Ryan Watches 50 Movies

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 wha...

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...

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 i...

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 (voic...

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 l...

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. Crai...

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...

Here's a movie from 1940 called The Ape , starring Boris Karloff. Will Karloff be the title character? Is it about some kind of freaky half-ape, half-human hybrid? Will the titular ape speak? Will it grow to enormous size? Enough with the questions already! Let's look at The Ape . Synopsis The circus is in town! All the local kids are excited, and even Dr. Bernard Adrien is pretty happy about it. He's the town's resident " crazy doctor ," mistrusted by the sheriff and most of the other men, but beloved by his favorite patient, Francis Clifford. Francis's legs are paralyzed, and Dr. Adrien is obsessively determined to cure her. Francis's mom Mrs. Clifford likes Dr. Adrien, but Danny the boyfriend is not convinced. That night at the circus, disaster strikes! After the show, the gorilla attacks his trainer! It's an APE ESCAPE ! In the ensuing chaos, the trainer's cigar starts a fire that burns down the whole circus! The trainer almos...

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 ...

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...