Lights, Camera, Chaos!: Nigel Kneale’s “The Dummy”

Now Playing: "The Dummy," (Episode of the UK TV series Beasts, originally broadcast November 20, 1976)

Pros: Nigel Kneale's teleplay is a wrily humorous send-up of Hammer Studios; Features an off-the-wall creation of a peculiar monster
Cons: Plausibility is sacrificed for the convenience of the plot

Yes, I know that the blog title is FILMS From Beyond the Time Barrier, but every once in a while, when the stars and planets are in perfect alignment and broadcast reception is crystal clear, I like to write about the classic TV that has entertained me over the years. Besides which, it’s time for another installment of Terence Canote’s Favourite TV Show Episode Blogathon over at A Shroud of Thoughts. You’ll want to adjust your antenna in order to tune in all the great posts that Terence is hosting this year.

Where would the movies be without that great 20th century innovation known as method acting? We might never have thrilled to Marlon Brando’s signature, anguished cry of Stellaaaa! in his sweaty t-shirt. The only Dean in our collective memory might be that guy named Jimmy who sold sausages on TV, instead of the late, great James Dean. Worst of all, we might never have gotten to know that bottomless well of feelings that is Shia LaBeouf.

From its origins in early 20th century Russian theater, the technique’s creator, Konstantin Stanislavski, could scarcely have imagined how popular it would become thousands of miles away and many years later in America, thanks to the tireless efforts of Lee Strasberg and Elia Kazan. 

In the hands of Hollywood, this method of fully inhabiting a character’s head has sometimes allowed actors to soar to sublime heights, and almost as often to plumb the depths of ridiculous excess.

One of the most notorious adherents of method acting, Dustin Hoffman, has done both. While making Marathon Man (1976), in which he portrays a NY graduate student caught up in a conspiracy involving Nazi war criminals and smuggled diamonds, Hoffman decided to inhabit his role as completely as possible.

The story goes that when co-star Laurence Olivier asked Hoffman how filming had gone for a scene in which his character was sleep-deprived for days, Hoffman admitted that he had made himself stay up for 72 hours in preparation. To which the classically-trained actor replied, “Why don’t you just try acting?” 

A few years later on the set of Kramer vs. Kramer (1981), Hoffman would take it upon himself to make co-star Meryl Streep suffer for her art too. His tactics included abruptly smashing a wine glass to get an unrehearsed reaction, slapping her between takes to increase the tension between their two characters, and reminding Streep of the recent death of her boyfriend to up the emotional intensity of her scenes. 

Streep won her first Oscar for the role, and Hoffman was the first person she thanked in her acceptance speech, but it does call into question the ethics of involving others involuntarily in the madness of your method. (Not to mention, smashing wine glasses without warning could put somebody’s eye out.)

"Is it safe?" With Dustin Hoffman on the set, maybe not.

Speaking of madness in the method, the protagonist of today’s featured episode, the titular “Dummy,” plumbs those depths and then some. In this cleverly constructed story centered on a B movie production, actor Clyde Boyd (Bernard Horsfall), aka “The Dummy,” is having a very bad day on the set of the latest entry in the long running Dummy horror franchise.

It’s bad enough that Clyde has to wear a heavy, cumbersome and stiflingly hot monster suit, but in the middle of an important take, he sees his arch nemesis, actor Peter Wager (Simon Oakes) hanging around the set.

It seems that during a time when Clyde was despairing over his stalled career, Wager started wooing Clyde’s attractive wife, and before long she had left him for the slimy lothario, taking their young daughter with her.

Clyde’s friend, producer “Bunny” Nettleton (Clive Swift), had managed to get financing for yet another Dummy picture, saving Clyde from destitution, but unwittingly also hired the very man who Clyde blamed for stealing his family.

With Wager hanging around, Clyde keeps freezing up and blowing the takes. The pressure is on, because a crucial supporting actor, Sir Ramsey (Thorley Walters), is insisting that after the day’s shooting he’s off to a vacation in the sunny Caribbean, and if the scenes aren’t completed, tough luck.

The problematic graveyard scene in the fictional B movie production, Revenge of the Dummy.

Bunny is caught in a triangular dilemma with his lead actor having a nervous breakdown, the cause of the breakdown refusing to bow out for the good of the production, and another pompous, selfish supporting actor ready to blow this pop stand to stick his toes in a sandy beach.

When Clyde retreats to his dressing room to start hitting the bottle, Bunny, desperate to get the picture in the can, has to give him the pep talk of his life:

“[Y]ou’re something different Clyde. I don’t think you’ve ever known yourself. You work in another dimension altogether. We never thought about it, we just let it happen. We never talked about it, but we felt it... So did all those other people, all over the world. You don’t need lines written down by other men, other people’s thoughts to repeat… it happens deep down, like going down to the sea, where words don’t function anymore. The rules are different… pressure… perceptivity… awareness… on that level, you reach us.”

Then, when Clyde is ready to once again don the Dummy’s monster mask,

“It’s starting Clyde, can’t you feel it? The power in you? This is it, this is the part I can hardly watch. Oh my god I never wanted to see this, I never wanted to be in this room when you… [pausing for dramatic effect] become the Dummy! I can feel it, I can feel it taking over!”

It’s a rousing halftime football speech and method acting master class rolled into one. Stanislavski couldn’t have done better himself. But unfortunately for Bunny and everyone else on the set, the speech works too well. Powered by a vast reserve of pent-up emotional pain, Clyde actually becomes one with The Dummy, and embarks on a rampage that would make even Dustin Hoffman recoil in horror.

Bunny channels Stanislavski for the benefit of his faltering star.

Before it’s all played out, a cast member is choked, the police called in, and Clyde’s wife summoned to try to talk him down. And as if things couldn’t get any worse, arch-nemesis Wager is lurking around, itching to use the shotgun he’s retrieved from his car. Can Bunny corral the monster he’s created before someone else gets hurt?

"The Dummy" was one of 6 episodes in an anthology series, Beasts, broadcast in the UK by ITV in 1976. The series was the brainchild of writer Nigel Kneale, a master of sci-fantasy, horror and the macabre. (Mr. Kneale is no stranger to Films From Beyond -- see my reviews of two Hammer film adaptations of his work, The Abominable Snowman and Quatermass 2, and his fascinatingly prophetic dystopian teleplay, "The Year of the Sex Olympics.")

Kneale is best known for his creation Dr. Bernard Quatermass, the crustily courageous scientist whose exploits in several BBC series of the ‘50s thrilled large and enthusiastic UK audiences, and who became even more popular with the Hammer film adaptations (The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass and the Pit in addition to Quatermass 2).

In spite of creating some of the BBC’s most watched series up to that time, all good collaborations must eventually come to an end, and by the mid-'70s Kneale and the BBC had parted ways due to a combination of personal and creative differences.

The year before Beasts, Kneale had scored a success with the ATV production company, penning a creepy folk horror episode, “Murrain” (1975), for their anthology series Against the Crowd. ATV approached him with the idea of writing a whole set of episodes for a thematic anthology series. Kneale proposed exploring the dark, bestial side of humanity through its various relationships with the animal kingdom, and Beasts was born.

As Kneale biographer Andy Murray relates,

“The decision was taken that few animals would actually be seen in the new plays. They would simply be heard, or their presence and influence would be felt, a latent, invisible force. The key to the project, though, was that there would be a great deal of variety between the six plays. ‘That was the first thing that [ATV producer] Nick Palmer and I agreed on,’ Kneale recalls, ‘to make them as different as possible from one another: one would be a funny one, another one horrifying, another one more ordinary.’” [Andy Murray, Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale, Headpress, 2006, p. 126]

Illustrating this variety, in addition to "The Dummy," fan favorites from the series include “Baby,” about a rural veterinarian dealing with superstitious locals who believe that the mummified body of an unidentified animal found in a farmhouse is a witch’s familiar, and “During Barty’s Party,” about a middle-aged couple trapped in their home by a pack of super-intelligent rats.

The animal connection is less direct in “The Dummy,” although the creature suit that Clyde wears is definitely animalistic (not to mention cheap-looking even for a B movie), bringing out his simmering bestial nature at a very inopportune time.

The Dummy gets a final going-over before his big scene.

While the episode isn’t laugh-out-loud funny, there are farcical elements throughout that elicit the occasional knowing grin. “The Dummy” seems like a comically inappropriate name for a 7-foot-tall monster that is supposed to thrill and terrify audiences, but the character is literally dumb (as in mute), and the actor who animates it has also lost his voice, as it were, through a series of traumatic life set-backs.

Then there’s the duo of Joan Eastgate (Lillias Walker), a journalist covering the making of the latest Dummy movie, and Mike (Ian Thompson), the put-upon studio publicist who tries in vain to prevent Joan from glomming on to the production’s many glitches, foremost of which is the star’s incipient meltdown.

At one point Mike, with barely concealed boredom, rattles off all the films in the Dummy series (which seems to be Kneale's dig at the Hammer horror film cycle that had finally played itself out in the mid-'70s). It’s also a knowing-grin moment for anyone who’s ever rolled their eyes at the film industry's love of sequels:

Joan: “How many have there been?”
Mike: “Dummy films? Six. (Counting on his fingers) Dummy, Horror of the Dummy, Death of the Dummy, Return of the Dummy, and, uh, Dummy and the Devil, Dread of the Dummy, and this one’s a Revenge… a touch obvious in my view…”

Mike almost runs out of fingers trying to count all the Dummy movies.

Later on, in a conversation with Bunny, Joan becomes a sort of one-woman Greek chorus foreshadowing doom, as she likens Clyde to a ritual dancer wearing a ceremonial mask.

Joan: “It’s not a disguise, they [the tribe] know the man’s inside, but it doesn’t matter. They believe the mask itself is alive, always, all the time, the man is just helping… very deep stuff…”

On the other end of the intellectual spectrum are the other “dummies,” the hopelessly narcissistic supporting actors Wager and Sir Ramsey. Simon Oates does a great job with his deplorable Wager character, oozing contempt for Clyde at every opportunity, while at the same time disingenuously protesting to Bunny that it wasn’t his fault that the man’s wife got fed up with him.

Thorley Walters as Sir Ramsey is the very picture of pompous self-regard, making only the feeblest efforts to appear concerned after a man has been killed and the set is in chaos; you can almost see the wheels turning in his head trying to figure out if the tragedy will affect his vacation plans.

Ramsey and Wager yuck it up as the set of Revenge of the Dummy devolves into chaos.

Kneale, with dozens of TV and movie projects under his belt by this point, wanted to capture his film industry experience via "The Dummy" episode. Biographer Murray again:

“With a generous helping of barbed humour, Kneale -- who’d always been fond of backstage drama -- was using his own experiences at Bray Studios to satirise the glory days of Hammer. ‘It was staged just like a Hammer film. I’d watched them at it. They were so cosy, these pictures, there was never anything less horrific! But if it had been real and somebody had got accidentally killed, well, that would be a different thing entirely. Not something you’d bargained for.’” [Murray, p. 130]

There are some things about Kneale’s fictional Hammer-lite studio that don’t quite ring true. Clyde has been the man in the monster suit for all the Dummy films, and characters at various times talk about his star quality, but it’s really the suit that’s the star, and seemingly any competent extra could wear the thing. At one point, as Clyde is having his breakdown, Bunny and the director talk about the possibility of replacing him, but dismiss it -- somehow, it wouldn’t be the same without Clyde in the suit. With so much on the line, it doesn’t make much sense.

Regardless, Kneale, with his tongue firmly in cheek, suggests that the so-called “primitive” dancer becoming one with the spirits in his ceremonial mask is not so different from the modern method actor parading around a movie set in his monster suit.

Even if the idea of method actors as shamans seems absurd, “The Dummy” is worth a look, if only for Bunny’s impromptu pep talk. It’s one of the most off-the-wall scenes of a monster being created that you’ll ever see.

Behold, the Dummy!

Where to find it: Streaming | Complete series

Alexis in Horrorland: Special Joan Collins Blogathon Edition

Now Playing: Dark Places (1973)

Pros: Joan Collins is deliciously evil as a fortune-hunting seductress; Effective spooky atmosphere.
Cons: Christopher Lee and Herbert Lom are wasted in mundane supporting roles.

This post is part of the 2021 Joan Collins Blogathon, graciously hosted by Gill at RealWeegieMidget Reviews. Get on over to the site for a plethora of posts covering practically every aspect of Joan's career.

It’s good to be bad, at least in the movies. So many actors over the years have talked about how much they relish playing villain roles, and how much more colorful and rewarding those parts are, that it has become almost a cliché. 

While there’s never been a shortage of juicy, villainous roles for male actors, women haven’t been far behind. From the man-eating vamps of the silent era to the sultry sirens of film noir to today’s female action badasses, fem fatales have always done well at the box office.

Actresses like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis became Hollywood icons chewing up men and spitting them out on the silver screen, and when the glamour roles dried up, they went right on being as bad as can be in B movies.

That career trajectory has played out many times, but few actresses have embraced it with as much panache as Joan Collins. Glamour has always been her trademark, but being dark haired and British, it was perhaps inevitable that she would be steered into fem fatale roles. Lucky for her, and us. If she’d been any sweeter, we’d be asking “Joan who?”

Collins’ bad girl image got an early boost with her role as the nefarious Princess Nellifer in the lush costume epic Land of the Pharaohs (1955). As Nellifer, she lies, cheats, steals and hires out assassins as she schemes to acquire Pharaoh Khufu’s (Jack Hawkins) wealth and power -- and she looks absolutely fabulous doing so.

"Hey Jack, have you been stealing from my wardrobe again?"

Several years later, she tested for the title role in the even more epic film Cleopatra, but lost out to Elizabeth Taylor. Collins almost got the part anyway, when Taylor became so ill during production that it looked like she wouldn’t be able to continue. Collins’ agent told her to get packed and be ready to report to the set at any moment. [Joan Collins, Past Imperfect, Simon & Schuster, 1984, p. 191]

Of course, Liz recovered. Would Collins still have become the premier go-to villainess after playing Cleopatra, or would her career have taken a different path? We’ll never know, but that’s all right -- the path she traveled in this particular universe is fascinating enough.

On her way to the ultimate glamorous and venomous role -- Alexis Carrington Colby on the ‘80s primetime soap Dynasty -- Collins took a detour into B horror-thriller territory in the early to mid ‘70s.

The horror roles came in quick succession, starting with Amicus’ wildly popular Tales from the Crypt anthology film in 1972. As befitting the future Alexis, she was no shrinking (or shrieking) violet to be easily taken out by the monster. In many of them, she was the monster (although a very alluring human one).

In Tales from the Crypt, she kills her husband on Christmas Eve and gets the bright idea to blame it on an escaped mental patient who is loose in the neighborhood. In the Hammer thriller Fear in the Night (1972), she is the cold, calculating wife of a school headmaster, lurking in the background while one of the school’s new employees (Judy Geeson) is repeatedly attacked by a mysterious figure. In Tales that Witness Madness (1973), she battles an uncanny, sentient tree (!) in a desperate attempt to save her marriage. And in I Don't Want to be Born (aka Sharon’s Baby, 1975), she gives birth to a demonic baby.

Joan realizes she's on Santa's naughty list in Tales from the Crypt (1972)

Which brings us to the main attraction, Dark Places (1973), a fitting description of where Collins’ career was taking her at the time. Although independently produced, Dark Places greatly resembles the psycho-mystery-thrillers scripted by Jimmy Sangster for Hammer during the ‘60s and ‘70s (Scream of Fear, Paranoiac, Hysteria and Fear in the Night among them).

In this case, the writing team of Ed Brennan and Joseph Van Winkle place a mild-mannered hospital administrator, Edward Foster (Robert Hardy) at the center of ominous events.

Foster is the last person to visit with Andrew Marr -- formerly a wealthy country squire -- before Marr’s death in an insane asylum. Marr had been committed years ago after a psychotic breakdown caused by the sudden disappearance of his wife, two children, and the children's governess. 

Foster learns that Marr bequeathed his sprawling estate to him in gratitude for his companionship. He moves to the nearby village and begins to pick through the ruins of the ramshackle old house, aware of the rumors that the squire stashed a fortune in cash somewhere on the grounds.

Foster suddenly acquires new friends: Dr. Mandeville (Christopher Lee) and his sister Sarah (Collins), and the village solicitor, Prescott (Herbert Lom). The three, also aware of the hidden loot, attach themselves like leeches to Foster, suspicious that Marr told him of the money’s location before dying.

Sarah cases the joint.

Sarah goes into high vamp mode, shamelessly flattering the unfashionable, middle-aged man: “You’re much younger than I expected. Most of the men in this village are past it. It will be nice to have somebody younger.”

She offers to help him clean the place up, the better to keep an eye out for satchels of cash. Later, as she’s scheming with her brother, she positively purrs with mischievous contentment:

Sarah: “He’s nice, isn’t he?
Mandeville: “Can’t you keep your hands off anyone?”
Sarah: “He’d be quite attractive with £200,000, quite eligible.”
Mandeville: “You are a bitch Sarah.”

As Foster’s newfound friends conspire to get their grubby hands on the money, they are blissfully unaware that the spooky old house is having a profound effect, making the uptight, skittish man far more dangerous than outward appearances would suggest.

Dr. Mandeville (Christopher Lee) is concerned for his sister's moral welfare.

As you might expect, Collins gets all the best lines, and you can’t take your eyes off her as she exudes pure, mercenary evil. On the other hand, Christopher Lee and Herbert Lom are given little more to do than stand around with concerned frowns on their faces. Fans at the time might have been excited by ads trumpeting the names Collins, Lee and Lom, but the film belongs to Collins and the lesser-known character actor Robert Hardy.

Some fans and critics have disparaged Dark Places for building the film around the nondescript Hardy rather than one of the horror icons, but the story benefits from a mild-mannered everyman at the center of the action, the better to make the character’s transformation all the more dramatic.

Dark Places sets up an effectively spooky atmosphere that slowly builds in suspense as Foster putters around the mansion, encountering lights that shouldn’t be on, creepy dolls with smashed faces lying on the floor, hobby horses rocking themselves, and eerie voices and children’s laughter echoing through the halls.

Foster becomes a man doubly possessed: possessed by the idea of finding the hidden fortune, and possessed by Marr’s overpowering spirit to the point that he begins reliving the squire’s tragic past.

Edward (Robert Hardy) wonders why he suddenly has so many friends.

Even as Sarah tries to seduce and manipulate Foster, Foster/Marr pursues his lost love -- the governess Alta (Jane Birkin) -- through the misty past. Unbeknownst to Sarah, who is blinded by greed and pride in her ability to reduce men to putty, the past will quickly catch up to the present, and tragedy will repeat itself with a vengeance.

Robert Hardy was an extremely versatile and busy character actor who appeared in scores of mostly British TV series and movies over the course of seven decades. His portrayal of Winston Churchill was apparently so spot on that he was called on to play the politician in three separate productions in the 1980s, including the highly regarded TV mini-series War and Remembrance. He also appeared as Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge in several of the Harry Potter movies.

Hardy as the befuddled Foster is the perfect foil for Collins the man-eater. He seems perfectly harmless -- right up until he’s not.

Director Don Sharp helmed several Hammer horror films and thrillers in the 1960s, including The Kiss of the Vampire (1963), The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964) and Rasputin: The Mad Monk (1966). Other horror credits include Witchcraft (1964, with Lon Chaney, Jr.), Curse of the Fly (1964), two Fu Manchu movies with Christopher Lee, The Face of  and The Brides of (1965 and 1966, respectively), and the cult favorite Psychomania (aka The Death Wheelers, 1973).

Sharp’s genre movie experience, plus a cast of talented veteran actors (especially Collins as a slinky man-eater), plus a script that allows the eeriness to build slowly but surely, adds up to a surprisingly good psycho-supernatural-mystery-thriller.

Where to find it: Unfortunately, Dark Place's home video releases are out-of-print. Currently there is a watchable (but not great) copy streaming on YouTube.

Edward has a pickaxe to grind.

Extra! Dame Joan Collins’ real-life encounter with the supernatural!

In doing some background digging for this review, I was surprised to find out that Joan’s experience with things that go bump in the night was not confined solely to the movies.

In a season two episode of the TV show Celebrity Ghost Stories, Collins describes an after-dinner party she attended in an old Venetian palazzo that was interrupted by an angry poltergeist. Guests were startled to find the outline of a body laid out on the dining room floor with almond candies. The butler told the guests that the outline was in the exact spot where a young wife had been murdered by her husband years before.

Then, in quick succession, a large knife flew across the room and stuck itself in the wall, and a large urn propelled itself across the floor. Everyone scattered, and Collins was convinced it was the ghost of the murder victim warning people away from the place where her life was prematurely cut short. See the clip here.

Night of the Living Dead Housewife

Now Playing: Season of the Witch (aka Hungry Wives; 1972)

Pros: An original “indie” psychological horror film with a different spin on the discontents of suburban middle-class life; Imaginative, disturbing dream sequences
Cons: Too talky; The hip, amoral college instructor character is too contrived; Difficult to get past the dated, god-awful ‘70s clothes, make-up and slang

Spring is finally here. Time to shake off the heavy coat of ice and snow that Old Man Winter blasted at us this year. It’s the season for renewal, and for an explosion of Mother Nature’s favorite colors. It’s the season of the birds and the bees and… witches.

These days, witches are popularly associated with the dark arts, Devil worship and Halloween, but the Vernal Equinox is a very important date on their calendar for celebrating Ostara, the Goddess of Fertility and new beginnings. (And let's face it, Christianity and its Easter celebration is a johnny-come-lately to this rebirth-renewal thing -- kind of like a loud, obnoxious guest who comes late to the party, shoves all the Pagans aside, cranks up his own playlist, drinks all the good stuff, and then takes credit for saving the party.)

"Hey, have you heard this one? A goat, a witch,
a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar..."

Darkness and evil is in the eye of the beholder. As any self-respecting witch will tell you, they’re not about casting malicious spells over bubbling cauldrons of eye of newt and bats’ wings, but rather about celebrating and tapping into the ubiquitous, renewing powers of Nature.

While the 2,000 year-old ascendent paradigm has contributed much good to the world, it has also contributed crusades, pogroms, inquisitions and burnings at the stake. In the wrong hands, it seeks to separate humanity from the bosom of nature, and pretends that Man can dominate the natural world with no consequences. And in spite of the founder’s preference for the meek, the poor and the dispossessed, modern day adherents are often hard on those groups. So it’s no wonder that the dispossessed sometimes find alternatives that give them a greater sense of control and meaning in their lives. In some areas of the world it’s Voodoo. In others, it’s Santería. In still others, including George Romero’s late 20th century suburbia of discontent, it’s witchcraft. (Yes, that George Romero -- you didn’t think he just made zombie movies did you?)

The protagonist of Romero’s Season of the Witch, Joan Mitchell (Jan White) is herself dispossessed, in spite of living the early ‘70s dream of a nice house in the suburbs complete with a hard working husband and a smart, attractive teenage daughter.

She is dispossessed of any meaningful adult existence, spending her waking hours listening to her bored housewife friends complaining about their husbands at endless bridge games and cocktail parties. At night, her subconscious lays out the bland horror of her vacuous existence in surreal dreams.

Joan and creepy lamp-boy listen as the dream guide runs
through the inventory of her vacuous existence.

In one sequence, her husband gets ready for a business trip by attaching a leash to the choke collar on her neck and coaxing her into a boarding cage like the family dog. In another, a dream guide in the form of a glib, leisure-suited friend takes her on a tour of her own house and her own middling, middle class life:

“[Checking his clipboard] Okay, Mitchell, Joan. Oh, you’ve been here before, but just for the record-- [gesturing around] dining room, kitchen… and through here the garage, sewing corner and books, all the latest… And televisions, 3 sets, in the den, in here and upstairs, with, uh, special programming designed to give you ideas… in case you should run out of ideas. And the ladies of course... [distorted, fish-eye closeups of her bridge friends dressed in hideous clothes and makeup] they’re available for luncheons, teas and bridge, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…”

News of a woman in the neighborhood, Marion Hamilton (Virginia Greenwald) who is a witch and gives tarot readings piques Joan’s interest. She and friend Shirley (an older, even more disenchanted woman played by Ann Muffly) decide to get readings. In spite of (or perhaps because of) Marion’s spot-on, yet bleak assessment of her friend’s cards, “Romantic love has failed you,” Joan seems all the more intrigued.

Joan rehearses for the local community theater production
of Bell, Book and Candle.

As Joan’s own life gets bleaker (her daughter runs away and hubby starts slapping her around in frustration), and her regular visits to the mild-mannered, pipe-smoking psychiatrist don’t seem to be helping, she turns to an alternate self-help book that she discovered at Marion's place, To Be a Witch: A Primer.

Being a witch is apparently just what the (witch) doctor ordered. As she practices her incantations, she seems infused with new life. She even uses her new-found powers to compel her daughter’s insouciant hipster boyfriend Gregg (Raymond Laine), an instructor at the local college, to come to her (what the heck, daughter’s run away and hubby is gone on another extended business trip!)

But there’s a price to pay. As she gets deeper into the witchy arts with the help of mentor Marion, her surreal dreams turn even more menacing. A shadowy intruder in a grotesque over-the-head mask (an entity she’s inadvertently summoned? her own subconscious in disguise?) is stalking her nightmares. In her waking life, her newfound sense of freedom and power is taking her to the edge as she continues her affair with the amoral Gregg, whom she despises yet can’t seem to get enough of.

"Hey lady, that'll be $22.50 for the pizza. Lady?..."

It would seem that a quick-tempered husband, an immature college boy lover and dangerous supernatural powers are the prime ingredients in an infernal witch’s brew that’s bound to bubble over into a real mess, and sure enough, it does. Depending on your view, the denouement is either a tragedy or a moment of liberation (but one that comes at great cost). In a nice touch, Romero uses voice-overs of the investigating police as a kind of lamenting Greek chorus.

And the very last scene suggests that Joan won’t be the last suburban witch -- there are many more witches-in-the-making out there dying to break free of their stifling, middle-class suburban prisons.

Shot in and around Pittsburgh, PA with a cast of unknowns, Season of the Witch (originally released as Hungry Wives), was Romero’s third feature film. While superficially it’s a huge departure from his surprise hit Night of the Living Dead, the two films share an acerbic outlook on humanity and doses of black humor. Sadly, Season was plagued with production and money problems, and quickly sank into obscurity. According to Wikipedia, it’s the only film on his resume that he would like to remake.

Weaselly Gregg doesn't believe in witchcraft.

Jan White as Joan goes through much of the film with almost a blank expression on her face. But then, given the dreary monotony of her life, that seems to be the point-- you’d be a robot too under the circumstances. When she’s called upon to Act with a capital A, as in the dream intruder sequences, she’s very effective.

Effectively irritating is Raymond Laine as Gregg, the weaselly college instructor who goes from romancing the teenage daughter to the mother without the slightest twinge of conscience. He’s arrogant and self-righteous, and more than a little cliched with his ‘70s hippie “do whatever feels good” philosophy. In a scene that goes on a little too long, he plays a cruel prank on Joan’s insecure friend Shirley, passing off a homemade “doobie” of regular tobacco as the the real thing.

If there’s a real star of Season, it’s Ann Muffly as Shirley Randolph. Shirley is vain, bored, anxious, depressed, and a borderline alcoholic -- in other words, a stereotypical ‘70s housewife. But Muffly brings surprising depth to what might have been a cardboard character. Her giddiness at taking a drag on what she thinks is her first joint, then her anxiety as she convinces herself she’s getting high is so authentic it’s difficult to watch. In another scene, she cries out to Joan that she’s “not done!” -- as in not done with life, no matter what her bridge friends or her slob of a husband say. In the hands of a contemporary filmmaker, Shirley would be a one-dimensional foil for the audience to laugh at. In Romero’s and Muffly’s hands, Shirley elicits a strong there-but-for-the-grace empathy.

Shirley is a two-fisted drinker.

All this is well and good -- if you can get past the monstrously hideous early ‘70s fashions that date the film like a guy wearing horned rim glasses and a porkpie hat to a college frat party (oh wait, I forgot, the seventies are actually back in style, Earth Mother help us!) From time to time I found myself thinking, “surely people really didn’t dress like that in 1972,” ... until I remembered that I myself owned a rainbow clown shirt eerily similar to one that Gregg wears in a later scene. I had tried to forget. Oh well.

Don’t let the dated aspects deter you. The average contemporary horror fan will hate this -- it’s talky and murky and there’s no gore. But I know you my friend. You’re mature, intelligent and discriminating, and will appreciate this lost George Romero near-classic for what it is-- a solid film of psychological suspense, with some memorable moments of biting satire, black humor, and surprisingly good performances from unknown actors.

---

Where to find it:

Amazon Instant Video


"They are all hungry wives with an appetite for diversion... gambling with life and death!"

"Mommie Dearest, please put down that axe!"

Now Playing: Strait-Jacket (1964)

Pros: Joan Crawford breathes wonderful, flamboyant life into the character of Lucy Harbin; Diane Baker is the perfect foil to Joan's histrionics.
Cons: Derivative of earlier films, even screenwriter Robert Bloch's own previous work.

Note:This is my contribution to the William Castle Blogathon, hosted by Joey at The Last Drive-in and Goregirl at her Dungeon. They've lined up an all-star cast of movie bloggers to storm the Castle for your entertainment and edification. Don't miss a single post!!

We're a fickle and petty lot, we commoners. When a new royal is born, we hang on every word of the talking, babbling heads of the 24 hour news outlets, and gorge on every image we can lay our bug eyes on:

• "Wow, doesn't she look absolutely fabulous even with that baby bump thing going!" 
• "She is just so brilliant for delivering a boy on the first go round!" 
• "Now remind me, where is this kid in the royal line of succession?"

And when these poor, overprivileged, overexposed creatures reveal themselves to be human just like the rest of us, we consume every sordid detail of every scandal large and small, and can't get enough of the humiliation and degradation.

• "Can you believe he went clubbing with that Russian ex-porn actress the other night?" 
• "Who in the world let him show up in that Charlie Chan costume for the Chinese ambassador's reception? Where are his handlers?" 
• "Did you see those beach photos of him with those rolls of fat? Why would show yourself in public if you were gonna let yourself go like that?"

But I suppose this is the price you pay for being the wealthiest, most glamorous public welfare recipients in the world. With apologies to all my readers in the UK, here in the good ol' U.S. of A. we have a much better system for anointing our royalty. At least until recently, qualifying for American nobility meant more than just being born into a certain family. You actually had to accomplish things, like building large profitable businesses, or playing a sport with consummate skill, or developing a screen persona that sold tickets by the millions. Better still, American nobles were crowned by the good, common people with their hard-earned money.

There was arguably no greater queen reigning over the country's Golden Age of movies than Joan Crawford -- and she "reigned" not once, but twice. In a prototypical rags to riches story, Lucille LeSeur, who had once worked with her mother in a laundry, parlayed her song and dance talents into a contract with MGM in the mid-'20s. (Joan Crawford, a name she disliked her entire career, was given to her early through a contest in Photoplay magazine.) Dissatisfied with the early roles the studio gave her, she tirelessly lobbied for bigger and better ones, to the point where, in 1932, she starred with such screen immortals as Greta Garbo and John Barrymore in MGM's lush, all-star picture Grand Hotel (1932).

The same year she was cited by the Motion Picture Herald as one of Hollywood's Top Ten Moneymaking Stars, and in 1937 Life magazine crowned her the "Queen of the Movies." But her first go round on the throne was to be short-lived. Even as Life was celebrating her screen royalty, her not-so-loyal subjects, the movie going public, were staying away from her pictures in droves. 1937's The Bride Wore Red was a huge flop for MGM, and she fell precipitously out of the money makers' top ten list, making instead the Independent Film Journal's list of actors and actresses labeled "box office poison."

Joan Crawford, circa 1934. "Bow before
the Queen you peasants!"
(Courtesy of Dr. Macro's High Quality Movie Scans)

Although she made something of a comeback in pictures like The Women (1939) and Strange Cargo (1940; with Clark Gable), her fate with MGM was sealed, and she left the studio in 1943 to sign with Warner Brothers. The move turned out to be the start of her new reign as Hollywood royalty. Against all odds, she secured the lead role in Mildred Pierce (1945) -- Bette Davis was the studio's first choice, but turned it down, and director Michael Curtiz wanted just about anybody but Joan. After collecting the Oscar for best actress, she appeared in a string of hits opposite some of the very best leading men of the era, including John Garfield in Humoresque (1946), Van Heflin in Possessed (1947), and Dana Andrews and Henry Fonda in Daisy Kenyon (1947).

Nothing lasts forever, and by the time she turned 50 in the '50s, the former screen queen had long been deposed, and was serving with the commoners in the antechambers of B movie melodramas. Of course, A-types like Joan don't just stop working, and like many aging actors and actresses of the time, her determination to keep making movies led her down some strange and interesting genre paths.

Years before the "Summer of Love," the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention, and Woodstock, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) ushered in America's most subversive decade. The brutality with which Hitch quickly dispatched starlet Janet Leigh in that film prefigured the passionate overturning of tradition and convention that would come to characterize the decade. The common folk had taken up their pitchforks, determined to storm the Hollywood palace and skewer any last vestige of the old glamor.

The skewering of the old icons was truly a sight to behold (and a lot of fun if you were in the right frame of mind). A few years after Psycho, director Robert Aldrich managed to get bitter real-life rivals Joan and Bette Davis into the same eccentric, neo-Gothic production, and somehow lived to tell the tale. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1964) was a very dark epitaph for the old Hollywood system, turning the two former glamor queens into repulsive hags who just happened to be … you guessed it … faded actresses. Its success at the box office spawned a wave of neo-Gothics featuring aging glamor queens in unflattering and sometimes grotesque roles: Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964, with Bette Davis and Olivia DeHavilland), The Night Walker (1964, with Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor), What's the Matter with Helen? (1971, with Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters), and many more.

Joan herself made more then her share of these things. She almost teamed up again with nemesis Bette in Hush…Hush, but when she took ill (some say after being unmercifully harassed by Davis), she was unceremoniously dumped from the production in favor of Olivia DeHavilland. No matter, she managed to appear in several more memorable (and not-so-memorable) horror-thrillers through the end of the decade, unfortunately culminating with the execrable Trog (1970), her last feature film role.

Joan suddenly realizes that her career has taken a turn
for the worse, and she's now starring in B horror movies.

Of these, Strait-Jacket is by far the best and most fun. Written by Psycho author Robert Bloch and produced and directed by the circus ringmaster of B horror movies, William Castle, Strait-Jacket features a dual role of sorts for Joan. In the movie's prologue, we're introduced to lusty, working class gal Lucy Harbin in a flashback sequence narrated by her daughter Carol (Diane Baker). Lucy makes her grand entrance to the sound of a train whistle and a bleating saxophone: "Lucy Harbin, born and raised on a farm, parents poor, education meager, very much a woman, and very much aware of the fact."

This Lucy, wearing too much makeup, a hideous print dress, cheap, jangling bracelets, and high-heeled shoes, confidently struts her stuff -- until she catches her no-good second husband (Lee Majors in an early uncredited role), seven years her junior, in bed with a former girlfriend. With young Carol watching, she cuts off this liaison for good with several well-aimed axe strokes. Cut to Lucy twenty years later (okay, okay, enough with the cheap puns!), after she's been released from the asylum to the care of her farmer brother and sister-in-law. She's now haggard, grey-haired, meek, and depressed, wearing a dress that looks like it was made out of an old sack. Both Lucys are a far cry from the sleek, chic glamor roles of Crawford's heyday. Moviegoers of the '60s, especially the drive-in crowd, did their best imitation of French revolutionary peasants, spurning the high class glamor crap and screaming "off with their heads!"

Jolly, cigar-chomping William Castle was always happy to feed the riffraff their red meat in the form of B movie horrors. He combined an innate instinct for mass taste with P.T. Barnum-like promotions, starting with an insurance policy against death by fright for his first breakout hit Macabre (1958), and following up with such gimmicks as floating skeletons and theater seat buzzers that were employed during the high points of his 1959 films House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler.

By 1964 and Strait-Jacket, Castle had dispensed with the gimmicks, and was content to follow the successful Baby Jane formula of featuring former A-list leading actors and actresses in B thrillers. The formula was indeed successful, enough so that for his next project, Castle secured not one but two fading A-listers, Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor (see my earlier post on The Night Walker). In spite of the difficulties in working with the imperious Joan (more on that later), Castle, under pressure to have a big name in the credits, enlisted her yet again for I Saw What You Did (1965) with John Ireland. Although the role was a small one and she's killed off pretty quickly (a bit of director's revenge?), she reportedly got as much for it, $50K, as she did for the far meatier role in Strait-Jacket. [John W. Law, Scare Tactic: The Life and Films of William Castle, Writers Club Press, 2000.]

Estranged mother and daughter bond over a cool, refreshing bottle of Pepsi.
(Joan was on the board of PepsiCo at the time, thus the product placement.)

Strait-Jacket, while not innovative or particularly surprising, sets itself apart from the run-of-the-mill B thriller by exploiting the deep-seated fears we all (or at least most of us) have about our place in society. It's a horror story about social class as much as it is about mental illness. Both incarnations of Lucy -- the brash, lusty broad from the wrong side of the tracks, and the quietly grim ex-mental patient -- are awkward and stick out like a sore thumb in polite society. By contrast, her daughter Carol, in spite of having witnessed her mother's gruesome killings 20 years earlier, is seemingly happy and well-adjusted, not to mention gorgeous.

Carol lives contentedly on a small farm with her aunt and uncle (Emily and Bill Cutler, played by Rochelle Hudson and Leif Erickson), has converted one of the farm sheds into a sculpture studio, and is on the verge of getting engaged to the handsome son of one of the richest men in the county (Michael Fields, played by John Anthony Hayes). At the point where it seems life couldn't get any better for Carol, Mommie Dearest shows up, fresh from the sanitarium and wearing a sack-cloth dress and a frown.

At first, Carol reacts coldly to this veritable stranger, but then, taking pity on her haggard mom, decides to turn the frown upside down. She takes Lucy into town to go shopping and get a makeover. The result is almost an exact copy of the old five and dime sultry dame, right down to the noisy, jangling costume jewelry and the dreadful print dress. But Lucy's newfound joy and vigor don't last for long. She has nightmares, waking up next to the headless bodies of her victims from 20 years ago. She imagines that children playing in the street are chanting the Lizzie Bordon nursery rhyme, updated specifically for her. The doctor from the asylum who pays a surprise visit to check up on her suddenly, mysteriously turns up missing. She completely blows her first meeting with Carol's prospective fiance, drinking too much, playing music too loud, and coming on to the young man in spite of herself. And most terrifyingly, she learns that she will be meeting Michael's rich, snooty parents at their house for cocktails and dinner.

Somehow, Castle got permission from the bigwigs at distributor Columbia Pictures
to cut their icon's head off at the end of the film.

Yep, we've all been there, playing the role of the awkward outsider at a gathering of chic, self-confident people who are much, much better than we are. Short of having your head lopped off with an axe, few things are more uncomfortable. And though there are a number of bloody murders throughout the film, none are as cringe-inducing as the scene in which a flat-out drunk Lucy slobbers over Carol's weirded-out fiance. Thankfully, Joan goes right up to the edge of overplaying the part but never quite oversteps, and Lucy keeps our sympathy throughout the film. (Diane Baker also plays her role to near perfection. Underneath the pretty, smiling, forgiving daughter act lurks something not so pretty or forgiving. At first, the bright white headband that she wears throughout much of the film seems like a symbolic halo. By the end of the film, we're thinking it's a device for keeping her head from exploding…)

Apparently the former glamor queen had the normally ebullient Bill Castle cringing (and perhaps bowing and scraping) throughout the production. IMDb's trivia section for the film is filled with her demands and conditions:

• She had script and cast approval. 
• She had a fellow Pepsi board member and vice-president of the company, Mitchell Cox, play the asylum doctor. 
• She had a carton of Pepsi displayed prominently in an early kitchen scene (an early product placement!). 
• She had the actress originally slated to play daughter Carol fired. Diane Baker stepped in front of the cameras only a day after she accepted the role.

And according to John Law, she forced Castle to adopt the A-list way of making movies:

"'Joan asked me when you plan to start rehearsals," asked [Associate Producer] Holloway to Castle. 'Rehearsals?' hollered Castle. 'Who said anything about rehearsals? I just want to start shooting…. No goddamn rehearsals. I never have rehearsals before I shoot!' But this time he would. On an empty stage with only folding chairs, the cast began rehearsals for the film." [Ibid.]

Joan admires her beautiful, glamorous former self in
the tacked-on ending of Strait-Jacket.

More momentous still, she had the ending of the film changed. The film was originally supposed to end with a very effective close-up of Carol/Diane Baker. Her Highness had a scene tacked on in which Lucy desultorily sums up the nefarious goings-on in a discussion with her brother. In a Joan Crawford picture, no younger, prettier actress was going to steal the final scene! (Interestingly in this scene, Joan's character, once more dressed primly and clearly showing her age, poses with a glamorous bust of herself. For the storyline, the sculpture was fashioned by Carol, but in real life, it was done by Yugoslav artist Yucca Salamunich, and presented to Joan on the set of A Woman's Face, 1941. For a moment, Crawford seems to be lost in reverie, dreaming of the days when she ruled the silver screen.)

The axe murders in Strait-Jacket are almost incidental. The real fun is in watching Joan and Diane Baker go toe-to-toe, Mommie Dearest-style. I suspect Producer/Director/Showman Bill Castle scarcely knew what he was getting into when he signed Joan, but the results are a very worthy addition to his cinematic B ring circus.

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Where to find it:

Amazon Instant Video

Amazon (The William Castle Collection)


"So shocking, it slashes through the limits of suspense!"