In 2009, a pseudonymous author and private investigator using the moniker Phaedra Starling first coined a now ubiquitous and often contentious term: “Schroedinger’s Rapist.” Modeled on the now familiar thought experiment of how, if presented with a cat inside a windowless box, until that box is opened, the cat may be considered simultaneously both alive and dead, the essay asserted that in the present day, in the dominant patriarchal structure of society, a woman dealing with a man, be he a stranger or a longtime presence in their life, they are always left with that question, and “The only way we know for sure-the only way the box can be opened, as it were-is if the man proves himself a rapist by committing a rape, either against us or against someone else.”
William Byron Hillman had likely never thought deeply about any concepts tied to Erwin Schroedinger or what we now call “toxic masculinity” when he wrote, produced, and directed his second feature film, THE PHOTOGRAPHER, in 1974. but he got a decent head start on how to depict it. Though in modern interviews Hillman has retconned his film to be read as an intentional dark comedy, and some of the choices its leading star makes in his portrayal would probably arouse astounded snorts in modern audiences, there are still points made about men’s perception of women that are no laughing matter.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER initially unfolds with a familiar structure drawn from Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM: Adrian Wilde (Michael Callan), an outwardly avuncular photographer claiming to specialize in animal portraits and layouts for mystery magazines, is consistently murdering the models he hires, many times in the actual manner of the crimes he’s ostensibly re-enacting. He lives in disillusioned bitterness with his alcoholic mother (Barbara Nichols), whom he still blames for a childhood incident where a one-night-stand she slept with attempted to choke him, a somewhat stronger scenario than the lazy Freudianism of most serial killer movies of the ‘70s pithily summed up by comedian Robert Holmes: “Anything that is longer than it is wide...is a penis. And anything that is not a penis, is your mother.” Even in settings when he’s not intending to kill, such as photographing a rare schnauzer, his mania kicks in when the dog’s owner asks him to shoot glamour photos of her, and all he can see is the pathetic visage of his parent. Like the Andy Summers lyric, every woman he meets up with becomes his mother in the end. He has enough self-awareness to attempt reaching out to a friend to confess his crimes, and to rant at God for allowing him to live. Cosmically, it will be an almost contrived act of God that will finally end his killing spree.
All of this kind of grim material seems like an odd 180 turn from a writer/producer/director whose career has leaned more often to family-friendly comedy (though wildly, THE PHOTOGRAPHER still carries an unaccompanied-minors-friendly PG rating). The former actor, stuntman, and animal trainer made his trifecta debut with THE MAN FROM CLOVER GROVE, shot in 1972, a slapstick fantasy about a rural toymaker (Ron Masak) whose creations spark confrontations with local police and corporate intrigue. As he described in a blog post from February 2018, “Back in the 70's when young filmmakers made motorcycle, horror and T&A flicks, I did the opposite and made a G rated goofy comedy...It's corny fun the kids loved then and still love today.” And after making THE PHOTOGRAPHER and such detours as writing the 1984 teen sex comedy LOVELINES and collaborating with David Heavener on the 1990 revenge-o-matic drama RAGIN’ CAJUN, along with other unproduced projects alluded to on the history page at his website, since 1998, Hillman has stuck almost entirely to kid-friendly fare as THE ADVENTURES OF RAGTIME and QUIGLEY, though he does carry a producer-only credit on an upcoming “psychological thriller” by Chuck Borden, PURGATORIUM. Reflecting on his career in October 2013, he remarked, “While I have produced and directed R rated projects that did exceedingly well at the box office and later on home video, all have disappeared from distribution after a few years and you can’t find a copy to rent anywhere...The G rated films I have produced and directed are still in distribution, and all of them have returned more in residuals than all the other projects I have done combined.”
Entertainment industry news clippings of the time tell of a long process of bringing THE PHOTOGRAPHER to the screen. It was first announced in July 1972 as the second project of Intro-Media Productions, the company created by Hillman with career camera operator William E. Hines, following CLOVER GROVE, and was initially planned to reunite the stars of that film, Ron Masak and Cheryl Miller, with a script credited to Hines, to begin shooting in November of that year. In January 1973, Hillman was announced as director, with an intention to begin shooting in February, with announcements that GROVE actors Spencer Milligan and Jed Allan would be in the cast. Almost no news followed on the project the rest of the year, likely due to Intro-Media focusing on the sale of CLOVER GROVE to new distributor American Cinema, who would later release the Chuck Norris films GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK and THE OCTAGON, and promoting it in regional markets. When Michael Callan and Barbara Nichols were announced as the new leads in January 1974, and that shooting would begin in San Francisco on the 11th of that month, Hillman was now listed as writer and director with Hines’ name no longer mentioned, suggesting a significant change in the script from what had originally been conceived. Production wrapped on April 27th. On October 21st, it was announced that Avco Embassy had picked up distribution rights, and it first opened in a quiet test engagement in Spokane, Washington, on December 6th.
From piecing together snatches from various interviews, once underway, the shoot offered some challenges. In a 2017 BluRay commentary interview with Joe Rubin of the Vinegar Syndrome label, he stated, “When we made THE PHOTOGRAPHER we had a [pending] deal with Avco Embassy, and Avco Embassy didn’t want us to do something outlandish. They didn’t want nudity, they didn’t want real slasher kind of violence...Originally we had some more outlandish scenes planned, and they were all pulled. And we made it kind of a mellow version [of] a thriller...a lighthearted version of [a serial killer’s story].” In a pair of summer 2014 Facebook posts, he said, “Directing Michael Callan was a bit strange. He was taking the role seriously, thinking about killing Barbara Nichols...Calming him down was like offering a virtual Xanax...Directing them was like trying to keep up with who could tell the best story, remember their lines and when ‘ACTION’ was shouted - go right back into character. One minute we were laughing hysterically and then next talking about murder.” In Richard Koper’s biography THAT KIND OF WOMAN: THE LIFE AND CAREER OF BARBARA NICHOLS, he recounted, “She was starting to slide into bad habits...She snuck drinks onto the set after promising not to...[But she] promised she would never miss a line or be late and she wasn’t...Bottom line, I loved working with her.”
Callan’s opening scenes as Wilde would not initially seem 100% sinister to audiences in the mid-70s, though they unfold like a parade of red flags to a present-day viewer. His demeanor and gravelly voice comes across, as Conchata Ferrell would say in NETWORK, “crusty but benign,” and until the moments when he inevitably snaps, he seems no different than any other jaded professional. Only in the presence of his mother, imminent victims, and with God, does he openly display his full-strength rage. The actor had established himself as a versatile song-and-dance man, playing Riff in the original Broadway cast of WEST SIDE STORY. During his years as a contract player at Columbia Pictures, while occasionally playing a bad boy in films as THE VICTORS, was mostly cast as likeable handsome types, serving as man candy for Deborah Walley in GIDGET GOES HAWAIIAN and Jane Fonda in CAT BALLOU, culminating in a one-season sitcom, “OCCASIONAL WIFE,” playing a bachelor faking marriage to a co-worker so that both may advance in their company. This was his first headlining film role as an all-out heel, shot before the name Ted Bundy became famous, so while it is now a cliché for serial killer tales to have almost all female victims be attracted to their predator, it doesn’t play implausibly here. If anything, it carries the comic veneer that Hillman suggests was in effect, especially since in most occasions, he actively resists the overtures of his victims, tentatively parodying the cliché before it became one.
Meanwhile, the other men orbiting around this situation offer little positive contrast, especially in regards to their view of women; the low bar what separates them from Wilde is that, well, they aren’t actively murdering anyone. Wilde’s best friend Clinton (Spencer Milligan) has been secretly sleeping with his pal’s hated mother, fences stolen goods through his pal’s photography studio, and at one point selfishly asks him for a hookup to the wealthy wife of a jeweler, unaware that Wilde killed her earlier on. Lt. Luther (Harold J. Stone) and Sgt. Sid (Edward Andrews), the homicide detectives who find some of his victims, at first dismiss them as suicides, runaways, and hookers, failing to connect the dots, and spending almost more time grousing about their own diets. Even the ostensible heroic coroner Joe (Jed Allan), who finds the pattern between the killings and alerts the detectives, is way more focused on his exotic cooking, which he conducts in the morgue itself, thus literally treating the human remains of violent crime like so much meat in his personal kitchen. While never approaching the bleak misanthropic nihilism of, say, Abel Ferrara’s MS. 45, the microcosm of men Hillman presents here are not an inspiring lot. Accepting Hillman’s framing of his story as a dark comedy, one of its rueful punchlines is how the cops’ discovery of Wilde’s souvenirs of his killings – the photographs – deliver more shock and emotional impact to them than the actual dead bodies of the women at the crime scene. But then, when they were shooting this film, Paul Simon was all over Top 40 radio proclaiming, “Everything looks worse in black and white.”
The actors playing these supporting characters hew to the archetypes they’d previously established elsewhere. Milligan and Allan had both previously acted in CLOVER GROVE, and are essentially playing the same kinds of roles here, Milligan as a useless associate of the protagonist, Allan as a kooky but wise misfit who sees the bigger picture. The presentation of Stone and Andrews as the detectives is very much in line personality-wise with several types they had essayed before: Stone as grave, respected authority figures, and Andrews as petty bureaucrats. Notably, they both played such roles in episodes of “THE TWILIGHT ZONE;” Andrews as an unctuous colleague in “Third from the Sun” and Stone as an FAA inspector with a big unsolved case in “The Arrival.” Stone also played an otherwise competent detective unable to identify a unique murder weapon in an episode of “ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS” directed by Hitchcock himself, “Lamb to the Slaughter.”
What is particularly striking is the uncanny manner that Callan, Milligan, and Allan all...sort of look alike! When Clinton first shows up to have a nooner with Wilde’s mother, he can almost be mistaken for a blood relative, and when they are shown bowling together, you’d almost think they’re brothers, with Clinton having a wider face and a more slovenly demeanor. And while Joe the coroner easily stands out from the rest of the cops at the precinct by his youth and tight curly hair, he too has the same sort of face structure as Wilde. The result of Hillman’s casting, in tandem with the behavior of these three characters as respectively Chaotic Evil, Neutral, and Good, creates an environment where, if their mugshots were presented to a witness, they could end up second-guessing themselves, or, in the manner of the infamous meme from “THE OFFICE,” declare they’re all the same person.
And here, whether Hillman intended it or not (and if he intended it, was it for chuckles or for creeps), is where he unexpectedly lays out a “Schroedinger’s Rapist” scenario and becomes a soothsayer of women’s conundrums to come. Again, maybe a modern viewer calloused by decades of crimes, culture, and snark, may dismiss Wilde’s victims as the typical naive prey of a slasher flick, but for their realm of knowledge in the story’s setting, they cannot be immediately certain of his intentions until he acts on them, and they’ve been socialized to give him the benefit of the doubt, a deadly miscalculation. Concurrently, Clinton conducts himself like the sleazy opportunist that he is, and while he’s ultimately not a killer like Wilde, the winsome waitress at the bowling alley, Candy (Patty Bodeen) has seen enough of his antics to keep him at bay, making a judgment call that keeps her safe in the short run, though her repeated outreach to Wilde suggests she too is giving him more slack than is wise. It’s a Hobson’s choice she navigates every time she goes to work. It’s doubtful Hillman ever fancied himself some sort of sensitive new age guy – his first credit as a producer, ODDLY COUPLED aka BETTA BETTA, has a logline so offensive even he won’t describe it on his own website resume – but by creating a milleu where, as a woman, you’re marginally safer with a con artist than a real artist, and if you do lose your life to either of them, the police’s first instinct is to ask what you did to cause it, and the man in charge of diagnosing your demise is doing that job in between cooking lessons, he has lain out why all these years later, women can’t often safely distinguish which man is a threat and which is not.
The question of whether this indistinguishability was intentional or not grows curiouser upon watching Hillman & Callan’s 1982 return to the life of Adrian Wilde, DOUBLE EXPOSURE. In present day interviews, Hillman describes the film an an origin story or prequel to the events of THE PHOTOGRAPHER, though it more effectively serves as a retconning of the character, since there is little to no mention of Wilde’s despised mother or the incident from the previous film that scarred him, DOUBLE EXPOSURE takes away one family member, but provides Wilde with an actual brother, B.J. (James Stacy), a stuntman adapting to the loss of an arm and a leg, a role specifically written for the real-life double amputee actor. And while again, the movie presents a spate of model murders investigated by comically ill-equipped (but this time less condescending) detectives, in this tale there is reason to question whether or not Wilde is responsible for the killings. Overall, it is a more straightforward and less peculiar production than THE PHOTOGRAPHER, but by giving Wilde a direct blood relation that bears resemblance to him and with whom there’s mutual affection, Hillman still plays a “can you tell these men apart, really” game.
It’s also within reason to contemplate whether Hillman’s screenplay had been influenced in any way by one of the film’s executive producers, another actor-turned-filmmaker, John Hayes, a struggling playwright who took the occasional acting role in wholesome fare as Disney’s THE SHAGGY D.A., but created films that were anything but family friendly. Writer Stephen Thrower, in his deeply researched history book of exploitation filmmaking NIGHTMARE USA, wrote of Hayes, “What’s striking about [his] career trajectory is the way that he returns, time and time again, to the experiences of his childhood, revisiting familial traumas in a variety of settings, from melodrama to horror to hardcore.” And Adrian Wilde’s grudge with his mother lines up thematically with similar instances of horrid parenting in Hayes’ films MAMA’S DIRTY GIRLS, DREAM NO EVIL, and GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE. In his talk with Joe Rubin on the commentary track for DOUBLE EXPOSURE, Hillman suggests he does not need outside inspiration, saying “I don’t want to copy anybody. I hope I don’t ever do that. Everything I try to do is original...Everything is macabre [and] I have my own sick mind.” Still, his and Hayes’ collective antagonists could easily form their own bowling team.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER has been a difficult film to see from the moment it was released. It took nearly three years for it to make it’s journey to cinema audiences. After a brief release in upper northwest cities in December 1974 through early January 1975, Avco Embassy sat on the film for a long spell, then made another attempt with a new ad campaign in the Tri-State region of Ohio/Indiana/Kentucky from January to February 1977. Neither push drew good reception from the few critics that deigned to review it. During it’s pre-Christmas 1974 run in Spokane, Washington, Spokesman-Review critic Joan Applegate threw ridiculously cruel darts at Michael Callan’s entire career, sneering, “Callan thinks he is going to make a comeback to filmdom and takes his role all too seriously. For those who might remember the face or name, Callan has starred in such celluloid greats as THE INTERNS and BECAUSE THEY’RE YOUNG. Neither strained his talent, nor does his latest effort.” When it arrived in Cincinnati in late January 1977, Cincinnati Post critic Jerry Stein snarked, “Hillman’s idea of portraying a psychotic is having star Michael Callan grunt, growl, and clench his fists. Too bad ‘King Kong’ already has been cast.” Even with its PG rating, the subject matter must have proven too disturbing for television, as no network, cable, or syndicated airings can be readily found after it left cinemas. And aside from a quiet VHS release on Embassy’s Charter sub-label in 1987, it has been out of circulation since. By comparison, it’s “requel” DOUBLE EXPOSURE received a more muscular release from Crown International, its VHS release was promoted strongly by Vestron Video, and has received several DVD and BluRay releases to the present day.
Luckily,
Grindhouse Releasing co-founder Sage Stallone saw the film, and
became a long and vocal champion of it during his ascent as a trusted
authority on exploitation films. He ultimately elevated his support
to the strongest degree by acquiring the rights to it after Embassy
Pictures’ initial deal with Hillman expired, planning an ambitious
revival for it. Sadly, he had not yet achieved his hopes of giving it
a significant reissue when he unexpectedly died in 2012. But his
actions have made sure the elements are safe and preserved, and
Grindhouse continues to have it on their slate of upcoming
restorations.
It’s been nearly 50 years since the
filming and release of THE PHOTOGRAPHER. What was surprising and
transgressive to ‘70s audiences has significantly changed. The
predatory threat of unhinged men violating women, and the prevalent
dismissive attitudes of men on woman after violation, has not. It may
not make Hillman a prophet or a feminist, but it demonstrates that
the instincts he brought to his film were correct. As such, it’s
also what makes it inherently watchable both as a time capsule and a
time-released warning to the present day.
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