31 Days of Halloween - Day 28 - Movie

In Drag Me To Hell (2009) Lorna Raver plays what may be the most horrifying senior citizen since the housekeeper in House on Haunted Hill (1960). This was Sam Raimi's long return to horror, and his time making glossier studio financed films has served him well. Drag Me To Hell has all of the attitude and much of the disgusting factor that his Evil Dead movies had with the polish and technical flourishes that a larger budget affords.

Christine (Alison Lohman) is a loan officer at a bank worried about her future. In a decision meant to help her obtain a coveted assistant manager position she decides not to extend more time to an old woman behind on her house payments and on the brink of foreclosure. This woman then violently attacks Christine in her car and places a curse on her. For the next few couple of days, Christine will be harassed by an evil spirit and on the third day that spirit will drag her to hell. Now, while her world unravels around her, and her sanity verges on the breaking point, she desperately seeks a way out.

This was a fun movie. The horror aspects, like those in the first two Evil Dead movies, are pretty over the top, leaning heavily on the gross out gag (poor Christine is subjected to plenty of vile substances) and some jump scares and less on a build up of tension. There is tension in the movie though. It doesn't come from wondering if Christine is going to find a way to save herself, but simply watching as she falls apart and wondering if she'll manage to salvage any of her normal life, such as her job and relationship once this is over. The movie has a strong cast, and Alison Lohman exudes vulnerability which makes us empathize with her character.

This was my first time seeing this movie and I'm looking forward to watching it again.

  

31 Days of Halloween - Day 28

I grew up without a horror host. What I did have was The Creature Double Feature on WLVI, channel 56 out of Boston. Every Saturday afternoon, following a voice over announcement of the movies to be shown over solarized footage from Son of Godzilla and other Godzilla movies accompanied by Tocatta by Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

For three hours every week, I was glued to the television to get my guaranteed double dose of monster movies, and rarely missed it. From 1972 until somewhere around 1976, I drew the monsters from every single episode that aired. In one of my worst decisions, these drawings were all thrown away by be when I was in high school. The only one that survives is one I did of Reptilicus. I was hoping to share this drawing with this post, but can't locate it. I know I tucked it "somewhere safe"so it's still around.

The joke about the grandparents of my generation is that they'd talk about the hardships of their childhood as "having to walk to school every day through three feet of snow for five miles uphill in both directions." For my generation, the equivalent was the lack of DVD players, or even VCRs and cable television. Not only did we have to study TV Guide very carefully  for any movies we wanted to watch, but watching them involved serious negotiations with other family members, and sometimes setting the alarm clock for the middle of the night and hoping your parents didn't catch you watching tv at three o'clock in the morning. On top of that almost everything worth watching was on a UHF channel, and the further you were from the broadcast point, the worse your reception was. Boston was about 75 miles away, and Channel 56 was the most reliable of the UHF stations, meaning it was the least fuzzy, and where you could actually see the picture with relative clarity and the least interference from ghost images of other UHF stations overlapping the one you were watching. Many of my early movie memories involve ghosted images of baseball players superimposed over the movies I watched. Reception was also enhanced or hindered by how many leaves were on the trees around the house.

I'm glad for DVD technology and the ability to watch any movie whenever I want, if I have it on hand, and roll my eyes when I hear people complaining about a less than stellar print being issued on DVD. A bit of nostalgia actually occurs whenever I see a crappy print of a public domain movie on DVD. It's almost like seeing the movie on UHF again.

The Creature Double Feature had a tremendous impact on my career path, and it's influence on my life can not be measured. Without it, who knows if I'd have developed such a great love of monster movies, or monsters in general. It could have ended up being Westerns, or War Movies, or maybe nothing, and I'd have ended up being an accountant, or who knows what else. I owe the past folks at WLVI a debt of gratitude for broadcasting a double dose of monster movies regularly for so long.

You can learn about the history of the Creature Double Feature here. 

On the Creature Double Feature Website there's a list of all the movies that were shown, in order of their showing, and the number of times they were shown. There's a better more complete list of movies in their message boards which explains why I was so fond of The Amazing Colossal Man, Daimajin, and War of the Gargantuas since these particular movies were shown with great frequency.

If you grew up in New England and remember watching the Creature Double Feature you should attend the CDF Round Up happening tomorrow night in Attleboro, MA and Taunton, MA. Locations are listed in the poster below by Sean Hartter. I was planning to attend, but other commitments have forced me to cancel my attendance.

From the Creature Double Feature Round-Up Facebook Page:


This is a 2 tier event. Leg 1 begins at 5:00 P.M. in the mini auditorium at Attleboro High School. We'll show clips of CDF movies, and new stuff inspired by CDF. Meet the voice-over "voice" of WLVI TV's Creature Double Feature, Tom Evans; Matt Sanborn (author of "Call of the Cthulu: Arkham Now"); Comic book artist Christian White; Uncle Jesse from "Uncle Jess's Possum Hour"; and Ethan Gilsdorf (author of "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks") reading an essay tribute to CDF.


Leg 2 is at the Ugly Duckling, a wonderful restaraunt in Taunton Ma. This will be an after party event, fun, food, drinks and lots of memories: Begins roughly at 10:00 pm. 









  

31 Days of Halloween - Day 27 - Movie

Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone were all wasted doing mostly straight horror roles. What they should have been doing is more comedies. The Comedy of Terrors (1963) is proof of this. It also demonstrates that writer Richard Matheson best known for novels such as I Am Legend, as well as many classic Twilight Zone episodes and other dark horror and fantasy novels, movies and television episodes, should have been plying his trade more often in humorous tales. Director Jacques Tourneur who delivered the defining cinematic psychological horrors of Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie and Night of the Demon, is just as adept at comic timing as he is at delivering scares.

Vincent Price plays a harsh drunk who is running his father-in law's (Boris Karloff)  funeral business into the ground. Forced to either pay a year's back rent or face eviction, Price and his assistant (Peter Lorre) decide to create some customers by murdering them. When he chooses his landlord as one of his victims in order to "kill two birds with one pillow" things get complicated.

This is a genuinely funny dark comedy that's about as gothic looking as it gets. Everyone in the cast is perfect in their roles, and there's less ham on display here than typically seen when playing their straight roles. This has been one of the highest points in my Halloween viewing this year.


  

31 Days of Halloween - Day 27

Lewis Carroll had John Tenniel, A.A. Milne and Kenneth Grahame had Ernest Shepard. These were perfect matches of stories and artwork, and while others may have come along to illustrate Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, The Wind in the Willows and Winnie the Pooh, it's those artists who will always be THE artists for those works.

Edgar Allan Poe also had the perfect artist to illustrate his macabre stories in the person of Harry Clarke (1889-1931), a stained glass artist and book illustrator. His black and white illustrations are reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley who found his match with Oscar Wilde, and Clarke's color work is along the lines of the work of the great children's book illustrator Kay Nielson who would later design the "night on Bald Mountain" sequence for Fantasia.

The Cask of Amontillado

King Pest

The Assignation

The Black Cat

The Masque of the Red Death

The Gold Bug

A Descent Into the Maelstrom

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

The Mystery of Marie Roget

Landor's Cottage

Some Passages in the Life of a Lion (Lionizing)

The Premature Burial

William Wilson

The Tell Tale Heart

MS. Found in a Bottle

The Fall of the House of Usher

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Ligeia

Morella

The Pit and the Pendulum

The Pit and the Pendulum

Berenice

The Tell Tale Heart

Metzengerstein

The Fall of the House of Usher

Ligeia

MS Found in a Bottle

The Mystery of Marie Roget

Edgar Allan Poe

  

31 Days of Halloween - Day 26 - Movie 2

It's been so long since I've seen Attack of the Puppet People (1958) that all of my memories of it came from the trailer and not the movie itself. If you watch the trailer you'd expect the movie to be campy and certainly more comedic than horrible, but that trailer is incredibly misleading. The movie turns out to be quite a bit on the disturbing side, and very low on the comedic scale of things.

Sally Reynolds (June Kenney) takes a secretarial job with odd dollmaker, Mr. Franz (John Hoyt). She begins to notice some odd behavior on his part and that her predecessor mysteriously vanished, as did the mailman for the building. When her fiance, Bob (John Agar) also goes missing after visiting Franz, Sally goes to the police with a wild story about how her boss is turning people into dolls. Sally soon finds herself transformed into one, and meets several of his other victims, all of whom have to perform for Franz who is so afraid of being alone that he's created an entire miniature social scene for himself. As the police get closer to learning the truth, Franz decides that it's time to take his own life, and those of his dolls as well. He throws them one last party, and that's when they make their bid for freedom.

This movie was directed by size disparity obsessed Bert I. Gordon, and he does a great job of building up a sense of dread. The movie starts with the secretary previous to Sally, and when Sally comes in applying for her position one scene later, we know something is wrong. The clues that build up showing that kindly Mr. Franz is not who he seems really work at building suspense. John Hoyt is also really great as the off Mr. Franz who comes off as kindly and sinister at the same time. There's actually something really disturbing about his performance, and you worry about the safety of any character who is alone in a room with him. The movie also has a claustrophobic quality to it since most of it takes place within Franz's workshop and reception area. The special effects are rather good considering their low budget. Yes, the shrunken humans in the glass tubes are clearly photographic cutouts, but they still work. The matte work is nicely done and the oversized props are good as well. The effects don't get wobbly until two of the characters run out onto the city streets near the movie's climax.

Speaking of the climax, you'd expect a scene of exciting comeuppance with Franz getting his just desserts, but the more ambiguous ending is stronger, and unusual for this type of film. Gordon also dedicates quite a bit of screen time plugging another of his films when Bob and Sally go to the drive-in to take in The Amazing Colossal Man, and Bob proposes. Mr. Franz's friend Emil (Michael Mark) will be a familiar face from numerous other genre films, but particularly for his role as the father of Maria, the girl the monster drowns in Frankenstein (1931).


  

31 Days of Halloween - Day 26 - Movie 1

  

Dr. Cyclops (1940) has one of the most basic plots imaginable, but remains a highly enjoyable movie, not in spite of this, but because of it. Dr. Thorkel (Albert Dekker) a mad scientist using a large radium deposit in the heart of the jungle to experiment with miniaturization summons three scientific experts (and their guide) to confirm some of his research, which his own failing eyesight won't allow him to do hmself. When his guests get too nosy about his work, Thorkel shrinks them down to Barbie doll size. The miniaturized humans spend the rest of the movie trying to escape while Thorkel hunts them down.

Dekker is wonderful as looney scientist whose bottled up madness always seems on the verge of breaking free. The rest of the cast is fine, but their characters are pretty much one note types. The real star of this movie are the visual effects by Gordon Jennings, which are superb. Using a mix of rear screen projection, optical compositing and oversized props, the miniaturized people interacting with the full sized scientist and his environs are truly convincing.

The movie was directed by Ernest Schoedsack, half of the directing team for King Kong (1933) and he's done an outstanding job here as has cinematographer, Henry Sharp and Matte artist, Jan Domela. The movie is really beautiful to look at, especially the opening scene with the green light and flickering shadows.


  

31 Days of Halloween - Day 26

For anyone who hasn't seen these, artist Sean Hartter  has created a bunch of alternate universe movie posters for real movies, but with different casts, crew, budgets, and eras than those we know, such is this great one for a Ghostbusters I'd love to see. There are also a few comic book based and horror movies that have not even existed in our own universe in any manner. His choices in casting and design are well thought out and definitely worth looking at here.

He also created some lobby card style posters for actual movie like this great one for Horror Express which can be seen here.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 25 - Movie

Strange Invaders (1983) is probably the dullest alien invasion movie I have ever scene. Twenty-five years after aliens take over a small midwestern town, an entomologist (Paul Le Mat) travels to that town in search of his missing ex-wife (Diana Scarwid) who had returned home to attend the funeral of her mother and never returned. He stumbles across aliens, a government cover-up, and discovers that the aliens are after his young daughter (Lulu Sylbert).

The movie mostly involves a very bored looking paul Le Mat walking, driving, and otherwise looking uninterested while aliens disguised as humans who still dress like it's 1958 skulk about and stare. Le Mat's caharcter also develops a romance with a tabloid reporter (Nancy Allen) which has absolutely no chemistry in it. Nothing much happens in this movie for its entire ninety minute length, and not even cameos and brief roles by many genre actors of yesteryear, such as Kenneth Tobey, June Lockhart, Mark Goddard, Charles Lane, and Bobby "Boris" Pickett can breathe life into this limp movie.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 25

Just as I did previously on this countdown with the haunted houses of SCOOBY-DOO, here are some of the haunted dwellings from CASPER - THE FRIENDLY GHOST, which was an absolute favorite of mine as a wee lad. I even dressed as Casper for Halloween one year.

"Casper Comes to Clown"

"The Deep Boo Sea"

"Fright From Wrong"

"Hide and Shriek"

"By the Old Mill Scream"

"Casper Take a Bow Wow Wow" and "Not Ghoulty"

"Once Upon a Rhyme"

"Casper's Birthday Party" and "The Boo Scout"

"Ghost of the Town"

"Cage Fright"

"Frightday the 13th"