MADHOUSE (1974)

 

(Director: Jim Clark. Screenwriters: Ken Levison and Greg Morrison. Additional dialogue and text provided by an uncredited Robert Quarry, who plays Oliver Quayle in the film.)

 

Review

Based on Angus Hall’s 1969 novel DEVILDAY, this PG-rated American International Pictures [AIP] flick stars Vincent Price as Paul Toombes, a horror actor largely known for playing an iconic, five-film villain, Dr. Death. When Toombes’s fiancée is murdered at a Hollywood party, he loses his mind and spends twelve years in a mental asylum. Leaving the asylum, Toombes heads to London, England, when Dr. Death creator Herbert Flay (Peter Cushing, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE, 1974) invites him there. Flay is in the employ of Oliver Quayle (Robert Quarry), an ex-porn producer producing a Dr. Death television series─whose lead role Toombes will hopefully resume. That Quayle knew Toombes’s murdered fiancée and attended the party where she died rankles Toombes but, professional that he is, he deals with it.

Almost immediately, a murderer, dressed like Dr. Death, begins killing people around Toombes. It isn’t difficult to figure out the killer’s identity, but the screenwriters throw a lot of red herrings in the mix. MADHOUSE likely doesn't do anything you haven’t seen before (if you’re familiar with the horror genre), but the solid writing and pacing, the over-the-top acting and murder scenes and everything else make this an entertaining film, worth your time.

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Filmic deep(ish) dive – got this from MADHOUSE’s IMDb “Trivia” page

MADHOUSE features scenes from other AIP films: TALES OF TERROR (1962, starring Price and Basil Rathbone, who died in 1967); and THE RAVEN (1963, starring Price and Boris Karloff, who died in 1969). The Dr. Death clip shown near the start of the film is AIP’s THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963, also starring Price), with voices dubbed in to add the Dr. Death element. Later in the film, at Oliver’s house, scenes from Price’s 1961 film THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM are shown during a party.

MADHOUSE was Price’s final movie with AIP. He started working with them in 1960.

During one of the costume party scenes, Robert Quarry wears his outfit from COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE (1970). Also: Peter Cushing, who played Van Helsing on several occasions, wears a Dracula costume.

THE RAVEN (1963)

 

(Director: Roger Corman. Screenwriter: Richard Matheson.)

Storyline

A malevolent sorcerer targets two fellow magicians, one of whom he has turned into a raven.

 

Review

This Richard Matheson-scripted (and family friendly) comedy horror film, set in 1506 and not-really-based on an Edgar Allan Poe poem, is one of my favorite entries in Corman’s Poe-cinematic hexad. Everything about RAVEN, shot in fifteen days, works: the physical comedy and adroit wordplay; the top-notch acting of its masters-of-horror co-leads (Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff) and other actors (e.g., Hazel Court, who acted opposite Price in 1964’s THE MASQUE OF RED DEATH, and Jack Nicholson, who worked with Boris Karloff in the 1963 movie THE TERROR, shot immediately after RAVEN on the same set); its good-for-its-time FX (Price’s spellcasting is shown as bright green laser beam-like rays); its era-evocative, color-rich sets; and its often playful, mood-varied soundtrack. . .  like I said, everything.

SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN (1970)

 

(Director: Gordon Hessler. Screenwriter: Christopher Wicking.)

Review

This American International Pictures [AIP] movie is based on a 1967 novel (THE DISORIENTATED MAN) by Peter Saxon, a pseudonym used by various authors between the late 1950s and the 1970s. According to Wikipedia, Stephen Frances wrote most of DISORIENTATED, with W. Howard Baker editing. The novel was later republished as SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN, a title it shares with its resulting flick.

In SCREAM, a vampire-like killer runs wild in London. While the police try to track the blood-obsessed murderer down, an offbeat scientist gets caught between them.

The film is a non-gory, fragmented science fiction-conspiracy-thriller work starring three top horror stars. Vincent Price (THE RAVEN, 1963), played Dr. Browning, an experimental scientist and head of a lab compound trying to create a humanoid master race who wear SS-like uniforms. Peter Cushing (MADHOUSE, 1974) cameoed as Major Benedek, an officer in an unnamed eastern European intelligence service. Christopher Lee (HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF, 1985) played Fremont, a high-ranking officer in an unnamed British intelligence agency. Price and Lee share a scene near the end of the film. 

Meanwhile, a serial killer with vampiric tendencies targets young women in London clubs, tragedies that, in choppy fashion, draw attention to Browning’s medical-military compound.

If viewed as an oddball, triple-segment and solid conspiracy thriller with horror actors and a horror title, SCREAM may prove to be a fun cinematic outing for you. If watched as a traditional horror film─it has touches of horror, e.g., Browning’s under-the-floor acid vat beneath his operating theater─it might not be choice entertainment for you.

Deep(er) filmic dive

SCREAM’s “Michael Gothard versus police chase” [IMDb] scene was partly shot on the Alpine Circuit at Milbrook test track—also used in TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972, “Wish You Were Here” segment).

THE TOMB OF LIGEIA (1964)

(Director: Roger Corman. Screenwriters: Robert Towne and an uncredited Paul Mayersberg.)

Storyline

A newly married woman’s relationship with her husband is threatened by his obsession with his dead wife.

 

Review

The last of Roger Corman’s six Poe-inspired films, TOMB has a different feel than Corman’s other Poe flicks in that it was mostly shot outdoors─the other films were largely interior works. In it, the second wife of a rich man finds that her husband’s obsession with his first, dead wife is causing her to have ongoing nightmares, even as the first wife’s black cat stalks and slashes at her. Vincent Price (SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN, 1970) played the husband, Verden Fell; Elizabeth Shepherd (DAMIEN: OMEN II, 1978) played The Lady Rowena Trevanian (second wife, with ginger features) and The Lady Ligeia (the first wife, with long black hair). John Westbrook (THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, 1964) played Christopher Gough.

Made from a screenplay by Robert Towne and an uncredited Paul Mayersberg, TOMB is a lesser, okay entry in Corman/Price’s Poe series. That said, this is not terrible film, given the talent behind it─it merely, compared to its predecessor flicks, recycles themes and visual elements that were more richly shown in the first five films. If you’re a fan of Corman’s Poe-cycle movies and a completist, it might be worth seeing once, but don’t expect too much from it.

THE TINGLER (1959)

 

(Producer/director: William Castle. Screenwriter: Robb White.)

Storyline

A pathologist traps and studies a parasitic creature that feeds off people’s fears, killing them if they are unable to scream.

Review

Dr. Warren Chapin (Vincent Price, THE TOMB OF LIGEIA, 1964) has been studying the effects of terror on its dead victims’ spines for six years─those who were electrocuted have cracked vertebrae─when a local, deaf-mute movie theater owner (Mrs. Martha Ryerson Higgins, played by Judith Evelyn), whom he experimented on with a fear drug, dies. An X-ray reveals a large centipede-like parasite attached to her spine. Chapin, with his cuckolding wife (Isabel Stevens Chapin) and Martha’s widower (Oliver “Ollie” Higgins) looking on, extracts the arm-length, well-fed creature from Martha, and it escapes. . . into a theater of people watching a 1921 silent action film, TOL’ABLE DAVID! Can Warren and Ollie stop the everyone-has-one beast with a “hydraulic press” grip before it kills them and those in the half full film palace? (Or is the theater half empty?)

An hour and twenty-minutes long, TINGLER is an excellent fun-blast of a flick, with a lot going for it. There’s the tightly written, character-twisty script, penned by Robb White (who worked with director/producer William Castle on many of Castle’s best films, including HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, released in February 1959, five months before TINGLER energized filmgoers). There’s Castle, a rigid practitioner of one-take shots and creative-with-often-effective-promotion gimmicks, at the helm. There’s first-ever-on-film LSD trips, courtesy of the fear-adrenalizing tinglers, which recall scenes from HAUNTED HILL and other Castle-directed movies. And of course, there’s tar-black humor, taking variable forms in the characters (Ollie and Isabel, who are devious spouses─HAUNTED HILL was also underscored with this acidic, marital-gallows tension).

Of course, this tale of duplicity, spinal-parasitic monsters and fear would not have been as effective with a less-than-talented cast. Price, as expected, imbues his character with sympathetic aspects, morally ambiguous motives (he’s willing to experiment on Martha without her and Ollie’s explicit consent) and wit─Warren’s wry, dagger-slice comments to Isabel are less venomous and intense than those of Frederick Loren (also played by Price) toward his wife, Annabelle (Carol Ohmart), in HAUNTED HILL, and Warren is not out to murder his wife (though he would not mind if she died). Patricia Cutts’s Isabel is a fun (in a bitter way) foil to her science-obsessed husband, dishing out as good as she receives.

The Higgins are also enjoyable. Ollie’s initially innocent, amiable façade and later desperate actions (spot-on performance by Philip Coolidge) and Martha’s briefly seen intensity and panic attacks are given full-blown life by Judith Evelyn, who played Miss Lonelyhearts in REAR WINDOW (1954).

Pamela Lincoln (as Lucy Stevens, Isabel’s younger sister) and Darryl Hickman (as David Morris, Lucy’s suitor, and a scientist) provide a positive counterbalance to the Chapins’ and the Higgins’ shadowy unions. (In real life, Lincoln and Hickman got married in November 1959; they divorced in December 1982.)

The tingler itself is impressive, in all its cheesy, B-movie glory. The scene where its shadow is seen, large as about-to-happen death, against the brightly illuminated movie screen makes it all the more fun, while theater patrons scream, trip over each other and spill popcorn in the aisles is a hoot.

It would not be a Castle film if there wasn’t a gimmick or two to accompany it.  For TINGLER, Castle coined the phrase “Percepto,” placing buzzers under some of the theater seats. During screaming scenes in the film, the buzzers would vibrate and those sitting in those seats would experience the sensations of someone being preyed upon a tingler─like the characters, they were encouraged to scream the deadly terror away. Other viewers, working for Castle, would scream as well. In a later biography, the director/producer said he buzzed twenty million butts (minimum) during this film, whose ending was intentionally volume-inducing

TINGLER is one of my favorite 1950s fun-monster films for the above reasons. If you’re looking for a low budget, tightly shot thrills and an excuse to make noise, this might be a worthy flick.

QUICK NOTE: I got most of my facts about this film from IMDb. If you were entertained by them, you might want to check the “Trivia” subsection on THE TINGLER’s information page.

THE MASQUE OF RED DEATH (1964)

 

(Director: Roger Corman. Screenwriter: Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell.).

Storyline

While the Red Plague stalks the peasantry, a cruel prince and his fellow deviants shelter in his castle.

Review

Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s story, MASQUE is an excellent, possibly perfect film, from R. Wright Campbell and Charles Beaumont’s tightly penned script, its top-notch acting, its vivid, symbolic splays of colors and lighting, to producer Roger Corman’s waste-no-shots directing. (If Beaumont’s name sounds familiar, he was a staff writer on the original 1959-64 TWILIGHT ZONE series.)

MASQUE stars include: Vincent Price (THE TINGLER, 1959) as the cruel Prospero; Hazel Court, who played opposite Price in THE RAVEN (1963) and whose last film was an uncredited role (“Champagne Woman at Hunt”) in THE FINAL CONFLICT (1981); Patrick Magee, as an envious, toady-like Alfredo─two of his later films include A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) and THE BLACK CAT (1981); and an uncredited JohnWestbrook as Man in Red (a.k.a. the Red Death); Westbrook also appeared in THE TOMB OF LIGEIA (1964). Be sure to look for the background/visual cue callbacks to earlier Corman/Price films, THE RAVEN and THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961)!