Plane crazy

Plane, Dir.Jean-Francis Richet, 2023, 107 mins, Amazon Prime

Gerard Butler is Gerard Butler in this incredibly daft, if oddly enjoyable, action-thriller. Now, I’m sure Butler can act, and he’s certainly excellent with regards physical acting… and to be fair its not as if he’s asked of much else in something like this… it’s a little like moaning about Liam Neeson in his action films, these guys have found their niche, and are no doubt making a fortune out of it. Good luck to ’em I say, but anyway, Gerard Butler is… well, he’s the same guy in this as he’s been in most any of his films. They just sport different names, separated or widowed, with a kid or two.

In this one he’s Captain  Brodie Torrance, possibly the scruffiest Airline pilot in the fleet, going by his beard (does Butler have not having a shave in his contract for every film?).

On a late, New Years Eve flight his mostly-empty plane has just fourteen passengers (of whom, wouldn’t you know it, two are a handcuffed homicide suspect and his cop handler who’s not going to last long). The flight hasn’t gone far when the plane is struck by lightning in a storm killing the planes avionics- fortunately just before he is forced to ditch the plane in storm-tossed seas Brodie spots an island and managing to somehow reach it with his one dying engine, then spies a convenient big wide (and long) road in the jungle on which he can land the plane. I bet the lottery ticket in his pocket is a winner.

This is where their luck runs out though, because its a lawless island full of armed-to-the-teeth militia rebels who take all the passengers hostage when Brodie is off looking for a phone with homicide-suspect Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter).

No, seriously. Brodie finds a phone in the jungle (no, really, I’m not pulling your leg, he does) and rings his daughter to ask her to tell his bosses he’s landed the plane on an unknown island and to get help, Anyway, after killing a few bad guys who disturb his phone call, Brodie and Louis return to the plane but are horrified to arrive just in time to see the rebels shoot two passengers dead and take the others away as hostages for ransom. Louis is ex-French Foreign Legion and with a surprising moral code for a killer, and Brodie is able to handle himself surprisingly well in a fight too (for an airline pilot) , so the unlikely duo set out to rescue the hostages against the army of bad guys.

I’m not going to moan about the formulaic plot or the coincidences that pile up on each other, the action sequences are well-staged and to be honest, that’s all viewers of this are going to be concerned about. Once the silliness of the flight/lightning strike/landing is done with and it turns into a series of fights in the jungle, its settles down, even if I did choke on my crisps at the daftness when -spoiler alert, but surely who cares?- Brodie gets everyone back onboard the (repaired, with nary a wrench)  plane and then flies them  off the island to safety (another conveniently close island with more pleasant populace). That was plainly some level of plot stupidity too far for me, but hey, its a Gerard Butler movie, these things operate on some other level, like with regards the rebels having military rocket launchers to try shoot the plane down to add more tension.

Grab a few drinks on a lazy Friday night and this is probably worth your time. Certainly better than it possibly has a right to be, its mostly harmless. At least unless it spawns a sequel or two, Gerard Butler has form for inflicting those on us and there’s just this nagging  Die Hard-for -Airline-Pilots thing that worries me….

MacMurray’s a good ‘un? What?

Face of a Fugitive, Dir, Paul Wendkos,  1959, 81 mins, SD

And now for something a little different (well, you can only have so much horror, even in October). Face of a Fugitive is a very interesting western with a not inconsiderable noir flavour to it.  Fred MacMurray stars as Jim Larson, a man who seeks to escape his past by assuming a new identity in the frontier, becoming Ray Kincaid. Unfortunately he finds it increasingly difficult to escape old ghosts and is repeatedly tested to make a choice, ultimately finding himself siding with the same sheriff who is liable to arrest him once his true identity is revealed when the next train pulls into town.

I think the casting of Mac Murray works really well here- ignoring his dark role in Double Indemnity, he is most well-remembered him for his light comedies for Disney, but for me he’s always been the adulterer and corporate bastard Jeff Sheldrake of The Apartment who broke poor Shirley MacLaine’s heart. I fell in love with Billy Wilder’s adult comedy when I was very young so have always had a deep dislike for MacMurray whenever I see him in anything. In Face of A Fugitive he has this odd duality perfectly suited to him in- he looks a safe and respectable guy and yet there’s always this other side to him, a cynicism, the feeling that he could turn tail and show his ‘true’ colours and let everyone down just to save his own skin. Its what makes this film really interesting and the real magic happens when he does indeed do the right thing and it actually feels real, like its earned, rather than just a feel-good copout to suit the plot.

That being said, I was caught off-guard by the surprisingly grim ending (well, grim for Larson, anyway, even if has survived a final showdown) when in the best film noir tradition, the happy ending we might expect is subverted as those old ghosts finally catch up with him. Yes, there’s a suggestion that he might eventually find redemption, but its hinted and not guaranteed.  Always like to see MacMurray/Jeff Sheldrake get his just desserts.

What can I say? I’m a viewer that likes to hold a grudge.

I rather stumbled upon this film, caught at a loose end yesterday afternoon when it just turned up on the telly while I was waiting in for a delivery. These things happen, films suddenly landing in one’s lap as if from nowhere. Funny thing is, I was tempted to switch channels when I saw that MacMurray was in it, but hey, I’m so glad I didn’t. Its a pretty solid western- in fact, my only real gripe with it would be the casting of Alan Baxter as the law-breaking landowner Reed Williams- he doesn’t have the weight and presence to really have menace, always outplayed by James Coburn who plays one of his henchmen and has more threat in his smirk than Baxter does in whole scenes of dialogue ( a fistfight between MacMurray and Baxter gave me flashbacks to Arnie fighting Michael Ironside in Total Recall or Keanu Reeves fighting Michael Nyqvist in the first John Wick‘s anticlimactic finale) .

Clearly what won me over with this western was its noir flavour, particularly that ending – its a great ending- which felt kind of sudden, as they tend to be in 1940s/1950s movies (films seldom stuck around for codas back then) but still felt rather perfect. Pull off a perfect ending, and you’ve got a pretty decent film, no matter whatever other issues it might have getting there.

God’s bullet is a well-intentioned dud

God Is a Bullet, Dir. Nick Cassavetes, 2023, 120 mins , HD

I’m afraid this one was a bit of a misfire, its long and ugly and never really convinces- it just tries too hard, crashing over into overkill. So much so in fact that it almost comes across as a banal parody of a revenge thriller. Legs are blown off, heads are blown off,  the violence isn’t constant like in a John Wick film, but when it arrives its utter carnage and pretty shocking. There’s no subtlety, no middle ground- this is hardcore, life-is-shit-in-this-godless-world nonsense, from a director who is far too obsessed with Mad Max and  The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo movies for his own good (one would be forgiven watching this to assume that America has descended into a Mad Max dystopia already).

The familiar tropes are what inspire the feelings of parody: cop has to save his estranged daughter from a psycho death cult of gun-toting maniacs and needs a Girl With the Dragon Tattoo wannabe to aid him. That’s pretty much the whole movie.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays detective Bob Hightower, whose ex-wife and her husband are brutally murdered by a Death Cult of tattooed psychos who then kidnap  Hightower’s teen daughter Gabi (Chloe Guy). Naturally the ineffectual police department fail to track the gang down and Gabi seems destined for a fate worse than death unless Hightower goes all Liam Neeson and sorts it out himself. Fortunately he is joined by Lisbeth Salander, sorry,  Case (Maika Monroe), who herself was abducted several years ago and indoctrinated into the group but managed to escape. Haunted by her experience and keen to spare Gabi from sharing a similar -or worse- fate, Case takes Hightower to The Ferryman (Jamie Fox), a one-armed tattooist who transforms respectable Hightower into a Mad Max character so that he’ll fit in better in the Lowlife Shitsville she’s going to take him into.

Its certainly earnest. Its shot very well (always a bit ironic how pretty an ugly world can be), has a great cast who try… well, try too hard. Its like everyone is trying too hard. I think it would have worked better with unknowns, maybe- sometimes beautiful Hollywood actors just look a  little daft garbed as abused low-life scumbags.

Upon noticing  Mad Men star January Jones’ name in the credits, I was at a loss for ever even noticing her in the film at all. I began to wonder if she’d been hidden under lots of prosthetics, tattoos and body piercings, but apparently the version of the film here in the UK is 36 minutes shorter than the original version released theatrically in America; that’s a whole chunk of movie with various sub-plots (and entire performances) apparently lost. I doubt that longer version is a cinematic jewel but nonetheless, one has to wonder if there’s really a better movie there, but I doubt many watching the UK version will be engaged enough to try seek it out.

Oh the Horror: The Mist

The Mist, Dir. Fred Frank Darabont, 2007, 126 mins, 4K UHD

The Mist will always be THAT film, the film that some people just cannot bear to rewatch because of THAT ending. Naturally everyone shudders at the nightmare horror of poor Thomas Jane’s character and his solution to his no-win scenario, but I’ll accept that those viewers who have children of their own perhaps feel that horror more intensely than the rest of us. The Mist has an ending that is as purely horrific as that of any film – not all horror films end with cathartic escape/success/survival; but maybe only the bravest see through to such a grim inevitable end. I suppose you could say that The Mist is a horror film with a capital ‘H’. For myself, I can only say that when I first saw the film I found the ending curiously refreshing. Emotionally its a kick in the gut, but intellectually it reminds me of the ending of John Carpenter’s The Thing, curiously perfect, albeit frustrating.

Which is probably the thing I most enjoy (if that’s the word) in The Mist– the flawed protagonist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) who is a decent guy who tries to do the Right Thing but gets things terribly wrong.  There’s something real about that. Usually in films, the ‘hero’ character sees things through, whether it be Ripley escaping from the Nostromo, Stevie Wayne surviving the Fog, or Laurie Strode thwarting Michael Myers. They may be forever changed by their experience but they survive, and while one could argue that David survives the horrors of the titular mist, in a very real sense he doesn’t, having made some bad decisions that have terrible consequences. There’s a truth to that, somehow, horrifying as it is, seeing the protagonist make mistakes, understandable as they may be.

There is also no small measure of fascination in watching the survivors sheltering in the supermarket- rather than banding together to fight the common danger, instead they break apart into disparate groups, turning against one another. As Tobey Jones quips, “As a species we’re fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?”  It is humanity in a nutshell. Its curious how Laurie Holden’s assertation “People are basically good; decent. My god, David, we’re a civilized society” only to later realise how fragile that is, is informed by real-life events during the Covid Pandemic and elsewhere. I think The Mist is one of those films that get better with age… if you can bear to watch it, of course.

Snort ‘n bear it

Cocaine Bear, 2023, Dir. Elizabeth Banks, 95 mins, HD

This was nuts, utterly bonkers.

I came into this… well, as usual I came into this thing pretty ignorant, devoid of spoilers, which I usually find to be a good thing but yes,  it can be a bad thing, too. I expected something like ‘Jaws but with a bear,’ something dark and gritty like THAT scene in The Revenant… indeed, I thought maybe THAT scene had become the inspiration for a horror movie. I suppose what I’m getting at is that I expected something more dark, nasty, edgy… more Tarantino, you know? Instead, its rather more… Amblin.

There’s nothing wrong with that, you know, going that way. But it does prove disorientating. Maybe that’s the bad side of me being ignorant. In any case, this was not the film I expected it to be.  Which isn’t necessarily terrible, you know, but when you’re expecting something over-the-top dark and instead you’re getting something more like The Goonies or Gremlins… again, there’s nothing wrong with that, but crikey, I thought Cocaine Bear was going to be something…. different.

Comedy and horror, it’s an interesting, and often rather troublesome, combination. Its hard to fall for the scares when you’re so busy laughing. I suppose its fun being scared but… when the fun is coming from laughing at how deliberately preposterous things are, its hard to believe in the horror, and when the characters are all fairly ridiculous… I don’t know. Maybe its personal preference, but I’d much rather this been wilder, darker, more serious. More horror. Less of an entertainment.

There’s no scares. Plenty of gore, sure, but there’s no scares, they are replaced by laughs.

At least it was short, this thing is so tight at just 95 minutes it certainly doesn’t bore. It entertains. I had the impression, ridiculous as it may sound and obviously a silly reflection of the good old DVD days,  that this was a Studio-mandated ‘soft’ cut, and that there’s a really nasty unrated cut coming in six months that’s maybe half-hour longer, drops the laughs and ramps up the horror,  basically a totally different movie. I think I’d prefer THAT movie.

Oh the Horror: Creepshow television

Creepshow Season One (2019), Six Episodes, Blu-Ray

Far as I’m concerned, 1982’s Creepshow remains a lovely anthology horror film that has aged surprisingly well, considering it seemed pretty throwaway when I caught up with it on VHS rental back in the day. For me the film’s appeal now is largely from the nostalgia-value of its great cast, and its music score which is part-hugely atmospheric, part-masterclass in very cheesy 1980s synth. I have the La La Land expanded CD on the shelf, a perennial favourite for a sly play every October.

I was only vaguely aware of the television series even being made – have to admit, as soon as I find out something is going behind a streaming paywall my attention span cuts out completely; so it came as quite a surprise to me when it was announced that the first three seasons were being released here in the UK on Blu-Ray and  the show into its fourth season already.

Well, I couldn’t resist at least giving the show a try with the season one box. Its endearingly faithful to the original film in tone and approach, which I’d sum up as being  fun and grisly, as the cackling Creep recounts horror stories from the pages of his stash of Creepshow comic books.

Some of the stories work better than others, a frequent issue with these kinds of anthology shows. Season one has six episodes, each featuring two stories, twelve in all – I think the score card for me is that three episodes are great,  six stories are good, and three poor, which isn’t a bad return unless you’re Rod Serling.

The best stories are The House of the Dead, in which a severed toy head suddenly appears in a girl’s dollhouse and terrorises the dolls within (its much creepier than it sounds) before threatening to leak out its horror into the world beyond the dollhouse, All Hallows Eve, a terrific tale about trick-or-treating teens who terrorise a small town, and The Man in the Suitcase, a neat morality tale about a man agonisingly trapped in a suitcase. These are genuinely great, its probably unrealistic to expect the show to maintain that quality but its a shame the season is let down by three turgid tales I wouldn’t care to rewatch again (Bad Wolf Down, Times is Tough in Musky Holler and By the Silver Water of Lake Champion).

The show gets bonus points for some of the casting- its great seeing Adrienne Barbeau, a genre favourite (how is it over forty years since Escape From New York?) who appeared in the original 1982 film, and the likes of Tricia Helfer (from the Battlestar Galactica reboot), Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator) and Bruce Davison.  My biggest complaint regards the show is that they don’t use the film’s original theme tune, a particularly odd decision as the theme tune used is unbearably forgettable and lacking in any  character or atmosphere, so typical of modern music scores. Its beyond bland.

Surprise- John Wick 2 isn’t as bad as I remembered

Well, as might be predicted, watching (and enjoying) The Continental on Amazon Prime over the weekend got me of a mind to give all the John Wick films a rewatch, not having seen them since well before seeing John Wick : Chapter 4 last year. Its film as television series, or old movie serials- they don’t really exist as seperate entities, so watching them over consecutive nights seems to make perfect sense.

And as, again, might be expected, the first John Wick film still shines brightly (and it does seem surprisingly restrained, most of the stunt work almost mundane considering what followed, but hey, that’s hindsight for you) I must confess to being surprised just how much I really enjoyed John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) which I’ve always considered the black sheep of the franchise. It actually works very well indeed.  It expands the mythology of the High Table and the arcs of many of the characters, raises the bar regards the death count/violence as action sequels usually do…  but that last point,  was mostly what I disliked about the film first time around, quickly descending into videogame parody at some points – indeed, so much so that I couldn’t muster sufficient interest to write a review of the film here.

Here we are several years and two more John Wick films later, and you know, there’s that hindsight thing again, because if Chapters Three and Four did anything, they rather seem to have made Chapter Two as restrained as it itself made the first film seem back in 2017. Time allows an extra perspective of a film, gained from all the films that follow after. I suppose the shadow of John Wick Chapter 4 looms large here, a massively bloated summation of the John Wick films before it, and I wonder what I’ll think of that film giving it a rewatch tonight.

That said, maybe re-watching it in 2030 after another John Wick film or two might spark a revaluation there, too…

More guns. Lots more guns.

The Continental: From the World of John Wick (2023), Dir. Albert Hughes, Charlotte Brandstrom,  Three Episodes, 268 mins, Amazon Prime

Have to confess, I had an absolute  blast with this.  I suppose in all honesty, I was predisposed to enjoy it- I loved the gritty, falling-apart production design of a dirty, crumbling 1970s New York (which probably makes Gotham City seem aspirational),  I loved the funky  source music that just oozed coolness, and naturally I enjoyed the over-the-top fight choreography and violence. Hell, I think I enjoyed this series more than I did the last John Wick film (heresy for some, no doubt, but this actually had a plot, for one thing). They don’t even play the procrastination card which so much new television does now- three nights, three mini-movies, its done.  It would have been so easy to stretch this into a traditional series over eight or ten episodes.

Its not perfect, of course it isn’t. The John Wick films themselves have plenty of issues (especially, as I have noted, the fourth one) and this style of hyper-cartoonish action choreography is beginning to wear thin as it continually tries to outdo itself, increasingly crossing the line and slipping into ridiculous nonsense that is either self-parody of more suited to a superhero flick. I suppose there is an argument these films are really superhero flicks anyway, just minus the DC or Marvel trademarks, so shouldn’t be compared to traditional, more restrained action dramas. There is a lot of style and very little substance, but there is no surprise there at all, and fans just go along with it. It is everything it is intended to be, and nothing more.

The Continental, as the title likely suggests, is about the hotel which features so greatly in the John Wick films. It serves as a prequel, telling the story of how Winston Scott (Ian McShane in the films, played here by  Colin Woodell), is dragged back to his childhood stomping-ground of New York and is tasked by ruthless (and rather unhinged) crime boss and manager of the Continental, Cormac O’Connor (Mel Gibson), to track down Winston’s brother Frank who has stolen a priceless artefact from Cormac that is hugely important to the High Table and its secret league of assassins.  The details and John  Wick mythology that all this involves isn’t realty important,  indeed its almost irrelevant- suffice it to say that this sets-up a narrative of bloody  vengeance as Winston soon sets upon a mission to kill Cormack and in so doing take down any of the many assassins who opposes him. To this end, he recruits a motley band of crooks and army vets to assist him, and also most notably Charon (played by the late great Lance Reddick in the films and Ayomide Adegun here), Cormac’s assistant and future concierge/associate of Winston in the films- getting these two together is a little like seeing Batman and Robin meet, or C-3PO and R2D2.

Okay, its not going to set the world afire or melt many critics hearts, its not great art but this is probably one of those times that fans just don’t give a tosh regards faults etc, its just such a bit of fun, as carnage goes. Maybe I’m suffering a little from that diminished expectations thing (hardly surprising, really, after the fourth film entry) but this really turned out much, much better than I’d expected, and I really did have a blast watching this over the past three consecutive nights. I’d certainly welcome a rewatch, and if ever it gets released on disc (preferably on 4K UHD) with a commentary track or two, it’d be pretty much an essential purchase to sit alongside those John Wick discs on the shelf.

Next in this ever-extended John Wick universe, I believe, is Ballerina starring Ana de Armas and Keanu Reeves, coming in 2024. Cannot wait (albeit with cautionary reservations regards Len Wiseman directing it, but hey, you never know…).

Alas, undone by the end of a very long night

The Long Night (1947), Dir. Anatole Litvak, 101 mins, SD

The Long Night is possibly as much romantic drama as it is film noir; there’s this weird tension as it pulls between the two, and perhaps inevitably the film doesn’t satisfyingly work as either- instead its caught in-between.  Henry Fonda, Vincent Price (yep, its him again),  Barbara Bel Geddes and Ann Dvorak feature in the cast and all are very good – indeed its one of the best performances I’ve seen by Henry Fonda. Vincent Price is his typically smooth sleaze-bag, dripping menace and contempt. Bel Geddes is fine in what’s in all fairness a fairly thankless role, except where the script leaves her with a big climactic speech that unfortunately comes across as hysterics.  Its a well made film, with some beautiful, atmospheric cinematography with evocative play of light and shadow, and graced by an interesting score in which Dimitri Tiomkin, no less,  interprets the hugely moody Allegretto from Beethoven’s Symphony No.7. that only deepens the tension and sense of doom.

But for all that, ultimately it doesn’t completely work as well as it possibly should.  I had a problem with the ending, to be honest, it felt all too sudden and open-ended, but also, well, maybe I was over-thinking things. The film begins with the sound of a gunshot from inside the apartment of Joe Adams (Fonda), from which a stricken Maximillian (Price) crashes onto the landing and down the stairs. Adams is immediately put under siege by the police, and the majority of the film is in the form of  flashbacks as Adams reviews the events that led him to this end. This is where the romantic drama comes in, as we see Adams meet and romance fellow orphan Jo Ann (Bel Geddes) a beautiful but innocent girl who later falls under the lecherous eye of Maximillian, leading to the fateful encounter in Adam’s apartment.

Its all very well executed, albeit the pacing drags terribly during the romantic interludes, but my issue was in knowing how much of a schemer Maximillian was, and the fact that it was his own gun that he allows Joe Adams to get hold of and fire. Maybe I’ve seen too many noir, but I immediately suspected that Maximillian was setting Adams up, maybe loading the pistol with blanks? At one point I thought Maximillian had faked his own death, but of course the police must have had his body to accuse Joe of murder, but then I was thinking maybe Maximillian died from his fall and that an examination would note that there was no gunshot wound. So I’m expecting some kind of twist/revelation at the end to exonerate Joe, but it never comes.  The film leaves him with Jo Ann standing by him as he is taken into custody accused of murder.

So unfortunately this is one of those films that was lessened by what was, for me, a anti-climactic ending. Many noir benefit from bold endings with clever twists of fate, but this one just ended with a bit of a dull thud, and seemed sudden and premature. It was really unfortunate, the film otherwise had such a lot going for it.

Oh the Horror: Twice-Told Tales

Twice-Told Tales, Dir. Sidney Salkow, 1963, 120 mins, SD

I always have sympathies for those who I define as the classic-era horror stars, such as Vincent Price, Peter Cushing etc. The horror genre was, while popular and commercial, for decades considered the domain of low-rent b-movie exploitation flicks and no doubt sneered upon by most of the Hollywood thespians. About the only film lower than a horror flick was a sci-fi flick.

So I often imagine the likes of Vincent Price etc going to Hollywood parties and being looked down upon by condescending  actors who felt themselves superior, with their Westerns and romantic comedies and dramas and thrillers being a cut above such low-rent tosh as a horror. Which was always doing the like of Price, Cushing etc a mighty disservice. The irony that a large number of those better-regarded films are largely forgotten now while many of those disparaged  horror films are loved and re-watched all these decades later is as sweet as any gruesome twist a Hammer or Corman horror might have.

So anyway, October being a favoured month for horror films, we’ll kick off this year’s horror-fest with a late-night Talking Pictures presentation of an obscure title I’d never heard of-  Twice-Told Tales, a decidedly low-budget horror, based upon a collection of Nathaniel Hawthorne ghost stories first published in 1837, whose title was a reference to Shakespeare’s King John (“Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale”).  This film anthology features adaptations of three Hawthorne stories; Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment, Rappaccini’s Daughter and The House of the Seven Gables.  The stories have varying degrees of success- my favourite was the first, which benefitted from a few genuine twists, one last final ‘shock’ and its brevity. The other two stories are weaker and seem rather dragged-out in comparison. What makes them all worthwhile however is that each one features Vincent Price (obviously in different roles, there’s no narrative link or crossover), which is a nice treat for fans, and I think the producers may have missed a trick in not recasting all the actors in each story likewise, like a retinue of actors performing different plays.

Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment is really great hokum, with a lovely Autumnal mood as two aged freinds celebrate a birthday and reflect on their lives. Price leads as ex-playboy Alex Medbourne, who seized life for all its riches and excess, while his friend Doctor Carl Heidegger (Sebastian Cabot) considers his life with regret, still grieving for his fiancé Sylvia (Mari Blanchard) who died some forty years ago on the eve of their wedding day.  After a storm the two freinds check upon the nearby tomb of Sylvia fearing it has been damaged by a lightning strike, and are horrified to find that the tomb has been damaged by a flood seeping from the ceiling. However, closer inspection transpires that there is something very odd about the waters leaking from the mountain above into the mausoleum, for while they have soaked Sylvia’s coffin they have preserved her body as if she died only yesterday, a mystery that bewitches and baffles Carl. The doctor investigates, finally deciding to inject himself with some of those waters, rejuvenating himself and restoring his youth. Marvelling that they have stumbled upon some Fountain of Youth, he injects Alex with the waters with the same results, then turns his attention to Sylvia, daring to anticipate what might happen if he treats her corpse with the same concoction…

Well, its never a good idea resurrecting the dead, especially when the effects of the magical waters turn out to be only temporary…

I think its a great little ghost story, enlivened greatly by Price and Cabot. I really enjoyed it and as I have noted, its really quite short, never outstaying its welcome  and I enjoyed its sombre mood. The other tales are lesser, which feels odd as the film progresses, as if the film sets itself up to fail by leading with its best story and it being all downhill from there. The third story, The House of the Seven Gables is really pretty poor, a predictable and mundane haunted house tale that drags on far too long, ending the film on a sour note. Not even Price can save it from being quite tedious.

The one thing that saves Rappaccini’s Daughter is a surprisingly nuanced performance by Joyce Taylor as the titular character, who is hidden from society by her jealous and domineering father (played by Price) with all sorts of obvious undertones. Taylor plays up to much of this, obviously informing her part with the knowledge of how taboo-breaking her father’s obsessions are, even if the film only suggests it (a modern adaptation could really work with that).  Quite struck by her performance here, which is in all honesty better than the lacklustre production and flat direction really deserves. I  was surprised to learn that Joyce Taylor only had a very short career in film (another victim of Howard Hughes’ RKO) and a few guest-spots in 1950s/1960s television. I don’t really know why this sort of thing still surprises me, as watching old films I notice this all the time, so many beautiful and impressive actresses had short careers in those days (its possibly just as true today, but its curiously poignant seeing their lives and careers summarised by a short bio and filmography). I’d have liked to have seen her playing Sylvia in the first tale, and Alice in the third story, had the producers followed the conceit of recasting all the actors in each story as they did Price in the various leads. A missed opportunity there, I think.

So Twice-Told Tales is definitely a lesser horror but certainly worth a watch. As I have noted, the best of the three tales is the first, which like the best ghost/horror stories, has a central premise that is juicy enough that it survives the limited execution (sic). Price of course is always worth your time.