Tag Archives: Alfred Hitchcock

Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: The Snorkel (1958)

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The Snorkel (1958) is labelled as a horror film by the IMDb.  It was made by Hammer Films, and they are certainly best known for their horror films. I would go so far as to say that most people think of them as a horror film company. Hammer Horror is a well loved phrase and #HammerHorror is a well used hashtag.Poster for The Snorkel (1958)

DVD box set of Hammer Film Noir. It does not include The Snorkel (1958).The truth is that Hammer also made films that were not horror at all. For example, Hammer made quite a few crime films, such as the ones included in DVD sets like Hammer Noir Collector’s Set #1. In some ways, The Snorkel fits in better with those movies, and the IMDb does also use words such as crime, mystery and thriller to describe it.

Still, The Snorkel isn’t quite film noir, either. It’s more of a suspense film, possibly closer to something that Alfred Hitchcock might have done. In fact, Hammer made several Hitchcock style suspense thrillers in the wake of Psycho (1960). I may have a said a few words on that topic when I wrote about Scream of Fear (1961), which is one my all time favourites. Or maybe it was Stop Me Before I Kill! (1960)…? No matter. The point I’m working my way around to, is that The Snorkel came out two years before Psycho so it can’t really be categorized as one of those post Psycho black and white suspense thrillers (but it is black and white).

I suppose horror is as good a label as any to hang on this movie – especially when accompanied with other words like crime, mystery and thriller. Not everyone will agree with me, however. Some people make a really big deal about what is horror, and what is not horror. They say things like “That movie isn’t a horror film. It’s not horrific or scary at all.”

Not horrific? What does that even mean? I watch horror films almost every day of my life and I can’t recall ever saying “That was horrific!” I think of horrific as something that’s really unpleasant, like a brutal industrial accident that tears someone apart. If I try to think of a movie that is horrific, I tend to come up with films like Irreversible (2002), which Roger Ebert described quite accurately as:

“…a movie so violent and cruel that most people will find it unwatchable.The camera looks on unflinchingly as a woman is raped and beaten for several long, unrelenting minutes, and as a man has his face pounded in with a fire extinguisher, in an attack that continues until after he is apparently dead. That the movie has a serious purpose is to its credit but makes it no more bearable. Some of the critics at the screening walked out, but I stayed, sometimes closing my eyes…” — Roger Ebert, from his review.

I watched the movie once, was perhaps impressed by the skill that went into making it and the performances of the actors, but I felt no desire to ever watch it again. I certainly would not have said that I enjoyed it. I might have said that it was horrific. Interestingly enough, the IMDb refers to it as crime, drama, mystery, thriller – not as a horror film.

What I experienced when watching Irreversible is NOT what I am generally looking for when I watch a horror movie. I am more often looking to have fun. Friday the 13th Part (whatever) is fun – and I think that most people would agree that those movies are horror films. They aren’t horrific (n my opinion). They aren’t even really scary (at least not now, after seeing them many times over the years). They might include the odd jump scare, or a few moments that create suspense and/or tension. But I watch them with a smile on my face, not cowering under the covers afraid of what might be coming next. And still I think of them as horror films.

Horror is a broad genre that includes everything from comedies, to period pieces, to children’s stories, to romances – even hard core pornography. Pretty much every other genre you can think of, can also be the setting of a horror film. Why would anyone want to put limits on what can be called horror? Why would anyone want to have a narrow definition of the genre that would leave out many great films? Within the overarching genre of horror, there are also many sub-genres, such as zombie movies and slasher films. These sub-genres CAN have much more specific rules and narrow definitions (although not necessarily, in my opinion). I believe that one of the things that makes horror such a powerful and timeless genre is it’s ability absorb almost anything from other genres and make it its own. If it was too narrow and unbending, it probably would have died out years ago, as times and tastes changed and it did not.

But I digress…

I had never heard of The Snorkel before, and the title certainly didn’t conjure up feelings of fun or horror (at least in me) – but fun it is.  It’s the story of a man who commits a murder in a very clever way and gets away with it – except for the fact that his step-daughter immediately suspects he’s guilty and tries to tell anyone who’ll listen. No one believes her, but she vows to prove it. And this, in good Hitchcockian tradition, puts her in peril.

It’s an effective little thriller – not as good as, say, the best of Alfred Hitchcock, but an effective suspense film nonetheless. It includes a great performance by child actress Mandy Miller, and it’s often referred to as her last movie. This is a bit misleading, because she continued to appear on television – including acting in at least one made-for-TV movie – for the next five years or so. She retired from acting at age 18.

The Snorkel (1958) is a #NotQuiteClassicCinema classic – that could have been a real classic if it was just a little better known. Things being what they are, it would make for a perfect addition your next double or triple bill of black and white chillers and thrillers on a #FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn.

Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: 13 Frightened Girls (1963)

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William Castle never fails to entertain me. I’ve enjoyed movies like House on Haunted Hill (1959) and The Tingler (1959) for many years. And his legendary gimmicks are always an added plus to the experience (not that I’ve ever actually EXPERIENCED the gimmicks, but reading about them – and imagining what they would have been like -always adds to my enjoyment of his movies).

In the case of 13 Frightened Girls (1963), the gimmick is a little less visceral than, say, a giant skeleton flying over the audience (Emergo from House on Haunted Hill) or electric buzzers wired to theatre seats (Percepto in The Tingler). This time the gimmick was a world wide talent search for teenage girls to play the daughters of diplomats who attend a special school. So, presumably, this would mean that people from 13 different countries could take pride in one of their own being selected to appear in this movie. I’m not sure if this actually increased ticket sales in the winning countries, but I understand the spirit of the idea.

On the downside, this gimmick seems more like a pre-movie publicity stunt than something that would actually enhance the experience of watching the film. Still, it’s a fun idea.

Judging by the title and the poster, a person might be tempted to think that 13 Frightened Girls is a horror film. It clearly seems to have been named after Castle’s successful 13 Ghosts (1960) and, going in, I almost wondered if I was about to see some sort of sequel to that movie… but no.

13 Frightened Girls is unusual and unique – hard to classify or put into a category. As I watched the first few minutes of it I found myself wondering what Castle had thought he was creating. Did he imagine that this was his version of… a James Bond film? It did come out one year after Dr. No (1962) – and there certainly were a lot of James Bond knockoffs in the 1960s (including some spoofy comedies), but it seems unlikely that this one could have been a direct decedent. Let’s face it, a story about teenage schoolgirls doesn’t quite seem like an obvious riff on Bond.

As the movie wore on, I decided that Castle must have been thinking of Alfred Hitchcock when he made this one. Picture it: a suspenseful story about an ordinary person, in this case a teenage schoolgirl, who gets mixed up in a dangerous game of espionage when she accidentally stumbles upon a murder. That could be a Hitchcock plot – and Hitchcock certainly knew how to use humour in his films…

…which brings me to the point that while 13 Frightened Girls is sort of a suspense thriller, it’s also a fairly silly teen comedy. In fact, I’d say it’s more of a comedy than a thriller. It also contains a potentially uncomfortable Lolita-like sub-plot: Candy, our 16-year-old schoolgirl heroine, is in love with 40 year old Wally Sanders, an intelligence agent who works at her father’s embassy. Wally is in love adult woman named Soldier, so it’s not actually a Lolita story. Still, Candy’s feelings for Wally make her decide to “help” him by using her school connections to spy on other counties and pass the information along to Wally. She does this under her nom de plume, Kitten. 

As you can probably imagine, there is much silliness and humour in 13 Frightened Girls. There are also a few suspenseful sequences. It’s by no means William Castle’s best movie, but it’s quite a bit of fun. It’s also a fairly unique movie, as I can’t think of many (or any) others that are exactly like it. Some viewers might take exception to the cultural stereotypes that are on display. As a nearly 60 year old movie that deals with characters from 13 different countries, it’s almost inevitable that much of it would seem outdated now. For maximum enjoyment, it should be viewed as an artifact of it’s time.

Some reviewers have pointed out, quite correctly, that there are in fact 15 girls in this movie – not 13. I’m not sure how to explain that. Perhaps Castle was originally going to call it something else (The Candy Web perhaps), but then decided to cash in on his earlier hit movie, 13 Ghosts. Who knows? I suppose it should also be pointed out that most of the 13 (or 15) girls don’t ever appear to be particularly frightened, either.

No matter how you look at it, 13 Frightened Girls (1963) is #NotQuiteClassicCinema. I had no idea what to expect from it – and if I had, I might have thought twice about screening it on a  #FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn. After all, it’s not a horror movie, or a monster movie, or any other kind of typical drive-in movie. It’s certainly not an exploitation film… or is it? Maybe what William Castle was exploiting this time, was the national pride of 13 (or 15) different countries. Maybe he was trying to start a whole new kind of exploitation. Or maybe he was just making a PG schoolgirl comedy. Someone suggested that it might pair well with an old Gidget movie (Gidget (1959) or Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) anyone?). And actually that might not be a bad way of understanding this film. Perhaps 13 Frightened Girls was William Castle’s Hitchcock meets Gidget movie. It may have failed to spark a whole new genre, but it’s a fascinating relic of another time.