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Post by almuric on Oct 20, 2023 16:28:47 GMT -5
Mesa of Lost Women (1953) - If I had the option here, I'd just play the maddening, repetitive and endlessly repeated flamenco score from this movie in lieu of an actual review. This is what the bottom of the barrel looks like, 70 minutes of some of the dumbest schlock ever put on screen. In spite of the presence of Ed Wood regulars Lyle Talbot and Dolores Fuller, the reuse of the score in one of his movies, and the general lack of quality, this was not actually part of the Woodian canon. Instead, that dishonor fell to Herbert Tevos and Ron Ormond, who actually finished the movie.
The plot, for what little that matters, a mad scientist (Jackie Coogan), working in Mexico's Muerto Desert ("the desert of DEATH!" we are reminded repeatedly) is making half-woman, half-spider abominations. It's hard to convey how lousy all this is, with plot-convenient insanity and stupidity, a grimy look and depressing vibe. It's slow to boot and the 70 minutes drag on for almost twice that. Oh, and eight-legged spiders are constantly referred to as hexapods. Amazingly, MST3K missed this one, but it featured as a Rifftrax in 2012, which is probably the only safe way to watch this dreck.
God, I can still hear the music!
Next time: Always the bridemonster, never the atom
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 20, 2023 18:08:33 GMT -5
Mesa of Lost Women (1953) - If I had the option here, I'd just play the maddening, repetitive and endlessly repeated flamenco score from this movie in lieu of an actual review. This is what the bottom of the barrel looks like, 70 minutes of some of the dumbest schlock ever put on screen. In spite of the presence of Ed Wood regulars Lyle Talbot and Dolores Fuller, the reuse of the score in one of his movies, and the general lack of quality, this was not actually part of the Woodian canon. Instead, that dishonor fell to Herbert Tevos and Ron Ormond, who actually finished the movie. The plot, for what little that matters, a mad scientist (Jackie Coogan), working in Mexico's Muerto Desert ("the desert of DEATH!" we are reminded repeatedly) is making half-woman, half-spider abominations. It's hard to convey how lousy all this is, with plot-convenient insanity and stupidity, a grimy look and depressing vibe. It's slow to boot and the 70 minutes drag on for almost twice that. Oh, and eight-legged spiders are constantly referred to as hexapods. Amazingly, MST3K missed this one, but it featured as a Rifftrax in 2012, which is probably the only safe way to watch this dreck. God, I can still hear the music! Next time: Always the bridemonster, never the atom That’s how I watched it, it’s a painfully slow 70 minutes. Didn’t they reuse the spiders and the plot in some other picture? (Wanna say Cat Women of the Moon). |
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Post by almuric on Oct 21, 2023 10:34:39 GMT -5
Bride of the Monster (1955) - And speaking of Ed Wood . . .
This year, for Bela Lugosi's birthday, I'll be looking at a movie that I can say unironically contains the best of Lugosi's 1950s roles (not that the competition is too stiff and does, after all, include two other Wood movies). Compared to something like Mesa of Lost Women, this breezes past. It's a good demonstration of the difference between so-bad-its-good and so-bad-its-unbearable. Bride of the Monster (originally Bride of the Atom, which is still spoken in dialogue) is effectively a pastiche of Lugosi's previous screen roles: A mysterious hypnotic foreigner (Dracula and others) performs sinister experiments making animals bigger (The Devil Bat), has a disobedient servant played by Tor Johnson who lusts after his female captives and must be punished with a whip (The Corpse Vanishes). You can tell Wood grew up with the old Universals and Monograms. The lightning clip from Bride of Frankenstein is even borrowed from the Universal stock footage library, adding to the feel.
Lugosi's "forsaken jungle hell" speech, faithfully recreated in Tim Burton's Ed Wood, is unexpectedly touching, a perfect reflection of how Lugosi had fallen from his heights of 1930s superstardom to Poverty Row. That said, the film also includes Wood's famously loopy dialogue, a male hero who gets his shirt shredded to Doc Savage tatters after a mild scuffle, Lugosi's ramshackle house with its painted stone wall and stairway next to the main entrance that leads nowhere, and the heroes surviving the climactic atomic explosion from the safe distance of about thirty feet. It's lots of fun.
Next time: Two-day wonder
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 21, 2023 11:58:34 GMT -5
Bride of the Monster (1955) - And speaking of Ed Wood . . . This year, for Bela Lugosi's birthday, I'll be looking at a movie that I can say unironically contains the best of Lugosi's 1950s roles (not that the competition is too stiff and does, after all, include two other Wood movies). Compared to something like Mesa of Lost Women, this breezes past. It's a good demonstration of the difference between so-bad-its-good and so-bad-its-unbearable. Bride of the Monster (originally Bride of the Atom, which is still spoken in dialogue) is effectively a pastiche of Lugosi's previous screen roles: A mysterious hypnotic foreigner ( Dracula and others) performs sinister experiments making animals bigger ( The Devil Bat), has a disobedient servant played by Tor Johnson who lusts after his female captives and must be punished with a whip ( The Corpse Vanishes). You can tell Wood grew up with the old Universals and Monograms. The lightning clip from Bride of Frankenstein is even borrowed from the Universal stock footage library, adding to the feel. Lugosi's "forsaken jungle hell" speech, faithfully recreated in Tim Burton's Ed Wood, is unexpectedly touching, a perfect reflection of how Lugosi had fallen from his heights of 1930s superstardom to Poverty Row. That said, the film also includes Wood's famously loopy dialogue, a male hero who gets his shirt shredded to Doc Savage tatters after a mild scuffle, Lugosi's ramshackle house with its painted stone wall and stairway next to the main entrance that leads nowhere, and the heroes surviving the climactic atomic explosion from the safe distance of about thirty feet. It's lots of fun. Next time: Two-day wonder The MST3K verison is one of their best episodes. Servo: Where the heck do these stairs go? Crow: This is why Lobo never got a promotion at work, he's so slow! Servo: Well, Lobo's attitude is do you want it done now or do you want it done right? Crow: This is Bela's best scene and he's not even in it! Joel: Just take the shirt off, Dick! It is an odd bit of irony that his speech won an Oscar...for Martin Landau. The octopus supposedly cam from the set of Wake of the Red Witch, but there's only one problem: there ISN'T an octopus in Wake of the Red Witch! However there is one is another John Wayne film having to do with the sea, Reap the Wild Wind where there is most definitely an arthropod, so I'm wondering if it's actually from that film. It would've been laying around somewhere for a dozen years but it makes more sense than the accepted version. Anyone know where the rest of Harvey B. Dunn's finger went? |
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Post by kemp on Oct 22, 2023 7:37:00 GMT -5
Watched the 1931 Dracula movie the other year, the atmosphere was right, Bela Lugosi as Dracula, dark gothic castle, Transylvanian mountains, rats, bats, howling wolves...the whole works, but what the hell with the Armadillos, did Dracula import them from South America or something cause they can carry leprosy !?!  At least Dracula didn't collect any of our Australian Fauna. Imagine seeing eastern Grey Kangaroos hopping about in the castle's courtyard. |
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 22, 2023 8:56:58 GMT -5
Watched the 1931 Dracula movie the other year, the atmosphere was right, Bela Lugosi as Dracula, dark gothic castle, Transylvanian mountains, rats, bats, howling wolves...the whole works, but what the hell with the Armadillos, did Dracula import them from South America or something cause they can carry leprosy !?! At least Dracula didn't collect any of our Australian Fauna. Imagine seeing eastern Grey Kangaroos hopping about in the castle's courtyard. I never knew armadillos were scary until Tarkus. The restoration Universal did on that film was excellent. The sound of the film projector was finally gone! |
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Post by almuric on Oct 22, 2023 10:06:24 GMT -5
The laws of nature in Transylvania are not as they are in other lands. Strange forms stalk the night.
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Post by almuric on Oct 24, 2023 17:16:36 GMT -5
The Terror (1963) - When The Raven wrapped, Roger Corman still had Karloff contracted for another two days as well as the standing sets from the movie. So he decided to see if he could make another movie with the leftovers of the previous one. What resulted is a film more noteworthy for the tortured story of its creation than for anything it actually depicts onscreen. Over the next few months (the number varies depending who is telling the story) four more uncredited directors, including a young Francis Ford Coppola, shot more material piecemeal in an effort to turn the footage into something like a movie. You can tell which scenes these are because of the absence of Karloff and the fact that the cast's suntans and haircuts keep changing from shot to shot. After, Corman, still unsatisfied, shot some more material.
The finished (sort of) film is about as coherent as you might expect from five directors making it up as they went along. Nicholson is fatally miscast as a French officer. He's about as European as John Wayne. He's not helped by the incredibly dull and wooden dialogue he's been given. Corman, in many respects, is the anti-Wood, a low budget filmmaker who was able to maintain a certain level of quality despite his resources. Not so much here. A sequence of Karloff visiting his wife's crypt is used three times. Day and night get confused near the end. Karloff threatens to shoot someone with a pistol he's carrying by the barrel. And let's not forget the floating bricks in the watery climax.
Because the film was left in the public domain, Corman ended up losing his cut of the profits. So, in 1990, Corman got Dick Miller back and shot a handful of new scenes as a framing device to turn The Terror into The Haunting. Even after all those years, Corman was still making the movie.
Next time: Abbott and Costello Meet Their Future
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Post by almuric on Oct 26, 2023 16:50:37 GMT -5
Hold That Ghost (1941) - Long before they met Frankenstein, even before they had the time of their lives, the boys had their first brush with the possible supernatural. Bud and Lou are gas station attendants who get jobs as waiters at a high-class restaurant . . . which of course fails, sending them back to the gas station. There they have a chance encounter with a gangster (William B Davidson) which leads improbably to them becoming the gangster's heirs when he's killed by the authorities. I have to question the legality of that will. Anyhow, their inheritance is a spooky old club with a hidden fortune, secret passages and supposed ghosts.
This is pretty funny, though the scares and laughs aren't as well-balanced as they are in some of their later Horror hybrids. It pokes some fourth-wall leaning fun at the well-worn old dark house tropes, which were old even back then. There's an early version of the "Lou-sees-a-moving-candle-which-Bud-doesn't" which was later perfected in Meets Frankenstein. And Evelyn Ankers is in it too, at the dawn of her scream queen days. The only real drawback are the musical sequences that open and close the movie. They kind of kill the pace and mood and unless you really like the Andrew Sisters, they don't serve much purpose. But still worthwhile.
Next time: Running with Hammers
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 27, 2023 5:40:11 GMT -5
Hold That Ghost (1941) - Long before they met Frankenstein, even before they had the time of their lives, the boys had their first brush with the possible supernatural. Bud and Lou are gas station attendants who get jobs as waiters at a high-class restaurant . . . which of course fails, sending them back to the gas station. There they have a chance encounter with a gangster (William B Davidson) which leads improbably to them becoming the gangster's heirs when he's killed by the authorities. I have to question the legality of that will. Anyhow, their inheritance is a spooky old club with a hidden fortune, secret passages and supposed ghosts. This is pretty funny, though the scares and laughs aren't as well-balanced as they are in some of their later Horror hybrids. It pokes some fourth-wall leaning fun at the well-worn old dark house tropes, which were old even back then. There's an early version of the "Lou-sees-a-moving-candle-which-Bud-doesn't" which was later perfected in Meets Frankenstein. And Evelyn Ankers is in it too, at the dawn of her scream queen days. The only real drawback are the musical sequences that open and close the movie. They kind of kill the pace and mood and unless you really like the Andrew Sisters, they don't serve much purpose. But still worthwhile. Next time: Running with Hammers this was originally going to be the second film after Buck Privates but when that film was a huge success, they rushed In the Navy into production. Then they showed test audiences Oh Chuck! (the original title) and all they asked was “Where are the Andrews Sisters?” So they brought the cast back for reshoots, but Joan Davis (later Star of I Married Joan) was doing a picture for Fox so they wrote her out. Also an early picture for Richard Carlson before his run of 50s sci-fi. There was a run of comedy haunted house pictures around that time including two with Bob Hope and the one Blondie movie you can’t see in syndication due to a certain character they think is stereotypical but isn’t that bad in comparison . |
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 27, 2023 5:46:49 GMT -5
For those who missed last year’s Halloween podcast, this was one of the films included:
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Post by almuric on Oct 28, 2023 19:29:55 GMT -5
Now, for a Hammer speed-run to catch up.
Rasputin, the Mad Monk (1966) - There's more legend than history in Hammer's lurid account of the Russian mystic, played to diabolical perfection by Christopher Lee, but it's still thrilling. Lee is at his evil best, insinuating his way into power in pre-Revolution Russia. Filmed back-to-back with Dracula, Prince of Darkness (with which it shares sets and co-star Barbara Shelley). this gives Lee a much more rounded character than he got to play in any of his Draculas. It's interesting that Hammer, while playing up the more sensational aspects of the Rasputin legend, toned down his infamously prolonged assassination. Time? Censorship? Not sure.
The Devil Rides Out (1968) - It was inevitable that Hammer would tackle the works of Dennis Wheatley. The British thriller writer was famous for his novels about black magic and the dark arts were rarely far away, so an adaptation of his 1934 novel of the same name was a natural fit. This time it's Christopher Lee at his most heroic as he is cast against type as the Duke de Richeleau, out to save the souls of a pair of young people (Patrick Mower and Nike Arrighi) from a devil-worshipping cult. Taking up the villain role this time is Charles Gray as the sinister Mocata, one of Hammer's best villains. Screenwriter Richard Matheson wisely streamlines the story, jettisoning Mocata's world-domination scheme from the novel in favor of focusing the threat on the main characters. The result is a taut supernatural thriller with great acting, frightening set-pieces and a great James Bernard score. The movie would be perfect except for two small flaws. Firstly, the effects work, rarely a Hammer strong point, is especially weak, undermining some of the sequences. Secondly, we're never shown Mocata's final fare, we have to take the Duke's word for it. But overall, it's Hammer at it's peak.
Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter (1974) - In the something-or-other-century, Captain Kronos (Horst Janson dubbed by Julian Holloway) of the Imperial Guard (which emperor?) searches for vampires, somewhere in Hammerland with the help of Caroline Munro (who had been in Dracula 1972 AD). Written and directed by Brian Clemens, best known for his TV work on The Avengers (no, not those ones, the other ones), this feels more like the set-up to a TV show than anything else. There's a lot of playing around with the common vampire tropes, with the idea that there are many different types of vampires with various strengths and weaknesses. The mix of monsters and swashbuckling action is so cool you have to wonder what took Hammer so long to think of it. As it was, this came too late for the studio. This sat on a shelf for two years before it's release, where it didn't make much of a splash. A pity. This could have been the start of something interesting, but as it stands, it's well-worth a look.
Oh, and there's a reference to Hammer's other vampire series of the time, the "Karnstein trilogy", which is the only time the studio tried to create a bridge between their properties. They could have made some kind of Monstrous Cinematic Universe if they'd continued . . .
Next time: I see a strange door and I want to paint it black
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 29, 2023 19:04:18 GMT -5
Let’s try this again. Godzilla podcast ready
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Post by almuric on Oct 30, 2023 19:20:18 GMT -5
The Strange Door (1951) - As I asked near the beginning of the month, does this film belong here? Well, I applied the Tom Weaver test again. Sure enough, in the opening moments of his commentary on the Blu-Ray from Kino Lorber, he mentions Gothic Horror and the movie's ties to Universal's earlier Horror movies, so it sneaks in under the door. Based very loosely on the Robert Louis Stevenson short story "The Sire de Maletroit's Door", this is the story of an evil nobleman (played to the hammy hilt by Charles Laughton), who shanghaies a young wastrel (played by Richard Stapley) into a melodramatic revenge scheme that involves marrying him off to his niece (Sally Forrest) and a room where the walls comes together and crush you. Boris Karloff is also on hand as the Sire's shifty servant. Curse of the Undead's Michael Pate is also on hand as a scene-stealing henchman. As Weaver also points out, the climax of this owes a lot to Universal's earlier The Raven. The pace and atmosphere is good, the cast is decent and how can you go wrong with a room where the walls come together to crush you? While it's not Universal's best, it's certainly better than a lot of the studio's mid-40s output (including She-Wolf of London, from which this movie swipes its main title theme from). You'll have to hunt this one down on Blu-Ray because I don't remember it ever airing on TCM.
Happy Halloween!
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 31, 2023 11:27:00 GMT -5
The Strange Door (1951) - As I asked near the beginning of the month, does this film belong here? Well, I applied the Tom Weaver test again. Sure enough, in the opening moments of his commentary on the Blu-Ray from Kino Lorber, he mentions Gothic Horror and the movie's ties to Universal's earlier Horror movies, so it sneaks in under the door. Based very loosely on the Robert Louis Stevenson short story "The Sire de Maletroit's Door", this is the story of an evil nobleman (played to the hammy hilt by Charles Laughton), who shanghaies a young wastrel (played by Richard Stapley) into a melodramatic revenge scheme that involves marrying him off to his niece (Sally Forrest) and a room where the walls comes together and crush you. Boris Karloff is also on hand as the Sire's shifty servant. Curse of the Undead's Michael Pate is also on hand as a scene-stealing henchman. As Weaver also points out, the climax of this owes a lot to Universal's earlier The Raven. The pace and atmosphere is good, the cast is decent and how can you go wrong with a room where the walls come together to crush you? While it's not Universal's best, it's certainly better than a lot of the studio's mid-40s output (including She-Wolf of London, from which this movie swipes its main title theme from). You'll have to hunt this one down on Blu-Ray because I don't remember it ever airing on TCM. Happy Halloween! They tossed this onto that Boris Karloff set from a decade and a half ago so it’s loosely linked in. |
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