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.

CLASSIC HORROR / HALLOWEEN TREATS

This is my favorite season… Something about it always makes me feel alive. Maybe it’s the inherent threat of death that exists in the chilly air and changing leaves (... though there’s much less of this autumn weather in southern California than there was in the mountains of Virginia where I grew up). Every year, I ritualistically celebrate October by watching my favorite horror movies… and a few new ones.

This year, I find myself gravitating toward the classic Universal monsters. Those old black and white myths have never been my favorite part of the horror genre, but I find that I appreciate them more with each passing year – because they are such a striking contrast with the comparatively un-philosophical horror films of today. I appreciate their emphasis on pervasive, carefully-crafted atmosphere over simplistic jump scenes, mythic storytelling over naturalism, black and white chiaroscuro over the arbitrary use of color.

In his book Horrors! (The awful truth about the monsters, vampires, werewolves, zombies phantoms, mummies, and ghouls of literature – and how they went Hollywood), Drake Douglas explains the appeal of those old Gothic yarns: “The [current] films have lost the dark creeping spirit of true horror, dealing as they do with shock and sensationalism rather than with the more cerebral and human aspects of the classics.” Jeremy Dyson, author of Bright Darkness: The Lost Art of the Supernatural Horror Film, adds: “At its best the supernatural horror film is capable of exploring and illuminating the interior conflicts of the psyche – repression, the denial of strong emotion, a fear of madness and the disintegration of the personality – elements that we have seen were present in embryonic form in Whale’s FRANKENSTEIN and its sequels, and them more clearly developed in THE WOLF MAN, CAT PEOPLE, I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and DEAD OF NIGHT. These films […] articulate something of what it is to exist in a mysterious and opaque universe, reminding us that mankind is not the be all and end all, and that there is something larger than ourselves, be it as plainly evident as KING KONG or as intangible as the forces that are able to keep the desiccated remains of a wayward Egyptian priest alive.”

With this last phrase, Dyson is making reference to CAGLIOSTRO – a script by Richard Schayer and Nina Wilcox Putnam that eventually morphed into the classic Boris Karloff vehicle THE MUMMY (after an extensive rewrite by John Balderston, based on his own experiences as a reporter at the opening of King Tut’s tomb in 1922). Dyson describes CALIGIOSTRO as a story about “a 3000-year-old Egyptian magician who has kept himself alive using scientific rather than supernatural means,” utilizing “radio waves to murder his victims.” When I read this description, I thought it made CAGLIOSTRO sound more like some of Karloff’s later “mad scientist” films than THE MUMMY. Thanks to author Philip J. Riley, I had a chance to find out for myself by reading the original script.

Riley is a serious fan of classic horror – so serious that he has written a book on Lon Chaney and edited a comprehensive set of Universal Horror film scripts. More recently, he unearthed some unproduced scripts from Universal’s heyday and published them through Bear Manor Media. The resulting series – “An Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters” – is a treasure trove for horror fans. In addition to CAGLIOSTRO: THE GREAT IMPOSTER, there are four titles:

DRACULA STARRING LON CHANEY features a detailed treatment by Louis Bromfield. The treatment was intended to entice actor Lon Chaney to tackle the title role. Riley says that the producers “knew that Chaney was always more involved when the screenplay was close to the original novels.” Accordingly, the treatment closely follows Bram Stoker's novel, featuring many of the more effective scenarios that were left out of Tod Browning’s 1931 film with Bela Lugosi (e.g. warnings at the inn; the vampire brides seducing Jonathan, Dracula climbing the castle wall like a spider; Mina at Lucy’s window; the extermination of Lucy; the climactic race to Castle Dracula). All things considered, Bromfield’s vision is quite a bit bolder that the Browning's film. Also included in this publication are the first few pages of the script by Bromfield and Dudley Murphy, a work in progress that was cut short by the death of Lon Chaney. In lieu of a full script, Riley’s book offers subtitle transcripts for F.W. Murnau’s NOSFERATU (1921) and Browning’s DRACULA (1931), as well as Lon Chaney’s only known attempt at autobiography. Bottom line: this is a collection that any serious horror fan should own.

ROBERT FLOREY’S FRANKENSTEIN is a more threadbare publication - serving mainly as proof that the irreverent tone of the 1931 FRANKENSTEIN film didn’t come entirely from director James Whale. Most of the iconic scenes and lines (including “Now I know what it feels like to be God!”) are present in this early script by Florey (who was originally slated to direct the film… as well as a prospective sequel in which Henry and Elizabeth join a traveling circus!) and Garrett Fort (who received the main writing credit on DRACULA’S DAUGHTER).

JAMES WHALE’S DRACULA’S DAUGHTER presents a story that is very different from the filmed sequel to DRACULA. The treatment by John Balderston, who had earlier adapted Stoker’s novel for Broadway, parallels the action in Stoker’s novel. It begins and ends at Castle Dracula (Van Helsing goes to finish off Dracula’s wives… and, later, his daughter), while the central action is set in London. Balderston’s stated goal was a faster tempo, and increased excitement and tension. “In the three horror pictures with which I was associated as original playwright or scenarist,” he says, referring to DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN and THE MUMMY, “the last one third of each dropped badly.” He maintains that the third act of DRACULA’S DAUGHTER “must top everything,” and he proposes that this film, by using a female vampire, can do so by “playing up SEX and CRUELTY legitimately.” The result is an excellent example of how to take a successful formula and amp up the horror so that a followup is less repetition than reimagination. The ensuing script by R.C. Sherriff, which Whale “camped up” with elements of S&M and homoeroticism, begins as a prequel: a brutal origin story for Dracula and his adopted daughter, with plenty of opportunities for Bela Lugosi to chew the scenery. It progresses slowly into a battle between Van Helsing and Countess Szelenski – who, in this version, is a far more delicious, far less pitiable villain.

THE WOLF MAN VS. DRACULA is perhaps the least worthy entry the Alternate History series. It comes from a later period in the Universal horror cycle, when the classic movie monsters were being transformed into kiddie fare. This script by Bernard Schubert, apparently set sometime after FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (1943) and HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1944), was designed to match Lugosi’s Dracula against Chaney’s Wolf Man by utilizing pre-existing sets from earlier films, and a very minimal supporting cast. Long story short: Dracula and Lawrence Talbot cross paths in familiar territory from the earlier monster mashes, and end up lusting after the same hangman’s daughter. Unfortunately, the hangman's daughter is a thinly developed character and the dialogue written for the monsters is uniformly unimaginative. All in all, it’s a depressing outing for characters that should be larger than life. Be glad this one never got made.

Not satisfied to simply read about classic horror movies, I’ve also been watching a few. Until this week, I wasn’t aware that two of Boris Karloff’s best films of the 1930s were made for Columbia. Sony’s “Icons of Horror” collection features the Gothic gem THE BLACK ROOM (1935) and the quirky sci-fi quickie THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG (1939). In THE BLACK ROOM, Karloff plays aristocrat twins – the gentle Anton and the sadistic Gregor – who are tormented by a family curse that pits them against each other. It’s a story as old as Cain and Abel, but bolstered by some surprising plot twists, plenty of atmosphere, and solid evidence of Karloff’s range as an actor. In contrast, THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG has very little atmosphere to speak of. It’s a straight-ahead, modern-day morality play that will be familiar to anyone who’s seen FRANKENSTEIN. Nevertheless, it’s worth watching the film for Karloff’s performance in the third act – a scenario similar to Vincent Price’s routine in HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1958), with just as much gleeful sadism. The characterization of this not-so-mad scientist may be a little hard to swallow, but the actor manages to maintain his dignity and likability throughout the show.

Also on my playlist this week: THE MUMMY’S HAND (1940) and THE MUMMY’S TOMB (1942). These first two films in Universal’s “Kharis series” are not as well known as the 1932 MUMMY film starring Karloff, but they have a very devoted following. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that the plotline of the Kharis series is more resonant than THE MUMMY.

THE MUMMY’S HAND begins with the backstory of an Egyptian prince named Kharis, who steals the secret of eternal life (a secret involving forbidden tana leaves) to resurrect his lover Ananka. He is buried alive as punishment, but only after he has been granted eternal life. For centuries, Kharis’s tomb is protected by the priests of Karnac. Only they know the secret: three tana leaves will make Kharis walk again, and kill anyone who dares to enter the tomb of his beloved; more than three tana leaves will turn him into an uncontrollable “monster.” Leave it up to a few clueless American archeologists to wander into “the most dangerous region in the whole of Egypt” and test the legend…

Dick Foran plays Steve Banning, the hero of THE MUMMY’S HAND. I don’t see how anyone could possibly watch the Kharis series today and not see him as the forerunner of Indiana Jones. Perhaps that’s why Universal’s 1999 remake of THE MUMMY has more in common with Spielberg’s adventure series than with the Karloff monster movie. The finale of THE MUMMY’S HAND is pretty lackluster (not to mention Tom Tyler’s performance as Kharis), but the film on the whole boasts some amusing characterizations, a good sense of mystery, and a laudable respect for the main theme of classic Gothic fiction: “There are some things in science which should be brought to light; there are others which should be left alone.”

THE MUMMY’S TOMB is not as dynamic, despite a slightly better mummy (Lon Chaney Jr. made up by Jack Pierce). The sequel takes place 30 years later, and the action is transplanted from Egypt to small-town Massachusetts, where the next generation of Bannings falls victim to the Mummy’s curse. The plotline is an unimaginative redux of THE MUMMY'S HAND, but that’s what makes the film so intriguing to me. Watching THE MUMMY’S TOMB, I felt like I was discovering an early template for the boilerplate slasher sequels of the 1980s. The Mummy kills with Jason Voorhees-like crudeness, visiting the sins of the father on the children with Michael Myers-like regularity. Unfortunately, this by-the-numbers plot merely leads to another lame finale. The angry mob from FRANKENSTEIN descends on modern-day Massachusetts, and the Mummy tries to escape by fumbling up a rose trellis. After this, I couldn’t bare to go on and watch THE MUMMY’S GHOST (1944) and THE MUMMY’S CURSE (1944).

It’s worth adding that the definitive Boris Karloff biography was released earlier this year. I haven’t had the time to start this impressive 568-page tome yet, but it’s waiting on my bookshelf. I’ve also pre-ordered the Criterion Collection’s release of the original ISLAND OF LOST SOULS. This one has been a long time coming! ISLAND is one of the very best classic horror films and the whole horror-loving world should be thrilled that Criterion, a distributor that is always devoted to excellence, has pulled this one off. The street date is October 25, by which time I also hope to have my copy of John Kenneth Muir’s new book, Horror Films of the 1990s, a film-by-film examination of the decade of darkness that I grew up in.

More to come…

HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN: The 1940s

With the DVD release of NIGHTMARES IN RED WHITE AND BLUE looming (next Tuesday!), I thought I’d spend the next few weeks highlighting some great horror films that aren’t included in my documentary. In 96 minutes, NIRWAB references approximately 250 films… but, of course, this barely scratches the surface of “classic horror.” With that in mind, I’ve given myself a task for the weeks leading up to Halloween. For each decade between the 1930s and the 2000s, I’m going to pick ten additional films to highlight. And since there are plenty of great horror films that I haven’t even seen yet, I’m also going to review a pair of films from each decade that are completely new to me…

For me, the 1940s are all about Val Lewton. The nine horror films that he produced for RKO between 1942 and 1946 are, in my mind, the bridge between monster movies and more “adult” horror. They may not have received very much recognition at the time of their original release, but future generations have discovered them on home video (I remember sitting in a darkened room in the basement of the my college library, watching them one by one on laserdisc), and many viewers share the opinion that these films represent the horror genre at its most ambitious. Here’s the list:

CAT PEOPLE (1942, director: Jacques Tourneur)
I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943, Tourneur) – arguably Lewton’s best
THE LEOPARD MAN (1943, Tourneur)
THE SEVENTH VICTIM (1943, directed by Mark Robson)
THE GHOST SHIP (1943, Robson) – the weakest of the bunch
THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944, directed by Robert Wise)
THE BODY SNATCHER (1945, Wise)
ISLE OF THE DEAD (1945, Robson)
BEDLAM (1946, Robson)

Die-hards like me also want to include Jacques Tourneur’s NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957) and Robert Wise’s THE HAUNTING (1963) in the list, even though Lewton's influence was entirely spiritual.

Not everyone wants to give Lewton so much credit. When I interviewed John Carpenter for NIRWAB, he confessed that he is emphatically not a Val Lewton fan. At one point, he said, he was scheduled to be a talking head in Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Lewton – and his plan was to offer a counter-argument against the producer’s stylized approach to monster movies. He told me:

“There’s a scene in THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, where Kirk Douglass and Barry Sullivan are these Hollywood filmmakers, and they’re looking at these cat people outfits… and [the outfits] are so bad. So they say, ‘Well, we’ll do it the old fashioned way with shadows and such.’ But when you’re a kid, you don’t want to see shadows. You want to see the real thing, man! Don’t piss me off by not showing me [the monster]… If you’re going to show a cat person, make it a good one… The most famous movie monster of all time probably was Frankenstein – and, man, they showed him. And he became iconic. You couldn’t keep him in the shadows. It would be a cheat.”

That’s not to suggest that Carpenter doesn’t still appreciate the aesthetic of Lewton’s film. He loves film noir – a visual style that had pervaded all of Hollywood by the late 1940s, and transformed horror movies into introverted, psychological dramas… with only a slight hint of the supernatural. Alfred Hitchcock’s elegant Gothic romance REBECCA (1941) keeps the ghosts in the heads of the characters, while Paramount’s THE UNINVITED (1944) seems embarrassed to admit that the ghosts are real. Old-fashioned horror movies like Universal’s SON OF DRACULA (1943) also took to psychoanalyzing their characters. In the film, the main female victim longs for eternal life just as intensely as Dracula himself longs for death. Her psychologist (a stock character in horror films of the day) explains, “The girl was morbid. That often means a fear of death, and Alucard could give her eternal life.” Of course, Lewton’s THE SEVENTH VICTIM made this point much more eloquently… foreshadowing dramas like THE SNAKE PIT (1948), in which the immensely sympathetic Olivia de Havilland suffers a nervous breakdown and shock treatment. Perhaps no film of the 1940s combined pop psychology and monstrous horror better than MGM’s memorably twisted THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1945). In this case, however, I’d have to agree with John Carpenter that too much can be left to the imagination.

Whether one chooses to cite Val Lewton’s films as a major influence on mainstream horror or not, the genre unquestionably digested the style of film noir (as practically every American genre did). Some viewers are particularly taken with the horror-noirs of director John Brahm, who remade Hitchcock’s THE LODGER in 1944. Personally, I think THE LODGER is painfully melodramatic. I have a much stronger appreciation for following year’s HANGOVER SQUARE, which stars Laird Cregar (an A-list version of Lon Chaney Jr. who played Jack the Ripper in THE LODGER) as a workaholic composer who is so repressed that he can commit murder without remembering it. Only DORIAN GRAY’s pop psychologist George Sanders knows the truth: When Cregar gets torn between two women (a blond-haired “good girl” and a raven-haired “bad girl”), things get messy. The plot is a little too close to Victor Fleming’s slick remake of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1941) – and, frankly, I’d rather watch the earlier film, since it boasts Lana Turner and Ingrid Bergman as the dueling dates – but there are a couple of highly memorable set pieces in HANGOVER SQUARE… one that takes place during a Guy Fawkes festival and one that takes place during a piano concerto – with music by Bernard Herrmann. (Eat your heart out, Alfred Hitchcock.)



Another unsung film noir that drew my attention this week was Delmer Daves’s THE RED HOUSE (1947), which stars Edward G. Robinson as a peg-legged old man with a guilty secret. When his adopted daughter and her new beau start snooping around a mysterious shack in the woods, all of his repressed memories start coming back… and suddenly ol’ Ed isn’t as kind and gentle as he was before. THE RED HOUSE isn’t a horror movie… It’s a much more traditional Gothic romance, where the major conflicts exist solely in the minds of the characters. Nevertheless, there are shades of later films like BLUE VELVET (1986) and LADY IN WHITE (1988), and some great moody sequences that take place in the woods at night, with the moon casting long shadows and wind howling through the trees. THE RED HOUSE also features a young Rory Calhoun (who horror fans will remember as the demented farmer in MOTEL HELL) lurking in the darkness, pretending he's Robert Mitchum.




More than anything, THE RED HOUSE made me want to see another film that’s I remember being just as effective at creating that kind of atmosphere. I first saw Disney’s THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW (1949) when I was seven or eight years old, and the five-minute sequence at the end where Ichabod Crane is chased through the hollow by the Headless Horseman made a huge impression. In NIRWAB, Joe Dante cited Disney’s PINOCCHIO (1940) as an example of childhood fare that separates the horror fans from the non-horror fans. SLEEPY HOLLOW (viewed, as I recall, back to back with POLTERGEIST on a day when I came home sick from school) was certainly one of the films that made a horror fan out of me.

And while we’re talking about cartoons, I have to mention one more kid-friendly favorite from the 1940s: “HAIR-RAISING HARE” (1946) is a Merrie Melodies short that pits Bugs Bunny against a big orange monster and a droopy-eyed mad scientist who looks and sounds just like Peter Lorre's mad pianist in THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS, which was released the same year. (Eat your heart out, Laird Cregar.)

HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN: The 1930s

With the DVD release of NIGHTMARES IN RED WHITE AND BLUE looming, I thought I’d spend the next few weeks highlighting some great horror films that aren’t included in the documentary. In 96 minutes, NIRWAB references approximately 250 films… but, of course, this barely scratches the surface of “classic horror.” With that in mind, I’ve given myself a task for the weeks leading up to Halloween. For each decade between the 1930s and the 2000s, I’m going pick ten additional films to highlight. And since there are plenty of great horror films that I haven’t even seen yet, I’m also going to review a pair of films from each decade that are completely new to me. Let the Countdown to Halloween begin!

Universal's DRACULA (1931) made the commercial appeal of “morbid” supernatural fantasy immediately apparent, and the studio was eager to duplicate its success. MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932) makes an interesting study because it’s based on story elements that writer/director Robert Florey intended for Universal’s screen adaptation of FRANKENSTEIN. The film is also notable as actor Bela Lugosi’s follow-up to his star-making role in DRACULA… which came only after he turned down the role of Frankenstein’s Monster. RUE MORGUE has absolutely nothing to do with Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name, but – like most of the classic Universal monster movies – it does have mood to spare.

Lugosi fared even better in the same year’s WHITE ZOMBIE (1932), which capitalized on his exotic Dracula persona (there are an unholy number of prolonged closeups of Lugosi's eyes), while Boris Karloff rode Frankenstein’s coattails into the more prestigious THE MUMMY (1933), arguably the most beautiful of Universal’s monster movies. The opening scenes, set in Egypt, benefit greatly from the natural beauty of Red Rock Canyon in Kern County, California, and the rest of the film testifies to the natural talents of cinematographer Karl Freund. The only problem with THE MUMMY, as George A. Romero said to me during our interview for NIRWAB, is that “there’s no mummy in THE MUMMY!” In fact, you only see Karloff as the Mummy in the opening sequence. After that, he takes off the bandages and becomes Ardeth Bey – a lethargic variation on Lugosi’s Dracula. (Romero added: “It was Christopher Lee’s Mummy that really impressed me!”) For sheer atmosphere, the film that trumps all of Hollywood’s early monster movies is the German Expressionist film VAMPYR (1932), Carl Dreyer’s first sound film. It would be years before native American filmmakers learned how to capture the same dreamlike quality.

Arguably more innovative but certainly less atmospheric was a pair of films that director Michael Curtiz made for MGM. When I interviewed Larry Cohen, he raved about Curtiz’s work. Despite his enthusiasm for the director, however, he wasn’t particularly impressed with DR. X (1932) or MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933). At the time, these films had the distinct appeal of being presented in color (actually three-strip Technicolor) and being set in modern-day America. DR. X plays like a 1930s American screwball comedy with some scares tacked on: THE FRONT PAGE in a rubber mask. MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM is a more compelling horror movie. In my opinion, it’s just as effective as its better-known remake HOUSE OF WAX (1953).

The most shamefully overlooked 1930s monster movie is Paramount’s ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932), a surprisingly gutsy adaptation of H.G. Wells’s “Island of Dr. Moreau.” It features a memorably sadistic performance by Charles Laughton (as the mad scientist who cross-breeds men and beasts) and a notable minor performance by Bela Lugosi, as one of Moreau’s man-beast creations who rebels against his creator. It’s a crime that this movie still isn’t available on DVD.

One of the best DVDs around for classic monster movie fans is disc three of MGM’s “Legends of Horror” Collection: a double feature of MAD LOVE (1935) and THE DEVIL DOLL (1936). MAD LOVE features Peter Lorre as an obsessive surgeon named Gogol. Bela Lugosi tried to top his eccentricities in the similarly-themed THE RAVEN (1935), but nobody plays crazy better than Peter Lorre. THE DEVIL DOLL is equally eccentric, but is perhaps more notable as director Tod Browning’s most sentimental film. Lionel Barrymore’s turn as an emotionally tortured scientist has all the pathos (though, admittedly, less of the perversity) of Browning’s early efforts with Lon Chaney.

SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939) is a capstone on the decade, reflecting a dramatic change in the genre: The extroverted horror film was no longer in vogue. SON OF FRANKENSTEIN is not nearly as morbid as its predecessors, and most of the thematic darkness is softened with humor. In fact, it would fit better on a double bill with Mel Brooks’s parody YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974) than with James Whale’s films. This was Boris Karloff’s last turn as Frankenstein’s Monster (who, for some reason, has gone mute since BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN). Bela Lugosi plays another thankless role, as Ygor.

There are plenty of monster movies from this decade that I have yet to see. I admit that I’ve only watched about half of the Universal pictures that appeared in the “Shock” and “Son of Shock” TV packages in the 1950s. (About half of them aren’t available on DVD yet.) Several of the filmmakers that I interviewed for NIRWAB fondly remembered those films. Joe Dante said:

When I was a kid, I lived in the suburbs of New Jersey and there were no revival houses. Occasionally they would find a film like THE WIZARD OF OZ and run that on a matinee, but for the most part we were completely unaware of earlier pictures. That all changed when the Shock package was sold to TV. That was Universal movies from the 30s and 40s that had escaped our notice, because they were never available… The coming of the Shock package to television was a big deal because it was all over the country at the same time. And it coincided with the creation of Famous Monsters of Filmland, which was the publication that united a lot of kids who felt very alone in their obsession with these movies, and didn’t think there were other kids like them out there. When the magazine became available [we realized], “Hey there’s more kids like this. Like me.” It was the beginning of monster movie fandom. There had always been science fiction fandom, but it was very literary. But this was movie stuff. The one thing that Forry Ackerman did, I think, for a lot of people who grew up to go into the movie business was to sort of educate them to the fact that there was more than just going to the movies – more than just sitting there and going home. There were people out there who made these movies. There were people who starred in them. And there were trends and types and categories of films. It was really the beginning of critical thinking, I think, for a lot of kids.

Mick Garris remembers:

Channel 6 showed horror movies late at night, on a show called The Scary Show. And it was just a guy in a lousy rubber mask – not a memorable horror host at all – but he had the Universal package, so they would run the DRACULAs and the FRANKENSTEINs and THE WOLF MAN at 11:30 on Saturday night, and my mother would stay up and watch them with me. Most mothers at the time would discourage kids from reading comic books or watching monster movies, from drawing ghoulish things and the like… but my mother would say, “At least he’s reading, at least he’s drawing, at least he’s writing, at least he’s doing something creative,” and was very encouraging about it… She wasn’t a big horror fan but she would watch them and say, “You know, that was a good movie.” I remember after watching the 1931 DRACULA, she said, “That really holds up.” I don’t know that she’d say that today but back in the 60s she said, “That really holds up”… So I guess in part I have her to thank for my turn down the dark aisle.

Many of the “Shock” films that have been released on DVD over the past few years feature Boris Karloff. In 2006, Universal released the “Boris Karloff Collection” – which includes NIGHT KEY (1937) and THE MAD GHOUL (1943) – and the “Icons of Horror” collection, featuring THE BLACK ROOM (1935), THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG (1939), BEFORE I HANG (1940) and THE BOOGIE MAN WILL GET YOU (1942). The “Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive” box set, released in 2009, includes THE BLACK CAT (1934), MAN MADE MONSTER (1941), HORROR ISLAND (1941), NIGHT MONSTER (1942) and CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943).

This Halloween, I decided to watch two non-Universal Karloff movies from the same time period, THE GHOUL (1933) and THE DEVIL COMMANDS (1941). Both were good finds. THE GHOUL is also relatively new to DVD… It was believed to be a lost film until a near-perfect-quality negative was found at the British Film Institute in the 1980s. MGM finally released the title on DVD in 2003, and it’s a beautiful sight.


The film stars Karloff as an Egyptologist who returns from the dead to stalk greedy heirs in a spooky old mansion. The cinematography is beautiful, and the dialogue surprisingly witty. Unfortunately, Karloff doesn’t get much screen time. Neither does Ernest Thesiger (best known as the wily Dr. Pretorious in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN).


Obviously there are some missed opportunities, but it's still a great companion piece to THE MUMMY (1933) and THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1934)… or even George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1967). Romero’s original title for NOTLD was “Anubis,” named after the Egyptian God of the Dead, and his concept of the living dead was very different from how it came to be interpreted by viewers: “I didn’t use vampires,” he told me, “because [Richard Matheson] had done that [in his novel I Am Legend]. I didn’t call them zombies because zombies were those boys in the Caribbean doing Lugosi’s wet work [in WHITE ZOMBIE]… I called them ghouls.”

The concept of the “living dead” is quite different in Columbia’s THE DEVIL COMMANDS (1941), directed by Edward Dmytryk. THE DEVIL COMMANDS is a Lovecraftian story that casts Karloff in the role of an obsessive scientist studying brain waves. After his wife is killed in a car accident, he goes mad, enlists the help of a cold-hearted psychic and starts experimenting on corpses. His goal is to use them as physical mediums for communication with his wife’s disembodied spirit.




Parallels to FRANKENSTEIN are numerous – right down to the Victorian warnings about “things mankind wasn’t mean to know” and an inevitable confrontation with an angry mob of provincial conservatives. Although it lacks the frisson to be a true horror classic, THE DEVIL COMMANDS is nevertheless an impressively literate horror film. Personally, I can’t help thinking of it as a forerunner to Tom McLoughlin’s ONE DARK NIGHT (1981), which delves deep into the pseudo-science of biofeedback beyond the grave. My only complaint: Where the hell is the devil in THE DEVIL COMMANDS?

Happy haunting!

Hollywood Avalon

It’s always nice to escape Los Angeles for a few days. Sometimes I forget how hectic life can be here, until I get away. And there are so many possible escape routes. The cliché is true: Travel for an hour in any direction and you’ll be in a completely new environment. You can go north to the mountains, east to the desert, or south to the coast. This week we went west, to the island of Catalina – Hollywood’s resort paradise for more than a century.


The main attraction on Catalina is the harbor town of Avalon. Though it represents only 1% of the land, this is where 99% of the population resides. Avalon has been a major tourist attraction since at least 1910, when filmmakers discovered it. The first film shot on the island was an Essanay one-reeler titled “Feeding Seals at Catalina Isle” (1910). Two years later, pioneer filmmaker D.W. Griffith came to make his short film “Man’s Genesis” (1912). He was followed by Mack Sennett and Fatty Arbuckle, who made an international star out of the island’s oldest seal (“Big Ben”) in one of their Keystone comedies, called “The Sea Nymphs” (1914). Soon after, Charlie Chaplin’s brother Sid made the short film “A Submarine Pirate” (1915), which featured the first underwater scenes shot at Avalon. The stars of the silent film era were well entrenched on the island even before Griffith’s THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) transformed filmmaking into an art form.

Around the same time, Avalon experienced its own re-birth. In 1915, a massive fire destroyed half of the town. Director Thomas Ince used images of the devastation in his 1916 epic CIVILIZATION. That could have been the end of Hollywood’s love affair with Catalina, but instead it was just the beginning. In a sense, what rose from the ashes afterward was not the same island… but a mythic world, filled with heroes and monsters and mountains of melodrama.


In his book CATALINA IN THE MOVIES, Lee Rosenthal identifies the 1916 feature THE PEARL OF PARADISE as “probably the first South Sea Island movie made on Catalina.” For roughly the next four decades, Catalina was home to most of Hollywood’s shipwrecks, swashbucklers and swarthy pirates. Two versions of Robert Louis Stevenson’s TREASURE ISLAND were shot there, one in 1918 and another one in 1924. Catalina also hosted two versions of CAPTAIN BLOOD (1924, remade in 1935 with Errol Flynn) and two versions of THE SEA HAWK (1924, remade in 1940 with Errol Flynn), as well as the early Technicolor movie THE BLACK PIRATE (1926) starring Douglas Fairbanks, and the big-budget OLD IRONSIDES (1926)… notable for an early appearance by Boris Karloff. Most of these films were not shot at Avalon, but at the two harbors of Isthmus, a much smaller town on the northern end of the island. Cecil B. DeMille made this his home away from home – returning multiple times to shoot exotic scenes for MALE AND FEMALE (1919), THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1923), FEET OF CLAY (1924), and THE KING OF KINGS (1925).

The interior of the island was also used frequently… for westerns! In all likelihood, this happened not because the landscape was ideal for the stories (though I admit that Blackjack Mountain looks quite a bit like Calabasas, where Warner Brothers filmed most of their early westerns with Errol Flynn), but because writer Zane Grey and actor Tom Mix had made Catalina their homes. Both men built houses on the northern hill of Avalon in 1918. Grey promoted the island in his 1919 nonfiction book TALES OF FISHES; Rosenthal says that Mix shot his first one-reeler here in 1919. DRUG HARLON (1920) was the first feature-length cowboy movie shot on the island, and it was followed by an early John Ford western called ACTION (1921). Ford, who spent most of his time on a yacht when he wasn’t on a movie set, returned to Catalina for MEN WITHOUT WOMEN (1930), SEAS BENEATH (1931) and THE HURRICANE (1937). Two of Zane Grey’s novels were later brought to life on Catalina: THE VANISHING AMERICAN in 1925 and THE GOLDEN WEST in 1932. The first film made a significant impact on the local culture: The filmmakers brought a small herd of North American bison to the island for filming and, when they were finished, simply released the animals into the wild. Today, descendants of those wild “buffalo” still roam the hills of Catalina.



Not all of Hollywood’s new additions were pirates and cowboys. In 1926, director Tod Browning brought actor Lon Chaney to Catalina for one of his most memorable roles. In THE ROAD TO MANDALAY, Chaney plays a creepy one-eyed criminal who follows his estranged daughter through the jungles of the Far East. I saw an incomplete bootleg video of this a few years ago, and was impressed – as always – by Chaney’s ability to inspire pity as well as fear. Even more unsettling: H.G. Wells’s sadistic Dr. Moreau set up camp at Isthmus in the 1932 film ISLAND OF LOST SOULS – indisputably one of the greatest horror movies ever made. (Why is it still unavailable on DVD?!) Also, I could swear that I read somewhere that KING KONG and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME were shot back-to-back on Catalina… but Rosenthal only mentions SON OF KONG (1933), so maybe I’m making that up.


By the end of the 1920s, Catalina was thriving under the ownership of Chicago businessman William Wrigley Jr., who built the island’s crown jewel -- the Avalon Casino -- as a monument to his 10-year-anniversary as owner. The casino featured a state-of-the-art movie theater for “talkies” (believe it or not, that newfangled technology wasn’t expected to last, so Wrigley was making a bit of a gamble on this one) and a grand ballroom that drew the top performers of the Big Band era. Our tour guide said that there was never any gambling here, adding that the Italian word "casino" originally meant a building used to host civic town functions.



Even as the rest of America suffered through the Great Depression, the resort community thrived. In 1935, Isthmus hosted its most expensive film project yet – the $2 million production MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY. In terms of film production, this was probably the high water mark. In 1942, Catalina was closed to visitors for the duration of World War II. (The Wrigley family leased the entire island to the U.S. military at a cost of $1 per year.) One of the very few films that were shot on the island during this period was the 1943 film GUADALCANAL DIARY – key scenes were filmed at Little Harbor, on the western side of the island. Many years later, Isthmus was used for WWII battle sequences in the film MACARTHUR (1977). Catalina made another significant contribution to film history during the war period: Merchant marine James Dougherty was stationed at Avalon, and he brought his young bride Norma Jean Baker. The future Marilyn Monroe got a job pulling taffy at Lloyd’s of Avalon. From there, she went on to a modeling career, which in turn led to an acting contract with 20th Century Fox in 1946. Marilyn Monroe returned to the island in 1958, to shoot a handful of scenes for SOME LIKE IT HOT.

By then, Avalon’s star was waning… at least in Hollywood. The advent of affordable air travel meant that filmmakers started going further from L.A. to find exotic locations for their films. Avalon hosted many lower-budget television productions in the 50s and 60s, but fewer and fewer feature films. One of the biggest remaining draws for filmmakers was Avalon’s famous glass-bottom boats – featured prominently in the 1966 Doris Day picture THE GLASS BOTTOM BOAT. These boats were famously used to shoot underwater sequences for JAWS (1974). I like to think of Spielberg's film as the culmination of a Catalina sea-monster tradition that goes back to an early screen adaptation of Herman Melville’s MOBY DICK (as THE SEA BEAST in 1926); it continued with the Howard Hawks film TIGER SHARK (1932), mutated into a pair of 50s b-movies (THE PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES and Roger Corman’s MONSTER FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR) and evolved into JAWS, the perfect beast.

Another famous horror movie from the 60s features Little Harbor on the west side of the island. Remember Rosemary’s impregnation nightmare in ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968)? She starts out by imagining that her bed is floating toward a tropical island. Unfortunately, when she gets to the beach, she’s suddenly surrounded by a bunch of naked old devil-worshippers. I suppose this sums up the island’s New Hollywood mystique. Beautiful shores, dark interior. Eternal sunshine above, terror down below.


On a similar note, Avalon’s historic Tuna Club served as the site of the first encounter between Jack Nicholson’s private eye and John Huston’s incestuous robber baron in CHINATOWN (1974) – a film entirely devoted to exposing the dark underbelly of Los Angeles.


What’s amazing is that, although Catalina doesn’t draw the trend-setting crowd like it used to, it still exudes the magic of its heyday. Everyone here seems to breathe a little easier (maybe because most of the fast-moving cars have been replaced by golf carts), and the locals are certainly proud of their island. Filmmakers still visit from time to time – mainly for pickup shots (see WATERWORLD, THE THIN RED LINE, PEARL HARBOR, etc.) – but the island belongs mostly to those who come to escape, and who instantly find themselves feeling “at home.”

Classic Horror

If you haven't visited classic-horror.com lately, you really should. All month long, the site is profiling obscure international horror films -- shining a light on overlooked gems from beyond the U.S. Last week, I made a guest appearance to review the 1976 Spanish film Who Can Kill a Child? This week, the site is focused on German horror and I got into the spirit by watching two mid-century German exploitation films. I thought I'd post an "unofficial" review here....

In the late 1950s, Wolfgang C. Hartwig was West Germany’s answer to David F. Friedman – a slick exploitation producer with no artistic aspirations. That made him one of the most reviled members of his film community and a pioneer of Europe’s simmering cinema of sex and violence. Two of Hartwig’s early films have achieved long-lasting cult status among horror fans – the 1959 mind-bender The Head and the comparably mindless Horrors of Spider Island (1960).


The Head (the original German title, literally translated, is The Naked and the Devil) revolves around a mad scientist named Dr. Oog, played by the subtly menacing Horst Frank. Oog – like many a respectable mad scientist – spends his days in a darkened lab, talking to the disembodied head of a former colleague. After hours, he lurks in a sleazy nightclub, ogling a strip-tease dancer named Lily and hatching plans to graft a crippled nun’s head onto the dancer's voluptuous body. The film becomes especially twisted when Lily’s boyfriend unknowingly falls in love with the new hybrid, and the beautiful Monster (I like to think of her as “Re-Animatrix”) wonders aloud what she has become: “Which is my past – the past of Lily’s body or the past of my head?” It's a moment that's almost worthy of David Cronenberg.

One wonders what it must have been like to see this outlandish film in West Germany in 1959, when there was little to compare it with. Certainly there were antecedents: Robert Wiene’s The Hands of Orlac (1924), Erle Kenton’s Island of Lost Souls (1932), Curt Siodmak’s Donovan’s Brain (1953), Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), and countless mad science movies featuring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. But, as Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs point out in their book Immoral Tales (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995), this was one of the first European films to mix flesh and blood so overtly – setting the trend for Hammer and its many imitators. According to the authors, “this demented epic totally revolutionized the severed head sub-genre.” While it might be a bit of a stretch to refer to a “severed head sub-genre” in 1959, the film undoubtedly paved the way for Eyes without a Face (1960), The Brain that Wouldn’t Die (1962) and They Saved Hitler’s Brain (1966), as well as a bevy of sordid Euro-horrors in the following decade. This influence alone guarantees the film some status among horror fans, but The Head also stands on its own due to a genuinely surreal atmosphere – part German Expressionism (the lab and the nightclub are both equally shadowy) and part erotic obsession (the camera leers at Lily’s body just as lovingly as Oog does). Watch it alone at 2AM and see if it doesn’t get your imagination wandering.


Less inspired, but no less memorable, is Hartwig’s Horrors of Spider Island (a.k.a. It’s Hot in Paradise). The film stars Barbara Valentin, “the West German Jayne Mansfield” who appeared briefly in nightclub scenes in The Head, as Babs. A sleazy Hollywood producer named Gary hires Babs and eight of her saucy friends to travel to Singapore with him, for some kind of “dance performance.” Fortunately for Gary, their plane goes down and they all become trapped on a remote tropical island. Unfortunately for Gary, the island is already inhabited by a giant spider creature that transforms him into a hairy - and apparently lovesick – mutant.

From the moment the weary female castaways discover a fresh water spring on the island – and begin moaning in ecstasy as they bathe themselves and each other – it’s clear that the film aspires to be nothing more than mindless male fantasy. Before long, the girls are complaining about the “frightful heat” on the island, and shedding clothes as they vie for the affections of the last man on earth. Gary, feeling morally challenged, wanders off in the middle of a thunderstorm, and gets bitten by a laughably cheap (but still somehow creepy) spider. What’s interesting is the way this story plays out. The “monster” begins stalking the girls, but he never attacks them – he is simply a hideous voyeur. Nevertheless, when Gary’s appearance causes one of the girls to fall from a cliff, the bikini-clad women hunt him down with torches – like the angry villagers in Frankenstein. Suddenly, all that sexual tension turns into violence.

For all of its potential, Spider Island is not as moody or as erotic as it could be. Only a handful of images (the thunderstorm; the angry villagers) will stay with horror fans and even fewer of the buxom women will make the intended impression. By far the most striking thing about the film is the horrific dubbing and the mind-numbing English dialogue (“A dead man in a huge web… Oh Gary.”). Still, the film is not without its own peculiar charm – for better or worse, they just don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Chances are relatively good that any contemporary viewer who goes out of their way to watch a cheap 1960 monster movie called Horrors of Spider Island will get what they are looking for. Happy hunting.