Blogorium Review: Dark and Stormy Night

By now, I'm guessing that at least half of the regular visitors to the Blogorium have heard the Cap'n mention The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, if you haven't also seen it yourself. Some people love it, others loathe it, and I fall right in the middle. On the one hand, I enjoy the knowing send-up of cheapo 50s sci-fi B-movies; on the other hand, I admit that it occasionally lapses into the very territory it lampoons and becomes a little boring in the middle. I've heard arguments that the lags hurt the movie, and others argue that Skeleton is merely keeping true to the tradition of those films, but either way I like, not love, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

For the past six years, I hadn't thought too much about Skeleton or writer / director / actor Larry Blamire, so imagine the Cap'n's surprise to hear about The Lost Skeleton Returns Again, which is now out on DVD. Since I hadn't realized that Blamire had continued working in the interim, it never occurred to me a Lost Skeleton sequel could be in the cards (or his similarly themed Trail of the Screaming Forehead). Naturally, having enjoyed the first film, I went on a hunt for The Lost Skeleton Returns Again. I didn't find it. But I did find the simultaneously released Blamire joint Dark and Stormy Night.

If there's one thing I enjoy more than low-rent Science Fiction from the 50s and 60s, it's "haunted house" movies. Whether it's a simple murder mystery, an Abbott and Costello variation, or my own personal favorite, James Whale's The Old Dark House, if the throwback feels right, I'm on board*.

Blamire's Dark and Stormy Night is a send up of such films, and rendered very much the way Skeleton was: attempting to recreate the style of dialogue, camerawork, and plot machinations with a "just over the top and stupid but not too stupid" sense of parody. Dark and Stormy Night is as much of genre it's poking fun of, so the ribbing never feels to mean spirited or snarky.

The film exaggerates the size of "spooky house" ensembles to at least twenty speaking roles, characters with names like 8 o'clock Faraday, Billy Tuesday, Jack Tugdon, Seyton Ethelquake, Sabasha Fanmore, Archie Folde, Happy Codburn, Teak Armbruster, and Mrs. Cupcupboard. When the comically overloaded cast ends up at the estate of the last Sinas Cavinder to hear his will (some family friends, some domestics, money grubbers, relatives, total strangers, doctors, reporters, safari guide, lost travelers, a Cabbie looking for his fare, and at least one Gorilla), the Cavinder family secrets come out, and the Cavinder Phantom AND Cavinder Strangler wander the halls, picking off guests one by one. Will the reporters be able to save the day? Is there a 300 year-old witch fulfilling her curse? Is an escaped mental patient assuming the identity of one of the guests? Will the Cabbie get his thirty-five cents?

With an almost impossibly large cast of characters to keep track of, Blamire manages to keep the chaos reigned in for most of Dark and Stormy Night. The result is a frequently funny mystery with occasional horror touches (including nods to The Old Dark House, House on Haunted Hill, Invisible Ghost, The Haunting, The Most Dangerous Game, His Girl Friday, Great Expectations, The House of Mystery, The Haunting, and yes, Hillbillys in a Haunted House**). There are more than a few chuckles, if not outright laughs, especially from Blamire's Ray Vestinhaus, an unassuming, deadpan stranger who drops non sequiturs left and right when you least expect it.

The kills are generally stabbings, chokings, and the ironic "Safari Guide Head Mounted to the Wall" gag. Dark and Stormy Night is not surprisingly bloodless - as its antecedents were - and keeps the mystery in place until a suitably goofy conclusion that half makes sense. The only downside is that Dark and Stormy Night, like The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, tends to drag in the middle. For a 93 minute movie, it certainly feels longer than that, which hurts Dark and Stormy Night overall. If you aren't already familiar with the films Blamire is sending up, I can't imagine you'd make it through the entire film.

That said, if you've seen any of the movies listed above (or thought of half a dozen I didn't mention), and you enjoyed The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, I suspect you'll be pleased with Dark and Stormy Night. The opening and closing make up for the drag in the mid-section (starting around the 40-minute mark) and while not every joke works, more than enough will keep you chuckling all the way through.

As for the Cap'n, I look forward to watching it again, possibly as a Horror Fest supplementary film, and once I can locate a copy of The Lost Skeleton Returns Again, I look forward to reviewing that for you. And Trail of the Screaming Forehead, which sounds like something worth looking into.



* Honestly, I'm willing to include such disparate films as Murder By Death and The Haunting in this category. ** At least, that's where I choose to draw the gorilla from. Oh, sure, House of Mystery is 33 years older, blah blah blah. Hillbillys in a Haunted House. Get used to it.