Ryan Watches 50 Movies

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 bun...

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 cop...

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...

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...

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...