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Wednesday's Child: Hal E. Chester

3/5/2014

Born Harold Ribotsky, Brooklyn, NY March 6, 1921 - March 25, 2012

Pre-Bigshot

From "Dead End" Kid to Bigshot Producer

Harold Ribotsky was the youngest of seven children born to Polish -Jewish parents in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a property developer who lost his fortune in the 1929 market crash. Chester began his long and industrious career as a delivery boy, Wall Street runner, newsboy, magician's assistant, and painter before trying his hand at acting. He appeared in the Broadway premier of Dead End using the stage name "Hally Chester" as one of the "Dead End Kids," and later turned up in the 1937 film by the same name.

For the remainder of the 1930s, Chester played various street urchins, thugs, and petty criminals in B serials as a "Little Tough Guy" or an "East Side Kid." Shortly after WWII, Chester purchased the rights to Joe Palooka, a popular comic strip, and made the switch from film actor to producer, changing his name to the more adult sounding "Hal E. Chester." He cranked out 11 Joe Palooka pictures between 1946 and 1951 and went on to produce a number of B crime dramas, including The Underworld Story (1950) with my pal, Dan Duryea, and Crashout (1955) with William Bendix and my girlfriend, Beverly Michaels.

Chester also produced the science fiction classic, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), which featured an atomic-test-generated giant lizard thingy (precursor to the highly trademarked Japanese version whose name I can't afford to mention) and Ray Harryhausen's stop motion animation.

In 1955, Chester moved to England to work on internationally co-produced films, which included the very spooky Jacques Tourneur film Night of the Demon in 1957 and a number of well-regarded comedies.

Hal E. Chester retired in 1970 and remained in London until his death on March 25, 2012 at the age of 91. His was an interesting, varied, and oddly prolific career.

Trailer: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms

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It's in the Trees, It's Coming!

1/3/2014

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Beware of the Angry Muppet!

Night of the Demon (1957)

Not my usual choice of picture, the horror flick, but when the mood strikes, I generally prefer something British that proceeds at the pace of Village of the Damned: black-and-white, more creepy than scary, and scattered if possible with tow-headed, post-war youngsters. Night of the Demon (edited and retitled Curse of the Demon in the United States) is one of those.

It's the age-old tale of a modern man, Dr. Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis), who practices ancient black magic and who terrorizes anyone who crosses him with rune-summoned, demonic death. To underscore how long of this type of thing has gone on, the film opens on Stonehenge under the rolling r's of a deep-voiced narrator, intoning : "It has been written since the beginning of time, even unto these ancient stones, that evil supernatural creatures exist in a world of darkness..."

One cannot help but think of Spinal Tap.

Karswell has just put into motion the death of Professor Henry Harrington, who had threatened to expose Karswell's practices. Harrington's demise is pretty creepy and would have been scarier had producer Hal. E. Chester not insisted — over the strenuous objections of director Jacques Tourneur — that the audience see an actual demon emerge from the billowing smoke. Tourneur, director of the Noir classic, Out of the Past (1947), and the weirdly compelling and inexplicably (and poorly) remade, Cat People (1942), hadn't wanted the monster to be seen, leaving the question of its existence open. As a result, the demon, to today's audiences, is more Muppet than Moloch.

Meanwhile, psychologist Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews) has come to England to attend and scoff at a paranormal psychology convention only to learn that his colleague, the late Professor Harrington, has a good excuse for not meeting him at the airport. At Harrington's funeral, Holden meets the professor's beautiful niece, Joanna (Peggy Cummins), who instantly recognizes him as the jackass in the seat in front of him who had his seat completely reclined on her tray table the whole flight over from America. Joanna tells Holden that her uncle had known the time and date of his death and had become understandably unhinged as the day drew closer. The two team up to get to the bottom of things.

There are some pretty spooky sequences and the whole thing is gorgeously lit and shot like a Noir film. If you forgive the unwanted monster, it's worth a vieweing, so I'm not going to tell you what happens.

Although the picture ranks number 9 on Martin Scorsese's 11 scariest horror films of all time (again, Spinal Tap; his list goes to 11), it remains more of a UK pop culture staple than an American one, Night of the Demon is referred to in the opening song of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and in the opening notes of the Kate Bush song, "Hounds of Love." If anyone can think of an American horror movie that has those legs, please let me know.

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Wednesday's Child: Hal E. Chester

Pre-Bigshot

From "Dead End" Kid to Bigshot Producer

Trailer: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms

It's in the Trees, It's Coming!

Night of the Demon (1957)

About Mildred

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