Let's Scare Jessica to Death.

Review #2456: Let's Scare Jessica to Death.

Cast: 

Zohra Lampert (Jessica), Barton Heyman (Duncan), Kevin O'Connor (Woody), Gretchen Corbett (The Girl), Alan Manson (Sam Dorker), Mariclare Costello (Emily) Directed by John D. Hancock.

Review: 

"Well, I don’t want to make a parody, I’d like to make a genuinely scary movie. If you let me rewrite this, I’ll do it.’ And they did, and I rewrote it, and changed it 80 or 90 percent. ... I grew up on a fruit farm on weekends, so that’s the first thing I did was set it on a fruit farm, and that really got my juices going,"

In fairness, the title did stick out to me for quite a few months. Apparently, the original script for this film by Lee Kalcheim was different from the finished version, as evidenced by the title he put on it: "It Drinks Hippie Blood". When John D. Hancock was approached about being involved, he insisted on re-writing the screenplay that retained the slightest of elements (such as the mute girl) while taking influence from the classic novella The Turn of the Screw alongside The Haunting (1963) to go along with childhood memories of his father (who was a sprayer) and other things. This was the feature film debut for Hancock, who had started directing on Off-Broadway in the late 1960s before getting into film with the Academy Award-nominated short subject "Sticky My Fingers, Fleet My Feet", which caught the eye of certain people that happened to own a chain of theaters and needed someone to direct a script they had. The movie was made without a distributor in mind but Paramount Pictures bought it. Studio executive Frank Yablans was the one who gave the movie its final title, as the working title was apparently just "Jessica". They apparently went with a marketing campaign all about vampires and promo ideas such as write-in contests, ticket giveaways for hearse drivers, you get the idea. Apparently, Rod Serling and Stephen King were big proponents of the film. Hancock followed this film up with likely his most known film in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) and has directed a couple of movies* to go alongside theater-work in the years that followed.

I guess you can get with the movie on a level of allowing its strange charms to flow over you in ambiguity, particularly since calling it a vampire movie isn't really that fair when it comes to its varying levels of logic. Then I sigh, smirk at that title having seen the movie, and try my damndest to justify the fact that this is a really average movie to sit through. It is entirely possibly one could be unsettled by the events that occur with the movie, what with a strange drifter and an odd town that seems to not like new visitors that challenge the status quo. For me, since one knows there is something lurking in town (namely someone who decides to not kick out a drifter at first sight - hippie foolishness or just being nice - you decide), it only gets interesting when it actually shows something beyond mental unraveling, mainly because the only interesting performance is with Lampert. Of course, maybe it says something about my patience with supposed ambiguity, because I go with something being real from the jump. But Lampert does make an effective performance in vulnerability that might be relatable for those with lingering passions and doubts about who they are back in the world of the supposed stable people. Her doubts do spring sympathy because we care about who she is more than any of the other people in such a casual movie, particularly since the real threat is not too far removed from say, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). At any rate, there are a few interesting visuals to speak of, whether that involves a certain sequence with surprise or one that is more just odd to see with a glimpse at the townspeople. I just wish by the time it was over at 89 minutes that it had a bit more to its ending beyond what you get, which might as well be the equivalent of wondering if you pressed pause on the remote. As a whole, Let's Scare Jessica to Death is a low-key type of horror movie that may or may not find ways to unnerve you based on how you approach a movie that plays its tension to a string of unnerving casualness that may be fit for your timing.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*You also might remember he was the one who supervised the ADR sessions for Wolfen (1981).

Splendor in the Grass.

Review #1406: Splendor in the Grass.

Cast: 
Natalie Wood (Wilma Dean "Deanie" Loomis), Warren Beatty (Bud Stamper), Pat Hingle (Ace Stamper), Audrey Christie (Mrs. Loomis), Barbara Loden (Virginia "Ginny" Stamper), Zohra Lampert (Angelina), Fred Stewart (Del Loomis), Joanna Roos (Mrs. Stamper), John McGovern (Doc Smiley), Jan Norris (Juanita Howard), and Martine Bartlett (Miss Metcalf) Directed by Elia Kazan (#104 - East of Eden, #109 - A Streetcar Named Desire, and #110 - On the Waterfront, and #1375 - Panic in the Streets)

Review: 
“I was very lucky to do the first movie that I ever did with Kazan, who really was not only a great director, he was a very, very smart producer,”

The 1960s had plenty of interesting directors and stars to accompany films that found themselves on the center of cultural changes with plenty of distinctive stars of stature and range to go alongside old and new directors to lead them forward. By this point in time, Elia Kazan had directed thirteen films in his career, with most of his success coming in the 1950s (eight of his eighteen films were in this decade), and controversy had surrounded his decision to testify during the Hollywood blacklisting that he felt was "only the more tolerable of two alternatives that were either way painful and wrong" (his decision, one I feel was the correct one, was a fiercely debated one for decades, where even being awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 1999 still inspired sour grapes refusal to applaud from certain circles). Regardless of this decision, it should not be denied that Kazan has a lasting effect as a director that extends to the actors that he directed onto the screen over the decades, which extends to the main stars here in Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood. In the case of Beatty, he had developed a love for films from an early age while watching them (such as The Philadelphia Story and Love Affair) with his sister Shirley, with Warren following in her footsteps to become an actor. He learned his craft from famed coach of acting Stella Adler, with his first few jobs being in television (most notably The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis) and one (and only) turn in the theater with A Loss of Roses (1959). Beatty, described by Kazan as having energy, intelligence and more "chutzpah" than anyone else. He was the first of numerous directors that Beatty sought to learn from, though it did not come without disagreement, such as when he snapped at Kazan once about him naming names, which he later described as an arrogant and stupid challenge. In the course of over half a century, Beatty honed his craft into beyond acting, soon founding his own production company and eventually turning to directing as well. Wood had her own path to acting, led by her ambitious mother that led to a debut in a bit part in film at the age of 4. Her debut came three years later with Tomorrow Is Forever (1946), where Orson Welles described her as "so good, she was terrifying". She would do a string of child films before transitioning into teenage rebel roles and television, and Kazan found a "desperate twinkle in her eyes" behind her well-mannered front that would serve her well in retaining herself as a presence to behold.

The film was written by William Inge, playwright and novelist behind works such as Picnic and Bus Stop who had based it off his upbringing in Kansas, which led to an Academy Award for his work on the film. When it comes to heartbreak and romantic repression, one can't really go wrong with a film like this. Anybody else other than Kazan would have made this 124 minute tale run shorter or seem less realistic with trying to soften the film's strike of melodrama and honesty. Wood makes a capable main focus, one with plenty of doubt and frustration that boils to the surface with such honest expressiveness, whether that means dealing with some form of love or with others. Beatty makes for a great debut with confidence in playing the other side of the coin in a tragedy of youth, exhausted at the expectations one must bear from their parents in what to do and who to do what with. The final sequence with them at the farmhouse is especially well-done, perfectly sealing up the pathos of what it means to have loved and lost one's innocence along the way, where time overrides all things, perhaps even happiness in some way, which makes for a somewhat depressing but fair experience.

Kazan sure picked two well counterparts to counter Wood and Beatty in Hingle and Christie. Hingle (a Weslaco High School and University of Texas graduate in radio) had met Kazan years earlier at the Actors' Studio and had done a few productions for Kazan and Inge before a 1959 freak accident involving him being stuck in a lift that led to him losing his balance in crawling out and falling over 50 feet; he fractured many parts of his left side, including a broken leg and losing a finger while having a noticeable limp. He is tremendously entertaining here with composed dominance on a family and business level, a rough but fascinating performance to match up with his on-screen son in Beatty, such as when he speaks for so long and with such spirit that Beatty can't even get in a word of reluctance on him. Although Christie did not have as prolific a career as the other main three did, she cultivated a career in Broadway alongside television spots after taking class and being on vaudeville at the age of 15. She makes for an effective strict performance to go for the grain to reflect the times of authority that doesn't seem outdated or a caricature then as now. The others (who make up a film as twentysomethings trying to play teenagers to make it look less distracting that Wood and Beatty also look a bit too old to be teens) fill the film well in making a heartland tale of heartbreak come across with fair conviction that still finds relevance after over five decades because of how it speaks to us still about expectation and reality in terms of adolescents and beyond.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.