50 Horror Classics: The Wrap-up

I did it! I watched 50 old public domain movies slapped together by a cheap home video label under the claim that all of them are "horror classics." So... now what? I'll get to that later, but first, how about a breakdown of all 50 horror classics by letter grade? Before you read on, try guessing which letter grade I gave out most frequently!

A: 2
Night of the Living Dead, Metropolis

B+: 3
The Little Shop of Horrors, The Phantom of the Opera, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

B: 9
House on Haunted Hill, The Bat, Monster from a Prehistoric Planet, Nosferatu, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Corpse Vanishes, Invisible Ghost, Creature From the Haunted Sea, Carnival of Souls

B-: 9
The Amazing Mr. X, Bloodlust!, The Gorilla, Doomed to Die, The Killer Shrews, The Fatal Hour, The Giant Gila Monster, One Body Too Many, The Last Man on Earth

C+: 5
A Shriek in the Night, Tormented, Bluebeard, The Vampire Bat, Nightmare Castle

C: 8
Last Woman on Earth, Swamp Women, Indestructible Man, King of the Zombies, The Ape, The Screaming Skull, The Monster Maker, Dementia 13

C-: 5
The Brain That Wouldn't Die, The Terror, Attack of the Giant Leeches, Atom Age Vampire, The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues

D+: 1
Dead Men Walk

D: 4
The World Gone Mad, The Mad Monster, White Zombie, Black Dragons

D-: 2
The Monster Walks, Revolt of the Zombies

F+: 1
The Beast of Yucca Flats

There you have it. There were more B's and B-'s than any other letter grade. That's pretty surprising to me, but I'll point out that I did try to keep these things in perspective when rating them. I was comparing them to each other, not to The Godfather.

Now here are some exciting odds and ends about this collection and my journey through it:

MOST FREQUENTLY APPEARING ACTOR
Bela Lugosi, with roles in 6 of these movies. Boris Karloff is the the runner-up, with 4 movies, followed by Vincent Price with 3. Honorable mentions include George Zucco with 2 and the supporting actors in the Mr. Wong movies, Grant Withers and Marjorie Reynolds, also with 2 appearances. Of course, it's possible there were some actors in minor roles in more than six of the old low-budget movies produced by the "Poverty Row" studios, but none that I recognized.

MADDEST SCIENTIST:

The scientist's assistant who later took over the scientist's identity in Maniac.

SPUNKIEST GIRL REPORTER
Patricia Hunter in The Corpse Vanishes, beating out Pat in A Shriek in the Night and Bobbi Logan in Doomed to Die and The Fatal Hour.

MOST INTIMIDATING PRIMATE:
The ape from The Ape, followed by the gorilla from The Gorilla, followed closely by the chimp from The Monster Walks.

FIVE SCARIEST MONSTERS
1. Nosferatu in Nosferatu
2. Mr. Hyde in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
3. The Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera
4. The zombies in Night of the Living Dead
5. The Bat in The Bat (not technically a monster, but a ruthless, efficient serial killer)

FIVE LEAST SCARY MONSTERS
1. The shrews in The Killer Shrews, with their dog bodies and paper-mache heads
2. The gila monster in The Giant Gila Monster, who slowly, calmly stepped on model trains and miniature cars
3. Jacob Javorski, the fat, lumbering schmo wandering the desert in The Beast of Yucca Flats
4. Elwyn the slow-moving, grandfatherly vampire in Dead Men Walk
5. The sea monster in The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues, looking enough like a piñata that candy might have come out if the characters had whacked it

MOVIES THAT STRAINED THE DEFINITION OF "HORROR"
A Shriek in the Night - Murder mystery
The Fatal Hour - Murder mystery
Doomed to Die - Murder mystery
Swamp Women - Exploitation, crime, adventure
The Gorilla - A mystery starring a comedy team, The Ritz Brothers
One Body Too Many - Starring comedian Jack Haley, more of a comic pastiche than a legitimate horror movie
Metropolis - Science fiction
The World Gone Mad - Incredibly boring

MOVIES DURING WHICH I FELL ASLEEP:
Included Tormented, King of the Zombies, and Bluebeard.

LONGEST RUNNING TIME:
Metropolis - 119 minutes

SHORTEST RUNNING TIME:
Maniac - 51 minutes

OLDEST FILM:
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from 1920

NEWEST FILM:
Night of the Living Dead from 1968

LONGEST TITLE:

Monster From a Prehistoric Planet, with 29 letters.

SHORTEST TITLE:

It's a tie! Maniac and The Ape each have just six letters each.

AVERAGE BODY COUNT:

Well, I was hoping to have an actual, mathematical mean here, but considering there were movies in which entire island populations died, and at least two where almost every human in the world died, it's hard to come up with an exact count. Let's say... oh, I don't know... twenty million.

MOVIE LIKED MOST BY MY ROOMMATE, JOE:
One Body Too Many. He also liked House on Haunted Hill.

MOST SHAMEFUL CONFESSION:

Mine, right now: I never did get around to writing a real review of Maniac. I did watch the film... and a torturous hour it was. Then I put a placeholder post up here to announce that I would have a real write-up posted soon, but by the time I got around to sitting down to write it, I had lost my notes. I couldn't recall the specifics, and there was just no way I was going to suffer through that movie again. I hope you can forgive me, and I'm pretty sure you will... After all, it's not like I raised the dead, or turned an innocent man into a werewolf, or threw a hat on a bed.

FINAL THOUGHTS
How did I make it through 50 movies? As much as I love motion pictures, it wasn't easy. The Beast of Yucca Flats was the movie that almost broke me, and The World Gone Mad once again challenged my resolve. But it was such a random collection of movies that there was always the chance that the next one would be better.

And some of them were better than I expected -- Creature from the Haunted Sea, for example, was a fun, tongue-in-cheek monster movie, and Carnival of Souls, as the first film in the box set, actually tricked me into expecting less crappiness in the ensuing 49 movies. It was also cool to catch up on some of the actual classic movies that somehow managed to find their way in -- Night of the Living Dead and The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the like. Oh, and then there was the time I wrote about The Phantom of the Opera, and a guy claiming to be Lon Chaney, Sr. commented. That was pretty unexpected.

I would love to say I feel like I'm a better person for having done this, but mostly I feel like a person who's spent a lot of time watching old movies. I can't help but notice that I spent a lot of time on this venture, at least a couple hours every week. Now that I'm finished, I could use the extra time to write the great American novel, or climb mountains, or take up oil painting or crocheting... but there are so many more movies in the world that I haven't watched yet!

As I mentioned in my first-ever post, I also own the 50 Movie Pack: Drive-in Movie Classics DVD set. It is tempting to watch them all -- How could I resist Creepers from 1984, starring a pre-Labyrinth Jennifer Connelly? Or a movie called I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? Or that all-time classic, Black Hooker, which is somehow rated PG?

And this past Christmas, my dad, because he is silly and awesome, also gave me yet another DVD set from Mill Creek entertainment, namely 20 Movie Pack: Cult Classics. It includes such dubiously beloved films as Sex Madness, Marihuana, and Oomo-Oomo the Shark God. They all sound fantastic... plus, I hate to abandon this perfectly good blog.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to watch one a week, but every once in a while, when the mood strikes, I'll throw one of these things -- a TNT Jackson or a The Cocaine Fields -- in the DVD player and write them up right here. I'll most likely send out e-mail notificiations when I do this... I know there are a handful of people who have been reading every week. If you want to be updated when I post a new review, let me know and I'll include you on the list. And maybe I'll finish watching all 70 of those drive-in and cult classics by the time I turn 70 years old.

So I guess that's it. Fifty horror classics. Thank you for reading. I hope you've gotten some semblance of enjoyment out of reading this blog, and I hope that you, like me, will always keep a special place for Bela Lugosi in your heart.