Publicity
poster for The Gardener (when
released as Seeds of Evil) (© James
H. Kay/KKI Films Inc/Nolan Production/Subversive Cinema – reproduced here on a
strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)
As regular readers of this blog will
know, I have always been fascinated by films featuring monstrous or malevolent
plants, especially of the scientifically-unknown variety, but the exceedingly
strange mid-1970s American flick that I discovered entirely by chance online
last night and watched straight away takes this whole sub-genre of monster
movie along an entirely different, extremely unexpected route. Largely
forgotten nowadays but truly a hidden gem in my personal opinion after having
viewed it, this obscure yet fascinating feature has been marketed with a range
of different titles, including Seeds of
Evil, Garden of Death, and The Touch of Satan, but is best known nowadays
as The Gardener, whose inscrutable eponymous
character is its central focus.
Directed and written by James H. Kay, and
released in 1974 by Nolan Productions, The
Gardener was filmed on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, famous for its
lush vegetation and multicoloured tropical flowers, but when it comes to
botanical beauty (especially of the deceiving kind) you ain't seen nothing yet,
trust me!
SPOILER
ALERT! Detailed
online synopses of this little-known movie are exceedingly few and far between,
so I am providing one here, summarizing the most significant aspects of its
plot, including its extraordinary climax. So if you don't want to know what
happens in it, read no further!
The Gardener opens with a scene inside a
hospital room, in which a youngish woman named Dorothy is lying asleep in bed,
strapped up to various drips and clearly not in the best of health. As she
slumbers a nurse brings a large bowl of unusual, brightly-coloured flowers,
apparently a present from her gardener, and places them near her bed. The nurse
then leaves, but as she does, Dorothy stirs, with an alarmed look on her face,
and turns around, towards the flowers, presumably having detected their scent. When
she sees them, she screams, and from outside the room the nurse hears a massive
crash. She races inside, to find Dorothy hanging out of the bed, her face contorted
with terror, and dead, as if she'd died of fright. We are then briefly shown
Dorothy's funeral before the opening credits roll.
The scene then changes to Dorothy's home,
where two of her acquaintances, the somewhat unworldly Ellen Bennett (played by
Katharine Houghton, a niece of Katharine Hepburn) and the unequivocally worldly
Helena Boardman (Rita Gam), who is also Ellen's neighbour and best friend (as
well as this movie's sex-mad comic-relief character for much of it), are
reminiscing following the funeral. While there, they encounter a tall, taciturn
employee who turns out to be the late Dorothy's gardener, Carl (Joe
Dallesandro, in his first post-Warhol movie), who had sent her those strange flowers
in hospital.
As Carl's services are no longer required
in Dorothy's garden, however, and as the garden of Ellen and her wealthy but
inattentive husband John (James Congdon) is in need of some herbaceous TLC
(well, that's Ellen's story after casting her eyes over the habitually
bare-chested Carl and she's sticking to it!), she invites him to become their
gardener now, which he accepts.
Within just a few weeks, Carl has
entirely transformed Ellen's garden into an Edenesque paradise, with its blooms
bursting forth all over, bigger and brighter than she has ever seen them
before, and even blossoming out of season. Carl takes pains to decorate the
interior of Ellen's home with flowers too, much to the upset of her local
maids, who are disturbed not just by the flowers' seemingly unnatural growth
rates but in particular by the mysterious, enigmatic Carl who has wrought such
strange transformations in them. They view him as sinister and his accomplishments
as witchcraft.
The annual carnival, featuring a costumed
masked ball, comes along, and Ellen is persuaded by Helena's husband to dress
as the Greek flower goddess Persephone, who according to classical mythology is
doomed to spend six months of every year in the Underworld with her husband Hades,
during which period it is Autumn and Winter in our world, but is free to return
here for the remaining six months, during which period we experience Spring and
Summer. Carl garlands Ellen's gown with exquisite glowing flowers (which the
maids unsuccessfully attempt to discard before she can see them, as they
consider them to be evil), and Ellen is enraptured by the sight of
such a gorgeous costume. John, conversely, is less enamoured by it, because
each time he attempts to touch her, his hands somehow become torn by the mysterious
flowers' all but imperceptible yet painfully sharp thorns.
Joe Dallesandro as this movie's titular gardener, Carl, with Katharine Houghton as Ellen Bennett (© James
H. Kay/KKI Films Inc/Nolan Production/Subversive Cinema – reproduced here on a
strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)
Gradually, Ellen becomes disturbed about
Carl's inexplicable horticultural talents, and also about her growing
attraction to him, try as she might to resist his unnerving charms – and when
one evening she somehow finds herself standing in her garden's pool kissing a totally
naked Carl, yet unable to remember why she was even there, she begins to agitate
about his increasing presence and manipulative influence in her life,
especially as she is only too aware that she knows absolutely nothing about
him.
Consequently, Ellen persuades a reluctant
Helena to join her in investigating Carl's background, only for Ellen to
discover to her considerable alarm that all the women for whom Carl has
previously worked as their gardener (including Dorothy of course) have died,
and in odd, unexpected ways – all but one, that is. The lone exception is a Mrs
Garcia (Anne Meacham in wonderfully creepy form), whom they visit, only to
realize very swiftly that she has somehow been driven insane…by flowers. So
much so that she lives entirely inside her heavily-curtained house, where
sunlight cannot penetrate and where, according to her, flowers therefore cannot
bloom and release their poisons. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would have
said.
By now, Ellen has become thoroughly
unnerved by Carl, but Helena considers the death toll of former employers
linked to the grim grass-reaper to be mere coincidence, and that Ellen is
grossly over-reacting. Nevertheless, to ease her friend's mind once and for
all, Helena suggests that Ellen should sack Carl, on the pretext that he won't
be needed when she and John leave for the long overseas holiday that John has
recently promised her. Moreover, to soften the blow for Carl, Helena agrees – and
without needing any persuasion either! – to take him on as her gardener
instead. And so the switch is swiftly set in motion, albeit with much
apprehension for Helena's well-being with Carl by Ellen, and with much
anticipation for her own well-being with Carl by Helena!
The movie's climax arrives with
unexpected swiftness and an outrageously unexpected revelation. Driving at
night, Ellen fears for Helena's safety alone with Carl living on the premises
of her home, so she drives at a furious pace to reach her, her head seemingly
filled with the lascivious on-screen images that the viewers see of Carl with
Helena amid much midnight fondling in the foliage and flowerbeds of Helena's
garden. When Ellen arrives, she searches the garden and is horrified to
discover Helena trapped inside a veritable cage of vegetation, her hands and
arms bound firmly to its bars by thick rope-like strands of ivy and vines that
are not only growing ever tighter around her but also actually appear to be sprouting from her. Helena is shrieking in terror, so Ellen
races off to fetch some shears to cut through the binding plants, but returns
instead with a gardening sickle.
Seemingly driven out of her own mind with
horror at what has happened, Ellen swings the sickle down again and again at the
ivy and vines, with wild, indiscriminate fury, apparently oblivious to the
gruesome fact that she is chopping not only the plants but also Helena's arms
and hands, as they and the plants are now as one, thereby causing Helena to scream in excruciating pain and uncontrollable fear, before finally
collapsing, dead.
The commotion has attracted Carl's
attention, and he appears out of the darkness, bare-chested as ever, his eyes
glowing with fervor, exhilaration, triumph, who can say? But as he gazes
fearlessly at Ellen, ready to claim her as his next victim, she suddenly pulls
out a revolver and shoots him at close range. Shocked and, for the very first
time, on the receiving side of persecution and danger, Carl flees, closely
pursued by Ellen, intent upon ending his deadly, murderous spree forever. But
then, abruptly, he stops stock still and faces her, stretching his arms
upwards. And then, to Ellen's total disbelief, Carl…
This is a very timely point at which to
mention that over the years Joe Dallesandro has attracted criticism from some
film buffs, who have claimed that his acting performances are wooden
(conversely, I've seen several of his films and totally disagree with their
opinion), but if ever there was a role in which he truly needed to act wooden,
this is the one – because…
As Ellen stares in total disbelief, Carl
begins growing larger, and larger, transforming, transmuting, transmogrifying,
transfiguring, until his astonishing, inexplicable metamorphosis is complete –
towering over Ellen where just moments earlier Carl had been standing with arms
upstretched, there is now a huge, demonic tree!
Yet somehow, despite being confronted by
this supernatural monstrosity, Ellen's mind breaks free of the chains of fear
that had momentarily held it rigid, enabling her to race away to fetch what is
needed to conquer Carl, or whatever he is now.
Moments later, Ellen returns with a can
of petrol (gasoline) that she hurls all over the tree, soaking its trunk – and
then she throws a lighted match at it. The petrol catches fire immediately,
resulting in an explosive conflagration that wholly engulfs the vile entity as
Ellen stands and watches at a safe distance.
Eventually morning breaks, and she is still
standing there, as sunlight filters down through the garden, lighting up the incinerated,
burnt-out wreck of a massive tree, a tree that had previously been a
green-fingered, murder-minded gardener named Carl.
Carl transforming into a tree in The Gardener (© James
H. Kay/KKI Films Inc/Nolan Production/Subversive Cinema – reproduced here on a
strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)
As you can tell, The Gardener is no ordinary monster plant movie, that's for sure! In
fact, I'm not actually sure what it
is. It is generally classed as a horror movie, and yet except for the last few
minutes, beginning when Ellen starts hacking away maniacally at poor doomed
Helena before confronting Carl as Carl and then as a diabolical tree, it is
conspicuously horror-lite. True, there was the brief opening scene of Dorothy
expiring in the hospital courtesy of Carl's fatal flora, and every so often
there is some suspenseful music playing in the background, but that's it. Even
the supernatural elements are hinted at rather than made manifest prior to the
dramatic climax, with the single exception of a brief scene set in Ellen's
garden, when Carl holds her hand over a flower and she is shocked to see the
flower instantly expand to twice its size.
Nor are any explanations offered for the
strange, eerie events being witnessed by this movie's viewers. First and
foremost: what exactly is Carl? His
intimate, psychic rapport with plants, which extends to his incredible, preternatural
capability to transform into one, readily demonstrates that he is not human.
More like a were-tree, in fact, than anything of the mammalian persuasion!
And what is Carl's purpose, his motive,
for killing all of his employers? What does he benefit from doing so? All that
seems to happen is that he is shunted from one garden to another, instead of
staying put at one particular garden where he would surely derive sustained pleasure
from ensuring that it is maintained to its greatest possible (even impossible!)
potential via his uncanny powers.
Visually, The Gardener is beautiful to look at, replete with glowing colours
and captivating imagery, most especially during the carnival scenes, which as a
connoisseur of masquerade masks I particularly enjoyed (click here to check out some from my own
collection within my review of the movie Night
Train To Venice aka Train To Hell).
There is a rich abundance of classic 1970s chic and kitsch too – including the
music score, for much of the time anyway (when it's not heralding some
disquieting occurrence, that is, usually of the floral kind). But when it comes
to elucidating the actual plot to which all of this sun-drenched and moon-lit
spectacle provides an elegant, edifying backdrop, answers come there none.
Despite a long and varied acting career,
Joe Dallesandro remains best-known for his early movies directed/produced by Paul
Morrissey and Andy Warhol, such as Flesh,
Trash, Heat, Lonesome Cowboys, Flesh For Frankenstein, and Blood For Dracula. However, The Gardener, his first movie beyond the
Morrissey/Warhol period of his career, began his journey down some very
different acting pathways.
Speaking of which: another of Dallesandro's post-Morrissey/Warhol fantasy/horror
movies that I'd like to view (and review) but have yet to chance upon in a
reasonably-priced DVD format is Black
Moon, released a year after The
Gardener. In it, he plays a mysterious telepathic mute youth named
Lily, alongside an atypically portly, greenish-brown unicorn that does talk. I
strongly suspect that another decidedly strange movie watch lies ahead with Black Moon!
As for The Gardener, if you'd like to watch this cinematic curiosity in
its entirety, simply do what I did after discovering it last night – watch it
for free on YouTube, by clicking here. Or click here
to view a somewhat blurry trailer for it.
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.
The
official Subversive Cinema DVD of The
Gardener (© James H. Kay/KKI Films Inc/Nolan Production/Subversive Cinema –
reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for
educational/review purposes only)
