Video picks remembers Halloween classics

Don Weberg

OK, OK, so the attempt at the old movie and new movie pick on a rotating weekly basis didn't quite work out. So what?

The pick this week is simple. What month is it?  October, meaning that horror films have to be spotlighted, a genre that I am particularly familiar with.

To pick "Halloween" or "Friday the 13th" would be cliché and way too easy.  Like ordering chocolate or vanilla ice cream, the practice is overdone. Cal State Long Beach students are far more astute, and as such demand movies with superior cult status to ease their film palettes, movies not quite as well known to the common viewer. After all, we are not Cal State Fullerton, now are we?

Therefore, in this spirit two picks are on the slate, one for fans of noir and one for fans of revenge.

Pick No. 1 is Paramount Picture's 1948 hit by director Anatole Litvak, "Sorry, Wrong Number." Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Ed Begley and William Conrad, this film will rocket viewers into the suspense zone in no time flat. Several remakes of this film have been made, but this one is still the best.

The plot involves an invalid woman, Stanwyck, who is confined to her bed and one night overhears a phone conversation when her line is crossed with another. The conversation is between two men plotting to kill one of their wives.  A frantic call to police gets shrugged off because they cannot do anything about people plotting to kill and the possibility that the invalid woman may just be a crackpot looking for attention. The story gets deeper and deeper as Stanwyck tries in vain to figure out who the men are and, more importantly, who the endangered woman is. Stanwych attempts this by listening to the phone conversations and trying to get the operator to find out where the calls are coming from. A surprising twist at the end of the film always leaves new viewers in awe.

The second picture, certain to entertain the movie-savvy students of CSULB, is "House of Wax."  The 1953 Warner Brothers flick stars the godfather of horror films, Vincent Price as Professor Henry Jarrod, co-owner of a wax museum.

Jarrod's partner, much to his horror, propositions the idea of setting fire to the museum for insurance money. Jarrod, obsessed by his waxy friends, firmly says no, leading to a scuffle rendering Jarrod unconscious. His partner then runs rampant, setting the museum ablaze and leaving Jarrod to die in the fire.

A plot twist sends viewers over the edge when Jarrod survives the flames and opened his own wax museum.  However, the semi-secret identity of Jarrod is nothing compared to the identity of some of his wax sculptures.

It's story-telling time, and there is nothing quite as fitting for Halloween than a black-and-white film noir of things that go bump in the night. Let the Fullerton crowd watch the films well traveled this All Hallows Eve, while Long Beach students broaden their film horizons.

Don Weberg is a print journalism major at Cal State Long Beach.