The Mad Doctor (1940)

THE MAD DOCTOR (1940) ***1/2
Basil Rathbone, like his fellow English actor Peter Cushing afterwards in the Hammer films, could effectively play both villains and heroes. He’s perfect as both Guy of Gisbourne in The Adventures of Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes in the 14 movies produced by 20th Century Fox and Universal from 1939 through 1946.

Rathbone (1892-1967) could be suave and sinister, charming and cunning, and it worked for him during a career that lasted from the 1920s through the 1960s.

That great ability to play both suave and sinister, charming and cunning, serves both Rathbone and The Mad Doctor well, a 1940 release directed by Tim Whelan and from Paramount Pictures (now owned by Universal, though) not to be confused with the 1933 Disney animated short The Mad Doctor or the 1942 Universal film The Mad Doctor of Market Street starring Lionel Atwill and directed by Joseph H. Lewis.

You just might recognize the plot of The Mad Doctor from a hundred or a thousand or maybe even a million novels, TV shows, and movies. It seems to have been one of the first plots ever devised.

Our title character targets wealthy women, marries them, and then murders them for their money. We pick it up with his latest target, who also happens to be suicidal in addition to being wealthy. Her ex-fiancé, a newspaper reporter, and an older doctor find out the dark truth about the mad doctor but is it too late for the latest target to be saved from becoming the latest victim. The mad doctor and his male assistant are obviously lovers, something made a lot more obvious than the average movie from 1940.

Yeah, definitely seems familiar, but The Mad Doctor works so effectively and becomes a minor classic because of the performances of not only Rathbone but also Ralph Morgan as bloodhound Dr. Charles Downer and resident villain actor Martin Kosleck as the real nasty piece of work Maurice Gretz.

I heard that Rathbone and Kosleck played up the gay subtext more and more because they found it amusing, and it’s so blatant when Kosleck sinks his teeth into You’re like all the other clever ones, clever until they meet a woman, and then they suddenly become fools.

One can be relatively sure this passed the Hays Code because, let’s face it, Rathbone’s title character and Kosleck’s Maurice Gretz do not meet happy endings.

The Mad Doctor has a classic promotional trailer.

[Text] Women Know The ECSTASY and TERROR Of Loving This Man!

But For Him A KISS … A CARESS Is Not Enough!

He Builds a Bonfire OF WOMEN’S SOULS …

To Satisfy His MONSTROUS CONCEIT!

[Narration] Blood-chilling drama of a man who kills as easily as he loves starring Basil Rathbone, Ellen Drew, and John Howard with Barbara Allen and Ralph Morgan in the amazing drama of a fiend who fascinates women, lures them with love, and then as he tears their souls apart, destroys them.

[Text] SUAVE!

TENDER!

SINISTER!

TERRIBLE!

‘THE MAD Doctor’

Robin and Marian (1976)

ROBIN AND MARIAN (1976) ****
Richard Lester’s Robin and Marian definitely made a strong first impression.

I placed it on my top 10 films list for 1976, based on just viewing it a single time on cable TV many years ago.

Granted, Robin and Marian crossed my mind several times in recent months, especially after Robin and Marian star Sean Connery died last Halloween and then after I watched both the Disney (1973’s Robin Hood) and the Mel Brooks (1993’s Robin Hood: Men in Tights) takes on the legendary old warhorse. Disney and Brooks both left me feeling often unimpressed and ultimately supremely disappointed, for very different reasons, and I started thinking instead about superior Robin Hood films The Adventures of Robin Hood and Robin and Marian, both of which I first encountered during childhood or teenage years.

The Adventures of Robin Hood remains my favorite take on Robin Hood and I’ve watched it numerous times over the years. Of course, it helped that The Adventures of Robin Hood ranked among the select few titles Grandma Sisney had on VHS and I played it — along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Fun in Acapulco — so many times before Grandma took over her TV for a day of game shows and soap operas. There’s always been something so indelible about Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood that I judge all others portraying Robin Hood against Flynn’s standard, Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone make incredibly satisfying villains, and Olivia de Havilland’s Maid Marian simply radiates a MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD AT THIS VERY MOMENT glow. Plus, it’s hard to forget the colors (and costumes) that argue for three-strip Technicolor superiority.

Robin and Marian left a mark for similar reasons — Connery and Audrey Hepburn both carry some of the same appeal as Flynn and de Havilland do in their iconic roles. Flynn was just a month shy of 29 years old when The Adventures of Robin Hood first came out in May 1938 and similarly, De Havilland was two months shy of a mere 22. However, Connery and Hepburn play older Robin Hood and older Maid Marian — please consider both Connery and Hepburn were in their mid-40s during Robin and Marian and each had a solid 15-20 years of stardom behind them. Connery and Flynn both have an undeniable robust humor and physicality (both men seemed tailor-made for James Bond, for example) and Hepburn could make claims on de Havilland’s radiant MBWITW glow several times during her career, from Roman Holiday and My Fair Lady to Robin and Marian.

Anyway, I finally watched Robin and Marian for a second time and it holds up as a great movie, right behind only The Adventures of Robin Hood in the Robin Hood cinematic pantheon.

Because of centering around middle age characters, Robin and Marian plays different notes and takes on a greater emotional range than any other Robin Hood film I have ever seen.

It’s definitely not the lusty adventure like The Adventures of Robin Hood. Sure, Robin and Marian has sword fights and scenic vistas and soaring music and horses and romantic clinches and every prerequisite of the genre, as well as King John, King Richard the Lionhearted, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlett, and Sherwood Forest, but they’re all — both people and places, and every plot event — suffused with melancholy.

To be fair, though, Lester and Connery inject enough good humor and spirit into Robin and Marian to help it avoid being a more downbeat experience like the 1991 Robin Hood starring Kevin Costner. And the scenes between Connery and Hepburn are simply flat-out appealing, rooted in seeing two of the most attractive, most ebullient performers to ever grace the screen share time with each other (and us audience members).

It should also be mentioned that supporting players Nicol Williamson, Richard Harris, Denholm Elliott, and Ian Holm contribute to an absolute dynamite cast.

Didn’t we always ponder how it all turned out for Robin Hood, Maid Marian, the Sheriff, Little John, Friar Tuck, and Will Scarlett?

Lester’s film, with a screenplay written by James Goldman (writer of the play, film adaptation, and TV movie version of The Lion in Winter), answers those very questions, but do we viewers feel comfortable with the answers? Are we prepared to see Maid Marian as a nun because Robin Hood, off on his damn crusades and holy wars with Richard and Little John, didn’t write her for the last 20 years? We also found out that she attempted suicide. He’s back, though, and it’s obvious that Robin Hood and Maid Marian are destined to be together. They might initially hate it and initially fight it, she invariably more than he, but they are pulled together rather than apart.

All roads lead toward a final showdown between Robin Hood and the Sheriff (Robert Shaw). They fight like two worn-out, downtrodden men with many, many battles behind them and none ahead of them, who have resigned themselves to their final destiny. They fight because it’s their duty, or their almost perverse obligation to each other as hero and villain. They really don’t want to be fighting each other at this precise historical moment, it feels like, BUT THEY MUST FIGHT TO THE DEATH. There’s none of the joy in this fight that can be found in great film sword fights like the one, for example, between Robin Hood (Flynn) and the Sheriff (Rathbone) in The Adventures of Robin Hood. This final showdown, just like Robin and Marian overall, gives us something that’s different from any other purely adventure movie. All the main players have lived through considerable pain, considerable disappointment, and the film serves a reminder (from early on and throughout) there’s flesh-and-blood and real-life experience behind every legend, every song, every ode, every hymn, every myth.

Maid Marian gives Robin Hood (and us) some final words, “I love you. More than all you know. I love you more than children. More than fields I’ve planted with my hands. I love you more than morning prayers or peace or food to eat. I love you more than sunlight, more than flesh or joy or one more day. I love you more than God.”

Schlock (1973)

SCHLOCK

SCHLOCK (1973) ***

Schlock (/SHläk/): cheap or inferior goods or material; trash.

For quite some time as I watched it, I could not make heads or tails out of John Landis’ 1973 extremely low-budget feature film debut SCHLOCK.

I mean, I understood that it’s a good old-fashioned spoof of good old-fashioned monster movies, sure, from the moment I read a plot synopsis and that its title speaks louder than a thousand words, you bet, but it kept veering between tones. Our title character (played by none other than Landis himself) seemed menacing and imposing one moment and then funny the very next. He’s the missing link and “The Banana Monster” and the poster promises “A love stronger than KING KONG.”

There was one sequence though in particular that changed my tune about SCHLOCK.

Schlock (blanking on his full name right now) watches DINOSAURUS! from 1960 and THE BLOB from 1958 in a movie theater, both classics directed by Irvin S. Yeaworth and produced by SCHLOCK producer Jack H. Harris. We see choice scenes from both films, like a dinosaur fight and that classic moment in THE BLOB when its title character attacks first the projectionist and then the patrons to rudely interrupt the showing of DAUGHTER OF HORROR (renamed from DEMENTIA). Showing THE BLOB also provided Landis an opportunity to work Steven, er, Steve McQueen into his little $60,000 movie.

Not only that, but Schlock learns about vending machines and cleans out a candy counter. Bet he loved them jujubes with his sharp teeth. I love what Schlock does when this incredibly tall man sits in the seat one row in front of him. If only life could be that way. Then again, proper authorities cannot handle Schlock.

At the point Schlock went movie watching, I learned to stop worrying and like (not love) SCHLOCK.

Landis’ love for SEE YOU NEXT WEDNESDAY starts out early in his directorial career, by promoting it with “First, BIRTH OF A NATION! Then, GONE WITH THE WIND! 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY! LOVE STORY! SEE YOU NEXT WEDNESDAY! And now … SCHLOCK!” A line spoken in 2001 turned into a running gag throughout most Landis films and even the music video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

So many low-budget movies have a great back story.

Landis and crew, including makeup artist Rick Baker early in his career, made SCHLOCK during 12 days in the summer of 1971, but it was not released until 1973. Johnny Carson found out about the film and he booked Landis on “The Tonight Show.” With this spotlight opportunity, Landis showed clips from SCHLOCK, which helped the first-time director find a distributor in Jack H. Harris Enterprises. Harris put up $10,000 if Landis put 10 minutes of running time on SCHLOCK.

I enjoyed SCHLOCK every bit as much as the Joan Crawford classic TROG (1970) and the similarly low-budget KING KUNG FU (1976).

Of course, I did not forget, but I will see you next Wednesday.

Black Christmas (1974)

BLACK CHRISTMAS

BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974) Three stars

Watching BLACK CHRISTMAS for the first time, one might be surprised just how many standards of the slasher film can be seen during this 1974 Canadian chestnut from director Bob Clark.

Let’s see, we have an opening shot later repeated by John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN, a killer who racks up a rather impressive body count, POV shots from the killer’s perspective, obscene phone calls from the killer following every killing, plot twists (including the location of the caller), “The Final Girl,” and a shock ending, as well a holiday theme. BLACK CHRISTMAS basically synthesized elements that were already present during previous films like PSYCHO, PEEPING TOM, and Mario Bava movies BLOOD AND BLACK LACE and TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE into a single horror film narrative.

The plot also echoes “The Babysitter & The Man Upstairs” urban legend, so we already know the location of the caller. Still, the characters do not, so it’s a jolt hearing “The call is coming from inside the house.” Several movies, notably BLACK CHRISTMAS and WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, have relied on this angle for their chills and thrills.

A real-life case has been credited for inspiring the urban legend.

On Mar. 18, 1950, 13-year-old babysitter Janett Christman was raped and strangled to death in Columbia, Missouri, three days before her 14th birthday. Mr. and Mrs. Ed Romack found the body when they returned home, but, fortunately, their 3-year-old son Gregory was still alive, sleeping in his room. From the AP story, “Prosecuting Attorney Carl Sapp said blood was smeared through the house, indicating the girl put up a terrific struggle. … Footprints were found in a sleet-covered area near a broken window in the house. Police believe the intruder crawled through the window. The state highway patrol also is processing fingerprints found at the scene.”

More from the report, “An electric iron cord was twisted around the girl’s throat. Her scalp had been pierced several times by an instrument, apparently similar to a small lead pipe.”

Christman may have attempted to call the police around 11 p.m. the night of her death. Columbia policeman Roy McCowan took a call from a frightened girl who told him to “come quick.” “I urged her to calm down and just tell me where she was,” he said. “Then there was silence — not the sound of a receiver being hung up — just silence.” The Romacks’ phone was discovered “improperly placed on the instrument.”

Christman’s murder remains unsolved.

Just a few years earlier in Columbia, Stephens College student Marylou Jenkins, a white woman, was raped and murdered with an electric cord (reportedly from a lamp) twisted around her throat. An all-white jury convicted black man Floyd Cochran of the crime and he was executed Sept. 26, 1947 in the Missouri State Penitentiary Gas Chamber in Jefferson City. Cochran was originally arrested for murdering his wife with a shotgun and then he confessed to raping and murdering Jenkins.

For his last meal, Cochran ordered but did not partake in consuming a T-bone steak, french fries, scalloped corn, cream gravy, bread, butter, cake, and coffee. He died at the age of 36.

From 1938 through 1989, Missouri put to death 40 inmates in the gas chamber at Jefferson City, with John Brown the first on Mar. 3, 1938 and George “Tiny” Mercer the last on Jan. 6, 1989. Mercer was the first person from Missouri executed since 1965.

Just about seemingly every horror movie in existence shoots for a slambang ending, so we leave it discussing just what happened inside our heads or with all our friends and loved ones who have also seen this movie. BLACK CHRISTMAS gives us a rather unconventional ending, in that we are left unsure of the fate of protagonist Jess (Olivia Hussey) as she’s alone in the sorority house with the killer. Also, we never find out the real identity of the killer other than he’s named “Billy” and very rare indeed is the horror movie (especially a slasher) without a great big reveal in the grand finale. You just might have to be a fan or at least more forgiving of an ambiguous ending to appreciate BLACK CHRISTMAS. Either way, though, it will be discussed.

Like the later HALLOWEEN, BLACK CHRISTMAS thrives on atmosphere. That’s what they both do best and why fans appreciate them all these decades later.

Both films have rather distinguished casts for low-budget horror movies. Hussey came to fame during her teenage years for her performance as Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 ROMEO AND JULIET. Keir Dullea played astronaut Dave Bowman in both 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) and later 2010 (1984); Dave uttered the famous words, “Open the pod bay doors please, HAL.” Margot Kidder (1948-2018) appeared previously in Brian De Palma’s 1973 shocker SISTERS and subsequently made her fame as Lois Lane in four Superman movies. Character actor John Saxon’s six-decade career includes ENTER THE DRAGON, TENEBRAE, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and FROM DUSK TILL DAWN.

Director, screenwriter, and producer Clark (1939-2007) is best known for his two radically different nostalgia pieces, PORKY’S and A CHRISTMAS STORY. Yes, please wrap that magnificently designed brain around the fact that Clark directed both BLACK CHRISTMAS and A CHRISTMAS STORY. Louisiana born Clark found his greatest success up north in Canada. PORKY’S supporting actors Doug McGrath and Art Hindle both appear in BLACK CHRISTMAS.

Kidder almost steals the show in BLACK CHRISTMAS as the drunken, profane sorority girl Barb. She rips into her dialogue with extra relish. Hussey makes for a good entry point and rooting interest. Saxon knows how to maximize his screen time.

For horror movie fans who have not yet seen BLACK CHRISTMAS, I fully recommend amending it immediately.

The Mighty Peking Man (1977)

THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN

THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN (1977) ***

The Shaw Brothers (Runme 1901-85 and Run Run 1907-2014) have rarely ever let me down and they provided some of the greatest entertainments of all-time, like THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN, FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH, INFRA-MAN, THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN, and CLAN OF THE WHITE LOTUS.

The Shaw Brothers did not (and still do not, in death) cheat us.

For example, in THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN, their 1977 spin on King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, and Tarzan (not to mention Godzilla) that’s not quite peak but still good Shaw Brothers, we don’t have to wait very long whatsoever to see the title character. No, life is short, time is precious, so director Ho Meng-hua gives us our first monster encounter in the first minute of screen time. Okay, to be exact, it’s 1:45 into the movie, but that still beats most every other entry in this distinguished genre.

That establishes a tone for a very generous entertainment package. Find a copy and buy it for somebody, and it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN not only provides a sympathetic monster in the grand tradition, but also (in no particular order) a plucky explorer hero (Danny Lee) who’s been betrayed by his lover with his playboy brother so he’s drowning his sorrows in booze when he’s recruited for a jungle mission, a scantily-clad leading lady (Evelyne Kraft, a regular Swedish Fay Wray) who’s grown up with the animals in the jungle after her parents died in a plane crash (she’s been raised by the Mighty Peking Man, in fact), an earthquake, elephants, tigers and leopards (oh my!), a fight between a leopard and a snake, quicksand, vine swinging, flashbacks to key moments in both the hero’s and the leading lady’s life, callous and shady businessmen, heartless authority figures, mucho destruction of miniatures galore, and a grand finale that boggles the mind even after everything that came before.

My favorite scene, however, begins around the 33-minute mark.

It involves the Semi-Obligatory Lyrical Interlude, a term made famous by the late Roger Ebert. Here’s the definition from Ebert: “Scene in which soft focus and slow motion are used while a would-be hit song is performed on the sound track and the lovers run through a pastoral setting. Common from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s; replaced in 1980s with the Semi-Obligatory Music Video.”

The Simon and Garfunkel songs in THE GRADUATE epitomize the Semi-OLI.

The one in THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN rates below Louis Armstrong singing “We Have All the Time in the World” over George Lazenby and Diane Rigg in ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE and the foreboding use of Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in Clint Eastwood’s PLAY MISTY FOR ME. Ebert himself said Eastwood filmed the first Semi-OLI that works.

In THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN, our hero and leading lady embrace and lock lips for the first time (watch her eyes after this first kiss) and they unleash the awesomely banal love song “Could It Be I’m in Love, Maybe.”

This is one helluva old-fashioned love song and one helluva Semi-OLI.

I mean, I believe it’s the only Semi-OLI in the history of motion pictures to incorporate a leopard.

Not only that, but the leading lady seems more interested in the leopard than our poor, poor hero. You really sympathize for this guy even more after this scene.

Let’s get back to those lyrics for a second here.

“The love you gave me then showed me a thing or two / I guess I saw it in your eyes / And the look of love upon your face is too hard to disguise / Maybe just a smile will say [cannot make out, even after watching this scene 500 times] / Could it be I’m in love (Maybe? Baby?)” (To hell with it, I already chose “Maybe.” Why does life have to be so difficult?)

“I can’t begin to say what makes me feel like this / I never knew what love could do / But if this is love, it’s here to stay / [Don’t want to make this part out] / So all I have to hear is I’ll give it all to you.”

There’s more lyrics, but we all catch the drift and there’s not any need to drown in banality.

It all totals about 3:30 of pure junk food cinema bliss.

I definitely love it because it’s so utterly ridiculous.

Then again, utterly ridiculous describes THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN.

I should end this review with a consideration of the ending of THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN. Just imagine the ending of KING KONG times 10 times 10.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975 / 1998)

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (1975 / 1998) Four stars

Imagine a mystery ending unsolved.

That’s the challenge for readers of Joan Lindsay’s original 1967 novel and viewers of the 1975 Australian film adaptation by screenwriter Cliff Green and director Peter Weir.

Lindsay’s editor Sandra Forbes made the suggestion to remove the final chapter and Lindsay did so before publication. In 1987, three years after Lindsay’s death, “The Secret of Hanging Rock,” the infamous final chapter, Chapter 18, finally appeared.

Weir’s 1998 Director’s Cut trimmed eight minutes from the original film, 115 down to 107 minutes.

In turn of the 20th Century Australia, three Appleyard College school girls and one teacher do not return from their picnic at former volcano Hanging Rock near Mount Macedon in Victoria. The girls’ curiosity about exploring Hanging Rock obviously gets the best of them. One of the girls, Irma, returns every bit as mysteriously as she disappeared one week earlier and she’s no good for answers in the heart of the picture, “I remember — nothing! Nothing! I remember nothing!” Irma’s fellow characters become every bit as frustrated with her as we do in the audience, because all of us (they and we) demand a solution and an explanation. People desperately want rationality in an often irrational world.

School girls Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert) and Marion (Jane Vallis) and Miss McGraw (Vivean Gray) remain missing, despite the best efforts of both official and unofficial search parties. For example, there’s Michael Fitzhubert (Dominic Guard), a young man who becomes obsessed with finding Miranda.

Seems like virtually everybody’s obsessed with this Miranda, who Mlle. De Poitiers (Helen Morse) describes as a Botticelli angel before her disappearance. The film is very suggestive and hints at terrible, unspeakable events. Imaginations may run wild, as they do within the film.

Miranda provides a line vital to understanding PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK, “What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream,” a quote from Edgar Allan Poe’s 1849 poem “A Dream Within a Dream.” It is quite possible that Poe (1809-49) would have admired PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK.

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if Hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand —

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep — while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

Guess we should discuss this Hanging Rock, which becomes a character and even more of an impenetrable mystery in its own right than the central mystery. Australian New Wave films — like PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK — received (and deserved) much praise for their depictions of the natural landscape.

Hanging Rock quickly becomes mythical, powerful, before we even take one look.

Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts) builds it up within our minds in an early scene, “The rock itself is extremely dangerous. You are therefore forbidden of any tomboy foolishness in the matter of exploration, even on the lowest slopes. I also wish to remind you, the vicinity is renowned for its venomous snakes and poisonous ants of various species. It is, however, a geological marvel.”

Miss McCraw contributes, “The rocks all round — Mount Macedon itself — must be all of 350 million years old. Siliceous lava, forced up from deep down below. Soda trachytes extruded in a highly viscous state, building the steep sided mamelons we see in Hanging Rock. And quite young geologically speaking. Barely a million years.” These dialogue passages remind one of how Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) played up Michael Myers in HALLOWEEN.

The watches of coachman Mr. Hussey (Martin Vaughan) and Miss McGraw both freeze at the stroke of noon. They speculate about the magnetic powers of Hanging Rock.
That’s before the girls decide to go explore Hanging Rock.

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK derives considerable power from the juxtaposition of the young women and Hanging Rock. Also, Hanging Rock itself cannot be interrogated about what happened on that fateful day or explain how one girl returned. What did Hanging Rock do to and then with these women?

Hanging Rock remains a marvel and tourist hot spot today.

Check out the sales pitch: “Where else in Australia will you find the Black Hole of Calcutta, The Eagle, The Chapel and Lover’s Leap … let the secrets of Hanging Rock unfold before your eyes as you wind your way up to the pinnacle where spectacular views await” and “The unexplained disappearance of a group of schoolgirls at Hanging Rock in 1901 is just one of the legends of this mysterious area, and many visitors say they can feel the spirit of the girls as they climb the Rock. Joan Lindsay’s book and Peter Weir’s film about the ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ ensures that the mystery lives on. …”

No evidence has been found to prove the novel and the movie are based on a true story.
PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK sticks with many viewers, just like the surviving characters are haunted.

The technical aspects are first-rate: cinematographer Russell Boyd, editor Max Lemon, art director David Copping, costume designer Judith Dorsman, makeup artist Elizabeth Mitchie and makeup supervisor Jose Luis Perez, composer Bruce Smeaton, and musician Gheorghe Zamfir, in particular.

Zamfir’s pan flute later influenced Ennio Morricone’s work for Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA.

After writing this review, I know that I want to watch PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK again.

Class of 1984 (1982)

CLASS OF 1984

CLASS OF 1984 (1982) Three-and-a-half stars

Given its exploitation film content including gore, nudity, profanity, sex, and violence, CLASS OF 1984 will not be shown to new teachers or substitute teachers any school year soon.

Not that it should, but a little independent research never hurt anybody.

I don’t remember, though, if I first watched CLASS OF 1984 during or after my three years as substitute teacher in the late 00s. However, I do remember that it made a strong impact with its story of how an idealistic music teacher eventually gives into the dark side and murders his most unruly students at an inner city high school. It’s definitely the movie to see after DANGEROUS MINDS, LEAN ON ME, all that feel good uplifting claptrap.

Watching CLASS OF 1984 again in a decade since I substituted, it still brings on memories of the little punks who threatened violence, who said they would sue, who just ran their mouths incessantly, and who made getting through another day feel like an endurance contest from Hell. For every good student, it often seemed like there were two or three or twenty bad ones in every class. “I would love to punch you in the face,” one junior high student said. “Go ahead, give it your best shot,” the substitute teacher said. Thankfully, not every day substitute teaching was quite like that.

In that spirit, though, we return to our regularly scheduled review of CLASS OF 1984.

Be warned: This is a rough little movie, a nasty piece of work at times, but if you can make it through scenes like the biology teacher’s murdered rabbits and the rape of the music teacher’s wife, this 1982 update on the 1955 classic BLACKBOARD JUNGLE does have its merits.

The performances help lift this film above mere exploitation trash: Perry King as the music teacher, Roddy McDowall as the biology teacher, Timothy Van Patten as every teacher’s worst nightmare, and Michael J. Fox (in an early role) as one of the good students.

King makes for a likable protagonist and takes us from one end of the picture to the next. We are behind him every step of the way, and that’s critical during the film’s violent final act as enough has become more than enough for this music teacher. Those damn punks go too far, far enough for at least a couple exploitation films. Roger Ebert called the climax a cross between THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME and BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.

McDowall (1928-98) had a knack for supporting performances that almost steal a movie away from their nominal stars, and he displays that knack here in CLASS OF 1984, especially when he cracks and teaches his biology class by gunpoint. I bet you’ll remember how many chambers are in the human heart with a gun pointed at you, and I also bet that Richard Kiley (from BLACKBOARD JUNGLE) wishes he could have got a scene like that after the punks in his film had their way with his favorite jazz records. Damn kids, damn punks.

[Review resumed about two weeks later.]

To work properly, this genre requires a repugnant piece of work going up against the hero and Van Patten certainly provides that as teenage antagonist Peter Stegman. Audiences have been known to cheer his demise. Stegman’s personality profile on Villains Wiki, “A totally violent, sadistic, ruthless and mentally unstable teenager. He will hurt anyone who he thinks is threatening his authority over the school, or he will also kill them with no remorse or regrets.” In a different movie, Stegman’s piano-playing ability would have been exploited for a different kind of feel-good ending, not one where you feel good the bastard’s dead.

You can see why Fox became a superstar, even in a supporting performance.

CLASS OF 1984 director Mark L. Lester also directed TRUCK STOP WOMEN, WHITE HOUSE MADNESS, BOBBIE JO AND THE OUTLAW, GOLD OF THE AMAZON WOMEN, ROLLER BOOGIE, FIRESTARTER, and COMMANDO. Now, that’s some filmography and I’ll say that it’s close (real close) between CLASS OF 1984 and COMMANDO for his best work.

A movie like this needs a proper soundtrack.

Nearly two decades before AMERICAN GRAFFITI, BLACKBOARD JUNGLE made waves with its use of Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock.” What an opener!

Alice Cooper provides “I Am the Future” for CLASS OF 1984. Mr. Cooper has the ideal credentials for scoring a teenage rebellion pic: specifically “I’m Eighteen,” “School’s Out,” and “Teenage Lament ‘74” from his glory days. As far as mid-period solo Alice standards go, “I Am the Future” does not quite measure up against 1980’s “Clones” and 1983’s “I Love America,” but it still far surpasses Alice’s late 80s and early 90s hair metal period.

CLASS OF 1984 belongs to a branch of entertainment that includes such notables as not only BLACKBOARD JUNGLE but also BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, OVER THE EDGE, ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, RIVER’S EDGE, and PUMP UP THE VOLUME, as well as the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video.

King Kung Fu (1976)

KING KUNG FU (1976) Three stars

The Empire State Building, completed just a couple years earlier, played a key role in the 1933 classic KING KONG. At this very moment, we can picture Kong fighting off them darn airplanes from the highest spot in the modern world. Very few endings in movie history can even approach the final minutes in KING KONG. Remains awesome nearly 90 years later.

Meanwhile, our gorilla King Kung Fu takes shapely Pizza Hut waitress Rae Fay to the top of the Holiday Inn Plaza, the tallest building in Wichita at a majestic height of 262 feet, for the grand finale of KING KUNG FU. King Kung Fu battles a stop-motion helicopter piloted by a police captain with a bad John Wayne impersonation. Awesome, in a completely different way.

You win some, you lose some, and often times it seems like Kansas loses on the cultural front, while New York City wins and wins again and again and wins forever more.

Both the Empire State and the Holiday Inn are no longer their cities’ tallest buildings. Heck, the latter is not even the Holiday Inn any more, it’s the 250 Douglas Place Apartments (a.k.a. the Garvey Center). They both are doing quite well for themselves, however, with the Empire State Building in the news in late 2019 for $165 million renovation and being a top tourist destination.

The duo of producer Bob Walterscheid and director Lance D. Hayes started filming KING KUNG FU in 1974 and finished in 1976, but it took another 11 years for Walterscheid to wrangle up the necessary funds to complete the editing on this half-King Kong, half-Kung Fu spoof that has its tongue planted firmly within its cheek. Hell, maybe every cheek in Wichita.

I watched the Korean KING KONG rip-off A*P*E and KING KUNG FU within basically the same 24-hour period.

Objectively, both are “bad” movies, but there’s a world of difference in what both achieve.

A*P*E plays exactly like a cheap, cynical KING KONG rip-off and it’s quite telling that its most famous scene is of the title character flipping the bird.

KING KUNG FU, meanwhile, feels more like a labor of love, an affectionate tribute to King Kong and Kung Fu. Plus, it has this undeniable goofball charm as it tries every lowbrow gag, at least one per minute. Most fail, others succeed, but that’s part and parcel with any sense of humor. I laughed out loud a few times during KING KUNG FU and that’s definitely far more than what I can say for A*P*E.

I laughed at the “Simian Scope” gag at the beginning of KING KUNG FU. This is the first and last movie filmed in “Simian Scope.” We’ve had many variations on CinemaScope over the years: The Shaw Brothers’ “Shaw Scope” being my all-time favorite. Also worth seeking out: The Shaw Brothers released their own take on KING KONG in 1977, MIGHTY PEKING MAN.

I laughed at the John Wayne impersonation, which eradicates the whole “bad” judgment I wrote a few paragraphs back about that impersonation since I believe it was intended to be funny … and … (for a third time) I laughed. We could have used even more scenes with this character played by Tom Leahy, a favorite in the Wichita area for his many years of work in radio and television. Since we have a subordinate officer surnamed Pilgrim, well, you can already guess about half of the dialogue from Mr. Leahy as Captain J.W. Duke. Leahy died in 2010.

The plot: Two would-be reporters Bo (Billy Schwartz) and Herman (Tim McGill) hatch a master plan to free King Kung Fu, a great big gorilla from China whose goodwill tour of the United States stops in Wichita and the Sedgwick County Zoo. Of course, having seen KING KONG, Bo and Herman bait King Kung Fu with Rae Fay (not Fay Wray or Link Wray, for that matter). Sounds like Bo and Herman want to make a movie, one with a happy ending.

Unfortunately, the movie drags just a little bit in the middle section. Plain and simple, it takes way too long for King Kung Fu to be unleashed on Wichita. We get too many scenes with Bo and Herman and their slapstick shenanigans, as the filmmakers seem to have forgotten their own title. Granted, Bo and Herman are likeable oddballs, but they do push endurance levels to breaking point with their schtick in this middle section.

Because we want to see King Kung Fu wreak good-natured havoc on the Old Cowtown Museum, the Joyland Amusement Park (no longer in operation), and Lawrence-Dumont Stadium (demolished for a new facility that will host a new Triple-A franchise named The Wichita Wind Surge, beginning 2020). These scenes are worth their weight in gold.

Never mind Bo’s line, “… Me as the karater and him as the karatee.”

Or the genius in Washington who says, “As you can see, Wichita is located in the center of this great country of ours and it means quite simply we have him surrounded.” That look on his face when he says “It means quite simply we have him surrounded,” I mean, wow, if you watch it now it would be great preparation for the next electoral season.

Guess it should be mentioned King Kung Fu utters dialogue like “I gotta make like a banana and split.” I once told somebody, “Why don’t you make like Michael Jackson and just beat it!”

Believe it or not, KING KUNG FU received a ‘G’ rating. Not many movies are ‘G.’ The Washington Post ran “Rated ‘G’ — For Gone?” in 1992, because a ‘G’ rating became at some point a kiss of death just like X or NC-17 on the other extreme of taste. Disney animated movies survive a ‘G,’ no problem, but little else can break through the stigma associated with ‘G.’

This ‘G’ rating was not a mistake for KING KUNG FU, like, for example, it was for the 1968 Hammer film DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE. There’s no blood in KING KUNG FU.

You might never look at Wichita quite the same way again after seeing KING KUNG FU.

House (1977)

HOUSE

HOUSE (1977) Four stars

The year 1977 produced four of the definitive WTF movies in the history of cinema: ERASERHEAD, SUSPIRIA, EXORCIST II, and HOUSE, an item from the Japanese studio (Toho) responsible for Akira Kurosawa, Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and the H-Man.

Toho really outdid itself with HOUSE, which even surpasses GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER in nonstop funky weirdness. Janus Films describes HOUSE as an episode of “Scooby Doo” directed by Dario Argento.

Bottom line: HOUSE just might be even weirder than ERASERHEAD, more colorful than SUSPIRIA, and more whacked out bat shit crazy than EXORCIST II. You have been warned.

First-time director Nobuhiko Obayashi pulls out all the stops in realizing a rather simple tale on the surface: teenage girl Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) and her six friends Prof (Ai Matsubara), Melody (Eriko Tanaka), Mac (Mieko Sato), Kung Fu (Miki Jinbo), Sweet (Masayo Miyako), and Fantasy (Kumiko Oba) pay Gorgeous’ aunt (Yoko Minamida) in the country a visit. It just so happens that the aunt died in this house many years ago waiting on her fiancee to return from World War II and her spirit remains and feasts on unmarried girls. This is a haunted house movie where the house is hungry, very hungry indeed.

Obayashi’s at-the-time pre-teen daughter Chigumi Obayashi contributed ideas to her father. She came up with several childhood fears, her father relayed the fears to screenwriter Chiho Katsura, and they incorporated her ideas into the finished product. You’ll be able to recognize her contributions almost instantly and they contribute to the uniqueness.

Just as a fun exercise, I looked up the plot keywords for HOUSE on IMDb: “refrigerator,” “banana,” “watermelon,” “bloody spray,” “dismemberment,” “decapitation,” “full frontal nudity,” and “severed head” are some of the more interesting 75 keywords and they only scratch at the surface of the overall bizarre nature of the entire enterprise.

More than 30 years after its original release, HOUSE seemingly came from out of nowhere to develop a cult following in the United States, playing first as a midnight movie in Nashville and then at a film festival in Austin in 2009 before heading to DVD.

I first encountered HOUSE through its cover image for the Criterion Collection release on October 26, 2010. Maybe you remember seeing that artwork, as well. Nashville graphic designer and Ben Folds drummer Sam Smith came up with the distinctive image: “I used the first idea that came to me after watching a screener of the film — Blanche the cat’s psycho-screaming mug — and adapted it to stand alone as a symbol of the uncanny and over-the-top assault that our midnight-movie audience was in for,” Smith said. The poster first appeared for the film at the Belcourt Theatre in Smith’s hometown.

Then, I read the reviews for HOUSE and they’re nearly as over-the-top as the film itself.

Online reviewer Dennis Schwartz wrapped up his mixed review, “The director uses freeze-frames, jump-cuts, video effects to change dimensions, spiral effects, color tints, and assorted other techie tricks to play the scary pic card more for laughs than to be gruesome. It’s an experimental visual pic that becomes overwhelmed with low-brow slapstick comedy, a ridiculous killer house and garish visuals. But it’s a one-of-a-kind film that has its admirers, who just can’t resist such weird childish nonsense.”

Michael Atkinson opined in the Village Voice, “But though it plays like a retarded hybrid of ROCKY HORROR and WHISPERING CORRIDORS, it is, moment to moment, its own kind of movie hijinks. It even won a directorial-debut critics’ prize back in the day. Gigglers and cultists, pony up.”

I watched James Rolfe’s review for Monster Madness X from 2016. Rolfe started his review with a pause and a WOW! Of course, Rolfe picked HOUSE for one of the “WTF Wednesday” reviews.

I finally caught up with HOUSE in late summer 2019 and it lived up to expectations. It calls to mind a few pictures: EVIL DEAD II, THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T, DAISIES, SUSPIRIA, and MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO. Like those films, though, HOUSE ultimately stands alone as an unique work because it creates its own world. I find that I respond more forcefully to fictional works that do that, rather than just rehash more of the same old already damaged goods. I want to be challenged, inspired, etc. I’ve never seen a haunted house movie quite like HOUSE.

HOUSE haunts one’s thoughts and gains in strength upon deeper reflection. At this moment of typing, I am thinking about Gorgeous’ aunt and how much time she spent waiting alone in that house for the love of her life to return from World War II. He never did, and they both died, she in that darn house and she’s cursed to haunt it for eternity because of her bitterness about the war. Then, I start thinking about the sheer enormity of the loss endured by the human race from Sept. 1, 1939 through Sept. 2, 1945: An estimated 70-85 million people died or three percent of the world’s population in 1940; 50-55 million civilians and 21-25 million soldiers no longer lived on this planet from a variety of causes, death on a mass scale that doubled World War I; the atomic bomb and the Holocaust two of humanity’s depressing advancements in death.

Obayashi was born in Hiroshima in 1938 and he lost all his childhood friends when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as post-WWII nuclear testing, inform many Japanese films of the last almost 75 years.

Tourist Trap (1979)

TOURIST TRAP

TOURIST TRAP (1979) Three stars

TOURIST TRAP belongs to a rather fine and distinguished horror movie tradition I’ll call “American Gothic” (forget the famous 1930 painting by Grant Wood).

Other films that fit the bill are several Universal productions, Val Lewton productions beginning with CAT PEOPLE, HOUSE OF WAX, PSYCHO, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, EATEN ALIVE, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, and FUNHOUSE. As you can see, directors Wes Craven (1939-2015) and Tobe Hooper (1943-2017) both liked this mode.

“American Gothic” horror films are heavy on atmosphere, whether they’re filmed in black & white or color. They often delight in exposing the darker underbelly of American society after such happenings as the closing of the local slaughterhouse or the roadside wax museum that once existed on the right side of the road before it was bypassed. They sometimes take on the disintegration of the family unit or any number of issues plaguing our society. “American Gothic” films are rich in metaphorical readings.

Since it belongs to such a fine tradition, you’ll be able to recognize TOURIST TRAP right off the bat and see that it’s a dab of HOUSE OF WAX layered on top THE HILLS HAVE EYES or any of the seemingly hundreds of horror movie plots that begin with car trouble and the wrong gas station and end after several deaths.

Later on, you’ll note that it’s also a pinch of PSYCHO and a dash of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE — Chuck Connors plays wax museum proprietor Mr. Slausen in the grand old Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates style (a hallmark “American Gothic” element) and production designer Robert Burns worked on both TEXAS CHAINSAW and THE HILLS HAVE EYES.

Just like the Bates Motel had seen better days before PSYCHO, so had Mr. Slausen’s “Slausen’s Lost Oasis.” Nowadays, Mr. Slausen’s wax museum would have been profiled by Roadside America, the guide to “uniquely odd tourist attractions,” and it could have survived and even thrived off this exposure.

If you find wax figures, mannequins, human replicas, et cetera, repellent or they weird you the fuck out, then you will enjoy TOURIST TRAP.

I especially recommend seeing the film before stopping in at Jesse James Wax Museum right off the highway in Stanton, Missouri.

It’s your patriotic duty.

TOURIST TRAP creates a creepy, claustrophobic atmosphere transcendent of the standard issue plot.

From the brilliant opening scene all the way to the bitter end about 90 minutes later, there’s somebody eyeball stalking the protagonists in every scene in TOURIST TRAP.

That somebody’s usually a wax figure, mannequin, human replica, etc., and that’s just creepy, for lack of a better word.

For many years, TOURIST TRAP itself met the fate of “Slausen’s Lost Oasis,” seemingly forgotten and consigned to being a relic of a bygone era of horror movies. Never mind Stephen King’s recommendation in his 1981 book “Danse Macabre.”

The film has made a comeback in recent years.

Cinemassacre’s “Monster Madness” featured TOURIST TRAP in 2014.

In July 2018, Joe Bob Briggs opened “The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs” by showcasing TOURIST TRAP.

It just goes to show you that nobody can ever keep an “American Gothic” horror film down for too long.