Dank Satanic Mills #1

It’s the iron maiden again! Screen right, bottom. The same infernal device Conrad Veidt is consigned to in THE MAN WHO LAUGHS (in his first role, as the hero’s father) and which he later admired from the outside in ABOVE SUSPICION. We saw it again later in Corman’s THE RAVEN, the most recent appearance I’ve spotted by the long-serving instrument of torture. One of the most-used props in films. After a turn in it, you could recover by having a lie-down on Gloria Swanson’s swan-boat-bed.

I would like to discover more appearances.

Anyway, I have to say more about THE STRANGE DOOR because Eureka! granted me a review copyof their ace Karloff MANIACAL MADNESS set. Fun movie — future Star Trek director Joseph Pevney is turned loose in a lot of standing sets (a cucalorus in every room) with Charles Laughton and Boris Karloff. Laughton seems like he needs a couple-three more takes of every scene to get the lines down, but, aware of the tight schedule, I guess, he ploughs on until “cut” (rather than breaking the scene whenever he feels himself drying, as he did with Sternberg in all those I, CLAUDIUS outtakes). There’s a lot of mad invention and lipsmacking craziness, but punctuated by uncertain pauses where he has to slow himself down and then ramp up the energy again when he remembers what’s next.

Karloff, very solid, reunited with his OLD DARK HOUSE co-star, did not get on with him, as reported by Kim Newman and Stephen Jones in their lively commentary. The suggestion that Laughton’s style was becoming old-fashioned is one I’d take issue with — I’d say “Have you seen ADVISE AND CONSENT?” Or, indeed, ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, which always struck me as a very modern bit of camp villainy. If Laughton seems out of date in THE STRANGE DOOR it’s because the whole film is, the dead end of the Universal Gothic cycle (along with THE BLACK CASTLE the following year). And the man isn’t on top form, though he’s certainly ENGAGED.

The climax, with our heroes trapped in a cell whose walls are inexorably closing in (powered by the water-mill I alluded to in our title), is gripping. Walls closing in always makes for a good, suspenseful scenario — I don’t know why they don’t trot the idea out more often, unless it’s that one so seldom encounters it in daily life.

Femms Fatale

Got my Blu-Ray of THE OLD DARK HOUSE from Masters of Cinema!

Stephen Horne and I made a great big video essay for this one — 38 mins! I just couldn’t help myself. Adding to my musings are quotes from various interested parties and the J.B. Priestley source novel, Benighted, performed by ace actors Angela Hardie and Steven McNicoll. I think this is a particularly fun one — DVDBeaver and CineOutsider have been kind enough to call it “wonderful” and “enthralling” — and of course the film is a stone-cold masterpiece.

The Old Dark House [Masters of Cinema] Dual Format (Blu-ray & DVD)

Bride of the American Werewolf

We’re going to see BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN at Filmhouse today, introduced by John Landis.

Landis has a nice ongoing relationship with Edinburgh — he was retrospected by Edinburgh International Film Festival, he shot parts of BURKE AND HARE here (here hare here) and now he’s a guest of Dead By Dawn, our long-running horror fest.

My connection to the BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, always intense (though I never saw it as a little kid — took me years), is even more meaningful now, since I recently completed an epic video essay for the forthcoming Masters of Cinema release of THE OLD DARK HOUSE. So I can call myself a Whaler with the best of them.

The confluence of Landis and BRIDE makes me want to pitch a sequel to his maybe-best film — Anthony Waller’s AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN PARIS is best forgotten, which is fine, because it has been. BRIDE OF AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON would star Jenny Agutter, who provided the romantic interest in the first film. It would turn out that lycanthropy is also a sexually transmitted condition. I mean, who’s to say she didn’t get bitten by her boyfriend during their sexytimefun in the original movie? There’s definitely something oral going on.

(Big cunnilingus scene in KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE too. Obviously a Landis favourite. Maybe that’s why he wears a beard, so he always feels like he’s… Should I ask him? Probably best not.)

Anyway, werewolf Agutter, that’s the pitch. We can work the details out later.

This prospective encounter feels very timely, since my friend Stephen Murphy, a brilliant make-up artist, just met Rick Baker, creator of Landis’s werewolf (and so much more) at the Monsterpalooza convention (yes, this a thing). Stephen was made up as a zombie Rick Baker at the time. I can’t compete with that.