THE
HOUSE ON SKULL MOUNTAIN (1974)/THE MEPHISTO WALTZ
(1971)Directors: Ron Honthaner and Paul Wendkos
Fox Home Entertainment
Appropriating the Midnite Movies label from MGM, Fox has begun to release a number of two-disc double feature sets, raiding their vaults to bring many horror, sci-fi, and exploitation films to DVD for the first time! This said, the genius at Fox who decided to pair these two completely unrelated films deserves a medal for bone-headed move of the year. THE HOUSE ON SKULL MOUNTAIN, a PG-rated no-budget blaxploitation haunted house/voodoo flick, and THE MEPHISTO WALTZ, an R-rated major release focusing on the occult, simply don’t belong together. Maybe it’s the fact that actress Janee Michelle is in both, or the vague connection between the black arts of voodoo and Satanism? After watching both films back-to-back, the real reason may be that they’re both pretty disposable genre entries.
As an elderly black woman lies dying in her mansion, she instructs her doctor
to send out letters to four of her distant relatives, sophisticated Lorena,
obnoxious youngster Phillippe, matronly Harriet, and white anthropologist Andrew,
none of whom know her or each other. They arrive in time for the funeral, but
soon learn that their deceased great-grandmother, Pauline Christophe, and the
entire Christophe family’s history is teeming with voodoo, and because
they have come back to the family estate, evil spirits are intent on bumping
them off one by one to fulfill some ancient curse.
Essentially
an "Old Dark House" movie with a black cast (and one white leading
man, with top billing, for no real conceivable reason), THE HOUSE ON SKULL MOUNTAIN
came about at the wrong time. By 1974 the American horror scene had been witness
to LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, THE EXORCIST, and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. In
comparison, SKULL MOUNTAIN is terribly quaint and old-fashioned, thus thoroughly
forgettable. Populated by cardboard characters, the confusing mess of a script
has no idea what do with them. Simply casting black actors (like Mike Evans
from “The Jeffersons” and character actor Jean Durand) isn’t
anything special; the filmmakers should have done something with this new movement
in film spotlighting black talent and the desire within the community for films
that spoke to them. BLACULA was a great horror film, because not only did it
feature likable black characters and a romantic lead in William Marshall, but
it also addressed race issues by making the vampire Mamuwalde the victim of
white vampirism. Forgoing the social politics of the film, it also provided
a number of decent scares and memorable moments. SKULL MOUNTAIN offers none.
Attempts at atmosphere fall flat, especially when a matte shot of the mountain
and a cheap cutaway of a stormy night sky (with animated lightning bolt and
sprinklers to create the illusion of rain) are used ad nauseam; a cheesy romantic
sequence with Andrew and Lorena is completely out-of-place (and rather inappropriate
considering they’re supposed to be related by blood); and the script,
written by a Mildred Pares who never wrote another film, has not one lick of
sense to it. Characters are threatened by flashing skulls, giant snakes, hooded
figures, hypnotic trances, and voodoo dolls, and none of these threats are ever
tied together coherently. They’re just nonsensically thrown into the film
as horror elements and couldn’t scare a five-year-old.
Giving credit where credit is due, leading lady Janee Michelle does her best
with the material, and she obviously is a talented actress, but it’s not
hard to see why she wouldn’t get much more work after this thankless role.
Stuntman Victor French, as Andrew, looks and acts completely out of his element
and it’s actually kind of offensive not only that the producers crowbar
in a white face in a group of black leads, but even give him top billing!! Jean
Durand makes for an imposing voodoo high priest, that’s for sure, but
here is where a little camp could have aided the proceedings and he doesn’t
oblige. It shouldn’t have been impossible to make a good haunted house
or voodoo picture; LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE and SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM were admirable
efforts from the previous year. What could Fox have seen in this film to pick
it up for theatrical distribution? SKULL MOUNTAIN is ultimately a dreadful bore
you’ll be depressed you wasted your time with.
Classical
music journalist Myles Clarkson, his wife Paula, and daughter Abby have their
lives turned upside down when Myles becomes the new pet favorite of one of his
interview subjects, the world-famous pianist Duncan Ely. Ely and his mysterious
daughter Roxanne take a liking to Myles, especially his hands, and insist he
take up the piano again after abandoning it for his writing career. Things take
a turn for the worse when Ely passes away, but Paula soon begins to notice that
Myles has begun to take on the personality of the deceased pianist, becoming
obsessed with the instrument and distancing himself from the family in favor
of Roxanne. Paula’s paranoid investigation into Ely and Roxanne’s
history uncovers an unusual death and an ex-husband that may lead her to discover
just what happened to her husband.
If THE MEPHISTO WALTZ sounds an awful lot like ROSEMARY’S BABY, you’d
be right. And it’s not just that both are based on novels. The concepts
of a married couple being preyed upon by elderly Satanists and the wife experiencing
a major change in her husband aren’t entirely original and where Polanski
was able to draw suspense and dread out of Mia Farrow’s plight as ROSEMARY,
Paul Wendkos doesn’t have the talent to do the same with Jacqueline Bisset
in MEPHISTO. The interesting premise of Satanists transferring their souls to
other, preferable bodies so they can live forever may be interesting, but it
isn’t necessarily good scary movie material unless handled carefully.
There is no mystery to MEPHISTO. Wendkos, perhaps because of his and producer
Quinn Martin’s backgrounds in television, shows the audience the entire
process of how Ely has his soul transplanted into Myles’ body; we know
what’s wrong with Myles. For the remainder of the film, we’re left
waiting for the other shoe to drop, but who cares really? Paula is really pretty
irritating anyway, and her realization of the fate of her husband isn’t
believable or, frankly, very interesting.
“Bland”
is the operative word when describing MEPHISTO: Alan Alda, just before he shot
to superstardom on “M*A*S*H*”, is handsome, but an utterly milquetoast
lead; Jacqueline Bisset, while the ravishing beauty she still is today, simply
can’t stand out when her character’s motivations are basically to
be suspicious and concerned because the script asks her to be, not because she
actually is; Barbara Parkins, the least memorable lead in the notorious VALLEY
OF THE DOLLS, is a stunning woman and an underrated actress, and tries her best
with an interesting role, but isn’t nearly as much of a femme fatale as
the script requires of her. One of the only bright spots in the cast is child
actress Pamelyn Ferdin, several years before she would mature into Cameron Mitchell’s
obsession in TOOLBOX MURDERS, but she doesn’t last long (in fact, her
exit from the film is handled quite callously by the screenwriter), and neither
does veteran character actress Lilyan Chauvin, familiar with horror fans as
the sadistic Mother Superior in SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT, and still working,
last seen as a Mexican seer last year on “Ugly Betty”. See if you
recognize lovely Marta Kristen (“Lost in Space”, TERMINAL ISLAND)
and Antoinette Power (PROM NIGHT) among Duncan’s party guests. The musical
score by Jerry Goldsmith is great, and a stand-out moment finds a giant human
mask placed on Duncan’s vicious Rottweiler, an image so weird it appeared
on the film’s theatrical poster. But a script that jumps all over the
place, characters you could give a damn about, and an implausible twist ending
make MEPHISTO WALTZ nothing more than an interesting Satanic curio to come out
of Hollywood between ROSEMARY’S BABY and THE EXORCIST. For a much better
film about Satanists’ souls being transplanted to other bodies, the independently-made
THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN, released the same year as MEPHISTO WALTZ, is a much
more satisfying unsung gem, made all the more chilling as the targets of the
villains are children. Shot for a fraction of MEPHISTO’s budget, all involved
with the Fox film could have learned a lot from that one.
The good news is, that if these films do indeed have fans (every film has its share of followers), they will be overjoyed by the transfers here! Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfers, both films look as if they were shot recently, with solid colors, a crystal clear image, and no print damage or debris to be seen. Of the two, HOUSE ON SKULL MOUNTAIN is the cleaner, as MEPHISTO has some slight grain issues during darker scenes, but nothing to really complain about. The English mono tracks on both are very strong, bringing the musical scores to life beautifully and delivering dialogue clearly. SKULL MOUNTAIN includes a Spanish mono track, as well as optional subtitles in English, Spanish and French. MEPHISTO includes Spanish and French mono tracks, as well as optional subtitles in English and Spanish. The only extras on both discs are the theatrical trailers and brief stills galleries. (Casey Scott)