House That Would Not Die, The (1970) (TV)

Directed by:
John Llewellyn Moxey

Competent, but very forgettable, made-for-TV haunted house/ possession tale, based on Barabra Michaels' novel Ammie, Come Home. Ruth Bennett (Barbara Stanwyck) and her beloved niece Sara (Kitty Winn) move into a very old country home that belonged to a distant, reclusive relative that Ruth hardly knew. Things look up for both ladies as they quickly find potential romance; Ruth with next-door neighbor Pat McDougal (Richard Egan), a college professor, and Sara with Stan Whitman (Michael Anderson, Jr.), a college student. Pat's sister (Mabel Albertson) gets permission to bring psychic Madame Sylvia (Doreen Lang) over to the home for a seance and soon after several of the characters start behaving strangely. Sara freaks out during the seance and tries to strangle her aunt later that night, but can remember nothing by the next morning. Pat becomes violent and sexually aggressive. A painting falls into the fireplace, sudden gusts of wind open and close doors and a male voice can be heard calling out from the garden...

Ruth and company begin researching the history of the home and eventually uncover a few dark secrets hidden in the family closet. Around two-hundred years earlier during the Revolutionary War, a general and his daughter lived there. The general, a traitor siding with the British during the war, was threatened to be exposed by the girl's soldier boyfriend after the general forbids the two to marry. So what horrible things happened to the three of them? Whatever it is, it's likely located right behind a boarded-up door in the cellar. Sara is periodically possessed by the girl and wants to expose the secret, while Pat is sometimes possessed by the general, who tries to make sure no one finds out what really happened.

The cast is fairly decent, but the storyline is incredibly predictable and the chills just aren't there for the most part, though nostalgic viewers who saw this one as kids seem to look at it through rose colored lenses. One senses Henry Farrell (WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?), who adapted the book, may have had to tone things down a lot for the tube, as there's some hinting toward childhood sexual abuse here. Stanwyck, who also appeared in William Castle's THE NIGHT WALKER (1964) and the TV-movie A TASTE OF EVIL (1971), injects some class into the proceedings for what's it worth. Winn (billed as Katherine Winn) would go on to win the Best Actress prize at Cannes for PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK (1971), play Ellen Burstyn's personal assistant in THE EXORCIST (1973), appear in the 1977 flop follow-up, EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC and then basically threw in the towel on her acting career to raise a family.

Released to VHS by both Worldvision and Guild Home Video, but there's no official DVD release. Aaron Spelling was the producer and it was an ABC "Movie of the Week."

★★

Home for the Holidays (1972) (TV)

...aka: Deadly Desires

Directed by:

John Llewellyn Moxey

Standard, brief (73 minutes), talk-heavy, low-budget Movie of the Week fare, written by Joseph Stefano (PSYCHO) and executive produced by Aaron Spelling, is helped along by a decent cast of familiar faces. It's Christmastime as dying Benjamin Morgan (Walter Brennan) requests his four estranged daughters return home for one visit. They; eldest, straight-laced Alex (Eleanor Parker), alcohol/pill addict Frederica (Jessica Walter), snotty and promiscuous Joanna (Jill Haworth) and young, sweet Christine (Sally Field), a college student, are immediately informed by their father that he thinks that his wife/their stepmother Elizabeth (Julie Harris) is attempting to slowly poison him to death... just like she was accused of doing to a previous husband. A rainstorm floods out the roadways and the characters find themselves stranded as one-by-one they're picked off by a gloved psycho dressed in a rain slicker.

It's darkly lit, overly familiar, somewhat predictable and the venomous family dynamic makes for a pretty depressing viewing experience, though Stefano attempts to temper things with black humor and the film can now be seen as a proto slasher utilizing the holiday feel several years before BLACK CHRISTMAS did the same. Several of the actresses elevate the material as much as possible, particularly Parker and Harris, both of whom give performances of chilly restraint. The same cannot be said for Walter, who probably landed the role after her excellent psycho portrayal in the previous year's PLAY MISTY FOR ME. Her big scene finds her camping it up in near hysterics with a broken bottle in her hand. Haworth is sufficient as an icy bitch, while Field is still stuck in the squeaky clean rut she found herself in after making a name for herself on the TV shows Gidget and The Flying Nun. It wouldn't be until a few years she'd make a name for herself in Emmy (1976's SYBIL) and Oscar (1979's NORMA RAE) winning roles.

I best remember this one for that Vidmark VHS cover pictured above, which always intrigued me as a kid. No official DVD release as of yet.

★★

Night Stalker, The (1972) (TV)

Directed by:

John Llewellyn Moxey

Right after his long stint working on Dark Shadows (the TV show and two theatrical releases) Dan Curtis returned to produce this excellent TV movie, which benefits from top-notch acting, good location work and a witty, suspenseful script by Richard Matheson (based on an unpublished Jeff Rice story). He also brought over talented British filmmaker John Llewellyn Moxey (HORROR HOTEL) to direct. In Las Vegas, unstoppable reporter (and, as his harried boss puts it, "amateur bloodhound") Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) gets assigned to cover a story involving a young woman found dead… completely drained of blood and with puncture marks on her neck. More victims follow and fit the same m.o., as Kolchak tries in vain to convince the authorities that what they are actually dealing with is a 70-year-old, super-strong vampire named Janos Skorzeny (Barry Atwater). He ends up right in the middle of "the largest manhunt in Las Vegas history," but the district attorney (Kent Smith), county sheriff (Claude Akins), police chief (Charles McGraw) and others want to cover it all up and "don't want to cause a panic." Kolchak is just interested in uncovering the truth and bears witness to the vampire robbing a blood bank, taking dozens of bullet hits, throwing cops around with ease and keeping a victim tied to a bed in his home for quick late-night snacks.

McGavin is great fun in this role; energetic, quick-witted, no-nonsense, sardonic, pushy, courageous… and his rapid-fire sarcastic exchanges ("What do you want? A testimonial from Count Dracula?") with flustered, screeching editor-in-chief Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland) are highlights of the film. Atwater's silent bloodsucker is pretty creepy, too, especially in close-up. Carol Lynley is pretty much wasted however as the token lady in distress. Also in the cast are Ralph Meeker, Stanley Adams, Elisha Cook, Jr., Larry Linville and Virginia Gregg.

After the success of this TV movie, Curtis, followed with THE NIGHST STRANGLER, the second pilot film for the eventual television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which lasted from 1974 to 1976. The MGM DVD contains both films and two interesting interviews with Curtis.

★★★1/2

Horror Hotel (1960)

...aka: City of the Dead, The

Directed by:

John Llewellyn Moxey

Originally titled THE CITY OF THE DEAD, this is one of the most atmospheric horror films produced in England in the 1960s, thanks in part to the incredibly handsome photography of Desmond Dickinson. It’s also the haziest, with a constant dense, impenetrable blanket of fog covering the ground in most of the outdoor scenes that creates a wonderfully nightmarish ambience. Doing research for a term paper for college professor/occult expert Alan Driscoll (Christopher Lee), plucky history student Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson) heads to Whitewood, Massachusetts, a secluded town New England town where 300 years earlier black magic, human sacrifice and witch-burning were common occurences. She rents a room at Raven’s Inn from the extremely uptight Mrs. Newless (Patricia Jessel) and gradually starts to realize the whole town is stuck in the 17th Century. The townspeople stop dead in their tracks to stare her down, dancers at a local tavern disappear, she hears strange noises coming from a downstairs cellar the proprietess claims doesn’t exist, a dead bird shows up in her room… and she never returns home.

Two weeks later, Nan’s brother Richard (Dennis Lotis) shows up to investigate and teams up with Patricia (Betta St. John), who has just moved to town to open a bookstore and seems to face a similar fate to that of Nan. It’s a great looking package, with top-notch art direction, sets and location work, intelligent dialogue, an interesting storyline with parallel plotlines and an excellent cast. Jessel is particularly impressive in her role, and Valentine Dyall puts in a brief, but very impactful, cameo. The re-mastered print viewed was letterboxed and in excellent condition. Even the copy contained in the cheap DVD packs is excellent.

★★★

Circus of Fear (1966)

...aka: Circus of Terror

...aka: Psycho-Circus

...aka: Rätsel des silbernen Dreieck, Das

...aka: Scotland Yard auf heißer Spur

Directed by:

John Llewellyn Moxey

If you can make it past the shaky, badly edited opening sequence featuring a slew of criminals robbing an armored truck of a quarter of a million pounds and then escaping in a speedboat, then you may enjoy the rest of this Edgar Wallace adaptation (it does pick up soon after). Cranky Sir John (Cecil Parker) sends police Inspector Elliot (Leo Genn) undercover as a professional photographer to investigate a string of murders at "Barberini's Circus." Among the suspects are Christopher Lee as Gregor the Great, a hooded lion tamer who never shows his face, Suzy Kendall as his faithful assistant, Anthony Newlands as the cigar-chomping owner, Heinz Drache as the ringmaster, Maurice Kaufman as a bad-tempered knife-thrower with an unfaithful girlfriend (played by Margaret Lee), Skip Martin as a sneaky, blackmailing dwarf, Eddi Arent (once again used as comic relief) as the prank-playing book keeper and many more. Klaus Kinski (one of the robbers from the opening sequence) also shows up acting weird and 'looking for work' (actually the loot that was stolen at the beginning). Victims end up with knives in their backs, some find the missing money and hide it and there are enough assorted secret agendas, double crosses, back-stabbings, blackmailing, jealousies and rampant criminal activity to keep this interesting enough. It was filmed at Bray Studios in England and features a pretty good blues score from Johnny Douglas.

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A terrible print of the film became a fixture on all those cheap, public domain DVD multi-packs (distributed by companies like Alpha and Brentwood), but Blue Underground eventually released a better quality copy of the film. It was also part of the four film box set "The Christopher Lee Collection."

Score: 5 out of 10