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20 Years, 100 Commentaries

July 10, 2019, 1:05 pm
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What I've assembled here is a newly updated list of my audio commentary work, numbered for the first time. It's been awhile since I've amended the list originally posted here; in fact, as I started working on this post, I thought I'd be using it to announce the fact that I was now working on my 100th commentary assignment - but as I looked the list over more carefully, I realized that I'd failed to number one of the titles, so my count was off! I'm presently at work on my 101st and missed my opportunity to celebrate! 

The order presented is more or less in the order I recorded them, but I can't promise the ordering is absolutely true. It's certainly truer with the most recent releases, but some earlier ones were dragged from the year they were recorded to that in which they were released. I've numbered each commentary except for those listings that denote reissues of earlier commentaries; there may be some international reissues of which I'm unaware. I have also highlighted the various awards and recognitions that various of the commentaries have received or been part of.

Please note this list includes titles due for imminent release, and a few that have been done but - for various reasons I can't explain - are presently "on hold." If there are any DVD or Blu-ray releases from regions around the world that you know of, which are not listed here, please drop me a line at tim@videowatchdog.com. 

I'd like to thank my principal employers - Bret Wood and Frank Tarzi of Kino Lorber, and Francesco Simeoni of Arrow Video and his team of ace disc producers (James Blackford, Michael Mackenzie, Ewan Cant, and Anthony Nield) - for their ongoing custom and encouragement, and also my late and much-missed friend Michael Lennick, who - twenty years ago, in the late summer of 1999 - recorded my first two commentaries up in Bala, Ontario, thereby setting me on the path to a side-career at which he would have excelled himself. 

Here's a guide to my first 100 titles. Thanks for your good words of encouragement.  

1999

1. Black Sunday, Image Entertainment 
2. Kill, Baby... Kill!, Image Entertainment (unreleased)

2000

3. Blood and Black Lace, VCI Entertainment (reissued 2005)
4. The Whip and the Body, VCI Entertainment, Kino Lorber (2014)

2005

5. Danger: Diabolik, Paramount DVD - with John Phillip Law
6. Monster Kid Home Movies, "The Gentle Old Madman" - with Tom Abrams, PPS Productions

2007


7. Kill, Baby... Kill!, Dark Sky Films (2007, withdrawn)
8. The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Anchor Bay Entertainment
9. Black Sabbath (international version), Anchor Bay Entertainment
10. Knives of the Avenger, Anchor Bay Entertainment
11. Rabid Dogs, Lucertola Media (Germany)
12. Black Sunday, Anchor Bay Entertainment

2008

13. Baron Blood, Anchor Bay Entertainment
14. Lisa and the Devil, Anchor Bay Entertainment
15. Bay of Blood, Anchor Bay Entertainment
16. Erik the Conqueror, Anchor Bay Entertainment - with excerpts from Cameron Mitchell interview

2009

17. Thriller: The Grim Reaper, Image Entertainment (with David J. Schow and Ernest Dickerson)
18. Thriller: The Premature Burial, Image Entertainment (with David J. Schow and Ernest Dickerson)

2012

Bay of Blood, Arrow Video (UK)
19. Das Geheimnis des Doktor Z (The Diabolical Dr. Z), Subkultur Entertainment (Germany)
20. Hatchet For The Honeymoon, Kino Lorber

2013

Black Sunday, Kino Lorber, Arrow Video (UK)
21. Five Dolls for an August Moon, Kino Lorber
22. The Awful Dr. Orlof, Redemption
23. Nightmares Come At Night, Redemption
24. A Virgin Among the Living Dead, Redemption
Baron Blood, Arrow Video (UK)
Lisa and the Devil, Arrow Video (UK)
Black Sabbath (international version), Anchor Bay Entertainment
Black Sabbath (international version), Arrow Video (UK)

2014


25. The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Arrow Films (UK)
Rabid Dogs, Anchor Bay Entertainment
Rabid Dogs, Arrow Video (UK)
26. Trans-Europ-Express, BFI (UK) - 26 - 30 are collected in the BFI box set ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET: SIX FILMS 1963-1974
27. L’Immortelle, BFI (UK)
28. The Man Who Lies, BFI (UK)
29. Eden And After, BFI (UK)
30. Successive Slidings of Pleasure, BFI (UK)
31. Pit and the Pendulum, Arrow Video (UK)
32. Dr. Phibes Rises Again, Arrow Video (UK)
33. The Whip and the Body, Odeon Entertainment (UK - new revised recording)
34. Planet of the Vampires, Kino/Scorpion Releasing 

2015 

35. Tales of Terror, Kino Lorber 36. Blood and Black Lace, Arrow Video (new revised recording)
37. Evil Eye with The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Kino Lorber - 2007 commentary with new added material
38. X - The Man with X-Ray Eyes, Kino Lorber (includes trailer commentary as Easter Egg)
39. The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, Redemption
40. Videodrome, Arrow Video (UK)
41. Eyes Without a Face, BFI (UK)
42. Black Sabbath (AIP version), Kino Lorber - different to the 2013 International Cut commentary 

2016

44. Valentino, Kino Lorber (US), BFI (UK) - minor editing differences between the two
45. Journey to the Seventh Planet, Kino Lorber
46. Death Walks On High Heels, Arrow Video (in the Death Walks Twice box set)
47. Death Walks At Midnight, Arrow Video (in the Death Walks Twice box set)
A Maldiçao do Demônio/Black Sunday, Versatíl (Brasil)
48. Blood Bath (Arrow Video), "The Trouble With Titian - Revisited" audio essay
49. Daughter of Dracula, Redemption
50. Destiny, Kino Classics
51. Dr. Orloff's Monster, Redemption
52. The Skull, Kino Lorber
53. One Million Years B.C., Kino Lorber

2017  

54. Lifeboat, Kino Lorber - Winner of the 2018 Saturn Award for Best Classic DVD/BD Release
55. Caltiki the Immortal Monster, Arrow Video
Baron Blood, Koch Media (Germany)
Lisa und der Teufel, Koch Media (Germany)
Die drei Gesichter der Furcht/Black Sabbath, Koch Media (Germany)
56. Der Mude Tod / Destiny, Eureka!/Masters of Cinema (UK) - a re-recording of 2016 Destiny commentary with minor alterations in content
57. Compulsion, Kino Lorber
58. Die Toten Augen des Dr. Dracula / Kill, Baby... Kill!, Koch Media (Germany) - new revised commentary
59. Erik the Conqueror, Arrow Video - new revised commentary 
60. Kill, Baby... Kill!, Kino Lorber - new revised commentary
Kill, Baby... Kill!, Arrow Video UK - new revised commentary
61. Vibrations (Film Movement) 
62. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)
63. Sin In The Suburbs (Film Movement)
64. Confessions of a Young American Housewife (Film Movement)
65. Moonlighting Wives (Film Movement, on hold)
66. The Witches / Le Streghe (1967; Arrow Academy)
67. Roy Colt & Winchester Jack (Kino Lorber)
68. The Incredible Shrinking Man (Arrow Video)
69. The Outer Limits, Season 1: "The Production and Decay of Strange Particles" (Kino Lorber)

2018

70. The Diabolical Dr. Z  (Redemption/Kino Lorber (re-edited version of 2012 commentary) 
71. The Outer Limits, Season 1: "The Invisibles" (Kino Lorber) - Both OUTER LIMITS SEASON 1 and 2 were Winner of the 2018 Rondo Award for Best DVD Extras
72. The Outer Limits, Season 1: "The Forms of Things Unknown" (Kino Lorber)
73. The Outer Limits, Season 1: "The Zanti Misfits" (Kino Lorber)
74. The Outer Limits, Season 1: "The Bellero Shield" (Kino Lorber)
75. The Outer Limits, Season 1: "ZZZZZ" (Kino Lorber)
76. Neurosis/Revenge in the House of Usher (Kino Lorber, on hold)
77. A Fistful of Dollars (Kino Lorber)
78. Death Smiles on a Murderer (Arrow)
79. Jack the Giant Killer (Kino Lorber)
80. "2" - I, A Woman Part II (Film Movement)
81. The Outer Limits, Season 2: "The Duplicate Man" (Kino Lorber)
82. The Outer Limits, Season 2: "The Premonition" (Kino Lorber)
83. The Night Stalker (Kino Lorber) Winner of the 2018 Rondo Award for Best Audio Commentary
84. The Night Strangler (Kino Lorber)

2019

85. Four Times That Night (Kino Lorber)
86. Vampire gegen Herakles/Hercules in the Haunted World (Koch Media - Germany)
87. Knives of the Avenger (Kino Lorber) - new revised recording with excerpts from Cameron Mitchell interview
88. For A Few Dollars More (Kino Lorber)
89. Scream and Scream Again (Kino Lorber)
90. The Beast with a Million Eyes (Scorpion Releasing, on hold)
91. The Possessed (Arrow Video) Winner of 2019 Il Cinema Ritravato DVD Award for Best DVD Extras
92. Whirlpool (Arrow Video - BLOOD HUNGER: THE FILMS OF JOSE LARRAZ box set)
93. Dead of Night (1946; Kino Lorber)
94. Double Face (Arrow Video)
95. Fantomas (1964, Kino Lorber) 
96. Attack of the Robots (Redemption/Kino Lorber)
97. Lost Highway (Kino Lorber, withdrawn) Go to https://videowatchdog.blogspot.com/2019/07/hear-my-lost-lost-highway-audio.html for link to free commentary
98. Alphaville (Kino Lorber, forthcoming)
99. Last Year at Marienbad (Kino Lorber, forthcoming)
100. Blackmail (1929 sound version, Kino Lorber, forthcoming)

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
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Sleeper Alert: THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD (1971)

July 11, 2019, 1:19 pm
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Kirk Douglas as the embittered, withdrawn hero, William Denton.


Last night, I made a spontaneous decision to go back and check out LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, an early (1971) Alexander and Ilya Salkind production made in concert with Kirk Douglas' company Bryna Productions. It's based on Jules Verne's THE LIGHTHOUSE AT THE END OF THE WORLD, one of Verne's last novels, one of his few to be written in the 20th century, when he was recovering from an attempt on his life by a family member and in his most cynical and disillusioned state of mind. To find Verne's name emblazoned on the advertising for any post-1960s film is usually shorthand for cheesy family entertainment - but, suffice to say, LIGHT is anything but.

If anything, it's a counterpart to the savage streak found in other contemporary releases, ranging from Cy Endfield's SANDS OF THE KALAHARI (1965) and Elliot Silverstein's A MAN CALLED HORSE (1970) to Sam Peckinpah's STRAW DOGS (1971), while also anticipating the even greater extremes of Umberto Lenzi's THE MAN FROM DEEP RIVER (1972) and other Italian adventure films to follow. To condense a gratifyingly intense and complex response, it was nothing like what I expected. 

The film opens very slowly - indeed, I would have to say it feels juvenile and borderline asinine for its first 10-15 minutes, with that stale sense of remove one feels with some cheaply post-produced international co-productions. I was actually on the point of reconsidering my decision to watch when the film suddenly bit down hard, refusing to let up for the remainder of the sometimes hallucinatory, often harrowing adventure.


Douglas (and monkey companion Mario) sights unwelcome visitors. 
In short, it’s a film about a man named William Denton (Douglas) who has retreated from life due to a broken heart, who has retired to an isolated island to serve as an assistant lighthouse keeper with two other men, one of them a retired sea captain played by Fernando Rey, speaking English in his own voice for a change. His idyllic, monastic evasion of life is then suddenly challenged by the arrival of a ship of pirates, led by the serenely imperious Captain Jonathan Kongre (an implacable Yul Brynner, whose birthday it is today). His band of raucous cut-throats (including future Jess Franco repertory players Aldo Sambrell, Luis Barboo, and Tony Skios, Jean-Claude Druout as a flamboyantly decadent gay member, and Victor Israel to boot!) cruelly overtake the island, which Kongre intends to use as an ideally placed base from which to misguide, wreck, and plunder other ships.


Douglas makes the acquaintance of his island captor.
To say more would ruin the surprise of the often horrific shifts that take place in the narrative. Suffice to say, this is a sometimes shockingly perverse and Sadean adventure, that includes one moment of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST intensity that I presume was faked but does not play that way - and is one of several reasons why this film should be kept away from children. I've learned that Verne himself did not shy away from animal violence in his novels of survival, and also that his reputation as a writer for all ages was largely rooted in the often barbarically reductive translations of his work - so the content of this film may well be a plausible adaptation of his original novel - for a long time available here only in a more child-friendly version revised by Verne's son, Michel. 


Yul Brynner with Samantha Eggar.
Much like Burt Lancaster in THE TRAIN, this film presents a 50-something Douglas in most impressive physical condition, doing many of his own stunts in a highly physical performance shot entirely on location. The film finds its dramatic crux when the wreckers overtake a ship whose unfortunate passengers include a lookalike for Will's lost love (Samantha Eggar), a subplot that - rather admirably - plays out in a manner quite opposite to what we may expect, further confirming the hero’s disillusionment with mankind. The flashbacks to this backstory stylistically evoke the similar structure of Sergio Leone’s FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965), and director Kevin Billington's handling of the picture - photographed by Henri Decaë (PURPLE NOON), with second unit special effects photography by Cecilia Paniagua (LISA AND THE DEVIL) - evokes Leone more than once. The score by the usually reliable Piero Piccioni is frankly uninspired, not one of his best.


Original US half-sheet.
All in all, though admittedly erratic and downbeat, THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD is a nonetheless strangely rousing and uneasily shaken adventure, worthy of rediscovery. I understand this film's current US DVD release is quite poor in quality and a must to avoid; alternately, there is a region-free Spanish DVD import with optional English audio with 2.1 stereo sound which Amazon user comments seem to think is quite good, though it's reportedly missing a few seconds involving a vicious stunt overturning a horse. Clearly, a definitive Blu-ray edition is much needed.

In related news, please be aware that Walt Disney has finally just issued their classic 1954 film of Verne's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, starring Kirk Douglas, on Blu-ray. Though it's Disney Movie Club exclusive, it is also available from various eBay sellers for those with aversions to membership.

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved. 
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THE PERFECTION (2018): A Considered Response

July 16, 2019, 4:56 pm
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Logan Browning and Allison Williams as the lovers and competitors of Richard Shepard's THE PERFECTION.
THE PERFECTION (Netflix) is a beautifully designed and shot film for the most part, one that builds to a nicely kinky tableau that is half ingenious and half absurd and thus lingers in the memory; unfortunately, its scenic pluses made me all the more upset with its coarse, overplayed minuses. Its narrative rewind gimmick reminds us twice that we’re just watching a movie, while also indirectly telling us that what we see on the first pass isn't the whole story, hence can’t be trusted at face value. The gimmick also detracts from what could have been a more genuinely clever arrangement of the narrative with simple fades to an earlier moment. It begins so well and goes so wrong, even giving us some glimpses of the movie it might have been. 

I think Michael Reeves and George Romero would agree with me on this: if you’re going to make a horror film to take a serious, defiant, political stand about something (say, rich white men and child abuse), do your audience a favor and find a metaphor. Furthermore, never make your heroes dubious (much less crazy and borderline evil from the get-go); if you must villainize something, make it something bad rather than something admirable like education and achievement; and finally - if blood must have blood - never leave your audience chuckling smugly. 

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
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RIP Greg Shoemaker (1947-2019)

July 21, 2019, 1:48 pm
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I'm very sorry to learn of the passing, two days ago, of Greg Shoemaker - a fellow Ohioan and, for 17 years and forever more by reputation, the editor-publisher of THE JAPANESE FANTASY FILM JOURNAL. Launched in 1968 with an issue devoted to Ishiro Honda's GODZILLA (1954), it was the first English language magazine to seriously document the fantasy films of Toho, Daiei, and other Japanese studios. It also had an initial print-run of only 25 copies, which I did not know when I read an enthusiastic mention in the pages of CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN. It was the first horror-related fanzine I ever sent away for and received in the mail.


I was surprised to find inside the envelope a hand-written letter of apology from Greg, informing me that #1 had sold out (I imagined a warehouse suddenly emptied of boxes by popular demand!) and that he was sending me the latest issue in its stead. It was JFFJ #4, featuring the second half of their FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD coverage. It was printed on white paper, mimeographed with a photo-offset cover. I was initially disappointed (you try reading the second half of an article and imagining what came before!) but, in the days and weeks that followed, I devoured that issue again and again. 


I was one who preferred to exchange my money for items acquired on the spot, so for years, JFFJ #4 was the only issue I would ever see. I've been able to collect the last several issues, when the once-ditto-pressed, hand-stapled mailing had evolved into a handsome offset publication, well-written and -illustrated with a reported circulation of 1,000. It ceased publication in 1985, and I sorely wish I'd supported it all along.


It is hard to express what its example meant to me: it was the first time I'd seen Japanese fantasy films written about without derision, and it also presented me with a very early pre-CINEFANTASTIQUE glimpse of what might be possible to do with my own life. I wish the issues missing from my collection were easier to come by. Individual copies occasionally turn up on eBay with starting bids that are both so much higher than they should be, yet indicative of how cherished they are by the kogunosenti.

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved. 
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Discovering Akio Jissôji

July 24, 2019, 1:10 pm
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I want to thank my friend Jean Guerin for bringing my attention to Episode 38 of ULTRAMAN DYNA, directed by the remarkable Akio Jissôji. Jean had previously brought to my attention the fact that Jissôji had directed the 22nd episode of the original ULTRAMAN series, employing a somewhat jarringly unusual visual style influenced by the works of Jean-Luc Godard. It was yet another of the six episodes of the series that Jissôji directed that Hayata reached for his Beta capsule and pulled a spoon from his pocket instead - a surreal joke that reportedly worried the show's producers but went on to become a favorite moment with fans.

I had never before seen an episode of ULTRAMAN DYNA, which ran in 1997. I tend to find it difficult connecting with the later ULTRAMAN series, particularly those shot digitally, because they are somehow too clean, too transparent, too antiseptic to feel filmic. That said, I recommend that everyone watch this episode, because - despite its digital origins - it’s one of the trippiest, most cinematic experiences I’ve had in a long time.


Akio Jissôji and friend.
In addition to the 22nd episode of ULTRAMAN, Jissoji also directed four episodes of ULTRA SEVEN in 1967-68, and one episode of ULTRAMAN DYNA's direct predecessor, ULTRAMAN TIGA. Before you watch, think of the basic requirements of any ULTRAMAN series episode, and then marvel to how much more Jissôji imports: Pirandello-like musings on reality and fantasy, Biblical imagery, theatricality, alchemy, flashing reflective surfaces, Kaspar Hauser, sex dolls; he even resorts to imparting information through bending, refracted imagery and somehow makes it work. It’s blatantly experimental work in an arena that wouldn’t seem to permit this - and yet it absolutely succeeds in telling a highly concentrated story that would make even Philip K. Dick bust his buttons with pride. Mark my words and check this out.

I see from his IMDb listing that Jissôji also directed the Edogawa Rampo adaptation THE WATCHER IN THE ATTIC (1993) and also a segment of the anthology feature RAMPO NOIR in 2005, the year before his death at age 69. Definitely a filmmaker worth studying more closely.


(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
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50 years Ago: THE LOST CONTINENT (1968)

August 3, 2019, 2:00 pm
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50 years ago today, I spent the afternoon in the welcoming dark of my beloved Plaza Theater with one of my all-time favorite Saturday matinee experiences - so good, I went back the next day to enjoy a double dip! Meanwhile, across town at the 20th Century, it seems that attendance was disappointing for arthouse Poe, and a switch of program was already in the cards after only three days of play. Philistines!


I was so thoroughly entertained by THE LOST CONTINENT that, after that second viewing, I worked up the courage to ask the theater's manager if I could buy, or perhaps have, the poster for the film when they were done playing it. (As I recall, the poster for PLANET OF THE APES was already spoken for.) He kindly let me have it for the princely sum of 75 cents, and, when I was 13, this one-sheet was displayed for awhile on the wall of my room. Everywhere I have moved since then, it has come along with me but it has spent most if not all that time folded and in storage. Realizing that it's actually been 50 years today since my first encounter with this underrated Hammer production - and that I still own this artifact from the theater where I saw it (and most of the films I saw through my early teens) - I couldn't resist showing it the respect it deserves by popping it into a frame - an enduring tactile connection to a memory and place from half a century ago.



(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved. 
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Review: THE MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION OF MICHAEL REEVES (2019)

August 28, 2019, 12:33 pm
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Premiering this past weekend at FrightFest in the UK was THE MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION OF MICHAEL REEVES, the first stand-alone documentary feature produced by Diabolique Films, under the direction of DIABOLIQUE publisher Dima Ballin. Ballin previously collaborated with his co-producer, DIABOLIQUE editor Kat Ellinger, on some similarly ambitious documentary extras included on the German Blu-ray releases of Hammer's DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE and TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA; this new work is their first to focus on the entire career of an individual filmmaker within a feature-length (86m) framework.

Two particular challenges arise from making director Michael Reeves (1943-1969) the subject of such a film: his legacy really consists of only three completed films - THE SHE BEAST (1966), THE SORCERERS (1967), and WITCHFINDER GENERAL (aka THE CONQUEROR WORM, 1968), each wildly unlike the others in terms of competence and technique; and this modest, irregular output demands assessment through the lens of Reeves' most likely accidental death at the age of only 25. CINEFANTASTIQUE once called him "The James Dean of Horror," but it might be fairer to call him Horror's Christopher Marlowe. His filmography dies screaming. It's impossible to watch his three films, each one representing a leap in quality, without reflecting on his loss, his potential, and feeling so bereft of unmade work that we start looking at the completed work for more than actually resides there.

Wretchedly shot in 16mm, with second unit comedy relief material shot by Corman cohorts Charles B. Griffith and Mel Welles, THE SHE BEAST anticipates WITCHFINDER GENERAL with a savage witch-dunking sequence but doesn't offer a great deal else. It stars Barbara Steele, who was hired for one day and worked all twenty-four hours of it. The underrated THE SORCERERS (paid special attention here, rightly so) is one of the genre's earliest meta-scenarios but may well owe its complex substance to screenwriter John Burke, not to mention the fine performances of Boris Karloff and Catherine Lacey. WITCHFINDER GENERAL is a legitimate masterpiece, though realistically a minor one, which few people point out was not the film Reeves envisioned; it was cast against his wishes and he fought on set with its star Vincent Price every single day. People credit him rather than Price with the performance the actor finally gave, but it's really nothing that Price hadn't previously done in Roger Corman's THE HAUNTED PALACE. If there's one thing we know about Michael Reeves as a director, from on-set testimony, it's that he had no idea how to direct actors toward a preconceived performance. Make no mistake, it's remarkable that anyone could die at 25 having already made three internationally distributed features, but it's the film he made in spite of his vision that makes the whole of his achievement seem almost preternaturally significant; the films he didn't make that make those he did rise in stature.

The lionizing of Reeves began with a remarkable chapter in David Pirie's landmark study A HERITAGE OF HORROR: THE ENGLISH GOTHIC CINEMA 1946-1972, continued with a well-researched CINEFANTASTIQUE cover story by the late Bill Kelley, and continued with two substantial biographies written by John B. Murphy and Benjamin Halligan, respectively. In contrast to these painstaking literary studies, this well-organized assortment of interviews with various colleagues and genre commentators is not exactly the "definitive history" promised; it recovers (and to some effect, refreshes) the ground these others first ploughed. There is no faulting the contributors, who include personal friends and collaborators Ian Ogilvy, Tom Baker, and Ingrid Cranfield, biographer Ben Halligan, and genre authorities Kat Ellinger, Steve Haberman, David Huckvale, and Gavin Baddely, but there is an impersonal feeling about the whole suggesting that its own vision was shaped by the content of its interviews, rather than vice versa. In other words, while it's technically a documentary, it's ultimately more of an appreciation composed of archival photos, film clips, and a neat set of bracing, upbeat and sometimes wistful insights and annotations. It's the kind of smart, illustrated programming one would wish for as the prime extra in a Reeves box set. In the days when magazines ruled, we called these in-depth articles.

The ideal audience for THE MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION OF MICHAEL REEVES would be those viewers who have seen one or two of his films and want to know more about who made them. A younger viewership seems specifically entreated, in that there's a concerted effort toward the end to give Reeves some contemporary relevance by identifying WITCHFINDER GENERAL as a forerunner of "folk horror." This is a stretch. Set in the 17th Century, it has a rural setting but its implied machinations extend to the most civilized seats of power extant at that time; in its way, it's really no more "folk" than ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN. Like Ken Russell's THE DEVILS, WITCHFINDER's greatest horror is that it's based on actual historical accounts and shows us in chilling detail the extremes of which ambition, whether political or sexual, is capable. At the time it was made, it was clearly seen as a film addressing its own times, when Church and State were becoming more brazen in collusion, and rich old men were packing young men off to die in a war whose ultimate purpose was unknown to them. 

Perhaps because his premature death was initially reported as a likely suicide (subsequently discounted), Reeves has endured as precisely the kind of brooding Romantic figure that we see on the poster above. Though this film omits some personal detail best left to the books, Ballin's film is to be commended for establishing a more practical, less romanticized reading of Reeves' troubled character (he seems to have had all the advantages and fragilities of a wealthy background) and his personal investment in the horror genre. There is a consensus of opinion here that - had Reeves lived - he probably would have abandoned the horror genre to embrace the kind of big action movies that were made by his mentor, Don Siegel. Who knows? Given a few more years, Reeves' magnificent obsession might have been to direct MAGNUM FORCE.

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.  

       

     



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Anthony Perkins, PASSWORD Player

September 12, 2019, 3:24 pm
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For the past several months, Donna and I have been revisiting episodes of WHAT'S MY LINE? at dinner time, but we recently broke our pattern to enjoy some classic episodes of PASSWORD. Here's a treat from March 5, 1964 (see above)...

The celebrity players are Paula Prentiss (plugging the bound-for-immortality MAN'S FAVORITE SPORT?) and Anthony Perkins (who's plugging future hard-to-see cult item THE FOOL KILLER). But they are promoting these films by being themselves, in competition, not by talking them up - and you come away at the end feeling like you've spent some real time with them, gaining a better appreciation for who they are, or were, as real people. Perkins particularly comes across as friendly, worldly, and also fiercely competitive. 

The earlier 9/16/63 episode with Perkins and Carol Burnett (see below) is particularly interesting, with surprising revelations of their past sharing of a theatrical dressing room without ever meeting, and Perkins getting into a dispute with host Allen Ludden, who rightly forbids "a certain four-letter word" ("pimp") as a prompter for "gigolo." At another point in the episode, Perkins offers "mescaline" as a clue for "drugs" in a lightning round!


There are several Anthony Perkins PASSWORD episodes to be found on YouTube, so check 'em out.

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
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ONCE UPON A TIME IN... HOLLYWOOD Under the Tim Scope

September 16, 2019, 12:44 pm
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Quentin Tarantino recently invited me to review ONCE UPON A TIME IN... HOLLYWOOD for the New Beverly Cinema's website. That's not a request that comes along every day, nor one I was likely to turn down, but what came out after a week of intensive, enjoyable exploration turned out to be less a review than an essay or an analysis. It's fairly lengthy but I could have gone on even longer, and perhaps someday I will - but, in the meantime, there's a lot here and it just goes to show that the real test of a good movie is how many ideas and how much of a dialogue it generates. Click on this exact spot to gain access! 

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
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The Return of the VIDEO WATCHDOG Round Table!

September 24, 2019, 9:33 pm
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Brad Pitt gets some slobbering love from Brandy the Dog in ONCE UPON A TIME IN... HOLLYWOOD. 


If memory serves, and it doesn't always, the last VIDEO WATCHDOG Round Table Discussion was in VW #136, when Stephen R. Bissette, Shane M. Dallmann, Kim Newman and I discussed Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's self-styled double feature GRINDHOUSE - at great length. After I turned in my recent essay on ONCE UPON A TIME IN... HOLLYWOOD, the folks at the New Beverly Cinema site asked me if I might reunite that particular round table to have a go at Quentin's latest and, happily, everyone was willing, able and excited to take part. Within a few days of starting, the four of us had amassed a highly loquacious - and, we hope, insightful - conversation spanning more than 10,000 words - and it's now available for you to read and enjoy at the other end of this link. 

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
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In A Mirror, Darkly: The Soska Sisters' RABID (2019)

October 11, 2019, 1:57 pm
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Laura Vandervoort as Rose in the Soska Sisters' RABID.
The Soska Sisters’ new version of RABID - which premiered in late August at the London FrightFest Film Festival and is presently available only on a Region B Blu-ray disc from 101 Films - is only a remake of David Cronenberg’s 1977 film in the general and tributary sense. Surprisingly, the screenplay card itself (which implies a Jen and Sylvia rewrite of a script by story generator John Serge) doesn’t mention the original creator; this information is kept separate, as an introductory credit shown just before the film presents its first (impressively recreated) image as a picture on a commercial billboard. From there, with the exception of some names (and a lot of name-dropping), it pretty much steers its own course.

Said course is often a very jagged line between satire and tragedy - or “schadenfreude,” to use the word it applies to the bizarre, flamboyant fashion designs of its heroine, assistant dressmaker Rose Miller (Laura Vandervoort). Instantly conveyed as a modern-day incel klutz - wearing battle scars, a broken nose and glasses even before she gets into the first of two motorcycle accidents we see - and vegan sensitive ("I just don't like to hurt anything"), Rose explains her professional passion by likening haute couture to armor, something it's necessary for people like her to wear before they step out into the dog-eat-dog world, if they want to feel safe, confident, and empowered.


"Why do we keep remaking old trends?" These disarming, introductory words, are addressed to us by Rose's boss, fashion maven Günter (Mackenzie Gray), at the outset in voice-over as we see Rose arriving typically late for work, stepping off an escalator and forcing her feet back into a pair of unbearably severe high-heeled shoes. "How are we breathing new life and soul?," he continues. "Are we adding something new? If there is no soul, there cannot be life. So, do we cater to the masses, or do we create art, only for the few who dare experience it?"

Well, those are the questions, aren't they?

Unlike Cronenberg's own film, and his work in general, which grapple with philosophical questions about the responsibility of art and science and whether it is possible to entwine the logic of science and the imagination of art, the Soska version is about appearances. Rose quickly loses what little outward appearance she has (or believes she has) in a motorcycle accident brought about by a fit of wounded vanity, which ruins the lower portion of her face. Her wired jaw forces her to take liquid nourishment from a large plastic syringe that looks more or less like Marilyn Chambers' underarm appendage in the original, until a surprise email qualifies her as a test subject for a stem cell regeneration procedure at the Burroughs Clinic, under the supervision of - you guessed it - Dr. William Burroughs (Ted Atherton), whose waiting room is adorned with Francis Bacon-like art that would send any reasonable patient running. Almost as quickly as her face was ruined - and revealed to her in a scene of appalling medical cruelty by the attending Dr. Keloid (Stephen McHattie, who seems to mispronounce his own name), before making the point "I strongly recommend staying away from mirrors right now" - she is almost as quickly reconstituted and rejuvenated into a Cinderella fantasy of herself. She's even able to throw away with her ugly-bug glasses. Suddenly beautiful and always hungry, she experiences a fit of breakthrough creativity and designs Günter's new spring line almost single-handedly... but with all this new beauty, talent and confidence comes a new daily regimen: a "super-protein" beverage called Red and other medication labelled "May Induce Paranoia - May Cause Vivid HALLUCINATIONS." (No pain, no gain - right?)


This is not quite the film most people might expect going in; it lacks the original’s essential humanity and has no particular underlying philosophy about the ideas (or at least the name checks) it engages. Though the film is titled RABID, it spends surprisingly little time on the city-wide rabies outbreak that results from Rose's "Patient Zero" interactions with the general public. Certainly this was likely imposed on the film by budgetary constraints, but Cronenberg had the same problem and somehow managed. It was a conscious decision on the Soskas' part to keep Rose in focus at all times, while Cronenberg aspired to give his tragic heroine a distance and anonymity from the horror she spawned, which eventually spread far enough to return to her.

Mind you, this new RABID is the product of very different Canadians and a very different Canada. Cronenberg made his film in a simpler and cozier world, at a time when many Canadians didn't even bother locking their doors at night. Here, the societal impact of Rose’s skyrocketing narcissism is given barely a glance in the scheme of things, because the focus is always on Rose, her troubled dating life, her groveling professional servitude, and her shallow, obnoxious model friend Chelsea (Hanneke Talbot), whose every line of dialogue describes someone playing to an imaginary laugh track. It’s telling that the epidemic is first spread to a daytime soap actor (Stephen Huszar) in a swimming pool labelled "Shallow Water - Do Not Dive" and when it finally explodes, it's on the set of the telenovela as the hunky star's coked-up director tries to get the entire murderous outburst on film as "a witness to [his] truth." 

Do we laugh? Do we scream? Do we change the channel?

The bloody bacchanal (which includes a non sequitur appearance of a department store Santa Claus, à la Cronenberg's original) builds to a climactic runway show that goes similarly haywire - so, in a sense, the impact we are made to feel from the rabies epidemic is likened to interruptions of programming, interspersed with supposedly real life scenes that feel awfully like scenes from a random cop or hospital show. As Rose's tragic transformation continues to evolve, Vandervoort's well-developed, empathic performance is countered as the horror aspect veer well outside of Cronenberg into John Carpenter territory and then further on toward Frank Henenlotter-ville. In all fairness, some of this special effects material appears to have been wisely cut back in the editing, but its final port is even crazier - showing the influence of Luca Guadagnino's SUSPIRIA (2018), which can also be seen in Rose's impressively hellish dress designs. Perhaps we might do well to remember those warning labels on Rose's medication, but the film does nothing to clarify how much, or indeed if any, of the film is subjective.


The Soskas' goal here appears to have been to touch on as much of Cronenberg's work as possible in the context of a single story, which does honor to the hero but amounts to a series of knowing distractions from the story at hand and the absence of a more substantial there there. The swimming pool seduction and photos of Dr. Burroughs' late wife (images of actress Lynn Loring) invoke SHIVERS; the pharmacological side-effects and a climactic suicide invoke VIDEODROME (as does Vandervoort's resemblance to Deborah Harry, and the fact that one fellow addresses her as "Blondie"); the Burroughs references invoke NAKED LUNCH; Rose appears to be "always crashing in the same car" (to borrow a line from David Bowie); Rose's fashion line might better be described as "the shape of rage" (an important phrase from THE BROOD) rather than as "schadenfreude"; and the crimson surgical mantles of DEAD RINGERS are standard dress code at the Burroughs Clinic (where original cast member Heidi Van Palleske makes a cameo). It's reasonably well integrated but the constant reminders of how clever the references are serve no constructive purpose and continually take us out of the film's presumed reality.


SPOILER (please skip this paragraph if you haven't seen the film): In the film's defense, it played more richly on my second viewing, when the meaning of its odd coda struck home for me. With VIDEODROME, we never really learn if Max Renn's final suicidal act frees him or ties him into the loop of the film itself (which is suggested by the way the film opens), but in this film, Rose - after going through similar motions - definitely does survive, apparently made immortal by her stem cell-engineered armoring. Even so, there is a scary implication that nothing of the original Rose survives, that what is left to live and breathe and roar with outrage is just the surface, just the armor, just her appearance. She's hammering with her fists against unbreakable glass so something of Rose may remain, or believe it remains, but like the reinvented tenants of the Skyliner high-rise apartments in SHIVERS, she's ready to meet the amok, hostile, incessantly bitchy world we've made for ourselves. There are also some visual evocations of the Soskas' prior success AMERICAN MARY peppered throughout.   

Despite its problems, the implications of this finale raise this tossed salad above the usual formulaic remake, as do a number of outstanding lead performances - Vandervoort, Atherton, and also Mackenzie Gray as Günter, the Keith Richards-wigged, reptilian-looking figurehead of the fashion salon, who looks less like a real person than some wizened kimonoed totem that Screamin’ Jay Hawkins might rattle in your face; these are all characters and performances I think Cronenberg himself would have been pleased to direct. Co-producers/directors/writers Jen and Sylvia Soska, the film's only twins, appear briefly as two snide and naughty disco flakes - named Bev and Elly in the end scroll, a wink at DEAD RINGERS. They seem to be having a good time in fantasy land, but if this story is any indication, internal pressure is building. Time will tell if they can move past their preoccupation with make-up, dress-up, and appearance and trust their audience by telling a story that really drops their armor.

It was announced yesterday that the Soska's RABID will make its US home video debut in December from Shout!/Scream Factory. It will also open in select theaters and on VOD platforms on December, Friday the 13th.

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
  
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SCARS OF DRACULA - You Need It For the Commentary

October 12, 2019, 3:50 pm
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Christopher Lee brandishing red hot steel in SCARS OF DRACULA.
Constantine Nasr's audio commentary for Shout! Factory's SCARS OF DRACULAis Aces - informed, eloquent, and more incisively critical than I probably would have been under the same circumstances. That said, he’s articulating conclusions reached with the aid of personal scripts annotated by the director and actors, different script drafts (allowing him to deduce the different hands that worked on SCARS, attributed singly to "John Elder"/Anthony Hinds, who seems to have relinquished his right to a final say), internal company correspondence, and more. It’s an important addition to Hammer research as well as an elegy to Hammer’s Silver Age period horror gothics, and a particularly clear appreciation of Hinds.

The film also looks great (made available in standard 1.78:1 and fuller 1.66:1 presentations), includes the "Inside SCARS OF DRACULA" featurette from the UK Sky Canal BD release, and the original Anchor Bay DVD commentary by star Christopher Lee and director Roy Ward Baker (both no longer with us) with input from moderator Marcus Hearn. 

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
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14 Years A Blogger

October 13, 2019, 12:29 pm
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Tuesday, October 8th, I was in Orlando, Florida, flattened by a debilitating head cold when I should have been taking full advantage of a long-anticipated, first-ever visit to Disney World. I was rooming in the spectacular Wilderness Lodge, but the two days I was rooming there I had neither the energy nor the stamina to venture far from my room, so my holiday photos pretty much consist of shots of the beaver and bird carved into the rustic headposts of my bed, and the Bambi and Chip and Dale tiles mounted on the wall of my shower. On my last day, I mustered what strength I had, showered, dressed, and went out to the dock where you can grab a boat ride that will take you to the heart of the Magic Kingdom in less than 10 minutes. I made the effort but that's as far as I got before the sky began to spin and I asked myself, "Who are you kidding?" Fortunately, this trip was really Donna's dream and she was away for the better part of those two days, being given a VIP personal tour that enabled her to sample well more than 25 rides - and I got to hear her recounting of the days when she came back.

Donna and I flew down to Florida (a first for me) because, these days, she is working as the advertising coordinator and office manager for GENII, The Conjurer's Magazine, a long-running publication written by magicians for magicians. When VIDEO WATCHDOG was still publishing, Donna cherished her telephone and email contact with our subscribers, and the artistic expression she derived from producing our layouts, even though she personally had very little interest in the movies we wrote about. She's more "at home," if you will, at GENII because she's always been fascinated by magic. Our first stop in Orlando was the Florida Hotel, which played host to this year's GENII Convention, where Donna manned the magazine's business table. In the evenings, we got to see live performances by many brilliant magicians from all over the world, including Penn and Teller (Teller by Skype), Piff the Magic Dragon, Raymond Crowe, Lucy Darling, Gaëtan Bloom, Eric Jones, and Read Chang.

Donna had the additional pleasure of being invited onstage as an audience participant no less than four times over that weekend - every time, it seems, I returned to our room for some rest from the activity and the hotel's aggressive air conditioning. She was a big hit, having absolutely pure and gullible reactions of astonishment to every trick she was shown - the audience there was predominantly magicians, so somewhat familiar with how many tricks were done and most interested in the style and finesse of their execution. We were told that some photos were taken of the various shows, and that Donna is agape with astonishment in almost every shot she figures in. We had a lot of fun there, and I was particularly impressed not just by their prestidigitations, their grace and finesse, but by the variety of personas which the magicians had assembled to put their craft across. The crud settled in as we prepared to change hotels on Sunday, the 6th. Everyone prepared us for Florida's heat and humidity so earnestly that I didn't bring any warm clothing and the air conditioning, and the hand-shaking with so many strangers, not to mention the flight down filled with innumerable children bound for Disney World, just got through my beach-ready wardrobe and my defenses.   

Somewhere in the midst of my subsequent mucous-laden melodrama, this blog passed its 14th Anniversary. By my count, I've added 53 posts since last October - an average of four posts per month, one a week - but if I've been lax about quantity, the quality has remained high. I'm especially proud of my A. Louise Downe piece and who else gives you a free LOST HIGHWAY audio commentary? My Facebook activities continues to drain the time I could be putting to use here, and I am trying to be more diligent about reposting here the most interesting work that gets summoned up over there. Let's see if I can do better in the year ahead.

My current outside projects: my audio commentaries for MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES (Arrow) and HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD (Kino Lorber) have just streeted, and THE MAGIC SWORD (also Kino) was just announced; I have about a half-dozen further commentary titles already assigned to me by various companies; my novel based on the MAN WITH KALEIDOSCOPE EYES screenplay has been delivered to my agent Judy Coppage of the Coppage Company, and hopefully is now making the rounds in search of a publisher; my book manuscript about the 1960s films of Joe Sarno is gaining mass at about 425 pages; and next year, PS Publishing will issue my magic realist novella UNDER THE NINE (subtitled Of the Secret Life of Love Songs), inspired by the work of Nick Cave - as well as a set of wonderful songs that I've been blessed to write in collaboration with Dorothy Moskowitz Falarski, formerly the lead vocalist for the pioneering '60s art-techno group The United States of America. 

Stay tuned!   

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

  
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Dipping Into ULTRA Q

October 18, 2019, 1:27 pm
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This past week, Mill Creek Entertainment issued the opening salvo of a long-overdue, serial bombardment of English-friendly Blu-ray box sets of all the various series produced by Japan's Tsubaraya Productions. The first two releases consist of ULTRA Q (a black-and-white series from 1966) and the legendary ULTRAMAN (a color series from 1967). Both series were previously released here on DVD but these sets are in a different league, sourced from the original camera negatives. While ULTRAMAN was shot in 16mm, as was standard for Japanese television at the time, ULTRA Q was filmed in 35mm with similar standards to those of THE OUTER LIMITS, whose two seasons were beautifully issued by Kino Lorber last year.


To finally see ULTRA Q with a depth and clarity it has never known in any television venue, anywhere in the world, is a revelation. I've had a long but very incomplete history with this series; my first exposure was via bootleg tapes without subtitles, which gave the false impression that ULTRA Q was a cheap knock-off of the Toho features where Tsubaraya had made his mark. I then discovered that the series had been released on Japanese laserdisc, which again were without subtitles. They not only looked markedly better but each volume contained an excerpt of a never-before-released English-dubbed version of the third episode, "A Gift from Space."I bought the subtitled DVD set when it came out, but - as sometimes happens when a lot of interesting things came out at once - it got filed away in my attic as other interests took precedence. It's still in the shrink-wrap. So the Blu-ray set, which presents all 28 episodes with gorgeous clarity of image and sound, asserts a new imperative to investigate and come to terms with this pioneering series, which launched the greatest number of spin-offs in television history - 35 different series, to date. Our technology has finally caught up with them, and we can now see with accuracy what was always built into them.


So far, I've watched only the first disc in the set, consisting of the first seven episodes. There is no superhero in ULTRA Q; the series stars Toho regular Kenji Sahara as aviator Jun Manjomi, Hiroku Sakarai (ULTRAMAN's Fuji) as news photographer Yuriko Edogawa, and Yasohiku Saiju as Jun's comic relief aviation partner, all of whom have an uncanny knack for being around when gigantic monsters suddenly appear. A number of these monsters recycle costuming with Toho's kaiju celebrities: the pilot episode's Gomess is Godzilla with extra hair and horns; Goro is essentially King Kong with a different face; Manda is retrofitted to become a fire-breathing dragon; and so on. The show also launched a few monsters that became beloved in their own right, like Garamon (who later became better known as Pigmon on ULTRAMAN, ULTRAMAN MAX and ULTRAMAN X). Did I say a few? In fact, this series probably launched more original monsters than any other program or film series of its time, besting even THE OUTER LIMITS for quantity if not quality. In its 30-minute presentations, it also showed a gift of prophecy; in its sixth episode, an oddball but endearing children's entry without the usual cast and monster threat, it delved into the imaginations of child characters as Toho would later do in 1969's GODZILLA'S REVENGE/ALL MONSTERS ATTACK. Another reason to like the show is that it resisted its own formula and was never afraid to include stories that stepped outside the book to push in different directions.      


Gomess!

Goro!!

M-1!!!

Ragon!!!!
Garamon!!!!!!
My only complaint thus far about the set is that the erratic English subtitling contains a surprising amount of profanity for a 1966 family show. I suspect this has less to do with accuracy of translation than with a young translator's misunderstanding of 1966 discourse that causes Japanese characters - at this time, the most reserved of people - to jump past exclamations of "Heck!" or "Darn!" and go directly to "Dammit!" or even "Shit!" when something out of the ordinary happens. Such words were not socially acceptable at this time even in America; we had milder alternative expressions that allowed people to maintain civil discourse and to keep social intercourse more temperate and easy-going, and this should not be forgotten.

In the best news of all, Mill Creek's ULTRA Q sets are selling for less than half the cost of Shout Factory's DVD box set of the same episodes, even in its Steelbook variant (which sells for a couple dollars more than the regular edition).

Speaking of ULTRA series... Since the Mill Creek ULTRA series Blu-rays are not including the English dubs, some of you may want to grab these important variants while they remain available from YouTube - in addition to the official releases, of course. The majority of ULTRASEVEN (due for release next month) is there with the jokey Cinar English dubs produced in Canada, which ran on WTBS and featured monsters with ridiculous double-entendre names like Merkin. They also have four different ULTRASEVEN episodes with the original dubs shown only in Hawaii.

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
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Robert Forster: From ALLIGATOR to JACKIE BROWN

October 30, 2019, 10:50 am
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In November, the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles will be hosting a month-long tribute to actor Robert Forster, who we lost last month. From November 4-7, the New Beverly will present a perhaps unlikely double bill of Lewis Teague's ALLIGATOR (1980, scripted by John Sayles) and Quentin Tarantino's JACKIE BROWN (1997), which scored Forster his only Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. At Quentin's request, I've written a lengthy new article explaining how Forster's casting in ALLIGATOR unwittingly laid the groundwork for his casting in the role that would later revitalize his screen career. Enjoy!

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
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WEREWOLF and BYLETH: New Severin Titles Reviewed

November 4, 2019, 2:00 am
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Coming to Blu-ray tomorrow - Tuesday, November 5th - from Severin Films are two Italian horror items: Paolo Heusch's WEREWOLF IN A GIRL'S DORMITORY (1961) and Leopoldo Savona's BYLETH, THE DEMON OF INCEST (1972). Though produced a decade apart, the two unrelated films prove to be fairly well-matched as a double feature.


Giallo touches in the Werewolf film.
Its American title makes a ready mockery of WEREWOLF IN A GIRL'S DORMITORY, originally titled Lycanthropus. It's actually a humorless tale of stirred and thwarted male libido set in a girls'reformatory - an important key to its subtext. Though an early entry from the Golden Age of Italian Fantasy, it's unusual in that it's a contemporary gothic, with its whodunit aspect more akin to a giallo than a supernatural horror movie. Surprisingly, it even includes a scene involving an archetypal black-gloved killer, wielding a scary syringe, a few years before Mario Bava made such imagery his own in BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (Sei donne per l'assassino, 1964).


Mark Damon as the haunted anti-hero of BYLETH.
On the other hand, BYLETH, THE DEMON OF INCEST (Byleth, il demonio dell'incesto) was made six years after the last gasps of Italy's classic horror cycle (1957-66) and thus represents one of a few vain attempts to revive or sustain a specifically Italian twist on the genre. A historical gothic with kinky elements, it's about a noble-born incel who comes unhinged when his more-than-beloved sister pays a visit to his isolated castle with a new husband in tow.

Weirdly, WEREWOLF, the more contemporary of the two films, is set in England and shot in black-and-white, while BYLETH, the historical thriller, takes place in 19th century Italy (it's incredibly rare for an Italian thriller to admit its nationality) and is lensed in color. Also, though I could not find a perfect match to illustrate my point, the exterior locations in both films seem related and they may have shared one or two exterior locations (see below). In his book Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1970-1979 (McFarland) Roberto Curti reveals that BYLETH was filmed at "the baronial palace in Borgo del Sasso, in Cerveteri."


Not precise matches, but eye-catching nonetheless.

Not your hairiest werewolf.
Scripted by Italy's genre-writing machine Ernesto Gastaldi, WEREWOLF IN A GIRLS' DORMITORY was given the usual English camouflage before it was released - Heusch credited as "Richard Benson," Gastaldi as "Julian Berry," and composer Armando Trovajoli as "Francis Berman," etc. Indeed, in the States, MGM swept away most of these irrelevancies from the outset to focus for maybe 10 seconds on a tie-in theme song, "The Ghoul In School" by The Fortunes - not to be confused with the same-named British beat group who scored a hit around this same time with "You've Got Your Troubles." The song was released with some self-respecting distance on MGM's Cub Records sub-division label. Cursory but contractually obliged actor credits were clipped from the front and tacked onto the end. The film's producers did not renew their MGM contract when it expired, so that version fell into the public domain, resulting in several poor quality, incomplete, and ultimately misleading versions infiltrating the marketplace.  


Barbara Lass.
Running about a minute longer than the American version, the original Italian cut presented on Severin's disc is, by far, the best the film has ever looked or played in this country. The original opening titles show a Saul Bass influence and allow the film its intended somber quality. If you choose the Italian language option with English subtitles, you'll find that a more adult film results, one in which the characters and their teachers come across as more mutually compromised and corrupt. Carl Schell, the male lead, is a new teacher at the reformatory, sent there as penance for a charge of manslaughter; the female charges, led by the soulful and winsome Barbara Lass (née Kwiatkowsa, the first wife of Roman Polanski - who plays Brunhilda in the Italian version, Priscilla in the English dub), are accustomed to selling their sexual favors in exchange for preferential treatment; Sheena, an icy aging instructor in the Harriet Medin tradition is married to an impoverished nobleman (Maurice Marsac, whose career extends to much American television including The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres) whose sexual trysts with the werewolf's first victim lead to blackmail and a not-very-energetic police investigation. The film is sometimes criticized for its not-very-hairy werewolf but this is a cultural variation and one probably truer to actual case histories of lycanthropy than what movies like THE WOLF MAN (1941) gave us. The script stops just short of drawing a pronounced parallel between the werewolf and the sexual predator but the pieces are certainly there to be connected, as is the similar relationship between the respective partners who have perhaps enabled their behavior to prolong the illusion of their own happiness.


Curt Lowens and Luciano Pigozzi.
Gastaldi is the real auteur here, as the story and its characters resonate with others he created in other films; Heusch's direction is not particularly inspired but competent. The atmosphere is due entirely to Renato del Frate's cinematography and special effects and particularly the oboe-driven Trovajoli score, alternately glimmering and gloomy, which bears many similarities to his music for Mario Bava's HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD (Ercole al centro della terra, 1961), made that same year. Bava favorite "Alan Collins" (Luciano Pigozzi) also brings interest to the film as a disfigured groundskeeper, as do uncredited walk-ons by the similarly ubiquitous John Karlsen and SUSPIRIA's Giuseppe Transocchi.

Severin's 1.66:1 disc includes a new interview with Gastaldi, which focuses almost exclusively on this film and reveals that Paolo Heusch was gay, known to his crew as "Paolina," and often directed his scenes while reclining on a chaise longue. (I can't wait for the Tim Burton movie.) The set also includes David Del Valle's interview/commentary with the film's werewolf Curt Lowens from the previous Retromedia DVD, a booklet reprinting an article on the film from one of the old Charlton horror magazines, and a second disc of Trovajoli's score (14 tracks, previously released by Digitmovies with the same composer's score for ATOM AGE VAMPIRE, Seddock, l'erede del Satana, 1960).

BYLETH, on the other hand, is a genuinely fresh discovery, never previously available in this country and a film that Severin discovered on the cusp of extinction, surviving only as a mildly imperfect German print called Trio der Lust, which is matched here with the incomplete surviving Italian track, both playable with English subtitles. It may be an Italian film, but the audio track defaults to German so much, and so distractingly, I recommend sticking with the German track - which is better acted anyway. Director Leopoldo Savona is probably best-known for the movie he did not make: it was he who began shooting the Viking Western Helmut il solitario, which ran out of funding and was later completed as KNIVES OF THE AVENGER (Raffica di coltelli, 1965) by Mario Bava.


Lionello spies on his sister's marital happiness.
After a pre-credits, post-coital murder that establishes the film's voyeuristic, psycho-sexual terrain, we cut to the opening titles, illustrated with various details of Gustave Doré etchings from Dante's Inferno, before Mark Damon is introduced as Duke Lionello Shandwell, to the tune of someone's electric fuzz guitar. (The score is credited to Vasili Kojucherov, who would subsequently score Damon's THE DEVIL'S WEDDING NIGHT.) Prone to nervous breakdowns as a child and incestuous longing for his sister Barbara (Claudia Gravy) since puberty, Lionello has spent some years alone since Barbara placed some deliberate distance between herself and her sibling. Left to his own devices, Lionello has become a solitary voyeur spying on the hayloft frolics of the hired help - but word of Barbara's pending return raises his hopes for the shared life he's always dreamed of. Unfortunately, she arrives with a husband, Giordano (Aldo Bufi Landi), who tries his best to befriend the brother who can only see him as a hated rival. Other expendable women pop up, allowing more murders to take place, and Giordano eventually traces the cause to a demon named Byleth - the most beautiful of all demons, according to legend, garbed in black astride a white horse. Barbara recalls that this obscure name was first invoked by Lionello as a child, around the time of his mother's violent death, and he has invoked it once again, summoning Byleth to punish the sexually active ladies with a trident-like neck impaler. The film's back story invokes the Catholic rites of exorcism more than a year before William Friedkin's THE EXORCIST (1973). 


Lionello unburdens himself to Barbara.
Italian Gothic horror encompasses a good many supporting characters like Damon, ranging from Franco Nero in THE THIRD EYE (Il terzo occhio, 1965) to Alessio Orano in Bava's LISA AND THE DEVIL (Lise e il diavolo, 1973), and Damon takes his performance through the roof, reminding us of Oliver Reed in CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (1961) and almost every role ever played by Michel Lemoine. Unfortunately, none of the other roles are as persuasively cast, with Gravy most bland of all as the object of Lionello's obsession, so the story's perversity becomes more deadweight than pleasure. Savona's directorial bag of tricks is limited, his lack of visual imagination aggravated by a propensity for zooms, plodding POV shots of boots climbing stairs, and subjective handheld murder scenes. Despite these traits, BYLETH's rarity makes it a necessity for Italian gothic completists, but most any film of similar genre from this time and place is better. I could best compare it to Aristide Massaccesi's DEATH SMILES ON A MURDERER (1973), as I imagine it might play if deprived of Klaus Kinski's commanding cameo and Berto Pisano's literally enthralling score.

In his aforementioned book, Roberto Curti lists BYLETH's original running time at 95 minutes and the German version at 81 - the running time here rounds out to 83 minutes, so there must be a great deal of footage missing from the irretrievable Italian version. This may be one of those cases where the tighter presentation is the kinder gift to posterity.

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
  

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Thoughts on Hammer's TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL

November 5, 2019, 2:00 am
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Paul Massie as Hyde.
Paul Massie as Jekyll.
I may be alone in this, but I admire THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL (which I just watched as part of Indicator's forthcoming HAMMER VOLUME 4: FACES OF FEAR box set - a beautiful presentation) and consider it one of the most interesting interpretations of the tale. People have problems with it because it’s not a horror film and Jekyll doesn’t become a “monster” in the literal sense. The movie’s one insurmountable problem has always been Jekyll’s beard - where does it go when he becomes the clean-shaven Hyde? Director Terence Fisher must have been aware of this; I don’t know if it was specified in Wolf Mankowitz’s script, but it got past any number of possible objections before it reached the screen, so it must have a reasonable explanation. 

Watching the movie again, the thought came to me that people see in other people what they want to see (think of those young infatuated women who attended Ted Bundy’s trial); they also see in themselves what they want to see, whether they are being narcissistic or hyper-critical. So it’s becoming my interpretation that the film is subjective rather than objective, or at least an objectively presented story tainted with subjectivity; that it’s Jekyll’s own deluded dream of what happens, the account as he (or Hyde) writes it down in his notebook. For all we know, it could be Jekyll’s own belief in Hyde that persuades others that he is two different people. I shared these thoughts with my Facebook friends, some of whom pointed out that it is just a movie, and that the detail of Jekyll's vanishing/reappearing beard shouldn't be any harder to accept than his ability to change his sex back and forth in DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE (1971).

At the bottom line, this is a story - a fantastic story at that - I can accept as being told in a symbolic way. Indeed, after seeing this film ten times or more over the years, I’m beginning to wonder if Jekyll’s wife Kitty and the snake dancer are really two different women, as a big part of Hyde’s scheme is putting the two of them in each other’s beds - that is, reconciling them (and thus himself, in relation to them) in both his mind and libido. At any rate, this study in anarchy juggles more interesting ideas and issues than most other Hammer films combined, so it’s always been a favorite.

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
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This Month: Harryhausen at the New Beverly

November 6, 2019, 9:50 pm
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The awesome Tales attack in Ray Harryhausen's JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS.
This month at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles, they are hosting a month's worth of Ray Harryhausen matinees - a rare opportunity, for those in the area, to immerse themselves in Dynamation on the big screen in 35mm! They asked me to write about the four pictures being shown this month and here's a link to my article.

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.  
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Admit One: THROAT SPROCKETS

November 11, 2019, 7:11 pm
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Sabrina Sharp as the Dark Lady in THROAT SPROCKETS. It's about time!


I'm not sure where the time went, but it was almost exactly nine years ago this month that I was invited to come up to the film factory at the Douglas Education Center in Monessen, PA to write and direct a short film based on my 1994 novel THROAT SPROCKETS. It was decided by my friend and executive producer Robert Tinnell in advance that I would actually direct two films - one that would serve as a trailer for my book or a possible feature film adaptation, and then a short sustained scene of my choosing. I was strongly petitioned to arrive with storyboards for the latter, and though I had not actually drawn anything in many years, I postponed the task until the night before my departure and somehow managed to produce more than 100 drawings on index cards. They definitely proved useful.





Hotel Scene original storyboards by Tim Lucas.
Both films managed to be completed ahead of schedule over a weekend shoot, with Douglas film students volunteering their time. They were superb. My producers Joseph Russio and Matt Deering were masterful in providing me with locations and vehicles I had no idea of how to go about acquiring. I didn't have too much control over casting, but I lucked out with the suave Christopher Scott Grimaldi playing the Ad Man, Brandy Loveless as the tattooed temptress Nancy Reagan, and a supporting cast that included Sabrina Sharp as the Dark Lady, Allie Lewis, Adrienne Fischer, and others too numerous to mention. The films were shot by Jarrod Yerkes and cut by Stephanie Fenrisson (now Akers) and R.J. Taylor, all of whom did brilliant jobs. Stephanie, Keith Holt and Jason Baker were all indispensable comrades in arms and art. When it was all done, I showed the work to Steven Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees and he kindly allowed me to use the Banshees' song "Umbrella" in the trailer, and provided a solo cue recorded with his wife Arban Severin for the hotel scene. He seemed favorably impressed when I showed him the final result, and I'm honored to have the music on the films.



C.S. Grimaldi and Brandy Loveless in the Hotel Scene.
Aside from a single public screening of the Hotel Scene at the 2011 Fantafestival in Montreal, few people have seen this work since it was done. Why? 

Well, for two reasons primarily: 1) I always hoped we might be able to work a bit more on the final sound mix of the hotel scene, where some dialogue is under-miked or spoken too briskly. Minimal looping would work wonders. Also, the idea was to use this material to pursue offers to complete the film, and with our respective workloads, neither Bob nor I had the time or means to do this. So the idea gradually became to hold back the material until it could promote the release of a new edition of THROAT SPROCKETS, which has been out of print now for more than 20 years. It may well come back into print in the next couple of years, but that's not now.

I revisited this footage earlier today, made curious by an interviewer who asked to see it. It brought back such wonderful memories of the time I spent with all those gifted obsessives, many of whom had read my book - and I have to assume that some of them never saw this footage - so I asked Bob Tinnell (who is currently occupied with opening his new feature, FEAST OF THE SEVEN FISHES) if he would mind if I set loose the Kraken.

He shot back, "DO IT!"

And so I am - and if I need a reason after all this time, here's a good one. It's 2019 - the 25th Anniversary of my first published novel.

And so... ladies and gentlemen, step right up.

Here is your ticket to the THROAT SPROCKETS trailer.
The password is "eros."

And here is your ticket to the THROAT SPROCKETS Hotel Scene.
Again, the password is "eros."

The unclear dialogue at the outset of the Hotel Scene is as follows... 

NANCY: That campaign's everywhere nowadays. Is it one of yours?
AD MAN: Why do you say that?
NANCY: Because it looks like the poster for the...
AD MAN (shushes her): 'Subliminal' means you're not supposed to notice!

The poster she's referring to is this one:

Original poster art by Dorian Cleavenger and Radomir Perica.

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
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Operation Commandos in Furs

November 19, 2019, 1:51 am
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Last year I realized that there are still a good many American International releases from the 1950s that I've never seen. I'd like very much to see them all - so I was delighted when I recently discovered that Shout! Factory TV (viewable directly on their website or via Amazon Prime app) is featuring a number of their rarely-seen war pictures this month.

Last night, I watched Burt Topper's TANK COMMANDOS, which takes place in Italy toward the end of WWII and features a surprisingly strong performance by Wally Campo, who I'd known only for being one of the striped-shirted workers aboard Vincent Price's Albatross in AIP's MASTER OF THE WORLD (1963). I have a feeling that not all the film was shot on location, but it's also quite possible none of it was, which made me more curious about Topper as a resourceful, overlooked low-budget filmmaker. To make it even more interesting, it's very well photographed by future OUTER LIMITS DP John Nickolaus, who makes use of some clever glass matte shots, and credited with the sound effects is... you guessed it... Josef von Sternberg.


Tonight, I continued my little film festival with TANK COMMANDOS' original co-feature, Louis Clyde Stoumen's OPERATION DAMES - which is set in Korea 1950, where a small squad of US soldiers acquires the unwanted task of helping a group of USO showgirls out of enemy territory. It's kind of a stinker, but it has moments, not to mention one of Eve Meyer's only two feature film performances. You haven't lived till you've seen her try to camouflage herself by rubbing mud all over her face and then walk furtively through California foliage sporting some of the biggest blonde hair you'e ever seen. Earlier in the picture, there's a scene of several characters talking around a campfire that makes one's jaw drop when one of them casually mentions that it's the middle of the night - it's also broad daylight.


Afterwards, I happened to notice that Jess Franco's VENUS IN FURS was on Amazon Prime. It felt like serendipity because my copy of the new color edition of Stephen Thrower's MURDEROUS PASSIONS: THE DELIRIOUS CINEMA OF JÉSUS FRANCO had arrived today and I spent an hour or so very happily paging through it from cover to cover. It's beautiful. I checked the quality of VENUS IN FURS, which turned out to be very nice, and ended up watching the whole thing. It's still a spellbinder; it's Maria Rohm's masterpiece, even though this version does not represent Franco's original cut. As Mr. Thrower points out, there is actually no evidence that his original cut ever saw the light of day anywhere, or indeed that he ever finished the picture. Everything after the cop shows up is a good deal messier than I remembered, and if the two available cuts - the other being PAROXYSMUS, from Italian TV - tell us anything, it's that no one has yet been able to assemble a serviceable third act - nor an explanation for why Maria Rohm's hairstyle and color changes three times during the movie. The US cut comes closer to achieving a satisfying ending (though it is presaged in the hipster narration at least a couple of times), but the Italian version feels more like a Franco movie and it has a jazz soundtrack that I can actually believe was written by Manfred Mann and Mike Hugg. 


Maria Rohm in VENUS IN FURS.
When the end credits were rolling, I noticed that the post-production work on the picture was credited to Robert S. Eisin and Harry Eisen. By checking their IMDb credits, I see that Robert was the editorial guy and Harry was primarily a music supervisor, so Robert must have cut this US version together for Commonwealth United while Harry embellished the original soundtrack with library music by Stu Phillips and others.

I was startled to discover that Robert was not only the editor of Don Siegel's INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS but was in charge of its post-production work, so he was the guy who changed the ending to please Allied Artists! He also supervised the US version of RODAN, which was similarly reworked with flashbacks and voice-over narration - and edited Albert Zugsmith's CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER, which is just as trippy as the US cut of VENUS IN FURS. Bringing us back to where I started, Robert also turns out to have been the editor on a few of AIP's war pictures - SUICIDE BATTALION, JET ATTACK, and PARATROOP COMMAND. The IMDb also lists him as having done post-production work on Franco's 99 WOMEN, so it's likely that Franco's original cut of that has never been seen here. 

Eisen's career dates back almost 65 years, so it's almost certain he's no longer with us. Too bad - I'll bet he could have given a great interview.

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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