Showing posts with label monsters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monsters. Show all posts

Monday, October 15, 2012

October Watch: The Phantom of the Opera (1943)

It speaks volumes about the work done in the 1925 silent version of Phantom of the Opera that its still the version of the story most people are familiar with, and which evokes images in the mind somehow more powerful than a smash Broadway musical that's been running for 250 years.

For reasons as mysterious to myself as anyone else, I read the original novel by Gaston Leroux when I was 15.  The book was a spirited, if creepy, adventure story about a very odd, very deadly music enthusiast living in the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera House.

If you've never seen the Chaney-starring version of the movie, you absolutely should.  I saw it the first time in high school when I bought a copy of the movie out of a bin of movies which had seen their copyrights expire and I've tired to own a copy in whatever has been the latest video technology.  You can watch the film now at Netflix!

However, that's not the version that came with my new Universal Monsters boxed set, likely because of the lapsed copyright.  Instead, I got this 1943 version starring the always terrific Claude Rains as The Phantom.


Sunday, October 14, 2012

Octoberama! Sundays with The Bride!

Hair and make-up check.

It takes work to look this good.



October Watch: Frankenweenie (2012)

I had actually planned to go see Hotel Transylvania this weekend, but then I looked at Rottentomatoes and had second thoughts.  That movie had scored a 43%, but I noticed Frankenweenie was cruising at around 86%.

The trick is that I like Halloween movies, and Jamie will not watch anything scary.  I've had The Thing on BluRay forever, and one day she'll watch it, but that day has not yet come.  But we can do movies where all the monsters are silly, etc...  My biggest issue is that I haven't really cared much for Tim Burton's work since the golden age of Ed Wood and Mars Attacks.*  I know he has his devoted following, and good for you.  I am not to be counted among your number.

Anyone who's marginally aware of Burton's history knew he was working at Disney when he made Vincent and the original short of Frankenweenie, which, in the post-Batman brouhaha, used to be available on VHS for rent, but for some reason I never did.


Friday, October 12, 2012

October Watch: Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Probably the weirdest thing about this movie, an all ages movie featuring classic Universal Monsters at their least scary meeting the comedy duo of Abbott & Costello, is that there's a sort of continuity to the Universal Monster pictures, and this movie is absolutely a part of the long narrative tied together by meetings of Frankenstein, Wolfman and Dracula.

In fact, in addition to the stars in the title, this movie also features Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Lon Chaney Jr. as Talbot/ The Wolfman, and Glenn Strange as Frankenstein's monster (who he'd played in at least 2 prior films).  It's 17 years after the first Dracula film and 16 years after Frankenstein (and 7 years after The Wolfman, so you don't need to look that up).



Sunday, October 7, 2012

October Watch: Dracula's Daughter (1936)

I can't remember if I'd watched this movie before or not, because bits looked familiar, but I'm counting this as my first viewing of Dracula's Daughter (1936).

Following quickly on the heels of 1935's Bride of Frankenstein, this movie took a different angle from the Frankenstein sequel, and this one features a lot of the titular character instead of a scant few minutes and mostly hissing at Karloff.  However, it lacks any of the over-the-top insanity of Bride.



Octoberama! Sundays with The Bride!


Ms. Elsa Lanchester takes five on the set of Bride of Frankenstein

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Signal Event: Anyone Want to Catch a Frankenstein Double-Bill on October 24th?

Holy cats, people.



On October 24th, Fathom Events will be showing both of the James Whale directed Frankenstein movies at cinemas all across the country.

Basically, the movie theater will show a high-resolution digital copy of the movie in full cinematic sound, etc...  and you sit in your theater seat and eat popcorn and whatnot and know you're sharing the same experience with people all across the country.

So, a double-bill?  Well, yes.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Signal Watch Watches: Frankenstein Island (1981 - but you'd never know it from looking at the movie)

I don't really know where to start.

Ok.

To explain, we watched the VOD version of this movie from RiffTrax with Doug, and he was right - the new VOD stuff RiffTrax is doing is every bit as good as the better MST3K stuff.

While the RiffTrax guys strayed from the world of punching-bag-bad movies and have stepped up to big budget Hollywood stuff in this format (and absolutely killed with it), it's still fun to see the old tools come out and see these guys at work.

So...  Frankenstein Island (1981).  

Oh, John Carradine, even your unused b-roll deserved better...

There are many things one could say about this movie, and among those things is the idea I find inescapable that director Jerry Warren, who had spent the mid-50's through the mid-60's creating the exact sort of movie that wound up on MST3K in the first place, was sitting around with his pals and said "Hey, let's do one more!  It'll be great.  Let's make a movie!" and this is what happened.  And so, in a way, I really hope those guys had fun making the movie, because it makes no sense and it's both mind-boggling and boring.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Klaatu Barada Nikto! Paramount Austin Sci-Fi Week is Coming

Hey, Austinites!



It's about to be Sci-Fi Week at Austin's own Paramount Theater, August 14-19!

There's a great bunch of films coming, and I am up for any and/ or all of them.

Let me know if any of this looks like fun, and we can join up downtown.

"Gort.  You stay here and watch the car."

  • Day the Earth Stood Still
  • Forbidden Planet
  • Metropolis
  • The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
  • Planet of the Apes
  • Invasion of the Body Snatchers
  • The Terminator
  • A Clockwork Orange

A lot of these movies are showing three days, so we have lots of options.

in case you couldn't guess, I'm pretty keen on seeing "Beast from 20,000 Fathoms".  And hearing Jamie surely describe the monster as "really cute!".

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Movie Watch 2012: "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Godzilla: Final Wars"

Bond

It was Bond week this week at Austin's Paramount Theater.  Sadly, I was pre-occupied and unable to make it to the screening of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which I really wanted to see.

One summer when I was in middle school, Jason and I would go to the video rental place, return the last Bond movie we'd rented and check out another.  In this manner, we watched every Bond movie but Thunderball, which I still haven't seen.  The problem with this method was that within two years, all of the movies had sort of bled together in my mind, so I could only remember specific set pieces and the occasional Bond girl.

Thanks to TBS and a few other sources, I've watched several Bond movies over since then, and I do like catching the movies over again now, but I make an effort to watch them pretty far apart so they don't blend together again.  And, for the record, Connery, of course.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) stars Roger Moore as Bond, and it's from the point where the Bond franchise became a bit too enamored with quippy one-liners and just took it for granted that women melted under Bond's icy gaze.  It's a fun movie, and it has some great Q gadgets, a phenomenally cool villain base, gadgets and private military (sherbet colored uniforms?  Where do I sign up?!).  The plan is pretty poorly sketched, but whatever.  It's post-Connery/ pre-Timothy Dalton Bond, and its not all that different from what we'd see with Pierce Brosnan later.

And, hey, this is the one with the Lotus that turns into a submarine.

The movie makes an attempt to give Bond a sexy female Russian counterpart, but, truthfully, the base misogyny of the Bond franchise hadn't quite sort through itself, leaving Barbara Bach mostly standing around beside Bond as he Bonds his way around.  I'm not sure Bach is also the most compelling Bond girl, but she does the job.

It's not my favorite Moore entry (For Your Eyes Only, probably), but it does feature "Nobody Does it Better" performed by Carly Simon, which is a pretty great Bond theme - and has a Bond opening sequence that well reminds you why they changed those for the Daniel Craig years, even if it's pretty brilliant.

Godzilla

Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) was Toho's "we can't top this" ending to production of Godzilla movies after 50 years.  I'd heard they'd planned to stop making them prior to the US produced Godzilla starring Matthew Broderick, but after that trainwreck, they felt like they needed to keep making their own films.

I will give Godzilla: Final Wars this:  you have no idea where this movie is going when the movie begins.  I can promise you:  mutants, aliens, Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan and a dozen other Kaiju, super ninja fights, matrix-style battles, sexy biologists and reporters, international/ interplanetary intrigue, the destruction of a half-dozen cities on at least four continents and a wildly out of control costuming department.  Oh, and a really amazing mustache.

I don't really know how to sell this movie other than to say: hold tight and leave expectation at the door.

And, f-yeah, Godzilla.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Signal Watch Watches: Mothra (1961)

Well, of COURSE I watched Mothra (1961).  It came on right after Rodan, so I recorded it to my DVR and watched it later.

Uh...



So, I don't know how many Toho Studios Kaiju movies you've watched.  I've seen about 10-15% of their output, and I've always liked "the twins", the two mysterious faeries that popped up and sang and seemed to be friends with all the giant monsters on Monster Island.  I had never seen the original Mothra movie, but had seen the giant flying bug in other Godzilla films, and not found her without her charms.  But after the super rampage that was Rodan, something about this film seemed a bit too tame, and sort of pre-sages the era of movies wherein we'll lose focus from steely-jawed scientists, wise-cracking journalists and other adults in the lead and devolve into an endless sea of kids in bad shorts named "Kenny" as the protagonist of the film.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Movie Watch 2012 - Rodan (1956)

I have no idea why, but when I got home tonight from Boston, I watched almost all of kaiju super fest Rodan from 1956.  

The movie attempts to find the same mournful tone as Gojira, but misses by a bit while still sticking a bummer of an ending onto an otherwise pretty spunky movie.  Jamie was not a fan of Rodan, either as a movie or a muppet.  I thought it had its charms, but Rodan's lack of atomic-fire-breathw as apparently a big red "x" against our flying petaranodon (or however the movie spelled pteranodon).

Rodan!


I also liked their models in this movie.  They actually moved WHILE shooting.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Re-Watch: Trollhunter (2010)

Last night Jamie was out of town, so a few pals came by and our gameplan was to eat lousy Greek food, make a drink and then watch Crank 2.  Tragically, this was not to be.

I opened the NetFlix sleeve, popped in the disk and was ready to roll when we received an error message from the player.  The disk was for some PS3 game, and most certainly NOT for Crank 2.  So some poor 19 year old out there is wondering where his copy of Battlefield went.*

Plan B was to watch Troll 2, but that was deemed "@#$%ing unwatchable" by some in attendance, so Matt said "if we're going to watch something with trolls in it**, let's watch Trollhunter".

So we did.

Here's what I said about the movie when I caught it in the theater almost exactly a year ago.

I'm not sure I really sold the movie back then as well as I could have, but its a really fun flick, and not scary at all, if that's your concern.  Its just a fun time, and, as Matt said "definitely one of the best of these 'found film' movies."

I loved the discussion of the physiology of trolls, the shadowy Troll Security Service, etc...  all good stuff.

Anyway, its on Netflix Streaming, so check it out.



*I've got it!
**I'm not sure "trolls" was our only criteria, but it made sense at the time.


Monday, May 28, 2012

Signal Watch Watches: King Kong (1933)

I was in high school before I got to see King Kong (1933) in its entirety, and I've probably seen it almost a dozen times since.  Before that I had seen both the 1976 version of King Kong with Jessica Lange and the almost forgotten King Kong Lives (1986) in the theater.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Like A Doll's Eyes - Quint's Monologue

As we head toward Memorial Day, a day of remembering our fallen soldiers here in the US, and as we cross the threshold into summer (at least here below the the Mason-Dixon Line), I am already pondering not if, but when, I will watch Jaws this summer.

I can't remember the last time I saw a movie with a monologue, a real monologue, included.  I don't suppose the kids these days would sit for a full two or three minutes of somebody just, you know, talking, without pulling out their cell phones and texting away.  But this is from an era of filmmaking that wasn't entirely about avoiding risk, perhaps the only serious era where this occurred at the studios.

No matter how many time I watch it, Robert Shaw's speech about the sinking of the Indianapolis still hits me.  Its a terrific bit of film writing and an amazing performance to match, all carried by the extremely young Steven Spielberg behind the camera.



The sinking of the Indianapolis as described by Shaw's character Quint was all too real, the details of which had only been released to the public in the few years previous to when Jaws hit theaters, and not many had heard the story.

Clearly the speech sets the motivation for Quint, that its far more than about the $10,000 plus expenses, and it gives the film's primordial man vs. nature premise a bent that supersedes Brody's duty and Hooper's scientific curiosity.  And, in many ways, despite tying the film to World War II, it also manages to decouple the film from a 70's creature movie, placing it alongside Melville as a seafaring journey, a sort of tale of revenge against the very sea that gives the character meaning.

Memorial Day isn't just about car sales or a day off.

1100 men went in the water, 316 men come out.  The sharks took the rest.  June the 29th, 1945.


Monday, May 14, 2012

Signal Watch Watches: Curse of Bigfoot (1976)/ Teenagers Battle The Thing (1958) - with RiffTrax

Wow.

There are a few breeds of "bad movies" out there.  This one falls into the "contemptibly incompetent/ nobody here knew how to make a movie.  No, that is not hyperbole, these people really had no idea what they were doing.  At all." category, the reigning champion of which still seems to be Monster-a-Go-Go (1965), but just by a sasquatch hair.

While Monster-a-Go-Go has its own stunning production history to consider, Curse of Bigfoot is a 1976 repackaged 1958 movie originally titled Teenagers Battle The Thing.



Apparently seeking to cash in on the mid-1970's Bigfoot craze (yes, our younger readers, there was a mid-1970's Bigfoot craze.  I don't know.  How do any of these things happen?  I blame The Six Million Dollar Man and In Search Of, but they seem to post-date this movie, so I have no clue, man.  Bigfoot and Wildboy?).

Signal Watch Watches: Twilight - Breaking Dawn, Part 1 (with RiffTrax)

Without RiffTrax, its impossible for me to wrap my head around the experience of viewing any of the Twilight films.  It's safe to say: I am not in the demographic to which the series is aimed.  But it's also become a hugely successful movie series, spinning off the classic vampire genre and tropes, and we quite like monster movies, so there you go.

In the spirit of full disclsure, before starting the movie, we armored up with a couple of cocktails and with the protective barrier of RiffTrax to shield us a bit from unfiltered Twilightness.  I, myself, wore the mithril coat of Manhattans made with generous portions of Bulleit.

Seriously, all of these people can shut up now.  Except the girl on the left.  She's cute enough, she gets a pass.


Let's get the preliminaries out of the way.
  • Kristen Stewart is both bad and insufferable in these movies, a fact which is mind-boggling considering how many directors have now had a crack at her.  I have to assume her stammering, energy-free performances in these films suggest a level of contempt for the material that one must share in order to properly decipher her true intention.  Or else she's just that bad.
  • Robert Pattinson's "Edward" may be handsome, I guess, but he's otherwise completely worthless as a character.  Since the first movie, in which he stalked Bella into submission, he's since mostly been dialog-free and at an arm's length from Bella, enough so that they seem like work acquaintances than the subjects of the most popular romance in pop fiction.
  • The core of the drama in the Twilight movies stems from the fact that the characters seem incapable of making decisions or taking action, and are very into waiting to see what happens.  I don't like the term "proactive", either, but I don't think its particularly useful to tell four books' worth of stories and never present anyone making a decision other than "I'm in love, I guess".
  • Oddly, discussing this movie aimed at a YA audience is going to spawn one of the more adults conversations we're going to have around here.  Mainly because I'm not sure any adults were associated with the making of this film.
  • Do not be confused by the length of this discussion.  This is a terrible movie.  Frankly, its one of the worst high-budget feature films I've seen in my entire life.  Its just astonishingly terrible on any level you'd care to discuss.  We're really going to rein it in here this evening so that we can try to retain some focus, but suffice it to to say, one could spill no small number of bits dissecting how this movie is a failure on every level.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Boy, can I relate

The early 90's were a difficult period for yours truly...

don't worry, kid.  A little Retin-A will clear that right up

Just a quick note... the woman who played Lois Lane on Season 1 of The Adventures of Superman, Phyllis Coates, appears in this movie.  As much as I am on record regarding my love for Noel Neill, Ms. Coates was pretty great, too.


Saturday, January 7, 2012

Movies 2012: MST3K watched Gamera

In the spirit of naming every movie I watch this year, with the help of Joel, Tom Servo and Crow, last night I watched Gamera.


You can watch it on Netflix streaming RIGHT NOW.

I don't know what one says about Gamera that hasn't been said before.  Its a movie about a 40-story, ancient, bi-pedal turtle that absorbs heat and energy as food (so missles, etc...  only make him stronger), spits it out as atomic mouth blasts and rampages like Godzilla with none of the motivation or style, but that turtle has joie de vivre.  Oh, and he can fly.  Its a mixed bag.

Mostly, we all come to Gamera to hate Kenny.  Because Kenny sucks.

Gamera to scale with a model of a boat.
Really, I can handle Godzilla movies on their own, but the only way to watch Gamera is with a healthy dose of The Satellite of Love.  I recommend watching with MST3K.