Neo-Noir Double-Headed Features Unearthed Oddities

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At something of a low point in his legendary career, country star Johnny Cash finds himself playing the part of a vile and violent psychopath, gunning down cops and terrorizing a defenseless housewife with a pistol and a fireplace poker. Meanwhile, the not-so-legendary Constantinople-born salon owner Aram Katcher stars as a vile and violent psychopath, killing in cold blood and reveling in the spoils of an ambitious amphitheater heist.

Dedicated archivists Film Masters have graced us with this delightfully offbeat double-feature, pairing the Cash-led oddity Door-to-Door Maniac (a.k.a. Five Minutes to Live) with the little-seen outsider-auteur delight Right Hand of the Devil. Both films are presented in quality 4K scans from original archive elements – 35mm for the former, 16mm for the latter. Later in life Cash expressed regrets about how Door-to-Door Maniac turned out. Meanwhile, concerning Right Hand of the Devil, Film Masters note the following: “Unfortunately, our research showed that all 35mm elements were destroyed by the Director.” Curiouser and curiouser…

As afore alluded to, both films look wonderful on this new Blu-Ray set. They were produced in the early 1960s, and were photographed in an appealing black and white approach that feels like a holdover from the B-tier noirs of the two decades prior. Cash’s performance in Door-to-Door Maniac is surprisingly good. He exudes a callous menace that serves the film’s unnervingly close depictions of the realities of misogyny. While the film as a whole is largely mediocre, it is not without its strong points. It was co-written by Robert Joseph, who also co-wrote Ida Lupino’s The Hitch-Hiker – a similar but superior noir. The beginning of the film is intriguing, but it feels longer and longer in the tooth as it goes on. Scenes of Cash singing and strumming his guitar are fun, but can’t help but feel shoehorned in for obvious reasons.

Movies like this – grimy home invasion type pictures where women are terrorized by deranged men – would flourish in the subsequent decade. The 1970s brought a dirtier, more graphic, and more nihilistic form of the B-movie. Door-to-Door Maniac feels quaint by comparison – and its nastiest elements can’t help but feel somewhat unintentionally uncomfortable. Commonly understood ideas about gender relations have changed a bit since the early 1960s, after all. However, the Cash performance will likely always ensure that the film retains something of a niche appeal.

On the other hand, Right Hand of the Devil – the film which is simultaneously the worse and far more entertaining of the pair – is anchored by producer, director, and star Aram Katcher’s seriously weird performance. He wonkily creeps and crawls through most scenes like your local community theatre’s answer to Peter Lorre. Then in other scenes he stands rigid, staring into empty space, seemingly reading his lines off of improperly placed cue cards (this is not confirmed fact, merely speculation).

The plot is an incredibly simple rendition of the heist film, like a SparkNotes version of The Killing. But Katcher’s awkwardly endearing weirdo energy, combined with some of the movie’s more eccentric elements (including a macabre horror-tinged ending) make the affair noteworthy. It’s definitely worth seeing. Fans of cult figures from this period like Ed Wood, Roger Corman, and William Castle will appreciate Katcher’s eccentricity. Assuredly a lot of the proceedings are stiff and stiltedly paced, but there are a handful of artfully executed sequences. One scene set on a beach uses shot compositions that pre-date, but will certainly remind you of, The Graduate. This is all to say: Aram Katcher was not the first, nor was he the last, in many respects.

Releases like this are certainly welcome. Hyperbole is almost always the name-of-the-game in a media market oversaturated with an endless deluge of content. There are choices, choices, and more choices and each and every Tom, Dick and Harry is adamant on convincing you that their choice is the choicest of choices. Everyone is insistent on discovering, championing, planting their flag in and singing the praises of the latest in a long line of “undiscovered masterpieces.” But not everything that has escaped public attention is in fact an unfairly ignored work of neglected genius. The essays that accompany these two films are very well put-together: informative and level-headed. Film Masters, and all involved, appear to understand that staggering brilliance is not a prerequisite for preservation. Aram Katcher’s weirdness, or the novelty of seeing Johnny Cash’s famous face utilized as the monstrous mug of a merciless criminal, are indeed things worthy of being as accessible to the film-inclined public as the works of Orson Welles or Ingmar Bergman.

Maybe Cash would have preferred that Door-to-Door Maniac stay forgotten. Maybe it will. Alas, only time will tell…

This new 2-disc collector’s edition includes detailed liner notes, a new visual essay, multiple commentary tracks, and trailers for both films.

Wicked Horror Rating: 6/10

Available Aug. 27 in a special, two-disc collector’s edition on Blu-ray and DVD from Film Masters.

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