Giving "Devil's" Its Due!

Hurtling ourselves once more into the TV-movie time tunnel, we brush up against this gem from 1973, The Devil's Daughter. In the wake of Rosemary's Baby (1968), a tidal wave of films (feature and television) involving Satanism, possession, voodoo and God knows what else came crashing onto screens everywhere. This delightfully brief (72 minute) telefilm from the golden days of such, has a neat cast of actors going through their devilish paces under the skillful direction of Jeannot Szwarc. Szwarc had helmed nearly 20 installments of Night Gallery and continued to do scads more TV (along with a few high-profile cinematic disasters like Santa Claus: The Movie, 1985!)

Daughter begins in a beautiful old church with elegant stained glass windows, handsome wood furnishings and a distraught woman praying the Rosary. The lady turns out to be Diane Ladd, a haunted, emotionally-devastated woman who's living in virtual squalor and relies on alcohol to self-medicate.

It's a cameo role, for she's dead before the credits roll, but Ladd gives her part everything she possibly can, effectively conveying all the fear, hurt, turmoil and despondency she can muster in her brief screen time. Just two years after this, she would score her first Oscar nomination for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1975.)

At Ladd's funeral, we meet her now-orphaned daughter, Belinda Mont- gomery, who's been away at school for most of her life, only seeing her mother a few times a year and never having even known her father.

After the service, a vintage limo pulls up and out comes vintage Shelley Winters with her mute chauffeur Jonathan Frid in tow. She introduces herself as a longtime pal of Montgomery's mother and invites the mourning girl to come back to her home with her.

The home, a lovely old estate, is filled with unusual antiques and a rather ridiculously forbidding portrait over the fireplace! A pretty obviously evil-looking man with glowing eyes and a mystical staff crouches menacingly against a red background...! Just the sort of thing you want to dot your living room decor.

A dejected Montgomery is fawned over by the doting Winters (who is decked out with gobs of gold jewelry.) She convinces the young girl to stay with her in her spacious home until she has decided what she's going to do from here on.

A pair of sisters who live next door drop by for a visit. Needless to say they make quite a pair (Velma Carpenter and Lucille Benson) as they dress practically identical yet are clearly fraternal, if related at all! LOL

Her first morning at Winters' estate, she is greeted with breakfast in bed. Frid (legendary to fans of Dark Shadows for his role as Barnabas Collins) is clearly devoted to Winters and yet can't help seeming to encourage Montgomery not to get in too deep.

Winters offers her young guest a ring that Ladd had once given her for "safe keeping." The distinctive design is one that Montgomery will be coming across more and more during her stay with Winters...

She comes upon the next-door sisters again and they invite her to come for lunch the following day for apple strudel. (Wasn't it an apple that brought down The Garden of Eden?) Benson, a highly unique performer, excelled at demonstrating ebullient kindness while also suggesting a hint of menace underneath. Carpenter was chiefly a stage performer who occasionally work in movies and on TV.

Montgomery finally notices that the ring she is wearing shares its design with not only the staff in the portrait over the fireplace, but the label on the Spanish cigarettes that Winters is endlessly smoking. Winters explains that it's nothing but a local symbol that finds its way into many items around California...

Not long after, Montgomery stumbles upon a scrapbook bearing this same insignia and inside it are photos of herself from childhood almost to the present as well as photos of her mother from the 1940s. This would be enough to send me packing, but she still isn't disturbed enough!

The local priest drops in and suggests to her that she move in with a young lady he knows who is in search of a roommate in town. Finally, Montgomery opts to take a hint and get out of the creepy mansion.

Perky Barbara Sammeth is the gal with the cute apartment with whom Montgomery decides to bunk. Sammeth, who had not appeared on-screen since her 1969 debut in Winters' The Mad Room four years prior, was an actress of a particularly prevalent type in the 1960s & '70s: very "on," superficially stylized and artificial in tone. Sort of "That Girl" times ten when one was plenty...

Winters is apoplectic when she finds out that Montgomery has chosen to move out, leading to a confron- tation between her and her young charge.

Later, while Montgomery is waiting at school for Sammeth, a young boy with a ball (which he dribbles in the most strenuous way) nearly walks into oncoming traffic, as if driven to it by someone. Two creepy cretins watch from behind some playground equipment.

After that harrowing bit of activity, Sammeth takes Montgomery to the stables to meet her beloved horse, but the animal is uncharacteristically spooked by the newcomer.

Back at the apartment, Winters has payed an unexpected (and unwelcome) call to see what sort of digs Montgomery has chosen in preference to her own.

Winters, who pretty much has a ball throughout this telefilm, is decked to the hilt in a silvery fur hat and stole.

She takes special interest in Sammeth's delicate glass horse collection, delivering a lengthy monologue while fingering one small one in particular. This was one year after her Oscar-nominated role as Belle Rosen in The Poseidon Adventure and she was balancing TV-movies with colorful roles on the big screen. This same year she played the outrageous villainess in Cleopatra Jones.

Montgomery, still not having learned her lesson, heads to Winters' home for a party in her honor. The place is packed with people she mostly doesn't know.

Suddenly Winters appears in sparkling gold eye shadow, thanking her for coming and gleefully introducing her around.

The twin sisters are on hand. Black Carpenter fondles a white cat while white Benson cuddles a black one! Note the sculpture in the foreground with a dangling red glass apple...

Next we meet rather fishy (get it?! ha ha!) anthro- pological researcher Abe Vigoda (yes... Abe Vigoda!) who offers to demonstrate one of the dances he picked up during his travels. Thankfully, his participation is just a few steps here and there; less than one would see from an expectant father in a hospital waiting room.

The main event turns out to be Mont- gomery, who starts swaying and sashaying around, tossing her glorious mane of brunette locks everywhere. When she's done with her impromptu exhibition, the party guests offer her a crown bearing the ever-present insignia and announce that she is the daughter of Satan!

The next day, Montgomery is informed that her (long absent) father has left her a $15,000 trust fund, overseen by kindly judge Joseph Cotten. She confesses the bizarre circumstances of the night before, but he tells her that it's mumbo-jumbo and cannot hurt her if she doesn't believe in it.

That same day, she is heading back home with some purchases when she "meets cute" a new tenant in the building who is carrying his mattress up the stairs behind her and knocks her down with it!

Inside her apartment she's horrified to see members of the coven inside, uninvited! They inform her very bluntly that, while they're sorry they sprung on her that she's Satan's offspring, that's not all. She is also set to wed a demon!

And... even though he has the thickest eyebrows ever to emerge on planet Earth, the demon is not Abe Vigoda.

Sammeth is all set to go on a date with the guy who moved in upstairs, Robert Foxworth. After flouncing around in her new dress, she discovers that Foxworth and Montgomery had a bit of a tiff out front when he moved in, but now they've settled their hash.

Foxworth is nice looking and all, but to anyone who saw him in Airport '77 or Damian: The Omen II (1978), he isn't going to be getting off without at least a little bit of skepticism! Before long, Sammeth is dispatched and he begins to get to know Montgomery better.

Winters is still relentless in her pursuit of Montgomery, with phone calls emphatically emphasizing her plan of action.

To get away from the harassment and bad feelings, Foxworth suggests a trip to see his mother and enjoy the splendor of her ocean-side estate. We're treated to some really gorgeous location scenery and the two begin to fall for one another.

Foxworth's mother is played by Martha Scott, who endearingly portrayed Charlton Heston's mama a couple of times and who went on to play Lee Majors' mom on The Six Million Dollar Man and a fretful nun in Airport 1975.

Montgomery heads back to town from her soul-replenishing visit with Foxworth and his mother and informs judge Cotten that she has agreed to marry her handsome suitor. Cotten expresses concern that it's all a bit sudden, but finally gets on board and even agrees to walk the orphaned bride down the aisle at her ceremony.

Prior to said ceremony, Montgomery stops by Winters' estate to inform the coven that they can take their devil's daughter crap and stick it where the sun doesn't shine.

The blushing bride is all decked out for her big day, aided by Foxworth's mother, resplendent herself in pale blue chiffon and silver jewelry.

The ceremony gets underway to the bliss of both the bride and groom. But has Winters had her final say? All through the movie, as one does, I kept trying to figure it all out, thinking that surely there might be a twist ending. There is an alleged twist ending, but for the life of me it's the very one I was predicting all along!! I guess the whole thing's just been done too many times by now.

However, this little movie has the benefit of atmosphere and a gallery of interesting performers in it. Several of Frid's fans bemoaned the fact that his role is smallish and that he isn't permitted to speak in it, but he's still giving it a lot of thought and feeling without ever reaching the hammy heights of Miss Shelley at her best/worst. Frid did a lot of varied stage work, but his screen career was limited almost completely to thrillers, chiefly related to Dark Shadows. One year after this, he departed the screen completely until making a cameo in Dark Shadows (2012), dying prior to its release.

This TV-movie can be seen in its entirety, commercial free and in a very good print right here. If it looks interesting to you or you're a fan of Winters at her zany, domineering best, I recommend it highly. It'll only take an hour and fifteen minutes to watch.

Thanksgiving Turkey

Happy Thanksgiving! You know, in The Underworld, we really don't celebrate in the traditional manner, so when we carve up and serve a turkey, we're not dealing with white or dark meat or wings or legs. We're giving you movies that were real turkeys... at least to some of the people involved with them, if not the public at large. These fifteen pieces are from the delightful book "Hollywood Talks Turkey," which we have offered up once here and then revisited here. But there is still some meat stuck to its bones, so we're digging in AGAIN! Enjoy. And I hope you're holiday is great.

CAROL BURNETT: After my first film, Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (1963), I should have been given the award for "Worst Performance Ever Given in Movies by an Actress." I was confused, bored and I missed the [live] audience. Nothing was spontaneous. If CBS ever shows that turkey on their late show, I'll break my contract.

OLEG CASSINI: Despite the boycott [allegedly begun by Darryl Zanuck who was angry that his star Gene Tierney wed the designer], I did get some free-lance design jobs during this time. The first was one of Gene's films, The Shanghai Gesture (1941.) ... But the film was an overwrought turkey destroyed by the critics, who gave Gene her first bad reviews. ... As a souvenir of the experience, Gene had brought home carved figurines of each character of the film - they had been used in a particularly absurd dinner scene near the end. When the picture opened and bombed, I took the figurines out to the backyard, lined them up along the top of our fence and executed them with a hunting rifle. "How could you do it?," Gene screamed when she learned about the firing squad. "You know I wanted to keep them!" "Those characters deserved to die," I told her. "Now at least we won't be constantly reminded of that dreadful movie."

JOSEPH COTTEN: The Radio City Music Hall haunted me. Somehow, I felt I had been cheated out of a childhood ambition [to have a film open there]. Imagine my delight when, some 40-odd years later, my dream came true. I appeared in Heaven's Gate (1980), which cost over $40,000,000 and was the most expensive picture ever to open in the Radio City Music Hall. It was such a disaster that it closed the Music Hall.

VINCE EDWARDS: Frankly, I was discouraged by the poor previews for Mr. Universe (1951.) I never liked the plot in the first place. But I took it because it spelled opportunity. After I saw the picture, I was convinced I had done the wrong thing. It was a lousy way to make a debut in movies--as a big, dumb, blond kid. That kind of character gets you labeled.

JANE FONDA: Everyone has to start somewhere. But after Tall Story (1960), there was nowhere for me to go but up.

PAUL NEWMAN: I had the privilege of doing the worst motion picture filmed during the fifties--The Silver Chalice (1954.) ... How many other actors have you spoken to who can say with complete objectivity that they were in the worst motion picture made in the fifties--a film that cost $4,500,000? That makes me very special. When they ran The Silver Chalice on Los Angeles television three or four years ago, I took out ads in the newspapers apologizing for what was going to happen on channel nine that night. But it backfired. Everybody wanted to know what I was apologizing for, and the picture ended up with the second or third highest rating of any picture that station had ever shown.

ROSALIND RUSSELL: The first lead I played at Metro--it was forced on me, I went down hollering--was a B movie called The Casino Murder Case (1935), with Paul Lukas. It was so bad, and I was so bad in it, that it gave my maid Hazel ammunition for seasons to come. "If you don't behave," she'd say, "I'm going to tell people about that Casino Murder Case."

DINAH SHORE: Making movies was so boring. You sat around interminably. And I never thought I was photogenic. I thought I looked horrible on the Technicolor screen. To this day, if I hear some of those recordings and see those movies my knees start knocking. Now those monumental successes are played on TV at three o'clock in the morning. I've become and insomniac's nightmare! Anyone who'd stay up to those ungodly hours to see Aaron Slick from Punkin Crick (1952) deserves what he gets.

LEA THOMPSON: The "H" word--that's how I refer to Howard the Duck (1986.) I'd never seen the press go after something like that. I was in such shock. I wasn't prepared. You can say anything about the movie--I'm not defending it--but you have to realize how much work it was, six months, every single day. I was so committed to that duck--I had to fall in love with a mechanical ILM effect, and in order to do that you have to believe. So, yeah, it was really disappointing.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: The final humiliation was to have to see Cleopatra (1963.) The British Embassy trapped me into it. They requested me to take the Bolshoi Ballet as my guests to a screening of Cleopatra. I couldn't very well say no. When it was over, I raced back to the Dorchester Hotel and just made it to the downstairs lavatory before I vomited. I'm being sued by 20th Century-Fox and one of their complaints is that when somebody asks me what I think of their film, I tell them.

MARLON BRANDO: The Freshman (1990)--it's going to be a flop, but after this, I'm retiring. I'm so fed up. This picture, except for the Canadian crew, was an extremely unpleasant experience. I wish I hadn't finished with a stinker. [Brando went on to further gems such as Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) and Free Money (1998). his last movie actually being The Score (2001.)]

DIANA DORS: They brought me here as a sex bomb, a supposed threat to Marilyn Monroe. And who did they give me for leading men? George Gobel in I Married a Woman (1958) and Rod Steiger in The Unholy Wife (1957)! I should have had Bill Holden or Cary Grant. I had to carry the whole burden myself, and the pictures fizzled. I was a sex bomb, all right--with the accent on "bomb." [The Unholy Wife did also have Tom Tryon as Dors' lover.]

ROGER MOORE: It's a period in my life I just laugh about now. I remember my biggest part was opposite Lana Turner in a bomb called Diane (1956.) Time said, "Lana Turner as Diane de Poitiers walked on the screen in a clattering of heels and a fluttering of false eyelashes, followed by a lump of English roast beef." I was the English roast beef. The they [MGM] asked me to leave. "Just check your wardrobe and clear out" is the way they put it. I arrived in America on April Fool's Day, 1954. I should have known that meant something.

VICTORIA PRINCIPAL: I think I have an irrational fear of features. I did something called The Naked Ape (1973), which is arguably one of the 10 worst movies ever made. That began such a painful period in my life, and I always connect it to features.

  
And this was my favorite! ~~~~~
 

MARGUERITE CHAPMAN: The Amazing Transparent Man (1960) was filmed in Dallas, Texas, with oil money. They needed a money loser, and they sure got it. It was never publicized. I don't know of any theaters that played it, though a few little fleatraps somewhere may have had a death wish. When I arrived in Dallas, Les Guthrie, our director, had just done three films in a row for these people and told me, "I've never had so much trouble. All I need now is for the motel to burn down." Later that evening...the roof of the motel caught fire and it was spreading to where I was. Quick as a flash, Les rushed in--to save me, I thought. Instead, he grabbed my studio clothes lined up by the drapes and ran out with them. A minute later, James Griffith, one of the actors in the film, hollered in, "I've got to save my guns! I'll be back for you!" ... The motel was saved. ... The odor from the fire was so foul that I asked if I couldn't please be moved to a hotel. So they put me on the 13th floor of a Dallas hotel. I no sooner got settled in than a waiter blithely announced, "Oh, this is the room where a lady jumped to her death from one of the windows"! Everyone who came in said this to me. The day after the picture finished, I called a couple I knew in Fort Worth and pleaded with them to come and get me. "I can't stay in this room a minute more," I said. ... After a while trouble popped up there, too. My friend's husband tried to rape me! ... What do I think of The Amazing Transparent Man? What would you think of The Amazing Transparent Man?! Pukesville! It was my last movie.

Wishing all my Poseidon's Underworld readers a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving!