Movie Ads of the Week: The Many Faces of HORROR HOSPITAL (1974-1978)

Richard Gordon's comic-horror production HORROR HOSPITAL (1973) -- directed by Antony Balch and starring Michael Gough, Robin Askwith, Vanessa Shaw and Dennis Price -- was acquired for the U.S. by Hallmark Releasing in late '73 and retitled EASTWORLD to capitalize on the success of Michael Crichton's WESTWORLD. The ad above is from Kokomo, IN where American International was handling Hallmark's releases, while the ad below is from Poughkeepsie, NY (Both are dated January 25, 1974).

Simultaneous with the film's release as EASTWORLD, Hallmark was also circulating prints under the title COMPUTER KILLERS, using the same ad campaign.

Middletown, RI - February 8, 1974

Two months later (April 19, 1974) the film surfaced in Louisville, KY as DEATH WARD #13, a title Hallmark had used the previous year for S.F. Brownrigg's DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT.

HORROR HOSPITAL was re-released in 1978, despite being sold to television two years earlier, this time under its original title and with a tag line that took aim at another Michael Crichton film, COMA (also 1978). The ad above is from St. Louis, MO on December 1, 1978.

"Dust" by Charles Pellegrino

Citizens of Long Island, listen up: You have a real knack for attracting creepy-crawlies. "Get out!" -- yes, there were lots of flies in THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, but do any of you remember the mite outbreak of 1994? The fleas three years before that? How about the slime plague of '73? The wasp infestation of '79? Civilization as we know it crumbles to Dust in this aptly titled eco-disaster novel by paleontologist/archaeologist Charles Pellegrino -- and I'll give you three guesses which part of the U.S. is nailed first.

Swarms of flesh-eating "motes" descend upon Long Beach, NY, reducing most of the population to skeletal remains by Chapter 2. Next we visit Tobago, where prey-switching has caused vampire bats to kill every human being on the island. An outbreak of Mad Cow Disease in Guyana -- fungal blooms wiping out crops in India -- birds dying by the thousands in France -- bacteria poisoning oceans and lakes...

What we're experiencing is a worldwide biological chain reaction triggered by a mass die-off of insects. Insects?! That's right -- they may chew up our homes and ruin our picnics, but their presence here is an absolute necessity; if they disappeared tomorrow, we could all be living in the Dark Ages by the end of the month. If nothing else, Dust paints a suitably grim portrait of what would happen if the Earth decided to "shake us off like a bad case of fleas," as one scientist in the book (quoting George Carlin) so eloquently puts it.

Sure, the story wanders all over the place and the characters are instantly forgettable, but Pellegrino's enthusiasm for the material -- as well as the intriguing premise itself -- makes this a fascinating read simply on an educational level alone. Plus, fans of the late Michael Crichton should note that Pellegrino's own DNA-in-amber theory -- the entire backbone of Jurassic Park -- comes into play here as a last-ditch attempt to repopulate the world with insects. There's also some fun to be had with the story's futuristic elements (the ultimate fate of O.J. Simpson is particularly satisfying), and I can't come down too hard on any book that features a military captain with Mad Cow Disease shooting missiles at Hoboken because - get this - he hates Frank Sinatra.

Rhymes with 'frighten'

After it was reported last week that Michael Crichton had passed away at the age of 66, there was a good deal of online chatting about his novels and films, with the same three or four -- THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, WESTWORLD, COMA, JURASSIC PARK -- cited as examples of perfectly constructed techno-thrillers. Ignored as usual, even by the most devoted Crichton fans, was EXTREME CLOSE-UP, his one and only perfectly deconstructed techno-thriller. If you’re one of the folks who believes that he was a great idea man who shoehorned too many of those ideas and far too much research into formulaic genre product, then this is the Michael Crichton movie for you. The setup couldn’t be simpler: TV news reporter John Norman (played by James McMullan, also seen in Crichton's TV movie PURSUIT and later the star of the short-lived BEYOND WESTWORLD series), doing a week-long special investigation on snooping entitled “Privacy: The Vanishing American Privilege,” quickly becomes a snooper himself, obsessed with the same surveillance technology he’s supposed to be condemning. With ninety-nine movies out of a hundred, the next sentence of the pitch would begin “When he accidentally witnesses a [fill in the blank],” but this is the one that never does what’s expected of it. There are at least half a dozen instances where Crichton and director Jeannot Szwarc lead us right up to the doorways of familiar genre convention, only to slam the doors closed in our faces. A nod to REAR WINDOW in the first 10 minutes is so obvious that it nearly gives away the joke. Later, when Norman spies on a sunbathing woman through a telephoto lens, I was so sure I was seeing the opening of DIRTY HARRY -- and hearing it, too (Basil Poledouris really nails Schifrin here) -- that I half expected Norman to put a bullet in her. Oh, right, it's just a camera. But get this: when he goes back the next day to spy on her again, he brings a sniper rifle with him! As he struggles with the knobs on an audio device, straining to hear the woman's telephone conversation, Poledouris’ score mimics the feedback and distortion. I especially like it when Norman ditches his cameraman (James A. Watson, Jr.) so he can sneak away to do something really creepy and stalkerish…but then he looks directly into the camera to deliver his on-air copy to us, as if his sick behavior is all part of his investigative report! He even has the nerve to light up a cigar while peering through his snooper scopes (if that cigar really is a cigar, then John Norman may as well be Sam Fuller). It makes total sense that EXTREME CLOSE-UP would come on the heels of TARGETS, MEDIUM COOL and HI, MOM! but pre-date THE PARALLAX VIEW and THE CONVERSATION. This thing could only have been made in 1972.

Not content with just being a sly movie about making movies, EXTREME CLOSE-UP offers a whole other level of study within its comments on privacy rights. Everything in this film seems like an intrusion of some kind, from the television commercials that play in the background (“Let’s peek in for a moment on the private life of this ordinary sinus sufferer…”) and the unpleasant Leone-like close-ups of mouths chewing food to the tender kiss on the neck that Norman gives his wife and the outburst from their child a moment later. When a councilman with legislative experience in privacy issues is interviewed on TV, there’s a huge poster of a grinning Richard Nixon on the wall behind him. The time we spend alone with Norman, observing his fetishistic treatment of assorted photographic accesories, becomes increasingly unpleasant as we see him getting more and more turned on by his activities. His obscenely long camera lens juts out from an open car window as he spies on a sexy nurse undressing in her bedroom; his sweaty face twitches, his fist clenches the tripod handle, and the directional microphone gets longer as he watches a nude sunbather being massaged by her lover. Stressed to the point where he’s suffering from substernal pain, Norman is instructed by his doctor to “watch the coffee and cigarettes," a setup for a nice visual payoff later on; when a private detective who specializes in divorce cases and industrial “fact finding” is interviewed for the program with a cigarette and a cup of coffee in the same hand, it’s hard not to imagine him as an older, burned-out version of Norman (“Do you enjoy your work?” Norman asks him. “Not particularly,” the detective shrugs, “I just got into it is all.”).

A failure when released in 1973, and a schlockmeister’s confidence game when it returned four years later as SEX THROUGH A WINDOW (it would also hit videocassette and late-night TV under this title in the 1980s), EXTREME CLOSE-UP is an intriguing item that constantly catches us off-guard by refusing to play by the rules. The end result is another uncomfortable viewing experience, from that incredibly fertile period in which all of the most challenging American films -- dozens ranging from DELIVERANCE and LITTLE MURDERS to THE PAPER CHASE and THE HEARTBREAK KID -- provide uncomfortable viewing experiences. It’s just a shame that when this one finally joins the others on DVD someday, Crichton won’t be around to provide an interview or audio commentary.