Hallo-Watch: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Watched:  10/31/2026

Format:  4K disc

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  James Whale

Well, we managed to get in a viewing.  It wasn't easy, but we did it. 

Still top-tier for me, not as a sequel, but as a movie on its own.  

I've been watching this movie for Halloween every year since at least 2015.   Maybe earlier.  I've lost track, and in ye olden days, this blog wasn't exactly a film-watching journal.  So.  I don't know beyond 2015.  I do suspect I've seen this movie at least 20 times.  More likely, something like 25-30 times.  I don't believe I saw it until 2003 when Universal put out a crate of horror movies, so it's been a lot of catch-up.

As we discussed whilst discussing this year's viewing of Frankenstein, it felt like that movie left a lot of gaps in the conversation.  Bride of Frankenstein picks up saying directly to the audience "oh, we weren't done.  That's only half the story," and starts addressing those questions artfully and with pathos and a huge helping of humor.

Hallo-Watch: Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Watched:  10/30/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing: First.  Ha.  Just kidding.

Director:  Frank Oz

James F. watched this and we had a bit of a convo about it in his comments, so I found myself watching Little Shop of Horrors (1986).  Again.  

I highly recommend checking out James' blog.  Dude is crushing it over there, and had some interesting thoughts on this film.  I don't always line up exactly (that would be boring), but I always get his point.  Get over there and check him out.  

So, read his post.  My comments I'll limit.  We've all seen the movie.

First, my crush on Audrey (if not Ellen Greene) continues on uninterrupted since a screening in 1986.  Well done.  We wrote about our crush 18 years ago at the old blog.

Frank Watch: Frankenstein (1931)

Watched:  10/30/2026

Format:  4K Disc, kids.  Yes, I bought a 4K disc so I could see film grain, I guess.

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  James Whale

Uh...  I have watched this movie a lot, and written about it a lot.  We do watch this movie every Halloween, which happens almost every year, from what I'm told.

Think, me, think.  What's our angle this time?

So, I think it's worth talking about the movie in non-poetic terms and just what actually happens.  

Henry Frankenstein creates his human, and clearly shows why he should never be asked to raise a puppy.  One, he mostly leaves his creation in the care of his helper, Fritz (you think his name is Igor.  It's Fritz.) who is a malicious bastard and tortures the monster.   Two, rather than initially being horrified, it seems Henry Frankenstein just gives up on the creature because he's too much work.

Sir Patrick Stewart Merges With The Infinite

Well, I've already pushed back some tears about this one.

Sir Patrick Stewart, our captain, has passed.  He was 86.

Prepare for a few generations of people to be really broken up about losing one of the bright stars of our firmament.

I had seen Stewart in one or two things before I came to know him as Captain Picard with the Star Trek: The Next Generation pilot, Encounter at Farpoint.  I was, originally, a bit thrown.  But, within a few episodes, I understood what Stewart was bringing to the screen.

By the time I left for college it was with a poster that was just Picard, and so it was that Patrick Stewart - in the form of Jean-Luc - watched over me my freshman year.    

It turned out that Sir Patrick, out of character, was an immensely interesting person, who seemed to embrace life and the world around him with more warmth with each passing year.  After Star Trek, he made a tremendously good version of A Christmas Carol, he became Professor Xavier - a character I held dear from my X-Men reading days, and helped create the comic book movie as it exists now - one that demands the material find a truth to it.  And during COVID, he read us Shakespeare.  

He was outspoken about gay rights, about equality domestic abuse and other causes, and seemed, above all, a good man.  

Among his Star Trek comrades, he truly did seem to be the Captain - the British-trained actor who expected the most out of everyone, and the love the cast showed for him on and off screen was apparent.  And I knew during that final season of Picard, we were seeing a terrific gift given to us by that cast and crew.  One final mission for a man who was aging and meant much to all of them.

If you can find it, this coming Christmas season, either find his version of A Christmas Carol on television or the audiobook he narrated of Dickens' book.

Fair sailing, Captain.  You'll be missed.

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.