Only now does it occur to me... DANIELLE STEEL'S FAMILY ALBUM (1994)

Only now does it occur to me... to say a few words about the 1994 NBC miniseries DANIELLE STEEL'S FAMILY ALBUM. I must admit that I sought this out entirely to explore John Waters' role as "Vincent," an appearance so apparently obscure that I could not find a single image to prove the existence of his involvement on the entire internet. Not a one! He mentioned the project by name in a few interviews, but to me, it became one of the most intriguing omissions in his filmography. (Worry not, in the end, I shall provide you with a video of his entire performance.) But first, what even is this thing?

FAMILY ALBUM is adapted from the 1985 Danielle Steel novel of the same name (one of over 140 novels she has written), and it tells the epic, four-decade saga of a 1950s Hollywood actress who decides to break the mold and become a film director. In the process, it basically tells a fictionalized version of the life of Ida Lupino.

Our Lupino stand-in is CHARLIE'S ANGELS' own Jaclyn Smith as "Faye Price":

 

and her brow-furrowing husband, "Ward Thayer," is played by TWIN PEAKS' own Michael Ontkean:

 

Honestly, this is all a little better than it should be, though it's still a pretty long three hours and twenty minutes and very indicative of pre-prestige 1990s soapy network "two evening event"-style television.

Where does John Waters fit in? Well, Faye's daughter (played by Leslie Horan) is trying to break into the movies without using any of her mother's connections. She finds an "in" with a horror filmmaker who is sort of a sleazier William Castle/Tobe Hooper/Wes Craven-type making a CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON/SWAMP THING-inflected movie in the 1970s. This filmmaker, "Vincent"––surely named for Vincent Price, given who's playing him––is portrayed by John Waters. He spends his single minute of screentime attempting to pressure his leading lady into doing nudity in the picture ("What's the big deal about showing some skin, it's an art film, it could go to Cannes, it's my best work!").

So there you have it. Mystery solved! John Waters in DANIELLE STEEL'S FAMILY ALBUM, ladies and gentlemen:

Sean Gill's "The Mysterious Ecstasy of Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball for Super Nintendo" in Hobart

My latest essay, "The Mysterious Ecstasy of Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball for Super Nintendo," chronicles the delightfully bizarre cultural connections (involving the likes of Stephen King, John Waters, Judy Garland, Werner Herzog, etc.) that exist in the vintage SNES baseball game. It's just been published by the literary journal Hobart, and you can read it online here.

Film Review: MATINEE (1993, Joe Dante)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 99 minutes.
Tag-line: "Lawrence Woolsey presents the end of civilization as we know it. Make that... Proudly Presents!"
Notable Cast or Crew: John Goodman (C.H.U.D., THE BIG LEBOWSKI), Cathy Moriarty (RAGING BULL, COP LAND), Simon Fenton (THE POWER OF ONE, A KNIGHT IN CAMELOT), Omri Katz (EERIE INDIANA, HOCUS POCUS), Lisa Jakub (INDEPENDENCE DAY, MRS. DOUBTFIRE), Kellie Martin (TROOP BEVERLY HILLS, ER), Robert Picardo (TOTAL RECALL, GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH), Dick Miller (GREMLINS, THE TERMINATOR, A BUCKET OF BLOOD, CORVETTE SUMMER), John Sayles (novelist and director, LONE STAR, THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET), Kevin McCarthy (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, THE TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE), William Schallert (THE PATTY DUKE SHOW, THE TWILIGHT ZONE), Naomi Watts (MULHOLLAND DR., KING KONG '05).  Music by Jerry Goldsmith (ALIEN, POLTERGEIST, GREMLINS).  Makeup effects by Rick Baker & Co. (VIDEODROME, THE HOWLING, STAR WARS, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON).  Written by Jerico Stone (MY STEPMOTHER IS AN ALIEN) and Charles S. Haas (OVER THE EDGE, GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH,
Best One-liner: "Young lady, human/insect mutation is far from an exact science!"

Ah, MATINEE...  I saw this film for the first time back when it came out in '93, and despite having no idea at the time who William Castle was, I was immediately drawn to the film's layered nostalgia and infectious sense of harmless fun; it's a paean to dedicated showmanship in a scary world.  Probably not before or since has a movie so thoroughly and tenderly explored the life-affirming thrill and ultimate social value of horror cinema––it's about taking yourself (and perhaps a date) to the Lovecraftian brink and back again in a safe, controlled environment; to forget, even for eighty minutes, the considerably less exhilarating, quotidian terrors that linger beyond the limits of the screen.

Equal parts fan service and a sincere coming-of-age, MATINEE is for every lonely kid who grew up on B-movies, late-night TV spook shows, and monster magazines; the socially awkward ones who imagined that Vincent Price, King Kong, and Dracula were sort of their friends.  It'd make a fine double feature with FRIGHT NIGHT, I must say.

Castle's career lived primarily in the shadow––or is that silhouette?––of Hitchcock.  Castle believed they were equals; personally, I tend to wonder if Hitchcock even knew who he was.

Set in Florida during the Cuban Missile Crisis, MATINEE follows movie producer/director Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman, playing a not-even-thinly-disguised version of the manic, cigar-chomping, creature-feature ringmaster and gimmick-king William Castle) as he brings his new film "MANT" to Key West, forever changing the lives of a few teenagers who are making the transition to adulthood beneath the (anticipatory) shadow of a mushroom cloud.

And God bless William Castle––John Waters has said he'd rather have sat on his lap than Santa Claus' when he was a child––and damned if Castle isn't essentially the halfway point between Santa and P.T. Barnum. Here was a man who playfully threatened to kill audience members in his promotional materials, pioneered the Illusion-O Ghost-Viewer and Ghost-Remover, shoehorned contest winners into bit parts, handed out plastic coins in an attempt to energize cinema-goers, let the audience vote on killing off a character via a "Punishment Poll",  marketed a film (sucessfully) to children about kids who must murder their uncle before he murders them, stuck vibrators on seat-backs and called it "Percepto," used fake life insurance policies to hype in-movie scares, and handed out cardboard axes for a movie where a fifty-nine year old Joan Crawford plays a twenty-year-old (in a flashback).

What Castle called "barnstorming" (following your film cross-country to promote it in person, maximizing the asses in seats like a carnival barker) is Woolsey's bread and butter, and he'll employ every trick in the book to make sure his audience has a once-in-a-lifetime film experience, combining all the joys of live theater, the haunted house, and a boardwalk magic show.

This is all handled expertly by Joe Dante, who infuses the proceedings with equal doses of nostalgia, silliness, and a genuine humanity (that feels as well-earned as anything from masters like Renoir or Altman).  It's pretty damned great.

Without further ado, I'd like to delve into my eight favorite elements of MATINEE:

#8.  The authenticity in storytelling and art direction.  Not being a child of the 50s, I may be way off base, but there's a definite eye for detail in Steven Legler's production design,

and I appreciate little details, like burgeoning teens listening to a Lenny Bruce record

and hurriedly shutting it off when Mom pulls in the driveway.

#7.  And whaddya know––Omri Katz!  The kid in the striped shirt in the above screencap is none other than the star of Dante's EERIE, INDIANA, one of my favorite (albeit short-lived) TV shows as a child.  He's effortlessly likable, and it's a shame he hasn't done much acting since the early 90s.

#6. The in-jokes.  There are more obvious nods, like references to Castle's "rivalry" with Hitchcock; but there are deeper cuts, too––posters for everything from CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER to THE DEADLY MANTIS appear frequently in the background, and a fictionalized version of Samuel Z. Arkoff (of American International Pictures) even shows up to the MANT screening!

#5. Cathy Moriarty as the washed-up starlet turned horror vixen; basically she's Joan Crawford in STRAIGHT-JACKET or Barbara Stanwyck in THE NIGHT WALKER.  She gives fewer shits than Bob Mitchum and has her most fantastic bit as the lobby "Nurse" in a nod to MACABRE's mock insurance policies.

She very nearly steals this movie away from John Goodman and a giant "Mant" prosthetic, which is, at the end of the day, quite an achievement.

#4. Dante crony and "that guy!" legend Dick Miller and novelist/director John Sayles as Woolsey's shills:

out-of-work actors pretending to protest MANT in order to amplify the word of mouth (any press is good press, eh?).  It's a classic technique, and one that I imagine the real Bill Castle must have employed at one time or another.  In between the whimsy, however, Dante manages to sneak in a sobering aside about the Hollywood Blacklist.

#3. Robert Picardo as the scaredy cat/wet blanket theater manager, who happens to have a personal fallout shelter in the basement.

Picardo's twitchy demeanor and knack for physical comedy make the character especially vivid, but even as you laugh at his panicked clowning, Dante never lets you fully forget that the man has some valid concerns (it's October '62, after all!) about nuclear annihilation.  (It's the same humanism that allows Dante to give real pathos to character deaths in something like GREMLINS, even though the methods of murder are borrowed straight from the Looney Tunes.)

#2.  The film-within-a-film, Lawrence Woolsey's MANT.

Tonally, it's spot-on––a hilarious mashup of THE TINGLER, PANIC IN YEAR ZERO!, THEM, and THE FLY with perfectly stylized imagery and dialogue.  It certainly helps that he's packed it with B-movie actors from the era, including INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS' Kevin McCarthy

and THE TWILIGHT ZONE's William Schallert (both of whom also appeared in Dante's segment of THE TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE).

It lives up to the (Castle-styled) hype and is one of the most memorable 'film-within-a-films' I can think of.

#1.  A second film-within-a-film, "THE SHOOK-UP SHOPPING CART" has a shorter, though no less memorable appearance.


Intended to be a spoof of eye-rolling, "safe" live-action children's fare of the era, like THE ABSENT-MINDED PROFESSOR, CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG, or THE LOVE BUG, it features a sentient, crime-fighting shopping cart and a young Naomi Watts.  Even the film stock and color correction are spot-on––it's clear that every aspect of this production was a labor of love. 

Five stars.  Perhaps one day, some inspired filmmaker will tell a thinly-veiled story of the effect the consummate showman Joe Dante's films had on their childhood!

––Sean Gill

P.S. I also recommend you check out J.D. of Radiator Heaven's nuanced take on the film here!

Film Review: HIS KIND OF WOMAN (1951, John Farrow)

Stars: 4 of 5.

Running Time: 120 minutes.
Tag-line: "They were two of a kind ! ...and bound to meet, but neither of them knew what such a meeting would mean!" Whaaaaat?

Notable Cast or Crew: Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, Vincent Price, Raymond Burr, Tim Holt (TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, STAGECOACH), Charles McGraw (THE BIRDS, SPARTACUS), Marjorie Reynolds (GONE WITH THE WIND, HOLIDAY INN). Some supposed uncredited direction by Richard Fleischer (SOYLENT GREEN, MR. MAJESTYK, FANTASTIC VOYAGE).

Best one-liner: "Alas, why must I be plagued by yammering magpies on the eve of battle?" As said by Vincent Price.

I'd call HIS KIND OF WOMAN something of a hidden gem- not only for Mitchum aficionados, but for fans of ridiculous cinema in general. Our story unfolds at a Mexican resort which is, in fact, a sprawling, intricate set populated by 'Mexicans' who speak fluent English except for "Si" and "Señor," as if the thought process is: "I present to you now the champagne you requested..." -damn, what's the English word for Señor aw fuck it- "...Señor."

The plot is kinda DARK PASSAGE meets OUT OF THE PAST with a sprinkling of the THIN MAN: icy, depraved, eye-bulging mobster Raymond Burr

wants to steal the face of patsy Bob Mitchum so he can return to America. A l'il romance with Jane Russell and a l'il whackiness with Shakespeare-quotin' Vincent Price provide a lighthearted tone.

Mitchum is great. He's playing a teetotaler, and I kept on thinking that it was just a set-up for a joke where at the end he'd drink an entire bottle of gin just to prove what a hardass he is, but alas... no.

Mitchum orders milk at a bar and visualizes spending his paycheck on several cases of gin.

And you can tell that even having to pretend that he doesn't imbibe is pissing him off. This film, like every one he ever did, is full of scenes of Mitchum scoffing and otherwise not giving a shit. There's a very good chance he didn't even watch this flick after it was released.


Mitchum tries his best to give a shit about Jane Russell.


Mitchum pretends not to give a shit about that drink, mere inches away.

And, as always, whenever he 'does a good deed,' you're thinking- 'yeah, that's just cause it was in the script.' Then he follows it with an insolent sneer so you know you're right.

Mitchum is pained by the thought of being a do-gooder.

Then, we got Vincent. He plays a girlish actor coming to grips with his 'action persona' through the need to perpetrate real violence on deserving hoodlums.

Look at that smarm. The utter lack of respect for anyone who can't quote the classics with equivalent fluency or zest.

He's having a ball. He's stealing the movie from Mitchum. To be fair, it's teetotaling Mitchum. And to be more fair, Mitchum doesn't give a shit if he steals the movie or not. But still... impressive.

Anyway, later, while Mitchum's in bondage, Vincent is saving the day, blasting goons and shouting one-liners like "Deceased! Or to say in plain terms- gone to heaven!" or "Death hath not struck so fat a deer today," which is, in short, one of the best things I've ever seen.



"This place: is dangerous. The time: right deadly. The drinks are on me, my bucko!"

There's Mexican stand-offs, scathing Hollywood satire, and Mitchum bets his shoe at a card game ("Well, if we're betting leather..."). I love it. Four stars.

-Sean Gill

Junta Juleil's Summer '10 Movie Series
1. HELL IN THE PACIFIC (1968, John Boorman)
2. KUFFS (1992, Bruce A. Evans)
3. THE OUTFIT (1973, John Flynn)

4. FOR Y'UR HEIGHT ONLY (1981, Eddie Nicart)

5. A*P*E (1976, Paul Leder)

6. BLIND FURY (1989, Philip Noyce)
7. HIS KIND OF WOMAN (1951, John Farrow)
8. ...

Television Review: THE LETTER PEOPLE, EPISODE 2- MEET MR. T (1974, Thomas McDonough)

Well, a tenacious reader reminded me a few days ago that at one point in time, I had promised to eventually review each episode of the Letter People series. Being as the first and last installment of that series premiered over one year ago, I've decided that it's time to continue. It's important for me to show the world that Sean Gill is not a liar, particularly when said lies involve defunct 1970's low-budge' puppet theater of the absurd. You can read the review of Episode 1 and an introduction to the series itself HERE. So, without, further ado, I present to you now– THE LETTER PEOPLE: EPISODE 2- MEET MR. T:

Episode 2: Meet Mr. T.
Stars: 3.5 of 5.
Running Time: 15 minutes.


(sung)
"Tall--my teeth are so tall
Terrifically tall,
The tallest you'll see;
I'm called Mr. T.

(spoken word)
Mr. T--that's me - TALL TEETH.
Why, my tall teeth are so tall,
That it takes my toothbrush 222 turns
To take a trip
From the top of the tip,
To the tip of the top
Of each tooth,
And that's the tall truth!

And talk about toothpaste
From Tuesday to Tuesday,
I'll use 2,222 tubes of tasty toothpaste,
For each tremendous tooth,
And that's the tall truth, too!

(sung)
Tall -- my teeth are so tall,
Terrifically tall,
The tallest you'll see;
I'm called Mr. T."


Simply poetry. Yes...Mr. T. The lilting, singsongy voice. The delicate, almost melancholy demeanor. He's just a sweet 'ole cowpoke. The kind of father figure who you want tellin' you bedtime stories or feedin' ya beef jerky. A tall-tale-tellin' Texan who gallivants about while riding an adorable horse on a stick. All of this is is quite deliberate. A carefully concocted charade, painstakingly fashioned to cover up the simple fact that

HE IS
FUCKING
TERRIFYING.
Yeah, he's somehow the missing link between Gary Busey and a box of Wheaties, I suppose. Perhaps his Southwestern persona was inspired by the Boetticher Western THE TALL T, the Tag-line of which ("Taut! Torrid! Tremendous! T Is for Terror!") could easily be dialogue in this episode? Annnyway. So he sings this little ditty and proceeds to ride off into the sunset, but the perspective is contradictory and quite ambiguous. Some of the scenery floats back and forth as if it is meant to represent clouds, yet the foreground and background coloration of the cardboard setpieces remains identical, thus making it exceptionally difficult to tell what the hell we are looking at exactly. So allow me to revise my observation- Mr. T rides off behind the sunset at the song's conclusion.

Mr. M then pops up from below like the he mouth-breathing, toupee-wearing, skulking, oily perv that he is to make the glib remark

"Ohhhh, that was marvelous music, Mr. T...I'm MR. M."



The rest of this episode is a mixed bag. Clearly the makers were unsure of which direction to take the series, so we get a few irregularities (like some live-action children, which I'll get to in just a minute). Anyway, Mr. T imparts a tall tale about a fracas with Terrible Tough Tony that ends with Tony having the shit scared out of him

and a punchline involving Teflon Taffy that doesn'T sTick to his Tall Teeth, which is oh so very clever, except that it encourages kids to combine junk food with polytetrafluoroethylene. Ultimately, this is one of the reasons that I like this show so much. THE LETTER PEOPLE is not for the faint of heart. It's not going to kowtow to the least common denominator. So we're gonna talk about eating Teflon? So what. You can figure out which chemicals you can eat on your own time. Cause right now, we're here to watch a bunch of whacky puppets tell us some slightly relevant shit about phonics.

Anyway, then there's a weird live action segment, and a bunch of kids (wearing T-shirts cheaply adorned with the letter 'T') present a series of musical instruments, all beginning with the letter 'T' (i.e., tuba, trumpet, trombone, tom-tom drum, tamborine, etc., etc.) and form a terrible makeshift orchestra.



The resulting Tonal, Tremulating Timbre of the music is so egregiously Tone-deaf that the Tree from EVIL DEAD grimaces and escapes the scene, and I'm not quite sure what he was doing there anyway.


This is the only time that THE LETTER PEOPLE flirted with genuine live-action, and the resulting absurdity makes me wish that they'd given it another shot.

Then Mr. T goes to the dentist and engages in a lengthy, boring interaction with his DDS which is notable for one reason– the dentist's voice is a clear velvet-tongued impersonation of one Vincent Price.

This is one of many celebrity references which will occur on THE LETTER PEOPLE- entire episodes will later center on a Bogart-esque private eye named 'Nardo. Clearly, a lot of love, thought, and attention to detail were put into these. Apparently the same attention to detail did not go into the sets.

We end with a really bizarre cartoon where the singer isn't in synch with the music, and it's chock full of uncanny, freakish images like this one.

Yeah... I don't think I like this.

A fairly solid second episode- but there are some pretty mind-blowing ones to come. Three and a half stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES (1971, Robert Fuest)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 94 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Vincent Price, Joseph Cotten, Virginia North. Caroline Munro as the uncredited 'Victoria Phibes.' Produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff.
Tag-line: "Revenge Is The Best Medicine."
Best one-liner: "This mask is jolly tight!"

"A brass unicorn has been catapulted across a London street and impaled an eminent surgeon. Words fail me, gentlemen." They'll probably fail you, too. And in a good way. THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES is one of the best films of a kind that, along with DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN and THEATRE OF BLOOD, emerged as a subgenre within Vincent Price's larger body of work: basically "extraordinarily intelligent Vincent character seeks well-planned, exquisite, literary, specific revenge against a series of colorful opponents."

Which of course is a subgenre of the larger Vincent genre "extraordinarily intelligent Vincent character just plain kills a series of opponents in ingenious ways," which kind of includes everything from HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL to HOUSE OF WAX. In DR. PHIBES, Vincent is killing everyone in ways that corrolate to the Biblical plagues. And he's wearing a mask of himself as he does it.

That's right. You don't even get to see his mouth move. The mise-en-scene is amazing: bright 70's yellow and purple dominant the color scheme of a 20's period piece, and there are ridiculous robotic character setpieces that are actually kind of creepy.



Plus, we got Vincent drinking a glass of wine through his neck hole. That's not something you get to see every day. By now, you should be able to tell if this is your kind of movie or not. For all others, seriously, get the hell out, forthwith, cause you don't even want to see what Vincent has got planned for you.

-Sean Gill

2009 Halloween Countdown

31. PROM NIGHT (1980, Paul Lynch)
30. PHENOMENA (1985, Dario Argento)
29. HOUSE OF WAX (1953, André de Toth)
28. SILENT RAGE (1982, Michael Miller)
27. BASKET CASE (1982, Frank Henenlotter)
26. THE DEADLY SPAWN (1983, Douglas McKeown)
25. PELTS (2006, Dario Argento)
24. ANGEL HEART (1987, Alan Parker)
23. KILLER WORKOUT (1986, David A. Prior)
22. FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE (1991, Rachel Talalay)
21. THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES (1971, Robert Fuest)
20.
...