Mental Health Watch: Bedlam (1946)

Watched:  08/14/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mark Robson

Well, this is *weird*.  Somehow, unintentionally, I watched two movies by the same director in the same day, the other being Valley of the Dolls.  Mark Robson everybody.  Apparently he made Patty Duke cry a lot.  I wonder if he made Boris Karloff run away weeping.

This is an historical drama with large dollops of political commentary and a dash of the horror film - we do have Boris Karloff in the movie, after all.

The movie is essentially about a young woman, Nell (Anna Lee), who is the protegee of the porcine Lord Mortimer.  Mortimer is a rich idiot living well in the world of 1770's-ish England.  He sees himself as a generous fellow, and one of the things he does is employ Sims (Boris Karloff) to manage a lunatic asylum, which has a different name, but is commonly called Bedlam.  

"Bedlam?" you say.  "Doesn't that mean chaos... or... crazy...?"  Yes.  And guess where we got that word, humans of 2026?  Yeah, the English language is a wild ride and I am sure this will make some well-meaning people very cross, indeed.

Anyway, two things happen.  1.  Nell considers herself a stone-hearted jerk immune to the suffering of others, surely a useful tool in an era where people were in rags begging for scraps as you rolled by in your gold plated wagon pulled by local urchins.   She visits Bedlam, which the rich do for their personal amusement.  Back in these days we called the mentally ill "idiots" and "fools" and it was all a good time. However, Nell is horrified.  Shit is bad in the badly run lunatic asylum.   2. She meets a Quaker who was also there to take work as a mason.  He says "I can tell you're secretly a good person", which she denies.

However, Nell *is* a good person with a conscience.  She seeks to use her favor with Lord Mortimer to improve the lot of the inmates, but Sims convinces Mortimer this will be costly and if he spends the money, he'll lose favor in the Royal Court (of King George.  Boo.  Go, America!).  

Sims contrives to have Nell put in the asylum.  

There is *a lot* going on here which, 20 years ago, would have seemed like a hyperbolic echo of the misguided ways of the past, and now just feels like "oh, yeah, totally".  Rich people?  Who can't see other people as human?  Almost impossible to imagine.

It's a good movie!  Well acted, hits all the right beats, tells the story in 80 minutes, in-and-out.  This sort of movie is my bag, baby.  And Karloff's fate is some prime "Val Lewton was here" stuff.  

  

Catch-Up Watch: The Menu (2022)

Watched:  08/08/2026

Format:  Library DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mark Mylod

While watching The Menu (2022), I kept thinking - this is a movie that wants to be a "fuck the rich" movie, but doesn't seem to want to actually say what the problem is.  

For all it's aspirations, the movie only occasionally rises above any other flick where people are held hostage with increasing horrors inflicted upon them.  It has lofty goals as a social commentary, of making poetic commentary about food and nourishment and art - And you've likely seen better.  It's stylish and sets itself up as comment upon the exploitation and pretentions of the elite, but then has nothing to say about it beyond a college freshman ranting in their dorm room.  Nor does it turn the lens back on those inflicting the damage - the cult-like crew of Ralph Fiennes' kitchen who have happily gone along with the plan that drives the movie, who had to know what they were signing up for if they wanted to work in Michelin star restaurants. 

Monster Watch: The Black Scorpion (1957)

Watched:  07/31/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Edward Ludwig

Y'all...  You're gonna be something less than shocked when I tell you that maybe a 1957 movie about kaiju-sized scorpions rampaging through Mexico is maybe not Oscar material.  But I will say it is entertaining as hell.  

The story is basically lifting Them!, which had just been a big success.   But in this case, the volcanos that erupt throughout Mexico this time crack open the earth.*  A pair of geologists, one handsome Mexican guy (Carlos Rivas) and one lantern jawed American (Richard Denning) race to the location to scout it out.  En route they come across a police car that's been wrecked - like inexplicably shredded - food still cooking and an abandoned baby.  They also find the police officer who is dead, his eyes wide open, and leaning against a wall.

With no idea what's going on, they head to the town with the baby, and everyone is in a panic.  Cowboys are coming in from the local ranches reporting the cattle are turning up dead.  Shit is bad, yo.

Spoilers:  there are giant scorpions running around who escaped their underground layer and seem to want mammal flesh.  

Sci-Fi Horror Watch: The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

Watched:  07/18/2026

Format:  TCM with John Carpenter and Alicia Malone

Viewing:  First

Director:  Val Guest

SimonUK kept suggesting The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) to me during the podcast era, and I can see why.  I think mostly in England, but also among sci-fi and horror-heads in the US, the Quatermass media - of which there's more than you'd think - is considered foundational or classic.  Thus, it may have inspired things like Doctor Who (which I confess I never got into) and there's no small amount of John Carpenter's early work in this movie.  

And, in fact, I watched it because Carpenter is hosting two days of movies on TCM with Alicia Malone. 

I'd also argue - Stan and Jack may have lifted the origin of the Fantastic Four from this movie in a small way.  And if you know Jack, he was constantly reworking what he saw on the street, in movies and in culture right into his comics, so it wouldn't shock me.

TV Watch: Widow's Bay - Season 1

Right after it debuted, JAL texted me and said to check out Widow's Bay over on Apple TV.  But it was a few weeks before I got around to it.  

As you may have heard - Widow's Bay is a sort-of comedy about the residents of a cursed island off the coast of New England, founded during the colonial era.  In the modern era, it's a fishing backwater where people kind of accept the horrific and unexplainable things that happen as a matter-of-course.  And, in fact, those born on the island know they can never leave without a deadly misfortune befalling them. 

The season follows the events as the island once again "awakens" - ie: the weird stuff escalates again.  And all during a few days just as our non-native mayor, Tom, has finally managed to get people to visit the island as tourists in an effort to bolster the dying economy of the place.

I'll do my best not to spoil - but y'all know if I'm talking about TV it's because I'm either dragging something or I'm recommending it.  Widow's Bay comes in as a solid:  recommended

Golden Sci-Fi Horror Watch: Dr. X (1932)

Watched:  05/15/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michael Curtiz!

I have felt that at some point I should watch every movie mentioned in Science Fiction / Double Feature, the opening tune from Rocky Horror Picture Show.  And I've done pretty well.

This viewing of Dr. X (1932) checks off "Dr. X will build a creature", I believe, leaving only Tarantula.  That said, the line doesn't at all describe the actual plot of Dr. X, but okay.  

Maybe best described as a sci-fi-horror-comedy-heavy-on-the-horror, Dr. X sees a series of killings occur in the streets of New York, the link being they all occur on a full moon and with the same surgical instrument.  The police investigate and determine the instrument used is very rare, and only purchased by a specific medical school run by a Dr. Xavier.  

Shadowed by a determined reporter (Lee Tracy) the police meet each of the kooky scientists working on their research.  

Horror Coppola Watch: Dementia 13 (1963)

Watched: 04/29/2026

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Francis Ford Coppola

The story Ben Mankiewicz and producer Roger Corman shared about why this movie exists sounds like a movie in itself.  

Basically, while filming a motorsports movie in Europe, Corman was running severely *under* budget.  With $20K left in in the bank, a crew and equipment available, and some time before they had to go home - he set  his second unit director loose to go make something for $20K.  That director?  Francis Coppola.

This is Coppola's first movie, and it feels like something between a Gothic mystery - one of those books with women running away from a castle, or Turn of the Screw or some such, and a modern thriller (for 1963).  For a first movie made on the cheap (the final total budget was $40K after selling the rights to the UK to bolster the budget) and written in a rush, and produced on-the-fly.  

Horror Watch: Friday the 13th Part VI - Jason Lives (1986)

Watched:  03/13/2026

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Tom McLoughlin

JAL texted me at the end of the work day on Friday and said "You have to watch Friday the 13th Part VI.  It will make you miss Showplace 6".   

I was more likely to go see Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome at Showplace 6 than a horror movie during the window he and I were hitting the family owned theater in North Austin, but I get it.  The place was there for us during a crucial period of movie-going.  It was the kind of theater that welcomed kids, did not ask if we were 17 before letting us into Rated-R movies, and always had Spree as an option for candy.

As stated *last* Friday the 13th when we watched the first Friday the 13th movie, these movies were never part of my canon.  I've not really spent time with them.  But after watching two of them, I *do* have a pitch for a new one, which I'll share at the end.*

I guess in the 4th movie, they killed Jason?  Like, fer reals?  Which - this is where I found out Jason wasn't previously a magical kill zombie?  You learn new things all the time.  It seems the fifth movie was about the Corey Feldman character, now played by someone else, becoming the killer?  And that went over like a lead balloon, so they re-cast the character *again*, ignored his murderous tendencies and made him the focal character for this installment as Jason is reborn from a lightning strike (it makes sense in the moment).  

Anyway - rejuvenated and feeling fancy free, Jason spends the day killing everyone he can find in what feels like a highly populated recreational forest area.  I mean, he is just finding new victims hither and yon.  

There's absolutely nothing *scary* in this movie - it's like watching an NES side-scroller play-through of Jason killing people.  But it does have good set pieces, the best of which is the Winnebago stuff.  

But, man, does it look like everyone making this movie is having fun.  Even the prop department.  There's a "well, we tried" fake head that rolls out of a truck.  And someone was very good at a very particular blood splatter pattern we see performed like five times.  

This is the stuff that drove moral crusaders nuts in the 1980's that teens knew was just a good time, and has subsequently been absorbed into the popular consciousness to such a degree *no one bothers to talk about horror movies as being a problem anymore*.  

Is the movie good?  No.  Is it fun?  Yes.  It has no artistic aspirations, and wants to say nothing other than "this goon in a mask will murder you good", and sometimes that's all you need, I guess.  But we're past trying to scare anyone here, just get hoots and hollers from the audience as an assortment of folks are dispatched in a series of creative ways.

It does make me wonder what Jason does during his downtime.

*I think you could make a good Friday the 13th as a sort of Road Runner or Tom and Jerry cartoon, with Jason trying to get Natasha Lyonne as our Final Girl, and there's lots of 4th wall breaking

Friday the 13th Watch: Friday the 13th (1980)

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Watched:  02/13/2026

Format:  Amazon  

Viewing:  Second - but first since I was a kid

Director:  Sean S. Cunningham

So, when I was a very young kid, my friends who lived near us had (a) a VCR and (b) a sister in high school who rented Rated-R movies.  So, yeah, I saw this when I was 7 or 8.  I am pretty sure I saw it again in middle school, because I very much remember Betsy Palmer going murdery.  

I've never been a huge fan of horror movies where the main attraction is "the kills", and that's absolutely what this movie is.  It's just a lot of set-up (some might say too much set-up) and then people getting murdered by surprise.  

Sure, we get some set-up at the beginning of Camp Crystal Lake being a bad place where bad things happen, but the characters seem unaware of any of that mythology.  They're just going to the toilet and getting murdered there.  

Then, Betsy Palmer shows up as Jason's mom and blows the @#$%ing doors off for the last 1/4th of the movie.  She's great.  And, in fact, the last quarter of the movie is really good, which is how we got something like 9 sequels.  

Technically, I find the movie kind of interesting.  It's *so* voyeuristic, and effectively so, it's been spoofed and borrowed from, etc... to where you really can't do this anymore.  I think this would really speak to De Palma and kinda shows up in Body Double four years later.  Plus, there's some interesting editing - that shot of Alice's face over the lake is nifty.  

You can kind of see the line from Black Christmas to Halloween to Friday the 13th, and I'll argue, this movie does start feeling like a xerox of a xerox by this point.  ALl of the movies have a murderer sneaking around and unsuspecting young folks getting picked off.  And I can't say why this feels un-scary in comparison.  Black Christmas is *upsetting*.  Halloween works like a charm, in part because of Laurie Strode - and this movie just doesn't have that.  Sure, Kevin Bacon appears, but he's also dead pretty quick by comparison.  And we don't spend much time with our final girl (Adrienne King).

The version I watched was restored and looks better than any version I've seen previously.  It's really weird to see a movie of this vintage that is so clearly a B-movie shot on a shoe string with some occasionally iffy acting now looking as clean as anything new.  

I don't know the actual history of the box office or anything on this movie or this series.  I just wasn't watching horror during the period where these were coming out left and right and have no real nostalgia for these movies.  But I might watch the first few.  I've seen them!  I just don't really recall a lot.   But I think Jason doesn't even get the mask til the 3rd movie.  We'll see!

Crampton Watch: Sacrifice (2020)

Watched:  12/29/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Andy Collier / Tor Mian

There's some interesting stuff in Sacrifice (2020), but it never shakes the feeling it's maybe too-familiar- maybe especially in the wake of Ari Aster's Hereditary and Midsommar, and probably several other scary films where there's a cult involved.  

The film is about a younger couple who come to remote Norway to sell a house the guy, Isaac (Ludovic Hughes), inherited from a father he doesn't remember.  His mother, an American, told him his father found a new family and she returned to America.  His wife, Emma (Sophie Stevens) is very pregnant - and the sale of the house is intended to create a nest-egg for raising that baby.

However, the locals start off rude, until they learn who Isaac's father is, they then welcome him like a brother.  And a local constable (Barbara Crampton trying on a Norwegian accent) comes by to ask questions - telling Isaac his father was murdered in the house.  

This is a movie wherein the dude starts deciding he's down with whatever the people in the culty, remote town are offering up, and the wife is clearly trying to clear out.  

Christmas Horror Watch: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

Watched:  12/13/2025

Format:  Amazon?

Viewing:  First

Director:  Lee Harry

Sometimes horror fans complain that critics will say "this is pretty good for horror" or something of the like.  And I agree - that's a bit dismissive of a whole genre.  But my suspicion about why this happens is that sometime in high school, a person who would one day become a critic was with friends who rented something like Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987), and their takeaway was "this is what you guys are watching?"

On its face, yes.  This is a movie with problems.  It's three years after the first film's release, and this sequel - put out well into the age of VHS where most people probably saw the first Silent Night, Deadly Night - spends 36 minutes doing a mix of clip show of the first movie and having our new villain/ protagonist relay the story of the first film to a psychiatrist.  Then it spends ~30 minutes relaying the fate of the brother of the first Kill Krazy Kris Kringle (our hero/villain) before it unleashes our guy onto the world, where he immediately goes after his abusive former Mother Superior.  

There is, to my surprise, an added bit of pretension at the end as we learn the surviving nun was the same woman our Second Santa avenged after near SA - killing the dude with a Jeep.  I did not think this was the sort of movie to include dramatic irony, but here we are.

By the way, I did figure out immediately that at some point I'd seen the first half of Silent Night, Deadly Night, but I must not have finished the movie.  

But if your critics' only takeaway was "that wasn't very good", I am afraid they're missing the point.  This is the opposite of "elevated horror" - this is Santa Exploitation Horror.  This is a mad man walking around a suburban street firing off something like 20 shots from a six-shooter while he laughs stiffly and badly.  This is a guy murdering people for talking in the movie theater and punishing "naughty" people with an axe to the head.  It's not scary - it's basically a comedy.

So does it succeed as a film delivering on that premise?  

I mean, I think so.  This is a Rental movie to watch while drinking beer, and maybe cheer a bit when some murders happen.  

Thanks to the merging of the first film into the first act of this movie, it's also a wildly overcomplicated movie for a movie about a guy who puts on a Santa hat to kill people.  And it's part of the movie's charm.

I am only sad that I watched it by myself.

One day I need to do a post about how maybe the usefulness of critics and awards is minimal, and that what really makes a movie survive is a culture that can sustain those movies.  And horror and the horror fanbase is amazing about keeping movies alive and making lowkey celebs out of people who made a cheap movie 40 years ago.

Happy Birthday, Ingrid Pitt

Today marks the birth of actor and author Ingrid Pitt, born this day in 1937 in Warsaw, Poland.

If that date and location seem a bit ominous, Pitt was also Jewish and spent time in a concentration camp.  She and her mother escaped.

Pitt became an actress in Europe and tried her hand in America.  Her largest success was in England, especially in horror films.  In the US, she's a cult horror figure, famous for appearances in The Wicker Man, The Vampire Lovers (one of my favorite films), Countess Dracula, The House That Dripped Blood and others.  She also appears in British action movies, including the dynamite film Where Eagles Dare (recommended).  

She also penned a few books, including an autobiography and a series of horror-related books.

Her filmography is not particularly deep, and she was never a Bond girl, so her exposure in the states in minimal.  I, personally, think she's great.  In the sea of Hammer's extraordinary talent, in my opinion, she's one of the absolute best to do it.

Pitt passed in 2010 at only 73 years old.

100 Years of "Phantom of the Opera"

We are somewhere in the year of the 100th Anniversary of the release of Phantom of the Opera (1925), the silent film starring Lon Chaney, man of 1000 Faces.  

I haven't watched it again this year, but I will!  I promise.  

I can't say when or where we are in relation to the original release schedule.  Google is telling me the release date was November 15th, but I'm seeing much earlier in the year on Wikipedia.  In the 1920's the movie would play in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other major markets.  Then, it might move on to other cities.  This could be several months apart.  Eventually, beat-up prints might leave the country or be sent to podunk towns.  So who knows when or if Phantom of the Opera played most cities.  But 1925 is the year in which the movie was released.

I saw Phantom of the Opera the first time circa 1990 on a lo-fi VHS tape obtained from a bin at Walmart.  As the film precedes 1928, it fell out of copyright, and I found a copy produced by "Goodtime Videos" that set me back less than $10, and as an angsty teenage kid I spent an evening watching my first feature-length silent film while listening to some moody music.  

Frankly, I was blown away.  

I'd expected the movie to just be actors more or less pantomiming in front of shoddy sets, and all in wide shots.  And, instead, a film taking place against the massive backdrop of the Paris Opera House unspooled, with wild visuals and dramatic moments.  What I do not recall is if I had already read the novel of Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, but I sort of suspect that I had.  I do know I had seen the film and watched the movie by the time I saw a non-Andrew Lloyd Webber stage play of the story toward the end of that same academic year.*

If silent-era films aren't your jam, I get it.  I struggle with them as well and hats off to the folks who've trained themselves to watch silent films that aren't Buster Keaton or Chaplin.  But I think Phantom of the Opera is practically must-see/ assigned viewing.  It gives you an idea of how complex storytelling was handled during the era and the spectacle that could be created on the silver screen with visual tricks, gigantic sets, etc...  It's almost hard to believe it wasn't actually filmed on location somewhere.

Lon Chaney is absolutely brilliant as Erik, which seems trite to say, but every time I watch the movie, I'm stunned by how terrifying he is.  Others are good, no doubt.  One does not dismiss Mary Philbin who plays Cristine and Mary Fabian's Madame Carlotta is terrific.  

Whether I loved the recent Frankenstein or not, what I can say is that I love how it swung for the fences as an epic.  We get one of those every few years in the horror genre, and it feels like Phantom of the Opera is the first of these in America.  And, dang, you owe it to yourself to see this thing.

Happy 100th, Phantom of the Opera!

*I have no feelings on Andrew Lloyd Webber's version as I've only heard it and never seen it

Final Hallo-Watch: Frankenhooker (1990)

Watched:  10/31/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Frank Henenlotter

So, I wrapped up Halloween with Frankenhooker (1990) a movie I've somehow not seen before in the past 35 years, but been aware of since at least 1993.

Wow.  They truly do not make them like this anymore.

I was never a Troma guy, but my continual viewing of USA Up All Night in the 1990's should be a sign of what I will tune to on a Friday night.  I am happy to go in for questionable taste.  I am a person of deeply questionable taste, if this blog is any indication.

My favorite bit was the revived Elizabeth storming around Manhattan spouting prior dialog and knocking people over.  That's just good stuff.  I guess Patty Mullen was a Penthouse pet who barely did any movies, but she really went for it and she's really funny.

Anyway, the movie is kinda exactly what I expected in some ways, but vacillated between truly hilarious and "okay, I get it.  We can move on." in the ways of these kinds of movies.  What I will say is that the end was *chef's kiss*.  Glad I finally watched it.

JLC Hallo-Watch: Halloween H20 - 20 Years Later (1998)

Watched:  10/30/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Steve Miner

This movie has a "and introducing Josh Hartnett" credit at the beginning, and knowing what we'd soon know about Hartnett's quality as a lead and Hollywood hunk...  it's absolutely inexplicable that he has one of the dumbest haircuts in cinema.  I was alive and a young adult in 1998.  Nobody had this haircut, this was not a haircut I literally saw on anyone then, before then, or since. It's somewhere between the male version of the Karen/ Kate Gosselin haircut, like he just woke up, like maybe he deeply offended a barber, or someone pulled a prank on him or her took pinking shears to his own head.  

"...so you're saying there's a chance?"

It's so odd, in part because the hair changes moment by moment in the film, like they really couldn't manage it.  It required some weird trimming, and in some shots it's one way, and some shots it's not, and he just looks insane through the whole movie.

The haircut is just a minor indicator of what's happening with Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998), a shockingly unnecessary movie and a reminder of why sequels and horror movies have such a bum rap with many critics.  It is predictable, it's not enough and too much, doesn't seem to know when Halloween occurs or think the holiday matters in the Halloween franchise.   

Hallo-Franken-Watch: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Watched:  10/30/2025

Format:  4K

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  James Whale

What's not to like in Bride of Frankenstein (1935)?

Yes, if you come in expecting to be genuinely scared, that won't happen.  If you want to see something weird, uncanny, funny, touching, cheer-worthy, wildly subversive and camp (a word we throw around a lot but don't correctly use), Bride is your movie.  

This movie is about so many things.  

Rather than have someone directly speak to the audience in this installment, we recreate the Percy and Mary Shelley (nee Godwin) and Lord Byron conversations that famously spawned Frankenstein.  Mary Shelley is posed as the one explaining the hubris of what we're to see, as the scene echoes what will come later with Dr.'s Frankenstein and Pretorious.  

Hallo-Franken-Watch: Frankenstein (1931)

Watched:  10/28/2025

Format:  4K

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  James Whale

As longtime readers know, every year I watch Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) as we enter the spooky season.  

Since last Halloween, I picked up the first film in 4K, curious about how a film I know as much for its 1930's black and white grain and the hiss on the soundtrack as I know any other aspect of the movie would present in the format.  Would they clean it up, or if would they leave those artifacts intact?  

The answer is: aside from one shot, I highly recommend this 4K transfer.  There's some hiss and some grain, but especially that hiss familiar to early sound films has been reduced to a less noticeable white noise.  The grain is still there, more or less.  I was replaying it with a commentary track (that was great) and walked close to the TV and it is WILD to see what the pixels are doing with this black and white.

I didn't pick up any weird AI mucking with the picture, and it just mostly looked like a very clean print, with many of the minute defects corrected.  In one shot, an item in the foreground is kind of wobbly, like the algorithm didn't know what to do with it.  But I'll leave that for you to discover (though I'll never not see it now).

Hallo-Franken-Watch: Frankenstein (2025)

Watched:  10/26/2025

Format:  Drafthouse

Viewing:  First

Director:  Guillermo del Toro

Twenty years ago, on the heels of the runaway success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson was given carte blanche to make an adaptation of the 1933 film King Kong.  It's tough to get into all the details and I'll spare you, but the basic gist is that Peter Jackson had long said his favorite movie of all time, and the one that inspired him as a filmmaker, was the Fay Wray screamer.  

Jackson's 2005 Kong film was not well received by critics or audiences.  Yes, it looked beautiful and was technically well-directed, but a near 3 hour run-time is quite a bit more than the 100-minute runtime of the original.  It was just too much of everything, a movie lasting the duration of two movies, where everything is turned up to an 11.

And, so it was, I was nervous going into Frankenstein (2025).  

Director Guillermo del Toro broke out with a few key films at the turn of the century, and made a reputation for himself as a master of the macabre.  Some I've liked, some not so much.  For a long time, he's very loudly proclaimed the 1931 Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff his favorite film.  And, hey, it's an all-timer for me, as well.  

And, look, I will publicly say:  the book came out in 1818.  Monkeying about with the story is fair game.  After all, I love stuff like the Universal movies, I like Frankenstein comics sometimes, I love Creature Commandos...  sure.  Do whatever.

But I'm not sure what del Toro was doing, what he was trying to say or why he changed so many things in his movie from the novel when it seemed like it made the overall story of the novel weaker.  But I also think I'd need to watch the movie again to understand what he was doing and why as I'd be far less distracted by his careening variations from the text while also playing up certain aspects of the text. 

Light Spoilers

Hallo-Watch: Werewolves (2024)

Watched:  10/25/2025

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Steven C. Miller

On paper, I totally get what Werewolves (2024) was doing.  We're going to do The Warriors' run across a city plagued by monsters.  And the monster that makes the most sense to run from, without spending a lot of time worrying about the set-up, is werewolves.  We all get werewolves.  Moon.  Roar.  Kill kill.

It's basically an excuse to have a straight hour of nothing but action sequences as Frank Grillo and Katrina Law shoot their way across the city.  What's interesting is that it's a movie completely devoid of character moments, themes or story.  It is just a series of things happening.  Which is really a weird way to do things, because it *looks* like a movie in many ways.  It just functions more like...  a horror action screen saver.

Initially I was like "huh, this is like a SyFy movie but with good actors and a budget", but it's actually a Bizarro SyFy movie.  SyFy movies are mostly people standing around talking because they can't afford to do their bad FX.  Or driving from place to place looking mildly cross.  And then you get a giant CGI shark and snake at the end.  SyFy movies pull from the Banal Character Development Playbook and run through the motions of how this giant shark attacking people ties to their personal struggle.  But in the case of Werewolves, ain't no one got time for that.  What we do have are several practical werewolf suits, one detailed werewolf head we'll see in profile about 55 times during the movie, and Frank Grillo.  And shooting up sets, fighting and explosions.  And no real character beats.

Crampton Hallo-Watch: From Beyond (1986)

Watched:  10/25/2025

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  Third?

Director:  Stuart Gordon

Pal @iffywizardry watched From Beyond (1986) as part of his horror-a-day Halloween watching, and I decided, yeah, I wanted to re-watch it this year.  Because who doesn't need more Barbara Crampton in their movie-watching, really?

I wrote this up just last year, so no real need to re-litigate.  If you read that brief write-up, I kinda underplayed the push the movie makes about the pineal-gland stuff and madness and sex intertwining.  And it's right there.  And leads to the most famous scene in the movie, which sure made an impression on a generation of horror fans.  

But, yeah, this is a movie about a bunch of people with sexual hang-ups, and very little in the way of discussing it, and instead manifesting as weird shit.  And it's kind of great.  

It's a movie with transdimensional monsters, a warped villain, and a guy eating brains.  What's not to like?

Anyhoo, like Re-Animator, this is an oddly perfect movie hitting all the right notes and gets better every time you watch it, which for genre film I think is *the* defining sign of greatness, whether we're talking horror or The Third Man.    

I would pick this up on 4K, but it's currently $47.  Which... come on, man.