Last night, we wanted to honor Bela Lugosi on his birthday (October 20), so we chose "Black Friday"(1940) from a Bela Search, and though he wasn't the star (it was Boris Karloff), he does have a substantial role. It turned out we'd seen it before. I warned you that would happen a lot during horror season, and while I'm always looking for Bela and Boris flicks we've never seen, I don't think we'll find any more. The good thing is, they made such great movies, you can watch 'em over and over again. Anyhow, in this one, Karloff is a brilliant surgeon, who - as the movie opens - is headed to the electric chair. The scene shows the prison's high voltage room, soon to be sending lightning through Boris's brain, through a metal skullcap. Skulls, brains, electric chairs, surgery - all are essential ingredients for a Universal horror movie.
Before he sits in The Chair, Boris gives his diary to a reporter/witness "from the only paper that treated me fairly." His story is told in flashback from its pages. When Boris needed work, his friend "George Kingsley" (Stanley Ridges) got him a professorship at the local college, where Kingsley is an English professor. One day, the two men are headed out on vacation. Boris is driving with his daughter (Anne Gwynne), Professor Kingsley and his wife. Kingsley asks to stop at his apartment to retrieve his hat. "Sorry, but I feel naked without it." As he crosses the street, he's hit by one of two cars driven by rival gangsters involved in a shootout. Professor Kingsley becomes collateral damage, clinging to life as an ambulance carts him away, along with a second casualty: Red Cannon, the gangster who hit him. Cannon has a severed spine from the accident. He's probably gonna die. At best, he'll be paralyzed for life.
At the hospital, Karloff asks for and is granted privacy with the arrivals. There, he gets an idea. Since Red Cannon is a criminal who is either gonna die or end up in a wheelchair (or get electrocuted for his crimes), and since Professor Kingsley's brain has been irreparably damaged in the car crash, Boris makes the split second decision to Perform A Brain Transplant.
Of course. What else would one do in such a critical situation, if one were a brilliant brain surgeon? I have to cut in to say that there's something about the word Brain that is thought-provoking (or maybe just disturbing) when combined with the word Transplant. Brain surgery is bad enough, but Brain Transplant?
And why did it take until the 1930s and '40s for the idea to catch on, of Putting One Guy's Brain Into Another Guy's Head? And why did it become so popular in those decades?
Well, in this case, Boris Karloff's reason is semi-altruistic. As he sees it, the donor (Red Cotton) is a criminal who is gonna die or live a life of misery, and the recipient is a college professor who is raising the intellect of his students, and therefore benefiting the community. He's also a family man and Karloff's friend. It's a No-Brainer. So, while he is alone with the two men at the hospital, he performs the brain transplant quickly and without assistance. But as brilliant as Boris is, he's never considered the mental aspect of the transplant, only the physical. A replacement brain for Kingsley meant that his body would continue to function, thus he'd live. But now, when he awakes, he's got the Mind of Red Cotton, fighting with his own mind for control.
Karloff tries to remedy this complication with hypnotic suggestion: "You are George Kingsley, s professor of English Literature. Your wife's name is Margaret. Your students revere you." Kingsley slowly gets better, but the next afternoon there's an article about Red Cannon, the now-dead gangster who stashed a half million dollars that was never found. It gives Boris another idea, which he rationalizes: "Part of George is Red Cannon. If I can awaken that part, I can get him to tell me where the money is hidden, and I can found an institute to help Brain Patients the world over." Ahh, the motivation of Helping People's Brains. So yeah, Boris convinces himself that he's doing something good. He'll get the hidden money, found his own hospital, and Operate On Brains all day. To help folks, of course.
But what actually happens, when he HYP!- No-Tizes George to redirect his identity ("you're now Red Cannon, you've robbed a bank and you have half a million dollars hidden") is that he creates a split personality. Red Cannon is back, in George's body! And not only does he want to reclaim leadership of his gang, but he's gonna get revenge on Bela Lugosi and the other gang members who conspired to kill him and take the money. All of this creates more problems than even Boris Karloff can handle, which eventually leads him to Death Row. Two Huge Thumbs Up, especially for the double role by Stanley Ridges. The picture is very good. ////
The previous night we found a TV Movie from Dan Curtis entitled "Dead of Night", which first aired on March 29, 1977, right around the time I was leaving high school, set free by the Proficiency Exam. Do they still offer that escape hatch? Well anyhow, we know that Curtis always delivers the goosebumps. I wasn't sure I'd seen this one, a trilogy of short stories written by Richard Matheson, until the final segment played out. Then I knew I'd seen it, because it still scared the living daylights out of me 46 years later. Dan Curtis created Dark Shadows, which was a daytime soap opera in the mid-60s. We've mentioned it before, and if you're my age or older you remember it. It aired in the afternoon, but was definitely not for kids. My Mom told me not to watch it (though I wondered why my sisters were allowed), but you just got this vibe that it was Really, Really Scary. It's as if Curtis knew that a show called Dark Shadows would be more frightening in in the afternoon, and in black and white, on a small-screen TV in your bedroom with the curtains drawn and only diffused sunlight breaking through. And that's because Curtis knew the whole deal, not only of What is Scary but why. Dark Shadows is Curtains, Time of Day, the static, videotaped lack of depth, and the name Barnabas Collins. No wonder it had a Taboo Reputation with 1960's Moms ("not 'Tab Who', Gilligan. Taboo!")
Well anyhow, we've established that Curtis is a horror honcho. But in this triptych, he holds back, giving you first a wistful supernatural piece about Ed Begley, an old car and a deadly accident. Then he builds to a short but effective Vampire story with a twist, featuring Patrick Macnee and Elisha "The Squealer" Cook. But it's in the movie's finale, it's final story, that Curtis breaks out the bigtime scares and shows why he was the top dog in TV horror in the 1970s. The final story, titled "Bobby", tells the tale of a ten year old boy who has "accidentally" drowned, and the mother who can't accept his death. As it opens, she's gone so far off the deep end that she's painted a pentagram circle in her living room. It's a dark and stormy night, thunder roars as she invokes the demon Euronymous (later of the black metal band Mayhem) to please bring Bobby back, because his death was not meant to happen. "It was an accident! I command you to bring him back to life!"
Well, you can guess what transpires when you start commanding demons, and when Bobby does come back, shivering and cold at Mommy's front door, that was when I knew I'd seen this movie, on it's original air date, because this image scared the bejeezus out of me, and - judging by the IMDB comments - out of millions of viewers. I don't wanna tell you too much about this final story in the movie, just that it features only two actors: Joan Hackett as Mommy and a kid named Lee Montgomery as Bobby, whose use-of-voice is truly terrifying for one so young. Curtis did a heck of a job of directing him. "Bobby" is essentially the story of an abused kid's revenge, but that's all I'm gonna say. The segment is a 10 on the Scary Scale and earns Two Gigantic Thumbs Up, our highest rating. Overall, "Dead of Night" slips to Two Huge, with the Ed Begley story being the better of the other two: eerie, nostalgic and heartfelt. I found the the vampire segment a tad quirky. It's okay, not great/not terrible, and is the shortest of the three, but "Bobby"?......oh Bobby. "Mommy? I'm coming to get you, Mommy. I know where you're hiding." Watch it and remember how terrified you were the first time you saw it. The picture is very good.
I have a bonus movie for you: "Killers of the Flower Moon." As always with movies currently in the theater I won't tell you much about it, though in this case you almost certainly know the basics (because everyone's been talking about it). The first thing that must be noted is that it's overlong. 3 1/2 hours? C'mon, Scorsese. I mean, it doesn't really drag, but it does get slow in places. But the main deal is that it's a Martin Scorsese movie, and ever since "Goodfellas", well, if you've seen that one you've seen 'em all. When it ended, my first thought was "Goodfellas goes to Oklahoma". You've got Robert DeNiro doing his Crinkley-Faced Thing yet again. And DiCaprio does a version of the Billy Bob Thornton "Frown Jaw" from "Sling Blade". He's very good, and so is DeNiro, but they're Doing Their Respective Things, and while I am sure Lily Gladstone is a fine actress, she doesn't get a chance to do much besides suffer and maintain a Stone Face. As a story, it's very good. It holds your attention for the most part, and the characters are all interesting. But is it a masterpiece, or even Best Picture material? No on both counts. It's good, even very good, but basically it's Another Martin Scorsese Movie about Hoodlums Bumping People Off. Go see it, if you don't mind sitting for 206 minutes. The photography is epic, good soundtrack. It's a history lesson that's well worth a look, better than "Oppenheimer" (which, in hindsight, was only so-so) and Scorsese even gives credit where credit is due to the otherwise deservedly reviled J. Edgar Hoover, who authorised the investigation into the Osage murders. Maybe he started out with heroic motives before becoming thoroughly corrupt.
And that's all for tonight. Go Rams tomorrow, versus Steelers. My blogging music is Klaus Schulze "Dune", my late night is Handel's Admetus, King of Thessaly. I hope you had a nice Saturday and I send you Tons of Love, as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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