Ryan Watches 50 Movies

BONUS: Milton Berle's Low Impact/High Comedy Workout

2010-07-13T12:00:00.002-04:00

Disclaimer: The DVD I'm talking about today is not a horror movie, a drive-in movie, or a cult classic. It's pretty far out, though.

Some time ago, I was digging through the $1 DVD bin at Walmart in Marble Falls, Texas, when I came across something amazing: A Milton Berle exercise video. The cover of Milton Berle’s Low Impact High Comedy Workout had a PhotoShopped picture of Uncle Mitlie in a tracksuit, smoking a cigar and holding a martini and... wearing a cowboy hat???, and I think you’ll understand when I say I knew immediately that I had to own that DVD, no matter the cost, which fortunately was only one dollar.

How excited was I about this DVD? I was so excited that I took it home, put it on a shelf, and didn’t watch it for about four years. But on a recent Saturday, as my roommate Joe and I were looking for something to do, we realized the time had come to experience this workout once and for all.

First of all, I love that this thing even exists. I have to wonder how it came about… Were the producers looking to make a celebrity workout video for senior citizens and they asked Berle if he’d be interested? Or did Mr. Television himself take a look at all the various stars (and former stars) who were making big bucks for doing a few calisthenics and decide he wanted in? The video was released in 1995, and then, over a decade later and after Mr. Berle had gone on to that big Friar’s roast in the sky, somebody decided that it would be a good idea to release this thing on DVD. I love that even more.

The video opens with Laura Gladwin, of the Aerobics Something-Something of America. She warns us that, although this video will be really funny, Milton Berle takes exercise very seriously, so we should follow these tips to avoid any trouble. As she stumbles over the cue cards, I can’t help but get anxious… Where’s the comedy? Where’s Milton Berle? I can’t even imagine owning this video in the VHS age, when you’d have to fastforward past this stuff every single time you watched it.

Finally we get to the good stuff. The set is an aerobics room full of old people. Most of them are standing, but a few are sitting, which the video tells us is perfectly all right. Most of them are wearing Milton Berle Workout t-shirts or solid-colored sweats, except for one lady who’s wearing a Reebok sweatshirt. If this video were made today, they’d probably blur that out or make her wear it inside-out, unless Reebok was paying for it.

Hey, here he is. “Hi, this is Milton!” he greets us. Hi, Milton! Say something funny! “Our ideas about old age are changing,” he says, and then he tells us all the statistics of how many old people there are in America today. Huh. That’s not funny.

Now, I thought we were just going to do some leg lifts and stuff, but Milton explains that this video will make us feel good about ourselves and about aging. So it's a very ambitious comedy workout. “Then after the workout,” he says, “I’m gonna help plan a good, nutritional meal.” I can't wait.

So Milton introduces us to the class of seniors and the instructor, Merrily Smith. “Merrily, are you ready to roll?” asks Milton. When she says yes, he says, “Then Merrily we roll along!” And all the seniors crack up: HA HA HA HA HAHAHAHAHA HA! Oh, Uncle Miltie. You still got it!

And then… Well, then the rest of the video is pretty standard exercise video stuff, just geared for folks 60 and older. Milton doesn’t actually do the exercises; he just stands off to the side watching, and every once in a while he wanders in front of the camera and delivers a joke or talks to the exercisers. Here are some of his gems:

“Oh God, I’d love to have the prune concession for this group!” (HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!)
“This lady is on a liquid diet -- she only drinks what comes out of her blender. Last night she had two pot roasts and a chicken.” (HA HA HAHA HAHA HA!)
“Have we met? Weren’t you a lifeguard at a water bed motel? (HA HA HA HA HA!) What are they laughing at? He saved me from drowning!”
“I’ll show you how I can empty this whole studio in just one second… Watch this: BATHROOM BREAK!” (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!)

And then, during a break from the strenuous leg-lifting and arm-swinging, he comes out dressed as Richard Simmons, with shorts, a wig, and a ridiculous effeminate affectation. “Do you really like this outfit I’m wearing?” he asks the seniors, which is of course hilarious because Richard Simmons is always asking people if they like his outfit. “This really turns people’s heads,” he says, “and it doesn’t do much for their stomachs either!” And then: “It’s dangerous for me to look in the mirror in this outfit. I keep trying to jump on myself!” Man, that is Richad Simmons all over. Do you think the real Richard Simmons ever saw this video? Based on his appearances on David Letterman's show, it's always hard to tell whether he's in on the joke of himself or not.

If you thought that was the extent of Berle’s acting talent, think again: A few minutes later, he comes in as Jane Fonda. I guess nobody expected Milton Berle to go through an entire video without dressing in drag at least once. As Fonda, he notices that everyone is sweating and says, “Me, I never sweat. Ted pays someone to do it for me!” Aww, that joke is sad now because Jane Fonda and Ted Turner are divorced.

“I want you to know that I run a very slick workout class,” he/she says. “I do not allow my pupils to drink, smoke or have sex. Until the class is over.” Finally, to prove that the key to good aerobics is “no pain, no gain,” Milton Fonda punches himself in the stomach, then limps away… and it gets applause! How much were they paying these people anyway?

During these moments of outrageous comedy, the instructor stands there reacting with a sort of “Oh, you rascal!” expression on her face. She’s a regular person, not an actor, but she makes a pretty good straight man. Too bad they never made any more videos together. I would love to see Merrily as Milton's assistant for Milton Berle's Do-It-Yourself Catamaran Building.

By the way, I have a favorite senior of all the exercisers in the class. It's this lady:

She really gets into all the choreography, and adds a little something extra to every move. It's obvious she knows she's on camera, and she's wants to make sure she's noticed. Well, lady, I noticed you, and I say to you: You go, girl.

Hey, did you know that if you don’t have light weights to use in aerobics, you can just use water bottles? Well, you can! That’s pretty cool. And it leads to this exchange:

Milton: Sir, I noticed that they didn’t give you any bottles.
Man: No, they didn’t.
Milton: I guess they knew that you couldn’t hold your water!

Milton obviously knows his audience; the majority of the jokes are about old people stuff. Incontinence is funny! Oh, and then there’s this moment, which I still don’t understand:

Milton (to a guy sitting in a chair): Why aren’t you exercising?
Guy: I’m not here to exercise, I’m your brother Phil!
Milton: I know you’re my brother Phil! But why are you here?
Guy: You didn’t mail me my check, so I came to pick it up!
Milton: 93-year-old smartass…

Huh? What check is he talking about? Why does Milton Berle owe his
93-year-old brother money? Or was this something that was common knowledge in 1995? Maybe I’m just not remembering the front-page headlines telling the story of how Milton Berle asked his brother Phil to buy some stuff from him on eBay because he didn’t have an account, then forgot to pay him back.

Next up are some exercises that involve lying on a mat. (Or is that laying? I’m never sure about that one.) I should probably leave the jokes-at-old-people’s-expense to Milton, but I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the seniors wouldn’t be able to stand up once they were down on those mats. I’m pretty sure at least three of them fell asleep, anyway.

Merrily leads everyone in lifting themselves up off the mat, and back down again: “Up! Down! Up! Down!” And Milton says, “Up, down, up, down… Remember when those words had a whole different meaning?” Which I suppose is… a sex joke? Actually, I should point out the one joke that actually brought a smile to my face: Milton and a 91-year-old man compare their sex lives, and Milton says: "My wife and I make love almost every night! Almost on Monday, almost on Tuesday, almost on Wednesday..." Well, it seems funny compared to the other jokes, anyway.

Oh, and every once in a while Milton pops up in a little window in a corner of the screen to give us a helpful exercising tip. See, when he walks into the aerobics room, that’s when he’s going to tell a joke, but when he pops up in the little window, it means he’s going to give some serious advice. I’m glad they came up with that device, because otherwise I would still be trying to figure out why “Keep your stomach muscles tight” was supposed to be funny.

After a while, the exercisers have wiggled their limbs in just about every direction possible, so it’s time to cool down and wrap up. Milton comes in one more time, and tells everyone they did a sensational job. “Especially you, Merrily, you must be tired. Go to my dressing room and lie down.” So everyone shuffles out and says goodbye… and then, I’m sure, as soon as they were out of earshot, they all turned to each other and said, “Were any of those jokes funny?”

But there's still more Milton! As promised, we get Milton’s Healthful Hints for preparing a nutritious meal. Here’s a step-by-step summary of Milton Berle’s cooking process:

1. Stand there and watch as a professional chef does all the cooking.

The menu consists of herb-crusted salmon, Julienne vegetables, and garlic-roasted red potatoes. And the chef – Patricia Hill from 442 Restaurant in Los Angeles – is extremely uncomfortable on camera. She never once looks at the camera, and she barely looks at Milton. For the most part, he just narrates what she’s doing, explaining how much garlic to use or what to do with the leftover veggies. But when she’s chopping up red peppers, he can’t resist: “By the way, the knife she’s using was a gift from Lorena Bobbit.” My first instinct was to say, A-ha, that tells us exactly when this video was made… but then I remembered that it’s Milton Berle, and he was probably telling Lorena Bobbit jokes for 10 years after she was in the news. Yes, that would mean that he kept telling them after he died, but I wouldn’t put it past him.

When dinner’s ready, Milton says to Patricia, “It was a great pleasure watching you prepare this wonderful meal… and you can cook for me anytime,” and attempts to playfully pinch her cheek, but she doesn’t react at all. She cannot wait to get out of there. I bet she didn’t know what she was signing up for. She probably thought she was going to be cooking in the Milton Bradley workout video!*

And there you have it. We’ve learned to appreciate our aging bodies, we’ve gotten in shape, we’ve made some good food, and we’ve laughed our heads off at the cutting-edge comedy of Mr. Milton Berle. Good work, everyone.

So… Did Henny Youngman ever make a workout video?

*I struggled to find the name of another famous Milton here, but there are really no other Miltons out there. If you like, you can replace “Milton Bradley” in that sentence with “Berth Milton, Sr,” the noted Swedish pornographer.

Drive-in Classic 4 of 50: PRIME TIME

2010-02-24T13:23:00.005-05:00

Still jumping around in the Drive-in Classics 50-movie pack, I selected 1977's Prime Time as my next "classic." It's a sketch film, a subgenre of comedy that inevitably yields mixed results. Kentucky Fried Movie and Amazon Women on the Moon are both full of funny moments, and they take advantage of having a larger budget and more production time than a TV sketch show would have... but they also both have their share of stupid segments. Loose Shoes, on the other hand, doesn't have a single sketch that's amusing enough to justify its existence. I had never heard of Prime Time before I got this DVD set, but I was eager to see if the funny outweighed the stupid. And, well... I don't want to ruin the suspense, but I'll just go ahead and tell you that this movie sucked.

THE MOVIE
As Prime Time begins, a high-ranking military officer named Bill settles down to watch TV somewhere in Washington, D.C. He sees a commercial for "Trans Puerto Rico," an airline boasting air conditioning (a ceiling fan), freshly-cooked meals (brown sludge prepared by an unhygenic slob of a chef), and plenty of baggage room to accommodate the body bag containing your mother. You might be thinking, What does any of that have to do with Puerto Rico? It's just the first of many segments designed to be as offensive as possible to various ethnic groups and nationalities.

That's followed by a televised speech by Congressman Simon, who rants to an empty stadium on the subject of moral decay before getting shot dead. High-ranking military officer Bill frantically alerts a colleague, who tells him that in fact there is no Congressman Simon, and nobody knows where that broadcast came from: "Somebody's messing with the TV waves." They realize that this is a matter for the president of the United States, so they alert him to the situation. And then there's a commercial for a men's product called Stay Down, which prevents unwanted erections but causes flatulence.

And that's the way the whole movie works. It's a bunch of TV show and commercial parodies, interrupted every 10 minutes or so by the president and his advisors trying to figure out what's happening. Segments include:

A news report on the new law that allows a fetus to be aborted through its fifth year of life
A telethon for sexual deviation
A Charlie's Angels spoof called Manny's Nymphs, featuring three overweight women
An oil company executive announcing that his company has discovered a new cheap energy source: the Negro

You get the idea. Nearly every sketch has something to do with 1) bathroom humor, 2) juvenile sex jokes, or 3) the hilariousness of all non-WASP peoples. Eventually all this rogue programming causes rioting in the streets, and the presidents makes the decision to blow up the world. I think. Maybe. Honestly, I was just relieved it was all over.

IS IT FUNNY?
No. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

No.

SOME OTHER TOPICS THIS MOVIE THINKS ARE FUNNY

Breasts on areas of the body they don't belong
Feminine hygiene products
Slavery
Killing the elderly
Charles Whitman, the University of Texas student who killed 14 people and wounded 32 in a shooting spree on campus eleven years before this movie was released. This comes up in a scene featuring two guys climbing a tower with their guns to participate in the "Charles Whitman Invitational," and then we see them shooting pedestrians below, and then we see the victims getting hit and falling down, and then the shooters tie the dead bodies to the roof of their truck, and... that's comedy?

LESSONS I LEARNED
-This movie sucks.

COMMENTS

-Sometimes when I look at the way my own personal comedy standards have evolved, I wonder if my mind has gone too far into the gutter. I will sometimes laugh at inappropriate jokes that would have seemed repulsive to me, say, 15 years ago. But the fact that I hated Prime Time actually makes me feel really good about my own sense of decency.

-So was there anything in the movie that made me laugh? Looking over my notes, I see just one: A commercial that starts very seriously, promoting a sermon by an important minister... who is then revealed to be a poodle. It was all downhill from there.

-I suppose obscene language was still fairly novel in movies at this point. It seems like often the writers are counting on nothing more than the use of the s-word of the f-word to provide the key laugh of a scene.

-In fact, there's a lot of stuff that couldn't be done on TV in 1977, and still couldn't. I'm sure it would have been possible to create a film composed of too-hot-for-network-TV parodies that were actually clever. But this movie's not up to the task.

-One thing I will concede: Many of the commercial parodies must have been inspired by ad campaigns from the 1970s and earlier, which I've never seen. I'm familiar with "How do you spell relief?" but I've never seen an "Open your mouth for milk" commercial in my life. So maybe -- maybe -- I would have had a better appreciation of where the jokes were supposed to be if I had seen this movie upon its release. Speaking of which, the internet tells me that this film is sometimes called American Raspberry. So, there's that.

-One of the women in the "Manny's Nymphs" segment is none other than Suzanne Kent, perhaps best known as Mrs. Renee from Pee-wee's Playhouse. Another sketch featured Harry Shearer as a hapless hitchhiker. And former Texas governor hopeful Kinky Friedman shows up to sing a disgusting song about Ol' Ben Lucas, who had a lot of mucus. Friedman is also credited with providing vocals for a sort-of music video for the song "If I Were a Carpenter," which presents the song as a duet sung by Mary and Joseph on their way to the manger. I suppose the joke is supposed to be that Joseph was, in fact, a carpenter and Mary was a lady, but it seems... oddly sincere. They only undercut it by having the booming voice of God point out that it's going to be His baby.

-There's not much about this movie on the web, but the Unknown Movies site has this review, including some information on its distribution, for those really eager to know.

Letter grade for Prime Time: F

So what should I watch next? Hmm... I'm thinking either Black Hooker from the drive-in classics set, or Sex Madness from the cult classics set. What do you think?

Drive-in Classic 3 of 50: THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT

2009-09-15T19:30:00.001-04:00

And now for a chance of pace. A big, hairy, stinky change of pace. The Legend of Bigfoot was released in 1976, and according to the description on the DVD sleeve, it's a documentary. I was expecting it to be the kind of thing that you might see on the Discovery Channel... a look at the history of the Bigfoot legend, with some blurry photos and plaster casts but no new information. And, of course, it would contain the famous Patterson-Gimli Bigfoot film. Yeah, I definitely knew it would include the Patterson film, which we've all seen a million times.

I was wrong.

Wait, what? Could a public domain movie included in one of these 50-movie packs actually have something that I, a former child Bigfoot aficionado, had never seen before? Maybe!

THE "STORY"
The film was directed by Harry Stuart Winer, but the star of the show, the guy who wants us all to listen to him talk, is Ivan Marx. I looked him up - Ivan Marx was active in the Bigfoot believers community for a while, but this page, which refers to him as "the greatest huckster," seems representative of what most of his peers thought of him. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt! He's here to tell us about Bigfoot, and the whole movie is a first-person account of his personal Sasquatch journey.

From the very beginning, there are many shots of rugged outdoorsy stuff. What is this, a cigarette commercial? HA! Ivan Marx's voiceover says, sincerely: "This is my country." He's a tracker, see, which means he doesn't kill for sport, but to protect innocent animals from mean ol' bully animals. Or something like that. One day he was called to Alaska, where a rancher reported a large animal was killing his cows. Marx figured it must be a Kodiak bear-- but hold the phone! The rancher had a different idea: He insisted 'twas Bigfoot killed the beef. HA HA HAHA HAHA HA! That's a laugh. Of course, Marx doesn't believe in Bigfoot: "What a buncha hogwash," he says, with just as much sincerity as the nature stuff.

Marx tells his brother-in-law about the Bigfoot nonsense, but the bro-in-law says, "Hold on there, pardner! Bigfoots might be real!" (Not an exact quote.) See, 700 years ago, Indians drew pictures on cave walls of a giant man-beast-creature-monster-thing. What more proof could you ask for? And no sooner are the splinters of doubt stuck in the finger of Marx's mind than he comes across an 18-inch-long footprint... with hair in it! He sends it to a lab, and they report that the hair doesn't come from any known animal. Which would imply that it comes from... an unknown animal. Like a purple octo-zebra! That's an unknown animal, right? Well -- have you ever known one?

Long story short, Marx soon becomes a Bigfoot beliver. He searches all over the country in places where Bigfoots (or is it Bigfeet?) have been reported... and then, in Washington state, he sees one! It seems to have injured its foot, and sadly, the Bigfoot nation has no public health care system, so it's limping around in pain, but Marx captures it on film. He's amazed at his luck... but honestly, I'm more amazed that he expected anyone to accept the film as real, 'cause gee, it sure looks like a person wearing a furry suit and doing a funny dance. But Marx doesn't mention that.

Soon Marx develops a theory, based on his hardcore research, of course: Bigfoot migrates! The species travels north from various places in North America toward the Arctic Circle, where it mates at the moose breeding grounds. He doesn't tell us how the moose might feel about the Bigfoots invading their sex playground. Marx still can't get anyone to believe he's seen a Bigfoot with his own eyes, so he resolves to get real proof, even if it means traveling far from home, braving the cold, and watching moose gettin' it on. Because apparently filming a "real, live" Bigfoot still wasn't good enough.

BODY COUNT
No humans died, but a couple of animals don't make it through the film alive.

LESSONS I LEARNED
-Bigfoot migrated across the Bering Strait before the Ice Age. That's why he lives in North America! What?

-According to Ivan Marx: "You don't know what it is to wait 'til you've been a tracker." (My brother drives a Tracker. Does that count?)

-Ground squirrels play hard to get.

-The legends are true: Bigfoot can turn into a white bird, or some crap like that.

-Moose sexual tension is actually not sexy at all.

MY FAVORITE LINES
Ivan Marx: (while waiting for Bigfoot to show up on a beach) My secluded beach turned into Coney Island! The only way Bigfoot could show up here was wearing swimming trunks!

Ivan Marx: (while chasing a Bigfoot with his camera) What the hell am I doing?!

SADDEST MOMENT
-Marx has a whole feature film to fill, so he wastes some time by filming two ground squirrels. They're a playful mating pair... and then one of them gets hit by a car.

COMMENTS
-When I was a kid, I was all about Bigfoot. I'm still not convinced it's impossible (sadly, I've pretty much given up on the Loch Ness Monster) that they exist, but jeez, this movie doesn't help the cause of the believers much. So much of the theorizing just seems like stuff Ivan Marx made up as he went along... and then when he realized he still didn't have enough to make a feature film, he threw in a bunch of random nature footage and called it a day.

-You know, one of the things that made the aforementioned Patterson-Gimli Bigfoot film so debatable was the shaky camera work and the distance from the subject. It could just be a guy in a suit... but it's hard to tell! So let's assume Ivan Marx wanted his own much-talked-about Bigfoot footage, so he bought some suits and had his wife film him hopping around. He should have had her stand farther away! He should have had her shake the camera around! There's some Bigfoot footage at the end of the film that almost looks more like the Sasquatch family decided to shoot some home movies than an amazing example of wildlife caught on camera. And from what I've read online, this is not even the fakest of Marx's Bigfoot "evidence."

-So, yeah. Maybe Bigfoot is real, but Ivan Marx was not the man to prove it.

-Did this really play in drive-ins? I can't imagine it being very interesting to teenagers, but then, they were probably only there to get to first base anyway. Kind of like those moose.

-To be fair, the nature footage in this film probably looked pretty good on movie screens. Certainly it looked better than the washed-out copy on my public domain DVD set, anyway.

-So what do YOU think? Are there Bigfoots? Sasquatches? Oomahs? Yetis? Harry and the Hendersons? Let me know in the comments!

Letter grade for The Legend of Bigfoot: C

So what should I watch next? I'm really trying to avoid anything that looks like horror, so I'm thinking maybe my next "50 Movie Pack" movie will be Prime Time, which is allegedly a comedy.

Drive-in Classic 2 of 50: CREEPERS

2009-08-29T10:00:00.000-04:00

Back to the "50 Drive-in Classics" DVD set! Once again I shun the order of the discs, and I jump directly to Creepers, a 1985 horror movie starring a very, very young Jennifer Connelly, before she won an Oscar, before she starred in Career Opportunities or Labyrinth, and before she became one of the most frequently screen-captured women on the internet.

Creepers was directed by Dario Argento, an Italian filmmaker who is quite popular among horror aficionados. He's also the father of actress Asia Argento, who almost became a star after appearing in the craptacular Vin Diesel action movie XXX.

An interesting fact I found in researching this movie online: Creepers is the title of the American cut of this movie, which has been edited to remove some of the gory stuff. The original version of the film is called Phenomena, which should not be confused with the movie Phenomenon starring John Travolta, even though Travolta, like Jennifer Connelly, has appeared in a movie based on a Marvel comic book (Travolta was in The Punisher, Connelly was in The Incredible Hulk).

Anyway. What's this movie about?

THE STORY:
In the first scene, a hapless young tourist girl gets left behind in the Swiss countryside when her tour bus leaves without her. She responds by doing what any smart-thinking person would do: She wanders unannounced into a random house. Seeking help, she shouts "I'm a foreigner!", which struck me as very funny for whatever reason. Argento lets us see that somewhere in the house something is chained to a wall and trying to get loose, but we don't see who or what it is. Before long, the girl is being chased by someone, and then her head gets cut off and thrown over a waterfall. Sploosh!

Months later, her decomposing head (Ewwww!) is examined by police officers and Dr. John McGregor (Donald Pleasance), an insect expert who can tell how long the head has been in the river by the type of maggots that are crawling on it, or something. It's pretty disgusting, but they're all very noncholant about this bodiless head they're looking at. Also: Pleasance has a pet chimp named Tina.

So where's Jennifer Connelly? Oh, here she is. She plays a teenage girl named Jennifer Corvino. Hey, her name is very similar to her actual-for-real name! I wonder if that was deliberate. Jennifer is the daughter of a famous, hunky movie star, so everyone she meets knows who her dad is. When we meet her, her dad's assistant is taking her to a private school, where she'll spend the year while he's in the Phillippines. Also: She likes bugs.

On Jennifer's first night in her room at the school, her roommate casually tells her there's a serial killer in the area. It's like, "Just so you know, sometimes I snore, and we're not allowed in the kitchen, and some guy's been killing people in our neighborhood. Good night!" And then we CUT TO: One of the girls from the school being chased by the unseen killer!

Meanwhile, Jennifer rises from her bed in a trance. Her head is filled with images of a long, bright corridor with doors everywhere, and electronic music plays on the soundtrack, and for just a second it feels like a Labyrinth prequel. But then she wanders outside -- she's sleepwalking! Unfortunately, her sleepwalking takes her right to the site of the latest murder by the killer. Then she falls off a roof, gets hit by a car, gets picked up by some teenage boys, jumps out of the car, and ends up hanging out with Dr. McGregor and his chimp.

Eventually, Dr. McGregor figures out the truth about Jennifer and her affinity for insects. She can actually communicate with them telepathically. She's like Ant-Man, only without the ability to grow and shrink, or the drinking problem (Wow, another Marvel superhero!). And then a bunch of stuff happens, and Jennifer's roommate gets killed by the murderer, and Dr. McGregor figures out that Jennifer can team up with a corpse-detecting fly to track down the killer. Which is a great idea! Except that Jennifer is a 14-year-old girl. So maybe it's not so wise for her to deliberately go to the home of a guy who's brutally murdered several other teenage girls.

I won't reveal the identity of the killer, but I will say that it's not anyone I would have guessed. Also, there are more maggots in this movie than most movies I've seen this year.

LESSONS I LEARNED
-Baby food tastes like cat food.

-It's an accepted scientific fact that insects can communicate via telepathy.

-One should never eat gummy worms while watching a movie that features many, many shots of maggots crawling all over everything.

BODY COUNT
Seven.

Memorable Lines
Roommate: What do you think about before you fall asleep?
Jennifer: My father.
Roommate: If I thought about your father, I’d never get any sleep!

Teacher: (desperately trying to get the class to pay attention) And what about Shakespeare? Mozart, Beethoven? And Richard Wagner?
Student: RICHARD GERE! (Classroom erupts in hollers of girls.)

MOST HORRIFYING MOMENT
When Jennifer finds herself in the killer's house, she ends up falling in a pool of dead bodies, body parts, and sludge in the basement. Yeccch.

COMMENTS
-So, I guess Dario Argento is considered a great horror director, but while this movie was competently made with some real suspense, the blood & guts aren't really my style. I can't imagine what the longer, more graphic version is like.

-It's nice to see Donald Pleasance in a movie where he doesn't get killed by Michael Myers.

-The movie has a largely heavy metal score. Sometimes it's effective, but usually it just draws attention to itself and reminds us that the movie is from 1985. The opening credits list the contributing bands, including Motorhead, Iron Maiden, and Andy Sex Gang. "Andy Sex Gang"?!?

-Tina the chimp is actually a pretty important character in the movie. In fact, if it weren't for her and her quick primate thinking, Jennifer wouldn't survive the movie!

-So Jennifer Connelly is the star of this film, and I know what you're all wondering: Does she appear standing at the end of a pier? (See Dark City, Requiem for a Dream, and House of Sand and Fog). Well, no. But she does run across a dock to a boat at one point! An early-career indication of things to come.

-I like that they don't try too hard to explain Jennifer's power. There's no "You were swarmed by magical insects when you were a baby, and they blessed you with their language!" It's just, "So, you can talk to bugs. Cool."

-I'm not normally one to yell at characters in a movie, but I'll confess that I actually shouted the classic "DON'T GO IN THERE!" to Jennifer during one scene.

-I'm sure today's kids are jaded, but this seems like the type of movie that would have been great to rent in high school with a group of friends and hope the girl you like gets spooked and grabs your arm a lot.

-Whoa! While I've been writing this I'm watching The Tonight Show in the background, and Conan O'Brien just said "Jennifer Connelly" right when I was typing her name! WHOAAAAA! I guess she's going to be on the show next week... I hope they spend the whole time talking about this movie!

-Did I mention there are a lot of maggots in this movie? 'Cause there are a lot of maggots.

Letter grade for Creepers: B-. Like I said, the icky stuff isn't my cup of tea, but I can see how it's a good example of its genre.

Stay tuned for more "drive-in classics!" And maybe some "cult classics!"

Drive-in Classic 1 of 50: I WONDER WHO'S KILLING HER NOW?

2009-07-07T08:00:00.001-04:00

Disclaimer: Although I'm titling this post with "Drive-in Classic 1 of 50," 1975's I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now?, directed by Steven Hilliard Stern, is not actually the first movie in the Mill Creek 50 Movie Pack: Drive-in Classics DVD set. It's just the one I decided to watch first, based mostly on the title.

The title, of course, is a goof on the old song I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now. My initial assumption was that this would be a really bad thriller with a high body count. But as soon as I pressed PLAY, that belief was challenged. An animated opening title sequence? A credit that reads "Starring Bill Dana?" Could this be... a... comedy?

(Bill Dana, by the way, is a comedian best known for playing a Mexican character named José Jimenez, who ranks somewhere near the Frito Banditio in terms of political correctness.)

And it is indeed a comedy, or at least it thinks it is. It starts out promisingly enough, but about halfway through the tone changes, and the whole thing becomes really, really stupid.

THE STORY:

Jordan Oliver (I thought maybe this was Bill Dana, but no, it's Bob Dishy) is married to a wealthy, frigid woman named Clarice, and he works for her father's company. Jordan just has one little flaw as an employee: He's been stealing from the company for years. His supervisor tells him he has just 30 days to repay the $250,000 he's stolen, so he plans to ask his wife for help. But it's not Jordan's lucky day, because when he gets home his wife announces that she's planning to divorce him.

So what can Jordan do? He attempts to sell his collection of paintings, but a dealer tells him they're forgeries (He actually says "feurrrgeries"), and the entire collection is only worth $25,000. And that's just for the frames.

In a session with his analyst, Jordan has a brainstorm: What if he took out a life insurance policy on Clarice, then had her killed? What a quick and easy way to get the money! His analyst vows not to tell anyone, because he takes doctor-patient confidentiality seriously. But can he do it? That day at lunch, his fortune cookie encourages him: "DON'T BE A COWARD! DO IT NOW!!!" After taking in a movie called Die! Die! My Pet, Jordan makes up his mind: He's going to kill his wife.

Before the insurance policy can go into effect, he has to arrange for Clarice to have a physical, which he manages to do without her knowing, in an occasionally funny scene featuring future Karate Kid and Happy Days star Pat Morita as a very sneaky doctor. Then he heads to a bar, where he meets a wacky ethnic guy named Bobo (Bill Dana), and hires him to do the job.

But wait! The insurance guy has bad news: The doctor Jordan hired to do the physical is not a real doctor (of course not... he's a martial arts expert who runs a malt shop!), so the insurance policy is not yet effective! In a panic, Jordan tracks down Bobo, only to discover that Bobo subcontracted another hitman - Patla, another wacky ethnic guy.

So they both track him down, only to discover that he sub-subcontracted another hitman - Dr. Binay, who runs a fat farm, speaks like Bela Lugosi, and employs as a nurse a man in drag. So they all track him down, only to discover that he sub-sub-subcontracted another hitman - CIA agent James Kirsten, who is undercover as a (wacky French) waiter but is secretly a bricklaying enthusiast. And yep, he hired another guy, and he hired another guy, and so on and so forth, and please is this movie over yet?

The early scenes with Jordan scheming to get the money are entertaining enough, with a few clever gags. For example, at the movie theater, he views a scene in which the character names and dialogue are exactly the same as the preceeding divorce scene between himself and his wife.

But as soon as Bobo reveals the existence of Patla, any trace of wit disappears, and instead we get a series of scenes that each serve only to introduce the next wacky ethnic caricature. The writers stop creating jokes; instead, they just sit back and rely on silly men just being silly. It's almost like there are two movies happening here: One is an offbeat but enjoyable enough comedy about a guy trying to kill his wife, and the other one is a loud, obnoxious mess about a bunch of character actors running around acting ridiculous.

COMMENTS:
-Man, there is nothing about this movie on the internet. Even IMDb only has one external review link.

-So how come Bill Dana gets the "Starring" credit when Bob Dishy's Jordan Oliver is the main character? Was Jose Jimenez really that popular?

-When the waiter/CIA agent/bricklayer showed up , I thought it was prolific character actor Vincent Schiavelli, but sadly it was not. It was Richard Libertini, whom I don't think I had ever heard of before.

-There's a gag early on where Jordan sits at a piano, and appears to be beautifully playing a stirring classical piece, but then it's revealed that he's just miming it and the real music is coming from a tiny man playing a tiny piano. It's... odd. And then the art dealer is very short also. This movie clearly believes that short = hilarious.

-One gag during Jordan's search for a hitman involves a flasher on a street corner. Is this just a comedy thing, or did it really exist at some point -- Men standing on street corners wearing large trenchcoats, waiting to open them and reveal their everythings to unsuspecting passersby? If so, where are all the flashers today?

-Apparently this movie sometimes goes by the title Kill My Wife, Please, which is absolutely no better or worse than I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now?

-According to IMDb, director Steven Hilliard Stern also directed a TV movie called Murder in Space. I think I would like to see that.

Letter grade for I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now?: C

I don't know when I'll watch another one of these things, but I'm pretty my next one will be the "Drive-in Classic" Creepers, starring a very young Jennifer Connelly. But I still have 49 drive-in movies and 20 "Cult Classics" left to go, so I have plenty to choose from. Stay tuned!

50 Horror Classics: The Wrap-up

2009-02-18T18:00:00.006-05:00

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.

Horror Classic 50 of 50: THE PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES

2009-02-11T22:55:00.001-05:00

Countdown update: After this movie, there are... zero. Zero horror classics out of 50.

Wow! Can that possibly be true? Why, as good as these movies have been, it seems like only... only 12 years ago that I started this project. And now here I am, about to write up the very last one, 1955's The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues. Do you suppose the people at Mill Creek Entertainment who put these DVDs together saved the best for last? Will this phantom be even better than that other phantom who hung around the opera? Let's dive in and find out.

But first! Let me remind you that this blog ain't over yet! Next week I'll be posting the super mega deluxe Horror Movies Wrap-up post. In 3-D!

Synopsis
So there's this guy out fishing in a little rowboat in the ocean, and suddenly a monster shows up, tips his boat over, and fondles him vigorously until he dies.

Wait! They already showed us the monster? It hasn't even been 5 minutes yet! And here already we know exactly what the monster looks like (a cross between an iguana and one of those Chinese parade dragons, but less animated than either)! The filmmakers must have something pretty special planned for the rest of the movie if they're willing to go all-out like that in the first scene.

Later that day, the body of the fisherman is found on the beach by two men: federal agent Bill Grant, and a visitor in town whose name is Ted Baxter. Ted Baxter! Unfortunately, he's not played by Ted Knight, and he's not a dim, arrogant newsman. The two men are suspicious of each other, and it doesn't help when Ted explains that he's in town to see Professor King at the university. Grant doesn't trust Professor King either, what with his mysterious experiments and all.

Not long after, we see Professor King himself come home to the house he shares with his grown-up daughter. When Ted knocks on the door and asks to see King, King runs and hides in his room, then sneaks out the window, because he's suspicious of Ted (and pretty much all other people). Basically, everyone is suspicious of everyone else. If the cast of this movie had been on the game show Who Do You Trust?, they would have won zero dollars.

So, it's pretty obvious at this point that King is the monster, right? Like, his crazy experiments have resulted in his occasional transformation into a sea monster with killing as a hobby. Man, I've been watching so many of these old horror movies I can see this stuff coming from a mile away.

When Agent Grant and Ted run into each other again, Grant reveals that he's discovered the truth about Ted Baxter: His name's not really Ted Baxter. He's actually Ted Stevens, and he's a scientist himself, a scientist who's done a series of experiments with radiation and sea creatures, which somehow has the potential to lead to the invention of a death ray. And he's never been married to Georgia Engel! He's concerned about Professor King's experiments, because they might lead to something pretty unpleasant for all life as we know it. All of this, of course, makes Agent Grant suspicious.

How about a few more characters who are suspicious? Okay! There's Andy, the janitor who works at King's office, but he doesn't get much to do so why the heck am I even mentioning him? And there's King's secretary Ethel, who snoops around every chance she gets.

Not to mention George! George is former student of King's who now lurks around spying on everyone. He's in cahoots with Wanda, an icy blonde who works for... somebody. It's never explained who, but I guess the implication is that it's the Russians. And you know how much those commies would love to get their hands on our secrets for creating death rays and really ugly monsters!

Ted finally manages to make an appointment to talk to Professor King. By this time, Ted has started flirting with King's daughter Lois. Uncharacteristically, King tells Ted to show up at his house any time and walk in the unlocked front door. It soon becomes clear why the writers made this choice: It's so Ted can catch a quick glimpse of Lois wrapped in a towel just out of the shower.

When King shows up (wearing clothing, not a towel), he and Ted have a talk, and King reveals that he, too, knows that "Ted Baxter" is actually Ted Stevens. How did he deduce this? Well, it has something to do with his owning a copy of Ted's book, which has a giant picture of Ted on the cover. This guy is really, really bad at hiding his identity.

By this point, Ted has gone for an underwater swim himself, and he's seen the monster with his own eyes. As he talks to King, the truth comes out: The monster is a sea animal mutated by the hydrogen-uranium isotope, which King created and which was affected by the heavy water, and now the monster is guarding the uranium, and... whew. Anyway, I was wrong. King's not the monster, he's just a monstrously careless scientist.

I feel like this is a long synopsis. Does this synopsis feel long to you? Oh well, it's my last horror classic. Woo-hoo!

So, the next thing that happens is, the monster comes out of the water, starts singing, and soon becomes a star on Broadway! No, I'm sorry. That doesn't happen. But wouldn't be great if it did? The next actually important thing that does happen is Agent Grant and Ted decide to dive into the water and kill that thing. Their plan doesn't quite work out, because Ted is a lousy shot with a spear gun. Soon, Professor King realizes it's his responsibility to blow up that dang ol' monster, even if it means blowin' up his own dang self in the process.

Is It Scary?
It is not.

Lessons I Learned

A small deposit of uranium on the ocean floor will cause any ship that passes over it to explode.
The best way to endear yourself to the girl you like is to walk into her house while she's taking a shower and sit outside the bathroom door.

Body Count
Six, plus the entire crew of a cargo ship.

My Favorite Lines

Lois: "You should do that more often!"
Ted: "What?"
Lois: "Smile."
Ted: (with no emotion whatsoever) "Well, all I need is a little encouragement. And you've given that to me."
Professor King, to his secretary: "Ethel, I consider you intelligent. A bit bitter, perhaps, no great lover of mankind. But intelligent."
George, to his ex-lover Wanda: "For quite a while, were were just a man and a woman, weren't we? I didn't know then they could put beauty and poison so cleverly in one package."
George: "You see too much, Ethel. You should wear blinkers." [Did he maybe mean "blinders?"
Wanda: "You don't look well, George. Or is it just that I don't find you attractive anymore?"

Comments
• The answer to my question, "Did they save the best for last?" is no. This was one of those movies that, despite its short running time (this one was 80 minutes), seemed very slowly paced. A lot of the actors were less than impressive... Ted was a boring lead and Wanda always sounded like she was reading lines.

• Doesn't the word "phantom" usually imply something ghostly, or at least sneaky? This was a big, bulky, ugly monster. Not very phantomian. I'm pretty sure he wasn't from 10,000 leagues, either. Maybe it means the monster is a baseball player, and he's played in 10,000 different leagues in his career. But probably not.

• At various points in the film, we see Professor King performing experiments to mutate a turtle, but he ends up killing it. It's too bad he didn't let that mutant turtle grow to be a teenager... It could have become a ninja.

• The part where Ted Stevens is trying to pass himself off as "Ted Baxter" to Professor King, and then Professor King goes into the next room, where he has a science book written by Ted Stevens with an enormous picture of the author on the cover? Pretty hilarious. What publishing company specializing in books on scientific theory would put the author on the cover like that? Why not a picture of something scientific, like an isotope or the periodic table or the universe?

• At first it seemed like a bold choice to show the monster in the first five minutes of the movie. Upon further consideration, however, it just seems stupid.

• Ted Stevens' hairstyle looked a lot like Sean Connery's from the James Bond movies. I would suggest that he did it on purpose, but this movie was released in 1955, seven years before the first Bond film. So maybe Sean Connery stole his look from this guy!

• Every time a character jumps off a boat to go diving, on the score there's this little glissando on the piano as they plunge into the water. It's pretty cartoony, but I liked it. (I hope "glissando" is the correct term here. If it's not, please don't tell Uvalde High School band director Mr. Derocher that I got it wrong.)

Letter grade for The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues: C-

Next film in the 50-movie set: Nothing. That's all she wrote. That's the whole ball of wax. That's the whole bowl of fruit, the whole salad. But come back next week for the wrap-up post!

Horror Classic 49 of 50: DEMENTIA 13

2009-02-04T21:00:00.003-05:00

Countdown update: If you can do basic math, you may have already guessed that after his, I only have 1 movie left to go!

Just one left! That means next week is the last horror classic! But it won't be the end of this blog, no sirree, Bob. In two weeks, I'll post a grand finale of a post, which will be moving, entertaining, stirring, and spectacular. I'm calling it -- Are you ready for this? -- The 50 Horror Movies Wrap-up.

Hmm. So maybe it's not such a catchy title. Certainly it's not as catchy as Dementia 13, the title of this week's movie. It was released in 1963, produced by Roger Corman, and it's more or less the directing debut of Francis Ford Coppola, who would later go on to direct such masterpieces as The Godfather, The Godfather Part 2, and Captain E-O. And no, it is not the sequel to Dementias 1 through 12.

Synopsis

Married couple John and Louise are out in a boat, surrounded by darkness. Why would you go for a boat ride at night? Don't they fear the Creature from the Haunted Sea? Well, it's not that kind of movie, so instead of getting eaten, they argue. It's the night before John's family reuinion, and Louise thinks it's ridiculous that John's sickly old mother still has Kathleen in her will. It's impossible to know whether she's right or not, because we have no idea who Kathleen is yet. Is she a budgie? If so, I'm gonna have to side with Louise on this one.

Long story short, John has a heart attack and Louise drops him in the lake. Then she forges a letter from John to his mom (including a spacing typo!), in which the fake John says, "Hey, I'm sorry I couldn't make it on time, but Louise is coming, so be nice to her, and I'll be there later." Then she goes to Castle Haloran in Ireland, where John's family is gathering for a rather morbid purpose.

It's the anniversary of the death of Kathleen, and just as they do every year, the Halorans are having a memorial service for her. Kathleen died when she was a little girl -- she went missing overnight and was found drowned in the pond in the morning -- and poor old Mother has never gotten over it. Also present at this spooky kooky castle are John's brothers Billy and Richard, and Richard's bride-to-be Kane, who Mother disapproves of.

"Kane"? Is that a name? Do you suppose Richard ever affectionately calls her "Kane, Sugar"?

So the castle's big and eerie, and everyone stares at each other a lot, but nobody seems to catch on to Louise's foul play. Her plan, you see, is to endear herself to Mrs. Haloran, then convince the old lady that Kathleen is speaking to her from beyond the grave and wants her to put Louise in her will. Hmm... How much sense does that make? Kathleen's going to project herself from the afterlife just to say, "Hey, Mom! You know that lady that my brother married, whom I never met? You should really leave her all your money! Really!"

But Mrs. Haloran has so few noodles left in her mental soup that it just might work. So after the memorial, Louise steals a few of Kathleen's old dolls and begins a complicated plan to moor them to the bottom of the pond so Mrs. Haloran will perceive it as a sign. This plan, naturally, requires Louise to strip down to her underwear. I can assure you, it's absolutely necessary to the hott. I mean, to the plot.

Guess what Louise sees at the bottom of the pond. A rubber tire? No! A boot? No! Judge Crater (look it up)? No! It's a small shrine to Kathleen, complete with a little monument that says FORGIVE ME KATHLEEN. What the hey? Who put that thing there? Does somebody in the family know more about the girl's death then they're letting on?

You might expect that the rest of the film would be about Louise finding more clues and working her way through that mystery... but you'd be proven wrong as soon as she surfaces from the pond and is immediately ATTACKED BY A SHADOWY FIGURE WITH AN AXE, WHO HACKS HER UP AND DISPOSES OF THE BODY! Wow. I didn't see that coming. Clearly somebody is determined to hide the truth.

Now what? Well, now there's still the family doctor, who has some suspicions of his own. With Mrs. Haloran distracted by her favorite dead daughter, Billy being kind of a wuss, and Richard and Kane busy with their stupid ol' wedding plans, it'll be up to Dr. Detective to figure things out. Before the movie ends, there's another axe murder, a creepy human-size wax doll, and a couple of fake-sounding Irish accents.

Is It Scary?

I have to admit, that first murder really startled me. As you might guess, this film was made after Psycho, so it's pretty obvious Coppola was influenced by that other movie about an attractive blonde who schemes to dishonestly take a large sum of money, shows us her underwear, then dies halfway through the film.

Lessons I Learned

Don't go swimming in your underwear in the middle of the night in a pond where your husband's little sister died. I guess most people would never even have that opportunity, but you can't be too careful.
Putting two blonde women with similar hairstyles in the same movie can be confusing. (I spent about 15 minutes thinking Louise and Kane were the same person.)

My Favorite Line

Kane, to Richard: "You know, sometimes I think you see me as a Christmas tree ornament!"

Body Count
Four.

Comments
• I wasn't sure what to expect from this. Sure, Coppola's made some good movies, but this was his first real film and it was made with the frugal B-movie producer Roger Corman. It was a passable thriller... It seems like the kind of thing that would be remade.

• My roommate's girlfriend Katie was around for this one. I asked for her assessment when the movie was over, and she said, "The first half was good. I sorta fell asleep after that. It looked a lot like the inside of my eyelids."

• So why "Dementia 13"? The number 13 never enters into it. According to the Wikipedia article, they were just going to call it Dementia, but there had already been a film by that name. Also according to that article, there was an extra scene at the beginning of the theatrical print, in which a "doctor" administered the "D-13 test" to determine whether the moviegoers could handle what they were about to see.

• I want to point out that I watched this movie during the first half of the Super Bowl. Football game? What football game?

• I don't want to spoil too much, but that wax doll I mentioned earlier? Totally creepy.

Letter grade for Dementia 13: C
Next film in the 50-movie set: The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues. The last of the horror classics! Will it be within the realm of watchability like the last disc and a half's worth of movies, or will it be another complete stinker? I can't wait to find out.

Horror Classic 48 of 50: THE LAST MAN ON EARTH

2009-01-28T00:00:00.001-05:00

Countdown update: After this film, I only have 2 left to go! Will I make it? Or will the next movie be so bad that it inspires me to feed myself to the walrus at the zoo? Stay tuned!

The Last Man on Earth stars Vincent Price. Released in 1964, it was based on the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, which would later be adapted as The Omega Man (with Charlton Heston), and again as I Am Legend (with Will Smith). How about that? Three different movies based on the same book, and they have three different titles! I can't think of any other instances of that happening, can you?

Why did the first two versions change the title? I don't know, but maybe it was because I Am Legend is a pretty stupid title. I honestly have to wonder if it was supposed to be called I Am a Legend and Richard Matheson just forgot the article. Or maybe it's a referene to some classic medieval poem or something and I'm just showing my ignorance. Duhhhh.

Synopsis

The opening credits list a bunch of actors other than Vincent Price, which seems kind of curious for a movie about the last living man on the planet.

Poor old Robert Morgan. He's quite lonely, you see, because he's the last man on Earth! What happened to everyone else? We won't find out until later. My guess? They were all eaten by the walrus at the zoo.

Morgan has his daily routine down: He gets up, sharpens a few stakes, hops in his car, and drives around the city killing the vampires that live in every nook and cranny. He disposes of their bodies by dumping them in an enormous funeral pyre. When night falls, he has to stay inside, so he throws some jazz records on the ol' turntable while vampires try to break into his house, bellowing his name.

See, Morgan's not the last man-like creature on Earth, he's just the last man who hasn't been infected by the nasty disease that turned everyone into a vampire. (They should've used that Airborne stuff!) I should note here that the vampires in this movie are a lot slower and more brainless than traditional movie vampires. In fact, they more closely resemble post-Night of the Living Dead zombies, which makes me wonder if the producers of that film had seen this one. I bet they had, and they were all like, "Hey, let's make us a movie about some creepy folks like that! Only we won't call 'em vampires, and we won't have Vincent Price killin' 'em! It'll be fun! Woo-hoo!" That's probably exactly what they said.

Anyway. There's a lot of scenes of Morgan killing things, dumping bodies, being sad. There's also an extended flashback which starts with his daughter's birthday party (Yaaay!) and ends with his wife and daughter both getting infected with the disease (Booo!). And then he finds a dog, and he's really happy that he's going to have a pet, but then the dog is infected too, so he has to kill it.

Perhaps you've concluded by now that this is not a happy movie.

So, one day Morgan is outside when he sees a broad walking around in lady daylight. I mean, he sees a lady walking around in broad daylight. Could it be? Is she really another normal human? Well, yes and no. The lady is one of a whole herd of people who have been infected, but have created a vaccine to keep the vampirism at bay. They know all about Morgan and his vampire-hunting hobby; in fact you might almost say he's a Legend. In fact, if he were to say it, he might almost say, "I Am a Legend." But under no circumstances would he say, "I Am Legend."

The thing about these non-vampire people, though, is that they're pretty mad at Morgan because he's accidentally been killing some of them under the mistaken impression that they're infected. Whoops. Sorry for killing your friends and dumping their bodies in a giant fire pit, guys. We cool?

No, they're not cool, and now Morgan finds himself running for his life from his fellow humans, who run a lot faster than the vampires, and also have weapons, and better hair.

Is It Scary?
It's certainly unsettling. The flashback was pretty tense, as Morgan and his wife watched their daughter degenerate into one of the infected. Too bad about the casting, though. The daughter under-acted and the wife over-acted... between the two of them they made one good actress.

Lessons I Learned

Plumbing and electricity will still work three years after the vast majority of humans have been wiped out.
Similarly, garlic will stay fresh for at least three years.
Vincent Price makes for a surprisingly sympathetic hero.

My Favorite Line

Morgan, in voiceover: "There was a time when I shopped for a car. Now I'm looking for a hearse. This station wagon will have to do." [I can't quite explain why I found that line amusing, but I did.]

Body Count
Most of the people in the world. But not as many as in Last Woman on Earth.

Comments
• I haven't seen The Omega Man or I Am Legend, so I can't compare this to them, but I'm guessing it's better than the former but not as good as the latter. Unlike so many of these "horror" classics, the filmmakers had a genuinely interesting story to tell... but I don't know. I couldn't help but think the movie would have ben considerably better if they had upped the pace a bit. And I'm not even some punk kid short-attention-span-having MTV-watcher... I've voluntarily watched My Dinner with Andre in its entirety.

• Morgan listens to jazz while the vampires pound on his door at night. If you had vampires tryign to get into your house, what kind of music would you listen to? I think I might go with classic rock.

• Morgan sets an alarm clock to wake him up in the morning. I know he feels like killing vampires all day is his duty, but I honestly don't think I would bother to set an alarm if I were the last human on the planet. I'd sleep in every day! And eat Snickers bars for BREAKFAST!

• There's one scene in which Morgan watches some old home movies of his family going to the circus. Vincent Price starts laughing, and the laughter keeps going, becomes increasingly desperate, and finally breaks into sobs. That's some pretty good acting by Mr. Price there.

• In the flashback we see a newspaper with a lead story about the disease. There's also a headline that reads "CUT-PRICE POLARIS FORCE." What the heck does that mean?

• Morgan doesn't know why he's immune to the infection, but he has a theory: Years ago, in Panama, he was bitten by a bat. That bat must have had an early, weak strain of the germ, and it gave him immunity. If that's the best they could come up with, I think I would have preferred if they hadn't tried to explain it at all.

• This movie doesn't really have anything in common with Roger Corman's Last Woman on Earth. This one is about the miserable, tortured existence of a man who believes himself to be the only person alive to have maintained his humanity, and that one was about two dudes fighting over a chick. But fascinatingly, both films set their final scene in a church.

Letter grade for The Last Man on Earth: B-
Next film in the 50-movie set: Dementia 13. I hear it's better than Dementia 12, but not as good as Dementia 11.

Horror Classic 47 of 50: HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL

2009-01-21T18:00:00.000-05:00

In case you're keeping track, there are just 3 horror classics left in my 50-movie DVD set after this.

Like last week's The Bat, House on Haunted Hill was released in 1959 and stars Vincent Price. Unlike The Bat, however, House was directed by William Castle, a horror flick master with a flair for gimmicks. The flamboyant director played by John Goodman in the underrated 1993 movie Matinee was largely inspired by Castle. I thought for sure I had already watched one Castle film in this DVD set, but as I look over the archives it appears I was mistaken... All the more reason to look forward to this one, then.

According to various online sources, Castle's gimmick for the theatrical screenings of this film was called "Emergo," and it involved a glow-in-the-dark skeleton swinging out over the audience at a scary, climactic moment of the movie, a trick that was perfect for House on Haunted Hill, but which would be notably less effective if used with movies like Steel Magnolias or Brokeback Mountain.

Now, try not to get too scared as I tell you about the movie:

Synopsis

Vincent Price is Frederick Loren, a creepy rich guy who's planned an unconventional all-night "party" in an effort to amuse his disenchanted wife, Annabelle. He's invited five strangers to spend the night in a big, scary house. If they manage to make it until morning, they each get $10,000. Personally, I'd rather earn $10,000 by winning on America's Funniest Home Videos.

The guests are Nora Manning, who is skittish; Lance Schroder (what a name!), a test pilot; Ruth Bridges, a columnist; Dr. David Trent, a doctor; and Mr. Pritchard, who is simultaneously fascinated and terrified by the idea that the house is probably haunted by the ghosts of seven people who have been murdered there in the past. Annabelle is also lurking around, but she doesn't really feel much like socializing.

The plan is for the house's caretakers to lock everyone in and leave the building at midnight, but while they're waiting for the witching hour, Mr. Loren gives his guests a tour, during which blood drips on Ruth, Lance is hit on the head by an unseen assailant, and Nora comes face to face with a hideous ghost! So the house IS haunted! Except the blood might be paint, and the hideous ghost is actually the caretaker lady. Yikes.

By the time midnight rolls around, Nora is so spooked she wants to leave. That's partly because of the bloody, severed head she finds in her suitcase. (I'd be more upset about it touching my toothbrush than anything.) But it's too late! The doors are locked! And then the party really gets rolling: Annabelle Loren thinks her husband is trying to kill her, everyone gets a gun as a party favor, Lance finds the severed head in his closet, and some other scary things happen.

Man, what a crappy party. Not even a game of naked Twister could lighten the mood in this place. What could possibly make this party worse? What about Dr. Trent finding Annabelle's lifeless body hanging over the staircase? She's positioned too high for it to be a suicide, which means somebody in the house killed her! Was it the obvious suspect, Mr. Loren? Or was it... G-G-G-G-G-G-GHOSTS?!

Is It Scary?
Heck yeah. As was true of The Bat, there are no huge, lumbering monsters, but the floating spectres and other ghastly goings-on effectively gave me the creeps.

My Favorite Lines

Frederick, to Annabelle: "Remember the fun we had when you poisoned me?"
Frederick, to the increasingly agitated Pritchard: I've had enough of your spook talk! Get out, you sot, and don't come back into this room again!"
Frederick, to the two characters who conspired against him: "It's a pity you didn't know when you started your game of murder... that I was playing too!"

Lessons I Learned

It's quite easy to stage a haunting.
Blind, elderly, crazy-haired character ladies get around by hovering rather than walking.
Acid left in a vat in the basement will still be there, and still be effective, decades later.

Body Count
Two. More or less.

Comments:
• While this film is not a well-regarded piece of movie history like Nosferatu or Night of the Living Dead, or even a respected cheap horror movie like Carnival of Souls, I think it can genuinely be considered a classic. I would even go so far as to recommend it. It was competently executed, and the scares really worked. I may seek out more William Castle films... It's too bad I can't see them in theaters equipped with SHOCK-O-RAMA or whatever.

• The movie begins with a black screen, and then there's a woman's BLOOD-CURDLING SCREAM! It's a pretty effective way to kick things off and set the tone.

• This is like the 800th movie in this "horror classics" DVD set to take place in a really old, really big, really spooky house. I wish I had created a label for that way back at the beginning. Oh well.

• I don't want to give everything away, so I won't say too much, but there's a scene involving a window and a rope that strains credibility.

• The closing credits listing the cast included "Skeleton - By Himself." That's nice to know. I thought maybe the skeleton had been played by Hedy Lamarr, or President Eisenhower.

• Remember that summer when the remake of this was out in theaters at the same time as The Haunting, which was a remake of The Haunting of Hill House? I saw The Haunting, which was quite terrible, but I never saw the Haunted Hill movie. Did anybody? Was it any good? Did Geoffrey Rush make an effective Vincent Price?

Letter grade for House on Haunted Hill: B. Are these movies getting better or am I getting more generous?
Next film in the 50-movie set: The Last Man on Earth. Gee, do you think he's met the Last Woman on Earth?

Horror Classic 46 of 50: THE BAT

2009-01-14T20:00:00.002-05:00

The Bat. It's a 1959 film starring Agnes Moorehead, which means it came a few years before her role as Endora on Bewitched, and several years before the pinnacle of her career when she played the Goose in the animated Charlotte's Web movie. It also features Vincent Price, as well as Darla Hood, best-known as Darla from The Little Rascals/Our Gang. She's all grown up here, which is strange, as it never occurred to me that the Little Rascals ever grew up.

But that's not the most exciting thing about the movie. The most exciting thing is that it's the 2nd film on Side B of Disc 11 of the 50 Movie Pack: Horror Classics. That means I only have 1 disc of 4 movies left to go!

Anyway. The movie:

Synopsis
Agnes Moorehead plays Cornelia van Gorder, a mystery writer who has rented a house called "The Oaks" for herself and her good pal Lizzy for the summer. In an early scene jam-packed with white-knuckle exposition, we meet Victor Bailey, the local banker; his wife Dale, and police lieutenant Anderson.

They're all happy to welcome Cornelia to their town, but everyone's a little nervous because of a serial killer called (you guessed it!) The Bat. He's described as "a man with no face" (Dude ain't got no face!) who slashes his victim's throats with his claws, and he probably has some connection to the rabid bats who have also been causing trouble.

Cornelia should have spent her summer somewhere else, somewhere without any bats. Does Idaho have bats? She should try Idaho.

Are you ready for more characters? Good. Vincent Price is Dr. Wells, who's hanging out in a secluded cabin with his patient and friend John Flemming, the president of the bank who also happens to own The Oaks. Flemming tells the doc a secret, and it's not "I know who has a crush on you." It's more like, "Hey, guess what? I stole a million dollars worth of securities from my bank and hid them. If we kill our hunting guide, you can put him in a coffin and tell everyone it's me, so everyone will think I'm dead. Then we can split the money and nobody will ever suspect me! Woo-ha!"

Wells has a different plan: He shoots Flemming. Ouch. That's the last time he'll ever tell a secret! (Of course it is; he's dead.) Meanwhile, the bank discovers they're missing a million, and Victor Bailey gets blamed for it and arrested. Tough break, man.

Cornelia and Lizzy have a rough night, during which a storm blows their suit of armor down the stairs, Lizzy gets bitten by a bat... and then The Bat (the killer, not the animal!) tries to break in. Eventually, Dr. Wells is summoned to look at Lizzy's bite. And guess what he's doing when he gets the call? He's experimenting on bats! He's totally the killer. Totally. Come on, he's Vincent Price.

Meanwhile, Mr. Flemming's nephew Mark reports to Lt. Anderson that they can't find any of his uncle's personal fortune. Where could it be? Hidden in the Oaks maybe? Maybe! Cornelia's writerly instincts kick in, and she starts writing a story based directly on the mystery that's unfolding around her.

She gets plenty of material to work with when the Bat breaks into her house one night and kills Mark. Yikes! The next night, Dale (Darla from the Little Rascals!) and her friend Judy (Spanky from the Little Rascals! Just kidding!) sleep over at The Oaks, which seems like a really dumb idea. The writers don't really even try to come up with a contrived reason to keep them there.

Predictably, the Bat waltzes into the house again, and this time he attempts to cut a hole in the wall of a spare room. He's caught in the act by the girls, one thing leads to another, and soon Judy is dead. Fingers are soon pointed at Cornelia's chauffer/butler Warner, who's been hiding the fact that he's been arrested for murder before.

Come on. The Bat is Dr. Wells. It has to be. Oh, wait. He just got killed... by the Bat. Nevermind. So who the heck is the Bat, anyway? Does he know where Mr. Flemming's fortune is hidden? And how many people will he kill before he finds it?

Is It Scary?
Kinda. The Bat is an effectively creepy villain. The black mask that covers his whole face is especially striking in dark, shadowy nighttime scenes. And somehow he seems more fearsome because he's not a slow-moving, hulking monster. He's just a man in a suit, and he moves through the house quietly and nimbly, effecient in his ruthless mission.

Also, a scene in which Cornelia gets trapped in a secret passageway all alone was pretty unnerving.

Body Count
Five onscreen characters, plus two Bat victims mentioned in the newspaper.

Lessons I Learned

Don't continue to stay over at a friend's house when a serial killer who's still at large has repeatedly tried to break in. That's a pretty important lesson.

My Favorite Lines

Dale: [Cornelia's last book] gave me the shivers!
Lizzy: Only the shivers? Scared the hell out of me! (They're allowed to say that in 1959?!)

Lizzy: There's a storm comin' up, and it's gonna be a snorter!
Dr. Wells, to Cornelia, on the night of Mark's murder: This has been a tragic house for anyone who's ever lived in it. [pause] Well, good night! (He's the least reassuring doctor ever.)
Cornelia: No matter how clever you are... you can't hide murder!

Comments:
• It's always nice to see competent filmmaking in one of these "horror classics." The Bat held my interest, and rarely gave reasons to mock it. Except... why did they stay in the house?

• An author who finds herself tangled up in a real murder mystery and takes it upon herself to do some investigating? Hey, Murder, She Wrote totally stole this movie's idea!

• A killer who wears a hat, has a frightening face, and kills using one clawed hand? Hey, Nightmare on Elm Street totally stole this movie's idea!

• I didn't really think Vincent Price's character would be the Bat, but I was actually pretty surprised when the Bat killed him.

• Agnes Moorehead has super-long hair in this. I don't think it was her real hair, but with one endless braid in the back, she looked kinda like Willie Nelson.

• When Lt. Anderson shows up on the night of Lizzy's bat bite, he says something like, "It looks like a TWO-legged bat got in!" But don't all bats have two legs?

• Cornelia is a smart lady who takes active steps to solve the mystery, rather than just a passive victim who screams a lot. I like her.

• If you want to know who the Bat was, give me a holler and I'll spoil the movie for you.

Letter grade for The Bat: B (B for Bat!)
Next film in the 50-movie set: The House on Haunted Hill

Horror Classic 45 of 50: LAST WOMAN ON EARTH

2009-01-07T20:00:00.001-05:00

Here I am! Boxing Day has come and gone, and now I'm ready to get back to watching old "horror" movies. And now that I've watched Last Woman on Earth from 1960, I only have five movies left!

Faithful "Ryan Watches 50 Movies" reader Grady Roe has been keeping up with this blog since the beginning. He astutely observed some time ago that many of the posters for these movies tend to prominently feature females with varying amounts of their clothing torn or removed. And he's right... apparently the designers of these posters were under the impression that filmgoers' attention would be grabbed by nekkid ladies. Well, take a glance (or a long, lingering, lascivious look) at the poster for Last Woman on Earth:

Wow! That's really something! And, if those figures are to scale, the woman is this movie is ENORMOUS! Towering over shirtless men, she's a BEHEMOTH of epic, exploitative nudity who terrorizes the countryside with her voluptuousness!

Now let's find out if that's true:

Synopsis
As the opening credits roll, the camera takes a slow pan over a still photo of a nude woman. It's sort of a Ken-Burns-meets-Hugh-Hefner thing. Then the director credit comes up: Roger Corman. Well, that explains a lot.

Now the actual movie starts, and we're in Puerto Rico, where a shady guy named Harold takes his wife on a date to see a cockfight. She's not exactly thrilled to be there. His lawyer, Martin, shows up, and the wife introduces herself: "I'm Edd Byrnes." Wait -- what?! This hot chick is the guy who played Kookie on 77 Sunset Strip?!

Oh... I misheard. Her name is Ev Gern, and she's grown disenchanted with her law-not-adiding husband. So the next day, he takes her out on a boat for some man-and-wife time, fishing and swimming, and of course to make it extra-romantic he invites the lawyer too. There's already some tension between Martin the Lawyer and Harold the Shady Guy, as Martin is trying to convince Harold that one of these days all his bad business is going to catch up with him.

They all go scuba-diving for a while, and when they surface they find they can't breathe without their oxygen tanks. Even more shocking, their boat's driver is dead of apparent suffocation. The poor guy didn't even get any lines! They make their way to shore and into the jungle, where they discover that they can breathe safely again, thanks in part to the numerous oxygen-producing plants. Thanks, plants!

A quick trip into town confirms their worst fear: They're in a Roger Corman movie. No, sorry, I meant, their worst fear: Something in the air has killed everyone around. Now, in a situation like this, you might panic. You might mourn the loss of all your family and friends back home. You might even travel to a major city to check for survivors. Not these folks! They decide that everyone is probably dead, so they should go hang out in a beach house for a while and then move to Canada.

So, not only is Ev ostensibly the last woman on Earth and a total hottie, her two companions are the last two men on Earth, and one of them is her husband. So it doesn't take long before the tension grows, as Martin lusts after Ev, Ev starts noticing Martin, and Harold simmers.

Finally, the unbearable stress of hanging out at the beach all day takes its toll. Ev and Martin smooch, which doesn't sit well with Harold. Harold banishes Martin from the house, which would be a pretty lousy development for Martin, except that then Ev decides to go with him. When Harold finds out he gets pretty darn mad. I won't give away the ending except to say that one third of the planets humans die.

Is It Scary?
It's not really meant to make you jump out of your chair or scream blood-curdlingly. It's more designed to make you go, "Whoa. What if everyone on Earth died except me?"

Lessons I Learned

If an airborne toxin kills every living creature on Earth, fish, insects and birds won't become extinct. The fish can survive in the water, and the bugs and birds gestating in eggs will still be able to hatch. This movie is educational!

My Favorite Lines

Ev, to Martin: "I'm going to take my big toe... and wipe you out!" (It only made a little more sense in context.)
Martin, to Harold: "If rotten money smelled like rotten fish, they'd have give you a bank to yourself. Yes, sir, Mr. Gern. The way you made your money STANK! The way you catch fish STINKS! And furthermore, Harold, YOU stink.

Body Count
MILLIONS! Plus one.

Comments
• Well, this movie wasn't as much about exploitation as I expected. It's an interesting idea -- only three humans left and it's a love triangle. It's just hard to get past the part where they react to their predicament by moving into a party house instead of doing something more... active.

• I didn't realize this until I clicked on the IMDb page, but the titular woman in this movie is played by Betsy Jones-Moreland, who also played the gangster's girlfriend in Roger Corman's Creature From the Haunted Sea, which was also included in the "horror classics" DVD set. Further internet research reveals that the two films were shot back to back. Wow!

• The characters keep referring to what's happened as "the end of the world." But the world is still there... it's just that most of its residents have ended.

• And why do they dress so nicely? If I was one of the last three people on the planet, I'd probably stop shaving, and I'd never wear a button-down shirt again. I might even wear the same t-shirt twice without washing it!

• Would plumbing still work if all humans were dead? I mean, doesn't there have to be somebody running the waterworks and sewage facilities and whatnot?

Letter grade for Last Woman on Earth: C
Next film in the 50-movie set: The Bat. A horror movie about baseball?

Snow Day

2008-12-20T11:31:00.002-05:00

Will you look at that? I'm so close to the end, and then I skip a week for Thanksgiving, and then I miss another week... What's wrong with me?

Well, if you really want to know why I didn't post a movie write-up here on Wednesday, it's because this is the week I compiled the 2008 Ugly Muppet Toy Pageant over on ToughPigs.com. You should check it out; it's highly entertaining. But it took me so long to finish that I decided I never wanted to look at a computer screen again.

I may or may not post about Last Woman on Earth before I leave for Texas for Christmas this Wednesday. But here is my solemn vow, and may zombies and psychics strike me down if I fail to live up to it: When I resume watching and posting, I will not take any more breaks until I reach the end.

Horror Classic 44 of 50: THE AMAZING MR. X

2008-12-10T22:47:00.006-05:00

Check out that poster image. That's the best I could find on the entire internet. Mr. X doesn't seem so amazing when he's that small, does he?

Man, is this really movie #44? That's insane. What was I thinking, taking on this box set? It's hard coming up with clever ways of describing 50 old movies nobody remembers.

Which is why I'm doing this week's synopsis not in the usual way, but in the style of a 6-year-old trying to explain a movie to you. Take it away, six-year-old!

Synopsis
Um, there's this lady? And her name is Chris but she's not a boy like my friend Chris. It's short for Christine. And, um, she has a sister and her name is Janet, like my mom's friend, and she lives in a big house on the beach, and then she goes to sleep, and then she hears this man going, "CHRIS... CHRIS..." and she thinks it's her husband, but he's dead. I forget how he died.

Um, and then she's gonna go on a date, but then there's this man, and his name is Alexis, but he's not a girl like my friend Chris's sister Alexis. He's kind of like a magician but he doesn't really do any, like, magic tricks, he just reads everyone's mind, but not really, because he's just tricking everyone, and but he has a bird on his shoulder.

Um, so Alexis tells the lady Chris that her husband wants to talk to her even though he's dead, and she believes him, and also Alexis has a moustache. But then Janet and Martin don't like Alexis because they think he's a big fat liar, and Martin is Chris's boyfriend, and then Janet goes to Alexis because she thinks he's just tricking Chris, but then she thinks he's really a magic guy and she then she likes him.

Um, and then Chris finds out that Janet is talking to Alexis, and she gets all mad, and then they both go to Alexis's house and he does this thing where they lock him in a box and he makes magic stuff happen and they hear Paul's voice, and Paul is the name of Chris's husband who is dead, but then Martin and the detective come in, but then they all see Paul, and then Paul is really alive because he's not really dead, and then Paul tells Alexis that he has to marry Janet and take all her money and give some of the money to him or he'll tell everyone that he's not really magic.

Um, and then Chris drinks a glass of milk and Janet and Alexis go to the beach and they kiss and it's gross, and then Chris hears Paul again and she walks outside and falls off the cliff but she doesn't die because Alexis gets her and then Paul is mad at Alexis and then I don't remember what happened and then it was kind of scary when Paul had a gun and then Alexis got shot and then he said he didn't need his bird on his shoulder anymore so he told it to fly out the window. And also there was another guy and he was a detective and I don't remember if I already told you about him.

Is It Scary?
It's certainly moody. There were a few moments that could qualify as scary.

Lessons I Learned

Don't live near the beach.
"Psychics" are greedy, manipulative sleazeballs, but they're actually pretty nice guys.

My Favorite Lines

Janet: "If any husband of mine chased me out into the ocean, I'd shoot him!"
Alexis, assessing a potential customer: "Hmm... Expensive car. Expensive clothes. I would say no brains and lots of money."

Body Count
Huh. Just one, I think. That's rare.

Comments
• That kid's synopsis up there didn't do it justice, but this actually wasn't a terrible movie. It was slow moving by today's standards, but the production values were fairly high for a film in this DVD set.

• There's an effect that happens several times when scenes take place at the beach... We get a wide shot of the whole beach, but when the camera cuts in close on the actors, they're obviously standing in front of a rear projection screen with footage of the beach on it. This was especially distracting during the climactic moment when Chris tumbled down the cliff.

• The detective is keen to help Janet and Martin investigate Alexis and expose him as a fraud because he used to be a phony magician himself. As he talks to them, he does this thing where he sort of flips a coin over and over his knuckles on one hand, without ever using the other hand. I wish I could do that!

• Alexis' pet bird was either a crow or a raven. How do you tell the difference?

Letter grade for The Amazing Mr. X: B-. Hmm... Have the letter grades been higher lately? I wonder if I'm getting soft or the movies are getting better.
Next film in the 50-movie set: The Last Woman on Earth. I hope it's the quirky, romantic comedy story of a guy who says of a rival co-worker, "I wouldn't date that chick if she was the last woman on Earth!" and then he's forced to eat his words.

Horror Classic 43 of 50: BLOODLUST!

2008-12-03T21:00:00.001-05:00

Before we proceed, I want to be certain everyone knows the title of this film is Bloodlust! with an exclamation mark. This puts it in the same category with such motion pictures as Tora! Tora! Tora! and Airplane! and Viva Zapata! As you will see, this film is nearly identical to those three.

You may remember last week when I wondered aloud whether the "Robert Reed" listed in the credits for this film would be the same Robert Reed who starred on The Brady Bunch. I think you'll be as delighted as I was to know that yes, in fact, the guy who played Mike Brady stars in this movie running for his life from an insane man with a crossbow.

Gee, you just never know what you'll get with this 50-movie pack of "horror classics." One week it's a silly Japanese giant-monster movie from the late 60s, the next week it's a dumb comedy mystery from the 30s, and a few weeks later it's a thriller from 1961 that shamelessly rips off a classic short story.

Which short story, you ask impatiently? Well, stop fidgeting and check this out:

Synopsis
Four young people are out on a fishing boat on their vacation: Johnny, Betty, Pete, and Jeannie. Johnny is played by Robert Reed, and he may as well be a younger Mike Brady. He's a decent, stand-up guy who has good advice for every situation. He even gets captured by an old eccentric dude, although sadly it's not Vincent Price. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The two couples spot an island nearby, and decide to row their dinghy ashore (hallelujah?). The fishing boat's pilot Tony wakes from his drunken stupor long enough to warn them not to go anywhere near that island, but it's too late: they can't hear him, and they're already dinghying their way across the waves, so he goes back to being unconscious, which has to be against some kind of maritime regulations.

So, let's say you're young and imptetuous, and you've just landed on an island that you know nothing about. There could be hostile natives, wild animals, disease-carrying insects... What's the first thing you do? If you answered "Run into the jungle to look for banana leaves to use for a clambake," you might be one of the characters in Bloodlust! Of course they want to have a clambake! It's just a shame they forgot to invite Gidget and Moon Doggie.

Before they've even had the chance to play beach blanket bingo, though, they're captured by the henchman of Mr. Belleau. He's a rich but dignified old kook who's lived in a mansion on the island for years, importing animals from all over the world so he can hunt them, and kill them, and mount their lifeless bodies all over his house so he can brag about how good he is at making things dead.

Of course, he has a favorite animal to hunt, and if you've ever heard of Richard Connell's famous short story The Most Dangerous Game, you already know what it is: snails. No, just kidding! It's people! IT'S PEOPLE! But our heroes don't know this yet. He just tells them they'll be his houseguests approximately forever, has one of his goons show them to their rooms, and slips out to hunt his latest victim.

But there are two other people living in the house: Belleau's wife Sandra, and his associate Dean. Dean and Sandra are lovers, and they have an escape plan, which they let our heroes in on. It involves the two of them making their way through the jungle to a hidden boat, and then coming back to rescue -- well, anyway, they don't make it.

Johnny, Betty, Pete, and Jeannie attempt their own escape, but Belleau heads them off at the pass and reveals the details of his horrible hobby, in a dramatic scene that takes place in a huge cave-turned-trophy-room full of taxidermy-stuffed humans. Now he has a new, fun way to spend his weekend: He's going to hunt Johnny, Peter, and Tony, their pilot, turning them loose in the jungle with one gun between the three of them. There's a single bullet stuck in a tree somewhere, so they'll only get one shot at him. Meanwhile, his flunkies are guarding the girls.

So now it's Johnny, Pete, Jeannie, Betty, and Tony, vs. Belleau, his staff, their weapons, and their knowledge of the island. The odds don't look so good for Mike Brady and company.

Is It Scary?
On occasion, there's perhaps enough suspense to make a sensitive viewer cringe.

Lessons I Learned

The dad from The Brady Bunch was a strapping lad in his younger days.
Clambakes are deadly.
Any thug who says "I'm harmless!" is not harmless.

My Favorite Lines

Johnny: "Of all the women in the world, I had to get mixed up with the daughter of a judo expert!"
Betty: "Daddy told me men like to wrestle."
Johnny: "That's not exactly what I had in mind."
Pete, after Betty kisses him and wishes him good luck as he ventures into the jungle alone: "Let me at 'em!"

Body Count
Six.

Comments
• Troy Patterson is in this movie. Doesn't that sound like somebody who would be in a B-movie like this?

• This movie is not great, but the filmmakers kept things moving. Every scene had a point, even if it was only to give Betty another reason to scream like a girl.

• Hey, I didn't make any jokes about the fact that Robert Reed was gay in real life. What kind of snarky internet writer am I, anyway?

• I liked the scene with Belleau explaining to the four heroes who he is. He introduces Sandra, and her entrance is accompanied by a new musical theme. Then he introduces one of his brutish servants, and his entrance gets a musical sting. I was half expecting him to next say, "And now, here's my pet cat, who will be represented by the clarinet."

• There was one totally weird transition... After the good guys are shown to their rooms, Belleau goes to the bar in the center of the parlor and pours himself a drink. There's a zoom-in on the bottle, then the picture gets all wavy, as if there's going to be a flashback... but instead, it just dissolves to Sandra and Dean in the same room a few minutes later. What happened? Is this supposed to signify that Bealleau got a little drunk? Or perhaps the director got a little drunk.

• To prove he means business, Belleau shoots a statue of a horse with his crossbow. It looked a lot like the horse statue on the table at the bottom of the Brady Bunch's staircase. I'm just sayin'.

• This film would probably be better if it were made today. For one thing, the four leads would have more distinguishable personalities. Also, there must be an actor working now who would do a better job at playing Belleau... Somebody with that combination of dignity and intensity. Robert Downey Jr.? Anthony Hopkins? Alec Baldwin? Clive Owen? Alan Rickman? What do you think?

• Ooh, or what about this: What about a comedy remake of this movie? I think a good writer could make people hunting people seem funny.

• I loved the shot where the entire jungle is dark except for one spot in a tree that's completely lit from above, and in that spot we see Johnny, Peter, Betty, and Jeannie all lined up in a row. That is some wonderfully unnatural blocking.

Letter grade for Bloodlust!: B-. I was going to give it a C+, but then the film concluded with a title card reading "THE END... of BLOODLUST!" and that bumped it up a notch. I was even considering giving it a B, but that seems too generous. Maybe it's a B by the low standards set by the other movies in this DVD set.

Next film in the 50-movie set: The Amazing Mr. X: Is he related to Dr. J?

Happy and/or Horrific Thanksgiving!

2008-11-25T09:29:00.005-05:00

It's only Tuesday morning, but I can tell you right now I'm not going to have a write-up of Bloodlust ready here on Wednesday night. That's for two reasons: 1. I'm going to be flying across the country on Wednesday, and 2. I haven't watched Bloodlust yet!

But I'm looking forward to it, especially as the DVD sleeve claims it stars Robert Reed. Could be the same guy who played Mike on The Brady Bunch? I can't wait to find out, and hopefully to see him fight zombies.

I hope everyone has a thoroughly pleasant fourth Thursday of November. And now, in the spirit of Thanksgiving and horror movies, please enjoy this picture I found while doing a Google image search for monster turkey:

Horror Classic 42 of 50: A SHRIEK IN THE NIGHT

2008-11-19T19:58:00.006-05:00

A Shriek in the Night stars Ginger Rogers, and was released in 1933. That means it came out two years before Top Hat, which as far as I know was the first musical to co-star Rogers and Fred Astaire. I was genuinely curious to see if there would be any singing or dancing in this movie, but alas, there is none... only shrieking in the night.

So, that's too bad. Forty-two movies into this project and I can't even get a musical number. What else can I do to make things more interesting? How about if I write the synopsis in verse? Okay, I'll try that.

Synopsis (in verse)
Mr. Harker falls out his window
Down he plummets -- watch him go!
Suicide? Murder? Or accidental?
Detective Russell wants to know.

Harker's live-in secretary
Is quite a pretty dame
She's also an undercover reporter!
To her this whole thing's like a game

Her name is Pat, and she works hard
For all the news that's fit
But when her rival steals her story
She's so mad she could spit!

His name's Ted; he thinks he's smart
Stealing Pat's hard work
He's the male lead of the film
But really, he's a jerk

Meanwhile, Harker's downstairs neighbors
Turn up dead and strangled
It sure does look like murder now
The housekeeper's nerves are jangled

Before his death, Mr. Harker received
A card with a snake drawn on it
The message: "You will hear it!"
But what does it mean, doggone it?

As Ted and Pat investigate
They make each other mad
He's always getting on her nerves
(They want each other bad)

Now, what about Mr. Martini?
Harker knew that criminal
Was he involved in the murder, maybe?
Yeah, I think maybe it was him-inal

But wait! The maid finds a secret note
To Harker from the guy he framed long ago
"I'll get you!" it says, and it's signed "The Juice"!
OJ Simpson's in this?! Whoa!

The note-writer's dead, but he had a brother
The brother's bald, and kinda fat
And when she deduces what's going on
The brother tries to incinerate Pat!

I knew Ginger Rogers was pretty hot
But this is ridiculous, friend!
Will the vengeful janitor kill her?
Or will she survive in the end?

Is It Scary?
Nope.

Lessons I Learned

Men are jerks. Until the third act, when they become nice.
Investigating a murder is a barrel of laughs. Laughs, and sexual tension.
Cab drivers are wise and should be listened to.
Janitors prefer to live in darkness.
YOU WILL HEAR IT!

My Favorite Lines

Pat, trying to accompany Detective Russell on his investigation: "Don't you think it's a good idea?"
Russell: "I think you're trying to flirt with me. If I didn't have four kids and a wife who could lick her weight in wildcats I might like it better."
Augusta the maid, on being asked to identify the neighbor's body: "Coby's dead? I didn't even like him alive. What makes you think I'd like him dead?"
Ted: "Could you sit a little closer?"
Pat: "Not without getting arrested."

Body Count
Four.

Comments
• Well, I did the synopsis in verse. That was interesting. I don't think I need to do it again.

• As with so many other films in this DVD set, this was not really a horror movie, but more of a murder mystery. It was all right, I guess. It was nice that we were actually given enough information to guess who the murderer was before the characters did. But it had the same audio issue as The World Gone Mad, where it sounded like somebody was unwrapping a giant, shrink-wrapped mummy in the background of every scene.

• Pat Morgan's fake name when she's undercover as Harker's secretary is "Miss Terry," which, as my roommate Joe pointed out, is a pun on the word "mystery."

• Pat's just the latest in a series of spunky girl reporters on this DVD set. She was not as spunky or likable as Patricia in The Corpse Vanishes, but I suppose I'd rate her above Bobbi from Doomed to Die and The Fatal Hour, at least as far as sheer spunkiness. And nowhere near the same league as Lois Lane.

• When characters make phone calls, we see the switchboard operator connect the calls. This was obviously a low-budget movie, which raises the question: Why even bother casting an actor to play the operator? They could have saved quite a stack of quarters by just showing us Ted saying, "Operator, connect me to the Daily News," and then cutting to the Daily News, instead of showing us some dorky guy in between.

• There's a scene where Ted walks into Pat's room and tosses his hat on her bed, then they both frantically throw it off, lock pinkies, and quickly count to ten. My question: Wha?! Is this a superstition I've never heard of? What does it mean? Somebody please tell me! If you don't know the real answer, please make something up!

• Wikipedia and IMDb will tell you that the guy in this movie is named Ted Kord. Ted Kord, of course, was the secret identity of the original Blue Beetle in DC Comics. Imagine my disappointment, then, when the guy in the movie turned out to be Ted Rand. Wikipedia is WRONG! Akording to me.

• Of course Ted and Pat were smooching by the end of the movie, but I'm really not sure Ted deserved it. He was a pretty big jerk at the beginning.

Letter grade for A Shriek in the Night: C+
Next film in the 50-movie set: Bloodlust. Eww.

Horror Classic 41 of 50: THE GORILLA

2008-11-12T21:28:00.004-05:00

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Hey! Hold the phone for one cotton-picking minute! Hasn't this clown already watched a silly movie called The Gorilla?" And the answer is: Nope. Several weeks ago I watched The Ape, which is completely different from 1939's The Gorilla.

For one thing, The Gorilla stars the Ritz Brothers, a film comedy team from the 1930s. As a guy who's perhaps more interested than most of my peers in movies made before my parents were born, I've long been vaguely aware of the Ritz Brothers, but I'd never seen any of their films, and they seem to have faded into obscurity. I was looking forward to this movie because I was curious about the Ritzes: Do they deserve to stand alongside the Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy, and other greats of their era, or is their "forgotten" status deserved?

Synopsis
Newspaper headlines scream the top story of the day: A crazed killer called the Gorilla is on the loose! He always warns his victims shortly before he kills them. But is he an actual gorilla, a guy in a costume, or an evil primate-and-his-trainer team? It's unclear.

The skittish Kitty, maid for the rich Mr. Stevens, is minding her own business and reading Shakespeare when a furry paw reaches in the window and pins a note on her: The gorilla is coming for Mr. Stevens! Kitty freaks out, very entertainingly. On hearing the news, Mr. Stevens remains calm, but he soon makes a pretty suspicious phone to tell somebody that he'll have the money for them soon. Oh, and guess who else works for Mr. Stevens? Peters, the butler, played by our old friend Bela Lugosi! Good to see you again, Bela.

The next day, some more characters arrive. First there's Stevens' niece Norma Denby and her fiancé Jack, and then there are private detectives Harrigan, Mulligan, and Garrity, played by the Ritz Brothers. They take the case despite being completely terrified of everything that's going on in the house. They do a lot twitching and starting at every little thing, especially Harrigan. In fact, I'm not sure which Ritz Brother played Harrigan, but I'd say twitching was his number one acting tool.

The detectives begin questioning everyone in the house, and they're not ready to trust anyone, especially Peters. The single greatest moment in the film comes when the detectives are interrogating Peters, and one of them gets too close, and then Bela Lugosi GRABS ONE OF THE RITZ BROTHERS BY THE ARM AND FLIPS HIM OVER. It was startling and funny.

Soon after, a rock comes crashing through a window with a note on it: "AT MIDNIGHT," it says, which means that Stevens now has two things to worry about: 1. He's going to be killed very soon, and 2. He has to fix that window. Soon, we see (but the characters don't see) a gorilla in the basement, sneaking out of its cage. Is this the Gorilla, or just some other gorilla?

Everyone is gathered in the den when the lights suddenly go out. When they come on again, Stevens is missing! The detectives stage a series of reenactments of this moment, with Garrity, then Mulligan, then Harrigan taking the role of Stevens. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these experiments result in all three Ritz brothers vanishing just as Stevens did. Will those wacky guys ever learn?

Next, a man with a moustache sneaks in the side door of the house and finds a freaked-out Harrigan locked in the closet. Who is this mustachioed stranger? He claims to just be there to use the phone, but if you believe that you obviously haven't been paying attention to these "horror classic" reviews.

And then some other stuff happens, and everyone suspects Bela Lugosi's character Peters as being the cause of all the mayhem, and in the end it turns out there might be as many as three different parties acting as "the Gorilla." Also, the Ritz Brothers make a lot of funny faces when confronted with the actual gorilla, and Kitty does some more entertaining freak-outs.

Is It Scary?
It's not really meant to be. There are some suspenseful elements, but it's more of a mystery than a horror movie.

Lessons I Learned

Gorillas hate women.
Gorillas can't write.
The Ritz Brothers are hard to tell apart.

My Favorite Lines

Peters: "I wouldn't be frightened like that if I were you."
Kitty: "You be frightened any way you want... This is my way!"
Harrigan: "Where do you think you're going?"
Kitty: "I'm gettin' outta here!"
Harrigan: "There's no door there!"
Kitty: "That's all right, I'll make one!"
Norma: "Kitty! Go get a basin of water!"
Kitty: "Do you mind if I go out of town to get it?"
Harrigan: "If there's anything screwy about this... it's ME!"
Jack: "Have you men been drinking?"
Harrigan: "No, but it's a good idea!"

Body Count
Hmm. I don't think anyone actually died. Maybe gorillas aren't so dangerous after all.

Comments
• So, the Ritz Brothers weren't that funny in this film. Maybe they were never very funny, although as my buddy and fellow film aficianado Anthony pointed out, if the only Marx Brothers film I ever saw was Go West, I wouldn't think very highly of them either, so I shouldn't be too quick to blow them off.

But... for one thing, they were practically indistinguishable. This film was based on a play, and I'm pretty sure the three brothers were playing a role originally written for just one actor, so that may have something to do with it. Also, their shtick consisted mostly of acting like scaredy cats the whole time... Bob Hope managed to pull that off in a film or two, but he had genuinely clever jokes to go along with it.

• On the other hand, Patsy Kelly, who played the role of Kitty, was a delight. I laughed more at her than I did at all three Ritzes combined.

• Bela Lugosi looks spooky most of the time, but on those rare occasions when he doesn't, his default expression is smugness.

• I've noticed that people in the earlier part of the 20th century used to call monkeys "monks" for short. What's up with that?

• This film included a fake gorilla-arm sleeve... just like The Monster Walks, which I watched about two weeks ago!

Letter grade for The Gorilla: B-
Next film in the 50-movie set: A Shriek in the Night. Featuring Ginger Rogers! Do you think she'll dance?

Horror Classic 40 of 50: MONSTER FROM A PREHISTORIC PLANET

2008-11-05T00:00:00.005-05:00

Wow, am I really on movie #40 out of 50? Why, it seems like just 40 weeks ago that I started this venture... or maybe more like 45 or 46 weeks ago, because of all the times I couldn't bring myself to watch and comment on one of these things. But now I'm 4/5 of the way through! And so far, I'm still sane! I think.

You may have noticed that the poster over there does not carry the title Monster from a Prehistoric Planet. That's because... well, that's because the poster is in French. But it's also because this film, like many of the "horror classics," has been released under different titles over the years. In Japan, where the movie was produced, it was called Daikyojū Gappa, while the original title for the American release was Gappa, the Triphibian Monsters, which makes more sense, mainly because the monsters in the movie do not come from a prehistoric planet. They come from Earth! In the year 1967, which is when this movie was made! What the heck?

Synopsis
The publisher of Playmate magazine unveils plans for a new resort he's cleverly calling Playmate Land. You might think, given the similarity of this fictional publication's title to the real world's Playboy, that Playmate Land would have something to do with naked ladies, but in fact it's just a lush vacation spot meant to duplicate the experience of visiting an island in the South Seas. Why don't the tourists just skip Playmate Land and go to the South Seas? Who knows?

The publisher sends a crew of scientists and journalists to a remote island so they can find and bring back some rare animals and plants to populate the resort. Their arrival is greeted by a rumbling volcano and a series of earthquakes, and soon they encounter some natives (looking suspiciously like Japanese actors made up to look black), who tell them that the disturbances are happening because "Gappa angry!"

Is Gappa their god? Not quite. Reporter Kurosaki and photographer Miss Koyanagi venture into a cave under the volcano (always a great idea!), where they find a giant egg. Pretty soon the egg hatches, and out pops a bouncing baby... thing. What is it? It's a Gappa, of course. A dinosaur-like creature with wings on its back and a fin on its head. Our heroes can't believe their luck, and they immediately load Baby Gappa on their boat so he can be the star attraction of Playmate Land. The natives try to explain to them that this is a bad idea (because of the whole "Gappa angry!" thing) but they don't listen. Foolish Americans! Wait, no... I mean, foolish Japanese!

The publisher decides to keep the Baby Gappa a secret until he can announce it in the next issue of his magazine and sell a zillion copies. He's keeping it locked up, which doesn't sit well with the creature. Meanwhile, his scientists determine that Gappas come equipped with some kind of telepathic homing system... and that means Mommy Gappa and Daddy Gappa are sure to come looking for their kid.

And come looking they do, in the most destructive way possible. Emerging from a lake under the volcano, they first wreak havoc on the population of the island, then they zoom like jets across the ocean to Japan, where they completely trash the first city they find. And this is what this film, like so many other Japanese monster features, really comes down to: Some giant creatures smashing stuff. And these guys are tough. Tanks can't stop them, missiles mostly just annoy them, and they can survive on land, in the air, or underwater (hence the "triphibious monsters" label in the alternate title).

All the scientists and journalists and everyone who's not an idiot thinks it's time to give the Baby Gappa to its parents so they'll stop destroying everything in sight, but the publisher is hesitant. Fortunately, he's outnumbered, and after a bold jailbreak the film closes with a beautiful family reunion scene in which the Gappas share words of love and affection, including "RRRRRRRAAAAAAAA!" and "GRRRRRRRRNNNNNNGGGGAAAAA!" I almost cried.

Is It Scary?
Well, this raises an interesting question. Were Japanese giant-monster movies ever meant to be scary? I guess the original Godzilla was supposed to be a frightening warning about atomic energy, but when the monsters are huge beyond anything that could ever actually exist, it's hard be be genuinely scared of them.

Somehow, a movie about vampire sneaking into people's bedrooms to bite them is more believable, and thus more affecting, than a movie about a beast the size of a building who steps on cars.* So... is Monster from a Prehistoric Planet even a horror movie? What do you think?

Lessons I Learned

An egg can "hibernate" in a volcano for millions of years, then hatch when it's exposed to outside air.
Gappas live for millions of years.
Magazine publishers are stupid.
"Even the impossible can happen."

My Favorite Lines

Publisher's assistant, researching the Gappa: "The height... Do you know what the height is?"
Publisher: "Oh, about five feet."
Assistant: "Oh, that small?"
Publisher: "You can't judge a man's value by his height! And you better remember it!"
Assistant: "I was... asking Gappa's height!"
Publisher: "Idiot! Why didn't you say so first?"

Body Count
It's hard to say. Hundreds of hapless island natives and city dwellers, crushed under the clawed feet of distraught parents. Kinda like what happens to the referee at a kids' soccer game.

Comments
• This movie was in color, a rarity on this DVD set.

• The movie was pretty fun, all in all. The generous helpings of giant-monster city-stomping action made this 90-minute film easier to sit through than many of the 65-minute films I've watched for this blog.

• Not only did the dialogue dubbing not make any attempt at lip synching, the voices of the actors didn't match the Japanese actors onscreen at all. I'm guessing there wasn't much of an audition process there.

• The main scientist guy pronounced the word "reptile" in a way I've never heard before. He said "rep-tull"... kinda the way some older people pronounce "robot" as "ro-but" instead of "ro-bot." Weird.

• I still don't understand why a magazine called Playmate would want to own a giant prehistoric monster. I can't imagine Hugh Hefner ever doing such a thing... He's much more interested in bimbos with big bosoms than mad, massive monsters.

Letter grade for Monster From a Prehistoric Planet: B
Next film in the 50-movie set: The Gorilla. Wait a minute! Haven't I already watched that one? Nope... I watched The Ape, and this is The Gorilla. I can't wait to see how they compare, and how they both measure up to that horror favorite The Bonobo.

*The exception to this is Cloverfield, which was about a monster as big as a New York City skyscraper, but which managed to thoroughly scare the ever-loving daylights out of me.

Horror Classic 39 of 50: THE MONSTER WALKS

2008-10-29T20:37:00.004-04:00

Check it out: the only image I can find online of a poster for 1932's The Monster Walks is this one in Spanish. The movie's not in Spanish. But check out that monster! It's a giant, partially-evolved man-beast that eats people! This movie's gonna rock! I just know it will... I've never been wrong about any of these "horror classics" before, have I?

Synopsis
One of the first things I noticed was that the credits included a character named "Exodus" played by an actor named "Sleep 'n' Eat." This gave me an uneasy feeling... the kind of feeling you get when you suspect that you're about to see a cringe-inducing stereotypical African-American character in a movie from the early 1930s. You know that feeling.

Anyway, the movie starts with the death of Mr. Nelson. Various associates of his are gathered at his house on this stormy night, including Dr. Nelson's friend and lawyer Mr. Wilkes, Mrs. Krug the servant and her son Hans, Dr. Nelson's wheelchair-bound brother Robert, Dr. Nelson's daughter Ruth, and Ruth's fiance Dr. Clayton. We meet one other important character in the early minutes of the film: Dr. Nelson's pet chimpanzee Yogi, who lives in a small cage in the basement. Dr. Nelson used to perform experiments on Yogi, and as a result, he's not the most amiable ape around. He also really hates Ruth, in a weird case of sibling rivalry.

Okay, so there's a chimp in the movie. He can't be the titular monster, can he? That would be totally lame. Surely there's something else going on here... like, Dr. Nelson actually transferred his brain to Yogi's body before he died, so now he can run around and wreak havoc in ape form. Oh! Or one of Dr. Nelson's final experiments exposed Yogi to radiation, and now he's going to grow larger and stronger over the course of the movie, until at last he's as big as the house! Yeah, that must be it.

Okay, so everyone's in the house, and everyone wants to know what's in Dr. Nelson's will, so Mr. Wilkes reads it. The entire fortune is going to Ruth, with Mrs. Krug and Hans getting a few leftover bucks to keep taking care of the house. Robert gets nothing, unless Ruth dies, in which case he's next in line to the inheritance. Everyone's pretty chagrined (except Ruth, of course; she seems just vaguely happy to be wealthy), so it's not a huge shock when somebody attempts to kill Ruth as she sleeps later that night.

Slightly more shocking is the method of the attempted murder: a hairy paw reaches to strangle her from INSIDE THE WALL of her room! Now, halfway through the movie, the monster finally walks! Ruth is so terrified by the ordeal that she can't go back to sleep, so Mrs. Krug offers to keep her company for the rest of the night.

Yogi the chimp, of course, is the only one in the house with a hairy paw, and we all know how much he hated Ruth, so it must be him, right? But he's still locked in his cage. So who could it be? Mrs. Krug and Hans, right? Well, that seems likely... until Mrs. Krug is strangled by the same hairy paw as she dozes in Ruth's bed.

And then a bunch of other stuff happens, and it turns out that the killer was Hans after all, wearing a fake chimp arm and taking orders from Robert the wheelchair-bound uncle. Hans killed his mom by accident, see. Hans is so shaken up he grabs Ruth and takes her downstairs, preparing to throw her to the wild ape in the cage... and this is one Yogi who's not interested in peaceful meditation.

(If you don't like that final sentence, try this one: "This is one Yogi who won't be satisfied with pic-a-nic baskets.")

Is It Scary?
No, although I did appreciate the fact that it sticks with several tried and true scary story/murder mystery conventions.

Lessons I Learned

Chimps are psychic. Yogi could sense Ruth was coming to the house before she arrived.
There were no regulations on animal treatment in movies in 1932. I felt really bad for that chimpanzee in the cage. He paces and stomps and jumps up and down and rattles the bars... he's stir crazy, and it's obviously not acting.

My Favorite Lines

Dr. Clayton: (flirting with Ruth) "You're going to have to take something for your nerves, young lady."
Ruth: "Shall I take an apple a day, doctor?"
Dr. Clayton: (Grinning lecherously) "Apples are strictly forbidden in your diet." [Is that innuendo? A pun? I don't get their foreplay at all.]
Yogi: "Eeep eep eep eep EEEEEP EEEP EEEEP!!!"

Body Count
Three.

Comments
• This was a pretty bland murder mystery, and there was really no monster in it at all. What a ripoff. It should have been called Some Guy Wearing a Hairy Glove Walks.

• As I mentioned, an actor called Sleep 'n' Eat played Exodus, the driver. He was not important to the plot at all, serving only as the most unenlightened, stereotypical kind of comic relief. Here's a question that might be weird: How terrible is this? In 1932, would it be better to have a) No African-Americans in movies at all, or b) Over-the-top, stereotypical portrayals like the one in this film, assuming those were the only two options at the time?

• Dr. Clayton is Ruth's fiance. Because of the storm, he ends up staying at the house, but of course morality dictates that he sleep in his own separate room. But there are a few scenes where he sees her to her room, and every time, he kind of lingers there and stares at the door after she closes it. You can tell he'd love to do some things not permitted by the Hays Code.

• In one scene Dr. Clayton goes to his room and puts a robe on... over his suit. Isn't that less comfortable than wearing either the robe or the suit? Shouldn't he have taken off the suit before putting on the robe? Am I thinking about this too much?

• Speaking of chimpanzee actors, did you know that one of the most prominent chimps to play Cheeta in the Tarzan movies is still alive and living a luxurious life of retirement? I've recently seen and heard stories about him in Entertainment Weekly and on NPR. Check it out.

Letter grade for The Monster Walks: D-
Next film in the 50-movie set: Monster from a Prehistoric Planet. Oh, sure. I suppose it's just some guy wearing half an ape suit walking around in a desert somewhere. I'm not even going to get my hopes up for seeing some awesome stop-motion creatures terrorizing humans via rear projection.

Say, wait a minute... The monster never even walked!

Horror Classic 38 of 50: TORMENTED

2008-10-22T22:16:00.002-04:00

This movie is from 1960, and it's called Tormented. Who will be tormented, and what will be tormenting him or her? As I sat down to watch the film, I couldn't wait to find out. This week, my old pal, fellow movie nerd, and loyal Ryan Watches 50 Movies reader Sara was visiting, so she had the enviable privilege of joining me as I watched an old movie no one's ever heard of.

Synopsis
Tom Stewart is a jazz pianist, successful enough that he has a concert coming up at Carnegie Hall. (But how will he get there, har har har?) Right now he's spending some time on a lovely island, which has a sunny beach, an impressive old lighthouse, and the tide coming in which drowns out the dialogue in all the scenes shot outdoors.

Tom is about to marry his girlfriend Meg, but trouble shows up in the form of his ex, Vi. (When the credits said "JULI REDING AS VI", I wasn't sure if her name would be pronounced "Vie" or "Six.") Vi hasn't quite gotten over Tom, and she prepared to do everything in her power to derail his marriage before it's begun. In a confrontation at the top of the aforementioned lighthouse, she threatens to show Meg the old love letters Tom wrote her.

But then the railing she's leaning on breaks, and suddenly she's dangling precariously over the unforgiving rocky shore below. Tom could save her life, but instead he decides to make things easier for himself, and he lets her plunge to her death. Bye, Vi!

The next morning he feels kinda bad about it, so when he sees her body floating in the ocean ("Her boobs are keeping her afloat!" Sara remarked, and in truth they do appear quite buoyant), he dives in to retrieve it. But when he dumps it on the beach, it turns into seaweed. What the heck? Was Tom makin' out with a pile of leaves that whole time, or is there something else going on here?

Then there are more characters: Mrs. Ellis is a blind lady who is concerned about Tom in a grandmotherly way. Meg is his fiancee, who doesn't really seem like much of a catch. Sandy is Meg's precocious little sister, who seems to have a weird crush on Tom. One of my favorite parts of the movie, unrelated to the story, involved Sandy doing a magic show, wearing a top hat and a moustache. In fact, even if I had hated this movie, I would have had to give it pretty good letter grade just for having a little girl wearing a top hat and a moustache.

So where does the tormenting come in? Thank you for patience; now here it is: As Tom tries to convince himself that he's not culpable in Vi's death, strange things start to happen. First, the wedding ring he bought for Meg disappears... and reappears on VI'S DISEMBODIED FLOATING HAND! The effect here is surprisingly good, and I'm honestly not sure how they did it. It really looks like the hand is just floating there next to Tom's piano.

Later, Tom and Meg pose for a Polaroid, and when it comes out, the photo also includes... an image of VI'S DISEMBODIED FLOATING HEAD! As if that's not bad enough, said floating head later shows up in Tom's room, and has a little chat with him about how she's going to haunt him and there's nothing he can do about it. Well, he could break up with Meg, but she's just so gosh-darned excited about getting married. Of course, she's a little less excited when her dress suddenly gets ruined... by being WRAPPED IN SEAWEED!

The appearance of a guy named Nick doesn't help things at all... He's the dude who gave Vi a ride to the island, and now he has some pretty astute suspicions. He could ruin everything by squealing, which is why Vi's ghost tells Tom to kill him. And he does! Unfortunately, little Sandy witnesses it. Oops. Now what? Will Tom ever get to live a torment-free existence? Or will it be impossible for him to marry Meg and live happily ever after?

Is It Scary?
Some of the ghost stuff was actually pretty spooky. The hand, for example. But Vi's disembodied head hanging out on Tom's end table? That was just funny.

Lessons I Learned

Don't lean on lighthouse railing.
Ghosts produce an oddly sweet smell which does not resemble the smell of roses.
Little girls with top hats and moustaches are funny.

My Favorite Lines

Tom's inner monologue, after failing to prevent Vi's death: "My conscience? Why should it bother me?"
Sandy, looking at the lighthouse late at night: "There's a light on up there!"
Meg: "It's probably a boy and a girl. You wouldn't understand."
Sandy: "People go up there to neck."

Comments
• This was not a great movie, but it was better than most of the films on these DVDs. As my friend Sara pointed out, there was an interesting, Telltale Heart-style mood... Tom could see and hear the various manifestations of Vi, but no one else could, which raised the question of whether he was imagining it all as a product of his guilt.

• The director of Tormented was Bert I. Gordon, who shares his names with three Sesame Street characters: Gordon, Bert, and the letter I.

• You know who played Nick the doomed blackmailing guy? Joe Turkel. You don't recognize the name? Neither did I, but Sara quickly determined that he's the same guy who played Lloyd the bartender in The Shining. That film, of course, starred Jack Nicholson, who appeared in last week's movie, The Little Shop of Horrors. Isn't that amazing?

• Speaking of Nick, in his attempts to extort money from Tom, he used practically every slang word for money: scratch, dough, bread, a "fin", "five thou", horseshoes, Uncle Pineapple, blurpleguff... I may have made up a few of those.

• Vi is supposed to be some kind of singer. When Tom tries to practice the piano, he's interrupted by his record player turning on by itself, and playing a record called "Tormented"... sung by Vi. That was a nice touch.

• It makes me very happy that there are now two entries in this blog with the label "disembodied head." Do you remember what the other one was? Go ahead, click on it down there and see.

Letter grade for Tormented: C+
Next film in the 50-movie set: The Monster Walks. Well, that's good. I hope the monster also eats plenty of vegetables.

Horror Classic 37 of 50: THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

2008-10-15T19:19:00.006-04:00

Is Roger Corman's 1960 film The Little Shop of Horrors really a horror movie? If you have one, two, or more functioning eyeballs, you should be able to read the tagline on the poster over there: "THE FUNNIEST PICTURE THIS YEAR!" So no, it's not intended as a serious horror movie. There's a monster, and death and stuff, but the movie doesn't take itself seriously for a minute.

In fact, it's so amusing that Howard Ashman and Alan Menken turned it into a very funny musical comedy (efficiently dropping the "The" from the title) in 1982, which was later turned into another (highly entertaining) movie. Perhaps someday there will be a serious horror film based on that version, but for now, let's talk about the Corman incarnation of the story.

Synopsis
The film is narrated faux-noirishly by Sergeant Joe Fink, a no-nonsense cop. He tells us about a case he worked on involving Seymour Krelboin, a sad sack who works at Gravis Mushnick's flower shop on Skid Row, alongside the short-tempered Mr. Mushnick and the bubbly Audrey. Mushnick's has a few regular customers, including Mrs. Shiva, who constantly requires flowers because her relatives are dying every day, and Mr. Fouch, who loves carnations... for lunch. But for the most part, the shop is devoid of customers.

Seymour's a real screw-up, and Mushnick is ready to fire him. But Fouch and Audrey persuade him to reconsider, and to take a look at the new kind of plant Seymour's been working on. He bought the seeds from somewhere, but he's not sure where they originated. The plant is a cross between a butterworth (Is that a real flower?) and a Venus flytrap, and it's pretty unusual. He named it Audrey, Jr., a fact which delights the original Audrey. But it seems to be dying. How can Seymour save it?

That evening, Seymour goes home to his hypochondriac mother, and delivers to her the new medication she requested. (It has 98% alcohol content.) The presence of Mrs. Krelboin is the biggest difference between the original and the musical. In the musical, Seymour is an orphan, which renders him even more pathetic, but which eliminates the pretty funny character of his mom, who's convinced she has just about every disease there is.

Later, as Seymour tries to figure out how to nurse Audrey Jr. back to health, he pricks his finger on another plant, and Audrey Jr. perks up. So that's what Audrey Jrs. eat: blood! Seymour goes about pricking his other fingers so the plant can have a ten-course meal.

The next day, Mr. Mushnick is stunned to find that the plant has doubled in size. It's alarming, but it attracts the attention of two girls from the float committe of the Rose Parade, who place an order for thousands of flowers. Mushnick is so thrilled he tells Seymour that from now on, he's Seymour's father. Wow. I've heard of promotions, but this is... well, not so much ridiculous as just weird. I mean, Seymour already has a mother, and she's not married to Mushnick. Ah, but soon the boss changes his tune when the plant wilts again.

The next morning, Seymour is alone with the plant again when he hears it speak. "FEED ME!" it says, though in a voice much less deep and less funky than that of Levi Stubbs in the musical film. Seymour's already squeezed out all the blood from his fingers, and he has no idea what to do next, so he takes a walk. As he moseys along by the railroad tracks, he absent-mindedly throws a large rock... which lands right on a guy's head. The man, disoriented, stumbles right into the path of an oncoming choo-choo, and a second later he's all over the place. Seymour gathers up the body parts and puts them in a bag.

How can he dispose of the evidence? Audrey, Jr. has an idea, and it consists of two words. (Spoiler: The two words are "Feed me.") So he does, but Mr. Mushnick happens to be watching, and Mushnick freaks out. Seymour has done something horrible... on the other hand, business is booming! So Mushnick keeps the secret.

Seymour has a toothache, so he vists the dentist, Dr. Farb. Farb is a sadistic fellow who loves performing unnecessary operations on his patients' mouths (Don't they all?). When Seymour resists him, the two men end up fighting with dental tools, and Dr. Farb is killed in the struggle. Doesn't this sound like "the funniest picture this year"? A moment later, a new patient comes in, and Seymour has to pretend to be Farb. Fortunately, the patient loves, loves, loves having his mouth ravaged, and he's thrilled when he walks away missing half his teeth. The actor who plays that patient? Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jack Nicholson. He looks to be about 16 years old.

Then Seymour feeds Dr. Farb's body to Audrey Jr. He knows it's wrong, but his plant is making him more successful than he ever dreamed of. A lady named Hortense Bushtwanger(!) shows up to tell him he's going to win a major award from the Society of Silent Flower Observers of Southern California. Everything's coming up roses for the budding florist: When he lets slip to Audrey (the human) that he wants to marry her, she reveals that she wants to marry him too! Also, the plant hypnotizes Seymour into killing a prostitute to feed to it, but that doesn't so much fall into the Good News category.

But soon the jig is up: This is where Sgt. Joe Fink and his partner Frank Stoolie enter the case. When the plant blooms, images of all its victims appear in its buds. (Including the thug who attempted to rob the shop, but was persuaded by Mushnick that all the money could be found inside the plant's mouth.) Fink and Stoolie chase Seymour all over town, and although he manages to lose them, he ultimately comes to the conclusion that he has to make a great personal sacrifice to atone for what he's done.

It really is a funny movie. I promise.

Is It Scary?
The idea of a plant that eats people, and can hyptonize humans to do its bidding? Yes. This movie? No.

Lessons I Learned

Stay far, far away from dorks with rocks
Don't play with matches (See "My Favorite Lines" below)
Malapropisms are always funny (The dialogue of both Mushnick and Audrey are full of them)

My Favorite Lines

Mr. Fouch, trying to persuade Mushnick that an unusual plant can boost business: "I remember one place that had a whole wall covered with poison ivy. People came from miles around to look at that wall!"
Mushnick: "And the owner got rich?"
Fouch: "No, he scratched himself to death in an insane asylum."
Seymour's mom: "Bring me the Evening News. They're running a self-diagnosis contest. The winner gets to go to the Mayo Clinic!"
Mushnick, witnessing the newly huge plant: "It grows -- like a cold sore from the lip!"
Seymour's mom: "Seymour! You promised me you wouldn't get married till you bought me an iron lung!"
Sgt. Fink: "My name is Fink. Sergeant Joe Fink. I'm a fink."
Prostitute, to Seymour: "My name is Leonore Fly. How's the rain on the rhubarb?"
Sgt. Fink: "How's the wife, Frank?"
Officer Stoolie: "Not bad, Joe. "
Sgt. Fink: "Glad to hear it. The kids? "
Officer Stoolie: "We lost one yesterday."
Sgt. Fink: "Lost one, huh? How'd that happen?"
Officer Stoolie: "Playing with matches."
Sgt. Fink: "Well, those're the breaks."
Officer Stoolie: "I guess so."

Body Count
Four.

Comments (Warning: Spoilers for the musical version!)
• Of course, one of the most interesting things about watching this movie now is noticing the differences between it and the musical adaptation. A lot of the changes in Howard Ashman's script make sense for dramatic or comedic purposes, but I thought it was interesting that in the original film, Mushnick discovers Seymour's secret much earlier, so it's as much his secret. And here, Mushnick actually survives the whole thing, whereas in the musical, he... well, doesn't. Also, in this version we never find out the plant's origins, whereas the musical gives the plant a solo called "Mean Green Mother from Outer Space."

• I didn't address it in the synopsis, but one of the funniest scenes is when Seymour brings Audrey home for dinner with his mother, during which Mrs. Krelboin serves cough syrup and cod liver oil. The sweet, ditzy Audrey finds this odd, but happily accepts it.

• I've seen a lot of cheapo DVDs of this movie that prominently feature Jack Nicholson on the cover. I forgot to time his appearance in the film, but I'm guessing his total screen time is somewhere around four and half minutes. He's not even important to the plot... His character, Wilbur Force the masochistic dental patient, is really just there as a joke.

• The movie ends with Seymour feeding himself to the plant. But what happens next? The plant is still alive. Does Mushnick stop feeding it? That would mean an end to his business's hot streak.

• Everything I've ever read about The Little Shop of Horrors, including the Wikipedia article linked above, mentions the amazing fact that Roger Corman shot the film in two days on sets left standing from a previous movie by the same studio, but nobody ever says what the other movie was. I want to know! Where else can I see Mushnick's flower shop on the silver screen?

• The flower-munching Mr. Fouch is played by veteran character actor Dick Miller, who also appeared in Corman's The Terror, which was included in this same "horror classics" DVD set. He was often cast by Corman, and would later become a regular of Corman protege Joe Dante, appearing in both Gremlins movies, The Burbs, Innerspace, Small Soldiers, etc.

• The lady who keeps coming in to buy flowers for dead relatives is Mrs. Shiva. Sitting shiva is a traditional Jewish mourning ritual. It's a joke! About death.

Letter grade for The Little Shop of Horrors: B+
Next film in the 50-movie set: Tormented. I just hope that doesn't describe how I feel while watching it. Zing!

Horror Classic 36 of 50: THE WORLD GONE MAD

2008-10-08T18:00:00.007-04:00

The World Gone Mad from 1933 is pretty obscure. It's so obscure, in fact, that I couldn't find an image of the poster online. So I made this one. It's the world going mad.

Remember last week's movie from the "50 Horror Classics" DVD set, Swamp Women, and how it wasn't really a horror movie? Well, guess what? The World Gone Mad is even less of a horror movie! I'm not sure what genre I'd put it... probably the "men in suits talking a lot" genre. Honestly, I had a hard time following the whole mess, but I'll try my best to sum it up for you.

Synopsis
Oh heck, where to begin? Okay, so there's this guy named Christopher Bruno, a crooked businessman who works in the Empire State Building. He has a meeting with his buddy Graham Gaines, and he has a very important assignment for Graham: Kill the District Attorney.

See, the DA, Avery Henderson, is about to start an investigation that would uncover all the corrupt dealings they and their cohorts have been involved in, dealings connected to the Suburban Utilities company and the Cromwell company. So Graham calls a guy, who calls another guy, who first calls Ronco to order an amazing new juicer not sold in stores, and then calls another guy, who kills DA Henderson.

How am I doing? Does it make sense so far?

So, it's pretty sad that Henderson is dead, because he had a wife, and a young son with an unruly mop of hair. Not that the kid's hair makes it any sadder; I just thought I'd mention it. Anyway, before long, the fast-talking, drinkin', smokin', hittin'-on-other-guys'-girlfriends reporter Andy is on the case. (Man, there were a lot of commas in that sentence.)

The new Distrcict Attorney is Lionel, played by an actor who really reminds me of somebody, but I never did figure out who. He's determined to pick up where Henderson left off, and get to the bottom of these corporate fraud shenanigans. Also, his girlfriend is the daughter of Mr. Cromwell, who just happens to be one of the major forces in said shenanigans. Whoops.

And then... hmm. I know I stayed awake the whole time. What happened next? Some other guy got killed. There were three men with nearly identical moustaches, whom I could never tell apart. Andy did some pretty good forensic work, figuring out whose gun fired the bullet that killed Henderson. And then, yada yada yada, as Andy and Lionel get closer to unravelling the web of scandal, blah blah blah, their very lives are in danger, oogly oogly oogly.

Is It Scary?
I'm not even going to dignify that question with a response. You should be ashamed for asking.

Lessons I Learned

Never get in a car with a guy who plans to crash into a train.
73 minutes is still too long for this movie.
The world has gone MAD!

My Favorite Lines

Newspaper Guy: "How do you spell Poughkeepsie?"
Andy: "Poughkeepsie. P-O... P... Ah, just make it Yonkers and let it ride."
Andy: "[You're reading] Casanova?"
Moustache Man: "It's literature, my friend."
Andy: "Yeah, with a capital 'sewer'!"

Body Count
Six! Isn't that MAD?

Comments
• It's possible that this story could make for a good movie with a different script and different direction and different actors. Corporate corruption thrillers can be quite entertaining if they're actually... thrilling. Which is not to say this film doesn't have action. Why, one scene featured Andy dialing a phone. And when he got no answer... DIALED AGAIN!

• Andy is played by Pat O'Brian, but it's not the guy who hosts Access Hollywood. That would just be weird... especially because he hadn't been born yet when this movie was made.

• There was a lot of filler. One scene featured Andy sitting on a bed with Chris Bruno's girlfriend for what seemed like ten minutes... in the dark! We couldn't see them at all! Maybe this was supposed to be artistic, but it just looked like somebody forgot to turn on the lights.

• There was a constant noise in the background of every scene... I'm sure it's a product of the poor condition of this print of the film, but it sounded like somebody was taking a shower on the set, or playing an accordian made of cellophane.

• This movie was made in 1933, so it's about selfish, greedy executives profiting at a time when all the normal people in the country were struggling. Good thing that would never happen today!

• In one scene, the characters stood in front of a poster for the movie The Vampire Bat. Hey, I've watched that movie for the very classic horror movie blog you're reading now! Would you believe that both films were made by the same studio? I bet you would.

Letter grade for The World Gone Mad: D
Next film in the 50-movie: The Little Shop of Horrors. The Roger Corman movie, not the Frank Oz version of the off-Broadway musical version of the Roger Corman movie.

Horror Classic 35 of 50: SWAMP WOMEN

2008-09-29T22:00:00.002-04:00

All right, so... Swamp Women! This is a 1955 movie directed by Roger Corman, and it's included in a "horror classics" box set, so let's see if I can predict what it's about: a hapless family on a camping trip encounters a tribe of fierce mutants: half-women, half-alligators!

Yeah! That sounds awesome! And it's a Roger Corman movie, so it must be something like that. Let's check it out!

Synopsis
It's Mardi Gras! Or, rather, it's stock footage of Mardi Gras, and it's being watched by Bob and his girlfriend, whose name I never did catch. Bob's in New Orleans because he's an oilman, soon to be looking for a good place to find oil in the swamp. Something like that. Girlfriend begs to go along with him on his trip to the bayou, and he consents, partly because he enjoys her company, but mostly because he enjoys her makeouts.

Meanwhile, a police officer named Leigh meets with her captain. They've hatched a plan to track down the super-valuable "Nardo diamonds," which were stolen and hidden in the swamp years ago by the Nardo gang. All the men of the Nardo gang have since been zapped in the electric chair, but their womenfolk are in prison together. So all Leigh has to do is go undercover in prison, gain their trust, help them break out of jail, and let them lead her to the diamonds! Easy peasy!

The Nardo gang ladies are three tough-talkin' broads: Josie, the de facto leader of the group, Vera, a feisty redhead, and Billie, a fairly dumb blonde. Leigh infiltrates their Mean Girls club (they're remarkably trusting of the new girl in their cell!), they all bust outta the joint together, and soon they're in the swamp with some supplies and a boat. Unfortunately, their boat springs a leak... but who should come along at that moment but Bob, his Girlfriend, and their guide. How convenient! For the criminal chicks, not for the other folks.

One of the Nardo girls kills Bob's guide, which ticks off Leigh, and soon there's a GIRL FIGHT! Yeah! WOOO! And then that's over and they hijack the boat and take Bob and Girlfriend hostage. It soon becomes clear that all the women in the gang have crushes on Bob.

So now they're all cruising through the bayou on their way to the diamonds, occasionally stopping to glance at stock footage of animals. The next morning, the women decide quite spontaneously to take a knife to their jeans, thus creating cutoffs. YEAH! WOOO! Who wears short shorts? Bloodthirsty criminals wear short shorts! Oh, and later that day there's a GIRL FIGHT!

Then Bob's girlfriend does a stupid thing: She tries to escape. But she falls out of the boat, and soon she's being pursued by a hungry, hungry alligator! Bob jumps in the water and tries to save her, but despite his using his best underwater wrestling moves on a fake alligator (or a dead one?), the girl gets eaten, But he doesn't seem too shaken up about it -- and hey, that's less competition for everyone else! And in fact, Leigh soon reveals her true identity as a cop to Bob, and then they smooch, despite having no chemistry whatsoever.

And then some other stuff happens, and then they find the diamonds (right after a GIRL FIGHT)! And they really are a girl's best friend -- so much so that Billie suggests to Josie that they kill Leigh and Vera so they can keep more of the dough when they fence the ice (that's criminal talk!). Josie's shocked and appalled, but no so much as she is when Vera steals the diamonds and the guns and the man and hides in a tree, all part of a brilliant plan to take all the cash herself.

At this point in the film, we have diamond-stealing women in cutoffs shooting each other and throwing makeshift spears in the swamp while a huge snake attacks the man they have tied to a tree. This is also the point when I realized THIS MOVIE RULES!!!

Is It Scary?
As you've probably guessed by now, this is one of those "horror classics" that's not actually a horror movie at all. So... no.

Lessons I Learned

Never go for a pleasure cruise in the swamp.
If a new girl shows up in your jail cell, don't tell her all about the escape plan you've been working on for three years, even if she seems really cool.

My Favorite Lines

Billie, with a suggestively arched eyebrow as she unties Bob so he can eat his dinner: "Enjoy yourself."
Bob: "What's for dessert?"
Josie, after Vera's death: "Funny thing.. She always wanted to kill, kill anything -- and the last thing she did was save his life."
Leigh: "No. The last thing she did was kill a snake."

Body Count
Three, not counting the alligator or the snake.

Comments
• Bob is played by an actor named "Touch Connors." When I saw this in the credits, I thought this was hilarious. Then I looked at the DVD sleeve, which claims that Touch later changed his name back to the more sensible "Mike Connors" and starred on TV's hit show Mannix. So there you go.

• So, I guess this is an exploitation film, but honestly, it wasn't very titillating. I guess it's assumed that seeing women in cutoffs wrestling each other is exciting, but women pulling a boat through shallow, filthy, mucky swamp water? Let's just say it doesn't float my boat... nor does it pull it through shallow, filthy, muck swamp water.

• Leigh let three people die on her mission to find the diamonds. She's kind of a lousy cop.

• None of the characters are very likable, although Josie seems to have a bit more depth than anyone else. I think this was probably just because actress Marie Windsor was the more talented of the bunch.

Letter grade for Swamp Women: C
Next film in the 50-movie set: The World Gone Mad. Mad, I tell you! MAAAD!

Yet Another Interlude

2008-09-25T11:08:00.002-04:00

Hi, everyone. Here's the deal: I haven't written about Swamp Women yet. I've had an unusually full week. But I will write about Swamp Women! Soon! And it will be the swampiest thing you've ever seen.

Horror Classic 34 of 50: NOSFERATU

2008-09-17T23:35:00.005-04:00

First of all, I want to say that I discovered something very cool while watching this movie. But I'm not going to tell you what it was until my "comments" section, so keep reading.

Now, here's something odd. Before this week, I'd seen the 1922 silent classic Nosferatu once, on Turner Classic Movies, and in the version I saw there, the vampire in the film was named Count Orlok. In the version included on the 50 Movie Classics: Horror DVD set I'm trudging through now, that character's name is Count Dracula.

Apparently the Bram Stoker novel Dracula was still copyrighted in 1922, which explains why the German filmmakers changed the villains name and many other details. But I wonder, at what point did somebody create a new English print of the film in which his name was Dracula instead of Orlok? And if the film is in the public domain, does that mean I could take the film, add new titles establishing his name as Dr. Macadamia van Goofberry, and sell copies of it? I'll have to call my lawyer about that, but first let's talk about the movie.

Synopsis
Jonathon Harker a chipper fellow who smiles way too much, and works for a real estate agency in Bremen, Germany. His boss is Mr. Renfield, an old man who would never win the Mr. Germany beauty pageant. He's married to a woman named Nina, and they're really in love. It's kind of nauseating, really, the way they make goo-goo eyes at each other. Of course, goo-goo eyes don't make any noise, which plays pretty well in a silent film.

One day, Renfield shows Jonathon a letter he's received from Count Dracula in Transylvania. (Remember, I'm just telling you what was in the version I watched, and in that version he's Dracula. If you see it somewhere else he may be Count Orlok, or Count Chocula, or Count von Count.) The Count's letter is full of weird symbols and it looked pretty indechiperable to me, but apparently it says he wants to buy a house in Bremen. Renfield chooses the perfect house... right next door to Jonathon and Nina! And it's up to Jonathon to travel to Transylvania to get Dracula to sign the paperwork.

As it turns out, Transylvania is far away, and also said to be the "land of the phantoms," so Nina's pretty worried about her husband, but he insists he'll be fine. On the way, he spends the night at an inn, where he find in his room a copy of The Book of Vampires. What, no Gideon Bible? The vampire book tells of Nosferatu, the terrifying creature whose very name should be avoided at all costs. Jonathon thinks this is hilarious, and he ignores the book's warnings. He actually hurls the book to the floor like he's spiking a football. Take that, silly book! (From what I hear, this is the same reaction many people had when they finished reading another vampire book, Breaking Dawn.)

Then some other stuff happens, and then Jonathon arrives at Dracula's castle, which is all dark and shadowy. He gets the count to sign the papers, and sleeps at the castle that night. In the morning, he wakes to find two puncture marks on his neck, which can only mean one thing... He tried to eat with chopsticks in his sleep and did a really bad job of it!

Or it could mean that the count is a vampire. Which of course he is, and Jonathon realizes it later that morning when he finds the count sleeping in a coffin. So Jonathon skedaddles back to Bremen. Ah, but he's not the only one headed for that destination. Count Dracula/Mr. Nosferatu has himself packed in a crate and loaded on a ship headed for Bremen. By the time the vampire's ship comes in, the entire crew is dead. The Bremen officials immediately fear the plague.

But it's not the plague, oh no sir, it's not. It's something ever worse: a bald guy with pointy ears! Nosferatu has big plans for the city, and they don't involve joining the neighborhood watch or the city council so much as killing every citizen one by one. Not just the musicians of Bremen, either -- he's after everyone.

Then Nina finds Jonathon's Book of Vampires, which mentions the only way to end a vampire's curse: A pure-hearted woman must willingly offer Nosferatu her blood. Can Nina allow herself to participate in the most horrible blood drive ever, one that doesn't even offer cookies or a sticker?

Is It Scary?
Nosferatu/Dracula/Orlok is a very freaky villain.

Lessons I Learned

If you find a book on monsters in your hotel room, read it very carefully before hurling to the floor.
Vampires never travel anywhere without an entourage of a few hundred rats.
Transylvania is nothing like Pennsylvania.

My Favorite Lines

Not really amusing, just creepy: When the count sees a picture of Nina, he says to Jonathon, "Is that your wife? What a lovely throat!"

Body Count
Well, let's see... There was the one... and then all the guys on the ship... and those townspeople... It all adds up to... A LOT!

Comments
• Okay, so here's the cool thing I mentioned earlier. It didn't take me long to realize that the soundtrack attached to the movie on the DVD had nothing to do with the film. It was one long, loud, overbearing organ solo, and I just couldn't listen to it for 80 minutes. So I muted it and played my CD of the Empire Strikes Back special edition score.

And you know what? It was actually startling just how many times it matched up. There was exciting music during exciting parts, slow music during eerie parts, and sometimes the tempo or instrumentation would even change at the exact moment of a cut to a new shot. It was stunning, really, and a lot better than watching with the BLOMMMMM BLOM BLOM BLOMMMM of that organ track. However, the reverent, hopeful sound of "Yoda's Theme" did not match at all with Nosfearatu's death scene. Oh well.

• Dr. Van Helsing was in this movie too, though I'm sure he had a different name in the original cut. He first appeared giving a lecture on "secrets of nature," including predators like carnivorous plants, clawed polyps, and the phone company.

• There was some stop motion here, used to make it look like Nosferatu was opening doors or coffins with his mind. I'm sure it seemed unbelievably clever in 1922, but it kind of reminded me of videos I made when I was 13.

• Speaking of camera tricks: As Jonathon approaches the count's castle, he's picked up by a strange, hooded figure driving a horse-drawn coach. When the coach starts moving, it's filmed in "fast motion," so it looks like it's super-speedy. I guess it's supposed to be unsettling, but all I could think of was The Munsters, which frequently used the fast motion device for comic effect.

• Have you ever noticed that old monster movies always end with the monster's death, while modern films tend to include an epilogue to wrap things up for the protagonists? I'm not saying either way is better, but I wonder when that tendency changed.

Letter grade for Nosferatu: B
Next film in the 50-movie set: Swamp Women

Horror Classic 33 of 50: THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME

2008-09-10T12:00:00.002-04:00

Two weeks ago I watched a Lon Chaney, Sr. movie. Last week I watched a Lon Chaney, Jr. movie. This week it's the elder Chaney's turn again as I watched 1923's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I've never read the Victor Hugo book, and the only other adaptation I've seen is the Disney musical which I assume took one or two liberties with the original story.

But I do happen to own a copy of Marvel Comics' The Incredible Hulk versus Quasimodo from 1983:

Is that cool or what? It was written by longtime Hulk writer Bill Mantlo, with art by Sal Buscema and Steve Mitchell, and features the Hulk actually fighting the hunchback in the cathedral of Notre Dame. But of course, I'm here to talk about the classic movie, not some silly comic book, so let's proceed.

Synopsis
The Notre Dame cathedral is a big ol' church in Paris. It serves as a sanctuary for many of the city's impoverished, and today it's the site of the Festival of Fools, a big ol' party that allows citizens to get drunk and act as crazy and obnoxious as possible... so it's a lot like a Bette Midler concert.

Of course, the cathedral's bell tower is the home of Quasimodo, the hideously deformed hunchback who is hated and feared by humanity. In the Hulk comic, by the way, the Quasimodo living at the cathedral is the great-great-great grandson of the original hunchback, which explains why he's around in 1983, but which also raises some questions: How have four generations of Quasimodos managed to find women to bear their children? What are the chances that they would all have the same deformityl? Is a hunchback really hereditary?

Oh, sorry, I'm supposed to be talking about the movie. In rapid succession, the film introduces about 70 characters: There's King Louis XI, who's not fond of poor people. There's Clopin, the "king of beggars" who is a thorn in Lou's side. There's the archbishop Claude Frollo and his brother Jehan. There's Phoebus, the Captain of the Guard. And there's Esmerelda, the dancing gypsy, who is essentially property of Clopin -- he bought her as a child and raised her, which is kind of messed up.

You know what else is messed up? Quasimodo's get-rich quick scheme in that Hulk comic. See, Bruce Banner and his girlfriend Betty are in Paris so Bruce can give a speech at a medical conference, which I guess is as good a reason as any for him to be there. But Betty has a side mission: She's meeting the French Minster of Finance on behalf of her father, a general, and she carries a key that will unlock a vault filled with vast riches. So Quasimodo kidnaps her! Right in front of Bruce! Bruce follows them to a chamber hidden in the sewer system, and pretty soon he gets really mad and turns into the Hulk!

Yeah, Hulk! Go get 'im! BUST HIS HUMP! You can-- oh, right. The movie.

So, there's this love triangle thing where Phoebus and Jehan are both infatuated with Esmerelda, though a title card will tell us that Phoebus only thinks of her as "another girl to hold in his arms." Be careful, girl -- He's just not that into you! Meanwhile, Jehan plans to kidnap Esmerelda, but he fails... which doesn't matter a lick to him, because he's made sure Quasimodo takes the blame. Quasimodo is sentenced to be lashed in the public square... and they ain't using wet noodles. It's pretty harsh.

But not as harsh as the Hulk's fight with the hunchback after he rescues Betty! Quasimodo drops a freakin' chandelier on the Hulk's head, but that only ticks him off, so the Hulk punches Quasi right out the window! In the comic, Quasimodo has a giant pet bat named Salvatore, and he has the bat drop the Hulk in the Seine River! From like hundreds of feet in the air!

Um... that doesn't happen in the movie. In the movie, Jehan stabs Phoebus and frames Esmerelda, and soon Esmerelda is sentenced to death. But then a hero comes to her rescue: the handsome -- no... dashing -- no... incredibly ugly Quasimodo swoops in and grabs her, taking her to the top of the cathedral. And when an angry mob comes for her, the Quaz throws stones at them and pours molten lead on them. YEEOWCHIE!

You know what else would make me say "YEEOWCHIE"? Trying to stop a train with my bare hands... but that's exactly what the Hulk does when the hunchback tries to ram him with the underground train that's carrying the treasure. But the hunchy guy has already stolen an experimental serum that Bruce Banner hoped would cure him of the Hulk forever. Quasimodo takes the serum... and is transformed into a normal-looking, totally non-crazy man! It's a happy ending for the Hunchback of Notre Dame!

Oh, but not in the movie. In the movie the hunchback dies. The End.

Is It Scary?
Like Lon Chaney's phantom in that other movie, Quasimodo is pretty freaky, but the movie never had me on the edge of my seat.

Lessons I Learned

Be nice to hunchbacks and they'll be nice to you.
"Jehan" is a funny name.

My Favorite Lines

As usual, a silent film doesn't provide many memorable lines, but I did laugh when a lady pointed out Esmerelda dancing with her goat to Phoebus, saying, "Phoebus -- see the pretty goat."
Oh, and then there was Clopin's line: "Long enough the aristocrats have treated us like sheep. We'll show them -- we are wolves." That's pretty good tough-guy talk.

Body Count
I think there were three... but that's just a hunch.

Comments
• One thing that struck me during the film is that, although the man with the hump gets his name in the title, it's really Esmerelda's story. Everyone's desire for her drives the action, and I wouldn't be surprised if you were to tell me that she has more screen time than the titular hunchback.

• Again Lon Chaney is rendered completely unrecognizable by his character makeup. That guy was really good at making himself look terrible.

But somehow I didn't find Quasimodo as compelling a character as the Phantom. Actually, I suspect that I may have liked the whole movie more if the picture quality had been better... According to my very brief web research, the original 35mm copies of the film were destroyed, so all existing copies are derived from some commercially available 16mm prints made decades after the film's release.

• I couldn't help but notice that Norman Kerry, who played Phoebus, bore a resemblance to Kevin Kline. Then my roommate Joe, who was watching the movie with me, pointed out that in Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame the role of Phoebus was played by... Kevin Kline! Do you think they did that on purpose?

• This particular DVD copy of this silent movie had a score that actually matched the action onscreen, a first for this 50 Horror Classics set. There were even some sound effects!

• I didn't mention it in my very detailed and insightful synopsis above, but there was a subplot about an old gypsy/beggar lady named Marie, whose daughter was stolen from her as a baby. I figured out immediately that her daughter was, in fact, Esmerelda... I have to wonder if this "revelation" was ever a surprise to viewers of the film or readers of the novel.

• There are a heck of a lot of extras in this movie.

Letter grade for The Hunchback of Notre Dame: B
Next film in the 50-movie set: Nosferatu. Another silent classic, but alas, one without a Chaney.

Horror Classic 32 of 50: INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN

2008-09-03T22:04:00.001-04:00

So, did everyone see where Lon Chaney, Sr. himself commented on last week's entry on his movie The Phantom of the Opera? Yep, despite being dead, the veteran actor has his own Blogger account. And a MySpace! His age is listed as 125. Man, you never know who you'll find on the internet.

While watching Indestructible Man, I honestly wasn't sure whether the title character was played by the elder Chaney or his son Lon Chaney, Jr., also a horror movie actor (best known for The Wolf Man). The credits just say "Lon Chaney," and the movie is from 1956, 31 years after Phantom, so it seemed feasible enough that it could be the old guy. It's not like I would recognize his real face after seeing him in that phantom makeup. But according to both Wikipedia and IMDb, it's Lon Jr., and I guess I'll take their word for it. Unless one of the Chaneys corrects me.

Synopsis
The movie is narrated by a detective named Dick Chasen. With a name like that, you're pretty much destined to be a) a detective, and b) a character in a movie. A notorious criminal, Charles "the Butcher" Benton, has just been executed, and though police lieutenant John Lauden considers the case closed, Chasen still has some questions.

See, the Butcher hid a large amount of stolen money somewhere, but it hasn't been located yet. Furthermore, his accomplices, Sweeny Ellis and Joe Marcelli, are still free, and his lawyer Paul Lowe seems pretty shady too. Though it wasn't explicitly stated, I can only assume that the Butcher's two partners were nicknamed "the Baker" and "the Candlestick Maker." Perhaps a deleted scene featured all three men in a tub.

Dick decides the best way to begin his investigation is to go to a burlesque club and question a dancer. Oh, sure. I'm sure that's absolutely the most logical place to start, and that his interest in the burlesque show is purely professional. Sheesh. He talks to the Butcher's old girlfriend Eva Martin, but she doesn't know anything about anything. So he asks her on a date.

Meanwhile, a scientist named Dr. Bradshaw is conducting an experiment which he believes might be crucial to finding a cure for cancer. He's managed to procure a dead body, and guess whose body it is? It's the Butcher's, of course. So here's the complicated scientific process of Dr. Bradshaw's experiment: He zaps the Butcher's corpse with a crapload of electricity. That's it. That's his brilliant plan. And holy guacamole, is it ever effective! The Butcher comes back to life, but two things are different: 1. He can no longer speak because his vocal cords have been fried, and 2. HE CAN'T BE KILLED! He wastes no time in killing Dr. Bradshaw and his assistant.

Next he turns his attention to Ellis and Marcelli, on whom he had vowed revenge because they testified against him. Look out, guys! Oh, and meanwhile, Dick and Eva go on their date, which includes both of them telling long, boring stories about themselves when all we really want to see is the indestructible man smashing stuff.

The Butcher soon kills again, and steals a car, and now the police are after him, but they haven't figured out that their killer car thief is the same guy who just got executed. Of course, why would they even suspect that? But then they do find out, and detective Chase and Lt. Lauden realize they better do something about it pretty darn quick. But how can they stop a man who can't be hurt by bullets, flames, or a smack in the face? And can they end his rampage before he kills anyone else? (Spoiler: No, they can't.)

Is It Scary?
The movie is not scary, but if I ran into the Butcher in a dark alley, or a light alley, or the soup aisle at H-E-B, I would be pretty terrified.

Lessons I Learned

Electrocuting a dead man can bring him back to life, but because his cellular structure has become denser, he's no longer human. And he's invulnerable. And he can't talk. I find the science in this film highly suspect.
There is one way to kill an indestructible man: Electrocute him again.

My Favorite Lines

Eva: You know something, Dick? I haven't had a hamburger in the front seat of a car with a guy in a lot of years.
Lt. Lauder: I have a hunch this killer could be our baby.
Eva: Tell [Lauder] Charles Benton is alive... and not even bullets can stop him!

Body Count
Ten. That's counting both times the Butcher was killed.

Comments
• The premise of this movie would have made for a pretty good X-Files episode, but as a 71-minute film it dragged. This was largely because of its limited budget... a bigger film could have given us more spectacular scenes of the Butcher destroying things, and failing to be destroyed. It would have been cool, for example, to see the Butcher get hit by a train, surviving and smashing the train in the process.

• The title of the movie makes me want to say, "Indestructo... THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN!" in the manner of Conan O'Brien as Moleculo the Molecular Man in that Saturday Night Live sketch.

• There are several very tight close-ups of Lon Chaney's eyes as his stares at things. This is much like Bela Lugosi's eye close-ups in White Zombie. I wonder if Chaney and Lugosi ever got together for staring contests.

• I didn't mention it in the synopsis, but there was a map to the Butcher's stolen treasure, which was hidden in the sewer. I ask you this question: What would be the minimum amount of money for which you would be willing to roam around in the sewer?

• What would you do if you were an indestructible man? You could do anything you wanted to, really -- skydiving, swimming with sharks, eating at White Castle -- without having to worry about any damage to your person. But I wonder, could the Butcher have gotten sick? It was established that needles couldn't puncture his skin, so that could be problematic. I guess I'm okay being a destructible man.

Letter grade for Indestructible Man: C
Next film in the 50-movie set: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Horror Classic 31 of 50: THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

2008-08-25T22:08:00.001-04:00

First of all, I want to mention that I just spent 20 minutes wandering around my apartment looking under things because I could not find my notes on this movie, before finally finding them in an unlikely place. Now, it may just be that I misplaced them, but I don't think that's the true explanation. I'm almost certain that my notes were, in fact, stolen and hidden from me by... THE PHANTOM!

The Phantom of the Opera is a 1925 silent film starring Lon Chaney (Senior), based on the 1909 novel by Gaston Leroux, which was of course based on the Twiggy episode of The Muppet Show, in which the theater is haunted by the Phantom of the Muppet Show.

These days, of course, when most people think of the Phantom story, they think of the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical. I've seen the musical, but fortunately I had forgotten enough of it that I didn't know everything that was going to happen in the movie.

Synopsis
The Paris Opera House is enormous, and grand, and palatial... and built on top of old torture chambers and dungeons. Very early in the movie, we see a man wandering through the tunnels below, carrying a lantern. This leads to a static shot lasting at least 30 seconds featuring the lantern man standing there staring into space. This has no importance whatsoever to the rest of the movie.

The opera house is changing hands today, and the old owners are glad to be rid of it, because there's a phantom haunting the joint. They don't tell the new owners that little detail until after the papers have been signed... it's kinda like when you sell your car and it's only after you've gotten paid that you tell the buyer about the velociraptor living in the trunk. To emphasize the point that there's a phantom and he's scary, there's an extended sequence of a bunch of ballerinas running around all terrified because they spotted him, but because they're ballerinas their terrified running is all very graceful.

The opera's star singer, Carlotta, receives a letter from Mr. Phantom himself. It informs her that she must stay out of the show on Wednesday night, and let the young singer Christine take her place. She goes along with it. She probably wanted a day off anyway. On Wednesday night, Christine's beau Raoul comes to see her sing. Do you suppose he really likes opera, or is he just there because as her boyfriend he's obligated? I'm sure he'd much rather be at a monster truck rally.

After the show, Christine hears a "voice like an angel" somewhere behind the wall of her dressing room. The owner of the voice tells her he's going to help her reach her full potential as a singer, as long as she allows him to be her master. For some reason, she's all like, "Yeah, okay." Right away we can tell there's something wrong with her. A mysterious voice in the wall who wants to own you? You might not want to give him your phone number, honey.

And then Carlotta gets another letter, but this time she appears in the show anyway, in a costume that makes her look EXACTLY like the Swiss Miss. Is there an opera about hot cocoa? As Carlotta sings, the lights flicker, and then... the chandelier plummets from the ceiling and crashes into the audience! This Phantom fellow means business! What a menace!

And now he makes his move: He takes Christine (through a hidden door behind her mirror) into his underground world of catacombs and tunnels. When she sees that his whole face is covered by a mask, she suddenly has second thoughts... but he's not letting her go anywhere.

He takes her to his bedroom and tells her he loves her, which I'm pretty sure Dr. Drew would have advised him not to do. He tells her he wants her to be his, and his love will redeem her, and blah blah blah. Also, his real name is Erik, and he's hard a really, really hard life, but he's not such a bad guy. No, really. Oh, and one more thing: Whatever she does, she is not to touch his mask.

Guess what she does the next morning as he's playing the organ? That's right, she takes off his mask, and HOLY GUACAMOLE! This is one phantom that done got beat with a ugly stick! But even after this incident, he allows her to leave so she can attend the masquerade ball, but she has to never ever see her boyfriend again. The ball rolls around, and suddenly the movie goes from black and white to color! Apparently the masked ball takes place in Munchkinland. The Phantom shows up at the ball to scold everyone for having fun. He also spies Christine and Raoul planning to leave town together. Then we go back to black and white.

That doesn't sit so well with Erik, so the next night when Christine takes the stage, he takes Christine. Now it's up to Raoul and his new friend Mr. Ledeoux of the secret police to make their way through the Phantom's maze of madness and get her back.

Is It Scary?
The Phantom is a pretty frightening fella. You know, he's supposed to be something of a tragic figure, but it's difficult to feel sorry for him when he's actively causing trouble for everyone.

Lessons I Learned

Opera is no less boring when it's silent.
You can lead a horse to an underground river, but you can't make him ride in a gondola.
Watch out for the chandelier!

My Favorite Lines

You know, there just aren't that many in a silent. But I did chuckle audibly when, after traveling way underground to a hidden chamber by an intimidating man in a mask, Christine pointed at him and said, "You- you are the Phantom!" As if she'd just figured it out.

Body Count
Just one, a stagehand who knew too much about the Phantom. Say, now that you've read this whole post, you know a lot about the Phantom too. Be careful!

Comments
• I'm glad this 50-movie project has forced me to watch a few silent dramas. I like silent comedies, but when it comes to dramas I've been pretty slow to get caught up with the classics.

• Christine was played by Mary Philbin. I was wondering if she was Regis's mom, but I guess she's not. She also starred in 1928's The Man Who Laughs, which also featured a deformed character. That character would later inspire the design of Batman's foe, the Joker. Mention this fact the next time you go to Sonic, and they'll give you free tater tots!

• A couple of characters claim that the Phantom has no nose. So how does he smell? Considering the fact that there are no showers in those underground tunnels, I'd say pret-ty bad.

• Christine really is dumb for agreeing to go with the Phantom and then being shocked when he's weird-looking. I mean, what was she expecting?

• The Phantom's mask here looks nothing like the one from the Andrew Lloyd Weber show. In that version, it's a simple, ivory-white mask that only covers half his face (thus making it easy to see from the balcony and allowing the actor to sing), whereas here it looks like a fake face, with eyes and everything.

• I mentioned in the Lessons I Learned that the Phantom has a horse. Where does it sleep? How does he feed it? And, um, where does it... you know... poop?

• The Phantom's supposed to be a really amazing organist, right? That doesn't come across so well in a silent film, especially when they didn't even bother to put any organ on the soundtrack.

• I guess that one color sequence was just to show off all the masquerade costumes. The Phantom himself shows up brightly garbed as Red Death, which is pretty striking.

• The Phantom really is hideous without his mask. I already knew what he looked like, as the image has become iconic, but I imagine it must have been breathtakingly startling for audiences seeing the film for the first time in 1925. Lon Chaney suffered for his art, too. This is from Wikipedia's informative entry on the movie:

Chaney pulled his eyeballs out from their sockets with thin wires, so that his eyes appeared to bulge out and their sockets became very deep. He then kept his eyes in their bulged-out position with wires and painted his eye sockets black, giving a skull-like impression to them. He also pulled the tip of his nose up and pinned that in place with wire, enlarging his nostrils with black paint, and putting a set of jagged false teeth into his mouth to complete the ghastly deformed look of the Phantom.

Yowza.

Letter grade for The Phantom of the Opera: B+
Next film in the 50-movie set: Indestructible Man

Interlude: Movies Are Good

2008-08-20T21:34:00.000-04:00

Hi there. I ran out of time to watch The Phantom of the Opera this week. But I had a pretty good reason... or rather, reasons. Let me tell you about it (them).

On Thursday, I attempted to go to a free outdoor screening of Cabaret, but it was rained out, so I watched it at a friend's apartment instead. It was not quite what I expected. I was surprised to see that all of the musical numbers in the film were presented as performances at the titular nightclub, and the characters never spontaneously burst into song, as is traditional in musicals. Is there a term for this subset of musicals? But it was still a pretty good movie.

On Monday, I went to a free outdoor screening of Superman, which was the most crowded and high-energy movie screening I've ever been to. People were cheering and whooping and applauding for pretty much everything Superman ever did, and for the duration of the film, for all of the New Yorkers squeezed together on the lawn at Bryant Park, Superman was a very real hero. Even a momentary loss of sound during a climactic action sequence didn't put a damper on our enthusiasm. In fact, we ended up doing a brief sing-along of the main theme from the movie's score to fill the silence. Superman is so epic, and treats its protagonist with such reverence, that it always feels to me like the world's biggest, most spectacular biopic, and I like it more every time I see it. In fact, I almost like it enough now to forgive the ludicrous flying-around-the-world-in-reverse denouement.

On Tuesday night, I went to a free outdoor screening of Killer's Kiss, Stanley Kubrick's second feature film. It was... disappointing. For the most part, it was surprisingly unoriginal, although there was some creative cinematography and a thrilling, realistic fight scene in a mannequin factory. Watching two men throw body parts at each other seems like the kind of thing that would be right at home in one of the "horror classic" movies, and at no point during the sequence did anything feel choreographed... It seemed like Kubrick just gave the one guy an axe, gave the other guy a fireplace poker, and turned them lose in front of the camera with instructions to try to kill each other. So it was interesting, but not great. Or even good.

As you can see, I've been way too busy watching movies to take the time to watch a movie. But I'll post my write-up of Phantom next Wednesday. And if you ever ever ever have the opportunity to see a movie outdoors, I would highly recommend it. Even if the movie is Attack of the Giant Leeches.

Horror Classic 30 of 50: DOOMED TO DIE

2008-08-14T00:20:00.001-04:00

Several movies ago, I watched The Fatal Hour, a detective movie starring Boris Karloff as the Chinese detective Mr. Wong. Doomed to Die is the second Wong movie in this DVD set, which doesn't mean much because as you know, two Wongs don't make a right.

According to IMDb, Doomed was made just after Fatal Hour, in the same year (1940). It also features the return of spunky girl detective Bobbi Logan and cranky cop Captain Street, and like its predecessor, it's not a horror film at all, but rather a murder mystery. Yep, it sure has a lot in common with The Fatal Hour, which is a movie I have seen.

So it was interesting to me that when I went back and read my entry on Fatal Hour just now, I remembered almost nothing from it. When I saw Bobbi Logan and Captain Street in this week's movie, I had no idea I had seen them before. As I've gone through these "horror classic" movies, I've often wondered how much will stick with me... and now I have my answer. But maybe Doomed to Die will be more memorable. Let's find out.

Synopsis
Okay, so there's this giant ocean liner, and it's called the Wentworth Castle, even though it's not a castle. It's a boat. It catches fire while out on the sea, and lots of people die. Cyrus Wentworth is the owner of the ship company, and as you might expect, he's not too happy about it. When he calls lawyer, Mr. Martin, and makes a change to his will, Martin can't help but wonder: Has the Castle disaster driven him to thoughts of suicide?

Wentworth insists that he's fine, even when his arch-nemesis shows up. That would be Paul Flemming, the owner of a rival ship company who offers to buy out Wentworth. Wentworth tells Flemming to go suck an egg (That's not an exact quote).

Oh, and there's another complication of a kind that always happens in stories like this: Mr. Flemming's son Dick is madly in love with Mr. Wentworth's daughter Cynthia. He tells Wentworth they want to get married, but Wentworth is all like, "No way, José." Moments later, BANG! A shot is fired, and Wentworth is dead. Dick is the obvious suspect, and Capt. Street has him arrested, but when Mr. Wong is brought in to investigate, he's not so quick to accuse the young lovebird. In fact, he suspects Dick didn't do the deadly deed.

Soon, Cynthia finds out her dear old dad is dead dead dead, and so does Cynthia's pal, spunky gal reporter Bobbi Logan. From here on, Bobbi is present for every step of the investigation, much to Capt. Street's annoyance. They did some verbal sparring in The Fatal Hour, but here they're hurling snappy insults at each other in every scene, and honestly, it makes this plodding murder mystery more bearable.

So, Wong obtains a list of the passengers on the Wentworth Castle and determines during a trip to Chinatown that one of the passengers was a Chinese guy who was illegally transporting gold from Havana on the ship. He managed to survive the fire, but disappeared soon after. Having gathered this information, Wong prepares to leave Chinatown... but he gets shot!

Don't worry, Wong's okay. There are still a couple movies left in his franchise. Meanwhile, Mr. Wentworth's chauffer hides out on the fire escape at the Wentworth company, where Paul Flemming has just taken over. Wentworth's chauffer spies Paul in the act of disposing of the gun found at the scene of Wentworth's death. Later that night, the chauffer sneaks into Wentworth's former office, opens the safe, removes a piece of paper, and burns it.

Mr. Wong, arriving at the scene moments later, gathers the ashes as evidence, which seems kind of silly. But then it turns out that he knows a guy who can take a photograph of the ashes in such a way that they can read what was printed on the paper. WOW! I had no idea that kind of technology existed, especially in 1940! But this is a Mr. Wong movie, so I will assume it's for real.

As it turns out, the name "Kai Lin" is on the piece of paper. That's the same guy who was on the ship with the gold! Captain Street and Bobbi go to Lin's house, where they find him stabbed in the back. Also dead. But here's the thing: When Bobbi sees Kai Lin's body, she recognizes him as Lim How, an associate of Cyrus Wentworth! How can two different people be the same person?!

Well, in the end Mr. Wong figures it all out, and I knew he would, although in all honesty I've already forgotten how he deduces it. But here's a spoiler regarding who, exactly, dunnit: It was the chauffer! Just as Dick was leaving Mr. Wentworth's office, the chauffer shot him from down a hallway, then tossed the gun into the room. Isn't that clever? In the final moments, Bobbi reminds Capt. Street that he had promised to eat his hat if Dick was not the killer. Street obediently takes off his hat, looks at it, then yells another insult at Bobbi, and everyone laughs and has a good time and that's the end.

Is It Scary?
No. Like The Fatal Hour before it, Doomed to Die is a murder mystery, not a horror movie.

Lessons I Learned:

Don't mess with the chauffer.

If you close your eyes, it's impossible to tell whether gunshots are coming from behind you or in front of you.

My Favorite Lines:

Bobbi Logan, paying for Cynthia's drinks: "What's the damage?"
Bartender: "That'll be... four dollars."
Bobbi: "What'd she do -- buy the place?!"
The doctor, after patching up Wong's gunshot wound: "Thank you. Come again."
Wong: "I hope not!"
Capt. Street: "What are you doing on the fire escape?"
Chauffer: "Parking the car."
Capt. Street: "He stabbed himself in the back, did he?"
Bobbi: "Well, an Oriental would, wouldn't he, Wong? Commit hairy-hairy or whatever they call it?"

Body Count:
Two. Unless you count Kai Lin and Lim How as two separate people. Which they weren't! That's the twist! AHHHH!

Comments:
• If this movie were made today, the mutual bitterness between Bobbi and Street would be an indication of sexual tension. And they would totally be doin' it by 2/3 of the way through the movie. Or at least makin' out.

• Overall, this was a bit more lighthearted than The Fatal Hour, and thus a bit easier to get through. And it's interesting that both movies involved the murder of an important businessman and two young lovers with disapproving parents. I wonder if they wrote all the Mr. Wong movie scripts using the Mad Libs method. Also, I'm not sure, but I think Karloff's Wong makeup may have been a little more prominent in this one.

• Bill Withers continues to be under the impression that shouting = acting. Man, I was really hoping he would actually eat his hat at the end.

• I'm not going to seek out the other Wong films, but I am curious to see how they compare, especially the final film in the series, in which Keye Luke (an actual Chinese guy!) replaced Karloff.

Letter grade for Doomed to Die: B-
Next film in the 50-movie set: The Phantom of the Opera. It's the silent classic starring Lon Chaney, Sr.! Or... Jr. I'm not sure which is which. Anyway, the only version of Phantom I've ever experienced is the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, so it'll be interesting to see how it compares. I'll assume that because it's a silent film, there won't be any actual singing.

Horror Classic 29 of 50: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

2008-08-06T12:00:00.000-04:00

I've watched a number of zombie movies in this Horror Classics DVD set, all made in the 1930s and '40s, and thus far they've all left a lot to be desired. White Zombie, Revolt of the Zombies, King of the Zombies, Ma and Pa Zombie Back on the Farm -- these were all movies I endured rather than enjoyed.

But to my surprise, this week's horror classic was 1968's Night of the Living Dead, a zombie movie directed by George A. Romero which is so influential they're still making sequels to and knockoffs of it. In fact, this may be the first movie in this box set that can accurately and without question be referred to as both a horror film and a classic. I've never gone out of my way to see zombie movies (I enjoyed 28 Days Later well enough but skipped 28 Weeks Later and had no interest in I Am Legend), but they can be pretty darn effective when done well. So I was curious to see this movie, and especially to see if it still seemed scary.

Synopsis

After some eerie, mood-setting opening credits music, the movie opens on Johnny and Barbara, two adult siblings who have just taken a three-hour one-way drive to place flowers on their father's grave. Okay, so these are our two main characters. As they head back to their car, Johnny sees a dour-looking man walking toward them, and teasingly tells Barbara, "He's coming for you!"

And then... well, the man is coming for them, and he attacks Barbara so Johnny jumps in and fights the guy and they struggle and roll around on the ground and then the guy kills Johnny and then he starts chasing Barbara and she screams and gets in the car and crashes it into a tree and the guy is still chasing her so she runs to an abandoned house and tries to call for help but the phones are out and there are more zombies hanging out outside the house and she runs upstairs and there's a decomposing corpse there!

Whew! We're about seven minutes into the movie, and there's already been more action and thrills than any five of the previous "horror classics" put together. Barbara is completely dazed, so it's a good thing that Ben shows up. He's a quick-thinking dude who beats the tar out of three zombies until they stop moving, then sets fire to them. They're afraid of fire, you see... just like Frankenstein, or the Martian Manhunter, or Mortimer Snerd.

As Ben boards all the windows and doors, Barbara tells him what happened to her... though, curiously, the way she tells it is not exactly the way we just saw it happen onscreen. I don't know whether this was a result of filming out of sequence or on-set improvistion, or a deliberate choice on the filmmakers' part, but it certainly makes sense that the traumatized Barbara would have some of her facts skewed.

Suddenly, there are two other men in the house. Where the heck did they come from? The cellar, actually. Tom and Mr. Cooper have been hiding out there with their respective wives, Judy and Helen, as well as the Coopers' daughter Karen, who was attacked by one of the creatures and is now deathly ill. Mr. Cooper, by the way, has the exact same hair as Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry. Also, he's kind of a jerkface, yelling at Ben and insisting that everyone stay in the cellar instead of gathering on the ground floor. So... he's definitely gonna die before the movie's over.

The whole area is crawling with zombies, so they can't leave the house. The TV becomes an essential source of information from the outside world, and they learn from the news that this "epidemic of mass murder" includes recently dead folks coming back to life, killing people, then eating their flesh. Which is disgusting. If I had been dead for a few days, I'd come back to life
starving for a #6 combo at Whataburger. (In other words, I'd be craving chicken fingers, not my friends' fingers.) Also, scientists are speculating that the whole horrible outbreak might be connected to a radioactive space probe that recently crashed back to Earth after investigating Venus.

Soon, the men devise a plan. Cooper will hurl Molotov cocktails at the creatures while Ben and Tom run to the gas pump outside and fill up Ben's pickup truck. Then everyone will escape in the truck. But first, Tom and Judy share an emotional moment, and danged if it wasn't actually pretty affecting. They're all in love and stuff, and she's worried something might happen to them.

Next: Cooper throws Molotov cocktails, aggressively! The zombies recoil, fearfully! Ben and Tom dash outside, quickly! Judy follows them, unexpectedly! They put gas in the truck, but the encroaching zombies cause them to spill some, and a fire starts. BOOM! The truck blows up, with Tom and Judy still inside.

Now it's really anyone's game. Up to this point, I was fully expecting that about a third of the characters would survive, but now I wasn't so sure. Could it be that the winners in this movie are... the zombies?

Is It Scary?

It's only the scariest movie out of 29 horror classics I've watched so far. I guess that's not really saying a lot when previous contenders have included The Giant Gila Monster, but yes, it's scary. And occasionally yucky. I was very surprised to see, in an American film made before the existence of the MPAA ratings system, a scene of zombies hungrily chewing on their victims' torn-off body parts.

Lessons I Learned:

Well, "zombies are afraid of fire" seems to be an important one. After all, you never know...

My Favorite Line:

TV Reporter: "Are they [the zombies] slow-moving, Chief?"
Police Chief: "Yeah, they're dead. They're... all messed up."

My Favorite Tie:
Johnny's polka-dotted necktie, which I only wish I could have seen in color.

Body Count:
Sixteen! A new record, if I'm not mistaken. That's including the zombies who were re-killed, as well as the DVD set's very first trowel killing. A trowel!

Comments:
• I'm not intimately familiar with the history of horror movies (or the horror of history movies), but I'm guessing you could effectively divide the genre in half: Everything before Night of the Living Dead and everything after. The high body count, the flesh-eating scenes, the good guys fighting amongst themselves... There's a lot here that would inform horror movies for decades after. And today, zombies are making a comeback, including that book World War Z, which certainly drew on this film and its follow-ups for inspiration.

• Ben, with his bravery and resourcefulness, emerges as the leader of the group and the hero of the film. For a film made in the 60s it seems unusual to see this character played by a black actor (Duane Jones), so I guess that's another way in which this movie was progressive and influential.

• The part where the zombies ate people was really gross. Really gross. Yecch. It was not nearly as graphic as similar scenes in today's terrible horror movies, but how did this get released in theaters in 1968? Not only that, there were a few instances of swearing that took me aback.

• The officials in the TV reports refer to the undead creatures as "ghouls" rather than "zombies." When did Hollywood make up their mind about what a zombie was? Some of those earlier movies depicted zombies are merely being hypnotized humans, which is like, totally lame compared to this.

• The explanation of the reanimated corpses as being the product of radiation from Venus was unnecessary. I think I would have preferred it if there were no explanation at all for the zombies' existence. The sci-fi element clashes with the more earthy feel of the rest of the film, I think. However, it does open the door for a series of relationship books called "Men Are From Mars, Zombies Are From Venus."

• I know this film praised for its use of metaphor... but I'm just a country bumpkin so I couldn't quite pick up on what the zombies were a metaphor for (metafor?). I'm guessing that the way the police handled the zombie invasion is meant as a critique of the US military's efforts to ward off Communism... but I could be way off. After I post this, I should go to my local library and Read All About It. Or, you know, check out the external links on IMDb.

• Now I'm interested in seeing George Romero's other "living dead" movies. Has anyone seen them? Are they all worth watching?

Letter grade for Night of the Living Dead: A
Next film in the 50-movie set: Doomed to Die. Not to be confused with that horror classic about Easter eggs, Doomed to Dye.

Horror Classic 28 of 50: THE CORPSE VANISHES

2008-07-30T13:11:00.000-04:00

The Corpse Vanishes is a 1942 film, and guess who's in it? Bela Lugosi! It's been a long time since the last Lugosi film in the 50-movie DVD set, so seeing him again was like being reunited with an old friend. A spooky old friend who tries to drain the life from you for his own nefarious purposes, but a friend nonetheless. Good to see ya, Bela ol' buddy.

Last time, I asked you, the readers, to be active participants in this blog by making predictions about when exactly the corpse would vanish... but nobody did. Come on, guys! The internet is supposed to be interactive! For the record, though: More than one corpse disappears, but the important one vanishes at 11 minutes and 33 seconds into the movie. What or who makes it vanish, and how and why? Well, I'll tell you.

Synopsis
The first scene is a wedding. Isn't that nice? The church looks lovely, the groom is handsome, the bride is dropping dead, and the-- THE BRIDE IS DROPPING DEAD?! Yeah, she is, and her body is immediately loaded onto a hearse and driven away... only it turns out the hearse is a phony, and now nobody knows where the corpse is. To make matters worse, this is only the latest in a series of mysteriously-dying- then-disappearing brides.

Smart, spunky girl reporter Patricia Hunter is determined to get the bottom of this. She goes to the next big wedding in town, and sure enough, the bride kicks the bucket again, and her body stolen. Sheesh, and they never even got to do the chicken dance. Now, who do you suppose is driving the car that steals the body? That's right, it's Bela Lugosi.

Patricia soon finds a lead: All the brides were wearing a rare breed of orchid when they died, and nobody knows where the orchids came from. It must be an important clue, right? Her stupid editor, Mr. Keenan, dismisses it as having no significance whatsoever (How did he ever get to be a journalist?), but Patricia is undeterred, so she sets out to visit Professor Lorenz (Lugosi!), an expert on orchids. Of course, she has no idea he's the man behind the vanishings, so she hitches a ride to Lorenz's mansion with his colleague Dr. Foster.

Lorenz, meanwhile, is keeping busy. In his lab, he sticks a needle in the fresh bride, extracts her young-and-beautiful juice, and injects it in his aging wife. Naturally, her wrinkles immediately disappear, and she's a hot young thing. It seems like an extreme way to fight aging, but you have to remember they didn't have Botox in 1942. (A Botox joke! Yes, that's the kind of cutting-edge humor you get here on Ryan Watches 50 Movies.)

Patricia arrives and asks Lorenz for an interview, but he says it'll have to wait until tomorrow, and since there's a big storm outside, why doesn't she just spend the night at his place? So she does. That night, Lorenz sneaks into her room via a secret passageway, and leers at her. Bela Lugosi was an expert at leering at sleeping people, and having it witnessed it as many times as I have in these movies, I hope he never leers at me while I sleep.

As you've probably guessed, Lorenz and his wife (who, by the way, sleep in matching his-and-hers coffins) see Patricia as their next victim. But Patricia is no damsel in distress: As she investigates the house, she discovers Lorenz's lab and his collection of dead brides.

Now Patricia has her evidence... and her work cut out for her. Will this be the biggest story of her life... or the end of it?

Is It Scary?
It's kinda spooky at times, though like several of these movies, it's more suspenseful than shocking.

Lessons I Learned

According to Professor Lorenz, many people prefer coffins to beds. Oh yeah? What kind of people? Besides Dracula, I mean.
If a mysterious man hands gives you an orchid at your wedding, DON'T SNIFF IT.

My Favorite Lines

Patricia: "What if I get a clue?"
Other reporter: "I wouldn't worry about that, sweetie pie. You wouldn't know a clue if it bit you!"
Patricia: "I'll remember that, stooge."
Patricia, on the Lorenzes: "So that's what you call being eccentric. I have another name for it."
Patricia: "Do I get a byline?"
Mr. Keenan: "After this, you can have a clothesline. With my shirt on it!"
(What does that mean?)

Body Count Five, if you count the guy who falls down at the very end after sniffing the orchid, but that's played for laughs.

Comments

• This was not a bad movie. It was extremely refreshing to have a hero like Patricia, who is the most active female protagonist I've seen on this DVD set. There have been female leads before, sure, but they've done a lot of cowering and screaming. Patricia was like Lois Lane, fearlessly diving into danger to get her story.

Which is why the ending was a bit disappointing. Patricia's plan to catch Lorenz in the act involves staging a phony wedding, and while this is going on, Dr. Foster proposes to her, which comes out of abso-frigging-luteley nowhere because we never seen any kind of chemistry between them. And then Patricia quits her job and marries Dr. Foster. I guess that's the way things worked in 1942, but couldn't she at least have kept her job until they had kids?

• The idea of an old person stealing their victim's youth has popped up in these classic horror movies a few times before, but they all run together so I can't remember which ones.

• You may have noticed that these movies often involve the normal protagonists staying overnight at the home of the scary character. It's a horror movie tradition that's been carried on right up through The Rocky Horror Picture Show and beyond.

• The score was pretty good, especially when Patricia was sneaking around Lorenz's house. The music there managed to be pretty and unsettling at the same time.

• Lorenz has three servants that we see a lot of: A big dumb guy, a little guy, and their mother. The mother was a really bad actress. She sort of... growled all her lines.

Letter grade for The Corpse Vanishes: B
Next film in the 50-movie set: Night of the Living Dead. Whoa, really? That's an actual horror classic... and it's only 40 years old! Can it really be included in this set?

Horror Classic 27 of 50: BLUEBEARD

2008-07-23T21:48:00.000-04:00

So, you know how I'm watching 50 old horror movies for this blog? And you know how sometimes it's been very, very difficult to find the willpower to carry on? Well, the other day I was in the Virgin Megastore, and what do you think I saw? I'll tell you what I saw. This:

TWO HUNDRED FIFTY MOVIES! And it's by the same video label as my 50-movie pack. My first thought is, where did they find 200 more crazy old horror movies? My second thought, of course, is, I sure am glad this isn't the DVD set I got for Christmas. I'd go completely bonkers before I finished watching 250 of these things.

Speaking of things, (Is that a great transition or what?) this week I watched Bluebeard, a 1944 film which is not, as I expected, an adaptation of the old story of the ugly, many-wived Bluebeard. Nor does it have anything to do with Kurt Vonnegut's novel Bluebeard, other than the fact that both of them include a few allusions to the original story.

Synopsis
The place: Paris. A dead woman is pulled out of the Seine river, the latest victim of a serial killer who has been dubbed "Bluebeard" because he strangles women, much like the guy in that old story I mentioned up there, if you were paying attention.

Meanwhile, local puppeteer Gaston performs his latest marionette opera, to the delight of a young amateur seamstress named Lucille. He and Lucille chat backstage after the show, and he asks her if she could make some new costumes for his puppets, and it's obvious they're totally into each other, but this doesn't sit well with Gaston's ex, Rene.
She confronts Gaston later, and rather than listen to her whining, he strangles her with a cravat.

Wait, what? He strangled her! He's Bluebeard!

So he's a puppeteer, a serial killer... does he wear any other hats? Yes, actually, he's a painter, but when his art dealer, Pointy Goatee Man, shows up, Gaston tells him he's through with painting. It sure is a good thing Pointy Goatee Man hasn't already sold Gaston's latest painting, which happens to be a portrait of his last victim. That would look mighty suspicious if anyone ever saw it.

Whoops... turns out he has sold it, which is not good news for Gaston, because pretty soon police inspector Renard is combing the city in search of the artist who painted the picture of the chick that just died.

Meanwhile, Lucille and Gaston continue to flirt, and for some reason he asks her about four more times if she can make costumes for his puppets without her ever actually doing it. Oh, but guess who's buddies with Inspector Renard? It's Lucille's sister, Francine, who helps the police hatch a plan to catch the elusive painter/killer. It almost works, too -- Francine comes face-to-face with Gaston... but then he goes ahead and kills her with his cravat. Bummer.

To make a long story short, Lucille eventually deduces that Gaston is Bluebeard. Will the police take down the murderous artist before Lucille becomes his next victim?

Is It Scary?
I have to give this film credit -- although this was one of the worst film-to-DVD transfers I've come across so far, there were actually a few scenes with some genuine excitement and suspense.

Lessons I Learned

Beware of puppeteers who carry cravats.

My Favorite Lines

"He won't need no string to make her talk!"
-Gaston's assistant, when Gaston invites Lucille backstage
Investigator: "You are an artist's model?"
Artist's model: "Sure I am. What do take me for?"
Investigator (smirking): "That is beside the point."

Body Count
Five. That Bluebeard gets around.

Comments

• What the heck is a cravat?

• Gaston is played by John Carradine, who was David Carradine's dad. There's a definite family resemblance.

• This movie was all right, I guess. At first I thought it was going to be a mystery and we wouldn't find out Bluebeard's identity until the end, so I was pretty surprised when the film came right out and told us it was Gaston about 15 minutes in. There were several scenes that just felt like filler, though.

• Toward the end, Gaston tells Lucille a long story about his first murder. I think it was supposed to explain why he kills women, but I didn't really understand his murderer logic. If anyone has seen the movie and is a psychologist, please explain things to me in the comment section below.

• You don't see too many movies about marionette experts. The only other one I can think of is Being John Malkovich... John Cusack's character was a big sad sack, but at least he wasn't dumping anyone in the river.

Letter grade for Bluebeard: C+
Next film in the 50-movie set: The Corpse Vanishes. Here's a challenge for you, the readers of this blog: At what point in the film do you think the corpse will vanish? Post your guess (e.g. "10 minutes in," "17 minutes in") in the comments!

Horror Classic 26 of 50: DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

2008-07-16T22:36:00.000-04:00

Today I'm going to do something a little different. This week I watched Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a silent film from 1920 which stars John Barrymore (Drew's grandpa!) and is much more classic than most of the movies in my 50-film DVD set, even if it is a total rip-off of The Nutty Professor.

By an incredible coincidence, this was also the week I purchased The Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2, a fantastic DVD set which includes the 1955 Bugs Bunny cartoon Hyde and Hare, which is a slightly sillier take on the Robert Louis Stevenson book. So I'm going to compare the two to see how they... um, compare.

Dr. Jekyll

In the Barrymore movie, Dr. Jekyll is a selfless philanthropist who loves nothing more than taking care of sick poor people. You know the type -- he makes the rest of us feel guilty for spending our free time watching America's Got Talent instead of volunteering. He often wears a hat.
In the Bugs Bunny cartoon, Dr. Jekyll is a timid little man (voiced by Mel Blanc) who loves nothing more than feeding rabbits in the park. He wears a hat too.

The first transformation

The 1920 Jekyll invents a transformation formula because he wants to see if he can separate his evil side from his good side. When he drinks the potion, he jerks and spasms and falls down, in an impressive, extended performance from Barrymore that must have given him a headache.
The animated Jekyll brings Bugs Bunny home to be his pet, and initially seems like he'll be the perfect owner... but then he drinks the potion and instantly changes to Mr. Hyde.

Mr. Hyde

The silent film's Hyde is one ugly dude, and I think he may have gotten uglier as the film progressed and Jekyll lost control. He has long, stringy hair, bad teeth, an elongated head, and gnarled fingers that must make it really hard to shop for gloves.
The animated Hyde is a green-skinned, yellow-eyed, long-armed monster, although it should be noted that the other Hyde may have had green skin and yellow eyes too... We just can't tell because the film is in black and white.

Hyde goes nuts

Silent Hyde roughs up some women, tramples a kid, causes Jekyll to neglect his fiancee, and kills Jekyll's future father-in-law. He's a pretty bad dude, and Jekyll finds it increasingly hard to exert control over him.
Animated Hyde chases Bugs Bunny around a lot. He's not quite as horrible, and he does pretty well as long as he stays away from the evil-flavored Kool-Aid.

The ending

Jekyll, no longer able to reign in the purely evil Hyde, takes his own life by swallowing poison.
Jekyll decides to get rid of his formula, which is a far less drastic solution, but someone has already drunk it all. Bugs Bunny denies any culpability.

Themes

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The inherent dual nature of man, the meaning of evil, sin and its consequences
Hyde and Hare: Talking rabbits

Is it a good film?

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a pretty good film. As with the female lead in Metropolis, John Barrymore does a fine job at portraying two characters without the benefit of spoken dialogue. The script kept most of the best ideas from the book while making a few changes for dramatic purposes. The makeup effects were impressive for their time. Although the pacing dragged at times, this movie was much easier to watch than most of the talkies I've screened for this blog.
Hyde and Hare is really not one of the better Bugs Bunny cartoons. I mean, there are really no bad Bugs Bunny cartoons from that era, but Hyde is not representative of the character's best. Bugs is at his best when he has a real adversary to match wits with and ultimately get the better of, and that just doesn't happen here. Instead, it's just a series of sequences in which Jekyll turns into Hyde, Bugs freaks out, and Hyde turns back into Jekyll. The Liberace joke was okay, though. I wonder why the 1920 film didn't have any Liberace jokes.

Letter grade for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: B+
Letter grade for Hyde and Hare: B-
Next film in the 50-movie set: Bluebeard. I hope it's in color, so I can see his blue beard.

Horror Classic 25 of 50: KING OF THE ZOMBIES

2008-07-09T21:33:00.000-04:00

So, King of the Zombies is a 1941 film which features --

Hey, wait a second. "Horror Classic 25 of 50"?! That means I'm halfway there! I've watched and written about 25 of these suckers! Now I only have to watch... um... 25 of them. Bleh.

Last weekend I found out my brother (hey, Jason!) has been reading this blog every week. Jason owns the same 50-movie DVD set, but he hasn't watched any of them yet. He confessed that he doesn't have "the intestinal fortitude." So, what kind of intestines does it take to watch King of the Zombies?

Synopsis
Bill is the hero, "Mac" McCarthy is his buddy, and Jeff is... well, he's an over-the-top African-American caricature is what he is, but he's also Bill's valet. The three men are flying over the ocean, lost, when they receive a mysterious radio signal. Mac tries to bring the plane in for a landing on the nearest island, but the end up crashing.

Soon they find the home of Dr. Mikhail Sangre, a spooky guy who wears a cape. Apparently kindly grandmothers just don't live in old houses on scary islands. He insists that there are no radio transmitters on the island, so they couldn't have heard any kind of signal. He tells them it might be weeks before a boat comes by the island, so he offers to let them stay at his place. Bill and Mac will share a finely furnished bedroom, and Jeff... well, Jeff will stay in the servant's quarters in the basement. Ahem.

Jeff hangs out with the servants, wisecracking and bulging his eyes, and before long he meets some of the other inhabitants of the island. You guessed it -- ZOMBIES! Jeff runs to Bill to let him know, but when Dr. Sangre brings them back to the basement there's not a single zombie to be found. What's going on here?

Matters are complicated and spookified when the gang meets Dr. Sangre's wife, who walks around in a trance, almost like a... zombie? Hmm. There's also Barbara, who Dr. Sangre introduces as his niece, but something seems askew.

What's going on here? Is Dr. Sangre controlling the zombies? What are those drums -- a voodoo ceremony or somebody's band practice? Bill, Mac, and Jeff will have to try to stay alive while they answer those questions.

Is It Scary?
No. I'd say it's more of an adventure film than a horror film. Also, Jeff's presence means there's constant comic relief.

Lessons I Learned

According to one of Dr. Sangre's servants: "Zombies ain't suppose to eat salt."
Voodoo drums don't sound like Gene Krupa.

My Favorite Line

Jeff, when Bill and Mac venture into the strange, foreboding house: "I'm gonna stay right here until I change my mind!"
Jeff: "If there's one thing I wouldn't want to be twice, zombies is both of them!"

Body Count
Aw, I don't know. Two, maybe.

Comments
• So... what to make of the racial caricature of Jeff? He's a funny character and the actor Mantan Moreland gives a really good performance. A lot of the lines he's given are genuinely clever. But then there's all the eye-bugging, running and screaming, "I's gonna get outta here!" stuff, which is just uncomfortable to watch. It's just too bad that roles like this were really the only ones available to actors like Moreland at the time.

• Mac tells Dr. Sangre that he and the other two were on their way to the Bahamas, but he says it like "Ba-hay-mas." I've never heard that before.

• Jeff calls Bill "Mr. Bill," which meant I kept hoping Bill would get thrown out a window by a zombie and scream, "Ohh nooooo!"

• As soon as I saw Dr. Sangre, I thought he seemed like a Bela Lugosi character. According to the Wikipedia page I linked to up there, Lugosi was originally approached for the role, which makes perfect sense. If your character is a Bela Lugosi type, why not get the man himself? As it is, actor Henry Victor is not nearly as intimidating as Lugosi would have been.

• Oh, another thing about Jeff. Although he's essentially the sidekick, it seemed to me that he had more scenes to himself than Bill or Mac did. Jeff was the first one to find out about the zombies, and it's really because of him that they get to the bottom of the whole zombie mystery. So basically, Jeff is the real star of the movie.

• During the voodoo zombie-raising ceremony, all of Sangre's servants and zombies were chanting something. It sounded like "Oh, those beans, cocoa beans!/Baby blue cocoa beans!/Rock my soul, cocoa beans!/ZOMBIE!/I eat cocoa, I eat cocoa!" But that's probably not what they were saying.

• I kind of, um, fell asleep during this movie. But I didn't miss much.

Letter grade for King of the Zombies: C

Next film in the 50-movie set: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Happy Independence Day

2008-07-02T20:06:00.000-04:00

I have to get packed to fly to Texas tomorrow, so there's no classic horror movie post today. But next week I'll post my review of King of the Zombies. The track record for zombie movies on the horror classics set has not been so good. Will King of the Zombies be the king of zombie films? Come back next week to find out. Until then, enjoy this picture I found by doing an image search for "zombie":

Horror Classic 24 of 50: THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE

2008-06-24T22:07:00.000-04:00

The Brain That Wouldn't Die is a pretty unlikable movie from 1962. I actually own a tape of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode featuring this movie, so I was already pretty familiar with it. But you may not be so familiar with it, and you may be wondering: Why won't the brain die? Good question! I'll tell you all about it.

Synopsis
Bill Cortner is a doctor with big ideas. As the film opens, he is in surgery, and the patient has just died, but he refuses to give up. He opens up the guy's head and pokes his brain for a while, and whaddyaknow? He comes back to life! Bill's dad is also a doctor, but Daddy doesn't approve of Bill's unconventional methods... and he really doesn't approve of Bill's crazy ideas about transplanting body parts from one person to another. Oh, and he REALLY REALLY doesn't approve of Bill stealing limbs and brains and stuff from the hospital for his experiments.

Bill's girlfriend is Jan. She loves him a lot and wants to get married. They're about to go out after work when Bill receives a call from his colleague Kurt. Kurt says Bill must return to his house out in the country immediately, because something terrible is happening. Bill and Jan hop in the car, and Bill drives like a mad scientist out of Hell, which is not a very good idea because he crashes his car.

Bill recovers from the accident without a scratch. As for Jan... well, she doesn't have a scratch either, but she also doesn't have a head. Bill grabs her decapitated noggin, wraps it in his coat, and runs and runs and runs as if he's trying to score a touchdown. When he arrives at his country house, he rushes to his lab and goes about trying to bring Jan's head back to life.

Success! Congratulations, Bill, your girlfriend's not dead! But now she's just a head, which has its disadvantages. You can't walk down the beach holding her hand, or go ballroom dancing with her. On the other hand, you could still take her bowling, but she'd have to be the ball.

Jan is furious at Bill, and alternates between begging him to let her die and telling how much she hates him. But he's not done yet: That night he goes to a sleazy club to look for a woman whose body he might use to make his ladyfriend whole again. He almost finds what he's looking for in a slutty dancer, but then another slutty dancer interferes and ruins the whole thing. Oh, and that scene ends with the two women rolling around on the floor in a scantily-clad catfight. I assure you, it's completely necessary to the story.

Meanwhile, Head-Jan has made contact with the terrible thing Kurt mentioned earlier. It's some kind of creature, the result of an experiment gone wrong, that Bill is keeping locked in a closet. Monster in the Closet and Head on a Plate become BFFs in no time, and plot their revenge against Bill. The next day, Bill goes out again to stare at women below the neck. His friend Donna invites him to a "Body Beautiful" pageant, which gives us a scene full of scantily-clad women posing. I assure you, it's completely necessary to the story. But Bill knows he's hit the jackpot when Donna reminds him of their mutual friend Doris, who has "the best body" she's ever seen.

Bill finds Doris posing for a photography class (scantily- and necessarily-clad, of course). They exchange some light-hearted small talk. Wait, no. They talk about the horrible scar on Doris's face, given to her by a real jerk of an ex-boyfriend. Bill tells Doris he's a doctor and he has just the thing to fix her face. She agrees to come to his lab with him, right then and there. She doesn't even take the time to set the TiVo for Chuck.

Just before they get there, Head-Jan commands Closet Monster to kill Kurt. The monster rips Kurt's arm off, and Kurt stumbles around the house, getting blood all over everything, which really isn't very considerate of him. When Bill shows up, he drugs Doris and prepares to subtract her head and add Jan's head to her body... but Jan has other ideas, and she has the monster on her side.

Is It Scary?
Nope. I would consider this more of a science fiction film than a horror film. Heck, I'd consider it more of an exploitation film than a horror film. It's pretty much a movie about a doctor staring at women.

Lessons I Learned

Obey posted speed limits
Disembodied heads can speak.

My Favorite Lines

Bill: "You've been wonderful."
Jan: "I'd rather be a bride!"
Slutty brunette: "Who's to tell me to blow if I don't want to?"
Jan to Closet Monster: "I'm only a head, and you're whatever you are, but together... we're strong."

Body Count
Four. That seems to be a standard for the "classic horror" movies.

Comments

• As I said, I'm pretty familiar with the Mystery Science Theater version of this movie, so I was really, really missing the wisecracks this time around.

• Over the course of the film, Jan says "Let me die!" or a variation thereof eight times.

• The monster makeup was pretty good for the era. The monster himself sort of reminded me of Sloth from The Goonies.

• Who's the hero of this film? The lead character, Bill, is a sick egomaniac who's keeping his girlfriend's head alive against her wishes. But Jan isn't any more likable... She's all whiny and vindictive. Maybe the hero is Kurt, although he doesn't actually do anything heroic. What a stupid movie.

• I guess men got pretty excited seeing this in 1962 and catching glimpses of legs, midriffs, and even -- whoa! -- some cleavage.

• The opening credits clearly state that the movie is called The Brain That Wouldn't Die... but then the end title says The Head That Wouldn't Die. Oops. I guess the latter would make more sense... It's her whole head that stays alive, after all.

Letter grade for The Brain That Wouldn't Die: C-

Next film in the 50-movie set: King of the Zombies. After previous experiences with this DVD set, a movie with the word "zombie" in the title does not do much to excite me.

Horror Classic 23 of 50: THE KILLER SHREWS

2008-06-18T22:01:00.000-04:00

So, here we have The Killer Shrews, a 1959 film directed by Ray Kellogg. Does that name sound familiar? It certainly should if you know anything about anything, because Kellogg was also the director of the horror classic The Giant Gila Monster, which I reviewed in this very space.

According to the not-always-impeccably-reliable IMDb, Shrews and Gila Monster were intended to be shown as a double feature. I can see how they both came from the same brain.

Synopsis
Our hero is Captain Thorne Sherman. That's right, Captain Thorne Sherman. Is that a great hero name, or what? As the film opens, he and his first mate Rock (not the WWE wrestler) are on their way to deliver some supplies to Dr. Marlowe Craigis on a remote island. Ah, but there's a hurricane -- or, as Thorne calls it, a "hurric'n" -- coming, so Thorne decides they'll be staying on the island overnight. Ah, but there'll be no beach party for them... only KILLER SHREWS!

They meet Dr. Craigis, as well as his assistants Jerry and Bradford, and his daughter Ann. Dr. Craigis and his colleagues have been doing some biological experiments on the island, which they explain to Thorne. See, Dr. Craigis is very concerned with overpopulation, and he noticed that small animals (like, say, shrews) have low metabolisms, which means they don't eat much. He figures if he can take genes from shrews and stick 'em in people, he can create a new kind of human, which will eat be smaller and eat less. Of course, no one would ever object to this plan... Everyone wants to be more like a shrew!

In the Craigis house a little later, Thorne gets cozy with Ann, who's acting more nervous than a cat in a roomful of killer shrews. She wants to be on the boat the next morning, because she wants to get off the island as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, Thorne sends Rock out to take care of the boat. To make a long story short, Rock gets devoured by KILLER SHREWS. Yeah, the island's crawling with them, the result of a horrible mistake Jerry made in the lab, and that's why Ann wants to get the heck outta there.

So Thorne comes up with a plan: After the storm, at daybreak, everyone will run like heck for the boat. Good plan, right? Ah, but the KILLER SHREWS have another plan, and theirs involves smashing and burrowing through walls to eat some folks. One of them sneaks into the cellar, where Thorne and Mario, Dr. Craigis's manual labor guy, have a close encounter with it which Mario does not survive.

As the night wears on, the shrews continue their efforts to have an all-you-can-eat buffet, while the humans continue their efforts not to become brunch. Also, Jerry acts like a big stupidhead, 'cause he's all jealous that Ann likes Thorne more than him. It'll take bravery, expert shrew-shooting skills, and an escape vehicle made out of barrels if anyone's going to make it out alive.

Is It Scary?
The idea of giant shrews forcing their way into your house is pretty unsettling. The shrews themselves were pretty effective for a film from 1959, I guess. They were usually just dogs wearing shrew costumes, but there were some close-up shots where puppet shrew heads were used, and what they lacked in scariness they made up in ugliness.

Lessons I Learned

Shrews are afraid of water.
Shrews eat horses.
Overpopulation is a major problem... but not as important as kissing.

My Favorite Line

Ann to Jerry: "I'm not saying you created them, Jerry. I'm saying that in your drunken stupidity, leaving the cage door open, you created the horrible situation that now exists!"
Ann to Thorne: "I'm sorry I had to threaten you with a gun."
Thorne to Ann, when she expresses her desire to leave the island and live a normal life: "I'll take a dull, alive woman every time."

Body Count
Four humans, plus many, many KILLER SHREWS. Two of those humans happened to be the only minority characters in the movie. Hmm.

Comments
• So, how does this film compare to The Giant Gila Monster? They're pretty equal. Like Gila, Shrews has production values slightly higher than what I've come to expect from these "horror classics." As for the protagonists, Thorne was kind of a know-it-all, less sympathetic than Gila's Chase... but Thorne never burst into song, so again they're even.

• This movie took itself really seriously, which makes me think that the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode featuring it must be pretty good.

• The escape method used by Thorne, Ann, and Dr. Craigis was pretty brilliant... They welded three metal barrels together, turned them upside-down and waddled inside them from the house to the beach. It was like a KILLER SHREW-proof suit of armor!

Letter grade for The Killer Shrews: B-

Next film in the 50-movie set: The Brain That Wouldn't Die. Having seen the Mystery Science Theater version, I'm not salivating at the prospect of watching it without the wisecracks.

Horror Classic 22 of 50: THE MONSTER MAKER

2008-06-10T23:07:00.000-04:00

So, you know what's really a horror? Trying to get Blogger to do what I want it to do. As you may have noticed in previous posts, my text sometimes shows up in all different fonts and sizes. This is not an attempt to test your eyesight or a mistake on my part. I just can't get Blogger to get it right, no matter how many times I try to fix it. So... sorry about that, but don't blame me. Blame Blogger, which just might be run by mad scientists. And hey, speaking of mad scientists...

First of all, let me make this clear: Harry Dean Stanton is not in this movie.

In 1989, NBC aired The Jim Henson Hour, which was sort of a half-Muppet Show, half fantasy anthology affair. One episode was a drama called Monster Maker, and it featured Stanton as a special effects wizard who mentors a teenage boy with aspirations of working in the movies.

It was a one-hour show, and it was pretty good. Will the 1944 film The Monster Maker prove to be better? Worse? As good? Let's jump right in and see.

Synopsis
Anthony Lawrence is a successful concert pianist. In the opening scene, he's giving a recital, which is attended by his daughter Pat, Pat's boyfriend Bob... and the creepy Dr. Igor Markoff (Is that a great name or what?). Dr. Markoff can't stop staring at Pat, which gives her more than a few heebie-jeebies. After the concert he apologizes to her: See, it's just that she looks exactly like his dead wife, that's all. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she doesn't feel much better.

This is all to the chagrin of Maxine, Dr. Markoff's long-suffering assistant, who wants to be the only woman in his life. But every time she starts complaining he just stares at her and she does his bidding, so apparently he has some mind control mojo working on her.

Dr. Markoff starts sending Pat flowers and love notes, but she's Just Not That Into Him, so she asks Mr. Lawrence to tell Markoff to knock it off. So Lawrence goes to Dr. Markoff's lab, where the doc is doing all kinds of weird experiments with glands and proteins and stuff. Markoff tells Lawrence that he's going to marry Pat and that's all there is to it, but Lawrence begs to differ. So Markoff knocks him out with a candlestick. It was Dr. Markoff, in the study, with the candlestick!

While Lawrence is out cold, Dr. Markoff injects him with a little something special: the disease acromegaly, a real disease which causes extreme swelling of the extremities, including the hands, feet, and face. For a concert pianist, this is a problem. Not only can he not play the piano, he can't show his face in public because it's all puffy and yucky-looking. Lawrence returns to Dr. Markoff's lab and threatens to kill him, and Markoff makes him an offer: He'll cure Lawrence, but only if Pat will marry him. Then he has his servant grab Lawrence so he can chain him up, and lures Pat to his lab.

Man, this is nothing like the Jim Henson show. For one thing, there are no puppets.

There's a lot more running around, and in the end, Pat escapes from Markoff's clutches, Anthony kills Markoff, and Markoff's assistant Maxine gives him the cure so he can go back to tickling the ivories. The end.

Is It Scary?
No. The way most of these old horror movies are shot -- kinda like a sitcom, with very basic blocking and little to no camera movement -- just doesn't allow for much suspense.

Lessons I Learned

Dr. Igor Markoff lives at 1335 Cliff Drive. Not really a lesson, but it was repeated several times so I figured I'd better write it down.

My Favorite Lines

Mr. Lawrence to Pat, when she first expresses fear over Markoff's intentions: "You've been listening to too many horror radio programs! What you need is a good workout on the badminton court!"
Lawrence to Dr. Markoff, after his transformation: "You've set yourself up as a Frankenstein and I am your monster. But the monster destroyed the man... and that's what I'm going to do to you!"
This telephone exchange:
MARKOFF: Don't be alarmed, but your father came to me last night for a consultation.
PAT: My father came to you last night for a consultation?
MARKOFF: Yes.

Body Count
Just the one.

Comments
• Jim Henson's Monster Maker was better. It had a coming-of-age story and an amazing, gigantic robot dragon. This movie had a guy with a goatee.

• But seriously, this could have been a lot worse. Igor Markoff was a pretty good villain, quietly sinister until he set his evil plain in motion. There was a revelation about halfway through about the fact that he was not the real Igor Markoff, but had stolen Dr. Markoff's identity, fled to America, and infected his own wife with acromegaly in a jealous rage, causing her to kill herself. But none of that was necessary at all. I suppose the filmmakers were hoping to shock the audience, but it didn't do much for me.

It's interesting that they used a real affliction as the source of the "horror." But I'd argue that Dr. Markoff did not actually make a monster... he just made a guy look really bulgy.

• Check out the tags at the bottom of this post. This movie is a mother lode of horror movie clichés! Heck, there's even an ape in it! He doesn't do much though... There's just one scene where Markoff lets the ape out of his cage so it will kill his assistant Maxine, but then the dog barks at it and it runs away.

• On two different occasions, a man hits another man on the head with a blunt object, and both times the impact occurs offscreen. I guess nobody wanted to do their own stunts.

• Look at that poster. It totally gives away the grotesque appearance of the diseased Lawrence, which is supposed to be a shocking reveal in the film. Spoiler!

Letter grade for The Monster Maker: C

Next film in the 50-movie set: The Killer Shrews. They can't be tamed!!!