Despite the wish casting in the banner of this ad for a "Special One Night Only" Sneak Preview screening of Gremlins 2 The New Batch, the Gremlins did not get out of hand when they were unleashed on June 15th. So it goes.
Less a linear sequel and more of an outright Looney Tunes cartoon-style parody of what a Gremlins sequel might be like, both in front and behind the camera. Gremlins 2 The New Batch is a whirling and wobbling dervish anarchic energy and slapstick comedy.
If there is to be a downside to this movie, it is that it leans a tad too heavily into cartoonishly comedic chaos and nowhere near enough toward something approximating an actual, you know, story. It just takes the narrative framing of the first film upon which to hang an insane, almost exhausting, number of jokes, references, gags, parodies, and creature effects.
Not that that is a bad thing. There are will always be times when one is dire need of watching something that only exists to be a silly, funny, and goofy good time. An admission that makes me want to plop on the couch and watch Gremlins 2 The New Batch one more time.
I wanted to believe him, but I couldn't take the chance. If this Bishop was lying it could mean that the Alien would never be destroyed. I knew what I had to do...
I remember seeing some television spots for this big bug throwback's theatrical release and being freaked out by them. Surely The Giant Spider Invasion would shock and terrify me beyond all measure.
Twenty-three or so years would pass before I would actually see The Giant Spider Invasion and, well, whatever horrors I imaged the film containing at age eight or so turned out to be far, far worse than what was in the film itself. But it did provide fodder for what just might be my all time favorite episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
"GILLETTE, THE BEST A MAN CAN GET!" "PACKERS WIN THE SUPER BOWL!" "MOSES, MOVE THE BIKE!"
Quoting it only makes me want to watch it again.
As far as the film's co-hits go. The Alameda Showcase had The Giant Spider Invasion on a double-bill with 1972's Tales from the Crypt. The Eastmont Four had it showing with a different feature from 1972. The Hit Man, which starred Bernie Casey and Pam Grier. At the Roxie, The Giant Spider Invasion was paired with yet another different feature from 1972, Eddie Romero's Philippines lensed The Twilight People. That same double-bill was also unspooling at the Coliseum Drive-in. But the Nimitz bucked the trend of dusting off features from 1972 by pairing The Giant Spider Invasion with 1973's cheapie science-fiction thriller The Clones. Pleasant Hill's Motor Movies Drive-In did not buck the trend, as it had Spider, like the Alameda Showcase, paired with Tales from the Crypt.
United Artists in Berkeley had to have had the most thematically appropriate pairing, though. There it was paired with the William Castle production Bug. The Plaza, the eighth and final venue listed, also had it showing with 1973's The Clones.
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger might be the only Ray Harryhausen effects movie I saw on the big screen. While this June 5, 1977 ad clipped from the San Francisco Examiner listed the Alameda Theatre, I remember seeing it at the ever reliable Southshore.
While the film has a bevy of stop motion beasties to enjoy, the only big screen moment that lodged in my memory was the antagonist bemoaning there was not enough magic potion to fully complete her transformation from bird back into human form. "Not enough! Not enough!"
From out of the shadows came Bishop. The company had sent a Bishop look-alike to gain my trust. He said the company wanted to remove the Alien inside me and destroy it. He said they wanted to help me. But what if he was lying?
This newspaper ad is all that stuck with me for the brief theatrical run of what became the modest cult/sleeper hit Alligator. Blessed with a solid cast that got to work with a tongue-in-cheek script by John Sayles, who claims to have wrote this on a plane flight from the New York to Los Angeles. Alligator is a fun, unpretentious, and, at times, downright nasty monster movie.
For whatever reason, this is one that slipped through my fingers and I did not see it until it debuted on network television. I think the film's infamous "walk the plank" scene made it to the airwaves intact, but that first viewing has been mixed and muddled with countless follow-up VHS and DVD viewings that it no longer matters. But I did know about the scene well in advance, because someone at school that had seen it on the big screen talked about it.
A check of Friday's "Theatre Guide" revealed that the Roxie would have Alligator on triple-bill with Shogun Assassin and Planet of the Dinosaurs. The Southshore had it paired with the action film High Risk. The Coliseum Drive-in was showing it with Humanoids from the Deep, while United Artists in Berkeley had it coupled with Windwalker. If you went to see Alligator at the Festival Cinema in Hayward, you could watch it with Excalibur. The Cooper Twin in San Pablo also had it with Humanoids from the Deep, while the Regency in Pleasant Hill paired with the Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin historical action flick Death Hunt.
Ivan Reitman and Dan Ackroyd, with the assist of Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, and an almost unacknowledged Ernie Hudson, captured lightning in a bottle that, despite numerous repeat attempts, was never truly been recaptured.
This might have been my favorite film of the summer of 1984, although it did receive stiff competition from the even darker and actually scary at times Gremlins. Which just so happened to have been released on the very same weekend as Ghostbusters.
I was visiting friends and family in the states at the time, which meant I got to see it during its theatrical run while it was enjoying massive business and the Southland Cinema in Hayward. At least that is where I remember seeing it.
I could see them across the way; they had finally arrived. The Weyland-Yutani Commando team charged up the stairs, ready for battle. They were outfitted in full military uniform and each of them carried a pulse rifle. May question was: Were they here to rescue us... or the Alien?
While Brian De Palma's cult oddity Phantom of the Paradise was first released in late 1974, I did not see it on the big screen until this 1976 re-release.
One of the things I truly enjoy about clipping and sharing these vintage ads is learning and processing the difference between when something happened versus how I remember it having happened. Sometimes the history and the memory align, sometimes it does not. This is an example of the former.
I remember sitting in the Alameda Southshore, which was still called the Showcase at this time, and recognizing Rod Serling's distinctive voice speaking the opening narration. A voice that I recognized as the host of Night Gallery, not The Twilight Zone. Because I would not see an episode of The Twilight Zone until 1978 or 79. Maybe? Oh, and my I remember my first ever Twilight Zone episode being the Charles Beaumont scripted A Nice Place to Visit, which remains one of my all time favorite episodes.
Phantom of the Paradise would also serve as my first ever Brian De Palma movie. And a wonderful and memorable introduction it was, I think.
As far as actual history differing, or merging, with personal memory goes. A check of the theatre listing revealed...
That Phantom of the Paradise was double-billed with another, far less stellar, childhood memory of mine. The painfully unfunny (at least that is how I remember it) Old Dracula. Which means that I saw them on this double-bill, although I did not remember that as being the case.
But... my memory of where I was seated, and thus how the screen image was positioned before for me, for both films were identical. Why I do not remember seeing these two together, I have no idea. But see them I did. Together, at the Alameda Showcase, in 1976. At the tender age of eight or nine.
I was on summer break from SFSU, and thus in Hong Kong, when Invaders from Mars was released at selected theaters and drive-ins to a less than spectacular reception from both audiences and critics. So I missed out on seeing it on the big screen. Which is too bad, as I thought it was a nifty 'little' movie when I saw it on home video.
While not as chaotically bonkers as Hooper's delightful cult classic Lifeforce, which had cratered at the box office the year before, Invaders from Mars, despite looking and feeling ever so slightly choppy and uneven, has a colorful charm and a dreamlike sense of wonder to it. Elements that make it pair really well with Joe Dante's 1985 box office flop Explorers, which also, despite looking and feeling ever so slightly choppy and uneven, has the same kind of colorful charm and dreamlike sense of wonder to it as Invaders from Mars.
I think this movie is well worth seeing for the Martian ship set design, the Stan Winston creatures, and Daniel Pearl's gorgeous cinematography. There was an interesting essay, that was attributed to director Tobe Hooper, that was in John Russo's book Making Movies. It detailed some of the baffling meddling Hooper had to contend with while making this movie and should be sought out and read.
One anecdote I heard was that Golan/Globus, and the Cannon Group, were disappointed that the film was not scary enough. They wanted a scary monster movie, an alien invasion variation of Poltergeist. But Hooper was intent on making more of an E.T. style adventure.
And I think it succeeded, for the most part. This is one of those movies I really wished had done better at that box office. It would have been great if it had at least broken even at the box office and not lost a ton of cash for the struggling studio/distributor.
The Alien was trapped in the lead mould. But so were Dillon and I. There was a huge gantry overhead; our only chance was to climb out and onto the platform with Morse. I made it to the top and clung to one of the overhead pipes, helplessly watch as Dillon tried to climb to safety.
After a near two decade long hiatus from the horror genre, director Sam Raimi returned to the genre from which his career was birthed with the zesty Drag Me to Hell. At time of release I remember a smattering of online complaints about the film. One being that its PG-13 rating would rob it of any and all visceral thrills. Another being that it was not Evil Dead 4.
Being a Sam Raimi film, Drag Me to Hell blended visceral shocks with Three Stooges inspired splat-stick comedy to great effect. Longtime fans were also rewarded with an ending every bit as upbeat and optimistic as the ones for the first two Evil Dead movies had been.
For some reason my memory of these card got shuffled together whilst they were in storage. I thought this image was used in the trading card set Topps released for Alien in 1979.
Considering how The Omen both raked in copious amounts of cash (on an admittedly modest budget) and ended with an ominous promise of biblical torments to come. It is no surprise that Omen producer Harve Bennett and distributor 20th Century Fox decided to craft a series of films about Damien Thorn (aka The Antichrist) growing up and coming to power.
Not a bad concept, in theory. In execution, though? [Execution, get it? Hahaha] Not so much.
Even with the obvious and inevitable workings of the Law of Diminishing returns on display here, Damien Omen II remains my favorite of the trio. This might have to do with how Damien himself is characterized in the film. The film has the most tantalizing glimmer of an idea regarding Damien having a degree of personal autonomy about this whole Antichrist gig. What if he did not like the idea? What if did not want to do it?
It was just a glimmer though. A brief and tantalizing flicker of an interesting concept that helps elevate this weird twist on the coming of age trope ever so slightly above the humdrum. Couple that with some truly operatic death scenes, another terrific score by Jerry Goldsmith, and some well utilized production value, and it is easy to see why this middle entry is my Omen comfort viewing of choice.
Dillon rounded the corner just as I was confronting the creature. As the Alien crept closer to us, Dillon knew I was his only chance for survival. He grabbed me, holding me hostage. He used me as his shield as we inched back to the main corridor, leading the Alien closer to the lead mould.
Transcribing the text from the back of the cards onto this blog's pages had been both an education and reminder of just how muddled and up in the air the plot of Alien 3 truly was. This series glosses over some things, reinvents others, or just makes weird stuff up. Whether you had seen the movie before getting the cards or not, the fractured 'story' being told here feels as if it were being improvised from card to card.
What my first exposure to the work of Michael Crichton was is buried deep beneath the smothering Sands of Time. But I do remember watching this film adaptation when it made its network television debut. Being an enthusiastic fan of morbid fare, I loved the film's unsettling opening sequence. Yet everything after that seemed a tad sterile and, well, lifeless.
The end result was a film that kept my attention, but not my interest. I kept holding out hope that there would be a tad more devastation. Something that would make the threat a bit more palpable. Something more akin to The Color Out Of Space, I think. But that did not happen. So it goes.
Another woeful gap in my genre viewing. I remember the film's theatrical release, seeing the title on a drive-in marquee, and being somewhat curious about it. But I would have been eight or nine years old around this time and, even though I was somewhat intrigued, my parents were not.
Director Ralph Nelson had quite the career. He directed The Twilight Zone episode A World of His Own, as well as the films Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), Lillies of the Field (1963), and Charly (1968). To name only three.
He did make one movie I do remember seeing on the big screen. The Robert Mitchum vehicle The Wrath of God. "Rubby-dubby-dubby-dub, thanks for the grub."
The Alien appeared in the main corridor, slowly stalking Dillon and me. It was bigger than any others I'd seen. And the legs were different. But out was still an efficient predator. It had already gotten most of the others: Gregor, Williams, Jude, Kevin, Eric. Were we next?
One year after striking box office gold with Grizzly, director William Girdler, producer Edward L. Montoro, and stars Christopher George and Richard Jaekel gathered together to see if they might be able to milk more cash from the animal attack genre cow.
While Day of the Animals looks to have turned a modest-to-low profit at the box office, it did fall far short of collecting the impressive and sizable stacks of cash that Grizzly had raked in the year prior.
From my own admittedly skewed and imprecise memory, this movie came and went from local theatres and drive-ins without my noticing it. First time I saw it was when it debuted on television and I remember liking it okay. It held my 11, 12, or 13 year old attention, but it did not grab me like Grizzly had. So it goes.
As far as the co-hits keeping the film company on its opening weekend, the Alameda Showcase had it coupled with Embryo, while the Coliseum Drive-in had it with Grizzly. The Hayward 6 had Days of the Animals going solo, while the neighboring Union City Drive-In had it paired with Black Sunday. That would be the one with the blimp, not the Mario Bava movie.
Richmond's Hilltop Drive-In also had it paired with Grizzly, while Pleasant Hill's Motor Movies Drive-In had it with Rooster Cogburn, of all things. Of all of those films, I think Embryo is the only one I have yet to see.
Vincent Price plays a beloved horror icon attempting to restart his acting career after a stint in a mental institution recovering from a nervous breakdown. Bizarre occurrences and suspicious shenanigans soon have Price's character wondering if he is, in fact, truly stable.
I have only seen Madhouse once and, if memory serves, I spent most of its running time vacillating from feeling sympathy for Price's sad sack character and being frustrated that he could not see the obvious.
While it was not all that surprising to discover the film was based off a novel, because Amicus co-founder Milton Subotsky was an avid reader of all manner of genre fiction. I was tickled to learn that this film's 1969 source novel had been penned by Angus Hall, who would wrote the novelization of Scars of Dracula. Cool beans.
I caught sight of Dillon trying to rescue Kevin. The Alien had a death grip on Kevin and was pulling him up into the air duct. Dillon grabbed Kevin's legs, attempting to pull him to safety in a warped game of tug-of-war. Dillon won. But Kevin was too badly injured. He didn't make it.
The excitement for Alien 3 deflated pretty quickly, once this muddled and downbeat film was unleashed on audiences eager for Aliens 2. Not whatever the hell this movie was trying to be.
While I did like and appreciate some of the creative swings taken by the project. It was also quite clear that the film's story and characters had not been worked out. Another draft or two of the script, ones that would have whittled down the cumbersome and indistinguishable supporting cast (and xenomorph fodder) to a more manageable and identifiable number, was in dire need of being hammered out.
Couple that with the mistrust both the producers and the studio had with their chosen director, David Fincher, which led to bothersome creative second guessing and tinkering that did far more harm than good. It comes as no surprise that the film was deemed a disappointing misfire.
But I still like it far more than whatever the hell Alien Resurrection was supposed to be. For me the Alien franchise remains a closed and ended trilogy.
San Francisco got an exclusive 'early' engagement. Meanwhile, in the East Bay, I had to suffer an eternity of eager anticipation for the movie to open in June and actually see it, I think, in mid-July. Worth the wait.
But it still seemed to take forever to finally get to see it...
I could hear Jude screaming. But I couldn't tell where he was. The lights flickered and dimmed, leaving the main corridor very dark. All they had to do was lead the Alien to us. But with the poorly operating electronic doors and the miles of twisting passageways, anything could happen.
The feature film debut of cult filmmaker Jamaa Fanaka, who would go on to make the Penitentiary trilogy starring Leon Isaac Kennedy. This film's biggest claim to fame is the memorable moment when Brother Charles strangles a man to death using his monster-sized penis. Really.
I'm sure there is a scathing social, cultural, and political statement being made at that moment, but did anybody bother to take it seriously? Could it be taken seriously?
I haven't seen any of Fanaka's films and, maybe, I should remedy that by watching Welcome Home Brother Charles or the first Penitentiary, at least. Maybe.
While I did watch and enjoy The Incredible Mr. Limpet, The Reluctant Astronaut, and The Shakiest Gun in the West whenever they aired on TV, back in the day. My title choice for this blog makes the admission that The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is my all time favorite no surprise whatsoever.
"Atta, Luther!"
The film was directed by Alan Rafkin, who worked primarily in television. Amongst the hundreds of credits are numerable episodes of sitcoms I was exposed to during my childhood. Which means that the work of Alan Rafkin was an unrecognized element of the pop culture miasma I experienced as a child in the 70s and as a teenager in early-to-80s.
An incomplete list includes, but is in no way limited to, The Dick Van Dyke Show (4 episodes), Gomer Pyle: USMC (5 episodes), I Dream of Jeannie (3 episodes), Bewitched (2 episodes), The Andy Griffith Show (27 episodes). The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1 episodes), Get Smart (6 episodes), The Odd Couple (3 episodes), Love, American Style (9 episodes), The New Dick Van Dyke Show (5 episodes), Rhoda (2 episodes), The Mary Tyler Moore Show (4 episodes), The Bob Newhart Show (29 episodes), What's Happening (1 episode), Sanford and Son (17 episodes), M*A*S*H (2 episodes), Alice (5 episodes), Laverne & Shirley (22 episodes), The Love Boat (11 episodes), and One Day at a Time (123 episodes).
There are a lot more. though. The above list are just shows I remember watching, either every now and then, or with week-to-week regularity.
The screams had died down to mere echoes and hushed, panicky voices. Dillon went to investigate carrying only an axe. He reported that one of the prisoners had been killed, badly mangled. Dillon had come across the body in one of the side corridors. But there was no sign of the Alien.
Three or so years after the Vincent Price voiced cameo "appearance" of the Invisible Man at the very end of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), the famed comedy returned to the Universal Monster well for this entertaining special effects laden romp. It has a better reputation than most of the other Abbott and Costello movies of the early to mid-fifties, but I have a greater nostalgic affection for Meet the Mummy.
The second half of this double feature is The Fat Man, a film adaptation of the popular radio mystery series of the same name. Whether it was meant to, or would have, birthed a series of films featuring the titular corpulent detective is moot. Dashiell Hammett's imprisonment during the Black List era killed the radio show and, one might suspect, any interest in a cinematic series version.
The Hand was the second, of only two, horrors films written and directed by Oliver Stone. The first being an under scene oddity from 1974 titled Seizure, which started Jonathan Fried and Martine Beswick.
While I remember the ad campaign, both newspaper and TV spots, and reading about the film in the pages of both The Twilight Zone and Fangoria magazines, I would not see the film itself until it debuted on HBO.
Although I did part with some coin in the spring of 1981 in order to purchase the source material's retitled movie tie-in edition. I never got around to actually, you know, reading it. So it goes.
While I am on the subject of somewhat embarrassing (to me, at least) admissions. While D-Day had been one of my favorite characters in Animal House (1978), I did not recognize character actor Bruce McGill in this film as the actor that had played that very character. Then again, I was all of 13 or 14 years old at that time and far more interested in Adrienne Barbeau.
I heard Kevin give his signal, "Door C9 closed." Then Jude, "Door B7 safe." Someone else shouted that the V Channel was secure. They were slowly driving the Alien toward the Lead Works. But then I heard screams. Chaos. Something must have gone wrong.
Star James Brolin is reputed to have quipped that the working, or shooting, title for this film was Wheels. A tongue-in-cheek reference to the at all in no way subtle fact that The Car is a Jaws knock-off. This film, just as yesterday's subject (William Girdler's Grizzly) did, duplicates the narrative structure of Jaws almost point-for-point. The only thing missing here is a problem denying town official. Somebody that emphatically refuses to cancel the town parade because there is no way for that psychopath to drive his measly little sedan into the center of town and through the gathered crowd of townsfolk. Not if the town sheriff (James Brolin) would do his job.
One interesting piece of trivia about this desert set oddity. The script was written by the then writing team of Dennis Shryack and Michael Butler. This creative duo would retrain the desert vistas as location and backdrop for yet another vehicle heavy action-thriller script that was produced and released at the close of the same year. The Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke road movie The Gauntlet.
While I do not dislike the fifth and final film in the first round of Planet of the Apes movies. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the fourth film in the original franchise, is considered to be the last of the truly good ones. Or, at the very least, the last one where the creative team appeared to have made a game effort at having detectable level of creative quality and energy.
Due to the lower than hoped for box office returns on the modest-budgeted Escape from the Planet of the Apes. Conquest was given a smaller budget for its ambitious concept, dramatizing the uprising that would result in the creation of the world and society of the first two films.
Because the budget was low, neither Jerry Goldsmith, who had scored the first and third film, nor Leonard Rosenman, who had scored the second, were approached to compose music for this entry. Instead, on the recommendation of Lionel Newman, Fox's head of music, Tom Scott was hired to score the film.
Faced with a tight post-production schedule, Scott asked fellow composition Lalo Schifrin for advice.
"There was no time to write the sort of full-on orchestral battle scene that I really would have like to do." Scott recalls in the liner noters for the Film Score Monthly release. "Lalo said I should do a row of orchestral events. This was something I had heard him do in other pictures. You'd have ten seconds, for example, of all the woodwinds playing a low, atonal growl, and then you'd have another wall of muted brass playing high, fast staccato notes, and paint these little tone pictures, and that would get you through a great deal of the drama and give the impression that something was going on without having to kill yourself composing and orchestrating."
One thing Scott did not foresee was how the film, which had been shot in a semi-documentary style, would struggle with its harsh tone being a hindrance to maintaining a family friendly rating. Of the first five films, this was only one not to be awarded a G-rating.
Because of all the retooling, most of Scott's score for the film went unused and, in some instances, was replaced with tracks from Goldsmith's score for the first film. Which explains why I do not remember or recall a great deal of music from this particular release.
While Jaws made me afraid of the ocean and the unseen terrors lurking in its impenetrable depths, Grizzly made me terrified of the potential dangers of camping in the woods. In May or June of 1976, when I was eight or nine years old, Grizzly seemed a tad plausible. Today it just looks and feels like what it is, a quickie Jaws cash grab.
But, like yesterday's The Manitou, there are flashes and glimmers of prowess hinting that director William Girdler was capable of doing more with far better material than he what had to work with here.
Still though the movie, though. And that Neal Adams poster art will never not be awesome to behold.
The new plan was to flush it out of the passageways into the Lead Works, then drown it in hot lead. We only had one thing to use as bait to coax the Alien out of hiding - ourselves. The 13 remaining prisoners would lead it to the Lead Works, I'd take over from there.
The film version of The Manitou first dinged my burgeoning horror geek radar when I perused the paperback movie tie-in edition at our local Gemco. I remember being unnerved by the color photos on the back cover and, I believe, that were in the center of the book. It looked far too scary for me.
Years later I would finally catch up with the film on home video, or television, and be both amused and somewhat unnerved by it. While the movie is awash with over the top cheesy zaniness, it also has one or two really effective moments. The best of which, I argue, is the birthing sequence. It really works and also shows that the late William Girdler had legit talent as a director. Who knows what he might have done, if he had he lived.
The movie that created what I call the 'Betsy Palmer Rule' regarding fame and pop culture imprint.
In 1979 the semi-retired Betsy Palmer found herself in need of same cash to replace her old car with a brand new used car. As luck would have it, her agent received a script and offer for her to do a few days work on a low budget horror movie. A job that would cover the cost of her getting a brand new used car.
Palmer read the script, deemed it a piece of crap, but took the job because 1) she needed that brand new used car and 2) no one outside of a few 42nd Street grind house theaters and lower tier drive-ins would see the thing.
One year later, Paramount Pictures released Friday the 13th on well over 1,000 screens across the United States and saturated the market with advertisements. The success of the film would eclipse and extinguish the wholesome aspects of her career and, to everyone my age and younger, she became known as Jason's Mom.
Short version of the rule. The crap job you take for a paycheck will most likely be what you are best remembered for.
I startled it from its nest inside the infirmary air ducts. My only weapon, a heavy lead pipe, was useless. The Alien batted it out of my hand like a matchstick, then crept toward me. But it didn't attack. I didn't think it would. Not when I had its queen gestating inside me.
The Vault of Horror was the second of two anthology films, produced by the Amicus Production company, adapting yarns from the (in)famous EC horror comics of the early 1950s - Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear.
While the first film, Tales from the Crypt, drew from all three comics, this second entry consists almost entirely of stories taken from the pages of Tales from the Crypt. The one exception being the second segment, The Neat Job, which is from Shock SuspenStories.
As much fun as I think it would be for me to do a page-to-screen-to-page review of The Vault of Horror, I cannot. Because, at time of writing, I do not have access to the comic book source material for the film. I only have access to the film and its novelization, which was written by Jack Oleck.
That name should be familiar to comic book aficionados, as Oleck wrote for EC Comics, back in the 1950s. He was one of the main writers for Crime SuspenStories, as well as contributing to The Vault of Horror and Weird Science-Fantasy.
After the Comics Code caused something of an industry collapse, Oleck took a decade long sabbatical from comic book script writing. During which he published and edited the magazine Interior Decorator News. He also wrote two evidently lurid and pulpy novels set in ancient Rome. Messalina, which appears to have been a bestseller, and Theodora.
Oleck returned to comic script writing in the late sixties, working for DC on a variety of horror lines. But he also continued to pen the occasional novel. Prior to writing the novelizations of Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror, he wrote a novel about 1950s era beatniks titled The Villagers. Following the novelizations were two anthology books featuring prose adaptations of stories from DC’s The House of Mystery. To which Oleck just so happened to be a contributor.
In addition to The House of Mystery, Oleck supplied yarns to Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion, The House of Secrets, Tales of Ghost Castle, Weird War Tales, and Weird Mystery Tales. So there is a better than average chance I read something written by Jack Oleck during my childhood in the so-called Bronze Age of the comic book industry.
Oleck passed away in 1981, at the age of 67.
I have no idea how amused or apathetic Oleck might have been over being hired to write novelizations of film adaptations of stories from comic books he had toiled on twenty years ago. Since this was, no doubt, a work-for-hire project, it was, most likely, a mixture of both. Depending on the time of day and the idiosyncratic mood of the writer.
Oleck does what he can with what he was given, which was a thin, almost perfunctory, script. How much creative leeway on a work-for-hire project like this really depends on whoever, or whomever, the licenser has overseeing or supervising the project. Some will allow for artistic flourishes and storytelling liberties, while others want nothing more than an impersonal translation of the material into book form for marketing purposes. Because novelizations were nothing more than mass market press kits meant to sell a movie, or TV show.
While the film opens with a camera pan across the River Thames, on a bright, somewhat smoggy London day, before zooming in on the topmost floors of the Millbank Tower and cutting to an interior shot of Rogers (played by Daniel Massey) pressing a button, to summon an elevator. Oleck’s approach is a tad more ominous and atmospheric, with the character 'Rogers' walking down an empty corridor at night.
The shadows seemed, to Rogers, to be somehow threatening. There is a loneliness about a nearly deserted office building at night that is almost otherworldly, and he did not like it. He did not like it at all. It was as if the swarms of secretaries and executives and clerks who were the life blood of the building by day had, with their going, left it a corpse. His footsteps echoed eerily along the corridor and even the harsh glare of the overhead lights seemed unable to dispel the gloom that, here and there, made long fingers of darkness where a nook or a bend in the corridor wall cut off the brilliance.
Now that is a tad more unsettling than a simple daylight pan across the River Thames, right? I also liked the cryptic foreshadowing as to both his state of existence and the events of the story that brought that state about. How the absence of the “life blood” of the building makes it feel like a corpse.
An elevator arrives, but it offers no respite for Rogers. His descent to the ground floor is slowed by four separate men, who the enter the elevator on different floors, that Rogers observes with an ill-tempered contempt that is not at all present in the film.
Although each man pressed the Ground Floor button, the elevator does not stop there. It continues downward, into the depths of the building. Stopping and opening its doors at the sub-basement level.
There they find an elegantly furnished sitting area, which they enter, and the elevator door closes behind them. There is no call button to summon the elevator back, nor does there seem to be any other way out of the room. They seat themselves around the table, pour some drinks, and make small talk about how this entire situation feels like some kind of vivid dream…
Which, of course, is the conversational segue necessary for Rogers to describe a horrible dream that has been haunting him…
MIDNIGHT MESS [from Tales from the Crypt #35]
Rogers tracks down and dispatches his estranged sister, so he can claim the family inheritance. Said sister had taken to living as a recluse in an isolated village. One that shuts down and locks up tight just before nightfall. Because, “They come out at night.”
The differences between the film and the novelization here are both slight and marked. In the film Rogers arrives in the town of Waterville, right at the doorstep of his missing sister’s domicile, via a simple edit. Oleck has Rogers take a bus out to Waterville. Also, while the film is coy about the nature of what “they” are, the novelization is quite up front about it. Which, judging from the panel snippets I have seen from the comic, is also true to the film’s source material.
The novelization breaks from the film’s continuity by having its next story be…
BARGAIN IN DEATH [from Tales from the Crypt #28]
A financially strapped writer attempts to cheat an insurance company via a fraudulent life insurance claim. Only his daring plan gets good and mucked up by a combination of greed and a pair of desperate, yet none-too-smart, medical students.
This is one of those stories that probably worked far better as a comic than it does as a cinematic narrative. Although I could see the campy and cartoonish Tales from the Crypt HBO series doing a decent job of it. This needed a lot more energy to it than was displayed.
THIS TRICK’LL KILL YOU [from Tales from the Crypt #33]
A husband-wife magic act visit India, specified as Calcutta in the novelization, to see if they can find something to liven up their moribund show. What they find is a rope trick that can be literally breath-taking.
Oleck, just as he had done with Rogers, presents Sebastian, this story’s viewpoint character, as a grumpy, uncomfortable, and very unpleasant character. Not that he, or his wife, are all that nice and pleasant in film. But Oleck amps up the palpable contempt Sebastian has for what he sees and experiences in India to an 11 on the Misanthropic Measuring Scale.
Of the five tales in the film, this one is probably the most straightforward one-to-one adaptation in the book. It’s a great story, with a great payoff, that, in the film, is marred only by the limitations of the rope effects. Otherwise, great stuff.
THE NEAT JOB [from Shock SuspenStories #1]
Critchit is a controlling neat freak that demands his young wife Eleanor do everything to his satisfaction, which means neat, tidy, and JUST AS HE AS ALWAYS HAS DONE IT! He has a place for everything and everything is in its place.
Of all the stories in this film, I think this one might have taken the most liberties with its source material. Judging from the comic panels from it that I have see, the source material is from the viewpoint of Eleanor and is a flashback as to how Critchit drove his poor wife to madness by his psychotic fastidiousness. Although the police officers that are questioning Eleanor, and to who she confesses via her story, are absent from the film, Oleck brings them back for the story’s conclusion in the novelization.
Oleck, once again, amps up the misanthropic cattiness to 11 in the story’s opening scene. In the film it is just a simple expository conversation so the viewer can understand that Critchit and Eleanor are newlyweds. But in the novelization it is a far more unpleasant experience for Critchit’s supposed friend and luncheon partner, who seems to have been summoned just so that Critchit can boast to somebody about his getting married. Which is really kind of sad, when you think about it.
Another interesting flourish, or liberty, taken by Oleck is having the desperate and eager to please Eleanor attempt to create a modern art sculpture for Critchit, as a gift. Something that he dismisses and demands she destroy it with peevish and abusive zeal.
The problem here is that The Neat Job is more Eleanor’s story than it is Critchit’s and could have worked far better if she had been the one to tell this tale.
Only one story remains to be told. A doozy called…
DRAWN AND QUARTERED [from Tales from the Crypt #26]
When an impoverished artist living in seclusion in Haiti learns that he has been cheated out of substantial profits from the sales of his work. He utilizes voodoo in order to get revenge.
Although Tom Baker, who was on the cusp of becoming the fourth Doctor, delivers an intense and engaging performance as the slighted artist Moore. His performance does not contain the amount of loathsome venom that Oleck saturates the character with in the novelization.
As was the case with Calcutta in This Trick’ll Kill You, Oleck brings the hot, humid, and heavy atmosphere of Haiti to a sensory life that the set bound film production was incapable of doing.
While this closing segment's narrative is just as tight and focused as This Trick’ll Kill You, it is Baker’s energetic performance coupled with the segment being the most atmospheric of the bunch that gets it my vote for best in show. It ends both the movie and the novelization on a strong note.
Having reached the end, a ringing chime alerts the five men that the elevator has returned…
The door opens and one final divergence from the film occurs.
Although both the film and the novelization kicked off with Rogers entering the elevator and, I think I should note, the men board the elevator in the order of the stories as presented in the novelization. This has me suspecting this had been the original scripted order and was changed during post-production.
Yet, in the film, it is Sebastian, the magician from the centerpiece tale, This Trick’ll Kill You, that observes and narrates the film's curtain call.
But the novelization has the character of Critchit, from The Neat Job, doing the honors of the departing curtain call. Just another interesting deviation from the film that geek’s like me find intriguing and amusing.
Which is basically my end assessment of this novelization. While it may not be the most original or surprising collection of terror tales to grace bookshelves. It is an entertaining enough time-waster for what it is, a relic from a time when books helped market movies that would drifting from regional release to regional release. A pleasant enough reading palette cleanser to enjoy between courses of headier, or more complex, literary entertainments.
Seeing this on a double-bill with Dead & Buried at the Alameda Southshore Twin provided yet another memorable movie going experience for me. Because it was unrated, and I could be something of a stickler for to-the-letter rule following, I was certain that I would be forbidden from buying a ticket. Seeing that no one under 17 would be admitted, "due to the violent nature of [the] film." And I would have been all of 14 at the time.
But nobody cared and I was allowed to join another raucous crowd (well, I remember it as being raucous) of hooting and hollering at the explosion of silliness and sleaze getting splattered across the screen. While I enjoyed the movie, the group I was with did not. So it goes.
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