kevinolzak

1974's "The Bat People" is a long forgotten AIP obscurity that sadly deserves its status, director Jerry Jameson and a mostly unknown cast all small screen veterans at the mercy of a lousy script devised by producer Lou Shaw. The title promises a multitude of bloodshed, yet the viewer sits through a crazed fugitive on the run, believed to be a killer by Sgt. Ward (Michael Pataki), who turns out to be quite a creep himself after hitting on the suspect's wife. The few murder scenes are shot subjectively so the killer is never shown, Stan Winston's makeup work consisting of one webbed claw and a mask (only seen during the final reel) that more resembles a gorilla than a bat. Location filming in Bishop shows off the famed High Sierras but little else of interest, a picture that came and went with hardly a ripple long before it was featured on Mystery Science Theater (alternate title "It Lives by Night").

1991's "Life Stinks" was a rare departure for writer-director-star Mel Brooks, not a parody like the glory days of "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein," but a seriocomic look at the homeless in downtown Los Angeles (the budget was $13 million). Brooks himself plays the arrogant billionaire Goddard Bolt, who doesn't think twice about tearing down a home for the aged or clearing out an entire rain forest if it means turning a profit with another capital venture. Setting his sights on a piece of L. A. real estate to put up his cherished Bolt Center, he's opposed by fellow billionaire Vance Crasswell (a wonderfully smarmy Jeffrey Tambor), who seeks to purchase the property for himself, proposing a wager that Bolt must spend 30 days among the homeless with no money and no ID or forfeit his half of the land. Stripped of his wallet, his gold watch, and his toupee, Bolt is essentially a fish out of water on his own, at least until he's befriended by street smart bag lady Molly, played in scene stealing fashion by the always radiant Lesley Anne Warren. Fine derelict turns from Theodore Wilson as Fumes and Brooks' longtime buddy from YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS, Howard Morris as Sailor ("I was nearly in the navy!"), who gets to recreate a real life incident that Mel used to discuss on talk shows. After his father Hugo passed away, Howard wanted to have his ashes scattered over the Hudson River, so the dutiful son made his way through the bushes to the cold, damp shoreline, bid farewell to his pop, and watched in horror as the ashes all blew back into his coat (he used to say that his father's final resting place was Rand Cleaners!). When Rudy De Luca's J. Paul Getty tries to best Bolt in the amount of money he lost 'during the crash,' the two get into a slapping match that had Johnny Carson asking Mel if Moe Howard got a residual! Comic invention isn't always consistent, and the final third in particular just kind of peters out, but as a challenging change of pace it remains among the director's personal favorites.

1962's "The Horrible Dr. Hichcock" (L'Orribile Segreto del Dr. Hichcock) served as Barbara Steele's triumphant return to Italian horror after her ill fated Hollywood period, just one notable movie role opposite Vincent Price in AIP's "Pit and the Pendulum." Riccardo Freda was the director who spearheaded the genre's revival in Italy (its first horror film was 1920's lost "Il Mostro di Frankenstein") with the 1957 release of "I Vampiri," on which his cinematographer was none other than Mario Bava, whose "Black Sunday" made Barbara a European star. Freda worked fast in color, the actress spending ten days on set in the midst of shooting of Federico Fellini's "8 1/2," leading man Robert Flemyng as Doctor Bernard Hichcock, a renowned surgeon devoted to submissive wife Margaretha (Maria Teresa Vianello) and their secret midnight trysts, coming to an untimely end with his use of an untested anesthetic that proves lethal. Leaving housekeeper Martha (Harriet Medin) behind to look after things, he abandons his London abode for 12 years, only returning in 1897 with new bride Cynthia (Barbara Steele), whose love for him is severely shaken once they're under the same roof. Mysterious footsteps in the night are all too casually dismissed by Bernard, and each new revelation for Cynthia is ascribed to a vivid imagination. A figure clad in white could lay claim to being Martha's sister, awaiting a trip to the local asylum, but Hichcock's second wife is not so easily deceived despite a nervous breakdown prior to the wedding. She finds an ally in fellow doctor Kurt Russ (Silvano Tranquilli), and ensures her own survival by foiling her husband's carefully laid plans to honor his deceased Margaretha. The finale dispels any suggestion of the supernatural, disappointing those expecting something less traditional, but as always the atmosphere prevails. Barbara Steele at first appears to be playing the stock role of a terrorized bride, but with enough pluck to deny her dismissive husband his long awaited triumph in service to the deceased, cast more to type in a semi sequel, "The Ghost" (Lo Spettro del Dr. Hichcock), also directed by Freda. As one might surmise, the carefully spelled "Hichcock" unsurprisingly references several of Alfred's most famous titles: "Rebecca" (a menacing housekeeper devoted to her former mistress), "Suspicion" (a poisoned glass making its way up or down stairs), "Vertigo" (the protagonist's increasingly obsessive behavior about a deceased loved one), and of course "Psycho" with its suggested necrophilia. Robert Flemyng's almost palpable disinterest fits the devious doctor quite well, though his sideways glances at naked female corpses (and protruding tongue) nearly creates a comic tone despite the unsettling subject matter. He's most effective in silent doses, either fondling the deceased in their coffins or gently watching his first wife take one last breath via injection before he proceeds to ravish her (it's possible that only pedophilia might be just as, if not more, disturbing to filmgoers than necrophilia, as both must be considered off limits since the 'anything goes' explosion of taboo items during the permissive 1970s). Flemyng was a busy television actor almost always cast as military types in feature films (in accordance with his real life service during WW2), accepting this extraordinary role for a trip to Rome before realizing its disturbing implications, rising to the occasion to convey the struggle to hide his unhealthy compulsions in the company of fellow physicians. He would not fare so well with Peter Cushing's "The Blood Beast Terror," in which he was called upon on short notice to play the stock mad scientist part vacated by the sudden death of Basil Rathbone in July 1967 (Flemyng was just coming off a later Emma Peel episode of THE AVENGERS, "You Have Just Been Murdered," featuring a petrified character named Lord Rathbone!).