There’s a bit of other stuff in here, too (as there’d damn well better be, considering how frigging late this update is), but the main unifying theme this time is the inglorious coda to an illustrious career:
Berserk (1967), in which Joan Crawford looks way the hell better in that outfit than you’re going to when you’re her age…
Strait-Jacket (1964), in which William Castle realizes that an over-the-hill star is the ultimate gimmick…
A Thousand and One Nights (1945), in which new ground is broken in the realm of odious comedy (you can’t call it odious comic relief when it’s actually the entire point of the film)…
Trog (1970), in which Crawford makes her final bow while babysitting a refugee from Stanley Kubrick’s junkroom…
and…
Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922), in which Benjamin Christensen gets a four-decade jump on the rest of the world as regards witch-burning, nunsploitation, and Mondo reportage.
#1 by Blake Matthews on January 27, 2008 - 2:49 pm
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The only thing I remember from Trog was Ray Harryhausen’s dinosaur footage from the unmade “Animal World”.
#2 by Blake Matthews on January 27, 2008 - 2:55 pm
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Just one more memory: The first time I ever heard of Beserk! and Staight-Jacket was when they appeared on TNT’s “100% Weird” on a triple-bill with “The Legend of Lizzie Borden.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to guess that night’s theme.
#3 by lyzard on January 27, 2008 - 5:12 pm
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We did Witchcraft Through The Ages in a film study course I took some years back, and we had more walk-outs during that than anything else we ever looked at – most of them during the “baby boiling” sequence, I’m sure I don’t know why….
#4 by Chadly on January 28, 2008 - 2:00 am
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SPOILER WARNING FOR THE CRAWFORD FLICKS!
You ever notice that it’s always Crawford’s character’s daughters who always wound up being the killer in those old skeeze-noirs? (No wonder Christina wrote that book.)
#5 by Matthew Fudge on January 28, 2008 - 5:43 am
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What amuses me about all those sixties ‘aahhh here comes an old woman that you thought was attractive in 1940..isn’t the aging process scary!’ movies, is that these women actually aren’t that old.
#6 by El Santo on January 28, 2008 - 8:47 am
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60 was a lot older in the 60’s than it is today, though.
#7 by KeithA on January 28, 2008 - 10:11 am
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My reaction to old Bette David was always, “Ahhhrrrr! No! It’s terrifies us! It burns us! Make it goes away!” But then, my reaction to young Bette Davis was the same.
#8 by Matthew Fudge on January 28, 2008 - 10:20 am
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I reckon it’s because these days major celebrities never go out of the public eye, so there’s no surprise factor to the revelation that they look old. Perhaps the modern equivalent is “oh my god look at Burt Reynolds plastic surgery!”, there could be a whole bunch of horror movies based around once good-looking stars who’ve had botched facelifts…. Mickey Rouke in The Man With the Melting Face,
#9 by KeithA on January 28, 2008 - 1:28 pm
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Or my reaction to seeing an older Diane Lane: “My God! I’m still in love!”