William Shatner, the Hawksian organizer of men in a future without currency, determined player of crisis-bound priests and rock-like teachers, and an Arizona sheriff named 'Dances with Tarantulas.' In the following two films you will see him drink from a flask on frozen airplanes, and bare his chest to preserve a book and drop and lose a protective amulet the minute a Borgesian glimmer spell rolls its 20 sided serpent die his way... He's a relic from when hunky sci fi guys were brainy, had resonant voices and a certain catlike nimbleness. A tad macho and impulsive, but able to draw on cooler minds to guide him. Shatner is his name. He never lived with common people, but common people are all we have now. The Emmys prove that more every year. And the winner is, American Family.
Not in the late 60s-early 70s it wasn't! And we kids couldn't have been happier about it, even we didn't want to see kids onscreen unless they were going to be terrifying - Bop Bop!
I know there are those hardcore Trekkies who are annoyed by Shatner's nimble macho fey arrogance as Kirk, who prefer the dry baldness of Patrick Stewart. They probably also hate There will be Blood and W.C. Fields. I am not them. Stewart's a bore. Maybe it was growing up watching Trek with my dad in syndication as a wee nipper. But to me Shatner can do no wrong. Even his terrible toupee is all right with me. Always just a bit hammier than called for, his expressive resonant voice... his unique... pauses...followedby... rapidcascades.... ofwords, have brought decades of amusement to a beleaguered nation. (See: Sex, Drugs, and Quantum Existentialism).
And when starring in dopey films like the one included here, or artsy experiments like Incubus, he went for broke, lugging Shakespeare-style oratory into the rarefied sphere of the cowboys-vs.-Satanists, cowboys vs. marauding spiders, and bearing torches on planes 37,000 Feet in the air, with a flask ever at the ready. If you're ready, Mr. Spock...
HORROR AT 37,000 FEET
1973 - TVM / CBS
***
In order to earn the prime time slot, a 70s TV movie had to borrow from at least popular cinematic themes then in vogue, so here we get 1) the ancient curse attached to an ancient artifact, 2) the social commentary, and 3) the ensemble disaster movie (a welcome form of actor equity: faded stars, child actors, nearly-ran starlets, and granite-jawed authority figures could all meet as strangers and end as bonded heroes--see also: Day of the Animals). Here they board a jumbo jet luxury "airplane" hauling a massively heavy Celtic altar, and a dog. And the downstairs storage freezes --the dog is frozen solid! And the plane become suspended at 37,000 feet, trapped in a crossfire of wind tunnels, providing an ingenious explanation of why the plane interiors never once give the impression of movement, or engine roar, or being anything but a three-wall set.
The result is a kind of zero point surreal experience where some smoke wafting up from a hole in the carpet and the occasional Val Lewtonian shadow substitutes for any kind of literal monster or concrete threat. The strange fascination with sub-zero temperatures on a plane (just touching the door makes Chuck's whole arm go numb) goes well with the array of locked-in ensemble types (Buddy Ebsen!) waiting for their line in the script with the reserved confusion of a Sartre one-act drama directed by Rod Serling's nephew after too a night of too many olives in hs martinis.
The sparse passengers include a wild-eyed single lady (the dog's owner), who knows all about the stone's colorful human sacrifice-enriched past, her eyes alight with ancient magick. Chuck Connors is the square-jawed pilot; Shatner is the quintessential priest who lost his faith (I was shocked when a hot stewardess in a short skirt wanted to confiscate his flask - when meanwhile he's also helping himself to the bar without paying, which doesn't bother her at all). Once he's drunk enough, Shatner laughs ruefully at their collective fate, though snaps to life when the other passengers contemplate child sacrifice after first trying to pacify the spirit with the kid's doll as effigy. Will they commit the ultimate transgression or will the dawn come up in time to save them? We'll find out after this brief fade out where commercials once played, dissipating whatever tensions may have accrued.
It all moves pretty fast and fans of Italian horror can luxuriate in the colorful red lights of the cockpit and everyone can notice the way one of the actresses has a Rosemary Woodhouse buzz cut and sweat sheen, and another looks like Carrie White (though that film was still three years away). Naturally unless you were around in the 70s and remember these kinds of TV events, you're far less likely to care. But those of us who were kids will be glad to know the DVD of this looks way better than most. If only Satan's School for Girls or Death at Love Housewould one day get the same respectful treatment. May Cheesy Flix die a thousand deaths for its profaning the profane and blurring the Kate Jackson!
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THE DEVIL'S RAIN
1975 - dir. Robert Fuest
***
I've seen hellfire and I've seen face-melting rain - and it's not, um, a great movie, but for kids from the 70s The Devil's Rain is an unholy and powerful relic. Its TV spots were an inescapable part of local prime time TV in 1975. I was eight and had a bizarre childhood dream about that rain and even now there's a lingering prepubescent-perverse erotic charge associated with imagining acid rain hitting me and my coven and melting us all down like so much birthday candle wax. We'd heard Devil's Rain was lousy, but my dream was amazing, and if I wasn't so savvy about Satanic cinema even at eight years-old, and it was the 80s instead of the 70s, and a careerist child psychologist heard my dream, he'd probably think I was abducted by Satanists and convinced it was only a dream through hypnosis, and they'd arrest my parents and teachers. But in the 70s it was anybody's game, a whole Middle America demographic gone to the devil with touchy feely cocktails, bridge, Jaycees, smoking on planes, turtleneck and medallion conclaves of wife-swappers, communes and encounter groups, all-night block parties leading into softball breakfast picnics of still-drunk adults and kids high on their very first sunrise and sleep deprivation. So in rode devil films, a parallel subconscious repository that all of us, down to the smallest most impressionable infant, knew was only fantasy, yet a fantasy so powerful it spilled over into our collective subconscious, leading to witch hunts in the 1980s and the rise of nervous micro-managing overprotective brand parenting we're still hurting our children and ourselves with today.
That feeling of these films having some supernatural power is gone but, as a kid growing up in the Satanic 70s, just seeing the TV commercial for an R-rated horror movie was enough to give you sexy nightmares and make the world seem full of strange telekinetic magic and unimaginable terror. And when we imagined the effects of the then brand-new acid rain, the Devil's Rain is what we imagined.
Turns out, in real life, the film is too strange, too 'off' to be scary, with daytime afternoon Satanic ceremonies in the Arizona desert and Shatner hamming it up worse than Vincent Price at the end of Pit and the Pendulum. There's a nice 'start in the middle' approach to narrative (it's never really explained why or how Shatner's family's holding onto the Corwin's magic Satanic bible until a flashback) and an old deserted western ghost town making a surprisingly effective setting for a Satanic takeover, with an old church covered in black and the crosses replaced with pentagrams. Earnest Borgnine is an odd choice for the head Satanist, but Shatner is great as the cowboy whose parents are sucked into the coven, which has taken over the whole ghost town. Meanwhile Joan Prather is psychic for no good reason except to allow her to 'see' the flashback (via looking into coven member John Travolta's dead black eyes) and to provide an interesting scene where she performs an EKG for a crowd of psychology students while Dr. Eddie Albert explains that ESP is very real and he's in the process of discovering what brainwave controls it. Tom Skerritt is her husband and eventually wrests the lead away from Shatner. The big climactic melting rain sequence goes on for what seems like an hour; it was the big 'money shot' of the film, even on the posters, so the director clearly wanted to get his money's worth. I got mine. The DVD is a must at $6.98, even if most critics lambast the film, urging their slavish followers towards the admittedly superior and similar Brotherhood of Satan. I love that film too but I never saw commercials for it as a kid, so there's no perverse unconscious charge.
Got to admire a film that gives Hieronymus Bosch a name credit in the titles. What, were his lawyers all up in arms? Anton LaVey was a consultant, too, whatever that means (he knew which way to point the pentagrams? I've never considered him an authority, except at self-promotion). This movie gets no love from critics (20% approval on rotten tomatoes,) but I think they're being harsh. A nice buzz and low expectations is key to any Satanic film, and the whiskey-loving LaVey would agree. Still, Rain was infamous enough it destroyed director Robert Fuest's career --though he'd also made the more well-received And Soon the Darkness and Dr. Phibes neither of which I like as well as this. Got no Shat!!
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See also: KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS!