I WAKE UP SCREAMING! Oliver Stone on the Making of SEIZURE Introduction and Interview by Tim Lucas
I was the Cincinnati “bureau” of CINEFANTASTIQÜE, in which capacity I saw every new release of the horror/ sci-fi persuasion, after which I dutifully crammed a paragraph-length critique onto a postpaid card and dispatched it to publisher/editor Frederick S. Clarke in Oak Park, Illinois. This particular matinee was a double bill (“ 180 Minutes of Murder and Madness!”) composed of new horror fare from (the now-defunct) Cinerama Releasing: THE BEAST MUST DIE, the really exciting item from afar, starred Peter Cushing and was the latest production of Britain’s Amicus Productions; the co-feature, something called SEI­ ZURE, starred Jonathan Frid and Martine Beswicke. The director was a rookie named Oliver Stone. Oh well, as long as there’s nothing better to do... Contrary to my expectations, THE BEAST MUST
I
DIE was a real dog (so was its werewolf!), ranking with the very worst Amicus films. SEIZURE, on the other hand, was almost unbelievably good. Here was a horror film that wasn’t afraid to challenge its audience: it dispensed with narrative in favor of the fluid ambi­ ence of a harrowing dream; it replaced plot with a series of contests in which victory meant the differ­ ence between life and death; it stood its ground and confronted its audience with dark, unflinching, philo­ sophical questions.
SEIZURE
1974, Prism Video (USA), HF/OP, $59.98, 94m 17s Starmaker Video (USA), HF, $29.98 (SP), $9.95 (EP), 94m 8s Astral Video (Canada), OP, NS FI, 94m 17s
T WAS ALMOST twenty years ago— in early 1975 to be exact—that I attended a
certain, fateful matinee at Cincinnati’s (now- demolished) RKO Grand Theater. Back then,
SEIZURE is the story of Edmund Blackstone
(Jonathan Frid), a writer of horror fiction beset by a recurring, heart-straining nightmare, which (for some reason) he is adapting into a macabre children’s book. In the nightmare, as in life, Edmund and his wife Nicole (Christine Pickles) invite a group of friends to their lakeside cottage in Quebec for the weekend. It is a motley crew, made up of millionaire Charlie (Joe Sirola), his younger girlfriend Mikki (Mary Woronov), a social dropout named Mark (Troy Donahue), Edmund’s mentor Serge (Roger De Koven) and his wife Eunice (Anne Meacham, who yearns for spiritual contact with her late husband Arris), and others. As the mixed group bicker about sex and money and their different feelings about these loaded topics, the radio reports the escape of three psychos from a nearby asylum, led by Jezebel Jones, a philosophy professor incarcerated for the murder of a student. That night, Blackstone’s home is invaded by three murderous apparitions—who maybe the asylum escapees, or the characters he has created for his work-in-progress. They are Kali (Martine Beswicke), the Queen of Evil; The Spider (Hervé Villechaize), a sadistic dwarf; and Jackal the Giant (Henry Baker), a disfigured executioner. During the five hours between Midnight and Dawn, these demons set Edmund and his guests to tests of physical endurance, punishing the losers with merciless death, until Edmund is left with only one chip to buy his own survival—the life of his young son Jason (Timothy Ousey). This final horror causes Edmund to awaken, on the verge of another heart attack, but the dream is not over. The woman in bed beside him is not Nicole, but Kali— trapping Blackstone in a cyclical nightmare from which there is no escape. For its time,SEIZCIRE was a powerful piece of work,
and when I returned home from the screening, I didn’t reach for my prepaid cards—I called Fred Clarke. I wanted the assignment of reviewing this one.
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