TORMENTED (1960)

Written by Bert I. Gordon and George Worthing Yates

Directed by Bert I. Gordon

One night at an abandoned lighthouse, Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson) dumps his unwanted old girlfriend Vi (Juli Reding) — quite literally, into the sea, but her ghost comes back to haunt him. Atmospheric, with a protagonist trapped by his failure to react who eventually commits a worse crime than his initial crime of omission, this supernatural noir is probably the best film Bert I. Gordon ever made. The manifestations of the ghostly Vi are well done, with the standout being the materialization of her talking head on a coffee table. Featuring the director’s young daughter in a quite natural supporting performance, Joe Turkel as a hipster blackmailer and Gene Roth as a beach-side hash slinger. Its also an early example of product placement, with characters being served Coke on two occasions, the soft drink’s name deliberately uttered and its familiar bottle prominently displayed. Readily available on cheap PD DVDs and viewable in its entirety on-line, I watched the first 40 minutes on “Wolfman Mac’s Chiller Drive-In” (which showed a soft transfer with audio sounding like it was recorded using a 1920s telephone) and the remaining 35 minutes on Something Weird’s DVD of MONSTERS CRASH THE PAJAMA PARTY, which includes TORMENTED among its many extras. SW’s print is a bit scratched but good overall.

PYRO (1964)
Written by Sidney W. Pink and Luis de los Arcos Directed by Julio Coll

Architect Vance Pierson (Barry Sullivan) invents a new energy generator which will be constructed in Spain. Having a precise idea in mind of the house he wants to buy for himself, his wife (Sherry Moreland) and daughter, his colleague Julio (Fernando Hilbeck) tells him he’ll have difficulty finding it in Galicia. Vance is ready to give up his search when he finds exactly the house he wants, but it is about to be torched by its owner Laura Blanco (Martha Hyer) for the insurance. Instead, Vance buys the house and immediately starts an affair with its owner. By her red blouse and black leather pants, he should have known she would prove dangerous. Though the film has a lot going for it, it lacks the stylistic coherence a stronger director might have given it, and as a result it feels like three different movies: a soap opera tale of an illicit affair, a horror story of revenge, and a police story of a fugitive hiding with a traveling carnival. None of these elements, though done fairly well on their own, mesh into a satisfying whole, with colleague Julio and the police appearing to be complete dolts when they finally catch up with the elusive, murderous Vance and fail to recognize him, though his “disguise” consists of merely a blond wig and a dark mustache. The Spanish locations, the dangerous beauty of Martha Hyer, the innocent beauty of a teenage Soledad Miranda in an early supporting role, and convincing make-up of the disfigured Sullivan help, but can’t overcome the inconsistencies of what might have been a minor gem if given an approach like that of the similar CIRCUS OF HORRORS. (Viewed on OnDemand in a scratched, pan/scan print distributed by Troma that allows for only half the image to be seen at any given time, but which has nice color. The two posters above from American International Pictures’ original U.S. release of the film illustrate its disconnected nature; even the masters of the hard sell weren’t sure how to sell it.)

— Robert Deveau, The Doomed Farmer