"Pretty Boy Floyd" (1960) on Amazon Prime

 

      In an effort to make this the leading Herbert J. Leder online resource, today we take a look at "Pretty Boy Floyd", the only remaining title of his left unreviewed in the world of streaming. This dirty little period crime picture marks his directorial debut. Good or not so good, Leder's work is always fun to look at, even if this picture isn't quite the overstuffed, undercooked burrito of weirdness his other movie's are.

     The picture starts off in that most traditional of mid twentieth century crime film settings: the boxing gym. In the locker room Floyd viciously beats the angry husband of a woman he is sleeping with. The camera holds Pretty Boy in close-up as he wails on the cuckold, all teeth gritting rage. John Ericson inhabits the character, an ex-con boxer who likes to steal men's wive's and bank's money, with a dangerous, handsome violence.

     The boxing ring isn't where he wants to make a career, though. Floyd just wants to make an honest living as an oil field worker. When that career is cut short after his boss discovers his criminal past, Pretty Boy returns to his Oklahoma hometown. Upon arrival there, he is informed his father was shot dead, and that the man who committed the act still walks free. Broke and consumed with vengeance, he beats, then burns the man in a barn fire before setting off as a career as the "Sagebrush Robin Hood", dispensing stolen funds to Okie's in need.

     Pretty Boy's partners throughout the picture are a character actor all-star team. Peter Falk plays Shorty Williams, with whom he commits the bank robbery that restarts his crime career. As the picture progresses, the violence escalates, the bodies begin to pile up and things start to spiral out of control. Eventually, Pretty Boy partners up with his old boxing pal, Al Riccardo, portrayed by Barry Newman of "Vanishing Point" fame. A psychotic crescendo to the bloodletting is reached when they team with Machine Gun Manny (Al Lewis of "The Munster's") to spring a prisoner who is being transported to the Missouri State Pen. The job goes bad when the men accidentally slaughter the man they are supposed to rescue, along with a whole bunch of cops.

     The men who hired them for the job are unhappy and what follows is a trial scene within the Halls of Injustice. The three hoods stand before there "judges"- representatives from the world of organized crime-who decide the men's fate by kissing and passing a gun down the table at which they sit. It's a stark scene of indelible gangland mythology, and a classic bit of off-kilter Herbert J. Leder oddness.

     The acting across the board is remarkably solid, especially for a low budget crime programmer. Al Lewis is particularly great, exuding a toothy aura of barely contained wildness. Ericson, tall and sharp angled, stalks through the picture like a pompadoured undertaker. He more than holds his own, even when he's on screen with Columbo, Grandpa Munster and Kowalski.

     Leder was never more focused as a director than he is here. The cheap black and white combined with voice over narration gives the film a bold, tabloid feel. William Sanford and Del Sirino deliver a jazzy, driving score; the use of "modern" music in the context of a 1930s period piece adds a "cool" mood. It's the sole credit on both composer's IMDB page's, and a search of the web brought up no info on the men that I could find. If anyone out there knows the story behind these guy's, drop me a line!

     With an ending that is a downright haunting bit of rural death poetry, Leder creates some moments of real cinematic strength within a film that should be completely disposable. "Pretty Boy Floyd" is a film that frequently overachieves. Filled with sex, murder and robbery, it's a nasty, low-budget id of a crime picture.



   

"Fiend Without A Face" (1958) on Hulu Plus

   

     After reviewing "It!" I felt bad about how mean I was to Herbert J. Leder. Determined to smooth things out, I decided to go back to "Fiend Without A Face", which is when we first fell in love, in hopes of rekindling our relationship. The good news is my affection for this movie is stronger than ever. This is the picture where Leder's love of mixing together strange ingredients really works well.

     There's been a series of murder's surrounding a US air base in a Canadian farm community. An unseen "mental vampire" is killing citizens, each found with their "brain sucked out like an egg". The townsfolk suspect the nuclear power plant at the base is blame. It's being used to power a new radar system to spy on them there Russkies. Major Jeff Cummings (Marshall Thompson) is our speed popping hero. "You ever try sleep instead of Benzedrine?", he's asked, "You might like it." He's determined to get to the bottom of the murders and prove it isn't the military's fault. Through his investigations he comes to know the foxy Barbara Griselle (Kim Parker), sister of the first victim. 

She works for Professor Walgate, played by Kynaston Reeves, who is just wonderful and is everything a B-movie professor should be. Sport jacket? Check. Pipe? Check. Whiskey? Check. Desk? Fireplace? How about a desk in front of a fireplace? Double check! Cummings meets with The Professor in an attempt to gain some insight into what's been going on. When it is suggested the killings may be supernatural in origin, Walgate gets super pissed off. In the end, though, we will discover he is more involved than he claims to be. 

     The execution of the murders (filmically speaking, not literally) is an example of doing the most you can on a low budget. For most of the movie the creature is invisible, so the filmmakers rely on sound design and subtle special effects, along with the death pantomimes of the actors. It's remarkably effective, and the murder scenes have a scary, brutal atmosphere.

     An ominous lumbering sound let's us know the killer is near, but it isn't only in these morbid scenes where audio is used to tell a story. A constant theme of the picture is the townspeople's unhappy relationship with the neighboring air base. To illustrate this, the sound of loud aircraft flying is often heard on the soundtrack. The most striking example of this is during the funeral for the first victim. A noisy plane flies overhead and the mourners cast their eyes skyward; the military intruding on even the most solemn of the communities moments. 

     This is a Herbert J. Leder script, so that means there's an abundance of idiosyncratic, oddball ideas. The affect of the military base on cow's milk is brought up more than once, and later it is revealed the killings are a result of the Professor's experiments in manifesting his thoughts. Using nuclear power syphoned from the base, he managed to successfully use his mind to create a living thing which has now run amok. It's the perfect metaphor for Leder, who's own work seems to suffer from runaway ideas. Indeed, the idea of a man's own thoughts being turned into enemies, gaining life beyond himself, could be seen to symbolize the relationship of an artist to their work, or even mental illness.

     Leder was originally slated to direct, but work visa issues prevented that, so veteran British cinematographer turned director Arthur Crabtree stepped in to take the reins. He ably guides the film as it progresses from atom age scare film, into a Gothic interlude in a crypt at night, until finally becoming a siege movie. The cinematography is crisp, atmospheric black and white. Take note of the scene in the autopsy room; Crabtree and cinematographer Lionel Banes evoke a creepy, ominous mood through use of shadow. 

     When the creature's finally become visible, they are crawling brains with antennae and spinal cord. The climax, in which they launch an attack on Walgate's house, where our character's are holed up, is shockingly violent and gory. Stop motion is used to animate the brain creatures, and though it ain't Harryhausen, it doesn't look terrible. The idea of gross, murderous brain's sounds funny on paper, but under Crabtree's direction it comes across as scary and intense. 

     A nuclear scare film that is also about the relationship of the military-industrial complex with civilians, the power of thought, and killer brains; "Fiend Without a Face" is the best example of Herbert J. Leder's "conceptual stew" approach to screenwriting. The mix of ideas work in harmony in a manner they just don't in the pictures he directed himself. Perhaps it's the journeyman efficiency of Crabtree that managed to corral all those elements into a cohesive whole. This picture does what a B-movie should; it introduces interesting and unusual concept's and conflict's and then solves them with monsters, guns and explosions.    

      

"It!" (1967) on Warner Archive Instant

   

     Did "Psycho" not have enough museums and Yiddish folklore for you? Then I think you may be the audience Herbert J. Leder was aiming for when he made "It!". An audience I suspect consists of one member, namely: "Herbert J Leder".

     Arhur Pimm (Roddy McDowell) is a curator's assistant at a museum which has just had a warehouse fire. He and the curator, Harold Grove (Ernest Clark), search the smoky, brick strew ruins. The only thing left standing among the rubble is the ashen, ghastly figure of The Golem. Grove rests his umbrella in the figures hands, soon there's a yell and suddenly Pimm has a dead boss.

     Pimm hopes to get the curator position but doesn't, and he gets suitably p.o.'d about it. The Golem is moved to the museum, and the electrician there to light it takes a moment to blow smoke in it's face. If there's anything Golem's hate worse than umbrella's it's cigarettes, so the figure falls, crushing him to death.

     Word gets out that the museum has a killer statue, which leads to boffo box office. Arthur fancies the late Harold Grove's daughter ,Ellen (Jill Haworth), and he invites her out for a drive with his mother. At first, she declines, telling him she likes him well enough, she just doesn't "like like" him. Eventually, though he guilts her into it. The car drive doesn't happen until the end of the picture, and it won't be exactly what she bargained for. An American expert, Jim Perkins (Paul Maxwell), is flown in and informs Pimm that the inscription on his statue is the same as that on the Golem of legend. Jim has got two things on his mind: making time with the lovely Ellen and getting The Golem back to New York. Markings from the statue are taken to a Jewish scholar, who informs Pimm they are a warning mankind will not make it into the 21st Century. Using a scroll hidden in the Golem's foot, Pimm re-animates the creature. Professor Weal (Aubrey Richards), the new curator, sees him doing this, and the Golem (Alan Sellers) is ordered to eliminate the witness. When the murder is complete Pimm has the Golem help him steal jewelry he can bring home to his dead mother.

     Oh, have I buried the lead? Yeah, Pimm lives at home in a Norman Bates-ian existence with his mother's corpse, right down to the rocking chair (a "rot-king" chair, if this were a "Tales From the Crypt comic). Writer/producer/director Leder is an odd guy; he does an unfrozen Nazi movie actually about a decapitated head of a young woman, and he does a Golem movie that's a psychological study of a necroOedipal jewel thief. There's a great dream sequence, in which an unclothed Ellen appears to Pimm, bathed in lurid red light. When he finally reaches her, though, it turns out to actually be the decaying body of his corpse mom. It's Hitchock by way of a 1950's horror comic, all shadows and colored lighting. Frustrated by both his subconscious incestuous desires and Ellen's spending time with Jim, Pimm has the Golem destroy a bridge, the aftermath of which is shown in a really bad matte painting.

     The movie never becomes as interesting and fun as it could potentially be, favoring endless scenes of dry dialogue over exploring the truly twisted psyche of the main character. More than once Pimm mentions he and his dead mother's connection to the supernatural, but again, aside from a mental bond to The Golem, nothing much is done with it. As with "The Frozen Dead", Leder introduces all these cool (pun not intended) elements and just leaves them on the table. Leder isn't enough of a maniac to take the movie he has started and push it to the limit, he's constantly pumping the brakes.

     Not until the last ten minutes, when there's a Golem prison break, followed by Pimm taking Ellen hostage and hiding out with dead old mum and his pal Golem at a castle, does the movie finally give into it's wild side. We've got Roddy McDowell lighting a woman on fire and the British army firing a bazooka The Golem who is guarding the castle. If only Leder didn't eat up the other ninety-percent of his movie with people talking in a museum. The bazooka proves ineffective, so what do you do when that happens? If you're the army in this movie, you employ a "small" nuclear warhead, of course. The ending is what you'd get if Robert Bloch had a mental condition and was 12 years old when he wrote "Psycho". This picture manages to be both insane and underwhelming at the same time. Yes, the ending is crazy, but getting there is a slow crawl. Leder's reach exceeds his grasp and one can't help but think he would have been served well by creative collaborators. The climax of this film is essentially Norman Bates vs. The World, and it's given such little screen time that it comes across as muddled and rushed. We should have gotten here at the beginning of the last third of the film and not the last ten minutes.

     "It!" is a weird mash-up of disparate influences: "Psycho", Jewish legend, psychic abilities and nuclear apocalypse. Fun on paper, but unremarkable in execution, "It!" continually threatens to be a psychotic good time, but unfortunately waits until too late in the proceedings to stop taking it's medication.

   


     

"The Frozen Dead" (1966) on Warner Archive Instant

"I'm as good a Nazi as I was 25 years ago."

     Sometimes, after a tough night at work, you just want to go home and watch a movie about an unfrozen Nazi army. This was my thinking when I decided to watch "The Frozen Dead". Unfortunately, the picture is a bit of a bait and switch.

     Dr. Norberg (Dana Andrews) is a Nazi scientist living on a British estate with his assistant Karl Essen (Alan Tilvern), and his bald, staring manservant Joseph (Oliver MacGreevy). The doctor has been conducting experiments trying to reanimate frozen Nazi soldiers. He has not been fully successful in this and is a man surrounded by his failures. There is a dungeon filled with his half-brained test subjects and we learn that even the nimrod Joseph was a failed experiment, as well. Hey, at least he got a butler out of the deal.

     Soon, the Third Reich come knocking and inform Norberg that they want him to reanimate the 1500 frozen Nazi "elite" that lie in wait around the world. Now don't get yourself too excited thinking how great that movie would be-the one about unfrozen fascist hordes descending on mankind-because you don't get that one. We have Dr. Norberg (and writer/producer/director Herbert J. Leder) to blame. Because, as he we learn, he kind of sucks as a scientist. Besides never successfully bringing back a frozen kraut with a working brain intact, he also at one point screws up another brain when Karl bursts through a door and startles him. If this dude wasn't such a sub par Nazi mad doctor, we wouldn't have had to wait 43 years for "Dead Snow". Thanks alot, Dana Andrews.

     The movie we get is about the severed head of a young woman. Norberg's niece, Jean (Anna Palk), arrives home at the estate with her friend Elsa (Kathleen Breck). In order to procure Herr Doktor a head to experiment on, Karl drugs Elsa and then has her killed by the most violent of the reanimated subjects (played by Edward Fox...yes, "Day of the Jackal" Edward Fox. According to his IMDB page he "claims to have never worn jeans"). Norberg is eventually joined by an eager American scientist Dr. Ted Roberts (Philip Gilbert), who gets too much screen time. Also, there's a Nazi woman hiding in town, Mrs. Schmidt (Anne Tirard), who has a swastika carved into her face. She wears a life mask of her own unscarred visage in order to hide her shame and gets too little screen time. This flick excels at doing nothing with the supremely cool and creepy elements it introduces. The bulk of the movie concerns the plight of poor Elsa's head. Bathed in blue light, the severed head effect looks like an EC comic. The cinematography is lurid and colorful, and is served well by the HD presentation

     Elsa sits tragically in the basement, whispering and trying to mentally contact Jean. It would seem that through the doctor's tinkering she has gained psychic abilities. This leads to without a doubt the best scene ever to feature a bitchy argument between a Nazi mad scientist and his assistant about whether or not the psychic, animated head they are keeping is negatively affecting the mindset of the half-witted unfrozen soldier's they have captive.

     "The Frozen Dead" starts off promising us "Shock Waves", but ends up delivering "The Brain That Wouldn't Die". Once I got over the fact this wasn't the flick I was anticipating, I enjoyed it. It feels like a horror comic book come to life and Elsa is a truly weird, unsettling presence. Also, who can hate a movie with a climax involving a decapitated head mentally controlling a wall of severed arms?