Last year The Kid and I were watching a lot of my old favorite monster and sci-fi movies together: Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, King Kong, Them!, Creature from the Black Lagoon and Tarantula, among others. The Kid seemed to enjoy them, and didn’t seem to be particularly scared by any of them. Then one slow afternoon I put on the 1961 Ray Harryhausen adventure Mysterious Island...
It didn’t occur to me to worry that this colorful, rather sunny fantasy would scare The Kid. But that, alas, was the one that got her—thanks to none other than Herbert Lom.
Lom had one of his more memorable roles as Captain Nemo…
…in the last third or so of that movie. In the climactic scene, Nemo is trying to escape from the sinking Nautilus when he gets pinned in the collapsing vessel. There’s a big close-up of Lom’s expressive face as his eyes roll, full of pain and suffocation and awareness of impending death. The next day The Kid reported that she was so haunted by Lom’s face that she had a hard time sleeping. Giant crabs and birds and tentacled bottom-dwellers, no problem, but a Czech actor’s face kept her awake.
Thereafter I was forbidden to show The Kid any more monster flicks, nor did The Kid herself show any enthusiasm for them (though as Halloween approaches she’s begun expressing interest again).
I couldn’t be too irritated by the ban, because…it occurred to me that the very same scene had creeped me out pretty good when I was a kid. Indeed, I have a memory of seeing that movie at my pal Lonnie’s house, and the same shot scaring Lonnie’s little brother enough that he fled the room.
So Herbert Lom, with just the look on his face, gave a couple of generations of kids the willies. What an actor.
No comments:
Post a Comment