todmichel

Quote: "I won't give away the ending, but think it was satisfying as far as it goes, but not nearly as appealing, from my angle, as the foregoing material. That brings up my one complaint: the title. By the end of the movie, we have some sense of the meaning of the title. Yet it still seems to me to feel cheesy and really unworthy of the movie." Sorry, but I think exactly the contrary. The movie is unworthy of its brilliant title, and totally unworthy of Matheson's book. Some of the scenes in deserted NY are truly impressive, but the animation effects are simply ridiculous, and the best actor remains Samantha (the dog). Will Smith seems, at times, plays another movie and sometimes overplays. And the "explanation" of the title, in the movie, is inept. The same title was PERFECT in the Matheson original.

According to John Carr himself, at first this movie was not finished. Then, some portions of the filmed materials were incorporated in the "Night Train to Terror" anthology. After that, Carr left USA for England for a time. When he came back to the USA he was amazed to find that the producers made a "complete" version of his movie, using almost all the materials filmed. This version was released on VHS as "Scream Your Head Off". Later, John Carr decided to finish his movie and shot new sequences with John Philip Law (noticeably older) and incorporated Marilyn Monroe (played by Francine York) in the story. This last (?) version is the one known as "Marilyn Alive and Behind Bars", "completed" in 1992. In résumé, there are THREE versions of this movie: - 1) one as a segment of "Night Train to Terror" - 2) the illegitimate version, "Scream Your Head Off" (in VHS only) - 3) Marilyn Alive and Behind Bars. Apparently, during the first shooting some scenes were filmed twice, with girls more or less clothed. The nude version of these scenes was shown in "Night Train to Terror". It also seems that some shots in "Night Train to Terror" were gorier than the "Marilyn" version. But it COULD have been specially filmed material by the producers of "Night Train to Terror", as it was made for the two other movies "cannibalized": "Cataclysm", and "Death Wish Club". Special sequences involving SPFX were filmed when abridged versions of these two movies were included in "Night Train to Terror".

I know very well the still showing Boris Karloff menacing Stan & Babe, often reproduced in books and magazines, but I have serious doubts about Boris playing "The Tiger" as written in different places, and in the IMDb entry for "Sous les verrous". I think Walter Long played the role in all five versions (American, Spanish, French, German and Italian). In any case, we have now the proof that it was Walter Long in the Spanish and German versions, as the first one exists on video ("De bote en bote") et a segment of the German one has been found, and shown on TV and DVD, and Walter Long plays the same role in this. If Karloff was really in the movie (whatever the version) he would have played a little role. Why ? because he wasn't fluent in French, as proved by the fact he was replaced by other actors for French-language versions of two of his films made at the same period : "The Criminal Code" (he was replaced by Daniel Mendaille in the French version, "Criminel") and "The Unholy Night" (another actor played his role in the French version, "Le spectre vert", directed in Hollywood by Jacques Feyder). So, if Karloff was replaced by French actors for the French versions of two of his movie, it seems highly dubious he replaced an American actor, Walter Long, for the French version of another movie !!! Of course, the only way to solve the problem would be to find this French version, but unfortunately it is "lost" since decades. Since the immediate post-WW2 period, the film known in France (where I live) as "Sous les verrous" is in fact a dubbed print of the American film, NOT the original French-speaking one. To date, the only French-speaking movie of Laurel & Hardy still in existence is "Les carottiers", released on DVD by Universal, which is "Be Big" and "Laughing Gravy" combined together (same thing for the Spanish versions, "Las calaveras", also available on DVD). The Italian version of "Sous les verrous" is apparently lost too.

The Argentinian segment was one of the three stories, from works by Edgar Allan Poe, which formed the movie "Obras Maestras del Terror" (litterally: Masterworks of Terror), directed by Enrique Carreras and released in Argentina in July 1960. When this film was released in the United States by Jack H. Harris, this segment was cut from the movie, which was reduced to 61 minutes (from 115 !!!) and its well-known American title is "Master of Horror".

Famous Argentinian actor Narciso Ibanez Menta appeared in all three segments in different roles (and is, of course, although uncredited, in the Argentinian footage of "Legend of Horror". The "young man" is his son, Narciso Ibanez Serrador, which became a famous director in Spain. It was rumored that Narciso Ibanez Menta was in fact the true director of the movie, as Enrique Carreras never made something similar in his other works. The three Poe-adapted stories were "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Truth About the Case of Mr. Valdemar" (both in "Master of Horror", and "The Tell-Tale Heart" (recycled in "Legend of Horror'.

This TV-movie ranks as one of the two best versions of the classic tale of Sweeney Todd, the other one being - of course - the 1936 black-&-white movie starring Tod Slaughter.Ben Kingsley and Joanna Lumley are terrific - and their approach of the famous characters is in the true spirit of horror melodrama: a perilous "exercice de style" between horror and comedy. All the other actors are excellent, the sets are wonderful in their creepiness, a touch of gore is added to good measure, and Schlesinger's direction is faultless. This TV-movie could be shown in movie theaters, as a "legitimate" picture - in fact, it's well above most of the current movies...

Incidentally, this version is an Irish-British coproduction, certainly not "an American production" as wrongly mentioned in some posts.

This film is not at all "under one hour of running time", I suspect that some US video collectors saw only a cut version. The original running time - in Great-Britain - was 79 mins (7005 feet). It was released in the USA (as "Horror Maniacs") in the early Fifties, as part of a double-bill with another Tod Slaughter film ("The Curse of the Wraydons", renamed "Strangler's Morgue"), cut to 72 mins. And more recently, an American video company "offered" a totally butchered version, reduced to 53 mins!

Happily enough, the complete 79 mins version is now available from some video companies.

Just a little rectification: if the order of releases in Great-Britain is correct, this film is the fourth, not the third, in the series. The British releases were as follow: Murder, She Said - August, 1961 Murder at the Gallop - April, 1963 Murder Most Foul - February, 1964 Murder Ahoy - July, 1964

Although Bourvil was (and remains) one of the really popular French movie stars, this film remains totally unknown to most of his fans. Furthermore, even the books written on Bourvil generally neglect to mention this title. Why? Well, for unexplained reasons, the distributor didn't release CLODO in its original form, but added hardcore sequences (yes!) and tried to release it some years after its completion, under a new title, "Clodo et les vicieuses". Of course, it was a total fiasco and the film fells into oblivion. Happily enough, it was made available on videotape in the early 1990's (WITHOUT the hardcore sequences...) and recently, Jean-Pierre Mocky, the French director, who owns his own movie theater, "Le Brady", in Paris, was able to show the film to moviegoers. So, a film with Bourvil, Pauline Carton, and other beloved French actors, finally became available to film fanatics...

I'm sorry, but I have a totally different opinion on this movie - if you can name it a "movie". If you want to see Lon Chaney Jr in his last Wolf Man theatrical appearance, it's better for you to catch the original version of this film, LA CASA DEL TERROR, Mexico 1959, directed by Gilberto Martinez Solares. As usual, Mr. Warren totally destroyed an excellent film in cutting about one-third, mixing it with elements of a Rafael Portillo mummy film totally unrelated with the other, and (always as usual) putting his name on a film made by others. Not only the original LA CASA DEL TERROR is an excellent film, but the comic elements (with Tin Tan) are well integrated with the horror segments, as it was the case in ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, also with Chaney...

For a long time, the true origins of this pitiful travesty of a film were unknown; it was rumored that two Mexican films were used as the basis of the Jerry Warren "work" - but in fact CURSE OF THE STONE HAND is composed (apart of the Warren-filmed horrendous sequences with Carradine, Katherine Victor, etc.) of two EXCELLENT (in their original form of course) Chilean movies of 1945, both directed by exiled Argentinian directors. The segment known as "House of Gloom" is made of one-third of LA CASA ESTA VACIA, directed by Carlos Schlieper, and the other segment, "The Suicide Club, is equally one-third of LA DAMA DE LA MUERTE, directed by Carlos Hugo Christensen. Both directors were highly talented men, and as you can imagine their works are totally destroyed by the Jerry Warren ineptitude. Another Christensen movie, LA BALANDRA ISABEL LLEGO ESTA TARDE (1949) was also "cannibalized" by Warren, and released under the title "The Violent and the Damned". If you can, AVOID AT ALL COSTS any Jerry Warren travesty (you can eventually watch his OWN films, such as "Teenage Zombies" or "Frankenstein Island"...) and try to see the original foreign movies destroyed by this man...

This beautiful, atmospheric Chilean movie (made by an Argentinian director) was unfortunately "cannibalized" by Jerry Warren, who kept about a third of the original footage, together with another third of "La dama de la muerte" (another superb Chilean movie of the same period, made by Argentinian director Carlos Hugo Christensen), then added his own senseless "additional sequences" with John Carradine and Katherine Victor, the final result being the atrocious CURSE OF THE STONE HAND !!!

"Murder at the Grange" was shot under another title, "Death at the Festival", at Bushey Studios. It was part of the "Inspector Morley Investigates" series, originally made with an eye towards television - but apparently never aired. Filmed in 35mm, some of the episodes were shown in theaters in 1952 and 1954 as two "features", "King of the Underworld" and "Murder at Scotland Yard" - each composed of 3 episodes. "Murder at the Grange" was shown separately as a short film. Another featurette, "A Ghost for Sale", was also released separately, but, although it has the same principals, is NOT part of the series. Apart from these released titles, others (exact number unknown) were made and I saw some of them. They are NOT mentioned in movie reference books... "Murder at the Grange" seems to have been slightly altered for its release; the name of Tod Slaughter doesn't appear in the print itself, probably a result of the change of title, and the end credits mention "Adapted and Produced by Frank Ross; Directed by Gerald Landau; Made at Pinewood Studios, England" - however, these changes seem limited to some exteriors shot (probably lifted from other episodes) and no real sequence seems to have been added, as ALL of the actors appearing in the final result were listed in the original credits for "Murder at the Festival"...

"A Ghost for Sale" is a curious little picture, economically made in re-using entire sequences from an earlier (1946) movie from the same director and studio, "The Curse of the Wraydons". When "Curse" was released, many critics described the film as "too long" (at 92 mins). Six years later, Victor M. Gover, the director, was making a series of featurettes describing the struggle between ex-Scotland Yard inspector John Morley (Patrick Barr) - assisted by his secretary Eileen Trotter (Tucker McGuire) - and arch-criminal Terence Reilly (Tod Slaughter), sometimes helped by his brother Patrick (Slaughter again). Although often considered as part of the series, "A Ghost for Sale" is in fact a totally different affair. Barr and McGuire play an American couple who want to buy a British manor - preferably haunted. A real estate agent (David Keir) gives them the adress of a castle. They are welcomed by a strange caretaker who narrates a story - here begins a series of long flashbacks, intercut with "current" scenes. The story if of course of Philip Wraydon, a maniacal inventor wanting take revenge on his family members. After some crimes he perishes in one of his own traps. The American couple is not too convinced by the story, and discuss about to buy the manor. Suddenly, they saw the caretaker disappear before their eyes... They realize he was Philip Wraydon himself, reincarnated to narrate his own story. Apart from Slaughter, Barr, McGuire, and Keir in a short scene, all the other actors are only from the "Curse of the Wraydons" segments. In a sense, one can consider this little film as a shorter version of "Curse of the Wraydons", with an ironic ending, and the answer by the director to the critics who described his 1946 movie (his only feature, incidentally) as "too long"...

"Murder at the Grange" was shot under another title, "Death at the Festival", at Bushey Studios. It was part of the "Inspector Morley Investigates" series, originally made with an eye towards television - but apparently never aired. Filmed in 35mm, some of the episodes were shown in theaters in 1952 and 1954 as two "features", "King of the Underworld" and "Murder at Scotland Yard" - each composed of 3 episodes. "Murder at the Grange" was shown separately as a short film. Another featurette, "A Ghost for Sale", was also released separately, but, although it has the same principals, is NOT part of the series. Apart from these released titles, others (exact number unknown) were made and I saw some of them. They are NOT mentioned in movie reference books... "Murder at the Grange" seems to have been slightly altered for its release; the name of Tod Slaughter doesn't appear in the print itself, probably a result of the change of title, and the end credits mention "Adapted and Produced by Frank Ross; Directed by Gerald Landau; Made at Pinewood Studios, England" - however, these changes seem limited to some exteriors shot (probably lifted from other episodes) and no real sequence seems to have been added, as ALL of the actors appearing in the final result were listed in the original credits for "Murder at the Festival"...

Crimes at the Dark House is really one of my all-time favorites. Not only it's the best adaptation of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White (by far superior to the latter Hollywood version), but it's also the more perfect of the eight films produced/directed by George King with the great Tod Slaughter. This actor being one of my favorites, I like practically all of his movies, but the fact is that Crimes at the Dark House has better production values, witty dialogue, a better mobility of the camera, and wonderful actors, including the great Hay Petrie as the sinister Count Fosco, head of an insane asylum. The film has priceless value in keeping on film the performance of Slaughter, a really unique comedian, preserving one of his better characterizations. Sure, other titles like The Face at the Window, Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The Crimes of Stephen Hawke, and others, must have their partisans - in fact anything with Tod Slaughter is of interest, but Crimes at the Dark House is MY choice. Curiously, did anybody noticed than the print of this movie has no credited director? the British sources (magazines, books, pressbook) credit George King generally, at least a big full-page color ad of the time credits David Macdonald, but the film itself has no director credit!

This film has a great reputation in Argentina as one of the better from its director, Carlos Hugo Christensen. As an adaptation of the nice Cornell Woolrich short Story, "If I Should Die Before I Wake", it has all the elements generally found in the works of this author: suspense, interesting characters, atmosphere. It is - in this reviewer's opinion - the Argentinian counterpart of the best American adaptations of Woolrich: Hitchcock's Rear Window, Ted Tetzlaff's The Window, Robert Siodmak's Phantom Lady. Curiously, due to a letter published many years ago in a monster-magazine, this movie is sometimes listed in reference books as "El vampiro acecha / The Lurking Vampire" (perhaps its Mexican title ?) and generally with a wrong cast (Abel Salazar and German Robles). Neither Robles nor Salazar are in this film, but ALL you can like in Woolrich's novel and short stories ARE in it. The same year, Christensen made another Woolrich adaptation, "No abras nunca esa puerta", also a superior movie with two parts. The adapted stories were "Somebody on the Phone" and "Hummingbird Comes Home". Other Woolrich stories were adapted in Argentina, Mexico, and of course in France where ALL the books of this author are regularly reprinted.