alone time

Oh, to be tucked away in some forsaken wintry pocket of seclusion, a man and his hands and determination, gone from it all.  Alone with the wilder things, at peace with the ice-kissed ether, lost from the maddening crowd.  And as the world slipped further into its oblivion, I would be out there, living, with not a concern for their wretched thoughts or movements. Civilization is but a bittersweet reminiscence as the days stretch on in the silent splendor of the hinterlands—away from them all.

I may take up carpentry yet!

over easy

In this remarkable local Baltimore television profile from 1978, which attempts to summarize Edith Massey's strange claim to stardom, we get a rare and intimate glimpse into the life and work of one of John Water's most indelible early trademarks. Hailed here as the "queen of punk rock" and "queen of the underground", she is likewise lauded "the most universally loved figure in Baltimore since Brooks Robinson". As is apparent below, it all couldn't have happened to a nicer woman.  All hail the Egg Lady!

while you sleep

Nightmare at 43 Hillcrest (ABC’S Wide World of Mystery; originally broadcast 8/20/74)

In this rather perilous, long-forgotten vista into a lost suburbia, circa 1974, a real-life nightmare scenario unfolds for a mild-mannered family of three. The subject of this tense, foreboding episode of ABC’S WIDE WORLD OF MYSTERY (produced by Dan Curtis), based on true accounts, is arguably as relevant today as it ever has been.

The story begins as the camera silently probes the darkness in and around the Leyden residence, while they sleep.  It’s an ominous preamble to a home invasion, and when the front door bursts in and a group of armed men drag the Leydens out of their bedrooms, casting menace and threatening violence at every turn, it’s easy to assume this average American family is being robbed, or worse.

But there’s a twist here, and it’s a rather unsettling one: the intruders are detectives from the local police, and it seems they believe the Leydens are drug pushers.

Less than a minute into this chaotic scene, it’s quite apparent the Leydens believe, like the rest of us, that they are being robbed.  Only after being assaulted and knocked to the ground in front of his horrified wife and teenage daughter does Greg Leyden (Jim Hutton) learn the truth: these guys are detectives and are in his home to arrest him—to arrest them—for dealing heroin.  Furthermore, their brutal leader, Detective Clarence Hartog (Peter Mark Richman), is steadfast in his conviction that the Leydens are dope pushers. 

Esther (Emmaline Henry) and Nancy Leyden (Linda Curtis), awake in a nightmare.

But just as soon as the detective has pistol-whipped Greg Leydon to the ground in front of his shocked wife and daughter, his second in command, Detective Sanford ‘Sandy’ Bates (Don Dubbins), is grabbing his elbow, looking gravely concerned.  After some prodding, he manages to corral his hard-driving superior out front for a word in private. 

And, oops…well, it seems they’ve hit the wrong house—they were supposed to raid 43 North Hillcrest.  Additionally, they’ve just terrorized an innocent family and viciously assaulted its patriarch as result of their egregious error.  But as Sandy is about to head back in and spill the beans, Hartog takes hold…"I’m arresting these people." "You’re what?!"  "You heard me.  I can’t afford to blow 20 years over a little mistake." "A little mistake?!"  

"There’s some heroin packaged in the car.  Plant ‘em.”  “Clarence, these people are innocent!"  "Do you want to go back to walking the beat?!"

And so the Leydens are taken downtown and booked while Detective Hartog has his picture taken with Sandy and a case full of heroin for the morning newspaper.

And that is how the nightmare begins in this 71 minute, shot-on-videotape (and on the fly) made-for-TV potboiler.  As television went in those days, this was all but disposable product, but of the many dozens of network-exclusive cheapo thrillers aired that same year, few distinguished themselves with the kind of verve and visceral emotional impact that a story like this one all but promises to deliver.

"Oh God, I can't believe this is happening!"  "What are we gonna do?!"

Out on bail the following day, the Leydens see the dire immediate impact of their arrests. Greg learns he's been fired from work, their daughter, Nancy (Linda Curtis), has been expelled from high school, and they've become personae non gratae throughout the community.  

What's more, their front door has been defaced and they immediately begin receiving vulgar, harassing phone calls.  When someone throws a large stone through their living room window with an unutterable message attached, Greg, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, can muster only one desperate, disgusted word—“Filth!”

Veteran TV mainstay, Jim Hutton, gives the best performance of the cast..

Worse yet, the police have destroyed their home searching for drugs and evidence.  And their lawyer, seemingly their only protection from all this stark raving madness, is advising them to plead guilty and take a plea deal (and prison time).

"They've got 8 bags of heroin that says you are guilty!"

As these things so often tend to go, there is light at the end of the tunnel for the Leydens, something unexpected—and perhaps the least believable aspect of this story: an honest cop, present during the raid, risks his career to set the record straight and save the family.

And, reluctantly, an idealistic young D.A.'s assistant (Mariette Hartley) begins to believe the noble detective, gradually building a case alleging a frame-up against the Leydens.

Alas, while the pendulum of justice still often sways from its intended path, that "one good cop" high-mindedness alluded to here is more often than not the product of fiction, as dissention among the ranks and whistle-blowing are typically met with career-ending circumstances few are willing to risk.

Peter Mark Richman, eviscerating the scenery.

On a tragic side-note, Linda Curtis (daughter of producer Dan Curtis), who stars here as daughter Nancy, is listed as having passed away the following year, 1975, at the age of 20.  This is her only known role, for which she gives a very fair account of herself. Despite much scouring of the web, details of her death remain elusive.

I'll fly away

"Third from the Sun" (TWILIGHT ZONE, originally broadcast January 8, 1960)

I must admit to a certain amount of distraction as of late, to the degree that I didn’t believe I’d be doing anything here at all until this abysmal election was finally over and done with.  With that in mind, I chose something that is more or less thematically compatible with my current disposition.

Based on the short story by noted fantasist, Richard Matheson—and adapted by Rod Serling—“Third from the Sun” follows the plight of troubled family man and scientist, Will Sturka (Fritz Weaver), whose work in a government weapons plant offers him a distinct vantage point into his nation's foreign policy.

"You a defeatist, Sturka?  That's dangerous thinking.  You'd better mind what you say."  "And what I think, too, eh?"  "And what you think."

Amid a pronounced increase in bomb-making and hushed rumors of imminent nuclear war, Will and his friend and colleague, Jerry Riden (Joe Maross), have been plotting an exit strategy for months—one that involves pirating an experimental government spacecraft capable of reaching other galaxies.

Jerry, who’s been test-piloting the new ship, has also mapped out a destination—a planet 11 million miles away, with people and an atmosphere not dissimilar to their own. 

"11 million miles...in a ship we're not even sure will leave the atmosphere."  "That's the risk, though."  

But a superior from work by the name of Carling (Edward Andrews) has been watching Sturka closely, and seems aware something is amiss just as he and Jerry are about to make their move.

"It's coming, boy, it's really coming...and a big one, too!"

And move, they must, because a global nuclear war is about to commence any time now.  "You see if I'm not right...48 hours and we'll have them aloft." And so, despite Carling's hinting that he is on to them, they can wait no longer to gather their families.

"But I have a date tonight."  "Break it, Jody, will you?" 

"Everyone I talk to lately, they've been noticing..."  "Noticing what, Jo?"  "That something's wrong.  That something's in the air."

"It'll be a holocaust.  It will be hell...the end of everything we know.  People, places, ideas--everything"

"We're leaving...you and Jody and I, Jerry and Ann.  We're leaving tonight."

But as they assemble on the final evening before their planned late-night departure, playing bridge to keep up appearances, Sturka's budding nemesis, Carling, pops up once again to shake the tree.

"I was just telling your wife she makes wonderful lemonade.  Hot night, too.  This is a night for a front porch...or sleep.  But nothing else."

"You're a little nervous, Mrs. Sturka.  You're very nervous."

After a tense game of cat and mouse, Carling departs, letting Will know beyond doubt that he knows what they're planning.  And just as he's out the door, Will's boss is calling on the phone—they're sending a car to pick him up.  And so the time is now...or never.

"Third from the Sun" is one of the classic Twilight Zone episodes, for a number of reasons—including its taut, compelling script and Richard L. Bare’s memorably expressionistic, claustrophobic direction—but what really makes this one tick is the intense back and forth between Sturka and Carling.  As Will Sturka, Fritz Weaver’s visceral tight-rope act of barely-masked contempt and paranoia is wonderfully offset by the loathsome Carling (Edward Andrews, amiably detestable as ever), who enjoys the game and doesn't mind letting on, if only because he just can't help himself.  

"You ever think there might be people on one of those stars out there?"  "The thought has crossed my mind."

In times like these, it's easy to relate to a man like Will Sturka.  A man made cynical by a world beholden to its hate and fears—a world bent on destroying itself.  A man of ideals coming to grips with a society that seems to have run out of them.  

And when he's left no choice, and forced to leave his world, it's little wonder we're optimistic for him—for them.  It's our nature.  Sure they'll make it...what else is there? What, there's people there, you say?  Are they sure they picked the right one?

future blues

There are lonely nights like this, when the rain is constant and the future is maddening, that I get the Blade Runner Blues. When humanity takes yet another backwards step and the bad times can seemingly only get worse. When they've sounded all the alarms of catastrophe—and a new power braces to take hold.  And you blindly hang your feet over the edge of that great unknowable precipice, the beginning of the end.  And ponder someone you love...and what lay ahead. What’s it all for, anyways? And why the hell does any of it matter anymore? When a somber melody tells the only truth.

nothing's shocking

BLUE SUNSHINE (1978;d:Jeff Lieberman)

There are a couple of scenes in BLUE SUNSHINE that are so riveting, so terrifying, that it is difficult to ignore their disparity with the rest of the movie.  This is in no way intended as an appraisal of the film’s inconsistency, but rather an attempt to draw attention to a pair of sensational moments herein.

What BLUE SUNSHINE has going for it is one brilliant concept for a horror movie.  In the seventies, no one knew for sure what the long-term, lingering effects of psychedelic experimentation might be, and there had long been a sense that revelers in LSD were more or less trampling in God's domain.  And isn’t that the crux of so many horror classics past?

Just moments in, we find ourselves visitors to a party that seems to be winding down.  There are about 10 or so guests left, one of whom has taken to flapping his arms and screeching loudly like a testy pterodactyl.  When he crashes into other guests and winds up on the floor, still flapping away, it's easy to assume he's added a bit of extra lemon to his spritzer, or—possibly—drugs are afoot.

A young Brion James (BLADE RUNNER) learns to fly.

The rest of the guests seem mostly unaffected by this strange outburst, as the drug culture has become commonplace in modern-day Los Angeles—a recurring theme throughout BLUE SUNSHINE.  When the host of the party decides to serenade his guests, though, the first such “moment” mentioned earlier begins to transpire.

Billy Crystal's brother, Richard, plays Frannie Scott, a self-styled crooner on the verge of a meltdown.

Breaking out a bit too self-assured, finger-snapping rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “Just In Time”, Frannie Scott (Richard Crystal) seems to project nothing untoward—beyond his ominous trampling of one of The Chairman’s gems—until he plants a forceful, inappropriate wet one on the lips of a guest’s startled date.  Her boyfriend, in turn, grabs his presumptuous host by the hair, which comes off in his hand, leaving the room in stunned silence as the newly-bald Frannie, wild-eyed and (thankfully) at a loss for words, bolts from his own living room and into the night.

Well, what was that all about?  

"Let’s go look for him."  

As the group sets out in pursuit of their increasingly odd host, a trio of young lovelies wait back at the house, just in case he shows up .

There's a knock at the door...maybe it's Frannie?

It is Frannie, and he's picking up one of the girls and carrying her, screaming in terror, over to the fireplace...

And I thought the bird guy was wacko.

Oh no!  What the hell is Frannie doing?!  And just like that, he's shoved this hysterical young woman into the blazing fireplace.

As confusion gives way to the soul-piercing shrieks of agony and horror, her friends rush over to help.  Frannie, however, is intent on watching the young woman burn, and blocks her frantic attempts at escape, even as her friends violently attempt to pry him away.

Once he's certain the young lady in the fireplace is dead, he turns to the others.

And just minutes into the film, we've experienced something totally unexpected and extremely disturbing.  The premise of BLUE SUNSHINE is simple enough.  A group of former students of Stanford University are beginning to experience some unsettling side-effects from a particular strain of LSD they’d taken 10 years back.  They begin to lose their hair, which is accompanied by terrible headaches, ultimately leading to a total psychotic break, resulting in the kind of violence we’ve already witnessed.

The story arc follows the plight of one of the partygoers from earlier, Jerry Zipkin (Zalman King), who is falsely accused of the multiple murders in the house after pushing the crazed Franny in front of an oncoming truck.  While on the run, he and his girlfriend try to prove his innocence while also digging deeper into the Stanford/LSD connection.  I won’t delve into that much further because the movie does lose a bit of steam up until the other horrifying moment mentioned earlier, about an hour in.

While seeking out other former students in the area, Jerry comes across a woman watching her neighbor's noisy children, and he notices she's wearing a wig just before she asks him to leave.

"Don't you know it's impolite to stare?!"

Wendy Flemming (Ann Cooper), experiencing one doozy of a headache

After showing Jerry the door, Wendy Flemming—who happens to be the ex-wife of the student who'd sold the bad acid we come to know as Blue Sunshine—begins popping pills for her migraine.

"WE WANT ICE CREAM!  WE WANT ICE CREAM!"

In the next room, her neighbor's ill-mannered children begin jumping on the furniture and shouting incessantly for ice cream. 

And so Wendy pops some more pills...

And as her wig slides off, a scene from a nightmare begins to unfold.

When the Andrea Yates case first made headlines, the scene which follows came to mind.

Along with many other horror films, I first saw BLUE SUNSHINE on either Creature Feature or Thriller Double Feature, on Saturday afternoon UHF (metro Detroit), at a very young age.  It made quite an impression, to say the least.

As much as I might like to forget, these are images that have been indelibly stamped into my memory, for all time—and that is the measure of a good horror movie.  

And, alas, that's a wrap for October...sleep tight.  Oh, and happy Halloween!