Pinocchio's Mystery
Movie Matinee

(aka PINOCCHIO IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE)
(In Production 1974, Additional Work in 1985. Not completed, U.S.)

Produced and directed by Ron Merk
Written by Ron Merk and Lawrence Garinger
Director of Photography: Paul Glickman
Music by Sebastian De Grazia, Jr.

With: John Fields as Papa Gepetto, Ziska Baum as the Fox, Peter Blaxil as the Cat, Rocko Cinelli as the Mailman. Marionettes and puppets created by James Racioppi.

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Herewith, a special page devoted to a film that doesn't exist --- yet.

After completing the Pinocchio trilogy (PINOCCHIO, PINOCCHIO'S BIRTHDAY PARTY, PINOCCHIO AND HIS MAGIC SHOW), filmmaker Ron Merk had high hopes for a fourth in the Pinocchio series: PINOCCHIO'S MYSTERY MOVIE MATINEE. According to Merk, " 'PINOCCHIO'S MYSTERY MOVIE MATINEE' would probably have been the best one. It had the best concept of all. Pinocchio has been given some money by Papa Gepetto to pay for some tools that are being delivered by the mailman. But the Cat and the Fox cheat him out of the money by selling Pinocchio a decrepit, old movie theater. Despite being "haunted" by the Cat and the Fox, who realize that the theater, may in fact, be worth more, Pinocchio is successfully cleans up the theater and puts on a great show. We were planning to use silent movie clips, mostly comedy, and thereby introduce modern children to the wonders of silent movies. When the money ran out, and with some of the rushes looking too low-budget, I abandoned any hope of finishing the film.

Some years later, after I had moved to Los Angeles, I came up with an idea to help fill in the gaps in the footage. It was in 1985 that I decided to add a totally new character. The theater would have it's own resident organ-playing phantom, a never-was silent movie star named Virgil Love. I wanted an old, but famous actor to play this part. Vincent Price was my first choice. A friend of mine in Hollywood was good buddies with Vincent Price. Price loved to keep working, and you could get him for a reasonable weekly rate toward the end of his career. It was just a matter of me coming up with the money to re-shoot some of the old scenes, and then do Price's bits. So, I went into the footage, looked at it thoroughly, and then wrote the scenes that would be cut into the film.

What was great about the Pinocchio puppet, unlike the actors, was that he did not age over the many years that had passed since the original shooting. I called upon my old school chum, Jimmy Racioppi to design three theater sets which we planned to build on a small soundstage called Movie Tech Studios, owned by my friend, Lucky Brown. But life has a strange way of leading you in directions you never planned, and I never did get to work with Price. He was in failing health, and I still had not come up with the money to do all the work. I know it would have been a delight to work with him.

Today, the film remains unfinished, but it's stored safely in a film vault for possible future visitation."

Imagine this great family film, with an homage to classic silent cinema and Vincent Price to boot! Needless to say, we would have loved to see this film, and are confident it would have been quite popular. Ron Merk agreed to let us assemble a tribute to this most fascinating film as it stands now, in the hopes that "it might provide some interest in the whole issue of the many unfinished films that are sitting around on shelves everywhere, and possibly to the issue of film preservation."

We agree wholeheartedly, although Merk was not particularly optimistic about the film being resurrected at this point: "There's only about a half hour of footage (usable screen time). The actors are now 30 years older, and some of the footage is not of the same high quality as my other films. The problem we had was that we had to shoot by day, and change sets by night, since we had a very small soundstage (26' x 26') at Airwick Industries in Carlstadt, New Jersey. Since we were shooting scenes for two movies at the same time (a cost-cutting stroke of genius) we would shoot all the scenes at Gepetto's house for both films. Then the sets would change. At first I was able to shoot by day and direct the set building at night. But after many weeks with little sleep, this became impossible. Without my ideas and input, the sets began to look tired, unfinished and dull. So, after shooting about half of 'Mystery' I called it quits. We had run out of money, everyone was tired, and it was just time to fold the tent."

There's still a chance that the footage will be seen one day. In 2004, Merk began to work on an alternative to re-shooting. One idea I have is to give the footage to a film school editing class, and see if they could cut a good half hour out of the footage. I've actually had a discussion with the film faculty at San Francisco State University, where I have set up a complete 35mm editing room for the students' use. At least, in some way, the film would be 'finished' and I can stop dragging 25 cartons of materials around with me, like the chains of Marley's ghost in A Christmas Carol."

"The Cat and Fox are great characters; this make-up was difficult to do, especially with no budget. The costumes are also super, and well-matched to the characters. I worked a number of times with Ziska Baum, the actress who played the Fox, and she was just so good at everything, and had the most beautiful speaking voice."

Fairy tale film buffs of course will recognize Ziska Baum as the extraordinary actress who played Mombi the Witch, in Barry Mahon's exciting musical fantasy THE WONDERFUL LAND OF OZ (billed only as "Zisca")!

In the meantime, at least we can enjoy these rare visual images from PINOCCHIO'S MYSTERY MOVIE MATINEE.