In the past two issues (here and here), we've turned the spotlight on the huge "body" of horror films that were graced by the talents of Donald Pleasence.  Now, we must forge ahead and document the fright flicks he appeared in during the last years of his life.  Although he did have a few high points in this final stage of his career, most of those points were low and some were really low, as you'll learn in this third and concluding installment of...

By HARVEY F. CHARTRAND

(Note: This is the third and final article in a three-part series that examines the huge horror film output of actor Donald Pleasance.  Part One can be found here.  Part Two can be found here.)

By the early 1980s, Donald Pleasence was becoming more closely associated with horror and fantasy films, at least as far as the general public was concerned. After the international success of Halloween and Halloween II, the veteran actor appeared in a series of television commercials for a British lager that capitalized on his trademark "odd" image. In these ads for Pils (the "odd lager"), Pleasence peddled beer in the company of Egyptian mummies, homemade robots, werewolves and other monsters. He was now Horror Royalty. Unfortunately, the quality of most of the horror films that lay ahead would decline even further.

Pleasence started being pulled into projects that can only be described as Godawful. Quite often, he was the only star power in pictures populated by mediocre actors whose careers were short-lived. Pleasence’s respectable-to-crap ratio started leaning heavily toward the excremental. Observed film writer Nathan Shumate in Cold Fusion Video Reviews: "Pleasence was a good actor, and as a matter of course he threw his heart into his roles. By the mid-eighties, though, I suspect he had finally realized he was never going to rise to the old ranks again, and decided that his new philosophy would be ‘show up, say the words, get the paycheck.’"

Pleasence was aware that his workaholic ways and casual willingness to accept any role that came along had dimmed his reputation. Perhaps his constant output of B- and C-pictures disqualified him for a British knighthood. John Carpenter relates that Pleasence, in his later years, expressed regret about having made so many lousy films. It really bothered him, apparently. And yet he never stopped appearing in junk.

Even as the workaholism exacted its toll and his health began to fail, Pleasence persisted, making five or six pictures a year. He went from film to film, often shooting in distant, exotic locations. Sometimes he looked very tired – either worn-out or inebriated. He justified his relentless pace, citing his need to constantly make money to support the lavish lifestyle to which he had grown accustomed.

In 1984, Pleasence and Nancy Allen co-hosted Terror In The Aisles, a retrospective of scenes from 75 horror and suspense movies, ranging from 1941’s The Wolf Man to 1982’s The Thing. Seated in a crowded movie theatre with an audience of filmgoers, Pleasence acquits himself well in his hosting duties, but I remember feeling cheated after paying good money to see this picture. Terror in the Aisles is only 84 minutes long, features tiresome narration (a lot of gushing tributes and breathless commentary), offers a blizzard of film clips but no interviews with then still living horror icons, and includes several pictures that have no right being there (such as the delightful but not at all scary To Catch a Thief).

Another drawback is that Terror In The Aisles skips lightly over three decades of horror filmmaking, favoring more recent (and inferior) product, such as 1981’s Nighthawks and 1982’s Vice Squad. So this quasi-documentary is by no means an exhaustive analysis of horror and suspense movies, but nothing more than a series of random clips taken out of context. Terror In The Aisles is to be avoided at all costs, even by horror completists. It was an egregious attempt to cash in on Pleasence’s short-lived post-Halloween box office clout.

In Dario Argento’s Phenomena (1985), Pleasence plays Professor John McGregor, a Scottish entomologist who is helping the police track down a serial killer. He befriends student Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly in her first starring role) and discovers that she has the remarkable ability to link telepathically with insects. Prof. McGregor helps the girl understand her gift and urges her to use this strange power to zero in on the killer. Pleasence is good as the kindly Prof. McGregor, but it’s not really much of a part, giving him no opportunity to shine. Phenomena was savagely cut by 28 minutes for its American release, retitled Creepers. However, in this reviewer’s estimation, neither version is worth seeing. Phenomena is just about the dumbest, most far-fetched horror film ever made. Reducing its length is an act of kindness to unsuspecting audiences lured into watching it.

Pleasence is a talking head in Dario Argento’s World Of Horror (1985), a documentary on Italy’s renowned horror/mystery filmmaker, covering his work from 1970’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage to 1985’s Phenomena. The brief behind-the-scenes footage on Phenomena should be of interest to Pleasence fans, as the busy actor is seen between takes conversing with Argento and assistant director Michele Soavi.

Pleasence then lands a substantial role in the Mexican gorefest Treasure Of The Amazon (1985) as funny old Nazi adventurer Klaus von Blantz, who seeks to fund the resurrection of the Third Reich. Pleasence’s German accent is spot on, and a scene in which von Blantz is overwhelmed by a busty Amazon babe (the only time the actor was ever upstaged) is priceless. This ruthless man who comes to the jungle in search of treasure finds instead a sickening end – he is hung on a hook by his tongue. Treasure of the Amazon has a few other harrowing scenes, notably one in which a paralyzed man’s eyes are devoured by hungry crustaceans.

In the Italian thriller Nothing Underneath/Sotto il vestito niente (1985), Pleasence plays a soon-to-be-retired Milan detective chasing down a killer who is using scissors to murder top fashion models. Bob Crane, a Yellowstone Park ranger (Tom Schanley), arrives in Milan, looking for his sister’s murderer. Crane crosses paths with the decadent denizens of the international jet set. The killer decides to turn the tables on his pursuer.

Pleasence once boasted in an interview that Sotto il vestito niente was a bit of a cult film in Italy, but (take my word for it), there is nothing underneath the surface gloss of this uninvolving horror/thriller.

With the straight-to-video atrocity Into The Darkness (1986), we come to one of the lowest ebbs of Pleasence’s career. In fact, this crummy little slasher may well be the absolute nadir of his horror output. A bevy of beautiful models arrives on a tropical island for a photo shoot, but soon they are killed off one by one. Pleasence plays an investigator who is trying to find the killer. This one has "tax shelter" written all over it. Into the Darkness co-stars Ronald Lacey, who achieved screen immortality as a leering Nazi in Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981).

Drenched in brooding atmosphere and reminiscent of early Hammer, Prince Of Darkness (1987) is one of John Carpenter’s greatest films, offering Pleasence a fine late-career role. The story begins with the death of an old monk, the lone survivor of the mysterious Brotherhood of Sleepers. The dead monk leaves behind an ancient manuscript and a key. A priest (Donald Pleasence as Father Loomis) is intrigued by the items, and in studying them, discovers that the key opens a door leading to the basement of an abandoned church. For 2,000 years, the Brotherhood guarded the Sleeper in an ancient crypt beneath the church.

The Sleeper is said to be the Ultimate Evil, the thing against which Christ warned mankind. It has been sealed inside a giant glassine cylinder, revealing itself as twirling and ethereal dark green matter. Father Loomis brings a team of scientists to the church to study the cylinder. It is locked from the inside and can’t be opened, and whatever is inside is gaining energy. Meanwhile, dozens of homeless persons, led by a malevolent Alice Cooper, gather outside the church, violently preventing anyone from leaving. Everyone close to the canister has dreams and visions of the future in which a frightening figure emerges from the church, possibly signaling the advent of doomsday.

Prince Of Darkness is the second installment in Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy, a very downbeat series of films that deal with the end of the world. The first part of the trilogy was Carpenter’s shattering remake of The Thing, and the third was the excellent Lovecraftian horror In the Mouth of Madness (1994). Prince of Darkness really gets under your skin and stays there. Our man Pleasence is nothing short of superb as the priest, by turns heroic, by turns worried and afraid as the underpinnings of his lifelong faith are removed one by one.

Pleasence next appears as the lone star and single non-Italian in the cast of Specters, a 1987 occult thriller filmed in Rome. Pleasence is Dr. Lasky, the head of an archaeological dig that uncovers a sealed passage to Domitiano’s Tomb, the site of human sacrifices to monstrous divinities, buried for over two millennia. A tablet at the entrance to the tomb reads: "Invoked or not invoked, evil will come."

Specters has its moments, although Pleasence’s screen time is limited. The scene where Dr. Lasky shines his torch over a subterranean night gallery of "expressionless" Roman statues to finally reveal something frightening is impressive, evoking a sense of doom connected with a centuries-dead civilization. The set design of the ancient catacombs is first-class, but unfortunately Specters veers off into dumb subplots involving stupid teenagers, sex scenes and gratuitous pop songs.

In 1988’s Phantom Of Death, directed by Ruggero Deodato (of Cannibal Holocaust fame), Pleasence plays Inspector Datti, a Venetian policeman determined to track down a serial killer (Michael York) afflicted with rapid aging disease. Phantom of Death is definitely a step up for Pleasence, who colors his stereotypical role in interesting ways, making Datti’s obsessive desire to solve the case entirely believable. York delivers a moving performance as the pathetic antagonist – a once handsome and successful concert pianist struck down by a disease that rots his mind and body, driving him insane and turning him into a psychopathic killer.

Another step up: Pleasence plays Don Alvise, a zealous Catholic priest, in Nosferatu In Venice (1988), an artistic vampire film with an accomplished cast. Klaus Kinski reprises his role as Nosferatu The Vampyre (minus the bald head, chalk-white skin and protruding teeth, as the temperamental actor refused to submit to the required painful makeup sessions for this semi-sequel to Werner Herzog’s 1979 film). This vampire is no longer rat-like or venomous looking – instead he resembles an aging hippie with long white hair and threatening black eyes.

Christopher Plummer appears as the Van Helsing-like Professor Paris Catalano, an ailing expert in vampirism. Young countess Helietta Canins (Barbara De Rossi) thinks a vampire may be entombed in her basement, so she hires Prof. Catalano, the bickering Don Alvise and a crazy medium to find out if the body in the tomb is really that of Nosferatu. It turns out that Nosferatu is living freely among gypsies who worship him as a sort of demigod. Yet Nosferatu has tired of immortality and is seeking a way to die, but to achieve mortality, he must deflower a virgin who loves him completely. And what girl in her right mind could possibly love--or even like--an ugly, undead man?

In Punishment Without Crime, a 1988 episode of The Ray Bradbury Theater, Pleasence plays George Hill, who contracts to have an android made to look exactly like the wife he loathes. His plan is to kill the robot, but he falls in love instead. Hill’s life soon takes a turn for the worse. This episode (notable for its futuristic sets and Pleasence’s tragic performance) is based on Bradbury’s story, published in the March 1950 edition of Other Worlds.

Pleasence returns to the role of Ahab-like Dr. Sam Loomis for the third time in Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers (1988). Indestructible psycho killer Myers escapes while being transferred from a mental institute, this time going after his niece Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris). On Halloween night, Dr. Loomis again follows Myers to the town of Haddonfield, Illinois, and attempts to stop him once and for all. Jamie goes out trick-or-treating, unaware that her murderous uncle is following her. Dr. Loomis enlists the help of the sheriff to search the town for Michael and to find Jamie and shield her from danger. Dr. Loomis survived being blown up in Halloween II and looks a bit haggard. He now walks with a cane and his face is burned and scarred.

Pleasence always performs wonderfully, but he isn’t given enough to do in Halloween 4. Dr. Loomis talks at great length about pure evil and how Myers is not human but evil incarnate and no one knows how to stop him except Loomis, and so on and so forth… Ten years after Halloween reinvigorated the horror genre, this third sequel is stale. You’d think the producers would have gone the extra mile for Pleasence (the only major player from the original who was still around after John Carpenter and Jamie Lee Curtis bailed out of the franchise). The scriptwriters should have crafted better dialogue for Pleasence. Sadly, Dr. Loomis would remain essentially unchanged through the next two sequels, perhaps slightly more crazed but repeating statements made many times before.

The story goes that Pleasence did not want to appear in Halloween 4 and was tricked by the producers into doing it. Supposedly, Pleasence was told that John Carpenter read the script and hailed it as a masterpiece – the best in the series up to that point. Carpenter had in fact not read the script at all. (Unless Pleasence was offered dizzy money, one wonders why he would agree to appear in two more Halloween sequels if he was aware of the ruse.)

Pleasence then traveled to South Africa to appear in two Harry Alan Towers-produced films based on Edgar Allan Poe stories. Pleasence teamed up with a bloated Oliver Reed for The House Of Usher (1988), a dismal retelling of the classic tale. Ryan Usher and his girlfriend Molly McNulty visit Ryan's uncle Roderick Usher (Reed) at his spooky mansion. They find that Roderick's brother Walter (Pleasence) has gone insane, and Roderick himself isn't far behind. Ryan and Molly attempt to escape from the doomed mansion before the curse of Usher claims them as well.

Pleasence has an electric drill permanently strapped to his hand, and you can guess what he eventually does with it. The man overacts shamelessly in The House of Usher: it is sad to see this distinguished and respected actor humiliate himself in such a shoddy effort.

Pleasence has a cameo in the appalling Paganini Horror (1989), directed by Luigi Cozzi (The Black Cat, Contamination). An all-girl rock band moves into the old Paganini mansion, intending to use the house as the backdrop for its newest video clip. Niccolo Paganini was a 19^th-century violin player who (it is rumored) sold his soul to the Devil in order to become world-famous. The band’s studio drummer is approached by the mysterious Mr. Pickett (Pleasence), who sells him an unknown piece of music written by Paganini titled Paganini Horror that was used in satanic rituals.

Bandleader Kate decides that the music is perfect for the band to record and hires a horror director to film it in the eerie old house where Paganini made his pact with the Devil. The ghost of Paganini, offended by the bad rock music, returns from the dead, killing off the band members one-by-one with his switchblade-violin combo weapon! Paganini Horror is another career low point for the Donald.

In 1989, Pleasence stepped back into the shoes of Dr. Sam Loomis for the derivative Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. It is exactly one year since Myers returned to terrorize his hometown of Haddonfield, and attacked his niece Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris). She is still in Haddonfield's Children's Hospital, where she is being treated by Dr. Loomis, but she hasn't said a word since the attack. To her horror, Jaime discovers that she has a psychic connection to her murdering uncle, who has spent the past year in a coma, recovering from his wounds. Myers awakens and again returns to Haddonfield on Halloween night. Jamie knows that she must leave the hospital to save herself and, with the help of Dr. Loomis, sets out to defeat her uncle on his own home ground – the old Myers house where he committed his first murder as a boy.

Pleasence once again brings Dr. Loomis to life. He gets to do a bit more than usual here, trying to talk Myers down in one scene, and in another, beating the crap out of him with a two-by-four (and screaming "die!" with each blow). Pleasence clearly understands that he is not making high art here, and that a campy performance is what the script calls for – so he goes all out. The only reason to watch Halloween 5: The Revenge Of Michael Myers is to see this old pro rise above the material and give it everything he’s got. Otherwise, this fifth installment in the franchise just recycles the same slasher formula – an assembly line of gory dispatches of faceless teen victims, with no trace of the seat-edge suspense or concern for characters that marked the franchise’s debut 11 years earlier.

Harry Alan Towers’ Buried Alive (1990) is loosely based on Poe’s "The Premature Burial" and "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather." Somehow Poe’s stories have been transformed into a routine slasher with a masked killer preying on female students at the Ravenscroft Institute, an all-girl reform school. Young science teacher Janet Pendleton (Playmate Karen Witter) shows up at the reformatory, seemingly staffed by ex-mental patients (including Pleasence as Dr. Schaeffer, the director’s twitchy assistant, assuming a dodgy German accent and sporting a phony-looking toupee). Spurred on by a series of horrific hallucinations, Pendleton investigates the mysterious disappearances of several students. Dr. Schaeffer is a leading suspect in their murders, but as Pleasence plays him, he comes across as relatively harmless – an easily irritated old man bordering on senility.

Gérard Kikoïne, a onetime pornographic filmmaker who put a skeletal Anthony Perkins through his paces in Edge Of Sanity the year before, directed this bomb. Sadly, Buried Alive was John Carradine’s final film role: the 82-year-old actor played mad doctor Robert Vaughn’s father, walled-up in the basement of the creepy building. It’s sad to see so many fine actors this desperate for work.

In Shadows And Fog (1992), a moody horror spoof from acclaimed comedy director Woody Allen, Pleasence appears as "a humanitarian practitioner of midnight autopsies" – an apt description by Glenn Erickson in his review for DVD Savant. Shadows and Fog is set in a nameless Middle European city in the 1920s. A serial strangler is on the loose, and in the middle of the night, a group of vigilantes on patrol in their neighborhood awaken a timid clerk named Kleinman (Allen), demanding that he join them in their search for the fiend.

When Kleinman visits the local coroner (Pleasence), the doctor meditates on the nature of evil, hoping to get the murderer on his slab so he can pick through his brains to discover the point where insanity ends and true evil begins. The scene is nicely played. With its evocative black-and-white cinematography and impressive sets of warped buildings and cobblestoned streets, Shadows And Fog is the horror film that Pleasence should have gone out on. Allen’s tribute to German Expressionism would have made for a better swan song than Fatal Frames (released posthumously in 1996).

Pleasence was still very much in demand by horror directors. At this point, David Schmoeller and David DeCoteau wanted him for Puppet Master 6, 7 and 8, which were to be shot back-to-back-to-back in Romania. The stories would all have taken place during the Second World War. Pleasence agreed to take the recurring role of puppet theatre owner André Toulon. He would have worked about 10 weeks on all three films. Unfortunately, the Puppet Master triple-header was not meant to be.

In 1995, with the shades of death gathering around him, Pleasence played Dr. Sam Loomis for the last time in Joe Chappelle’s Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. (What happened to the "6"?) Although filming was complete when Pleasence passed away, editing was still in progress, so Dr. Loomis was killed offscreen in the last scene, written out of the series from that point on.

Pleasence once again parades around, letting all within earshot know that he is the only one who can stop "The Evil." Dr. Loomis pops up in school classrooms and at parties. He is inescapable and, in his dotage, a tad frightening, having stared into the abyss for far too long, and seen only Michael Myers staring back.

In real life, Pleasence looks as if he’s at the breaking point of exhaustion. Was he even well enough to finish all his scenes? Looking much older than his 75 years, Pleasence speaks his own epitaph when he first appears onscreen, after a talk show host confesses the mistaken belief that Dr. Loomis had died. "Not dead, just very much retired," he says, but Pleasence himself died a few months after filming ended.

The plot of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is fairly confusing and far-fetched: In 1989, Myers disappeared with his niece Jamie Lloyd (now played by J.C. Brandy) after terrorizing the good people of Haddonfield. Kidnapped by a sect of evil Druids who protect Myers, Jaime escapes from the cult six years later after being raped by a pagan and giving birth to a child. She flees to Haddonfield with her baby in the hope that Dr. Loomis will be able to help her again. Indeed, help is at hand from Loomis and an unexpected source: Tommy Doyle – one of two child survivors from the original Halloween – who has grown up and researched Michael's madness. Tommy might have the answer to what drives Myers to kill and kill again: a curse from ancient times…

Pleasence has a cameo in the execrable giallo Fatal Frames. Originally cast in a lead role as Professor Robinson, a famous criminologist who joins the Italian authorities to investigate a series of videotaped murders, Pleasence filmed his scenes in 1993, but the production, hobbled by money problems, shut down for over a year. Filming resumed in 1995, but Pleasence was no longer available to shoot his remaining scenes, because the curtain finally rang down on him on February 2, 1995, as he was recovering from surgery to replace a defective heart valve at a clinic in St. Paul de Vence, France.

For the record, the story of Fatal Frames is as follows: Music video director Alex Ritt (Rick Gianasi) arrives in Italy to direct a video for pop sensation Stefania Stella (playing herself). Ritt soon crosses paths with a mysterious killer who videotapes his victims as he murders them. Suspected by the police and targeted by the killer, Ritt becomes enmeshed in a sordid world of voyeuristic murder games and must use his extensive knowledge of video technology to trap the fiend.

Pleasence’s character is abruptly written out of the story and his voice appears to have been dubbed by another actor. In his exit scene, Prof. Robinson talks on the telephone with a detective. He tells him he’s heading back to the United States; he has to be there before Halloween because "it looks like an old case has been reopened." And then Prof. Robinson walks off to catch his train, using a cane. John Carpenter’s theme for Halloween can be heard on the soundtrack as Pleasence limps down the platform to board the train.

As noted by Roy Frumkes in his review of the Fatal Frames DVD for Films In Review: "It was chilling to see Donald Pleasence play out his last role here. Pleasence seemed incapacitated, perhaps by a stroke. I’m not sure he was ever really speaking. In the telephone booth, pulling a Plan 9 from Outer Space, we’re actually shown an actor in a Donald Pleasence mask."

It was an undignified but suitably macabre finish to Donald Pleasence’s prolific screen career. Yet the memory of this odd King of Horror will live on, like an undead prince of the night or some monstrous creation lurching through a steaming swamp towards its next sequel…

Thanks so much, Harv, for this thorough--and definitive--series on the horror film legacy of Donald Pleasence.   We agree...it would have been nice If Pleasence had simply hit a (somewhat) high spot in his later career, like, say, Shadows And Fog, and just retired.  But some actors always feel the need to work, regardless of the available material, and we suspect that Donald Pleasence was one of those types.  Regardless, he cast a big shadow into the already shadowy world of horror cinema and his truly fine performances will be remembered long after junk like Terror In The Aisles is forgotten.

Article copyright © Harvey F. Chartrand

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