Malpertuis (1971)

... aka: Legend of Doom House, The
... aka: Malpertuis: The Legend of Doom House
... aka: Malpertuis: Histoire d'une maison maudite

Directed by:
Harry Kümel

After his ship docks for the night, pretty boy sailor Jan (Mathieu Carrière) hops off and decides to go looking for his childhood home. He locates where it should be, but it's now gone and so is his family. Getting a glimpse of a woman off in the distance who looks like his sister, he follows her through the streets and ends up in a rowdy pub / brothel. The girl he thought was his sister is actually Bets (Sylvie Vartan), a sultry cabaret singer and working girl. Two other men; Charles Dideloo (Michel Bouquet) and Mathias Crook (Daniel Pilon), have been trailing Jan ever since he left the ship and make mention of him falling into their "trap." Charles gets Sylvie's boyfriend / pimp all riled up and a bar brawl ensues. Jan is struck over the head and passes out. When he awakens, he's in a nautical-themed bedroom... but he's finally found his long-lost sister Nancy (Susan Hampshire), who's waiting by his bedside. Jan soon discovers he's actually at his Uncle Quintin Cassavius' (Orson Welles) sprawling mansion, which is called Malpertuis. Since he equates his uncle to the Devil and the home to Hell, we know this isn't necessarily a good thing.

Cassavius is not a very nice man. He's cheap, rude, dirty, a huge glutton (he eats an entire roasted pig in one sitting) and refers to the staff as things like "miserable wretches" and "scavenging cows." He's also dying and seems to spend most of his time lying in bed barking out orders. For some reason, he's insistent on seeing his nephew Jan, who's not really interested but finally caves when Charles, who turns out to be his uncle, threatens to rape his virtuous sister! Cassavius tells Jan he wants him to take his place and become "master of the world." Lots of other strange and eccentric people occupy the home, including imbecilic, overly-sensitive taxidermist Philaris (Charles Janssens) and the grubby Lampernist (Jean-Pierre Cassel), who occupies a cell and is paranoid he won't have enough light. Other than the above mentioned characters and the staff, Charles' wife Sylvia (Dora van de Groen) and daughter Euryale (Hampshire again, in a red wig), Nancy's lover Mathias and a trio of sisters; Eleonora (Jet Naessens), Rosaria (Cara Van Wersch) and Alice (Hampshire again, in a brown wig), all gather at the dying patriarch's bed to hear his final wishes.

Cassavius splits the money evenly between everyone present, but there's just one small catch. The money is to be distributed annually and, to receive it, they must stay inside the Malpertuis grounds and never leave. The last survivor will inherit the home and all that goes with it. If the last two survivors are male and female, they must marry. Lawyer Eisengott (Walter Rilla) is lurking around to ensure the heirs all play by the rules. From that general set-up, this goes in all kinds of bizarre, nonsensical directions. Jan falls in love with the ethereal beauty Euryale, despite the fact she barely talks to him and refuses to ever look him in the eyes. Nancy plans to flee the home with her lover but he's found dead with a spike driven through his head. Alice, who is referred to as Alecto by her cackling sisters, seduces both Charles and then Jan. When Cassavius' tomb is opened, he's somehow turned into a stone statue. Distorted fetuses are kept in jars, an eagle rips a guy apart, there's mention of Cassavius wanting to create a "master race" of blonde haired, blue eyed people and the greedy characters sit around counting their money and behaving like mad men and women. The home itself is a strange place full of long hallways, staircases leading up and down and tons of locked doors. Just what's up with all the oddball characters? And what is the secret of the home?

Malpertuis (first released in the U.S. as The Legend of Doom House) was director Kümell's follow-up to his acclaimed arty-erotic lesbian vampire hit Daughters of Darkness (released the same year). Despite being well-produced and extremely nice from a visual standpoint, booking a showing at Cannes in 1972 and having some internationally bankable name stars in he cast, it was financially unsuccessful and didn't get near the attention that Daughters did. After viewing it, it's easy to understand why. You ever get the impression certain films are strange and random simply for the sake of being strange and random? I couldn't tell you what point (if any) this was attempting to make. It's even sandwiched with Alice in Wonderland references (ending with a Lewis Carroll quote even) as if the whole point was to be irreverent. Twists - one after another - are piled on during the last 20 minutes; everything from elements of Greek mythology to the standard "it was all just a dream" cop out, but after sitting through nearly two hours of bizarre characters doing bizarre, nonsensical things I found myself beat into such a state of complacency that I'd stopped caring. This is a definitely a case where personal taste is going to dictate one's enjoyment. Those who don't care a whole lot about a coherent narrative or a stable grounding point will likely soak up what this has to offer. Others are going to have a more difficult time with it.

I'm not sure how close this sticks to the Jean Ray novel on which it is based, but if it's faithful I'd probably have little interest in actually reading the book myself. On the plus side, it looks great, the art direction and photography are both superb and British actress Hampshire is extremely striking (enhanced by some nicely subtle makeups) playing no less than five different roles.

Even though I was lukewarm on this one overall, I did love all the supplements on the Barrel Entertainment DVD. It has interviews with the director (who also provides a commentary track), Hampshire, Carrière, producer Pierre Levie and director of photography Gerry Fisher. Kümel basically says that Welles was a huge pain the ass to work with, was drunk the whole shoot, had absolutely no respect for the other actors and gave the impression he would leave the set at any moment if he didn't get his way; concluding that the cast and crew actually celebrated once he finished his scenes and left the set! Fisher adds that Welles told the director his main job was to please him and he was a diva control freak who demanded things be done on his way or else. Apparently, Welles insisted on doing his own [they say terrible] makeup, demanded close-ups and stopped the shooting for extended lunch breaks whenever he felt like it, throwing them completely off schedule. The DVD also shows some behind-the-scenes footage from the shoot which pretty much lend credence to these claims. The same footage shows that the film was shot in English, though the version I watched had been dubbed into French.

★★1/2

War of the Worlds, The (1953)

... aka: H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds

Directed by:
Byron Haskin

H.G. Wells' landmark sci-fi novel "The War of the Worlds" is one of those juggernauts that will never die. It's constantly being revived, remade and homaged, and has gone on to influence all manner of popular entertainment over the years. The book became even more legendary after a now-infamous radio broadcast aired right before Halloween on October 30, 1938. Put on by CBS as part of their anthology series "The Mercury Theatre on the Air," the novel was adapted for the airwaves by Anne Froelick and Howard Koch and directed and narrated by Orson Welles. The first two-thirds of the broadcast (listened to by about 6 million people) was fashioned like a mock news report detailing an invasion of our planet by deadly alien spacecraft, which gave many listeners a real fright when they believed this was all actually occurring in real time. A mild panic ensued in some areas, concerned listeners flooded the phone lines and the rest is history. Public statements were later issued and some listeners scared by the program even unsuccessfully attempted to file lawsuits against CBS. Welles gladly took the publicity and ran with it; he'd make Citizen Kane (1941) just a few year later, and the broadcast's headline-making notoriety was enough to secure the tale a place in pop culture history. And not just in American pop culture history. In 1946, a radio station in Ecuador produced a Spanish-language version of the play, which led to panic, mass rioting and seven reported deaths! It made perfect sense that a film version be made once the available technologies were available.

War (loosely adapted from the novel by Barré Lyndon) opens with narrated footage briefly describing weaponry in both World Wars as well as space-set narration by Sir Cedric Hardwicke detailing our neighboring planet of Mars. The denizens of Mars, far more technologically advanced than we here on Earth, are tired of their severe weather and want a new place to call home. Instead of asking if they can move in, they decide to stage a full scale takeover of Earth instead. The denizens of Linda Rosa, California will be the first to encounter the beings when a red hot meteor the size of a house crash lands in the woods near the small town. A handful of scientists from Pacific Tech happen to be on a camping and fishing trip nearby and one of them, Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry), a famous inventor who was on the cover of Time Magazine for creating a new atomic engine, decides to stay behind and wait for the meteor to cool down. Late that night while the rest of the town is busy at a square dance, three men watching over the meteor notice it moving. Something begins to screw off the top and a cobra-like appendage pops out. Deciding it best to announce themselves as friends, the men approach the being only to get blasted into smithereens with a laser.

The lights go out, the phones stop working and watches and other battery-operated devices become magnetized and cease to function. After Dr. Forrester and the Sheriff go back to the meteor crash site and see what they're up against, the U.S. Marine Corp - led by General Mann (Les Tremayne) - are immediately called in.  Meanwhile, hundreds of other similar meteors, each housing a separate manta ray-shaped spacecraft, are falling in pairs of three all across the planet. In Linda Rosa, after the aliens blast local pastor Matthew (Lewis Martin), the marines open fire. Since the ships have the ability to shield themselves from blasts from guns and tanks using an electromagnetic force field, they make short work of the military. Dr. Forrester and Sylvia Van Buren (Ann Robinson), a USC professor and Forrester's obligatory love interest, commandeer a small plane, crash it and then retreat for cover to a farmhouse. There, they get sight of a squatty, silly looking alien with three pupils and long suction cup fingers and manage to get their hands on some of the alien's blood as well as a periscope-like camera the crafts use to sniff out prey. The items are brought to some scientists in hope they can find a weakness.

Nations attempt to band together to fight the alien invasion but despite our collected scientific knowledge and military power, nothing seems to stop these things. As a last ditch effort, the military drops an atomic bomb directly onto one of the crafts, but it emerges without even a scratch or dent. Exhausted of options and hope nearly non-existent, people begin to panic, loot, riot and steal any vehicle available to them. Others peacefully congregate in churches; hoping their prayer will be enough to extinguish the menace. The ending both maintains the source novel's ending (the aliens being unable to adapt our atmosphere and dying from microbial infection), but also shoehorns in the religious angle to cater to the audience of the day.

Upon release in 1953, WOTW  became both a critical and financial success for Paramount, and it deservedly retains its status as an influential genre classic nowadays. Produced on a healthy 2 million dollar budget (Cecil B. DeMille was the uncredited executive producer), it was nicely shot in Technicolor and boasted state-of-the-art special effects for its time. While some of the fx are now, of course, dated and sometimes hokey, others (particularly the spacecrafts laying waste to a big city) continue to impress. The film also still manages to excite modern audiences with a speedy pace, lots of action and scenes of wide scale destruction, which create a wonderfully frantic, apocalyptic feel toward the end. The cast is sufficient, and small roles are also played by Robert Cornthwaite as a doctor, Paul Frees as a radio reporter (he also narrated the war footage), Henry Brandon and Jack Kruschen, with small uncredited parts played by Russ Bender, Paul Birch, Ann Codee, Russ Conway, Carolyn Jones, Alvy Moore, Walter Sande and James Seay. Producer George Pal has a cameo as a bum listening to a radio news report. It netted three Oscar nomination; winning for its special effects.

The legacy of Wells' novel has only been strengthened in recent years; managing to bleed over into film, TV, radio, comic books, video games and other forms of popular entertainment since its publication. Numerous radio stations around the globe continue to air the original 1938 broadcast as a Halloween tradition, while others go all out and put on their own new broadcasts of it (there was even a musical version). In 1988, the same year a War of the Worlds TV series aired here in America, NPR put on a new radio production, which ended up being nominated for a Grammy Award. The 46-page script for the radio broadcast later broke records for entertainment memorabilia when it sold for 143,000 dollars at Sotheby's Auction in New York City. A second radio script (which had belonged to Wells) turned up and was purchased by Steven Spielberg for 32,200 dollars. 

In 2003, the broadcast was added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress. In 2005, two new versions of the novel were made; one a big-budget blockbuster by Spielberg (which was heavily weighed down by the inclusion of two extremely annoying child characters) and another cheaper cash-in by The Asylum. In 2011, this 1953 film version was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. A documentary about the radio broadcast played on PBS right before Halloween earlier this year as part of their "American Experience" series.

★★★1/2

Yi mei dao ren (1989)

... aka: New Mr. Vampire 2
... aka: One-Eyebrow Priest
... aka: Vampire vs. Vampire

Directed by:
Ching-Ying Lam

The official Mr. Vampire series consists of four eponymous titles produced between 1985 and 1988, plus Xin jiang shi xian sheng (1992), which was also released as Mr. Vampire 5, Mr. Vampire 1992 or Chinese Vampire Story. All five of those were directed by Ricky Lau for Golden Harvest and all but one starred the wonderful Ching-Ying Lam as a "one eyebrow" vampire buster (usually a priest). The series also had many spin-offs which closely copied the winning format and were titled to try to cash-in on the popular series. Wei Tung's excellent MAGIC COP (1990), which also starred Lam, was re-titled Mr. Vampire 5 in some quarters, causing confusion with the other Part 5. Released the same year as the second official Mr. Vampire film was Billy Chan's Jiang shi fan sheng (1986), which was released as Kung Fu Vampire Buster some places and as New Mr. Vampire in others. Three years later came this one; originally Yi men dao renon, and released as a sequel to Chan's film (New Mr. Vampire 2), or (under the title I watched) Vampire vs. Vampire. Another well-produced Golden Harvest production, this one fits in perfectly with the official 5-part series thanks to its similar tone and the presence of Lam in the lead role. He also got to direct this time out, as well.

The format is laid out almost identically to the other films: even-keeled, experienced, cool-as-a-cucumber priest + bumbling, immature young assistants who can't seem to stay out of trouble + various evil fiends to do battle with = excuse for lots of juvenile comedy, crazy special effects and elaborate stunt / wire / martial arts action. 

Things open with a long comic set-piece with young understudies Hoh (Siu-hou Chin) and Fong (Fong Liu) having to fix a chapel roof. Moonlight (which animates the dead) gets in, some black gunk oozes from an urn and a slimy, fanged little puppet monster emerges from it. A tame, bouncing little boy vampire who is fine with just eating tomatoes also escapes from his casket and is involved in some cutesy slapstick scenes accompanied by comic sound effects. Frantic Chi Lei Kan (Yuet Sang Chin) shows up next asking for help after his brother is bewitched by a love-hungry female "palm ghost" (So Yip). And then there's another female ghost (Yuk-Ting Lau), a singer who had acid thrown in her face by her pimp. Her body must be located and laid to rest or else her spirit will continue to haunt the area. If this all sounds rather episodic, it's because, well, it is.

Thankfully, enough of a central story begins to take shape upon the arrival of a bunch of new people to the area who are planning on starting a village there. One Eyebrow Priest and his boys are in charge of using fung shui to help find them the ideal spot to start building. Meanwhile, Mother Superior (Maria Cordero) and four young nuns take over an abandoned, bat-infested church that used to be occupied by Satan-worshipping priest Father Kei, who's since disappeared. The mummified, fanged priest is eventually unearthed while the land is being excavated and he has a silver, ruby-encrusted cross wedged in his chest. A greedy general (Billy Lau) and his prissy cousin (Sandra Ng) decide to remove the cross. The general accidentally cuts himself while doing so, starts bleeding over the corpse and brings the evil priest back to life. He quickly turns the cousin into a vampire and then flees to some temple ruins to bring his lost love back. Our heroes must set about stopping the powerful zombie-vampire and all the resulting vampires.

A little unfocused and slow to get started (so hang in there a bit), Vampire vs. Vampire ends up being a successful, rousing and extremely fun blending of horror, action and comedy. The English release title is likely in reference to its novel merging of Asian and European vampire mythology; with the little vampire boy (kept in check by spell paper taped to the forehead) representing the former and the revived priest (who is weakened by garlic, crucifixes and sunlight, unlike his usual Asian counterpart) representing the latter. The comedy elements are a bit hit-or-miss, but when they hit they're pretty damn hilarious. All of the action scenes are great; very well-choreographed, directed and edited, and just plain fun to watch. The make-up and special effects are also very good and some amusing characters (especially the lead nun) add to the enjoyment. Some standout scenes include a vampire bat attack on the church (one of the best of such scenes I've seen), and the finale, where the Taoist priest and the vampire priest face off in the forest by some quicksand pits.

★★★