On the Trail...and Deep into the Woods #1: Bride of Frankenheimer

Let’s just pretend I haven’t been really busy moving  3 times in the last 4 months and get on with the movies, shall we? To reset: I have a few things I’m interested doing in over the next month. We’re leading up to both Halloween AND an election so I’m going to try to get my train back on the tracks by doing a month of nightmares. We’re gonna have the requisite horror genre stuff, but also a parallel path of great political/campaign films. (I hate politics, hence the “nightmare” tag, and I know it sounds boring, but it’s made for good film fodder and I promise to keep it interesting.) If I can lay down 15 of each I will consider October a success. Posts will likely be short and sweet and in no particular order, but at least there will be actual content for once. I haven’t been able to watch much this summer -- I finally saw The Avengers this week, so...yeah -- but if I can get some other posts in, too...well...let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Speaking of content, I’ve finally started a youtube account AND my new digs come with the added bonus of a reliable internet connection so I hope to be able to upload pertinent clips to my own private account when needed rather than relying on the Arbitrary Internets to come through for me. Not needed today, since I found what I was looking for, but...score!

Ok, and away we go.

On the Trail...

I’m starting this month’s campaign with one of my favorite movies of all time, John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate (1962), a taut tale of international communist conspiracy, brainwashing, and political manipulation. It is steeped in an era of Cold War paranoia but still feels fresh, vibrant, and chilling today.

All the players are at the top of their game. Frank Sinatra was never better as an actor, a true dual threat, even if his character is merely a conduit through which the rest of the action can flow. Laurence Harvey’s undergoes a remarkably steely transformation from a mostly normal if slightly dislikable joe who is really only cold to his domineering mother and buffoonish Senator stepfather, and with the simple turn of a card he turns cold and inaccessible to the rest of the world. Angela Lansbury: damn, she absolutely plunges the knife into every scene.

Oscar-worthy stuff, though she lost to Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker, which, ok, fairly forgivable. If you aren’t sold yet, and don’t mind a few plot spoliers:

Yeesh. My spine is all tingly. That gives some of it away, but don’t worry, it’s plenty twisty. And pretty "Twilight Zone"-y, which I love. The shot here, after the dream dissolve, was a famously dizzying technical achievement for the time. Watch closely as as the camera pans a full 360 degrees and the set undergoes a mind-blowing alteration without any cuts or computer tricks.

Still one of my favorite pieces of film. EVAR.

I found the remake pretty solid, but it doesn't hold a candle to the original. Frankenheimer was in impeccable form in the '60s, following this up with Seven Days in May in 1964 and another lesser-known masterpiece in 1966.

...and Deep into the Woods

For the start of this scary October I’m sticking with Frankenheimer (surprise!) and recommending another bit of unsettling cinema, his 1966 mindfuck Seconds. I love good slashers, serial killers, mysteries, and monsters, and you’ll see some of each forthcoming if I manage to keep at it, but ultimately I have a greater affinity for this type film, something with a subtle, dark undercurrent, a horror grounded in the distortion of reality. The awful building of existential dread is, to me, some of the creepiest stuff out there. It doesn’t beat you over the head with the scares but builds slowly from a smart setup, through small twists, to a stomach-churning finish.

It’s apparently a relatively hard film to find, but there are good chunks of it up on youtube. The plot involves an old man, Arthur Hamilton, who is given an out-of-left-field opportunity to completely change his identity and start an exciting new life as playboy/artist Tony Wilson. Obviously, this pact is not all it’s cracked up to be, even after the docs make him look like Rock Hudson.

The mood is established right off the bat, as we’re treated to an amazing, sinister Jerry Goldsmith score (one of the greatest film composers) and creepy Saul Bass titles. James Wong Howe was a premiere artist of black and white cinematography, and while it starts out a teeny bit gimmicky with its fisheye lens and choppy pre-Steadicam POV setup, it still paints one of the most unforgettable, suck-you-in openings ever captured on film. 

Maybe it's just that I’m just reeeally creeped out by Khigh Dhiegh, the brainwasher from Manchurian Candidate who makes an appearance here as Hudson’s "career counselor." He does a great job in his small part as a manipulative cog under the guidance of a larger, controlling entity, conveniently named, simply, “The Company.” One more clip, a couple plot spoilers herein, but lots of squishy twists left to be unraveled:

Find it. Watch it. Love it. 

As a side note, this movie apparently helped to ticket Brian Wilson on his slow train to Crazytown. Well, we’ll always have Pet Sounds.

Hey, welcome back. More to come if I don't suck. Or have to move again.