Dead of Night (1945)

Posted on December 28, 2018 at 11:31 am by Jeff Kuykendall

The anthology film Dead of Night (1945) has an insidiously unsettling quality which sinks slowly into you, seemingly out of nowhere, but stretching into your veins like a virus. Quite literally, watching it is to step into a nightmare, one that has already been unfolding and which will continue long after you walk away from the film. That’s both the plot and the film’s method, one that builds upon classic British ghost stories and anticipates the paranoid reality breakdowns of The Twilight Zone. Yet it’s all handled – until the final reel – with such reserve that you never see the full effect coming. Produced by the storied Ealing Studios, still best known for its classic comedies, Dead of Night boasts four directors but a clarity of vision and shared purpose: Basil Dearden (They Came to a City), Cavalcanti (aka Alberto Cavalcanti, Champagne Charlie), Robert Hamer (Kind Hearts and Coronets), and Charles Crichton (The Lavender Hill Mob). Produced during a decade in which the British horror genre was slumbering, it was released wide in the U.K. a couple weeks prior to Halloween, and it ultimately left its mark as one of the greatest horror anthologies of all time.

Sally Ann Howes in “The Christmas Party” segment of Dead of Night.

The framing story is certainly one of the best of its kind; the genre is not exactly known for its solid linking tales, which are often perfunctory or clichéd. Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns, The Day of the Triffids) is summoned to a country manor to consult on some renovations. Upon arriving and encountering those already gathered there, he begins suffering a dreadful déjà vu. He had a just-remembered nightmare which contained all the details he’s now experiencing. He’s able to predict what will happen next with accuracy, though how it will all end – the nightmare part which he begins to dread – is a confusion of contradictory and violent memories. While his situation is clinically refuted by a psychologist, Dr. Van Straaten (Frederick Valk, Night Train to Munich), the other guests begin recounting their own uncanny encounters to bolster Walter’s trepidations. In the first tale, Dearden’s “The Hearse Driver” (based on “The Bus-Conductor” by E.F. Benson), a race-car driver (Anthony Baird) experiences a frightening vision in the middle of the night which reveals itself to be a life-saving premonition. In the second, Cavalcanti’s “The Christmas Party,” teenager Sally O’Hara (Sally Ann Howes, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) unwittingly encounters the ghost of a child in an isolated room during a game of hide-and-seek. Both of these first tales are brief and to-the-point, delivering basic but effective twists. Sally, upon learning that the boy she met was the victim of a fratricide some years ago, immediately proclaims “I’m not scared! I’m not scared!” to no one at all, reverting to a state of childhood terror. But although the Benson adaptation, with the ghostly hearse-driver’s cry of “Room for one more, sir,” would prove a lasting ghost tale, there is nothing in either to make Dead of Night a classic. Then the film kicks into a more inspired mode, as though it were simply laying the groundwork before moving into more complex and original variations.

Mervyn Johns tells of his recurring nightmares to the gathered guests.

There is Hamer and screenwriter Angus MacPhail’s story of a haunted mirror which is not told by the one who is haunted by it, but his wife (thus introducing an element new to this anthology thus far – that the victim of these haunted happenings might die). Screenwriter John Baines’ original story follows a married couple whose lives are nearly destroyed by the introduction of a mirror acquired in an antiques shop. When the husband (Ralph Michael) gazes into it, he sees himself in another room, with a burning fireplace and a four-poster bed. Increasingly he’s unable to see anything but this mirror-world, and begins to go unraveled. His wife (Googie Withers, The Lady Vanishes) learns that it belonged to a man who strangled his wife, a past that might soon be relived. This effective horror tale is more sinister than those which came before it, and seems to have directly inspired some Amicus anthologies in decades to come. A respite follows for the more faint-hearted members of the audience, in a story adapted from H.G. Wells’ “The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost” and directed by Crichton, the Ealing director whose gifts for farce would, many years on, lead him to direct A Fish Called Wanda (1988). Two friendly rivals whose lives are entirely devoted to golfing find themselves in the middle of a love triangle, and decide to settle it on the green. When one man cheats, the other nobly drowns himself in a water hazard, only to come back to haunt him. Crichton, as an in-joke using two actors from The Lady Vanishes (Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne) playing similar single-minded characters (with golf substituted for cricket), escalates the extreme nature of their rivalry while retaining a level of indifferent deadpan. A sustained shot in which the two realize that a woman has come between them – while she (Peggy Bryan) is physically sitting between them – and resolve to play a game of life and death for her, is all the funnier because of their prize’s cheerful agreement. Eventually it ventures into ghost-comedy territory well trod by the likes of René Clair’s The Ghost Goes West (1935), Topper (1937), and both the Noël Coward play and David Lean film of Blithe Spirit (1945), but none of those  sports this many golf jokes.

Michael Redgrave and Hugo the dummy.

Finally we reach the installment that everyone who sees Dead of Night remembers with a shudder, the tale of a ventriloquist, Maxwell (Michael Redgrave), whose wicked doll Hugo seems to be the one that’s really in charge of their career. When Hugo begins to make overtures to another ventriloquist, the drunken and depressed Maxwell goes insane. This segment stands on the shoulders of the Erich von Stroheim-starring The Great Gabbo (1929, from a story by Ben Hecht) and prefigures similar takes by The Twilight Zone (twice) and the films Devil Doll (1964) and Magic (1978), among many others. Still, it’s one of the best of its kind, aided by the brevity granted by the anthology format and a lived-in performance by Redgrave, along with an eerie denouement. But Dead of Night has one last trick up its sleeve, a final supernatural rug-pull that begins with a murder, accelerates into a stream-of-consciousness nightmare that collapses the scariest moments of the preceding tales into manic reenactment, and finally reveals the logic behind the architect’s premonitions of disaster. The British own the ghost story format. In a 1945, Dead of Night became a key part of that legacy.

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Double Feature: Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969)/Beast of Blood (1970)

Posted on November 25, 2018 at 6:31 pm by Jeff Kuykendall

Having already taken a look at the first two titles in Severin’s limited edition box set The Blood Island Collection – Terror is a Man (1959) and Brides of Blood (1968) – let’s move on to our last pair of Blood Island adventures new on Blu-ray. Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969) is, like Brides, co-directed by Filipino directors Gerry de Leon (the artsy one) and Eddie Romero (the shameless one). John Ashley, the would-be teen heartthrob from many American beach movies, is once again the lead, now establishing himself as a key partner in sleazy exploitation; Ashley would linger in the Philippines as an actor and producer with films like The Big Doll House (1971), Beast of the Yellow Night (1971) and The Twilight People (1972), and eventually produce TV shows like The A-Team, Something is Out There, and Walker, Texas Ranger. Here Ashley plays Dr. Bill Foster, who comes to Blood Island with his assistant Sheila Willard (Angelique Pettyjohn) to investigate strange happenings and also to find her father (Tony Edmunds), whom she hasn’t seen since she was a child. This latter plot is something of a red herring, as the real melodrama unfolding on the island involves a mad scientist, Dr. Lorca (Ronald Remy), and his experiments with chlorophyll injections. With this technique he once hoped to treat a man with leukemia, but instead turned him into a rampaging green monster. The creature’s son, Carlos (Ronaldo Valdez), joins Dr. Foster, Sheila, and her father in investigating the killings – the crime scenes are stained with green blood – while romancing the mysterious Marla (Alicia Alonzo), who holds a secret of her own.

In “Mad Doctor of Blood Island,” a creature with green blood stalks his prey.

The sex and gore elements are even more explicit than in Brides, as exemplified in the cold open, which involves a fully nude island native running through the jungle pursued by the green-blooded monster; later, partially nude characters are graphically dismembered by the fiend. Of course, it all just feels like a harmless drive-in romp. A William Castle-like introduction from the original release urges audience members to partake in the “Oath of Green Blood,” showing groovy teenagers smiling at each other and drinking together from vials of green liquid while an oath to be recited by the audience scrolls up the screen. Packets of the stuff were actually distributed to theaters for brave audience members to try. Another gimmick runs throughout the film: whenever the monster is about to attack, the camera begins to zoom in and out wildly. This might as well be called MigraineVision. Presumably this was to disguise the cheapness of the monster makeup, though it really looks no worse than anything else that would have been on drive-in screens at the time. A climax in a cave where Dr. Lorca conducts his experiments looks like something from a Gilligan’s Island episode. But this is quality cheese. As Marla, Alicia Alonzo makes the strongest impression, perhaps because, unlike everyone else, she seems to consist of more than two dimensions. She has nude scenes (including some completely unnecessary skinny dipping), but she also has the meatiest part. When, in the finale, she slumps slowly down with flames climbing the walls around her, satisfied that her vengeance is complete, the image is unusually potent – de Leon had a good eye.

Eddie Garcia as Dr. Lorca in “Beast of Blood.”

The final film, however, is directed by Romero alone, and it shows – for better and worse. There’s nothing artsy or attractive here, just lean, mean exploitation. Beast of Blood announces itself immediately as a direct sequel to Mad Doctor, which is interesting, given that previous films showed no interest in continuity. Picking up right where the last film left off, Ashley’s Bill Foster is leaving Blood Island on a boat on which the monster has stowed away. It rampages, as is its wont, spilling gasoline everywhere, and Foster is flung from the boat just as it explodes, killing Sheila and Carlos (who are never seen, since Angelique Pettyjohn and Ronaldo Valdez didn’t return for this round). Much later, Foster returns to the island with a reporter in tow, Myra (Celeste Yarnall, who passed away in October of this year). No sooner has Bill reunited with tribe leader Ramu (Alfonso Carvajal, who played the same role in the last film) than Myra is kidnapped by Dr. Lorca (now Eddie Garcia). Lorca, in contrast with the last film, now has an armed militia at his disposal. With a half-scarred face from the fire in Mad Doctor and wearing an eye patch, he looks like a Bond villain, which makes sense, as the plot bears a passing resemblance to Dr. No (1962). In sharp contrast with the other films in the series, Beast of Blood plays out as one long spy mission, culminating in a shootout climax against numerous henchmen. Dr. Lorca retains his subterranean laboratory, but this time it’s equipped with metallic doors that slide open automatically. The well coiffed Ashley gets to be the cold man on a mission, not even pausing to make love to local rebel leader Laida (Liza Belmonte) because apparently he’s still mourning Sheila, with whom, he claims, he was in love. (Which should lead anyone who’s seen the last film to say, Really?) Never mind, because once he rescues Myra he gets naked with her immediately. I guess he got over it.

The disembodied head of the Beast of Blood.

This more action-oriented film does have a horror highlight, the green-blooded monster which Lorca has recovered and now keeps in two pieces in his laboratory: body on the slab, head in a pan. He’s kept the creature sentient through electrodes, but gets ornery that it won’t talk back to him, leading to a handful of unintentionally humorous monologues as he demands the creature get over itself and talk. A failed attempt at a head transplant features graphic surgery close-ups that take a page from Terror is a Man – though without the warning bell this time. We soon learn that the monster has been plotting, and the head can actually control the detached body, leading to the inevitable scene in which Lorca is subdued by the headless beast; and now, at last, the head talks. Perhaps Stuart Gordon was taking notes, since he revisits the concept in Re-Animator (with greater imagination and black humor). Beast of Blood offers lurid fun in keeping with the tone of the series, though it’s less colorful and exotic, and Severin’s 2K scan is only from a 16mm print, looking much rougher than its predecessors; accordingly, it’s the only film not for sale outside the box set. Mad Doctor, by contrast, looks very nice indeed on Blu-ray, though it suffers from the aforementioned problem with Brides of Blood – day-for-night shots are left undarkened so that characters run from night to day and back again. On the whole, however, the set – chock full of interviews and commentary tracks, along with a soundtrack CD for Mad Doctor – is a welcome presentation of four films that have never been treated that well in the first place. Take the Oath of Green Blood, if you dare.

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Double Feature: Terror is a Man (1959)/Brides of Blood (1968)

Posted on November 24, 2018 at 9:23 am by Jeff Kuykendall

Severin Films’ new Blu-ray set The Blood Island Collection (initially available as a limited edition box set; 3 of the 4 films are also for sale individually) brings together the full series of notorious horror films set on the titular island from prolific Filipino directors Eddie Romero (The Twilight People) and Gerardo “Gerry” de Leon (Women in Cages). Released by Hemisphere Pictures (the Philippines-based production company started by American expat Kane W. Lynn and producer Irwin Pizor), each is a wild, sex and violence filled monster movie like a needle to the Id. The set kicks off with de Leon’s Terror is a Man (1959), later released as Blood Creature. Separated by the subsequent Blood Island trilogy by nine years, it is more reserved than those films, focusing instead on atmosphere and making the most of its black and white photography. Borrowing liberally from H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau, the story concerns a scientist, Dr. Girard (Francis Lederer, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Return of Dracula), who from his remote island is obsessed with turning animals into humans through a bit of surgery and some experiments on the brain. His greatest success is a panther-man, who at the outset escapes and kills one of the local native girls. The audience surrogate is William Fitzgerald (Richard Derr, When Worlds Collide), a shipwreck survivor (like Dr. Moreau‘s protagonist) who is brought into the doctor’s home. Naturally, the doctor has a younger, sex-starved wife, Frances (Greta Thyssen), who takes notice of their new visitor. During a surgery scene, a very brief, graphic scalpel slicing is accompanied by a warning buzzer so timid audience members can look away – a technique used later in Ivan Reitman’s satirical Cannibal Girls (1973).

Dr. Girard (Francis Lederer) and his tormented wife Frances (Greta Thyssen) in “Terror is a Man.”

Not just a dry run for the Blood Island films to come, Terror is a Man places an admirable emphasis on shadow-draped mood and empathy for its monster. Admittedly, the panther-man looks somewhat ridiculous: he’s covered in mummy bandages like some monster kit-bashing, exposing only a paw and a cat’s head; when he’s fully covered, his two gauze-wrapped cat’s ears still stick up at the top. But he’s a sympathetic creature, reserving most of his anger for the man who created him, fixated on the pretty girl (as all monsters must since King Kong), and not killing that much until the finale. In fact, if, by drive-in standards, anything can be held against the film’s execution, it’s that there’s a long period in the middle of the film in which order is maintained, the monster is leashed, the villagers are safe, and Lederer has pages and pages of scientific nonsense to read aloud. But even these scenes are livened by Fitzgerald’s exploration of the island estate, discovering the secret lab and the bandaged body with cat-eyes peering out. With no nudity, the sex element is limited to Thyssen’s cleavage and an irrelevant but humorously diverting scene in which she writhes alone on top of her bed. Most memorable are the first killing scene, shown from the monster’s point of view as he stalks his victims at night, and the denouement, an unexpectedly lyrical moment in which the wounded creature is saved by a village boy and set adrift in a boat – not so much promising a sequel as giving a creature who’s been tortured day after day a chance at a new beginning far from “Blood Island.” Severin’s Blu-ray, taken from “a new 4K scan from a fine-grain print recently discovered at the UCLA Film Archive,” looks fantastic, though the tinny soundtrack leaves a bit to be desired (much of the problem being native to the source material, I’m sure).

A late night sacrifice in “Brides of Blood.”

Brides of Blood (aka Island of Living Horror, aka Jungle Fury, 1968), co-directed by de Leon and Romero, is an altogether different beast. Kicking off the Blood Island series proper, it’s much more explicit in its gore and titillation, including brief dashes of nudity. The film plays like a Martin Denny exotica record rendered as a horny fever dream. The acting is stiff and the monster looks even more ridiculous than the one in Terror is a Man (mercifully he’s usually only seen from a distance). But, like the irradiated jungle at the center of the story, everything in this movie seems wild and alive – and usually wriggling and writhing. Three Americans come to Blood Island: Jim Farrell from the Peace Corps (John Ashley, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini), who wants to help the island modernize; Dr. Henderson (Kent Taylor, of the TV series Boston Blackie and films like Death Takes a Holiday), looking for signs of radiation from nearby bomb tests; and his blond, busty wife Carla (Beverly Hills, aka Beverly Powers, Kissin’ Cousins), who is sexually frustrated, as required. In a typical scene, Carla, restless in the middle of the night, crawls on top of her sleeping husband and labors to initiate a make-out session while he remains stone-faced, eyes closed. Either that man is dead or he is very, very rude. Turns out the island has been contaminated by fallout, with vines and branches that move of their own accord, reaching out to strangle and dismember anyone who ventures too close. In a neat touch, there’s a gauntlet the villagers must walk between the flailing trees and vegetation. Step quickly!

Mario Montenegro has some skin problems.

Reverting to “old ways,” the islanders have also begun to sacrifice women by lottery to appease a humanoid creature which looks a bit like Tabonga of From Hell It Came (1957) notoriety, only not as good, if you can imagine. The monster will only accept women because, here we go, it rapes them and tears them to pieces. Lighting torches and ripping the tops off the victims, the villagers race away before the lumbering creature in the rubber mask comes stomping into the clearing.  At a remove from the natives is the wealthy estate owner Esteban Powers (Mario Montenegro), who invites the Americans to stay with him and warns them away from the jungle for obvious reasons. Esteban, who looks younger than he is and goes missing in the middle of the night, has a terrible secret. Can you guess what it is? Probably you can. Jim falls for a local village girl, Alma (Eva Darren), and when she’s chosen to be sacrificed, he disrupts the ritual by rescuing her (though only after the other poor woman is torn to pieces). After the evil has been destroyed, it’s time to relax around the fire while the native girls do a mating dance. Under her father’s approving eye, Alma performs a sexually charged solo routine before Jim takes her into the jungle where all the dancers take their boyfriends. Has exotic escapism ever been so blunt?

The new Blu-ray is a mixed bag, with the image being a bit too bright in certain scenes, and shots that were surely intended as day-for-night left undarkened, so that during the nighttime sacrificial ritual we jarringly move from the middle of the night to broad daylight and back again. But the new 4K scan pulls a lot of detail from the interpositive, and the proper way to watch this film is after you’ve had a few cocktails anyway. Up next: Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969) and Beast of Blood (1970).

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