Ryan Watches 50 Movies

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...

Just in case anyone thought to check for a Monday-night update: I haven't yet had a chance to watch The Fatal Hour . I'll try to watch it tomorrow, then post about it. Hopefully it won't turn out to be a Fatal Hour (and sixteen minutes) for me.

I'm back! The dreadfulness of Revolt of the Zombies drove me to take a week off from watching horror classics, but now I'm back in the groove. The Giant Gila Monster is from 1959, and it seems like exactly the type of film that a teenage boy would take his date to, in the hopes that she would scream and grab his arm during the scary parts. It was directed by a guy named Ray Kellogg, but it has nothing to do with Corn Flakes. Most importantly, though: Is it better than Zombies ? Let's find out. Synopsis A young couple, Pat and Liz, are canoodling in a car when suddenly -- BLAPWOM! They're attacked! By a -- well, presumably it's a GIANT GILA MONSTER , but all we see is a scaly claw, so it could be anything... a giant iguana, a giant tuatara, or a normal-sized spinosaur. Meanwhile, a bunch of Pat & Liz's friends are waiting for them while boppin' to the rock 'n' roll at a local hangout when Old Man Harris, the town drunk, comes in. And boy, do th...

A message to my loyal readers (all three of you): I haven't watched The Giant Gila Monster yet. I will soon -- you can bet your sweet bippy on it. But I just haven't gotten around to it since last week's post. Maybe I've finally hit a saturation point of "classic" horror movies and I need to take a break. I'm only human, after all. At least last I checked... It's altogether possible I'm an atom age vampire or a beast of yucca flats and I just don't realize it. But just so this isn't a complete waste of your time, enjoy this trailer for the 2001 film The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra , which is a hilarious pastiche of exactly the kind of film I've been subjecting myself to for 12 weeks and counting. The movie is a bit hard to find, but it's immensely entertaining.

"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...

I'm now 12 movies into watching a DVD set that includes 50 movies. When I started this crazy venture, I wondered how long it would take me to get sick of bad old public domain terror movies, and the answer is: now. This week I felt my first pangs of Horror Classic fatigue as I faced 1963's The Terror , a film directed by the prolific Roger Corman (see also Creature From the Haunted Sea ) and starring Boris Karloff and a very young Jack Nicholson. I had seen this film once before and I remembered that it wasn't great. Ah, but there was one aspect of The Terror that excited me: It's the first movie in the Horror Classics set to be filmed in color ! Would this make it more watchable? Hmm... Synopsis It's 1806, and Jack Nicholson plays Andre, a French soldier who's wandering the along coast when he discovers a mysterious and alluring woman. She says her name is Elaine... and then she walks right into the pounding surf . Andre jumps in after her, only to be attack...