by ·Comments Off on While the City Sleeps (1956, Fritz Lang)

Kane Kyne Enterprises runs a sensationalist newspaper/TV empire. As is often the case in crime reporting movies, it’s not enough for these guys to cover the big serial killer story, they have to solve it before the cops do, in order to create new stories to cover. Vincent Price is the spoiled kid who just inherited the company, playing power games by creating an executive director position and watching the company leaders fight for it. In the game: big brit George Sanders, big eyebrows Thomas The Kid Mitchell, and small mustache James Craig (Side Street). Free agent Dana Andrews is a TV newsman trying to get away with his fiancee before getting pulled into all this drama. For once the women are just as important in the story. Rhonda Fleming is Price’s hotwife, sleeping with the small mustache guy, which somehow lands him the big job. Ida Lupino is Sanders’ gal, kissing up to Dana to coerce and/or blackmail him into helping. Sally Forrest (star of a couple Lupino-directed dramas) is Dana’s gal, who he puts in danger by trying to bait the killer. All this leads to more and more inter-office drama, the news people caring less about the actual serial killer, who tries to reassert himself with some serial killings, but gets caught in a futile newspaper exclusive. Last-minute scale-tipping rewards the (relatively) virtuous and interferes with an employee’s honeymoon, as was always happening in 1950s workaholic movies.

by ·Comments Off on Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962, Albert Zugsmith)

Odd human trafficking spy/rescue story, less furious than The Furious but overall better, set in 1900ish San Francisco. Yet another movie where newspaper men have to solve local crimes themselves, sneaking around to find kidnapped brides held in bamboo cages. All the dialogue is philosophical quotes. Costarring every Asian guy they could round up to play Chinese (including the Chinese-Hawaiian Richard Loo, who played Japanese in The Steel Helmet, and the Korean-American Philip Ahn, who’d play a doctor in Shock Corridor), I found nothing wrong with the movie’s politics except when it scared a cockatoo into trying to fly while tied to a perch.

Vincent Price is a rogue element stepping into the middle of a gang war filmed on Western sets, hmm. Nice freakout scene with masks, skulls, funhouse lenses, and zoo animals. In the middle of the rescue operation Price has a couple hours to kill until the girl auction starts, so he stops to smoke some opium. Soon afterwards when he’s accosted by baddies, the drug has given him super-slo-mo powers.

Feels like a Messiah of Evil / Carnival of Souls indie. Zugsmith produced a couple Sirk films and Touch of Evil before cementing his legacy with MST3K-bound pictures about wayward high schoolers. As far as I can tell, the source book by Thomas De Quincey (best known as originator of Suspiria) is an 1810s drug memoir and contains no human trafficking thriller story. The Monthly Film Bulletin review excerpted on wiki is spot on, just add “(complimentary)” to the end of each sentence.

Philip Ahn and Vincent have the same tattoo:

The late Richard Loo faked his death, joins Price for the final fight:

Angelo/Master has a cameo:

by ·Comments Off on The Haunted Palace (1963, Roger Corman)

“One becomes accustomed to the darkness here.” Another year, another lovely Corman/Price/Poe movie, this one with some Lovecraft mixed in. The Raven came out in January, The Terror in June, X in July, and this in August – Corman was a powerhouse in ’63.

Vince prepares the waffle iron:

110 years after Vince got burned as a witch, his descendant (also Vince) comes looking for his haunted palace inheritance, along with his useless woman Debra Paget (of Tales of Terror, Lang’s Indian Tomb star). They find Lon “The Wolf Man” Chaney claiming to be the caretaker, but he’s standing in the dark and has cleared out none of the cobwebs.

Elisha debuts his famous wide-eyed stare:

Possessed Vince with Lon and their bald friend:

Ancient Vince had possessed the Necronomicon (this is a good movie to watch right after The Ninth Gate) and his vengeful spirit still lives in the basement. With Chaney’s assistance he possesses Current Vince and summons hellfire against his enemies’ families who all still live in town – first Leo Gordon (villain of Riot in Cell Block 11) then the great Elisha Cook Jr. (in his first of many demonic and scary-house movies). The only normal guy who advocates against revenge and mob violence is Dr. Frank Maxwell (also the only normal person in The Intruder), but you can’t stop mob violence – at least the townspeople pause outside the castle to call Vince’s name a couple times before they charge in and set the place on fire.

How people in New England say “let’s do this”

by ·Comments Off on House of Usher (1960, Roger Corman)

“That almost looks like an image from a Roger Corman Edgar Allen Poe movie” says the Messiah of Evil audio commentary the first time the lead girl gets to the beach. “Don’t mind if I do,” said I. This was the first of the Price/Poe movies, made the year after A Bucket of Blood, and the color is really nice but they didn’t have their groove down yet, it feels draggy and drawn-out.

Visitor Phil makes a poor first impression, throwing a fit over being asked to remove his shoes indoors, then insists he’s the fiancee of sickly Lenore and is taking her away with him. Her brother Vincent disagrees (a delicate shut-in, this must be the performance the Burton cartoon was based on). Vincent goes on to explain that all his ancestors were evil and so is the house itself, and anyway, whoops, Lenore just died. But the butler slips and mentions catalepsy, so Phil goes barging through the family catacombs trying to rescue his beloved. She’s either driven insane from being buried alive or just wants revenge on her gothy depressive brother, and they go up in flames together.

Ever since Tales of Terror I’m collecting shots of Price being throttled in front of fire:

Phil was Mark Damon, who went on to exec-produce Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, and Lenore would guest-star on TV’s Batman. The butler is Harry Ellerbe of The Haunted Palace, which also has Elisha Cook Jr., so could’ve been an equally smart double-feature with Messiah of Evil.

Phil, having a foggy dream that used up the movie’s entire dry ice budget:

by ·Comments Off on Theater of Blood (1973, Douglas Hickox)

RIP Anthony Hickox – on the day he died, I watched a film by his father. Vincent Price is in disguise as a fake cop, not helping some housing bigwig evict murderous squatters. Turns out Price is back from the near-grave, having suicided in front of the critics association after losing an acting award, rescued by cartoonish winos and become their king. Daughter Diana Rigg handles his above-ground affairs while Price contrives new ways to kill his tormentors (beheading in sleep, being fed their own beloved dog on a fake game-show set) in connection with his Shakespeare roles. They don’t necessarily deserve to die for thinking Price is a cheesy actor, but for other reasons, they mostly do. In fact it’s annoying that the boring critic Ian Hendry gets to survive, but I can’t stay mad at a movie that stages a swordfight on trampolines.

I forget which Shakespeare play this was:

by ·Comments Off on The Raven (1963, Roger Corman)

Corman the year after The Intruder and Tales of Terror, same year as X, lightens things up with a very silly Poe comedy. Based on the opening poem and magician Vincent Price casually drawing with light in his living room, you don’t get a sense of the movie’s tone, but as soon as the raven transforms into Peter Lorre you know what you’re in for.

Adventurers Price, Lorre, and their kids Jack Nicholson and Olive Sturgess:

Rival magician Boris Karloff has got the traitor Lenore (Hazel Court), and speaking of traitors, Lorre has been sent to retrieve Price by claiming to be in trouble. There’s a henchman named Grimes; Price zaps his brains with magic finger-bolts. Lorre gets turned into goo during the ensuing magician’s duel, I think the kids survive, and Price goes back to his happy place: giving soliloquies to birds.

Price and the gang are all good but the real MVP is the trained raven:

by ·Comments Off on Laura (1944, Otto Preminger)

Laura is Ghost and Mrs. Muir star Gene Tierney, and she is dead. Detective Dana Andrews (moving up from playing the mob guy in Ball of Fire) is the detective, inviting Laura’s friend Clifton Webb to join the investigation since he’s a writer who loves murder cases. Prickly gossip columnists make good movie characters. Our chief suspect is Laura’s fiancee Vincent Price, but Dana keeps up the heat (incl. some weird tactics: one time he gets everyone over to drink cheap whisky then dismisses them a minute later). Laura turns out to be alive, a friend of hers having been shotgunned in the face and presumed to be her, and at her still-alive party, jealous Webb is outed as the killer.

“Dames are always pulling a switch on you.” I like Andrews – he has an interesting face, but he underplays hard in this. He’s better than Dorothy Adams as Housekeeper Bessie, who must’ve improved by the time she appeared in The Killing, since I don’t remember anyone derailing that movie like this. It’s one of those perfect-looking 40’s films – besides all the great closeups and composed shots there’s such smooth camera movement.

by ·Comments Off on Witchfinder General (1968, Michael Reeves)

This was pretty good, and less than half the length of Woodlands Dark & Days Bewitched, which I watched as an extended intro. After his men and horses died with bright red paint for blood, romantic lead Ian Ogilvy (Puppet Master 5 and a Peter Cushing haunted junk shop movie called From Beyond the Grave) returns home to marry his beloved Sara (Hilary Dwyer, who’d return to Vincent Price and witches in Cry of the Banshee) with the blessing of her preacher dad. Meanwhile, Vincent Price is going from town to town with his brute beardo torturer sidekick Robert Russell (of the pre-Revenant Man in the Wilderness) getting paid for ferreting out witches, who are drowned using the Monty Python & The Holy Grail technique or burned or whatever’s convenient.

Villains:

Next time Ian is away, the witchfinders roll into town. Price’s game is to get cash and get hot women. Sara agrees to sleep with him for a time, but he drowns her dad and brands her a witch, and Ian forgives her (weird for a dude in a period film) then sets to hunting the hunters. Price is on the outs with Beardo and has to hire a substitute torturer in the next town, finally gets beaten to death when Ian catches up.

Appreciate that the townspeople left her alone except to enter her house with ladders and put up this witch sign like a happy birthday banner:

Reeves and DP John Coquillon (soon to join Peckinpah) acquit themselves nicely, with a lotta zooms, some nicely framed closeups, a real cool water-to-fire transition. The sound editor however had a minute of anguished cries and kept looping them.

by ·Comments Off on World of Tomorrow 3 & Stump the Guesser

World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime (2020, Don Hertzfeldt)

Hertzfeldt comes up with his biggest horror yet: embedded-HUD popup ads. A future Emily backup clone contacts a past David and sends him on a disfiguring journey to retrieve secret messages about the clandestine between-time assassinations of various Davids by other Davids. It’s twisty! And excellent, and full of more wonderful quotes, and I’ll be watching these forever.

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Stump the Guesser (2020, Maddin/Johnson/Johnson)

The Odenkirk-looking Guesser (The Editor from The Editor) is renowned for his abilities, but when he runs out of guessing milk, things go bad and his guessing license is revoked. But during this time he falls in love with his long-lost sister, spends some time scientifically disproving theories of heredity in order to marry her, but things go badly at the end when he has to guess which door she’s behind. Some fun leaps of logic and distorted visuals here, but I wasn’t feeling it as much as other Maddin films.

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Accounting for some other things watched recently… The Mads from MST3K have been doing monthly live shows. I checked out Glen or Glenda, a movie that’s so busy explaining itself that it never gets to the movie, and told Neil:

That was… really fun. That’s the most I’ve enjoyed a MST3K-related thing since the end of the sci-fi channel years. I don’t know if it’s because of their obvious affection for the material, or if I’m just in the right mood. I’d never seen the feature either – shame on me, after digging the Tim Burton version for 25 years now (oh you just tried to watch it, is it cringey now? Is it Johnny Depp’s fault?) and the Mads nailed it in their intro when they said this movie has everything, but it also has nothing.

Next was The Tingler, which I already just barely remember (also explainy, features Vincent Price)… then the truly baffling, tensionless version of The Most Dangerous Game called Walk The Dark Street. I think the guy from The Rifleman played the baddie. Then some shorts I should track and name, but am not gonna.

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Hannah Gadsby’s Douglas is her stand-up comedy special to follow Nanette, which was the special to end stand-up comedy, and yet she pulls off the follow-up by creating another perfectly-constructed show and this time being breathtakingly funny. That sounds like a cliche, but I had to pause the show to catch my breath.

And Katy and I watched something called Australia: Land of Parrots, which is everything you’d dream it would be, and I should just play it on a loop.