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DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 1, NO. 23 |
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 In just nine films made between 1942-46, he forged a legacy of "less is more" in the horror genre. |
Still scary after all these years:
Val Lewton's 1940s horror films
By
RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
After sitting through a modern horror film like "Scream" or "Hollow Man" or the most recent remake of "The Mummy," one longs to round up everybody responsible for those pictures, march them into a drafty old movie theater and force them to watch a Val Lewton marathon.
Maybe you can't force-feed subtlety, but surely those modern filmmakers could learn something about what really terrifies a movie audience by sitting through the nine low-budget horror films producer Lewton made between 1942-46 at RKO studios.
Here's a clue: They wouldn't learn how to use grotesque special effects techniques to maximize the blood and gore on the screen. There isn't any of that in the Lewton films--but there are chills in abundance. Lewton, by necessity, learned a secret of cinematic terror: Less is more.
Consider the sequence in "The Leopard Man" (1943) in which a young Mexican girl, dispatched by her mother to buy flour late one evening, is pursued to her very door by something horrifying. She pounds frantically at the bolted door of her house, screaming with terror, until her angry mother finally rushes to pry open the jammed bolt. But it's too late: The screaming has stopped...and a pool of blood seeps under the door.
At no time do you ever see what's pursuing the girl. At no time do you see her attacked and ripped apart. You don't even see her body. All you see is the blood seeping under the door. But the scene is so masterfully shot that it leaves you quaking with fear. And I guarantee you will never go shopping alone at night after seeing that famous sequence.
How would they do that scene today? Naturally, the girl would be older, so she could have breasts the monster would expose when it slashes her blouse away. You also would see great gobs of flesh splattering against the door and the girl's ripped-apart body would topple into the room and fall on her mom once the door was opened. That's, of course, provided the monster didn't stop to eat her first.
Another good example would be the sequence in "Isle of the Dead" (1945) in which a woman (Katherine Emery) who's paranoid about being buried alive succumbs to the plague and is placed in her coffin in a vault. The camera pulls back until we see the coffin on its raised platform in the vault, hearing nothing but the growing wind outside--until a sudden piercing scream from within the coffin jolts us out of our seats!
Today there would be a camera inside the coffin and we'd watch the woman claw at the coffin lid until her fingers were raw and bloody. It might even occur to somebody to have a rotted corpse in there with her because they'd run out of spare coffins during the busy plague season.
My point is simple: Producer Lewton and his brilliant young film directors (Robert Wise, Mark Robson, Jacques Tourneur, etc.) had discovered the "less is more" principle that borrowed a universal truth from the radio suspense dramas of the day: No special effects can ever scare you as much as your own imagination can, if it's stimulated properly.
Producer Lewton had some strong motivations for making that discovery. He was put in charge of a film production unit at the money-pinched RKO studios with this special assignment: Develop a series of cheap horror pictures to compete with Universal's "Frankenstein," "Dracula," "Wolf Man," "Mummy" and "Invisible Man" series. Each film would have a budget that could not exceed $150,000. Worse yet, Lewton would be given film titles issued from the office of Charles Koerner, RKO's production chief, and would have to make films to fit those titles.
One of those titles is generally regarded today as among the stupidest of all time: "I Walked With A Zombie." Yet the film Lewton made to go with that title may be his masterpiece--a beautifully photographed, visually stunning horror version of Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre."
Again, it has no scenes of grotesque violence like the ones we're so sick of seeing in horror movies today. Yet it has sequences of inspired terror--like the lonely walk of heroine/nurse Frances Dee and her somnambulistic patient (Christine Gordon) through the jungle to the voodoo Houmfort, accompanied only by a steady, monotonous distant drumbeat, the sighing of the wind and the dark, ebony-carved presence of the zombie "guard" (Darby Jones).
That film and the other eight Lewton horror films had to stimulate our imaginations to generate terror because he couldn't afford to build monsters or dazzle us with invisible man effects or wolf man transformations. He turned a liability into an asset that has helped his nine films stand the test of time.
Lewton was, first and foremost, a writer. He worked on all the screenplays for his nine horror films and never used his own name to take credit. (He used a pseudonym, Carlos Keith.) He had been story editor for producer David O. Selznick before coming to RKO to head what's now commonly referred to as "the Lewton unit." Before that, he had been a magazine writer and reasonably successful novelist.
What you don't hear about Lewton very often is that he was the nephew of Alla Nazimova, the notorious Russian actress whose silent "Salome" is still remembered as one of the most outrageously exciting films of the 1920s. (I've seen it and can vouch for its scandalous content.) Lewton was born in Yalta, Russia, and came to America in 1909 as a child after his mother, Nina Leventon, left his father and abandoned his now forgotten surname. Nina earned a living as a writer and even had a story published in Harper's magazine. When her sister got her a job in the story department at Metro's New York offices, it brought her and Val into the world of movies for the first time.
(Nazimova had been one of Metro's great silent stars. She returned to the screen during the sound era and played many memorable roles, including Tyrone Power's mother in "Blood and Sand" in 1941 and the Polish welder in Selznick's "Since You Went Away" in 1944. She died in 1945 at age 66.)
Considering how much obvious talent he had, it's strange that Val Lewton is best remembered for the nine horror films he made under such appalling conditions at RKO. It's very likely he would have been involved with many mainstream hits had he not died so young--age 46--after a series of heart attacks. He had just teamed up with Stanley Kramer and was about to produce "My Six Convicts" and the original "Member of the Wedding" when he died in 1951.
However, it's no surprise that his horror films are so highly regarded. Though the films weren't well reviewed by many of the nation's big daily newspapers at the time of their release, there were some farsighted critics who did discover the films and celebrate their genius. Among them was the legendary James Agee, who wrote for The Nation in the 1940s. He actually chose Lewton's "Curse of the Cat People"--the first film ever directed by future Oscar winner Robert Wise--as one of the best films of 1944.
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Left: The ad for "TheCat People" sold it as a straight horror movie. Right: Julia Dean and Ann Carter in "The Curse of the Cat People," a study of a lonely child's psychological behavior.
What makes the Lewton nine so exceptional, besides their often terrifying tension, is their literate scripts. While some critics thought them "too talky," the truth is the films seem very intelligent and character-driven today. Lewton also was way ahead of his time in two areas: Psychological themes and treatment of race. Few films of the war years approached characters along psychological lines, but almost all of Lewton's films did, providing us with fascinating insights into America's emerging understanding of paranoia and other psychological conditions.
His first film, "The Cat People," and it's so-called sequel, "The Curse of the Cat People," both have deeply psychological themes. In the first, the leading character, Irena (Simone Simon), is mired in her own phobias and awash in feelings of guilt over her belief that she may have inherited the werecat tendencies of her Serbian ancestors. The follow-up film is more a study of child psychology than it is a horror film with little Ann Carter playing the lonely child who sees a picture of the dead Irena, her father's first wife, and begins to imagine that Irena is her "invisible friend." There's an abiding creepiness about "Curse of the Cat People," but its truly durable quality is its uncanny ability to take us into the wonder-world of a troubled little girl, circa 1944.
Hollywood simply didn't make movies like that in 1944, which is why the truly well-tuned critics of the day gaped in wonderment at what Val Lewton was putting on the screen under the guise of schlock horror movies.
It's also apparent that Lewton had a very advanced view of race. Though his films have many black characters--especially "I Walked With A Zombie"--and "The Leopard Man" has many Latino characters, those characters all are treated with dignity and respect, not with the cliches and unpleasant comic relief aspects that almost all other Hollywood films assigned to them in that era. One fine example: The black Calypso singer Sir Lancelot appears in several of Lewton's films, frequently as a sort of "Greek Chorus," telling us in song what's going on behind the masks of the white characters.
It's commonly known that Lewton and Alfred Hitchcock knew each other, frequently dined out together and admired each other's films. Certainly the Lewton horror films borrowed from the British Hitchcock thrillers and his early American films, like "Rebecca" and "Suspicion," in terms of look and feel. Hitchcock, too, believed less was more and loved to force viewers to imagine what was happening off camera.
In Lewton's "The Seventh Victim," though, there is a "Psycho" shower scene that easily might have stuck in Hitchcock's mind if he saw Lewton's film in 1943. In that scene, Kim Hunter is taking a shower and the blurred image of Mary Newton suddenly looms on the other side of the shower curtain. Hitchcock once told me that nothing really was new in film, that many of his heralded innovations derived from bits and pieces he'd seen in earlier films. Here's a case where at least a portion of his famous "Psycho" scene seems to have been inspired by an earlier film.
In a 1998 interview, director Robert Wise told me how clever Lewton was about finding economical ways to make his pictures look much more expensive than they were. He said Lewton constantly prowled the RKO lot, on the lookout for portions of sets he could borrow from more expensive pictures to use on his cheapies.
"When we made 'The Body Snatcher,'" Wise said, "he found a piece of the old 'Hunchback of Notre Dame' set at the RKO ranch in Encino. They still had a lot of exterior sets out there."
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Wise is one of many young filmmakers that Lewton helped with their first big breaks in the business. A film editor for Orson Welles, Wise was summoned to take over direction of "Curse of the Cat People" when the original director fell behind schedule. He directed two more films for Lewton: "The Body Snatcher" and a non-horror period picture, "Mademoiselle Fifi."
After "Bedlam" was released in 1946, Lewton was scheduled to make several non-horror pictures, but RKO was having terrible financial problems and the productions experienced many delays. Then Lewton suffered a heart attack, which also threw him off track. Ultimately, he left for a new deal with Paramount. His subsequent films--"My Own True Love," 1948; "Please Believe Me," 1950; "Apache Drums," 1951--did nothing for his reputation, which now rests almost entirely on his nine horror films.
By creating a distinctive new style that created terror through the subtle use of shadows and stimulation of the human imagination, Val Lewton gave new dimensions to the traditional horror genre. His great achievement as a producer wasn't fully recognized while he was actually doing the films, though, but they are still around for us to study and admire and marvel at for their uniqueness in their time.
It's a shame that Hollywood doesn't have a Val Lewton today--someone who might end the cycle of mindless slasher films and bring back the idea that less is more, even in the thrill-driven horror genre.
© 2000 by Ron Miller.
Right now the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto, Calif., is running a Val Lewton retrospective. For Bay Area readers, here are the dates and times for those films:
Thursday, Friday, Nov. 16-17: "I Walked With A Zombie," 7:30 p.m.; "Bedlam," 6 and 8:50 p.m.
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Nov. 22-24: "Isle of the Dead," 7:30 p.m.; "The Ghost Ship," 6:05 and 8:55.
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Nov. 29-Dec. 1: "Curse of the Cat People," 7:30; "Mademoiselle Fifi," 6:10 and 8:50.
The Stanford Theater is located at 221 University Ave. in Palo Alto, Calif.
THE NINE HORROR FILMS OF VAL LEWTON with star ratings by John Stanley from his "Creature Features" guidebook:
1. THE CAT PEOPLE (1942) French actress Simone Simon stars as a young woman who believes she may be descended from a race of Serbian cat-people. With Tom Conway, Kent Smith, Jack Holt. John Stanley Rating: 4 stars.
2. I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943) A nurse (Frances Dee) is hired to care for a woman who exists in trance-like state on a West Indian plantation, but falls in love with the invalid's husband (Tom Conway). With James Ellison, Sir Lancelot. Rating: 4 stars.
3. THE LEOPARD MAN (1943) A leopard escapes from a nightclub in a small New Mexico town and begins killing people--or is someone else behind the killings? With Dennis O'Keefe, Margo. Rating: 3 1/2 stars.
4. THE SEVENTH VICTIM (1943) A young woman (Kim Hunter) comes to New York City to find her missing sister with the help of her sister's husband (Hugh Beaumont), but learns her sister is involved with a Satanic cult. With Tom Conway, Jean Brooks. Rating: 3 1/2 stars.
5. THE GHOST SHIP (1943) A young ship's officer (Russell Wade) discovers the ship's captain (Richard Dix) is a homicidal maniac, but can't get anyone to believe him. With Lawrence Tierney, Dewey Robinson. Rating: 3 stars.
6. THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944) A little girl named Amy (Ann Carter) is very imaginative, but her father (Kent Smith) becomes concerned when he finds evidence that the spirit of his dead first wife (Simone Simon) may be in contact with the child. With Jane Randolph, Sir Lancelot. Rating: 3 1/2 stars.
7. ISLE OF THE DEAD (1945) A Greek general (Boris Karloff) is marooned on a cemetery island with a group of people trying to escape a plague on the mainland. When one of the group dies, then rises from her tomb, the general suspects a vorvolaka, a sort of vampire-demon, is loose among them. With Ellen Drew, Marc Cramer, Katherine Emery. Rating: 4 stars.
8. THE BODY SNATCHER (1945) A surgeon (Henry Daniell) in Edinborough, circa 1831, uses a graverobber (Boris Karloff) to secure corpses for his illegal research. With Russell Wade, Bela Lugosi, Robert Clarke. Rating: 3 1/2 stars.
9. BEDLAM
(1946) A
British actress (Anna Lee) wants to investigate the scandalous
way Master Sims (Boris Karloff) runs the notorious St. Mary of
Bethlehem mental asylum in 18th century London, but winds up
as a patient there, under his control. With Billy House, Jason
Robards Sr., Robert Clarke, Ellen Corby. Rating: 3 stars.
© 2000 by Ron Miller.
Ron Miller
is the author of 'Mystery! A Celebration." For details on
how to acquire a signed copy, click on SHOPPING MALL below.
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