In a remote army base, three busty scientists create a busty robot named Raquel (Melissa Brasselle). General Griffin (Arthur Sellers) is impressed that Raquel has mastered all forms of combat but he is not happy by her dominatrix outfit because, according to him, America’s enemies don’t fear cleavage.
One night, while the scientists all have hot dates, Raquel escapes from the base and goes to a nearly deserted desert town, where she kills a leering gas station attendant and a busty diner owner. Meanwhile, a group of busty teenagers and their boyfriends run out of gas while driving through town and find themselves being stalked by Raquel.
This is a Jim Wynorski film so you know what you’re going to get, a lot of cleavage (though, for once, no actual nudity), a splattering of blood, and some deliberately corny humor that is sometimes self-aware enough to be funny. Murderbot was originally named Killbot, a reference to Wynorski’s first film, Chopping Mall. Murderbot even duplicates that film’s famous exploding head scene, though it’s the entire body that explodes this time.
This is pretty dumb but Wynorski fans should be happy. Even though no one will be watching this movie for the acting, I actually did like the performances of Walker Mintz and Sylvia Thackery, playing respectively a trumpet player and the girl that he likes. As Raquel, Melissa Brasselle is no Arnold Schwarzenegger but she still handles dreadful one-liners like “You’ve been deleted,” with enough aplomb to make them tolerable.
Murderbot is proof that, no matter how much things change, Jim Wynorski will always by Jim Wynorksi.
The 2010 film, Freeway Killer, opens with a desperate woman named Ruth (Debbon Ayer) visiting a man named William Bonin (Scott Anthony Leef).
Bonin, who has a quick smile and a mustache that makes him look like a wannabe porn star, is an inmate on California’s Death Row. In just a few days, Bonin is scheduled to be the first man to be executed by lethal injection in the state of California. Ruth explains that she has done everything that she can to try to save Bonin’s life. She has written to the review board. She had written to the governor. She has asked that Bonin be spared and she’s even used the exact words that Bonin suggested that she use in her letters. However, she’s gotten no response. Still, she now wants Bonin to uphold his side of the bargain. She wants to know if her son was among the thirty-six men that Bonin is suspected of having murdered.
William Bonin merely smirks and points out that he never actually agreed to tell Ruth anything. He suggested that Ruth write the letters but never did he say that he would actually do anything in return. That was just something that he allowed Ruth to assume. Even while sitting on Death Row and facing an inevitable execution, Bonin enjoys the power that he gets from manipulating people. Instead of telling Ruth about her son, he tells the story of his life as a serial killer.
The film flashes back to 1980, when William Bonin has already started his career as a murderer. A Vietnam vet who has a war story for every occasion, he cruises the freeways of California and picks up young hitchhikers. Sometimes, he is accompanied by an accomplice. Vernon Butts (Dusty Sorg) is a self-styled occultist who wears a wizard hat at home and who knows more about Dungeons and Dragons than real life. When they’re not killing hitchhikers, Bonin and Vernon tend to bicker. Vernon constantly points out that Bonin was not the great war hero that he claims to have been. Bonin makes fun of Vernon’s hobbies. At times, they seem to genuinely despise each other but one of the few times that Bonin shows any emotion is when Vernon tries to kill himself in a pique of hurt feelings.
One night, Bonin sees a teenager named Kyle (Cole Williams) being yelled at by both his boss and his girlfriend. As he does with all of his victims, Bonin pulls up in his van and asks Kyle if he wants a ride. However, when Kyle gets in the van, it turns out that Bonin doesn’t want to kill him. Instead, he sees Kyle as a kindred spirit and soon, he’s recruited Kyle as his second accomplice. Unlike Vernon, Kyle believes all of Bonin’s stories. However, Kyle grows more confident with each murder and soon, he’s even suggesting that Bonin should kill Vernon. Frustrated with both Kyle and Vern, Bonin search for a third accomplice, an act that ultimately leads to his downfall.
Watching Bonin, Vern, and Kyle, I was reminded of a creepy group of older men who always seemed to be hanging out on campus when I was in college. Though none of them were enrolled in classes and all of them were notably older than the majority of the people on campus, they still spent all of their time hanging out around the student union, smoking cigarettes, and trying to impress people who were half their age. They approached me and my friend a few times, making awkward comments about whatever we happened to be talking about or studying at the moment. One thing that I quickly learned was that being rude would not get rid of them. Instead, you had to literally stand up and walk somewhere else to get away from them. (They had no problem approaching people but were too lazy to follow after them.) At the time, my friends and I used to joke that they were probably serial killers. Most realistically, they were probably just three losers who didn’t want to have to grow up. Still, they definitely gave off a bad vibe.
Based on a true story, Freeway Killer focuses on the relationship between Bonin, Vernon, and Kyle. Though he’s their self-declared leader, Bonin is incapable of doing anything without the help of Vernon and Kyle. At the same time, the film leaves us to wonder if Vernon and Kyle would have become killers if they hadn’t fallen under William Bonin’s influence. One gets the feeling that if Bonin and Vernon had never met each other, they both would have spent the rest of their lives as obscure losers, living alone and working a dead-end job. Certainly, if Bonin and Vernon had never met, Bonin would never have subsequently felt the need to recruit Kyle into their activities. But, because they did meet, at least 30 innocent people were murdered in California. The film is unsettling, not just because of the murders (of which only a few are discreetly portrayed) but because of the feeling that the murders themselves would never have happened if only William Bonin had not served an earlier prison sentence at the same time as Vernon Butts.
Scott Anthony Leet gives a good performance as William Bonin, playing him as man whose quick smile is just a cover for the raging feelings of inadequacy that are churning just below the surface. Dusty Sorg and Cole WIlliams are also well-cast as, respectively, Vernon and Kyle. Sorg, especially, makes Vernon into a monster who is frightening because it’s very easy to imagine running into him (or someone like him) in everyday life. Michael Rooker brings his quiet intensity to a small role as the detective who investigates the Freeway Killer murders.
The real-life William Bonin was executed in 1996. I’m against the death penalty because I don’t think we should normalize the idea of the government killing anyone but that still doesn’t mean that the world isn’t better off without William Bonin in it.
First released in 1973 and also known as The Hanging Woman, Beyond The Living Dead is a Spanish horror film that is just incoherent enough to be intriguing.
Having inherited the estate of his uncle, Serge Chekhov (Stelvio Rosi) arrives in the town of Skopje and is stunned to discover that, even though it’s only 6:00 in the evening, there’s no one in the streets. Everyone has retired to their homes. Even after Serge stumbles across a woman hanging in the cemetery, no one is willing to open their doors when he pounds on them. Serge finally finds his uncle’s place, where he discovers that the hanging woman was the daughter of his uncle’s widow, Countess Nadia Minalji (Maria Pia Conte). While Serge speaks to the police (who seem to view Serge as being the most likely suspect), Nadia retreats to her room, performs a black magic ceremony, and sends out a mental summons to Igor (Spanish horror great Paul Nashcy), a gravedigger who is also a necrophile and who has a huge collection of photographs of naked corpses in his shack.
Once Serge is finally able to convince the police that he’s not a murderer, he helps them when they chase Igor around the village. Later, Serge returns home and is promptly seduced by Nadia. The next morning, Nadia’s servant, Doris (Dyanik Zurakowska), begs Serge not to fire her and her father, Prof. Droila (Gerard Tischy). It turns out that Prof. Droila has a laboratory in the house’s basement where he’s been doing experiment on how to reanimate the dead. Serge has Doris undress for him and then, once she’s crying, he tells her that he already talked to the professor and agreed to allow him and his daughter to remain. WHAT THE HELL, SERGE!?
Got all that? I hope so because the film only gets stranger from there, with multiple murders occurring and Serge falling in love with Doris just as quickly as he fell in love with Nadia. As Igor stumbles around the village and peeps through people’s windows, Nadia holds a séance and eventually, a few decaying zombies show up. The plot is nearly impossible to follow, which is actually something that I tend to find to be true with a lot of Spanish horror films that were released during the Franco era. Making movies full of murder and nudity under a puritanical regime leads to a certain narrative incoherence. That said, the film plays out at such a strange pace and contains so many bizarre red herrings that it does achieve the feel of a particularly vivid dream.
Today, Beyond The Living Dead is best-remembered for Paul Naschy’s memorably weird performance as Igor. Naschy originally turned down the role, thinking that it was too small. The director allowed Naschy to rewrite the script to make Igor more interesting and it was Naschy who came up with the idea of making Igor not just a grave robber but also a necrophile. For English-speaking audiences, it can be hard for us to judge Naschy as an actor because we usually only see him in poorly dubbed films. (The English-language version of Beyond The Living Dead was apparently dubbed by a group of cockney voice actors.) But Naschy definitely had an imposing physical presence and this film makes good use of it.
Full of atmospheric visuals and surprisingly effective gore effects, Beyond The Living Dead does capture the viewer’s imagination, as long as one is content to not worry too much about trying to make much sense of it!
The 1986 film, Invaders from Mars, opens with a dark and stormy night.
12 year-old David Gardner (Hunter Carson, son of actress Karen Black and filmmaker L.T. Kit Carson), who dreams of growing up to become an astronaut, witnesses something strange happening outside of his bedroom window. He watches as a spaceship lands on a nearby hill and apparently drills itself into the ground. The next morning, David convinces his father (Timothy Bottoms) to go out to the hill and see what he can find. When his father returns, he says that he didn’t see anything strange at the hill. However, he is now acting strangely, no longer showing emotion.
Soon, everyone in the small town is also acting strangely, from David’s mother (Laraine Newman) to his teacher (Louise Fletcher). David notices that everyone has a mysterious mark on the back of their neck. Even more alarmingly, he walks in on his teacher eating a mouse. Investigating the hill himself, David discovers that his father was lying about nothing being there. Instead, there’s a cavernous spaceship that is patrolled by aliens! A creature with a giant brain has taken control of almost everyone in David’s life. David discovers that the hill right outside of his house is now the headquarters of an intergalactic invasion. It’s a war of the worlds and David is stuck right in the middle.
Fortunately, David does have a few allies. The aliens have not managed to take control of everyone. The school nurse (Karen Black) believes David and helps him explore the spaceship. The surprisingly nice General Wilson (James Karen) is not only willing to launch a military operation on the advice of a 12 year-old but he also doesn’t have any problem allowing that 12 year-old to take de facto command of his soldiers. Can David save his community from the Martians?
A remake of the 1953 sci-fi classic, Invaders from Mars was directed by Tobe Hooper, the Texas-born director who was best known for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist. At first, the deliberately campy Invaders from Mars might seem like an unexpected film from Hooper but actually, it has quite a bit in common with Hooper’s other credits. Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it plays out like an increasingly surreal dream, one with an emphasis on isolation. Like Poltergeist, it’s ultimately a satire of suburban and small town conformity. (Indeed, one could argue that Invaders From Mars is Poltergeist without the interference of Steven Spielberg.) If the original Invaders From Mars was about the dangers of communism, the remake is about the danger of losing your childhood imagination and just becoming a mindless drone.
Invaders From Mars is often a deliberately silly film. Sometimes, it’s definitely a bit too silly for its own good, hence the guilty in guilty pleasure. That said, whenever I see it, I can’t help but smile at how quickly General Wilson starts taking orders from David. (James Karen plays the role with such earnestness that General Wilson seems to be less concerned with David’s age but instead just happy that he has someone around who can tell him what he needs to do.) But it makes sense when you consider that the film is meant to be a child’s fantasy of what would happen if there was an alien invasion. Who wouldn’t want to be the one telling the adults how to save the planet? For all the aliens and the mind control, this is a rather innocent film. Featuring entertaining performances from Hunter Carson, Timothy Bottoms, Karen Black, and the great James Karen, Invaders From Mars is an entertaining daydream of interstellar conquest.
The 1983 film, The Being, takes place in the town of Pottsville, Idaho.
Pottsville is a small town with a quaint downtown, a drive-in that shows violent slasher films, and a group of neighborhood activists who have come together to take a stand against smut. (Maybe they should start with that drive-in….) It’s home to a quarry, several potato farms, a trailer park, a diner, a church, and a …. ahem …. nuclear waste dump.
Strange things are happening in town. The young son of Marge Smith (Dorothy Malone) has vanished and Dorothy has become a familiar sight, wandering around the town in the middle of the night and searching for her child. One person loses his head while fleeing an unseen assailant. Two rednecks are killed while smoking weed at the drive-in theater. People are dying and Detective Mortimer Lutz (Bill Osco) is determined to find out who (or what) is doing the killing. He’s particularly concerned about the fact that a mysterious green slime is found at all of the crime scenes.
Meanwhile, Mayor Gordon Lane (Jose Ferrer) is more concerned with just covering up the crimes and the history of nuclear waste disposal because he’s got potatoes to harvest and he also hopes to be the first potato farmer in the White House. (George Washington already beat him to that, though one could point out that Washington never actually lived in the current White House.) While his wife (Ruth Buzzi) encourages everyone in town to take a stand against smut, Mayor Lane calls in a chemical safety engineer named Garcon Jones (Martin Landau) to investigate.
The Being is a bit of an oddity. On the one hand, the title character is grotesque and the scenes in which the creature attacks its victims are notably gory. On the other hand, the film has a strangely off-center sense of humor, starting with Bill Osco’s opening narration, which Osco delivers in the teeth-clenched rat-a-tat style of Rod Serling. Halfway through the film, the action stops so that Lutz can have a rather bizarre dream in which he sees Garcon fall out of an airplane while the mayor’s wife flies by on a broomstick with blood flowing from her eyes. This is the type of film in which the notably bloody conclusion is followed by satiric title cards that tell us what happened to each of the survivors. The Being is a horror film that seems to be cheerfully aware of its budgetary limitations and, as a result, it’s full of moments in which it seems to wink at the audience and say, “Hey, don’t worry so much. Sit back and have fun.”
For a low-budget, often poorly lit film about a killer mutant, The Being has an impressive cast. Dorothy Malone, Jose Ferrer, and Martin Landau were all Hollywood veterans and all three of them give admirably straight-faced performances in their smallish roles. (Ferrer and Malone won Oscars long before appearing in The Being. Landau won his Oscar a decade after.) Ferrer, in particular, does a good job of portraying the mayor’s irritation at having to actually deal with the people that he governs. I also liked the performance of Ruth Buzzi. Buzzi plays someone who should be very familiar to anyone who has ever lived in a small town, the person who has found a small amount of power and who is determined to never give up.
Low-budget aside, The Being is just odd enough to be watchable.
When last we saw Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein’s Monster, they were all coming to an untimely end in House of Frankenstein.
Dracula (John Carradine) was caught out in the sun by a group of angry villagers and ended up turning back into a skeleton while desperately trying to climb into his coffin. The Wolf Man, also known as Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.), was shot, presumably with a silver bullet, and finally, the world was free of having to listen to Larry whine about his unfortunate condition. The Monster (Glenn Strange) was last seen drowning in quicksand.
Despite all of that, all three of them return in 1945’s House of Dracula. The Monster is at least found in an underground lair, preserved in a state of suspended animation by the quicksand. Dracula and Larry Talbot, however, just show up with neither looking the worst for wear. I supposed that Larry could have survived being shot but Dracula’s return is bizarre because he was literally exposed to sunlight. In the past, reviving Dracula has always required the stake to be removed from his heart. Did someone remove the sunlight from Dracula’s skeleton?
All three of the cursed beings show up at the castle of Dr. Franz Edelmann (Onslow Stevens). Working with two nurses, the beautiful and religious Milizia (Martha O’Driscoll) and a compassionate hunchback named Nina (Janes Adams), Edlemann is researching blood transfusions. He believes that blood transfusions can cure just about anything. Edelmann is so convinced that he can cure Dracula of his vampirism that he allows Dracula to move his coffin into the castle’s cellar. Edelmann is also convinced that he use the spores of a special plant to cure Larry of his lyncanthropy. As usual, Larry Talbot is skeptical and spends the entire movie boring everyone with the details of how much it sucks to be a werewolf. As for Frankenstein’s Monster, he’s in the castle because Edelmann happend to come across him in an underground chamber. Quite a coincidence, that.
Unfortunately, all of the blood transfusions in the world can’t stop Dracula from being Dracula and soon, the Lord of the Vampires is trying to turn Milizia into his queen. Larry is also in love with Milizia, to the extent that he doesn’t realize that Nina is falling in love with him. Meanwhile, Edelman ends up infecting himself with some of Dracula’s blood and soon, his reflection is no longer showing up in mirrors and he’s feeling the temptation to revive Frankenstein’s Monster. A violent murder upsets the villagers, who refuse to listen to Inspect Holz (Lionel Atwill) when he begs them to let the police take care of things as opposed to laying siege on the castle with a bunch of torches. That’s what happens when you allow your house to become the House of Dracula.
House of Dracula is a clear and marked improvement on House of Frankenstein. While Larry Talbot is just as whiny as ever (and Lon Chaney, Jr.’s sad sack performance is a bit dull) and Frankenstein’s Monster is a bit underused, John Carradine makes for a perfect Dracula, mixing old world charm with cunning cruelty. Director Erle C. Kenton directs the film as if it were a film noir, filling the castle with ominous shadows and giving us a cast of morally conflicted characters. Though I think most modern viewers are a bit too jaded to be truly scared by the old horror films, the scene where Edelmann watches as his reflection disappears from the mirror is effectively creepy. I can only imagine how audiences in 1945 reacted to it.
When first released, House of Dracula was not a hit and, as a result it was one of the final “serious” films to feature the Universal monsters. (Chaney and Strange would reprise their signature roles in a few comedies while Carradine would play Dracula in several other non-Universal productions.) Seen today, it seems like the perfect final chapter for the monsters that, for 20 years, defined Universal.
Adapted from the classic short story by Washington Irving, 1922’s The Headless Horseman tells the story of Ichabod Crane (Will Rogers), a stern schoolmaster and a student of the occult. He comes to the town of Sleepy Hollow to serve as the new school teacher and he immediately gets on everyone’s bad side by being a bit tougher on the students than they were expecting. When it appears that Ichabod is interested in Katrina Von Tassel (Lois Meredith), Katrina’s other suitor, Abraham Von Brunt (Ben Hendricks, Jr.) conspires to make it appear as if Ichabod is working with a coven of witches.
Of course, even if Ichabod survives the witchcraft accusations, there’s still the threat of the Headless Horseman who is said to haunt the isolated roads around Sleepy Hollow….
This was not the first film adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. There were two other silent versions that came out before The Headless Horseman but they are both lost films. The Headless Horseman is the earliest surviving film version of Irving’s tale. Historically, it’s interesting as an example of an early horror film. To be honest, the scene in which Crane imagines what will happen to him if he is found guilty of witchcraft is more effective than the Horseman scenes. But Will Rogers does do a good job with the role of Ichabod Crane, even if Rogers is hardly the tall and thin Crane who was described in Irving’s story. Rogers was, of course, best-known for being a humorist and it was claimed that he “never met a man he didn’t like.” Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Ichabod Crane.
First released in 1970, The Cross and the Switchblade stars Pat Boone as David Wilkerson.
David is a small-town preacher who heads to Brooklyn in the late 50s. Having read an article about the prevalence of violent gangs in New York City, David is determined to make a difference and bring some peace to the city. Why exactly he feels that he can do that, as opposed to someone who is actually from New York and who has some actual experience dealing with gangs, is never really explained. David starts going to drug dens and back alleys and rooftops in the poorest parts of the city. At first, no one takes him seriously but, because he refuses to give up, he does slowly start to win the neighborhood’s respect. He’s even given a place to live so that he’ll no longer have to spend his time sleeping in his car.
(Sleeping in his car? David really didn’t think this out before heading up to New York, did he?)
David becomes obsessed with trying to reach Nicky Cruz (a young Erik Estrada), who is one of the most fearsome member of the Mau Maus gang. The problem is that Nicky really doesn’t want to be reached. He’s been betrayed too many times by the system to trust anyone who claims that they want to help. Nicky is a lot like the character that Michael Wright played in The Principal, basically threatening to cut off any helping hand this offered to him. When one of Nicky’s girlfriends begs for a fix of heroin, Nicky instead sends her to the local church with orders to “take care of” David. When she instead accepts David’s offer of help and gets sober, Nicky becomes even angrier….
The Cross and the Switchblade is an early example of the type of “mainstream” religious film that, as of late, has become popular in America. It may be about religion but it also has a lengthy fight scene and some mild cursing, as if the film wanted to make sure that everyone watching knew that it was a “real movie” as opposed to just being a religious tract. The film was shot on location in Brooklyn, which does bring an authentically gritty feel to certain parts of the film.
Unfortunately, the film itself is done in by a slow pace and a few odd casting choices. One would think that a young Pat Boone would be a good choice for a fresh-faced preacher from Middle America but, instead, Boone gives a rather stiff performance as David Wilkerson and certainly shows none of the charisma that would be necessary to get the film’s gangs to even momentarily put down their weapons and listen to a sermon. If Boone doesn’t show enough emotion, Estrada shows a bit too much. The film was Estrada’s acting debut but, even at the age of 21, Estrada had already developed the Shatneresque acting style that makes him so entertaining in films like Gunsand Chupacabra Vs. The Alamobut less credible in films where he actually has to play characters who go through a change or learn a lesson.
In the end, perhaps the most interesting thing about this film is that it was directed by Don Murray, the actor who was nominated for an Oscar for Bus Stop and who played the doomed senator in Advice and Consent. Three years after Cross and the Switchblade, Murray would make quite an impression as the evil Governor Breck in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. More recently, he played Dougie’s surprisingly sympathetic boss in Twin Peaks: The Return. Murray is a great, albeit underrated actor. But, as a director (or at least as the director of this particular film), he struggled to keep the action moving and far too often, he used gimmicks like slow motion and weird camera angles in an attempt to liven up the story.
The Cross and the Switchblade asks the viewer to choose one or the other. Ultimately, it doesn’t make a compelling case for either.
Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.
In 1971, Clint Eastwood made his directorial debut with Play Misty For Me.
Eastwood plays Dave Garver, a DJ at a Carmel-By-The-Sea jazz station who has ambitions to some day go national. Every night, a woman named Evelyn (Jessica Walter) calls Dave and asks him to “Play Misty for me.” Eventually, Dave meets Evelyn in a bar and he takes her home with him. After sleeping with her, Dave tells Evelyn that he’s only interested in having a casual relationship. Evelyn, however, reveals that she has a far different interpretation of casual. Soon, Evelyn is dropping by Dave’s house unannounced and acting rather clingy, even appearing to attempt suicide when Dave tries to tell her that he’s not interested in having a serious relationship with her.
At first, it’s hard not to feel bad for Evelyn. Yes, she’s obviously unstable. Yes, she’s clingy. Yes, the scene in which she intentionally ruins Dave’s interview for a national job is difficult to watch. But there’s something so sincere and desperate about her need to have someone in her life that, again, it’s hard not to have sympathy for her. When she claims that Dave took advantage of her when they first met, she’s got a point. Dave obviously felt that Evelyn was a one-night stand that he would never have to see again. Evelyn feels differently.
Things chance when Dave eventually runs into his former girlfriend, Tobie Williams (Donna Mills). Dave and Tobie tentatively restart their relationship. When Evelyn finds out, she goes from being clingy to be homicidal. She goes from trashing Dave’s place to attacking Dave’s housekeeper to attacking Dave and Tobie themselves.
An assured directorial debut, Play Misty For Me shows that Eastwood had a strong directorial sensibility from the start. (It also shows, during an extended sequence in which Dave and Tobie attend a jazz festival, that Eastwood was always capable of being rather self-indulgent.) Eastwood uses the film to deconstruct his own confident persona, with Dave going from being a somewhat callous womanizer to ultimately being terrified for his life. The film is dominated by Jessica Walter’s performance as Evelyn. Walter is sad and terrifying, often in the same scene. Though the film doesn’t dig into what happened in Evelyn’s past to drive her to such extremes, Jessica Walter’s performance leaves no doubt that she’s someone who has been hurt by the world and is now so desperate for love and protection that she’ll strike out at anyone who she feels is denying it to her.
As a horror movie that was directed by an actor who, at the time, was still not a favorite of the critics, it’s perhaps not surprising that the Academy ignored Play Misty For Me. Still, it’s a shame. If nothing else, Jessica Walter’s performance was far more memorable that Janet Suzman’s nominated turn in the painfully dull Nicholas and Alexandra. It’s a brave performance and one that more than deserved to be honored.
The 1945 Best Picture nominee, Spellbound, tells the story of Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman), a psychoanalyst at a mental hospital in my least favorite state, Vermont.
Constance has fallen in love with a man (Gregory Peck) who she believes to be Dr. Anthony Edwardes, the newly appointed director of the hospital. Dr. Edwardes is youngish and handsome and idealistic and authoritative …. well, he’s Gregory Peck. However, he also has an intense phobia about seeing any set of parallel lines. Curious to discover the reason for Edwardes’s phobia, Constance does a little digging on her own and discovers that Dr. Anthony Edwardes is not a doctor at all! Instead, he’s a guilt-stricken amnesiac who is convinced that he murdered Dr. Edwardes and took his place!
Constance, however, doesn’t believe that the Amnesiac is a murderer. She thinks that he is suffering from some sort of deep-rooted guilt that had led him to believe that killed the doctor. She wants a chance to psychoanalyze him and discover the truth about his background. Unfortunately, the police do think that the Amnesiac is a murderer and their determined to arrest him.
Constance and the Amnesiac go on the run, heading to the home of Constance’s mentor, Dr. Alexander Brulov (Michael Chekhov, the nephew of Anton Chekhov). With Brulov’s help, Constance analyzes a dream that the Amensiac had, one involving curtains decorated with eyes, the faceless proprietor of a casino, and a man falling off a mountain. Can Constance and Brulov solve the mystery of the Amnesiac’s identity before the police take him away to prison?
Spellbound was the last of the four Hitchcock best picture nominees and it was also the last film that Hitchcock made for producer David O. Selznick. Selznick was quite a fan of psychoanalysis and he insisted that Hitchcock not only make a movie about it but that he also use Selznick’s own therapist as a technical advisor on the project. Hitchcock, for his part, was able to bring in the surrealist Salvador Dali to help design the Amnesiac’s dream sequence but Selznick felt that the 20-minute sequence was too long and too weird and, as a result, it was cut down to two minutes for the final film. All this considered, it’s not a surprise that, despite the fact that Spellbound was a hit with critics and audiences, Hitchcock himself didn’t care much for it and considered it to be more of a Selznick film than a Hitchcock film. And it is true that the film’s total faith is psychoanalysis feels more like something one would expect to hear from a trendy producer than from a director like Hitchcock, who was known for both his dark wit and his rather cynical attitude towards anyone in authority.
For a film like Spellbound to truly work, there has to be some doubt about who the Amnesiac is. For the suspense to work, the audience has to feel that there’s at least a chance, even if it’s only a slight one, that the Amnesiac actually could be a murderer, despite the attempts of Constance and Brulov to prove that he’s not. And Spellbound is full of scenes that are meant to leave the audience wondering about whether or not the Amnesiac should be trusted. However, because the Amnesiac is played by Gregory Peck, there’s really no doubt that he’s innocent. Hitchcock was not particularly happy with Gregory Peck as his leading man. Peck projected a solid, middle-American integrity. It made him ideal for heroic and crusading roles but made him totally wrong for any role that required ambiguity. It’s difficult to believe that the Amnesiac is suffering from a guilt complex because it’s difficult to believe that Gregory Peck has ever done anything for which he should feel guilty. Cary Grant could have played the Amnesiac. Post-war Jimmy Stewart could have done an excellent job with the role. But Peck is just too upstanding and stolid for the role. In a role that calls from neurosis, Peck is kind of boring.
That said, the rest of the cast is fine, with Ingrid Bergman giving one of her best performance as Constance and Michael Chekhov bringing some needed nuance to a role that could have turned into a cliché. Leo G. Carroll has a small but pivotal role and he does a good job keeping the audience guessing as to his motivation. Even at a truncated two minutes, the Dali dream sequence is memorably bizarre and the famous shot of a gun pointed straight at the camera still carries a kick. This is a lesser Hitchcock film but, that said, it’s still a Hitchcock film and therefore worth viewing.
As I mentioned previously, this was the last of Hitchcock’s films to be nominated for Best Picture. Ironically, his best films — Rear Window, Vertigo, and Psycho among them — were yet to come. Spellbound was nominated for six Oscars but only won for Miklos Rozsa’s score. (Ingrid Bergman was nominated for Best Actress that year, not for her role in Spellbound but instead for The Bells of St. Mary’s.) The big Oscar winner that year was Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend.
“Blow harder!”
