"Seance on a Wet Afternoon" (1964) on Hulu Plus

     I remember when I first encountered this film. It was during one of my shifts at the video store (Video To Go RIP). Wandering the aisles, my eye was caught by what I thought was one of the strangest titles I'd ever seen:

     This experience of stumbling upon a title purely through chance- of wandering through an environment with a finite amount of choices and discovering a dusty gem- is one I miss. I understand that alot of it is nostalgia, and the irony of bemoaning the loss of the video store experience on a blog dedicated to streaming services is not lost on me. It's just that I miss the thrill of discovery, of having my interest piqued by a title, a bit of cover art, or a write-up on the back of the box. We live in a world now where our devices tell us what they think we want, where the computers at Netflix make weird recommendations based on whatever algorithms they are programmed with. Video stores, to me, were all about not knowing what I wanted. Of travelling the world of cinema without a detailed map, until an avenue caught my eye and then finding where it lead. Such was how I discovered this film.

     "Seance on a Wet Afteroon" begins quite literally. The mood of the piece is immediately established in the hushed candle lit seance scene that opens the picture. After that, the participants and the audience are thrust out into the afternoon, rain falling on the camera as we stare up into the grey English sky.

     This is the story of Myra (Kim Stanley) and Billy (Richard Attenborough) Savage and their plan to kidnap a child (Judith Donner), so that Myra may later aid in finding her, thereby proving her psychic abilities. Myra treats Billy horribly, manipulating and insulting him at every opportunity. Attenborough as Billy is soft-spoken, beaten down with a soul-weary stare, quietly carrying out his wife's criminal wishes.

     There's a mournful black and white heaviness to this picture; a fluid, uneasy stylishness to the cinematography. Initially, the aesthetic alone evokes dark feelings within the viewer, and as the story unfolds we discover they are tied to the narrative as well, a story of loss and sorrow. Under Bryan Forbes' direction, style and substance are one.

     Likewise, sound and screen are synthesized beautifully. John Barry delivers a score that stands out even among his godlike body of work. During the kidnapping scene, as the child cries out from the backseat, we don't hear her voice. Instead, we hear the flute's of Barry's music. It's music as dialogue as pure emotion. Forbes' attention to sonic detail enriches the entire picture. When Billy kidnaps the girl, a jet flies overhead, underscoring the moment. Later, he and Myra hide in their house as the cops are at their door, looking for the girl they have hidden. The sound of the young girl's voice penetrates the silence, making the tension unbearable. It's an example of a film-maker using all the cinematic tools in order to create suspense.

     Kim Stanley's performance is powerful and complex, and because she didn't perform on the silver screen again for 20 years, legendary. Myra is a charlatan who believes her own con, who uses kidnapping as a means to prove the truth of her lies, oblivious to the paradox. This discordant mix of the esoteric and the common perfectly echoes the title, which conjures images of the mystical and strange, but instead refers literally to a seance that is happening on an afternoon when it is raining.

     As the picture progresses, we eventually come to view Myra not as a domineering manipulator, but as a sick, mentally troubled woman. In a pivotal scene about 90 minutes in, Billy finally asserts himself, becoming a voice of reality and reason, and we realize the dynamics between this couple are not at all what we had supposed them to be. Whether out of love, loyalty or both, Billy has chosen to be the subservient husband until this moment when Myra's requests go too far. Attenborough, understated and heartbreaking, is the perfect counterpoint for Stanley's portrayal of a woman's gradual mental breakdown. It's a case of two great artists relying on each other and enhancing one another's performance. Together they give us a portrait of two sad human beings, haunted by a shared tragedy in their past.

     Part thriller, part psychodrama, but ultimately a study in grief, "Seance on a Wet Afternoon" is an overcast ode to loss and plans made for a future that never arrived.

Richard Attenborough (1923-2014)

Cinema has lost a giant. While, like most people my age, I first encountered him in "Jurassic Park", the role I will most remember him for is that of Bartlett in "The Great Escape". I haven't seen nearly enough of Mr. Attenborough's work both in front of and behind the camera and I will do my best to remedy that, in short order. Within a day or two I will have a review posted of a film I particularly admire that he both produced and starred in. What follows is a list of his work that is available streaming:

Netflix:

actor:
Doctor Doolittle (1967)

The Sand Pebbles (1966)

All Night Long (1962)

director:
Gandhi (1982)

Chaplin (1992)

Grey Owl (1999)


Hulu:

actor:
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

The League of Gentlemen (1960)

director:
Gandhi (1982)

Grey Owl (1999)


Warner Archive Instant:

actor:
The Human Factor (1979)

"Norman, Is That You?" (1976) on Warner Archive Instant

     "So there's a shot-on-video movie from 1976, directed by George Schlatter, the guy who produced "Laugh-In", about Redd Foxx coming to terms with the fact that his son is gay?"
   

     That's what went through my head when I was searching through Warner Archive Instant's offering's and came across "Norman, Is That You?". For those of us who relish forgotten curios like this, Warner Archive Instant is the only game in town. It's for film enthusiasts who don't need every film to be a 5-star classic, who want to dig into the old, dusty stuff that has lay forgotten in the corner of pop culture, like this strange piece of 70's detritus.

   

     Foxx plays Ben Chambers who travels to Los Angeles to visit his son, Norman, after his wife takes off with his brother for a tryst in Mexico. Unbeknownst to Ben, Norman is gay and living with his boyfriend Garson (Adam Sandler's director of choice: Dennis Dugan). Eventually, despite Norman's protests, Garson reveals the truth to Ben. This turns his world upside down and the rest of the picture consists of him struggling with his son's homosexuality, until his wife, Beatrice (Pearl Bailey) returns. He buys books on the subject at a store across from The Brown Derby (where the clerk asks him if he wants to put it on his Diner's Club card; I love the 1970s), hires a hooker (Cleopatra Jones herself: Tamara Dobson), and even try's to strangle Garson, but is foiled by his bad back.

     At the 20 minute mark I smashed my TV, lit the rubble on fire and drove over it with my car. I did this because, at this point, a being of pure evil shows up: Madame.

     Perhaps a little context and background might help with this. Madame is a puppet who is a sassy, aging movie star. Madame and her puppeteer Wayland Flowers were big business back in the day, making appearance's all over the television world, including director George Schlatter's "Laugh-In". This, I imagine, is how he came to cast both in "Norman, Is That You?"; Flowers plays Norman and Garson's upstairs neighbor, Larry Davenport.

     As a child, for some unknown reason (probably her horrifying visage), Madame filled me with such pure fear that I can't even think of something to compare it to. When her TV show, "Madame's Place" was on, my 4 or 5 year old self was terrified to flip through the channel's, lest I catch a glimpse of her, or even more accurately: I was scared that she would see me. So, when she appeared in close-up in this movie, I didn't actually smash my TV. Instead, I sobbed in the fetal position in the corner for a half hour, until someone walked into the room and asked me why I, a 34 year old man, was crying on the floor like a baby. I pointed to the TV, where Madame's image still showed, peering forward through time, from 1976 to 2014, letting me know I'm never safe. They looked at the TV, and then me, with a confused, sad look and then hurried from the room. "Exactly!", I shouted, "Exactly!" Every kid has a bogeyman, and mine was a puppet of a bawdy old broad. At one point in the movie, Larry disappears with Madame, reappearing with a not as frightening, but way more offensive puppet of a sassy black woman, at which point I was not only weeping from fear, but cringing in embarrassment, as well.

     Speaking of cringing, there's a number of moments in this picture that elicit said reaction. There's the phone call scene where Ben attempts to reach his wife at the Mexican motel she is staying at. Instead, he engages in some bad sketch comedy with the two stereotypes working the desk. The humor in this scene supposedly comes from the incongruous subtitles for the Spanish gentleman, but it's baffling why anyone would think it's funny. It should be noted that one of those desk clerks is played by awesome "Mad" magazine and "Groo" cartoonist, Sergio freakin' Aragones. If anyone knows how he came to be cast in this, please let me know.

     Later, after returning from a night carousing at the gay hotspot's with Garson (more on that in a bit), Ben has a dream where he is accepting the award for "Homosexual Dry Cleaner of the Year". This features a wig wearing Foxx doing a swishy gay impression that manages to be unfunny and surreal at the same time. Oh, and when he is awoken by Garson, he yells, "Rape! Rape!"...yep.

     Everything about the movie isn't terrible, though. It's impossible for something starring Foxx to be entirely humorless, and there are some laughs scattered throughout. He and Dugan actually have some decent chemistry together, and there's an odd sweetness to their scenes. After Ben attempts to murder him, Garson makes dinner for them both, and then the two go out on the town. Madame, that eldritch mockery of the human form, makes another appearance when they take in Larry's stage show. Later, Ben indicates that they also went to, "...that other place, where the guy imitated Dinah Shore."  It's difficult to believe that mere hours after attacking Garson in a rage, Ben would enjoy taking in a drag show with him.

     Schlatter's visual style is that of someone who made a career in television and most of the movie looks like a TV show. The cinematography of the picture, shot-on-video then transferred to film, gives it an aesthetic that exists in a lo-fi limbo between television and cinema.

     This movie is as weirdly ham-handed and clumsy as you'd expect given the combination of subject matter and talent involved. It's like your conservative uncle trying to explain how he's open-minded, and how OK he is with "those people"; it's heart is in the right place, but the more it goes on, the more you wish it would stop.

   

"The Disembodied" (1957) on Warner Archive Instant

       "The Disembodied" is a dark tale of voodoo, murder, and the sound of native drums in the night. But, mainly, it's a jungle cheesecake fest with the primary goal of showing star Allison Hayes in as many form-fitting and revealing outfits as possible, and at that it succeeds.

     Made the year before Hayes' iconic turn in "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman", it's the story of Tonda Metz (Allison Hayes), who lives in a jungle shack with her much older, Germanic husband Dr. Carl (John Wengraf) and their hunky manservant Suba (Dean Fredericks, here billed as "Norman Frederic"). Wengraf's line readings in this are great, sounding like a Teutonic version of Peter Cook in "The Princess Bride": "Dwums! What do they say?... Get wid of dem. Fwighten dem off!" The character of Tonda is established immediately, as the opening credits play over a scene of her trying to kill her husband by suffocating a voodoo doll. She's interrupted by the the intrusion of Suba.

     Tom Maxwell (Paul Burke), his partner Norman (Joel Marston) and their guide Gogi (Paul Thompson) arrive at the camp with their injured buddy Joe (Robert Christopher); "He was attacked by a lion while we were shootin' motion pictures". And they ask the Doctor to patch him up.

     Soon enough, Tonda is on the porch showing off some leg for Tom and giving him all kinds of "do me" looks. Suba spys, and when Tom leaves he confronts Tonda. She makes out with him, then slaps his face and it is here that we begin to realize there's an s & m vibe happening in this flick.

     Tonda visits Joe in his room and begins doing some kind of ritual, then we cut and all of a sudden she's in the jungle doing a full-on voodoo ceremony. Hayes is the embodiment of lurid, pulp cover hotness. In the sexpot sweepstakes I'll take her over Jane Russell any day. Suba is tied up, and Tonda throws a chicken on him, then stabs a voodoo doll. And with that, Suba, beefiest and most obviously Caucasian of jungle butlers is dead...or is he??

      The next day we find that Joe is all better. It would seem that Tonda's ceremony healed him. If black magic can cure people why aren't there voodoo hospitals? Why doesn't the Voodoo M.D. genre exist? "Nurse, I need two chickens and a sacrifice victim, stat!"

     Suba's wife Mara (Eugenia Paul) confronts Dr. Carl and accuses him of killing Suba. The doctor slaps her. Man, this couple loves to slap natives. What a couple of jerks.

     After discovering that Suba's heart has been cut out and that the same goes for the chicken at the voodoo ceremony site, Norman and Gogi head out with the intention of getting their jeep so they can leave. While they do this, Tom makes some more time with Tonda and later has a discussion with the doctor, who it is revealed is actually a Doctor of Psychology. The two talk voodoo and we get this gem of a line: "Pythagoreans? Weren't they the ones that believed in metempsychosis?" Which, I guess, is the transfer of consciousness from one body to another.

     Remember those question marks after Suba's death? Well, guess what? Joe soon tries to kill Paul and we find that Suba ain't dead...he's been metempsychosis-ized (eat that, spell check) into Joe's body!

     Tom and Tonda eventually end up making out and then she tries to convince him to kill her husband. He slaps her, and she says, "Beat me, if you want. Go ahead, beat me." This picture is one kinky, voodoo noir, and Hayes is a black magic femme fatale. When taken alongside "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman", it seems she carved out a one-woman niche of dominant female roles in genre pictures.

     Tonda ends up stabbing her husband, with the intention of framing Tom. She kills the only other witness, Kabar (Otis Greene), but Tom and Norman use some "Weekend at Bernie" trickery to fool her into thinking he's alive. In an effort to to save her husband before the authorities come, she attempts to sacrifice Tom. In the climax we get another (not unwelcome) black magic ceremony scene, complete with plenty of (not unwelcome) ecstatic writhing about by Hayes.

     There's nothing better than an unapologetic B-movie. This picture is like a Val Lewton production if Val Lewton wasn't a genius and didn't have guys like Wise, Tourneur and Musuraca working for him. It was directed by Walter Grauman, who did the intense 1964 thriller "Lady In a Cage" and the film that inspired the Death Star trench attack scene in "Star Wars", "633 Squadron", along with endless amounts of television. This movie has what so many other B-pictures of the era lack: a sense of pacing. At a swift 66 minutes, this flick moves along, there's no filler and scenes never overstay their welcome. With a handful of set's and a minuscule budget, "The Disembodied" is an enjoyable psychotronic movie that fully embraces its exploitative elements.

"Walk Softly, Stranger" (1950) on Warner Archive Instant

"Orson Welles: Alida Valli. Boy, she's great.

 Henry Jaglom: What happened to her?

 Orson Welles: She was the biggest star in Europe. She was huge during the fascist period, all through the war. In Rome. Then she was taken up by Selznick. Selznick destroyed her. He brought her to America, tried to make a big star out of her here, thought he'd have another Bergman, and put her in three-

 Henry Jaglom: After 'The Third Man'?

 Orson Welles: No, 'The Third Man' was in the middle.

 Henry Jaglom: What else did he put her in?

 Orson Welles: A terrible trial movie, 'The Paradine Case'. And something else terrible."

-"My Lunches With Orson"

     Made before "The Third Man", and then shelved for two years until after that picture's success, "Walk Softly, Stranger" may not be "terrible" as Orson described it, but it's certainly not "great" or perhaps even "very good". Instead it's a serviceable noir romance which suffers when compared to "The Third Man", and that other movie featuring Cotten as a criminal in small-town America: Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt".

     The picture opens with Cotten arriving in a white-picket fence Ohio town. Slowly and methodically he cons his way into a place to live and a job at the local factory. Valli, is the wheelchair-bound daughter of the owner, who Cotten romances and eventually falls in love with. Cotten leaves town briefly to pull one last job, robbing a gambling joint, and then returns. As one might predict, Cotten's criminal dealings eventually catch up with him, and he is left to make the choice between giving into his past, or going straight and embracing the wholesome love he has found with Valli.

     Robert Stevenson directs, and this is the first non-Disney picture of his I've seen. I'm much more familiar with his later work for Uncle Walt. Growing up I endlessly watched "Bedknobs and Broomsticks". As someone who owns "The Gnome Mobile" on DVD, and who watched "The Island at the Top of the World" about twice a month at the video store I was once employed by, I have to consider myself a Stevenson fan. He does an OK job with this picture, but there are just too many missed opportunities to consider it a success. There is a scene toward the end where Cotten is trying to get away from the thugs who are out to get him, and he finds himself stuck at a railroad crossing; a train blocking him on one side, the hoods' car on the other. A better director would have squeezed all the tension they could out of this set-up, instead nothing happens and we move on to the next scene. To Stevenson's credit, the scene where Cotten comes home to find his ex-partner missing is downright haunting, and the car-crash sequence at the end is a knock-out display of directorial and editorial toughness. It was probably just a wrong mix of director and material, and as with any Selznick production, we have to take his notoriously hands-on approach into account. As pictures such as "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" and "Mary Poppins" proved, Stevenson was one hell of a director. He became the definitive live-action Disney filmmaker, so it makes sense that film-noir maybe wasn't the best showcase for his talents. Although, I imagine working for Selznick provided a good introduction to the kind of producer interference he would have to live with at the company he worked for during the last 19 years of his career.

     The two leads, Cotten and Valli, are good, but never spectacular. Cotten doesn't bring the menace like he does in "Shadow of a Doubt". This is no fault of Cotten's, he's playing the character as written, but unlike Hitchcock's film, this is a story of redemption and it's just not as nasty or interesting. Valli, likewise, does what she can with the material. As a disabled woman learning to live and love again, she gives a fine performance. There are some quite nice exchanges between the two in Frank Fenton's script.

"We're both failures: your legs, my life."


 My favorite performance in the film is by John McIntire in a small role as Cotten's boss. He gives the type of naturalistic performance that made him a top character actor. In his small role, he gives nuance to every scene he's in, even if it's something as simple as eating a sandwich while playing poker or packing his pipe as he talks to a co-worker. These touches add interest to what otherwise are run-of-the-mill scenes (for another great McIntire performance, check out "Scene of the Crime", also available on Warner Archive Instant). Also good in a blink-and-you-miss-it role is an uncredited Will Wright.

     This isn't a bad film, but because "The Third Man" and "Shadow of a Doubt" exist, it can't help but pale beside them. The tough, shadowy flashes we get in the last third are promising, but ultimately this picture favors gauzy romance over it's darker elements.

Dana Gould "I Know It's Wrong" on Hulu Plus/ Eddie Pepitone "In Ruins" on Netflix

 

      There are few podcasts better than "The Dana Gould Hour" . Having been familiar with Gould through his work on "The Simpsons" and his previous stand-up special, "Let Me Put My Thoughts In You" (itself a classic and available streaming on Netflix), I eagerly consumed his pod when it first arrived in 2012. Each episode is loosely centered around a theme and is edited from conversations of Gould with various guests and features a central portion where Gould educates the listener on a specific related topic. These have ranged from the life of Tod Browning, to the carny-noir "Nightmare Alley", to the production lineage of "King Kong vs. Godzilla". Needless to say, if you're interested in the weird side of pop culture history, you'd do well to listen.

     One of the constants on "The Dana Gould Hour" has been the presence of comedian Eddie Pepitone. He's been on nearly every episode, and at this point it almost feels like he is the co-host. The conversations between Gould and Pepitone are inevitably the best part of the show. I'd never heard Pepitone before encountering him on the program, but his combination of neuroticism, anger and undeniable likability made him a favorite of mine.

     With Gould and Pepitone so intertwined through Gould's pod, it seems fitting that both of their new specials have been released this past week: Gould's "I Know It's Wrong" on Netflix Instant and Pepitone's "In Ruins" on Hulu.

     "I Know It's Wrong" was filmed at the Neptune Theatre in Seattle. I saw Gould perform the material from this special last September in Boston, and both times I've been struck by how incredibly tight Gould's set is. He is one of the rare performers gifted with the ability to combine physical comedy with something more substantial. His set encompasses (among many other things): the JFK assassination, a rock legend having sex with an insect, Bob Hope, the Black Dahlia and the "n word". Despite the many touchy areas Gould dips into, he maintains an effortless flow and things never seem labored or forced. At this point in his career he is operating at such an exceptional level that his comedic arsenal seems limitless. This special marks a new high-point for the performer.

     Pepitone's special likewise captures a veteran performer at the peak of his abilities. Both are stand-up comedy at it's purest, and in Pepitone's case: at it's most raw.

     Filmed in Brooklyn by Steven Feinartz director of the Pepitone documentary "The Bitter Buddha" (highly recommended), "In Ruins" captures the maelstrom of rage, self-doubt, anxiety and existential dread that is Eddie Pepitone. With his disarming blue eyes, Pepitone holds the stage for an hour. He is the master of the digression and the nightmare scenario. Relentlessly personal, one feels they are seeing a man open up and lay bare the part of his psyche that most would not dare acknowledge. My Roku crashed during his opening "round of applause" sequence, which somehow makes sense given the performer involved. I can't get his lounge singer bit out of my head. This is essential, dark stuff.



     Both specials are capsules of what makes the performer's special: Gould, master of the delayed punchline, willing to give his words room to breath, never eager to rush to the laugh; Pepitone, painter of apocalyptic scenarios, which become the canvas for his internal struggles and confessions. Support great comedy and watch them, and if you like what you see and hear, check out "The Dana Gould Hour", where you can hear Gould and Pepitone in a more subdued and candid, but no less entertaining environment.