The Information Age is a wonderful thing. As long as it keeps its filthy hands off of democracy, anyway. What I mean is, all a person needs to make a movie these days is a smartphone and an idea. That’s pretty much all Nigel Bach has, and that guy just made his seventh horror flick in three years. Besides that, countless people have been shooting small moving snapshots of daily life that are creating a pastiche of culture to pass down to the ages that is unrivaled in human history. But that doesn’t mean that the world of film was completely closed off to everyone outside of Hollywood or New York in the days of analog. Sometimes, someone on the fringes of the entertainment biz — someone along the lines of Herk Harvey or Harold P. Warren — would get it into their heads to make a movie, and, despite all the obstacles of a time when one couldn’t carry a film crew in their back pocket, managed to make it happen. Such was the case with The Dungeon of Harrow, the 1962 gothic horror flick from writer/director Pat Boyette. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Dungeon of Harrow”
Tag: 1962 in Film
October Hammershow: Night Creatures, aka Captain Clegg
I feel like American audiences have been sold a false bill of goods with Night Creatures. The title implies quite a different movie than what we got. While today’s film was titled Night Creatures for the American market, its original title in the UK and elsewhere is Captain Clegg. That title isn’t exactly the best, either, as it makes the movie sound like something Disney would have cranked out for kids, and it’s not that.
From 1962, Night Creatures, directed by Peter Graham Scott from a screenplay by Anthony Hinds, is a departure for Hammer. By the time this film was made, Hammer was fully invested in making gothic horror, but Night Creatures is a thriller. It can be painted as a horror flick, however, which is why I feel there’s been a little misdirection involved in promoting it.
In 18th century England, a notorious pirate by the name of Captain Clegg was captured, hanged, and buried in a small coastal town. Ever since then, ghostly phantoms on horseback have plagued the marshes surrounding the town. Many in the town are terrified that such creatures lurk in the wilderness. Where did they come from? What is their purpose? Will anything be done about them? This film sets itself up as horror. But, it’s really about wily townspeople trying to hide their illegal activities from the government. Continue reading “October Hammershow: Night Creatures, aka Captain Clegg”
October Hammershow: The Phantom of the Opera (1962)
Hammer’s version of The Phantom of the Opera may not look it at first, but it is a very significant film in the history of cinema. There have been many, many adaptations of Gaston Leroux’s Le Fantôme de l’Opéra — the most famous being the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical from 1986. But this film, from two and a half decades earlier, was the first Phantom adaptation to feature the phantom playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. That simple decision on the part of the filmmakers to have the phantom banging away on an organ in one scene was the birth of a trope that has crept up in movies, television, and even videogames on a regular basis. Whenever a viewer sees a shadowy figure hunched over an organ and it spits out Bach, it’s all because of this movie. Continue reading “October Hammershow: The Phantom of the Opera (1962)”
October Horrorshow: Carnival of Souls
Who the hell is Herk Harvey and what is Carnival of Souls? Well, Herk Harvey was a filmmaker from Kansas whose directing career spanned three decades encompassing no less than 46 titles. His IMDb page lists such titles as What About Juvenile Delinquency? and Exchanging Greetings and Introductions. It’s not typical Hollywood fare. The vast majority of Harvey’s work consists of short educational films for schools and businesses. A few can be found online for the curious, and they’re just what one would expect. The sole feature film in Harvey’s career is Carnival of Souls, which he directed and wrote (with John Clifford) in 1962. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Carnival of Souls”
The Empty Balcony: Lawrence of Arabia
Lawrence of Arabia is the grandest of them all. Grand scope, grand personalities, and a grand, at times overpowering, score. The film is at or near the top of more ‘best movies ever’ lists than is worth recounting here. It is a classic, a film at the apogee of the industry’s aspirations for crafting epics. It was also a gaping hole in my experience of film. Until this weekend, I had never seen more than the first few minutes and some random clips here and there. Mostly, I had just never set aside the time. For the last few years, however, I never sought out the film because of what I know of the Middle East, and the film industry’s liberal interpretations of history. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Lawrence of Arabia”