redneck twat”), so there’s no sense that whitebread victims are superior to slaughtered ethnic, immoral or elderly characters. However, the equation of abuse victims and deformity with evil continues to be dubious: even the FRIDAY THE 13TH series gradually distanced itself from its initial depiction of Jason as a Down’s Syndrome sufferer, but freak thug Victor Crowley is so thinly-conceived he might as well be an action figure (Green claims to have invented the character when he was eight years old— which still doesn’t excuse his adult self in presenting such an identikit menace as a franchise wannabe). HATCHET moves along at a fair lick, doesn’t out- live its welcome, and its messi- ness is probably a side-effect of the anything-for-effect approach which quite often gets laughs or screams (though the first half hour has dead spots). It’s no great breakthrough for the genre, but it “plays.”
Starz Home Entertainment/ Anchor Bay’s DVD is value-for- money, thanks to the enthusias- tic participation of Green, who referees a lively commentary with cinematographer Will Barratt and actors Feldman, Moore and Rich- mond and is literally all over vari- ous “making-of” featurettes (which range from a standard general behind-the-scenes doc to a study of one particular gore ef- fect, a chronicle of onset pranks (including McNab being more frightened than in the film) and a sweet account of young Green’s relationship with his idol, Quiet Riot frontman, horror film direc- tor and FANGORIA Radio host Dee Snyder. Even if you don’t warm to the film, it’s hard to resist Green’s persistence in getting it made, shown and promoted. The behind-the-scenes stuff includes a lot of interesting material and information about the problems
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in shooting a swamp-set movie primarily in a desert. (Those in- clined to research further are rec- ommended to look up the porno CAMP CUDDLY PINES POWER TOOL MASSACRE, shot by day on the sets HATCHET used at night.) Also included is a trailer for SPIRAL, a film co-directed by Green and Moore which repre- sents a major advance over HATCHET in ambition and effect.
HOUDINI
1953, Legend Films, DD-1.0/CC/+, $14.98, 105m 50s, DVD-1 By Tim Lucas
If one can forgive this Techni-
color biopic, nominally based on the book HOUDINI, HIS LIFE by Harold Kellock, its many in- ventions and inaccuracies, it’s a fairly captivating couple of hours. Tony Curtis plays Harry Houdini (no reference is made to his birthname of Erich Weiss) with a twinkle; he meets cute with fu- ture wife Bess (a wasp-waisted Janet Leigh) while impersonating a carnival “wild man” and she gets away from him, and a few subsequent accidental meetings, making her seem like the escape artist. Then, as if by magic, she reappears and, after an offscreen marriage, makes Harry settle down as a 9-to-5 worker in a safe factory. After victory in a magic competition wins them a trip to Europe (“That’s where I’ve always wanted to go!”), Houdini be- comes a star overseas, with Bess as his skimpily-attired stage as- sistant and returns to America only after acquiring some bluish gray at the temples and the valet (Torin Thatcher) of the fictional Johann von Schweger, suppos- edly the only magician ever to achieve a state of dematerializa- tion. Houdini overcomes the in- difference of the US press by staging suspended straitjacket
and locked safe escapes, but the death of his mother (Angela Clark) sets him off on a séance- busting spiritualism kick that cul- minates in his attempt to escape from Von Schweger’s aqueous “Pagoda Torture Cell.”
Revisiting this George Pal pro- duction, directed with charm by George Marshall (THE GHOST BREAKERS), one is surprised by the extent to which it foreshad- ows later Pal productions like THE 7 FACES OF DR. LAO (Curtis appears in many different carny and theatrical guises, in- cluding the wild man, an old man and a gillman-type creature, and there are lots of rowdy cowboys in his audiences) and DOC SAV- AGE, MAN OF BRONZE (nearly all of Houdini’s performances are set to Souza marches). There are oddities about the film, like the way European audiences always attempt to spoil Houdini’s stage act with public accusations of fraud (have they no concept of “show business”?) and the way it is complemented later by Houdini’s determination to ex- pose fraudulent mediums, and the later episodes in the increas- ingly episodic storyline look re- shuffled in the editing room, judging from the way Curtis’ hair sometimes turns darker. (He doesn’t exactly die in the final scene, though it’s filmed in a way that suggests this.) Also, a taxi- cab scene with reporter Simms (THE THING’s Douglas Spencer) evinces the most inept rear screen projection we’ve ever seen; we actually see the splice through the rear window and the looping of the footage.
Filmed in three-strip Techn- icolor, Legend’s 1.33:1 HOUDINI (originally 1.37:1) generally looks attractive but there are in- termittent signs of the source negative layers shrinking differ- ently, leaving some of the col- ors imperfectly matched and
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