“This movie could make a stone cry” –Orson Welles

Ah the sunset years! You’ve raised your kid s- they’re grown and on their own now. You’re slowing down at work, what with the economy in shambles and that old injury that’s been hampering you the past few years. But you’re married to the same great gal you fell for all those years ago. And you’ve got the house where you raised your family. You’ve got a least a little security.

Or maybe not…

Maybe you lose the house…

And maybe when you call the kids over to talk about it, you’ve procrastinated, hoping that something would turn up to stave off eviction, so that you really can’t put together much of a plan. Bobby, the baby of the family, won’t be too much help; he’s barely getting by himself. Cora’s husband is out of work. Nellie and Harvey…well we don’t want to ask Harvey for help, particularly as Nellie is always going on about how bad his business is doing. George and Anita have a little room; their daughter Rhoda will be going to college soon. Maybe if Ma shares her room – there is an extra bed after all – and Pa stays with Cora on the couch in the living room, the family can buy time to make a plan. Addie out in California may be able to help and Nellie will arrange things with Harvey in a few months. It’s a short visit with the kids. What could possibly go wrong?

Leo McCarey’s 1937 MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW explores just how deep the fractures can become within a family within just a few months. Not surprisingly, Rhoda resents sharing a room with a seventy-year-old woman. She no longer brings her friends home and spends a lot of evenings out. Not only that, Ma Cooper (wonderfully played by Beula Bondi) is also interfering with the running of the household and is woefully out of place.

At the bridge lessons, Anita organizes to help pay the bills. This will eventually foment a full scale domestic crisis with the most sympathetic of her children. Eventually, a nursing home looks like a real possibility. In fact, Ma will enable it in a touching scene with her son George.

Pa will fare no better in Cora’s care 300 miles away. Cora will eventually shunt her father to the California-based daughter as none of the children prove willing to take responsibility for the couple as a couple. Of course, all this will mean the dissolution of their union after a marriage of fifty years, the real heartbreak that lies at the heart of this movie. Yet despite this and the disappointment in their children echoed in Ma’s observation that “you don’t sow wheat and reap ashes”, the couple will have moments of both grace and laughter.

So…we have an exceedingly odd picture here. The director, Leo McCarey, won an Oscar the same year for the Cary Grant vehicle THE AWFUL TRUTH; and said that the Academy should have given it to him for this instead. He came out of a background in comedy; he directed the Marx Brothers’ DUCK SOUP, RUGGLES OF RED GAP, and paired Laurel with Hardy. Later, he also directed GOING MY WAY, AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, and THE BELLS OF ST. MARY’S. MAKE WAY was his favorite film, made in part as a reaction to the death of his father.

McCarey was known as an actor’s director and there are some really fine performances here. Ma Copper is the pivotal role and Beula Bondi plays her vulnerability and her strength admirably. She was forty-eight at the time, playing seventy. A veteran of Broadway, she became one of the stalwart character actors of the 30′s and 40′s. Alternating between passivity, regret and graciousness, Pa Cooper was played by Victor Moore. The moments they share evoke a couple that both love and need each other. Fay Bainter was nominated for both best actress and best supporting actress the following year – winning the latter for JEZEBEL. Here she plays the initially sympathetic daughter-in-law opposite Thomas Mitchell, one of the finest character actors of his generation and another eventual best supporting actor.

There’s a lot of nuance in this film, and McCarey is brilliant in avoiding cardboard characters or assigning easy blame to any of the characters. Pay close attention to the bridge party, to the later conversations between Ma Cooper and Anita and George, and above all, the final scene, one of the great endings you’ve never seen. Just keep the tissues handy.

Old age has ever been a problematic subject for Hollywood – and a nearly forgotten one. There’s the epic LION IN WINTERr, the overly sentimental ON GOLDEN POND, the wishful COCOON, and more recently and in a more realistic vein, 2002′s IRIS and 2007′s excellent THE SAVAGES .Yasujiro Ozu’s TOKYO STORY (1953) was derived directly from MAKE WAY and offers an interesting counterpoint to it. Ozu also looks at an ungrateful generation through the eyes of their elders, but the stakes are not as high and it is in many respects not as poignant a story. I challenge you to recall more. Let’s face it, no one wants reminders of their own mortality and wrinkles are not particularly appealing to those who don’t sport a few of their own. Moreover, the problems of the elderly simply don’t condense well into a two-hour narrative. They are more likely to touch upon themes of loneliness, despair, and when we are lucky, acceptance.

This is one of the real lost gems of Hollywood’s golden years. Although box office poison in its day, it absolutely merits its resurrection by Criterion, which includes three essays and brief talks by Peter Bogdanovich and Gary Giddens. It’s a movie that is as relevant today as it was then. Watch with your spouse. Then call your mother.

Anchor Bay DVD re-release by Victory Films and Deimos Productions

VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES (1972) Directed by Leon Klimovsky, Written by Jacinto Molino. Starring Paul Naschy, Romy, Mirta Miller and Vic Winner

NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF (1980) Directed and Written by Jacinto Molino (Naschy). Starring Paul Naschy, Julia Saly, Silvia Aguilar, and Azucena Hernandez. aka THE CRAVING.

Paul Naschy (Jacinto Molino) is often referred to as the Lon Chaney of European horror films, and has been making movies for forty years (he is still at work). He has done just about every classic Universal horror type, vampires, mummies, even a hunchback, but is best known for his recurring character, Waldemar Daninsky, a werewolf better known as Senor Lobo. A Naschy film usually has a gothic atmosphere with an endangered damsel or two, and a villain allied with unspeakably evil minions. A lot of attention is placed on makeup as there are no CGIs, and stage blood will be served by the bucket. There are two noteworthy aspects to these films: the outstanding physicality Paul Naschy brings to the screen as a former bodybuilder, and his ability as a writer to repeatedly recycle the genre.

VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIESwas made in 1972, a year when Naschy made six other films. The story takes place in contemporary London, where followers of the guru Krisna (Naschy) gather to hear his teachings. Among them are Elvira, who is devoted to the fakir, and her skeptical friend Lawrence, an expert in the occult. Later that night Elvira is attacked at home by a zombie, and her father is killed by a mysterious masked figure. She flees to Krisna’s country house, while Lawrence helps Scotland Yard investigate a series of voodoo-flavored killings that have the police baffled. Devil worship, murder, and the twisted revenge of Krisna’s evil brother follow.

All of this probably seems pretty familiar, and that is probably the problem with most horror films of this type. Naschy injects some new elements by throwing together Indian and Haitian motifs, but the film is something of a mess and the ending slapdash. The production values are about what you’d expect from an early seventies B movie, made worse by what just might be the worst soundtrack ever (check out the euro-pop funeral scene). The direction is sloppy, the many outdoor night sequences are underlit, and there are several continuity errors. Somehow, one suspects the cast had more fun making this than the audience does watching it.

RETURN OF THE WEREWOLF, on the other hand, has quite a few redeeming qualities. Made with a larger budget, and directed by Naschy, it is a far more polished film. The action starts in 16th Century Transylvania, where Elizabeth Bathory (Saly), the evil countess who maintained her youth by bathing in the blood of virgins, is sentenced to death, along with several of her followers, including the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky. Flash-forward to 1982 Italy, where three young anthropologists – young, supermodel-type anthropologists – plan a trip to Bathory’s grave. One of them, Erika (Aguilar), is pursuing her own agenda; she has been in contact with Bathory’s spirit and seduced by the promise of satanic immortality. Meanwhile, grave robbers at a Transylvanian castle have stumbled upon Daninsky’s grave and foolishly awakened the lycanthrope, a bad move.

A few days later, the three students turn up in Transylvania, and on the way to the castle are attacked by bandits, only to be saved by a mysterious figure with a crossbow, none other than Daninsky. Erika locates Bathory’s grave, while Karen (Hernandez) learns more about their host, Daninsky, who’s posing as the ruined castle’s owner. Erika resurrects Bathory by sacrificing Barbara, and becomes herself a vampiric servant. The upshot of all this is twofold: it’s not a good time to be a villager in Transylvania, many of whom will be either punctured or mauled, and there’s a power struggle brewing between Bathory and Daninsky, who’s a pretty decent guy between full moons.

The ensuing struggle has a lot of the standard set piece action one expects in classic horror films; in fact, we caught a few sequences that were eerily identical to those seen in the old Universal films. Unfortunately the movie stumbles badly coming down the stretch, Still, Naschy shines in just about anything he does in this film, and his werewolf is both vicious and athletic. The writing, direction, and production values are also a lot tighter than Vengeance, and the credit for that has to go to Naschy, wearing three hats here (he directed in full makeup; it must have been quite a sight). His supporting cast, while not flawless, is an improvement over the earlier movie. Naschy could have made better use of them if he had at least given his vampires some lines.

NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF has enough good things going for it that one doesn’t want to knock it too viciously; it’s certainly as good as many Hammer films, and does a lot more with less than recent forays into this territory such as VAN HELSING. These films are noteworthy also in the context of Spanish cinema; remember that they were created during the end of the Franco years and often were not distributed in Spain. Naschy’s problems are those encountered by anyone who wants to recreate the Universal horror franchise: how do you keep such a venerable tradition fresh? VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES might have the better answer – incorporate different traditions and portray the intersection of traditions as a genuinely scary thing. After all, almost everyone finds some aspect of globalism a little frightening. Alternately, a more thorough investigation of character might make these old archetypes more interesting to contemporary audiences. HOWL and GINGER SNAPS both rework lycanthropy into something new and interesting.

These reissued films then are perhaps more for the connoisseur of horror films than the casual viewer. The DVDs are nicely packaged in both dubbed and letterbox versions, with the original trailers. They also have enjoyable introductions by Naschy, who is, despite his material, a true original.