Blood Drive

 

 

 

This is my entry in the 4th Annual Spooky Classic Movie Blogathon hosted by Hoofers and Honeys.

 

 

 

 

 

The Midnite Drive-In has played host to quite a few movies of varying caliber from the 1950's over it's ten year existence. The '50's. in the opinion of your humble blogger, is they heyday of the essence of what I term as the "drive-in movie".  Elsewhere on this blog I have mentioned that the drive-in was essentially a venue for low quality sci-fi, horror and motorcycle films, the kind of stuff that the average 20-25 year old male drive-in patron would be enticed to see. Below is a typical newspaper ad for films discussed in this entry. Note the draw of "All New! Never anything like them before!" Not entirely true really. Many of the drive-in features had the same recurring plots, but that doesn't mean they didn't each have some entertainment value in their own right.

 

 

 

The year 1958 had lots of movies like the ones previously mentioned in the opening of last week's entry, the 10th Anniversary piece. If you read that piece, you know what you are in for here, because these movies feature the same "high" standards of quality film making that the three movies featured in that post had. Of course, I'm not so isolated that I don't know that some of you probably won't find these two films in your own bailiwick. But they do have their own following, even so. Years ago I gave up the hope of getting my sister to watch these kinds of movies. But some of my friends really get a kick out dancing under the limbo bar required to sit through them, and those are my kind of people...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blood of the Vampire (1958):

 

"The most loathsome scourge ever to afflict this earth was that of the Vampire.  Nourishing itself on warm living blood,  the only known method of ending a vampire's reign of terror was to drive a wooden stake through its heart."

 

As the credits roll, the opening features a ritual, circa 1874, as a corpse is being buried. But prior to the burial a stake is driven through it's heart. After everyone else has left the scene, the gravedigger begins the process of competing the burial. But he is stopped by a hunchback (Victor Maddern), who kills him. 

 

 

 

The next scene features a pub in riotous gaiety as the hunchback enters. With every suspicious and wary eye on him he approaches a man and gestures that the man must leave with him. It turns out that the man had been previously hired to do a heart transplant on a body. As if you couldn't guess, it's the body of the grave victim that the hunchback had rescued from being buried. The man, a surgeon, completes his task, but makes the grievous error of demanding more money, with the threat of exposure of the illicit activity, and the hunchback dispatches him, too.

 

The scene shifts to a courtroom, 6 years later, where Dr. John Pierre (Vincent Ball) is convicted of having committed "malpractice leading to manslaughter" of a man, through supposed "incompetency" as a surgeon. His grievous error involved him trying to do an early form of blood transfusion, but the patient died. He claims innocence and requests that the court contact a fellow doctor in Vienna to corroborate his testimony. Unfortunately a letter from said doctor claims he has no knowledge of Pierre, and requests that the courts give him the maximum penalty available. He is sentenced to a penal colony, but someone has used his influence to get Pierre committed, instead, to a prison for the criminally insane.

 

 

 

No, Pierre himself is not insane, but he has a knowledge of certain medical processes, including his experimental work on blood transfusions, a new idea on the frontier of the medical community at the time.  This reason is why the director of the prison has manipulated the system to get Pierre committed to his prison. 

 

 

You see, the director of the prison is, (surprise, surprise), the character that the hunchback rescued from being buried and had the hapless surgeon perform a heart transplant on in the first part of the picture. The prison director, now going by the name of Dr. Callistratus (Donald Wolfit), is being kept alive by blood transfusions. The poor denizens of the prison cells are the unwilling blood donors.

 

 

Pierre is put in a cell with fellow inmate Kurt (William Devlin). (Devlin looks a heck of a lot like The Howling Man from the Twilight Zone episode, but it's not the same guy...) 

 

Kurt tells Pierre that there are some strange things going on in the prison, that he, Pierre, is in "the bottomless pit of Hell itself". Kurt later tells Pierre that many, if not all, of the prisoners are there through the manipulations of forces that the outside world is helpless to combat. For instance, like Pierre, Kurt was also innocent of the crime that got him convicted. Kurt tells him that once Pierre realizes that no help from the outside is going to be of any use, perhaps they can help each other.

 

Meanwhile, on the outside, Pierre's fiancee, Madeleine (Barbara Shelley) tries her best to find a way to prove Pierre is an innocent man.  In doing so she contacts Dr. Meinster (Henry Vidon), who insists that he had never received any contact from the courts or the Prison Commission. He tells the head of the Prison Commission, Auron (Bryan Coleman), that he is going to reopen the investigation into Pierre's trial. But Auron was not the person he should have told this. Because it was Auron who, working with Callistratus, managed to get Pierre convicted and also sentenced to Callistratus' prison. He also sent the forged letter that denied any knowledge of Pierre from Dr. Meinster...

 

 

Auron informs Callistratus that the Commission has ordered that Pierre be released, but Callistratus tells Pierre a different story: that the Commission found no evidence that would overturn his conviction. Meanwhile Pierre has come across some clue as to what is going on in the prison when a patient is discovered whom Callistratus is draining his blood. The truth of the sinister goings on is that Callistratus is draining blood from his prisoners in order to have the blood injected into himself, to keep him alive.

 

 

 

Eventually Pierre has had enough of this folderol and works with Karl to escape the prison. Unfortunately Callistratus is wise to the escape and Karl ends up supposedly killed.  Pierre comes away from the attempted escape alive, but Callistratus rigs the report of the attempt to read that Pierre had died in the escape attempt, too.  Back at home, fiancee Madeleine is suspicious of this report and manages to get a job at the prison as Callistratus' housekeeper. (Callistratus has as high turnover rate for housekeepers as he does for inmates...) As would be expected, Madeleine runs into Pierre in her duties as housekeeper, which not only is not good for job security, but also not a conducive atmosphere for continuing to exist on the planet. 

  

If you've noticed by now, there is no "vampire" in this film, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. No fangs, no midnight rendezvous with dulcet dames, no avoiding direct sunlight or religious icons, none of the trappings of the vampire trope one comes to expect. This is more of an intense psychological horror, with more emphasis on science than any supernatural horror. The film seems awfully similar to something that might have been produced by the Hammer Studios, although the Hammer name is not associated with it. 

 

In actuality, the scriptwriter, Jimmy Sangster, did have some work with the early Hammer films this movie seems to emulate before this film, and continued to crank out stuff for Hammer afterwards.  The film actually seems to be more of a science-fiction film as opposed to a horror film, what with all the "new" science of blood transfusions, and the added emphasis on discovering why certain victims' blood are more harmful than good. (In case you are one of those people who slept through biology class, you can't mix A+ blood with B- blood... it can be deadly.)  

 

Despite that, the film is intriguing in it's own right.  Donald Wolfit, the sinister Dr. Callistratus. is one of the better actors in the film. Apparently towards the end of his career he had to take on many roles in the motion picture industry, including The Hands of Orlac and Dr. Crippen, a significant step down from his years as the leader of an acting troupe that did touring productions of Shakespeare. Most of the other actors a pretty much run-of-the-mill type. Vincent Ball, who played Dr. Pierre, probably had the more prolific career, although much of his output was in the realm of second or third tier credits.

 

If you like the old Hammer Films horror output, it's not a bad imitation. It drags in some points, especially when Callistratus and Pierre start talking about the difficulties of blood type incompatibilities.  And if you can get over the disappointment that there is no actual "vampire"... 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Monster on the Campus (1958): 

 

You could be forgiven if you thought you were going to see a light hearted family movie with the opening scene. With a lilting happy score, Jimmy (Troy Donahue), drives up in a van marked "Dunsfield University Science Department" to his fraternity house to pick up Samson, a German Shepherd. 

 

 

 

He then drives to the university, where Dr. Donald Blake (Arthur Franz) is creating a mask of one of his assistants, Madeline (Joanna Moore), who is also Blake's fiancee, to be used to represent the "modern woman" display of an exhibit on the evolution of man.

 

 

 

Blake, a bit of a pessimist, expresses his opinion that the human race may be doomed if they can't figure out how to control "the animal-like instincts from our ancestors". (We seem to have survived for thousands of  years, so far, doc, but maybe we ARE just around the corner from self-destruction...)  

 

Jimmy shows up with a coelacanth, a fossil from the bygone prehistoric age. A coelacanth is a prehistoric fish, BTW.  

 

 

 

Some of the water that was in the crate leaks out on the ground and Samson licks at it. Jimmy pulls him off of the puddle, but it is too late for Samson. He transforms from a docile dog to a vicious mutt that tries to attack Madeline and does attack Jimmy.  

 

They take Samson to another doctor, Dr. Oliver Cole (Whit Bissell) who tells Blake to keep him under observation to see if he has developed rabies.  He wants Blake to get a sample of the dog's saliva for further investigation. While having Samson under observation, Blake notices Samson's teeth, which oddly are a throwback to an evolutionary earlier form of what we now call a "dog". 

 

 

When Blake tries to move the coelacanth to the refrigeration to preserve it he accidentally cuts his hand on it's teeth. Then, while moving the crate, his grip on it slips and he ends up dunking his hand into the water (the same water that Samson tried to drink...)

 

He starts to feel woozy, so Molly (Helen Westcott), Dr. Cole's assistant who happens to be helping Blake, offers to take him home. When they arrive, Molly finds Blake has passed out in the passenger seat, so she goes in to his house to call for help. But she is attacked by some creature we can't see. Meanwhile Madeline is waiting on Blake to show up for a prearranged date. When he is still a no-show, she firsts checks the lab to see if he lost track of time and is still working, but with no sign of him there, she heads over to his house.  What she finds there is that the house is in a shambles, as if some wild creature had gone berserk in it. Which apparently it has... 

 

 

 

 

She finds Donald out on the back yard lawn, apparently a little groggy. She finds Molly dead, also, hanging from a tree. When the police investigate, naturally Blake's story of being unconscious and not remembering anything after getting in the car with Molly at the lab becomes a little suspicious. Plus the fact that they found a tie clip which Blake admits is his in the grip of dead Molly's hand.  But to cast suspicion on those conclusions are some hand prints and fingerprints that the investigators find which are not only not Blake's but unlike any they have ever seen before.

 

 

 

Back at the lab, Samson appears to have lost the characteristics of a throwback that Blake had observed earlier and has reverted to its former normal self. Even though Blake swears he had pointed the dog's canine teeth out to Molly, since she was the only other person to have seen them, Blake feels inclined to admit to Cole that he probably imagined it, although he doesn't really believe that. 

 

The lieutenant in charge of the murder investigation, Lt. Stevens (Judson Pratt) shows up, inquiring whether Blake had any enemies that could enlighten the investigation, but Blake is like a saint as far as he himself is concerned. Lt. Stevens reveals an interesting fact in the murder investigation; Molly did not die of injuries, she died of fright. 

 

Several strange events happen over the next few hours, including a situation where a dragonfly comes into the lab and is checking out the coelacanth. Later, you guessed it, the dragonfly ends up being reverted to a form of it's ancient biological ancestor, and becomes several times it's normal size, and ends up attacking Blake and Jimmy and his girlfriend. (The two had come to collect Jimmy's dog). Samson had reverted back to his normal self, so is no longer a threat. And, eventually, that dragonfly reverts back to its normal state.

 

 

 

Apparently that coelacanth, or at least the water it was in, has some kind of power to cause whoever comes into contact with it to become a savage ancestor of it's evolutionary past. At one point it is revealed that the coelacanth had been subjected to gamma radiation, ostensibly to help keep it preserved. (Ah! The dangers of the atomic age!  In the 50's, Hollywood's biggest bugaboo was the new and mysterious atomic science...)  As it slowly dawns on Blake that all this regression into primitive state is connected with contact with the blood of the irradiated coelacanth, he decides to performs an experiment to prove his theory.

 

 

 

It all comes to a head when Madeline and his colleagues and the police come to a cabin where Blake has gone to perform an experiment on himself to prove his theory. Then, as with any good man who realizes that he himself is unwittingly responsible for the havoc that has been caused, he arranges it so the police can shoot him while he is still in the regressive state.

 

I saw another movie a few years ago, (one which I am still getting around to reviewing, BTW), called The Monolith Monsters. (And if that title is highlighted at some future point, you'll know I finally did it.) That movie, like this one, has what may seem like a fairly ridiculous plot, but it is in the execution of the plot and in the acting of the cast that makes the whole thing remarkably well done.  

 

One of the reasons this movie turns out so well, in my opinion, is that it was directed by... Jack Arnold.  Many films that Arnold had a hand in became classics of the genre, but if these films had been in the hands of some other director I doubt they would have turned out as well. That's because Arnold was a stickler for making the science in these films plausible. You actually believe there could be a remnant of a prehistoric age living in the jungles of Brazil in The Creature from the Black Lagoon.  The idea that a lab developed nutrient to help the human populace in need could, in it's undeveloped stages, cause a lab spider to grow to enormous size is not entirely unbelievable in Tarantula! And, despite the strangeness of the idea, a strange mist could actually cause a man to shrink in size in The Incredible Shrinking Man becomes fairly realistic.

 

The reviews of the day considered the film "very good". It is only in retrospect of time that the film has gone down in it's  reception. The modern public, as evidenced by another review website, the Popcornmeter, only gives the movie a 27% rating.  A lot of the bad reviews seem to center on the makeup used for the monster, as it is compared to the makeup in The Wolf Man and found wanting. Even it's director was not entirely enamored by his final product. An interview with Arnold. quoted in a Wikipedia article, claims that he "really didn't hate it, but [he] didn't think it was up to the standards of other films" he had done.

 

Other than the somewhat overemphasized philosophical sub context, that man needs to curb his irrational aggressive nature before he becomes no better than his prehistoric ancestors in the emotional state, the movie is well worth checking out, in my opinion.

 

Well, folks, that wraps it up for today. Time to crank up the old Plymouth and head home.  Drive safely.

 

Quiggy

 

 

 

Sgt. Pepper vs. The Disco Invasion

 

 

 

 

So here's a premise for you. Take one of the most beloved and iconic rock albums of all time, cast some then current 70's disco "icons" as characters, add in a bizarre plot that is loosely based on it, and foist it on the public as an ostensible tribute to a band that means more to many people than life itself. 

What you get is a mess that is about as effective as a halfwit with a BB gun facing a rampaging onslaught of evil robots.

This film, which starred disco era icons, the Bee Gees, as the Henderson brothers who, along with their friend, Billy Shears, played by Peter Frampton (who probably should have known better) on a quest to achieve fame, and, as an added plot twist, retrieve the iconic instruments of a predecessor that had been stolen from the idyllic town of Heartland, U.S.A.  The plot itself, however, is just the glue that binds together a host of 70's bands to do cover versions of Beatles songs culled from, mainly, their albums Abbey Road and, of course, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. This is what's known in the industry as a jukebox musical.

The definition of the term "jukebox musical" might require some definition to the newbie. A jukebox musical by strict definition is a musical which incorporates previously known songs, as opposed to original songs written for said musical. Most of the time, it's the songs drive the plot forward. 

However, much like the later released Pink Floyd: The Wall there is not much dialogue in this film. In point of fact, almost nobody other than George Burns, who plays Mr. Kite, has any spoken lyrics. The film relies on the songs themselves to carry the story to it's ultimate conclusion. Note: Apparently there was additional dialogue, including speaking parts for the Henderson brothers, but the Gibb brothers couldn't pull off an American accent, and Peter Frampton, also British, wasn't much better, thus making the illusion of this taking place in the heart of the U.S.A. became an illusion that just didn't work. 

Several other big name acts were either roped, or maybe even duped, into appearing in this film, as well as recording said cover versions of those classic songs. Now, admittedly, a couple of those covers were not entirely bad. I still, to this day, prefer Aerosmith's cover version of "Come Together" than the original Beatles version. But, tell me, is there anything that could be worse than Steve Martin's attempt at doing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"?

The film actually had a predecessor in the form of an off-Broadway production in 1975, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band On The Road. As near as I can tell, based on the description of it on wikipedia, about the only thing it had in common with the movie version is that they were both derived from the original album. The stage production appears to have virtually the same selection of songs, however, so I can't say how close the movie was to the stage play.

 

 

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978):

 The film opens with a scene from World War I in August 1918, in a little village of "Fleu de Coup" (seriously...) as the Allies and the Central Powers are engaged in battle. As Mr. Kite (George Burns) tells it: 

"The War to End All Worlds did not end soon enough. So Heartland USA sent the Allies it's most effective secret weapon.

Sgt. Pepper... and his Lonely Hearts Club Band." 

On to the scene of the battle marches an oompah band. And everybody stops fighting. And the war ends. (Really!) Hold on to your hats , folks.  It gets even weirder... Apparently the band was instrumental (no pun intended) in solving the depression and even causing the end of WWII to boot.  In 1958, a ceremony is held to inaugurate the installment of a weather vane that, claims Mr. Kite, "will always point to happiness... (as opposed to whichever way the wind is blowing...) At the inauguration, Sgt. Pepper has promised to play one last tune for good old Heartland. (and if Sgt. Pepper was in his 20's in 1918, he seems to have aged 70 or 80 years in the 40 years since...) Sgt. Pepper, sadly keels over on stage mid tune. And Mr. Kite's response? "Oh, well..." Sgt. Pepper leaves his instruments to the town as supposedly, as long as the instruments stayed in Heartland "humanity would live happily ever after".  

All of this in the first five minutes of the movie....

20 years Sgt. Pepper's favorite grandson, Billy Shears (Peter Frampton) forms a band with three of his friends, the Henderson brothers (portrayed by the Bee Gees). They play to the hometown crowd at Heartland, singing With a Little Help from My Friends. 

There's a rumor that B.D. Hoffler of "Big Deal Records" has an interest in this new band. A lot of the credit for this development can be put on the shoulders of Dougie Shears (Paul Nicholas), Billy's avaricious and opportunistic cousin. It is through him and his love of money that much of what happens to our heroes happens in the first place. 

 

The next song we get is Fixing a Hole in which we get George Burns doing a soft shoe dance and "singing" (sort of). Burns had never really been known for his Euterpian abilities, so it's no surprise that his cover is basically what is called "talk-singing".  And Getting Better exemplifies how life is changing for the quartet. Billy and his true love, Strawberry Fields (Sandy Farina), have a final night together before Billy is due to leave to embark on his career. They sing Here Comes the Sun as dawn breaks over Heartland.

 

Mean Mr. Mustard (Frankie Howerd) makes his appearance. His goal, apparently as a lackey for some as yet unknown evil entity, is to steal the treasured instruments of Heartland. The motto of this presence "We Hate Love! We Hate Joy! We Love Money!"

 

The group boards a hot air balloon for the trip to Hollywood (really!). But at some point either they collide with or are magically transported to a better form of transport, a jet airplane. And they get to meet the head of Big Deal Records, B. D. Hoffler (Donald Pleasance, who has to share screen presence, if not billing credit, with his toupee...) During the limo drive and an extremely well catered extravaganza (and by "well-catered" I don't mean the food...), there is a back and forth between all present during a cover of I Want You (She's So Heavy).

 

After signing their contracts at the dinner, which (probably intentionally) brings to mind the typical "deal with the devil" contract signing of a movie version of the Faust tale, the band is on their way. And if that Faust reference was anything prescient, it plays out that way in the boys' case. For the next morning, as the caption reads, they begin "a difficult one week climb from obscurity to stardom". They become huge hits immediately, and have a 37 night run at the Forum, which is "sold out" for every night...  

Good Morning, Nowhere Man, Polythene Pam, and She Came In Through the Bathroom Window exemplify the hold that the band has on it's adoring public. But back home in Heartland, things are not looking too good. Mean Mr. Mustard, who is under the influence of a body now revealed to be "F.V.B.", is preparing to put into action his devious deed, to steal the town's cherished instruments. Aided by The Brute (Carel Struyken), he ties up Mr. Kite and makes away with said artifacts. He is instructed to distribute the instruments to various locations.

 

The cornet is taken to Dr. Maxwell Edison (Steve Martin) and the tuba to cult leader Father Sun (Alice Cooper). And the saxophone of course is due to go to F.V.B. Mustard gets to keep the drum. What the importance of each getting which instrument is, however, is never revealed. As a result of the instruments going missing poor Heartland becomes a den of debauchery and vice (in other words, Las Vegas. A low-rent Las Vegas, anyway...) Strawberry takes a bus to Hollywood to find Billy and the boys and tell them of the tragedy that has befallen Heartland.

She arrives in Hollywood to see the opening act for the boys, Lucy and the Diamonds (Stargard) playing, of course, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.  Strawberry tells Billy of Mr. Mustard's nefarious deed and the boys embark on a quest to retrieve the stolen instruments in Mustard's stolen van, which is conveniently there because Mustard followed Strawberry to Hollywood.

Their first quest is to retrieve the cornet from Dr. Maxwell, "a small time quack" who turns "ugly old corrupt people into handsome young corrupt people". And thus we get what is probably the worst cover version of the movie, Maxwell's Silver Hammer, in which Dr. Maxwell turns a slew of old people into what looks like his version of Hitler Youth. The boys arrive and engage Dr. Maxwell in battle, including a cheesy reenactment of the light saber battle of Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars. But they succeed in getting the cornet.

 

Then on to the next quest.  They go to Father Sun, previously known as Marvin Sunk, who in a previous life was "an unemployed school crossing guard at the bottom of his life"... (Yeah, that would probably be the bottom for me, too...) He had an inspiration to get his revenge on his tormentors, the school kids, by brainwashing them for F.V.B. Why? Because, why else? He has the tuba that was stolen and the guys show up to do battle with him.

 

But Billy get a huge jolt of electricity in the battle and it takes Strawberry to revive him (and finally we get Strawberry Fields Forever sung by Sandy "Strawberry" Farina). There is still the saxophone to retrieve, so the quest must continue.  But frustration takes over among the boys and they end up destroying the computerized portion of the van, thus losing a way to figure out where the saxophone was.

As Heartland descends into chaos and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band starts to rack up concert cancellations, Dougie finally gets a good heart (maybe temporarily) and convinces B. D. to sponsor a benefit concert for Heartland. This concert would essentially have every big band name in the world descending to raise money to save the town, and maybe even the band. Dougie's newfound moral re-righting is short found as he and Lucy attempt to make off with the proceeds of the benefit however (You Never Give Me Your Money).

While the real band, Earth , Wind and Fire (the only act to appear in the movie under it's real name) perform a version of Got to Get You Into My Life, Mustard and the Brute manage to steal the van back, and the instruments, which are still inside. 

 

Not only that, but they kidnap Strawberry to boot.  The boys give chase in, what else, the hot air balloon... (Better add some jet boosters to that thing boys...) Meanwhile, on the van, Mustard, who has a crush on Strawberry, serenades her with When I'm Sixty-Four. The only thing that keeps this part from delving into cheese ball status is that Strawberry turns into a duet. God forbid we be subjected to two Frankie Howerd talk-singing solos...

At  F.V.B. headquarters, we find out that F.V.B. stands for "Future Villain Band" (Aerosmith). "The evil force that would poison young minds, pollute the environment, and subvert the democratic processes... and worst of all, change Strawberry into a mindless groupie!" (Ye gods!) We finally get to the best cover of the movie, as the Future Villain Band performs Come Together. Billy battles the leader of the band and defeats him, but in the process, Strawberry is killed.

 

As Billy serenades Strawberry's body with Carry That Weight, and then wanders away in tears and memories as the strains of The Long and Winding Road play, and the Hendersons mourn for Billy's loss with A Day in the Life, it appears that not everything is going to end in a good world, at least not for everybody. Billy is so distraught that he takes a plunge off a tall building.

Oh, put a lid on those tears! This is a feel good movie! It ain't over yet! (And some of you may be groaning..."There's still more???")  The miracle that HAS to happen to bring the feel good movie back from that dark edge occurs, when a good wind blows on the weather vane (remember the weather vane of the original Sgt. Pepper from the opening?)  and it turns into none other than Sgt. Pepper himself (or in this case Billy Preston) who uses his magic to turn everything back to it's previously happy state (with Get Back), almost as if the events in the movie never happened. 

 

But not, unfortunately, as if the movie itself never happened...

The finale recreates the album cover of the Beatles original album, with everybody who was anybody in the 70's (or at least anybody who would deign to appear in it) getting together to do a chorus of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". Check out the faces you will recognize in this scene, including Carol Channing, Cousin Brucie, Dr. John, Leif Garrett, Helen Reddy, Tina Turner, and Sha-Na-Na, just to name a few.

 

The movie was nominated for a Stinkers Bad Movie Award (a predecessor to the Razzies), but it lost to If I Ever See You Again (which I never saw, and probably won't see, based on it's story line...)  Also in competition that year were Paradise Alley, Moment by Moment, and The Bad News Bears Go To Japan. Based on that lineup I'm thinking it was close voting between the winner and Moment by Moment. I kind of liked Paradise Alley, and really, the Bad News Bears sequel is not as bad as it's made out to be...

The sad part is, if it's not just hyperbole anyway, is that Universal apparently thought they had the next "Gone with the Wind" on their hands. In reality it was a virtual D.O.A. at the box office. It made back it's investment (barely), but the critics loathed it. As usual, my barometer of the critics is the Tomato-meter which gives this film a rating of 11%. The IMDb website, which gets the public reception of the film, gives it a 4.3 out of 10 based on public voting at the site.

OK, so this movie was not it's generation's Gone with the Wind. It probably wasn't even it's generation's Reefer Madness (although a little reefer before watching might improve it somewhat, I couldn't say).  I do however say it is a much better movie than some of the stuff that Hollywood foisted on the public to try to take advantage of a popular genre or theme in the 70's. Don't believe me? I challenge you to sit through The Star Wars Holiday Special. Even Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park pales by comparison to cheese ball status to that corker...

The film was, needless to say, not very well received. George Harrison, one of the original Beatles, was quoted as expressing sympathy for the Bee Gees, and Frampton and producer of the film, Robert Stigwood. He thought the film "damaged their careers", saying that it was kind of like the Beatles trying to cover the Rolling Stones, the Rolling Stones did it better. Notwithstanding the chutzpah it took to emphasize how much better he and his band were than the artists in question, one could say that it was probably bound to fall short in the eyes of the adoring public of the Beatles. The premiere was attended by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. Notably not mentioned anywhere is that I guess John Lennon avoided it. But then, Lennon was so full of himself he probably didn't even attend the movies he was actually in...

Some interesting tidbits of information: Did you know that Kiss was originally approached to be Future Villain Band (the part that went to Aerosmith)? Apparently they thought the part would be bad for their careers and instead opted to make Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, and you can draw your own conclusions about THAT choice...  Some big names that chose to opt out of being involved in this film were Barry Manilow, Olivia Newton-John (who would have been Strawberry Fields) and Bob Hope (who would have been Mr. Kite).

The director, Michael Schultz, had a couple of good movies under his belt, going into this one. Both Car Wash and Greased Lightning are scheduled for my upcoming Semiquincentennial Movie Project next year, as well as Cooley High, noted as a great moment in black cinema.  After this he would still have a career as a director, but most of his output was not on par with his earlier output, with much of it being episodes of TV shows. He was the director of Carbon Copy, however, which although not a huge hit, is notable as being the first big screen appearance of Denzel Washington. He also followed up with two films in 1985 that garnered some good reviews, Krush Groove and The Last Dragon.

If you want to compare this film to examples of how the idea of pairing popular music with a plot that actually works, I recommend the adaptation of the Who's rock operas Tommy or Quadrophenia. But even, staying in the 70's, a case could be made for either Godspell or Jesus Christ, Superstar. Neither of those incorporated previously popular songs, but the outcome was much better. And I can't pass up the opportunity to put a plug in for one of my favorite musicals, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That list is by no means complete, but it's enough to get you started.

Well, folks, time to fire up the old Plymouth and head back to the good old staid homestead. Drive safely.

Quiggy

 

 

 

Strange Dreams

This is my entry in the Secret Places and Trippy Houses Blogathon hosted by Taking Up Room

 

 

 

Alone at night in the shadows of my room,

I drift inside of a magical view.

Strange dreams invade my sleep at night! 

 

"Strange Dreams" by Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush 

 

Your dreams are the realm of fantasy. In your dreams you can be an amazing superhero, saving the world just by wagging your pinky finger. Or you can be the cock of the walk, getting the best looking girl (or guy, as the case may be...) in town. Those are what we might call "good" dreams.

 

On the other side of the coin you could be haunted by some pretty bizarre circumstances. Who among us hasn't had a dream where you were caught at school in your pajamas, or underwear, or even naked in front of your classmates? That is just a mild nightmare, as far as nightmares go. A few years ago I related a story about dreaming that flying monkeys were out to get me after watching The Wizard of Oz on TV. (A Nightmare in Oz) 

 

But the nightmares that  haunt some people are even more devastating. Again, on a personal note, I have dreamed, on several occasions of being in a terrible accident, usually while driving. To have nightmares where your actions within the dream sequence not only affect you, but also affect others, can be a cause of distress.  

 

Take for instance the dream of a world leader. God only knows what kind of sick dreams a wacko like Adolph Hitler or Kim Jong Un had or has.  But even world leaders who have some semblance of rationality, such as the President of the United States, can be a bit off kilter.  In this movie the President, played by Eddie Albert, is still holding on to a tenuous hold on rationality, but is still plagued by a recurring nightmare.

Dreamscape is a film that sometimes seems to be unsure of what it wants to be.  Is it a horror movie? (Some scenes may just scare the pants off of you).  Is it a science-fiction movie? (The idea of being able to enter the dreams of another person and interact with them is the stuff of geek sci-fi fantasy). Is it a political thriller? (The main baddie has some ulterior motives for his trying to get the President some help with his nightmares). There is even a not-so-subtle romance going on in the movie, so a case could be made for a romance movie. To top it off, the movie poster (see below) clearly tried to make a connection to the adventure film, a la Indiana Jones, although there is not much in it that could remind you of that adventure type of movie...

Besides the focal "star" of the film, (and, at this point, Dennis Quaid was just getting started, since he had only a few big roles under his belt by this time, Tough Enough, Jaws 3D and The Right Stuff, and had still not achieved the "familiar face" status he would later get), you also got some superstar talent in the form of Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer, as well as Kate Capshaw, who had just earlier this year gained some recognition for her role in the second Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The highlight of the film, for me, though, was David Patrick Kelly, who had a few years prior made his film debut in what will probably end up being his most memorable role, as Luther in The Warriors.  

Additionally, there was also George Wendt ("Norm" from Cheers), who throughout the 80's got parts as subsidiary characters in films, and Peter Jason, whose name may not be familiar, but his face surely will be if you watched many 80's movies (in particular, he was the leader of the resistance movement in They Live and was also the bartender who was the recipient of the classic line delivered by Eddie Murphy in 48 Hrs... ""There's a new sheriff in town.. and his name is Reggie Hammond!") .  

Dreamscape came out in 1984 and faced the daunting competition of  such blockbusters as Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Fortunately the studios didn't actually try to pit it against those monster moneymakers:  The early summer gave the public the big guys, and let Dreamscape have the luxury of coming to the big screen in late August. It still had the opportunity to have a semi-decent draw, garnering $12 million against a (astoundingly) low budget of $6 million. (The movie LOOKS like it costs more than that, since the special effects are pretty decent...) Note: Elsewhere I have read that the producer claims ticket sales reached upwards of $25 million, take that as you will.

 

 

 

 

Dreamscape (1984):

A key recurring theme in the 80's (and beyond) is that anytime there are potential psychics involved in the story, there is ALWAYS some secret government group seeking to have control over these talented individuals. It was true in Firestarter, and it is true here also. At the beginning of the movie, Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer) is discussing with Dr. Paul Novotny (Max von Sydow), pointing out that a former associate of Novotny's, Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid), is just the sort of man that Blair is looking for for his project.  The project at hand is a program that purports to use psychics to enter the dreams/nightmares of patients at the institute to help them overcome the nightmares that plague them.

 

Blair wants a good talented psychic to help relieve the President of the United States (Edward Albert) deal with a recurring nightmare he has been having about causing the coming of World War III.  But Blair's motives are not altruistic. See the President (whose name is never given, but at one point he is called "John") is determined to go to a Geneva Peace Conference and try to negotiate a disarmament or at least a reduction in the available nuclear weapons stash of the country. See, the President is not only haunted by thoughts of an imminent nuclear war, but he is still dealing with the trauma of his recently deceased wife. (Thus his wife plays a prominent role in his nightmare as she is frantically running from the blast of an exploded nuclear weapon).

 

Blair, the essence of a "hawk" thinks this is a bad idea. And, as it turns out later, his plan is to kill the President in his dreams. This would have the effect of killing the President in real life, because it is established that if you die in your dreams, you die in real life, too.

But Alex has skipped out of the limelight, living basically in the shadows, using his psychic abilities to win at gambling.  When bookies show up to wrangle him into helping them Alex is not very receptive. But when some guys from his former boss's institute show up Alex uses the opportunity to escape from the bookie and his henchmen. But, when it turns out that Alex finds out his newly acquired saviors intend to basically "kidnap" him for Novotny's program, he is not entirely all that gung ho about it. Even when he finds out they intend to try to use him in the dream scheme. 

That is, until he meets Dr. Novotny's colleague, Dr. Jane DeVries (Kate Capshaw). Alex is, among other things, a womanizer (and with Capshaw as his new potential conquest, who could blame him...?) So he agrees to hang on for just a little bit longer. At least until he can get Jane to agree to a romantic interlude...

 

Blair's prize psychic is Tommy Ray Glatman (David Patrick Kelly). Tommy Ray is the ultimate in "I'm just in this for myself" kind of thinking. It turns out that Tommy Ray is not entirely as innocent as anyone may think. Alex eventually finds a file in the offices of Blair that reveal that Tommy Ray had killed his own father.

   

As usual, when the government has it's hand in the pie, it turns out that not all is what it seems, even though Blair manages to put up a front to keep the secret agenda hidden away from Alex as well as Novotny and Jane. Before we get to that final combat in the nightmare of the President, however, we get to see Alex work his magic at helping a young boy overcome is nightmare of a boogeyman, Or, in this instance, a snake man... (By the way, the kid is played by Cory Yothers, whose sister had a bit more success in Hollywood, mainly by playing the younger sister of Alex Keaton in Family Ties).

There is also a pretty funny sequence where Alex helps out a man who is having trouble with his sex life with his wife. It turns out that he is haunted by his own "nightmare". I won't give this part away because a: it's well worth seeing on screen and b: it's just too funny to describe anyway.

Alex and Jane end up together in a dream she is having, but since Alex entered the dream without her knowing about it first, or even her acquiescence, she is understandably a bit annoyed with Alex. But she had an attraction to Alex in the first place, so she is not all that incensed by his intrusion. (Unlike other bloggers I am not going to address the non-PC issue that this scene might be looked at in today's world. I try to look at movies in the context of the time they were made, not whether they would fly today).

Alex meets up with a writer of potboilers, Charlie Prince (George Wendt), who is investigating the mysterious goings on at the institute, and eventually turns Alex on to the fact that Blair may not be all the altruistic figure he seems to be trying to promote himself as.

 

Most of the dream sequences are a bit on the low budget side (that snake man, for instance, is not really all that scary, just made more so by the music accompanying the scenes). But, considering, the time, they are pretty decent. I found out in doing research that the low quality of the dream sequences was due to the fact that the producers underestimated the time they would need. Apparently, they thought 2 months would be plenty of time. Imagine what they could have accomplished if they had given themselves at least double that... 

Ultimately, the best sequence is the final scene in which Alex and The President have to fend off Tommy Ray, who as I mentioned earlier is Blair's number one boy for dispatching the President. 

The post holocaust scenes in the President's nightmare, although not much different from any other post-nuclear war scenes depicted in movies and TV shows down through the ages, can be pretty nerve-wracking, and were probably even more so during the mid-80's when the threat of nuclear war with the Russians still loomed on the horizon. And here that filter that the camera man uses to give it an odd unworldly feel of the dream world makes the scene work all that much better.

A note here about the content: Red Dawn, which had been released earlier in 1984, was the first movie to ever receive the newly created PG13 rating, movies that weren't too graphic in other areas, but might be to violent for a standard PG rating. Dreamscape became the second. You parents with small children might keep that in consideration...  

If you decide to take the leap in to the dream world of this movie, I don't think you'll be disappointed. When I originally saw it in the theater back in 1984, I think I would have given the film an 8 rating. Here, in the retrospect of the past, and having seen many more films with an apocalyptic scene or two, made much better due to a bigger budget, I would be remiss to say it didn't drop a peg or two, but I think I could still rate it a 7.

Well, time to fire up the old Plymouth and head back home. Drive safely.

Quiggy

 

 

 

 

10th Anniversary of The Midnite Drive-In

 

Well, folks, your humble(??) blogger has achieved yet another milestone! 

Friday marks the 10th anniversary of this blog.  (As to why today, instead of Friday for this post, I have another entry already committed to post on that day, and I didn't want to overwhelm you with multiple posts...) 

Back in October of 2015 I came across a blogathon: The Universal Pictures Blogathon. That blogathon was hosted by Silver Scenes, and it inspired me to create this blog with the intention of delving into the kind of shock and schlock of the old drive-in theaters of yesteryear.  A daunting task in itself, I admit, but made even more daunting by the fact that I kept straying from my original goal.

True, there were plenty of low budget trips into the kind of stuff that both my idol, Joe Bob Briggs, and I love.  But often I would stray into mainstream fare, too (what Joe Bob referred to as "indoor bullstuff").  And worse, between late 2020 and early 2023 the blog was pretty much in idle. I managed only 4 posts during that period. Blame it on COVID. But in late 2023,  I made an effort to revive it. And this time I have (mostly) kept to that theme of drive-in shlock.

When I realized that the 10th anniversary of the blog was coming up, I decided, much as I did with the 5th anniversary, to try to find a suitable set of movies that would exhibit the heart of the drive-in experience.  So, I browsed some pictures of old drive-in movie newspaper ads to inspire me.  Unfortunately, many of the ones that appealed to me included one movie I had already covered, and I was loathe to rehash it just to get to the other movie(s).

But finally I found one that had three new movies for the blog. And after watching them, I thought they really were meant to be for this anniversary celebration, given that I am trying to return to cheesy schlock.  All three were released in a landmark year, 1958.  The three movies in question, reviewed below, were: Night of the Blood Beast, The Brain Eaters, and The Screaming Skull.

Among the other great classic movies released that year were: The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, The Blob,  The Fly, Frankenstein's Daughter, From Earth to the Moon, I Bury the Living,  I Married a Monster from Outer Space, It! Terror from Beyond Space, Missile to the Moon, Queen of Outer Space, The Space Children, Teenage Caveman and War of the Satellites. 

You could also add to that list Attack of the Puppet People, Blood of the Vampire, Colossus of New York, The Crawling Eye, Curse of the Faceless Man, Earth vs. The Spider,  Frankenstein 1970, The Lost Missile, Macabre, Monster on the Campus, She Demons, Space Master X-7, Terror from the Year 5000, and The Thing That Couldn't Die.

(Oh, yeah... The year also saw the release of A Night to Remember, Auntie Mame, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Damn Yankees, Gigi, I Want to Live!, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, King Creole, The Last Hurrah, No Time for Sergeants, The Old Man and the Sea, Separate Tables, South Pacific and Teacher's Pet...  if you're into that kind of stuff... But you are going to wait a loooong time if you expect to see most of them being shown at The Midnite Drive-In...)

So now the management presents you with a triple feature.  A trio of movies that will have you on the edge of your seat.  A trilogy of films that will make your hair stand on end. A trifecta of cinema from Spook Central. In other words...

An event to give you THE SCREAMING MEE MEES!

The horror genre would be seriously deficient without the efforts of American International Pictures. Elsewhere on The Midnite Drive-In, I have given bits and pieces of the history of the company, so I won't rehash it here. (Feel free to click on "AIP" link in The Greatest Movie Studio of All Time (American International Pictures) section of the home page. You'll find every AIP movie I have reviewed there. Or you could just click that highlighted link in the text above...) All of the movies today were a product of AIP.

 

Night of the Blood Beast (1958):

Directed by Roger Corman, one of the first things you notice in the credits is it was written by Gene Corman. That's right, the director's brother. Boy, Roger knew how to save money in more ways than one... Along with a newcomer, Martin Varno, who did most of the screenplay credit, this script, which was originally titled Creature from Galaxy 27 went into production in early 1958, with a 7 day shooting schedule and a budget of $68,000.

The film starts out like it might be a science fiction movie as opposed to a horror movie because we get a scene of a rocket ship about to blast off into space. After some fairly cheap special effects during the opening credits (except for the scene where it blasts off from Earth, the ship looks like cartoon drawings, rather than models), the film wastes no time in getting to the meat of the story.

 

 

The astronaut, Major John Corcoran, has successfully completed his space launch, but on trying to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere he experiences a malfunction. Neither the rockets nor the emergency chute that would slow down the space ship seem to be working and the rocket crashes to the Earth, killing Corcoran.

At the scene of the crash two fellow scientists inspect the wreckage. They are informed by higher ups to clean up the wreck site, but there are some strange things around. For one, one of the scientists, Donna Bixby (Georgianna Carter) says that the wreck has traces of some strange mud composition. And when other scientists show up, the other scientist who was first on the scene, Dave Randall (Ed Nelson), points out to the newcomers that the hole in the space ship seems to have gotten much larger. (Not to mention the fact that there appears to have been some invisible creature or something moving through the underbrush, unnoticed by either of the first scientists...) 

 

Coming up on the scene are fellow scientists, Dr. Alex Wyman (Tyler McVey), Steve Dunlap (John Baer) and Julie Benson (Angela Greene). Julie has the added interest in the events because she was engaged to be married to Corcoran sometime after his return. Dr. Wyman notices something strange when he examines Corcoran's body. After 3 hours since the crash there is no sign of rigor mortis in Corcoran's body! Wyman says they are going to take Corcoran's body back to the lab to continue his examination.

At the lab Wyman is a bit perplexed. Corcoran's body is almost assuredly dead, but the expected after effects of the deterioration of his body issue is still not there. 

 

Also, all communication with the outside world seems to be stopped. They can't raise HQ or the Air Force or anybody on the short wave radio. While the body is still being examined, with Wyman finding a mysterious scar on Corcoran's body, Dave heads outside to see if he can find a problem with the communications tower. While out there he is attacked by a mysterious creature coming from the nearby woods.

Although Dave survives, things continue to seem to be going wrong at the station. It appears that someone, or something, wants to isolate the station. Both vehicles that could be used to go get help have been disabled somehow. There is a magnetic force field surrounding the area that is the cause of the malfunctions of the radio and the vehicles... 

And Corcoran's body continues to act weird. Now it seems like his blood pressure is back to normal for a body that should be alive, not dead. Plus a blood sample taken reveals that it has, not the normal two blood cells, white and red, but a third type of blood cell that seems to be attacking the other two. And there seems to be alien embryos growing inside of him. At this point, most people would probably say there is too much weird s**t going on here and abandon the base, but these are scientists who have more curiosity than prudence in their make-up.

The crew decide that they have to stay at the station and keep watch, but things go drastically wrong. Something kills Wyman, taking Wyman's head, and (apparently), Corcoran's body. (Because, after all, Corcoran is dead, so he couldn't move himself... or...) Well, it turns out that Corcoran has come back to life, which can't happen, but it did.  He seems to be normal at first, curious about what is going on. But gradually it becomes apparent that some alien creature has a telepathic communication going on with Corcoran. (OK, so it is science fiction after all..)

 

 

The alien finally makes it's appearance and Corcoran pleads with his friends not to kill it. Why? Because the creature is not a threat it only wants to help the human race... (Yeah, so do any number of alien races who supposedly come in peace...) Corcoran (or maybe the alien communicating telepathically through him) tries to plead with his friends to give the alien a chance to explain itself. ("Can't we all just get along?" and all that folderol...) 

Well, as it turns out, the plan to "save" the human race is to actually destroy it and replace it with the aliens. Corcoran realizes this and realizes that the only way to stop this plan is to kill himself, and thus the alien embryos inside him.

 

This is a much better movie than it sounds like, believe me.  While there are some parallels that make it seem like it is sponging off of previous better films, such as The Thing from Another World and even Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the film does have a bit more in it than just a cheesy knockoff. To be fair, it wasn't well received, and some reviews are downright scathing. One reviewer claimed that the alien looked "like the San Diego Chicken after it had been tarred and feathered"and another said that it resembled "a human-sized parrot that had been covered in feces"...  Ouch.

 

 

OK, the alien aside, which admittedly does look kind of ridiculous, the story is pretty good. The creature does resemble a bird man, but that was made necessary because someone in the front office said the original alien's nose looked "too Jewish". The film was not without it's controversy. Martin Varno sued Roger Corman twice over the writing credits. Check out the "WGA arbitration" section of the wikipedia article on the film if you are interested.

 

Aliens come in all sizes, however, as the next feature will prove.

 

 

 

The Brain Eaters (1958):

"A few weeks ago Riverdale, Illinois was just another quiet small town. Then on that Saturday, shortly after midnight, a living nightmare began."

 

And with that not so subtle beginning, the movie jumps right in to the meat of the story.  Two men encounter each other and one bumps in to the other, causing the first man to drop his glass container.  Rather than have a cordial (or maybe not-so-cordial) discussion about the accident, the man carrying the container starts to beat the crap out of the other man.

 

The star and narrator, Glenn (Alan Frost) is traveling with his fiancée, Elaine (Jody Fair), to meet with his father to share the good news about his impending wedding. But they get sidetracked. Something odd is going on up ahead, so the two get out to investigate. While walking through the woods they come upon a couple of dead animals. But the weirdest thing is they discover a cone like object that they don't understand. 

 

 

 

Elaine asks Glenn "What is it?"

Glenn: I don't know. (Which turns out to be an oft repeated phrase....)

The curious object becomes a point of interest in Washington. A senator, Senator Powers (Jack Hill), demands to be apprised of the situation and takes control of the investigation. One wonders how much free time the Senator has if he can go off gallivanting around the country rather than spend time voting in Congress, but this is the movies, so I guess he can vote on his time off...

 

 

 

So off he goes to the site, where the scientist of note investigating this object, Dr. Kettering (Ed Nelson) is finding some intriguing facts. And using some highly questionable methods to do so. (One of the most ridiculous things he does is fire a gun into the interior of the cone. Seems to me that a qualified scientist would realize that that could result in the bullet ricocheting around and ultimately damaging valuable equipment inside, if not actually ricocheting enough to come back out the opening and hitting HIM...)

 

Eventually Kettering clambers inside, but doesn't find anything useful. Meanwhile, Glenn's father, who is coincidentally the mayor of the local town of Riverdale, has returned from a disappearance.  And he is emotionally unstable.  The crew go back to his office to find out what has happened to him. The mayor tries to kill his son and his friends, but he, himself, is killed instead.

 

 

 

After he dies, they inspect the body and find that some parasite has attached itself to the back of his neck. They figure that the parasite had injected some kind of poison that would have eventually killed him if they hadn't shot him. There is something going on with these parasites, but where did they come from?

Eventually they determine that the cone did not come from outer space, but actually came from the interior of the Earth.

 

Seems these parasites are a remnant from an earlier prehistoric age. They are determined to take over the Earth and bring about an age of peace, and their intentions are good (at least to their way of thinking...) The essence of their takeover and their motives is reminiscent of the typical "red scare" movies of the time. (In other words, mankind is diseased and only the parasites can bring about a new age where everything can be fixed, as long as the populace submits to their rule.) One look at these creatures and you'll get the idea that maybe they need to grow a pair before they try taking over the world...

 

 

(No that's not some delicacy from the buffet table at the sushi bar... those are the intelligent parasites...)

 

Of course, the humans don't want to be controlled by the "saviors" and put up a fight.

 

Leonard Nimoy (curiously, credited as Leonard "Nemoy") makes an appearance late in the film as Dr. Cole, a scientist who had disappeared 5 years before. He is alive, but he has been controlled now by the parasites.  (BTW, you might not recognize him, because he is made up to look like an old man. Only his voice is enough to trigger your recognition.) 

 

 

 

The Brain Eaters has one claim to fame in the fact that the producers were sued by Robert A. Heinlein, a science fiction author who found many similarities in the story to his own novel, The Puppet Masters. He got $5,000 dollars in a payoff and one stipulation, that no mention of his name be used in conjunction with the film.  A plan to adapt the novel, The Puppet Masters, to the big screen was jettisoned as a result.  Although, eventually a film version more true to the original novel would be produced in 1994.

 

As this film is also only an hour in length (and even that seems a little long considering), it has some entertainment value.  The suspense is enough to keep you watching, but it suffers from some pretty subpar acting. There are some familiar faces here however, if you watch the same kinds of movies I do. Joanna Lee, who plays Alice, was also in Plan 9 from Outer Space, as Tanna, one of the aliens,. Ed Nelson was a frequent actor in many AIP films, including the first movie in this entry Night of the Blood Beast.  

 

 

 

 

 

The Screaming Skull (1958):

Frightfest Guide to Ghost Movies, by Axelle Carolyn, lists The Screaming Skull as one of it's 200 "must see" ghost movies. She refers to this one as an "atmospheric, yet unevenly paced" picture.  

And, BTW, you can't go wrong if you add the Frightfest Guide series to your reference collection. All of them are not only entertaining in their own right, but excellent go-to guides for the horror genre. As of this writing there are seven books in the series, covering, in order of publication, (with each having "Frightfest Guide to" preceding them) Exploitation Movies, Monster Movies, Ghost Movies, Werewolf Movies, Grindhouse Movies, Vampire Movies and Mad Doctor Movies.

  

The film opens, in the time honored tradition of such exploitation film makers like William Castle, with a warning: 

"The Screaming Skull is a motion picture that reaches it's climax in shocking horror. It's impact is so terrifying that it may have an unforeseen effect... It may kill you! Therefore, it's producers feel they must assure free burial services for anyone who dies of fright while seeing... The Screaming Skull."

And to put an exclamation point on that the camera zooms in on an open coffin with a placard that reads

 

(BTW, unlike William Castle, who went so far as to actually hiring people to pose as nurses in the lobby to deal with frightened patrons, and even had a real insurance company on hand to sell life insurance policies in case the patron died of fright (Macabre), there is no indication that the producers followed through with any subterfuge of having someone on hand to provide "burial services" to patrons...) 

 

OK, so now that you are well informed and, if you wish to continue on despite that warning I will begin this portion of the review... don't say you weren't warned...

 

The film opens with newlyweds Eric (John Hudson) and Jenni Whitlock (Peggy Webber) arriving at Eric's estate.  Eric is on his second marriage. His late wife, Marian, had died not long after their marriage.  The house that Eric and Jenni are now planning to make their newlywed home is barren, because Marian had all the furniture in it moved out in preparation for she and Eric to stock it with new furniture. (Eric apparently never put the old furniture back in after she died...) But he tells Jenni he will bring it all back tomorrow.

 

 

 

Unseen by either is a figure peeking in on the two. This is Mickey (Alex Nicol, who was also the director of the movie), the gardener for the home, who is later revealed to be mentally disabled. Mickey kept up the garden for the two years Eric had been away, and as Eric tells Jenni, he and Marian used to spend hours working in the garden.

 

 

 

The Reverend Snow (Russ Conway) and his wife, only introduced as "Mrs. Snow" (Tony Johnson), show up to greet them. Mickey shows up and Eric introduces him to Jenni. The two visitors each take one of the pair aside, and during the course of discussion it is revealed that Jenni is rich and Eric is barely struggling to keep his head afloat. (And if you don't see what's coming, boy, are you naive...)

 

Mickey is somewhat reserved in talking or even greeting Jenni, and instead seems to have a longing for the return of Marian. He even talks to a portrait of Marian and asks her to "send them away." Apparently Mickey is still not convinced that Marian is actually gone.

 

Eric reveals to Mrs. Snow that Marian has had an unhappy past, which included her losing her parents. They had been in a drowning accident. Coincidentally then, that Reverend Snow reveals to Jenny that Marian, too, had been in an accident that resulted in her drowning in a pool on the garden property.   

 

During their first night as newlyweds, Jenni is awakened at night by a weird banging downstairs. When she goes to investigate she finds an open window banging in the wind, but after she closes it she sees a painting of Marian and it startles her.  

 

 

 

She tells Eric it looks just like her mother. She confides her fears to Eric, and Eric tells her (implants the idea, that is) that Mickey is up to some shenanigans.  He is mentally disabled, after all, and just can't accept the idea that Marian is actually gone.

 

At least, that's what Eric tries to convince Jenni is going on.  Except nothing entirely untoward has even happened yet. Just a window left open, maybe inadvertently, and a leaf from the pond in the house. But that doesn't last for long. Jenni hears strange noises and finds a skull in a cabinet, one that wasn't there the last time she looked.

 

 

 

Eric, ever the loving husband, tries to help her by burning the portrait of Marian with Jenni.  But in the ashes Jenni sees a skull. Eric insists that there is no skull.  But after Jenni passes out, Eric picks up the "non-existent" skull, and hides it in the pond.  At this point, you are probably coming to the conclusion that this is just a cheap cheesy knock off of Gaslight.

 

 

 

Ah, but friends, this isn't the world of psychological thriller, this is the world of horror. Admittedly, up to this point there is nothing entirely "horror" about the movie, and I admit, by 50 minutes into this 70 minute movie I was getting kind of bored. But as it turns out, Eric was involved in a superficial attempt to scare his newlywed rich wife to death, but someone still blames him for the death of Marian, his previous wife.  No, it's not Mickey, who is probably too mentally challenged to even dig up a grave to find a skull.

 

Nope, and I probably don't need to tell you who is going to enact revenge on Eric, who apparently was responsible for the death of Marian, after all. 

 

 

 

Alex Nicol, who played Mickey, chose this script for his first attempt at directing. The script was based on a story by Francis Marion Crawford, which in turn drew it's inspiration from a real legend of a screaming skull. Every review quoted in the Wikipedia article on this film is pretty dismissive of the film. One claimed it was a "truly awful example of drive-in cinema". That may be my opinion for the first 50 minutes of the film, but really. if you can last until that last 15 minutes, I think it improves the film exponentially. Cheesy as it is. 

 

Better yet, just find a copy of it and skip everything up to the point where Jenni tells Eric that Reverend Snow is convinced the skull is real as is going to bring a crew of people onto the property to search for it. (About the 53 minute mark). At that point the movie actually becomes interesting. Eric begins to look for the skull he hid earlier, but now cannot find, and suspects Mickey of having seen him hide it and  taking it.  

 

Although much of that last 15 minutes, including the expected attack on Eric by an unknown force, is kind of shoddy, it is still intense enough to garner some interest. Eric, as expected, gets his comeuppance. 

 

Of the three movies in this entry, I think this may be the worst of the three, but still, it's not as bad as Teenage Zombies...

 

Well, folks, sleep well. 

 

Quiggy