Days of Horror: Doris Day’s Screaming Thrillers. By Brian Kirst
Known primarily as a musical comedy star and cotton candy-like romantic siren, film legend Doris Day also managed to work up a nerve wracking scream or two when the screenplay required it. In fact, her startled yelp in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much is justifiably considered one of film land’s most iconic moments. Still, Day (considered one of the most naturally proficient un-trained film actresses by many scholars) often got so emotionally involved with her character’s inner lives that she limited her thrilled based appearances to just a few.
Her first entrance into the scare sweepstakes was in a little seen 1956 wife-in-peril feature called Julia. From all accounts, Day attacked the title role with her usual boundless energy and professionalism, but it is the previously mentioned Hitchcock masterpiece and the much copied (and unnecessarily maligned) Midnight Lace that have truly registered most profoundly with the viewing public.
In The Man Who Knew Too Much, filmed in the same year as Julia, Day plays Jo, a former singing sensation living a low-key life with her activist doctor husband (James Stewart) and their lively son. While on vacation in Morocco, Stewart’s character receives the gasped out details of an assassination plot from a dying acquaintance. Soon the son is mysteriously kidnapped to buy his father’s’ silence. Afterward, Day’s character is drugged into calmness by Stewart’s character and then told of her son’s disappearance. Day’s multi-leveled portrayal in this scene is matched only by her subtle reactions in the film’s final sequence. Jo has to play piano and sing for London diplomats while simultaneously trying to rescue her son with nothing more than the sound of her voice. This is almost inconceivably amazing performing on Day’s part and besides Hitchcock’s story telling skill and the quirkily enjoyable performances from genre icons Reggie Nalder (Mark of the Devil, Zoltan) and Carolyn Jones (Adams Family, House of Wax), it is the primary reason for indulging in this suspenseful, beautifully photographed picture.
In 1960’s Midnight Lace, Day actually became so involved in the travails of her wealthy Kit that she was rumored to have had a nervous breakdown on the set. In fact, acquaintances and a gossip columnist or two reported that Day did not want to do the picture but was strong armed into doing it by her husband, the film’s producer Marty Melcher.
While Midnight Lace (unreasonably dismissed by Day biographers) has a standard Hitchcockian ‘Gaslight’ plot, it is also lushly filmed and contains many moments of true suspense. In fact, anyone who has been spooked when walking alone down a dark street or has felt the claustrophobic fear of being caught in a motionless elevator will have much to relate to in the film’s tensest moments. While the opening credits pass by, Day’s Kit is stalked down a foggy London street and the dense cinematography and Day’s realistic horror make it a strikingly suspenseful sequence and an electric start to the feature as a whole. Day’s escalating terror as Kit is eventually trapped in an elevator and frantically fights for her life, leaves no doubt to her attentiveness to detail as a performer and, on a more lurid note, is strong evidence for the multiple reports of Day’s subsequent collapse on set.
Midnight Lace, worthy of multiple viewings for its atmospheric attention to detail alone, also features John Gavin of Psycho fame and Roddy McDowall, whose many genre credits include the original Planet of the Apes films and the blackly disturbing and often ridiculous Shakma, a movie about a killer baboon starring Christopher Atkins.
Both of these Day dominated films feature subtle elements of terror and are recommended for those rare nights when another bloodbath just seems too much for your system to take or when your non-horror loving companion needs a little break.
