Tonight's word is gigantomachy. From Greek mythology, it means "war of the Giants" or "war between the Gods and Giants". I've referred to it before, years ago, and I do again tonight because, frankly speaking, I love that word. Something about it cracks me up. Maybe it's the clunky syllables, maybe it's the machy. Gi-gan-to-machy. I mean, "Giganto" is almost identical to "Gigantor" (i.e. The Space Age Robot), it's just missing the "r". And then....."machy". I suppose "machy" means "war" in Greek, but don't hold me to that. But c'mon : gigantomachy. What's not to love? Me, I find it a hilarious word, in a low-key sort of way. Whenever I mention it, now or years before, it's because I've just read about The Gigantomachy in one of Dr. Farrell's books. He writes about it from time to time, as he just did in "The Tower of Babel Moment", in connection with a possible literal interpretation of it's meaning. It is said that myth is disguised truth, or disguised history, and in the case of The Gigantomachy, Dr. Joe has examined the cosmic explanation, i.e. Planets as Gods (Jupiter = Zeus, Saturn = Chronos). We are looking for literal, physical explanations for The Gigantomachy; could the Greeks have been talking about astronomical catastrophes? Collisions of planets as reported in ancient lore? Or near misses, in which the magnetic fields of enormous bodies like Jupiter would have given off terrifying electrical discharges, visible to people on Earth?
There is also the possibility that the Giants were just that - actual Giants. It is reputed that Huge Skeletons were dug up by early archaeologists, indicating that a race of Gigantic People did indeed walk the Earth at one time, some of them twelve feet tall. The Smithsonian institution suppressed all of those finds, which is why you never hear about them, but you can do some Googling on your own if interested. Me, I believe there were Gigantic People on Earth in the past. If we now have folks over seven feet tall, what is so outrageous about 12-footers walking around a few dozen millennia ago? Think of the story of David and Goliath, where do you imagine that came from? Or the tale of the Cyclops?
When we come to The Gigantomachy, though, I agree with Dr. Joe. I think the explanation is cosmic. The planets are the real Giants, and in those days men spent their nights watching the sky. In reading Dr. Van Flandern's book we have ample evidence for an exploded planet as the cause of the Asteroid Belt. Immanuel Velikovsky and Zecharia Sitchin say it could have come about from planetary collisions. The point is, people in ancient times saw some very scary stuff in the night sky, and these events were turned into myths. But they were entirely real events, they actually happened, and they also caused catastrophes here on Earth such as the Flood. We have the evidence to strongly suggest it.
Now, you may be asking, "what in the world does this have to do with tonight's film"?
"C'mon Ad. We get that The Gigantomachy is a laff riot, and also interesting from a mythological and scientific perspective, but what's the deal? Where's the freakin' movie"?
My answer is that there is a correlation. Tonight's movie was called "War of the Colossal Beast" (1958). It was a sequel to "The Amazing Colossal Man", directed by our buddy Bert I. Gordon, and it featured the Gigantic Man himself, ol' Colossal, so we had a potential Gigantomachy on our hands right there in the title! But as I am terribly disappointed to report, Bert Gordon has let us down. He's been Mr. Reliable up to now, even with his Giant Grasshopper movie, which could've had a better script but was still entertaining. I don't know what happened with this flick, or if Bert just churned it out for a paycheck (and it was a sequel), but boy oh boy oh boy oh boy was it ever dull. As noted folks, umpteen times, you can do anything to me, cinematically speaking. Just don't bore me, puhleeze! This is why I have written so much in the preamble above, because I don't have a lot to offer in the way of a movie review. There simply isn't a story in this film, to the extent that even a stultifying anti-masterpiece of tedium like "Mesa of Lost Women" outdoes it on weirdness, if nothing else. It's not that "Colossal Beast" is up there with the Worst Movies Ever Made, it's that it isn't interesting enough to even be considered.
Here's a synopsis : A young deliveryman is driving a truck through Chatsworth Park in Mexico, hell bent to escape something terrifying. He abandons it at a rocky outcrop and runs for the hills. Next we cut to the office of a Mexican Police Chief, who's being berated by a belligerent white man, the owner of the vehicle. He wants his truck back and figures the kid has stolen it. "I want you to get out there and find him right now"! he yells. The Chief takes it in stride. He's an easygoing chap. "Senor, if you will just calm down, I will help you locate your truck. Now, what route would your driver have taken"? They find it in the same location, but it's been smashed and twisted as if from a wreck. And there's no sign of the driver.
"This doesn't make sense, Senor. No one could could walk away from such an accident. Could the damage have been done after he exited the vehicle? Maybe he was running from someone".
"Maybe. But where did he go"?
They find the young man in a local hospital, but he's gone bonkers. He just stares wildly at the ceiling, unresponsive to their questions. The Police Chief suggests a return to the site, to look for more clues. There, in a clearing, they find a Giant Footprint. "Whatever made this, Senor, is ten times the size of a man". When the Chief reports the discovery, scientists are called in. One believes he knows the source of the footprint. "It could be Col. Glenn Manning, the officer who grew to 60 feet in height due to radiation exposure".
"But didn't he die after falling from Hoover Dam"?
"That's what we thought. But what else could explain that footprint"? I'm cutting in to say "that's what we all thought" because we in the audience also witnessed the demise of Col. Manning at the end of "The Amazing Colossal Man". He did indeed fall from the dam and was presumed dead, by everyone except the producers.
Because they have a Giant on the loose, and because he's already torn up Las Vegas in the first movie, the scientists aren't taking any chances. This time, they don't try to cover up his existence. They call in the news media to warn the public. By following his tracks and a trail of strewn auto wreckage, they determine that Colossal is grabbing food trucks for sustenance. He appears to be headed for Los Angeles. The Army is put on alert. At the Beverly Hilton Hotel, a lady is watching a report on KTLA. "Special Bulletin - A man at least sixty feet tall is making his way to the city. All residents are urged to remain indoors until further notice". She does the opposite, running instead to the local military base, where she tells the Major she wants to help. "You need me! I'm his sister"! Ahh, yes - we remember her too. She tried to reason with her brother in the first film, tried cheering him up when he grew depressed and then cynical over his growth spurt. We didn't like the plot twist (or his attitude) and referred to him then as "The Pouty Colossal Man" or "The Churlish Colossal Man". Now Sis is back and wants to try again. The Major tries talking her out of it : "Your brother is beyond help now. He's become a Beast" (hence the adjusted title of the movie).
Anyhow, that's basically all the drama for the rest of the picture, and we're only at the halfway point. As he did in "Beginning of the End", Bert Gordon is going to abandon plot tension and further discovery. In "Beginning", he did so in order to give us a Protracted Bug War, so we at least got some action. But this time, we're subjected to another 38 minutes of Colossal Unhappiness. They catch The Big Guy and chain him up in a hangar at Burbank Airport, where he languishes in the depths of despair. His moans and groans become increasingly loud and obnoxious (I had to remove my headphones at one point). He has a long flashback of his prior captivity in Las Vegas, and his near-death ex-schperience at Hoover Dam. This allows Bert Gordon to fill eight minutes of screentime and to pad his almost non-existent script. Finally, with ten minutes to go, Colossal breaks loose and does a 23-skidoo, stomping over the hill to Griffith Park. There he makes his final stand, at the Observatory, with the Army shining searchlights in his face as they blast away with artillery.
I don't wanna tell you what happens at the end, but then you may not care by now, haha. His sister does try to talk Colossal out of another rampage, but you'll have to see for yourself if she's successful or not. I liked the first movie enough to give it Two Solid Thumbs, because it had a great first half, featuring stock footage of a hydrogen bomb test and other cool hardware-related stuff. This sequel doesn't even have that. In addition to the lackluster script, Gordon's direction is surprisingly flat and tepid. Other than the angry man who wants his truck back, the characters don't feel invested in the story. As for the Colossal Man himself, he's being played by a different actor this time around. It's as if the first guy knew how bad the sequel was gonna be, and opted out. I would've liked to have given "War of the Colossal Beast" Two Regular Thumbs Up, just because we like Bert Gordon, but I just can't do it. While it won't qualify as one of the worst movies we've seen, it certainly is one of the most boring, Top Three in that category. Two Thumbs Decidedly Down, sorry Bert. //////
It's now Monday evening. I had a nice hike at Aliso a little earlier. Also ordered three Gentle Giant albums from Amazon. Man, talk about re-discovering a band. I guess it took me a long time to "get" their music. I mean, we all loved "Octopus" as kids, and we might've had copies of "Three Friends" and "Power and the Glory" and played them a few times, but for myself, other than "Octopus", I really hadn't listened to GG or thought much about them over the years. But when Ono mentioned the Derek Shulman interview, everything changed. I watched it and thought, "lemme listen to those guys again". This time, 45 years later, I blew my mind! Now I've been listening every day since, and today I ordered the albums. My Summer listening was gonna be Buddy Holly and Bobby Fuller, but now we can add Gentle Giant to the list. Wow.
I also began reading "The Giza Death Star", as predicted. See you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo (and don't forget about The Gigantomachy, haha)
Monday, June 8, 2020
Sunday, June 7, 2020
"Terror in the Haunted House" starring Cathy O'Donnell and Gerald Mohr
Mr. Spinks came through again for us this evening, with the straightforwardly titled "Terror in the Haunted House" (1958), which reminds me of "plain wrap" products that were sold briefly in the 1980s. Remember the white packaging and blue labels? They read "beer" or "peanut butter" or "napkins". There was no question about what you were getting, and no attempt to "sell" it. There were only simple nouns to describe each product. That's what this title reminds me of, plain wrap packaging. "Terror in the Haunted House". If you saw it in the store with a blue label, you'd know it contained Terror, and that the Terror took place inside a Haunted House. 'Nuff said, right?
The problem is that the title is misleading, because it sounds like a full-on horror flick, but it's actually more of a gothic melodrama. Also, that isn't the original title of the movie. It was first called "My World Dies Screaming", which is slightly more fitting for the subject matter but may have caused confusion years later with a movie called "The Earth Dies Screaming", which we saw early on in our Quarantine Cinematheque. My guess is that "My World Dies Screaming" was retitled for tv distribution around the time "Earth Dies Screaming" was released in theaters, in 1964. Finally, in the original version the movie was 85 minutes long. In it's retitled form, it's been edited down to 79 minutes, further suggesting a cut for television.
Cathy O'Donnell stars as "Sheila Wayne", a young woman being treated for suppressed memories at a Swiss sanitarium. She has a recurring nightmare of walking into an old house, which we retrace with her as the movie opens. Through Sheila's eyes we see the weed strewn yard, the peeling paint. The front door opens and she ascends the staircase, turning at the landing where she screams! at a shadow on a billowing curtain. It resembles a ghost. Sheila is awakened by her psychiatrist, who had her under hypnosis. "Once again you were unable to proceed to the next floor", he tells her. "There's some trauma up there that's blocking you. We'll continue to try to work through it, I'll see you again tomorrow". He won't have the chance, though, because that very afternoon Sheila's husband "Philip" (Gerald Mohr), an American like herself, checks her out of the sanitarium and takes her back to Florida.
Sheila barely knows Philip. She brings up their "whirlwind courtship" and marriage. "I don't even know your last name", she tells him. "Does that matter"?, he replies. "All I know is that I love you, and I guess that's all I need, if you love me too", she says.
"Of course I do, baby. Of course I do". Mohr is doing his Humphrey Bogart impersonation once again, but more on that later.
Sheila is a very fragile girl. Her psyche nearly cracks when she sees the house to which Philip has brought her. "Ohh, Philip! That's the house from my dream! How did you find it? Why have you brought me here"?
Sheila doesn't want to enter the house, so Philip uses logic to persuade her. "It's just a house, made of wood and nails. A house can't hurt you. If it looks like the one in your dream, that's just a coincidence". But when Sheila goes inside, everything is exactly the same, right down to the flickering shadow on the curtain. She feels her panic rising. "I can't stay here, Philip, I have to leave"!
Suddenly a man appears from a doorway. "That's right", he says. "You'll both have to leave right now".
Philip is outraged. "And who are you"?, he demands.
"My name is Jonah Snell. I'm the caretaker here. This house is not for rent. No one's lived here for seventeen years and the owner wouldn't want you on the property. You must go immediately".
Snell (John Qualen) is old and frail, so Philip bullies him. "We're not going anywhere", he says. "In fact, we're going to live here"!
Sheila recoils at this news, but Philip continues to placate her, sometimes Gaslighting Sheila to get his point across. "Darling, you aren't well. You've just gotten out of an asylum". What he doesn't mention is that he's the one who removed her, before she was cured. In moments alone with Jonah, Sheila asks him about the house. "There was a family who lived here named the Tierneys. There was a curse on 'em, I think. They all died except one. Folks called 'em the Mad Tierneys. The owner believes in the curse, too. That's why he don't want nobody living here".
For much of the film, we can't guess Philip's intent. Is he trying to get rid of Sheila, to scare her to death, or is he trying to help her to face the past? They move into the house, despite Jonah's protests. Sheila's nightmares begin anew. In one, she sees an old palm tree in the yard. On it are carved the initials "SW + PT". The next morning, she goes outside to discover the tree is still there. "Sheila Wayne.....that's me", she whispers. At breakfast she asks Philip again about his last name. "It's Tierney, isn't it? SW plus PT. You're Philip Tierney, the last of the Mad Tierneys. Now I know why I fell in love with you at first sight. I knew you as a child! We carved those initials ourselves"!
"Yes", he replies. "And you lived here too. Now you're beginning to remember". He encourages her to work through her dreams in order to rebuild her memory. It seems as if he really does love her. Then one day the owner shows up, a man named Mark (William Ching). He too orders the couple to leave, but his words have little force. Mark seems intimidated by Philip. Do they know each other? Something very strange is going on. Kindly old Jonah urges Sheila to protect herself. Earlier in the movie, someone removed the distributor cap from Philip's car, preventing them from leaving. But Philip never wanted to leave in the first place. Who can Sheila trust? She takes Jonah's advice and steals Philip's pistol, keeping it close at all times. Who is this Mark, anyway? He claims to own the house, but why does he kowtow to Philip? And what is Mark's last name? Is he a Tierney also? In Jonah's words "they all died, except one". The survivor is supposed to be Philip. Sheila has no escape. Now her memory is coming back, little by little, and it's more terrifying than ever. Will she be able to cross that psychological barrier in her nightmares, the one blocking her ascent on the staircase? The story boils down to that question.
Very early on, you discover that "Terror In The Haunted House" is not gonna be the Thriller Chiller you were expecting. There is plenty of spooky atmosphere, even a jump scare or two, but there are no ghosts or hobgoblins, none of the denizens you'd expect in your typical haunted house. Really, the haunting is all in Sheila's head. We're dealing with something similar to what we saw last night in "The Creeper". In that film, the Nora character was having nightmares of a childhood event in the West Indies. Here, Sheila is also recalling a horror from childhood. In both cases, the truth is being hidden from the young women. The only way they can get well is for it to be revealed. As with Janice Wilson last night, this is Cathy O'Donnell's film all the way. She is an incredibly sympathetic actress with a gift for portraying vulnerability. On a side note, she was in two Best Picture winners, "Ben-Hur" and "The Best Years of Our Lives". She is in every scene of this movie, so - just like Janice Wilson - the level of fear instilled in the audience depends entirely on her performance. She really has to sell it and she does. The excellent photography and shadowy lighting helps, too. The house is nicely rickety and overgrown and the other actors are generally good...........howwwwever :
This brings us back to Gerald Mohr. I like him; he's a good actor, and he's okay here. He's "okay", but really, he isn't right for the part. Mohr's main problem isn't that he looks like Bogie. It's that he's more suited to play tough guys or suave Lotharios. The thing about Humphrey Bogart is that he had great range. Watch his movies, see what he can do just with his eyes. He was incredible, could play all emotions with great nuance. Mohr is a serviceable actor, but I wish they'd stop putting him (or wouldn't have put him) in sci-fi and horror movies. We saw him in "Invasion USA", where the world was being bombed to smithereens, and what did Mohr do? He pulled his Frank Sinatra act, pouring Martinis and saying, "Don't worry, Baby. I'll getcha outta this". And that's more or less (or "Mohr" or less) what he does here. He's either menacing poor Shiela or turning on the charm, New York, New York-style. He goes from a grimace to a toothy smile, eyes twinkling, with nothing in between, no nuance. He's also at least fifteen years older than O'Donnell, so it's hard to believe their characters could have known one another as children. His casting doesn't ruin the film, and as I say, he's okay in the role, but he always does his Sinatra Thing and it doesn't work in scary movies. Someone should tell him that less is Mohr.
There is a murder in "Terror In The Haunted House", but I can't tell you who gets killed or who does it. Much of the plot development is revealed in great heaps through expository dialogue, so you can go a long time wondering what's happening, and then "all-at-once" there will be a scene where the characters bring you up to date. That happens a couple of times, but - like Mohr's performance - it doesn't take away from the overall effect of the movie, which builds up a palpable level of tension, mostly through O'Donnell's reactions to her surroundings. Because of her, it's a success. I give "Terror In The Haunted House" Two Solid Thumbs Up (almost Two Bigs) and recommend it, as last night, for fans of psychological horror and unknown gems. One final note : when you watch it on Youtube, you will notice some frames that flash by very quickly that at first seem to be damaged (I thought) or are just overexposed. Then this happens again......and again......and you finally realise what it is. The filmmakers used a gimmick they call "Psycho-Rama", where - in the Grand Tradition of subliminal advertising - they actually inserted single frames, into the scary scenes, that depict "cartoon" images of demons, with captions saying things like "Get Ready To Scream"! and "Die, Die, Die"! I attempted to freeze frame them but it didn't work. You'd need to go frame by frame on a dvd player; can't do it on the computer. Anyway, keep an eye out for the Psycho-Rama when you watch, lol. That is all. /////
I had a nice hike at Aliso this afternoon, and I finished "The Tower of Babel Moment" by Doctor Joe. Next I'm gonna begin his "Giza Death Star", the very first book he wrote, back in 2002. That's all I know for the time being. See you in a few hours at the Usual Time. :)
Tons and tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The problem is that the title is misleading, because it sounds like a full-on horror flick, but it's actually more of a gothic melodrama. Also, that isn't the original title of the movie. It was first called "My World Dies Screaming", which is slightly more fitting for the subject matter but may have caused confusion years later with a movie called "The Earth Dies Screaming", which we saw early on in our Quarantine Cinematheque. My guess is that "My World Dies Screaming" was retitled for tv distribution around the time "Earth Dies Screaming" was released in theaters, in 1964. Finally, in the original version the movie was 85 minutes long. In it's retitled form, it's been edited down to 79 minutes, further suggesting a cut for television.
Cathy O'Donnell stars as "Sheila Wayne", a young woman being treated for suppressed memories at a Swiss sanitarium. She has a recurring nightmare of walking into an old house, which we retrace with her as the movie opens. Through Sheila's eyes we see the weed strewn yard, the peeling paint. The front door opens and she ascends the staircase, turning at the landing where she screams! at a shadow on a billowing curtain. It resembles a ghost. Sheila is awakened by her psychiatrist, who had her under hypnosis. "Once again you were unable to proceed to the next floor", he tells her. "There's some trauma up there that's blocking you. We'll continue to try to work through it, I'll see you again tomorrow". He won't have the chance, though, because that very afternoon Sheila's husband "Philip" (Gerald Mohr), an American like herself, checks her out of the sanitarium and takes her back to Florida.
Sheila barely knows Philip. She brings up their "whirlwind courtship" and marriage. "I don't even know your last name", she tells him. "Does that matter"?, he replies. "All I know is that I love you, and I guess that's all I need, if you love me too", she says.
"Of course I do, baby. Of course I do". Mohr is doing his Humphrey Bogart impersonation once again, but more on that later.
Sheila is a very fragile girl. Her psyche nearly cracks when she sees the house to which Philip has brought her. "Ohh, Philip! That's the house from my dream! How did you find it? Why have you brought me here"?
Sheila doesn't want to enter the house, so Philip uses logic to persuade her. "It's just a house, made of wood and nails. A house can't hurt you. If it looks like the one in your dream, that's just a coincidence". But when Sheila goes inside, everything is exactly the same, right down to the flickering shadow on the curtain. She feels her panic rising. "I can't stay here, Philip, I have to leave"!
Suddenly a man appears from a doorway. "That's right", he says. "You'll both have to leave right now".
Philip is outraged. "And who are you"?, he demands.
"My name is Jonah Snell. I'm the caretaker here. This house is not for rent. No one's lived here for seventeen years and the owner wouldn't want you on the property. You must go immediately".
Snell (John Qualen) is old and frail, so Philip bullies him. "We're not going anywhere", he says. "In fact, we're going to live here"!
Sheila recoils at this news, but Philip continues to placate her, sometimes Gaslighting Sheila to get his point across. "Darling, you aren't well. You've just gotten out of an asylum". What he doesn't mention is that he's the one who removed her, before she was cured. In moments alone with Jonah, Sheila asks him about the house. "There was a family who lived here named the Tierneys. There was a curse on 'em, I think. They all died except one. Folks called 'em the Mad Tierneys. The owner believes in the curse, too. That's why he don't want nobody living here".
For much of the film, we can't guess Philip's intent. Is he trying to get rid of Sheila, to scare her to death, or is he trying to help her to face the past? They move into the house, despite Jonah's protests. Sheila's nightmares begin anew. In one, she sees an old palm tree in the yard. On it are carved the initials "SW + PT". The next morning, she goes outside to discover the tree is still there. "Sheila Wayne.....that's me", she whispers. At breakfast she asks Philip again about his last name. "It's Tierney, isn't it? SW plus PT. You're Philip Tierney, the last of the Mad Tierneys. Now I know why I fell in love with you at first sight. I knew you as a child! We carved those initials ourselves"!
"Yes", he replies. "And you lived here too. Now you're beginning to remember". He encourages her to work through her dreams in order to rebuild her memory. It seems as if he really does love her. Then one day the owner shows up, a man named Mark (William Ching). He too orders the couple to leave, but his words have little force. Mark seems intimidated by Philip. Do they know each other? Something very strange is going on. Kindly old Jonah urges Sheila to protect herself. Earlier in the movie, someone removed the distributor cap from Philip's car, preventing them from leaving. But Philip never wanted to leave in the first place. Who can Sheila trust? She takes Jonah's advice and steals Philip's pistol, keeping it close at all times. Who is this Mark, anyway? He claims to own the house, but why does he kowtow to Philip? And what is Mark's last name? Is he a Tierney also? In Jonah's words "they all died, except one". The survivor is supposed to be Philip. Sheila has no escape. Now her memory is coming back, little by little, and it's more terrifying than ever. Will she be able to cross that psychological barrier in her nightmares, the one blocking her ascent on the staircase? The story boils down to that question.
Very early on, you discover that "Terror In The Haunted House" is not gonna be the Thriller Chiller you were expecting. There is plenty of spooky atmosphere, even a jump scare or two, but there are no ghosts or hobgoblins, none of the denizens you'd expect in your typical haunted house. Really, the haunting is all in Sheila's head. We're dealing with something similar to what we saw last night in "The Creeper". In that film, the Nora character was having nightmares of a childhood event in the West Indies. Here, Sheila is also recalling a horror from childhood. In both cases, the truth is being hidden from the young women. The only way they can get well is for it to be revealed. As with Janice Wilson last night, this is Cathy O'Donnell's film all the way. She is an incredibly sympathetic actress with a gift for portraying vulnerability. On a side note, she was in two Best Picture winners, "Ben-Hur" and "The Best Years of Our Lives". She is in every scene of this movie, so - just like Janice Wilson - the level of fear instilled in the audience depends entirely on her performance. She really has to sell it and she does. The excellent photography and shadowy lighting helps, too. The house is nicely rickety and overgrown and the other actors are generally good...........howwwwever :
This brings us back to Gerald Mohr. I like him; he's a good actor, and he's okay here. He's "okay", but really, he isn't right for the part. Mohr's main problem isn't that he looks like Bogie. It's that he's more suited to play tough guys or suave Lotharios. The thing about Humphrey Bogart is that he had great range. Watch his movies, see what he can do just with his eyes. He was incredible, could play all emotions with great nuance. Mohr is a serviceable actor, but I wish they'd stop putting him (or wouldn't have put him) in sci-fi and horror movies. We saw him in "Invasion USA", where the world was being bombed to smithereens, and what did Mohr do? He pulled his Frank Sinatra act, pouring Martinis and saying, "Don't worry, Baby. I'll getcha outta this". And that's more or less (or "Mohr" or less) what he does here. He's either menacing poor Shiela or turning on the charm, New York, New York-style. He goes from a grimace to a toothy smile, eyes twinkling, with nothing in between, no nuance. He's also at least fifteen years older than O'Donnell, so it's hard to believe their characters could have known one another as children. His casting doesn't ruin the film, and as I say, he's okay in the role, but he always does his Sinatra Thing and it doesn't work in scary movies. Someone should tell him that less is Mohr.
There is a murder in "Terror In The Haunted House", but I can't tell you who gets killed or who does it. Much of the plot development is revealed in great heaps through expository dialogue, so you can go a long time wondering what's happening, and then "all-at-once" there will be a scene where the characters bring you up to date. That happens a couple of times, but - like Mohr's performance - it doesn't take away from the overall effect of the movie, which builds up a palpable level of tension, mostly through O'Donnell's reactions to her surroundings. Because of her, it's a success. I give "Terror In The Haunted House" Two Solid Thumbs Up (almost Two Bigs) and recommend it, as last night, for fans of psychological horror and unknown gems. One final note : when you watch it on Youtube, you will notice some frames that flash by very quickly that at first seem to be damaged (I thought) or are just overexposed. Then this happens again......and again......and you finally realise what it is. The filmmakers used a gimmick they call "Psycho-Rama", where - in the Grand Tradition of subliminal advertising - they actually inserted single frames, into the scary scenes, that depict "cartoon" images of demons, with captions saying things like "Get Ready To Scream"! and "Die, Die, Die"! I attempted to freeze frame them but it didn't work. You'd need to go frame by frame on a dvd player; can't do it on the computer. Anyway, keep an eye out for the Psycho-Rama when you watch, lol. That is all. /////
I had a nice hike at Aliso this afternoon, and I finished "The Tower of Babel Moment" by Doctor Joe. Next I'm gonna begin his "Giza Death Star", the very first book he wrote, back in 2002. That's all I know for the time being. See you in a few hours at the Usual Time. :)
Tons and tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, June 6, 2020
"The Creeper" starring Janice Wilson and John Baragrey
Tonight we stayed with pre-'50s horror, moving up from 1935 to '48. Our movie was "The Creeper", found once again on the Youtube list of Mr. Spinks. Like last night's "Dr. Crespi", it was short, running 64 minutes. Former child star Janice Wilson ("Now, Voyager") stars as "Nora Cavigny", the young daughter of a chemist. When we first meet her, she is walking in her sleep, holding a gun taken from her father's drawer. She places it under her pillow and goes back to bed. Nora is terrified of cats, to the extent that she subconsciously needs to arm herself.
Her Dad, "Dr. Lester Cavigny" (Ralph Morgan) is a researching an experimental serum containing phosphorus. He believes it's luminescent property will help in surgery, by demarcating organs slated for removal or repair. If hard to reach tumors or cancerous areas were illuminated, surgeons might work with greater precision; lives could be saved. Dr. Cavigny has been working on this project with another researcher, "Dr. Jim Bordon" (Onslow Stevens), whose office is next door. But Cavigny is becoming increasingly distracted by the outbursts of his daughter. Every time Nora visits his office, she becomes hysterical at the sight of the cats kept there as test animals. Her fear of them is so great that her father considers abandoning the project. Dr. Bordon is unsympathetic to Nora's phobia. He has no time for her neurotic displays and tells Dr. Cavigny that if he won't participate any longer, the project will continue without him. Bordon suggests Cavigny put Nora in a psych ward and be done with it.
Of course, the doctor loves his daughter and will do no such thing. Instead, he gives her sedatives so she can sleep, but these cause bad dreams, in which she remembers a time in the West Indies, where she lived as a little girl. The script hints that, in her waking hours, Nora has no memory of living there, or that her memory was deliberately erased through hypnosis. Whatever the reason, she only recalls it in dreams, and even then they are just glimpses, fragments of whatever happened there. But whatever it was, it has something to do with her extreme fear of cats.
During one of her visits to the office, Nora meets the tall, handsome "Dr. Reade" (John Baragrey), Dr. Bordon's young assistant. Reade is engaged to Bordon's nurse "Gwen Runstrom" (June Vincent), but begins to pay more attention to Nora, who has developed a crush on him. Reade is sympathetic to Nora's plight, which pits him against his boss Dr. Bordon and also to Gwen his fiance, who is actually pretty cold hearted when you get right down to it. She's gung ho to produce the serum also, despite Nora's protests and Dr. Cavigny's ambivalence. Thus we now have two opposing camps in the plot ; on one side is Dr. Cavigny, Nora and Dr. Reade, on the other is Dr. Bordon and Gwen, his nurse. There is a third doctor involved, Dr. Van Glock (Eduardo Cianelli), an older man who watches most of the proceedings from his work table where he quietly mixes chemicals. There seems to be something sinister about Dr. Van Glock, mostly because he is played by Cianelli, who often portrayed gangsters and bad guys in his numerous onscreen roles. Also, and quite oddly I might add, he is given top billing in this film when his part is actually very small. The picture belongs to Janice Wilson and John Baragrey, who are third billed for some strange reason. June Vincent and Onslow Stevens are above them as well.
Anyhow, back to Eduardo Cianelli as "Dr. Van Glock". He keeps one cat as a pet. It's name is "Creeper" and it's allowed free run of the office. Creeper follows Nora around until she's about to jump out of her skin. She passes out one night and winds up in the hospital. Baragrey brings her flowers. By now, his engagement to the ice queen Gwen is all but over. In the hospital, Nora tells Baragrey she saw something horrible in the office before losing consciousness. It looked like a Giant Cat, but it walked upright like a man. Now we are getting into "Cat People" territory, but you probably expected that. Baragrey tells her it was just a nightmare, but then Nora adds that she's beginning to remember more of what happened during her time in the West Indies. "I think it's the same thing now", she says.
The following night, there is a murder in the research lab. The cat handler, an elderly man named Andre (David Hoffman), is found ripped to shreds. Now the police are involved, but the scratch marks don't match those of an ordinary cat. That rules out the ones in the lab. Detectives think a psycho may be on the loose, one with an animal rights agenda. "Maybe the guy used a weapon, something to simulate claws to get his point across". But it still doesn't make sense. Who would want to kill poor old Andre? He was just a lowly assistant.
When Nora learns of the murder, she tries to tell the detective what she saw the night before. Baragrey, who is now in love with her, makes excuses for Nora so she won't be considered crazy. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant. She doesn't know what she's saying. Please forgive her, she's been under a lot of stress lately". But Nora is remembering the West Indies now. What happened there is happening all over again and she won't be dissuaded from talking. She confronts her father with what she knows. He in turn goes to Dr. Bordon and demands the project be stopped. Bordon won't abandon it, so Nora finds his notebook with the serum formula and burns it in the fireplace. This creates a showdown. That night, Nora is visited by The Creeper in her bedroom. All we see is a shadow on the wall, but it's suitably terrifying. It looks like an oversized Cat Claw, moving vertically as if it were walking.
That's all I can reveal about the plot, but it's quite an effective story considering it's brief length and the fact that much of it is related via expository dialogue rather than action. This isn't one of those jam-packed scripts where a ton of stuff happens, but what does happen is very atmospheric - very "Creepy" in fact, so the title lives up to it's name. I would classify "The Creeper" as "quiet horror", where the focus is mostly psychological. It relies on the performance of young Janice Wilson, which I found quite good. Some IMDB fans thought she went over the top, but I disagree. She is playing a supposed "hysteric" after all, but we know that she's entirely sane. She really has seen a Cat Creature, and her memories from the West Indies prove it. Also, her father knows she's telling the truth but has been trying to cover it up. Wilson has to portray all facets of Nora's mental state, and I thought she did a great job. It's her movie all the way, and though it's low budget and lacks a layered script, "The Creeper" is a nice little horror flick, one that stays with you through the night. I give it Two Solid Thumbs Up and recommend it to fans of overlooked, minor gems. /////
That's all for the time being. Gonna go for a CSUN walk now. See you later tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Her Dad, "Dr. Lester Cavigny" (Ralph Morgan) is a researching an experimental serum containing phosphorus. He believes it's luminescent property will help in surgery, by demarcating organs slated for removal or repair. If hard to reach tumors or cancerous areas were illuminated, surgeons might work with greater precision; lives could be saved. Dr. Cavigny has been working on this project with another researcher, "Dr. Jim Bordon" (Onslow Stevens), whose office is next door. But Cavigny is becoming increasingly distracted by the outbursts of his daughter. Every time Nora visits his office, she becomes hysterical at the sight of the cats kept there as test animals. Her fear of them is so great that her father considers abandoning the project. Dr. Bordon is unsympathetic to Nora's phobia. He has no time for her neurotic displays and tells Dr. Cavigny that if he won't participate any longer, the project will continue without him. Bordon suggests Cavigny put Nora in a psych ward and be done with it.
Of course, the doctor loves his daughter and will do no such thing. Instead, he gives her sedatives so she can sleep, but these cause bad dreams, in which she remembers a time in the West Indies, where she lived as a little girl. The script hints that, in her waking hours, Nora has no memory of living there, or that her memory was deliberately erased through hypnosis. Whatever the reason, she only recalls it in dreams, and even then they are just glimpses, fragments of whatever happened there. But whatever it was, it has something to do with her extreme fear of cats.
During one of her visits to the office, Nora meets the tall, handsome "Dr. Reade" (John Baragrey), Dr. Bordon's young assistant. Reade is engaged to Bordon's nurse "Gwen Runstrom" (June Vincent), but begins to pay more attention to Nora, who has developed a crush on him. Reade is sympathetic to Nora's plight, which pits him against his boss Dr. Bordon and also to Gwen his fiance, who is actually pretty cold hearted when you get right down to it. She's gung ho to produce the serum also, despite Nora's protests and Dr. Cavigny's ambivalence. Thus we now have two opposing camps in the plot ; on one side is Dr. Cavigny, Nora and Dr. Reade, on the other is Dr. Bordon and Gwen, his nurse. There is a third doctor involved, Dr. Van Glock (Eduardo Cianelli), an older man who watches most of the proceedings from his work table where he quietly mixes chemicals. There seems to be something sinister about Dr. Van Glock, mostly because he is played by Cianelli, who often portrayed gangsters and bad guys in his numerous onscreen roles. Also, and quite oddly I might add, he is given top billing in this film when his part is actually very small. The picture belongs to Janice Wilson and John Baragrey, who are third billed for some strange reason. June Vincent and Onslow Stevens are above them as well.
Anyhow, back to Eduardo Cianelli as "Dr. Van Glock". He keeps one cat as a pet. It's name is "Creeper" and it's allowed free run of the office. Creeper follows Nora around until she's about to jump out of her skin. She passes out one night and winds up in the hospital. Baragrey brings her flowers. By now, his engagement to the ice queen Gwen is all but over. In the hospital, Nora tells Baragrey she saw something horrible in the office before losing consciousness. It looked like a Giant Cat, but it walked upright like a man. Now we are getting into "Cat People" territory, but you probably expected that. Baragrey tells her it was just a nightmare, but then Nora adds that she's beginning to remember more of what happened during her time in the West Indies. "I think it's the same thing now", she says.
The following night, there is a murder in the research lab. The cat handler, an elderly man named Andre (David Hoffman), is found ripped to shreds. Now the police are involved, but the scratch marks don't match those of an ordinary cat. That rules out the ones in the lab. Detectives think a psycho may be on the loose, one with an animal rights agenda. "Maybe the guy used a weapon, something to simulate claws to get his point across". But it still doesn't make sense. Who would want to kill poor old Andre? He was just a lowly assistant.
When Nora learns of the murder, she tries to tell the detective what she saw the night before. Baragrey, who is now in love with her, makes excuses for Nora so she won't be considered crazy. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant. She doesn't know what she's saying. Please forgive her, she's been under a lot of stress lately". But Nora is remembering the West Indies now. What happened there is happening all over again and she won't be dissuaded from talking. She confronts her father with what she knows. He in turn goes to Dr. Bordon and demands the project be stopped. Bordon won't abandon it, so Nora finds his notebook with the serum formula and burns it in the fireplace. This creates a showdown. That night, Nora is visited by The Creeper in her bedroom. All we see is a shadow on the wall, but it's suitably terrifying. It looks like an oversized Cat Claw, moving vertically as if it were walking.
That's all I can reveal about the plot, but it's quite an effective story considering it's brief length and the fact that much of it is related via expository dialogue rather than action. This isn't one of those jam-packed scripts where a ton of stuff happens, but what does happen is very atmospheric - very "Creepy" in fact, so the title lives up to it's name. I would classify "The Creeper" as "quiet horror", where the focus is mostly psychological. It relies on the performance of young Janice Wilson, which I found quite good. Some IMDB fans thought she went over the top, but I disagree. She is playing a supposed "hysteric" after all, but we know that she's entirely sane. She really has seen a Cat Creature, and her memories from the West Indies prove it. Also, her father knows she's telling the truth but has been trying to cover it up. Wilson has to portray all facets of Nora's mental state, and I thought she did a great job. It's her movie all the way, and though it's low budget and lacks a layered script, "The Creeper" is a nice little horror flick, one that stays with you through the night. I give it Two Solid Thumbs Up and recommend it to fans of overlooked, minor gems. /////
That's all for the time being. Gonna go for a CSUN walk now. See you later tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, June 5, 2020
"The Crime of Dr. Crespi" starring Erich von Stroheim
Tonight we went way back in time, to 1935, to watch a horrific gem called "The Crime of Dr. Crespi". I know we're supposed to be sticking to the mid 1950s - early '60s, and concentrating on science fiction over horror, but I found a new movie list on Youtube, compiled by someone named "Mr. Spinks", that consists of over 700 titles! Some of 'em are movies we've seen and some we don't wish to see (late 60s/early 70s garish horror and/or counterculture stuff), but he's also got quite a few we've never heard of. I got "The Night Caller" from Mr. Spinks, and tonight I was looking for a short film in the 60 to 65 minute range because I spent quite a while reading my Dr. Farrell book and listening to my Buddy Holly cd. Plus, I love short movies, and it's been a while since we saw a good old fashioned sixty minuter, so when I saw "Dr. Crespi" on Mr.Spinks' list, I knew it was perfect for tonight.
One big draw was the star, Erich von Stroheim. He was a dual talent, an actor and director ("Greed") and was part of early Hollywood royalty, but what he is mostly remembered for today is his image : that of a monocled tyrant in jodhpurs, cracking a whip at his actors, or a shaven headed Nazi without a shred of conscience. Few could play evil like von Stroheim, and he had the countenance to match. But he wasn't a one-note actor, and we saw this tonight in his nuanced performance as a surgeon who plans to get rid of his romantic rival, the man who married his sweetheart.
The movie opens with a few minutes of hijinx. Things are slow at the hospital. Night duty nurses are gabbing & calling their boyfriends. An Italian man has just become the father of quintuplets but he doesn't speak English so he doesn't realise what's hit him. These are sprinklings of screwball comedy which was popular at the time, but they are kept low key because of what is coming next. The news comes in that "Dr. Stephen Ross" (John Bohn), another prominent physician, has nearly been killed in a car accident. Several doctors confer on his prognosis and decide that only Dr. Crespi can save him. Inside his office, Crespi receives the news with stoic glee. Stoic because he must present a Grave Face to his co-workers, After all, Dr. Ross is his best friend. But he is also secretly gleeful because he hates the man's guts. Dr, Ross, you see, married Dr. Crespi's love, Estelle (Harriett Russell). Crespi has never forgiven him for "stealing" a woman who was never his in the first place. And now, he has his chance for revenge. The opening credits mention an "inspiration" by Poe's "Premature Burial". We recently saw Roger Corman's adaptation of that story starring Ray Milland. It was faithful to the original; this film is a takeoff, but both feature the main theme of getting put in the ground before one is deceased, a grim prospect indeed.
Dr. Crespi assures Estelle that he will do his best to help her husband, but he doesn't mean it. Although he does perform the life-saving surgery, it isn't long before he injects Dr. Ross with a serum that induces a death-like state. In "Premature Burial", Milland's fear was that he'd inherit catalepsy, a disease. Here, the dramatic device is a curare-like poison, deliberately administered. In one of the most diabolical scenes in recent memory, Von Stroheim leans over the recovering Dr. Ross and describes to him in graphic detail what he intends to do and what the consequences will be. I feel ghoulish even re-creating some of it for you, but here goes : "And after I inject you, you will lie motionless, unable to even blink your eyes. You will appear dead and will be taken to the morgue, knowing you are still alive but unable to summon help. Then, you will be placed in a casket with the lid sealed shut. You will be carried to the gravesite and lowered into the ground, where you will hear the muffled sound of dirt falling on top of you. That sound will slowly become faint until you hear nothing at all, and there you will lie, in total darkness until you take your last breath".
Sorry about that. Believe me, what I wrote is mild compared to what he actually says. It's brutal! But what Von Stroheim doesn't know is that Dwight Frye has been monitoring his actions. Frye, the legendary actor from both "Frankenstein" and "Dracula" gets to play a good guy for once. Here, he's "Dr. Thomas", a young physician who works under Crespi. Crespi constantly upbraids Thomas for alleged incompetence, which Thomas resents. And now that he overhears Crespi's demonic diatribe to Dr. Ross, it's time for some payback, only it won't be as simple as he imagines.
Dr. Thomas confronts Crespi with what he's just heard. "I know what you plan to do and you won't get away with it! You're evil, you are, and I'm going to stop you"! This sends Dr. Crespi off the deep end. He attacks Dr. Thomas, knocking him unconscious. Then he ties him up and stuffs him in a closet. This buys him time to attend the funeral of Dr. Ross, after which he will comfort the bereaved Estelle and eventually complete his plan by proposing to her. When the funeral is over, Dr. Ross is buried and does indeed suffer every panic-inducing sensation that Crespi predicted. He's still alive, of course, but only Crespi knows it. Von Stroheim now pours on the sympathy : "Ahh, he was a good man, my best friend and colleague. I shall miss him terribly". Estelle cries on his shoulder as he leads her away. All is looking good.
But back at the hospital, one of the nurses has heard a knocking sound, coming from behind a wall. When she investigates, she finds Dwight Frye in the closet, tied up and gagged. He explains to her what's taken place. "We must act immediately! Dr. Ross is still alive"! You can guess what's coming next - an exhumation. Hey, it wouldn't be a 1930s Horror Movie without one, and you knew Dwight Frye had to do something weird along the way. He's unable to talk the nurse into helping him, but her boyfriend agrees to assist. He's "Dr. Arnold" (Paul Guilfoyle), another physician at the hospital who resents Dr. Crespi, in his case because he believes he - Arnold - should be the chief of surgery over the mad doctor. Doctors Thomas and Arnold repair to the graveyard and begin digging. When they reach the casket, they open the lid and.........
Prepare yourselves for a fiendishly satisfying ending, in which Von Stroheim receives his just desserts.
The plot is simple but the movie works because of Erich von Stroheim's portrayal of the sociopathic Dr. Crespi. He adds a lot of personality tics that make the character seem real, such as his nervous tapping of a pencil, or his habit of pouring himself a shot while facing a toy skeleton he keeps on his liquor cabinet like a mascot. And like a true sociopath, he maintains two faces; one of placid competence for the world, the other of spitting contempt for his enemies, which he can don in a split second. It's a scary performance, balanced nicely by Dwight Frye's demeanor as the morally-upright Dr. Thomas. He was a really good actor and it's nice to see him playing something other than a creep.
"The Crime of Dr. Crespi" is a quick and quiet little movie with few plot developments and no music, but it's very effective on the strength of the acting, and of course the devious nature of the story. I'm gonna go a little higher than you might expect and give it Two Big Thumbs Up, in context for what it is, which is a short but classic little horror gem. If you like little-known finds, check it out. It's highly recommended. ////
That's all I know on this overcast afternoon. We went from 100 degrees two days ago down to about 70 today. I'm gonna head out for a hike in just a minute, destination unknown. See you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
One big draw was the star, Erich von Stroheim. He was a dual talent, an actor and director ("Greed") and was part of early Hollywood royalty, but what he is mostly remembered for today is his image : that of a monocled tyrant in jodhpurs, cracking a whip at his actors, or a shaven headed Nazi without a shred of conscience. Few could play evil like von Stroheim, and he had the countenance to match. But he wasn't a one-note actor, and we saw this tonight in his nuanced performance as a surgeon who plans to get rid of his romantic rival, the man who married his sweetheart.
The movie opens with a few minutes of hijinx. Things are slow at the hospital. Night duty nurses are gabbing & calling their boyfriends. An Italian man has just become the father of quintuplets but he doesn't speak English so he doesn't realise what's hit him. These are sprinklings of screwball comedy which was popular at the time, but they are kept low key because of what is coming next. The news comes in that "Dr. Stephen Ross" (John Bohn), another prominent physician, has nearly been killed in a car accident. Several doctors confer on his prognosis and decide that only Dr. Crespi can save him. Inside his office, Crespi receives the news with stoic glee. Stoic because he must present a Grave Face to his co-workers, After all, Dr. Ross is his best friend. But he is also secretly gleeful because he hates the man's guts. Dr, Ross, you see, married Dr. Crespi's love, Estelle (Harriett Russell). Crespi has never forgiven him for "stealing" a woman who was never his in the first place. And now, he has his chance for revenge. The opening credits mention an "inspiration" by Poe's "Premature Burial". We recently saw Roger Corman's adaptation of that story starring Ray Milland. It was faithful to the original; this film is a takeoff, but both feature the main theme of getting put in the ground before one is deceased, a grim prospect indeed.
Dr. Crespi assures Estelle that he will do his best to help her husband, but he doesn't mean it. Although he does perform the life-saving surgery, it isn't long before he injects Dr. Ross with a serum that induces a death-like state. In "Premature Burial", Milland's fear was that he'd inherit catalepsy, a disease. Here, the dramatic device is a curare-like poison, deliberately administered. In one of the most diabolical scenes in recent memory, Von Stroheim leans over the recovering Dr. Ross and describes to him in graphic detail what he intends to do and what the consequences will be. I feel ghoulish even re-creating some of it for you, but here goes : "And after I inject you, you will lie motionless, unable to even blink your eyes. You will appear dead and will be taken to the morgue, knowing you are still alive but unable to summon help. Then, you will be placed in a casket with the lid sealed shut. You will be carried to the gravesite and lowered into the ground, where you will hear the muffled sound of dirt falling on top of you. That sound will slowly become faint until you hear nothing at all, and there you will lie, in total darkness until you take your last breath".
Sorry about that. Believe me, what I wrote is mild compared to what he actually says. It's brutal! But what Von Stroheim doesn't know is that Dwight Frye has been monitoring his actions. Frye, the legendary actor from both "Frankenstein" and "Dracula" gets to play a good guy for once. Here, he's "Dr. Thomas", a young physician who works under Crespi. Crespi constantly upbraids Thomas for alleged incompetence, which Thomas resents. And now that he overhears Crespi's demonic diatribe to Dr. Ross, it's time for some payback, only it won't be as simple as he imagines.
Dr. Thomas confronts Crespi with what he's just heard. "I know what you plan to do and you won't get away with it! You're evil, you are, and I'm going to stop you"! This sends Dr. Crespi off the deep end. He attacks Dr. Thomas, knocking him unconscious. Then he ties him up and stuffs him in a closet. This buys him time to attend the funeral of Dr. Ross, after which he will comfort the bereaved Estelle and eventually complete his plan by proposing to her. When the funeral is over, Dr. Ross is buried and does indeed suffer every panic-inducing sensation that Crespi predicted. He's still alive, of course, but only Crespi knows it. Von Stroheim now pours on the sympathy : "Ahh, he was a good man, my best friend and colleague. I shall miss him terribly". Estelle cries on his shoulder as he leads her away. All is looking good.
But back at the hospital, one of the nurses has heard a knocking sound, coming from behind a wall. When she investigates, she finds Dwight Frye in the closet, tied up and gagged. He explains to her what's taken place. "We must act immediately! Dr. Ross is still alive"! You can guess what's coming next - an exhumation. Hey, it wouldn't be a 1930s Horror Movie without one, and you knew Dwight Frye had to do something weird along the way. He's unable to talk the nurse into helping him, but her boyfriend agrees to assist. He's "Dr. Arnold" (Paul Guilfoyle), another physician at the hospital who resents Dr. Crespi, in his case because he believes he - Arnold - should be the chief of surgery over the mad doctor. Doctors Thomas and Arnold repair to the graveyard and begin digging. When they reach the casket, they open the lid and.........
Prepare yourselves for a fiendishly satisfying ending, in which Von Stroheim receives his just desserts.
The plot is simple but the movie works because of Erich von Stroheim's portrayal of the sociopathic Dr. Crespi. He adds a lot of personality tics that make the character seem real, such as his nervous tapping of a pencil, or his habit of pouring himself a shot while facing a toy skeleton he keeps on his liquor cabinet like a mascot. And like a true sociopath, he maintains two faces; one of placid competence for the world, the other of spitting contempt for his enemies, which he can don in a split second. It's a scary performance, balanced nicely by Dwight Frye's demeanor as the morally-upright Dr. Thomas. He was a really good actor and it's nice to see him playing something other than a creep.
"The Crime of Dr. Crespi" is a quick and quiet little movie with few plot developments and no music, but it's very effective on the strength of the acting, and of course the devious nature of the story. I'm gonna go a little higher than you might expect and give it Two Big Thumbs Up, in context for what it is, which is a short but classic little horror gem. If you like little-known finds, check it out. It's highly recommended. ////
That's all I know on this overcast afternoon. We went from 100 degrees two days ago down to about 70 today. I'm gonna head out for a hike in just a minute, destination unknown. See you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, June 4, 2020
Elizabeth (linguistics commentary) + "The Night Caller" starring John Saxon and Patricia Haines
Having finished the Van Flandern, I've started a new book : "The Tower of Babel Moment" by Dr. Joseph Farrell. The subtitle is "Lore, Language, Leibniz and Lunacy", and right now - in mentioning the book - it is language I am interested in, because in the early chapters, Doctor Joe is giving an overview of linguistics as it relates to the Tower of Babel myth of the Bible and many other religious texts. Hey Elizabeth! You were a linguistics major. You obviously know about linguistic taxonomy, the classification of languages into families. You're likely also aware of the theory of monogenesis, that all languages on Earth derive from a single, ancient language that is untraceable up to this point. Have you ever heard of a linguist named Merritt Ruhlen? In 1994 he wrote a book called "The Origin of Language" which according to Farrell was somewhat heretical at the time because Ruhlen sought to go beyond the Indo-European Family, the limit of classification for most mainstream linguists, to identify linguistic traits that he believed would lead to the discovery of a monogenetic "original" language. Ruhlen was influenced by his teacher, Joseph Greenberg, who in turn was influenced by the work of Alfredo Trombetti.
I learned all of this today and it's blowing my mind, because Dr. Farrell is correlating the linguistic information into his own study of the Tower of Babel story, in which God decided to scatter the singular language of man after seeing man's progress in constructing a Tower that rose to the heavens. If completed, the Tower would give man the power to "do anything he desired", according to the Bible. This was perceived as a threat to God's authority, and so - according to the myth - He "came down" and not only "confused the tongue" of man, so that man's one language became many, but also prevented man from completing the Tower, because now, with the multitude of languages, no one could understand anyone any longer. The Tower of Babel story is known worldwide. It has variations in every religion and on every continent, so - like the story of the Flood - it somehow gained a foothold among the traditions of all peoples, suggesting that there is some truth to it, disguised within the myth.
In other words, what the Tower of Babel story is saying, is that there was, in the beginning, a single language in use by all of mankind. According to Farrell, modern linguistics is not willing to go there, because mythology is antithetical to the scientific method. But apparently the linguist Ruhle went around this barrier, armed with new evidence to suggest there was indeed once an initial, single language spoken by mankind. Farrell's book seeks to unravel the Babel myth, to understand why the single language was broken up. It's a short book, only 135 pages, so I should be finished with it in a few days, but it's extremely interesting, a mindboggler so far. I'm bringing it up because it made me think of you and your original major of linguistics, of which Dr. Joe goes into quite a technical analysis. :):)
Well, now on to tonight's movie. It was another Veddy Brrittissh production, entitled "The Night Caller", which sounds more like a mystery than a Sci-Fi Flick, but that's the English for you, at least as far as their movies go. You never know what you're gonna get. What starts off as a straight ahead military/ufo scenario, of the type we've seen in a dozen American movies, turns into a crime caper with a possible serial killer on the loose, except the psycho is probably an Alien.
Inside a radar station, John Saxon is tracking a meteor, along with his colleagues "Dr. Morley" (Maurice Denham) and "Ann Barlow" (Patricia Haines). It's moving at 10,000 miles per hour and is about to hit the Earth, not far from their installation. When they drive out to locate it, the Army is already there, headed up by the "Major" (John Carson). Similar to last night's "Beginning of the End", he's established a blockade and no one is allowed in. Also similar, the scientists talk their way in, on the pretext that they know more about meteors than an Army Major. Traveling by Jeep, again like last night, they locate the meteor, but it's a lot smaller than expected, about the size of a basketball. It's also very cold, the opposite of what would be expected. Perhaps it's not a meteor after all?
The three scientists bring "the sphere", as they refer to it, back to their laboratory (la-BORE-a-tory). The Major is in tow. Under examination, the sphere proves not to be an atomic weapon, easing the fears of the Major, who suspected it was launched by the Russians. So if it's not a meteor and it's not a bomb, what is it? Ann Barlow stays late to find out. After Morley and Saxon have gone home, she's alone with the sphere late at night, when suddenly it begins to glow. As Barlow peers at it through the safety glass, a door creaks open.......then a Hand appears, clawlike and large. It slowly closes around Barlow's wrist. "Helllllllllp"!!
She manages to get away and locks Whatever It Was in the room with The Sphere, but when the Major comes running in, it's gone. "I swear to you there was a Hand", Barlow tells him, but the Major is skeptical. He's military, they don't believe in Clawlike Hands that reach from doorways, so he reacts in the customary way that skeptics do in these movies : by telling Barlow she's been working too hard. "Why don't you go home and get some sleep"?
"But I'm telling you it was there"!
The next day she tells her story to Morley and Saxon, who are slightly more accepting. Morley suggests an experiment. "You say you were stricken with a severe headache just after the sphere began glowing. I would like to recreate the conditions this evening. This time I will be alone in the lab, but you two will be stationed outside. We will equip ourselves with microphones for communication and I will describe what, if anything, takes place". That night at 9pm, Dr. Morley locks himself inside the lab with explicit instructions to Barlow and Saxon that he is not to be interrupted. It's a variation on the old "No matter what I say, even if I cry out for help, don't let me out of this room" theme. Soon enough, the Sphere, which must be capitalised now, begins to glow. Morley reports that he, too, is feeling pain in his head. It becomes so severe that he falls to the floor and loses his glasses. We now see from his blurred POV as a Tall Being appears in the room, as if it's been beamed in ala Star Trek. The blurry Being approaches Morley, he screams and it's all over ; he's dead. Maybe he should've allowed his pals to let him out of the room after all (but then I suppose it would've violated that Cardinal Movie Rule mentioned above).
Okay, it's me here, butting in. So far we've had an excellent Sci-Fi setup. We've got a landed sphere, origin unknown. We've got a radar station and Army involvement. We've got skeptics and believers, and we've got an emergent Clawlike Hand and Blurry Being. Now we have our first death. But for whatever reason, the movie's gonna make a sharp turn of genres, keeping the sci-fi but placing it in the back seat, while giving the steering wheel to crime thriller. I use the automotive metaphor because of what happens next. After killing Dr. Morley, the Being breaks a window, jumps out, runs across the parking lot and steals a car. Yep, he knows how to drive, and fast too. All we see is his Hand on the steering wheel, clawlike and large, as he peels away.
Now we switch to the police station. John Saxon is there with the Major. Without any prior exposition of this subject, the detectives are giving them the rundown on several local girls who have gone missing. "It looks like we've a madman on the loose"! (Madman pronounced "MAD-mn", no vowel in second syllable). At this point I will need to condense details to encapsulate a very complex investigation, otherwise we'll be here all day. By interviewing one girl's parents, detectives learn that she answered an ad in a "figure magazine" called "Bikini Girl". "She's always wanted to be a model", says her father. They track down a copy of the mag, locate the advertiser - a gentleman named Medra - and pay him a visit, but he's not at the office. Next, they discover that almost all of the missing girls had answered ads in "Bikini Girl". They go to a local bookshop where the magazine is sold and interview the owner, a fidgety weirdo who dislikes coppers. Under pressure, he reveals to them that, yes, many girls have come in to the shop to buy that very magazine. And also, some of them met a man there, a tall, quiet person who always wore a scarf over his face. Now maybe they're on to something!
Two things happen next that will bring the story to a crescendo, but keep in mind that all of this takes 45 minutes to unfold, which is why I'm condensing it for you. Ann Barlow, the radar scientist, volunteers to be a guinea pig for the killer. She answers the ad in "Bikini Girl" and arranges to meet "Medra" at the bookshop. When she gets there, the Creepy Owner is dead. Now she is trapped with Medra in the shop. The other thing that happens is that John Saxon, working furiously back at the lab, has discovered that the Being comes from Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter. He knows this because of radiation data around the planet. Using the Brilliant Deductive Techniques the British are known for, the lead detective surmises that Medra and the Being are one and the same! Holy smokerinos, good people! Who would've guessed?
I mean, no wonder the killer's been getting away with it for so long. Who would ever imagine that a guy from Ganymede would come to Earth and put ads in a girlie magazine? Now, it's not as sleazy as it sounds. He's got reasons for doing so, and they aren't what you're thinking. You may still be reeling from the ending to "The Maze" a couple of nights ago, and so I won't describe the grand finale of "The Night Caller". It's nowhere near as weird but it's got a similar level of "you've gotta be kidding me". Having said that, if you're willing to accept a hybrid film, made up of one third classic science fiction and two thirds crime story, with an ending that's unusual (and a slight letdown), then you'll probably enjoy "The Night Caller", which is very well made, well acted and never drags. I liked it, enough to give it Two Solid Thumbs Up and to recommend it for originality. You can also look for it under it's American title "Blood Beast From Outer Space". Give it a shot and see what you think. ////
That's all for the moment. The curfews are over thank goodness, so I can take my time today with all outdoor activity. Yesterday I did get a short hike at Santa Susana, and today I will go to Aliso for a more leisurely stroll. I see on Facebook that today is the sixth anniversary of my discovery of the place, so an Aliso Hike seems fitting. Have a great day and I'll see you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I learned all of this today and it's blowing my mind, because Dr. Farrell is correlating the linguistic information into his own study of the Tower of Babel story, in which God decided to scatter the singular language of man after seeing man's progress in constructing a Tower that rose to the heavens. If completed, the Tower would give man the power to "do anything he desired", according to the Bible. This was perceived as a threat to God's authority, and so - according to the myth - He "came down" and not only "confused the tongue" of man, so that man's one language became many, but also prevented man from completing the Tower, because now, with the multitude of languages, no one could understand anyone any longer. The Tower of Babel story is known worldwide. It has variations in every religion and on every continent, so - like the story of the Flood - it somehow gained a foothold among the traditions of all peoples, suggesting that there is some truth to it, disguised within the myth.
In other words, what the Tower of Babel story is saying, is that there was, in the beginning, a single language in use by all of mankind. According to Farrell, modern linguistics is not willing to go there, because mythology is antithetical to the scientific method. But apparently the linguist Ruhle went around this barrier, armed with new evidence to suggest there was indeed once an initial, single language spoken by mankind. Farrell's book seeks to unravel the Babel myth, to understand why the single language was broken up. It's a short book, only 135 pages, so I should be finished with it in a few days, but it's extremely interesting, a mindboggler so far. I'm bringing it up because it made me think of you and your original major of linguistics, of which Dr. Joe goes into quite a technical analysis. :):)
Well, now on to tonight's movie. It was another Veddy Brrittissh production, entitled "The Night Caller", which sounds more like a mystery than a Sci-Fi Flick, but that's the English for you, at least as far as their movies go. You never know what you're gonna get. What starts off as a straight ahead military/ufo scenario, of the type we've seen in a dozen American movies, turns into a crime caper with a possible serial killer on the loose, except the psycho is probably an Alien.
Inside a radar station, John Saxon is tracking a meteor, along with his colleagues "Dr. Morley" (Maurice Denham) and "Ann Barlow" (Patricia Haines). It's moving at 10,000 miles per hour and is about to hit the Earth, not far from their installation. When they drive out to locate it, the Army is already there, headed up by the "Major" (John Carson). Similar to last night's "Beginning of the End", he's established a blockade and no one is allowed in. Also similar, the scientists talk their way in, on the pretext that they know more about meteors than an Army Major. Traveling by Jeep, again like last night, they locate the meteor, but it's a lot smaller than expected, about the size of a basketball. It's also very cold, the opposite of what would be expected. Perhaps it's not a meteor after all?
The three scientists bring "the sphere", as they refer to it, back to their laboratory (la-BORE-a-tory). The Major is in tow. Under examination, the sphere proves not to be an atomic weapon, easing the fears of the Major, who suspected it was launched by the Russians. So if it's not a meteor and it's not a bomb, what is it? Ann Barlow stays late to find out. After Morley and Saxon have gone home, she's alone with the sphere late at night, when suddenly it begins to glow. As Barlow peers at it through the safety glass, a door creaks open.......then a Hand appears, clawlike and large. It slowly closes around Barlow's wrist. "Helllllllllp"!!
She manages to get away and locks Whatever It Was in the room with The Sphere, but when the Major comes running in, it's gone. "I swear to you there was a Hand", Barlow tells him, but the Major is skeptical. He's military, they don't believe in Clawlike Hands that reach from doorways, so he reacts in the customary way that skeptics do in these movies : by telling Barlow she's been working too hard. "Why don't you go home and get some sleep"?
"But I'm telling you it was there"!
The next day she tells her story to Morley and Saxon, who are slightly more accepting. Morley suggests an experiment. "You say you were stricken with a severe headache just after the sphere began glowing. I would like to recreate the conditions this evening. This time I will be alone in the lab, but you two will be stationed outside. We will equip ourselves with microphones for communication and I will describe what, if anything, takes place". That night at 9pm, Dr. Morley locks himself inside the lab with explicit instructions to Barlow and Saxon that he is not to be interrupted. It's a variation on the old "No matter what I say, even if I cry out for help, don't let me out of this room" theme. Soon enough, the Sphere, which must be capitalised now, begins to glow. Morley reports that he, too, is feeling pain in his head. It becomes so severe that he falls to the floor and loses his glasses. We now see from his blurred POV as a Tall Being appears in the room, as if it's been beamed in ala Star Trek. The blurry Being approaches Morley, he screams and it's all over ; he's dead. Maybe he should've allowed his pals to let him out of the room after all (but then I suppose it would've violated that Cardinal Movie Rule mentioned above).
Okay, it's me here, butting in. So far we've had an excellent Sci-Fi setup. We've got a landed sphere, origin unknown. We've got a radar station and Army involvement. We've got skeptics and believers, and we've got an emergent Clawlike Hand and Blurry Being. Now we have our first death. But for whatever reason, the movie's gonna make a sharp turn of genres, keeping the sci-fi but placing it in the back seat, while giving the steering wheel to crime thriller. I use the automotive metaphor because of what happens next. After killing Dr. Morley, the Being breaks a window, jumps out, runs across the parking lot and steals a car. Yep, he knows how to drive, and fast too. All we see is his Hand on the steering wheel, clawlike and large, as he peels away.
Now we switch to the police station. John Saxon is there with the Major. Without any prior exposition of this subject, the detectives are giving them the rundown on several local girls who have gone missing. "It looks like we've a madman on the loose"! (Madman pronounced "MAD-mn", no vowel in second syllable). At this point I will need to condense details to encapsulate a very complex investigation, otherwise we'll be here all day. By interviewing one girl's parents, detectives learn that she answered an ad in a "figure magazine" called "Bikini Girl". "She's always wanted to be a model", says her father. They track down a copy of the mag, locate the advertiser - a gentleman named Medra - and pay him a visit, but he's not at the office. Next, they discover that almost all of the missing girls had answered ads in "Bikini Girl". They go to a local bookshop where the magazine is sold and interview the owner, a fidgety weirdo who dislikes coppers. Under pressure, he reveals to them that, yes, many girls have come in to the shop to buy that very magazine. And also, some of them met a man there, a tall, quiet person who always wore a scarf over his face. Now maybe they're on to something!
Two things happen next that will bring the story to a crescendo, but keep in mind that all of this takes 45 minutes to unfold, which is why I'm condensing it for you. Ann Barlow, the radar scientist, volunteers to be a guinea pig for the killer. She answers the ad in "Bikini Girl" and arranges to meet "Medra" at the bookshop. When she gets there, the Creepy Owner is dead. Now she is trapped with Medra in the shop. The other thing that happens is that John Saxon, working furiously back at the lab, has discovered that the Being comes from Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter. He knows this because of radiation data around the planet. Using the Brilliant Deductive Techniques the British are known for, the lead detective surmises that Medra and the Being are one and the same! Holy smokerinos, good people! Who would've guessed?
I mean, no wonder the killer's been getting away with it for so long. Who would ever imagine that a guy from Ganymede would come to Earth and put ads in a girlie magazine? Now, it's not as sleazy as it sounds. He's got reasons for doing so, and they aren't what you're thinking. You may still be reeling from the ending to "The Maze" a couple of nights ago, and so I won't describe the grand finale of "The Night Caller". It's nowhere near as weird but it's got a similar level of "you've gotta be kidding me". Having said that, if you're willing to accept a hybrid film, made up of one third classic science fiction and two thirds crime story, with an ending that's unusual (and a slight letdown), then you'll probably enjoy "The Night Caller", which is very well made, well acted and never drags. I liked it, enough to give it Two Solid Thumbs Up and to recommend it for originality. You can also look for it under it's American title "Blood Beast From Outer Space". Give it a shot and see what you think. ////
That's all for the moment. The curfews are over thank goodness, so I can take my time today with all outdoor activity. Yesterday I did get a short hike at Santa Susana, and today I will go to Aliso for a more leisurely stroll. I see on Facebook that today is the sixth anniversary of my discovery of the place, so an Aliso Hike seems fitting. Have a great day and I'll see you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, June 3, 2020
"Beginning of the End" directed by Bert I. Gordon and starring Peter Graves and Peggy Castle
This blog was begun Tuesday night June 2nd, and completed the following day :
It's been a while since we had a Giant Bug Movie, so I was excited to find one I'd never heard of : "Beginning of the End"(1957), directed by our friend Bert I. Gordon ("Tormented", "The Amazing Colossal Man"). We're in Illinois, just outside of Chicago, and as the movie opens, a young couple is making out, parked off the side of Devonshire Street. Suddenly they hear a loud screeching noise and look up. The girl screams and Bert Gordon yells "cut"! Flash forward about an hour and two cops are driving down Devonshire when they see an overturned car that looks like it's been hit by a train. "Call homicide", says one. When detectives arrive, they reassign the officers to another location. "You two get over to Ludlow right away. Something bad's happened, no word yet what it is but they're setting up a roadblock. Go help".
At the roadblock, the officers are assigned to keep everyone out, but by morning an Intrepid Reporter (Peggy Castle) has shown up and talks her way in by pulling a "Karen" and asking to speak to the manager (i.e. the authority on scene). I have to step in to say that while I normally pay little attention to Facebook memes and other online fads, I nevertheless find the "Karen" meme hilarious, which is why I worked it into the review, haha. But back to the story, when the commanding officer tells Castle he doesn't have any information either, she goes over his head as well. Turning to the military, she visits the local Army base, where she knows the General (Morris Ankrum). He likes Castle, she's always written in favor of his leadership, but even he hasn't much information to relate. Of Ludlow, he says: "All I know is that the entire town's been destroyed, and everyone who lived there is gone. Vanished without a trace".
"But that's over a hundred and fifty people", Castle replies. "Are you saying there's not a sign of anyone"?
"That's correct. It's utterly baffling. We've ruled out an explosion, which would leave remains. Even a meteor strike would leave something, but there's nothing there except some wood scraps. We have no idea what happened, which is the reason for the strict secrecy".
The General agrees to take Castle on a tour of the site, if she will withhold her story for the time being. Driving through in a jeep, they view the wasteland of what had been Ludlow, a small town of 150. Stock footage of tornado damage was used to simulate the destruction. After the tour, the General takes Castle to see another building that was also leveled, a nearby grain warehouse. It's corrugated steel walls are knocked flat, the giant silos askew. What's interesting is that all the grain is missing. "There must have been over one hundred tons altogether", the General says, "but nothing is left, not a kernel".
"What was the crop"?
"Wheat".
Castle's curiosity drives her to visit an experimental farm sponsored by the state of Illinois. Inside the greenhouse, she is struck by the sight of enormous tomatoes and strawberries. She meets "Dr. Ed Wainwright" (Peter Graves), who explains they're the result of an Atomic Fertilizer being tested at the facility. He goes on further to say that he's not a botanist but an entomologist. The head botanist has been rendered deaf and mute by a radium spill, so Graves is the spokesman by default. "As you can see, it's dangerous work. But we believe the benefits will be worth it. These tomatoes could feed a village, for instance. Imagine what we could do with meat and dairy products". She doesn't want to imagine that, and neither do I, but she does want to know about bugs.
"You say you're an entomologist"?
"That's right".
"What is it that you do at a place like this"?
"Well, it's interesting you asked that. Normally I study insects, their breeding and habits, and for that reason I have lots of them around. But here, my job is to keep them out. The protocols are very strict because of the atomic plant food we're using. We've actually had a few species get in, grub worms mostly". He pauses to show her a frozen specimen, enlarged beyond it's normal size. "This guy got into the strawberries. The radiation from the fertilizer caused him to grow quite rapidly, just like the fruit itself".
Castle's mind is working fast. She gets an idea : "And what type of insect eats wheat"?
"Oh........grasshoppers mostly. Locusts also, when they swarm".
She asks Graves to accompany her out to the site of the destroyed grain warehouse. As it turns out, it belonged to his facility. "Yes, this was ours. I wasn't aware of it, when did this happen"?
"Last night. As you can see, all the grain is gone. Could locusts have done that"?
"Maybe, though not in one night. And besides, they'd still be here. Some of them anyway. They don't leave an area for weeks".
Just then, they hear a low humming sound. It gets louder and louder, until it builds to a high pitched screech. Suddenly, from behind a fallen silo, a Creature appears........hold your breath kiddos, it's a Giant Grasshopper, eight feet tall!
It means business and even after pounding wheat grain all night, it's still hungry! Graves pulls his pistol and fires at it (didn't know entomologists carried guns until now), but it does no good. He and Castle are forced to run for their lives. They haul Major League Booty back to the Army Base to inform the General what they've seen. Graves gives him the Atomic Rundown on how it could have occurred. "The large supply of grain in those silos would have promoted rapid growth that would have correlated with the increasing appetite of the grasshoppers. The more they ate, the bigger they got, and the bigger they got, the more they kept eating, until all the grain was gone".
"That's quite a story", says the General, when Graves is all done. "I just hope you don't expect me to believe it. I mean, come on Doctor. Giant grasshoppers? You're doing good work out there at the farm, but maybe you need to take a break if you get my meaning".
Then Castle chimes in. "But I saw it too! It's real, General".
Graves : "Yes it is, and you need to do something about it right away, because that thing is likely not the only one out there. Insects feed in packs, of dozens, hundreds, even thousands".
The General : "Hmmm. Well, something caused Ludlow to be wiped off the map and up to now we've no idea what it is. I'll withhold an opinion on your grasshopper for the moment, but I want you to show me exactly where you saw it, right away".
This is me again. I'm gonna stop with the dialogue because this is one of those movies where I could write down every word. But the problem is that the plot development, which was excellent up to here, basically stops at this point. We're only at the 30 to 35 minute mark of a 73 minute film, and the suspense is over. The General will see the Huge 'Hopper for himself, and then a war will ensue. First he calls out ground troops, and when that doesn't get the job done he threatens air strikes. Graves turns out to be right, that there is more than one Grasshopper. There's hundreds of 'em! They're all over Placerita Canyon and some have entered Downtown Chicago and are climbing the sides of skyscrapers. Fans on IMDB have remarked about Bert Gordon's use of postcards to create this effect. He apparently took postcards of Chigaco, placed grasshoppers on them and photographed them in macro. It looks like the fans might be right, and if so - lol! But it still works pretty good as an effect. A Giant Grasshopper punches out the window of a high-rise apartment, to get to a woman wrapped only in a towel. Of course, Mr. Gordon, of course. :)
Graves begs the General not to go through with the air strikes. "There's people in those buildings. Look, I'm an entomologist, my job is insects. Just give me some time and I'll figure out a way to get those bugs out of the city. Then you can destroy them any way you want to, but please.....give me a chance first".
The General reluctantly agrees to give Graves some time, but it ain't much - just a few hours. The final plot point in the movie will involve escalation. While Graves is working feverishly to devise a sound that will lead the bugs out to Lake Michigan ("like a duck call"), their attack on Chicago is increasing. The General has given up on regular air strikes and has called Washington for permission to use The Atomic Bomb. He's gonna nuke the entire city to save America. Graves is Chicago's only hope. Will he be able to devise his "Grasshopper Call" before the deadline?
I loved the first half hour of "Beginning of the End", and was thinking "man, this is one of the best Bug Movies I've ever seen". The the plot broke down and the last forty five minutes was more or less a war, which was okay too because there was a lot of action. But the story was so interesting, I wish Gordon had continued to develop it, for at least another fifteen minutes or so. Then he could've used the final act to stage the war, instead of making it more than half the movie. Had the plot been more extensive, there's no doubt I'd be giving the film Two Huge Thumbs Up, but because of the drift-off I can only allow Two Solid Thumbs. It's still really cool, and they say Stephen King mentioned it in "IT". I can see why he would love it - the Giant Grasshoppers are awesome, because they are Awesomely Cheesy. Gordon takes real grasshoppers and uses backscreening to superimpose them in various locations. Ya gotta love it, and.........it will (all together now) Scare The Bejeezus Out Of You! So I do recommend the film, it's definitely a classic Bug Movie and has a lot of great science and Atomic Age dialogue. It just could've been a Top Five Classic had the story been deeper. But don't miss it anyway! ///////
Finally, today I finished "Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets" by Tom Van Flandern, and I think as science books go, this is one of the greatest I've ever read. It will now be my Astronomy Bible. I believe Dr. Van Flandern's "Meta Model" theory of a stable (non-expanding) but infinite Universe will one day replace the Big Bang model, which has been having theoretical challenges for decades now. Van Flandern, who died in 2009, will go down as one of the great scientific geniuses, in my opinion, and will be forever known for his Exploded Planet Hypothesis, which will revolutionise our understanding of the Solar System and of the birth and death of planets and other orbital bodies.
That's all for the moment. Our curfew has been expanded to 9pm, so I don't have to rush all my miles today. Maybe I'll try for a hike in a little while. See you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of peace and love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
It's been a while since we had a Giant Bug Movie, so I was excited to find one I'd never heard of : "Beginning of the End"(1957), directed by our friend Bert I. Gordon ("Tormented", "The Amazing Colossal Man"). We're in Illinois, just outside of Chicago, and as the movie opens, a young couple is making out, parked off the side of Devonshire Street. Suddenly they hear a loud screeching noise and look up. The girl screams and Bert Gordon yells "cut"! Flash forward about an hour and two cops are driving down Devonshire when they see an overturned car that looks like it's been hit by a train. "Call homicide", says one. When detectives arrive, they reassign the officers to another location. "You two get over to Ludlow right away. Something bad's happened, no word yet what it is but they're setting up a roadblock. Go help".
At the roadblock, the officers are assigned to keep everyone out, but by morning an Intrepid Reporter (Peggy Castle) has shown up and talks her way in by pulling a "Karen" and asking to speak to the manager (i.e. the authority on scene). I have to step in to say that while I normally pay little attention to Facebook memes and other online fads, I nevertheless find the "Karen" meme hilarious, which is why I worked it into the review, haha. But back to the story, when the commanding officer tells Castle he doesn't have any information either, she goes over his head as well. Turning to the military, she visits the local Army base, where she knows the General (Morris Ankrum). He likes Castle, she's always written in favor of his leadership, but even he hasn't much information to relate. Of Ludlow, he says: "All I know is that the entire town's been destroyed, and everyone who lived there is gone. Vanished without a trace".
"But that's over a hundred and fifty people", Castle replies. "Are you saying there's not a sign of anyone"?
"That's correct. It's utterly baffling. We've ruled out an explosion, which would leave remains. Even a meteor strike would leave something, but there's nothing there except some wood scraps. We have no idea what happened, which is the reason for the strict secrecy".
The General agrees to take Castle on a tour of the site, if she will withhold her story for the time being. Driving through in a jeep, they view the wasteland of what had been Ludlow, a small town of 150. Stock footage of tornado damage was used to simulate the destruction. After the tour, the General takes Castle to see another building that was also leveled, a nearby grain warehouse. It's corrugated steel walls are knocked flat, the giant silos askew. What's interesting is that all the grain is missing. "There must have been over one hundred tons altogether", the General says, "but nothing is left, not a kernel".
"What was the crop"?
"Wheat".
Castle's curiosity drives her to visit an experimental farm sponsored by the state of Illinois. Inside the greenhouse, she is struck by the sight of enormous tomatoes and strawberries. She meets "Dr. Ed Wainwright" (Peter Graves), who explains they're the result of an Atomic Fertilizer being tested at the facility. He goes on further to say that he's not a botanist but an entomologist. The head botanist has been rendered deaf and mute by a radium spill, so Graves is the spokesman by default. "As you can see, it's dangerous work. But we believe the benefits will be worth it. These tomatoes could feed a village, for instance. Imagine what we could do with meat and dairy products". She doesn't want to imagine that, and neither do I, but she does want to know about bugs.
"You say you're an entomologist"?
"That's right".
"What is it that you do at a place like this"?
"Well, it's interesting you asked that. Normally I study insects, their breeding and habits, and for that reason I have lots of them around. But here, my job is to keep them out. The protocols are very strict because of the atomic plant food we're using. We've actually had a few species get in, grub worms mostly". He pauses to show her a frozen specimen, enlarged beyond it's normal size. "This guy got into the strawberries. The radiation from the fertilizer caused him to grow quite rapidly, just like the fruit itself".
Castle's mind is working fast. She gets an idea : "And what type of insect eats wheat"?
"Oh........grasshoppers mostly. Locusts also, when they swarm".
She asks Graves to accompany her out to the site of the destroyed grain warehouse. As it turns out, it belonged to his facility. "Yes, this was ours. I wasn't aware of it, when did this happen"?
"Last night. As you can see, all the grain is gone. Could locusts have done that"?
"Maybe, though not in one night. And besides, they'd still be here. Some of them anyway. They don't leave an area for weeks".
Just then, they hear a low humming sound. It gets louder and louder, until it builds to a high pitched screech. Suddenly, from behind a fallen silo, a Creature appears........hold your breath kiddos, it's a Giant Grasshopper, eight feet tall!
It means business and even after pounding wheat grain all night, it's still hungry! Graves pulls his pistol and fires at it (didn't know entomologists carried guns until now), but it does no good. He and Castle are forced to run for their lives. They haul Major League Booty back to the Army Base to inform the General what they've seen. Graves gives him the Atomic Rundown on how it could have occurred. "The large supply of grain in those silos would have promoted rapid growth that would have correlated with the increasing appetite of the grasshoppers. The more they ate, the bigger they got, and the bigger they got, the more they kept eating, until all the grain was gone".
"That's quite a story", says the General, when Graves is all done. "I just hope you don't expect me to believe it. I mean, come on Doctor. Giant grasshoppers? You're doing good work out there at the farm, but maybe you need to take a break if you get my meaning".
Then Castle chimes in. "But I saw it too! It's real, General".
Graves : "Yes it is, and you need to do something about it right away, because that thing is likely not the only one out there. Insects feed in packs, of dozens, hundreds, even thousands".
The General : "Hmmm. Well, something caused Ludlow to be wiped off the map and up to now we've no idea what it is. I'll withhold an opinion on your grasshopper for the moment, but I want you to show me exactly where you saw it, right away".
This is me again. I'm gonna stop with the dialogue because this is one of those movies where I could write down every word. But the problem is that the plot development, which was excellent up to here, basically stops at this point. We're only at the 30 to 35 minute mark of a 73 minute film, and the suspense is over. The General will see the Huge 'Hopper for himself, and then a war will ensue. First he calls out ground troops, and when that doesn't get the job done he threatens air strikes. Graves turns out to be right, that there is more than one Grasshopper. There's hundreds of 'em! They're all over Placerita Canyon and some have entered Downtown Chicago and are climbing the sides of skyscrapers. Fans on IMDB have remarked about Bert Gordon's use of postcards to create this effect. He apparently took postcards of Chigaco, placed grasshoppers on them and photographed them in macro. It looks like the fans might be right, and if so - lol! But it still works pretty good as an effect. A Giant Grasshopper punches out the window of a high-rise apartment, to get to a woman wrapped only in a towel. Of course, Mr. Gordon, of course. :)
Graves begs the General not to go through with the air strikes. "There's people in those buildings. Look, I'm an entomologist, my job is insects. Just give me some time and I'll figure out a way to get those bugs out of the city. Then you can destroy them any way you want to, but please.....give me a chance first".
The General reluctantly agrees to give Graves some time, but it ain't much - just a few hours. The final plot point in the movie will involve escalation. While Graves is working feverishly to devise a sound that will lead the bugs out to Lake Michigan ("like a duck call"), their attack on Chicago is increasing. The General has given up on regular air strikes and has called Washington for permission to use The Atomic Bomb. He's gonna nuke the entire city to save America. Graves is Chicago's only hope. Will he be able to devise his "Grasshopper Call" before the deadline?
I loved the first half hour of "Beginning of the End", and was thinking "man, this is one of the best Bug Movies I've ever seen". The the plot broke down and the last forty five minutes was more or less a war, which was okay too because there was a lot of action. But the story was so interesting, I wish Gordon had continued to develop it, for at least another fifteen minutes or so. Then he could've used the final act to stage the war, instead of making it more than half the movie. Had the plot been more extensive, there's no doubt I'd be giving the film Two Huge Thumbs Up, but because of the drift-off I can only allow Two Solid Thumbs. It's still really cool, and they say Stephen King mentioned it in "IT". I can see why he would love it - the Giant Grasshoppers are awesome, because they are Awesomely Cheesy. Gordon takes real grasshoppers and uses backscreening to superimpose them in various locations. Ya gotta love it, and.........it will (all together now) Scare The Bejeezus Out Of You! So I do recommend the film, it's definitely a classic Bug Movie and has a lot of great science and Atomic Age dialogue. It just could've been a Top Five Classic had the story been deeper. But don't miss it anyway! ///////
Finally, today I finished "Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets" by Tom Van Flandern, and I think as science books go, this is one of the greatest I've ever read. It will now be my Astronomy Bible. I believe Dr. Van Flandern's "Meta Model" theory of a stable (non-expanding) but infinite Universe will one day replace the Big Bang model, which has been having theoretical challenges for decades now. Van Flandern, who died in 2009, will go down as one of the great scientific geniuses, in my opinion, and will be forever known for his Exploded Planet Hypothesis, which will revolutionise our understanding of the Solar System and of the birth and death of planets and other orbital bodies.
That's all for the moment. Our curfew has been expanded to 9pm, so I don't have to rush all my miles today. Maybe I'll try for a hike in a little while. See you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of peace and love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
"The Maze" starring Richard Carlson and Veronica Hurst
Tonight's movie was an atmospheric thriller from director William Cameron Menzies called "The Maze"(1953). Sci-Fi veteran Richard Carlson ("Creature From The Black Lagoon") stars as "Gerald MacTeam," a young Scotsman engaged to the beautiful "Kitty" (Veronica Hurst). Gerald is descended from noble blood. His Uncle Samuel is the Baronet of Castle Craven in the Scottish Highlands. They haven't a close relationship. Gerald hasn't seen his Uncle since he was a child, but when he receives a letter summoning him to the castle, he leaves on the verge of his wedding day. Uncle Samuel is ill and Gerald - as his heir - feels a duty to be there for him.
He promises Kitty he'll write, and return home as soon as possible. Then they will marry as planned. It won't be long, he says. Uncle is only 45 and should recover from whatever is ailing him. But a week goes by, then two more. There's been no word from Gerald. Finally, six weeks after his departure, Kitty receives a hastily scrawled letter that amounts to a farewell message. Gerald says that he cannot return. He offers no explanation, but adds that Kitty mustn't come looking for him. "Forget about me and make a new life for yourself", he finishes. Kitty finds this awfully bizarre. Gerald has always been loving to her, his personality carefree. He didn't give a fig about his Uncle or Castle Craven prior to getting that summons. What could have happened in the meantime?
Kitty sees in the newspaper that Uncle Samuel has died, apparently of heart failure, so his illness was more serious than they'd thought. His death makes Gerald the new Baronet, but why didn't Gerald mention any of this in his letter? Why the secrecy about his Uncle's death? Kitty intends to find out. Something is very wrong at the castle, so she recruits her Aunt Edith (Katherine Emery) and the two of them travel by cab to the foggy highlands, to see for themselves what it is.
The castle is foreboding. Is it redundant to say that? I mean, castles by nature are gloomy, but this one looks particularly ominous. The door is answered by the estate's butler, a dour looking fellow named "William" (Michael Pate), who sports a thick, iron grey comb-back. William is so grim faced he makes Lurch look chipper. He curtly informs the two callers that Gerald does not wish to be seen, and they should leave the premises immediately. Kitty is not about to stand for such effrontery after traveling all that way. "I'm his fiancee and I know he'll see me", she announces, striding past William and into the castle's foyer. Aunt Edith is of a different opinion as she follows Kitty inside. "I don't think this is a good idea", she offers. "This place gives me a bad feeling. He made clear in the letter that he doesn't want to see you. I think we should go back home".
"Nonsense", says Kitty. "Gerald's not like this. Even if he was finished with me, he wouldn't have said so in such a vague way. I think something's happened to him and I intend to see what it is". She does see, as Gerald comes down the stairway moments later. His hair is now gray and receding, his skin sallow. His in the six weeks since he left, he looks like he's aged twenty years. Gerald's manner is unfriendly toward the love of his life : "I told you never to come here! Go home"! When Kitty replies that she can't - the cabbie having driven away out of fear - Gerald allows her and Aunt Edith to stay the night. "But you must leave first thing in the morning"!
The two women are locked into their room from the outside by William and his assistant Simon. They almost seem to run the place, though Gerald is ostensibly the Baronet. That night, Kitty explores her room, looking for a way out, and discovers a hidden stairway behind a curtain. It leads up to a window overlooking the castle grounds. Braving bats and cobwebs, Kitty ascends the stairs, looks out the glass and sees a Maze, standing in the darkness like a puzzle. The cabbie mentioned something about mazes, what was it........oh yes: "Every castle in Scotland had one. They've all been torn down except at Castle Craven". Why is this maze the only one standing? Kitty needs to buy time so she can explore it, so she uses Aunt Edith's cold as an excuse to stay another day. "My Aunt can't travel just yet", she tells Gerald. He relents - slightly - but William and Simon aren't buying it. They follow Kitty's every step, locking her in and out of sections of the castle like jailers. Gerald has left a book on Tetralogy in the study. I had to Google the term, which doesn't match what is described in the movie, but anyhow, when Kitty tries to read it, Simon snatches it out of her hand. "I'll take that for you, Miss".
Kitty finally decides that a distraction is needed to get to the bottom of the situation, so she writes to Gerald's old friend Bert, a doctor. She asks Bert to visit the castle in order to examine Gerald, who she fears has gone insane, but instructs him to bring along his wife and another couple, so it will seem like a social visit. Then Gerald and the two butlers will be outnumbered and perhaps the truth of what is going on will be forced to the surface. While they are waiting for the doctor and his friends to arrive, Aunt Edith sees something horrific in the hallway and passes out. Kitty likewise catches a late night glimpse of a figure moving through the maze. It looks unnatural, sloshing and slithering, but the vision lasts just a second. She knows she has to get inside the hedgerows for a closer look, but when she tries the next morning, Gerald is there to stop her.
That night at dinner, he announces that all the guests will have to leave the next day and has William and Simon lock them all in their rooms. But Aunt Edith has stolen a key, and in the middle of the night she and Kitty go upstairs to a darkened floor, one to which the two butlers are often seen ascending. From a corner, they watch as Simon leads someone - or something - back down the staircase.......on a leash! William follows behind, covering the individual with a sheet. Unaware of the women, they take this person outside and into the maze where they release him (or it, or whatever). Kitty and Aunt Edith surreptitiously sneak in after William and Simon are gone.
Now we will have the best Maze Scene since "The Shining", except.......well, I am going to have to ask you a favor at one point. I will come back to it, but for now, Kitty and Aunt Edith are inside the maze and trying to locate the direction of the Slithering Sound that will lead them to "the person" that was brought in before them. He, she or it will certainly be behind the secret of Castle Craven. The sound seems to be coming from all directions at once, so Kitty and her Aunt make the decision to split up to cover more ground. "We mustn't get too far away from each other", Edith says. "Okay", Kitty replies. "Just stay within the sound of my voice, and look above the rows for the light of my candle". As you can guess, this plan works only for a brief time. Then, the candle is extinguished by a Mysterious Gust, and Kitty's voice echoes from all directions.
Suddenly, Aunt Edith hears the Sloshing Sound. It's close by and getting louder. Then, from around a corner, something is coming at her, pulling or dragging itself across the path. Aunt Edith screams, and......here folks, is where I have to call in that favor. I am not going to reveal any more of the story or tell you what Edith has seen. But what I am going to ask is that you suspend your disbelief to the maximum possible extent, and just "go with it". If you do this, if you accept what director Menzies has given you, you will have a satisfying conclusion to a very suspenseful movie. If you refuse to accept it - or worse, if you laugh, as some IMDBers have mentioned doing - you will ruin the movie for yourself, and that would be a shame because "The Maze" is quite a Creepy Chiller. So please, just Go With What You See and let the ending play out. You might even find it touching. One other thing, and this I must insist upon : you are hereby ordered not to Google or seek out in any way, an answer to what I am referring to. You know how Gerald forbade Kitty to enter The Maze? Well I am forbidding you the same, prematurely at any rate. Do not go into The Maze via Google. Wait until Kitty and Aunt Edith go inside at the end of the movie and you can follow along then. And, if you suspend your disbelief, you'll get a nice little sci-fi explanation that will hopefully prove satisfactory. I myself was at first shocked by what is revealed, then was even momentarily disappointed, but my disappointment vanished as I continued to watch. Finally, I was.........amazed? Is that the right word? Yes I guess so. I was amazed that anyone would end a movie this way, especially a Creepy Castle flick that plays like a ghost story. But William Cameron Menzies did so, and for that I give him credit, because he must've known the risks.
I'll give "The Maze" Two Big Thumbs Up for that reason - the sheer chutzpah to go with such an ending - and also because the movie is very well done in the first place. Highly recommended for weirdness!! //////
That's all for the moment. I will see you later this evening at the Usual Time.
Tons of peace and love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
He promises Kitty he'll write, and return home as soon as possible. Then they will marry as planned. It won't be long, he says. Uncle is only 45 and should recover from whatever is ailing him. But a week goes by, then two more. There's been no word from Gerald. Finally, six weeks after his departure, Kitty receives a hastily scrawled letter that amounts to a farewell message. Gerald says that he cannot return. He offers no explanation, but adds that Kitty mustn't come looking for him. "Forget about me and make a new life for yourself", he finishes. Kitty finds this awfully bizarre. Gerald has always been loving to her, his personality carefree. He didn't give a fig about his Uncle or Castle Craven prior to getting that summons. What could have happened in the meantime?
Kitty sees in the newspaper that Uncle Samuel has died, apparently of heart failure, so his illness was more serious than they'd thought. His death makes Gerald the new Baronet, but why didn't Gerald mention any of this in his letter? Why the secrecy about his Uncle's death? Kitty intends to find out. Something is very wrong at the castle, so she recruits her Aunt Edith (Katherine Emery) and the two of them travel by cab to the foggy highlands, to see for themselves what it is.
The castle is foreboding. Is it redundant to say that? I mean, castles by nature are gloomy, but this one looks particularly ominous. The door is answered by the estate's butler, a dour looking fellow named "William" (Michael Pate), who sports a thick, iron grey comb-back. William is so grim faced he makes Lurch look chipper. He curtly informs the two callers that Gerald does not wish to be seen, and they should leave the premises immediately. Kitty is not about to stand for such effrontery after traveling all that way. "I'm his fiancee and I know he'll see me", she announces, striding past William and into the castle's foyer. Aunt Edith is of a different opinion as she follows Kitty inside. "I don't think this is a good idea", she offers. "This place gives me a bad feeling. He made clear in the letter that he doesn't want to see you. I think we should go back home".
"Nonsense", says Kitty. "Gerald's not like this. Even if he was finished with me, he wouldn't have said so in such a vague way. I think something's happened to him and I intend to see what it is". She does see, as Gerald comes down the stairway moments later. His hair is now gray and receding, his skin sallow. His in the six weeks since he left, he looks like he's aged twenty years. Gerald's manner is unfriendly toward the love of his life : "I told you never to come here! Go home"! When Kitty replies that she can't - the cabbie having driven away out of fear - Gerald allows her and Aunt Edith to stay the night. "But you must leave first thing in the morning"!
The two women are locked into their room from the outside by William and his assistant Simon. They almost seem to run the place, though Gerald is ostensibly the Baronet. That night, Kitty explores her room, looking for a way out, and discovers a hidden stairway behind a curtain. It leads up to a window overlooking the castle grounds. Braving bats and cobwebs, Kitty ascends the stairs, looks out the glass and sees a Maze, standing in the darkness like a puzzle. The cabbie mentioned something about mazes, what was it........oh yes: "Every castle in Scotland had one. They've all been torn down except at Castle Craven". Why is this maze the only one standing? Kitty needs to buy time so she can explore it, so she uses Aunt Edith's cold as an excuse to stay another day. "My Aunt can't travel just yet", she tells Gerald. He relents - slightly - but William and Simon aren't buying it. They follow Kitty's every step, locking her in and out of sections of the castle like jailers. Gerald has left a book on Tetralogy in the study. I had to Google the term, which doesn't match what is described in the movie, but anyhow, when Kitty tries to read it, Simon snatches it out of her hand. "I'll take that for you, Miss".
Kitty finally decides that a distraction is needed to get to the bottom of the situation, so she writes to Gerald's old friend Bert, a doctor. She asks Bert to visit the castle in order to examine Gerald, who she fears has gone insane, but instructs him to bring along his wife and another couple, so it will seem like a social visit. Then Gerald and the two butlers will be outnumbered and perhaps the truth of what is going on will be forced to the surface. While they are waiting for the doctor and his friends to arrive, Aunt Edith sees something horrific in the hallway and passes out. Kitty likewise catches a late night glimpse of a figure moving through the maze. It looks unnatural, sloshing and slithering, but the vision lasts just a second. She knows she has to get inside the hedgerows for a closer look, but when she tries the next morning, Gerald is there to stop her.
That night at dinner, he announces that all the guests will have to leave the next day and has William and Simon lock them all in their rooms. But Aunt Edith has stolen a key, and in the middle of the night she and Kitty go upstairs to a darkened floor, one to which the two butlers are often seen ascending. From a corner, they watch as Simon leads someone - or something - back down the staircase.......on a leash! William follows behind, covering the individual with a sheet. Unaware of the women, they take this person outside and into the maze where they release him (or it, or whatever). Kitty and Aunt Edith surreptitiously sneak in after William and Simon are gone.
Now we will have the best Maze Scene since "The Shining", except.......well, I am going to have to ask you a favor at one point. I will come back to it, but for now, Kitty and Aunt Edith are inside the maze and trying to locate the direction of the Slithering Sound that will lead them to "the person" that was brought in before them. He, she or it will certainly be behind the secret of Castle Craven. The sound seems to be coming from all directions at once, so Kitty and her Aunt make the decision to split up to cover more ground. "We mustn't get too far away from each other", Edith says. "Okay", Kitty replies. "Just stay within the sound of my voice, and look above the rows for the light of my candle". As you can guess, this plan works only for a brief time. Then, the candle is extinguished by a Mysterious Gust, and Kitty's voice echoes from all directions.
Suddenly, Aunt Edith hears the Sloshing Sound. It's close by and getting louder. Then, from around a corner, something is coming at her, pulling or dragging itself across the path. Aunt Edith screams, and......here folks, is where I have to call in that favor. I am not going to reveal any more of the story or tell you what Edith has seen. But what I am going to ask is that you suspend your disbelief to the maximum possible extent, and just "go with it". If you do this, if you accept what director Menzies has given you, you will have a satisfying conclusion to a very suspenseful movie. If you refuse to accept it - or worse, if you laugh, as some IMDBers have mentioned doing - you will ruin the movie for yourself, and that would be a shame because "The Maze" is quite a Creepy Chiller. So please, just Go With What You See and let the ending play out. You might even find it touching. One other thing, and this I must insist upon : you are hereby ordered not to Google or seek out in any way, an answer to what I am referring to. You know how Gerald forbade Kitty to enter The Maze? Well I am forbidding you the same, prematurely at any rate. Do not go into The Maze via Google. Wait until Kitty and Aunt Edith go inside at the end of the movie and you can follow along then. And, if you suspend your disbelief, you'll get a nice little sci-fi explanation that will hopefully prove satisfactory. I myself was at first shocked by what is revealed, then was even momentarily disappointed, but my disappointment vanished as I continued to watch. Finally, I was.........amazed? Is that the right word? Yes I guess so. I was amazed that anyone would end a movie this way, especially a Creepy Castle flick that plays like a ghost story. But William Cameron Menzies did so, and for that I give him credit, because he must've known the risks.
I'll give "The Maze" Two Big Thumbs Up for that reason - the sheer chutzpah to go with such an ending - and also because the movie is very well done in the first place. Highly recommended for weirdness!! //////
That's all for the moment. I will see you later this evening at the Usual Time.
Tons of peace and love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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