Don't Answer the Phone! (Robert Hammer, 1980)

It's Don't! Season on the Decap Zom Vamp B-bath (I'm rebranding the blog title to appeal to our diminished attention spans). For the next two or three months, and broken up by the occasional early '40s movie that may or may not tell us what we should or shouldn't be doing, we're going to be tackling films whose titles urge us, "Don't ____!" I'm way ahead of our first don't! movie's command. I've been letting the phone go to the answering machine or voicemail for 30+ years.

Let's be honest. The title of this low-budget classic of late '70s/early '80s sleaze is a bit of a stretch, though phone content is plentiful. The movie's first victim answers a phone call from her mother shortly before being murdered, but she would've died even if no one called, and the call actually delays the murder by a few minutes. She should've kept answering the phone! Our killer makes a fake phone call in another victim's home in an attempt to calm her suspicions, but no one answers a pretend call, so warnings here are pointless. One of the murders happens during a call to a talk radio show, but, again, the victim is dead whether the radio station takes the call or not. One of our major characters is a therapist who also hosts the aforementioned radio show in which our killer is a frequent caller, so we're getting a little warmer on title suitability here, but is it enough to justify it? The other murders don't involve phones at all. Despite the ambiguous nature of whether you should or shouldn't answer the phone in the context of the film's killing spree, I'm going to allow it. A) Don't Answer the Phone! is simply a good title; B) You May or May Not Want to Answer the Phone, It's Totally Up to You! is a terrible title; and C) the movie came out 46 years ago.

Title aside, Don't Answer the Phone! is a compellingly oddball exploitation film with a deeply eccentric killer (intensely performed by Nicholas Worth) and frame after frame of Los Angeles local color back when the world had texture and atmosphere and grit and character and wasn't a homogeneous sewer of gray-box touch-screen phone-app aesthetics. (Get off my lawn, corporations!) The jokers and clowns on Letterboxd don't seem to like this one much, but I see something interesting to look at in almost every frame. Granted, it's pretty sleazy (maybe your problem but not mine), the killer's crimes are  disturbing and ugly (and because it's 1980, every woman gets her top ripped off), and some of the characters are a little too deliberately obnoxious, but this thing has seedy underbelly vibes for days and the locations and bit-part actors have so much flavor. I'm a sucker for that. You may accuse me of overrating movies that deliver these things, but that delivery is a big reason why I love the movies. I'm a junkie for the artistic presentation of stray details and behaviors, the bittersweetly haunted past-is-present psychogeography of cities captured on film, and the ineffable feelings these things rouse in me. Exploitation, drive-in, and low-budget genre films are especially good at capturing these moments and places, which are all more important to me than any plot or story.

Speaking of plot and story, Don't Answer the Phone! concerns Los Angeles serial murderer and rapist Kirk Smith (Nicholas Worth), a barrel-chested military-vet slab of a man and a sexual sadist with an inflated sense of self-worth, a hatred of women, and a love of pumping iron, grunting, drinking a beer shirtless while bragging to his dead father about beating up a black man, and calling in to a talk radio show while doing a horrible imitation of a Mexican accent (he's basically a composite of every MAGA voter with even more psychosexual weirdness). He makes his living as a photographer and uses his profession to lure some of his victims into a false sense of security, while using his military training to break into the homes of his other victims. Worth gives Kirk more genuine weirdness, personality, and identity than the usual slasher movie killer, committing fully to the part and giving every scene he's in a mood of unpredictability and danger while also presenting how pathetic the guy and his worldview are. (According to his friends and colleagues, the late Worth, despite looking like he could rip your face off without breaking a sweat, was a gentle sweetheart and a devout Christian who looked at this role as a challenge from God to present the world as it is.)

Homicide detectives Lt. Chris McCabe (James Westmoreland) and Sgt. Hatcher (Ben Frank) are a couple of cynical asshole cops with hearts of gold in charge of investigating the murders. Their methods are unorthodox, but they get results. (Momentary digression about Westmoreland. He had the same manager as Rock Hudson, and the manager decided Westmoreland needed a similar marquee-level pseudonym to rocket him to stardom, leading to Westmoreland's billing as Rad Fulton in the '50s and early-to-mid-'60s. He went back to his real name after ditching the manager in the late '60s.) 

Free clinic therapist Dr. Lindsay Gale (Flo Gerrish) is a committed professional who cares about her patients, and she's also a local celebrity, hosting a talk radio show where callers can get advice about their psychological problems. When Lt. McCabe and Dr. Gale's paths cross because of the murder investigation, McCabe is a jerk and Gale hates his guts. Of course this means they're going to fall in love by the third act. This is pretty standard generic movie biz, but it's so much more interesting in presentation. Westmoreland, Frank, and especially Gerrish give idiosyncratic but relaxed performances that infuse enough naturalistic behavior and oddball quirks into the movie clichés to make them feel fresh.

The murders themselves are disturbing and brutal, and these scenes may be rough going for anyone who has a tough time watching sexual violence. I am typically one of those people, but the presentation here never feels like the filmmakers are getting off on it, even when they're meeting the nudity quotas of the era. We mostly see the moments before and the beginnings of these attacks with the rest happening off screen, and the camera is generally in sympathy with the victims or focused on Kirk. These scenes aren't lingered upon, and the movie spends most of its running time on the behaviors of the characters, the detectives' investigation, Dr. Gale's life and work, and the streets and people of Los Angeles. The movie also lets you get to know the victims and their personalities even when they're onscreen for just a brief scene, and they all feel like real, three-dimensional people with lives outside the movie.

The filmmakers get great shots of West Hollywood and the clubs, movie theaters, bars, strip clubs, and porn shops of the era, including Gazzari's (also memorably featured in Cassavetes' The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, the pilot episode of The Rockford Files, and The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years) and the notorious dive bar The Balled Eagle (prominently featured in one of my favorite exploitation movies, 1982's Vice Squad). I also love the outdoor stairwell entrance to Dr. Gale's free clinic and the clinic's striking paint job, the radio station, and all the seedy porn shops, massage parlors, porn mag offices, and Kirk's rented photography studio.

The movie also gets how important it is to make all the supporting players, bit part actors, and extras as interesting as possible. Most contemporary movies and TV shows turn these roles into bland exposition machines, but this one sure doesn't. Everyone has personality and flavor, with some of my favorites being porn mag publisher Sam Gluckman (Chuck Mitchell, best known as Porky in the Porky's movies and John Cusack's boss at the burger joint in Better Off Dead), psychic Von Hammensveld (Chris Wallace), pimp Adkins (Stan Haze), hitchhiker Sue Ellen (Pamela Jean Bryant), model Joyce (Gail Jensen), and the multiple actors and actresses playing drug dealers, sex workers, johns, and street people, every single one of them bringing something to the party.

Director Robert Hammer was a one-and-done filmmaker, with Don't Answer the Phone! his only feature, but he's lived quite a life. In the military, he worked covert army operations. After leaving the military he worked as a photographer, studied karate under famous martial artist Ed Parker, became interested in filmmaking and shot mostly unreleased documentary footage for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and the Steve Miller Band (some of his CSNY footage ended up in a David Crosby doc), decided to make Don't Answer the Phone! guerilla-style without permits on the streets of Los Angeles, and spent some frustrating years unsuccessfully trying to get another film made before switching gears and becoming a corporate executive in the tech world (come on, man). I believe we all live weird lives because existence itself is weird, but even by those standards, he has a lot of us beat.

The Wolf Man (George Waggner, 1941)

Happy Halloween, ghouls and freaks. This year, we have a seasonally appropriate Universal monster classic. I couldn't be happier that this blog's movie choice roulette landed on The Wolf Man on such an auspicious date. In addition to kicking off Halloween weekend, yesterday was also drizzly and overcast, which fit the film's Gothic, fog-drenched atmosphere to a tee, and I made a big pot of turkey chili for the occasion. It was a solid day-before-Halloween night. (Turkey Chili and the Wolf Man would be great nicknames for a couple of rowdy bikers, by the way. "Brothers, Turkey Chili and the Wolf Man are riding in from Durango. We're gonna need at least three more kegs and way more cocaine.")

The Wolf Man has long been considered a horror classic, but people who know it only by its reputation or pop-cultural influence may be surprised by the movie's understated approach. (To be fair, the fog is not understated. Those fog machines are cranked to the max, baby.) It's a movie that relies on mood, atmosphere, and quiet tragedy instead of jump scares, menace, and sensationalism. I'd seen parts of it on television as a kid, but this was my extremely belated first time watching it in its entirety, and I was completely absorbed by both its mesmeric style and the quality of the classic Hollywood filmmaking.

Much of the credit for The Wolf Man's success, aside from the solid cast, is the trio of unique talents guiding the behind-the-scenes creative decisions. Curt Siodmak, a science fiction and horror novelist and screenwriter (his other credits include the Boris Karloff films Black Friday and The Ape, the Jacques Tourneur classic I Walked with a Zombie, The Beast with Five Fingers, and the plethora of movies adapted from or inspired by his novel Donovan's Brain) and the younger brother of great film noir director Robert Siodmak (the Siodmaks were German Jews who fled Nazi Germany, Curt for England and Robert for France before both men made the move to Hollywood), wrote the screenplay, and George Waggner, who also made another excellent Lon Chaney Jr.-starring horror movie called Man Made Monster (reviewed on this blog last May) and was sometimes credited as "George waGGner" to combat the frequent misspelling of his last name, served as director. Most of cinematographer Joseph A. Valentine's previous experience was on B-movies, low-budget Poverty Row pictures (including 1933's Night of Terror, reviewed on this blog in 2020), and teen romance movies marketed to adolescents, but his beautiful work on The Wolf Man led to three films for Hitchcock (Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt, and Rope), several Hollywood melodramas and films noir, and Victor Fleming's version of Joan of Arc with Ingrid Bergman in the lead.

Lon Chaney Jr. gets a lot of grief for his lack of dynamism and charisma (especially compared to his man-of-a-thousand-faces father, who dominated the silent era's horror films, adventures, and crime thrillers, and any movie that just needed a really weird guy), but he has an everyman persona and a sadness in his eyes that work well in certain roles, particularly his two horror films for Waggner (aka waGGner). In The Wolf Man, he plays Larry Talbot, the estranged son of a wealthy Welsh family. Larry has lived in the United States for 18 years, apparently enough time to lose his Welsh accent and gain an aw-shucks U.S. cadence. His older brother (not a twin but apparently identical if his painted portrait above the fireplace is accurate) was recently killed in a hunting accident, inspiring Larry to return home, make amends with his father Sir John (Claude Rains), and prepare to take over the estate, which is a big deal to his dad but seems like a pretty easy be-a-rich-guy-and-let-the-servants-do-the-work kinda gig to me. His dad's buddies include police captain Paul Montford (Ralph Bellamy), a childhood classmate of Larry's, and village doctor Lloyd (Warren William).

After a typically understated UK father/son reconciliation, Larry fixes Sir John's telescope and gets an eyeful of the woman living above the antique store across the street, Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers). Gwen and her father Charles (J. M. Kerrigan) run the antique store, and the Conliffes are longtime friends of the Talbots. Larry wastes no time pursuing Gwen, who doesn't know who Larry is despite him looking exactly like his dead brother. Larry is mostly a sympathetic guy, but he hits on Gwen in an aggressively smarmy way, telling her about the earrings she was wearing when he saw her through the telescope and where she put them in her bedroom. She's understandably creeped out (but also a little intrigued) and mentions both her father and her fiancé Frank (Patric Knowles, playing a classic '40s milquetoast) to try to get him to simmer down.

Larry gives her some jive about being psychic instead of 'fessing up about the telescope, but he does buy a cane with a wolf's head carved into the handle, leading to much talk about the local werewolf legends. He tells her he'll pick her up at 8:00 so they can take a walk and get their fortunes read by the gypsies who have recently arrived for the annual carnival and whose caravan is parked on the outskirts of the village. Gwen tells him she's engaged and has no intention of meeting him.

When the witching hour (minus four) of 8:00 p.m. arrives, Gwen is waiting for Larry after all, but she's brought along a friend, Jenny Williams (Fay Helm). The trio walk through the fog-shrouded forest and discuss the local werewolf legends until they arrive at the caravan. Two of the gypsies prepared to tell fortunes are a mother and son, Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya, who makes the most of every second she's onscreen and is the movie's secret MVP) and Bela (Bela Lugosi, excellent in a small but memorable role). Gwen and Larry saunter off by themselves while Bela attempts to read Jenny's fortune. Bela sees something in the fortune that stops him cold, alarming Jenny. He then tells her to leave immediately and come back tomorrow. Jenny runs off but is attacked by a wolf. Larry runs to help her after hearing her screams, but he's bitten on the chest while bashing the wolf with his cane, setting up the events that bedevil the entire village for the rest of the film.

Part of what keeps this movie so fresh 85 years later is its human touch and its lack of hammy theatrics. The actors give emotional performances, but those emotions are relayed with adjustments in facial expression and body language instead of cranked-up melodrama. Feelings are suppressed or endured until they can no longer be suppressed or endured. 

Academic interpretations of the film have read it as an allegory for puberty, the ego and the id, sexual repression, patriarchal guilt, the betrayal of our bodies through illness or accident, and the fascist creep of Europe in the years leading to WWII. I can see how all those readings could be applied, and they only add to the experience, but I think the film endures mostly because of the magic combination of its style and atmosphere and its two simple human stories of the struggle with our conscience when our behavior diverges from our values and how we deal with our lives when bad shit happens outside of our control.

The Wolf Man is deserving of its classic status and a great pick for Halloween weekend. I'm glad I finally caught up with the whole shebang after piecemeal childhood viewings. It's a worthy member of the classic Hollywood, classic horror, and Universal monster canons, and it was a belated triumph for makeup effects artist Jack Pierce, who finally got to use the werewolf design he'd created for Universal's previous werewolf movie, 1935's Werewolf of London (an excellent and underrated film that gets overshadowed by this one and which I reviewed on this blog in October of 2022).  

 

Werewolf of London star Henry Hull vetoed Pierce's initial werewolf design because he said it made him too unrecognizable. Some people think Hull had an ulterior motive of avoiding the hours of makeup the design required, but the plot of that movie really did hinge on the other characters recognizing the werewolf as their former colleague, so who knows? Pierce finally got to use his full werewolf design on Lon Chaney Jr. seven years later, though Chaney probably wished he'd pulled a Hull, subsequently complaining about the time and discomfort in press interviews. (I like both designs, though the iconic 1941 version looks just a little more quaint to me than the 1935 Hull-approved look, and Hull's movements are a bit creepier than Chaney's amusing tip-toe wolf walk.)