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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 8, No. 44 |
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FESTIVAL OF HORROR  |
Thirteen Rare Chillers
To Screen on Halloween
By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
Tired of all the usual Halloween night videos? All those Frankenstein and Dracula movies and slasher flicks? Then why not follow the advice of Ronzo the Uncanny and round up a couple of rare, oddball or off-the-wall scare flicks to entertain your guests with on Halloween night?
Uhhh, well, there may be a catch: You may not find any of the following 13 movies in your village video shop, but if you get busy and start scrounging the internet, you may come up with one or two in time for your Wednesday night party. If not, at least you'll have a head start for next Halloween.
Note: All these films except #11 are currently available either on DVD or VHS.
Let's start with:
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DARKNESS (1971) |
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This Belgian-French horror movie has been
available in a nice color, widescreen video for some years. It
has some real admirers in the world of movie critics, but be
warned that it's awfully kinky. It's about the real-life Hungarian
Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who had lesbian tendencies and was
said to have bathed in the blood of at least 300 maidens in her
time. The movie suggests she's still alive in modern times, still
looking for victims. In this film, she's played by sexy Delphine
Seyrig. The big surprise is that the male lead, a horny honeymooner,
is played by a very young, very slim John Karlen, best known
to TV fans as the much older, much fatter Harvey Lacey, husband
of Det. Mary Beth Lacey on "Cagney & Lacey." Best
Scene: The Countess and Karlen's honeymooning bride (Danielle
Oumet) surprise him naked in the shower with the Countess' sexy
girl friend (Andrea Rau). Sadly, the girl friend is dead, naked
and covered with blood. The Countess celebrates by kissing Karlen's
bride full on the lips. OK, I said it was kinky, didn't I?
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Assuming that nobody would be satisfied
with just one lesbian vampire movie, this is the best back-up
number. This Italian version of Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla"
was directed by Roger Vadim, the naughty French filmmaker who
made several of his wives run naked through several movies (including
Jane Fonda when they were husband and wife). In this one, the
wife involved is Annette Vadim and her lesbian vampire lover
is Elsa Martinelli. Mel Ferrer is in there somewhere, but I was
too busy watching the girls to notice him.
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This is the absolute best of the many film versions of "The Hands of Orlac," in which a noted concert pianist has both hands severed in an accident, but gets new hands--taken from a murderer--transplanted in their place. Naturally, he begins to feel more like strangling people than practicing piano scales. This is a glossy MGM production starring Colin Clive, the high-strung Brit who played Dr. Frankenstein in both the original 1931 "Frankenstein" and its sequel "The Bride of Frankenstein," and lovely Frances Drake as his wife, Yvonne, who acts in a local Grand Guignol horror theater. Stealing the picture is the great Peter Lorre as Dr. Gogol, who does the hand transplanting. Lorre, in his American film debut, chews scenery in a grand style unmatched until Vincent Price came along much later. The film was directed by great cinematographer Karl Freund and photographed by an even greater cinematographer, Gregg Toland, renowned for his work on "Citizen Kane." Best Scene: Clive is confronted by the guillotined murderer (actually Dr. Gogol in disguise), now wearing false metal hands and a metal neck brace to keep his once-severed head in place. Whoopee!
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Dario Argento is the ultimate Italian horrormeisterlini--and
this is my favorite among all his rather blood-spattered and
excessive horror movies. It stars two Americans--the then very
young Jennifer Connelly, long before she became an Oscar-winning
actress (2001's "A Beautiful Mind") and Donald Pleasence,
who had already turned to horror as the perennial therapist to
slasher Michael Myers in "Halloween." Connelly is the
quarry of a serial killer who's slashing his way through a Swiss
Girls' Academy where she's enrolled. She's a little offbeat because
she can telepathically communicate with insects--enormous numbers
of them! Pleasence is a bug authority who's in a wheelchair.
Best Scene: The opener, in which a girl is left behind by her
school bus and goes to a creepy nearby house to call for a ride.
Bad idea! The film also includes maggots, mutants and a chimp
with a razor. Avoid the American version knowm as "Creepers,"
which has 28 minutes missing. You'll enjoy the sountrack, too,
which includes the music of Goblin.
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If you consider Victor Hugo's "The
Hunchback of Notre Dame" a horror movie, then you'll also
think this Hugo story one, too. Made for Universal at the very
end of the silent movie era--it's silent, but with music, background
sounds and stray spoken words--"The Man Who Laughs"
feels like a German film, probably because it was directed by
the great German director Paul Leni ("The Cat and the Canary"),
has all the trappings of the shadowy German cinema and stars
Conrad Veidt, the German star of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari."
Veidt plays the grown-up version of a little boy whose face was
carved into a perpetual grin by vicious gypsies. He now works
as an attraction in a touring sideshow and is loved by a blind
girl (Mary Philbin). Veidt may be best remembered by young movie
fans as the German officer who was trying to bust Bogart and
Bergman in "Casablanca." Philbin played Chritine in
the original "Phantom of the Opera" and was the one
who unmasked Lon Chaney. Also in the cast as the villainess:
Olga Baclanova, who suffered the torment of vengeful sideshow
attractions in Tod Browning's "Freaks." Best Scene:
The little boy with the mutilated face crawls through the snow
and finds a circus wagon.
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Banned in England for 30 years, this is
the most grotesque of all early American horror films. Olga Baclanova
is the sexy trapeze star who's having an affair with the circus
strongman, but seduces the well-heeled midget (Harry Earles)
to get at his money. She learns it's not wise to betray circus
freaks in the film's best scene: The freaks all come after her
one rainy night when the circus caravan is bogged down in the
mud. Beware: This film features REAL "freaks" and isn't
for the squeamish.
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RKO Producer Val Lewton was famous for
making creepy, atmospheric horror movies that avoided showing
monsters, but used the shadowy suggestion of horror to
create genuine thrills. This was supposed to be a sequel to the
studio's popular "Cat People" of 1942, but is really
more an exploration of the mind of a very imaginative and deeply
troubled little girl (Ann Carter) who conjures up a vision of
her father's dead first wife (Simone Simon), who may or may not
have been a "cat woman." This was the first directing
job for the great Robert Wise, who went on to win two Oscars
for "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music."
Also featured: Sir Lancelot, the calypso singer Lewton often
used as a sort of Greek Chorus in his horror movies. Best Scene:
The ltitle girl's lonely walk home after being told a very dramatic
version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by an elderly former actress
who lives nearby.
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Again a Val Lewton knockout of a horror movie. The studio handed him the title and urged him to make a movie to go with it. So, Lewton adapted "Jane Eyre" as a horror movie--and a very atmospheric one! Beautiful Frances Dee comes to a voodoo-absorbed island to nurse the catatonic wife of Tom Conway, who the natives believe is a zombie. Sir Lancelot is on hand to Greek Chorus for us with calypso rhythm. Best scene: Dee takes the entranced lady through the jungle to a voodoo ceremony she hopes can cure her. Meanwhile, a real zombie tags along. Directed with great finesse by Jacques Tourneur.
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This Warner Bros. "B" movie isn't very scary, but it's a real hoot because the "monster" mad scientist of the title is played by....Humphrey Bogart! Yes, it has to be seen to be believed. This is NOT a sequel to the original "Doctor X," which starred Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray. Rosemary Lane is the decorous heroine who almost gets done in by Bogart. Wayne Morris is the hero and Huntz Hall from The Bowery Boys is on hand in case you hadn't noticed this is a "B" movie.
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This is a bizarre horror movie with lots of strange angles to it. In the first place, it stars Gale Sondergaard, the first winner of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in "Anthony Adverse" (1936). And she's playing a character she originated in the 1944 Sherlock Holmes thriller "The Spider Woman." She's a demonic woman living in an isolated old mansion in swamp country, experimenting with carnivorous plants. Her assistant is played by Rondo Hatton, perhaps the strangest character in the history of horror movies--a real-life sufferer of the disease known as acromegaly, an affliction of the pituitary gland which causes the bones of the head, hands and feet to swell to grotesque sizes. Hatton was pressed into horror movies because he was really scary-looking, first playing a monster character called The Creeper in another Sherlock Holmes film, "The Pearl of Death" (1944). Hatton died soon after completing this film. The heroine is Brenda Joyce, who playied "Jane" in the Tarzan films after Maureen O'Sullivan left the Tarzan series. The hero? Would you believe Milburn Stone, who later was "Doc" on "Gunsmoke." What's not to like about a simple-minded movie with such a cast?
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This is a beautifully-preserved rarity--the Spanish language version of "Dracula" that was filmed on the same sets as the original "Dracula" after the other cast, crew and director had gone home for the day. (In the early days of sound, dubbing wasn't yet technically feasible, so foreign language versions of major movies were filmed simultaneously with the original English language versions.) Little known director George Melford even does a better job than Tod Browning did in some sequences. Carlos Villar plays the Count with a Latin flair and Lupita Tovar is a little sexier than Helen Chandler was in the familiar version. It's all sub-titled, of course, but this is a great film for looking at, even if you don't care about hearing "Listen to them, children of the night. What music they make!" in Spanish instead of fractured Lugosi English.
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After director Tod Browning helped Bela Lugosi scare us in the original "Dracula" at Universal Pictures, he migrated to MGM where he revolted us with "Freaks," then remade his lost silent Lon Chaney classic, "London After Midnight," as "Mark of the Vampire" with Bela Lugosi. Then he really freaked moviegoers with this kooky classic in which Devil's Island escapee Lionel Barrymore, disguised in female drag,
shrinks people down to doll size and sends them out to rob and kill for him. Leading lady Maureen O'Sullivan may have thought she was working in weird settings as Jane in the MGM Tarzan movies, but this movie made her rush back to the jungle as fast as possible.
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This is the legendary anthology film, made while England was still at war, in which people who stop at a country inn all exchange horror stories in the dead of night. The best sequence--imitated, but never duplicated--is the one in which a ventriloquist is inspired by his dummy to become a killer Michael Redgrave, father of Vanessa and Lynn, plays the tormented ventriloquist. It makes you so glad Edgar Bergen's Charlie McCarthy never became interested in slitting throats.
©2007 by Ron Miller. The lead illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. The movie ads are from www.amazon.com and are courtesy of the film companies and home video distributors involved. This column first posted Oct. 29, 2007.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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