Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly.

Review #2429: Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly.

Cast: 

Michael Bryant (New Friend), Ursula Howells (Mumsy), Pat Heywood (Nanny), Howard Trevor (Sonny), Vanessa Howard (Girly), Robert Swann (Soldier), and Imogen Hassall (Girlfriend)

Directed by Freddie Francis (#854 - They Came from Beyond Space, #856 - The Evil of Frankenstein, #860 - Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, #1145 - Tales from the Crypt, #1419 - Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, #2143 - Trog)

Review: 

Apparently, Freddie Francis wanted to just do a movie on his own without studio assignments in his way, and this is the end result. Francis enlisted the services of Brian Comport, who had provided written material for the 1968 documentary The London Nobody Knows. The adaptation material to freely crib little from was a play called The Happy Family, which had been written by Maisie Mosco that apparently was quite weird. All Francis wanted was to make sure that the film could be set and shot in Oakley Court, a castle that overlooks the River Thames in Bray, Berkshire, England that had been used for a handful of movies for exterior shooting. Comport wrote just three more screenplays: Moon (1970), Beware My Bretheren (1972) and The Asphynx (1972). He later moved to Australia to become a journalist and did corporate videos before he died in 2013. Reportedly, this was the movie that Francis admired best among the movies he directed as a filmmaker. The movie was released on VHS but not on DVD until 2010. An event to honor the film at the Court was done in 2015 and it may very well be possible to call this a cult favorite. While the movie had an opening in the States in early 1970 and a premiere in the United Kingdom in April, it only was released in its native country for theater showings in September, which as it turned out was just a few weeks before the release of Goodbye Gemini, a movie involving a pair of close siblings and its own implications of their closeness together. Apparently, the fact that a horror movie daring to show or hint at something controversial was shocking to media watchdogs (read: losers but are they the biggest losers imaginable?) that led to backlash and led to theaters not being big on wanting to screen the film. For whatever reason, the movie was called "Girly" outside the United Kingdom, which seems like a foolish thing to do.

Admittedly, it is a pretty British type of movie, dangling bits of humor in the fuss it has in manners in the same breath that sees quite a few people get hacked off. Sure, it isn't a bloody affair, but it has an unusually chipper attitude that I can't help but appreciate in the slow burn for 101 minutes. It is a cheery type of film for people that like macabre things with a worthwhile group to play the game in characterization. Mostly, it is up to the viewer to consider just how anybody goes around calling themselves Mumsy or if these folks are even related to each other at all. They just go around with devilish whimsy that happens to resonate well with the interesting choice of setting in such beautiful isolation. There is a morbid elegance to people trying to play house while corpses are around the place (don't forget that in one instance Sonny goes and records one of the murders to show as a snuff film later on) that I imagine would be extremely deserving for a following or at least recognition. Francis may not have been big on doing horror film after horror film as a director, but he at least had an eye for trying to make the best out of what could've easily just been silly British stuff. Howells and Heywood were the among most experienced actors in the film (i.e. more than a few) and they do a pretty good job in establishing the unsettling nature of play-acting in roles of alleged authority, one that has them more concerned about who finishes knitting first than the business of disposed bodies. Howard Trevor (not to be confused with Trevor Howard, as one might find when trying to Google) apparently made just one film as an actor and it was this one, while Howard had a handful of horror films and that was it, since she retired from acting not too long after getting married, doing just three more movies after Mumsy (All the Way Up [1970], The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer [1970], What Became of Jack and Jill? [1972]); she died in 2010 at the age of 62. Incidentally, a bench in her memory was dedicated at Oakley Court in 2015. She does a pretty unnerving job in making it more than just with a detached commitment that is more than just being a bit. It all collides with Bryant, who plays the lone detached force with clever interest, managing to maneuver around the strange order of things without just being a bland would-be final "guy" (well, at least by how the ending may, or may not, go in the long run...). As a whole, Mumsy is a strange piece of macabre amusement, one that plays with its environment and expectations for a few enjoyable moments within the horror of people bound to structure and the ones who have the misfortune to have to try and adjust to it without losing their head. If you like seeing movies that deserved better from the time it was made, this one may be up your alley.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

I Married a Monster from Outer Space.

Review #2428: I Married a Monster from Outer Space.

Cast: 

Tom Tryon (Bill Farrell), Gloria Talbott (Marge Bradley Farrell), Peter Baldwin (Officer Frank Swanson), Robert Ivers (Harry Phillips), Chuck Wassil (Ted Hanks), Valerie Allen (Francine, a Hooker), Ty Hardin (Mac Brody), Ken Lynch (Dr. Wayne), John Eldredge (Police Captain H.B. Collins), Alan Dexter (Sam Benson), James Anderson (Weldon), Jean Carson (Helen Alexander Benson), Jack Orrison (Officer Schultz), Steve London (Charles Mason), and Max "Slapsie Maxie" Rosenbloom (Max Grad) Produced and Directed by Gene Fowler Jr (#1912 - I Was a Teenage Werewolf)

Review: 

"This was strictly an exploitation picture. But there again I tried to put characterization into the monsters. The so-called monsters, the aliens, were very sad people. One of the things I've always found is that you've got to accept the premise, regardless of how ridiculous it is. If you accept the thing as very realistic and very honest, then you can come up with very honest performances and make a fairly honest picture out of it."

Sometimes audiences just don't know what they are missing. Released from Paramount Pictures, the movie ended up as being the second movie on a double feature with the independent acquisition that happened to be in color: The Blob (1958). The script was done by Louis Vittes, and it was Fowler who suggested coming up with an eye-catching title, although he stated in later years of hating the final title (he was interviewed for the film a bit in this book here). As producer and director, Fowler noted that the studio heads insisted that the monsters have a glowing effect, for which he would serve as a designer. It is the kind of movie that could be done with a bit of foliage and wire on a budget of $125,000, but somehow, when compared to The Blob in audience screenings, that movie tested better and therefore was slotted to be the "A" film on the double feature circuit. It may interest you to know that the movie featured the services of John P. Fulton for its special effects: he did movies that could range from The Invisible Man Returns (1940) to Wonder Man (1945) to The Ten Commandments (1956) (in total he was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won three times). This was the second and last horror film Fowler Jr made (he mostly made crime dramas, although he spent far more time as an editor), as you might remember he directed I Was a Teenage Werewolf the previous year. I don't understand the hubbub that arose about the title. 1949 had a movie called I Married a Communist, what is so weird about a movie title like this that is wholly accurate? The movie basically seems like a cousin of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (well okay that movie was a bit different, since the invasion involved emotionless copies and plenty of pods whereas this movie has a spaceship...somewhere) so what exactly did one expect, "Husbands From Space" as a title? 

Honestly, I found this to be a curious little movie to see play out in paranoia but also in tragedy, since you could construe it as such depending on who you find to be the true lead. On the one hand, you have a woman who has a sinking realization that the "honeymoon period" really can just evaporate quickly when being with someone because the real guy they fell in love is in a slab somewhere. But, perhaps most importantly on the other hand, you have a movie with a being who is desperate to keep their race alive and in the process of that desperation finds something shocking: the capability to feel love rather than simply trying to breed (there are probably some guys who might treat a woman like they were stock, incidentally). Tryon was a Paramount contract man since 1955, although he mostly was known for television work more than say, his work as a star, and he apparently was not too keen on starring in this film. Years later, he became a horror/mystery writer with works such as The Other (1971).* You could contend that his performance is a bit wooden (Fowler discussed that assessment, for example), but I would argue that seems to fit the movie to a T if you really get down to it: this is a person who goes around at strange times to meet people rather than be around his wife. Sure, the one scene he has before being taken by the beings (as represented in a composite shot) probably doesn't help this argument, but most of the time you are watching someone that is slowly less inhibited by who they are. It works well with Talbott in that awkward sense of tension and paranoia, because who among us hasn't had a sinking feeling that the people you know are just a bit too strange today? The 78-minute runtime is fairly adept at getting to the point of having one get growing paranoia as the tension becomes more and more clear not only of a burgeoning invasion but of what could happen to folks having to be human longer and longer. There is a body count, with probably one of the odder deaths in quite a while coming from someone looking at a doll in a window before getting spooked to kill some scared passerby. The ending wraps everything up a bit conveniently (the woman who helped spur a posse of new fathers is told to go back home, but the big enemy of the aliens is dogs ripping out tubes), but at least it leaves folks to pause with the fact that a bunch of sexless dudes had been living in town for months. In that sense, what you have is a fairly honest and interesting movie, far better than just being the "B" side of a double feature and worth actual consideration of your time, having a few decent visuals for the time to go with a monster that is far more interesting than what you might expect in perspective for a worthwhile time.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

*Tryon died in 1991 as a result of stomach cancer, although he apparently had HIV at the time he died, per the executor of his estate, who disagreed with Tyron's partner about being quiet about the HIV part.

October begins. We'll try to have plenty of interesting horror films all throughout the month that has one hell of time for Halloween night and, well, Halloween The Week After: Year VII.