Paula Dupree, the Ape Woman of CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN , returned in a sequel titled JUNGLE WOMAN a year later. While the former film has a kind of goofy charm to it, the sequel is a wretched concoction that’s not worth the time it’ll take me to write this – but I’m gonna do it anyway, so bear with me!
JUNGLE WOMAN is the very definition of a ‘quickie’, and I don’t mean that in a good way. A good chunk of the film is made up of stock footage from the original, including the stock footage that film used from Clyde Beatty’s THE BIG CAGE. Even so, it took three screenwriters to come up with this nonsense! The movie starts out okay, with a female fiend attacking a man, who gives her an injection, shown in shadow. But it quickly bogs down as we’re at a coroner’s inquest, with…
As we all know, October is the month when we usually ignore everything but the horror genre here at the Shattered Lens. However, I’m going to briefly interrupt our horrorthon to say a few words about The 15:17 to Paris.
Directed by Clint Eastwood, The 15:17 to Paris is a film about the 2015 Thalys train attack. This was when a terrorist named Ayoub El Khazzani opened fire on a train that was heading from Amsterdam to Paris. He wounded three passengers and probably would have killed countless more (there were over 500 people on the train) if he had not been subdued by three American friends, one British passenger, and a French train driver. The 15:17 to Paris focuses on the three Americans, Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alex Skarlatos.
When the film was released on February 9th, it got middling reviews and was considered to be a box office disappointment. Myself, I saw it the first week of March, just a few days before Jeff and I left for a two-week stay in the UK. I meant to review it when we returned to America but I just never got around to it. However, about a week ago the film made its cable debut and seeing as how Clint Eastwood has a second film coming out this year that might be the Oscar contender that his first film probably won’t be, I figured now is as good a time as any to defend The 15:17 To Paris.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The 15:17 to Paris is not a great film by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, the film’s first line of dialogue — in which Anthony Sadler, in voice over, says that he knows we’re probably wondering why “a brother like me” is hanging out with two white guys — made me cringe so hard that I was worried I might sink into my seat and never be able to escape. Sadler, Spencer Stone, and Alex Skarlatos all play themselves in the movie and none of them comes across as being a natural actor. They may be heroes but they aren’t movie stars.
And yet, the fact that none of them are stars is also the film’s greatest strength. Throughout the film, Eastwood emphasizes how totally and completely average Sadler, Skarlatos, and Stone are. None of them really get the type of “hero shots” that one normally expects to see in a film like this. Instead, Eastwood continually reminds us that they’re just three friends who happened to be on the train when the shooting started. They put their own lives at risk to take the shooter down and they also provided first aid to a man who had been shot. Whether they have movie star charisma or not, they still saved countless lives. The film’s point is that you don’t have to be Chris Pratt or Chris Evans to be a hero. You can just be Chris from across the street. You just have to be someone willing to do the right thing at the right time. It’s a sincere and heartfelt message and it’s one that comes across specifically because Eastwood cast three nonprofessionals.
The film starts with a lengthy sequence that depicts the childhoods of the three lifelong friends. It’s kind of a strange sequence, largely because almost all of the supporting roles are filled by talented actors who are best known for their comedic work on television. Thomas Lennon plays a high school principal while Tony Hale shows up as a coach. Even Jaleel White (!) has a role as a teacher who gives the boys advice on self-defense. When the childhood scenes work, it’s largely due to the performances of Jenna Fischer and Judy Greer, who plays the mothers of Alex and Spencer. But whenever Fischer and Greer aren’t around, the childhood scenes are a bit too slow and awkward.
However, once Sadler, Skarlatos, and Stone are on that train, the film definitely picks up. Whatever awkwardness that the three nonprofessionals may have exhibited earlier in the movie disappears as they spring to action and they recreate their responses to the attack on the train. It’s here that Eastwood’s no-nonsense approach to storytelling definitely pays off, as he recreates the train attack without any of the showy tricks that you might expect from other directors. Instead, Eastwood allows things to play-out naturally. Like the passengers on that train, all we can do is watched as the three men rush the gunman.
The 15:17 to Paris may not be one of Eastwood’s best films but it’s hardly the disaster that it was made out to be. Instead, it’s a sincere and unapologetically old-fashioned celebration of heroism and doing the right thing.
Halloween is the perfect time for a good ghost story and, with that in mind, here is today’s movie.
Released in 1960 and directed by Bert I. Gordon, Tormented tells the sad story of Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson). Now, Tom might look like a pretty regular guy but we know that he’s a little bit crazy because he’s a jazz pianist and you know how dangerous those beatnik-types are. Tom is happily engaged to Meg but one day, his ex-girlfriend Vi shows up. Vi is obsessed with Tom and swear that she’s going to end his engagement.
So, naturally enough, Tom throws her off of a lighthouse.
Problem solved, right?
Not quite. Vi may be dead but she’s not out of Tom’s life. Instead, her disembodied head tends to pop up at random moments and taunt Tom. Meanwhile, Tom is having to deal with Meg’s suspicious sister and a beatnik (Joe Turkel, who years later played Lloyd the Bartender in The Shining) who is determined to collect the $5 that he claims Vi owes him.
Between the beatniks and the raging ocean and the disembodied head popping up whenever it’s least convenient, Tormented is a lot of fun and the perfect film for some retro Halloween fun.
Yuppie lawyer Ted (adult film actor Randy Spears, credited here as Gregory Patrick) is shocked when he sees a painting of a man who looks just like him. He is told that the portrait was painted in 1964 and that the man in the painting is the late husband of the artist, Arlene (porn legend Georgina Spelvin, credited here at Ruth Raymond). Arlene goes on to reveal that Ted is actually her long-lost son and then she invites him and his wife, Evie (Linda Blair, credited here as Linda Blair), to come out to her mansion. What Ted doesn’t realize is that Arlene believes that he is actually her husband reincarnated and she is planning on doing away with Evie so that she can have her son all to herself and do what it is she wants to do with him. Yes, this film goes there.
Chuck Vincent was one of the leading directors of the Golden Age of Porn. Unlike most other adult film directors, his movies were popular with not only the public but also with critics. (His best-known film, Roommates, received a rave in the New York Times.) In the 80s, Vincent tried to make the move into mainstream film, mostly directing sex comedies and dopey thrillers. Most of his mainstream films featured adult performers in dramatic roles, which made them very popular on late night cable.
Bad Blood feels like a combination of Fatal Attraction and Misery. There’s even a scene where Arlene ties up her son in bed and then breaks his toes to keep him from leaving. (Bad Blood, though, came out a year before Rob Reiner’s film so the resemblance is probably a coincidence.) Spelvin, who was widely regarded as being the best actress to ever regularly appear in pornographic movies, gives a great, demented performance as Arlene and Linda Blair is also good as Evie. Chuck Vincent was a good director, even when he was doing schlocky straight-to-video stuff like this. Perhaps because of his background in adult films, Vincent never hesitated about taking his films to the places where other directors would be scared to tread. Sadly, Vincent died in 1991 and most of his movies have fallen into obscurity.
Director Robert Siodmak is remembered today for his dark excursions into the world of film noir: THE SUSPECT, THE KILLERS , CRY OF THE CITY, CRISS CROSS . His first entry in the genre is generally recognized as 1944’s PHANTOM LADY , but a case could be made for SON OF DRACULA, Siodmak’s only Universal Horror that combines elements of both genres into what could best be described as supernatural noir.
A train pulls into the station in a sleepy Louisiana town. Frank Stanley (Robert Paige) and Dr. Brewster (Frank Craven ) are there to meet Count Alucard, invited for a visit by Kay Caldwell (Louise Albritton), Frank’s fiancé, who has long been interested in the occult. Alucard isn’t aboard, but his trunks are, and Brewster notices Alucard spelled backwards reads as Dracula. The trunks are delivered to Kay’s family plantation, Dark Oaks. The scene shifts, and…
The 1974 film Silent Night, Bloody Night is an oddity.
On the one hand, it’s pretty much a standard slasher film, complete with a menacing mansion, a horrible secret, a twist ending, and John Carradine playing a mute newspaper editor.
On the other hand, director Ted Gershuny directs like he’s making an underground art film and several of the supporting roles are played by actors who were best known for their association with Andy Warhol.
Personally, I like Silent Night, Bloody Night. It has a terrible reputation and the film’s star, Mary Woronov, has gone on record calling it a “terrible movie” but I like the surreal touches the Gershuny brought to the material and the sepia-toned flashbacks have a nightmarish intensity to them. The film makes no logical sense, which actually makes it all the more appealing to me. As the saying goes, your mileage may vary.
Seriously, those little wooden things totally freak me out. You know how some of you feel about the painted smile on the clowns ‘face? Well, that’s how I feel whenever I see the big eyes of a ventriloquist dummy or that mouth with the fake teeth. And don’t even get me started on those tiny little legs that some of them have! AGCK!
I mention this because there is a ventriloquist’s dummy in the 1980 film, Humanoids From The Deep. There’s really no reason for it to be in the film but suddenly, out of nowhere, there it is. It belongs to a teenager named Billy who, when we first see him, is relaxing in a tent on the beach, trying to get his girlfriend to undress for him and the dummy. Of course, they’re promptly interrupted by a seaweed-covered monster, who rips open the tent, kills Billy, and chases after his girlfriend. The whole time, the dummy watches with a somewhat quizzical expression on his face. It’s a strange scene.
Now, I’ve done some research and I’ve discovered that Billy was played by David Strassman, who was (and still is) a professional ventriloquist and his dummy was named …. I do not kid …. Chuck Wood. So, the whole tent scene was kind of a celebrity cameo. Roger Corman, who produced the film, said, “You know what? This movie has blood, nudity, killer fish-men, and rampant misogyny but it’s still missing something! How about that ventriloquist that I saw on the Tonight Show last night!?”
Anyway, Humanoids From The Deep is basically about what happens when you try to mutate salmon. You end up with a bunch of pervy fish monsters swarming the beach and trying to make like human/fish babies. You end up with a lot of dead teens and unplanned pregnancies. You also end up with the local redneck fisherman (led by Vic Morrow) blaming the local Native Americans, accusing them of killing all of the dogs in town. Jim Hill (Doug McClure) and his wife, Carol (Cindy Weintraub), try to keep the peace but their efforts are continually tripped up by the fact that almost everyone in town is an idiot.
For instance, despite the fact that there’s been a countless number of murders and rapes and that they’ve all been committed a group of monsters that nobody knows how to fight, the town still decides to hold their annual festival on the pier. Of course, as soon as the obnoxious DJ starts broadcasting, the humanoids from the deep show up and basically, the entire festival goes to Hell. And here’s the thing. The film itself is ugly and mean-spirited and misogynistic but the attack on the festival is totally and completely brilliant. I mean, it’s one of the greatest monster sieges of all time, largely because the monsters are apparently unstoppable and that humans are so obnoxious that you don’t mind seeing them all die. I mean, if nothing else, the monster deserve some credit for taking out that DJ.
It all leads to a “surprise” ending, which isn’t particularly surprising but which is so batshit insane that it somehow seems appropriate.
Humanoids From The Deep is an incredibly icky movie, one that has some effective scare scenes but which is way too misogynistic to really be much fun. (Roger Corman hired Barbara Peeters to direct the film but reportedly brought in a male director to film the movie’s more explicit scenes.) Oh well. At least the ventriloquist died.
Maggie Healey (Linda Blair) is an American nurse in Australia. Freshly separated from her drug addict boyfriend, Maggie gets a job working at a mental hospital. Dr. Jonathan Heckett (Tony Bonner) is experimenting with “dead sleep therapy,” where the patients are kept drugged at night. Maggie notices that the patients keep dying and that Dr. Heckett doesn’t care so she teams up with an annoying activist to investigate what dead sleep therapy is actually about.
This was on TCM at 3 a.m. last night, airing right after Dreamscape. Dead Sleep might be disguised as a horror film but there’s nothing scary about it. When the patients are in dead sleep, they don’t even have nightmares, which is a huge missed opportunity. The movie is so sloppily put together that it doesn’t even reveal why Dr. Heckett is putting his patients in dead sleep, other than he’s just evil. Linda Blair delivers her lines as if she is reading them off a cue card and the entire movie look like it was filmed at a community college. The only amusing thing about the movie was that all of the male patients got to wear hospital gowns when they went under deep sleep while all the female patients slept topless. Normally I wouldn’t complain but it was so blatant what the filmmakers were doing that it was hard not to laugh when the movie tried to pivot to being a serious drama. A film starring Linda Blair has no right to be this boring.
Universal’s 1943 remake of the 1925 Lon Chaney Sr. classic THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA is definitely an ‘A’ movie in every way. A lavish Technicolor production with an ‘A’ list cast (Claude Rains, Nelson Eddy, Susanna Foster) and opulent sets (including the Opera House interiors built for the ’25 silent), it’s the only Universal Horror to win an Oscar – actually two, for Art Direction and Cinematography. Yet I didn’t really like it the first time I saw it. It’s only through repeated viewings I’ve softened my stance and learned to appreciate the film.
Claude Rains’s performance in particular has made me a convert. As Erique Claudin, he’s a sympathetic figure, and one can’t help but feel sorry for him. When he’s let go from the orchestra by the maestro, after twenty long years as a violinist, his arthritis causing his playing to become subpar, I felt pity for…
There’s a beachside resort town, one whose survival is pretty much dependent upon tourists and big business. If you give the tourists a reason to not show up, the town dies. If you give big business a reason to build their factories and their underground tunnels somewhere else, the town dies.
Unfortunately, something bad is happening in this little town. People are going in the water and they’re never returning. It appears that they’re being killed by some sort of giant sea monster, even though the authorities swear that it’s simply impossible. The town’s leaders are putting pressure on the sheriff to cover up the crimes. A scientist shows up and thinks that everyone he meets is an idiot.
It’s not safe to go in the water but people keep doing it!
Now, you may be thinking that it sounds like I’m describing the plot of Jaws but actually, I’m talking about an Italian film called Tentacles. Released in 1977, Tentacles was one of the many films that was directly inspired by the success of Spielberg’s film. Jaws was such a phenomenal success that it was ripped off by filmmakers across the world. That said, of all the people ripping off Spielberg’s film, the Italians brought an undeniable and frequently shameless flair to the Jaws knockoffs.
Tentacles is a bit different from other Italian Jaws films in that, this time, the threat does not come from a shark. Instead, it comes from a giant octopus! That’s actually a pretty good twist because, in real life, an octopus is actually more dangerous than a shark. Not only are they bigger and considerably smarter than most sharks but if they get enough of their eight arms around you, they can literally squeeze you to death! I mean …. agck! Say what you will about sharks, I imagine getting eaten by one would suck but at least it wouldn’t take long to die. Whereas if an octopus gets you, you would actually be aware of it squeezing you to death and oh my God, I’m never getting in the water.
Anyway, in Tentacles, the octopus is snatching babies off of piers and sailors off of boats and it’s using its octopus powers to rip their skin from their bones. It also attack scuba divers by firing ink at them. The sheriff (Claude Akins) says that it’s nothing to worry about but Ned Turner (John Huston), a hard-boiled reporter, thinks that there’s a story here. Ned’s in town visiting his sister (Shelley Winters). She has a ten year-old son who enjoys sailing. Uh-oh….
Henry Fonda shows up for a few very brief scenes, playing the head of a company that built the underwater tunnel that somehow mutated the octopus. Fonda looks incredibly frail in his scenes (and apparently, he filmed his part while recovering from heart surgery) but his performance in Tentacles still isn’t as cringe-inducing as his performance in The Swarm.
Also showing up is a marine biologist named Will Gleason (Bo Hokpkins). Fortunately, Gleason owns two killer whales so, after the octopus kills his wife, Gleason sends out the orcas to track it down. Before doing so, he gives them a pep talk. Apparently, killer whales respond to positive reinforcement.
Tentacles is unique in that it’s an Italian production that managed to rope in a few well-known American actors. It’s an odd film to watch because, on the one hand, the film is full of risible dialogue and it’s painfully slow whenever the octopus isn’t attacking anyone and no one really seems to be that invested in any of their characters. (When the octopus kills a baby, the actress playing the baby’s mother underacts to such an extent that the scene becomes almost surreal.) This isn’t like Jaws, where you actually care about Brody, Quint, Hooper, and the Kintner boy. On the other hand, the octopus itself is actually kind of frightening so, on that very basic level, the film works.
In the end, Tentacles is one of the lesser Jaws rip-offs but you’ll never forget that octopus.
