{"id":6596,"date":"2013-05-12T18:50:12","date_gmt":"2013-05-12T22:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mondomark.com\/wordpress\/?p=4014"},"modified":"2013-05-12T18:50:12","modified_gmt":"2013-05-12T22:50:12","slug":"kirk-douglas%e2%80%99-horror-triptych","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=6596","title":{"rendered":"Kirk Douglas\u2019 Horror Triptych"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Nope. Not Spencer Tracy. It's Kirk!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Twilight Time\u2019s Blu-ray release of Brian De Palma\u2019s The Fury<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] is a good example of a stylish, slickly made supernatural thriller that lacked a coherent script, if not a raison d\u2019etre<\/em>. Hard to tell whether De Palma or novice screenwriter John Ferris are to blame, but the years have neither dated nor enhanced the film\u2019s elements \u2013 it just happens to be a beautiful, vapid work that\u2019s somewhat satisfying for its elegant trashiness.<\/p>\n

A year before The Fury<\/strong>, Douglas also appeared in Alberto De Martino\u2019s Omen<\/strong> rip-off, Holocaust 2000<\/a> <\/strong>[M<\/a>] (Lionsgate), playing an industrialist whose determination to build a nuclear power plant may unleash Satan\u2019s power and enable a total reset. De Martino may have structured the story as some veiled political critique of Pol Pot\u2019s evil regime and his efforts to \u2018reset\u2019 Vietnam to Year Zero through a series of bloody purges, or maybe he just globbed together Omen<\/strong> plot points hoping his own elegant production would gel into something that looked and sounded like an Omen<\/strong> film without alerting Fox\u2019 lawyers.<\/p>\n

Holocaust 2000<\/strong> is still its own thing \u2013 one can argue it also influenced Fox\u2019 subsequent Omen<\/strong> sequels \u2013 but De Martino\u2019s best work is the sleazy, foam-barfing Exorcist<\/strong> rip-off The Antichrist<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] (1974), which similarly starred internationally recognized thespians in the twilight of their careers.<\/p>\n

Douglas\u2019 interest in horror may have stemmed from co-producing and starring in a genuine curio \u2013 a musical version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] in 1973 for NBC TV. Originally broadcast in a 90 minute time slot, this oddity featured music by Lionel Bart (Oliver!<\/strong>) and probably sounded like a good idea at the time\u2026 but really wasn\u2019t. 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<\/a>, via a low-res dub from a broadcast master. (The film\u2019s been divided into 10 parts, but includes the black fadeouts over which ads would\u2019ve run for about 3 minutes.)<\/p>\n

With the exception of an episode from Tales from the Crypt<\/strong> (\u201cYellow\u201d), Douglas\u2019 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\u2019s an early TV production edited by future Die Hard<\/strong> and Skyfall<\/strong> editor Stuart Baird, and filmed by Dick Bush (Tommy<\/strong>, Victor Victoria<\/strong>) using warm tube cameras.<\/p>\n

Coming next<\/em>: soundtrack reviews.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor
\nKQEK.com <\/strong>( Main Site<\/a> \/ Mobile Site<\/a> )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tough guy Kirk Douglas made horror films? Why yes, he did! Uploaded are the following as proof: Brian De Palma’s body-exploding silliness The Fury (Twilight Time) on Blu, Alberto De Martino’s Omen rip-off Holocaust 2000 (aka Rain of Fire, aka The Chosen), and Kirk Douglas as an all-singing \/ cycling \/ transformative hero \/ villain in the TV musical version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, circa 1973.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1Io","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6596"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}