What Michael Reeves’ life can teach you
Michael Reeves released three movies in his career, but one of them was Vincent Price’s Witchfinder General.
At age 8, Michael Reeves said to his mother that he wanted to become a movie director. Age 11 was when he made his first short film Carrion, the story of young boy assaulting a handicapped girl, which already starred Ian Ogilvy and was co-written by Tom Baker. According to Ogilvy, the boys had to learn to make travelling with a tea trolley for Reeves wanted not only to make movies but “Hollywood movies”. The boy would go on to release two other movies, Down and Intrusion, but only the latter can be found on the world wide web. A weird story of two robbers entering a house and terrifying a lonesome girl, again. Still some considers it a premise of what Wes Craven was going to do in Last House on the Left ten years later.
Michael Reeves wasn’t born in a rich family, according to sources he was still close to a heir made rich by paint manufacturing but he was a public school boy, always ready to skip school in order to go to the theatre. President of the film club, it has been claimed he once screened Some Like it Hot three times in one week. This is how deep Reeves’ love for movies went.
Thanks to his proximity to riches and thanks to an inheritance which befell his family when he was seventeen, Reeves went on vacation in America, in Boston to be precise, with his mother. Accounts say the teenage boy escaped and booked a plane all by himself to fly to Hollywood and knock on Don Siegel’s door. Siegel, who was responsible for Night of Body Snatchers amongst other things, was the godfather of cinema in the eyes of young Reeves, who always preferred genre fiction to the French Nouvelle Vague. Legend has it, Siegel answered dumbfounded and in underwear to the aspiring filmmaker. Still, the established director was touched and gave a job to Reeves overseeing dialog ona soon-to-be Elvis Presley movie.
Reeves would go on to become assistant director on a bunch of movies. Some for Roger Corman, mostly some campy weird stuff. Still, this is while working on 1964 Terror in the Crypt (a.k.a Crypt of the Vampire) that Reeves met producer Paul Maslansky. He would go on to work a second time with Maslansky on Castle of the Living Dead, which Reeves was supposed to have in part directed but Maslansky adamantly denies this. According to one biograph, this false claim was mostly due to a pretty violent sequence during the end of the Christopher Lee starring movie, which, in hindsight, reminded critics of the violence Reeves would soon put in his own movies. Still, the meeting between Reeves and Maslansky would change the aspiring filmmaker’s life.
Castle of the Dead was shot in Italy. This is where Maslansky agreed to produce Reeves first feature film. The movie would be Revenge of the Blood Beast (a.k.a The She Beast), a strange story about an executed witch coming back through possession to wreak havoc in a small village of Communist Romania. Even though it was made for $15,000, Maslansky still was able to cast Barbara Steele. According to the producer, he promised her $1,000 for one day of work, what he didn’t tell her was that this sole day would be 18 hour long. It seems, eager to direct, Reeves didn’t have a script when he began production the movie, just a briefcase full of money and a plan to shoot for 21 days. Ian Ogilvy once again stars in this, he once stated that he lost sight of Reeves when his agent askedhim: “D’you know of Michael Reeves? He wants you to be the lead in his first movie.” Today the film appears minor to most historians, still, the execution period scene which opens it would play a big role in Reeves’ career and actually makes it a worthwhile watch.
Reeves then entered a deal with Tygon who would produce The Sorcerers starring Boris Karloff. In this movie, an elderly couple of hypnotists puts under a bored young man and use it to their own means which soon turn into killing beautiful young women. The first screenplay was written by John Burke but changed heavily by Tom Baker and Reeves, in order to please Boris Karloff by turning its character into a more gentle soul. Luckily, Burke’s original screen would be found and published in 2013. The Sorcerers, still starring Ian Ogilvy, was shot on a budget of $50,000, a step up from the She Beast which might explain why Reeves was more contempt with it, turning its credit name from Mike Reeves to Michael Reeves. Still, Reeves’ appetite for movies could still be felt on set, much like he had exhausted Barbara Steele in the past, Reeves pushed Ian Ogilvy to make dangerous stunts and according to lead actor, the last sequence in which a car exploded was shot without any permission. After the explosion, everybody began to ran which one with a stand, which one with a camera, hoping the images were good enough. The crew wanted to escape police for the blast had shattered windows all around. Having already watched Iron Fist and Kung Fu Kicks, I already heard of such stories but this didn’t really surprise me for,during my career, I once had to set ablaze a whole barrel of fuel for a movie without permission right behing the lead actress. Still, Tygon had witnessed the potential in Reeves and offered him a five year contract before the production was over.
Witchfinder General is Reeves’ most famous movie. It would also be his last. Lots have been written about this movie starring Vincent Price and (oh!) Ian Ogilvy once again. Mainly because of the rivalry between Price and Reeves, which the BBC once turned into a radio play. In part because Kim Newman stated that this was on this precise set that an argument arose between price and Reeves where when Price asked the young director how many films he’d made, Reeves snappy responded “Two good ones.”
Tygon produced Witchfinder General because they possessed the right to a book written by Ronal Bassett, recounting the life of Matthew Hopkins, a witch-hunter which travelled Britain during the 16th century. Tom Baker and Reeves turned this story into a revenge flick in which a young officer’s fiancé is killed by the eponymous Witchfinder General and then goes on a killing spree. Still writing the script, Reeves wanted Donald Pleasance to play Matthew Hopkins but Tygon had to find funds to make the movie and made a deal with an American company which stuck the young filmmaker with Price.
What’s interesting is that Price considered the director didn’t know how to communicate with his actor. A thought shared by Ian Ogilvy, you see, Ogilvy wasn’t specifically Reeves’ friend, the director turned to him because he knew him beforehand, knew that he could trust the actor. Still, even with all the war and bruised ego and fall from horses, and crew strikes, Witchfinder General got made. It’s certain it’s Reeves’ best movie, a film so violent critics howled at it when it premiered. Still, Price came to the conclusion that this was most likely his best prestation in any movies ever, going as far as writing a letter of apology to Reeves stating he liked “what [Reeves] gave me to do”. It appears the 23 years old filmmaker carried the letter around in his wallet as a souvenir.
Sadly, Reeves would die of a barbituric overdose a little over a year later while working on the production of the Oblong Box still starring Vincent Price. Some say he would have gone to direct Scream and Scream Again, also starring Price, since Witchfinder General had been purchased by Corman and distributed in the US territory under the name The Conquering Worm so as to make it fit into their series of Edgar Allan Poe’s adaptation. In order to do so, the production company just added a poem by Poe and read by Price during the opening sequence. Asking his producer would reveal that Tygon wanted to make a thriller called O’Hooligans Mob, according to sources it would have been like Bonnie & Clyde but starring the IRA. Reeves’ Director of Photography tells another tale, the man is adamant Reeves and him were set to shoot Easy Rider, the first American movie Reeves would have made.
All of this is why Reeves’ suicide appears dubious to most movie historians. People seem to think the young man got home inebriated, swallowed sleeping pills, maybe awoke during the night and through a blurry haze swallowed some more. This is based on the quantity of medication found in his stomach which didn’t make it look like a suicide but a genuinely sad, albeit avoidable, incident.
Still, what’s to be taken from this tale is that a young man fought hard enough throughout his short life to make three short films and three movies before he turned 27. All of them starring quite big movie stars. Be like Michael Reeves, if you have any project. JUST.DO.IT.
Next week is Fiction Friday! It’ll see the release of Raised by Ants!
