Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a little look at Criterion's upcoming 2-disc release of the 1967 cult creature feature EQUINOX. This film was spear-headed by future ILM genius Dennis Muren in the 60s, when he was a teenager. Him and his friends grew up watching Ray Harryhausen movies and reading Forrest J. Ackerman's FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND and decided one day that they wanted to make something worthy of both those men.
They gathered up a silent 16mm Bolex, $6500 in cash and spent years piecing together a campy little film about an evil book that invokes demons and monsters.
If that sounds a little familiar wait until you see the movie. Sam Raimi must have watched EQUINOX during its small theatrical run or seen it on TV as there are quite a few moments in the film that I'm positive directly influenced Raimi on his EVIL DEAD series, including the Book of the Dead.
The movie itself is very rough, with non-professional actors and a completely over-dubbed soundtrack, which is painfully obvious in some places, but for anyone interested in special effects this movie is a must see. There are half a dozen sequences that employ good ol' Willis O'Brien and Harryhausen stop motion creatures, there are tons of amazing traditional matte paintings, a great forced perspective sequence and above all else you can see the love and sweat that went into this film.
Being a Criterion release, they took much care with the release. On Disc 1 you get a video introduction by Forrest J. Ackerman (Or Dr. Acula as he refers to himself) and 2 cuts of the film. The best looking cut is the theatrical release. The movie was sold to Jack H. Harris who organized about 10 minutes of additional footage and cut out some of the cheesier looking effects before putting it into theaters. That cut is the best transfer. The second cut is called THE EQUINOX, which was the original title, and is as close to the first assemblage that Muren and friends showed around when they wrapped.
Both cuts have commentaries, with co-directors Muren and Mark McGee and effects honcho Jim Danforth on the second cut and Jack Woods (credited as "director") and producer Jack H. Harris on the theatrical cut. I listened to all of the Muren/McGee/Danforth commentary, which was interesting, but far from entertaining. I couldn't bring myself to watch the movie a 3rd time listening to another commentary track. I really only wanted to hear Muren's thoughts and recollections anyway, so I just skipped over to the second disc.
Disc 2 has a lot of previous short film work from David Allen, Muren, McGee and the rest of the EQUINOX gang. Lots of stop-motion monsters and tests here, including the first tests for the giant creature used in EQUINOX known as Taurus. There's also a short called ZORGON: THE H-BOMB BEAST FROM HELL, which plays out like a Scooby-Doo mystery (completely silent, by the way), but features the work of a young, young Rick Baker.
There's also an Interview With Dennis Muren where he's talking about his experiences making the movie and growing up a sci-fi and fantasy nut. There's some Super 8 footage he shot experimenting with visual tricks, including one I particularly liked with a kid swinging a large stick at a giant foot, clad in converse sneaker and leg in blue jeans. The leg raises and stamps the kid. It's short, simple and crude, but funny as hell.
You also get cast interviews with the leads (Frank Bonner, Barbara Laughray and James Duran, who played the force-perspective Giant in the movie). It's a pretty typical cast interview scenario. Entertaining and Criterion carefully keeps them from repeating the same information we've had already.
My two favorite extras were the David Allen Appreciation segment, for the stop motion animator and friend to the production. He did a very cool Volkeswagon commercial in the 70s using stop motion that had a real damn impressive imitation of the original KONG puppet on top of the Empire State Building, grabbing bi-planes with a screaming blonde in his hand. He notices the super duper large VW and has to climb down and look at it. The woman playing Ann Darrow in the commercial was Fay Wray's daughter.
There was also a sort of Harryhausen puppetoon looking fairy tale he did called The Magic Treasure.
That was really cool and so was the part of DVDs I usually skip over, which on this release ended up being my favorite extra of them all: The Storyboards and Picture Gallery. In between these behind the scenes pics and preproduction art pieces were little paragraphs describing what you're seeing next and there was a whole section devoted to forced perspective (they had their "giant" standing on a picnic table which they dressed to match the sand on the ground behind the table. When lined up the effect, even in still form, was impressive) and matte paintings. Mattes were paintings on glass that were set up in front of the camera, often times with big blank places on the glass... so they could look through match with a location. In this instance, they had a giant castle on a hill which didn't exist nor could they afford to build it, so they painted in on glass. One side of the glass had the castle on the hill, the other side matched the foliage and trees, with the bottom right corner blank. They had their actress standing there and the rest blended together so it looked like was there in the painting. Gorgeous. I love that stuff.
All in all, the disc is up to Criterion's standards. The movie itself isn't really for those casually into film. It's rough. It's a bit amateurish. If you're fascinated by old school effects and love a good cheesy '60s monster movie romp, then EQUINOX is your cup of tea.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
