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Private Notes
This week I present for your enlightenment a message film from the Corman Brothers, with the grammatically challenging title of Beast From Haunted Cave. Made in 1959, its message is Crime Does Not Pay. Not the most original of messages and one that, in our bizarre, through-the-looking-glass world, is not easy to take seriously. In films at least, thieves planning robberies usually fail to take something important into account. This time they have neglected to consider the possibility of being hunted down by a large camera-shy monster. How careless! Like all vigilantes, Beast's sense of right and wrong is not as well-developed as it ought to be, and like all vigilantes, causes much collateral damage.
This week's offering from the wild and crazy world of low-budget, past-their-commercial-use-by-date horror films, is Bluebeard, made in 1944 by people with talent. Indeed, there's not much wrong with this variation on the old legend of Bluebeard, the serial killer of his own wives, that a decent budget couldn't have fixed. It has a skilled director already experienced in doing good work on modest budgets, and the lead is an actor of considerable ability, well known to devotees of cheap horror and science-fiction films. He has played a Mad Scientist and Mad Doctor, and this time he's a Mad Artist.
When I inform you I'm screening an Old Dark House film for you tonight, you know what to expect. Concealed doors, secret passages, people abducted in the few seconds when no-one is looking, dead bodies behind secret doors, servants who may or may not be malevolent and a scoundrel at large, moving freely about the house. Tonight's film doesn't miss a single cliche, despite the fact it isn't THE Old Dark House film, but AN Old Dark House film. This one is called The Bat, was made in 1959 and stars Agnes Moorehead and Vincent Price.
It is my great pleasure to screen for you the eerie horror film White Zombie, made in 1932 and starring our favourite Hungarian ham, Bela Lugosi. This film is better than most of the titles to be found in the Public Domain and I'm confident you'll feel watching White Zombie was time well spent. But I must hasten to point out, these zombies are not the flesh-eating variety. Since Night Of The Living Dead in 1968, their official job description now includes an insatiable appetite for brains, and in some recent films have even become champion sprinters!
"My Vengeance Needs Blood!" You know you're in for a special treat when a movie starts with a quote from the Marquis De Sade. Bloody Pit Of Horror begins with a flashback of a red-hooded criminal being strapped into one of his own iron maidens, or rather a cardboard maiden which looks like it was constructed for a school play. Then his body and soul are locked up inside a coffin-shaped painted plywood prop, complete with a really cool wax seal. What I love about these wax seals is that they last for hundreds of years, but instantly fall apart as soon as some clumsy photographer brushes against it.
You know, sometimes, when you're on a boat, fishing and frolicking with your best friend and your best gal, and your best friend's best gal, and your best friend's drunken sea captain's best bottle of whiskey, the idea of jumping ship to explore that strangely deserted island that no-one has ever heard of and isn’t on the charts just seems too darn good an idea to let pass. And if anyone ever did think about the logical reasons why not to go, then we would of course be seventy minutes short of time. Let’s think for a moment about what Ralph Brooke, writer, director, producer, might have done better with this seventy minutes...
How's your astronomy? Planet Paira, as you know, occupies the same orbit on the same elliptical plane as Earth, but on the opposite side of the sun, which makes it impossible to see from Earth, so don't try to find it with your telescope. I did, and look at what happened. When an envoy of starfish-like aliens arrive from said planet to warn mankind about a runaway planetoid that is on a collision course with Earth, fearing that their own planet will be destroyed as well, it's up to humble Japanese scientists to attempt to prove that nuclear bombs are good for us.
This is the first film version of The Phantom Of The Opera, starring that Man With A Thousand Faces, Lon Chaney Senior. Have no fear of oppressive over-orchestration and cacophonous caterwauling, for this was made in 1925, when the absence of sound technology protected all cinema-goers from such a disagreeable experience.
You may think the Reign Of Terror was the most perilous time to be living in Paris, but I'm starting to believe 1890 to 1914 was far more dangerous. There were so many Mad Artists doing nasty things during that time, I wonder why they never thought of forming a Trade Union? Svengali is played by John Barrymore, one of the most prominent film stars of the day and this is one of his best performances. Yes, it's true, John Barrymore is the grandfather of Drew Barrymore, whose acting frightens us for entirely the wrong reasons. But I hasten to point out that John Barrymore passed away in 1942, over thirty years before Drew was born, so those of you who demand a written apology from him will have to wait in vain.
I am more than confident you will enjoy Robot Monster. It's made with such breath-taking incompetence that the end result provides more laughs than a Marx Brothers comedy, and If the dinosaur sequences appear to be well-done, it's because you're watching stock footage lifted from the 1940 version of One Million Years BC. Robot Monster was made in 1953 on a tiny budget of $20,000, the first science fiction film ever made in 3-D. Unfortunately, the 3-D prints are very hard to find nowadays, and I can only show you the 2-D version. Not to worry. Rest assured, you will be entertained, and I predict certain lines of dialogue will leave you dumb-founded.
Filmed in just five days, The Wasp Woman stars the lovely Susan Cabot as proto-yuppie Janice Starling, CEO and the public face of a large cosmetics company she herself has built up from nothing. The Wasp Woman may be read as Roger Corman's sincerely-felt protest at how society undervalues women over the age of forty, then as now. Others have seen The Wasp Woman as evidence of Roger Corman's sincerely held belief that a shameless rip-off of The Fly, a big money-earner for 20th Century Fox the previous year, would earn similar profits for him. Either or both are possible. Roger was known to have a social conscience and, although he didn't work for major Hollywood studios, he was also known to fully endorse their core motto: If It Sells, Copy It.
Did you know the President Of The United States Of America is a stupid redneck with a sub-human sociopath murderous flesh-eating creature as his speechwriter? Thankfully, George W. Bush is no longer in power, and now the truth can finally be revealed. Tonight we turn to the dog-eat-dog world of American politics and occultism to find out what really happens when good journalism goes bad, in the 1973 documentary Werewolf Of Washington.
This is clearly a Poverty Row picture in a lot of ways, and it's not just the limited number of locations. Filmed at night on Universal's European village set, the interior of Lionel Atwill's house is from The Old Dark House and nothing much really happens to advance the main plot. A large chunk of the movie is taken up with hunting down Karl, and the doctor's plan is not explained in a very comprehensible way. His discovery comes not as the result of Melvyn's investigation, but more by chance. Still, this is far better than some of the films I present. The movie is moody and atmospheric, and it works hard to give everything a rational underpinning, plus it gives you an excuse to stare at Fay Wray for an hour or so, which can't be a bad thing.
