Lagoon Watch: The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)

I quite like the original Creature From the Black Lagoon.  It's just really well shot, has a compelling story, and it is nigh-impossible to beat the creature design.  I just love the way that fella looks.

I'd love to see an updated remake, but when I consider what it'd be like without Julie Adams, well, I have a moment of pause.  And it's that moment of pause that's kept me from ever watching the sequels, two of which I own on a DVD set I purchased at least a decade ago.  But I told myself I was going to watch both sequels this October, because, hey... why not?  I mean, aside from the glaring mistake of not including Julie Adams.

This one image is more or less that whole movie in a nutshell

Alas, we're not here to ponder Julie Adams.  We're here to talk about the inevitable Universal sequel, The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).  Actually, it's the sequel to the sequel, but I watched the damn things out of order, so, there you go.

Ed Watch: Ed Wood (1994)

Really, Ed Wood (1994) could not have come out at a better time for me, personally.  I was 19ish and headed into the production track for Film at Univ. of Texas.  The movie landed with a thud in theaters (less than $6 million at the box office on an $18 million budget), but I think found its audience on home video.  Maybe not a huge audience, but I'm not really sure what anyone expected from a biopic about an unknown figure of questionable contribution to humanity, shot in black and white, that involved staunch support of cross-dressing, and, arguably, it's biggest star circa 1994 was Bill Murray who was in a smaller part.

The movie meant a lot to me at the time as a wanna-be filmmaker - especially as I realized I would always be one of questionable talent and choice-making, and even today I rank it pretty highly not just among my favorite Tim Burton movies, but among movies in general.  And, as we went through film school, it basically gave us a script to quote from, not the least being "Let's shoot this @#$%er!"

If you haven't seen it, and don't know what I'm talking about, Ed Wood tells the story of Writer/ Actor/ Director/ Producer of B-pictures, Edward D. Wood, Jr., who was considered, for many years, the worst director to ever make movies.  And if you've seen his most popular offerings, Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 From Outer Space, they make a pretty strong case for that supposition.*

Ed (Johnny Depp) is a man of big Hollywood dreams, who wants to create the same movies that inspired him, like Dracula and Citizen Kane, but his stabs at creative work via live theater aren't really panning out, and he can't get funding until he hears about a small studio thinking of making a biopic of Christine Jorgensen, one of the first Americans to undergo gender re-assignment surgery.  Ed lands the job by revealing he understands Christine as he, himself, likes to dress in women's clothing.  Of course, Ed's actually a cross-dresser, not transgendered in the same way, and so he delivers a completely different movie with Glen or Glenda?, which is basically his own story.

Halloween Watch: The Mummy (1932)

Hot on the heels of the success of Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931), Universal wanted to catch lightning in a bottle for third time, so they threw in the Egyptology craze that was still echoing a bit after the King Tut discoveries of 1923.*

if the poster makes you think this movie is about a dead guy and a gal in slinky dresses, you are correct

The Mummy (1932) isn't my favorite Universal horror film, but every time I watch it, I like it a bit more.  It's part Dracula, part Jack Pierce make-up genius, has loads of Karloff, a mythology that's been ripped off so many times it feels almost bland in 2015, and Zita Johann, who is busily trying to compete with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford for most memorable eyes in a Hollywood film, 1932.

Weirdly, it's only really book-ended by thrills at the beginning and end of the film, and the rest of the movie is sort of a slow, mystical boil.  For my dollar, one of the creepiest things in a Universal Horror film is the opening of The Mummy's eyes in the first few minutes of the movie.  It's everything you absolutely do not want to see happen around a guy who has been dead for 3 millennia.  And all of that works thanks to the astounding conception of the scene in lighting, make-up, direction and Karloff.

Halloween Watch: Trick 'r Treat (2007)

Well, this was a nice surprise.  I think a few of you had suggested this one to me over the years, but I'd always look at the poster and think "eh, this is one of those movies with a 'scary' antagonist that's more visually interesting than actually all that scary".

I watched the movie with pal SimonUK, and as the WB logo went up, he said "You know, I think this is going to be one of those movies people wind up watching every Halloween."   Which, about 2/3rds of the way into the movie, I paused the movie and said "yes, I can see why you'd say that, and I think you're right on the money."

That's So Craven! We watch "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "The Hills Have Eyes"

When Wes Craven died, I realized I'd only seen a portion of his filmography.  Sure, I'd seen Scream and a few Freddy movies, but I'd never seen his two earliest hits, The Hills Have Eyes and Last House on the Left.

It had been 20 years or more since I'd last seen A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), and I am pretty sure the last time I watched it all the way through was in high school.  There's no question there is genuine horror and a great bit at work in this movie, but there are also some clunky moments, and we're far from thinking of Freddy as the wise-ass franchise character he'd become in subsequent movies.

Dead Watch: Evil Dead 2

What to even say about Evil Dead 2?

I assume a good chunk of the folks who come to this page routinely will have already seen it, and the folks strolling by looking for Evil Dead II info are already in.  It's not like we're talking about either a new or particularly obscure movie.  If you haven't seen it and you can tolerate some gore, it's a worthy entry for your Halloween watching.

For all of the rest of us - it holds up now as well as it ever did.  So, you know, depending on what you already think, your mileage is just going to vary.

This is the Evil Dead Sam Raimi and Co. made after the success of The Evil Dead and the failure of Crimewave (I've never the latter film, but I know it tanked at the box office).

It's a movie that's ridiculously simple, and, given a second go at the idea, the crew improves on the original by abandoning the horror tropes that made the first entry just one more movie where something happens to high schoolers in a cabin in the woods and, instead, throws strangers together against the evil that's been unleashed.  It's an odd mish-mash of genre, from horror to action to slapstick, but I'd argue that it works pretty well.

It's no secret this isn't a direct sequel to The Evil Dead so much as a replacement for that movie.  Evil Dead 2 cannibalizes portions of the first movie to establish Ash, but makes way for everything else the movie wants to do, creating an all new cast of victims characters.

I'll never say anything bad about the movie because I don't think there's anything wrong with the movie.  I've never really gotten over the first time I saw it, in a good way.  I won't say it inspired me to go to film school or any of that, but it's a reminder that in the middle of splatter-fest horror movie, you should be enjoying yourself, or else I don't even know what you're doing watching the movie.

The only downside to the movie is that it's absolutely at it's best when it's just Bruce Campbell fighting the Evil Dead on his lonesome.  You can't really do that for a whole movie, but while it lasts, it's maybe one of my top 20 favorite scenes in any movie.

Dead Watch: The Evil Dead (1981)

As I recently read the Bruce Campbell memoir, If Chins Could Kill, it seemed fitting to revisit the 1981 film that got Campbell in front of audiences, The Evil Dead (1981).

Firstly, for the many of you who have seen the movie before, I picked this up in a restored HD BluRay transfer, and this is by far the best presentation of the movie I've ever seen.  The disc actually had two aspect ratio options for viewing, and I selected the original 1:33/ 1 ratio, because, why would I not?  The 1:88/1 ratio option is weird.

The sound elements and picture elements have been cleaned up enough that the muddiness I've associated with the movie for years have been sharpened up to the point you'd never know this was shot on 16mm.  The colors look great and the dialog has lost that "in a well" quality I felt it had last time I saw the flick, which, honestly was either on cable or VHS.

Signal Watch Reads: If Chins Could Kill, by Bruce Campbell

I'd almost picked this book up at Borders during its hardback, first-release era, and didn't, and was pretty aware if I did buy it, I'd never sit down to read it.  So Bruce never got any of my money from this project, but I was chatting with PaulT about Bruce Campbell, and I think he recommended the book.  Anyway, I thought "well, if he reads it himself, this could be all right."

And, sure enough, in 2010 or so he did record an audiobook version.  It seems the digital version led to a new edition as there are essentially three endings in the audiobook, and I suspect that since the initial book came out in 2002 and we didn't get an audiobook til 2010, and there was a surprisingly lengthy section after I initially thought the book was over with about the book tour, something got added somewhere.

If you don't know Bruce Campbell, he's most famous for his role as Ash in Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness.  If none of those movies ring a bell, we have nothing to say to one another.  I don't love horror, but its fair to say the Evil Dead trilogy transcends genre and is its own, hard-to-pin-down thing.

Wes Craven Merges With The Infinite

The thing about being my age is that so many of the names we grew up with, who were just doing amazing work during my youth, are beginning to pass.

My social media is flooded with the news that writer/ director/ producer Wes Craven has passed at the age of 76.

If you grew up in the era I did, you saw Wes Craven movies one way or another.  Most famous of his movies, likely, is A Nightmare on Elm Street, something I was already planning to re-watch this Halloween and now have a moral obligation to take in.

He also brought us The Hills Have Eyes, Swamp Thing, The People Under the Stairs and Scream.

Here's my film-school story about Scream.

JAL managed a theater when we were in college.  They were showing Scream after they wrapped the rest of the movies in that theater.  It was all the way across town, and I don't really like horror movies, and I was just feeling cranky, and, etc....

JAL:  Do you want to see Scream tonight at the tech screening?
Me:  Man, I don't want to see that movie.  It's just some slasher shit, and it's going to be a total hassle.
JAL:  Wes Craven directed it.
Me:  What time does it start?

We'll miss you, Wes.  You were one of the good ones.

Sci-Fi Watch: The Thing From Another World (1951)

I'm a big fan of the 1982 John Carpenter sci-fi horror flick, The Thing, but I'd never seen Howard Hawks produced The Thing From Another World (1951) - the movie upon which the Carpenter film was based.

I recorded it off TCM at some point and finally got around to watching it, which was well timed as I'd been having a twitter-convo with some of y'all about whether remakes and sequels were really out of control.*

Horror Watch: House of Wax (1953)

I have to get up and go on vacation at a super weird early hour, but I re-watched House of Wax (1953), and it's still a great movie.  Maybe not as great as when you watch it the first time when you're 14 because 26 years later you already know how the creeping horror of the movie winds up - but I think Price is just great in this movie.

And one day I'll see it in 3D and see the thrilling PADDLE-BALL scene the way it was INTENDED.

80's Watch: The Hunger (1983)

I don't think I've watched The Hunger (1983) since I was living with pal CarlaBeth back in college, so - wow, almost 20 years ago.  Which means that Jamie, who I started dating at the time, has been saying "The Hunger of David Bowie!" then "I sure do fancy a cheeseburger!" at me in an iffy British accent for almost two decades.

My, how time passes.

Which is exactly what this movie is about, by the way.

I was a bit surprised to see the movie show up on Turner Classic.  I mean, yeah, it's more than 3 decades old, but I have no recollection of TCM previously throwing caution to the wind and going ahead and showing partial nudity or that much blood.  And, this being a vampire movie, boy howdy is there a lot of blood.  And Bauhaus!  Those Andy Hardy movies are way low on their offering of Bauhaus.

Horror Watch: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

After visiting Austin's Sfanthor! sci-fi/fantasy/horror shop and classic horror wax museum, I began pondering the fact that I'm probably more familiar with Vincent Price as the amiable but possibly murderous roles in noir films like Laura and His Kind of Woman.  But I quite like House on Haunted Hill and House of Wax.  I've been aware of the cult following for The Abominable Dr. Phibes since I watched a few minutes of it on the TV at Vulcan Video circa 2001.  But, it just never crossed my path.

Despite promises to do otherwise (and go full in on a BluRay set), I picked up a cheaply priced DVD boxed set that included Dr. Phibes and which I'll, no doubt, be bothering you guys with for a while.

This movie is British set and produced, but for international appeal, they cast Price as our lead villain and one of my favorite actors of his generation, Joseph Cotten as one of the guys on Phibes' trail.