STANLEY (1972)

Director: William Grefé

Writers: Gary Crutcher, William Grefé

Producer: William Grefé

Cast: Chris Robinson, Alex Rocco, Steve Alaimo, Mark Harris, Marcia Knight (as Marcie Knight), Susan Carroll, Rey Baumel, Paul Avery, Gary Crutcher, Pamela Talus, Milton ‘Butterball’ Smith, William Marquez, Mel Pape, (and uncredited cast) Charles Lawlor, Melanie Grefé, Frank Weed, Julio C. Chávez

Tim Ochopee is a Seminole Indian living alone in his shack amidst the Florida Everglades. His Vietnam War experiences have soured him on humanity. He feels more kinship with the many snakes that he has caught and cares for in his home. Tim’s closest companion is the rattlesnake he names Stanley. When various locals further aggravate the disturbed young man’s misanthropy, Tim uses his venomous pets to enforce his sense of justice.

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Since 1971’s Willard was a big hit at the box office, animal-inflicted-horror films were all the rage for the rest of the decade. Florida filmmaker William Grefé was savvy enough to hop on that trend early. That surely inspired Grefé’s dream, which formed the story basis of his weaponized-snake flick Stanley.

This film takes a slow-burn approach by establishing the setting, psychology of the protagonist, and the conflicts that protagonist has with the rest of the main characters. This certainly seems to be a Willard-modeled template, though the setting and characters are unique here.

But snakes alive! No time is wasted in immediately rousing the audience’s ophidiophobia. Our maladjusted hero, Tim Ochopee, is bitten by a venomous snake in the very first scene. Tim takes it in stride and adds the slithering reptile to his vast array of snakes that he keeps as pets in his humble home. We soon learn that snakes are the only true friends the reclusive Vietnam War veteran has.

Chris Robinson stars as lead character Tim Ochopee. Robinson was a prolific actor on television, and he is probably best remembered for continuing roles in the soap operas General Hospital (1963–present), Another World (1964–99), and The Bold and the Beautiful (1987–present).

Robinson is one of the many Caucasian actors impersonating Native Americans in this film’s era. Details of his character’s backstory are sketchy. Although his Tim Ochopee is referred to by the locals as an Indian, there is one moment when he says that he does not feel like he is either an Indian or a white man. This could be a throwaway indication he may be of mixed-race heritage and that his blue-green eyes are appropriate for his character.

What will probably impress the most about Robinson’s performance in Stanley is how much interaction he has with snakes. It is absolutely vital for this story that his character is completely comfortable mingling with his unusual pets. He is constantly talking to them, removing them from their cages to crawl all over the floor of his home, draping them around his neck, and even setting places at his dinner table for a couple of them. His petting and conversations with his closest chum, the rattlesnake Stanley, makes the poisonous, scaly critter seem almost cuddly.

Not only Robinson, but many other cast members are in very close proximity to the snakes in the film. Even with the on-set snake wrangler’s coaching and milking of the poisonous snakes’ venom, this had to be quite a challenge for the cast to be able to focus on their performances while their slithering co-stars are around. There were some measures taken with the snakes, such as defanging, that helped ensure actors’ safety. Unfortunately, there seems to be quite a bit of snake abuse happening in the film that just would not fly today. I can only hope that the abuse was only inflicted on some of the snakes that had died in captivity, but that appears doubtful in a couple of shots.

Stoic recluse Tim Ochopee is confronted by some obnoxious louts (Steve Alaimo, Mark Harris, and Paul Avery) in the employ of Richard Thomkins. This entrepreneur’s business-model is dependent on harvesting the reptiles in the Everglades for their skins to be used as fashion accessories. Thomkins’ philosophy is that he should be appreciated for making “worthless” animals into something valuable (belts, vests, shoes, etc.) It is not only Thomkins’ predation-for-profit of Tim’s beloved snakes that creates conflict; Tim’s father was “accidentally” shot by one of Thomkins’ goons.

As Richard Thomkins, Alex Rocco’s performance is delightfully despicable. He is a soulless capitalist creep who thinks everything and everyone is for sale. Thomkins not only pays for the company of his “girlfriend” (Pamela Talus), he also leers at his teenage daughter (Susan Carroll), who he thinks should respect him because his money provides everything she could want. His vanity and insecurity make him quite entertaining. We watch Thomkins primping before his poolside mirror as he performs a series of pointless and low-effort motions, as if they will somehow maintain his physique. The ridiculous dumbbells he curls are little more than paperweights. His loud swim trunks perfectly complement the frivolous nature of this character.

Alex Rocco is probably the most recognizable cast member in Stanley. His exploitation movie roots were planted with his very first film role in Russ Meyer’s Motorpsycho (1965). He would become a ubiquitous face as a guest-star on many television series for decades and was a busy character actor in feature films. Rocco would be awarded a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a comedy television series as Al Floss in The Famous Teddy Z (1989–90). Perhaps his most high-profile role was as Moe Greene in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). While Rocco was in Miami, Florida doing promotion for Coppola’s film, he squeezed in his enjoyably hissable role for Stanley.

Without a doubt, Gloria is the most important character in Stanley. Why? Because she is this film’s featured burlesque dancer, of course! I must admit that her stirring my adolescent loins (when I first saw Stanley on late- night television before I even knew I had loins) has endeared this flick to me. Ahhh, those never-to-be-forgotten formative experiences… They have honed the cinematic insight and critical perception that I know you all appreciate and have come to expect here.

While charming the trouser snakes at The Climax club (and in the film’s audience), Gloria’s dance routine is distinguished by brandishing the snakes that Tim lends to her for the act. It is an extra kink she adds later to her performance that pushes our protagonist even further over the edge. However, early on she proves to me that Tim must already have a few screws loose if he’d rather snuggle with snakes than Gloria. Perhaps he is afraid of being gored by Gloria’s fearsome, false eyelashes.

Marcia Knight appeared in three of director Grefé’s 1970s films. Her filmography is quite limited, but she seems to have made her movie debut back in 1961’s inept-movie exemplar The Beast of Yucca Flats. Knight is quite good here as Gloria. She is embittered and a bit sad as an aging exotic dancer stuck with her disrespectful, money-grubbing hubby (Rey Baumel) who owns the club where she works. Even when Knight’s Gloria does the wrong thing, we understand why. Hell, with a beer in my hand and her on stage, I’d let Gloria get away with murder. Gloria has not only cultivated my critical faculties, she has also nurtured nuance in my wishy-washy morality.

Exploitation films just can’t serve up too much cheesecake, so we have sexy Susan Carroll around to add to that beauty-and-the-beasts vibe. As Susie Thomkins, the impudent, rebellious, and promiscuous teenage daughter of this flick’s biggest heel, she hates her greedy and intolerant father. I find it quite refreshing and honest that this film does not make Susie some idealized moral counterpoint to her awful old man; she is not really very likable. It stands to reason that she might be spoiled being raised by a rich jerk like Richard Thomkins, and that some of his lack of tact might rub off on her.

Therefore, it’s up to our maladjusted hero to give us someone to root for. Once all the foes of Tim Ochopee step up, and then step way over the line, our snake-loving loner starts slinging serpents around to do his “dirty work.” That’s what we all are waiting for, right? Those oh so mellow ’70s had no room for the “I’m okay—you’re okay” philosophy at the drive-in. Yeah, yeah, I’m still trying to justify my Gloria-influenced, wishy-washy morality.

THE NIGHT STRANGLER (1973)

Director: Dan Curtis

Writer: Richard Matheson (based on characters created in Jeff Rice’s novel The Kolchak Papers)

Producer: Dan Curtis

Cast: Darren McGavin, Jo Ann Pflug, Simon Oakland, Scott Brady, Wally Cox, Margaret Hamilton, John Carradine, Nina Wayne, Al Lewis, Ivor Francis, Richard Anderson, Virginia Peters, Kate Murtagh, Diane Shalet, Anne Randall, Francoise Burnheim, Regina Parton.

Veteran reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) relocates in Seattle, Washington looking for work. He runs into the newspaper editor he used to work for in Las Vegas, Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland), and gets hired. As Kolchak’s luck would have it, he is soon investigating a series of murders just as strange as those he reported on back in Las Vegas. Women are being strangled by a killer who leaves traces of rotted flesh on their throats and extracts blood from the base of their skulls. Once again, Kolchak runs afoul of the authorities who don’t want to accept the incredible sounding facts he uncovers about the crimes.

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The Night Strangler is the equally entertaining sequel to the ratings blockbuster telefilm The Night Stalker (1972). Once again, the theme of journalism oppression by the authorities is as prevalent as the horror. Both Dan Curtis and Richard Matheson are involved again. This time producer Curtis also directs. Matheson’s script is an original story using the two characters of newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak and his exasperated editor, Tony Vincenzo, from the previous film that was based on a Jeff Rice novel. Rice, in turn, would write a novelization of this sequel film.

Some may feel that The Night Strangler is something of a rehash of The Night Stalker, but it has an energy all its own. It is loaded with funny and distinctive characters, most of whom Kolchak can’t help rubbing the wrong way. This leads to many bust-out-loud-laughing moments, yet the humor is never at the expense of the horror. We are still fully invested in the setting and situations Carl Kolchak is investigating.

Speaking of setting, that is often as important as character and motivation in a good horror tale. Like the earlier film, The Night Strangler takes place in a city not often dealt with, especially on television back in the ’70s. Seattle provides not only a different locale, but screenwriter Matheson delves into a strange-but-true bit of its history to add another layer of mystery and the bizarre to his story; it is an essential part of the killer’s character.

The main concept for this film’s menace seems to have a strong precedent in the Hammer Films horror movie The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), which was a remake of Paramount Pictures’ The Man in Half Moon Street (1945). Matheson’s story brings plenty of other elements into this film to keep it fresh and exciting, and his use of the Seattle Underground is a great idea.

First published in 1950, Richard Matheson was a very innovative and influential writer of fantasy stories. His horror tales often placed a menace in the contemporary settings and times of his readers. This made his stories more relatable and potentially unsettling for his audience. Matheson’s prolific output would also include screenplays for films and television. Many of the best-remembered episodes of TV’s The Twilight Zone (1959–64) were scripted by Matheson. He wrote most of director Roger Corman’s film adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories in the 1960s. In the ’70s, Matheson scripted two important movies that helped ensure popularity and respect for the burgeoning made-for-TV film medium: Duel (1971—based on Matheson’s short story and directed by Steven Spielberg in his feature film debut) and the first Carl Kolchak adventure, The Night Stalker.

Producer Dan Curtis admired Richard Matheson’s writing, but he had once offended the writer when offering an option to make a film based on a Matheson story. Matheson had resented such a low-figure bid for his work. That earlier Curtis production never materialized, but when the opportunity for Curtis to produce The Night Stalker arrived, he had a tough time overcoming Matheson’s grudge to get his “favorite writer” to do the screenplay. Once they got past that initial acrimony, Curtis and Matheson became cordial and would collaborate on more ’70s telefilms.

The Night Strangler repeats the narrative hook of the dedicated journalist tracking down another weird serial killer. Both writer Matheson and producer-director Curtis must have felt that more overt humor would keep the sequel from appearing formulaic. Matheson had already proven his merit writing for laughs in the horror comedies The Raven (1963) and The Comedy of Terrors (1963). While the first Kolchak film was laced with cynicism and humor, Matheson’s original screenplay for this sequel has even more amusing characters collaborating or clashing with our newshawk hero. Since all this humor arises from character quirks, egos, and conflicting agendas, it does not diminish the threat and intrigue of the horror being investigated. Dan Curtis’s direction still enhances the creep factor and delivers some fine jump scares.

Jo Ann Pflug co-stars as Carl Kolchak’s belly dancer friend and psychology undergrad, Louise Harper. She is another sexy and appealing lady that our reporter hero manages to hook up with, and she becomes much more involved in Kolchak’s investigations than his last girlfriend. Pflug would also star in the next year’s Curits-Matheson TV terror, Scream of the Wolf (1974).

Scott Brady plays Police Captain Roscoe Schubert, Kolchak’s most immediate obstacle to his latest journalistic crusade. Schubert actually seems quite reasonable if inflexible; however, he is driven to rage by Kolchak’s pushy antics.

Horror movie stalwart John Carradine is Llewellyn Crossbinder, the stuffy and domineering publisher of Kolchak’s newspaper, The Seattle Daily Chronicle.

Wally Cox (TV’s Mr. Peepers—1952–55) is The Chronicle’s meek and forgotten researcher, Titus Berry, and he proves to be a great help to Kolchak’s investigations.

Margaret Hamilton (The Wicked Witch of the West in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz) has a cameo as the cranky Professor Crabwell who gives Kolchak some ideas about the killer’s motivation.

Al Lewis (Grandpa in The Munsters TV series—1964–66) portrays a vagrant living in the Seattle Underground.

Richard Anderson, best known as Oscar Goldman in both The Six Million Dollar Man (1973–78) and The Bionic Woman (1976–78) TV series, brings fanatical intensity and a touch of madness to his brief role of Dr. Richard Malcolm.

Dan Curtis’s frequent music composer, Robert Cobert, returns with a revamped theme from The Night Stalker. Cobert also contributes other jazzy and creepy pieces that perfectly suit this contemporary urban horror story.

This second Carl Kolchak television movie was also quite successful, and plans were made for a third film that was to be called The Night Killers. Richard Matheson collaborated on that script with William F. Nolan, another writer who would also provide creepy scripts for future Dan Curtis productions. That third Kolchak feature film was never made, but on Friday the 13th in September of 1974, Kolchak: The Night Stalker debuted as a twenty-episode television series. Curtis and Matheson were not involved in the weekly show, as they both felt that the Kolchak concept was played out. Darren McGavin would not only star in the ongoing series; he was also the co-producer. The series was a ratings flop in its day, but it was great, spooky fun and has developed a devoted cult following over the years. It influenced Chris Carter when he created the television series The X-Files (1993–2002, 2016–18).

The 1970s were the heyday of made-for-television movies. There were many in the horror genre that deserve to be made available again. Of them all, the Carl Kolchak adventures The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler are the most deserving of classic status. Those two films are all-time favorites of mine and must-see for true horror buffs.

THE NIGHT STALKER (1972)

Director: John Llewellyn Moxey

Writers: Richard Matheson, Max Hodge (uncredited), adapting the novel The Kolchak Papers by Jeff Rice

Producer: Dan Curtis

Cast: Darren McGavin, Carol Lynley, Simon Oakland, Ralph Meeker, Claude Akins, Charles McGraw, Kent Smith, Barry Atwater, Larry Linville, Jordan Rhodes, Elisha Cook, Jr., Stanley Adams, (and uncredited cast members) Virginia Gregg. Patty Elder, Irene Cagen, Don Ames, Buddy Joe Hooker, Peggy Rea, Edward Faulkner, Rudy Doucette, Sig Frohlich, Eddie Garrett, Monty O’Grady, Mark Russell, George Simmons, Al Roberts

Las Vegas newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) is assigned to cover the murders of various women found drained of their blood. The killer (Barry Atwater) proves to be elusive and dangerous, even to the police that try capturing him. Kolchak constantly grates on the local authorities in his pursuit of the truth. When the truth Kolchak wants to report suggests that the murderer may be a supernatural vampire, he also encounters resistance from his editor (Simon Oakland). Yet his reporter’s zeal and ambition drive Kolchak onward, regardless of the risks.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

The early 1970s seemed to be an era hellbent on resurrecting the vampire as a modern-day, movie menace. Films like Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) and producer-director Dan Curtis’s House of Dark Shadows (1970), his feature film adaptation of his Dark Shadows television series (1966-71), opened the decade with contemporary spins on that Gothic horror.

1972's telefilm The Night Stalker is one of the finest horror films ever made. Great writing, characters, performances, and direction all contribute to the excellence of this production. It is the concept that really energizes the whole thing: a modern-day metropolis and its officials having to deal with the possibility of a fiend from folklore being responsible for the serial killings making headlines. The Night Stalker dumps what seems to be a classic vampire right into the lap of 1970s Las Vegas. There is no way to explain the menace rationally, and the authorities refuse to acknowledge it for fear of not only creating panic, but also to protect business interests (gambling and tourism), as well as law enforcement reputations that may look foolish admitting to the existence of a “real live vampire.” 

The screenplay, by fantasy writer Richard Matheson, is based on the then-unpublished novel The Kolchak Papers by Jeff Rice. There has been a bit of speculation about the originality of Rice’s vampire-in-a-modern-day-American-city premise, as the 1965 novel Progeny of the Adder by Leslie H. Whitten also dealt with a similar situation in Washington, D.C., from the perspective of the police rather than a newspaper reporter. Rice claimed not to be familiar with the earlier work when he wrote his novel, and there are many instances where similar ideas occur to different creators. As a matter of fact, long before the Whitten and Rice works, the king of all vampire tales, Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, took place in what was then modern-day London, England. For that matter, modern-day London was also the setting for the 1931 film version of Dracula as well as the 1943 film The Return of the Vampire, both starring cinema’s vampire icon Bela Lugosi. 1958’s movie The Return of Dracula had the famous bloodsucker relocating in a small, modern-day, California town. 1970’s Count Yorga, Vampire also had its title fiend settling into modern California. All the previous works mention that modern society does not readily accept the existence of the vampire, yet the Jeff Rice novel and its film adaptation really stress the corruption of the establishment being the main obstacle to dealing with the supernatural menace.

This was the first collaboration between writer Richard Matheson and producer Dan Curtis. Matheson had written many fantasy and horror stories in prose and screenplays for the cinema and television. Curtis had produced the 1968 television adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and was the creator of the daytime television Gothic soap opera series Dark Shadows. Curtis would later direct, as well as produce, more Matheson-scripted films. Anything these two guys were involved in is worth checking out.

Director John Llewellyn Moxey had directed the British horror film The City of the Dead (1960), aka Horror Hotel. That was the first horror production by the producing team of Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg, who would later helm Amicus Productions. That company would become Hammer Films’ chief British rival in horror film production during the ’60s and ’70s. Llewellyn would later move to America and direct a lot of television work, including more suspense and horror projects.

Producer Dan Curtis’s go-to-guy for his soundtracks, Robert Cobert, composed a score for The Night Stalker that is full of energy and eeriness with a contemporary urban feel. It puzzles me how Kolchak’s creator, author Jeff Rice, could have hated this film’s fantastic music. I think Cobert’s music is perfect.

While working as a painter for Columbia Pictures, Darren McGavin’s long acting career began when he managed to get hired for a bit part in Columbia’s 1945 film A Song to Remember. He then moved to New York City to study acting and performed in stage productions while also appearing in live-television dramas. By the mid ’50s, McGavin was starting to get featured roles in movies while he was becoming a television mainstay. In addition to guest-starring roles in episodes of many television programs, he also headlined several series: Casey, Crime Photographer (1951–52),  Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (1958–59), Riverboat (1959–61), and The Outsider (1968–69).

When Darren McGavin portrayed news reporter Carl Kolchak, he created one of my all-time favorite heroes. He is likable but irascible. His goal to report the truth is both noble and self-serving. He is not infallible or fearless, yet he presses on. He is a very human and, ultimately, tragic character. Carl Kolchak has certainly become Darren McGavin’s signature role, perhaps only to be rivaled by his “the Old Man” character, young Ralphie’s father in the yuletide classic A Christmas Story (1983).

Ralph Meeker plays Bernie Jenks, Kolchak’s pal at the FBI. It is fun to see both McGavin and Meeker teaming up in this film, as both actors had portrayed that most hard-boiled of private detectives, Mike Hammer. Meeker portrayed Hammer in one of the greatest film noir flicks, Kiss Me Deadly (1955), three years before McGavin played another interpretation of that character in the syndicated television series.

It is suggested that Kolchak’s girlfriend, Gail Foster, is an escort or hooker, which was pretty daring for the hero’s love interest of a 1972 TV-movie. As Gail, the adorable Carol Lynley makes us root even more for a happy ending to play out for our reporter hero.

Simon Oakland, as Kolchak’s editor Anthony Vincenzo, establishes the ongoing friction between the two characters that would become ever more entertaining in the sequel to this film and the twenty episodes of the weekly ABC television series that followed.

There are plenty of other memorable character actors that provide great support such as Larry Linville, Charles McGraw, Kent Smith, Claude Akins, and Elisha Cook, Jr. As in all the Kolchak stories that would follow, these other characters provide a lot of interesting and often humorous conflicts with Carl Kolchak.

Of course, the greatest conflict is created by “suspect” (as the Las Vegas establishment would have it) Janos Skorzeny. Without a single word of dialogue, Barry Atwater portrays the creepiest vampire ever. FBI man Bernie Jenks provides the only information known about this character during a press conference. That makes us relate to the killer in the same way that we would if he and his crimes were being reported to us through the news media. This is the same way we are made aware of all too many other real-life killers among us. It is this sense of matter-of-fact reality that enables The Night Stalker to get under our skin.

I was just a kid tuning in the boob tube on the cold winter night of January 11, 1972 when I first saw The Night Stalker. I knew nothing about it beforehand, but this little ghoul realized he had hit the jackpot during the second scene when the leggiest beauty (Patty Elder) he had ever ogled met her grisly fate in a Las Vegas alley. The Night Stalker made television ratings history and proved that sometimes something can be enormously popular because it deserves to be.

THIRTEEN WOMEN (1932)

Director: George Archainbaud

Writers: Bartlett Cormack, Samuel Orniz adapting the 1932 novel by Tiffany Thayer

Producer: David O. Selznick

Cast: Irene Dunne, Myrna Loy, Ricardo Cortez, Jill Esmond, Peg Entwistle, Mary Duncan, C. Henry Gordon, Kay Johnson, Florence Eldridge, Harriet Hagman, Edward Pawley, Wally Albright, Blanche Friderici, Lloyd Ingraham (uncredited), Phyllis Fraser (cut scenes), Betty Furness (cut scenes)

Ursula Georgi (Myrna Loy) is a Eurasian beauty with the mystic ability to force her will on others. She has controlled an astrologer, the Swami Yogadachi (C. Henry Gordon). He had made horoscopes for twelve sorority sisters who were Ursula Georgi’s American finishing school classmates. Georgi forges new horoscopes from the swami and sends them to each of the sorority sisters. Each of the mailed horoscopes now predicts doom and seems to compel each of the women receiving them to perform self-destructive acts.

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Myrna Loy probably found her greatest film fame as half of the crime-solving couple of Nick (William Powell) and Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934) and its five sequels. Prior to that, she had been fighting typecasting as exotic, non-American vamps. Her most notorious role was as the depraved daughter of Boris Karloff’s diabolical criminal genius Dr. Fu Manchu in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). Just one month before that film’s release, Loy appeared as the sensuous and sinister Eurasian Ursula Georgi in Thirteen Women.

Loy’s performance is restrained, yet she commands every scene she is in; you just can’t take your eyes off her. Her lovely features are suitably enhanced with exotic eye makeup that suggests her mysticism and hypnotic power. During the film’s climax when she is venting about her backstory and grievance that provide her murderous motive, Loy’s performance still maintains enough dignity that we can empathize a bit with her.

At first glance, it may seem that this is just another foreign stereotype of Asian villainy being set up as a film baddie. But this movie eventually reveals how the casual cruelty of American attitudes about class and race cause this foreigner to strike back. That oh so American virtue of pulling oneself up by their bootstraps did not spare the Ursula Georgi character from being ostracized due to the desperate circumstances of her impoverished background and “half breed” status.

That final vendetta reveal, as well as the victims-picked-off-one-by-one storyline, is why Thirteen Women has been cited as a precursor to the slasher film. Many vengeance-seeking slasher villains are revealed to have suffered a trauma dealt to them at a young age or in a school setting. But Loy’s Ursula Georgi doesn’t need to bloody her pretty hands when the weapon she wields is the power of suggestion.

The application of that deadly control is rather vague. It seems that the sorority sisters who are targets for Ursula Georgi’s rage are all susceptible to suggestion by the horoscopes of the Swami Yogadachi predicting their fates. Yogadachi’s horoscopes originally foretold happiness for the sorority sisters. As the swami’s secretary, Georgi writes new horoscopes foretelling doom that she sends in his name to her hated former classmates. Due to their faith in the swami’s horoscopes, these women are compelled to behave in ways that assure their downfall. The Swami Yogadachi is one mystic foreigner who, in turn, is under the sway of another, the hypnotically alluring Ursula Georgi. Her mysticism is weaponizing his. We soon meet another man (Edward Pawley) who is practically Georgi’s henchman because he is also similarly smitten with her. Georgi can also command people to instantly fall asleep. Originally, this film tested poorly with audiences and later had 14 minutes cut from it. Perhaps the missing footage explained more about how all this occultism works. It is just as likely that the filmmakers did not bother. American filmgoers would accept mysterious foreigners from exotic places having strange abilities Westerners just can’t understand. However, all this inexplicable mysticism does enable a fitting irony and ambiguity for the film’s climax.

Irene Dunne distinguished herself in screwball comedies and had been nominated for an Oscar five times without winning. She earned her first nomination in her second film, the 1931 Western Cimmaron. The following year Dunne is starring in Thirteen Women as wealthy single mother Laura Stanhope. Of all the victims of Ursula Georgi’s wrath, Laura earns the most of our sympathy as Georgi targets her young son (Wally Albright) for death. Despite this stress, Dunne’s Laura Stanhope seems the most levelheaded of all the potential horoscope victims.

Ricardo Cortez plays the detective investigating the strange series of deaths inflicted by Ursula Georgi. As Police Sergeant Barry Clive, he meets Dunne’s Laura Stanhope, and something tells me he likes what he sees. Cortez had co-starred with Dunne earlier the same year in the drama Symphony of Six Million (1932). He already had an extensive filmography and had played detective Sam Spade in 1931’s The Maltese Falcon, the first film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s novel.

This strange thriller’s acts of self-destruction were tragically prescient for an actress portraying one of the doomed sorority sisters. In Thirteen Women, stage performer Peg Entwistle had her only film credit playing the small role of Hazel Clay Cousins. Unfortunately, just one month before the film's premiere, Peg Entwistle would achieve her greatest fame by committing suicide leaping off the top of the famous Hollywoodland sign. Her motive for this tragic act is left unclear by her cryptic suicide note. Such a sad fate for an actress whose stage performance had inspired none other than the great Bette Davis to pursue acting.

If one attributes any significance to karma or superstition, it may come as no surprise that Thirteen Women was unlucky at the box office. In retrospect, this weird film is appreciated as another pre-Code curiosity that was edgy, unconventional, perhaps eventually influential, and now seems to have a reputation verging on cult status.