New York Producer Larry O’Brien (Richard Conte) moves to Los Angeles to found
and head a new independent movie studio. Buying an old studio building that’s
been unused since 1929, he learns of the unsolved murder of former silent star
director Franklin Ferrara. Ferrara was shot right in his office on the lot, too,
so it’s easy for Larry to become somewhat obsessed with the matter.
Clearly, the combination of oldest school Hollywood glamour and an unsolved
murder should make box office gold, so Larry decides to turn this particular
true crime story into his first Hollywood film, despite misgivings from friends
and very shouty misgivings from his money man Sam Collyer (Fred Clark).
And because Larry’s a bit of a method producer, he starts hiring old talent for
that project, former silent actors as well as Ferrara’s old script writer
Vincent St. Clair (Henry Hull). Also not amused by his project – or is it his
deep dive into the matters of the case? – are the daughter of Ferrara’s
favourite star (Julie Adams) as well as the actual killer.
Supposedly made as Universal’s answer to Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd,
and directed by William Castle, this mystery doesn’t actually have much in
common with the Wilder movie beyond the call-backs to the silent era and some
cameos and small part appearances by actual silent era actors whom Universal,
staying classy as always, decided to pay the lowest rates possible. It’s also,
keeping with being classy, a thinly veiled version of the actual unsolved murder
of silent movie director William Desmond Taylor, leading to a film that’s
strangely meta in a very different way to Wilder’s film.
But then, Sunset Blvd was all about Hollywood and what it does to
(at least some) people, whereas this one’s a zippy murder mystery whose moments
of meta and strange resonance seem less based on an explicit artistic program
but just come about through a combination of a somewhat exploitative set-up, a
director in William Castle insisting on a degree of authenticity when it comes
to places and their feeling by using actual silent sound stages as well as a
couple of well-known Hollywood spots, and the magic that a film where production
and plot can’t help but mirror one another a little simply cannot avoid when
made by dedicated professionals. So while there’s no direct attempt at depth or
more than a small critique of Hollywood life in the film’s script, there’s a
certain resonance to the proceedings, as if this particular film had stumbled
into a particularly liminal space by a mix of accident and mercenary
commercialism, providing things with an air of the slightly weird
throughout.
Thanks to being an actual murder mystery, and its willingness and ability to
tell a genre story, Hollywood Story also avoids the horrors of artier
movies about filmmaking, a sub-genre much beloved by Ebert-style film critics
and certain directors that’s typically comparable to all those Great Novels
about middle-aged writers, their writing blocks and their wish to fuck their
grand-daughter-aged students. That is to say, this stuff is really of no
interest to anyone but the makers and their cliques.
If you’ve first encountered the great William Castle, king of the gimmick
movie, with his later, independent productions, and heard and seen all those
lovely gimmicks, it’s often easy to forget that the man had had a healthy career
as a studio contract director before that. It’s a bit ironic that this film made
in his studio phase is also a bit of a gimmick movie with its “ripped from the
old headlines” approach, but it’s not Castle’s gimmick, it’s the studio’s.
The gimmicks also can tend to hide Castle’s considerable abilities as a
director, like his command of pace – as a rule, a Castle movie is never slow nor
full of filler – or the generally short but deft and effective use of
expressionist filmmaking stand-bys like chiaroscuro effects, stark shadows, and
so on and so forth. Hollywood Story in particular features some clever
tracking shots, and well-staged suspense sequences, but its high point is the
film’s actual climax that’s about three minutes of a beautiful potted noir chase
through a studio lot by night, wonderfully mixing Castle’s talent for the
efficiently brief and the expressionist.
Showing posts with label william castle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label william castle. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
The Tingler (1959)
Somewhat, okay, majorly obsessed pathologist Dr Warren Chapin
(Vincent Price) and his assistant David Morris (Darryl Hickman) are, when they
aren’t just doing autopsies, hot on the heels of Chapin’s weird pet theory about
something that grows along a person’s spine when they are in the grip of pure
terror. In fact, Chapin is convinced that whatever this force - let’s call it
“The Tingler”, why don’t we – may be, it can actually crack one’s spine quite
easily.
We will soon enough learn the Tingler is some earworm-like thing that lives inside of every human body and grows to rather unpleasant size when a person is in terrible fear. The only thing that can loosen its grip around your spine is screaming. So, PSA: please scream a lot.
Complicating Chapin’s research and the plot is the William Castle typical hate/hate relationship between the scientist and his wife Isabel (Patricia Cutts), including the expected murder attempts, for in Castle movies marriage is the kind of hell that turns even the mild-mannered into wise-cracking murderers. Not helping anything is Chapin’s willingness to test his theories by dosing himself with that new-fangled drug known as LSD. Our protagonist’s acquaintance with a silent movie retro cinema owner named Ollie (Philip Coolidge) and his mute wife Martha (Judith Evelyn), the latter of which rather tempts the good Doctor with her horrible aversion to blood and her inability…to scream, keep things even more lively.
The Tingler is certainly the goofiest of William Castle’s sort-of adult oriented features. This is after all the film that sees Vincent Price injecting himself with LSD and mugging himself adorably and admirably (as always) through a very bad trip, and that features an underarm-long big rubber earworm as its monster (of course to be wrestled by Price at one point). On the Castle gimmick front, it’s the movie where Castle apparently (or not) did some electrifying things to some cinema seats and that features a couple of scenes where the screen turns black and Price and a bunch of screamers encourage the audience to do the same, for the Tingler is right in the cinema with them.
Like most Castle films, inside of these parameters, this is actually a very well done low budget movie that zips along wonderfully from one scene to the next, and where every single scene contains at least one fun thing. As usual with the director The Tingler also looks rather great. Castle, at this point already an experienced hand who had learned his craft making studio films like the Whistler movies, is just very good at staging theoretically preposterous scenes of the macabre, using all the tricks German expressionism via noir had taught him while adding a sense of sardonic humour to the proceedings. So a scene like the murder of Martha which should be patently ridiculous is just great fun to watch, feeling, as does Ollie’s final fate, a bit like an EC comic come to life without the ultra violence. Castle is often a genuinely imaginative and clever director too, in the finale creatively intercutting the silent movie Tol’able David (I have no idea) with the Tingler business going on in the cinema.
Plus, one has to admire the pure chutzpa with which Castle integrates a movie theatre into the plot so to be better able to sell his gimmick. But then, I cannot believe anyone could watch this and not love Castle at least a little bit for it.
We will soon enough learn the Tingler is some earworm-like thing that lives inside of every human body and grows to rather unpleasant size when a person is in terrible fear. The only thing that can loosen its grip around your spine is screaming. So, PSA: please scream a lot.
Complicating Chapin’s research and the plot is the William Castle typical hate/hate relationship between the scientist and his wife Isabel (Patricia Cutts), including the expected murder attempts, for in Castle movies marriage is the kind of hell that turns even the mild-mannered into wise-cracking murderers. Not helping anything is Chapin’s willingness to test his theories by dosing himself with that new-fangled drug known as LSD. Our protagonist’s acquaintance with a silent movie retro cinema owner named Ollie (Philip Coolidge) and his mute wife Martha (Judith Evelyn), the latter of which rather tempts the good Doctor with her horrible aversion to blood and her inability…to scream, keep things even more lively.
The Tingler is certainly the goofiest of William Castle’s sort-of adult oriented features. This is after all the film that sees Vincent Price injecting himself with LSD and mugging himself adorably and admirably (as always) through a very bad trip, and that features an underarm-long big rubber earworm as its monster (of course to be wrestled by Price at one point). On the Castle gimmick front, it’s the movie where Castle apparently (or not) did some electrifying things to some cinema seats and that features a couple of scenes where the screen turns black and Price and a bunch of screamers encourage the audience to do the same, for the Tingler is right in the cinema with them.
Like most Castle films, inside of these parameters, this is actually a very well done low budget movie that zips along wonderfully from one scene to the next, and where every single scene contains at least one fun thing. As usual with the director The Tingler also looks rather great. Castle, at this point already an experienced hand who had learned his craft making studio films like the Whistler movies, is just very good at staging theoretically preposterous scenes of the macabre, using all the tricks German expressionism via noir had taught him while adding a sense of sardonic humour to the proceedings. So a scene like the murder of Martha which should be patently ridiculous is just great fun to watch, feeling, as does Ollie’s final fate, a bit like an EC comic come to life without the ultra violence. Castle is often a genuinely imaginative and clever director too, in the finale creatively intercutting the silent movie Tol’able David (I have no idea) with the Tingler business going on in the cinema.
Plus, one has to admire the pure chutzpa with which Castle integrates a movie theatre into the plot so to be better able to sell his gimmick. But then, I cannot believe anyone could watch this and not love Castle at least a little bit for it.
Friday, September 9, 2016
Past Misdeeds: Mr. Sardonicus (1961)
Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more
glorious Exploder
Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for
the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here
in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.
Please keep in mind these are the old posts without any re-writes or improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.
After some carnival impresario-like mugging of our host (and director and producer) William Castle, the film introduces its hero. Sir Robert Cargrave (Ronald Lewis) is a successful Victorian physician and specialist in the treatment of paralysis.
Unexpectedly, Cargrave receives a letter written by the love of his youth, Maude (Audrey Dalton), who would have become his wife if not for a greedy father without the proper faith in Cargrave's future career. Maude is now married to a certain Baron Sardonicus and lives in one of those imaginary Central European countries full of people with utterly incongruous accents I know and love from dozens of other movies.
In her letter, Maude invites Cargrave to her husband's estate, but gives the invitation an urgent undertone that convinces the physician to close his practice at once and run off to the continent. Why, one could think he is still in love with Maud.
In Europe, the good doctor soon notices some peculiarities. The local citizenry fears his host as if he were Dracula himself, and it doesn't take too long of an acquaintance with the Baron's lifestyle to understand why. It's the usual combination of gothic ghastliness - a sinister servant, Krall, (Oskar Homolka), a permanently locked door, the total absence of mirrors in the house, experiments with leeches on the house maid. And those are the things Cargrave experiences before he finally meets Sardonicus himself (Guy Rolfe). Sardonicus is a very unpleasant man with the peculiar habit of hiding his face behind a waxen mask and with more than a whiff of the sadist about him, as the screeching town girls he likes to secretly entertain will agree.
There's a good reason for the Baron wearing a mask, though. His face is disfigured, paralysed in a permanent deathly grin he acquired when he robbed his father's grave of the lottery ticket that bought him his title. Obviously, Sardonicus needs Cargrave's help, and he is willing to threaten his own wife to get it.
Given that Mr. Sardonicus is a William Castle production, it is self-evident that it has a gimmick every carnie barker would be proud of. When the movie made its initial matinee run, cards picturing a hand showing thumbs up or down were distributed in the audience. At a certain point shortly before the end, Castle appears on screen again, asking the audience to vote if poor old Sardonicus is in need of further punishment by presenting the appropriately positioned thumb to him. After a gleeful pretence at counting the votes, the audience then is presented with the film's only existing ending, which is of course the "more punishment" one. There are rumours that a more redemptive ending does actually exist but is now lost, but the way Castle's counting scene is set up alone should make clear that there's just no chance for that; if you think otherwise after having watched the film, I have a nice bridge to sell you.
It's not my favourite Castle gimmick - that would be the ones in The Tingler - it does however give the film a gleeful charm that helps loosen up its sometimes a bit talky proceedings.
That doesn't mean the gimmick is the movie's only virtue. Probably inspired by the success of that other great cheapskate director/producer Roger Corman's House of Usher, Castle makes a trip into gothic horror, a field he usually didn't work in. There are a few differences between the two films' approaches to their sub-genre, though, and certainly one in quality and artistic vision, the latter just not a thing very close to Castle's heart. The most important difference, however, is that Corman uses colour - or rather COLOUR! - where Castle makes a black and white film (although I doubt this was anything other than a budgetary decision). Corman's film is very much screaming "new Gothic" through this alone, while Sardonicus looks much more like Castle is going for a continuation of the visual language of the classic Universal horror film, although with the addition of open sadism and relatively daring content most of its old brethren just couldn't get away with. There's an emphasis on stylish but cheap artificiality in the sets that looks to me very much like the Universal style without the verticality of the sets the older films could afford. I'm a firm believer in artificiality as a stylistic element in films as long as the artificiality serves the building of mood, as it does here, so I found this part of Sardonicus quite satisfying.
The film's photography is equally moody and satisfying and at times unexpectedly beautiful, again showing the influence of early Universal and the cheap semi-noirs Castle started his career with, albeit with less emphasis on shadows, and more on sharp contrasts and interesting framing.
Not as satisfying are the more sensationalist moments, not because I have any ethical problems with them (which would come as a surprise, wouldn't it?), but because they don't really agree with the film's more subtle aspects. The more of Castle's films I have seen, the more I come to the conviction that the man should have trusted in his own ability to be subtle from time to time, even if he (probably rightfully so) believed his kid audience to be averse to subtlety. On the plus side, Castle's lack of restraint grants the viewer moments of silliness like the beloved flying head dream sequences you'd usually connect with cartoons.
As is often the case with Castle's films, there are also some quite memorable dialogue scenes that present a sharpness and a cynical view of humanity you don't usually expect to find in exploitation films aimed at teenagers. Ray Russell's script (based on his own novella) is particularly interesting, building a castle made of classical Gothic tropes, cheap Freudianism, extreme but thematically fitting psychology and dialogue that is a bit stiff but deeper than it strictly needs to be. One could criticise that there isn't much happening in the film, but gothic horror is all about mood and theme, with little need for plot or action beyond having everything go to pieces in the end.
The acting is also pretty good, with Ronald Lewis giving (and that might very well be a first) a sympathetic and even vaguely charismatic hero in a sub-genre that usually has no time or interest for making its heroes memorable, Guy Rolfe granting his Sardonicus just the right mixture of sadism, sarcasm, desperation and even a bit of humanity and Oskar Homolka relishing the opportunity to lay it on really thick as the sinister factotum.
Audrey Dalton on the other hand seems to struggle with most of her dialogue and is never able to make Maude an actual human being.
All in all, Mr. Sardonicus is one of the better films in Castle's filmography, especially for people with an interest in Gothic horror beyond the initial Universal wave, Corman and Bava.
Please keep in mind these are the old posts without any re-writes or improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.
After some carnival impresario-like mugging of our host (and director and producer) William Castle, the film introduces its hero. Sir Robert Cargrave (Ronald Lewis) is a successful Victorian physician and specialist in the treatment of paralysis.
Unexpectedly, Cargrave receives a letter written by the love of his youth, Maude (Audrey Dalton), who would have become his wife if not for a greedy father without the proper faith in Cargrave's future career. Maude is now married to a certain Baron Sardonicus and lives in one of those imaginary Central European countries full of people with utterly incongruous accents I know and love from dozens of other movies.
In her letter, Maude invites Cargrave to her husband's estate, but gives the invitation an urgent undertone that convinces the physician to close his practice at once and run off to the continent. Why, one could think he is still in love with Maud.
In Europe, the good doctor soon notices some peculiarities. The local citizenry fears his host as if he were Dracula himself, and it doesn't take too long of an acquaintance with the Baron's lifestyle to understand why. It's the usual combination of gothic ghastliness - a sinister servant, Krall, (Oskar Homolka), a permanently locked door, the total absence of mirrors in the house, experiments with leeches on the house maid. And those are the things Cargrave experiences before he finally meets Sardonicus himself (Guy Rolfe). Sardonicus is a very unpleasant man with the peculiar habit of hiding his face behind a waxen mask and with more than a whiff of the sadist about him, as the screeching town girls he likes to secretly entertain will agree.
There's a good reason for the Baron wearing a mask, though. His face is disfigured, paralysed in a permanent deathly grin he acquired when he robbed his father's grave of the lottery ticket that bought him his title. Obviously, Sardonicus needs Cargrave's help, and he is willing to threaten his own wife to get it.
Given that Mr. Sardonicus is a William Castle production, it is self-evident that it has a gimmick every carnie barker would be proud of. When the movie made its initial matinee run, cards picturing a hand showing thumbs up or down were distributed in the audience. At a certain point shortly before the end, Castle appears on screen again, asking the audience to vote if poor old Sardonicus is in need of further punishment by presenting the appropriately positioned thumb to him. After a gleeful pretence at counting the votes, the audience then is presented with the film's only existing ending, which is of course the "more punishment" one. There are rumours that a more redemptive ending does actually exist but is now lost, but the way Castle's counting scene is set up alone should make clear that there's just no chance for that; if you think otherwise after having watched the film, I have a nice bridge to sell you.
It's not my favourite Castle gimmick - that would be the ones in The Tingler - it does however give the film a gleeful charm that helps loosen up its sometimes a bit talky proceedings.
That doesn't mean the gimmick is the movie's only virtue. Probably inspired by the success of that other great cheapskate director/producer Roger Corman's House of Usher, Castle makes a trip into gothic horror, a field he usually didn't work in. There are a few differences between the two films' approaches to their sub-genre, though, and certainly one in quality and artistic vision, the latter just not a thing very close to Castle's heart. The most important difference, however, is that Corman uses colour - or rather COLOUR! - where Castle makes a black and white film (although I doubt this was anything other than a budgetary decision). Corman's film is very much screaming "new Gothic" through this alone, while Sardonicus looks much more like Castle is going for a continuation of the visual language of the classic Universal horror film, although with the addition of open sadism and relatively daring content most of its old brethren just couldn't get away with. There's an emphasis on stylish but cheap artificiality in the sets that looks to me very much like the Universal style without the verticality of the sets the older films could afford. I'm a firm believer in artificiality as a stylistic element in films as long as the artificiality serves the building of mood, as it does here, so I found this part of Sardonicus quite satisfying.
The film's photography is equally moody and satisfying and at times unexpectedly beautiful, again showing the influence of early Universal and the cheap semi-noirs Castle started his career with, albeit with less emphasis on shadows, and more on sharp contrasts and interesting framing.
Not as satisfying are the more sensationalist moments, not because I have any ethical problems with them (which would come as a surprise, wouldn't it?), but because they don't really agree with the film's more subtle aspects. The more of Castle's films I have seen, the more I come to the conviction that the man should have trusted in his own ability to be subtle from time to time, even if he (probably rightfully so) believed his kid audience to be averse to subtlety. On the plus side, Castle's lack of restraint grants the viewer moments of silliness like the beloved flying head dream sequences you'd usually connect with cartoons.
As is often the case with Castle's films, there are also some quite memorable dialogue scenes that present a sharpness and a cynical view of humanity you don't usually expect to find in exploitation films aimed at teenagers. Ray Russell's script (based on his own novella) is particularly interesting, building a castle made of classical Gothic tropes, cheap Freudianism, extreme but thematically fitting psychology and dialogue that is a bit stiff but deeper than it strictly needs to be. One could criticise that there isn't much happening in the film, but gothic horror is all about mood and theme, with little need for plot or action beyond having everything go to pieces in the end.
The acting is also pretty good, with Ronald Lewis giving (and that might very well be a first) a sympathetic and even vaguely charismatic hero in a sub-genre that usually has no time or interest for making its heroes memorable, Guy Rolfe granting his Sardonicus just the right mixture of sadism, sarcasm, desperation and even a bit of humanity and Oskar Homolka relishing the opportunity to lay it on really thick as the sinister factotum.
Audrey Dalton on the other hand seems to struggle with most of her dialogue and is never able to make Maude an actual human being.
All in all, Mr. Sardonicus is one of the better films in Castle's filmography, especially for people with an interest in Gothic horror beyond the initial Universal wave, Corman and Bava.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Three Films Make A Post: THE SEQUEL YOU DID NAZI COMING
Nightlight (2015): The cast isn’t bad, the direction has its moments, yet Scott Beck’s and Bryan Woods’s film is still another POV horror film about pretty young people getting lost in haunted woods. Not surprisingly, the film lacks the vague, yet weird and disquieting mythology of that one big predecessor whose name I don’t need mention, and doesn’t really have much of its own to replace it with. There’s an attempt at characterization through classic teenage angst but whenever I actually started to believe in the characters and cared a little about what happened to them, they began to act not like frightened people but like horror movie characters, and there all caring must stop.
There are a few okay scares in here, but most of the film is of the sort of middling okay-ness that annoys me more than a truly bad movie ever does.
13 Ghosts (1960): For my taste, this is one of William Castle’s lesser efforts at gimmick – the GHOST VIEWER! – horror but I suspect that’s in large part because it’s too much of a family movie for my tastes, with not enough of the sardonic and very dark humour that makes House on Haunted Hill or The Tingler so much fun.
As all Castle films, it’s not a bad movie in any way, but I didn’t find myself exactly glued to the screen watching it, most likely because 50s (and the film still belongs very much into that decade) horror comedy is anathema to my sensibilities.
Route 666 (2001): Who’d have thunk a film about Lou Diamond Phillips fighting an undead chain gang on a by-road of Route 66 called Route 666 could be this boring? Dumb, sure; badly directed by William Wesley (director of not much beyond this and the lightyears better Scarecrows), yes, but boring? Alas, it truly is, thanks to the snail’s pace the plot happens (or not) in, the meandering tone containing much odious comic relief, the less than engaging way the undead attacks are filmed in, and the many, many scenes that could have been cut out of this thing without anyone in the audience noticing before the film would end an hour earlier than is usual. It’s a dire effort.
Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,horror,comedy,scott beck. bryan woods,william castle,lou diamond phillips,william wesley
Friday, May 21, 2010
On WTF: Mr. Sardonicus (1961)
Please imagine me grinning and chomping on a cigar.
Technorati-Tags: american movies,william castle,horror,reviews,gothic,oskar homolka,ronald lewis,guy rolfe,other places
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The Whistler (1944)
Earl Conrad (Richard Dix) has been suffering from a severe depression since his wife died in a maritime disaster. He feels so guilty for her death he just wants to die. Well, what better way to kill yourself can there be than hiring a professional killer to murder you?
Shortly after he has arranged the contract through a middleman, he learns that his wife isn't dead at all, but just in Japanese captivity and on her way to be shipped home. Conrad now desperately wants to live, but it's not that easy to call the hit off, for his middleman got himself shot by the police directly after the deal was perfect and the killer (J. Carrol Naish) is not of a very sound mind, either.
The Whistler is the first of six movies based on an Old Time Radio show. The titular character is just the narrator of the piece, although he still gets to do a little whistling.
It is also an early directorial work by William Castle, years before he perfected his matinee cinema formula. The film is another example that shows how underappreciated a director Castle was. His style lacks some of the more obvious flashiness other noir films showed, but Castle shows himself perfectly able to turn a rather pedestrian script and very bland work by his protagonist Richard Dix into a wonderfully effective little thriller. The rest of the cast (especially always dependable J. Carrol Naish as the psychotic killer) does a fine job to let the shady part of life during World War II come to life and the movie doesn't overstay its welcome with a running time of barely an hour.
Very much recommended to friends of suspense movies of the era.
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