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Post by charleshelm on Oct 27, 2019 13:42:25 GMT -5
Well her part in the ceremony was quite a change from her good girl image at the heyday of her career, unless I am mistaken.
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Post by almuric on Oct 28, 2019 9:57:48 GMT -5
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed! (1969) - Baron Frankenstein returns yet again, this time blackmailing a young doctor, Karl (Simon Ward) and his fiancée, Anna (Veronica Carlson) into aiding him in his brain transplantation experiments. If Frankenstein Created Woman was the Baron at his most sympathetic, this is him at his sociopathic worst. Once again, Frankenstein is the true monster, callously destroying the lives of everyone around him in the pursuit of his amoral science. The victim of his experiment (Freddie Jones) is the most sympathetic of all of Frankenstein's creatures, a man whose brain has been transplanted into another man's body. Despite a seemingly-final demise for the Baron (trapped in a burning house), Cushing would return one more time in Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell in 1974.
Dracula 1972 AD (1972, obviously) - We open with Van Helsing slaying Dracula at the cost of his own life in 1874 . . . wait, what? The original Horror of Dracula was set in 1885. So here we have Van Helsing slaying Dracula and then dying over a decade before he first encountered Dracula! To further muddy the waters, the later The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires has Van Helsing fighting Dracula yet again in 1904.
And I thought that the Universal Monster timeline was screwy!
We transition to the then-present with a nice shot panning up from Van Helsing's tombstone to a jet airplane going overhead. Yes, we're in the '70s now. The fashions on display are certainly horrific. We quickly meet Jessica Van Helsing (a young Stephanie Beacham), who gets invited to a Black Mass where the cunningly-named Satanist Johnny Alucard (Christopher Neame) raises Dracula from his grave, unleashing him on the unsuspecting 20th century. He is opposed by Lorrimer Van Helsing (Cushing, of course) as he tries to wreak vengeance against the Van Helsing family . . .
Bringing the Count into modern times isn't a bad idea, but the filmmakers don't fully commit to it here. Dracula spends his time in the deconsecrated church, amidst the same Gothic trappings of the previous Hammer Draculas. I would have had a scene of him wandering the streets of an unfamiliar London in modern garb, hunting a new victim. Maybe the amount of screentime Lee was willing to work for was an issue, since he's barely in this one at all. The vampirized Alucard picks up some of the vampire slack, but it could have been so much more.
It's an interesting if not entirely successful experiment. I wonder if Marvel's Tomb of Dracula comic took some inspiration from this one?
Next time: Last Man Standing
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 28, 2019 10:20:27 GMT -5
I remember when TCM premiered this about a year back with John Landis doing the introduction. "The best mad scientist and gorilla movie you'll see" is pretty spot on! It goes places you don't think a movie with a guy in a gorilla suit would go, but it does. The Monster And The Girl (1941) - The first half of this obscurity is a gritty crime drama, where Scott (Philip Terry) tries to save his sister (Ellen Drew) from the life of prostitution she's been entrapped in. But the second half, where Scott is framed, tried and executed for a crime he didn't commit, suddenly veers into Mad Science territory when Scott's brain is transplanted into the body of a gorilla by George Zucco. With a new body, Scott begins hunting down and slaying the people responsible for his death . . . The most amazing part of this movie is that it's good. I went in expecting schlock, and was pleasantly surprised to find a well-acted, well-written and well-directed B-movie. Even the gorilla costume is great. Better in many respects than Black Friday, which covers similar territory. It's probably the best mad-scientist-and-gorilla movie you'll see.
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Post by almuric on Oct 29, 2019 9:49:27 GMT -5
But first, some new thoughts upon seeing the later Frankenstein films again.
The jump in quality between Ghost of Frankenstein and Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man is quite noticeable. The latter has more energy, even with the well-publicized problems with Lugosi's Monster. It's also the last time the Monster will actually play a major role in the plot until he meets Abbott and Costello. House of Frankenstein is still a blast, though it has a huge number of gaffes. From the well-known like Carradine's false moustache falling off or Chaney forgetting his furry gloves, to the strange lack of reaction from Dr. Niemann when Daniel falls through the floor three feet behind him or the obvious wire holding Daniel up when the Monster tosses him. It's all part of the goofy fun. Also note Chaney's obvious smile when Elena Verdugo embraces him after his "death". I'll bet he liked that.
House of Dracula remains a listless mess. Appropriately it has a Franken-score, stitched together from previous movies and even featuring the very distinctive Sherlock Holmes theme (as did Son of Dracula). It fits in well with the recycled props, sets and script. Apparently Universal wanted Karloff back, this time as Eidelmann, which would have made the scene where he finds the Monster and the skeleton of Dr. Niemann (both previously portrayed by Karloff) very strange indeed. Why does Dracula want to be cured? He certainly doesn't act like it, when he's busy putting the moves on Eidelmann's nurse. If he's struggling against his vampiric urges he's not struggling very hard. And his end is very anticlimactic. If he had put a lock on his coffin, at least Eidelmann would have had to work to destroy him. And poor Glenn Strange keeps getting sidelined. You'd think they'd take advantage of his size and physique and give him more than a climactic temper tantrum (half of which is footage of Chaney as the Monster from Ghost of Frankenstein!). Instead he's stuck as a prop, yet again.
Maybe if they dropped the Monster altogether and kept it focused on Dracula and the Wolf Man. Maybe introduce a legend that a werewolf can kill a vampire, have Dracula make his big move during the full moon, only to be stopped by the Wolf Man, who reverts to human form and gets the operation and is cured. Speaking of, the scene where Talbott is cured and looks at the full moon without fear is a great moment, even if it doesn't last in the long run. But I'm probably putting more thought into it than they did.
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 29, 2019 13:06:38 GMT -5
But first, some new thoughts upon seeing the later Frankenstein films again. The jump in quality between Ghost of Frankenstein and Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man is quite noticeable. The latter has more energy, even with the well-publicized problems with Lugosi's Monster. It's also the last time the Monster will actually play a major role in the plot until he meets Abbott and Costello. House of Frankenstein is still a blast, though it has a huge number of gaffes. From the well-known like Carradine's false moustache falling off or Chaney forgetting his furry gloves, to the strange lack of reaction from Dr. Niemann when Daniel falls through the floor three feet behind him or the obvious wire holding Daniel up when the Monster tosses him. It's all part of the goofy fun. Also note Chaney's obvious smile when Elena Verdugo embraces him after his "death". I'll bet he liked that. House of Dracula remains a listless mess. Appropriately it has a Franken-score, stitched together from previous movies and even featuring the very distinctive Sherlock Holmes theme (as did Son of Dracula). It fits in well with the recycled props, sets and script. Apparently Universal wanted Karloff back, this time as Eidelmann, which would have made the scene where he finds the Monster and the skeleton of Dr. Niemann (both previously portrayed by Karloff) very strange indeed. Why does Dracula want to be cured? He certainly doesn't act like it, when he's busy putting the moves on Eidelmann's nurse. If he's struggling against his vampiric urges he's not struggling very hard. And his end is very anticlimactic. If he had put a lock on his coffin, at least Eidelmann would have had to work to destroy him. And poor Glenn Strange keeps getting sidelined. You'd think they'd take advantage of his size and physique and give him more than a climactic temper tantrum (half of which is footage of Chaney as the Monster from Ghost of Frankenstein!). Instead he's stuck as a prop, yet again. Maybe if they dropped the Monster altogether and kept it focused on Dracula and the Wolf Man. Maybe introduce a legend that a werewolf can kill a vampire, have Dracula make his big move during the full moon, only to be stopped by the Wolf Man, who reverts to human form and gets the operation and is cured. Speaking of, the scene where Talbott is cured and looks at the full moon without fear is a great moment, even if it doesn't last in the long run. But I'm probably putting more thought into it than they did. I'm still trying to nail down whether the whole Wolf Man vs. Dracula thing was actually considered or is a Conan: Blood & Ice/Orson Welles' Batman thing of someone's imagination. If the info out there is something resembling what was considered, it would have been a follow up to House of Frankenstein (notwithstanding the proclamations it was supposed to follow FMTWM, Talbot is lying dead exactly as he would have at the end of HoF). So the thought may have been out there to do it with just the two, then they revamped the story and tacked on the monster just to say he was there. Funniest part is the end of HoD where Chaney is watching the burning house...and seeing himself as the monster! (or his stunt double depending how much was imbibed that day). |
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Post by charleshelm on Oct 29, 2019 21:14:40 GMT -5
I pre-orderd the Bluray Toho Kaiju set... Got this in today and it's pretty cool looking packaging.
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 30, 2019 7:22:07 GMT -5
It's been very weird over the past few years seeing the Japanese versions with subtitles (first on the Starz/Encore channels, then on TCM) as the go to ones. Up until a dozen years ago or so, they were almost completely unknown and unseen in the US. Still trying to convince the family this is really the only thing I want for Christmas, then the Band of Gypsys box got scheduled...
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Post by almuric on Oct 30, 2019 9:33:07 GMT -5
That Godzilla set looks beautiful. And expensive.
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 30, 2019 13:01:51 GMT -5
That Godzilla set looks beautiful. And expensive. $165 on Amazon works out to $11 a Blu, not a bad price. |
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Post by charleshelm on Oct 30, 2019 20:55:44 GMT -5
Yes, it was higher priced when I pre-ordered but came down a lot.
Edit: Note that the discs typically have more than one movie on them.
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 31, 2019 9:34:56 GMT -5
Yes, it was higher priced when I pre-ordered but came down a lot.
Edit: Note that the discs typically have more than one movie on them.
You're right, there are 2 films on almost all the discs so make that $11 a movie. |
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Post by almuric on Oct 31, 2019 15:59:13 GMT -5
The Last Man On Earth (1964) - Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is a very important novel. It helped modernize the vampire mythos and spawned the sub-genre of the Zombie Apocalypse. The first of three times it has reached the big screen was here. In the then-future of 1968, Robert Morgan (Price) is seemingly the last survivor of a plague which has killed most of the population, changing the survivors into vampires. Well, sort of. The movie depicts them more in line with zombies (mentally and physically slow) but still calls them vampires. The budget was limited so director Sidney Salkow opts for showing the fall of humanity not through scenes of panicked crowds but rather the wind blowing leaves past an empty swing.
Matheson didn't care for the movie. He felt that Price was miscast. And maybe he's right, since Robert Neville (as he is called in the novel) is more of an everyman. But Price is still good in it. He does a good job of conveying Morgan's loneliness and despair. I really like the scene where he settles in for another night of cocktails, jazz music, and listening to the zombie-mutant-vampires try to batter the door down. The movie was filmed in Rome despite being set in North America, so pay close attention to the architecture. Maybe it wasn't what Matheson had hoped for, but it's decent enough in it's own right. It would be filmed again, as The Omega Man in 1971 and under its own name in 2007.
Happy Halloween!
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Post by charleshelm on Oct 31, 2019 22:04:10 GMT -5
Omega Man is probably better but the Vincent Price one is not bad. Not a big fan of the Will Smith version.
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Post by charleshelm on Nov 2, 2019 14:32:54 GMT -5
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Post by johnnypt on Nov 4, 2019 8:59:10 GMT -5
Amazon has now countered and their price is $112.49. It may only last as long as the B&N one does so take your choice of site and snap it up. |
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