Review: 'Horror Hotel' DVD

In 1960, director John Moxey arguably outdid Hammer with his own atmosphere-rich Gothic horror. In contrast to Hammer's vibrant colors, Moxey opted for high-contrast black and white and deep focus photography to tell his tale of a burned witch who reappears in the present to lure a young woman to her sacrificial death. Much has been made of the structural similarities between Moxey's City of the Dead and Hitchcock's Psycho, but Moxey's story is purely supernatural and his film much more stylized. It's also a lot more fun than the grim and realistic Psycho. 

Review: 'Film Noir Style: The Killer 1940s'

Even with its multilayered mysteries and bizarre developments, film noir was always more about style than plot. No one can tell you what The Big Sleep is about, but everyone remembers Bogart’s rumpled trench coat/fedora combo and Bacall’s sharp houndstooth suit.

Kimberly Truhler surveys film noir style in her new book Film Noir Style. This is more than an analysis of the costumes the actors wore in films such as The Postman Always Rings Twice and Gilda, though it is that. Truhler occasionally discusses how lighting, set design, and camera angles fashioned the instantly identifiable noir aesthetic.

 

Review: 'Notorious' Blu-ray

Eight months after the end of World War II, Alicia Huberman’s dad is convicted of spying on the U.S. for the Nazis. An agent named Devlin recruits her to infiltrate the home of her dad’s pal Alex Sebastian, a Nazi industrialist hiding out in Rio who has long carried a torch for Alicia. Since Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia and Cary Grant is Devlin, they’re just too damned good looking to keep their hands off of each other, and the budding romance complicates her dangerous liaison with Alex, played by a unsettlingly sympathetic Claude Rains.

This bizarre love triangle is the backbone of Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious. Without the Gothic feverishness, luridness, wild set pieces, or high adventure of Hitchcock’s most celebrated work, Notorious may stand as his most low-key and adult film. Grant even suppresses his usually uncontainable charm to play Devlin as a cold fish whose actual motivations do not become clear until the very end of the film. All of this does not render Notorious similarly chilly. Hitchcock still manages to electrify his imagery with flashes of disorienting camerawork and wrings classic moments of suspense out of such subtle actions as a palmed key and a dwindling champagne supply. However, it is Bergman who really ignites the atmosphere. She was rarely better than she is here as a fierce alcoholic determined to outpace her father’s reputation but ends up as a pawn in a potentially fatal scheme.

The Criterion Collection is now giving Notorious a 4k upgrade, and the film looks good with a natural grain and no noticeable flaws. At times sharpness and contrast are a tad weak, but the picture looks very fine overall. The supplements constitute a veritable crash course in cinema studies. Chief among them is David Thompson’s 2009 documentary Once Upon a Time… “Notorious”, which spends 52-minutes analyzing the filmmaking, describing making of details, and placing the picture in historical/political context…some of which will require a very strong stomach as it includes actual concentration camp footage. There are also plenty of new exclusives, such as David Bordwell’s video essay focusing on the film’s style and chillingly subtle ending, an interview with cinematographer John Bailey on the look of the picture, and additional featurettes starring Hitchcock’s biographer Donald Spoto and David Raim. There is also an hour-long radio adaptation of Notorious starring Ingrid Bergman  and Joseph Cotton, a very brief pathe reel featuring Bergman and Hitchcock, and Marian Keane’s audio commentary ported over from Criterion’s 2001 DVD.

Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors: #3

Halloween season simply isn’t Halloween season without a regular dose of golden age Universal horror (1923-1963). Every day this October, I’ll be giving you a steady IV drip of it by counting down Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors!

#3. Psycho (1963- dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

As I said in my discussion of The Birds a few days ago, Hitchcock’s horrors of the early sixties didn’t as much wrap up an age of horror as they launched a new one. With the possible exception of Franju’s gory Le yeux sans visage, Psycho was the ultimate shot across the bow for horror’s new age. After subsisting on years of vampires, ghosts, giant spiders, and other humbugs, 1960s audiences must have been utterly rattled by this unsparing portrait of a human monster. The film’s sexuality, the viciousness of the attacks, the grotesqueness of Mother’s corpse, and the sympathetic way Norman Bates is presented surely reconfigured the minds of movie audiences and made them capable of digesting even hardier stuff such as Night of the Living Dead, A Clockwork Orange, and The Exorcist. Hitchcock maximizes his film’s shocks with tricky, bait-and-switch storytelling, and Anthony Perkins aids and abets that assault with his completely ingratiating portrayal of Norman Bates. As far as I’m concerned, horror cinema’s two greatest decades are the 1930s and 1960s, and Universal was responsible for setting both of them in motion.

Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors: #7

Halloween season simply isn’t Halloween season without a regular dose of golden age Universal horror (1923-1963). Every day this October, I’ll be giving you a steady IV drip of it by counting down Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors!

#7. The Birds (1963- dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

Hitchcock’s horrors of the early sixties really mark the beginning of a new age of horror distinct from the days of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, and The Gill Man. They are utterly contemporary, psychologically complex, graphically violent, and overtly sexual. In the case of The Birds, Hitchcock’s brand of horror is also very colorful. Because of its complete cinematic sophistication, it may be a little unfair to rank The Birds against most of the other movies in this series, but it does deserve a place here. Hitchcock was a shit, and it’s hard to find Melanie Daniels’s terror entertaining knowing what we know about what the director put Tippi Hedren through, but his artistry is unassailable. The playground, children’s party, and yes, attic sequences constitute a master’s class in establishing suspense, delivering terrifying action, editing, sound, acting, and everything else that goes into making a superior horror movie. The Birds is one of the most superior of all.  

5 Superior Adaptations of Horror Lit

Adapting literature for the cinema is always tricky, and this can be especially true when dealing with stories intended to raise shivers. What is terrifyingly evocative on the page can flop like a sack of wet leaves when realized with a dude in a zip-up monster suit on screen. Acts unimaginably awful when described cease to play on the imagination when depicted with a rubber knife and karo-syrup blood. Some of horror’s greatest literary works, such as “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, It, and I Am Legend, have never received ideal screen adaptations. Some page-to-screen trips have been more lateral with stories such as Frankenstein and Dracula offering very different yet equally essential elements when turned into movies or ones such as The Haunting of Hill House and Rosemary’s Baby being faithful enough to be genuine cases of “six of one/half dozen of another.” On occasion, a film goes above and beyond, reinventing the story upon which it is based in ways that make the original text virtually irrelevant. Here are five of those superior horrors.

31 TV Shows for 31 Days of Halloween Season: Day 21

Series: Alfred Hitchcock Presents

Episode: “Final Escape”, in which Season Hubley plays a convicted murder who plots a foolproof escape that involves hiding in a coffin and getting buried in the prison graveyard. Ha! Most of the shows featured in 31 TV Shows for 31 Days of Halloween Season have some sort of supernatural angle, but “Final Escape” may be the scariest of them all because of its realism. The final image will give you nightmares even if you see it coming. Hubley sure didn’t.

31 TV Shows for 31 Days of Halloween Season: Day 9

Series: The Alfred Hitchcock Hour

Episode: “The Jar”, in which a good ol’ boy buys a jar containing a mysterious object at a carny show and become a local celeb when all his friends and neighbors swarm to his house to take a gander at the bizarre thing. The Alfred Hitchcock Hour usually delivered clever, twisty murder mysteries, but “The Jar” is kind of something else. Directed by Norman Lloyd (who played the weasley title character in Hitchcock’s Saboteur), its story and execution are much weirder than usual. Lloyd’s queasy blend of the farcical and the utterly grotesque make it something special and the ideal hour for Halloween season.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 365

The Date: September 29

The Movie: The Wrong Man (1956)

What Is It?: Although it explores the director’s pet topic to the point that its title basically translates to Generic Alfred Hitchcock Movie, The Wrong Man is one of Hitch’s more unusual films because it is based on a true story and manages more sympathy for its characters than his usual brilliant exercises in style do. Really, there are no more heartbreaking people in the Hitchcock cannon than Manny Balestrero (Henry Fonda), a bass player wrongfully accused of being a “hold up man” (I can’t help but find that designation hilarious and wonder if there is a less awkward term for someone who holds places up), and his wife Rose (Vera Miles), who loses her grip on reality while going through the ordeal of her husband’s incarceration and trial. Wrenching stuff.

Why Today?: On this day in 1909, the real Manny Balestrero is born.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 273

The Date: June 29

The Movie: Vertigo (1958)

What Is It?: Fear-addled Jimmy Stewart is made to believe that Kim Novak has been possessed by the ghost of a woman named Carlotta Valdes. This proves a ruse, but it allows Hitchcock to indulge in a sort of California-Gothic sensibility. Stewart’s acrophobic episodes (his vertigo doesn’t seem as acute, but I guess Acrophobia isn’t a very catchy movie title) are made horrific with Hitchcock’s distorted camera effects. His psychedelic nightmare is like something from one of Roger Corman’s Poe pictures and Bernard Herrmann’s score is disorienting and romantic.

Why Today?: On this day in 1911, Bernard Herrmann is born.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 227

The Date: May 14

The Movie: Strangers on a Train (1950)

What Is It?: Robert Walker meets Farley Granger on a train and wants to do a little criss-cross. Dim, dim Granger does not realize that means swapping murders. A-doy! One of Hitchcock’s nastiest and funniest movies, and daughter Pat Hitchcock is priceless as the little sister of Granger’s fiancé.

Why Today?: Today is National Train Day.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 201

The Date: April 18

The Movie: Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

What Is It?: Hitchcock named this disturbing story of a beloved uncle who turns out to be not-so-great as his favorite of his own films. Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotton are brilliant as a niece/uncle team with a pretty strange bond.

Why Today?: The railway station in the film’s climax was one of the few structures to survive the earthquake of April 18, 1906.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 123

The Date: January 31

The Movie: Lifeboat (1944)

What Is It?: Alfred Hitchcock makes his first great gimmick picture by dropping the divine Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Hume Cronyn, Henry Hull, Walter Slezak, and the rest (sung to the tune of “Gilligan’s Island”, of course) into a lifeboat for 96 minutes and seeing what happens. There’s a definite reality-show dynamic going on here as the survivors of a U-boat attack decide whether or not to vote Slezak off the boat. Look out for Hitch’s requisite cameo in a diet-pill ad!

Why Today?: On this day in 1902, Tallulah Bankhead is born.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 110

The Date: January 18

The Movie: North by Northwest (1959)

What Is It?: In the midst of his darkest run of movies (Vertigo through Marnie), Hitch has a lot of fun by running Cary Grant through a mistaken-identity gauntlet of kidnapping, drunk driving, cornfield stalking, and Mt. Rushmore climbing.

Why Today?: On this day in 1904, Cary Grant is born.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 97

The Date: January 5

The Movie: The Birds (1963)

What Is It?: The petty problems of a spoiled debutante and a condescending mama’s boy cease to matter when our fine feathered friends start trying to peck their and everyone’s eyes out. A moment of psyche-scarring horror occurs when they succeed.

Why Today?: Today is National Bird Day.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 73

The Date: December 12

The Movie: Psycho (1960)

What Is It?: Janet Leigh is Marion Crane, a secretary charged with depositing a $40,000 real estate deposit in the bank. Marion decides to make off with the cash, but she has a change of heart before taking a shower. Honestly, I can’t remember what happens after that.

Why Today?: This is the date that Marion Crane takes her shower.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 60

The Date: November 29

The Movie: Suspicion (1941)

What Is It?: Alfred Hitchcock’s kooky noir flummoxes expectations by casting Cary Grant as a potential creep who may be plotting to moider perpetually anxious Joan Fontaine. That glowing glass of milk is certainly suspicious…

Why Today?: On this day in 1986, Cary Grant dies.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 43

The Date: November 12

The Movie: Rear Window (1954)

What Is It?: Hitchcock’s most satisfying formal experiment locks Jimmy Stewart in an apartment and leg cast for two hours, allowing Grace Kelly to embody the film’s adventurous spirit. The backyard set is one of cinema’s most enchanting.

Why Today?: On this day in 1929, Grace Kelly born.

Review: 'The Bride Wore Black' Blu-ray

Francois Truffaut was one of cinema’s key filmmakers and one of its key students and critics. He had already showed off that first hat with The 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim, and Fahrenheit 451 and the second and third ones with his work for Cahiers du Cinema, in which he posited the auteur theory, by the time he made The Bride Wore Black in 1967. Here Truffaut’s art and his obsession with the art of another—namely Alfred Hitchcock—gel in a film that begins as winking homage before developing into something more personal.

When The Bride Wore Black (based on a novel by William Irish, who also wrote “It Had to Be Murder”, which Hitch adapted into Rear Window) begins by showing generally mundane images set to Bernard Herrmann’s overwhelming and overwhelmingly recognizable score, it’s as if Truffaut is trying to shove a signifier of Hitchcock’s most melodramatic scenes into scenes nearly devoid of melodrama despite the fact that the woman on screen tries to kill herself at one point.

That woman is Julie Kohler (Jeanne Moreau), who soon sets about her own obsessive mission by insinuating herself into the lives of various men and killing them. Her motive remains a mystery for a quarter of the film, but since the title of the movie is The Bride Wore Black, I don’t feel like I’m spoiling too much by saying she’s on a mission of revenge against the creeps she blames for her groom’s death.

While Truffaut seems to drop clues about his movies’ apparent main influence (we see such locations of iconic Hitchcock scenes as a schoolyard, a speeding train, and a concert hall), Julie differs from the mass of Hitch’s charming main characters because she is a husk (it is telling that she shares a surname with the similarly emotion-drained title character of Shoot the Piano Player). She carries on with her grim mission devoid of emotion, something that could not be said of even sketchy characters like Norman Bates and Marnie Edgar. This means The Bride Wore Black is not as fun to watch as your average Hitchcock movie, but maybe revenge, murder, and soul-destroying grief are not supposed to be fun (or maybe they are—just see how Quentin Tarantino reshaped this movie’s premise into Kill Bill). It is, however, a suspense film worthy of the master when obstacles such as an unexpected visit from a redheaded model, a sweet little boy, and even the possibility that she may have found a new love fall into Julie’s vengeful path. These are the film’s most powerful moments.

I’ve been wanting to see The Bride Wore Black ever since I saw Kill Bill ten years ago. It’s finally available on blu-ray via Twilight Time, and in a beautiful transfer with strong blacks, strong color (though this is not a strikingly colorful movie), and strong grain. Supplementing the film (presented in both subtitled and English dubbed versions—the dubbed one contains different musical cues) is a commentary by film historians Julie Kirgo and Nick Redman and Herrmann biographer Steven C. Smith. Smith’s presence puts a lot of the focus on the score, and he discusses the clashes between Hermann and Truffaut over the director’s choices in this film—as well as Herrmann’s clashed with Hitchcock. Kirgo tries to pull the focus away from Hitchcock, whose influence she does not see as strongly in the film as a lot of other commentators do, and discusses the more meaningful role gender dynamics play in the film. There is also a supplementary CD featuring a 79-minute interview with Bernard Herrmann that spotlights the composer’s short temper. The blu-ray disc’s isolated score track spotlights his art.

Get The Bride Wore Black on Screenarchives.com here.

Review: 'A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock'

Although Thomas Leitch and Leland Poague don’t dare say as much in their introduction to A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock, they certainly seemed to have compiled their essay anthology to be a sort of final word on Hitchcock scholarship. Now this is no more likely than the idea that Mark Lewisohn’s sprawling All These Years series will put an end to Beatles books, but there is a similar sweeping scope to A Companion that could keep a lot of students from bothering with another Hitchcock study.

Our two editors are well aware of all the other anthologies on the market and selected their essays accordingly. There have already been ample discussions of Hitchcock’s macguffins and his storyboarding and his theories about suspense vs. surprise and his cynicism, misogyny, and so on. Any new volume can only serve its purpose by approaching this well-exhausted topic in fresh ways without overreaching. A satisfying number of the thirty essays contained in A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock accomplish that, as when Lesley Brill counters the usual accusations of cynicism by convincingly repainting Hitchcock as a romantic both in his treatment of love and his charming reliance on fairy tale structure. Richard Allen reaches beyond the usual noir suspects to look at the director’s influence on less recognized followers, such as Last Year at Marienbad, Blow Up, The Tenant, Something Wild, and Jurassic Park. In general, the writers also do a decent job of looking beyond the most over-analyzed Hitchcock films (Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds, etc., which are well-represented here too) and into such relative obscurities as The Pleasure Garden, I Confess, and The Lodger, making for a fuller picture of his work than we often receive.  Teachers and students alike will find much to keep themselves busy in A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock... at least until the next heavy-duty study of his work arrives.