Happy Birthday, Elsa Lanchester

Happy Birthday, Elsa.  

Today marks Lanchester's 124th birthday.

Thanks to Elsa for marrying Laughton and giving hope to dumpy dudes who hope their sparkling personalities will make up for everything else.

Walter Koenig Merges With The Infinite

Sorry to hear about the passing of acting Walter Koenig.  

Whenever one of the cast of Star Trek passes, it feels like you're hearing someone you knew in high school or college has gone to their reward.  And surely Koenig is no different.

As part of the main Star Trek crew who appeared across the series and into the movies, he's been a staple in my life since I was 9 years old.  Of course seeing him appear outside of Star Trek was always welcome, but without his Chekov accent, it was always a little odd.

We don't have much of the original crew left.  He'll be missed.

Horror Watch: Dolls (1986)

Watched:  10/25/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  I'll call it a first viewing

Director:  Stuart Gordon

Sometimes I just want to know what the story is or was about a movie more than I care about the movie.

One day I'll do a full de-brief on Stuart Gordon's From Beyond, but the movie which is the subject of our post - Dolls (1986) - and From Beyond were apparently shot back-to-back re-using some of the same locations and sets.  They certainly share some of the same producers and a Director of Photography, Mac Ahlberg.

I'm guessing Dolls was shot as a sure-fire money-maker - and it's worth noting one of the producers involved with Dolls wound up writing Puppetmaster - which has a cameo by our own Barbara Crampton, star of From Beyond.  

Frank Watch: The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

Watched:  10/24/2026

Viewing:  Third?

Format:  Disc

Director:  Terence Fisher

One of the fun things about having Peter Cushing in so many Hammer and horror movies is that you can see how Hammer had specific ideas and Cushing absolutely crushes it when he plays both the absolutely vile Victor Frankenstein versus the obsessive but good Van Helsing. 

Yes, of course, Christopher Lee shows his range as The Creature and Dracula - two *very* different roles.  But Cushing goes from one of the most well-crafted concepts for a villain in cinema in the Frankenstein movies to one of the most driven/ obsessed heroes in Van Helsing.   Good stuff.

Noir Watch: The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

Watched:  10/22/2026

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Stevenson

We're still in the late 1940's with the release of The Woman on Pier 13 (1949), and there's still more of the grit in the movies that audiences felt reflected the post-war moment than we'd see five or six years later, even in noir.

A movie about the ruthlessness of American Communists and romance twisted to obsession into cruelty, the movie finds us alongside newlyweds Brad and Nan Collins (Robert Ryan and Laraine Day).  Ryan plays a guy who came up the hard way, from a San Francisco stevedore to the newly appointed Vice President of a shipping company.  

He's met Day as the decorator for his office and married her within two weeks - something that movies treated as fairly *normal* until the 1960's.*  During their honeymoon, two things occur.  

Vamp Watch: Interview with the Vampire - The Vampire Chronicles (1994)

Watched:  10/22/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Neil Jordan

Credit where it's due.  We don't get the last 30 years of vampire media without, first, Anne Rice's vampire novels and probably not without Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994).  It's also hard to explain what a huge deal Anne Rice was in an era of B. Dalton book stores and a lack of access to somewhat transgressive fiction for suburban kids.  You want quasi-queer fiction you can read at the lunch table?  This was it.  And, there is a line somewhere from Anne Rice's novels to Twilight to stuff like Vampire Academy and, absolutely, the current popularity of supernatural romance.  

I should be clear - I'm more of a Bela Lugosi / Nosferatu / Sinners / Near Dark kind of vampire guy.  I've never read any of Rice's books.  And in 1994, I took a pass on the movie in the theaters, in part because I was busy with college, and in part because I thought Tom Cruise was a chode who had weaseled his way into the movie.

I finally watched Interview with the Vampire on VHS by myself at some point shortly after it hit the Blockbuster - but I couldn't tell you when.  All I can tell you is that I was really, really bored.  

Well, I have news about re-watching this movie in 2026.

Tom Skerritt Merges With the Infinite

Actor Tom Skerritt, fixture of five decades of film, has passed.

Skerritt was kind of amazing because you could just drop him in anywhere and he was buyable.  Running a space ship hauler?  Sure!  Someone's dad in Wyoming.  Why not?  Sometimes the stalwart, sometimes the villain, we always got the assignment.

He'll be missed.

85th Anniversary of Wonder Woman

Today marks the 85th Anniversary of Wonder Woman.

Oh, gosh, I guess it was around 2000 that I picked up my first Wonder Woman comic during the Phil Jimenez run.  I'd seen positive comments online (where was I looking for comic news in 2000?) and the character, on the page, immediately clicked.  

I know I was already interested from reading Morrison's JLA, and was sampling all of the JLA at that time.  I was a real Martian Manhunter fiend for a while there.

Jimenez was pivoting away from the sexed up art that had appeared in preceding years in the pages of Wonder Woman - the 90's were an odd time for comic art with some, uh, ideas about anatomy and the general thong-i-ness of female character's costumes. His Diana was an athletic, impressive figure drawn beautifully, but without a hint of exploitation.  He understood the character and how she fit into the world - her wisdom was mistaken for naivete, her kindness mistaken for weakness, but at her core, she was made of the strongest iron.    

And she proved them all wrong again and again.

Noir Watch: The Chicago Syndicate (1954)

Watched:  10/20/2026

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Director:  Fred F. Sears

This was... shockingly good.  Or, at least, The Chicago Syndicate (1954) really landed for me.  Maybe I was shocked it wasn't bad, tilting into me outright enjoying the film.  

I don't rank movies by numbers or stars or whatever, but I give it... 7 Emmylous.  

just one Emmylou is quite a good thing to have

I will not be explaining this ranking system at this time.

It's perhaps because the movie has the quick pacing of nearly a modern film, or because they throw both Allison Hayes and Abbe Lane at you...  Anyway -  I dug it.  

Horror Watch: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Watched:  10/18/2026

Format:  State Theater/ Panic at the Paramount

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Robert Fuest

A couple of weeks ago, pal-CB asked if I wanted to go see The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) at Panic at the Paramount, a now-annual film series hosted between the Paramount Theatre (currently closed for remodeling) and its sister theater/ nextdoor facility, The State Theater.  

Really, it should just be a rule that when someone asks you if you want to see Dr. Phibes, you say "yes".  

A very odd comedy-horror, there are movies with similar plots, including Price's own Theatre of Blood, but nothing else feels like or even looks like The Abominable Dr. Phibes.  It's set in 1920's London with a mix of chic art deco architecture and old-school Victorian homes and offices.  Phibes himself dwells in the coolest villain layer I can think of - complete with his own Rock-a-Fire Explosion mechanical band.