From Raspberry World – Volume 2, Issue 2 (August/September 2007) Isn’t it amazing, the effect of seeing one’s favorite actors when they actually get to do some acting? Cushing, as an example, was a terrifically talented man, so much so that he at least made it seem as though very few of his projects were much of a challenge, professionally. I don’t mean he just showed up on the set and walked through his role – even wasted as he is in Scream and Scream Again…, he puts thought into the little he has to do in his one scene. What I mean is… Okay, how to put this…

Pick any Cushing performance, and you never notice him acting (certainly never Acting). But then you catch him in something like 1984, and it isn’t that you’re aware that he’s acting, but much the reverse. You watch him, in certain scenes, and he’s so good, he alarms you! That scene where they’re about to take him to Room 101 – I have never seen such a remarkable and true representation of stark, deprived-of-manhood, virtual-loss-of-bowel-control terror. I forgot I was watching an actor, forgot I was watching a performance, and just wanted to reach into that TV screen and get that poor man the hell out of there!

I forget who tells the story – Boris Karloff, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck… I don’t suppose it matters. They tell a story about Lon Chaney, who was really one of the finest actors of the 20th Century. They were struggling with how they found their feelings in a particular role, and going to Chaney for advice, he set them straight.

“Kid,” he said, “it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference how you feel in front of that camera – it’s how you make the audience feel.”

Wow. He nailed it, right there, didn’t he? And he was a master of the craft. As creepy as he was as the Phantom of the Opera, under the shivers and revulsion and the madness, anyone with a heart feels for that character, and some of that is inherent in the material, but a lot of it is down to Chaney’s performance. At the end of the movie, the mob has him cornered, and to hold them off he reaches into his cloak and pulls out something in his fist – who knows what? We can’t see it, is it a grenade, a bomb, what? Then he stretches out his fist and opens to reveal… nothing. Absolutely nothing. He laughs, at the end as the mob descends on him, laughing at his last little trick – and our hearts break for this creature who has terrorized a girl, an opera company, an entire city, all for love.

His son, Creighton Tull Chaney – better known as Lon Chaney, Jr. – was no less talented, when given the opportunity. Look at The Wolf Man. Is there a more likeable, affable and, finally, pitiable character than Larry Talbot? But in that same movie, the same actor gives us the other side of the coin – the Wolf Man. It’s always amazed me that these characters were the same person – poor Mr. Larry, and that snarling, acrobatic personification of rage, fury, hunger. Again, there’s a certain amount of built-in compassion in the role(s), as we can share Larry Talbot’s horror and despair at the knowledge of what comes over him and that he has no control over it. But the fact that we care about Larry Talbot comes down to Lon Chaney, Jr.

Contrariwise, there’s the protagonist of Werewolf of London. He’s in the same predicament, but he just doesn’t excite either our compassion in human form or any real terror as a lycanthrope. This may be due to the writing, though – Dr. Glendon is a bit of a cold fish, but that should make his transformation all the more horrific. The creature he turns into, though, isn’t a ravening wild thing, but rather a sinister, intelligent, conniving creature – other than its appearance, there’s very little of the animal about it.

Similarly, in the various versions of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, it’s difficult to care much about Jekyll. I realize the doctor is supposed to be chilly and stiff and a thorough example of Victorian oppression, but that doesn’t mean there’s no way to let the audience warm up to him. But that’s more a flaw in the writing. And in any case, the original novel doesn’t present Dr. Jekyll as a particularly cuddly individual.

What I’m getting at (for some reason, since it has little or nothing to do with what I was going on about a couple paragraphs ago), is that in Werewolf of London and the Jekyll & Hyde outings is that the horror is strictly in what the changed person does. There’s plenty of that in all of the Wolf Man appearances, but there’s also horror in and outrage over who it’s happening to.

Maybe what I’m getting at here is that our best actors manage to connect to us, to that common bond of humanity. Vincent Price’s transformation from Nicholas into his dead father, Sebastian, in The Pit & the Pendulum wouldn’t be half as terrifying if we hadn’t spent the previous four fifths of the movie commiserating with the character as he twists in guilt and the fear that he might have buried Barbara Steele alive.

This isn’t confined to horror movies or transformations, by the way. It’s just as effective in comedy or drama. Buster Keaton is an excellent example – he never, ever put his character in a situation that demanded pity or sympathy (yes, they are different) from his audience. And yet, no matter how much of an outsider his character might seem, he never failed to get us on his side, if only through our identification with his goals, his earnestness, his determination and perseverance in attaining what he was after, be it a job, a girl, a pair of trousers, or whatever.

Likewise, there’s Gary Cooper, as the sheriff in High Noon. He’s up against it, he knows it, but he goes to the townspeople with quiet dignity and asks for help. Not pity, not sympathy, nothing really but a little repayment in kind. And the fact that he doesn’t try to shame or guilt-trip anyone into doing the Right Thing only makes us respect and feel for him all the more. What really marks him as a decent guy is his response to the one person who offers the least support, the town drunk. He doesn’t tell him to get real, that the only way he could help would be if he shot Cooper before the bad guys got to town – he gives him a warm smile, a kind and friendly hand on the shoulder – and (most importantly to the guy and his family if he has one) an out. If I recall, there’s even some loose change to go get a beer. Cooper wants help, sure, but he isn’t about to jeopardize someone who’s more likely to get shot up, when all they want to do is help.

Next time, I’ll resume the position on Invisible Men – or maybe I’ll do a column on the films of Pete Walker, or possibly both, since he fits the criteria, at least in the US. Or maybe not. Who knows.

I guess we’ll find out next issue – see you then…

K.C. Locke