Classic Films in Focus: TWICE-TOLD TALES (1963)

Borrowing both the star and the literary atmosphere of Roger Corman's Poe adaptations, Twice-Told Tales (1963) offers a trilogy of stories from Nathaniel Hawthorne, with Vincent Price taking the lead in all three segments of the film. Like the Corman pictures, this anthology of horror drips with Gothic period atmosphere and relies heavily on Price's irresistible appeal, but for Price devotees the actor's presence more than justifies the movie's existence. Given the genteel 19th-century quality of the tales, there aren't really any shocks on offer, but the Hawthorne stories do present abundant examples of irony and even a little of the supernatural. The third piece, "The House of the Seven Gables," is the most truly Gothic of the three, but both "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" and "Rappaccini's Daughter" have their charms.

In "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," Price stars as Alex, an old friend of  Carl Heidegger (Sebastian Cabot), whose lifetime of mourning his lost love takes a strange turn when the pair discover water with the power to restore youth and life. Price then plays the sinister father in "Rappaccini's Daughter," using his botanical science to transform his child (Joyce Taylor) into a poisonous vessel of death. "The House of the Seven Gables" features Price as prodigal son Gerald Pyncheon, who brings his wife (Beverly Garland) back to his family's haunted estate to search for the wealth in a hidden vault.

Hawthorne's favorite themes are very much on display throughout the trilogy; he has a finer, less macabre sense of horror than Poe, and his works often hinge on moral considerations. Each of the anthology segments makes significant changes to Hawthorne's original texts, but they still retain the spirit in which the stories were conceived. The first two are basically weird tales wrapped in the crushed crimson velvet of American Romanticism; they are almost, but not quite, science fiction, but both concern themselves more with questions of irony and ethics than scientific speculation. Price, of course, is a master at registering a character's dawning sense of the tragically ironic, although he's far less campy in all three segments than in many of his most iconic horror roles. Each of his characters fails Hawthorne's moral tests and richly deserves his fate, but Price also invests the first two with sincerity and regret; the third, Gerald Pyncheon, is a fully realized Gothic heavy, a scheming wastrel who defies a vengeful ghost in spite of the danger to himself and his innocent wife. Price's performance in that part harks back to his role as Nicholas Van Ryn in Dragonwyck (1946), although Price had actually played a very different Pyncheon character in the 1940 feature length adaptation of The House of the Seven Gables.

Price's costars in each segment benefit from his screen presence, with the women in particular standing out in their performances. Mari Blanchard is lovely if less than innocent as Sylvia, Dr. Heidegger's long lost bride, while Joyce Taylor conveys the anguish of Beatrice Rappaccini, a Rapunzel trapped in her garden by her father's poisonous love. Beverly Garland and Jacqueline deWit provide foils for one another, as well as obstacles to Price's Gerald Pyncheon, as Gerald's wife, Alice, and formidable sister, Hannah. Garland appears as the heroine and deWit as a variation on the sinister Gothic housekeeper, the person who knows the family's darkest secrets. The other men are generally less memorable, although Sebastian Cabot gives a very fine performance as the heartbroken Heidegger. Brett Halsey and Richard Denning, both playing straight romantic leads, are mostly there to pine after the ladies and get in Price's way, but their characters suffer from the usual flatness of their type.

For a double bill of Vincent Price horror anthologies, pair Twice-Told Tales with Corman's Tales of Terror (1962). The actor had a busy year in 1963, which also saw the release of The Raven, The Haunted Palace, and The Comedy of Terrors. Sebastian Cabot is best remembered today for the TV series, A Family Affair, and for his voice acting roles in Disney films, including The Sword in the Stone (1963), The Jungle Book (1967), and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977). Be sure to catch Beverly Garland in The Alligator People (1959), and see Richard Denning in Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). Sidney Salkow, who directed Twice-Told Tales, mostly worked on television episodes and Westerns, but his career stretched all the way back to the 1930s. He also directed Bulldog Drummond at Bay (1947), Sitting Bull (1954), and four episodes of The Addams Family.

Classic Films in Focus: THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE (1959)

Like The Fly (1958), The Alligator People (1959) merges science fiction and horror with a premise about dangerous experimentation gone horribly wrong, although in the second movie's case the combination of animal and human traits is intentional rather than tragically coincidental. Thus we get Richard Crane, as the increasingly reptilian victim of medical innovation, wandering the Louisiana swamps with one seriously bad case of gator face, while Beverly Garland chases after him as a dedicated wife who just won't take "no" for an answer. Most horror fans will come to The Alligator People for Lon Chaney, Jr., who plays a drunken villain, or for another example of the drive-in sci-fi chiller that flowered in the 1950s, but additional attractions can be found in the direction of Roy Del Ruth and performances from experienced players like Bruce Bennett, George Macready, and Frieda Inescort, each of whom helps to nudge the picture beyond mere B-movie spectacle.

Garland is the story's protagonist, a newly married nurse named Joyce Webster whose husband, Paul (Richard Crane), vanishes from a train on their honeymoon. Joyce tracks Paul to his family's plantation in the swamps, where she meets his mother, Mrs. Hawthorne (Frieda Inescort), who gives Joyce an icy welcome and tries to force her to leave. Determined to uncover the truth, Joyce stays until her mother-in-law and a local medical researcher, Dr. Sinclair (George Macready), reveal that Paul is suffering the side effects of a radical treatment for injuries he sustained in a plane crash during the war. Joyce joins their efforts to reverse Paul's transformation, but chaos erupts when a loutish plantation worker, Manon (Lon Chaney, Jr.), transfers his violent hatred for alligators to the alligator man.

The Alligator People is by no means a great film, and it often makes choices that are typical of its genre, but it also offers pleasant surprises. The pseudo-science of the central plot is wrapped in a strange psychological setup that presents Joyce, now known as Jane, as a victim of trauma induced amnesia as a result of her experience. Bruce Bennett appears in the frame scenes as one of two sexist doctors who can't stop mentioning how attractive the nurse is even as they use hypnosis to dredge up her horrible past. On the plus side, the frame tale serves a practical purpose in that it lets the audience know right away that this story won't end well for the alligator man or his bride, much as the opening of The Fly sets that story on its unbending course toward tragedy. The sexism also gets a much appreciated rebuke in the stalwart devotion of Joyce, who refuses to give up her search or abandon her husband once she sees his monstrous transformation. She even goes after him at the end, screaming not so much at his freakish appearance as his awful demise. Sure, his alligator head looks utterly fake, and we can even see the seams in his bodysuit, but Beverly Garland's performance as Joyce helps us focus on the drama of the situation rather than its special effects budget.

The success of the movie depends mostly on Garland, who plays Joyce as an active, intelligent woman caught up in overwhelming horror, but several supporting performances are worth noting. Lon Chaney. Jr. makes his presence felt as the belligerent Manon, a far nastier role than the actor's best known characters in other horror films. With his hook hand and his lecherous eye, Manon is a true monster; he provides a telling contrast to Paul, who loses the appearance of humanity but retains its inner qualities, even to the bitter end. Frieda Inescort also turns in a good performance as Paul's distraught mother; her accent wanders a bit, but she navigates the emotional territory of her character with greater assurance, letting her stern rejection of Joyce melt into shared misery over a loved one's terrible fate. Richard Crane gets less screen time as Paul, since he mostly skulks around the bayou in hiding, but his opening scenes set the stage for his later anguish. Hold on to the subtle cues on his handsome face as he talks about his accident with Joyce; that subtlety is lost later, but its emotional impact endures. Bruce Bennett and George Macready are both somewhat underused in their roles, but they give their doctors far more animation than such characters usually have in these pictures.

Some sci-fi B movies of this era are beloved precisely because they are campy and badly done, but The Alligator People takes a more serious tone, and despite its faults it's really a much better picture than it probably has any right to be. Give some of the credit for that to Roy Del Ruth, who also directed Born to Dance (1936), It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), and On Moonlight Bay (1951). See more of Beverly Garland in D.O.A. (1950), Not of This Earth (1957), and Twice-Told Tales (1963); she also enjoyed a long and varied television career and was even nominated for an Emmy. Lon Chaney, Jr. is best remembered for The Wolf Man (1941), but he plays supporting roles in many films, including The Black Castle (1952), The Black Sleep (1956), and The Haunted Palace (1963). Catch Frieda Inescort in Pride and Prejudice (1940), You'll Never Get Rich (1941), and The Return of the Vampire (1943). For similar 50s creature features, try I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), and Return of the Fly (1959).