Two Friggin' More Horror Reviews Previously Published!!! (I'll be back from vacation tomorrow)
Dead of Night (1945)
The British censors outright banned the making of horror
movies in the country during the World War II, opting instead to allow
patriotic, morale-lifting pictures to pervade for the good of the people. So,
when the British horror anthology Dead of
Night was released immediately after the war, one cannot now imagine what
kind of power it held. It is a captivating movie, frightening and
contemplative, circling around itself as its stories plummet to their
disturbing conclusions. It was a work of team effort, containing six segments
made by four directors (Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Chricton, Basil Dearden and
Robert Hamer) and featuring overlapping actors (including Michael Redgrave,
Mervyn Johns, Ralph Michael, Sally Ann Howes and Anthony Baird). The macabre
glee with which the directors approached their only just recently taboo
subjects shines through and Dead of Night
contains images that deserve a place next to the most well-known thrillers.
The main plot of the film concerns a man who is summoned for
reasons not made abundantly clear to a house in which he finds several people
engaged in a social party. He insists that he repeatedly dreamed the events
that then unfold, that he vividly dreamed the house and all the guests. When he
accurately predicts a few minor incidents that occur, the guests are enthralled
by the supernatural prospects and begin to tell stories about other
unexplainable incidents that occurred to them. This is the link that leads to
five isolated segments that make up the bulk of the film.
In one, a man is haunted by the vision of a spectral hearse
that he believes foretells his death. In another, the same man’s wife is disturbed
by her husband’s sickly fascination with a mirror that he claims does not
reflect their bedroom. Another involves a girl who finds a child during a game
of hide and seek, a child that shouldn’t exist. In the most famous segment, a ventriloquist’s
dummy may or may not be acting on his own. And in the only portion of the film
that doesn’t quite work, a gentleman beats his friend at a golf game by
cheating, which leads to the friend killing himself and returning as an
obnoxious ghost.
Excepting the golf story, each segment in Dead of Night is a genuinely chilling
experience of its own. They mostly use everyday objects and situations that
resonate with a viewer more than horror’s usual impossible scenarios. I know
that I spent most of my childhood terrified of mirrors because of the idea that
I’d see something that shouldn’t be there, and the idea of a possessed ventriloquist’s
dummy has been used to death since its appearance here and never as
effectively. What makes the stories even more involving is the constant
suggestion of falsehood. All of the stories, again excepting the golfing one,
are presented in ways that could make them factual or hallucinatory. A “logical”
explanation can always be provided, but the fun of the movie is in how much it
convinces us otherwise. Even though its absence on home video makes it
difficult to see, it is a little masterpiece of its genre, and well worth
seeking out for fans of the genre.
In the late 50s and early 60s, William Castle was the
self-proclaimed “King of Showmanship.” He had a way of exaggerating the truth,
and everyone knew he was truthfully the “King of Gimmicks.” His specialty was horror
B-movies and before beginning a career of his own he had a reputation at
Columbia Pictures for producing films before schedule and below budget. His
first movie as director and producer was Macabre
in 1958, tickets for which were accompanied by a $1,000 life insurance policy,
in case the viewer should die of fright. Then, in 1959, he released the now
cult classic House on Haunted Hill
starring Vincent Price. Larger theaters showing that film were equipped with a
box containing a skeleton on a wire, which would swing over the audience during
the finale. Both films were written by Robb White who also wrote Castle’s third
and best picture The Tingler, which White
claimed was inspired by the sight of the fake worms in House on Haunted Hill, even though there were no worms in that
movie (It seems inventing stories about William Castle productions was
infectious.).
The story of The
Tingler is absurd beyond reason. Vincent Price stars as a doctor who
discovers that whenever people are afraid, a worm-like creature grows in the
spine and is only destroyed by the sound of the person screaming, releasing the
fear that the creature feeds on. If the person is unable to scream for whatever
reason, they die of fright, due to the creature growing to a ridiculous size
and breaking the person’s spine. During the climax, the “Tingler” creature, now
in large, obviously-a-puppet centipede form is loosed on the world. The
screenplay could never be considered intellectual, but it delivers this
baffling premise as smartly as it can muster. Even more convincing is the
direction by Castle, who firmly believes his movie is frightening and almost
succeeds in making it so through this conviction, and the performance by Price,
who always somehow managed to be likeable when playing characters that were
undeniable creeps. This would later be known as the Hannibal Lector paradox.
The Tingler is a
movie so straight-forward and so charmingly sincere that it succeeds as great
entertainment, even when failing as anything else. Castle had a way of treating
his viewers like they were friends in on a joke. Even when pulling silly ploys
in both plot and presentation, you never suspect he actually questioned our
intelligence. I also think it’s interesting that the movie includes a
respectful deaf character (played by Judith Evelyn who does scared well during
the movie’s most elaborate sequence) during a period that did nothing but treat
minorities condescendingly. Also included is one of the first uses of LSD in a
motion picture, an acid that was then legal.
William Castle was one of the great camp filmmakers and one
of the most successful. The popularity of House
on Haunted Hill and The Tingler led
to Alfred Hitchcock’s decision to make his own low-budget horror flick, Psycho. Castle wanted to entertain his
audience and make them a first-hand part of the film process, which explains
the buzzers that were placed under seats during screenings of The Tingler, which went off suddenly at
the point where Price announces, “The Tingler is loose in this theater! Everybody
scream! Scream for your lives!” It’s corny, but it worked.
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