31 Days of Halloween - Day 23

I love monsters. All kinds. Here are my favorite monsters of the movies, fiction, and folklore. Monsters have appeared throughout my work in vast numbers, most of them I make up, but often times I'll take one from mythology to craft a story around. For my 2013 Halloween Countdown I showcased many of the monsters that appeared in stories I wrote. You can find them here.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 22 - movie

Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994) picks up right where the last one left off (even though 6 years have lapsed between when the films were made. This time A. Michael Baldwin returns as Mike. After waking from a two year coma, Mike is abducted by the resurrected Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) and Reggie (Reggie Bannister) sets off to rescue him. This time he has some help in the form of Mike's dead brother Jody (Bill Thornbury) now in the form of one of the Tall Man's spheres, and Tim (Kevin Connors) an orphaned kid with a penchant for weapons, and Rocky (Gloria Lynne Henry) a badass woman with her own vendetta against the Tall Man.

This time the Tall Man is harvesting brains for his spheres, and continuing to create his dwarf creatures. The group traps the Tall Man within a freezer, a sphere launches from within his head, but is caught and disposed in liquid nitrogen. In the end, Mike is discovered to have a sphere occupying his own head and departs with Jody telling Reggie not to follow. Tim and Reggie then are attacked by dozens of spheres, and before Tim can save Reggie, he's whisked away by one of the Tall Man's minions as the Tall Man reappears.

While still not as magnificent as the original film, this was a step up from the second film. Reggie and his new companions don't have the same chemistry that Reggie, Mike and Jody did in the original film, but they bring their own dynamic to the story, which is much needed since Mike becomes increasingly haunted and withdrawn, and Jody now has a role similar to the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Bringing him back in the manner that they did, brought back some of the anything goes storytelling that made the original so wonderful, and was lacking in the first sequel. It also allowed the introduction of a whole new plan for the Tall Man to mastermind.

Not close to perfect, this was still fun to watch.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 22

If there's any one author who embodies the Halloween spirit, it is this man here; Ray Bradbury. To me he's as much a part of the season as Jack O'Lanterns, ghosts and the colors orange and black. For years he was centrally represented in my outdoor yard decorations in the form of Jack O'Lantern filled Halloween Trees. Sadly, the house I'm currently occupying does not have any trees in our front yard, so that tradition has stopped until my next move. To learn more about Ray Bradbury's connection with Halloween read here.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 21 - movie 2

Again, I previously included Phantasm II back in 2011's Halloween Countdown. I really disliked it back then, but on a second viewing find it to be far more tolerable. I still have some of the same complaints such as the characters of Liz and Alchemy not really contributing much. Liz, at least starts out as a guiding factor to the plot, but once she's connected to Reggie and Mike, she has a lot less to do beyond being a captive, even though she is instrumental to the climactic showdown with the Tall Man. Alchemy is essentially there to be eye candy and to begin what will be a running character trait for Reggie, making him a horny dude constantly trying to sleep with the female characters in each subsequent installment. It's not a charming trait.

The plot is much more down to earth this time, as Mike (now played by James LeGros - less jarring for me this time, but I'd rather A. Michael Baldwin had returned as Mike) and Reggie pursue the Tall Man through the trail of towns that have fallen into becoming ghost towns in his wake of grave robbing. The chrome sphere is back as are the killer dwarves, the Tall man and the hemi 'Cuda, but the relentless inventiveness of the original is not present in this film. Instead, the established tropes of the first film are locked in place as being the key elements, and no new madness is introduced to supplement them.

It's a watchable sequel, but not a necessary addition to the fine film that the original Phantasm remains.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 21 - Movie 1

I first wrote about Phantasm (1979) way back in 2007, as part of that year's Halloween Countdown. I never wanted to repeat myself here, but since I decided I wanted to include Phantasm 3-5 in this year's countdown, I felt a need to revisit the first two.

My love for this film remains strong, from the beautiful 1971 Plymouth hemi 'Cuda, to the flying sphere, to the camaraderie between the three leads, who when I was young, seemed to be about the coolest people out there. They seem a little less cool now, but the dynamics of their relationship to one another is still really strong and what really drives this series.

I'm still amazed by all of the weird stuff that's just thrown up on screen, often without connection to anything else (such as Mike's visit to a psychic), and typically without any explanation (the fly). The only explanation we are given is that something weird is going on at Morningside Mortuary involving  the Tall Man and that he's stealing corpses, shrinking them down, packing them into barrels, and shipping them back to his own planet where they are reanimated as diminutive slave labor (due to the heavier gravity). Everything else is WTF dressing to move the plot and characters along.

It's a beautiful thing.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 21

While not necessarily a Halloween movie, per se. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) has one of cinema's best witches. Her transformation scene from being the queen is quite an amazingly choreographed spectacle as well. Check it out here and here.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 20 - Movie

Werner Herzog's remake of Nosferatu (1922) , Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht/ Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) returns the proper names to the characters (mostly. Mina and Lucy are swapped, and Renfield is now Harker's boss instead of a coworker) from Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula, which the original film was based on. Rather than being a straight adaptation of Dracula, the remake includes elements that originate in the 1922 version of Nosferatu and not with Dracula, the novel. These include the plague of rats that accompanies Dracula on his voyage, and Lucy's attempt to save her husband from the vampire by sacrificing herself. Van Helsing is also present, but presented as a skeptical man of science as opposed to the vampire expert we all know and love.

Less atmospheric than the original, Herzog's version is more matter of fact with some poetic moments and nice visuals. Klaus Kinski as Dracula is not as iconic as Max Shreck's Count Orlok, but comes off as more complex; a predatory creature wearing a more, or less, human appearance, his eyes, locked on to their prey, guiding his physical mannerisms, too. Isabelle Adjani is a haunted Lucy, and Bruno Ganz is Harker, completely overcome by his encounter with Dracula. The score by Popol Vue has a fairy tale quality to it, and some of is seems to be echoed in this year's horror stand out, Hereditary.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 20

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Dracula by Bram Stoker are both classic novels whose influence can still be felt today. Both have also been published in numerous editions. The covers to a number of versions of Frankenstein can be found here and here. Covers for Dracula can be found here, here and here.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 19 - Movie

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) is the story of a young girl whose sexual awakening happens to coincide with the arrival of a troupe of actors and a group of missionaries to her village. Also arriving are Orlik, who may, or may not be her brother, and the mysterious Constable, who is determined to obtain Valerie's earrings. The Constable is also a vampire, who was once the lover of Valerie's aunt, Elsa. He promises to make Elsa young again if she will give him the house Valerie is to inherit. This pact also turns Elsa into a vampire. The use of magic objects protects some of the characters and dooms others.

Obtusely told, this fairy tale unfolds like someone else's dream, filmed in soft light which gives it a hazy uncertain feel at some moments, and appears like a soft core pornographic film in others. It's hypnotizing to watch, and there are some arresting visuals. Jaroslav Schallerova is captivating to watch, though the way the camera lingers over her often creates an uneasy sensual feeling.

This would make a good companion piece to a viewing of Viy (1967) or The Company of Wolves (1984).

31 Days of Halloween - Day 19

Most years I posted a seasonally suitable comic book story that I wrote. The image above comes from Xombi, which you can obtain in an inexpensive paperback version from Amazon.com. Below are some stories from other comic books told in their entirety.

Night Terrors

Spook House 

Something to Sink Your Teeth Into 

It Lurks In the Night

Donor

Man of a Thousand Monsters

31 Days of Halloween - Day 18 - Movie 2

After a meteor strikes outside a small California town, Martian war machines rise up out of the ground and start destroying everything in their path. The same thing is happening all across the earth, with more and more of them arriving, and nothing can stop them.

You can't get more classic than War of the Worlds (1953). Beautifully filmed with those well designed, and terrifying Martian war machines, their mysterious, and predatory nature amplified by the incredible sound design, this is simply a suspenseful tale well told. Granted, the religious angle to the film is a bit preachy, and the very visible wires and wrinkles on the backdrop are a bit unfortunate (and an instance, much like with Frankenstein (1931) where I'd be okay with some George Lucas-ish digital clean-up), overall the film remains a masterpiece.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 18 - Movie 1

I first encountered Baltimore filmmaker Don Dohler through the pages of Cinemagic magazine, where he provided numerous articles on how to make props and accomplish special effects on almost non-existent budgets. Dohler was the epitome of an amateur fimmaker, creating simply from the passion to do so. The Alien Factor (1978) is one of the feature length results of this passion to create movies. Elements of this film were the source of numerous articles in Cinemagic.

The film concerns a small town dealing with a crashed spaceship that was transporting three specimens for an alien zoo, now released and on the rampage, while an outsider appears to stop these creatures, before they can kill anyone else. It's a decent premise. The outsider's true identity is not surprising, but provides a solid (if also not surprising ending). The filmmakers also get kudos for not just creating one alien being, but five. These are also not cheesy aliens in the sense that they are humans in futuristic clothing, or humans with weird ears, or bumpy foreheads, but full blown creature suit aliens (plus one delivered courtesy of stop-motion animation). Sure, everything is crafted for virtually no money, but the effort and ambition show.

The movie itself drags. The opening credits are really long (though nicely done), the acting is amateurish, the filmmaking equally so. There's quite a bit of padding, illogical storytelling (including a bullet proof monster foiled by a screen door, and dispatched with a syringe needle), wonky sound design, and a sudden halt while a band performs. It's tough to beat on something that was clearly created with a lot of love and enthusiasm, which is why I'm always willing to give Ed Wood films a pass, but Ed Wood is practically Orson Welles in comparison to Dohler's work.  It was almost nice to finally see a film that I knew so much of the behind the scenes material for, but I can't say I was glad to have used my time this way.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 18

Monsters carrying women, usually unconscious, have been a staple of monster movies and publicity photos pretty much since the beginning. I have amassed a number of these photos here and here.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 17 - Movie

John Agar started with a promising acting career which he derailed with a drinking problem. Amiable in his 1950s Universal monster movies, he eventually ended up in a number of less than stellar science fiction and horror films, including Night Fright (1967), which has to be one of the worst.

Surly teens ignore Agar, as the sheriff, when he tells them to stay away from an area where a double murder has occurred, possibly by a large animal. Benevolent teens assist him. In the meantime Agar is also having trouble from Federal officials keeping him away from a rocket crash site. Could the murders, the animal, and the rocket all be connected? In a movie this simple they have to be, and we learn that the creature responsible for the deaths is an alligator muted by cosmic rays from the rocket into a ape-like creature with a spiky purple head that looks something like a Klingon, though it's hard to see exactly, since the print I watched was really murky, and is apparently the same one this screen grab I found online was from. Anyway, it doesn't really matter what the thing is, because you should never attempt to view this unwatchable mess.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 17

I've always been fascinated by "All Is Vanity" by Charles Allan Gilbert, and other versions of skull illusion art. You can learn about them and see a wide variety of examples here, here, and here.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 16 - Movie 2

In Frankenstein 1970 (1958) Boris Karloff plays a descendent of the original Dr. Frankenstein. Disfigured for nazis for not cooperating with them he still lives in the family castle, but has been selling off the family heirlooms in order to buy laboratory equipment. His latest scheme is paying for a nuclear reactor by allowing a tv movie crew to film a Frankenstein movie in his castle. He also picks off the cast and crew, one by one, in order to manufacture the latest in his family's line of monsters.

This film is a real mixed bag. While I like the concept, Baron Frankenstein is pretty inept. After making his victims disappear, he keeps claiming they left, which is easily checked and found not to be true. He also activates his monster before giving it eyes, necessitating a second batch of invasive surgery to install them later. The laboratory scenes, and their pseudo medical gibberish are a bit of a chore to sit through, and the monster itself, as shown above, may be imposing in size, but is hardly enough to cause someone to die of fright (as happens with one victim). The catty banter amongst the film crew is mildly entertaining, but the bulk of this movie, sadly, is not.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 16 - Movie 1

There are many films in which Boris Karloff plays a kindly doctor, or social reformer, with good intentions, who ends up being turned into a murdering fiend. The Haunted Strangler (1958) is one of the better ones. Here he plays a novelist investigating a case in which a one armed man was hanged for a series of murders that were half strangulations, half slashings. He's convinced the wrong man was hanged and instead believes that the doctor who performed the autopsy on the hanged man was actually guilty of the crimes, especially since he suffered from left arm paralysis. Seeking the doctor's missing surgical knife, he finds it in the coffin of the convicted man. A exhumation is refused, so Karloff's character dig it up himself. He finds the knife, and once it's in his grasp he finds his left arm paralyzed and his facial features grotesquely contorted. He also finds himself compelled to murder. Once he returns to normal, he finds that no one will believe his story when he tries turning himself in, and the weird compulsion comes over him again, and again...

This film was very enjoyable, even though it starts off following the formula of many other films with a similar plot/theme. The film really takes on life during Karloff's desperate attempts to convince everyone of his own horrible crimes. Karloff puts in a great performance.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 16

Do you want to know what comic books scared the crap out of me as a kid? The one above probably would have had I owned it, but the one's found here and here certainly did.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 15 - Movie

A murderous priest learns that his cellmate in prison committed a robbery in which the money was never found. When he is released from prison he sets out to find the robber's widow, and her two children, and to get his hands on the money. Soon, the children who have it on their possession, find themselves on the run from the never tiring patient pursuit of the evil man.

If John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) counts as a horror movie, then Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter (1955) is most certainly one. Filled with gorgeous, haunting, and dreamlike imagery, the story is told from the perspective of the two children as they are pursued by this sinister, seemingly unstoppable, bogeyman in the form a very disturbing Robert Mitchum. Mitchum's character has all of the adults believing he is a generous, kind-hearted, man of God, while only the children know better. The film has a real fairytale quality to it.

This is a gorgeous masterpiece and it's a shame that Laughton never directed another movie after this.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 15

Halloween is the perfect time to read the works of Edgar Allan Poe. While doing so, take a look at this gallery of art illustrating Poe's works by Harry Clarke.