Aunt Roo is a witch!

Ever since the death of daughter Katherine, eccentric Mrs. Forrest (Shelley Winters), who's affectionately know to the locals as Auntie Roo, has been using a medium to try to contact the girl, as well as inviting the local orphans to spend Christmas at her mansion. When six year old orphan Katy (Chloe Franks) arrives unannounced for Christmas with brother Christopher (Mark Lester, "Oliver!"), Aunt Roo thinks she's found the reincarnation of her daughter. And since Forrest has flipped her lid, she decides to kidnap the children!


"Whoever Slew Auntie Roo" (not to be confused with the demented "Cat in the Hat" spoof "Who Slew Simon Thaddeus Mulberry Pew?") is a warped variation of "Hansel & Gretel." The film was director Curtis Harrington/star Shelley Winters' follow-up to "What's the Matter with Helen?."


Winters agreed to star in both films solely based on her friendship with the director... but Harrington didn't have much input on the rest of the cast. He remarked that Mark Lester "had a wonderful quality and presence," but the boy's heart wasn't in acting and it was difficult to keep him focused while filming. Similarly, there were problems with Michael Gothard, whose acting abilities (or lack thereof) were highly criticized by the director on numerous occasions -- Gothard apparently ruined countless takes and was generally difficult. Harrington liked Hugh Griffith, but commented the actor was a drunk whose wife accompanied him to the set to keep him on the wagon. Meanwhile, Shelley Winters was so afraid that she'd be upstaged by Judy Cornwell that she had Cornwell's role drastically rewritten and reduced. And there were four (credited) writers. Doesn't sound like a fun shoot, but one would hardly know that seeing the final result.


However, Harrington always had nice things to say about Chloe Franks, the young girl who played Katie. In 1994, Harrington told Scarlet Street Magazine, "In the scene with the teddy bear, when Shelley Winters gets the idea that Chloe's the reincarnation of her daughter, she was supposed to say, 'I had one just like it a long time ago.' I was trying to get a certain line reading out of her, you know -- to get that sort of mystical feeling that would be conveyed to Shelley -- and Chloe looked at me and said, 'How could it be a long time ago? I'm only six years old!'"

Looks like the movie is currently (and legally!) available to view online for free at Camp Here!, a gay video site (with an interesting selection of movies and TV shows) that I stumbled on while doing a search on the film. But that's not my share...



The share is a collection of radio spots from the American release, which was titled "Who Slew Auntie Roo?" (a slightly shorter title that Harrington objected to). And since the share is small and there's no official soundtrack, I've also included the main title overture and two of the songs from the film...

Who Slew Auntie Roo
Radio Spots

01. Radio Spot #1
02. Radio Spot #2
03. Radio Spot #3
04. Radio Spot #4
BONUS!
05. Let No Man Steal Your Thyme - Shelley Winters
06. Main Titles
07. Tit Willow - Shelley Winters
08. Trailer

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Whoever Slew Auntie Roo photo gallery!

And remember! When kidnapping children and serving them for New Year's dinner, it's always best to baste them with butter to ensure their skin turns golden brown. Presentation is everything and chances are you won't have time to swipe, gut and bake another kid before your guests arrive for the feast.

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Grandmother's bees aren't ordinary...

"Killer Bees" stars a young Kate Jackson as the newest addition to the van Bohlen's, a wealthy family presided over by Madame Maria van Bohlen (Gloria Swanson) who runs an acclaimed vineyard. But the grande Madame has a secret as to why the vineyard has flourished for decades that involves hordes of nocturnal African bees...

As one can surmise, the plot of "Killer Bees" is pretty thin, probably mostly due to the time it was released (1974), when TV movies were running a scant 74 minutes -- there simply wasn't time enough for much more plot. However, what the film lacks in plot, it more than makes up for in atmosphere and performances. For most shots, the bees were really on set (though one notable exception for an FX sequence near the end of the film looked hokey in the '70s and is downright painful to look at now). Jackson gives a fine performance as the ingenue, as does Edward Albert as her adoring fiancée. But stealing the show as Albert's grandmother is Gloria Swanson. While it's not quite a Norma Desmond part, Swanson played it with the same sort of zeal.


Ironically, Swanson was the director's second choice. Bette Davis was offered the role first, and she genuinely wanted to do the movie but was advised by her doctor not to. Davis was allergic to bees and her doctor feared that a sting would send her into anaphylactic shock or possibly kill her. So director Curtis Harrington lured Swanson out of retirement, citing her as the only other actress who could play the part. Little did anyone know it would be her last, but it was a wonderful final performance.


Harrington noted on numerous occasions that he wanted to see "Killer Bees" released on DVD; the film never had a VHS release and Harrington feared it would become a "lost movie." Didn't happen during his lifetime and I've no reason to think it's gonna happen during mine. Weird since the movie was rerun so frequently throughout the '70s and '80s. Anyway, here's a rip of the movie that's been circulating on torrents, which comes with huge thanks to the recorder/ripper!

Killer Bees
1974, Not Rated, 73 mins.

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Clothes don't grow on trees!

In 1982 there was an attempt to revive the "Witch Mountain" franchise. Completely ignoring (and negating) events that took place in 1978's "Return to Witch Mountain," "Beyond Witch Mountain" directly follows the events in "Escape to Witch Mountain." The original kids (Kim Richards, Ike Eisenmann) were too old so they were replaced with Tracey Gold and Andy Freeman; Efrem Zimbalist Jr. took over the role of Aristotle Bolt (Ray Milland in the film) and perennial TV actor J.D. Cannon took over for Donald Pleasence as Deranian. The only person to reprise their role from the film was Eddie Albert who (thankfully) returned as Jason O'Day.


This time Tia and Tony escape from Witch Mountain following Uncle Bene (Noah Beery Jr.), who's on a quest to find his grandson. But poor Uncle Bene is too old to continue the search, so Tony and Tia go in his place. Soon they meet up with Jason and Winky and discover Mr. Bolt hasn't given up his search for the kids.


The idea was that this would be a weekly tv series. Yep, tune in for the adventures of Tony, Tia, Jason and Winky as they search for more space-crash survivors while dodging the nefarious Mr. Bolt and company. Obviously it didn't happen. Can't discern how it fared for its February 1982 outing, but the first rerun was one of the lowest-rated shows of the week...



...probably because it fails to capture the charm of the original. Aside from Albert (who slipped right back into his character), Gold (who's a likable Tia) and Zimbalist (who's not the menacing presence of Milland but is still effective), the performances aren't particularly noteworthy. Even less so are the special effects, which are minimal and on an '80s television budget (in other words: corny). And once again there's the same sort of story detours and plot devices from the original: levitation, kidnappings, fleeing via foot and RV, cute cat distracting villains and other assorted hijinks. It's also worth mentioning that director Robert Day is no John Hough -- it's a very visually bland. As '80s TV fare it's passable, but it doesn't stack up when compared to the two films before it and the two since.


A couple interesting things about the movie though. They made a big deal about how Zimbalist was playing a villain. Zimbalist thought it was such a big deal that he even grew a mustache... but he had to shave it...

Also worth noting, a "boy" barely seen in a flashback that's so hazy his face isn't discernable is Kirk Cameron. He and Gold would go on to play siblings in the long-running sitcom "Growing Pains." It would be another another decade before he'd go on to become a religious crackpot.


Personally, I think the film should have been an extra on the "Escape" disc. But since it's not, here's a rip of the movie, which originated on a torrent at Cinemageddon. Duped from vhs of a Disney Channel rerun, it's nowhere near hi-def, but it's still certainly watchable and an interesting post-script for fans of the original film.

Beyond Witch Mountain
1982. Not Rated. 48 mins.

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Phantom of the Paradise: Scene By Scene

"Phantom of the Paradise" is one of my all-time favorite films -- and I wouldn't know even a fraction of what I know about the movie if not for The Principal Archivist at The Swan Archives. Ari is an überfan who seems to be on a mission to get every possible detail about the film dated and archived (on the surface the site appears small but it's very deceptively layered), and he's really outdone himself with his latest achievement...


Now available is a "Scene By Scene" breakdown of the film that features a wealth of information about virtually every aspect of the movie, from inception through production and beyond. And wherever applicable, there's a link to a deleted scene, vintage document, Blu Ray cover or anything else that the text is referring to. Every shooting location has been pinpointed, he's documented mistakes, where obscure literary one-liners originated, which lines were dubbed by an uncredited Betty Buckley, the songs that were hits in El Salvador, the extra who had a ridiculous amount of screen time, which lines the closed captioning people screwed up on... In other words: the new section is wonderfully obsessive and thorough.

So head on over to The Swan Archives and check it out!

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I know what death looks like

Regardless of anyone's opinion of the unrelated sequel (which was recently touted as the Best Bad Film of All-Time), "Troll" is a offbeat little '80s flick that I will staunchly defend. It had an unusual story (little gremlins turns an apartment building into a fairy wonderland) that mixed horror and fantasy, a weird cast (Sonny Bono, Shelley Hack a.k.a. one of Charlie's later Angels, Atreyu from "The Neverending Story," Phil Fondacaro, June Lockhart...), and an infectiously creepy little song performed by the villainous trolls, fairies and elves. Certainly not the greatest flick ever made, but it's likable and memorable.


Weird thing with the soundtrack though. Instead of opting to release just the bigger cues, composer Richard Band arranged all of the cues for the film into overlong "Cantos" suites. On it's own merits its a pretty cool, synth-heavy orchestral fantasy album. Portions of the score were also released separately on a promo full of untitled cues that's been circulating which is boasted as a "complete" bootleg. Unfortunately, it's not really complete; only the first 13 tracks are from "Troll," the rest are from a different movie. So here's a combination of the albums, which is close to a complete soundtrack as is available without resorting to re-editing the Cantoses or snagging inferior DVD rips. I opted not to repeat "Cantos Profanae" (aka the creepy song), and I've included the song "Summertime Blues," which Harry Sr. uses for his "Risky Business" moment.

01. Cantos I
02. Cantos II
03. Cantos Profanae
04. Cantos IV
05. Cantos V
06. Main Titles
07. Wendy Meets Turok
08. Wendy Terrorizes Harry Jr./Turok & the Pod Person
09. Wendy's Troll Friends
10. What Death Looks Like
11. The Trolls Take Over
12. Turok's Garden of Eden
13. Malcolm's Childhood Fantasy/Turok Shows Himself
14. Turok's Story
15. Eunice Searches for Turok
16. Harry Battles the Beast
17. Happy Ending
18. Summertime Blues

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I smell a ghost...

"American Gothic" was one of those great TV shows that fell victim to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. CBS was struggling to snag ratings when the show debuted in 1995. What started out as an intriguing story about a boy (Lucas Black) who's frequently visited by the ghost of his sister (Sarah Paulson) living in a mysterious town presided over by a devilish Sheriff (Gary Cole) degraded into something else entirely. Cole was established as the devil incarnate (and he played the role to perfection), but when it failed to immediately grab ratings, the focus of the show became murky and the storyline and characters drastically changed on an episode-to-episode basis. Actually, I'd liken the later episodes to "Eerie, Indiana," as it became an anthology show with a static cast and a guest-star driven story-of-the-week. It's a shame because the early episodes showed a lot of potential, had the show been more serialized.


So anyway, here's a promo with Joseph LoDuca's complete score for the pilot episode. In addition to the creepy orchestral moments, it also includes some bluesy Southern-rockish cues and the original song "Ball Rackin' Blues."

American Gothic
Pilot Score
Joseph LoDuca

01. American Gothic Main Titles
02. Goat Town
03. This Time (Orchest. Version)
04. Gage's Plan
05. Caleb Goes to Merly
06. Caleb's Dream
07. No More Running
08. Ball Rackin' Blues
09. Problem
10. Birthday
11. Daddy's Shovel
12. Neck Break
13. Merly's Song
14. Ghost Train
15. This Time (Syth. Version)
16. Gail Packs
17. Gail Drives In
18. Revealing Secrets
19. A Good Man
20. Home and the Truth
21. You Know Death
22. Goat Town (reprise)

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Finally available: Evening Primrose!

Like strange movies? Check this out: a conceived and shot for '60s TV musical fantasy-horror-melodrama with music by Stephen Sondheim, starring Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates from "Psycho") and Charmian Carr (Liesl from "The Sound of Music"), based on a short story by John Collier about a small group of people who live and masquerade as a mannequins in a department store. "Evening Primrose" is a movie I've wanted to spotlight as an underappreciated film for forever, but the only copy I had was such horrible quality that it verged on unwatchable -- so I'm elated that it's finally officially out on DVD!

Poet Charles Snell (Perkins) decides to shun the world and take up residence in a department store, where he'll have all the luxuries one could possibly desire -- once the customers have left for the day. But soon after arriving, he discovers he's not the first person to have this idea. He meets a small community of elderly residents and 19 year old Ella Harkins (Carr), who has been ostracized by the elite in-store community but kept on as a servant. Love blooms between Charles and Ella, but they have to hide their romance for fear the others will send for the sinister "Dark Men." I'm not gonna spoil the rest of the story, but suffice it to say the movie plays like a wonderfully demented musical episode of "The Twilight Zone." Here's the fun establishing opening number:

I wouldn't want to give the impression that the movie's perfect because it has its share of flaws, beginning with the title. If one doesn't know what an evening primrose is (which I initially didn't - it's a flower that blooms at dusk), the title is meaningless. The film was shot quickly and cheaply, so there's some technical issues and continuity errors. The song "I Remember" (though pretty) does absolutely nothing to push the story forward -- quite the opposite in fact, it brings the movie screeching to a halt for four minutes. (I know I'm gonna get shit for that comment since the song's very beloved but the lyrics are ridiculous and the single-take-scene-with-the-slowest-camera-push-in-ever teeters dangerously close to the edge of tedious.) But most disappointingly, at a scant 50 minutes the central Romeo and Juliet love story is so heavily emphasized that there's not room to delve into the nightly (and daily!) goings on in the department store, which seems infinitely more interesting. The film's been hailed as a lost masterpiece (mostly by Sondheim aficionados), and that's really an overstatement. What it is, however, is a memorably quirky cult curio that boasts some wonderful performances, nice songs and a pretty cool ending.


So, about the DVD itself... The movie was filmed and broadcast in color as an episode of "ABC's Stage 67," but the color version has since been lost. The only known copies are black and white kinescope prints, and that's exactly what they've used for the DVD (on one hand, this works in the film's favor during the horror-movie-moments). Although the film used for the transfer is a newly-discovered print that's been described elsewhere as "flawless" and "pristine", this is not entirely accurate. There's a handful of brief video rolls and blips as well as a few scratches here and there (most notable during "I Remember"). But overall the picture is surprisingly sharp and the sound is crisp. Certainly beats the hell out of the long-circulating bootlegs... which seemed beaten to hell before they were transferred the first time (seems everyone had 88th+ generation copies).


The extras are simultaneously wonderful and annoying. First up is a 25 page booklet packed with information about the production and remembrances/opinions by Sondheim. On the disc itself is an on-camera interview with 90 year old director Paul Bogart. Bogart does have some interesting things to say, but not 34 minutes worth, which is the running time on his featurette.


Next up is 21 minutes of color "test footage." This includes lots of shots of Perkins in and outside of the New York Macy's store, which was the initial shooting location of the film (at the last minute Macy's opted out and the crew had to relocate the production to the now-defunct Manhattan Stern Brothers store). Much like Bogart's interview, this starts out interesting but it quickly becomes tiresome viewing take after take of silent footage, which is mostly insert shots of nameless people shopping. Would've been a little more tolerable if they'd bothered to drop in the score for the film (which I'll get to momentarily), but instead the footage is silent.


The final extra on the disc is the best -- but the most frustrating. It's a wonderful telephone interview with Carr conducted by Jane Klain of the Paley Center for Media. The pair each have a lot of really interesting things to say about the film, and Carr also discusses her post-acting life and how she discovered Michael Jackson's adoration of "Evening Primrose" when she helped him decorate his first home (it's a suitably bizarre Jackson story). However, I have absolutely no idea what the running time of this interview is because it plays out on what's basically a menu screen with a static photo of Carr plastered on the side. You can't pause it, can't rewind, can't fast-forward and if you stop it, you've gotta start all over again from the beginning. I'd expect that sort of cheapness in 1999 but not in 2010.

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And for those just discovering the movie, there's also a soundtrack! Released as a special limited edition in 2008 by Kritzerland Records, the label seemed to have overestimated interest in this obscurity, as there's still copies available. The album contains all of the songs from the film as well as the background score. There's two or three brief dropouts during "When," and "Take Me to the World" was recorded live on-set so some audio anomalies near the end of that track are a result of the film's editing, but otherwise the sound quality's pretty exceptional... particularly taking into consideration this was a nearly-lost film.

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House of Harrington

I've never been obsessed with a director until I discovered the films of Curtis Harrington, who made a number of really interesting, ploddingly-paced horror/thriller films throughout the '60s and '70s. The stories in his films were never particularly original, but what the films lacked in originality they more than made up for in visual style and the performances he got out of his actors. Matter of fact, I'd say that numerous name actors (Dennis Hopper, Debbie Reynolds, Ann Sothern, John Savage, Gloria Swanson, Anthony Perkins, Shelley Winters, etc.) gave some of the greatest performances of their careers while starring in Harrington's films.


Unfortunately, something always seemed to go wrong. He was thrilled to be given the opportunity to direct the original "The Omen," but ultimately wound up losing the job to Richard Donner. "The Killing Kind" (arguably his best film) was handed over to a dubious distributor and was barely seen by anyone until it hit DVD 35 years later. "What's the Matter with Helen?" suffered from a wretched ad campaign that blatantly revealed the ending. "Ruby" was hijacked and virtually destroyed by the producer. He made the mistake of directing a few high-rated made for TV movies in the '70s ("How Awful About Allan," "Killer Bees," "Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell," etc.), then got labeled a TV director and found the only work he could get was directing episodes of shows like "Charlie's Angels" and "Dynasty" for friend Aaron Spelling. He did all the pre-production work for the acclaimed TV movie "The Legend of Lizzie Borden," then was ousted from the helm. When he tried to get financing for his final film, "Usher," his scores of so-called friends wouldn't help him out. Harrington's films were always tragic and, in the ultimate twist of irony, so was his promising career. But I don't want to dwell too much on the negative. The man left behind a catalog of wonderful, underappreciated films, and I'm always looking to bring them some extra attention.


In 2008, Automat Pictures released "House of Harrington," a loving documentary that looked back on the films he made and featured one of his final interviews. For me personally (having seen/read countless interviews), the most interesting part is the glimpses of "Usher" and his oft-spoken-of early short films, none of which were ever commercially released. Of course, this documentary hasn't been commercially released either, but here's hoping it eventually becomes an extra on a DVD (maybe on "Games," which is suspiciously absent on Region 1 DVD)...


The 25 minute short "House of Harrington" is available to view on You Tube. I plan on giving Harrington's films some more attention throughout the month, so now's your chance to pre-familiarize yourself with them...

Might not be a bad idea to look at the comments. I'm just sayin'...
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Ruby, no one can love you like I do...

Okay, Hallowkkah starts out small, with the title song from a very interesting rip-off film named "Ruby." Now, one would think the titlular "Ruby" would be the freaky looking girl on the poster/cover who's screaming and covered in blood. Nope, that's Leslie (Janit Baldwin), Ruby's daughter. Leslie's been possessed and even does a variation of the "Exorcist" spiderwalk scene decades before that footage was released!

Piper Laurie (fresh off of filming "Carrie") is Ruby, who was a gangster's moll in the '30s. Unfortunately, her beloved Nicky was killed by his own men and mistakenly thought Ruby set him up to take the hit. So now his spirit wants revenge on Ruby and the men who killed him, and he conveniently finds them all together working for Ruby at a drive-in movie house in the 1950s. Now, throw in a deaf, dumb and blind man who's telepathic, a paranormal investigator and factor in a lot of overacting and another campy performance from Laurie, and here you have one thoroughly bizarre film!


"Ruby" was directed by Curtis Harrington (get used to the name, you're gonna see it again throughout the month), a director whose first love was horror movies. Unfortunately, problems always seemed to abound with Harrington's films -- and "Ruby" was probably the most problematic for him. 'Til the day he died, Harrington spoke ill of producer Steve Krantz , describing him as a cheap, power-mad man with no taste. Krantz demanded cuts, completely changed the ending (to give it a annoyingly derivative "Carrie" shock), and then he further cut the movie and had additional non-Harrington footage inserted into the television print... which was inexplicably released on home video. For decades the theatrical print was thought to be lost (as Harrington's cut now is) but it's currently available on DVD from VCI, paired with Kiss of the Tarantula. It's a highly flawed, plodding film, but it's just weird enough that it's unique and memorable.


Okay, so on to the share! Here's a pretty rare promotional 45 that was released to radio stations to market the film in the USA. Along with two cheesy radio spots for the film, it also includes the schmalzty '70s title song by Don Dunn. Unfortunately, "Love's So Easy," the Piper Laurie tune heard crooned several times during the film, doesn't seem to have ever been issued anywhere... but if someone can prove me wrong on this, it's highly encouraged!


01. Ruby - Don Dunn
02. Ruby Radio Spot #1 (60 secs.)
03. Ruby Radio Spot #2 (30 secs.)

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And remember! If you or a loved one are possessed by a demonic spirit (of a loved one), simply stop, drop and roll! Wait a minute, that's not right...

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