October Watch: An American Werewolf in London

I cannot begin to come to An American Werewolf in London (1981) objectively.  I had to leave work fifteen minutes early or so to make the picture, and someone said "I've never seen it.  Is it good?" (my co-workers are well aware of my love of movies like The Room, so my interest in a movie is not a sign of my belief in the film's quality).

I paused and said "You know, I don't really know.  I've seen this movie a half dozen times since I was sixteen or seventeen, and I know I like it."  And I suspect that's true for a lot of us who saw the movie when we were the right age to enjoy the horror, the comedy (it is a wickedly funny movie), the sex, and the rather pragmatic ending to the film.  Like the better horror films, you don't really worry about the bad science, the faults in the make-up or effects (and this is Rick Baker so the effects were completely groundbreaking for 1982 and still look mostly terrific.  @#$% CGI.) because its not about whether you can see the string on the bats or the seam in the creature's suit.  In a weird way, as expensive as a creature feature could be to produce, it really is about the story.

Octoberama! Sundays with The Bride!

Here's a bevy of posters used to promote screenings of The Bride.

FYI - you can see The Bride of Frankenstein and Frankenstein on the the BIG SCREEN on October 24th!

Get tickets now at Fathom Events. These are two of my favorite films of all time. If you're in Austin and want to go, let me know!

Octoberama! Phantom of the Opera - Masque of the Red Death

Over the years, it was somehow mostly forgotten that at one point, a lot of early movies were tinted for color.  The film might be shot in black and white, but the prints themselves would be processed with a tint to have color that evoked the mood, etc...  However, by 1925 there was already a two-color process, and that's what you're seeing here.

The Lon Chaney starring Phantom of the Opera (1925) is a beautiful movie if you've never seen it.  At least some of the prints feature color, and the Masque of the Red Death sequence, even without color, was always powerful stuff.  With color - I think it's amazing.

At this point in the film, the Phantom has been causing problems (including deaths) but has been unseen.  Here he strides into the middle of a party of the wealthiest in Paris and threatens them all from behind the skeleton mask of Death.

Here it is - silent. You can provide your own music in your own head.



You can see the color better here, but I forewarn you, its synched to the music of the Broadway musical of the same name.

In the first movie and the book, unlike the musical, The Phantom is a spooky bad-ass. So if all you know if Andrew Lloyd-Webber, I recommend looking up the 1925 film.

October Watch! Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

If you've never seen Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), it's an absolute blast of a movie and pretty much sets the tone for every succeeding creature feature to follow - but it also leans a bit on the set-up of movies like King Kong.  Intrepid explorers/ scientists have some vital but benign evidence, return to the spot  far from civilization where it was found, and modern man can't deal with the havoc that ensues when an unexpected monster appears (and makes off with the stunningly attractive woman along for the ride).

Creature is fun partially because of the raw science-adventure tone that movies like Prometheus try to capture, of lantern jawed scientists throwing themselves into the path of danger in the name of discovery - along with a scrubby but affable crew along for the adventure who know their protocols are there for a reason.  As well as knowing natives may be superstitious, but they're also not crazy, so sometimes you just avoid their "Black Lagoons" if they suggest that's not a good place to bring your boat.  But: SCIENCE.

Happy Birthday, Bela Lugosi

Today is Bela Lugosi's 130th Birthday.

Born Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in Hungary, Lugosi arrived in America in the early 1920s. By 1927 he was cast as Count Dracula in a Broadway show.

Most famous for his role as Dracula in the 1931 film, Lugosi found himself typecast and caught in a strange whirlwind of the Hollywood system which kept him in spook pictures, more or less, his entire career.

It's the Halloween season.  Go out and get yourself a copy of Dracula if you've never seen the original movie.  He's pretty darn good.

October Watch: Ed Wood (1994)

In 1989 I caught my first episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which featured the movie Bride of the Monster.  At the time I had never heard of Ed Wood, and I wasn't terribly aware of the sea of terrible monster movies out there.  But I like to know that my adoration of terrible movies sort of begins and ends with the work of Edward D. Wood, Jr.

When I watch a movie like Birdemic: Shock and Terror, a movie so abysmally, ineptly put together that those watching it assume it has to be a put on, I think of Ed Wood and his sincere belief in his projects, and while I understand the desire to refuse to believe anyone could be so myopic...  no.  We're funny things, us people, and we have rich visions that we are often unable to translate.

Ed Wood was released in 1994, and among the folks I worked with in film school, it was a bit of a totem.  We quoted from the movie endlessly, and we believed in the central conceit of trying to follow your uncompromised dreams to make the product you want to make.  And sometimes that meant exactly using pie-plates on sting to recreate a UFO crash.*

This scene (language NSFW), is more or less every project I ever did in film school in a nutshell.

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.

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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!".

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.

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.

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.

Signal Watch Watches: Prometheus (2012)

Look, this thing is full of spoilers, so don't bother unless you've seen the movie.

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.