RetView #86 – X The Unknown (1956)

Title: X The Unknown (1956)

Year of Release: 1956

Director: Leslie Norman, Joseph Losey

Length: 81 mins

Starring: Dean Jagger, Edward Chapman, Leo McKern, William Lucas, Peter Hammond, Kenneth Cope

X The Unknown is one of the few non-anthology movies in existence to boast more than one director. The official line is that original director, Joseph Losey, who had moved from the US to the UK after being placed on the Hollywood Blacklist (an actual post-WWII list of individuals in the entertainment industry with alleged communist links), ‘fell ill’ and had to be replaced by Leslie (father of Barry) Norman who had been a Major in the British Army. That wasn’t the only early controversy to befall this Hammer production, which had been intended to serve as a sequel to The Quatermass Xperiment (1955). That plan fell through when writer Nigel Kneale refused permission to use the character of Prof Bernard Quatermass, which rendered a sequel to the seminal British sci-fi horror flick meaningless. To all intents and purposes, Dr Adam Royston (Jagger) became the ‘new’ Quatermass. At least for a little while. There was yet more controversy after the film’s release when a distribution deal between Hammer and RKO fell through due to the latter company’s demise, before it resurfaced as RKO Pictures Inc, forcing Hammer to strike an alternative deal with Warner Bros.

Given all this off-screen chaos, it’s a testament to the professionalism of those involved that they managed to come up with anything at all, let alone a film with such a tight, streamlined plot and focused narrative. There is very little superfluous material here. The film begins with a group of British soldiers using a Geiger counter on an exercise in a remote part of Scotland. One of them (Cope) finds an unexpected source of radiation, and then gets himself blown up. Oops. Even worse, for mankind, anyway, the explosion reveals a seemingly bottomless crack in the earth. After a series of strange deaths where the victims appeared to be melted, Dr Royston inexplicably (though mightily impressively) concludes that a form of life that existed in distant prehistory when the Earth’s surface was largely molten had been trapped by the crust of the Earth as it cooled, only to return to the surface periodically in order to seek food from radioactive sources. This ‘form of life,’ unseen on screen until the closing stages, turns out to be a dead ringer for the blob from The Blob (1958) which was actually released several years later. Whether or not it was inspired by X The Unknown, is unclear. In any case, can Dr. Royston and his band of merry men find a way to save the world from being melted by the blobby thing (alternatively dubbed ‘throbbing mud’ in some reviews)?

Despite the absurd storyline (which 1950s storyline isn’t absurd?) this is an entertaining film. The acting is superb, though the special effects let it down slightly. I suspect this was in part due to a shortfall created by half the $60,000 budget going towards paying Academy Award winner Jagger’s salary, who had just been given the gong for Best Supporting Actor in the war film Twelve O’Clock High (1949). There is also a notable lack of a female lead, or a female anything. But hey, this was the fifties. Communists were bad and women were in the kitchen. I love the ending which, though ostensibly ambiguous, is actually a stroke of genius, but what really stands out for me is the dialogue. Here’s a sample:

Q: What was that?
A: I don’t know, but it shouldn’t have happened.

A brilliant, concise, straight-to-the-point, no frills, typically British response.

At the time of writing X the Unknown has a 6.1/10 rating on IMDb, based on 3 000 audience votes, and a 5.8/10 rating, at critic aggregate Rotten Tomatoes. AllMovie gives it 3/5 stars, and Craig Butler writes: “While it is not a classic of the genre, it’s a very well-made and quite entertaining little flick” A contemporary review on the website Mike’s Take on the Movies, says: “I liked this film the first time I saw it when it turned up on VHS tape thanks to the Hammer line released by Anchor Bay years ago and I still enjoy it after repeated viewings. It’s far from flashy but it’s direct and the thrills are solid for a mid fifties sci-fi flick with some startling F/X from Leaky. Then there’s Dean Jagger. A consummate pro on screen.” LINK

In a highly recommended in-depth review, the blog Scifist 2.0: A Scifi Movie History in Reviews says: “In comparison to the Quatermass films, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and their other legendary horror movies, X the Unknown remains a footnote in Hammer’s filmoghraphy. However, it is significant as the film in which some of the core personnel of Hammer’s horror franchise started to coalesce. Many key names are still missing, but X the Unknown for the first time brings together a large number of the artists who would go on to create the Hammer Horror cycle.”

Trivia Corner:

According to sources, Jimmy Sangster’s original script described the blobby throbby mystery monster thing as being “made up of millions of writhing worm-like segments” capable of slipping through small cracks and forming up again on the other side. This ability is briefly described in the film, but never shown on screen. Even if the movie had had a significantly larger budget, those effects would have been virtually impossible to achieve with the technology of the day.

RetView #85 – The Orphanage (2007)

Title: The Orphanage (El Orfanato)

Year of Release: 2007

Director: JA Bayona

Length: 97 mins

Starring: Belén Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Roger Príncep, Mabel Rivera, Montserrat Carulla

This acclaimed co-production between Spain and Mexico is the long-form directorial debut of Barcelona-based director JA Bayona, who went on to direct Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) and Society of the Snow (2023), which told the story of the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes in 1972. Short on both money and experience, for Orfanato, Bayona enlisted the help of Mexican horror legend Guillermo del Toro Gomez, perhaps best known Mimic (1997), The Shape of the Water (2017) and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019). It’s also the first screenplay by Sergio G Sanchez, who was heavily influenced by the classic literature Turn of the Screw by Henry James and Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, as well as horror movies like The Innocents (1961), The Omen (1976) and Poltergeist (1982). The work was nominated for Best Screenplay at the 2008 Goya Awards after being nominated for no fewer than 14.

The Orphanage opens with some kids playing a game, but you just know things won’t stay this innocent long, in more ways than one. One of these kids is Laura (Rueda) who is adopted only to return to the now-abandoned building thirty years later with her husband (Cayo) and son, Simon (Príncep), with the altruistic intention of turning it into a home for disabled children. Soon after they move in, Simon, who is both adopted and HIV-positive but doesn’t know either (which is certain to make for some pretty awkward family chats at some point) soon starts making friends, kind of unusual given that the place was deserted when they moved in, and starts saying off-kilter things like, “I’m not going to grow up. Like my new friends.” He now has six of these invisible playmates, by the way. He talks about a treasure hunt, presents a box of teeth as a ‘clue,’ and claims that if he finds the treasure he will be granted a wish. He has also taken to drawing creepy pictures of a child with a cloth sack over his head, another massive red flag. Don’t the kids in these films always do stuff like that? By now, it’s pretty clear the old orphanage is haunted and the spirits are exerting their influence on poor Simon. The question now becomes why? Because there is always a ‘why.’ Things are compounded by a visit from a social worker called Benigna (Carulla) who is later spotted acting suspiciously in the grounds. As things escalate, Laura becomes increasingly concerned, and then frantic with worry. All of which seems entirely justified when Simon disappears, driving a wedge between Laura and her husband. This leads to a series of strange discoveries, and as the secret of the orphanage is slowly revealed it turns out Simon is neither the first nor the only child to go missing.

The gothic mansion (the Partarriu Manor) where most of the action takes place is very impressive (pictured below), and some of the cinematography truly stunning. Despite being filmed on location in Llanes, northern Spain, there is a lot of torrential rain (rain in Spain?) and it’s overcast most of the time, which all adds to the menacing mood. The location was chosen due to its diverse natural settings, which Bayona made full use of. It was made in 2007, but looks and feels a lot older. Maybe that was the intention. In 2007 New Line Cinema bought the rights for an English-language remake but that seems to have stalled, and there have been crickets ever since. On this, Bayona noted, “The Americans have all the money in the world but can’t do anything, while we can do whatever we want but don’t have the money,” whilst also pointing out that the American industry doesn’t take chances, and prefers to remake movies that were already hits.

The Orphanage reportedly received a standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, and when it was released in cinemas became the second highest grossing debut ever for a Spanish film. It was also a hit with international audiences. At the time of writing the film has an 87% approval rating on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes based on 181 reviews, with an average rating of 7.4/10. The critical consensus reads, “Deeply unnerving and surprisingly poignant, The Orphanage is an atmospheric, beautifully crafted haunted house horror film that earns scares with a minimum of blood.” Pulitzer Prize winning film critic Roger Ebert said the film is “deliberately aimed at viewers with developed attention spans. It lingers to create atmosphere, a sense of place, a sympathy with the characters, instead of rushing into cheap thrills.” A more contemporary review in The Film Magazine says: “The Orphanage might be one the most moving ghost stories ever put to film, and throughout its deliberate, slow-burn telling of a pitch-black gothic mystery it never loses touch with its beating heart. It’s about lost, forgotten, mistreated children and how pain can be passed on decades down the line, but ultimately also that love, care and kindness saves lives and prevents the next generation being both metaphorically and literally haunted.”

On the negative side, the film drew criticism for its ending and several reviewers picked up on the fact that at its core the film is about grief and the mental toll it takes, with some suggesting it is a depiction of a bereaved parent’s slow descent into madness drawing comparisons with The Babadook (2014). Tellingly, this is never definitively addressed.

Trivia Corner:

Though uncredited, Guillermo del Toro Gomez plays the doctor at the Emergency Ward who treats Laura after she injures her leg looking for Simon.

RetView #84 – Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972)

Title: Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things

Year of Release: 1972

Director: Bob Clark

Length: 87 mins

Starring: Alan Ormsby, Anya Ormsby, Valerie Mamches, Jeff Gillen, Paul Cronin, Jane Daly, Bruce Solomon

Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (also known as Revenge of the Living Dead, Things from the Dead, Cemetery of the Dead, The Siege of the Living Dead, and Zreaks) is an iconic piece of work co-written and directed by Bob Clark, who would go on to direct Deathdream (1974) and the classic frat comedy Porky’s. Riffing off Night of the Living Dead (1968), the script was written in 10 days and the movie shot in 14 on a budget of just $50,000, with most of the people working on it being college friends making it a true labour of love. Most of the cast were not even trained actors, with only a select few going to to have modest careers in TV or cinema. Also, this must be one of the very few zombie movies starring a married couple, Alan and Anya Ormsby who’s characters, hilariously, are also named Alan and Anya. Nod, nod, wink, wink. The quips and one-liners come thick and fast (“What a bunch of stiffs!”). At least, they do until the shit hits the fan.

The story follows a theatre troupe (“I do have talent when I have a good part!”) who travel by boat to an island off the coast of Miami that is mainly used as a cemetery for criminals, for a night of campy fun. When they arrive, their director Alan (Ormsby), a twisted, sadistic individual, tells the motley crew of actors, whom he refers as his ‘children’, stories about the island’s grisly history in a concerted effort to unsettle them. He also digs up the corpse of a man named Orville, which is certain to make any party go with a bang. The names written on the styrofoam tombstones, by the way, are the names of various crew members.

“They’re having trouble all over the world with graverobbbers, ghouls, and people breaking into cemeteries.”

“But we’re the graverobbers. Who’s going to bother us?”

“Nobody but demons.”

And zombies, as we are soon to discover.

Eventually, Alan leads the group to a cottage where they are supposed to spend the night, and then proceeds to get robed up and prepare the group for an ancient ritual to summon the dead. Probably not the smartest move when you’re on an island off the coast of Miami that is mainly used as a cemetery for criminals, but okay then. When some of the group aren’t so keen (understandably) he threatens them with the sack, which I am pretty sure would be a breach of some ethical code or other these days, but this was the seventies. Alan’s bullying and cheap jokes soon stop when the gang realise the ritual they performed had worked, and the entire island is now swarming with freshly reanimated zombies. It kind of makes you wonder what they expected to happen. Even for a low-budget seventies horror comedy film, “They seem pretty slow. Why don’t we make a run for it?” has to be one of the dumbest lines ever uttered.

In a desperate attempt to get themselves out of the mess they had created, the group attempts to perform another ritual to return the zombies to their graves. And it works! For a bit. However, they neglect to return Orville to his grave, prompting the zombies to re-emerge and ambush the group as they leave the house. Alan and Anya retreat back inside, and in a last ditch effort to save himself, despicable Alan throws Anya to the zombies and locks himself in the bedroom where he left Orville’s corpse, not realising Orville is now a zombie, too.

In these #RetView posts I try to keep spoilers to a minimum and not to discuss plot holes or endings. I’m not here to be a killjoy, and my hope is that readers will seek these films out themselves. On this occasion, though, I feel I have to mention it. The zombies get on the boat, see. The boat the group had taken to the island. As the zombies board it, you can see the inviting lights of Miami twinkling in the background, the implication being that the zombies will soon enter the mainstream, so to speak. But… who is going to sail the boat? Sailing a boat is a tricky business, or so I imagine. These zombies are shambling husks that can barely walk. I doubt very much any of them retain enough brain function, let alone dexterity, to captain a boat across a choppy section of water. I know I’m probably pedantic but as the credits rolled all I could think was, “Shit! The zombies got on the boat!” which was, I suppose, the desired effect. But this was quickly followed by, “Oh, it’s okay. they won’t get far. We’re good.”

Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things is currently rocking a 42% rating on review site Rotten Tomatoes and in reviewing the later DVD release, Bloody Disgusting said: “[This] is well worth your time if you haven’t gotten around to it yet [and] really should be held among the top zombie movies of all time.” Meanwhile, the website 100 Misspent Hours was less generous, saying, “The biggest problem with Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things is that it’s an 85-minute zombie movie in which the zombies don’t turn up until minute 64.”

Bob Clark was said to have been considering a remake, but plans were curtailed when his Infiniti I30 was hit by a drunk driver in April 2007. Unless, of course, Alan Ormsby decides to raise him from the dead. Since then, other rumours of a remake have circulated, but none have so far come to fruition. It is available as a free download from the Internet Archive.

Trivia Corner

Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, a track on Finnish heavy/doom metal band Wolfshead’s 2017 album Leaden, is based on the movie.

RetView #82 – Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Title: Cannibal Holocaust

Year of Release: 1980

Director: Ruggero Deodato

Length: 96 mins

Starring: Robert Kerman, Carl Gabriel Yorke, Francesca Ciardi

A lot of films have been called controversial. Scroll this blog series and you’ll find dozens of them. But not many films can legitimately claim to be ‘the most controversial film of all time.’ Oh boy. This has everything; genocide, mutilation, graphic violence, animal slaughter, sexual assault, nudity, racial discrimination, not to mention portrayals of actual cannibalism. The film was banned, on various grounds, in over 40 countries (including the UK until 2001) and Italian director Ruggero Deodato, who heavily influenced both Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino, was even investigated on suspicion of murder at one point. More about that later. In fact, the film is still banned in some countries, even in its edited form. Not that it mattered much when home video became popular, and even less now with the Internet. There has been so much intrigue around this release that it would require a whole book to explain in full rather than a measly blog post. What a lot of people seem to forget is that Deodato was (he died in 2022 aged 83) a purveyor of exploitation cinema. It was the mechanism he used to shine a light on ‘difficult’ topics. Added to that, he was a master manipulator. If he got a rise out of anyone watching this film, for whatever reason, that was exactly what he wanted, and something he went to great lengths to achieve. Even the use of the word ‘holocaust’ in the title was no accident, and you feel was intended to simply stir up emotions, especially in Europe where the word still held so many negative connotations through World War Two and Italy’s association with fascism.

The movie follows a team of American film-makers led by anthropologist Harold Monroe (Kerman) into the Amazon rainforest (it was filmed on location) as they search for indigenous tribes rumoured to be cannibals. No prizes for guessing what probably happened to them, then. Footage from the trip is recovered (found footage, if you will) and later ends up in the hands of a TV station where execs watch it and together we discover the grisly fate of the expedition. Many have suggested that this marked the beginning of the found footage genre later popularised by movies like The Blair Witch Project (1999), Megan is Missing (2011), and V/H/S (2013). Produced as part of the contemporary cannibal trend of Italian exploitation cinema, Cannibal Holocaust was partly inspired by Italian media coverage of Red Brigades terrorism. Deodato thought that the media focused on portraying violence for salacious reasons with little regard for journalistic integrity, and believed that journalists staged certain news angles in order to obtain more sensational footage. This idea of media manipulation became central to the film, which essentially a mockumentary about a group of filmmakers who stage scenes of extreme brutality for a Mondo-style documentary. For example, ‘recovered’ footage shows the group capturing and raping a local Ya̧nomamö (Tree People) girl. In one of the film’s most iconic scenes they later find the girl impaled on a wooden pole by a riverbank. It is assumed that the natives killed her for loss of virginity, but subtley implied that the filmmakers themselves killed her and staged it as a murder for dramatic effect. The result is that the viewer begins to question everything they see, and ask whether they themselves are being manipulated, which of course, they (we) are. In a 2011 article for The Guardian, journalist Steve Rose remarked, “As a comment on shock value, Cannibal Holocaust succeeded all too well. The get-out is that the film-makers in Cannibal Holocaust are the real savages. They are shown goading, raping and even killing to get sensational footage for the media back home.”

After its premiere in Italy, the film was ordered to be seized by a local magistrate, and Deodato was arrested on obscenity charges. He was later charged with multiple counts of murder due to rumours that several actors were killed on camera in snuff film fashion and faced life in prison. In reality, the cast had signed contracts requiring them to disappear for a year after shooting to maintain the illusion that they had indeed died. When the actors appeared in court, alive and well, the murder charges were dropped, but not before it blew up in every newspaper in the country.

It was alleged that during production, many cast and crew members, including Kerman, protested the use of real animal killing in the film, which is certainly hard to watch at times. I still feel for that poor turtle. The point Deodato seems to be making here is that animals are living, breathing creatures, and they bleed and writhe when they are killed, something society often forgets when all the meat we consume comes in shrink-wrapped packages from the supermarket. This is typical of Deodato’s approach in that his preferred method of inferring a message was to hold it up in front of your face and take a machete to it. He was similarly derided for his ‘exploitation’ of native tribes, actual members of which play key roles in the film but are uncredited and, allegedly, unpaid, though one would assume that with concept of money being so alien to them they wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway. At its core, the film is an attack on sensationalist media, which is often built on flawed journalistic ethics, all of which Deodato used himself to great effect in marketing the film. Love it or hate it, you have to admire the ingenuity. In a 2011 interview with the BBC prior to his death, the director said: “All debates on cinema are good for the artform. The most important aspect [of Cannibal Holocaust] was the original use of reportage style. The special effects aimed to make people believe what they were seeing was real.”

Cannibal Holocaust has never really been out of the public eye, but was thrust back into the limelight in 2013 when it was revealed to be the inspiration for Eli Roth’s Green Inferno which took its title from the opening monologue in Cannibal Holocaust. A planned sequel, entitled Cannibal Fury, was never made. Even knowing what we know today, it remains as shocking as ever. This isn’t a pleasant viewing experience, but it was never intended to be.

Trivia Corner:

Demonstrating once more how media savvy and self aware he was, in 2007 Deodato made a cameo appearance in Eli Roth’s Hostel: Part 2 playing a cannibal, no doubt with his tongue firmly implanted in his cheek.

RetView #81 – The Mutations (1974)

Title: The Mutations

Year of Release: 1974

Director: Jack Cardiff

Length: 92 mins

Starring: Donald Pleasence, Tom Baker, Brad Harris, Julie Edge, Michael Dunn

Sometimes films, no matter how good they are, just get overlooked and then forgotten about, only to resurface decades later on some obscure satellite TV station, in this case Talking Pictures in the UK. In The Mutations (aka The Freakmaker), Donald Pleasence (What a Carve Up! Death Line, the first two Halloween films, and about a bazillion others) stars as mad scientist, Professor Nolter, who has taken it upon himself to pioneer what he sees as the next stage in human evolution by crossbreeding Venus flytraps with college students he abducts from his class (standard dialogue: “We are interested in cloning, not in clowning!”) his ultimate plan being to create a race of “plants that can walk, and men that can take root”. Seems reasonable enough, right? No problem there.

However, friends of the missing students start asking questions and obviously, science being what it is, the vast majority of Professor Nolter’s kooky experiments end in abject failure, leaving the crazed professor with a surplus of mutant human/plant hybrids which are handed over to a cruel circus freak show owner, Mr. Lynch (a barely-recognisable Baker, seen here shortly before his career-defining turn as Doctor Who) who attempts to exploit them for monetary gain which, as we all know, is the, ahem, root of all evil. Boom. This aspect calls to mind another classic Pleasence outing in Circus of Horrors (1960) though The Mutations is generally believed to have been directly inspired by Tod Browning’s classic Freaks (1932), which follows the exploits of a travelling French circus. And like that movie, it’s now frowned upon by modern standards because of the sometimes distasteful exploitation of actors with genuine disabilities who star alongside able-bodied actors with fictional disabilities, among the array of ‘freaks’ are the Pretzel Man, the Bearded Lady, the Monkey Woman, the Alligator-skinned Girl, and the Human Pincushion. Michael Dunn, a well-known American actor with dwarfism who played Lynch’s sidekick Burns, died at the Cadogan hotel in London at the age of 39 while the movie was in production. Other problematic scenes included the professor appearing to feed a live rabbit to a giant Venus flytrap. It seems people are cool with seeing scores of teenagers meet all kinds of inventive, grisly ends in the movies, but the moment you feed a rabbit to a Venus flytrap everyone loses their marbles. As you can probably guess, all this is bound to end in disaster. Good must triumph over evil. And the mutations, kitted out in shoddy costumes and grotesque make up, set out to wreak their revenge.

In much the same way as Tod Browning manages in Freaks (the parallels just keep coming), in the second half of the film the viewer is cajoled into feeling a measure of sympathy for the nutations who, from the outside looking in, would appear to be the monsters. These are the abused, the downtrodden, the disaffected, and the vulnerable, who wouldn’t even consider being evil if something evil hadn’t happened to them first, and you want them to find justice. This isn’t exactly a new mechanism, harking back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and maybe even earlier, but is unusual none-the-less. Mr. Lynch, aka, ‘the ugliest man in the world’ is also a very complex character. Horribly disfigured, he yearns to be normal and refuses to take his place among the ‘freaks’ (“He’s one of us!”). At one point he goes to a prostitute and pays her extra to say ‘I love you.’ Aww.

The Mutations was directed by legendary British cinematographer Jack Cardiff (1914-2009) and released through Columbia pictures. Though filled with crackpot theories and pseudo-science, it raises all kind of moral and ethical questions, chief among them being how much should (or could) people interfere with nature? Is it selfish to attempt to guarantee the future survival of a species? Or is it necessary? Pleasence is wonderfully cast, though he does tend to resemble Pete Townshend a bit too much for my liking. Speaking of music, also worthy of note is the truly unsettling soundtrack by Basil Kirchin, which starts with something resembling a heartbeat in the opening credits, and twists and writhes throughout. The film has been released on DVD several times since 2005, most notably in 2008 by Subversive Cinema as a part of a 2-Disk ‘Greenhouse Gore’ movie pack with The Gardener (1974) about a deranged landscaper who turns into a tree.

Author and film critic Leonard Maltin criticised The Mutations’ ‘predictable’ story and what he called “grotesque elements” while the TV Guide awarded it one star out of five, saying, “Though at times the film is so bad it’s unintentionally funny, it has a certain cruelty to it.” Contemporary review site My Bloody Reviews notes, “more of a curiosity piece than essential viewing The Mutations is criminally dull and only comes to life whenever Tom Baker is on screen, otherwise this is rather pedestrian and questionable in its depiction of ‘freaks’”. Michael H. Price of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, was slightly more impressed, giving it a solid three stars and praising both the effects and Kirchin’s “dissonant orchestral score” which he claims “adds mightily to the mood of unease and gathering madness.”

Trivia Corner

According to Tom Baker, while filming he and Willie Ingram, who played Popeye, so-called for his uncanny ability to make his eyes pop far out of their sockets, struck up an unlikely friendship. They used to frequent a pub, where a particular waitress made it clear that she didn’t approve of Baker, who was white, being friends with Ingram, who was black. To get back at her, Ingram would make his eyes pop out when she passed, then pretend nothing had happened.

Brats (2024) (Review)

I grew up (mostly) in the eighties, so I was looking forward to this new release which promised to explore the Brat Pack, a ‘group of young actors who frequently appeared together in coming-of-age films, and the impact on their lives and careers.’ Sadly, I was disappointed. This is less an evaluation of the contribution the Brat Pack made to eighties pop culture and more a self-indulgent 90-minute poor-me rant by Andrew McCarthy about how being called a ‘brat’ forty-plus years ago hurt his feelings. It’s clear the guy has been stewing over it for decades, and he sets out here, in his role of writer/director, to prove once and for all, how hard he has it and how unfair everything is. I can’t think of anything more bratty.

For those who don’t know, the ‘Brat Pack’ was a nickname given to a group of young actors and actresses who frequently appeared together in a succession of coming-of-age films, the most enduring of which are probably The Breakfast Club (1985), St Elmo’s Fire (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986) and About Last Night (1986). The films themselves have been described as representative of the “socially apathetic, cynical, money-possessed and ideologically barren eighties generation,” and focused primarily on middle-class teenage angst. They made use of adolescent archetypes like alienation, isolation, and sexual frustration, and, for some reason, were often set in the suburbs of Chicago. An appearance in one or both of The Breakfast Club or St Elmo’s Fire is often considered the prerequisite for being a core Brat Pack member which puts Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, and McCarthy himself firmly in the frame, though there are numerous peripherals including James Spader, Robert Downey Jr, Jon Cryer, Mathew Broderick, John Cusack, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Lea Thompson. Even the likes of Tom Cruise, Nicolas Cage, Sean Penn, Charlie Sheen, and Kiefer Sutherland couldn’t escape being guilty by association. The unofficial president of the Brat Pack was usually thought to be Emilio Estevez (son of Martin Sheen and brother of Charlie) who was also once engaged to Demi Moore, and the name itself was a homage to the so-called Rat Pack of sixties entertainers centred around Las Vegas casinos comprising the likes of Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis. This small detail seems to have been completely lost on McCarthy, who rails against the word ‘brat’ being taken to mean spoiled and entitled, and claims it attempts to nullify his talent and had an abject effect on his career.

When I started watching Brats I did so with a certain sense of empathy. These were all young people who, you could argue, were sometimes harshly treated by the media (though you could argue no more than any other entertainer). Actors can be a sensitive bunch at the best of times. But that pretence wore thin very quickly. I mean, being called a brat isn’t the worst thing in the world, is it? Has McCarthy watched the news since 1985? Anyway, enraged by the injustice of it all, one by one McCarthy tracks down (most of) his old mates and asks leading questions like, “Where were you when you first heard the term Brat Pack,” and “How did it make you feel?”

Cue morose music and crocodile tears. It’s nice to see that while many admit to feeling a bit pissed off about it at the time, the majority of Brat Packers chose not to carry that burden with them and shrugged it off, refusing to be sucked into the well of self pity McCarthy seems to have been living in ever since. You get the impression most of the people he talks to are just humouring him. He hasn’t been in touch with them in decades. For most of us it would probably be the equivalent of spontaneously popping round to see someone you worked with for three weeks forty-plus years ago and haven’t seen since. Emilio Estevez seems a bit bemused by it all. By far the most insightful contribution comes from Demi Moore, who manages to contextualise the whole saga in a mature, upbeat way, and even puts a positive spin on it. There’s no denying that for a while there, everyone wanted to be in the Brat Pack. They were the epitome of cool, both on and off camera, and all got very rich very quickly. Surely there’s a lot to be thankful for. If only McCarthy’s could put his well-worn victim card away long enough to realise how truly fortunate he has been. For Heaven’s sake, the label itself is nowhere near as caustic as it once was, and is now imbued more with reverence than anything else. And another thing. This doc tries way too hard to hit the right notes. For example, a random black guy pops up just to tell us that there were very few black people in the Brat Pack films. I still don’t know who he was. There’s no in-depth discussion about it, no attempt at justification, no explanation, not even a proper introduction for the interviewee. It’s just another awkward moment.

Talking about awkward… The doc culminates in McCarthy tracking down New York journalist David Blum, the person credited with starting the whole thing when he wrote an article called “Hollywood’s Brat Pack” for New York magazine back in 1985. When McCarthy asks him if he’s sorry, or if he thinks he could or should have been ‘kinder,’ Blum is having none of it and says instead that he always thought he deserved more recognition for coining the phrase. And he’s right. Let’s be fair, he was probably paid about $200 for that article, he was just doing his job and doesn’t want to waste his time talking about it now. McCarthy needs to acknowledge that being in the public eye cuts both ways. You have to take the rough with the smooth. There’s certainly a case to be made that the whole Brat Pack thing only strengthened McCarthy’s clout and led to producers writing him bigger cheques. For a while, at least. You could argue that at the root of the ‘problem’ lies a group young actors and actresses being packaged together in big budget, zeitgeist-capturing films by savvy producers and directors looking to tap into certain audiences. What’s wrong with that? Hollywood has always done it. Worse things happen at sea, as they say.

By this point, the constant whining is getting tiresome and repetitive, and you can’t help but feel McCarthy is predisposed to this kind of behaviour. This is a man who, by his own account, had an alcohol problem at the age of 12, long before he started acting, and once wrote a book called ‘The Longest Way Home: One Man’s Quest for the Courage to Settle Down’. Groan. The signs were there. He seems like the type who would gladly point fingers at everybody else rather than accept responsibility for his own failings. Personally, I think Weekend at Bernies (1989) was more harmful to his career than some jobbing journalist calling him and his mates brats. I want to see a documentary about that.

RetView #80 – King of Zombies (1941)

Title: King of Zombies

Year of Release: 1941

Director: Jean Yarbrough

Length: 68 mins

Starring: Dick Purcell, Joan Woodberry, Mantan Moreland, Henry Victor, John Archer

This B-movie starts off with three men in a cargo plane en route to Puerto Rico attempting a crash landing on a secluded island in the middle of the ocean because they got lost. Even in the 1940s, that premise must be considered questionable. Anyway, plane safely crashed in a graveyard (how’s your luck?) the three men, all remarkably unharmed and unshaken despite their ordeal, set about finding a way out of their predicament. Within about 15 seconds they stumble upon a creepy old mansion owned by a Dr. Miklos Sangre (Victor) and his rather subdued wife. Remarkably, he isn’t the least bit surprised to see them and doesn’t bother asking too many questions. At this point, one of the three, a servant (yes, it’s problematic) by the name of Jeff (Moreland) implores the group to leave. But of course everybody ignores him and sends him off to the servant’s quarters where he soon starts making friends. He also meets some zombies. But don’t worry, these are the more traditional kind of ‘reanimated corpse used for cheap labour’ variety of living dead so they aren’t into chasing people around and eating brains. Not at first, anyway.

Meanwhile, the trio (now reduced to a duo) guess something might be amiss with the spooky old mansion, but ignore any misgivings and whip the brandy out instead. As you do. When Jeff tries to warn them about the zombies they ridicule him, mainly on account of his skin colour, you feel. Stupid white people. Jeff actually turns out to be right. Plus, he also has all the best lines (“Did I hear anything? No. Just the sound of my heart trying to jump out of my chest!”). When the group eventually pluck up the courage to go exploring, one of them contracts ‘jungle fever’ and ends up dead and buried. But not for long, obvs. They then find Dr. Sangre conducting a voodoo ritual in the cellar with a veritable army of the undead. Given that this film was released in the middle of World War Two, it wouldn’t feel complete without some war references, and it soon transpires that not only is Dr. Sangre a madman up to his nuts in zombies and black magic, but he’s a gosh darn spy as well! Could he BE any more evil? That said, though there are a few hints throughout the movie, the film makers are extremely careful not to explicitly say the doctor is German. Instead, the plot refers to him as “A secret agent for a European government” and encourages the audience to draw their own conclusions, which they inevitably do.

King of Zombies supposedly started out as a straight horror film, but when the Bob Hope vehicle The Ghost Breakers (1940) became a big hit for Paramount, changes were made, which included replacing the original director with Yarbrough, who was more known for his comedies. He would go on to direct such genre staples as House of Horrors (1946), The Creeper (1948) and Lost in Alaska (1952) with legendary comedy duo Abbot and Costello. King of Zombies is one of the very few horror movies to be nominated for an Academy Award for best music (Music Score of a Dramatic Picture). The composer Edward Kay worked on over 340 films from the 1930s into the 1960s, and was actually nominated for Academy Awards on multiple occasions but never won. In 1943, it was followed by a sequel (of sorts) called Revenge of the Zombies that featured two of the original cast members. Mantan Moreland reprised his role as Jeff and Madame Sul-Te-Wan was cast as Mammy Beulah, the housekeeper.

In a contemporary review, website Basement Rejects, notes: “Like a lot of the films at a time, most of the movie relies on xenophobia and the strangeness of different cultures. This is combined with a number of jokes surrounding the Black valet who is the only one who completely believes in the zombies that are ‘haunting’ the island.” 100 Misspent Hours were much less complementary in saying: “What we’ve got here is an agonizingly unfunny, racist horror comedy with no redeeming features beyond its extreme brevity and the rare witty one-line.”

My personal opinion is somewhere in between. Despite the sometimes questionable cultural references, King of Zombies is actually a pretty decent comedy horror. The dialogue is sharp and witty, and the pacing moves things along quickly. There aren’t many dull moments. Perhaps best of all, like many movies of the era, it’s a fast watch and readily available to watch for free online.

Trivia Corner

The role of Dr. Victor Sangre was originally meant for genre heavyweight Bela Lugosi. When he became unavailable, negotiations ensued to obtain Peter Lorre for the part, but a deal could not be reached. Veteran character actor Henry Victor, who was born in England but grew up in Germany was signed just in time. Sadly, he died from a brain tumour in March 1945 at the age of 52.

Retview #79 – Island of Terror (1966)

RetView #79

Title: Island of Terror

Year of Release: 1966

Director: Terence Fisher

Length: 89 mins

Starring: Peter Cushing, Edward Judd, Carole Gray, Eddie Byrne, Sam Kydd

Something monumental happened within the English cultural landscape in the summer of 1966. Something that would send shockwaves far and wide, and leave a lasting mark for generations to come. Something for people to aspire to. Yep, that’s right, Island of Terror was released. Directed by British horror legend Terence Fisher of Curse of Frankenstein (1957), The Gorgon (1964) and Hound of the Baskervilles (1969) fame, Island of Terror was based on an original story by Edward Mann and Al Ramsen. It was distributed by Planet Film in the UK and Universal Studios in the US as a double bill with The Projected Man (1967).

On a remote Island off the coast of Ireland, a farmer’s wife contacts the authorities claiming her husband has gone missing. He soon turns up in a cave, dead, without a single bone left in his body. What the eff has happened ‘ere? Local copper John Harris (Kydd) doesn’t have a scooby and calls the local doctor (Byrne). He too is clueless, so travels to the mainland in search of answers and eventually hooks up with ‘noted London pathologist,’ Dr Brian Stanley (Cushing). He too is unable to work out what might have happened (can you see a theme developing?) so they seek out Dr David West (Judd), an expert on bones and bone diseases. Although the mismatched duo interrupt West’s quiet evening at home with his rich lover Toni Merrill (Gray), he is evidently more interested in bones and stuff so the whole gang promptly decamps back to the island in Merrill’s dad’s helicopter, which was handy. Once there, they soon discover a castle laboratory and upon inspection find the occupants all dead and boneless. This prompts our intrepid band of heroes and heroines to hypothesise, not unreasonably, that whatever is going around killing folk and turning their bones to mush probably began life in the lab, possibly as the result of an experiment gone wrong.

Some notes they find written by a Doctor Landers (I know, I know, too many doctors) confirm as much, and hint that in a quest to find a cure for cancer, the lab’s head honcho may have accidentally created a new lifeform that was especially partial to bones. And what’s worse, the lifeform (or lifeforms) might still be there. These amorphous grey creatures are nicknamed “Silicates” by Dr. Brian and Dr David, and kill their victims by injecting a bone-dissolving enzyme into their bodies. The Silicates are incredibly difficult to kill, as the luckless Doc Landers learns when he has a rush of blood and attacks one with an axe, and multiply every six hours. It’s unclear how. Regardless, the group estimate that if the multiplication is allowed to continue for a week there would be a million of them. At one point, we actually see this multiplication happening. After making some farty noises, one of the creatures splits open and some tinned spaghetti spills out, prompting Dr. Brian to yell, “They are multiplying!”

Dr. Brian, Dr David and the rich girl then mobilise the islanders, and with the help of the island ‘leader’ and the bloke from the shop (which just happens to sell dynamite), declare war on the silicates and attack them with everything they can find, not much of which is very effective. They shoot one a few times and all it does is wave its tentacle menacingly, moving Stanley to say, “Nasty little creatures, aren’t they?” During an epic battle scene, a silicate drops out of a tree onto a dude chucking petrol bombs at them. We aren’t told how the silicate managed to climb the tree with no arms. Speaking of no arms, after he has a brief encounter with a silicate, Dr David lops off Dr Brian’s arm and minutes later asks him how his arm is.

Like, what arm? You chopped it off, you daft bassard.

Anyway, when one of the ‘nasty creatures’ is found dead, apparently after accidentally ingesting radiation from the lab, the gang realise they must find more of the stuff and figure out how to contaminate the remaining silicates before it’s too late. Long story short, they eventually succeed, of course they do, but an epilogue reveals a visit to a satellite programme in Japan, where technicians are duplicating the work that spawned the silicates with predictably unfunny results. It may have been 1966, but let’s hope they didn’t want to come home. That’s the last football reference, I promise.

Brian J Dillard writing for Online database Allmovie gave the film a generally positive review, saying: “This creepy yet clunky sci-fi-horror flick boasts one of the coolest monsters ever to grace the silver screen – radioactive silicone beings that suck the calcium right out of your bones. A Saturday-afternoon creature-feature favorite, Island of Terror also boasts one of the most memorable amputation scenes ever.” Meanwhile, TV Guide awarded the film two out of four stars, criticizing its “shaky plot” but commending Cushing’s performance and Fisher’s direction. Radio Times also gave the film two stars and called it “Long on logic but high on hysteria,” whatever that means. All good fun. You can watch Island of Terror RIGHT HERE for nuffink!

Trivia Corner

Terence Fisher directed Peter Cushing (who plays Dr Brian Stanley) in a total of 13 films, including the last offering before he died in 1980 at the age of 76, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974).

RetView #78 – Burnt Offerings (1975)

Title: Burnt Offerings

Year of Release: 1975

Director: Dan Curtis

Length: 116 mins

Starring: Oliver Reed, Karen Black, Burgess Meredith, Eileen Heckart, Bette Davis, Anthony James

What a stellar cast. Oliver Reed and Bette Davis each have (had, sorry) the ability to elevate any only crap to whole new levels, and to have them both in the same film is just absurd. Being an English language geek, however, it took me a while to get past that title. Is it burned or burnt? Turns out it can be both though the former is more common in American English, which makes it even more surprising that they’ve chosen to go with ‘Burnt.’ It takes its title from the book of the same name by American author Robert Marasco published in 1973. Anyway, back to the movie, and this is very much a slow burner (get in!) low on gore and big on atmosphere typical of the raft of seventies haunted house films. Interestingly, Stephen King lists it as one of his favourite horror movies and there is ample evidence to suggest that the original book at least partly inspired his own novel The Shining. It won a slew of Saturn Awards, including Best Horror Film, and Best Director. Bette Davis also won the award for Best Supporting Actress.

Writer Ben Rolf (Reed), his wife Marian (Black), their 12-year-old son Davey and Ben’s elderly aunt Elizabeth (Davis) visit a large, remote, neo-classical 19th-century mansion with a view to renting it for the summer. The home’s eccentric owners, elderly siblings Arnold (Meredith) and Roz Allardyce (Heckart), offer them the property at a bargain price of $900 for the entire summer, which seems too good to be true. And it is. The offer comes with with a request: the Allardyce’s elderly mother, who they claim is 85 but could pass for spritely 59, will continue to live in her upstairs room, and the Rolfs are to provide her with meals during their stay. The old woman is obsessed with privacy and will not interact with them, so meals are to be left outside her door. Like that isn’t a red flag. Anyway, Marian soon becomes obsessed with the house, and eventually starts wearing some Victorian-era clothes she finds and distances herself from the rest of the family. Various unusual circumstances occur: Davey falls and hurts his knee playing in the garden, a dead plant starts to grow again, Ben comes a cropper with champagne bottle, and a malfunctioning light bulb is mysteriously repaired. Ben is also haunted by visions of an eerie, grinning hearse driver (James) who he had first seen at his mother’s funeral years earlier.

Despite the awards and the all-star cast, Burnt Offerings received mixed reviews. George Anderson of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette criticized it as being “dependent on typical horror tropes such as shocks and loud music hits” and described the tension as, “A lot of sinister huffing and puffing to little effect”. While praising Meredith and Heckart (who had won an academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1972 for her performance in Butterflies are Free) as the best performers in the film, Richard Dyer of The Boston Globe argued the source material gave the actors too little to work with. He called Black, who was four months pregnant during filming, “particularly inconsistent”, said Reed looked “like an eggplant”, and stated Davis “tries to create a Bette Davis character without any Bette Davis lines to work with.” At the other end of the spectrum, in a contemporary summary, Rovi Donald Guarisco of Movie Guide called the film “worthy of rediscovery by the horror fans who missed it the first time”, concluding that “In the end, Burnt Offerings is probably a bit too methodical in its pacing for viewers accustomed to slam-bang approach of post-’70s horror fare, but seasoned horror fans will find plenty to enjoy.”

For what it’s worth, I thought the performances were superb but found the overall package slightly overwrought and overlong, especially for a film where, frankly, there isn’t much plot. You could easily cut 20-25 minutes off the running time and lose nothing except some snivelling from Bette Davis and some posturing by Ollie Reed. In short, there’s more style here than substance, but what substance!

Trivia Corner

Bette Davis reportedly detested Oliver Reed. She insisted on referring to him as ‘that man’ and only speaking to him when they shared on-screen dialogue. After filming, she described him as “possibly one of the most loathesome human beings I have ever had the misfortune of meeting.” She also had conflicts with Karen Black, feeling that Black did not treat her with an appropriate degree of respect. Oh dear.

RetView #77 – Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)

Title: Attack of the Giant Leeches

Year of Release: 1959

Director: Bernerd L Kowalski

Length: 62 mins

Starring: Ken Clark, Yvette Vickers, Jan Shepard, Michael Emmet, Tyler McVey, Bruno VeSota

ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES, (aka THE GIANT LEECHES), poster art, 1959.

IMHO leeches are a very underused mechanism in horror. We see far too many rats, spiders and snakes, but not nearly enough of these natural blood-sucking vampires. They are fucking disgusting. Even the little tiny ones that stick to your legs after you go paddling in streams are gross. Imagine giant ones! Luckily, someone else did, so you don’t have to. Produced by Gene (brother of Robert) Corman and directed by Bernerd L Kowalski (who would go on to direct episodes of classic eighties action series’ Knight Rider and Airwolf) Attack of the Giant Leeches came right at the end of the 50’s creature feature craze that was a reaction to the Cold War that gave us such timeless gems as It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955), The Indestructable Man (1956) and The Blob (1958). This is reiterated, if you were in any doubt, when a character speculates that the man-eating leeches they are up against have been affected by atomic radiation from nearby Cape Canaveral. It was shot over eight days and released as part of a double bill with the horror comedy A Bucket of Blood (strangely enough, directed by another Corman, Roger, who would later gain fame for his film adaptations of Edgar Allan poe stories) by American International Pictures.

In the swampy Florida Everglades, a pair of massive intelligent leeches live in an underwater cave, presumably subsisting on the local wildlife as several references are made throughout the film to a lack of crocodiles in the area (which one would imagine not being a bad thing). Soon, though, the giant leeches decide to move on to people and begin dragging locals down to their cave, where they are kept alive and slowly drained of blood. Two of the first victims are local vixen Liz Walker (Vickers), who has been cheating on her husband Dave (VeSota), and her latest paramour. Poor traumatised Dave immediately comes under suspicion, mainly because he admitted chasing the amorous couple through the forest with a shotgun, but then he commits suicide leaving more questions than answers. Game warden Steve Benton (Clark) takes it upon himself to investigate, aided by his girlfriend, Nan Grayson (Sheppard), and her father, Doc Grayson (McVey). The intrepid bunch soon discover the giant leech’s underwater lair and blow it up. The end.

Or is it?

The film is notable for featuring Cary Grant’s long-time squeeze Yvette Vickers soon after her appearance in the Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958), who promoted it by appearing as a centrefold in the June 1959 issue of Playboy. After that, her movie roles began to decline and she was last seen alive in 2010 having withdrawn from her family and friends. Tragically, her mummified body was discovered around a year later at her home on Westwanda Drive, Beverly Hills, by actress and neighbour Susan Savage. There were no signs of foul play, the cause of death deemed to be heart failure resulting from coronary artery disease. After her demise, Hugh Hefner issued statements expressing his sorrow.

Attack of the Giant Leeches, while corny and somewhat predictable, doesn’t get nearly enough love. It barely even comes into the conversation. Any conversation. This is despite a remake directed by Brett Kelly and written by Jeff O’Brien being released in 2008 and a stage adaptation performed at The Village Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, in February 2020. The original has proved somewhat divisive on Rotten Tomatoes, where it measures 70% on the Tomatometer but has an audience score of just 18% based on 1000+ ratings. In his book Classic Movie Guide: From the Silent Era Through 1965 (2010) film critic Leonard Maltin awarded the film 1.5 out of 4 stars, calling it a “ludicrous hybrid of white trash and monster genres.” There’s just no pleasing some people.

The original movie is now in the public domain as its copyright was never renewed, and you can watch it in full HERE.

Trivia Corner

The monster costumes were designed by actor Ed Nelson and Gene Corman’s wife, with some claiming they were constructed from stitched-together black raincoats. Other insiders were less gracious and insisted black refuse sacks were used. Honestly, I kinda hope that was the case.