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Image of the Day
Sep. 5th, 2011 08:08 pm
Cobra Woman (1944)
You watch a movie like this, and all you can conclude is that Hollywood said, "Here's one for the drag queens."
Cobra Woman (1944)
You watch a movie like this, and all you can conclude is that Hollywood said, "Here's one for the drag queens."
Image of the Night
Feb. 8th, 2011 06:46 pm
The director of photography for The Spiral Staircase (1946) was Nicholas Musuraca, who was one of the great noir stylists and also shot a number of the Val Lewton horror thrillers at RKO. The Spiral Staircase feels like a Lewton movie in many ways, or maybe it's just the RKO team feeling, with music by Roy Webb and art direction by Albert D'Agostino as well. Women-in-peril gothics are a variation on the old dark house genre, so you've got to go down into the dark basement with nothing but a quavering candle. The lion's head in the background ties in with the predilections of one of the major characters, but it's also a great bit of weird symbolism. Above all, I love this shot for the way the lighting turns Rhonda Fleming's face into a mask.
Image of the Day
Feb. 7th, 2011 06:27 pm
'I'm never more witty than when I've had a little nip. I see better, I hear better, and I feel much better.'
-- Elsa Lanchester as Mrs. Oates in The Spiral Staircase (1946). I've got a thing for Elsa. She is mostly comic relief in this film, and she's perfect in that niche, wearing big clothes to make her seem plumper, a kindly clown. The beautiful girls are murdered in the dark, but Mrs. Oates just gets drunk on stolen brandy and passes out by the kitchen fire. There's also a strange scene where the mute girl gives out a strangled cry that sounds remarkably like Elsa's iconic screech as the Bride of Frankenstein.
The Spiral Staircase (1946)
Feb. 6th, 2011 08:31 pmThis is an utterly gorgeous and atmospheric Gothic woman-in-peril thriller with unexpected depths. The heroine is mute, and director Robert Siodmak draws connections between her muteness and silent film. Like many woman-in-peril Gothics (e.g., Gaslight and Experiment Perilous, both 1944), the film is set in the 1890s or 1900s, which is also the era of the first films. In the opening sequence, we see an audience watching an early silent film called "The Kiss". Even more meta than that, we see people sneaking a peek at people watching a movie in the dark.
( The kiss of death )
( The kiss of death )
