Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: The Deadly Dolls

For fans of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, it is chance to see her old pal Vincent Price in a new context. If MST3K is more your thing, Gypsy’s beloved Richard Basehart was one of the regular stars. If neither appeals to you, chances are you might be a bit befuddled by one of the weirdest episodes of dramatic TV ever produced. Vincent Price and his evil little friends try to take down the crew of the Seaview in “The Deadly Dolls” episode of Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (written by Charles Bennett and directed by Harry Harris), which airs this coming Saturday night on ME TV.

While docking for supplies, the charming Professor Multiple performs a puppet show for the Seaview, gently lampooning the submarine’s officers. It is a great hit, but oddly, his marionettes look inexplicably featureless after the show. That’s because they will become doppelgangers for crew members, once Multiple starts his body-snatching campaign. Eventually, even Admiral Harriman Nelson is replaced by an especially nasty, smart-alecky puppet. Only Captain Lee B. Crane (played by David Hedison, Price’s co-star in The Fly) remains free, shimmying through airducts and crawlspaces (on a sub, mind you), like he is Bruce Willis in Nakatomi Plaza.

It is hard to describe how tripped out these devious little puppets are, like an unholy union of Sid & Marty Krofft with Avenue Q. Honestly, they make Vincent Price look reserved in comparison. You have to see it to believe it, especially the puppet that looks like Basehart’s Nelson, who sort of sounds like a megalomaniacal Alf (the sitcom alien).

Madhouse, Starring Vincent Price & Peter Cushing

Old horror actors never die. They just get repackaged. Pete Cushing is a perfect example. Twenty-two years after he died, he appeared again in Rogue One, through some CGI trickery. He had seen it before, but less sophisticated. In this 1974 horror movie about horror actors, the late Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone get special screen credits, appearing in vintage film clips that also featured Cushing’s co-star Vincent Price. Horror movies might grant immortal fame, but they are also a dangerous business in Jim Clark’s Madhouse, which airs Monday night on TCM.

Paul Toombes used to be a huge star portraying Dr. Death, the Freddy Krueger of his era. However, his career and his sanity crash-dived after the violent murder of his fiancée. Of course, they had drunkenly argued in front of half the industry before her untimely demise, so everyone assumes he did it. Frankly, Toombes doesn’t even know himself, because he blacked out. Perversely, the scandal maintains interest in Dr. Death, so when he is finally released from the sanitarium, he reluctantly agrees to star in a Dr. Death TV reboot.

As part of the agreement, Toombes must stay with his old friend, Herbert Flay, the screenwriter of the Dr. Death series, who will keep him out of trouble. At least that’s the idea. Unfortunately, Toombes is a magnetic for would-be exploiters, like Elizabeth Peters, an aspiring starlet, whose annoying attempts to seduce Toombes makes her a cinch to get murdered. Fortunately, his network publicist, Julia Wilson is good at running interference, but not good enough. Soon, bodies are piling up, inducing flashbacks of horror to the increasingly unstable Toombes.

As if Price, Cushing, and archival appearances from Karloff and Rathbone were not enough to satisfy vintage horror fans, Robert Quarry, a.k.a. Count Yorga, also appears as crass network head, Oliver Quayle. Of course, Price and Cushing are the main attraction, slyly and surprisingly poignantly playing off their own careers and images. Price is a wonderfully tragic figure, who in many ways represents a continuation of his grandly elegiac turn as Edward Lionheart in the classic Theater of Blood. Likewise, Cushing is effortlessly sophisticated yet deeply sad as old Flay. Even though it is not exactly the most profoundly written part in cinematic history, Natasha Pynne (who also co-starred in a Hammer pirate movie) plays Wilson with appealing forcefulness and energy.

The Tingler, Starring Vincent Price

Like a pool hustler carrying his own cue, Vincent Price should have had his own specially tailored lab coat. Usually, he portrayed mad doctors conducting evil experiments. However, Dr. Warren Chapin is a more ambiguous researcher, who is working on some real science. It is crazy, but his discovery, a parasitic creature brought out by fear, nicely complimented showman-director William Castle’s “Percepto” gimmick. Scream for your life Castle advises viewers in his signature campy introduction to The Tingler, which airs Friday night on TCM.

Fear is Dr. Chapin’s specialty, as he explains to nebbish Ollie Higgins, who is exercising his court-mandated right to observe the autopsy of his freshly executed brother-in-law. It turns out his homicidal brother really died of fright from the anticipated voltage of the electric chair. That gets Chapin to thinking about his own emerging theories regarding the physical effects of fear.

When he scares the wits out of his unfaithful wife Isabel, he manages to x-ray the centipede-like “Tingler” on her spine. After conducting a sort of controlled experiment on himself, by dropping acid, Chapin develops a hypothesis that Tinglers feed off human fear, until the noise of their hosts’ screams forces them to break contact. That’s the theory, but what happens when someone can’t scream, like Higgins’ deaf-mute wife, Martha?

The Tingler is notorious for Castle’s Percepto stunt. According to urban legend, he rigged select theater seats to give patrons electric shocks, but other sources say he merely hooked them up to buzzers. He also hired fainting shills and posted phony nurses in theater lobbies. In fact, The Tingler is probably more responsible for Castle’s huckster reputation than any other film.

Yet, the film never really gets credit for a pretty original concept. Frankly, Castle was arguably punching above his weight with his rather distinctive and even stylish execution. Dr. Chapin’s acid trip nightmare is creepy, but Martha Higgins’ freak-out sequence is truly surreal and sinister, inventively integrating the bright crimson red color of blood into the film’s shadowy black-and-white (despite his shticky rep, Castle was quite familiar with European art cinema and you can see the influence here).

Plus, Robb White’s screenplay pulls of some surprisingly clever misdirection. Admittedly, the dark sequences in which Price warns the audience to scream their lungs out because the Tingler is loose in their theater (or drive-in, according to alternate version) are definitely Castle-corny, but that is all part of the film’s charm.

Twice-Told Tales, Starring Vincent Price

Hawthorne and Poe were both born in Massachusetts, but the former was widely seen as an upright New Englander of letters, while Poe was the disreputable Southerner, who dropped out of UVA and drunk himself to death in Baltimore. Yet, Poe inspired all the good horror movies, even though Hawthorne penned plenty of Gothic tales ripe with Puritanical hypocrisy. While Vincent Price was starring in Roger Corman’s classic Poe films, he also helped give Hawthorne similar treatment in Sidney Salkow’s under-appreciated anthology, Twice Told Tales, which airs this Friday on TCM.

Yes, these are stories of the macabre, but they are directly address the power of love, both to save and to destroy. For the opener, “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” it will definitely be the latter case. The elderly scientist is enjoying a bittersweet birthday dinner with his old friend Alex Medbourne. Decades have passed since Heidegger’s fiancée Sylvia Ward tragically died on their wedding day, leaving him so heartbroken, he never loved again. In contrast, Medbourne romanced every woman he could—of course he would be the one played by Price (who appears in all three stories).

Heidegger expects to soon reunite with his beloved in death, but fate seems to present a tantalizing alternative. A freak storm releases a mysterious stream of water that apparently offers the power to restore youth and even renew life itself. Naturally, Heidegger duly revives Ward’s desiccated body, after rejuvenating himself and Medbourne, but the darkly O.Henry-esque reunion is not what he expects.

The “Heidegger” twist is very much akin to what you might expect from a Twilight Zone episode, but the anguished emotion is quite surprising. Both Price and Sebastian Cabot (in the sub-titular role) are genuinely heart-breaking, offering proof that you really can find excellent dramatic work in these great old films that never got the critical love they deserve.

“Rappaccini’s Daughter” is a weirdly sunny story, largely taking place in a Padua garden, but what a garden it is. Giovanni Guasconti falls in love with the beautiful Beatrice Rappaccini from his garret window, but her mad scientist father Giacomo has taken extreme measures to protect her from the advances of adventurers. Yes, that would be Price again. Brett Halsey is a bit too shallow and bow-dried for the Old World setting, but Abraham Sofaer sounds convincingly wise and humanistic as Guasconti’s mentor, Prof. Baglioni.

Somewhat ironically, the concluding adaptation of Hawthorne’s novel, The House of the Seven Gables could be considered more faithful than the previous feature-length take, which also starred Price, if you disregard the way producer-screenwriter Robert E. Kent pumped-up and augmented the supernatural elements. Regardless, the original Pycheon patriarch definitely did wrong by Matthew Maulle, well-earning the curse the condemned man allegedly leveled on him. Generations later, the Pyncheon’s are still haunted by the curse, as well as the legend that old man Maulle secretly stashed a great fortune in the grand house he was gallingly commissioned to build for his enemies.

The Price of Fear: Theater of Blood

Among his many talents, Vincent Price was quite renowned as a chef. He must have enjoyed the chance to employ his culinary skills in this film. Admittedly, it is for a macabre meal inspired by Titus Andronicus, but it is still cooking. Reportedly, this was one of Price’s favorite films and also a favorite of his co-star, the late, great Diana Rigg. Fittingly, Douglas Hickox’s Theater of Blood is one of five films coming to Shudder as part of their “Price of Fear” collection.

The late Edward Lionheart was a classically trained traditionalist, but he was also terribly corny, at least according to the dismissive London drama critics. They panned his performances and then humiliated him when he inexplicably got the idea in his head that he was due to win their annual award. That would make him the logical suspect when someone starts murdering members of the drama circle in grisly ways inspired by Shakespeare’s bloodiest scenes, except Lionheart is dead—or rather presumed dead.

For a while, plodding Inspector Boot focuses on Lionheart’s loyal daughter Edwina, but she has no intention of cooperating and no sympathy for the fools who belittled her father. Despite their police protection, Lionheart and his accomplices, a gang of homeless crazies and a creepy hippy, keep cutting through the critics. It rather alarms Peregrine Devlin, the arrogant chair of the critics’ association, who was the first to suspect Lionheart.

Theater is a wonderfully macabre but erudite film that offered Price a chance to perform some of the greatest Shakespearean speeches, while still giving people what they wanted from a Vincent Price movie. It is easy to see why the film was adapted for the legit London stage in 2005, with Rigg’s daughter Rachael Stirling taking on her role as Lionheart’s daughter. It certainly worked out for Price too, since he met his third wife Coral Browne while she was playing one of the ill-fated critics.

In fact, Price and Rigg were right. Theater is a very distinctive horror film that combines the baroqueness of The Abominable Dr. Phibes with the tragic heft of Shakespeare and the grittiness of Death Line (a.k.a. Raw Meat). Lionheart’s Shakespearean death traps are wonderfully theatrical, but Price’s performance is often surprisingly poignant, especially his ostensive suicide scene, involving Hamlet’s soliloquy. He and Rigg are terrific together. Frankly, fans had never seen Rigg as she appeared in Theater—you sort of need to see it to understand why.

The Bat (1959), a Sentimental Favorite, Starring Vincent Price

Cornelia Van Gorder is mystery-solving mystery novelist, much like Jessica Fletcher, but she is tougher and tarter. She started out as Rachel Innes, the heroine of Mary Roberts Rinehart’s novel, The Circular Staircase, but morphed into the less sentimental character of the Broadway adaptations, titled The Bat. The original West End run featured Claude Rains, so it must have been spooky. Rinehart subsequently released a novelization ghost-written by Stephen Vincent Benet to differentiate the divergent properties. However, we are more interested in Vincent Price, who co-starred third official feature film adaptation. The dastardly villain is on the prowl, much to Miss Van Gorder’s annoyance in Crane Wilbur’s The Bat, which airs this Wednesday on TCM—and is easily findable online, having fallen into public domain.

Miss Van Gorder and her comic relief maid Lizzie Allen have rented the country home of local bank president, John Fleming, but they have trouble hiring domestic help. Evidently, the property has a bad reputation. It does not help when Fleming dies in a supposed hunting accident. Actually, it was Dr. Malcolm Wells who killed, in hopes of stealing the million bucks Fleming embezzled. Of course, he has an advantage, since he also serves as the medical examiner.

So, is Dr. Wells the notorious Bat—the faceless mad man, who has terrorized the town? He is obviously a leading suspect, along with Warner, Van Gorder’s arrogant chauffeur-turned-butler and Lt. Andy Anderson, who always seems to arrive on the scene just in the nick of too late. Whoever he is, the Bat keeps skulking around the Fleming house, in search of the missing money.

Admittedly, The Bat is not a great movie, nor is it very scary, but it is fun, in a nostalgic, Scooby-Do kind of way. It also moves along quite briskly, thanks Louis Forbes’ jaunty and brassy score, featuring jazz-exotica guitarist Alvino Rey. Wilbur certainly understood the material, since he wrote a knock-off play titled The Monster.

Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven

Gene Tierney was the ultimate Hollywood femme fatale. One glimpse of her portrait was enough to bewitch Dana Andrews’ hard-boiled police detective in Otto Preminger’s 1944 classic Laura. The next year, Cornel Wilde would fall for her hard during a chance encounter, but would soon rue that fateful day in John Stahl’s Leave Her to Heaven (trailer here), which opens this Friday at the Film Forum, in a newly restored 35M print.

When author Richard Harland notices the beautiful Ellen Berent reading his latest novel on a train to New Mexico, his attempts to charm her seem to fall woefully short. However, she sees a resemblance between him and her late father and before you can say “Sigmund Freund” Berent has dumped her fiancé and announced their engagement (much to Harland’s surprise). This would be the second film in which Gene Tierney breaks off an engagement to Vincent Price, but he takes it much harder here as District Attorney-candidate Russell Quinton, than as the social climbing adventurer Shelby Carpenter in Laura. In fact, Quinton remains under Ellen’s toxic spell, setting up a wildly over-the-top courtroom climax that frankly makes no legal sense, but comes far too late in the saga for viewers to be concerned with such trifling details.

It seems safe to say Berent has father issues. “There’s nothing wrong with Ellen,” her mother explains, “It’s just that she loves too much.” However, when Berent shifts the focus of her obsessive attention from her father to Harland, her jealousy starts to manifest itself in disturbing behavior. While outwardly angelic, she will sacrifice anyone who could conceivably come between her and Harland, most certainly including his endearing younger brother Danny, currently undergoing extensive physical rehabilitation for an unspecified disability.

At times, Leave is laugh out loud outrageous, approaching perilously close to camp, as Tierney unrepentantly chews the scenery, in the tradition of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. She might be hot, but at heart, she is a stone-cold sociopath, whose manipulations are vastly entertaining. While the film boasts a great supporting cast, including Jeanne Crain as her pure-hearted adopted sister and Ray Collins (whose credits include Citizen Kane and Perry Mason) as the family lawyer, it is Tierney’s film. She is an amoral force of nature, but with a hint of vulnerability that nearly captures our rooting interest (considering how pathetic Harland turns out to be).

Leave has many critical champions, such as Martin Scorsese, but they are often at a loss to categorize its genre. Terms like “Technicolor Film Noir” are often bandied about, given its vibrant colors and wide open spaces. Indeed, Leon Shamroy’s cinematography gives it a big, bold look and the set design of the New Mexico ranch could be described as western baroque. More than anything, Leave is high melodrama that takes perverse glee in its scandals, carrying the audience along with it. Ultimately, the film is just great fun, having survived long enough as a guilty pleasure to now be considered a classic of Hollywood’s golden age. It screens at Film Forum for a week, starting this Friday (3/6).