Tag Archives: Janet Leigh

Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 2.20 “Birthday Party/Ghostbreaker”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1986.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Mr. Roarke reunites a family and arranges for a man to battle a “ghost.”

Episode 2.20 “Birthday Party/Ghostbreaker”

(Dir by Cliff Bole, originally aired on March 3rd, 1979)

This week, Tattoo has both a joy buzzer and a pink carnation that squirts water.  He explains to Mr. Roarke that he read somewhere the women love a man with a sense of humor.  “I want to be the king of humor on Fantasy Island,” he explains.

“Lucky us,” Mr. Roarke replies while dramatically rolling his eyes and reminding viewers of just how much he despises his scene-stealing assistant.

As for the two fantasies, this is another episode where the fantasies don’t really seem like they should be happening on the same island.  One is rather serious.  The other is a bit cartoonish.

The first guest to get off the plane is Elliott Fielding (Ken Berry), a librarian who believes in ghosts and who is pretty sure that he knows how to exorcise a ghost from a haunted location.  He’s so confident that he’s even written a book about it.  However, because Elliott has never actually seen a ghost, no one is willing to publish his book.  Elliott’s fantasy is to exorcise a real ghost and prove that his theories are true.  Mr. Roarke obliges by taking him to a mansion that Roarke explains was once occupied by a murderer known as the Gentleman Strangler.  Now, however, it’s a private all-girls boarding school!  (This is one of those episodes that leaves the viewer wondering just what exactly Fantasy Island is exactly.  When the show started, it was just a resort.  Now, it appears to have become a thriving nation, home to not only industry but also an exclusive boarding school.)

The school’s students have been reporting sightings of the ghost of the Gentleman Strangler.  Elliott sets out to exorcise the ghost and along the way, he falls in love with the school’s headmistress (Annette Funicello).  He also finds an enemy in the form of the school’s fencing instructor (Larry Storch).  Oddly there aren’t any other teachers at the school so I guess the students just spend all of their learning how to fence.

This was an odd fantasy because, on the one hand, you had this ghost potentially threatening to strangle a bunch of teenage girls and, on the other hand, you had the very broad comedy of Ken Berry and Larry Storch facing off.  Of course, it turns out that there really wasn’t a ghost haunting the school so, at first, it appears that Elliott’s fantasy didn’t come true.  However, after Elliott leaves, Roarke explains to Tattoo that Elliott actually did meet a ghost when he had a conversation with a helpful handyman.  That probably would have been a good thing to let Elliott know before he left but …. well, Mr. Roarke does what he wants.  If there’s any lesson to be learned from watching Fantasy Island, it’s that Mr. Roarke makes the rules and it is best to never question his arbitrary decisions.

Meanwhile, Carol Gates (Janet Leigh) comes to the island to be reunited with the twins (Skye Aubrey and Christopher Stone) that she gave up for her adoption.  I was expecting the twins to reject her or to be angry.  Instead, with her support, her son gets signed to a football team and her daughter decides not give her own children up for adoption.  Yay!  It was a bit of an easy fantasy, with little of the drama that I was expecting.  But Janet Leigh was a talented actress and she’s good here, bringing a lot of genuine emotion the story.

The fantasies were a bit mismatched but I like ghost stories (even when they’re a bit silly) and Janet Leigh is one of my favorite actresses so this trip to Fantasy Island was worth it.

Retro Television Reviews: The Love Boat 2.9 “Till Death Do Us Part–Maybe / Locked Away / Chubs”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986!  The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

It’s time for another cruise!

Episode 2.9 “Till Death Do Us Part–Maybe / Locked Away / Chubs”

(Dir by Allen Baron, originally aired on November 11th, 1978)

The Love Boat is haunted!

Well, no, not really.  Instead, one of the passengers is haunted.  Ellen Garner (Vernee Watson) is having a difficult time getting over the death of her husband, Mickey (Jimmie Walker, who also appeared on the very first episode of The Love Boat, though as a different character).  It’s been two years since Mickey died and Ellen still has not been able to move on.  Some of that might be because Mickey’s ghost is still following Ellen around.  Only Ellen can see and hear Mickey.  This leads to a lot of scenes of her arguing with Mickey while everyone standing around her assumes that she’s talking to herself.

(To be honest, I think most people would be made nervous by a woman who spent the entire cruise loudly arguing with herself but the passengers and the crew of The Love Boat are oddly unconcerned.  It was the 70s so I assume everyone just assumed it was due to the cocaine.)

Mickey wants Ellen to move on and he pressures her to find a new husband on the cruise.  In fact, Mickey thinks that Ellen should spend some time with Greg Elkins (Greg Morris), who is handsome, polite and wealthy.  At first, Ellen resists Mickey’s attempts to push them together but finally, she gives in.  Suddenly, Mickey starts to get jealous.  By the end of the cruise, though, Mickey is at peace with Ellen moving on and Ellen accepts Greg’s marriage proposal.  Mickey tries to congratulate Ellen, just to discover that she can no longer see or hear him.  Mickey vanishes into thin air, giving this otherwise frothy story a somewhat bittersweet aftertaste.

Whether you were being haunted or not, would you get married after only knowing someone for a week?  I know that there are reality shows built around this very idea but still, I have to wonder how many of these spontaneous Love Boat marriages ended in divorce.  Speaking of divorce….

Also on the cruise is a young married couple, Linda (a young Jamie Lee Curtis, looking relieved to not have to deal with Michael Myers or any other knife-wielding madmen) and Wayne (Peter Coffield).  Linda and Wayne are on the verge of divorce.  Ever since her parents, Les and Gail (Conrad Bain and Curtis’s real-life mother, Janet Leigh), acrimoniously split up, Linda hasn’t believed in love.  Linda and Wayne spend most of the cruise fighting, though it’s never quite clear what they’re fighting about.  What they don’t know is that Les and Gail are on the cruise as well.  Les and Gail came to the ship to see their daughter off and then, as they tried to exit, they accidentally got locked in an unused cabin.  Trapped together and subsisting only on peanuts, water, and stowaway sex, Les and Gail discover that they are still in love and they agree to get married for a second time.  At the end of the cruise, everyone is reunited and, seeing that her parents are going to give marriage another shot, Linda agrees to give Wayne another shot. Awwwww!

(Again, it should be kept in mind that Les and Gail fell back in love because they literally didn’t have anything else to do.  They were trapped in cabin for several days!  Will their rekindled love continue once they have to deal with each other in the real world?  Considering how much they hated each other before getting trapped, it’s easy to be pessimistic.  Can you imagine how Linda will feel if her parents get married a second time just to then get a second divorce?  Then again, this is The Love Boat.  Perhaps the whole point is not to give it too much thought….)

Finally, Gopher is super excited that his sister will be celebrating her 18th birthday on the cruise!  However, Gopher is shocked and horrified to discover that Jennifer (Melissa Sue Anderson) has grown up and now has every guy on the ship hitting on her.  Gopher asks Doc Bricker to look after her, which is an odd request given that Doc is a walking HR nightmare.  That said, for once, Doc tries to do the right thing.  However, Jennifer is eager to lose her virginity and she’s decided that Doc would be the perfect man to which to lose it….

Really?  Out of all the guys on that cruise, you’re going to pick Doc?

Stories in which Doc is portrayed as being a legendary lover are always a bit strange because Doc was played be Bernie Kopell, a likable actor who gave off suburban Dad vibes as opposed to international playboy vibes.  Kopell, Anderson, and the usually underused Fred Grandy all give likable performances in this storyline but it’s still just odd to think that Jennifer has apparently spent years dreaming about Doc Bricker.

It’s also strange that Captain Stubing mentions that it’s been years since he last saw Gopher’s sister.  The previous season established that Captain Stubing had just recently been assigned to the boat and that he was still getting to know the crew.  So, either several years passed between the first and the second season or someone in the writer’s room wasn’t paying attention to continuity.  Then again, I imagine that continuity wasn’t as big a concern in the days before the Internet.  Even if someone did notice the mistake, who would they tell?

This episode was a fairly entertaining one.  Janet Leigh and Conrad Bain were definitely the highlight of this episode and it was fun to watch Leigh and Curtis acting opposite of each other.  (That said, you just know the show’s producers probably tried to convince Tony Curtis to play Janet Leigh’s ex-husband before they asked Bain.)  The ghost subplot had a few funny moments and Gopher finally got to do something.  All in all, it was a pleasant cruise on the Love Boat.

Horror On TV: Circle of Fear 1.14 “Death’s Head” (dir by James Nielson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Circle of Fear!?

What happened to Ghost Story!?

Fear not, they’re the same show.  Apparently, Ghost Story was struggling in the ratings so William Castle changed up both the show’s format and the title.  Ghost Story became Circle of Fear and, sadly, Sebastian Cabot was dumped as the show’s host.

The first episode of the new Circle of Fear era featured Janet Leigh as the wife of a man who loves insects.  Unfortunately for him, Leigh hates insects.  This, along with an adulterous affair, can only lead to murder and that, of course, can only lead to the moths coming for revenge.

That may sounds silly but let me tell you, I totally agree with Janet Leigh when it comes to moths.  If you want to see me run out of a room, just point out that there’s a moth flying around.  Agck!

This episode originally aired on January 5th, 1973.

Horror Film Review: The Fog (dir by John Carpenter)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Time for one more story,” Mr. Machen (John Houseman) declares the beginning of John Carpenter’s 1980 horror film, The Fog.

Mr. Machen is a resident of Antonio Bay, California, a coastal town that was founded with the help of gold stolen from a ship that was owned by a wealthy man named Blake (Rob Bottin). Blake wanted to start a leper colony. Instead, he was betrayed by six sailors who sank Blake’s ship, stole the gold, and used it to start the town of Antonio Bay.

At 12 midnight, on the day that the town is to celebrate its 100 anniversary, strange things start to happen. Windows shatter. Masonry falls from walls. A thick fog rolls across the ocean and seems to move from house to house. Inside the fog are several angry spirits, led by Blake. They not only want their gold back but they also want to take six lives as a way of getting revenge on the six conspirators who stole their gold and sank their ship.

It all starts with knock at the door and, if you look out a window, maybe you’ll see a dark shadow standing in an all-enveloping fog. Answering the door is a mistake. At the same time, so is not answering the door. It’s not easy to escape the vengeful spirits in the fog.

The Fog (1980, dir by John Carpenter, DP: Dean Cudney)

The Fog plays out like a disaster film, albeit one with a supernatural twist. The film follows several characters who are trying to survive the night and the majority of them don’t even meet until the final half of the film. There’s a truck driver (Tom Atkins) and a hitchhiker (Jamie Lee Curtis). There’s the alcoholic priest (Hal Halbrook) and the chairwoman (Janet Leigh) of the anniversary committee. Nancy Loomis, who co-starred with Curtis in Carpenter’s Halloween, plays an administrative assistant while Carpenter’s wife, Adrienne Barbeau, plays the local radio DJ whose son is briefly targeted by the fog. There’s even a coroner named Dr. Phibes!

In fact, the whole film is full of references to other films. The Fog finds John Carpenter in a rather playful mood, with characters named after Carpenter associates like Dan O’Bannon, Tommy Wallace, and Nick Castle. There’s even a mention of Arkham, the fictional New England town that served as the setting for many of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories.

42 years after it was made, The Fog holds up as a very well-told ghost story. I mean, fog is just creepy in itself. Then you add in a bunch of silent shadows standing in the fog and it gets even scarier! For the most part, the actors all do a good job playing rather thinly-drawn characters. Tom Atkins is always fun to watch! The true stars of the film, of course, are the ghosts and they will definitely give you nightmares.

The Fog is a good film for Halloween viewing so watch it and don’t answer the door!

The Fog (1980, dir by John Carpenter, DP: Dean Cundey)

(Don’t just take my word for it!  Be sure to read Leonard’s review of The Fog!)

Cleaning Out The DVR: An American Dream (dir by Robert Gist)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Loosely based on a novel by Norman Mailer, the 1966 film, An American Dream, tells the story of Stephen Rojack (Stuart Whitman).  Rojack’s a war hero, a man who has several medals of valor to his credit.  He’s married to Deborah (Eleanor Parker), the daughter of one of the richest men in the country.  He’s an acclaimed writer.  He’s got his own television talk show in New York.  He’s been crusading against not only the Mafia but also against corruption in the police department.  He has powerful friends and powerful enemies.  You get the idea.

He’s also got a marriage that’s on the verge of collapse.  Deborah calls Rojack’s show and taunts him while he’s on the air.  When Rojack goes to her apartment to demand a divorce, the two of them get into an argument.  Deborah tells him that he’s not a hero.  She says he only married her for the money and that she only married him for the prestige.  She tells him that he’s a lousy lover.  Being a character in an adaptation of a Norman Mailer novel, the “lousy lay” crack causes Rojack to snap.  He attacks Deborah.  The two of them fight.  Deborah stumbles out to the balcony of her apartment and it appears that she’s on the verge of jumping.  Rojack follows her.  At first, he tries to save her but then he lets her fall.  She crashes down to the street, where she’s promptly run over by several cars.  The cars then all run into each other while Rojack stands on the balcony and wails.  There’s nothing subtle about the first 15 minutes of An American Dream.

Actually, there’s nothing subtle about any minute of An American Dream.  It’s a film where everything, from the acting to the melodrama, is so over-the-top and portentous that it actually gets a bit boring.  There’s no relief from the screeching and the inauthentic hard-boiled dialogue.  When a crazed Rojack starts to laugh uncontrollably, he doesn’t just laugh.  Instead, he laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and …. well, let’s just say it goes on for a bit.  It’s like a 60s version of one of those terrible Family Guy jokes.

Anyway, the police don’t believe that Deborah committed suicide but they also can’t prove that Rojack killed her.  Meanwhile, within hours of his wife’s death, Rojack meets his ex-girlfriend, a singer named Cherry (Janet Leigh).  Rojack is still in love with Cherry but Cherry is also connected to the same mobsters who want to kill Rojack.  Meanwhile, Deborah’s superrich father (Lloyd Nolan) is also on his way to New York City, looking for answer of his own.

An American Dream is a very familiar type of mid-60s film.  It’s a trashy story and it’s obvious that the director was trying to be as risqué as the competition in Europe while also trying to not offend mainstream American audiences.  As such, the film has hints of nudity but not too much nudity.  There’s some profanity but not too much profanity.  Rojack, Deborah, and Cherry may curse more than Mary Poppins but they’re rank amateurs compared to the cast of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  It’s an unabashedly melodramatic film but it doesn’t seem to be sure just how far it can go in embracing the melodrama with alienating its target audience so, as a result, the entire film feels somewhat off.  Some scenes go on forever.  Some scenes feel too short.  The whole thing has the washed-out look of an old cop show.

All of that perhaps wouldn’t matter if Stephen Rojack was a compelling character.  In theory, Rojack should have been compelling but, because he’s played by the reliably boring Stuart Whitman, Rojack instead just comes across as being a bit of a dullard.  He’s supposed to be a charismatic, two-fisted Norman Mailer-type but instead, as played by Whitman, Rojack comes across like an accountant who is looking forward to retirement but only if he can balance the books one last time.  There’s no spark of madness or imagination to be found in Whitman’s performance and, as a result, the viewer never really cares about Rojack or his problems.

Noman Mailer reportedly never saw An American Dream, saying that it would be too painful to a bad version of his favorite novel.  In this case, Mailer made the right decision.

Horror Film Review: Night of the Lepus (dir by William F. Claxton)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s really only one lesson to be learned from the 1972’s Night of the Lepus.

There is absolutely no way to make a rabbit look menacing.

Oh sure, you can film them in slow motion.  And you can add a lot of weird sound effects and you can do a lot of extreme close-ups to make them look bigger than they actually are.  You can do a lot of stuff as a part of your effort to make a rabbit into a scary monster but you’ll pretty much be wasting you time.  Rabbits are simply not intimidating.  There’s a reason why the idea of a killer rabbit was so funny in Monty Python and The Holy Grail.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m enough of country girl that I know the damage that wild rabbits can do.  They eat crops.  They eat bark.  They chew on irrigations lines.  If you’re a farmer or even just someone who wants to maintain a nice garden, you know that rabbits can be a nuisance.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that there’s nothing really menacing rabbits.  Rabbits are cute and, for the most part, they’re fairly timid.  They’re aware that, in the brutal world of nature, they’re designated prey and, as a result, they try to stay out of the way.  Rabbits are shy and they hop around and there’s absolutely nothing frightening about them.

(We actually have quite a few rabbits in my neighborhood.  It’s not unusual for me to see one hopping through the front yard.  Whenever I go for a run in the early evening hours, it’s not unusual for me to see several rabbits hopping through a nearby park.)

Night of the Lepus is a strange film that attempts to make rabbits frightening.  It takes place in the southwest and it features a bunch of mutated, giant rabbits who hop around the desert in slow motion and who savagely kill everyone that they meet.  The plot makes it sound like a spoof but Night of the Lepus takes itself very seriously, which needless to say is a mistake.  It even opens with documentary footage that’s designed to make sure that we understand that rabbits are actually very dangerous.  It’s all very odd and you have to wonder why, out of all the wild animals in the southwest, the filmmakers decided to go with the least intimidating creature possible.  I mean, there are coyotes and Gila monsters in the desert.  Imagine having a giant coyote coming at you.  That would be scary!

Instead, we get giant rabbits, attacking a cast of actors who definitely deserved better.  Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun, DeForest Kelly, they’re all talented actors and, in this film, they’re reduced to fighting a bunch of giant rabbits.  No one comes across particularly well, though just about everyone in the cast does manage to keep a straight face.  Still, the problem is that the rabbits are just too damn cute.  Even after they’ve killed half the cast, you still don’t want anything to happen to them.  When Whitman and Calhoun opened fire on a group of rabbits and killed a few of them, I actually found myself getting mad at the humans.  Leave the rabbits alone! I thought.  You humans have had your chance!  This the land of rabbits now!

Anyway, Night of the Lepus is silly but it’s kind of fun, just because the giant rabbits are cute.  They’re kind of like the giant guinea pigs that attacked South Park a few seasons ago.  They’re murderous but they’re adorable!

 

 

 

 

When It Comes To Halloween, Should You Trust The IMDb?

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Dr. Sam Loomis

Like a lot of people, I enjoy browsing the trivia sections of the IMDb.  While it’s true that a lot of the items are stuff like, “This movie features two people who appeared on a television series set in the Star Trek Universe!,” you still occasionally came across an interesting fact or two.

Of course, sometimes, you just come across something that makes so little sense that you can only assume that it was posted as a joke.  For instance, I was reading the IMDb’s trivia for the original 1978 Halloween and I came across this:

Peter O’Toole, Mel Brooks, Steven Hill, Walter Matthau, Jerry Van Dyke, Lawrence Tierney, Kirk Douglas, John Belushi, Lloyd Bridges, Abe Vigoda, Kris Kristofferson, Sterling Hayden, David Carradine, Dennis Hopper, Charles Napier, Yul Brynner and Edward Bunker were considered for the role of Dr. Sam Loomis.

Now, some of these names make sense.  Despite the fact that Sam Loomis became Donald Pleasence’s signature role, it is still possible to imagine other actors taking the role and perhaps bringing a less neurotic interpretation to the character.

Peter O’Toole as Dr. Loomis?  Okay, I can see that.

Kirk Douglas, Sterling Hayden, Charles Napier, Steve Hill, or Lloyd Bridges as Dr. Loomis?  Actually, I can imagine all of them grimacing through the role.

Walter Matthau?  Well, I guess if you wanted Dr. Loomis to be kind of schlubby….

Abe Vigoda?  Uhmmm, okay.

Dennis Hopper?  That would be interesting.

Mel Brooks?  What?  Wait….

John Belushi?  Okay, stop it!

Dr. Sam Loomis

My point is that I doubt any of these people were considered for the role of Dr. Loomis.  Both director John Carpenter and producer Debra Hill have said that they wanted to cast an English horror actor in the role, as a bit of an homage to the Hammer films of the 60s.  Christopher Lee was offered the role but turned it down, saying that he didn’t care for the script or the low salary.  (Lee later said this was one of the biggest mistakes of his career.)  Peter Cushing’s agent turned down the role, again because of the money.  It’s not clear whether Cushing himself ever saw the script.

To be honest, I could easily Peter Cushing in the role and I could see him making a brilliant Dr. Loomis.  But, ultimately, Donald Pleasence was the perfect (if not the first) choice for the role.  Of course, Pleasence nearly turned down the role as well.  Apparently, it was his daughter, Angela, who changed his mind.  She was an admirer of John Carpenter’s previous film, Assault on Precint 13.  Carpenter has said that he was originally intimidated by Donald Pleasence (the man had played Blofeld, after all) but that Pleasence turned out to be a professional and a gentleman.

Laurie Strode

Of course, Halloween is best known for being the first starring role of Jamie Lee Curtis.  Curtis was actually not Carpenter’s first choice for the role of Laurie Strode.  His first choice was an actress named Annie Lockhart, who was the daughter of June Lockhart.  Carpenter changed his mind when he learned that Jamie was the daughter of Janet Leigh.  Like any great showman, Carpenter understood the importance of publicity and he knew nothing would bring his horror movie more publicity then casting the daughter of the woman whose onscreen death in Psycho left moviegoers nervous about taking a shower.

There was also another future big name who came close to appearing in Halloween.  At the time that she was cast as Lynda, P.J. Soles was dating an up-and-coming actor from Texas named Dennis Quaid.  Quaid was offered the role of Lynda’s doomed boyfriend, Bob but he was already committed to another film.

Not considered for a role was Robert Englund, though the future Freddy Krueger still spent some time on set.  He was hired by Carpenter to help spread around the leaves that would make it appear as if his film was taking place in the October, even though it was filmed in May.

Robert Englund, making May look like October

Interestingly enough, Englund nearly wasn’t need for that job because Halloween was not originally envisioned as taking place on Halloween or any other specific holiday.  When producer Irwin Yablans and financier Moustapha Akkad originally approached Carpenter and Hill to make a movie for them about a psycho stalking three babysitters, they didn’t care when the film was set.  It was only after Carpenter and Hill wrote a script called The Babysitter Muders that it occurred to Yablans that setting the film during Halloween would be good from a marketing standpoint.  Plus Halloween made for a better title than The Babysitter Murders.

And, of course, the rest is history.  Carpenter’s film came to define Halloween and it still remains the standard by which every subsequent slasher movie has been judged.  Would that have happened if the film had been known as The Babysitter Murders and had starred John Belushi?

Sadly, we may never know.

Horror Book Review: Alfred Hitchcock and The Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

57 years after it was first released, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho remains one of the most influential films ever made.

Certainly, every horror film ever released since 1960 owes a debt to Psycho.  The infamous shower scene has been duplicated so many times that I’ve lost count.  Whenever a big-name actor is unexpectedly killed during the first half of a movie, it’s because of what happened to Janet Leigh in that shower.  If not for Psycho, Drew Barrymore would have survived Scream and that shark would never have eaten Samuel L. Jackson in Deep Blue Sea.  Every giallo film that has ended with someone explaining the overly complex psychological reasons that led to the killer putting on black gloves and picking up a scalpel owes a debt to Simon Oakland’s monologue at the end of Psycho.  Psycho is so influential and popular that, decades later, A&E could broadcast a show called Bates Motel and have an instant hit.

What goes into making a classic?  That is question that is both asked and answered by Stephen Rebello’s Alfred Hitchcock and The Making of Psycho.  Starting with the real-life crimes of Ed Gein, Rebello’s book goes on to examine the writing of Robert Bloch’s famous novel and then the struggle to adapt that novel for the screen.

This book is a dream for trivia lovers.  Ever wanted to know who else was considered for the role of Marion Crane or Sam Loomis or even Norman Bates?  This is the book to look to.  Read this book and then imagine an alternate world where Psycho starred Dean Stockwell, Eva Marie Saint, and Leslie Neilsen?

(That’s right.  Leslie Neilsen was considered for the role of Sam Loomis.)

The book also confronts the controversy over who deserves credit for the shower scene, Alfred Hitchcock or Saul Bass.  And, of course, it also provides all the glorious details of how Hitchcock handled the film’s pre-release publicity.  Ignore the fact that this book was cited as being the inspiration for the rather forgettable Anthony Hopkins/Helen Mirren film, Hitchcock.  This is a fascinating read about a fascinating movie and a fascinating director.

First published in 1990 and still very much in print, Alfred Hitchcock and The Making of Psycho is a must-read for fans of film, horror, true crime, history, Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, and Psycho.

Rocky Mountain High: THE NAKED SPUR (MGM 1953)

Posted on by gary loggins

gary loggins's avatarcracked rear viewer

(By sheer coincidence, this post coincides with the birthday of character actor Millard Mitchell (1903-1953), who plays Tate in the film. Happy birthday, Millard! This one’s for you!)  

James Stewart and Anthony Mann  moved from Universal-International to MGM, and from black & white to Technicolor, for THE NAKED SPUR, the third of their quintet of Westerns together. The ensemble cast of five superb actors all get a chance to shine, collectively and individually, creating fully fleshed out characters against the natural beauty of the Colorado backdrop.

Bitter Howard Kemp, whose wife sold their ranch and ran off while he was serving in the war, is hunting down killer Ben Vandergroat for the $5,000 bounty in hopes of rebuilding his life. Along the trail he meets old prospector Jesse Tate and recently discharged (dishonorably) Lt. Roy Anderson. The trio manages to capture Vandergroat, but he’s not alone… he’s accompanied by pretty wildcat Lina…

View original post 484 more words

Horror Scenes I Love: Psycho

Posted on by Arleigh

Psycho

It would be difficult to get through October and not point out one of the best scenes in horror ever.

There’s Janet Leigh’s performance which conveyed the utter terror the scene wanted to convey. We have Bernard Hermann’s discordant film score highlighting the attack. Despite being a very bloodless sequence the way Hitchcock filmed the scene made audience imagine that they were actually witnessing something more violent and gory.

We all have Alfred Hitchcock to thank for this most iconic of all horror scenes.