Thursday, October 17, 2013

Caught Your Waves Last Night

The Dunwich Horror (1970)
directed by Daniel Haller
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
streamed on Netflix

The still waters of three 3-cravat reviews in a row will drown me if I'm not careful, so let's begin with some trivia. Not only did I incorrectly identify Ed Begley as Ed Begley Jr. in the opening credits (I just assumed he played the eldritch monstrosity that would inevitably appear at the end of the film), but Ed Sr. and Dean Stockwell both starred in Stars in My Crown when Dean Stockwell was still in short pants. 1970 is the only possible year when a 34-year-old version of Dean's orphaned youngster could be considered a romantic match for a solitary young woman susceptible to the influence of an underground cult, and Stockwell, to his credit, never bothers to dial the quiet inflection of his performance above "obvious molester."

I'll give the guy who designed the cover of American Stars 'n Bars praise for just about anything, and mustachioed creep is no exception, but the heart of the movie is Wilbur's dad, "Old Whateley." Old Whateley, reduced to a doddering shut-in at the mercy of his physically abusive son, once impregnated his own wife as a vessel for Chtulhu's magnificence, only to see the promised unholy age wither on the vine. In Lovecraft's stories, the terror comes (in part) from the impression that the whole grand scale of human history is beneath the barest acknowledgment of the Old Ones, omniscient and eternal. Here life is more like The 7th Victim: men and women made hateful from loneliness.

When Wilbur grapples with a library security guard while trying to steal The Necronomicon after hours, he reiterates the smallness of his efforts and ambitions. Sandra Dee's Nancy Wagner is so close to catatonic in her behavior and acquiescence that she's very close to Wilbur's perfect match. When Wilbur confronts the citizens of Dunwich, only one or two wants to run him out of town or hurt him; the rest are scared, but not for their lives. "This is a Christian cemetery," one woman says. She's embarrassed more than afraid.

I liked that young mother and the Les Baxter score. More movies should use live owls as objective observers and more directors should fire up wind machines on estuaries and grassy fields (a trick Daniel Haller no doubt learned from the master). As in Night of the Demon, no monster can live up to the imagination--especially not Ed Begley Jr. in a rubber suit, who, it turns out, never shows.