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83 |
586 |
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22 |
154 |
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431 |
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Recent Reviews
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MCT:August 28, 2008Although most of the themes are left to imagination, as usual in any Val Lewton horror production, I surrender to the moody atmosphere director Mark Robson sets up. This was indeed a film ahead of its time, in its depiction of devil worshipers not as strange entities or mad caricatures, but as any rather normal person with desires of success. Two horror masterpieces came to my mind while watching this, Psycho and Rosemary's baby, both surprisingly melded in an excellent shower scene, in which the shadow of a lady with a hat looks very much like a horned satanic figure.
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MCT:August 5, 2008
An interesting blend of noir and horror. The wonderful use of shadows certainly enhance the horror scenes, particularly a creepy shower scene that obviously influenced Psycho. The satanic stuff might have also influenced Rosemary's Baby. I don't really care for the film's message it's not really explored enough to be interesting.
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MCT:August 2, 2008
The very last of the Val Lewton/RKO horror cycle--not chronologically, but the last for me to see--and one paired, on DVD, with a documentary on Val Lewton instead of another one of his movies (a rather interesting documentary with horror experts of the non-fiction writing kind and the more modern director and writer kind--Romero, Dante, del Toro, Matheson, Ramsey Campbell, Harlan Ellison, Gaiman...). We see the return of Tom Conway, not only to a Val Lewton film, but in fact, as the same character--psychiatrist Dr. Louis Judd, from Cat People.
Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter) is a young woman studying at a private school, pulled into the administrator's office to be informed that her sister, who has been paying for her tuition, has disappeared--and tuition has not been paid for the past six months. She's sent away to try and find her sister, Jacqueline (Jean Brooks), chasing her to her cosmetics factory, restaurants, rented rooms and names she is given, never seeming to get anywhere near her sister. Jason Hoag (Erford Gage) is a failed writer, who suggests the missing persons department of the police. After giving her report there, she is given the advice of checking the morgue by excitable private eye Irving August (Lou Lubin), where she is given the name Gregory Ward (Hugh Beaumont--yes, later Ward Cleaver, and just as whitebread), only to discover this man is Jacqueline's husband. They find themselves ensnared in a rather noir-esque web of the satan-worshipping (!) Palladists and the varying pasts and knowledge of the people who've interacted with Jacqueline.
As is often the case with Lewton films, I'm stunned to look down at the runtime for the first time and find only fifteen minutes has passed--not because I feel it's been dragging, but because so much has happened in what is normally a sixth or an eight of a movie, but is nearly a quarter of it here. It's this rapid pace that I think helps Lewton's films so very much, keeping it up and preventing any dead space or drag from ever occurring. Similarly, they bear an honesty about them--even in flawed performances (dear me, the Italian restaurant owner...), we can see a strange honesty to them. It struck me that this is the most important thing in any film to my eyes, or even any writing--that it does not overreach its grasp. Certainly it can fail to reach it, and it can aim quite high, but when it's clear that the overriding elements do not congeal, the grasp was more than any person in the production had (barring, I suppose with a nod to Mr. Ellison, the original writer). A weak performance, or a collection of them, or effects that do not come together, can all be saved by an overall understanding that someone involved in the production had a very clear idea that they tried to put together and knew the right elements for, limited only by weaknesses along the way in other people. When a movie, a novel, anything does not attempt to be anything more than it is--which is not to say a horror film, for interest, must remain a horror film and nothing more, or anything else so limiting--or anything, more importantly, more than the folks in control of it can indeed manage. This is what Val Lewton brought to all of his films--a vision that he understood himself. The actors were not always up to the task, though they usually were (and exceptions were typically quite small roles), and certainly the budget limited many elements, and studio interference could cause issues, but Lewton clearly knew how to get the films he built and allegedly screen-wrote all of.
Alas, this is not one I can stand fully behind. There's a hideously corny scene where Conway confronts the Satanist Palladists and cows them with the most absurdly obvious thing in the world--The Lord's Prayer. Really now. They'd never heard it before? That really made them doubt themselves? Please. Give me a break here. Beyond that, there were a greater number of weak roles--Beaumont is, as I say, rather whitebread. There's a romance that blooms inexplicably between him and Mary, perhaps just to satisfy the studio's hunger for wide audiences ("Something for the women!"), but it comes off as ridiculous. It was peculiar to see Dr. Judd again, considering his previous role, though nice to see him a little less sleazy--and it definitely set my reference and intersection-loving heart a-fluttter. But for once Lewton did not perfectly insert the "supernatural" element this time (though as always it was not terribly supernatural)--Satanists? Perhaps I couldn't swallow it simply because of that absurd final appearance they make. Still, Jacqueline's chase scene near the end is excellent, the light-swallowing noir shadows the fill the film are beautiful and Jacqueline's final fate is ahead of its time, but it doesn't all quite come together. -
MCT:July 30, 2008
Maybe one of the moodier and darker of Lewton's produced films... it doesn't rely on the supernatural, just the darker side of human nature.
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MCT:May 31, 2008
brilliant dark mystery/thriller from val lewton, a rather obvious inspiration for rosemary's baby with a shower scene that looks awfully familiar as well! very nihilistic tone and the final scene is a shocker. starring beaver cleaver's dad and zora from planet of the apes!
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MCT:May 31, 2008
Offbeat film with a gothic tone and noirish attitude about a young woman searching for her missing sister in New York and meets a group of parties who are similarly interested. Val Lewton produced this suggestive film that leaves true horror to your imagination with one of the bleakest endings to any film ever made in Hollywood.
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MCT:September 10, 2007Interesting mystery that drives the story (whatever happened to her sister?), shocking set pieces, and a genuinely creepy and foreboding atmosphere make the film an interesting to watch, unfortunately the pacing is slow and plot is not as complex or surprising as the first act suggests. Still, a good chiller with some truly well-executed sequences.
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