9/30/09
Hitch on the Hump: The Trouble with Harry (1955)
Before we get into the guts and gore that October brings, I wanted to pause for a moment to celebrate the fall season. In these late weeks of September and early weeks of October, the trees will begin to explode into a wide color palette. While I am no great naturalist, I do like to take trips into the mountains near my home this time of year to enjoy the explosion of color that marks the beginning of winter. Likewise, once Alfred Hitchcock got the clout and budget to take his movies on location, he often chose material that would allow for him and his wife Alma to travel to beautiful locales. Hitchcock had enjoyed a vacation with Alma in 1951, and now he wanted to return to film his next feature, The Trouble with Harry. In his words he wanted, “to counterpoint its macabre elements with beautifully colored scenery.”
The location for The Trouble with Harry was a small town in Vermont, St. Johnsbury, and the director relished traveling across the country to film the autumnal beauty. Unfortunately, a hurricane in early September and a wetter than usual few weeks stripped the trees of their foliage. Hitchcock waited patiently for the weather to change and passed his time shooting interiors and long vistas, but when all hope was finally lost, it came time for a bit of Hitchcock magic to take control. He sent back crates of leaves to Hollywood where Paramount art director John Goodman built a dazzling array of artificial trees and leaves. Then with a bit of work matching the light to the footage Hitchcock had already shot, and the director recreated the beauty of a Vermont fall in the comfort (and perfect weather) of a Hollywood soundstage.
This was the second relocation that John Trevor Story’s novel The Trouble with Harry had endured on its way to the screen. Trevor’s story was set in the English countryside and ran for only 100 pages. Hitchcock, who had been thinking about adapting the novel since 1951, has been quoted as saying Story’s novel was, “A nice little pastorale”, and he enlisted his frequent collaborator John Michael Hayes to create a script for the film. The Trouble with Harry soon became infused with the same kind of sexy humor that had pervaded Hayes’ previous script, To Catch a Thief. Hitchcock loved all the winking double entendres that pervaded Hayes’ draft, and it appealed to the director’s bawdy sense of humor. Paramount and the production code office were concerned, but Hitchcock soothed their nerves and promised the issues would be taken care of. As usual, instead Hitchcock found a way to get everything he wanted into the final film.
One thing that changed very little from Story’s novel was the narrative of The Trouble with Harry. Simply put, the trouble is that Harry is dead, and no one knows exactly why, but there are plenty of folks who think they may have done it. Captain Wiles (Edmund Gwenn) thinks he might have shot him while he was hunting rabbits, Miss Ivy Graveley (Mildred Natwick) thinks she might have killed him with the heel of her hiking boot, and Jennifer Rogers (Shirley MacLaine) thinks she might have killed him with a bottle across his head. So with everyone thinking they are to blame, what to do with the body? Local artist Sam Marlowe (John Forsythe) is happy to help his friends bury and unbury Harry all afternoon while they try and avoid local deputy sheriff Calvin Wiggs (Royal Dano).
When the film was released, it was met with indifference in the States while abroad the film played much better. Francois Truffaut noted that in Paris, “it opened in a very small theater… it was expected to run no more than a week or two, but it played to packed houses for half a year.” Pat Hitchcock noted that while her father had lost his British accent he had never, “lost his British sense of humor.” “Alma and others often said Hitch made his most British movie.” The humor in the film is reserved and wry, and if you put it on a double feature with a film like Waking Ned Devine, it would pair quite well. When Truffaut mentioned the films humor stemming from the “attitude of disconcerting nonchalance”, Hitchcock commented that, “That’s the idea. Nothing amuses me so much as understatement.” There are a few laugh out loud moments, but the film succeeded is plastering a smile across my face for practically the whole of the running time.
The Trouble with Harry’s humor could not have translated if it were not for the stellar cast that Hitchcock rounded up for his ensemble cast. The leading lady was quite the sticking point for a while. Hitchcock of course wanted Grace Kelly, but by then the future princess was being swept off her feet by Prince Rainier and proved to be unavailable. Hitch considered casting Brigitte Auber who had appeared in To Catch a Thief. After all in John Michael Hayes words, “Auber had a casual way of wearing a blouse which exposed her bosom frequently. And Hitch, of course was delighted.” Instead, Hitchcock settled on a newcomer who had been suggested by producer Hal Wallis. Shirley MacLaine was a chorus girl and understudy for the Broadway show The Pajama Game when Hitch met with her. The story goes that after finding out how little experience the actress had Hitchcock commented, “That makes you the copy of a shamrock, doesn’t it?” MacLaine, sure her chance was sunk replied, “Yes, I suppose so. Should I go now?” To which the director gamely replied, “Of course not. Sit down. All this simply means that I shall have a fewer bad knots to untie.” In the end MacLaine’s tomboy cuteness and fresh face provided the perfect leading lady for the film. While the redheaded MacLaine was no Hitchcock blonde, she fit the bill for the other kind of ladies found in Hitchcock films, brainy, clever resourceful, and most often, dark haired.
The film also found Hitchcock with a chance to reunite with an actor he had not worked with in 15 years, Edmond Gwenn. Gwenn had appeared in three previous Hitchcock films, 1931’s The Skin Game, 1934’s Waltzes from Vienna, and 1940’s Foreign Correspondent, but, while he appeared in 92 films during his lifetime, he will be forever remembered as the kindly Kris Kringle in 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street. Gwenn gave his character, The Captain, a wonderful turn, and I think there are parts of his character that are even meant to conjure up Hitchcock himself. It is a wonderfully funny performance, and the budding romance between The Captain and Miss Ivy Graveley is extremely sweet and surely a highlight of the film. Miss Gravely was played by Mildred Natwick, a favorite of legendary director John Ford, and she does an exceptional job as the prim old maid besotted with The Captain.
There were two more interesting faces in this film and I’ve grouped them together because they are most recognizable from their days in TV. Jerry Mathers made his first screen appearance in The Trouble with Harry, and only a few years later he would play an equally precocious child in the hit series Leave it to Beaver where he played the title character. The lead male role of Sam Marlowe was originally intended for William Holden, but because of one thing or another, the actor was not available for Hitch’s film. When passing through New York on business, Hitchcock met with John Forsythe, an actor with few film credits to his name, but a lengthy resume of Broadway and radio roles. Hitchcock found him to be a quirky charmer and thought he had what it took to fill the role of the quirky, charming artist. Forsythe would have a robust career thereafter, and nowadays he is probably best remembered as Blake Carrington on Dynasty or for his more invisible role as the voice of Charlie on Aaron Spelling’s Charlie’s Angels.
The Trouble with Harry also marked an important first for Hitchcock. With the score for To Catch a Thief going slower than expected, Hitchcock could not use composer Lynn Murray for another score. Murray suggested that Hitch might be interested in working with his friend Bernard Herrmann. The composer was already an Oscar winner for his score for The Devil and Daniel Webster (which beat out his score for Citizen Kane), and Herrmann had worked on films as diverse as Jayne Eyre, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. Few thought the pairing of composer and director would work, but when they finally met Herrmann commented they had “a great unanimity of ideas”. Herrmann’s score for The Trouble with Harry perfectly sets the mood for the droll film with macabre overtones. It would be the start of a fruitful collaboration which would not bear sour fruit until nine years and a total of seven films had passed.
Even though The Trouble with Harry never gained the wide response that his more classically thrilling films did, Hitchcock considered this film among his favorites. He even counted the moment where The Captain is dragging Harry away and Miss Gravely primly approaches him and says, “What’s the trouble, Captain?” as his favorite line in all his films. Hitchcock had always infused comedy into his films, but this was the first of his films to be pointedly comedic. Still its dark humor seems to fit in with the rest of the Hitchcock canon. As he noted, “With Harry, I took the melodrama out of the pitch-black and brought it out in the sunshine.”
Bringing it out into the light, Hitchcock set a pattern for dark comedy that still runs through the works of modern film makers. It would be quite easy to imagine The Trouble with Harry being remade by Coen Brothers, but it would lose something, something primordially Hitchcockian with any translation. The Trouble with Harry really is that this infrequently seen film is often ignored in the midst of Hitch’s work. So as fall begins, kick back and enjoy the leaves from the comfort of your own home while you watch The Trouble with Harry. Sure, it may be a soundstage, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t look grand.
Bugg Rating
9/29/09
Terrifying Tuesday: Return to Sleepaway Camp (2008) Plus How You Can Be Part of The Lair This Halloween
Now onto today’s film. Sequels to horror films are something that comes with the territory, but very rarely do they wait twenty years to happen. In the case of director Robert Hiltzik, that’s just what happened. After writing and directing the classic Sleepaway Camp, two sequels followed the film up, but neither were the product of the films progenitor. So when he got a chance in 2003 to return to the story and give it his own vision, Hiltzik was ready to continue the storyline he started in 1983. Ignoring the Pamela Springsteen years, Return to Sleepaway Camp picks up years after the first film, but with a familiar setting and a few old faces showing up, Hiltzik gets right back on track.
The events begin as camp is getting into full swing, and everyone is having a great time, well, almost everyone. Alan (Michael Gibney) is having a hard time fitting in. He bullies the dorkier, young kids, but everyone else, including most of the councilors, picks on Alan. When mysterious deaths start to occur at the camp, blame is quickly cast on Alan because of his aggressive, angry, and downright weird behavior, but long time counselor Ronnie (Paul DeAngelo) thinks there’s something else going on. He believes that the deaths aren’t Alan’s doing, but the return of Angela, the killer who terrorized Camp Arawat all those years ago.
Return to Sleepaway Camp is not the earth shattering revelation that the original film was, but I wasn’t expecting that. Frankly, I wasn’t even expecting to enjoy the film that much, and for the first hour, I really didn’t. It wasn’t until the third act got rolling that I really started getting into the film. From that point on, Return to Sleepaway Camp got on the right track, and by the time the credits rolled I was pretty happy. Hiltzik created a film that pairs well with his original film, and the Hiltzik-less sequels. In fact, one the strange things is how much I think he took from the films that he didn’t work on.
I don’t really recall the killer in Sleepaway Camp having much of a sense of humor. Sure, the kills might be accomplished with bees or curling iron, but they still seemed like cold blooded acts. In the sequels, Pamela Springsteen’s Angela is a pretty zany character, and killing people with flagpoles, lawnmowers, and an outhouse filled with poop became her M.O. In Hiltzik’s Return to Sleepaway Camp, the killer is back, but unlike the vicious killings in the first film, the victims are dispatched with a tongue planted firmly in cheek. The worst example of this is when a stoner, named Weed no less, gets tied up and the killer forces him to drink gasoline. Then Weed gets a sticker slapped over his mouth that says “Drugs Are For Dummies”, and the killer cuts a hole in the sticker to place a lit joint into. A few seconds later, Boom goes Weed. The whole sequence is a long way to go for a joke that seemed straight out of a Scary Movie sequel, although it may have been a highlight in one of those films. With Return to Sleepaway Camp, I was hoping for some sly humor, as Hiltzik’s original film included some, but I felt pretty disappointed to find that the killer was portrayed in such a campy (no pun intended) way.
My other big problem in the film is that it takes one hour to build up the storyline around Alan, and he is easily just as annoying as the people in the film say he is. It might be a credit to the skill of first time actor Michael Gibney that the character seems so realistically irritating. The problem is that I like to watch films where I at least like one of the main characters, but in Return to Sleepaway Camp, I didn’t like Alan any more than the people who were picking on him. The few characters that I did like were rarely on screen, and when they did appear, I had no hopes that the camera might linger on them for a moment. The last third of the film rebounded in part because all these characters that have been irritating me for the last hour get off-ed in rapid succession.
One thing that enhanced the whole project was the appearance of Paul DeAngleo, camp counselor Ronnie, and Jonathan Tiersten, as Angela’s brother Ricky. Both men reprise their roles from twenty years back, and it adds a good deal of flavor to see these two on screen again. Tiersten’s appearance is brief, and it does seem a little forced. All the same I enjoyed him showing up. DeAngleo appears throughout the film, and even though his acting skills have not improved in the intervening decades, I found him to be the most enjoyable part about watching this flick. The film also sports a couple of cameo appearances as well with Isaac Hayes showing up as a real life version of his South Park “Chef” and Vincent Pastore (of the Sopranos) as camp leader Frank. Pastore is pretty amusing with his performance though the highlight is the groan worthy moment when Alan informs Frank that he’s just “a big pussy.” It’s not clever, but it made me chuckle.
That almost sums up my whole feeling about the film. There was something good here, but a mix of slow buildup and unlikable characters made this film a taxing watch for me. While I will revisit the three previous Sleepaway Camp films many times over the years, I don’t know if I will add Return to Sleepaway Camp to my collection or even give it a second viewing. It’s not that the film is bad as much as it’s so very average that it is easily forgettable. I have some hopes that Hiltzik might hit gold with his third Sleepaway Camp film, Sleepaway Camp Reunion, which is rumored to showcase more of the cast from the original film.
Fans of Hiltzik’s original film are divided about this installment. I’ve seen people extol its virtues, and I’ve seen other revile it as trash. That’s the thing about sequels; it’s hellishly hard to predict how fans of the original will react. Throughout the month of October, I’ll be looking at a lot of sequels, and I’ll be thinking a lot about what works. You folks should take a moment to think about that too. Then jot your list down and send it to the Bugg so you can be part of the Halloween Top 13: The Sequel. Just a reminder. I’ll be back tomorrow with a Hitchcock film to usher in the fall season, and then the fun really begins of Thursday as October gets underway. See all you folks then!
Bugg Rating
9/24/09
B.L.O.G. Presents Island of the Fishmen (1979) with Barbara Bach
I’ve waxed poetic about my love for Sergio Martino too many times for me to rehash that love affair again, but I will say that no other Italian director so successfully made so many great low budget films in so many genres. In the late seventies, with a string of sex comedies in his recent past (capped by the western Mannaja), Martino embarked on what I call his jungle trilogy. Starting with the 1978 cannibal film At the Mountain of the Cannibal God, he then shot Island of the Fishmen and Big Alligator River both released in 1979. The first film was an offshoot of the cannibal craze currently happening in the Italian cinemas, and the latter no doubt inspired somewhat by the success of Spielberg’s Jaws released four years earlier. The film in the center of these two, Island of the Fishmen, is less comparable to any existing title, and though the other two films have their relative charms, Island of the Fishmen was pure Martino.
When a group of prisoners is shipwrecked on a mysterious island, at first one of them warns of zombies and voodoo (somewhat comically considering it was shot concurrently and in the same location as Fulci’s Zombi 2), but soon the band of nere-do-wells and the last remaining officer from the ship, Lt. Claude de Ross (Claudio Casinelli) discover there may be a more insidious creature inhabiting the island. Ignoring a warning from Amanda Marvin (Barbara Bach), they follow her to the huge mansion home of Edmond Rackman (Richard Johnson) who takes in the three survivors as his “guests”. Claude discovers that Rackman is keeping scientist Ernest Marvin (Joseph Cotton) prisoner, and Edmond has been slowly turning the islands populace into deadly fishmen which Rackman is using to loot the treasures found in the newly discovered underwater kingdom of Atlantis.
IMDB attributes the writing credits for Island of the Fishmen to Sergio Donati, Cesare Frugoni, Luciano Martino, Sergio Martino, and bizarrely horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. The Cthulhu scribe is credited with his story “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, but the film more resembles H.G. Wells’ novel The Island of Dr. Moreau. Now when I say resembles, I’m being generous. It’s not that the writers come without a pedigree. Donati co-wrote Once Upon a Time in the West, and Ceasare Frugoni had written for Umberto Lenzi and the script for Luciano Martino’s sex comedy The Virgin, The Tarsus, and The Capricorn. Yet the film’s 1891 setting, the fishmen raiding Atlantis, and Richard Johnson’s eccentric villain all seem patently absurd.
But here’s the thing, Sergio Martino can make it work. You can say many things about his films, but I’ve never seen one that wasn’t entertaining. Island of the Fishmen is no exception. I mean just look at the fish man over there. They look like the Creature from the Black Lagoon had mated with a Bratz Doll, but here’s the thing, it works because somehow it fits. Once again, Island of the Fishmen marked another collaboration between the director and cinematographer Giancarlo Ferrando, and the look they achieve has the same grit of the previous jungle effort, Cannibal God.
Now, I’m four paragraphs in and Sergio Martino has distracted me from the reason we’re here today. So before we go any further, let’s talk about Barbara Bach. First, let’s get the obvious out of the way, she’s gorgeous in this flick, and it was not hard to see why the fishmen would obey her commands. They might be wall eyed and slimy. But they’re still men! So how did Barbara Bach end up in a Sergio Martino film? Well, she got married. In 1966, Bach met an Italian businessman on a plane, and the two ended up getting married. She kicked off her film career in Italy with 1968’s L’Odissea. She did not make an English language film until 1977 when she memorably starred with Roger Moore for The Spy Who Loved Me. Bach worked for a few more years, and while appearing in Caveman, Bach met and married ex-Beatle Ringo Starr. She’s made few film appearances since, but long time fans of Ms. Bach will know that she’s taken time out to appear in Playboy a couple of times. Taking all this into account, what made me smile was imagining Ringo watching Island of the Fishmen.
As beautiful a woman Ms. Bach was and as good as solid as her acting was, she is surrounded by a trio of great actors. Richard Johnson, who was simultaneously filming Zombi 2, chews up the scenery as the white suited Edmond Rackman. I always like to see a crazy guy in a jungle still be able to suit up if needed. Considerably less well dressed, Claudio Cassinelli’s Lt. de Ross brings the action when called on, but he still finds time to look extremely pensive when a moral dilemma confronts him. Cassinelli is always enjoyable to see, and he’s the glue that holds together the Martino ‘jungle trilogy’ with his appearance in each. Ultimately, filming with Martino would be his undoing when he died in a tragic helicopter accident during the filming of Hands of Steel.
The last actor I have to mention is, of course, Joseph Cotton. Appearing in Citizen Kane, Shadow of a Doubt, Baron Blood, Soylent Green, Touch of Evil, and too many more to list, Cotton is a movie legend with an incredible resume. His appearance in Martino’s film adds a bit of gravitas to the proceedings, and what should have been a stock role as the mad scientist becomes an engaging portrait and another solid performance from the veteran actor.
Island of the Fishmen is not the kind of movie you put on when you want to watch a film, drink wine, and congratulate yourself on your refined taste. No, Island of the Fishman is a campy, rubber-suited monster movie combined with a thick layer of sweat and filth as only Sergio Martino could slap on a scenario. So there you have it, Island of the Fishmen is a cult film through and through, and this is one that should please viewers who don’t usually like the Italian genre offerings. I know this one got bought up by Roger Corman at one time, and with added, newly shot footage, released as Screamers. I’d like to compare the two of them, but I would highly recommend the straight stuff which is available from my good friends over at Cinema De Bizarre. So check it out. You won’t be sorry, but you may never eat sushi again.
Bugg Rating
9/23/09
Hitch on the Hump: The Lady Vanishes (1938)
By 1938, Alfred Hitchcock was tiring of the British film industry. His last couple of films, 1936’s Sabotage and 1937’s Young and Innocent, had made no inroads with the movie going public, and the choice of films laid out for him by producers at Gaumont-British were not to his taste. He dreamed of moving to Hollywood, and he had recently traveled to America to begin making overtures to the various studios. When he returned, he still owed one more film for his Gaumont contract. Hitchcock had been so wrapped up in his plans to escape the U.K. for America that the notoriously prepared director didn’t have a project lined up.
Enter new screenwriters Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat. The pair had been working for some time on an adaptation of Ethel Lina White’s 1936 novel The Wheel Stops, and even before Hitchcock got his hands on it they had crafted a tale with distinct “Hitchcockian” flair. There was a speeding train, a young man and woman linked by necessity, a missing body, and a pair of Englishmen more interested in finding out the cricket scores than finding the missing lady to provide comic relief. Gilliat was working as the assistant to Walter Mycroft, who had written the novel Hitchcock‘s 1928 film Champagne was based on. This allowed him to get the film to Hitchcock, and in the words of biographer Patrick McGilligan“the director’s nose twitched”. Hitch did ask for a few changes in the script adding an introductory scene at the beginning and a more dramatic closing to the story. Hitch along with his wife Alma, credited with ‘continuity’ in the film, made some other sweeping changes to the body of the script increasing and changing parts, and in the end, the production would end on a bad note between the writers and the director.
The Lady Vanishes stars Margaret Lockwood as Iris Henderson, a young woman who had been living a carefree life traveling across Europe with her friends, who is returning to England to get married to a man she is indifferent about. While trying to return a pair of glasses to a little English lady, Miss. Froy (Dame May Whitty), she gets conked on the head by a potted plant. The older woman helps her onto the train and shares a cup of tea with her. Iris, very tired from her day, takes a short nap in their compartment, and when she awakes Miss Froy is nowhere to be found. To make matters worse, no one will admit to having seen the lady. Enlisting the help of folk music scholar Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), Iris begins to unravel the mystery involving political intrigue, magicians, and mysterious patients.
With the writers at his throat, the last thing Hitchcock needed was a leading man who did not take to him at all, but that is what he got from Michael Redgrave. Having been something of a star in the theater, Redgrave was wary of the medium of film overall and Hitchcock’s films in general. The actor even went so far as to label himself “something of an intellectual snob”. Redgrave did not cotton to Hitchcock’s techniques either, and never understood why the director kept him apart from his co-star Margaret Lockwood until their first scene together. Redgrave commented, “It is possibly the greatest disadvantage of acting for the camera that one must do an important scene with someone one had never acted with, perhaps never even met, and in somewhat artificial circumstances. After some initial parrying, Margaret and I got along well, though we remained suspicious of each other for some time.”
Little did Redgrave known that Hitchcock was often up to tricks like this on set to get the performances he wanted from his actors, such as when he left The 39 Steps co-stars Robert Donet and Madeleine Carroll handcuffed together for the better part of the day after he “lost the key”. Redgrave and Lockwood’s characters meet under bad circumstances and remain suspicious of each other for some time before their romance blossoms. Hitch’s techniques were not always understood, but the performances he got were undeniable. Hitch and Redgrave continued to butt heads during the course of filming especially when Redgrave commented on having three hours to prepare for a scene in the theater. The director is quoted as having responded, “I’m sorry in this medium we have three minutes.” The Lady Vanishes launched Redgrave’s film career and he would go on to appear in Orson Wells Mr. Arkadin (1955) and 1961’s The Innocents.
I could find almost nothing of what actress Margaret Lockwood thought of the director or what he thought of his brunette leading lady which was very unusual since usually Hitch and his ladies either clashed greatly or had a wonderful relationship. She was the choice of Gaumont producer Ted Black, and she had been working in film since her role in 1934’s Lorna Doone. Her performance is the linchpin on the film, and I enjoyed watching her go from spoiled socialite to bewildered young woman to determined investigator. At each turn, her character grew more endearing and likeable. My favorite of her scenes occurs when Redgrave’s Gilbert is struggling with a French magician in the baggage car. Her attempts to help Gilbert are comical and very well timed. The one pronouncement that I found Lockwood made about Hitch dubbed him, “a dozing, nodding Buddha with an enigmatic smile on his face.” She would not be the first or last of Hitchcock’s actors to comment on the catnaps the director was prone to take while on set.
The Lady Vanishes is enhanced by the subtle secondary performances that surround Lockwood and Redgrave’s characters. Dame May Whitty has limited screen time as the titular vanishing lady, but when she appears, her performance is most memorable. Hitchcock must have thought the same because he cast her again in his 1941 film Suspicion. The Lady Vanishes also launched the career of a comic duo who were not even a duo until they were paired in Hitch’s film. Nauton Wayne and Basil Radford were cast as Caldicott and Charters, the two English gents who preferred not to get involved in the mystery because they wanted to get back to England in time for an important cricket match. It’s easy to see while watching The Lady Vanishes why Wayne and Radford would become a duo in films and radio as they had a natural comic chemistry that made them quite amusing to watch.
While the acting was quite good and the script very funny and well paced, the part that stuck me most about The Lady Vanishes was the deftly wrought camera work in the picture. From the very start the camera pans in over a town which looks very much like what it is, a miniature, to the modern audience, but it transitions so fluidly into the set that I was very impressed. Throughout the film, Hitchcock and cinematographer Jack Cox, who had worked with the director since 1927’s The Ring, prove their mastery of the double exposure, the process shot, and all the classically Germanic camera angles you could ever need or want. The most impressive of their shots comes when Redgrave’s Gilbert hangs on the outside of a railcar in order to climb into the next one. A train comes speeding along in the other direction as the folk music scholar flattens himself against the train. While in the age of green screen and CGI, it may appear primitive, I found the process shot to be very compelling and thrillingly shot.
The Lady Vanishes would finally give Hitchcock another hit in Great Britain and in the United States where 21st Century Fox distributed the film. This allowed him a bigger bargaining chip as he got closer to making his move halfway across the world to California. He directed one last picture in England, 1939’s Jamaica Inn, but his eyes were squarely focused on the States where producer David O. Selznick was enticing the director with a planned film about the crash of the Titanic.
Hitch’s next to last British film has fast become one of my favorites in his oeuvre, and I would highly recommend that any fan of the director, or classic film, seek this one out. It is widely available at many price points. I’m going to link it below from the Internet Archive, it can be widely found on value priced DVD’s, and The Criterion Collection has issued an expansive edition of the film for those with the cash to drop on it. Any way you see this film, it is more than worth it. This is Hitchcock material almost in a stereotypical fashion. It’s thrilling, mysterious, funny, and astonishing at times. Check this one out folks, and you’re sure to like what you see.
Bugg Rating
9/22/09
Terrifying Tuesday: Head (a.k.a. Premonition) (1972)
The director of tonight’s film got his start in horror in the most unlikely of places, The Brady Bunch. Well, OK, maybe it’s not exactly horror, but I would have to imagine that living in a house with six kids would be pretty horrific. In fairness, the Brady Clan, for which Alan Rudolph served as Assistant Director on eleven episodes, was not his first job. He served in the same capacity on the Jim Brown/Gene Hackman film Riot and the Ryan O’Neal version of Elmore Leonard’s The Big Bounce. What we’re here to talk about tonight is his very first film. Produced, directed, and written by Rudolph, Head (a.k.a Premonition a.k.a The Impure) is a different kind of horror film. In fact, it may not even be one at all.
A few days back, I wrote about Fulci’s Lizard in a Woman’s Skin in which the leading lady is menaced by nightmarish hippies. In Head (1972), it is the hippies being menaced by their own nightmares. It all begins when Neil (Carl Crow) takes a job with anthropology professor Kilrenny (Victor Izay), and they find an Indian skeleton in the Mexican desert. Kinrenny and Neil load it into the truck. As soon as Neil touches the skeleton he is troubled by strange visions, but he’s not sure if they are real or hallucinations from the local “devil’s weed“. Driving blind through the desert, Neal crashes the truck off a side of a cliff, and while the two men escape, the skeleton is lost forever. Three years later, Neal has cleaned himself up, and now he’s devoting his time to his new band with Baker (Winfrey Hester Hill) and Andy (Tim Ray). When they movie to a Southern California farm to practice, Neil and Andy both start having nightmares, similar to the visions Neil had on that night in the desert. What starts off as an attempt to live the rock and roll dream ends up plunging the group into a nightmare from which they might not return.
While Rudolph’s hippie horror fest fails to produce any real scares, it does succeed in building a very tense, trippy atmosphere throughout. By 1972, the hippie movement was beginning to fade, and the thought that drug use had warped many young minds was on the national consciousness. Neil comes off like a dippy acid casualty with his troubled, pained expressions and fearful worry over something he may or may not have seen. Andy on the other hand is in the thick of it, constantly smoking the “devil’s weed”. The film devotes most of its time to character development, and Andy goes from a happy, well adjusted fellow to a dissociative loner.
For all the faults the film has; a disjointed narrative, an unclear theme, and a lack of any climatic moment, where it does succeed is in the acting department. Carl Crow had been acting for over ten year, mostly in television, but his biggest film role previously was in Elvis Presley’s G.I. Blues. Crow’s character seems pensive and a bit whiney at times, but I think this is what you’re supposed to get from him. I rather enjoyed watching him, but both the title song, written by Crow, and the moments that he spoke directly to the audience I could have done without. Tim Ray, who played Andy, also was very effective as the sensitive, classically trained musician that retreats into his own mind. Ray had only a bit part in a film prior to Head, and the only other role credited to him came some nineteen year with 1991’s Julia Has Two Lovers starring David Duchovny.
Winfrey Hester Hill, who played Baker, never appeared in any other films, and that’s really too bad. Not only did he exhibit a fair amount of charisma on camera, he also had a very good comic timing which lightened the mood in the heavily atmospheric film. The only other actor with any credits to his name was Victor Izzy, the anthropologist. Izzy has worked steadily in film and television since 1960 with roles in 1968’s The Astro-Zombies, 1971’s Billy Jack, and 1988’s Young Guns. He’s still going at it today and has appeared in 2006’s Employee of the Month and 2007’s Wild Hogs.
The most successful person to come out of this movie was director Alan Rudolph. He followed up Head with another horror film, 1974’s Nightmare Circus. His love of music and musicians lead him to work with Alice Cooper on his 1975 Welcome to My Nightmare film. Alice returned the favor by appearing in Rudolph’s 1980 film Roadie starring Art Carney, Meat Loaf, Asleep at the Wheel, and Blondie. I’ve seen it a couple of times myself, and I’m sure I’ll get around to reviewing it sometime because it’s a fabulous film. Rudolph wasn’t done with musicians yet, and in 1984 and 1985 he directed a pair of films starring Kris Kristofferson. The first was a broad comedy called Songwriter co-starring Willie Nelson (another great film) and the second a film noir inspired effort, Trouble in Mind, with Keith Carradine and Divine in his only non-drag role. Rudolph has continued to work over the years with the highest profile film being the 1999 Kurt Vonnegut adaptation Breakfast of Champions.
For a first film, Head is not that bad. I’ve seen far worse efforts from more experienced film makers. It will not please anyone looking for jump scares, horrific imagery, or gore, but, if you enjoy an atmospheric film or a glimpse into the roots of indie horror, then give this rarity a shot. You can get this flick over at Cinema de Bizarre, and when I say this is rare, I mean it is pretty dang rare. So be warned that the picture quality, though very good for what it is, is not going to be perfect. The sound quality is excellent though, and the few moments where the picture detracts from the film are brief and negligible. So check this one out, folks, and remember stay away from that “devil’s weed”.
Bugg Rating
The Lair's good pal Rev. Phantom recently made a hell of a great trailer for Head recently. So credit where credit is very much due. Check it out and enjoy!
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