Halloween Horror Watch #8: Twice-Told Tales

Twice-Told Tales -- Sidney Salkow



Twice-Told Tales was on the other side of the DVD featuring Tales of Terror and why not? It's the exact same structure and each story features Vincent Price but substitutes Nathaniel Hawthorne for Edgar Allen Poe. I want to say that Tales of Terror is the better film because I've read more Poe, like Roger Corman better, and the cast is more impressive, but the films are about on par. The only appreciable difference is that Twice-Told Tales is a half hour longer and probably doesn't need to be that way.

The best and creepiest of the tales is the finale, The House of Seven Gables. There's some good haunting, bleeding paintings and walls, and the finale really brings the house down. Price plays a great selfish asshole looking for a vault filled with money. His demise is charmingly hokey, but only people who don't appreciate this kind of movie will hold it against the film. Even the weakest of the shorts, Rappaccini's Daughter, builds to a fun ending. Maybe I'm sour on that segment because it features that terrible trope of older movies where people fall in "love" after only one encounter.

Having watched Tales of Terror and Twice-Told Tales, I've learned that I'm a big fan of the format and I wish filmmakers and studios would adapt short stories as short stories instead of trying to stretch them into features. It's rare that the resulting film doesn't feel padded out. Maybe modern audiences wouldn't go for that sort of thing, but I'd like it and that's all I care about.

Halloween Horror Watch #5: Duel and Tales of Terror

Duel -- Steven Spielberg



The first of the horror watch that I've already seen. I watched it with a group of friends and it's just as enjoyable as I remember. Man, Steven Spielberg was pretty great until about 1982 when I assume he was replaced by his non-union Mexican equivalent. Duel is loaded with interesting shots moving around speeding cars (or attached to speeding cars) and that make great use of screen space. I'm deeply impressed that this movie took only 12 or 13 days to shoot.

I'm a total mark for Duel anyway. Car chases are about my favorite thing in movies. The only other element that comes close is if a moving train features prominently in the plot. Duel is one long car chase with the added element that the pursuer is more interested in cat-and-mouse games than actually catching our hero (why our hero didn't just return home after an hour of this, I'll never know).

The other reason I'm a mark is because Richard Matheson wrote the screenplay (and short story) and he's the tops. Aces all the way. It's amazing that Duel is able to maintain suspense and what little story there is for over an hour and that's a tribute to Matheson's inventiveness in building the story to a point where it doesn't even seem like the truck driver can be human. He's too omniscient. Our hero probably would have been pursued even if he had turned around.

Great movie, all around.

Tales of Terror -- Roger Corman



I had an unintentional Richard Matheson double feature. Once all of my friends left and Andrea went to bed (she actually watched most of the first tale with me), I threw this on as I won't get to watch a movie tomorrow. Talk about marks. Aside from Matheson adapting Poe tales, Roger Corman directs (during the era where Corman did his best work) and it stars Vincent Price AND Peter Lorre. There's no way I'm going to dislike this movie.

The pacing of the segments is a little slow, but that's par for the course with the Corman Poe adaptations. They burn slowly building to frenzied finales. I'm a big fan of that because I like taking in the sets and costumes and watching actors I love act before they are let loose during the climax. One thing I've learned the more I watch Vincent Price, the man was nuanced. More and more I hate that he's known as a parody of himself instead of the great actor (who yes, is in some schlock, but he always looks like he's having fun and giving the material his all) that he is. I don't know when this happened, but I blame cartoons from the '90s. Peter Lorre has the best role, that of a cuckolded drunk. He's incredibly funny throughout but never more so than in the wine tasting scene with Price.

Vincent Price stars in all three tales and does some mood-setting narration between. I was only familiar with one of the Poe stories, The Black Cat. I'm happy with the format as it gives us several more Corman-Price-Poe  adaptations that a feature would have supplied. Good night for movies watching.

Dr. Death Will See You Now: Madhouse

This may be old news as I've spoken to many friends about this, but I love Vincent Price. For basically my entire life up until about a year ago, he was a caricature. I knew him from Thriller:

Vincent:

Edward Scissorhands:

and The Simpsons:

After reading part one of a massive Orson Welles biography, I learned that Price was in the Mercury Theatre with Welles and it set me on a mission to discover the man for myself (that and Josh Becker speaks fairly highly of him when the subject comes up on his "Ask the Director" page). 

Over the past year I've been systematically watching as much Price as possible and I've learned that far from being a caricature, the man can flat out act! He brings sincerity, melancholy, menace, joy, and humor to his roles and always when necessary. I'd say I felt bad for him that he went from "serious" acting to starring in nothing but horror films, but genre cinema is all the better for it (and since I'm lauding a St. Louis boy at the same time the St. Louis Cardinals are in the World Series, I'll throw my hat in the ring for the Cards).

Madhouse gives Price quite a lot to do. He is at the center of a series of murders and his mental state is such that he may be committing the murders and not even know it.

OK, so Price gets a little cartoony with that scream at the beginning of the trailer. 

Price plays Paul Toombes, a man famous for playing the killer Dr. Death. The writer of these films is Herbert Flay (Peter Cushing). After an incident years before, Toombes spends some time in a mental institution but is now out and going to lay the part again for TV as a favor to Flay. That is, until everyone around him starts dying. There's kind of a lot going on around the heart of Madhouse and not all of it feels organic or even makes much sense, but it allows for bodies to pile up, so no complaints here!

Probably my favorite aspect of the film is that it shows a number of Toombes old films, some of which were made specifically for Madhouse and feature Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff, and some are old films or Vincent Price like The Pit and the Pendulum. That brings a level of authenticity to the film even if the latter of which suggests an alternate universes in which there is no Vincent Price, or no Paul Toombes, or they are the same person). There's also a lot of jabs at the filmmaking process and the nature of the industry. In regards to someone living a part, the response is "Actors don't get carried away like that." There really is no room for method in horror movies, anyway... And even though everyone around the TV show production is dying, the show must go on at all costs! There's plenty more, but I didn't start picking up on the mockery until about halfway through the movie.

The reveal can be seen coming a mile away and I was probably more surprised that it was that obvious. Dare I give Madhouse credit for trying to trick the viewer by not trying to trick the viewer? There are lots of scenes of people discovering bodies and screaming which is more amusing than anything else. Overall, though, I totally dig Madhouse. It's weird, but classy and offers a few surprises even if the ending isn't one of them. And the last line is pretty boss: "It's your favorite, Paul. Sour cream and red herrings."

Post-script: Madhouse is rated PG but is decidedly not a kids movie. This brings to light the relative pointlessness of the PG-13 rating. PG meant parental guidance suggested, but it doesn't mean that kids can't see the movie alone. By making a PG-13 rating, it's saying something that's already being said. The issue gets confused once one starts comparing movies released after PG-13 was instituted. PG came to mean kids films. But when you look at movies with PG ratings before 1984, you find Jaws, Poltergeist, and Barbarella in mix. By today's standards, there is no way they get a PG, but there is no retroactive rating. I don't really care about ratings much at all and plan on watching all sorts of movies with my kid(s?). After all, that's what PG stands for and even R requires a parent/guardian to be present. What a world...