THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD (US/Spain/Liechtenstein - 1971) Directed by Kevin Billington. Written by Tom Rowe and Rachel Billington. Cast: Kirk Douglas, Yul Brynner, Samantha Eggar, Renato Salvatori, Jean-Claude Drouot, Fernando Rey, Massimo Ranieri, Aldo Sambrell, Tito Garcia, Victor Israel, Tony Skios, Luis Barboo, Tony Cyrus, Raul Castro, Maria Borge. (PG, 128 mins) Kino's new Blu-ray edition of 1971's THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD was already announced several months before the legendary Kirk Douglas died just prior to its release at the age of 103. Unfortunately, it's not one of the iconic actor's better films, but of course, in a storied career as long as his, there will be inevitable ups and downs. LIGHT was made at a time when Douglas found himself in a major slump following a trio of costly big-studio duds with 1968's THE BROTHERHOOD, 1969's THE ARRANGEMENT, and 1970's THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN. His box-office misfortune probably wasn't helped by the youth-driven "New Hollywood" era being ushered in by the likes of BONNIE AND CLYDE, THE GRADUATE, and EASY RIDER, so there was little chance Douglas was going to secure the Hollywood studio funding he needed for THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, a passion project that he'd been trying to get off the ground since 1965.
Kirk Douglas (1916-2020)
THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD was based on Jules Verne's posthumously-published 1905 adventure novel The Lighthouse at the End of the World, and Douglas had a history with the author's work, having starred with James Mason in Disney's 1954 live-action Verne adaptation 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. It was a hugely popular box-office smash, kickstarting a Verneassaince in Hollywood that led to the likes of 1956's Oscar-winning AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, 1958's FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON, and 1959's JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH among several others. Douglas' own production company Bryna was able to front some of the budget for LIGHT, but he had to secure the remainder of the funding through European sources, namely producer Alexander Salkind, who would soon go on to oversee THE THREE MUSKETEERS, THE FOUR MUSKETEERS, and the SUPERMAN franchise. Salkind had been a minor player in the European film scene for some time, and, at least until his attempted "make two movies but only pay the actors for one" chicancery on the THREE/FOUR MUSKETEERS and SUPERMAN/SUPERMAN II, had a reputation as a hands-off producer who put up the money and let directors make the films they wanted to make. Salkind produced Orson Welles' 1962 Franz Kafka adaptation THE TRIAL and while the money ran out before the end of the shoot, it was one of the very few instances in his directing career that the mercurial Welles was able to work without meddling financiers looking over his shoulder and questioning every decision he made, and he always remained grateful to Salkind for demonstrating that trust and respect.
Similar money issues are apparent in much of THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, particularly some almost Antonio Margheriti-worthy miniatures and one embarrassing shot where a ship's crew is obviously just tiny, immobile action figures on a model vessel that could very well be floating in the bathtub in Douglas' hotel room. With its mostly European supporting cast (including spaghetti western stalwart Aldo Sambrell and Spanish genre vet Victor Israel) dubbed by numerous familiar voices, and some shocking violence that flirts with grindhouse brutality (surprising, considering that Verne adaptations were typically family-oriented fare), LIGHT frequently resembles a cost-cutting Harry Alan Towers production of the time despite some class brought to the proceedings by Douglas and Yul Brynner, which is probably where a good chunk of the money went. Douglas is Denton, an assistant lighthouse keeper at the southernmost tip of Argentina in 1865. An American Gold Rush prospector on the run from a checkered past and a broken heart, Denton butts heads with head lighthouse operator Capt. Moritz (Fernando Rey, right before his memorable turn as the villain in THE FRENCH CONNECTION), but gets along fine with affable young apprentice Felipe (Massimo Ranieri), who has a cute capuchin monkey sidekick named Mario. Mario is about as kiddie-friendly as LIGHT ever gets, as the monkey, Moritz, and Felipe will soon be murdered by a crew of slobbering pirates led by the sadistic Kongre (Brynner), who takes over the island and has a testy exchange with Denton ("Do I detect an American accent? I used to have dealings with your countrymen during the happy days of the slave trade!" Kongre sneers), as a cat-and-mouse game unfolds between his psycho crew and the sole surviving lighthouse keeper, who escapes and spends the rest of the film running around the island trying to stay out of sight and stay alive.
Shot on some treacherous, rocky terrain on the coast of Spain, surrounded by some intimidatingly rough waters, THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD is buoyed by some often breathtaking location work, and it's undeniably impressive watching a 55-year-old Douglas doing a lot of his own stunts, sprinting around the island, climbing rocks, and putting himself in harm's way as the waves violently crash on the shore. But that's also a LIGHT stumbling block as it suffers from erratic pacing and numerous shots that seem drawn-out and repetitive (how much of this movie is just people walking around?), and after a while, you realize it's by design so middle-aged Kirk can show off his spry athleticism and make sure we see that it's really him doing all this dangerous shit. British TV director Kevin Billington is at the helm, and his wife Rachel has an "additional dialogue" credit (along with an "additional ideas" credit for Salkind's wife Berta Dominguez D, the driving force behind the later Salkind fiasco WHERE IS PARSIFAL?), but make no mistake--this, like SPARTACUS, is Kirk's baby all the way. But it's not 1960, it's not a mega-budget Hollywood epic, and Kevin Billington is not Stanley Kubrick. The pacing issues improve somewhat at the midpoint when a ship en route from San Francisco to England wrecks and Kongre's men slaughter all of the survivors except Montefiore (Renato Salvatori), who's rescued by Denton, and high society matron Arabella (Samantha Eggar), who is held prisoner by Kongre for obvious assumed reasons.
There's an unconvincing subplot involving Kongre's attempt to trick Denton into believing that Arabella is really his long-lost love Emily Jane (Maria Borge in flashbacks), but it doesn't work at all--either as a Kongre plan or a LIGHT plot device. The film takes numerous liberties with the source material, and the finale gets dangerously close to turning into THE LAST LIGHTHOUSE ON THE LEFT, as Kongre has Montefiore strung up and flayed alive and Arabella gang-raped by his subhuman flunkies. The former is pretty tough to watch even now, and the latter mostly implied, and with the downbeat, nihilistic ending (not to mention a still-controversial instance of animal cruelty where a galloping horse is tripped), LIGHT is decidedly not the kind of film one generally associates with the idea of "Jules Verne." National General Pictures cut nearly 30 minutes from THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD for its US release in the summer of 1971. The US cut ran 101 minutes and carried an all-ages "GP" rating, obviously losing the more graphic material but likely tightening up some of the extremely slack pacing. Regardless, it was another flop for Douglas, but Brynner and Eggar would reteam in 1972 on the short-lived CBS series ANNA AND THE KING, an ill-advised period sitcom that was canceled mid-season, with Brynner reprising his Oscar-winning role from 1956's THE KING AND I. Kino's LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD Blu-ray (because physical media is dead) is the uncut--and entirely too long--128-minute European version, still sporting a PG rating on the packaging but with all of the hard-R violence intact.
THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
opening in Toledo, OH on 8/25/1971
Directed by Denis Heroux. Written by Michel Parry. Cast: Peter Cushing, Samantha Eggar, Ray Milland, Susan Penhaligon, Donald Pleasence, Alexandra Stewart, John Vernon, Joan Greenwood, Catherine Begin, Roland Culver, Chloe Franks, Renee Girard, Katrina Holden, Jean Leclerc, Sean McCann, Donald Pilon, Simon Williams. (Unrated, 89 mins) Pioneered by 1945's DEAD OF NIGHT, the portmanteau horror anthology format became a durable subgenre in the 1960s with TV shows like ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, THE TWILIGHT ZONE, and THRILLER, and on the big screen with Roger Corman's 1962 Poe entry TALES OF TERROR and Mario Bava's 1964 classic BLACK SABBATH. The UK's Amicus Productions went all-in on the trend with titles like 1965's DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS, 1967's TORTURE GARDEN, 1970's THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD, 1972's ASYLUM and TALES FROM THE CRYPT, 1973's VAULT OF HORROR, and 1974's FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. Horror's game-changer came with the release of 1973's THE EXORCIST, and despite attempts to stay current by upping the gore and T&A factor, the anthology, as well as the other kinds of more classically-oriented fare from Amicus and its more renowned contemporary Hammer, began to fall out of favor with audiences. The 1973 anthology TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS--with one segment devoted to a man's sexual obsession with an erotically-shaped tree stump--is easily the worst of the British portmanteau offerings, and the subgenre more or less faded away. The work of Stephen King would help revive the movement in America with 1982's CREEPSHOW and 1985's CAT'S EYE, but in the meantime, Amicus closed up shop in 1977 but co-chair Milton Subotsky kept the faith with a couple of tangential, Amicus-style stragglers. The wave of British horror anthologies dating back to 1965 came to a quiet end with 1981's generally lighthearted, Vincent Price-headlined THE MONSTER CLUB, which featured an obnoxious movie producer character named "Lintom Busotsky." Made at a time when slasher movies and innovative special effects were dominating the genre, THE MONSTER CLUB didn't even hit US theaters, instead going straight to syndicated TV.
An almost identical fate befell 1977's THE UNCANNY, which would be unseen in the US until it premiered on CBS in 1980. It establishes its British anthology bona fides by being co-produced by Subotsky and starring the ubiquitous Peter Cushing, but it's actually more a part of the Canadian tax shelter craze of the period. Shot and set in Montreal, THE UNCANNY is a triptych of unsolved, feline-related mysteries told in a framing device by nervous, paranoid writer Wilbur Gray (Cushing) to incredulous publisher Frank Richards (Ray Milland), who's having a hard time buying Gray's thesis that cats have a supernatural hold on their human owners. "London 1912" has wealthy, elderly spinster Miss Malkin (Joan Greenwood) cutting off her family and deciding to leave her vast fortune to her horde of cats, much to the chagrin of her scheming nephew Michael (Simon Williams) and her greedy housekeeper Janet (Susan Penhaligon). Janet manages to distract Miss Malkin's attorney (Roland Culver) and swipe the original copy of the new will from his briefcase and must get the other copy from her wall safe...but the cats have other ideas.
"Quebec Province 1975" has nine-year-old orphan Lucy (Katrina Holden, who would become an orphan herself a few years later and be adopted by her mother's friends Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland) and her cat Wellington sent to live with her aunt (Alexandra Stewart) and uncle (Donald Pilon) after her parents are killed in a plane crash. Her aunt takes an instant dislike to Wellington, but that's nothing compared to the scorn heaped on Lucy by her bratty, bitchy older cousin Angela (Chloe Franks), who resents no longer being the sole center of attention and sets out to make Lucy's life hell. Unfortunately for Angela, it seems that Lucy has been studying up on books belonging to her witchcraft-enthusiast mother. And "Hollywood 1936" has ludicrously-toupeed ham actor Valentine De'ath (Donald Pleasence) orchestrating the "accidental" death of his more famous wife Madeleine (Catherine Begin) on the set of his latest film DUNGEON OF HORROR. After a grieving period of a few minutes, De'ath insists to the producer (John Vernon) that the show must go on and suggests his wife's role be recast with his younger mistress Edina (Samantha Eggar), a woefully untalented ingenue who immediately moves into the De'ath mansion, much to the disapproval of Madeleine's beloved cats.
Director Denis Heroux and Samantha Eggar on the set of THE UNCANNY.
Written by Michel Parry (XTRO) and directed by Denis Heroux (JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS), THE UNCANNY has a few trips and stumbles along the way--while the grisliest segment by far, "London 1912" drags on too long, and there's some really bad dubbing of some of the supporting cast for no apparent reason, particularly Holden and Franks--but looking at it now on Severin's new Blu-ray (because physical media is dead), it's somewhat of an unsung gem from the waning, life-support days of the British portmanteau. It's always great to see Cushing in these things, and it's fun watching him be regarded with the kind of sneering, pompous derision that was late-career Milland's bread-and-butter. Anthology horror fans will also get a kick out of seeing a teenage Franks getting her just desserts several years after her unforgettable turn as Christopher Lee's witchcraft-practicing young daughter in the "Sweets to the Sweet" segment of THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD. Like any decent film of this sort should do, they save the best segment for last, with some absolutely terrific work by Pleasence and Eggar, both of whom get to show off rarely-utilized comedic skills as, respectively, the hapless Valentine De'ath--known as "V.D." to industry insiders--and his unbelievably dim mistress. Seemingly patterning her performance on Judy Holliday in BORN YESTERDAY, Eggar's scream queen screech is even worse than that terrible actress at the beginning of Brian De Palma's BLOW OUT, and is prone to obliviously saying things like, "Oh, V.D., I love you!" Lost in the shuffle thanks to a drastically changing genre landscape following the demonic horrors of THE EXORCIST and THE OMEN, THE UNCANNY probably seemed hopelessly antiquated in 1977, and it's little wonder why it completely bypassed American theaters. But time has been kind to it, and looking at it now reveals a surprisingly enjoyable mix of horror and inspired humor that's deserving of some appreciation. And of course, it doesn't miss the opportunity to deploy "What's the matter...cat got your tongue?" as an EC Comics-worthy punchline.
THE GREATEST BATTLE aka THE BIGGEST BATTLE aka THE GREAT BATTLE aka BATTLE FORCE (Italy - 1978) Directed by Umberto Lenzi. Written by Umberto Lenzi and Cesare Frugoni. Cast: Helmut Berger, Samantha Eggar, Giuliano Gemma, John Huston, Stacy Keach, Ray Lovelock, Henry Fonda, Edwige Fenech, Evelyn Stewart (Ida Galli), Aldo Massasso, Venantino Venantini, Guy Doleman, Patrick Reynolds, Rik Battaglia, Andrea Bosic, Giuseppe Castellano, Luciano Catenacci, Giovanni Cianfriglia, Geoffrey Copleston, Tom Felleghy, Manfred Freyberger, Marco Guglielmi, Fulvio Mingozzi, Giacomo Rossi Stuart, Bill Vanders, Robert Spafford, Olga Pehar Lenzi. (PG, 102 mins) WWII movies were extremely popular all over the world from the mid-1960s through the 1970s, and journeyman Italian director Umberto Lenzi was no stranger to the genre. He'd already made "macaroni combat" movies like 1967's DESERT COMMANDOS and 1969's BATTLE OF THE COMMANDOS in response to the 1967 blockbuster THE DIRTY DOZEN, but then he moved into gialli like 1972's SEVEN BLOODSTAINED ORCHIDS and really hit his stride with a string of ridiculously entertaining and extraordinarily violent poliziotteschi like 1974's ALMOST HUMAN and 1976's ROME ARMED TO THE TEETH among many others. But between his crime movies and his jumping on the post-CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST gut-muncher bandwagon with 1980's EATEN ALIVE and 1981's CANNIBAL FEROX, Lenzi cranked out two more "macaroni combat" films. Differing from the DIRTY DOZEN-inspired "men on a mission" formula of his late '60s genre contributions, 1978's THE GREATEST BATTLE and 1979's FROM HELL TO VICTORY (which starred George Peppard and George Hamilton, the same year he had a huge hit with LOVE AT FIRST BITE) seemed like responses to the more large-scale, all-star ensemble epics that were being produced at that time, like 1976's MIDWAY, 1976's THE EAGLE HAS LANDED, and 1977's A BRIDGE TOO FAR. Both films had casts of big-name actors who carried significantly more prestige than you'd expect in a run-of-the-mill Italian knockoff, but from the looks of THE GREATEST BATTLE, the entire budget went to paying those actors because for the most part, it looks like how a WWII epic might turn out if it was directed by Jess Franco or Al Adamson.
THE GREATEST BATTLE was shown under a plethora of different titles: it was shot in Rome, Almeria, and Los Angeles in 1977 as IL GRANDE ATTACCO, and then alternately known as THE BIGGEST BATTLE (the title it carries on Amazon Prime), THE GREAT BATTLE, and BATTLE FORCE, but THE GREATEST BATTLE is what it initially went by when drive-in outfit Dimension Pictures released it in the US, cut down to 90 minutes, with Lenzi pseudonym "Humphrey Longan" credited as director, and with added narration by Orson Welles, who's not heard on the complete 102-minute, English-dubbed BIGGEST BATTLE version streaming on Amazon (dubbing fixture Anthony La Penna handles some incidental narration in a few spots). Stacy Keach is among the stars, and in his very enjoyable 2013 memoir All in All, he refers to the film under yet another title, THE MARETH LINE, and calls it "flat-out awful." A fair assessment, though as Keach points out, "It gave me a chance to work with Henry Fonda and John Huston," and they're only a few of the reputable actors called upon to star in a film by the future director of CITY OF THE WALKING DEAD, MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY, and FATTY GIRL GOES TO NEW YORK. THE GREATEST BATTLE opens in Berlin in 1936 just after the Olympics, as a small group of friendly acquaintances meet for a formal dinner: German Major Manfred Roland (Keach), British war correspondent Sean O'Hara (Huston, not even attempting a British accent) and his wife (Lenzi's wife Olga Pehar Lenzi), West Point legend General Foster (Fonda), and renowned German actress Annelise Ackermann (Samantha Eggar). They discuss the rise of Hitler and his disdain of Jews and "American negroes" in the wake of Jesse Owens' Olympic triumph, but all parties foolishly conclude that everything is fine, that war is unlikely and they'll all be friends for many years to come.
Cut to 1942, and the entire world is at war. From then on, THE GREATEST BATTLE is an episodic and seemingly random series of vignettes that eventually form some semblance of a story but it still feels choppy and haphazardly-assembled. There's copious amounts of stock footage from newsreels and other movies, and sometimes the various film stocks don't even match. Foster's son John (Ray Lovelock) has enlisted after flunking out of college, unable to win over his old man like his older, war hero brother Ted (never seen, but played by a framed photo of future CEMETERY MAN director Michele Soavi); Roland and Annelise are now married, but he's conflicted about pledging his allegiance to Der Fuhrer and the Nazi party and determined to keep Annelise's being half-Jewish a secret from his superiors. We also meet other characters who have nothing to do with the initial expository set-up of the Berlin dinner, such as British Capt. Martin Scott (Giuliano Gemma), his ex-wife (Ida Galli) and her new husband (Venantino Venantini), and German Lt. Kurt Zimmer (Helmut Berger), who's fallen in love with French prostitute Danielle (Edwige Fenech) who may or may not be a member of the Resistance. Some of these people cross paths, and some of them don't. Huston's O'Hara is the most confusing character of them all, a grouchy old cynic who seems far too old to be playing a roving war correspondent chasing a story at the center of the action, and it's anyone's guess why some characters occasionally refer to him as "Professor O'Hara" or why he's shown strutting around and barking orders at some officers in one scene. Huston--just four years removed from co-starring in CHINATOWN--doesn't even seem to know or care what he's doing, as he has one of the most jaw-dropping exits you'll ever see, a barely-concealed breaking of the fourth wall, almost as if he said "Alright, Lenzi, I'm done here...I'll show myself out of this movie." In between the Ovidio G. Assonitis classics TENTACLES and THE VISITOR, Huston isn't even hiding his disinterest in THE GREATEST BATTLE, further evidenced by an anecdote Keach shares in his memoir. Concerned about not overdoing his German accent and having difficulty communicating with Lenzi, who didn't speak English, Keach asked Huston, his director on 1972's FAT CITY and THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN, for some advice. Huston replied "I'm only an actor here. I didn't ask you about my accent. Talk to the director," adding "Learn Italian or find an interpreter."
Speaking of TENTACLES, both Huston and Fonda appeared in that 1977 Italian JAWS ripoff about a giant mutant octopus, though they shared no scenes. Fonda has a few fleeting appearances scattered throughout TENTACLES, always on the phone yelling at someone. His entire role was shot in one morning at his house, and his dialogue is vague enough ("Well, take care of it!") that I remain convinced he had no idea he was in a movie about a giant mutant octopus. While Fonda gets out a bit in THE GREATEST BATTLE in both the opening dinner sequence and the closing scene at a cemetery, the rest of his appearances are, once again, by himself and on the phone in what looks suspiciously like a very 1970s Beverly Hills home in which a famous movie star might reside. Was this Fonda's thing prior to capping his stellar career with ON GOLDEN POND? Forcing journeymen Italian directors to make house calls if they wanted him in their movie? THE GREATEST BATTLE makes a lot of noise but very little sense, jumping from place to place with an ensemble whose members vanish for long stretches or right after they're introduced. The supporting cast is an impressive who's who of jobbing Italian supporting actors who always turn up in this sort of genre fare (I'm pretty sure Tom Felleghy owned that general's uniform, and having gravelly-voiced dubber Robert Spafford appear on camera as Gen. George S. Patton was an inspired choice), but the performances of the main cast are all over the map, with Huston looking visibly inconvenienced and demonstrably irritable in a way that borders on acting out, and Fonda mostly phoning it in TENTACLES-style (oddly, in Tony Thomas' 1983 Citadel Press-published The Complete Films of Henry Fonda, THE GREATEST BATTLE was absent even though his role is considerably more than a cameo, and in the early days of pay cable, this aired on HBO quite often). Berger is relatively restrained, considering his reputation and that he'd recently been in the 1976 Nazisploitation epic SALON KITTY, though if anyone can figure out why he and Fenech are even in this, let me know. The usually reliable Eggar is absolutely awful, but for whatever reason, Keach, the same year he co-starred in Sergio Martino's vile MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD, is trying a lot harder than his other big-name co-stars and is the only one who seems interested in creating a three-dimensional character, even if the sloppiness of Lenzi's direction and the scattered script by Lenzi and Cesare Frugoni give him little with which to work. Franco Micalizzi's by-the-numbers "rousing" score lacks the maestro's usual catchy pizazz, and some of the miniatures in the battle sequences would make Antonio Margheriti cringe and look away in embarrassment. But for fans of "macaroni combat" movies, there's plenty of action sequences and a lot of big and loud explosions. Just don't expect it to make much sense. Maybe that's why Huston looks like he's breaking character and literally walking out of the movie.
CURTAINS (Canada - 1983) Directed by Jonathan Stryker (Richard Ciupka and Peter R. Simpson). Written by Robert Guza Jr. Cast: John Vernon, Samantha Eggar, Linda Thorson, Anne Ditchburn, Lynne Griffin, Sandra Warren, Lesleh Donaldson, Deborah Burgess, Michael Wincott, Maury Chaykin, Kate Lynch, Calvin Butler. (R, 89 mins)
"Fans have made this movie a lot more intricate than it is. Because there's nothing to understand" - Paul Zaza, CURTAINS score composer "It's such a mishmash and such a mess that it's endearing somehow? They love it for the idea of what it could've been" - CURTAINS co-star Lesleh Donaldson
"I started getting e-mails from people wanting to interview me about CURTAINS, telling me it's a big cult movie now, and I'm like, 'This is a cult movie? Really? CURTAINS?'" - Richard Ciupka, uncredited co-director of CURTAINS
Those are just some of the sentiments of the participants in "The Ultimate Nightmare: The Making of CURTAINS" on Synapse Films' just-released Blu-ray and DVD edition of the 1983 Canadian cult classic CURTAINS. It's a bluntness usually not heard in such supplements, which typically resemble pleasant puff pieces about how great everyone was and what a great time they had. But there's a bit of an incredulous streak running through some of the cast/crew comments on CURTAINS that borders on the legendary SNL sketch where host William Shatner yells "Get a life, will you people?" to a room filled with Trekkies at a STAR TREK convention. CURTAINS is a perfect example of a completely forgotten film that bombed upon its initial release inexplicably taking on a life of its own long after the people involved in its creation have put the experience behind them and gotten on with their lives and careers.
Synapse's Blu-ray goes a long way toward making the case that CURTAINS is a film worthy of study, but it's mostly surface and cosmetic. Zaza's right--there's nothing to understand, and it's probably the ultimate in revisionist nostalgia among children of the '80s who now label every 1980s movie a classic. I don't throw this stone with a dismissive tone from a glass house, either--hell, I bought the CURTAINS Blu-ray. Nostalgia's fun, and it's nice to look back at a time when movies like this were opening in theaters every Friday, but the notion of CURTAINS being a "classic" is absurd. I first took note of just how big this particular facet of '80s nostalgia was becoming back in 2009 when fans were outraged over Lionsgate's DVD release of the 1986 slasher film SLAUGHTER HIGH just being a port of the old VHS transfer, right down to the Vestron Video logo at the end of the movie. First of all, it is outrageous that they'd release a VHS transfer on DVD as late as 2009, but secondly, I thought "People give a shit about SLAUGHTER HIGH?" The story of a persecuted nerd named Marty Rantzen getting revenge on his tormentors at their ten-year reunion was barely a blip on the radar and was in and out of theaters in a week in 1986, and whatever attention it got from Fangoria at the time was due to actor Simon Scuddamore, who played Marty, committing suicide shortly after filming ended in late 1984. SLAUGHTER HIGH was the actor's only film and there was an air of mystery surrounding him and his short life and to this day, very little is known about him. So there's the Scuddamore factor but beyond that, SLAUGHTER HIGH is not particularly interesting and certainly not an exemplary film in its genre. It's good for some laughs and it's got some gore, but it's really nothing special at all.
CURTAINS falls under that same category: it's not a great movie or even a good one, though admittedly, its infamously troubled ordeal of a production and its lengthy journey into theaters make it an interesting curio. Synapse's Blu-ray is a case where the supplemental features are actually more interesting than the film itself, though in this beautiful, newly-restored 1.78 transfer, it does play a lot better than it did on the murky old Vestron VHS at 1.33:1, which was the source for CURTAINS' appearance on a 2010 Echo Bridge four-film bargain bin DVD set and on free cable VOD services like Verizon's ViewNow. Donaldson has a good point in that fans love CURTAINS for what it could've been, but it's probably more of a love for the time that it was released. It takes us back to our formative years as horror movie fans, when everything was new and every trip to the video store in that golden age was an adventure. It didn't even matter if the movies were good. It was the thrill of discovery...of directors, actors, subgenres, styles, etc. Home video was a revolution whose impact is easy to forget now and it just isn't understood by younger people who've only known a world where everything is a click away. You can't explain to them the hours spent browsing the shelves of video stores. That's why there's the whole VHS nostalgia craze. It's certainly not for the picture quality, although that's what the hipsters might try to tell you. The nostalgia is for the boxes themselves. Cable exposed us to a lot of new things, but video stores offered a seemingly bottomless treasure trove of choices when we were used to whatever was on late-night TV or Saturday afternoon Creature Features. For example, my favorite Lucio Fulci film is CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980), which was released in the US in 1983 as THE GATES OF HELL. CITY is one of his essential films, but it's probably not his best. I suspect the reason CITY (which I still find myself calling THE GATES OF HELL, even though no one refers to it as that anymore) still resonates so strongly with me is that when my dad got a video store membership, the first movie I picked was THE GATES OF HELL, in that old Paragon big box. I was ten years old and it was the most gloriously disgusting movie I'd ever seen. From that moment on, I was hooked. I knew the old Universal horrors of the 1930s and the Hammer and Amicus titles of the 1960s and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and JAWS and HALLOWEEN and ALIEN and FRIDAY THE 13TH, but this was something else entirely. To an impressionable ten-year-old, those other films were merely gateway drugs and now there was no turning back. For me, it was THE GATES OF HELL, but someone else's cult movie epiphany might very well have been SLAUGHTER HIGH or CURTAINS. The point is, this kind of nostalgia is like comfort food. The key is avoiding the hyperbole and the tendency to anoint everything "classic." I love the era of CURTAINS as much as anyone, but that doesn't make CURTAINS good. Let's not pretend this is a brilliant film awaiting critical reassessment. It's not without its effective moments, which seem like happy accidents considering how chaotic the shoot was--including one legitimately terrifying scene that's usually the only thing anyone remembers from it--but let's not kid ourselves about this being a good movie. The people involved in it don't even have your back on that claim.
As CURTAINS opens, famous actress Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar) feigns a breakdown in order to get admitted to a mental hospital to research the title role in AUDRA, the next film by famous director Jonathan Stryker (John Vernon). She ends up escaping when she reads in Variety--which is apparently delivered to the asylum--that Stryker is casting for AUDRA and has no intention of having her released from the institution. Samantha shows up at Stryker's mansion, where he's auditioning five actresses for AUDRA: aspiring stand-up comedian Patti (Lynne Griffin), ice skater Christie (Donaldson), dancer Laurian (Anne Ditchburn), party girl Tara (Sandra Warren), and embittered Brooke Parsons (Linda Thorson, best known for replacing Diana Rigg on THE AVENGERS), a veteran actress on the outs in the industry and desperate for a comeback. A sixth actress, Amanda (Deborah Burgess) is killed before she even gets to Stryker's house, and that same killer, wearing a horrific hag mask, starts offing the actresses one by one. Is it one of the actresses eliminating the competition? Is it Stryker? Is it red herring caretaker and Tara's hot-tub buddy Michael (Michael Wincott)? It's doubtful even the filmmakers knew until the footage was assembled.
CURTAINS began shooting in Toronto in October 1980. Producer Peter R. Simpson just had a big hit with the HALLOWEEN knockoff PROM NIGHT and was finishing production on the child-custody drama MELANIE, which was eventually released in 1982. Simpson fired MELANIE director Rex Bromfield and assigned the film's cinematographer Richard Ciupka to handle some post-production reshoots involving a character played by Guess Who frontman Burton Cummings. The Belgian-born Ciupka was making a name for himself in the Canadian film industry with numerous Canadian/French co-productions: he was the chief camera operator on two Claude Chabrol films (BLOOD RELATIVES and VIOLETTE, both 1978) and was promoted to director of photography on Nicolas Gessner's IT RAINED ALL NIGHT THE DAY I LEFT (1980) and, most importantly, Louis Malle's ATLANTIC CITY (1980). After agreeing to finish MELANIE for Simpson, Ciupka was rewarded with what was to be his official directorial debut with the $4 million CURTAINS. Working from a script by Robert Guza Jr, who would go on to be the head writer on GENERAL HOSPITAL from 1984 to 2011, Ciupka shot CURTAINS, with Simpson frequently checking in but more or less leaving him alone to work, as he was a businessman who had other projects going on at the same time and Ciupka knew what was expected of him. When shooting was finished and Simpson asked to see Ciupka's rough cut, their relationship quickly soured. According to editor Michael MacLaverty in the "Ultimate Nightmare" supplemental feature, Ciupka made an art film when Simpson wanted a slasher thriller, and on top of that, "it was only 45 minutes long and it was boring."
Simpson immediately shelved the film and it was over a year before he reassembled the necessary cast members for reshoots--without Ciupka--in March 1982, taking over the direction of CURTAINS himself. He completely overhauled and restructured the story, adding the slasher/gore elements that Ciupka didn't include, and it was Simpson who directed the film's most famous sequence: Christie's ice-skating encounter with the killer. Donaldson says that Simpson shot an entire subplot about her character that was ultimately not used, but all told, in its final cut that was finally released in US theaters on March 4, 1983, Ciupka and Simpson each directed about half of the 89-minute film, which was credited to one "Jonathan Stryker," after Vernon's character, when a disgruntled Ciupka refused to sign off on the paperwork required by the Director's Guild. Simpson basically took the 45 minutes that Ciupka assembled and created a beginning and ending around it, plus the ice-skating sequence, which happens around the 40-minute mark. Ciupka is interviewed for the Blu-ray, and states that his work is mostly confined to the middle of the film (he doesn't claim to have directed the ice-skating sequence here, but he has in the past; Donaldson says it was part of the 1982 reshoots, when Ciupka was no longer around), and that nothing in it is his until roughly 21 minutes in, when Amanda finds the doll in the middle of the road during a storm, a sequence that Simpson re-edited to appear as a dream. Though he added a beginning and an ending, Simpson's final cut of CURTAINS has haphazard seams and stitching showing all over the place, not just in terms of hairstyle changes from 1980 to 1982 and other continuity mishaps, but with Simpson completely forgetting about the Michael character, who has no dialogue and disappears until he turns up dead (on the commentary track with Griffin and Donaldson, Griffin has a vague recollection of Michael being Samantha's son in the script, but it's never mentioned in the film). Elsewhere, most of Ditchburn's scenes were cut as she has no dialogue in the released version, but she does get a memorable death scene as Ciupka slowly, almost hypnotically, moves in on her wonderfully expressive face, accompanied by Zaza's haunting piano theme, before the killer's black-gloved hand enters the frame and covers her mouth--it's another example of a powerful moment indicating what could've been. There's another scene where Samantha is burning photographs of the other actresses and talking to a woman who helped her escape. We only see this other woman's legs and hear her voice. This mystery woman is neither seen nor mentioned again (Griffin on the commentary: "Who is this woman supposed to be?"). Simpson's closing scene is an effective reveal that works well, but still feels like a last-minute decision on who the killer should be.
Synapse's Blu-ray presents CURTAINS in a way you've never seen it before, finally making it watchable and proving that, yes, it is at least a visually competent film. The muddy-looking VHS that everyone's been watching for 30 years was so dark at times that it was hard to tell what was going on and which characters were alive or dead. In this HD remastering, the film plays a lot like a Canadian giallo, particularly in some of Ciupka's very atmospheric framings and willingness to let things play out slowly. Simpson mimics that to a degree in his initial set-up of the ice-skating scene, which lasts about eight minutes, though the finishes of his kill scenes have an aggression to them that Ciupka's do not. It works both ways, as demonstrated by Laurian's murder as she rehearses, dancing for several minutes as Ciupka very deliberately moves the camera in. Some of Ciupka's decisions have an understandably European feel to them in a way that was at odds with the in-your-face slasher movies of the sort Simpson was expecting. The end result is a confused mix of styles, but at least as far Ciupka's work is concerned, there's an argument that CURTAINS attempts the now in-vogue "slow burn" horror a few decades before Ti West made it hip, and maybe Ciupka's contributions influenced that to some degree. Again...the film that could've been... And that's not even taking into account all of the footage--Christie's subplot, a completely different ending, and more--that Simpson shot and never used. All of that material--various rough cuts, alternate takes, scenes shot with Quebec actress Celine Lomez before she was fired and replaced by Thorson early into shooting, any unused footage--was destroyed by the rights holders during a vault-cleaning in 2009. As Synapse head Don May posted online at the time: "All gone...destroyed by someone who had no idea what they were getting rid of."
In addition to "The Ultimate Nightmare," there's also two commentary tracks, though one consists of a 45-minute phone interview with Simpson from 2004 (he died in 2007), and a ten-minute audio interview with Samantha Eggar by CURTAINS superfan Todd Garbarini, where she talks mostly about her past career and doesn't recall much about CURTAINS. The actual 2014 commentary features Griffin and Donaldson and is moderated by Edwin Samuelson, a regular fixture in the world of Blu-ray/DVD supplements. Samuelson was a last-minute replacement for planned moderator Garbarini who, for unspecified reasons, couldn't make it to the recording. Samuelson uses some of Garbarini's prepared notes and obviously knows the movie, and he does a decent job considering he probably woke up that morning with no idea he'd be recording a CURTAINS commentary before the day's end. He asks the expected questions of the actresses, and sometimes it goes nowhere--Samuelson brings up future makeup effects guru Greg Cannom, who worked on the movie, and Griffin and Donaldson have no clue who he is--but the actresses are entertaining to listen to and come off like two old friends shooting the breeze. Samuelson tries to keep them on subject, but he doesn't really have to--the two have a natural chemistry together and sometimes their asides and wanderings have an emotional, real-world resonance to them, as when Griffin, having not seen the film in many years, is surprised to see her late mother in a background bit part ("That's my mom! Hi, Mom!"), and Donaldson being able to pinpoint exactly when a particular scene was shot because "we were working on this when we heard that John Lennon was killed."
Exclusive to the Synapse Blu-ray edition is a 1980 short film about Ciupka, then a hot commodity after his ATLANTIC CITY cinematography accolades, and his debut effort with CURTAINS. There's some great behind the scenes footage of Ciupka directing Vernon and some of the cast during the dinner scene. What's most fascinating is that even during production, Ciupka is already openly questioning and pretty much regretting his decision to become a director, saying he was much happier as a D.P. and misses working with his crew and that sense of collaboration, feeling more like a manager now that he has to oversee everything on the set as director. He's clearly not happy (one shot catches him sitting alone, thumbing through a copy of the script and looking almost longingly at the camera crew as they adjust some lighting) even though, at least according to Donaldson, the cast was behind him and they were disappointed when shooting reconvened in 1982 and Ciupka was no longer their director. It's no surprise that he went back to being a D.P. after CURTAINS, waiting another decade to direct again and even then, only very sporadically and, aside from one episode of the late '90s Showtime erotic horror anthology series THE HUNGER, all French-language, Quebec-shot productions that never got US exposure. CURTAINS rarely works or makes any sense, but Synapse's stunning presentation of it and its informative extras come dangerously close to making a believer out of even the most ardent detractor.
Similar money issues are apparent in much of THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, particularly some almost Antonio Margheriti-worthy miniatures and one embarrassing shot where a ship's crew is obviously just tiny, immobile action figures on a model vessel that could very well be floating in the bathtub in Douglas' hotel room. With its mostly European supporting cast (including spaghetti western stalwart Aldo Sambrell and Spanish genre vet Victor Israel) dubbed by numerous familiar voices, and some shocking violence that flirts with grindhouse brutality (surprising, considering that Verne adaptations were typically family-oriented fare), LIGHT frequently resembles a cost-cutting Harry Alan Towers production of the time despite some class brought to the proceedings by Douglas and Yul Brynner, which is probably where a good chunk of the money went. Douglas is Denton, an assistant lighthouse keeper at the southernmost tip of Argentina in 1865. An American Gold Rush prospector on the run from a checkered past and a broken heart, Denton butts heads with head lighthouse operator Capt. Moritz (Fernando Rey, right before his memorable turn as the villain in THE FRENCH CONNECTION), but gets along fine with affable young apprentice Felipe (Massimo Ranieri), who has a cute capuchin monkey sidekick named Mario. Mario is about as kiddie-friendly as LIGHT ever gets, as the monkey, Moritz, and Felipe will soon be murdered by a crew of slobbering pirates led by the sadistic Kongre (Brynner), who takes over the island and has a testy exchange with Denton ("Do I detect an American accent? I used to have dealings with your countrymen during the happy days of the slave trade!" Kongre sneers), as a cat-and-mouse game unfolds between his psycho crew and the sole surviving lighthouse keeper, who escapes and spends the rest of the film running around the island trying to stay out of sight and stay alive.
