Evening Primrose (1966)

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Odd mini-musical from Broadway giant Stephen Sondheim seems almost like an episode from "Twilight Zone." Story centers on a community of department store dwellers who hide during the day but come out at night and inhabit the store. Anthony Perkins pays a failed poet who stumbles upon this weird cult and falls in love (and finds his poetic voice) with the aged group's maid (Charmian Carr).Several haunting songs highlight this outing with Perkins and Carr in good voice. The plaintive songs accent their new-found love and desire to leave the group and go outside. But no one is allowed to leave for fear of exposing the group and casting them all outside. Anyone suspected of leaving is gathered up by the "darkmen," another group that lives at a funeral home.Perkins is a major surprise, showcasing a wonderful singing voice. Carr is also excellent as the maid held by the group against her will. Her "I Remember Sky" is especially good. Dorothy Stickney plays Mrs. Monday, the leader of the group who's been there for decades. Larry Gates is Roscoe and Margaretta Warwick is Bilby. Other old ladies include Margaret Bannerman, Dorothy Sands, and Margaret Barker.Filmed at the Stern Brothers department store in New York City. This was originally shown on ABC's "Stage 67" series. The ending is quite chilling.

By all means not mind-blowingly amazing, more interesting and good. There are moments of clumsy direction, especially with the mannequins, the special effects are rather substandard and hindered by budget and Charmian Carr's singing voice sometimes did sound on the weak side. The settings are decent though for its budget and give the production a creepy but also melancholic look. The stage direction succeeds in being frightening and poignant, while the photography is decent and the sound while it could have been sharper was serviceable enough. Anthony Perkins is charming and commanding with a pleasant singing voice- just 6 years since playing one of Hitchcock's creepiest and most iconic villains in Psycho-, and Charmian Carr is an attractive partner for him with her acting faring better than her singing. Dorothy Stickney deftly-characterises and seems to be having fun with her role. Stephen Sondheim's score and songs though are the real star, and while not one of his best scores they are of high quality, I Remember and Take Me to the World are outstanding. Overall, not a classic but worth discovering. 7/10 Bethany Cox

On Mandy Patinkin's 1987 CD Dress Casual, the music from Evening Primrose is sung by the two great interpreters of Sondheim's music: Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. It was a wonderful introduction to the songs. The CD itself suffers from something common in his albums, a too-large modulation in volume, which is forever causing you to turn the volume up, then down, then up again.But the singing itself is gorgeous. These are two magnificent voices singing music representative of Broadway's best composer, and it's a wonder we haven't heard the tunes more often in the many tributes to Sondheim. The plot idea is as old as Greek mythology, and over-used. Anyone interested in Sondheim at all should get a listen to this CD.

The 1966 TV special "Evening Primrose" still attracts interest because of its score by Stephen Sondheim and its leading performance by Sondheim's long-time friend and collaborator Anthony Perkins. I viewed a kinescope of "Evening Primrose" at the Museum of Television & Radio in New York City, where the curator told me that they receive frequent requests to view this show."Evening Primrose" is based on a short story of the same name, by English author John Collier. In the original story, a sensitive young man retreats from the cruel world by moving into a department store. He plans to hide in the daytime when the store is open, coming out only after closing hours at night, helping himself to food and clothing and writing materials from the store's merchandise. Then he learns that the store is populated by a Morlock-like group of subterraneans with the same idea but different motives, who spend their daylight hours hiding in plain sight, disguised as department-store mannequins. Among the living mannequins is a beautiful girl who was abandoned in the store as an infant and who has lived among the subterraneans for her entire life. The young man falls in love with her and tries to rescue her. But then danger looms...John Collier's story "Evening Primrose" is a classic of horror fiction, widely anthologised. But the TV special "Evening Primrose" dispels nearly all the eerie atmosphere of its source material. Anthony Perkins, cast as the sensitive young man, is too neurotic - too Norman Bates-ish - for the role to succeed. He's meant to be playing a normal guy among the weirdos; instead, Perkins manages to seem weirder than the (very normal and dull) actors who play the subterraneans.This project suffers from a small budget. "Evening Primrose" takes place in a luxury department store, but we're obviously on a tiny soundstage with a few props. When we first see the store's mannequins, we're meant to assume that they're REAL (plaster) mannequins, but they're obviously played by live actors trying to stand motionless. This gives us the impression that the producers were just too skint to obtain actual dummies, so they hired bit-part actors and paid them minimum scale (less expensive than renting real dummies) to stand still and pretend to be plaster dummies. Later, when we learn that the "plaster" mannequins really are flesh-and-blood denizens of this nocturnal realm, the surprise has been blunted by the clumsy early scenes. A well-known "Twilight Zone" episode ("The After-Hours") handled a similar idea in a much better way: use plaster dummies (with the facial features of real actors) to play inanimate mannequins, then bring on the real actors when the mannequins come to life."Evening Primrose" features some weird effects that are baffling rather than eerie. When Perkins first enters the department store, we hear a loud heartbeat: is it HIS heart? Somebody else's? Why are we hearing it? We never find out.Due to the short length of this musical (less than an hour), there are only a few songs ... but the Sondheim score is excellent. The best song is the poignant ballad "I Remember Sky", sung by the beautiful girl (who has lived in the store from early childhood) as she tries to recall her brief existence in the living world. This girl (the "evening primrose" of the title) is played by Charmian Carr, who gives a much better performance here than she did as Liesl von Trapp in "The Sound of Music". Make every possible effort to view "Evening Primrose". I wish it were available on commercial video: maybe this review will start some demand for it to be issued.