Prom Night

Prom Night
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One of the many nice things about the first Scream movie is how it is, among other things, a love letter to Jamie Lee Curtis. There were other actresses who built their reputations on horror movies before her, but Curtis, more than most, is not only primarily associated with the genre, she managed to transcend it as well, and become a more complete actress, appearing in comedies like A Fish Called Wanda and Trading Places, as well as action movies like Blue Steel and True Lies. Currently, Curtis is back in the spotlight as the anchor of a new TV show called, appropriately enough, Scream Queens. From what I've read, it appears to be a modern homage to the slasher flicks of yore that made Curtis a star, but it looks like it hasn't been received too well.

As you know, Jamie Lee Curtis is the daughter of a pair of Hollywood legends: Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. They married in 1951 in defiance of Curtis' studio, Universal-International, who thought it would ruin his career. Obviously, it didn't. It was the first of six marriages for Curtis, while for Leigh it was her third. They divorced in 1962. In addition to Jamie Lee, they had another daughter, Kelly.

As Scream laid out so explicitly, Jamie Lee Curtis was a long-lasting Final Girl in horror movies like the Halloween franchise and today's subject, Prom Night, because her characters always followed The Rules, but in addition, she always struck me as being so much more mature than her peers. She was 22 when she made Prom Night, only two years after Halloween, but in watching her, she seems to have a certain poise, one that's so unlike so many of the teeny-bopper starlets that inhabit contemporary horror movies. I mean, she wears a jacket with elbow patches in this movie and gets away with it! And she has aged so gracefully too. Must be all that yogurt she eats!

Leslie Nielsen doesn't play as big a role as you might expect. Pity.

Prom Night is somewhat different from most slasher movies in that the killings don't start until the third act. The premise is simple: six years ago, a group of kids were playing around in an old abandoned building and one of them accidentally falls out of a window when their game gets a little too out of control. The other kids make a vow to not reveal their part in her death, but now, on the night of the high school prom, someone who knows what they did is targeting them for assassination.

The first two-thirds of the film set up the characters and their relationships to each other, though after awhile I found myself eager for the killing to begin. Maybe I'm too used to the formula of movies like this, though there must have been a time when this sort of thing wasn't old hat, no? I kinda wish I could watch a movie like this when it was brand new, before the genre was debased with numerous ridiculous sequels and spin-offs and reboots, before audiences were genre-savvy to all the tropes that movies like this established. I feel like I'll never be able to truly appreciate it any other way.

That said, there were some things I genuinely liked. Curtis has some decent dance moves that she shows off here. There's a little nudity, which is always welcome. Some of the slayings are genuinely surprising - one pivotal character gets beheaded and his head rolls out onto the catwalk of the stage at the prom, scaring the hell out of everyone! That was pretty funny. Another character struggles with the killer while driving a van. The scene goes on longer than it should; the way it plays, one could put some Benny Hill music behind it and it wouldn't feel out of place.

I'd have to say that Prom Night is no Carrie, but it's worth watching for the nostalgia factor, and to appreciate the career of a fine, enjoyable and (still) sexy actress in Curtis.

Ruby Dee

Last year, there was a 25th anniversary block party celebration in the Brooklyn neighborhood where Do the Right Thing was filmed. Absent the building where "Sal's Pizzeria" stood, it's more or less the same now as it was in 1989. On that day there was a stage at one end of the street, flanked by booths down the block and banners hanging from the gates and fire escapes of the surrounding brownstones. There was one banner devoted to Ruby Dee, who had died in June. It hung from a front gate; it was a recent picture of her next to the legend, "We speak your name!"

I don't need to tell you how important and groundbreaking that movie was, nor how it continues to speak to America today. Dee was one part of a huge ensemble cast in writer-director Spike Lee's film, all of which were meant to be evocative of the kind of people you might see in an urban black neighborhood in 1989 (although I don't remember anyone in my old neighborhood like Mother Sister).

You can't talk about Ruby Dee without also talking about her husband of over fifty years and nine movies, Ossie Davis. I used to imagine that in the movie of my life, they would play my parents, especially Davis. He didn't look like my father did exactly, but there was something about his screen persona that reminded me of my father so much: the warmth, the wisdom, the physical presence (IMDB lists him as 6' 2"). My mother isn't as short as Dee was (5' 2 1/4" - Davis dwarfed her!), nor is she as skinny, but Dee could've gotten away with it, and honestly, I wouldn't have wanted anyone else. It's a moot point now. (My current choices: Dennis Haysbert and Loretta Devine.)

Dee with long-time husband Ossie Davis

You may be aware of Dee and Davis' political activism over the years. Dee, for example, was a member of the NAACP, CORE, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. They were both friends with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., and rallied other actors to their social justice cause under the banner of the Association of Artists for Freedom, the group they co-founded.

Did you also know they once experimented with an open marriage? In their joint biography, With Ossie & Ruby, they say that they tried it in an attempt to avoid lies about affairs. To quote Dee:

...we both came to realize that we were very fortunate that, in all of the deep profound, fundamental ways, we really, really only wanted each other. It was like a rediscovery of something from the beginning. It's not something that you'd recommend to everybody. But often Ossie has said - and I've thought too - the best way to have somebody is to let it go. If it doesn't come back you are free in another kind of sense - in that you find the strength to let go and wish somebody well. So, we thought an open marriage was appropriate for us but it turned out not to be.

From what I know of open relationships (which is more than you would think), I know that it is possible to love one person while sleeping with someone else, but personally, I think it's more trouble than it's worth. It sounds like Dee and Davis beat the odds by discovering that they preferred each other in the end. That's good.

Oh, yeah, they also made movies and TV shows! Dee was a six-time Primetime Emmy-nominee, winning for the 1990 TV movie Decoration Day, with James Garner, and a three-time Daytime Emmy nominee for her voice work in animation. She and Davis also won a Grammy in 2007, in the Spoken Word Album category for the audio version of With Ossie & Ruby, awarded after Davis' death.

And of course, she won that Supporting Actress SAG Award for American Gangster. I remember how that came as a surprise. That was the year of Cate Blanchett's gender-bending role as "Bob Dylan" in I'm Not There, which received massive critical praise, as well as Tilda Swinton's turn in Michael Clayton. All three women would go on to get Oscar nominated, with Swinton winning, but as I recall, Dee didn't exactly rack up a lot of major critics or guild awards by comparison, hence the surprise. Still, Dee was very good in her limited role in the film, and I'm glad she won the SAG.

I wish I could say I've seen more of her movies. There's A Raisin in the Sun, of course. Dee was part of the original Broadway cast of Lorraine Hansberry's play, as well as the film version. Dee had worked with Sidney Poitier in the American Negro Theater, and she was also part of the American Shakespeare Festival for a time. It's easy to take her role in Raisin for granted, compared to the showier roles by Poitier and Claudia McNeil, but she has excellent chemistry with Poitier, and I think her character, more than anyone else's in the play, keeps him grounded - a necessary element, and one she performed well.

Individually, Dee and Davis were exceptional, principled actors. Together, they were an inspirational, loving couple who were one of the rare examples of a successful Hollywood marriage. The industry, and the world, seems slightly diminished with their absence.

Next: Vincent Price

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Movies with Ruby Dee:
A Raisin in the Sun

Previously:
Jack Lemmon   Jean Arthur   Edward G. Robinson   
Rita Moreno   Frank Capra   Bernard Herrmann
Joan Blondell   James Dean   Ethel Waters   
William Powell   Tod Browning   Edith Head
Joel McCrea   Thelma Ritter   Douglas Fairbanks   
Gloria Swanson   Robert Wise   Saul Bass

Horror Express

Horror Express
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So Christopher Lee left this world for a better one earlier this year, and while I knew little about his life and career at the time, some of the things I've learned have been quite surprising - none more so, perhaps, than his recent sideline as a heavy metal singer!

What I've always found to be the hilarious thing about classic metal, especially British metal, is the way they took the most preposterous, over-the-top, apocalyptic lyrics and performed them so sincerely. Bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath refined it to a fine art, and it helped that they were fronted by singers with mighty, high-pitched pipes: Ronnie James Dio, Bruce Dickinson, and the Metal God himself, Rob Halford.

So to hear someone with such a deep and resonant voice as Lee's perform songs in that same spirit makes for a startling contrast - and he only got on this kick a few years ago! As you can imagine, though, he had a history of vocal talent, and in his case, it ran in the family, as he explains in this video. Lee's voice reminds me a little bit of Thurl Ravenscroft, the singing voice of the Grinch in the animated version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, among other things, roughened by age. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure Lee's metal songs are to my taste; maybe I'm just so used to high-decibel, Halford-esque shrieking in metal that the contrast is off-putting. Still, how can you not respect someone like him accomplishing this so very late in his life? It's quite inspiring.

As for Lee's acting career, in looking over his filmography, I've noticed that he tended to stick to genre material time and again. One imagines he could've easily crossed over into "straight" material, and indeed, one can see he made movies like A Tale of Two Cities, Julius Caesar and Treasure Island, but movies like these almost seem like footnotes in a career that also included films with titles like Uncle Was a Vampire, To the Devil a Daughter, and my favorite, The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism! It's no wonder that he's as embraced as he is by the geeks.

Horror Express is the kind of film that the hardcore horror-philes no doubt love to pieces, and as much as Lee and his long-time cinematic wingman Peter Cushing try to class it up, it's still derivative schlock (apparently, it's inspired by the same novella that brought us the original The Thing From Another World, if IMDB is to be believed). It's entertaining, though. I like the idea of a monster running loose on a train, and Telly Savalas totally hams it up in his limited appearance.

So fare thee well, Sir Christopher. Yours was a long and full career, and even if most of the films you made weren't necessarily my cup of tea, I hope you had a lot of fun making them.

Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro

Hollywood's Hispanic Heritage Blogathon es un evento dedicado a celebrar los logros de los latinos en la industria del cine a lo largo de la historia, organizado por Once Upon a Screen. Para obtener una lista de bloggers que participan, por favor visite los enlaces en cualquier sitio.

Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro (AKA Samson vs. the Vampire Women)
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Long before the Rock, Hulk Hogan, Jesse Ventura or Rowdy Roddy Piper, there was El Santo - a professional wrestling legend from Mexico who parlayed his success in the ring into the movies and other media, as part of a career that spanned almost five decades. Was he any good as an actor? Nope - but this is one of those cases where acting ability was kinda beside the point.

Little Shop of Horrors: 1960 vs. 1986 (and also, 1982)

The They Remade What?! Blogathon is an event in which the goal is to compare an original film with its remake, presented by Phyllis Loves Classic Movies. For a complete list of participating bloggers, visit the host site at the link.

It's common knowledge now that Little Shop of Horrors began as a semi-obscure Roger Corman movie from the sixties, if for no other reason than it was one of the first screen appearances of Jack Nicholson. How did it inspire a hit Broadway musical and a film adaptation of that musical? Thereby hangs a tale...

The Old Dark House

The Old Dark House
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The Old Dark House was less of a horror movie than I expected, but it wasn't bad. I should have expected as much from director James Whale. Let's talk about him for a minute or two. 

Whale's movies really stick out from other films from the dawn of the sound era in Hollywood. For example, he wasn't afraid to move the camera for purposes other than following the physical action. There's a scene where the camera pans across a dinner table and back, focusing on the diners and what they're eating. It doesn't necessarily advance the plot, but it's an unexpected and unique little character moment in an ensemble film with a variety of unusual roles.

Whale got great and memorable performances out of his actors. Here, in a cast featuring such heavyweights as Boris Karloff and Charles Laughton, and solid players such as Melvyn Douglas and Gloria Stuart (old Rose from Titanic), the one who stood out for me was Eva Moore as the crazy old lady who steals scenes left and right. A religious fanatic, she mocks her brother, Ernest Thesiger, for his weakness and taunts Stuart in this terrific scene where she goes into the history of her effed up family.

Notice in this scene in particular how the shots are composed and edited: During her soliloquy, we see Moore surrounded by candles in one moment, then there's a cut to another shot of her, deeper in shadow, and then another cut to a bizarre, distorted image of Moore through a cracked mirror. After she's gone, we see Stuart looking at herself through that same distorted mirror and then there are cuts to those previous shots of Moore, as her words ("Laughter and sin!") echo through Stuart's brain and freak her out. Whale creates a sense of dread and paranoia with this sequence, and he pulls it off brilliantly, but it's Moore who sells this scene as her character's jealousy and spite towards her family comes gushing forth, taking out her frustrations on poor Stuart. Dynamite stuff.

This was another nice character moment.

There's a disclaimer in the beginning of House which clarifies that Karloff is, indeed, the same guy from Frankenstein. It turns out that his name was omitted from the publicity materials for that movie (but not from the closing credits), so House is actually his first credited starring role. In the early days of his career, he, like Greta Garbo, was a one-name-wonder, billed as simply "Karloff." (Nobody does that these days, it seems, except pop singers.) His role as the stalking butler isn't far removed from that of the Frankenstein monster, though I think he's better in that than in this.

Whale had the goods, having directed some of the most iconic monster movies of all time, including Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, of course. The 1998 film Gods and Monsters was a wonderful tribute to the man, as portrayed by Ian McKellen. If you've never seen it, it's worth checking out.

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

House on Haunted Hill (1959)
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The original House on Haunted Hill was better than I had remembered. We don't see any actual ghosts in the story, but the possibility that they exist isn't entirely ruled out, either. The plot doesn't quite hold up under closer scrutiny, but it's still entertaining. It's a William Castle movie, so you know it's meant to have an audience-related gimmick: in this case, it was "Emergo," a giant glow-in-the-dark skeleton that hovers over the audience during the film's climax. I can't say I missed its absence while watching the film on my laptop, but at least I've seen Emergo in action - even if it was for the wrong movie.

Later this month, I'll talk more about Vincent Price in general, but here I'll say that he's marvelous, as you might expect, in the kind of role that solidified his reputation as a master of the macabre. He and Carol Ohmart, who plays his wife, have a War of the Roses-kind of vibe between them; the way they trade pointed barbs at each other is a big part of the entertainment value.

The house itself is a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed edifice known as the Ennis House. Watching the film, I took note of its unusual facade and layout; it doesn't look like the traditional Gothic manor we tend to associate with haunted houses. It was built in 1924 by Wright's son Lloyd for retailer Charles Ennis, made of over 27,000 concrete blocks. It has quite a history in the movies. Besides Hill, it was first used in the Ruth Chatterton pre-code film Female. In more recent years, it has appeared in Blade Runner, Rush Hour, The Day of the Locust, and The Karate Kid Part III, among others, as well as such TV shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: The Next Generation and also for commercials, fashion shoots and music videos. It's listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

It is said that the success of Hill is what inspired Alfred Hitchcock to make a horror movie, which would go on to be Psycho. We may bitch and moan about horror movies today, but perhaps the reason why we do is because not enough A-list directors, like Hitchcock, make them. Hill may come across as low-brow, especially with the Emergo gimmick, but it was a big hit, and if it's true that its success led, however indirectly, to the creation of a masterpiece like Psycho, then it kinda makes one wonder what a Blair Witch Project or a Paranormal Activity or an It Follows could inspire, if a big-name director was willing to take that chance. Just a thought, anyway.

As for the remake, all I'll say about it is that with his mustache, Geoffrey Rush is the spitting image of Price.