Four of a perfect pair

Some genres offer bodies of work so self-similar that, naturally, we sometimes confuse one film with another, or get the details mixed up in our minds. Take, for instance, the archetype of the spunky female reporter, saved from grisly death by (poison flowers/murderous lunatics/toxic gas/hired goons) thanks to the well-timed intervention of her love interest, a (policeman/ADA/reporter/detective), whom she marries at the end of the film. Can you fill in those blanks for a movie like A Shriek in the Night or The Fatal Hour without Googling? We sure can't.

It gets weirder, though, when we find ourselves confronted with pairs of unrelated films that don't have much in common with each other but, when considered as a duo, bear a striking resemblance to another couple of films.

Such is the case with these two flicks. There's very little connection between The Dungeon of Harrow and The Devil's Sleep, except that they're both on Disc 39, Side B of the Mill Creek 250-pack, and so we watched them consecutively. But as a pair, they have a freakishly large amount in common with the two films we wrote about here, Bloody Pit of Horror and City of Missing Girls. Some examples:

• Brooding nobleman in isolated castle engages in sadistic behavior towards visitors while living under the shadow of a lethal, disfiguring plague? Well, that's The Dungeon of Harrow and Bloody Pit of Horror.
• Hoodlum, threatened with prosecution for leading young folk into iniquity, engineers compromising photograph in order to blackmail high-ranking officer of the court into resigning? And then, girlfriend of court officer goes sexily undercover to thwart blackmail plot, but has cover immediately blown? Why, that's City of Missing Girls and The Devil's Sleep.
• Film prominently features famous real-life strongman as major character? Huzzah, it's Bloody Pit of Horror and The Devil's Sleep.
• How about a captain -- played by a well-known "name" actor whose fame exceeds that of anyone else in the cast -- who offers a much-needed voice of sanity and competence in the midst of chaos, and treats his junior partner with kind respect? Look no further than The Dungeon of Harrow and City of Missing Girls.

Clearly, these four have their cross to share: what a perfect mess! But let's pull out our torch, wooden sword, and superfluous apostrophes for our descent into:

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The Dungeon of Harrow (1962)

Grade: D

What on earth to make of this moody, messy affair? How do you parse a movie that clearly plans to live or die by the virtues of its dialogue, but is chock full of line readings stiff enough to make Faith Clift blush?

How, exactly, to take a movie seriously that mispronounces the name of its own antagonist? (Yes, the bad guy is "duh Sayd", it seems, and Donatien Alphonse François is spinning in his grave.)

Or that thinks you can turn an ordinary middle-aged man into a convincing facsimile of the devil, simply by inverting the colors of the shot?

And yet there's something vaguely endearing about The Dungeon of Harrow, whose flaws aren't, one imagines, the product of mercenary cynicism or Woodian half-assery. For such an obviously cheap film, it manages to conjure an impressive degree of atmosphere; even when the props and costumes look to be borrowed from the local summer stock theater -- or simply made from whatever the 1962 equivalent of the local dollar store had on hand -- it's somehow forgivable.

We're guessing this was a labor of love for Pat Boyette, who wrote and directed the film, serves as its narrator, and even gets credit for the soundtrack (though from the sound of it, we'd guess he was just bringing up the faders on various snatches of library music). He was also a well-known comic book artist, though a claim on IMDb that he was associated with Howard the Duck appears to be completely false.

Thing is, The Dungeon of Harrow isn't stupid, just amateurish. And it's got a real edge to it too, with whips, chains, décolletage that reveals a bit more than usual for 1962, graphic deaths at the hands of piercingly-thrown swords, and -- hey, speaking of piercings -- female characters who'll never again have the chance to say "Hey, Mom, look what I did!" 

Also, we can't overlook Matches -- de Sade's towering (and fiercely loyal) black servant -- whose bizarre getup and platinum blond dye job evoke nothing so much as a Santa Claus/Dennis Rodman mashup (as one site aptly noted). Somehow Maurice Harris brings a certain dignity to a part that, let's face it, is only one or two notches above the likes of The Lost City on the racism-o-meter.

What else can we say? It's The Dungeon of Harrow. It's low-budget, ham-fisted regional filmmaking. It's ponderous voice-over narration. It's "Oh my God, no!" said with an inflection more suitable to discovering that you put the wrong mustard on your turkey sandwich, and you really wanted the Dijon but I guess you'll have to live with the yellow because it's not as if you're going to clean that off, I mean you could but it's a hassle and a waste and why didn't you pay more attention? Now your sandwich isn't good and it's the only sandwich you get to have today, so there.

It's a print that looks like ass (go for the Vinegar Syndrome release, we figure, if you want to see this one at its best). And it's...well, it's pretty decent makeup, actually! Good job, Henry (or is it Enrique?) Garcia.

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The Devil's Sleep (1949)

Grade: D+

"Mr. America, walk on by / Your supermarket dream"?

"Mr. America, walk on by / The liquor store supreme"?

"Mr. America, try to hide / The product of your savage pride"?

But -- sorry, Frank -- Mr. America, aka George Eiferman, doesn't do any of those things. He's scrupulously honest and humble, hides nothing, and is entirely drug- and alcohol-free. And naturally, he only gets about ten minutes of screen time, which is all well and good since he can't act his way out of a paper bag. (Dude sure was jacked, though.)

No, The Devil's Sleep may talk a big game when it comes to its featured celebrity, but the vast preponderance of the film is devoted to the naive teens, pill-pushing hoods, and upstanding citizens affected one and all by the scourge of prescription drug abuse: mainly uppers, but some downers too.

It even casts a shadow over The Honorable Rosalind Ballantine (Lita Grey), who's refreshingly portrayed as a judge first, woman second. And when she has a come-to-Jesus moment late in the film, wondering if she hasn't erred by putting her career before her maternal duties, her daughter Margie (Tracy Lynne) shuts her right down, and there's no more said about that. Nice!

Ballentine is one of several public servants who, alarmed by growing episodes of drug-fueled juvenile delinquency, decide to take the fight to local hood Umberto Scalli (Timothy Farrell). Naturally, Scalli -- who, as villains go, is nearly interchangeable with King Peterson from City of Missing Girls -- won't take this lying down. He's not nearly as genteel about it as Peterson, but then again he doesn't seem to murder people routinely, so that's a plus in his column.

Then there's Sergeant Dave Kerrigan (William Thomason), whose girlfriend is Margie's boyfriend's sister. (We literally stopped the DVD to work this out.) And he does the things these guys do in all these movies: do you really need us to tell you what?

Especially for a 1949 film, The Devil's Sleep has a surprising amount of T&A. Some of this revolves around the reducing clinic that's one of Scalli's rackets, where plump aspirants are fed dangerous stimulants to get the pounds dropping off (but don't tell Mr. America!). Cue sideboob, natch, and even more beneath the frosted glass.

The plumpest of those aspirants is Tessie T. Tesse (Mildred Davis). Her considerable girth doesn't go unremarked upon, but the expected jokes have an unexpected lack of nastiness. They wouldn't pass muster on Tumblr -- and what does, really, except the self-righteous spleen-venting of bourgeois brats whose entitled whining so materially and categorically contributed to the election of the unelectable that one might reasonably think them agents provocateurs? -- but (ahem, don't mind us) it's still remarkably gentle for the time, or for such a lightweight movie (no pun intended).

Davis's ownership of her own size -- and witticisms at her own expense -- are the poised responses of a seasoned comedienne. But with no other IMDb credits, her experience must have been on the vaudeville circuit. Too bad; she's pretty good, and could've shined in bit parts on I Love Lucy and so forth.

On a different note, creeped out by Gary Crosby on Adam-12? Well, here's a prototype:

Short, jacked men with domestic violence haircuts and fetal alcohol faces: they just feel like snakes in-a-gadda-da-vita, somehow. So, guess that means Stan Freed is well cast as Hal Holmes, Scalli's liaison to the hungry mouths of teens who just want to loosen up a little.

Holmes is also instrumental in getting Margie in trouble, yielding even more teh und ah in photographic form:

Anyway, to get to the point, The Devil's Sleep is inoffensive but preachy mediocrity, with several scenes that could plausibly have been co-written by Ed Wood if the timeline allowed for it. Then again, amphetamines are scary stuff -- so a bit of moral panic is, for once, hard to fault. After all, you could end up like this guy:

Family matters

As we approach year's end, we here at The Umbrellahead Review can't help but sympathize with all those poor souls who struggle with discord and strife in their households over the holiday season. Even in today's consumer-centric world, a happy family surely isn't something you can buy in a store or order at a restaurant, and it can be a difficult journey indeed to restore domestic tranquility to a troubled home.

And so, too, the protagonists of these movies, all three of whom find themselves at odds with their fathers (or fathers-in-law). Can a non-Oedipal solution be found to bring peace and harmony to the unhappy home?

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Vulcan, Son of Jupiter (1962)
(aka Vulcan, figlio di Giove)

Objective Grade: D-
Bouncy-Bouncy and/or Beefcake Bonus: B+



Pity poor Vulcan (Iloosh Khoshabe, here billed under the amazing pseudonym of "Rod Flash Ilush"). All he wants to do is make weapons and armor in his smithy and be left alone, but the other gods have different plans.

Most pressingly, they need to find a husband for Venus (Annie Gorassini), an attention-seeking troublemaker whose pastimes include making out with good-looking guys, flaunting her assets in public, and hanging out with Nicole Richie.



The two best candidates are Vulcan and hotheaded Mars (Roger Browne), but the latter is far more smitten with Venus's charms. Mars jealously picks a fight with Vulcan in his smithy, as a consequence of which -- "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- they're both temporarily banished to Earth.



This is fine with Mars, who schemes to depose Jupiter with the aid of King Milos of Thrace (Ugo Sabetta). They plan to build a Tower of Babel-like structure to reach the gods in their heavens, and hopefully get to whip some slaves along the way.



For Vulcan it's rather more inconvenient. On arrival he's wakened from unconsciousness by a group of Neptune's nymphs, but all are soon captured by an armada of dentally 'n' mentally challenged lizard-men.



These outcasts, cursed by the gods, relish the chance to get some revenge by imprisoning and torturing Vulcan. However, help comes in the form of the reluctant Geo (Salvatore Furnari), whom the nymphs are able to sneak out in a bundle of hay.



Once free, Geo blows a conch shell to summon a Triton, who drags him to the undersea kingdom of Neptune (Omero Gargano), kicking and screaming the whole time -- which is pretty much how Geo spends 90% of the film, at that.



Help is soon sent, and once the lizard-men are dispatched, everyone goes to visit Neptune, where Mercury brings news of Mars's plans. Vulcan vows to stop him, but not before enjoying a sexy, sexy dance from nymph Aetna (Bella Cortez), whose pendulous assets would put many Holsteins to shame.


("Pit bulls are just so misunderstood, you know?")

Meanwhile, Venus is bored with all this talk of war, and yearns for the simple life -- that is, the one where everyone constantly pays attention to her, despite the fact that she does nothing worthwhile at all. So she finds her own ways to cause trouble.

("Aetna knows what she did, and that's all I'm ever going to say about it.")

You can probably guess the rest: swordfights, impassioned speeches of love, bouncing bazoombas, cornball dialogue, and alas, the bald guy gets it.

Not the bald guy!

Of course it's all utterly, wonderfully ridiculous, with poor acting, gloriously misguided dubbing (an unequivocal plus in a film like this), and fight scene choreography that's akin to assisted cartwheel practice in grade-school gym class. There's plenty of firm and/or jiggling flesh on display if you like that sort of thing -- even middle-aged dwarf-flesh, offering a welcome opportunity for those curious souls who don't want to clutter up their browser search history. And while Mill Creek's print is far from pristine, with washed-out colors that vary wildly even within a single shot (and a perennial red line on the right-hand edge of the frame), it's still more than watchable. 

So why not let Vulcan, Son of Jupiter be your companion for one of these lonely nights? It may not feed your head, but if someone denies the entertainment value in such a spectacle, we'll raise our heads in indignation and shout: "It's not right!" 

("Well, I'm trying to get up that great big hill of hope.")

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The Man with Two Lives (1942)

Grade: C-



Sometimes men wear tuxedos and bow ties. These are usually good men, like Philip Bennett (Edward Norris), one of two sons of wealthy Hobart Bennett (Frederick Burton), and his brother Reg (Tom Seidel), who bears a vague resemblance to Anna Paquin.



Other good men in The Man with Two Lives include family friend Dr. Richard Clark (Edward Keane), who's in the midst of conducting a series of highly successful experiments in reviving the organs of dead animals. He has big plans to start human trials, and conveniently, there's a convicted murderer due for execution that very night...at midnight. (Haven't you ever seen The Indestructible Man, bud?)



And then there's Professor Toller (Hugh Sothern), a buzzkill who keeps hinting that these experiments might be meddling with God's domain, and is particularly fond of talking about the transmigration of souls.



Well, there's an engagement party, a shocking turn of events, an unexpected tragedy, and a few suspenseful shots of a clock. Always a bad sign, that one.



Bottom line, Philip wakes up, and now he's wearing a necktie. And a hat. This can't be good.



"Surely," he says to himself, "I need some outside help on this." He seeks out Marcia Gay Harden, but since she hasn't been born yet, instinct directs him to Sporady's, a magical Irish bar that has a roughly 68% chance of existing on any given night.



Here he finds the next best option, Helen Lengel (Marlo Dwyer), a local specialist in funny hats with a heart of gold.


(I mean, she has the heart of gold, since you can't really wear a gold-hearted hat without hurting your neck.)

She suggests that he return home and consult his fiancée, Louise (Eleanor Lawson), and even provides a funny hat for her on the house. The results aren't good, however.



Having enraged his father, he returns to Sporady's (which luckily happens to exist) and barges in on a roomful of gangsters in a desperate attempt to find a new foster father. They're sympathetic, but deeply uncomfortable with both the form and content of his request, and encourage him to find other ways to resolve the situation.



Ultimately Philip and his dad come to terms when they discover that Reg is deeply in love with his fiancée. Together, as father and son, they beat the younger brother to death, affording them a much-needed opportunity to reconnect -- and conveniently simplifying the wedding plans, since Louise didn't have a good candidate for maid of honor.

In the closing scenes, local policeman Lt. Bradley (Addison Richards), a compulsive eater, is discovered in the final stages of consuming the couple's entire wedding cake. "We never should have trusted that necktie-wearing bastard," says the ensemble in unison, before promptly descending upon the hapless cop. After asphyxiating him on the remaining cake and severing his man-parts, they throw his body into the Seine, in a beautifully choreographed scene set to the strains of the Moonlight Sonata.



If you're wondering how all this could've passed the Hays Code, never fear, disaster is averted: at the last minute, we learn that practically everything since the engagement party was all a dream.

So all the asphyxiating, hat-wearing, and sibling-beating? None of that was true, none of it happened. And if you feel cheated, well, so did we -- but hopefully it was entertaining while it lasted.

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Scared to Death (1947)

Objective Grade: F
Hungarian Hue Honorarium: D



This, friends, is the protagonist of Scared to Death, one Laura Van Ee (Molly Lamont). She spends most of the film with rage, fear, and contempt etched on her face, fulminating with hatred of her husband and father-in-law (and they're none too fond of her either), with whom she lives in a spooky old house -- and whom she suspects of wanting to kill her.

But when we first see her, she looks more like this:



No spoiler, that, since it's how the film starts: with Ms. Van Ee on a slab in the morgue, and two coroners about to go to work on her.

As they prepare to undertake (!) their gruesome necessities, they note that "one hates to perform an autopsy on a beautiful girl", leaving us to wonder whether they're lamenting the death of someone attractive -- always more tragic than when ugly people get snuffed, as is well-known -- or whether they're simply sad to spoil an aesthetically pleasing object which would otherwise offer intriguing possibilities.



Either way, it's probably the only genuinely creepy bit in the film. But before they start carvin', they pause once more to speculate about her final moments:

"And yet...one often wonders: what could have caused the last thought that was cut off by death?"



Well, Scared to Death is here to tell us. Thanks to the magic of corpse narration, the whole film is recounted from Mrs. Van Ee's point of view, more or less, tracing her descent into paranoia as her mysterious persecutor draws the noose tighter and tighter.



While this is a clever gambit in principle (put your pants back on, Nacho), in practice it means that, every 10 minutes or so, the film is suddenly interrupted by the following sequence:

• a still shot of the corpse that fades in, underscored by "woo-woo" spooky music that amounts to a wordless vocalise and a couple of augmented chords;
• Molly Lamont delivers a line or two in voiceover, usually meaningless expository filler in the White Gorilla "As I watched..." vein;
• and the shot fades back out, accompanied by the same musical cue.

We don't know how this was received in 1947, but nowadays it reads as a dead ringer for a loading screen from a 1990s CDROM game. Just add a progress bar, a few two-color icons, and a bonus preview for Wand of Gamelon, and you're there.



These cornball tactics are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Scared to Death's problems, as many factors sink it beyond all hope of redemption. Despite a few vague signs of greater ambition, the plot is incoherent, full of red herrings and loose ends, and generally feels like it was being made up as the filming went along. Characters' motivations are unclear, their behavior often makes no sense, and none are remotely sympathetic. And the final twist, revealing the culprit at last, amounts to a cheap trick that doesn't even play fair.



Then you've got Nat Pendleton as Bill "Bull" Raymond, a disgraced cop turned private investigator who inserts himself into proceedings in hopes of redemption. The relentless "comic" patter of this bumbling idiot is like nails on a chalkboard, and it's hard to imagine any of his one-liners eliciting anything but a groan and a sad shake of the head, even in 1947.



The film's one saving grace is Béla Lugosi as Professor Leonide, an enigmatic mesmerist and cousin of the elder Van Ee (George Zucco). In the midst of all this domestic turmoil, he arrives unexpectedly in the company of his diminutive manservant Indigo (Angelo Rossitto), though his visit isn't exactly welcome.



Lugosi's performance is exactly what you'd expect, but allows for a bit more range and playfulness than most of the pseudo-Drac dreck he slogged through in the last decades of his career. Genteel, urbane, but unequivocally dangerous, he easily steals every scene he's in.



And, as every review on the Internet notes, this movie is your only chance to see Lugosi in color. At least in Mill Creek's print, the film uses a funky, not-quite-right palette that initially made us suspect it was one of Ted Turner's misguided colorization efforts. But nope, it's every inch the real thing.


("Really, you met Milton Berle?")

But let's be clear, Scared to Death is an utterly regrettable movie with absolutely nothing else to offer save Béla's presence. If seeing him is enough to please you, by all means; otherwise, steer very clear of this abrasive, half-assed trainwreck.


(Nice tie, too.)