The Case Study of Gordon Hessler and Christopher Wicking
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!1 Dual Auteurs? : The Case Study of Gordon Hessler and Christopher Wicking by John Steven Haberman submitted in partial fulfilment for a Doctorate of Philosophy in Film History Research Awarded by De Montfort University Submitted on September 4, 2020 !2 CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………………….3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ………………………………………………………………………………4 Chapter 1 - INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………5 Chapter 2 - LITERATURE REVIEW…………………………………………………………………..16 Chapter 3 - DUAL AUTEURS………………………………………………………………………….43 Chapter 4 - COMPARISONS: FISHER, CORMAN AND REEVES…. ……………………………68 Chapter 5 - THE OBLONG BOX - A KIND OF RETRIBUTION……………………………………87 Chapter 6 - SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN - MAN IS GOD NOW…………………………….128 Chapter 7 - CRY OF THE BANSHEE - AGAINST GOD AND THE CROWN……………………158 Chapter 8 - MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE - MUST A MAN DIE TWICE………………….198 Chapter 9 - AFTER AIP……………………………………………………………………………….227 Chapter 10 - CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………….234 APPENDIX A: HESSLER’S CUT AND AIP’S CUT OF CRY OF THE BANSHEE………………239 APPENDIX B: HESSLER CUT AND AIP’S CUT OF MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE……243 APPENDIX C: UNREALISED PROJECTS…………………………………………………………247 APPENDIX D: SYNOPSIS OF CHRISTOPHER WICKING’S VAMPIRELLA…………………..254 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………………….265 !3 ABSTRACT This thesis examines the four American International Pictures horror movies, The Oblong Box (1969), Scream and Scream Again (1970), Cry of the Banshee (1970) and Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971), directed by Gordon Hessler and written by Christopher Wicking between 1969 and 1971, in an effort to discover whether the director and writer were the dual auteurs of these works. The study adopts the philosophy and methodology of the auteur theory as described by Andrew Sarris in his essay, “Some Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962” (Sarris 2008: 35-45) and modified by Richard Corliss to include his “Synthesis: The Multiple Auteur” in his 1974 book, Talking Pictures (Corliss 1972: xxvii-xxviii). Various drafts of the screenplays for the four movies by Hessler and Wicking have been studied and compared, along with various cuts of the films, interviews, contemporary reviews and critical evaluations. In this way, the author discovers the commercial and artistic evolution of each project in the context of the themes and concerns of the creative team of Hessler and Wicking, discerning whether the writer and director were indeed equal authors of the finished products. This thesis asserts that the movies were not only unique works signalling the end of the world-wide resurgence of gothic cinema in the 1950s and 60s, but personal responses to the genre and the era. The four movies are analysed as the body of work of the writer and director team and compared and contrasted to the films of the other artists who influenced them. The study examines the genre conventions as well as the original innovations of each movie. The author concludes that, despite the comparative critical neglect of these films, they emerge as an important achievement distinguished by an original cinematic style and a unifying vision of the genre and the turbulent times in which they were made. !4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank Lily Susan Todd, the widow of Christopher Wicking, for her incredible generosity and interest and for providing the actual drafts of the scripts and story treatments relating to her late husband’s work with Gordon Hessler and AIP. In addition, the author also thanks film historian and writer Tim Lucas as well as Gary Teetzel of MGM for kindly sending three drafts of The Oblong Box from the AIP files. Gary Teetzel also provided summaries of inter-office memos from the files relating to the making of Murders in the Rue Morgue. Acknowledgement is also due to the American Heritage Centre at the University of Wyoming that provided Tim Kelly’s original screenplay of Cry of the Banshee from their Tim Kelly Collection. Gratitude also to De Montfort University and Professor Ian Hunter for help and guidance, as well as Kieran Foster for his assistance in providing Wicking’s draft of Vampirella. Thank you to Constantine Nasr and Steve Chibnall for paving the way to De Montfort University and to Alan Gansberg and Mel Brooks for their recommendations. Mel Brooks also arranged an interview with Norman Lloyd who generously spent an afternoon answering any and all questions about his eighty years in show business and his associations with Gordon Hessler. And finally, thank you to my wife, Julia, who always made sure I had what I needed to continue. !5 CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION The year is 1968, and Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson of American International Pictures (AIP) are excited about the new young director who will replace Roger Corman on their Edgar Allan Poe horror movies. Michael Reeves, only twenty-four years-old, breathes new life into the series with his brutally realistic historic thriller, Witchfinder General (1968). Co-financier AIP retitles the movie The Conqueror Worm after Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, and the moribund Vincent Price-Poe series is reborn. Reeves’ mini-epic garners positive reviews, stirs controversy over its gut wrenching violence, gives Price one of his most chilling roles and outgrosses all of Corman’s Poe films except Pit and the Pendulum (1961) (Hamilton 2005: 113-114). In response to the success of The Conqueror Worm, executive for American International in England, Louis M. Heyward, hands Reeves an original screenplay by 68 year- old English filmmaker Lawrence Huntington called Man in a Crimson Hood. But even as Reeves works with young writer Christopher Wicking to turn Huntington’s underwritten gothic into something more interesting, complications ensue. The title changes from Man in a Crimson Hood to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Oblong Box (1969) to once again star Price, but Reeves hates the story (Del Valle 2003: 45). And despite their successful collaboration, Reeves dreads having to hold down Price from what he considers his theatrical tendencies. Most damaging to the prospects of the project, Reeves is in therapy for severe emotional problems and chronic depression (Murray 2002: 292-293). Reeves and Wicking transform Huntington’s poorly structured, episodic yarn into a dark and serious chamber gothic about colonialism, betrayal and revenge. Reeves consults with Price on wardrobe, expertly casts the supporting characters and picks locations in Ireland. But the weekend before shooting begins, the brooding director overdoses on alcohol and barbiturates. Reeves lives, but AIP loses confidence in their wunderkind and quickly replaces him as director with the film’s producer, Gordon Hessler (Murray 2002: 295). !6 Hessler has directed only one released feature, a modest but effective Diabolique (1955) style thriller called Catacombs (1965). His most impressive qualification is a long association with Alfred Hitchcock as story editor, producer and eventually director on his two television series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1962) and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962-1965) (Weaver 1991: 142). AIP gives Hessler two days to reorganise The Oblong Box and start shooting (Weaver 1991: 173). Despite its chaotic inception, the eventual financial success of this first collaboration will result in three more stylish and original horror movies from Hessler and Wicking in the next two years: Scream and Scream Again (1970), Cry of the Banshee (1970) and Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971). These four works from Hessler and Wicking have been undervalued and little explored by most film critics and historians. Yet, they represent artistic extensions of, and in some cases reactions against, the traditions of gothic cinema that had become prevalent in the previous decade. They also work as metaphors about the turbulent times in which they were made. Their neglect seems even more puzzling since the first three starring Price received wider distribution and grossed more at the box-office than almost any other low-budget genre efforts of their time. Most critics and historians consider them only in comparison to the works by Corman and Reeves that have genre similarities, instead of appreciating the quite different approaches to this material introduced by Hessler and Wicking. This thesis uses the four horror movies of Hessler and Wicking as a case study in an investigation into the validity of the theory of “multiple auteurs” as introduced by Richard Corliss in his 1974 book, Talking Pictures. More specifically, it explores the possibility of dual auteurs, a screenwriter and a director, who have worked consistently and in concert to shape existing material into movies with a vision and style created and shared by both. So, the single and over- riding research question guiding this project is, are Gordon Hessler and Christopher Wicking the dual auteurs of their four horror films for American International Pictures? !7 GORDON HESSLER Their lives, unique experiences and serious dedication to cinema made Hessler and Wicking unusually well qualified to expand the horror genre at the end of the 1960s, one of its most creative periods. Director Hessler was born on 12 December 1925 in Berlin to an English mother and a Danish father. After his father died when the boy was three, Hessler’s mother took her son to England. He studied aeronautical engineering at school and was drafted into the British Army at the end of World War II. Fortunately, the war ended before Hessler saw combat (Bowie 2014). Hessler sought employment simultaneously with the mass of British veterans returning from the war. As he later said, “There was a depression in England in the film business. It was pretty tough – you couldn’t get financing” (quoted in Bowie 2014). Feeling that he seemed too old to be embarking on a film career, he subtracted four years from his age, but he still could not find a job. Hessler emigrated to the United States instead, looking for his chance to make movies there. In New York, Warner-Pathe News hired him as a driver.