Cat People (1942)

 dir Jacques Tourneur lp Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph, Tom Conway

This is one of a series of horror films produced by Val Lewton for RKO Studies in the mid-1940s. In the wake of Universal's success with gothic horror films starting in 1931, RKO executives gave audience-tested titles to Lewton and assigned him to make films to fit them. Instead of the exploitation period pieces the studio was expecting, Lewton made literate, restrained films with contemporary settings using actors not associated with horror. They are remembered today as some of the best horror films ever made (RKO eventually forced Lewton to use Boris Karloff for three period-set horror films - they were also excellent).

Cat People is at the top of the list. Irina Dubrovna (Simon), a fashion artist and Serbian immigrant living in New York, has a meet-cute with architect Oliver Reed (Smith), while she is sketching a black panther at the Central Park Zoo. She is attracted to the ruggedly handsome Oliver, and he is entranced by her beauty and exotic accent (Simon was actually French). When she invites him to her apartment for tea, he finds she has something of a morbid streak. Among the cat-themed decor (which also includes Goya's painting Don Manuel Osorio, with three cats hungrily eyeing a canary) is a statue of a knight on horseback holding aloft a sword with a cat impaled on it. Irinia explains that this is King John of Serbia, who freed the area from the Turks, but discovered that the formerly Christian villagers in Irina's ancestral region had fallen into devil worship. Although King John executed most of the satanists, some of them escaped into the mountains. Their descendants transform into panthers when aroused by anger, jealousy, or sexual passion.

As time passes, Oliver falls more deeply in love with Irina, despite the fact that she believes that if she surrenders to her desire for him, she will transform and kill him. The two are married, but at their wedding dinner at a Serbian restaurant a strange women in black (Elizabeth Russell), approaches Irina, greeting her as "sister." A month into their marriage, with Irina still refusing physical intimacy, Oliver arranges for Irina to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Judd (Conway). He tells her that her belief in cat people is a delusion that she must overcome, but she refuses to see him again. Meanwhile, the unhappy Oliver grows closer to Alice, a woman in his office with whom he has a long-standing platonic friendship. Irina's jealousy at their relationship threatens to spark the transformation that she has feared.

Cat People remains a master class in restrained film-making. Lewton believed that nothing that he could show on screen would be superior to what the viewer's imagination could concoct, so their are no transformation scenes. Lewton apparently intended never to show Irina in her panther form, but the studio forced him to include a brief shot of an actual panther prowling around Oliver and Alice's office,  frightening them when they are working late. The are two justly famous scenes that illustrated Lewton's preferred approach. In the first, Alice is walking home late at night, when she gradually becomes aware that she is being stalked; she senses something moving through the vegetation nearby. She (and the viewer) is startled by a loud, catlike hiss, but it turns out to be only a bus pulling up to her bus stop. After she leaves, the camera reveals that four sheep have been killed nearby and we see a series of muddy footprints that gradually transform from feline paws to high-heeled shoes. In the other scene, Alice is swimming in a lonely basement pool at the YMCA, when she begins to hear catlike growls and hisses around the edge of the pool. Treading water, she looks anxiously around, but cannot see what is making the noise. The tension mounts until she begins to scream, her voice bouncing off the walls enclosing the pool and merging with the cat sounds, until someone flips on the light and it's Irina, in human form, calmly asking Alice if she knows where Oliver is. Her knowing smile hints that she enjoyed her romantic rival's panic.

Cat People is a masterpiece of subtle horror, where everything seems normal at first, but we gradually realize that something is wrong. I really enjoy this approach, in both cinema and literature, so this is one of my favorite horror films. Some critics and writers about film have gone a bit too far, however, and claimed that the reality of Irina's condition is supposed to be ambiguous, that the viewer is not supposed to know if Irina actually transforms into a cat, or is simply experiencing a delusion. I agree with film writer Jonathan Rigby, in his great American Gothic, that this is nonsense. Even if we discount the studio-mandated scene of a real cat, there is plenty of evidence that Lewton and screenwriter Dewitt Bodeen meant to establish that Irina literally does turn into a panther.

Forty years after this film, a violent and sexy remake, also called Cat People, directed by Paul Schrader and starring Nastassja Kinski, Malcom McDowell, and John Heard was released. It is of some interest, but is not deserving of the original's classic status.

The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967)

 dir Haral Reinl lp Lex Barker, Karin Dor, Christopher Lee

Lee is Count Regula, an evil sorcerer in 18th century Germany who is attempting to gain immortality by sacrificing 13 virgins. After 12 murders, however, he is arrested and condemned to death. Just like Barbara Steele in Black Sunday (1960) he has a spiked mask hammered onto his face. Unlike in that case, however, this doesn't prove fatal and he is subsequently finished off by being pulled apart by four horses, but not before pronouncing a curse on his executioners.

Thirty-five years later, the Countess Lillian von Brabant (Dor) and her lawyer Roger Mont Elise travel to Count Regula's castle to collect an inheritance for the Countess. Once there, they are captured and imprisoned by servants of the Count, who manage to revive him. Regula announces that Lillian will be his 13th victim, but will first be psychologically and physically tortured.

The original title of this German film translates as The Snake Pit and the Pendulum and, indeed, Roger is tied down in a room with a giant, sharp-edged pendulum getting every closer as it swings back and forth above him and Lillian is trapped on a plank above a snake-and-spider filled pit that is slowly retracted, threating to pitch her in. The very profitable series of Poe adaptations by American International Pictures (AIP) had recently ended so it's not hard to see why the producers of this film might want to ride that wave. However, this is probably more of an imitation of Mario Bava's Italian gothics, like the aforementioned Black Sunday or Kill, Baby, Kill (1966) than it is of AIP's Poe films.

Like the Bava films, this emphasizes atmosphere and it does have some memorable images. The forest that Lillian and Roger travel through to reach Castle Regula is festooned with corpses hanging from the trees and the corridors of the castle are lined with skulls. The mask hammered onto Regula's face and which he is still wearing when revived seems a definite Bava influence. Unlike the demonic mask used in Black Sunday, however, this mask bears more than a passing resemblance to the famous '70s icon, the 'have a good day' smiley face, which gives the mask sequences an unintended air of parody.

That exemplifies the problem with this film. Although there is some effective atmosphere, for the most part it seems silly and cartoonish. Lee isn't given anything interesting to say (neither is anyone else) and the performances of the supporting actors, such as Vladimir Medar as a supposed comic-relief monk, are inadequate (though this could be the fault of the dubbing). Despite the English-language title (one of the most amusingly over-the-top of the era), this has little blood or gore. This is not in itself a bad thing, but the mildness of the film, combined with the weak script, makes this seem more like a live-action cartoon than a truly frightening horror film.

Blood of the Vampire (1958)

dir Henry Cass lp Donald Wolfit, Vincent Ball, Barbara Shelley, Victor Maddern

A deceptively titled (the lead character isn't really a vampire) early entry in the 1950s Gothic revival, this begins in Transylvania in 1874 with a burial in a remote mountain cemetery. Before the lid of the coffin is closed, a masked executioner pounds a stake into the heart of the corpse. A strange deformed man watches from concealment, waiting until everyone else has left, then killing the grave digger and (presumably) stealing the body. Later the deformed man, whose name is Carl, pays an alcoholic doctor to put a fresh heart in the body, then kills the doctor.

Later we meet John Pierre, a young doctor whose experiments with blood transfusion cause him to be unjustly convicted of malpractice and murder. Condemned to life in an island prison, he is diverted instead to a huge asylum for the criminally insane. The feared governor of the institution is Dr. Callistratus, who, of course, is the same person whose burial we witnessed at the beginning of the film. Because the wrong blood type was used during his revival, Callistratus suffers from a condition whereby, "one group of cells in my body is destroying the other." To try to find a cure, he's taking blood from unwilling donors among the inmate population, sometimes so much that it kills them. He enlists Pierre to help him in is experiments, granting him freedom to move about the asylum and to live in a comfortable bedroom rather than a dirty cell. When new evidence exonerates Pierre, Callistratus tells the court that Pierre has been killed in an escape attempt. This causes Pierre's beautiful wife, Madeleine, to infiltrate the asylum, posing as a housekeeper.

This is an imitation of the Hammer thrillers which were just beginning to become popular at the time it was made, but is not nearly as satisfying as films such as Horror of Dracula. It has many of the same trappings as the Hammer films, but the script and performances are not up to Hammer's standards (at least those of the legendary studio's best films) and the plot is a muddled mess. As Bill Warren says in his magisterial Keep Watching the Skies, it seems as though the writers put in as many horror tropes as possible, but failed to mold them into a coherent whole. In the end, it's only interesting as an example of Hammer's early influence and for a chance to see frequent Hammer performer Shelley in her first venture into Gothic horror.

The Reptile (1966)

dir. John Gilling  cast Noel Willman, Jennifer Daniel, Ray Barrett, Jacqueline Pearce, Michael Ripper, John Laurie, Marne Maitland

In the Cornish village of Clagmoor Heath, sometime in the late Victorian period, local resident Charles Spalding, visits the manor house of Dr. Franklyn, drawn by a note left at his cottage. There, he is bitten by some sort of humanoid creature which we don't quite see, and dies foaming at the mouth, his face swollen and blackened. Charles' brother Harry (Barrett) inherits the cottage and moves in with his beautiful bride Valerie (Daniel). Harry was told by his brother's attorney that Charles died of heart failure, but quickly finds out things are not that simple. The townspeople are openly hostile to Harry and only the publican Tom Bailey (Ripper) will talk to him. He warns Harry not to live in his brother's cottage and eventually admits that Charles died of some mysterious malady known locally as the "Black Death". A local eccentric, Mad Peter (Laurie), seems willing to reveal more, but he also shows up infected by the Black Death. When Valerie rushes to the manor house to seek Dr. Franklyn's help, the Doctor coldly informs her that it is none of his concern and, in any case, he is a Doctor of Theology, not a physician.

Peter dies and, because there is no medical doctor in the village, Tom agrees to examine the body, having gained some amateur medical experience as a sailor. Tom and Harry find strange puncture wounds on Peter's neck which Harry, who served in the army in India, recognizes as similar to those caused by the bite of a King Cobra. Tom convinces Harry to disinter Charles, which reveals identical wounds on his neck.

Meanwhile, Valerie meets Dr. Franklyn's gorgeous daughter Anna, who seems friendly, but is treated by her father with cold cruelty. When Valerie protests, Dr. Franklyn tells her that there is more to the situation than she knows. A tense dinner at the manor house ends with Dr. Franklyn encouraging a reluctant Anna to play the sitar for the Spaldings, then suddenly, inexplicably, smashing the instrument in a fit of rage. What is going on?

One of Hammer's two Cornwall-set movies filmed back-to-back and directed by Gilling, The Reptile is often considered inferior to the other "Cornwall Classic," Plague of the Zombies. Though I agree with this assessment, I think both films are worthy. It's difficult to judge how compelling the mystery is, since I already knew the answer from reading other reviews, but the script hides the solution fairly well. The monster that is revealed is almost unique (it has a few cinematic precedents) and, in truth, is one of the very few monsters "created" by Hammer and not re-used from the first wave of Gothic horror films in the '30s and '40s. The film's biggest weakness is that the ending feels unimaginative and somewhat rote, resembling that of several other Hammer films.

In the end, this is a film for Hammer fans to watch for the performances. Michael Ripper had a great name for a horror star (sadly, he never played Jack the Ripper), although it was his ability to play kindly, slightly eccentric characters that made him one of Hammer's most-beloved character actors. He appeared in many Hammer films, sometimes for only a few moments of screen time, as in Brides of Dracula, sometimes in more substantial roles, such as here and in Plague of the Zombies (as the local constable), but is always memorable. His cinematic charisma came close to matching that of Peter Cushing, though Ripper was never a headlining star. Pearce, on the other hand, only appeared in Zombies and this film for Hammer, but is also quite memorable. In the Reptile, she looks great in her Eastern costumes, while doing a nice job of portraying an outwardly friendly character about whom there is something just a little "off." Zombies is a better film overall, but I think Pearce gets a better showcase here. It's a pity she wasn't in more Hammer films.

In the final analysis, this film is a worthy addition to the Hammer horror canon mainly because of Ripper, Pearce, and the unusual monster.

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974)

dir. Jorge Grau  cast Cristina Galbo, Ray Lovelock, Arthur Kennedy, Jeannie Mestre

Saddled with a bewildering array of alternate titles, including Breakfast at Manchester Morgue, Don't Open the Window, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Non si deve profanare il sonne dei morti (Do Not Profane the Sleep of the Dead), and others, this Italian-Spanish co-production probably has the most critical love of any of the first generation of cannibal zombie films made between the first two George Romero Dead films: Night of the Living Dead (1968), and Dawn of the Dead (1978). Its reputation is well deserved.

George (Lovelock), a young bearded, long-haired curio shop owner, leaves Manchester on his motorcycle for a relaxing weekend in Great Britain's Peak District. At a highway gas station, he meets pretty strawberry blonde Edna (Galbo) when she backs over his bike in her mini. Now lacking transportation, the assertive George all but forces the meek Edna to give him a ride to his destination in the nearby village of Windermere (he insists on driving). After successfully pleading to be dropped off first at her sister's house, Edna waits in the car while George asks directions at a local farm. Edna manages to escape when a strange man lurches out of the nearby woods, apparently with the design of attacking her. The man matches the description of a well-known tramp who recently drowned in a nearby river, but no one will believe Edna's story. Later, the same man turns up and kills Edna's brother-in-law Martin, an event witnessed by Edna's heroin-addicted sister, Kate (Mestre).

Sergeant McCormick, the detective on the case, won't believe Kate and Edna's story or George's protest that he had nothing to do with the crime. McCormick is a hostile arch-conservative who rails against George's "long hair and faggot clothes". He becomes even more convinced that George and Edna are responsible when photographs of the incident taken by Martin's automatic camera fail to reveal the zombie (this strange detail is never explained). Later, George takes Edna to a remote graveyard to prove to her that the tramp's body lies in its coffin. Of course, it does not and George and Edna barely escape with their lives after encountering more zombies. Further deaths occur, which McCormick also blames on George. George discovers that an experimental sound-wave machine, designed to get rid of agricultural pests, is making the dead rise and attack the living, but can't get anyone in authority to believe him. Carnage ensues.

Grau admitted that he was charged with simply making an imitation of Night of the Living Dead in color, but The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue has enough intriguing differences from the Romero film to have a life of its own. Filmed on location, the movie effectively contrasts the horror of the walking dead with the quaint beauty of the Peak District's woods, valleys, and small villages. The film reveals its menace very gradually, as it takes George and Edna quite awhile to figure out what is happening, and Grau does well in building a sense of mounting dread. Rather than Romero's mass invasion of zombies, we never get more than three or four zombies onscreen at one time. However, these zombies seem more intelligent than Romero's, possessing an ability to use tools and weapons. The only means of destroying them is with fire; even shotgun blasts to the head don't do the trick. In an intriguing touch, the zombies have a desire and ability to increase their number by daubing blood on the eyes of recently deceased corpses. They also have a tendency to strangle or bludgeon their victims before eating their organs. The use of gore is more restrained than in Romero's films, but what we do see is just as intense.

Kennedy is very good as the hateful McCormick; the other performances are acceptable. Galbo is attractive, but regrettably, her character is written as always on the edge of hysteria and perpetually needing to be rescued by George. George is easy to root for when he goes up against the thick-headed officials who refuse to even listen to his story merely because they don't like the way he looks and when he fights the zombies, but his condescending and domineering treatment of Edna makes him seem like a chauvinistic jerk. I'm guessing this is a symptom of the times, rather than the result of any intention of the screenwriters.

In some ways, I like Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, even better than the Romero films. It seems more "plausible" (if that term can even be used in discussing zombie films) and I liked the gradual unfolding of the story. I recommend it highly.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972)

dir. Emilio Miraglia cast Barbara Bouchet, Ugo Pagliai, Marina Malfatti, Pia Giancaro, Sybil Danning

In contemporary Germany, the aristocratic Wildenbruck family is under a curse. Every 100 years, the "Red Queen", their evil ancestor, takes possession of one of the women in the family and murders seven victims, the last her own sister. Now, its been a century since the last murder spree and when a figure in a red cloak sneaks into the bedroom of the family patriarch brandishing an antique dagger and frightens the old man to death, it seems to be happening again. The new spate of murders centers around the friends and co-workers of Kitty Wildenbruck, a beautiful young woman who works as a fashion photographer. Eyewitness accounts seem to point toward Kitty's sister Eveline as the murderer, but there's just one problem. Years before, Kitty accidentally killed Eveline and covered up the unfortunate incident with the help of her other sister Franziska (Malfatti), telling everyone that her sibling had severed all ties with the family and moved to the US. Is Evenline back from the grave for supernatural revenge?

Giallo (Italian for "yellow") novels were cheap, sensational paperback crime novels, often with yellow covers, popular in Italy beginning in the 1930's.  When Italian directors began to adapt the same style to film in the 1960s, giallo began to be used to denote a cinematic genre. Half crime/suspense films and half horror thrillers, giallo films usually featured twisty, at times nearly incomprehensible, plots, abundant eroticism, and bloody, disturbing murders.  Dozens of these films were made in the late 1960s and early 1970s, usually with an eye to the export market, which meant they featured international casts incorporating continental European, English, and American actors.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times is a good example of the genre. Like many gialli it has a contemporary setting, but is careful to include numerous Gothic trappings as well. Kitty spends her 
days surrounded by glamorous people in ultra-modern offices and studios, but the climax of the film is set in the crumbling dungeons of the Wildenbrucks' ancestral castle, and the red-cloaked killer, wielding an ancient-looking dagger, is a figure straight from the Gothic past. The murders are disturbing, including stabbing, a fence-post impalement, and one character dragged to death behind a car. The eroticism is also present with Danning, who later became a star of much cheaper and sillier American exploitation firms, providing the major nude scenes. Women are front and center as the major characters, yet there are disturbingly misogynist touches, including one completely unnecessary rape scene, which at least is suggested more than shown, but should have been removed altogether. It has practically no affect on the plot or the characters.

As for the plot, it was made well enough to keep me interested in the solution to the mystery, though the dialogue is often silly and the acting is frequently over the top. Bouchet is acceptable in the major role. I had only seen her in the comic version of Casino Royale (1967), as Miss Moneypenny, so it was fun to see her in a more serious role. The film is flawed, but I didn't find any of the flaws fatal and, for the most part, enjoyed it.

IMDB says that this film is rated PG. They must be referring to a cut US version, because the version I saw had plenty of blood and nudity and was definitely an R. Since it was in unsubtitled Italian (I streamed it on Amazon and had to turn on the closed captioning feature), I'm assuming it was the original Italian version. In a way, it was ludicrous to hear characters with German names speaking Italian while all the signs, documents, etc. were in German, but then American movies do that all the time.  
 

The Devil's Wedding Night (1973)

dir. Luigi Batzella  cast Mark Damon, Rosalba Neri, Esmerelda Barros, Xiro Papas, Gengher Gatti

Karl Schiller (Damon), a scholar of the occult, announces to his twin brother Franz (also Damon), his plans to travel to Castle Dracula in Transylvania to secure the ring of the Nibelungen, which holds great power for evil. His motive is altruistic, to deposit the ring in the "Karnstein Museum of Archaeology" thus keeping it out of circulation. However, Franz needs the money a sale of the ring would bring to pay his gambling debt and beats his brother to Transylvania. There, he seduces an inkeeper's beautiful daughter, Tania, who tells him that every fifty years on the "full moon of the virgins" (the literal translation of the film's original Italian title), five virgins are mysteriously compelled to go to Castle Dracula and are never seen again.

At the Castle, Franz meets the Contessa Dolingen de Vries (Neri), the current owner of the castle, who explains that she was able to buy it cheaply because she is a member of the Dracula family. During sex with the gorgeous Countess, Franz notices that she wears the ring, but he is quickly overcome by her supernatural powers. Soon after, Karl arrives looking for his brother. Can he defeat the Countess, save his brother and Tania (who has been kidnapped by the Countess' servants) and recover the ring?

This is a silly, but entertaining film that amusingly works hard to throw in references to just about every trope of Gothic horror. Franz is introduced reciting lines from Poe's The Raven, the name of the museum is a reference to Sheridan LeFanu's classic vampire tale Carmilla, the Countess' name is from the Stoker short story Dracula's Guest, the Countess bathes in the blood of virgins, just like Elizabeth Bathory, and Dracula features prominently in the story. None of this really hangs together and the script is uneven. The screenwriters have strange ideas about history. The dialogue indicates that Poe is still alive, while at the same time referencing Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, which did not debut until 20 years after Poe's death.

Like many continental horror films of the time, this is at least as much of a softcore sex movie as a horror movie, with as much nudity shorehorned in as possible. For instance, at the climactic satanic ritual, the Countess' henchmen are careful to begin by tearing open the tunics of the virgins who have been hypnotically summoned to Castle Dracula, giving viewers a good view of their breasts. It's a film that's hard to take seriously, but, again like many other European films, it does benefit from being filmed on location, rather than a cheap set. It's also a good showcase for Neri, one of the most beautiful of the many sexy actresses who graced Euro-horror in its heyday. The more well-known Lady Frankenstein was a larger role for Neri, but a much inferior film.