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Post by almuric on Oct 5, 2019 19:01:10 GMT -5
Black Sabbath (1963) - Mario Bava directs this trio of short tales of terror in this Italian-American co-production (originally titled The Three Faces of Fear). Boris Karloff (who needs no introduction here) is the host of the introductions, the only source of humor in an otherwise bleak movie, as well as the star of the final segment. First is "The Drop of Water", in which a young nurse (Jacqueline Pierreaux) is tormented by a dead medium's ghost after stealing a ring from her body. Second is "The Telephone", in which a beautiful young woman of unclear profession (more about that later) receives threatening phone calls from a man she believes to be dead. Last and best of all, is "The Wurdulak", a grim tale of vampirism with a bleak ending that prefigures the darker nastier movies that begin to dominate the genre over the years to come.
The film was altered somewhat for its American release, removing references to prostitution and intimations of lesbianism from "The Telephone", for instance, and replacing the original Italian score. I'd like to see the original version some day. But despite the problems, it's a good time for Horror fans.
And yes, the band got their name from the movie.
Next: The Haunted Castles
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Post by almuric on Oct 8, 2019 18:59:30 GMT -5
The Tingler (1959) - Vincent Prince stars in this one as a scientist who makes the discovery that a mysterious organism (the titular Tingler) feeds on human fear. You all know the story of the Percepto gimmick, right? I don't need to rehash that, save to say that it would have been cool to be in an audience where that was being used. The Tingler itself is vaguely Lovecraftian, but the science of it all is hooey. No matter. With Price explaining it, everything sounds perfectly reasonable.
Strait-Jacket (1964) - Joan Crawford, fresh off What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? stars in this one, from a script by Robert Bloch, fresh off the success of Psycho. Crawford plays Lucy Harbin, a woman who murders her cheating husband in front of her young daughter. 20 years later, she's released from the asylum, only to be tormented with a series of sanity-breaking events. Is she losing her mind again, or is someone trying to make her think she is? This is a William Castle film, so the answer should be clear. The gimmick this time was pretty mild: cardboard axes handed out to moviegoers.
The Night Walker (1964) - Barbara Stanwyck (in her last film role) stars in this one as yet another woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She's Irene, stuck in an unhappy marriage to her cruel blind husband (Hayden Rorke). After her husband's death, she's plagued by a serious of dreams (or are they?) which have her questioning her sanity. You know, there's a lot of unhappy marriages in Castle's movies. As far as I know, he was happily married, but most of his films feature marriages on the brink of homicide.
As per usual with Castle, plausibility comes a distant second to chills. If this one has a weakness, it's that the plot against Irene is so convoluted it needs not one, but two villain monologues, one right after another, at the climax. This one didn't do well at the box office, but it's decent enough Castle, with an unforgettable score by Vic Mizzy.
There's something endearing about how William Castle spends a movie scaring the pants off you, only to reassure you at the end that it's all make-believe after all. I don't think he set out to create Art, but he succeeds in doing just that. His 4th Wall-breaking gimmicks and reveals elevate something that could have been just another low-budget Horror movie into something memorable.
Next time: Dead Movie Walking
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Post by almuric on Oct 11, 2019 16:24:34 GMT -5
The Vampire Bat (1933) - Bela Lugosi wasn't the only actor from Dracula to get typecast. Poor Dwight Frye ended up occupying an even narrower cinematic niche than Bela, ending up with a parade of madmen and weirdoes. Here he's village idiot Herman, whose strange habits and love of bats makes him the prime suspect in a series of murders being investigated by Karl (Melvyn Douglas). His girlfriend, Ruth (Fay Wray) is lab assistant to Dr. Von Niemann (a wonderful Lionel Atwill). Needless to say, the conspicuous Herman is just a red herring and there's a rational explanation for the "vampire" killings . . . SPOILERS . . . if you assume that Von Niemann telepathically controlling his other lab assistant into draining human blood to fuel the artificial life the doctor has created in his laboratory qualifies as "rational". There's a bit too much comic relief, but at just over an hour, this never overstays its welcome.
Beware of "extended versions". TCM a few years back was airing a version of this movie which was inflated by several minutes with shots of Atwill lifted from different movies. Happy to say, this has been corrected since then, but bastardized versions could still be out there.
Dead Men Walk (1943) - Frye is the slave of the undead once again, this time as the improbably-named "Zolarr", servant of Dr. Elwyn Clayton (George Zucco), a Satanist-turned-vampire. Elwyn is opposed by his brother Lloyd (also Zucco). Most of the plot is Vampire 101, enlivened by Frye and a double-dose of Zucco. This is a PRC cheapie that is redeemed by its swift pace and decent cast. Amusingly, many of the townspeople of the unspecified hometown of the Claytons dress and talk like they just stepped off the set of a Western. They probably did. B-Westerns were PRC's bread-and-butter, some of them directed by Sam Newfield, who did this movie.
Neither film is a classic, but they are worth at least one watch.
Next time: Frankenstein Created A Classic
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Post by almuric on Oct 15, 2019 10:36:53 GMT -5
Nightmare (1964) - A rare Hammer Horror in black and white, directed by Freddy Frances. Young Janet (Jennie Linden) is plagued with a deep fear of going mad like her mother. When she returns to her family home, she experiences a series of terrifying visions (or are they?) that drive her ever closer to the insanity she fears . . .
While the gaslighting premise is very familiar, the execution is top-notch. Like Psycho before it, Nightmare has a shocking mid-movie twist which completely changes the direction of the story. And while the final twist isn't without some credibility-stretching, it's a very satisfying ending. Highly recommended.
Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) - A series of tragic events lead to the demises of both young Hans (Robert Morris) and his disfigured love, Christina (Susan Denberg, in one of her few movie roles). But Dr. Frankenstein (Peter Cushing, as always) revives Hans's soul in Christina's resurrected body. But Hans wants revenge on those who destroyed his life, and soon he takes control of Christina, forcing her to kill and kill again . . .
The monsters are all human in this one. Frankenstein is almost sympathetic in this one . . . until you realize he could have helped Christina before she died and prevented the chain of disasters that led to her death. One gets the feeling the filmmakers are saying that Frankenstein could have been a great man if he bothered to care about the people around him. Of note are the charmingly designed Steampunkish machines Frankenstein uses in his research, from his 19th century cryogenics chamber to his soul-trapping apparatus. This is possibly the best of the Hammer Frankensteins.
Next time: Bela and Boris, the Later Years
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Post by almuric on Oct 20, 2019 9:58:41 GMT -5
I hope someone's reading these . . .
The Invisible Ray (1936) - Just a year after the Boris-Bela vehicle The Raven nearly killed off the Horror movie, the stars reunited for this science-fictional tale. Boris is Janos Rukh, a scientist who is obsessed with discovering "Radium X", a radioactive element from space. Leading an expedition to Africa with the aid of Dr. Benet (Bela, in one of his rarer sympathetic roles), he finds it. After being irradiated, his touch becomes deadly and soon Rukh becomes obsessed with revenging himself upon all those he believed done him wrong . . .
This movie was a bit ahead of its time, with its radioactive menace from space. It still has some gothic links to Universal's past, with Rukh hailing from "the Carpathian Mountains" (which almost seem to be a sovereign nation in Universal Land) and the Strickfadden machines in his laboratory. You have to wonder why the Eastern European Rukh wasn't played by Lugosi, who was actually from that part of the world. Who knows? John Fulton provides the excellent effects work, including a startling practical melting rock and a glow that would be used again for Lon Chaney Jr. in Man Made Monster.
Black Friday (1940) - Curt Siodmak loved brains. The two novels he's best known for -- Donovan's Brain and Hauser's Memory -- revolved around them. And his Horror work often involved switching or transplanting brains, as it does here. Boris is Dr. Ernest Sovac, who transplants the mind of gangster Red Cannon into the body of his friend. Soon his friend begins to manifest the memories and mannerisms of the slain mobster, leading to murder and mayhem . . .
Bela was originally the doctor and Boris the gangster, but this was changed, relegating Bela to a secondary role. It's not as bad as wasting him as a butler in Night Monster, but it's still a bit of a disappointment and sets the tone for Bela's subsequent roles at the studio during the decade. Boris keeps playing Sovac sympathetically, but he's really not. Using his friend as a guinea pig and exploiting Red's memories to get his money is pretty bad. Not sure why he gets the chair at the end, though. He does gun down Red, but it was in self-defence. Maybe brain experimentation is against the law in Universal Land. The mechanics of the brain transfer are maddeningly vague. It's only mentioned halfway through that it was done by injecting brain cells from Red Cannon into Kingsley's brain. And the makers of the movie often seem to forget that Red is in the body of an older, less athletic man when he goes running around strangling people and getting in gunfights with the authorities. It's enough to keep the movie from really taking off.
It's uneven, but it's one last chance to see the Two Titans of Terror sharing the screen at Universal. They would appear together one more time on screen, in RKO's The Body Snatcher.
Next time: What Do You Know About Space Vampires?
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Post by emerald on Oct 20, 2019 13:22:10 GMT -5
I hope someone's reading these . . . The Invisible Ray (1936) - Just a year after the Boris-Bela vehicle The Raven nearly killed off the Horror movie, the stars reunited for this science-fictional tale. Boris is Janos Rukh, a scientist who is obsessed with discovering "Radium X", a radioactive element from space. Leading an expedition to Africa with the aid of Dr. Benet (Bela, in one of his rarer sympathetic roles), he finds it. After being irradiated, his touch becomes deadly and soon Rukh becomes obsessed with revenging himself upon all those he believed done him wrong . . . This movie was a bit ahead of its time, with its radioactive menace from space. It still has some gothic links to Universal's past, with Rukh hailing from "the Carpathian Mountains" (which almost seem to be a sovereign nation in Universal Land) and the Strickfadden machines in his laboratory. You have to wonder why the Eastern European Rukh wasn't played by Lugosi, who was actually from that part of the world. Who knows? John Fulton provides the excellent effects work, including a startling practical melting rock and a glow that would be used again for Lon Chaney Jr. in Man Made Monster. Black Friday (1940) - Curt Siodmak loved brains. The two novels he's best known for -- Donovan's Brain and Hauser's Memory -- revolved around them. And his Horror work often involved switching or transplanting brains, as it does here. Boris is Dr. Ernest Sovac, who transplants the mind of gangster Red Cannon into the body of his friend. Soon his friend begins to manifest the memories and mannerisms of the slain mobster, leading to murder and mayhem . . . Bela was originally the doctor and Boris the gangster, but this was changed, relegating Bela to a secondary role. It's not as bad as wasting him as a butler in Night Monster, but it's still a bit of a disappointment and sets the tone for Bela's subsequent roles at the studio during the decade. Boris keeps playing Sovac sympathetically, but he's really not. Using his friend as a guinea pig and exploiting Red's memories to get his money is pretty bad. Not sure why he gets the chair at the end, though. He does gun down Red, but it was in self-defence. Maybe brain experimentation is against the law in Universal Land. The mechanics of the brain transfer are maddeningly vague. It's only mentioned halfway through that it was done by injecting brain cells from Red Cannon into Kingsley's brain. And the makers of the movie often seem to forget that Red is in the body of an older, less athletic man when he goes running around strangling people and getting in gunfights with the authorities. It's enough to keep the movie from really taking off. It's uneven, but it's one last chance to see the Two Titans of Terror sharing the screen at Universal. They would appear together one more time on screen, in RKO's The Body Snatcher. Next time: What Do You Know About Space Vampires?
I saw most of these when I was just a sprout, crazy for horror movies and staying up late to catch every creature feature I could find.
The Universal stuff seemed good to me but it came in second to the Atom Age s.f. horrors of the 1950's. Universal's old school Gothic-tinged classics couldn't compete with the army desperately battling giant ants in the storm drains of Los Angeles in Them, with the giant city-destroying robot of Kronos, or the ghastly disembodied, spinal cord devouring brains of Fiend Without a Face.
I still kinda feel that way, but I know I need to revisit some of the Universal movies I haven't see in decades. So I'm paying attention to what you have to say about them.
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Post by charleshelm on Oct 20, 2019 13:35:29 GMT -5
I am also reading.
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 20, 2019 15:05:48 GMT -5
Now that you’re back with the Universals, I’ll try to dig out my reviews again as companion pieces :-)
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Post by almuric on Oct 21, 2019 9:43:18 GMT -5
Suspiria (1977) - Wow. Director Dario Argento moved from giallo (basically Italian slasher films with classier direction) to supernatural Horror with this classic. Young Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) enrolls at a prestigious dance academy in Germany. A series of mysterious deaths leads her to the discovery that the school is home to a coven of evil witches . . .
Wow. It's not many Horror movies that have a scene which made me jump off my couch. Looking back on the film, I can see that there's many scenes which make no logical sense. But the movie operates by nightmare logic, and with Argento's psychedelic direction and the nerve-wracking score by the German prog-rock band Goblin, it's hard not to get caught up in the moment and just accept whatever happens. Things that would normally be flaws, like the dubbed actors and strange dialogue, actually help contribute to the dreamlike feel of the movie. It's less a narrative than an experience.
Remade last year. Check out the recent Blu-Ray from Synapse. The remastering is some of the best I've ever seen. Wow.
Lifeforce (1985) - This is one of the most bonkers movies I've ever seen. I mean this as a compliment. Director Tobe Hooper of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame made this, on a then-massive $25 million budget from the Colin Wilson novel The Space Vampires. The Cannon Group saw the project as a chance to do a prestigious big-budget movie and gave Hooper whatever he wanted. The result was a box office failure and one of the wildest Horror movies ever.
A space shuttle, on a mission to Halley's Comet, discovers a massive alien space ship hiding in the comet's tail. Finding seemingly human bodies inside, they bring them back to Earth where the revived aliens unleash death and destruction on an unsuspecting world. The story has a definite Quatermass influence, especially Five Million Years To Earth, with its ideas of legends being inspired by alien invaders as well as its apocalyptic finale with London in flames. It also closely parallels the novel of Dracula, especially in the middle section. Whenever the narrative threatens to bog down, it just switches genre. Science-fiction to detective story to vampire movie to alien invasion.
It's famous-infamous for Mathilda May playing the role of the female space vampire, spending about half the movie in the nude. Not that I'm complaining. Also features a pre-TNG Patrick Stewart as a doctor. This is like the best kind of B-movie, only with an A-movie budget. Cannon had a not entirely undeserved reputation for making lowbrow crowd-pleasers, but they also took chances on passion projects from well-known directors. Lifeforce inhabits the rare sweet spot between those two.
Note: I saw this on TCM, which was airing the original theatrical cut. The director's cut is 8 minutes longer and currently available on Blu-Ray.
Next time: Another Stroll Down Poverty Row
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Post by charleshelm on Oct 21, 2019 20:30:45 GMT -5
I think I had Suspiria on LaserDisc...Lifeforce is famous/infamous and is worthwhile but a weird take on vampires. I have it on DVD and I think BluRay but I have not spun the BluRay yet.
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Post by almuric on Oct 25, 2019 16:57:48 GMT -5
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.
Scared to Death (1947) - My pick for viewing on Bela Lugosi's birthday. The only color film in which Lugosi has a starring role. And it is cool to see him in color for a change. When dealing with people who lived back in those days, it's easy to think of them inhabiting a black & white world, even if we know they didn't. And Lugosi is definitely having fun in this cheapie.
But the movie itself? Do I have to?
Sigh. There is too much "comic" relief, courtesy of dim-witted ex-cop Bull Raymond (Nat Pendleton) and not enough of Bela and his dwarf sidekick. The movie is almost entirely confined to one house, with a few brief scenes in the morgue, where the body of the murder victim "narrates" the events of the movie to the audience in a series of scenes that quickly become intrusive. I'm not surprised that this stagey film was based on a stage play. Even George Zucco -- here playing Bela's cousin -- seems a bit bored by it all. It never reaches She Wolf of London levels of awful, but it's not that great either. Strictly for completists.
Next time: A Lovecraftian Duo
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Post by charleshelm on Oct 25, 2019 20:57:26 GMT -5
"It's probably the best mad-scientist-and-gorilla movie you'll see."
A sentence I did not expect to see today, but reminiscent of many of my reviews on Instagram!
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Post by almuric on Oct 26, 2019 10:16:24 GMT -5
The Dunwich Horror (1970) - Lovecraft doesn't get much movie love. I suppose it's the fact that his stories hinge on things that would be hard to depict on screen. Or the fact that his stories don't have much dialogue. Or characters. "The Dunwich Horror" is a rare exeception. It was adapted to radio in 1945 and to the screen by AIP in 1970. The results are . . . mixed. Dean Stockwell plays Wilbur Whately (considerably less deformed than his literary counterpart). He does a great job conveying Wilbur's alienness, sometimes going from almost sympathetic one moment to coldly inhuman the next. He's the best thing in it. The movie's budget lets it down at the climax. The director is trying at least with the psychedelic visuals, but it doesn't quite work, which is a shame. AIP did a great job with Poe. It would have been great if they could have done the same for Lovecraft. The whole course of '70s Horror could have been changed. It's half a good Lovecraft adaptation, at least.
Re-Animator (1985) - Based loosely on Lovecraft's somewhat atypical mad-scientist story "Herbert West -- Re-Animator" (considered by the author to be his poorest work), this tale from writer-director Stuart Gordon and Charles Band's Empire Films is one of the wildest Horror movies of the '80s. Between this and Lifeforce, I'm convinced there was something in the water that year.
Jeffrey Combs (of Star Trek fame), is Herbert West, a medical student obsessed with reviving the dead. He succeeds after a fashion, unleashing a gruesome chain of events. This is by far the goriest movie I've ever seen. Fortunately, it has a wicked sense of humor to keep you chuckling between gasps. Threatened by a revived head, West sneers: "Who's going to believe a talking head? Get a job in a side show!" It was originally rated X, but cut down for home video releases. Followed by two sequels and a stage musical (!).
Next time: Insert Clever Hammer Pun Here
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Post by charleshelm on Oct 26, 2019 16:52:17 GMT -5
The Dean Stockwell Dunwich is better than the remake reboot done more recently...and it has Sandra Dee right?
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Post by almuric on Oct 26, 2019 17:10:22 GMT -5
The Dean Stockwell Dunwich is better than the remake reboot done more recently...and it has Sandra Dee right? Yes, it does have Dee. She honestly doesn't leave much of an impression, not helped by the fact that she spends a good quarter of the movie as a living prop in Wilbur's big ceremony. You know, it's funny. I haven't seen many of Band's films, but I remember reading all about them back in the '90s when I was a faithful reader of Starlog magazine. His latest direct-to-video movie would get as many pages as articles on big-name franchises. |
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