Halloween Harvest Comes Back

 

You Would Have to Have Been a Pretty Dumb Kid By 1966 to Fall For This Shill

Pumpkins: Chamber of Horrors, My Blood Runs Cold, Two on a Guillotine, and Brainstorm

Smash-and-grab was a device Warners perfected from 1953, through the sixties, beyond if we consider not-so-freak success that was The Exorcist. Promising scares was surest way to fill seats, especially with TV complicit to sell. Monies WB accumulated from House of Wax and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms were remarkable for a genre thought debased by a moviegoing mainstream. More than children obviously attended these. It became a matter of applying formula to production, release, and promotion of ones to follow --- Them!, The Black Scorpion, The Curse of Frankenstein, or combinations where single entries didn’t measure up to even lowered standard for sci-fi and horror, Teenagers from Outer Space with Gigantis, the Fire Monster instance of this. It was understood that never much money should be invested, demand for these distinctly limited. Chamber of Horrors came in 1966 by which time knowing adolescents saw a party largely broken up, this Chamber built initially for television’s square contour, a proposed series based upon House of Wax, which was as valued an intellectual property as Warners owned to that point. The concept was not half-bad, murder mysteries investigated by wax museum operators Cesare Danova, Wilfrid Hyde-White, and “Tun-Tun,” aka Jose Rene Luiz, hobbyists at crime detection in period-set Baltimore. There surely were high hopes for the teleseries, at least initially, dollars spent on sets which would serve over a hopeful long haul. Who can say what scuttled prospect for a full season? Hy Averback (also director) and James Barnett were the credited producers. It’s been said that Chamber of Horrors was released as a theatrical feature because content was “too intense” for home screens. I suspect outcome was more result of an expensive pilot for a series headed nowhere, Warner terms perhaps too high for any network or advertisers to support. Negative cost for the proposed season opener had run past a million, high hurdle for even above-average horror to recover in theatres, however exploited.

Blueprints for the 1953 Set Undoubtedly Consulted Here, Reason to Sort-of Like Chamber of Horrors

That "Free" Part Settled the Liberty to Order These Along with Door Panels Below

Effort on behalf of the pilot did show, however. Settings were handsome, the more so for entertainment television bound, Chamber of Horrors ahead of what AIP or Hammer could have managed at the time. Latters could or would not drop a million on genre product, Warner knowing well that here was investment not likely to recoup. Still they’d surge forward as if trick selling had life left, effort tried of late with a brace of black-and-white scope thrillers, Two on a Guillotine, My Blood Runs Cold, and Brainstorm, all made in-house and but one realizing profit. Here was where monochromatic rubber met road that was increased sale of color televisions to American homes, a death knell for B/W features and perhaps for moviegoing overall. Warner would open Chamber of Horrors regionally and wallpaper local TV with spots leading up to playdates, promising free ad kits to management which included door panels to promote the “Fear Flasher” and “Horror Horn,” these to aural/visual warn viewership when a particularly gory scene was ahead. I suspected at age twelve that this was hooey, and disliked besides a sarcastic trailer Warners sent out in support of their goat-gland feature. In fact no such gore would come on heels of clamor we got four times through the film, racket plus flashing more annoyance than if they’d simply left the tepid thing alone. Chamber of Horrors tendered nothing more than, well ... something made for television. A rip-off, yes, but the movie was not quite bad enough for us to cry foul. Performances were good, mad killer Patrick O’Neal nod enough to Vincent Price that we wondered if he might be the star's successor. Chamber of Horrors earned $480K in domestic rentals with $500K foreign, not enough to avert loss, 980K worldwide ordinarily spelling a hit for any horror film, except of course horror films costing what Chamber of Horrors did. Wink toward watchers worked for future releases however, as witness what Warners did for Dracula Has Risen From the Grave two years later.

Portraiture Such as Here Hadn't Long to Last Past 1965 When Troy and Joey Posed

We went to see My Blood Runs Cold because the title sounded promising. Didn’t mind its black-and-white because my family, most others in the neighborhood, did not yet have color television. Little happened apart from Troy Donahue thinking Joey Heatherton was his lost love from a century before, thrills to ensue, or not. Troy was on a back end of Warners stardom, and Joey was … whoever Joey was, presented as a newcomer but more like Connie Stevens with a repaint. The pressbook Col. Forehand gave me had pin-up art of her, so WB had hopes for Joey. It was more psycho than a ghost yarn and besides ran twenty minutes too long for full engagement. Such was case for trio of thrillers William Conrad directed under Warner shield, him a would-be Hitchcock doing modern-set, lot-confined feature work when not trying to rescue 77 Sunset Strip from imminent cancellation. His Two on a Guillotine piqued my interest for being about guillotines and presumably poised to show one in operation. That wouldn’t happen of course, but there was at least Max Steiner to score, his penultimate, plus interesting locations (the Hollywood Bowl, Benedict Castle in Riverside, CA). Connie Stevens is here under threat of madness, or is it really Great Caesar Romero’s ghost haunting her dreams, their father-daughter reunion at Guillotine’s finish bringing a tear to my eye in 1965, perhaps a first occasion for my being moved so by Max’s music. There was a Dell comic book that secured my twelve cents, plus Aurora’s build-it-yourself and working Guillotine where one could cleave off the head of a victim supplied as part of the dollar purchase. The plastic blade sometimes did not fall hard enough to behead my victim, the effect more effective for the appendage hanging half-on, half-off to suggest greater suffering for the condemned. Had but Two on a Guillotine been as explicit.

Warners By Now Knee-Deep in Smarty Pants Selling for Thriller Output

Brainstorm played as half of a dualler Warners released, co-feature being The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die, which I have not so far noticed on DVD or streaming. Brainstorm was again on-premises Warner, Woman Brit-produced and merely distributed by WB. Conrad-directed Brainstorm was again along psychological thriller line, once more overlong, visually an argument for continued black-and-white offerings, the more so in scope, more of same not encouraged by half-million Brainstorm lost for WB. Again, I got the pressbook, despite Col. Forehand having passed on the combo. Wonder if he wanted it for Saturday only and Warners nixed. They'd treat the Conrads like major releases, surprising at the time. Chamber of Horrors had played as a single for first-runs, the Liberty hosting it on three weekdays at a time when chillers were routinely shunted to weekends. Brainstorm emerges finally on Blu-Ray and registers like 60’s cocktail melodrama, much elegance amidst mansions Warners rented, a lead man (Jeffrey Hunter billed here as “Jeff”) who does one appallingly stupid thing after another with honest conviction he’ll ultimately get what he wants (faithless Anne Francis). There are players known for better pictures they earlier made, Dana Andrews, Viveca Lindfors, others. Brainstorm has graceful and well-dressed look of the sixties before it became “the sixties.” What sweeping change took place almost overnight. I’d see a feature one week at the Liberty to be followed a next by something utterly different, both proposing to represent life as being lived at the time. Brainstorm like others of Conrad output was vaguely unsatisfactory, but only vaguely by J.L. Warner lights, his appreciation of William Conrad such as to ask the director if there was anything on the lot he’d like, to which Conrad replied, the Maltese Falcon bust, for which Jack immediately called down and had brought up, thus awarding Bill with treasure today more valuable than cumulate of salaries Conrad drew from Warner coffers. Maybe his movies weren’t stuff dreams were made of, but Bill’s estate sure saw balm from the Falcon’s eventual sale.