"Homicidal" Tendencies

It had been a minute since my last viewing of today's featured movie, so revisiting it was close to a new experience, despite there being several unforgettable facets to it. The first time I happened upon the movie was way back in the early-1990s, perhaps on American Movie Classics or the original incarnation of TNT. It was startling to say the least and must have been quite the head-scratcher for viewers when it hit theaters in 1961. I refer to Homicidal, which came on the heels of the groundbreaking (and much imitated) Psycho from 1960. (I have to point out the hilarity in this poster. The upper-right inset has artwork that had to be based on a publicity still from 1951's A Streetcar Named Desire because I recognize Marlon Brando's back and torn shirt!) In the spirit of Halloween, which is just around the corner, we take a gander at this uniquely bent film. 

Alfred Hitchcock was always one to make his persona part of the package with his films (C.B. DeMille being another), but director William Castle gave him a run for his money. Castle loved gimmicks and loved to show up here and there as he did at the start of Homicidal. He's doing needlepoint, which turns out to be...

The film's title, in sampler form. 

A brief prologue depicts a little girl playing with her doll who then has it stolen from her by her younger brother. 

In the present day (1961, natch!), we're introduced to a statuesque blonde with an austere manner, played by Jean Arless. She's come to the Ventura Hotel to rent a room. 

She's also finicky about which bellman she wants to show her to her room. If you guess that she picks Richard Rust, on the right, then you get a gold star. 

She looks to be a light packer, with the entirety of her luggage being one slim attache case! She sends the boy off to fetch some ice. 

 

When he returns, she's in the middle of slipping into something more comfortable and doesn't seem to mind if he watches (which he does.) 

She has a proposition for him, though it's not the one you might have in mind. She wants him to marry her! The caveat is that the marriage will be annulled immediately afterwards. 

He returns later that night to pick her up and head to a Justice of the Peace, but not just any. She has a specific man in mind to perform the ceremony.

Arriving in the dead of night, the man's wife Hope Summers is skeptical about allowing the young couple to come in, but Arless promises to pay extra. 

The JOP is James Westerfield, who agrees to perform the ceremony while his wife is told to play (softly!) the organ. 

I couldn't help noticing that this small town couple has a copy of The Mona Lisa on the wall. You may or may not know that some theorists have claimed that Leonardo da Vinci used himself (!) as the model for this legendary work as a sort of wink (smirk?) to his sexual identity.

Westerfield performs the ceremony as requested. But when he announces that he is entitled to kiss the bride, things take a turn...

... a most unhappy turn! 

Comparisons to Psycho abound in this movie, such as the nervous blonde, driving at night with a cop behind her... 

Then when she finally arrives home, there's this point of view on the staircase. 

Arliss turns out to be caregiver (if that's the best way to describe it) to a wheelchair-bound old woman.

Eugenie Leontovich plays the woman, a mute who struggles to communicate, but bangs an old doorknob on the handle of her chair when she wants someone to pay attention to her. 

Leontovich travels from level to level in the house via a built-in lift. 

Not only is Arless not particularly kind to the woman, she's also sometimes threatening. 

A respite from the menacing atmosphere comes in the form of Patricia Breslin. Breslin is the half-sister of the owner of the house and runs a local flower shop. She brings the old woman a bouquet.

Arless coerces Breslin into staying with Leontovich while she runs to town to pick up a prescription for her patient.  

Down at the pharmacy, we meet cutie-patootie druggist Glenn Corbett. (The movie is one-third through its running time when top-billed Corbett is finally introduced.) 

Before Arless can depart, the local doctor stops in and recalls how he wasn't able to deliver the owner of the house she lives in when he was born because of illness. His then-assistant Leontovich had to assume the duty. 

Arless, instead of heading home with the prescription, lets herself into Breslin's flower shop, located in the same shopping center. While caressing one of the blossom's, she spies a set of wedding figurines. 

The more she focuses on them (and the floral display behind her), the more enraged she becomes. Finally, she starts to trash half the place! 

Next, she enters Breslin's living quarters located in back of the shop and is set off further by a framed photo she sees. 

It's of Breslin's half-brother Warren, the owner of the home we saw earlier. 

Arless is apparently not a fan and reduces the portrait to smithereens, with glass flying everywhere! 

Later, Corbett goes next door looking for Breslin, but is konked on the head for his trouble. He's brought around by none other than the aforementioned Warren. 

It seems he is just in from San Diego and stopped by to see his sister on the way to visit Leontovich. 

Warren shows Corbett the latest newspaper headline, but he doesn't seem to be alarmed by it. He does inform Warren that someone smashed his portrait and so he should be careful. He also offers to clean up the mess at the flower shop and suggests that Breslin spend the night up at the house. 

For her part, Breslin complains to Warren about how Arless just disappeared on her, leaving her alone to see to Leontovich. 

The conversation takes place in Warren's old room, a virtual museum to boyhood masculinity. Their father wanted Warren to grow up strong and manly. (The strong part seems to have taken hold more than the other...!) 

The two recall how their father dumped Breslin's mother because she had the ill fortune to bear a daughter instead of a son. Then we're told that the father and his second wife died in a car crash while the kids were still children. Leontovich had been their foster mother up until a stroke rendered her the way she is now. 

 

Breslin, cradling the doll we saw at the beginning of the movie, watches as Warren heads to bed across the hall.

In the middle of the night, as she rises to close a banging window, Breslin is stunned to find Arless in her room! Arless says not a peep, however. 

Breslin is stunned to see Arless heading into her brother's room, then overhears the two having a brief conversation within. 

The next morning brings contention between the women. Breslin wants to know why Arless was in her room while Arless denies ever having done such a thing before it's all said and done, Arless informs Breslin that she and Warren are in fact married! Then she tells Breslin to leave the house or she's going to kill her. 

Back at the flower shop, Breslin is confronted by police lieutenant Gilbert Green. He wants to know what she was doing the night before last. 

He's brought along bellboy Rust to see if he can identify her as the woman he married that night! Arless had used Breslin's name during her shenanigans. 

When Breslin tells her boyfriend Corbett about Arless' threats against her, he lets her in on the break-in he'd originally shielded from her. He wants to contact the police, but she's reluctant in case Arless truly is married to her little brother. 

Up at the house, Warren is recalling to Leontovich how he will be coming into a $10 million inheritance upon his upcoming birthday. That's why he's come back home from Denmark, with her in tow along with her caregiver Arless. Corbett arrives and tries to convince Warren that Arless may be dangerous, but the most he'll do is provide a snapshot to show the Ventura police. 

Later, Arless is really giving it to Leontovich. She's already had the local Fix-It man come and sharpen her favorite knife and now she wants to try it out on the old woman! 

Her plans to do in her helpless charge are interrupted when the doctor suddenly pays a visit. 

Leontovich wants to get help from her former employer, but can't form or emit the words. Arless manages to caress the doctor into leaving, announcing that it's the old gal's nap time. 

From Ventura, Corbett calls to check on Breslin, having told her to stay home with the door locked. 

Not long after, Warren is out front knocking on the window to come in. 

Corbett calls once more to alert Breslin that Arless was positively identified by the bellboy as the woman who married him and who killed the Justice of the Peace. Warren decides to head back to the house and Breslin insists on accompanying him. 

Once there, he implores Breslin to wait in the car and let him handle Arless. She waits and waits, until... 

William Castle's latest gimmick kicks in! Castle narrates that this is the "Fright Break" and that anyone who's too scared to continue watching could exit the theater now! (Theaters were equipped with a "Coward's Corner" for those who opted out. They also were entitled to a refund, which necessitated the need for different colored tickets at each showing so that people couldn't cheat.)  

Even though my teeth were chattering with abject terror, I stuck it out so that I could compose this post. Ha ha!

Breslin faces down a couple of gruesome scenarios before the police lieutenant, having raced from Ventura, comes to her aid. 

Typical of the era, the film's twisty plot line is explained at the end (much the way Psycho's was), first by the doctor...

...then by the police detective. 

It's like a conglomeration of setting and performer, cribbed from Simon Oakland's summary from the prior (and, needless to say, superior) movie.  

Corbett had entered the movie biz in 1959 after having served in the US Navy and was a supporting actor to the likes of Ernest Borgnine, James Stewart and Alan Ladd before receiving this first top-billed role. Unfortunately, the part could scarcely be more conventional and thankless. He's amiable, but isn't given anything remarkable to do. The year after this, he landed his first short-lived TV series, It's a Man's World, before taking over for an indisposed George Maharis on Route 66 during its final season. He continued to appear in movies such as Shenandoah (1965) and Chisum (1970), but was chiefly a TV guest star (including one Star Trek) with occasional series like The Road West. In the mid-1970s, he segued to daytime soaps with The Doctors, followed by his final gig of note - recurring on the prime-time soap Dallas in the mid-1980s. He died of lung cancer in 1993 at only age 59.

Breslin was the daughter of a New York judge who began acting on the stage before segueing to television parts. While not a particularly arresting actress, she was a rather perfect embodiment of the type of 1950s and '60s female that programs called for at that time. She costarred on the (now forgotten) Jackie Cooper sitcom The People's Choice from 1955-1958 and worked on several installments of Perry Mason and The Twilight Zone. After Homicidal, she returned to work for William Castle in I Saw What You Did (1964), then enjoyed a stint on Peyton Place. She later moved to daytime, spending the late-'60s on General Hospital. When she married second husband Art Modell (a successful businessman and NFL team owner), she departed the acting profession and turned her attention to considerable philanthropy in the Cleveland, Ohio area. She passed away in 2011 of pancreatitis at age 85.

Breslin was seven years older than Corbett, a fact not helped by the dowdy styling for ladies which was popular at the time. I don't know if this publicity shot was done before or after the filming of the movie, but she did not have these streaks in her hair in the finished product. Perhaps she was given a color and restyle to try to bridge the gap a bit.

Leontovich is an interesting case. A Russian actress who attended Moscow's Imperial School of Dramatic Art, she fled the country (and lost three brothers) during the Russian Revolution. Learning English as swiftly as possible, she landed a role in the play Blossom Time on a US tour. Eventually, she made it to Broadway, causing a splash in Grand Hotel (her role going to Greta Garbo for the movie), followed by Twentieth Century (which was done on screen by Carole Lombard) and others. Later, she originated the role of the Dowager Empress in Anastasia, once again losing the movie part to a better known actress, in this case Helen Hayes. She had done a few films here and there (and from 1923-1949 was wed to actor-director Gregory Ratoff), but remained a stage actress as well as a dramatic coach for the most part. She died of cardiac arrest in 1993 at the age of 93. 

 

Leontovich in her Grand Hotel hey-day.

Opposite Viveca Lindfors in Anastasia. 

A rare film role opposite Michael Rennie and Lana Turner in The Rains of Ranchipur (1955.)

 

Rust has long been a favorite of mine. He actually has a mini-tribute here already at the tail end of my 2012 profile on the film Walk on the Wild Side (1962) which you can read here if you wish. He wasn't necessarily handsome in the conventional manner of the time, which cream cheese matinee idols were the thing, but I think he's gorgeous and always look forward to seeing him on screen. He passed away of a heart attack in 1994 at only age 59. 
 

::::::SPOILER ALERT!:::::: 

You won't want to read on if you don't like key things revealed about a movie you aren't familiar with. As you know, I try to keep things reasonably obscured when I'm paying tribute to a movie, but this was one of the toughest to handle! 

There is no Jean Arless. This was a pseudonym given to busy television actress Joan Marshall. A former Chicago and Las Vegas showgirl, eager to break the mold and pursue greener pastures as an actress, Marshall began acting on many mid-1950s westerns like Have Gun - Will Travel, Tombstone Territory, Bat Masterson and Maverick. When the opportunity for Homicidal came along, she auditioned for and won the role of Emily, the crazed caregiver. But then she returned in heavy disguise to try for the contrasting male role, which Castle was considering using a man for! She so impressed him that he cast her in both parts and used the fake name "Jean Arless" to throw people off the scent as to who or what was on screen in the title role. She was aided in her performance by the overdubbing of a male voice when appearing as Warren and, though most keen-eyed audiences of today can see right through this with relative ease, it was a pretty admirable attempt. Her performance is remarkable in the way she moves as Warren. And, to help make things a bit more authentic, it's as Warren that she uses her own dyed and restyled hair! Most actresses would have opted for a toupee so that they could hold on to their own long locks.  After this, Marshall continued to appear on many popular TV series, along with the occasional movie, until quitting the biz at the end of the 1960s. She made one brief appearance in 1975's Shampoo as sort of an in-joke (her own life experiences had become the basis for some of that film's story line!) Having retired to Jamaica, she died there in 1992 at age 61 of lung cancer. 

 

One distinctive bit of trivia in Marshall's career was her appearance in the initial (and unaired) pilot for The Munsters. She was Phoebe Munster, Herman's wife, but was deemed too close in appearance to Morticia of The Addams Family, so the part was retooled and cast with former movie leading lady Yvonne de Carlo. 

Star Trek fans will recall her as one of Captain Kirk's former loves, who ends up prosecuting him in a court-martial for one episode. 

And just in case any of you think I forgot about it. No, I haven't! Prior to his legitimate career as an actor, ex-sailor Corbett found work as a physique model and his pictures were published in a variety of "fitness" and bodybuilding periodicals. So here are a couple of examples! 

Goodbye till next time!