Happy Halloween, Part III

On this, the third Halloween since I started this blog, I'm reviewing not one, not two, but THREE totally '80s, cheesy, "atomic" horror, B-movie spoofs. There's also pictures of my son wearing his Lil' Frankie costume for the third year in a row and the Jack O'Lanterns that I freehanded (so don't judge my witch too harshly).

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (one and a half stars total) was my personal favorite of the bunch, despite the fact that I gave it the lowest rating. I don't think I've ever pointed out here that my "scientific method" for reviewing movies may subjectively rate craftsmanship, but it has no bearing on transcendental qualities, or unquantifiable sentimentalities. Just because I consider my favorite movie of all time to be a five star movie doesn't mean that any of my other favorites deserve the same rating. Killer Klowns (1988) doesn't sound like it would be a scary movie, it isn't really meant to be a scary movie, and yet, if watched with a certain state of mind, it becomes scary for fleeting moments. Its creators, the Chiodo brothers, also did the special effects on Elf (2003) and Team America: World Police (2004). It stars John Vernon, the bad guy from such silly classics as Animal House (1978), Herbie Goes Bananas (1980) and Ernest Goes to Camp (1987). The theme song was written and performed by The Dickies, the first California punk band to be signed to a major record label. I'd go on but there's nothing I can say that's going to change anyone's mind about this movie.

The longer I watched Night of the Comet (two stars total), the less I liked it. You know a movie's bad when it has to use a cover version of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" instead of the original. It stars Catherine Mary Stewart, who was also the leading lady on The Last Starfighter (1984) and Weekend at Bernie's (1989). She plays an independently minded 18-year-old that works at L.A.'s historic El Rey theater, loves arcade games, and knows more useless trivia about Superman than her boyfriend, who becomes breakfast for a zombie the morning after a comet that killed the dinosaurs passes by Earth again. For me, the real star of the show was Kelli Maroney, the leading lady from Chopping Mall (1986), as the bubblegum-popping, younger sister. I defy you to name another movie where violence is so casually domesticized as in this one's line that goes "the MAC-10 submachine gun was practically designed for housewives." Ah, the Reagan years. I honestly do miss some '80s styles, not the shoulder pads, but definitely the big hair. Despite the fashion revival that's happening right now, Halloween is my only chance to see the best outfits from yesteryear, the oversize button-down shirts with the sleeves rolled up under colorful vests. Wait a minute, maybe I'm thinking of the early '90s.

Tremors (three and a half stars total) The early '90s kinda blend with the late '80s in my mind, hence the reason that Tremors (1990) can be considered totally '80s. I mean, it's got Kevin Bacon, isn't that good enough? He did Flatliners the same year as this movie, but over the last decade he's done almost all thrillers. I was living out of country when Wild Things (1998) and Stir of Echoes (1999) came out and I still haven't seen them, but I thought Bacon definitely brought his dark Everyman thing to Mystic River (2003) and The Woodsman (2004). Anyway, you gotta love him for doing Tremors, because he didn't have to and it appears as though he had fun. Granted, it's beautiful country, he gets to do an accent, cuss up a storm, be the hero and get the girl. The only other familiar faces are the dad from Family Ties (1982-1989), the grandpa from the 3 Ninjas (1991-1997) series, and Reba McEntire as a survivalist gun nut. You gotta love survivalists, (at least you do in this movie, along with the harmonica, because they play a lot of it). The moral to the story happens to be the same as the Boy Scout motto, "be prepared." It got me wondering how many people would be able to handle heavy machinery in a pinch. It's a good skill to have in creature features where characters are cut off from the rest of the world.

Recent Supernatural Thriller Versus Classic Supernatural Thriller

"One of the most important things about the bedroom is the position of the bed (or, in the case of the first movie reviewed here, the crib). It must not be placed in front of the door leading to your bedroom. This bed position is called the 'coffin position' and it signifies death. If you have a master bathroom, you should not be able to see the toilet or have the bathroom mirror reflect your bed. In fact, it is inauspicious to have a mirror anywhere in your bedroom. Full-length mirrors on the doors of built-in wardrobes are considered to be particularly harmful. Feng shui practitioners believe that the resting occupant is disturbed by spirits created by the reflection of you in the mirror while you are sleeping." (Antonia Beattie and Rosemary Stevens, Using Feng Shui: Easy Ways to Use the Ancient Chinese Art of Placement for Happiness and Prosperity, p. 72)

Paranormal Activity 2 (four and a half stars total) Add babies or little kids to any horror movie and it's automatically scarier. Top that off with a language barrier between characters, a family pet getting hurt or killed, and you can add confusion, depression and frustration to the mix. Paranormal Activity 2 (opened in theaters last weekend) isn't as funny as the first Paranormal, but I do believe a sequel can be better than its predecessor (see my 12/22/08 "Defense of Movie Sequels" post), and it has nothing to do with budget. Overall, there seem to be less effects shots this time around (no fire or footprints), although I admit the "dragged out of bed" scenes are much longer. If anything, the security cam slideshow on PA2 is more monotonous than the tripod, time-lapse photography on the original. The reason I think this sequel is better is that it has more of everything else: characters, rooms, and most importantly, ideas. It didn't make any sense for them to film each other while surfing the internet, to not have handy flashlights or a spare set of keys, but in our current economic climate, I'm still reeling over the idea of a family ancestor gambling on their posterity for wealth (for more on firstborn male heirs, see Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, 1995). It's not necessarily a novel concept to have an average, American family feeling powerless to effect change against unseen forces (global warming, the rising cost of college tuition and oil prices). Here are some sample morals I got from this movie, which you do have control over: Don't try to make contact with demons. Don't leave toys all over the living room floor. Don't fire your housekeeper, especially if she recommends abstinence to your teenage daughter. Do learn a second language.

RiffTrax Live! House on Haunted Hill (four stars total) For almost as long as I've lived in San Diego, I've seen pre-show advertising at different theater chains for live entertainment like The Met Opera, UFC matches and FIFA World Cup games. Until now I've always wondered, who actually goes to the theater to watch these events? This week I attended one of these satellite broadcasts for the first time and I was shocked to find the room filled to capacity (screen number "13" for what it's worth). RiffTrax ("we don't make movies, we make them funny!") features the later hosts from Mystery Science Theater 3000 doing comedic commentary from three, little, split-screen boxes on the side. Apparently they're based in San Diego and they've already done other live shows like last year's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958) and then Reefer Madness (1936), earlier this year. I was excited to see a RiffTrax version of House on Haunted Hill (1959) because I'd forgotten most of the plot details since I last saw it, but also because I wanted to understand why other people seem to deride B-movies so much. Everybody laughed at the first jump scene, with the blind ghost rolling out of the closet, but I think that scene's scary. Maybe I like letting my imagination fill in the cracks, when budgetary constraints leave me cracks to fill in (for more on this, see my 4/5/10 "Fine Art Versus Popular Culture" post), or maybe other people just laugh nervously more than I do. The hosts made an astute observation that "the hill is what's haunted - the house is perfectly fine," but mostly they inserted current pop culture jokes about Jersey Shore, Lady Gaga, and Vincent Price's involvement with Michael Jackson's Thriller, along with the usual race and gay jokes. I came to the realization that the educational short films the comedians show before the feature presentation act as icebreakers while they get warmed up. I came to accept that audiences aren't any harder on B-movies than the characters in those movies are on each other, and I learned that the house in the movie was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in real life, so I think it's safe to say I had a very enlightening evening in a dark, old house.

Recent Japanese Thriller Versus Classic Japanese Thriller

"CGI running may be faster than real running, but it never seems like anybody is really working at it. We're watching an effect instead of an achievement." (Roger Ebert's review of The Promise, 2006, included in his book, Your Movie Sucks, p. 231)

Casshern (one and a half stars total) As anal retentive as it may be, there is a difference between war and wartime movies. This movie and the other one reviewed below are evidence of that. Avatar (2009) would be a war movie. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) would be a wartime movie. What both of these sci-fi/action movies share in common with Casshern (2004) is that they all were shot with digital backlots (live actors performing in front of a greenscreen) and they all suck. My wife really likes Sky Captain but what bothered me was all the times Gwyneth Paltrow's character put the movie on pause to stare at her camera. There are lots of lingering shots in Casshern too. My complaint isn't about the overall pacing on either movie. My complaint is that some scenes just need to be left on the editing room floor/computer hard drive. They may be redundant within the context of the whole movie (Sky Captain), but more often they are devoid of any meaningful content no matter what their length or position (Casshern). I've already written about movies with video game sensibilities elsewhere on this blog (see my 8/14/10 Scott Pilgrim review), so I'll just close by saying that I have no appreciation for most video game graphics, the world doesn't need another version of Frankenstein (1818), and while I own the original Metropolis (1927), I'm less and less motivated to the see the anime (2001) that it inspired with each Japanese movie I watch.

"The first time I saw the film, I knew hardly a thing about Japanese cinema, and what struck me was the elevated emotional level of the actors. Do all Japanese shout and posture so?" (Roger Ebert's 2002 review of Rashōmon, included in his book, The Great Movies II, p. 362)

Onibaba (three stars total) Would someone please explain what's up with Japanese movies (anime or otherwise) and sex perversion? I haven't seen a lot of Japanese movies, less than a half dozen by director Akira Kurosawa, plus a couple of Cartoon Network imports (the "adult" in Adult Swim should've told me everything I needed to know). I've tried to read a fair share of (non-Shōjo) manga and all of it has included at least a passing reference to either cross-dressing, hermaphrodites, incest, striptease or supernatural rape. Onibaba (1964) literally translates as "demon woman," but the English title could just as easily be Cougar Serial Killer Mother-in-Law. An old widow throws herself at a neighbor who's half her age, but he goes after her young daughter-in-law instead. Nothing about this movie is suitable for network TV, and the funny thing about that is it's almost 50 years old. The setting alone is a horror movie waiting to happen. Two women, not blood relatives, are forced to live together in a rural swamp with no honest way to support themselves. They've taken to killing samurai and stripping them for items to pawn. When the older woman offs a samurai with a demon mask, she steals it to scare the younger woman away from the object of her disgusting desire. If you're familiar with the Goosebumps story, "The Haunted Mask" (either the 1993 book or the 1995 TV episode), you already know what happens next. Supposedly this movie (and probably the one reviewed above) are about the aftermath of atomic warfare, but not in the same way that Godzilla (1954; Casshern marks its 50th anniversary) is about the effects of the bomb. In one way or another, are all Japanese movies about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or just those that find their way to the U.S.?

'50s Psychological Thriller I Just Saw for the First Time

"(The leading foe of horror comics) Fredric Wertham's dishonest, bullying 'science' also had much in common with the increasingly sophisticated and cynical efforts of Madison Avenue to control the attitudes, anxieties, and consumption patterns of American women. And expanding postwar incomes was enabling psychiatry to make vast inroads into outpatient-land. The as yet unnamed category of drugs to be known as tranquilizers was already on the drawing boards, and would soon permit the psychiatric medicalization of a whole class of postwar discontents, many essentially social and economic in origin." (David J. Skal, The Horror Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 237)

The Bad Seed (one and a half stars total) My middle brother and the guys we grew up with had an inside joke about the way my dad talks. We used to say that anytime he opened his mouth, he was "gettin' technical." As with most men, my dad's not big on chitchat. If you ask him a question, he'll tell you everything he knows with relation to that question and then that topic will be exhausted. Sometimes I catch myself "gettin' technical." This blog is the perfect example. The dialogue on The Bad Seed (1956) works the same way. It's all exposition. None of it flows naturally. The characters might as well be reading passages from Dr. Spock's book, Baby and Child Care (1946), like newscasters with a teleprompter. For those of us that didn't grow up with the revolution that was the antiwar protester, Dr. Benjamin Spock, he was the first pediatrician to apply psychoanalysis to child-rearing. The Bad Seed might be the first horror movie to apply the word psychoanalysis verbally to a family line of female serial killers. It was definitely the first horror movie to be nominated for (count 'em up) four Oscars, including Best Actress in a Leading Role, two for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and the most surprising to me, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White. The movie takes place mainly indoors and features people sitting on couches for much of its running time, so I'm not sure what cinematography it was nominated for, unless it's the "grace of God" lightning scene at the end. I've already mentioned the acting, but I must specifically mention Nancy Kelly in the leading role. Her hoarse, smoker's voice is so weak and whiny it's like nails on a chalkboard. While most audiences were probably thinking the bad seed's character just needed a good spanking, I was wishing I could grab the mother's character by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. The daughter's character, played by Patty McCormack, may act like she's been spared the rod and spoiled for sure, but she doesn't look like she's been spared the ugly stick. She has the same wild-eyed unibrow and bad teeth as Ernest Borgnine's title character from Marty (1955), which swept the Oscars the year before. Back to spankings, the moment of triumph on The Children's Hour (1961), another movie based on a play with similar themes, comes when a proud old woman finally disciplines her rotten granddaughter, who is partially responsible for a lesbian schoolteacher committing suicide. Such a scene only comes to those who wait till after the "curtain call" styled closing credits on The Bad Seed, and by then it's too late.

'60s Psychological Thriller I Just Saw for the First Time

"The New American prosperity of the early 1950s was won atop the largest bone pile in human history. World War II had claimed the lives of over 40 million soldiers and civilians, and introduced two radical new forms of mechanized death - the atomic bomb and the extermination camp - that seriously challenged the mind's ability to absorb, much less cope with, the naked face of horror at mid-century. And only five years after the fall of Germany and Japan, America was once again at war, this time a 'police action' in Korea haunted by the specter of the H-bomb, a looming necro-technology now shared uneasily with the Soviets. If America in 1950 was filled with the smell of new cars, it was still permeated by the stench of mass death, and the threat of more to come." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 229)

Carnival of Souls (one star total) was released two years after Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) changed everything about horror movies, three years after The Twilight Zone (1959) turned Cold War terminology into an abstract but mainstream TV series, and four years after the Saltair Pavilion (1893) was closed down on the southern shore of Utah's Great Salt Lake. That should tell you where the ideas might have come from for a young, unmarried woman driving cross-country toward a twist ending, and an abandoned amusement park haunted by Death. Having lived in Salt Lake City, where Carnival of Souls (1962) was filmed, I recognized a few locations immediately. Aside from Saltair (now a concert venue where I saw The Strokes and Third Eye Blind), there's the wall surrounding Temple Square, the most historic tourist attraction downtown, where the main character gets "ignored" by a cop. There's also a scene in the park at City Hall when she passes out, right at the corner where my wife and I used to go for bubble tea. I can't help but wonder, was the idea for a job as a church organist was inspired by the Salt Lake Tabernacle pipe organ? The "theater" organ she's hired to play (pictured below) is minuscule in comparison to the Tabernacle's, but apparently it's capable of sounding creepier. Forget the familiar story that gets recycled in Carnival of Souls because the movie's really more about imagery and a particular point in pop culture. Stained glass windows and big, empty, old cathedrals have scared me since John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987) but here, church and recreation come together in a dreamlike danse macabre. 1962 marked the "death" of the Golden Age of Radio with the final broadcast of one of its most popular programs, Suspense (1942). Whether the "TV generation" needed more sights than sounds to be horrified, or whether this transition gets indirectly referenced in Carnival of Souls is my own conjecture. The rise of TV was blamed for a lot of things, including the closure of the Saltair Pavilion. When the main character is unable to find anything on the radio but old-timey gospel music, it could just be to create atmosphere. Then again, it could be signifying the "death" of an era - the switch from swing dances to counterculture peace rallies, poodle skirts to mini skirts and "The Greatest Generation" to the baby boomers. After all, if teenage drag racers weren't hallucinating zombies before Carnival of Souls, they certainly were after JFK's assassination the next year or the increased draft to Vietnam the year after that.

'70s Psychological Thriller I Just Saw for the First Time

"The cinema of horror provides its highly secularized audience with their last - perhaps their only - opportunity to experience mystery and miracle . . . The great frenzies of chaos, creation, disobedience, disaster, solitude and evil which have been rendered vague or bland in the well-bred church and synagogue services of the '70s are restored to their terrifying proportions in the half-light of the movie theaters. Priests of the horror cinema still recite incantations that count." (Leonard Wolf, "In Horror Movies, Some Things Are Sacred," The New York Times, April 4, 1976, as quoted by David J. Skal in The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 386)

The Wicker Man (two and a half stars total) I had to look up the definition of "straw man" arguments. It's been too many years since high school speech and debate class. I was curious to see if it would have any correlation to the movie, The Wicker Man (1973). I admit that anything can be twisted to mean anything for argument's sake. This ties in directly with "straw man" arguments, which directly tie in with The Wicker Man, no twisting necessary. The police sergeant who goes to investigate the report of a missing person wants a "proper" Christian burial and to enforce laws against public indecency. The pagan islanders he's investigating want religious tolerance and a "miracle" that will restore their crops in the coming year (never mind their own elaborate involvement in the machinations). The policeman's "reasoning" with the islanders is a logical fallacy because he's only attacking his own "distorted" version of their position and that fails to constitute an attack on their actual position (see Wikipedia for a full list of logical fallacies). It's so cruel the way they talk down to him at the end, explaining everything in layman's terms that even a self-righteous blowhard can't argue with, but I guess it's no more dismissive than when he laughs at their custom for "supernatural impregnation" toward the beginning. As a kid, I thought the title referred to the villain's name, but the truth is much more terrifying than that. The villain is just actor Christopher Lee, dressed in purple and yellow drag.

If there were such a thing as the "Twelve Days of Halloween," they might start tomorrow. This is debatable because the "Twelve Days of Christmas" either end on Christmas Day or the day before Epiphany (see Shakespeare's Twelfth Night), so who's to say whether you should start this make-believe holiday extension by counting down from October 20 or October 31? Holiday blending like "Chrismahanukwanzakah" or "Festivus" really get to me. Christmas alone is an example, blending the displaced Nativity (December 25) and the arrival of the Wise Men/baptism of Jesus (January 6) with the ancient Roman Saturnalia (December 17-23) and the pagan Germanic Yuletide/winter solstice (December 21-22). Somewhere along the line, Halloween has transmuted into a second tier Christmas Day, probably because it's the second most commercialized holiday in the U.S. For me, Halloween will never be just an appetizer or a speed bump before Christmas. It's neither the anti-Christmas nor a dark twin to its neighbor holiday. Don't even get me started on The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Would this still have happened if Halloween were in June? Unfortunately, its proximity to Christmas has led to atrocities like Halloween wreaths, trees, stockings, pumpkin "snowmen" and "haunted" gingerbread houses. Soon there won't any distinction between holiday celebrations. Alas, it's the only politically correct way to go.

'80s Psychological Thriller I Just Saw for the First Time

"Popular 'amusements' have a flip side that is often less than sunny, and the very world 'recreation' has some usually overlooked connotations. Any process of re-creation or rebirth necessarily entails a death of one sort or another. This may explain the prevalence of sugar-coated intimations of mortality in carnivals and fun parks - spook shows, wild rides involving heart-stopping plunges and near-collisions, and the omnipresent, endlessly cycling wheels and whirligigs of chance, fate, and destiny. Freak shows similarly offer a glimpse of ourselves, re-created along strange physical and behavioral lines. Nothing is fixed, and everything is possible." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 30)

Something Wicked This Way Comes (two stars total) I once ran into Ray Bradbury at San Diego's Comic Con and no one else around us seemed to recognize him. That's probably my only random celebrity encounter (I say "probably" because - again - no one else recognized him as a celebrity). I've sat close to many movie and TV stars on panels and such, but never on a plane or at the store. Back when Comic Con used to put artists doing autographs in the far corner of the exhibit hall, I was standing in line for David Finch to sign some Moon Knight comics (there are some more "big" names you'd have to be a nerd to know) when I noticed Bradbury was parked against the wall right next to me. I asked him if he was also waiting and he replied: "No, I was just looking for a quiet place to sit." If I'd seen Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) at that time, I would've asked him how he felt about the casting of the bad guy, Mr. Dark. I've read that Bradbury wanted Peter O'Toole or Christopher Lee for the role, but I feel that Jonathan Pryce is scarier than either of those bigger-name actors. I can't be the only one who feels that way because he's been cast as other bad guys since then (Stigmata; Pirates of the Caribbean), even as the Bond villain on Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). Pryce wasn't the bad guy on Brazil (1985; the first movie I ever saw him in), but that movie disturbed me so much that anything remniscient of it scares me.

Something Wicked This Way Comes is pretty scary for a Disney movie. It wouldn't fit on my "Unintentional Horror Movies" list (see my 10/30/09 post) because it's definitely trying to be scary. It shows a severed head and nightmare spiders, plus the usual thunder and lightning. I like movies where kids are quicker at figuring something out than their parents. It adds a layer of horrific betrayal to what's usually an impossible predicament from the start. There's extra pathos to the predicament in this movie because the narrator/protagonist's father (the old guy from Dream a Little Dream) has a weak heart and already feels guilty over not being able to protect his son (the kid from The Monster Squad) years earlier. I'm a sucker for father-son movies, and I just realized that the ones I've most enjoyed recently have all been thrillers of one kind or another: How to Train Your Dragon (2010), The Road (2009), Gran Torino (2008; "surrogate" father in this case), 3:10 to Yuma (2007; better than the 1957 original BECAUSE of the added emphasis on the father-son relationship), and last but not least, Rocky Balboa (2006). What do thrillers have to do with fathers and sons? I don't know, maybe nothing. Or maybe guys just like a little danger in movies that are supposed to be about them.

'90s Psychological Thriller I Just Saw for the First Time

"The symbolic flesh-eating and blood-drinking of the Catholic mass has the same ancient roots as vampire legends; when gay demonstrators ('life-eating' monsters to the far religious right) disrupted the communion service at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in 1991, primitive and unarticulated blood-themes shadowed the publicly stated issues . . . A surprisingly high number of vampire aficionados (gay and straight) do turn out to be Catholics or ex-Catholics - at least in this writer's extensive, if unscientific, observation. In The Queen of the Damned, Anne Rice calculatedly imbued her ambisexual vampire with the traits of a pagan/Christian savior." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 348)

Stigmata (three stars total) For yesterday's "Recent Psychological Thrillers" post, I originally intended to review a pair that are possibly still playing in theaters somewhere, Ryan Reynolds' "stuck in a coffin" movie, Buried (premiered at Sundance), and M. Night Shyamalan's "stuck in an elevator" movie, Devil (opened 9/17/10). The former wins my award for "Feel Bad Movie of the Year" and that's all I have to say about that. The latter would've just led me to write about my theological stance on angels and demons (not the Dan Brown novel, but we'll come back to him). I didn't want to be redundant with Shyamalan's final point on Devil, so I held off. Then the same themes showed up again in Stigmata (1999), so I'm taking that as a sign, but not like "Jesus in a pancake" (an actual line from Devil). Disconcerting as it may seem, I believe the devil's always around, but I also believe that angels are everywhere. I agree with Shyamalan that "we don't need the devil because man is capable of all evil alone." I also believe that temptation only matters inasmuch as we give in to it (this is where Stigmata comes in). Bad priests (or parishioners) can't discredit the good that any given church does. The devil is powerful but God's still in charge. The devil was allowed to let loose on Job but not to take his life, and in the long-term it was all for Job's good. I don't believe that the devil was ever trying to help Job in the long-term, nor do I believe he ever tempts us with what really matters. Conversely, I don't believe that God would ever try to hurt us in the long-term, nor do I believe he ever blesses us with what doesn't really matter. God gave Jonah an all-natural punishment inside the whale but I don't believe he would ever punish a person with the unnatural stigmata. I don't believe the movie Stigmata favors science over organized religion, nor do I feel it should shake anyone's faith in a loving God. It speculates on a conspiracy to suppress truth the same way that Dan Brown does in The Da Vinci Code, and it does so with better acting but worse music (here's looking at you, Chumbawamba).

Recent Psychological Thrillers I Just Saw for the First Time

"In his essay The 'Uncanny,' published at the end of the first world war, Sigmund Freud first discussed the relationship of the castration complex to macabre fantasy stories. In Freud's view, the doppelganger (the basis of all monster images) is a defense mechanism; the unconscious mind, sensing a mortal danger to the ego, eye, limb, or genital, creates an imaginative stand-in for the threatened part." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 76)

May (two and a half stars total) I've heard a psychological explanation for feeling uncomfortable around people with physical defects (amputation; blindness; cerebral palsy) which is that they make you subconsciously consider the possibility of sustaining similar defects yourself. You've probably heard that obesity and smoking are considered contagious because people feel more comfortable with their own bad habits when they have friends or neighbors with similar habits. May (2002) is all about social anxieties, like whether or not desperate advances from a gay coworker (a goth Anna Faris) can turn you gay too, whether or not it's a faux-pas to make out while watching horror movies, whether or not you should even admit to watching horror movies (Jeremy Sisto, better known as Elton on Clueless). I have a lazy eye that I know has bothered people and a teddy bear that I treat with the same respect I would a living person, so you'd think that May's eyepatch and talking doll collection would hit home for me. However, I find eyepatches and dolls just as creepy as the next person (according to this movie, talking dolls sound like glass breaking). It's perfectly natural to put yourself into fictional stories (actually, that's the whole point), but the only part of me that I could see in May was her choice in stereo equipment. Have you ever watched a movie where a character wears an outfit that you also happen to own or a scene is filmed in your hometown - perhaps down your street or at a restaurant you frequent? My coinkydink connection isn't that rare, but it turns out I have the exact same Sony boombox that May plays at her veterinary clinic (yay for me and product placement). Speaking of her job though, I would never try to compensate for a lack of human interaction by caring for animals. If you're the kind of person that need lots of attention, maybe a cat's not the best pet for you. I'm not saying that cats don't love their owners, they just do it on their own timetable, and they can't defend themselves as well as humans against sudden, violent outbursts. So to all you cool cats and kittens out there, stay away from May.

"In a horror movie-esque situation, even when the axe is about to drop, don't let the intensity get to you. Because in a horror movie, once people start to pick at each other, those same people start to get picked off. Maybe killers' dislike for fights stems from an unpleasant home life during childhood. Most murderers grew up in less than ideal situations, and arguing mothers and fathers top the list of Reasons to Become a Murderous Psycho. Alternatively, it could be a dislike for loud noises (although they've picked a strange profession if they dislike screaming)." (Meredith O'Hayre, The Scream Queen's Survival Guide, p. 146)

The clue to solving the "locked room mystery" in Session 9 (three and a half stars total) comes in the form of advice given by the first victim (played by the coach from Glory Road) to the new kid (played by the shoplifter in Empire Records) on an asbestos cleanup crew: "Just have an exit plan, dude. You stick with this job long enough, it'll mess you up, man. It gets inside you - the stress." Interestingly, the character mentions stress over the threat of asbestos exposure, but that's the tip off. I don't mention this to spoil the plot for anyone, just to show that it's a tightly woven plot and it's the little things that you glance over that come back around. Most mysteries aren't fun the second time around because they hinge entirely on the ending, but that's not the case with Session 9 (2001). I used to hate old Matlock (1986) and Perry Mason (1957) episodes where you'd think you had it figured out only for them to introduce to a brand-new character in the last five minutes and reveal that they were the killer instead. Session 9 is a "locked room mystery" and that means that the killer HAS to be one the few characters present all along. What's more, the "locked room" in this mystery is the real-life, isolated and empty Danvers State Insane Asylum (pictured above), birthplace of the pre-frontal lobotomy. Five years after Session 9 was filmed there, it was partially demolished to be rebuilt as apartments, but those caught fire the very next year. Ominous history, wouldn't you agree? In my parents' hometown, there used to be an old, abandoned hospital on a hilltop, smack dab in the center of town (that's my brother pictured below, trespassing with me on the roof). Just like the hospital in the movie, ours was a public health hazard, a hideout for the homeless and a gallery for gang graffiti. We used to brave broken glass and the threat of a police record to secretly explore this dark, deserted dungeon. As a dumb kid, I never considered the possibility of falling or getting beat up without anyone to rescue us or know where to look for our bodies. Now I'm wondering if there were any other dumb kids that might have died there and continue to haunt that hillside to this day (insert scary noise here).

Boris Karloff, Mad Scientist

"Very rarely is the purpose (of a movie doctor) to save a life or effect a cure . . . The favorite purpose of an operation on the screen is either disfigurement or the creation of a monster . . . Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this pseudo and sadistic science is its immaculateness . . . The blacker the heart of the surgeon the more fastidious he is likely to be in his professional methods . . . Ghosts and goblins that used to lurk in dark corners to pounce upon the unwary pale into ineffectual shadows before the grim figure of the demon surgeon brandishing his scalpel." (The Times, London, August 4, 1936, as quoted by David J. Skal in The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 195)

The Ape (three stars total) Whenever I hear Boris Karloff speak, I can't help thinking of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966 TV special). Fortunately his role as Frankenstein's monster doesn't include too many lines of dialogue, so I can still watch that undistracted. His appearance changed more from film to film than Bela Lugosi's did on the six that they made together. Personally, I'll take his devil-worshipping widow's peak on The Black Cat (1934) or his eye hanging out of its socket on The Raven (1935) over Lugosi's consistent formalwear and supposedly "hypnotic" stare, which could be mistaken for constipation (it turns out he suffered from sciatica and that's how he became a painkiller addict). On The Ape (1940), Karloff wears a moustache so that - I'm assuming - he'll look grandfatherly and he wears glasses so that - I'm assuming again - he'll look smart. Like a medical doctor. Or like a mad scientist, because the lenses make his eyes look bigger. Why is it that crazy people are always portrayed with eyes opened as wide as can be? This was Karloff's fourth film to derive its title from an animal (the first was The Sea Bat, 1930, about killer manta rays off the coast of Mexico). Silent film fans sometimes complain about the unbelievable number of "old dark house" mystery plots involving apes (giant or otherwise, it's usually just a guy in a gorilla suit). Karloff flips that here by actually revealing himself to be the guy in the gorilla suit in a twist ending and practical explanation for the cheap special effects. If you're a Universal monsters enthusiast, you may recognize the name of Curt Siodmak on the opening credits for screenplay. The very next year he would write The Wolf Man (1941), along with the stories for Son of Dracula (1943) and House of Frankenstein (1944), plus a dozen or so other horror titles. This is the fifth film I've reviewed from Mill Creek Entertainment's $10 Horror Classics double-sided DVD collection (The Corpse Vanishes yesterday; Nosferatu last week; both The Phantom of the Opera and White Zombie last year, 10/5/09 and 10/6/09, respectively). You can look forward to Bluebeard and Carnival of Souls next week. If I never watch another title from the set, I'll still have paid less than $2 each for almost ten hard-to-find and historical hours of entertainment!

Bela Lugosi, Mad Scientist

"Michael Jackson is often compared to Peter Pan, but Peter Pan is rarely acknowledged as the variation on Dracula that he is - a late-Victorian fantasy being who flew into young people's bedrooms with a problematic offer of life everlasting . . . The fantasy still flies. Rejuvenation and eternal youth are the driving illusions of the cosmetic surgery business, to which Michael Jackson's image is forever wed." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 320)

The Corpse Vanishes (one star total) This is the oldest feature film to be riffed on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1942 to be exact). It's one of those movies that would be unbearable to watch without the mocking commentary. There's a scene a little over halfway through where the same musical phrase gets repeated over and over. Before I even had a chance to fast forward though, Crow, Joel and Tom Servo started humming along like kazoos. Talk about taking lemons and making lemonade! Granted, everything sounds funnier coming out of a robot's mouth. Say anything in a robot voice and try not to smile. That's not to say that they speak robotically on MST3K. Well, Joel Hodgson does, but I think that's unintentional (he left the series after 100 episodes because he didn't feel comfortable acting in front of the camera). On this particular episode, he does a Bela Lugosi impersonation that sounds more like Sesame Street's Count von Count and it's still better acting than Lugosi's. Out of 198 total episodes, 66 (that's exactly one-third) are available for instant streaming on Netflix. If you do attempt to watch the original, unedited version of The Corpse Vanishes without the aid of MST3K, at least do so in the company of others. You could try riffing yourself about how the movie's family of freaks looks like Dick Tracy rogues' gallery or wonder aloud why "ace" reporters and "hard-boiled" newspaper editors were so popular in the early '40s. Without a doubt, someone will make a lewd comment about the mad scientist's wife moaning all through her rejuvenative procedure and everyone will laugh when she later slaps the journalist who's simultaneously barged into her home AND into the overall plot of an otherwise serious mad scientist movie.

Gene Wilder, Mad Scientist

"Dracula and Frankenstein are significant modern myths, gods that have descended periodically into ineffectual kitsch, but only to rise again, stronger than before. Each icon defines the other; they rarely travel alone. They embody nothing less than the centuries-long war between science and superstition - Apollo and Dionysus at the Saturday matinee. In the age of AIDS they have spent an inordinate amount of time admiring each other, perhaps, in part, because they both 'reproduce' as AIDS does - one through transfusion and one through transplantation. The dark twins are palpably present when the most advanced communication technology in history brings home, almost nightly, the most psychically primitive juxtapositions of blood, sex, and pestilence, a new kind of living-room war, a psychosexual Vietnam." (David J. Skal, The Horror Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 351)

I'll be honest, Young Frankenstein (two and a half stars total) is the only Mel Brooks movie I've watched all the way through besides The Producers (1968), which I saw for the first time a few years ago and enjoyed for Zero Mostel. I made a friend change the channel when he tried to get me to watch The History of the World, Part I (1981) and over the years, I've seen enough bits and pieces of Spaceballs (1987) to equal a whole movie, but they never made me laugh. Recently, I started Blazing Saddles (1974) but quit early and while I have Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) on my Netflix instant queue, we'll see how far I make it. Audiences nowadays have been trained by the marketing machines to expect a movie to be all funny or all serious. Were Young Frankenstein (1974) released today, I'm sure they would call it a comedy, but to me, it's pretty serious stuff. As with William Castle's The Old Dark House (1963) and The Munsters (1964; have you heard they're remaking it on NBC?), the atmosphere and the scenery is so perfect. They're even better than the movies they're spoofing. You could almost turn the volume down, ignore the sitcom setups and dreadful music numbers ("Puttin' on the Ritz") and pretend that you're watching a classic horror movie with modern sensibilities. I expected all of Young Frankenstein to be double entendres and general '70s sleaze, but that doesn't start until twenty minutes in. Before that, it's quality time with Gene Wilder, who co-wrote the script and has the kindest eyes south of Santa Claus. If you can stand all the standard, horror movie screaming from the twenty minute mark on to the end, you'll be treated to an early Gene Hackman comedy cameo. And that's funny.

Wilford Brimley, Mad Scientist

"Here, in science fiction form, is an orgy of hate and fear and futility, with no hope of escape, no constructive element whatsoever. The child with whom one is asked to identify is bereft of any security from father and mother, from constituted authority, and the adults burst into meaningless violence . . . For a time we hope there will be an answer in this projection of the formless fears abroad in our world of technological annihilation and savage ideologies, but the terror and dread only pile higher." (Transcript of 1953 PTA reports on Invaders from Mars, as quoted by David J. Skal in The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 251)

The Thing (four stars total) If you were putting together a team of adventurers to accompany you in Antarctica (I used to imagine such groups for role-playing game campaigns), the real-life Wilford Brimley might make a good candidate. Before becoming the face of Quaker Oats oatmeal, he was a ranch hand, a bodyguard for Howard Hughes and a stuntman in western movies. I like him because he's Mormon and you don't see too many of those in Hollywood. John Carpenter's remake of The Thing (1982) isn't a traditional mad scientist movie, and Wilford Brimley doesn't play a stereotypical mad scientist. He's just a scientist driven mad by the same body-snatching, tentacled, alien invader that he eventually becomes. Now allow me to interrupt this review for a word on tentacles. At a preschool age, I saw two things on TV that scarred me for life. Only one of them was definitively horror, and that was the first BBC miniseries adaptation of The Day of the Triffids (1981; a year before The Thing). When I saw a little boy my age get lashed in the face by a Triffid's tentacle, just for pruning the garden, I couldn't believe my dad saying that the horror in the book (1951) lies more with humans than with alien plants. As an adult, the most shocking horror I've seen is the alien/mecha "tentacle porn" on Meatball Machine (2005; there's so much of this crap in Japan, the term has its own Wikipedia entry). Needless to say, I wasn't too excited with The Thing when a wolf's face blossoms like a bloody Triffid flower and tentacles whip out to lasso the other dogs in a kennel. I could've easily fast forwarded through that scene but never the one with Wilford Brimley (without his trademark moustache!) smashing a computer room up with an axe.

Marlon Brando, Mad Scientist

"By the mid-1920s, Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol of Paris had achieved a worldwide reputation for its repertory of short, horrific plays that subjected human characters to the same kind of exaggerated violence that was formerly the province of the little guignol, or Punch-and-Judy show. The difference was that the 'big puppets' bled, or convincingly seemed to. The Grand Guignol was founded in 1897 (a benchmark year for horror, with the publication of Dracula, the exhibition of Philip Burnes-Jones' painting The Vampire, and - incidentally - the coining of the term 'psychoanalysis') by Oscar Méténier, a playwright and former police clerk. Méténier had cofounded an earlier avant-garde venture, Théâtre-Libre, which had produced some of his sensational and sordid playlets. The brief sketches presented life at its most squalid, utilizing the language of the streets and the most unsavory situations and characters possible . . . Since naturalism was deemed to be 'scientific,' Méténier's excursions into the lower and criminal classes were permissable for bourgeois audiences, who could vicariously contemplate base humanity - and their own baser selves - from a fashionable remove." (David J. Skal, The Horror Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 55)

The Island of Dr. Moreau (three and a half stars total) Celebrate Columbus Day with a United Nations negotiator (how perfect is that?) whose plane crashes while headed west overseas. Edward Douglas, originally shipwrecked Edward Prendick in the 1896 book by H.G. Wells, expected to meet with foreign diplomats but was introduced to "new men" instead. Christopher Columbus expected to initiate a trade route but ran over the "New World" instead. They both learned the hard way that all disappointment stems from unmet expectations. Just as contemporary school teachers seem to hate Columbus, critics and the Razzies hated this third film adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996; the centennial anniversary of the book). Perhaps their disappointment stems from unmet expectations for stars like Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer, the $40 million budget or a script that was continually tinkered with until the end of shooting. I had no expectations for the movie, no knowledge of the book and apparently I had nothing better going on because I enjoyed it all, even fifteen years after it was released in theaters. I didn't expect to hear Deep Forest, an electronic world music group I listened to in high school, nor did I expect to hear Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" performed by or for monkey-men. I didn't expect to see Fairuza Balk, an actress that's creeped me out since Disney's Return to Oz (1985). You may remember her as the bad witch from The Craft (1996 was a busy year for her). Back to those top-billed actors mentioned above, I never could've expected to see Marlon Brando in a dress or Val Kilmer doing an impersonation of Marlon Brando in a dress - in the same movie. Now those are some MAD scientists, and they're probably as scary as Columbus was to Native Americans.

Adrien Brody, Mad Scientist

"The wreckage of the jazz age was a forbidding new landscape. Millions waited for a scapegoat or a deliverer. A new and controversial kind of entertainment - the gangster picture - served as a lightning rod for public anger and cynicism; audiences vicariously took part in adventures outside the law and standards of fair play that now seemed utterly irrelevant. The popular interest in gangsters wasn't an entirely vicarious identification: Prohibition, after all, had literally turned millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals. But the most lasting and influential invention of 1931 would be the modern horror film. Monster movies opened up the possibility of psychic lawlessness; a monster, for Hollywood, was a gangster of the id and unconscious. Cataclysmic junctures in history usually stir up strong imagery in the collective mind, and the years following the 1929 economic crash were no exception." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 114)

Pick a topic, any hot topic, and chances are good you'll find it in Splice (two stars total; released on DVD last week). From the title alone, you know it includes animal experimention and and human cloning, but it also tells the story of a couple making major life transitions involving abortion rights, gender roles, overprotective parents, rural relocation and sex education. I haven't even mentioned corporate restructuring and the pharmaceutical industry, which are the most important issues to the plot. All this comes during our nation's current financial crisis and uncertainty over health care reform. If that seems contrived, cutting edge or just plain relevant, refer back to the quote above, about horror movies during the Great Depression. They say there's nothing new under the sun, but I guess there's nothing new under microscopes either. I never saw Species (1995), but I get the impression it shares a lot in common with Splice (2009). Maybe this is just me, but does anyone else have a problem with only being able to see certain actors in the role that you first saw them? For me, Adrien Brody will always be the jealous, mentally-challenged, murderous psychopath that he played on The Village (2004), which was the first movie I saw him in. That's what made it so hard for me to see him as a romantic lead in King Kong (2005) or as a tough guy on Predators (2010). But I can totally buy him as an adulterous, mad scientist that listens to "über" music.

Recent Werewolf Movies I Just Saw for the First Time

Ginger Snaps (three and a half stars total)
Contribution to werewolf movie mythology - replacing silver bullets with drug injection as a means to end the werewolf curse

Not until I watched the movie did I realize that the title's a simple sentence, not a reference to cookies. It's a testament to its cleverness that at first I didn't like Ginger's (as in the one who snaps) younger sister, Brigitte (B for short), but by the end she was my favorite character and my sole (as in old soul) reason to seek out the sequels. She's mature beyond her years, and while we're on the subject, her lack of a menstrual cycle. She's so loyal to her sister, it's criminal. She's goth without wearing any makeup or intentionally being a bad student. Her bedroom is an unfinished basement decorated with Polaroids of fake deaths acted out by her and her sister, each picture stuck to the wall with black, electric tape. This movie has a couple of the most disturbing things I've ever been confronted with in a horror movie, and neither of them have anything to do with fake deaths. I'm referring to blood in urine (I get sick just considering it) and having more than a half dozen teats like a dog (for the first time - a practical purpose for nudity in a horror movie). Blech. Another horror staple since the '60s that gets an intelligent twist here is stoner humor. Normally it feels tacked on for the "coolness" factor, but this time it's an actual stoner that almost saves the day. Until Ginger snaps on him.

Skinwalkers (two and a half stars total)
Contribution to werewolf movie mythology - yee nadlooshi, the Navajo name for werewolves

Worst. Dialogue. Ever. But if you can get past the setup, you're in for a few fun twists. "Luke, I am your father," should give you everything you need to make an informed decision. Sometimes you hear a piece of fiction described as "crossing multiple genres" or "hard to peg," but Skinwalkers (2006) is easily a western, werewolves-at-war, horror-fantasy, family, action movie. If that sounds hokey to you, it's because it is. But if you like formulaic Chuck Norris TV shows or highly conceptual John Carpenter movies, here's some more cartoonish violence for you (from the producers of Resident Evil, 2002 and Wrong Turn, 2003). The practical effects look better than anything on Underworld (2003) plus the bad guys still wear black leather. The main difference between this movie and others of its kind is that there's daylight in this one, except for when that red moon screensaver pops up. When the small-town shootout on Main Street is over, you can hear - you're not going to believe this - birds chirping. I figured the forest looked a little too green to have been filmed on location in my native state of New Mexico, and I was right. What both of the movies reviewed in this post share in common, besides being about werewolves, is Canadian heritage. Ontario, to be more specific.

Classic Vampire Movies I Just Saw for the First Time

In general, there are three different looks for vampires. Each of the movies reviewed below depicts a different one. The first is the most human, both in terms of normal dress and appearance, but also in its desire to regain full humanity. The second is not quite human and may include claws or fangs that grow, distorted facial features and fur or wings, even when not shapeshifting. The third is the most monstrous and may stand taller than a human, with or without a conehead, or appear reptilian (like a chupacabra or a snake).

House of Dracula (three stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - Dracula seeks out a scientific cure for vampirism

Two years after Frankenstein's monster met the Wolf Man, they met Dracula for the second time in the House of Dracula (1945). It was the last "serious" Universal horror movie before the Abbott and Costello series (1948-1955). While it was the second time for John Carradine to play Dracula and Glenn Strange to play Frankenstein's monster, the only actor returning to a title role that had originally starred them was the (1941) Wolf Man's Lon Chaney, Jr. The real scene stealer though is an even lesser-known actress, Jane Adams, playing a beautiful lab assistant with a painful deformity. The way they reveal her hunchback is shocking enough that looking back, you might think she jumped out screaming, but all they do is show her face first and then zoom out. I'll never understand why Dr. Edelmann's hair has to get messy when he becomes a Jekyll-and-Hyde-like mad scientist. Nor will I ever understand why people get so excited for classic character team-ups or company crossovers, either on film or where they're the most popular, in comic books. I'll take my Godzilla without King Kong, my Superman without Muhammad Ali and my Aliens without Predators, thank you very much.

Mark of the Vampire (three and a half stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - a spoof of the Bela Lugosi vampire image (ironically by Lugosi himself, almost without speaking AND 60 years before Tim Burton's biopic, Ed Wood, which depicts a pathetic yet proud Lugosi in his, ahem, "twilight" years)

Say what you will about the twist ending. I loved it. I loved Lionel Barrymore's hammy acting, the foggy cemetery where a woman's nightgown gets caught on the ground directly above a grave and the scene of a vampire outside the window peering in. I loved seeing a roach infestation in a bed and a wall crawling with tarantulas. As much as I hated the Universal monster homage, Van Helsing (2004), I loved finding out that one of its unconvincing computer-generated images was possibly inspired by a very realistic effects shot in Mark of the Vampire (1935). I'm referring to a dress that transforms into giant, bat wings, worn by one of Dracula's brides in Van Helsing, or in the case of Mark of the Vampire, by Count Mora's daughter, Luna. Carroll Borland perfected the attractive-repulsive look for a vampiress at least three years before Morticia Addams appeared in The New Yorker magazine as a cartoon strip character and almost twenty years before Vampira became TV's first horror host on an ABC affiliate in LA.

Nosferatu (four stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - only a woman who is "pure in heart" can defeat a vampire, and she does this by keeping him out past sunrise

"If I were to make over the film, I should depict Nosferatu (1922) . . . not as terrible and fantastic but on the contrary in the guise of an inoffensive young man, charming and most obliging. I should like it to be only on the basis of very mild indications, in the beginning, that any anxiety should be aroused, and in the spectator's mind before being aroused in the hero's. Likewise, wouldn't it be much more frightening if he were first presented to the woman in such a charming aspect? It is a kiss that is to be transformed into a bite . . . It might be rather startling, furthermore, for the vampire to yield to the woman's charms, forget the hour . . . I can easily see him appearing a a hideous monster to everyone, and charming only in the eyes of the young woman, a voluntary, fascinated victim . . . He should become less and less horrible until he really becomes the delightful person whose mere appearance he only took on at first. And it is this delightful person that the cock's crow must kill." (Nobel Prizer winner for literature, André Gide, journal entry, February 27, 1928, as quoted by David J Skal in The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, 1993)

'50s Vampire Movie I Just Saw for the First Time

Horror of Dracula (three stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - after a stake is driven through a vampire's heart, it returns to whatever human state it would've been in (old but dead, decomposed or dust)

By my count, Hammer Film Productions made sixty horror movies, although three of those are just video compilations from the only season of their TV series, Journey to the Unknown (1968; what Americans call "seasons," the British would refer to as "series"). Another ten off that list could be downgraded to psychological thrillers, and a couple are more horrific action/adventure hybrids than horror, if you're a purist about definitions. I was happy to see the new Hammer logo appear before the opening credits on Let Me In (which opened in theaters last weekend). After killing itself with kung fu experimentation and soft porn schlock starting in the late '60s, the company is now back from the dead. It's interesting to note that Hammer has waited until this current era of remakes to return, because it was remakes that really got the company going in the late '50s. You could almost consider Let Me In (2010) to be like a 50th anniversary celebration of The Brides of Dracula (1960). In my opinion, those two movies have about as much in common as Christopher Lee's Dracula (1958) does with Bela Lugosi's Dracula (1931). Lee doesn't try for a Romanian accent and neither do any of his neighbors down in the village. When we first see his castle, it's sunny and clean, no cobwebs or wolves howling. He focuses on raw physicality and shocking mood swings, much like the soundtrack focuses on drum banging and cymbal crashing. Extensive liberties are taken with the Van Helsing character. Aside from dramatic changes to Bram Stoker's plot, he's pretty much allowed to steal the show from the title character. When he kills his own friend who's become a vampire, Jonathan Harker, you know he means business (and you never see it coming). Peter Cushing plays Van Helsing as a human monster, reducing Christopher Lee's Dracula to a sympathetic animal that had to be put down. In other Hammer horror, he played a rapist Victor Frankenstein while his costar played another unfortunate monster. Look no further than the Star Wars series to determine which actor is scarier - Grand Moff Tarkin (Cushing), commander of the Death Star, or Count Dooku (Lee), who gets served by a little green muppet? And speaking of actors that later appeared in '80s and '90s movie franchises, if you want to see Batman's butler, Alfred Pennyworth, as a young man, check out Michael Gough on The Horror of Dracula as well.

'60s Vampire Movie I Just Saw for the First Time

The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck (also known as Dance of the Vampires; one and a half stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - crosses don't work against Jewish vampires

Until I saw the Rob Lowe remake of 'Salem's Lot (2004), I'd never really been confronted with the idea that a cross doesn't work if the user has no faith. Following this logic, a cross shouldn't work against a vampire that has no faith either, but I'd never seen a movie bring this up until I watched The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). Perhaps you've never imagined a religious vampire, but seeing as how all vampires start off as people, and the majority of people in the world are religious, a newfound thirst for blood shouldn't change that. Only a religious person would consider it a curse. At the end of this movie, it's suggested that the curse of vampirism gets spread throughout the world. To a religious person, that might mean something as simple as unbelief. To Polish director Roman Polanski, it could be a metaphor for Russian communists or German Nazis (all Godless). All I know is you have to sit through 45 minutes of slapstick just to get to a place where some fearless vampire killing can begin, and then it just switches from straight sex farce to gay sex farce. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind horror-comedy hybrids. One of my favorite movies of all time is The Monster Squad (1987), and that had its fair share of raunchy humor. It's not that this one's not funny, it's just not funny enough. The Professor character looks and acts just like Mr. Bean, assuming that you find that funny. The professor's assistant, played by the director himself, reminded me personally of Scrat, the "saber-toothed squirrel" from Ice Age (2002), although I'm sure I'm forgetting some well-known, wimpy sidekick. It's sweet that actress Sharon Tate got to know her future husband while working with him on The Fearless Vampire Killers. It's tragic to know that she was murdered exactly two and a half years after its release. I don't want to end on a melancholy note, even though that's what the movie does, so I'll add that it includes animated bats over the opening credits, similar to the ones featured a year earlier on Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966; you've got to see that one to believe it).

'70s Vampire(?) Movie I Just Saw for the First Time

Martin (one star total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - vampirism as mental illness and/or child abuse

You'd think that a one-star review would write itself, that out of bitterness or to get revenge I would get on my soapbox and blast this movie with every scathing criticism I could conjure. Mostly, I just want to forget it and move on. But the point of this movie review marathon is to document my experience, for good or bad, so here goes it. Sometimes it's easier to define something by what it isn't that what it is. According to my movie review guide to the right, the opposite of half an orange star and half a green would be full red, yellow and blue stars. A movie with great script, great acting and great music, but without cinematography or studio trickery could very well be just a play. But that is not Martin (1977). Martin chases his victims from room to room (not impossible to show on stage, but still) and has black and white daydreams (instantaneous costume changes are harder to pull off on stage). Cinematic technique aside, you're left with a bad script, worse acting and THE worst '70s music I've ever heard. If it couldn't work as a play, is it possible it could still make for a great movie? According to director George Romero, it's his personal favorite out of all the movies he made, and that includes Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2008) and Survival of the Dead (2009). Martin proves that Romero hasn't just done zombies (he's done exactly ten movies without), but it also shows why investors haven't bent over backwards to throw bigger budgets at his projects. He's got his own way of doing things, but I still love the thick, square glasses and the gray ponytail. If you want to see what he looked like as a young man, without the glasses or ponytail, watch Martin. He does cameos in a lot of his movies but this one's a big speaking part. If you're not interested in what he has to say, avoid this movie like your life depended on it.

'80s Vampire Movie I Just Saw for the First Time

The Hunger (two stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - a head vampire is killed because one of her half-vampire lovers commits suicide

Apparently there's a book by the same author that wrote Wolfen (1978, adapted in 1981) and The Day After Tomorrow (2004, adapted in 2007), and it clears up all the confusion that this movie causes. It's not the same book pictured here, but I found that cover to be somewhat applicable. Believe it or not, when I was in high school, I had an idea for a book about a teenage vampire living in a commune with an older vampire who's a doctor and it all revolved around whether or not to turn the protagonist's girlfriend into a vampire as well. Sound familiar? Honestly, I was so mad when Twilight went viral because I figured I'd given up a million dollar idea by not writing my book sooner. Then I realized that the timing would have been off. When I was in high school, kids weren't reading like they have since Harry Potter (1997 in the UK). My protagonist wasn't a girl and my book wouldn't have included werewolves or love triangles. Underworld (2003) hadn't yet popularized the face-off between the two species and championed vampires as the good guys. How does any of this apply to The Hunger (1983)? It doesn't, at least not directly, but the bottom line is that The Hunger was perfect for its time and still got panned by the critics, so nothing's ever a sure thing. It opens with a nightclub playing Bauhaus (and one of the first songs on "My History of Goth Rock" post, 9/2/08), it features music video style editing (just a couple years after MTV was born) and starred David Bowie the same year that he released "China Girl", "Let's Dance" and "Modern Love." Music is almost the only thing I can recommend about the movie. The soundtrack features two pieces from Bach, one of them being the "Suite for Cello" that I first discovered on The Soloist movie trailer, one piece from Schubert, and last but not least, the "Flower Duet" from the opera, Lakmé, by Delibes. A few months ago I purchased, count 'em up, SIX different versions of the "Flower Duet" on iTunes and I like them all equally. Don't ask me what that has to do with vampires but if you think about it, what better way to spend eternity than catching up on classical composers and learning to play the violin?

'90s Vampire Movie I Just Saw for the First Time

Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (two and a half stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - a war between creationist and evolutionist vampires, with Dracula taking a side

They say no one ever sets out to make a bad movie (see also my "Difference Between Craptastic and Cult Movies" post, 11/5/09), but lots of people specifically set out to make B-movies. Historically, the term merely meant the second half of a double feature. The word "less" comes up a lot when discussing B-movies, as in "less" of a budget, "lesser"-known actors and the "least" number of minutes necessary to be considered a feature-length film. Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat proudly wears its genre conventions like a B-movie badge of honor, but it doesn't exactly fit the above criteria. It's cheap if that's how you feel about claymation. It's underground if you've never heard of stars like John Carradine (Kung Fu and Kill Bill) and Bruce Campbell (The Evil Dead and Spider-Man trilogies). At 104 minutes, it's not a sweeping epic, but this horror-comedy with utopian sci-fi themes and a western setting still feels stretched thin. By giving the movie two stars, I don't mean to imply that it's horrible. Rather, it's a horror movie for people who don't like horror movies. I liked the "hemotechnics" laboratory, the umbrella impaling death sequence and the awesome '80s rock, not so much the red-flashing bat-vision, the soap opera subplot and the re-recorded versions of '50s doo wop numbers like "Earth Angel." At first it looks like it was filmed on location at Monument Valley, where John Ford use to make all his John Wayne westerns (see the panoramic picture above). Turns out it was shot just three hours north of that, outside of Moab, Utah (see the panoramic picture below). That leads me to my final observation. So much of Sundown is steeped in Americana - the old hicks swinging in overalls at the service station, the small town diner and the Manifest Destiny that applies even to vampires. It's not a period piece though. It doesn't trace vampire history back to the Wild West or show what vampires were up to during the Prohibition era, For that, you can check out American Vampire, a comic book series that was started by Stephen King.

Disneyland Versus Universal Studios

I'm sorry for bragging, but we've been to Disneyland for free three years in a row now. It's all thanks to my wife's blog. My little blog has nothing to do with it. Each year there's a Family Media Day. I found it amusing that this year's coincided with Gay Days Anaheim, so there were a bunch of people in red shirts with suggestive phrases on them. Last year we went at night to California Adventure for Mickey's Trick-or-Treat Party. It's nice to switch back and forth. The only added horror comes in the form of some mean-looking Jack O'Lanterns next to the children's petting zoo. They do change the Space Mountain roller coaster to Ghost Galaxy and the Haunted Mansion attraction gets a Nightmare Before Christmas makeover. Nothing against Tim Burton, but I prefer the traditional Haunted Mansion sights and sounds. They don't assault the eyes with as much neon or assault the ears with the same repetitive kiddie bop. The biggest advantage (and I've mentioned this before in my Legoland post, 4/17/09) that Disney theme parks have over others is density. When you're standing in line, there's always something to look at in any direction and there's room to breathe but not a lot of walking.

When my son was one, he cuddled up to Aladdin's Genie, but this year he was wary of Disney Villains Jafar, Cruella de Vil and the wicked Queen from Snow White.

My favorite Jack O'Lantern was this snowman-style Queen of Hearts.

More than the castle, more than Tom Sawyer Island, even more than the Haunted Mansion, my favorite scenic spot is in front of Monstro the whale's mouth at the Storybook Land Canal Boatride.

This has nothing to do with Halloween or horror, but there's a countdown for the new nighttime programming to promote Tron: Legacy (opening 12/17/10) at the entrance of California Adventure.

Tomorrow marks seven years since my wife and I honeymooned in Orlando, Florida and attended Halloween Horror Nights XIII, the last of such events that was held exclusively at Universal's Islands of Adventure. This year is only the fifth annual at Universal Studios Hollywood, even though they started in 1997 (they went on hiatus from 2001-2005). The one we did on our honeymoon had more varied settings. There was a street covered with "toxic waste," a jungle maze, a tour of a sanitarium and another on a haunted boat. Four out of the five mazes at this year's were named after horror film franchises and three out of those took place mostly inside houses. The fifth maze was a castle featuring a mix of all the classic Universal monsters. Every maze had strobe lighting, threads hanging in the dark to mimic spider webs and narrow halls with body bags to push out of the way. The streets in between each maze featured different masked maniacs with chainsaws. The masks varied from asylum escapees to circus freaks to clowns but the chainsaws were a consistent theme. To sum it up in two words - sensory overload.

I missed this year's backlot tour, Terror Tram: Chucky's Revenge, but I did see a lot of movie props like this knife from My Soul To Take (opening this coming weekend).

The best and most disturbing maze was named after Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses. Each room showed a murder scene from a different real-life serial killer. It was gory enough that I don't feel the need to ever go to another haunted tour/corn maze. I mean, you can't top this one, and if you can, I don't wanna know about it.

I have no idea who these kids are but they provided the perfect pose as I was passing by.

This is under the Universal Citywalk outdoor shopping mall. We ate at a Brazilian steakhouse there where actual Carnival dancers put on shows every hour.