Happy Birthday Edgar Allan Poe: Castle of Blood (1962)

About twenty years ago I stumbled on a video company called Sinister Cinema which specialized in public domain films of every exploitation genre imaginable: old movie serials, juvenile delinquent, sword and sandal, poverty row mysteries, bottom of the barrel sci-fi, and of course, horror. I was eager to get my hands on copies of some of the more obscure films I had watched on Scream In when I was a kid, movies like Black Sunday and Terror in the Crypt. Once I started ordering from the catalog, I was hooked and picked up some fun things as well like Roger Corman’s Swamp Women, Ed Wood Jr’s Jail Bait, and a campy hoot called Teenage Devil Dolls. But the real excitement for me was the chance to finally see some of the legendary and, until then, unattainable Barbara Steele flicks such as Castle of Blood and The Terror of Dr. Hichcock.

Today, my collection of VHS tapes from Sinister Cinema is buried in a box in my basement. Since the advent of DVD, there have been a number of film companies who have gone to great lengths to painstakingly restore some of these gems. Hichcock remains unattainable, but in 2002 Synapse Films remastered and fully restored the wonderful entry in Italian Gothic cinema, 1962’s Danza Macabre, better known as Castle of Blood stateside, restoring bits of risqué dialogue and some brief female nudity.

Castle of Blood purports to be based on an Edgar Allan Poe story. It bears some resemblance to his story Never Bet the Devil Your Head, but beyond that it is strictly a fabrication of screenwriters Sergio Corbucci and Giovanni Grimaldi. Like the American counterparts filmed by Roger Corman, Castle of Blood doesn’t adapt Poe as much as it captures the dreamlike quality and sometimes hallucinatory feel of his work.

 

Poe himself appears in the prelude at the Inn of the Four Devils, where he is being interviewed by British journalist Alan Foster. In the tavern, Poe and Foster meet Lord Thomas Blackwood who offers Alan Foster one hundred pounds if he can survive the night at the haunted Blackwood family castle. Foster accepts the wager, Poe and Blackwood drop him off at the estate and the fun begins.

Visually, like most of the other Italian Gothics from the early 1960s, Castle of Blood takes its cue from Corman – we are treated to plenty of cobwebs and candelabras, mysterious piano music, and drop dead gorgeous babes, most notably Barbara Steele who somehow cornered the market on haunted Gothic heroines in many of these films. Like most boys my age who were mesmerized by her Gothic glamour, I’ve had a lifelong obsession with the actress and her films to the point where the dead heroine of my novel, The Haunting at Blackwood Hall, is not only named after Steele’s character of Elizabeth Blackwood from Castle of Blood, but possesses her physical description as well.

Castle of Blood is slow moving by today’s standards, but it positively drips with Gothic aura in its tale of a house full of ghosts who relive the last five minutes of their lives every night at midnight. While the movie has several long passages of the characters wandering through the cobwebs with eerie music playing on the soundtrack, we are also treated to some stunning outbursts of violence and even a bit of lesbian erotica. Due to the slow pacing, Castle of Blood is not necessarily to everyone’s taste. But if you are a lover of cinema as visual art and ready to tackle something different in the Gothic genre, please give Castle of Blood a try. The Synapse release is still available from Amazon.

I realized I have been writing this blog for well over a year now and have not yet touched on the Italian branch of Gothic horror films. Expect more in the weeks and months ahead.

Happy Birthday Edgar Allan Poe: January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849.

Satanic Madmen: Hjalmer Poelzig

I can’t pronounce it either. But Bela Lugosi can. Listening to Lugosi’s fractured English in a non-Dracula role is one of the joys of this 1934 Universal horror film, especially when he intones the classic line, “Supernatural perhaps – baloney, perhaps not.”

The Black Cat owes next to nothing to the Edgar Allan Poe story from which it draws its title, yet somehow manages to capture the essence of Poe in its strange tale of obsession, paranoia, and revenge.

During a raging storm (is there any other kind?), Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi) and a hapless American couple who are his traveling companions to Visegrad, find themselves seeking shelter at the home of Werdegast’s arch enemy, the architect Hjalmer Poelzig (Karloff) who made off with Werdegast’s wife while Werdegast was in a prison camp for the past fifteen years. The minute we lay eyes on Poelzig we know this guy is up to no good…in a bad, bad way. I mean, look at that haircut, guyliner, and lipstick. Eww.

Under Edgar Ulmer’s script and direction, Poelzig is as serious a diabolic madman as has ever been put on film. Poelzig’s house is a modern expressionistic nightmare perched atop the ruins of Fort Marmorus which he had commanded during the war, an army which he ultimately betrayed to the Russians causing the death of thousands of Hungarian soldiers. Poelzig lives on top of the graveyard of the soldiers he led into death.

If that isn’t evil enough, wait till you get a load of the former wives and lovers he keeps in suspended animation, displayed in glass boxes which he likes to view while stroking the titular feline. You call that a collection? I call it fifty shades of necrophilia. You don’t think he just looks at them do you?

Werdegast is no slouch himself in the weirdo department. Though his characters is the protagonist, his performance is laced with menace, fear, lust, and a thirst for revenge involving a scalpel. Early in the film he engages in some inappropriate touching of the young bride of his traveling companion, a gesture so creepy and pervy it makes me wonder how it made it past the Hollywood censors. According to the events surrounding the film’s production as detailed at 366 Weird Movies, The Black Cat was heavily edited before its release. Most of the old Universal monster films leave us with a sense of fun. This one makes me want to take a shower after I’ve watched it.

The plot is occasionally hard to follow which may be due to these edits. Nevertheless, things build to a devilish climax when it becomes clear Poelzig and his disciples are about to celebrate the Rites of Lucifer and he intends to sacrifice the innocent American bride. The ritual room is good stuff, complete with socialites in black cowled robes, Poelzig sporting a pentagram amulet, and a piece of set decoration that looks suspiciously like an inverted cross. Strong stuff in 1934, it still has hypnotic power over the viewer today. 

If your ideas of Karloff and Lugosi begin and end with Frankenstein and Dracula, prepare yourself for a truly bizarre Gothic thriller. The Black Cat is available on DVD in The Bela Lugosi Collection along with other lesser known Universal horror films The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Invisible Ray, and Black Friday.

Dzaet - The Art of Pamela Hill

A crescent moon ascends a benighted sky. A woman’s hair becomes a tangle of leafless, lifeless tree limbs. A Victorian woman navigates the forest of souls, pestered by a flock of ravens with human faces. A wide-eyed beauty strikes a formal pose, the severed head of Edgar Allan Poe in her lap.

Enter, if you will, the World of Dzaet, the Art of Pamela Hill.

One of the joys of internet social networking sites is the discovery at the click of a mouse, of something, or someone, new and wondrous. This is how I discovered Pamela Hill in the autumn of 2009 and purchased for my own, a print of the painting, Annabelle Lee.

                                                

Besides her uncanny ability to conjure deeply personal visions from the depths of her soul that resonate with people who have never met her, one of the most startling facts about Pamela is that she is completely self taught, having picked up the brush as recently as 2007, and has already made a name for herself throughout her home state of Virginia and as far away as the European continent.

Pamela, can you tell me a little bit about how you got your start. What made you decided to take up painting at mid-life, and how did you go about developing your techniques?

Well, Barrymore, in all honesty, I am not sure how I got my start. I was bored one day, and simply decided to try my hand at a painting. I had always been interested, had "dabbled" in art in my teens, but never pursued it. It was hilarious. However it was also addicting. By the third painting, I found that all of my childhood angst was being poured out on canvas. The paint was mixed with tears, and although it was emotionally taxing, something deep inside me knew that it was a path that I had to walk down. So, I walked. It was exciting, yet difficult. It opened wounds, and it healed. Those early canvases were rudimentary, yet filled with stories of my life. I never worried about technique during that time. I just wanted to empty myself of all the bottled up pain, and so I continued.

                                             

From past conversations with you, I understand how difficult it is for you to part with your original paintings, even though in less than five years you have developed a hobby into a full-time professional career. How did you come to publicly display your first painting, and how did you feel when you made that first sale?

Yes, it is extremely difficult for me to part with my paintings. For obvious reasons, I keep a canvas journal. Each and every one of my paintings are autobiographical, so when one of them finds a new home, a part of me leaves with it. Sometimes as humans it is difficult for us to give up the past, to let go of anger. At times I wanted the paintings around to remind me of how justified I was to have those negative emotions. When I do let a painting go, it is the ultimate in healing for me. I have finally reached the place where I am willing to let go of that past and forgive.

I don’t consider what I do a career, it is more of a service. Each painting touches the person that it is supposed to. The client resonates with it personally, and perhaps it begins their own road to healing. I found this when a close friend of mine "talked" me into posting a piece on MySpace, and the piece was received with messages from people who had been through the same emotional upheaval. That encouraged me to take the advice of a friend at a local art shop who had wanted me to try a show. At the first show, I found myself holding a young woman who cried her eyes out. I gave her the painting, as I realized that she needed it to begin her own path. I finally had found a reason for the suffering I had endured.

Are there any particular artists who influenced your particular style and/or any artists that you admire and strive to emulate?

I have no art history knowledge at all. I am not well acquainted with other artists, so there was no one in the beginning that influenced me. I will say though, that one woman eventually did touch me. I was in Barnes and Noble looking through their clearance table when I saw a book about Frida Kahlo. I opened the book, looked at a few of her paintings, and thought “WOW this woman paints like I do!” I had no knowledge of who she was, or that she was no longer alive. I bought the book, then the movie, and learned a lot about her. Although our styles are not necessarily the same, she was also a symbolist, and she painted her life on canvas. I have since completely resonated with her as a human being.

As I life long lover of all things Gothic, from art to film to literature, I often find myself asking: Why Gothic? Where did this inclination toward the dark exploration of the soul come from? What do you think has influenced your life and art to lean toward the types of dark and atmospheric images that appear in your work?

Yes, Barrymore, I love all things Gothic. However, I don’t purposely paint in any style. I simply use my symbols to tell a story, and my stories are dark and painful. Again, they are autobiographical. As a writer, imagine getting up every morning and writing about your personal feelings, upsets, joys, etc. That is all that I do.

Are there any particular books or films that influenced your Gothic leanings as you were growing up?

You know, I don’t really know why I love the Gothic world. My first thought would be that I love the Victorian clothing. I simply adore everything from corsets and ruffles to the beautiful architecture and furnishings. Perhaps I was alive in that era? I would guess so.

I know that many of your paintings are deeply personal. This one, Out of the Darkness and Into the Light, has been described as a self-portrait. Would you be willing to share with my readers what some of the imagery means to you?

                                               

Yes, it is a self portrait. The title gives away some of the meaning. I was lost and now am found. This particular painting was meant to show my growth in the spiritual aspect of life, thus the blue corset, which symbolizes spirituality, and the owl’s head which symbolizes the wisdom that I have gained. She is walking out of, or away from, the darkness felt from feeling alone, and into the knowledge that we are all one. All things are one, and there is never any need to feel alienated or alone. Just look around you at any given moment and know that you are surrounded by "family". She holds the light, it is no longer unattainable. She has found her place in the world, in the universe. She is content.

One last question, one I’m sure you have been asked more times than you can count, what is the meaning of Dzaet?

I love this question. The answer always reminds me of the journey that I have taken and the wondrous outcome of it. Dzaet is Armenian for the numbers 808. I was born at 8:08 in the morning, and when I picked up the paintbrush, I feel that I was re-born. Reborn into a new purpose, a new life, a new path. It seemed appropriate that I would paint under that name. After all, how much more boring could "Pam Hill" get? And for those who know me personally, I deplore boring!

One thing is certain your artwork is never boring! Thanks so much for allowing me the opportunity to share your work with my readers. Pamela’s work can be found online at Dzaet, MySpace, and on Facebook at Dzaert Art. All images included here are copyright by Dzaet, reproduced with permission.

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

For kids growing up in the US in the 1960s, Saturday night television was a thing of wonder when we were allowed to stay up late with a bowl of popcorn and a bottle of root beer, shivering with anticipation as the minutes kicked down to the start of our local fright show. In my city it was called Scream In and was hosted by a groovy hippie vampire named The Cool Ghoul. Week after week he brought us the best in (mostly Gothic) horror films from the 40s, 50s, and early 60s. We saw our first Hammer films on these programs, low budget shockers such as Francis Coppola’s Dementia-13, dubbed Italian imports, and of course, the Roger Corman adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of mystery and imagination. Few things were scarier to me at that age than the bloodied hand of Barbara Steele rising from her tomb to stalk Vincent Price through the womb-like corridors of Medina Castle in 1961’s Pit and the Pendulum.

British film critic David Robinson accurately pointed out, "As in (Corman’s) House of Usher, the quality of the film is its full-blooded feeling for Gothic horror - storms and lightning, moldering castles and cobwebbed torture chambers, bleeding brides trying to tear the lids from their untimely tombs." Indeed, Pit and the Pendulum is so soaked in Gothic atmosphere that I have probably watched this film on VHS and DVD more than any other. On any rainy Saturday afternoon, sleepless midnight, and of course, the Halloween season, I find myself being drawn back to Castle Medina and the ravings of Vincent Price again and again.

To today’s younger audiences who have grown up with more graphic shockers, Pit and the Pendulum might seem too cheesy to take seriously. I have to admit that if Vincent Price was any more of a ham his performance might be mistaken for Christmas dinner. But when you drill down through the blood and thunder soundtrack by Les Baxter, the lashing rains and crashing waves, Daniel Haller’s art direction which fills the frame with an almost unparalleled Gothic atmosphere (watch for more about this guy in future posts), what we have left is a truly disturbing portrait of a mind on the brink of psychological collapse.

For those not familiar with the plot of Richard Matheson’s adaptation (spoiler alert), Don Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price) is the son of Sebastian Medina, one of the Spanish Inquisitions most notorious torturers. At an early age, Nicholas witnessed the death by torture of his Mother and Uncle at the hands of his Father, accusing both of marital infidelities. Here we have what is unofficially known as Wicked Father Syndrome, a motif found in several of Corman’s horror films as well as a staple of 20^th century romantic Gothic fiction. This psychological fissure casts Medina as a true Byronic hero, making him a character to be both feared and pitied. The irony of this childhood trauma is that his own wife, Elizabeth (played by the ever ravishing horror film icon, Barbara Steele) has engaged in adultery with Nicholas’ best friend, Dr. Leon. The core of the plot revolves around an elaborate gaslight wherein Dr. Leon and Elizabeth fake her death, going so far as to bury another woman’s body in Elizabeth’s crypt. Nicholas, and the audience, have been led to believe that Elizabeth is dead, which brings us to the memorable scene of Elizabeth rising from her tomb, very much alive.

If Pit and the Pendulum were to be adapted today, the film would undoubtedly focus on grisly torture effects, much as it did in a 1991 version. With its music, art direction, atmospherics and emotional histrionics, Corman’s 1961 film remains one of Gothic cinema’s major milestones.  

“Neeeecholas!”