Scream Of The Wolf

With regard to my earlier comments about David Case's The Hunter, thanks to e-bay and a kindly Australian gentleman, I finally got to see the 1974 ABC Movie Of The Week version, starring Peter Graves as Wetherby and Clint Walker as Byron. You'd think with Richard Matheson writing the screenplay and Dan Curtis directing, we'd really have something here, but it doesn't quite materialise. We start off dodgily in sunny Californ-aye-ay, but with a couple of eerie fog-bound killings. It seems these killings precede the inevitable commercial break, and you can bet your bottom dollar that we'll be back after the fade out with hordes of police cars. This is at first amusing, then annoying. The police are baffled and call in Wetherby. He's baffled as per the original story to the exact nature of the beast. Byron is refusing to get involved. Wetherby's part-time girlfriend (Jo Ann Pflug) doesn't like him anyway. He has a habit of turning up at odd moments, watching the confusion with a detached bemusement. I mistook Clint Walker's hulking size and slow delivery for dimness at first, but as the film proceeds, it really makes a mark. Byron is far more in control than anyone else. Matheson has the good taste to bring in a scene directly from the original story where some know-all challenges Byron's somewhat primitive outlook on life, and the result is amusing and worrying. The second half of the film is much better, embodying some of the claustrophobic nature of Case's writing, and the ending is well-handled and offers more closure than the tale, perhaps in keeping with US TV. Much better than I expected

The Pit....And The Pendulum

Recently watched The Pit (1962) a short ( just less than half an hour) experimental film, funded by the BFI, based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story. Filmed in black and white with a very discordant score, it’s extremely creepy and a very good take on that particular tale.

As a result I reread EAP’s story and was very disappointed to find that although replete with horror and menace, Edgar’s version had a happy ending! Sellout!

‘Twas but a short step to the Roger Corman outing. Although Richard Matheson more or less jettisoned the story, it’s an amazingly atmospheric piece of work. There’s a castle, full of torture instruments, cobwebs (although this may be the only Corman Poe film that doesn’t feature the obligatory tarantula), secret passages. It’s by the sea (apparently representing the unconscious) so there are lots of wonderful waves-crashing-against-the-rocks shots. And there’s Vincent Price (who, like the tarantula, only missed one of the series). People have criticised his madness as being, well, a bit hammy, but, goodness gracious, we all go a little mad sometimes, and I’m all for my madmen and women being totally MAD.

There’s a storm at the end too.