13 Nights of Shocktober: Rosemary's Baby (1968)

 by A.J. 

Night 2: New Hollywood Horror Night

“This is no dream. This is really happening!”

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

In 1968 two films were released that would forever change the landscape of horror movies: Rosemary’s Baby and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Prior to these films, most horror films were period pieces and fantasies set in castles with period costumes and monsters. Universal monster movies of the 1930’s and the British Hammer Films and Roger Corman produced movies of the late 50’s and early to mid-60’s typified the genre. Both Rosemary’s Baby and Night of the Living Dead had contemporary settings—though Rosemary’s Baby is technically set two or three years before it was released—and approached their respective plots with a stark realism missing from most horror movies (Val Lewton’s horror movies for RKO in the 1940’s being the exception). It is hard to believe that a dark and disturbing movie like Rosemary’s Baby had such broad appeal upon its release. It's hard to believe that Rosemary’s Baby has sustained its appeal over the decades. Even today it casts its creepy spell and people who say they do not like horror movies will watch Rosemary’s Baby.

I think the most difficult thing for a modern viewer to understand is that the movie’s final revelation is supposed to be a twist. Like Psycho (1960) and Planet of the Apes (also released in 1968), the final twist is maybe the most famous thing about the movie. Both Ira Levin’s novel and the film adaptation play up suspicions about witches, witchcraft, and secret covens. All of the evidence Rosemary finds points to her new neighbors, friends, and doctor being part of a coven but she does not guess the true nature of her pregnancy. She comes to believe that they plan to sacrifice her baby in some sort of ritual.

Mia Farrow gives her signature performance as Rosemary Woodhouse. She is not a damsel but she is a person unaware of the danger around them until it is too late. Her petite figure accentuated by her pixie haircut (it’s “Vidal Sassoon” she says to everyone taken aback by her short hair) visually enhances that sense of looming danger. This only increases with her pregnancy. The stress of an unusual pregnancy, changing personality of her husband, and her isolation, paranoia, and realization that the circle of people she can trust is shrinking are effectively portrayed by Farrow. 

It is interesting that Rosemary’s Baby was such a watershed for horror movies, yet it began as a more conventional horror movie. William Castle, the B-movie producer famous for cheesy horror movies that used outlandish gimmicks (most famously rigging certain seats with buzzers for The Tingler), wanted to try his hand at more serious filmmaking. He optioned the rights to Ira Levin’s novel and planned to direct with his friend and frequent collaborator Vincent Price playing Rosemary’s sinister doctor. However, Paramount executive Robert Evans saw the potential for a substantial horror movie and hired Roman Polanski, then an upcoming European filmmaker of tense movies like Repulsion, later to be a fugitive from America, to direct.

Castle remained on the movie as producer, but Polanski as writer and director unlocked the potential that Evans saw. Polanski did not upend horror tropes of the time; rather, he stayed away from sensationalism, downplayed the supernatural, and grounded the film in a recognizable reality. Even the dream scenes retain a realistic but strange look, which only increases their surreal and disturbing tone–especially since one of those dreams turns out to be very real. The most important thing the film does is put us in Rosemary’s place, sometimes literally though POV shots. Unlike countless other horror movies, we don’t want anything bad to happen to her. The horror of Rosemary’s Baby is that it all feels so plausible. 

Whether you know the conclusion or not, Rosemary’s Baby is an incredibly effective horror film. Fashions and automobiles aside, little about it feels dated. In his review, Roger Ebert notes that instead of using surprise to scare the audience the movie uses a feeling of inevitability to create horror. That feeling of inevitability casts a tone of doom and dread over the whole movie and it lingers in the mind of the viewer. This is one of the greats of the modern horror era, but not the last thing you want to watch before going to bed.

Rosemary's Baby airs on TCM on Saturday, October 25th at 8:30CT and is available to stream on Paramount+, Kanopy, and Hoopla.

13 Nights of Shocktober: From Beyond the Grave

by A.J.

Night 10: Anthology Horror Night

“All tastes catered for. Oh, and a big novelty surprise goes with every purchase.”

From Beyond the Grave

Horror anthologies, or portmanteau films, are maybe my favorite horror subgenre. Multiple stories of different kinds wrapped up for the price of one movie. Many horror stories, in fact most, no matter what kind (monsters, slashers, allegories, whathaveyou) work best in short form simply because there is less time to pick apart details or overthink a thin premise. In the late 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s the British production company Amicus specialized in horror anthologies. Their most famous film is Tales From the Crypt (1972). Their 7th and final production, From Beyond the Grave (1977) did not fare well at the time, but it is quite entertaining and makes for great spooky-not-scary Shocktober viewing. 

From Beyond the Grave has four separate stories following people who visit an antiques store run by none other than horror legend Peter Cushing. Each story is based on a short story by British author R. Chetwynd-Hayes and all have the same director, Kevin Connor, and cinematographer Alan Hume (later to shoot Return of the Jedi and A Fish Called Wanda), so they all have a similar aesthetic while also having just enough variety in tone to feel distinct. Every anthology movie winds up feeling uneven to a certain degree and From Beyond the Grave is no exception, but overall there is more to enjoy than not. 

The first story, “The Gate Crasher”, has David Warner purchasing an old spooky looking mirror. He has some friends over and one of them says the mirror looks like something a medium would have. This prompts someone to suggest they have a séance, so they do, because why not. This calls forth an evil spirit trapped in the mirror who hypnotizes Warner into luring people to his apartment and killing them. The premise feels familiar if you’ve seen enough horror movies but it’s a good start and probably the darkest of the four stories. 

The second story “An Act of Kindness” is probably the best of the four. It stars Ian Bannen as a put-upon office manager with an overbearing wife who befriends a peddler played by Donald Pleasence. The peddler invites the office manager to his flat for dinner and to meet his daughter (played by Pleasence’s real life daughter, Angela). Of course, the peddler and his daughter are not what they seem. This segment benefits from the added layer of the office manager seeming to be a proper gentleman but actually being an undignified, pathetic man (he steals a war medal to impress the peddler) and the lowly peddler actually have the dignity and self respect the office manager only pretends to have. It also benefits from a great performance from Donald Pleasence. This story ends with a twist that plays a bit like a joke and seems to come out of nowhere but it fits the tone of the story. 

The third story has a man switching the price tags on snuff boxes in Cushing’s store. On the train ride home a goofy psychic calling herself Madame Orloff (Margaret Leighton) claims that he has a nasty elemental on his shoulder and gives him her card. When he gets home the dog won’t stop barking at him and his wife gets mysterious scratches, so he calls Madame Orloff to perform an exorcism. The exorcism is Madame Orloff giving him an insane shoulder massage while objects fly around the house. This is clearly a comedy and is a nice tonal switch up.

The final story is relatively straightforward. A young man asks to buy the extremely spooky looking door with a scary gargoyle carving. It’s crazy that this guy wants this; it’s even behind stuff that Cushing has to move out of the way. Perhaps the craziest thing about this story is that the guy uses this door for a simple closet in his otherwise average looking house. Of course later when he opens the closet he finds a big abandoned room covered in layers of dust and cobwebs. The room holds the spirit of a 17th century warlock who needs a body to finish a ritual and escape into the real world. There is not a lot to this story but the old room, lit with an eerie blue light and covered in cobwebs provides a good spooky atmosphere. 

There isn’t anything in From Beyond the Grave that will make you jump or cover your eyes, and there are more than a few moments that will make you laugh or even giggle. However, each story works well on its own and also as part of a larger anthology of people getting more than they bargained for and sometimes deserving what they get. 

From Beyond the Grave airs on TCM on Wednesday, October 30th and 6:15AM CT.

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Black Cat (1934)

by A.J.

Night 11: Universal Horror Night

“Superstitious, perhaps. Bologna, perhaps not.”

 The Black Cat (1934)

Released in 1934, The Black Cat is unusual for a Universal Studios horror picture because it features none of their signature monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, or any monsters, at least no supernatural ones. However, The Black Cat does feature the biggest horror stars of the era, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff giving some of the best performances of their careers. The title card says the movie is “suggested by the immortal Edgar Allan Poe classic” but that claim is more than a stretch as the only thing the plot has in common with the Poe short story is the inclusion of a black cat in one scene. Fortunately, the story invented by screenwriter Peter Ruric and co-writer and director Edgar G. Ulmer makes for a superbly dark and creepy old-school horror picture.

While traveling on the Orient Express through Hungary on their honeymoon, newlyweds Peter (David Manners) and Joan (Julie Bishop) end up sharing a train compartment with Dr. Vitas Werdegast (Bela Lugosi), who is very polite but mysterious. They also share a carriage but after an accident Dr. Vitas takes them to the closest shelter, which happens to be his destination: the home of an “old friend,” Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff). We learn that Vitas and Poelzig are actually deadly enemies. During the Great War Poelzig betrayed their army, leading to a massacre and Vitas being sent to a prison camp where he says, “the soul is killed slowly.” Poelzig built an elaborate estate on the site of the massacre, kidnapped Vitas’s wife, whose body he keeps preserved in a glass case, and is now married to Vitas’s daughter. Poelzig is also a Satan worshiper and wants to use Joan in a ritual. In short, he is a very bad guy. It is no wonder why Vitas is so set on revenge. Vitas has also been driven mad from his time in the prison camp and is so set on getting vengeance that even learning that his daughter is still alive doesn’t alter his revenge mission.

The highlight of The Black Cat is watching Lugosi and Karloff duel, first with their words and later with their fists. Vitas and Poelzig have a strange respect for each other even though their hatred for each other permeates every scene. Karloff is excellent as the sinister and evil Poelzig. We first see him in silhouette and his tall, gaunt, and slender figure is used to great effect. Karloff’s lilting voice also adds an extra creepy layer to his dialogue. Lugosi gets to be the hero, sort of—anti-hero might be a better description. He has been so overwhelmingly wronged by Poelzig that he has your sympathies even though his plan is to horribly torture Poelzig. His main redeeming quality is that he wants no harm to come to Peter or Joan and goes out of his way to protect Joan (Peter proves to be superfluous, even misunderstanding Vitas’s rescuing Joan). As Vitas, Lugosi brilliantly delivers many wonderful and eerie speeches that do as much to create a chilling atmosphere as the setting and score.

Poelzig’s home is not a creepy gothic castle but a surprisingly modern looking estate. Peter describes it as a “nice, cozy, unpretentious insane asylum.” The lair where Vitas’s wife’s preserved body is kept and the satanic ritual is performed is a mix of dungeon and mad scientist’s lab. Vitas’s torture of Poelzig happens offscreen but still makes you squirm. The Black Cat was made before the puritanical Production Code heavily restricted the content and subject matter of all movies. With its plot dealing with violent revenge, torture, satanism, implied rape, and necrophilia, there’s little chance it could have been made after the code became strictly enforced. Because of this, The Black Cat still retains some surprising shock value even after nearly 90 years. This movie is not nearly as well known or widely seen Dracula (1931) or Frankenstein (1931), but it is as deserving of classic status, and in many ways it is the scarier classic horror movie.

The Black Cat airs on TCM on Halloween at 1:30 PM CT and is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)

 by A.J.

Night 5: Vincent Price Night

“The incredible legends of the abominable Dr. Phibes began a few short years ago, all of them unfortunately true!”

Dr. Phibes Rises Again

The Abominable Dr. Phibes is one of the best Vincent Price movies, if not the best. It is a totally fantastic, wildly entertaining movie that I’ve written about before and could write about even more. It has to be seen to be believed. Topping a movie like The Abominable Dr. Phibes is pretty much impossible, but the sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, comes very close. 

If you haven’t seen the first film, not to worry, as the sequel opens with a narration and recap. Dr. Phibes (Price) was an Egyptologist who was horribly disfigured in a car accident and presumed dead. He actually survived but wears an incredibly realistic mask of his former face and can speak only through a special device connecting his neck to a speaker. Due to medical neglect his beloved wife, Victoria, died, but Phibes has her preserved in a suspended state. The Abominable Dr. Phibes had Phibes taking elaborate revenge on the team of doctors who failed to save his wife. Dr. Phibes Rises Again has him seeking the hidden River of Life in Egypt that will revive his wife and give them both eternal life. 

Dr. Phibes’s rival in the search for the River of Life is an archeologist named Darrus Biederbeck (Robert Quarry) who steals an ancient papyrus scroll from Phibes. So, Dr. Phibes unleashes his elaborate wrath on Beiderback and everyone standing in his own path to the River of Life. Biederbeck is arrogant and suspicious, and while he eventually earns some sympathy he never quite comes off as a hero or protagonist. Phibes, of course, is a murderous mastermind whose preferred execution method is elaborate and ridiculous devices, but in this film he comes across as more of an anti-hero; in the first film he was a charismatic and sympathetic villain. The closing credits group Phibes and Biederbeck together under the heading “protagonists” but Phibes is the character you are rooting for, or at least find more entertaining.

Many of the distinct stylistic elements that made the original film so memorable are also in the sequel. The elaborate art-deco design of Phibes’s lair is replicated in his Egyptian lair. His band of automaton musicians, The Clockwork Wizards, are now The Alexandria Quartet. Phibes’s beautiful but silent assistant, Vulnavia (this time played by Valli Kemp), is once again ready to help. And of course, Phibes still kills with ridiculous methods. One of the simpler kills involves distracting a man with a mechanical snake while a real snake attacks. Other deaths include but are not limited to: a raptor pecking someone's face to death and Phibes and Vulnavia faking a sandstorm to cover up the sounds of a man being crushed in a box. Robert Fuest returns as director for the sequel and once again his background in production design provides an exquisite, fun, and distinctive look.

Dr. Phibes was one of Vincent Price’s favorite roles and it is easy to understand why. Phibes is technically a villain but is sympathetic; he is vengeful but not hateful. He is devoted to Victoria and thanks to Price’s performance, Phibes’s love comes across as genuine and true instead of obsessive. Phibes is also a silent character, sort of. Since he must be connected to a machine to speak, his lips do not move while he talks, meaning that Price acts along to a recording of his voice. If acting is reacting, then Price gets to do both with the same character in the same scene in the same performance. The phonograph crackle of the speaking machine adds a nice eerie layer to the dialogue and monologues delivered wonderfully by Price. Dr Phibes is indeed one of Price’s best performances. 

The Phibes movies are not scary but they are excellent horror entertainment. They are campy, pseudo-slasher movies. If you ever wondered what the SAW movies would be like if all of the gruesome gore and cynical dread was replaced with fun, you should watch The Abominable Dr. Phibes and/or Dr. Phibes Rises Again. Like the original, the Dr. Phibes Rises Again revels in the ridiculous, the baroque, the weird. In one scene, Phibes puts someone in a catch-22 torture device. In another Vulnavia is wearing a sousaphone for no reason. The first time I  saw The Abominable Dr. Phibes was on Halloween night in 2015. I watched Dr. Phibes Rises Again on also on Halloween night. Watching either film is a perfect way to celebrate the Halloween season.  

For a long time both movies were very hard to find but thankfully they were recently released as a double feature Blu-ray. Both films will air on TCM as part of a late night Vincent Price marathon beginning on Tuesday, October 24th at 11PM CT with The Abominable Dr. Phibes followed by Dr. Phibes Rises Again at 12:45AM CT Thursday, October 25th. Dr. Phibes Rises Again is also currently streaming on Tubi and Freevee.

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Bad Seed (1956)

 by A.J.

Night 3: Psycho Killer Night

“It’s just that they are bad seeds. Plain bad from the beginning”

The Bad Seed

The “creepy kid” or “killer kid” movie is an entire subgenre of horror with entries like Village of the Damned, The Innocents, Bloody Birthday, The Good Son, and Orphan to name a few. The Bad Seed (1956) has a firm place as a classic, if not the classic, creepy kid/killer kid movie. Based on a novel by William March and its stage adaptation, the killer kid here is 8-year-old Rhoda who is outwardly sweet, privately snobby, and also quite evil and murderous. Though The Bad Seed is not at all violent, it feels delightfully subversive and transgressive, like a movie that got away with something, especially for being made during the 1950’s.

The trouble begins when Rhoda loses a class award to another student. Then on a field trip that boy drowns in a lake after hitting his head. The medal goes missing but later Rhoda’s mother, Christine (Nancy Kelly), finds it hidden in Rhoda’s room and begins to suspect that her daughter caused the boy’s death. She also starts to wonder if Rhoda may be responsible for the death of their last landlady, a nice old lady who promised to leave Rhoda an heirloom when she died…and then suddenly died. Christine is also dealing with the knowledge that she was adopted and her biological mother was a notorious serial killer. There are some debates about nature vs nurture, likely one of the first times the topic was addressed in a major film. 

Young Patty McCormack does an excellent job playing Rhoda. She seems completely capable of causing the deaths that happen off screen, which are plausible as accidents or murders–they are not grand or elaborate “kills.” She is also convincing as a little kid. Rhoda is smart and clever, but is not an evil genius. When the creepy groundskeeper, Leroy (Henry Jones), who sees right through her façade, taunts her about having evidence against her, she believes him the way a child believes an adult, even one they don’t like. This exchange makes Leroy Rhoda’s next target

You might hear that The Bad Seed is a campy movie, and after seeing it you might even agree, but this does not diminish the dark, disturbing nature of the movie. Many of the performances seem just a bit over the top, but a better description is that they are heightened stage performances that were not turned down for the movie version. This makes sense since most of the cast from the stage production reprise their roles for the movie. They are still great performances, however, and it is no surprise that Nancy Kelly received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress and Patty McCormack received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Eileen Heckart, who plays the mother of the dead boy, really makes the most of only two scenes and also received a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.

The real camp value in The Bad Seed comes from how totally oblivious the adults, except for Leroy, are to Rhoda’s malevolent side. When Nancy asks Rhoda about the death of their previous landlady the entire scenario is so obviously murder that Rhoda’s continued good girl act becomes humorous. I think director Mervyn LeRoy knew what he was doing in allowing these exaggerated, or camp, moments into the movie. The stylized performances and dark humor take the edge off an otherwise disturbing premise. 

Of course the novel and play end differently than the movie, which had to tack on a new ending to satisfy the requirements of the puritanical Production Code office. This is the most outlandish and campy scene of all, yet even this scene is so over the top that it feels subversive too. It is as though the filmmakers decided that if they had to add an ending where Rhoda gets her comeuppance, they would tack on the most ridiculous “moral” ending imaginable. Also, a Warner Bros. executive insisted on including a “cast curtain call,” not common in this era when movies had no closing credits, with the cast happy and smiling, including Patty McCormick and Nancy Kelly, just so audiences could rest easy with the extra assurance that they had not been watching a documentary. Though it may not be exactly scary, The Bad Seed is a dark and creepy and entertaining film.

The Bad Seed airs on TCM on Sunday, October 22nd at 1PM CT and is also available to stream on Hoopla.