When the Earth falls out of orbit, two women try to cope with increasingly oppressive heat in a nearly abandoned city.
Stay cool! – MonsterGirl
This is a film by writer, and director Ranald MacDougall who wrote screenplays for such films as The Unsuspected 1947, Possessed 1947, Mildred Pierce 1945, and The Naked Jungle 1954.
With writing credits to M.P. Shiel from their novel “The Purple Cloud”, Ferdinand Reyher’s “End of The World” and co-written by MacDougall. Harry Belafonte is an uncredited producer of the film.
With an incredibly evocative score by Miklós Rózsa (Spellbound 1944, Double Indemnity 1945) and a Noirish framework by cinematography Harold Marzorati, it’s an edgy adventure for Noir and Sci-fi fans alike.
This could be considered a Socio-Noir experience, as it deals at times frankly with the issue of race and gender, while not as critically as it might be dealt with today, for its time, it approaches the subject matter with a narrative that starts the conversation.
Filmed with gritty realism, set in an urban milieu with characters who are flawed and in conflict with each other and their surroundings.
Harry Belafonte plays Ralph Burton a miner trapped under the city for several days as a result of a cave-in. After days of isolation and deprivation, he manages to dig himself out of his underground grave.
Soon after he discovers that the entire population of Earth has been destroyed by nuclear holocaust.
He ventures to New York City and stumbles upon a once thriving metropolis that is now a desolate urbane wasteland, not unlike the landscape that Charlton Heston’s Neville faced in post-apocalyptic L.A.
Much like Neville, Ralph sets up a home for himself but is suddenly thrown into flux by the discovery of Inger Stevens as Sarah Crandall, the last surviving female on Earth.
The World, The Flesh and The Devil is an allegorical journey about desolation, survival, human nature, sacrifice, and the evolution of men and women trying to define themselves.
Thrown into the mix of this newly formed friendship between the only living black man and white woman, intrudes a third character Mel Ferrer who plays Benson Thacker a white entitled privileged male who has somehow navigated a small boat into the NYC harbor.
The triangle is formed and the tensions play out in a script that might have been penned by Rod Serling, who often took on the issue of race, class, and at times, but less so, gender with his thoughtful philosophical Sci-fi television show The Twilight Zone.
The two men struggle over who will be the dominant male suitor… who will take ownership of Sarah as if she weren’t already the last female on earth, her sexuality becomes amplified, her body thus systematically objectified to the nth degree, and does she even have a say in choosing neither of the men at all…white or black!
Try and catch this lesser-known post-apocalyptic tale filmed way back in the late 50s!
Stay real! – MonsterGirl
Directed by Herschel Daugherty adapted for television by writer William D. Gordon from a short story by crime novelist MacIntoch Malmar. Which was later adapted for television, again directed by Hershel Daugherty in an updated film called The Victim 1972Â starring the wonderful Elizabeth Montgomery and the always acerbic Eileen Heckart.
Starring Nancy Kelly as Janet Willsom (The Bad Seed 1956) The classic American horror-thriller film directed by Mervyn LeRoy won Kelly an Oscar for Best Actress that year as psychotic Rhoda Penmark’s (Patty McCormack) mother, Christine Penmark.
Walter Kerr of the New York Herald Tribune wrote of her "Tony Award-winning stage performance:
“Though Miss Kelly has done attractive work on Broadway before, she has never really prepared us for the brilliance of the present portrait” (Walter Kerr-New York Times, January 14, 1995).
The Bad Seed 1956 also stars Eileen Heckart and the quintessentially cranky Henry Jones)
The evil Rhoda strokes her mother. Scarier than clowns….!
The Storm also stars James Griffith as Ed Brandies the quirky lecherous and intrusive cab driver. David McLean as Ben T. Willsom and Jean Carroll as the voice of phone operator Drucie. Not to be forgotten, the beautifully sleek and ever-present Baba the black cat and real star of this episode…
Nancy Kelly plays Janet Willsom, a woman besieged by noises and bad weather, while isolated in her home, waiting for her husband Ben to arrive home in during a raging storm. Kept alerted and accompanied by her faithful black cat Baba, Janet must first fend off the nauseating advances of the cabbie who brings her home and wants to practically move in on her, while her husband is away on business.
When I originally posted this feature I had made a reference to Hitchcock in the post concerning the body of the dead girl in the trunk. The focus is on her lifeless finger, with the large diamond ring dangling as limp as a soggy carrot.
The Storm, in general, contains striking elements of a good old-fashioned Hitchcock thriller! As well as the framing of one hell of a good stage play!
I hadn’t been asked to join in the BEST HITCHCOCK MOVIE (THAT HITCHCOCK NEVER MADE)Â yet. So here it is once again, with a few little tidbits thrown in so that it can take its place in the wonderful blogathon that’s going on between July 7 -July 13!
The episode opens with a mysterious pair of man’s trousers assailing a beautiful blonde in the midst of the rainstorm. She is strangled and stuffed in a trunk in the cellar, as we are strategically shown the emphasis on a shiny diamond ring on her lifeless finger sticking out of the trunk. A very Hitchockian moment…
Is Janet now being stalked by the same mad killer? What’s behind every noise and flash of light and sweep of shadow?
I love this episode because it creates a perfectly creepy environment of isolation. Very much lit as a faithful crime drama Film Noir, the shear simplicity of each moment, each little task Janet undergoes to create normalcy and safety in her surroundings, what would usually be merely ordinary banal gestures become tautly drawn-out maneuvers in a darkly ominous, tweaked and dangerous landscape.
Invoking more of a sense of terror because of its bared-down realism, than a manufactured horror. As suggested by David Schow‘s wonderful commentary of this episode on the recently released DVD box set, the atmosphere of the isolated ‘woman in peril‘ who must fend off whatever is lurking, reminds us of Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark 1967
This is also a faithful psychological Film Noir piece, utilizing the very best in Nancy Kelly as the dame in danger and James Griffith as the lasciviously intrusive cab driver Ed whose quirky character is either a raving maniac or just a red herring to throw us off the scent of the true murderer.
Continue reading “As sure as my name is MonsterGirl, this is a Boris Karloff Thriller! “The Storm””
Versatile actor of film and stage Stacy Keach plays the poetic everyman Pat Quid who is driving a semi across Australia carting a truckload of meat, pig carcasses specifically, due to the high demand as there is a meat strike going on. As in any good traveler mystery, he encounters a variety of odd characters who periodically pop up time and again, as if they are all trapped in some kind of desert purgatory.
Along the way, there are also the occasional hitchhikers who are traveling on the same highway. Pat and his trusted companion Boswell, a dingo, like to occupy his time playing word games to make the journey more stimulating.
He likes to imagine the identities of other people on the road, guessing what they do for a living.
Stopping over to sleep at a motel one night, he loses his room to a mysterious guy in a dark green van who has picked up a foxy young hitchhiker. A girl Quid had decided to pass up along the way, as it is not his practice to pick up hitchhikers because it is against regulations.
That night he sleeps in the back of his cab but is aroused at 4 am by the garbage trucks who have come to pick up the motel trash. Boswell is sniffing around the plastic rubbish bags, chewing at whatever smells tempting on the inside.
Strangely up too, is the guy from the dark green van, who is watching out the window to see that the collectors are picking up the garbage.
The night before, we witness him murdering the young girl passenger that he brings to the motel. Most likely he has disposed of her body in the bags set out on the curb.
After seeing Green Van Man on the road, burying another garbage bag, and once Quid sees a cooler or ‘lunch box’ on the guys front seat, which is big enough to hold a human head, Quid puts a few things together and decides that this guy is probably the serial killer that the news has been talking about.
Jamie Lee Curtis plays Pamela ‘Hitch’ Rushworth a hitchhiker Quid finally picks up after the third time seeing her on the side of the same road.’Third time lucky!’
The two form an amateur detective team, playing cat and mouse with the elusive Green Van Man as they begin to try and track the serial killer on their own. The chemistry between the two does not have the hallmark romanticism of a typically immortal Hitchcock pairing, Keach and Curtis are more working-class guts and grit and less polish and panache.
But in Quid’s pursuit of the Green Van Man, it brings him to the attention of the police, who then suspect him of being the killer. Throughout the film, Quid plays the alienated nice guy, who is misunderstood, and under suspicion.
Directed by Richard Franklin (Patrick 1978, Psycho II 1983)Based on an original story by Richard Franklin and adapted for the screen by Everett De Roche. Also starring Marion Edward as Madeleine ‘Frita’ Day and Grant Page as Smith or Jones the Green Van killer.
Not least of which are the few obvious touts to Hitch himself: The casting of Janet Leigh’s  (1960 Psycho’s Marion Crane) daughter with actor Tony Curtis, the wonderfully androgynous Jamie Lee Curtis.
Curtis’s character Pamela has a nickname in the film which is ‘Hitch’ and Franklin actually directed Psycho II in 1983 which starred Anthony Perkins revisiting his iconic role as Norman Bates. Franklin obviously had an appreciation for the story and Hitchcock’s contribution to the mystery/suspense genre.
At one point in the film, Pamela in the back of Quid’s cab picks up a vintage Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine from the 60s.
The more significant allusions that can be drawn from the film are Keach’s role as Patrick Anthony Quid, using a Hitchcockian formula, ‘The Wrong Man.’
The police not only suspect him of the murders, but Quid becomes alienated by the rest of the hostile players in the film, even going as far as being set up by the real killer, not unlike Hitchcock’s later and quite starkly disturbing Frenzy 1972.
Starring Barry Foster as the criminally insane misogynist Robert Rusk, the necktie killer who rapes and strangles his female victims in what I feel Hitchcock lensed with an utter brutal realism that stays with you.
In Frenzy it is Jon Finch who plays Richard Ian Blaney the misunderstood working-class man who is falsely blamed for a series of murdered women. Blaney also becomes set up as a patsy by the killer, like Quid for the murders.
Unlike Frenzy’s lustful sex maniac who we get to see up close and personal, remember the hideous line… ‘lovely.’
Green Van Man maintains anonymity, a distance from us and the camera, so the intimacy of the plot is stifled and a line is drawn in the sand as far as understanding the killer’s identity any closer than his gloves, his guitar wire, and the dark green van.Which might be the point. Although, Robert Rusk was a fertile character that repulsed yet fascinates.
Missing is the profoundly evocative score from Bernard Herrmann. Road Games doesn’t utilize music as much to underscore its narrative. Although it’s sound editing is very key in various spots of the film to accentuate the sense of alienation that is pervasive in the film. Where Herrmann’s romantic scoring might guide the viewer along the way to either an empathetic moment or a suspenseful point in a film, the use of sound in Road Games is incorporated in a much more holistic way. And the film starts out quietly, bleakly, allowing Keach’s Pat Quid to stretch his characterization of a solitary man on a journey.
Another interesting motif of the film that utilizes some of the traditional stylizations of a Hitchcock film is the use of The MacGuffin– The cooler or ‘lunch box’ that is frequently shown framed in one scene or another which is the possession of the Green Van Man, might or might not hold something of interest or relevance or could just be a big red herring. We wonder as does Quid, whether it holds the severed head of the foxy hitchhiker we see being murdered in the beginning of the film.
I found it interesting that our first awareness of the murders takes place in a motel, not unlike 1960s Psycho.
Also of interesting note is the use of the ‘Open Road’, expansive at times indicative of alienation and desolation, lending to ‘the traveler’ theme. Like Tippi Hedren in The Birds 1963.
I’m also reminded of the cinematic open landscapes as seen in North by Northwest 1959, with its desert environment. While not a single-engine plane as the nefarious mode of transportation in pursuit, Quid is often swallowed up by the vast Australian expanse, being taunted by a maniac in a dark green van that is playing cat and mouse with the protagonist!
And again with the character of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) traveling from Arizona attempting to escape the mundane ticking of her working-class existence. Running away after having stolen a large sum of money from one of the Bank’s clients. Hoping to be together with her lover Sam Loomis ( John Gavin.)Unfortunately stumbling onto yet another desolate hostile environment that is hidden underneath quiet American family values and a nice mama’s boy named Norman Bates.
Hitchcock often used actors who could be perceived as an ‘everyman’ Quid reiterates this line several times in the film, “Just because I drive a truck doesn’t mean I”m a truck driver.” He’s fair and ethical and is just looking to do his job, but won’t be defined by anyone else’s standards.
The Lighting has the certain feel of a Hitchcock thriller, the Neo-Noirish ambient colors, highlighting only the ‘object’ the director wants us to see, with everything else framed within shadow. The obscuring of a purposefully arranged set with an emphasis on the specific players being lit in close up. And colors used specifically to accentuate a mood. The use of color in Road Games helps develop the feeling of a surreal type of desolation.
Right from the beginning of the film, Quid the protagonist, starts out in conflict with this mysterious stranger in the dark green van. The game of cat and mouse begins.
“First he steals my girl and then he steals my bed"¦ ”
“I hope she steals his wallet. I bet she doesn’t even wait to take her socks off.
Monstergirl is thrilled to share a special occasion happening from July 7th to July 13th, 2012!
Hosted by Dorian Tenore-Bartilucci, of Tales of the Easily Distracted and Rebecca Barnes, of ClassicBecky's Brain Food.
You’ll read some of the best writing and insight into some extraordinary films, lensed by various bloggers who have gathered together to honor one of the greatest film makers, Alfred Hitchcock.
Putting a spin on the director and focusing on films that while Hitch did not direct, the feel and flavor of his highly stylized work comes through as either artful homage or unspoken symbiosis.
I’ll be chiming in on July 11th with my take on 1981 Road Games starring Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis, as well as re-reviewing an earlier Boris Karloff’s Thriller episode called The Storm.
So here’s to that silly man with the inimitable voice and droll sense of humor, dark and ironic and filled with morbid joyfulness!
A special belated Happy Birthday to Hitch’s daughter Patricia who celebrated her 84th on the 7th of this month!
Directed by Frank Wisbar from his own story, also co-written for the screen by Leo J. McCarthy. Make-up by Bud Westmore. Also co-starring Effie Laird as Martina Sanders, Nolan Leary as Pete Jeffers, Frank Conlan as Joseph Hart, Therese Lyon and Virginia Farmer.
This is a hauntingly beautiful re-make of director Frank Wisbar’s own 1936 German film Faehrmann Maria a retelling of the legend of Death and The Maiden. Which started Sybille Schmitz, the memorable victim of Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr (1931).
It’s an effectively creepy story from the Poverty Row Film Company PRC who brought us The Devil Bat and The Flying Serpent. While this is a low budget B movie, it is quite effective to watch as the ghost of Douglas seems to dissolve in and out of the darkness.
There is an essence of the slow and dreamlike stylization that is similar to Dreyer’s work, at work here in Strangler of The Swamp. The setting is a lonely backwoods swamplands where the villagers live under a terrible curse left by a wrongly accused man hung for a crime he did not commit.
Three women from the village including Martina Sanders glide down the bayou on the ferryboat with Joseph Hart, evoking a mythical quality as if used as augury like that of The Furies designating Joseph’s ill fated path for his sins of false witness and murder.
(Anthony Perkins) plays Dennis Pitt, a mentally disturbed young man recently released from an institution, who tells a pretty All-American girl Sue Ann Stepanek (Tuesday Weld) that he’s a secret agent working for the CIA.
She’s thrilled to feed into Dennis’ fantasy world and that’s when all hell breaks loose and subterfuge Folie à deux and murder ensue, in this dark thriller from the 1960s. Co-starring Beverly Garland as Mrs. Stepanek and John Randolph as Morton Azenauer
Directed by Noel Black and written by Stephen Geller based on his novel, and screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr.
Happy Trailers-MonsterGirl!
Written for the screen and directed by Delmer Daves (Dark Passage 1947) this is a tautly wound horror/thriller featuring one of my favorites, the gruff everyman Edgar G Robinson as Peter Morgan, a very ‘unbalanced’ guy.
Pete ( Edgar G Robinson) and sister Ellen Morgan ( Dame Judith Anderson) have raised pretty Meg ( Allene Roberts) as their own child after her parents ran off and abandon her as a baby.
Meg now a young woman gets her friend Nath (Lon McCallister) to come help out doing odd jobs on the farm because her father Pete has a wooden leg and is getting on in years.
One night, Nath decides to use a shortcut home through the woods, which enrages Pete who warns him to stay clear of the red house, for fear of the unspeakable horrors associated with the dilapidated old wreck.
But like all great horror thrillers, Meg and Nath ignore his warnings and start digging around anyway and of course, the two begin falling in love, which is not only a problem for Meg’s mysterious caretaker, but for Nath’s sexy girlfriend Tibby played by a very young Julie London.
What is the dark secret of the red house, and what is deranged father Pete Morgan hiding after all these years?
Happy Father’s Day from MonsterGirl!
The film stars Tony Lo Bianco and Shirley Stoler as Ray Fernandez and Martha Beck. Doris Roberts has a part playing Bunny. Also starring Mary Jane Higby as Janet Fay.
This is an intense, often grotesque film based on the true story of serial killers Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck who meet through a lonely-hearts correspondence club. Director Leonard Kastle creates a sickening atmosphere of acute sexual psychosis in The Honeymoon Killers , that forces you to feel repulsed by this pair’s Folie à deux.
Ray is a swarthy playboy, rough around the edges and a devious sociopath. Martha is ‘morbidly’ obese (and I use the term specifically tailored to her character), obsessive, paranoid and maniacally possessive of Ray.
The two concoct a dangerously horrific plot to lure lonely women into going out with Ray, until he proposes marriage. All the while pretending that Martha is his sister, a nurse. The plan is to con the women’s into turning over their entire savings, and then make them disappear. Neither Ray, nor Martha show any remorse of trace of humanity, within their claustrophobic narcissistic love affair. They are ruthless and brutal to no end.
The film is bleak, grimy and unashamed to show the ugliness of human nature. While it is unrelenting in it’s frankness, it’s oddly compelling to watch Lo Bianco and Stoler do their thing.
Happy Trailers- MonsterGirl
Directed by Will Cowen and Starring Carolyn Kearney (Molly Bancroft in Doktor Markeson episode of Thriller) as Jessica Burns, a young girl with psychic abilities who, like a dowser,
uncovers the ancient chest containing the severed head of Gideon Drew ( Robin Hughes), which has been buried for centuries on her aunt’s ranch. Once released from his entombment…
Gideon’s head wreaks havoc trying to be reunited with his evil body, as he used to be a 16th-century devil worshiper who Sir Francis Drake beheaded!
Keep Your Chin Up!- MonsterGirl