There are so many different versions of this story put onto film that it's hard to say which one is my favorite. This one has 2 things going for it, one is that it's narrated by Vincent Price and hearing his voice is always awesome, second is that it's only 24 minutes long but still manages to hit all the plot points. It does seem that ol' Scrooge is transformed from a miserly prick into a Christmas-loving maniac really fast but it gets the message across either way. Check it out if you aren't a Christmas-hating commie.
The original KING KONG is one of the greatest classic sci-fi/horror/adventure movies of all time. This sequel is not quite up there with it's predecessor and it's clearly due to it being rushed out to capitalize on the success of the original. This was actually released in the same year as KING KONG and while the FX are just as good the main not-as-giant gorilla here is way goofier and is actually a hero in the story which takes away from any horror aspects the first film had and makes it way more of a kiddie-friendly monster-movie. Still it's at least a semi-classic and one that was shown along with the first movie and MIGHTY JOE YOUNG every year on Thanksgiving on local TV here in New York making it a sentimental holiday tradition and a good alternative to watching MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS again. If you dig the classic monster flicks or just quickie cheapo exploitation films capitalizing/ripping-off something better this one isn't a bad choice. As a bonus you get to see a musical group of monkeys perform a delightful tune.
This poster sells the movie as a straight-up comedy:
While this has never been my favorite of the classic Universal monster movies, due to it's slow-moving action and stagey feel, it's such an iconic film, thanks mainly to the performance of Bela Lugosi, that even all the negatives are swept aside and it's historical significance shines through. Dwight Frye is also quite awesome with his signature laugh as the bug-eating servant of Mr. Dracula, Renfield.
I was happy I got the chance to view this in an actual theater along with it's Spanish version last night and the main thing I realized in this setting is how quiet the film is. I mean besides the opening titles there's no soundtrack at all so the audience got to enjoy the sounds of the retarded Hollywood movie playing next door as well thanks to the piss-poor construction of your modern-day shithole multiplex theater. But even this couldn't take away from the experience of watching on of the most influential horror classics.
I watch this film about once a year. It didn't invent the slasher genre(BLACK CHRISTMAS is usually cited as being the film to do that) but due to it's success it did kick-off the 80's glut of stalk n' kill movies that followed. Probably the first few times I saw this was on TV which is a different cut from the original theatrical release so when I finally caught it on VHS it was strange to see all the little differences. Of course now having seen it so many times on VHS and DVD it's pretty ingrained in my memory.
Everything about this film is very iconic to the horror genre. Shots are framed with an amazing focus on detail, the camerawork is incredible, the music fits everything perfectly and the characters are about the best the slasher genre would ever see. Donald Pleasence was the only actual name actor at the time this was made but everyone does a great job and of course Jamie Lee Curtis would become a household name after this. This also started director John Carpenter down the road of making some great 80's horror flicks and unlike many of the other supposedly great horror films of the 80's his weren't all full of jokes, but actually scary movies.
There were 8 official sequels and then a shitty pointless remake from Rob Zombie.
I feel like the success of this film was largely responsible for the onslaught of all those Satanic films that came out throughout the 1970's. So it's got that going for it. Also it's just an amazingly iconic film with a bleak ending(which was also pretty much the norm for the next decade or so). Everyone in this movie does an amazing acting job. There's nothing graphic shown but the psychological-horror aspects of this film have really never been topped since. Looking back at it today it's hard to imagine a world where a film like this is a huge success. In what is probably the only example of an academy award going to someone that actually deserves it Ruth Gordon won for best supporting actress. Typically Mia Farrow wasn't even nominated.
This was produced by William Castle but is pretty unique in his filmography which mainly consists of way more light-hearted and schlocky stuff. Castle makes a Hitchcock-like cameo appearance.
There is a made-for-TV sequel, LOOK WHAT'S HAPPENED TO ROSEMARY'S BABY but it doesn't look very good.
This old clunky horror flick is probably best known today for historical purposes rather than being a great film. This was the first film featuring zombies. Of course these aren't your modern-day over-hyped, gut-munching type but your old-timey voodoo, mind-controlled, shambling slave sort. Bela Lugosi is the main highlight here as our evil villain with the awesome name of Murder Legendre. This is a very dashing Lugosi complete with sweet bad-guy mustache and matching beard. You also get a little racism thrown in, since it's the 30's, when someone talks about the worst thing for a woman would be to have her body in the hands of natives. Pretty dull whenever Bela isn't onscreen but worth a watch if you dig the classics and can deal with a very low-budget example of one.
Although it feels like this movie is everywhere today due to being in the public domain the original film was actually lost for a bunch of years up until being rediscovered in the 60's.
Overly stagey(cuz it's based on a play which was based on a book) but classic tale of a cute little murderous girl. The whole appeal of this film is the performance of Patty McCormack. She's quite convincing as a vengeful little demoness who gets rid of people who piss her off. The ending of this seems tacked on and deviates from the original story, it also seems almost Frankensteinian in it's convenience in wrapping everything up neatly. Then there's an epilogue which seems totally bizarre where our little brat gets a spanking which just adds to the campy qualities that run throughout the movie. A good watch but I'm not sure if this qualifies as a horror film, a drama, a psychological thriller or maybe all three wrapped up in what became a sorta template for a lot of killer kid movies over the years. There was a made for TV remake in the 80's but I've never heard anything good about it.
I'd seen the 1996 remake of this with Marlon Brando at a drive in once before but never actually viewed the original version til now. This one blows that newer flick away by far and I thought it was great for a few reasons. One being Bela Lugosi who doesn't star but has a neat role as the leader of the beast-men and seems to have been an inspiration for the band Devo with his "are we not men?" chanting. Charles Laughton is also great as Dr. Moreau and this one really fits in well with the other classic Universal monster movies(even though it was technically made by Paramount) since it has a whole island of hairy monster creeps running around. Also of note is the Panther Woman who's pretty hot for a 30's chick. I've never seen the 70's interpretation of this but I think it would be hard to top this.
This is a movie that totally disturbed me when I first saw it back in the VHS days and that was probably a cut up version with most of the gorier bits missing. It's also a movie I felt compelled to watch over and over again because of the power it had over me and after repeat viewings this one eventually went up there into classic status in my book. Like I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE it's a basic rape/revenge plot but here we get even nastier and more colorful villains. David Hess as rapist/sadist/balloon-hater Krug Stillo and porn star/director Fred Lincoln as his henchman are both amazing as is their animalistic lady counterpart Jeramie Rain who unfortunately only appeared in 3 movies before going off to marry Richard Dreyfuss. A lot of people give this movie shit for the scenes of bumbling cops(featuring future KARATE KID Cobra Kai leader Martin Cove) but as incongruous as they might seem this would be a ultra-bleak trip of a movie without those parts.
Overall what you get here is one of the few examples of a good Wes Craven film in my opinion and worthwhile to anyone who loves real exploitation,sleaze and/or just nasty nihilistic films in general. Avoid the remake unless you like watching very attractive people try and pretend their sleazy low-life rapists and failing miserably at it.
One of the more famous movies to use the old "it's only a movie"-line:
I never really considered The Invisible Man to be up there with the other classic Universal studios monsters. I mean he's not really even a monster, is he? He's just a crazy invisible guy(although he does seem pretty strong when he starts tossing cops around). Didn't seem nearly as amazingly awesome to me as a kid as watching the Wolf Man or Frankenstein lurking about. On top of that this isn't even really a horror film, it's science-fiction but because of when it was made it's lumped in with the other more monstrous characters from Hollywood's golden age. With that being said though I do find this an entertaining flick by FRANKENSTEIN director James Whale. It's nowhere near that one or his classic BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN but just the fact that you have a naked, crazy-ass fellow running around and screwing with society makes this one worth checking out.
The one major complaint I have with this movie is the old screechy-voiced woman played by Una O'Connor. I hate her and her whole stupid comic-relief act. While Whale did use her in BRIDE it seems like she gets a lot more screen-time here or maybe she's just extra-specially annoying. Either way I would have rated this movie a lot higher if she was killed in the first five minutes. On the positive side computer graphics didn't exist yet so the FX in this movie are awesome also Claude Rains is pretty spectacular since he has to convey almost everything using his voice alone.
Producer Val Lewton is responsible for a bunch of neat little 40's horror flicks like I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and a few Boris Karloff titles. He's probably one of the most famous producers in classic horror films and this is my fav from his filmography. This is the kind of movie I hated when I was a kid because it deals more with characters relationships and not enough monster action but watching it as an adult I can appreciate the subtlety and subtexts that are apparent throughout the movie. Most of the reviews I've seen for this over the years point out the comment that it makes on the sexual repression of women and a woman's fear of her own sexuality but to me this movie always seemed like a thinly veiled metaphor for a lesbian who tries to become a member of the "straight" world and since it was made in the 40's this couldn't be made very clear without it being censored out of existence. Of course this might not have been the original intention at all and I'm just putting a modern spin on it. Either way it's all done with a really noir-ish, moody atmosphere and you do get a little cat-lady monster action in the big finale.
There was a sequel to this made a couple of years later and a remake in the 80's. I've never seen either one but I remember the trailer to the 80's version playing on TV when it first came out and it seems like they had no trouble embracing the sexual ideas only hinted at in the original. Gotta check that out sometime.
One time this clearly insane paranoid fellow informed me that the
modern-day craze of zombie popularity was some sort of warning from the
powers that be that soon mass segments of the population would become
shambling messes due to radiation-leaks or some other such man-made
catastrophe. If this was true, which it obviously isn't, this would make
director George Romero some sorta all-seeing prophet since the guy
basically invented this genre right here. Also zombies were pretty
popular throughout the 80's and I don't recall any living dead epidemics
back then but what do I know?
At this point there's not a whole lot anyone can say about this
milestone horror epic that hasn't been said before a million and one
times. This movie has been picked apart by scholars and idiots alike.
People have ascribed it a social significance that seems to have been
mostly unintentional by the filmmakers and every serious horror fan
would have to admit that this film was the starting point of a new era
in horror. An era that would be marked with increasingly graphic and
horrific elements in film that mirrored our own societal ills quite a
bit more relevantly than something like THE BLOB or THE WOLFMAN ever set
out to. 70's horror for all practical purposes starts right here and
movies that came before, for the large part, instantly seemed quaint and
hokey in comparison. I've probably viewed this movie as much as
possible without my eyes falling out of my head and it always entertains
on some level. From an old cheap-ass VHS tape I had, to MTV's
midnight Halloween showings, to this being on almost every cheap-ass horror movie DVD set,
this film is inescapable. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. It is
due in part to it's public domain status that this film has gained it's
legendary reputation.. It changed
scary movies form being about giant bugs and martians to being about
gore and human monsters. We are the monsters. If there's any more
truthful statement than that in horror movies I don't know what it could
be. Or as John Carpenter likes to say it's the horror "out there" vs.
the horror within all of us. This, along with THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE,
are the two films I've seen the most in my life.
The one thing I have noticed, the more times I watch this film, is how my sympathies in this movie have shifted from the Ben character to that of Mr. Cooper. Sure it's easy to like Ben, he's the hero, he seems to do almost everything right and keeps his cool. Cooper on the other hand is almost the stereotypical uptight family man and although it's never explicitly stated we're led to assume that he's probably some kind of a racist as well. The problem is after viewing the movie so many times you realize that Cooper is right about the basement being the safest place and about all the barricades set up not really being strong enough of a defense against all those zombies. The way I figure it, if they just listened to him in the first place everyone would have been way better off. Maybe if he wasn't such a nervous, sweaty balding man he would have gotten the respect he deserved. Of course this would not have made quite as entertaining a movie and I suppose we have Ben to thank for this film going on to influence every zombie film made after it. Of course I'm also looking at the film from 2013 and not
1968 which I think would skew my view quite a bit taken out of the
social/racial-context that it was created in.
This spawned 2 different series of films including Romero's Dead
trilogy and writer John Russo's way goofier RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD
series. This was officially remade in 1990 by Tom Savini but also served
as the blueprint for just about every zombie movie made after it.
Update 10/25/13: I saw this as part of a Rifftrax show recently and while they could
riff on some of the goofy old-timey elements and dubious acting of some
of the cast here and there, even these goofballs couldn't do
much to elevate the depressing ending and note of doom that this classic
wraps up on.
It's been my experience that, as a general rule, women-in-prison movies are always way more entertaining than men-in-prison movies. The male films though are usually done with a somewhat more serious approach. This Hollywood classic really only uses the setting to convey a tale of rebellion in the face of a hopeless situation. It's very noticeably a product of the 60's mentality and has a stark anti-establishment message. Most modern audiences would probably find the movie a bit slow, and it does drag at times, but it's a compelling story and a beautifully shot film to look at. You get Paul Newman eating 50 eggs in an hour as our loner hero. This was way before he started selling salad dressing and whatnot so he was still at the top of his game as far as acting goes. There are a couple of scenes which are supposed to remind us of Jesus for some reason or another. You also get Strother Martin with the famous "What we've got here is a failure to communicate" line as the warden, George Kennedy as the jailhouse bully, Harry Dean Stanton as the lazy guy, Dennis Hopper as the crazy guy(not much of a stretch there) and the dad from The Waltons amongst other familiar faces. There's also an unexpected gratuitous car washing scene with a very busty hot sixties chick that comes out of nowhere. Worth checking out if you dig the 60's classics and don't suffer from ADD.
The first shock film? That's one possible interpretation. There is no plot so nothing really makes much sense beyond the dreamlike sense that we affix to anything that we don't immediately comprehend. This was the point though as Director Luis Bunuel was opposed to any interpretation of his work having any meaning or symbolism applied to it. A series of random imagery, the best known being a straight razor slicing across an eyeball, that leaves the viewer feeling nothing but uneasy right from the start in the off-beat weirdness of it all. Also features ants crawling out of a stigmata-like wound, a severed hand, dead animals, a deaths-head moth and various other odd things that randomly show up with no rhyme or reason. Not being an expert on the surrealist movement or Sigmund Freud I can't comment on the influence those things had on this film other than knowing that all these things are intertwined here in one way or another. There's an added creepy factor in knowing that the two main actors in this thing both ended up committing suicide. Check it out if you have any interest in bizarre cinema.
Thanks to my dad I was raised on a steady diet of THE THREE STOOGES and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO from a very early age and I've always loved almost all of their collective stuff no matter how idiotic. The cool thing about this classic is that you get A & C along with the great Shemp Howard from the Stooges and, even though he's probably my least favorite Stooge, you also get "Curly" Joe Besser in there and he comes off in this like he's sorta doing an impersonation of Lou Costello(although I guess they always did that same sorta act) and the two together are quite ridiculous. Of course you also get the obligatory cheap, shit-ass gorilla costume, which is always cool and the totally non-politically correct depictions of Africans, which is probably not considered very cool nowadays, but this was Hollywood in the 40's. Check it out if you love classic stupid comedy.
Costello meets KING KONG? Or is that THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN?:
What can you say about one of the greatest filmmakers of all time? This is supposed to be the first film that Akira Kurosawa had total control of and it's an interesting look at humanity and two fairly opposite characters. One an alcoholic doctor who, besides for his addiction to drinking, lives a pretty moral and upstanding life and the other a gangster who comes down with tuberculosis. It's great to see a young Toshiro Mifune playing the gangster role. The Japanese countryside looks pretty miserable and considering this was made right after World War II I can imagine why that would be. Not Kurosawa's best work, his samurai films are much better, but a good film to see for historical reasons. I also learned from this movie that Japanese chicks in the '40's had some crazy ass eyebrows.
"A bold essay in the art of the macabre" Quite the disturbing Hollywood classic. Stars old-timey legends Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in two pretty unflattering roles. Davis' Baby Jane bringing to mind The Joker and a female Leatherface in its ugly insanity. I can't imagine too many current big name stars making themselves so unappealing for a role. Hell, even Charlize Theron in MONSTER wasn't as hideous as this. Victor Buono is great as a money hungry musician. He would go on to be King Tut in the Batman show. Director Robert Aldrich would go on to make THE DIRTY DOZEN and that womens wrestling movie. Joan Crawford went on to be known as MOMMIE DEAREST in real life. All in all an interesting off-kilter look at celebrity sibling rivalry/insanity.
What can you possibly say about this movie that hasn't been said before? Only in the 1970's could we get a movie, released by a major studio, where a 12 year old girl repeatedly shoves a crucifix up her bloody vagina while screaming out "fuck me" over and over. That kind of ballsy insanity died somewhere and things seem to get worse and worse all the time on the creative front. While this probably works on a whole other level of scariness if you believe in things like the Devil and God and all that kind of stuff I still think it works just as well as an insane iconic work that will probably never be surpassed in many ways. A shocking movie that actually has a plot. It's hard to imagine that once upon a time Hollywood used to be able to do such a thing.
