Two great films, some schlock horror, one of which proved embarrassing, a rediscovery and a box-office flop that deserves a second look, despite its script. Quite the week!
Frogs
A very young Sam Elliott paddles through a swamp taking pictures at the start of George McCowan’s eco-horror FROGS (1972, Prime). With the first shot, the frame freezes on two large lizards with the names of AIP’s founders, James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff, superimposed over them. At first, I thought someone was slagging the executives, but all the credits play over freeze frames of various noxious critters, litter and pollution, so unless someone hated everybody working on the film, I guess that wasn’t the case. Nonetheless, any time those two lizards turned up, it seemed the money men were on set making sure nobody was wasting money. At times, they even helped kill off various characters, possibly so they could stop paying them. But that’s enough whimsey for now. The film depicts the animal kingdom revolting against humanity after years of abuse. Its heart is in the right place, but its brain is nowhere to be found. A boating accident leads to nature photographer Elliott’s staying with ruthless tycoon Ray Milland’s family during a reunion celebration, but the script is so inept it takes forever to establish the blond young man (David Gilliam) always by Milland’s side is his grandson and not some random boytoy. For that matter, it’s hard to keep clear which characters belong to which parents. Most of the deaths are laughable, but dotty Aunt Iris (Hollis Irving), done in while hunting a butterfly for her collection, actually works, as the creature leads her deeper and deeper into the swamp, and she becomes progressively disheveled. Some of the actors — Elliott, Joan Van Ark (in her film debut), Judy Pace and Nicholas Cortland — do decent work within the limitations of the inane script. Milland snarls his way through until almost the end, and Lynn Borden whines so much as his daughter-in-law it was a mercy to the audience she was finally done in by a large tortoise. The film has good atmospheric photography by Mario Tosi, though there are times the footage cuts between day and night with no logic. And Les Baxter creates an eerie score with random notes that seem inspired by the sound score for Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS (1963). Of course, this is an obvious attempt to up the ante on that film. Sadly, the ad campaign didn’t warn us “The FROGS is coming,” but they did advise, “If You Are Squeamish Stay Home!!! Cold green skin against soft warm flesh…a croak…a scream.” The scream, I fear, would mostly likely be from laughter.
Day of Wrath
Released during the Nazi occupation of Denmark DAY OF WRATH (1943, Criterion Channel),, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s tale of a small Danish village corrupted by a fundamentalist regime hunting out witches, bore inevitable comparisons to the current political situation. That was reinforced when the director-co-writer fled to Sweden the day his film opened on the pretext of selling it to the international market (it didn’t reach the U.S. until 1948, when James Agee called other leading critics to task for their inability to understand the film). There’s more here, however, than just a political statement. Dreyer has turned Hans Wiers-Jenssen’s play ANNE PEDERSDOTTER into a tragedy in which Anne (Lisbeth Movin, who looks like the young Lauren Bacall but acts lots better) suffers a forced marriage to an aging minister (Throkild Roose) only to fall in love with her stepson (Preben Lerdorff Rye). Contrary to what critics like Bosley Crowther said, the tragedy is leavened slightly by comedy in Movin’s dealings with her disapproving mother-in-law (Sigrid Neilendam). But the true focus is on the way the family tragedy grows out of the persecution of an innocent woman (Anna Svierkier) charged with witchcraft because she knows herbal cures. In that, the film is a proto-feminist document, depicting the oppression of women at the hands of an aging religious patriarchy. Svierkier calls out Roose’s hypocrisy — he had spared Movin’s mother so he could marry her daughter — which triggers an attack of guilt that causes him to distance himself from his wife. And their emotional reaction to the woman’s execution brings Movin and Rye closer together. Dreyer shoots his interiors, where Movin is constrained by her marriage, austerely, with long takes in which the camera moves from one focal point to another. By contrast, the young lovers meet in the woods, a bucolic setting that almost glows in Karl Andersson’s camera work. Poul Schiefbeck’s score, working variations on the traditional “Dies Irae, adds to the sense of tragedy. When a boys choir accompanies the execution with the tune, the film reaches the heights of horror and takes on a special contemporary relevance, underlying the way the church grooms the young, in this case quite destructively.
The Demented
If Christopher Roosevelt’s THE DEMENTED (2013, Tubi) lived up to its name, it might be worth watching. As it is, it would be better titled THE DERIVATIVE or just THE MEDIOCRE. From its boring opening, in which college student Richard Kohnke gives girlfriend Kayla Ewell a promise ring because they’re not ready to get engaged (nothing like keeping the stakes low) to the tired nihilism of the ending, it’s a relentless exercise in why bother. Six college students party at a country house outside Baton Rouge. That means for the first few minutes you get a lot of beef- and cheesecake as they cavort on a slip ‘n’ slide. I’d say Roosevelt was an equal opportunity exploiter, but when they find out a terrorist attack has unleashed a deadly biological agent, the guys put on shirts and pants while the girls keep on their bikini tops, so you know who the film’s aimed at. The chemical, I know this will surprise you, is turning people into zombies. Between early attacks, Roosevelt throws in a little soap opera over whose boyfriend cheated with whose girlfriend. At least the attacks move fast. And there’s one neat effect — until activated by sound, the zombies stand as if in a trance. It’s a sign of Roosevelt’s lack of awareness (or the budget or scheduling) that the only engaging actor in the film, Michael Welch as the spoiled rich kid, is the first to go. That leaves us with leaden dialogue delivered in either monotone or forced hysteria. But the sickest part of this whole mess is that partway through I realized I’d seen this before (I recognized the house), but it was too late to switch to anything else. So, my greatest disdain for this film is reserved for myself. At least this review is better written than the earlier one.
Thriller: "Masquerade"
When I was younger there were episodes of Boris Karloff’s THRILLER series that scared the pants off me. My favorite episode, however, was a comic horror, “Masquerade” (1961, YouTube), directed by Herschel Daugherty with a script by Donald E. Sanford from a story by Henry Kuttner that first appeared in WEIRD TALES in 1942. Tom Poston and Elizabeth Montgomery are a bickering couple lost somewhere in the South who take refuge in a sinister house whose inhabitants may be killing and eating travelers. It would just be a clever thriller were it not for a twist at the end, and watching it knowing the twist may be even more fun, as you can see all the set-ups. Montgomery and Poston play in two different styles. She seems to be doing THE THIN MAN (1934) and quite well, while he seems to be doing WHISTLING IN THE DARK (1941). But they have one scene arguing about his drinking moonshine that has great comic timing. John Carradine and Jack Lambert are their hosts and possible killers, and the wonderful Dorothy Neumann (a Roger Corman regular with a background in sketch comedy) is the madwoman locked in a room upstairs. The three take such glee in their over-the-top characters it’s pretty much infectious. The set is great, but then, it was great in PSYCHO, too, with different dressings. And Jerry Goldsmith’s score catches the right balance between the eerie and the ridiculous.
The Master
As with so much of his work, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance as cult leader Lancaster Dodd in Paul Thomas Anderson’s THE MASTER (2012, Hulu, Max, Plex) is so good you may want to cry over the loss of one our best actors. His Dodd is a showman who revels in his control over those around him while masking his own insecurities and repressed desires. It’s easy to believe people’s falling under his spell just as it’s easy to believe his son’s (Jesse Plemmons) statement that he’s just making it all up. At Hoffman’s request, Andreson’s script focuses on a World War II veteran (Joaquin Phoenix), possibly suffering from PTSD, who stows away on Hoffman’s ship and quickly bonds with him, though his problems often prove inconvenient for the growth of a religion founded on freeing people from their animal natures. Hoffman’s scenes with Phoenix play as a long seduction, with Hoffman doing his best to draw him into the cult and make him their greatest success story. There’s never any overt sexual play between the men (though they share a “post-coital” cigarette after Phoenix’s first “processing” session), but there’s a definite sense that Hoffman’s luring Phoenix into his orbit, is an exercise in power and abuse. That confluence of power and seduction is echoed in the way Hoffman’s wife (Amy Adams) positions herself as his controller and enabler and even in a brief scene in which his married daughter (Ambyr Childers) comes on to Phoenix only to later accuse him of coming on to her. With a great score by Jonny Greenwood that incorporate some very apt music from the early ‘50s, and Anderson’s carefully planned imagery, the film can be an overwhelming experience. It lacksa satisfying ending, as if Anderson had written himself into a corner, though the final scene between the two male stars is just as strong as anything that had preceded it. With Laura Dern as a faithful follower and Patty McCormack as a wealthy sponsor who turns on Dodd.
Bad Things
I really liked Stewart Thorndike’s debut feature, LYLE (2014), which offered a plot reminiscent of ROSEMARY’S BABY and anchored by Gaby Hoffman’s terrific performance. It was compact, eerie and very persuasive as it built on Hoffman’s suspicions that her wife and neighbors were trying to sacrifice her unborn child. Thorndike’s follow-up, BAD THINGS (2023, Shudder), is 25 minutes longer and starts promisingly as a lesbian take on THE SHINING. Ruthie (Gayle Rankin), her lover (Hari Nef), Nef’s ex- (Rad Pereira) and a woman Rankin once cheated with (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) spend a weekend in an upstate hotel Rankin has inherited. She wants to sell it, but Nef thinks they would enjoy running it. Of course, it’s haunted, and the first sitings — two models jogging and an empty dining room suddenly filled with hotel guests — are treated almost matter-of-factly, which is rather chilling. Thorndike takes her time getting to the horror. She wants us immersed in the tangled relationships and Rankin’s emotionally unstable character. And the four actresses are strong enough to maintain interest as almost nothing happens. There’s an eerie moment when Molly Ringwald, very good as the host of a hospitality web series Rankin has been watching, suddenly starts addressing her directly. Thorndike keeps holding the camera on people who are alone but with an empty door behind them. Or she holds on a location for a few moments after people have left it. You keep waiting for this to pay off with one of the ghosts drifting into view. But the horror moves in an entirely different direction. Instead of THE LESBIAN SHINING we get THE UPSTATE NEW YORK CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and the slow build-up fizzles as people get hysterical and the bodies start not exactly piling up The cast is too small for that. They’re just there, and the film dies along with them.
Looking for Love
When I was teaching theater, I sometimes thought GLEE was my worst enemy. Try getting students to work on acting assignments and productions when they’ve seen the GLEE kids grab some music and immediately improvise a polished production number. I even had some students ask me to sponsor a glee club, their own version of New Directions, and managed to decline without screaming, “No fracking way! This school’s already given me one ulcer!” That’s all a round-about way of getting to Don Weis’ LOOKING FOR LOVE (1964, TCM). Early on, while on THE TONIGHT SHOW to hawk her new “Lady Valet” invention, Connie Francis mentions she used to be a singer, and Johnny Carson (not as embarrassing as he used to joke after the film tanked at the box office) urges her to do a number. She then launches into a polished impromptu performance, with the band not missing a beat as they back her up. “Thanks a bunch,” my inner curmudgeon screamed. But then she’s booked at the last minute on a variety show (to replace Barbara Nichols in a number nobody in their right mind could envision her performing), does the number without rehearsal, and it’s a disaster — a very funny, expertly performed disaster, but a disaster, nonetheless. I felt vindicated. Then the show’s host, Danny Thomas, asks her to join him in an unrehearsed duet. And it’s great but, more important than that, it looks unrehearsed. The two create a totally believable, utterly charming illusion of spontaneity. And, of course, the number makes her character a star.
Anyway, producer Joe Pasternak had worked magic with Deanna Durbin and Jane Powell, so naturally when MGM signed Francis to a three-picture deal, they expected him to do the same for her. He didn’t, but it’s not for lack of her trying. Francis is a natural in front of the camera and, working with veteran director Don Weis, pulls off some nifty physical bits. I kept thinking somebody should have cast her and Annette Funicello as sisters, with a good script (a musical version of EXPERIMENT IN TERROR? Nah! Something original and, did I mention this before, well-written). Francis is backed by a solid cast, including Jim Hutton as the promoter she loves who can’t see her as a romantic object, Susan Oliver as her wise-cracking best friend and Joby Baker as the bass player who loves Francis. The script, however, just isn’t there. The jokes aren’t funny, and the suggestion that becoming a singing star can’t hold a candle to marrying a doctor (who’ll probably end up cheating on her with Lauren Bacall or Gloria Grahame or Dyan Cannon, because that’s what movie doctors do) is hopelessly dated. Of course, given her choices between Hutton’s chauvinistic character and Baker, who keeps trying to upstage her while they’re performing (his book scenes, however, are solid), I kept thinking she should have ended up with Oliver. When they’re struggling roommates, they naturally share a bedroom in their otherwise spacious apartment. But when Francis hits it big and hires Oliver as her secretary, they live in a mansion,where they’re still sharing a bedroom. Kind of makes you go, “hmmm!” doesn’t it?
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