Die! Die! My Darling!

Horror movies are typically pretty hit or miss with me.  One thing drives me nuts more than most though, and that's the ridiculous predicaments the fodder finds themselves in.  At a summer camp where a serial killer is killing all the campers?  LEAVE.  Visiting some creepy house where demons and spirits haunt the place? Get the F out!  Yes, I realize movies would be over 15 or 20 minutes in, but it's those forced situations that drive me up the wall.  Thankfully, a fair share of horror movies force the unwilling participants to stay in some hellish situation...hurricanes, no car, a wounded friend, anything really.  Somewhere in between is 1965's Die! Die! My Darling!

A late candidate for most original title from a movie I've seen this year, 'Darling' is a Hammer films production that suffers from that problem. The premise is interesting, the execution a mixed bag, and the end result a weird movie that I'm not sure what to make of.  A big test though, none of the movie happens if star Stefanie Powers' character realizes how creepy the situation she is in really is and gets the hell out of there.  Makes for a dull movie though, don't you think?

Visiting England with her fiance, Alan (Maurice Kaufmann), Patricia Carroll (Powers) decides to take a detour by herself. Years before, a previous fiance of hers died in a car accident and Patricia wants to visit his family, having never gotten a chance to talk to them face to face.  She plans to be gone no more than a day on the visit, but finds nothing is going to go her way.  Arriving at the house, she meets her former fiance's mother, Mrs. Trefoile (Tallulah Bankhead, no first name provided) who welcomes her with open arms.  But Patricia quickly finds out what a nut Trefoile is but doesn't go along with her gut feeling.  Is she just a religious fanatic still grieving over the loss of her dead son?  Or is it something else, something darker and deeper?  Before she can figure it out and extricate herself, Patricia finds herself in too deep with nowhere to go.

Where to start her with director Silvio Narizzano's horror movie that is more Twilight Zone than a real horror movie. The setting is eerie, the mood creepy, and the sense of imminent danger floating around at all times.  Powers' Patricia should have tucked her tail away and ran like a bat out of hell right away, but a 20-minute movie probably wouldn't make too much money.  Most of the movie takes place in the Trefoile house so you get a feel of being trapped with no outlet. I guess I was just expecting more out of a screenplay from master of horror thrillers Richard Matheson. 

Bankhead is the runaway star of this quasi-horror flick. Her religious fanaticism is ridiculously over the top, her personal beliefs antiquated even for biblical times, and a hypocritical nature to boot.  A winning trifecta if there ever was.  The character is an epic trainwreck who is clearly loony from the word go, and things get much, much worse before they are ever going to get better.  Whatever crazy stuff's going on in her head though, Bankhead's Mrs. Trefoile clearly has some pull on those around her, including housekeeper and groundskeeper married couple Anna (Yootha Joyce) and Harry (Peter Vaughan) and a dimwitted albino orphan, Joseph (Donald Sutherland) who lives in the house. Bankhead's movie for sure.

I've always had a crush on Stefanie Powers since I saw her in the classic Herbie Rides Again.  I'll basically watch anything she's in.  An underrated actress, Powers gets to show some of her range off here, dialing it back and forth between distressed and terrified with moments of quick thinking and manipulation.  She is certainly easy on the eyes too, which doesn't hurt.

This isn't going to be a long review though simply because the movie isn't particularly bad or good.  The script is lacking something, it's never really scary, and there are just too many plotholes and unanswered questions for it to be anything better than average.  An interesting premise with a decent cast that never amounts to much.

Die! Die! My Darling! <---trailer (1965): **/****

The Magnificent Seven Ride!

Probably the darkest and most cynical of the four movies, 1972's The Magnificent Seven Ride! is undone by any number of things starting from the apparently very cheap budget which affects the sets, the story, and surprisingly enough, the musical score from composer Elmer Bernstein. Ah, who knows? Maybe the studio thought adding an exclamation point in the title would fix all those problems. Close, but no cigar United Artists.

A good place to start is with the story/script. It's basically two movies which if done separately might have been good, or at least two hour-long TV shows. But of course, that might be too easy to do. My main issue though is simple, the new Magnificent Seven aren't even introduced as a group until an hour into the movie. Say what you want about the first three Mag7 movies, but Chris in anyone of his forms was putting together each group of 7 within the first 15 minutes or so. Not so here which starts a completely different storyline before even getting to a new group of specialists.

Now with a badge on his shirt, Chris Adams (Lee Van Cleef) is a marshal in a small western town with a new bride, Arilla (Mariette Hartley). Chris has built himself up quite a reputation as a tough law officer, but his wife convinces him to let go of a young prisoner she believes made one bad mistake. He does, but the boy joins a gang and during a bank robbery, they kidnap Arilla and ride out. Chris, joined by a writer, Noah Forbes (Michael Callan) trying to document his heroics, head out after the gang, only to find Arilla raped and murdered and the trio of youngsters split up.

Out on the trail looking for them, Chris meets an old friend, also now a sheriff, who is trying to stop a bandit and his gang from attacking their town. Chris declines the invitation to help, and it's not long before the friend and his posse are shot down. Feeling guilt for what he chose not to do, Chris finds the town, sans men, now occupied by just the widows, including Stefanie Powers (with some big 70s hair too) with the gang's return seemingly imminent. With no other option, Chris and Noah recruit five prisoners from the Tucson Territorial Prison (think crappy Dirty Dozen story) to help them defend the town.

The Seven: Van Cleef is an interesting choice to replace Yul Brynner and George Kennedy as Chris. A huge star because of his success in Europe, Van Cleef brings an edge to the character we haven't seen before. For him after losing his wife, he plans the town's defense like a suicide mission fulling expecting to die in the process. An interesting twist on the character for sure. In the quasi-McQueen sidekick part, Callan plays Noah as a whiny, cheap writer who questions Chris' actions, only to...gasp...come around in the end. It could have been a cool character to add to the mix, but Callan comes across as just plain annoying.

Now for the Mag7: Convict Style which seems like an easy way to keep the story moving by taking an idea from a different movie. Making it worse, none of the five convicts are developed much at all. There's Skinner (Luke Askew) and Pepe (Pedro Armendariz Jr), two gunfighters who'd like nothing more than kill Chris, Walt (William Lucking), the strong, silent type good with a shotgun, Hayes (James Sikking), a former Confederate officer adept at planning battle strategy, and Elliott (Ed Lauter in his first movie), the explosives expert. The only ones making much of an impression are Askew and Armendariz, more so because they act cool than any sort of development they have.

The "Villain": In the original, Eli Wallach's Calvera is introduced, disappears for an hour and then returns with a vengeance late. In 'Ride!' the lead bandit has one line the whole movie (a classic delivery of 'Vamanos!' if you ask me) and is played by acting powerhouse Ron Stein, a stuntman known for his parts in the Planet of the Apes TV series as 'First Gorilla.' The villain is totally wasted here and not a presence at all.

Another test of how good/bad movies can be is the groan test. How many times watching the movie do you groan at some cheesy line, horrible special effect, or set falling apart in the background? This one has its fair share including my personal favorite, 'I, Chris, degrade your woman!' in a message to Stein's De Toro character. Also, the widows left in town were gang-raped by De Toro's men and just found out their husbands are all dead. They sure cozy up to these new men awful quick, including Chris (wife raped and killed) snuggling up with Stefanie Powers (gang-raped, husband murdered, has to care for children...) days after all the bad news hits. Now that's a good script.

Besides the lack of a good story, the film has the look of a made-for-TV movie because it was filmed in the Hollywood backlots on a variety of generic looking sets straight out of Gunsmoke or Bonanza. The positive to take away is the final battle as De Toro and his men finally attack the town, but even then it's a measured positive. We know little to nothing about these men, but are supposed to feel something for them when they begin to drop like flies? Yeah, good luck with that. A disappointment all around and a sorry end to the four Magnificent Seven movies.

The Magnificent Seven Ride! <----trailer (1972): * 1/2 / ****

Experiment in Terror

I tend to avoid horror or slasher movies whenever I can. Seeing people's heads get lopped off or the torture porn in the Saw and Hostel movies just doesn't do it for me. It doesn't take much to make a movie a scary or frightening one, especially for me. You don't need mass murderers wielding chainsaws and machetes to bring out fear. Sometimes all it takes is the unknown, a stranger messing with your life like in 1962's Experiment in Terror.

Probably more well known for the Pink Panther movies, director Blake Edwards bases the story on a frightening premise; someone is always watching you, in this case an individual who knows almost everything about you and is holding it over your head. All it takes sometimes to get someone to do something, often against their will, is to threaten loved ones. That's the basic premise of 'Experiment' and even at over 2 hours it's always interesting with a back and forth cat and mouse game.

Coming home from a late-night party, Kelly Sherwood (Lee Remick) pulls into her garage and is heading to bed when a man grabs her from behind. Calmly and cooly with his arm around her throat, the stranger whispers to Kelly what he wants from her. One day soon, Kelly, a bank teller, will take $100,000 from her drawer and bring it to him. If she doesn't cooperate or goes to the authorities, he'll kill her 16-year old sister, Toby (Stefanie Powers) and then come after her. He leaves with an ominous final threat, someone will always be watching you so don't try any funny business.

Secretly calling the FBI, Kelly talks to Agent John Ripley (Glenn Ford) and enlists his help in finding the mysterious man blackmailing her into robbing her own bank. With Kelly unable to give a physical description of her attacker, all they have is one clue to go on; he's asthmatic and talks in a slow, halting pattern. Can they catch him with so little information before both Kelly and Toby come under the gun?

This is a thriller that is at it's best when it's dealing with the villain, played perfectly by Ross Martin. I won't go into his background or motivations because that would ruin some of the mystery. Known mostly for his work as Artemus Gordon, James West's partner in The Wild, Wild West, Martin is downright terrifying as the bad guy. Edwards always shoots him in dark, shadowy situations in close-ups that rarely give a clear shot of his face. If you've seen him in other shows, you'll recognize the distinctive voice right away. It's quite a departure for Martin who as Gordon was the amiable master of disguise always appearing at the perfect time to save the day. He was nominated for his part for a Golden Globe, but unfortunately was snubbed by the Academy Awards.

As the possible victim, Remick is an ideal damsel in distress. The 27-year old actress is rail-thin here and looks like a good wind would knock her over. At first, she's not quite sure how serious her attacker is in his threats so at times she's terrified of what he'll do and then other times eerily calm in her dealings with Ripley and the FBI. I like Glenn Ford more and more with each movie I see of his. He wasn't in a ton of classics and was almost a poor man's John Wayne, but Ford was always likable/believable as the tough leading man trying to save the day. A young Stefanie Powers, as cute as she ever was, is also good as Kelly's younger sister, a thankless role because she's not given much to do.

The story moves along as the FBI tries to secretly help Kelly and Toby, all the while trying to find the mysterious man threatening them. Martin coasts in and out of the story, making one ominous appearance after another until he finally puts his plan into play. The finale is a good one, filmed at a L.A. Dodgers vs. the San Francisco Giants game at Candlestick Park. With thousands of extras all around, it's a great setting as the FBI attempts to close in on their man, all the while trying to protect Kelly who's out in the open with little protection.

The DVD has been discontinued and can be hard to find, I caught it on TCM recently, but the print I saw was a good one, really taking advantage of the black and white filming. The movie's got a good score from Henry Mancini, here's a sample. Of course, I can't find any trailers, but TCM does have a handful of scenes you can watch through their website. It's a good thriller with a movie-stealing performance from a villainous Ross Martin and good parts from Ford, Remick and Powers.