Cycles of horror films are between six and seven years, then they go out in popularity. We've reached the end of one cycle and there are not going to be horror films. The last one we did, The Comedy of Terrors, was the transition film, which leaned to comedy. Comedy of Terrors as a script was a beautiful script. It was a parody on Shakespeare, a comedy on horror films. It had to do with a funeral enterprise in 1900-1904 and it was a comedy, naturally—and it's a finished film that was not, I believe, understood very well. My wife and my friends say 'We don't like this film at all.' They say 'It's not you! Why did you do it?' I loved it and I'm sure that in Britain it'll be much more understood because it was cynical, cynical comedy, a little bit in the old René Clair tradition and no-one knew what it was all about in the States.
Roger Corman—his films, as far as I'm concerned, are adapted to young people, children—they're not for adults. Ours was extremely adult. That's what's wrong with it. because the people who go to the films today — especially the drive-ins in the States — are 19 years old and under. No one over 19 goes to the cinema in the States and our film was deliberately aimed at the mature thinking people who appreciate satire, who appreciate cynical humour—therefore it was completely lost on the kids who were looking for horror and they didn't get it. There was no horror in it. It was a comedy about a mortician. We had a 15-day schedule and at four o'clock on the fifteenth day we were finished-couldn't shoot another scene if we wanted to — so we made a little trailer from four o'clock to five thirty, a little trailer for the film.
There are now in the States three horror half-hour television shows every week, starting last September, and they've taken the edge off the horror films because they've made them so ridiculous that it's very difficult to frighten anyone now, so for the next five or six years the cycle of horror films will be dead as far as we're concerned and from now on it'll be adventure stories. In other words, City in the Sea is an adventure—it's on a par with Three Weeks in a Balloon, Journey to the Centre of the Earth—what we call the far out adventure film. The story basis of this is a poem, a short poem by Edgar Allan Poe called The City in the Sea.
It's in the Disney tradition in the sense that it's completely fanciful. It takes place in 1880, it's about Lyonesse which is a parallel to Atlantis. Lyonesse is off the coast of Penzance. It's somewhere between the island of Sicily and Land's End, quite deep, and in 1880 at the equinoctial tides twice a year they heard the big bell—this is essence of the poem by Edgar Allen Poe. And there was an interesting red glow that occurred when the tide was extremely low. Our adventurers by accident are caught in a maelstrom and sucked down to this city which is populated by fish-men which are mutations. And the city's been down there encrusted with barnacles and there's a thick forest of sea weed everywhere. These mutations of fish-men who have learned to live down there cannot come up into the air at all and the volcano, which is down there, which has not erupted but which is fomenting, has kept them alive with its heat. Principal photography is thirty days which is six weeks and then after that we'll have. I imagine, a week or ten days of underwater things.
I'm a devotee of anything that audiences haven't seen and I'm a fighter against the cliché within the limits of what I'm given.
In the average film you'll see someone receive a letter—well, I'll make a deliberate point of having that person if it's a day scene get up, go to the window and read it—if it's a night scene, go to the lamp and read it. If someone has to pick up a phone in a scene, I never have the phone right there. In the Dana Andrews film [Night of the Demon], he was in the hotel room, a man had to pull the phone—it was the wrong way round—because that happens in real life. I walk to the phone—this is the average film—in deadly silence I dial, six, seven, eight, nine times, you know—then I say hello. In my pictures l save my last sentence that I'm talking with you about. Before I get a chance to say the last sentence the phone rings. I walk to the phone and while dialing I say what I'm supposed to say. Result—flow. Nobody else seems to do that—they have dead footage. There are certain traditions which I hate. When the man pays off the taxi, he never gets any change. How many times have you seen the boy and girl are having a drink in a café—they get in an argument or something—they leave. Nobody pays. How many times have you noticed that? These are dramatic licenses that I don't like. I fight these things.
I never look in the camera—camera men hate a director who is always looking in that thing—because I know pretty well what's on it. But I'm very adamant and descriptive about the source of lighting, and if he doesn't give it to me I can tell on the set and I say, 'Look, this won't do. There's no logical source.' Most directors from my observation take much too much time looking into the camera for the framing and forget the essential part which is the lighting.
I'm a great believer in cause and effect. To me a mistake is to show a man shootining a gun—you must see the effect. I don't care if it's a vase, if it's a window, or someone — immediately follow cause by effect. Because subconsciously they say, 'Gee, there was a bullet in that gun', but if a man fires a gun they know damn well it's a blank. We liked that woman [in Wichita]—we had to kill her. You feel more sorry for her if you see the splintering door to show the terrific impact before it hits her rather than just hitting her directly with what's obviously a blank.
I've always fought second units. Whenever I have any authority at all I just don't have them. There's no second unit at all in Berlin Express. I was on that about six months. I think it's very unfair to criticise a film that's done on a very modest budget in 12 days in the same way that you'd criticise a 93-day film like Berlin Express. We don't have a chance to do anything interesting on a 12 or 14 day film like The Fearmakers. The script is written for a quickie. When you're making a long, long schedule thing, the script is written with many situations—and you do much more coverage, spend much more time rehearsing, you get a much better film.
I did a lot of research on Night of the Demon because we were rewriting it anyhow. That's why Night of the Demon has a pseudo-honest approach. It's a vulgarisation of the truth and next time I'm going to do the truth about parapsychology. To me, Night of the Demon was two films. Three-fourths of the film to me was honest and in a pseudo-scientific way correct—it was science fiction psychology but it was almost honest. Then the one-fourth of the film which had to do with the with the delineation of that monster belonged in another type of film which is the teenager horror film. Now had we carried on and made the whole film believable and logical and if we’d suggested that monster we would have had a completely honest film, but to me it’s two things. Actually the monster was taken right out of a book on demonoIogy—3-400 year old prints copied exactly—and it looked great, I must say, in a drawing so I said, ‘Pine, go ahead’. Then they put this thing on a man. I thought it was going to be suggested and fuzzy and drawn, in and out, appearing and disappearing, like a cartoon, animated. The film was edited after I left. It was my intention to use that panther but to edit it go that you’d say at the end ’Did I see a panther or didn’t I?’ whereas it was edited in such a bald way — when you really saw that was a stuffed animal, that was stupid. In the draughting room [of The Cat People], we had a black panther going between the tables. The panther was black—we kept everything black—so that you saw it but, you know, ‘Did I see it or didn’t I?’ We were so successful with the theory that anything your mind can conjure up will always be better than anything we can show that I’ve tried ever since, since, but ever since I’ve done independent films in which I go onto other films and they play with the film after I’ve left.
In the old days when you were under contract to studios, you were there all the time, you were expected to follow through on the editing and you could change the editing. Now. when you’re a journeyman director, according to the Director’s Guild ruling you’re allowed to look at the first rough cut which doesn’t mean a thing. You make notes—I usually look at a reel at a time and I have a stenographer there. They don't have to follow these directions. They go ahead and do what they want. Then you’re gone and the first time you see your film is in a cinema somewhere and you see crazy things— they’ve added scenes, shot great big close-ups of extra people reacting or, if it’s a laughing scene which I try to cover discreetly, a crowd laughing, after I’m gone they’ll take five dollar extras, big heads, ha ha ha ha, six seven, eight like that, and put it in the film. And it's got my name on the beginning. People say, ‘Gee Tourneur’s stupid’ 'He’s slipping’ or something. That exact same thing happened on Timbuktu—the producer shot one or two days with a lot of extra people shooting close-ups, inserted those in the film, and hurt it terribly. The ambulance ringing [in Night of ihe Demon]—that was done after I left. There was no ambulance in the film. They added miles and miles of an ambulance—you don’t know who’s in it.
I started directing in 1932—was editing from 1928 to 1932. I was a contract director to Pathé-Natan, paid by the month, and I was directing features and I was getting around $50 a week which wasn’t much money. And we hadn’t been married too long—my wife and I—and of course I had been brought up in California and I went to school there, I liked the climate. And I made a mistake—I thought it would be very easy, I could quickly get a film in Hollywood having done four features in France. So we just packed up and took a chance. We said we’Il go over there—if it doesn’t work we can always come back. Then it took me a year or two—I had to do second units, but even doing second units MGM was paying me $100 a week which was twice what I was doing features for.
I worked for three months [on A Tale of Two Cities] — we had a unit which was called the French Revolutionafy Unit of which Val Lewton was the producer. I was the director. We had our own script which Val Lewton wrote which had to do with all the storming of the Bastille, that bit of it. So we were responsible for that and I shot 10 or 11 days. That’s how we met Then Lewdon went to RKO as a producer, he asked for me and we did The Cat People and a few other films.
The Department of Justice asked Mr. Louis B. Mayer if he would make in his short subjects a two-reel subject about the Federal Penitentiaries. So since I was doing shorts they sent me to five or six . . . all over the United States. Then Mr John Higgins wrote a two-reel Crime Does Not Pay story with actors about that. The two-reel thing comes out and Mr. Louis B. Mayer looks at it and says, 'This is interesting. We’re now doing featurettes, we’re going to do four-reel films to complete the programme.’ They said call back Johnny Higgins and write two more reels. So we had an awful time getting the actors together. They were all over the place. We had to wait a month or two before we could get them all together.
We cut that together—three months go by—Mr. Mayer looks at it: ‘This is four reels—this shouldn’t be a featuretter—this should be six reels and be a full-length feature.’ We wait, get all the actors together again and we finished with a full length feature called They All Come Out which unbelievably made good sense. Looking at it you’d never think it was first two reels, then four reels, then six reels. It was a tour de force on the part of Mr. John C. Higgins and that’s how I did my first feature, at MGM. Then they put me into Nick Carters and those things.
I did the first two Nick Carters and then they made more and I left and went to RKO. The first A feature was the one with Gregory Peck [Days of Glory] — that was a very big budget. There were 35 people in it, not one of whom had ever been on any screen beforer—an experiment by Casey Robinson. There was one exception—Hugo Haas had in Hungary or wherever he was made one or two little silent films. In those days they were exalting the Great Russian Guerilla. Four years later it was anathema.
All B fiIms and especially horror film in those days were done in terrible taste—a general lack of taste. Val Leyton we a man of innate good taste and we worked beautifully together. I think Cat People was a bit above the average and so was I Walked With A Zombie. I Walked With A Zombie was to me the best. It was very poetic—a horrrible title. The film had nothing to do with the title. It was all at night and it was an authentic, documentary approach to voodoo in Haiti. We showed the real voodoo rites — we had real voodoo people come in. We used for the first time in any fitm a calypso singer—he told the story. It began and whenever we were having a dramatic scene somewhere in the street at night he’d go by singing and he was observing this drama going on and telling us, just like the old Greek tragedies. This gave a wonderful poésie to the film. It was Jane Eyre really. We were looking for a subject—well, it was public domain so we said let‘s take Jane Eyre and put it in Haiti with a voodoo singer.
Joel McCrea's a friend of mine and one day he gave me the book [of Stars In My Crown] and said, 'I'm going to make this picture at MGM.' Well, I read the book and I fell in love with it because it was such a heartwarming story about a boy and his father, a wonderful story. I went to see the producer at MGM and I said, 'I want to make this picture'. He said, `Jacques, I'm sorry, it's a B picture, a quickie, and we're going to put a contract director on it.' So I went to see Eddie Mannix who was the boss. He said the same thing: 'It's a little B picture. We can't pay your price'. To which I said to Eddie, 'I'll do this picture for nothing'. He said, 'Do you mean it?"Yes. Now that's cheaper than your contract director.' He said, 'I'll call you Monday.' Well, he called me Monday and he said, 'We're not allowed to pay you nothing because there's a Guild and we'll have to pay you a minimum.' So I said, 'Fine. Pay me the minimum'.
I shot the picture very quickly and the picture came out. Nobody saw it, nobody saw this picture. It had a bad title, it's the best picture I've ever done, the one I like the best. I didn't get any money and it lowered my price. I was way down, I couldn't get any more money, but it was worth it because I loved every bit of that picture.
My favourite film for years and years and years is Lilies of the Field. It was a 12-day thing. It cost nothing. I voted for that at the Academy as Best Picture of the Year. I don't see many films. I do at the Academy—once a year I see about 30 or 40 in the spring when we vote. I saw Tom Jones three times and liked it better the third time.
This director Sam Peckinpah worked with me as dialogue director on one or two films—he was on Wichita and he always said he admired my style on Wichita. He was very anxious to become a director and by accident one day I was downtown in Los Angeles and I had nothing to do and I saw Ride the High Country [Guns in the Afternoon]—it was just great. It was John Ford when John Ford was good, 10-15 years ago. It was the first honest western I'd seen in years and years and years. I'm very anxious to see Major Dundee.
I'm a great, great believer—I'm not a nut on this subject but I've been a student for forty years—I'm a great believer in parallel worlds — you know, to do with vibrations—which I'm certain of. I've never in my whole life initiated a film—I've always taken what they've given to me. But I'm starting now.
There is a parallel world. I want to show it. I'd like to make almost a documentary on parapsychology—using actors. I'm going to use all the scientific things as against ghosts. I'm going to make my own mistakes now. I'm either going to make a great film or a terrible film.
(Adapted from a tape-recorded interview with Allen Eyles and Barrie Pattison).
Films and Filming n°12, November 1965
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