Jack In The Attic

 

 (imdb)

MAN IN THE ATTIC-1953-The mysterious Mr. Slate (Jack Palance) rents a room from Mr. & Mrs. Harley during the Jack the Ripper murders. Slate fits the description, stays out late and talks strangely. His landlady Helen (Frances Bavier; the future Aunt Bee on TV's “The Andy Griffith Show”) suspects him immediately but husband William (Rhys Williams) thinks everyone is just in a panic. Slate takes a liking to Helen's niece Lily Bonner (Constance Smith), a singer who's “the toast of England”. Inspector Warwick (Byron Palmer) looks for fingerprints. Slate, a kind of a confused mamma's boy, almost does in Lily but relents. He escapes in a horse drawn coach with Warwick in pursuit. Although Slate seems to drown, they don't recover his body. 

This fictional account of the Ripper murders is of course based on fact and also on the two film versions of THE LODGER that came before it. One, a 1927 version directed by Alfred Hitchcock and a 1944 version starring Laird Creger and George Sanders. This low-budget production is really held together by Palance's performance. 

Argentina born director Hugo Fregonese does a good job of keeping the mood but sometimes the plot focuses more on Lily than it does on Slate. Star Palance was in SHANE the same year but lead actress Constance Smith's career never took off. Her time as an actress was marred by bouts of drugs and alcohol, a stabbing, jail time and several attempted suicides. She died in 2003.

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Rage

 

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RAGE-1972-Rancher Dan Logan (George C. Scott; also the director) has a nice life until he wakes up one day after camping with his son Chris (Nicholas Beauvy; later in THE TOOLBOX MURDERS (1978)) to find his cattle dead and Chris deathly sick. An army board headed by Col. Nickerson (Kenneth Tobey) (including Robert Walden and Stephen Young) seems concerned because it was an accidental spraying of some government poison gas. Major Halliford (Martin Sheen) and public health service guy Spencer (Barnard Hughes) assure him his son will be alright. 

Not true. Chris dies and the government seems to cover it up. Family physician Dr. Cardwell (Richard Basehart) finds some discrepancies in the medical reports. Logan sees through the government lies and finds his son’s dead body. Now a dying man, Logan goes for revenge but he dies before extracting real vengeance. Dabbs Greer is a doctor and Ed Lauter is an orderly. 

Two years after this Scott would direct one more film, the notorious THE SAVAGE IS LOOSE. This disappointing box office flop was actually based on a 1968 incident that took place in Utah where thousands of sheep were killed while the US army tested a new nerve gas. The army denied responsibility and other theories were presented. However, documents released 30 years after the incident occurred seem to say the army was at fault.

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The Todd Killings

 

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SKIPPER aka THE TODD KILLINGS-1971-Skipper (Robert F. Lyons) is an unemployed loser. Some would call him charismatic but he's really a jerk. He hooks up with Billy (Richard Thomas; just before TV's “The Waltons”), a naive local just out of the army. His dumb mother (Barbara Bel Geddes) who runs a home for old people gives him money. He hooks up with Roberta (Belinda Montgomery) who he abuses but she seems to like it until a girl (Holly Near; ANGEL, ANGEL, DOWN YOU GO (1969)) lets on that she helped Skipper bury a body (shown at the beginning of the film). He kills her and her little sister. A guy named Fred (Ed Asner) suspects Skipper when the girls go missing. Skipper kind of forces Roberta to help him bury the bodies. Police include Michael Conrad and Sugar Ray Robinson. Gloria Grahame & Harry Lauter are Billy's parents. James Broderick, Fay Spain and Geoffrey Lewis (uncredited) are also in it. 

It's a pretty interesting psychological melodrama (based on a real-life case) directed by Barry Shear (WILD IN THE STREETS (1968). The character of Skipper is based on real life murderer Charles Schmid, a weird guy who was convicted of several murders and later killed in prison.

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Deranged

 

DERANGED-1974-Ezra Cobb (Roberts Blossom) listens to his mother's hateful speech on her deathbed. They've lived alone on a farm for the last 15 years. When she dies he builds a shrine to her and waits for her return. One night he hears her voice (it's him talking) tell him to bring her home. He digs her up ("mama, you're in terrible shape") and mummifies her, using other dug up bodies to "patch her up". He meets a woman who talks to her dead husband and during a seance' tells Ezra to have sex with her. But of course he kills her instead. He gets a waitress Mary (Micki Moore) to come to his house where she discovers Ed's collection of corpses and Ed dressed in dead skin. He gets caught after killing a local girl and hanging her up in his barn. Not sure about the reporter/narrator (Leslie Carlson) being comedy relief or not. 

However Roberts Blossom gives a great performance as Cobb (of course based on the real life ghoul Ed Gein). Alan Ormsby (CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS) wrote the screenplay and co-directed with Jeff Gillen.

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Based on The Truth

 

39 STRIPES-1979-Director/co-writer Ron Ormond presents this dramatization of the real life preacher Ed Martin (Tim Ormond who wrote the script with dad), a former chain gang convict who found Jesus and was born again. Boring with too much talk. The acting and direction suck.

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Death Row

CELL 2455, DEATH ROW-1955-Little juvenile delinquent Whit Whitter (R. Wright Campbell) grows up to become a full fledged murdering thug (William Campbell; Wright's real older brother) gaining fame as the vicious "red light bandit", pistol whipping men and molesting women at local lover's lanes. The smug and unrepentant Witter is eventually arrested and sentenced to death. He wages a successful effort to win stays of execution on death row. It's based on the then well known book by death row denizen Caryl  Chessman (who was executed in 1960 for similar crimes; at the time he was the longest serving death row inmate) although the character's name is changed (Whittier was Chessman's middle name) and a disclaimer says the whole thing is a work of fiction. 

Less workman like than other outings by the prolific Fred Sears, it is unusual for a film at the time to spotlight such a slimy character in a kind of “justice story”. Today most lead characters in movies are slimy assholes you couldn't give two shits about and they are usually the heroes!

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The Zodiac

THE ZODIAC KILLER-1971-This is based on the real life incidents that took place in California,from 1968 to 1969 in which the killer was never caught. It's very cheap, exploitative and badly acted with terrible dialogue (except for the Zodiac's rantings). The story focuses on two characters who could be the killer. One is Grover (Bob Jones), a truck driving, drug user alcoholic who hates women (especially his ex-wife), goes to bars wearing an ill fitting wig, gets drunk and can't remember anything. The police suspect him but when he holds his daughter hostage they shoot and kill him. Then there is Grover's friend Jerry (Hal Reed), an unhappy mailman who likes rabbits and breaks down crying when one of them dies. He turns out to be the Zodiac and kneels in front of an idol and rants (“I am the supreme Zodiac!”). He shoots various people and taunts the police (“I want headlines!”). One couple he stabs to death then he kills an old woman with a tire and drops a jacked up car on her. He wears a false nose and glasses to kill an old man in an elevator then cuts off his ear. He kills an old woman by crushing her head with a car hood. Apparently the heart of his problem was being unloved by his father who he visits in an insane asylum (the father completely ignores him when Jerry emotes during a visit). So that the visit isn't a total loss, Jerry kills two patients. The final scenes show Jerry helping various people in his neighborhood while his ominous voice-over talks about how trusting and unsuspecting future victims are (“I'll be seeing you”). It ends with the words “This is not the end”. 

Comedian Doodles Weaver (his name is spelled “Doddles” in the credits) has one scene as Jerry's neighbor who says of women “I like them plump, juicy and dumb”. The director Tom Hanson made one other movie A TON OF GRASS GOES TO POT (also with Hal Reed and Doodles Weaver) and acted in Coleman Francis' NIGHT TRAIN MUNDO FINE'.

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Chicago Nut Job

CHICAGO MASSACRE: RICHARD SPECK-2007-Based on the true story of mass murderer/nut job Richard Speck who murdered 8 nurses in cold blood in 1967, this is really just an excuse to show and exploit death, blood and gore at the expense of it being based on a true story. It shows how he was a nut from the beginning after being abused as a child and how he could have been taken off the streets earlier but wasn't. He abuses, tortures and kills several other women (and given the look and demeanor of the Speck character and the portrayal of these victims as being fairly normal the movie almost seems to say it was their fault they were killed). Two detectives track him down.

It's very brutal and graphic and Corin Nemec (also a serial killer in the same director's TED BUNDY: AN AMERICAN ICON) gives a good scumbag performance but recently these types of roles are all the rage in Hollywood. Some real footage of Speck in jail is also used but since the director Michael Feifer when on to make similar “opuses” about Ed Gein, Henry Lee Lucas and others that were not exactly fact based this may not be all that accurate either.  

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London Murder

DR. CRIPPEN-1964-This film is based on the actual murder case of Dr. Hawley Crippen (Donald Pleasence (in a very low key performance) the infamous wife murderer who's trial caused quite a sensation in 1910 London.

Coral Browne (also great) is Belle his shrewish, insulting wife who dreams of a singing career and flirts with other men and says things like "Don't be so damned British!". A policeman describes her as a "healthy looking cow". A young Samantha Eggar is Ethel Le Neve, a young office worker who becomes the doctor's lover. Most of the story is told in flashbacks as Crippen is verbally abused and embarrassed by his (sometimes) drunken spouse who he finds repulsive and is only happy when he is with Ethel. When Belle goes too far with her threats Crippen drugs and murders her, hiding her body in a coal bin.  When he suspects the police are closing in (they aren't) he and Ethel decide to hightail it to America (with Ethel dressed as a boy).  They are caught (in part by Marconi's wireless) and brought to trial. Crippen is found guilty and hung. Ethel was acquitted of being an accessory. In his final moments the doctor's only concerns are for his lover.

This well done, well acted black & white drama was directed by Robert Lynn who also made POSTMAN'S KNOCK with Spike Milligan. Pleasence was in THE GREAT ESCAPE and an episode of TV's THE OUTER LIMITS the same year.

A German production of the story had been made in 1942.

For more about the murder (and it's connection with Marconi) read "Thunderstruck" by Erick Larson.

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