For today’s horror on the lens, we have a real treat! (We’ll get to the tricks later…)
Long before he achieved holiday immortality by playing the father in A Christmas Story, Darren McGavin played journalist Carl Kolchak in the 1972 made-for-TV movie, The Night Stalker. Kolchak is investigating a series of murders in Las Vegas, all of which involve victims being drained of their blood. Kolchak thinks that the murderer might be a vampire. Everyone else thinks that he’s crazy.
When this movie first aired, it was the highest rated made-for-TV movie of all time. Eventually, it led to a weekly TV series in which Kolchak investigated various paranormal happenings. Though the TV series did not last long, it’s still regularly cited as one of the most influential shows ever made.
Anyway, The Night Stalker is an effective little vampire movie and Darren McGavin gives a great performance as Carl Kolchak.
Like so many film noirs, 1957’s Hell Bound opens with a narrator. As we watch scenes of a group of thieves robbing a Naval ship of World War II narcotics, the narrator explains to us what each criminal is doing and how their plot will hopefully lead to them getting rich. Again, this is something we’ve seen in a countless number of film noirs. What makes Hell Bound unique is that the narration keeps going long after one would expect it to stop. And the expected cops and federal agents are never introduced….
That’s because we’re watching a film within a film! Jordan (John Russell) has made and produced the film himself, all to convince a gangster named Harry Quantro (Frank Fenton) to support his plan to …. well, to rob a Naval ship of narcotics. Jordan promises that the real-life theft will go just as smoothly as the theft in the movie! And, it must be said, Jordan’s movie was really well-made. He hired actors and everything. Harry agrees to give Jordan his backing on the condition that Jordan use Harry’s girlfriend, Paula (June Blair), in the operation. That, of course, means that Jordan won’t be able to use his own girlfriend, Jan (Margo Woode). That’s going to be awkward.
Anyway, Jordan starts to assemble his crew and they’re the typical film noir collection of misfits. One of the more fun things about Hell Bound is that it’s full of odd and eccentric characters, the types who would you actually expect to find trying to rob the U.S. Navy of narcotics in the 1950s. My favorite character was the blind drug dealer named Daddy (Dehl Berti). He has the perfect attitude for someone who had the luxury of not having to see the damage caused by his professions.
Of course, there’s no such thing as a perfect plan. Whenever you get a bunch of criminals together to pull off the perfect heist, there’s bound to be some betrayals and some paranoia. We’ve all seen the ending of Goodfellas and we all know what the piano coda from Layla means. Complicating matters is that a big part of the scheme requires Paula to fake being an ambulance nurse and that means that she’s going to have to work with an honest ambulance driver named Eddie Mason (Stuart Whitman). Eddie is a good, working class guy who just wants to help people and make the world a better place. How can Paula go through with her part of the plan when she’s got Eddie looking at his hands and saying that he wants to use them to be a healer!?
I really liked Hell Bound. I wasn’t expecting much from it but it turned out to be a really effective and clever 50s film noir. Clocking in at 70 minutes, it doesn’t have any time for excess padding or anything else. As soon as the film-within-a-film comes to an end, it jumps right into the action and it doesn’t let up. Add to that, you’ve got John Russell giving a tough and gritty performance as the wannabe criminal mastermind and then you’ve got Stuart Whitman managing to make his self-righteous character likable and June Blair doing a great job as the femme fatal. Hell Bound is bit of an unsung classic, a tough and gritty film noir that packs a punch.
Tonight’s episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker is a fun one!
In this episode, Kolchak investigates a series of mysterious deaths that seem to involve one very ambitious politician (played by Tom Skerritt). Kolchak’s investigation leads him to believe that not only has the politician made a deal with the devil but that the politician also has the ability to transform himself into a killer dog!
Agck!
That’s Chicago-style politics for you, I guess.
This episode originally aired on November 15th, 1974.
On tonight’s episode of Thriller, we see what happens when an aspiring sorcerer (George MacReady) accidentally kills his son. In order to brings his son back to life, he has to have a special suit made by the weird tailor of the title (played by Henry Jones).
This is one of the better episode of Thriller. For once, the use of the word “weird” in the title is not a misnomer! This one was written by Robert Bloch, who adapted his own short story. It originally aired on October 16th, 1961.
For today’s horror on the lens, we have a real treat! (We’ll get to the tricks later…)
Long before he achieved holiday immortality by playing the father in A Christmas Story, Darren McGavin played journalist Carl Kolchak in the 1972 made-for-TV movie, The Night Stalker. Kolchak is investigating a series of murders in Las Vegas, all of which involve victims being drained of their blood. Kolchak thinks that the murderer might be a vampire. Everyone else thinks that he’s crazy.
When this movie first aired, it was the highest rated made-for-TV movie of all time. Eventually, it led to a weekly TV series in which Kolchak investigated various paranormal happenings. Though the TV series did not last long, it’s still regularly cited as one of the most influential shows ever made.
Anyway, The Night Stalker is an effective little vampire movie and Darren McGavin gives a great performance as Carl Kolchak.
How, you may be asking, did I come to see The Clones, an extremely obscure and low-budget science fiction thriller from 1973?
It all started when I first saw the trailer for the film on 42nd Street Forever, a compilation of old school grindhouse trailers. For whatever reasons, the trailer for The Clones fascinated me. Whether it was the extremely dry narration or the fact that the trailer actually ended with a quote from a then-member of the U.S. Senate, I felt that The Clones was a film that I, as a student of film and history, simply had to see.
How obscure is this film? It’s so obscure that The Clones has never even been released on DVD. In order to see the film, I had to go on Amazon and order a used VHS copy from a some guy in Indiana. When it arrived in the mail, the first thing I noticed was the big “Property of the St. Augusta Public Library” that was stamped on the back of the worn video box.
The fact that my copy of The Clones had obviously seen better days actually added a lot to the viewing experience. Much as true grindhouse fans treasure every scratch and auditory pop whenever they watch a film like Fight For Your Life or Last House on Dead End Street, I found myself oddly proud that my copy of The Clones had obviously survived so much just so that it could eventually end up as a part of my video library.
As for the film itself, The Clones is one of those wonderful low-budget films that deserve to be rediscovered. Dr. Gerald Appleby (well-played by an actor named Michael Greene) is a nuclear scientist who discovers that he’s been cloned and that the clone has essentially been out living his life whenever the original Appleby has been at work. Though it’s hinted that he’s being set up by foreign spies, the reason for Appleby’s cloning remains obscure throughout the entire film. Whether this narrative obscurity is intentional or not, it actually serves the film well as it helps to transform Appleby into almost a Kafkaesque figure.
When Appleby attempts to reveal to the proper authorities that he’s been cloned, he finds himself accused of being an imposter and is forced to literally run for his life. The majority of the film deals with Appleby being chased across the California desert by not only the mad scientist who cloned him (a wonderfully demented Stanley Adams) but also by two ruthless federal agents. The two federal agents are played by Otis Young and Gregory Sierra, two character actors who appeared in several films during the 70s. Sierra and Young are a lot of fun to watch in this film and it’s hard not to like them, even if they technically are villains. They both just seem to be having so much fun trying to kill our hero.
From what little information that I’ve been able to gather about this film’s production, it appears that The Clones was one of the first motion pictures to attempt to take advantage of the paranoia that most people feel over the prospect of humans being cloned. When seen today, the film’s story is a bit predictable because, to be honest, there’s really only so much when you can do with cloning as a plot device. However, The Clones remains an oddly effective film. The low budget (and lack of special effects) actually contributes to the film’s success. Without the crutch of spectacle, The Clones is forced to pay attention to things like characterization. How’s that for a concept?
The film eventually climaxes with a genuinely exciting shoot out in a deserted amusement park and then it all ends, in typical 70s fashion, in a climax that manages to be both fun and depressing at the same time.
The Clones is not necessarily an easy film to see but it’s well worth the effort.
Through the Shattered Lens 