#robert milli

Klute (1971)

"I know you're his contact. And I know he's trying to acquire Jane McKenna's book. I'm in a position to offer more for it than he can. You don't understand what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Yes, Jane McKenna's book. And I'll try to get it for you."

"No. Obviously you're frightened and you're lying."

"No, I'm not, I - I will, I'll try to get it for you."

"Is this... something Klute's invented? Is this a trap for me? Does - Klute knows about me, doesn't he?"

"Knows what about you?"

With its cardboard sets, period time frame and plummy acting, Del Tenney’s THE CURSE OF THE LIVING CORPSE (1964, Prime, Tubi, Plex, YouTube) seems like an expanded episode of DARK SHADOWS. The pioneering horror soap, however, was significantly better.

New England patriarch Rufus Sinclair has left specific instructions for how his death is to be handled to avoid his greatest fear, being buried alive. In addition, his heirs are required to live a year in the family manse (with exteriors shot at the former home of Gutzon Borgum, who carved Mt. Rushmore). Should they fail to save him from premature burial, which they all seem to do, his will states each will die in a manner related to their greatest fears: drowning, fire (how symmetrical), suffocation, facial disfigurement, etc. So, of course, when the murders start, the first victim is a serving girl who was never mentioned in the will but was having an affair with eldest son Bruce (Robert Milli). Then the heirs start falling as predicted, leaving drunken second son Roy Scheider (in his film debut) as the new patriarch, but for how long?

This was the first film directed by Tenney, a stage actor. I suppose that means he can be forgiven gaffes like group scenes in which the camera has to pan to get to the next speaker and doesn’t always arrive on time. Those who did not lose 84 minutes of their lives to this turkey might be inclined to be - forgiving. His script also has such inanities as a police constable who says the first two victims could have died accidentally despite the fact one of them was decapitated (she just walked into that neck-level sword), while a masked Tenney stands in for the killer, who turns out to be a cast member that looks nothing like him. To Tenney’s credit, there are a few good exteriors shot against a clear sky that have the feeling of American landscape painting, and there’s a sequence with runaway horses that’s well edited to disguise the fact the horses aren’t really running away with anybody. And the film is certainly better than Tenney’s second, THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH (1964), with which it played on double bills.

The cast is largely composed of New York stage actors, which means most of them had extensive soap opera credits. In fact, the family lawyer (Hugh Franklin) spent most of his later years as Dr. Charles Tyler on ALL MY CHILDREN. He’s reliably proficient in the role, but others either overact shamelessly or barely register. I don’t think it’s just that I recognized them that made Candace Hilligoss (of CARNIVAL OF SOULS, as Franklin’s daughter, and Scheider stand out. Scheider gets most of what Tenney considers bon mots (“The body is a long insatiable tube — in need of drink and relaxation.”) and delivers them with relish. That and his disdain for his wife (Tenney’s wife Margot Hartman), who seems to be involved with Milli, make his character read gay. In a film this bad, it’s hard to tell if that was Tenney’s intention.