60's American Horror Part Six

THE GHOST OF SIERRA DE COBRE

(1964)

Dir - Joseph Stefano

Overall: MEH

The lone directorial effort from screenwriter Joseph Stefano, The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre was one of the strangest made-for-television films of the 1960s.  It was initially done as a pilot for an Outer Limits type anthology series for CBS to be called Haunted, but in its feature-length, eighty-minute form, it is a clashing watch.  Stefano's script is clumsy as it introduces a few unnecessary components while feeling poorly fleshed-out at the same time.  Martin Landau, Judith Anderson, and Diane Baker, (all of whom had appeared in Alfred Hitchcock films as Stefano likewise had a connection to the master of suspense, having penned the screenplay for Psycho), give the material a solid try, but Landau seems tuned out while both Anderson and Baker give way to inconsistent, dramatic mannerisms in the final act.  Stefano's direction is the oddest aspect though as he lingers on certain shots for a noticeably prolonged time, fills some scenes with terribly over-blow music while others play to dead silence, and makes inconsequential cuts at regular intervals.  Some of the supernatural set pieces are excellently handled as well as being befitting to the overall oddball presentation, but the rest of the movie is too off-kilter to work.

 

BRAINSTORM

(1965)

Dir - William Conrad

Overall: MEH

 

Willingly ignoring the way that logical thinking and professional conduct works in the real world, William Conrad's neo-noir thriller Brainstorm stumbles to its inevitably cynical conclusion.  The third of three such films that Conrad produced and directed for Warner Bros. all within a single year, it has a sincere presentation despite a script that does not understand how insanity pleas work and also thinks that truth serum is a real thing.  This gives it a strange tone where its absurd aspects are presented matter-of-factly, leaving one to wonder if Conrad and screenwriter Mann Rubin were conducting some sort of sly joke on their audience.  Despite an intriguing and genuinely heart-racing opening scene, the rest of the story's outcome is broadcast from the get-go where we realize what is going to happen long before the characters do.  Speaking of characters, some of them disappear for long enough periods of time to wonder if handfuls of their scenes had to be trimmed off the running time, a running time which already feels bloated at a hundred and five minutes.  Whether this was meant to be a tense and clever depiction of a sucker duped by a femme fatale or just some B-movie silliness disguised as a prestige work, a mess is still a mess.

 

SECONDS

(1966)

Dir - John Frankenheimer

Overall: GOOD

Another highly effective thriller from the very much in his prime director John Frankenheimer, Seconds continues some of the clandestine operation shenanigans explored in his masterpiece The Manchurian Candidate, except here the focus is much more on a personal, human level as opposed to a political one.  This was famed screenwriter Lewis John Carlino's first credit for a full-length film, adapting David Ely's novel of the same name.  It is also one of the last works from cinematographer James Wong Howe whose deep-focus, handheld, and actor-mounted camera work is a certifiable highlight.  In an eerily potent role, famously closeted Rock Hudson is superb as a man who lives a false life that was artificially created for him.  His struggles with the manipulated yet selfish need to escape both the reality that he made for himself and the one that he was given at considerable cost both represent a deeply psychological look into the struggle with one's identity and mortality.  The mood is quietly tense throughout, with the frightening finale seeming wholly earned after a build-up with its fare share of surprises, such as a hedonistic, full-frontal nude sequence and more of Howe's unusual and effective cinematic techniques.