a funhouse mirror. The fact that the motive for the bizarre crimes on screen is always greed reflects concerns about the rampant materialism in postwar West Germany. Just as the fact that the villain is inevitably revealed to be an upstanding pillar of society under his (or more rarely her) mask is all too reminiscent of recent revelations that quite a few politicians, judges, doctors, professors, civil servants and captains of industry used to be Nazis and still somehow managed to continue their careers unimpeded in postwar West Germany. As for the tendency of henchmen in Wallace movies to mutter, "But I was just following orders. You can't blame me", when captured – well, where have we heard that before?


Poster for The Terrible People (1960)

The Edgar Wallace movies offer pleasantly comforting shudders, as the viewer delves into a strange parallel world, where London is the murder capital of Europe and the Squeaker, the Frog, the Black Abbot and the rest of the Wallace menagerie stalk the fog-shrouded streets to commit bizarre crimes. And even though all movies stand alone, they are set in the same universe with Siegfried Schürenberg's Sir John acting as a link between the different stories. This shared universe concept occasionally shows up in literature such as the Cthulhu mythos, but has never really been tried in movies so far. The possibilities are limitless.


Sir John (Siegfried Schürenberg) is shocked that the latest villain turns out to be yet another member of his club.

The success of the Edgar Wallace movies quickly spawned a host of imitators. Producer Artur Brauner acquired the rights to several crime novels by Bryan Edgar Wallace, son of Edgar Wallace, while Constantin Film adapted several novels by Czech writer and Edgar Wallace imitator Louis Weinert-Wilton. Other imitations are more of a stretch, such as a series of Wallace style movies featuring G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown.

However, the most interesting of the many crime thrillers released in the wake of the Edgar Wallace movies are the Dr. Mabuse movies produced by Artur Brauner. Based on a supervillain character created by Norbert Jacques in the 1920s, they are not just unambiguously science fiction, but also a return to the glory days of German cinema during the Weimar Republic. But that's a subject for another day.

[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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Movies

[March 31, 1964] 7 Faces and 7 Places (The movie, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao)

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by Victoria Lucas

Place Number 1: Denver

The neat thing about film festivals is not just being able to see more than one film in a short period of time.  It's the gossip, the revelations, the people who show up, some of them onstage.  In this case the festival site was Denver, Colorado.  Seem an unlikely place for a film festival?  But there it was that "7 Faces of Dr. Lao," made last year, enjoyed its first U.S. release on March 18.  I went there basically to see that one film, but my ride-sharing friend went to see many.  So I saw a little of Denver outside the movie theater.  But I'm not here to review Denver. 


My mom's postcard—I don't have a camera

Place Number 2: the MGM lot

If you saw my review of Finney's Circus of Dr. Lao back on June 16, 1962 you would know why I went to such (literally) lengths to see this movie.  It did not disappoint, but I did object to the interpolations of a soppy romance and a hackneyed Western takeover-the-town plot.  The "Circus" was filmed, according to sources, on the MGM back lots, although some of those Culver City hills must be pretty rough if that's so.  My theory is that filming on location was out due to the many roles of Tony Randall, who plays Dr. Lao, the Abominable Snowman, Merlin, Apollonius of Tyana, Pan, The Giant Serpent, and Medusa.  All those makeup and costume changes (to say nothing of any other cast) must have needed the workshop of famed makeup artist William Tuttle and a large selection of MGM costumes, as well as (not credited) costumer Robert Fuca.

Place Number 3: Chujen, Chu, China

This was the last place Laozi was seen alive (531 BC), if indeed he did live.  In the movie, but not the book, the Abalone newspaper editor, Ed, asks where he is from, and after Dr. Lao tells him this place, Ed looks it up (providing an opportunity to see his love Agnes, who in the movie is a librarian as well as a teacher) and confronts Dr. Lao with the news that Chujen no longer exists, so what is going on?  So we and Ed see the circus tent and Merlin (not in the book) for the first time.  And that provides me with an excuse to tell you the following.  The plot of both Finney's story and the film was, very briefly, that the circus comes to town, the town of Abalone, to be exact.  But it's not a Barnum & Bailey-type circus.  It arrives somehow with, or in the person of, the Chinese legend Laozi (Lao-Tse, Dr. Lao, or as you wish), since in the movie he arrives on a donkey with only a fishbowl and fish, as well as a pipe, which he ignites with his thumb as lighter.  It consists of other legends, myths, and gods in—as it were—the flesh.  The rest is what happens to, of, with, by, and from the circus and its hawker, guide, medicine man, and (in the movie) magical self, Dr. Lao.


Courtesy of University of Arizona Special Collections

Place Number 4: Abalone, Arizona

MGM's Abalone, understandably, looks just like all those old western towns you see in television shows and movies, more than one horse, but not more than half a dozen, and not more than that many streets.  I always thought of Finney's Circus as taking place in the late 1920s, when he began the story while he was still billeted in China by the U.S. Army.  But this version of the story takes place in that same smeared-out time zone that westerns always use—somewhere between 1890 and 1910, when record players were known as gramophones, and when men were men and women were uh … unable to take care of ourselves. 

Place Number 5: Tucson, Arizona

Many people, including me, think that Abalone, Arizona—the setting of more than one Finney story—was actually Tucson.  And there is an "Old Tucson," a movie set just outside Tucson that became a tourist attraction in which the stagecoach gets robbed twice daily.  The set really epitomizes that "Old West" stereotype that dominates in "7 Faces."  But in desert scenes, saguaro cacti figure heavily in the movie's landscape.  Most people don't know that saguaros are not found anywhere but in the Sonoran Desert.  There is a certain creep, perhaps a foot or so per year, as the cacti spread around mainly southern Arizona (U.S.) and northern Sonora (Mexico), but at this point they only live in the Southwest, and not on the MGM lot in California.  The ones on the MGM lot look pretty strange.  I would have said that the cacti were the worst things about the movie, were it not that I realized that their strange appearance (looking like cardboard cutouts) adds to the surreal nature of the film.


A real—not surreal—saguaro cactus near Tucson, Arizona

Place Number 6: Dr. Lao's circus tent

The circus tent of the good doctor is said to be "bigger on the inside than it is on the outside" by one observer in the movie, and indeed it has many twistings and turnings.  In fact it is rather like a layered labyrinth and is a remarkable movie set, one of the best inventions of the movie, I think.  There is a lair for every beast, a spiel for every part of the tent.  Steps up, steps down– Hurry! Hurry!–a very strange circus tent that provides the setting for the fish from Dr. Lao's fishbowl, not in the book, but in the movie an excuse for some animation when it grows to the size of the sea serpent advertised.  The book ends with the story of Woldercan (below), but the movie has a showdown with villain Clint Stark's henchmen that burns the tent.

Place Number 7: Woldercan

Woldercan was a city dominated by a vengeful god in Finney's Circus, and now, in the movie, destroyed by improbable cataclysms.  In both the movie and the book, Woldercan is shown as if unfolding outside as the rear of the tent rolls up, but in the movie the people of the city look like the people of Abalone, and they are led astray by a man who looks like Stark.  In the book they are threatened by starvation and flock to the temple, where a dispute over which virgin to sacrifice leads to the deaths of three people—not the whole city.  In the movie the story of Woldercan becomes the turning point in the Stark v. Abalone battle.


The author, courtesy of University of Arizona Special Collections

As I think of it, the movie was funny although not Finney, worth seeing for the performances of Randall and Barbara Eden (Angela), the jokes and pokes at westerns—oh, and don't forget the surrealism.  Go see this circus when it comes to town.

And now for a little catalog.  Finney put one at the end of his story, so I thought I'd put just a short one in:

Plots & bits interposed in Finney's tale:

  • romance of Angela & Ed
  • politics of Clint Stark v. Abalone, including meetings, printshop destruction
  • Lao's interruption of beating of George who is supposed to be a Navajo (Indians from Northern Arizona) played by a Lakota (Plains) Indian
  • inflation of sea monster
  • Lao's trick of lighting his thumb
  • Lao's trick of speaking any dialect, not just perfect English v. Chinee American stereotypical dialect.

Men-like creatures not in book:

  • abominable snowman (screenwriters' solution to the book's Russian v. bear problem)
  • Mike (Angela's son)
  • Clint Stark
  • cowboy muscle and snark
  • Merlin the magician (Apollonius was the magician in the book)
  • Ed Cunningham (Angela's honey and editor of the newspaper)

Woman-like creatures not in book:

  • Angela's mother-in-law

Ending as it began

As for Laozi (not pronounced LOWzee), he was last seen riding into the west, but in the 6th century BC that was on a water buffalo.  On the MGM lot in 1963 it was on a donkey, and in the direction of some cardboard saguaros.  Or, as the movie's Dr. Lao (pronounced LOW) would say, "Hello.  Goodbye.  Thank you."

[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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Movies

[March 19, 1964] When Vampires Rule the World (Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow's The Last Man on Earth)

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by Rosemary Benton

Horror meets SF

As creators and Hollywood producers have found, horror is a versatile complementary genre that has been instrumental to the fear factor within thrillers, the stark human experience in film noir, and the complex depth of character behind a compelling villain. Recently, the genre has been going through a bit of a self-imposed revolution as it moves away from late 1800s and early 1900s stock-stories to pair off with 1950s science fiction literature such as John Wyndham's book The Day of the Triffids. Comedy has increasingly been a partnered with horror, as in The Tingler (1959), the self-aware movie The Comedy of Terrors (January 1964), and the upcoming freaky-family sitcom The Addams Family.

Those who have made a name for themselves as character actors within horror (Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi, Peter Cushing, and of course Vincent Price) are more and more finding themselves in roles that are written to be the very embodiments of the characters they were initially typecast as. While they take on these roles with flair and aplomb, seeing them act outside of their comfortable and accommodating niches is an exciting opportunity for their fans. This month the debonair gentleman-villain/tragic aristocrat character actor Vincent Price was given the opportunity to showcase his acting talent in the newly released film, The Last Man on Earth, a film that promised to be a stark departure from his previous roles.

Based on the 1954 novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, The Last Man on Earth follows the depressing life of Robert Morgan (played by Vincent Price) after a deadly plague sweeps the planet, turning infected people and animals into shambling, blood thirsty vampire ghouls. Even with the book's heavy reliance on internal dialogue and the writing's somewhat disjointed flow, a brilliant movie adaptation of I Am Legend would be entirely possible in the hands of a succinct screenwriter, a brooding leading actor, and a director capable of bringing severe emotional distress to the screen. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the talented team behind Last Man, none of these elements quite linked up with one another. The result is severely disappointing.

What Happened?

Robert Morgan was once a scientist working to find a cure to the plague creeping across the globe. But when the disease took his neighbors, his fellow scientists, then his child and finally his wife, Robert found himself alone with the terrible burden of quite possibly being the last human being alive.

Boarding up his house and festooning it with garlic strands, crosses and mirrors, Robert whiles away his evenings making stakes and farming garlic as the zombie-like vampires beat away at the outside of his house. Alcohol, records, books and home videos are some comfort, but also stand as constant reminders of the civilization he is now bereft of. During the day when the vampires seek shelter from the sun Morgan methodically sweeps the area to hunt them down, stake them, load them into his station wagon and drive the bodies out to an ever burning plague pit.

After three years of this grim routine Robert happens to come across a woman named Ruth Collins (played by Franca Bettoia) who is out walking in the sunlight. He chases her down and brings her back to his home. Robert soon deduces that she is one of the infected, but comes to find out that the vampire disease has been contained with a drug that must be taken regularly lest the victim lose their sanity. She tells him that she was sent to spy on him by order of the new society of vampires she belongs to. The group intends to find a way to take revenge on Robert for killing many of their number as they hid from the sun. She explains to him that he is the new monster in this world, killing during the day while the new norm sleep.

After a short altercation Ruth becomes unconscious. While she is out Robert filters Ruth's blood through his own body via a makeshift dialysis setup, effectively curing her of the vampirism. But Robert's discovery of a cure is too little too late. As Ruth and Robert come to realize the miracle that has taken place a vampire breaks into the house and bites Ruth, effectively ending her brief return to full humanity. Just then black vans full of heavily armed vampires roll up and begin to slaughter the feral ghouls stalking around Robert's property. Their mission is to exterminate Robert, just as he has been doing to any sleeping vampires he has come across. Fleeing the house and running into a church, Robert is pursued and fatally wounded. Spitting venom and insults at the vampires, Robert crumples on the steps to the pulpit and dies as Ruth looks on. The church begins to fill with worshipers as Ruth walks out. She comforts a crying child saying that there is nothing to be afraid of anymore, and then the film fades to black. 

What went wrong

To preface my oncoming analysis of The Last Man on Earth, I wholeheartedly believe that a movie adaptation of a book is not obligated to be a carbon copy of its source material. Movies such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Most Dangerous Game (1932) prove this well, both of which were wonderful films even though the creators took liberties with the characters, scenes, and atmosphere of the literature they were based on. That being said, given what the writers of Last Man chose to keep from Matheson's novel and what they chose to tweak, the movie just doesn't come across as raw, desperate and angry as it should be. The blame lies primarily in the music, and as much as it pains me to say this, in the casting of Vincent Price as Robert Morgan.

Upon hearing the opening trills of the music, heralding the credits to begin rolling onto the screen, I felt something was wrong. The music blares loudly over the words with a cliché cacophony of horns and violin before switching to a melodramatic lilting tune, then back to clashing force full of a powerful energy completely at odds with the fragile looking, depressed Vincent Price mulling around his boarded up home. The musical scoring doesn't get any better from there. At times when the audience is supposed to feel the tedium of Robert Morgan's existence there is music that makes you feel as if his daily routine is full of exciting danger. In actuality it is full of mundane horror as he forces himself awake day after day with only the acts of eating, repairing his home, and exterminating the sleeping vampires (men and women alike) to keep his mind occupied.

Most insultingly the entrance of Franca Bettoia's character brings with it a strange romantic subplot that seems to come out of the blue with little buildup and conflicting sincerity. The interplay between Price and Bettoia takes on a very jarring fast succession of shoulder shaking, menacing staring, hysterics and hugging. During all of this the score flips wildly between lovely crescendos and stricken horns blares and drum rolls to show betrayal and hurt. It's reminiscent of the sweeping operatic film scoring common of old horror films from Universal Pictures, but feels very out of date for a modern movie that is supposed to be seething with barely repressed despair and scant few moments of actual hope.

Finally, the visual reason the film fails to emote properly comes to rest on the unfortunately sub-par performance of Vincent Price. For a character who is fast coming to believe that he is the last uninfected human on Earth, Price plays the role of Robert Morgan with too much restraint. Robert Morgan is a man with a young family taken by the plague and who lived to see his wife and neighbors come after him from beyond the grave. Such a character should be deeply shaken and depressed as he goes through his remaining days with monotony and acceptance of a life alongside the undead.

Price, however, carries himself like someone who is physically fragile and emotionally cold. His rounded back and stiff-armed walk speak of a man afraid he might break a bone if he moves with more than a shuffle, as opposed to a barely middle-aged man with a heavy burden on his shoulders but a determination to survive. His emotional connection to the other characters in the story seems very distant as well. One could argue that this was a fault of the script, but when the audience sees him chasing the van carrying his still living daughter to the plague pit to be burned, Price is turned away from her body with little effort. He barely struggles at all, and walks away in a daze too easily for a man supposed to be a hysterical, grieving father.

At one point in the story Price's character encounters a ragged dog out in the daylight. His disappointment at learning that a wounded animal he brings home with him is infected is minimal, and in the next scene we see him burying a small bundle with a stake in it. There is little remorse in his posture or expression, even though he is burying the first living creature he has had contact with in three years (before he meets Ruth). Vincent Price just can't do desperation. He can emote long suffering sadness well as is evident in the scene when he visits his wife's tomb and when he is watching home movies and begins to laugh before breaking down into tears, but he just can't seem to nail down what it must be like for a character as raw, desperate and hungry for social contact as Robert Morgan.

The verdict

Sadly, this particular movie is only worthy of a two and a half star rating.

In terms of its competence as a whole, The Last Man on Earth is a solid enough science-fiction/horror movie from directors Sidney Salkow and Ubaldo Ragona, and will likely please the casual movie goer looking for a darker story. But given the material it had to work with in I Am Legend, the movie feels flat. Some films are better when you have read the novel beforehand, but this is not one of them. For those who are die hard fans of Vincent Price I would also avoid seeing this movie as it is hardly his best performance. Instead save your money for the upcoming Roger Corman film The Mask of the Red Death in June.

[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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Movies

[February 25, 1964] From the Sublime to the Ridiculous (Castle of Blood and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Now that February has much of the Northern Hemisphere in the grip of winter, it's a good time to escape the cold and seek out a different kind of chill.  Head out to your local movie theater or drive-in (bring a blanket) and watch a good horror movie.  Or at least a horror movie.  Not all of them are good.

Two that I recently sat through represent the apex and the nadir of the genre.  Well, that's a bit of exaggeration.  The good one isn't that good.  It's hardly in the same class as, say, last year's The Haunting, which is a modern classic.  But it's worth watching, so let's take a look.

Castle of Blood: Barbara Steele and the Italian Gothic Horror Film

The history of Italian fright films of the modern era begins with I Vampiri (1957).  It was not until the 1960 release of La maschera del demonio, known in the English-speaking world as Black Sunday, however, that anyone sat up and took notice.  The international success of this gruesome shocker launched the careers of director Mario Bava and star Barbara Steele.

Steele is a British actress of unusual beauty.  Her striking features can suggest innocence or evil.


Innocence


Evil!

After Black Sunday, Steele went on to haunt audiences in Roger Corman's Pit and the Pendulum.  She then returned to Italy, specializing in scary movies.  (But not always.  You may have caught her in Frederico Fellini's 8½.) These include The Horrible Dr. Hichcock and The Ghost.  Her latest terrifying feature is Castle of Blood.

Known in its native land as Danza Macabra, the film begins with an English journalist interviewing Edgar Allan Poe in a tavern.  (By the way, the ghastly anecdote our fictional Poe relates here is clearly based on his 1835 short story, Berenice.) The skeptical reporter denies that Poe's accounts are real.  An aristocrat bets that the journalist cannot spend a full night in his ancestral home on All Souls' Day.  The journalist accepts the wager, and the terror begins.


Poe tells his story

At first, things don't seem too bad.  Barbara Steele shows up as the aristocrat's lovely sister, and the two quickly become lovers.  Another woman living in the castle tries to come between them.  A man of science is also present.  He explains some of the weird things that happen, but they remain mysterious.  The journalist meets his fate in an ironic ending.


The hero and his new girlfriend


A particularly spooky scene

Although slow at times, the film is eerie and compelling.  The black-and-white cinematography is moody and atmospheric.

Four stars.

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies: The Weird World of Z Movies


Sometimes considered the ultimate example of the Z movie

The term Z movie has recently come into use, referring to films, generally of poor quality, with extremely low budgets.  Many of these are labors of love, made independently outside the usual Hollywood system.  A lot of them are science fiction and horror movies.  Examples abound, from Robot Monster (1953) to Teenagers from Outer Space (1959), previously reviewed by our host.

A relatively new name in this dubious field is Ray Dennis Steckler.  A couple of years ago, he directed Wild Guitar, one of a handful of films that Arch Hall Sr. produced as vehicles for his son, Arch Hall Jr.  Now Steckler has made a movie for himself, going so far as to star in it under the outrageous pseudonym Cash Flagg.


And he's married to second-billed Carolyn Brandt

So what do we get if we dare to watch this movie?  Well, not much.


Our director, producer, and star

Steckler (or Flagg) shows up at a carnival with some other folks.  He gets mixed up with a fortune teller who hypnotizes him and sends him out to kill people. 


"I see that you will all soon star in a very bad movie."

That's about it, although we do get some guys near the end of the film with faces scarred by acid.  I suppose these are the title characters.


"Hi.  I'm an incredibly strange creature . . . Oh, you know the rest."

We also get lots of dance sequences, starring Carolyn Brandt.


A little something for the leg men in the audience

Credit where credit is due.  The color cinematography is actually pretty good.  Somehow this makes the movie's failings stand out even more.  I'd suggest bringing a group of friends with you to make fun of it.

One star.

Until next time, see you at the movies!


Coming soon!

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Movies

[February 15, 1964] Flaws in the seventh facet (Seven Days in May)

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by Janice L. Newman

Seven Days in May premiered three nights ago!  My husband and I made sure to get to the theater early, as we wanted to claim good seats for this star-studded and much anticipated political drama.  Given the amount of talent assembled both in front of and behind the camera, there was no way the film would be a disaster.  At the same time, Seven Days in May wasn’t quite an unmitigated success.  The film is a flawed jewel, the minor imperfections standing out all the more so against the clarity and glitter of an otherwise perfect gem.

The Plot

The movie opens with a fight between protestors, some of whom support the US President and others who oppose him.  The scene is filled with powerful imagery, but doesn’t do much more than set the tone for the story.  I suspect the director chose to start the movie this way to give stragglers a chance to find a seat without missing any of the meat of the story.

Once the riot is over, we’re introduced to the President himself, “Jordan Lyman,” played by Fredric March (you may remember him from his performance in Inherit the Wind as Matthew Harrison Brady).  We quickly learn that the President has signed a disarmament treaty with the Russians, and this has angered the general populace.  The newspaper headlines blare the fact that only 29% of the public support him.  It’s hard to imagine any US President having such a low popularity rating as that outside of an event like the Great Depression, especially one who supports peace.  But the public are convinced that the Commies are only playing along and will stab us in the back at the earliest opportunity.

One of the many people who oppose the President’s actions is US Air Force General James Mattoon Scott, played by Burt Lancaster.  We are introduced to him as he makes a compelling case before Congress, insisting that trusting the Russians, who have ‘broken every single treaty’, will spell the doom of the United States.  Looking on as he makes his case in a beautifully framed shot is the handsome Kirk Douglas as USMC Colonel Martin “Jiggs” Casey.

From there the story follows Jiggs, who encounters a number of strange things that don’t seem to fit together: a newly constructed base he’s sure he’s never heard of, a top secret betting pool whose members comprise most of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Senator who seems to know more about upcoming military maneuvers than he should, and other odds and ends that add up to a deeply troubling picture.  Jiggs must choose whether to turn a blind eye or take his suspicions to the President despite the circumstantial nature of his evidence.  If he’s wrong, his career will certainly be ruined.  But if he’s right, the scale of the plot and its ultimate target are staggering: it’s no less than a plan to kidnap the President and take over the United States government.  In the end, Jiggs follows his conscience, and the consequences of his choice drive the rest of the movie.

Unapologetically Liberal

Though based on the 1962 novel by Charles W. Bailey II and Fletcher Knebel, the screenplay is by Rod Serling – and it shows.  Mr. Serling’s work on Twilight Zone has earned him much acclaim (with good reason) but he’s never been shy about stuffing his character’s mouths with his own political views.  Since I tend to share Serling's views, I’m more inclined to be impatient with his lack of subtlety than enraged by his wrongheadedness.  Your own reaction may vary, of course.

The politics of the film are unapologetically liberal, with the villains having no hesitation in castigating ‘bleeding-hearts’ and ‘intellectuals’.  At the same time, the villains are not portrayed cartoonishly, which I appreciated.  Scott in particular is charismatic and convincing.  You can understand why the public likes him and trusts him.  He is passionate and sincere in his belief that what he is doing is both right and necessary.

Of course we, the enlightened audience, know that for all his sincerity he is wrong.  Continuing to build a larger and larger stockpile of nuclear weapons, we are told, can lead to only one outcome: the eventual destruction of the human race.  I don’t disagree with this attitude, but it did come across as a rather glib – as one might expect of Serling.

Nevertheless, for the most part, Serling's screenplay works – in no small part thanks to the excellence of the actors performing it. Douglas adds a subtlety to his role that transcends his (mostly good) lines. March's tears at the death of a good friend are all too believable. And the work of co-stars Balsam and Edmond O'Brien, President Lyman's right and left hand men, are excellent in outsized proportion to their screen time.

Fantastic Framing and Marvelous Music

The best part of the movie was the cinematography.  The indoor shots are thoughtfully framed, with one particularly memorable discussion with Scott presented against a background of model missiles and Jiggs with the American flag behind him.  When written out like that it sounds, like the rest of the movie, as though it might be a bit too ‘on point,’ but it was so beautifully done that I couldn’t help but appreciate it.  In addition to this we are treated with some impressive outdoor shots, from the desert surrounding the secret base, to a character being ferried to an aircraft carrier across the ocean, to scenes on the aircraft carrier itself.

There are also convincing notes that place the movie in the future: two-way video phones, for example, and prominently placed digital time and date displays.

The music was also extremely good, with lots of driving military march drums contrasting sharply with discordant notes.  There was no music during most of the talking scenes, but the scoring during action scenes created an unsettling, nervous atmosphere that was highly effective.

Out of Joint

My husband noted that the story felt somewhat disjointed, and I agreed.  The point of view jumps around from character to character as the plot dictates.  Personally, I almost would have preferred seeing everything through Kirk Douglas’s eyes.

The most jarring note was the inclusion of Ava Gardner’s character, Scott’s former mistress, Eleanor Holbrook.  I’m not sure why she was even there, as in the end her performance, as good as it is, doesn’t add much to the story.  There’s a bit of sex appeal and a bit of tragedy to her, but overall her role is to give Jiggs some potentially incriminating evidence that he hesitates to use, thus reminding us that he is a ‘good guy’. 

Of course, Eleanor is a woman in a man’s world, with men filling every important position in government, the military, the press, and pretty much everything else.  Since the story is set only ten years in the future, I suppose that view of the world isn’t unrealistic.  I can’t help but hope, though, that we’ll eventually see women in roles other than “spurned lover” and “oversexed waitress” in stories about the future, if not in the future itself.  At the very least, it would be nice to see a few more movies where women speak to each other.

But in the end, Two Hours Well-Spent

Despite its flaws, Seven Days in May is still two hours well-spent.  What the movie does well, it does masterfully.  The acting is great, especially Douglas, whose understated performance is more convincing than either of the pontificating leads.  The cinematography is top-notch, and the music is compelling.  If it weren’t for Serling’s insistence on driving his points home with a sledgehammer and the disjointed feel caused in part by the need for the story to jump from character to character, I would have given them film five stars without question.  Parts of the movie deserve that rating all on their own.  It’s worth a watch.

Four stars.




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Movies

[January 30, 1964] Satire or Documentary?  (Stanley Kubrik's Dr. Strangelove)

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by Rosemary Benton

The Thin Line between Comedy and Terror

The newest movie by maverick filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, known for Spartacus (1960) and Lolita (1962), has hit theaters to the delight of film critics and the apprehensive joy of moviegoers. Behold the masterpiece which is Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and be amazed. Never before has a movie been so utterly terrifying, and yet so funny. It was a film that had the audience sitting on the edge of their seats, giddily laughing with nervous energy. For a film with so few action sequences, the story is absolutely riveting. I was completely captivated, and based on the reactions I witnessed from my fellow movie goers they too felt the simultaneous deep unease and dark humor just as intensely.

The plot of Dr. Strangelove is loosely based on the 1958 thriller novel by Peter George, Red Alert. Both the book and the film describe a situation that could be considered as far from comical as possible: the initiation of a nuclear attack on the Soviets by a rogue United States Air Force general. In Kubrick's film the logic of this loose cannon, named Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (played by Sterling Hayden), is that Communists have made the “bodily fluids" of Americans impure by fluoridation. By his reasoning this has already counted as a preemptive strike: fluoridation has rendered politicians including President Merkin Muffley (played by Peter Sellers), impotent and incapable of proper leadership.

Meanwhile in the War Room of the Pentagon the situation continues to escalate as President Muffley consults with his military counsel General Buck Turgidson (played by George C. Scott), and the Soviet Ambassador Alexei de Sadeski (played by Peter Bull). Eventually it is concluded that the Soviet Premier, Dimitri Kissov, must be informed of the situation and given the deployed bomber squadron's flight path. The situation couldn't be more dire — until the Ambassador then imparts to the room that the Premier has just made him aware of a doomsday device that has been built in secret and was to be unveiled within the week. If the American bombs are not stopped in time, a network of interlinked Soviet bombs enhanced with “cobalt-thorium G" will trigger and the Earth will be shrouded in a “Doomsday shroud," killing all human and animal life. Worse yet, there is no way to deactivate the doomsday device without triggering it. A precaution that was taken to avoid human error.

After managing to secure the recall code from General Ripper all bombers but one are recalled. Due to damage to the plane's radio and fuel tanks sustained when the Soviets launched a surface-to-air missile to intercept the B-52 Stratofortress carrying the payload, the pilot and crew are unable to communicate with the American forces, nor are they able to fly back. At the order of the bomber's commander and pilot, Major T. J. "King" Kong (played by Slim Pickens), the crew decides to fly onward to a nearer target knowing that it will be a one way flight. In perhaps the most memorable scene on the film, Major Kong jumps on the back of the bomb and rides it down to a Soviet ICBM site whereupon it explodes.

Back in the War Room the attendants have begun to consider how they will survive the coming 93 years of darkness. Dr. Strangelove (also played by Peter Sellers), the wheelchair bound, ex-Nazi, nuclear war expert in the employ of President Muffley advises that a small population of several thousand should take up residence in deep mine shafts so as to repopulate the Earth. To that end there should be a 10:1 ratio of women to men. Comically, despite the reality of planning for the end of the world, General Turgidson is very concerned that the Soviets will think of the same thing and warns against a “mine shaft" gap. As the arguing and planning escalates in volume the Soviet Ambassador slips a discreet shot of the War Room with a hidden camera and slinks away. The movie ends to the dulcet serenade of “We'll Meet Again" as nuclear blasts go off one by one.

Too Close to Home

These last two decades, indeed the last three years, have brought the continued struggle between the USSR and America, between Capitalist and Communists, Democracy and Dictatorship, to the average American's door on a daily basis in the news, in magazine articles, and through social organizations such as the local Civil Defense officers conducting surveys of urban preparedness. The fear has been stoked that the international war of ideology, trade and survival could come to us civilians very literally in the form of a coordinated nuclear attack.

The Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950, initially designed to guide civilian preparedness in a series of committees from the federal level all the way down to the community level, found little traction with the general public in its day. Recently, however, given the Soviet military buildup in Cuba, the use of fallout shelters has come back into the public's eye. But science has far surpassed the weapons of over ten years ago, and one must wonder how useful the leftover pamphlets on nuclear survival from 1951 will be to the American citizen today.

In a general sense any nation's international policy making has consistently been about the division of land and wealth, with the extraction of natural resources and the mobilization of man power either resulting in economic success or failure. On top of the core responsibility of leaders to ensure their country's economic success are layers and layers of rhetoric to justify the means to this end. But only recently has that rhetoric reached a dangerous pinnacle on which both sides consider the virtual hostage taking of millions of civilian lives to be a worthy deterrent to foreign challenges that could come from halfway across the globe.

Being in a competition of military prowess has unfortunately resulted in inflammatory saber rattling in a long line of US presidents. From President Truman's 30 November, 1950 refusal to rule out the use of nuclear weapons to halt Communist advances after Chinese troops crossed the Yalu River to aid North Korea, to President Kennedy's repeated call to close the missile gap during his 1960 election campaign. Ultimately the natural escalation of “anything your bomb can do, mine can do better" has seemed to end in a standoff. Hence the development of unsettling strategic theories such as MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). 

The Satire Bites Deep

The writing, cinematography and special effects of Dr. Strangelove are ingenious, but more than anything I have to comment that this is a profoundly dark satirical film. Not only does the plot highlight the precarious position that current world leaders and their military advisors have found themselves in since the fracturing of the Allied forces after 1945, but it highlights the very real and very frightening attitudes that have come to encompass the policy making of modern superpowers at home and abroad.

Co-writers Stanley Kubrick, Peter George and Terry Southern really understood this last point, and put it front and center within Dr. Strangelove's satire. General Turgidson's excitement at the destructive capabilities of the B-52 Stratofortress borders on buffoonish megalomania. His enthusiasm and envy when he says that he wishes the US too had a doomsday device like the one the Soviets have concocted is astounding given the situation. It is horrific that General Turgidson considers the launching of an all out attack an acceptable plan of action considering the “modest and acceptable" civilian casualties of 10-20 million lives “depending on the breaks". Most importantly, the film masterfully picks apart the lunacy of having to have a post-apocalyptic plan in the first place.

Indeed, everything about Dr. Strangelove’s indignant rebuke to the Russian ambassador feels as if it were lifted from an exchange between Herman Kahn, the RAND corporation’s renowned military strategist, and a chastened government official. “The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost, if you keep it a secret. Why didn't you tell the world, eh?!" Ambassador Sadeski replies, “It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises."

In the skillful hands of such an intrepid writing team the catalyst of the whole nuclear attack comes into question: is such a scenario so far off? Yes, Brigadier General Ripper is clearly insane to believe that Communists would plan an attack on “bodily fluids" by putting fluoride in the drinking water, but if the military personnel who hold the power to initiate a nuclear attack were unstable but methodical, would such a cascade of fail safes work against us as they did in the film? And if worse came to worst, would our leaders be able to accept the figurative and literal fallout with the same calm equanimity as the assembly in the war room did? If mine shafts would make such excellent hibernation holdouts for humanity, as Dr. Strangelove hypothesized, would the public even be made aware for fear of a mine shaft shortage?

For the answer to such questions I would highly recommend that everyone see this film, watch the evening news for a week, and come to their own conclusions. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is an exceptionally cutting and cheeky movie, and I happily give it five stars.




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Book

[October 4, 1963] A Story Turned Inside Out—the movie of Burning Court

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by Victoria Lucas

Now here's a word you don't see every day:  "evert." It's used in biology or surgery to mean turning something inside out.  

That's what the movie by director Julien Duvivier, “inspired by John Dickson Carr's novel, The Burning Court,” did to the book.   

No one ever accused Carr of being less than ingenious, and the movie is ingenious too,  changing the topography of the book so thoroughly that it can only be compared to peeling off a glove by starting at the arms and pulling it back over the fingers.
 
If you read my review of the book (and radio program) you might remember that I asked, "Can a detective story have elements of the supernatural?  Can a mystery also be horror fiction?" The answer, for the movie, is still "yes," but instead of being a horror tale that shadows, overtakes, and finally transforms a detective story as in the book, it is a detective story that dispels the supernatural elements and turns the whole thing back into a murder mystery ending in a police inspector's office.
 
What is a 'burning court'?   It was a secret group that met to try those accused of criminal acts; the guilty were punished by burning.  
 
The relevance of the burning court is briefly described in a scrolling text near the beginning of the film:   an ancestor of Marie d'Aubray, a main character in the book and film, was "burnt at the stake" for witchcraft and poisoning "after having had her head cut off."   After declaring that d'Aubray cursed her betrayer and his descendants, the scroll ends with "The following tells the story of that curse."
 

 
This is a truly international film made with French and Austrian actors and both French and Italian production companies, on location in Hesse, Germany, based on a novel written by an American writer who lived in England for much of his life and adopted the British style of detective novels, instead of the French style evident in the movie.  The French style of murder mysteries includes the disclosure of whodunnit early in the narrative, and that is what happens in the movie.
 
Instead of opening as the novel does in a Philadelphia commuter train, which makes succeeding elements of horror that much more unexpected, the movie is set in a stereotypical venue of horror films, a castle in the Black Forest.
 

The castle setting
 
The characters are altered to fit the new locale and also to fit the new topography by Duvivier and scenarist Charles Spaak.  Instead of Edward Stevens, the plodding neighbor of the Despard family (the Desgrezs in the movie) and husband of the less restrained Marie D'Aubray, there is the writer Michel Boissand.  D'Aubray's name and her position as the descendant (or ?) of the Marquise de Brinvilliers, a famous poisoner, does not change. Her character develops during the film (not the novel), and Nurse Corbett (Schneider in the movie) reveals her true self more and more throughout the film, again different from the book.  Whereas Stevens is an editor at a Philadelphia publishing company, Boissand is a freelance writer come to interview Desgrez, who was already dead at the beginning of the novel, there named Miles Despard. Desgrez's two nephews remain, and remain at odds, but the niece is eliminated. So is the writer Gaudan Cross, who provided the first element of horror in the book, with only a few bits of his contributions given to Boissand.  Cross also provides the second body in the book, which in the film changes sex and manner of death.
 

Marie D'Aubray
 
The changed nature of Stevens/Boissand/Cross is handy because Boissand can do exposition in the film that would be more awkward for other characters, although D'Aubray's distress, the curiosity of the elder Desgrez, and a doctor with a revoked license (Partington in the novel, Hermann in the movie) provide excuses for revealing some things about the relationship of D'Aubray's and Desgrez's ancestors.  
 
Further signs of “eversion”: although certain elements of horror were added (a ride through and setting in the Black Forest, to start with), others were subtracted.   For instance, the story of the housekeeper about seeing a woman in 17th-century costume give Desgrez his poisoned drink and then disappear through a wall is kept and made a plot element, the most horrific part of the description in the book was discarded:  "The idea was that the woman's neck might not have been completely fastened on." A mysterious silver cup and a dead cat are also cut from the narrative.
 
The changes make sense if, whereas the novel is a detective story shot through with elements of horror, the movie is a horror tale shot through with elements of a detective story.  Once the movie scene is set for horror, it is increasingly degraded into an ordinary murder mystery, while the book added elements of the supernatural. But at the very end of both the book and the movie, a little stroke of horror enters to leave a question in the mind, just as, whether removing or donning gloves, the fingertips are the last to touch the gloves.  At the end of the movie, it is a most ordinary character, a police inspector, who adds his own element of gothic horror.
 

Police Inspector with Skull
 
There are some interesting cultural features of the movie versus the novel.  One is the fact that Partington, a friend of Mark's, is clearly identified in the book as a doctor who has been driven from his practice by having performed an abortion.  In the movie Dr. Hermann (a friend of Mathias Desgrez) says that he took pity on a young pregnant girl who would have otherwise drowned herself. This narrative is clearly meant to show the doctor in a more favorable light, but it also avoids the word "abortion," the procedure, and the social/religious controversy over it.  The former doctor does requite himself better in the movie than in the book, though with a German accent and a preference for psychoanalysis.
 

Dr. Hermann  
 
And then there is Mark's brother Ogden Despard/Stephane Desgrez.  In the book Ogden is a brooding, sardonic presence who is beaten up by Mark.  In the movie Stephane (a unisex name) is a more sympathetic character; and he gives signs of being a homosexual.  A masked ball occupies most characters the night of the first murder, providing some alibis. Stephane attends the ball in a dress that he also uses with a mask to gain admittance to his uncle's unwilling presence to ask for money.   He is practically disowned by his uncle, who dislikes him, and in the movie Marc refers to "the life you've been leading" as the reason for the dislike.
 

Marc, Stephane, and Lucie  
 
A strangely modern feature of the new topography is the body of Nadja Tiller, who plays Nurse Schneider in the film.  She is an Austrian celebrity whose increased role is congruent with her stardom. As is usual with female film stars, Tiller is a beautiful young woman, and the film shows her off to an extent one doesn't expect in a horror film (unless a monster is about to eat or kidnap her).  Marc's relationship with her in the movie (not the book) provides opportunities to see her in her underwear.
 

Nurse Schneider  
 
Other bizarre features that show up in the movie but not in the novel:  the funeral for the elder Desgrez, which he has decreed should be in the great hall of his castle (actually Castle Hohenbuchau in Hessen, Germany), with an open coffin and a sextet, which apparently (the instrumentation is too full for a small group) plays a Strauss waltz for everyone to dance.  A band playing Sousa follows the funeral procession to the mausoleum, through the gate of which Mathias is later seen seated on a chair.
 

Mrs. Henderson, Marc, Stephane, and Mathias laid out
 
Stephane's impatience with Boissand's speed in front of him, while he himself drives a customer's Porsche on a narrow, winding mountain road, is a bit of strange character revelation of Boissand's odd sense of humor, D'Aubray's passivity, and Stephane's over-the-top personality.
 
The roles of both D'Aubray and Dr. Hermann are much enhanced in the movie, and much changed.  The change is typified by a scene in which Dr. Hermann points out to D'Aubray after Desgrez's death that this time (under the curse), here she is alive and Desgrez is dead instead of the other way around, when her ancestor was executed.  D'Aubray is quite upset by this, says, "Why do you hurt me?" and runs away, emphasizing the difference between the D'Aubray of the book (self-assured, mostly uninvolved, coming into her own at the end) and the timid, pale woman of the movie who is subordinate to her husband and relies on Dr. Hermann to help her.
 

A view of a courtyard in the Schloss
 
Like the book, though, the movie defies classification.  Director Duvivier is best known for "Pepe le Moko," which came out in 1937, the same year as Carr's novel.  For both of them, that year was the heyday of their work. I repeat the recommendation I have seen before and made in my review of the book: don't see the movie first because it may spoil the much more detailed and structured book for you.  I would give both the movie and the book 4 out of 5 for ingenuity and hope you find an opportunity to enjoy them.
 




 

 

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Movies

[September 19, 1963] Out of Sight (The Man with the X-Ray Eyes)

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by Lorelei Marcus

When a new science fiction movie comes out for me to review, my father usually proposes it as, “There's a new movie to watch.” This means I go in blind with nothing but the title and a few actors' names to fill me in on what to expect. What I hope for is a movie so horrendously bad I can laugh my way through and then write an easy article with a comedic spin about how terrible it was. What I often get is a mediocre movie that leaves me feeling like I could’ve spent my time in better ways, but gives me easy enough content to fill my articles with.

However, once in a while I get a very good movie that makes me think and is enjoyable all the way through. In this case our diamond in the rough is The Man With the X-Ray Eyes, a movie so good that, as I sat down I was left at a loss for words. See, I was ecstatic to have witnessed such a great movie, but that also meant I was going to have to write a great article to go with it. A movie with this complex a story is not an easy beast to tackle, but that won’t stop me from trying!

Our movie follows Dr. Xavier as he develops (and like any good doctor, tests on himself) a serum that will allow him to enhance his eyesight. At first the serum seems to have simple x-ray effects, removing clothes, looking through walls, etc., but that's only the beginning. He uses his new-found powers to operate on a little girl, saving her life. However, the serum is also potentially dangerous; in one scene, he tests the serum on a monkey (a scene that caused both me and my dad to shout ‘Konga!’), and the animal dies immediately after taking a large dose.

I won't say any more because frankly, this movie threw me and my father for a loop with how simply unpredictable it was! We were expecting the classic plot of “Man gets power that eventually drives him crazy and turns him into a monster,” but this movie is anything but. Nearly every moment had us guessing what would happen next. The story was truly something new and refreshing that took the cliché of x-ray vision down a new intriguing path.

This movie is especially impressive considering the budget wasn't super large. Like Panic! In Year Zero (Another movie starring Ray Milland) it made up for what it lacked in effects with provocative storytelling instead. That’s not to say the special effects were bad, though I did find it tiring when they kept showing the “x-ray vision” — basically a glorified kaleidoscope filter. The most effective effect, I'd say, was when we got to see a room of people doing the twist — naked! It was the one time it truly felt like we were seeing the world through x-ray vision.

The linchpin that made this movie so great was definitely the characters and the actors portraying them. Ray Milland gave an excellent performance, as always, and played a convincing balance of under stress but not quite crazy. Don Rickles effectively played a corrupt circus worker (especially interesting considering he’s known for his Vegas Comedy act).

Finally, Diana Van der Vlis plays Doctor Diane Fairfax, one of the best characters in the movie. It was incredibly refreshing to see a strong , intelligent woman played as something much more than a simple love interest, in fact, she’s Xavier’s boss! Doctor Fairfax was a complex character who was critical to the story and very enjoyable to watch: I hope other movies feature similar characters.

In sum, this movie has a deep and compelling plot, potent special effects, and fantastic acting. It was a roller coaster of an experience, keeping me and my dad on the edges of our seats the entire time. A solid film, deserving of four out of five stars. I would recommend you watch this and try to predict the end. I'd love to hear responses of how far off your predictions get!

This is the Young Traveler, signing off.




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