SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (1984)

Director: Charles E. Sellier, Jr.

Writers: Michael Hickey from a story by Paul Caimi

Producer: Ira Richard Barmak

Cast: Robert Brian Wilson, Lilyan Chauvin, Tara Buckman, Britt Leach, Danny Wagner, Jonathan Best, Will Hare, Charles Dierkop, Gilmer McCormick, Nancy Borgenicht, Jeff Hansen, Toni Nero, Randy Stumpf, Linnea Quigley, Leo Geter, Max Robinson, Amy Stuyvesant, A. Madeline Smith, H.E.D. Redford, Eric Hart, Vince Massa, Michael Alvarez, John Bishop, Richard Terry, Spenser Alston, Alex Burton, Max Broadhead, Oscar Rowland, Melissa Best, Spenser Ashby, Angela Montoya, Don Shanks (uncredited)

After witnessing the Christmas Eve murder of his parents (Tara Buckman and Jeff Hansen) by a killer (Charles Dierkop) dressed as Santa Claus, five-year-old Billy Chapman (Jonathan Best) is sent to an orphanage. As he grows, Billy (Danny Wagner) continues to be tormented by the memories of his yuletide tragedy and is subjected to strict punishments from Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin), the head nun at the orphanage. Many years later, the teenage Billy (Robert Brian Wilson) gets a job at a toy store. On Christmas Eve, the store’s owner (Britt Leach) coerces Billy into being the substitute Santa Claus for the store’s young customers. Donning the costume of his childhood horror deranges Billy, who becomes a murderous St. Nick punishing those he deems naughty.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

Despite what Andy Williams’ seasonal crooning would have us believe, the most wonderful time of the year is always complicated with Christmas controversies:

• Get a real or artificial tree? 
• Buy gifts or give money? 
• Open presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?
• Turkey, goose, or ham for Christmas dinner? 
• Who the hell does the dishes?

So, in the yuletide spirit of peace on Earth and goodwill to men, allow me to settle some Christmas controversies: 

• If you do the trimming, buy any damn tree you want. 
• Giving money is always the right size. 
• Opening gifts Christmas Eve must not interfere with my drinking time and opening them on Christmas Day must be done after I sleep off my drunk. 
• Anything that makes a good base for booze can end up on my Christmas dinner plate. 
• Serve the dinner on paper plates and I’ll do the dishes. 

However, back in 1984, even my yuletide pragmatism could not quell the controversy caused by the holiday horror of Silent Night, Deadly Night. This film was released as the slasher film craze had begun to wane and so had the self-righteous indignation of self-appointed moral guardians. But the television ads for this movie about a killer dressed as Santa Claus were traumatizing tots all over the United States. That resulted not only in renewed lambasting by the slasher film-hating movie critics, but also protests from parents that prompted the immediately profitable film to be pulled from theaters. The violation of children’s joyful image of Santa Claus for an R-rated horror film was treated as child abuse. I find it rather ironic that, prior to this film’s ads, probably half of the panicked parents’ kids would already scream bloody murder or be petrified with fear when they were made to sit on a department store Santa’s lap, anyway.

Despite all the outrage directed at Silent Night, Deadly Night, it was certainly not the first time the movies made maniacal, murderous merriment with a sinister St. Nick. Both 1972’s Tales from the Crypt and 1980’s Christmas Evil featured dangerous Santa Claus imposters. Apparently, the 1984 film’s ad campaign was all too effective in an era when the horror sub-genre of the slasher film had become yet another scapegoat for misbehaving youth and poor parenting. The fact that these R-rated films were unable to be seen at the theaters by lone youngsters under 17 years of age did not matter. Yeah, yeah, I understand it was the TV ads creeping into families’ homes during prime time that was causing the shit storm. However, I also understand that the outrage was not directed at the marketing, but at the very existence of the film itself. My response to such censorship sentiment is a hearty “Bah! Humbug!”

According to director Charles E. Sellier, Jr., the aim of the film was for the financing distributor, Tri-Star Pictures, to hit the low-budget/low-risk tier of film production with just the sort of product that had been profitable in recent years. Horror film aficionados will notice that the filmmakers behind Silent Night, Deadly Night were making a list of slasher flick tropes and checking it twice:

holiday-themed mayhem ✔✔

prologue of past trauma ✔✔

traumatized maniac menace ✔✔

distinctive outfit for the killer ✔✔

gory kills via a variety of techniques ✔✔

sex and nudity ✔✔

There are also a few variations from the slasher film norm that make Silent Night, Deadly Night distinctive. The identity of the traumatized maniac is not a mystery; we know who he is and see how he becomes a menace. While there is nothing very deep and profound being expressed in this film, we spend a lot of time seeing how an ongoing series of tragedies and abuse contribute to the maladjustment of the boy who will grow up to become the film’s murderous main protagonist. There is an odd mix of decency and brutality. While not only the nasty people get offed in the traditional slasher film, there seems to be a few instances here where not only are nice people killed, but their deaths seem even more undignified than usual. I think the impact this film has is an ongoing sense of injustice. Both people and fate can be indiscriminate doling out punishment.

Billy Chapman is the kid whose Christmas karma is consistently crapped on. Five-year-old Billy and his family are visiting his catatonic grandpa (Will Hare) at a mental facility on Christmas Eve. As soon as Billy’s parents leave him alone for a moment with his unresponsive grandpa, the old codger gets a wicked gleam in his eye and tells Billy that Christmas Eve is the scariest night of the year. Grandpa gets Billy to admit he wasn’t always a good boy that year, so Grandpa says that Santa will arrive that night to punish him. As soon as the parents return, the sadistic, old geezer plays catatonic again. No reason is ever given for Grandpa’s behavior, and this is the last we see of him, but the movie is already establishing an unsavory vibe for the yuletide season. This is my favorite scene in the film, as it just seems so strange and inappropriate. Will Hare should have nabbed an Oscar that year.

From this point on, Billy’s Christmas and all his Christmases to come are cursed. On the Chapman family’s drive home from the mental facility, they are flagged down by an armed robber in a Santa suit, who kills the parents. Billy and his baby brother are raised in an orphanage that is run by the strict nun Mother Superior, who preaches that no one ever gets away with being naughty and punishment is good. Unfortunately, as poor Billy ages, his past Christmas trauma makes him act out during the yuletide season and he keeps getting punished.

Once Billy is old enough to hold a job, the kindly Sister Margaret (Gilmer McCormick) finds him a position stocking shelves at Ira’s Toys. The young man seems to be an exemplary employee until the store’s Santa Claus for the kids can’t perform and Billy is pushed into the role. Despite his horrific Santa memories, Billy somehow manages to endure playing Santa until things get out of hand at the store’s after-hours Christmas Eve party. Then Billy snaps, becomes the Santa of his grandpa’s malicious taunts, and sets out to punish the naughty and just about anyone else who gets in his way.

In his very first role as the full-grown Billy Chapman, Robert Brian Wilson has a likable and naïve demeanor. When suited up as Santa, his smiles seem both childlike and demented. His best scene is during his Christmas Eve killing spree when he offers a young child (Amy Stuyvesant) a gift. This is suspenseful, peculiar, and funny.

The stunning Tara Buckman appeared in a lot of television roles, but the only other thing I recall seeing her in is the action-comedy The Cannonball Run (1981), where she played the blonde bombshell race driver partnered with brunette bombshell Adrienne Barbeau. As little Billy Chapman’s mother, Buckman’s murder is Silent Night, Deadly Night’s nastiest moment and sets the tone for the rest of the film.

The 1980s scream queen and B-movie favorite, Linnea Quigley, is featured in a small role. Her character’s reluctant involvement with deer antlers is probably the film’s most famous scene.

Silent Night, Deadly Night defied its critics and protesters by spawning four sequels. Paradoxically, the veteran Hollywood actor who had objected to the original film, Mickey Rooney, starred in Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker (1991). The original film was remade as Silent Night in 2012. A brand-new version of Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025) is currently playing in theaters this holiday season.

So, if you want to wallow in nostalgia for an era when a cinematic Christmas cash grab could cause a commotion and gain cult status, see Silent Night, Deadly Night. It always puts me in the holiday spirit. Seeing a serial-killing St. Nick brutally punish others who are naughty helps me appreciate those lumps of coal I keep getting in my stocking every year.

INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996)

Director: Roland Emmerich

Writers: Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich

Producer: Dean Devlin

Cast: Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Judd Hirsch, Mary McDonnell, Randy Quaid, Margaret Colin, Robert Loggia, James Rebhorn, Harvey Fierstein, Vivica A. Fox, Brent Spiner, Adam Baldwin, James Duval, Bill Smitrovich, Kiersten Warren, Harry Connick, Jr., Ross Bagley, Mae Whitman, Lisa Jakub, Giuseppe Andrews 

A gigantic alien craft has taken a position in space between Earth and the Moon. It sends out 15-mile-wide flying saucers to hover over many of the world’s major cities. They use the world’s communication satellites to relay a coordinating signal that counts down to a moment for all the saucers to simultaneously obliterate the cities beneath them. A U.S. Marine pilot (Will Smith) and an IT engineer (Jeff Goldblum) join U.S. President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) and his staff to try preventing the extermination of mankind. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review 

SPOILER ALERT! This review will reveal many plot points and the conclusion of —ah, to hell with it! It’s impossible to spoil a turd. 

Way back in 1996 when I first saw the trailer for Independence Day, I knew I was going to hate it. The ad immediately conveyed that the film would be loaded with special effects and “attitude,” which was the recipe for so many half-baked, roller coaster ride movies of that era. 

Very little has changed since, except that no one is awed by “way cool” effects anymore; we just expect them. That should mean that films stop being made just to showcase special effects. However, now that effects-heavy movies are referred to as a director’s “vision,” we are supposed to believe that CGI eye candy is meaningful. Usually it just pacifies an audience that can’t be involved anymore. 

I will give Independence Day its due. The story achieves an epic scale and has game performances to drive home the schmaltz. However, it is the fine special effects that are half the reason for the film’s existence. Of course since those very effects are merely adequate by our jaded, present day standards, we are left with the other even more obsolete reason for this film’s existence: pandering to the contemporary conceit of the 1996 audience. 

The filmmakers of Independence Day had only one objective: to make money with a sci-fi  blockbuster à la Jurassic Park (1993). That is the only “vision” they had in mind. They wanted to shovel another load of CGI effects-seasoned sci-fi slop into the entertainment trough hoping that the moronic mainstream masses would lap it up during the peak summertime movie season. If those filmmakers really had some balls, they would have immediately puked up another CGI-dinosaur movie instead to reveal their utterly mercenary, creatively bankrupt motives. 

Lest you think I judge director Roland Emmerich and company too harshly, I ask you: Why else did their sci-fi follow-up to Independence Day become another CGI-dinosaur movie called Godzilla (1998) with velociraptors in it? Moviegoers didn’t know the first frigging thing about raptors till they were shown Jurassic Park. But making Godzilla spawn those suddenly hip dinos would seem to be an oh so contemporary twist for the remake. While Emmerich and company weren’t quite so ballsy as to hand us another GGI-dinosaur movie right away, their Godzilla remake clearly displays their derivative and opportunistic nature. 

I have no issue with filmmakers making stuff that is of its time and popular. No commercial filmmaker sets out to make a film that is a financial failure. But when a film is made to simply regurgitate a well-worn plot, load it up with new effects, and then shoehorn contemporary gimmicks into the plot as an effort to seem hip, clever, and accessible to stroke the audience while destroying any logic the ripped-off plot already had, that is NOT good filmmaking. However, it may make money from the insecure dummies that will feel validated having their asses kissed by this acknowledgement of their contemporary interests. That is why I resent this film. Not only did the mainstream audience not deserve to have its ass kissed, but I also knew that, if Independence Day was a hit, we would be buried in an avalanche of more “high concept” crap. Director Emmerich himself was encouraged by this film’s success to feed us more CGI spectacles that are probably just as gag inducing. 

 

Emmerich and his accomplices must have decided that great big alien spaceships blowing up a lot of shit could be another profitable sci-fi spectacle. Thus, 1953’s The War of the Worlds gets a ’90s special-effects rehash. 

Above all, this movie needed to be seen as clever, so it was not called something as honest as War of the Worlds for ’90s Nitwits. It was called Independence Day. Boy, that sounds lofty, doesn’t it? There is a certain air of dignity and heroism about this whole half-assed, expensive endeavor now, isn’t there? Best of all, it would have a nationwide release the day before the July 4th Independence Day holiday, so the movie could be marketed with the oh so hip acronym of ID4. The word “four” does not actually appear in the film’s title, BUT if we are all really smart, (and if we can figure this out we must be and will just love this movie for engaging us on such an “intellectual” level) we will realize that the numeral four refers to the U.S. Independence Day date of the fourth of July. It also follows that ’90s trend of sticking numerals into titles and names of things that make them sound techy and make us feel so advanced for accepting numerals adorning titles and names for no good reason. Man, these filmmakers don’t miss a trick! They must be geniuses! Actually, they just know their moronic market and will pander to it shamelessly, as we shall see… 

Independence Day is just another alien invasion movie. British author H.G. Wells popularized that classic science fiction concept of mass destruction way back in 1897 with his novel The War of the Worlds, which has been the basis for adaptations in all forms of media ever since. Apparently, our familiarity with that story means we should be impressed when Independence Day puts its ’90s spin on it. Independence Day was hell-bent on being ingratiating to its audience. It knows that we “get it” being so “clever” and are made to feel relevant having an old sci-fi standard festooned with our contemporary interests. Those “hip” variations are anything but clever when they are not only forced, but they often blast holes in the logic of the plot. 

Remember when I told you that I hated this film immediately on the basis of its trailer? It trots out that ’90s movie trope of disaffected youth, represented by a cute stripper named Tiffani (Kiersten Warren), reacting to a television news report of a nearby, giant spaceship with an oh so disaffected exclamation of, “This is so cool.” Right. We all know that the nation’s youth are so worldly and sophisticated that they are above any sense of concern or panic. Well, actually that is only how the filmmakers think that the film’s young target audience wish to be perceived. So, Tiffani joins more of the cool crowd somehow holding a rave atop a Los Angeles skyscraper waving “Welcome” and “Take Me Away” placards right below one of the hovering UFOs. In one of many “hip” variations on the 1953 movie version of The War of the Worlds, instead of three local yokels waving a white flag becoming the first victims of the alien attacks, it is this group of thrill-seeking hipsters getting blasted who represent a large chunk of this movie’s demographic. Wow! Now it’s personal? Whatever. 

Why is another stripper named Jasmine (Vivica A. Fox) the girlfriend of Will Smith’s hero character? Because 1996 was apparently when strippers went mainstream. You could not watch prime time television that season without sooner or later seeing a promo for a stripper being featured in an episode of a network series. There is no reason for a stripper to be in Independence Day; it is just another hip ’90s gimmick. Hey, I love strippers! Bring ‘em on! But since this is a PG-13-rated movie, when we see this stripper at work she won’t drop the top, so what’s the point? Oh yeah, it’s still supposed to be cool in an oh so ’90s way. One more box has been checked off on the trend list. 

Independence Day makes a stab at sci-fi relevance by incorporating UFOlogy speculation about the legendary UFO that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico and the government Area 51 facility in Nevada that is supposed to be storing it. In this movie Area 51 contains an old scout ship from the alien race now attacking Earth. For 40 years the movie’s government eggheads have been studying this alien technology that is so advanced they understand hardly anything about it. Of course the awe that is supposed to generate is destroyed when our heroes must instantly master this technology. Nevertheless, since the ’90s sci-fi television series The X-Files used Roswell references, Independence Day dumps that into their sci-fi slop. At least this justified David Duchovny pissing on an Independence Day poster in the first theatrical film of The X-Files (1998). Truly an Oscar-worthy moment. 

Apparently, just about no one was more hip than Will Smith on the verge of superstardom in 1996. So, we need him to be the hip U.S. Marine hero Captain Steven Hiller. After bringing down one alien fighter craft, he knocks out the alien pilot with one punch and drags it across the desert to Area 51. It is never explained why this glass-jawed alien during a later surgical examination suddenly has the deadly ability to immediately decimate a room full of scientists. I guess the eggheads did not have any wiseass Will Smith-styled one-liners to defend themselves with. 

Eventually, in order to save the world, Smith has to fly the old, downed alien ship stored in Area 51. But just how the hell does he have instant prowess flying a forty-year-old alien craft so expertly that he can outmaneuver aliens flying their own new and presumably more advanced fighter vessels? Way back in the 1936 Flash Gordon serial, Buster Crabbe’s Flash had to at least watch Frank Shannon’s Dr. Zarkov pilot his rocketship all the way to the planet Mongo before Flash could fly such vessels himself. So much for the supposed advance of credibility and sophistication in the modern science fiction film. 

Remember that bullshit title to all of this contrived crap? Bill Pullman’s character of U.S. President Whitmore tries to justify this film’s pretentious title by delivering a troop-rousing speech before the big counter attack against the aliens. Very conveniently for movie marketing purposes, this is occurring on July 4th. Therefore, President Whitmore makes a ridiculously strained and patriotic analogy about this being Earth’s Independence Day. What the hell does once seceding from a monarchy have to do with resisting invasion and extermination? This is not about independence but survival. I guess “kill or be killed” doesn’t make the popcorn-munching morons want to stand up and cheer. 

Remember those government scientists in Area 51 that were studying that old alien vessel for 40 years and still can’t figure out how it works? Don’t worry because Jeff Goldblum (another popular box is checked using the star of Jurassic Park), as our IT hero David Levinson, shows up with his magic laptop. You see, back in the ’90s, the audience was infatuated with that new consumer craze for home computers. So, they would accept any plot point being glossed over by those gadgets. Computers were the handy trinkets that lazy screenwriters used to score with their audience. Here we are stroked with yet another “hip” variation on The War of the Worlds; instead of naturally occurring germs being responsible for the aliens’ destruction, a computer virus delivered via laptop saves the day. 

That is absolutely impossible! How does the virus get written that will communicate with an alien civilization’s computers? Remember that Earth scientists could not understand anything about that alien technology. So how the hell does Goldblum’s Levinson, who has no prior knowledge about the aliens, immediately cobble together a virus to interact with an alien technology that, once again, scientists were studying for 40 years and still understand almost nothing about? That means that they would not understand that alien computer language, much less be able to write code for it. 

Goldblum’s laptop had info about alien signals from his company’s cable television satellites that were being used by the aliens. Therefore, are we to believe that laptop somehow automatically wrote a virus with code that is understood by alien computers? Then why the hell did anyone ever bother to learn how to write computer code? The reason that most of our real world computer viruses did not infect both Apple Macintosh computers and other personal computers was because they have different hardware and operating systems. So, doesn’t it stand to reason that an extraterrestrial computer and its code would be even more incompatible with human computing code writing a virus? Should we assume, without any explanation in the film, that in a matter of minutes or hours, our hungover IT hero somehow invented alien-compatible code to write a computer virus? 

Believe it or not, computers are not magic. But they need to be for the purposes of this gung-ho, feel-good, ’90s perversion of The War of the Worlds. Can’t just let man be saved by the grace of God. Hell no! Gotta be sure that our salvation depends on our techno trends and consumer choices. Never fear! All is solved with a magic laptop. Did Apple and Microsoft bankroll this stupidity? 

This asinine aggravation just does not end, folks! This impossible computer virus is supposed to command the alien vessels to drop their defense shields allowing mankind’s missiles to strike them. Hotshot marine Will Smith, along with IT guru Jeff Goldblum and his magic laptop, must fly the old alien vessel from Area 51 into the aliens’ mothership. Somehow a giant leap of logic is made to assume that, once they dock, they will be connected to the mother ship’s computer system to download the virus. First off, this vessel that Smith and Goldblum are using is 40 years old. Why do the aliens not notice this antique arriving in their mother ship? If this alien race were so technologically sophisticated, surely their aircraft would have advanced one helluva lot over 40 years. Second, it was surmised that the aliens are telepathic. Then why is it when the Will Smith-piloted vessel docks in the alien mother ship, none of those telepathic aliens watching can sense that no member of their race is aboard that 40-year-old relic? 

Let us not neglect the sentimentality that is supposed to legitimize this coldly calculated money grab called Independence Day (not ID4, dammit). In a redemption setup that could be seen coming a light year away, the Goldblum character’s crusty father (Judd Hirsch) and ex-wife (Margaret Colin) see no merit in the tech guru’s line of work. Of course nothing could be more uplifting to a ’90s mainstream audience than seeing someone’s career path not only being justified, but also used to save the world. Great, now the wage slaves will feel validated marching back to the office to keep making the money to buy more stuff, especially computers. 

Having to force myself to watch Independence Day again for this review, I am not quite as hate-filled about it these days. I do see that a lot of technical and performance talent was poured into it, yet I am still opposed to its objective which is more about marketing than storytelling. I do not expect perfection, but I will condemn pretentious pandering full of illogical plot points. This expensive and ponderous display of fantasy could have been partially salvaged with just a few more sentences of that dreaded exposition to prop up its wobbly logic. That wouldn’t have cost one more lousy buck, but it may have required an honest effort. Just because Independence Day is ripping off The War of the Worlds does not mean it can’t be bothered to make sense of its contemporary tweaking. Paper costs no more for a good script than for a bad script. Since this turd cost $75 million and took four months to excrete, these feces makers could have made the effort to wipe. 

Whew! This alien autopsy was long overdue, but rest assured that it did not cost the American taxpayer a single penny, folks. I normally do not expend this much energy picking movies apart. There are plenty of fun flicks that have some narrative lapses, yet I may be able to reason out something not made clear and still celebrate a film’s merits. I love schlock, but Independence Day wants us to believe it is more than schlock, when it is actually less. An expensive production without originality or logic that aspires to be nothing more than trendy, state-of-the-art spectacle should be beneath contempt. Unfortunately, too many moviegoers got off on it, so I have been compelled to use this review to lance the boil of my contempt that has been festering for decades. Please excuse the mess.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972)

Director: Freddie Francis

Writers: Milton Subotsky adapting EC Comics stories by Al Feldstein, Johnny Craig, and Bill Gaines published in Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror

Producers: Milton Subotsky, Max Rosenberg

Cast: Ralph Richardson, Joan Collins, Peter Cushing, Ian Hendry, Richard Greene, Barbara Murray, Robin Phillips, Nigel Patrick, Patrick Magee, Roy Dotrice, Chloe Franks, Martin Boddey, Oliver MacGreevy, Susan Denney, Angela Grant, David Markham, Frank Forsyth, Geoffrey Bayldon, Robert Hutton, Peter Fraser, Manning Wilson, Irene Gawne, Stafford Medhurst, Clifford Earl, Edward Evans, Hedger Wallace, George Herbert, Harry Locke, Jane Sofiano, Peter Thomas, Tony Wall, John Barrard, Robert Rietti (uncredited radio voice)

Five strangers on a tour of a graveyard’s catacombs become separated from the rest of the group and are trapped in a weird stone chamber. They meet a grim, old man (Ralph Richardson) garbed in a hooded robe who shows his apprehensive guests their awful fates.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

During the 1960s and 1970s, Amicus Productions were the leading contender for British horror movie supremacy against Hammer Film Productions. Amicus seemed to have the most success with their portmanteau format. Amicus produced seven such horror films that each contained multiple stories united by a wraparound narrative.

Of all the Amicus anthology films, Tales from the Crypt is probably the most famous and perhaps the most effective. Each yarn in this film is adapted from a surefire source for this type of material: the infamous, American, 1950s EC Comics series Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror. Each issue of those publications had a similar format of multiple short stories narrated to the reader by ghoulish hosts.

Tales from the Crypt’s fearsome fables are off to a festive start with “And All Through the House.” The drop-dead gorgeous Joan Collins plays Joanne Clayton, a murderous wife caught up in the holiday hustle and bustle of tidying up her Christmas Eve crime scene at the same time a lunatic (Oliver MacGreevy) wearing a Santa Claus costume is trying to break in. There is a perversely cozy, yuletide atmosphere throughout this segment as traditional Christmas carols play on the living room radio while Collins’ cold-blooded beauty takes the time to open the gift from her husband she has just killed before she gets to work staging things to look like an accident. More carols play as she is forced to multi-task between corpse-clean up and locking out the psychotic St. Nick. It is even more perverse in that the murderess is shown to be a loving mother.

The next story has me empathizing a bit with the bad guy. In “Reflection of Death,” Ian Hendry plays family man Carl Maitland who is running away for a new life with his mistress (Angela Grant). There is not a lot of time to flesh out his character, but, in just a few scenes, we see that there is emotional pain and guilt suffered by Hendry’s adulterer abandoning his wife and children. This, more than any other story, makes us realize what a badass fate can be.

Tales from the Crypt does holiday double-duty with “Poetic Justice.” Robin Phillips plays James Elliot, perhaps the most despicable character in the film. He is a young, upper-crust snob obsessing about Arthur Grimsdyke, the kindly, elderly man living across the street. James thinks that the frugal, old rubbish collector and his modest home drive down the property values in the neighborhood. So, James enjoys conducting a secret campaign of harassment meant to drive old Grimsdyke away. Things take a really nasty on Valentine’s Day. Peter Cushing is simply heartbreaking as poor, put-upon Grimsdyke. This is one of my favorite performances by this great actor.

“Wish You Were Here” begins with ruthless businessman Ralph Jason (Richard Greene) and his beautiful wife, Enid (Barbara Murray), facing financial ruin. The Jason couple is contemplating which of their expensive possessions to start selling when they notice the inscription on their old, Chinese statuette. It says that the relic can grant its owner three wishes. Despite Ralph’s reservations, since this situation is eerily similar to that in the classic horror story “The Monkey’s Paw,” Enid makes a wish. That’s when the troubles for the Jason couple really begin.

The final fate that Ralph Richardson’s baleful Crypt Keeper relates is called “Blind Alleys.” It concerns Retired Army Maj. William Rogers (Nigel Patrick) taking over the directorship of a retirement home for blind men. The selfish Rogers spends lavishly on himself from the meager budget allowed the rest home, while the residents have to make due with bad food, poor heating, and not enough blankets. In the role of the blind George Carter, Patrick Magee is the spokesman for his fellow, neglected residents. Magee was a frequent performer in many British genre films. He could be quite unsettling, as he is here. This time, in particular, he has every right to be.

Director Freddie Francis already had plenty of expertise directing fright flicks for Amicus and Hammer. Although Francis did not want to be stuck in the horror rut as a director, he certainly had the knack for this nasty niche. In Tales from the Crypt, he is at his absolute best. Each simple story is just long enough to establish the characters and their situations while never seeming rushed. I suppose that the original comic book stories were almost a storyboard for this film, but Francis knows just how to stage and shoot things effectively. Many creepy sequences play out in purely visual terms with just the right succession of shots effectively building to horrific and ironic climaxes.

Much of the credit for these tight narratives should be given to the original EC Comics stories. The fact that producers Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg were Americans probably explains why a British film would be based on the 1950s American horror comics, which were being rediscovered and appreciated in the ’70s.

As has been noted by many others, despite the transgressive acts depicted in horror stories, such narratives often express a very strong morality. That was certainly the case of the once unfairly maligned EC Comics. Those tales were both nasty and satisfying with their ironic justice dealt to evildoers. It is just that kind of cold comfort that makes this film such a satisfying concoction for those who enjoy the morbid mixed with their mirth.

One aspect of this film I appreciate is how it allows its flawed main characters to show little touches of humanity. Each of the five tourists trapped in the crypt become the unethical protagonist of a separate story that The Crypt Keeper tells them. Yet despite the short time allotted to each tale, the film makes us relate to each protagonist as a human being rather than just a hissable villain. Okay, so maybe the vindictive, young snob James Elliot has us hating his guts, but it is hinted that he does have some sense of guilt. Even the selfish and inhumane Maj. Rogers loves his dog. Details like these drive home the moral point that real people can do awful things, so maybe we should examine some of our own choices and motives. All of the regrets and sentiments in people still do not excuse their cruelty.

THE SAINT STRIKES BACK (1939)

Director: John Farrow

Writers: John Twist and A.C. Edington (uncredited) adapting Leslie Charteris’ Saint novel Angels of Doom, aka She Was a Lady, The Saint Meets His Match

Producer: Robert Sisk

Cast: George Sanders, Wendy Barrie, Jonathan Hale, Neil Hamilton, Jerome Cowan, Barry Fitzgerald, Gilbert Emery, Robert Elliott, Russell Hopton, Edward Gargan, Robert Strange, James Burke. Nella Walker, (and uncredited cast) Willie Best, Paul E. Burns, Tristram Coffin, Robert Homans, Gerald Hamer, Ray Turner, Kernan Cripps, Jack Gargan, Tex Brodus, Tom McGuire, Howard M. Mitchell, Frank O’Connor, Ted Oliver, Tom Quinn, Bob Reeves, Ben Taggart, Dale Van Sickel 

In San Francisco, California at the Colony Club New Year’s Eve party, a gunshot rings out at the stroke of midnight. The victim is a notorious gunman that was drawing a bead on another guest at the party. He was shot by Simon Templar (George Sanders), an adventurer, amateur sleuth, and criminal-robbing thief better known as the Saint. Templar is in San Francisco to expose Waldeman, the mysterious leader of a group of criminals. Templar is also at odds with Val Travers (Wendy Barrie). She is the beautiful blonde that was accompanied by the gunman Templar shot. Travers’ father was a police inspector framed for robbery involving the Waldeman gang. That disgrace led to his suicide. Travers has allied herself with underworld characters to help her avenge her father. Simon Templar tries to charm the vengeful Val Travers at the same time he is trying to expose the criminals that she wants to destroy, though she may also be associating with them. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review 

Simon Templar, alias the Saint, was introduced in Leslie Charteris’ 1928 novel Meet the Tiger. This led to an ongoing series of stories written by Charteris until 1963. Charteris collaborated with other writers for more Saint adventures that were published until 1983. Simon Templar was an English antihero often seen as something of a precursor to James Bond. The popularity of the character’s stories led to more Saint adventures in radio shows, comic strips, comic books, movies, and television. 

RKO Radio Pictures produced the first film presentation of the Saint, 1938’s The Saint in New York starring Louis Hayward. The film was very successful, and a series soon followed. Due to commitments to appear in other films, Hayward was unable to continue playing Simon Templar, so George Sanders began his five-film stint as the Robin Hood of Modern Crime. Until Roger Moore starred as Leslie Charteris’ hero in the 1960s television series The Saint (1962-69), George Sanders was the actor most identified with the role. 

The Saint Strikes Back provides a striking introduction for Sanders as Simon Templar. No sooner are we presented with the perceptive gaze of Templar spotting an assassination in the offing during a ritzy New Year’s Eve party, then the would-be assassin gets shot, the dead man’s beautiful accomplice makes for the exit, she is intercepted on the street by Templar, and during his smooth barrage of quips he reveals that he is the assassin’s assassin, and none other than the Saint, while he does his brash best to charm and tease her at the same time. 

That scene perfectly demonstrates what the George Sanders style of his Saint is all about. I find Sanders’ somehow-relaxed, rapid-fire delivery of witty banter mingled with his one-step-ahead-of-everyone-else trickery to be as amusing as a great Marx Brothers routine. Even if my head is spinning trying to keep track of the alliances and deceptions between characters in the story, Sanders’ wry manner ensures that I still enjoy the ride on this mystery merry-go-round. 

Of course George Sanders had a long acting career, often playing smooth-talking cads, and he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1950’s All About Eve. The Saint’s creator, author Leslie Charteris, was often very critical of the various media adaptations of his hero. He seemed quite unhappy with George Sanders as Simon Templar. As is often the case, film adaptations take liberties with their source material and must succeed with the audience on their own merits. Perhaps Charteris felt that both Sanders’ performance and Hollywood’s Motion Picture Production Code smoothed over the most ruthless edge of his character. Nevertheless, we are still provided with a hero in the Sanders films that often operates just outside the law, even as he aids it to see justice done. 

Returning from the previous Louis Hayward starring film is the character of New York Police Inspector Henry Fernack played by Jonathan Hale. Fernack provides a lot of humor, usually at his own expense, as he is alternately assisted and confounded by the daring and elusive Simon Templar. While Fernack is always suspicious of the Saint’s true motives, he is also an admirer of the Saint’s abilities used to defeat criminals in the past. No matter how irritated Fernack becomes with some of the Saint’s subterfuge, he can always be convinced one more time to aid the Saint’s crime-busting schemes. 

Wendy Barrie co-stars as the vengeful Val Travers. She is allying herself with crooks to expose and kill those who framed her father and drove him to suicide. Not only her beauty, but also her outside-the-law determination to see that her father is avenged appeals to Simon Templar. Her steely determination is initially immune to Templar’s charm, and she is only slowly won over by his efforts to expose the criminals she is also after. Barrie would appear in two more of the Sanders-starring Saint films as different characters. When RKO shifted George Sanders into the hero role of Gay Laurence/The Falcon in a similar series of mystery films, Wendy Barrie would also star as his love-interest in two of them. 

Another very familiar face to lovers of crime fighter series is Neil Hamilton as Valerie Travers’ smitten accomplice, Allan Breck. Hamilton would gain lasting fame late in his acting career as Police Commissioner Gordon on the Batman television series (1966-68). In two episodes of that show’s first season, Hamilton would be joined by George Sanders as the first actor to play the villain Mr. Freeze. 

The 1930s launched many film series featuring sleuths of all sorts. Many probably considered the Saint films just more of the same. Yet these jaunty flicks were distinguished by George Sanders’ assured performance as a witty and quick-witted hero that dealt with crime as if it was just a lark.