Well, it's been quite a Halloween horror season, beginning back on October 1st with Clint Walker and "Killdozer", and it's been so much fun that I don't think we'll stop just yet. Better to let it play out of it's own accord than to cut it off by pulling the plug. After all, Halloween doesn't end until we say it does, so we'll probably watch a few more horror flicks until we move closer to the holidays. Then we'll get all warm and fuzzy. I hope you had a great Halloween. I did, by doing the usual, with a twist. I did two Halloween walks, first in Reseda on the route Pearl and I used to take. There were swarms of Trick-or-Treaters, more than I've seen in a long time. I then did a second walk in Northridge, past Cupid's and through the old neighborhood. Rathburn Street always has some very cool Halloween houses, but 9032...oy! (see below). My walks totaled 8 1/2 miles, then I drove up to Granada Hills, to see a haunted house Grim had mentioned, which was raising money for charity. I went through it, and man - it was super scary, with killer clowns jumping out of the woodwork, zombies in fog in the corners, and a voodoo priestess whom you couldn't tell if she was real or fake! I had a blast, then came back to my apartment about 10 pm, where I watched two of my Halloween Traditionals: "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown". All told, it was an amazing Halloween and an awesome Halloween season. The movie reviews are below:
Tonight, for Halloween, we watched "The Ghoul"(1933), starring Boris Karloff. We've seen it about five or six times now, dating back 20 years to when I found a copy at the 99 Cent Store. Though not as well known as other films in the Karloff Kanon, it's certainly one of the most demented. Boris, playing "Professor Henry Morlant", an Egyptologist, has - during an archaeological dig - come into the possession of a gem called The Eternal Light, belonging to the ancient King Anubis, who is now regarded as a god. Professor Morlant is dying, and believes that if he is buried with the Eternal Light in his hand, that Anubis will bring him back to life on the first full moon after his death, and grant him eternal life.
When we first see Morlant sick in bed, Karloff's makeup is, in my opinion, as scary as any of his more famous characters. I mean, we often talk about onomatopoeia around here - words that sound like what they describe - and, I mean, you don't call your movie "The Ghoul" unless he's one creepy-looking dude. Ghoul is one of the scariest words in any language (I think its Indian or Egyptian); it means "grave robber". Anyhow, Professor Morlant - on his deathbed - makes his loyal houseman "Laing" (Ernest Thesiger) bandage the Eternal Light in his hand before he dies. But Laing only pretends to do it, to avoid Morlant's wrath. In reality he's afraid of committing blasphemy because he's a Christian and Anubis is a pagan god. He pockets the jewel, not to steal it but to give it to the professor's heir. All he knows it's that he doesn't want it, and he's not going to bury it with his master, who he believes has gone insane.
When Morlant dies, a funeral procession made up of friends and peers carries his coffin (a replica of an Egyptian sarcophagus) into a large stone crypt on his property. The group walks out, muttering disagreement with the proceedings ("disgusting!"), and a man walks in: Morlant's bookkeeper and lawyer "Broughton" (Cedric Hardwicke). He too thinks Morlant was insane, but he's not going to let a priceless artifact go to waste. He opens the sarcophagus to examine Morlant's hand, but finds there is no jewel wrapped inside it! That's because Laing disobeyed the order. But Broughton is not about to give up, and others are in on the hunt. There's a priest (Ralph Richardson) who just happens to have stumbled upon the scene, and a Sheikh from Arabia who's been looking for the Eternal Flame for the two years since Morlant stole it. But even the Sheikh is a crook (in addition to the others) because he isn't Egyptian.
He ends up being attached to "Kaney" (Kathleen Harrison), a wacky British gal who's the best friend of Morlant's niece "Betty" (Dorothy Hyson). Kaney and the Sheikh make for excellent (if bizarre) comic relief. There's an element of the Old Dark House motif at work, inasmuch as there are many characters with differing situations and motivations gathered in the same place.
Complicating the Gem Hunt is that someone has wired a dy-No-mite! charge to the 700 pound door of Morlant's crypt, which is also locked, but Morlant has a key on the inside, for when Anubis raises him from the dead, allowing him to blow this pop stand when the full moon shines. But when he awakens, he discovers he doesn't have the Light, and boy is he ever pissed. He stalks over to the Mansion Proper, as only Boris Karloff can stalk (all stiff-legged), and starts strangling people: men, women, it makes no difference to him. Then, one of the Light seekers turns out not to be who we think they are, and Betty and her cousin Ralph (Morlant's heirs) find themselves trapped in the crypt with The Ghoul and the god Anubis. A fire breaks out, and that's all I can tell you. "The Ghoul" is as much about the seekers of the Eternal Light, and the butler Laing, who wants to dispense himself of responsibility for his crazy master, as it is about The Ghoul himself. Karloff is featured at the beginning and the end (and he's unforgettable in the role, he really was a great actor) and he bookends the race to steal the mythic gem. The comic relief team of Kathleen Harrison as Kaney and Harold Huth as Sheikh Dagore are low key and superb, keeping the humor subtle without intruding on the suspense. "The Ghoul" is a horror classic, truly off-the-wall. Imagine someone trying to make a movie like this today. Or better yet, don't. Two Huge Thumbs Up. The picture is razor sharp. ////
Now I will briefly tell you about 9032. Have you seen what the current owner has done to that house? It's obscene bordering on criminal. In fact, I'd jail whoever did it. It's the equivalent of radical and unnecessary plastic surgery that renders a person unrecognizable. What was once a homey and comfortable wood planked house with shuttered windows, two lovely sycamores by the kitchen, a back porch separating the garage from the main structure, and a white picket fence bordering the raised back yard, now looks like a Dark Grey Stucco Fortress. It looks like a bunker or a freaking prison.
You could not make it uglier if you tried. I could go on a much longer tirade but I won't, because it's too depressing. Given what I now know about my life, which is a lot, I now feel a closer connection to Reseda than I do to Northridge. But I still have fond memories of my 9032 years, and it's terrible what's been done to that house. Now, on to our next movie:
Last night, we went back to Mario Bava, choosing his "The Whip and the Body", taking a chance on that S & M inspired title only because it starred Christopher Lee and because of it's 6.7 IMDB rating. And wow did it turn out to be good! Bava, it seems, is an art film director using horror as his context. The film is beautifully photographed, in spotlit colors of green, purple and red; horror colors. His camera moves slowly in hypnotic Tarkovskian pans. Lee, as the exiled "Kurt Menliff", is riding home at dusk to his family's castle on the coast. He wants revenge for his brother "Christian" (Tony Kendall) stealing his woman, the beautiful but tormented "Nevenka" (Daliah Lavi). Finding her alone on the beach, Menliff pulls out his whip. "You always loved violence", he spits, whipping her back before making love to her, to which she willingly submits. Their relationship is a little (ahem) unbalanced. His brother Christian says "I only took her because you left home." But Kurt did not leave willingly. He was cast out by their father for causing his first fiancee's suicide. And Christian isn't much better. He's really in love with the family servant "Georgia" (Harriet White Medin). He doesn't love Nevenka, who has a love-hate relationship with Kurt because of his violence, which he"s trying to pin on her by telling her that she "loves" being whipped. By now, she doesn't know if she does or doesn't.
Kurt is then killed by a dagger through the throat, and the movie becomes a whodunit, exacted as high art. This is Dark Shadows on steroids. Christian buries Kurt in the family crypt, located of course in the basement. But Nevenka keeps seeing his face in the narrows of the castle. Is he really dead? Then, the Menliff patriach is killed in bed. The father never wanted Kurt to return home, nor did his mother, because of his violent nature. The undercurrent of sadism is palpable, and powerful, and for 1963 it's menacingly sinister. The movie is a slow-burn treatise on S and M, on secret keeping, and the kind of lust that leads to murder, all of it set in a haunted castle. Hey, Halloween ain't over till we say it is. Kurt Menliff is the main character but Lee is onscreen only in a supporting role, as he gets killed at the 40 minute mark. The story is a soap opera, a horror melodrama with sexual taboos ("not Tab Who, Gilligan - taboo!") that were being explored in early '60s cinema through the use of vampire themes. This is the midnight Mario Bava version of some really Dark Shadows, shot in day-glo color.
It IS one spectacular looking flick, and for that reason it's a must-see, even if in parts it's slow as molasses and the ending is a bit of a cop out. Two Huge for the look. Two Bigs for everything else. The picture is very good. ////
And that's all for tonight. Hey, the blog is back on track! I've been writing my butt off, blurring my eyeballs, going from book to blog to book. But we're back on schedule and we'll try to keep it that way. My blogging music is Klaus Schulze "Picture Music", my late night is Wagner Die Walkure. I hope your week is going well, and I send you Tons of Love, as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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