This review originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2003.
...after all these years, Young Sherlock Holmes is still a good bit of entertainment. Produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Barry Levinson (Bugsy [review], Wag the Dog) from a screenplay by Chris Columbus (who went on to direct the worst of the Harry Potter franchise [review]), this is the kind of adventure romp for all ages that Spielberg was regularly producing throughout the 1980s. Young Sherlock Holmes came out in 1985, a year after his own Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and in a way, this is like the more cerebral version of that film: less gore, more mystery, and a loving wink to the literature of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle rather than pulp serials.
In this gentle reimagining of the story of Holmes and Watson's first meeting, the future detective is played by Nicholas Rowe (at the time of this writing seen as Rivesh Mantilax on Dr. Who). He meets the nervous and portly Watson (Alan Cox) when the boy comes to his boarding school. They quickly bond, and the relationship dynamic of forward-thinking adventurer and his bumbling pal is established immediately. Holmes is a bit of a misfit at the school, beloved by some teachers, annoying others, and finding jealous rivals amongst the students. An eccentric old professor (Nigel Stock) who keeps trying to build a flying machine is his mentor, and that professor's niece, Elizabeth (Sophie Ward), is the sleuth's sweetheart.
When the kooky professor ends up dead, Holmes realizes that this is one of a string of murders. The local police chief, a fellow named Lestrade (Roger Ashton-Griffiths), doesn't buy the boy's crackpot theories, and a school prank has gotten Holmes expelled. So, he must work in secret with Watson and Sophie, looking for the connection between the deceased and searching for the source of the poisoned thorns that have caused them all to hallucinate their way into a nasty demise.
The hallucination sequences are some of the more famous from Young Sherlock Holmes, alongside Levinson's homage to his producer, when Holmes and Watson pilot the rickety flying machine past the moon. Most of the delirium is shown as stop-motion animation, and though less smooth than we might be used to today, the old-school quality makes it kind of neat. One could even argue that since they are the delusions of dying men, they need not look real, the way dreams often don't look real. One absolutely stunning effect, though, is a knight who steps out of a stained-glass window. This is credited as the first-ever completely CGI effect in a motion picture, and it was overseen by no less than Pixar-hero John Lasseter while he was still with Industrial, Light and Magic. It's a cool looking creation, and the quality of the achievement extends beyond the historical.
Levinson's direction and Columbus's script are both expertly handled, though at times maybe with too much expertise. Seasoned viewers will be able to spot the technique in both men's work. Levinson's mis en scene for the suspense sequences is lifted straight out of old Val Lewton creepfests, and the twists and turns of the plot offer very little that is surprising. Still, it's the kind of stuff that has worked for decades for a reason, and it's no less effective here. Younger viewers who aren't as familiar with storytelling devices will be totally enraptured. Rowe provides them with a stalwart, intellectual hero they can wish they could be, Cox gives them a sidekick they can identify with, and well, it's hard to imagine a teenage boy not getting a crush on a cutie like Sophie Ward. I know when I was 13 I wanted to hop in the flying peddle-bike and carry her off to our own adventures. Kudos, as well, for the filmmakers not pulling any punches with the ending. There are some dark things here, but ones that make sense in the context of making Sherlock Holmes the man he will become.
Or simply the easiest? The narrowest path Is always the holiest So walk on barefoot for me Suffer some misery If you want my love”
- Martin L. Gore, “Judas”
It’s kind of nuts how well that opening verse from Depeche Mode’s 1993 album track “Judas” so fits what is going on with director Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past) and producer Val Lewton’s 1942 black-and-white horror film Cat People. It’s not just thematically accurate, but it’s also descriptive of the aesthetic technique. Cat People is about as unfussy a film as there has ever been. It’s the perfect example of how a filmmaker can effectively stoke the audience imagination by showing less, rather than more.
But it all starts with a script, and DeWitt Bodeen’s screenplay is itself spare. There isn’t much plot here. A young man meets a young woman at the zoo, and a romance is ignited. Oliver (Kent Smith) is intrigued by the pretty lass who is sketching cats outside the panther cage. Played by French movie star Simone Simon (La bête humaine [review], La ronde [review]), Irena is a strange girl, a Serbian immigrant who clings to folklore from the old country. Specifically, that once upon a time her people were vanquished by a righteous King, and those who escaped his wrath scattered across the world, their wickedness taking feline form. Even after they are married, Irena keeps Oliver at arm’s length, believing should they so much as kiss, she will transform into a leopard and tear her husband apart.
At first Oliver indulges these fantasies, but once he starts to worry she is taking these fables too seriously, he connects Irena with Dr. Judd (Tom Conway), who doesn’t believe these supernatural tales, but may not be on the up-and-up, either. And adding to this love quadrangle is Oliver’s co-worker Alice (Jane Randolph), that annoying sort of do-gooder who tamps down her own desires to make sure that the man she wants does what is right. Too bad she didn’t figure for the complicated, sociopathic emotional range of a jealous kitten.
Much of Cat People smolders slowly. In the early stages of their union, Irena’s wild stories don’t carry much threat. That’s because Tourneur withholds anything that would concretely suggest her claims are more than delusion. He ties the revelations of Irena’s truth to her jealousy. The more heated she gets about Alice, the closer we get to seeing her claws come out. In many ways, this little monster movie is a modern stalker story, the good guy unable to shake the troubled woman, and she strikes out at the one who would replace her.
Yet, that in itself is maybe too simple a reading. For as little as goes on above the surface, plenty can be gleaned from what lies underneath. Bubbling through all of this is a commentary on puritanical values, and particularly how they affect young women. Irena’s fear of her own sexuality is only warranted if her beliefs turn out to be true, but she has good reason to be scared of the masculine sex, and her fighting back against Dr. Judd is inarguably a justified defense. Here is a man in a position of trust who betrays the social contract. In the #metoo era, many might also gravitate to the fact that Irena is not believed, and that prevents her from finding a less deadly solution or obtaining real help. Wrapped up in all this, we can see a certain xenophobia, as well: Irena is different, and perhaps if she had embraced a more modern American lifestyle and been more like Alice, she’d be more comfortable in her own skin. Which is somewhat contrary to the beliefs of the time, but Hollywood was always progressive in its morals.
Good horror should be malleable in this way and stay relevant to contemporary issues, but I suspect Tourneur and Lewton were less high-minded than all that. Their primary focus was more likely just to scare filmgoers, and they seized upon relatable primal urges to create a vehicle for that. Most of the frights here are more unnerving than terrifying--though there is one pretty good jump scare, where the orchestra provides a screechy sound effect when the bus pulls in to pick up a nervous Alice*--but that’s okay. Tourneur is experimenting with the horror of the things that exist just beyond the reach of our senses--the things we can’t see, but think we do; the things we aren’t sure we hear. One of the most effective scenes is when Judd gets his comeuppance. Irena’s transformation happens entirely off-screen, but the doctor’s reaction tells us all we need to know--even if once again we only think we know what he is seeing. The tussle itself appears merely as shadows cast on walls, including one with a mural of a menacing panther (lest we forget, Irena is a cat!). We hear more than we see. Same with the earlier scene when Alice is at the pool. The echoes of her screams are more chilling than anything that might jump into the water with her.
It’s underkill, not overkill. It’s simplicity. Compare how light on its feet this Cat People is to Paul Schrader’s overdone, moronic 1980s remake for a quick object lesson in why less is more.
Or skip Schrader altogether and go with something more akin to a middle ground: the 1944 “sequel” The Curse of the Cat People, recently re-released on Blu-ray by Kino. In terms of follow-ups, Curse is in the vein of The Bride of Frankenstein for how it expands on the original and becomes its own weird thing. We can chalk some of that up to the movie originally being intended as a stand-alone feature with no connection to Cat People at all. It only morphed into a second entry in a series when Cat People became so successful.
Pretty much everyone except Tourneur returns for The Curse of the Cat People. Gunther V. Fritsch originally took charge of the director’s chair but himself was replaced by Robert Wise (The Day the Earth Stood Still, West Side Story). The new story features Jane and Oliver as the concerned parents of a young daughter, Amy (Ann Carter), who lives more in her imagination than she does in the real world. There is further cause for worry when Amy befriends the disturbed neighborhood dowager (Julia Dean) and starts talking to an imaginary friend that just so happens to be Irena.
The “cat” aspect of Cat People is completely dropped for this realm of gothic childhood fantasy, but that doesn’t make The Curse of the Cat People any less compelling. The dilemma of a child who is at odds with the world around her being put into peril by both her fantastical indulgences and the adults who won’t believe her has an inherent tension that will keep you guessing what will happen, while also hoping it won’t all go wrong. Fritsch and Gunther have a more up-front style--does Elizabeth Russell chasing Amy up the staircase remind anyone else of Kathleen Byron coming unhinged in Black Narcissus [review]?--but that works here. This time, what is “unseen” is actually witnessed by the little girl, casting the doubters in a whole different light.
Criterion’s edition of Cat People features a great cover and interior poster by influential comics artist Bill Sienkiewicz. Fans of the TV show Legion tangentially know his work as he originally created the character with Chris Claremont. And their legendary run on the New Mutants comic series is an inspiration for the movie that should be out sometime in the next year or so. Sienkiewicz’s work changed how artists approached a comic book page, combining painting and digital in fascinating ways. Look for his Elektra: Assassin graphic novel with Frank Miller, his own Stay Toasters, or if you can find it, his Classics Illustrated version of Moby Dick.
* This effect of a scare coming from the arrival of an otherwise mundane object is known as a “Lewton bus,” and perhaps the most perfect use of it was in the episode of The Simpsons where the Psycho theme is being played by an orchestra riding public transport.
Val Lewton started off as a pulp novelist before being hired by David O. Selznick to work as part of his production team. RKO eventually snatched him away to try to revive the studio after the Citizen Kane fiasco of 1941, and Lewton created a roster of efficient craftsmen to start cranking out B-movies for the studio. The result was some classics of the genre, famous for their sense of invention. Lewton had to work quickly and with little money, so he developed a style that used economy to its advantage. The stories were tight, usually preying on the imagination of the audience by keeping much of the macabre violence offscreen. Lewton realized it was better to make you create your own impression of the horrible things that happened, to make you a part of the experience, flying directly in the face of the Universal monster fests that had been on top of the horror heap for quite some time.
Mark Robson, a former editor who collaborated with Lewton, directed Boris Karloff in 1946's Bedlam, the second film the pair made together, and it has a similar center to their first team-up, Isle of the Dead: a malignant force trapping people in one place to serve his own ends. In this case, however, Karloff’s apothecary, Master George Sims, doesn’t see any greater good the way Isle's General Pherides becomes misguided in trying to preserve his army. Sims is only trying to preserve himself and maintain his position as the head of the infamous 19th-century mental hospital.
Based on engravings by William Hogarth, Bedlam is gruesome and macabre. It’s not a traditional spookified frightfest, but instead uses its medical setting and the sociological conditions for a little psychological horror, playing on a rather common fear: being wrongfully committed to the madhouse. When Sims locks up Nell Bowen (Anna Lee) for opposing his cruel tactics, it can stand in for the anxiety any of us would feel in a situation we can’t escape from. It’s survival against malicious forces beyond our control. Ultimately, Bowen’s kindness does exactly what Sims fears: the lunatics take over the asylum.
Jacques Tourneur’s 1943 film I Walked With a Zombie is easily a standout of the genre that takes us to the West Indies where voodoo is alive...and so are the dead!
Tourneur creates a gorgeous setting for the story: the tropical estate of the Holland family, long-time exploiters of the island people. Amidst the lush foliage is a statue of Saint Sebastian, the namesake for the island, pierced with arrows, his body arched in pain. When the rain falls over its torso, the statue appears to bleed. Frances Dee plays Betsy Connell, a nurse hired to come to the island and care for the catatonic wife of Paul Holland (Tom Conway). No one is exactly sure what happened to the woman. One explanation is she caught a tropical fever that wiped out her mind, and another--one popularized in a local song--says that when Paul found her canoodling with his half-brother, he persecuted her into insanity. The locals that make up the servant class on the Holland estate believe something different, that she is no longer alive at all. She is the living dead!
I Walked With a Zombie works along many parallel lines. In one sense, it is an indictment of imperialism, decrying the wounded state of the oppressed people. The citizens of Saint Sebastian were brought over on slave ships, and they are so distraught over their non-lives, they cry when a baby is born and laugh with relief when one of their number dies. Their state of living decay is beginning to affect the Hollands, and the family is falling apart. The dominance of the now indigenous culture is also a victory over the oppressors’ science. Mrs. Rand (Edith Barrett), the Holland matriarch, is a doctor, and she has invaded the voodoo ceremonies to sneak a little medicine into suspicion. Yet, there is nothing she can do for her daughter-in-law, and as the voodoo priests call the zombie out into the sugar fields, she begins to believe there is something beyond what she can understand or control.
The mixture of science and magic holds very real consequences that are analogous of the ways we interact with each other. The infidelity of the Holland family has destroyed their grasp on their opulent life. Only Betsy’s goodness pulls Paul out of the abyss. The same cannot be said for his brother. Unable to let go of the feelings he has for the zombie woman, he ultimately meets a dire end, finding the relief in death that the islanders have promised. Fittingly, he and his absent lover are chased to their doom by the only other zombie in the movie--a towering island man who has come to claim the woman so she can be put amongst his people, where she now belongs.
Tourneur’s direction is lyrical, using the natural surroundings of Saint Sebastian to their full effect. This is a story about nature winning out, after all. Amusingly, the film was based on a tabloid story about a woman’s love affair with a dead man. Lewton was often given very little to start his films with, sometimes just a title. The triumph of I Walked With a Zombie is that of creative men taking small beginnings and making something bigger out of it.
Martin Scorsese has said that film fans that don’t like horror movies can’t be real film fans. Horror films are movies at their most visceral, playing with our bodies and our minds, provoking reactions. In these splatter-filled days of ridiculous curses and unrestrained gore, horror films don’t poke at our imaginations the way these older movies did. In the end, their endurance is evident of the lasting scares they inspire. Even their lack of color gives the viewer something spookier, something culled from the terrors of the night. Pass on the latest remake making a box office grab and go to your local video store for something with a little more power, and then get ready for a scary Halloween.
Well, if there was any prevailing motto for the horror
movies being made at the Japanese studio Shochiku in the 1960s, it was
“anything goes.” Their films were defiant of genre, narrative structure, logic,
and yet embracing of imagination, ambition, and the glee that comes with
throwing caution to the wind.
Two from 1968 nestled in the middle of the WhenHorror Came to Shochiku boxed set, Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell and The Living Skeleton couldn’t be more
different. One is a color sci-fi mash-up that sits right alongside any flying
saucer schlock to be found in an American drive-in; another is a
black-and-white ghost story more in the tradition of Val Lewton. Both narratives
stem from a horrible accident on a travel vessel--a crashing airplane, a
massacre on a boat--but there the similarities end.
Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell was
directed by Hajime Sato. It has many of the hallmarks of a smart B-movie
production in that it makes do with a limited budget by isolating the events.
In this case, a commercial airplane is stranded in the middle of nowhere after
being knocked from the storm-torn sky of an alien invasion. Once the craft is
on the ground, surviving crew and passengers must wait out the storm and each
other’s dwindling patience. Things were tense even before the crash. An
anonymous tip told the crew there was a terrorist bomber on board, and while
the hunt for him didn’t uncover any explosives, it did expose a hijacker (Hideo
Ko) who had smuggled a gun in his luggage. Rather than be detained after the
accident, the bad guy takes the stewardess (Tomomi Sato) hostage. His flight
from justice only leads him to the alien craft, however, and the gelatinous
ooze that has come to Earth looking for a host.
The image would not be out of place in a horror manga. The
hijacker’s face splits open and the alien goo crawls inside. Once possessed,
the hijacker starts hunting down the other passengers, sucking out their life
force like a vampire. One by one, the crew falls, but not before their class
positions and particular sins are exposed. It’s like Kurosawa’s TheLower Depths crossed with Hitchcock’s Lifeboat
[review]. Amongst the passengers are a corrupt politician (Eizo Kitamura), a
feckless arms dealer (Nobuo Kaneko, The Human Condition
[review]), and an American widow (Kathy Horan) grieving for the husband she
lost in the Vietnam War. The original bomber, as it turns out, was only faking,
looking to have some kicks in a world he finds boring, using violence as his
own private stimulus.
There is a fairly clear anti-war message here. The aliens,
it is theorized, have managed to infiltrate humanity because everyone is so
busy fighting each other, they can’t see the threat from beyond the stars.
Thus, the bickering fliers are a microcosm of the macro problem. They can’t agree
on anything, so they all die. Goke seems sadly prescient.
Many of its horrors are relevant to today. Terrorism, privacy, disagreements
about science, birds mysteriously falling from the sky--or, committing suicide,
as it were. It could just as well be our own timeline the plane is hurtling
threw. Albeit, minus the aliens, plastic special effects, and silly plot
machinations. Hopefully our world will be absent the bleak ending, as well.
There is some influence of the French New Wave evident in
how the scenes of war are cut into the sci-fi monster narrative: random flashes
of overexposed violence doused in red flash across the screen at the mere
mention of Vietnam. Actually, that’s another element Goke
has in common with The Living Skeleton. Sketchy memories of
the inciting massacre reappear throughout, just quick splices to remind us of
the bloody horror that set all the later spookiness in motion.
Directed by Hiroshi Matsuno, The Living
Skelton seems more serious minded than the Shochiku films viewed
previously, though with no bigger budget and no better special effects. Hell,
there isn’t really a living skeleton, just a lot of fake skeletons anchored to
the bottom of the ocean. And they look no more real than the bats that serve as
bad omens for the evil men whose greed kicked everything off.
In the opening scenes, a gang of opportunistic pirates
attack a sailing vessel and kill everyone on board. Jump ahead three years
later, and Saeko (Kikko Matsuoka), the twin sister of one of the murdered,
accidentally stumbles on the ship’s ghostly wreckage while scuba diving. She
communicates with her lost twin through whatever dimension separates the living
from the dead and learns all about the crime. Now having seen the faces of the
men responsible, the surviving girl starts posing as the ghost of her sibling,
scaring the crooks into their own untimely deaths.
Though essentially a ghost story, its criminal underworld
setting adds a touch of noir to The Living Skeleton before
eventually careening off into mad scientist territory and even a little
tragedy. There are also Christian overtones throughout. The living twin spends
much of her time at church commiserating with the priest (Masumi Okada,
Crazed Fruit). And, of course, the chaste Saeko only finds
the underwater skeletons after having sex with her boyfriend (Yasunori Irikawa,
Samurai Spy). Some tropes don’t just transcend genre, but
international borders.
The Living Skeleton doesn’t ever really
get scary, though credit to cinematographer Masayuki Kato for getting the look
just right. The moody photography creates an otherworldly atmosphere. Like the
rocky terrain of Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell), the foggy
seaside of The Living Skeleton could be everywhere and
nowhere. It is of no real origin, of no real time. Kato and Matsuno get
inventive with some of the underwater shots, placing the characters in a kind
of netherworld. It could be under the ocean, or it could be outer space, or
perhaps this is just where we go when we die.
Which, again, sort of encapsulates what is going on in the
When Horror Came to Shochiku set. Whether from above or
below, from within or without, the threats are indescribable, boundless, and
ultimately deadly. Yet, even with the body count, they’re also grand fun.
Author of prose novels and comic books like Cut My Hair, It Girl & the Atomics, You Have Killed Me, and 12 Reasons Why I Love Her. Jamie's most recent novel is the serialized book Bobby Pins and Mary Janes, and his most recent graphic novels are the sci-fi romance A Boy and a Girl with Natalie Nourigat; Madame Frankenstein with Megan Levens; and the weird crime comic Archer Coe & the Thousand Natural Shocks with Dan Christensen.
