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 eyesFiled Under DVD, Image Blog, Interviews, Reviews
Orson Welles’ THE WAR OF THE WORLDS turns 70 today
October 30th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Listening to Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds 70 years after the fact, it’s hard to imagine the mass hysteria induced by a dramatized broadcast about Martian invasion. Welles presented the show as the Halloween episode of his successful Mercury Theatre on the Air. The anthology series ran as was what was once called a “sustaining program,” or one that plays uninterrupted without commercials. Welles’ “We Interrupt This Program” technique led almost a third of the 6 million listeners to believe that America was actually under attack by space invaders. The fact that America was on the verge of war didn’t help matters. Many listeners panicked for fear that it was the Germans, not Martians, that were attacking. (Adolf Hitler referred to the ensuing panic as “evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of democracy.”)
For decades rumors circulated that the terrified masses fled their homes and in some cases committed suicide. While thousands, maybe millions, were spooked there is no evidence, short of sensational newspaper accounts, that any of this took place. CBS stood behind Welles and the broadcast reminding officials that listeners were frequently informed throughout the broadcast that the show was a performance.
According to Wikipedia, “When a meeting between H.G. Wells and Orson Welles was broadcast on Radio KTSA San Antonio on October 28, 1940, Wells expressed a lack of understanding of the apparent panic and that it was, perhaps, only pretense, like the American version of Halloween, for fun. The two men and their radio interviewer joked about the matter, though with embarrassment. KTSA, as a CBS affiliate, had carried the broadcast.”
Listen to the entire broadcast (and all of the other Mercury Theatre on the Air productions) here.
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