The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2014: The Masque of the Red Death (1964), directed by Roger Corman

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Plague", by Crystal Castles

     Roger Corman is a strange figure in the world of film. The man is amazingly prolific, having directed 55 films and produced some 385 more during his long career in the industry, which goes back as far as 1954’s Monster from the Ocean Floor. He’s also mentored some of the biggest names in the industry, including James Cameron, Joe Dante, Ron Howard and Martin Scorsese, which as far as track records go is pretty solid. Despite his filmography geared almost entirely towards B-movies (and not what you might call ‘cult classics’ if the original Little Shop of Horrors is any indication), the man has made an impression in the medium that won’t soon be washed away. Hell, he was even the youngest director in history to receive a retrospective at the British Film Institute and the Museum of Modern Art. Pretty good for a guy who makes monster movies for a living.

     Perhaps the most well-known work of Corman’s were in the mid-60’s, with a series of films all based around the works of famous American author Edgar Allen Poe. Though they often only bared a tangential relationship to the actual events in the original texts, they were colourful, just violent enough, and featured some of biggest horror icons of the age, such as Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Vincent Price. Alouth they’re all weird enough to earn a position on this list, the one I’ve decided to go for this time around is adapted from one of my preferred Poe tales: even though you already know the name of it from the title, it’s The Masque of the Red Death.

     If you’ve ever read the original story by Poe, then you already have some idea as to what the story is all about; dickish Prince Prospero from some medieval land holds a grand costume party for all his royal friends in his castle while all the peasants outside die of the plague, and receives a grisly surprise in the end. So it is in the film version, but because that wasn’t enough to fill out a full-length movie, Corman decided to make his own alterations to flesh it out. We get the required attractive romantic leads Francesca (played by the very Caucasian Jane Asher) and Gino (played by some guy), an entire subplot based on another Poe story is added (“Hop-Frog”, the main characters of which are renamed Hop-Toad and Esmeralda in this film for some unknown reason), and of course Prospero is a Satanist. Yes, Prince Prospero (played by the legendary Vincent Price) is now a full-blown Devil worshipper, trying to corrupt the sweet, virginal Christian Francesca to a life of implied debauchery. The grand theological debate might have made for a good theme to focus on, but the movie is so biased towards a certain side that it all feels hokey. Francesca acts like someone glued a red wig to a block of wood, and when the grand defense of Christianity is ‘I’m too stupid to know better, but I know you’re bad because reasons’ (paraphrased), that debate ends up seeming a bit uneven. Which makes it seem like this is a religiously themed movie in America that isn’t pro-Christian, but Prospero comes off as such a murdering dickbag that all his valid criticisms and redeemable actions fall by the wayside. I know I shouldn’t expect that much controversy from some 60s B-movie, but if they’re going thrown those elements into a story they should at least try and do something novel with it, otherwise what was the damn point? It could’ve been just the love triangle between Gino, Francesca, and Prospero without any of the Satan crap, and it the story could have played out exactly the same. I guess the Devil was big that year.

     My creative problems with the story aside, Masque of the Red Death is an okay horror/thriller movie for its time. I’ve always loved older films explosive use of color, and this movie is based on color. Vincent Price steals the show of course, as he does with almost every film he’s been in. It’s certainly a twist on an old favorite, and if you know to expect something hokey going into it, this might be a good film to get into this Halloween.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016: Spirits of the Dead (1968), directed by Roger Vadim, Louis Malle and Federico Fellini

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "A Dream Within A Dream", by The Alan Parsons Project

     If there are two things that you just don’t see all that often in movies nowadays, it’s Edgar Allan Poe and anthology movies.

     Now as far as film legacies go, there aren’t many American writers, especially horror writers, that have achieved the same level of success on the silver screen Poe. There have not only been scores of films based directly or indirectly on his work (The Raven from earlier in this list, the Roger Corman series in the late 60s), but even films based on Poe himself (anybody remember that one movie with John Cusack?). That being said, there hasn’t really been anything Poe-related out recently, and it doesn’t seem like there’s as much of a outcry for Poe than there was in the past. Is America just not in a mid 19th century mood anymore, or are we just not interested in things related to books anymore? Who can say?

     In the case of anthology films, or films comprised of separate story segments (occasionally directed by separate people) compiled into one artistic piece, well those have never been all that prevalent in general. I can name drop a few, The Twilight Zone Movie, Creepshow, Black Sabbath, but it’s a pretty underused framing device that emphasizes brevity . Hell, even anthology TV shows are rare, despite the incredible pedigree that it has garnered for the horror and sci-fi genres (the Twilight Zone of course, the Outer Limits, Tales From the Crypt, Night Gallery if you’re being generous). Has modern America become so obsessed with the idea of continuity and arcs that we’ve killed off episodic storytelling? Should shows stick to 6 episodes if they’re going to stretch one story arc over an entire season? Who can say?

     For those who love the works of Poe and anthology films, look no farther than Spirits of the Dead, otherwise known as Tales of Mystery and Histoires Extraordinaires, starring Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda and Terence Stamp, among others. From the U.K. we have Roger Vadim with “Metzengerstein”, a story about a beautiful and sadistic Countess, her cousin, and a mysterious black horse. From France we have “William Wilson”, directed by Louis Malle, about a sociopathic young man who is stalked by another man who just so happens to also be named William Wilson. Finally, there’s “Toby Dammit” by Italian director Federico Fellini, detailing the tragic downward spiral of an neurotic, alcoholic actor who’s arrived in Rome for an awards ceremony. Fun fact: Only the first two parts of this movie are actually based on stories found in the Poe collection Tales of Mystery & Imagination, which is the name it first released under in the U.K.

     Out of the three, I found that it was Fellini’s contribution that stood out as the most interesting, both narratively and creatively speaking. Vadim and Malle’s stories are entertaining enough, and they stuck to the Poe identity much closer than Fellini, but there’s something so… ‘of the times’ about them that keeps them from standing out. The extensive use of colors, the cheesecake eroticism, the way the camera lingers on certain things to make sure you know they’re important, it all feels like something you’d see in, say, Corman’s Masque of the Red Death or a late era Hammer horror movie. That’s not to say they’re bad of course, but you know what you’re going to get with those stories, and they run on just long enough that you’re relieved when they finally decide to wrap up.

     “Toby Dammit” however, despite having the least in common with it’s source material, seems far more unique and prescient even today. It’s a surreal, kaleidoscopic mix of paranoia and self-destruction from beginning to end, and only rarely does it seem like we as the audience are going to be let in on what’s running through the titular Toby’s mind as stumbles madly to his inevitable conclusion. In that way, I think that Fellini manages to capture the sense of ‘fear & loathing’, that infamous state of mind coined by the great Hunter Thompson, better than any other filmmaker I’ve seen yet. Even Terry Gilliam, the man who directed the excellent Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, never quite reached the frenetic rush of anxiety, self-hatred and dissociation as “Toby” manages to achieve at its climax. It’s a question of pacing and it’s a question of brevity, and Fellini appears to feel more at ease with them than Vadim and Malle, who struggle at times in their sections to pad out their runtimes. Especially Vadim, who feels the need to stick a multi-minute long montage between a woman and her horse in the second half. And trust me, that’s not as interesting as the internet would have you believe.

     Vadim’s section is easily the weakest of the three, but I wouldn’t say it’s outright bad. Malle’s is rather predictable, which might be the fault of the author rather than the director really, although there is some worthwhile cinematography. Fellini’s is, as I mentioned, quite good. So overall I suppose it averages out to a pretty good movie, and I’d say it has earned a recommendation. If you’re working a very Poe-centric Halloween this, make sure you get this one in the queue.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016 -- The Raven (1935), directed by Louis Friedlander

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "Silver Raven", by Gene Clark

     When it comes to the sacred art of compiling Halloween movie lists, you can’t do it up proper unless you have a certain respect for the classics. I’m not talking about about atomic age sci-fi fare like The Incredible Shrinking Man, I’m talking old-school, Golden Age of Hollywood style, pre-movie ratings board horror. Back when the idea of talking in your movies was still an impressive bit of movie magic and you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting some gothic architecture. Yessir, even if Universal was about the only major player in the monster movie game at the time, and they earned that spot by a steady stream of hits. Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Mummy, The Phantom of the Opera, movies that have captured the hearts and minds of generations of people. 

     Well, the good ones did at least, pretty sure no one was inspired by the three shitty Mummy sequels.

     The Raven, directed by Lew Landers under the name Louis Friedlander, is what you might call a B-level Universal classic. Released in 1935, the film acts a kind of companion piece to The Black Cat, which was released a year earlier. Both films starred Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, two men who had already become horror icons with the release of Dracula and Frankenstein at the dawn of the decade, with Karloff as the villain in The Black Cat and Lugosi taking the spot in The Raven. It’s worth noting though that even in The Raven, where Lugosi was the primary character, Karloff still received top billing despite having a far less important role. A precursor to the way their careers went, perhaps.

     Anyway, in the film Lugosi plays the enigmatically foreign Dr. Vollin, a gifted surgeon and a huge fan of the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Such a fan in fact that he has actually made working reproductions of several torture devices featured in Poe’s work, including the titular pendulum. Which would just make him a rather creepy but otherwise harmless recluse on any other day, but when he’s pushed to save the life of the beautiful Jean Thatcher, things change. A simple infatuation with Jean soon gives way to obsession, and obsession to a sadistic madness, as Vollin plots wicked schemes against those who would dare to stand against his ambition. Boris Karloff stars as Edward Bateman, a criminal looking for a new identity who is given a hideous new form by Vollin. I know, Karloff as a hulking, deformed, but ultimately sympathetic being would never work in a movie, but it’s fine.

     Compared to later movies in the genre and even some of its peers, The Raven seems like an incredibly simplistic and inconsequential film, and that’s because it is. Characters that just barely manage to be one-dimensional, a plot that wraps itself up in a neat little bow in less than an hour, little to no violence (despite being a movie centering around torture devices), and only ones to actually die are the bad guys (again, despite this being a movie centered around torture devices). The inclusion of Boris Karloff also does nothing for the film aside from drawing in a couple more moviegoers into this cinematic antlion pit, considering he could have been just as easily replaced by Tor Johnson and nothing would have changed. I know that I probably have different expectations than a movie fan of the 1930s, and having Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in the same film was probably mind-blowing, but how much is it really worth seeing Karloff do a less interesting version of something that he’s already done? Especially with the implication in the billing and marketing being that Karloff is an important figure in the film. Anything to sell a ticket.

     Still, there is a certain appeal in seeing Lugosi chew the scenery and acting like a loon, and if that’s enough of a reason for you then by all means watch The Raven. Those just getting their feet wet in old-school horror however, Universal and otherwise, will probably have a ways to go before they need to add this one to their watch queue. Hell, it’s not even a sure thing for movies that are based on the works of Poe, as it’s competing with 2012’s The Raven starring John Cusack and 1953’s The Raven starring Vincent Price and Peter Lorre, which just so happens to have starred Boris Karloff as well. Who knew Poespoitation movies were such a lucrative genre?