Ryan Watches 50 Movies

The Vampire Bat is yet another film from a "poverty row" studio -- Majestic Pictures, this time. It features Fay Wray, which is cool, because I don't think I've ever seen Fay Wray in anything besides King Kong , in which she spent about half the film screaming. How much screaming does she do in The Vampire Bat ? Let's find out. Synopsis Our characters live in a village that's facing a major threat . It's not a new Wal-Mart, it's the fact that people keep getting killed, mysteriously, their corpses drained of blood and bearing two marks on the neck. Could it be a VAMPIRE BAT ? The title of the film would certainly seem to make that a likely possibility, and it's the theory held by most of the men of the town, including the bürgermeister . What is a bürgermeister, anyway? I think I'd like to be one, because I'd like to have that word on my business card, but I should probably find out what they do before I go to bürgermeistering school. Othe...

First of all, a note for those of you who aren't familiar with this film: Metropolis is not a film about Superman's city of residence. Second of all, a question: What the hey? Metropolis , the silent German classic directed by Fritz Lang in the 1920s, has fallen into the public domain like the rest of the films on the 50-movie Horror Classics DVD set -- or at least, versions of it have. But there are two reasons I'm surprised to see it included here: 1. It's considered a genuinely classic film, a distinction not traditionally associated with the likes of The Mad Monster and The Invisible Ghost, and 2. It's not a horror film, and anyone who has seen it would know that it fits much more logically into the category of science fiction. Perhaps the folks at Mill Creek Entertainment are reading this right now, and perhaps they'll slap their foreheads and realize, "Of course this isn't a horror movie! What were we thinking! Let's take out an ad in a ...

This week's movie is Maniac , a 1934 movie that truly defines the phrase "a 1934 movie." Okay, I have a confession, for the two or three of you who check this blog regularly: I haven't watched Maniac yet. I really have no excuse; it's only 51 minutes long. Fifty-one minutes! I've taken longer to fold my underwear! So, I haven't been very good lately about sticking to the "update once a week, exactly on Wednesday evening" schedule, despite the large salary I make for writing this blog. But I'm really, really going to try to do better, and that's a promise. May mad monsters and atom age vampires strike me down if I'm lying! By the way, in the unlikely event that you hadn't guessed, that's not even a picture from Maniac up there. That's from the classic LucasArts adventure game Maniac Mansion , which has the word "maniac" in the title. Also the word "mansion," but I don't think there's a movie c...

One unexpected result of watching a bunch of cheap old horror movies is that I've developed a familiarity with the now long-forgotten studios that released them. On doing some academic research (i.e. clicking around Wikipedia), I've learned a little bit more about " Poverty Row ," which was the collective name given to all the tiny, low-budget studios who used to crank these things out. One such Poverty Row studio was Producers Releasing Corporation. They produced last week's Dead Men Walk , so I had a pretty good idea of what I was in for when I realized that this week's The Mad Monster , from 1942, was also unleashed on the world by PRC. But I watched it anyway. After all, I've come this far. I can't turn back now! Synopsis George Zucco of Dead Men Walk is back again, this time as Dr. Cameron, a mad scientist who lives in a big ol' house in some kind of swampy area. As the film begins, Dr. Cameron is the happiest mad scientist on the block , bec...

In case there's anyone checking this little ol' blog today: Don't forget, I've switched to a Wednesday evening update schedule. Mondays proved to be just too formidable a foe for me to vanquish, whatever that means. Come back on Wednesday for The Mad Monster!

So, it's not Monday. It's later than Monday. I've been trying to stick with the Monday night update schedule on this here blog, but for some reason it's just not working out, as evidenced by the fact that it's today is the type of Monday that is a Wednesday. So here's the deal: from now on, I'm updating this thing on Wednesday evenings. Mark your calendars. This week's horror classic is Dead Men Walk . It's a drama from 1995 starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, which covers the controversial topic of -- wait a minute. Sorry, that's Dead Man Walking . Dead Men Walk is a 1943 cheapo starring veteran actor George Zucco, which covers the controversial topic of vampires. It does so very... very... slowly. Everything in this movie happens slowly. It's only 64 minutes long, but it could have easily been 32 if they had just picked up the pace. But enough of my Alive Man Complaining. Synopsis The first thing we, the viewers, see is a spooky face sp...

The Fatal Hour is a 1940 film directed by William Nigh. It's on side A of disc 4 of the Horror Classics DVD set, but it should have come with a disclaimer... for you see, my friends, The Fatal Hour is NOT a horror movie ! Though it has a number of things in common with other movies in this set (see tags below), it just doesn't qualify as horror. So what is it? Read on to find out. Synopsis The character right at the center of all the action is Mr. Wong, an Asian police detective affectionately known as "the Chinese copper." So who better to play him than a British guy ? It's none other than Frankenstein (and The Terror ) star Boris Karloff, which probably explains the presence of this movie in this DVD set. Anyway, the plot. So, our other characters include police captain Bill Street and spunky girl reporter Bobbie Logan. As the story begins, the body of Street's fellow officer and buddy Dan Grady is found floating in the San Francisco bay... and he's be...