Movies: The cat came back.

Of all the movies produced by Val Lewton during his now legendary stint as the horror-show unit head at RKO, perhaps none has inspired more tributes and caused more ink than The Cat People. This 1942 flick, directed by Jacques Tourneur (the finest of Lewton's stable of directors – which also included Robert Wise), was named dropped in The Kiss of the Spider Woman, remade and tarted-up by Paul Schrader in 1982, and is a staple of horror revivals, film studies classes, and discussions of noir style.

As an aside, if you really want to know horror, listen to every painful second of David Bowie's "Putting Out the Fire (The Theme to The Cat People)," one of the White Duke's least impressive and most gratuitously '80s outings. Several medical studies in Europe have actually linked a pattern of repeated listening to "Putting Out the Fire" with increase incidences of rectal cancer; that's how bad the song is. It appears on the 2002 two-disc Best of Bowie. I specify the year here because, realizing that the word "best" carries a specific meaning to most of the English-speaking world, EMI dropped the tune from the 2004 release of the set.

But enough about Bowie's less-than-greatest hour and back to the flick in question, the original Cat People is the first flick on a two-feature disc, the first of five double features in the TCM Lewton collection. The story is a classic boy-meets-girl, boy-marries-girl, girl-turns-out-to-be-a-cursed-cat-monster story. We open on Irena, a raven-haired beauty sketching the black panther in its cage at the Central Park Zoo. Irena's played by French import Simone Simon, whose Marseillesn accent is sufficiently non-Parisian enough to sound suitably exotic without being quite identifiable. Irena catches the eye of Oliver Reed: All American. Played by square-jawed, hyper-vanilla Kent Smith, Ollie is a sort of Everyman in the Grey Flannel Suit. Ollie puts some smooth moves on our foreign-born beauty and soon they're dating. Eventually Ollie wants to do some light consensual lip wrasslin', but Irena puts the kibosh on any physical contact. She explains that she descends from a long line of cursed villagers. The cursed women of this village, when they "fall in love" (read: "do the naughty"), have the tendency to turn into cat monsters and claw up their men. How this has lead to there being a long line of such women is unclear. My admittedly scant knowledge of Darwinism suggests that this particular trait would pretty much ensure the extinction of folks carrying it – but let's not dwell on this as it is a mere bump in the road compared to the narrative obstacle I'm going to ask you to leap next.

Ollie, after being cock-blocked for their entire dating history (or kiss-blocked, as it were), decides that he just can't take it anymore and does the reasonable thing: he marries Irena. That's right. Without so much as exchanging a smooch, Ollie decides that Irena's cat people story is just a manifestation of some erotic frigidity. And nothing heats up the sexually frigid like marriage – it's a well-known fact! He figures that he's a patient guy and he can just wait out whatever deep-seated psychological trauma makes human contact so horrifying to Irena. Our heroes get hitched and settle into married life. Sure, things are a little weird: Irena's obsessed with cats, has the tendency to scare pet birds to death, and enjoys chasing bits of string maybe just a little too much (okay, not that last bit). Ollie's hottie blonde coworker (the blonde = good, dark haired = bad correlation in these old flicks is remarkably consistent – it's like there was some clause in the SAG contract) suggests Irena should see a shrink, which introduces the pompous and sleazy Dr. Judd, who starts taking a more than strictly Hippocratic interest in the exotic Irena. Everything comes to a bewhiskered head when Irena's jealousy over Ollie's blonde "um-friend" and the creepy attentions of the good doctor make her "break all kitty on this ishi, yo," as the gentlemen down on the corner phrase it.

Admittedly, the story is a bit clunky. In the 1940s and '50s, American cinema became utterly enamored with what was a strangely mechanistic misunderstanding of psychoanalysis. Flicks like The Snake Pit and Dark Voyage reworked horrific mental illnesses into fodder for weepies. Shrink doctors popped up in film after film, conveniently provided exposition at reasonable hourly rates. Hitchcock seems to have used the DSM as a screenwriting handbook, hanging on to his paperback psycho-babble for an embarrassingly long time after others had moved on to more trendy characterization crutches (see Marnie). Cat People is a clear product of that decades long infatuation with the monster that Freud built. It's a film unashamed to include dialogue like "Find me a psychologist, Ollie. Find me the best one there is." This is all a little curious insomuch as the shrink turns out to be a bit of a sleaze-bag and the existence of a sequel called The Curse of the Cat People should give you a pretty good indication of just how rooted in psycho-pathology Irena's problems really are.

Still, despite the leaps of logic required by Hollywood censors and the screenwriter's love of Freud for Dummies, the director and actors manage to make the film hum along. Visually, the flick is a shadow-soaked noir treat. One scene in particular – when Ollie and his blonde are trapped in his office with the only light coming from a series of tabletop light-boxes – is a standout. The acting won't stick with you, but the cumulative effect is to make the viewer pity Irena. Despite the oddity of the character, she seems genuinely trapped on all sides. The film's dramatic tension comes almost entirely from our concern about Irena, even though she's supposed to be the "monster" in this particular feature.

For many modern viewers – as well as for the folks behind the remake - Cat People may go a bit slow. Lewton created this curious hybrid genre of the horror-melodrama. His flicks were stylish, thoughtful productions intended for adult audiences – in stark contrast to the teen-centric fare that's dominated the horror genre from the '50s on. This unique fusion's pace and detailed characterization aren't for everybody. Personally, I dig this flick and think it well deserves its status as the gem in Lewton's crown.

The second feature on the disk is lackluster sequel The Curse of the Cat People. Despite reusing the same characters, the title's deceptive as the cat persons plot is pretty much jettisoned for a whole new set of psych-influenced problems. The film marks the first director credit for Robert Wise (he served as co-director) and contains a few nice scenes. But, overall, the film's a disappointing follow-up.

Movies: Good morning, Captain.

Before we get to movie review: a little thought experiment. Imagine being at the autocratic whims of a leader who, in the name of keeping you safe, is willing to sacrifice your freedom, trample the law, and commit unspeakable crimes. Now imagine, if you can, that this leader's power is completely unchecked. Sure, there are legal limits to their authority. There's even a perfectly legal and bloodless way to remove this power-mad dictator from his command. But, seemingly, everything works to keep the man in power. Crimes are reinterpreted as accidents. People refuse to stand up and potentially be branded troublemakers. Others chose to believe that the state of affairs is only temporary; they just need to wait it out. And still others are content with their lot, unwilling to risk what little freedom and security they already possess in a bid for more. So, in this fantasy scenario, conditions would worsen. Eventually, even the policy of keeping your nose clean and minding your own business would become impossible. To ignore the increasingly untenable would require deliberate and willful ignorance. Dissidents wouldn't just be targeted by the leader; ultimately their own friends and coworkers would isolate them as well, trying not to get dragged into a situation they know they're already a part of.

Pretty hard to imagine, hunh?

The dynamic described above is at the heart of 1944's Ghost Ship, an effective and engaging thriller that can be found packaged with The Leopard Man in the TCM Val Lewton collection.

Part suspense flick, part message picture, Ghost Ship follows the adventures of an Earnest Young Sailor taking his first long voyage. He signs on as the third mate of the Altair, a cargo ship sailing the Atlantic. On board, he meets the Captain, whom, at first, he treats like a father figure. However, after the Captain makes a spectacularly crappy choice regarding a basic safety procedure, the EYS begins to doubt the Captain's competence. These doubts become even more serious after a "troublemaker" on the crew dies in what seems to be a freak accident. Convinced the Captain is a murderer, the EYS takes his complaints to the shipping company only to have them dismissed. The EYS is dismissed from duty and loses his job.

Through a shore leave misadventure, the EYS ends up back on the Altair as it heads out to sea again. Once underway, the Captain begins to play a lethal game of cat and mouse with the sailor, all under the nose the crew which refuses to take the sailor seriously, lest they be accused of mutiny.

While billed as horror flick – as was Bedlam, another non-horror Lewton film offered in the collection - Ghost Ship is not so much horrific as it is a well-plotted, effective suspense film with just a schmeer of message pic to give it a little dramatic boost. The acting, while not brilliant, is adequate enough to carry the story along without becoming so wooden that you get distracted. Lewton second stringer Mark Robson boxes well-above his class and, with the exception of a somewhat ponderous Greek chorus device (in the form of the internal narration of mute crew member), he turns in a work that packs more visual intensity than his previous offering would suggest him capable of. He also does some wonderful stuff with sound design, most notably in his clever matching of jarring music and visuals. The best instance of this being a brutal knife fight set to the soundtrack of a Caribbean sailor's jaunty ditty – sort of a distant spiritual predecessor to Mr. Blond's torture scene set to Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle with You."

There's probably some mileage a historically minded viewer could get out of reading Ghost Ship as a bit of World War II Era anti-fascist propaganda. More interesting to me is the fact that the film, by avoiding overt references to the war or any particular leader, becomes a more general and, perhaps, more profound story about power and its abuses. This lack of historical context means that, despite some predictability, the flick still plays pretty fresh today.

Using the mother-approved Communities of Alberta Film Rating System, I'm giving Ghost Ship a solid Wetaskiwin. Perhaps it doesn't rank as full-fledged forgotten classic, but it is certainly an over-looked gem.

Movies: Island getaway of the damned!

In a previous post I reviewed the excellent two-films-in-one-disc I Walked with a Zombie and The Body Snatcher package that was part of the Turner Entertainment 5 disc/10 movie Val Lewton retrospective. Those flicks were absolutely fabu, so I've been digging up the other discs in the series.

Next up, a Karloff double header that stars with Isle of the Dead and ends with Bedlam.

To recap, Val Lewton was head of RKO's horror unit for about a decade in the late 1940s. While there, Letwon connected talented directors with smart, dramatic scripts to create a signature style of horror: a moody, melodramatic, classy approach to a genre often too comfortable with mediocrity. The flicks on this disc showcase that approach, though I think it is debatable just how much of a horror film Bedlam is.

Let's start with Isle of the Dead. Set in 1912, during the opening year of the Balkan Wars and an outbreak of the plague brought on by the conditions of war, the film opens with Karloff, a brutal Greek general known as "the Watchdog," ordering one of his officers to commit suicide for the offense of failing to get his troops to the front fast enough. And this even thought the battle was won! Apparently, the Greek military operates on the same management principles as the Empire from the Star Wars flicks.

After establishing that Karloff's character is a thoroughly unpleasant jerk, we follow the general and an American reporter embedded, as it were, with the general's forces to a small island where the general's wife is buried. There the general finds his family tomb has been ransacked and his wife's body is missing. Searching for the looters leads the two to a small house were a group of random folks have hid themselves away from the conflict and the disease. We learn that one of them, a scholar of ancient Greece, has been collecting artifacts and, in hopes of making some money, his presence has spurred the locals to acts of plunder. This sort of explains the missing corpse of a wife (though who thought they could fob off the body of a twentieth century Greek woman as an ancient relic is beyond) and that subplot is rapidly dropped.

The movie begins in earnest when one of the members of the household, a traveling salesman, drops dead of the plague. A doctor from the general's camp comes and quarantines the house and all its inhabitants. The plague begins claiming the members of the household one by one. Cabin fever and the strain of not knowing who is next starts to fray the nerves of the trapped characters. Eventually, an old crone of a maid convinces the general that the ravages of the plague are not an accident of nature, but the act of an evil spirit from Greek mythology who has possessed the hottie of the group, a feisty young woman who is making goo-goo eyes with our reporter.

Isle of the Dead is a solid example of Lewton's gothic, dramatic brand of horror, though it doesn't measure up to I Walked with a Zombie. This is partly due to the fact that Mark Robson, who directed the film, is simply not as strong a director as Tourneur. His work is fine, but never great. The story is excellent and the cast, apart from Karloff, who takes his role and runs with it, works well enough to keep the viewer watching.

The second film on the disc, Bedlam, is a bit of a head-scratcher. Though it does star Boris Karloff and begins with a premise that might have tipped into horror, it ultimately becomes a kind of period piece message picture. The story involves a decadent minor aristocrat who, after being turned on by his mistress (though the character swears she is not his mistress, the relationship they are supposed to have in the flick makes no sense and I assume this was just a way for the filmmakers to get around the issue of having to discuss the fact that she's basically a kept whore), gets Karloff, head of therapeutic services at Bedlam asylum, to lock her up with the crazies. Once she's locked up, she goes through a conversion and begins to work to make the lives of the lunatics better. Meanwhile, a she and a friend attempt to win her freedom.

Bedlam is a fine bit of melodrama. It is competently directed, again by Robson, and features some real standout scenes. In particular, there's a wonderful scene where lunatics are forced to perform a series of dramatic presentations for the amusement of the aristocratic elite. Still, I don't think it was intended to be a horror flick and its inclusion here is a bit curious.

Using my controversial Topics Covered in VH1's "I Love the 80s – 1986 in 3D" Movie Rating System, I'm giving Isle of the Dead an enjoyable Not Necessarily the News rating. Good stuff, especially if you're a Karloff fans or have a particular interest in pop culture representations of the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 (and who doesn't?). I'm not going to rate Bedlam. Not because it is a crap film, which it isn't, but because I don't think it is a horror flick and horror is how we roll here at Screamin'.

FUN SCREAMIN' TRIVIA: The number of flicks inspired by books and plays is enormous. You get fewer flicks from poems. Even fewer, I'd wager, are inspired by pieces of visual art: paintings, etchings, sculpture, and so on. In fact, I can only think of two that I've seen. Bedlam is one. It is supposed inspired by one of the etchings in Hogarth's A Rake's Progress. The second is The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and Her Lover. Director Peter Greenaway has occasionally claimed that the inspiration for that flick came from the group portrait "The Banquet of the Officers of the St. George Militia of Haarlem" by Frans Hals.

Movies: I walk the line. With a zombie.

Way back when, in the Golden Age of the Hollywood studio system, even their cheapies seemed classier. At least, you'd think so checking out Val Lewton produced double-header I Walked with a Zombie and The Body Snatcher. Part of the 5 disc/10 movie Lewton retrospective released by Turner Entertainment, this two-for-one disc is a prime specimen of the top notch, classy, gothic film Lewton produced during his brilliant, but brief, four-year run as head of RKO's horror unit: a run that produced at least one certifiable horror classic a year and exploited the talents of several then-minor but soon to be famous directors.

A little backstory on Lewton before we hop into the two flicks. Born Vladimir Leventon, the future director came to America with his family when he was five. Though it doesn't seem to have done him much good, he was the nephew of the scandal-ridden silent screen vamp Alla Nazimova. Lewton spent most of his early career as a freelance writer. He cranked out copy for newspapers (he was booted from one paper for fabricating a story about a mass kosher chicken die-off during a New York heat wave), weekly magazines, the pulps, and even wrote a bit of pornographic erotica. Anything to pay the bills. The name Val Lewton was originally a nom de plume. Vlad used it on the cover of a few of his novels before picking it up semi-permanently for the movie biz.

In 1933, Lewton got a job work for David O. Selznick. He acted mainly as a story editor, but the job morphed into something more like a behind-the-scenes jack-of-all-trades. During this time, he famously contributed several scenes to Gone with the Wind - most notably the long crane shot of what seems to be endless rows of Confederate wounded, suffering and expiring under a waving Confederate flag. For nearly a decade he ran around the RKO lots, doing random chores and picking up the movie biz through osmosis. In 1942, he was appointed the head of RKO's horror unit. He was to crank out crowd pleasing theater fillers, in a hurry and on the cheap.

Funny thing happened, though. Lewton turned a steady profit and filled the theater seats with fare that was definitely down market – he once said, "You shouldn't get mad at New York reviewers. It is actually very hard for a reviewer to give something called I Walked with a Zombie a good review" – but, in hindsight, it is clear he also made some very good films. Lewton's horror flicks are literate, well shot, thoughtful, and steeped in a classic gothic sensibility. His movies were so much better than they needed to be that, even now, they can take the viewer by surprise. You settle down, expect some good old-school horror cheese, and, instead, you're pulled into the work of a man film critic James Agee claimed was one the three most creative figures in Hollywood.

I Walked with a Zombie is often considered Lewton's finest outing. Based on a series of "scientific" articles about the practice of voodoo in Haiti, Lewton decided the original story was weak on narrative drive and wed the zombie and voodoo trappings to a rough re-working of the plot of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. In Lewton's hybrid, a young nurse is hired by a wealthy sugar plantation owner to care for his wife, in a coma like state since suffering a rare tropical disease. There she is pulled in the gothic family politics of the plantation and the hidden world of voodoo thriving outside the walls of the estate. Despite its European-gothic-by-way-of-voodoo-magic exploitation angle, the semi-anthropological thrust of the original articles was not lost on Lewton and the finely realized details of the film make it one of the few Hollywood horror films in any era to treat voodoo and the Caribbean culture that created with a modicum of sincere respect. Many of the most effective moments of the film deal not only with the horrors of voodoo magic, but with the enduring legacy of slavery and colonialism.

The film also benefits from the pairing of Lewton and one of his most accomplished regular directors: Jacques Tourneur, director of the horror classic The Cat People and the noir landmark Out of the Past. Tourneur's use of lighting and set and his smooth, polished professionalism, all conspire to give I Walked with a Zombie a classic look and feel that completely transcends its poverty row origins. You feel like your watching some strange, surreal A-picture.

In the second feature, The Body Snatcher, Lewton again benefits from an excellent director. This time the director seat holds up the talented ass of Robert Wise, who would later go on to direct The Day the Earth Stood Still, Run Silent, Run Deep, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Sand Pebbles, and, one of my favorite horror flicks, The Haunting. (He also did the first Star Trek film, which isn't my cup of tea, but regular reader Screamin' Dave might get a kick out of the mention.)

The Body Snatcher, loosely based on a Robert Louis Stevenson short story, follows the misadventures of two 19th century doctors who find themselves blackmailed by the murderous grave robber who supplies their medical school with cadavers. Wise's film is somewhat hampered by a too-chatty script, but it does boast something Tourneur's film lacks: a wonderful performance by Boris Karloff as the Gray, the sadistic body snatcher. It also features Bela Lugosi in a minor, but effective role.

Neither of these films is truly frightening by modern horror standards. Instead, it is probably better to think of them as gothic dramas, maybe even horror melodramas. Still both films are classics of the genre and well worth your time. Using the Lifetime Achievements of William Withering Movie Rating System, official movie rating system of the European Union, I give I Walked with a Zombie a superb "invention of digitalis" rating and The Body Snatcher a somewhat lesser, but still fine "first English-language botany text to use Linnaean taxonomy." A solid two-film package.