BY HANK REINEKE
The ninth annual Drive-in Super Monster Rama was staged
– as is traditional - on the weekend following Labor Day at the Riverside
Drive-in, Vandergrift, Pennsylvania. Inaugurated in 2007, this fiendish gathering of monster-movie insomniacs
is tailored to those who cherish the classic horror films of the 1960s and
1970s. It’s a thoughtfully programmed and
purposely retro affair; fans get to experience (or re-experience) their
favorites as they might have when the movies were new – in the witching hour setting
of an authentic neighborhood drive-in theater.
With each passing year the Monster Rama grows steadily
in attendance and flourishes in reputation. In 2013 the annual gathering spawned a mid-spring sister event, the
April Ghoul’s Drive-in Monster Rama. Co-sponsored from inception by George Reis (of the preeminent cult/horror/exploitation
film review website DVD Drive-in) and
Todd Ament, the proprietor and projectionist of the Riverside, both weekend
events feature eight full-length feature films (almost exclusively from 35mm
elements) as well as a dizzying array of vintage trailers, cartoons, shorts,
and refreshment stand advertisements.
The September event is proudly the more old-school of
the two and this year’s offerings might have been the best yet. On Friday night, September 11, with the
weather as near-perfect as one could expect for the season, there was a four-film
celebration of American International Picture’s Edgar Allan Poe-film cycle. From 1960 through 1964, director-producer
Roger Corman filmed no fewer than eight adaptations of Poe’s work, a remarkable
series of visionary and literate motion pictures that brought together such on-screen
talent as Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Ray Milland, Barbara Steele, Jack
Nicholson, Hazel Court and Basil Rathbone. Of course, it’s without argument that the uncontested big-ticket star of
the enterprise was the legendary Vincent Price. The elegant actor with the menacing but sonorous voice would feature in no
fewer than seven of the eight Poe films.
Though it’s been nearly twenty-two years since his
passing, Vincent Price remains an obvious favorite amongst Monster Rama
attendees. The films of this master of the macabre have been well represented
at the September event; Price remains the only actor to have at least one – and
often several – back catalog films screened at every gathering since launch. So it was to everyone’s delight - and no
one’s surprise - that Price would be the featured player in all four of
Friday’s films: The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Masque of the Read Death (1963), Tomb of Ligeia (1964), and
The Haunted Palace (1963).
Roger Corman’s celebrated cycle of Poe adaptations are,
well… exactly that, adaptations. The films are only occasionally literal
re-creations of the original source material; mostly they’re brilliant cinematic
re-imaginings inspired by the author’s body of macabre work. As a child seeing the films for the first
time - in ten minute intervals sandwiched between drain-cleaner commercials on
the 4:30 movie - I was disappointed in them. Surely these were costume melodramas and not genuine horror films. Where were
the monsters?
Today, as an adult with a half-century’s accumulation
of weariness and wisdom, I’ve come to understand that Corman, in the best tradition
of Poe, identified the wellspring of terror as something internal. The short stories, novelettes, and poetry that
ebbed from the pen of this vanguard of American mystery writing is imbued with
a grotesquery that is almost always more psychological than spectral. Corman’s great directorial gift was his canny
ability to visually convey the crippling psychological inner-torment of both
victim and protagonist.
The vessel in which such madness is primarily conveyed
is, almost exclusively to the series, through the magnificent performances of
the great Vincent Price. The actor perfectly emotes with anguish and pathos the
stricken fortunes of the doomed - and often sympathetic - characters he inhabits. These tormented figures are, usually but not
exclusively, broken individuals who have been driven to madness through their
own past transgressions or the lingering sins of their ancestors. Only as Prince Prospero in The Masque of the Red Death, does the
actor play his character as evil incarnate. In the other Poe (and H.P. Lovecraft-suggested) vehicles on Friday
night, the actor teeters anxiously between two extremes. He’s both victim and tormentor as he descends
into a desperate madness due to some malevolent predestination not of his choosing.
The Poe films allowed Roger Corman to extend a reputation
beyond the rubber-suited monsters of The
Little Shop of Horrors (1960) and It
Conquered the World (1956). He was no longer satisfied to be a low-budget
film craftsman who could turn a profit by emptying the wallets of gullible
teenage audiences. Hamstrung by the limits of black and white photography and
non-existent budgets, Corman lobbied A.I.P producers Samuel Z. Arkoff and James
H. Nicholson to support and more generously fund his vision of bringing the
works of Edgar Allan Poe to the big-screen. The two producers, somewhat uncharacteristically, gambled on their
budding auteur, begrudgingly providing him the extra monies.
It’s evident that Corman made certain that every penny spent
was reflected on screen. The set
decoration is remarkable given the still relatively modest financial
constraints. With their elegant chamber
rooms, bleak gothic castles, torch-lit dungeons, and foreboding subterranean
torture chambers, Poe’s unique blend of melancholia, mystery, and madness is
effectively conveyed throughout the series. The regal, atmospheric bearing of the films is abetted by cerebral,
literate scripting by such brilliant writers as Richard Matheson and Charles
Beaumont (both veteran Twilight Zone scribes).
The series, all shot in Panavision or glorious CinemaScope,
are wonderfully mounted. Corman’s use of
color in all of the films is masterful; he approaches composition as an artist standing
before a canvas. The on-screen colors
are not mere elements; they’re woven into the film as an integral part of the
story. This is never more evident than
in The Masque of the Red Death when
Price leads frightened Jane Asher through a series of monotone colored
anterooms. Though Price forbids the girl
to enter the last and most mysterious room – shrouded in a lightless black, of
course – it’s clear that even these warm and inviting rooms have offered previous
occupants no solace. Price reveals the
most cheerful room, a yellow monotone, was once used as a prison cell for “a
friend†of his – apparently - equally ruthless father. Upon release, the prisoner had been duly broken
by the experience - he could no longer enjoy the yellow rays of the sun or gaze
upon a daffodil without sickness.
The folks who began to congregate early at the Drive-in
on Saturday afternoon would have likely welcomed the yellow rays of the
sun. Saturday’s precipitation, which
ranged from a fine mist to a light drizzle throughout the afternoon and evening
was near constant. Regardless, the wet
weather dampened only the fairground and not the enthusiasm of those gathered. Though there were a few figures that gamely clung
to their lawn chairs and umbrellas, most devotees - perhaps wisely - retreated
to their cars for the duration of the program. Night number two of Monster Rama, affectionately dubbed “British Vampire
Night,†was soon upon us. Though the
weather might have deterred a handful of night trippers from attending on
Saturday, the majority of faithful weekenders in cars and tents and makeshift
shelters were still on hand and at the ready.
Though it might have appeared, on first look, that Saturday
evening’s first two films Horror of
Dracula (1958) and Dracula Has Risen
From The Grave (1968) were on the schedule to serve as tribute to the late
great Christopher Lee who died this year on June 7 at age 93, both films had
actually been booked for the event prior to the screen legend’s passing. Much like Vincent Price, Lee is a fan
favorite of this drive-in’s core audience. Since the first Monster Rama in 2007, no fewer than five of Lee’s seven Dracula
films for Hammer Studios have been screened at the Riverside.
Lee’s physical and menacing Dracula would, of course,
survive neither film (due to sunshine and the Christian cross, respectively). But as this is Count Dracula, the “Prince of
Darkness†can always be counted on to return for a lively sequel regardless of a
colorful demise or two. To be sure, this
is not the last we’ll see of Sir Christopher Lee (nor of Dracula) on the
Riverside Drive-in’s big screen. There
are already rumors that a future Monster Rama will feature a proper
commemoration of the late actor’s contributions to the “fantastic film†genre. Two years prior, Reis observed what-would-have-been
Peter Cushing’s 100th Birthday; it was a tremendous and well
deserved eight-film “Centennial Celebration†of the beloved actor’s career in
genre movies.
Although I risk losing my credentials as a horror film
scholar (even one who stands on the lowest rung of that ladder), I admit this
was my first experience with the third feature of the night: Roman Polanski’s famed
horror-comedy The Fearless Vampire
Killers (1967). I almost had myself convinced
that I’d seen the film previously – not theatrically, but via a dimly-remembered
television airing. I’ve since realized I was delusional: it was a
false memory invoked by years of having read about this film in high-brow
studies of horror cinema and of having poured over many photographs from the
film in magazines and books. There was
one thing I knew about this movie going in. There tends to be little neutral feeling regarding it; casual filmgoers
and cineastes tend to either love or hate it.
The
Fearless Vampire Killers certainly doesn’t lack in style: a
winter’s interval in Transylvania is masterfully conceived with a trim of old
world set dressing, costuming and art direction. Douglas Slocombe’s photography is brilliant; it
imaginatively conveys the otherworldly atmosphere of the vampire’s remote castle
nestled amidst a snow capped mountain range. Unfortunately, the impressive photography and decoration doesn’t adequately
cover the film’s most evident flaw. Though Polanski’s scenario was an interesting one, it wasn’t terribly
well executed. When the last reel threads
out, we realize we’ve been treated to neither a great horror film nor a
particularly amusing comedy. Polanski
practically disowned this film (released in the U.S. a year prior to his
seminal Rosemary’s Baby in 1968). The director blamed MGM for the business-first
heart-cutting of the film, believing much was lost after the studio trimmed his
sprawling opus down to a more marketable 90 minute running time.
The film’s most tenacious defenders suggest that as the
legend of the vampire was born from an Eastern European mythos, The Fearless Vampire Killers best
represents the Slavic/Balkan tradition, one almost entirely hijacked by
Hollywood and London based interlopers. Though
the Slav traditionalists may have a point, there are undeniably very few
genuine laughs to be had throughout this spoof of vampire film tropes. Perhaps it’s my American sensibility that much
prefers Abbott and Costello or the East Side Kids to comically – if less
cerebrally - tangle with monsters and things that go bump in the night.
With regret, I was not able to last through the final
film of the weekend, Son of Dracula –
no, not the more beloved 1943 Universal film with Lon Chaney Jr. as the Count–
but the rarely screened horror-rock musical (released 1974) starring singer Harry
Nilsson and ex-Beatle Ringo Starr. I
would have loved to see this curio in 35mm, but exhaustion won out. It was
already half-past 2:00 A.M. so following the final flicker of The Fearless Vampire Killers, the family
and I packed up for the thirty-minute drive through dimly-lit, rain-slicked back
roads to our hotel. Though I missed the opportunity
to catch this kitschy rock n’ roll rarity, friends who managed to fight off
sleep deprivation affirmed that the film’s guilty pleasure reputation has been well
earned: a half-decent soundtrack disguised as a movie and of interest primarily
to Beatle-obsessed anoraks.
The
next April Ghoul’s Drive-in Monster Rama is scheduled for April 29-30,
2016. The next Drive-In Super Monster
Rama is scheduled for September 9-10, 2016. Both events will be held at the Riverside Drive-in, 1114 Lees Lake Lane
(off River Road), Vandergrift, PA. For drive-in web site click here.