Beginning of my article for EC Archives: The Vault of Horror

Vault Lines

Vault 18

In The Vault of Horror 18 (April-May 1951) and the half-dozen issues that followed, the EC artists were evolving and experimenting.

When The Film Noir Encyclopedia was published by Overlook Press in 1979, it became clear that Cornell Woolrich stories and novels had provided the source material for more 1940s film noir screenplays than any other writer. Dozens of Woolrich stories were dramatized on Suspense and other radio anthology programs during the 1940s.

Johnny Craig had a fascination with fiction by Woolrich, and “Sink-hole!” offers an opening seemingly suggested by the femme fatale of Woolrich’s Waltz into Darkness, published in 1947 under Woolrich’s pseudonym, William Irish. The novel was filmed by François Truffaut as Mississippi Mermaid (1969) and remade 32 years later by director Michael Cristofer as Original Sin (2001).

In Woolrich’s noir narrative, set in post-Civil War New Orleans, wealthy coffeehouse owner Louis Durand has been corresponding and planning marriage with Julia, a woman he does not know. When he waits at the steamboat dock to meet her for the first time, he expects a plain-looking, middle-aged woman but is surprised by the arrival of an attractive younger woman. He ignores her suspicious behavior and is stunned by her betrayal when she vanishes with his money. Seeking revenge, he stalks women who resemble Julia, hires a private detective and chases a masked girl through the streets during Mardi Gras.

In Truffaut’s film adaptation, wealthy tobacco plantation owner Louis Mahé (Jean-Paul Belmondo) lives on exotic Reunion Island (off the coast of Madagascar) during the 1960s. At the docks, he awaits his mail-order bride, Julie Roussel (Catherine Deneuve), whom he met through personal ads. When she arrives on a French ocean liner, the Mississippi, he does not recognize her because she looks unlike the photographs he had received in the mail. After they marry, she cleans out their joint bank account and disappears into the night.

Original Sin changed the setting yet again, this time to late 19th century Cuba, with both parties deceptive: Julia (Angelina Jolie) explains that she mailed an advance photo of a plain-faced woman because she has been searching for a man interested in more than just an attractive female, while wealthy coffee company owner Luis Vargas (Antonio Banderas) had Julia believing he lived in poverty.

Revamping the beginning of Waltz into Darkness for his “Sink-hole!” set-up, Craig employed a gender twist and then took his tale in a totally different direction, one “full of passion, grief… and hate,” as the Vault-Keeper notes in his introduction. These emotions erupt “with shocking force” when Shirley swings the frying pan on page five.  The climax of “Sink-hole!” is telegraphed on page seven, perhaps even page six. Oddly, the front cover completely reveals the story’s conclusion.

Craig did a nice job of visualizing the “parched, sunbaked earth” and the dusty farmland. The reader is given no clue as to the state where this farm is located, but sinkholes are prominent in Florida and Michigan.

The “ramshackle farmhouse” is rundown and dilapidated, but the farm machinery is state-of-the-art, indicating Craig had access to 1950-51 farm machinery journals or brochures. “Intercontinental Diesel” is an obvious reference to International Harvester, and the tractor depicted resembles the 1951 International TD-6 tractor crawler, which had the words “Diesel International” on the hood. (Go to YouTube to see a TD-6 crawler in operation.)