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Acolyte, v. 4, issue 1, whole no. 13, Winter 1946
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FORREST J ACKERMAN FANTASY MARQUEE (It is with genuine pleasure that we announce that henceforth Forrest J Ackerman, well-known as an authority on cinematical fantasy, will conduct a regular column in The Acolyte. ---FTL/SDR. -o0o- SPELLBOUND. A superb adaptation by Ben "Fantazius Mallare" Hecht of the novel The House of Dr. Edwardes by Francis Beeding (who also wrote The One Sane Man). Dali's dream sequence, already pictorially described in Life and cinemagazines, is the piece de resistance for the fantasy fan in this suspensefully directed picture by the "suspense man", Alfred Hitchcock. Original notes written up about this picture were unfortunately lost, but, six weeks after viewing the film, an indelible impression remains of a terrific psychological melodrama that had us sitting on the edge of our fingernails and gnawing our seats. Why did the sight of black lines on white sand send Greg Peck into a whing-ding? What was the cause of his amnesia and assumption of another man's identity? Would psychiatrist Ingrid Bergman uncover a murderer in her attempt to release the clouds from Peck's subconscious? Would her life be forfeit for her faith in this unknown man she had come to love? What would be the outcome of it all? Now we know, but we wouldn't tell you the secret for this world--or the next! Music lovers will be thrilled by the score, which brings to the fore the theramin, the unique instrument pictured 20 years ago on the cover of Gernsback's Science and Invention. Its debut adds much to the imaginative mood of the picture. ---o0o--- EVIL EYE, starring Claude Rains. This is a re-release of an English film produced about 1937 formerly titled The Clairvoyant (from the novel of the same name by Ernest Lothar). A picture which ordinarily would not be revived, its resurrection at this time is attributable to a rather disreputable attempt to profit from the popularity of Spellbound. Deceptively, the ads declare: "Spellbound...by a female Svengali". Though this is hooey, the film itself is a fair fantasy. A more youthful Claude Rains is a bit--foppish--as Maximus, a fake mindreader who acquires a real power of clairvoyance in the presence of a young lady, not his wife. Plot questions whether his prophecies may not cause the catastrophes he tries to avert by his warnings. In the end, after predicting a train wreck and a mine cave-in, he abandons his gift as "too dangerous". ---oo0oo--- THE LOST WEEKEND: The Saga of a Sot. As The Picture of Dorian Gray graphically depicted the disintegration of a man through sin, so does The Lost Weekend show, clinically clear, the disolution of a man through gin. (That he drinks himself into hallucinations via rye is beside the point.) Ray Milland should land the Academy Award for his realistic portrayal of a drunk. As a frustrated writer seeking to forget his failure by booze in the night, he gives a first-rate performance which reaches a height of horror in the depiction of his delirium tremens: a squeaking mouse half emerges from an imaginary hole in the wall of his livingroom; a bat enters his window, circels about the ceiling, swoops on the mouse; and Milland's hoarse shrieks of terror echo through the boarding house as a crooked stream of blood trickles down the wallpaper when the bat's jaws crunch the mouse... Paradoxically, the picture should appeal to fantasy enthusiasts because of its intense realism. Once again the teramin, that weird, wailing instrument, is employed with telling effect in -- 18 --
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FORREST J ACKERMAN FANTASY MARQUEE (It is with genuine pleasure that we announce that henceforth Forrest J Ackerman, well-known as an authority on cinematical fantasy, will conduct a regular column in The Acolyte. ---FTL/SDR. -o0o- SPELLBOUND. A superb adaptation by Ben "Fantazius Mallare" Hecht of the novel The House of Dr. Edwardes by Francis Beeding (who also wrote The One Sane Man). Dali's dream sequence, already pictorially described in Life and cinemagazines, is the piece de resistance for the fantasy fan in this suspensefully directed picture by the "suspense man", Alfred Hitchcock. Original notes written up about this picture were unfortunately lost, but, six weeks after viewing the film, an indelible impression remains of a terrific psychological melodrama that had us sitting on the edge of our fingernails and gnawing our seats. Why did the sight of black lines on white sand send Greg Peck into a whing-ding? What was the cause of his amnesia and assumption of another man's identity? Would psychiatrist Ingrid Bergman uncover a murderer in her attempt to release the clouds from Peck's subconscious? Would her life be forfeit for her faith in this unknown man she had come to love? What would be the outcome of it all? Now we know, but we wouldn't tell you the secret for this world--or the next! Music lovers will be thrilled by the score, which brings to the fore the theramin, the unique instrument pictured 20 years ago on the cover of Gernsback's Science and Invention. Its debut adds much to the imaginative mood of the picture. ---o0o--- EVIL EYE, starring Claude Rains. This is a re-release of an English film produced about 1937 formerly titled The Clairvoyant (from the novel of the same name by Ernest Lothar). A picture which ordinarily would not be revived, its resurrection at this time is attributable to a rather disreputable attempt to profit from the popularity of Spellbound. Deceptively, the ads declare: "Spellbound...by a female Svengali". Though this is hooey, the film itself is a fair fantasy. A more youthful Claude Rains is a bit--foppish--as Maximus, a fake mindreader who acquires a real power of clairvoyance in the presence of a young lady, not his wife. Plot questions whether his prophecies may not cause the catastrophes he tries to avert by his warnings. In the end, after predicting a train wreck and a mine cave-in, he abandons his gift as "too dangerous". ---oo0oo--- THE LOST WEEKEND: The Saga of a Sot. As The Picture of Dorian Gray graphically depicted the disintegration of a man through sin, so does The Lost Weekend show, clinically clear, the disolution of a man through gin. (That he drinks himself into hallucinations via rye is beside the point.) Ray Milland should land the Academy Award for his realistic portrayal of a drunk. As a frustrated writer seeking to forget his failure by booze in the night, he gives a first-rate performance which reaches a height of horror in the depiction of his delirium tremens: a squeaking mouse half emerges from an imaginary hole in the wall of his livingroom; a bat enters his window, circels about the ceiling, swoops on the mouse; and Milland's hoarse shrieks of terror echo through the boarding house as a crooked stream of blood trickles down the wallpaper when the bat's jaws crunch the mouse... Paradoxically, the picture should appeal to fantasy enthusiasts because of its intense realism. Once again the teramin, that weird, wailing instrument, is employed with telling effect in -- 18 --
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