For those hording toilet paper

Well, it is ugly, wet, windy, and gray down here in Mississippi; while this may not be good weather for trick-or-treating, it is ideal for a night of horror. Good spirits were in the office despite the weather, many of whom were dressed up in Halloween costume. I'm going the lazy route tonight, watching the Vincent Price festival on Turner Classics. Might drop comments as I watch the three films that lead to midnight. Then I think some of us horror fans will take that much needed break (even if its only a few days or weeks) from the genre to watch something (anything) other than horror. Three films make up the line-up leading to midnight: Pit & the Pendulum, The Haunted Palace, and Masque of the Red Death. Nice line-up that are all three quite entertaining to me and as worthy a triple feature as I can think of for Halloween night. I hope all of you have a safe and happy Halloween night (perhaps with better weather than what we Mississippians have down here).

Pit & the Pendulum: some random thoughts...

• the paint colors used at the opening, along with the unease of the score, really set the mood nicely, I thought.
• Antony Carbone's dick of a doc seems to be inauthentic in his sympathies and insistence that he was sure that Barbara Steele, wife to Vincent Price's nobleman, had died "of fright". While I was unsure of Carbone's performance, it makes sense in tonight's viewing because he was playing a part in the hopes of tricking Price into madness (he succeeds to his own ultimate detriment however)
• Steele's part isn't as sizable as it seemed to me in time's past. Sure her motives--in association with secret lover Carbone--are wicked and establish Price's transformation into his torturer father personality, but it really isn't all that big. She does mock Price when he surrenders his sanity and laughs along with her while Carbone discourages her antics.
• Price really works it with his distressful voice, eyes of both innate fear (that he was responsible for entombing his wife alive and of her return to "haunt" him) and eventually pure evil (once "Sebastian" comes alive in Price's Nicholas, taking hold for good), and then his whole body changing to resemble the father (the limp walk, crippling gait) after being driven mad. It is quite the tour-de-force performance where he lets it all hang out.
• John Kerr, like others in films alongside Price, is unfortunately stuck with the boring part that is essentially reactionary. He responds/reacts to the events as they unfold, outside eyes.
• the Pendulum sequence works so much better because of the warped camera angles and colored lens. Giving all of it this nightmarish quality that intensifies the situation. I guess you could visualize it this way and to the person stuck under that swinging blade it all might just seem a little askew
• Unfortunately, like Kerr, Luana Anders is saddled with a bore of a part that doesn't seem to require much zest or vitality. She basically is a mannequin reciting lines.
• a scene that never seemed to remain in my mind from viewings of the past really left an impression this go around. The discovery of a petrified corpse fixed in a state of fear when her tomb is opened just rocked my world. So awesome.
• also awesome this go around was the final screen image of Steele trapped in the iron maiden. No one will ever set foot in that room again. Too cool

One becomes accustomed to the darkness here.
The Haunted Palace: some random thoughts...
• I hadn’t realized just how much Lon Chaney Jr. suffered the ravages of bad health and alcoholism, but his physical condition sure shows in the film. Like when Debra Paget finds herself in a hidden passageway looking for her husband Price and there’s this intense close up of Chaney’s face, with wrinkled baggage under his eyes. He still has this sweetness in his voice and face that flies in the face of the character he’s supposed to portray (Spider Baby seems to better fit this Chaney during his latter days)
• I love how this film works as a precursor to the prosthetics boom soon to come in horror, particularly in the 80s (the makeup that describes the curse of Joseph Curwen upon the children (and children’s children) of those male conspirators who burned him at the stake for his activities involving the Necronomicon and “bewitched” women of the village of Arkham, regarding mutations to the face, with a particular growling monster kept in a room with bolted door fed scraps by its father)
• As cool as it was to see Chaney in a film directed by Corman, Elijah Cook’s presence was equally as thrilling to me, even if it was a rather insignificant part. He’s got the best “worried expression” to me. It’s a gas.  
• I like the subtlety in Price’s performance compared to his Poe adaptations which often required a bit of melodramatic oomph. I like the Jekyll/Hyde approach to the performance. How Charles Dexter Ward is a good man, but unable to withstand the force of the villainous Joseph Curwen. It’s all in the details of the duel between two distinct personalities. Charles is genuinely concerned and understands he must get out of the “palace” (more like the castle), but upon nearly escaping, Joseph’s “pull”, his strong evil will, is just too much.
• I love that there are so many Lovecraftian touches to this film. The mention of the well-familiar book, the elder gods, Charles Dexter Ward himself as the character undermined by his ancestor’s malicious spirit, and sacrificing women to the gods for “mating” purposes as to create this new race to overrule the earth. Adding Poe’s name at all to this is rather desperate marketing. Lovecraft, this film is.
• Paget faints when seeing Chaney in the secret passageway, and she’s a rather weak heroine who is often apprehensive when Joseph toys with her emotions. I acknowledge that the film is set (and was made) in a different era of female screen character, but I guess I just prefer to see a heroine not take so much shit from her man. Joseph wants to bed her in one scene and she’s appropriate repulsed by him, but only when he decides the act would require much physical labor (she does put up a resistance) does the evil presence abandon this attempt.
• I love the scenes where Price is touched up with a darker makeup to imply his takeover of Charles’ body. I also like the “weakening” of Charles and how Price shows him slipping away while Joseph works at his mind, body, and soul.
• Because of pervasively “colorful darkness” and the presence of thickening fog (including a cemetery and the village itself also smothered), Arkham seems besieged by gloom and doom. Add the disfigured townsfolk (even Elijah Cook has a webbed hand!), along with the ancient palace housing a hidden chamber that serves as a place of worship and conjuring, as well as, provides a sort-of entrance to where a monster lives (only one monster, never shown in full form, with director Corman opting to blur the screen, merely hinting to us of its presence) and there’s plenty of Gothic delights.
• At one point, this was in my top ten favorite horror films.
• The credits sequence at the beginning with the spider spinning the web is probably my all time favorite opening to a film, along with Saul Bass’ Psycho. It sets the tone and how Joseph Curwen is such a spider. Closing with the butterfly (to me, Charles) falling into the now-developed web, and Corman has really prepared us for a doozy.
• Along with Tomb of Ligeia, I think The Haunted Palace will eventually potentially surpass the more popular, highly regarded Corman films famous during this magnificent period for the highly influential producer/director with horror fans. Or at least, they might make it into the conversation.
• The idea that Charles almost survives after the portrait of Joseph is burned in the fire, yet not quite with the wink to us at the end comes at a time when twists weren’t the rage. It also feeds the idea that the stronger personality will remain in control even if the vehicle for which Joseph used to gain access to Charles was destroyed.

Masque of the Red Death: random thoughts...

 

• This isn’t your Curse of Frankenstein Hazel Court. She pledges herself fully to Satan, to be his wife! Even burning an upside-down cross on her marvelous bosom. Price claims, “She has just married a friend of mine.” This after his bird (trained now to do his bidding) attacks her!

•  You have Price in all that wickedness, finding both his wealthy guests and the peasants who beg at his castle walls for sanctuary contemptible. He has the wealthy grovel at his every whim/game, them doing as he asks while the peasants beg for shelter and food, for mercy, and receive archers’ arrows instead.

• On occasion, Patrick Magee has room to shine. In Masque, he was a member of aristocracy invited to Prospero’s castle, an adversary with a level of spite towards “the little people” who finds himself in an ape costume, hanging from a chandelier by rope, under the false impression that a dwarf performer will be his partner in the murder of Prospero. When he slapped a dancer (and assistant to the dwarf assistant), this sets in motion his demise.

• The “figure in red” is an ingenious plot device (and that voice offers both a sense of hope and doom in equal measure) and quite a stunning use of symbolism. I love how Prospero believes the “Red Death” on legs is Satan’s emissary, even believing he has been rewarded for “corrupting” the innocent, only to “unmask his death”. Price in red moving towards Prospero is fantastic as is how the people in his castle, now themselves taken by the red death, ambush him and then all collapse to the floor. Magnificent.

• The influence of The Seventh Seal is obvious, but Corman doesn’t just rob; oh, no, he has something else entirely to do with the concept of Death and those taken while walking the earth.

• The closing credits sequence as Death’s hand offers the cards is just awe-inspiring (done is striking red). The final “Death card” is neat.

• Jane Asher as a lovely peasant girl, impressionable and desperate to save her father and boyfriend by any means, clinging to her Christian upbringing and faith, is a part that allows us to see Prospero becoming enchanted by her. Maybe it is her pure, uncorrupted soul. Her dedication to those she loves and his need to see her forsaking all and joining him in a path towards total devotion to Satan. To do that he will need her to be shaken to the core and to have all hope devoid of her. But the Red Death has other plans.

• The standout besides those already mentioned, I would think is Asher’s father and boyfriend each having to slice their arm with a dagger stuck in the table of Prospero, one poisoned, killing the unfortunate person who has it enter his bloodstream in five seconds. What makes it standout to me is how those gathered at the table to stuff their face and gorge themselves on Prospero’s food (taken from his farming peasants) look on in delight.

• Another early scene has Magee, hoping to enjoy from the pain and suffering of others, thanks to Price and his soldiers, showing up at the peasants’ village to stir up trouble and choose from the lot to serve as entertainment!

• The score, photography, art direction, sets, and cast—all British except Price (who convinced as British)—offer Masque a quality hardly surpassed in Corman’s output of this period in his career (I still think the exteriors of Ligeia, though, are so good that this movie might just rival Masque)