Friday, September 22, 2017

Double Feature Picture Show Freestyle Party, Volume 1

Some weeks do not lend themselves to great thought. Unfortunately for yours truly, this is one of those weeks. So we're about to shake the pillars of heav....well, just of this site, really.

Fun The Mike fact: I started writing about movies online way back in the fall of 2002. My first assignment was a weekly roundup of new DVD releases with a couple of capsule reviews and a lot of zaniness. These columns were probably my favorite thing I've ever written (possibly because they no longer exist and I can't go back and see them now), and I've often wanted to go back to doing a kind of rambling column where I just wing it and let my heart tell you things my brain might not usually let me say.

So, welcome to the Double Feature Picture Show Freestyle Party. I'm gonna talk about some movies and throw out a whole bunch of double feature suggestions, with some help from some fine folks from around the globe. That's right - be ready for THE LIGHTNING ROUND.

You've been warned.

What's up at the Theater?
Over the last two weeks I had the chance to take in two of the most high profile horror films released in a long, long time. For starters, I just need to reiterate that - YES, THESE ARE BOTH HORROR FILMS. Don't be a genre snob. Just don't. It's not nice.

It
2017, Directed by Andy Muschietti

Horror fans have been waiting a long time for the big screen adaptation of Stephen King's It, and it's safe to say that the energy level among them was off the charts a couple of weeks ago when this thing finally hit the big screen. You could almost taste the love in the air; it was like Christmas but with a big scary clown whose lap no one wants to sit on. Hell, that's not even true. Some of you lady horror fans out there have some unique tastes - and I'm OK with that. You do you.

I left work early on a Friday afternoon (don't worry, I did my time) to catch It, and I enjoyed the experience a whole bunch. For starters, this update of King's novel - which moves the story's first half from 1958 to 1989 - feels genuine with its nostalgia act. Comparisons to Netflix's smash hit Stranger Things are obviously out there - based on the setting and shared star Finn Wolfhard - but I'm the kind of guy who will take King's writing over pretty much anything else. And the best thing about It is that it certainly feels like a Stephen King story. 

There are some changes to King's story - that's going to happen any time you adapt one of his books - but I'm pretty confident in saying that It sits alongside the best adaptations of King's work, mostly because director Andy Muschietti and crew were given such a long rope by Warner Bros. and New Line when making the film. Though the film only covers the first half of the It story, it is still allowed to run nearly two and a half hours. The script makes sure every one of those minutes count. The young cast is great, and Bill Skarsgard gives a turn as Pennywise that will be iconic on its own strengths. The scene where he entices young Georgie early in the film erases all memories of Tim Curry's (rightfully loved) performance in the 1990 miniseries, and his first appearance to The Loser's Club in a dark garage made me jump. I am not a big jumper!

The film has some definite flaws - especially in the final battle - that I won't go in to here, but I will say that I felt the film's strengths outweighed them in a big way. The biggest strength is how it handles the young characters, and how it attacks the experiences and feelings that led them to label themselves as The Losers Club. The characterization of the real life predators that live in the town of Derry - ranging from bullies to abusive fathers to imposing elderly librarians - are haunting, and it certainly helps anyone who's ever been bullied to relate to these young idealists. I had my share of traumas from some real life predators growing up in a small town, and I felt a lot of peace watching The Losers Club build the strength to face off with their demons. 

The best thing a horror movie can do, in my eyes, is to make us uncomfortable and make us afraid while at the same time reminding us that we can beat our fears because we are strong enough to defeat them. That's the central theme of It, and this adaptation hammers that message home. I don't care what else the movie's doing after that, because if it achieves that goal it's clearly doing enough to make me look at it as a huge success.

If you're going to the theater this weekend, It is clearly the movie I'm recommending you check out. If you're going to the theater looking for a double feature, you're in luck too. Because there's another horror movie out right now that, if nothing else, is worth talking about.

mother!
2017, Directed by Darren Aronofsky

I'm not gonna review Mother - I know I'm supposed to write mother! like I did above, but that's gonna confuse the heck out of me if I do that every time - as much as I'm just gonna talk about Mother, without any spoilers of course. And I'm darn sure not saying that It and Mother make a good double feature under any other circumstances, they go together like lamb and tuna fish.

(I just snuck a Big Daddy reference into my commentary on Mother. I don't know if I trust me either. But roll with it. It'll probably be fine.)

Darren Aronofsky's Mother - the film, not the lady - is first and foremost a film that makes me happy because of its existence. You can go to a movie theater and see a comedy with someone from a TV show any week or a drama about an animal or a war or an animal in a war (Thanks, Spielberg) any week. You can not go into a theater and see a movie like Mother any week. You simply can't. You guys know I live in Iowa, right? We've got 12 screens in town. We were lucky to get The Beguiled or The Big Sick here. And yet here's Mother, opening on 2300 screens across America, starring a bunch of Oscar nominees, and making viewers as uncomfortable as a dead squirrel that got dropped on the banquet table at Thanksgiving dinner.

Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem star as a married couple living in a beautiful secluded house in the middle of beautiful nowhere where there are no roads coming in or out and no cell service (don't worry though, they've got a land line!). He's a writer, she's responsible for keeping the house nice after it burnt down before. Then some people - starting with a couple played by screen legends Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer - show up. And things get uncomfortable for her. Really quickly.

I'm not going any further with the plot of Mother, but I will tell you that the two hour film becomes a nightmare for Lawrence's character. And it's a damn cool one to watch. Aronofsky knows how to direct insanity, and the camera moves around the house following the lead in such an uncomfortable way for most of the film. The film's sound design! I swear this might have been the best sounding in theater experience of my life. Surround sound does some good work for most movies, and some big movies - like Christopher Nolan's acclaimed summer hit Dunkirk - really excel in that department. But Mother sounded like the house was moving around me. I don't do drugs or drink - really, I'm naturally this weird! - but I felt that house in that theater.

(Random side story: About an hour into Mother a huge thunderstorm broke out in my town. I could hear it through the walls and ceiling of the theater. I was pretty sure it was a storm - but I wasn't ruling out the thought that Aronofsky and company put that storm under the soundtrack of the movie. I spent several minutes trying to figure it out. I'll never forget the moment that storm kicked up and I thought the movie was coming alive around me. It brought my heart to life.)

And it was just an hour into Mother when my heart started to soar because I was lost in its wonderful nightmare. It got crazier from there. A lot crazier. And then it told us what it was talking about in the final minutes - or at least told us as much as it was willing to in those final minutes - and that kinda brought the movie back a notch. After a whole lot of thought the allegory that is at the center of the film makes perfect sense - Aronofsky has even gone on record explaining it - but I kind of wish it didn't. This is such a wonderful nightmare of a film - it made me paranoid and uncomfortable in the best "I'm safe in a move theater so I can feel these things and still walk out of here fine" kind of way - and I wish it was just left as a nightmare after the fact. Who gave Aronofsky the right to make sense out of a nightmare? Who wants that? Just let us think about it for a while and make it our own. 

I guess it is Aronofsky's nightmare, after all. I just wish he'd kept his explanation to himself. I'm gonna watch Mother again and again and enjoy just how intense and insane it is at times - there's a sequence where it even makes us look at comedienne Kristen Wiig as a monster from some other place! - and I just wish I didn't have the writer/director's answer to it hanging around in my mind. What are movies for, if not for the viewer?

What's up on Home Video?

Snapshot - 1979, Directed by Simon Wincer

The coolest thing I've seen on blu-ray lately is Vinegar Syndrome's release of Snapshot (aka One More Minute, aka The Day After Halloween, aka Any Other Damn Title Some Greedy Distributor Of Its Era Can Think Of). Vinegar Syndrome has become one of my favorite niche labels over the last couple of years. Their commitment to restoring random grindhouse titles from the 1970s and 1980s (as well as pornography of the era, but you all know I WOULD NEVER) is something no one really ever asked for but also something people like me who love wild, weird movies from the past should have been asking for their entire lives if they had only known what they were supposed to be asking for.

Snapshot first came to my attention because of one of those alternate titles I listed above, The Day After Halloween. Anything "related" to Halloween is sure to get me to look into it, so when I heard there was a foreign flick out there that sounded like it was trying to capitalize on what John Carpenter created in 1978 I got really curious. Thankfully, like a good genre fan, I read some stuff about the film before jumping on it, and found out that not only does the film not have anything to do with Halloween....it's not even a slasher film! I KNOW!

What sounds like a bad thing about a film that wants to be like Halloween turns out to be a good thing when you realize the film isn't actually a film that wants to be anything like Halloween. What Snapshot actually is is the story of a young Australian woman who decides to try modeling, and who ends up getting her photo used for a full page magazine ad. The two problems that arise from this are a) her face appears in the topless photo against her wishes and b) someone is stalking her and she can't figure out which creepy dude in her life it is.

The film plays out as an uncomfortable mystery, and while it doesn't really hum with intensity all the time it sincerely feels like there's a sleazy entity waiting around any corner in her world. It builds at a slow pace to a couple of strong final reveals, and the journey that the lead, played with an innocent charm by Sigrid Thornton, goes on wraps up quite nicely. It's not the kind of film that will rewrite genre history, but seeing it in a shiny new package from a studio that has taken such good care of it makes me smile a lot.

Let's say we want to pair Snapshot up with a double feature, since that is kind of the gimmick of this site. Here's a quick bullet list of things about it that stick out.
  • That sleazy grindhouse smell. (OK, you can't smell it...but it feels like you should be able to.)
  • Models and creepy stalkers
  • A girl who's really just not having a good time at all even though thanks to them creepy stalkers.
Which brings me to....

The Centerfold Girls - 1974, Directed by John Peyser

We're doing a grindhouse style double feature here, which obviously makes me think of the Tarantino/Rodriguez double feature, Grindhouse. When that film came out it paired Rodriguez' fast paced, ultra violent Planet Terror with Tarantino's slower, more talky, but eventually violent Death Proof. Snapshot is more of a Death Proof paced film, so if we want a double feature partner with more carnage and more violence we need something like The Centerfold Girls. 

The Centerfold Girls is also about the danger of being a model, but it's far more direct in its approach than Snapshot is. Here we have one man - Andrew Prine of The Town That Dreaded Sundown and Grizzly and a whole lot of other cool stuff - who decides to put on a nice suit and some nice shoes and go kill each of the women in an adult calendar, because that's what God would have wanted him to do. He articulates his beliefes quite nicely, actually. But before we talk any more about the film, here are those shoes. 
I thought they was relevant to share.

Unlike the slow paced Snapshot, The Centerfold Girls feels more like an anthology film. The killer sets his sights on multiple girls, but is picking them off one at a time in different settings, so really the film is broken up into three pursuits. Each of these are effective in different ways - the first segment is as brutal as The Last House on the Left, the middle section feels slightly Italian, and the third stars my favorite grindhouse bombshell of the '70s - the gorgeous and talented Tiffany Bolling.

The Centerfold Girls is a tough movie to watch - that first segment treats its centerfold so poorly that we're almost relieved when she runs into the killer - and it certainly has that same icky feeling that's at the heart of Snapshot. It's probably a better second half to this double feature than Snapshot would be, especially when the star power of Prine and Bolling collides in the film's final act.

The Centerfold Girls is actually available on a double feature blu-ray disc from Gorgon Video, paired with my favorite Tiffany Bolling film, Bonnie's Kids. This disc came out on my birthday last year, which makes me believe that someone out there loves me. And that's nice.

Now...let's talk about you guys. That's right. It's time for.....
THE LIGHTNING ROUND
Yesterday I asked the fine folks who follow me on Twitter to name some movies they love, hoping I've seen them. A few people stumped me, but a few didn't. 

How this works:
1) Someone suggests a movie
2) In one paragraph or less, I pick a double feature title to go with that movie.
3) Everybody dances!
(Maybe there won't be dancing.)

Here's 12 flicks people suggested to me, and 12 double features you might (or might not, it's your time) want to watch:
I haven't seen The Last Starfighter in way too long. But I love Catherine Mary Stewart. Let's pair this one with Night of the Comet.

This is an easy one. I adore Fright Night so much for it's Rear Window-with-vampires charm. Another great '80s neighbors and killers movie goes perfect with it. That movie is The 'Burbs.

Man, Kurt Russell in a cannibal horror western is a tasty treat. Love this movie. I'm gonna pair it with another dusty horror, the Civil War zombie flick Exit Humanity. More people need to see that.

Dude. You obviously wanna double John Wick with John Wick Chapter 2, but let's take that out of the equation, just for fun. I'm a BIG fan of Keanu Reeves' directorial debut, Man of Tai Chi. You might want to play it first and then end on Wick though, because Wick can't be followed by anything but Wick. Wick begets Wick, I believe that's how the proverb goes.

This is another one with a natural double feature (Dazed and Confused), but you all know I'm unnatural.  Everybody Wants Some!! (the second film in this post who's title ends with an !) is a little sweeter and more romantic than D&C - and that kinda reminds me of Greg Motolla's Adventureland, which I think a lot of people slept on unfairly. (I had to think about this a while, thanks Ted!)

Re-Animator always makes me smile. Because it's so gross and so funny and so cool. You know what else is those three things? Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn.

Lifeforce is a reallllly hard double feature. There's nothing like it. So I'm gonna go with another movie from the same era that I used to get confused with it because both titles start with L - Leviathan. (I never said all of these double features would be winners! But you should still watch both of these movies.)

Let's go with a super '80s sci-fi double feature here. Dune and Brazil. Make it wild. Pick whichever version of Brazil you like.

Ahhhh, the 1970s. When you could want to make a movie called Satan's Cheerleaders and someone would give you money to make a movie called Satan's Cheerleaders. God bless the 1970s. Let's go with another Vinegar Syndrome title - Malibu High. Not much Satain, but this much cheese in one double feature seems like a great idea.

Man, I gotta tell you guys - I haven't seen Fight Club in over 15 years. Was never a big fan of it at the time. Been meaning to give it another shot, just haven't got around to it. But hey - let's do Office Space and follow it up with Fight Club. Show the progression of how bad being a guy in a white shirt and tie can be when you're fed up with life.

Alright, another Rear Window homage! Y'all love me today, clearly. I adore Body Double. It's about as great as sleazy De Palma can be. I kinda want to pair it with another De Palma, even though that's too simple. But do I go with Sisters or Femme Fatale? You know what - let's make this a TRIPLE FEATURE and throw Body Double in the middle. Bring a towel.

Alright, everybody stop what you're doing. We gotta break format here.

I'm breaking my own rules for The Lighting Round, but we gotta pay tribute where tribute is due. Last week we lost the great Harry Dean Stanton, who passed away at the age of 91 after living a life that saw him become one of the coolest dudes in the history of movies. The dude just had it. I don't mean the "it" that studios talk about it, the thing that makes you look good on magazine covers and make money selling tickets. I mean the "it" that makes someone look at an actor and say something like -
"That guy right there. That guy gets it. That's the guy I want to be like."

Man, I love Harry Dean Stanton. My best suggestion after Repo Man is to watch anything else he did. Look at that man work. The odds are he'll make your day better and make you smile. Because he had that kind of "it."
We've used the word it in a lot of different ways today. Are you sick of me? That's fair. Let's call it a day. There's 14 double features here when I usually only give you one. I don't believe it either.

Come back next week when we'll get back to normal and finish up Alfred Hitchcock Month! And keep an eye out for the next time we decide to do The Lightning Round and have one of these Freestyle weeks, you could be part of it!

As always, thanks for reading. I could do this without you guys - but I'd really rather not. You have "it."
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Thursday, September 14, 2017

Volume 11 - Rope and the Privilege of Murder

When you're having an Alfred Hitchcock Month!, as we currently are, there are certain topics you have to bring up. Women, suspense, mystery, and humor are certainly among them. But, in most situations, you can't talk about Hitchcock without talking about murder. I haven't done the math on this topic, but I think it's entirely possible that all of Alfred Hitchcock's films have some kind of murder going on, even if sometimes it's a murder of crows. (We'll get to that one of these weeks, I promise.)

While more than a handful of Hitchcock's films are built around a murder, there's one particular Hitchcock film that stands out because the entire film is devoted to a bunch of people, in one room, where a murder has just happened. It's not a mystery who did the killing, and why the murder happened is spelled out pretty neatly for us early on. If you're thinking that this doesn't seem like the formula for a Hitchcock thriller, you're right. And that's one reason why the film we're about to talk about stands out as one of the director's most interesting projects.

HOW THIS WORKS
Step 1) I pick a movie.
Step 2) I tell you about the movie.
Step 3) I tell you what we're looking for in a double feature movie.
Step 4) Another movie!
Step 5) Victory!

Rope
1948, Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

If Hitchcock's films were a line of toys, Rope is one of the ones that would have been sent to the island of misfit toys. It has a lot of the things we often expect from his films - murder, intrigue, a marvelous James Stewart performance - but it's certainly his most contained film. I don't mean that in regard to its themes, I mean that the action is literally contained in one room. Even Rear Window spends more time outside than this one does, and that's the movie where Mr. Stewart is confined to a wheelchair.

Rope opens in a dark New York City apartment with the murder of David Kentley, strangled to death with a length of rope by two of his college classmates, Brandon and Phillip. The two killers aren't the type of characters you'd expect to find as the killers in an Alfred Hitchcock film, they're simply two Harvard educated guys who thought murder could be an art. They're also obviously gay lovers, though the film never mentions this, which is one more reason Rope felt like such an outlier when it was released in 1948. Several theaters banned the film, not because of the murder, but because of the implied homosexuality.

Brandon and Phillip become the focal point of the film from the first frame, and they're two of Hitchcock's most vibrant characters, but for very different reasons. Brandon, played by John Dall, is smug and confident, laughing off the murder because it was so perfect.
"Nobody commits a murder just for the experiment of committing it. Nobody except us."

Brandon's glee is countered by Phillip, played by Farley Granger, who immediately regrets the couple's decision and begins to assume the worst. Phillip has a good reason to be concerned, because the second part of their plan involves hosting a dinner that night, in the apartment, with David's body resting as peacefully as possible in the chest from which dinner will be served. The guests for this dinner party include David's parents, David's girlfriend, another classmate, and Rupert Cadell (Stewart), the headmaster from school who gave Brandon the idea that murder could be justified in the right situation.

If this one-setting dinner party sounds like a stage play, that's because it originally was. And Hitchcock, eager to experiment while making his first color film, worked meticulously to frame the film as a play. Running at almost real time - there's a little bit of speeding up time during the evening to keep the film at a crisp 80 minutes - Hitchcock managed to shoot the film in a series of 4-10 minute takes, concealing the cuts as well as possible to make it appear that the camera never stops rolling inside the apartment.

Much like the camera, the conversation at the dinner party never seems to stop either. Brandon and Phillip allow their guests some time to talk about simple things, like books and movies - including a humorous sequence where Stewart attempts to talk about movie stars like James Mason and Cary Grant with the two female guests - but eventually the topic of murder finds its way into the conversation.
It's at this moment that Stewart gets to shine as only he can, preaching the idea that murder should be used for personal gain by certain enlightened individuals as the other guests in the room wonder if they should laugh at his idea or fear him. Brandon, still riding the high of finally testing this theory, leaps at the opportunity to guide the discussion, and his back and forth with Rupert leads the conversation to a rather abrupt end when David's father - who still expects his son to show up at this party - becomes shocked by the implications of it.
"Who is to decide if a human being is inferior, and therefore a suitable victim for murder?"

Brandon backs away from saying too much at this point, but he continues to push the envelope as the night goes on, particularly when he brings the rope that was used as a murder weapon back into the film. The viewer knows that he's taunting the guests and especially focused on Rupert, who he obviously respects and may even have feelings for (the original play implies that Rupert also had homosexual relations with one of the killers, but this is muted in the film). Brandon is kind of an ancestor to those overly talkative villains we're used to seeing in super hero and James Bond films, seemingly wanting not only to get away with a crime but have his crime understood by the people who could stop him. Dall shines as he does this, and Hitchcock's choice to pair him and Stewart against Granger's crescendo into drunken anger throughout the evening creates a intriguing game of cat and mouse as we watch to see if Brandon and Phillip's perfect plan will go off as they intended.
It's sad that the controversy that was most notable about the film upon release was its homosexual overtones, because the philosophical debate about murder and where it can rank on the scale of right and wrong is really the most interesting thing about Rope. There aren't a lot of films - especially films from the 1940s - that are willing to sit on the screen and debate whether or not murder is a good idea or not. It wasn't a comfortable topic then - Stewart even said after the fact that he wished he hadn't made the film - but today it still feels like one of the most fresh topics in any Hitchcock film. The script handles the debate expertly - even though it clearly guides us to understand the wrong in Brandon and Phillip's action - and Stewart's work in the final sequence is among the best he ever did. If you know anything about James Stewart (I think he's the greatest actor that's ever lived, but that's a debate for another day), that's a big accomplishment.

The problem with Rope - that's a very good problem to have - is that it's that misfit in both Hitchcock's filmography and in cinematic history. There are not enough films like this; films that are willing to challenge the viewer to think differently about macabre topics. Which made finding a double feature partner for Rope one of the more difficult decisions I've made since I started the Double Feature Picture Show. Here are a few of the things I considered:
  • Murder is the centerpiece of Rope, and murder needs to be a topic of debate in the film we're pairing it with. But we don't want a movie that's just about murder for the sake of murder, we need something that focuses on not just why the murder is happening but why the murder matters in the film's world.
  • As I've already said, Rope makes it pretty clear that we shouldn't sympathize with its killers, even though poor Phillip really does seem like he knows from minute one that he's made a huge mistake. Despite that, Rope still tries to keep us thinking about whether or not the murder could be justified. That's a theme that not a lot of movies are willing to attempt, so I want something that follows that lead.
  • I thought long and hard about the real time(ish) and one-setting aspects of Rope, but they don't really work with a lot of films. I love the technical gimmicks at the center of Rope, but I'm willing to abandon them in favor of a film that manages to convey some of the same themes.
  • The idea of murder as an "art" that only the gifted should be able to perform is a common theme in a lot of movies - especially when it comes to serial killers and sociopaths - but it's the romantic attachment to that art that Brandon shows throughout Rope that really sells this film's approach toward justified murder.
And it's that last point, where I started thinking about characters in film who murdered because they believed they had the right to do so, that led me to a film that's very different than Rope, but very committed to the same idea that some murders...well, they just have to happen.

Frailty
2001, Directed by Bill Paxton

Rope took us into the minds of two murderers, one giddy about the opportunity he has been given and one repentful. Frailty, the 2001 directorial debut by legendary character actor Bill Paxton, also gives us multiple murderers who have varying levels of commitment to the actions they are a part of. Like Rope, the motivation for these actions is clearly vocalized by one character, but the reasons for killing, the amount of killing, and the actions of the killer are all handled very differently in this religion-based horror feature.

Matthew McConaughey - in that awkward phase between his early career success and his rise to Oscar status in the 2010s - stars alongside Paxton, playing the adult version of Fenton Meiks, a man who walks into an FBI office late one night to tell an FBI agent (Powers Boothe, an acceptable substitute for the late James Stewart) the story of how his father and recently-deceased brother lived as "The God's Hand Killer" in a rural part of Texas. 

As a cold and beaten down Fenton relays his tale to the agent, we spend most of the film in flashbacks to his childhood, where Fenton and his brother Adam watch their father (Paxton) change from a simple life as a mechanic to a motivated serial killer who wants his boys to help with a series of murders. Why on earth does this man decide he needs to kill a list of people who he's never met? 

Because he was chosen by God to dispose of people who aren't people. They're demons.
Dad (his name is never spoken by his children, so that's all we have to go with) spends a lot of the movie explaining what is going on to his sons, and most of the film' s drama comes as young Fenton (Matt O'Leary) struggles with the fact that his father and younger brother (Jeremy Sumpter) believe that they are serving God by murdering people they've never met before. The two child actors do a fine job and carry most of the film, while Paxton manages to make Dad a brutal man who is surprisingly tender and straightforward with his sons.

Things start to get weird as Frailty goes on, because some of Dad's predictions are incredibly accurate. Adult Fenton explains this away to the FBI agent by saying "Sometimes, the truth defies reason," and that's about the best explanation we can get for why the father and sons seem to be able to carry out kidnappings and murders with little to no resistance. Dad and the young Adam are convinced that God is protecting the family and sending them everything they need to complete their crimes - including a now iconic axe with the name Otis carved into it - and one of the coolest things about Frailty is how it manages to sell this concept to the viewer.
Rope was a film about two killers with very little room for error, but Frailty flips that concept on its edge as everything just seems to go right for these killers. It's ridiculous to think that what this father is telling his sons is true, but Paxton and screenwriter Brent Hanley (who has, shockingly, never written another feature) do a wonderful job of keeping us guessing as the film goes on. I might have said too much about the plot already - seeing this with no knowledge of what it was about back when it played in theaters is still one of the great shockers of my cinematic life - but even if you haven't seen it and you're starting to make guesses about the film as I write this, I'm willing to bet you'll probably be wrong.

Frailty and Rope are both movies that are best experienced by open minded viewers who know little about them and are ready to get philosophical. This means that I've possibly made viewing them less enjoyable by talking as much as I have so far - way to go, Michael - but I'm pretty excited by just how unique this pair of films are together. One film is about murder that's justified by intellect or class, and the other is about murder that's justified by dedication and belief. You could even re-title them as Liberal Murder Story and Conservative Murder Story, as these are obviously killers on two different ends of the spectrum in American society.

In Rope, Brandon explains away his indifference toward his action by saying "Good and evil, right and wrong were invented for the ordinary, average man - the inferior man - because he needs them." He might as well have been talking directly about Dad from Frailty, because there's no reason this man kills anyone without his belief in good and evil. This isn't a shock - religion has probably been the cause of more deaths than anything else - but it does perfectly explain the difference between why he's killing and why Dad is killing.
While introducing an episode of his own show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Master of Suspense once quipped "I think everyone enjoys a nice murder...provided he is not the victim." That's a nice way of reminding us that murder is going to happen and if you're on the receiving end it doesn't matter if a killer is Harvard educated or an auto mechanic. Both of these films spend very little time humanizing their victims - but we're not here to enjoy their work anyway. These are two films about getting away with murder and why murder can happen for reasons you might not expect. Hitchcock made enough money selling murder that he could confidently remind us that murder is a completely nonpartisan affair, and I think he'd appreciate the opposing approaches to killing that exist in these two films.

So, if you're ever feeling particularly morbid and want to sit down and see some people from different walks of life commit murders for some unique reasons, this might just be the double feature for you. I hope you don't get too morbid and too inspired by them, but if you do - just know that I also wouldn't enjoy being the victim.
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Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Volume 10 - Rear Window and the Well-Intentioned Voyeur

Last week we kicked off Alfred Hitchcock Month! with a lot of speculation and a big leap of faith. On the other hand, this week's double feature is one of the easiest I'll ever pick. In fact, the only challenge in putting this double feature together will be stopping me from rambling forever about how much I love these movies.

Why do I think it's going to be hard for me to contain my enthusiasm about these movies, you ask? Well, it's because we're starting off with my favorite movie. Ever. Of all of them. The one I would chase through the gates of hell, and fight my way back to heaven with.

See? I'm gonna get loopy writing this. So let's stop introducing it and start talking about it.

HOW THIS WORKS
Step 1) I pick a movie.
Step 2) I tell you about the movie.
Step 3) I tell you what we're looking for in a double feature movie.
Step 4) Another movie!
Step 5) Victory!
Rear Window
1954, Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

I was 12 years old when I first saw Rear Window, and I immediately knew it was something special in my life. I don't think it became my favorite movie that day - at the time I'm not sure I even had a favorite movie, though it might still have been The Adventures of Milo and Otis (It's really cute, you guys!) - but I immediately identified with it on a personal level. It felt like what I wanted my life to be, with a few cosmetic changes. It was also the first Alfred Hitchcock film I saw, and that set me loose to keep visiting the man who would become my favorite director forever.

I was always looking for strange things as a kid. I've talked in the past about my (most likely imagined) run in with a UFO, and how easily influenced I was by ghost stories and the idea that something strange could be going on around us. You might say I had a wild imagination, but really I was just hoping for something a bit more interesting than going to school and working on our hog farm with my dad. So I started watching everything around me a little more closely. The problem was we lived in the middle of the country; there wasn't much to look at that wasn't pigs and corn.

This is not a problem that was shared by L.B. Jefferies, a.k.a. Jeff (James Stewart), the lead character of Rear Window. Jeff lives in busy New York City, and there's a lot going on in his world. His problem is that he's stuck in a wheelchair with a broken leg - which means that he can see what's going on around him, but when it comes to his ability to interact with it he might as well be living in the middle of nowhere too.

Looking out the rear window (Hey, that's the title!) of his apartment, Jeff can see into the lives of most of the neighbors that live across the small courtyard below. They're a unique bunch of individuals, ranging from the ballet dancer Miss Torso to the eternally longing Miss Lonelyhearts to the songwriter who gets his inspiration "from the landlord, twice a month." None of these names or personalities are the ones these characters claim, they're just what Jeff sees and assumes while sitting in a chair all day. For all we know, Miss Torso might be a really flexible astrophysicist. But we aren't seeing her world through her eyes. We're seeing it through Jeff's.

Jeff's one room world (we know he's got a kitchen and a bedroom, too, but we never see them) isn't completely boring, because there are two truly amazing characters that keep coming into it. The first is his nurse, Stella (Thelma Ritter), a fast talker who's ready to contradict Jeff at every turn, seemingly because she just really enjoys being right. Jeff has a similar problem - at one point he's accused of making an argument "intentionally repulsive" and replies by chiding that he's "only trying to make it sound good" - so his relationship with Stella becomes a wonderful back and forth that gives the film life quickly during the opening scenes.

The second character who graces Jeff's apartment with her presence is his girlfriend, Lisa Carol Fremont, a character brought to life by the unequaled talent and beauty of Grace Kelly. And when she first brings that talent and beauty to the screen, in a slow motion shot of her face swooping in to wake a sleeping Jeff with a kiss - My God. My heart stops every time I see that shot. It's the most beautiful moment in the history of film.

Lisa Carol Fremont might be a gorgeous fashion model, but - like Stella - she's quick with her words too. She argues with Jeff as well, mostly because he's convinced he needs to drive her away. What is it with all these men in movies who try to keep Grace Kelly out of their lives?

(Personal note: Having loved this movie most of my life, I like to think I learned a lot of my personality from Jeff. And while there are so many things about him that I love - his passion to never give up, his humor, his willingness to stand up (but not literally, there's a cast) against what's wrong - the one thing I wish I hadn't picked up from him was this tendency to assume you're a waste of others' time. Then again, maybe I already had that, and maybe that's part of why I relate to him so much? Who knows? Let's get back to the movie, why are we wasting time on me?)
The problem that arises from Jeff looking out that window is that he begins to believe that a salesman across the way (Raymond Burr, who many believe Hitchcock made to look like the former boss he hated, David O. Selznick, for this role) has murdered his wife. We know Jeff hasn't been sleeping right, and we know he's cooped up and hungry for adventure, and we even know he's a little bit depressed (again - he's trying to push away Grace Kelly). So it's hard to believe that he's right...but then again, this is an Alfred Hitchcock film.

It's not the argument about whether or not Jeff is right that makes Rear Window so perfect to me, though that's a real fun bit of the picture. Jeff also brings a smug friend who happens to be a detective (Wendell Corey) into the apartment, and that character seems to keep popping up in the film just to make us think Jeff really is just a guy with an overactive imagination. Lisa and Stella end up taking Jeff's side, which makes the banter with the detective even more fun when they are involved, but it's the moments where Jeff and Lisa realize they might be wrong where the movie really soars for me.

I've talked a lot about the arguing and the banter in this movie, and that's because to me this might be the film with the snappiest, most perfect dialogue ever written. I can't tell you how many throwaway lines in this film are part of my every day language. I'll call out an "ordinary run of the mill Wednesday" from time to time and point out that I'm looking for something "dramatically different" when I'm seeking a movie to watch. Sometimes I borrow some of Stella's homespun philosophy on relationships when I'm feeling blue. I might laugh more watching Rear Window than I do watching any other film, because even after all these years the dialogue is still so punchy to me. Heck, I wanted to make sure I had a quote right in my brain just now - I did, don't doubt me - and the cool thing is that I just typed two words from it into Google because I was pretty sure no one has ever used those two words together like Rear Window did. Sure enough, that quote was the first thing that popped up.

Getting back to those doubts I just mentioned - there's one piece of dialogue in the film that has blown my mind for nearly 25 years. Lisa and Jeff have just had their hopes of catching the murderer attacked again by that reasonable detective, and as they fall silent Lisa speaks up...

"Jeff, you know if someone came in here they wouldn't believe what they'd see? You and me with long faces, plunged into despair, because we find out a man didn't kill his wife. We're two of the most frightening ghouls I've ever known."

I think I fell in love with words the moment I heard Grace Kelly say that. I always liked reading and writing as a kid, but I never though that writing could produce something like that. The dread that lives in that statement, the perfect combination of sadness and humor, the self-awareness to know that you made a mistake and you're not quite sure who you are right now, but also knowing that your feelings right now are kind of a farce. Lisa and Jeff really haven't harmed anyone in this moment, but their whole situation has just been made to appear totally ridiculous and Lisa (the wisest character in the film, by far) can see right through it. John Michael Hayes got an Oscar nomination for this script, and this line alone makes me think he should have won the award and had it renamed after him. It's so perfect that it makes me say farcical things too. If that makes me a frightening ghoul, I'm freakin' proud to join the club.
I said it earlier, and I'll say it again - this is an Alfred Hitchcock film. You buy the ticket, you take the ride. And you know that ride's not going to end with everything "wrapped up in a neat little package," like the episode of The Simpsons that parodied this film (Bart of Darkness, Season 6, Episode 1) would have us believe. As Hayes and Hitchcock drive us to the final reveal there are plenty of twists and bumps, and every one of them will make people like Jeff and I and any other well-intentioned voyeur with a passionately paranoid mind grin and prepare for the next one. Rear Window keeps us involved in a murder mystery not by taking us on a cross country adventure - Hitch saved that for North by Northwest and other films - but instead by making us jump to conclusions inside our own minds as we try to understand how all the pieces of this potential murder could fit together. 

When you're a slightly ghoulish dreamer that can't go anywhere - either because you're trapped in a wheelchair or because you're a preteen on an Iowa farm - those are the kind of adventures you get to go on. Apologies to the UFOs and the ghost stories, but when I met Rear Window I realized it was the kind of adventure that - while completely implausible - could actually happen. And it inspired me to try to be quicker, to be more observant, to choose my words for their impact and not necessarily their meaning, just in case I need to make my point "sound good." I'm not sure if I understood this all when I was 12 - I've been rambling so much that I might read this back to myself and not understand it now - but I know Rear Window set my life on a new course that night. 

And that's probably why Rear Window will always be my favorite movie. It makes me want to always be prepared for anything, even when the only thing I can do might be to offer a humorous retort or a crazy theory.

One thing I learned quickly after I saw Rear Window is that it's one of the most copied films ever made. I don't mean that in a bad way - like the man said, "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" - but it does make picking a double feature to go with it a different kind of challenge. A lot of times it's hard to pick one movie to go with a movie, this time it's hard for me to pick just one. 
  • The basics of Rear Window are basically their own subgenre by now. Someone sees something, or thinks they see something, and then no one believes them. The part where a lot of films that borrow this set up fail is that they show the audience too much. You lose that joy that I got from following Jeff and Lisa's theories when you do that. Like I said above - the mystery needs to be in the lead character's head.
  • The other thing that makes Rear Window so unique is Jeff's predicament. He's alone and he can't do anything. We don't necessarily need to duplicate his injury, but we need a film where the lead really can't act most of the time and where he's slightly unreliable. He needs a couple of people to bounce his ideas off of, obviously, but we can't give him too much help.
  • More than anything else - we need a movie that doesn't just feel like a rehash of Rear Window. We need a movie with Hitchcock's spirit. I'm looking for something by a director and writer that has a good understanding of Hitchcock. And there's a guy out there who fits that description who might not be the one you're thinking of.
How can I follow up my favorite movie and not feel like I'm taking a gigantic step backward? Because I'm picking a movie by a director whose experience with Hitchcock started a bit like mine.

Road Games
1981, Directed by Richard Franklin

Like me, Richard Franklin was 12 years old when he saw his first Alfred Hitchcock film. Unlike me, that film wasn't Rear Window; it was Psycho. That doesn't matter though, he became devoted to Alfred Hitchcock too. The Australian born Franklin took a more direct approach to his fandom - he became a filmmaker. He ended up making his way to the University of Southern California in 1967, and during his time at the Los Angeles based university he managed to get Alfred Hitchcock himself to come host a screening of one of his films, Rope. Then, Hitchcock invited Franklin to come watch him work on set while he was making one of his final films, Topaz.

If that paragraph makes you insanely jealous, you're not alone. Imagine being a young filmmaker and not only being able to talk film with Alfred Hitchcock but also being able to watch Alfred Hitchcock work. I know a lot of people will warn you about meeting your heroes, but man I would love to have been in Richard Franklin's shoes. Franklin went on to direct the long overdue Psycho II in 1983, and the work he did making what appeared to be an unnecessary cash in into a truly entertaining film is enough to earn him my eternal admiration. And that's not even the best tribute to Hitchcock he made.

Franklin returned to his home country after school, and worked his way up to making features by the end of the 1970s. In 1981 he made one of the most expensive Australian films of the time - Road Games. 

The simple way to describe Road Games is as "Rear Window in a Semi," but that's a disservice to Franklin's film. The set up is similar - Quid (Stacy Keach), who's driving a truck full of pork across Australia, begins to believe that another driver on the road is killing hitchhikers - and starts to try to solve the case. Unlike Jeff, we see in the opening scenes that this unnamed man - Quid refers to him as simply "Smith or Jones" - is a killer, but we also know that Quid doesn't know this.
Keach will probably never be listed next to James Stewart on many lists of actors in cinema history, but his performance as Quid is a one of a kind treat. Like Jeff, Quid's mind is open to all kinds of possibilities. He's been sleeping in his truck, the only soul he has to talk to most of the time is his pet dingo, and as he drives across the country he starts to come up with stories about the people he passes on the road. Some of these characters draw a direct parallel to Rear Window's - though Franklin's picture of how newlyweds act in 1981 is a bit more direct than Hitchcock's was in 1954 - which makes it even easier to see the influence Hitchcock had on this director.

But Quid is an angrier (If you call him a truck driver he'll snap back with "Just because I drive a truck does not make me a truck driver.") and more active character than Jeff. He's obviously more physically active - he can get out of the truck and walk around, but he's still facing a deadline that keeps him confined to the truck for most of the film - and he's also more mentally active. Road Games gives Quid a couple of people to talk to - most notably an American hitchhiker played by Jamie Lee Curtis (another significant Hitchcock connection, since she's the daughter of the star of Psycho) that Quid playful refers to as "Hitch" - but Keach is at his best when Franklin puts him behind the wheel and lets the thoughts that are running through his mind fill our ears.
As viewers, we know Quid is right about Mr. Smith or Jones. But watching him go through the facts and hearing what's going through his mind, especially once Hitch becomes part of the game of cat and mouse between the two drivers, pushes the tension in Road Games to wonderful levels. Franklin comes up with a brilliant trick to render Quid immobile during the final showdown, and by that point we don't need the mystery about whether or not he's right to keep us caught up in this film.

When you look at the films that have imitated Rear Window, there are examples that resemble it more directly. One of the most recent examples is Disturbia, a procedural 2007 thriller starring young Shia LaBeouf. Credit where due, Disturbia didn't drive me crazy as a Rear Window wannabe. Any movie that allows David Morse that much sinister screentime is worth something. But it's a movie where someone who loves Rear Window is going to look at it and say "Oh, it's just a movie that's doing Rear Window." That's not a crime, and it's kind of exciting. I remember seeing the trailer for Disturbia the first time and, after an initial moment of shock, thinking how cool it was that people were still wanting to be like my favorite movie more than 50 years later. But the cool thing about Road Games is not that it wants to be like Rear Window; it's that it wants to be like Rear Window and still manages to be funny and ghoulish and thrilling and actually feel like something Alfred Hitchcock would have made.
Richard Franklin got a direct line to Hitchcock while learning his trade, and he was able to use it perfectly in this film. He didn't just make a film that reminds me of my favorite film, he made a film that reminds me of my favorite film and manages to be one of my favorite films on its own merits as well.

I don't know if it's a requirement to be 12 years old to fall in love with Hitchcock and decide to devote a large portion of your life to loving Hitchcock's films, but I'm glad Richard Franklin was able to do it and you probably don't need me to say by now that I'm glad that it happened to me. Rear Window has been a defining piece of my personality - heck, it's a defining piece of my life - for more than two decades, and Road Games just happened to follow along behind it and become a perfect companion piece to it.

This might be my favorite double feature of all-time, guys. As Stella would say, Rear Window and Road Games are two great movies about "a pair of maladjusted misfits," and they make me want to be one of those, too. 
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Friday, September 1, 2017

Volume 9 - Rebecca and the Haunted House of Hitchcock

We're heading into our third month here, and I'm starting to feel confident I won't just up and abandon all five of you that are reading this. Confidence is addictive, and I'm thinking the next step in our young friendship can be only one thing - a themed month of posts.

What kind of theme are we talking about? Well, I'm glad you asked. There's one man who casts the biggest shadow over cinema history in my eyes, and I feel like he's a guy who deserves at least a month's worth of posts about some of his films. That man is Alfred Hitchcock. Thus, September will be henceforth known as.....

Alfred Hitchcock Month! 

I know, it's simple. But it's effective. And the exclamation point gives it a nice kick.

It's something of a challenge to opine on Hitchcock's filmography these days - people have been writing about him for about 90 years, the takes aren't exactly fresh - so I'm going to be taking a few leaps of faith as I put together five double features involving the Master of Suspense. This week's leap might be the biggest, so stay with me here. I promise I'll try to make sense.

With no further ado (except for the ado I'm about to type), let's kick things off with Hitchcock's first American film.

HOW THIS WORKS
Step 1) I pick a movie.
Step 2) I tell you about the movie.
Step 3) I tell you what we're looking for in a double feature movie.
Step 4) Another movie!
Step 5) Victory!

Rebecca
1940, Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

As a fan of all things Hitchcock, it's absolutely crazy to know that Rebecca is the only film directed by the man that won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. And it's especially surprising that the movie is as good as it is (Spoiler alert: I think it's very good) when you consider the relationship between Hitchcock, who was new to America, and the man he was working for - legendary Hollywood producer David O. Selznick. Many accounts of the film's production tell of their squabbles over various aspects of the film, ranging from Hitch's filming techniques to the adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's novel. People who first met Hitchcock through his later works might watch Rebecca and quickly realize that his signature style is at times muddled by the relationship with his producer, not to mention the strict Hays Code held over films of this era. The relationship between Selznick and Hitchcock did contribute to a couple of films that are relatively clunky compared to the director's other works, but thankfully Rebecca is not one of them.

For those unfamiliar, Rebecca is not the story of a woman named Rebecca. In fact, the woman at the center of the film - an innocent youngster (Joan Fontaine) who becomes the bride of the sophisticated Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) - has no name. Never once does a character in the film refer to her by name (kind of like Roddy Piper in They Live, but we'll save that for another double feature). They do, however, spend plenty of time talking about Rebecca, Maxim's deceased first wife. Those familiar with Hitchcock's standoffish attitude toward actresses might assume this rudeness toward the living lead character was his doing, but in fact the nameless lead character comes right out of Du Maurier's novel.
The second Mrs. De Winter, as she is often referred to, meets Maxim in the South of France, just as he appears to be contemplating suicide on the edge of a cliff. Instead of taking this as a sign that he's a bit tortured, she ends up in a whirlwind romance with him. She thinks he's marvelous, he thinks she's a cute child. When she nearly has to leave, he proposes with a super romantic "I'm asking you to marry me me, you little fool!" If it seems like their relationship is a little possessive, that's a shared byproduct of both the source novel and on set tensions. Olivier was upset that his then girlfriend, Vivien Leigh, didn't get the part over Fontaine, so he took his frustrations out on her. Hitchcock, who always thought anything he could use to build tension was worth a try, decided the best approach to this would be to tell Fontaine that everyone else on set hated her too. 

It seems ridiculous that this is how a major Hollywood picture - Selznick saw Rebecca as his first attempt to top the success he had in 1939 with Gone With The Wind - would function, but I guess that's how you put the "drama" in melodrama. Rebecca needed Olivier to be a bit angry as the widower who hasn't shaken off his past, and it needed Fontaine to be timid and frightened by her sudden ascent from paid traveling companion to wife living in a grand estate. Maybe the producer and director didn't go about getting that out of the actors in the right way, but they definitely got it out of them.

No disrespect to the leads - or Judith Anderson, who we'll get to in a minute - but the real star of Rebecca is Manderley, the estate that is Maxim and his new bride's home. The house itself was a miniature (Selznick couldn't find a location that suited his tastes), but it looms large over the entire movie. The opening narration by Fontaine is still one of the most haunting introductions ever put on film, setting the mood for the picture and foreshadowing things to come.
"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter...for the way was barred to me. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers...and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me."

If you haven't guessed by now, Manderley is haunted. It's not haunted in the traditional horror movie way, but it is haunted by memories of Rebecca. Everything Maxim's new bride tries to do in the house is met by not-so-subtle reminders that Rebecca did things differently or that Rebecca was "the most beautiful creature I ever saw" or that everyone in the house "simply adored Rebecca." The girl is already facing a big change in her life, and now everyone that meets her is comparing her to this ghost that's just hanging out in a giant bedroom in the off limits wing of the house.

The living face of the house's intimidation toward her is that of Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper who happened to be Rebecca's closest confidant. Mrs. Danvers is played perfectly by Judith Anderson (I don't know who won the Oscar for Supporting Actress that year, but the voters must have got it wrong) and Hitchcock frames her as a constant reminder to the new bride that she is living in Rebecca's house. Hitchcock used Danvers the same way William Castle would later use characters in films like House on Haunted Hill, making her an unblinking character who seems to float from place to place. There are plenty of implications about Mrs. Danvers' relationship with the past Mrs. De Winter - implications that the Hays Code wouldn't let Hitchcock address - but her intentions toward the new bride are pretty obvious. She wants her gone from Manderley.
The second half of the film focuses on the deteriorating relationship between the still grieving Maxim and his new wife, who can't understand who or what she is supposed to be in this house. It's unfortunate that the film gets stuck in some mundane courtroom drama as it winds to a conclusion, but the house looms large over the finale. When we learn Rebecca's secret, we're reminded one last time that Manderley belonged to her, and that it always will.

Paranormal spirits may not be at work in this house, but the film's finale sends a message that echoes a passage from Fontaine's opening narration, confirming once and for all that this house is no longer a home.

"I looked upon a desolate shell...with no whisper of the past about its staring walls. We can never go back to Manderley again. That much is certain."

Picking a double feature to go with Rebecca is a tall challenge. It's a 130 minute melodrama that can stand alone pretty well. But when I looked at the things I love about Rebecca, I started to think about how Hitchcock could have expanded on some of them in a different setting at a different time. So this week's double feature is less about what this film does, and more about what I'd loved to have seen the director do to build off of it later in his career. Here are some of the factors that played into this double feature pick.
  • Hitch is known as a master of suspense, but very few of his films fit into the traditional definition of the horror genre. The ones that do - most notably Psycho and The Birds - are widely regarded as being among the best the genre has to offer. Sometimes I get a little greedy considering what it would have been like if the director dove into the genre a little more often.
  • Hitchcock gained a lot of control over his films after his contract with Selznick ended in 1947, and also became more of a risk taker as he moved through the final couple of decades of his career. It's easy to wonder what a man of Hitchcock's mindset could have done with more time working after the Hays Code ended (it was replaced by the MPAA rating system in 1968 after being ignored for most of the 1960s) and filmmakers were given more freedom to tell riskier stories on screen.
  • I mentioned similarities between Hitchcock and William Castle, possibly the two most larger than life showmen in genre cinema history. Hitchcock managed to make us feel the tension of a haunting inside Manderley, so I wonder what he could have done with a more traditional haunted house story.There would probably be some similarities with Castle's work, but I also think Hitchcock would have been willing to make a haunted house film that's a little darker and more adult-themed.
    • Random tangent: Within Hitchcock's own filmography, the next closest thing to a haunted house film is obviously Psycho. Though very little of the film actually happens in the iconic house on the hill above the Bates Motel, it's still the place that Norman Bates' demons - most notably, Mother - call home. There's another way of telling that story that sure could have felt like a cross between Rebecca and a William Castle chiller, but most people would probably agree with me when I say the way Hitchcock handled Psycho worked out pretty darn well.
Now let's jump ahead 33 years, and take a look at how much different the world Hitchcock was making films in had become.

The Legend of Hell House
1973, Directed by John Hough

In 1972, Hitchcock released his next to last film, Frenzy. It was the first R rated film of his career, and it had enough on screen violence that Roger Ebert called it "Psycho without the shower curtain." For the time - and especially for the director, who was usually more playful with his murders - it was a brutal film about a rapist and killer on the loose in London. Films like Psycho and Marnie - a late career film in which Hitchcock featured an implied rape - had given us a taste for what Hitchcock could be willing to do after the pesky Hays Code was dead. But Frenzy was the first time he put the violence and deviance he'd always hinted at front and center in one of his films.

Which leads me to the film I think a Hitchcock haunted house film of the 1970s would have looked like - The Legend of Hell House. Released a year after Frenzy, it's a perverse and violent adaptation of Richard Matheson's Hell House that drew a PG rating despite a whole bunch of violence toward women and talk about orgies and a candy coating of pure dread that makes every minute of the picture a little bit more sinister than the last. Like Rebecca, many of the sexual elements of the novel had to be toned down for this film, yet the final product still manages to top off its horror setting with a tone that's pretty kinky for 1973.
The connections between Rebecca and The Legend of Hell House as full films are pretty superficial, but there's something to be said for the Hell House of the title as a more vile version of Manderley. As four characters spend several days in the deserted house, we quickly realize there's a gender swap at the center of the house's power. The late Rebecca is replaced here by the unseen Emeric Belasco, a twisted millionaire who towered over the mansion and hosted depraved parties before disappearing after a massacre that took place in his house.

It might be unfair to draw a parallel between a fictional sadist and a real world director who was notorious for being cruel to actors and actresses, but I get the feeling Hitchcock would have had a lot of fun with a character like Belasco haunting one of his films. Much like Hitchcock, director John Hough (working from a screenplay adapted by Matheson himself) spends much of the film putting the female leads that walk into Hell House in stressful and vicious situations.

The first of these women is Florence Tanner, a spiritual medium played by Pamela Franklin. She's interested in the specific entities that are in the house, and ends up focusing her attention on what she believes is the ghost of Belasco's son, Daniel. She's a rather direct young woman, especially considering the situation she's walked into, and some of her optimistic and matter-of-fact reactions to things in the house remind us of some of the more innocent women in Hitchcock's canon, like Barbara Bel Geddes' Midge from Vertigo or his daughter Patricia's Barbara Morton in Strangers on a Train. Hitchcock often had mercy on characters like her, but at this point in his career he was breaking a lot of the rules he had once established.
The other female character featured in The Legend of Hell House is Ann Barrett, played by Gayle Hunnicutt, and she's the character Hitchcock really would have had fun with. She finds herself in the house simply because she's the devoted wife of the man in charge of the investigation, and the house quickly latches on to her. The only reasons for this that the film allows us to assume are a) she's a woman and b) she's sexually frustrated.

One of the film's most intense moments occurs when Ann, possessed by the primal spirits of the house, throws herself at the male character in the film who's not her husband. She grinds her teeth and sweats all over the screen and growls about how much fun it would be if the people in the house all - for lack of a better term - got freaky. And she's very convincing about it. Mrs. Danvers' character came with an implied sexual relation to Rebecca, but the portrayal of the possessed Ann here feels like a moment where all the rules that held Hitchcock back in 1940 have been thrown out the window and replaced by a moment of untethered lust.

The closest thing we have to the second Mrs. DeWinter here is physical medium Ben Fischer, played by the great Roddy McDowall. While the house physically torments the women that enter it, Fischer is the character whose sanity is most blatantly attacked by the house. Fischer is the sole survivor of a previous investigation at Hell House, and his psychic connection to it makes him an easy target. Ben and Florence are clearly more dangerous to Belasco and Hell House than the leader of the expedition, who just wants to wipe the house clean with a giant ghost vacuum machine (I'm pretty sure that's not the technical term, but it's what I'm going with), and Fischer's restrained approach while facing the house makes him the character in the film who needs to step up if he's going to make it out of Hell House alive.
It's hard to see Hitchcock spending as much time on the spiritual and scientific aspects of The Legend of Hell House as this film does; both of these themes were often bumped out of his work in the name of adventure and escapism. But The Legend of Hell House has such a playful psychology toward its characters that I really wish I could see what Hitchcock would have done with them near the end of his career. He might have made a more playful version of the film - perhaps sacrificing some of the dread for a more direct threat - but I think he would have enjoyed the similarities between this film's ending and the endings of Rebecca and Psycho, each of which feature a surprising revelation about the unseen force that haunts the film.

Like I said at the beginning - I'm taking a big leap of faith about my favorite director's approach to filmmaking with this double feature. But it makes sense that a man who once said "I am to provide the public with beneficial shocks" would've jumped at the opportunity to make a haunted house film that was more aggressive than a Selznick produced melodrama ever could be. Rebecca shows us how Hitchcock was able to make a novel about a second wife feel like a kind of haunted house story, and The Legend of Hell House makes me dream about what a purely Hitchcockian haunted house story could be. It might not be the double feature anyone expected, but if it's a choice that shocks you then I'm glad I could provide one too.
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