Genre lip service, the bane of October.  It’s the month where everyone talks about horror and professes how great it is, then forgets about it for the next eleven months.  When the next October arrives, we’re once again barraged with “Top 50 Scariest Horror Movies” or “Top 100 Horror Movies You Have to See” lists by critics who couldn’t care less about the genre but need something to satisfy the page-hit-increasing demands of their editors (God, how I hate those lists).  It bothers me sometimes that the nod to horror every October is so transparently phony and forced, especially since it’s a favorite genre of mine, along with science fiction.  Most of the time, however, I don’t have any problem with horror getting one month out of the year at all.

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It’s getting ever closer to Halloween, and TCM is imminently going to screen the spectacular 1922 Nosferatu.  I was asked to contribute an audio commentary on this legendary horror classic for the UK Blu-Ray edition from Masters of Cinema.  In preparing my track I took the opportunity to challenge some of the received wisdom about the authorship of this film—but one disadvantage of the audio commentary format as a vehicle for that kind of discussion is that I was limited to the visual examples presented by the film itself.  To really make my case I wanted to be able to show some other film clips or stills—which is best suited to a blog!  So here we go—into the mad world of Nosferatu’s creator, F.W. Murnau Albin Grau!

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Last week I explained my own personal Halloween aesthetic — not ooey-gooey rich’n’chewy, not gory or cruel, not blood-spattered and ichor-soaked but rather dry, papery, eldritch, withered and sere. Crepuscular rather than craptacular. Old school. Quaint and curious. Movies that evoke for the viewer mystery and wonder, dread, and true fear rather than just disgust and the vicarious thrill of inflicting harm. And I take back not a word, mind you, but I will allow that the build up to Halloween itself does allow for many different experiences, not all of them feature length. Really, nothing mirrors the anticipation of All Hallows Eve better than the horror movie trailer, with its promise of the forbidden, the horrid, the profane, and the grotesque. For this holiday-themed edition of my ongoing Trailer Park series, I will showcase fright films that I might not actually sit down and watch on 31 October but whose previews make my Gothic ganglia twitch. And now, in no particular order…

I first saw THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN (1971) at a kiddie matinee. No warning, no hint of what I was about to be subjected to. Man, I loved the 70s! The title alone should have been a red flag warning to my parents but, no, I was allowed to go off on my own. For those who thought THE EXORCIST (1973) was proof that the world was going to Hell in a hand-basket, this thing smacked moviegoers flat in the gob two full years earlier and it’s the more disturbing of the two. (It’s worth point out that little Geri Reishl, who has the principal child role here, was a contender for the part of Regan in THE EXORCIST.) Being a natural non-joiner and a near-lifetime atheist to boot, I find sects and cults of any kind to be creepy, whether they’re roasting a virgin in a wicker behemoth in a bid to benefit the harvest or simply setting up foldling tables for a prayer breakfast… so obviously a small town filled with old folk harvesting the local (and visiting) kinder for their own selfish ends is going to fill me with positive horror. Superficial points of commonality notwithstanding, BROTHERHOOD is far from just a quickie ripoff of ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968); it’s a movie that truly gets to you and works on you with a parade of images that, even at their most timeworn and hoary (hooded cultists, black candles, creepy dolls) upset and bother. The movie spoke to me then, at age 9 or 10, and still feels relevant to me now at age 52 as a comment on asleep-at-the-wheel-of-reason parenting and the monsters that spill out of the wreckage.

You know what’s really wrong with contemporary horror movie trailers, and I mean apart from the issue that the movies themselves invariably suck ill wind? It’s that the previews don’t shout the movie’s title in your face anymore. God, remember when movie trailers assumed your were blind and read everything out to you? Good times – and DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1964) is a prime example. I love that clumsy ad line “The terrifying horror of a man called Dr. Terror…” It feels like that was written in about five minutes, by someone with not quite enough adjectives at his disposal, but ye Old Gods I love it. Plus, it’s always great to see Christopher Lee properly freaking out, the old turnip. And Peter Cushing just looks great, doesn’t he? There is no proper US DVD of this early Amicus effort, and more’s the pity, because on second thought I would watch this one on Halloween… though keeping my distance from the houseplants.

As far as titles go, you’d be hard pressed to do better than WEREWOLF IN A GIRLS’ DORMITORY, whose original title (I almost hate to tell you) is/was LYCANTHROPUS (1961). I like the American title better because it is the apotheosis of truth in advertising, like the little can of “potted meat product” you can buy at the 99 cent store. (An alternative release title was I MARRIED A WEREWOLF, which is just dumb.) This is the kind of (now) vintage experience I really crave on Halloween. It has the coziness factor of a girl’s school located in the European sticks and an autumnal ambiance, a werewolf in a suit, and a great leading lady in the beautiful Barbara Lass (who was married, by turns, to Roman Polanski and PEEPING TOM‘s Karlheinz Bohm– yeesh!). But even on the level of its US trailer, this thing sings to me. Come on… a N-E-R-V-O-R-A-M-A SHOCKER! Have you ever been offered such a wonderful gift as a nervorama shocker? Or even the promise of one? Wouldn’t you rather watch a nervorama shocker than Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson explaining horror?

Like THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN, TOURIST TRAP (1979), which brackets a wonderful decade of disturbing, visceral horror, is supremely messed up. Movies in which stuff flies around on its own generally don’t do anything for me but TOURIST TRAP mixes in so many wildly disparate and nightmare-inducing elements that even if you find it hit or miss you’re going to go home (or go to bed) in a state of heightened vigilance. More than half of the equation here is the movie’s soundscape, which works on you as a bamboo sliver works on a fingernail – it loosens you, it bends you backward, and leaves you raw where once you were hardened and secure. The trailer does a great job of selling the experience, and that wonderful ad copy is the icing on a very disquieting cake. Bonus points for movie trailers that work the title of the flick into a full sentence. “God help those who get caught in… the TOURIST TRAP!” And even better: “SHOCK YOU CAN SEE! TERROR YOU CAN FEEL! HEARTSTOPPING SUSPENSE THAT MAKES THIS THE NIGHTMARE THAT NEVER ENDS!” Can you stand the confidence? If this trailer were sitting at the bar buying drinks, I’d be going home with it!

THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN (1977) is one of those movies that really divdes the room, even among the horroratti. I will admit that it is an imperfect picture, whose comic elements seriously undermine the “torn from the headlines” verite of Texarcana’s “Phantom Killer” case (aka “The Moonlight Murders”) of 1946, and yet… I cannot deny it. My affection for the film may be due to the fact that I heard about it for years before I got a chance to see it, so it attained a kind of iconic property in its unavailability, merging as it does true crime with urban myth. The trailer encapsulates what works for me about the film, that police procedural quality, names and dates, that seem to be an attempt to render what is chaotic and nightmarish into a spreadsheet of names and dates, something understandable, categorical. And the tension between the ghastly and the mundane is where the best parts of THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN call home.

The people who sold THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999) seem to have taken a tip or two from, if not THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN spefically, then at least from the tenor of the times in which the earlier film was made. You get that same sense of oral history/police procedural, the cold relating of facts surrounding something hotly horrific, and the implantation of that seed of curiosity. The trailer makes you want to know more, want to peek, want to open that door even at your own peril. Looking back at BLAIR WITCH now, at the distance of 14 years, it’s interesting to note what lessons subsequent horror filmmakers and horror film trailer makers have taken to heart and what they seem to have left with the scraps as not useful to them. What works best about this preview, to my mind, seems to matter less to previewistas in 2013, which is to say the bland police log facts o’the case articulated in a disconcertingly dispassionate voice (for auld lang syne, I’d love to hear John Laroquette read “In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland…”) while what has been carried forward is the device, the herky-jerky film style (“ShakyCam,” as it is known in certain circles) and the reduction of the message to micro-bursts of visual information. That’s a gag that worked a few times for me but probably never better than for…

… ALIEN (1979). And after that it just got old and annoying. Like Rip Taylor old and annoying. I think this trailer for ALIEN works gangbusters and I love the movie… but you can see this almost subliminal style as the beginning of the end of that old school blood and thunder, which so wonderfully epitomized the era of hoopla, hyperbole, and ballyhoo. Few horror movie trailers nail that rap better than …

… THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES (1968). Say what you will about the movie itself, or about how much Wendell Corey had to drink before he showed up on the set, but the trailer works it. And working it, my friends, is what Halloween is all about.

Vincent Price & Alfred Hitchcock on the set of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS (1957)

Last week I wrote about Vincent Price’s early stage career and this week I’d like to focus some of his notable television appearances. As regular readers know, every month I try to spotlight a particular telefilm that deserves more recognition in a yearlong feature I’ve christened Telefilm Time Machine. But this month I thought I’d take a small screen diversion into Vincent Price’s extensive career in television. Price only appeared in a few telefilms but he made many appearances on TV specials, game shows and popular dramas that endured him to audiences and undoubtedly gained him many new fans. Programs as varied as BATMAN, THE BRADY BUNCH, DANIEL BOONE, F TROOP, VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, LOVE AMERICAN STYLE, GET SMART, HERE’S LUCY, THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW, COLUMBO, THE BIONIC WOMAN, THE LOVE BOAT, HOLLYWOOD SQUARES, SCOOBY-DOO and THE MUPPET SHOW (just to name a few) all benefited from Price’s talent and worldwide celebrity. It’s also worth pointing out that Price’s last performance was in a made-for-TV mystery called THE HEART OF JUSTICE (1992) where he has a few scenes playing the elderly neighbor of a pulp writer (Dennis Hopper). Price’s television appearances are so numerous and noteworthy that instead of focusing on just one standout role I decided to compile a list of my favorites that should appeal to classic film fans eager to see Vincent Price in some of his most interesting small screen successes.

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In this month’s Book Corner here at TCM, Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait is the highlighted book of the month.  It was released here in the states yesterday, October 8th and gets released in the U.K. on Thursday, October 10th.  The book’s author, Kendra Bean, is a longtime blogging friend who’s been writing about Vivien Leigh since 2007.  It was in April of that year that she started VivAndLarry.com to expand her own knowledge of the subject and provide resources for other seekers.   As she puts it, “I had two goals with VivAndLarry.com: to gather as many photographs as possible, and to set up an archive of articles and information that was as comprehensive as I could possibly make it.”  Through the years, more and more fans have shown up, shared stories and connected with Kendra.   “I’m grateful for that,” says Kendra, “I can honestly say that Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait would not have been published without their presence and support.”  I got a chance to read the book last month and speak with its author, Kendra Bean.  I was thoroughly impressed with the book and had to start out with a question Kendra must have been asked a thousand times before.

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In its 51st edition the venerable New York Film Festival is testing its boundaries. While still a small, tightly curated affair compared to the industry bacchanals of Toronto and Cannes, they’ve been slowly increasing their scope. There are 36 official selection entries this year, thirteen more than 2011, and have expanded the Revivals and Views of the Avant Garde sections to the point where they could stand on their own. A mammoth Jean-Luc Godard retrospective is also running concurrently with the festival. The official selection was heavy on the Brits this year (with four, although I didn’t see any), and otherwise tried for their usual balance of star power (Captain Phillips) and experimentation (Norte, the End of History, all of Views).

The Centerpiece screening was the world premiere of Ben Stiller’s The Secret World of Walter Mitty, the second adaptation of James Thurber’s short story, following the 1947 Danny Kaye vehicle. Stiller’s directorial outings, from The Cable Guy (1996) to Tropic Thunder (2008), have been dark and masochistic comedies about pop culture’s corrosive power. Mitty, on the other hand, is a nostalgia piece, mourning the transition from analog to digital. Having little relation to Thurber’s moody miniature, Stiller’s Mitty takes the daydreaming office drone and shunts him into a world-hopping, mountain climbing  journey of self-discovery, kind of a middle-aged male’s Eat Pray Love. Where Thurber’s story ends with Mitty fantasizing about his own demise, Stiller’s closes with all of his dreams coming true.

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Episode 6 of The Story of Film: An Odyssey airs tonight and tomorrow night on TCM. Titled, “1953-1957-The Swollen Story: World Cinema Bursting at the Seams,” this episode continues the exploration of Hollywood and world cinema of the 1950s that was begun in Episode 5. In regard to Hollywood, the career of musical director Stanley Donen and the impact of McCarthyism were discussed last week, while James Dean and the era’s glossy melodramas are briefly mentioned tonight, along with On the Waterfront. While musicals, McCarthyism, melodramas, and Marlon’s Method do characterize Hollywood cinema in the 1950s, the decade represented so much more for the American film industry.

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Harry Harrison wrote Make Room! Make Room! in 1965. It was published a year later and in 1973 was turned into the feature film Soylent Green by Richard Fleischer, starring Charlton Heston. Harrison was clearly influenced by Malthusian theory, a stance that might be summed up by the 18th-century British cleric and scholar in one concise sentence: “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.” Over the years, critics of Thomas Robert Malthus have found plenty of fodder with which to reject his dire premise, mainly because the models used by Malthus didn’t account for the many ways in which human ingenuity would make many resources more readily available, and at lower prices, to the growing number of people inhabiting the planet. Malthusian critics might also point to the divide between Harrison’s scenario, which envisioned life in the Big Apple circa 1999 as being multiplied by a factor of five, going from seven million people in the sixties to 35 million by 1999. That didn’t happen, not in NYC at least (Tokyo, on the other hand, has now surpassed that number). Today, the population of of NYC hovers under the nine million mark, perhaps held in check by the exorbitant price of a martini, not to mention the going rate for monthly rent. Fleischer, working in the 70s, decided to hedge his bets by extending the date for Soylent Green out to the year 2022. He also contributed powerful imagery not found in the book of people being scooped up by garbage trucks, which also made for a very compelling poster. [...MORE]

I missed y’all last week, due to a technical difficulty.  And thanks to that glitch, I missed posting about John Ford’s Stagecoach in advance of last Sunday’s screening on TCM.  Which is a shame, but at the same time Stagecoach is one of those classic movies so towering in its importance that it practically dwarfs all efforts to really appreciate it–here is the film that made John Wayne a star, that proved that Westerns could move from the B-movie ghetto to being major Hollywood fare, and that then established the character types and narrative tropes that would fuel all those subsequent Westerns inspired by it.  That’s a lot to pull off in just 96 minutes.  More to the point, it’s a set of accomplishments defined primarily by what comes later, by what we know about Stagecoach‘s precedent-setting legacy.

In other words, forget that I missed putting it in context when it aired on TV last week–what would it have been like to experience it back in 1939?  That’s almost beyond our reach altogether.  But c’mon, let’s give it a try, shall we?

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It is October and Halloween is (eyes swivel to countdown clock)… 27 days away. At some point this month I will be asked “What are your favorite movies to watch for Halloween?” and, you know what, I’m just going to answer that question now. [...MORE]