With one of the cleverest uses of the old spinning newspaper headline gag, our latest feature gets a huge chunk of its backstory out of the way early through a vintage photo montage from the mining boomtown of Silver City, Colorado, intermixed with headlines from the local paper, which begins with news of a massive silver strike in the area back in the spring of 1888, the resulting rush of prospectors, hitting the mother-lode, and the prosperity this wrought over the next two decades until things took a sinister turn as more headlines appear touting a pox of deadly cave-ins, safety inspectors due, and culminating with the biggest disaster to date when 27 men get trapped in the mine by the worst cave-in yet. And as the days and editions pass, with rescue efforts proving futile, and reports of mysterious attacks by something unknown from the lone survivor who managed to escape, the rescue is called off, the miners are declared dead, and this cursed mine is closed and officially sealed off for good in late 1912, where it sat undisturbed -- until now.
Here, the movie picks up some seventy years later, where a couple of men working for Syndicated Mines Inc. are charged with opening up the old derelict Silver City mine, assess the condition, collect rock samples to see what precious minerals are present, and determine if it’s worth exploiting any further with a full crew. And so, for now, it’s just Brian Deering (Crawford) and Dan Ostroff (Flory), a couple of grizzled company men who’ve explored hundreds of abandoned mines just like this one. Joining these two men are a couple of fresh-faced transplants from Pennsylvania mining country, Roger Lowrie (Harlan) and Mark Kinner (McCarren). And after breaching the entrance, the older men get to inspecting the timbers in the main shaft, which are in pretty sad shape, leaving the shit-work to the two newbies, who schlep the heavy equipment around and string wire to hang lights as they move deeper into the tunnel.
Meantime, a Martha Chapman (Dangerfield) is not having a very good day. The landlord of the property Lowrie and Kinner will take possession of tomorrow when Lowrie’s girlfriend, Jessica Ford (Martin), arrives, Martha is on the way to light the pilots of the furnace and hot-water heater for her new tenants when she runs her car off the road to avoid a deer. Then, after walking the rest of the way to the secluded house in the bitter cold, over snow and ice -- all under the lurking surveillance of the same creepy old man (Lormer) who was spying on those at the mine earlier that day, Martha finishes the prep work and makes a few futile calls for help, saying she will just spend the night at the house and beg a ride back into town tomorrow. But her stay is short-lived as she’s soon drawn back into the basement by some mysterious noises, which appear to be emanating from behind a shabbily boarded-up hole in the wall near the bottom of the steps, where the woman is violently attacked and drug off into the hole, kicking and screaming, by some unseen horror.
Back at the mine, work comes to a halt when they find evidence of a branching tunnel that doesn’t appear on any of their maps, blocked off by rubble from one of those long-ago cave-ins. Curious to see what’s on the other side, Deering and Ostroff use controlled blasts to remove the obstruction. And what they find is a huge natural cavern dominated by an underground lake. Scattered around the shore they also find huge piles of bones; the skeletal remains of all those lost miners, they figure.
Now, there are three huge clues our four explorers miss, here:
One, it seemed awful easy to get into the chamber where those missing bodies were found, making one wonder why they weren’t just as easily rescued back in 1912. And I think the answer to that is the second clue: the condition of those skeletons, and how the bones are a jumbled mess and not somewhat intact and still clothed in the remnants as you’d expect if 27 trapped men laid down and asphyxiated -- more like stripped clean and discarded. So maybe there was something to those hush-upped reports of an attack in the mine. And thirdly, if you’re still not convinced something strange is going on, there’s some kinda something lurking in the water just below the surface that’s obviously stalking our obtuse protagonists, who’d best start paying more attention and put all of this together soon before they all wind up as just another pile of bones, too...
Ever since I began raking my knuckles over the keyboard and started posting the resulting nonsense on the wild world of the web some twenty years ago, I have been singing the praises for one of my personal patron saints of schlock cinema, Charles E. Sellier Jr.. But that was usually focused on his barrage of cryptozoological, strange phenomenon, and eccentric historical docudramas he unleashed for Sunn Classic Pictures back in the 1970s, where Sellier found kindred spirits of unknown phenomenon with filmmakers, Robert Guenette and James Conway.
And for a glorious period between 1975 and 1981 these three would conspire in the producing, directing, and writing of The Mysterious Monsters (1975), The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomena (1976), The Unexplained: The UFO Connection (1976), In Search of Noah's Ark (1976), The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977), Beyond and Back (1977), The Bermuda Triangle (1979), Encounter with Disaster (1979), Beyond Death’s Door (1979), and The Man Who Saw Tomorrow (1981) in some capacity, where the likes of Brad Crandall, Peter Graves, or Orson Welles would guide us on a personal tour of the inexplicably unexplained, throw a lot of conjecture at the screen, make dubious assumptions and hypothesis, and then tout their cock-eyed conclusions as fact, much to audiences’ delight.
But today we’re gonna explore the period when Sellier started working outside his faux doc comfort zone, which would ultimately result in the near Christmas ruination with the release of Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), which Sellier had only directed as a favor, and whose resultant backlash over the marketing campaign and blasphemous content of a homicidal Santa Claus marked a decisive end to the first wave of the slasher boom of the early 1980s as studios quickly ran for cover and distanced themselves from all the blood and boobs. Before that, however, Sellier and Sunn were looking for the next hot trend at the dawn of the ‘80s, when the market for their quaint documentaries and matinee friendly family fare started drying up. And there was nothing hotter at the time than independently produced horror films with high body counts.
Charles E. Sellier Jr.
Based out of Salt Lake City, Utah, Sunn Classics, a subsidiary of Schick Enterprises, was purchased by Taft International Pictures in 1980, who would take over production and distribution of their films to help combat Hollywood’s efforts to squeeze-out old school roadshowers and four-wallers like Sunn. And so it was Taft who greenlit Sellier’s first R-rated feature, The Boogens (1981). Sellier would produce the film, while his old friend, and lifelong horror nut, Conway, would direct from a story concocted by Tom Chapman and David O’Malley, which was later hammered into a shooting script by O’Malley and Bob Hunt.
And while this script shares several of the newly minted and rapidly solidifying slasher movie tropes -- horny youths, horny youths dying first, old coots lurking and warning of imminent danger and curses, which go unheeded, rogue POV shots representing whoever is doing the killing, red herrings, pet stranger danger, prolonged stalking, gory deaths, all in service of the systematic reduction of the cast, The Boogens is, at its heart, despite some clumsy misdirection, nothing more than a good old-fashioned monster movie as it quickly becomes apparent that something inhuman attacked and most likely killed the landlord, and was also responsible for all those bones. And worse yet, it’s still hungry as Jessica arrives at the rental house with her old college friend, Trish Michaels (Balding), in tow.
Seems Jessica and her boyfriend, Roger, have been scheming to bring their mutual friends, Trish and Mark, together for awhile now, feeling they’d be perfect for each other. But this was the worst kept secret and both victims of these machinations are having cold feet; but their inevitable meet-cute shows a definite romance in their future, which is confirmed when this relationship is consummated later. Meantime, Jessica and Roger’s debaucherous reunion in the sack is brought to a screeching halt not once, but twice. First, when a Deputy Greenwalt (Wilkinson) shows up looking for the missing Martha Chapman, whom none of them have seen. And second, when Roger draws the short-straw and gets “nominated” to drive into Denver long before the sun comes up to secure an upgraded map of the mine. And so, Roger leaves Jessica and the others in Silver City -- which also pretty much died when the mine shut down from what we see, with Deering and Ostroff at the local saloon so he can go catch a few hours sleep without the temptation of sex before heading out, only to promptly get attacked in the garage by some horrible, tentacled thing that slashes his throat open with the deadly barbed end of this appendage once it takes his legs out.
The following morning, thinking Roger is on his way to Denver, not realizing his truck and the bloody evidence of his demise is still in the closed up garage, Jessica starts tackling a few domestic chores while Trish, a cub reporter for the Denver Post, heads into town to check out the local paper and do some research on the old mine disaster, hoping a story will come out of it. And as she digs through the morgue, Trish becomes intrigued by several accounts about the lone survivor; a man named Blanchard, who claimed the mine was occupied by something evil. There’s hints this man caused the cave-in on purpose to stop this phantom menace from spreading and the other miners were already dead; but this line of inquiry peters out with an article stating Greenwalt was deemed crazy and committed to an asylum. Is this the old man that’s been lurking about? Maybe. What we do know for sure is what most likely happened in the mine back in 1912:
When the cavern was first discovered, the miners found something deadly waiting inside, which attacked them. Blanchard managed to get away and resealed the entrance to the cavern with dynamite. And in an effort to hush this up and prevent several lawsuits, the lone survivor was blamed for the disaster, declared insane, and committed. Now, of course, this cavern has once more been broken into, giving the monster (or monsters) free access to a maze of ventilation shafts that surface all over the town -- including one in the basement of the rental house our protagonists are occupying.
But Trish doesn’t quite have all of these clues put together yet as she heads back to the house. Meanwhile, realizing her dog, Tiger, has been missing all morning, Jessica discovers Roger’s truck is still there and calls the mine-works to alert Mark, who calls the Denver office. And though he should’ve been there hours ago, Roger never showed up. Mike calls Jessica back, saying he doesn’t know where their friend is but not to worry -- not realizing Deering and Ostroff just found Roger’s torn up body floating in that underground lake. Then, after Mark joins them as they pull the body to shore, the old coot shows up with a sack full of dynamite, who rants at them for letting the evil loose. Seems this man is Blanchard’s son. And unlike everyone else, he believed his old man’s tale of the Boogens and took it upon himself to keep watch on the mine and the ventilation shafts around town to make sure they never got out. And as he threatens to blow up the entrance, one of the creatures strikes from the water and kills Olstroff, causing a panicked Blanchard to seal himself and Deering inside the cavern with the massing creatures.
Mark, realizing the girls were in danger, had already fled before the explosion to get Jessica and Trish out of the house. But he’s already too late as Trish returns first, finds signs of a struggle and the shower still running, but can’t get a response from her friend. Here, she retraces Jessica’s terrified flight from one of the creatures, who attacked while she was in the shower. And after a harrowing chase, Jessica was trapped in the pantry and killed. Following the smeared blood evidence down to the basement, Trish finds Jessica’s mutilated body. Turns out the monster was still down there, too, and we finally get a good look at this misshapen mutant amphibian from hell as it attacks her, too. Luckily, Mark and the deputy, whom he called after giving up trying to reach the girls on the phone, arrive in time.
Greenwalt empties his revolver into the monster, which seemingly falls dead. The deputy then makes a tragic mistake by going in for a closer look only to have the critter spring to life and bite his face off. In the ensuing melee with Mark and Trish, the fuel line for the heater is severed, flooding the basement with kerosene. Mark puts a match to this, hoping to kill the creature. And while that mission was accomplished, the resulting inferno soon engulfs the stairs, trapping them in the burning basement with the only way out being the mine-shaft. So in it they go, where after a few suspenseful turns they run into Olstroff, whose bloodied but still breathing. Blanchard? Not so much. But as Olstrroff points the way to the surface, he is attacked and killed by another creature -- but not before he gives Mark the rest of Blanchard’s dynamite and orders him to get out and seal the mine for good. And this Mark and Trish do, barely staying ahead of what sounds like a whole horde of these creepy crawlies. And despite the last second suspense of a stubborn lighter, the fuse it lit, the dynamite goes boom, the shaft is sealed, and the day is saved but not without great cost.
Like those Sunn docs of old, the slow and deliberate pace director Conway and company deliver in The Boogens might be too much for some horror fans to overcome. The story structure is pretty clumsy, too, and pretty loose with no coherent timeline, meaning it probably would’ve been better served to open with the death of the landlord instead of taking that night-time sequence and shoe-horning it into the middle of the initial opening of the mine sequence, which all takes place during the day. This same script also relies way too heavily on Jessica’s dog for both comedy relief and for the entirety of the suspense for the whole middle third of the movie as the cantankerous canine is stalked by the unseen menace constantly, and is presumed dead a couple of times, before the Boogens finally get him. Kudos to the two pups who played Tiger and their trainers. Always in the scene, and, yeah, kinda carries the movie in spots.
Still, despite these glaring mistakes, I think this hybridization of monster and slasher movie works overall thanks in most part to a likeable cast, well-defined and likeable characters, that taps into a nice blue collar vibe. These are the same working stiffs we saw in My Bloody Valentine (1981), which I feel is the best slasher movie ever made, and helps ground the film considerably. Anchored by solid character actors, John Crawford and Med Flory, who definitely add some weight and humor (“How ‘bout we jog?”), the cast was rounded out by a couple of genre vets with Anne-Marie Martin and Rebecca Balding. Martin didn’t survive Prom Night (1980), while Balding was the final girl in Silent Scream (1980). Balding also fulfilled her contractual obligation to go nude while Martin did not. I always thought Balding was adorable in Lou Grant before she got fired off the TV show after only six episodes because the producers suddenly felt she wasn’t right for the part, which freed her up to be in Silent Scream and The Boogens. Director Conway agreed with me, apparently, as the two fell hard for each other during this production and would be married four weeks after the film wrapped.
While set in Colorado the movie was shot in and around Park City, Utah, utilizing several abandoned mines and an unused grocery store, where the cavern and lake interiors were constructed. And apparently, while filming the climax, the explosions got out of hand and the whole building and all the standing sets inside went up in flames, forcing cast and crew into one of those real mines to finish shooting the ending. Also of production note, seems there was a reason why we never got a really good look at the monsters in The Boogens. Seems despite the best efforts of William Munns and Ken Horn, veteran make-up and prosthetic makers for The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Swamp Thing (1982), and Return of the Living Dead (1985), who both built the animatronic monster and provided the bloody wounds the fanged and tentacled amphibians inflicted, the monster’s rubbery origins didn’t pass muster with Conway, who wound up taking the less-is-more Spielberg route and relied heavily on his POV-cam and the sound-design of Jeffrey Sandler, who took a recording of a dog and cat fighting, looped it backwards, and then slowed it down to realize the monster's hideous roar, to make it appear there were hundreds of Boogens in the mine and not just the one working prop they had, to maintain the dread.
After its limited theatrical release in 1981 -- and I have a vague, vague recollection of seeing this as a second feature at the drive-in on a dark and stormy night, The Boogens became a bit of an enigma because no one was able to see the damned thing for the longest time as the film essentially disappeared off the face of the earth, propagated by vague memories and a favorable review by Stephen King in the July, 1982, edition of The Twilight Zone magazine. And the film stayed lost for nearly twenty years until a very limited and very shitty pan ‘n’ scan VHS release in 1998 through Republic Pictures Home Video just as the format was dying out to make way for DVDs. And just when it appeared ready to disappear back into obscurity, Olive Films secured the rights and released The Boogens on DVD and Bluray in all its glory in 2012 to satiate many a curious fan. Myself included. Was it worth the wait? Well, expectations be a bitch and all that, but I found The Boogens’ novelties refreshing enough to easily overlook any of its shortcomings, though many they were.
What is Hubrisween? This is Hubrisween. And now, Boils and Ghouls, be sure to follow this linkage to keep track of the whole conglomeration of reviews for Hubrisween right here. Or you can always follow the collective head of knuckle on Letterboxd. That's two reviews down with 24 to go! Up Next: The Exorcist by way of a highway safety film! Buckle up, buttercups!
The Boogens (1981) Taft International Pictures :: Jensen Farley Pictures / P: Charles E. Sellier Jr. / AP: Bill Cornford, Carole Fontana, Cliff Osmond / D: James L. Conway / W: Thomas C. Chapman, David O'Malley, Jim Kouf / C: Paul Hipp / E: Michael Spence / M: Bob Summers / S: Rebecca Balding, Fred McCarren, Anne-Marie Martin, Jeff Harlan, John Crawford, Med Flory, Scott Wilkinson, Marcia Dangerfield, Jon Lormer
Something has gone terribly wrong at the Tower Mountain Research Station and Summit Lab. For above the raging winter storm on the outside, we can hear the nonsensical ravings of the lone occupant trapped inside as we peer into several lighted windows as he stomps around the compound, stressing out, but we don’t really see a whole lot through the glare and frost-encrusted glass. We also hear someone else desperately trying to contact this disturbed man over a two-way radio. But these distress calls are ignored as the incoherent blathering reaches a fever pitch -- he can hear them, but they can’t hear him, followed by the sound of things being smashed and rendered, followed by a few screams of how they wouldn’t listen to him, and now it’s too late, then the sound of breaking glass, followed by a sudden and eerie silence as the radio operator continues to beg for Dr. Vogel to please respond -- a response that will never come.
Located near the top of a mountain somewhere near the Arctic Circle, the Summit Lab was established at such a high altitude (over 14,000 feet) and in such harsh surroundings to test the effects of total isolation and extreme environmental changes on a group of chimpanzees to gather data that will hopefully translate into better prepared astronauts for the rigors of extended space travel. Now, several days after the last contact with Dr. Vogel, the two scientists who first envisioned and conceived of this primate research facility, Dr. Frank Enari (Wallach), a primatologist, and Dr. Robert Jones (Culp), a theoretical physicist, have volunteered to travel to the station to find out what exactly happened to Dr. Vogel, of course, but their top priority is to save the animals and salvage the research Vogel had started before he apparently suffered a total nervous breakdown, where he started conversing with the ghosts of Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus, and other historical tyrants according to the radio logs, before breaking off contact completely; and then continue on with these experiments if feasible. If not, it would mean a lot of time, effort, and tax dollars spent all for naught.
When Jones and Enari arrive by helicopter, they find the interior of the station in ruin. It’s also extremely cold as the furnace is not running -- not disabled, but turned off; but all the animals, by some miracle, thanks to the electric lights, are still clinging to life. And while Jones (Culp) struggles to get the heat going, and Enari (Wallach) sees to the animals, the pilot (Gwynne) continues to search the compound, each room in total disarray, until he at last comes to the electronics room and has to force the door before entering, where he finally finds Vogel, dead, frozen solid, clutching the mic of a recorder, with a window to the outside sitting wide open behind him. Let me repeat that so this mystery sinks in properly: the man was sitting alone in the only room with a lock on the door in the whole compound with the window open. And there he sat, until he froze to death. As to how and why he came to be in that condition, well, that will have to wait until the pilot flies the corpse back to civilization and the magnetic tapes Vogel used to record his last report thaw out -- a slow and tedious process to prevent them from shattering, before they start getting any answers.
Meantime, Jones and Enari start cleaning up and putting the lab and living quarters back together and tend to the animals, including a replacement chimp named Geronimo Enari brought along in case one or all the other test animals were lost. And once everything is back in working order it’s time to get back to the real work once they settle on who will be responsible for the menial tasks to keep them and the station functional. Enari has a checklist of duties, but Jones bristles at the very idea of something routine as it soon becomes readily apparent this mismatched odd couple don’t really like each other very much; and maybe the notion of just one scientist assigned to this remote lab doesn’t seem quite so hair-brained as it did not five minutes ago.
See, Jones’ field is in theory and speculation, pondering imponderables, and finding solutions outside the box. Enari, meanwhile, is a firm believer in the scientific method and is a stickler for repetitive tests that will establish definitive results. And that’s why Enari believes Vogel died because, obviously, the cold and the isolation got to him and he suicided out. But Jones isn’t so sure, feeling they’re missing something, and notes how when people freeze to death they tend to look very peaceful, as if they’ve just fallen asleep, but Vogel looked terrified. But they table this disagreement for now as Jones volunteers for outside duty to scoop snow into a large metal tank, where it will melt into their water supply, and maintain the heater and generators, leaving everything else -- the cooking and cleaning and tending the animals, to Enari.
Days pass and things settle into a dreary sludge at the Summit Lab, running the chimps through a rugged battery of stress tests, monitoring their vitals, and collecting blood samples. They receive word that Vogel’s autopsy showed no signs of a brain tumor or a stroke to explain away his erratic behavior, and his official cause of death was exposure to the elements. And while this pretty much backs up Enari’s version of events, Jones refuses to let this locked room mystery go and will wait for Vogel’s tape to finish thawing before passing final judgment -- only this tape proves blank, erased by unseen hands. And so, figuring the unstable Vogel just didn't use the machine properly, the work continues until one night Jones is awakened by the cooped up animals raising hell in their cages -- except for Geronimo, whom Enari gives free run of the compound. But Enari, like someone who lives and sleeps by the train tracks, is conditioned to this kind of racket and slumbers on.
And so Jones checks in on Gengi, Allie, and Augie, who seem extremely upset over something but the cause of which remains elusive. (I mean, aside from being caged up, strapped down, and experimented on.) Moving on, Jones searches the rest of the compound until he comes to the electronics room, where several pieces of equipment have been turned on. Also of note, the window that caused Vogel’s death has once more been jimmied open, allowing in the cold, snow and ice. As Jones closes the stubborn window, the door to the room slowly starts to close behind him, and the man barely has time to catch it before he’s locked in -- just like Vogel. The hallway is empty, betraying no culprit, and when Jones returns to the bedroom after his search turns up nothing, Enari is still sound asleep. Well, at least he wants Jones to think he’s still asleep as the other man crawls back into bed.
The following morning, Jones awakens to the sight of his own breath and Enari’s empty bed. The heat is off, and Jones finds his partner struggling to get the furnace lit. Here, Jones sees their water supply is completely frozen over, too, meaning the heat has been off for several hours and its a race to fix things before the water pipes burst. Once the furnace is rekindled and things start to warm up again, the two men have it out since Enari thinks Jones shut the heat off during his midnight stroll and would like to know why. Jones, meantime, thinks something preternatural might be going on at the station, or they’re not alone, since someone or something lured him into a trap in the electronics room just like Vogel, and then tried to kill them both by turning the heat off, making the two men look like lab rats trapped in a maze of their own design, which leaves us to wonder who is really experimenting on who here...
In his original review for The Chicago Sun-Times, film critic Roger Ebert called Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) nothing more than an intergalactic haunted house thriller, but at least he gave the film credit for working around this age old conundrum: if your house is haunted by homicidal monsters, then why not just leave the house? Scott, and scriptwriter Dan O’Bannon, of course, trapped all of their characters on a freighter in deep space, where vacating wasn’t really a viable option. In space, no one can hear you scream after all. Of course, author A.E. Van Vogt had already thought of that nearly four decades earlier with his rip-snorting tales of the crew of the Space Beagle in The Black Destroyer and Discord in Scarlet, which introduced the Coeurl and the Ixtll, which would then serve as the unofficial basis for many a cinematic sci-fi horror hybrids to come, including Alien.
Van Vogt was a protege of John W. Campbell, the godfather of modern science fiction, who put the stress on the nuts and bolts of the science instead of the fantasy of the fiction, who also found a workaround on the haunted house conundrum by setting his seminal tale of suspense and paranoia, Who Goes There?, at an isolated Antarctic research station, leaving them trapped with an alien trying to assimilate its way to world conquest, which also inspired several films, including The Thing from Another World (1951) and The Thing (1982), which was a more faithful adaptation of the source material.
And with its claustrophobic arctic setting, mounting paranoia, and an air of otherworldly mystery, Campbell’s story obviously had an influence on Jerrold Freedman’s telefilm, A Cold Night’s Death (1973). Now, there’s another noted sci-fi novel, which also spawned a renown film franchise, that also influenced Christopher Knopf’s script, I’d bet, but we won’t reveal that one quite yet because there’s some pretty massive spoilers coming up and I urge you all, right now, to stop reading if you haven’t seen this movie yet, and go watch it -- it’s available to stream on many YouTube channels, because this thing earned those righteous plot twists, which are a pure joy to watch as they unravel and are all creepy as [expletive deleted].
From the very first scene, where the camera’s eye rapidly glides across the frozen snowpack, as the wind angrily howls and the hostile electronic musical score gives you a sense of some approaching alien menace, A Cold Night's Death rarely misses a beat as it burns through it’s brief 73-minute run time. Both director Freedman and cinematographer, Leonard South, were veterans of the old Night Gallery anthology TV show, which this telefilm would’ve made a great episode of. I love how the camera always seems to be moving as if a third person observer is sneaking around the compound, jockeying for the best angle, or the long tracking shots as the camera whispers down the long hallways, giving one a true sense of how isolated and trapped our two protagonists really are.
Then add in the editing skills of David Berlatsky, who cranks up the creeping unease and the mounting tension with a series of rapid cuts when things go bonkers but also wasn’t afraid to hold a shot. But there was one cut that’s so subtle you barely even register it as Jones, after another sleepless night of investigating phantom noises, finally settles into to bed only to immediately wake up again, hears more noises, and then finds Enari putting Geronimo through his paces on a treadmill as if nothing is wrong. But something seems off, and when you finally put your finger on it and realize both men look like they haven’t shaved in weeks, or even a month, you get a shivering sense of how much time has elapsed and how much this regimented routine has worn these men down and frayed their last nerve. And don’t discount the effort and effect of the sound designs of Herman Lewis and Edward Rossi, who make sure the ever present wind is constantly heard, and the eerie, nerve-ratcheting, almost avant garde score of Gil Melle, which helps keeps those bearings lost.
And all of that in service to a crackerjack teleplay by Knopf, who mostly wrote scripts for TV westerns, TV movies, and TV anthology shows, with his only other sci-fi credit being the adaptation of the Ray Harryhausen vehicle, 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957). The same year this telefilm was originally broadcast Knopf wrote the screenplay for Robert Aldrich’s Emperor of the North (1973) -- another fantastic dual actor showcase for Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine. For A Cold Night’s Death, we get Robert Culp and Eli Wallach, whom we’ll be addressing in a second. For them, Knopf weaves one hell of an engaging mystery as their characters become highly distrustful of each other. Are they both going crazy? Is there something supernatural -- or extraterrestrial, going on here? And to Knopf’s credit, the answer to this riddle, and what really happened to Vogel, have been kinda hiding in plain sight since the very beginning; only these two estranged men are no longer thinking clearly and can’t see them, and won't see them, until it’s far too late.
Seems Enari is convinced Jones has cracked up just like Vogel did and is now out to get him, while Jones cannot convince the other man some outside influence is pushing their buttons and pushing them both over the edge. Things come to a head when they wake up one morning and find the mess hall and most of their food stores destroyed. After that, blaming each other, the two men no longer speak and sleep in separate rooms -- but neither sleep all that much as the power and heat keep fluctuating, lights are lit in empty rooms, and equipment seems to turn itself on. And all the while, Jones keeps mentally running through Vogel's last contact before cracking up for good, sure that will hold the key. And he’s still trying to work this out when he once more heads into the bitter cold to replenish the reservoir with more snow. Something Vogel had said. Those phantoms he had talked to ... The names of the chimps ... And when it all finally snaps into place, Jones abandons his shovel and tries to go back in to warn Enari -- only someone has bolted the door, leaving him to freeze to death outside. And it wasn’t Enari.
But Jones rallies himself, fights off the hypoxia induced delirium, instant frostbite, and hypothermia, and manages to crawl through the opening where he scooped the snow and plunges into the ice cold water tank, which was partially frozen over, meaning the heat is off again AGAIN. And once he manages to extract himself from that, nearly frozen stiff, he seeks out Enari, who has armed himself with the pistol designated for putting any rogue chimps down, for protection, once he found the body of Geronimo, whom Jones always complained about, figuring he killed the favored chimp to get at him -- and he's next. Thus, Enari warns Jones to stay away once he finds him in the rec hall. The half dead Jones, his eyes nearly frozen shut, begs Enari to listen as he pleads his case, which proves so rational an explanation the implication is terrifying -- too terrifying for Enari, who will not accept what really happened to Vogel, which has been repeated against them, forcing the two scientists to endure the harsh elements, causing them stress, denying them food -- do these “tests” sound familiar? They should.
But Enari is in full blown denial and accidentally shoots Jones dead when the half-frozen man is overcome with hysterics when Enari refuses to believe, thinking he was attacking him. Then, Enari heads to the electronics room, drawn by a recording he'd made earlier. Someone has turned the recorder on. But when he gets there, he finds the room empty and that same damned window is open, and broken to the point it will not shut. Then, he hears the door slam, and then the deadbolt engaged from the outside. Then, his frozen fate sealed, Enari hears something moving around in the hall, and then the man sees one of the test chimps through the door’s narrow meshed window, staring back at him, solving this mystery once and for all.
Now, I know how I’ve related this story before: how when I was a littler kid back in the early 1970s, and how my family of goons wound up at one of those Go Ape! Marathons 20th Century Fox unleashed to showcase all five of their Planet of the Apes movies -- Planet, Beneath, Escape, Conquest, and Battle (1968-1973). Circumstances that day dictated we had to bail after the fourth film, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), where the Apes officially took over. And so, in one afternoon, I witnessed the Heston trapped in a madhouse, watched the entire world get nuked out of existence, twice, three brutal ape homicides, and the fall of mankind in one sitting. Thus and so, already a little freaked out, this was then compounded by my inability to know the difference between gorilla fighting and guerilla fighting, which was reported on the news all the time during this turbulent period, meaning, at the time, I was convinced General Ursus was already on the move and the Ape revolution had really and truly begun. Also during this time, many a Made for TV fright flick had sent me to bed with a bad case of the drizzles. And for both of these traumatic reasons, I am sooooooooo glad I didn’t catch A Cold Night’s Death back then, too, under those circumstances, or I probably would’ve never slept again.
Thus, I’m sure the Planet of the Apes franchise had at least some influence on the final outcome of A Cold Night’s Death -- or at least made it seem more plausible at the time. Again, the mystery leading up to that shocking final reveal is outstanding and earned Knopf a deserved Edgar Award nomination for the TV category. And breathing life into this tempest without, crisis within, tale are two rock-solid character actors in Culp and Wallach. With that limited setting the whole thing kind of comes off as an intimate two man play, and it's a genuine pleasure to watch these two work and make their pitch for what Freedman and Knopf were selling. You believe these men are scientists, and the tests they run on their captive chimps are equally disturbing and brutal and perhaps unnecessarily too real in a "no animals were harmed" sense. And to their credit, both Culp and especially Wallach make the massive verbal plot-dumps necessitated by the short running time to get their character's traits, methods, and motivations across by simply flat-out stating them work. But in the end, these weren’t even necessary as all you had to do was watch how each man deals with the mounting stress and sheer exhaustion from working in that kind of cold and thin air. It kinda makes you wish it could’ve been expanded to 90 minutes just to give these characters a little more room to breathe, to just spend more time with them, as things snowball toward that freaky-deeky climax.
A Cold Night’s Death was produced by the two punch combo of Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg, whose Spelling-Goldberg Productions unleashed many a 1970s era TV staple, ranging from Starsky and Hutch to Charlie’s Angels to Dynasty. But they were also responsible for a slew of pure whackadoodle telefilms like A Taste of Evil (1971), Home for the Holidays (1972) Satan’s School for Girls (1973), and Death Cruise (1974). But as gonzo as all of those were, they just can’t compare to A Cold Night’s Death, which premiered on January 30th, 1973, as part of ABC’s Movie of the Week, which was a designated time slot set up specifically for this type of telefilm. Alas, like a lot of its MFTV brethren, A Cold Night’s Death still hasn’t made the legitimate digital leap yet. And that’s too bad as this one is a bona fide chiller that still packs a hefty, disquieting punch.
What is Hubrisween? This is Hubrisween. And now, Boils and Ghouls, be sure to follow this linkage to keep track of the whole conglomeration of reviews for Hubrisween right here. Or you can always follow the collective head of knuckle on Letterboxd. That's one review down with 25 to go! Up Next: We all get shafted.
A Cold Night's Death (1973) 20th Century Fox Television :: ABC Circle Films :: Spelling-Goldberg Productions / EP: Aaron Spelling, Leonard Goldberg / P: Paul Junger Witt / AP: Robert Monroe, Tony Thomas / D: Jerrold Freedman / W: Christopher Knopf / C: Leonard J. South / E: David Berlatsky / M: Gil Melle / S: Robert Culp, Eli Wallach, Michael C. Gwynne, Vic Perrin
