Riffing on an earlier essay at Arbogast on Film, Final Girl offers this opinion on why Barbra in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), is the one horror movie victim she would have saved if she had the chance. Barbra (Judith O’Dea) of course receives undue contempt from contemporary audiences because she is – realistically and quite believably – traumatized by the horrible events around her; instead of morphing into a monster-fighting icon of female empowerment (something that would not really happen until Sigourney Weaver played Ripley in ALIEN eleven years later), Barbra simply sinks into catatonia until she briefly flares up at the end – only to be devoured by her dead brother. Barbra sets the standard as the archetypal character who cannot handle what is happening (she foreshadows Veronica Cartwright in ALIEN and Bill Paxton in ALIENS), and her ultimate fate is less shocking than deeply disturbing – which is to say it packs a deep emotional resonance that provokes viewers to think, “Oh no!” instead of “Ain’t it cool!”
I have never had quite such a memorably profound reaction to the death of an on-screen character as Final Girl records, but many are victims I have seen who did not deserve their fate. Below I offer my list…
A Woman of the Streets in MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932). Arlene Francis (who would later become famous as a panelist on the TV show WHAT’S MY LINE) plays this euphemistically-named character (obviously a prostitute). Practically crucified on a rack, Francis screams – and screams – and SCREAMS while Bela Lugosi’s Dr. Mirakle examines her blood, hoping it will help his experiments. The way she is trussed up vaguely suggests some kind of S&M dungeon device, and this may be the distant grand-daddy of Torture Porn. And as if it were not enough to kill the woman, Mirakle insults her as well, adopting a tone of moral outrage because her blood is “polluted” (presumably symbolic of her state as a fallen woman), which means it is not suitable for his work. What is most amazing, however, is that this quaint relic from an earlier era actually still packs a punch, thanks to Francis’s unnerving vocalizations – which provoke an almost instinctive protective reaction in the listener.
Josef in THE BODY SNATCHERS (1945). Lugosi gets payback for Francis in this film, playing a dim-bulb assistant who makes the mistake of thinking he can blackmail the murderous body snatcher played by Boris Karloff. Josef is not much of a character, but it is sad to see Lugosi, briefly the reigning king of horror thanks to DRACULA, killed off by Karloff, the star who dethroned him by playing the Monster in FRANKENSTEIN.
The Creature from the Black Lagoon in THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US (1956). This is the one where meddling scientists operate on the Creature so that he can no longer breath underwater, forcing him to become a permanent land-walker. Some jerk commits a murder and tries to blame it on the innocent beast, who goes on a rampage, killing the real murderer. The Creature then heads to the ocean, lured by the sound of crashing waves, and the film leaves us in no doubt that he will drown to death attempting to return to the water that used to be his home. The humans in this film have much to answer for, and one wishes the Creature didn’t have to pay the price for their mistakes.
Dandelo in THE FLY (1958). Dandelo the cat becomes the unwitting victim of his master, scientist Andre Delambre (Al Hedison) who puts him in a matter transmitter. Dandelo disappears – but never rematerializes. All that is left is an echoing wale on the soundtrack. Poor Dandelo, I wish I could bring you back to our dimension; I have a little cat bed here, some cat toys, and a little catnip….
Miles in THE INNOCENTS (1961). Exorcising a malicious ghost proves to be a fatal experience for this young boy played by Martin Stephens. The tragedy of the downer ending hits you over the head like a sledgehammer. Did his governess (Deborah Kerr) save him from the evil influence, or did she unwittingly give him a heart attack by forcing him to confront the ghost? I don’t know if I could have handled the situation any better, but I would like to try.
The Monkey in PORTRAIT OF HELL (1969).This Japanese masterpiece tells the story of Korean painter who can only paint what he sees. When his Japanese lord asks him to paint a divine vista, the artist insists on painting Hell instead. To aid in his endeavor, he asks his lord to stage a scene with a burning chariot; the lord complies – and puts the artist’s daughter in the chariot! As she burns to death, her pet monkey leaps from a nearby tree, joining her in the living funeral pyre. That’s right: in this film, no one comes to a good end – even the monkey dies! It’s such a gratuitous bit – an extra added sucker punch, just to make you feel even worse as you view the tragedy – that you want to point your fire extinguisher at the screen.
The Private Eye in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET (1971).This Dario Argento thriller features a gay private detective in a supporting role. He brags that he has never solved a case but confidently insists that the odds must therefore now be in his favor. He does identify the murderer but only in time to become a victim himself. His demise by poison is poignant – as he realizes, at the moment of his death, that he was, for once, right. You really wish he had lived to enjoy his success instead of expiring ignominiously in a public restroom.
Dr. Martin in ASYLUM (1972). For me, actor Robert Powell will always be JESUS OF NAZARETH – that and the almost mystical father-figure in Ken Russell’s film version of TOMMY. The death of his well-meaning young psychiatrist at the end of this film is too horrible for words. Dr. Martin’s murder, I have to admit, is a pretty effective sick joke (the murderer strangles him with a stethoscope, then uses it to listen for the heartbeat that is no longer there). But the film had set him up as an idealist who objects – quite rightly – to the situation he finds in the asylum. When he dies, it is as if a small piece of hope dies with him.
Edward Lionheart in THEATRE OF BLOOD (1973). Vincent Price plays a hammy Shakespearean actor who kills the critics that trashed his performances. Although inspired by Price’s role in the DR. PHIBES films (in which the mad doctor triumphed), THEATRE reverts to a standard formula at the end, with Lionheart dying in a fire while the final critic walks away to live happily ever after. The injustice is infuriating: Lionheart should have survived and toasted the arrogant twit. (By the way, this is the only suggestion on my list that I mean literally: the film would be better if the script had been rewritten to make Lionheart triumphant.)
Sergeant Howie in THE WICKER MAN (1973). As he investigates the disappearance of a young girl on a Scottish Isle, Howie (Edward Woodward) is set up as a bit of a dullard and an unsympathetic prick to boot. The effect for me is that he comes across as a pathetic patsy – a victim less of the murderous pagans on the island than of the unsympathetic screenwriter (Anthony Shaffer) who created him. Howie, I never really liked you that much, but I can’t stand to see anyone forced to take a fall like that. If there were any C02 left in my fire extinguisher after saving the monkey in PORTRAIT OF HELL, I would use it on the flaming Wicker Man.
Jessica Bradford in BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974). We do not actually see Jessica (Olivia Hussey) die in this film, but the movie ends with her character drugged unconscious while the idiot police department (having fingered the wrong man) leaves her alone in the house with the real killer. Director Bob Clark later said in an interview with Cinefantastique that Hussey’s character had earned the right to live, and I have to agree. I have a hypodermic of adrenalin here that should wake her from her drugged-out torpor, if only I could reach through the screen…
Carrie in CARRIE (1976). I would have saved Sissy Spacek’s psychic girl long before her death at the end of the movie. When the film builds up to the horrible prank at the prom, it is one of the few moments in a horror film when I found myself dreading what was about to happen – even though I knew it had to happen in order for the horror to break out (which was, after all, what I had paid to see). Unlike most films, in which one eagerly anticipates this kind of thing, so that the film will get to the “good stuff,” I did find myself involuntarily reaching out to the screen, wanting to stop Nancy Allen from pulling that rope and dumping pig’s blood all over poor Carrie White.
Officer Jim Kelly in ALLIGATOR (1980). Robert Forster plays Madison, a cop who lost a partner years ago. When he needs someone to help check the sewers where some bodies have been found, most of his chicken-shit colleagues make up lame excuses, but Kelly (Perry Lang) steps forward – even though he knows about Madison’s past. Kelly’s reward for his courage is to be eaten by the titular alligator, while the cowards back at the precinct live to see another day. If Madison couldn’t save Kelly, I don’t know what I could do. Maybe flip the alligator on his back and rub his tummy till he fell asleep? (They say this works, but it never did with my pet alligator – I’d probably just end up joining Kelly’s dismembered body parts in the monster reptile’s gullet.)
Godzilla in GODZILLA VS. DESTROYER (1995). The radioactive reptile has been responsible for more death and destruction than one could possibly tally, but the payback he receives in this one more than settles his karma: a full-blown nuclear meltdown reduces the beast to nothing but a pile of ash blowing in the wind. There is a certain grandeur about this attempt to create a convincingly “final” death for the long-lived monster, but his destruction looks really, really painful. If I could just find a few cadmium rods to slow down the chain reaction before it reached critical levels…
The rat in THE EYE (2002). A distant cousin of the monkey in PORTRAIT OF HELL, this rat serves a similar, though slightly vaguer purpose: it’s not enough for the humans to die, the filmmakers have to hammer home the relentless destruction by offing an innocent animal as well. Whatever the point, the rodent’s desperate but failed attempt to outrun the climactic conflagration by diving down a sewer pipe is a great piece of film-making – a perfect little exclamation point to the human destruction above ground. Poor rat, I wish I could adopt you and create a litte menagerie, including the monkey from PORTRAIT OF HELL and Dandelo the cat from THE FLY (I don’t think my facilities would accommodate Godzilla, however).
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Tag: Bela Lugosi
Plan Nine From Outer Space – Colorized on DVD
This DVD from Legend Films presents Ed Wood’s cult classic – commonly regarded as the worst film ever made – in a colorized version, along with some contributions from Mike Nelson (former captain of the Satellite of Love on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000), plus a few bonus features. PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE has received more attention than it probably deserves, and it is an open question whether anyone really needs this title in their collection; however, if you feel compelled to have it on your shelf, this is the version to get. The print is in good shape; the colorization looks nice; you can also view the film with its original black-and-white photography intact; and the bonus features are interesting and funny.
The most interesting thing about viewing PLAN NINE again is the realization that, despite its reputation, it is far from the worst movie ever made. It is sloppy, silly, cheap, and pretentious, and yet there are many movies so boring, atrocious, and/or offensive that PLAN NINE cannot even begin to compete them in terms of sheer unadulterated awfulness.
PLAN NINE is bad, but it is fun to watch. Writer-director-producer Ed Wood, Jr., seems to have been blissfully unaware of his own shortcomings as a filmmaker. As a writer, he simply regurgitated old cliches and mixed them with current trends, but the bizarro combination of Gothic horror (the walking dead) with science-fiction (aliens and flying saucers) is interesting in a movie-movie kind of way. As a director, he seems to have been completely unconcerned about filming scenes that were well beyond his budget, and he is barely concerned with hiding the shortcomings.
At times, Wood’s work seems almost avant garde, as when he frames a commanding officer against a blank wall that is apparently meant to suggest a horizon-less sky. Poverty (of both budget and imagination) was the mother of Wood’s invention, yielding a catalogue of cinematic mistakes: mismatched cuts, obvious doubles, artificial sets, unconvincing special effects, and absurd action. A more sophisticated director – Jean-Luc Godard, for example – might have performed some cinematic jujitsu and synthesized these techniques to create an abstract rendering of a science-fiction film (this is the guy who had the inspiration to film the sci-fi script ALPHAVILLE as if it were a hard-boiled film noir detective tale). In Wood’s case, we get the unrefined, raw material that stumbles toward accidental art but in the end falls flat on its face.
Are there words to convey the rapturous ecstasy inspired by delightfully pretentious philosophical ramblings from alien invaders, who muse that, on Earth, the people who can think (the living) are afraid of those who can’t think (the dead). Incredibly, Wood manages to top this with the alien’s high-minded warnings about the threat that Earth poses to the galaxy, a heavy-handed sermon that devolves into frustrated name calling: “You see! You see! You’re stupid minds! Stupid! STUPID! ”
All budgetary considerations aside, Wood clearly had no talent for using his meagre resources in any but the most absurd way. One might forgive him for being forced to film a graveyard scene on on obvious interior sound-stage, but what possessed him to have the funeral goers pile out of a tiny tombstone door like a variation of the circus clown car gag (in which an improbable number of clowns exit from a tiny vehicle). You cannot blame lack of money for the way he lets his policeman characters (who should know better) carelessly wave guns in each other’s faces.
Even when Wood has something at his fingertips that could yield some entertainment value, he has no idea what to do with it. This is particularly obvious with horror icons Bela Lugosi and Vampira. Former Dracula-star Lugosi is left running through his vampire shtick like an aging vaudeville performer recycling his greatest hits, and actress Maila Nurmi is given virtually nothing to do but wander silently around the graveyard in her Vampira get-up. Even Ed Wood should have been smart enough to exploit more of her persona (which relied on her voice and attitude as much as her looks); at the very least, if he was going to cast her as a “Vampire Girl,” he should have shown her actually attacking a victim.
Paradoxically, Ed Wood’s biggest failing as a filmmaker is also his saving grace. He was a terribly sincere, and he seems to have thought that viewers would suspend disbelief in spite of PLAN NINE’s budgetary and artistic shortcomings. There is no intentional irony, no winking toward the audience, no pretense of passing off the bad special effects, cheap production values, and lame storytelling as some kind of spoof. This straight-faced presentation goes well beyond self-parody, creating a truly bizarre oddity of cinema that has to be seen to be believed.
DVD DETAILS
The Legend Films DVD presents PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE in a restored print, viewable in both the original black-and-white and in a colorized version. The latter actually looks decent. The introduction with Criswell is rendered in what looks like sepia tone; the rest of the film features fairly believable color that does not look painted on. This is probably more care and expense than was ever lavished on the film originally.
Bonus features include audio commentary, trivia subtitles, Ed Wood home movies, “Deleted Scenes” (actually jokey altered scenes created for this DVD), and a humorous list of Plans 1-8 from Outer Space.
AUDIO COMMENTARY: This displays some of the same weakness seen in Mike Nelson’s work on The Film Crew, which is to say: he does not provide a real audio commentary, just the same old jokes he did on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000. Nelson begins promisingly, noting some interesting trivia about narrator Criswell (he was popular television psychic and sometime weatherman) and also about actor Gregory Walcott, who appeared in some mainstream movies (“Of course, he was also in this,” Nelson dryly observes, “which kind of counts against him.”). A lot of the riffing is on obvious topics, such as the switch between Lugosi and his double. (Do we really need Nelson to point this out?) The biggest problem is that, working alone, Nelson provides only one-third of the jokes you get with either MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER or THE FILM CREW. On the plus side, his anorexia joek – an exclamation of “Lara Flynn Boyle!” upon seeing the “Ghoul Man” character reduced to a skeleton – is laugh-out-loud funny.
BONUS TRIVIA SUBTITLES provide the fun background information lacking in Nelson’s audio commentary. The subtitles note the trouble that Dr. Mason (who doubled for the Ghoul man after Lugosi died) has with his cape – which at one point almost falls off, forcing the actor to quickly wrap it back around his shoulders. Also noted is that actor Paul Marco went on to recreate his Patrolman Kelton role in two subsequent Ed Wood movies, creating an unofficial “Kelton Trilogy.”
Both the audio commentary and the trivia subtitles are available with either the colorized or black-and-white version of the film, but you cannot simultaneously listen to the commentary and watch the subtitles.
COMMERCIALS: These are a handful of short, low-budget spots Wood made, with space for Sponsor Card to be inserted later, so that the commercials could be sold to different local advertisers. In the jewelry store ad “Treasure and Curves,” pirate women bury a chest of jewelry. In the men’s store commercial “Magic Man,” a half-naked man magically disappears, then reappears in new clothes. “The Bestest” has Western setting: a gunfighter gets a drop on a rival, who asks to be buried with his boots on; admiring the boots, the gunfighter relents, and the two men head for the shoe store, leaving girl behind.
PLANS 1-8 has Mike Nelson postulating on the nature of the undisclosed plans that preceded Plan 9, such as enlisting the aid of Earth’s garden gnomes or radiating the pituitary and pineal glands of road kill squirrels. Mixing footage of the film with animated graphics or found footage, this milks the concept for a few good laughs, particularly Plan 3 (“Just sit tight and do nothing”), which features the infamous footage of George Bush reading children’s book during the 9/11 attacks.
ED WOOD HOME MOVIES: These consist of a couple of clips with jazzy background score. The first is pretty ordinary stuff – a birthday scene in which even the dog gets a slice of cake. The second shows Wood dressing up in drag.
DELETED SCENES: This is another joke feature. The scenes actually consist of the same old PLAN NINE footage, which has been re-edited or enhanced with computer-generated imagery. In one snippet, TV’s Brady Bunch appears on the alien’s view screen, prompting one of the Earthlings to cringe, “You fiend!” Easily the best joke – so good it is used in three times without losing its impact -is based on the police detective’s penchant for gesticulating with his loaded revolver pointed at Kelton’s face. A little CGI work and a sound effect creates a wonderful illustration of why you should not do this.
TRAILERS includes previews for other colorized DVD movies from Legend Films: The Three Stooges, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, CARNIVAL OF SOULS, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, REEFER MADNESS, and of course PLAN NINE. Curiously, the PLAN NINE trailer gives Bela Lugosi star billing, despite his low placement in the film’s actual credits. (Top-billed Tor Johnson and Vampira are also mentioned by name but less prominently.) Even more curiously, the botched take of Dr. Mason nearly losing his cape is included.
The bonus features help make this as worthwhile a presentation of PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE as one can imagine. The movie’s enduring cult status seems assured, but the best place to see it is at a midnight movie/bad film festival screening, with lots of appreciate fans laughing along with you. That kind of community feeling can never be recaptured at home, but if this strange little piece of film history needed to be preserved on DVD, it is hard to imagine a better one, short of remaking the movie itself.
Click here to purchase Plan Nine From Outer Space on DVD.
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