Kirk Douglas’ Horror Triptych

Kirk Douglas played a multitude of roles in his 90+ films and TV projects which spanned a variety of genres, but his venture into horror was generally sparse, and inarguably less rewarding because the material lacked strong scripts, or were overshadowed by superior antecedents.

Twilight Time’s Blu-ray release of Brian De Palma’s The Fury [M] is a good example of a stylish, slickly made supernatural thriller that lacked a coherent script, if not a raison d’etre. Hard to tell whether De Palma or novice screenwriter John Ferris are to blame, but the years have neither dated nor enhanced the film’s elements – it just happens to be a beautiful, vapid work that’s somewhat satisfying for its elegant trashiness.

A year before The Fury, Douglas also appeared in Alberto De Martino’s Omen rip-off, Holocaust 2000 [M] (Lionsgate), playing an industrialist whose determination to build a nuclear power plant may unleash Satan’s power and enable a total reset. De Martino may have structured the story as some veiled political critique of Pol Pot’s evil regime and his efforts to ‘reset’ Vietnam to Year Zero through a series of bloody purges, or maybe he just globbed together Omen plot points hoping his own elegant production would gel into something that looked and sounded like an Omen film without alerting Fox’ lawyers.

Holocaust 2000 is still its own thing – one can argue it also influenced Fox’ subsequent Omen sequels – but De Martino’s best work is the sleazy, foam-barfing Exorcist rip-off The Antichrist [M] (1974), which similarly starred internationally recognized thespians in the twilight of their careers.

Douglas’ interest in horror may have stemmed from co-producing and starring in a genuine curio – a musical version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [M] in 1973 for NBC TV. Originally broadcast in a 90 minute time slot, this oddity featured music by Lionel Bart (Oliver!) and probably sounded like a good idea at the time… but really wasn’t. The teleplay has appeared on VHS in the U.S. and Europe (plus a U.S. laserdisc release), but with no DVD release, this slick production can only be seen (for now) on YouTube, via a low-res dub from a broadcast master. (The film’s been divided into 10 parts, but includes the black fadeouts over which ads would’ve run for about 3 minutes.)

With the exception of an episode from Tales from the Crypt (“Yellow”), Douglas’ work in horror has been rather rare, but most of the aforementioned are available in some form or another, although it would be nice to see a newly mastered Jekyll and Hyde, given it’s an early TV production edited by future Die Hard and Skyfall editor Stuart Baird, and filmed by Dick Bush (Tommy, Victor Victoria) using warm tube cameras.

Coming next: soundtrack reviews.

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Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

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