George Kuchar, one half of the twin “Kuchar Brothers” who together are responsible for some of the strangest – and most memorable – underground films of the 60’s and 70’s, has passed away at age 69. The prolific artist was behind such short films and features as Sylvia’s Promise (1962), Lust for Ecstasy (1964), and The Devil’s Cleavage (1975 – pictured above), among countless others. Indie Wire has a very nice obit and appreciation.
Releasing the films of the Kuchar Brothers on DVD has always been a spotty issue, since they so frequently appropriated the soundtracks of big-budget Hollywood melodramas and other “sampled” sources, but here’s hoping that more of his work becomes available to the public soon. Highly recommended for an overview is It Came From Kuchar, the 2009 documentary which covers the brothers’ singularly bizarre output, zero-budget but striking and very funny films, which influenced artists such as John Waters and Guy Maddin. That is available, and well worth your time.
Last year, on a trip to Pennsylvania, I stopped by the Monroeville Mall (just outside Pittsburgh), where Dawn of the Dead (1978) was filmed. I’d nearly given up hope on finding anything George Romero-related when I discovered 
If Night of the Comet had been rated R, instead of PG-13, I wouldn’t have seen it at just the right age, when it acted as a post-apocalyptic wish-fulfillment fantasy. As you have probably guessed, I hadn’t seen the film’s chief inspiration, Dawn of the Dead, and wouldn’t for several more years (even then, I was always more of a Night of the Living Dead person; it wasn’t until my Monroeville Mall excursion that I rewatched the film, and truly came to appreciate Romero’s sequel). I was fascinated by the ideas in Night of the Comet, as well as the enticing genre soup writer/director Thom Eberhardt created: a bit of science fiction, a bit of horror, dollops of John Hughes-style teenage angst, a pinch of bleak end-of-the-world drama. Zombies, gun battles, shopping – hard to resist. Revisiting the film as an adult, I can add one more ingredient: 80’s-ness. It was hard to see just how 80’s this film was, back when I saw it…in the 80’s. We were all rather blind to it back then. But there is hardly a frame of this film which doesn’t scream the decade in which it was made, and that, undoubtedly, has only added to the film’s appeal. The nostalgia wafts thickly.
We meet two teenage sisters in Los Angeles: cinema usher Regina (Catherine Mary Stewart of The Last Starfighter) and cheerleader Samantha (Kelli Maroney of Chopping Mall). Regina’s the rebellious one; she’s sleeping with the projectionist, a film geek who prides his 3-D print of It Came From Outer Space, and during the work hours she wastes time in the theater lobby racking up high scores on Tempest. Samantha, for her part, is contentedly shallow. A comet is passing near Earth which hasn’t visited the planet since the dinosaurs mysteriously vanished – a clue dropped by the booming-voiced narrator who introduces the film and then promptly disappears for the remainder. Comet parties are being held across the globe, but Regina is using the opportunity of limited parental supervision to lock herself in the steel-encased projection booth with her boyfriend for the evening. That poster for the Jean Harlow film Red Dust that’s hanging on the wall is foreshadowing: when she wakes up the next morning, the comet has obliterated most Earthlings into little piles of…red dust. Those less directly exposed are beginning to decay, and their personalities turn homicidal. Regina decides that only the steel casing of the projection booth kept her and her boyfriend alive, since Samantha survived the evening by sleeping in a steel-walled shack. When a comet-altered man – let’s just call him a zombie, since the characters do – murders Regina’s boyfriend, they decide to hole up in a radio station. Here they meet Hector (Robert Beltran, Eating Raoul), a hunky truck driver who immediately hits it off with Regina. This leads Samantha to complain, “My sister, who’s swiped every guy I ever had my eye on, has now swiped the last guy on the whole freaked-out world.”
But we know they’re not alone, because periodically we check in with a group of scientists living in a military compound out in the desert, exposed to the comet’s effects and desperately trying to find a cure. So desperate, in fact, that they’ll use any survivors they find for fresh blood transfusions – including a pair of children. Meanwhile, Hector temporarily abandons the two sisters so he can check on his family, leading to a battle with a zombie adolescent in his home. Regina and Samantha work through their stress by shopping; thus the obligatory 80’s music montage, and the Cyndi Lauper. Their decadent mall experience is interrupted by some psychos in sunglasses (in Night of the Comet, never trust someone in sunglasses – they’re hiding their zombie eyes); Regina fires at the assailants with her submachine gun while Samantha throws shoes at them. They’re rescued by the scientists, but only for what promises to be a worse end; a sympathetic Mary Woronov (Death Race 2000) fakes Samantha’s death so she can be reunited with Hector (who returns to the radio station wearing a Santa Claus suit and beard), but Regina is brought back to the military facility to unwittingly supply the scientists with all the fresh blood they need. Hector and Samantha go to the rescue.
Given the fact that the plot boasts zombies, gunfights, and daring escapes, what’s most curious about Night of the Comet is its tone, which remains ridiculously mellow for its entire 90 minutes. That might be because most of the time is spent in the FM radio station, which is surely the mellowest place on Earth: dim lighting, flashing neon, and nonstop easy-listening music hosted by the ghost of a DJ (his voice runs off pre-recorded tapes, which doesn’t explain why he’s able to deliver weather updates). The station looks like the perfect place for a nap. Have you fallen asleep while trying to get through Night of the Comet on some afternoon TV screening? It’s that damn radio station. The characters, in fact, take naps themselves: Samantha dreams she’s assaulted by zombies, and we’re given a nightmare-within-a-nightmare sequence which is the film’s most effective jolt, even if it’s borrowed wholesale from An American Werewolf in London (1981).
You can’t help but wish there were more scares in Night of the Comet, which introduces the promise of zombie attacks and then gradually forgets about the zombies, as the characters begin to deal with less-decayed, more human foes: first the chatty stockboy and his gang of thugs in the mall, then the cold-hearted scientists. Eberhardt seems less interested in action and horror than he is reveling in mood: the loneliness and boredom of characters lost in a suddenly vacated world. He’s also keen on his color schemes, in particular the color red; the dusky hues of the sky match the piles of dust that spot the streets and sidewalks. The smog-choked Los Angeles skyline provides the film’s cheapest and most effective special effect. It looks like a comet just passed and altered the atmosphere, because L.A. always looks like that.
He also steals plenty of memorable shots of Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney stalking the eerily deserted L.A. streets amid skyscrapers, which leads to Night of the Comet‘s very best gag, at the film’s end. Despite its languor and – mellowness – the film is a satire, and there are some nice jokes scattered throughout, such as Kelli’s obliviousness the morning after the comet’s passing (she wonders where her dog Muffy went, noticing a collar and a pile of red powder under it) – a bit more of this and we’d be in solid Shawn of the Dead territory. Maroney, who delivers the film’s funniest line (“Daddy would’ve gotten us Uzis”), sells the film’s concept by spending most of the movie in her cheerleader outfit: she’s the Omega Man as Valley Girl. But Eberhardt, who had previously directed the low-budget horror film Sole Survivor (1983), and would go on to direct comedies such as Without a Clue (1988), never hammers away too strongly at any of the elements he has at play. Night of the Comet is never as scary as it ought to be, never as funny as it ought to be, never as thrilling as it ought to be. It just kind of…is. But the concept and the images are so strong that the film sticks with you anyway, and by the end it proves itself to be strangely endearing. Indeed, that offbeat ending might just explain the film’s tonal oddity: it was headed here, of all places, and Night of the Comet earns the ending that it has. There are better post-apocalyptic films, but this one sticks with you, like an easy-listening FM song from the 80’s that you just can’t get out of your head. I’m going to go take a nap now.
For tonight’s double feature, we continue our survey of the films of William Castle. When last we checked in, he was taking a break from abject gimmickry and horror with 
If it seems to be a very strange little film, I would only point out that so is Zotz! (and tonight’s B-feature, 13 Frightened Girls!). Castle enjoyed black comedy, but he always plays it a bit broad, which is why it tends to be more successful when cloaked by the horror genre. The Old Dark House, however, is most certainly a comedy, and the comic rhythms sometimes click, and too frequently don’t. Zotz! star Tom Poston returns, playing Tom Penderel, an American car salesman who shares an English flat with Casper Femm (Peter Bull of Dr. Strangelove). Casper only needs the flat during the day, and Tom only needs it during the evening, so their paths seldom cross; any suggestion that Casper might be a vampire, alas, is a red herring. At the film’s outset, Tom meets Casper at a casino to deliver his new car, but his bad luck costs Casper at the baccarat table. Ultimately, Tom agrees to drive the car to Casper’s family estate, Femm Hall; on the way, more bad luck: knocking against the front gate, one of the gargoyles topples and drops straight through the hood of the car. When Tom, sopping wet from the storm, walks up to the front porch, he knocks and is promptly dropped through a trap door and into the cellar. An apologetic Potiphar Femm (Mervyn Johns) greets him there, noting that the trap was built long ago to dissuade visitors (which is curious, since it would drop them inside the house). Potiphar is a softspoken and somewhat batty member of a clan that will shortly prove to be very batty indeed. We don’t know right away, for example, that Potiphar is anticipating a Biblical Flood and is constructing his own Noah’s Ark in the backyard. That will come later, once the madness has properly escalated.
Potiphar informs Tom that Casper died but an hour ago. He’s shown the corpse, lying in an open casket and gazing at the ceiling. He also meets the rest of the Femms, as they begin to gather: the beautiful young Cecily (Janette Scott, The Day of the Triffids), the domineering Roderick (Robert Morley, Around the World in 80 Days), sexpot Morgana (Fenella Fielding), her father, Morgan (Danny Green), the ever-knitting Agatha (Joyce Grenfell), and – to Tom’s bemusement – Casper’s perfect twin, Jasper, who was known as “Dumpty” to Casper’s “Humpty.” Roderick Femm explains to Tom that their ancestor, Morgan the Pirate, left a fortune which can only be inherited if each member of the family meets in a particular room of the house at midnight every night. The family member who doesn’t make it to that room by the appointed hour loses out on their share. Roderick suspects that Tom might be a Femm himself, but once members of the family begin dropping dead (over the course of one long evening), suspicions in Tom’s direction grow more hostile. Meanwhile, he attempts to negotiate a romance with Cecily Femm while eluding the seductive embrace of Morgana, as well as physical assaults from her mute, brutish father.
One can easily see why William Castle would be attracted to the material, bearing as it does a passing resemblance to House on Haunted Hill (albeit without the ghosts). Tom Poston remains an appealing comic lead, lovelorn, clumsy, and aghast at the lunatics who surround him; at one point, Morgana delivers him a saucer of water which turns out to be acid, and he loses the end of his tie while leaning over it. The supporting players are well cast, though the familiar Hammer faces are absent. Castle seems to make a gesture at British bawdiness by a loving close-up of Morgana’s breasts as she descends the stairs, but for the most part it’s easy to see why this film flopped in England, when it was belatedly released: the slapstick humor is very American, and British wit is sorely lacking. The film has many awkward gags, like a trip to Potiphar’s zoo in the ark, where Tom imagines Morgana’s face on a barking seal – not an image you will easily erase from your consciousness. The Old Dark House comes to life, thankfully, in its climax, as Tom races to defuse bombs set in the clocks scattered throughout Femm House, but one is left lamenting: if only the script were as sharp as the knitting needles which pierce poor Agatha’s neck. (Special attention should be given to the stellar opening credits, drawn by none other than Addams Family creator Charles Addams. He signs his name with a pen wielded by a monstrous claw.)
While The Old Dark House struggled to find an appropriate release in England, it came and went in the States (in black-and-white, oddly; the Sony/Columbia DVD restores the uncut film to full color). Castle moved on quickly. 13 Frightened Girls! (1963), aka The Candy Web, was another comedy with elements of suspense, though lacking any touches of horror this time around. The Old Dark House was pitched at adults with some risque humor and gruesome murders, but 13 Frightened Girls! courted an altogether new audience for Castle: adolescent girls. The film tells the story of Candy Hull (Kathy Dunn), the teenage daughter of a CIA honcho. She goes to school with a number of diplomats’ daughters, all of them of different nationalities (the thirteen girls of the title). She’s madly in love with an older CIA agent (Murray Hamilton – the mayor in Jaws), but he rebuffs her virginal advances. To get his attention, she engages in some freelance espionage work under the codename of “Kitten” (after her cat). She also begins manipulating her foreigner friends to glean information out of them, like the true American patriot that she is.
This leads to a funny moment when she seduces away the boyfriend of her German friend, though she gets more than she bargained for when he invites her back to his hotel. The threat of – gulp, sex – is dispelled when he realizes that she’s discovered he’s a spy, so he drugs her, and tries to push her off the balcony before his crime is interrupted (he falls to his own death instead). Next Kitten takes on her biggest case yet: trying to find out why an American agent was apparently murdered at the house of Kang (Khigh Dhiegh, the brainwasher in The Manchurian Candidate), the father of her friend Mai-Ling (Lynne Sue Moon). Is it a Communist conspiracy? Well, yes. Of course it is. But what matters most – from the perspective of a teenage girl – is that Candy’s friendship with Mai-Ling is broken when she confesses that she’s really Agent Kitten. Mai-Ling thinks she was being used, so she tearfully goes to her father…who then sends an assassin called the Spider to murder Candy. Sweet Valley High this isn’t.
The title promises a climax in which Spider terrorizes the international consortium of teenage girls, but sadly, this doesn’t quite happen, and the Hitchcockian conclusion the film deserves never actually materializes. Instead, Castle satisfies himself with a too-wacky setpiece in which the girls go to Candy’s rescue by vexing the Communist agents, and then outright piling on top of them. Finally Candy confronts Spider on her own (there’s a twist, though not a surprising one). 13 Frightened Girls! has a genuine Nancy Drew-ness which it never shakes, but at least that gives the film some shape and purpose. As disposable teenage entertainment for 1963, it’s perfectly fine. It’s hard to imagine a more unusual fit for someone with the reputation of William Castle’s, but he seems just at home with the mugging of overacting teenage girls as he does with the sleepy-eyed mugging of Tom Poston. I enjoyed The Old Dark House more, perhaps because of the milieu: stormy night, drawing room mystery, and so on. But I asked my wife which film she preferred, and she said 13 Frightened Girls! without hesitation. “That’s just because you’re a girl,” I said, and she answered, “That’s right!” So who am I to judge Castle? He was a showman, but he never lost sight of his audience.
