For as long as I've been doing this site, there's been a blogger who has been a great pal. He's always had kind words to say about the ever lovin' blue eye'd Bugg, and if you ask me, he's one hell of a writer. Plus if there's a full moon out, then he's always up for an all-nighter. I'm talking about Freddie Young a.k.a Fred the Wolf of the fantabulous site Full Moon Reviews. I'm thrilled that Freddie would take part in Hitch on the Hump so let me stop yammering and let the man do it to it.

I would first like to thank TL Bugg for requesting my services for this month's Hitch On The Hump. It's truly an honor to have the opportunity to discuss the work of one of the Masters of Cinema - Alfred Hitchcock. From the moment I was asked to contribute, I wanted to discuss a Hitchcock work that probably not many people have talked about or even used as a basis for Hitch On The Hump. I mean, how many times can one read about Psycho? Or Rear Window? Or Vertigo? Or The Birds? I think you get my point.

So I looked into Alfred Hitchock's filmography to find this month's subject. And to my surprise [and thanks to Netflix Instant Watch], I found a Hitchcock film that I have never heard of or read anyone discuss. And that film is 1938's Young and Innocent - or The Girl Was Young in the United States.

Young and Innocent is one of Hitchcock's British films, showcasing the director's trademarks long before his American films. The film begins with a couple arguing - Christine (Pamela Carme), who happens to be a famous actress, and her lover Guy (George Curzon), who accuses Christine of cheating on him with random "boys". The next morning on a nearby beach, a young man named Robert Tisdall (Derrick De Marney) strolls along and finds Christine's corpse washed up on the shore. The only evidence is a belt from a stolen raincoat that belonged to Robert. Running off to find help, two female witnesses arrive finding not only the body, but assuming that Robert is the guilty party. When the police arrive, the girls accuse Robert of murder. He's arrested and quickly put on trial.

After some commotion in the courtroom, Robert is allowed to escape in order to hunt down the real killer. He meets up with the police constable's daughter, Erica Burgoyne (Nova Pilbeam), who he charms into helping him. Even though she doubts Robert's innocence at first, as well as not wanting to risk her life and her father's job and reputation, Erica falls for Robert and decides to help him prove his innocence. Their only lead is one Old Will (Edward Rigby), who claims the murderer has really twitchy eyes.

Young and Innocent is based on a Josephine Tey novel titled "A Shilling For Candles". Tey's novel, published in 1936, was her first mystery novel with Inspector Alan Grant, who would be her main character over a 25 year span. Like the film adaptation, the story of "A Shilling For Candles" involves a murdered actress, whose young friend named Robert Tisdall is considered the prime suspect for her murder. The rest of the story involves Alan Grant trying to solve the case as Robert escapes with Erica, who believes in his innocence.

However, Hitchcock and screenwriters Charles Bennett, Edwin Greenwood, and Anthony Armstrong, decided to go against Tey's novel, changing things around to lessen the mystery aspect while focusing on the relationship between Robert and Erica to craft a more cinematic thriller. The killer in the novel is completely changed in the film [it's pretty obvious who the real killer is here from the start] and there's no Alan Grant character anywhere to be seen here. Instead, we have the traditional Hitchcock male-female duo protagonists that can be seen in The 39 Steps, North By Northwest, and Vertigo. Both Robert and Erica happen to meet at chance, which links them together for the rest of the film in order the solve the case. Also in the film, the killer is given a specific trait [eyes that twitch] to make him easy to spot. This is similar to The 39 Steps again, where the villain is missing one of his fingers. This trait is not in the novel at all. Also Robert's backstory is different. In the novel, Robert is a young unemployed man. In the film, he has a higher social status and is wittier and more charming than his book counterpart.

There are also moments where Young and Innocent gives hints to other Hitchcock trademarks. In one scene, Robert, Erica, and Old Will are caught in a crumbling mine shaft after being chased by police. While Robert and Will are safe, Erica needs help and reaches for Robert's hand, teasing the audience with slight fingertip touching, before he pulls her out of the pit. This was used again in North By Northwest in the Mount Rushmore scene.

Another moment is a great crane shot in the final act of the film inside the Grand Hotel. There seems to be some sort of gathering or event at the Grand Hotel, involving a group of musicians dressed in blackface as Old Will and Erica search for the killer [who happens to be at this event]. It takes its time really setting up the location of where the mystery would be revealed, ending on a close up on the killer and his twitching eyes. The same technique was used similarly in Notorious during that film's party scene. It's just done so well and it's easy to see why Hitchcock would use it more than once.

Hitchcock also focuses on the idea of eyes and vision in general. The killer can be identified by his eyes. The Robert's lawyer can't do his job without his glasses [the idea that justice is blind]. The hotel clerk needs a pair of magnifying glasses to read her notes. The opening shot is a close up on Christine's eyes. At a birthday party, Erica has to escape her aunt's suspicions about her relationship with Robert by sneaking out after her aunt is blindfolded in a game of "blind man's bluff". And you got to love the title of the film, as the young [Erica] and the innocent [Robert] are the only ones who see the truth, while everyone else is blinded by what they hear from others. It's a motif that Hitchcock comes back to in many of his other films, from Psycho, to Rear Window, The Birds, Frenzy, etc. Young and Innocent is a showcase on things Hitchcock would continue to add to his movies years later.

As for Young and Innocent itself, it seems to have been overshadowed by other British works, such as The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes - two films that are considered to be the highlights of Hitchcock's British era. And it's easy to see why that's the case. While Young and Innocent isn't a terrible film, it's flawed in a lot of ways. Pilbeam and De Marney don't have much chemistry with each other, which makes the characters they play feel forced in their union. The mystery isn't there, as we know who the killer is. In fact, the police characters are probably the worst policemen you could ever have in your town. Not only do they not go after Christine's main lover, but they don't even check her background, with involved her playing a cougar to multiple younger men. Also for a thriller, it's not really all that exciting to watch. It's more humorous than anything. It's more light-hearted than Hitchcock's other works, making it sort of a black sheep in his filmography.

That being said, even an above-average Hitchcock film is better than most other films. The direction is solid, with some editing issues at times but you can only tell if you really look. The picture, while faded out a bit, still looks beautiful. The acting is solid all around. And the story still happens to be entertaining for 83 straight minutes, even if you want more depth out of it.

I think to ignore Young and Innocent is a shame if you're any kind of an Alfred Hitchcock fan. It's not a classic like his other films, but considering the low-budget he had to deal with many of his British films, the film is put together quite nicely. I believe this lesser-seen film was a blueprint for the great stuff he would put out in later years, which makes Young and Innocent more than worthy of a watch.

I can't thank Freddie Young a.k.a Fred the Wolf for stopping by and dropping the knowledge on The Young and Innocent. Makes sure you stop over at Full Moon Reviews and check out more of Fred's great work!  If you'd like to take part in Hitch on the Hump, then drop me a line at thelightningbug (AT) charter.net and we'll set you up!

This month would have been the 100th birthday of Vincent Price, and over the past three years there’s been a number or Price movies covered on the Lair both by myself and in Fran Goria’s feature For the Love of Price. Throughout his lengthy career, Price starred in all kind of films playing everything from the romantic lead to the dastardly villain. One role I always appreciate him in is that of the eccentric supporting character, and that is exactly the part he fills in today’s film, More Dead than Alive. With a title like that, and the fact that it stars Vincent Price, it would be easy to assume this film would be an entry into the zombie subgenre, but that couldn't be further from the truth. This 1969 film, released between Price’s Poe adaptations Witchfinder General and The Oblong Box, is one of only a few Westerns in which Vincent appeared. Much like his offbeat Sam Fuller Western, The Baron of Arizona, More Dead than Alive is a tale of the Wild West that doesn't neatly fit into the normal, standard genre format.

Clint Walker (TV’s Cheyenne) stars as Cain or more specifically “Killer” Cain. Amassing twelve notches on his gun by the time he was eighteen, Cain spent the next eighteen years in jail paying for his crimes. He became a model prisoner, and by the time he was released, the warden believed him to be fully rehabilitated. Unfortunately, there’s little opportunity for an infamous ex-con to get a job in the West, and he soon falls into the only job he knows, shooting. This time however, he’s not a gun for hire. Instead, he does trick shots in Dan Ruffalo’s Shooting Show. Still haunted by his past everywhere he travels, Cain can’t be with the woman he loves (Forbidden Planet’s Anne Francis), is hounded by his Shooting Show co-star Billy Valance (Paul Hampton), and constantly has to look over his shoulder knowing that the past is due to catch up with him when he least expects it.

More Dead than Alive starts off with a song that I can only infer is supposed to make the viewer equate the biblically named Cain’s struggle with that of Jesus. Try as I might to figure out how to balance out the story of a 12 time killer with a chill carpenter who did killer magic tricks, I came up empty handed. That’s not to say that More Dead than Alive doesn't have a lot of ambitious things going on under the hood. The redemptive tale is told not in a white hat/black hat kind of way, and Cain never seems flippant about his murderous past. In place if clear but heroes and villains, the film is chock full of people who have real reactions and emotions no matter if we’re talking deep regret (Cain), self centered avarice (Price’s Buffalo), or pained, misguided envy (Hampton’s young gunslinger Billy). The film itself looks like a standard studio Western of the late ’60s (save for some really spot on, modern looking editing looking throughout by John F. Scheyer), but the symbolic ideas it contains from the pen of Escape 2000 and Futureworld scribe George Schenck far outweigh it’s simple presentation.

I’m going to talk a bit in a moment about all the leads, but of course the reason we’re here today is because of the presence of Vincent Price. While the whole film is solid, whenever Price shows up as the huckster Dan Ruffelo, he adds a special larger than life flavor to the character. No matter is he is doing his carnival barker bit, scheming over how to make money, or telling the sniveling Billy Valance to keep in line, Price does what he does best. He makes the most of every single second of screen time and plays the part to the hilt. This is one of the million reasons that I love Mr. Price. If you looked at his role on paper, Ruffalo might seem like a thankless part that did little more than connect a few of arcs in the story. As Price plays him, Ruffalo becomes a pivotal person in Cain’s life. He is the catalyst to everything that comes from our repentant hero.

While Price steals away nearly all his scenes, it’s quite a struggle when he’s playing opposite star Clint Walker. Walker, who made his name as a TV cowboy, is an impressive figure standing at a barrel chested six foot six inches tall, and while he strikes a commanding presence, he also has the chops to carry the film o his broad shoulders. Emotional resonance is something that I doubt Mr. Walker thought too much about, his hardened, stoic performance as Cain is perfectly suited for a character filled with repressed guilt. Ann Francis appears as the love of Cain’s life, but she doesn’t show up in more than twenty minutes of the film’s total hour forty running time. Their romance is quite sweet, but I found her character, a single woman living on the frontier as a painter, to be the least genuine and interesting. While everyone from Cain to Billy to Ruffalo had turmoil and issues, Francis’ Monica Alton was the most well adjusted among them. The least adjusted on the other hand would be Paul Hampton’s Billy Valance. While I never thought Hampton was so young to be underage as the film implies, he definitely mined an immaturity of character that made him a despicable foil for Cain.

More Dead than Alive contains some big ideas, some inspired performances, and the one and only Vincent Price, but what it doesn’t contain is much happening. When Westerns get mixed up with philosophy in movies like Fulci’s Four of the Apocalypse, Eastwood’s Pale Rider, or Jarmusch’s Dead Man, there’s a delicate balance that needs to be struck between waxing poetic and whacking bad guys. More Dead than Alive falls on the short side of the action spectrum. With only a handful of shootings, no sex, and very little violence, I’m still a bit puzzled as to how the film garnered an ‘R’ rating, but never the less; this is where the flick really falls apart. If it were not of the actors making their characters so watchable and interesting, I’m not sure I would have made it through the film. The only other thing holding More Dead than Alive back is the ending. I don’t want to say much more, but it contradicted so much of what I had just sat watching for almost two hours.

That brings up to the end of our first new Price review for the month. Look out of a few more, and don’t forget to look back into the archives for many, many more.

When Emily suggested the 2007 Canadian horror film The End of the Line for our monthly swap, I accepted the challenge  but when I checked the flick out and found this staring back from the Netflix screen.....
it did not inspire overwhelming confidence on my part. The Entertainment Today blurb, "Does for Subways what Jaws did for Oceans" went a long way to further my impression of The End of the Line as some kind of subway dwelling creatures (similar to Jarad, but Canadian so I assume there would be copious amount of Maple Ham involved) flick. In the end, there was a kind of monster in subway, in fact, in the whole world, but not the kind that I expected at all. Speaking of expectation, I have to wonder what Emily will think of the film I picked for her, the 1985 Chris Lambert film Subway. Hopefully, she loved spending some time with Luc Besson's action crime film set in the Parisian Metro. So make sure you all stop in over at the Deadly Doll's House to find out what she thought of my pick. Now back to the matter at hand. While only marginally better than the DVD box art that Netflix shows for The End of the Line, the theatrical poster actually gives a little clue to what the film actually is.

Karen (Ilona Elkin) is a nurse working at a psychiatric hospital who begins to have strange visions of eyeless stalkers coming for her, and boarding the nearly deserted subway does little to ease her nerves. She gets harassed by a bleached blonde weirdo, but thankfully runs into fellow traveler, Mike (Nicolas Wright), a nice guy who keeps her company when the train makes an emergency stop. However, the stop is no real emergency. It is the beginning of a massacre. A religious group, expecting doomsday to roll around any time now, has taken to slaughtering unbelievers in an attempt to save their wayward souls. Karen and Mike soon find themselves banded together with a small group of survivors as they attempt to escape the subway system. The closer they get to freedom, the more apparent it is that the doomsday cult has spread much further than the underground tunnels, and the end times might well be neigh.

For the first thirty minutes of The End of the Line, I was still fairly convinced that the big bad were going to turn out to be a monster. Even after the first few of the zealots with their terribly inconvenient looking cross knives show up, I still suspected they were rounding up meat for some kind of monsters. I suppose the subway setting just planted Midnight Meat Train in my mind and wouldn’t let go. I have to admit though the first act, which also suffers from some confusingly placed time jumps, was barely registering with me. Then it took the hard turn into a religious based horror where the evil became the knife toting members of the Church of Hope who were intent on cleansing the world. With the uniforms that brought to mind both Nazi Brown shirts and bike riding Mormons at the same time and a collection of blank stares plastered across their faces, they become a faceless killing machine intent on carrying out their divinely inspired mission.

I would be kind of remiss if I talked about this film and didn’t mention the current doomsday cult prediction going around. According to some schools of Christian thought (note I said some), the clock is up on the world in only nine days. That’s right folks. You’ve only got until May 21 until the whole tribulation kicks off, and then by December the whole shebang will wrap up for good. There are a whole lot of reasons I’m not worried about the end of the world. For one, I’m not someone who’s looking forward to the world ending. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m having a good time. Secondly, there’s been someone saying the world is going to end since the world began. If it hasn’t happened so far, then it’s not got a great chance to happening now, but in a day and age when people on both sides of religion and politics are getting more radicalized, I have to wonder how preposterous the events detailed in The End of the Line really are. After all, there was no sign in the film of an actual Rapture; it was men killing men because of what some other man said about a book that was written long, long ago.

Director Maurice Devereaux has only made four films in his fifteen years as a filmmaker, but despite The End of the Line’s floundering first act, once the film gets going, it really gets there. Working from his own script, The End of the Line explicitly points out the dangers of zealotry without making grand or pejorative statements, and it was clearly a subject that Devereaux felt strongly about. Working with many of the same crew that had made his previous three films, the film feels assured even during the moments were timing seems a bit shaky. There are also a good many moments of graphic violence, and while they are used for jump scares in the beginning of the film, the blood really flows in the third act. Watching the film left me a bit paranoid around the edges, but my gore-hound cravings were more than satisfied.

The only real downside to the film is the cast. While I thought many of the actors were solid, no one really ever stepped up to become an individual. While watching I kept trying to catch people’s names, but more often than not my notes are littered with annotations such as “hero guy”, “medic girl”, “anime chick”, and “consistently stabbed guy” (seriously how does someone get so repeatively stabbed so often). There wasn’t a one of them that I disliked, but I couldn’t honestly say I was rooting for anyone. Well that is except for “anime chick” who I really wanted to bash “creepy blonde guy” to death with a hammer. I never caught “creepy blonde guy‘s” name either (I think it was Patrick as played by Robin Wilcock.), but he was the standout performance among the entire cast. I do have to also mention the wonderfully played, emotionality complex scene where the group of survivors is confronted by two young followers of The Church of Hope.

Having both the antagonists and protagonists feel anonymous gave the whole picture a feel as if the players were symbolic of the general, happy, normal masses and the faceless, anti-other. I don’t want to diminish any actor’s performance because on average they were all good. The question is this. Was the decision to relieve the characters of all but the most present back-story and base character traits a conscious decision or did the actors just fail to define themselves? No matter if the answer is that I enjoy The End of the Line because of its delicate crafting or in spite of its terrible flaws, there is always the chance I liked the film far more than I should because I agree with the film makers political and religious stances. I’d rather think I enjoyed an original take on a horror premise that went in a completely different direction from what I expected. In any event, this month I definitely have to thank Emily, that Deadliest of Deadly Dolls, for her pick, and I can’t wait to see what she has in store for me next month. (If you know, we’re all not busy being tribulated upon.)

I’ve been talking about slashers a lot for the past couple of months, but one thing I’ve avoided thus far was talking about any of the major franchise players. However, after a very stressful week, I felt like the cinematic equivalent of comfort food, and that’s what lead me to pop in Nightmare on Elm Street IV: The Dream Master. Back in October when I was talking sequels, I talked at length about my love for Nightmare III: The Dream Warriors, and though it had been a number of years, I still looked back on Dream Master follow up with the same nostalgic glee. So imagine my surprise when I found The Dream Master to be a film that was far less than masterful. Often when I go back to watch films that I haven’t seen since I was in my teens, either I find them to contain interesting elements my youthful mind glossed over or they turn out to be painful affairs that make me want to go back and punt my 13 year old butt for liking. Nightmare 4: The Dream Master contains more than a little of both.

The opening strains of the weakly poppy theme song, “Nightmare“, sang by Elm Street 4 actress Tuesday Knight, announce quite quickly that this will be a different kind of film than the one that preceded it. Nightmare 3 kicked off with Dokken and featured Freddy in his prime, both terrifying and delivering some of the best zingers in the series. When the last flick ended Kristin Parker (Partricia Arquette), Kinkaid and Joey banded together to unleash a can of “Dream Warrior” whoop ass on one Fred Kruger. The sequel begins with Kristin (Tuesday Knight) and her pals trying to live a normal high school life, but she stop Kruger soon returns to life in one of Kinkaid’s dreams. Dispatching with the foes that defeated him in the last film, Freddy moves on to prey on a new batch of Elm Street kids including Kristin’s friend the demure Alice (Lisa Wilcox). As Alice’s friends begin to get killed one by one, she find herself in possession of their greatest talents (such as her brother’s martial arts skills, the rocker chick’s strength, and the nerdy girl’s brains). By the time Freddy comes for her, he finds not a scared teenage girl, but a formative Dream Master ready to rumble.

Despite the theme song’s wanting nature, Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master starts off on a good note. The opening scenes, running straight through Fred’s resurrection and first kill, are dark, moody, and set the stage for some decent tension. Well, that is except for the appearance of neon pink, glowing, smoking claw marks on the lockers as Kristen and company walk by. This moment is indicative of the whole film. Somewhere buried beneath some of the worst Freddy one liners, Pizza with soul toppings, and some non-sensical death scenes, there might have been a scary dark script lurking underneath, but it hardly ever made it up for air. Director Renny Harlin (who would go on to direct both Die Hard  2: Die Harder and Cutthroat Island (!?)) was just coming off directing his American breakthrough, the incarcerated horror flick Prison, when he was slotted to replace as director of Nightmare 4. Harlin does a solid job with the film visually, but the tone is all over the place, and I have to chalk it up to an inexperienced director balancing what he wanted with what the studio demands were.

Nightmare on Elm Street 4 marked the first of the Elm Street movies that gave top billing to the central bad guy, Freddy Kruger a.k.a actor Robert Englund. Strangely, I would consider it the first where he didn’t deserve to be billed as such. Not only are Freddy’s jokes and one-liners stale or just unfunny, the director (or the producers) found it necessary to really amp up the vocal effects on Robert Englund’s performance. While they didn’t quite go so far as to auto-tune the Kreuger, the layer upon layer of effects left everyone’s favorite scorched slasher sounding like Harvey Firestein on a particularly phlegm-filled day. It didn’t help that his one-liners were not partially funny or scary with his only gem being, “You shouldn’t have buried me. I’m not dead.” Yeah, I know. It’s not a terribly great line, but as the second place winner would be Fred telling a girl who is turning into a roach, “They check in, but they don’t check out.”, the competition is far from stiff. While Englund didn’t turn in his best performance as Freddy (despite his in-drag turn as the school nurse), the film does see the slasher get some very nice effects moments. Freddy’s reconstitution scene, while not as stunning as Frank’s in Hellraiser, is a very enjoyable classic, practical effect, and I always enjoy the souls pushing out of Freddy’s chest. When recycled as a pizza, it’s not nearly as good though.

There’s not a ton to say about the acting in Nightmare 4, but I do have a very few words to say to some of the performers. Tuesday Knight, you’re no Patricia Arquette, but you did a good enough job to where I barely missed her. Andras Jones, you’re no Johnny Depp. No matter how many martial arts montages they give you or amount of hair gel you apply, you will never jump any streets, but you were in Night Trap so that‘s something. Randy of Randy and the Redwoods, thanks for showing up on a TV screen because I had almost totally forgotten about you. Brooke Theiss, who played the big haired rocker chick who gets turned into a cockroach, I really feel like you should have gotten a more appropriately rock and roll death. Speaking of which Lisa Wilcox, the nerd girl, I have to wonder if you’re like me and can’t quite figure out why the first thing Freddy sends against you is a mechanical arm coming out of a pool of blood on your desk. It’s not his style and seems pretty incongruous. Finally, Rodney Eastman, I realize it was your character, but even in a dream I would assume a naked girl inside my waterbed was trouble.

I can still recall pulling a copy of Nightmare 4 off the shelf at Blockbuster, getting my parents to rent it for me, and watching it with a friend who was spending the night. While my memory was more than a bit on the faulty side when it came to quality, Freddy rampage, cheesy as it was, still felt like a slice straight out of my childhood, albeit a stale one. Nightmare on Elm Street 4 is not the film perfect to use to introduce people to the series, but it does set things up for the final of the "dream" movies, 1989's The Dream Master. Simply put, Nightmare 4 is not the scariest, funniest, or most original among the Kruger films. The performances are lacking and the tone is uneven. On the other hand, it’s flaws make it a excellent example of the excess and lack of quality control that ran the ‘80’s franchise horror film off the rails. Freddy might well have intoned in Nightmare 4, “fresh meat so sweet”, but there was very little fresh on display in the film for him to call sweet. Well, except for perhaps the Fat Boys single that the film spawned, "Are You Ready For Freddy?" 'cause that does happen to be pretty sweet.