When is a sequel not a sequel? When the studio wants a sequel, but the previous movie wasn't set up for one.
RKO was surprised and delighted by the success of Cat People, the first of its series of low-budget horror films produced by Val Lewton, and very much wanted a sequel, despite the fact that the lead character, Irena, played so well by the exquisite Simone Simon in the original, died at the conclusion. So Lewton and screenwriter Dewitt Bodeen took the title the studio heads handed them--Curse of the Cat People--and tried to work around these circumstances to come up with a sort-of sequel, with some characters returning from the original, but with no "Curse" involved and no "Cat People" in sight.
Instead, Lewton, Bodeen and directors Gunther Frisch--who went off to fight in World War II before the movie was finished--and Robert Wise (who was a film editor at RKO at the time, but went on to have a long, distinguished career, directing such films as The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Andromina Strain, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Sound of Music, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director--craft a gentle fable that has elements and characters from Cat People grafted onto it.
Amy, a little girl who's the daughter of the architect from the first movie (Kent Smith) and his second wife, Alice (Jane Randolph, also reprising her role from the original), has an imaginary friend...who just happens to be the architect's first wife, Irena (Simon). The girl is lonely and isolated, with only the house help (calypso singer Sir Lancelot) and an aging, senile actress (Julia Dean) to talk to.
There are few scares in Curse. Dean does a great reading of Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," which sets up a scene on an empty country road where Amy is sure that the Headless Horseman is going to get her. (This scene has some of the same tension as the more famous passage in The Leopard Man in which a young girl is stalked by an escaped leopard, only without that movie's gruesome result.) And, of course, there's a dramatic ending in which the little girl has to be place in jeopardy (real or imagined).
Fritsch and Wise keep Curse moving along and looking good, but the sensational title sets up an expectation that the movie attached to it can't deliver on (much like Lewton's The Ghost Ship, which also had a title that promised one kind of horror movie but delivered something entirely different). So even though Curse is a decent, intelligent little movie in its own right, it suffers by its connection to the original Cat People, which it's related to only in name. RKO would have been better off letting Cat People stand as a one-shot deal and doing this movie as a totally unrelated story under a different name.
Showing posts with label Val Lewton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Val Lewton. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Review: The Ghost Ship (1943)
When you look at the title of this movie--The Ghost Ship--you might well assume that this is a supernatural thriller about a haunted sea vessel. And when you see the name "Val Lewton" attached as producer--responsible for such horror classics as I Walked with a Zombie and Cat People, you just know this is a supernatural thriller about a haunted sea vessel.
Both reasonable assumptions. But wrong.
Executives at RKO determined the often sensation titles of the movies Lewton would make, but Lewton determined the content. For The Ghost Ship, Lewton opted not to take the title literally, but use it as an opportunity to make a psychological thriller in which a ship isn't haunted by ghosts, but a flesh-and-blood man is consumed by his personal demons, making him a threat to all around him.
A young seaman, Tom (Russell Wade) ships out as third mate under Captain Will Stone (Richard Dix) who, unfortunately for everyone involved, is slowly going insane and bumping off anybody who crosses him, like a shipmate (Lawrence Tierney) who speaks out against the captain and is later "accidentally" crushed to death by an anchor chain. When Tom voices his suspicions about Captain Stone, he becomes the next target, and the rest of his shipmates (Including Calypso singer Sir Lancelot) won't help because...well, Stone is the captain, and on the sea, the captain's word is law unless Tom can prove that Stone is out of his mind.
Like all of Lewton's movies for RKO, The Ghost Ship has a moody look to it, with lots of low-key lighting and sweaty close-ups, especially of former silent film star Dix (whose name sounds like a modern male porn star pseudonym). His performance as Captain Stone is reserved and tense, rather than loud or flamboyant--no giggling psychotic here--making it all the more chilling. Mark Robson, who worked as editor on other Lewton movies before finally getting a shot at directing on The Seventh Victim, keeps things grim but well-paced, and there are a couple of good scares to be had: The murder of Tierney is harrowing, since the audience realizes his fate well before he does, and a later scene in which Wade must stay in his cabin despite the lock having been removed from the door is proof that a little paranoia goes a long way.
The key to enjoying The Ghost Ship is not to lower your expectations, but adjust them. If you come in looking for a solid psychological drama rather than a spook show, you'll enjoy The Ghost Ship, especially if you've ever suspected that your boss just isn't quite right in the head.
(Note:: This Ghost Ship isn't in any way related to either of the two much later movies with the same name (one released in 1980, the other in 2003). Both of those have actual ghosts on board. Both of them are very bad movies.)
Both reasonable assumptions. But wrong.
Executives at RKO determined the often sensation titles of the movies Lewton would make, but Lewton determined the content. For The Ghost Ship, Lewton opted not to take the title literally, but use it as an opportunity to make a psychological thriller in which a ship isn't haunted by ghosts, but a flesh-and-blood man is consumed by his personal demons, making him a threat to all around him.
A young seaman, Tom (Russell Wade) ships out as third mate under Captain Will Stone (Richard Dix) who, unfortunately for everyone involved, is slowly going insane and bumping off anybody who crosses him, like a shipmate (Lawrence Tierney) who speaks out against the captain and is later "accidentally" crushed to death by an anchor chain. When Tom voices his suspicions about Captain Stone, he becomes the next target, and the rest of his shipmates (Including Calypso singer Sir Lancelot) won't help because...well, Stone is the captain, and on the sea, the captain's word is law unless Tom can prove that Stone is out of his mind.
Like all of Lewton's movies for RKO, The Ghost Ship has a moody look to it, with lots of low-key lighting and sweaty close-ups, especially of former silent film star Dix (whose name sounds like a modern male porn star pseudonym). His performance as Captain Stone is reserved and tense, rather than loud or flamboyant--no giggling psychotic here--making it all the more chilling. Mark Robson, who worked as editor on other Lewton movies before finally getting a shot at directing on The Seventh Victim, keeps things grim but well-paced, and there are a couple of good scares to be had: The murder of Tierney is harrowing, since the audience realizes his fate well before he does, and a later scene in which Wade must stay in his cabin despite the lock having been removed from the door is proof that a little paranoia goes a long way.
The key to enjoying The Ghost Ship is not to lower your expectations, but adjust them. If you come in looking for a solid psychological drama rather than a spook show, you'll enjoy The Ghost Ship, especially if you've ever suspected that your boss just isn't quite right in the head.
(Note:: This Ghost Ship isn't in any way related to either of the two much later movies with the same name (one released in 1980, the other in 2003). Both of those have actual ghosts on board. Both of them are very bad movies.)
Friday, October 14, 2005
Review: The Leopard Man (1943)
The night is dark. The girl is young. And frightened. She didn't want to go to the store. She didn't want to get the cornmeal. She knew about the leopard that had escaped from the club and was frightened. But her mother chided her for being afraid, and her little brother made fun of her. So out she went into the dark. Her mother bolted the door behind her and told her she would't be allowed back in unless she came back with the cornmeal for the tortillas.
On her way back from the second store (the first store she went to was closed, and the owner's wife didn't want to open up again, if even for a minute), she must pass beneath the train bridge again. In the darkness, she can see two points of light--the glowing eyes of the escaped leopard. A train suddenly passes overhead. When she looks again, the eyes are gone. but when she emerges from the underpass, the leopard is sitting atop the embankment. She screams. The leopard springs after her. She runs for her life, spilling the cornmeal.
She pounds on the door of her family's home. "Mamacita!" she screams, "If you love me, let me in! Mamacita!"
Her mother is unimpressed and thinks her daughter silly for being so afraid. "It's coming closer--I can see it!" The girl screams one last time. There's a sickening "thud" against the door, and what sounds like an animal snarling. "Wait, Teresa," the girl's mother says. "I come. I will let you in." But it's too late--the only answer her mother receives to her cries is her daughter's blood flowing beneath the door.
The scene above, one of the most intense and unnerving in any horror film, is from The Leopard Man, the third collaboration between RKO producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur (after Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie)--and, unfortunately, the last. They play with big kitties again in this mystery set in New Mexico.
The agent (Dennis O'Keefe) for a dancer (Jean Brooks) devises a plan to draw attention away from her rival, a flamboyant flamenco dancer (Margo): His client will walk into the club where they perform with a leopard on a leash. Great plan...till the flamenco dancer frightens the cat and it dashes off into the night. When the young girl is killed, the agent and dancer are torn apart with guilt. But when two more women die in a similar manner, the agent becomes suspicious: Is the leopard responsible for these new deaths, or is something--or someONE--else responsible?
It's not too difficult to figure out what's going on in The Leopard Man. Because Tourneur and screenwriter Ardel Wray spend a lot of time on introducing us to characters who, in very short order, are knocked off, there are very few characters that carry from the beginning of the movie to the end, thus cutting the suspect list down to next to nothing. And we know it's not the leopard killing off all the pretty girls--the title tips you off to that, and the trailer (included on the newly released DVD) flat-out says there's a human killer on the loose. That leaves the viewer to admire the style of the movie, which, like all of the Lewton/Tourneur features, is great to look at, visually elegant and restrained. (Go back to the scene above. We don't see Teresa die--hearing her beign torn apart is more than enough for the imagination to fill in the rest.)
But The Leopard Man is less engaging than most of Lewton's other features, perhaps because the mystery is so easily solved, because there is no supernatural element present (despite what the title implies) and because all of the characters who get terrorized in this movie are young, beautiful women, thus qualifying The Leopard Man as an early prototype of the mad slasher film.
I'm not sure that's necessarily a good thing.
On her way back from the second store (the first store she went to was closed, and the owner's wife didn't want to open up again, if even for a minute), she must pass beneath the train bridge again. In the darkness, she can see two points of light--the glowing eyes of the escaped leopard. A train suddenly passes overhead. When she looks again, the eyes are gone. but when she emerges from the underpass, the leopard is sitting atop the embankment. She screams. The leopard springs after her. She runs for her life, spilling the cornmeal.
She pounds on the door of her family's home. "Mamacita!" she screams, "If you love me, let me in! Mamacita!"
Her mother is unimpressed and thinks her daughter silly for being so afraid. "It's coming closer--I can see it!" The girl screams one last time. There's a sickening "thud" against the door, and what sounds like an animal snarling. "Wait, Teresa," the girl's mother says. "I come. I will let you in." But it's too late--the only answer her mother receives to her cries is her daughter's blood flowing beneath the door.
The scene above, one of the most intense and unnerving in any horror film, is from The Leopard Man, the third collaboration between RKO producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur (after Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie)--and, unfortunately, the last. They play with big kitties again in this mystery set in New Mexico.
The agent (Dennis O'Keefe) for a dancer (Jean Brooks) devises a plan to draw attention away from her rival, a flamboyant flamenco dancer (Margo): His client will walk into the club where they perform with a leopard on a leash. Great plan...till the flamenco dancer frightens the cat and it dashes off into the night. When the young girl is killed, the agent and dancer are torn apart with guilt. But when two more women die in a similar manner, the agent becomes suspicious: Is the leopard responsible for these new deaths, or is something--or someONE--else responsible?
It's not too difficult to figure out what's going on in The Leopard Man. Because Tourneur and screenwriter Ardel Wray spend a lot of time on introducing us to characters who, in very short order, are knocked off, there are very few characters that carry from the beginning of the movie to the end, thus cutting the suspect list down to next to nothing. And we know it's not the leopard killing off all the pretty girls--the title tips you off to that, and the trailer (included on the newly released DVD) flat-out says there's a human killer on the loose. That leaves the viewer to admire the style of the movie, which, like all of the Lewton/Tourneur features, is great to look at, visually elegant and restrained. (Go back to the scene above. We don't see Teresa die--hearing her beign torn apart is more than enough for the imagination to fill in the rest.)
But The Leopard Man is less engaging than most of Lewton's other features, perhaps because the mystery is so easily solved, because there is no supernatural element present (despite what the title implies) and because all of the characters who get terrorized in this movie are young, beautiful women, thus qualifying The Leopard Man as an early prototype of the mad slasher film.
I'm not sure that's necessarily a good thing.
Wednesday, October 5, 2005
Review: I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
"I walked with a zombie...does seem an odd thing to say."
Was producer Val Lewton tweaking the noses of his bosses at RKO with this line of dialogue, the opening bit of narration spoke by Betsy (Frances Dee) in Lewton's second teamup with director Jacques Tourneur? Maybe so. But Lewton, Tourneur and screenwriters Curt Siodmak (who had written The Wolf Man for Universal) and Ardel Wray take the title that RKO gave them to work with (lifted from a magazine article) and create a lovely, poetic voodoo yard by way of Jane Eyre.
Young, beautiful Canadian nurse Betsy is hired to go to the island of St. Sebastian and take care of Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon, with one of the thinnest waists in the history of the silver screen), wife of sugar plantation owner Paul Holland (Tom Conway, brother of George Sanders). Sounds simple, doesn't it? But is it? Of course not. It never is. Jessica fell ill after trying to run off with Paul's alcoholic half-brother, Wesley Rand (James Ellison). Calypso singer Sir Lancelot (who actually gets to play a Calypso singer in this movie, as opposed to a servant or a deckhand) helpfully sings a song detailing the whole sordid affair.
Paul is a brooding man, taking even the most placid scene and finding despair and morbidity in it. In a beautiful, foreboding monologue, he says to Betsy on the ship ride to St. Sebastian, "That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies. The glitter of putrescence. There's no beauty here...only death and decay." (Wesley later says that words are his half-brother's great weapon: "He uses them like other men use their fists.")
And then there's Jessica, who just stares blankly off into space, seemingly catatonic. Betsy suggests electroshock therapy to bring Jessica out of it, but it doesn't help matters any. But wait...what about those voodoo drums in the distance? If medical science can't cure Jessica, maybe native magic can! Then again, maybe not...
I Walked with a Zombie is, in many ways, different from any of the other eight horror pictures Lewton produced for RKO between 1942 and 1946. Its setting is far removed from the effective urban settings and empty streets of Cat People and The Seventh Victim and Tourneur makes good use of the modest tropical sets and allows the sounds of the island--the tropical breezes blowing through the sugar cane fields and the distant beat of voodoo drums (heard when Betsy leads Jessica-with-the-Thousand-Mile-Stare toward the native village in a desperate attempt to save her patient)--to take the place of Roy Webb's usual elegant musical score in spots to great effect.
But like all of the Lewton films, the most unnerving moments happen when characters are by themselves, when long, dancing shadows cast on walls or sounds piercing the pervasive darkness that seem to come from things darker still, take on greater weight. When the imagination--of the character in question or the viewer in the relative comfort of a theater or living room--can provide more horrific details to the mind open to such suggestion than all the latex appliances and computer-generated special effects in the world ever could.
That was what Lewton and his collaborators always did best: Help us scare ourselves.
Was producer Val Lewton tweaking the noses of his bosses at RKO with this line of dialogue, the opening bit of narration spoke by Betsy (Frances Dee) in Lewton's second teamup with director Jacques Tourneur? Maybe so. But Lewton, Tourneur and screenwriters Curt Siodmak (who had written The Wolf Man for Universal) and Ardel Wray take the title that RKO gave them to work with (lifted from a magazine article) and create a lovely, poetic voodoo yard by way of Jane Eyre.
Young, beautiful Canadian nurse Betsy is hired to go to the island of St. Sebastian and take care of Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon, with one of the thinnest waists in the history of the silver screen), wife of sugar plantation owner Paul Holland (Tom Conway, brother of George Sanders). Sounds simple, doesn't it? But is it? Of course not. It never is. Jessica fell ill after trying to run off with Paul's alcoholic half-brother, Wesley Rand (James Ellison). Calypso singer Sir Lancelot (who actually gets to play a Calypso singer in this movie, as opposed to a servant or a deckhand) helpfully sings a song detailing the whole sordid affair.
Paul is a brooding man, taking even the most placid scene and finding despair and morbidity in it. In a beautiful, foreboding monologue, he says to Betsy on the ship ride to St. Sebastian, "That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies. The glitter of putrescence. There's no beauty here...only death and decay." (Wesley later says that words are his half-brother's great weapon: "He uses them like other men use their fists.")
And then there's Jessica, who just stares blankly off into space, seemingly catatonic. Betsy suggests electroshock therapy to bring Jessica out of it, but it doesn't help matters any. But wait...what about those voodoo drums in the distance? If medical science can't cure Jessica, maybe native magic can! Then again, maybe not...
I Walked with a Zombie is, in many ways, different from any of the other eight horror pictures Lewton produced for RKO between 1942 and 1946. Its setting is far removed from the effective urban settings and empty streets of Cat People and The Seventh Victim and Tourneur makes good use of the modest tropical sets and allows the sounds of the island--the tropical breezes blowing through the sugar cane fields and the distant beat of voodoo drums (heard when Betsy leads Jessica-with-the-Thousand-Mile-Stare toward the native village in a desperate attempt to save her patient)--to take the place of Roy Webb's usual elegant musical score in spots to great effect.
But like all of the Lewton films, the most unnerving moments happen when characters are by themselves, when long, dancing shadows cast on walls or sounds piercing the pervasive darkness that seem to come from things darker still, take on greater weight. When the imagination--of the character in question or the viewer in the relative comfort of a theater or living room--can provide more horrific details to the mind open to such suggestion than all the latex appliances and computer-generated special effects in the world ever could.
That was what Lewton and his collaborators always did best: Help us scare ourselves.
Wednesday, November 5, 2003
Review: Cat People (1942)
My junior-year English teacher once assigned me to write a short story using 250 words or less. With my lousy handwriting, that came out to one page of notebook paper, front and back. I don't recall what the story was about--something sappy and sentimental about a kid whose brother died in Vietnam, I think--but it got an "A." I was
challenged by the restrictions placed upon me and found myself rising to the challenge.
I mention this memory because I think of it whenever I think of Val Lewton.
Lewton was a producer at RKO who was given the task of creating a string of B horror movies, but with numerous creative and budgetary restrictions: The studio provided the often-sensational titles (Cat People, Ghost Ship, Body Snatcher, etc.), but provided little cash. Lewton worked with what he was given with. The result? Some of the most intelligent, elegant and suggestive horror films ever made.
Cat People is the first--and, many reasonably argue, the best--of this string of B pictures (nine in all) and stars Simone Simon as Irena, a beautiful young fashion artist from a small European village who meets, falls in love with and marries an architect (Kent Smith). But Irena has a superstitious fear that, if emotionally (i.e., sexually) aroused, she'll turn into a black panther and kill her mate. Hell of a hang-up, that. This, as you'd imagine, causes all sorts of problems, so she winds up seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Judd (Tom Conway), who tries to convince her that it's all in her head. But when one of her husband's co-workers (Jane Randolph) seems to be more than casually interested in the architect, Irena stalks her.
It's in these scenes of stalking that Cat People really takes hold. Nothing is really shown--we never see Irena turn into a panther, and there's only one scene in which we see a panther that's even assumed to be Irena--but plenty is suggested by screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen and director Jacques Tourneur. Randolph walks down a dark, deserted street seemingly pursued by the clicking of Simon's heels...until the clicking stops. Why? Did she just change into a panther? Is Randolph about to become a meal? And what about the scene in which Randolph swims in a hotel pool, only to see shadows and hear noises that would suggest a large cat is about to pounce. Is this Irena? Has her jealousy transformed her into a killer? A non-human killer at that? And is the "transformation" sexual in nature? If so, is there an element of lesbianism involved? Could you even do that in a '40s monster movie?
Cat People is a great film to look at (and no, not just because of the exquisite Simon), thanks to the sure-handed direction of Jacques Tournier, who would handle other horror films for Lewton and RKO (I walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man) and make further contributions to the genre in later decades (Night of the Demon in the '50s and The Comedy of Terrors in the '60s). And, as with all of the other Lewton-produced horror flicks, the quiet moments are the creepiest. Characters aren't comfortable being alone. Empty streets are more menacing. Even an empty room can fill one with dread. Where other filmmakers might have shown a complete transformation scene (as in Universal's Wolf Man pictures), Lewton has neither the interest nor, bluntly put, the budget for such gimmicks. The horror, for the most part, is off-screen...and is all the more effective for it.
Cat People started a great winning streak for Lewton and RKO. And horror film fans were the beneficiaries.
I mention this memory because I think of it whenever I think of Val Lewton.
Lewton was a producer at RKO who was given the task of creating a string of B horror movies, but with numerous creative and budgetary restrictions: The studio provided the often-sensational titles (Cat People, Ghost Ship, Body Snatcher, etc.), but provided little cash. Lewton worked with what he was given with. The result? Some of the most intelligent, elegant and suggestive horror films ever made.
Cat People is the first--and, many reasonably argue, the best--of this string of B pictures (nine in all) and stars Simone Simon as Irena, a beautiful young fashion artist from a small European village who meets, falls in love with and marries an architect (Kent Smith). But Irena has a superstitious fear that, if emotionally (i.e., sexually) aroused, she'll turn into a black panther and kill her mate. Hell of a hang-up, that. This, as you'd imagine, causes all sorts of problems, so she winds up seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Judd (Tom Conway), who tries to convince her that it's all in her head. But when one of her husband's co-workers (Jane Randolph) seems to be more than casually interested in the architect, Irena stalks her.
It's in these scenes of stalking that Cat People really takes hold. Nothing is really shown--we never see Irena turn into a panther, and there's only one scene in which we see a panther that's even assumed to be Irena--but plenty is suggested by screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen and director Jacques Tourneur. Randolph walks down a dark, deserted street seemingly pursued by the clicking of Simon's heels...until the clicking stops. Why? Did she just change into a panther? Is Randolph about to become a meal? And what about the scene in which Randolph swims in a hotel pool, only to see shadows and hear noises that would suggest a large cat is about to pounce. Is this Irena? Has her jealousy transformed her into a killer? A non-human killer at that? And is the "transformation" sexual in nature? If so, is there an element of lesbianism involved? Could you even do that in a '40s monster movie?
Cat People is a great film to look at (and no, not just because of the exquisite Simon), thanks to the sure-handed direction of Jacques Tournier, who would handle other horror films for Lewton and RKO (I walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man) and make further contributions to the genre in later decades (Night of the Demon in the '50s and The Comedy of Terrors in the '60s). And, as with all of the other Lewton-produced horror flicks, the quiet moments are the creepiest. Characters aren't comfortable being alone. Empty streets are more menacing. Even an empty room can fill one with dread. Where other filmmakers might have shown a complete transformation scene (as in Universal's Wolf Man pictures), Lewton has neither the interest nor, bluntly put, the budget for such gimmicks. The horror, for the most part, is off-screen...and is all the more effective for it.
Cat People started a great winning streak for Lewton and RKO. And horror film fans were the beneficiaries.
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