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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 6, No. 27 |
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AT LONG LAST! ALL THE CLASSIC LEWTON RKO HORROR FILMS OF THE 1940s WILL BE ISSUED IN ONE GIANT DVD PACKAGE!
At left, Simone Simon in the original 1942 "Cat People," first of the immortal classics from producer Val Lewton; at right, Jean Brooks with "Dynamite," the ferocious beast that gets loose in Lewton's 1943 thriller, "The Leopard Man." By the way, "Dynamite" was featured in the unforgettable poolside scene in "Cat People," too. |
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There is no bigger news for vintage horror fans than this: The entire Val Lewton film collection will be released in October as a DVD boxed set, complete with rare interviews with Simone Simon, star of the 1942 "Cat People" and Oscar-winning director Robert Wise, who made his directing debut with the 1944 sequel, "Curse of the Cat People."
All the films are included: "The Cat People," "I Walked With A Zombie," "The Leopard Man," "The Seventh Victim," "Curse of the Cat People," "Isle of the Dead," "The Body Snatcher," "Bedlam" and even the rarely-seen classic that was tied up in legal snarls for decades, "The Ghost Ship."
This is, quite simply, the classiest group of horror films ever made. They are best remembered as the films that managed to scare the devil out of millions without ever sinking to the depths of flamboyant gore that litters and stains the screen today.
But they're remembered for a lot more than that, too.
For example, producer Val Lewton put together a group of young filmmakers then working at RKO and gave them their first chance to really show what they could do. Film editor Robert Wise, for example, had never directed a film before. When the director of "Curse of the Cat People" fell behind on Lewton's tight shooting schedule and was turning out sub-par footage, Lewton asked Wise to take over.
Result No. 1: "Curse of the Cat People" might have been just a quickie sequel to the box office hit "Cat People," but Wise fashioned it into a masterpiece of psychological horror as seen through the eyes of a troubled child with a vivid imagination.
Result No. 2: Wise went on to win two Oscars as a director for two of the most beloved films of all time: "West Side Story" (1961) "The Sound of Music" (1965). Among his other immortal films: "The Set-Up," "I Want To Live," "The Sand Pebbles," "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," and three more classic thrillers, "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "The Haunting" and "The Andromeda Strain."
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sequence from the climax of "The Leopard Man." |
How about another example: Mark Robson, who had assisted Robert Wise in the film editing of Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane," but who got a chance to direct under Lewton, doing "The Ghost Ship," "Isle of the Dead," "The Seventh Victim" and "Bedlam."
Robson broke into the big time in 1949 as the director of Stanley Kramer's "Champion" starring Kirk Douglas. Among his other great films: "Home of the Brave"; "The Bridges at Toko-Ri"; Humphrey Bogart's final film, "The Harder They Fall"; the enormous hits "Valley of the Dolls" and "Earthquake", and two films for which he was nominated as best director: "Peyton Place" and "The Inn of Sixth Happiness."
Lewton also gave actress Kim Hunter her first screen role as the leading lady of "The Seventh Victim" in 1943. Eight years later, she won the Supporting Actress Oscar with her memorable performance as Stella opposite Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan's "A Streetcar Named Desire."
Lewton was a writer recruited by RKO to set up and run a low budget horror unit at the studio that RKO hoped would start churning out big profits like those being racked up by Universal with its Frankenstein, Dracula, Mummy and Invisible Man horror pictures. He had slim budgets and he often was required to come up with movies to go with pre-tested titles the studio thought would bring in fans.
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goes for a midnight stroll in the company of the undead in "I Walked With A Zombie," a thinly-disguised version of "Jane Eyre." |
By using actors and crew people already working for RKO and even utilizing lavish leftover sets from "A" pictures like "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," Lewton was able to turn out films that looked rich and expensive. Because costly makeup and photographic effects weren't feasible, he adopted a style of filmmaking that concentrated on shadows, moody lighting and psychological horror.
Some classic examples: In his first film, "The Cat People," you don't actually see the cat-monster at all. When the heroine is menaced in an indoor recreation pool at night, you're scared silly, but you never really see anything but shadows. (Kirk Douglas' film producer character in "The Bad and the Beautiful" obviously draws from the Lewton legend by having him start out making a horror picture about cat people.)
Another classic example: In "The Leopard Man," which was based on Cornell Woolrich's novel "Black Alibi," an imaginative teenage girl is pursued by the cat-monster to the door of her home, but her mother ignores her cries for help until it's too late and we see a pool of the girl's blood seeping under the door.
Still another: While Kim Hunter is showering in "The Seventh Victim," a terrifying face suddenly appears on the other side of the shower curtain. Alfred Hitchcock, who frequently dined with Val Lewton, no doubt "borrowed" that moment for his more famous moment in "Psycho" 17 years later.
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| At left, Boris Karloff as Master Sims, who keeps a few sane people locked up in his asylum in "Bedlam" (1946). At right, Julia Dean as the wacky old lady who fires up the imagination of little Ann Carter in "The Curse of the Cat People" (1944). |
Lewton cast "B" level stars or actors nobody else wanted as leads in most of his picturers. Simone Simon, for instance, was a lovely and talented young French actress brought over to the U.S. by Darryl F. Zanuck in the early 1930s to become "a major star" at 20th Century-Fox. After flopping in several mediocre pictures, she was dropped and returned to France where she made her greatest film, Jean Renoir's "La Bete Humaine" in 1938. Lewton cast her as the lead in "Cat People" when the war forced her back to America and also starred her in his non-horror costume drama, "Mademoiselle Fifi." Fans here remember her only for her luminous performance in "The Cat People." (She reprised her role, briefly, in the sequel.)
Yet Lewton also acquired the services of Hollywood's greatest horror actor, Boris Karloff, and gave him two of his best non-monster roles in "Isle of the Dead" and "Bedlam." In "The Body Snatcher," which Robert Wise directed for Lewton, Karloff was teamed for the final time with his rival for horror fame, Bela Lugosi.
All these films--except "The Ghost Ship," which was mired in a long dispute over the liteary rights--were available on videotape in the early days of home video. Later, an independent company reissued new tapes of all the films, including "Ghost Ship," but they've been unavailable commercially for nearly a decade.
Apparently every effort has been made to round up most of the surviving participants in the making of these films in order to put together a solid group of "extra features" for the all black and white set of films. The boxed set also will include a documentary film on the life and work of Val Lewton.
If you've never seen the Val Lewton films, you're in for a grand experience. Meanwhile, diehard fans like yours truly already are holding a place for them in our film libraries.
©2005 by Ron Miller.
The illustrations are from the Val Lewton RKO films, ©1942-46.
This column first posted June 27, 2005.
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
and teaches classes in mystery for the Academy of Lifelong Learning
at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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