Tim Lucas / Video WatchBlog

A big CONGRATULATIONS to all my friends and colleagues whose good works have been nominated for the next round of Rondo Awards! Though she’s not named as such on the ballot, I was particularly pleased to see Donna Lucas’ cover for the Farewell Issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG on the ballot - her only solo cover creation since the Rondos began! (Of course, she’s up against THREE Mark Maddox covers, two of them wraparounds!) Also very pleased to see that producing VW’s final issue allowed for the nominations of Larry Blamire (Best Columnist) and John-Paul Checkett (Best Article) and, of course, our final shot at Best Magazine!

I wasn’t anticipating much in the way of nominations for myself this year, other than maybe one for Best Commentary, and I was very happy to be acknowledged for my work on Arrow’s CALTIKI THE IMMORTAL MONSTER - but I was also very pleased and surprised to be reminded of other work I’d done (Best Article for my CALTIKI piece for SCREEM and Best Columnist for my “Shot in the Dark” piece for DIABOLIQUE)! I’m also thrilled for Neil Snowdon’s Best Book nomination for his WE ARE THE MARTIANS: THE LEGACY OF NIGEL KNEALE, to which I contributed - and finally, a nomination for the work I do here at Video WatchBlog, now in its 12th big year - and rapidly approaching its 2,000,000th page view!

It's both wonderful and heartening to see how many projects of real passion and value are represented on the ballot this year. Competition will be stiff!

Please celebrate the very best work being done in horror and fantasy journalism and criticism by perusing the ballot, finding your favorites, and casting your votes! And a Big Thanks to Mr. David Colton and his wife Eileen Colton for all the work that goes into organizing and hosting this occasion each year - from all concerned!

You can find a ballot listing all this year's nominees at the Rondo Awards website.

A postscript which I feel compelled to add, given some Facebook reaction to the ballot about how few female creators and contributors made the the final selection. I agree it's an unfortunate oversight but, I hasten to add, not a biased or malicious one; it's just an indication of some of the important work going on that missed the radar of the Classic Horror Film Board's nominations forum. I was very pleased to see Laura Wagner's work finally acknowledged in the Best Columnist category, as well as the Soska Sisters' Blood Drive PSA's for Women In Horror Month, but there are some blind spots. Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger did a slew of superb audio commentaries this past year - admittedly some for the UK market only, and they also figure notably in the podcast realm with Daughters of Darkness and Kat's Hell's Belles podcast with Heather Drain. (Speaking of podcasts, I miss seeing Bill Ackerman's SUPPORTING CHARACTERS and Mick Garris' POST MORTEM on the ballot, too!) Heather Buckley's production work on the DVD supplements for RAWHEAD REX were also worthy; she's such a force of nature and so prolific and passionate about horror, her name should be all over this ballot.

If you agree, one thing you can certainly do to advance awareness is to take into consideration the fine work being done in the service of the genre by all these ladies as you cast your votes in the Write-In categories - as well as Kimberly Lindbergs, Kier-la Janisse, Anne Billson, Emma Westwood, Alexandra West, Maura McHugh, Thana Niveau, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Marcelline Block, Stacie Ponder, and many more. (My apologies to anyone I have inevitably left out in my haste to add these words.) These women are bringing so much of importance to the table and their works will thoroughly reward your attention!

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Very pleased to announce that I've placed a new short story, "The Migrants," in the second volume of Mark Morris' enthusiastically-received NEW FEARS anthology, which Titan Books will be releasing this coming September. I'm honored to be one of this estimable line-up of contributors:

MAW -- Priya Sharma
THE AIRPORT GORILLA -- Stephen Volk
THUMBSUCKER -- Robert Shearman
BULB -- Gemma Files
FISH HOOKS -- Kit Power
EMERGENCE -- Tim Lebbon
ON CUTLER STREET -- Benjamin Percy
LETTERS FROM ELODIE -- Laura Mauro
STEEL BODIES -- Ray Cluley
THE MIGRANTS -- Tim Lucas
RUT SEASONS -- Brian Hodge
SENTINEL -- Catriona Ward
ALMOST AUREATE -- V.H. Leslie
THE TYPEWRITER -- Rio Youers
LEAKING OUT -- Brian Evenson
THANATRAUMA -- Steve Rasnic Tem
PACK YOUR COAT -- Aliya Whiteley
HAAK -- John Langan
THE DEAD THING -- Paul Tremblay
THE SKETCH -- Alison Moore
PIGS DON'T SQUEAL IN TIGERTOWN -- Bracken MacLeod

I'll be reminding you again and again about this collection as the time draws nearer, but for now, it's just very heartening for me to share this good news. I don't write many stories - in fact, this is only the second I've publshed - so I'm delighted this one resonated with Mark. In the meantime, I encourage you to bide your time with NEW FEARS Volume 1, which features VIDEO WATCHDOG's own Ramsey Campbell. You can find print and ebook editions at a very nice price at Amazon, here.

I've had another piece of fiction accepted for publication, but I can't say anything about it till the publisher makes their announcement - hopefully soon! And there is another fiction project in the works, so stay tuned.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

It seems it was right around this time, 50 years ago, that my mother - for a reason I no longer remember - treated me one night to any downtown movie of my choice. We took a taxi downtown and everything.

After seeing that the International 70 was showing CUSTER OF THE WEST and the Albee was showing GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER?, I chose the feature showing at the Times. It was advertised as being inappropriate for children my age, but I was accompanied by a parent. In retrospect, it was the best choice on the table, but it was also kind of like walking into an explosion. Black-and-white. Panavision. Docudrama. Two unknown leads. Shotguns and rubber gloves. No "The End."

I'd been going to horror films most of my life, most often alone, but I had never been so frightened by a movie. I didn't know movies could do that to a person, emotionally. I wasn't really yet aware that there were people like that. I walked out of the theater into a different world, with a different comprehension of the world. I was shaken up for days, even though I'd hidden my eyes during the murder scene - the last time I ever hid my eyes at the movies.

I saw IN COLD BLOOD twice more within the next year or two (until I finally saw all of it), and I also read Truman Capote's book - trying to get a handle on the experience.

If a lifetime of watching movies has taught me anything, it's that you don't get a handle on the combination of Richard Brooks, Conrad Hall, and Quincy Jones.

You light the fuse and run.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Back in 2011, I posted some notes about three of the first four Fantômas novels by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain, as they exist in English translation, in acknowledgement of the character's first centenary. Regrettably, I didn't take notes on the third Fantômas novel, MESSENGERS OF EVIL, as I was reading it - and it turned out to be my favorite of those four. Also now available in translation as THE CORPSE THAT WALKS, it's the one in which Fantômas commits a series of hideous crimes attributed to a dead man by using the peeled skin from a dead man's hands as a pair of form-fitting gloves!

Since that time, I've gone on to read the fifth novel in the series, A ROYAL PRISONER, and more recently the sixth and seventh, THE LONG ARM OF FANTOMAS (UK title: A LIMB OF SATAN) and SLIPPERY AS SIN - which, for many years, was the last of the Souvestre/Allain translations, though twenty-five further titles remained to be translated.

Thankfully, in recent years, a couple of fresh translations have welcomely emerged, published by Black Coat Press: THE DAUGHTER OF FANTOMAS (translated by Mark B. Steele, which directly follows SLIPPERY AS SIN and introduces the major character of Héléne, who is Fantômas'... well, you get the idea) and THE DEATH OF FANTOMAS (translated by Sheryl Curtis, this is a conflation of the last two Souvestre-Allain titles). This abrupt leap to the end of the saga offers little hope that the remaining twenty-two volumes will ever be made available in the English language.

There was still more after the supposed end of that original 1911-13 saga. A decade or so following the premature death of his co-author (and the series' principal creator) Pierre Souvestre in 1914, Marcel Allain revived the series for eleven further books of his own. Five of these made it into English translation between 1925-28 under the titles THE LORD OF TERROR, JUVE IN THE DOCK, FANTOMAS CAPTURED, THE REVENGE OF FANTOMAS and BULLDOG AND RATS. Long the exclusive province of antique book collectors with deep pockets, these are now available as paperback reprints. I've not read them, but these books tend to be described as disappointments that reveal M. Souvestre to have been the real motivating genius behind the character.

Italian edition cover.

A ROYAL PRISONER (UN ROI PRISONNIER DE FANTOMAS, "A Royal Prisoner of Fantomas") is the great disappointment of the translations. The original French edition, Le Roi Prisonnier de Fantômas, ran 318 densely-packed pages of text, while the English translation from Brentano's runs 277 pages of larger-than-usual type with an uncommon lot of air between the lines. One need only look at the pages to feel short-changed, but to actually compare the English translation to the French original page by page is to see entire paragraphs scattered to the winds. As presented, the storyline feels sparse and incomplete, a reckless job of paraphrasing with little of the picaresque flavor of the earlier books. There is no shortage of new editions of these books, and at least one such reprint series boasts of correcting and modernizing some of their wording, but what this book seriously needs is a new, more thorough, translation. Reading it angered me so much that I didn't return to reading Fantômas for another few years.

Italian edition cover.

Fortunately, THE LONG ARM OF FANTOMAS (LE POLICIER APACHE, "The Crooked Cop") is a conscientious return to form. While there remains a notable discrepancy between the two lengths - 384 pages in French, about 320 in English - neither the story nor its storytelling feel pared down in conversion. Alternately amusing, exciting and appalling, it picks up the ongoing scenario with the hero Inspector Juve in prison, accused of being Fantômas, while his indicted partner, the journalist Jérome Fandor, eludes the authorities by infiltrating the criminal underground and tracing the felonious activities of Père Moche and his gang to the Genius of Crime. Just when things are not looking so good for Fandor, who should announce his arrival in Paris to clean up this unholy mess but the famous American detective Tom Bob (you heard right). Juve is off-stage for the bulk of this novel, which frees the authors considerably to get at the real meat of these adventures, which is the murkier cat-and-mouse game being played out by the resourceful (but still learning) Fandor and the perversely honorable Fantômas himself, who is so much more advanced than his adversary and seems to be grooming him toward a greater destiny. Though a direct continuation of where things were left off in A ROYAL PRISONER, LONG ARM also reactivates narrative threads dropped at the end of A NEST OF SPIES, reintroducing the tragic character of Fandor's star-crossed love interest Elisabeth Dollon (introduced in MESSENGER OF EVIL). The novel is also a feast of malefic highlights, starting out with a brutal hammer murder and continuing with police shootings, the discovery of dead bodies buried in the walls and under the floorboards of various French residences, a masquerade ball at which several different Fantômases appear, an elaborate blackmail scheme, a gruesome hiding place for a treasure in gold, and a lake set afire.

Italian edition cover.

I was so pleased with this one that I proceeded directly to the next Fantomas translation, SLIPPERY AS SIN (LE PENDU DE LONDRES, "The Hanged Man of London") - which, to my surprise, represents a curious rebooting of sorts, though the story itself remains continuous. First of all, there is a two year gap between this and the previous novel, and much of the action takes place in and around London. To explain in too great a detail would spoil some essential surprises, so just let me say that, while THE LONG ARM OF FANTOMAS concludes most satisfactorily with an important character exposed as one of Fantomas' many artful disguises, SLIPPERY AS SIN continues at a distance with that disguise still in active operation - as if the previous case had never concluded, Fantomas continues to wear this highly public disguise after two years, in plain sight! Furthermore, we learn that, while Fantomas himself has taken a two year vacation from active criminal duty, he has also taken up a third identity as a doctor and dentist who has tempted the ire of Fantomas' vindictive mistress Lady Beltham (who has her own alternate identities) by taking another lover. In a funny way, SLIPPERY AS SIN conjures less the image of a Genius of Crime or Lord of Terror than a man who really thrives on overcomplicating his life!

Alas, for a reader familiar with Souvestre/Allain's dense, paid by-the-word prose style, it is all too easily seen that this English translation is less a faithful translation than another paraphrasing of the original text. There are a great many paragraphs here consisting of single, declarative sentences - and these men never wrote a single sentence paragraph unless it was to exclaim "Standing before them was none other than... Fantomas!" I checked the book against a copy of the original French edition and found the translation ran 133 pages shorter and the text was also much airier on the page, so it might well represent a shortage of 150 pages or more. While not as insultingly severe a condensation as A ROYAL PRISONER, the translated prose feels less than genuine, and sometimes glosses over incidents that have happened in the interim; one can't help imagining that these asides were originally colorfully described and presented with characterization and dialogue.

Ultimately, SLIPPERY AS SIN is a moderate disappointment, more focused on private deceptions and intimate betrayals than public crimes, but there are enough gaps in the tale it recreates that one cannot help but wonder how much of its disappointment is due to the original or a too hasty transliteration. It's a peculiar criticism to address to a translation of a book that was, itself, generated inside a single month.

I will continue with my notes on the two Black Coat Press volumes when the time comes.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

"Was zur Hölle ist das?"

I don't need to be rich, but I would like very much to live in a house large and comfortable enough to permit me the luxury of a Peter Van Eyck room.

While I can't claim that Peter Van Eyck (1911-1969) was my favorite actor - therefore, it goes without saying that any house permitting me a Peter Van Eyck room would also have to allow me a number of other shrines - there is something about him and his screen persona that I find curious, compelling and fascinating. He doesn't have what you would call a warm vibe, but if you're looking for someone with cool reserve and urbane efficiency, he's your guy.

He first stood out for me when I discovered Henri-Georges Clouzot's THE WAGES OF FEAR, when he shaves on the morning of driving a treacherous stretch of road with his explosive cargo because, should he happen to meet God that day, he intends to look "presentable." Unfortunately I have never found him featured in any of the advertising art for this classic film, so I am not sure how I would go about representing it or many of his other important early films (HITLER'S CHILDREN, HITLER'S MADMAN) on the walls of my private temple. I've seen many of his films since but his shaving speech in THE WAGES OF FEAR continues to stand out for me as his great screen moment. It gave him a claim to a special compartment in my brain and such a compartment should also exist in my very large house, the one I own outright in my dreams.

The items I would include would have to adhere to a very strict and particular criteria, much as I expect things would have had to pass muster before Peter Van Eyck's aptly discriminating eye would have led him to adopt them for his own home. This magazine cover from BRAVO would require understated yet distinctive placement as it is the only Van Eyck magazine cover I have seen. Had VIDEO WATCHDOG continued, I could guarantee you a Peter Van Eyck cover. So this much is a certainty, perhaps in a humble but sturdy frame above the light switch.

Another essential accent piece would be a nearly wall-sized poster enlargement of this still from the 1958 film Das Mädchen Rosemarie, depicting a debonair Van Eyck in the divine company of Nadja Tiller. The magic of this still would be reflected in the great care with which I would furnish my Peter Van Eyck room with items as close to those seen in the photograph as possible.

The mainstay of the room's decorations, of course, would be Peter Van Eyck film posters, posters from every country around the world, each demonstrating in its own way how Peter Van Eyck is perceived and celebrated in different places and cultures. For instance, this British quad poster for the Hammer thriller THE SNORKEL (also 1958) which, incidentally, is newly released on Blu-ray in the UK from Indicator. This is a spectacular Van Eyck image because his accoutrements demand an expression which he is simply too cool to yield.

Somewhat more forthcoming is this Spanish poster for the British-German co-production known in English as either THE BRAIN or as VENGEANCE, starring Peter Van Eyck under the direction of Freddie Francis. The poster's tagline translates as "A Dead Man Discovers His Killer," which gains resonance in the light of Van Eyck's perplexed expression as it hovers with thwarted purpose over this aquarium with all manner of tubes and wires affixed to a submerged human brain. This would be ideal for framing above a comfortable reading chair, where one might tackle crossword puzzles and crypto-quips.

For sheer provocation, this Italian fotobusta for 1963's SEDUCTION BY THE SEA would also be a must, though Peter Van Eyck can barely be seen in it. But that is one of the challenges proposed by this fantasy; very often, Van Eyck is aggravatingly secondary to the artwork.

When it comes to the most desirable Peter Van Eyck items, the criteria of these pieces is dependent upon those items that would best capture - and, to some degree, even fetishize - his particular expressions, expressions found on no other face in cinema. I am also very fond of this Belgian poster for BLIND JUSTICE (1961), enticingly retitled "Black Nylons, Hot Nights." I like the way the artist has captured his expression here; you could almost believe that someone had tapped him on the shoulder unexpectedly. He's like "Huh? What?"

One of Peter Van Eyck's great latter-day claims to fame is that he starred in several of CCC's "Dr. Mabuse" films, including Fritz Lang's THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR. MABUSE (1960), a series that ran parallel to Rialto's long-running series of Edgar Wallace krimis. My Peter Van Eyck room would need something special to hang above its fireplace, and I don't think there is any reason to overthink which poster that might be - not when this superb example exists. Somehow, in this French poster for SCOTLAND YARD VS. DR. MABUSE (1964), the artist succeeded in perfectly capturing the suavity, furtiveness, the exoticism, and the capability of this most acerbic Mensch of Action and Mystery.

One could ponder that expression for hours and never satisfy yourself that you knew what set of situations might have produced it. Fortunately, a still exists that answers this question, while at the same time doing nothing to damage the persistent allure of the artwork.

I would also want to include this picture and find a place for it near where I or my guests felt most comfortable as we made our devotions.

But the pièce du résistánce of my Peter Van Eyck room would, of course, be my life-sized Mike Hill sculpture based on his pose in this photograph. From a special corner of the room, he could survey all that I had done to honor his memory - and his expression would deem it... presentable.

I don't know how many people remember Peter Van Eyck today, but this photo shows him signing a great many autographs for his fans, so they must be out there somewhere. Someday, I will spring for one and it will likewise be shown the appropriate respect. Sadly, his memory holds a certain obstacle in that he did die so young, at the age of only 57 - from sepsis, Wikipedia tells us, "due to an untreated, relatively small injury." Had he lived, I feel certain that he would have opposed Roger Moore's James Bond at the very least, and given him a tough time with his mad dreams of world domination.

Admittedly, some of what I have said here is silly, but it is meant with sincere affection. I do admit to a strange reverence for Peter Van Eyck, that something about him causes my imagination to race. If I had endless room in which to externalize my dreams, I can guarantee that his shrine would be one of the more interesting and amusing to visit.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

THE SECT (1991)
Michele Soavi's follow-up to THE CHURCH (1989, itself intended as a follow-up to DEMONS), derived from a Dario Argento story, actually plays more like the third "Three Mothers" story than THE MOTHER OF TEARS: it too has a young protagonist in a strange place (rural Germany), surrounded by young students, cultish colleagues and weird elders, with a mysterious watery recess far beneath her house. Soavi has, by far, the best directorial chops of anyone working in Italy during this period, and the movie begins with a soberingly sure-handed prologue that makes one feel there is an actual filmmaker is in the pilot seat, rather than someone with more flamboyance than a clue. Once we get down to brass tacks, after a fine part for Herbert Lom as a mysterious tramp with a purpose, the movie succumbs to the usual Argento foolishness: our heroine (Kelly Curtis, whom I actually prefer to her sister Jamie Lee) lives with a rabbit she calls Rabbit; she meets cute with a young doctor (Michael Hans Adatte) with an aversion to rabbits that results in unpersuasive banter; there are flashy deaths for anyone tenuously attached to the story; and we get the tail end of Argento's fascination with bugs. None of it makes any sense and, if a lot of it is silly in either execution or principle, some of it is also weirdly beautiful. The occasional scene commands respect - even if the visual allusions to THE BIRDS, EYES WITHOUT A FACE and ROSEMARY'S BABY and character names (Martin Romero, Mary Crane) are rather more brazen than they would be in the Maestro's hand. Available on Blu-ray from Scorpion Releasing.

ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES (1959)
1950s horror doesn't come much grislier than this salty slice of cryptid horror pulp. Executive produced by Roger Corman and produced by brother Gene Corman, this is Bernard L. Kowalski's pursuant feature to NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST (1958), scripted by none other than Leo Gordon. Ken Clark (future star of Mario Bava Westerns) is a game warden in a sleepy, backwoods Southern town whose job consists mostly of patrolling local swamps for illegal traps - until the sighting of a bullet-proof mutation and the abduction of some locals raises the pressure on him to dynamite the area. The barely hour-long running time contains a fair amount of conversation about the ecological disadvantages of such a response, which is unusual and interesting, and there are an unseemly number of opportunities for Clark to bare his hairy chest, but the real stars of this show are Bruno ve Sota and PLAYBOY's July 1959 Playmate Yvette Vickers, as a bickering couple out of BABY DOLL whose sexual antagonism builds to an extended scene of Vickers and her lover Michael Emmet being chased through the woods by a shotgun-firing ve Sota - "just to scare them" - till something really scary happens. The scenes of the abductees having their blood sucked by the garbage bag monsters are unforgettable. Historically speaking, it's been hard to find a decent-looking copy of this film since it left TV syndication, but it's now available from Retromedia Entertainment as half of a nice-looking Blu-ray double featurewith TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first time this traditional 1.33:1 title has been released to home video in a widescreen format.

FIRECREEK (1968)
Slow-cooking, even-burning Western from director Vincent McEveety finds James Stewart and Henry Fonda delivering earnest portrayals where we might least expect them. This was not one of the better eras of the American Western, which is not to say that fine work in the genre wasn't still being done, just that audiences weren't as responsive to it. The Calvin Clements script gives us a hero and villain who are early examples of the two being mirror images of each other: Stewart is an underpaid honorary sheriff and family man in charge of a sleepy little town of self-described losers, who is bullied into defending it by the irresponsible actions of an outlaw gang led by a tired and wounded Fonda, who would rather hang his hat and make peace with the world but can't because these men represent his ability to lead. Neither man is actually leading; they're just wearing different kinds of badge, but as the sun goes down, night falls - night "when things happen" - and the men are forced to bring their images of who they are to the test. In 1968, this would have stood out as a searing indictment of what was then called "the Silent Majority," and its message still stands today. Far more thought-provoking than the usual American Western of this period, with strong supporting work by Gary Lockwood, Jack Elam (acting alongside Fonda before the two of them went into Leone's ONE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST), James Best, Louise Latham, Ed Begley, Dean Jagger, Brooke Bundy and, in one of the most potent performances she ever gave, Inger Stevens. Available for streaming from Amazon Video, iTunes and YouTube. Also on Warner Home Video DVD.

(C) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

SINFONIA EROTICA (1979, 84:39)

Before I say anything about the film itself, grateful thanks must be extended once again to David Gregory's Severin Films for its continued support of Jess Franco's film legacy. In this case, said support extends to paying for the 4K restoration of the only known surviving print of one of his more obscure titles (reportedly donated by the Instituto de la Sexualidad Humana in Madrid); mind you, this is a film never before released in America and known to circulate before now primarily as an Italian-language bootleg. Such a release is nothing short of heroic, as counter-commercial as the film itself, and therefore fully deserving of our custom. What makes the gesture still more appreciable is that the film in question is so very odd, even within its niche; it's the only period film Franco shot in the seven-year spread between JACK THE RIPPER (1976) and El Hundimiento de la Casa Usher (1983), and his penultimate Sade adaptation, followed by THE SEXUAL STORY OF O in 1983-84.

Shot in Sintra, the magical area of Lisbon where A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD (1971) was filmed, this is a very personal, very cheap, yet remarkably sustained period adaptation of the Marquis de Sade. It's more akin to the Jean Epstein and Ivan Barnett adaptations of Poe than anyone could have expected from a 1980s feature, and also Franco's only attempt after 1968's JUSTINE to film Sade in an other than contemporary setting. It's based on the "Marquis de Bressac" portion of the novel JUSTINE, involving the characters more decorously portrayed by Horst Frank and Sylva Koscina in JUSTINE.

Inhabiting these roles in this telling are Armando Sallent as the Marquis de Bressac, an unrepentant sadist and sexual anarchist who has taken a gay lover (Mel Rodrigo) in the wake of his wife's placement in a mental sanatorium, a deed he has arranged by blackmailing a corrupt doctor (Albino Graziani) - named Louÿs in honor of the French erotic poet. The discharging of the wife, Martine (Lina Romay, in her blonde-wigged "Candice Coster" persona), prompts the two male lovers to contrive a plan to murder her for her vast fortune, but their plot unexpectedly coincides with the discovery of a violated novice nun (Susan Hemingway of LOVE LETTERS OF A PORTUGUESE NUN) on their castle grounds. The pleasure of corrupting the nun (in which Martine hungrily takes part) unexpectedly exposes the captive's nascent sadistic personality, and the subsequent revels ultimately prove punishing to all... as well as liberating to some.

The film is scored with excerpts from "Concerto No. 4" by Franz Liszt (a composer whose "Liesbestraum" figures in other Franco films, notably 1968's SUCCUBUS) and stabby washes of glacial electronic keyboard by Franco himself. Musically, the film is unusual though not entirely unfamiliar as Franco's work. However, it was shot (evidently in 16mm) in a fractured style and general vagueness that - Romay's surreptitious but transparent involvement aside - doesn't fully evoke the involvement of its director. Its use of Victorian dresses and hats, its shots of gay men gamboling in nature over canned classical music sometimes brings the work of Andy Milligan to mind; while, on the other end of the spectrum, Franco sometimes appears to be deliberately emulating (if not satirizing) the technique of Walerian Borowczyk, sharing his attention to period clothing, to rooms and furnishings, to antiquity, and indeed the eccentric off-kilter framing that we so often find in Borowcyk's work. Only in the film's subject matter and its numerous sideways glances into abstraction and lens-flexing is Franco's hand apparent. It's interesting that Franco would attempt something so unlike his usual self (no self-references, no humor), particularly at the same time Romay was going so far as to deny her own screen persona, and that these attempts to forge new creative identities would coincide with their return to Madrid after decades of self-exile.

It should also be noted that (depending on exactly when it was made) the film may have represented an under-the-radar reunion for the couple, who had gone their separate ways around 1976-77, at least onscreen - with Romay making films with other directors (Erwin C. Dietrich, Carlos Aured and Jorge Grau), while Franco occupied himself either by shooting films without Lina (SEXY SISTERS, DEVIL HUNTER) or creating new films out of older footage like THE SADIST OF NOTRE DAME.

SINFONIA EROTICA may not be a major title in Franco's canon, but it also lacks the personal characteristics of a minor or malign one. It's a film that doesn't appear to have been made for the usual reasons of ambition, to do with ego, but in response to a deeply personal challenge to do something one has not done, to be someone one has not been. There are, admittedly, points of aggravation when the opening shots of the boughs of trees (which seem to quote the album cover art of Bruno Nicolai's original soundtrack for JUSTINE) are not sustained as long as they need to be held under the opening titles, and splice, and splice, wrecking the mood of the Liszt music; likewise, there is the climactic moment when the last thing a dramatic scene needs is for Lina's blonde wig to come off... and it does. Cut, print. One looks in vain for a reason why Franco would have retained an error so severe. Perhaps he didn't notice at the time and was stuck with what he had, perhaps he saw it as a Brechtian injection of distance into the moment - a reminder that these are all actors, like the ones we are surprised to find applauded in the opening scenes of many of his films. Perhaps it was a bit of both.

The film has a high degree of grain in some shots, which is one reason to suspect a 16mm origin. There are also occasional markings onscreen but, this being the only known print in the world, there is little room to find fault that wasn't there to begin with. The Region ABC Blu-ray disc presents the film in its original post-synchronized Spanish audio with English subtitles. There is some male and female frontal nudity, but the sexual activity never crosses the line into hardcore.

Franco authority Stephen Thrower (MURDEROUS PASSIONS: THE DELIRIOUS CINEMA OF JESÚS FRANCO) is on hand with a 22:22 talk; while clearly bemused about the film, in a good way, he quickly runs out of compliments for it and spends most of his time on its literary origin and Sade's influence on Franco's work generally. There is also a touching 6:34 reminiscence of Nicole Guettard, Franco's first wife (credited with set decoration here), filmed during Severin's last visit to Franco's apartment in 2013.

Available directly from Severin Films, where it is available as a no-frills bundle with Franco's THE SADIST OF NOTRE DAME or in a deluxe bundle with the bonus feature, a special limited edition one-sheet, and an enamel pin.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

"The world shall hear from me again."

When Christopher Lee agreed to portray Sax Rohmer's popular Emperor of Crime in this, the first of what became five adventures for producer Harry Alan Towers, he was graduating to the role in a couple of different ways. Firstly, he was stepping away from his essential homebase at Hammer Films to extend his range of portrayals of the great roles in horror and fantasy, having already played Frankenstein's creature, Count Dracula, and the Mummy - and in doing so, he was extending his reach as an international actor, as the film was to be an international co-production between Towers and Constantin Films of West Germany, who would ultimately release their own different cut (with a different score, to boot), Ich, Fu Manchu ("I, Fu Manchu"). Furthermore, he had already approached this role from two oblique angles; one might even say he had auditioned for it, by having played a very similar character, Chung King, in TERROR OF THE TONGS (1961) for Hammer, as well as Ling Chiu, the Chinese detective in THE DEVIL'S DAFFODIL (1961), a krimi made for West Germany's Rialto Film, the home of the celebrated Edgar Wallace thrillers. It was here that those two lines had to converge.

Nigel Green and Karin Dor.

This first entry in the series opens with the ceremonial decapitation of Fu Manchu for his crimes, with his nemesis Sir Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard (Nigel Green) in attendance - an impressively ceremonial yet understated pre-credits sequence that underlines Lee's entrance with the flicker of light that precedes approaching thunder and concludes with the rain finally breaking and pouring down on an open courtyard abandoned by all save his headless body. The script by Peter Welbeck (Towers' pseudonym), based on no particular Rohmer novel, borrows a cliffhanger from the first Fantômas novel by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain to explain the villain's resurrection: he hypnotized a great Chinese actor into taking his place on the headsman's block. Then, we're off and running in a new plot, which concerns Fu's cold-blooded quest to acquire the research that has gone into the development of a new mass-murder drug distilled from the seeds of the black poppy. In a scene recalling the early scenes of VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, Smith and his associates Dr. Petrie (Howard Marion-Crawford) and Carl Jannsen (Joachim Fuchsberger) visit a small town that has been used as an example of Fu's power, and the camera lingers mercilessly over the images of women, children, and animals who dropped dead in the street.

Like Father, Like Daughter: Tsai Chin and Christopher Lee.

Jannsen is engaged to Maria Muller (Karin Dor), the daughter of the scientist (Walter Rilla) working in this area of research, who must be abducted and threatened with torturous death to get him to do what is wanted. It's a pleasure to see Fuchsberger and Dor, the stars of the Wallace krimis, acting together in English and they both figure in outstanding suspense scenes. Tsai Chin also makes a strong impression as Fu's sadistic and diminutive daughter, Lin Tang - whose name was Fah Lo See in the novels; she subsequently became a Bond girl in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967). Her father has the power and authority, but she is shown actively working in the trenches of crime, disguising herself and chomping at the bit to deal out more punishments. In short, she seems potentially the more formidable foe, though she would never transcend her increasingly sullen, second banana status.

Director Don Sharp (KISS OF THE VAMPIRE, DEVIL-SHIP PIRATES, WITCHCRAFT) directs the film capably and without a hint of self-consciousness or humor, and the vaguely defined period setting is well-sustained. There is a sense about the film that it might have been whittled down from something of more epic length - there are references to key scenes glossed over or not shown - but it moves along at an able, indeed variable, pace that holds one's interest. The one source of disappointment is the score by Christopher Whelen, which seems present only to punch-up the action scenes, doing little to inject the film with identifiable flavor and personality. In this department, the film might well be improved upon by the German version (even shorter), which was rescored by Gert Wilden and is available as part of a comprehensive 5-disc box set released in Germany.

In case you're wondering, the film efficiently shrugs away any quarrel about this escapist material's inherent "racism" when one character's color-conscious observation is shut down by his companion's wise and friendly admonition: "It takes all kinds to make a world."

Available as a DVD-R from Warner Archive, with no extras. It's actually your best bet. Various import options exist, including a British DVD box set including the sequels THE BRIDES OF FU MANCHU (1966) and THE VENGEANCE OF FU MANCHU (1967) which includes bonus trailers; however, the quality of this version leaves much to be desired, looking somewhat noisy and overbright - evidently a not-very-skilled attempt at overcoming the limitations of 2-perf Techniscope.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

With the second film in producer Harry Alan Towers' series, the key participants appear to have studied their previous effort closely, taken note of all the minor mistakes therein and corrected them, though the new work makes a few missteps of its own. Nevertheless, THE BRIDES OF FU MANCHU is an appreciably more assured film and perhaps the series' high point.

Rather than filming in Dublin as before, the production occupied Bray Studios, where all of Hammer's best-loved films had been made. As Fu's subterranean headquarters is secreted this time far below an Egyptian temple, the set flats and decorations are right out of a Mummy series rummage sale and feel familiar in the best way. Again, the budget didn't allow for a Hammer-level composer, but Towers was able to recruit Bruce Montgomery (a veteran of the Doctor in the House and Carry On series), who is described by the IMDb as "a hopeless alcoholic" and whose work here was likely far more than simply buoyed by its credited conductor, Philip Martell - Hammer's musical supervisor since 1962). It was Montgomery's last credited score (though he did not die until 1978 at age 56) and it has the authority of a genuine, if minor, Hammer score. Also significantly, returning director Don Sharp had done another Hammer film with Christopher Lee in the interim, presiding over one of his more celebrated performances in RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK (1965), and he makes immediately clear that he has learned how to use this instrument onscreen to its fullest. Lee's Fu Manchu is a more expressive characterization here, swathed in emerald silks and taking charge of people's minds by wrapping their heads in his large hands. The opening sequence, which drops us immediately into the middle of the action (not to be confused with the needless memory-refreshing excerpts from FACE that open the American version) - reintroducing Fu and his daughter Lin Tang (Tsai Chin) as well as their latest abductees, Michele Merlin (Carole Gray) and her scientist father Jules (Rupert Davies) - may be the most bravura filmmaking in the entire series. Acting, direction, camera blocking, wardrobe, set design, and score - it feels like a foretaste of classic Hammer.

Howard Marion-Crawford and Douglas Wilmer, our heroes.

Then come the aftertastes, which unfortunately include the less satisfactory heroics of Douglas Wilmer as the new Nayland Smith; he hasn't much of the dramatic gravity that Nigel Green brought to the role. Howard Marion-Crawford is back as his stuffy associate Dr. Petrie, with somewhat less to do, and this time the guest German actor slot is handed over to the reliable Heinz Drache (THE MYSTERIOUS MAGICIAN), who gets several opportunities to demonstrate his flair for fisticuffs - which look good but sound like someone off-camera was asked to clap his hands together every time a punch was thrown, the better that we can hear them connect. The primary heroine is surprisingly not Carole Gray (who's a bit far down the cast list for one of her screen time and credentials), but rather a French ingenue, Marie Versini - who isn't remotely equal to Gray but had the advantage to the film's German investors of having been a cast member in several of Rialto Film's Karl May adventures. The Peter Welbeck (Towers) script is a basically a more needlessly complicated retread of the previous story, built to accommodate a fifth-wheel supporting role for another of Rialto's krimi men, Harald Leipnitz.

Carole Gray and Tsai Chin, center stage.

One of the surprising highlights of the film is an abduction staged in a crowded theater during an opera performance - which must have been scripted in expectation of a more opulent budget and had to be pared down to barest essentials as the day of shooting finally came. Technically, it's a tour de force of getting away with murder: we see an audience not particularly dressed for a night at the opera, at least a few rows of faces, all looking at the stage as if they have been asked to imagine it while smelling something awful; we never see a glimpse of performance - we don't even see the stage! - and yet the scene, remarkably, works.

The wonderful character actor Bert Kwouk, best-remembered as Cato in the Pink Panther films, is a marvelous added resource to the Fu Manchu team as their star engineer Feng, but his addition is also problematical. First of all, Kwouk is simply too good an actor; we can see Christopher Lee upping his game when they share scenes together, which has the unwelcome effect of making them interact as equals - something the imperious Fu would never permit. Not only do the two men banter and bicker (!) over important details, but Feng actually questions and ultimately refuses orders. But the primary error of the Welbeck script, also present in the first, is that the reasons for Fu's dreams of world conquest are never explained - as are his intentions for what to do when and if he attains such power. With his goal left so nebulous, the film limits itself to a lower level of entertainment than it might have achieved. Also, when the stakes are raised to their highest in the final reel, Fu blithely ignores numerous danger signs arising between himself and absolute success, which causes him to look crudely sociopathic, insane rather than a villain with a vision. Sharp also does no favors to Fu's dignity when he allows us to see father and daughter scurrying like ordinary mortals on the lam, accessing their executive escape hatch as all Hell breaks loose around them.

In preparing this film, Towers plucked a feather from the cap of American director William Castle, who had recently chosen the cast of his 1965 thriller 13 FRIGHTENED GIRLS from among the discoveries of an international beauty contest for teens. Having a knack for making other people's ideas a little spicier, Towers announced this film by holding a similar pageant for continental starlets above the age of consent! Whether or not the competition was a real contest or just ballyhoo, he got some quick ink in European magazines by having the "brides" pose while tearing off each others' clothes on set, though there is no erotic content in the film whatsoever.

My review is based on a viewing of Momentum's UK disc, dated 2001, though the film has since (2008) also become available domestically as half of an MGM Midnite Movies double feature with 1967's CHAMBER OF HORRORS. I have heard this version (which includes the aforementioned US prologue) also has an anomaly of presentation that causes a slight vertical stretching of the image, which is reportedly soft to begin with; I have seen grabs online that confirm this. No such anomalies are present on the Momentum disc, which looks infinitely better than the copy of FACE OF FU MANCHU included in the same FU MANCHU TRILOGY box set. There are no extras on the disc. As with the other films in the series, BRIDES is included in its shorter, alternate German cut with music by Gert Wilden in the German box set THE DR. FU-MAN-CHU COLLECTION.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Christopher Lee, actually playing Sax Rohmer's Emperor of Crime in Hong Kong.

You've got to hand it to producer Harry Alan Towers: as busy as he was, as productive as he was, he always had his finger on the pulse of what was happening in popular media - not just in English-speaking countries, but around the world. When director Don Sharp moved on to bigger, more mainstream pictures after directing the first two Fu Manchu films, Towers had already groomed Jeremy Summers to take over the pilot seat, having chosen him on the basis of his solid background in British crime programmers (CROOKS IN CLOISTERS, DATELINE DIAMONDS), pop culture (the Gerry and the Pacemakers film FERRY CROSS THE MERSEY), and episodes of DANGER MAN and THE SAINT. Towers would ultimately make four films with Summers, of which this was the second, following FIVE GOLDEN DRAGONS (1967), derived from the Sanders novels of Edgar Wallace.

Douglas Wilmer, Howard Marion-Crawford.

Maria Rohm, Horst Frank.

Peter Carsten, Tony Ferrer.

But the actual playing ground of the third Fu Manchu film showed even greater global awareness and ambition. Again working with a German co-production company (actually two, Constantin joining forces this time with Terra-Filmkunst), Towers further extended his partnership to the Shaw Brothers factory in Hong Kong, which availed the film of a scenic splendor that the previous two could only hint at. The principal players - Christopher Lee, Tsai Chin, Douglas Wilmer, Howard Marion-Crawford - happily returned, seizing paid vacations to the Far East with both hands. They were joined by Horst Frank, Suzanne Rocquet, Peter Carsten and Wolfgang Kieling from Germany, New Zealand actor Noel Trevarthan, and Filipino superstar Tony Ferrer, cannily cast as Nayland Smith's Eastern counterpart, Inspector Ramos. Ferrer, who since 1965 had been starring in crime and action pictures as the Philippines' answer to James Bond, Agent X-44 (a role he would continue to essay until 2007), is the most interesting element of the film. His participation includes actual martial arts choreography, then rarely seen onscreen, and his arrival on the international scene coincides remarkably closely with that of Bruce Lee. True, he's not as dynamic or charismatic a martial artist as Bruce Lee (who is?), but when he cuts loose, he spikes the film with an authenticity it doesn't often summon otherwise. Also making her debut in the series is actress Maria Rohm, Towers' Viennese wife, as Ingrid Swenson, a torch singer in a sailor bar. She pantomimes to two songs sung by Samantha Jones. Nayland Smith's demure Chinese maid, Lotus, is here replaced by a new one, Jasmin - played by Mona Chong, an actress fresh from ADAM ADAMANT LIVES! and DANGER MAN and bound for ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE.

Douglas Wilmer.

Ditto.

Maria Rohm.

Once again, Sax Rohmer's name appears above the title on a story he never wrote. And it's that same story he never wrote. Fu Manchu abducts the daughter of a leading scientist at work on a potentially devastating formula, and the story builds to the usual klutzy demise for Fu and Company... However, in this case, the film foregrounds what should have been a more interesting and original storyline involving the abduction of Nayland Smith, who is replaced with one of Fu's murderous minions after some advanced plastic surgery. As things play out, it's an energy-sapping subplot as the replacement is played less as an impersonator than as a zombie, which effectively takes the film's putative hero out of circulation - we see him tediously tried for murder, shots of him looking dead-faced and uncommunicative in the dock with flip-optical cutaways to newspaper headlines (the cinematic equivalent of yawning through a series of "and this happened, then this"). On the plus side, Ferrer and Carsten are actually better equipped for the film's physical heroics, and the subplot gives Marion-Crawford opportunities to emote for a change; he contributes his own finest work in the series. Christopher Lee and Tsai Chin likewise are fully prepared to give their best - Lee has an excellent moment when he receives the news of Nayland Smith's capture - but their characters are surrounded by too much excelsior. At the same time, seemingly important supporting characters are simply present to go through the motions, which now verge on the risible (thanks mostly to Frank's fey, panatela-smoking bad guy with Texas cowboy affectations), or to stand around as the drably predictable happens. Summers' direction capably handles all the onscreen traffic, but never feels involved in it. It should be mentioned that Nayland Smith mentions at one point that he has retired from Scotland Yard and is joining a new organization to be known as Interpol. Interpol was founded in the 1950s, but this may not be an error in the film's period setting, as Wilmer's hair is shown to be fully gray here and there is not much on view to absolutely contradict an early 1950s time period - apart from the fact that our villains have not aged.

Christopher Lee.

Noel Trevarthan, Tony Ferrer and "motley crew" under cover.

Horst Frank and torture chamber props going to waste.

Most observers of this series blame Jesús Franco for bringing about the end of this series with the last two entries, THE BLOOD OF FU MANCHU (aka KISS AND KILL, THE KISS OF FU MANCHU and AGAINST ALL ODDS) and THE CASTLE OF FU MANCHU - and it should be mentioned that Towers himself agreed. But the real problem is fully apparent in the first three: Towers should have allowed someone else to write them - someone with the time to actually read Rohmer, perhaps. The first three films essentially present us with the same story three times, each time served up with a bit more sauce and seasoning. (The spice in this case is some mild profanity; there is almost none of the usual sado-masochism, with the exception of a branding sequence for which a prop of a woman's bare back was obviously built for a close-up that isn't kept in its entirety.) In a sense, the most significant fault of THE VENGEANCE OF FU MANCHU is that, in its reach for greater (dare I say Bondian?) glamor and spectacle, it loses sight of the character's origins in pulp fiction. The negligence of his alien invasive presence, lurking dangerously on the periphery of a known world, is sacrificed as the series extends beyond mystery into common adventure.

Once again, I have reviewed the film working from the imported Momentum DVD release of THE FU MANCHU TRILOGY of 2001, which includes a trailer. The image grabs used here are from that Kinowelt/Studio Canal-sourced release. The film has since been released domestically as a DVD-R from the Warner Archive Collection. I have not seen that version and cannot verify whether or not the American cut differs from this one in any way.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Margaret Johnson in her doll palace.

There is an Amicus production I’ve known for about 15-20 years and have never really liked at all: Freddie Francis' THE PSYCHOPATH.

Since its original release in 1966, the Paramount release has been all but impossible to see - except in a pan-and-scanned copy that first ran on TNT with commercial interruption way back when I first taped it, eager to see one of the more important titles that eluded me back in the day. It more recently ran on TCM in the same ugly copy. But this past week it was released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber in an actual Techniscope presentation. Imagine how these frames would have looked cut in half to fit your TV screen...

Patrick Wymark interrogates the principal cast.

I am surprised to report that I have done A COMPLETE TURNAROUND! With the full frame revealed, with the contrast corrected, the film has a marvelous look, with a strong cast and an Elisabeth Lutyens score with a eerie lullaby motif. I believe there may also have been a scene or two cut from the version I had previously seen, as some girly photos are taped to a man’s wall, a bit stronger than Paramount would have allowed for an all ages matinee movie in 1966. Not to mention half the screen was missing in every shot of that TV print! Admittedly, the Robert Bloch script is a little obvious, but the actors are top notch and the team responsible for THE SKULL are turning the screws as ably as ever, with some masterful compositions and set pieces.

Judy Huxtable and Alexander Knox.

Seeing it this way, it is also much easier to appreciate that director Freddie Francis must have seen a Bava film or two by this time, because we get some of his giallo atmospherics - the scattered dolls, the strobing lights, the victim trying to elude her killer while wearing a candy apple red mackintosh out of BLOOD AND BLACK LACE. Indeed, this film can now be taken into account as a likely inspiration for some of Argento’s later imagery, and his uses of murder fetishes, particularly in DEEP RED (1975). As the title suggests, Bloch’s script is a quirky elaboration on his PSYCHO - it’s a more baroque study of a somewhat similar, somewhat dissimilar situation and - what a nice surprise! - grandly effective at times. The climax of the film achieves a level of simultaneous high camp and grand tragedy - actually operatic - and (this is no spoiler) Margaret Johnson's final flourish must have had matinee kids squirming in their seats back in the day.

This is now going to be my chief reference when I tell people that presentation has everything to do with how we respond to a film. Mind you, the opening reel of the film has some unavoidable scratches, but they are much easier to ignore when the frame brightens to a day scene - and thereafter it is smooth, enjoyable sailing. On Facebook, Kino Lorber's Frank Tarzi has credited disc producer Bret Wood with being wholly responsible for the reconstruction of the film's Techniscope elements and color correction, making it releasable in the first place as a more elaborate restoration would have been outside the company's budget. The color palette is essential to the film's enjoyment, featuring extraordinary uses of lavender and royal blue that I'd never noticed in my old faded copy. There's also an audio commentary by Troy Howarth and a grab bag of trailers for similar recent Kino Lorber product.

Very happy to scratch this important restoration off my list of disappointments after all these years... but don't get me started on THE DEADLY BEES (also 1966), pretty much an abject failure from the same filmmakers!

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

I’ve told the story here, at least a couple of times, about how I first saw ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST by accident as the unexpected half of a double feature, and how it so unexpectedly and completely moved me in ways to which my 12 year old self was accustomed that I left afterwards without seeing the Elvis Western I’d come to see. I knew Elvis couldn’t possibly compete with what I’d just experienced, so I picked up my coat and I left. I look back on this moment as the first adult decision of my life.

I was moved by a lot of different things about the film, but I now realize that its female lead Claudia Cardinale - who turned 80 yesterday - gave what was probably the first truly dimensional, empathetic portrayal of a woman I had ever seen in a film. Jill McBain is introduced as a New Orleans hooker who had the good fortune to catch the eye of a rich, romantic widowed landowner. She moves to join him and steps off the train to find him and his three children massacred for standing between some dangerous men and a goal they cravenly coveted - the raw lumber and iron necessary to build a town called Sweetwater, which Jill had somehow inspired in a heart no longer beating.

Jill is not your usual heroine; she is more of a look behind the scenes of a traditional western heroine’s life as she fights to survive and claim what she has earned. Throughout the film she is attended by three different men, each of them vultures of a kind and, in addition to whatever else the story eventually settles, the film is about how these three men interact with her and how her heart finally settles on one of them, who isn’t the worst one but really isn’t the right one either. When we meet her, she is one kind of illusion, the kind of woman whose promenading glance and well-turned ankle that might inspire a man to look at a handful of dust and dirt and believe in a place called Sweetwater. Then her life is blindsided by tragedy and the need to understand what has happened to her dreams and why. To learn the answers, she must navigate her way through the mysterious intersecting motives of these three men. By the end of this journey, she has gone from being confused by the name Sweetwater to becoming a literal waterbearer for the town springing up around her and the first train rails to connect the two halves of America from east to west.

Jill wasn’t the first woman of her kind in a western, but she was the first one I ever encountered. What she taught me that day at the movies, some men never learn.

Auguri e grazie, Claudia Cardinale.

Ann, a young woman from a small town, travels to the Big Apple in the 1960s in hopes of becoming an actress. In doing so, she finds it sometimes necessary to take some odd jobs to make ends meet, but she has the constant support of a boyfriend who believes in her.

No, I haven't decided to review Season One of THAT GIRL! I'm talking about the legendary "lost" Adults Only film, THE ORGY AT LIL'S PLACE (1963)!

In one of the biggest buried headlines in home video history, this tantalizing title - long assumed to be, along with numerous early Andy Milligan titles, a fatality of the bonfires to which distributor William Mishkin assigned prints of his properties that stopped paying their keep in rental fees - has turned up as a bonus co-feature on Vinegar Syndrome's Blu-ray disc of PICK-UP, a mystical 1973 skin-flick directed and photographed by Bernard Hirschenson, the award-winning cameraman who also shot DAVID AND LISA, SATAN IN HIGH HEELS, the "Keep America Beautiful" ad with Iron Eyes Cody, and... THE ORGY AT LIL'S PLACE.

Directed by Jerald Intrator under the name J. Nehemiah, THE ORGY AT LIL'S PLACE was shot in and around New York City in 1962. In the biggest of the film's surprises, future director Del Tenney (THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH, THE CURSE OF THE LIVING CORPSE) is credited as assistant director, and furthermore plays what is ultimately the film's male lead, the heroine/narrator's boyfriend Charlie, working under the name "Bob Curtis." At the eponymous orgy (where a group of NY socialites play Strip Dice, a game that quickly turns into Just Roll the Dice and Laugh), he even performs a couple of stanzas of a folk song. In his capacity as assistant director, it seems likely that Tenney may have handled all the second unit NYC travelogue material, which is actually the film's most impressive content.

The real ace in the film's deck was its cinematographer Bernard "Bernie" Hirschenson, a former GI cameraman whose other achievements include DAVID AND LISA, the "Keep America Beautiful" ads with Iron Eyes Cody, and SATAN IN HIGH HEELS. The ads for the film looked sordid, but the cinematography is excellent throughout and effectively captures the greatest American city at its greatest. For most Adults Only films of this period, a big screen is hardly a requirement but if you have one, it's going to add a great deal to the film's scenic impact.

The film was successful and attracted a good deal more than the usual mainstream attention; it's rumored to have found its way into at least one Johnny Carson monologue. But somehow it disappeared from any and all circulation until a near-pristine print was recently discovered on file at the Kinsey Institute, where a collection of erotic films had been maintained. I assume there might have been a problem with Kinsey letting the film out of their hands for commercial use, but Vinegar Syndrome was able to acquire it for use as a free bonus feature through the American Genre Film Archive. Otherwise, I suspect ORGY would be the A-title here.

And despite that harsh and somewhat sleazy title, THE ORGY AT LIL'S PLACE turns out to be a surprisingly wholesome movie about - as I mentioned - a small town girl ("Carrie Knudsen" = Kari Knudsen) who joins her sister ("June Ashlyn" = June Ashley) in NYC with naïve dreams of becoming an actress and gets work as a model on some torrid projects. There are nightgown and bubble bath assignments, even a couple of Bondage spreads. She takes on the work in good humor; it’s a living. It's remarkable in light of where the movies generally took such stories in subsequent years, but nobody gets hurt, nobody gets mugged, nobody rubs up against the Mob, nobody gets raped, nobody even gets their career ruined or heart broken for not coming across sexually. Call it naïve, but ORGY seems to have been made with unusual care to appeal to female viewers, unusual for adult films at this time - and the silvery black-and-white photography actually explodes into full color when all our heroine’s dreams come true.

Among the cast members is '70s soap star Robert Milli (billed as "R.M. Miller"), who had also appeared in Graeme Ferguson's THE SEDUCERS (1962 - written by Wilson Ashley - any relation to June?) and played a key role in Tenney's THE CURSE OF THE LIVING CORPSE (1971).

Oh, and this guy strikes me as familiar, maybe with slightly more gray in his har. Does anyone recognize him? If so, drop me an email or message me on Facebook.

A few days ago, I became aware that the EVIL SPELLS, the third volume of Fantagraphics’ complete works of Guido Crepax, has been out since January. I was able to find a copy at a welcome reduced price and just finished perusing it. I thought some of my readers might like to know that, in addition to Crepax’s adaptations of JEKYLL AND HYDE, THE TURN OF THE SCREW, and three Poe stories (entitled “Three Gialli”), this volume contains his legendary masterpieces about Valentina and Baba Yaga; I’m not sure if these have ever been published before in English.

Adding further contextual interest is a four-page interview with director Corrado Farina, conducted the year of his death (2016), about the film he based on these stories (BABA YAGA aka KISS ME, KILL ME, 1971). There is also a marvelous introduction by Barbara Uhlig that discusses the whole Italian movement of comics films and the rise of the giallo, and extensive notes on each story.

There is also a tidbit in Ms. Uhlig's essay that I wish I had unearthed while preparing my commentary for THE WITCHES... that Italian feminists of this era called themselves “Le streghe” because they were fed up with being considered “good girls.” Considering the general lack of supernatural elements in the Dino De Laurentiis production, this eureka sheds intriguing new light on the proceedings that might have been fruitful to explore.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

I'm particularly saddened to see this one go.

A former Wilhelmina fashion model, she was unforgettably sexy in Steve De Jarnatt's CHERRY 2000 (1987) and Mike Figgis'LIEBESTRAUM (1991 - a masterpiece, I thought) and unforgettably tragic as Teresa Banks in David Lynch's TWIN PEAKS FIRE WALK WITH ME (1992). Has anyone ever played a more believable corpse? Outwardly cool and mysterious, with a kittenish demeanor, she had an intimate voice, an aura of danger, and a taunting look that suggested she was amused to find out whether you would succeed or fail with her - she’d get her kicks either way.

As feature options dwindled, she gravitated to series television with continuous roles in STRANGE LUCK, THE PRETENDER, CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION (covering the first three seasons) and SKIN, and she also directed a short film of her own (I JUST FORGOT) in 2004. Unfortunately, her screen credits end about 12 years ago, though she was included in the recovered deleted scenes of FIRE WALK WITH ME.

She had a rare magnetism - strong, even street-tough, yet otherworldly and ethereal - and I often wondered what had become of her. Looking over her filmography, I see that I have some catching up to do. It has been reported on her Wikipedia page that she died in her New Hampshire home on April 16, at the age of only 52. No cause mentioned.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

It has happened once or twice that I've come aboard a project as audio commentator not quite knowing in advance what I'm going to bring to it, but feeling an intuition I should proceed. Such was the case with Arrow's DEATH SMILES ON A MURDERER, directed in 1973 by Joe D'Amato under his real name of Aristede Massaccesi. This afternoon, I zoomed through an advance screener - not as in "fast-forwarded," but as in "enraptured." I am so proud of this whole package, I could burst.

It wasn't a movie I knew well and, to be perfectly honest, I'm not a big D'Amato fan, generally - but when I revisited DEATH SMILES before making my decision to sign on, I sensed that it was not an opportunity to be missed. To my surprise, I could see something in it that I immediately felt a need to share with other people - not unlike why I'm posting this blog entry today. Almost as soon as I started working on the commentary, I felt a strange alchemy at work that was undoubtedly brought on by Berto Pisano's score, one of the most spellbinding in Italian horror; I found myself responding to the film's images and their poetry rather than their meaning or their production history minutiae. It was unexpected and delightful.

Klaus Kinski and Ewa Aulin.

I couldn't be happier with the extras. Kat Ellinger has contributed a marvelous video essay on the full breadth of Joe D'Amato's work, a much-needed addition to the package; then there is also a brief archival interview of D'Amato talking about the film, about 5m long. My commentary is more of a shot-by-shot "reading" of the film, an appreciation and analysis of the film itself, rather than a documentation of the filming, though I cover some of that, as well. I think I took a step up with this one. But the icing on the cake is a 40+ minute camera interview with the elusive Ewa Aulin herself.

Greta von Holstein - Avenging Angel.

Not at all what I expected, Ewa is not one of those fashion models who puts her nose in the air and dismisses her genre films. No - she dismisses the fluff like START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME! It's the genre films she understands, appreciates, and articulately defends as works of art! She loves Tinto Brass and Giulio Questi and she speaks speaks warmly and with engagement about working with D'Amato, too! I was completely charmed by her; I could have listened to her talk all night! She is the epitome of a cultured European artist and audience - and the tomes on the bookcase behind her during the interview, thick books on the visual arts, only support this.

Arrow's DEATH SMILES ON A MURDERER will be streeting in the UK on May 21, then here in the States on the day after. Mark this baby down as a must-have.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

"In Corfu, Lorna Green. In Capri, Lorna Green. In England, Lorna Green. In Lisbon, Lorna Green. I love everything and everyone that reflects Lorna Green." - SUCCUBUS (1967)

Farewell to one of the most iconic of Jess Franco stars, Janine Reynaud, who so imperiously embodied Lorna Green in his breakthrough film NECRONOMICON (aka SUCCUBUS) as Lorna Green (pictured), and was also prominently featured opposite Rosanna Yanni in the “Red Lips” entertainments SADISTEROTICA (aka TWO UNDERCOVER ANGELS) and KISS ME, MONSTER.

She also worked for directors Antonio Margheriti, Max Pecas, José Benazéraf, and Sergio Martino along the way, appearing in such films as KILLERS ARE CHALLENGED, CASTLE OF THE CREEPING FLESH, I AM A NYMPHOMANIAC, FRUSTRATION, CASE OF THE SCORPION’S TAIL and BLINDMAN (in which she plays a remarkably minor part, no more than an extra, but must have done so for the privilege of working with Apple and Ringo Starr). She was married for a time to her frequent co-star, the equally mysterious and bizarre Michel Lemoine - it’s unfortunate their undoubtedly fascinating story will remain untold - and later retired to Texas while he remained in Paris.

Au revoir, Madame - and thank you for the fantasies.

Burt Lancaster as Dr. Moreau.

It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that this second filmed version of H.G. Wells' 1896 novel THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU is tonally similar to PLANET OF THE APES (1968): it was directed by Don Taylor (ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES), its half-human supporting cast are adorned with similar facial appliances by Oscar-winning makeup artist John Chambers (assisted by Dan Striepeke and Tom Burman), and Michael York strikes a respectably Hestonian figure as the shipwrecked sailor hero. Approaching his title role with customary poise and eloquence, Burt Lancaster is the cinema's only Moreau whose brilliance an audience can believe. He's not a camped-up autocrat with a messianic complex; when he strikes a messianic pose to keep his creatures in line, it's not a pose but the well-earned authority of a man who has played Moses. Nevertheless, he is deranged and his derangement is subtle enough to be plausible, his isolation from society having led him far afield of matters of morality and conscience, which York's accidental arrival brings suddenly to bear. There is a mutual respect, a cerebral spark between the two men that legitimizes York's questions and begins to slowly deconstruct the unassailable world this outcast has built for himself. What becomes particularly clear in this telling is that Moreau's misanthropic experiments, supposedly undertaken for the benefit of a mankind he has eschewed, have resulted in volatile conditions wherein any independent action runs the risk of producing truly Biblical consequences. In this respect, this oft-overlooked version remains more potent than either Erle C. Kenton's 1932 classic or the 1996 John Frankenheimer version shanghaied by Marlon Brando.

Barbara Carrera and Michael York.

Revisiting the film again after a gulf of 40 years, I find that it has aged remarkably well: the supporting roles of Nigel Davenport, Richard Basehart (as the Sayer of the Law), and Barbara Carrera well complement the two commanding leads; Gerry Fisher's cinematography (though occasionally marred by haphazard subjective insert shots during action scenes) is appropriately scenic and humid; the dramatic scenes are well-written; the action scenes feature some impressive stuntwork, and Lawrence Rosenthal's exotic, primitive score finds an appeal similar to that of Jerry Goldsmith's original APES music. I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that M'Ling, Moreau's half-human majordomo, was played by Nick Cravat - Lancaster's acrobatic partner in so many wonderful 1950s films like Jacques Tourneur's THE FLAME AND THE ARROW.

Remarkably, this was one of the last horror films to be distributed by American International and presented by Samuel Z. Arkoff, though nothing about it strikes an AIP vibe. Well... except for some unfortunate editorial meddling. Alas, the film's reputation was initially hobbled, and unfortunately will likely remain so, by the way it dances around the important issue of Carrera's female lead Maria. Of course, Maria is the analog of Kathleen Burke's "Panther Woman" character in the pre-code 1932 version. However, due to a fairly early scene in which she and York consummate their attraction, it was decided to skirt the issue of bestiality and to leave her exact nature ambiguous, to make the difference between a GP and an R rating. Alternate endings were reportedly planned or shot (in one of them, Maria was to give birth in the escape boat to a litter of kittens!), and Kino Lorber's handsome Blu-ray disc includes (with two bonus trailers) a single close-up image of Carrera in semi-feline makeup, which a sloppy edit snips out of the climax. Without this necessary jolt, there is no complexity to the ending and the thought-provoking film ends with a simple implied rescue and no further consequences from the adventure. Marvel Comics produced a graphic novel adaptation (script by Doug Moench, pencils by Larry Hama and inks by Jess Jodloman) that retained the original ending:

Thanks to Gary Teetzel for bringing this to my attention.

The disc's aspect ratio is 1.85:1 and it upgrades the previous DVD release with the theatrical 2.0 stereo mix.

If you don't mind going into a picture whose endgame is disappointment, there is much here to reward your time, not least of all York's powerful portrayal of a man resisting the chemically induced reversion to animal instincts. In his work here, one can see a rare antecedent of what David Cronenberg and Jeff Goldblum achieved in THE FLY.

Earlier this week, word came of the passing of Austrian actress Maria Rohm, who had starred in numerous films produced by Harry Allan Towers, whom she married in 1964. In her earliest films - THE MILLION EYES OF SU MURU, THE VENGEANCE OF FU MANCHU, THE HOUSE OF 1000 DOLLS - it must be said that she did not make much more than a picturesque impression, but when Towers began working with Jess Franco in 1968, she became a primary focus of the films that followed - 99 WOMEN, THE GIRL FROM RIO, MARQUIS DE SADE'S JUSTINE, and most particularly VENUS IN FURS, EUGENIE... THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION, and COUNT DRACULA, in which her roles became exquisitely tailored to her capabilities. Since her husband's death in 2009, Rohm - whom he called "Schnitzel" - lived in relative seclusion in Toronto, and dealt with recurring bouts of ill health. In 2013, she arranged for Bear Manor to publish her husband's autobiography MR TOWERS OF LONDON: A LIFE IN SHOW BUSINESS. I was fortunate enough to befriend Maria through Facebook for several years, and it was a pleasure to witness her pleasure at seeing her work discovered and appreciated by new generations on DVD and Blu-ray. She was 72.

Farewell also to actress Deanna Lund, best-remembered as a cast member of Irwin Allen's LAND OF THE GIANTS, though she was also a frolicking bikini girl in STING OF DEATH, one of the androids who marched out of Dr. Goldfoot's Bikini Machine, the temptress known as Tuff Bod who lured spy Jonathan Daly in the cult classic OUT OF SIGHT, Anna Gram - the moll to John Astin's Riddler on BATMAN, and a passing gleam in Elvis Presley's eye in two of his movies (PARADISE HAWAIIAN STYLE and SPINOUT). She also worked with Jim Wynorski in TRANSYLVANIA TWIST. So much Baby Boomer pop culture packed into a shapely nutshell, she was 81.

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Various friends have been urging me to write for this blog a little more often, that they miss me when I go away. I don't mean to be neglectful; I've been busy with audio commentaries. Would you believe I've now recorded 84 commentaries since 1999, and that approximately 36% of them were recorded in this year? That's right, this year - the one that's only slightly more than half over.

But one way that I might find my way back into blogging is by not worrying so much about what to write about, and being definitive about the things I do write. Just tell you about some of the things that are on my radar, that I think are very cool. And here's one.

My wife Donna has been an OZ book collector since she was a little girl. When I married her, I had no idea there was an OZ book series and that many books were added to the series after the passing of series originator, L. Frank Baum. When she was a kid in grade school, a teacher read to her class from Baum's THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ but somehow failed to complete the reading, which left her wondering how the story ended. Then, some time later, she attended a yard sale and found a copy of the book for sale. I was also quite taken with the illustrations in these books, by John R. Neill, and it became one of the ways I demonstrated my love to always be on the lookout for OZ goodies to bolster her collection. Whenever I pass by the shelf that holds these books, I am filled with the romance of antique books and book-making, and since the great majority of them were used, it's an extra treat to page through them and see where their original owners wrote their names and addresses on the "The Book Belongs To..." page and where some of them with artistic inclinations took watercolors to the black-and-white illustrations. At some point, the OZ books became a Christmas tradition and some of our copies are inscribed with parental or avuncular love to children who found them under a tree.

Baum himself was quite the busy writer. In addition to this series, he wrote other books of many different kinds - including other series, Young Adult adventure novels that he penned under pseudonyms like Edith Van Dyne, Floyd Akers, and Schuyler Staunton. Because his books are often beautifully made, illustrated, or just plain weird, they have become highly collectable and costly to acquire. Gone are the days when I could walk into a book store (as I once did), find a copy of the novel THE FATE OF A CROWN on the shelf, and pick it up for five dollars. There was even a time when I climbed a tall ladder in a bookshop to come within reach of their children's authors whose names began with B, and found up there an actual copy of Baum's second OZ book THE LAND OF OZ, under its original title THE MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ. I doubt we paid even ten dollars for it.

But, as I say, he's now a pricey fellow to collect - and the OZ books of his successors (Ruth Plumly Thompson, John R. Neill himself, Jack Snow and others) sometimes even moreso, given their rarity.

The other day, I was lamenting to Donna that Baum ebooks available to for Kindle are almost never illustrated, which takes away so much of their immediate charm. She explained to me that Kindle books are not set up for illustration, which is more the province of the iPad. So I decided to see if anything better was available for iPad. I know, I know - nothing beats reading the original books, and why would I want an iPad version if I had access to those books in the first place? In my case, it's a matter of convenience; I like to read in bed, to read before going to sleep, and my iPad lets me do this without disturbing Donna's sleep by keeping the lights on. Anyway, I was gratified to discover that there are many illustrated Baum ebooks available for iPad, and also a significant number of the Thompson books (which I must confess to liking even somewhat more than Baum's - I find his puns corny and hers elegant). But what most impressed me is the volume I have pictured above.

Delphi Classics is far and away my favorite ebook imprint. They have really cornered the market in terms of "Collected" or "Complete Works" volumes. They are consistently reliable, attractive, and they also venture in their selection beyond the primary classic authors (Dickens, Twain, Verne, Wells, James, Conrad, etc) to some early 20th Century masters like Lovecraft, Hodgson, Machen, Wallace and Rohmer. Some of their books are less than complete owing to certain titles being still under copyright (a truly COMPLETE WORKS OF EDGAR WALLACE is available only in the UK, for some reason), but what these books manage to access is often uncanny. There are titles here you would have to pursue for a lifetime to be able to find. When I discovered that they offered a COMPLETE WORKS OF L. FRANK BAUM, I couldn't believe it. But it's true: if you have an iPad, you can download every word that Baum ever published, under any and all of his various bylines, everything completely illustrated, for a mere $2.99.

Among the treasures to be found herein are THE ROYAL BOOK OF OZ (the first Thompson novel but officially credited to Baum), the two rapturous OZ spin-off books about Trot and Cap'n Bill (THE SEA FAIRIES and SKY ISLAND), fairy tale oddities like AMERICAN FAIRY TALES and QUEEN XIXI OF IX, his gender-bending mystery JOHN DOUGH AND THE CHERUB (which generated an actual "Guess the Cherub's Sex" contest upon its initial publication), his "electrical" science fiction adventure THE MASTER KEY, his "Boy Fortune Hunters""Mary Louise" and "Aunt Jane's Nieces" series, POLICEMAN BLUEJAY, and even his widow Maud Gage Baum's autobiography. It has it all - including his rarest work THE WOGGLE-BUG BOOK, which no one has rushed to reprint, apparently because it contains an abundance of sexist and racist humor that is fairly unique among this author's work and has not dated at all well.

I have a cherished memory of my own, about the time I surrendered to the OZ book romance I mentioned earlier, and promptly sat down on the floor next to Donna's shelf, pulled down Ruth Plumly Thompson's OZOPLANING WITH THE WIZARD OF OZ (a title that always beckoned to me), and read it there and then, in that same spot. It took me about three hours, but it's three hours I continue to look back on in fond remembrance. The OZ books have been spoken of fondly by a lot of important writers - Ray Bradbury, Gore Vidal, John Updike, Ursula K. Le Guin, even Harlan Ellison. I think I'll be dipping back into them soon.

If I've intrigued you, I can direct you to some additional reading worth the exploration. Back in 2010, Mari Ness decided to re-read and review all 40 books in the main canon of the OZ series for the TOR Books website. You can read that fascinating body of work here.

Oh, and for those of you who are strictly about paper, Books of Wonder is a good place to look for new editions - and even one $24,000 First Edition (Second State) of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ!

(c) 2018 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Roll Out the Nominees for the 16th Annual Rondo Awards!

New Fiction from VW's Tim Lucas Coming This September

50 Years Ago: Seeing IN COLD BLOOD

Continuing with Fantômas

Dreams of My Peter Van Eyck Room

Recent Viewings: THE SECT, GIANT LEECHES, FIRECREEK

Recent Viewings: SINFONIA EROTICA

Recent Viewings: THE FACE OF FU MANCHU (1965)

Recent Viewings: THE BRIDES OF FU MANCHU (1966)

Recent Viewings: THE VENGEANCE OF FU MANCHU (1967)

Recent Viewings: THE PSYCHOPATH (1966)

Claudia Cardinale at 80

Recent Viewings: THE ORGY AT LIL'S PLACE (1963)

Third Crepax Volume Now Available

RIP Pamela Gidley (1965 - 2018)

DEATH SMILES ON A MURDERER Previewed

RIP Janine Reynaud (1930-2018)

Reviewed: THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (1977)

Farewell, Maria Rohm and Deanna Lund

Rapture of the Rainbow: L. Frank Baum Revisited