THE WICKED WEST

 

A few years ago, I decided to write a followup to my 2004 book Nightmares in Red, White and Blue, a cultural study of American horror films. 

At first, I imagined it as a book about horror remakes, reboots and “re-imaginations”—because those were dominating the genre at the time.  (This was somewhere in the lull between “torture porn” and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY.)   I outlined the book, started doing research, and even wrote a first chapter… then changed my mind.

When I came back around to the project a year or two later, I decided to make it a book entirely about supernatural / metaphysical horror films—focusing especially on films made since the mid-1980s.  I had been working for several years on a Discovery Channel series called A HAUNTING, which seemed to be in line with the latest trends in the horror genre, and I had strong opinions about why and how such stories work.  So I started writing.  Again I created a full outline, did some in-depth research, and completed a first chapter.  I was feeling pretty good about it, but somewhere along the line I got distracted.

One of the things that distracted me was exploring L.A.  Every weekend, my wife and I would go hiking at scenic spots in and around the city, and I quickly realized that every scenic spot in and around L.A. has been featured in a movie at some point.  Many of the more remote locations have a long history of use as filming locations, especially in westerns.  Although I had never been a particular fan of westerns—I naively thought it was a genre built on clichés—visiting these filming locations prompted me to start watching some studio-era westerns I'd never seen.  I found a great old-fashioned video store called Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee that had a lot of stuff never released on DVD.  After that I was hooked.

Somehow, over the next few years, my prospective horror book became a book about westerns.  Initially, I thought of it as “a book about the other great American film genre about violence."  I had an idea that westerns generally presented a very conservative perspective on violence, while horror films are more liberal.  But that simplistic notion disappeared once I actually started watching the movies.  My hope is that end result of my cinematic exploration will be a compelling introduction to the genre for people like me: members of a certain generation (raised on action, horror and sci-fi films) who have never really given westerns a chance. 

2015 was a big year for westerns.  Films like THE HATEFUL EIGHT, THE REVENANT, and BONE TOMAHAWK made a big impression on younger moviegoers—in part, I think, because they aren't what we expect from westerns.  They are adventures, thrillers, horror films.  But still westerns.  Personally, I don’t believe that any genre is ever pure.  I can’t write about the horror genre without also writing about psychological thrillers and dark sc-fi, and sometimes even comedy.  I don’t think anyone can, or should, write about westerns in this day in age without also considering “hidden westerns” that are more readily identified with other genres.  (I borrow the term "hidden westerns" from filmmaker John Carpenter, who has made more than his fair share of hidden westerns.) 

When I started obsessing about westerns, I noticed that the most comprehensive and authoritative books on the subject tend to assume that the genre basically died in the mid-1970s, with maybe a few gasps of new life in the early 90s and late 2000s.  Being a horror fan, of course I love the idea that the western genre is undead… returned from the grave, somehow transformed by its years in purgatory.  Hence the title of my book: The Quick, The Dead and the Revived.

It’s not a book about horror-westerns.  It’s a book about the most intelligent and influential western films from 1939 to 2010, in the same way that Nightmares and Red, White and Blue was about the most intelligent and influential American horror films from 1931 to 2000.  I tried to examine all of the classic A-westerns.  There are three chapters alone on the 1950s, the decade that produced the most iconic films in the genre.  There’s also a chapter on spaghetti westerns, as well as chapters on urban westerns of the 1970s, space westerns of the 1980s, neo-westerns of the 1990s, and the postmodern westerns of the 2000s.  I think the book proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the genre remains vital—if still somewhat hidden and underappreciated.

Now, because I know that my name on a book cover is probably not going to draw my fellow horror fans to the western genre, I want to point to some places where the two genres overlap in interesting ways.  I think most horror enthusiasts are vaguely aware of the more overt attempts to blend the two genres—mostly B-movies and DTV features about ghosts, vampires and zombies in the Old West.  Stuff like CURSE OF THE UNDEAD (1959), BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA (1966), Charles Band’s GHOST TOWN (1988), DEAD NOON (2007) with Kane Hodder, etc.  I’m not a big fan of that type of horror-western.  I prefer more subtle overlaps.

Gary Cooper and Boris Karloff in UNCONQUERED

For example, I can’t watch Cecil B. DeMille’s western UNCONQUERED (1947), which stars Boris Karloff as the villainous Chief of the Seneca Indians, without thinking about how DeMille typecast Karloff as another “monster.”  (UNCONQUERED is a very un-PC movie.)  In a similar way, I can’t help but think of John Carradine’s performance as a rather effete Dracula (in HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and HOUSE OF DRACULA) when I watch him in westerns.  And Carradine was in a lot of westerns, including some of John Ford's best work.  Likewise, Lon Chaney Jr.—best known for his performance in THE WOLF MAN and its sequels—made more western films than anything else, right up to the very end of his career.  Even Vincent Price dabbled in the genre, most notably in Sam Fuller’s THE BARON OF ARIZONA (1950).

My favorite early horror movies are those that came out of RKO in the 1940s, under the auspices of producer Val Lewton and directors Jacques Tourneur and Robert Wise.  So I was thrilled to find that Lewton’s only western, APACHE DRUMS (1951), plays like a forerunner to George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.  (I was, in fact, so excited that I emailed Romero to ask if he’d ever seen it.  He said he hadn’t.)  Tourneur and Wise also made their own forays into the western genre.  Tourneur’s STARS IN MY CROWN (1950) is only marginally a western, but it’s a personal favorite of mine.  I think of it as an Old West version of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, although STARS was made a few years before Bradbury wrote his novel.  Wise directed one of my favorite noir westerns, BLOOD ON THE MOON (1948), starring Robert Mitchum, as well as one of the most intense westerns of that time period, TWO FLAGS WEST (1950).  And speaking of noir westerns…

There are some obvious crossovers of film noir and the western films.  Hardboiled detectives on dusty streets, that kind of thing.  But I don't want to name them, because much prefer straight westerns that have a streak of dark naturalism or fatalism in them.  I love vaguely metaphysical westerns like PURSUED (1947), YELLOW SKY (1948), and COLORADO TERRITORY (1949), so I wrote an entire chapter about these psychological / noir westerns in my book.  

Robert Mitchum in the noir western BLOOD ON THE MOON

Once you get to American cinema in the 1950s, it’s almost impossible to avoid talking about westerns.  It was by far the most popular genre of the day, in film and in television—although science fiction gave it a good run for its money.   That said, it should come as no surprise that some of the best-known sci-fi and horror filmmakers of the day made some pretty innovative westerns. 

Andre De Toth is primarily remembered as the director of the 3-D Vincent Price vehicle HOUSE OF WAX (1953), but he was actually more of a western enthusiast than a horror enthusiast.  John Ford personally recommended him to direct RAMROD (1947), and De Toth cast his wife Veronica Lake in the lead female role, opposite Joel McCrea.  De Toth went on to make six more western films with screen cowboy Randolph Scott in the 1950s, plus one with Gary Cooper (SPRINGFIELD RIFLE, 1952) and one with Kirk Douglas (THE INDIAN FIGHTER, 1955). He rounded out the decade with one of my personal favorites, DAY OF THE OUTLAW (1959)—a particularly bleak film featuring one of Robert Ryan's best performances.

Andre de Toth

Jack Arnold—the man behind Universal’s monster movies IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953) CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954), and TARANTULA (1955)—made MAN IN THE SHADOW (1957) starring Orson Welles as a cold-hearted rancher, Audie Murphy’s best western NO NAME ON THE BULLET (1959), and the blaxploitation western BOSS NIGGER (1974) with Fred Williamson.

William Castle and Roger Corman each made several westerns in the 50s, although the merits of those films are debatable.  Some have argued that Corman’s directorial debut, FIVE GUNS WEST (1955), was the inspiration for ensemble action movies like THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and THE DIRTY DOZEN.  Corman himself, however, was quick to abandon the genre—although he later produced two compelling westerns from director Monte Hellman, THE SHOOTING (1966) and RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND (1966), both starring Jack Nicholson.  And I’ve always been fascinated by Corman’s claim that he helped to develop the Gregory Peck vehicle THE GUNFIGHTER (1950), one of the most iconic westerns ever made, when he was still a lowly script reader at Fox. 

Jack Nicholson and Millie Perkins in THE SHOOTING

Edgar G. Ulmer is not as well known as Castle or Corman (although his following seems to grow every year) but he made a western that is more interesting than anything either of them did in the genre.  I’m not sure what to say about THE NAKED DAWN (1955), except that if you are a fan of Ulmer’s work (which includes Universal’s THE BLACK CAT and DETOUR), you should definitely check it out.  It's a unique film in the genre.  Ditto Ray Milland’s directorial debut A MAN ALONE (1955), a very strange—eerily effective—little western.  And while we’re on the subject of strange…. Did you know that Rod Serling wrote a western?  It’s called SADDLE THE WIND (1958), and it’s pretty good…. Although not as good as some of the western episodes Serling wrote for THE TWILIGHT ZONE.   Serling also reportedly wrote an early draft of Marlon Brando’s ONE-EYED JACKS (1961), but we probably shouldn’t give him credit—or assign him blame—for that one.

Gene Fowler Jr. is another name that is familiar to classic horror fans.  He directed the cult classics I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (1957) and I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958).  He also directed SHOWDOWN AT BOOT HILL (1958), a respectable B-western that gave Charles Bronson his first lead role and paved the way for Roger Corman to cast Bronson in a comparable breakout role in MACHINE-GUN KELLY (1958).  Even more striking are Fowler’s credits as an editor.  He worked on Fritz Lang’s WESTERN UNION (1941), Sam Fuller’s RUN OF THE ARROW (1957) and FORTY GUNS (1957), Clint Eastwood’s first American western HANG ‘EM HIGH (1968), and the controversial A MAN CALLED HORSE (1970).  

Charles Bronson and John Carradine in SHOWDOWN AT BOOT HILL

Italian westerns are, of course, some of the most violent and horrific westerns around, reflecting a backlash against the genre in the late 60s and early 70s.  Horror icons like Mario Bava, Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci were part of the trend.  Bava directed one of the many pseudo-sequels to the immensely popular RINGO (RINGO IN NEBRASKA, 1966), as well as the western-comedy ROY COLT AND WINCHESTER JACK (1970).  Not his best work, but entertaining.  In addition to creating storyboards for the opening sequence of Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968), Argento co-wrote the Zapata western THE FIVE MAN ARMY (1969) and the ultra-violent CEMETERY WITHOUT CROSSES (1969).  According to some sources, he was also involved with CUT-THROATS NINE (1972).  Fulci likewise has three hyper-violent westerns to his name: MASSACRE TIME (1966), FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE (1975) and—depending on who you ask—A BULLET FOR SANDOVAL (1969). 

As far as I’m concerned, FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE is the nastiest postscript on the spaghetti western subgenre—although Sergio Corbucci’s THE GREAT SILENCE (1968) remains the best.  Others point to DJANGO, KILL! (1967) as the darkest Italian horror-western.  It's certainly the weirdest.  And there’s no question that DEATH RIDES A HORSE (1966), one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorites, is filled with indelible horror imagery.  These films all influenced increasingly dark and bloody American westerns, like WELCOME TO HARD TIMES (1967), THE STALKING MOON (1968), SOLDIER BLUE (1970) and Robert Aldrich’s ULZANA’S RAID (1972).  

Did I mention Robert Aldrich’s other westerns?  The filmmaker who gave us WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962) and HUSH… HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964) also gave us APACHE (1954) and VERA CRUZ (1954), both starring Burt Lancaster.  I remember when I went to the Deaville Film Festival in 2009 with my NIGHTMARES IN RED, WHITE AND BLUE documentary, the thing I was most excited about was the fact that they were screening all three of Aldrich’s major westerns.  The French still appreciate this genre, even if most (younger) Americans don’t. 

I could go on.  Christopher Lee co-starred in a British-Spanish western that pioneered the rape-revenge subgenre (HANNIE CAULDER, 1971).  Charles Bronson starred in a Native American version of JAWS (THE WHITE BUFFALO, 1977).  PSYCHO’s Anthony Perkins made an excellent law-and-order western with Henry Fonda (THE TIN STAR, 1957).  HALLOWEEN’s Donald Pleasance played terrifying villains in the revisionist westerns WILL PENNY (1967) and SOLDIER BLUE (1970).  John Carpenter has written several westerns, including an early script that was optioned by John Wayne’s production company (and later made--badly--as BLOOD RIVER, 1991).  I’d argue that Wes Craven made a western (THE HILLS HAVE EYES, 1977).  George Romero's most recent Dead movie (SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, 2009) was an homage to the Gregory Peck western THE BIG COUNTRY (1958).  The list goes on and on, and I’ve included many these titles in my book. 

So, horror fans… welcome to The Wicked West.  Read on.

MOVIES MADE ME #5: X - THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES

I was aware of this movie by reputation long before I actually saw it. In Danse Macabre, Stephen King hails Roger Corman’s X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES as “one of the most interesting and offbeat little horror movies ever made.” This is how King sets it up:

“Ray Milland plays a scientist who develops eyedrops which enable him to see through walls, clothing, playing-cards, you name it; a kind of super-Murine, if you will. But once the process begins, there is no slowing it down. Milland’s eyes begin to undergo a physical change, first becoming thickly bloodshot and then taking on a queer yellow cast. It is at this point that we begin to feel rather nervous – perhaps we sense the gross-out coming, and in a very real sense it’s already arrived… “

King astutely notes the film’s kinship with the writings of H.P. Lovecraft as well as Corman’s later counterculture features (namely, THE TRIP and THE WILD ANGELS) and concludes his description with an unforgettable anecdote about the final scene:

“At last Milland can stand it no longer. He drives his car to a deserted spot (that bright Presence hanging before his eyes all the time) and whips off his shades to reveal eyes which have gone an utter, glistening black. He pauses for a moment… and then rips his own eyes out. Corman freezes the frame on those staring, bloody sockets. But I have heard rumors – they may or may not be true – that the final line of dialogue was cut from the film as too horrifying. If true, it was the only possible capper for what has already happened. According to the rumor, Milland scream: I can still see!”

This is indeed a capper worthy of the best science fiction writers (and Roger Corman had several of the best science fiction writers on his payroll at the time), but I can't help thinking that Stephen King made up this ending himself in a late-night writing frenzy. Corman, never one to miss an opportunity, has since embraced the rumor – but not very convincingly. In the DVD commentary for the film, Corman says he doesn’t remember shooting this rumored ending... then adds that he believes it probably did happen and speculates that he must have decided that the original ending was better. I might have been convinced if he’d said that the censors wouldn’t allow the final line... but I hate to think that Corman could have been dumb enough to discard that ending. Whatever the case, that rumored phrase drives home both Corman and King’s message - that X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES is more than just a gross-out horror movie.

Corman explains that X – the first of his films about drug culture – originated with a simple idea about “a sax player in a jazz group who’s doing a lot of drugs.” He changed the hero to a scientist because he wanted to explore the idea that drug use could be progressive, not merely destructive. Certainly that’s what resonates about the film… Milland’s ability to see through women’s clothes and to best the dealers in Vegas is mildly amusing for a while, but the most memorable parts of the film are his trippy musings about “a city unborn, flesh dissolved in an acid of light” and a pulsating heart “close to the center of reality.” If only the visuals lived up to these turns of phrase…

In his autobiography, Corman writes that years later he realized “it was the concept that was important: a researcher moving through science toward a religious mystical experience. The theme of X-RAY EYES was rather similar to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, made five or six years later, in that there is at the end of the odyssey an hallucinogenic, mystical vision of light and motion. Kubrick’s trip was through space; X’s was interior.” Corman has also said that this is one of his only films that he would like to remake – because he believes the story deserves a bigger budget. (To give you an idea of the budget limitations, let me just point out that the supernaturally brilliant colors perceived by true visionaries are represented in this film by optical treatment of Pathe-processed film footage. Also, Corman used The Sportsman’s Lodge in Studio City as a stand in for Las Vegas... Enough said.)

This is one horror movie remake that I’d love to see! And with so many of Hollywood’s most successful filmmakers routinely giving lip-service to the genius of Roger Corman – the guy was just awarded a Lifetime Achievement Oscar, for crying out loud – it's a wonder that none of them have bothered to remake X. In the right hands, a big-budget “re-imagination” might even be able to top the ending that Stephen King planted in my brain - something that attempts to go behind the doors of perception that Aldous Huxley wrote about:

"Each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet... Most people, most of the time, know only what comes through the reducing valve and is consecrated as genuinely real by the local language. Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by-pass that circumvents the reducing valve. In other temporary by-passes may be acquired either spontaneously, or as the result of deliberate 'spiritual exercises,' or through hypnosis, or by means of drugs. Through these permanent or temporary by-passes there flows, not indeed the perception 'of everything that is happening everywhere in the universe (for the by-pass does not abolish the reducing valve, which still excludes the total content of Mind at Large), but something more than, and above all something different from, the carefully selected utilitarian material which our narrowed, individual minds regard as a complete, or at least sufficient, picture of reality."

Los Angeles Arboretum

A few weeks ago, my tour of Roger Corman filming locations ended abruptly. I had planned to include the Los Angeles Arboretum in Arcadia – where parts of Attack of the Giant Leeches were filmed – but decided to wait and make the trip later when I could spend more time there. This weekend, Leon Smith’s book Movie and Television Locations (McFarland, 1999) prompted me to make the trip. Smith claims that the Arboretum has been used in more than 100 movies and television shows since 1937 – among them, the Madonna vehicle Who’s That Girl?, the 1990 remake of Lord of the Flies, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The American President with Michael Douglas, the 1997 b-movie Anaconda with Jennifer Lopez, plus various Tarzan movies.

The Arboretum proved to be a beautiful getaway, but I have a bone to pick with Smith’s book: Most of its pages are devoted to pointless synopses of films, with very little additional information about where specific scenes were shot. For example, the unnecessary one-sentence synopsis of T2 is followed by this line: “The jungle is a location in several scenes.” Which scenes? I don’t remember any jungle scenes in T2. Other entries don't even provide this much information about where the supposed filming took place, which makes it seem that this book is a result of very basic detective skills (by a former member of the LAPD) rather than a genuine passion for the films or the filmmaking process.

A much more thorough list of movies shot here (at least, prior to 1994) exists on the Arboretum’s official website. Most of the shoots, it seems, revolved around the lagoon – which is probably most recognizable from the star-studded TV series “Fantasy Island.” In the middle of this lush jungle setting is a striking Victorian house, painted red and white like something out of a fairy tale. The house, known as Queen Anne Cottage, was commissioned in 1885 by Elias Jackson Baldwin – owner of the Santa Anita Ranch – as a wedding present for his fourth wife. The marriage didn’t last very long and the house was re-designed as a memorial for Baldwin’s late third wife, and used mostly as a guest quarters. Baldwin himself stayed at a nearby adobe, built on the property in 1839 and reconstructed in 1958-60. Just up the hill, there's a second oasis with views of the San Gabriel Mountains.

While I was in the neighborhood, I decided to pop down the street to Sierra Madre, which doubled as Santa Mira in one key scene from the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Dr. Miles Bennell’s office was in a two-story building overlooking the town square. From a second-story window in that building, he saw the townfolk gathering giant seed pods to distribute throughout the region. Through the magic of the movies, he and Becky Driscoll escaped via Beachwood Drive (several miles away in the Hollywood Hills) to Bronson Canyon (in nearby Griffith Park). For more information on this film, see Jerry Schneider’s comprehensive “Movie Making Locations” website.

Roger Corman's L.A.

L. and I were thinking of going to Big Sur for the 4th of July weekend… right up until it caught on fire, along with (it seems) every other patch of semi-wilderness in California. Lately, it’s hard not to think of all the apocalyptic books and films that have been set in this corner of the world – fires, floods, and earthquakes have repeatedly ravaged the late, great state of California. Wildfires in the L.A. hills provided a suitably ominous backdrop for Joan Didion’s novel Play It As it Lays (1970) and at least one film that made a big impression on me – Roger Corman’s The Fall of the House of Usher (1960).

In his autobiography, Corman writes: “The one exterior at the outset of Usher – when Philip Winthrop rides his horse through woods to the castle – had to have a stark fantasy look. As ‘luck’ would have it, there was a forest fire in the Hollywood Hills just as we were going into production. I heard about it on the car radio, turned my car around, and drove to the scene. I watched the firemen put out the tail end of the fire… The next day I went out to the hills with a skeleton crew, the second male lead, Mark Damon, and a horse. It was great. The ground was gray with ash; the trees were charred and black. And we threw a little fog in to add some effect. I got exactly what I wanted: to not show green grass, leafy trees, or any other organic signs of life. The film was about decay and madness.”

Corman made his Edgar Allan Poe series at the very beginning of the counterculture movement in California – just before a transitional period in which America would get bogged down in a long and costly war with a third-world country, then betrayed by the power-hungry president who perpetuated that war, before being saddled with the economic woes of an oil crisis. Sound familiar? But I digress...

One of the reasons I wanted to visit Big Sur this past weekend is because that’s where Corman shot one of his most influential films about the counterculture movement (The Trip). Instead, we stuck close to home over the holiday weekend and took a mini-tour of some of Roger Corman’s filming locations in and around Los Angeles. One location is practically in our backyard. The lagoon sequences for Corman’s first sci-fi/horror picture The Day the World Ended (1954) were shot in the patio area at The Sportsman’s Lodge on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. Corman says, “We were allowed to film there only because the restaurant didn’t serve lunch, but I had to promise to clear out before dinner.” (Update: The Daily News recently reported that The Sportsman's Lodge will be closing its doors at the end of the year.) Other outdoor sequences for the film were shot in Bronson Canyon near Griffith Park – where the geography perfectly suits the storyline: A group of strangers have survived the mutating effects of a nuclear blast by hiding out in a steep-walled canyon.

When he was getting started as a director, Corman also made a few westerns – including his debut film Five Guns West (1955), which was shot among the rock formations at Iverson Ranch in Simi Valley. This is a strange location to visit because it now sits right in the backyard of a small suburb and you almost can’t help peering into the windows of the nearby houses. Of course, that wasn’t the case in 1955 when Five Guns West was shot here in 9 days on a $60,000 budget. It’s been a few years since I saw the movie... (In the summer of 2001, I was working on the backlot at a TV production studio in Virginia – helping to clean up a disastrously organized collection of art department props. Among the debris in a huge outdoor container was a VHS collection of cheap westerns. The only tape that still played was Five Guns West, which I watched simply because it had Roger Corman’s name on it. I don’t remember being very impressed, but that was before I had really learned to appreciate the western genre. And, again, I digress...)

In his autobiography, Corman recounts his first day as a director: “I had planned everything. Then I awoke on the first day of shooting and drove to the location through an incredible torrent of rain. This wasn’t possible. My first day! I hadn’t even started and I was already behind schedule! I got so worked up and tense that I pulled off the road and threw up. Then I just leaned against my car in the rain and pulled myself together. I made it to Iverson’s and after about an hour’s wait the rain stopped… Actually, the opening shot was quite beautiful. We had great dark rain clouds with the sun just starting to shin through as the criminals were gathering on a hillside to be sworn in. It was the kind of shot you wait for on a big-budget picture.”

I loved standing on the tallest rock at Iverson, overlooking the sprawling suburbs of the San Fernando Valley and imagining that first shot. Corman returned to Iverson Ranch and Bronson Canyon for his forgettable film The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957), which I’ve only seen on Mystery Science Theater 3000, but I have to assume that the bulk of that movie was shot on the coast, possibly at Leo Carrillo State Beach.

One of my favorite Corman movies, Attack of the Crab Monsters, was shot at Leo Carillo... except for a handful of scenes that were filmed at Marineland in Palos Verdes. Marineland was the first amusement park in California, opening its doors in 1954 and closing them in 1987 when it was essentially co-opted by SeaWorld. What’s interesting to me about the coastal bluff where Marineland once stood is that it was used as a filming location both before and after Marineland: parts of the original King Kong (1933) were shot there, as well as scenes from The Lost Boys (1987) and Pirates of the Caribbean (2003). For the past few years, it’s been a popular destination for scuba divers, snorkelers, and movie geeks… but we learned that public access is now restricted due to construction of a new subdivision.

Sportsman’s Lodge - A startling number of people have gotten married in this gazebo, right next to where Lori Nelson was carried off by a horned mutant. How romantic.



Iverson Ranch

Marineland

Bronson Canyon

This weekend, we moved into our new apartment… and still found time to go see “Transformers” at the ArcLight dome in Hollywood, and to explore the Bronson Caves in the nearby hills of Griffith Park. Bronson Canyon is a mecca for cult movie geeks – a man-made canyon where dozens of films and television series have been shot since the days of silent film. In the early 20th century, the canyon was a quarry, where rock was mined for use in the construction of Hollywood roads. According to legend, the caves – or, more accurately, tunnels – were dug into the rock for the 1922 feature “Robin Hood,” with Douglas Fairbanks.

This underground passage is perhaps best known as the Bat-Cave from the 1960’s TV series “Batman.” “Star Trek” fans may also recognize them from the episodes “Friday’s Child” and “Bread and Circuses.” Others will know them from a host of mid-century monster movies: “Robot Monster” (1953), “The Brain from Planet Arous” (1957), “Earth vs. the Spider” (1957), “I Married a Monster from Outer Space” (1958), “Teenagers from Outer Space” (1959), “Eegah!” (1962), and “Invasion of the Star Creatures” (1963).

Roger Corman shot portions of several films here: “The Day the World Ended” (1955), “It Conquered the World” (1956), “Attack of the Crab Monsters” (1957), “Night of the Blood Beast” (1957), “Viking Women…” (1958) and “Teenage Caveman” (1958). More popular films that feature the Bronson Caves include John Ford’s “The Searchers” (the final scene in which John Wayne carries Natalie Wood out into the desert) and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter take refuge from the pod people in the old cave, only to fall asleep).

I’m a big fan of Don Siegel’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956), which has already been remade twice – Philip Kaufman turned the aliens into yuppies in the 1978 remake of the same name, and the writer/director team of Larry Cohen and Abel Ferrara took potshots at the military in 1993’s “Body Snatchers” (which was, at least, half of a really good movie). Each remake has been a substantial re-imagining of the original tale and I’ve often thought of this as a classic series on par with George Romero’s Dead films. The underlying themes are similar: “We’re them and they’re us.” The scene in which McCarthy and Wynter flee an entire town of pod people is one of my favorite moments in screen history… so naturally I had to track down the shooting location: at the nearby intersection of Beachwood Drive and Belden Drive.

Before the screening of “Transformers,” we saw a preview for the latest adaptation of Jack Finney’s novel “The Body Snatchers”… and I’m pretty sure the people sitting near me heard me groan. First complaint: the latest remake is titled “The Invasion”… as if distributors were afraid that target audiences wouldn’t go see a film with the phrase “Body Snatchers” in the title. And maybe they’re right – it depends on the audience they’re targeting. Which leads me to my second complaint (and this is a big one): It looks like “The Invasion” is more of an action-thriller than a sci-fi/horror movie… or at least they’re trying to sell it that way. It seems to me that the filmmakers are alienating a built-in audience: fans of the older films. I, for one, would rather go see a faithful remake of the surprisingly intelligent “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” than the latest action-thriller with Nicole Kidman. But then maybe I’m in the minority…?

on the north side of Bronson Caves

Bronson Caves - south side





Bronson Caves - north side





view from the north side of Bronson Caves



At the corner of Beachwood and Belden

Happy 4th!

Everybody has their own way of celebrating the 4th of July. I decided to forego barbecues and ballgames, and seek out the shooting location of the 1982 horror film “Poltergeist.” A few months ago, I wandered through Agoura Hills – where the neighborhood establishers were shot – but couldn’t find the main house. Turns out that the Freeling home didn’t implode… It’s just further north, on the far edge of Simi Valley.

Recently named one of the top ten safest cities in the U.S., Simi Valley is known mostly as the home of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the setting of the Rodney King trial. It’s also the unofficial home of the old Hollywood gunslinger: hundreds (some say thousands) of westerns were shot in the surrounding hills – many of them on movie ranches near the Santa Susana Pass. After I took photos of the "Poltergeist" house, I decided to head that direction.

My first stop was Corrigan Park, named for Ray “Crash” Corrigan, who purchased approximately 1,900 acres of land here in 1937, and opened it up to Hollywood filmmakers. In the following years, the Poverty Row studios (RKO, Columbia, Republic, Monogram, PRC) made dozens of low-budget westerns on the property, prompting Corrigan to build a mock mining town on the ranch in 1942. A few years later, a small village was built nearby for the 1946 Howard Hughes film “Vendetta.” One year after that, 20th Century Fox built sets for John Ford’s “Fort Apache,” starring John Wayne, Henry Fonda and Shirley Temple.

In the 1950s, the ranch was opened to the public as an amusement park. It remained in business until 1965. By then, fewer westerns were being shot on the premises – both because the popularity of the genre was waning, and because the ranch no longer had the same sweeping vistas. In 1966, the Simi Valley Freeway was built right through the middle of the ranch. That same year, no-budget filmmaker William Beaudine provided two onscreen death gasps: “Billy the Kid vs. Dracula” and “Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.”

Sadly, all of the movie sets that were on the property have since been dismantled or destroyed by fire. Only about 200 acres of the original 1,900 acre ranch are currently accessible to the public… but they include the shooting locations of “Vendetta” and “Fort Apache.”

View from above "Vendetta Village," looking south

View from above "Fort Apache," looking west

Former site of Spahn Ranch, at the corner of Santa Susana Pass and Iverson Road

Further east on the Santa Susana Pass are the sites of two other noteworthy ranches: Spahn Ranch and Iverson Ranch. Spahn Ranch was the setting of only a handful of films – including Al Adamson’s unmemorable “The Female Bunch” – but it gained notoriety as the hideout of the Manson Family. Today, the property belongs to the Church at Rocky Peak… and they are not especially welcoming to morbid curiosity-seekers. Just as 10050 Cielo Drive (the site of the Manson Family murders) was demolished, Spahn Ranch has essentially been wiped off the map.

Iverson Ranch has a much more welcoming reputation. As a filming location, it predates Corrigan Park by more than two decades, and is allegedly “the most photographed location ranch in motion picture history.” Over the years, it played home to Tarzan, The Cisco Kid, The Lone Ranger, Batman, Superman… It was also the site of Roger Corman’s directorial debut, “Five Guns West.”

The ranch was subdivided among subsequent generations of the Iverson family, and much of it was sold to real estate developers. The most recognizable portion of the original movie ranch – known as “The Garden of the Gods” – has been preserved by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.



Lower Iverson

Garden of the Gods

Psycho Beach Party

This weekend, I started reading a book called Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2006), which prompted me to head for the beaches of Malibu. And not just to soak up the sun.

Along some thirty-odd miles of coastline between Santa Monica and Santa Barbara, there are more than a dozen beaches where several memorable (and some not-so memorable) feature films have been shot. The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) first came ashore at Will Rogers Beach. Clarence and Alabama vacationed on El Matador State Beach at the end of Quentin Tarantino’s True Romance (1994). Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello performed musical numbers on the Malibu beaches in AIP’s “lovably inane” Beach Party series, shot in and around Paradise Cove.

I confess I have never seen any of the famous Malibu beach party films – I prefer AIP’s experiments with Roger Corman, which brings us to the rocky shores of Leo Carrillo State Beach. This is where Corman directed portions of Attack of the Crab Monsters (1954), The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957), and Jack Nicholson’s LSD opus The Trip (1967). The beach is also featured in the Corman-produced Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954), The Terror (1963), and Peter Bogdanovich’s Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968). (It’s also where Mr. Miyagi taught Daniel how to “crane kick” in The Karate Kid.)

Years of erosion have created sea caves in the rock just below Lifeguard Station #3 – making it look like the perfect place to find a prehistoric crab monster… or hide from a prehistoric monster (see the 1959 adaptation of Journey to the Center of the Earth)… or bury a body (Benicio del Toro ended up here at the end of The Usual Suspects). Independent of their ominous screen history, the caves convey a real sense of danger during high tide. I couldn’t help thinking of a segment I produced for Survive This!, about an unwitting tourist who got swept into a sea cave off the coast of Oahu and couldn’t get out: the incoming waves kept slamming him against the jagged rock wall at the back of the cave until he was too tired to swim out. Thankfully, when we visited Carrillo State Beach, the tide was low… so we walked right into the caves.

Further south, we visited Point Dume – the site of one of film history’s most iconic moments. Point Dume is a 35-acre natural preserve, sitting on top of a 200-foot-tall triangular headland that juts out into the ocean. On the north side is Zuma Beach, which has been featured in the finales of several offbeat films: Robert Aldrich’s classic film noirs Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1963), and the Coen Brothers’ Barton Fink (1993) and The Big Lebowski (1998). On the south side is Pirate’s Cove, recognizable as “the forbidden zone” from the closing moments of Planet of the Apes (1968). At the far south end of the cove is the site where Charlton Heston saw the remains of the Statue of Liberty.

We took a long, winding way home on Mulholland Highway, to catch a glimpse of one more famous filming location. Malibou Lake sits in the center of an exclusive neighborhood, not far from the Paramount Ranch. It looks just as serene as it did in James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), when the Monster accidentally drowned an innocent girl there.
That’s a lot of film history to cover in one day, but it barely skims the surface of Hollywood Escapes.

Malibou Lake


Leo Carrillo State Beach

Corman’s Cave






Westward Beach

Pirate’s Cove (looking south)


north end of Pirate’s Cove


view from above


south end of Pirate’s Cove