Have a PSYCHO Halloween!
October 31st, 2008 by Scott Marks
Here’s a 10 minute solo piece I did on horror films a couple of Halloweens ago for KPBS-Radio’s These Days. I was asked to come up with three bone chilling DVD rentals guaranteed to scare even Count Floyd. Admittedly, horror films are not my drug of choice mainly because it is the most recycled genre of all. For every Psycho or Rosemary’s Baby or The Hitcher there are literally dozens (hundreds?) of wretched knockoffs, sequels and remakes.
For me, it all peaks a few minutes in when I recount an abusive childhood memory: Dad taking me to see Hitchcock’s Psycho when I was five. What was he thinking? That it was hot out, we didn’t own an air conditioner and he wanted to cool off in a movie theatre for a couple of hours.
This year I spent Halloween eve revisiting Roger Corman’s X:The Man With the X-Ray Eyes (1963) and Jack Arnold’s Tarantula (1955). It’s hard to be horrified watching Ray Milland’s bad toupee and a Hawaiian-shirted Don Rickles as a carnival barker, but X remains a very well made, exceedingly entertaining horror film. (Rickles gives his best on-screen performance this side of Casino!) It’s an allegorical tale of a doctor who invents a miraculous serum that gives him a Superman-like power to see through everything. Instead of putting his invention to good use, Milland is kicked out of the hospital for malpractice and winds up as a sideshow clairvoyant. The film ends at a revival meeting, led by Corman regular John Dierkes, where the man who puts the “mentalist” in Christian Fundamentalist dutifully follows scripture and pulls the old “an eye for an eye” on himself. Columbia Pictures has announced a planned remake for 2010 and for once I’m not upset. In our soon-to-be post George Bush era, this parable is ripe for retelling. (It also makes a great double-bill with Jerry Lewis’ The Nutty Professor.)
Have not seen Tarantula in ages and frankly, the only reason I pulled it off the shelf is because I remembered Whit Bissell in it. (No one says “Halloween” more than the good Doctor Bissell.) No Whit, and even less wit, as John Agar, Leo G. Carroll and Gina Gershon lookalike Mara Corday are terrified by a giant, hairy arachnid. They should have quit with the impressive spider FX, but, no, Leo G. had to experiment on humans and subsequently get a dose himself. As in too many 50s horror films, the makeup draws howls…of laughter. Dan Blocker’s cosmetic makeover in the 3 Stooges Outer Space Jitters is unnerving by comparison.
Happy Halloween, everybody, and as Pee-Wee Herman said, “DON’T EAT ANY APPLES YOU CAN SHAVE WITH!!!”
Listen to the KPBS broadcast here.
Tags: Alfred Hitchcock, Don Rickles, Halloween, halloween movies, horror films, psycho, psycho movie, roger corman, rosemary's baby, tarantula, tarantula movie, THE HITCHER, the man with the x-ray eyes, x: the man with the x-ray eyesShare: 
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