After three eccentric businessman arrange for a young couple to get together right before the holidays, a plane crash kills the three men. However, their ghosts remain on Earth to watch over the couple and to take care of some unexpected holiday business. The film is a holiday film and a comedy and a romance and a musical and a ghost story and a melodrama and finally an oddly sincere meditation on life and death.
From 1940, here’s Beyond Tomorrow!
“Tom Stewart killed me!” shouts the spirit of Vi Mason (Juli Reding).
Technically, it’s debatable whether or not Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson) actually killed Vi. As is seen during the opening moments of 1960’s Tormented, Vi actually slipped and was clinging onto the lighthouse’s balcony for dear life before she fell to her death on the rocks below. Tom didn’t push her and he didn’t force her to fall. However, Tom did refuse to pull her up. After she fell, he ran into the ocean and thought he had dragged back to safety. But then it turned out that he was just dragging around a bunch of seaweed.
To a certain extent, Tom is glad to be done with Vi. Vi was his ex-girlfriend and she was determined to keep Tom from marrying the rich and innocent, Meg (Lugene Sanders). Meg’s father (Harry Fleer) already hates Tom because he’s not only a pianist but he’s also a jazz pianist! Still, Meg loves Tom and, in a somewhat disturbing way, Meg’s little sister, Sandy (Susan Gordon), seems to be kind of obsessed with Tom as well. “Why can’t I get married!?” Sandy demands. BECAUSE YOU’RE LIKE TEN, YOU LITTLE BRAT!
Still, it’s not helping Tom that he keeps hearing Vi’s voice and seeing her ghost. Everyone in the village think that Tom is acting strangely but they dismiss it as pre-wedding jitters. (And, of course, his future father-in-law just assumes that Tom is being weird because he’s one of those jazz pianists.) If it wasn’t bad enough that Tom is having to deal with Vi’s ghost, he’s also got a hepcat blackmailer named Nick (Joe Turkel). Nick was hired to take Vi out to the island where Tom lives. When Vi doesn’t return to pay him, Nick goes to Tom for the money. When Nick overhears that Tom is about to marry a rich woman, Nick decides that he needs even more money.
Joe Turkel was one of the great character actors. A favorite of Stanley Kubrick’s, he appeared in Paths of Glory and later played Lloyd the Bartender in The Shining, Turkel also played Eldon Tyrrell in Blade Runner, in which he made the mistake of talking down to Rutger Hauer’s Roy. In the role of Nick, Tukel is the best thing to be found in Tormented. Turkel delivers all of his dialogue with a wonderfully insolent attitude. He’s the type of character who, in the style of Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear, refers to everyone he meets as “Dad.” He’s a lowlife and criminal but he’s got the spirit of Kerouac and Cassady in him and it doesn’t take him long to see straight through Tom.
Tormented was directed by Bert I. Gordon, who was best-known for his movies about giant monsters. There aren’t any monsters in Tormented but there is a really shrill ghost and a truly unlikable protagonist. There’s a lot flaws to be found in this film but Joe Turkel makes up for a lot of them. And the scene where Vi’s ghost objects to Tom’s wedding is a lot creepier than it really has any right to be. This is probably the best film that Bert I. Gordon ever directed, which does not necessarily mean its a good film. Bert I. Gordon was still Bert I. Gordon. But Tormented is definitely entertaining.
After three eccentric businessman arrange for a young couple to get together right before the holidays, a plane crash kills the three men. However, their ghosts remain on Earth to watch over the couple and to take care of some unexpected holiday business. The film is a holiday film and a comedy and a romance and a musical and a ghost story and a melodrama and finally an oddly sincere meditation on life and death.
From 1940, here’s Beyond Tomorrow!
I’m standing at the edge of tomorrow
And its all up to me how far I go
I’m standing at the edge of tomorrow
I’ve never seen such a view before
A new world before my eyes
So much for me to explore
It’s where my future lies
Today I’m standing at the edge of tomorrow
From here the future looks bright for me
And it’s all up to me how far I go
It’s my time to break away
I’m standing at the edge of tomorrow
Today
Beyond Tomorrow is a strange film from 1940. Technically, it is a holiday film. It takes place during the Christmas season and there’s a lot of very peppy scenes featuring people celebrating the holidays. I watched the movie with my friends in the Late Night Movie Gang. We’re a pretty sentimental group but even we felt that some of the characters went a bit overboard with the holiday cheer. The film is also comedy and a romance and a musical and a ghost story and a melodrama and finally an oddly sincere meditation on life and death. That’s a lot of weight for one film to carry and there were more than a few times that Beyond Tomorrow seemed like it might collapse in a heap of Christmas ambition. Fortunately, the film always righted itself and, in the end, it actually managed to be …. well, definitely more interesting than what any of us were expecting!
The film opens with three businessmen (Harry Carey, C. Aubrey Smith, and Charles Winninger) living in a mansion with their Russian housekeeper (played by Maria Ouspenskaya, who was also the old gypsy lady in The Wolf Man). As almost something of a lark, the three men arrange for James (Richard Carlson) to meet Jean (Jean Parker). Jean is a teacher. James is a singing cowboy from Texas. Together, with the encouragement of the three businessmen, Jean and James get together. Awwwww!
Unfortunately, the three businessmen are then all killed in a plane crash. However, their ghosts remain on Earth and watch over the growing love between James and Jean. Unfortunately, James become a singing sensation on the radio and soon, he’s being tempted to cheat. Meanwhile, Jean’s ex-husband is running around with murder in his heart and a gun in his hand! This romantic comedy has suddenly taken a very dark turn!
While the three ghosts look after James and Jean, they consider why they’re still on Earth and not in the afterlife. One ghost is eventually greeted by his son, who died during the Great War. Another one of the businessmen is haunted by vaguely defined sins and, even in death, he refuses to repent because he feels that he doesn’t deserve to go to Heaven. Instead, he continually walks off into the darkness. The last businessman continually tries to push James and Jean on the right path but it turns out that it’s not easy for the dead to talk sense to the living.
You can probably give yourself whiplash trying to keep up with the film’s tonal changes. It starts out with romance and comedy and then suddenly, it’s turns into an existential rumination of love, forgiveness, and guilt. Once the three businessmen die, it becomes a totally different story. Suddenly, soldiers are returning from the dead and the gates of Hell are beckoning. And, on top of that, James keeps breaking out into song every few minutes!
It’s a very strange film. Unfortunately, from the start, the pacing feels off. By today’s standards, Beyond Tomorrow gets bogged down in all of the songs and the scenes of holiday mirth-making. That may not have been as much of a problem for audiences in 1940 but I have to say that, speaking as someone trying to watch this film in 2020, Beyond Tomorrow made my ADD go crazy. If not for my friends and their patient willingness to inform me what was going on in the film, I probably wouldn’t have been able to follow the film’s storyline.
That said, the film was fairly well-acted and the final scenes, with the heavenly gates in the sky, are undeniably effective. Speaking as a history nerd, I found it interesting to see how the shadow of World War I still hung over a film that was made 21 years after that war ended. As the scenes in which one of the ghosts is a reunited with son showed, America was still dealing with trauma and horror of the first modern war. (One year after the release of Beyond Tomorrow, Japan would bomb Pearl Harbor and America entered World War II, a conflict that many hoped to avoid precisely because they remembered the all of the men who didn’t make it home during the previous war in Europe.) Messy though the film may be, Beyond Tomorrow functions well as both a historical document and a bit of sentimental wish fulfillment.
Compared to holiday classics like the original Miracle on 34th Street and It’s A Wonderful Life, Beyond Tomorrow is relatively unknown. Certainly, it’s no classic. But, for fans of both Christmas and old movies, it’s still an interesting trip into the past.
Since today is Tor Johnson’s birthday, I wanted to share a scene from Plan 9 From Outer Space or Bride of the Monster or even the Beast of Yucca Flats.
Unfortunately, YouTube would not cooperate. I found a lot of tribute videos that people had done. I found several videos of Tor playing Lobo with silly music playing in the background. There were a lot of weird Tor/Bela tribute videos. (Apparently, there’s a very active community of Lobo/Varnoff shippers, which was not something that I really needed to know.) Anyway, try as I did, I couldn’t find any decent videos of just Tor walking into a wall or rising from the dead of reaching for the bunny in Beast of Yucca Flats.
However, I did find this clip from a film in which Tor Johnson appeared in 1948. Apparently, Behind Locked Doors was noir about a detective who goes undercover at a sanitarium. One of the other patients at the sanitarium? TOR JOHNSON!
So, enjoy this chance to see Tor Johnson in a scene not directed by Ed Wood or Coleman Francis. (The scene was directed by Budd Boetticher, who has a far different critical reputation that both Misters Wood and Francis.)
A woman named Christine (Lyn Bari) walks along the beach when she thinks that she hears the voice of her husband calling out her name. The only problem is that her husband has been dead for two years. Christine’s sister, Janet (Cathy O’Donnell), says that Christine is just hearing things and that she needs to move on from mourning. After all, her boyfriend, Martin (Richard Carlson), is on the verge of asking Christine to marry him….
And yet, Christine can’t escape the feeling that her husband is trying to contact her from beyond the grave. During another walk along the beach, she runs into a handsome man who introduces himself as being Alexis (Turhan Bey). Alexis says that he’s a medium and that he has the power to speak to the dead. Furthermore, he tells Christine that he can speak to her dead husband for her.
Despite the fact that Alexis owns a really impressive crystal ball, Martin is skeptical of his claims. Martin even goes so far as to hire a private investigator (Harry Mendoza) to investigate Alexis’s past. Meanwhile, though she has her suspicions, Janet finds herself falling in love with the charming Alexis….
Released in 1948, The Amazing Mr. X is an unjustly obscure little mystery film. Though I guess it’s open to debate whether it should be considered a horror film or just a noirish thriller, The Amazing Mr. X is full of creepy atmosphere and eerie moments. Employing expressionistic camera angles and dark lighting, director Bernard Vorhaus turns The Amazing Mr. X into a dream of dark and forbidden things. Some of the black-and-white shots are simply stunning and the seance sequence is brilliantly done.
The film is also well-acted by a cast of actors who deserve to be better remembered. Lynn Bari is perfectly fragile and sympathetic as the haunted Christine while Cathy O’Donnell turns the potentially boring Janet into a compelling character. The film even makes good use of Richard Carlson’s reliable dullness by casting him as the one character who is meant to be a force of stability in Christine’s otherwise neurotic life.
That said, the entire film is stolen by Turhan Bey. Born in Austria and of Turkish descent, Turhan Bey was nicknamed the “Turkish Delight” during his film career and, watching The Amazing Mr. X, you can see why. Bey is so charming and so handsome that you can understand why even those who should know better would want to believe that Alexis could talk to the dead. The Amazing Mr. X was one of the last films that Bey filmed in the United States. He retired a few years later and returned to his native Austria, where he ran a cafe. (40 years later, the now elderly Bey did come out of retirement and made a few appearance of television before passing away, at the age of 90, in 2012.)
Like all good mysteries, The Amazing Mr. X has a third act twist that you probably won’t see coming and it ends with the proper combination of tragedy and redemption. The Amazing Mr. X is currently in the public domain and can be viewed on YouTube so check it out! You won’t be sorry!
By the early 1950’s, the type of Gothic horrors Universal was famous for had become passe. It was The Atomic Age, and science fiction ruled the roost, with invaders from outer space and giant bugs unleashed by radiation were the new norm. But the studio now called Universal-International had one more ace up its collective sleeve: THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, last of the iconic Universal Monsters!
Scientist Dr. Maia, exploring “the upper reaches of the Amazon” with his native guides, discovers a fossilized hand that may be the evolutionary “missing link”. Taking his finding to the Institudo de Biologia Martima, he teams with ichthyologist David Reed, David’s pretty assistant/fiancé Kay Lawrence, institute chief Dr. Mark Williams, and fellow scientist Dr. Thompson to form an expedition. They charter the steamer The Rita, skippered by Captain Lucas, and head down the river into the Black Lagoon. Maia’s Indian guides…
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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.
Today we celebrate the birthday of everybody’s favorite wrestler-turned-actor named Johnson… no, not Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, but the hulking Tor Johnson (1902-1971)! Before he starred in all those Ed Wood epics, Tor was a pro wrestler billed as ‘The Super Swedish Angel’ (a bad guy, of course), and performed in hundreds (perhaps thousands) of bouts around the globe. Each year, Cracked Rear Viewer pays tribute to the 6’3″, 400 lb. behemoth, and this year I’ve unearthed a clip from a 1948 Budd Boetticher-directed noir called BEHIND LOCKED DOORS, in which Tor beats the crap out of another horror/sci-fi icon, Richard Carlson . Happy birthday, O Mighty Tor!:
Who is Adam Hart?
That is the mystery that Professors Jim Tanner (George Hamilton) and Margery Lansing (Suzanne Pleshette) have to solve. Someone is using psychic powers to kill their co-workers in a research laboratory. The police think that Tanner is guilty but Tanner knows that one of his colleagues is actually a super human named Adam Hart. Hart is planning on using his super powers to control the world and, because Tanner is the only person who has proof of his existence, Hart is methodically framing Tanner for every murder that he commits.
The Power is underrated by entertaining movie, a mix of mystery and science fiction with a pop art twist. It was also one of the first attempts to portray telekinesis on film. Similar films, like Scanners, may be better known but all of them are directly descended from The Power. George Hamilton may seem like an unlikely research scientist but he and Suzanne Pleshette are a good team and The Power makes good use of Pleshette’s way with a one liner. Also keep an eye out for familiar faces like Arthur O’Connell, Nehemiah Persoff, Michael Rennie, Gary Merrill, Yvonne DeCarlo, Vaughn Taylor, Aldo Ray, and even Forrest J. Ackerman as a hotel clerk.
Through the Shattered Lens 