A 1970's Halloween: Night of the Lepus (1972)

The horror cinema of the 1970s is filled with tales depicting Earth’s imminent destruction at the hands (or paws...) of…animals.   

But make no mistake: while Mother Nature may launch her animal armies against us, it is mankind himself that is to blame for her righteous vengeance  By polluting natural environments, by dumping toxic wastes, and by using pesticide, he has only brought upon his own destruction.

Message: it is not nice to fool with Mother Nature.

The Revenge of Nature Cycle may have started as the “when animals attack” genre, a movement exemplified by films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), or Willard (1972).  

But by the mid-point of the decade, filmmakers were almost constantly coupling vicious animal behavior with man’s massive and on-going mistreatment of the environment.

Accordingly, polluting man battles amphibians in Frogs (1972).  

Pesticide-spraying man battles spiders in Kingdom of the Spiders (1977).  

Toxic-waste dumping man faces insect rebellion in Empire of the Ants (1977).  

Other films of the same ilk including The Bug (1975), Squirm (1976), Day of the Animals (1977), and perhaps the most infamous revenge of nature movie of all: Night of the Lepus.

In Night of the Lepus -- a film derived from the satirical novel, The Year of the Angry Rabbit (1964) by Russell Braddon -- the careless mistake of two scientists results in the spread of a dangerous hormone that can cause “genetic deformity.” It becomes unloosed on the out-of-control giant rabbit population of Arizona. 

Before long, the ranchers and law enforcement officials near Ajo are waging a war against giant carnivorous bunnies with teeth the size of “saber tooth tigers.”

The guiding principle behind the movie, and indeed, behind the Revenge of Nature cycle is sound, and not entirely new in the 1970s.  Just as the original Godzilla (1954) is about a monster that represents out-of-control atomic power -- the opening of Pandora's Box, so-to-speak, the bunnies represent out-of-control science and irresponsible man tampering in God's domain, in Night of the Lepus.  

The big problem with the film is that as avatars of fear, rabbits are rather un-intimidating creatures.  Even with red paint splattered on their whiskery mouths. 

Ants, spiders, worms, and even frogs seem more appropriately terrifying.  And Night of the Lepus does itself no favors by showing the “enlarged” rabbits on screen constantly with tiresomely repeat or stock footage. 

 In fact, these giant rabbits hop around -- or rather “stampede” -- across miniature sets in slow-motion, in full view of the camera for long, dull stretches of the running time, and the result is underwhelming to say the least.

“Mommy, what’s a control group?”

A newscaster on TV hosts a special report about the “imbalance in the animal world,” and a “plague of rabbits” infesting Australia.  He then describes how the same situation is bedeviling the residents of Arizona.

There, rancher Cole Hillman (Rory Calhoun) is seeing his land overrun by ever-multiplying rabbits.  One day, his favorite steed trips on a rabbit hole, breaks its leg, and must be put down, and that’s the last straw. Cole asks a friend, Elgin Clark (De Forest Kelley), to help him solve the crisis.

Elgin contacts two scientists who work with animals, Roy (Stuart Whitman) and Gerry Bennett (Janet Leigh).  With their daughter Amanda (Melanie Fullerton) alongside them, the scientists examine the problem and begin to experiment with hormones in an attempt to suppress the mating drive of the rabbits.  The experiment doesn't work, and the scientists mix up a new concoction with results they can't predict, as they readily admit.

Unfortunately, Amanda accidentally frees an affected rabbit, Romeo, from captivity, and the new hormone it carries causes a mutant strain of giant rabbit to rapidly develop.

The Bennetts, Elgin and Cole attempt to stop the onslaught of the rabbits, even blowing up a mine-shaft where they have made their home.  

But a herd of giant carnivorous rabbits escape from this trap, and make a run for Ajo, where they have the capacity to do major damage in terms of life and property value.

“There’s a herd of killer rabbit headed this way!”

You may not realize it, but if you have watched The Matrix (1999), you have seen, at least momentarily, imagery from Night of the Lepus.  

The movie plays on-screen during the scene in which Neo (Keanu Reeves) visits the Oracle, and sees children bending spoons.  The subtle suggestion is that a movie like Night of the Lepus -- about a “herd of killer rabbit” -- could only exist in a weird facsimile of reality.

That’s a good point, because Night of the Lepus is surely one of the most unintentionally hilarious horror movies of its day, particularly with Amanda, the Bennett’s little girl, asking exposition-heavy questions such as “Mommy, what’s a control group?” or speaking for the audience and noting “I like rabbits!"

Even the humorless narrator of the “Rabbit War” news report at the film’s beginning adds to the film's unintentional sense of humor by noting that these “cuddly pets” could become a terrible “menace.” 

As a general rule, it’s a good idea not to refer to your monster as “cuddly,” because an adjective like that undercuts the sense of horror. In a movie about slobbering, jumping, man-eating rabbits, the word cuddly should simply never be spoken at all.

Another moment of funny dialogue comes from Whitman who worries “Heaven help us if any of them [rabbits] get away before we know the effects of this serum.”

Guess what happens in the very next scene?

If you said that one of the affected rabbits gets loose, you are absolutely right. Amanda switches rabbits without her parents realizing it, and then the infected rabbit gets loose after Amanda keeps it as a pet for a time.  The Bennets are not merely lousy scientists, they are lousy parents too, for taking Amanda to work with them and not paying attention to her actions. It's clear they recognize what dangers could await if a rabbit escapes.

Even Janet Leigh, the great star of Psycho (1960) seems diminished by the film’s ridiculous dialogue. When she comforts Amanda after a lepus attack she soothes her.  It’s gone,” she assures her daughter.  “The rabbit is gone.”

Yes dear, the cuddly pet rabbit is gone now, and you have nothing to fear.  

Again, this is a fear that should not be named, specifically.  Even the very word, "rabbit," doesn't promote scares.

Let's be clear: Night of the Lepus features a monster that would be difficult to make scary under the absolute best of circumstances, but the movie doesn’t create or promote the best of circumstances. Director William Claxton allows for the rabbit scenes to linger on-creen -- in slow motion -- for long spells, and any illusion that they are giant, or dangerous, is lost because of their familiarity.  In fact, you get to the point where you start to recognize the rabbits.  There's the black one, the orange one, and so forth.  

And as the friendly-seeming rabbits hop across miniature sets it is painfully obvious that they are not gargantuan. The sound effects that accompany their runs  may “sound like a cattle stampede” to bystanders, but that too is kind of funny.

I should be clear, it’s not just that the shots linger beyond reason, in agonizing slow-motion, it’s that they repeat.  A scene with rabbits leaping a chasm is seen at least twice, and many scenes of the rabbits traversing a highway seem to repeat as well. Either that or are the roads are so similar as to be visually indistinguishable.

Director William Claxton -- a talent who directed several outstanding episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959 -1965) including the sensitive “I Sing the Body Electric” --  seems to approach this horror film as more of a Western, right down to Hill’s motivation for fighting the rabbits (the death of a horse), and some attractive, even picturesque landscape shots.  The rabbits are treated more as a stampede of out-of-control animals than as a threat resulting from science-run-amok, and nature’s reprisal.

Now, on one hand, treating the film’s threat as fairly realistic could be a good thing…if the monsters inspired fear. 

But on the other hand, Claxton goes way over-the-top in terms of fake-looking gore, a step which moves the film out of the zone of realism. The scene vacillates between deadly dull conversations and over-the-top moments of ridiculous violence, and the approach is not pleasing.

As one might expect from this approach, critics weren’t terribly impressed with the results of Claxton’s efforts.  

Roger Greenspun, writing in The New York Times, noted the “technical laziness,” “stupid story” and “dumb direction,” a kind of trifecta of utter terrible-ness. 

Alan Frank, in 1982, treated the film more gently, though drew the same conclusion, noting that the “enlarged rabbits” don’t “really carry a genuine monstrous charge.”

Watching the film again for the first time since I wrote Horror Films of the 1970's I felt a little bad for the out-dated wonders of Night of the Lepus. The movie features a lot of likable performers in it -- it’s great to see De Forest Kelley again, for instance -- and it surely capitalizes on the eco-terror Zeitgeist of its moment.  

And yet beyond that, this is a horror film unable to enunciate even a single moment of authentic horror.

Almost funnier than the movie itself is the trailer, which discusses a “night of total terror” and a “devil creature.”  It asks “what happened the night science made its greatest mistake?”

Well, what happens when the horror film makes a great mistake?  

Cult-TV Movie Review: Home for the Holidays (1972)

At Christmas time, four sisters -- Christine (Sally Field), Jo (Jill Hawarth), Freddie (Jessica Walter) and Alex (Eleanor Parker) -- return home for the first time in nine years to visit their dying father, Benjamin Morgan (Walter Brennan).

All the Morgan daughters suffer psychological scars from their uneasy upbringing, and have responded in different ways to it Alex is closed off, cold and emotionally-distant. Freddie is self-destructive, alcoholic pill-popper, and promiscuous Jo has married and divorced three times.

Only young, quiet Christine seems stable at all.  Upon her return, Christine is visited by the young town doctor, Ted Lindsay (John Fink), who has a romantic interest in her.

But the Morgan girls have returned to their home for the first time in nearly a decade because their elderly father insists he is being murdered -- slow-poisoned -- by his second wife, Elizabeth (Julie Harris).

The sisters are suspicious because Elizabeth’s first husband was murdered via poisoning, and she was jailed, for a time, for the crime. She maintains her innocence, but is not believed.

Soon, however, a killer armed with a pitchfork and wearing a yellow slicker begins murdering the Morgan sisters, one-at-a-time…

Penned by Joseph Stefano, the 1972 TV-movie Home for the Holidays is a fascinating proto-slasher film that features many of the elements of the sub-genre that were popularized (and became over-familiar) in the 1980’s.

Consider, we have the motivating “crime in the past,” which may have precipitated all the violence in the present. In this case, that “crime in the past” might be the death of Morgan’s first wife (was Elizabeth responsible?), or even the death of Elizabeth’s first husband.  But some event in the (pathological) past has turned a character irrevocably towards madness and murder.  This concept, often featured in a “deadly preamble” or flashback, is a standard of the slasher format.

And then, of course, we have the victim pool, in this case a group of sisters; the Morgans. We also have suspects, individuals who could be the killer, and at least two “red herrings.” Red herrings are characters who, through misleading dramatic devices, lead the audience to conclude that they may actually be the killer. 

In this case, Home for the Holidays provides two such red herrings.  One is Elizabeth, who is believed to have murdered her first husband (though the evidence is inconclusive) and who, in the last act, actually dons a yellow slicker. Yet she is not the pitch-fork murderer.

The second red-herring is Doc Lindsay, who visits with the Morgans at inopportune times and seems overly interested in the family’s comings and goings. Of course, this is just because he’s on the make; in love with Christine. But his first scene, which he shares with Alex upon her return to town, suggests he’s a busy-body and gossip.

Then we have the killer, who is differentiated visually from the remainder of the cast a wardrobe that stands out; in this case the yellow-slicker. Also, the killer is armed with a distinctive weapon: the pitch-fork.

There’s even a mini “tour of the dead” here, as Christine, running through a rain-storm at night, stumbles upon the body of one of her dead sisters, Jo, in the mud.  In many slashers, the tour of the dead occurs in the final chase, as the killer’s victims are discovered by the last survivor of the crime spree.

Speaking of Christine, she absolutely qualifies as the film’s “final girl,” the one (always female) character with the insight and observational skills to stay alive, even while a psychotic killer is loose.

If Home for the Holidays pioneers some of the slasher sub-genre’s most well-known elements, it also knowingly reflects classic literature, and in particular, one work by William Shakespeare. There’s a clear King Lear quality to the telefilm, as patriarch Benjamin Morgan summons his daughters (four, rather than three…) to his death-bed, to prove their love for him. 

His way of doing so (and ensuring an inheritance) is to have them commit murder for him, which is certainly a twist not featured in King Lear, but perfectly in keeping with the oeuvre of the man who wrote the screen adaptation of Robert Bloch’s Psycho (1960).

Although it is a simplification to note that King Lear concerns two major themes: the failure of political authority, and the nature of true love, those themes are also present in this TV-movie, at least after a fashion. 

Mr. Morgan, the authoritarian father-figure and patriarch of the family, has fallen into physical and mental weakness. He is no longer fit to lead the family, and yet he holds onto power by manipulating his daughters.  Quite noticeably, there is a dearth of male characters in the film. Lindsay only shows up long enough for suspicion to be cast upon him, and a male sheriff shows up briefly in the aftermath of the violent coup de grace, so Benjamin Morgan is the only major male character featured in Home for the Holidays. That he is weak, confused, and no longer able to discern truth or justice, is an important point.

Similarly, what is true love? Does one commit murder for true love?  The film revolves around those questions, and Morgan’s family members, including both Christine (our surrogate, perhaps, for Cordelia) and Elizabeth, grapple with them.

Above, I noted that Home for the Holidays is “fascinating,” and I used that adjective because almost none of the film’s outstanding mysteries are solved by the time the movie ends.

Of course, the killer is unmasked and taken away in a police car, but we don’t know if Mr. Morgan was really being poisoned, since he wouldn’t allow a doctor to examine him. 

Similarly, we don’t know who killed Elizabeth’s first husband, or why he was killed.

We don’t even know that Elizabeth is innocent of that crime, only that she is innocent of the pitch-fork murders featured at the Morgan Estate.

The whole movie is a mystery, but the film, to its credit, doesn’t reveal any more than it needs to, which leaves open the doorway to multiple interpretations. For instance, one might conclude that Elizabeth did kill her first husband, and is killing her second as well. However, she is not the pitch-fork murderer.  If this is so, then a killer is still on the loose when the movie ends. Julie Harris delivers a strong performance as Elizabeth Morgan, keeping her cards close-to-the-vest so viewers might rightly ask questions about her behavior and actions. There is one scene, for instance, where she describes how she will do anything to avoid returning to jail, and there is a brief flash of murderous ferocity in Harris’s eyes. Very quickly, that look subsides into mild acquiescence.

Like She Waits, the TV-movie I reviewed her two weeks ago, Home for the Holidays is slow-paced, and at times deadly dull. With all the murders and ambiguity to keep the thing pacey, the made-for-TV-movie should be thrilling, but John Llewelyn Moxey’s direction doesn’t do the movie any favors.

So, Home for the Holidays is a well-cast and well-performed, pseudo-Shakespearean, proto-slasher TV-movie, with a glacial pace.

Only in the seventies, right?

Cult-TV Movie Review: The People (1972)

A young elementary school teacher, Melodye Amerson (Kim Darby) travels to a small, isolated farming community in the southwest to run the one-room school-house there.  She has left behind a boyfriend, who worried that she would be alone in the middle of nowhere.  Melodye’s response is that, in this new location, she’ll have “more time” to figure herself out.

On her arrival in the rural community of Bento, however, Melodye finds the young students distant, unemotional, and strange.  Worse they are not allowed to sing, dance, make pretend, or otherwise express aspects of their imagination.  The whole community seems shut down emotionally.  The nominal leader of the town, Sol (Dan O’Herlihy) seems very reserved, and stern.

Also baffled by the incredibly healthy people of the town is Dr. Curtis (William Shatner), who wishes to study their hearty nature, and local medicines.

As Melodye and Dr. Curtis soon learn, the people of the town of Bendo are not and never can “be normal.” They are actually refugees from another, long-destroyed world. They emigrated to Earth, hoping to find safe harbor, but their ship blew up in the atmosphere on approach. Now, their people have settlements all over the world, mostly far from large human populations.

As Melodye soon learns from a student named Francher, these gentle, unassuming aliens possess advanced mental abilities, including ESP, and telekinesis. Melodye -- a bit of an outsider herself -- decides to stay on as the school teacher, and learn about the unusual community.

Executive-produced by Francis Ford Coppola, The People aired on The ABC Movie of the Week, on January 22, 1972. The telefilm is based on the novellas and short stories of much-beloved author Zenna Henderson (1917-1983), who wrote several tales involving “the People,” with titles such as “Ararat” and “Pottage.”  The People is a loose adaptation of the latter tale.

Like many of its 1970’s brethren (Night Slaves, The UFO Incident, or The Stranger Within), The People involves aliens on Earth, but here the story is not -- at least for the most part -- horror-based. 

On the contrary, The People is a straight-forward (and sympathetic) allegory for the immigrant experience in modern America.  Specifically, these aliens of Bento -- because of their cultural differences -- choose not to assimilate or accommodate to the dominant culture of the local population.  Instead, they “separate” (think: the Amish), setting up an isolated community and only tangentially relating to locals, like school teacher Melodye, or the physician, Dr. Curtis.  The aliens separate from the human community not only to maintain their individual culture and beliefs, but to maintain their safety and security. They are afraid of being discovered, and exterminated, when their alien nature is discovered.  But they are a danger to none, not knowing aggression or other violent impulses.

The situation of the aliens in Bendo is, impressively, mirrored by Melodye’s situation.  If the “people” are outsiders to the human race, Melodye is an outsider to Bendo, and the alien ways she soon discovers there. The path she chooses, as an émigré, however, is accommodation.  She doesn’t assimilate to the alien ways, leaving all her learning and rituals behind.  Nor does she put a wall of separation around herself, so as not to be “contaminated” by ways not her own. 

Instead, she attempts to share her beliefs (through teaching lessons at school) with the people, while she opens herself up to learning of their ways, as well.  Dr. Curtis, played by a low-key William Shatner, selects much the same path.  They are only humans in the town of aliens, and yet --for their own reasons -- they choose to make Bendo their home. As Curtis notes, he has “learned to respect the people and their customs.”

The People’s most compelling scene involves Melodye’s school project for the children, called “I Remember the Home.” Here, she asks each young student to draw what they remember of the place they hailed from.  As she learns from the results of the lesson, “The Home” is another world all-together.  But The People proves most artistically-adept as the story of the aliens is visualized through a series of children’s drawings, paintings, and sketches.  The whole journey, from the old world, to the new one, is transmitted via art, and this is a great, symbolic way to fill in back story, or provide exposition.

Some of the levitation effects don’t look great today, and yet the special effects hardly matter.  The unique thing about The People is that it concerns advanced, thoughtful people who have, at least largely, come to shun technology.

The film’s conclusion, with the aliens putting down “fear” to learn about the humans, is a hopeful one, too.

The story of diverse people learning to get along with one another is just as timely today, in 2017, as it was in 1972.  As Melodye points out “different people are what make the world interesting.”  How boring it would be if we were all the same, all living exactly the same way. The film’s conclusion is that the alien people possess a “wisdom and experience beyond anything we can imagine,” and that Earth “can be a place of love, as well as fear.”

But I like that this is not a one way street.  The process of “separation” has not served all the people of Bento well, resulting in the need for contact, with those like Melodye, or Dr. Curtis.  It is the immigrants, too, who learn to put down fear, not just the humans who encounter super-powered aliens.

The People was a back-door pilot for a series that never came, and which would have reunited the stars here, including Darby and Shatner (who first appeared together in the Star Trek episode “Miri,” in 1966).  It’s a great shame that the series never came to be, as this TV movie is charming, sweet, and engaging 

Although the central roles would need to be recast, it is not difficult seeing how this concept could be made to work again, in our modern environment, as an antidote to the rabidly anti-immigrant national dialogue of the past few years.

Not everyone who is different, or who carries different beliefs, is a monster. The People transmits that idea beautifully, although, honestly, I could do without the scene involving the flying kazoos.

Cult-TV Movie Review: Crawlspace (1972)

The take away lesson from the 1972 made-for-TV movie Crawlspace is simple: don't take in strays.

Directed by the late, great John Newland (One Step Beyond, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark), Crawlspace is the unsettling tale of an elderly childless couple, Albert (Arthur Kennedy) and Alice Graves (Teresa Wright), who decide -- with almost no debate, really - to allow a young, unshaven stranger, Richard Atley (Tom Happer) to move into the crawlspace beneath their kitchen. 

The Graves know virtually nothing about Richard save that he is really good at chopping wood, and currently unemployed.

Guess who's coming to dinner?

Why would two seemingly sane adults make such an odd and rash decision involving a stranger in their own home? 

Well, the answer to that interrogative is part of this TV movie's unique and disquieting charm. 

The Graves live lonely, isolated, regretful lives, and Alice wishes the couple had raised children.  Biologically speaking, that ship has sailed, but the odd, vulnerable Richard provides Alice a surrogate for her desires.  As Albert notes late in the proceedings, Alice took the young man to her "bosom in some crazy menopausal fantasy."

Yep. That about sums it up. 

But why Albert enthusiastically goes along with this fantasy is another question all together.  Perhap he feels guilty that he never had a child with his wife. Now, he's bound and determined to give Alice what she wants.  Even if what she wants is pretty nuts...

But at first, Albert attempts to reject Richard, when the homeless man first shows up in the crawlspace of his remote, country house.  Albert puts a padlock on the cellar door when Richard is out in the woods.  But Richard returns, breaks the lock, and scrawls the word "God" on the cellar door.  Instead of calling the police, or even insisting that Richard leave their crawlspace at once, the old Graves then start showering their weirdo "lodger" with gifts: a new suit and home cooked meals.  They even invite Richard to Christmas dinner.

After Richard has moved in, Newland shoots a series of scenes in the basement, where Albert talks meaningfully with the off-screen, silent Richard. As audience members, we're not even certain that Richard is in the crawlspace at that juncture.  All the conversations are deliberately one-sided, with Albert addressing, essentially, a darkened hole.  These scenes provoke anxiety, as we can only imagine what Richard is thinking while the old man addresses him.

In some weird way, these sequences are  also squarely on thematic point: a romanticized view of child-rearing, perhaps.  The Graves believe they can allow an adult (and a creepy one at that...) into their house, and that he will obey their rules.  They think they can just talk to him, and he will do what they want.   Anyone who's ever raised a kid knows it doesn't work quite that easy.  You can talk, but there's no guarantee your child will listen, let alone listen quietly and obey your edicts.  Here, it's downright weird to watch Albert -- alone in the frame (his space restricted by the angle of the shot) -- rationalizing his point-of-view to the off-screen Richard. 

You've got to take a bath today, Richard, because this crawlspace is under our kitchen, and putting off a terrible odor, you see...

As Crawlspace continues Richard's unstable and violent nature becomes apparent.   He chops up a local grocery store with an axe over an altercation involving a twenty-dollar bill. Later, Richard kills an obnoxious kid (again with the axe...) for that incident.  At this point, Albert and Alice repeatedly urge Richard to leave their house, but he refuses.  "Never.  Never ever," he insists.

Seems the Graves had it wrong, you see.  They aren't taking care of Richard.  He's taking care of them, or so he insists.  "I gotta take care of you.  I gotta keep you safe!"

As you might guess, the Graves' unconventional attempt at parenting finally ends in disaster.   When Albert croaks, "how did we get into this?," you may feel a little like laughing..or smacking your head.

Well, you did let a stranger move into your crawlspace, Mr. Graves...

Despite the patented weirdness of the movie's plot and character motivations, Crawlspace remains a pretty tense affair, enhanced by Newland's efficient use of P.O.V. exterior shots (at night). 

The film is lean too, mostly involving just three characters in a contained space (the crawlspace and the house above).  At a running time of just 74 minutes, Crawlspace doesn't wear out its welcome, and on the contrary, may leave you feeling deeply unnerved. 

That anxiety arises not because Crawlspace is a movie about a psycho living in the basement, but because it's a movie about a family that encourages a psycho to live in the basement.

Cult-TV Movie Review: Something Evil (1972)

It certainly seems to me that the magical alchemy of good made-for-tv horror movies involves one particular equation above all others: accomplishing a lot with very little. 

Exhibit A: the most memorable horror TV-movies of yesteryear, such as Duel (1971) Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973), Trilogy of Terror (1975), and Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981) create moods of suffocating, overwhelming terror without necessarily showing viewers much by way of monsters, blood or other visual effects. 

Instead, in each of these productions the audience is strongly encouraged to identify with one "everyman" (or every-woman) character, and then watch as reality seems to slip further away from that protagonist and they descend into situations of the surreal or nightmarish. 

A salesman experiences supernatural road rage. A woman battles a Zuni Fetish doll come inexplicably to life, and so forth. 

These stories are models of simplicity and efficiency, but each effort also boasts unexpected high impact due to virtuoso directorial flourishes.

Yet another TV-movie that epitomizes this brand of low-budget ingenuity and inventive spirit is 1972's Something Evil, directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Robert Clouse.

This tele-film was made during the rise of Exorcist fever in the United States -- after the book's release and before the premiere of the movie -- and the plot line indeed seems familiar to fans of the Friedkin venture. 

But the point here isn't necessarily the originality of any specific narrative details. Rather, the point is how ably Spielberg manipulates film grammar to forge an overarching atmosphere of free-floating, amorphous dread.

There is something at evil at work in the film all right, but at various times, one might suggest that the "something evil" of the title is madness, family dysfunction, or demonic possession.

First aired in prime time on CBS in 1972, Something Evil concerns the Worden family as it moves into an old, recently vacated farmhouse in Pennsylvania Dutch country.

The patriarch of the family, Paul (Darren McGavin) is a TV ad-man and producer, who is often away in New York City.  His wife, Margery (Dennis) is an artist who stays at home and cares for the family's two children, Stevie (Johnny Whitaker) and young Laurie (Debbie and Sandy Lampert).

After the Wordens purchase the country home -- which is suspiciously decorated with supernatural pentacles -- Sandy begins to experience regrets about their move.

For one thing, a surly neighbor, Gehrmann (Jeff Corey) keeps ritualistically killing chickens in plain view of her bedroom window. For another, Margery frequently awakens in the night to the terrible sounds of a child crying.   

Another local, Harry Lincoln (Ralph Bellamy) informs Margery that pentacles represent a form of protection against devils and demons, and that he himself believes in such devils.  In fact, Lincoln has made a study of them his hobby.  With Paul away in the city for longer and longer intervals, Margery grows increasingly paranoid about the house, especially when two of Paul's employees die in a car "accident" after filming a commercial on the premises. 

Convinced she is becoming spiritually possessed, Margery locks herself off from her children, only to realize -- at long last -- that she is not the target of the Devil's attacks at all...

Again, the story in Something Evil is one we've all likely seen before. A lonely housewife believes in the supernatural and insists on the supernatural while her "rational" husband refuses to join in and share a meaningful dialogue about it.  

He's just worried about money.  "If we sell this house now, I'd take a terrible loss," he states at one point.  On a (very) superficial level, the narrative is similar to Rosemary's Baby, for instance.

Then, of course, there are the young children imperiled by demonic possession, and  local experts warning of a house's dark history with the mystical and supernatural. These plot details suggest The Exorcist, The Haunting and other horror tales horror fans know and love.

Yet Something Evil is perfectly titled. There is indeed "something evil" at work in this horror story, some amorphous aspect of the diabolical, and Spielberg carefully refrains from showing the Evil Thing's presence or even its shape on Earth throughout the film.

Rather, the director rigorously crafts unsettling, almost surreal set-pieces that effectively tap into our shared, subconscious language of nightmares. 

For instance, twice in the tele-film Margery detects a strange noise in the thick of the night.  Both times, the noise sounds like a cat crying at first. Then, as it continues more loudly, we can discern it is the voice of a terrified human child, crying and whimpering incessantly. Margery follows this unnerving voice down a dark staircase, out into the night, and into an outbuilding, a garden shed.  She can find no source for the cries, and returns to bed.

The second night that Margery hears the sound, something more terrifying occurs.  She follows it to the garden shed a second time, and this time the voice appears to be emanating from a mason's jar filled with a thick red, gelatinous substance.

The substance moves in the jar as if it is alive, as if the child's essence or soul is trapped inside.  Now, pretty clearly, this doesn't make a lot of "awake" or conscious sense, but it makes perfect nightmare sense.  It's irrational and yet wholly terrifying.

Amazing what a little food coloring and a mason's jar can achieve when utilized thoughtfully, isn't it? The discovery of the mason jar is just so weird, incongruous and unsettling that you can't quite shake the imagery.

To augment the idea of the shed as a source of something unspeakably evil, Spielberg often films his exterior sequences from a vantage point inside the structure, looking out into the surrounding yard.  This perspective accomplishes two things of consequence.  First, it restricts the available space of the characters visible in the frame. The children are seen playing in the yard, but they are bracketed -- trapped, essentially -- by the arch of the doorway. 

Secondly, and perhaps even more significantly, this perspective suggests the notion that something is alive in the shed, and gazing out from inside it. This could be the point-of-view shot of a devil or demon. The demonic jar and its contents, perhaps?

Another, almost throwaway moment is nearly as unnerving as these canny visual perspectives. Late in the film, Paul is at work in the city, reviewing the commercial footage he shot at his home.  A technician enters his office only to show him something weird that inexplicably appears on the film, even on the negative.  It's a set of red, glowing eyes...inside one window frame. 

Again, we're not seeing a CGI demon, or even a man in a costume.  We're just seeing a photographic still of eyes where none should be, and the effect is pretty shocking.

Finally, during the climax of Something Evil, Margery must reclaim the soul of her son, Stevie, who has become possessed.  Again, Spielberg selects a simple but effective shot to convey the demon's sense of power. He positions the child in the center of the room -- but higher than any child could possibly stand -- and lets all hell break loose around this stationary force, meaning demonic wind, doors swinging open, etc.  The child's back is to the camera, so we can't see his face; can;t see what he actually looks like as an instrument of the Devil. 

Again, when we think of demonic possession we remember the incredible visual effects of The Exorcist: twisted heads and pea soup, namely.  With little budget to speak of, Spielberg instead implies the demon's power by positioning him like a pillar -- unmoving --- in the center of the frame; letting others react to his powerful presence.

Low-budget filmmakers today really ought to study Spielberg's excellent staging. Every truly chilling moment in Something Evil is achieved through applied film grammar; through positional intimation, to coin a phrase.

In narrative terms Something Evil might be  interpreted as a story in which a  family is torn apart by a sensitive mother's increasing sense of alienation and isolation.

Margery physically strikes Stevie at one point, and then delivers a heart-wrenching speech in which she says, essentially, that she is leaving the family (children included), because she no longer trusts herself.  She might as well be an alcoholic, given the particulars of her dialogue, and her actions. 

Conjuring an evil force as the motivation for Mommy's bad behavior seems a perfect metaphor for childhood logic.  Mommy isn't herself.  There's "something evil" at work inside her.

Similarly, Stevie becomes "possessed" by something evil when Mother's love is no longer available.  Something else...something of a more sinister shade, steps in to fill that void. Finally, Mom is told that "love is a powerful force" and re-asserts her role in the family.  But in some ways, the damage is already done.

Though in horror terms, Something Evil offers a pretty hoary, familiar story-line, it succeeds mainly because of Spielberg's staging. By the time audiences get to Marge's second nocturnal visit to the garden shed -- and the sight of that oozing red gelatin in the mason jar -- Spielberg has us by the throat.  Then, the TV movie reaches a fever pitch of terror before ending on another unsettling visual:  The family car pulls away from the house of evil, but Stevie -- now free again -- sits backwards in the car, peering towards the camera (and the house), out the back window. 

If not demonic, Stevie's eyes certainly appear traumatized.  His positioning  (backwards, essentially, intimating the opposite of order) denies the film a clean restoration of  balance and of the natural world, and suggests that Stevie's family problems may just be beginning.

In other words, what's encoded here under the supernatural veneer of Something Evil is the idea of how a family's dysfunction damages and destroys children.  Something evil happens to the Wordens.  Is it demons, or the specter of looming divorce?

I often wonder what networks executives were thinking about, green-lighting such terrifying tv-movies for family audiences in the 1970s.

And then I realize that on paper, Something Evil probably didn't appear too traumatic. Just another, run-of-the-mill demon possession story.

But when Steven Spielberg entered the picture, the director lifted the material.  He took Something Evil from the realm of the routine and the familiar to a level of authentic horror, conscious and subconscious, that remains effective to this day.

Disaster Day: Short Walk to Daylight (1972)

Disaster movies were very much in vogue during the early 1970s, due in large part to the efforts of producer Irwin Allen, the so-called "Master of Disaster." 

The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Towering Inferno (1974) and Earthquake (1974) all proved early box office hits during the decade, and the appeal of such films -- both then and now --  arises in witnessing the varied and colorful human responses to chaos, mortality, and apocalypse. 

Some characters in these dramas may rise above their petty everyday problems to survive. Others find the weight of their own prejudices, problems and weaknesses too tremendous to overcome, even in moments of high crisis.

The group dynamic is important too. In most good disaster films, power struggles arise, and group loyalty shifts back and forth.  Who knows the "right" path to survival?  The right fork-in-the-road that will save lives? 

One made-for-television movie that exploits this tried-and-true yet still efficacious disaster formula is Barry Shear's impressive Short Walk to Daylight (1972).  The TV movie aired on October 24, 1972 and involves a small handful of subway passengers in Manhattan who, late on a quiet Saturday night, become trapped in a catastrophic earthquake and must escape from the ruined, collapsed tunnels. 

The film stars James Brolin as a white police officer, Tom Phelan, and James McEachin as African-American train driver Ed, two very different prospective "leaders" during this particular crisis. 

Each man sees the survival of the group as his bailiwick and responsibility. And each man wants to call the shots based on his own knowledge and experience.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group consists of two young white women returning home from a night on the town, Joanne (Brooke Bundy) and Sylvia (Suzanne Charny), a sullen, disenfranchised African-American man, Alvin (Don Mitchell), and a hard-working African-American mother ending the night shift, Dorella (Abbey Lincoln).  

Also on the train when the quake hits is a junkie, Jax (Lazaro Perez) and his girlfriend, Sandy (Laurette Spang). We begin the subterranean odyssey with these eight characters, and along the way, their numbers begin to dwindle in crisis after crisis.

The elephant in this subway system, other than the earthquake itself, is clearly racial tension.

As noted above, Tom and Ed butt heads over leadership, and whether to remain in the train, or to seek escape in the tunnel systems.  More plainly, Tom and Alvin also develop an immediate dislike of each other.  Tom takes Alvin for a criminal and thug at first, and Alvin sees only a racist cop who is out to judge him.

As the film progresses, Alvin and Tom confront each other as well as their own prejudices. Although they don't realize it at first, they are each  looking only at a stereotype, rather than the individual.

Desperation grows in the tunnels as several escape routes are blocked, and one tunnel route system under Brooklyn begins to flood.  The group realizes quickly that "no one is digging for" them early on a Sunday morning, under Wall Street, or anywhere else for that matter. If they are going to survive, it's up to them.

A crisp 73 minutes in duration, Short Walk to Daylight makes the most of a small budget by fostering a powerful sense of claustrophobia. After the film's first shot of Manhattan by night, the film cuts to a view of Sylvia and Joanne descending a long flight of stairs.  From that shot on, the film never actually returns to the world of the surface or the world of daylight.

Instead, after the earthquake scuttles the train, the film adopts a shaky cam to present an informal, spontaneous aura to the action. Sometimes, the camera is also positioned behind broken glass, observing characters through a shattered lens, in essence. 

This kind of expressive mise-en-scene, along with the minimal lighting and restrictive set confines, grants Short Walk to Daylight a strong sense of disorder, chaos and urgency.

The small, gritty details are appreciated, and worth noting too.  The Iowa girl, Joanne (Bundy) breaks her nose in the quake, and spends the movie with a bloodied face. And Tom's shirt is covered in sweat for the narrative's duration. The persistent overlapping dialogue also adds to the unnerving vibe of a disaster unfolding "as live," essentially.

Short Walk to Daylight is also bolstered by a few impressive effects sequences, thanks to the hard work of Albert Whitlock.

A good matte painting reveals an overburdened tunnel at one point, and near the film's climax, water bursts into the tunnel and gravely imperils the survivors.  One character is washed out to sea in the rushing waves.  It all looks very convincing, and very deadly.

But in the final analysis, what works best about Short Walk to Daylight is the intense, unswerving focus on the eight diverse dramatis personae.

Tom is a good cop, but one who thinks "you can shake people enough," so they'll do what he wants.

Alvin, by contrast, is a man with an overdeveloped persecution complex, and sees the earthquake as yet another one of the daily hurdles in his life to overcome.  "All my life, this city has been coming down on me," he notes, "and all I have to say is let it crumble on down."

The most sympathetic character in the drama is Abbey Lincoln's character, Dorella, who is slow to trust and like her fellow survivors, and already exhausted from a hard night's work. 

The only thing Dorella desires is to be back at home, on a Sunday morning, with her two little boys.  Every Sunday morning you see, she gets to relax, and her children bring Mom breakfast in bed for a change. 

There's a moment in the film -- traversing a flooded tunnel compartment -- when Dorella's life is unexpectedly imperiled, and this TV-movie gets you exactly where it wants you. After her monologue about Sunday mornings and her two sons, all you can think about are Dorella's children, facing the thought of life without their Mom.

Short Walk to Daylight never wears out its welcome, and never returns to daylight, even in its valedictory moment.  The reason, of course, is that all the drama is right here: these diverse people forced to contend with one another in the dark.

The issues at play, like their locale, are all part of the "underneath" of the American experience.  The battles over the law, jurisdiction and race reveal how different from one another Americans can sometimes seem; in every regard from philosophy to background. But ultimately, the film also reveals how similar we all are aside from such skin-deep differences.

Many disaster movies thrive on epic and expensive imagery: buildings falling down, skyscrapers on fire, the end of the world, even.  Short Walk to Daylight features good but minimal visual effects and saves the real fireworks for the character interaction.  It's a good call, because a Short Walk to Daylight is actually better than a  big-budget 1996 disaster film with roughly the same premise, called Daylight. There, the focus was on impressive stunts and mock heroics, not people...and what people fear losing. 

Yet loss is the real looming threat of any disaster or crisis.

What moves us and motivates us is the terrible fear of losing loved ones, or even our lives. And that's what Short Walk to Daylight never forgets; the human  component of such tragedy.  We all live for those Sunday mornings with our families, but man proposes, and God disposes, right?

The Films of 1972: The Poseidon Adventure

Based on Paul Gallico’s 1969 novel of the same name, Irwin Allen’s The Poseidon Adventure (1972) is one of those disaster movies from the seventies that even today proves nearly impossible to resist.  

It’s not just human curiosity that makes this film appealing, with audiences inevitably wondering how, in the same situation, they might fare.

On the contrary, there’s actually a strong spiritual component at work in this thriller directed by Ronald Neame.

Indeed, the movie offers a full-throated, abundantly muscular version of Christian faith that many viewers will find appealing now, in 2016, and must have proven highly appealing at the time of the film's original release, in the aftermath of Time Magazine’s “Is God Dead?” cover story.

The filmmakers knew what they were onto, I believe, and so the film’s promotional materials read, pointedly. “Hell, Upside Down!”

That tag-line very nicely sums up the movie’s thematic through-line. 

Specifically, a widely-disdained man-of god -- a Moses or Jesus figure -- played by Gene Hackman leads a group of would-be survivors through an industrial Hell on Earth: the capsized ocean-liner S.S. Poseidon. 

The path to safety and indeed, salvation, is veritably Dante-sque in its grueling, horrific dimensions, consisting of floods, fires, and other challenges for the faithful to overcome. Again and again, Reverend Scott’s tenets of faith are asserted, challenged, and vindicated as he rallies the spirits and courage of his wayward flock.

This approach is quite different, for certain, from the specifics of the novel.

In the literary version of this tale, Scott possesses some rough edges, and takes his own life. Additionally, the character played by Pamela Sue Martin in the film is, in the book, raped by a fellow survivor. The filmmakers have removed this controversial material so that Scott and his “flock” are easier to identify with and root for, perhaps.

And that’s the thing worth lauding about The Poseidon Adventure (1972). 

In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter how much Ernest Borgnine over-acts, or if the special effects have aged poorly (and mostly, they haven’t).  

Despite any such superficial drawbacks, the film enthralls the viewer because we desire to see the characters live up to their leader’s words. We hope to see them take responsibility for their own lives; for their own survival. 

When they do so, their victory is not merely one of physical endurance. It is one of spiritual strength.

“Resolve to fight for yourself and others.”

At sea, the ocean liner S.S. Poseidon is struck by a tsunami, and it cap-sizes. The captain (Leslie Nielsen) and bridge officers are killed instantly, leaving survivors of the disaster to fend for themselves.

In the ship’s main hall, a ballroom where a New Year’s Eve party was in full swing, the Reverend Scott (Gene Hackman) attempts to convince the others that they must leave the hall and head for the upside-down vessel’s aft propeller section. There the metal hull is at its thinnest, and rescue is therefore possible.

Many don’t heed his message, but some do. 

Climbing a Christmas tree and escaping the ballroom with the reverend are a young woman, Susan Shelby (Pamela Sue Martin) and her little brother, Robin (Eric Shea), and an older Jewish couple, the Rosens (Shelley Winters, Jack Albertson). 

Also going with Scott’s group are an argumentative police officer, Rogo (Ernest Borgnine) and his wife, Linda (Stella Stevens), as well as a single man, Mr. Martin (Red Bttons) and a traumatized singer, Nonnie (Carol Lynley).

The group escapes the hall just as water floods it, killing those who stayed behind. 

But the survivors can’t look back, and must soon navigate a passageway called “Broadway,” a kitchen riddled with fire, a submerged compartment, and the obstacles of a burning engine room.

“Nobody’s gonna help us except ourselves.”

Early in The Poseidon Adventure, Gene Hackman’s outsider reverend (who is bound for exile in the third world for his non-dogmatic views of Christianity) delivers a powerful sermon on the ship's deck.  

He declares that God cares about humanity, but sees humanity on a different scale than we can understand. God is looking at man over the generations, over a huge span of time, and can’t worry about each one of us, says Scott.

Instead, Scott informs his flock -- and the audience -- when we “pray to God” we should “pray to that part of God within” all of us. 

“God wants winners, not quitters,” he says. Scott then suggests that his listeners “resolve to fight” for themselves and "for others."

Scott’s philosophy comes in handy during the crisis, but on a much more significant level, also informs the rest of the film.  It is not actually in Scripture that “God helps those who help themselves,” but The Poseidon Adventure puts forward that philosophy, on steroids, as a guide-post for the faithful in harrowing and uncertain times.

Again, one must consider historical and cultural context when thinking about a film’s meaning. In the early 1970s, the pop culture was agonizing over the issue of God and faith. The 1966 Time Magazine with the “Is God Dead?” cover appeared in Rosemary’s Baby (1968), for example. 

The Poseidon Adventure’s response to such questioning, is, essentially, to say, stop being a crybaby about God and go pull your own weight. 

God’s got other things to do besides saving your scared ass. He made you in his image, so find that part of God inside you...and survive.  Quit being a victim.

Now, I am not advocating any viewpoint or belief system here (least of all regarding belief in God), merely noting that The Poseidon Adventure reflects its time, and accordingly puts forward a philosophy or way of commenting on that epoch.

Think about that time just a little more: December, 1972. American pillars like faith in government were beginning to fall, in part because of the Watergate Scandal. The first convictions in that crime came just weeks after The Poseidon Adventure’s theatrical release. 

Also, America was sharply divided by issues such as the Vietnam War, which it appeared to be losing...badly. The old ways of seeing and living just weren’t working anymore. In short, We all seemed to be trapped on a capsized ship, one that was sinking fast.  

The Poseidon Adventure’s answer  to that dilemma was simple but ultimately empowering on a personal level: When things are falling apart, look to yourself. Summon the best part of yourself to respond.

In the film, Scott’s superior in the Church, also on the Poseidon, laments that Scott “speaks only for the strong,” but I think he’s off-base in that assertion. I believe that the message of Scott’s sermon is that we all  carry the spark of the divine within us, and can access it when we try.  We are all strong, and we must summon that strength if we wish to survive. Again, I’m not advocating for or against anything, including religious belief, merely noting what I saw and heard consistently expressed in this movie.

The entire film can be read, at least metaphorically, as a religious journey. Scott states his philosophy, and some follow it...while others (to their detriment) don't. 

He leads them out of the hall or ballroom, specifically by climbing up a Christmas tree. Certainly, that is a symbolically-important choice.  In 2004, for example Pope John Paul noted that the Christmas tree exalts “the value of life” and related it to Scripture, and the tree of life in Genesis 2:9.  

Note that a key aspect of Scott’s philosophy, as repeated, in hushed tones throughout The Poseidon Adventure is that “life matters very much.”  Life, specifically, involves climbing that Christmas tree and escaping the hall. It is literally a tree of life for those who choose to see it as such.

Moreover, the Christmas tree in the film is topped by a star of sorts, if memory serves, and symbolically speaking, such a Christmas star is supposed to represent the one viewed by the Three Wise Men at the time of Jesus’s birth. Likewise in the film, above and beyond the star is, literally, salvation: an escape from the hell of the bowels of the ship.

Scott’s belief system, that “nobody’s going to save us except ourselves,” is transmitted to the others, including Belle Rosen (Winters). She gives up her life fighting to survive. Had she not chosen to swim into a submerged compartment, Scott would have died then and there, pinned under a sheet of metal, and the others would not have escaped the ship.  Belle Rosen -- whose name means beautiful flower -- "blooms" as a person, and puts into practice the belief of her spiritual leader.  She fights for "others," like her husband, Manny. She has resolved to fight for them, no matter the cost.

Next, of course, in this spiritual reading of the film, we must consider Scott himself. He is either a Moses figure, leading the survivors out of Hell to a promised land, or a Christ figure.  

I tend to prefer the Christ analogy, because -- spoiler alert -- he dies living his principles.  

Above the burning ruins of Poseidon’s Engine Room -- literally a lake of fire in spots -- Scott gives up his life so that others might live. He dies, essentially, for our sins, as Jesus did. Burning steam is being voided into the chamber, and Scott hangs precariously from the valve to close it, and make the way passable.

Although we don’t explicitly get a traditional crucifixion pose here, it is important to note that visually, Scott hangs isolated before the others, dying before their eyes, as he makes his sacrifice.

He dies living out his philosophy, fighting every inch of the way to survive, to fight not just for himself, but “for others.”

The Poseidon Adventure's final scene is particularly Dante-sque, as it sees the survivors escape the Hell of the Engine Room and step out onto the surface, into sunlight and safety.  This moment represents a catharsis, a cleansing. True, it’s not Easter Sunday when these individuals escape (like it was for Dante and Virgil in The Divine Comedy), but it is a day of renewal and re-birth nonetheless: New Year’s Day.

As readers are aware, I admire tremendously those movies that work on two tracks of meaning simultaneously. 

One can absolutely enjoy The Poseidon Adventure as a straight-up disaster film with some remarkable stunts.

But one can also view the film as a statement of philosophy; as a meaningful comment on spirituality and what it means at this particular junction in history.  Although the film is often criticized for over-acting and some cheesy dialogue, it also manages to craft some beautiful and unforgettable compositions.

For instance, there’s the moment early in The Poseidon Adventure when the hall is flooded, and those without faith in Scott's leadership panic and drown. There is nothing Scott can do to help them once the sea rushes in. 

Downcast, he closes the doors to the hall -- which the doomed will never reach -- his visage disappearing into shadow and darkness. The others have been locked out of Heaven, in a sense, because of their inability to believe in Scott’s philosophy of muscular faith. Visually, this shot  makes us understand how Scott must “close the doors” on those who can’t help themselves, and continue his trek for freedom (and the salvation it brings).

Another moment that lingers in the memory involves Mrs. Rogo’s death. She’s a former prostitute and a crass sort of gal.  She dies just moments before salvation, by falling into the lake of fire. 

This occurs, I believe, because she never came to believe in Scott’s dogma of looking out for herself and others.  She only got to the first part of that equation. In one especially ugly moment, she comments on Mrs. Rosen’s “fat ass,” and getting stuck behind it.  

Her punishment for abandoning her fellow survivors is death by fire. It’s true Mrs. Rosen dies too, but she dies at a moment of courage and nobility, saving others instead of deriding them. I suppose the important question involves how one meets his or her fate, right?

On the surface, The Poseidon Adventure is about a disaster at sea, of course, and those who do and don’t survive that disaster.  That’s to be expected.  

The rewarding quality about this film is that it talks about survival not merely as an end, but, finally, a statement of philosophy and faith. 

There are a lot of good disaster movies out there, but I don't know of many that are as coherent and consistent as The Poseidon Adventure is in terms of messaging and symbolism.

“Hell, Upside Down,” is the challenge you face, and if you desire to escape it, you have to do it standing on your own two feet.