1-5. Early 2022 Cellar Club tweet-along catch-ups
Sunday, 17 April 2022 16:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strange_complexIt's Easter Sunday, and I am transferring a few more Cellar Club Twitter threads over here so I can find them more easily in the future. I really want to get up to date with these so that they're no longer hanging over me and I feel like I can watch new films of my own choosing.
1. Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968), dir. Vernon Sewell, broadcast 7 January
Original tweet-along thread
Individual tweets:
Well. I've seen The Curse of the Crimson Altar before, and was underwhelmed. But I do love a good tweet-along of a second-rate film with #TheFilmCrowd, so count me in!
Christian, whose letter Caroline is reading out here, has excellent taste! I hope his requests for Brides of Dracula and Prince of Darkness are granted. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
This fireplace they're using for the opening credits is great! Heads of Pan obviously very appropriate for a story about occultism. The relief frieze along the top was clearly modelled on the Ara Pacis. I wonder where it was? #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
[One of the nice things about live-tweeting films with others is that you get instant answers to questions like that:]
Nice detail - you could hear from the rotation of the dial that she really was ringing 0264122. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Ah, 'tis the lovely Mr Lee! Complete with his usual dog's tooth jacket. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
He's quite Lord Summerisleish here, obfuscating about the brother and embroiling Manning into the community. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Ooh, a nice meta comment about houses in horror films and Boris Karloff there! Fits with something Murray Leeder observed - that horror films often are self-referential in exactly that way. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
It works because it is a smallish genre, whose fans are very dedicated and can be expected to know other horror productions. It also helps to increase the uncanny feeling of watching horror by drawing attention to its nature as a constructed narrative. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Ah, there's the Pan fireplace again! So pretty obviously part of the house they used. And indeed, here is Boris Karloff, just as advertised! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Love a good torchlit sacrificial procession. Adds to the proto Wicker Mannish feel, along with Lee's outfit and demeanour. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
The film itself may be a bit silly, but the face with which Boris delivered the line "instruments of torture" was well worth seeing. I felt his pain when Manning went to down his brandy like a shot of tequila, too. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Oh, I forgot Rupert Davies was in it! Giving good value too. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
This demonstration of vintage fire-fighting equipment is one of the best things in the film! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Good old Lee. He's done fiery inferno roof-top scenes before. You can leave it to him - he's a professional. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Some brilliant roles in these credits. 'Sacrifice Victim', 'Drunk Girl at Party', 'Girl in Car Chase'. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
2. I, Monster (1971), dir. Stephen Weeks, broadcast 14 January
Original tweet-along thread
Individual tweets:
Got my booze, got my snacks, I'm ready for the #CellarClub! I've seen this film twice before. The 1st time, I expected too much and was disappointed; the 2nd time I set my expectations at rock bottom and realised it had its merits. 3rd time for the happy medium? #TheFilmCrowd
See, these opening shots are fab! Monkey to Lee establishes fears about evolution, degeneracy, the beast within. Two-headed child in the jar establishes split personalities. There is plenty of thought and detail here. Just somehow less than the sum of its parts. #TheFilmCrowd
Then this conversation in the gentleman's club makes what the visuals were hinting at fully explicit, right down to a direct reference to Freud! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Some beautiful Lee finger-work in the way he's handling those beakers and test-tubes. He was such a great hand actor. (As was Cushing, of course.) #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Oh no, not the kitty! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
That was narratively important, though. He killed that cat without having yet injected himself with the solution, showing us his own latent brutal tendencies which the solution will merely unlock. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
And of course the contents of that drawer show some more suppressed tendencies... #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Has Marlowe sought ethical approval for testing out this drug on his patients, eh? #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
This business about how the drug has different effects on different patients (and animals) is one of the things which has puzzled me on previous viewings, and I don't think it's ever fully resolved. It gets lost as the story focuses on Marlowe's own transformations. #TheFilmCrowd
So here, we're getting a direct explanation of the ego, the super-ego and the id. Marlowe theorises that the drug is doing the same thing in all subjects - destroying all but one of them. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
But, given the different results we've seen, surely it isn't destroying the same ones in all subjects? So it's not 'the same thing' in all of them at all. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
One of the definite strengths of this film are its sets - interiors and exteriors. They're easy to take for granted by modern standards, but for British horror movies of this time they are pretty high-grade, and generally nicely-lit too (though this print is dark). #TheFilmCrowd
And another is the subtlety of the gradual transformations we are seeing in Lee. Just another notch more depraved each time he shoots up, and a lot of it in the early stages conveyed by his expressions and gait rather than prosthetics. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Peter Cushing is starting to get suss! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Interestingly, I think that as well as the actual transformations getting more grotesque each time, Lee's face as Marlowe has also deliberately been made slightly more haggard by this stage in the film, as the guilt and horror starts to tell on him. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
That shadow-transformation was an excellent touch! Pity it seems to have been a bit much for the elderly man-servant. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Also, I'm beginning to wonder why Mike Raven had such high billing in this film, appearing third on the poster after Cushing and Lee with his name the same size as theirs. He doesn't actually seem to be in it all that much? #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
A bit of direct contrast being established here, I think. Cushing's scarlet smoking jacket is very similar to one Lee was wearing earlier in the film, but Cushing's character is kind to his kitty. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Lee's transformation in death from gruesome to handsome there a nice contrast with his usual disintegration as Dracula, too. Got to have been a deliberate inversion, right? #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Anyway, there we go! It's been a blast, and I agree more with how I felt when I saw this the second time than the first. It's not perfect, but it's really a pretty good film all told. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
3. Quatermass and the Pit (1967), dir. Roy Ward Baker
This wasn't a Cellar Club screening - rather, I went to see it with![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
HickeyWriter at Home Manchester on 25 January. However, I did then tweet my main responses to the film on the train on the way home, so I can capture my thoughts in the same way. It was great to see it on the big screen, and I came out absolutely buzzing with the experience.
Original tweet-along thread
Individual tweets:
Some things which struck me on tonight's viewing of Quatermass and the Pit. It begins and ends on the same corner, looking at no. 72 Hob{b}'s Lane - initially we see a cat in the doorway, and then it's in the background behind Quatermass and Barbara as the credits roll.
No. 72 is an undertakers, which has acquired poignant resonances by the end after the deaths we've seen. But even the cat contributes to the sense of neatly conceived bookends, given that by the end of the film we have also just heard the sounds of crazed humans killing animals.
William Ellis, who played Joe Mitcham in Dracula AD 1972 is in it as a journalist in one of the early scenes with Professor Roney. I think he even asked a question. I've never noticed him before, so I think that reflects the benefits of seeing everything on a larger screen.
The poster in the underground station for The Witches is very prominent, but I also realised there's one for Dracula Prince of Darkness in the background. You only see it in the distance, obliquely and out of focus, but the colours and design are distinctive.
I'm struggling to find the exact right thing on my phone, but it's basically like this one, except portrait rather than landscape: https://propstoreauction.com/view-auctions/catalog/id/128/lot/26163/ Like Quatermass and the Pit, of course, it stars both Barbara Shelley and Andrew Keir.
There's also a poster for My Fair Lady, presumably because it was a Warner Bros film and they were Hammer's distributors. Plus a painted sign saying "Choose British Cheese". I'm not a cheese patriot, but I am definitely right behind the cheese-positive message. 🧀
The biggest audible reaction from the audience came in response to this scene, where Quatermass asks Roney how humanity might respond to climate change. That line has definitely acquired a lot more resonance since it was written, and indeed since COVID.
All the special effects really held up well on a large screen, including things like the decomposing insects, the ground shaking and bulging under Sladden, and the general carnage at the end. Great fun to see the whole set collapsing in flames!
Oh, and the scene where Quatermass shows the Minister, Colonel Breen et al the footage of the Martian race purge was really effective, as it was filmed so that at several points the cinema screen became coterminous with the screen he was using, so we became the in-film audience.
4. Doctor Blood's Coffin (1971), dir. Sidney J. Furie, broadcast 4 February
Original tweet-along thread
Individual tweets:
Ah, 'tis #CellarClub time! I can't say Doctor Blood's Coffin looks wildly promising, but it does at least have Hazel Court in it, so can't be all bad. I'm sure it will offer plenty of good fodder for the #TheFilmCrowd tweet-along anyway!
Strong violence and graphic scenes, hooray! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
This has quite an All Creatures Great and Small feel so far, except for him being a doctor in Cornwall rather than a vet in Yorkshire. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Oh, of course there are old tin mines! I understand there's some zombieism to come as well, so am already wondering whether this is a bit of a forerunner for Hammer's Plague of the Zombies? #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Eh up, he's got a collection down there! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Gratuitous bum shot! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
I feel like we must be missing quite a lot around the edges of the frame in this print. A lot of the shots seem much more closely cropped than most directors would want, especially for the landscapes. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
I actually quite like the way the undertaker is called Mr MORTon. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
I may be missing something, but why didn't the doc already have a recipient lined up for his heart transplant, if it was all so critical and delicate? What was he planning to do with it before Morton intervened? #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Well, that's that then. Not much cop I'm afraid. Too much padding, too few zombies. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
5. The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), dir. Roger Corman, broadcast 11 February
Original tweet-along thread
Individual tweets:
Ah, I love Fridays! Already had a superb steak; now it's time to settle down for this week's #CellarClub offering for the #TheFilmCrowd tweet-along. I'm properly looking forward to revisiting some of Corman's Poe this evening.
I watched most of them in the late '80s, when there was a season of them, probably on BBC2 I would guess, swiftly followed by nicking my Dad's copy of the short stories (I still have it!) and devouring them. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
But I've only really rewatched The Masque of the Red Death since, mainly because specific reasons came up to do so. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Once for costume research for a Masquerade Ball in Oxford themed around it. Here's me with a young lady of my acquaintance at said ball. We were Odin's ravens Huginn and Muggin - Thought (me) and Memory (her). #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
And the other time earlyish in COVID lockdown, when I think I'm right in saying TalkingPicsTV screened it, and ladylugosi and I decided to syncrowatch it - i.e. watch it in our own houses while messaging each other about it and then chat about it over video afterwards.
The rest of the sequence, though, I don't think I've really seen again since my teens. So, bring on the torment and the terror! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Lots done already in the opening sequences to set up a suitably uncanny atmosphere - weird dripping coloured fluids, a castle which seems to be almost hovering above the cliff, sprawling creepers and an oppressive silence until the knock on the door. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Oh, and these strange scraping noises in the dungeon too! Plus an awesome soft-shock entrance for Vincent Price #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Ooh, that cut from Elizabeth's picture through the fire to the dining room was clever! A lovely visual signal that things are far from well. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
These films are such close parallels to Hammer's in so many ways, but it has to be said that the aspect on which they really fall down by comparison is the music. Not a patch on James Bernard's #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Superb use of colours and soft focus in these flashbacks. We even have a different colour palette for this flashback to Nicholas' childhood to differentiate it from the one to Elizabeth's death. Bluer, in fact - a common way of showing distance in art. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Oh, and now suddenly orange and Dutch angles as the violence breaks out! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Ooh, not often we get gentlemen fainting in horror films, as opposed to ladies! More or less the only other example I can think of is the ITV Mystery and Imagination Dracula, in which Seward especially faints at the drop of a hat. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Another great device for generating uncanniness - sound without a source. Elizabeth's touch on the harpsichord, her speech to the maid. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
I like these views into the hall through the iron grille, as though signifying how much everyone is imprisoned by the horrible circumstances. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
More impossible sounds! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
We are going to get the actual pit and the actual pendulum at some point during this film, right? #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Love how Vincent seems to be literally shrinking in size in his pure terror as Elizabeth emerges from the tomb. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Ooh, a twist! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Vincent twists your twist right back atcha! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Off-scene screams always good value. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
It's pendulum time! #Finally #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Excellent use of those hooded demonic-looking Inquisition figures painted on the wall. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Yes, this has suddenly got a lot better now Vincent has full reign to unleash his villainy (and that other guy has been gagged). #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Liking the shadow of the pendulum slicing back and forth across the hooded figure wall-paintings. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Bit of glycerin sweat going on here... #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
And some nice uncanny colours again as Bartolome slips into a terrified stupor. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
And how all other sounds are now dampened by comparison with the unrelenting, quickening heartbeat of the pendulum. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Dammit, I was looking forward to a good slicing! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Yeah, that had its flaws, mainly in the non-Vincent Price acting department, but overall it was fab. Trippy colours, uncanny sounds, rising terror... all in all a fine Friday night's entertainment! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
1. Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968), dir. Vernon Sewell, broadcast 7 January
Original tweet-along thread
Individual tweets:
Well. I've seen The Curse of the Crimson Altar before, and was underwhelmed. But I do love a good tweet-along of a second-rate film with #TheFilmCrowd, so count me in!
Christian, whose letter Caroline is reading out here, has excellent taste! I hope his requests for Brides of Dracula and Prince of Darkness are granted. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
This fireplace they're using for the opening credits is great! Heads of Pan obviously very appropriate for a story about occultism. The relief frieze along the top was clearly modelled on the Ara Pacis. I wonder where it was? #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
[One of the nice things about live-tweeting films with others is that you get instant answers to questions like that:]
Nice detail - you could hear from the rotation of the dial that she really was ringing 0264122. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Ah, 'tis the lovely Mr Lee! Complete with his usual dog's tooth jacket. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
He's quite Lord Summerisleish here, obfuscating about the brother and embroiling Manning into the community. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Ooh, a nice meta comment about houses in horror films and Boris Karloff there! Fits with something Murray Leeder observed - that horror films often are self-referential in exactly that way. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
It works because it is a smallish genre, whose fans are very dedicated and can be expected to know other horror productions. It also helps to increase the uncanny feeling of watching horror by drawing attention to its nature as a constructed narrative. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Ah, there's the Pan fireplace again! So pretty obviously part of the house they used. And indeed, here is Boris Karloff, just as advertised! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Love a good torchlit sacrificial procession. Adds to the proto Wicker Mannish feel, along with Lee's outfit and demeanour. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
The film itself may be a bit silly, but the face with which Boris delivered the line "instruments of torture" was well worth seeing. I felt his pain when Manning went to down his brandy like a shot of tequila, too. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Oh, I forgot Rupert Davies was in it! Giving good value too. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
This demonstration of vintage fire-fighting equipment is one of the best things in the film! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Good old Lee. He's done fiery inferno roof-top scenes before. You can leave it to him - he's a professional. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Some brilliant roles in these credits. 'Sacrifice Victim', 'Drunk Girl at Party', 'Girl in Car Chase'. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
2. I, Monster (1971), dir. Stephen Weeks, broadcast 14 January
Original tweet-along thread
Individual tweets:
Got my booze, got my snacks, I'm ready for the #CellarClub! I've seen this film twice before. The 1st time, I expected too much and was disappointed; the 2nd time I set my expectations at rock bottom and realised it had its merits. 3rd time for the happy medium? #TheFilmCrowd
See, these opening shots are fab! Monkey to Lee establishes fears about evolution, degeneracy, the beast within. Two-headed child in the jar establishes split personalities. There is plenty of thought and detail here. Just somehow less than the sum of its parts. #TheFilmCrowd
Then this conversation in the gentleman's club makes what the visuals were hinting at fully explicit, right down to a direct reference to Freud! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Some beautiful Lee finger-work in the way he's handling those beakers and test-tubes. He was such a great hand actor. (As was Cushing, of course.) #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Oh no, not the kitty! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
That was narratively important, though. He killed that cat without having yet injected himself with the solution, showing us his own latent brutal tendencies which the solution will merely unlock. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
And of course the contents of that drawer show some more suppressed tendencies... #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Has Marlowe sought ethical approval for testing out this drug on his patients, eh? #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
This business about how the drug has different effects on different patients (and animals) is one of the things which has puzzled me on previous viewings, and I don't think it's ever fully resolved. It gets lost as the story focuses on Marlowe's own transformations. #TheFilmCrowd
So here, we're getting a direct explanation of the ego, the super-ego and the id. Marlowe theorises that the drug is doing the same thing in all subjects - destroying all but one of them. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
But, given the different results we've seen, surely it isn't destroying the same ones in all subjects? So it's not 'the same thing' in all of them at all. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
One of the definite strengths of this film are its sets - interiors and exteriors. They're easy to take for granted by modern standards, but for British horror movies of this time they are pretty high-grade, and generally nicely-lit too (though this print is dark). #TheFilmCrowd
And another is the subtlety of the gradual transformations we are seeing in Lee. Just another notch more depraved each time he shoots up, and a lot of it in the early stages conveyed by his expressions and gait rather than prosthetics. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Peter Cushing is starting to get suss! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Interestingly, I think that as well as the actual transformations getting more grotesque each time, Lee's face as Marlowe has also deliberately been made slightly more haggard by this stage in the film, as the guilt and horror starts to tell on him. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
That shadow-transformation was an excellent touch! Pity it seems to have been a bit much for the elderly man-servant. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Also, I'm beginning to wonder why Mike Raven had such high billing in this film, appearing third on the poster after Cushing and Lee with his name the same size as theirs. He doesn't actually seem to be in it all that much? #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
A bit of direct contrast being established here, I think. Cushing's scarlet smoking jacket is very similar to one Lee was wearing earlier in the film, but Cushing's character is kind to his kitty. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Lee's transformation in death from gruesome to handsome there a nice contrast with his usual disintegration as Dracula, too. Got to have been a deliberate inversion, right? #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Anyway, there we go! It's been a blast, and I agree more with how I felt when I saw this the second time than the first. It's not perfect, but it's really a pretty good film all told. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
3. Quatermass and the Pit (1967), dir. Roy Ward Baker
This wasn't a Cellar Club screening - rather, I went to see it with
Original tweet-along thread
Individual tweets:
Some things which struck me on tonight's viewing of Quatermass and the Pit. It begins and ends on the same corner, looking at no. 72 Hob{b}'s Lane - initially we see a cat in the doorway, and then it's in the background behind Quatermass and Barbara as the credits roll.
No. 72 is an undertakers, which has acquired poignant resonances by the end after the deaths we've seen. But even the cat contributes to the sense of neatly conceived bookends, given that by the end of the film we have also just heard the sounds of crazed humans killing animals.
William Ellis, who played Joe Mitcham in Dracula AD 1972 is in it as a journalist in one of the early scenes with Professor Roney. I think he even asked a question. I've never noticed him before, so I think that reflects the benefits of seeing everything on a larger screen.
The poster in the underground station for The Witches is very prominent, but I also realised there's one for Dracula Prince of Darkness in the background. You only see it in the distance, obliquely and out of focus, but the colours and design are distinctive.
I'm struggling to find the exact right thing on my phone, but it's basically like this one, except portrait rather than landscape: https://propstoreauction.com/view-auctions/catalog/id/128/lot/26163/ Like Quatermass and the Pit, of course, it stars both Barbara Shelley and Andrew Keir.
There's also a poster for My Fair Lady, presumably because it was a Warner Bros film and they were Hammer's distributors. Plus a painted sign saying "Choose British Cheese". I'm not a cheese patriot, but I am definitely right behind the cheese-positive message. 🧀
The biggest audible reaction from the audience came in response to this scene, where Quatermass asks Roney how humanity might respond to climate change. That line has definitely acquired a lot more resonance since it was written, and indeed since COVID.
All the special effects really held up well on a large screen, including things like the decomposing insects, the ground shaking and bulging under Sladden, and the general carnage at the end. Great fun to see the whole set collapsing in flames!
Oh, and the scene where Quatermass shows the Minister, Colonel Breen et al the footage of the Martian race purge was really effective, as it was filmed so that at several points the cinema screen became coterminous with the screen he was using, so we became the in-film audience.
4. Doctor Blood's Coffin (1971), dir. Sidney J. Furie, broadcast 4 February
Original tweet-along thread
Individual tweets:
Ah, 'tis #CellarClub time! I can't say Doctor Blood's Coffin looks wildly promising, but it does at least have Hazel Court in it, so can't be all bad. I'm sure it will offer plenty of good fodder for the #TheFilmCrowd tweet-along anyway!
Strong violence and graphic scenes, hooray! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
This has quite an All Creatures Great and Small feel so far, except for him being a doctor in Cornwall rather than a vet in Yorkshire. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Oh, of course there are old tin mines! I understand there's some zombieism to come as well, so am already wondering whether this is a bit of a forerunner for Hammer's Plague of the Zombies? #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Eh up, he's got a collection down there! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Gratuitous bum shot! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
I feel like we must be missing quite a lot around the edges of the frame in this print. A lot of the shots seem much more closely cropped than most directors would want, especially for the landscapes. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
I actually quite like the way the undertaker is called Mr MORTon. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
I may be missing something, but why didn't the doc already have a recipient lined up for his heart transplant, if it was all so critical and delicate? What was he planning to do with it before Morton intervened? #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Well, that's that then. Not much cop I'm afraid. Too much padding, too few zombies. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
5. The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), dir. Roger Corman, broadcast 11 February
Original tweet-along thread
Individual tweets:
Ah, I love Fridays! Already had a superb steak; now it's time to settle down for this week's #CellarClub offering for the #TheFilmCrowd tweet-along. I'm properly looking forward to revisiting some of Corman's Poe this evening.
I watched most of them in the late '80s, when there was a season of them, probably on BBC2 I would guess, swiftly followed by nicking my Dad's copy of the short stories (I still have it!) and devouring them. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
But I've only really rewatched The Masque of the Red Death since, mainly because specific reasons came up to do so. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Once for costume research for a Masquerade Ball in Oxford themed around it. Here's me with a young lady of my acquaintance at said ball. We were Odin's ravens Huginn and Muggin - Thought (me) and Memory (her). #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
And the other time earlyish in COVID lockdown, when I think I'm right in saying TalkingPicsTV screened it, and ladylugosi and I decided to syncrowatch it - i.e. watch it in our own houses while messaging each other about it and then chat about it over video afterwards.
The rest of the sequence, though, I don't think I've really seen again since my teens. So, bring on the torment and the terror! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Lots done already in the opening sequences to set up a suitably uncanny atmosphere - weird dripping coloured fluids, a castle which seems to be almost hovering above the cliff, sprawling creepers and an oppressive silence until the knock on the door. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Oh, and these strange scraping noises in the dungeon too! Plus an awesome soft-shock entrance for Vincent Price #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Ooh, that cut from Elizabeth's picture through the fire to the dining room was clever! A lovely visual signal that things are far from well. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
These films are such close parallels to Hammer's in so many ways, but it has to be said that the aspect on which they really fall down by comparison is the music. Not a patch on James Bernard's #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Superb use of colours and soft focus in these flashbacks. We even have a different colour palette for this flashback to Nicholas' childhood to differentiate it from the one to Elizabeth's death. Bluer, in fact - a common way of showing distance in art. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Oh, and now suddenly orange and Dutch angles as the violence breaks out! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Ooh, not often we get gentlemen fainting in horror films, as opposed to ladies! More or less the only other example I can think of is the ITV Mystery and Imagination Dracula, in which Seward especially faints at the drop of a hat. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Another great device for generating uncanniness - sound without a source. Elizabeth's touch on the harpsichord, her speech to the maid. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
I like these views into the hall through the iron grille, as though signifying how much everyone is imprisoned by the horrible circumstances. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
More impossible sounds! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
We are going to get the actual pit and the actual pendulum at some point during this film, right? #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Love how Vincent seems to be literally shrinking in size in his pure terror as Elizabeth emerges from the tomb. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Ooh, a twist! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Vincent twists your twist right back atcha! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Off-scene screams always good value. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
It's pendulum time! #Finally #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Excellent use of those hooded demonic-looking Inquisition figures painted on the wall. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Yes, this has suddenly got a lot better now Vincent has full reign to unleash his villainy (and that other guy has been gagged). #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Liking the shadow of the pendulum slicing back and forth across the hooded figure wall-paintings. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Bit of glycerin sweat going on here... #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
And some nice uncanny colours again as Bartolome slips into a terrified stupor. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
And how all other sounds are now dampened by comparison with the unrelenting, quickening heartbeat of the pendulum. #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Dammit, I was looking forward to a good slicing! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
Yeah, that had its flaws, mainly in the non-Vincent Price acting department, but overall it was fab. Trippy colours, uncanny sounds, rising terror... all in all a fine Friday night's entertainment! #CellarClub #TheFilmCrowd
