Peter Cushing in "Frankenstein Created Woman", and "The Mask of Satan" (aka "Black Sunday") starring Barbara Steele

Last night we were looking for something from Hammer Horror, because it isn't Halloween unless you're Hammered. But we were hoping for a movie we hadn't seen, and most of the Hammer films are pay-per-view. "Not gunna doo-it," as President Bush would say, because it obviously wouldn't have been prudent. Then a recommendation popped up for "Frankenstein Created Woman" (1967), which was free. It sounded like a Roger Vadim title, and because of the release year, we thought it might be cheesy: blood and bazooms and bouffants. But then we saw the long list of rave reviews on IMDB, and a "trivia" note that said it was one of Scorsese's favorite films. That, and the fact that it starred Peter Cushing, was ultimately the decider. And it turned out to be a minor classic.

We knew it was gonna be good when it opened with a beheading, in a field, on a five-story guillotine. The prisoner is a drunken murderer who tries to laugh off what's coming, until he sees his little son looking on from the bushes. (Stay! Out! Da Bushes!)

The last-rites priest tries running the boy off, but he still sees his Dad lose his head. Into the basket it goes. Nobody does English countryside guillotinings like director Terence Fisher, Hammer's go-to guy.

Cut to 15 years later. The boy, named "Hans" (Robert Morris), now a young man, works for "Baron Von Frankenstein" (Cushing) in his secret lab, which is fronted by a doctor's office. When we meet him, "Doctor Hertz" (Thorley Walters) is cryogenically freezing the Baron, but we don't know why just yet. We assume it's because he's dead, and in a way, he is! But we learn that they're running an experiment (which I'll let you see for yourself) and when it's over, and successful, they want to celebrate with a bottle of champagne. Dr. Hertz sends Hans down to the corner Inn to fetch it, and this is where the plot takes it's turn.

While Hans dickers with the "Landlord" (as the Innkeeper is called), who doesn't like Hans because he's always sniffing around his daughter, three young Dandies walk in, demanding wine, throwing their "class weight" around. "You don't want to lose your liquor licence, do you landlord?" They remind one of Droogs, but dressed in fancy duds instead of white jumpsuits. Worse, they demand to have the Landlord's daughter Christina serve the wine so they can mock her, as she's afflicted with polio and can hardly walk. Hans tries to defend her, and ends up beating the three to a pulp. But when they return later that night and murder the Landlord while looking for Hans and Christina (Susan Denberg), Hans gets blamed for the murder by the police, due to his earlier assault. He goes to trial and gets sentenced to the guillotine. "Like father, like son!" says the prosecutor. The next morning, just as Hans is losing his head, Christina rides past the site in a carriage on her way to the doctor. She sees Hans' head get chopped off, then runs to a bridge and drowns herself in the river.

Now, Baron Von Frankenstein, being a enterprising man, sees opportunity in all this tragedy. He's renowned as a genius by Doctor Hertz, even though he's extremely arrogant. Neil deGrasse Tyson would seem a piker in comparison. The baron is a physicist, linguist, MD, biologist and astronomer. He hasn't time for testifying at trials, or being hassled by the cops, and he makes this well known to the authorities. "I must be allowed to get on with my work!" "Why, Baron? What are you doing that's so important?" Well, he's discovered, through his freezing process, that the soul remains alive in a dead body. Think of a bubble in a block of ice. He's now going to use the soul of Hans (whose body he's stolen from the coroner) and put it into the body of the drowned Christina. While he's at it, he surgically repairs her disfigured face and crippled legs, and when she wakes up 94 days later, she's beautiful and can walk normally.

But she has Hans's soul, and he wants revenge for being wrongly executed. He now commands Christina's body to seduce and brutally kill the three Dandies who actually murdered her father. This is hard core stuff, combining cryogenics, exhumations, headless bodies, resuscitation, and a murder trail, and, a bit of the old ultraviolence from the extended Droog scenes. Actor Peter Blythe as lead Dandy "Anton" is especially effective. The sole problem is that, while the story is pure horror, it's lacking a monster. I probably shouldn't have told you that, but I'm sparing you the expectation of the headless Hans busting out of his coffin to kill his tormentors, which we hope for but does not happen. However, his severed head does play a key role. The scares are more in the implications of things, rather than in the the, um....execution? (see what I did there?)

It unfolds like a play, in separate acts. It's got all the Hammer earth tones we love, from 19th century England, and has the Shakepearean actors to pull it off. Two Huge Thumbs Up for "Frankenstein Created Woman". The picture is soft but watchable.  ////

Now then, we don't usually "do" Italian horror, or anything Italian when it comes to genre productions. Spaghetti Westerns, Giallo Horror, Amer-Italian comedies where the dubbing is always overloud and in Brooklynese? Forget it. For Italian horror, give me "Suspiria" or give me death (no, not really death, I'm only kidding). But you know what I mean. I just don't go for dubbed Italian movies, and especially horror. But I'd heard of Mario Bava, (had even seen his "Kill, Baby, Kill", which was good-but-not-great), and the previous night I got a recommendation for "Black Sunday"(1960) aka "The Mask of Satan". All the IMDBers were giving it a 9 or 10. "An atmospheric masterpiece" was the consensus, and it starred Barbara Steele, so I figured what the heck. With a title like that it was worth a shot. Steele plays "Katia Vajda", the descendant of  Princess Asa (also Steele), who 200 years earlier, was forced to wear the Mask of Satan after being convicted of witchcraft. The mask kills it's wearer by plunging spikes through his or her face. Aja's husband, Prince Vajda, was also killed in this way. Both were then buried with a cross hanging over their coffins to keep Satan from raising them from the dead.

But as fate would have it (and fate always has it, doesn't fate?) "Dr. Choma Kruvajan" (Andrea Checci), and his protege "Dr. Gorobec" (John Richardson) are traveling by coach to an educational conference. In these overland night scenes, Bava is as good at Gothic art direction as James Whale, or George Waggner in "The Wolf Man." Their driver doesn't want to take the shortcut because of the ghosts at the cemetery, but he's getting paid, so he has no choice. Naturally, they hit a rut and a wheel falls off their carriage. While the driver repairs it, the two doctors wander over to an ancient, open crypt, long neglected. Inside, they see a coffin atop a tomb. Dr. Kruvajan observes The Mask of Satan on the face of the deceased and explains it's significance to Dr. Gorobec. But he accidentally jabs his hand on a protruding shard of metal. Blood drips from his fingers into the eyeless socket of the 200 year-old witch, and she slowly begins to reanimate. 

She wants revenge on the family who put her to death, so she fixates on her descendant Katia, who looks exactly like her. She also breaks her long dead husband out of the ground in a spectacular scene of upheaval. Asa needs his muscle, and though he's a brute, if he weren't undead he'd be playing keyboards in a progressive rock band.

At the Inn, Dr. Kruvajan has disappeared. psychically summoned back to the crypt. Princess Asa has had a taste of his blood; now she needs all of it to come alive. Kruvajan becomes her zombie henchman, which leaves Dr. Gorobec to investigate. He enlists Katia's brother "Constantine" (Enrico Oliveri), and the duo battle the demonic Princess.

The movie is not all that scary, mainly due to lack of suspense. Bava isn't going for that kind of camerawork or pacing (or maybe he didn't have the technique). His camera is static, though he does use zoom, but his staging and art direction are a Ten on every level. It's almost like an Art Film. The black and white photography is incredible, as are the sets. Barbara Steele is one of the great scream queens. It's reminiscent of Mexican horror, which is also culturally-based. and doesn't rely on the jump-scares of American horror. You could even call it Catholic horror, as it comes from Italy and is all about saving souls and resisting Satan. So, yeah: a ten on every level except the scariness.

And since we're almost at Halloween, the question must be asked: is there anything scarier than a witch? I think not. I mean, we've talked about this before, but think of childhood imagery: what scared kids more than The Wicked Witch of the West? Or the Snow White Witch at Disneyland? I was in YMCA camp in the summer of 1968, and we had sleepovers at Chatsworth Park. The kids slept overnight on the lawn with their counselors, who were only 17-20 years old themselves. It was also the summer when The Manson Family was living just over the hillside at Spahn Ranch, though no one had heard of them yet. But one night, we had a hot-dog and marshmallow cookout, and the counselors told scary stories, two of which I've never forgotten: one was about a man with a bee's head who lived in the hills off Topanga Canyon. The other was about a couple who ran out of gas while driving through the Mojave desert. and a witch found their car in the middle of the night, and started scratching on the windows. The story then got scarier and scarier with the couple trapped inside their car, and I'm telling you - even if I heard these two stories today they would scar me for life....but this was when I was 8 years old. So yeah, I vote Witch for the Scariest Thing in the World.

There's just something about witches. The cackling, the black hat, the cauldron, the long nails. The pointy nose. Me and the late, great Mike Bellamy once stayed up late on a sleepover to watch "Burn Witch Burn". We were still talking about it 45 years later. So yeah, as we've said, They Didn't Burn 'Em At The Stake for Nothing. Let's be grateful for the Witchfinder General. Two Huge Thumbs Up for Mario Bava's "Black Sunday". It's a must see for it's look, and, as always, for Barbara Steele. The picture is razor sharp. ////

And that's all for now. My blogging music is Klaus Schulze "Timewind", my late night is Wagner Lohengrin. I wish you a Happy Halloween and I send you Tons of Love as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton and Ken Foree in "From Beyond", and "The Man Who Laughs" starring Conrad Veidt and Mary Philbin

Last night, we watched "From Beyond"(1986), a movie I saw in the theater in 1986, with Dave S. and Shecky. I remember that it spawned quite a discussion, later that night at Sheck's house, on the nature of inter-dimensional beings. It's based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft, in which a Mad Scientist named "Dr. Edward Pretorius" (Ted Sorel) uses an electromagnetic resonator to connect with the ethereal world. The movie was made by the same team who brought you the cult hit "Re-Animator" a year before, director Stuart Gordon and Producer Brian Yuzna. Actor Jeffrey Combs stars in both films. I remembered "From Beyond" being weird, weird,  and weird. Well, sometimes the memory of a film is better than the repeat viewing, because tonight I just thought it was gross, gross and gross. Disgusting, even. And now that I think about it, our discussion back at Shecky's house, after the movie was over, could've been more of a "silver lining" type of deal: "Yeah, well the movie sucked, but it had a fascinating premise." It's telling that I remembered the discussion more than the movie.

It starts out well enough. Combs, playing "Crawford Tillinghast", is working inside a spectacular Mad Scientist laboratory, as the assistant to the genius Dr. Pretorius (whose Latin surname adds Mad Scientist prestige). But something is wrong. Tillinghast is trying to shut off the computer that runs the lab's Resonator, which resembles a Van de Graaff generator. The Resonator sends powerful electromagnetic waves thru a series of tuning forks to create a frequency that permeates the aether. However, something has gone awry offscreen, and the next we see Crawford Tillinghast, he's running out of the old barn that houses the lab, screaming about murder, the murder of Dr. Pretorius, which he is then arrested for. Tillinghast is committed to an insane asylum run by psychiatrist "Dr. Bloch" (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon). "Dr. Katherine McMichaels" (Barbara Crampton) visits. She wants to experiment on Crawford, to run a brain scan to see if he's lucid. "If he is, there's a chance he's telling the truth." Dr. McMichaels has a rep as a hotshot shrink, trying to make a name for herself. But she gets permission from the asylum administrator (my sister's friend Bruce McGuire) to take Crawford off-grounds, and back to the scene of the murder. A big cop named "Bubba Brownlee" (Ken Foree) is assigned to go along, to protect her in case Crawford goes crazy.

Though nervous, he appears to be sane, and when they get him back to the Resonator lab, he describes what happened to Dr. Pretorius. "It came out of the aether and ate him." Crawford doesn't say what "It" is. Brownlee thinks he's nuts, until Crawford demonstrates the Resonator, at low level, and eels appear and swim around in thin air. "There! Now you've seen it with your own eyes." But then, because the frequency can also be controlled from the Other Side, by the force of human desire, the dead Pretorius turns up the volume and appears as a gruesome Gelatinous Mass.

In 1982, with the advent of John Carpenter's "The Thing", we were introduced to animatronic, gelatin-based creatures dripping with glycerin, with rope-like appendages, and the grosser the better. Many were designed to symbolize sex organs, and in this movie, that theme is emphasized because, in addition to his scientific genius, Dr. Pretorius was an S and M freak. In his Tumescent Incarnation, Pretorius makes Jabba the Hutt look like Paul Newman. And even though he was just doing his job, the actor playing him is just as repulsive. Now that he's controlling the Resonator (which Tillinghast never should've turned on) he takes one look at the hot blonde Dr. McMichaels, and decides he has to have her, the old  "Desire of the Flesh" theme again - a big 1980s motif - as expounded by Clive Barker.

Because this is the 1980s, the movie turns into a Horror Porno for about 15 minutes, coming completely unglued, not to mention slow and boring. What started out with promise in a great Mad Scientist lab, loses all focus as the real, human Pretorius reappears as a sex maniac, but he's an out of shape 65 year old man, and it's just gross and disgusting.  And the blonde actress - a pretty gal - is just kind of pathetic, because she's making a fool of herself, as Ken Foree's character points out. It's an '80s glossy porn sequence, filmed in lurid color.

Once the horror plot gets back on track, thanks to Foree's cop, we're off and running again on the movie's other theme: the activation of the pineal gland, the long-dormant Third Eye of the Sumerians and other ancient cultures. I think this is what begat our post-movie discussion at Shecky's because I was always interested in the concept of the Third Eye as it pertains to psychic ability, but in the movie, Crawford Tillinghast's pineal gland takes on a life of his own, and he turns into a cannibal - not a polite cannibal who cooks you first, but one who just grabs you and starts eating you. And this is where the movie becomes a total gross-out, overdoing it where movies like Texas Chainsaw or Night of the Living Dead knew that less is more.

Less is more: in special effects, in gore, etc. Because, when you drown the viewer in blood, guts, body parts, and grossly deformed gelatinous masses, and you do it with all the lights on......it's not scary.

And that's a huge problem with this movie. Though it does have its moments (not many but a few), there aren't but one or two minor scares in the whole thing. There's no suspense. It's just gross, grosser, grossest. And the bummer is that it could've been really good, in the same vein as Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness".

My verdict is fuggeddabboudit, unless you are a Gordon/Yuzna completist. In my opinion, nowdays even "Re-Animator" doesn't look that good, unless you are 24 and new to this stuff. I mean, I'll still take 1980s special effects over CGI (the most boring production value of all time), but you can't beat good old fashioned movie props made out of wood, fabric, clay, makeup, putty, etc. Things were better when they looked real. That's why 1940s horror holds up, and never looks dated. It's scary but never gross. I'm gonna be generous and give "From Beyond" Two Regular Thumbs Up, a rating we haven't used for ages. Just because it could've been good if they'd followed-up the first ten minutes. The picture is DVD quality.  ////

The previous night, we had "The Man Who Laughs"(1928), a movie I've been waiting to see for a long time. I got into Silent Film about 20 years ago, mainly for the epics of Demille, and the German Expressionists like Robert Wiene, Paul Wegener, Fritz Lang, F.W Murnau. And Paul Leni, who directed "The Man Who Laughs". I developed an appreciation of Silent movies, and watched Westerns and masterpieces like "Pandora's Box", and "Sunrise", but I never saw "Man Who Laughs", because.....well, I was cheap. I didn't wanna spend the 44 dollars for a Kino DVD. 44 bucks is a lot for any movie.

But still....

that image of Conrad Veidt, with his face-splitting smile.....man, you just had to see more. Talk about an iconic make-up job. And Veidt was certainly one of the all-time great actors. When you star in "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and "The Man Who Laughs", and then you cross over to Film Noir in the sound era, well, you've established yourself at the absolute top of the heap.

In "Laughs", Veidt plays "Gwynplaine", the son of Lord Chancharlie, a rival to "King James" (Sam deGrasse) who was killed in the King's "Iron Lady"(aka the Iron Maiden). As a child, he is orphaned and becomes the property of the Comprachicos, gypsies who steal children and perform crude surgeries on their faces to transform them into circus clowns as a source of income. Gwyn, now ten, has already had his surgery done, turning his mouth into a hideous leer, but he escapes the Comprachicos in a snowstorm as they are about to sail from England, from which they've been banished. Now, King James has an evil court jester named "Barkilphedro" (Brandon Hurst) who acts as an Iago, a manipulator.  When James dies, Barkilphedro gets the ear of the Queen.

By this time, Gwyn has been rescued by a traveling playwright named "Ursus", who touts himself "like Shakespeare...but better!" When Gwyn escaped from the Comprachicos, he found a frozen woman in the snow holding a baby. Gwyn is carrying that baby when he's found by Ursus. She is Dea, born blind.

Cut to 15 years later: Gywnplaine, raised to adulthood by Ursus, in now part of his stage show, billed as "The Laughing Man", named for his surgically altered smile. Conrad Veidt had to wear hooks at the corners of his mouth to stretch it into a lurid grin, with oversized prosthetic teeth, and glycerin in his eyes for constant tears. Talk about suffering for your art! He loathes his clown's role for Ursus, but feels he owes it to this man who raised him. He's also enamored with Dea, who plays a Blind Angel in the traveling show. Dea is in love with Gwynplaine. As Ursus rescued him, he did the same for her. She touches his face, feels his everpresent smile, and loves him for his heart. Gywn, in turn, loves Dea, but worries he could lose her if she ever regained her eyesight.

The plot turns when Barkilphedro finds out, through a mysterious scroll, that Gwynplaine is the heir to a Lordship and a vast fortune. He tells the Queen, who wants Gwyn to marry her wayward daughter. Gwyn is now popular with audiences as The Man Who Laughs, but the Queen has him arrested under false pretenses to force him into the arranged marriage. Can Ursus and Dea save him?

Keep an eye out for his loyal dog "Homo." Yes, that's his name. Don't laugh. In fact, you'll need Kleenex for the ending. Two Gigantic Thumbs Up for "The Man Who Laughs", our highest rating. Movies don't get any better than this tragedy that plays like a horror film. Mary Philbin is outstanding as Dea, and the supporting cast rounds out the effort. The picture has been restored and looks good, but man would I love to see it in the theater.  ////

And that's all for today. I hope your weekend is off to a good start. Do you have any Halloween party plans? If you do, have a blast. Go Rams tomorrow versus Cowboys. My blogging music (last night) was Klaus Schulze "Cyborg", my late night was Wagner Meistersinger. I promise that I will get this blog back on schedule. I send you Tons of Love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Elizabeth Ashley, Ben Gazzara and Michael Douglas in "When Michael Calls", and "White Zombie" starring Bela Lugosi and Madge Bellamy (plus A Halloween Story)

Continuing our classic TV Horror Movie run, last night we had "When Michael Calls"(1972), starring Elizabeth Ashley as "Helen Connelly", the divorced mother of a 10-year-old girl. Her ex-husband "Doremus" (Ben Gazzara) is coming to visit. Things are slightly strained over their co-parenting rights, but when he arrives, they get along and even have dinner as a family, just for old times' sake. But then the phone rings, and in any movie with a telephone reference, ones with titles like "When So-and-So Calls" or "The Such-and-Such Caller", or anything regarding phone calls, when it rings, you know there's a psycho on the line. Or a ghost. Everyone knows ghosts can make phone calls. This time it's a little boy who sounds terrified. "Hello, Auntie my Helen? It's me, Michael! I'm so cold, and I'm lost. Won't you come get me?" He's reminiscent of "Bobby" the other night. Helen thinks its a prank, and an unfunny one, because her nephew Michael has been dead for fifteen years. She mentions the call to her ex, Doremus, who suggests it might be "one of those crazy boys up at Greenleaf Asylum. One of them could be playing a trick."

Helen asks her other nephew "Craig" (Michael Douglas) for help. He's the head shrink at Greenleaf, and was also Michael's brother. "No, it couldn't be the boys. They have no access to a telephone." The next night, Michael calls again, frightened and alone. "Come get me, Auntie my Helen. Please, come and find me!" He's using a nickname that only Michael would know: "Auntie my Helen." The script is from a book by John Farris ("The Fury"), who was a big horror novelist of the era, just before Stephen King came along.

Though they were married, Doremus doesn't know as much as he'd like about Helen's family history, which she kept quiet. They divorced because she didn't like living in New York as the wife of a high powered lawyer. We only learn about her relatives from her little daughter Peggy, who tells her father: "Mommy says they were all insane. All except for herself." Doremus digs deeper, asking family friend "Doc Britton" (Larry Reynolds), who runs a cow and bee farm nearby. Doc fills him in. "About 16 years ago, Helen's sister went nuts. The family was worried she was gonna kill herself and take Michael with her, and maybe brother Craig as well, though he was older and could resist. Then their parents died, in an accident I heard, so Helen became her sister's guardian and had her committed to an institution upstate. Michael ran away and died in a blizzard soon after. Craig, the older brother, became a psychiatrist to try and understand the insanity in his family." Doremus then goes to see Craig, who explains that Michael hated his crazy mother. "But obviously he can't be the boy making those phone calls. He's been dead for a very long time." But then an actual little blonde boy, closely resembling Michael, appears in the snow, right after another Michael Call.

There's an awesome Halloween party at the Greenleaf Asylum, smack dab in the middle of this 87 minute flick, that makes it a Ten. It's nostalgic in the way of the post trick-or-treat party at Lucy's house in "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" and has the same color scheme, as well. But at this party, the local sheriff turns up dead, after investigating the death of Doc Britton, who was swarmed by his bees. Doc's weirdo longhair ranch hand is briefly considered a suspect.

Then Michael calls again, and Doremus personally drives out to the woods to find him. And that's all I can tell ya without revealing spoilers that would ruin the suspense. There's a lot of domestic, "divorced parents" stuff interspersed. Whatever happened to Elizabeth Ashley, anyhow? Remember her, with the big, wide-set eyes and soft southern accent? Her voice deepened and got husky as she aged, maybe due to cigarettes. But she was beautiful and was a cover girl in the early 1970s. Regarding the Telephone Movie motif, however, in 1980 a filmmaker finally made a picture with some good advice, called "Don't Answer the Phone!" I mean, it should've been obvious from the get-go. How come it took 'em so long to figure it out? You had all these Phone Call movies, with psychos or ghosts harassing people, and then finally, a director was telling you straight-up: "Don't Answer the Freaking Phone!" Why didn't anyone think of that before? Just don't pick up! Don't respond to dead kids like Bobby or Michael. They're only gonna mess with your head.

Two Huge Thumbs Up for this very scary movie. The picture is very good.  ////

The previous night we had "White Zombie"(1932), United Artists entry in the Universal Horror sweepstakes (it was largely shot on Universal's humongous sound stages), and it's nearly as classic as all the great monster films from that studio. It could stand a more energetic pace, perhaps, but then it IS about zombies, and the castle sets are as great as any in 1930s horror. As it opens, young "Neil Parker" (John Harron), an American now living in Haiti, welcomes his fiance "Madeline Short" (Madge Bellamy) to the island. She's just shipped over to join him, ahead of their pending marriage. On the voyage, she met a wealthy and handsome plantation owner, "Charles Beaumont" (Robert Frazer), who insisted she and Neil visit him at his mansion before they get married. Beaumont was charming, so they do it. On their way to his palatial house, they pass a  funeral in the middle of the road. "Why are they burying the man there?" Neil asks his driver. "Because, sir, people steal dead bodies. But in the road, witnesses pass by all day." At the Beaumont mansion, Neil can see that Charles covets Helen, whom he met on the ocean passage. Later that night, Charles goes to see a creepy mill owner named "Murder Legendre" (Bela Lugosi), whose workforce is made up of zombies. "Murder" (yes, that's his name) is a voodoo master. Beaumont asks his help in stealing Helen away from Neil: "I have to have her, I'll do anything." Legendre carves a wax doll effigy of Helen and melts it over the fire. Helen collapses at the marriage altar, right before saying "I do". She appears to have died and is carried off by a henchman of Legendre. Neil is distraught. He gets drunk that night and sees Helen calling out to him in a dream. She's zombified on a curare drug, but not yet Voodoo Undead. In Neil's dream, she's calling to be saved, but now Charles Beaumont has her. He watches her play Chopin in his living room. But she can't love him because her soul has been removed by Legendre. "Can't you put it back? he begs. Legendre shows him the zombie workers in his grain mill. "It's a business proposition, you see. They don't complain about long hours. You could do the same with Helen. She could be a concert performer". But Beaumont just wants love, the one thing Helen can't give him.

Meanwhile, Neil wants his fiancee back, and enlists the help of an Englishman named "Dr. Bruner" (Joseph Cawthorn) to find out what's going on. Murder Legendre has now had enough of Charles Beaumont's mewling, and turns him into a zombie, probably to join the mill train. Now, he can keep Helen for himself. But Neil and Doc Bruner are on his trail by now. Watch out for the pool of piranhas!

There are some matte-painted cliff views of the mansion that show "White Zombie"'s budget limitations. But in my view, they make the movie that much more impressionistic. The main thing that differentiates it from the top Universal Horror films is it's lack of script depth and the slow pacing. However, it's supposed to be gradational, revealed almost like a fable or a storybook.  

The picture has been resorted. Watch it if nothing else for the look. Charles Beaumont's living room is magnificent! Overall, I think it will eventually be regarded as very close to Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Wofman, The Invisible Man, and Creature from the Black Lagoon. Just one-half tier lower.  It was UA trying for their very own Big Horror Movie, and I think they knocked it out of the park. Two Huge Thumbs Up for "White Zombie". The picture is very good.  ////  

Let me tell you a quick Halloween story. When was the last time you trick-or-treated? Are you like me, and think there should be no age limit to Trick-or-Treat? I think the last time I went full-on T-or-T was when I was 14, but my question is: have you ever trick-or-treated and found yourself scared? Found yourself in a frightening situation? I mean, that's not supposed to happen, right? Trick or treating is supposed to be fun; it's one of the Ultimate Funs of life. What's more fun than Halloween night, correct? So how could it ever be scary? Well, when I was eight or nine, I went out trick-or-treating with a kid named Mike W., my neighbor who was a year older than me. When we moved to Northridge in January 1968, Mike was my only friend because the neighborhood wasn't full of kids like my Reseda neighborhood had been. Mike W. was the only one. So for two Halloweens, I went trick-or-treating with him, and we made our way through the 'hood. This was in the days when you took a pillowcase and tried to fill it up with candy, an impossible goal, but the intent was real. You stayed out until ten o' clock. Neither your parents nor the folks handing out candy were wimps in those days. Mike would've been about 10 years old, me 9. I'm guessing the year was 1969, and we'd been out since 6 pm. We were now walking slowly down Sunburst Street, behind Cupid's Hot Dogs, trying for the last few houses. We really had stuffed our pillowcases.

One house on this very dark street still had its porch light on. Was there a pumpkin outside? Probably not. It wasn't that kind of fun Halloween house. But it must've had something that attracted us besides the porch light. Was the front door ajar? And was there spooky music playing? Maybe so. Mike W. led the way. Up the walk we went. I wish I could remember my costume but I can't. It probably included one of those "you can't breathe" condensation masks with the rubber band. Mike rang the bell, and an old lady came to the door. To a kid, old was old. An 80 year old in those days was like 200 to a kid. And this lady was, I'd guess, between 75 and 85, but still 100% lucid and ambulatory, as old ladies go.

In response to Mike's bell, she walked to the door (was it screened?) and said, I kid you not, "Come on in, boys. My husband's dead." She opened the screen and beckoned. Mike was in front of me. We could both see clearly into the living room, where a coffin lay on the dinner table. Was it just a pine board Halloween job, a set piece, or was it a real coffin? I don't know. But it sure looked real to me. They had the lights down low, so the focus was on the coffin, and they had spooky Halloween music playing in the background. And her husband was dead. He was laying in the coffin!

All of this, from doorbell to dead husband, took less than 45 seconds. I was following Mike's lead. He hesitated at the door. The old lady said, "come on in and see him." You had to, if you wanted candy.

Her dead husband just lay there in his coffin as the old lady stood at the door with the screen open, waiting for us to come inside. She was smiling as the spooky Halloween music played. Mike was in front of me. I was holding my pillowcase that was 1/3 full of candy but was supposed to be full. I wanted that extra piece, but I was getting nervous. I didn't know much about dead people. Maybe they were kidding but it wasn't even funny. Old people were scary enough without being in coffins and inviting you into their house, and holding the candy hostage. "It's okay boys...come on in." Her husband just lay there, pasty-faced and dead.

Mike W., who'd been as frozen in his tracks as I was, suddenly came to life, scared out of his wits. I have never forgotten his response to her invitation: "No chance, Grandma!"

And we turned and ran. We ran from that old lady's porch on Sunburst Street, me gripping my pillowcase 1/3 full of candy, which I would later eat most of that Halloween night.

Think of it: one older couple, who never lost the Halloween spirit, dressed up to really scare, in good fun, the heck out of the trick-or-treaters who came to their door. And they even stayed open until 10 pm. Now THAT''s some serious Halloweeners. People in their mid-70s, at least, absolutely dedicated to horror.

And they terrified a couple of kids, who thought they had Halloween in the bag. //// 

And that's all for now. We're half a day late again, but soon back to normal. My blogging music was Klaus Schulze "Cyborg", my late night was Wagner Lohengrin. I hope your week is going well, and I send you Tons of Love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)      

George C. Scott and Brad Dourif in "Legion" (aka "Exorcist 3"), and "The Dead Don't Die" starring George Hamilton and Ray Milland

Last night's movie was "Exorcist 3: The Director's Cut"(1990), also known as "Legion". I hadn't heard of this version but when it came up in a YouTube recommendation I decided to give it a shot. I saw "Exorcist 3" in the theater when it was released, and at the time I thought it was very good, especially compared to the debacle of "Exorcist 2" thirteen years earlier. I think the main complaint I had was that there was no exorcism, and only minimal connections to the first movie. I was also surprised that it was more or less a crime story set within a supernatural context, rather than a full-on horror film like The Exorcist was. Still, I left the theater thinking it was very good, and I remember saying to my friend Pat, who went with me, that I was very startled by the jump-scare "hospital shears" scenes toward the end.

Those oversized silver shears later figured in a 1989 memory, one I told my Mom about, and which she used to remind me of from time to time. So the movie made an impression, even if it wasn't what I expected.

On watching it a second time, however, 33 years later (and I can't freaking believe that 1990 was a third of a century ago!), I've lowered my regard just a tad. For one thing, William Peter Blatty should've hired a director. There's waaaayyy too much of the snarky Blatty Banter in the first 30 minutes between George C. Scott, who replaced Lee J Cobb as "Lt. Kinderman" (Cobb was better), and Ed Flanders, who plays "Father Dyer" (who in the first movie was played by a real priest). Their jocularity gets tiresome in this day and age and probably did in 1990 also, but I didn't notice it then or wrote it off. After some initial set-ups to establish that a gruesome serial killer is at work, the first 30 minutes are Scott and Ed Flanders gabbing and joking and going to see "It's a Wonderful Life" together, all based on the movie-fan friendship of Kinderman and Father Karras in the original film.

But that one was directed by the great William Friedkin, using Blatty's script. Thus, Friedkin could trim Blatty's witticisms, which are fine in small doses and add flavor but drag when they run on. Blatty may have seen himself, partly, as a stand-up Catholic comedian, making endless Wry Jaded Priest Jokes. But half an hours worth is beyond way too much. Then we finally settle into the murder mystery. Gruesome, random killings are happening in Georegetown. Beheadings, the draining of blood. all simulating the work of the Gemini Killer, but it can't be him because he was executed 15 years ago.

When Father Dyer goes to the hospital for tests related to a nagging cough, Kinderman visits, to ask him questions about a priest who's been murdered during confession. "Everything about these killings says the Gemini, Father. But how is that possible?" Kinderman interviews the head of the hospital's mental ward, "Dr. Temple" (Scott Wilson) to ask about recently released patients. But then Father Dyer is killed in his room, drained of blood. The killer must be inside the hospital and the rest of the movie is set there. There's a "dangerous patients" crazy ward in the basement, and one cuckoo bird in particular interests Kinderman; a catatonic played by the nutjob's nutjob: Brad Dourif. Is it any wonder he never had a bigger career? You were too convincing, buddy! But an interesting thing about the scenes between Scott and Dourif, in his cell, is that they predate and predict both "Silence of the Lambs" and "Seven", two serial killer movies where the murderer is influenced telepathically.

In retrospect, however, the Dourif scenes need editing. They go on way too long. He does a great job, but Blatty (not a real director) doesn't know how to tighten him up. Thus, you can feel the strain, even though Dourif is pulling out all the stops. Also, Scott is good, but.......he's George C Scott; maybe not the best choice for a Satanic movie (though it must be said he was classic in "The Changeling", a truly scary film).

Overall, the main problem is the lack of directorial rigor. In one ill-advised "dream sequence" (filmed in gaudy 1980s production values), you have what looks like a Broadway show set in a mental hospital, with NBA star Patrick Ewing as an angel. It may have seemed like fun at the time, in the freewheeling 80s (as they turned into the 1990s), but this scene distracts from any horror thus far built up, because you're going "There's Patrick Ewing. Why?" Also, there are casting problems. An actress named Nancy Fish plays the head nurse on duty in the hospital, and she doesn't project any continuity in her character, jumping from one level of defiance to another, with a stiff delivery. It's like she's a reanimated corpse in a bad mood. Terrible acting, not just bad but awful. I think I noticed how annoying it was the first time, but you let these things go because it's The Exorcist franchise and you want it to be a great movie, but the actors took over from Blatty. All told, it's still a pretty good flick. On IMDB, there's a quote from Blatty (among many), in which he says it's scarier than The Exorcist. As if! And that's the main thing, there aren't many scares, because it doesn't play like a scary movie. There's horror, at the murders, and in Brad Dourif's overdrawn performance, which could've been an All Timer with Friedkin directing, but basically you've got a George C Scott police procedural with a psycho. Scarier than The Exorcist? What the heck was Blatty smoking? Let's give "Legion" (or "Exorcist 3" if you prefer) Two Big Thumbs Up with a recommendation to definitely see it if you are interested in the Exorcist franchise. The restoration is of course razor sharp except for scenes recovered from Blatty's version that were only available on old videotape copies, and are thus soft focus. Give it a look if you will.  ////

The previous night we found yet another TV Movie classic: "The Dead Don't Die"(1975). I'd have been in 10th or 11th grade for this one, depending on the month it aired. George Hamilton stars as "Don Drake", a sailor on leave in 1930s Chicago, who is visiting his brother on the eve of his execution. "Ralph Drake" (Jerry Douglas) is about to sit in Old Sparky for the murder of his wife; a crime he swears he didn't commit. The execution scene is carried out with all due gruesomeness, and then Don sets out to find the real killer, to fulfill Ralph's final wish. His first stop is the dance hall where the murder occurred. Don talks to the proprietor "Jim Moss" (Ray Milland), as a dance marathon contest plays out in the background. Exhausted dancers, barely standing after 21 days on the floor, resemble the zombies Don will soon be at war with.

Jim Moss says "Yes, I was here that night (during a prior contest). Your brother quarreled with his wife. Many witnesses saw it. I don't know what help I can be, especially now that he's been......well, I'm sorry."

The implication is that Ralph was guilty after all. Don is dejected but understanding. "Thanks for your help, Mr. Moss." A woman in black tails him down the street to a bar, and begs him to leave town. "My name is Vera LaValle. I was sent to talk to you by a man named Varrick. You don't know him but he's aware of you. Please, your brother was guilty. Just leave and save yourself some trouble." But her worried look only provokes Don all the more. And when he leaves, he sees.....what?.....Holy Smokes!

He sees his brother on the schtreet! How in the hell can that be? Ralph just got barbecued in The Electric Chair a day ago. Don runs back into the bar to confront Vera LaValle (Linda Cristal). "I just saw my brother! How do you explain that?!" She of course says, "You couldn't have seen him. He's dead." Don then runs out again and follows Ralph down the street to a hotel run by "Levenia" (Joan Blondell), a floozy who is fronting for a ghoul named "Perdido" (Reggie Nalder). "Sorry, but there's no Ralph Drake signed in." By now, the gloves are off. There can be no more pretending, because Don isn't buying any of it. "I know my brother ran in here." Perdido then goes Full Zombie and we're off on an undead manhunt that features exhumations and more sleep-deprived dance contests. A strange black man with a West Indies accent is tailing Don also, making inquiries. Vera Lavalle then shows him her neck scar and confesses that it's all about voodoo. "I'm beholden to Mr. Varrick. I'm dead. That's why I can't love you."

Don suspected as much all along. Now, he's gonna prove Ralph was wrongly convicted. Jim Moss drives him to the cemetery to dig up his brother's grave, but Ralph isn't in his casket! Meanwhile, the dance contest drags on into it's 22nd day. "Keep going!" Moss urges. "Think of the prize money!" He ends up on a meat hook when the zombies rebel.

If this had been a good print, the movie would rate Two Huge. Several IMDB fans call it an all time zombie-job, and it does have its moments. The zombies are top notch (Perdido will give you nightmares), but the all-timer on that score is "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things". Still, "The Dead Don't Die" is damn good. Whatever happened to George Hamilton, anyway? Boy, could we use him today. There aren't any Real Guys left. Not Real Men (and there aren't any of those either), just handsome guys with mustaches who aren't glorified boys. I mean, we all love Leonardo, but he will always be a boy, and did you know that he's been acting with De Niro since "This Boy's Life" in 1993? Both of 'em were great in that.

Aw, heck. Let's give it Two Huge anyway. Directed by Curtis Harrington of "Ruby" fame. James McEachin went on to star as "Tenafly", perhaps the first black detective on TV, and not jive, either. And, Ralph Meeker plays the police chief in this flick. How much more great can it get? George Hamilton, Linda Cristal from "High Chaparral", the great Ralph Meeker, Ray Milland, Joan Blondell, and James McEachin. You can't beat that cast. Unfortunately, the picture is very soft, but it's still watchable and you don't want to miss it. They need to quit fooling around and make great TV movies again. Not on cable, not streaming, but broadcast TV. ABC, NBC, and CBS need to reclaim their thrones. /////

And that's all I know for the moment. We are once again a half-day late. All this writing is backing me up, sorry about that. We will keep the blog on track, though. Just gotta keep typin'. My blogging music is Klaus Schulze "Moondawn", my late night (last night) was Wagner's Tristan. I hope your week is off to a good start and I send you Tons of Love as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in "Black Friday", and "Dead of Night", a TV Movie directed by Dan Curtis (plus "Killers of the Flower Moon")

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  :):) 

Dean Stockwell, Stephanie Powers and James Stacy in "Paper Man", and "The Maze" starring Richard Carlson (plus "Holly" by Stephen King)

In last night's "Paper Man"(1971), four college students use their university's "Big Brain" computer to create a fake identity after one of them mistakenly receives a credit card in the mail. The students themselves are cynical about credit: "Everyone must have it," Jerry, their leader, jokes. "And everyone must abuse it. It's the American way." Thus, they see nothing wrong in creating their Paper Man, after young "Joel" (Elliott Street), a freshman computer programmer, finds the mis-mailed credit card in his letterbox. They joke about it. "The Corporate Computer made a mistake, imagine that! So much for reducing us all to numbers." Leader "Jerry" (James Stacy), a med student, pushes the paper man idea because he's broke and needs the purchasing power. "C'mon, who are we hurting? Everyone does it and we can pay it back when we're all rich." "Lisa" (Tina Chen), the Big Brain language programmer, is game. Joel is too; he's only 17 but already writes code well enough to program Big Brain to calculate chess games four moves ahead. The script mentions Gaming Theory years before anyone had heard of it. Finally, there's "Karen" (Stephanie Powers). She's Jerry's girl, or so he thinks. She's studying graduate level psychology and knows nothing about computers.

The four agree then, on creating the paper man, who they call Henry Norman for the name on the credit card. 

The only problem is, they'll have to create a bank account for "Henry" and a bunch of other stuff, like a place of work, a DOB, and basically a life history in case anyone checks. They've gotta create a fake Real Person, one who exists entirely on paper (i.e in the computer system). And since none of them knows how to do that, Jerry - a handsome jock-on-campus who is nonetheless damaged by his Vietnam combat experience - recruits nerdy computer genius "Avery" (Dean Stockwell, sporting an Art Garfunkel hairdo). Jerry "pals up" to Avery, in the way a BMOC might prank the campus dork by pretending to be his friend. Avery knows he's being played, but because it's a chance to show his skills, he agrees to use Big Brain to create the necessary files to establish Henry Norman as a "real" person. Half an hour at the keyboard is all Avery needs: "There, I did it. Henry Norman exists." 

The gang are thrilled and start charging credit to their hearts' content, buying sweaters and watches and expensive chess sets. Jerry, despite his image, is poor. He lives with Joel in a crummy campus dorm, so to him, the credit card is a great boon. But then one day, Joel, who is hypoglycemic, has a sugar crash and needs to go to the hospital, where he unexpectedly dies. Jerry is floored and very upset. He's emotionally fragile because of 'Nam. And now, the bank's computer is asking for independent verification of Henry's identity.

There's a cyborg character involved, a lifelike medical robot named "Proto", that acts as a test patient for med students. "Proto" can affect any known illness, show symptoms, even be operated upon. And he's creepily lifelike. Lisa is trying to load words into Big Brain's memory. Right now she's working on "breathe", but Big B keeps replying "death". Lisa then gets crushed in an elevator. Is Big Brain getting revenge on the hackers? This stuff is fascinating, because it predicts AI, and of course HAL was doing that in "2001" in 1968, and I'm sure you could find references to AI in a 1930s book or movie, and even in the 19th century work of HG Wells. But here, it's like you're watching a direct preview of today. The only difference is the size of the equipment; the computer takes up the entire room. But everything else is the same. Avery even uses the phrase "logging on". PCs only became available for home use around 1982, and even then, only a handful of folks had them. It wasn't until 1994 that home computers began to be widely owned, and then it wasn't until 97/98 that the World Wide Web became well known, and dot com, and then the whole thing finally took off. But this movie was 27 years before that.

At one point, after Jerry is killed in a most gruesome way, Karen does some research on Avery and finds out he was in a mental institution as a teen. I must cut in to observe that we've had a lot of mental institutions and technological themes of late. The local sheriff is investigating Lisa's suspicious death, and is told by Big Brain's head technician that BB runs "everything mechanical on campus" including the lights, electricity, even the elevator. The explanation suggests that BB could have malfunctioned and caused the elevator to crush Lisa. But the sheriff doesn't buy it: "I may be dumb, but I thought the whole idea behind computers is that they never make a mistake?"

The technician is compassionate toward Avery, who everyone thinks is using Big Brain to kill the students who forced him into the credit card scheme. But, as the technician explains, "They don't know that a computer is not a living thing. It only does what a human being tells it to do." And I have to cut in to say that I wish folks wouldn't worry about AI. I mean, I hate all the hype also, but the bottom line is that it ain't real! AI only does what Neil deGrasse Tyson tells it to do. So you don't have to worry, or believe all the hubub about AI taking over. It's only the Tyson of Oz behind a curtain.

Two Huge Thumbs Up for this horror/scifi thriller, with a many-layered script involving psychology, technology, PTSD, and robots. There are even supernatural effects that may or may not be rationally explained, and there's even a psycho-killer mental hospital sequence. There's a ton of stuff going on, and it must be said that Dean Stockwell is a tremendous actor, to go from "The Boy with Green Hair", to this movie in 1971, to becoming The Suavest Man Alive in "Blue Velvet". Then there's the story of James Stacy, which is tragic. He was born Maurice Elias, half-Lebanese but with All-American Kurt Russell looks. IMDB says his idol was James Dean, and like Dean, he too had a terrible accident, in his case on his motorcycle, which he rides in this film. It was in the news for a long time, because he lost an arm and a leg. His subsequent recovery and eventual return to acting was made into a TV Movie, but the rest of his life was an ongoing struggle, with residual pain, and setbacks, and addiction to prescription pills. He also had legal issues in the '90s, related to sexual abuse, and a suicide attempt in Hawaii. You can see his tempestuous personality in his role in this movie, when he was still physically all in one piece. The picture is soft but watchable.  //// 

The previous night's motion picture was "The Maze"(1953), which I had a feeling we'd seen, and we had, way back in June 2020, three months into Covid. 2020 feels like an isolated year, it's really weird. It's impossible to believe that Covid was almost 4 years ago, and for us, with our movies, it resulted in the YouTube era which we have yet to break free of. But "The Maze" was worth a second view. It's far out as sci-fi goes, and the print was in Blu Ray condition. Instead of writing a new review, I'll just give you a link to the first one. Here it is: https://adlanders.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-maze-starring-richard-carlson-and.html

You may have to copy-and-paste it. The only thing I'd change is my opinion of the ending, which I initially thought was cheesy. Now, I think it's profoundly moving (and shocking), as director William Cameron Menzies intends it to be. Richard Carlson explains it, in exposition, otherwise we'd never understand it. After all, who's ever heard of Tetralogy? Two Huge Thumbs Up for this movie, but do read my initial review. First impressions are the most accurate, excepting in this case my opinion of said ending.  ////

And now, we need more reading material, because of the shortened second review. So, to finish out this blog and give your expected money's worth (and this being October, which means horror) I just so happen to have finished Stephen King's "Holly" two days ago. That's his latest book. If you don't know Holly Gibney, she's Steve's main (only?) recurring character, the only one for certain who has warranted her own set of books. Holly is a woman, now middle-aged but youthful, who became a private detective by an accident of fate. She may be mildly autistic. SK hasn't specified that, but all her characteristics say "yes". And, she somehow, also by fate, gets involved in the most gruesome of cases. This time, in "Holly", she's investigating the disappearance of a female college student. And what ensues, folks, may be the most horrific story King has ever written. I realize that's a subjective opinion, because how does one qualify "most horrific" with a writer like Stephen King, right?

It may have hit me that way, as his most horrific book, because his Protagonists of Evil are two college professors, who kidnap and imprison unsuspecting victims. If that sounds familiar, it's because you know that the same thing happened to me: I was kidnapped by a college professor in September 1989. Steve even says, "everyone knows they're crazy" meaning some college professors, because it goes with the territory of Thinking You Know It All, which is one of King's themes in this book.

But as much as I was tortured, and as much as my kidnapper deserves to be run through a wood chipper, then glued back together and run through it again, and then sent to a place worse than hell for over a million years, well...... these people are even worse, the college professors in this book, and that's because Stephen King thought them up. Steve knows evil, it's his business. He's not just a writer but an informer, he tattles on evil and we need him. So that's my filler for this blog. And none of this minimizes the evil of the man who kidnapped me, which will be detailed in my own current book. Anyone got a wood chipper handy?

 My blogging music was Klaus Schulze's "The Dresden Performance". My late night is Wagner Rienzi. I hope your week is going well and I send you Tons of Love, as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Heather Angel and John Howard in "The Undying Monster", and "Among the Living" starring Albert Dekker and Susan Hayward

Last night we found a good old fashioned werewolf story called "The Undying Monster"(1942), directed by John Brahm, who also helmed twelve Twilight Zone episodes as well as horror classics like "Hangover Square" and "The Lodger". Brahm gives us atmosphere aplenty in this film, opening with a thunderstorm over the English coastline. There's a mansion on the cliff; inside is a family with an ancient secret. Lady of the house "Helga Hammond" (Heather Angel) wishes her brother "Oliver" (John Howard) would return from walking his dog. "He never should've gone out on a night like this." Her butler "Walton" (Halliwell Hobbes) sympathizes, but tells her not to worry. "I'm sure he'll be all right, madame." After hearing the howl of what sounds like a wild beast, she wants to go out and look for him herself, with the aid of her own loyal pooch, a giant Great Dane named Alex. But Walton persuades her to stay put.

Frightened, Helga goes up to bed and a fitful sleep. Later, her brother does come in. "Don't wake her," he tells Walton. "There's been a ghastly situation, a tragedy." While out with his dog, he saw a woman being attacked. "I ran to help her, but the man - or whatever it was - was twice my strength. Five times. He threw me and I hit my head. I don't even know how I've gotten back here." Walton bandages Oliver's bleeding scalp, then Helga wakes up. Overhearing the story, she says, "We need to go help that poor woman!" When they get down to the beach, they find Oliver's dog dead. The woman is unconscious and barely clinging to life.

The next day, with the injured woman in a spare bedroom (in a coma), Helga calls Scotland Yard. "You've got to come out! There's been a monster at Hammond House!" Indeed it appears so. According to Inspector "Robert Curtis" (James Ellison), a forensics expert, it had to be a large animal. "Sir, your dog was ripped apart. Only an an ape could've done this. Are there any zoos in the area?" There are, but there've been no gorilla escapes. The middle of the movie turns into an investigative gem, with Curtis and his chemist partner "Christy" (Heather Thatcher) using early CSI techniques including spectrometry to separate the colors in a wolf's hair, which appear on the screen as a bar code.

There's a secret room in the house, which Curtis asks to see. A Hammond ancestor was locked away in there with mania of some sort or another. "All Helga and I were ever told is that there was a long-standing family curse. But we don't believe in superstitions." Down in the basement is the family cemetery. "The story is they all died from fever".

Up the old dirt road, very muddy on a night like this, lives a family of impoverished poachers. They're always setting traps on the Hammonds' property, which Oliver has tried to stop. He wonders if the poachers could be behind the beach attack? "Maybe we caught them setting their traps and they decided to kill us." "Yes sir, but your dog's bones were torn out of its body." "Yes, well you've got me there." Future American Noir great Charles McGraw plays the poacher who is questioned, and because his family are the #1 suspects, the movie briefly turns into a courtroom drama. But even the prosecutor has to drop the charges when confronted with the evidence of the ripped-up dog. Director Brahm keeps the Gothic atmosphere high. After the mauled woman dies, suspicion falls on the Hammond's doctor, who's been working on a cobra venom remedy. The Yard investigators think he may be using it in animal experiments, which would account for the strength of the killer. Inspector Christy performs a quick chemical analysis of the cobra venom, and it turns out that doc is not the murderer but the protector of the family secret. Another howling is heard and a chase on the cliffs ensues. Two Huge Thumbs Up for "The Undying Monster", but try to find the Blu Ray because the picture is somewhat blurry. ////

Then we have a maniac on the loose in last night's "Among the Living"(1941), a tale of twin brothers, one crazy, that has elements of Frankenstein and Beauty and the Beast. Man, does this one ever need a restoration; it's an oddball classic. As it opens, Harry Carey (our old Western pal) is attending the funeral of his business partner. Together, they founded a legendary mental hospital that has greatly benefited the community. "We staved off two epidemics," Carey notes. But something weird is going on. His servant "Pompey" (Ernest Whitman) is nervously waiting outside the cemetery gates. Carey approaches, trying to avoid notice by the mourners. "What's the problem, Pompey?" he whispers, looking past the man, down toward a house across the field. "Well, sir, it's Mr. Paul. He's gettin' hungry, and I'm all out of money for the chickens." Carey, a wealthy doctor, digs in his pocket and hands Pompey a wad of cash, muttering "Go feed Paul and put him back in his room." At this, even we horror vets are shocked: the staging of the funeral scene, followed by a nuthouse secret. What kind of insanity are we in for?

Pompey walks back to the decaying mansion in the distance, named Raden House for the site of the asylum. The first thing we see is a man in a straitjacket: "Paul Raden" (Albert Dekker), a big man and a lunatic who's just killed his father, Carey's partner, the man who's just been  buried. Not only has Carey covered up that murder, signing a death certificate for heart attack, but he also faked Paul's death 25 years ago. No one knows that Paul is still alive, and has been for all this time, locked away in a straitjacket in a hidden room in Raden House, put there by Carey to protect him. Paul's father (Carey's partner) was a cruel man, who pitted his twin sons against their mother, whom he beat and finally killed. Carey always knew this but covered it up because their asylum was doing such good work. But now, Crazy Paul has killed his dad. Pompey is scared. "Don't worry, Pompey. They've never questioned us before."

Harry heads back to the funeral to pay his final respects, but back at Raden House, poor Pompey is trying to get Paul back in his straitjacket so he can safely feed him his dinner. Paul is like a wild beast. He can be pacified by the right words, but a wrong sound or gesture can trigger his mania. Pompey says something, which reminds Paul of Dad. Paul goes crazy, kills Pompey, and escapes into the city, where he feels "normal" again, among anonymous people, and because he's handsome and wearing a suit, no one suspects he's a kook.

He's led to rent a room by a landlady needing money, and her spark-plug daughter "Molly" (Susan Hayward) takes a shine to him. Paul has the wad of money Harry Carey gave Pompey. He buys Molly a 30 dollar dress (expensive in 1941), so she shows him a night on the town. Pretty soon, she thinks he just might be boyfriend material; better than that no-account "Bill Oakley" (Gordon Jones) downstairs who's always asking her out. Molly and her mom like Paul because he's a gentleman. but what she doesn't know is that he's just killed a dance hall girl in another one of his spells. The police have put out a warning over the radio, offering a 5000 dollar reward.

Once she finds out it's Paul, Molly turns against him in a heartbeat. Hayward's performance here, at 24 (but looking 18) shows what a top actress she'd become. Now. she's inciting a lench mob, led by Bill Oakley, because she wants the five grand reward. Paul goes on the run, reverting to his mad state. He tries to make his way out of the city and back to the "safety" of Raden House, where he knows he'll be protected. Macabre is the key word here. Albert Dekker is tremendous in a dual role, also playing Paul's sane twin brother John. And the Frankenstein Torch Mob now believes that John Raden is the killer. He has to be, because "they all know" Paul is dead (and don't we all?). Remember that Harry Carey faked Paul's death years earlier, to prevent him from being put in the asylum! Therefore, the mob believes that the killer has got to be John. The tragic Frances Farmer, herself the victim of madness (not her own but her persecutors'), has a key role toward the end. What a cast! But the showstoppers are Dekker and the young Susan Hayward. "Among the Living" gets Two Huge Thumbs Up. It's really weird, and has there ever been a scarier word than "maniac"? The picture is soft, even blurry at times, but don't let that stop you from watching this classic.  ////

And that's all for today. The blog is late, sorry about that. I'm trying to keep up with other writing and attempted publishing (learning PDF, etc.) My blogging music was Klaus Schulze "Timewind", my late night (last night) was Wagner Das Rheingold. I hope your week is off to a good start and I send you Tons of Love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)