TERRIFIED (2017), A Worthy Halloween Treat

Like many people who enjoy watching movies, October is reserved for horror movies. My personal preference are the Universal horrors of the 1930s and 1940s, and the British Hammer horrors of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. But my wife and I enjoy a good horror film from time to time that was more recent and none have been more blood-curdling than Terrified (2017). 

This Argentinian addition to the horror genre is a refreshing submission from a fledgling director. Written and directed without the usual hubris that we as humans can solve any supernatural problem by basically willing it away, the movie is shot in just a way which evokes a feeling of being lost from the beginning. 

Told in a non-linear format with the vantage point being that of multiple characters, each with their own observations and fears, keeps the movie fresh through the relatively short run time of 87 minutes. But then again, the length of time should never be dictated for commercial value, but in the amount of time it takes to tell the story.

The movie concerns a number of strange events that occur in a small suburban Buenos Aires neighborhood, where a man is accused of beating his wife to death, and a young boy is accidentally killed in the streets. Police rule both incidents as homicide but the truth is even more terrifying. A group of paranormal experts fly into town to investigate, each taking up residence in each of the houses that the reported occurrences happened. What they discover and unearth is not a matter of verification but rather a chilling scenario that we are not alone... and time is running out before the terror spreads beyond the community.

Director Demian Rugna insisted on carefully shooting every scene in such a way that if you blink, you will miss something. This is truly one of those films that you cannot be distracted, and you must pause the film if you venture off to the bathroom. Many of the creepy moments take place beyond our peripheral vision -- a trick that not works for this the of story, but for the plot as well.

Seriously, this is one of the best horror films I have seen in years and a darn shame I missed it when the movie first came out in 2017. (Be sure not to mistake this with a different film of a similar name that came out a year after.)   

BURIAL SERVICES (1936) The "Lost" Radio Episode

Wyllis Cooper created a weekly horror program, Lights Out!, in 1934. Originating from the radio station of an NBC affiliate in Chicago, Illinois, the stories involved invisible creatures, vampires and all sorts of ghouls. The horror series was heard regionally and not nationally. Cooper, no doubt having proven he could conceive of clever horror plots, quickly made the movie to Hollywood for a career at Universal Studios (The Phantom Creeps, Son of Frankenstein). This left a void when the network decided to expand coverage of the program nationwide in the summer of 1936. Enter stage left, Arch Oboler, a playwright who would later succeed with a career on the Rudy Vallee radio program, and The Chase and Sunburn Hour. Oboler's idea of horror was different from Cooper's, and his first radio script for the series, "Burial Services," has since become both legend and folklore. 

Over the decades, rumors have circulated that the premiere episode of Lights Out! in the summer of 1936 was so gruesome that thousands of letters flooded into the network. Most of the letters were protesting and questioning how such a graphic story could be done on the radio. Forgetting the fact that the new series was heard at a very late time slot when the majority of the American public was asleep in their beds, the script was considered horrific not because of ghosts or ghouls, but because of the story. During the burial service of a young girl, the men and women who knew the deceased paused to recall various memories of her life... before the dirt was tossed onto the top of the coffin. 

Arch Oboler, interviewed over the years, often lent credence to the folklore by often recalling how many letters arrived at the studio and how he discovered early on that some stories of horror -- by nature -- were indeed too graphic to tell.

NBC never recorded the radio broadcasts of Lights Out! in 1936, so a recording of this episode is not known to exist. Thankfully, I found the original radio script in an archive and providing a PDF of the file through the link below. You can read it and make the decision yourself. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rxod68ih52z8sg1/LIGHTS%20OUT%20%28June%203%2C%201936%29%20Burial%20Services.pdf?dl=0

THE LONE RANGER: Limited Edition Newsletter

It's been a month since The Lone Ranger Fan Club celebrated the 75th anniversary of the classic television show starring Clayton Moore, Jay Silverheels, and John Hart with a special 60-page issue of The Silver Bullet. This is the newsletter that goes out to members of the club. Normally the issues are about 16 pages on average. But the response for the 60-page special was amazing, The editor of the newsletter received numerous inquiries about the possibility of receiving a printed copy of this issue. After much research, he just announced the answer is YES! 

For the first time in over a decade, The Lone Ranger Fan Club is printing an issue of The Silver Bullet. You read that correctly, because there hasn’t been a printed issue since 2010 when The Silver Bullet transitioned to an e-publication.

 

This will be a short-run printing, and members will need to pre-order their copies. To facilitate this, you can request your copy when renewing your membership for 2025. If you are not a member, you can sign up and still get the limited edition printing. 

 

Membership renewal for 2025 is now open on The Lone Ranger Fan Club website. You can renew at any time, but if you would like a Diamond membership with the printed anniversary issue, you will need to renew before the end of the month. This limited time opportunity closes on Halloween and Michael will be placing the printing order that weekend.

 

The membership rates for 2025 remain the same as 2024.

Silver - $10/Adult, $5/Youth (Standard membership)

Gold - $15/Adult, $10/Youth (Standard membership with membership certificate & card)

Diamond - $25/Adult, $20/Youth (Standard membership with printed anniversary issue)

https://thelrfc.org/products/2025-diamond-membership-adult?se_activity_id=184893899043&syclid=cs4q75di2nts73c3vh30&utm_campaign=A+Diamond+Anniversary+opportunity_184893899043&utm_medium=email&utm_source=shopify_email 

EARLY CINEMA BOOK REVIEWS: From W.C. Fields to Max Linder

Not a month goes by that I do not received a package at my front doorstep containing a book that the author or the publisher asked me to review. Somehow I feel obligated because they went to all the time and expense to ship it to me, and write the customized letter requesting the favor. The most recent box came from Bear Manor Media and contained four biographies about actors and actresses that are long overdue. 

I THANK YOU: THE ARTHUR ASKEY STORY

By Anthony Slide 

A diminutive, frenetic comedian, known for catchphrases that were once part of the English language, Arthur Askey was one of Britain’s most popular entertainers throughout much of the 20th Century. Immediately after World War One, Askey made his professional debut in concert parties at British seaside resorts. He began to appear on the stage and on radio, and in 1938, with Richard Murdoch, he introduced Band Wagon to BBC radio listeners. It soon became the most popular program on the air, and launched Askey’s career as a film star (one of Britain’s biggest), a major entertainer in pantomime and on the legitimate stage, and ensured an easy transition some years later into television.

 

Arthur Askey’s life and career is presented here in informative and readable fashion. I Thank You: The Arthur Askey Story is the first book-length biography of a great British comedian, and will, hopefully, introduce him and his humor to new audiences around the world.

 

If you never heard of Arthur Askey, do not feel ashamed. I never heard of him, either. But the fact that Anthony Slide went to all the hard work to document the life and career of this actor was essential to ensure Askey did not fall into obscurity. Through this book, his life will live on.

 

 

THE SILENT MOVIES OF W.C. FIELDS

By Arthur Frank Wertheim

The Silent Movies of W.C. Fields is a comprehensive depiction of Fields’ early years in New York and Hollywood, his personal and professional trials and accomplishments, his triumphs and disillusionments, each of which would lead to his ultimate screen legacy. Written by Arthur Frank Wertheim, who recently published a three-volume biography on W. C. Fields, this was an amusing read.

 

To my knowledge, Wertheim’s book is the first to examine W.C. Fields’ twelve silent movies and how they influenced his later career in sound films. Quite simply: the author concludes that Fields might never have become one of the premier comedians during the Golden Age of Sound Films without first embarking on a career in silent movies. In this exploration, readers discover new insights and surprises concerning Fields’ experiences in this medium. After all, he was a stage performer and acting for the screen was an entirely different field altogether.

 

The Silent Movies of W.C. Fields details Fields’ early failed screen attempts, which resulted in his decision not to abandon his successful Ziegfeld Follies career, a choice that would prevent him from joining the pantheon of great silent film stars: Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd---each of whom, by 1925, had achieved worldwide recognition and success.

Wertheim relates how Fields would have to struggle against all types of roadblocks to reach the second pantheon tier – and how legendary filmmaker D. W. Griffith came to his rescue by directing two of his silent pictures.

 

Generously illustrated with many new and rare photos, The Silent Movies of W.C. Fields will prove invaluable to fans of both the comic genius of W.C. Fields and his pristine time of moviemaking.  

 

 

SILENTS OF THE VAMPS: BAD GIRLS YOU DON’T’ KNOW – BUT SHOULD

By Jennifer Ann Redmond

The United States of the 1910s and 1920s was terrorized by an epidemic so pervasive, so virulent, it threatened to destroy every family it touched. Parents prayed their children would be spared. Small-town America formed tactical police units to combat it. Influenza? Communism? Nope. Vampires. Not the kind repelled with garlic, either. Author Jennifer Ann Redmond delves into the secret files of eleven screen sirens who drained the life (and banknotes) out of men by day while leading criminally captivating lives by night: Alice Hollister, Carmen Phillips, Claire de Lorez, DeSacia Mooers, Edna Tichenor, Iva Shepard, Marcia Manon, Olga Grey, Rosa Rudami, Rosemary Theby, Ruth Taylor. As a sexy vamp on the screen, the personal lives of these actresses are explored with rare photographs and summaries of their careers. I knew of Theda Bara, the most famous screen vamp, so this book helped make me more familiar with other screen sirens of the 1910s and 1920s.

 

 

MAX LINDER: FATHER OF FILM COMEDY

By Snorre Smari Mathiesen

 

Max Linder, born Gabriel Leuvielle in St. Loubes, France in 1883, started in films with the Pathe Brothers in Vincennes, just outside of Paris in 1905, making him one of the first film comedians that became world-renowned. In fact, there is evidence that Linder was the first screen celebrity to see his name in print. His comedy timing and gags (Linder started writing his own scenarios early on) have been copied and imitated by many of his followers, including Charlie Chaplin.

 

The fine line between comedy and tragedy blends into shades of gray in the story of Max Linder, a French comedian and director of the silent film era, who was often held as the standard for the legendary stars coming after him. Max's early start soon escalated into hundreds of films loved worldwide and elevated him into one of the first international movie stars years before Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin. Renowned and recognized globally, his fame nearly extinguished due to World War One injuries, but he recovered, returned, and regained his status only to face one of the most terrible tragedies in human existence. His hilarious films and heartrending personal tale unfold fully in this richly researched and annotated biography and filmography. Illustrated with dozens of photographs. 

 

Author Snorre Smári Mathiesen is a Norwegian cartoonist (yes, he lives in Oslo, Norway). A silent film aficionado since childhood, he researched Max Linder’s life for the past ten years and this book is the culmination of that research. He worked as assistant and translator on sociologist Thomas Mathiesen’s autobiography, Cadenza (European Group Press, 2017), which first gave him an opportunity to learn how to write and craft a book and get it published.

 

THE RISE AND FALL OF MAX LINDER: THE FIRST CINEMA CELEBRITY

By Lisa Stein Haven

In Lisa Stein Haven’s book, Linder's story is both a comedy and a tragedy. His meteoric rise to fame by 1907/8 hit a roadblock in 1914 with the onset of World War I, and was dealt a death blow by his attempts to revive his career in America and Austria. His marriage to a young wife was ill-fated and ill-timed, leading Linder to take the life of his wife and himself on the night of October 31, 1925, leaving a 16-month-old daughter behind, Maud, who would devote her life to restoring his film legacy. 

 

It is nice to see that there are two more books exploring the life and career of Max Linder, and both have something the other does not, making them both essential for the cinema fan.

Doomed! The Untold Story of Roger Corman's FANTASTIC FOUR

With Marvel Studios' announcement that a Fantastic Four movie is in the works, it does not hurt to look back at the rendition that was never meant to be seen. 

In 1994, Roger Corman produced a low-budget movie based on Marvel's popular comic book series, The Fantastic Four, starring Alex Hyde-White, Jay Underwood, Rebecca Staab and Michael Bailey Smith. This marked the first of what would be four live action renditions. Regardless of the fact that the three movies to follow had huge million-dollar budgets, fan boys at comic cons generally agree that the 1994 film is perhaps the best of them. Yet, the Roger Corman film was never released theatrically in theaters, commercially on VHS or DVD, and continues to sit on the shelves gathering dust. In fact, the only way anyone can watch the movie is to buy a VHS or DVD bootleg. Even worse is the fact that the movie was produced with no true intention to release the film - ever!

In the mid-1980s, German film producers, Constantin Films, bought the screen rights from Marvel Comics for an initial $250,000. Among the terms of the contract was that the studio had to produce a movie within ten years or the screen rights would revert back to Marvel. Just before the ten-year option ran out, and in order to meet the terms of the contract, executives at Constantin hired Roger Corman and hurriedly put this film into production. According to the story, executives at Marvel were not impressed at the low-budget results and in order to avoid damaging the brand the studio quietly bought the few existing film prints and negatives from Constantin Films to avoid the possibility of a theatrical or video release. Both Roger Corman (who produced the film), director Oley Sassone and the cast and crew of the film were not consulted or informed of this move, as there were indeed plans in place for a small theatrical release. (A movie trailer was made with this in mind.)

Constantin Films was able to maintain another ten-year option on the screen rights, secured funding from 20th-Century Fox, and the big budget 2005 version was the end result. A 2007 sequel and a terrible 2015 reboot followed.

While the movie was a means to tap dance around a contractual clause, fan boys today have managed to secure a primitive form or preservation by mass duplicating copies of the 1994 movie on VHS and DVD. It is estimated that every fan of The Fantastic Four, across the country, have a copy of this movie in their collection. (I had the good fortune to watch the movie at a fan gathering in Michigan a number of years ago.) If executives at Marvel or Constantin wanted to keep the movie locked away, their plan failed. To believe the film could be suppressed at this point would be futile. 

So you can imagine my pleasure when I learned that two years ago director Marty Langford produced an 84-minute documentary titled Doomed! The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four, providing the view from the ground of what it was like to pour your heart and hopes into something that was never going to be seen by the general public. Practically every actor, writer, producer, director, stunt man and crew technician was approached and interviewed for commentary, providing background into the film that today you can find easily on YouTube. It is pop culture documentaries like these that I find enjoyable. Now available on DVD through Amazon.com, I recommend this to anyone who loved the 1994 Roger Corman gem.