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Showing posts with label A Dan Curtis Production. Show all posts
Showing posts with label A Dan Curtis Production. Show all posts

Thursday, July 26, 2018

October will be a big month for Dan Curtis fans


Back in January, Kino Lorber confirmed they were preparing Blu-ray releases of a trio of Dan Curtis television classics from the 1970s. The details and release dates for those titles have finally been released, and they're corkers. 4K restorations of THE NIGHT STALKER (1972) and THE NIGHT STRANGLER (1973) will be arriving on Blu-ray and DVD on Oct. 2, with 1975's TRILOGY OF TERROR getting similar treatment on Oct. 16. None of these titles are yet available for pre-order, but I imagine that will change soon. Here's what you can expect:

The Night Stalker (1972)

• Brand New 4K Restoration!
• NEW Audio Commentary by Film Historian Tim Lucas
• NEW Interview with Director John Llewellyn Moxey
• NEW Interview with Composer Bob Cobert
• "The Night Stalker: Dan Curtis Interview" featurette
• Limited Edition Booklet essay by Film critic and author Simon Abrams (Blu-ray only)
• Newly Commissioned Art by Sean Phillips
• Limited Edition O-Card Slipcase (Blu-ray only)

Color 74 Minutes 1.33:1 Not Rated

Release date: Oct. 2

The Night Strangler (1973)

• Brand New 4K Restoration!
• NEW Audio Commentary by Film Historian Tim Lucas
• NEW Interview with Composer Bob Cobert
• "Directing 'The Night Strangler'" Featurette
• Limited Edition Booklet essay by film critic and author Simon Abrams (Blu-ray only)
• Newly Commissioned Art by Sean Phillips
• Limited Edition O-Card Slipcase (Blu-ray only)

Color 90 Minutes 1.33:1 Not Rated

Release date: Oct. 2

Trilogy of Terror (1975)

• Brand New 4K Restoration
• NEW Audio Commentary by Film Historian Richard Harland Smith
• NEW Interview with Composer Bob Cobert
• Audio Commentary with Karen Black and writer William F. Nolan
• "Richard Matheson: Terror Scribe" Featurette
• "Three Colors Black" Featurette
• Limited Edition Booklet essay by Film critic and author Simon Abrams (Blu-ray only)
• Newly Commissioned Art by Jacob Phillips
• Limited Edition O-Card Slipcase (Blu-ray only)

Color 72 Minutes 1.33:1 Not Rated

Release date: Oct. 16

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Monster Serial: THE NIGHT STALKER, 1972

Hello, boils and ghouls! October is upon us and that means one thing: HALLOWEEN! While most holidays get a measly day or two of formal recognition, orthodox Monster Kids prefer to celebrate it in the tradition of our people: By watching tons of horror movies. This month at THE COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY, we're going to be discussing some of our favorites every day until Halloween. So, put on your 3-D spex, pop some popcorn and turn out the lights .... because we're going to the movies!


By WALLACE McBRIDE

What would it be like to live forever? Ideally, immortality should offer a life free of consequences, where even your worst mistakes would eventually be forgotten. You might have to watch others wither and die, but problems like sickness and suffering would be concerns for other people. Fantasies of immortality have less to do with a fear of death than it does the indulgence of one's own ego: "I am too special to die."

THE NIGHT STALKER, the 1972 television movie that introduced intrepid newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak to the world, is a film preoccupied with questions of ego, not to mention immortality. This is to be expected from a movie about a vampire. That's part of the allure of this monster, whose life is equal parts gift and curse. But, the vampire is only an incidental element of THE NIGHT STALKER. The character has not one line of dialogue in the film, and what little we know about him is conjecture on the part of the other characters. He leaves the film the same way he enters: A mystery.


If you're willing to overlook the presence of a vampire serial killer, THE NIGHT STALKER is a pretty typical film noir. In fact, the film has more in common with the existential nightmares of Raymond Chandler than the monster movies produced by Carl Laemmle for Universal. The vampire is far and away the least dangerous villain of this film. Had it been made 30 years earlier, it might have starred Fred MacMurrary.

As is typical for noir, THE NIGHT STALKER lacks the presence of a hero. Oh, it has a protagonist in the form of Kolchak, played by Darren McGavin, but there's nothing especially heroic about him. As the story begins, he's a down-on-his-luck reporter working, he insists frequently, for a crummy newspaper in Las Vegas. Beside Kolchak's complaints, we aren't given any examples as to how the newspaper is lousy. It's likely he's voiced these same criticisms of his previous ten employers, which is why he's so prone to unemployment. In short, he's an asshole.

Kolchak makes a connection between a series of murders in the city, insisting they're the work of one person. This "connection" is held together less by facts than by Kolchak's own need for validation, though. You get the sense that Kolchak has a score to settle ... not just with his former employers, who were clearly correct when they fired him, but with the world at large. There's always a weird moment in vampire films when a character has to make a logical leap to believing in the supernatural, but this transition feels right for Kolchak. You never get the impression that he really believes his own bullshit, and mostly latches onto his serial killer/vampire theories for no other reason than they'd make for good stories.

Good stories with his name attached to them, I should say. Based on what we see in THE NIGHT STALKER, Kolchak is not a good newspaper reporter. He's not a responsible one, at any rate, and he seems to have gotten lucky with his vampire conclusion.


A little research eventually identifies the killer as Janos Skorzeny, a wealthy Romanian national born in 1899, and played by character actor Barry Atwater. Skorzeny has spent most of his life traveling, apparently in search of innovative ways to integrate himself into society. Posing as a doctor, we're told he preyed on air raid victims in London hospitals during World War II before moving on to Canada in the late 1940s. At some point, though, Skorzeny surrendered any pretense of humanity. When Kolchak finally corners him in the movie's climax, we see the vampire has been living like a vagrant in an empty house on the edge of town.

Kolchak has a crushing need to be acknowledged, a need that's ravaged his career, but Skorzeny's life has become structured around avoiding notice. The vampire had become consumed with the idea of survival, even when life had nothing to offer him.

Ultimately, it's all a wasted effort on Kolchak's part, though. Yes, he succeeds in rescuing Skorzeny's final victim from captivity, but he wastes no words of concern for her. The Powers That Be in Las Vegas  use the slaying of Skorzeny to force the obnoxious Kolchak out of town, threatening to charge him with murder if he doesn't seek more friendly climes. Just to twist the knife, they also offer Kolchak's girlfriend a similar proposition: Leave town, or face charges for unspecified unsavory activities. The movie ends with Kolchak alone, unemployed and in possession of  a book he's written about his experiences that he can neither publish nor substantiate. Like Skorzeny, he's been damned to a life without consequence.

Skorzeny has no dialogue in the film. While the device makes him a more interesting character, it becomes more curious when compared to producer Dan Curtis's previous horror success, DARK SHADOWS. Jonathan Frid, the actor who played Barnabas Collins on that show, reportedly had a less-than-warm relationship with Curtis. Frid also had problems memorizing his copious amount of dialogue for the live-on-tape TV show, and walked away from the franchise not long after shooting the feature film adaption, HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS, in 1970. While it's probably a coincidence, I can't help but wonder if Curtis took some satisfaction in watching the surly McGavin pound a stake into the heart of a silent Frid stand-in. 


THE NIGHT STALKER works astonishingly well on a story level. As a movie, though, it's on much shakier ground.  While television movies on the 1970s were generally more ballsy than their modern counterparts, THE NIGHT STALKER's overall production is hopelessly quaint. The movie's photography, commercial-dependent story structure, sound ... everything physical about the film just feels small and pedestrian today.

McGavin's performance still sings, though. As Kolchak, he's a man blissfully unaware of how close he's standing to the edge of the world, yet also someone who probably spends a great deal of time resisting the urge to leap into the abyss. It's the kind of film noir Robert Altman might have made if he better understood the genre, only with more vampire action. If you're a fan of horror, THE NIGHT STALKER is worth the 74 minutes you'll spend with it. It wouldn't hurt your experience if you were to lower your expectations a little, though.

Friday, April 12, 2013

A Dan Curtis Production: TRILOGY OF TERROR


TRILOGY OF TERROR has a venerable reputation among movie fans. Actually, it kinda has two reputations. Ask one person about their opinion of the film, and they'll tell you it's pants-shittingly terrifying. Ask another, and they'll say it's pants-shittingly hilarious. Either way, when you watch TRILOGY OF TERROR, you can expect pants to be shat. How they get that way is entirely up to you.

First broadcast by ABC in 1975, the movie was another notch in the belt of DAN CURTIS, who'd scored huge numbers for the network a few years earlier with THE NIGHT STALKER and THE NIGHT STRANGLER television features. TRILOGY re-teamed Curtis with writer RICHARD MATHESON, as well as LOGAN'S RUN author WILLIAM F. NOLAN. The movie proved to be another hit.

But here's the thing: For a film called TRILOGY OF TERROR, nobody seems to talk much about the first two stories in the anthology. And there's a reason for that .... they kinda suck. I don't think I'm alone in having forgotten the plots to the first two stories, which is surprising given how sleazy they are. The whole movie has a DEEP THROAT ambiance about it, and the rape and incest plot points don't do much to class the place up.

As the title suggests, TRILOGY OF TERROR is an anthology of stories stories written by Matheson (with Nolan taking screenwriting duties on the first two stories in the "trilogy.") KAREN BLACK plays the leading character in each tale. I've never given much thought to Black as an actress, but she shows tremendous range in the film. She plays predator and prey with equal authority, and I wish the script had given her a little more to work with at times. It's a rare actress who can be as scary as she is sympathetic, and the device of using her in all three tales only occasionally feels gimmicky.

This week on SEX OFFENDER THEATRE.
In a lot of ways, the first tale, JULIE, is the most disturbing. Black plays an instructor at a college seemingly populated by grown men and women. Date-rape enthusiast Chad (Robert Burton) and his sidekick Eddie (DARK SHADOWS alumnus James Storm) are the only students we spend any time with, which doesn't speak well for the student body. One afternoon, Chad takes a sudden (and unexpected) interest in Black's mousey literature teacher. After a little recreational stalking, he pressures her into a date, taking her to a drive-in where a very DARK SHADOWS-looking feature is playing. While there, he roofies her drink, takes her to a motel, rapes her and photographs the assault. He later uses the photos to blackmail her into being his sex slave, even inviting some unseen "friends" to one party. If you want to go take a shower, I'll wait.

The plot twist? Chad was under Julie's control the entire time. Though it's not explained how (is she a demon? a psychic?) Julie is the one who prompted Chad's interest in her. He's been her unwilling puppet in this elaborate role playing adventure. She poisons him while informing him of the real nature of their relationship, then burns his house down. We get a look at her scrapbook in the final seconds of the story, showing us that Chad was far from her first "victim."

The second tale, MILLICENT AND THERESE, ramps up the sleaze factor by injecting incest into the festivities. I don't think it's much of a spoiler to reveal Millicent and Therese are the same person, both played by Black. While there's a certain mystery about what's really happening, the costuming spills the beans about the "sisters" from the outset. When Millicent starts railing about her horrible, wicked rival Therese, it's pretty obvious from the outset that she's talking about herself. The mystery is why everybody seems to be playing along with the flimsy charade.

Besides the obvious reasons, that is.
Years ago, we learn, Millicent/Therese had sex with her father and then killer her mother. She didn't cope with her own behavior well, and developed a case of Hollywood Split Personality Disorder to deal with it. JOHN KARLEN (Willie Loomis of DARK SHADOWS) makes a guest appearance as Black's boyfriend, who is in way over his head. In the end, Millicent grows tired of Therese's bullshit and uses a voodoo spell to kill her, essentially committing suicide.

The real problem with these two stories is they lack a second act. Their short nature makes this kind of structure difficult, but certainly not impossible. Both stories spend a lot of time introducing the concept, but drop the hammer way too quickly on the climax. Neither are especially effective, even though Black does a great job in both. She's hampered a bit by the costuming of MILLICENT AND THERESE, which portrays the "wicked" twin like a Hollywood prostitute, complete with bad make-up, wig and cheap skirt. That being said, the cartoonishly timid Millicent isn't exactly plausible, either. There's a good idea in the story, but the script can't seem to find it.

Which brings us to the real star of the show, the Zuni Fetish Doll of AMELIA. While the first two stories lacked second acts, the show-stopper is ALL third act. There's hardly any set-up to the story: Amelia buys a Zuni Fetish Doll for her boyfriend, gets into an argument with her mother over the telephone (Dan Curtis has a profound love of characters who "appear" only by phone) and spends the bulk of the episode defending herself from a glorified action figure.

The TICKLE ME GENE SIMMONS doll wasn't a big seller last Christmas.
This is the moment when horror and hilarity unintentionally collide. I revisited the film last night for the first time in more than 30 years, and was bracing myself for what was to come. The Zuni Fetish Doll was potent nightmare fuel when I was a child, and came close to rivaling Fats from RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH's 1978 film MAGIC for the title of "World's Scariest Puppet."

While it still maintains a certain creepiness, I spent most of the episode with a grin on my face. I wasn't so much laughing at the movie as with it (though I still don't know how the fuck that doll was able to use a door knob.) It's a really fun segment that's saturated with gleeful, manic absurdity. The funniest moments are also the most nightmarish, such as how the doll uses a kitchen knife to solve its every problem. The doll is bloody rage personified and never, ever slows down. It's also kind of adorable, even when it's cutting Karen Black to ribbons.

RANDOM THOUGHTS: For reasons I can't quite say, JULIE plays a bit like a porn parody of COMMUNITY, with Robert Burton in the role of Jeff Winger. I think James Storm would have been more effective in the part, and not just because I'm a DARK SHADOWS fanatic. He might be the nicest guy in the world for all I know, but he's got a cruel, Marlon Brando-esque face and would have been less doofy in the part of aspiring sexual predator. Burton looks less like a college student, and more like the manager of a car stereo business.

John Karlen is incorrectly credited in the title sequence as John KARLIN, which seems odd given his long relationship with Dan Curtis. He's more or less wasted in the film, anyway.

The explanation for the Zuni Fetish Doll coming to life is a little thin. A chain around it's waist is supposed to keep it's soul in check, but manages to fall off by itself. Still, it's so much fun watching the little scamp begin his rampage that I didn't care. Also, Karen Black's body language in the film's final "possession" scene is pretty great. While she came to regret making the movie, she's clearly having a lot of fun on screen.

TRILOGY OF TERROR was based on three unrelated short stories by Richard Matheson. The 1962 short story "The Likeness of Julia" was published in his anthology ALONE BY NIGHT, "Needle in the Heart" was published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1969, and "Prey" first appeared in an issue of Playboy that same year. 
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