Tag: horror

Michael Curtiz, Part 2 – Weird Scenes Inside the Wax Museum

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The directorial personality of Michael Curtiz remains elusive, but his visual talent is indisputable. Look closely at the lighting and composition of these images from Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). If Curtiz had directed no other films than Mystery of the Wax Museum and Dr. X (1932) – both of which were photographed in [...]

Forgotten Fathers – Maurice Tourneur, Richard Oswald

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The Frenchman, Maurice Tourneur, and the Austrian, Richard Oswald, were major producer/directors during cinema’s Silent Era, but are hardly remembered today. These days, movie lovers are more likely to know the films and television shows directed by their sons — Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, Out of the Past), and Gerd Oswald (Brainwashed, Screaming [...]

Book Review: Lost Horizons Beneath the Hollywood Sign by David Del Valle

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   Lost Horizons Beneath the Hollywood Sign, by David Del Valle. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media, 2010. Paperback. $27.95. 458 pp. ISBN 1593936079.   David Del Valle collects. Among other things, he collects movie people. Lost Horizons Beneath the Hollywood Sign is a book of reminiscences, some of which previously appeared in Films in Review, of movie [...]

MYSTERY PHOTO

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Speaking of campy extraterrestrials, do you recognize this classic horror film star? Here’s another publicity image from the same production. I hope you’re as surprised and delighted as I was.  It’s Ernest Thesiger, best known as Dr. Pretorius in James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein, playing “The Monster,”  a talking microbe (not really an extraterrestrial, but he sure looks [...]

Campy Extraterrestrials – Michael Gough vs. Dudley Manlove

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I have written before of my admiration for the late Michael Gough (1916-2011), a British actor who could move effortlessly from the serious classical theater of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Harold Pinter, and Berthold Brecht, to the florid melodramas of Jimmy Sangster and Herman Cohen.  Which is another way of saying that – like Sirs Laurence Olivier, Alec Guinness, or John Gielgud [...]

Poster Comparison No. 9 – Kaleidoscope Frenzy

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Reaching across time, this poster for Gregg Araki’s 2011 film, Ka-Boom, echoes the kaleidoscopic poster design of Daniel Haller’s 1970 psychedelic monster-fest, The Dunwich Horror (screenplay by Curtis Hanson), and makes explicit the subtext of the earlier film, which is Those Crazy Kids.

Frazetta and the Mothman

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Another masterpiece by the late Frank Frazetta (1928-2010), and a classic example of how Hollywood studio thinking  – a misguided attempt to reach the widest demographic possible — destroyed the potential of a great property.  Frazetta’s cover painting illustrates and was inspired by John A. Keel’s 1975 non-fiction book, The Mothman Prophecies, about a cluster of paranormal [...]

An Atheist’s Guide to “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

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When you believe in things you don’t understand, you suffer. –Stevie Wonder In 1949 Walt Disney Studios produced the last, and arguably the best, of their “package” films – barely-feature length vignette collections made on reduced budgets during World War II for theatrical distribution – though the dyad of animated novellas included are improved little [...]

Ed Wood Blogathon: Screwy Details in THE NIGHT OF THE GHOULS

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It’s a shame that Ed Wood’s last non-skin film, NIGHT OF THE GHOULS (1959), had to go unseen all through the prime time of Wade Williams’ TV horror package. It was also never released theatrically, so there’s no original movie poster, just video cover art. Williams coughed up the lab fee Wood could never afford [...]

Poster Comparison No. 7

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Patrick Goldstein of the L.A. Times has some interesting observations to make concerning the Drag Me to Hell poster (top). As he notes, the actress’s wide open mouth seems to express orgasmic ecstasy rather than the horror of being dragged down to hell: “If this is a horror film where she’s supposed to be scared, [...]

DRAG ME TO HELL / STUCK – Women in Trouble

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The first is a supernatural horror film. The second is a horror story without any trace of the supernatural. Otherwise, they are remarkably similar. Both apply the horror film’s fundamental “return of the repressed” formula to the current economic malaise. Both films feature pretty but not-so-sympathetic heroines whose independence as career women is visually defined [...]

The Incredibly Strange Ray Dennis Steckler (1938-2009)

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Bright Lights After Dark pauses to remember Ray Dennis Steckler, denizen of Hollywood and Las Vegas, a truly independent filmmaker who was anathema to the studios, but who nonetheless managed to produce, direct, and often star in a series of mostly self-financed and self-distributed horror/noir/comedy/rock ‘n roll films with titles like Wild Guitar, The Thrill [...]

Bye Bye Forry (Forrest J Ackerman, 1916-2008)

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I just learned by way of CINEBEATS that Forrest J Ackerman, a man who inspired so many of us – as film fan and friend to film fans, as a writer, as the editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, as a literary agent, and one of the world’s leading collectors of all things science fiction [...]

Palin Meets EC

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The latest issue of Tales From the Crypt (inspired by the 1950s EC Comic of the same name) features Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin wielding a hockey stick at the Crypt’s storytelling inhabitants. The publisher assures us that his intentions were completely non-partisan: “[A]ny White House candidate who even entertains a conversation about book banning [...]

Overlooked Noir – John Brahm and Let Us Live (1939)

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Conventional wisdom tells us that the first “true” film noirs were made in the early 1940s, with 1941′s The Maltese Falcon generally considered “the unofficial beginning of the noir cycle” (Alain Silver). Conventional wisdom is sometimes wrong. Take a look at these frames from John Brahm’s Let Us Live (1939), and ask yourself if there [...]

Cloverfield Lover Castigates Critics

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Reviewers who have written about Cloverfield fall largely into two categories: (1) those who appreciate the horror and sci-fi genres and who are more than willing to applaud when a genuinely innovative and entertaining genre film comes along; and (2) those who would never be caught dead praising a “giant monster movie” and can think [...]

Plainview as Nosferatu: “I Drink it Up!”

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  John Ford taught us to regard every Western as an allegorical comment on America. And most of them are in some way. But Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood is so abstract, primal, and fundamentally ambiguous that it lends itself to any number of readings. Which is maybe why cinebloggers can’t stop writing [...]

The White Reindeer (Valkoinen Peura, 1952)

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Christa Lang Fuller, widow of Sam, in response to my post re 31 Essential Horror Films writes: “Please add Valkoinen peura (1952) to the top of your list as one of the finest and scariest horror films ever made … it’s a masterpiece waiting to be rediscovered.”    I’d never heard of Valkoinen peura, and [...]

Halloween Special – 31 Essential Horror Films

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Boris Karloff in “The Wurdalak” episode of Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath (1963) This is my ranked list of 31 Essential Horror Films culled from Ed Hardy, Jr.’s 183 Official Nominees for the 31 Flicks That Give You the Willies List. In keeping with the parameters of Ed’s poll, my primary criterion for inclusion and ranking [...]

The Gorey Factor

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Some still dispute whether Edward Gorey (1925-2000) was fundamentally an artist who wrote, or a writer who drew. Gorey was, in fact, both an accomplished writer and an accomplished artist who – like many of the greatest filmmakers – combined word and image to create a recognizable world of his own. Gorey’s influence on the [...]

Farewell to Curtis Harrington (1928-2007)

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Curtis Harrington was something of a role model for me, if only because he moved so gracefully through so many barriers that seem impenetrable to others, the barriers between amateur and professional, between critic and artist, between avant-garde and mainstream. A true film buff, he was just as likely to be seen in the audience [...]

2 or 3 Aspects of the Ackermonster

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On November 24, 2006, we wish a Happy and Hearty 90th Birthday to Forrest J Ackerman, writer, collector, literary agent, former editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, and ultimate fan of horror and sci-fi movies. (He coined the term “sci-fi,” for Cthulhu’s sake!) I plan to be out of town for the Thanksgiving weekend, so [...]

Halloween Apologies to George Robinson

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When I referred to the cinematography of George Robinson on the Spanish Drácula as relatively “crude,” I was comparing it to the sublime cinematography of Karl Freund (see, “Browning and the Slow Club” below). Robinson was by no means untalented and, in fact, had a long distinguished career in the horror genre, following his work [...]

Browning and the Slow Club

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Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) has gotten a bad rap in recent years. Some have even gone so far as to maintain that the 1931 Spanish version (shot on the same sets at night by George Melford, a non-Spanish-speaking director) is “technically superior.” Leaving aside the relative lack of distinction of the Spanish-speaking cast, the crudeness [...]