The Monsters Of Classic Hollywood
Part of a series about monsters and other scary things happening here through Halloween.
An incomplete survey of actual and arguable monsters, broadly defined, from Classic Hollywood. Here are a dozen that haunt my dreams—feel free to add your own.
Film: Rebecca (1940)
Monstrous Deed(s): Obsessed with Maxim’s (Laurence Olivier’s) now-deceased first wife, refuses to allow second wife (vulnerable, doe-eyed Joan Fontaine) to be happy/have peace/realize that Maxim loves her. Ever. Encourages suicide; tricks Joan Fontaine into making a fool of herself; lots of piercing, vacant stares.
Monstrous Quote: "I watched you go down just as I watched her a year ago. Even in the same dress you couldn't compare” in stiff competition with “Oh, you've moved her brush, haven't you?"
Film(s): A billion, most notably The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Monstrous Deed(s): Dooming his characters to lives of isolation and despair despite their kind, charitable souls.
Tragi-Monstrous Quote: "Feast your eyes! Glut your soul on my accursed ugliness!"
Film: Vertigo (1958)
Monstrous Deed(s): Distracts from Scottie (Jimmy Stewart)’s generalized creeper behavior; makes you forget you should dislike him much more than a set of eyebrows.
Monstrous Quote: "There’s no such thing as too much eyebrow pencil."
Film: The Little Foxes (1941)
Monstrous Deed(s): Old-school vigilante feminism: when asshole husband suffers a heart attack and needs medicine on the second floor, stands by and watches him fail to claw his way up the stairs; blackmails manipulative brothers; implicitly encourages daughter who threatens to reveal her actions to flee the family home.
Monstrous Quote: "I'll do things in my own way, Ben. I know what I'm doing."
Film: A Bucket of Blood (1959)
Monstrous Deed(s): Always on the outside of the beatnik culture that surrounds him; decides to take the cat that he’s accidentally knifed, cover it in plaster (knife intact), and present it to the arbiters of beatnik culture that run the cafe where he works. They love it, prompting Walter to keep killing bigger and better things and covering them in plaster. Events proceed exactly as one would expect.
Monstrous Quote:
Woman Doomed to Become Walter’s Next Art Project: "Nobody asked your opinion, Walter! You're just a simple farm boy, and the rest of us are sophisticated beatniks."
Walter: "I don’t like you…"
Film: The Women (1939)
Monstrous Deed(s): Existing; pitting Norma Shearer against Joan Crawford; distracting from 12-minute Technicolor fashion show; siring the character of "Little May."
(Inspires the) Monstrous Quote: "When anything I wear doesn't please Stephen, I take it off."
Film: Shane (1953)
Monstrous Characteristic: God-given ability to yell.
Monstrous Quote: "Shannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnne!"
Film: Mildred Pierce (1945)
Monstrous Deed(s): Obsessed with class status and appearances; super pissed when she finds out her mom (Joan Crawford) is working as a waitress in order to supply her with all the clothes she wants. Mom marries wealthy tool to please Veda; Veda takes up with tool; together, they swindle Mom. Just desserts ensue.
Monstrous Quote: Can’t decide between "With this money I can get away from you. From you and your chickens and your pies and your kitchens and everything that smells of grease. I can get away from this shack with its cheap furniture. And this town and its dollar days, and its women that wear uniforms and its men that wear overalls" and "You think just because you made a little money you can get a new hairdo and some expensive clothes and turn yourself into a lady. But you can't, because you'll never be anything but a common frump whose father lived over a grocery store and whose mother took in washing."
Film: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Monstrous Deed(s): Returns home to estranged brother (Cary Grant) with the body of his latest victim; terrorizes estranged brother and their two old biddy aunts (who also have been hiding bodies in the the basement [long story]); forces his accomplice, Dr. Einstein, to repeatedly perform plastic surgery on his face in order to avoid capture; gets really mad whenever anyone tells him he looks like Frankenstein.
Monstrous Quote: "Dr. Einstein and I need a place to sleep. You remember that, as a boy, I could be disagreeable. It would not be pleasant for any of us if… I don't have to go into details, do I?"
Film: The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Monstrous Deed(s): Generalized terror and terrorizing wordsmithery; scaring young children; deceiving Shelley Winters; making whistling creepy.
Monstrous Quote: "Ah, little lad, you're staring at my fingers. Would you like me to tell you the little story of right-hand/left-hand? The story of good and evil? H-A-T-E! It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. L-O-V-E! You see these fingers, dear hearts? These fingers has veins that run straight to the soul of man. The right hand, friends, the hand of love. Now watch, and I'll show you the story of life. Those fingers, dear hearts, is always a-warring and a-tugging, one agin t'other. Now watch 'em! Old brother left hand, left hand he's a fighting, and it looks like love's a goner. But wait a minute! Hot dog, love's a winning! Yessirree! It's love that's won, and old left hand hate is down for the count!" Close second: "There are things you do hate, Lord. Perfume-smellin' things, lacy things, things with curly hair."
Film: Double Indemnity (1944)
Monstrous Deed(s): Playing the system; playing husband; playing Fred McMurray; rocking the sausage-roll uni-bang; dominating the "femme fatale" category for the last 68 years.
Monstrous Quote: "We’re both rotten."
Film: Citizen Kane (1940)
Monstrous Deed(s): Allows itself to become overdetermined symbol of innocence past; tortures hubristic owner the entirety of his life; very name functions as irritant to all forced to watch film during sophomore year of college.
Monstrous Quote: "I’m just a fucking sled."
Previously in series: A Photo Journey Through Roswell And Area 51
Anne Helen Petersen writes Scandals of Classic Hollywood.
"Kim Novak's Eyebrows"
I love you so much.
Also, REVEREND HARRY POWELL!! Lordy, I forgot about him….CREEPY!!!
KIM NOVAK'S EYEBROWS! I'm actually really impressed that even 50+ years later, Kim Novak's wardrobe and makeup (ESPECIALLY THE EYEBROWS) instantly convey everything you're supposed to know about the class/cultural differences between Judy and Madeleine.
Also, I love the Night of the Hunter so, so much, but I've often been a little bit nagged about whether Harry Powell is supposed to be a con artist or a genuine religious psychopath. The opening seems to imply the former, but as things go on (especially when he snubs Shelly Winters, YIKES) you start leaning towards the latter. Maybe he took on the fake role of a preacher and then started getting really swept up in it?
@jfruh YES to all of the above.
@jfruh I think that was a story arc in Gasoline Alley once.
Scottie, a creeper?! Oh hell no. He is a man obsessed and hates himself for everything he does wrong; he is being eaten alive by the remorse but he can't help it any more than she can. SUCH a beautiful film my favorite Hitchcock by far.
@barnhouse He is very creepy and also the oldest man in the world in that movie! It is like watching Lincoln's great-grandfather softly catcalling a girl as she tries to walk down the street! He is a hairy-handed, loose-neck-skinned, lascivious corpse who is the oldest and grossest being to ever exiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiist.
JIMMY STEWART IS SO OLD IN THIS MOVIE
HOW OLD IS HE?
VERY OLD THAT'S HOW OLD
@melis omg I am with Melis 100%, except that she is neglecting to point that he is not MERELY a catcalling old zombie, he also is WEIRDLY SEXUALLY MANIPULATIVE, with the making Judy dress like Madeleine, it does not matter how sad you are you really shouldn't make your new girlfriend dress like your dead girlfriend before you fuck her
r u experienced
"Change the color of your hair, Madeleine! It can't matter to you!"
Furthermore HOW about erotic imagination, if it had been directed by P.T. Anderson would you be all oo, daring and EXPERIMENTAL p.s. young men! pfft whatever.
@barnhouse I'm not saying they need to cast…SAL MINEO or whatever (although actually I would totally see that movie), just don't pair a flawless 19-year-old with the Cryptkeeper's weird uncle without at least a throwaway line of like "oh by the way I literally cannot tell the difference between someone my age and someone who fought the Kaiser."
WHICH OKAY ACTUALLY nothing about the age of any of these characters make sense. Scottie is supposedly an old college chum of Midge, who is clearly 30 at the oldest! Also Gavin mentions the old school days (I think). Was this a kind of Edward-from-Twilight thing of his? He aged really slowly for decades, matriculating at college after college, picking up secretly unhappy brassiere designers and murderous old dandies as acquaintances until his true, ancient, furry-eared form burst through his young-skinned shell and he became the world's oldest detective?
@melis The world's oldest detective is ACTUALLY Umberto Eco. Sorry!
I guess he and Midge are meant to be in their mid-to-late thirties? And Judy is supposed to be maybe thirty. Though Stewart was really 50, to Novak's 25. I just read that Hitchcock agreed with you, melis; apparently he told Truffaut in an interview that in the end he thought the age difference was too much, that it made the movie suffer.
But not for me. I thought it was the most erotically-charged and beautiful movie I'd ever seen when I was 25 myself (some while ago.)
@barnhouse Hitchcock famously blamed Stewart's age for sinking Vertigo…..which is why he cast Cary Grant (also old, just hotter) in North by Northwest.
Also, I should say, I disagree only about the knee-weakening depth charge of this movie. The whole piece is sublime (as usual.)
That lace dress was made for vigilante feminism. I want it.
The lead-up to the "things you do hate, Lord" line is the BEST : "Well, now, what's it to be, Lord? Another widow? How many has it been? Six? Twelve? I disremember. You say the word, Lord, I'm on my way."
Oh, all right, one last time : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr59DKnFKx0
@Gef the Talking Mongoose Heehee the extra mansion!
No mention of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford? That movie is fucking horrifying!!
I second Baby Jane Hudson in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane". I'd also add the fly-human hybrid from the original "The Fly": its haunting "help meeee!" And while I love the choice of heterosexual mankind from "The Women", I think it should be followed up with Dr. Morbius from "Forbidden Planet" for his creepy interest in his daughter, or better yet Commander Adams for forcing Alta to watch the only home she's ever known get destroyed. Oooh, and what about Communism in "The Manchurian Candidate?" Or is it like "Clue" and merely a red herring?
Robert Mitchum is so dang hot it's ridiculous. I think I was in my mid-20's before I realized that his hotness is what made Night of the Hunter so uncomfortable for me, personally. That kind of sexy was an anachronism.