THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE

 

Front cover of my big box ex-rental VHS videocassette of The Twilight People (© Eddie Romero/Four Associates Ltd/New World Pictures/Dimension Pictures/Atlas Home Video/Les Edwards – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 22 June 2023, my movie watch was my big box ex-rental VHS videocassette, only purchased recently, of a nowadays largely-forgotten Filipino-American monster/horror movie from the early 1970s entitled The Twilight People and loosely based upon the classic H.G. Wells science fiction novel The Island of Dr Moreau.

Directed by veteran Filipino film director Eddie Romero, who also co-wrote its screenplay, and released by Dimension Pictures in 1972, The Twilight People (for some unknown reason, the 'The' was omitted from its title in my video's front cover artwork – more about that iconic artwork later – but not from its on-screen title) opens with the underwater kidnapping of scuba diver Matt Farrell. The movie's hero, he is played by John Ashley, a major American heart-throb actor and rock'n'roll singer during the late 1950s, who also co-produced this movie alongside the likes of Roger Corman.

Farrell is swiftly rendered unconscious and subsequently wakes up bound to a bed aboard a boat taking him to a remote tropical Pacific island. This island is inhabited by a maverick Nobel laureate scientist named Dr Gordon (Charles Macaulay), his beautiful, highly alluring, but sexually naïve daughter Neva (Pat Woodell), Gordon's sadistic Nazi-ish henchman/assistant Steinman (Jan Merlin), and a retinue of staff including a squad of armed guards. Gordon has chosen to live here, in a palatial home-cum-laboratory, after his radical experiments and his theft of massive amounts of funding swiftly led to his exile from the scientific community.

 

Blu-Ray+DVD Combo version of The Twilight People – worth noting is that most of the beast people illustrated here do not appear in the movie! (© Eddie Romero/Four Associates Ltd/New World Pictures/Dimension Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Speaking about Gordon's experiments: this island also contains eight other individuals – a benighted octet of mostly abducted humans who have been converted against their will into grotesque bestial humanoids no longer entirely human but not entirely animal either, in Gordon's crazed quest to create a race of super-human beings. Many reviews of this movie state that there are five of these beast-humans, these twilight people, but this is incorrect. Yes, there are five principal ones, but three others make brief appearances too.

The five principal ones are: Ayesha, the snarling, spitting Panther Woman (none other than Pam Grier!); Kuzma, the gentle horned Antelope Man (Ken Metcalfe); Darmo, the winged Bat Man, who can indeed fly (Tony Gosalvez); Primo, the hooting, arm-swinging Ape Man (Kim Ramos); and Lupa, the decidedly hirsute, lycanthrope-looking Wolf Woman (Mona Morena).

Additionally, in one scene showing these beast-humans caged in an underground cave where Gordon keeps them all prisoners, a sixth one is also briefly seen with them, a shy plume-headed, silver-costumed woman resembling a kind of half-human, half-bird entity. And just after Farrell is brought onto the island, there is a brief scene featuring an escapee beast-man named Dorro whom Gordon is trying to recapture alive with the assistance of his armed guards, but with his usual malevolence Steinman cold-bloodedly shoots him dead. When the beast-man's dead body is seen in close-up, it is revealed to have the tusked face of a wild boar. As for the eighth one – let's just say for now that she holds a very special, unique status…

SPOILER ALERT – Because I have yet to discover a detailed plot description online for this movie, I am providing one here, so if you'd rather not know what to expect before watching it, read no further!

Anyway, back to Farrell, who is informed by Gordon once installed in the latter's home that on account of his exceptional intelligence, knowledge, and physical attributes, this veritable latter-day Renaissance Man is to be utilized to engender Gordon's planned super-race, with his mind, brain power, and fitness to be transferred into each one of them. No details are given as to how such transference will be achieved, but it seems evident that however it is accomplished, Farrell will not survive the procedure, becoming a scientific martyr for the common good of future humanity as far as Gordon is concerned.

Moreover, as Steinman takes great delight in telling him, thanks to the island being a good 300 miles away from any other land mass, and patrolled by Gordon's squad, Farrell has no chance of escaping. Nevertheless, Steinman encourages him to attempt it, brazenly admitting that he would love the chance to pursue Farrell and kill him – and that's not all. As the story progresses, it becomes exceedingly obvious that blonde, blue-eyed Steinman has the hots for handsome, muscular Farrell, something that Neva loses no time in telling Steinman, inciting his fury – but he's not the only one in the Farrell fan club.

For Neva herself is too – she has spent her whole life on the island with her father in the absence of her mother, so until now she has never experienced what it is like to fall in love – but after Farrell kisses her while she is examining him in her trained medical capacity, all her pent-up passion explodes, she realizes the madness of her father's experiments, and vows to save Farrell from her father's dastardly plans. So the two of them plan their escape together, but Neva insists that the beast people are released and taken with them too.

When Neva attempts to free them from their cages in the cave, however, the bird woman refuses to leave hers and come with them but the other five do, and led by Farrell and Neva they make their escape into the jungle via a secret tunnel leading there from the cave whose existence is known only to Neva and her father. To give them a head start, Neva has drugged Steinman, but eventually he awakens, and sets off on their trail with an armed posse of the island's guards. Farrell, meanwhile, has told Neva that he is the person Steinman will be pursuing most emphatically, in the fervent hope of killing him, so their best chance of success is if they split up. Farrell convinces Neva to take charge of the beast people while he follows a different route to the coast, where they can then all meet up. What he doesn't tell her, however, is that he plans to return to the house, kidnap her father, and force him to come along, using him a hostage should Steinman and his squad track him down.

The rest of the movie focuses upon Neva's trek through the jungle with the beast people, and the various trials and tribulations experienced by them en route to the coast. These include: the Panther Woman ambushing and killing some of Steinman's men before deciding to do the same to the Antelope Man before he is rescued by the Wolf Woman who is friends with him; the Ape Man attempting to rape Neva before being warded off by the others; the Bat Man soaring through the jungle in quite spectacular fashion (the movie's only major special effect, the beast people having been rendered as such by little more than face masks and fake hair); and a stand-off confrontation by them against Steinman and his men that results in the latter's temporary capture of Neva.

As for Farrell and Gordon: at one point during their own jungle journey, Farrell ties him to a tree while investigating some movement in nearby foliage, but when after finding nothing he returns to the tree, Gordon is gone, the ropes having been mysteriously cut. Farrell also hears a strange, eerie, semi-human voice warning him that Steinman's men are near, which they are, but again he cannot trace who – or what – has warned him. Meanwhile, the confrontation between Neva and the beast people with Steinman and his men leaves only Neva and the Bat Man still standing. All of the others have been shot dead or killed by the beast people, and with all of these except for the Bat Man having themselves been shot dead too.

 

The full cover of my big box ex-rental VHS videocassette of The Twilight People (© Eddie Romero/Four Associates Ltd/New World Pictures/Dimension Pictures/Atlas Home Video/Les Edwards – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Finally, we see Gordon returning to his home, taking some important files out of a cabinet and fleeing back down the secret tunnel into the jungle – only to be seized when he emerges by a hideous humanoid entity shrouded in leaves, its face little more than a bloodied skull. This proves to be the eighth beast person, who was the very first one that Gordon had created – and guess who it is?? Read my review above again, the clue to her identity is there…

Anyway, this entity – the same one who had previously cut his ropes and had also warned Farrell of Steinman's men – now slays Gordon, whose dead body is subsequently found by Neva and Farrell. Afterwards, they sit together looking over the island, the last two fully human people left alive on it, and as they do so the Bat Man suddenly flies over their heads and soars through the sky, out across the island towards the sea, and beyond. And that's it, all over, The End, albeit quite an anti-climactic one.

There is no doubt that even by the early 1970s standards of monster and horror movies, The Twilight People very much falls into this film genre's low-budget B-movie category. Nonetheless, I found it to be immensely entertaining, and it very effectively elicits genuine sympathy for the beast people in light of their horrendous plight, while Macaulay's sinister mad scientist has more than a little of the Blofeld Bond villain about him. And speaking of villains, Steinman is evil incarnate, whose eventual demise is imho far too nondescript and merciful, regrettably, compared to what he deserves. Throw him unarmed to Panther Woman, I say, let her teeth and talons do for him!

As for Farrell: my problem with him was that in this movie John Ashley playing him bears an uncanny resemblance to English actor Kenneth Cope, who was most famous for playing the ghost in the very popular 1970s fantasy TV show Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), aka My Partner The Ghost as entitled when screened in the States. Consequently, when Steinman informs Farrell that because he has no clothes (having been captured while scuba diving in nothing but diving gear, remember), some new ones have been specially made for him, I was half-expecting him to appear dressed in an all-white suit! Equally, in view of Ashley's fame as a serious rock'n'roll singer coupled with this movie's rainforest setting, there was always the chance that he may suddenly give voice to Hank Mizell's 1958 hit song 'Jungle Rock', but sadly that didn’t happen either!

What did happen, however, which took me completely by surprise, is that during the music soundtrack (by Ariston Avelino and Tito Arevalo) accompanying Steinman and his squad's pursuit of Neva with the beast people through the jungle, a brief session of drumming suddenly, incredibly, segued into the unmistakeable theme 'Approaching Menace' – which is the iconic, menacing intro music to the BBC's cerebral UK TV quiz show Mastermind! And not just the music either, it was the exact same arrangement as in the latter show, and was periodically repeated throughout the remainder of the movie. Naturally, I'd always assumed that this piece of music, composed by English composer/conductor Neil Richardson, had been written specially for Mastermind, but its first series was screened in 1972, the same year that The Twilight People was released, so I'm mystified as to how this theme came to occur in both the TV show and the latter entirely-unrelated movie. Which featured it first? If anyone can explain this musical mystery, please post details below my review, thanks very much!

One last noteworthy aspect well worth highlighting here is as follows. Lovers of fantasy/horror artwork will no doubt have previously seen the very striking illustration that features on the front cover of my big box ex-rental video of The Twilight People – and for good reason. For it just so happens to be a cropped version of one of the most famous paintings produced by world-renowned fantasy artist Les Edwards – 'The Ghoul', which he created in 1979 (my video was released some years later by Atlas Home Video). As seen, it depicts the eponymous entity, whose extraordinarily lengthy arms have always intrigued me, emerging from some subterranean vertical tunnel or crypt inside what looks to be an Egyptian or some other Middle Eastern temple. Hence it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with The Twilight People!

 

'The Ghoul', by Les Edwards, 1979 (© Les Edwards – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

However, this deceptive non-sequitur between the storyline of a video-format movie and the often highly-dramatic artwork depicted on said video's cover was a very frequent occurrence back in the bygone days of big box ex-rental videos, no doubt an artful (in every sense!) means of enticing punters to rent out such videos.

If you'd like to pay a brief visit to the nightmarish world of The Twilight People, be sure to click here to view an official trailer for this movie on YouTube; or if you'd like to watch the entire movie, click here, because it is currently available to watch for free on YouTube.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

 

SMOOTH TALK - MY TRIBUTE TO TREAT WILLIAMS (1951-2023)

 

Front cover of my official UK cardboard-slipcase VHS video of Smooth Talk (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm/Nepenthe Productions/Palace Virgin Gold – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 13 June 2023, I was very shocked and greatly saddened to discover that on the previous day one of my favourite movie stars, American actor Treat Williams, had been killed when according to the Vermont State Police an SUV turned into his path while he was riding his motorbike along a state highway near Dorset, a Bennington County town in Vermont, USA. He was 71. (Ironically, another of my favourite actors, James Dean, had suffered the same tragic fate on 30 September 1955, when a truck pulling out of a side road didn't see him driving along the main highway towards Salinas, Calofirnia, in his lightweight silver Porsche Spyder racing car and ploughed directly into it, killing Dean instantly – click here for my Shuker In MovieLand review of his life and career.)

Down through the years, I've watched a very diverse selection of Treat Williams's movies, and have greatly enjoyed all of them, including the likes of Prince of the City, Hair, Flashpoint, The Phantom, Deep Rising, the 2-part TV mini-series Journey to the Centre of the Earth – and the movie that I am reviewing here at Shuker In MovieLand today. This was the first of his films that I ever saw, more than 30 years ago now. Yet for many years afterwards, it mystifying fixed itself implacably within my memory while more recently-viewed movies swiftly faded, until not so long ago, that is, when I finally discovered the highly unexpected but deeply unsettling reason why – a reason, I hasten to add, whose disturbing nature is due in no negative way to Mr Williams. On the contrary, because this movie theme's tenacious presence within my memory provides emphatic evidence of the exceedingly fine actor that he was. All will now be explained, for the movie whose following review by me is my personal tribute to the late, truly great Treat Williams is Smooth Talk.

Directed by Joyce Chopra, and released in 1985 by International Spectrafilm, Smooth Talk originally came to my attention sometimes during the late 1980s/early 1990s via a cut-price UK videocassette release by Nepenthe Productions in which the cassette was contained within a cardboard slipcase of the kind more commonly used in the States (far less often here in the UK, which preferred to house its videos in sturdy hard plastic box-format cases), thereby making it visually distinctive. I'd never actually heard of Treat Williams back then, but reading the movie blurb on the slipcase's reverse (more about which shortly) I was sufficiently intrigued to buy it, and I watched it for the first time not long afterwards.

For almost the first hour of this movie's 90-minute running time, however, very little of note actually happens. Its plot focuses upon 15-year-old high school student Connie Wyatt (an early role for Laura Dern), teetering upon the brink of transforming from a teenage ingénue who frequents shopping malls near her northern California home with her school friends, and laughs with them as they ogle and flirt with the boys there, into a confident young woman with all the passions and other emotional charges and changes that this major new phase in her life will bring.

Then one evening, Connie is leaving a local hamburger joint when she is spoken to by a handsome smiling stranger (Treat Williams), who dresses in youthful clothes that make him look like James Dean but is clearly in his early 30s. He tells her playfully that he's watching her – and although Connie hasn't realised it, he really has been, all night long at the joint, but without previously making his presence there known to her.

Startled, Connie turns away and returns home. After an argument with her mother Katherine (Mary Kay Place), however, she declines to go off with her family to a barbecue the following afternoon staying at home instead, alone in their out of town farmhouse. And this is when, at long last, the teenage bubblegum movie turns into an edgy grown-up thriller.

For not long after Connie's family are gone, a 1960s open-top convertible with 'Arnold Friend' painted on the driver's door in the form of a signature motors up to the farmhouse. Inside are two men. One of them, the passenger, is a 'local yokel' type named Ellie Oscar (Geoff Hoyle), but the driver is none other than the stranger who spoke to Connie at the hamburger joint last night. When Connie walks out of the farmhouse towards them to find out who they are and why they are here, the stranger introduces himself to her as Arnold Friend (hence his car's distinctive décor), and soon demonstrates just how much he has been watching her, by revealing various personal details about her, even knowing that the rest of her family have gone to the barbecue and won't be back for hours.

 

Connie (Laura Dern) and Arnold Friend (Treat Williams) resting against his eponymously-signed car (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Then, for virtually the whole remainder of the movie, and while his buddy Ellie Oscar stays in the car and listens to his radio pressed steadfastly against his ear, Friend proceeds to turn on the charm with Connie via a dazzling, megawatt-powered display of ingratiating grins and incessant glib lines, coaxing, cajoling, and coercing, wheedling, pleading, and wheeling around a confused and somewhat bewildered but unequivocally attracted Connie to come out for a drive with him into the surrounding countryside. His verbal powers of manipulation, suggestion, and allure soon threaten to break down the unworldly teenager's instinctive defences, and disarm her intuition's warnings – but rather than attempting to adequately convey the insidious guile of Friend's beseechings myself, why not read what is undoubtedly the best description of his dark, mesmerising word-magic and mind-games that I have encountered?

All too often, blurbs or plot summaries included on the reverse of movie video and DVD cases are master classes in hyperbole rather than valid descriptions of the films in question, but in stark contrast, whoever wrote the blurb on the reverse of my Smooth Talk video's slipcase produced an excellent, thoroughly accurate portrayal of Friend's silky yet truly sinister and soon to become decidedly unfriendly smooth talk. So here it is:

NO PHYSICAL FORCE... WORDS WERE HIS WEAPON.

He was a slick, silver-tongued seducer. He had all the right words, all the right moves. He knew just how far to go, when to hold back, when to push over the edge. He knew how to menace without violence — and love without pity. And Connie was easy meat to him; poor, pretty Connie with her head full of trashy daydreams, a blue-eyed blonde who just couldn't wait to grow up. He needed no threats, no physical force: words were his weapons and he could hypnotise and seduce with deadly accuracy. He wanted Connie under his thumb — and into his bed. She was prey ripe for the taking — and he knew it.

Yes he did, no doubt about that whatsoever.

Presently, therefore, it is beginning to look ever more likely that psychological predator Friend will indeed have his wicked way with her, and very shortly too. But then, like all the hammiest actors, he pushes his cod, insincere performance just a little too far, igniting a flame of fear that suddenly flickers inside Connie's mind and momentarily breaks his hypnotic spell over her – in turn spurring her to get back inside her home and bolt the door.

So how could Friend have failed in his seemingly-irresistible, saccharine-sweet seduction? By actually revealing to Connie – and the viewers – his true nature, while seemingly remaining entirely oblivious himself to having done so, that's how. Let me explain.

 

Treat Williams as the flirtatious Mr Friend (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

From what you've read here so far, the image of Friend seems to be that of a suave, worldly, intelligent, confident, highly manipulative egotist, demonstrating a definite way with words and the strength of suggestion – but what he appears entirely unaware of, thereby underlining just how dangerous and deranged he truly is, is that he is also displaying a scarcely in-check, under-control level of explosive violence liable to break forth at the slightest provocation. Exposing this Mr Hyde side to Friend's evidently schizoid personality is the sole but crucially significant purpose of a hitherto barely-mentioned character in this movie – Friend's buddy, Ellie Oscar.

For he soon becomes bored witless by Friend's wooing and whining around Connie, and says so on more than one occasion – only for Friend to erupt in hysterical shrieking fury each time, his eyes bulging with unrestrained ferocity as he screams repeatedly at his buddy to keep quiet and stop ruining everything. Each time this happens, Friend's mask of fake benevolence and playfulness falls further, the outward quasi-Jekyll further overshadowed by the unhinged savagery of Hyde lurking within.

Nevertheless, Friend is nothing if not persistent, and even finds a way inside Connie's home where he continues his increasingly creepy, psychological courtship of her – until finally Hyde gains triumphant ascendancy. Friend is friendly no longer, informing her that if she doesn't come out for a drive with him, he'll burn the farmhouse down!

And so, with the game well and truly over, Connie gets into his car and drives off with him, leaving Ellie Oscar at the farmhouse to await their return. Time goes by, but later that same afternoon they do return. Friend is grinning from ear to ear like the veritable cat from Cheshire, a smile on his face like the tiger from Riga, his bonhomie fully restored. Connie, conversely, looks lost, distracted, her clothes noticeably rumpled, dishevelled.

There seems little doubt that they have had sex while away, but what does remain in doubt for the rest of the movie is whether it was consensual, or whether we should add rape alongside under-age sex to Friend's catalogue of crimes? Connie shouts at Friend that she never wants to see him again as he and Ellie Oscar get back in the car, he shouts back that nothing happened, and drives away. So in view of that decidedly ambiguous interchange, who can say for certain what did, or didn't, take place during her time alone with him?

Perhaps the most tantalising aspect of all with regard to this issue is a brief scene inside Connie's bedroom that reveals the presence on her wall of a large James Dean poster, with Dean wearing very similar attire to that worn by Friend during their fateful afternoon – a pale shirt and tight dusty denim jeans. This has led some viewers and reviewers to speculate whether Connie's encounter with Friend that afternoon ever actually happened, or whether that entire scene was merely a febrile figment of her hormonally-driven adolescent imagination!

 

He's behind you – or is he?? (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The movie ends with a short scene in which Connie and her mother make up following her family's return from the barbecue, after which she dances with her sister June (Elizabeth Berridge) to James Taylor's recording of the song 'Handy Man' (James Taylor also happens to be this film's music director, but I still prefer Del Shannon's version personally, though that's neither here nor there!). However, she tells none of them about what happened while they were away – but might that be because nothing actually did? Make what you will of this movie's ultimately inconclusive conclusion.

Needless to say, Smooth Talk was not the first film I'd ever seen that featured a smiling, ostensibly affable monster in human form, nor would it be the last. So why did this particular one get under my skin to such an extent that I couldn't shake free of it? Time and again, flashes of scenes featuring Friend plying his tawdry trade of phoney amiability and affection toward Connie would abruptly surface, often at the most unexpected times, and seemingly devoid of any discernable trigger. Friend was a bad 'un, no question about that, but all my instincts kept telling me that there was something more here, much more, a sizeable missing piece of the complex jigsaw puzzle that this strange movie constituted.

Back in the data-deficient times of the 1980s (at least in comparison to today's instantly-accessible information super-highway of facts, and more facts, and still more facts, all just a fingertip away), researching anything took time, including frequent visits to libraries, archives, etc, if the details required were more than could be readily found in a decent encyclopedia (remember those?) devoted to the basic subject in hand. Smooth Talk was not a major movie by any standards, and rarely received more than the most perfunctory entry in film books. Consequently, like so many others that periodically jostled for attention in my mind but were not of any direct importance to me or my life in general, the mystery behind why I found this movie so intrinsically disturbing, yet infernally difficult to forget, remained unexplained.

Years went by, and I watched Smooth Talk a second time, and again the character of Friend troubled me – there was something so not right about him, but was that simply the way that Williams had chosen and/or had been instructed by the film's director to portray him? Yet if so, why? If it was to elicit a sense of unease in viewers, this aim had certainly succeeded with me, that's for sure! I did think about investigating whether the plot was an original story written for the film, or whether it was based upon some pre-existing novel, or a play perhaps, but as so often happens, other more pressing events arose to push such thoughts to the sidelines and subsequently the dusty attics of my mind and memory.

Just over a year ago, however, while reorganising my somewhat expanded collection of movie DVDs and videos (the outcome of finding ways and means to while away long periods of enforced indoor confinement during the covid lockdowns), I noticed my Smooth Talk video, and watched it a third time. Same result, same eerie feeling that Friend was a fiend in more ways than I was aware of. But this time there was also a major difference – I now had the internet to search for answers. So I did – and it didn't take long to find them either, but boy, I certainly wasn't expecting what I found!

It turns out that Smooth Talk, with a screenplay by Tom Cole, is based upon a much darker short story by American writer Joyce Carol Oates, which had been published in 1966 and was entitled "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" (the quotation marks/inverted commas, incidentally, are part of its title, as it's actually a biblical quote, from the Old Testament book of Judges). One of its plot's most significant difference from that of the movie is that Oates's story ends when Connie comes out of the house, having reluctantly agreed to go for a drive with Friend, plus his buddy alongside them. But even though the reader never finds out what happens next, the strong inherent implication is that the two men are going to take her to some far-flung location to sexually assault and possibly even murder her (and also, in an unexpected supernatural twist linked in part to an enigmatic 6-digit numerical code painted on his car, that in reality Friend is none other than the devil!).

 

Treat Williams as Arnold Friend – or Fiend? (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

This short story had in turn been inspired by the real-life activities of a certain Charles Howard Schmid – the perpetrator of the infamous Tucson murders during the early 1960s. Schmid was a serial killer living in Tucson, Arizona, who killed at least three teenage girls and possibly one teenage boy too while still only in his 20s. He was nicknamed The Pied Piper because of how charismatic he was, which, combined with his good looks, readily enabled him to persuade others, especially young women, to do whatever he asked them to.

After being arrested during the mid-1960s and put on trial for the three girls' murders, Schmid was found guilty and initially sentenced to death, though this was subsequently commuted to 50 years imprisonment. He and another murderer briefly escaped from prison together in November 1972 and they held some hostages captive, but were soon recaptured and re-incarcerated. On 20 March 1975, Schmid was fatally stabbed by two other prisoners, dying from his injuries 10 days later.

No wonder I'd felt so uneasy about the character Friend in Smooth Talk! Yet I'd felt that way without having any knowledge of his deadly real-life inspiration. All of this, therefore, is a stirring testament to the profound acting skills and talent of Treat Williams, who had succeeded in imbuing Friend with an underlying evil so subtle that it was not even visible to viewers, but lurked and lingered all about this malign character like a preternatural aura, detectable only by our own innermost, most secret sixth sense – the primal sense of survival that refuses to be silenced when it detects something potentially dangerous or threatening to our existence. Animal instinct, we call it when referring to non-human species – but don't forget that, zoologically-speaking, Homo sapiens is an animal too.

Also well deserving of mention here is that in 1986 Smooth Talk won the Grand Jury Award at fellow actor Robert Redford's prestigious, longstanding Sundance Film Festival. This yields further proof of the extremely high standard of acting contained in it, and not only by Treat Williams either, but also by Laura Dern, aged only 18 at the time, as Friend's over-sexed yet under-experienced, tragically gauche victim, which she plays to perfection. In short, despite being only a relatively minor movie, Smooth Talk induced performances of such potency from both of its lead stars that it served as a significant stepping stone for the acting careers of both Williams and Dern, and rightly so.

 

Official poster for Smooth Talk publicising its Grand Jury Award win at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

But now, 38 years later yet still far too soon, farewell and godspeed to Treat Williams – a very fine, exceedingly skilful movie actor, whose untimely death has robbed the world of who knows how many more notable on-screen performances, not to mention a much-loved family member and a friend to so many. RIP Sir.

If you would like to watch a couple of official Smooth Talk trailers on YouTube, be sure to click here and here, or click here if you'd like to view the complete 22-minute seduction scene from Smooth Talk between Arnold Friend and Connie that takes place at the farmhouse while her family is away at the barbecue.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Publicity poster for Smooth Talk (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

THE WASP WOMAN

 

Publicity poster for The Wasp Woman (© Roger Corman/The Filmgroup/Santa Cruz Productions/Allied Artists – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My movie watch earlier today was the 'classic' sci fi/monster/horror movie The Wasp Woman, made in b/w (and which I have on DVD) but also available to view as an excellent colorized version that I watched on YouTube.

Directed by the legendary Roger Corman, and released in 1959 by Allied Artists, The Wasp Woman (aka The Bee Girl and Insect Woman) is a wonderfully silly (and unintentionally comical) low-budget' movie set in Janice Starlin Enterprises, a cosmetic company headed by and named after its founder (played by Susan Cabot in her last movie role).

Moreover, for the past 16 years, Starlin had also been its only face model, becoming the established, trusted symbol of her company in the eyes of the general public buying her products, until age began to catch up with her looks (she was now around 40 years old). So she retired from that role – only for her company's profits to plummet alarmingly after a new, younger face model replaced her.

Desperate to create a revolutionary product that will save her company from bankruptcy, Starlin hires maverick scientist Dr Eric Zinthrop (Michael Mark), who claims to have invented a truly incredible, fast-acting rejuvenation serum using royal jelly, but obtained not from queen bees – instead, from queen wasps! Uh-oh!

Yes indeed, for when Starlin secretly injects herself with substantial amounts of Zinthrop's still highly experimental serum in the hope of restoring her fading beauty, she discovers to her horror that although it does indeed rejuvenate her, and very swiftly, it also temporarily transforms her into a humanoid wasp that kills some of her company's unsuspecting staff – until one of them discovers her terrifying secret!

My two favourite scenes from The Wasp Woman are as follows. The first one sees Zinthrop hold up and inject two aged guinea pigs with his rejuvenating serum, and just a few moments later Starlin reacts with astonishment at their dramatic transformation – as well she might, bearing in mind that the creatures now being held up by Zinthrop are not guinea pigs but laboratory rats! Oops.

The second one is when Starlin turns up at her office one morning after having covertly given herself yet another massive injection of the rejuvenation serum and one of her secretaries, Mary Dennison (Barboura Morris), claims that she looks no more than 22-23 years old, when in reality (and as any viewer of this movie can readily see), apart from sporting a different hairstyle and some artfully-applied make-up, Cabot (the actress playing Starlin) looks exactly the same as she did before! Should've gone to Specsavers, Mary!

The wasp woman monster comes complete with insectoid compound eyes, vicious mandibles, and horn-like antennae (not to mention an hourglass figure that would have made Disney's Tinker Bell even more green than usual, but this time with envy!), and certainly looks much better in colour than in b/w. Conversely, the film itself is definitely one to watch with all disbelief not so much suspended as chained up and locked away inside a steel chamber that the light of truth can never penetrate!

Both the original b/w version and the colorized one of The Wasp Woman are currently available to watch free of charge on YouTube. So click here to watch the former, here to watch the latter, and here to watch an official trailer for it.

Also, to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

Finally, it's time for some total trivia: By pure coincidence, a supernatural wasp woman character appeared in a dark fantasy novel that I read (and enjoyed) earlier this year, and which has a back story all of its own. About 20 years ago I saw this book at my hometown's regular Tuesday morning bric-a-brac market, yet although tempted to buy it, I didn't, but I long remembered it afterwards (due in no small way to its very striking dustjacket illustration – see below) and wished that I had done so (it was only 50p !!). What I didn't remember, unfortunately, was either its title or its author, which made seeking it out all but impossible. Some years passed, and then I happened to chance upon another copy of this selfsame book, again priced at 50p, but this time in a charity shop in the nearby town of Darlaston. Yet, bizarrely, I still didn't buy it, nor did I take note of its title and author.

After that, I never saw this tantalising book again – until early July 2022, that is, when at a local Thursday morning car boot sale I saw a copy of it on a stall, priced yet again at just 50p. But, believe it or believe it not, I STILL didn't buy it (why ever not???), strolling away down the next aisle of stalls instead, before I finally came to my senses, walked swiftly back, and purchased it! Third time lucky, as they say. And the book is... a 1995 supernatural/horror-themed hardback novel entitled Daemonic, authored by Stephen Laws, and which would make a superb movie! Film directors take note!

 

Above: The very eyecatching artwork featuring on the dustjacket of my copy of Daemonic; Below: its front flyleaf outlining its plot (© Stephen Laws/Hodder and Stoughton – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/reproduction purposes only)

 

 

THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS

 

My official UK DVD of The Happytime Murders (© Brian Henson/STX Films/H. Brothers/Black Bear Pictures/TMP/Henson Alternative/On The Day Productions/STX Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Tonight's movie watch, which I bought earlier today on DVD, was The Happytime Murders, an exceedingly quirky fantasy/crime/comedy movie released in 2018 by STX Entertainment, and is somewhat reminiscent in basic storyline to the 1988 live-action/animation movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit – but with two very major differences.

Firstly, instead of humans sharing the world with living cartoons, they share it in this movie with living puppets. Secondly, this ain't no family film – no indeed, not when it's full to overflowing with outrageous, in-yer-face puppet sex scenes (really!) and wall-to-wall expletives throughout. In the States, it was originally given an 'R' rating, and here in the UK my DVD of it has a '15' rating.

But here's the biggest twist of all – guess who created a movie that is so raunchy it would even make Fritz the Cat blush? None other than that production studio byword for big/small screen wholesomeness, the Jim Henson Company! I kid you not! During the early 2000s, under the specially-coined name Henson Alternative, the studio who created Sesame Street and The Muppet Show diverged into productions aimed at a more mature audience, beginning with various TV shows, but with The Happytime Murders as its first feature-length movie release. It's even directed by Jim Henson's own son, Brian Henson.

In this film, which is set in the seedy backstreets of Los Angeles, two former, exceedingly estranged LAPD cop partners, one human (Detective Connie Edwards, played by Melissa McCarthy), one puppet (Phil Phillips, voiced by Bill Barretta, and now an ex-cop after having fallen short big time during an earlier case), reluctantly combine forces once again to track down whoever (or whatever) is systematically slaughtering all the cast members of the erstwhile hit children's TV show The Happytime Gang, all of whom save one are puppets. The lone exception is the voluptuous human Jenny (Elizabeth Banks), who was once Phil's girlfriend, so he has a vested interest in coming good this time. But will he and Edwards succeed – especially when their anonymous but deadly adversary successfully frames Phil for all of the killings?

The Happytime Murders is a thoroughly anarchic neo-noir satire movie and has been diversely described in the film world as filthy, outrageous, wicked, uproarious, inventive, crazy, and highly original – and yes, it is all of these, and so much more too. But above all else, it is funny, very funny – totally hilarious, in fact – throughout its 87-minute running time (even the end credits contain great gags and laugh-outloud out-takes).

To put it another way: at the beginning of this review, I mentioned that The Happytime Murders is somewhat reminiscent in basic storyline to Who Framed Roger Rabbit – which it is. In presentation, however, it is far closer to Meet The Feebles – so if you've ever watched that movie, which is another dark, controversial, adult-themed puppet-featuring fantasy/crime/comedy flick, directed by none other than Peter Jackson and released in 1989, you'll know exactly what to expect!

But that's not all either. For The Happytime Murders also includes some of the most incredible, technically-complex puppetry that I have ever seen on film. Even the film critics, who generally hated this movie when it was released, grudgingly agreed about the latter aspect. Moreover, as soon as I learnt that they loathed it, I knew that I was going to love it – and, sure enough, I did!

If you'd like to view a trailer for The Happytime Murders on YouTube, please click here – but prepare to be shocked if the word 'puppet' has hitherto only ever conjured forth in your mind some innocent childhood images of talking frogs, joke-telling bears, and big yellow birds. There's also an even more overt, no-holds-barred Restricted trailer for it on YouTube, but I'll leave you to find that one for yourself! To quote this film's own publicity slogans: "No Sesame, All Street" and "Sex. Murder. Puppets." – absolutely!

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

POST #300 - MY THIRD, FULLY-UPDATED, ALL-TIME TOP REVIEWS LISTING ON SHUKER IN MOVIELAND

Following a tradition begun with my 100^th Shuker In MovieLand blog post (of 6 December 2020), when I listed what was at that time this blog's all-time top 10 movie/TV reviews as measured by reader hit counts (click here to access it), and continued with my 200^th blog post (of 13 January 2022), when I presented an updated top 10 listing (click here to access it), I am now, with this, my 300^th blog post (of 5 June 2023), presenting the very latest listing. But this time, for added interest and because of the considerable quantity of movies plus TV shows now reviewed on my blog, I am presenting not merely a top 10 but rather a top 20.

As in the earlier two, each of this third listing's 20 movie/TV reviews is presented as a clickable link, together with its original publication date on my blog, so that you can access it directly from this page to read in full if you so wish. Also, where applicable, each movie's position in my previous, second listing is given here in blue brackets. So here it is:

#1        The Lost Continent (4 April 2021) (#1)

#2       Ron Stryker's Motorbike and the Lightning Tree – Revisiting Follyfoot ((16 February 2022)

#3       Oliver in the Overworld/Little Big Time (15 February 2022)

#4       9 (2 March 2022)

#5        Horns (28 February 2022)

#6       Rumble Fish (28 April 2022)

#7        Rock 'N' Roll Cowboys (6 March 2022)

#8       The Prisoner (7 May 2022)

#9       Chander Pahar (aka Mountain of the Moon) (4 June 2022)

#10     From Selkies to Space Vampires (14 April 2021) (#2)

#11      Shadow of Death (aka Destroyer) (1 May 2021) (#3)

#12      Fade To Black (30 March 2022)

#13      Rock 'N' Roll High School (14 February 2022)

#14      Angels and Panthers and Yetis, Oh My! (25 April 2022)

#15      Land of Doom (aka Raiders of Death) (19 March 2022)

#16      The Singer Not The Song (12 February 2022)

#17      Carmen Jones (30 April 2021) (#4)

#18     Wish Dragon (11 June 2022)

#19      Mune: Guardian of the Moon (26 May 2022)

#20     The Sin Eater (aka The Order) (30 May 2022)

Only two movies from my second top 10 listing back in mid-January 2022 retain a place in this latest, third one, indicating that newer movie entries swiftly draw interest away from older ones. But of these two exceptions to that apparent rule, The Lost Continent retains not only a place in this new listing but also the very same place as before – i.e. right at the top, at #1, and via an appreciably higher hit count than even the entry directly below it at #2, let alone all of the other 18 in this top 20 listing. Why this relatively obscure, unremarkable horror/monster movie should have attracted such considerable interest from readers is a complete mystery to me, but it's an interest that shows no sign of waning. Indeed, if Shuker In MovieLand stays in existence long enough to reach a 400^th blog post and thus the compilation of a fourth top 10 or 20 listing, it wouldn't surprise me at all to find that The Lost Continent is still residing tenaciously at its summit.

Equally odd is that the majority of the movie reviews contained in this top 20 were  all posted within a very narrow period of time, spanning a mere 4 months, from 12 February 2022 to 11 June 2022 inclusive. So why were these specific reviews, and/or that particular time period, so inordinately, disproportionately effective in attracting high readership counts? Again, I have no idea.

Moreover, as with the two previous listings, I see no patterns or trends emerging as to which genres are represented in this latest one, nor the proportions of such representations. Indeed, the only aspect of this entire listing exercise that I feel certain about is that when it comes to movies and viewers' movie tastes, nothing is ever certain!

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.