Do you remember our old pal William Castle? We went on a binge of his horror movies a couple of years ago, before Covid and our resulting use of Youtube, when we still watched most of our movies on dvd. We watched my Castle box set, and also the entirety of his TV show "Circle of Fear," and we became big fans. One thing we noted about Castle was that he sure knew his production design, and also his mis-en-scene (if we can be forgiven for using a cinematic term that sounds pretentious), which simply means he knew how to set up a shot. He was a big fan of Hitchcock and it shows. We thought we'd long since exhausted our supply of Castle commodities, but then - lo and behold - Universal Schtudio's own Youtube channel posted a movie I'd never heard of, "The Night Walker"(1964), starring our neighbors Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor. It came to me by way of a Youtube recommendation. How's that for a choice curveball: Babs and Bob in a William Castle horror flick! So of course we had to watch it, and it began with a typical Castle gimmick: a narrator trying to freak you put about your dreams. For context, you've gotta remember that the early 1960s were "psych-out" time, as far as horror went. Gone, for the most part, were the monsters of the 30s through the 50s, to be replaced by creeps and weirdos (Baby Jane, anyone?), and a lot of demented psychological motivations.
Gothic horror was in for a while, or perhaps Grand Guignol would be a better term, though I don't know what it means (don't cheat and look up guignol. It sounds good, and that's all that matters). At any rate, Castle begins his movie by having the narrator get you "into a state". The movie's only two minutes old, and already you're afraid to go home and fall asleep, because he's convinced you that you're gonna have nightmares, ones that you might not wake up from! But you're still better off than Barbara Stanwyck. Here's why.
She's married to a rich but creepy scientist. He's blind, and disfigured (we never learn why), and he's also a paranoid s.o.b. who has tape recorders in every room (and under Barbara's bed) because he now relies on sound for sensory input. And, he's certain Barbara is cheating on him. The tapes prove it; she talks incessantly in her sleep, to an unknown lover.
When he creepishly confronts her about it, because he looks like a freaking monster (and he's not nice), she swears there's no other man. "I must be dreaming when you record your stupid tapes", she tells him. "And if I am dreaming I'm glad. At least my dream man loves me." But then Barbara's dreams turn to nightmares starring her husband's horrible face, and it looks like she's gonna lose her mind. Actually, she's having a premonition, because the next thing you know, he gets blown to smithereens in an explosion in his mad scientist lab, which is filled with electronic equipment, though we never find out what he was doing with it.
As mentioned, with William Castle movies, production design can be paramount over unanswered plot questions. His films are guaranteed to look great, so don't ask about what blinded the mad scientist.
Barbara turns to Robert Taylor for advice, and why wouldn't she? They were married for 14 years. He plays her husband's lawyer, and says that someone may be trying to manipulate her because her hubby was worth a fortune. "Someone may want you out of his will". After the ex-schplozion in the laboratory and more bad dreams, she decides to move out of the house and into the room at the back of the beauty salon she owns, where she lived before she met the blind mad scientist. Here, we get more William Castle aesthetic: a nice tour of the Wilshire Boogalord area of West L.A. A beauty parlor circa 1964 is a stylish place to be, but when she arrives, there's a new assistant, a young gal who's obviously trying to gaslight her: "Oh, Miss Stanwyck, you look terrible! Why are you so tired?" Etcetera, etcetera.
The only one she can trust is her horrible husband's lawyer Robert Taylor.
But then her nightmares begin again, and this time they have the form of lucid dreams, the kind that feel more real than reality. Castle stages a wedding scene between the Dreaming Barbara and her Dream Man in an old, small, Spanish-style chapel, complete with a wax-figure minister, wax witnesses and organist, that is classic and even spookier than it sounds; it should be studied for reference by future horrormeisters. "The Night Walker" was Barbara Stanwyck's last movie, after which she switched to television work and had success with "The Big Valley." It was also one of William Castle's final films, and it's good enough to rate Two Big Thumbs Up with an extra-high recommendation. If he'd had a slightly more developed schcript to work with, he'd have had a classic. The picture is widescreen and razor sharp. ////
Last night's movie was "Forty Little Mothers"(1940), which could be subtitled "One Man and a Baby". Eddie Cantor stars as "Professor Gilbert Thompson", who as the movie opens is missing from a faculty awards dinner at his university because he just got laid off. When we see him, he's sitting in a coffee shop, wondering what he's gonna do for a job. But then, in a nearby bus terminal, we see a woman who's even worse off. She kisses her infant baby goodbye, then abandons him and walks down to the waterfront where she prepares to jump into the ocean. Yeah, "It's a Wonderful Life", right? The suicide motif was prevalent in and around the Depression and war years, but the poor lady, without any other contextual info available, obviously feels she can't care for her baby and plans to end it all, so that a more worthy person will find and claim the child. Luckily for all involved, the dock she's about to jump from is in view of the coffee shop where Eddie Cantor is sitting. He sees her through the windum and runs out to stop her, saying anything and everything he can think of to cheer her up. Then he brings her back to the cafe and buys her a sandwich and a cup of joe while continuing his "something good is just around the corner" message. When he gets up to pay the bill, he notices the cafe owner is making a help-wanted sign. He suggests the rescued lady for the job, she gets hired, and, having his own unemployment to worry about, he wanders out into the night.
But with nowhere to go, he walks into the bus terminal and - wouldn't you know it - finds the baby the lady abandoned. After asking several women if the child belongs to them, he feels he can't just leave it there and takes it back to his apartment, where he asks his grumpy landlady to watch the child while he goes to the store for a bottle of milk. The next morning when we see him, he's being arraigned in court for stealing that bottle of milk. It turns out that he didn't have a dime, but was thinking about the baby's welfare. The judge takes this into consideration. He knows Cantor peripherally, from a university connection, so he lets him off the hook, and even gets him another teaching job, at an all-girls private school run by Judith Anderson.
But it's the girls at that school who really call the shots, much to the dismay of Headmistress Anderson and her assistant "Miss Cliche" (Nydia Westman) who try to keep them under control. When we first see the girls, they are bidding farewell, in unison, to a beloved male professor, a handsome man who's just been fired by Anderson because the girls have fallen in love with him.They throw him love notes as he leaves, then await his replacement. When that turns out to be Eddie Cantor, they are outraged.
This is where the movie turns into a cross between "Heathers" and a Beatles concert. Man, they already knew this in 1940; when a pack of teenage girls, operating with an alpha leader and a hive mentality, get it their heads to do something, they can't be stopped. Is it any wonder that The Beatles were nearly torn apart and had to stop performing? In the movie, the energy of a mob of teen girls is shown in a somewhat lighthearted way, and I'm reporting it as such, but man, if the gals in this film had taken over the Capitol on Jan 6th, they'd be running America.
They're led by "Doris" (Bonita Granville of "Nancy Drew" fame), and while they're more motivated by hormones than meanness, they still want to get rid of Cantor when they see how nerdy he is (and he's also replacing their beloved handsome professor). On Cantor's first day, they're horrid, drawing caricatures of him on the chalkboard. When he retaliates by assigning them a ton of homework, Doris and her minions make a plan to get rid of him the next day, by trapping him in their dorm and coming on to him, en masse, in a scene that might be called risque now because of political correctness, but would've qualified as romantically awkward-but-charming when the movie came out. As the girls put the moves on Cantor, one of them summons Judith Anderson to the dorm, so he will be caught dead to rights with forty girls.
Meanwhile, all this time he's been taking care of the baby he found, who stays at Mama Lupini's Boarding House down the street, the reason being that professors at the school can't be married or have children. Anderson says it will detract from their teaching duties.
Well, one day, one of Mama Lupini's boarders comes down with comes down with the mumps. Do people still get the mumps? Anyhow, Mama Lupini brings little "Chum" (as the baby is known) to the campus, telling Cantor, "you have to keep-a him now, he get-a sick if he stay at my house." Because children are forbidden on campus, Cantor has to hide him in a closet, and when Doris and the girls find him, they use his presence as a sure fire way to get rid of Cantor once and for all. But then, with Chum threatened, Eddie finally stands up for himself. He's been humiliated eight ways to Sunday, but he's not gonna let the girls pick on Chum, and he stands them down.
Once they see his determination to protect Chum, and meet the little guy themselves, they face a crisis of conscience and are heartbroken. They see the harm they've done in persecuting Eddie Cantor, and in meeting Chum their innate mothering instinct takes over. Now Chum has forty little mothers and they don't want Eddie to leave, even though he's been fired by Judith Anderson for having a baby on campus.
We've seen Eddie Cantor before, in "Kid Millions", and very much liked his easygoing comic style. He's kind of like the high school drama valedictorian, who can sing (which he does in this movie), dance, do a monologue or whatever the drama teacher asks. IMDB says he was an orphan himself (as was my Mom, so I have a soft spot), and that he did philanthropic work for children.
Director Busby Berkeley was famous for his "Broadway Melody" movies, which featured spectacularly filmed, kaleidoscopic dance sequences, and there's plenty of choreography here, with all those girls running around the school rooms. But what holds the story together is the innocence beneath their meanness. They aren't evil like the schoolgirls in "Five Little Peppers in Trouble", they just want a professor they can have a crush on, and in the end, Cantor becomes that crush when they see how he cares for his baby. Of course, the real mother shows up to claim Chum (she's the formerly suicidal lady from the beginning of the movie), and all ends well because Eddie remains at the school as the girls' favorite professor. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Forty Little Mothers", and a very high recommendation. It's a minor classic and the picture is razor sharp. ////
That's all for this Sunday night, and we're back on track with the blog schedule. My music was Mott the Hoople's first album (what's with Ian Hunter aping Dylan? You'd think it was Bob himself on some tunes), and also Bryan Ferry's "Avonmore". My late night listening is "The Flying Dutchman" by Wagner. I hope you had a nice weekend and I send you Tons of Love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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