The Cat and the Canary (1978)

The 1920s. A murder of prospective heirs descend on a somewhat creepy, and definitely creaky, old mansion, to hear the reading of the will of one Cyrus West (Wilfried Hyde-White). In a peculiar turn of events, the old man does the reading himself, via a filmed message that doesn’t just contain the will but also some rather rude remarks about his family, bastards all (or most of them, anyway), he says.

Not surprisingly, the will is about as peculiar as its presentation, seeing as it shows a curious fixation on the mental stability of the heir. Should the chosen heir to judged mentally unstable, the next heir is going to inherit; should that one botch their SAN test as well, it’s the next in line, and so on.

So one isn’t quite sure if one should congratulate West’s chosen victim, ahem, heir, Allison Crosby (Wendy Hiller) for winning the heir lottery, or simply suggest to her to run as quickly as she can.

Alas, running is out of the question in any case, for on the night of the reading of the will, the family is going to be stranded in the old dark house anyway, and soon, curious things begin happening. There’s the curious case of the suddenly appearing local psychiatrist (Edward Fox) on the armed hunt for a supposedly homicidal maniac who believes himself to be a cat; the curious case of the disappearing lawyer; and the many curious cases of the disfigured creep only Allison ever sees. Why, it’s enough to drive a woman mad.

I have no idea why the greatest of the arthouse porn directors Radley Metzger added another entry to the list of adaptations of this most archetypal of all old dark house stage plays; I have even less of an idea how he managed to acquire a cast that also features Honor Blackman, Michael Callan, and Olivia Hussey (among others) for what is clearly a pretty low budget affair.

What I can say is that he managed to turn out a very interesting (in the good meaning of that descriptor) version of the tale. A peculiar one, as well, for The Cat’s most obvious feature is its tendency to fluctuate between two very different tones – about half of the film is very much in keeping with the old-fashioned creakiness of its material (and of the house its plot takes place in), an old-fashionedly staged mystery comedy that might have been done exactly this way in the 30s or 40s. Its other half, on the other hand, seems to be unable to help itself from dragging the material to the borders of sleaze and exploitation cinema very typical of the late 70s; it never quite gets outrageous, but there are suggestions of what you’d have lamely termed “alternative lifestyles” when this was made and hints of outright perversion the old creaky stage play would never have dared even consider.

This latter element never becomes quite as explicit as in a giallo – which Metzger must have been influenced by – yet you never have the impression the film is squeamish. Rather, it feels to me as if part of Metzger’s approach here is meant as a comment on the fluidity of social mores over time, without wanting to quite make fun of the more stuck-up morals of the past (and, alas, sometimes the future) too much, lest the future will do the same to him.

Much of what makes the film as entertaining as it is – apart from some excellently timed jokes like West’s incredible video message and effective old-fashioned, creaky suspense – is in the tension between the very old-fashioned material and the idea of modernity used at the time when this film was made, a feeling of a movie that manages to look at the past and its own time with a degree of ironic distance, but also of sympathy.

So, apparently, I do have an idea of why Metzger might have chosen exactly this material.

Accidental TV Movie Week: The Night Stalker (1972)

aka Kolchak: The Night Stalker

Accidental TV Movie Week is what happens when I read the excellent “Are You in the House Alone?” edited by blogger and podcaster Amanda Reyes and spend a week only watching the sort of US TV movie treated in the book. Don’t be afraid.

Let’s start this thing off with a classic, one of the handful of US TV movies known and loved even by those horror fans who have little interest in or knowledge of this specific side of the genre. As is often the case, find myself in between, by the way, a dabbler but neither completely clueless about nor a full-blooded fan of the classic US TV movie.

The Night Stalker’s plot is simple and to the point: dedicated reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) has been exiled to Las Vegas for his unwillingness to play politics as much as for his love for purposefully pissing off any authority figure he might encounter. Investigating a series of murders of young women that leave the victims without blood, many curious facts begin to add up to a crazy conviction – the killer is an actual vampire. The fact that the police will only ever half believe what is going on even once they have repeatedly encountered an inhumanly strong man impervious to bullets, and even if they do, won’t let any of this get in front of the eyes of the public (vampires are apparently bad for business), just might turn Kolchak into an improbable vampire hunter.

Apart from being straightforward (which doesn’t mean stupid, mind you), The Night Stalker’s plot has the distinction of being point-perfectly executed. Scripted by the great Richard Matheson (and produced by Dan Curtis, the patron saint of US TV horror of the 70s), the film is as tightly written as possible, exclusively consisting of scenes that move forward the plot and reveal character and explore the film’s themes, with no filler whatsoever. The dialogue, while always absolutely of its time, is always sharp, often funny, and provides information and flavour at the same time. Because this is Matheson at his very best, at least every second scene features an absolutely brilliant idea, just as brilliantly executed. If that sounds as if I’m laying it on a bit thick here, I’m not – this is as flawless a script as a viewer can ever hope to encounter, the sort of thing you’d wish any prospective writer of genre films would study closely.

Even better, the TV gods put the script in the hands of one of the most talented TV directors (whom I have once or twist in the past inexcusably belittled as merely dependable, but who was actually as brilliant a stylist as the rules of TV and TV production of the 70s allowed), John Llewellyn Moxey, a man who apparently recognized gold when he found it and treated it appropriately. So Matheson’s brilliance is treated with all the respect it deserves here, with Moxey delivering a series of very effective horror set pieces (the climax in the vampire’s genuinely creepy house with one particularly creepy detail being a particular favourite of mine), sharply shot dialogue scenes, and buckets of drive and atmosphere. The vampire (Barry Atwater) is genuinely wonderful too, with effective corpse-like make-up and even presenting a high degree of physical menace when he isn’t out-running cars or eating bullets.

The acting – featuring mainstays like Carol Lynley (as Kolchak’s girlfriend Gail, who has the distinction of having a brain as well as of not being threatened by the vampire in the end), Simon Oakland, Ralph Meeker, Elisha Cook Jr and Claude Akins – is absolutely on the level of the script too. McGavin’s portrayal of Kolchak is fantastic, managing to keep the guy likeable while also being honest about how much of a pain in the butt he must be for everyone around him. Usually, a character who is right about everything and very loud about it should be perfectly insufferable, speaking truth to power or not, but Kolchak even at his smuggest also has a difficult to define quality of vulnerability under all of his swagger, created by McGavin and Matheson in concert.


So obviously, I think The Night Stalker is the masterpiece everyone says it is. Much of the rest of films I’ll talk about during this week (and the overflow of TV movies you can expect coming up during the next half year or so) of TV movies won’t be able to hold up to these standards to various degrees, but that’s nothing for anyone to be ashamed or disappointed about, for when it comes to intelligent yet pulpy 70s horror, this is one of the touchstones.

In short: Danger Route (1967)

Jonas Wilde (Richard Johnson) is working as a killer for one of the British secret services; as it goes with jobs like this, he’s gotten sick and tired of it, particularly since he’s acquired Jocelyn (Carol Lynley) as the kind of girlfriend that makes a man think of retiring. Also, not killing people for money anymore.

However, shortly after his latest job and before he can do anything about his retirement plans, Wilde is called in for an emergency assassination on British soil. The Americans have gotten hold of an Eastern defector, but Wilde’s superiors are convinced the man is in fact a double agent who will do incalculable damage if he’s not “gotten rid of”. The job doesn’t sit quite right with Wilde, particularly when curious things start to happen around the new job. His contact Ravenspur (Maurice Denham) suddenly grows a niece (Barbara Bouchet) who just happens to be in the game too, and Wilde can’t shake the idea the defector isn’t the only one who is to be gotten rid of.

He’s quite right, too, and that’s not even the worst thing Wilde will learn in the next few days. Well, at least he’s tough and unpleasant enough to have a chance for survival.

Most of us know Amicus as purveyors of horror anthology pictures, but of course the company did work in other genres too, like the mid-level realist spy movie Danger Route. The film is neither as kooky as your typical Eurospy movie or James Bond film nor as complex and dark as Le Carré style espionage films but moves on that middle ground where the spy work is relatively down to Earth yet not quite enough so to be believable as naturalistic.

On a philosophical level, the film prefers a somewhat tired bitterness and a very general feeling of disgust, a disgust that is in large part shared by its hero, who is disgusted by the things he does for a living (and once for Queen and Country), disgusted by how good he is at them, clearly disgusted too at the way he uses people like Diana Dors’s (fittingly sadly played) lonely alcoholic housekeeper, and certainly disgusted by the duplicity of everyone around him. Johnson expresses this disgust with deeply tired look and the facial expression of a man who really can’t smile at himself in the mirror anymore. The way Johnson plays him, it’s quite clear that Wilde expects the betrayals he is going to suffer during the course of the movie as the logical consequence of all the betrayals he has committed – and continues to commit - himself. In what feels like a twist of bitter irony, the only times Wilde really seems to be without doubts is when he commits the violent acts he has begun to abhor.

Seth Holt (a director with a bit of spy experience via the TV show Danger Man) films this bitter little piece without any grand gestures, concentrating on the performances of his lead and a bunch of fine supporting actors, giving everything the appropriate leanness as well as providing moments of effectively unpleasant violence that turn Danger Route into something of a lost gem of the espionage genre.

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