The Haunted Palace

Year of Release:  1963
Director:  Roger Corman
Screenplay:  Charles Beaumont, based on the story The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H. P. Lovecraft
Starring:  Vincent Price, Debra Paget, Lon Chaney Jr.
Running Time:  87 minutes
Genre:  Horror

In the 1700s, the small town of Arkham is in the grip of fear due to the evil warlock  Joseph Curwen (Price) who lives in a large palace overlooking the town.  The townspeople eventually grab Curwen and burn him to death, but not before he places a curse on the town.  110 years later Curwen's great-great-grandson Charles Dexter Ward (Price again) and his wife Anne (Paget) arrive in Arkham to move in to the palace which has passed down to him.  However the Wards are disturbed by the hostile reception they receive from the townspeople, and by the horrific deformities that seem to afflict many of Arkham's inhabitants.  Nevertheless, they move into the palace, but almost immediately Ward starts to display many strange personality changes, and Anne comes to realise that he is being slowly possessed by Curwen's evil spirit which still haunts the palace.

Despite the film being sold as based on Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Haunted Palace", it is really an adaptation of the H. P. Lovecraft novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and really has no connection with Poe at all, aside from a couple of brief extracts, one of which is narrated by Price as the scene changes from the 18th to the 19th Century, and the other appears as text as the film ends.  There are a lot of Lovecraft elements in the film:  It's set in Lovecraft's fictional town of Arkham, the evil book Necronomicon appears, and Lovecraft's recurring dimension-spanning monsters Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth are namechecked.  Other than that it is a fun slice of old-school gothic with mist-shrouded graveyards, angry villager wielding burning torches, secret passages and very nasty things locked in attics and dungeons.  Vincent Price hams it up for all he's worth in the dual role, and seems to be having enormous fun throughout.  Debra Paget is affecting as Anne Ward, and the rest of the supporting cast are all solid.  However the film is slow by modern standards, and it is quite creaky in places.  It's not a perfect film but it is a good film, and if you're looking for a good old-fashioned spooky story then you can do a lot worse.

Cathie Merchant, Darlene Lucht and Vincent Price in The Haunted Palace 

"Catch-22" by Joseph Heller

Year of Publication:  1961
Length:  519 pages
Genre:  Satire, war, dark comedy

The novel is mostly set on a US Air Force base on the Mediterranean island of Pianosa during the Second World War.  Bomber pilot Yossarian and his comrades try to survive the horrors of war, not just from the enemy, but from the bizarre, contradictory, cruel and arbitrary military bureaucracy that controls their lives, and the inescapable, universal law of "Catch-22".

This is a long, rambling, episodic novel, shifting points of view between a large number of characters and jumping back and forth in time.  The novel deals with the absurdity and horror of war and of military life, but expands that to include modern life in general.  It's a deeply rich book that requires a lot of attention from the reader.  There are lots of seemingly throw away jokes and references earlier in the novel that turn out to be important later on.  A lot of it is extremely funny, but much of the comedy is humour of the darkest kind.  It's tragic, comical, cynical, satirical and endlessly inventive.  The book doesn't really have a strong plot, being more an account of various episodes in the lives of the characters. Heller revels in jokes, wordplay and paradoxes, which can make the book an overwhelming experience.  When the book takes a shockingly darker turn towards the end it hits the reader like a bucket of ice water.
It's widely acclaimed as one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century and, while it may not be that, it is still a great book.

   

All the President's Men

Year of Release:  1976
Director:  Alan J. Pakula
Screenplay:  William Goldman, based on the book All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
Starring:  Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, Jason Robards
Running Time:  138 minutes
Genre:  Political thriller, drama

This film tells the story of the investigation into the infamous Watergate scandal, in which five men burgled the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in Washington DC, and the subsequent cover-up by then President Richard Nixon.  The film focuses on the investigation into the scandal by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Hoffman), and is based on the non-fiction book they subsequently wrote.

The film is one of the classic films about journalism.  The film contrasts the brightly lit, open plan offices of the Washington Post where characters are constantly in motion, followed by a constantly roving camera, with shadowy with shadowy, dimly lit homes, offices, and the underground garages where Woodward meets his mysterious informant (Holbrook).  This is about the day to day business of journalism, days spent on the phone and knocking on doors, desperately searching for anyone who will talk to them, pouring over reams of documents for scraps of information or verification.  This all could seem quite dry, and confusing, but as scripted by William Goldman, and directed by Alan Pakula, who made several political thrillers during the 1970s, it is quite gripping and fairly easy to follow, even if you are not particularly familiar with the case.  The story keeps moving along, with committed performances from the cast and a wealth of background detail.  In the scenes in the Post offices, both the foreground and the background are kept in focus. 
The film was released just a couple of years after the Watergate scandal concluded and so most of the original audience would probably have been aware of the case, but now it is kind of a historical case, even though it was one of the major American political scandals and one of the key events of the 1970s, although by today's standards it all seems rather quaint.

Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in All the President's Men