Shocktober Review: Trilogy of Terror

 The Cap'n was a little young for Dark Shadows, so for the most part my only experience with the long running horror soap opera was through reruns on The Sci-Fi Channel (back when it was called that) and maybe USA. It seems like I saw it before The Sci-Fi Channel existed, but I know that it was always in the early afternoon and that I rarely caught every episode in a given week. My experience with it tended to include some member of the Collins family being pulled back in time (the Salem witch trials run stands out in my mind) and then being sidelined / imprisoned so the show could immediately begin telling the soap opera lives of their ancestors, often not involving monsters. It led me to pick up a tape called "The Scariest Moments from Dark Shadows," which was (no joke), a 60 minute compilation of monster reveal scenes with no sense of context whatsoever.

 All of this is to give you some sense of context that the name Dan Curtis doesn't mean to me what it did to a generation younger than the Cap'n. Uber producer and director, on an intellectual level I know he's responsible for Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker and Night Strangler, both House and Night of Dark Shadows movies, and that he adapted Bram Stoker's Dracula with Jack Palance. I know this, and his role as producer and director is well known, if you're just a little bit older than I am. As a result, I've long known Trilogy of Terror, and I'm positive I've seen it, but I'd never associated Curtis with the anthology of stories. Watching it again, it's funny, because he directed the whole thing, cast Karen Black to appear in all three stories (playing four characters), and brought in William F. Nolan (Logan's Run, Burnt Offerings) to adapt three Richard Matheson stories.

 The end result, as anthologies often are, is mixed. While I'm fond of the movie overall, there's no arguing that two of them barely muster "terror." Two of them are kind of conventional stories, one - "Julie" - about a student (Robert Burton) who seduces and later blackmails his teacher (Black), only to find he's in over his head. The other - "Millicent and Therese" is about a pair of sisters (both Black) who are at odds after the death of their father, but is there more to their rivalry than it seems? The final segment - "Amelia" - is probably the most well known, as it features Karen Black at the titular character being stalked by a Zuni fetish doll in her apartment. It easily has the most energy and comes the closest to being suspenseful / terrifying, if sometimes amusing as a result of the noise the doll makes.

 Maybe I give Trilogy of Terror too much grief - we are talking about a made-for-TV horror anthology from 1975. It's not as though it's any more or less tame than an episode of Night Gallery or some (emphasis on "some") of the Amicus films. In order to get more specific, I'll have to venture into SPOILER territory, specifically about "Julie" and "Millicent and Therese." Continue accordingly.

 While I chuckle at the Zuni fetish doll (or, rather, the low-fi way Curtis and company bring it to life), "Amelia" is easily the best segment and the closest that comes to horror. "Julie" is, technically speaking, about a serial killer, although there's a bit of bait and switch about how she "implants" the idea of pursuing a teacher into Chad (Burton)'s head. I honestly thought it was heading in a supernatural direction, but nope, Ms. Eldritch just lures students in, lets them think they're in control, and then murders them when she gets bored. It seems like a horrible idea to have a scrapbook filled with nothing but articles about college students who died under mysterious circumstances, but that's how Curtis, Nolan (and, I guess, Matheson) wanted to end it.

 "Millicent and Therese" is horror / terror in the most tertiary sense - Millicent accuses Therese of using witchcraft and being a demon, and then kills her with voodoo magic. The only problem is that it's abundantly clear that since we never, ever seen them occupy the same space that Millicent IS Therese. Possibly this wasn't as easy to guess forty years ago, but it's not exactly subtle in foreshadowing, and by the time Millicent's doctor (George Gaynes) interacts with both of them (separately), it's easy to figure out the "twist." Split personalities makes for an interesting challenge for Karen Black, but it's hardly terrifying.

 That said, Karen Black is easily the main draw of Trilogy of Terror - in the span of 71 minutes, she plays four completely different types of characters and never draws attention to the gimmick of having one actress headline the entire anthology. She's so different in behavior, in delivery, and in body language from one segment to the next that it's easy to overlook the shortcomings of the rest of the movie. "Amelia" is essentially a one woman show, and she sells the fact that a mostly stationary doll is stalking and violently attacking her. When it bites her neck, the moment should be patently ridiculous, but instead it's quite tense. Black even makes the ending, which could be laughably bad in less capable hands, ominous.

 I'm a sucker for anthologies, even ones that barely qualify as horror, and Trilogy of Terror delivers just enough and doesn't overstay its welcome. Yes, Chad is possibly the most loathsome protagonist (?) you're going to see in any horror movie, but it's nice when he gets his. The second segment is at least atmospheric, if not very predictable. For a TV movie, the production values are pretty good. And, again, Karen Black is the main draw here, and she goes for broke to elevate Trilogy of Terror beyond just another TV movie. You can find creepier, or more violent, but for entertainment value, Trilogy of Terror is just the kind of anthology to put on for friends at a Halloween party.

Blogorium Review: Corman's World - Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

 I may be totally wrong about this, but one of the points made in Alex Stapleton's fine documentary Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel is that the average "twenty year old film buff" doesn't know who Roger Corman is. During an interview late in the film, Martin Scorsese (who made Boxcar Bertha for Corman) says "I think it's very important to let the generation of today know who he is, and we all, we knew it almost forty years ago, so it's time to reintroduce him as a director, but also what he represented to American entertainment." It's probably true that the average moviegoer doesn't know who Corman is, and I don't totally disagree with Scorsese or Penelope Spheeris (who makes the earlier point about his obscurity), I would argue among film buffs that the prolific exploitation director / producer is not only well known, he's revered.

 Roger Corman is credited with producing over 400 films, most of which are some variety of exploitation if not outright schlock. He's known for making films on a shoestring budget, sometimes in less than a week, and for providing many writers, directors, actors, and producers their first "break" in Hollywood. That list includes Jack Nicholson, Joe Dante, Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, John Sayles, Pam Grier, Dick Miller, Johnathan Demme, Spheeris, Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Allan Arkush, William Shatner, David Carradine, Robert DeNiro, Monte Hellman, Francis Ford Coppola, and Ron Howard (who directed his first film, Grand Theft Auto, for Corman). Many of these "Corman School" graduates appear in Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, to help tell the story of a fiercely independent filmmaker.

 Corman started his career as a script reader at 20th Century Fox, but when the story editor took his notes for The Gunfighter and took credit for it, he decided to go at it alone. He produced and assistant directed Monster from the Ocean Floor, then The Fast and the Furious (using borrowed sports cars from dealerships), and learned the keys to making films cheap in order to always turn a profit. He teamed up with American International Pictures and produced and directed a string of no-budget films (Dick Miller points out a scene in Apache Woman where he, as a cowboy, kills himself as an Indian).

 Corman's World breathlessly covers his stock actors, his period at AIP, the success Corman had producing a series of Edgar Allan Poe stories with Vincent Price, and the development of "teenage" pictures with Nicholson. The influence of The Wild Angels on Easy Rider (a film that AIP refused to make with Hopper as director and accordingly lost Corman a producer's credit), the decision by Corman to take LSD before The Trip, and the only Corman movie that ever lost money, The Intruder, are covered in some degree. Jack Nicholson makes his case why The Terror doesn't make any sense (the film had at least four directors, one of which Corman can't remember), and Scorsese used the "no-frills" schedule on Boxcar Bertha to make Mean Streets (which, had Corman produced the film, would have been changed to Blaxploitation!)

 The Intruder, in fact, may be the surprise for many people who only know Corman for films like Attack of the Crab Monsters or Little Shop of Horrors. Made in 1962 by Roger and his brother Gene and based on the novel by Charles Beaumont (who also wrote the screenplay), the film is a condemnation of the segregated South, told through the perspective of a racist rabble rouser named Adam Cramer (William Shatner), who arrives in the fictional southern town of Caxton to incite riots as a result of court-ordered integration of schools. The film, which is surprisingly un-exploitative, reflects Corman's own view of racial tensions, but was met with hostility when released. When he lost money on the film, Corman opted to go back to the formula that worked, and The Intruder, while highly regarded, remains unseen by many of his exploitation devotees.

 The documentary uses a wide cross section of Corman's output, from the monster flicks to biker films, women in prison films, blaxploitation films, and science fiction cheapies, and once the rating system came into being, the gore and gratuitous nudity required every few minutes. Stapleton also includes the tidbit that when Corman left AIP to form New World Pictures, he not only distributed his own films, but also provided US releases for Bergman's Cries and Whispers, Fellini's Amarcord, Laloux's Fantastic Planet, Fassbinder's The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum, and Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala. The desire to distribute foreign films when no one else would and, in some instances, play them in drive ins, reflected Corman's actual taste in films, despite his reputation.

 Also appearing in the film are Corman's wife Julie, herself a producer, director Eli Roth and Paul W.S. Anderson, the latter a director of the remake / sequel Death Race. At the beginning and near the end of the film, Corman's World shifts to the production of Dinoshark, one of the new films Corman is producing in a partnership with the Syfy Channel (you might have seen Sharktopus, another entry last year). It's star, Eric Balfour (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) talks about the guerrilla filmmaking techniques employed and general cost saving techniques that can make shooting the film difficult (including walkie talkies that don't work because they were made for children to play with).

 It's not too far away from the experiences of Corman's previous collaborators, who made do with too few extras, too little time, and not enough money. Bogdanovich's first "job" for Corman was taking a Russian science fiction film and turning it into The Gill Women of Venus, despite the fact that there were no women in the original film. He shot footage with Mamie Van Doren and other scantily clad women on the beach, and was told to shoot it with no sound. Once he delivered the footage, Corman decided that it needed dialogue, so the silent footage was overdubbed even though no one was speaking. Because he delivered the film in time and under budget, Bogdanovich had the opportunity to use an extra day of shooting from The Terror and made Targets. Corman may be fiercely independent and incredibly cheap (Nicholson mentions this repeatedly), but he knows how to spot talent and nuture it. Arkush and Dante started their careers as trailer editors for Corman before going on to make their own films.

 Corman's World manages to be both breezy and thorough in most points of Corman's career, but there are a few points of contention the film raises when dealing with his period running New World pictures. There's a distinct lack of coverage for the films Corman produced at New World (they instead focus on the distribution of respected foreign directors). The reason, at least one might argue, is that those films directly contradict an argument that Corman and Eli Roth make: in the wake of Jaws and Star Wars, Hollywood figured out the "Corman formula" and beat the schlockmeister at his own game. Accordingly, Corman couldn't compete with the major studios.

 What the film glosses over is the fact that a great deal of Corman's New World Pictures were ripoffs of the Hollywood films he claims beat him at his own game. It explains why Joe Dante's Piranha is moved around in such a way that the fact it was designed to cash in on Jaws never seems to come up, and other pictures like Battle Beyond the Stars (Star Wars), Forbidden World (Alien), and Galaxy of Terror (also Alien) aren't mentioned at all. Corman also claims he had no interest in slasher films, even though he put his name on a boxed set of the Slumber Party Massacre films (he produced parts 2 and 3) and The Sorority House Massacre parts one and two.

 It's not a serious problem, but Corman's World does gloss over a lot of the 1980s and 90s in favor of leaping forward into his work with the Syfy Channel (specifically Dinoshark). The "New World Pictures" section of the film is more devoted to footage from an earlier documentary about Roger Corman explaining his interest in distributing foreign films and also including interviews with director Jonathan Kaplan (Night Call Nurses) the late Paul Bartel (Death Race 2000, Eating Raoul). While it may be an odd omission, Stapleton's chronology does smoothly transition from the birth of the blockbuster to the death of the independent film (including a pointed comment from Nicholson to that effect) to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences awarding Corman a Lifetime Achievement Oscar. At the ceremony, many of the faces we've seen during Corman's World are in attendance, as well as Quentin Tarantino, an acolyte of the Corman style. The section caps the story nicely, although it is clear that Roger Corman is far from done producing exploitation films.

 And folks, that's not a bad thing. Even if it is the Syfy Channel.

To Be Continued... If I can only remember why.

Don't you hate it when you tease something like this:

"1. I am always looking for something new to show in between movies at Horror Fest (more on that subject later this week)."

but by the time you come back to it three days later, you can't remember exactly what you meant by "more on that subject later this week"? I knew I made a mental note to come back to that for today's entry, but I'll be damned if there's that much to talk about. Oh well, let's give it a whirl...

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One of the things I'd like to do with Horror Fest is expand the viewing pleasure beyond simply movies. There have always been episodes of TV shows playing between films and in the last two years or so Dr. Re-Animator became a fixture of breaks (to the chagrin of many of you) but that's really been the extent of it. I've tried finding good "horror only" trailer reels and it's not as easy as it sounds.

The one good dvd I did find was All Monsters Attack!, a disc devoted to Sci-Fi Monster movies that sorta fits the bill. The 42nd Street Forever discs each have horror movies, but they're split up in between other exploitation films so it can be tricky using those.

In my quest to find horror-related ephemera, I found a dvd from Something Weird Video called Monsters Crash the Pajama Party that may be exactly what I've been looking for. The dvd itself is three-and-a-half hours of short films, trailers, drive-in shorts, horror musicals, educational shorts, photo montages, and something called Hypnoscope that comes with 3-D glasses. Plus there's Tormented, a Bert I. Gordon joint from 1960.

Monsters Crash the Pajama Party may be exactly what I've been hunting for, as it's the sort of disc you can press "play" on and switch back to between the films proper. I'm not certain if there are more discs like this, but if so I'd like to check them out for future use, as it really can augment the experience.

The one other thing I've been trying to find with relatively little success is the Silly Symphonies cartoon about the musical skeletons. The Diz pulled that particular volume of Symphonies years ago and, the dummy that I am, I sold it.

Also, if you happen to see any good "Horror Host" material on Youtube, send it my way. I'm quite certain I can incorporate it into the Fest.

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So... that's about it. More than I expected, but still this feels like a lot less than what I teased. Hrm.

Oh! Voting ends on Sunday, so get any final plugs in. I'm going to cut the next bracket down to one week as to get more of you to jump on the business of choosing your Fest, so keep your eyes peeled!

Planning Ahead

While I was training a new employee at work tonight, she mentioned that there's a Drive-In over in Albermarle that's up and running. More importantly, it's doing pretty well. This makes me happy for two reasons:

1) this hints at a possibility of the revival of independent theatres - specifically drive-ins - that people can experience separately of the multiplex. Not knowing what they play, I don't want to go too much further down that avenue, but this does at least mean the Drive-In and drive-in culture isn't dead.

2) there's a (relatively) nearby drive-in to make a trip to and see movies at. I'm pretty excited about that possibility, especially if the movie matches the venue. We should put something together in the not-too-distant future about checking this out.

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The DVR is now working, and it should be recording David Cronenberg's Shivers, a movie I don't have on dvd and it'll be nice to have in some format. This aspect of digital media may have the edge on other "portable media" formats, since it looks pretty nice and is easy to access. The "remote" recording aspect is also a plus. I can plan waaay ahead to dvr a show and watch it on when I have a chance.

Now it's just a matter of perusing the absurd amount of movie channels available and narrow down additional films or series to check out. I also noticed that Syfy HD runs blocks of Tales from the Darkside, including later seasons, which I should also add to the "record" function. Horror fest will be coming sooner rather than later...

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Speaking of Horror Fest, Trick R Treat comes out on October 6th and I brought home a highly spoken of indie horror film called Plague Town. The Cap'n also needs to check out Martyrs, once he unpacks the Netflix disc.

Also, a little picture I found called Strangler of the Swamp...

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Behave out there, gangarinos. Remember, you still have two days to put in any dvd, book, game, vhs, or cd requests from Sweaty's.

It’s not Just About "High Art" (an essay about The Drive-In)

Sometimes The Cap'n just has to disagree with his textbook, no matter how authoritative the source is.

In James Naremore's otherwise quite thorough book More Than Night: Film Noir and Its Contexts, he devotes a portion of Chapter 4, "Low is High" to attack Joe Bob Briggs. For those of you not familiar with Briggs, he prides himself on being a fan of "low" cinema; you can find him providing commentaries for movies like I Spit on Your Grave and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter. He is also the author of a handful of books, including Profoundly Disturbing, Profoundly Erotic, and Joe Bob Goes to the Drive In, none of which I have read, but I'd like to.

Naremore considers him to be the very worst kind of champion for "low art", a far cry from the days of Manny Farber. In "Low is High", which is about the blending of low rent crime films and artistic criticism, Joe Bob appears as a figure of derision who "seems to be making fun of both the establishment and the Bible Belt yahoos, but in reality his cultural politics are quite safe". Naremore calls Briggs an "ersatz good old boy - a crefully contructed persona who enjoys redneck camp and who writes about a 'drive-in' culture that no longer exists (if it ever did)"(161)

I do not challenge Naremore's right to look down upon Joe Bob Briggs, and it does not surprise me that a "serious" film critic would do so. There is little toleration in the critical community for artifice or rebelliousness, so he's welcome to accuse Briggs of playing it "safe". What did raise my ire is the second half Naremore's contention, that a drive-in culture never existed, or that it is a fabrication on the part of Briggs.

Most of "Low is High" is devoted to refuting the myth that much of film noir consisted of "B" pictures interspersed with a few "A" movies. Included in that is a breakdown of the difference (both in stature and in budget) between the two kinds of movies, the history of Republic Pictures, Alliance Entertainment, and the birth of American International Pictures towards the end of the classic "noir" cycle.

It also gives me the earliest written usage of the term "grindhouse", from 1947, although Naremore points out that the movie the critic refers to a "typical" is actually a Hollywood A picture based on an Ernest Hemingway story (The Killers).

Naremore does not refute the existence of the grindhouse in large cities, but conveniently ignores the fact that smaller towns and rural areas did not typically have more than one movie theatre downtown. The local theatre would, in fact, play the "A" picture and a "B" picture with cartoons, newsreels, and short subjects. They would be extremely unlikely, however, to play the kinds of movies Briggs champions. Those films fell into the domain of the Drive-In.

I remember well into the eighties a drive-in somewhere in Raleigh called The Starlight* listed in the newspaper. I don't remember when it closed, but since we didn't have a "grindhouse" so to speak**, movies that would never play in a first run theatre or the burgeoining multiplex would show up at The Starlight.

But to actually cover the "drive-in culture" that Briggs defends and Naremore denies, we have to go back before the Cap'n was born. It brings about the crucial distinction between the drive in during its heyday and the dying days of the scene during the 80s and 90s: home video.

The reason I believe the "drive-in culture" had to exist was because there was no such thing as home video in the late seventies, and it wasn't widely available until the mid-to-late eighties for most middle class families. This didn't stop movies from being made that no Downtown movie theatre would play. The 70s is a repository for all sorts of "B" to "Z" cinema that wasn't made to go "direct to video", because such a thing didn't exist. The existence of Z Channel or HBO does not support the idea of films being made for television in the late seventies. So where did movies like I Spit On Your Grave, Robot Monster and Last House on the Left play? The Drive In!

Did "A" pictures play there too? I'm certain they did, but I bet you couldn't find Night of the Living Dead playing at the theatre next to the drugstore. In big cities, sure it probably made it to a smaller theatre or even a "grindhouse", but where that option doesn't exist, the drive-in is the logical alternative. Not to mention the ability to hang out in your car, smoke, drink, make out, or generally kick back and watch a movie.

All of this leads me to believe that there was such a thing as a "drive-in culture", if for no other reason than it would be fun to go to one every week. They offered different choices, double bills, and provided a more relaxed atmosphere than the local movie house. As the multiplex grew in stature, the option to see more than one movie clearly cut down on that angle, and the popularity of home video allowed people to enjoy movies at home in an even more relaxed atmosphere. The Grindhouse and The Drive-In faded, and are now both something of an abstraction; a memory.

James Naremore is quite right to differentiate between our conception of the "B" movie and the reality, and to shed some light on how we understand the history of some films, but I cannot agree that because one is misunderstood, the other cannot exist. There are simply too many movies produced in the era of the "B" film which serve no other purpose but to help support the "drive-in culture", whether he chooses to believe so or not.



* Please feel free to correct me, but I swear it was called The Starlight Drive In. We drove past it once or twice, and I'm almost positive that was the name.
* the closest Raleigh ever had to one was The Studio, which was technically two screens but otherwise pretty much fit the criteria