"From Hell It Came" (1957) on Warner Archive Instant

   

     It came from where? From hell. What did? A wild, undead creature of vengeance. Like what, a demon goat with nine legs, shooting fireballs from it's six eyes? Ok, not that wild. Then what is it? A stiff, lumbering kind of tree thing with a face. Oh. From Dan Milner, editor of "Bozo the Clown" amongst many other thing's, co-written and produced by his sound engineer brother Jack, "From Hell It Came" is an uber fifties tour de schlock.

     Nothing sucks you into a film like front loading it with lots of expository background dialogue, and, man, do you get a whole bunch here. Kimo (Gregg Palmer) is tied to the ground, about to be sacrificed as punishment for the death of his father, the former chief of the tribe. He is accused of allowing his father to die from American "devil dust", radiation poisoning from a nuclear bomb accidentally dropped nearby due to a typhoon throwing off calculations. In actuality the chief was poisoned as part of a conspiracy between Kimo's brother, Tano (Robert Swan), the new chief Maranka (Baynes Barron), and Kimo's wife, Korey,  played by Suzanne Ridgeway, who had perhaps the greatest run of uncredited roles ever, including appearances in "Citizen Kane", "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Gone With the Wind". The tribe seems mostly populated by guy's who look like Teamsters. These exotic natives must hail from the forbidden jungles of Paramus, NJ. Kimo is eventually sacrificed by a knife through the heart, but not before vowing, "I promise you all. I shall come back from hell, and make you pay for your crimes."

     Dr. Bill Arnold (Tod Andrews) and the booze swilling, toothy, brillcremed and bekerchiefed Prof. Clark (John McNamara)  are living nearby in the jungle as part of an effort to clean up and study the effects of the wrongly dropped nuke. Their horny, middle aged, widowed neighbor, Mrs. Kilgore (Linda Watkins), ends up at their place after spying on the sacrifice and being chased by a tribesman. She speaks with an unidentifiably loose accent best described as "Cocknailian". Only in the picture as some sort of an attempt at humor, she's a completely unnecessary and extraneous character who disappears for most of the movie only to return for the end.

     Mrs. Kilgore is an awkward, clunky element in a screenplay made up of almost nothing but. There's a weird abundance of expository detail given throughout the whole film that serves no purpose, including the parentage and backstory of the servant girl, Orchid (Grace Mathews). Everything about the writing feels like a first draft, including the need for a thesaurus. In a couple scenes there's a jarring repetition of word's, and it's the first time a movie has made me actively aware of it's limited vocabulary.

     In order to maintain a thematic cohesiveness, the entire cast deliver performances as wooden as the monster who is an actual tree. When combined with the entertainingly awful dialogue ("Sometimes, I could kick her beautiful teeth in.") they have to deliver, to which they add pauses and cadences filed with about as much rhythm as an Ornette Coleman record, what we get is a nonstop parade of gloriously awkward exchanges. When Dr. Bill romances Dr. Mason (Tina Carver), specialist "in dermatology, and the removal of excess scar tissue", during an extended flute scored sequence, he drops this line on her, "I'm gonna fill your head every morning with jungle flower's." Huh? What? His ham handed wooing comes to a close with the perverse and hilarious reveal that they've been next to the tribal burial ground the whole time. It's an awesome moment, too effective to be accidental, and the part of the movie where you see the editorial mind of Milner taking full advantage of the power of juxtaposition.

     They discover a stump growing out of Kimo's grave, which eventually grows a face (the stump, not the grave). What follows are scenes of psychotronic perfection as the team investigates the growth, checking it's heartbeat with a stethoscope and- in what must be the sole instance of this in cinema- giving the tree an IV in an attempt to save it after digging it up.

     The creature- called "Tabonga"- escapes the laboratory and makes his grand entrance during a fight between Kory and the chief's new lady, Naomi (Tani Marsh). It's an all out, knock down, drag out wrasslin' match that would make the Fabulous Moolah proud. Tabonga looks like a Tree Ent from LOTR if Peter Jackson had made those film's in his backyard when he was 12 (I kinda wish he had). Basically, it's a guy stomping around slowly in a big, blank eyed rubber suit trying not to fall down or bump into anything. He grabs Kory and tosses her into the nearby quicksand, thereby winning this movie the tree monster, catfight, quicksand Triple Crown as well as being the best moment in cinema I've seen all month (granted, we're only a week in). His two timing old lady taken care of, Tabonga heads to the village to wreak his undead, arboreal vengeance on the others who betrayed him.

     With it's combination of bad acting, awesome theremin laced score, awful dialogue, atom age science, silly rubber suit monster, restless island natives, girl on girl violence and quicksand, "From Hell It Came" is the Platonic ideal of a fifties B-movie. Pictures like this transcend "good" or "bad" and need to be appreciated as utterly unpretentious fun. If entertainment is the most important goal of cinema, then guys like Dan Milner and other filmmakers from the midnight country of the Late, Late Movie are auteur's of the highest order.

"Decoy" (1946) on Warner Archive Instant

"People who use pretty face's like you use yours don't live very long, anyway."

     Guy's brought back a lot of stuff from WWII. B-movie director Jack Bernhard brought himself back a wife and leading lady named Jean Gillie. Together they made a late night pulp noir so menacing it makes the cynical romance of "Gun Crazy" look like a Harlequin novel. "Decoy" sucker punched me when I first saw it. Being blindsided by a film is the greatest feeling in the world, and one that happens all too seldom. It takes the right combination of low expectation followed by high reward. Such was the case with "Decoy", a picture I initially only watched because it was on the same disc as "Crime Wave". I gave the disc a half hearted spin and soon became entranced by this hopeless low budget litany of betrayal, murder and avarice.

     We open on a man's dirty hand's in a sink, his reflection in a broken mirror. I don't know of a more definitive opening image in film noir, a genre populated by men whittled down and parceled out by fate. The man, Dr. Lloyd Craig (Herbert Rudley), has a gaze somehow both zombie like and imbued with singular focused purpose. He hitches a ride into town, walks into an apartment and shoots Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie) before being killed himself.

     Sheldon Leonard is Police Sgt. Joe Portugal, a tough, no nonsense streetwise cop. I always loved Leonard in his brief appearance in "It's a Wonderful Life" as the bartender, and it's great to see him here in a larger role. He possessed the kind of voice people had in the 1940's, but don't anymore. Margot's hard boiled deathbed confession to Portugal takes us into the story.

     It's the most far out of crime plots- a plan to dodge a death sentence by using a chemical antidote to gas chamber toxin. Margot's guy, Frankie (Robert Armstrong), is scheduled to meet his maker, and she plans on raising the guy from the dead so she can get her hand's on the resurrected sucker's stash of cash. Dr. Craig is the idealistic, altruistic doctor Margot seduces and manipulates; eroding his beneficent nature until he becomes her tool.

     The reanimation of Frankie is the poverty row crime story version of the creation scene from "Frankenstein", right down to Frankie's proclamation "I'm alive." Even if the picture wasn't any good, it would still be notable for the gonzo prison break scenario. It's one of the rare noir's infused with horror and sci-fi element's. Considering many noir's mutual low budget pedigree with the more fantastic genre's, it's disappointing more filmmakers didn't exploit the potential for cross pollination (one personal favorite is Robert Siodmak's "Son of Dracula", a heartbreaking tragic horror noir gothic).

     To reveal what happens from this point forward would be to take the dark joy away from experiencing some of the most wonderfully sinister plotting in all film noir. Suffice it to say, what happens to the men Margot has lined up is what inevitably happens to all dominoes meticulously arranged in a row. When the good doctor tries to pull out of his association with her, Margot says something that could be said to a million different guy's in a million different noir's, "You're in the middle. Deep. Over your head. No matter what you do now, you're still part of everything that's happened." He's yet another schlub who sold himself out for a pretty face, only to discover he'd been played, and now he's stuck with not only the dame, but her kill crazy soulless gangster boyfriend (Edward Norris), as well.

     Dr. Craig is interesting as a character because it is the act of giving life that sends him spiralling into this nightmare; through helping to cheat death, he finds himself in a world of it. He again becomes Margot's instrument of resurrection, but this time he's bringing a box of cash from it's grave in a fog shrouded forest. By this time, the doctor has been reduced to a drunken, mindless Igor, digging in the dirt under his mistresses order's. The film ends with a cold, nihilistic finish, it's minor key harmonious with all that preceded it.

    Women in film noir are a tough breed and Jean Gillie in "Decoy" may be the world heavyweight champion; an unholy arch femme fatale who uses her spiderweb of manipulation to try and snare a whole load of cash. Only thirty-three when "Decoy" was made, she returned to England afterwards, where a long career should have awaited her. Fate had other plan's. She died of pneumonia less than three year's later, having made only one more picture. Life just ain't fair sometimes.

     

   

"Gun Crazy" (1950) on Warner Archive Instant

"Some guy's are born smart about women. And some guy's are born dumb."

     I first saw "Gun Crazy" at some point in my early to mid twenties and it didn't make a lasting impression, This isn't a reflection of the quality of the picture, so much as it is another piece of evidence proving I was an idiot for much of that decade. In a way, though, that's appropriate, as it's a picture about being young and stupid, specifically when it comes to love and the choices it forces us to make before we've lived and learned to know better.

     We open on a rainy corner and young Rusty Tamblyn, as Bart, breaking the front window of a store so that he can steal a gun. See, this kid is crazy obsessed with gun's, to the point he's unable to function without one in his life. If this were today, the kid would certainly be on some kind of watch list and be going to therapy five day's a week. At the court hearing for his crime we flashback to Bart bringing his gun to school and the kid's gathering around to ogle it. It's a jarring scene to view through a modern filter and all the intervening year's of tragedy and caution. Bart's sister pleads his case, saying that although her brother might be gun crazy, the one thing he won't do is harm anything. In order to illustrate this we flashback to young Bart shooting a baby chick and becoming overwhelmed with grief when it dies. It's a simple, yet profound document of the moment in one boy's life when he learned he has the power to kill and how awful it makes him feel, anticipating Peckinpah's penchant for intertwining death imagery with childhood.

     Bart's story picks up year's later after he has graduated reform school and done a tour in the army. He celebrates his new freedom by- what else- shooting gun's with his buddies and then heading to a carnival where they take in a performance by sharpshooter Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins). Bart is captivated by this hot blonde who shares his affection for ballistic machinery, and, after winning a shooting contest against her, he joins the show as a performer.

     The two gunslinger's fall for each other, but the carnival owner, Packett (Barry Kroeger), tries to get in Laurie's way. Seems he thinks he's got a claim to her, something about a dead guy in St. Louis. Laurie thinks otherwise, and soon there's two unemployed sharpshooter's on the road. "I've got a funny feeling I want to be good. I don't know, maybe I can't", Laurie says to Bart before their late night wedding chapel marriage. Being young, dumb and horny, Bart pins his hopes on this pretty dame, naively assuming he's the one with the shameful past.

     But, Laurie is a hardened survivor who's been around. Cummins is perfect as a woman who is ice cold, materialistic and makes no bone's about it. She begins wearing away at Bart's moral code, and the two set off on a stick-up spree. John Dall ,as Bart, perfectly exudes the right combo of boyish innocence and romantic hopefulness of a schmuck in love with a morally absent femme fatale, who's too stupid to leave.

     The scenes of the couple running from their various job's contain some of the most iconic "Bonnie and Clyde" type imagery ever captured on film. There's a modest grit to Joseph Lewis' shot compositions; he has a gift for expressive close-up's and simple camera move's . The film's centerpiece, an extended one-take scene of a bank job shot from the backseat, with realistic, banal improvised dialogue, is a thrilling marvel of simple, efficient technique and staging. Just as de Toth does at the start of "Crime Wave", Lewis forces the audience into the role of voyeuristic co-conspirator.

    If you're going to make a robbery picture, you gotta have cool outfit's. It's a time honored tradition as exemplified by film's like "The Killing", "Reservoir Dogs", "Point Break" and countless others. Lewis understands that the aesthetics of wardrobe are important to the genre and dresses his leads in various disguises, most memorably their carny cowboy outfit's and their sunglasses and trench coat get up's. He uses wardrobe to illustrate the moral compromise that has overtaken Bart when he shows him wearing a stolen military outfit, when he once honestly wore his own uniform. Conversely, the couple's costume western attire takes on a new meaning when they become real life outlaws right out of the Old West. "Sometimes it doesn't feel like me", says Bart about his new life.

     "You're the only thing that is [real], Laurie. The rest is a nightmare.", he says to his vicious, cut-throat blonde bride. She's a tough broad who's decided to survive on her own term's, and who presents herself as the only reward Bart should need for the felonious quicksand she has led him neck deep into. At it's heart this is a film about that first relationship with someone who was wrong for you, but you didn't care and instead you did stupid shit even though you knew better; it's a film about how love can corrupt.

     As a final job they decide to knock off the Armour factory payroll. Laurie ice's a couple people during their getaway- a teeth grindingly intense sequence. I don't know that I've ever heard the selfish inanity of crime so succinctly described as when Bart says, "Two people died, just so we can live without working." It's a hell of a line, in a hell of a script, written by Dalton Trumbo, a hell of a writer, who at the time was on the blacklist because he wasn't a rat.

     With all bad relationship's, eventually they have have to meet the family, and that never goes well, and it certainly doesn't when Bart and Laurie hide at his sister's in an attempt to duck the law on their tails. Neither does Bart listen when his friend's try and talk some sense into him. The picture ends with the couple's flight from inevitability into the mountains. Winded and dirty they try and stay ahead of the siren's and dog's. Even nature conspires against them as the high altitude robs them of their breath, They become immersed in the disorienting fog of their marriage as the the ending approaches.

     "Gun Crazy" is a story of unhealthy romance, perfect for a cynic's Valentine's Day. It's a story of how blind affection can change us for the worse and where incautious devotion can lead. And it's about the time in your life when you couldn't give a damn about any of that jazz.

   

   

"Crime Wave" (1954) on Warner Archive Instant

      I romanticize Los Angeles- particularly LA of the mid 20th century- the way only someone who grew up in New England in the late 20th century is able to do. The ever tarnishing glamour. The crime. The sadness. It's a world that captivates me. The world of Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and, of course, James Ellroy. A list of Ellroy's favorite crime picture's is how I first heard of Andre De Toth's "Crime Wave", where it sits between Losey's "The Prowler" (a masterpiece) and Wise's "Odds Against Tomorrow" (still need to see it). Ellroy says of the film, "Any time I can go back and live in the actual physical presence of Los Angeles in the 1950's I am very happy, and this movie takes you there."

     "Crime Wave" does indeed literally take you there. De Toth puts the audience in the backseat of a car full of escaped convict's on a crime spree as they pull into the location of their latest job: a gas station. Right from the get go the film displays numerous essential noir element's: great character actor's (Ted de Corsia, Charles Bronson, Dub Taylor), blunt violence and a constant uneasy tension. The use of source music adds to the naturalism of the scene, as the radio plays a Doris Day record the gas station attendant requested. De Toth makes us party to the ensuing crime. The hood's slug the attendant, but before they can snatch the dough and scram, a motorcycle cop sticks his nose in their affair's. Three gunshot's later, there's a dead cop on the ground and a wounded cop killer on the run.

     De Toth captures what follows with a stylish verite; the streetscape of 1950's LA unfolds before us as cop's canvas the city, searching for those who killed one of their own. We are taken on the run with Gat Morgan (Ned Young) as he dodges through the shadow's in an attempt to evade the black and white shark's that hunt the street's. We are immersed in the world of the law, as well, most impressively in a sequence where De Toth's camera follows Sterling Hayden's Det. Lt. Sims as he walks the interrogation room, taking in the chaos of a late night at LAPD headquarters.

     De Toth's mixture of documentary rawness and poetic stylization gives the film a tension and power that most noir's don't reach. His economic storytelling is effortlessly perfect. With only the simplest of dialogue and a couple of short, beautifully composed scenes in which Lacey- the ex-con trying to go straight- is called by Morgan and then the cop's, we are given a full picture of this sympathetic character and the stigma he is living with. "Once you've done a bit, nobody leaves you alone. Somebody's always on your back."

     In true film noir tradition a man's past and the Fate's conspire to jam a guy up. Morgan shows up at Steve Lacey's (Gene Nelson) door and promptly dies in his living room. The ever dependable Jay Novello is fantastic as Dr. Otto Hessler, the drunk, disgraced doctor- now a veterinarian- who arrives too late and cleans his dead patient's pocket's clean. In one moment, Lacey finds himself all of a sudden in the cross hairs of Det. Sims' investigation; a supposedly reformed hood with a dead, jail breaking cop killer in his living room. Sims as played by Hayden is an intense, snarling, sadistic dick, obsessed with the truth as he sees it- not willing to give an inch to doubt.

     Lacey refuses to turn snitch and is released from jail through the effort's of his kindly parole officer O'Keefe (James Bell). His freedom is short lived as he and his wife (Phyllis Kirk) soon become the unwilling host's to the two remaining escapee's Doc Penny (Ted de Corsia) and Ben Hastings (Charles Bronson, who previously worked with De Toth in "House of Wax"). In a scene of brutal cinematic restraint, De Toth's camera takes us away from the scene of Hastings murdering Hessler at his vet clinic, instead following a newspaper man as he goes to alert a couple of officer's at a diner. The cacophonous barking chaos of the murder scene gives way to the jazz of the evening only to eventually return. He films Hastings' escape down an alley as if he was a monster running into the shadow's of the LA night.

     De Toth uses deft storytelling touches to populate his film with fully realized character's. Whether it's Hayden always wearing a poorly tied necktie and smoking a crumpled cigarette at the end or Novello's doctor using his free time to try and save a dog that was brought to him to be euthanized, this is a film concerned with real people, not stock cliche's. Gene Nelson gives a beautifully natural, understated performance as Lacey, a man who's marriage is being sucked into the undertow of his past.

     The hood's force Lacey to be their wheel-man for a bank robbery, intending for him to fly them out of the country afterwards. Johnny, a psycho perv played by Timothy Carey, watches over his wife. With his hypnotic gaze and unhealthy grin, Carey possessed one of the most uncomfortable screen presences in cinema history. When he's on screen you can't take your eye's off him- he courses with a sick, unpredictable energy.

     There's more violence and menace to this picture than your average noir. It's there in the blood flowing down Dub Taylor's face as he calls the cop's, it's in the lecherous gaze Bronson gives to Mrs. Lacey and it's in every second of Carey's screen time. "Crime Wave" is a raw, uncompromising street level noir with a dangerous vitality undiminished by the intervening 60 years. Indeed, it's tougher than any picture you'll likely see come out of Hollywood in 2015.

   

   

"The Big Cube" (1969) on Warner Archive Instant

"This is a pop art world, baby."

     Lana Turner had a true Hollywood life and career- the kind we simply don't get anymore. From her iconic femme fatale portrait in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" to the Oscar night knife murder of her gangster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato by her daughter- an incident cloaked in mystery- Turner's story is rich in the kind of showbiz gothic that makes for a great biography. By 1969, though, the Hollywood Turner embodied had become outdated and out of touch. Released mere months before the summer that gave us both "Easy Rider" and the Manson murder's, "The Big Cube" is a hippy scare thriller aimed at confused parent's of the late 60's.

     Renowned actress Adriana Roman (Lana Turner) is giving up her life on the stage to marry Charles Winthrop (Dan O'Herlihy). Winthrop's daughter Lisa (Karin Mossberg) is jealous of Adriana, fearing she'll take her father's attention away from her. Mossberg, with her thick accent, is a strange bit of casting. This is explained away by a reference to her having been schooled in Switzerland. She must have lived over there for her entire life to have an accent of that magnitude.

     While the newlywed's are on a sailing honeymoon, Lisa is hanging out with her long hair friends, grooving to the heavy sound's of a band fronted by a guy who looks a bit like Phil Lynott. Lisa makes the acquaintance of Johnny Allen, the acid cooking, perfectly coiffed, cleft chinned med student, played by with smug charm by George Chakiris. The night comes to an end with a full on acid freakout when one of Johnny's crew doses a guy who crossed him.

     Later, Charles blows his lid when Adriana and he return home to find a love-in strip tease occurring at their house, courtesy of Lisa's walking sixties cliche friend, Bibi (Pamela Rodgers). O'Herlihy brings his usual grinning gravitas to his role here. He's one of those guy's who apparently was always 60 years old, looking very much the same here as he would fifteen plus years later in film's like "Halloween III" and "Robocop".

     With no context, we are given a cool, trippy sequence of Adriana being carried down a beach on a stretcher, with intermittent flashes to her and Charles enduring a storm at sea. It's an intentionally disorienting way to engage the audience in one of the picture's major plot points. The dark, evocative score by Val Johns is wonderful here and throughout the entire film. Not bad for a composer whose major claim to fame is a cover of the "Theme from Ben Casey".

     Having been lost at sea, Charles' fortune falls to Adriana. Lisa receives nothing until such time as she is wed, with the caveat that Adriana must approve the nuptials. After Adriana will not give her blessing to marriage between Johnny and Lisa, Johnny manipulates Lisa into thinking Adriana married her father only to get at his money. As revenge, they lace Adriana's medication with LSD. The acid dosing co-conspirator's plan works and Adriana is placed in a mental hospital. Charles' money is given to Lisa after Adriana is ruled mentally unfit. "Maybe there's no perfect murder, but I think we've figured a perfect freak out.", Johnny gloats.

     Tito Davison directs the dark acid nightmare sequence's with a sense of lysergic unease; Johns' score helps to immerse the audience in Adriana's altered state. Oddly, this seems to be a Mexican production behind the camera. The psychedelic part's of this picture are mod, gel lit dynamo's and I'd be interested in seeing more of Davison's work based solely on their merit.

      Lisa marries Johnny in a wild wedding complete with biker's and hippy wedding cake topper's. At the end of the night, he kisses the far out floozy Bibi right in front of her. After kicking him out ("You are feelthy, disgusting!"), Lisa must decide what to do about the sordid, squalorous situation she has created. The ending involving an attempt to restore Adriana's mental health by having her enact a play of her life- written by her chain smoking, Brylcremed playwright ex, Frederick (Richard Egan)- is the pop psychology cherry on top of this disposable late sixties sundae.

     "The Big Cube" with it's juxtaposition of druggy darkness and teary eyed, string swelling melodrama, is the bastard child of Douglas Sirk and Roger Corman; an example of square cinema adopting the visual language of the same counter culture it warns against. To her credit, Turner manages to remain classy and elegant, despite the overwhelming silliness of the material. It's a film meant to confirm every Nixonite's suspicion's about the young folk. Watch it alongside "Skidoo" and have yourself an old Hollywood takes acid double feature.  

   

"Silent Night, Bloody Night" (1974) on Amazon Prime and Youtube

Slight spoiler's below...  

     Man, when I started this Christmas movie series, I had no idea a full 50% of the selections would feature incest as a major plot reveal. But, there it is, yet again, at the end of "Silent Night, Bloody Night", a grungy American giallo from 1974. I guess that would make it the " 'Chinatown' of Long Island Gothic Christmas movies starring multiple member's of Warhol's Factory". Actually, "starring" is too strong a word. Mary Woronov is the only Warhol acolyte with a major role. She was married to the director, Theodore Gershuny at the time, so I imagine she brought her Factory friend's along for the fun.

     Patrick O'Neal is John Carter, a lawyer tasked with brokering a deal to sell the Butler mansion to a group of power player's in the town of Arlington, MA. These potential buyer's are the mayor (Walter Abel), the sheriff (Walter Klavun), the newspaper editor (John Carradine) and...the telephone operator (Fran Stevens). The estate was left to Jeffrey Butler after his grandfather was burned alive on Christmas Eve 1950. Along for the ride with Carter is his mistress, Ingrid, played by the Bardot-esque Astrid Heeren. It should be noted that Carradine only communicates by ringing a bell ala Hector Salamanca on "Breaking Bad". I don't know why this choice was made. Maybe Carradine had variable rate's and charged less for not speaking. Anyway, it's a strange touch in a movie filled with them, such as having Tess' house filled with bird's in cage's. O'Neal is the biggest name in the picture and you know the budget wasn't there to pay him for an entire shoot, so he and Ingrid exit the picture early; axed to death in the Butler house where they are spending the night. This early portion of the movie flows well, with a fractured artistry to the pacing.

     The unseen killer is black gloved and makes disturbing phone call's to the potential buyer's in true giallo fashion. "It's Marianne. Tell the mayor. Tell them all. I'm waiting in my father's house", they tell Tess in an unsettling whisper. Bob Clark's "Black Christmas" receives a lot of completely justified praise for bringing the tropes of the Italian giallo to the North American horror picture, but "Silent Night, Bloody Night" is every bit as indebted to the style. Strangely, Christmas horror movies seem to follow a rule of two's: this and "Black Christmas" were both released in 1974 and 1980 saw the release of Santa slasher's "Christmas Evil" and "Silent Night, Deadly Night".

     Tony award winning New York actor James Patterson plays Jeffrey Butler, who has just arrived in town and may or may not be an escaped, wrench toting psycho. He befriends a suspicious, gun wielding Diane Adams, the mayor's daughter, played by statuesque, strong jawed, B-movie staple Mary Woronov. In a truly disturbing sequence, Tess arrives at the Butler mansion and is confronted by the killer who shines a flashlight in her face, the only light in the darkened house. The spotlight holds her frightened gaze as the whispering maniac addresses her before ending her life. Later, a handless ("His hand's...somebody cut off his hands") Carradine is accidentally hit and killed by Jeffrey as he and Diane drive to the house to investigate.

     The house's grotesque, debauched, blood soaked history is told in a sepia tone nightmare flashback. Featuring such Warhol Superstar's as Ondine and Candy Darling, it's a sequence both beautiful and ugly, exceeding the low bar the movie has set for itself by such a degree that it's rather stunning. The score by Gershon Kingsley, the guy who wrote "Popcorn", is dreary and ominous; effective not just during this part but the entire picture.

      With Woronov giving a scream queen performance for the ages during the surprisingly powerful, knockout ending, "Silent Night, Bloody Night" is the ugly New Yorker cousin of "Black Christmas"; rough looking and jittery from too many sleepless nights shooting speed with the Warhol crew. Candy Darling passed away the same month the movie came out, and James Patterson died two year's earlier when it was shot. It all adds to the general unhappy atmosphere of the picture. As anyone from the Northeast can tell you, winter isn't always beautiful, it's often bleak, barren and dirty; Theodore Gershuny's movie imperfectly captures that aspect.

   

"To All a Goodnight" (1980) on Youtube

     Nothing says Christmas like David Hess. The dean of 70s rape-o sleazoid roles, Hess specialized in playing completely irredeemable scumbag's, most notably as Krug in Wes Craven's "Last House on the Left" and then in the Italian production's "House on the Edge of the Park" and "Hitch Hike". He's also the only person involved in our Christmas movie series who hit on one of my friend's. It was a number of year's ago at a con and Hess was selling his newly printed shirt's reading "Women Love David Hess". My best friend was the first person to purchase one. Hess was elated, asking her to try it on and model it. Then he told her she should come back later in the show. Repeatedly. "No, really come back later." My friend never did take the man up on his offer, but within a year or two Hess was no longer with us, and that incident became a fond memory of a true B movie legend, who had an eye for the ladies even into his late sixties.

     "To All A Goodnight" is Hess' sole full length directorial effort. The fact that the sleazo supremo of drive-in cinema directed a Christmas movie somehow makes sense when viewed as one more chapter in a biography which includes writing song's for Elvis and penning English dubbing script's for Fassbender film's. He was a true show biz hustler, going wherever the money was. In 1980 he stepped behind the camera to give us this low budget rip-off/cash in of both "Friday the 13th" and the "All Through the House" segment of "Tales From the Crypt".

   
     We open on a pre credit sequence at "Calvin Finishing School for Girls", "Christmas Vacation Two Years Ago". It's shot with a foggy lens vignette, making the action almost indecipherable as opposed to dreamy. A group of girl's and an axe wielding Santa chase a girl through the house. Everyone seems to be having a fun time until the girl being chased accidentally plummets to her death.

     The main title sequence has a kick ass minimalist synth score. Unfortunately, the music in most of the rest of the picture isn't quite as great. During the kill scenes, though, there is some analog awesomeness.

     The movie picks back up during "Christmas Vacation The Present". A PA speaker makes endless announcements ala MASH as the student's leave for break. A group of six girl's are staying at the school during vacation, along with Mrs. Jensen (Katherine Herrington) who cooks and takes care of them and Ralph (Buck West) the lumbering simpleton red herring who enjoys barging into their rooms with garden shears. The girl's are planning on using their time off to hook up with a literal plane load of guys the boyfriend of Leia (Judith Bridges)-a somewhat annoying combination of Laraine Newman and PJ Soles - is flying in with. Soon, the bodies begin to pile up as a murderous Santa begins knocking off student's. The kill scene's are fun, the best one being a crossbow/decapitation combo on a bearskin rug; the severed noggin later makes an appearance as a shower head (what was it Chekov said about severed head's in drama?). The killer goes about their business in an orderly fashion, usually killing one couple at a time; the OCD part of my brain appreciated this patterned carnage.

     Hess made his name portraying character's specializing in unwanted advances towards women. It's interesting to note that as an auteur he creates a world in which the female's are ravenously sexual horndog's. Oddly, he also seems to think young college girl's would rather sleep with a cop who looks like a Long Island used car dealer than their handsome, plane owning boyfriend. The Hess worldview is an interesting thing.

     Alex Rebar, writer and star of "The Incredible Melting Man", penned the movie and his screenplay whittles down the slasher to it's most essential elements; it's basic even by the genre's standards. He'll generally gather the character's together in one location where they sit and engage in uninteresting dialogue, until one or two inevitably split from the group to be killed. Of course there's plenty of sex, as well discussion of getting beer and getting of said beer. More than one scene takes place in the glow of an open refrigerator. The lack of score for chunk's of the picture forces the viewer to uncomfortably notice the bland dialogue and awkward acting. Jennifer Runyon, though, who plays Nancy the virginal final girl, gives a totally decent performance.

     "To All a Goodnight" is just as grimy and artless as you'd expect a movie directed by David Hess to be. The cinematography is so murky and dark at times it becomes difficult to tell whats happening. One thing that really would have made this movie great would've been if Hess himself had stepped out from behind the camera and acted in it. It could use some of the ferocious, dangerous energy he brought to the screen.  But, if you dig low budget trash, there's some good stuff to be found here. For one, it's the only Christmas movie with classic porn star Harry Reems in it (he plays a small role as a pilot). The entire end of the picture attains the sort of dreamlike surreal atmosphere accessible only through psychotronic strangeness. There's a plane propeller death scene at the crack of dawn which has a strange feel to it. Also, throughout the last part of the movie, Leah, who has gone mad, sings and dances through the darkened house where the killer stalks. She is a haunting, unsettling image. If this sounds like it's your thing, then I say screw the "Hess Truck", make this "Hess Flick" your new holiday tradition.