Inefficient As Hell

It only took 49 years, but I finally saw Haunts Of The Very Rich, a 1972 ABC-TV MoW (movie of the week).

For those unfamiliar with the term, a MoW was a 75 minute made for TV movie in a 90 minute time slot.  ABC made more than 250 of these over a 6 year period, modern day versions of the programmers and B-movies of the 1930s and 40s.  

Many MoWs served as pilots for later series (The Six Million Dollar Man, Kolchak:  The Night Stalker, etc.), a few were attempts at serious drama (Brian’s Song, That Certain Summer, etc.), a couple were surprisingly good (Duel, Trilogy Of Terror, etc.)…

…and most were like Haunts Of The Very Rich.

It’s pretty much a quintessential example, showing all the strengths and weaknesses of the form:  Sensationalistic story, stellar (at least by TV standards) cast, plus enough time and budget to be more technically proficient and aesthetically pleasing than a typical TV episode are the plus side of the equation; cliché’, hackneyed, predictable, turgid, and astonishingly offensive for racial sensitivities of the era are the negative side.

If the title didn’t tip you already, the first two minutes hammer the point home:  They’re DEAD!!!  And they’re going to HELL!!!

Okay, dynamite TV cast for the era:  
Lloyd Bridges, Cloris Leachman, Edward Asner, Anne Francis, Robert Reed, Donna Mills, Tony Bill, and Moses Gunn all turn in performances ranging from good to very good indeed.

Paul Wendkos directed, a respected journeyman director who never made it to the A-list but worked consistently in film and TV across a wide range of genres.  He demonstrated an unsuspected flair for the supernatural in his best known theatrical film, The Mephisto Waltz, and manages to bring that same sensibility to Haunts…

Script?  Eh, don’t ask…  William Wood’s teleplay (story by T.K. Brown III, which I suspect is a pseudonym) is a ripoff of the 1923 play Outward Bound already filmed twice as Outward Bound and Between Two Worlds, but to modern audiences it looks like a Twilight Zone mash-up of Gilligan’s / Fantasy Island.

Seven very rich people (upper middle class bourgeoise, if you ask me) find themselves on a mysterious jetliner taking them to Seacrist, a tropical vacation destination, run by Mr. Seacrist (Gunn) in an all-white outfit than anticipates Mr. Roarke’s wardrobe by a good five years. 

I strongly suspect all the wealthy characters initially represented the seven deadly sins (pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth) but by the time ABC got through mucking with it those distinctions were lost.

Not that it matters.  The seven stooges arrive and run through their various melodramas.  Seacrist resort is cut off from the outside world by a hurricane.  The native help abandons the resort, Mr. Seacrist goes off to find aid, the rest of the cast mopes around as resources and tempers grown thin, and it finally dawns on them that they’re DEAD!!!  And they’re in HELL!!!

Folks, National Lampoon did that as a one panel cartoon called “Presbyterian Hell.”  EC’s Tales From The Crypt would have batted this one out in 6 pages.  As a half hour Twilight Zone it would feel padded (it might have worked as a short segment on Night Gallery).

Despite Wendkos and the cast doing their (dare I say it?  I dare…) damnedest to make the material work, the script is a killer and not in the good sense.

Case in point #1:
Mr. Seacrist is of African descent (Gunn provides him with an erudite, quasi-British colonial accent suggesting a Caribbean background), the staff -- “They understand English but I’ve instructed them not to speak it” (yeah, so the producers don’t have to pay for speaking parts) -- are either Native Americans or of African descent.

The stooges actually comment how surprised they are that Mr. Seacrist is running the show because native staff is one thing, but isn’t there usually a white guy in charge of everything?

Say wha -- ?!?!?  This was 1972, people might still be thinking that b.s. but only Archie Bunker would be saying it out loud.

Case in point #2:  
Timothy Leary, Bishop Pike, and Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan were pretty well known to the American public in 1972, and so Robert Reed’s reverend was given a big anti-drug scene.  I suspect the heavy handed anti-drug message was added not only to blunt (no pun intended) his character’s earlier mention of peyote but also to undercut the pretty chilling “there is no afterlife” context of the original scene.  (Despite this, it’s still the best thing in Haunts… and Reed shows some fine acting chops here).

Case in point #3: 
Lloyd Bridges is a married serial adulterer with a clinging wife he can’t stand who briefly enjoys a romantic fling with the equally married Cloris Leachmen (though if they’re dead, their wedding vows are now null and void).  Bridges’ wife can’t live without him and kills herself, showing up at the end to make his hell complete.

It’s hilarious when it happens to Harcourt Fenton Mudd in Star Trek, it’s horrific for all the wrong reasons here.

Why should she be eternally punished for his being an asshole?

Which leads us to the observation poised in the title of this post:  If this be hell, it’s a damned inefficient one.

Seacrist the vacation / damnation destination is actually the Villa Vizcaya in Florida and I must admit it’s a great location, a huge sprawling estate that gives off the same familiar-yet-somewhat-odd vibe as Portmeirion, Wales did for The Prisoner.

But in the context of the story, why go to all that effort to torment just seven people?  

Ever see Johnny Got His Gun?  The wounded WWI vet in that is blind / deaf / mute / limbless / unable to eat or taste anything (his genitals are still attached and functioning; rendering him the polar opposite of Jake Barnes in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises), trapped forever in an eternal sensationless hell.  Why go to the trouble of this elaborate stage show that lasts less than a week when these poor bastards are going to be stuck there for hundreds of thousands of millions of billions of trillions of years?
Just shove ‘em in airtight boxes and stack ‘em away in a hot room.

The only thing that would make sense about Seacrist would be if it’s not Hell but Purgatory, and the stooges’ suffering will eventually guide them through to eternal bliss.

I suspect that’s what Mr. Seacrist started as; an allusion to “see Christ” but the network suits apparently freaked out over that and made him just a run of the mill sinister host.

 . . .

BTW, I caught Haunts… on the Creature Features channel on YouTube.  Vincent, Tangella and Mr. Livingston picked up the torch (or should I say cigar?) from the late John Stanley and are churning out episode after entertaining episode.  I find they strike the right balance of humor and informative interviews and the show is delightful.  Check ‘em out.

© Buzz Dixon