The Night Stalker

Silk Stalkings

The Night Stalker
USA 1972
Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey
ABC Circle Films/Kino Lorber
US Blu Ray

Warning: Spoilers for the inevitable ending.

Revisiting an absolute legend of a TV character here today. Namely, investigative reporter Carl Kolchak, as portrayed in two TV movies and a TV series, by the late, very great Darren McGavin. I don’t think The Night Stalker is anything like ‘the first’ TV movie ever made, for sure but, something in the back of my mind is telling me that it was the highest rated (or most viewed, if you like) in those early days... not to mention the most brilliantly put together... and helped sell the idea of TV movies as a viable and lucrative art form to the industry (although, I can’t now find any of that backed up by anything on the internet so, hopefully my memory isn’t failing me here).

And no wonder. It has a fine pedigree, being produced by Dan Curtis (who many will remember from many other TV specials and his long running TV show Dark Shadows) and with a screenplay written by the great Richard Matheson. About that, the credit on screen is that it’s “adapted from an unpublished story by Jeff Rice”. It is indeed based on Rice’s novel The Kolchak Papers (aka The Kolchak Tapes) and it’s true, he couldn’t get it published until someone at the production company read the unpublished manuscript and turned it into this TV movie (and it was lamented by Curtis, after the fact, that he didn’t release the movie in cinemas instead, he thought it was that good... which, of course, it is). Rice’s novel (which I’ve read but a long time ago now, might have to reread it soon) was held up until 1974 because, once this TV show aired and a sequel was made (not based on a Rice novel), the publishers wanted Rice to write a second novel based on Matheson’s screenplay for the sequel, so they could release both of Rice’s paperbacks at the top two numbers in the best sellers list... which is what happened in 1974.

It’s a vampire romp and it’s a good one, with Darren McGavin’s acting and constant barrage of cynical voice over absolutely elevating this, as he portrays Kolchak (who if you’re listening carefully and doing the maths throughout the show, has been fired ten times by various newspapers before this story takes place) with a different wardrobe than that suggested by the original screenplay. Because of his character’s fall from grace, he portrays Kolchak in an old vented straw raffia hat and a 1950s style white pinstripe seersucker suit (which you can actually see properly on this new Blu Ray transfer) denoting that he hasn’t been able to afford a suit for quite some time. His beaten up, half rusted car is a further testament to his character’s social status (which is why it grates when the 2005 remake portrayed him as a much more well off, young person... completely at odds with the original character and which I’ve still not been able to bring myself to watch as yet).

The plot is very simple as to be almost a cliché now... set in Las Vegas, various women are turning up with their bodies drained of blood and a local hospital keeps getting its bottles of blood swiped. Kolchak doesn’t want to believe it’s a real vampire but quickly cottons on to the fact it must be... unlike the police, the CIA and various other authorities who manage to let the killer evade them at every opportunity. At the end, Kolchak manages to stake the vampire but is blackmailed to keep the story to himself and ordered to leave LA. He also loses his fiancé Gail, who is exiled from town before he has a chance to find out where she’s gone.

Along with a well filmed story which combines fluid camera shots with a certain amount of hand held footage to give an authenticity to the ‘fly on the wall’ nature of the action sequences, the film has some really great character actors in it... such as Ralph Meeker (who, like McGavin, had also played a version of Mikey Spillane’s hard boiled detective Mike Hammer in the excellent movie Kiss Me Deadly), Simon Oakland who plays Kolchak’s long suffering boss (who would be the only other character to follow McGavin into both the sequel movie and the regular TV show), Claude Akins, Carol Lynley, Larry Linville, Barry Atwater (as the silent but deadly, superhuman vampire) and the one and only Elisha Cook Jr, amongst many others.

To top it off, we have Bob Cobert’s infectious, jazzy theme tune which follows Kolchak around whenever he’s on the beat, reporting on the scene of the crime and, McGavin’s voice over narrative which is another factor that gives the whole film a kind of documentary vibe, as he comes in with dates and times of death or incidents such as... “Thursday May 29th 7.02am”... which is a specific ‘to the minute’ time which lends itself to the reportage of facts rather than just being a story element (Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho used a similar narrative on its typographical updates at the start of the movie).

The film is also nicely designed for the 4:3 aspect ratio, with an especially striking shot playing over the opening credits (following a prologue where Kolchak starts listening to his notes from his tape recorder, to introduce the ‘fact as fiction’ narrative), where three surgeons perform an autopsy of the latest victim, from the POV of the victim herself, their three masked heads forming a triangle looking down into the camera with the big light behind them as they cut into the body where the camera is. As he mentions on one of the extras accompanying this Blu Ray edition, composer Bob Cobert won his battle to keep that scene unscored to really fix the viewers attention, before bringing in the music for the next sequence.

And there’s not much more to say on this one. Kolchak is rightly a well loved and very influential character. After a sequel was filmed, a third movie was ditched in favour of a TV show (both of which I will be reviewing here over the nest few days... along with a couple of other Kolchak items of interest). However, the series only ran for 20 episodes before it was cancelled. However, without Kolchak we wouldn’t have had The X Files, as Chris Carter originally wanted to make a new version of the TV show but wrote The X Files as a response to not being able to secure the rights at the time. He did, however, cast McGavin as the original investigator who started off The X Files in two episodes of the show (after McGavin declined letting the Kolchak character turn up in the series... what a shame, that would have been great) and also cast him as Frank Black’s father in an episode of Millennium (another show that could easily have had Kolchak return and have it all make sense).

If you’ve never seen The Night Stalker, then you really should if you are a fan of the horror genre. It doesn’t downplay the supernatural aspects in the slightest but it does, through the use of the writing and characterisation, couch it in a way that has it collide with a modern, cynical reaction to the myth which powers it. Also, it’s interesting and refreshing that all the authority figures in the film are portrayed as corrupt and basically bad people, interested only in the political stakes that the truth behind the trail of corpses might pose to them personally... in the words of one of them, “It’s bad for business.” They are painted in far worse a light than the central vampire character and are the real evil of the show. So, yeah, check this one out for sure... a true classic of the small screen and, I have to say, Kino Lorber’s recent Blu Ray is absolutely the best I’ve ever seen it looking. I’m really glad I upgraded to this one.

The Falcon's Alibi

Off The Record

The Falcon's Alibi
USA 1946
Directed by  Ray McCarey
RKO/Warner Archive DVD Region 1

Warning: All the spoilers.

Well there you go. I never knew director Leo McCarey had family in the business but here he is, younger brother Ray, directing the 12th in the series of films based loosely on the character of The Falcon, namely The Falcon’s Alibi.

This one starts at a race track again, just like The Falcon In Hollywood (reviewed here) did but, this one introduces us to a lot of the main cast, aka suspects, during the race track scenes. Then it’s back to a hotel where The Falcon is trying to help a young lady played by Joan Meredith, who has purchased a fake set of jewels so the real, priceless jewels will not disappear if they get stolen, who is in trouble. Because, after a while, both sets are stolen... one of many thefts in a hotel where The Falcon, Tom Lawrence, once again played by Tom Conway, has to solve the mystery, try to work out why people are getting bumped off and come up with an alibi for himself (an alibi who winds up as another corpse and reverting us to the old dynamic of the police suspecting The Falcon of pretty much everything). He also has to foil a bunch of scammers who are claiming insurance for the thefts.

And, there’s not too much mystery in this one, it has to be said. Although this entry in the series has a bona fide superstar in it... co-starring as a DJ who is secretly married to another character, we have the great Elisha Cook Jr playing someone who you suspect right away is behind the killings and the robberies. As soon as I saw the DJ set up I was like... okay, so he puts a recording of his voice on the radio so he can leave the office and steal the various trinkets. And of course he does but, to the credit of the writers, they reveal it straight away and then, when the person defrauding the insurance company in collaboration is revealed to be the husband and wife getting their jewels stolen... well, like I said, it’s pretty obvious what’s going on here, despite a few minor plot twists which don’t exactly throw anyone off the trail.

And it’s a fine romp as these things always are. The police inspector and his sidekick are a new pair again and we have yet another guy, Vince Barnett, having a crack at playing The Falcon’s assistant Goldie Locke. Well, he’s passable but he seems less broadly comic and just a bit too understated to really shine in the role, it has to be said. All the actors are fine, though, especially Conway who really is very good in the role and, of course, the remarkable Elisha Cook Jr, who seems fine at first but then gets that weaselly look in his eyes and get a bit obsessive and disturbed as the film wears on (as you would expect from him in these roles at the time).

Not too much more to say about this one but one of the things I did note is that the score was kinda interesting on this one. The usual Falcon fanfare or signature tune is played at the front end of the movie, as it had been on a fair few of these by now and, as usual the music director is credited as C. Bakaleinikoff. However, this seemed a lot more interesting and there’s some wonderful, very low key timpani towards the end of the movie, when The Falcon is sneaking around various hotel rooms, where the drumbeats replay the opening jingle like bass drum notes. Very effective and it reminded me of some of the things John Barry used to do in his early James Bond scores. So I looked it up and it turns out the score for this film, uncredited and in only his third outing as a composer, was by Ernest Gold, who went on to score such famous films as Exodus, Cross Of Iron and, of course, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. And, yeah, he does a really good job here, it has to be said.

And that’s me done with this one. The Falcon’s Alibi is a fine, short but sweet entry in the series and Tom Conway would have just one more crack at the character, which I’ll get to as soon as I can.

Johnny Staccato (aka Staccato)

The Piano Player
Shoots Back

Johnny Staccato
(aka Staccato)
Air date: September 1959 - March 1960
27 Episodes. DVD Region 1

Johnny Staccato was TV’s jazz detective. Played by actor/director John Cassavetes, the show initially aired for a good half of the episodes as Staccato. Somewhere in the middle of the series, Elmer Bernstein’s roaring opening theme pitched against a jagged and memorable opening title sequence (which... well, I’ve no idea who designed it but it would have made Saul Bass proud and certainly seems ripped off from/influenced by him) is replaced by a less interesting sequence of Johnny running, then breaking a window to shoot his revolver through it. Annoyingly, the shot of Cassavetes in close up, peering through the glass, reveals a different smash pattern to the long shot, with a piece of glass hanging down in front of Johnny’s face which was absent when he actually crashes through the window initially. It’s at this point that the show is retitled to Johnny Staccato and uses a lighter theme tune... although the original, reminiscent perhaps of Bernstein’s famous opening titles for The Man With The Golden Arm, is retained for the end credits.

That being said, a few episodes using the original opening sequence occur on occasion after the show’s title change so, this probably means that the episodes were originally aired in a different order to when they were completed. Despite critical acclaim, the show was cancelled after one season so I’m wondering if, midway, the show was slightly re-tooled with an eye on a more popular reception, if the show runners got wind of the cancellation way ahead of time (although I didn’t notice any real sea change myself).

The series features Johnny, who works at Waldo’s Jazz Bar (Waldo appears in most episodes and is played by Eduardo Ciannelli) but he also takes big 'side order' jobs as a private detective. There are loads of guest appearances by once or 'soon to be' famous actors such as Martin Landau, Mary Tyler Moore, Dean Stockwell, Cassavetes' wife Gena Rowlands and, one of my favourites, Elisha Cook Jr... but the show was also noted for the musicians who sometimes appeared in minor, musical roles such as jazz legends like Shelly Manne... as well as the piano guy who sometimes takes over from Johnny when he’s off working a case, the now extremely famous composer John Williams, back when he was also known as Johnny.

The plots are simple and the show only runs for half hour episodes but they are compact stories. Sometimes Johnny will come up with a solution to the crime of the week but, sometimes, things will go wrong and the real criminal is not always revealed. The tone is upbeat but very dark as Johnny starts asking questions and getting himself in trouble as he tries to help out a friend.

Oh yeah, about that... quite a lot of the time he’s out to help a friend and more often than not, he never seems to get paid for a case, often because the person who has hired him to investigate things winds up dead at some point. Which explains why he is always short of cash, although his regular gig as jazz pianist at Waldos certainly pays him enough to give out plenty of ‘flash money’ to grease the wheels of an informant’s mind when he wants to get a jump on things.

There are also five episodes which, even if you didn’t know it from the end credits, are also directed by John Cassavetes and, wow, are they well lit and staged. Those ones must have really popped off of those TV sets and right into the headspace of the viewer back in ‘59/’60. Despite the obviousness of some of the plots (which may not have been all that obvious at the time), there is still an element of surprise to the show. Not because of the plot twists where, say, Johnny’s friend turns out to be the person who did the murder after all... but because the dark tone is just so unrelenting and hard hitting compared to what you expect from a show of the time (and perhaps a lot darker than someone might pitch a show like this today).

The show follows Johnny C playing Johnny S with Cassavetes giving the viewer a hard line in voice over which is usually also quite downbeat and cynical. That being said, not every episode has a downer of an ending. For instance, the 1959 Christmas episode, where future Diamonds Are Forever gangster Marc Lawrence (“I didn’t know there was a pool down there.”) plays an ex-con, brother to a shop Santa who he is pressuring to help commit a robbery... ends with a more cheerful scene at Waldo’s where Cassavetes breaks the fourth wall even more than usual by talking directly into the camera at the audience with a Christmas greeting.

That being said, the darkness of Johnny’s world tends to not stay in the side lines for long and I have to wonder, despite the critical appreciation it got, if the gritty edges of the storytelling helped hasten the show towards cancellation. Did they see it coming? Well, maybe. In the last episode, after failing to protect the new pianist from two guys he himself guns down, leaving the elderly widow of the man by his corpse in the street, Johnny waxes darkly lyrical in ‘voice over’ about the horrors of killing and walks off the show telling the audience... “I’m done!” So, yeah, maybe by that time they knew.

What I do know myself is, Johnny Staccato is a riveting series featuring a very cool central performance by Cassavetes, some brilliant jazz scoring by Elmer Bernstein, punchy stories and is generally as entertaining as hell. Maybe if it had gone on longer it would have ended up a caricature of itself at some point but this is a show I could have certainly have watched a lot more of and I would have loved it if it had transitioned into an hour long format at some point. Still, at least the series has survived the years while many shows contemporary to it haven’t. So I’ll just be thankful for what we’ve got here and say, if you like Cassavetes looking sleek but gritty in clean, black and white photography, you need to check this one out.

Logan

Citizen Shane

Logan
USA 2017
Directed by James Mangold
UK cinema release print.

And here we go again with what is probably the last of the X-Men movies to feature the popular 1970s creation Weapon X, aka Wolverine... at least with Hugh Jackman in the titular role and before 20th Century Fox start on the inevitable reboots to retain the options on the characters (one would suppose). That being said, Logan doesn’t quite feel like the majority of the X-Men movies out there, although it does have some of the feel of The Wolverine (reviewed by me here), which is to be expected since that movie was also directed by James Mangold.

This movie has a harder 15 rating over here and an R rating in America (and is on its way to becoming the biggest earning R rated movie they’ve had, by the looks of it). What that means in terms of the central character is that the violence is exactly as grim as you might expect from some of the comics and the tone is quite downbeat. The story content, for example, exactly matches that grimness, giving us a film set ten or so years in our future where there are no more mutants being born and, out of the few who are left, the two we are most concerned about here are both dying. It’s been said that this is Patrick Stewart’s last go at the Professor X character too and, for this one, he impressively lost a lot of weight for the role so he could play a very sick version of his iconic character... one who is prone to brain seizures which, if they are left unchecked and without medication, are capable of killing everyone around him. So we have a future where Wolverine and a mutant called Caliban are looking after the Professor but are also in hiding due to an incident in their past. You do get to hear what this incident, roughly, is but a lot of it is left to the imagination and no real details are revealed... which is a shame because I would have liked to know a little more.

And then, into this grim world comes a mutant child who has been genetically injected, along with other children, and raised from the DNA samples you may remember being ‘retrieved’ in the post credits scene from the last movie in the series, X-Men: Apocalypse (reviewed here). And the government programme that created this group of pre-teen killing machines, as shown in the film in no uncertain terms, wants them all back as they escaped before they could be murdered in favour of another programme. And so, in the case of one of the children, Laura (played nicely by Dafne Keen), it kind of falls on the reluctant Logan and the enthusiastic but extremely cranky Professor X to get her to a place called Eden... the origins of which I won’t spoil for you here.

And that’s that. The movie is a road trip film with certain X-Men-like events happening and a kind of bonding between Logan and Laura as the three main characters are thrown into the mix together. The director also exhibits a certain passion for showing one of his key influences, the old Alan Ladd version of Shane, up on the screen and, I have to say, it was kinda nice to see Jack Palance shoot Elisha Cook Jr on a large screen again. I have to say, though, that the references dotted about all over the place in reference to this movie are not exactly subtle and I think they could have been a little less overt and seemingly important than they are made out to be here.

But it’s not a bad little film, to be honest. It didn’t quite hit all the marks for me and I think I preferred the other two Wolverine-centric movies over this one but... it’s still a pretty good movie and much better than, say, the third movie, X-Men - The Last Stand, and the relatively recent X-Men - Days Of Future Past (reviewed here). I think it does the main character a little less justice than he deserves and it seems like he’s not learned anything from the arc which has brought him to where he is in this one but, maybe he’s as confused at the cracked continuity of the series of films as his audience, perhaps?

I hate to break it to anyone but this film in no way attempts to fix the completely bonkers lack of joining up and co-existing of various elements of the X-Men franchise, which seems to have been compounded and made worse with every movie made since the third one (except maybe for the second of the movies featuring Deadpool, from last year... you can read my review of that one here). It doesn’t explain how Wolverine was able to have Professor X in his Patrick Stewart body back at the end of The Wolverine and nor does it explain why, at the beginning of Days Of Future Past, he once more had adamantium claws when we’d clearly seen them stripped back down to bone claws in the previous film. And there are some other obvious errors which I won’t go into here but which make this, once again, impossible to exist with the other films in the franchise... something which can be said for pretty much every movie since The Last Stand.

But never mind... flawed as this movie contnuity is, there are some really nice things in it, not least of which is that the X-Men have also become fictional characters in a series of comics published by Marvel. Actually, although the various comics throughout the movie look and feel like 1970s issues of X-Men, they were in fact created with new artwork for the movie... so if you’re looking for a specific key issue which is used as an important plot point here then please don’t bother, the issue doesn’t exist outside of this movie.

I haven't got much else to say about this one, to be fair, but I did enjoy it and I’ll probably watch it again when it gets its inevitable Blu Ray release. There’s also a nice Marco Beltrami score which gives it a different feel to what I was expecting... almost playing against the tone of the film in some places but still managing to somehow work. There’s also some good song placement needle dropped in on this one so, all in all, the music was pretty good and I’m certainly looking forward to listening to a CD release of Beltrami’s music at some point.

If you’re a fan of the X-Men movies then you shouldn’t have a problem with Logan. It’s not an all out action fest like some of the films but, at the same time, the violence in this is quite intense and, certainly, fans of the Wolverine character from the comic books should enjoy this one. It’s definitely a mature take on the characters and, in this case, it’s also a depressing one so, you know, don’t go to this one expecting to come out on a high. If you go in knowing that from the outset... and I’m sure most people can figure out what’s going to happen in this one anyway, just by looking at the trailers... then you should have an okay time with it.

'Salem's Lot

Barlow Sugar

'Salem's Lot
1979 USA
Directed by Tobe Hooper
Warner Brothers DVD Region 2

There’s an image which has stuck in my memory over the years but it rarely haunts my dreams the way it did as a child. A big double window made of various panes, looking out into the night through this window and the fog rolls in. Out of the fog, a small boy floats towards the window, his eyes black rimmed and glowing. He starts to tap/scratch on the window... he needs entrance and, of course, everybody knows a vampire has to be invited in.

This scene is something I saw in either 1979 or 1981, if you believe the UK TV release date from the IMDB (which I don’t as it happens, pretty sure it aired both in 1979 and 1981 over here). It’s one of many images which made a distinct impression in my mind when I was just 11 years old (or 13 depending on whether you believe etc), as I watched, over two consecutive nights I think it was, the two episode mini series ‘Salem’s Lot. I already liked (and had bad dreams from) various horror movies as a growing lad (most notably with the series of Quatermass remakes by Hammer) and I was doubly curious because it also had David Soul in it, who had just finished his very successful four year run as one half of what the BBC television announcer would weekly proclaim as, “those rough, tough but likable cops” Starsky and Hutch. Soul played Ken Hutchinson, the weedy one, but it was still kind of interesting to see how he would be acting in something else.

What can I say? Not only is he pretty brilliant in this (and I don’t even want to think about the TV mini-series remake of Casablanca he was in where he played Bogart’s role, thanks very much) but ‘Salem’s Lot is actually a quite brave and interesting piece of US horror television, following in the footsteps, perhaps, of the two extremely successful TV movies The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler and the one season TV show they spawned, Kolchak: The Night Stalker. 

It’s been a long while. 34 years (or 32, depending on, yeah you know that bit already) and I have to say, it’s really stood the test of time. I do think that this is the stand-out career highlight for director Tobe Hooper, director of the original version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and, allegedly, pseudo-director of... erm... Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist. There are things that people of a younger generation might find hard going about this one these days... it had a pace all it’s own and most kiddies these days might not be able to sit still for that... but for people of my generation who were terrified and in love with the show, as I was, well it really isn’t all that dated compared to the original broadcast years ago.

The first episode starts off with a scene which takes place two years after the main narrative of the show and we meet David Soul as Ben and Lance Kerwin as Mark, still running from the events you are about to watch. A little bit of business with a vial of Holy Water which glows blue and then we’re into the jigsaw-like typography of the main credits, as composer Harry Sukman’s unbelievable score quotes the Dies Irae for a little bit before propelling us at high speed through a main title piece which is so startling and memorable that I’m surprised it hasn’t been released as a soundtrack before now. It was, in fact, released as a limited edition, 2 disc CD soundtrack a mere two weeks ago and I expect it will sell out soon (mine arrived a couple of days ago and it's been well played already) but the score is astounding in its moody atmosphere and that title music, I suspect, may have even been inspiration for Danny Elfman’s opening titles for Beeteljuice (and may also have been “inspired” itself by Bernard Herrmann’s Skeleton Duel music from The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad). That’s just my own flight of fancy speculation, of course... but I do believe it. 

Then we get in to the main story as writer Ben returns to his home town of ‘Salem’s Lot in Maine (where the writer of the original novel, Stephen King, sets most of his books and, indeed, lives), once known as Jerusalem’s Lot but shortened over the centuries. He comes to write the story of a house that terrified him as a child. A house where... bad things happen and, by a strange coincidence, where bad things are happening again. And this is where King pays tribute to (or just plain steals and splices in) the original Bram Stoker version of Dracula. With James Mason’s Mr. Straker acting as a Renfield substitute to “Mr. Barlow”, who is a vampire modelled after the Max Schreck performed creature in F. W. Murnau’s original Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror (hmmm... Nosferatu... sure I’ve heard that name before somewhere). The local estate agent has secured Mr. Straker and Mr. Barlow a nice antiques shop and, of course, the house that Ben has returned to write about.

And things get predictable but comfortable from this point, as Ben and his friends try to find out what is going on while the vampire slowly starts pulling the town apart. It’s not, in any way, rushed... but it still feels pacey at some points. I believe it was also very influential (I can think of at least one moment in John Carpenter’s The Fog which was done here first, although it's more likely that the specific scene I'm thinking of was first seen by Carpenter in the movie version of The Trollenberg Terror aka The Crawling Eye) and it firmly supports the foundations of the vampire myth in the 20th century while still having a certain amount of fun with it.

It also has some really nice shock and scare moments which were very well documented and talked through over the course of the next few days after its original airing in various school playgrounds around the country. The moment, for example, when a young boy is driven back from the wind, walks towards camera and then a black silhouette pops up from the bottom of the screen in front of him which is guaranteed to make most viewers who are engrossed in this jump out of their skin. Especially when it’s accompanied by a particularly close relative of the 1950s, B-movie monster, musical stinger, courtesy of Mr. Sukman’s thrill ride of a score. A similarly startling but, at this point expected, sit-up-in-the-coffin-and-take-a-bite moment also sticks in the memory. It’s all really great stuff and filled with carefully timed moments such as this, coupled with great acting from the entire cast, but especially all those I’ve mentioned so far and with a big shout out to young Bonnie Bedelia (known more for her role as Bruce Willis’ wife in the first two Die Hard movies) and the always watchable legend who is, one of the greatest overlooked actors in the history of the cinema... Elisha Cook Jr.

There is one irritating thing, though. It’s a glaring continuity error with a set of packing instructions which are stuck to the front of the crate which holds the coffin and body of Mr. Barlow. They seem to appear and reappear at will. You can forget about matching shots in this sequence of the show... but it is fun to play “spot the packing instructions” I have to admit.

Now, something which I would like help with from the memory of the NUTS4R2 reader collective is this. The character Mark has a penchant for horror pop culture. Various model kits and posters/stills of the iconic Universal monsters fill his disproportionately large bedroom (how do characters get that kind of money in the jobs they are in). In the story he is seen fixing part of the old Auroura model kit of the Frankenstein monster. Now I remember a scene where, once it was fixed, he pressed a button on the model several times and its eyes lit up and it made a buzzing sound. It doesn’t, however, seem to appear on this version of the show. Did I remember this right or have I remembered a scene from another movie or TV show from around the same time and grafted it onto my memory of ‘Salem’s Lot as the decades take their toll on my tired brain. I’d be really grateful if somebody could leave a comment or get in touch through twitter and put my mind at rest on that one.

And so that’s about it for this write up. I loved this as a kid and I still do now. This and Christine were the first two Stephen King books I read in my early teens (I read Christine first). I remember when I read ‘Salem’s Lot that the book followed it a good deal but then branched away and did its own thing... that is to say, the TV show changed it around and the writer, director and producers made some decisions about how best things would play out on popular TV is my guess. But it’s a pretty entertaining horror show and very much talked about by people, especially children, at the time. Definitely one to grab hold of and have a look if you’ve not seen it before and are in love with the horror genre. I understand there has been both a sequel and a remake to this in the ensuing years, but I haven’t seen either of those yet. I plan on fixing that sometime soon but, in the meantime, I will say that I can’t imagine any remake or alternate adaptation of this which could be anywhere near as engaging and entertaining as the original... nor have such a kick-ass score as this one. Definitely watch this 1979 version if you’ve got the time.

Don't Bother To Knock

Knock Around The Clock

Don’t Bother To Knock
1952 USA
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
20th Century Fox DVD Region 2

Warning: There are a few spoilers here, but I... 
don’t bother to... give away the ending.

Don’t Bother To Knock is a movie I hadn’t seen for a very long time. Not for at least thirty years, in fact, since I was a teen and was obsessed by Marilyn Monroe... not so much for being a great actress (I haven’t seen a great deal of her movies, to be truthful) but as much for the way her imagery was used and exploited as a powerful female icon to many generations (a practice that still remains today). If she’d been allowed to grow old and die a natural death she would, I fear, be nowhere as famous as she is today. Instead, her “brand image” has gone on to inspire and sadden people even now, as much as her acting performances are there to be enjoyed and admired in the modern, home viewing era.

Out of the movies I’ve seen her in, where she’s usually playing flirty, comical roles, this film is among my top three favourite Marilyn performances, along with Niagara and Bus Stop... although don’t ask me where in that top three this one comes because I’ve really not thought about it that much.

This was one of her early films, only five years into her career while she was still finding her feet and the studio really didn’t know what they were doing with her. It’s also, apparently, her first straight dramatic role, I’m informed, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the incredible performance she pulls off in this movie is what directly led to her being cast as the “femme fatale” in Niagara, a year later (and reviewed here).

Shot in black and white, Don’t Bother To Knock is one of those rare films, like High Noon and Before Sunset, which is actually set in real time. That is to say, time passes for the audience at exactly the same rate as the events that take place on the screen and, although the approach to the movie in terms of music and snappy dialogue starts off all bright and breezy with the young Ann Bancroft, making her movie debut as Lyn Lesley, singing old musical numbers in the hotel which provides the setting for the whole story... it’s not long before a decidedly dark tone sets into the piece when we meet our main male protagonist Jed Towers, played by the always reliable Richard Widmark.

Lyn has sent Jed a letter telling him that they are “over”! Naturally, this encourages Jed, an airline pilot, to get a room at the hotel and pester Lyn between songs from her floor show to find out where he went wrong and if there’s any hope of reconciliation. Lyn wants him there but she rejects him again (I’ll never understand the female mind) and he gets naturally frustrated and demonstrative. I don’t blame him when she comes out with confusing statements like... “I’m not angry... I’m just furious.” She said what now?

Even the bar tender, who wants to see Lyn happy, has words of wisdom for Jed when it comes to commitment and caring (which is kinda, I think, where Lyn is going with her psychological shenanigans), and it’s just another example of some great, crisp dialogue moments the movie has. When Jed and he get talking on the subject of “wives” he unleashes this little gem at Jed...

JED: “Get married and you become a statistic.”
BARTENDER: “Stay single and you end up talking to bartenders!”

Meanwhile, the main plot has turned up in the form of Marilyn Monroe playing Nell (originally Munro in the source novel on which the film is based, but apparently changed when the former Miss Norma Jean was cast in the part). Her uncle, who is one of the elevator operators (played absolutely solidly by the great Elisha Cook Jr), has fixed Nell up with the job of babysitting a couple’s 7 or 8 year old girl while they go downstairs to an important party in the ground floor of the building (the father is played by Jim Backus, who many will know as the voice of the short sighted cartoon character Mr. Magoo).

All well and good and all we know about Nell is that she desperately needs a job... but we will slowly begin to piece a lot more of her past together as we go through the movie. Her uncle promises to look in on Nell when he gets off his shift, to see she’s doing okay.

Meanwhile, Jed has given up on Lyn for a while. He goes back to his room, exchanging some more crisp dialogue with Elisha Cook Jr’s elevator operating character, Eddie, on the way up...

JED: “You’re lucky to have such a steady job.”
EDDIE: “Oh, it has its ups and downs sir.”

The film is noirish and Jed’s frustration is palpable as he paces his room, listening to Lyn’s voice on the live floorshow pumped in to the hotel room’s radio set. Then he glances out his window opposite a court in the middle of the hotel and sees Nell in the room across, wearing a sexy dress. He phones her and invites himself over to the room where she’s baby sitting. What he doesn’t know is that the dress and the ear rings and the watch that Nell is wearing belong to the couple who she is baby sitting for. With the kid tucked up in bed (or so she thinks), she starts to try the mother’s perfume and clothes on and eats the candy she so politely refused when offered earlier, in a greedy, gluttonous way which really starts to tell you that... yeah... their might be something a little wrong with our darling Nell.

After Jed has spent ten minutes with her, he begins to get a measure of her too, especially when the little girl comes out and gives the game away that this is not Nell’s apartment. Those tell-tale scars on the underside of Nell’s wrists where she’s tried to kill herself recently are not very reassuring either and, once the child nearly goes out of the window, but for the intervention of Jed... then he really begins to twig. Especially since Nell now mistakes him for her former husband, a pilot who died in an airline crash a few years before. After some shenanigans with busy body neighbours and Uncle Eddie, who Nell knocks cold, leaving him with a big gash in his forehead and... a little later... locked in a closet, Jed slips away to go downstairs and try to patch things up again with Lyn, once he’s made sure the kid is okay. He can see her silhouette sleeping in the dark as he slips out the door so she must be okay, right?

Nope. Another shocking moment in a movie which keeps building the suspense slowly is the revelation that, after all the noise the child has been making, Marilyn has hog-tied her on the bed. When Jed is telling Lyn about his evening and realises what he must have actually seen, in a moment of personal revelation that is similar to those experienced by lead actors in an early Italian giallo in terms of the way the mind plays tricks on one, he rushes up to the floor to find the child’s mother and Nell slugging it out in the girls room and all hell breaks loose.

The house detective arrives to take names and get to the bottom of the story and Nell takes this opportunity to escape, although she’s so out of it by now she doesn’t even realise it’s an opportunity. She grabs a razor blade and “wanders” off without anybody realising and makes her way to the lobby where she threatens to kill herself on account of all the attention she is getting. Then... oh, hang on, I don’t want to spoil everything. Let’s just say that Jed behaves in a manner that Lyn realises Jed has a part of him that he doesn’t show much... a part of him she’s been missing... and through Nell’s tragic tale, the two lovers start their relationship healing process.

This threadbare framework of the movie in no way tells you just how amazing the film is. The direction is quite throwaway in some respects, but the shot design is also be quite clever without making a fuss about it (including a nice conversation moment between Nell and Jed conducted through a shot in a mirror, in one sequence) and long steady shots are the order of the day. The artistry behind the camera is quite evident, even if the delivery is more pedestrian in it’s lack of vertiginous tracking shots and manipulative stylings. It’s a stark noirish milieu with sharp black and white photography and a sense of time ticking by at its own rate. The film is only 76 minutes long but never feels rushed at all or, considering the simplicity of the incidents depicted, in any way padded.

All the acting is top notch and solid, as you would expect from the cast on hand, with even the young Ann Bancroft turning in a fine performance in her first feature. The absolute icing on the cake, though, is Marilyn Monroe’s unbelievably worrying blend of her oft seen child-like naivete coupled with an intense darkness which she is able to let you see play across her features. Seriously, it’s like watching the cogs turning around in her brain, the facial expressions and tone with which she plays the piece is that good. If this was a brand new film this performance would be guaranteed to snag a best actress  oscar away from whoever this year’s hot contenders are. It’s absolutely stunning. The expression on her face when she starts getting her... “dark thoughts”... is absolutely chilling when seen in the context of the rest of her personality. I’m amazed Marilyn wasn’t given a lot more roles like this to do because the way she manages to play the tightrope delicacy of the part is absolutely exquisite. Anyone who thinks Monroe was just a brilliant comic actress or just an icon of female beauty (and she was both of those things too, of course) really needs to sit and watch this film. It won’t take up too much time and the intensity of her performance increasing as the running time wears on is absolutely brilliant.

So anyway, there it is. Don’t Bother To Knock. You can get this movie for a fiver or less at Amazon and if you haven’t seen this one, you really ought to. A classic piece of movie making, the style of which is all but forgotten these days and Hammer Horror enthusiasts might want to look at it to see what the director of such movies as Moon Zero Two (reviewed here), The Vampire Lovers (reviewed here), Quatermass And The Pit (reviewed here) and certain other genre favourites was up to before working on those things.