THE MAD ROOM - Dave Grusin - "Forgive Them" (1969)

We must have been blessed by The Devil, because out of the black, an age old colleague of ours has volunteered to sit in tonight and add his special touch to this month's Halloween Countdown proceedings, so without any further adieu, put your claws together, and welcome a world class scholar and critic to The Dungeon, but first just let me get those shackles and that strait-jacket off..., and he'll be ready to go!

Hello everybody out there in Lucky 13 land – this is Greg Goodsell, with my very first blog entry for Monster Movie Music! For my first entry, I thought I would dig up a REALLY obscure horror film, THE MAD ROOM from 1969. How obscure is it? Well, it has a lot of major acting talent involved – Stella Stevens, Shelley Winters AND Beverly Garland – and it’s not in a single horror movie reference book anywhere! Believe you me, I’ve read most of them!

Now, before we get too far into this, it’s very important to remember that this film is based on a very famous 1941 mystery play, “Ladies In Retirement” by Edward Percy and Reginald Denham. It was considered a contemporary of the much better known “Arsenic and Old Lace” at one time. You can read the original play synopsis here: "Ladies In Retirement" - DPS

It was also made into a film before, starring the film noir great Ida Lupino and the BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) herself, Elsa Lanchester in 1941. You can read the film’s synopsis here: "Ladies In Retirement" - TCM

Special care needs to be made of the source material, because as you see from the crime scene – THE MAD ROOM is a bit of a mess!

We start right away with the voluptuous Stella Stevens running … bounce, bounce, bounce. As we shall see, Stella is not running AWAY from some menace – she’s just running to post a letter! Scenes of girls running pads out a lot of action in this here flick, which runs only about 93 minutes!

Stevens plays Ellen Hardy, the paid companion of Mrs. Armstrong, played by that old battleaxe herself, Shelley Winters! Shelley could play this kind of role in her sleep by then, and she’s not in the film a whole lot, so maybe she just did! Take care of the muscular masseuse tending to Shelley’s wants and needs, he figures into the plot later. While other aspects of the production may be lacking, THE MAD ROOM does have a solid music score by jazz great Dave Grusin! Enjoy! According to some know-it-all Web site, “The original version of THE MAD ROOM included two songs by the pop group Nazz, which included songwriter, guitarist, and producer Todd Rundgren several years before he reached stardom as a solo artist; due to licensing restrictions, the songs do not appear on all video releases of the film.” Huh. If it’s the obnoxious music playing on the radio in the kitchen, Todd wouldn’t want that tidbit to become too well known!

Shelley is the widow of a decorated U.S. military official, and workers on her estate are busy building a museum in his honor. For whatever reason, the film is set in Canada, and many of the lapses in continuity and logic can helpfully be explained away with a vague, “Maybe they do things differently in Canada …”

Stella Stevens had by far the longest and most successful acting career of any Playboy centerfold (Miss January, 1960). She’s still working today, but let’s not forget her outstanding work in Jerry Lewis’ THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, WHERE ANGELS GO, TROUBLE FOLLOWS, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE and scads and scads and scads of TV.

Here we go – the iconic Beverly Garland doing a bit of mild nudity starring in a meaty supporting role as an alcoholic society lady. If you don’t know who Beverly is, you really have no business on this site. It appears that Beverly is married to Shelley’s hunky masseur and she’s inquiring as to his current whereabouts. What is a rich society lady doing married to a masseur? Maybe they do things differently in Canada …

Ooooooooops! Stella got something in the mail saying they’re kicking her younger brother and sister out of the loony bin and she has to come pick them up! The reason for their stay at the Hospital of Mental Ills forms the crux of the twisted plot to follow ……

Putting on her best Pepto Abysmal-pink Jackie Kennedy knock-off, the dutiful Stella goes to the madhouse to pick up her siblings. She’s successfully kept her brother and sister – and the circumstances surrounding their confinement from both Mrs. Armstrong, and her fiancé, Mrs. Armstrong’s son! Stella has an AWFUL lot of ‘splaining to do when she gets back home.

Here is Stella’s 16-year-old sister Mandy, played by Barbara Sammeth. Not only does she and her brother George, played by the distinguished child star Michael Burns, want their own rooms, they insist on a “mad room” like they had at the asylum, in order to “chill out.” What a demanding pair of little shits! Barbara would reteam with Shelley Winters in the fun made-for-TV movie THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER in 1973.

On the ferry ride home, George indulges in some relatively non-psychotic behavior for a man of his age and temperament –

I see London, I see France …

Here we go again with some pointless shots of girls running to fill up screen time. This time, it’s Carol Cole, sister of Natalie Cole, who plays Mrs. Armstrong’s maid Chris. As it was with Stella, Carol isn’t running AWAY from something, but rather running to go feed some dogs left chained up on the estate!

Once sequestered at the Armstrong house, Shelley finds a telling bit of evidence regarding Mandy and George! Vague, unexplained gaps involving some ill-defined “uncle” and “family tragedy” have gone flying out the window at this point.

Tell it Stella! In an extended flashback, Stella tells how her parents were brutally slashed to ribbons, finger paintings of smiling daisies drawn on the wall Charlie Manson style. No one figured out who did what to whom, and so Stella’s younger brother and sister were thrown in the madhouse on the assumption that they were the killers! Maybe they DO things differently in Canada!

Chris and George engage in an interracial romance somewhere along the line, which was rather radical for 1969 – it eats up some running time, anyway –

As expected, Mrs. Armstrong is sliced and diced by an unknown assailant in the manner of the kids’ late parents to keep secrets secret, but --

-- a telling piece of evidence is left lying around. The gleesome threesome hoist Shelley’s corpse into the drink in an attempt to make it all look like an accident, but whoever finds the corpse will notice that one of her hands is neatly severed away!

And now to the REAL STAR of the show, this mangy mutt who just won’t let body parts lie! If this film is remembered at all, it’s for the images of Rover with Shelley Winter’s dismembered hand in its mouth! GAH!

The Shadow knows. You’ve got to hand it to Fido to keep certain plot points salient. The guy who did the screen grabs for this entry opted for this discrete image. When you see the real McCoy, with the hand in Bowser’s mouth, it’s SO HORRIFYING beer will go spraying out your nose!

Beverly Garland, sauced to the gills, accuses Mrs. Armstrong of being in flagrante delecto with her masseur husband, and has the film’s best line: “I’m married to a male whore!”

THESE “Ladies In Retirement” are definitely not amused!

“Hick …. My Easter bonnet can kick YOUR Easter bonnet’s ass!” Bev then runs to the upstairs bathroom to slash her wrists with a broken liquor bottle!

After Beverly’s suicide attempt, Stella finds some occupational therapy in the form of some impromptu finger painting! If you didn’t know who the REAL killer was all along, you haven’t watched enough of horror movies!

There is that gosh-darn bit of incriminating evidence again, now left laying around on the jobsite! Naughty doggie is playing a particularly damning bit of “fetch” involving certain guilty parties.

Ruh Roh! Here comes Scooby Doo with the Hand of Justice for Hella Stella who’s gotten away with far too much for far too long!

FULL to the brim with bad taste elements, THE MAD ROOM folds in a little cruelty to animals when Stella lets Poochie have it for carting that hand around! Take that!

THE MAD ROOM was sold with the tagline of “Forgive them … Forgive them.” Audiences, reacting to the Swiss cheese storyline and extraneous subplots that lead no place chose to forgive – and forget this little opus. Never released to DVD, THE MAD ROOM is now available on a burn-to-order basis. A special tip of the hat to longtime friend Kevin V. for loaning me his copy for this blogpost!

THE PENTHOUSE - Lisa Shane - "World Full Of Lonely Men" (1967)

After a long absence, due to a thing called work, Greg Goodsell has returned to The Dungeon! Tonight's feature is a British bit of psycho-babble called THE PENTHOUSE from 1967! This very 1960s poster seems to give away a good part of the film's story, and this installment may have quite a few spoilers. You should see it anyway!

And so it begins -- THE PENTHOUSE is a psychological horror film without blood or physical mayhem. Think it will work? You bet your boots! I've always felt that this feature had a J. G. Ballard-ian vibe to it. For further information, read his novels High Rise and Concrete Island. An interpretation from director David Cronenberg on his novel Crash rattled quite a few cages back in 1996.

With a cast of five, it's important that we introduce all our players and give them justice! The blonde beauty you see before you is popular Eurotrash starlet Suzy Kendall. She's appeared in such fare as TO SIR, WITH LOVE, worked with Dario Argento in THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE and is perhaps best known for her participation in the proto-slasher TORSO! She appeared, if that can be the word, in BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO as recently as 2012 -- a film which gently mocked Italian horror films of yore.

Very little is known about Terrence Morgan, who had a mere four other acting roles after appearing in this film! To cut to the chase, Morgan plays Bruce, and Kendall plays Barbara, and they're having a clandestine affair in the aforementioned structure.

As a certain cartoon dog would exclaim, Ruh Roh! It's Tony Beckley as Tom and Norman Rodway as Dick! The two, after taking the stairs all their way up to the penthouse (puff, puff, puff) insinuate themselves into the domicile and begin a long session of sadistic fun and games. We'll get to Harry, who compliments Tom and Dick later.

Brunet Beckley was a durable British character actor who worked with Peter Sellers in RE-VENGE OF THE PINK PANTHER in 1978. He would rejoin Kendall in 1971 IN THE DEVIL'S GARDEN. Blond Rodway has an acting career in TV and movies more than a mile long, and in his own way makes this film!

Ruh Roh indeed! Things go pretty south really fast as one of the disgusting duo produces a knife! Such begins one of the most harrowing home invasion scenes this side of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE! -- which has some surprising similarities with this film.

The odious pair are unafraid to wave a knife around, but no worries -- they have no intention of marking up Kendall's lovely face ... wink, wink, nudge, nudge. On a more serious note, THE PENTHOUSE was the first feature film for TV director Peter Collinson. He would go on to direct one of my very favorite Hammer horrors, the tragically misunderstood STRAIGHT ON ‘TIL MORNING. Tragically, he dropped dead of a heart attack – at the far too young age of 44 – in 1980.

Yes, the scumbags want to get Kendall good 'n' drunk first! Candy is dandy but liquor, as they say, is quicker --

C'mon love, you're not going to decline some hospitality from two dangerous psychopaths who've crashed your illicit love shack, are you? DRINK UP!

An avant-garde cover for a jazz album. The crocodile pictured here figures into a later conversation -- wait for it!

All tied up with nowhere to go, in the manner of Jerry Lewis at the hands of Sandra Bernhard in Martin Scorsese' THE KING OF COMEDY, Bruce puts on a brave face -- but his inherent cowardice begins to become very evident!

Its little wonder why Rodway had such a lengthy career in movies and TV -- oozing menace, he could conceivably play Mr. Hyde without makeup! Based upon the play “The Meter Man” by Scott Forbes, the film takes swipes at Britain’s classist system, as well as the British practice of “molly-coddling” prisoners.   

                   
Ms. Kendall gets down to the business of showing some skin and substantial nudity -- rather daring for the film at the time of its release, 1967! We'll be seeing a lot more of Kendall later on in the film!

BANG! What did I tell you? 

Beckley waves his trusty switchblade at Bruce, while Bruce keeps up his stiff upper lip resolve! It is here that Beckley begins his long, eloquent soliloquy -- concerning the crocodile, as referenced by the record cover. Beckley waxes eloquent on how baby crocs were onetime popular pets by children, and how parents flushed them down the john, where the poor, benighted crocs had to stay alive in a sewers to survive, becoming even more savage and a threat to society as a result. Do we hear a reference to Britain's notorious class system going on here?

Kendall, reborn from her boozy ordeal as a Venus in furs, decides she's sick and tired of Bruce's crap -- she knows he'll never leave his wife and kids for her -- and begins to wave that switchblade around! YIKES!

And now the fun really begins! Harry, who Tom and Dick have referred to repeatedly through the siege appears -- and Harry turns out to be horror movie icon MARTINE BESWICK! If you need an introduction to this fantabulous Seventies scream queen icon -- you're on the wrong website. Beat it…

Usually cast in dominatrix-styled roles, Beswick is devastating -- and wonderful in a gray business suit and glasses, in lieu of the slinky get-ups featured in her other roles. This confirms that Beswick was criminally underused during her brief acting career!

ANYWAY ... Beswick informs the couple that she is Tom and Dick's parole officer, and that they have failed her! In fact, she's bringing them back to personally apologize! I tell you, Beswick is only in the film's last 13 minutes, but her eccentric, hilarious performance is the perfect payoff!

Tom, Dick and Harry lean in for a personal exchange, and --

-- the laugh is on the adulterous couple, as well as the audience! Was there any doubt that she was one of them?

The terrifying trio mete out their final verdict! The thing is -- they know full well Bruce isn't going to say anything that would reveal his affair, costing him his career and marriage! Tonight's fun and games has BEEN ON THEM!

Tied up again with no place to go, the adulterous couple are sadder -- but wiser! They escape unharmed, but things aren't going back to what they once were, that’s for sure!

Kendall dumps her loser boyfriend as a torch song plays ... So much for being the other woman! The “World Full of Lonely Men,” as Lisa Shane croons, but the way Brucie acts, he’s destined to be a very lonely man!