Fay Wray was born on 15 September 1907. She lived long enough to meet Naomi Watts who played Ann in King Kong (2005). But she died (at the age of 96) before they started shooting.

I’m not a huge fan of King Kong. To me, it’s a lot like Citizen Kane: important and ground-breaking, but not something I want to experience anymore. So I don’t even associate Fay Wray with it. I think of Doctor X and The Most Dangerous Game. But she starred in a lot of films. She started working during the silent era. But her career took off in the early days of sound film when they still made films fast.

Through the very early 1930s, Wray was under contract with Paramount. Two films (one silent, one sound) that she starred in with Gary Cooper are lost, which is hard to believe. She was rarely the lead actor in films of this era. In fact, she was often not even the top female actor. But she always had meaty roles.

I know her for her post-Paramount period. But it isn’t clear to me how she managed to avoid the studio system. She was working for different studios. For example:

• 3 August 1932: Doctor X (Warner Bros)
• 16 September 1932: The Most Dangerous Game (RKO Radio Pictures)
• 18 February 1933: Mystery of the Wax Museum (Warner Bros)
• 7 April 1933: King Kong (RKO Radio Pictures)

This was the period where she made her most memorable films. Of course, she gets two homages in 1975’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show with the songs “Midnight Double Feature Picture Show” and “Don’t Dream It.”

Fay Wray has a notable (but not starring) role in Mystery of the Wax Museum. And since it is one of my favorite films — combining His Girl Friday with House of Wax — I figured we would watch it today. Note that it is one of the few films to use two-color Technicolor so it looks weird to us today.

---

Fay Wray publicity photo via Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.

Sam Neill is 78 years old today. He was born on 14 September 1947. He was born in Northern Ireland. But people say he’s from New Zealand since his family moved there when he was seven.

To me, New Zealand is a land of mystery. How do so many amazing filmmakers come from such a small country?! Of course, I think the same of Canada. The United States is so big it destroys the will of most artists. That’s my theory anyway.

Sam Neill is a great actor. And he’s been in a ton of films — most of which are worth watching. But I love him for two films — one psychotronic and one, well, I’m not sure.

I’ve come to think of psychotronic as being about how you watch a film, not what you watch. It’s about open-mindedness. It’s about not listening to critics. And most of all, it’s about enjoyment. We do not make excuses for enjoying Now You See Him, Now You Don’t!

But what are we to do about films we love that happen to also be simply outstanding? Specifically, what are we to do with Dean Spanley? It’s a period comedy. The cast is outstanding with veterans in even the small roles. And the production couldn’t be better.

On the other hand, it’s about a clergyman who thinks he was a dog in a past life. What’s more, it’s written by Alan Sharp, who I think of as a genre writer with films like Night Moves and The Osterman Weekend. Regardless, I highly recommend everyone watch it. And here’s the whole film:

The other Sam Neill film is absolutely psychotronic: In the Mouth of Madness. I really don’t understand why this film isn’t more widely loved. Critical opinion is sharply divided into (1) critics who love it; and (2) critics who don’t understand it. Not that there’s much to understand. But most critics lean heavily on the dull side of the spectrum.

It and Re-Animator are probably the best filmed versions of Lovecraft. I think it is because neither takes the source material all that seriously. Lovecraft’s world fits nicely in the context of the last few thousand years of mythology. But like that mythology, it isn’t terribly believable. Few today would see gods in such concrete form. So its better if filmmakers have their tongues in their cheeks.

Sam Neill is great in the film. And the whole thing is a delight.

---

Image cropped from Neill at Burghound Asia in Singapore in 2011 by David Seow under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker hit American TVs on 13 September 1974. I was there from beginning to end. When I went to Universal Studios with my family in the summer of 1975, I asked a worker there if the show would return. And he told me ABC canceled it. It crushed me.

My love of horror goes way back. I used to watch Creature Features with my older brother and sister every Saturday. You could say I’ve modeled my life on Bob Wilkins. I had nightmares for years based on The Last Man on Earth. And I remember vomiting because of Bride of Frankenstein. (Of course, it could have been the ice cream too!)

Kolchak: The Night Stalker was not something new to me. When it premiere, I had watched the original TV movie, The Night Stalker. In fact, I thought the show was called “The Night Stalker” until I bought the box set as an adult.

At the time, I liked the TV series better than the movies. I liked that it removed the romantic subplots, which didn’t resonate at all with my 10-year-old brain. When I watch it now, I find the show less compelling because of Kolchak’s disinterest in everything but the latest story. But it’s still awesome!

Unfortunately, there was one problem with the show that doomed it. You can’t have a different monster every week. And the Night Stalker reboot didn’t address the problem at all. It just made the whole idea stupid. The show should feature a single monster every season. It’s obvious how to do it. Imagine breaking the two films up into a dozen episodes. No problem! It would have been brilliant. But I suspect it still would have failed. People just aren’t that into horror. Unless they are like me, and they are way too into horror.

Only 20 episodes of the show were made. Every episode is available online. You must first watch The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler. And here are the titles of all the shows (you should be able to find them online):

1. The Ripper
2. The Zombie
3. They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be…
4. The Vampire
5. The Werewolf
6. Firefall
7. The Devil’s Platform
8. Bad Medicine
9. The Spanish Moss Murders
10. The Energy Eater
11. Horror in the Heights
12. Mr RING
13. Primal Scream
14. The Trevi Collection
15. Chopper
16. Demon in Lace
17. Legacy of Terror
18. The Knightly Murders
19. The Youth Killer
20. The Sentry

Here is the whole series. But it gets taken down all the time.

---

Kolchak: The Night Stalker image via IMDB under Fair Use.

Joe Pantoliano turns 74 years old today. It’s kind of hard to believe. But he was born on 12 September 1951.

He’s the kind of guy who seems to be in everything. But he isn’t. He works a lot — but no more than you would expect from a character actor of his level.

He’s probably best known for the part of Cypher in The Matrix. He’s the rat who turns on his friends. And I certainly disagree with his behavior. But even at the time I thought he made a lot of sense. For one thing, Morpheus did lie to him (and the others). He said, “Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.”

Really?! I think he could have told everyone. But he didn’t! And I believe he didn’t because most people would not leave the Matrix to eat goop and risk death for unclear reasons. And if you see it in this light, you better understand why everyone other than Tank seems to be sleepwalking through the film. (BTW: the biggest problem with the sequels is that they lost Marcus Chong; his appearance makes the parade of unknown and most uninteresting characters fatal.)

But as I said, Pantoliano has been in a lot of stuff. He’s a known face that pops up in random films. And he’s always welcome as he is in Daredevil (2003), where he’s the most interesting thing.

But today, I want to highlight Memento. It’s a good film with a clever plot. And Joe Pantoliano really grounds it.

---

Image by Justin Hoch under CC BY 2.0.

Kristy McNichol is 63 years old today. She was born on 11 September 1962.

I know her from the ABC drama, Family. I loved that show even though I was very young. And it wasn’t just because I had a crush on McNichol. (I found out years later that she was a lesbian. This was not a surprise. The vast majority of the women I have crushes on turn out to be lesbians. I’m not sure what that says about me. If you have any thoughts, please keep them to yourselves!)

But today, Kristy McNichol is important to me for one thing. She starred in one of Samuel Fuller’s last, and best films, White Dog. It’s a remarkable film even apart from its politics. But it is a Fuller film, so it definitely has politics. And those politics are dark. It’s anti-racist. But it also makes the argument that once society creates a bigot, there is no cure.

McNichol plays Julie, a young actor. She hits a dog with her car, saves it, and adopts it. But she learns that the White Shepherd has been tried to attack Black people. So she hires some people to cure the dog.

Curtis Hanson (director of LA Confidential) wrote the original screenplay based on Romain Gary’s novel. Samuel Fuller then changed the screenplay to make the dog trainer a positive character and to provide the dark ending. Various Black organizations criticized the idea of the film and Paramount pulled the film from distribution in the US.

As a result, few people have seen the film. And they should! Samuel Fuller is one of the best film directors of the 20th century. But most viewers don’t know more than Shock Corridor. Psychotronic fans should really check him out because he made great genre films with far more skill than most.

Oh, and happy birthday, Kristy McNichol!

---

Kristy McNichol via Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.

Edmond O’Brien was born on 10 September 1915. Sadly, he died at 69 years old from Alzheimer’s disease.

For most of my life, Edmond O’Brien was some B-movie actor who starred in DOA. Shows what I know! He won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award and Golden Globe for The Barefoot Contessa. These institutions nominated him again 10 years later for Seven Days in May. But he didn’t win either this time.

All that said, O’Brien is still what I consider a psychotronic actor. He was in a ton of films that psychotronic fans will like. In addition to DOA, he was in the noir films The Killers (1946), A Double Life (1947), and White Heat (1949). He also had notable roles in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Fantastic Voyage (1966), and The Wild Bunch (1969). And he played Winston Smith in 1984 (1956).

For me, Edmond O’Brien is most notable for his role in another noir classic, The Hitch-Hiker. I wrote in my capsule review of the film, “The film is ultimately about how good people respond to evil… I find it a much more compelling rendering of evil than No Country for Old Men.” That’s high praise although maybe not as high as it seems given that I consider No Country interesting but overrated.

Here is a solid print of The Hitch-Hiker from Archive. Watch it as a tribute to Edmond O’Brien. You won’t regret it!

---

Edmond O’Brien via Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.

Dead of Night premiered in London on 9 September 1945.

It is an early horror anthology film. Sadly, critics don’t give these films the credit they deserve. They claim the film isn’t great because one or more of the shorts wasn’t great. As though every minute of an excellent traditional feature is great!

But this works to the advantage of Dead of Night. That’s because of the final short, “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy.” Critics consider it the best ventriloquist dummy film ever made. I don’t necessarily agree. But I don’t exactly disagree either!

Today, critics almost universally love the film. But that was largely true before. Psychotronic icon Michael Weldon loved it. But so did pretentious British critic Leslie Halliwell. He gave it four stars — on a scale where the vast majority of films got zero stars.

The one short that doesn’t work especially with most viewers is one about golf. According to the documentary Remembering Dead of Night, the US distributor removed this sequence from the film. Not because it was weak; because it was scandalous. It seems to endorse polyamory — and maybe even homosexuality.

What is probably best about Dead of Night is that the frame for the shorts works really well. Usually when this is done, the thread is very thin and we finally learn that everyone is in hell. (Okay, that’s an overstatement!)

If you haven’t seen it, you must. And here is a very good print with the correct aspect ratio from Archive:

---

Dead of Night (1945) poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use.

New World Pictures released Battle Beyond the Stars on 8 September 1980.

It’s a fun movie. It is basically Star Wars but without taking itself even that seriously.

The film had last than one-fifth the budget that Star Wars did. Yet it looks quite good. James Cameron was an important part of the team.

The film is based on Seven Samurai. And when I watched it recently, I tried to relate the warriors in Battle Beyond the Stars with the samurai. But John Sayles didn’t slavishly stick to the original in his screenplay. In fact, it isn’t exactly clear that there are seven warriors.

But let me lay it out for you:

• Kambei Shimada (Takashi Shimura) is the wise leader of the samurai. Shad (Richard Thomas) takes his role in the film. But the Nestor clones (Earl Boen) are Kambei, temperamentally.
• Kikuchiyo (Toshirō Mifune) is clear in Battle. And it is Saint-Exmin (Sybil Danning). Her large breasts are clearly a reference to Kikuchivo’s large (compensating) sword.
• Gorobei Katayama (Yoshio Inaba) is Kambei’s second and as such is represented by Nanelia (Darlanne Fluegel). She also acts as the love interest.
• Shichirōji (Daisuke Katō) is an old friend of Kambei and there really is no good match for him. Cayman (Morgan Woodward) fits the bill as well as any.
• Katsushirō Okamoto (Isao Kimura) is more or less Kambei’s apprentice. There is no good match for him but the closest is Kelvin 1 (Lawrence Steven Meyers) & 2 (Lara Cody) since they are subordinate to Cayman.
• Kyūzō (Seiji Miyaguchi) is almost as clear as Kikuchivo. The character is Gelt (Robert Vaughn). They just added a criminal back-story to the character.
• Heihachi Hayashida (Minoru Chiaki) is the most personable (High emotional IQ!) character. Space Cowboy clearly fits this.

I’ve now correlated the characters in two movies that almost no one has seen! But you can knock one off your list now! Here is a good print of Battle Beyond the Stars from Archive:

---

Battle Beyond the Stars poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use.

Dario Argento was born on 7 September 1940. So he turns 85 years old today.

I’m a big fan of his work. He makes really interesting films at the same time that he is a craftsman. That’s a rare combination! But I don’t get too excited about him. That’s not his fault. Too many cinephiles see him as an art director. So when most people tell me they like his work, I assume it is for all the wrong reasons. (Note: “wrong reasons” equals “not my reasons.”)

Dario Argento started as a screenwriter. He even got story credit on Once Upon a Time in the West. He directed his first film in 1970, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. It’s a remarkable film regardless. But for a first film? It’s a miracle.

Like many horror directors, Argento has a trilogy that isn’t. “Three Mothers” is made up of Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980), and Mother of Tears (2007). All three films are excellent and well worth watching. Suspiria, of course, is a psychotronic essential.

From 1970 through 1990, Lucio Fulci directed 28 films. Argento hasn’t directed that many films in his entire career. And during that time, he directed only eleven. But that does explain why I can’t think of a single unworthy Argento film whereas there are a few of Fulci’s that I wish he hadn’t bothered with.

Having said that, I think you can celebrate Dario Argento’s 85th birthday with any of his films. But let me suggest one of his films you may have missed, Phenomena (1985). I tend to like anything with Jennifer Connelly. I don’t know any young actor who so well projects a sense of generational sadness. And she is fantastic paired with Donald Pleasence. This film is a lot of fun and I think is the ultimate way to say “Happy birthday!”

I’m assuming here that everyone has watched Suspiria. If you haven’t see it, you absolutely must watch it right now!

---

Image cropped from Dario Argento Signign Session by Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz/ under CC BY 2.0.

John Berry was born on 6 September 1917. He was a very successful Hollywood director. Then, in the 1950s, Hollywood blacklisted him — outted by Edward Dmytryk and others.

There are a couple of interesting things about this. First is that Hollywood showed as much backbone then as all our modern elite institutions are showing toward our rush to full fascism.

Second, John Berry joined the Communist Party in the late 1930s because he supported the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. So he wasn’t exactly some political extremist who wanted to overthrow the US government. But this was and is the way that reactionaries on the right always act. The HUAC hearings were every bit as fake as the Stalin show trials.

Luckily, Berry was able to move to France and work in Europe. It’s interesting that Europe didn’t have the freak-out that the US did. It’s also pretty typical. Authoritarianism thrives on fake problems.

In the early 1960s, he returned to the US where he worked in TV for a few years. After that, he made features — some for TV but mostly for wide release.

Probably his least auspicious was The Bad News Bears Go to Japan in 1978. It isn’t as good as the original The Bad News Bears. Reviews at the time weren’t great but they were reasonably positive. But today, it’s so universally hated that all psychotronic fans should rush out to watch it! I think it’s a sweet little film with a lot to like. And here is an acceptable print from OK.RU:

---

The Bad News Bears Go to Japan poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use.