HOMICIDAL 1961 lecinemadreams.blogspot.com /2015/03/homicidal-1961.html
Warning: Spoilers, spoilers, everywhere! Do not read if you haven't seen the film! The late William Castle, schlock horror showman extraordinaire (The Tingler, Strait-Jacket, The House on Haunted Hill) wasn’t a bad director so much as an artless one. His pedestrian, TV-bland style of moviemaking —if the word "style" can be used to describe merely pointing the camera at whomever is speaking and making sure it's in focus—flattened and benumbd the performances of his actors and tended to drain the life out of the otherwise intriguingly bizarre narratives that were his latter-career métier. In fact, the sole mitigating factor distinguishing William Castle’s films from the formulaic, workaday B-movie mediocrity of say, Roger Corman, was the sense that lurking somewhere beneath William Castle’s bland, middle-class nice-guy countenance was someone with a perverse, almost John Waters-like predilection for the grotesque and downright weird. Unpretentious in the extreme (none of Castle’s films give the impression of aspiring to anything darker than the good-natured “Boo!” shouted in the dark), and with nary a subconscious demon to exorcise, Castle was a seemingly decent man who was more a gifted showman than deep-thinker. But he also a very ambitious man. A man inarguably more overburdened with self-confidence than artistic vision. Castle built his career on the imitation/emulation of his idols, Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, but, in his crude, over-simplistic interpretation of his material, revealed that he lacked both the aesthetics and innate vulgarity necessary to be a really interesting filmmaker.
As fate would have it, William Castle, through sheer huckster’s bravado and none of the genius, actually managed to 1/13
carve out a more prolific producing/directing career than former colleague Orson Welles (Castle served as associate producer on The Lady from Shanghai). And in a twist worthy of O. Henry, after years of dogging Alfred Hitchcock’s footsteps like an admiring, less-gifted little brother, the public taste pendulum had swung to such a corkscrew angle that it was eventually Hitchcock who wound up being the copycat: borrowing William Castle’s low-budget/heavyhype style for 1960s Psycho. And while it must be said that both Castle and Hitchcock are principally beholden to Henri-Georges Clouzot for his 1955 horror classic Les Diaboliques (whose final frame beseeches audience members not to be diabolical and reveal the film’s surprise ending to friends); Psycho’s then groundbreaking “No one will be admitted after the film starts” screening gimmick was a page lifted straight out of the William Castle hoopla handbook. Which brings us to Homicidal, a clear case of “Who’s copying whom?” William Castle had slogged away for years churning out crime programmers and private eye 2nd features before ultimately achieving moderate notoriety and success (if not respectability) in the Drive-In/Saturday Matinee horror circuit. Thus, it must have really burned his biscuits when a slumming Alfred Hitchcock came along with the critically and publicly well-received Psycho, fairly beating Castle at his own game, and emerging with his A-list reputation not only intact, but reinforced. The horror gauntlet had been thrown down. Castle was left with no choice but to prove that he was still a game player in a field he’d heretofore had all to himself.
Joan Marshall as Emily
Homicidal is basically Psycho-lite: all the sturm with none of the drang. It’s a largely inept, ergo wildly entertaining, homage/rip-off of only the most superficial of Psycho’s exploitation-worthy plot points and identifiable Hitchcock templates. All served up with William Castle’s trademark bargainbasement theatrics and nonexistent visual style. Glenn Corbett as Karl Anderson A sure-footed director like Hitchcock can afford to string his audience along for nearly fifty-minutes before unleashing the big shocker moment. William Castle, not so much. After an intriguing but amateurishly-executed prologue set in 1948 wherein a little boy enters a playroom and swipes a doll from a little girl who’s no Margaret O’Brien in the crying department, Homicidal jumps to the present-day and embarks on the film’s one truly effective suspense setpiece. A protracted sequence in which an icy “Hitchcock
blonde” buys a wedding ring, rents a hotel room, and offers a bellboy $2,000 to marry her on September 6 th, the wedding to be annulled immediately after. All this leading up to Homicidal’s big shocker moment: a brutal knife attack. All probably quite shocking for 1961, but the best that can be said for it now is that it matches in unintentional laughs what Psycho’s shower sequence provided in screams.
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Patricia Breslin as Miriam Webster
Jean Arless as Warren Webster
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Euginie Leontovich as Helga Swenson
Richard Rust as Jim Nesbitt
Alan Bruce as Dr. Jonas
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From setup to dénouement, the sequence clocks in at a brisk fifteen minutes, and, primed as we are with apprehension by the non-stop allusions to Psycho and our own piqued curiosity over the cryptic behavior of the woman; Homicidal begins on a fairly suspenseful high note. A note conspicuously lacking once the story proper kicks in. After an extended stay in Denmark (!), odd-looking Warren Webster, the androgynous, slim-hipped heir with the $10 million overbite, returns to his family home in Solvang, California to claim his due inheritance on the occasion of his fast-approaching 21st birthday. In tow are Helga, Warren’s childhood nurse and guardian following the death of his parents, now a mute invalid after suffering a stroke; and Emily, Helga’s striking but equally odd-looking nurse of mysterious origin and whiplash mood swings. Emily, whose manner is as stiff and brittle as her severe blond flip hairdo with fringe bangs, shares an ambiguous relationship with Warren (Friend? Companion? Wife?) which rouses the genteel suspicions of his halfsister with the dictionary name, Miriam Webster. Nurse Emily meanwhile tries to rouse more than just suspicions (if you get my cruder meaning) of Karl, Miriam’s square, square-jawed sweetheart who at one time was Warren’s childhood bully-for-pay playmate. (Fearing his son not masculine enough, Warren’s screwball of a father paid Karl to engage Warren in fistfights). Faster than you can say “We all go a little mad sometimes,” local outbreaks of assault, vandalism, and long-winded elder abuse alert authorities of a possible connection to the stabbing murder that opened the film. A connection tied to Warren, his inheritance, and all those around him who may or may not be exactly as they seem. Written by William Castle’s frequent collaborator Robb White (Macabre, 13 Ghosts), Homicidal has the makings of a fairly decent thriller, its potential submarined by the inadequacy of its particulars. Happily, for all us lovers of camp, William Castle’s carnival barker instincts as director never allow the film’s wan performances, risible dialog, and dry criminal procedural to distract from what are obviously his foremost points of interest: Homicidal’s two gimmicky hooks. There’s the gimmick he could openly promote: the one-minute “Fright Break” Emily, having a particularly trying day. which stopped the film and allowed audience members too frightened to see the finale an opportunity to flee the theater and get their money back (but only after suffering the indignity of sitting in the “Coward’s Corner” in the lobby). Then there’s the “surprise” gimmick which raises the stakes of Psycho’s cross-dressing twist, pulls a Christine Jorgensen reversal, and introduces movie audiences (a first?) to the “Ripped from today’s headlines!” sensationalism of gender reassignment surgery. 5/13
William Castle was responsible for some of the oddest films to come out of the '50s and '60s. When they were silly, essentially onenote genre programmers like The Tingler, Castle’s barely-above-average B-movie skills were a perfect match for the minimal demands of both the audience and the stories themselves. But as Paramount head of production Robert Evans knew when he wrested Rosemary’s Baby from Castle and handed it over to Roman Polanski; Castle’s uninspired directing style is woefully ill-suited William Castle assigned TV actress Joan Marshall the gender-neutral name of to anything requiring an understanding of Jean Arless to better conceal Homicidal's twist ending things like editing, pacing, composition, the building of suspense, and the appropriate application of a music score. Homicidal is no Rosemary’s Baby, but its compellingly preposterous plot is not without its appeal. That is, disregarding the obvious handicap of Robb White’s terrible dialogue: “Warren, what do you really know about her?” “What do we really know about anybody?” Homicidal cries out for a director with a bit more creative ingenuity and a willingness to go to some of the darker corners of its twisted plot than Castle was able to muster. I can’t vouch for how all this played for '60s audiences (alarmingly, Time Magazine placed it on its list of Top 10 films of 1961), but behind some of the pleasure I take in laughing at Homicidal’s excesses and liabilities, there’s the nagging frustration born of an opportunity lost and potential squandered. WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM If you’re gonna rip-off Psycho and need a gimmick to pull it off, you’d be hardpressed to find one as effective as the Warren/Emily gambit. Why? Because it’s a gimmick that works even when it doesn’t work. The first time I saw Homicidal was when it aired on one of those weekend “Creature Feature” horror movie TV programs in my early teens. I was unfamiliar with the plot then, but right Emily's strong response to children and the topic of marriage is only vaguely addressed from the start one thing stood out: there was something really strange about the actors playing Emily and Warren. Emily seemed carved out of wood, so angular were her striking features, and what with her stilted manner of speech and rigid carriage, she came across like some alien being trying to approximate human behavior. (Actress Joanna Frank achieved a similar quality when she played a queen bee in human form in “Zzzz”, my absolute episode of The Outer Limits).
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Warren, with his odd, immobile features and that robotic, disembodied dubbed voice, was downright eerie. I knew there was something “off” about this pair and never once thought the roles were played by different actors. But having grown up on Some Like it Hot , Uncle Miltie, and a particularly disturbing episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour titled, The Unlocked Window; I immediately assumed female-impersonation was the gimmick and that Warren was an actor playing a dual role. I was genuinely surprised to learn that it was a woman engaged in the cross-dressing. The exceptional thing about Joan Marshall—and you’ll never convince me of this being an intentional acting choice on her Something about Miriam brings out the full-throttle biocth in Emily part—is that whether dressed as a man or woman, she never quite comes off as a plausible human being of either sex. Hers is such a disorienting, androgynous presence; she (and the brilliant work of makeup artist Ben Lane) single-handedly imbue Homicidal with the surreal, creepy vibe William Castle nearly buries under his bromidic guidance. (As further proof of the enduring effectiveness of this gambit, as recently as a year ago, my partner watched Homicidal for the first time and he too thought it was a male actor playing the roles of Warren and Emily.)
PERFORMANCES Actress Joan Marshall is absolutely the best thing about Homicidal and the only reason I can still watch the film. Her campy performance may not be “good” by conventional standards (we’re talking a William Castle film here), but in every aspect, it is oh, so “right.” In a cast of yawn-inducingly ordinary actors giving by-the-numbers performances, Marshall comes off as an arch drag queen in her Emily persona (she’s like a proto-Coco Peru), and her Warren reminds me of Ron Reagan Jr. 7/13
(only with charisma). I'd read somewhere that Raquel Welch had wanted to play both Myra and Myron in Myra Breckinridge, and actress Sally Kellerman sought the same in the stage version of Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Interesting ideas, but like the never-convincing-as-a-man Julie Andrews in Victor, Victoria, I always suspect that had these actresses actually got their wish, neither of them would have been able to surrender vanity sufficiently enough to allow themselves to be made into convincing-looking males. No such vanity takes place in Homicidal. Marshall may make a weird-looking man, but she really does look like a guy (pretty much like any member of your average '80s punk band, in fact). And for my money, even Barbara Streisand’s Yentl has to take a back seat to Joan Marshall’s unforgettably hooty gender role-playing.
Handsome Glenn Corbett, in Homicidal's equivalent of the John Gavin role in Psycho, isn't given an opportunity to make much of an impression. Perhaps his photo from his early days as a physique model (circa 1955) will help to rectify that.
THE STUFF OF FANTASY What a difference a year makes. Psycho came out in 1960 and fast on its heels in 1961 came Homicidal. There's always been a thin line between homage, inspired-by, borrowed from, and just plain ripped-off; but Homicidal owes so much to Psycho, were the film made today, Castle would likely have to split his profits with Hitchcock. Here are a 8/13
few of the most glaring similarities. Fittingly, the Psycho images are first. Location Identification
The Fugitive Kind: Janet Leigh and Joan Marshall on the lam
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Psycho's Laurene Tuttle & John McIntire in roles (and robes) similar to those later occupied by James Westerfield and Hope Summers
Martin Balsam and Patricia Breslin apprehensively climb the stairs
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John Gavin unmasks and subdues Anthony Perkins, Alan Bruce performs the same duties for Joan Marshall
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THE STUFF OF DREAMS I don't know whether it was William Castle's intention to mask his shortcomings as a director behind distracting gimmicks and promotional ploys. or merely use those devices as a means of distinguishing himself as an independent filmmaker at a time when the major studios dominated the marketplace. Whichever the reason, the fact remains that Castle succeeded—limitations and all—where many more talented and better-financed directors failed: he made movies that were entertaining and that endure. My personal favorites, Strait-Jacket, The Tingler, I Saw What You Did, and Homicidal are more innocent than ominous. But they guarantee viewers a good time at the movies...an ironic good time, perhaps, but a good time nonetheless. BONUS MATERIAL: Joan Marshall appeared on many TV shows (many available on YouTube) before making her "debut" as Jean Arless in Homicidal. She married director Hal Ashby (Being There, Harold & Maude) in 1970 and both she and William Castle appear in Ashby's 1975 film, Shampoo, rumored to be based, at least in part, on aspects of her life (for example, Tony Bill’s character is said to be based on her brother). Although their marriage was troubled, Marshall remained married to Ashby until his death in 1988. She passed away in 1992. Joan Marshall stars in this 1964 unaired pilot for The Munsters. Network execs thought Marshall's Phoebe Minster (changed to Lily Munster when cast with Yvonne De Carlo) bore too close a resemblance to The Addams Family's Morticia.
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Copyright © Ken Anderson
Walking past a seated Warren Beatty, Joan Marshall as she appears in 1975s Shampoo.
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This is The Fright Break! You hear that sound? It's the sound of a heartbeat. A frightened, terrified heart. Is it beating faster than your heart, or slower? This heart is going to beat for another twenty-five seconds to allow anyone to leave this theater who is too frightened to see the end of the picture. Ten seconds more and we go into the house! It's now or never! Five..four...You're a brave audience!
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