By
Hank Reineke
Nicholas Anez’s Science
Fiction Thrills… Horror Chills is the fourth installment of the author’s
“Celluloid Adventures” series, all published by Baltimore’s Midnight Marquee
Press. Although I’m not familiar with Anez’s
original triad, I can reliably muse - based
solely on the strength of his newest effort - the preceding trio are as
well-researched, informative and against-the-grain-in-opinion as is this new
volume.
In his introduction to Science Fiction Thrills, Anez – full disclosure, a contributing
writer to Cinema Retro magazine - informs
readers that his intent in the writing of this current book is to “hopefully
create interest” in fourteen –mostly dismissed upon original release – sci-fi
and horror films. These were films that,
in one way or another, failed to find an appreciative audience despite creative
merit. Being a guy from New Jersey, I
can appreciate Anez’s fighting up from the mat for recognition of these
underdog efforts, championing under-performing films he posits as overlooked
cinematic treasures.
The fourteen films that go under Anez’s microscope are: Son of Dracula (1943), Alias Nick Beal (1949), The Maze (1953), Donovan’s Brain (1953), 1984
(1956), The Mind Benders (1963), Crack in the World (1965), The Mummy’s Shroud (1967), The Power (1968), Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969), The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972), Who? (1974), The Medusa Touch
(1978) and Capricorn One (1978). The latter title, Peter Hyman’s “space
mission” conspiracy film Capricorn One
is, of course, an odd man out in this study. Though not critically praised on its release, the film actually performed
reasonably well at the box office.
Each of Anez’s contributing essays are formulaic in
presentation: an introductory paragraph or two; a multi-page synopsis of the
film’s storyline; a discussion of the movie’s production history (including
full cast and crew credits); a review of a film’s critical reception and
subsequent box office performance. The
book is filled with a score of illustrations – both photographs and promotional
memorabilia - all well-reproduced in balanced black-and-white saturations. The book additionally closes with an eight-page
Appendix where the author lists his favorite sci-fi and horror flicks - as well
what he considers the greatest performances by an actor or actress in both
genres. Suffice to say, I share many of
the author’s cinematic enthusiasms.
To his credit, Anez doesn’t argue that any of the films under
examination - in an extremely readable and cogent two-hundred and fifteen page
paperback - is necessarily a “lost classic.” But Anez does suggest that each film studied here offers challenging
ideas and (mostly) cerebral storylines. Some of the films, he argues, were critically maligned or were proven box
office disappointments for economic reasons: that is, a shortfall of money. Too often the production budgets allotted
were simply too modest to mount and support the project’s ambitions. Having said that, Anez also notes the paucity
of money wasn’t always the reason a particular film did not light up the big
screen as hoped. The author opines some
of the films perhaps simply fell to the wayside due to the carping of critics (i.e.
the alleged miscasting of Edmond O’Brien as “Winston Smith” or of Michael
Andersons’ “unobstructive” direction of George Orwell’s novel 1984).
Other films, such as Basil Dearden’s The Mind Benders, might not have met expectations due to the filmmakers
having chose to mix multiple genre devices into their storylines. Anez gives examples: The Mind Benders is described as being “as much a domestic drama as
a thriller.” He offers John Farrow’s Alias Nick Beal as “a supernatural
horror story,” but one that “also fits in the category of film noir.” The author also contends that Robert
Siodmak’s Son of Dracula (a personal favorite
of mine, featuring an arguably miscast corn-fed Lon Chaney Jr.) remains “a
vastly underrated horror movie that is also a romantic tragedy.”
It soon becomes apparent that Anez’s argument that
certain films failed at the box office - or with film critics – was not due to
the quality of the films themselves. Instead many were perhaps doomed by visionary “outside-of-the-box”
productions that were tough to commercially pigeonhole. Perhaps these films didn’t achieve nor enjoy
a measure of acclaim due to the schematics of the filmmakers. It’s suggested such creative teams, at their
own expense, had gambled on their film’s commercial potentials – perhaps accidentally,
perhaps purposefully. Ultimately, they
chose not to cater to clichés or to rigid formulas or to the expectations of
their target audience.
In the book’s afterword, Anez notes he chose to focus on
“an era in which science-fiction movies depended on ideas and not special effects,” a time when horror films conjured chills
“upon the power of suggestion and not
graphic gore.” Reading through these
essays it becomes obvious that Anez is a strong champion of scenarios that feature
solid writing and cerebral storytelling. It’s of interest that of the fourteen films examined here, no fewer than
eight had been adapted from pre-existing science-fiction novels or other
literary sources published from the 1940s through the 1970s.
Anez acknowledges that some of these films under his
microscope might now appear dated - even open to some ridicule by contemporary
standards - for their dopey, unsophisticated poor-science-based projections. He muses other films might have been doomed at
the box office by their gloomy, paranoid prognostications of a dreary, dystopic
future. (Certainly none of the films Anez
examines here can be thought of as “feel good” movies – quite the opposite, in
fact). Such dystopic melancholia is
reflected in Anez’s own opinions. He
writes of his fear that contemporary exercises of political correctness and encroaching
Orwellian cancel culture movements might yet alter - even expunge – aging artistic
works and forms of “popular culture from the past.” “In today’s Hollywood,” Anez sighs, “nothing
is implied anymore; everything is explicit.”
I’m probably not as fatalistic as Anez on some of the points
he makes, though one can certainly understand – and even sympathize with – some
of the arguments he makes. But by my
reckoning, home video has - from inception - assured that a majority of cultural
artifacts will survive in their original forms for some time well into the
future. Certainly books and films and
music reflective of the aggrieved historical period in which they were created
will survive in their original state. How could they not? There’s too
many of us who have carefully collected and curated these artworks to see them
suddenly made unavailable. But it is also
true that many of these works might – might
- need to co-exist alongside a bowdlerized version for generations to come.
The real question is whether or not our shared histories
– good, bad, tragic, celebratory or indifferent - can be erased easily? The jury is out on that point, and the debate
on the historical revisionism of culture, I imagine, will be argued long into
the future. It’s of interest that many
of the future-looking films that Anez studies in Science Fiction Thrills… Horror Chills cautions and forewarns against
the censorship of free ideas - be those ideas well-meaning, ignorant, brilliant
or otherwise. I was going to end this review with Shakespeare’s famously reflective
and internal ponder on the duality of intentions, “Ay, there’s the rub.” But I
admit I almost didn’t, perhaps employing a bit of guarded self-censorship. After all, Shakespeare, the “immortal bard”
of Avon, might not prove so immortal after all. He too is now a target of cancel culture.
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