PERSONAL BLOG #7 - THE FOOL KILLER
Very recently, Joe Dante presented a rare extraordinary movie. In fact, Joe may be the only person around in the cinephile community who had been aware of it before the TCM presentation he did with Ben Mankiewicz. The Fool Killer (1965, directed by Servando González) was beautifully shot in rural U.S. locations by Alex Phillips Jr.
I could rap about the brilliant cast, but for me (who likes to study old monaural soundtracks), what stands out is the very tasteful selection and editing of sound effects and an elegant mono mix. Low-budget and Indy pictures often have terrible sound, but not this one.
The rural sound effects (like wind in trees or a running creek) are clean and always give the track the illusion of perfect production sound. A gobbling turkey sound is placed deftly between phrases of dialogue just before we see the bird. The audience thinks this is what the characters are hearing, as is always the professional goal. Sounds which may be Wild FX, or Foley, or Production Sound are all precisely and seamlessly integrated, and they mix fluidly with music and Dialogue to tell the story.
I don’t know much about the sound crew. IMDB lists this group:
Jack Fitzstephens: sound effects, James A. Gleason: sound mixer, Richard Gramaglia: sound, Dennis Maitland: sound, and James Perdue: studio recordist (uncredited).
The way credits are, we can only make presumptions about which of these performed what specific post production or production sound tasks. A good guess might be that Fitzstephens cut the sound effects, and possibly Gleason and Maitland were re-recording mixers. Gramaglia has “location” and “sound recordist” credits listed on IMDB. Maitland has both production and post production mixing credits, and was the father of four professional movie mixers. (Dennis Maitland II is better known to my generation of post workers.) Perdue seems to have worked as a production sound guy, but perhaps this “studio recordist” credit means that he worked on the Looping stage. The loops are well done here, and mixed to match production nicely.
The well-known Anthony Perkins is joined in the cast by a phenomenal juvenile actor, Eddy Albert’s son Eddy Albert, and by one of my favorite players, Henry Hull. In the second to last of his 113 movies, he’s created a crusty old hermit character, along the lines of Walter Huston in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
I loved the movie, and look forward to analyzing some of this monaural sound craftsmanship in detail, some day on http://www.soundofashot.com/.
Joe Dante is right. This unique movie is not to be missed. Incidentally, the story informs us that there was a legend in the rural American South about The Fool Killer, a demon that picks off much of the population as punishment for their folly. I couldn’t help thinking of Mose Allison, “The Sage of Tippo, Mississippi” and his hip and bluesy 1966 recording, Foolkiller.
Henry Hull as Dirty Jim
Henry Hull and Eddie Albert II in one of their Huckelberry Finn-like scenes
Threatening figure with axe
Eddy Albert II with Hull