samhainfest 2014: allison hayes triple feature

Disembodied: (1957. dir: Walter Grauman) You could call Allison Hayes the poor man's Jane Russell and you wouldn't be too far off-base. She suffered bad luck under the studio system, but that's to our advantage, because she wound up one of the original scream-queens, one of the greats.

In this ill-conceived and badly-written supernatural melodrama, Hayes is the Great White Voodoo Queen, leading the necromantic rituals of an unnamed native tribe in an unnamed jungle in deepest Africa. (One of my favorite lines is when the white men are awakened by drums and Paul Burke says, "It sounds like it's coming from the jungle," as if there's a second choice, as if in the jungle hut's back yard there's a nice rolling savannah they just never show us.) She's got the sex appeal and charisma to carry this femme fatale, but it's so badly written, incorporating so many unmotivated actions and crazy choices, that it's no great success. Also, and more damningly, her dances during the voodoo rituals are absurdly choreographed, and she winds up looking pretty silly doing them. The action never really gets rolling, the pace constantly derailed by the archenemies pausing to have a nice talk over tea cosies, some of it a lot of nonsense touching on Pythagoreans and metempsychosis, which makes no sense except to prepare us for one nice effect, when one of the natives switches personalities with one of the white men (ala "Turnabout Intruder" from the third season of Star Trek).

Still, she looks great, and when she hears her prey approaching the house and hikes up her skirt to show off the gams, you know the poor sod hasn't got a chance.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Zombies of Mora Tau: (1957. dir: Edward L. Cahn) These zombies walk underwater out into the sea; you can tell them from a distance because they're often adorned with seaweed. They have the 100-yard gaze, but otherwise look like men, and somehow their sailors' clothes from fifty years prior are still pretty neat and well-darned. They're guarding a chest of diamonds which was stolen from a local temple (this, also, is in darkest Africa, of course). Every so often a new expedition of white men come seeking the diamonds, and the old white lady of the island, widow of one of the zombies, shows the newest group the graveyard of all the men who've come, tried, failed, and either been buried or, if you don't get them into the ground fast enough, resurrected as the walking dead.

Sound like Pirates of the Caribbean? Well, it is, except without the charm or skill of execution. There are some chills, as when the ingenue is stolen by one of the zombies and dumped on the floor in the sort of bomb-shelter where the undead bunk down. The zombies all silently rise from their coffins (now, why do they sleep in coffins, again?) and gaze at her in utter silence before beginning, slowly, to encroach. (Don't worry. She gets saved.) Mostly it's pretty silly, but fun to watch. The diamonds are in a safe in the hold of a sunken ship, and the men diving have to fight off zombies underwater, which is not, I assure you, the makings of an exciting fight-scene.

Because she's an obvious slut, Hayes' character gets hers early on and becomes the only she-zombie amongst 'em. It's nice to see her man hit her with all his clout and the force of it bounce off her as if she's made of stone. In the end, the Old Widow "destroys" the diamonds (by tossing them out of a boat into water about a foot deep, where anyone could just reach down and grab them up again), and the zombies all vanish, their clothes fall into neat piles on the ground, and their souls, at last, are at rest. It's completely, entirely absurd, and a lot of fun to watch.

the Hypnotic Eye: (1960. dir: George Blair) I remember this one from when I was a kid, although I didn't remember it until the climactic, rather shocking moment. Beautiful girls are maiming themselves after they see a stage hypnotist at work. The early part about the girls and their auto-mutilations has almost a Sam Fuller feel to it, the perverse shock of it, but there are great hunks of the film devoted to Jacques Bergerac and his pretty dull mesmerism act (although, I'm here to tell you, when somebody keeps describing the taste of a lemon, your mouth really does react as if you're tasting it) and to a dull policeman (Joe Patridge) bumbling around trying to solve the crime. He patronizes his girlfriend (Marcia Henderson) when she gets the idea that the hypnotist is involved, letting her take all the risks, following her petulantly, almost letting his jealousy get her killed. He's patronizing to her friend, too, who defaces herself with sulfuric acid (which she just had sitting around the house. The fifties were a crazy time), disbelieving her when she claims that she really was hypnotized.

Hayes has the strong woman role here, and she's far more interesting than the suave, French magician himself. Even while she's lurking in the background her presence is powerful, and when she steps to the fore, she does it with a vengeance. To the film's credit, it doesn't pause to explain her motivations; it doesn't have to. If it weren't for the protracted clumsiness of the "let's hypnotize the cinema audience" scenes, this would have been a small but intriguing success.