I like to eat. I'm very fortunate in this, as Bettie seems to like cooking for me. She makes wonderful and deceptively simple dishes which I devour while my eyes roll back in my head and my stomach goes all happy. Despite her winsome smile and her ready laugh, she is an utter terror in the kitchen. She claims that the kitchen is too small for me to help, or for anyone to come within ten feet of her even. She claims this in any kitchen, and I'm convinced that when I've sold out and made a truckload of money, she will still claim that any kitchen is too small, even if she was cooking on the set of Emeril's show. She is, as the title suggests, an angry cook. At least until the above-mentioned eye-rolling-back commences, at which time she cuts loose with said winsome smile, and makes some small comment about "liking to cook" for me. For a life-long vegitarian, the woman can roast pork with the best of them (and as a 3 year laborer in the restaurant industry, I know what I speak of) and her steaks and chops are among the greatest meals I've eaten.
But on a Friday night... well, you get the picture.
Which brings us to last nights cinematic experience, Roger Corman's 1963 film The Haunted Palace, which was preceeded by a lovely vegetable fritata. The Haunted Palace itself is a nice greasy cheeseburger, and while my eyes may not have rolled back in my head, my viewing was pleasured.
Corman started in films a good half-century ago, and he's still working. He gave Coppolla his start, as well as a young actor named Jack Nicholson. He also provided paychecks and starring roles for workhorse character actors like Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, and Vincent Price (star of todays feature). Corman's company, American Independent Pictures (AIP) was justifiably famous for a few things in the 60s. Most of the films they churned out were shot in under 14 days, on minimal budgets, but actually looked a lot better than they should have. They tended to have impressive sets, attractive women-in-peril, and diabolical villains. More often than not, the villains were mystical in nature, and with some regularity, they were loosely based on poems and stories by Edgar Allen Poe. Corman had several early successes with Poe-based (even when in name only) period-horror pieces, but after a while, he longed to pull from another horror great. That would be H.P. Lovecraft, and his novel "The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward" seemed perfect for an AIP picture. Lovecraft's story had necromancy, hints of Elder Gods behind the scenes, and a central character going slowly mad under the influence of a long-dead or was he? ancestor. Corman drafted prolific screenwriter Charles Beaumont (responsible for 21 episodes of Rod Sterling's The Twilight Zone, as well as Corman's own Poe inspired The Mask of The Red Death, to get the story written in traditional AIP style.
AIP's honchos weren't keen on the Lovecraft angle though, why fuck with success? So Corman & Beaumont tagged on a Poe title, and a prologue/epilogue read by Vincent Price (from the poem of the same name). Old HP still had story credit, but so did Poe so AIP was satisfied.
After finishing off the fritata (yum), I did the dishes, and Bettie settled down to play on the WD. I settled down in my chair with a tall glass of scotch & soda. It wasn't actually scotch & soda, it was Egri Bikavar (a particularly tasty but incredibly cheap Hungarian wine) in a glass that say "scotch & soda". Since I was in the mood for a scotch & soda, but had neither scotch nor soda nor a bucket, hic! my artifice had to suffice.
I wanted to watch a movie, preferably something with some creep factor, and since I recently came across copies of The Haunted Palace as well as Dan O'Bannon directed/Chris Sarandon starring The Resurrected (1992, also based on Charles Dexter Ward's strange case) I decided to give 'em a go.
So enough with the meandering back story, and on with the show.