20FFF09: John Hough and The Legend of Hell House
The final guest at The 20th Festival of Fantastic Films 2009, again introduced by Wayne Kinsey, has probably the most varied career of the all, from Second Unit work and Direction on "The Avengers" in the late 60s, through Hammer's Twins of Evil (1971), Disney's Escape to… and Return from Witch Mountain (1975 and '78), Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988) for Harry Alan Towers, and a trilogy of Barbara Cartland adaptations, to a "Special Thanks" credit on Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse: Death Proof (2007), eclectic doesn't begin to cover the career of John Hough.
Early Years
Sporting a cockney brogue to this day, Hough (pronounced "Huff" rather than "How" as I had always thought) was born in London in 1941 and entered the business at the bottom, working in the sound department at Merton Park Studios in South London as a "trainee, come tea-maker, come floor sweeper". His first task at Merton Park involved crouching inside the shower with a microphone and a naked Barbara Windsor, the busty babe from the Carry On… films, at which point he decided that this was a job he liked. Mr Hough recalls this as being for Sidney J Furie's The Leather Boys (1964), but it was more likely for The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre production Death Trap (1962), directed by John Llewellyn Moxey, one of close to 50 Edgar Wallace productions filmed at the studios between 1960 and 1965.
As a trainee he was paid "existence money" as part of his four-year apprenticeship, which provided just enough to get by, but he worked his way up the ranks to the position of Third Assistant Director and Location Manager. It was in this role that he received his break, having scouted out a location for a country house, when the director had a nervous breakdown and failed to show up to the shoot. Hough took over and was now a fully fledged director (unfortunately it wasn't stated on which film this took place).
"The Avengers" (1968–9) and Wolfshead (1969)
Having left Merton Park, he moved on to Elstree Studios and Pinewood where he was employed 52 weeks a year and had the opportunity to work with Hitchcock and David Lean among others and watch them at work. Hough worked for several years as a Second Unit Director – shooting "the stuff where you never saw the actors" - on the ATV and ITC series "The Baron" (1966–7), "The Champions" (1968–9) and "The Avengers" (1968–9), before landing the Director slot on four episodes of the latter (including two of the best entries and one of the worst).
During this time he was approached to direct Wolfshead: The Legend of Robin Hood (1969), starring David Warbeck (who would also appear in Twins of Evil two years later). The film was funded by British expatriates working for NASA in the USA, who wanted to make an "Olde English" film. Unfortunately the NASA money ran out while they were still filming in Wales, so producer Bill Anderson bet all the remaining money on a horse at Doncaster races. Thankfully the horse won and they were able to complete the film.
With no real plans for distributing the movie, they sold it to Hammer as a TV pilot (the finished piece runs around 56 minutes) and the studio presumably still owns it, though it's only available as a 1981 VHS release from Video Gems, under the title The Legend of Young Robin Hood.
Having had a successful relationship with David Warbeck on Wolfshead, Hough wanted to work with him again on Twins of Evil. John reminisced about Warbeck's possible shot at the James Bond role and the fact that the flamboyant actor was cast and Hough hired to direct (he doesn't recall which film, but my guess is The Man With the Golden Gun, 1974) following Roger Moore's salary dispute with Cubby Broccoli. Before contracts could be signed however, Moore relented and the world was robbed of a gay James Bond – though Hough was unaware of Warbeck's sexual orientation until much later.
Hough was called "out of the blue" to direct Twins of Evil (he recalls it as being after The Legend of Hell House [1973] and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry [1974], but this seems unlikely) and remembers the Collinson twins (who were already cast) as being very much as they were in the film, Mary very sweet and gentle and Madeleine very forceful. Talking about Kathleen Byron, who died in January 2009 and plays Katy Weil in Twins, he said that she was a "superb" award-winning actress who had played Sister Ruth in Black Narcissus (1947), but over a short period of time disappeared off the radar and that Bette Davis, with whom Hough worked on Return from Witch Mountain (1978) and The Watcher in the Woods (1980), said the same thing happened to her after winning four Oscars. Davis fought back however, taking out an ad in Variety in 1962, which can be paraphrased as "Out of work Hollywood actress seeks employment" from which she received offers that kept her busy for years.
Twins was the first film on which Peter Cushing worked after the death of his wife, and Hough recalled that Cushing looked forward to seeing her again in the hereafter. He described him as a superb artist who was always word perfect and the two later worked together on Biggles (1986) and an episode of the short-lived TV series "The Zoo Gang" (1974), which he described as "one of the lesser events" in his career.
Hough was also responsible for casting Damien Thomas, and was drawn to his look: "He was handsome, but there was something in his eyes that made you suspect he was dangerous and evil." He also described him as a good artist with great training (he appeared in Julius Ceaser in 1970 opposite John Geilgud and Charlton Heston) and that it was a shame he never played Dracula.
Prompted by Wayne Kinsey to recall the aborted plans for Hammer to film the Warren Publications comic book, Hough said he went to Los Angeles, signed a deal and cast Barbara Leigh in the title role. He persuaded her to dress as Vampirella for a dinner meeting with Michael Carreras, but when they went to pick up the Hammer chairman, they discovered that he had talked another actress into doing the same thing. Apparently dinner was a little awkward.
In another incident, Hough arranged for Leigh to dress in the Vampirella outfit on the day the deal was to be closed, enter the boardroom of co-producers AIP and run the length of the conference table. This was a success and they signed the contract, only to discover that AIP had stipulated that Hammer had to sign a big name like Paul Newman to co-star and as a result the project died. Against Hough's advice, Barbara Leigh had already sold her home on the promise of a six picture deal and was heart broken.
Hammer After the Fall
Hough directed three episodes of the TV series "Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense" in 1985–6, alternating with Peter Sasdy. The two directors shared one crew and Hough feels that their attention was divided, making it hard to do good work. All of the TV series he worked on were shot on 35mm film, and Hough will always stand up for shooting on film versus video.
Hough made bids to purchase Hammer Films on two different occasions. In one incident, working with Hollywood producer Ken Hyman (The Stranglers of Bombay, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Hill, The Dirty Dozen), the deal was at the handshake stage, but unfortunately Hyman was a hard-talking businessman who ignored Hough's request that they look after Hammer executives Roy Skeggs and Brian Lawrence after the deal was finalized. As the champagne cork was being pulled, Lawrence told the duo that they were both out after the purchase and they refused to sign.
On the second occasion Roy Skeggs had again agreed a deal but got lost in heavy fog and didn't show up to sign, also failing to appear on a subsequent occasion. Hough planned to keep the studio largely the same, as it was such a recognized brand and DVD was then just around the corner with all the lucrative licensing that entailed.
Hough worked with Davis on two occasions and the role in The Watcher called for her character to appear both as an older lady and her younger self aged 30-35. Davis insisted playing both parts and flew in her hairdresser and make-up lady to do a screen test. Hough, though amazed at the transformation, did not think she looked believable and asked everyone to leave the screening room except the formidable actress. When he gave his opinion, she laughed and said "You're Goddamn fucking right!" She appreciated straight talk and the two remained firm friends for many years, Hough recalled that at one Hollywood party they attended together, Davis told stories for over two hours, holding the attention of the whole room.
Hough described Towers as a "fly-by-night character of dubious repute." but an educated raconteur and, despite the fact he didn't pay his crew, it was often worth the trip just to hear him tell tall tales. Their first collaboration was on a version of Treasure Island (1972) with Orson Welles as Long John Silver and Towers did a deal to have a replica galleon, docked at The Tower of London, sail to the filming location in Spain. A week before shooting was due to begin, Hough saw on the news that the Lutine Bell at Lloyd's of London had been rung to mark the sinking of the ship. They managed to locate another replica in Majorca, but in the meantime Hough had to make do with a mast stuck in the sand behind a dune. Despite their financial problems, Hough had a lot of time for Towers (who died in July 2009) and forgave his disappearing at night with the accountant and various other foibles.
Prompted by Kinsey to discuss other challenges he had encountered over the years, Hough named Roger Moore on the set of "The Saint" TV series. Hough was impressed with Moore's performance in The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) and, feeling he could get more out of the actor, pushed him for a fourth take in a scene, which the actor refused to do. Hough, young as he was, also refused to continue, quietly confident that he was going to be fired but refusing to bow to the actors demands. Eventually Moore relented and offered to do another take, but Hough said "No, you'll do as many as it takes to get it right." They eventually did 12 and Moore never forgave him.
Later, in questions from the audience, Hough also mentioned that working with actors who had been directors themselves was very difficult, mentioning Welles, John Cassavetes (Brass Target, 1978; Incubus, 1981), and Patrick McGoohan (Brass Target), but saying that 96% of the people he's worked with have been great. Further prompted on Patrick McGoohan, he described him as an intelligent actor who had very particular ideas about his roles, that were sometimes at odds with the director and, while he did have a period of drinking during which he "lost the plot" slightly, he was far from the crazy man some people have described.
The Legend of Hell House (1973)
This is Hough's personal favorite of all his work, and he's proud of the fact that the majority of the effects were done in-camera. In one scene Pamela Franklin enters a room and sees a body moving on a bed under a sheet, but when she removes the sheet the bed is empty. Hough refused to give away the secret, but did say that the scene was shot without edits, using a wide angle lens giving the special effects men nowhere to hide.
Tarantino gives a "Special Thanks" credit to Hough in the credits of Death Proof and Hough is very happy to have become a cult director's cult director, saying that whenever anything is showing on a TV set in a Tarantino film that they are usually his films. He recently met with Tarantino in London and the younger director said he'd been impressed with an interview Hough had given regarding Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, in which he explained that there was no under-cranking (to make the vehicles appear faster) and no optical effects. Tarantino used this as a blueprint for Death Proof, shooting in the same California locations and replicating many of the stunts.
I was happy to be able to ask a question that's bothered me for years regarding the extremely nihilistic ending of Dirty Mary and Hough confirmed that this was not in the script and that he'd "paid the price for it ever since." He decided to kill the characters at the end, but never told 20th Century Fox he was doing so ("In those days I never asked anybody anything.") thus killing off any chance of a Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry 2. In later conversation he said that he felt that the three characters in the car should pay for the mayhem they'd caused in the previous 90 minutes.
Asked about his most recent movie, the director commented that he had not yet discussed any of his disasters and that he has always had a financial stake in the films he's made, including Bad Karma which was a spectacular failure. Set in Boston but filmed in Ireland, the production was beset with problems, including the fact that Producer Mark L Lester (The Funhouse, Class of 1984) insisted on nudity after production had started, which stars Patsy Kensit (Lethal Weapon 2) and Amy Huberman (UK TV series "The Clinic") refused to do, leading to another crew and director being called in later to shoot nude scenes with body doubles (Huberman successfully sued The People newspaper in the UK for publishing nude shots and claiming they were of her).
He also mentioned another film that he invested in heavily (presumably 1998's Something to Believe In) in which, tired of explosions and decapitations, he wanted to explore themes of love and faith. Unfortunately this too turned out to be a huge flop.
Currently wrapping up post production on his son Paul's directorial debut The Human Race (2010), Hough remains a busy man and we look forward to seeing what the next generation brings to the screen.
John Hough at the 20th Festival of Fantastic Films 2009 (© Gareth Walters).
Box Office 11/16/09: End of the World Wins Big
To nobody's surprise, Roland Emmerich's $200M 2012 ruled the weekend box office. The disaster-meister's latest dollop of CGI destructo-porn raked in $65.2M, a little behind his biggest opener, the global cooling thriller The Day After Tomorrow ($68.7M in 2004), and also trailing last year's opening of Quantum of Solace on the same weekend ($67.5M).
A Christmas Carol held on well at #2, with only a 26% drop from its slightly disappointing opening, with $22.3M for a 10-day total of $63.27M. This year's other "little film that could" Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire pulled in a remarkable $5.87M on 174 screens ($33,762 per screen, which is good but not good enough to take the average-per-screen pole position) to take the #3 spot, while Men Who Stare at Goats battled poor reviews with another $5.86M, for a running total of $23.03M.
Michael Jackson's This Is It enters week three of its strictly limited two week run (do distributors have no shame?) with a 61% drop (perhaps audiences thought it was no longer playing) for $5.07M and a total of $67.19M. Widely derided, The Fourth Kind plummeted 62% to #6 with $4.60M, bringing its 10-day total to $20.44M (budget undisclosed). Both Couples Retreat (which cost an inexplicable $70M) and Paranormal Activity ($11–15,000 depending on who you believe) both crossed the $100M barrier this week, each pulling in around $4M for the weekend.
Law Abiding Citizen slipped one place to #9, with $3.79M and The Box (reportedly the recipient of some of the worst exit poll reviews in some time) just managed to stay inside the top 10 with $3.15M for a 10-day total of $13.17M. Richard Curtis's Pirate Radio managed a weak $2.90M in 882 theaters at #11, while Where the Wild Things Are is proving tenacious at #12, with $2.41M, making its total $73.44M in just over four weeks.
Fantastic Mr Fox (read my review here) opened small in just four theaters, but was by far the biggest winner on a per-screen basis, pulling in an average of $66,475, over twice the total of Precious. Expect this to do well with hipster parents over Thanksgiving.
This coming weekend sees the opening of tween juggernaut The Twilight Saga: New Moon; Spanish/English/US Pixar-wannabe Planet 51, a limited release (finally) for John Woo's Red Cliff (edited down to one 148-minute film from the original two-part epic); and Werner Herzog's ecstatically received festival favorite Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, with a back-on-form Nicolas Cage.
Box Office 11/9/09: Christmas Starts Slow
Halloween has come and gone, the holiday lights are appearing in the retail capitals of the world and Robert Zemeckis has another fantastically expensive motion capture animation, designed to entertain us with the volume turned up to 11. $30.05M is on the low side for this kind of thing but, given that A Christmas Carol was released a full seven weeks before the Big Day, it has at least a fighting chance of reaching its $200M budget.
Historically, where Christmas movies are concerned, only the Tim Allen Santa Clause movies open this early, and Carol just bested 2002's The Santa Clause 2, which opened on November 6th (but cost a relatively modest $65M) and was beaten out by How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) which opened on 11/17 with $55M, Elf (2003), which opened 11/7 with $31.11M, and (depressingly) Four Christmases (2008), which opened 11/26/08 with $31.06M.
At #2, Michael Jackson's This Is It is down 43% with $13.15M while The Men Who Stare at Goats opened with $12.70 at #3. The Fourth Kind is at #4 with $12.23, desperately hoping to soak up some of that Paranormal Activity money (budget undisclosed, but Milla Jovovich's trailer was doubtless more than PA's entire cost). At #5 Paranormal Activity itself comes close to crossing the $100M mark with $8.27M, for a running total of $97.10M - 'nuff said, I'm out of superlatives (see my review here).
Richard Kelly's The Box is at #6 with a disappointing – given its 2,635 theater release – $7.57M (though the budget was a lean $25M). Couples Retreat and Law Abiding Citizen hold on at positions seven and eight, and at #9, in spite of its detractors, Where the Wild Things Are is doing okay with $4.17M for a four week total of $69.70M, more than can be said for Astro Boy, which has failed to find a significant audience, bringing in $2.62M for a three week total of just $15.11M.
Saw VI sunk 61%, with $2.03M and a three week total of $26.25M, placing it easily in profit against its $11M budget, albeit as the least successful of the Saw series. Oscar hopeful Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, did remarkably well at #12, bringing in $1.87M in just 18 theaters.
Next weekend sees the launch of marketing juggernaut 2012, Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox (review here) on limited release, and also Richard Curtis's thankfully renamed The Boat That Rocked, which will be know in the US as Pirate Radio.
Congratulations: SIR Christopher Lee
Sir Christopher Lee in Dracula/The Horror of Dracula (1958)
On Friday, October 30th, 2009 (the day before Halloween), Christopher Lee was knighted by Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace. As reported by AP and the BBC, Sir Christopher commented "A whole new career opened up for me when I was in Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars [Episode II: Attack of the Clones]. What's really important for me is, as an old man, I'm known by my own generation and the next generation know me too."
Born the son of a Lieutenant-Colonel in the King's Royal Rifle Corps and an Italian Contessa, Lee was often unhappy with being typecast in Hammer Films' Dracula series and has done excellent work in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), The Wicker Man (1973) and The Three Musketeers (1973) and its sequels, as well as The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Sleepy Hollow (1999) and on TV in "Gormenghast" (2000)
As busy as ever at the age of 87, Lee can soon be seen in Hammer's The Resident (2010), Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010), and Robin Hardy's Wicker Man sequel The Wicker Tree (2010).
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Country: USA
Production Company: Twentieth Century Fox presents in association with Indian Paintbrush and Regency Enterprises an American Empirical picture
Producers: Allison Abbate, Scott Rudin, Wes Anderson, Jeremy Dawson
Executive Producers: Steven M Rales, Arnon Milchan
Director: Wes Anderson
Screenplay: Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach, based on the book by Roald Dahl
Editors: Ralph Foster, Stephen Perkins
Cinematographer: Tristan Oliver
Music: Alexandre Desplat
Production Designer: Nelson Lowry
Visual Effects: Tim Ledbury, Liz Chan, Tom Collier/LipSync Post, Hugh Macdonald/Stranger
Character Design: Félicie Haymoz
Animation Director: Mark Gustafson/Indian Paintbrush
Puppet Fabrication: Andy Gent/Mackinnon & Saunders
Sound: David Evans, Jacob Ribicoff
Titles: Look Effects
Length: 87 mins
Budget: $40M
Cast: George Clooney (Mr Fox), Meryl Streep (Mrs Felicity Fox), Jason Schwartzman (Ash), Bill Murray (Badger), Wally Wolodarsky (Kylie), Eric Anderson (Kristofferson), Michael Gambon (Franklin Bean), Willem Dafoe (Rat), Owen Wilson (Coach Skip), Jarvis Cocker (Petey), Wes Anderson (Weasel), Karen Duffy (Linda Otter), Robin Hurlstone (Walter Boggis), Hugo Guinness (Nathan Bunce), Helen McCrory (Mrs Bean), Roman Coppola (squirrel contractor), Brian Cox (Action 12 reporter), Adrien Brody (Field Mouse), Mario Batali (Rabbit)
Synopsis: Having given up a life of chicken stealing for a less exciting career in journalism, Mr Fox decides to move his family into a desirable residence that sits dangerously close to the farms of Boggis, Bunce and Bean. Bored with his new life he decides with the help of his sidekick, Kylie the vole, to rob the farmers on successive nights, but is unprepared for the extreme measures they will take to exact revenge. Measures that will mean the loss of his tail and his home and endanger the lives of his family and the entire local animal population.
Review: There's an exciting trend in children's animation (especially if, like me, you're the father of a one-year-old) – let's call it the "Post-Pixar Approach" – that takes a more sophisticated view of story-telling and credits children with greater emotional intelligence than is the recent norm. The approach, which has nothing to do with lazy post-modern allusions to the adult world, acknowledges that many of the elements we attempt to shield our children from – pain, violence, loneliness, and frustration – actually exist and can be managed.
This can be seen in such Pixar films as WALL•E (the best depiction of solitary life in outer space since Silent Running) and Up (that staggering opening sequence), and in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (described by Mark Kermode as a kid's film as re-imagined by David Lynch) and most recently and controversially in Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are. While this is entirely welcome, it does mean that the stage is set for someone to make a personal project, lose sight of the target audience and fall flat on their arse (some would argue Jonze already accomplished this).
Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox is the first book that Wes Anderson remembers owning and he worked for 10 years to get it onto the screen, first with Henry Selick (animator of Dahl's James and the Giant Peach, as well as the charming creatures in Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), who had to leave to work on Coraline and eventually with himself as director, working with an animation team in England.
When reading about Anderson's films, the words that come up most often are "hermetic" and "detailed", exemplified in his best work, Rushmore (1998) and particularly The Royal Tanenbaums (2001), the story of a dysfunctional family of prodigies in a New York brownstone, subject to the fickle whims of a dominating, miscreant patriarch. Watching Anderson's carefully art-directed snow globes – with their matching adidas gear and perfectly-spaced Futura titles (Kubrick's favorite font), it's easy to see the appeal of a world where everything must be created from scratch, moved in minute increments and that ceases to exist beyond the periphery of the lens.
Beautifully executed in the warm, walnut tones of Fall, the design and animation of the stop-motion characters in Fantastic Mr Fox is flawless – the film consists of 61,920 stills, shot on a Nikon D3 camera to give the illusion of movement – and they fit snugly into the gorgeous world created for them. Anderson wrote the movie with Noah Baumbach (co-writer of The Life Aquatic and writer-director of The Squid and the Whale) while sitting in Dahl's study at the author's home in Buckinghamshire and they lifted many details - including the Fox family's oak tree home - from what they saw around them. Even the sound recordings were made in locations as close to their natural origins as is possible – George Clooney being recorded in his garden in Italy.
However it's this insularity that is the film's main flaw. Recently the anomalies in Anderson's work are what stand out in fussy, forgettable films - Selick's animation in The Life Acquatic, the unexpected death of a child in The Darjeeling Limited - and it's easy to bemoan the collaboration with Baumbach, who created the gratingly insufferable worlds of The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding. Anderson and Baumbach consistently keep the viewer at arms length, we're outsiders looking in at a universe entirely of their creation, populated with characters whose whimsical flaws only exist to serve the plot and bear little resemblance to real people.
Here, Mr Fox speaks like George Clooney playing himself in a Woody Allen film and his son, Ash, sounds like Jason Schwartzman in Darjeeling, never quite letting you forget who's behind the animation. Bill Murray also is just too much Bill and not enough Badger, with only Meryl Streep as Felicia Fox and Willem Dafoe as Fox's nemesis, Rat letting you forget the actor and believe the character.
Anderson has said that he wanted the film itself to be like a wild animal, not overly domesticated and free of focus group feedback telling him that the farmers shouldn't smoke and the action was too violent. It's a shame then that he doesn't let rip a little more - the packed Sunday afternoon screening I attended at the Empire, Leicester Square, London was well attended by the under-10s, but they remained respectful, rather than elated - happy to enjoy the spectacle but laughing only when the animals broke character at the dinner table, becoming feral as their food is served, or at the sight of vicious guard dogs, drugged and cross-eyed, falling out of frame.
And yet, for all its faults, this is still a film I hope my daughter loves one day. Even if brain sometimes overpowers heart, its a tale of the dangers of growing up (and not growing up), the lure of domestic life versus the pull of the wild, an urban fox who wishes he was a forest wolf, and it's a good story, well told. But mostly because somewhere in my shallow heart I hope that one day she'll be smart and sassy like Kathryn Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby (or at least Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hudsucker Proxy) and because I want her to love films like this and WALL•E and My Neighbour Totoro, rather than Alvin and the Chipmunks. And, while I know that I will have to deal with whoever succeeds Miley Cyrus to the throne of Disney pop tart, I hope that some time in the future, five or six years from now, she'll watch Fantastic Mr Fox and ask me, "Daddy, what does "Kom-see, kom-sar mean?"". I'd quite like that.
Fantastic Mr Fox opened The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival on October 15th and opens in limited release in the USA on November 13th, expanding for the Thanksgiving Holiday.
Marketing display of characters and sets, The Gap, Oxford Street, London.
Tip of the Hat: Farciot Edouart (1894–1980)
Today marks the birth in 1894 of the one of the fathers of movie special effects, Farciot Edouart. Born in California, his father and grandfather were both photographers (something I can relate to) and he began his professional life in 1915 as a cameraman for Real Art Studios, which would eventually become part of Paramount Pictures.
After serving in the latter part of World War I as an Army photographer in the Signal Corps, he began his own photography business in 1921. The following year he joined Lasky Studios on the corner of Sunset and Vine, where he specialized in glass shots, by the mid 1920s they had been taken over by Paramount where he would eventually become Head of Special Effects.
Edouart pioneered the technique of rear projection (first used over at Fox on Just Imagine in 1931) which allowed more flexibility than glass shots and allowed actors to perform in front of a pre-photographed or artificial background. His main claim to fame is the creation of a triple head system, which overcame the faded look of most rear projection by using three projectors – one to the back and one at each side, their images reflected in mirrors – to intensify and deepen the background.
His use of this technique lead to an Oscar nomination for Doctor Cyclops (directed by King Kong producer Ernest B Schoedsack in 1940) in which Alfred Decker's Dr Thorkel reduces several fellow scientists and a servant to 14 inches tall - the film was shot in Technicolor, which required even more light density to achieve the effect than black and white photography.
Eventually winning 10 Oscars, he is best know for his process work with Cyclops collaborator Gordon Jennings on When Worlds Collide (1951) and The War of the Worlds (1953) and after Jennings untimely death in 1953, a run of science fiction movies including Conquest of Space (1955), The Space Children (1958), The Colossus of New York (1958), and Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964).
Hitchcock was a huge fan of the alternate reality afforded by process photography and engaged the special effects man on To Catch a Thief (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and Vertigo (1958). Edouart also contributed to such effects landmarks as The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), The Ten Commandments (1956), and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), as well as classics like Sullivan's Travels (1941), The Lost Weekend (1945), and Sunset Boulevard (1950).
His final screen credit was for Rosemary's Baby (1968) and he retired in 1974. Farciot Edouart died in Kenwood, California on 17th March 1980.
Alice in Wonderland (1933)
The Ghost Breakers (1940)
Doctor Cyclops (1940)
I Married a Witch (1942)
The Uninvited (1944)
When Worlds Collide (1951)
The War of the Worlds (1953)
Scared Stiff (1953)
The Naked Jungle (1954)
Conquest of Space (1955)
The Space Children (1958)
The Colossus of New York (1958)
Visit to a Small Planet (1960)
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964)
Village of the Giants (1965)
Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad (1967)
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
20FFF09: Peter Sasdy and The Hands of the Ripper
Typically lurid Hammer pre-production artwork for The Hands of the Ripper (1971)
Sunday morning at the 20th Festival of Fantastic Films began with a screening of what would later be announced as the winner of the Independent Film Award, Kirk (read a review here) and this was followed by Wayne Kinsey, making a fine attempt at Hungarian, who introduced Peter Sasdy prior to a screening of The Hands of the Ripper (1971)
Early Years
Born in Budapest in 1935, Sasdy escaped Hungary as a student in 1956 after the uprising. Settling in England, he graduated from the University of Bristol and applied to work at the BBC, but was ineligible as he wasn't a British citizen. Taking a job in a coffee house, making espresso, cappuccino, and even Horlicks (though didn't didn't understand that strange British beverage), he eventually completed a directors course at the BBC and was accepted at Lew Grade's ABC Television as a trainee, starting out on the Epilogue (a program that closed weekend broadcasts) with David Sheppard, the England cricketer and future Right Reverend Lord Sheppard, Bishop of Liverpool.
By 1958, he was directing the UK's first hospital soap "Emergency Ward 10" and the previous day's guest John Carson was one of the first actors he had the pleasure of working with (read a report of John Carson's Q&A here). Eventually he created 39 episodes of this long-running series, which broadcast twice weekly from 1957 to 1967. He graduated from there to episodes of "Probation Officer" (1959–60) and "Ghost Squad", which was a crime series that ran between 1961 and 1964, and afforded Sasdy his first opportunity to work with a "real" 35mm film camera.
Peter Sasdy's first encounter with the macabre came with this 1968 TV series and while this is generally credited as being a Hammer Production through Anthony Hinds, he recalled that by the time the series was set up, Hammer was no longer involved. It was his first time working at a proper film studio - the series was shot at the MGM British Studios in Borehamwood, Herfordshire – and an opportunity to work with executive producer Joan Harrison, co-author of several Hitchcock's films, including Rebecca (1940).
The following year, Sasdy directed the BBC classic serial "The Spoils of Poynton", based on Henry James' novel and was working on the edit in St Anne's Court, Soho, close by Hammer House in Wardour Street, when he was called to meet with Aida Young and James Carreras, having been recommended by Joan Harrison. They discussed working on a Dracula feature with the young director, who was barely able to contain his excitement at the prospect of moving from the small- to the big screen.
On reading the script, and full of the arrogance of youth, Sasdy felt that it lacked personality, and introduced the idea of centering the story on three Victorian businessmen, to both give the story resonance for a British audience, and uncover the hypocrisy of Victorian society. Sasdy treasures a review by Dilys Powell, doyen of British film writers, who gave the film a good notice in The Sunday Times. Sasdy still believes that revealing what went on behind closed Victorian doors carried weight with an audience whose grandparents lived through those times, a theory borne out in the fact that was the last Dracula film to receive anything like decent reviews.
Discussing Christopher Lee's disenchantment with the role and his lack of screen time in the film, Sasdy recalled that in the early stages of the production, there was a chance that Lee would not appear at all for contractual reasons but he felt that, having already changed the "recipe of the goulash," by concentrating on the three Victorian gents, that it was important that Lee be there for the sake of consistency. He took Lee to lunch and explained how important he felt his presence was and, after a few rounds of slivovitz, Lee agreed. While no increase was allowed in the budget to guarantee his appearance, certain concessions were made to keep the actor happy.
Wayne Kinsey commented that after the initial two Terence Fisher-directed Dracula films, some of the scenes between the Count and his female victims felt a little mechanical except, that is, in Taste the Blood of Dracula, in particular the scene with Isla Blair. Sasdy recalled a couple of things he did to help Lee's performance. He took him to a place off Harley Street to have special lenses made to redden his eyes, and then asked Lee to use his physical presence and these lenses to introduce a stillness to the character and act less to make Dracula more menacing.
Remembering Ralph Bates, who made his film debut here, he recalled that Bates was extremely nervous and couldn't get his lines out effectively, so Sasdy asked everyone to leave at 4pm and worked with Bates until 9pm reading all the parts of the other actors and ensuring he got his sight lines and readings correct. These scenes were edited into the finished film and no one could tell the difference - both of them remembered this experience, and Bates often said it stayed with him throughout his career.
In questions from the audience, a query was made regarding the actors and their on-set shenanigans during the brothel scene (following John Carson's comments the previous day), Sasdy commented on the time-pressure a director faces, saying "I don't giggle when I look at my watch", but did say it was difficult to keep a straight face in the presence of Roy Kinnear. He also recalled, as had Carson, that Highgate Cemetery was a very effective location, "Very spooky, you don't need any effects… One of the best locations for a Hammer movie."
Sasdy read a piece in The Times, by Hungarian writer Gabriel Ronay (author of the bestseller The Truth About Dracula, 1971), and took the idea to James Carreras before lunch one day. Carreras said "If you can get me a poster together after lunch, I have a meeting with Rank this afternoon." Following the meeting, Carreras sent out his #2, Brian Lawrence who asked "Can you start six weeks from Monday?" Quoting from Sasdy's DVD commentary, Wayne Kinsey reminded the director that James Carreras thought that he and fellow Hungarian, producer Alexander Paal, would work well together if they didn't kill each other first. Sasdy remembered that Paal wanted to push things in a more exploitative direction with more nudity, which Sasdy did not feel was necessary. On the casting of Pitt, he said that it was his decision, "But the position I was put in was very difficult."
Sasdy recalled that was now a trusted member of the Hammer family and was left alone to do his job (very different from when he worked in the US), speaking of the excellent cast, he was told that his first choices would never appear for Hammer but, because he had worked with many of the actors on BBC classic series, he pushed for the people he wanted and was successful. He also brought in costume designer Raymond Hughes and art director Philip Harrison, who had worked with him on his last two BBC pieces and were extremely happy to work on the big screen for less than established film crew wages, but more than they earned at the BBC. Sasdy would recommend Phil Harrison for later work on, among others, Never Say Never Again (1983), Mississippi Burning (1988) and Timecop (1994). He also recalled that they re-used sets from Anne of a Thousand Days (1969) to help the production overcome its limited budget and he fondly recalled cinematographer Ken Talbot who he had worked with on "Journey to the Unknown" (they would collaborate on four further films, until Talbot's retirement after I Don't Want to be Born/The Devil Within Her in 1975).
Quizzed on the rumor that Ingrid Pitt had once pushed him into the sea to show her displeasure at being re-dubbed, Sasdy said there was no truth to the story, but that she was unhappy at having her voice replaced, following up with a smile and the quip "There was no physical activity between us of any kind."
Sasdy's personal favorite film, and one whose success he largely credits to Angharad Rees, who was outstanding in the lead role. The script called for a "little porcelain figure" but she brought more to the part and was very well balanced with the experience of Eric Porter, who helped her with her self-confidence and acted as a mediator between director and actress to ensure her performance was perfect. Sasdy again resisted greater nudity in the film and, as with Taste the Blood…, managed to utilize existing sets, this time from Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), which he said "just happened to be there". However, one blow was the fact that they were refused permission to use the Whispering Gallery at St Paul's Cathedral for the climax, so he dressed some of the extras as tourists, took stills and used those as front projection plates.
Sasdy was called by his former "Emergency Ward 10" collaborator Christopher Morahan, who was by then head of plays at the BBC and asked to direct this science-meets-the-supernatural masterpiece. The BBC had decided that rather than try and compete with a big movie, they would create a scary 90 minute original drama for broadcast on Christmas Day (traditionally the UK's biggest for ratings).
Sasdy takes the credit for bringing Nigel Kneale on board, and explained that working with Kneale could be a challenge, as he had so many ideas that they needed to be filtered to be understood by ordinary human beings. Sasdy worked closely with Kneale at his home in Barnes ("As his dear wife was making the tea.") and went through the script word by word to simplify the story. Knowing that this was playing on Christmas Day and couldn't be bloody, they came up with the concept of a room in an old Victorian house that is able to record and play back the screams of the people who died there.
Sasdy was again able to pull off his perfect cast - a good thing, as he had no second choices - and Michael Bryant and Jane Asher were duly hired.
This was the first and (if you discount Hammer co-production To the Devil… a Daughter) only film produced by Charlemagne Productions, a collaboration between Christopher Lee and Hammer's Anthony Nelson-Keys and Lee part financed the film himself. Sasdy was director for hire and had no input on the script.
He described Lee's co-star Peter Cushing as a "Gentle human being," who would apologize to a fly as it passed by. Calling him "An extraordinary human being," he recalled the time they were both in Paris for a film festival and Cushing's child-like, innocent glee at seeing the city for the first time.
A member of the audience asked what it was like working with Diana Dors and Keith Barron and Sasdy responded that he had nothing but admiration for Dors, a hard working, professional, ordinary girl, who was willing to do multiple takes in difficult circumstances, a "Wonderful, professional actress," who was nothing like he imagined she would be prior to the production. He described Barron as a "Nice guy, very professional… One of the backbones of British television" who lives close by him in the Hampton Court area.
"Hammer House of Horror" (1980)
Sasdy was not involved in the business background of Hammer's post-bankruptcy TV series, but did share that the production time on each episode was too short, with only 10 days preparation and shooting time per show.
One audience member questioned whether he liked to be involved in the editing stage, to which he replied "Try to keep me out of the cutting room!" and elaborated that in the US, the bosses tried to keep him away, saying "Every producer can hardly wait for the last day's shoot. And then they want to shoot me." While he has enormous trust in the editors, he loves to be involved in this process, as well as soundtrack recording, post-sync dubbing, print, and grading, and he would go voluntarily to Technicolor's Denham laboratory to oversee the latter.
Asked who inspired him and whether he had every met Hungarian director Egdar G Ulmer, Sasdy answered briefly "Alexander Korda" to the first question, and "No" to the second.
Quizzed about his collaboration with wife, choreographer and actress Mia Nadasi (who was present in the audience), Sasdy recalled that she appeared in the "Hammer House of Horror" episode "Visitor from the Grave", and was choreographer on Countess Dracula and I Don't Want to Be Born/The Devil Within Her and that Mia was six-and-a-half-months pregnant with their first child, during the production of Countess Dracula.
Asked about working with Harry Alan Towers (who produced the 1991 pastiche Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady directed by Sasdy), he said that he had not been paid and indicated there were three others in the audience who had similar experiences (including John Hough, who directed three films for Towers, including 1988's Howling IV: The Original Nightmare). He described the making the Sherlock Holmes movie as "Not very pleasant." and Mia added that she acted in the film and that the other actors were threatening to strike due to lack of payment, which put her in a very difficult position as the wife of the director.
Graciously accepting an award for his achievements in film, Peter Sasdy exited these stage, ending another highly enjoyable hour at the Festival of Fantastic Films.
Peter Sasdy at the 20th Festival of Fantastic Films 2009 (© Gareth Walters).
Box Office 11/2/09: Michael Jackson vs. Horror
Unsurprisingly (and some would say appropriately), Michael Jackson's This Is It took the Halloween weekend #1 position, against few new openings and several genre holdovers.
Paranormal Activity continued its outstanding run, dropping just 21.6% from last week's #1 position and adding another $16.38M to its running tally of $84.62M, which now makes it the eighth most successful supernatural horror film ever made, ahead of Poltergeist (1982), and just behind The Amityville Horror (1979).
Where the Wild Things Are kicked up less of a rumpus, dropping 58% to #5, with $5.93M, for $62.65M after three weeks and Saw VI plummeted 62.7% to the #6 spot, with a weekend take of $5.27M and a two week total of $22.53M, safely putting it in profit (against an $11M budget), if not exactly setting the box-office on fire. Meanwhile, Astro Boy limped on with $3.46M in the #7 spot, a $11.31M two-week total meaning that its Hong Kong investors are unlikely to see a return on their $65M investment, however The Stepfather remake did slightly better, down 45% with $3.40M, for $24.74M.
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, took $2.80M at #9, down 51% on the same number of screens for a dismal two week total of $10.80M on a $40M budget. Last week's Amelia expanded by 250 theaters, but dropped 23% for $3M, at #10 and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Zombieland, both held on with $2.74M and $2.62M respectively.
At #14, Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day opened on 68 screens, bringing in $546,687, and at #16 Halloween II expanded wider for the holiday, adding 992 sites, bringing in an additional $445,344. Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D brought in another $140,037 for a re-release total of $356,022 at #27, and at #50 Antichrist added eight screens and brought in $49,292 for a total of $156,318.
Of the remaining new releases, Ti West's The House of the Devil opened on three screens at #58, bringing in $8,398 per screen (second highest of the week), for a total of $25,195, and at #76 Jared Hess's Gentleman Broncos opened on two screens, with $5,751 each, for a total of $11,502.
Next week, Robert Zemeckis's A Christmas Carol opens, along with alien abduction drama The Fourth Kind, and Richard Kelly's The Box.
