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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 9, No. 4 |
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SALUTING CURTIS HARRINGTON
Above left: Curtis Harrington. At right: Dennis Hopper in Harrington's first and most acclaimed film, 'Night Tide" (1963). |
His career was shrouded
in darkness and mystery
of TheColumnists.com
Back in the 1970s, I used to spend an hour or two each summer weekend hanging out in an antique shop in Santa Cruz, CA, shooting the bull with John Howe, the proprietor, who had once been my editor at the San Jose Mercury News, but had retired from journalism to become an antique dealer.
Now and then, another antique dealer who ran a shop up the street would drop by to pay his respects to Johnny. He often brought his friend, "Curt," with him. "Curt" seemed to be a nice guy, but I never learned his last name until much later, after the two of them had stopped coming by.
"Curt" turned out to be Curtis Harrington, one of the most unusual movie directors there ever was. I'd never talked about movies with him at all because I didn't know he had any connection to films. It just never came up. I've been kicking myself for screwing up those opportunities to talk with him ever since.
Curtis Harrington died on May 6, 2007, at the age of 80. He hadn't done anything notable in the movies since a short film he made in 2002 called "Usher," which I never saw. I'd really like to see it, though, because Harrington also acted in the movie, playing both Roderick Usher and his sister Madeline, both from the Poe story "The Fall of the House of Usher." That sounds significantly bizarre to me, especially since Harrington would have been in his late 70s at the time.
Harrington was gay and was associated with a number of gay-themed projects. One of his filmmaker pals was the notorious Kenneth Anger, author of "Hollywood Babylon" and the underground experimental filmmaker whose works include the sado-masochistic gay films "Fireworks," "Scorpio Rising" and "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome" (1954). Harrington appeared in the latter film as an actor, playing a slave. He also appeared in the gay party scene at George Cukor's house in "Gods and Monsters" (1998), the acclaimed film about gay filmmaker James Whale and his openly gay activities in 1930s Hollywood.
All that considered, it's not so surprising that Harrington left behind a curious legacy of his own films, TV movies and TV episodes. Most of his films fall into the category of horror--and many of his TV episodes, including some from "Tales of the Unexpected," "Wonder Woman," "Logan's Run," and the revived "Twilight Zone." But he also directed episodes of popular and glossy prime time shows like "Dynasty," "The Colbys" and "Hotel."
He began his cinematic journey, as Kenneth Anger and many filmmakers of his generation did, with experimental short films in the postwar 1940s. He attended UCLA, but I don't think he was around in the late 1950s when I was taking film courses there. Unlike Anger, though, Harrington wanted to make feature films and get into the Hollywood mainstream.
He landed a job as assistant to producer Jerry Wald at 20th Century-Fox and worked on the original "Peyton Place" (1957) and as an associate producer on "Return to Peyton Place" (1961), among other films.
His first feature film as a writer-director was the truly weird "Night Tide" (1963), in which a young Dennis Hopper plays a sailor who falls in love with a mermaid who's on exhibit in a seaside amusement park. It played as the lower half of a horror double bill, but Harrington's skill in creating an atmospheric feel to the film won it some praise from critics, even if it didn't exactly get people lining up to see it wherever it played.
Sadly, he seldom got out of the schlock category. Consider "Planet of Blood" (1966), which involved faded teen rave John Saxon and aging Basil Rathbone in the story of a space vampire who lands on Earth. Or "Ruby" (1977), about a possessed deaf-mute girl who goes on a killing spree in a theater specializing in horror movies. My absolute favorite among his TV movies is "Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell" (1978), in which a suburban family headed by Richard Crenna and Yvette Mimieux tried to cope with a Satan-trained dog that could have eaten Stephen King's "Cujo" for breakfast.
Perhaps Harrington's one prime opportunity to step up into bigger things was "Games," a Hitchcockian thriller he did in 1967 for Universal. It had an "A" cast including James Caan and Katherine Ross as a psychotic couple matching wits with Oscar-winner Simone Signoret ("Room at the Top"), but it didn't fare too well with reviewers and the public stayed away. He stayed in the same vein with "How Awful About Allan" (1970) with Anthony Perkins following up his "Psycho" performance as another nutcase and "Who Slew Auntie Roo?" (1971), a sort of "Hansel and Gretel" horror update with Shelley Winters as a psycho type, which he filmed in England for American-International. His 1971 "What's the Matter with Helen?" was a "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" clone with Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters, made for United Artists.
Most of his subsequent efforts were made for TV, among them "The Cat Creature" (1973). "Killer Bees" (1974), "The Dead Don't Die" (1975).
In 1985, he did "Mata Hari" with sex star Sylvia Kristel as the infamous spy. It went over like cement water wings and sank quickly from view. It's notable only for Kristel's nude scenes, which it's hard to imagine Harrington having any special feeling for directing.
Out of business for several years, Harrington suffered a stroke early last year and died from complications of the stroke on May 6.
The "Curt" that I met seemed like a nice guy and I certainly regret I didn't realize who he was at the time. I'm sure he could have told me some pretty memorable stories about his strange career path. Still, the films he made are not without merit and actually have a veneer to them that's far superior to the usual run of the mill horror schlock they're often lumped with by film historians.
©2008 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Jan. 14, 2008.
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.
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