Ryan Watches 50 Movies

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 ove...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

"Look out! The zombies are revolting!" "I'll say they are... heck, they're repulsive !" [Note: That exchange does not occur in this movie. But it should have.] Remember last week when I said I was beginning to feel the fatigue of attempting to watch 50 "classic" horror movies? Well, that fatigue continued this week. Now, I like old movies, and traditionally I've always had a fondness for bad movies ( Have a Nice Weekend and Scream Baby Scream changed my life). But watching one of these things every week is like eating an entire box of Fruity Pebbles in one sitting: that which is normally a fun treat simply becomes overwhelming, even sickening. And afterward, my saliva is orange. So this week, before watching Revolt of the Zombies , I attempted to cleanse my scary-movie palate (located somewhere between the hypothalamus and the medulla oblongata) by re-watching Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Psycho , of course, is great. From what I've al...

Ah, the atomic age. It's the era in which personal jetpacks, plastic houses full of plastic furniture, and nuclear-powered electric toothbrushes became a reality. However, none of those things appear in today's classic horror movie, 1960's Atom Age Vampire , which was directed by Anton Giulo Majano and stars Alberto Lupo and Susanne Loret. Instead, it's an Italian film (original title: Seddok, l'erede di Satana ) dubbed into English, about a mad scientist and his unrequited love, and there's not even a real vampire in it. No vampire?! That's like if Fried Green Tomatoes didn't feature any tomatoes, or if Seven Brides for Seven Brothers only had six brides for seven brothers! Synopsis In a strange coincidence(?), this movie begins with the female lead running her car off the road, just like in the last movie I watched , but this one results in a fiery crash rather than submersion. After her accident, Jeanette (who seems to be some kind of dancer by tra...