Jon Behrens

Filmmaker, photographer, sound artist

Movie of the Week : Day of the Triffids (1962)

Posted on by

It has been a really long time since I posted a Movie of the Week, so here it goes! I can remember this film blowing my young mind the first time I saw it on late night TV in the early seventies , 10 years after the film was released.

The Day of the Triffids is a 1962 British science fiction film in CinemaScope and Eastmancolor, produced by George Pitcher and Philip Yordan, directed by Steve Sekely, that stars Howard Keel and Nicole Maurey. The film is based on the 1951 novel of the same name by John Wyndham. Day of the Triffids was released in the UK by the Rank Organisation and in the US by Allied Artists.

Triffids are tall, carnivorous, mobile plants capable of aggressive and seemingly intelligent behaviour. They are able to move about by “walking” on their roots, appear to communicate with each other, and possess a deadly whip-like poisonous sting that enables them to kill their victims and feed on their rotting carcasses.

Bill Masen (Howard Keel), a merchant navy officer, is lying in a hospital bed with his eyes bandaged. He discovers that while he has been waiting for his accident-damaged eyes to heal (the accident that caused Masen to be blinded is never explained), an unusual meteor shower the night before has blinded most people on Earth. Once he leaves the hospital, Masen finds people all over London struggling to stay alive in the face of their new affliction. Some survive by cooperating while others simply fight, but it is apparent that after just a few days society is collapsing.

Masen rescues a school girl named Susan (Janina Faye), who has no parents and is a ward of the state, from a crashed train, and they decide to leave London and head for France. Masen and Susan find refuge at a chateau, but when it is attacked by escaped sighted convicts, they are again forced to escape; shortly afterwards, the Triffids attack and kill everyone in the chateau. The Triffid population continues to grow, feeding on people and animals. Meanwhile, at a lighthouse on a coastal island off Cornwall, Tom Goodwin (Kieron Moore), a flawed but gifted scientist, and his wife Karen (Janette Scott), battle the plants as he searches for a way to conquer them. Goodwin eventually finds the answer, which has been right there all along: salt water. ~ From Wikipedia

 

 

Movie of the Week : The Terror (1963)

Posted on by

 

It has a been a month or so Since I have done another edition of my Movie of the Week. This week is the Roger Corman classic The Terror from 1963. I know most of you have seen this film millions of times and you find it in the bargin binds of video stores and catch it on late night TV, but has mostly shown in the crappy faded scratched up dupe. This weeks movie of the Week presentation has The Terror taken from a pretty clean 35mm print and a nice scan done. Its almost like seeing the film for the first time,in its wide screen glory much better than the cropped version.

The Terror (1963) is a low-budget American Vistascope horror film produced and directed by Roger Corman. It was filmed on sets left over from other AIP productions, including The Haunted Palace. The movie was also released as Lady of the Shadows, The Castle of Terror, and The Haunting.

Set in 1806, the film tells the story of a lost French soldier in the Confederation of the Rhine named Andre Duvalier (Jack Nicholson) who is saved by a strange young woman named Helene (Sandra Knight). She looks like Ilsa, the wife of the baron (played by Boris Karloff), who died twenty years before.

Investigating who the woman really is, Andre stumbles upon a hidden secret of the Baron: After he found Ilsa sleeping with another man named Eric, the Baron killed his wife while his servant killed Eric, or so he explains.

All the while, the phantom of Ilsa remained under the control of a peasant witch (Dorothy Neumann), who has commanded the ghost to torment the Baron for the previous two years. Over the course of the film, Ilsa’s ghost beseeches the Baron to kill himself, so they could be together. After much hesitation, the Baron decides to do so, perhaps to atone for his crimes.

During the climactic scenes, Andre, as well as the Baron’s butler Stefan (Dick Miller), try to stop him, eventually forcing the witch into compliance. Here it is revealed that the witch Katrina is in fact the mother of Eric, who she believes was killed by the Baron twenty years before, and that is why she has tried to make him commit suicide and damn his soul to hell. In a stunning revelation, Stefan reveals that Eric never died, that it was the Baron who was killed. Eric then took the Baron’s place, living his life until he deluded himself into thinking he was the Baron.

Katrina, realizing her folly only too late, goes with the two men to stop Eric from flooding the castle crypt and killing himself. However, Katrina’s pact with the devil makes her unable to go into the consecrated ground of the mausoleum and ends up being struck by lightning and burning to death to the ground as she tries to escape.

In the climax of the film, Ilsa’s ghost attempts to kill Eric while the crypt floods, and Stefan joins the struggle. However, by the time Andre gains access to the crypt, it is already flooding and crumbling, and he is able to carry only Helene’s body away. the film ends as the two share a touching moment together outside before Helene begins to rapidly dissolve into a rotting corpse.

Corman decided to make the movie to take advantage of sets left over from The Raven. He paid Leo Gordon $1,600 to write a script, and made a deal with Boris Karloff to be available for three days filming for a small amount of money plus a deferred payment of $15,000 that would be paid if the film earned more than $150,000.

Boris Karloff later recalled:

Corman had the sketchiest outline of a story. I read it and begged him not to do it. He said “That’s alright Boris, I know what I’m going to do. I want you for two days on this.” I was in every shot, of course. Sometimes I was just walking through and then I would change my jacket and walk back. He nearly killed me on the last day. He had me in a tank of cold water for about two hours. After he got me in the can he suspended operations and went off and directed two or three operations to get the money, I suppose… [The sets] were so magnificent… As they were being pulled down around our ears, Roger was dashing around with me and a camera, two steps ahead of the wreckers. It was very funny.

Corman says he had “a previous deal” with Nicholson, Miller and Knight to work two days on the film.

Karloff’s scenes were shot in two days by Corman, who later said, “I didn’t have the money to shoot the rest of the picture union, which meant I couldn’t direct myself because I was personally signed with the unions. So I would say that at one time half the young filmmakers in Hollywood did pieces on The Terror.

Corman says when he cut together Karloff’s footage he realised “it didn’t make sense” so he filmed a scene between Dick Miller and Jack Nicholson (in close up because the sets had been taken down) and got them to explain the plot.

Corman sent Francis Ford Coppola to Big Sur for three days to shoot additional footage. He ended up staying eleven days. Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, Dennis Jacob and Jack Nicholson also directed some scenes. Corman says, “Jack Nicholson finally directed himself when we ran out of directors; and I think a couple of other guys worked in there.”

Leftover sets from other AIP films were used when shooting the film, notably those from The Haunted Palace, a Vincent Price horror film made earlier the same year. The tree against which Sandra Knight expires in The Terror is the same one to which Price was tied and burned in The Haunted Palace.

The uniform worn by Jack Nicholson was used by Marlon Brando in Désirée (1954).

 From Wikipedia

Movie of the Week: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Posted on by


This was one of the first films I remember going to see in a theatre as a kid, and was my first exposures to psychotronic cinema.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a 1971 British comedy horror film directed by Robert Fuest, written by William Goldstein and James Whiton and starring Vincent Price and Joseph Cotten. Its art deco sets, dark humour and performance by Price have made the film and its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again cult classics. The film also features Terry-Thomas and Hugh Griffith, with an uncredited Caroline Munro appearing in still photographs as Phibes’s wife.

The film follows the title character, Phibes, who blames the medical team that attended to his wife for her death four years prior and sets out to exact vengeance on each one. Phibes is inspired in his murderous spree by the Ten Plagues of Egypt from the Old Testament.

Plot:
Dr. Anton Phibes was an expert in theology and music who was supposedly killed in a car crash in 1921, shortly after the death of his beloved wife, Victoria, during an operation. However, he survived the crash, horribly scarred by the accident and left unable to speak, forcing him to remake his face with prosthetics and use his knowledge of acoustics to regain his voice. Resurfacing in 1925, Phibes believes that his wife died a victim of incompetent doctors, and begins elaborate plans to kill them.

Phibes begins his quest for vengeance with the help of his beautiful and silent female assistant Vulnavia, using the ten plagues of Egypt as a basis, wearing an amulet with Hebrew letters corresponding with the appropriate plagues as he commits the murders. After three doctors are killed, Inspector Trout, a detective from Scotland Yard, learns that they had all worked together under the direction of Dr. Vesalius, who reveals that all of the deceased had been on his team in Victoria’s case, as well as four other doctors and a nurse. When another murder is reported, Trout suspects Phibes is alive, and he and Vesalius go to the Phibes mausoleum at Highgate Cemetery. They find ashes in a box in Phibes’ coffin, which Trout believes are the remains of Phibes’ chauffeur; Victoria’s coffin is empty.

Despite all of the police’s best efforts, Phibes is able to kill the remaining doctors and the nurse. Reserving the final punishment for Dr. Vesalius, he kidnaps the doctor’s son, Lem, then calls Vesalius and tells him to come alone to his mansion on Maldene Square if he wants to save his son’s life. Despite Trout’s protests, Vesalius knocks the inspector unconscious and immediately races to Phibes’ mansion, where he confronts the mad doctor. Phibes has placed Vesalius’ son under anesthesia and prepared him for surgery; a small key implanted near the boy’s heart will unlock his restraints, but Vesalius must perform the surgery within six minutes (the same amount of time Victoria was on the operating table before her death) to get the key before acid from a container above Lem’s head falls and destroys his face. Vesalius succeeds and moves the table out of the way; Vulnavia, backing away from the police, is sprayed with the acid instead.

Convinced he has accomplished his vendetta, Phibes retreats to the basement of his house to lie in the stone sarcophagus containing the embalmed body of his wife. He drains out his own blood and replaces it with embalming fluid as the coffin’s inlaid stone lid slides into place, concealing them both in darkness. Trout and the police arrive and discover that Phibes has mysteriously disappeared. Trout and Vesalius recall that the “final curse” was darkness, and they speculate that they will encounter Phibes again. From Wikipedia

Link to Facebook