1974 – Cinefantastique

Dan Curtis' Dracula on Blu-ray – review

Posted on May 26, 2014 by Steve Biodrowski

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Bram Stoker’s immortal vampire rises again, this time on Blu-ray, a format that – appropriately enough -preserves the youthful veneer of this 1973 production, making it look as good as (if not better than) it did four decades ago. Like Dracula himself, MPI’s new disc will no doubt endure, intact and ageless, for centuries to come, emerging regularly from its box like the Vampire King rising from his coffin at sunset.
DAN CURTIS’ DRACULA (also known as BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA or simply DRACULA) is not the greatest adaptation of the classic novel, but it infuses some new blood into an old corpse drained of life by myriad prior film incarnations. This DRACULA features a strong central performance, atmospheric locations, and some enjoyably scary but not too gruesome moments of horror. However, the film’s greatest claim to historical significance is its (for the time) novel take on the titular character, which went on to influence later interpretations.

THE FILM: BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA

The fourth major adaptation of the classic novel*, BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (the on-screen title) begins by acknowledging audience familiarity with the tale, opening with shots of wolves (actually German Shepherds) amassing outside Castle Dracula, while the Count walks through a corridor toward the camera, like Norma Desmond ready for her closeup. “We know you know who this is,” the film seems to be saying, “so we’re not going toy with presenting him as a mysterious figure, and we’re not going to tease you with a long wait for what you obviously expect to see.”
After that Richard Matheson’s script settles into the familiar story, but only up to a point. Jonathan Harker (Murray Brown) arrives in Transylvania to arrange a real estate deal with Dracula (Jack Palance). However, the Count has ulterior motives: Harker finds a newspaper photo with a woman’s face circled. The woman is Lucy (Fiona Lewis), whom Dracula believes to be the reincarnation of a woman he loved during his mortal life. She also turns out to be the best friend of Harker’s finace, Mina (Penelope Horner).
After concluding his business with Harker , Dracula leaves the young man to the tender mercies of three vampire women (Virginia Wetherell, Barbar Lindley, Sarah Douglas) and heads to England, where he finds Lucy. Her finance, Arthur Holmwood, consults Van Helsing (Nigel Davenport), who spots the signs of vampirism – though too late to save the victim. After Lucy rises from the grave, Van Helsing and Holmwood stake her in her coffin.
Arriving in her tomb for the expected reunion with his long-lost love, Dracula is enraged to find her undead life snuffed out. He targets Mina next, but the vampire hunters manage to track down the coffins he needs to sleep during the daylight hours; robbed of his refuge, Dracula retreats to Transylvania, with Van Helsing, Holmwood, and Mina in pursuit. The two men stake the Count’s vampire brides in their coffins and confront Dracula himself in a life-or-death battle that ends with Van Helsing tearing down a set of curtains, allowing sunlight to steam inside, incapacitating the monster, who is then dispatched with a spear through the heart.

In flashback, Dracula (Jack Palance) is seen with the woman he loved (Fiona Lewis).

Back in 1974, when BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA first aired on American television, portraying the Count with a measure of sympathy was innovative and surprising; something so simple as a flashback or two to his days of mortal life was enough to suggest a whole new perspective on the familiar character. Dracula was no longer simply a monster; he had human emotions!
In this, the film was enormously aided by Palance. If you prefer your vampires in traditional Gothic mode, then Palance’s Dracula is for you: the actor registers such powerful screen presence that you feel he could single-handedly dispatch the entire cast of TWILIGHT’s glittering vampire-wimps. Though hardly Continental (the actor avoids affecting a Lugosi-style Hungarian accent), Palance conveys not only the enormous power of the King Vampire (who seems threatening even when he’s not actually doing anything) but also Dracula’s sense of love and loss. He effectively modulates the shifts from fierce to pained to tortured, and you almost feel for him. Almost.
The problem is that BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA does not have the screen time or the focus to completely humanize the Count. The reincarnation plot is clearly derived from Curtis’ own Gothic soap opera DARK SHADOWS (in which vampire Barnabas Collins sought the reincarnation of his lost Josette), but the TV series had the luxury of months of daily episodes to gradually transform Barnabas from predatory villain to doomed anti-hero. Here, we get only a few minutes of flashbacks, which are at odds with the rest of the story.
In attempting to condense Stoker’s lengthy tale while simultaneously introducing new elements, Matheson set himself a near impossible task. It’s great to see several of Stoker’s previously omitted scenes finally transferred to the screen: wolves escort Dracula’s carriage in Transylvania; Dracula uses a lone wolf, liberated from a zoo, to attack Holmwood in a room protected protected from vampires by crucifixes and garlic; Dracula forces Mina to drink blood from an open wound in his chest, tainting her to become a vampire whether or not see dies by his bite. However, some of the novel’s best moments are reduced to almost nothing (Dracula’s vampire brides – a highlight of the novel- barely register), and some of the familiar action fits awkwardly into the new context, which muddles the character’s behavior.

Dracula reacts to the second death of his lost love.

For example, with Jonathan (literally) out of the picture, Mina’s only connection to the vampire hunters is through her friendship with Lucy, so she has no clear reason to stay involved after Lucy’s death. Nevertheless, she remains, living with Holmwood and Van Helsing in Lucy’s house, apparently (though not expressly) with the permission of Lucy’s mother (who is never told what killed her daughter). One wonders why Mina does not return home or (better yet) lift a finger to figure out what happened to Jonathan. The answer is that the script needs to keep her close by, so that she can become Dracula’s second English victim – a development that now seems like an arbitrary remnant of the novel. (In the revised scenario, Dracula is presumably seeking revenge for Lucy’s destruction, but that would have made more sense had the characters been rewritten so that Mina was Holmwood’s fiance – suggesting that Dracula is taking Holmwood’s woman in exchange for Holmwood’s killing Dracula’s great love.)
Consequently, BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA feels like a familiar old puzzle with a few new pieces tossed in – they’re pleasantly surprising, but they don’t quite fit. And speaking of things that do not fit: this film not only tells us that Dracula was once a sensitive, loving human being; it also tells us that the vampire was, in life, Vlad Tsepes, a true-life historical figure known for cruelly impaling his victims on large, painful wooden stakes inserted in the anus – a contradiction the script never attempts to resolve.
Visually, the film belies its made-for-TV origins, with impressive lensing and production values. Dating from an era when most tele-films were point-and-shoot affairs with bland, over-lit photography, this DRACULA looks as good as a theatrical feature from the era. The location shooting enhances the proceedings enormously, lending an authentic European flavor missing from previous versions of the tale (though the interior of Dracula’s abode sometimes looks more like a mansion than a castle).
Dan Curtis knew how to deliver the genre elements a film like this needed, but his strength was more as a producer than a director. At times, he tried too hard to be clever and cinematic, when a more confident director would have let the scene play without the bells and whistles (typical for the era, the zoom lens is used and over-used, like an explanation point dropped by a writer juicing up a line of prose). At other times, Curtis could let a scene fall flat, such as the Mexican Stand-Off during which Van Helsing and Holmwood use crosses to hold Dracula at bay but let him walk out the door for fear of confronting him directly. (You want to yell, “Don’t stand there – do something!”)
When it came to staging action, Curtis could rise to the occasion and deliver effective moments of shock and horror: Dracula’s first encounter with Lucy is emotionally charged – creepy and seductive; the later revelation of her dead body, still beautiful but pale and blue, like a broken doll, is evocative and disturbing. Within the constraints of network television censorship, Curtis spruced up the narrative with bursts of violence that show how overpowering Dracula is compared to mere mortals, emulating but not quite capturing the full-blooded excitement of HORROR OF DRACULA (1958, from which several ideas were clearly borrowed).

Curtis Dracula Palance Ward sunlight — Dracula's attack on Holmwood (Simon Ward) is interrupted by sunlight.

Such borrowings occasionally lend an almost off-the-rack quality to the scenes, though viewers without an encyclopedic knowledge of vampire cinema are not likely to notice or care. For example:

As noted, the vampire romance is borrowed from DARK SHADOWS (there’s even a music box that plays a love them, scored by SHADOWS composer Bob Corbett).
Dracula tosses someone out a window, as vampire Janos Skorzeny did in THE NIGHT STALKER, a previous Curtis production. (This scene became something of a recurring motif for Curtis – check out BURNT OFFERINGS for another example).
Jonathan Harker never makes it out of Dracula’s castle, and Dracula is bound by physical limitations, unable to transform into a bat or mist – both element derived from HORROR OF DRACUULA.
Dracula seeks a woman whose photograph he has seen – an element in NOSFERATU and HORROR OF DRACULA.
Van Helsing defeats Dracula by tearing down curtains to reveal sunlight. This is taken from HORROR OF DRACULA by way of THE NIGHT STALKER.

The supporting cast fares less well than Palance. Lewis comes off best, emerging as one of Dracula’s most beautiful and alluring victims; unfortunately, she is given little screen time to register the transformation from innocent human to wanton vampire. Ward is an appealing screen presence, but his character has no distinguishing characteristics, nor an emotional journey worth following. Davenport turns Van Helsing into a methodical medical practitioner, without the commanding presence of Edward Van Sloan or the zeal of Peter Cushing. This may be a deliberate choice (an exchange of closeups, before Van Helsing delivers the fatal blow to Dracula, suggests we are supposed to relate to the tragic vampire rather than the heartless hunter), but it leaves the film without a strong protagonist. Horner’s Mina is not the surprisingly smart and capable woman of the book; in fact, she is not much of anything.
Seen in the purifying light of day, BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA is, like much of the producer-director’s work, an unapologetic horror film, eager to embrace genre conventions and deliver familiar elements that appeal to fans. Though no match for DRACULA (1931) with Bela Lugosi, nor HORROR OF DRACULA (1958) with Christopher Lee, the Curtis production is an interesting variation on the tale, bristling with more energy than COUNT DRACULA (1977), the talky public-television version starring Louis Jordan. And for horror historians, the Dan Curtis DRACULA represents an important evolutionary step in the portrayal of the character on screen, retaining the supernatural menace but adding a layer of humanity and romance that would become a bigger part of the character in later versions.

THE BLU-RAY: DAN CURTIS’ DRACULA

You didn't see this on television in 1974!

MPI’s Blu-ray disc (featuring the title DAN CURTIS’ DRACULA on the box art) presents the film’s theatrical cut in widescreen format, with options for English, Spanish, and French 2.0 soundtracks, along with optional English subtitles for the hard-of-hearing. The theatrical version is slightly gorier than the original broadcast version (all the vampires cough up blood when they die). Also, the tell-tale signs of the film’s television origin (e.g., blackouts for commercial interruptions) are missing, creating a more theatrical viewing experience.
The picture looks great on modern high-def televisions. There is a slight trace of grain (this was shot on film, after all), but the muted colors are lovely (lots of red backgrounds and that peculiar orange that passed for blood in those days). Though the film dates from the era of television screens with a 1.33 aspect ratio, the image looks perfect when cropped to today’s 1.78 aspect ratio (perhaps because the action was framed to work on wider theatre screens).
Bonus features include interviews with Palance and Curtis, Outtakes, Television Cuts, and a British theatrical trailer.
Outtakes offers raw camera footage, minus the on-set set sound, accompanied by music. These are mostly different takes, or slightly longer versions, of footage seen in the film, sometimes withe the crew and slates visible. Though not a blooper reel, there are one or two moments when an actor cracks a smile, as Lewis does after her gasping reaction to being staked.
Television Cuts presents alternate, blood-free takes from the broadcast version. These are limited to a few closeups the death throes of the vampires, who merely gasp when staked, instead of coughing up blood as in the theatrical version.
The Theatrical Trailer is a bit scratched and grainy (which perhaps helps us better appreciate the preserved picture quality of the film itself). EMI, the British distributor, sold the film (under the title BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA) as a bold horror movie, a la Hammer Films Dracula efforts, but also noted the romantic aspect.
The most interesting bonus features are the Interviews. Jack Palance discusses his approach to the character, saying that he did not play Dracula as a villain because that’s not how the character would see himself. Curtis talks about adapting the book, which he says “makes no sense” because Stoker never explains why Dracula leaves Transylvania for England; hence, Curtis decided to “rip-off” the reincarnation story line from DARK SHADOWS, in order to provide the missing motivation. (This explanation was apparently the approved party-line on the subject: Richard Matheson used almost the exact same words when I asked him about his script decades ago.)
[rating=3]
Worth a sanguinary midnight sip.

TRIVIA

BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA was scheduled to make its debut on American television in October 1973; however, the broadcast was preempted by President Richard Nixon’s address regarding the resignation of Vice President, Spiro T. Agnew. The film eventually premiered in Feburary 1974.

British poster for the Dan Curtis production of (Bram Stoker's) DRACULA.

Originally billed and advertised simply as DRACULA, the film later came to be known as BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, to distinguish it from previous versions. The posters and on-screen title cards confused the issue with graphics that conflated the star’s credit with the title and emphasized the character’s name at the expense of the author’s:

JACK PALANCE
as
BRAM STOKER’S
DRACULA
The word “Dracula” is in larger, bolder letters, suggesting that is the true title; Stoker’s name appears to have been included as a way of acknowledging the film’s literary debt to his novel, which is not otherwise credited as the source material for Matheson’s screenplay. The trailer for the subsequent overseas theatrical release adopted the full title, although the British poster, like the on-screen credit, emphasized “DRACULA,” with “Bram Stoker” in smaller type and lower-case letters.

Years later, home video releases also used the BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA moniker. However, since Francis Ford Coppola’s film of the same name, the 1973 production has been sold as “Dan Curtis’ DRACULA” on DVD and Blu-ray (though the on-screen title-credit remains the same).

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Coppola version of BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (1992) contains two notable similarities to the Dan Curtis production. First, like Matheson before him, James V. Hart’s screenplay identifies the fictional Count Dracula with his historical namesake, Vlad Tsepes, also known as Dracula (i.e., the Son of the Dragon, thanks to his father’s membership in the Order of the Dragon). Second, Dracula (played by Gary Oldman in the Coppola film) is also seeking the reincarnation of his lost love.

The reincarnation plot line, previously used by Curtis in DARK SHADOWS, has no precedent in Stoker’s novel. However, it can be traced to Universal Pictures’ THE MUMMY (1932), which deliberately recycles many elements from the studio’s earlier hit, DRACULA. Curiously, the Dan Curtis DRACULA is a bit vague about whether Lucy really is Dracula’s lover reborn. She looks the same but never expresses any recognition, even when she is falling under the vampire’s spell; also, when she rises as a vampire, she heads not to the Count but to her fiance, suggesting she does not reciprocate Dracula’s centuries-old passion.

FOOTNOTE:

After NOSFERATU (1922), DRACULA (1931), and HORROR OF DRACULA (1958).

DAN CURTIS’ DRACULA (Blu-ray title, released May 27, 2014 by MPI). Also known as: DRACULA and BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (copyright date, 1973; original air date: February 8, 1974). 100 mins. Made for Television. Produced and directed by Dan Curtis. Written by Richard Matheson, based on the novel by Bram Stoker (uncredited). Cast: Jack Palance, Simon Ward, Nigel Davenport, Pamela Brown, Fiona Lewis, Penelope Horner, Murray Brown. Virginia Wetherell, Barbara Lindley, Sarah Douglas.

Cybersurfing: Let Sleeping Corpses Lie review at And You Call Yourself a Scientist

Posted on June 21, 2009 by Steve Biodrowski

Over at one of our favorite horror review websites, And You Call Yourself a Scientist, Liz Kingsley provides a detailed write-up of Jorge Grau’s 1974 zombie opus, also known as THE LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE.

One of the areas in which Let Sleeping Corpses Lie proves a fitting participant in the world of the Romero zombie film is in its various social concerns, specifically the ecological and the authoritarian. Indeed, this film frequently seems less a riff upon Night Of The Living Dead, and more a foreshadowing of Dawn Of The Dead. Its opening sequence is a jarring montage of a world in crisis. The streets are crowded and noisy; traffic is bumper to bumper; the air is polluted; birds lie dead in the gutters. Commuters stand in sheeplike queues, seemingly oblivious to the dirt and chaos around them – except for those few who try to protect themselves from their environment by wearing a surgical mask. In the sequence’s most startling moment, a young woman (who sports an impressive white-girl ’fro) drops her coat and sprints naked across the street. No-one reacts – except one bus driver, and he just seems annoyed that she’s holding up traffic.

Even if you have seen the film and read much about it, Kingsley’s insightful analysis is worth perusing at your leisure

The Legend of Hell House – Retrospective Review

Posted on March 18, 2009 by Dennis Fischer

When Richard Matheson’s novel Hell House came out in 1971, its fusion of traditional haunted house elements with explicit sex and violence was quite shocking, as most horror novels prior to William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist avoided graphic material in favor of suggesting the shudders. While not up to the high standard of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House yet clearly inspired by it, Matheson’s book attempted to become the ultimate “haunted house” tale, incorporating a number of psychic phenomena that had not been previously combined into one ghostly story.
When James Nicholson, co-head of American International Pictures, split from Samuel Z. Arkoff to create his own company, Academy Pictures, he selected Matheson’s novel to be the basis for their first feature, THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, and he hired Matheson (who had scripted many of AIP’s Poe-inspired films starring Vincent Price) to adapt his novel into a screenplay. Unfortunately, executive producer Nicholson passed away while the film was in production, and it was sold to 20th Century Fox.
The early ‘70s had seen the development of more explicit horror films such as THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, which introduced nudity and lesbian to the mass market horror film; however, horror films were still sold mostly to teens, so Matheson scaled back much of the sexual element in his novel to allow the film version to garner a PG-rating. (He also expressed concern in a Cinefantastique interview that in the then-new era of openness, equating sex with evil acts would be laughable, though a key element of his story condemns not sexual per se, but sexual repression).
Amusingly, THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE opens with quotation on the reality of the psychic phenomena depicted attributed to Tom Corbett, a known “space cadet” (one of Matheson’s sly jokes). As in his classic novel I Am Legend, Matheson takes the trouble to look up scientific terms but not to understand them. Hence, the energy is described as electro-magnetic radiation, or in other words radio waves, microwaves, terahertz radiation, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays and gamma rays, which are all types of EMR and have nothing to do with souls, ghosts, or spirits.

Who ya gonna call: Ga;yle Hunnicut, Roddy McDowell, Clive Revill, Pamela Franklyn — Who ya' gonna call: Ga;yle Hunnicut, Roddy McDowell, Clive Revill, Pamela Franklyn

The story’s premise is fairly simple: An elderly man worried about his imminent demise hires a parapsychologist physicist Lionel Barrett (Clive Revill) and two mediums, Benjamin Fischer (Roddy McDowall) and Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin of THE INNOCENTS), to investigate the Belasco residence (known as “Hell House”) and report back proof, if any, on the existence of life after death. An expedition some 20 years before to this “Mount Everest of haunted houses” had resulted in the destruction of all participants by madness or death, except for Fischer.
Hell House represents a self-contained world, one in which, as Fischer points out, the windows have been blocked up to keep anyone from peering in on the socially unacceptable goings-on inside. Years ago, it was inhabited by a wealthy eccentric named Emeric Belasco (Michael Gough, appearing uncredited), a character Matheson based on Aleister Crowley. Belasco is described as a man who encouraged others to experiment with debasement and debauchery, leading to a long list of crimes against humanity (“Drug addiction, alcoholism, sadism, bestiality, mutilation, murder, vampirism, necrophilia, cannibalism… not to mention a gamut of sexual goodies”) which are mentioned but never actually depicted in the film version.
To ramp up a sense of verisimilitude, in both the novel and the film, Matheson divides sections by identifying a specific date and time when each incident takes place. This is a device that was later borrowed by Stanley Kubrick for THE SHINING. Unfortunately, at least in one instance, a stock daylight shot of the Belasco exterior is shown while the caption indicates night time event.*
THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE is the first ghost film, I believe, that depicts the phenomenon of ectoplasm, which we see emanating from the fingertips of Tanner, who is supposed to be a mental medium, unlike Fisher, who is a physical medium. In other words, spirits speak through her, whereas Fisher manifests observable phenomena. However, this distinction breaks down, as there is more than enough telekinetic and poltergeist activity on display for each medium. Despite the budgetary limitations, this is a very active haunting, and the sense of anything can happen at any moment aids in greatly enlivening the film.
On the other hand, in adapting his work to film, Matheson has shortchanged his major characters. While Roddy McDowall is very enjoyable playing the closed-off “only in it for the money” Fischer, Benjamin is more heroic in the book. There, he rescues all of the other characters at one time or another — saving Tanner during an attack, pulling heavy equipment off of Barrett, and keeping Barrett’s wife Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt) from drowning in a nearby tarn during a sleepwalk. Most of the scenes of Fischer aiding the others have been omitted from the film version.
Another crucial change is that the novel’s Barrett is somewhat crippled. He is a skeptic eager to prove that a machine he designed can dissipate the negative energy in the house and stop all the haunting; Hell House represents his opportunities to put his machine in action. It is clear in the novel that Barrett has developed a life of the mind, but has neglected the physical side of life, including his sex life with his wife. The very fit Revill seems miscast for the part as originally conceived, though he ably limns the character’s arrogance and cocksuredness as well as his dismissive way with his colleagues.
In the book, Ann clearly loves her husband, but longs for the intimacy that has been denied her. This makes her susceptible to Belasco’s libidinous influences, and so she throws herself sexually at a shocked Ben Fischer, and when he rejects her advances, seeks sexual solace from an unequally uninterested Tanner as well, a lesbian come-on scene the film omits entirely.
Florence’s part is diminished as well. She comes to believe that the ghost attacking her is that of Daniel Belasco, Emeric’s son, who reminds her of her late brother, who was forced to do the bidding of others. Believing she has found Daniel’s body, she buries it, hoping to put his spirit at rest, but such is not to be. She generates the theory that Belasco is like a general who can force other spirits in the house to do his bidding while he keeps himself behind the lines. Unfortunately, without having sketched in the background as to why she is so vulnerable to “Daniel’s” influence, she instead comes off as incredibly credulous and reckless, rather than as a participant who picks up a piece of the overall puzzle.
One of the most horrific scenes in the book comes off quite muted as well. Florence makes the mistake of allowing the spirit of Daniel to make love to her. (In the book, the spirit even sodomizes her in the shower). Instead of transitioning Daniel to love and peace hereafter, she gets abused and discovers herself making love to a corpse, leading to a particularly horrific entendre when she tells the others that Daniel is “in her.”

Physical medium Ben Fisher (Roddy McDowell) confronts the angry spirit of Emerich Belasco.

There is a mystery to be solved here, and Belasco’s duplicity must ultimately be uncovered. Matheson does leave visual clues as to the source of Belasco’s anger and frustration in each of the attacks he makes on the “guests” in hell house. While not as flashy as modern-day ghost stories, LEGEND takes the time to build up character and unease before unleashing its horrors, so that we care about the people these phenomena are happening to and have an emotional investment in hopes for their survival.
LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE is a well-crafted low-budget effort, but it lacks the superior story, characterization, scares, and performances of the Robert Wise classic THE HAUNTING. Nevertheless, director John Hough crafted a decent ‘70s horror that has proved influential on such subsequent projects as POLTERGEIST (which combined the idea of depicting all the various kinds of ghostly phenomena with Matheson’s story “Little Girl Lost”), William Malone’s remake of HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, and Stephen King’s ROSE RED, as well as numerous televsision series showing scientific teams investigating haunted houses and other ghostly locations. In fact, Matheson is in many ways the link from the Gothic horror of the past (including his famous work on Corman’s Poe pictures) to the modern-day scares of Stephen King (who has acknowledged his debt to Matheson’s I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man, and Hell House, all set in modern times).
Fox’s DVD release is anamorphically enhanced and at last presents the film in its original aspect ratio of 1.85. The colors have a muted look and there is a touch of grain, both of which are common to many ‘70s movies. The dual-layer disc also has a very high average bit rate. An additional perk is that Fox Video has given it a very reasonable sell-through price.
Both the film and the book have their limitations, but each made its own notable contributions to the development of the horror genre, and I found re-experiencing them to be quite enjoyable. They are both definite milestones in opening new territory for horror to explore in terms of adult content and taking a scientific approach to psychic phenomena.

THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE (1973). Directed by John Hough. Screenplay by Richard Matheson, based on his novel Hell House, published 1971. Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC. Cast: Pamela Franklin, Roddy McDowall, Clive Revill, Gayle Hunnicutt, Roland Culver.
EDITOR’S NOTE:

To be fair, the fog-bound sky is just dark enough to almost pass for night.

Madhouse (1974) – A Retrospective

Posted on September 11, 2007 by Steve Biodrowski

This 1974 effort is Vincent Price’s last starring role in a horror film and the last film he made for American International Pictures, the company responsible for the vast majority of his later big screen appearances. Appropriately enough, MADHOUSE feels a bit like a requiem, with Price playing aging horror star Paul Toombs, who attempts to revive his famous Dr. Death character on television, decades after an unsolved murder destroyed his film career and his sanity. Unfortunately, people begin dying hideous deaths inspired by scenes from the Dr. Death movies, and the police naturally suspect Toombs. The actor himself is unable to speak in his own defense, afraid that he may be committing the murders in a black-out and not remembering them. Eventually consumed with guilt over the deaths his character is committing, he locks himself into the studio, turns on the cameras, and sets fire to the set, dying a spectacular death in a fire. Or does he?
A weak genre effort, MADHOUSE makes little if any effort to transcend the horror label, instead offering up familiar elements for the benefit of undemanding viewers. Nevertheless, it is amusing for Price fans, who get to see him playing, in a sense, a fictionalized version of himself, a point underlined by using numerous clips from Price’s old AIP horror films to represent Toombs’s career. One is almost tempted to label MADHOUSE Price’s version of SUNSET BOULEVARD, though the film scarcely merits comparison to Billy Wilder’s 1950 masterpiece.
Director Jim Clark (a former editor) stages the action competently, but he does not have the sophisticated sensibility to create a post-modern meta-movie – that is, not just a standard horror film but a self-reflexive film about horror films. Instead, we get a by-the-numbers approach, enlivened mostly by the presence of Price and his two co-stars, Peter Cushing and Robert Quarry, whose verbal sparring provides an opportunity to add a little panache to an otherwise prosaic effort. Though the dialogue is seldom more than adequate, the acting trio makes the most out of it, particularly in two show business party scenes, wherein they exchange amusingly snide witticisms.
The result falls far short of being a masterpiece, but it is more than enough to enough to please cult enthusiasts eager to see the horror stars on screen together.

BEHIND THE SCENES

A co-production between AIP and the English company Amicus (responsible for numerous horror films such as 1967’s TORTURE GARDEN), MADHOUSE was based on a bad novel by Angus Hall called Devilday. The book wallowed in sleazy sex and scandal: we first meet Toombs shacked up with a sixteen-year-old, acne-scarred groupie (do aging horror stars really have groupies?), and his big scene consists of appearing naked at a Black Mass, so that the congregation can (literally) kiss his ass. Little happens, making the short novel feel longer than it is, and what does happen is deliberately left unexplained. The reader assumes that Toombs is up to something, but his guilt is never clearly established. At the climax, he is impaled by a falling rock, and a swarm of fans rifles his body for souveniers, but years later the novel’s narrator catches a glimpse of Toombs in a car, leading him to suspect that murder and mayhem will resume. Overall, despite the (then) modern English setting, the story seems inspired less by the Gothic Horror tradition than by scandalous legends from the early days of Hollywood. (Toombs’ career meltdown – after being suspected of shoving an icicle up a woman’s vagina – vaguely parallels that of silent film comic Fatty Arbuckle, who fell out of favor after being tried for literally raping a woman to death – even though the jury emphatically aquitted him of any and all wrong-doing.)

Fortunately, little of the novel remains in the screenplay, except the basic premise of a former film actor making a comeback on television, years after a bloody scandal. The script turns Toombs into a more sympathetic character, with whom the audience identifies even while uncertain of his guilt. Also added were the murders inspired by the Dr. Death movies – which lead us to suspect Toombes, even though we guess that someone may be setting him up. Unfortunately, the film feels a bit like a last gasp attempt to capitalize on the “Creative Deaths” formula used in Price’s previous efforts THE ABOMIMABLE DR. PHIBES, DR PHIBES RISES AGAIN, and THEATRE OF BLOOD, lacking the wit and imagination of those films.
Price had been working for American International Pictures since THE HOUSE OF USHER in 1960, but he had grown unhappy churning out low-budget, unimaginative horror films. “My contract had finished and I hoped it would be my last,” he told Cinefantastique for the career retrospective that ran in the January 1989 issues (Volume 19, No 2).
Actor Robert Quarry, who had co-starred with Price on the far superior DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN, was being groomed to replace the horror star after this film – a strategy that never came to fruition. He recalled that MADHOUSE was ill-fated from the start, thanks to Price’s shaky status at American International Pictures after year’s of contract disputes.
“What could we do?” Quarry asks rhetorically. “It ws Vincent’s last movie with AIP. His contract was up. We never got a script until Sunday morning, and we were to start shooting the next day. That gave us no time to bitch and scream. They knew if they’d sent it to us two weeks before, we’d have called them up and said, ‘Hey, work this over – it’s terrible!’ So they were very smart there.
“Jim Clark may have been a good film editor, but he was ill-prepared to direct a movie – he was just gonna shoot what was there,” Quarry continues. “So I would change the dialogue around so it was speakable and then leave the last line, the cue line, in. They never knew what hit them: when I finished talking and gave the cue line, the other actor spoke. About the second day, I told Vincent I had made some changes, so I wouldn’t have to speak this shit. He said, ‘God, help me with my stuff – could you rewrite some of this?’ I was flattered that Vincent trusted me enought to let me rewrite some of the scenes. I couldn’t change the scenes, but at least we put a little edge on some of them. That was probably the only serious work we did together, trying to find ways to do this dreadful movie.”
At the time of filming, Prices was in the process of breaking up with his second wife, who remained in the States with their daughter, while he was on the set in England (where all of Price’s later horror films were shot, for budgetary reasons). Quarry recalls that Price played fast and loose with his expense account.
“Vincent told me, in case anybody asked if Victoria and Mary were there, I was to say yes, because he wrote it in on his expenses. All that expense money for two weeks: first class air fare, food. I said, ‘Oh, I love it, I love it. Can’t you get anybody else on there?’ After all, he made a great deal of money for AIP. He was their only superstar. And they should have been damn grateful to him, and they should have paid him more money. Frankly, anything he could steal out of that studio – I said, ‘Baby, steal!‘”
When completed, MADHOUSE was barely released and never found much of an audience. Tentative plans for another Price vehicle at AIP, THE NAKED EYE, were dropped. It was the end of an era. Although Price would continue to remain busy as an actor, never again would he dominate the screen as the King of Horror. Partly this was due to the blockbuster success of THE EXORCIST: the lavish, major-studio production ushered in a new brand of horror, which helped contribute to the downfall of genre-friendly companies like Hammer Films, Amicus, and AIP, whose modestly budgeted efforts seemed low-key and quaint by comparison.
Viewed today, MADHOUSE is fun for fans, despite its flaws, and it does hold a place of some historical importance as Price’s last starring role in a horror film designed specifically as a vehicle for his talents. The film is available on DVD as part of MGM’s Midnight Movies Double Features, packaged with the far more enjoyable THEATRE OF BLOOD. The bare-bones presentation offers good transfers of both films but no bonus features except for trailers.

TRIVIA

The credits for MADHOUSE somewhat misleadingly include the names of horror stars Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone, both of whom died long before MADHOUSE was filmed. They appear only in clips from films in which one or both of them co-starred with Price, THE RAVEN (1963) and TALES OF TERROR (1962).
MADHOUSE (American International Pictures and Amicus Films, 1974). Directed by Jim Clark. Screenplay by Ken Levison, Greg Morrison, based on the novel Devilday by Angus Hall. Cast: Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Robert Quarry, Adrienne Corri, Linda Hayden, Natasha Pyne.