RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK

I love Hammer horror films. I love Christopher Lee. He's one of my favorite actors. Therefore, I should love a Hammer horror film starring Christopher Lee, especially when it's one I've never seen. A new treasure to be explored and savored! Right?

Not so fast. RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK (1966) is, by any one's standards, a rather lackluster Hammer film. Shot on a low budget, the film recycles sets from previous Hammer productions and although ostensibly set in pre-revolutionary Russia, makes no attempt whatsoever to accurately depict the time and place. Outside of character's names and some period costumes, everyone speaks with a British accent, the scale of the film is intimate and the one shot of a grand ball in the Tsar's palace is clearly recycled footage from some other film.

In addition, the screenplay by Anthony Hinds takes quite a while to really get going and when it does, the storyline is routine with Rasputin's powers and plans never quite fully explained while Don Sharp's direction is flat and dull.

With all of that working against the film, it's up to Christopher Lee to carry the weight and he does so admirably. Lee plays Rasputin as a cross between Dracula and Charles Manson, a "holy man" possessing the power to heal and to mesmerize people into doing his bidding. His healing power is demonstrated in the opening sequence of the film. He cures a woman ravaged by fever and then launches into a wild orgy of drink, dance and attempted rape. He's attacked by concerned citizens, slices off one man's hand and flees back to the monastery to repent of his sins. His credo is, if you're going to ask God for forgiveness, give him something really wicked to forgive.

Rasputin heads to St. Petersburg where he crosses paths with Sonia (Barbara Shelley), who is a lady-in-waiting to the Tsarina (Renee Asherson). He seduces Sonia and mesmerizes her into doing his bidding. Rasputin's goal is to get in good with the royal family and he succeeds. He's given a palatial home in which he sets up shop, ministering to the needs of various women. As his power and ambition grows, he hypnotizes Sonia into committing suicide and moves closer to the royal family. Sonia's brother, Peter (Dinsdale Landen) and Ivan (Francis Matthews), realize the threat Rasputin poses and plot to kill him.

But Rasputin proves hard to dispatch. Poison doesn't do the trick, but getting thrown out of a window does. The monster's dead. The movie's over.

It's never made clear if Rasputin possesses any supernatural powers or if he's just an incredibly powerful con-man and trickster. Since the film is loosely based on a real historical figure, it would be wrong to categorically state that Rasputin was indeed imbued with Satanic abilities. He was nevertheless, a ruthless schemer and plotter which Lee capably portrays.

The story of Rasputin provides material for a great film. RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK, sadly, isn't that film. It's second tier Hammer fare redeemed by Lee's performance.

IMPACT

I've had this one sitting on my bookshelf for who know how long. Finally decided to give it a read the other day. IMPACT, by Harry Olesker, was written in 1961. This edition was published by Dell in January 1965.

Stanley Gilborn, a New York City accountant, is a middle-aged man married to a much younger woman. Kitti, a former model, is Gilborn's "trophy wife" but the two seem to genuinely love each other. Gilborn returns to his apartment from work one day to find Kitti brutally murdered. Her death devastates him and suspicion (and circumstantial evidence) begins to point towards Lionel Black, an insurance salesman and Gilborn's much younger best friend.

But there are other suspects as well. Could Gilborn himself committed the crime? Black's needy wife Pat? Blanche, Gilborn's secretary who has been secretly in love with her boss for years? It's up to detective Joseph Conrad (I kid you not!) and his younger partner Johnny Rourke to sift through the evidence and statements and discover the truth.

Nothing spectacular here whatsoever but IMPACT is still a tightly written, efficiently constructed little murder mystery. Thumbs up.

THE WASP WOMAN

"When the monster's dead, the movie's over."

Shot in five to six days with a budget of only $50,000, Roger Corman's 1959 monster movie, THE WASP WOMAN, is a classic example of what made the legendary genre auteur the king of the "B"'s. It's got an alliterative, attention grabbing title (working titles included THE BEE GIRL and INSECT WOMAN), and a bait-and-switch poster that promises far more than the film can possibly deliver. For one thing, the monster is not a gigantic wasp with a woman's head, it's a woman with a wasp's head (ala THE FLY (1958)).

The opening credits play against stock footage of a bee hive, not a wasps' nest. In fact, there's no depiction of a real wasp anywhere in the film's sixty-one minute running time (when WASP WOMAN was sold to television in the 1960s, a prologue featuring Dr. Zinthrop (Michael Mark) was shot by Jack Hill to pad out the running time to seventy-three minutes and allow for more commercials in a ninety minute block of programming).  Zinthrop has been conducting experiments with the jelly produced by queen wasps as a way to reverse the aging process in animals. He's ready to try out the serum on a human subject but he needs someone to act as an investor and a willing guinea pig.

He finds such a person in the form of Janice Starlin (Susan  Cabot), owner of a large cosmetics company. Sales of her products have taken a nose dive especially since cover-girl and spokesperson Janice has begun to show horrible signs of age (she's only forty!). Desperate to regain her lost beauty and rescue her company from financial ruin, Janice agrees to fund Zinthrop and let him inject her with his serum. After all, it worked on a guinea pig and a cat, what could possibly go wrong by shooting the juice into a human?

At first, nothing goes wrong. Janice is restored to her former stunning good looks (loose the glasses, re-arrange her hair and remove the "age" lines and voila!). But Zinthrop discovers that there are some serious side effects and, devastated by this knowledge, steps off a curb into the path of a truck, an accident which renders him temporarily comatose. With Zinthrop out of service, Janice breaks into the lab and shoots herself up with more of the serum. This is where things take a turn for the worse.

The junk causes her to grow a wasp-like head and black, fuzzy waspish hands (actually, furry mittens) and to develop a taste for human blood. That's right, she's a vampire wasp woman (hey, that would have made a great title!). Zinthrop recovers, and warns Janice to stop using the serum but it's too late, she's gone insane. Zinthrop and PR man Bill Lane (Fred Eisley), confront the monster in the lab where she's doused with acid and shoved out of a window. The end.

Despite it's non-scientific plot, WASP WOMAN is an effective little thriller competently staged and efficiently shot by Corman and cinematographer Harry Neumann. The jazzy score by Fred Katz works and the Corman stock company of actors hit their marks and say their lines with practiced aplomb. The sets are minimal but they're nicely dressed with mid-century goodies courtesy of art director Daniel Haller. There's not much room in Leo Gordon's script for a sub-plot but a budding relationship between Lane and Mary Dennison (Barboura Morris), provides some romance. Two secretaries, Carolyn Hughes and Lynn Cartwright, talk about seeing DR. CYCLOPS (1940) on the late show, while Corman himself appears in one scene as a doctor.

WASP WOMAN was the first movie Corman made under the auspices of his own production company, Filmgroup, and, not having someone else's money to play with, it's obvious that he makes every shot count. Released on a double bill with BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE, WASP WOMAN is exactly what you think it is: cheap, quick and entertaining.

SING ME A MURDER

Before there was Hard Case Crime, there was Black Lizard Books. Black Lizard was an imprint that specialized in reprinting out-of-print works of noir fiction by a variety of writers in mass market paperback format. Founded and overseen by writer/editor Barry Gifford in 1984, Black Lizard published more than ninety books between 1984 and 1990. In June 1990, the imprint was sold to Random House where it was merged with the preexisting Vintage Crime imprint to form Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. The reprints of vintage crime material continue, along with some contemporary works but this time the format is trade paperback.

Black Lizard featured novels by such genre stalwarts as Charles Willeford, David Goodis, Peter Rabe, Harry Whittington, Dan J. Marlowe, Charles Williams, Lionel White and Jim Thompson, among many others. I remember stumbling across a slew of Black Lizard paperbacks in a Half Price Books store sometime in the mid-'80s. I went nuts looking for every book I could find that had the Black Lizard logo on it. I bought as many of them as I could and in the years since, have managed to read many of them. I currently have 22 Black Lizard paperbacks on my bookshelves. I've been in the mood lately to sample some vintage crime fiction but rather than spend money for used copies or reprints on eBay or other websites, I decided I'd read some of the stuff I already had.

Which brings me to SING ME A MURDER, a 1961 murder mystery by Helen Nielsen. Nielsen also wrote DETOUR (not to be confused with the Edgar G. Ulmer film of the same name) as well as scripts for such television shows as PERRY MASON, ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, ALCOA THEATRE and 87TH PRECINCT. She was one of the few women writers to sell stories to such male dominated crime magazines as MANHUNT, ACCUSED, HUNTED, PURSUIT and JUSTICE (among others), where she shared pages with Evan Hunter, Harry Whittington, John Jakes, and Gil Brewer. Nielsen was a whiz at plotting, a skill that is on clear display in SING.

Playwright Ty Leander is devastated by the death of his wife, the beautiful singer Julie San Martin. She met her end in a wildfire that consumed half of their Malibu Canyon home. When he learns about the death of Mary Brownlee, a look-a-like for Julie, he decides to attempt suicide in the same boarding house room where Brownlee was murdered by her jealous boyfriend. He doesn't really intend to kill himself but he feels he must atone in some way for the death of his wife. He declares to his attorney friend Cole Tyler that he intends to be charged with Brownlee's murder and take the place of the accused Mike Flanders (whom Tyler is defending). Got it?

Leander's bizarre actions at the beginning of the book are merely a ruse to get him involved in investigating the deaths of the women. He finds evidence that his wife may have been murdered at the same time it becomes clearer that Flanders is innocent. Who killed the two beauties? Among the suspects are lawyer Tyler, theatrical producer Marcus Anatole, set designer Alex Draeger (a woman) and moody young artist Dana Quist. Police detective Janus is also on the case which takes several surprising twists and turns before the killer is finally revealed.

SING ME A MURDER isn't noir or hard-boiled. It's a straightforward murder mystery with well drawn characters and a look into the goings-on in a mid-century artists' salon in Southern California. You have to pay close attention because Nielsen provides a lot of red herrings along with legitimate clues before the big reveal. Not the greatest murder mystery I've ever read but a perfectly fine way to spend a Memorial Day afternoon. Thumbs up to this one and any and all Black Lizard paperbacks you can find.

THE MAGNETIC MONSTER

I'm a huge fan of 1950s science fiction films. I've seen a lot of them but there are still some out there that I have yet to watch. One of them was THE MAGNETIC MONSTER (1953), which I recently had a chance to see, thanks to TCM.

Halfway through this coma-inducing film, I succumbed and nodded off for a few minutes. When I awoke, it suddenly seemed as if I was watching an entirely different film. There was stalwart sf icon Richard Carlson valiantly trying to save the world but what's with that massive set of futuristic equipment that looks like leftovers from Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS (1926)?

THE MAGNETIC MONSTER was produced by Ivan Tors. It was the first in his trilogy of science fiction films featuring the Office of Scientific Investigation. The other two films were RIDERS TO THE STARS (1954) and GOG (1954). Tors also co-wrote the screenplay for MAGNETIC with genre veteran Curt Siodmak, who also directed (along with an uncredited Herbert L. Strock). Trouble is, there are no opening credits to let us know who's responsible for the film. We only get a title card with Ivan Tors name on it. Full credits are reserved for the end of the film.

Tors and Siodmak adopt a docu-drama approach to the material in MAGNETIC. There's a voice-over narration and everything is presented in a straight forward, matter-of-fact manner. All of the scientific jargon sounds reasonable and plausible (it's not) and there's a lot of it (what, no flux capacitor?). Imagine Jack Webb producing a science fiction movie and you'll have some idea of the style of this film.

Carlson stars as OSI agent Dr. Jeffrey Stewart. His partner is Dr. Dan Forbes (King Donovan). They're called upon at the beginning of the film to investigate a mysterious outbreak of super magnetism at a local department store. The plot escalates from there as it appears a fellow scientist, Dr. Howard Denker (Leonard Mudie), has created a new highly radioactive isotope, dubbed serranium, which consumes massive amounts of energy on an exponential basis, doubling in size and mass each time and releasing deadly radiation and intense magnetic energy.

The whole world is threatened by this "magnetic monster" and it's up to Dr. Stewart to save the day. This requires using an experimental Canadian power generator, the Deltatron, under construction in a huge cavern under the ocean. The plan is to "feed" the monster an overdose of energy hoping that the overwhelming amount of power will be enough to finally "kill" it.

And here's where that previously mentioned giant set comes into play. In order to stage an exciting climax, Tors and Siodmak spliced some ten minutes of footage from the German science fiction film GOLD (1934), into the narrative. The match cuts don't entirely work. Carlson is forced to wear clothes that match a character in the German footage and a Canadian official is made to stand in Carlson's way in order to match a similar action from GOLD. The footage from GOLD is spectacular and seeing these few minutes makes me want to see the entire film. It's clearly the best thing about THE MAGNETIC MONSTER. Is it a cheat, an unfair way to pull off a dramatic and exciting climax by using the work of someone else? Tors clearly didn't have the budget to stage something on this scale on his own and it works for the most part. But imagine nodding off for a few minutes while watching a boring, routine "realistic" science fiction movie and seeing something that looks like a cross between Jack Kirby and Kenneth Strickfaden!

Carlson, as always, is good in a role that was a prototype for future parts in such '50s science fiction films as IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953), THE MAZE (1953), RIDERS TO THE STARS (1954) and CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954), among others. Co-star King Donovan appeared in THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1954), RIDERS TO THE STARS (1954) and Don Siegel's masterpiece INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956). Director Siodmak had a long career as a screenwriter. His genre credits include THE WOLF MAN (1941), INVISIBLE AGENT (1942), FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (1943), THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS (1946) and BRIDE OF THE GORILLA (1951). In addition to helming MAGNETIC MONSTER, Siodmak directed BRIDE OF THE GORILLA and CURUCU, BEAST OF THE AMAZON (1957). Included in the supporting cast of MAGNETIC are veteran character actors Kathleen Freeman as a switchboard operator and the legendary Strother Martin as an airplane co-pilot.

THE MAGNETIC MONSTER is a mixed bag. It sets up a difficult challenge from the get-go, one of how to make a "monster" out of what is essentially just energy, albeit an incredible amount of it. Everyone plays it straight which helps make the wild plot seem feasible. But the ending is jarring, throwing Saturday afternoon serial thrills (from another film), into what had previously been a pretty routine narrative. Definitely worth seeing for genre fans but if you're not already enamored of '50s science fiction films, you're better off giving this one a pass.

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN?

What hath Robert Aldrich wrought? When Aldrich's gothic masterpiece WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? was released in 1962, no one expected it to be the beginning of a cycle of films that would run through the rest of the decade and into the early 1970s.

We speak of course of the, you'll excuse the expression, "horror hag" films, thrillers in which the leading ladies were all a bit past their prime and "slumming" in low budget genre and exploitation films. These actresses had long and sterling careers behind them, but major roles in A movies were becoming few and far between. They took the work that was offered and gave it their best.

The Horror Hag filmography includes HUSH...HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964) (also by Aldrich). Bette Davis, who appeared in both JANE and CHARLOTTE, went on to headline DEAD RINGER (1964), THE NANNY (1965), and THE ANNIVERSARY (1968). Her co-star in JANE, Joan Crawford, starred in STRAIT-JACKET (1964), I SAW WHAT YOU DID (1965), BERSERK! (1968) and TROG (1970). Joan Fontaine did THE WITCHES (1966), Tallulah Bankhead terrorized Stephanie Powers in DIE! DIE! MY DARLING (1965) and Olivia de Havilland was menaced by James Caan in LADY IN A CAGE (1964).

Which brings us to WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN? (1971), a late entry in the Horror Hag cycle which paired fading stars Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters in a thriller set in the 1930s. Helen Hill (Winters) and Adelle Bruckner (Reynolds) are mothers with something grim in common. Their sons have been tried and convicted for the murder of a woman in a small town in Iowa. Beset with vitriol from the townspeople for the deeds of their sons, the two decide to leave town together and head for Hollywood. Adelle, a dance instructor, has dreams of making it big in Tinsel Town while Helen, a deeply religious woman, appears to be slightly disturbed and hiding something behind her placid features. Adelle finds a sugar daddy in the form of rich Texan Linc Palmer (Dennis Weaver), but as Adelle begins to find happiness, Helen starts to become unhinged and the bodies begin to mount up.

The poster image gives away a major plot point but there's nothing to be done about that now. It's provocative and I'm sure it helped sell some tickets. Reynolds has a chance to showcase her dance skills in a few scenes and she's generally good. Winters, on the other hand, is crazy from the get-go and it's no surprise when her dark side surfaces. There's a murder scene in which a man goes plunging down a staircase that recalls a similar sequence in PSYCHO (1960). The supporting cast is good with Agnes Moorehead playing a radio evangelist, Yvette Vickers in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance as a stage mother and young Pamela Ferdin as one of Adelle's child dancers. The cinematography by Lucien Ballard gives everything a slightly hazy, gauzy look. It is the past after all, while the production design is by Eugene Lourie, who directed such genre classics as THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953), COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK (1958), THE GIANT BEHEMOTH (1959) and GORGO (1961).

Director Curtis Harrington does a good job with Henry Farrell's screenplay. Harrington was a genre auteur whose filmography includes NIGHT TIDE (1961), VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET (1965), QUEEN OF BLOOD (1966), GAMES (1967), WHO SLEW AUNTIE ROO? (1971, with Shelley Winters), THE KILLING KIND (1973) and RUBY (1977). WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN isn't great by any means. The script holds no surprises and the shocks are minimal. Fans of Reynolds and Winters will enjoy seeing these two square off  but don't expect anything as outre as BABY JANE.

SAVAGE SEASON

The amazing thing about Joe R. Lansdale's SAVAGE SEASON (1990), the first Hap and Leonard novel, is that there were any more Hap and Leonard adventures, given the number and severity of injuries these two endure during the book's third act, a brutal, blood soaked showdown that plays like something out of a Sam Peckinpah film.

And that's a good thing.

Hap Collins and Leonard Pines are a noir odd couple, two anti-heroes who nonetheless end up on the side of good more often than not. Hap is a disillusioned sixties radical with no causes left to fight for except his own well being. Leonard, a Vietnam veteran, is gay and black. The two are fast friends and best buds who bicker back and forth constantly, trading insults and verbal jabs in the way that only two truly good friends can do.

They're making ends meet in the small east Texas town of LaBorde, working in the rose fields and enjoying a laid back lifestyle. But trouble rears its' ugly head in the form of the beautiful Trudy, Hap's ex-wife. She comes to town still hot-to-trot for Hap and seduces him into a scheme to recover some lost loot, supposedly hidden in a sunken boat in a creek somewhere deep in the woods. Trudy has thrown in with some other post sixties idealists who want the money (from a bank robbery gone bad) to finance their latest social justice cause. Hap and Leonard just want their cut of the loot for themselves. The money is found and the tables are turned as it's revealed that Trudy and her pals need the money to buy guns and ammo so they can go on a crime spree of their own.

But there's yet another reversal of fortune when the gun dealer, Soldier, turns out to be a stone cold psycho who will kill each and every one of them, including Hap and Leonard, in his quest to get all of  the money for himself.

Lansdale builds the tension slowly and surely and then let's everything explode in a wild climax that includes a nail hammered into a woman's hand, multiple gunshots, shovels to heads and more. Along the way he gives us sharp, terrific, hilarious dialogue, well drawn characters, a strong sense of place, a truly scary villain and ruminations and regrets over lost loves and causes.

SAVAGE SEASON was both a critical and commercial success and Lansdale has gone on to turn out several more Hap and Leonard adventures. But this is where it all began in all its' blood drenched glory. A first rate page turner that mixes filthy humor and oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-he-did-that horror, SAVAGE SEASON is highly recommended.