TCM Schedule for Thursday, October 30 -- Horror Anthologies

[Staph]

It's the beginning of 48 Hours of Horror on TCM, with horror stars Peter Lorre, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Vincent Price. Enjoy!


4:45am -- The Thing From Another World (1951)
The crew of a remote Arctic base fights off a murderous monster from outer space.
Cast: Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, James Arness.
Dir: Christian Nyby.
BW-87 mins, TV-PG

Partly filmed in Glacier National Park, at a Los Angeles ice storage plant, and at the Cut Bank, Montana, International Airport (my dad worked there after high school for Frontier Airlines -- he once acted as the customs agent and rifled through Mary Astor's underwear!).


6:15am -- Mad Love (1935)
A mad doctor grafts the hands of a murderer on to a concert pianist's wrists.
Cast: Peter Lorre, Frances Drake, Colin Clive.
Dir: Karl Freund.
BW-68 mins, TV-PG

The line "Each man kills the thing he loves" comes from Oscar Wilde's poem, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol".


7:30am -- The Beast With Five Fingers (1946)
After a famous pianist's murder, his hand returns to wreak vengeance.
Cast: Peter Lorre, Robert Alda, J. Carrol Naish.
Dir: Robert Florey.
BW-89 mins, TV-PG

This was Peter Lorre's last film for Warner Bros.


9:00am -- I Walked With A Zombie (1943)
A nurse in the Caribbean resorts to voodoo to cure her patient, even though she's in love with the woman's husband.
Cast: Frances Dee, Tom Conway, James Ellison.
Dir: Jacques Tourneur.
BW-69 mins, TV-PG

Edith Barrett, who played the mother, was only 3 years older than James Ellison, who played her younger son, Wesley. She actually was 2 years younger than Tom Conway, who played her older son, Paul.


10:15am -- Curse of the Demon (1958)
An anthropologist investigates a devil worshipper who commands a deadly demon.
Cast: Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis.
Dir: Jacques Tourneur.
BW-82 mins, TV-PG

This film was mentioned in the opening song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) ("Science Fiction Double Feature"): "Dana Andrews said prunes gave him the runes, but passing them used lots of skill".


11:48am -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Nostradamus And The Queen (1953)
This short focuses on the prophecies of Nostradamus as they relate to Catherine de Medici, who was the wife of Henry II, King of France.
Cast: Carey Wilson, Grandon Rhodes, Maria Palmer.
BW-11 mins

Narrator and producer Carey Wilson was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).


12:00pm -- The Gorgon (1964)
A mythical monster turns men to stone in a remote European village.
Cast: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Richard Pasco.
Dir: Terence Fisher.
C-83 mins, TV-PG

Actor Barbara Shelley, who played the possessed heroine, Carla Hoffmann, wanted to play the part of the gorgon as well for continuity, and suggested to producer Anthony Nelson Keys that she use a special wig with live green garden snakes woven into it for a more realistic effect. Her idea was rejected by Keys due to budget and time considerations. When Keys saw the abysmal gorgon effects in the finished film, he told Shelley that he should have listened to her suggestion. As Christopher Lee quips, "The only thing wrong with "The Gorgon" is the gorgon!"


1:30pm -- Mr. Sardonicus (1961)
A man whose face is frozen in a horrible smile forces a doctor to treat him.
Cast: Oskar Homolka, Ronald Lewis, Audrey Dalton.
Dir: William Castle.
BW-90 mins, TV-PG

Unlike Castle's other films, the punishment poll gimmick came as an afterthought. When the film was first shown to the execs at Columbia Pictures, they demanded that Castle shot an alternate happy ending to the film. Castle agreed, and soon decided to use this situation as a springboard for a gimmick. After shooting the happy ending, he shot a brief segment to be inserted before the ending. The audience would be given cards with a thumbs up and thumbs down. Before the ending, Castle appeared on the screen and explained the poll. He then "counted" the votes. If mercy won, then the happy ending would be shown. If no mercy won, the original ending would be shown. It is doubtful, though, that any audience voted mercy.


3:15pm -- The Tomb Of Ligeia (1964)
A man's obsession with his dead wife leads to trouble for his new bride.
Cast: Vincent Price, Elizabeth Shepherd, Oliver Johnston.
Dir: Roger Corman.
C-82 mins, TV-PG

This was the last of Roger Corman's "Poe" series.


4:38pm -- Short Film: From The Vaults: A Look Back At Crossbow (1965)
This promotional film for Operation Crossbow (1965) gives the historical background for the movie's plot.
Cast: Herschel Bernardi, Winston Churchill, Robert H. Goddard.
BW-10 mins

The title Operation Crossbow was (briefly) changed by MGM for the US release to The Great Spy Mission because they thought that having the word "operation" in the title might make people think it was a medical film, a genre that wasn't doing well at the box office at the time.


5:00pm -- The Tingler (1959)
A scientist discovers an organism that lives on fear.
Cast: Vincent Price, Judith Evelyn, Darryl Hickman.
Dir: William Castle.
BW-82 mins, TV-PG

The earliest film to depict an LSD trip.



6:30pm -- House Of Usher (1960)
A young man tries to rescue the woman he loves from her demonic brother.
Cast: Vincent Price, Mark Damon, Myrna Fahey.
Dir: Roger Corman.
C-79 mins, TV-PG

Roger Corman learned that there was an old barn in Orange County, CA, that was about to be demolished. He was able to strike a deal that would allow him to burn the barn at night and film it. The resulting footage was so good that it was used not only in the climax of this film but in later "Poe" films as well.


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: HORROR ANTHOLOGIES


8:00pm -- Dead of Night (1945)
Guests at a country estate share stories of the supernatural.
Cast: Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Michael Redgrave.
Dir: Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer.
BW-103 mins

The stories are "Haunted Mirror", "Ventriloquist's Dummy", "Hearse Driver", "Christmas Party", and "Golfing Story".

Cosmolgists Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi, developed the Steady State theory of the universe, an alternative to the Big Bang, after seeing "Dead of Night". They said that the circular nature of the plot inspired the theory.


10:00pm -- Torture Garden (1967)
A sideshow exhibit on torture predicts the deaths of those who view it.
Cast: Jack Palance, Burgess Meredith, Beverly Adams.
Dir: Freddie Francis.
C-100 mins, TV-PG

When this movie was shown in 1967 one of the promos was a pack of torture garden seeds given to patrons as they entered the theater. The seeds were actually grass seeds.


11:45pm -- Twice-Told Tales (1963)
A poisonous young beauty, the secrets of eternal life and a haunted house chill this collection of Nathaniel Hawthorne stories.
Cast: Vincent Price, Sebastian Cabot, Beverly Garland.
Dir: Sidney Salkow.
C-120 mins, TV-14

Based on three Nathaniel Hawthorne stories, Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, Rappaccini's Daughter, and The House of the Seven Gables.


2:00am -- Kwaidan (1964)
Four stories mix love and the supernatural in exotic settings.
Cast: Rentaro Mikuni, Michiyo Aratama, Misako Watanabe.
Dir: Masaki Kobayashi.
C-161 mins, TV-14

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film -- Japan.

[Staph]

1. The Beast With Five Fingers

Horror films about severed body parts with a life of their own are not too uncommon in the genre but it was in 1946 when Warner Brothers released The Beast With Five Fingers, their sole contribution in that category during the forties. Though budgeted as a B-picture and generally regarded by the studio as lowbrow entertainment for undiscriminating audiences, the movie has a considerable cult following today for several reasons. Foremost is Peter Lorre's intense, obsessive performance as Hilary Cummins, the personal secretary of an invalid concert pianist who begins to lose his mind after the mysterious death of his employer. It seems that Cummins is being stalked by the disembodied hand of the pianist which has an irrepressible urge to strangle anyone in its path.

Equally memorable is Robert Florey's innovative direction which is partly inspired by German Expressionist films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Florey's own interest in the avant-garde. Bizarre camera angles and point-of-view shots (the hand crawling behind a row of books in the library), dramatic lighting and foreboding sets help create the mood of a paranoid hallucination, all of which is a reflection of Cummins' distorted mental state. Even the music score by Max Steiner enhances the general sense of escalating madness and manages to make a simple piano sonata sound menacing. But how could it be otherwise when you know the musician on the piano is a severed hand?

With The Beast With Five Fingers Florey finished out his contract with Warner Bros. and it was one of his worst working experiences with the studio; initially he didn't even want to direct it. Probably the most difficult aspect of it was the special effects. From the very beginning, the animated hand was a challenge.

According to biographer Brian Taves in Robert Florey: The French Expressionist (Scarecrow Press), "The special effects department received the following instructions:

• Glove hand with stump, ready for photographic test Tuesday, December 11, 1945.
  
• Mechanical hand to crawl on floor, etc. ready for photographic test Wednesday, December 12th, 1945.
  
• Mechanical hand to claw at face and throat ready for photographic test Thursday, December 13th, 1945.

There was even some disagreement over the aesthetic properties the hand should possess. Mr. Trilling saw the test and objected to the length of the wrist on the present hand, and there was some mention of using a longer, scrawnier hand. If we use the present hand, it can be cut down and made irregular at the wrist...All of this brought out Florey's sometimes macabre sense of humor, and so he decided to have as much fun with it as possible." In one scene, Florey hid under a table and used his own hand as the "Beast," having it crawl out of a box on top. For the scene where the hand plays the piano, camera technicians covered musician Erwin Nyrigegyhazi in black cloth except for one hand which crawled across the keyboard (the eerie effect was completed in post-production).

Not surprisingly, The Beast With Five Fingers has the look of a lavish A-picture thanks to Florey's artistry but the director publicly disowned the final studio cut stating that most of his creative concepts and script suggestions were ignored. For instance, the long-winded epilogue in which a police inspector (J. Carrol Naish) is brought in to decipher the strange events for clueless moviegoers is one of the more obvious studio-approved changes. Only the sequence with Lorre being pursued and tormented by the hand in the library remains faithful to Florey's original intentions. And Lorre is truly a sight to behold in this film, wavering between quiet dementia and total hysteria; his performance carries the film just as it did in The Face Behind the Mask (1941), his previous collaboration with Florey.

One fascinating bit of trivia about The Beast With Five Fingers: Spanish director Luis Bunuel, the master of surrealist cinema, was under contract to Warner Bros. in 1945. According to John Baxter in his biography, Bunuel, "Some sources claim that Bunuel planned the entire severed hand sequence, but that producer William Jacobs vetoed the result as too florid. Bunuel himself insisted that his ideas were the entire basis of the script." But no records exist of this in any Warner Bros. file on the movie and Florey has never referred to Bunuel in any mention of The Beast With Five Fingers. However, in Conversations with Luis Bunuel conducted by Jose de la Colina and Tomas Perez Turrent, the director revealed "I wrote it (The Beast With Five Fingers) in order to charge them for an entire sequence, even though it was not filmed (I needed money). I imagined a cut-off hand that had a life of its own. Later, they filmed it and didn't pay me anything. I wanted to sue the company but I was already here in Mexico and I decided against it. I received my salary at the company, but that was a job I did on the side. As you two remember, there was already a scene with an amputated hand in Un Chien Andalou <1929>. I also used a severed hand that moved in The Exterminating Angel <1967>." Mystery solved, case closed.

Producer: William Jacobs
Director: Robert Florey
Screenplay: William Fryer Harvey (story), Curt Siodmak
Cinematography: Wesley Anderson
Film Editing: Frank Magee
Art Direction: Stanley Fleischer
Music: Max Steiner
Cast: Robert Alda (Bruce Conrad), Andrea King (Julie Holden), Peter Lorre (Hilary Cummins), Victor Francen (Francis Ingram), J. Carrol Naish (Ovidio Castanio), Charles Dingle (Raymond Arlington).
BW-89m. Closed captioning.

by Jeff Stafford