Tag Archives: Peggie Castle

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Back From The Dead (dir by Charles Marquis Warren)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1958’s Back From The Dead, pregnant Mandy Anthony (Peggie Castle) is on a California vacation with her husband Dick (Arthur Franz) and her sister, Kate (Marsha Hunt).

While staying at Dick’s vacation home (which overlooks the ocean), a tired Mandy grimaces when Dick starts playing a record.  Dick insists that it’s her favorite record but Mandy’s reaction would seem to indicate the opposite.  While the droning orchestral music plays, Mandy has a sudden seizure and passes out.  Dick rushes her to the bedroom while Kate smashes the record.  A doctor (Ned Glass) comes to check on Mandy and announces that she’s had both an epileptic seizure and a miscarriage.  When Mandy wakes up, she’s suddenly demanding to be called Felecia and referring to Dick by an odd nickname, “Deacon.”  Dick rushes out of the bedroom and refuses to reenter.  When Kate demands to know what’s wrong, Dick reveals that Mandy is actually his second wife.  His first wife was named Felecia and she always used to call him “Deacon.”

Soon, Mandy is demanding to be taken to see “her” parents, who are actually Felecia’s parents.  Felecia’s mother (Ada Bradley) is revealed to be some sort of witch who apparently cast a spell that caused Felicia’s spirit to possess Mandy as soon as she entered the vacation home.  (It turns out that terrible record that Dick insisted on playing was Felecia’s favorite.)  Along with Dick’s neighbor (Marianne Stewart), Felecia’s mother is a member of a Satanic cult that is led by the mysterious Renault (Otto Reichow)  The possessed Mandy is soon threatening not only Dick but also all of Dick’s friends.  She even murders Dick’s dog.  (Boo!)

There’s an interesting subtext to Back From The Dead, though I’m not sure it was intentional on the part of the filmmakers.  Even before Mandy is possessed, Dick is hardly the model husband.  He comes across as being cold and uncommunicative and when both Mandy and Kate say that they don’t want to listen to the record, he ignores them and insists that they both love it.  Dick also doesn’t seem to be particularly upset by the loss of the baby.  As well, he’s never even told his wife that he was married before.  The only time that Dick really shows emotion is when he realizes that he can no longer control Mandy.  Mandy spends the entire film either being ordered around by Dick or being possessed by Dick’s dead first wife.  In the end, it isn’t Dick or any of the other men in the film who fights for Mandy’s freedom.  Instead, it’s Kate, Mandy’s sister.  Kate is the only person in the film who seems to care that Mandy has basically lost control over her own life.  In the end, the film becomes about just how far one sister will go to protect the other.  Kate fights to give Mandy back her life but it’s hard not to feel that it’s not much of a life to begin with.  Much like Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life, Back From The Dead ends with a false sense of happiness.  For Mandy and Dick and Kate, nothing is ever going to be truly the same again.

Now, I should note that Back From The Dead is definitely a B-movie.  It has the look of a well-produced episode of a 50s anthology show.  All it really needed was Boris Karloff to host.  Arthur Franz is a bit on the dull side as Dick but that’s largely the fault of a script that doesn’t allow him to do much other than seethe and glower.  The film’s heart belongs to Masha Hunt’s fierce performance as Kate.  Kate is a fighter and a protector and it’s impossible not to root for her.  I can only hope to be as good as a sister as Kate but, then again, I don’t think any of my sisters are going to be possessed this holiday season.  Let’s hope not!

The film has its slow spots but, for the most part, Back From The Dead is a 50s B-movie that holds your interest.  You’ll never want to listen to vinyl record again.

Horror On The Lens: Beginning of the End (dir by Bert I. Gordon)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Giant locusts are attacking Chicago!

That’s the plot of this 1957 film from director Bert I. Gordon.  Chicago-haters will love this film, especially the scene where General Morris Ankrum announces that he has no  choice but to nuke the entire city.  If you don’t hate Chicago, you can still enjoy watching Peter Graves somehow retaining his dignity while dealing with the threat of giant locusts.

For the record, I’m enough of a country girl that I fully understand just destructive locusts can be.  That said, when it comes to their appearance, they’re not the most intimidating creatures out there.  The worst that can be said about them is that they look like really ugly grasshoppers.  A giant grasshopper still looks like a giant grasshopper.  And, needless to say, locusts do not attack humans.

(I’m also enough of a Southern girl that I can remember collecting the locust exo-skeletons that would always show up in the fall and winter.)

Here is the ludicrous and entertaining Beginning of the End!

 

Horror Film Review: Beginning of the End (dir by Bert I. Gordon)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1957 film, Beginning of the End, is perhaps the ultimate horror film for people who dislike Illinois.

Because it’s a Bert I. Gordon film and Gordon took his “Mr. Big” nickname seriously, it deals with giant monsters.  In this case, the monsters are a bunch of locust who ate all of this radioactive grain that was being stored in a silo.  The locusts grew to giant size and then they went on a rampage.

Fortunately, the rampage appears to be localized to Illinois.  Apparently, the locusts have enough respect for state boundaries that they know better than to hop into Indiana, Missouri, or Wisconsin.  Instead, the locusts take out the farming community of Ludlow and then start making their way to Chicago, perhaps hoping to battle the Chicago Outfit for control of the city’s politics.  Do they seriously think Mayor Daley is just going to sit back while a bunch of locusts overrun his city?

The government wants to cover up the locust rampage because they don’t want to risk a mass panic in the 47 states that they actually care about.  (This film came out before Alaska and Hawaii joined the Union.)  However, when enterprising reporter Audrey Aimes (Peggie Castle) comes across the remains of Ludlow and discovers that the U.S. military has taken over the area, she is determined to discover what happened.  She hooks up with Dr. Ed Wainwright (Peter Graves), whose work in making food bigger led to the giant locust attacks in the first place.  In most movies, Ed would shoulder most of the blame for the locust attack but Beginning of the End seems to understand that these things happen when you’re dousing food with radiation and then keeping the food in a poorly secured silo.

Of course, the main reason why it’s not Ed’s fault is that Ed is played by Peter Graves and seriously, who could blame anything on Peter Graves?  Graves was one of those actors who could deliver even the silliest of dialogue with a straight face and he certainly gets to do that in Beginning of the End.  He seems to be taking the situation seriously, even if no one else is.

One reason why it is a little bit difficult to take the situation seriously is because it’s about giant locusts.  Now, make no mistake about it.  I’m enough a country girl that I know how destructive locusts can be.  The problem is that locusts may be destructive but they don’t look all that menacing.  Even giant locusts just look like really ugly grasshoppers.  This film uses a lot of rear projection and still photography to create the idea of giant locusts crawling over buildings and threatening the soldiers who have been sent to fight them.  As is so often the case with Bert I. Gordon’s film, there’s a definite charm to the cheap special effects.  But still, locusts are locusts.

Chicago haters will love the scene where General Hanson (Morris Ankrum) announces that the locusts have only left him with one option, the drop an atomic bomb and wipe the city off the face of the Earth.  Fortunately, Ed is there to suggest another solution.  Good old Peter Graves.  I don’t know what we would have done without him.

As a final note, I’ll just mention that the poster for this film is actually more exciting than the film itself:

New York After Midnight: 99 RIVER STREET (United Artists 1953)

Posted on by gary loggins

gary loggins's avatarcracked rear viewer

The trio that brought you KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL – star John Payne, director Phil Karlson, and producer Edward Small – teamed again for 99 RIVER STREET, and while it’s not quite on a par with their film noir classic, it’s crammed with enough sex’n’violence to hold your interest for an hour and a half. Karlson’s direction is solid, as is the cast (including a knockout performance by Evelyn Keyes), and the camerawork of the great Austrian cinematographer Franz Planer gives it a wonderfully brooding touch of darkness.

The story itself is highly improbable yet highly entertaining: ex-boxer Ernie Driscoll (Payne), once a heavyweight contender now reduced to driving a cab, is married to ex-showgirl Pauline (the delectable Peggie Castle), who’s two-timing him with crook Victor Rawlins (slimebag Brad Dexter ). Ernie catches them making out through the window of the flower shop Pauline works at, and his PTSD is triggered…

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Film Review: Invasion U.S.A. (dir by Alfred Green)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here’s how Invasion, U.S.A. opens:

A bunch of strangers sit in a bar.  On the television, a blandly handsome anchorman delivers the news.  He talks about foreign wars.  He talks about domestic conflicts.  One of the bar patrons asks the bartender to turn off the news.  Who cares about all of that stuff?  All he wants to do is have a nice drink before heading home to his cattle ranch.  Can’t he just do that in peace?  The bartender agrees and turns off the news…

That’s a scene that gets played out a lot nowadays.  No one wants to watch the news.  Certainly not me.  I guess we all know that we should because it’s important to know what’s going on in the world and blah blah blah.  But seriously, people who spend all of their time watching the news inevitably seem to end up going insane and ruining twitter.  I’ve got no interest in doing that.

Here’s the thing, though.  Invasion U.S.A. may open with a contemporary scene but it’s hardly a contemporary movie.  Instead, it was made in 1952 and it serves as proof that we’re not the first Americans to get sick of watching the news and that our current crop of politically minded filmmakers are not the first to try to change our mind with heavy-handed propaganda.

Everyone at the bar has a complaint.  The Arizona rancher resents having to pay high taxes just to support the defense department.  The Chicago industrialist is upset that the government wants to use his factories to build weapons.  Congressman Haroway (Wade Crosby) is a drunk.  Socialite Carla Sanford (Peggie Castle) worked in a factory during World War II but she no longer follows the news.  Newscaster Vince Potter (Gerald Mohr) is a cynic.  Tim the Bartender (Tom Kennedy) is too busy selling cocktails to worry about the communists.

Only the mysterious Mr. Ohman (Dan O’Herlihy, who would later play Conal Cochran in Halloween III) seems to care.  While holding a conspicuously oversized brandy glass, Mr. Ohman explains that he’s a forecaster.  What’s a forecaster?  A forecaster is … oh wait!  There’s no time to explain it because the communists have invaded!

Everyone sits in the bar and watches as the news reports on the invasion of the U.S.A.  (Everyone except for Mr. Ohman, who has mysteriously vanished.)  In the tradition of all low-budget B-movies, the invasion is represented through stock footage.  Lots and lots of stock footage.  Planes drop bombs.  Soldiers run out of a barracks.  Cities burn.

When everyone leaves the bar, they discover that America has been crippled by people like them, people who never thought it would happen.  Some of our bar patrons die heroically.  (Not Tim the Bartender, though.  He’s still making dumb jokes and cleaning beer mugs when the bomb drops.)  Some of our patrons regret that they didn’t care enough when it would have actually made a difference.  The industrialist discovers that, because he wouldn’t let the government take over his factory, he now has to take orders from sniveling little Marxist.  The rancher discovers that taxis get really crowded when everyone’s fleeing the Russians.  And others discover that better dead than red isn’t just a catch phrase.  It’s a way of life.

Of course, there’s a twist ending.  You’ll guess it as soon as you see Mr. Ohman with that brandy glass…

Invasion U.S.A. is often cited as one of the worst films ever made but I have to admit that I absolutely love it.  I have a soft spot for heavy-handed, over the top propaganda films and they don’t get more heavy-handed than Invasion, U.S.A.  There’s not a subtle moment to be found in the entire film.  You have to love any film that features character authoritatively declaring that something will never happen mere moments before it happens.  Best of all, you’ve got Dan O’Herlihy, playing Mr. Ohman with just a hint of a knowing smile, as if he’s as amused as we are.

Politically, this film is a mixed bag for me.  The film argues that you should trust the government and basically, shut up and follow orders.  I’m a libertarian so, as you can imagine, that’s not really my thing.  At the same time, the villains were all communists and most of the communists that I’ve met in my life have been pretty obnoxious so I enjoyed the part of the film that advocated blowing them up.  The only thing this film hates more than communists is indifference.

In the end, Invasion U.S.A. is a real time capsule of a film, one that shows how different things were in the past while also reminding us that times haven’t changed that much.  Though the film’s politics may be pure 1952, its paranoia and its condemnation of apathy feels very contemporary.

(For the record, apathy is underrated.)

Seen today, what makes Invasion U.S.A. memorable is its mix of sincerity, paranoia, and Dan O’Herlihy.  Unless the communists at YouTube take down the video, you can watch it below!