Tormented (1960)

Director: Bert I. Gordon
Producers: Bert I. Gordon, Joe Steinberg
Screenplay: George Worthing Yates, based on a story by Bert I. Gordon
Cinematographer: Ernest Laszlo
Music: Albert Glasser
Visual Effects: Bert I. Gordon, Flora Gordon
Allied Artists; 76 min; B&W

Cast:
Richard Carlson (Tom Stewart), Susan Gordon (Sandy Hubbard), Lugene Sanders (Meg Hubbard), Juli Reding (Vi Mason), Joe Turkel (Nick, The Blackmailer), Lillian Adams (Mrs. Ellis), Gene Roth (Mr. Nelson)

Tom Stewart, a jazz pianist who lives and works in an island lighthouse, is about to be married to the wholesome Meg, but receives a visit from his old flame and former singer Vi, who isn't about to leave their relationship buried in the past. During an argument, a piece of lighthouse railing breaks free, and Vi hangs for dear life onto the twisted piece of steel. Tom purposely hesitates to save her before the metal gives way, and she falls to her death in the rocky shore below, thus ensuring that Vi is out of his new life for good. However, Tom finds out that the old phrase "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" also applies even in death.

This engaging little ghost story is a change of pace from Bert I. Gordon, best known for his movies featuring giant monsters (such as Cyclops or The Amazing Colossal Man) or giant bugs (Beginning of the End; Earth Vs. The Spider). Those films are also notorious for the primitive special effects (which either featured normal sized animals running around glaringly obvious miniature sets, or showed obvious matte lines) usually designed by Gordon himself.  Likewise, Tormented has moments with crude super-impositions as Vi's ghost comes back to taunt Tom. But this movie perhaps works better than those that give Mr. B.I.G. his namesake, because there is still a good movie without the effects.

I first saw Tormented on The Cat's Pajamas (pause- sigh) on their Sunday "Science Fiction Horror Night" program just before Christmas of 1985, shown with Roger Corman's The Wasp Woman (and found it to be far more inventive and creepy than the latter).  In 2006, I programmed this film as part of the Creepy Kooky Double Bill screening in October of that year; surprisingly, it became the hit of the evening over the headliner- another Roger Corman film (Creature from the Haunted Sea).  Even more surprisingly, despite that this little horror gem has been circulating in the public domain for years, no-one in that night's audience had yet seen it! It was a delight to see that this movie still worked with an audience.

Because it doesn't rely so much upon dated technical effects to deliver the goods, this movie succeeds as a mood piece about guilt. Tom is essentially a good man who yearns for a wholesome lifestyle, yet is now paying the price for a single stupid act. Whether it is due to ghostly encounters that only Tom sees, or that her watch shows up on the beach, his new life is constantly dismantled due to his momentary lapse of judgment. Further, he is being blackmailed by a jive-talking ship captain who initially chartered Vi onto the island, and knows that she never returned, especially in light of Tom's upcoming marriage. Despite all of this, we care enough about Tom to wonder how he'll get out of his plight. However, the heart of the movie actually belongs to Sandy, Meg's younger sister, who has a great friendship with Tom- it is largely through her eyes that we see his character change from a passionate human being to a paranoiac who will stop at nothing to erase the memory of Vi on this island. And once she knows too much, will her life be endangered as well?

Admittedly, I re-watched this movie the other night in memory of Susan Gordon, daughter of the director, who passed away this month.  Yet, I was surprised to discover that I had remembered absolutely nothing of her substantial role as Sandy.  (In truth, it is Joe Turkel's beatnik blackmailer who steals the picture performance-wise.)  Instead, one more recalls this film for the visceral experience it produces- its atmosphere is conveyed through such subtleties as shadows, wind, cold, shredded garments. I must also confess that I have an affinity for suspense films which are set on shorelines (The Fog; Play Misty For Me)- something about the waves and the wind, plus the elements of forbidden desire that the milieu recalls, and perhaps I value this picture more than others do for these ingredients. As such, this movie benefits greatly from its atmosphere: its setting upon an island detached from the rest of the physical world adds to the feelings of despair and helplessness. However, there is a great visual touch that I've always remembered from my first viewing 26 years ago: in one sequence on the beach, we see a pair of footprints gradually appearing in the sand next to Tom.

Low-key touches such as this make Tormented much than what it is: a programmer designed for a quick sell to the drive-in circuit. The movie is so fun that you forget the odd casting troika of 48 year-old Richard Carlson, 26 year-old Lugene Sanders (as his fiancée) and 11 year-old Susan Gordon. (She's young enough to play his granddaughter.) Although I watch Gordon's Empire of the Ants every Christmas Eve while I wrap gifts, perhaps his superior films are those peculiar fables which do not rely upon giant monsters or colossal men. It may be time to revisit such works as Picture Mommy Dead and The Magic Sword to re-evaluate where Gordon's talent truly lies.

The Man In The Net (1959)

Director: Michael Curtiz
Writer: Reginald Rose, from a story by Hugh Wheeler
Producer: Walter Mirisch
Cinematographer: John F. Seitz
Music: Hans J. Salter
United Artists; 97 min, B&W

Cast:
Alan Ladd (John Hamilton), Carolyn Jones (Linda Hamilton), Diane Brewster (Vicki Carey), John Lupton (Brad Carey), Charles McGraw (Sheriff Steve Ritter), Barbara Beaird (Emily Jones), Susan Gordon (Angel Jones), Charles Herbert (Timmie), Steven Perry (Leroy)

John Hamilton is a former New York commercial artist who has fled with his wife to rural Connecticut to begin a new career as a painter. However, his wife Linda (yes, Linda Hamilton) misses life in the fast lane in The Big Apple, despite John's implications that her former lifestyle contributed to her "illness".  A recovering alcoholic who frets over a grey hair at age 28, Linda is especially upset that John will be turning down a lucrative job offer back in the city, preferring instead to toil away his time in his new career that brings neither acclaim nor fortune.

The implied conjugal tensions outwardly manifest themselves into this John Cheever-ish world when Linda appears one night at a birthday party, inebriated, and with a black eye that she falsely accuses John of giving her. Soon after, when Hamilton returns from the New York trip where he turns down the job offer, he finds that all of his paintings have been slashed, and his wife has disappeared.  In short order, Linda's body is discovered buried in the shed underneath fresh concrete. Since John is already labelled a cad among his friends and neighbours, thanks to his wife's accusation the previous night, he is naturally accused of murdering Linda and flees persecution by the police and the mob of townspeople.

The Man in the Net is a surprisingly enthralling film noir, and also an interesting credit late in the careers of both actor Alan Ladd and its prolific director, Michael Curtiz (who had helmed many Warner classics in the 1940s). At first, this movie seems like a pleasant enough variation on the "falsely accused man on the run" plot. Despite how formulaic this story may first appear, it is made engaging for the panache that Curtiz gives the material- he certainly knows how to set a mood with deceptively simple mise en scene. (And as we will see, this film is deceptive in many ways.) By 1959, Alan Ladd's career had been fizzling- his acting instincts had become tired and dulled, and had to accept star billing in second-rate pictures.  Yet in its own negative way, Ladd's taciturn, world-weary demeanour suits the character of a man who has been put upon both personally and professionally. Carolyn Jones is superbly cast as his estranged wife- with her Bohemian bangs suggesting that she ended up in Connecticut by way of Greenwich Village, Linda is truly a fish out of water in this rural environment- yearning instead for life in the fast lane, despite the consequences.  If you stretch it, this film could be a continuation of her Oscar-nominated role in The Bachelor Party (1957)- "The Existentialist" has left the Beatnik scene for the suburbs. 
 

ABOVE: Carolyn Jones

Any good film noir reveals the corruption beneath the surface of a supposedly civil society.  Yet rather than depicting a rainy, urban jungle this film juxtaposes the benign suburbia of New England with a story of adultery, blackmail and murder permeating the picture-postcard landscape. And still, despite moving the setting to an uncommon green oasis, this "man on the run" formula is further differentiated as it slowly evolves into a delightfully bizarre allegory.

In the final third of the picture, John receives aid from the children he has befriended while painting out in the meadows. The movie thus becomes a unique Utopian treatise, as the incorruptible kids not only believe John, and enact his complex and clever plot to prove his innocence, but the children forge their own unique society with a moral code of virtue, loyalty, and a tolerance of class, race and gender. (The leader of the kids is a girl, after all. Young Susan Gordon, in one of her few screen roles, is a delight as the kids' captain and den-mother: the Raggedy Ann doll she always carries symbolizes her maternity and strength.) Further, it is a delight to see the African American boy Leroy work and play in harmony with his white friends. (This film is one of the very few from an age of segregation that slyly presents fraternity among mixed races.) The adult world by contrast is Barbaric and archaic, adhering to an outdated structure where race determines class: for instance, Leroy's father is a servant for one of the white kids' parents.  Despite that the current ruling class of this supposedly picket-fence environment is revealed to be full of deceit, one actually finishes the movie with the hope that these children (already exhibiting a maturity beyond their years) shall inherit the world, and seed their goodwill for future generations. Perhaps the children find a kinship with John in that he is an artist, and also lives a supposedly carefree (shall we say? childishly innocent) existence outside of the constrains of the ruling class.

ABOVE: Alan Ladd, Susan Gordon

Sadly, The Man In The Net is nearly forgotten today- hardly considered a career highpoint for any of the people involved.  Seeing a film like this recalls Wheeler Dixon's book Lost In the Fifties: Recovering Phantom Hollywood (which I read last month, and will review here soon): its central thesis insists that one would do best to look at the 1950's film and television that have not remained in memory, as they will be the works that more accurately depict the times in which they were made.  Indeed, many works of the decade suggest a society of forced conformity, sexism and segregation; this film on the other hand offers a more hopeful message of harmony and equality.  Released just a few years before such social themes entered the collective consciousness, Man In the Net is a fascinating precursor of the changing times. A programmer it may be- but a wholly diverting one at that.  Like the characters onscreen, this movie has much more underneath than meets the eye.

Susan Gordon (1949 - 2011)

Susan Gordon, who as a child appeared in several films by her father Bert I. Gordon, has passed away in New Jersey after a battle with cancer at the age of 62. Mr. Gordon's is best remembered for his giant monster movies (a la Earth Vs. The Spider or The Amazing Colossal Man)- and she was cast in his Attack of the Puppet People, but also appeared in some of his less typical (and ironically, stronger) efforts. She made a strong impression in the kiddie matinee fantasy The Boy and The Pirates, the underrated ghost story Tormented and the gothic melodrama, Picture Mommy Dead. In addition to her father's films, she also appeared on the big screen with Danny Kaye in The Five Pennies and Alan Ladd in The Man In The Net. Ms. Gordon was also busy on television, with a live presentation of Miracle on 34th Street (airing on Thanksgiving of 1959), and appearances in such series as "The Twilight Zone" and "My Three Sons".

For more on her career, visit her official site.