As I type these words, the
temperature outside is nineteen above zero.
Add in a brisk ten-mile-per-hour wind, and things get downright chilly. I’m someone who likes colder temps. Fall is my favorite season. But once you get to the point where the cold physically
forces itself into your bones and strips the skin off your face, you have to
admit that enough’s enough. My local
forecast also calls for snow and freezing rain in the next twenty-four
hours. Nothing like adding insult to
injury. Of course, it’s not the
twenty-below that the characters in Jerrold
Freedman’s (director of the fun Raquel
Welch roller derby film Kansas City
Bomber) A Cold Night’s Death (aka
The Chill Factor) have to endure, but
you know what? They can have it.
Robert Jones (Robert Culp) and Frank Inari (Eli Wallach) are a couple of scientists
flown to the Tower Mountain Research Station, where the previous occupant, Dr.
Vogel, has apparently gone insane and killed himself via exposure to the
elements. Or did he?
A Cold Night’s Death was an ABC Movie of the Week, and it lives up
to the genre. This was back when movies
made for television were allowed to be scary.
They didn’t necessarily need all kinds of shit blowing up. They didn’t need mass quantities of
gore. They didn’t need swearing for the
characters to be believable in their situations or have tits and ass hanging
out of every frame (no matter how much you’d personally love to see Wallach in a thong). All of those things, incidentally, are fine
and dandy with me in the right time and place.
There was a very tangible sense of dread (and even a grimy level of
sleaze from time to time) that these films carried; something lost today where
spectacle has replaced things like tension, story, etcetera. What I’m saying is, the constraints forced
the filmmakers to get creative with how they crafted their chills and thrills;
something I enjoy. In fact, whenever I
hear people complain about how repressive the Forties and Fifties were in terms
of cinematic themes, I always think that, yes, this is true, but look at how
much more effort was put into getting their point across or tackling things
considered risqué. Subtext, a thing as
rare as hen’s teeth these days, was necessary.
There’s a reason why people often say it’s better to suggest a monster
than to show it. Compare Robert Wise’s The Haunting to Jan de Bont’s
version for further proof. I’m not saying I’m against seeing monsters. I love monsters. But sometimes it really is better to conjure
something in your head, at least in terms of actually producing scares. Plus, some monsters just shouldn’t be
shown. I’ll let you debate which ones
should be included on that list. You can
level the “he’s just old-fashioned” argument against me about this topic if you
wish. That doesn’t make me wrong.
One very large comparison almost every person
who sees this film will make is to John
Carpenter’s The Thing (which was
released and bombed nine years later), so I may as well do it, too. There is the setting itself, naturally (and
this is really a large portion of what lines can be drawn between the two). There is the helicopter ride in with pilot
Adams (Michael C Gwynne), though he
is only in the film for a few minutes, and he isn’t a spot on Kurt Russell’s MacReady. There is the discovery of the frozen dead guy
in the electronics room. Most
especially, there is the haunting sense of isolation, and I would say it’s
amplified in this film, because there isn’t a whole team of men in these tight
quarters. It’s two men in a place that
now expands out the areas where dread lurks, because there are no warm bodies
filling them. What Freedman does to augment this is employs a lot of low angle shots
and some slight Dutch angles, keeping us from experiencing this world from a
normal perspective. Throughout the film,
he also composes shots where the characters are seen through cage bars, chicken
wire, door windows, and so on. In other
words, these guys are confined, the same as the primates on which they
experiment. They can go anywhere inside the
station they would like, but they can’t leave, and they never may.
A Cold Night’s Death plays with paranoia and obsession, and its
leads are perfectly cast as semi-foils to develop this. Jones is an explorer, a detective, while
Inari is more affable, less audacious. It’s
marvelous watching the protagonists slowly become more paranoid, more
suspicious of each other as the story unfolds.
They have only each other, and though they are both friends and
colleagues, there are resentments lying under the surface of their amity, and
these will inevitably come to the fore.
Being out of contact with the rest of the human race, their minds fill
the gaps in logic that they encounter with suspicion and flights of fancy. These are fairly restrained men, so when they
experience this loss of control, they respond by attacking each other (verbally;
at least, to start). After all, there’s
no one else on which to take any of this out.
Culp and Wallach embody the characters to a tee, with Culp bringing his usual tight-lipped pragmatism, and Wallach his innocent sincerity. Being the two consummate professionals they
are, the actors bring their A Game, and it lends the film a gravitas and
believability less capable actors may not have accomplished. Wisely, Freedman
never plays his hand until the very end, keeping his camera and editing
controlled enough to not give the surprise away while giving enough clues from
the start to allow you to figure it all out, if you’re of a mind to. Some might say that the reveal is a tad dumb
or even ludicrous, but personally, I loved it, and the closing shot is one of
the more chilling (no pun intended; maybe a little) I’ve seen in my horror film
watching experience.
MVT: The atmosphere that the
film and its actors generate is appropriately heavy and foreboding.
Make or Break: The
ending. You’re either going to love it
or laugh at it.
Score: 7/10
