Chiller Theatre Features

Starring: Lon Chaney, Patsy Ruth Miller Director: Herk Harvey, Wallace Worsley Original UK Premiere: 1923 Dvd Release: 3rd February, 2003 Number Of Discs: 3 Format: Box set, Black & White, Full Screen, PAL, Region 0 Encoding

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DVD Extras: Chiller Theatre is very acceptably remastered--with 1.33:1 aspect ratio & 12 chapter headings per film--and decently if minimally packaged.

Its difficult sometimes to fathom how compilers think. This Chiller Theatre threesome consists of two classic silent horror films, plus a low-budget B-movie from the early 1960s. The connection? You decide! Yet these are films that belong in any self-respecting collection, & this package is a good way of acquiring them.

Of those featuring Lon Chaney, its the original 1923 The Hunchback of Notre Dame that comes across best. Chaneys grotesquerie is shot-through with pathos, & Patsy Ruth Millers Esmeralda has enduring freshness. Wallace Worsley handles crowd scenes & cathedral stunts with aplomb, & theres an atmospheric posthumous soundtrack, though anyone looking for accuracy in the depiction of medieval French society is in for a shock.

1925s The Phantom of the Opera is slow-moving & uneventful by comparison, with Rupert Julians direction never escaping the narrow Gothic trappings of the novel. Chaney cranks up his range of gestures to the limit, & Mary Philbin is an eye-catching heroine, but the denouement in the Paris sewers seems endless, with looped extracts of Schubert & Brahms as a hardly appropriate soundtrack.

Cut to 1962, & The Carnival of Souls, made in Kansas for under $100,000, is an undeniable cult classic. Herk Harvey sustains the increasingly surreal narrative with ease, Candace Hilligoss is striking as the young organist caught on the cusp of this world & the next, & Gene Moores organ soundtrack is a masterly backdrop for the motley assemblage of ghouls who pursue her around the seaside pier in a memorable closing sequence.

Patsy Ruth Miller was an American movie actress. After being discovered by famed actress Alla Nazimova at a Hollywood party, Patsy Ruth Miller got her first break with a small role in Camille, which starred Rudolph Valentino. From this she began to slowly move up in Hollywood, being chosen as a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1922. 1923 saw her star in the role for which she is best remembered today, that of Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame opposite Lon Chaney, Sr. for which she won much acclaim. In the later part of the decade Patsy appeared chiefly in light romantic comedies, opposite such actors as Clive Brook & Edward Everett Horton. She retired from the screen in 1931. Patsy Ruth Miller at the Internet Movie Database. Posters Of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame

Editors Choice: The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Chiller Theatre Features, Hunchback Of Notre Dame, View DVDology

Harold A Herk Harvey, was a American film director. He has become known in recent years for his one self-produced 1960s feature film, Carnival of Souls, as well as his plate of 1950s & 1960s industrial short films, several of which have been featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Harvey was born in Colorado in 1924. Sometime around the early 1940s he moved to Kansas, then took bachelors & masters degrees in drama at the University of Kansas & later taught & directed for the K U drama department. Besides student appearances, he appeared in summer stock, with the Topeka Civic theater & with Kansas City s Resident playhouse. Overview, Street Safety is Your Problem, Caring for Your Toys, What About School Spirit? & Your Junior High Days. In 1961 he took a working vacation from Centron to try his hand at feature filmmaking, producing, directing & co-starring in the creepy horror film Carnival of Souls, shot in Kansas & Utah, using most of his partners from Centron. He retired from Centron in 1984.

Editors Choice: Carnival Of Souls, Chiller Theatre Features, View DVDology

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