DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS (UK - 1984) Directed by Edmund Purdom and Al McGoohan (Derek Ford, Alan Birkinshaw). Written by Derek Ford and Al McGoohan (Alan Birkinshaw). Cast: Edmund Purdom, Alan Lake, Belinda Mayne, Gerry Sundquist, Mark Jones, Caroline Munro, Kelly Baker, Pat Astley, Kevin Lloyd, Wendy Danvers, Lawrence Harrington. (Unrated, 86 mins)
The November 9, 1984 release of SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT, with its concept of a homicidal, axe-wielding maniac dressed as Santa Claus, was the subject of a major controversy, a media circus, and a ludicrously hyperbolic condemnation from Siskel & Ebert. It's not like the idea of Christmas-themed horror was new: we'd already seen Bob Clark's terrifying BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974), the original "the calls are coming from inside the house!" scenario with a hidden killer stalking the stragglers at a sorority house during Christmas break, and the opening "And All Through the House" segment of Freddie Francis' TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972), David Hess' TO ALL A GOODNIGHT (1980), and Lewis Jackson's CHRISTMAS EVIL, aka YOU BETTER WATCH OUT (1980) all dealt with the idea of a killer Santa long before SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT was nearly banned because of it. The breathless panic and the cries of "What about the children?!" that surrounded SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT had more to do with the mindset of the time than anything inherently offensive in the film, which, for the record, is not very good, though even it has its one legitimately iconic moment. Thanks to HALLOWEEN (1978) and FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980), and the flood of imitators that hitched a ride on the bandwagon, the popularity of slasher films was at an all-time high. Much like today's debate over the violence in video games, there was much parental concern about things like movie violence and the "Satanic Panic" of the era, with heavy metal acts like Ozzy Osbourne, W.A.S.P., and Judas Priest being the favorite targets of outraged parents. There was a growing belief that if kids were bad, it had to be the movies they were watching, the music they were hearing, and the books they were reading.
Prior to SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT's release, protest groups announced plans to picket and demonstrate outside theaters showing the film. But, as in most cases like this, all they really succeeded in doing was drawing more attention to a cheap, forgettable film that, because of all the media hype, stayed in theaters for two weeks instead of just the one it would've lasted had the protesters simply said and done nothing at all. SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT landed in eighth place at the box office in its opening weekend, dropped significantly in its second weekend, and was gone--or "pulled from release," depending on who's telling the story--by Thanksgiving, with a May 1985 re-release generating little fanfare. It's still revered as a "classic" by '80s horror fans prone to grading on an overly nostalgic curve, and it spawned four sequels (the last two in-name-only) and an abysmal 2012 remake. But late 1984 also saw another Santa-themed slasher film that fell through the cracks: the British-made DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS only got a very limited release on December 7, 1984 by exploitation outfit 21st Century Distribution Corp. before turning up in video stores several months later courtesy of the immortal Vestron Video. DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS was produced by veteran American schlockmeister Dick Randall, who had just set up shop in London after a decade-long run in Italy and Hong Kong, and Steve Minasian. Minasian was a veteran in grindhouse distribution and theatrical exhibition with his time logged as co-owner of Esquire Theaters and Hallmark Film Distributors. Minasian helped conceive the infamous "vomit bag" campaign for Hallmark's 1970 release of the German WITCHFINDER GENERAL ripoff MARK OF THE DEVIL. He was Randall's business partner on a number of 1980s European ventures, including the Spanish PIECES (1983) and the British SLAUGHTER HIGH (1986), but is perhaps best known for being involved as an investor in Georgetown Productions, the company that independently-produced FRIDAY THE 13TH. Minasian knew producer/director Sean S. Cunningham, who produced the Hallmark-released Wes Craven debut THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972). Minasian was a money man, had no creative input in FRIDAY THE 13TH or the first four sequels that carried a Georgetown Productions credit, and he isn't individually credited anywhere on the film, but that didn't stop him or Randall from exploiting that connection to the box-office phenomenon time and again throughout their partnership.
DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS newspaper ad
from the Temple of Schlock archives.
Perhaps the most interesting figure involved in DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS was Edmund Purdom. Purdom (1924-2009) was a British actor who had some small roles in a few UK films and appeared on Broadway with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh before heading to Hollywood in search of stardom. He had bit parts in TITANIC (1953) and JULIUS CAESAR (1953), and in 1954, lucked into the lead in the lavish MGM musical THE STUDENT PRINCE. Mario Lanza quit the film over a dispute with the studio, who apparently expressed their displeasure with the star's sudden weight gain. The very popular Lanza, a beloved tenor who parlayed his voice into a movie career, was prone to binge-eating and wildly fluctuating weight. He had already recorded the soundtrack to THE STUDENT PRINCE before shooting began on the film, and as a result, MGM owned the rights to the music. This put Purdom in the awkward position of lip-syncing Lanza's vocals in a film that was actually advertised as "featuring the singing voice of Mario Lanza!" The film was a huge success, but people were going to hear Mario Lanza, not to see Edmund Purdom. Purdom's next film was the 20th Century Fox mega-budget Biblical epic THE EGYPTIAN. Marlon Brando was cast in the lead, but decided he didn't like the script and bailed at the eleventh hour. Fox courted Farley Granger and an up-and-coming Dirk Bogarde, and both declined the offer. Scrambling, they finally settled for their fourth choice--Purdom--and, coming on the heels of the Lanza brouhaha over THE STUDENT PRINCE, the Hollywood gossip rags started derisively referring to him as "The Replacement Star." MGM offered him a contract and appeared committed to making Edmund Purdom happen: he and Vic Damone romanced Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds in the musical ATHENA (1954), with Purdom's character being the only lead to get no musical numbers, presumably because MGM had no more Mario Lanza vocal tracks lying around; he starred with Lana Turner in the epic spectacle THE PRODIGAL (1955); and was billed above the likes of David Niven and George Sanders in the swashbuckler THE KING'S THIEF (1955). None of these three post-EGYPTIAN films were successes, and just like that, Purdom's Hollywood career was over. He never got past the stigma of "The Replacement Star" and after an Allied Artists quickie with 1956's STRANGE INTRUDER, he left Hollywood to test the waters of the Italian film industry. He ended up spending the rest of his life there, his career largely concentrated in Italy with a few British, Spanish, French and/or German co-productions scattered throughout his filmography.
Purdom starred in adventures, westerns, gangster dramas, and horror films during this second career, and also found much work as a voice dubber and voiceover artist. There were some prestigious Italian productions for him in the 1960s, but as time went on, he was relegated to supporting roles in everything from high-end gialli like THE FIFTH CORD (1971) to low-grade Eurotrash like Jess Franco's THE SINISTER EYES OF DR. ORLOFF (1973) and the Italian-made Randall production FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS (1973), featuring the infamous credit "and Boris Lugosi as Ook the Neanderthal Man." Purdom would appear as Vittorio De Sica in the 1980 TV-movie SOPHIA LOREN: HER OWN STORY and had small roles in a pair of 1983 miniseries: THE WINDS OF WAR for ABC and THE SCARLET AND THE BLACK for CBS--all American productions with scenes shot in Purdom's base of Rome--but by the 1980s, he was mostly appearing in things like Joe D'Amato's HALLOWEEN ripoff MONSTER HUNTER (1982) and grimy Randall fare like Alan Birkinshaw's INVADERS OF THE LOST GOLD (1982) and the legendary PIECES, as the chainsaw-killer college dean assembling a human jigsaw puzzle out of the body parts of his victims. It was Purdom's friendship with Randall that led to their final, doomed collaboration: DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS.
Still basking in the glow of their PIECES triumph, Purdom talked Randall into letting him direct DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS, where the veteran actor plays Scotland Yard Inspector Harris, investigating a string of brutal and graphically gory murders of men dressed as Santa in the days approaching Christmas. The Santas are, in no particular order, shot in the head, stabbed, have a spear run through their head and out of the mouth, forced face-first onto a grill, and in the film's most infamous scene, castrated with a straight razor while using a men's room urinal. Much of the film focuses on Kate Briosky (Belinda Mayne), the daughter of one of the victims, and her busking flautist boyfriend Cliff (Gerry Sundquist), who's immediately pegged by Harris as a suspect. There's also Harris' partner Powell (Mark Jones) doing some investigating on his own after being tipped off by sketchy journalist Giles (Alan Lake), as well as a porn palace peep show stripper (Kelly Baker) who witnessed one of the killings and is eventually abducted by the murderer. There's an unusually large number of characters drifting in and out of the film, and many of the scenes appear awkward, choppy, and incomplete, with a seemingly romantic dinner between Harris and Kate immediately cutting to Kate alone in her apartment, or Kate suddenly seen in a waiting room and being told "Dr. Bridle will see you now," and we never see Dr. Bridle, nor was he mentioned before or after this scene, and we never know the reason nor the result of this phantom appointment. There's a reason for the frequently random, nonsensically slapdash feeling throughout DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS: even by Dick Randall standards, the production was a complete clusterfuck.
At some point during filming, Purdom was relieved of his duties as director and subsequently quit the project as an actor, with Randall handing the task of directing off to screenwriter Derek Ford. Ford was best known for scripting the excellent 1965 Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper thriller A STUDY IN TERROR and the sublimely trashy 1968 Peter Cushing plastic surgery laser hippie freakout CORRUPTION, but eventually found himself in the smutty 1970s British sex farce gutter with the likes of I AM A GROUPIE, THE SWAPPERS, SUBURBAN WIVES, and COMMUTER HUSBANDS. Randall wasn't happy with Ford's work and after a few days, fired him and brought in Alan Birkinshaw, the man responsible for the truly pathetic INVADERS OF THE LOST GOLD and now in charge of saving CHRISTMAS. Now that Ford was gone, Birkinshaw was assigned to completely overhaul the script to factor in the star no longer being around, take over directing the film, and reshoot some earlier Purdom sequences with which Randall was dissatisfied. Purdom wanted to make an old-fashioned thriller, and in a revelatory archival making-of on Mondo Macabro's 2011 DVD release, he's shown directing one murder scene involving the porn-booth stripper and says "I'm not really interested in showing a lot of blood here," demonstrating a fundamental disconnect with everything Dick Randall. Both the actress and the Santa actor are not the ones in the finished film. Birkinshaw reshot this sequence with a different actress (Baker) and buckets of blood and was actually responsible for almost all of the gory murder sequences. Purdom wasn't interested in splatter, and, by all accounts, was an eccentric and well-meaning guy who wanted to direct a movie but was in over his head and really didn't know what he was doing behind the camera. This is evident in a lot of the scenes in which Purdom is acting, which have the actors positioned in odd ways in shots that have a tendency to end abruptly, sometimes in mid-sentence, in an editorial necessity that can probably be chalked up to little or no coverage. Even with Birkinshaw's reshoots, new storylines, and massive re-edits, the film just doesn't cut together well at all.
Caroline Munro in DON'T OPEN
TILL CHRISTMAS, for some reason
Birkinshaw rewrote much of the script, introducing the subplot about the abducted stripper (Purdom never directed Baker at all), and another explaining the long stretches where Harris, the ostensible central character played by ostensible star Purdom, is completely absent from the action. DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS is entertaining for all the wrong reasons--way to waste the iconic Caroline Munro in a three-minute cameo as "herself" in a concert sequence, performing something called "Warrior of Love"--and barely hangs together, but it has its charms. Des Dolan's synth-heavy score has sections where it sounds a bit like something John Carpenter might compose on an off-day, Dick Randall aficionados will appreciate its sometimes PIECES-levels of nonsensical stupidity and incompetence, and the sight of the killer's smiling mask is undeniably effective. Birkinshaw hides behind a pseudonym, getting an "Additional scenes written and directed by Al McGoohan" credit presumably shared with Ford's equally anonymous directing contributions, and estimates that once Purdom's and Ford's useable footage was salvaged and he knew what he had to work around, he ended up directing about half of the film. Birkinshaw, the director of the 1978 video nasty KILLER'S MOON as well as dreadful remakes of THE HOUSE OF USHER and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH for Harry Alan Towers during that ill-fated late '80s Poe revival, describes Purdom as "a sweet man," but this whole grease fire begs the question: how badly do you have to fuck up and how catastrophic is the destruction left in your wake when Alan Birkinshaw is the guy who gets called in as a cleaner?
Diana Dors and Alan Lake in
happier days, in an early 1970s
photo with their son Jason
DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS is also morbidly noteworthy for the premature and tragic ends of two of its stars. Born in 1940, Lake, a veteran British TV actor with a busy but unexceptional career, was known to UK audiences for his marriage to 1950s starlet Diana Dors in 1968 after her divorce from Richard Dawson. Dors, the British Marilyn Monroe in her prime, drifted into Shelley Winters-esque character parts as she got older but was nonetheless a popular tabloid subject throughout her life due to her sultry screen image, her weight gain as she aged, and stories of hosting celebrity orgies and homemade stag films dating as far back as the late 1950s. Lake also earned some notoriety when he served a year in prison over 1970-71 due to his part in a violent pub brawl. Dors wrote several tell-all memoirs about her storied life, and she and Lake were regulars on British talk and game shows. Dors was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1982 and was only 52 when she died in May 1984, a couple of months after Lake finished his work on CHRISTMAS. A devastated and inconsolable Lake was finding it difficult to cope with her death, and a bad situation only got worse: shortly after losing Dors, Lake was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. On October 10, 1984, five months after Dors' death and two months before the release of DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS, Lake, just 44, took a shotgun to his head and ended his life, leaving the couple's 14-year-old son an orphan.
Born in 1955, Sundquist was a promising young actor who arrived on the scene in the mid '70s, and was soon labeled "the best-looking man on British TV." His biggest success in British cinemas was THE MUSIC MACHINE (1979), a knockoff of the 1977 blockbuster SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER that never got released in the US. Outside of the UK, he's known for the 1978 German sex comedy BOARDING SCHOOL, a favorite on late-night cable in the early '80s thanks to an early appearance by Nastassja Kinski, but his most high-profile role in the US was as the love interest to Esmeralda (Lesley-Anne Down) in the Anthony Hopkins-as-Quasimodo CBS/Hallmark Hall of Fame TV-movie THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1982). Sundquist also had a supporting role in the 1984 ABC miniseries THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII just prior to DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS, but his momentum was quickly stalling. The actor was plagued by depression throughout his life, and he developed a serious drug problem as his career fizzled out in the mid '80s. He only managed to score a few sporadic TV guest spots over the next few years, and his personal issues worsened into the next decade. In 1993, the 37-year-old Sundquist committed suicide by jumping in front of a train at London's Norbiton train station. DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS was the final film credit for both Lake and Sundquist.
Purdom in his later years
DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS opened in several theaters in and around NYC on the same day as BEVERLY HILLS COP, 2010, and CITY HEAT. It never expanded nationwide and didn't attract any of the controversy or media attention heaped upon SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT, which was already out of theaters and yesterday's news. DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS got some coverage in Fangoria and became a video store fixture in the VHS glory days. It's earned a solid cult following over the years, mainly due to increased interest in the trashy grindhouse legacy of Dick Randall (1926-1996), who also produced the 1980 Bruce Li epic CHALLENGE OF THE TIGER and the 1981 Weng Weng classic FOR YOUR HEIGHT ONLY, both of which, like PIECES, have to be seen to be believed. Purdom licked his wounds and kept working throughout the '80s and '90s, either in voice work or in brief onscreen appearances in films like the Golan-Globus prestige project THE ASSISI UNDERGROUND (1985), and in ENDLESS DESCENT (1990), PIECES director Juan Piquer Simon's contribution to the late '80s undersea monster craze. He never attempted to direct another film. His final screen appearance came in Pupi Avati's medieval Italian epic KNIGHTS OF THE QUEST (2001), headlined by F. Murray Abraham, Thomas Kretschmann, and an unlikely Edward Furlong. He died of natural causes on January 1, 2009 at the age of 84, a highly recognizable, respected figure to fans of Eurotrash cult cinema. Purdom seemed to realize very quickly that Hollywood stardom wasn't in the cards for him, and he instead stayed consistently busy in movies that were mostly far beneath him, but he seemed OK with it. He was a working actor who went where the work was. He likely lived a very comfortable life of luxury in Europe, but he's still regarded--if at all--by devotees of Hollywood's Golden Era as "The Replacement Star," a heavily-hyped washout and the George Lazenby of his day, a strong and capable actor thrown into a can't-win situation and rejected by moviegoers mostly for not being someone else.
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.
A huge box office hit when released in its native Norway and the rest of Europe in 2006, COLD PREY (Norwegian title: FRITT VILT) took three years to get a straight-to-DVD release in the US. The inevitable COLD PREY II has finally arrived on DVD in the US, a belated five years after its European theatrical run. The first film had five snowboarders on a trip to the Jotunheimen region of southern Norway finding shelter at an abandoned resort where they're pursued by a relentless killing machine who's basically the Norwegian cousin of Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers. Here, that film's Final Girl, Jannicke (Ingrid Borso Berdal) is found dazed and delirious and holding the dead killer's pickaxe, and transported to a nearby hospital that--of course--is operating with a skeleton crew because it's about to close down for good (helpful hint for slasher film protagonists: if you work in a hospital that's about to close, don't stick around; and when the lights flicker off and then back on, someone will instantly appear directly behind you). As any fan of classic old-school slasher films like HALLOWEEN II and VISITING HOURS can attest, a nearly-abandoned hospital is an outstanding setting for these types of things, and COLD PREY II is cut from the same cloth. The hulking killer (Robert Follin), thought dead, simply went into a brief hibernation from the cold. When the doc in charge (Fridtjov Saheim) idiotically resuscitates him, the bodies start piling up in various gory ways until it's down to Jannicke and other doc Camilla (Marthe Snorresdotter Rovik) for the final showdown.
There's no real surprises in COLD PREY II and because there's a limited number of people who can get killed, it takes about half of the running time before anything starts happening. But once the killer is on the loose, things pick up considerably, and director Mats Stenberg (awesomely-monikered COLD PREY director Roar Uthaug co-produced and has a story credit) offers some impressively-constructed chase and kill scenes. Also helping a lot is a truly badass Berdal staking her claim as a modern-day scream queen with her tough, gritty performance as Jannicke. Like its predecessor, COLD PREY II brings nothing new to the table and relies too much on characters behaving stupidly, but it does a nice job executing tried-and-true genre staples and doing so with respect and affinity. You don't need to see it, but doing so isn't a waste of your time. It proved to be another huge success in Europe, prompting a COLD PREY III in 2010, which, following the time frame of the first two, should hit US shores sometime in 2017. (Unrated, 90 mins)
PAWN (US - 2013)
This thoroughly forgettable thriller opened on a couple of screens four days before its DVD/Blu-ray release and showcases a large cast of recognizable faces in a completely by-the-numbers plot that's so routine that if you listen closely, you can practically hear their sighs of ambivalence. Ex-con Sean Faris promises his pregnant wife (Nikki Reed) that he'll stay out of trouble, but then he finds himself in the middle of a hostage situation at an all-night diner when a crew of gunmen led by Michael Chiklis barge in to rob the place. They're really after a hard drive that's being kept in the safe, and it's something that involves the grizzled diner owner (Stephen Lang as Scott Glenn) and the local crime boss (Ronald Guttman), whose villainy is instantly given away by the fact that he's the only person in the greasy spoon wearing an ascot. The slumming cast also includes Ray Liotta as a mob mystery man, Forest Whitaker and Marton Csokas as on-the-take cops, and Common as the hostage negotiator. For some reason, Chiklis uses a comically over-the-top Cockney accent that's basically an exaggerated impression of Jason Statham as Ray Winstone as Bob Hoskins, certainly to creatively infuse his character with some texture and depth and not at all an attention-hogging stunt suggested and supported by co-producer Michael Chiklis. (R, 88 mins)
Much to the chagrin of concerned parents' groups and a scaremongering media, slasher films were big business in the early 1980s, especially calendar-related slasher films. John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN (1978) is usually credited with creating the holiday slasher subgenre, and while it certainly kickstarted its wild popularity and was instrumental in establishing the formula, it was Bob Clark's terrifying BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974) that did it first. HALLOWEEN exploded, becoming (at the time) the highest-grossing indie film ever, and it led to such titles as TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT, CHRISTMAS EVIL, NEW YEAR'S EVIL, and PROM NIGHT from 1980, GRADUATION DAY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, and MY BLOODY VALENTINE from 1981. 1984 brought the controversial SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT, and even as late as 1986, there were two movies--one American and one British--called APRIL FOOL'S DAY, though the British film was retitled SLAUGHTER HIGH for the US.
None of these post-HALLOWEEN holiday/calendar offshoots were as popular as the FRIDAY THE 13TH series, which even inspired its own series of imitative "horny teenagers being killed in the woods/at camp" subgenre. Dismissed and practically burned at the stake by critics, Sean S. Cunningham's FRIDAY THE 13TH, is an expertly-constructed, archetypal slasher film--aided significantly by the terrifying "ki ki ki, ma ma ma" Harry Manfredini's score--that only seems tame today because it's been imitated so much. The success of FRIDAY THE 13TH, and the idea of the killer's actions being some sort of payback for the transgressions of past or present camp counselors, immediately led to THE BURNING (1981), MADMAN (1982), and SLEEPAWAY CAMP (1983), which itself had numerous sequels. But even the "dead kids in the woods" angle had somewhat of a precedent with Mario Bava's 1972 Italian horror film BAY OF BLOOD, which existed under a ton of alternate titles (TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE, and the misleading LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT PART II among them). FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2's famous scene of two lovers being impaled simultaneously during sex is an idea lifted completely from BAY OF BLOOD. The first two FRIDAY THE 13TH films did huge business and became a near-annual tradition for the rest of the 1980s. The hockey-masked killer Jason is right alongside HALLOWEEN's Michael Myers in terms of slasher horror iconography. Jason wasn't even the killer in the first FRIDAY film: he's only mentioned as the drowned son of Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), revealed to be the killer, who's seeking revenge on past camp counselors who were fooling around and not paying attention while he cried for help, struggling to stay above the waters of Crystal Lake. Jason only appears in a dream scene at the end, but takes center stage as the suddenly very much alive killer in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2, seeking revenge for the killing of his mother. It was Jason who would become the focal point of the franchise from then on (except for 1985's FRIDAY THE 13TH: A NEW BEGINNING, which has a killer dressed as Jason), though starting with 1986's witty, self-mocking FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: JASON LIVES, the series would abandon any illusion of seriousness, resulting in gimmicky fare like 1988's FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VIII: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN, and culminating in 2002's JASON X, which finds the killer awakening from a cryogenic sleep in outer space in the year 2455. By this time, the rights to the character had drifted from Paramount to New Line, who owned A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and 2003 saw the release of FREDDY VS. JASON, the last in the original series, which was rebooted in 2009 with FRIDAY THE 13TH to middling interest and thus far, appears to be stalled.
Jason's FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 "sackhead" look, very reminiscent
of the killer in the 1977 cult classic THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN
The iconic hockey mask look that started with FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III, which became the second film of the summer to knock E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL out of the top spot at the box office, is also an important film for the franchise in that it's the first time Jason (played here by Richard Brooker) wears his trademark hockey mask. He had the one-eyed "sackhead" look in PART 2, and he acquires the hockey mask after killing the hapless, buffoonish Shelley (Larry Zerner), who was wearing it at the time. Jason sports the mask for the rest of the film, and the look stuck in subsequent sequels. His first appearance with the hockey mask occurs exactly one hour into PART III and it's one of the series' best moments.
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III also worked in another short-lived early '80s craze: the return of 3-D, which hadn't been widely used since its initial 1953-1954 explosion. Numerous 3-D films were made from 1981-83 before the trend flamed out again: COMIN' AT YA (1981), PARASITE (1982) and several from 1983: TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS, SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE, METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN, AMITYVILLE 3-D, and JAWS 3-D.
Also, from a point of personal interest from growing up in Toledo, OH, one of the film's co-stars, Ann Arbor, MI-native Tracie Savage, quit acting after this film to pursue a career in journalism. While watching PART 3 on cable a year or so after seeing in theaters, I recognized her as a reporter for Toledo's then-NBC affiliate WTVG. At the time, being 10 or 11, I couldn't figure out how she managed to go from FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III to being a reporter in my hometown, and that was coupled with the strange feeling of having a seen a well-known local news reporter naked in a horror movie. She was on Los Angeles TV for several years and now handles news radio in the L.A. area, and was even called to the stand to testify during the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995.
Tracie Savage, soon to leave acting for a career in TV news.
FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH was based on a book by Rolling Stone writer Cameron Crowe, who went undercover as a student and chronicled his experiences. Crowe also scripted the film, which featured a large ensemble cast of future stars, including Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, Anthony Edwards, and Nicolas Cage (in his first film, and billed as Nicolas Coppola). But it was Sean Penn's star-making performance as stoner icon Jeff Spicoli that got all the attention, and deservedly so. Whether he's having pizza delivered to Mr. Hand's (Ray Walston) history class or wrecking the star football player's car ("My old man is a television repairman! He's got this ultimate set of tools! I can fix this!"), Spicoli is one of the great movie characters of the 1980s. As funny as Penn is, he largely functions as the comic relief in a film that's not as slapsticky as its ad campaign indicated. Also featuring Tom Petty's "American Girl," Jackson Browne's "Somebody's Baby," The Cars' "Moving in Stereo," and the Go-Go's "We Got the Beat," plus several girls "who've cultivated the Pat Benatar look." 1984 saw the release of the disappointing semi-sequel THE WILD LIFE, also written by Crowe, which followed a group of friends over the summer after graduation. Stoltz returns, but as a different character, and Penn's younger brother Chris stars as the resident party animal of the group, which seems to exist in the same Ridgemont High universe even though no FAST TIMES characters are carried over. FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH also spawned a short-lived 1986 TV series titled FAST TIMES, with Dean Cameron (Chainsaw from 1987's SUMMER SCHOOL) as Spicoli, but it was cancelled after just seven episodes.
PINK FLOYD THE WALL opened in limited release this weekend, and would go wide a month later. Based on the 1979 Pink Floyd album conceived by bassist Roger Waters, THE WALL would become a mainstream success but went on to a long life as a midnight movie. Working with Waters, who wrote the screenplay, and animator Gerald Scarfe, director Alan Parker brought his unique sense of visual style and his keen ability for melding music and imagery (the Giorgio Moroder-propelled chase in 1978's MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, plus films like 1976's BUGSY MALONE, 1980's FAME, 1991's THE COMMITMENTS, and 1996's EVITA) and helped create a truly nightmarish big-screen vision of Waters' bleak, disturbing magnum opus. The film opened to generally positive reviews but it was far from smooth sailing getting it to the screen. Waters planned on starring as Pink, but the role ended up going to Boomtown Rats frontman and future Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof, while Waters and Parker clashed throughout filming. Despite the behind-the-scenes troubles, the film has aged quite well and as far as cinematic rock operas go, it's arguably the best of its kind, with many haunting, unforgettable images throughout.
Also opening on this busy Friday was the very Reagan-era political action thriller THE SOLDIER, directed by James Glickenhaus, who had a huge sleeper hit with 1980's vigilante cult classic THE EXTERMINATOR. Ken Wahl (later of TV's WISEGUY) stars as a US government operative who tangles with an evil KGB agent (Klaus Kinski!) while dealing with a Soviet plot to detonate nukes in a Saudi oil field and contaminate the world's oil supply unless the US President (William Prince) starts a war with Israel. Glickenhaus, who left filmmaking years ago and became a major NYC investment broker and race car collector, was a tremendously underrated action craftsman with films like this, THE EXTERMINATOR, and 1988's SHAKEDOWN. He doesn't run from his B-movie past however, contributing audio commentaries to Synapse Films' recent Blu-ray release of THE EXTERMINATOR and their planned release of his 1991 Christopher Walken actioner MCBAIN. THE SOLDIER is probably best known for its memorable ski chase. And yes, that music is Tangerine Dream.
Lastly, this weekend also saw the re-release of STAR WARS, accompanied by a brief teaser for the next summer's final installment of the trilogy, then titled REVENGE OF THE JEDI before George Lucas changed it to RETURN OF THE JEDI.
Released Memorial Day weekend 1982, the highly-anticipated ROCKY III ended the two-week box office reign of CONAN THE BARBARIAN, grossing a then-very impressive $16 million on 939 screens. Sold-out showings and a whopping $17,000/screen average would cause the film to expand to just over 1300 screens at its widest release. By way of comparison, CONAN was playing on 1600 at this same time; there were none of today's 4000 screen rollouts back then, so things actually stayed in first-run theaters for a long time, because it sometimes took people weeks to be able to see them (as an example, PORKY'S was still in the top five after Memorial Day, in its 11th week of release). ROCKY III was a durable hit, staying in the top five until late July and going on to earn $125 million, making it the fourth-highest grossing film of 1982.
Written and directed by Sylvester Stallone, ROCKY III is thoroughly predictable at every turn, but few people know how to work their base like Stallone in his prime. After two immensely crowd-pleasing films, audiences had grown to care about Rocky, his wife Adrian (Talia Shire), his dumb brother-in-law Paulie (Burt Young), and his tough-as-nails trainer Mickey (Burgess Meredith). As ROCKY III opens, the Champ finds himself under fire from all directions: Paulie's still jealous and feeling left out and Mickey doesn't want to fight anymore, but biggest (and loudest) of all is upstart heavyweight Clubber Lang (an iconic performance by Mr. T), making a name for himself and calling out Rocky as a "paper champion." But the thing is, Clubber's right. Rocky seems to be everywhere but the ring: TV commercials, magazine covers, THE MUPPET SHOW, and even charity wrestling matches with Thunderlips (Hulk Hogan!). He's more celebrity than fighter, and after Mickey confesses that he's only lined up chump challengers to keep Rocky at the top ("Ya ain't been hungry since ya won that belt!" Mick growls), Rocky starts to question his legitimacy as a champ and, despite announcing his retirement, agrees to fight Clubber to prove his ability to himself. Rocky not only gets his ass kicked, but Mickey dies of a heart attack in the Madison Square Garden dressing room. Enter Rocky's old opponent Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) who sees that Rocky's gotten lazy and complacent with his title and his fame and he needs to regain the "eye of the tiger." Apollo takes over as Rocky's manager and trains him for a rematch with Clubber, who's become an even more insufferable dick now that he's the champ.
Few actors embody the underdog as well as Stallone, and as a writer, he needed to find a way to once again make Rocky fit that mold. But was it necessary to have Rocky and company move into a fleabag Skid Row flophouse so the Italian Stallion could regain his edge? But as hokey as it is, ROCKY III looks like RAGING BULL compared to 1985's on-leave-from-reality ROCKY IV, made the same year as RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, in the midst of the Stallone-as-American-hero mania.
One major reason that ROCKY III had such staying power with audiences--it actually had an increase in box office in early July, over a month after it was released--was the soundtrack. And no, I don't mean the three Frank Stallone songs featured on it, but rather, Survivor's chart-topping, Oscar-nominated monster anthem "Eye of the Tiger." It's said that every summer has its song, and you couldn't go anywhere in the summer of 1982 without hearing "Eye of the Tiger." And even today, it's an impossible song to dislike. If you listen to "Eye of the Tiger" and don't feel even a little bit of an adrenaline rush, then there's something wrong with you.
The other major release this same weekend (on 237 more screens than ROCKY III?!) was the Canadian slasher film VISITING HOURS, directed by Jean Claude Lord. Expectedly trashed by critics, VISITING HOURS isn't the best of its kind, but it gets a lot of mileage out of a truly repulsive, disturbing perfomance by Michael Ironside as Colt Hawker, a deranged, sadistic killer obsessed with a TV newscaster (Lee Grant). When an attempt on her life fails and she ends up in the hospital, he just goes to the hospital to try and finish the job. Ironside had been at the center of an instantly-legendary scene a year earlier in David Cronenberg's SCANNERS, and with VISITING HOURS, it seemed like he was poised to become a new horror icon. Instead, he's stayed busy to this day as an in-demand character actor, in films ranging from A-list to D-grade DTV garbage, plus frequent TV guest spots. But his reputation as a go-to bad guy was built on his turns in SCANNERS and VISITING HOURS. Aided by a creepily effective TV spot and similar poster art, VISITING HOURS managed to open in second place--a distant second at $5 million, but second nonetheless. I watched VISITING HOURS again about a year ago, and it holds up fairly well, getting a touch of class from the participation of veteran pros like Grant and William Shatner as her TV station boss.
VISITING HOURS trailer/TV spot
And speaking of Shatner, VISITING HOURS would not be the last time he'd be seen on the big screen in the summer of 1982. In fact, he had another film that was scheduled to open the next weekend...
