Ghouls on Film

Kiddies Beware! The Grannies Are Here

“Legion” came out last weekend and I didn’t see it even though I have a soft spot for the classic lines of Paul Bettany’s face. Not surprisingly, angels battling each other on earth didn’t make much of an impression on the general viewing public, no matter how much latex they wore or how many guns they shot – not even that crabby-armed ice cream truck driving one.

But one thing that did strike me, from the never ending previews I saw during movies for guys (and me) who like movies, was the diner scene where the spider monkey granny climbs the ceiling. Her name in the film is Gladys Foster, a fitting name for an evil older lady, and she is played by Jeannette Miller.

Miss Gladys Foster (this grandma’s a spinster no doubt about it) follows in a grand film tradition of matronly old women gone bad.  These films exploit society’s distaste for women who have gotten on in years, villainizing their good natured kvetching. They shine a light on the deep dark secrets your grandmother has been hiding in her handbag for far longer than the Werther’s Originals she uses to tempt unsuspecting children.  This makes sense of course, we’ve been read stories since we were babies about malicious matrons who want to cook us and eat us. Gladys Foster is the Wicked Witch, the Baba Yaga in our modern fairy tale.

I’ve put together a list of my favorite evil grannies. The ones who wear their blue perms with pride, who I can’t seem forget and still cause a shiver to run through me each time I pass an old folks home.

Victoria and Elizabeth, “Rabid Grannies” – I can remember going to my video store in New Milford Connecticut (Video World, I think?) and staring and at the box for this movie. It was right next to “Frankenweenie” and I was equally enamored with both boxes, but for much different reasons. The tag lines “They love their grandchildren … well done!” and  “Grandma, what a big mouth you have!” pretty much sum up the plot of the film. Since I didn’t know a whole love about Troma films I wasn’t completely ready for the amount of gore I would face while these grandmothers loved their families to death.
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Olivia, “Flowers in the Attic” – How many of you out there had a hard time accepting a cookie with powdered sugar on it after watching this movie? Raise your hands! And forget about getting a haircut from your grandmother. Better yet, just don’t take a bath in her house.

Mum, “Dead Alive” - Technically Vera Cosgrove isn’t a grandmother. But she has a grown son, Lionel, who is planning to marry and she is of grandmothering age. Which makes it all the more disturbing when her huge bloated zombie corpse gives birth to her son Lionel again.

Sylvia Ganush, “Drag Me to Hell” – Remember that clean hanky that your grandmother always kept in her bag? Well, it’s not so clean in this movie, and it wants to do more than wipe the dirt off of Christine Brown’s face. In fact it would like nothing better than to blind her and choke her to death. But if it can’t have that, it will settle for making her life a living Hell. Literally a Hell on earth. For real. I mean that literally. Until she is, well … actually in Hell.

Ma, “American Gothic” - For those of you who are unfamiliar with the works of the lovely Yvonne De Carlo, I will direct you to the blog post below. If only Grant Wood’s famous painting had been based on this movie, art history would be so much more fun. Ma has no time for visitors who don’t clean their plates and she’s very forthcoming with punishments for bad manners. But she does love to mother her “kids” who still live at home.

Granny, “The Granny” -  You might remember Stella Stevens opposite Elvis in “Girls, Girls, Girls” or in “The Nutty Professor” with Jerry Lewis. But neither of these roles begins to compare to the part she played in “The Granny.” The wig (I hope), the lips, the cat … it’s beyond words. You just have to watch.

Who is your favorite gruesome grandmother?

Note to readers: Think twice before doing a google search of “bad grannies” because it might bring up some imagery you aren’t ready to see or maybe you are ready to see it. I don’t know your life.

Yvonne De Carlo, creepiest mom on the block?

Once billed as “the world’s most beautiful woman,” Yvonne De Carlo became one of the first Scream Queens of both the silver and the small screen.  Born on September 1, 1922, De Carlo was typecast by Paramount and later Universal as an “exotic” type during Hollywood’s studio days in the 1940s. By 1964, however, the Canadian actress stepped back from spotlight to care for then-husband, Hollywood stuntman Bob Morgan and their three children.  Depressed and in debt, Yvonne was sacked with medical bills resulting from her husband’s career-ending injury when he lost a leg due to a stunt gone wrong on the set of “How the West Was Won.” Things would change that year for De Carlo when she took on the role of monster matriarch, Lily, on the 1960s TV series, “The Munsters.”

Actress Joan Marshall who starred as “Phoebe” (later renamed “Lily”) in the pilot episode was nixed from “The Munsters” cast and Yvonne De Carlo stepped into the role.  The series only ran for two years and spawned two movies, but the role of the sweet, yet sensible vampiress Lily introduced Yvonne to a new, younger audience and reignited her career.

Not entirely unrecognizable from her full-tilt glam studio days, Yvonne wore green makeup and a long, black fright wig with a silver streak as the wife of Frankenstein’s monster-esque Herman Munster.  In a way, (along with Carolyn Jones as Morticia on “The Addams Family,” which also ran from 1964-66) Yvonne De Carlo’s Lily may have helped to spawn early goth chic, introducing long black hair, flowing empire-waisted gowns, and bat necklaces to the mainstream public.

De Carlo's Killer Ride

De Carlo relished the role, going so far as to have her black 1966 Jaguar sedan tricked out by Hollywood customizer George Barris with spiderweb hubcaps, gold coffin rails in place of a luggage rack, and coffin-shaped door handles.  The pièce de résistance?  The traditional Jaguar hood ornament was replaced with a brass wolf’s head with gleaming ruby eyes.

During the later years of her career, Yvonne used her Scream Queen status granted by “The Munsters” to propel her career towards a second wind in B-horror movies to help pay the bills.  Quite often, she was cast in the role of a seemingly innocuous housewife. Lurking beneath the surface of her famous, sparkling gray eyes, Yvonne’s characters harbored a startlingly evil nature, capable of killing someone in cold blood.

In 1977’s “Satan’s Cheerleaders,” she played Emma Bub, wife to John Ireland’s archetypal Sheriff Bub. In the film, the Bubs (Get it?! BeelzeBUB?!) are high-ranking members of a Satanic cult who intend to offer up the bus load of stranded, scantily clad cheerleaders.

Still can't look at Grant Wood's picture the same way.

A decade later, she played the role of Ma opposite Rod Steiger’s Pa in “American Gothic” as the overly-religious parents of a brood of homicidal, mentally challenged middle-aged “kids” residing on a rural island. As an intrusive tribe of yuppies invade their island when their charter plane crashes, Ma and Pa deliver some fatal ass-whoopings “in the name of God” to the remaining visitors that “the kids” didn’t already kill.  Initially coming across as a homily-spouting, homespun housewife shoving heapin’ helpings of hospitality to company, Yvonne hammed it up, dishing lines like “Don’t you want to be a member of the Clean Plate Club?” Later is becomes clear that she’s a mixture of sweet and sinister when she tells her horrified guests about how she and Pa made some unwanted trespassers into “big dollies” in their basement.

In 1980’s “Silent Scream,” De Carlo starred alongside another original Scream Queen, the legendary Barbara Steele (in a thoroughly wasted, non-speaking performance).  As a boarding house matron to a bunch of smarmy college kids, Yvonne plays Mrs. Engels, a woman who houses her crazy daughter (Steele) in the attic and savagely kills off the little bastards.  It’s actually a mercy killing for the audience since none of the characters are particularly sympathetic and none of the actors are very good.

Not always a happy n’ horrible housewife, in “Play Dead” (a 1985 Troma film — which means you know you’re in for a camptastic treat!), Yvonne got a chance to be glamorous and evil as the wealthy, beautiful and bitter spinster, Aunt Hester.  The real kicker is that Aunt Hester uses a cuddly Satanic Rottweiler named Greta to systematically kill off the offspring of her younger sister who stole the love of her life.  She alternates between playing a seemingly caring, doting aunt to her dunderhead kin and secretly plotting their demise.  As per any Troma film, the ends Hester sentences her relatives to are completely ridiculous. She’s helped by a pooch trained to carry out her lethal agendas — including teaching the dog to fetch and pour liquid Draino into an unsuspecting victim’s cup of tea.

Yvonne even got a chance to play the role of a calculating cougar in 1983’s “Vultures.” De Carlo is only in a third of this flick, but boy, does she pack a wallop. If you’ve ever wanted to hear Lily Munster drop the f-bomb, her utterance of one line involving not being able to boink and think at the same time makes this otherwise terrible film worth watching. Right out of the gate, Yvonne’s 50-something cougar is seen sharing a bed with a strapping young stud.  For the rest of the time she is in the movie, De Carlo’s character boozes and cusses her way through the film until she is mowed down by a car.

However, my favorite of Yvonne De Carlo’s horror/comedy character creations was her character, Jugula, in the awesomely awful vampire-disco movie, “Nocturna.”  Sweet and motherly with a bit of added “bite,” Yvonne’s appearance lent some much-needed credibility to the 1978 vanity project under the writing and direction of belly dancer Nai Bonet (who stars in the title role of Dracula’s disco-loving granddaughter).  As Jugula, the former paramour of an aged Dracula, Yvonne reunited with her occasional “Munsters” co-star, John Carradine.  Along with Carradine and Brother Theodore, De Carlo is one of the film’s few bright spots as she alternates between genuinely caring friend to Nocturna and vampiric seductress, bent on getting back her coffin-bound stud muffin.

De Carlo starred in several other horror (and non-horror) films and parlayed her career renaissance into a brief stint on Broadway as a member of the original cast of Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies.”  She retired from film in 1995 and passed away at the age of 84 in 2007.  Nevertheless, Yvonne De Carlo lives on in syndication in the role that made her a star all over again and gave creepy kids everywhere a macabre monster mommy to look towards.

You could play the organ like no other and you will be missed.
I take solace in the fact that you’re with Carol Ann now.

Zelda Rubinstein - a Psychic Friend - May 28, 1933 – January 27, 2010

“This is life’s ultimate cruelty. It offers us a taste of youth and vitality, and then it makes us witness our own decay.”

Do you remember the time in your life (hopefully during childhood, else that would’ve been an awkward conversation!) that you comprehended your impending demise? Like, you’d known about death, maybe even experienced it with pets or relatives, but then your brain finally turned over and you realized that someday you wouldn’t be alive anymore?

I don’t remember how old I was, or what finally triggered my revelation, but I vividly remember being openly tearful and sorrowful for weeks. The depression about this nugget of knowledge was so thick, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see myself out of it. I thought about it the second I woke up and would stare at the ceiling, whimpering, when I tried to sleep at night. And then I saw Death Becomes Her.

Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn star as archnemeses who, through a series of unimportant (to this post) events, stumble upon a potion that promises eternal youth. Each woman reverses the effect of her respective aging and eventually even survives death.

This film became utterly fascinating to me, and found me at the exact moment I needed it. I watched it every time it was on television, no matter if it was from the beginning or not. Every trip to Blockbuster found me renting it out, despite its way-too-mature-for-a-child content (my parents must’ve been scared of me). This film ignited my love for everything undead that would cross my path in the years since and, while I still haven’t fully come to terms with my eventual death (I think I might cry just thinking about it), I do hold out hope that, one day, I’ll come upon a nearly-nakey Isabella Rossellini who’ll offer me the key to immortality.

Carl Kolchack ... disheveled saint

Carl Kolchak is my patron saint.

Yes, I am well aware that he’s not real and just the title character of the occult-themed ‘70s TV show, “Kolchak: The Night Stalker.” There’s something comforting about his disheveled seersucker suit and equally disheveled approach to news writing. The comfort factor only doubles when you consider that Kolchak was played by Darrin McGavin — “The Old Man” himself from “A Christmas Story.” (If you thought that I was referring to the remake of the series that aired a few years ago starring Stuart Townsend … Please! Perish the thought and add the original series to your Netflix queue post haste!) Chances are, if you’re a writer with a yen for the macabre, you might count him as your muse of choice when sitting down to your keyboard, too.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s looked to Carl Kolchak for inspiration over the years. “The X-Files” and “Supernatural” only scratch the surface of television shows that have been influenced by “Night Stalker.” The 1974 show (which lasted just a single season) utilized a “Monster of the Week” format in which Kolchak found himself discovering and writing about some supernatural beastie terrorizing his Chicago stomping grounds. Normally, this far more intriguing story detracted him from whatever assignment he was supposed to be working on for his high-strung boss/editor, Tony Vincenzo.

Amid such monsters as voodoo zombies, Hindu Rakshasas, and garden variety werewolves, “Kolchak” stumbled upon a curiously science fiction-tinged case in Episode 12 named “Mr. R.I.N.G.”

R.I.N.G.

In the episode, an android that had been commissioned by a government-classified military division known as the Tyrell Institute, kills the Professor that has been given the duty of de-programming and terminating him. The android is named for the project it was commissioned for, Mr. R.I.N.G. (Robomatic Internalized Nerve Ganglia) which combined the fields of Autonetics and Microcircuitry to create a miniaturized computer to be used by the military. Additionally, R.I.N.G. was programmed with aggression and a survival instinct. This survival instinct kicked in because R.I.N.G. did not want to die, murdering the professor in an act of self-preservation.

On the flipside, R.I.N.G. had also been programmed with likes, dislikes, and other “human” qualities by another scientist, Dr. Leslie Dwyer. In turn, Dwyer had been taken off the project when she opposed the potentially destructive direction it had taken. After killing the other professor, Mr. R.I.N.G. came to Dr. Dwyer seeking refuge and to complete his course in humanity, studying the readings of St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristototle’s “Ethics” to satisfy the creation of his own desired moral compass.

"Blade Runner"

Does any of this sound familiar to you? Just a bit? The Tyrell Institute? An android who wants nothing more than to live and to be human? It seemed to me that Mr. Ring was a rudimentary version of Roy Batty, Rutger Hauer’s iconic android from the 1983 classic, “Blade Runner.” The film takes place in the year 2019 and Roy Batty, along with four other “replicants” – or genetically engineered androids used to do humans’ dirty work on off-Earth colonies – decides that he does not want to be “retired” (a nice way of saying “destroyed”) and takes off on the lam issuing a path of destruction behind him. All the while, Batty ponders what it means to be “human.”

Unlike Mr. R.I.N.G. in the “Night Stalker” episode, whose “face” is a mass of circuits and L.E.D. lights, Roy Batty and his fellow replicants are virtually indistinguishable from humans. (In fact, Billy Idol probably owes a royalty check or two to Roy and Pris for co-opting their look.)

In the film, it’s not the Tyrell Institute that creates these replicants, but the Tyrell Corporation, which has amassed a substantial amount of power across the world. If the mind wanders, using the “Kolchak” “Mr. R.I.N.G.” episode as a springboard, it would only make sense (in an eerily prophetic way) that what was once a mere institute in 1974 would evolve into a world-wide conglomerate, possibly intertwining government, military, and corporate backing to create androids to carry out human orders.

The coincidences between this one-off episode of a ‘70s TV series and a film that emerged almost a decade later seem to be too coincidental to not be interrelated. Particularly when you consider Carl Kolchak’s awesomely subversive speech in the episode that ties together pie charts, tax dollars funding top secret government projects that tax payers don’t know about, and “mystery flavor” ice cream atop a pie à la Mode. (It makes much more sense if you watch it for yourself!)

Roy Batty ... golden boy

While the devil is in the details and those details crop up in “Blade Runner,” the eternal question of “Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?” comes into play in this instance, too. Much of the story of “Blade Runner” was (very) loosely based off of Phillip K. Dick’s 1968 novel, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”. The Tyrell Corporation was never mentioned, nor were some of the androids/andys/replicants named.

The original book actually showed the replicants in a much less sympathetic light than they were portrayed in “Blade Runner.” While the film was loosely inspired by Phillip K. Dick’s novel, Dick was not a part of “Blade Runner’s” writing team. Hampton Fancher and David Peoples were responsible for scripting the film.

Who knows? Maybe Fancher and Peoples caught the “Mr. R.I.N.G.” episode (written by L. Ford Neale & John Huff) when they were drafting their screenplay for “Blade Runner?”

Given the evidence proffered, there could be a good chance that “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” could very well have helped to inspire a sci-fi classic as we know it.