The Lion, the Witch and the Bedpost

 

I have often answered the question that pops up occasionally in questionnaires, "What is the first movie you ever saw in the theater?", with the fact that there probably was one or two before Bedknobs and Broomsticks, but that is the one I remember specifically seeing in a theater. The fact of the matter is that the director of this film, Robert Stevenson, also directed Mary Poppins, That Darn Cat! and The Love Bug all between the time I was born and today's movie, all of which I saw as a kid.

However, remember this was the time when Sunday night programming include The Wonderful World of Disney and it's highly likely I saw all of those on TV rather than in a theater. To my credit on that thought, my sister also thinks this was the first movie we saw in a theater environment. (I concede any argument on childhood memories to her because she often has a better memory...)

Robert Stevenson directed many movies in his long career, and starting from about 1957, he almost exclusively did movies for Walt Disney Studios.  If you've been a reader for long enough, you might remember I did a piece on Old Yeller. That was a Stevenson movie, too.  Again, if you are in my age bracket, many of his films may be in your wheelhouse of memories of favorite childhood films. Besides the movies already mention in the first paragraph, he also directed Johnny Tremain, Darby O'Gill and the Little People, The Absent-Minded Professor and it's sequel, Son of Flubber, Herbie Rides Again (a sequel to The Love Bug) and The Shaggy D.A. 

There are some interesting possibilities as to what this movie could have been. You may know Angela Lansbury stars as our heroine/witch. But some of the other actresses considered for the role were Lynn Redgrave and Julie Andrews. One of the things I found out while doing the research for this blog entry is that Andrews turned the part down because she was afraid of being typecast, but later had a change of heart and became willing to do it.  But by then Lansbury had already been given the role.

For the part of Dr. Emelius Browne, Peter Ustinov was considered, and Dick van Dyke had also been a possibility. But like Andrews, van Dyke turned the part down because he considered it to close to the character he played in Mary Poppins. 

The film garnered fairly positive reviews and was the #9 movie in terms of box office sales for the year. Considering that it was released in the same month as A Clockwork Orange, Diamonds are Forever and Dirty Harry, three movies that placed higher in terms of ticket sales, and still managed to come in the top ten, I'd say that's pretty good.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971):

 In 1940 England, in a little village called Pepperinge Eye, many children are being shipped from London to be housed in something like refugee houses.  The basic premise of this is that it is at the height of WWII and Germany's bombings of London. I am guessing that the children all have parents who stayed behind to face the dangers that the Nazis are perpetuating on British soil, but have sent the children away for their own protection. It doesn't really make much sense that they are being sent to live with total strangers, but then this is a different era. Most people are good by nature, (especially in Disney movies. what?) so they will be safer with these total strangers in an unfamiliar territory than facing the threat of Hitler's Luftwaffe and their incendiary bombs.

 

All of the children have been doled out except three kids, two boys and a girl, all from the same family. You don't find out until a little later in the movie that the children, Charlie (Ian Weighill), Carrie (Cindy O'Callaghan) and Paul (Roy Snart) are actually orphans whose parents have died and were living with their aunt at the time, but even the aunt is now dead as a result of the bombings.  So they actually have no home to return to even if they could go back.

 

Into this mix comes a sweet but slightly daffy woman named Miss Price (Angela Lansbury). Miss Price is not entirely with the program of housing the children, but she is essentially forced to do so by the town leaders because she has a big house and lives all by herself. She reluctantly agrees, but only until some other situation for them can be achieved. It turns out that Miss Price is an apprentice witch.  She has been taking witch casting spells classes via a correspondence course (and if the first thing that comes to mind is those companies that will make you a full-fledged pastor via mail, you're not far off...) At the same time as she is taking the children in, she has also taken possession of her witch's broom, which will enable her to fly. 

 

Sure enough, the children see her flying and Charlie, being an opportunistic little brat, decides he is going to blackmail Miss Price for better living conditions.

 

Miss Price gets the kids to agree by giving them a gift, a bed knob she has imbued with a magical spell that, when used properly, will enable them to fly. There is some convoluted spell involved which only the youngest boy, Paul, is able to make it work (because it was his bed knob...) At about this time Miss Price discovers that the final page of her spell book is missing a page or two. This is disconcerting because Miss Price had plans to use that final spell, called "Substitutionary Locomotion". Essentially this spell would animate previously inanimate objects, giving these things the ability to move on their own power. What Miss Price's plan was is not entirely well-thought out (or at least not entirely made clear to the audience), but somehow, apparently, she expected to be able to use the spell to defeat the Nazis. And to make matters worse, she receives a telegram from the correspondence college saying that it is closing up shop for the duration of the war. In an effort to get the missing pages she has Paul use his new magical device to take the bed to London to find the man in charge of the correspondence school, Professor Emelius Browne (David Tomlinson). 

 

It turns out that Browne is a charlatan.  He didn't really  have any idea those spells were effective.  He just found them in an old book.  In other words he was bilking his "students" for what he assumed were basically just nonsense words. He reminds me of Dr. Zachary Smith from Lost in Space, a guy who is trying to use any means necessary to gain an advantage over his unsuspecting audience.

 

It turns out that, since Professor Browne has no idea what that final spell was, they have to seek out the guy from whom he bought the original book, a Mr. Bookman (Sam Jaffe). Mr. Bookman has been seeking the same spell, but since he only had the second half of the book, he doesn't know much more than Miss Price and Browne. But Paul (remember young Paul?) has the solution.  He has a comic book he found in Miss Price's house which mentions a fabled land called  Namboombu. On this fabled island the animals have all become anthropomorphic, able to think and talk. And on this island is a medallion that contains the words to the final spell.

The crew uses the magic bed to go to this island, and thus we get an extended sequence where they interact with animated animals led by a lion, King Leonidas. The King wants to get rid of the human interlopers but Browne manages to save them by volunteering to be a referee for a soccer game between two teams, one of which is led by the King. A long extended sequence involves each team trying to score a goal on the other and win the game. At the same time the human crew are trying to figure out how to get the medallion that the King wears, which contains the words of the spell, away from him.

 

Eventually they do get the medallion and return to the real world where, surprise, a crew of Nazi soldiers has taken over the town.  Now equipped with the medallion and the spill of Substitutionary Locomation, Miss Price animates a horde of suits of armor to attack them and drive them off.

The movie ends in classic Disney style with everyone going off in an "all's well that ends well fashion. But there are a few things that really stand out as a bit confusing to me.  And Roger Ebert in his review at the time also points it out.  In Disney tradition you usually had an evil dragon or a wicked witch or some other "fantasy" bad guy for the children to root against, and they usually showed up fairly early and were instrumental in leading the side of good to accomplish their own goals.  Here the bad guys don't show up until the movie is almost over.  And the bad guys are... Nazis? I mean really, is that the kind of bad guy children would understand?

The second thing I never got: what was the point of the clergyman, Mr. Jelk (Roddy McDowell)? McDowell seems to be abhorrently underused in this film. And he got third place billing in the credits.  From what I read there was another plot going on that was cut out in which Mr. Jelk was a bit more obviously materialistic, trying to wangle a marriage with Miss Price just to get her farm. (Snidely Whiplash???) 

 

The third thing that stuck out was the length of time this movie takes to reach it's conclusion. I mean, typically a children's movie tops out at about an hour and a half in length.  This one stretches out to nearly two and a half hours. I don't really remember at this late a date whether I followed along with this movie for it's entire duration at age 9, but I wonder if kids these days or even then could stay with it.  The animated soccer game seems to be much longer than necessary and even some of the earlier scenes in London seem to be padding the movie beyond what I would think was acceptable.

As far as an adult watching it, it's not completely bad, but even as an adult I thought there was way too much extra stuff going on here.  I could have edited several scenes down considerably and not lost a bit of plot line. Still, if you have children with a good amount of patience for extraneous stuff, it's decent enough.

Well, folks, time to rev up the Plymouth for the drive home. Sure wouldn't mind a car that could fly by itself like the bed in this movie, but one must make do for the war effort...

Quiggy

 

    

 

Is There A Doctor in the House?

 

This is my entry for the Favorite Stars in B Movies Blogathon hosted by Films from Beyond the Time Barrier.

If Roger Corman can be considered the king of "B" movies, then the King of "B" movie stars would almost certainly be Vincent Price. Price made almost his entire career out of the kind of movies that would be standard fare at the drive-in. And he had a voice that is instantly recognizable. You don't even have to know beforehand that he appears at the end of the Michael Jackson song "Thriller". Once the words come across "Darkness falls across the land...", everybody knew, "Hey, that's Vincent Price!"

And absolutely nobody could emit an evil laugh that could send chills down your spine like Price.

American International Pictures, the distributors of the Dr. Phibes movies, went to the Price well a number of times over it's almost 30 years of existence.  The reason that AIP is one of my favorite studios is that it was one of the primary distributors of what are now classics in the drive-in movie pantheon. (If you've read this blog for a while, you know that, even though I have strayed from the original premise of the blog, my primary interest is in the low budget horror and sci-fi stuff that was primarily the fare du jour for the average drive-in.)

And although it can't be said that Price kept the studio afloat during those years, enough of it's output featured this drive-in movie hero that it can safely be said he made them a lot of money.

Over the years Price made a variety of films, some true horror, and some with such comic feel to them, despite the horror aspect, that they could almost be considered comedies.  I think the Dr. Phibes films could fall into that second category.  Black comedy (not "black" as in race, but "black" as in dark) is something that sometimes takes a special (some might say twisted) mind.

The gothic horror theme was in decline by the 70's, although it had had a nice run through the 60's. Was this a last hurrah for the theme?  Not entirely, although it didn't quite crop up all that often afterwards.  But if anyone could have still pulled it off, it was Price.  

OK, after extolling the virtues of Price, I need to add something else. The movie starts out in the titles with words that always get my heart pumping: 

"James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff Present" 

Those words meant I was getting high quality stuff in the next hour and a half or so,  They were the driving genius behind bringing us such classics as:

I Was a Teenage Werewolf

A Bucket of Blood

X: the Man with X-Ray Eyes

Panic in the Year Zero!

Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine

The Amazing Colossal Man

And a slew of others.  They were the driving force behind and original creators of American Pictures International and were highly influential in creating my love of trashy drive-in movies (none of which I was old enough to see during the first run, of course, but highly attractive to me now).  The fact that all of the above have links to previous posts on The Midnite Drive-In are a testament to how much I appreciate these two guys.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971):

"Love means never having to say you're ugly." That (corrupted) line from a (then) recent movie Love Story was the tag line for the film. (I didn't make it up, so don't blame me... There it is on the poster.)

The story takes place sometime in the 1920's. Mad genius Dr. Anton Phibes lives his life in a secluded mansion where he is the leader of his own band. Not a band in the traditional sense of the word. The band consists solely of one real person, Dr. Phibes himself, playing the oversized organ (and with an oversized ego to match...). The rest are animatronic players. 

 

Dr. Phibes has his doctorate in music and was a renowned musician in his heyday.  But he must be a genius in other realms too, because he didn't just buy that animatronic band or the other things he uses throughout this film at the neighborhood flea market. 

Doc spends his life in seclusion because the whole world thinks he is dead. Which helps when he begins his systematic attempt to exact revenge on the doctors who tried (but failed) to keep his wife alive after an accident.  And the reason the world thinks he is dead is because he was supposedly killed while racing back to London from Switzerland after hearing of his wife's predicament.

Phibes blames the doctors in charge of his wife's surgery for incompetence in their profession.  And thus has determined that each should die.  The method of their deaths is based on the Biblical plagues of the Old Testament, visited upon the Egyptians by the Hebrew God for their reluctance to free the Jews from captivity.  Why Biblical plagues? I have no idea.  It's not as if he is Jewish, at least I don't THINK he is...

(Of course, this being Hollywood, since some of those plagues in the Bible story were  not melodramatic enough, some changes were made.  For instance, there were no bats in the Biblical version, but the first victim is dispatched with them. Some of the others are just as tenuous.  Turning water to blood, for instance, appears to have been changed to draining one of his victims of their own blood.)

Assisting him is an assistant, called Vulnavia (Virginia North). Not his wife, just a helper who helps him in his quest.

Investigating these mysterious deaths is a police inspector, Trout (Peter Jeffrey), who despite the misgivings of his superiors, is convinced there must be some connection between the deaths of the doctors. 

(I guess having a sudden spate of odd deaths of people in the doctor profession all at once didn't raise any red flags with the superiors.  Or maybe they were just worried about the widespread panic that would result if the press got wind of it. Which is a legitimate concern with at least one of the bosses Trout confers with during his investigation.)

Doc hangs a Hebrew medallion on a wax sculpture after every death and burns the wax figure. I can't read ancient Hebrew, so I'm only assuming it is Hebrew, however, but otherwise the connection to the Biblical plagues and the medallions wouldn't make sense.

So Phibes' first victim (on screen), Dr. Dunwoody (Edward Burnham) is dispatched by bats (which apparently corresponds to the Biblical plague of flies. But flies can't be trained to act, and bats can, so...)

 

A reference to another victim who had recently been killed by bees, Dr. Cornton. (Possibly paralleled to the plague of boils, which may be similar to bee stings)  Which is where Inspector Trout begins his investigation, based on the coincidence of two doctors dying in mysterious ways.

The third victim, Dr, Hargreaves (Alex Scott), is choked to death by a frog mask (frogs plague, of course)

 

Trout finds out that the three victims had all worked under Dr. Vesalius (Joseph Cotten) and goes to him to find out some answers.

The fourth victim, Dr. Longsteet (Terry-Thomas), has his blood drained from him (which corresponds to the water turned to blood plague). You may not feel it so bad that Longstreet dies, because he is a pervert.  His last act on Earth is watching some 1920's porn...

 

Phibes ends up leaving behind the medallion he intended to hang on the wax sculpture.  It is found by Trout who goes to the guy who made them where he finds out that it is one of a set of ten he had made. And is told that the symbol is, indeed, Hebrew.  Which leads him to a rabbi who tells him that this particular one is a symbol of blood. And he also learns of the ten plagues. which is revealing, of course, since the first four victims have been dispatched in similar ways to the plagues.

30 minutes into the movie we FINALLY hear Vincent Price's voice (sort of: he has lost the use of his mouth because of the accident, but he can put a stethoscope-like device to his neck and vocalize, after a fashion), 30 minutes into a film starring Price before he even says one word seems like a long time, since Price's voice was probably the most noticeable part of his performances. 

Between his expounding that "nine killed you; nine shall die" to a picture of his wife, and Trout finding out from Vesalius that all the victims (plus a few others) had worked to try to save Phibes' wife, we get the full picture.  And there are potentially 5 more victims...

But since Phibes himself was apparently killed in a car accident while trying to race back to London, Trout is not sure who could be behind these strange occurrences.

The fifth victim is Dr. Hedgepath (David Hutcheson), who is killed by a hail making machine in his own car. (the plague of hailstones).

 

Gradually, based on the background that Trout discovers about Phibes' past, he starts to think that maybe, just maybe, Dr. Phibes didn't really die. An investigation of  the Phibes crypt reveals that there is a container with the ashes of someone inside, but that only proves that SOMEONE'S ashes were entombed.  Not necessarily Phibes himself. And Phibes' wife's crypt is empty.

Dr. Pitaj (Peter Gilmore) is the sixth victim, attacked by rats while trying to fly a plane ( the pestilence plague, perhaps?). Despite the efforts of the police to stop the plane before it takes off, he ends up dying by the rats and crashing the plane. (I read that originally they were going to do the scene on a boat, but some more rational person said "well, couldn't he just jump in the water and save himself?  Believe me, this is the better route, and the scarier one, if you ask me.)

 

And the seventh victim, Dr. Whitcombe (Maurice Kaufman) is skewered by the statue of a unicorn (the livestock plague? it's a stretch, I know. At this point, my being able to decipher those Hebrew symbols might have been helpful).

 

The eighth victim is not actually a doctor but a nurse (Susan Travers) who had been in attendance at the scene when Phibes' wife died.  She is dispatched by locusts, attracted by a goo he made from what appeared to be Brussels sprouts  (yet another reason for me to hate Brussels sprouts). And this despite the fact that "half of Scotland Yard" is surrounding the building complex. (Boy, this Phibes guy, he do get around.)

 

That leaves only the head doctor, Vesalius. (And, if you're keeping count, two plagues). So "darkness" and "first born" plagues remain. But Vesalius says his older brother is dead, so it's probably not going to be the "first born" one...  But, wait..., he DOES have a son himself...

OK, so I'll leave off here so you have something to maybe motivate and inspire you to watch. Gee, ain't I a stinker...?

But before I let you go to the intermission: 

Would you believe that Peter Cushing was in line for the Joseph Cotten role? The reason he had to back out was because his wife was very sick (she would actually pass away during the time the movie was filmed). Not that Joseph Cotten was bad, but I can see Vesalius being a very different character if Cushing had played him.

And while on the subject of Cotten, it's interesting to see how his star waxed and waned over the span of his career.  Although he never actually got nominated for an Oscar, he was in some very Oscar-worthy roles. And worked with the likes of Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock on numerous occasions. But he was also very obviously not ashamed to take a buck wherever it was. (Notably The Hearse, which was reviewed on this blog several years ago.)

 

Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972):

You just can't keep a bad man down... especially if there's money in a sequel...

It's only been a year since the release of The Abominable Dr. Phibes (or one minute since you read the story in the previous portion of this post).  But in terms of the history of the events in the two films,  it has been three years.

And just in case you may have forgotten the diabolical actions of our villain, the film starts out by giving you an encapsulation of said events.  It also tells us that Phibes put himself in suspended animation, as opposed to having killed himself.

See, he was waiting until the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars... Wait, sorry,  that's a different movie... But he is waiting for a special alignment of the moon and the planets, one which had not occurred for 2000 years.  When that happens, the events that sent him into this suspended animation reverses and Dr. Phibes Rises Again.

Phibes has a goal.  His goal now is to find a way to get his beloved wife, Victoria (Caroline Munro), back from the dead and to eternal life.  Apparently, as stated by Phibes, he had been alive at that time and prepared for this moment.  (Wait a minute, Phibes already has eternal life?  And he had been preparing for this moment even then?  This is interesting.  Maybe there's more to Phibes than we previously thought...)

He has a map to an ancient Pharaoh's  tomb, beneath which, only every 2000 years flows a "River of Life". He revives his trusted assistant, Vulnavia (this time played by Valli Kemp), and none the worse for wear (which, if you watched the previous entry, you know her exit was not all that simple,,,) But upon reaching the secret room where he has stored the map, he finds it demolished and the map stolen.  Only one man could be responsible... Dr. Biederbeck (Robert Quarry).

Biederbeckand his friend Ambrose (Hugh Griffith {who, BTW, appeared in the first Phibes movie as the rabbi}) discuss their upcoming trip to Egypt.  Biederbeck has only one goal, to find the same "River of Life" that Phibes seeks, so all the treasure they find he graciously concedes to his friend.

Phibes breaks into the house after Biederbeck and Ambrose leave, dispatching Biederbeck's butler with a golden snake. 

Hours later, Inspector Trout (Peter Jeffrey) shows up.  Despite Biederbeck's insistence that discovering who stole the papyrus is more important, Trout, to his credit, insists that capturing the murderer is more paramount.  But as Biederbeck points out, if Trout finds the papyrus, whoever has it will in fact be the murderer.

Having regained his precious papyrus, Phibes takes Vulnavia and the corpse of his wife, and boards a ship bound for Egypt.  Without the papyrus, Biederbeck and Ambrose also board the same ship. (apparently they are just going to wing it...) But the purpose that Biederbeck has is stronger than any threat of failure.  For it seems he has been keeping himself alive with an elixir of life.

Ambrose goes searching the boat hold for Biederbeck's model of a mountain that will help explain Biederbeck's theories.  Unfortunately, instead of the model, Ambrose finds the corpse of Phibes' wife.  And Phibes dispatches him (through the rather mundane act of choking him..). And throws the body, encased in a large jar, overboard.  (It's amazing, given the genius that Phibes exhibits, that he doesn't know the jar will not actually sink. It floats to shore, where it is discovered by Trout.

The captain of the ship (Peter Cushing, who finally got his chance in a Phibes film) wants to spend precious time trying to find the body, but Biederbeck exhibits the same indifference to the mystery of his missing friend as he did for the murderer of his butler.  

The ship MUST continue it's journey forward. (And here, Biederbeck starts to take on the less appealing of the two villains.  At least Phibes does have some sympathetic feelings, even if it is only for his dead wife.)

In Egypt, Phibes and Vulnavia enter a secret passage under a statue of an ancient pharaoh, and behold! A modern (or 1920's modern, anyway) room, complete with art deco decorations.  (Phibes must have been a psychic as well as an ancient sorcerer to have envisioned how things would be in style at this time...)

Trout and his boss go to the shipping agent, Lombardo (Terry-Thomas (who had previously played one of Phibes victims in the first movie}). Lombardo reveals that among the passengers was a woman who had arranged to have an organ put in the manifest for her employer.  Immediately they ask if the employer's name was Phibes. (Now why on Earth would they ask that? Surely they thought he had really gone on to his eternal "reward" 3 years ago...) Lombardo tells them, however, that his name was "Smith". (yeah, right, like that is a real name of someone...)

Biederbeck arrives at the mountain to find that part of his investigation crew has already gone on.  A man named Hackett (Gerald Sim) tells him that Baker (Lewis Flander) and Shaver (John Thaw) would not wait, despite Biederbeck's insistence, and have proceeded without him.  Baker is dispatched by an eagle that guards the entrance.

Meanwhile, Phibes discovers a secret compartment under the mountain which, inside, contains the pharaoh's crypt. and a key, which although he apparently does not know where it fits, he does know that it fits some lock which will help him revive Victoria.  And so, he puts Victoria is a glass coffin and, using the available trolley cart tracks, puts her under the crypt. Where he knows that the River of Life will flow on the full moon and revive her.

(Side note: If you are having trouble with all this modern technology having been created centuries before, you are not alone.  But then, it is apparent that Phibes is not only a wizard at concocting odd deaths of his enemies, a wizard at creating musical automatons, a wizard at avoiding any unecessary complications from his actions, but just plain truth, a wizard...)

Biederbeck's inamorata, Diana (Fiona Lewis). whom he has brought along, begins to wonder about her lover and what drives him.  She has observed that he is obsessed with the mountain and it's secrets, but lacks anything revealing sympathy or concern for the bodies that keep piling up around him.  She demands to know more, but he won't tell her. 

And bodies DO keep piling up. Phibes dispatches one man by locking him up and killing him off with a batch of scorpions.  Another is crushed in a vise. Biederbeck is determined in his goal, however.  But he does exhibit some sense of sympathy. He sends Diana off with the only remaining member of his entourage, Hackett, to safety. But he did not take into consideration Phibes' own sense of determination. He tricks Hackett into leaving Diana alone and wile he is gone takes her hostage.  Then dispatches Hackett with a trick car cigarette lighter which is rigged to turn into a sand blaster (one of the most ingenious devices Phibes comes up with in both movies!)

Once again, I will leave the denouement for you to discover on your own.  If you are a Vincent Price fan you may already know how it turns out, anyway.  Or if you are a fan of these types of movies, you can probably make an educated guess. (But you'd probably be wrong... Now, you are curious, aren't you/  Hahahahahaha!)

Unfortunately, the Phibes saga ended here. Although AIP tried to get yet another Phibes movie going, none of the proposed sequels ever got off the ground floor. Imagine, if you will, though The Seven Fates of Dr. Phibes. Or even The Brides of Dr. Phibes. (Both were proposed titles that never got completed to the satisfaction of the potential producers.)

This post is dedicated to the memory of the man who made horror both scary and funny.  No one could pull off adding humor to horror like Price.  Thanks, Vincent, for 50+ years of scaring the hell out of (and making us laugh while doing it.)

Home awaits. Time to get this old Plymouth rolling.  Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

 

 

The Legend of Matheson

This is my entry in the Richard Matheson Blogathon hosted by Wide Screen World and Moon in Gemini

"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room.  There was a knock at the door..."  (The shortest horror story ever written).


This is the story of a man and his (arguably) masterpiece of speculative fiction.

Richard Matheson (1926-2013) was one of the most prolific authors of the 20th century.  He was a favorite of Rod Serling who used Matheson's stories or original teleplays for no less than 16 episodes of the classic TV series The Twilight Zone, beginning with  the 11th episode of the first season ("And the Sky Was Opened", based on Matheson's short story, Disappearing Act.)  An incomplete list of Matheson's output for TZ would also include what eventually became the fan favorites of "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", "The Invaders". "Nick of Time", "Third from the Sun" and my personal favorite "Once Upon a Time".

Not only are his short stories fodder for film adaptation, several of his novels have made it to the big and small screen.  The Incredible Shrinking Man?  That was Matheson.  The Legend of Hell House?  Matheson.  What Dreams May Come?  Also by Matheson.  And for you romantic ladies (and men), Somewhere in Time, the Christopher Reeve / Jane Seymour movie was based on a Matheson book.  Plus such TV series as Rod Serling's follow up to The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery went to the Matheson well, as well did The Outer Limits, the Showtime series Masters of Horror and even a British TV series, Journey to the Unknown.

Matheson's third novel (the first two are largely unknown and probably forgotten by most people except real Matheson completists) was a book called I am Legend, the story of one man left alone in a world that is full of vampires.  (That was the original novel premise.  More on the movie adaptations and what they changed later.)  The novel, as indicated in the heading of the first chapter of the book takes place about a half a year after some catastrophe has drastically changed the human race.  It is never really explained, but sometime late in 1974 some disease started to kill off the human population of Earth.  (The events of the novel start 5 months after the events in January of 1976).

In the book, Robert Neville, a former factory worker (although that is pure speculation based on some bits of text, we never really know what Neville did before), is holed up in his house where he manages  to survive.  He goes out at daytime looking for surviving victims of the plague or whatever it is, the survivors having been turned into vampires.  For most of the novel he is alone, except for the vampires who continually show up outside his door each night shouting for him to "come out, Neville!"

Eventually Neville does try to learn a bit about the nature of the beast, such as it is.  For instance what makes the vampires detest garlic?  Why do they avoid mirrors?  Why are some of them afraid of the Christian cross, but others are not?  (He discovers that particular thing is only true of Christian vampires, but also discovers that Jewish vampires, while not deterred by a cross are deterred by a Torah, and Islamic vampires shy away from a Koran.)  He spends much of the novel trying to investigate what the origin of the plague that killed off most of the population and turned the rest into vampires.  Fortunately for him he has a whole library of book nearby to aid in his quest, but the reality is at the end he doesn't understand it any better than he did when he started. (Note: Unlike the movies, in the novel Neville was NOT formerly connected to anything in the science field).

When Hollywood came to call, they were interested in the one man against the rest of the world concept.  Unfortunately, as will be seen, they really didn't care about the vampires as much as they did about the idea of plague victims.  Throughout all three versions that hit the theaters, the "vampires" morphed into something else entirely.  For instance, in the Heston movie "The Omega Man", the enemy pretty much is just a radical religious sect of people who suffered deformities caused by the plague.  You really even couldn't call them zombies.  Sure, they are seeking the blood of Heston's Neville, but only for retribution from the harm he and the scientists have caused which made the world as desolate as it is, not as an element of survival.

The Last Man On Earth (1964):

The problem I have with The Last Man on Earth, aside from the subpar acting on nearly everybody's part, including, unfortunately, Vincent Price, is the fact that the plague victims are supposed to be vampires (witness the garlic, mirrors and stakes through the heart), but they act more like zombies.  (In fact this movie was one of the noted inspirations for George Romero's classic zombie flick, Night of the Living Dead, so that should tell you something.)

The movie changed the main character's name from Neville to Morgan.  THe original script was written by Matheson himself from his novel.  When casting came around, Matheson saw the Morgan/Neville character as a virile, macho he-man.  He was leaning towards Jack Palance as his odds on favorite to play his novel's hero, but casting decided to go with Vincent Price.  Although Matheson agreed that Price was a good actor, he was not what Matheson viewed his character as being.

That in itself would have been discouraging, but the producers added insult to injury by bringing in another scriptwriter, William F. Leicester, to make changes in the script.  The result was that Matheson asked that his name be removed from the credits, opting to use the pseudonym of "Logan Swanson".

Of the three "official" versions of the book, The Last Man on Earth is the least interesting.  It's not entirely bad, however.  Just the quality suffers a little.  (and it doesn't help that Rome, the setting for this version,  doesn't look a bit like the Los Angeles of the following two movies or the setting of the novel).

The Omega Man (1971):

Charlton Heston is Neville, the star of the movie.  He plays a military scientist who, through a series of unfortunate events, becomes immune to the virus that has turned the rest of the world into albino religious nuts.  He goes out by day, hunting the plague victims and holes up in his penthouse at night while the plague victims, led by Anthony Zerbe, assail his fortress.  The basic premise of the novel of them being vampires was rejected in favor of them being just creatures who can't see in the daylight.  And instead of them seeking the blood of Heston for survival, they are only out to take out the last remaining member of a society that caused the plague to befall the Earth in the first place.

One of the added features is that Zerbe has formed a "Family", a pseudo-religious cult that seeks to eradicate all remaining evidences of advanced technology, which they see as evil.  As such, when at one point Neville is captured by the Family, they sentence him to be burned at the stake, much like the witches of Salem.  He is rescued by what turns out to be a crew of remaining members of the former world who, although not immune to the plague, have managed to stay free from it for the past year or two.  They are holed up in the outskirts of the town, and one member of the group, Lisa (Rosalind Cash), has a brother  Ritchie whom she thinks can be saved from the plague by Neville.

In this part we also see a change from the original novel.  In the novel, Neville never actually finds any survivors (although he briefly does hook up with a woman who may or may not be what she seems.)  The movie has to have a happier ending, so indeed there is some hope for the future at the end.  This is Hollywood sticking its fingers in the pie, because at the end of the novel it appears that there is no hope for a return to a society that Neville would call normal.

(For a more in-depth insight into this movie, see my review of The Omega Man that I wrote a few years ago.)

I Am Legend (2007):

Once again, Neville is cast as a true scientist.  Will Smith garnered the role, and he searches for a cure to the plague. The original plague was started by an altruistic scientist who had morphed a virus into a supposed 100% cure for cancer.  Once again altruistic science goes awry, as it often does in apocalyptic fiction, and the cure takes on a life of it's own, turning it's people into pseudo vampires.  (Vampires whose bite transfers the virus to it's victims.)  This particular version comes as close as it gets to transferring the book's vampires to film, although in this film the "vampires" are barely sentient, more like animals.

This version benefits from a bigger budget in many ways.  First the CGI vampires are much more menacing than actors in make-up could do.  It was also a pretty good choice when Will Smith came on board as Neville.  (A far cry from the original expected star;  rumors circulated that when the idea of a remake came about 10 years earlier, Arnold Schwarzenegger was going to be cast in the lead.  This rumor was accepted about as reluctantly by Matheson's fan base as the decision to cast Michael Keaton as Batman was prior to that movie's premiere.)

In all three movies, there is a happy ending of sorts in that the main character manages to pass on a cure to the plague before his own untimely death.  As stated before this is Hollywood's finger in the pie.  The novel was not so optimistic.

As a footnote, there was also a made for direct to video movie I Am Omega, which was released basically to cash in on the then current release of I Am Legend, but since I never found a copy of it prior to press time I can't tell you much about it.

Drive home safely, folks.  And be careful of whom you see on the road.

Quiggy

Boys and Boys Together

A preface:  I want to give Chris @ Angelman's Place a big thank you for directing me to these two movies, a pair I might have never had cross my radar were it not for reading entries on them on his blog.  And also appreciation for his putting up with a clueless neophyte with not much contact in the LGBT community to know what is what.

13 years, more or less, separate these two movies in terms of history as well as how the characters come across.  The Boys in the Band takes place in 1968, sometime around the election of nixon for hist first term (although that's only a superficial detail, the movie could just as well have taken place in 1970 when the actual movie was filmed).  Longtime Companion begins in 1981 and ends in 1989.  Watching the two simultaneously gives a pretty good overview of the progress in how gays were depicted in those early years post-Stonewall. (Although, technically, since Boys takes place in 1968, it was prior to those events).

Given that I watched the PBS documentary on Stonewall, and read the book by David Carter on which most of the documentary was based, I can't help but wonder how a town like NYC which was still hostile to gays in general in 1968 dealt with the production of the Mart Crowley play (on which the Boys movie was based).  That documentary in itself is worth a view, either before or after watching these two films, assuming you take the plunge on the films.

I had originally wanted to title this piece "The Boys are Back in Town", because at the time I was watching The Boys in the Band,  a current revival of the play had been running on Broadway (with Jim Parsons of "The Big Bang Theory").  Unfortunately, the altogether too short run of it ended a couple of weeks ago.  So I chose the probably less impressive title you see at the top of the page...

 















The Boys in the Band (1971):

A cast of characters come together for a birthday party for one of their members.  The group includes the birthday boy himself, Harold, as well as the friends that Michael, the host of the party has invited to share in the festivities, as well as Michael's old college roommate, Alan, who shows up unannounced.  The rest of the party includes Emory, Hank,  Larry, Donald and Bernard. It also includes a character only called "Cowboy", who is not a friend of the group, but a male hooker that one of the friends brings as a gift for Harold.

That's the basic gist of the film.  From here on out I'd rather address the film from a viewpoint of commenting on the individual character.

Kenneth Nelson is Michael, the host of the party.  Michael is a recovering alcoholic who eventually, as the party spirals downward gets rip-roaring drunk.  It is probably that and some semblance of self-loathing that causes him to initiate the game that is the central part of the story.  The game entails each man at the party having to call the one he loves the most and confess his love for that person, with points gradually accruing for various things over the period of said telephone call.  It's hard to say who Michael would call (the game falls apart before we reach that point), but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be himself.

Michael

Cliff Gorman as Emory is the most effeminate of the group.  I get the impression that Emory would just like to find a nice man and settle down and become a good housewife.  He has  all the good qualities; he loves to cook and decorate.  The character comes off as rather stereotypical and may make some sensitive people cringe.  The fact of the matter is I knew a guy when I went to college who might have been an inspiration for Emory, if he had been born 20 years earlier.  I loved the fact that Emory got some of the best lines in the picture. (By best I mean funniest).

eg.  After Cowboy tells the group he hurt his back doing chin ups: Cowboy: "I lost my grip doing chin ups and fell on my heels and twisted my back."  Emory: "You shouldn't do chin ups in heels..."

Emory

Lawrence Luckinbill plays Hank, a man who has just recently accept his homosexuality, although he has been married and has kids.  He is currently living with Larry (played by Keith Prentice).  During the aforementioned game, Hank reveals the person he loves the most is Larry, but Larry has a problem with monogamy.  He wants to sleep around and that grates on Hank who is a one man man.  And yet Hank still loves Larry.

Hank

Larry

Frederick Combs is Donald. Donald is what passes for Michel's best friend and sometime lover.  Donald is the most compassionate of the crew, in my opinion.  This is only based on the fact that he doesn't get his chops in very often during the back-biting sessions that permeate the movie.

Leonard Frey (whom some of you will know as Motel, the boyfriend and future husband of Tevye's oldest daughter in Fiddler on the Roof) plays Harold, a self-described "32-year-old ugly pock-marked Jew fairy." And that should sum it up in a nutshell.  Harold has no qualms about stating what's on his mind, no matter how rude or obnoxious he may come off sounding.  But the fact of the matter is I probably like Harold the most of the cast, simply because he does come right out and say it.  He arrives ("fashionably"?), and thus misses out on some of the fun.

Leonard

Robert La Tourneaux plays "Cowboy", the "present" that Emory has brought for Harold.  Apparently a street hustler hired to put a smile on Harold's face, to say the Cowboy is a mimbo would be being overly gracious.  This poor sap probably couldn't put two and two together and get anywhere near 4.  In my typical acerbic wit I created a better word for him.  "Dimbo"  Cowboy gets off on the wrong foot from the very start when he greets Michael at the door with the song and the kiss that was supposed to be for Harold (who had yet to arrive for his own party).

Ruben Greene plays Bernard, a man who suffers from a double whammy of being both black and gay in a society that considers both to be less than acceptable.  Bernard is the first one on the clock to call his most loved one, which turns out to be the son of a woman for whom Bernard's mother worked as a housekeeper/maid.

Peter White plays Alan, the outsider in the group and the only straight man.  (There is some debate on that among critics and fans of the movie, and maybe my own heterosexual tendencies are in play here, but I am convinced he is straight even at the end.)  Alan was Michael's college roommate and in the ensuing years Alan married a girl from college with whom they were both friends.  Apparently Alan is having some trouble on the home front, which is why he comes to see Michael in the first place.  Watching Alan's expressions throughout the movie as he observes the interactions is pretty eye-opening.  I can imagine myself in his position, or at least I can imagine myself 30 years ago in that position.  Coming from my background (conservative small town mentality) , I probably would have reacted the same way in my 20's.  These days I'd fit right in.

As a final note on the picture, I rather liked it.  I understand that some members of the LGBT community have begun distancing themselves from the movie and play because it presents a rather negative view of the community, but if that's the case then most heterosexuals ought to distance themselves from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?...

A number of the stars of this film have since passed away from HIV/AIDS (Nelson, Combs, Frey, Prentice, La Tourneaux ) and it's complications.  Which makes it a good reason to segue into the next film we will discuss.

Longtime Companion (1989):

In 1982, I first heard about this new disease that was affecting, mostly, the homosexual community.  Not much was known about it at that time.  It had only really been discovered a year earlier.  The fact that not much was known about it, and the fact that it was first discovered to be appearing in the homosexual community did not stop people from speculating about it.  The evangelical Christian community for example took no pauses to declare that it was God's judgement on the homosexuals.

The movie covers one day each year for several years in the lives of several gay couples.   The first day is July 3rd, 1981.  The talk of the gay community is a New York Times article about a new "cancer" that has begun to crop up in the gay community.  While this is discussed, we are introduced to the main characters of the film.  Willy (Campbell Scott) and John (Dermot Mulroney) are a pair of friends who are visiting a couple on Fire Island.  David (Bruce Davison) and Sean (Mark Lamos) are their hosts.

Willy ends up hooking up with "Fuzzy" (Stephen Caffrey) because, as Willy confesses, he "likes hairy men".  Meanwhile Howard (Patrick Cassidy) is auditioning for a part in a soap opera, which just happens to being written by Sean.  Howard's boyfriend, Paul (John Dossett) lends his emotional support in Howard's endeavors.  Fuzzy's sister, Lisa (Mary-Louise Parker), who is a neighbor of Howard and Paul, also lends encouragement.  

 Over the course of 8 years (the movie ends on a date in 1989), we see the gradual deterioration of several characters to the disease which has now been labelled AIDS.  The first to succumb is John.  But the most heart-rending victim in the movie is Sean, who appears to hang on for a year or two, but his decline is seen from the prism of David's eyes as he watches his longtime companion die.  Bruce Davison was nominated for an Oscar for his heart-wrenching portrayal of David.  (He lost to Joe Pesci, but he did win several other awards including a Golden Globes).

The movie is not a total downer, however.  There is plenty of humor in it as people try to deal with the situations.  There is a funny scene as several try to find something for one of their friends to be dressed in during his funeral and they come across a dress in his closet.  And one character reveals a past incident where he dressed up in his sister's wedding dress and fell down the stairs while still in it and passed out,  And I don't know if it was supposed to be funny, but I found the scene where a trio of musicians performed the Village People song "YMCA" as if it was a chamber music piece pretty funny.

Longtime Companion has been cited as the first movie to deal compassionately with AIDS.  It was preceded by a play, The Normal Heart, but that didn't get produced as a film until 2014.  Philidelphia, which came out several years later is probably the most well known movie to address the issue, but this one surely deserves a watch.  You'd have to be hardhearted indeed to not shed some tears in the final scene as three surviving members walk along a deserted beach and imagine seeing a horde of their deceased companions running up to them.  (Sorry for the spoiler... The movie poster I used for this piece is actually from that scene, though.)

Drive home safely, folks.

Quiggy