Past Misdeeds: Diary Of A Madman (1963)

This is a re-run with only the slightest of edits, so please don’t ask me what the heck I was thinking when I wrote any given entry into this section (like, for example, why I didn't even mention Guy de Maupassant's original story in this one).


France in the 19th Century. A group of mourners attend the burial of magistrate and hobby criminal psychologist Simon Cordier (Vincent Price). Cordier left the group his diary - of course containing the mandatory horrible truth - to explain some strange occurrences surrounding his last few months. Thus endeth the unnecessary framing device and the actual action (or what goes for it here) begins.

Cordier, as one of the men who had sentenced the murderer Louis Girot (Harvey Stephens) to death, is invited by Girot to visit him a few days before his execution. The murderer had always stated that he wasn't to blame for his deeds, but was coerced to them by an invisible, evil force that controlled him. Not surprisingly, Cordier never did believe this story, and isn't getting any less sceptical when Girot now repeats it. Alas, Girot is telling the truth, as his greenish glowing eyes when the ranting session turns violent only too clearly demonstrate.

Cordier manages to survive Girot's attack and knocks the man out. Afterwards, however, the magistrate's life turns strange. He can't stop thinking about what Girot told him; the killer's process files mysteriously appear on Cordier's desk; the locked-up portrait of the magistrate's long dead wife and child reappears at a place in his study where it hasn't hung for more than a decade. Eventually, a mocking voice out of nowhere (Joseph Ruskin) introduces itself to Cordier, and explains that it is an Horla, a creature from another dimension that feels drawn to evil - in Cordier's case his feeling of guilt for having (or only thinking to have, the film's not really clear about that) driven his wife to suicide after the death of their child, for which he held her responsible - and uses mind control to let the evildoers do more evil. Which, frankly, seems a bit unnecessary and a mite illogical, what with them supposedly being evil already. Now, if the film would explain that the Horla feeds on the darker human emotions, this whole thing would make a bit more sense, but Diary's script doesn't believe in doing things the sensible way.

To prove its point, the Horla puts the mind-whammy on Cordier and makes him crush his budgie to death. The very next day, the magistrate does the sort of logical thing people in horror films never do - and that seems quite out of place in a movie typically as thoughtless as this one - and visits a psychiatrist.

The Freud surrogate recommends Cordier to take some time off from his exhausting job, and spend some time sculpting as he had done when he was younger. It's a decent idea, really, or rather would be, if the Horla weren't an actual living being instead of a hallucination.

In his new life as an amateur artist, Cordier soon enough meets and is instantly smitten by artist model Odette Mallotte (Nancy Kovack). She's just trying to sell him a picture she modelled for, but instead  of buying it, he decides to hire her as a model for his first new work. What Cordier doesn't know is that Odette is married to the penniless painter Paul Duclasse (Chris Warfield). That's alright, though, because Odette would be perfectly willing to leave her husband for a richer one, especially one as malleable as Cordier seems to be. Unfortunately, the Horla has rather more unpleasant and violent ideas about what Cordier should do with Odette and Paul.

You'd think that a somewhat larger and somewhat more reputable studio like United Artists would have had no problems emulating the success of AIP's (and Roger Corman's) Poe adaptations, especially when they were willing to hire the star of these films, the greatest actor in horror film, Vincent Price. Alas, the studio heads must have somehow overlooked that the quality of the AIP films had quite a bit to do with Corman's enormous creative powers (and at that point in his career, his willingness to use them) and scripts that were written with actual intelligence and care.

In the place of the visionary Corman, UA set Reginald Le Borg, a director who had begun his career cranking out indifferent films of every genre for Universal, and went on to crank out equally indifferent TV jobs for the thankless grind of 50s TV. One can't help but suspect he worked cheap and fast, without that nasty habit of still trying to make a movie worth watching the Corman bubble had brought to AIP. "Indifferent" is also a fine word to describe Le Borg's work here. There's not exactly anything wrong with the man's direction; there is unfortunately, nothing right with it that exceeds pointing the camera in the right - though never an interesting -direction and having competent lighting, either. In not a single scene does the director seem interested in building a mood - be it a spooky one, an ambiguous one, or a dramatic, an exciting or a just plain entertaining one. The camera points, Le Borg shoots, and that's all. For some reason, he also lets his actors pretend the French currency is called "The Frank" (yep, just like the first name), because there's nothing that makes fake France more believable than not even trying to pronounce it (or any of the character names) right.

Fittingly, Robert E. Kent's script is just as indifferent, and badly structured too boot. Too many scenes are completely superfluous, or tend to run on long after they have expressed what they wanted to express (which never is much, anyhow).

The script's troubles begin with the utterly unnecessary framing device that might as well just not be there, for all that it matters to the proceedings, and continue into that most cardinal of all scripting sins: setting up interesting psychological circumstances for a protagonist and then deciding to just not do anything with them, because one would prefer some stiff operatics about a gold-digging woman, her painter husband and the woman who truly loves him. No, I have no idea why I should care about the painter's best friend/would-be wife either - the film certainly isn't telling me. It's all just a draggy mire of misused opportunities.


And - worst of all - not even acting hero Price seems to be immune to the air of boredom surrounding the film. He's not bad, mind you, he's just neither using his control of thespian nuance, nor his patented thoughtful overacting. The star is mostly just there, going through the motions, getting paid. I won't blame Price much for not giving a good performance here, though. Even the most enthusiastic actor can do only so much surrounded by people caring so little about the quality of the film they are making.

Voodoo Island (1957)

Hotel tycoon Howard Carlton (Owen Cunningham) has discovered he’s the owner of a bunch of islands in the South Pacific he never knew about. Obviously, the most obscure of them is the perfect spot for a very special hotel. Too bad only one of the men in the first expedition he sent out to the island has returned, and he (Glenn Dixon) has come back acting a bit like a, well, a zombie.

Carlton still keeps to his grand hotel in the dangerous middle of nowhere plans, of course, so off he sends professional debunker and TV personality Phillip Knight (Boris Karloff) and assistant Adams (Beverly Tyler), a couple of his own henchpeople, the zombie guy and a doctor. It’ll take them quite a bit of time to reach the island next to the island they actually want to reach, for very mildly mysterious things happen around them. Because we can’t have nice things, our team also picks up greedy Martin Schuyler (Elisha Cook Jr.) and sub-Charlton Heston-like manly man Gunn (Rhodes Reason, three time winner of the “Best Name in the Biz” award), the latter of course so that Adams can lose her professional demeanour and BECOME A REAL WOMAN in his hairy arms. Screw you, the 50s.

After forty minutes, our protagonists finally do arrive on the mysterious island where they are beset by a bunch of particularly lame man-eating plants and a hilariously mixed-race tribe of Islanders whom nobody ever told they don’t actually practice voodoo in the South Pacific. After some time, things finally wrap up.

As a long-suffering victim of 50s low budget genre cinema, I’ve learned that one of the foremost abilities a viewer needs to get anything more out of many of these films than a nice little nap is to bring up the will to ignore one’s own yawns, try to identify anything of mild interest as fast as possible and cling to it through most of the film. After all, you don’t expect a director like Reginald Le Borg to keep you entertained without your help, right? If you do, you’ll be happy to hear this is a typical Le Borg joint, full of static shots that remind me of nothing so much as of the early days of sound film, and awkward editing that’ll at least teach you to appreciate the editing in Cannon films in the 80s.

On the scripting side, this suffers from the usual 50s obsessions with getting women back behind the cooking stove, rude assholes as the pinnacle of manhood, and not giving a shit about the little stuff like the fact that voodoo happens on rather different islands, or that there probably should something of interest happen in a movie from time to time. The dialogue’s, well, the dialogue is of the sort that leads to a wrily funny Karloff performance in which the great man has obviously decided the only way he can get through this is by delivering every single one of his lines as if he were talking to small, somewhat slow child. Which, given the performances of everyone here not named Karloff, Tyler or Cook, and what these poor people have to say, seems like a perfectly appropriate approach.

So in this case, making one’s own fun as a viewer mostly consists of giggling at Karloff’s and Cook’s performance, admiring how good the chemistry between Karloff and Tyler is, and developing respect for the dignity Tyler tries to give her character arc, such as it is, even though it’s a whole load of 50s bull crap. Later on, there are also the rubber plant monsters – whose best type seems to kill people by mildly bumping into them – and the South Sea tribe whose leader is played by a former Austrian cavalry officer to admire. It’s not much, but I honestly do take my enjoyment where I can find it in this sort of thing.

In short: Weird Woman (1944)

When Professor Norman Reed (Lon Chaney Jr.) returns from a research and book writing year somewhere in “jungles” of what I can only assume isn’t supposed to be Hawaii or Honolulu, even if the little we get to see of it in flashback suggest a really silly Hollywood version of one of these places, with his new wife Paula (Anne Gwynne), his star is on the rise. His book is a huge success, and he seems to be a shoe-in for the post of the department head of sociology. But are his actual achievements the reason for his success, or is it the magic Paula has brought with her from the island, and whose practice she hides from the unpleasantly rationalistic Norman? (Yes, I’m still a laissez-faire atheist and am perfectly alright with the people in my life having different beliefs than myself, Richard Dawkins and his ilk be damned, so Norman’s conniptions about Paula’s activities once he learns about them still make him look like a patronizing ass to me).

Be the working of magic as it may, his new fast-lane career is bound to make Norman some enemies. The worst of them is Illona Carr (Evelyn Ankers), the college librarian he once had a – seemingly quite public – “flirtation” with, and who learned of his marriage only when he and Paula arrived at the party she gave in honour of his return. Illona does her worst to drive Paula out and/or ruin Norman’s life, and given that people on that campus really fall for the most obvious attempts at manipulation, she just might succeed.

Usually, I don’t find it very difficult to separate movie adaptations of books that diverge heftily from their sources in my mind from the novels they don’t do justice to, and can try to appreciate them as their own entities.

In the case of this first adaptation of Fritz Leiber’s “Conjure Wife”, I find this approach a rather difficult one to take. Watching Weird Woman, I spent most of my time groaning about the changes to the book that devalue the supernatural content in a way which also turns a complex treatment of the connections between superstition and rationality, that is also doing ironic work on 40s concepts of marriage, the supposed differences between men and women, and campus politics, into a simple case of a morally and intellectually black and white thriller. Gone are the ambiguities of Leiber’s book, gone are some excellent moments of supernatural menace, and gone is much of the characterization, all to be replaced by a melodramatic thriller about campus politics that goes through a lot of plot beats of the novel while completely ignoring their meaning, simplifying everything for no reason apart from Universal’s mid-40s hatred of anything supernatural.

If I could get over my problems with these weaknesses, I would probably find something good to say about the film. At the very least, its preposterous melodramatic finale is a thing of perfection in its own little way, carried by performances of Ankers and a wildly, effectively, overacting Elizabeth Russell in tandem with blunt, yet wonderful, noir-expressionist editing and camera work. Director Reginald Le Borg does one of his finer jobs here anyway, providing Weird Woman with many a scene of shadowy moodiness, which makes it probably quite the effective film for anyone not as grumpy about Scott Darling’s adaptation of Leiber’s novel as I am. Of course that mood in the service of an actual supernatural tale would have been quite the thing.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,thriller,reginald le borg,lon chaney jr,anne gwynne,evelyn ankers

Three Inner Sanctums Make A Post: Read the fine print: you may have just mortgaged your life

Dead Man’s Eyes (1944): In this Inner Sanctum Mystery, Lon Chaney Jr. feels particularly sorry for himself after his artist character is accidentally blinded (which is the sort of thing that happens when your eyewash stands right next to your acid). That’s bad news for the audience, for the only thing standing between it and a dull yet melodramatic plot full of non-events that mostly aren’t shown by director Reginald Le Borg anyway is an extra helping of Chaney whimpering “I’m blind! I’m blind”, followed by Chaney shouting “I’m blind! I’m blind”, and other assertions of blindness. If you’re like me and find Chaney’s general tendency to regard whininess as the supreme thespian expression aggravating more often than not, Dead Man’s Eyes might just cause you paroxysms (“My brains! My brains!”) of annoyance.

Strange Confession (1945): Despite some – surprisingly – stylish direction by John Hoffman and an extra sleazy performance of J. Carrol Naish as the world’s sleaziest capitalist, this outing of Lon Chaney Jr., unluckiest man alive, isn’t very interesting. It fluctuates wildly between pretty tame melodrama, not very interesting mystery, and sub-Frank Capra gestures, without ever seeming to get to the actual point. Unless the point is to tell us that capitalists are evil bastards out to exploit even genius chemist Lon Chaney Jr., in which case I can only say “No shit, Sherlock”.

Pillow of Death (1945): This final Inner Sanctum mystery finds beleaguered Lon Chaney Jr. again having trouble with a murdered wife. An absurdly old-fashioned (for 1945) old dark house mystery ensues, fake séances are held by a psychic investigator called Julian Julian, and a guy who steals corpses and stalks the film’s heroine gets the girl in the end. The script of this thing is so crack-brained, it’s not difficult to imagine this to be a Monogram picture – nobody’s motives and actions ever have anything to do with each other, the film’s murder reveal tries and fails to get away with the old “he’s crazy, so it doesn’t need to make sense”, and things like attempted murders by gassing have no repercussions for the people involved whatsoever.

Because director Wallace Fox (him of Monogram’s magnum opus The Corpse Vanishes) does his job with visible enthusiasm expressed via random fast camera movements, and the script seems to be totally at one with its own idiocy, the resulting film is a very entertaining example of its type, the sort of thing I’d recommend to everyone who has seen all Monogram productions with Bela Lugosi and wants to see more of the same, just with Lonnie and a slightly higher budget. Which describes myself pretty well, actually. God be merciful on our souls.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,mystery,horror,melodrama,lon chaney jr,j. carrol naish,wallace fox,reginald le borg,john hoffman

In short: Calling Doctor Death (1943)

Popular neurologist Dr. Mark Steel (Lon Chaney Jr.) might have a wonderful career but when it comes to his private life, he’s a rather unlucky chap. His wife Maria (Ramsay Ames), you see, has only married him for his money and social position, and really likes to rub his nose in it too. Of course, she doesn’t agree to a divorce. It’s enough to make even somebody as exceedingly mild-mannered as Steel think about murder.

As luck will have it, Maria is found dead soon enough, hit with a blunt object and mutilated with acid. Curiously, it is the exact same weekend Maria is murdered when Steel has a nice little blackout followed by amnesia. Why, a neurologist might think there’s a bit of repression going on here! The investigating Inspector, a certain Gregg (J. Carrol Naish) is all too interested in Steel a suspect, even after Steel’s loving secretary, bookkeeper and nurse Stella (Patricia Morison) decides to give her boss an alibi. Gregg isn’t even happy after Maria’s lover Bob Duval (David Bruce) turns up, making just as nice a suspect as Steel himself.

Steel, stricken by feelings of guilt and hounded by the cop, isn’t happy with the situation either. Perhaps hypnosis will make things clearer to him?

I have already gone on record as not a great admirer of Lon Chaney Jr., despite his fine casting as Universal’s original wolfman. Turns out, I quite like his performances in the films based on the popular (and often excellent) Inner Sanctum Mysteries radio show. These films gave Chaney an unexpected opportunity to play characters a bit more suave than typical for him while, still providing enough room for his hangdog expression and general air of being hopelessly beaten before he even begins a fight. And because at that point in his life, he wasn’t quite the alcoholic wreck he’d become all too soon, Chaney actually made good use of the opportunity, turning out likeable and effective performances.

The first Inner Sanctum movie, Calling Dr. Death, is a case in point, with Chaney giving his successful doctor as someone it is difficult not to have sympathy with, while not overdoing the whole helplessness shtick. Cleverly, the script even makes a point out of the contrast between his abilities in his profession and his dire private life.

At its core, the film is of course a comparatively cheaply made programmer, a mystery more than bordering on the field of the noir with the plot and many of its elements (predatory women, amnesia, hypnosis) certainly belonging into the genre. One could, of course, argue Reginald Le Borg’s direction to be a bit too straightforward (with a handful of choice exceptions) for everyone’s favourite non-genre, and I wouldn’t even be able to disagree very much, but when a film’s every idea is this deep inside the well of a certain genre, I’m inclined to place it there as a whole.

Wobbly genre definitions aside, Calling Dr. Death is certainly a fine little film that may be rather obvious, but doesn’t outstay its welcome, and provides Chaney as well as J. Carrol Naish with opportunities to show themselves from their best sides. As an added bonus, there’s also a head in a crystal ball starting the film with a narration that has little to do with anything that comes after (and the same speech then was also used as an intro most of the following Inner Sanctum movies, with just as little connection to the actual films following it there).

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,noir,mystery,reginald le borg,lon chaney jr,patricia morison,j. carrol naish

Three Films Make A Post: in her eyes...DESIRE! in her veins...the blood of a MONSTER!

Gantz - Perfect Answer (2011): In the second Gantz movie (that in truth is the second half of one very long movie) Director Shinsuke Sato still ignores the fanservice part of the manga he is adapting, and concentrates on the characters and a lot of melodrama that's from time to time broken up by pretty fantastic fight scenes, as well as by a handful of pleasantly weird flourishes. The general tenor in reviews of the film seems to be that there just aren't enough of the fight scenes, but I really prefer the two tour-de-force set-pieces the film does have to the "more blood, more tits" approach; you know, there's nothing wrong with trying to stay classy. The problem the film has in my eyes is one of pacing - it takes a bit too much time to get going (and a bit too much time to actually end once the plot is over and done with), and then hasn't quite enough time left to develop the huge swathes of manga it has decided to adapt. I still enjoy the two Gantz films quite a bit more than most films of the blockbuster league, though.

The Black Sleep (1956): In theory, it must have sounded like a good idea to make a Gothic horror movie about the usual mad science stuff featuring Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr, John Carradine and a heartbreakingly ill looking Bela Lugosi. In practice, it's one of those films where most of the old stars are just carted out for a few minutes to remind the audience of better films, and the only one of them with a substantial role - Rathbone as the mad scientist - has the difficult job to not upstage Herbert Rudley too much while still acting like the prototype of Cushing's Baron Frankenstein.

The film's main problem is that there really isn't anything remarkable about it except for Rathbone's performance - the script is tame and lacking in imagination, Reginald Le Borg's direction is characteristically bland, and little happens that could not have happened in a film twenty years earlier in exactly the same way. "Pure retro" was an approach to art with as little power in 1956 as it has today.

Investigation Into The Invisible World (2002): I know, it's an incongruous position for someone like me, who always praises Werner Herzog's documentaries for their respect for even the strangest people and ideas, to take, but I find the same approach taken by Jean-Michel Roux talking to a bunch of eso crackpots and schizophrenics in Iceland pretty offensive. It might have something to do with Roux's visual style too, or rather the way he tries to turn Iceland into the cover of an Enya record (though at least the film's score by Biosphere and Hector Zazou is much above the Enya-level) using post-production effects so aggressively manipulative I was at first thinking something was wrong with my DVD player. To me, the whole project feels like kitsch with pretentions to be art, which is always the worst kind of kitsch as well as the worst kind of art.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,japanese movies,french movies,in short,sf,action,horror,gothic,documentary,shinsuke sato,reginald le borg,jean-michel roux,bela lugosi,lon chaney jr,basil rathbone,john carradine

On WTF: Diary Of A Madman (1963)

If there's one rule, one law, one order you can hold onto in this sad and tragic little life, then it's the superiority of Vincent Price over all other horror actors. Never did he give a bored performance, never did he just appear and cash in his cheque. Or so I thought, before watching Reginald Le Borg's Diary Of A Madman, a film so full of indifference even the glorious Mister Price was infected by it.

If you want to hear the details of my painful experience with this one (and who doesn't want to read me suffer?), please head on over to WTF-Film.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,horror,vincent price,reginald le borg,other places