The Bird with Crystal Plumage (1969) There are horses on the island of Vieques. Many more horses than there are fences. It is rumored that the dense equine population originated as cavalry horses, abandoned by the US military after WWI, multiplying and overtaking the beaches through the years as occasional companions, pets or nuisances to both the servicemen stationed in Camp Garcia and the inhabitants of Isabella II and Esperanza, the two villages on the island. Sailors and marines, living in tents around the slopes of Mt. Pirata could all claim a horse to get around on while stationed on the island. According to the common law of the island, one owns a horse after seven days of possession. That is, if a horse were to wander on to your property local custom would have it legal yours should you feed and stable it for a week. But, of course, that never happens. Often you may wind up taking care of your neighbor’s horse for six days or so, doing all the work, combing its mane, pitching it hay, feeding it carrots. Then on the seventh day its rightful owner will come looking for his horse.

This was more than analogous to Frank’s dating history.

Regrettably, even a hop off of Puerto Rico, seven miles to Vieques (literally the smaller greater island paradise hidden behind the first) on a rickety Cessna Grand Caravan coupled with poor cell reception are not enough to keep reality from sneaking in. Frank spots his phone whirring on the bar and relinquishes his 3-Star Barriltio and leaves Pasillo de Mufungo, his greatest regret being paying $1.90 for ice. In calling back the number, he finally gets a response as he paces the beach along Mosquito Bay and admires the profound bioluminescence.

It is an old flame from Worchester, Mass. She says that she just wanted to tell him that she got pregnant. There is silence on the line and Frank cannot tell if she wants him to be happy or sad; she has had bouts with ovarian cancer and had not been expected to be able to conceive. Frank tells her simply that he is glad for her if that was something she is trying do and that his thoughts are with her in any case. He shrugs hangs up and swipes a coconut off a nearby palm.

Two swipes with the machete and the top is off. He fills it with Apple Ginseng-Up and a bottle of cañita he’d picked up outside La Tienda Verde. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit into the cup holder in the Honda Element. Damnable rental car! And, oh. By the way, on the DVD-frontlines: Dario Argento may a few arguable classic films under his belt, such as Suspiria (1977). However, his first film L’Uccello Dalle Piume di Cristallo (The Bird with Crystal Plumage aka The Gallery Murders; 1969) is certainly not one of them. But it is out on DVD (25 October 05) on Blue Underground. Moreover, it is the first in Argento’s overdrawn oeuvre. Typical of his work, the story starts with a writer witnessing a (an attempted) murder. He decides to investigate the related series of murders himself. Paintings are important cues. The people around him start dying… To watch the same movie with slightly better casting (e.g. David Hemmings, Blow-up [Antonini 1966]), cinematography, and scares one would better seek out Argento’s 1975 effort, Profundo Rosso (Deep Red).

Un Sussurro nel Buio (1976) Frank tosses three pairs of blue Dickies and several paisley handkerchiefs into his duffle; his next assignment was Vieques. Neither the concept of machete-ing his way through endless acres of jungle, nor the vision of rum punch and beaches and pretty Latin girls, stirred him very much. To him it was simply his next assignment. He was as if a cork bobbing on the vast ocean, headed wherever the currents took him. Tom Horn and Junior Bonner know they are going to be shipped off to Iris’ again for a time; they miaow nervously and make figure eights between Frank’s legs as he crosses from the bed to the bookshelf deciding what reading material to bring on the flight. He chooses a dog-eared copy of Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), which is feathered with pink post-it notes. It is 4 AM. The blankness of his thoughts had kept him sleepless the last few days, for unlike many who cleared their minds and slept soundly, the determined Frank fared much better to concentrate (or, meditate, but Frank didn’t care much for the connotations of that word), on the goal at hand. whether it was to finish writing his next chapter, to rehang the Impala’s muffler, or to strike up a conversation with the mousy little cashier at the Winn-Dixie. But with nothing of consequence on his mind save packing for his trip, Frank had been staying up watching horror films; the idea was that shock and fright, for lack of anything else, were at least things to feel. Unfortunately, the last, Un Sussurro nel Buio or A Whisper in the Dark (Aliprandi 1976) was neither shocking nor frightening. For one of “classic Italian gothic” pieces from the early 1970s, the film is really pretty poor and rife with cliché, bad dialogue and untenable plot points. It’s out on DVD in time for Halloween (27 September on NoShame Films), but don’t rush out. The film centers on a creepy little blonde (Italian?) kid, Martino, and his imaginary friend, Luca. The imaginary friend demands the attention of his whole family. When ignored Luca the Ghost Kid makes it rain or puts frogs in the bathtub or encourages little Martino to push people off window ledges. And, oh yeah. Luca might be the spirit of Martino’s stillborn brother. And Mom feels pretty guilty ‘bout that. That’s your basic movie; just throw in some kinda creepy but repetitive dollies around the family’s estate grounds and behind bookcases and staircase banisters, some gratuitous nudity and Joseph Cotton (Citizen Kane; Welles, 1941) in an extensive cameo as the Professor looking in on Martino. What the hell Cotton was thinking is a moot point. It is more than balanced out by John Phillip Law as Martino’s father—you probably know him best as the angel from Barbarella (Vadim 1968). To boot, not only is the dubbing on Whisper very poor, the subtitles are almost comically disparate from the actual dialogue. If you do watch the film, play a game and try to guess which set of dialogue is sillier. Whisper is liberally influenced by Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898) and Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973). And Cotton’s arrival at the mansion is shot decidedly as a rip-off of Father Merrin’s arrival in The Exorcist (Friedkin 1973). The difference is that Roeg’s Venice-set pic is a classic piece of gothic horror, though admittedly not for everyone; it takes the concept of a scare where literally nothing happens to the nth degree. The most horrifying thing on the screen is that Donald Sutherland (MASH; Altman, 1970) and Julie Christie (Doctor Zhivago; Lean 1965) have actual intercourse in the love scene. (For those who remember life before the Internet, this kind of thing in mainstream film was pretty daring until about a year ago.) In any case, without spoiling it, Don’t Look Now is like having the camera filming on the wrong studio lot. We almost see the periphery of the story only. But again, if you need lots of action and hate anticlimax, don’t bother. A Whisper in the Dark takes non-horror horror to a tongue in cheek, cliché level. Better to check out Polanski’s “apartment trilogy”—Repulsion (1965), Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Tenant (1976), set in London, NYC and Paris, respectively. Or, for a few cool effects try Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil's Backbone (2001). Of course A Whisper in the Dark, Frank finds is just loud and annoying enough to keep him awake, packing his bags for a flight two days away. An extra pair of bootlaces, the lucky pen that homeless Jerry had given him, and a bottle of Old Spice (a bottle so old it still had the three-masted ship on the label and not the crappy yuppie sailboat) complete his packing. And Frank pauses in the medicine cabinet, eyes on the 10 oz cherry NyQuil.

Lifeboat (1944)

The lesbians sway to an Al Greene groove as Frank puffs another unfiltered cigarette in Chunky Monkeys, a gay bar and seemingly the only place open on a Sunday night in Durango, Colorado. Spike frowns at a candle on the bar and talks about his mouth-harp, though like many of the roughnecks in town, he’s thinking about crystal meth. Life on an oil rig, land or sea, was rife with drug tests, and unfortunately, that led to a man in need of a toke towards wickeder drugs that could be pissed out of your system quicker. Lights flash on the black and white tile and Frank only wishes that the price of drinks was cheaper (an unheard-of four bucks a pop for a juke-joint in the middle of nowhere) and maybe that some of the cuter girls are interested in men. Alas, he also wonders why they are watching a Steven Seagal movie silently flashing on a TV set above the bar. The gay men for the most part sit in a corner wearing white Stetsons and boots (insert euphemism, here.) and holding hands. Frank thinks perhaps he should have changed his western-cut shirt tonight and straw hat. The bar’s creed hangs nearby: “A Wise Monkey Never Monkeys With Another Monkey’s Monkey.” Kitschy. This suits the place. A fun time but mind your own bidness.

Another cigarette and Frank waits for the next desperate whiskey. but the bartender, as is most everyone, looking like the poor-man’s Tallulah Bankhead, is watching the folk singer, who is about to butcher a Frey/Henley tune. Frank is left hopelessly adrift on his stool. “Freedom? Oh, freedom,” he thinks, “Is just some people talkin’.” Spike shifts in his seat weakly too. His beast calls. Frank is embarrassed to be miserably lowing over Lunette again, whom he blames for chasing him into this directional drilling gig; he thinks instead of Tallulah, wondering why she isn’t the gay paragon that she deserves to be. Probably because today’s generation doesn’t know her; she was always primarily a star on stage over celluloid. And yesterday’s generation know her mostly as the Black Widow in the campy old Batman series, shortly before her death. Well, Dahlings, Frank always remembered her from the Hitchcock masterpiece, Lifeboat (1944), currently re-packaged on DVD (18 October 2005) by Fox Home Entertainment. Tallulah plays a bullish WWII reporter, whose torpedoed transport ship has left her adrift in a lifeboat with a mishmash of nine passengers and merchant seamen with one mysterious, rescued German. The cast is well rounded out, from William Bendix’s (The Babe Ruth Story; Del Ruth 1948) sympathetic portrayal of a dance-happy sailor with a gangrenous leg, to John Hodiak’s (Desert Fury; Allen 1947) devil–may-care machinist to Hume Cronyn (Cocoon; Howard 1985) as a starry-eyed radio-operator. Notably also is Canada Lee (Cry, the Beloved Country; Korda 1951), as “Joe” the black steward, he recites the Lord’s Prayer over one lost soul. He sounds, unlike any other actor Frank has ever heard, like he really understands it.

The story was written by John Steinbeck, so as one can expect, the dialogue is rich, naturalistic and presents a variety of deft social commentary in its little microcosm. When Willy, the German sailor, crawls aboard the lifeboat, for example, the American seamen want to toss him back. Not only are they the guys fighting the war, but also, presumably having been through the Depression and poverty, they have a better idea of the realism of food and rations. It is Connie Porter (Bankhead) and wealthy poker-playing industrialist Ritt, played by Henry Hull (Great Expectations; Walker 1934), who are against the barbaric act as unchristian. Morality, it seems is a hobby for the leisure class.

For Alfred Hitchcock, the second powerhouse behind this film, this is the first of some of his experimental, often claustrophobic films, such as the his two-hour “one-take film” Rope (1948) or Rear Window (1954) shot largely from Jimmy Stewart’s wheel-chair bound POV. Lifeboat has elements of both. There is by necessity one claustrophobic set, the boat itself. The opening shot under the credits begins with the sunken freighter’s stacks sliding under the waves, leaving only Connie in the lifeboat, looking for survivors. But instead of the duologue of Stewart and Grace Kelly, we have a whole choir of voices lyricized by the great Steinbeck. And note you won’t get the spoiler to Hitchcock’s trademark cameo here, but watch for it. It’s damned clever. Tallulah, who came down with pneumonia, played the sopping wet role without underwear, much to the distress of the cast and crew. Frank has no idea if the DVD contains any enhanced detail of Tallulah Bankhead’s snatch. But, Frank is broken in his reverie as the bartender finally notices his plight. He rows back up to the bar. The bartender is eager for repeat customers, so comps his and Spike’s drinks and also invites them to an after-party with the girls. Cool. Vodka and dildos at 2 am. You gotta love the personal touch.