Tell-Tale Heart, The (1953) [short]

... aka: Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, The

Directed by:

J.B. Williams

It's time to crack open the "Short Sharp Shocks" Blu-ray collection from BFI and take a peek inside. This first set (there are two collections) contains nine short subjects over two discs, which date anywhere from 1949 all the way up to 1980. My plan here is to head down these discs and review all of these shorts in the order in which they appear. I'm not going to be reviewing them here like bam-bam-bam in succession over the next few weeks but will instead squeeze them in periodically and do my usual reviews in between. Of course, the shorts still have to meet my guidelines for this blog, meaning they have to be horror enough for yours truly (many in the collection aren't horror by anyone's standard) and they have to be made or released between 1950 and 1990 or else I will not be reviewing them. That scratches the first two shorts from Disc 1, both from 1949, off my list but I'll talk about them briefly.

Lock Your Door and The Reformation of St. Jules, which fall just short of 15 minutes apiece, are both from director Anthony Gilkison and were shot at the same time on the same simple sets. These are nothing more than an old man in a room (usually sitting down) looking into the camera and telling us these stories. Nothing is visualized. The true appeal here is actually the old man: Algernon Blackwood, a great-named, prolific British writer who specialized in ghost and paranormal tales. Reformation and Lock are two of his own short stories. Blackwood isn't very well known here in the U.S. (I assume he is the UK, though), so it's cool to get a little sample of his work. This is also one of the only filmed documents of the writer, who passed away just two years after filming these; not much of a surprise considering he looks ancient here and was around 80 years old.

Following these is a 20-minute short that I actually can cover here because it's from 1953. It's yet another version of Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, a story so often adapted that this isn't even the only one from its year... there are three others! The most famous of these by far is the 8-minute-long animated version narrated by James Mason and directed by Ted Parmelee, which was nominated for an Academy Award (category: Best Short Subject, Cartoons) and was also selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 2001. This particular version was long ago forgotten until it found its way into this set.

The story itself features an unknown narrator but this one opts to name him: He's Edgar Allan Poe and he's played here by Stanley Baker. Unlike the Blackwood pieces, which are like grandpa telling his grandkids a scary story in a brightly-lit living room, there's a POV change-up here and an attempt to provide a claustrophobic, gloomy atmosphere more befitting the tale. However, this is still little more than a dramatized reading of the Poe story, told verbatim. At least it can never be accused of not being faithful to the source material!

Set in a dark, dreary, grimy and slightly expressionistic looking room, this has a very theatrical and overwrought Baker dressed in mid 19th century period clothing as he addresses the camera and tries to convince us he's perfectly sane recounting the killing and dismemberment of an old man whose malformed, blue "vulture" eye drove him to murder. Music and some sound effects (ticking clock, a loud beating heart [a crucial element of the story]) have been added for dramatic effect and there are also occasional cutaways to things like the moon in an overcast night sky, wind blowing curtains, a steaming kettle, a clock, etc. to help with editing the monologue snippets together. There's nothing really wrong with any of this, it's just not very inspiring.

The story behind how this finally found its way onto DVD is perhaps more interesting than the short itself. Thought missing for half a century, this was found in the attic of a home in Scotland. It had been purchased at a junk shop in Brighton in 1984 by a nurse and film collector, who then filed it away and thought nothing of it. It wouldn't be until 2018 when he was doing some cleaning that he discovered the film. He planned to sell it on eBay for £5 but found out researching the title that historians had been looking for it for years and the rest is history. Once in the hands of BFI, it was restored, archived and digitized. (See Daily Mail and The Independent articles for more details.)

Despite being just a man in a room telling a story, this was amusingly given a "Horrific" rating by the London Country Council and forbidden to those under 16. Imagine if they could take a look into the future to see what 16 year old's are watching nowadays. 😄

Death Was a Passenger (1959) and PORTRAIT OF A MATADOR (1958), both from director Theodore Zichy, follow on disc one.

★★

Batas Impian Ranjang Setan (1986)

... aka: Cauchemar (Nightmare)

... aka: Ranjang Setan

... aka: Satan's Bed

Directed by:

(H.) Tjut Djalil

"We feel ghosts are responsible and religion does teach us that, as well as us human beings, God created spirits annnnd it's my confirmed belief that, ummmm, that's what we got here."

Due to the overwhelming popularity of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984), there were loads of similar films made to cash in during the second half of the 80s. Most of these just utilized the general concept of killer dreams, others were very blatant in their approach, especially low budget foreign films that probably didn't have to worry about copyright laws. Batas Impian Ranjang Setan from Indonesia, given the English title Satan's Bed, is the most blatant copy I've seen thus far. The borrowings from Craven's film are almost too numerous to mention. There are the four teens dealing with typical teen stuff often seen riding around in a jeep. There are the self-absorbed parents who are too busy dealing with their own drama to pay proper attention to their children. And, most notably, there's the clawed, disfigured killer who haunts the dreams of the teenagers and kills them in their sleep. This just barely tries to camouflage what it's doing by giving the haunted home a different sordid backstory. 

A Dutch family consisting of a dad (Didier A. Hamel, now a popular artist), mom (Marianne Wolf) and their three young children, frequently seen in soft focus shots dressed in white doing jump rope in slow motion (sound familiar?), were all senselessly murdered there on Christmas day while doing a Dutch rendition of "Silent Night" (!!) at the piano.

Siska Baskoro (Linda Lolita Husein - ANITA: FEMALE SNAKES) moves into the same home years later. She's recently divorced from her lawyer husband (Mansyur Syahdan) and now dating an asshole named Marcus (Doddy Sukma), who pays all of her bills and claims he's going to soon divorce his wife to be with her. Siska's teenage daughter, Maria (Chintami Atmanegara), and teenage niece, Nina (Eva Eliza), move in with her, along with rotund maid Wanda (Sofia) and goofball gardener Bokir (H. Bokir), who are both involved in some ill-fitting comedy scenes. The two girls immediately start having terrible nightmares about a clawed ghostly figure (the Dutch husband / dad killed from the prologue) trying to kill them. Their idiot boyfriends, Irawan (Richie Ricardo, apparently a popular singer and teen idol in Indonesia at the time) and Rudy (Gusti Randa), mock their concerns until people actually start dying.

This goes right down the Elm Street 1 checklist, with little deviation. Remember when Freddy's face pushed through a wall? Remember when Freddy laughed with glee after cutting off his own finger? Remember when Freddy's claw emerged Jaws-style from the bathtub to yank Nancy underwater? Remember the sticky stairs? Remember the dead friend showing up in a body bag nightmare? Yep, that's all here, though this shuffles the order in which these moments occur in the narrative and also sometimes mixes up who they occur to. After the Nina character is killed (while wearing a "This is my SEXY t-shirt" oversized tee), Rudy is blamed for the crime. He's hauled off to prison, escapes and is later seduced by the ghost of the Dutch woman and then hung from a tree in the haunted home's front yard. Since two people have now been killed in her home and she's unable to run off to see her sugar daddy, Siska becomes depressed and lounges around all day in her robe sucking down booze.

An exorcist (Simon P.S.) is eventually called in and goes to battle with the ghosts in a foggy dream world, but it ends prematurely when the spirits detach their heads, throw them at him and then the woman's head bites down on his crotch. Siska learns from real estate agent Mr. Hendra (Anton Indracaya) that the home was built on an ancient burial ground and then this suddenly starts ripping off Poltergeist left and right, with coffins emerging out of the ground, skeletons popping out, etc. A second shaman (Belkiez Rachman) shows up, only to get killed when Dutch Freddy sticks his claw through his back and out his chest. Can a third holy man - a dwarf Catholic priest armed with a giant wooden cross (!) - save the day?

Amusingly, even with a preexisting template to steal directly from, this can't seem to do anything right. All of the NOES copycat scenes are ineptly staged, the acting is poor, the pacing is off, characters behave brain damaged and as if they could care less when people get killed (often times not even mentioning it), the editing is abysmal, the continuity is nonexistent and the make-up job on the duck-lipped Freddy substitute looks like it was applied by a toddler using finger paint.

While Satan's Bed obviously wouldn't be any good even in its original Indonesian language due to its weak attempts at emulating a vastly superior film, this is a case where the horrific English dubbing (featuring terrible voice actors and ridiculously dumb dialogue) actually help by turning what is a cheap, unscary and poorly made rip-off into a comedy goldmine. Fans of the Elm Street series should definitely get a few laughs out of it.

Unlike many other Indonesian genre films from this same time, this actually made it outside of its home country during the video era. There were at least three non-Indonesian VHS releases; one in Germany dubbed into German (under the title Satan's Bed), one in France dubbed into French (under the title Cauchemar / "Nightmare") and one in South Korea (again using the Satan's Bed title). Though I could find no evidence this was ever officially released in the U.S., UK or any other English-speaking country, at some point an English audio track was recorded. The German DVD and Blu-ray releases from Schröder Media and WMM come with both English and German audio tracks. Though a heavily-damaged print is used, the fact it's widescreen AND available in English makes it a real anomaly as far as 80s Indonesian genre films are concerned.

This actually wasn't the only Elm Street rip-off to emerge from Indonesia. There's also Sisworo Gautama Putra's Perjanjian di Malam Keramat / "Pact With the Forces of Darkness" (1991), which stars the legendary Suzzanna as the clawed killer! There were also several Indian / Hindi copies, like Khooni Murdaa / "Bloody Corpse" (1989) from Mohan Bhakri and, a little late to the party, Mahakaal / "The Monster" (1994) from the Ramsay Brothers.

SBIG

E Dio disse a Caino... (1970)

... aka: And God Said to Cain...

... aka: Dödsjakten (The Death Hunt)

... aka: Et le vent apporta la violence (And the Wind Brought Violence)

... aka: Fury at Sundown

... aka: Hevneren (The Avenger)

... aka: Revenge at Sundown

... aka: Satan der Rache (Devil of Vengeance)

... aka: Un homme, un cheval, un fusil (A Man, a Horse, a Gun)

Directed by:

"Anthony Dawson" (Antonio Margheriti)

Former army lieutenant Gary Hamilton (Klaus Kinski) has been stuck in a prison labor camp for ten long years. After slaving away breaking rocks with a sledge hammer in a rock quarry for a decade, and trying to avoid the rattlesnakes in the process, Gary finds out he's finally be pardoned, and by the President of the United States, no less! Now it's time to settle back into normal life. Well, kind of. He's got some other stuff to take care of first. Gary stops by a saloon for a drink and refuses the bartender's offer to stick the prison with the tab. "A man must pay for everything," he solemnly states before heading out. 

Stopping by an old trader's place, Gary purchases a rifle, a horse and enough ammunition to gun down about 500 people for ten bucks, which is incidentally the same amount of money I spent on a cold, shitty hamburger earlier today. He then meets cadet Dick Acombar (Antonio Cantafora, a fine looking chap) on a stagecoach ride. Dick is about to enter his final year at West Point and has come home for a visit. He's still trying to decide what to do with his life: Enter into military service or settle down with a wife, start a family and work at his rich father's mining company. Mr. Acombar (Peter Carsten, also one of the producers) has higher aspirations for his boy and wants him to enter politics. I won't spoil anything, but I will say that Dick's woes about the future will be solved by the end of the film.

It turns out Gary was framed for stealing a fortune in gold and cash during a stagecoach robbery (and the killings associated with the theft), wrongly convicted, given a life sentence (overturned by the government, who gave him leniency and a surprise pardon for his prior military service) and now has vengeance on his mind. The evil schemer who ruined his life is none other than papa Acombar. When word gets back to him that Gary's out and planning on paying him a visit, he puts a bounty out on his head. His primary goons are the Santamaria brothers; Miguel ("Lee Burton" / Guido Lollobrigida), Francisco ("Alan Collins" / Luciano Pigozzi) and Jim (Lucio De Santis), though it seems like 99% of the whole town is willing to do his bidding.

While Gary was away, Mr. Acombar stole everything that was his, including his house, his personal belongings and his blonde, beautiful and backstabbing lover, Mary (Marcella Michelangeli), who helped frame Gary by casting doubt on his alibi. He's also essentially taken over the entire town. Anyone who opposed him fell victim to an "accident" and now most of those left are conspirators or too scared to go against him. There are a couple of exceptions, including saloon / brothel owner Rosy (María Luisa Sala), whose husband had been murdered, and Dr. Jonathan (Giuliano Raffaelli), who has known Gary since he was a child. Both are eventual allies.

The best thing going on here is the wonderfully gloomy atmosphere achieved by Margheriti and the production people, who have set the events on the evening a tornado is passing through town so we get lots of swaying, unreliable lighting and constant gusts of strong wind blowing around dust, smoke and pieces of hay. This is clearly where the director's experience with Gothic horror - he'd previously made HORROR CASTLE (1963), Castle of Blood (1964) and THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH (1964); all of those good efforts, too - is evident. So much of the movie takes place in the dark that our hero ends up riding off into the sunrise, not the sunset, at the end!

While this definitely has merit in the visuals and mood, the simplistic and predictable scripting knocks it down a notch. Almost the entire last hour is spent with Kinski lurking in the shadows, occasionally ducking into some catacombs that once served as a Native American burial ground, and shooting people, which grows repetitive and tiresome. There are no wrenches thrown into the works. No real curve balls. Just a straightforward revenge story with a little minor additional conflict thrown in to fill in the gaps. Most of the drama revolves around Acombar and his son, with the latter oblivious to his father's misdeeds but determined to find out what's going on. In this case, the apple fell very far from the tree as son Dick is kind and actually has some decency while the dad is such a bad dude he thinks nothing of gunning down a preacher in a church for refusing to help him.

Margheriti directs with an extraordinary amount of low angle shots and there are also quite a few zooms right into bright blue eyes, which seem to jump off the screen since the entire cast look like they've been slathered with bronzer prior to filming. He also manages to come up with a visually striking climactic scene, set in a burning room filled with candelabras and mirrors, which seems to have been a big influence on the finale of Argento's INFERNO (1980).

Kinski's fine as the emotionless, quiet avenger, but he's been put to better use elsewhere and this isn't one of his more memorable roles. There's no graphic violence, just a tiny bit of blood, and the only non-shooting deaths are a hanging and someone getting crushed by a church bell, a fate fittingly reserved for Euro horror vet Pigozzi. There's also a cheesy theme song called "Rocks, Blood and Sand" sung by Don Powell.

Reportedly, this is an unsanctioned remake - uncredited rip-off if you prefer! - of a movie released just two years earlier called Uno straniero a Paso Bravo / "A Stranger in Paso Bravo" (1968). Directed by Salvatore Rosso and starring Anthony Steffen, that film has identical character names and much of the same plot, though its writers are not credited here; Giovanni Addessi, who also produced the film, and Margheriti are the only two listed as writers. (For the record, I have not seen that film myself and thus cannot verify any of the plagiarism claims.)

Though a box office success in both Germany and Italy, this was never theatrically released in America. It made its VHS debut here in 1986 on the Unicorn Video label. In the UK it was released on video under the title Fury at Sundown in 1984. There have been quite a few DVD releases since then, though these are all of varying quality. Since the film is so dark, you really do need a proper print of it. That occurred in 2021 when Arrow Video finally got it out on Blu-ray in their four film set "Vengeance Trails: 4 Classic Westerns." The other titles included there are Lucio Fulci's Massacre Time (1966), Maurizio Lucidi's My Name is Pecos (1966) and Massimo Dallamano's Bandidos (1967). This set was followed by a second called "Blood Money" from the same company.

★★1/2