Shocktober Revisited: Mini-Reviews!

 Sometimes, horror movies get rolled up in other quick reviews, and accordingly can be missed. The following quick takes are from various points over the years, so the quality of the review(s) can vary wildly:

Die, Monster, Die! - Based on H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space in the same way that The Haunted Palace is based on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (loosely), this AIP production has some effective imagery, but finds a way to drag on long enough to make 78 minutes feel like two hours. It's not lacking in atmosphere, and Boris Karloff certainly gives as much as he possibly can (which is saying something, as the actor was in poor enough health that he spends most of the film confined to a wheelchair), but I had trouble remembering much about the film hours after finishing it.

 Lovecraft's town of Arkham, Massachusetts, is relocated to England so that American student Stephen Rinehart (Nick Adams) can travel to the Whitley manor on the outskirts of town. Nobody in Arkham wants to talk to him about the Whitleys, nor will they provide him with any means of transportation, so Rinehart has to walk. It gives us the opportunity to see the desolate lands on the outskirts of the manor, and what looks like a huge crater, surrounded by dead trees that crumble to dust when touched. After dodging a bear trap at the gate, he enters the Whitley manor to find himself unwelcome by its patriarch, Nahum Whitley (Karloff), despite having been invited by Nahum's daughter, Susan (Suzan Farmer).

 Something is obviously very wrong at the Whitley house, and Nahum's wife Letitia begs Stephen to take Susan away (they were students at an unnamed university in the U.S.), against Nahum's objections. Letitia is bedridden and refuses to let anyone see her, and Nahum is opposed to taking her to a doctor in town. Their maid went insane and lurks around the grounds under a black veil, and their butler Merwyn (Terence de Marney) is barely capable of lifting silverware without collapsing. A strange glow is coming from the (locked) greenhouse, and it's rumored that Nahum's father, Corbin Whitley, practiced black magic (because, you know, it kind of makes it sound like it's connected to The Haunted Palace, maybe?), which seems to be confirmed from the artwork scrawled in the cellar of the mansion.

 Unfortunately, for all of the mystery surrounding the Whitleys and what writer Jerry Sohl cobbled together from The Colour Out of Space and more topical concerns (circa 1965) about radiation, Die, Monster, Die! is mostly a movie about wandering around a spooky house with candles until something jumps out. Audiences who bemoan "jump" scares in modern horror films will roll their eyes at no less than three such moments in Die, Monster, Die!, all of which have the bad form to continue well after it's clear they aren't scary. There are some nice images - the matte painting of the meteor crash looks very good, and the "zoo" of deformed creatures / aliens (it's never very clear) in the greenhouse "shed" make an impression, but the pacing of the film drags on endlessly.

 Lovecraft fans will, in all likelihood, not enjoy the explanation given to why the meteorite causes strange and horrible things to happen to the vegetation (SPOILER - it's Uranium) or the way that Die, Monster, Die! devolves into a "we have to fight the monster before we escape," wherein Boris Karloff is replaced by a stuntman wearing a glowing prototype of the "Green Man" outfit under his suit. I honestly can't remember if they even explain what happens to the maid after she tries to attack Stephen and falls down, but it's not the kind of plot point I'm even worried about following up on. While I've seen worse adaptations of Lovecraft stories, I'd be hard pressed to say I've seen one that's more of a slog to get through than this one.

Terminal Invasion - Cranpire's love of this film used to vex me. Admittedly, I'd only seen it in pieces on the Sci-Fi Channel and it looked like their run of the mill crap, just with Bruce Campbell. Now that I've watched the whole thing, I can understand why he enjoys it so much. Kind of.

I'll give credit where credit's due: director Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13th) is a more competent director than most of the "Sci-Fi Original" stable of no-names. Terminal Invasion is a cross between Pitch Black and John Carpenter's The Thing, with a small dose of Assault on Precinct 13 thrown in for good measure, and Cunningham rises to the occasion. For what's essentially a ripoff of other sci-fi / horror movies, it's pretty good. There's certainly no fat on this movie, so every scene exists to set up something later.

The story takes place on a snowy night while a small band of travelers are trapped in a charter plane lobby. Campbell is a criminal being transferred who ends up in their midst, along with some nasty alien invaders disguised as humans. You can figure out where it goes from there if you've seen any of the movies above.

What I appreciated about Terminal Invasion is the way it sets up twists in the story based on things you assume to be true at the beginning. While I was pretty sure I knew who was an alien and who wasn't (and was mostly right), there's at least one genuine surprise halfway into the movie. Cunningham uses the limited geography of the terminal to telegraph plot points later, which I find to be rare of Sci-Fi Originals.

That being said, this is still a made for TV movie, and it shows. Most sets are over-lit so that shooting can commence from any angle, so even the dark scenes are pretty bright. The cgi, while used sparingly, is still five or six steps below the early Nasonex commercials. At least twice during Terminal Invasion, the movie "Fades to Commercial", and it looks silly without actual commercials.

However, most of these are acceptable if considered in the context of how Terminal Invasion came to be. The unfortunate cost cutting exercise comes during "attack" scenes involving the aliens. The camera is normally pretty stable, but when the aliens attack there's a postproduction "herky-jerky" effect that just looks dirt cheap.

Still, with expectations set properly, Terminal Invasion is pretty good for what it is, and I'd probably watch it again. Bruce is pretty good despite having to play the "stoic" type for most of the movie. Not many wisecracks to be seen here, but there is some decent gore and Terminal Invasion would be good times with a six pack and your buddies.

Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie - Tim Burton continues along his path of "things you recognize, re-imagined by a director you really used to like" by adapting the long running gothic soap opera Dark Shadows and his own short film, Frankenweenie, but this time it's stop-motion animated and three times as long.

Are you ready for the shocker? I actually liked Dark Shadows more than Frankenweenie. Nobody else did, but Dark Shadows isn't nearly as horrible as I expected it to be, and instead of nonstop jokes about the 1970s, it's a surprisingly atmospheric and violent meditation on family ties. That said, it has too many characters, superfluous cameos that really don't move the plot forward (Alice Cooper, I'm looking at you), and while it's better than I was prepared for, that doesn't mean it's even close to the best Tim Burton is capable of. I suppose after being disappointed by Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Corpse Bride, the idea of a marginally entertaining Tim Burton film was refreshing. That said, everybody else seems to hate it, so be warned.

 Frankenweenie could be better if Burton could figure out how to stretch a 30 minute short film into a full narrative, but he didn't. Basically the structure of the original Frankenweenie has been elongated and stitched together with a clever pastiche of Joe Dante-esque "monsters run amok" - including the best (and possibly only) Bambi Meets Godzilla reference I can remember. Unfortunately, the first forty five minutes drag so much that it's more of a relief than a delight when the reanimated pets wreak havoc all over New Holland. I will say it was nice to (hear) Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, and Winona Ryder return to the Burton-verse, but ultimately Frankenweenie overstays its welcome before it has the chance to be any fun.

 Zombeavers - I didn't go into Zombeavers expecting it to be any good. This sounds counter-intuitive with what I said earlier in the recaps about trying to avoid bad movies, but I didn't watch Sharknado and this seemed like it might be an acceptable substitute. I mean, it couldn't possibly get better than the poster, or the inherently stupid premise, right? It would quickly get lazy and then I would get bored, like I normally do with Syfy Originals or movies that look like that (*coughTheAsylumreleasescough*).

 So imagine my surprise to discover that Zombeavers is a (slightly) higher budgeted version of a movie like Blood Car or Rise of the Animals. True, this is not a scrappy, home made production - how could it be with a "From the Producers of American Pie, Cabin Fever, and The Ring" on the poster? - but it has the same anarchic spirit of those movies. At times, it's actually as bad as those can be, but what helps Zombeavers (a lot, actually) is that every time you think it's not worth sticking through, something you wouldn't expect either happens or comes out of someone's mouth. Either the film takes a truly unexpected turn - which it does - or one of the characters has a line that evokes a "wait, what?" and you don't mind sticking around.

 I felt like I was in pretty good hands during the prologue, which features Bill Burr and an unrecognizable John Mayer (yep, "Your Body is a Wonderland"'s John Mayer) as drivers hauling around chemical waste and shooting the shit, often in increasingly strange ways. They eventually hit a deer, which leads to a barrel of said chemicals rolling down into a stream and to (dun dun DUUUUNNN) a beaver dam. Because, yes, this is a movie about zombie beavers. Or Zombeavers, if you will. Also, there are three college students: Mary (Rachel Melvin), Zoe (Courtney Palm), and Jenn (Lexi Atkins), who are having a "girls' weekend" in order to forget about Mary's boyfriend Sam (Hutch Dano) cheating on her. But he shows up anyway, with Tommy (Jake Weary) and Buck (Peter Gilroy) in tow, so it becomes a slightly uncomfortable couples weekend. With Zombeavers.

 You might struggle through the "set up" part of the film, and I nearly turned it off while the girls were on the way to the cabin, but some of the lines are so out of left field that I stuck with it. The tone is borderline surreal, from the "is this serious" hunter (Rex Linn) that they run into, to the neighbors near the cabin (Brent Briscoe and Phyllis Katz), who turn out to be way more savvy about kids than you'd expect. And there's a bear, but mostly, it's the Zombeavers. Which look like nothing more than marginally articulated puppets and are hilarious. You see, sometimes a cheap looking monster can elevate a B-Movie from "that was okay" to "that was amazing," and the titular zombified beavers are worth the price of admission. It doesn't hurt that Zombeavers gets even weirder when the "rules of infection" kick in, but the monsters are the stars of the show. Stick around after the credits - which include a song about the movie that puts Richard Cheese to shame - for an even better zombie related pun. If it sets up a sequel, I could be onboard with that, but if not, well played, Jordan Rubin...

 John Dies at the End -This is a faithful adaptation of David Wong's novel by Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, Bubba Ho-Tep), at least for the first half. The film gets to about the halfway point in the book, and then realizes it has thirty minutes to wrap up the rest of the story, so liberties are taken. Honestly, I didn't mind them, because I knew what was being condensed and most of the spirit is kept intact.

 That said, I totally understand why people who haven't read John Dies at the End don't like the movie. There's a sense of context that's missing from the film as it hurtles towards its conclusion that further confuses the comedy / horror tone and probably loses a lot of people. If you haven't read the book, I wouldn't watch the movie at all. You're going to hate it because of how it collapses in the last thirty minutes. If you have read the book, know Coscarelli mostly made sensible changes (not going to Vegas, diminishing Amy's role in the overall story, dropping certain elements of Korrok's plan), and made at least one I don't really understand (changing Molly's name), and two I don't know how I feel about (no Fred Durst and John's band doesn't sound nearly as bad as I thought it would). I dig John Dies at the End, and if it ever happens, I'd watch This Book (Movie?) is Filled with Spiders, although with what they had to do on a low budget here, I can't imagine that ever happening. That's a shame.

 World War Z - One could suppose that if Warm Bodies was a zombie movie for teenage girls, then World War Z is a zombie movie for people who vaguely know the word "zombie" in popular culture. It's not even really a horror movie - more of an action / disaster hybrid with a redesigned third act that inches towards suspense but still ends up like a tamer 28 Days Later. And I watched the "unrated" version, for the record. I can only imagine how toothless World War Z must have been in theaters. Still, it has a scrappy, amiable charm for a big budgeted blockbuster studio "tent pole" movie.

 Based almost not at all on the book of the same name by Max Brooks, World War Z is the story of Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), a retired UN investigator living with his family, until the zombie outbreak begins, that is. Then the Deputy Secretary General Thierry Umutoni (Fana Mokoena) brings him back in to travel around the world and see what caused the outbreak, from South Korea to Israel and eventually to a World Health Organization research center in Ireland. Separated from his family, and with continually dwindling support, Gerry finds that the zombie outbreak is capable of overcoming even the most fortified of cities, and unless they can find a cure, humanity is doomed.


 World War Z is essentially a travelogue designed to show off various big action set pieces, which director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace) does fairly well, and which Brad Pitt responds to with a reasonable sense of urgency. The zombies are sometimes people in makeup but are usually great swaths of CGI mayhem, particularly during the siege of Jerusalem. The movie makes an abrupt turn in the section in Ireland, due in large part because the delay in World War Z's release had everything to do with the third act not working, so they scrapped the original ending in Russia and went with a more sparse, claustrophobic ending. It works, although you can see loose threads of plot line in the film as a result - the main example is Matthew Fox's UN soldier who doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose other than to help move Gerry's family around, but who in the original version "takes" his wife and daughter as his own. Now it just seems like an oddly high profile casting choice for a minor role at best. Doctor Who fans already know the prescient casting of Peter Capaldi as the WHO Doctor (that IS how he appears in the credits).

 There's not really much else to say about the movie. I thought it was watchable, if mostly average. The story behind the movie is more interesting than the finished product. The survival bits near the beginning and towards the end are good, but have been done better before. All of the big action sequences are bombastic and if you like explosions and zombies and some degree of violence, the unrated cut is certainly worth your time. It's popcorn fare through and through, which is fine and dandy every now and then, but I can't imagine that I'd be all that enthused for World War Z 2.

The ABCs of Death 2 - is like V/H/S 2 in that it takes everything that worked about the first film, jettisoned most of what didn't, and was more fun to watch. The premise is still the same: twenty six directors each receive a letter from the alphabet, and have free reign to come up with a 2-3 minute short film that conveys a word and, in some form or fashion, death. The ABCs of Death had some interesting entries ("Unearthed" was a good one), but leaned heavily on scatological humor ("F is for Fart" was the tip of the iceberg, it turned out), and then there were the "oh, I didn't need to see that, not ever" letters. Like "Libido" and "Pressure." It turns out there are things you might want to un-see, and several of them are in The ABCs of Death.

The ABCs of Death 2, by comparison, has nothing as traumatic, and I would suspect it would play a lot better with an audience than the first one did. Watching that one at Nevermore, there was a lot of... shall I say, stunned silence as the film went on. There are certainly some "what the hell was that?" parts in the sequel, but nothing you're going to apologize for exposing someone to. The only thing that comes close is the last segment, "Z is for Zygote," which is centered around an already unforgettable image that closes on an even more disturbing note. I know that people don't like "P is for P-P-P-P-Scary!" but I thought it had an unhinged quality, somewhere between the weirder Betty Boop cartoons and Black Lodge-era David Lynch, that worked for me.

 As with the first film, you'll find highlights ("A is for Amateur") and lowlights ("V is for Vacation"), but there's nothing in The ABCs of Death that comes close to 2's "M is for Masticate," a slow motion gross out with a wicked joke at the end. There's also "D is for Deloused," which reminded me a bit of a Brothers Quay short. I'll leave most of the discovery for you, but if you kind of liked the first film, I strongly suspect you'll enjoy this one more.

 Horns - I feel like there's a better movie somewhere in Alexandre Aja's Horns. Maybe it got lost in the editing, or maybe it's just inherent in the adaptation of Joe Hill's novel, but the finished product just don't quite work. It's as though Aja made a bitterly funny, black comedy, and also made a more generic, teen-friendly story of good and evil, and then smashed them together at the worst possible junctures. For the opening twenty minutes of Horns, you're probably going to think the movie is great: it has a wicked mean streak, Daniel Radcliffe is spot on as a guy everyone thinks is a murderer, that embraces the horns he grows and the power that comes with it. The way people react, first telling him their darkest fantasies and then acting on them when he says they should, is often hilarious.


 And then we hit the first of what turn out to be several, lengthy, flashbacks, giving us the backstory of Ig (Radcliffe) and Merrin (Juno Temple), leading up to her death - the one everyone assumes Ig is responsible for. Everyone, including his family - played by James Remar, Kathleen Quinlan, and Joe Anderson - is positive he did it and that he's lying, with the exception of his friend, Lee (Max Minghella). The "whodunit" is pretty easy to work out for yourself, even if Aja, Hill, and screenwriter Keith Bunin throw in a number of red herrings. I bet, without telling you anything else, you can guess who the real killer is. That's not the problem, so much as the flashbacks that put the mystery together. There's a massive tonal shift from black comedy to slightly tragic story of temptation and of good and evil (on a biblical scale), and for some reason, ne'er the twain shall meet in Horns.

 I can understand how it might have worked in Hill's novel - which I haven't yet read, but plan to - but as a film, the structure of the story is at times jarring and disruptive. Maybe there was no way to properly balance the two in a film, because Horns alternates between wicked and bland, between clever and obvious, without ever finding a good middle ground. There are some fantastic moments sprinkled throughout the film, and the cast is game for anything, playing both the best and worst versions of themselves as they encounter "evil" Ig, but Horns gets away from them. It's never quite the movie that it could be, so I'm left feeling ambivalent with the end result.

 The Innkeepers - From Ti West, the director of The House of the Devil, comes another slow burn horror film where tension continues mounting and the sense of dread is palpable. Instead of replicating the horror of the early 1980s, West's "haunted hotel" follow-up is set squarely in the present, and he's just as adept at creeping you out with slow tracking shots, suggested noises, and believable characters you relate to. Sara Paxton's Claire is a young woman without much of a clue what she want to do or be, who becomes way too interested in Luke (Pat Healy)'s hobby: ghost hunting. She's fixated on finding the spirit of Madeline O'Malley, a bride who killed herself in the hotel in the 1890s.

 On the last weekend that the Yankee Padler hotel is open, Luke and Claire trade off shifts, watching over the last remaining hotel tenants - former actress / new age guru Leanne Rease-Jones (Kelly McGillis) and a mysterious Old Man (George Riddle) - while they hunt for evidence of O'Malley's presence. West doles out the scares slowly but surely, and only towards the very end do things go the way most horror films go. In fact, if there's any fault to be found in The Innkeepers, it's that what comes before and after the climax of the film are undermined ever so slightly by what we know HAS to happen, even if the subtle clues of why it happens don't always add up. Without spoiling too much, I can say that the film is an example of the kind of movie 1408 could have been, one that eschews cheap histrionics and trickery and deliberately ratchets up the "willies" factor.

 Fans of The House of the Devil are going to find a lot to love about The Inkeepers, but if you like your horror fast and relentless, this may seem a little slow for your tastes. For me? Let's just say I had to watch something else after I finished it, because I wasn't going to bed.

Quick Review(s): Non-Stop, Bye Bye Birdie, and Die, Monster, Die!

 Even the Cap'n has strange weekends, sometimes: while it should come as no surprise to you that I'm watching more movies than are being reviewed as of late, some weekends, even I can't account for the unusual combinations. This past weekend, for example, I sat down to watch Drive Hard and barely got through it, despite the potentially winning combination of Thomas Jane, John Cusack, and director Brian Trenchard-Smith. Then, because that was such a disaster, I watched Summer Fest alumnus Death Spa (this time on Blu-Ray) and was surprised at the level of talent behind the camera in the accompanying documentary (perhaps more on that at another point).

 Then, for reasons known only to me, I decided it was time to figure out whether I had really seen all of Bye Bye Birdie or not (I had), and then to check out an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation I didn't realize existed, Die, Monster, Die!, before closing things out with the latest "Liam Neeson 'special set of skills' Action Movie," Non-Stop. Because that's clearly a balanced weekend, right? A little action, a dash of musical comedy, and an AIP cash-in on the success of Roger Corman's The Haunted Palace.

 (To put it in perspective, the previous weekend included X-Men: Days of Future Past, Persona, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)

 Let's take a look at this unorthodox weekend-long triple feature, shall we?

 Bye Bye Birde - Full disclosure: Bye Bye Birdie is not my favorite musical. It isn't even close (coming in well behind The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Oklahoma, or Cannibal! The Musical), but it was a production I was involved in during high school, in a strictly "behind the scenes" capacity. Our mantra, particularly during musicals, seemed to be "copy the movie" when producing the play, so I'm certain the technical theater crew watched Bye Bye Birdie (as we did with Oklahoma and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying), but I couldn't remember if I'd ever seen it from beginning to end, so as I had the Twilight Time Blu-Ray from an order last month (with Wild at Heart and Used Cars), it seemed like a good time to find out.

 (It's worth pointing out that I've never seen any other production of Bye Bye Birdie - including [until very recently] the one I was involved in - so any mentions of "changes" is based entirely on what I know of the play as we did it vs. the film. I also have no idea how many other productions model themselves after the film, so the previous paragraph wasn't meant to disparage our drama department. Maybe everybody does that.)

 The film adaptation certainly has a fine cast, not limited to a star-making performance by Ann-Margret, although she nearly lost me with the opening song. It takes a little while to get accustomed to the way she sings, particularly the title song, which in all honestly I found to be a little shrill and abrasive (it's not actually part of the stage production), but I stuck with it. I wanted to see Dick Van Dyke as Albert and Janet Leigh as Rosie, and an early appearance by Ed Sullivan didn't hurt, either (his role in the film is more significant, one of several changes in adapting the play). I also knew that I had Paul Lynde - Kim MacAfee (Ann-Margret)'s father, Harry  - to look forward to. After all, I'd already seen him sing "Kids" on his Halloween Special.

Other than the title song, I found that I enjoyed most of the numbers in Bye Bye Birdie, although there are less of them than in the play (Rosie has at least one song cut, along with another song distracting reporters from asking questions about Conrad), but by necessity we also removed all of Hugo Peabody's songs - the actor playing him wasn't a singer - something that wasn't an issue for pop star Bobby Rydell, who is arguably a better singer than Jesse Pearson, the titular character. While I had largely forgotten about how much the movie deviates from the stage production, I found myself enjoying (and recalling) moving songs around - "Put on a Happy Face" in the MacAfees' back yard with Rosie, and almost immediately following "One Boy." Perhaps it was my general ignorance about Janet Leigh, but I didn't realize she was going to be singing, or, more impressively, be directly involved in the gymnastic elements of the Shriner dance. Watching the long, mostly unbroken takes, Leigh is, as best I could tell, being flipped around without the benefit of a double.

 Reading a bit about the movie, I hadn't realized that Dick Van Dyke and Paul Lynde weren't fond of the adaptation (both were in the original play), and that the former in particular felt it showcased Ann-Margret too much. It is true that the teaser trailer is strictly about Ann-Margaret and just barely finds time to mention anyone else, but even with the lion's share of screen time (and to be honest, Albert and Rosie get a lot of the middle of the film to themselves), she's not a low point in any way. If there was anybody who I felt underwhelmed by in Bye Bye Birdie, it's Conrad Birdie.

 Pinpointing exactly what's so problematic about Conrad is tricky - part of it is that director George Sidney toned down the "Lothario" part of Birdie, and aside from one quick mention of needing a "church key" to open his beer, he's not much of a louse in the film, either. Instead, Conrad is strangely muted, not particularly charismatic, and in no way deserving of the attention he gets from the girls of Sweet Apple, Ohio. I know that he's based in some capacity on Elvis (which is how most people seem to picture him), but my understanding was that the composers (Charles Strouse and Lee Adams) actually designed the character more around Conway Twitty. There's a rumor that Elvis was approached to play Birdie in the film, was interested, but Colonel Parker didn't want him parodying his image. No offense to Jesse Pearson, but it might have at least given Conrad more "oomph." He barely makes an impression for being the titular character, to the point that the Moscow Ballet portion of the Ed Sullivan Show at the end of the film is more interesting than "One Last Kiss."

 Bookending title song and Birdie aside, there's a lot to like about Bye Bye Birdie, much of which centers around Dick Van Dyke. Mary Poppins fans should keep a close eye out during "Put on a Happy Face" to see an early version of his "penguin" dance. He elevates a largely reactive character in a way that Rydell similarly doesn't (no fault of his - Hugo isn't much to work with). It's hard to argue that Ann-Margret isn't the centerpiece of the film, and she certainly makes a splash. I imagine she had some interesting conversations with Presley during the filming of Viva Las Vegas...


 Non-Stop - I suppose the easy joke here would be to say that "Non-Stop is more of a non-starter," but the truth is that for a healthy chunk of its mid-section, the film is a serviceable to pretty good thriller with enough unfolding plot developments to keep you invested. That all falls apart if you take any time to think carefully about the story, but by the time you realize what he / she / them are actually up to, it won't even matter. It's a ridiculous explanation, followed by an even more implausible climax that will leave you shaking your head. But I've gotten ahead of myself, haven't I?

 Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) is an Air Marshall on a routine trip from New York to London, when he receives a mysterious text on his secured phone. A passenger aboard the plane threatens Bill that if he doesn't transfer 150 million dollars to a private account, someone will die every twenty minutes. Marks isn't just going to let this happen, but without causing panic on the plane, who can he trust?

 That's the set-up for the film, and for the most part the entire plot, for better, for worse. Most people are really just coming because Liam Neeson is in the film and he has a gun on the poster, which brings us to his "particular set of skills" in this film, which are drinking and being a grizzled Air Marshall who hates flying. I think he's also supposed to be good at observing people, or at least that what the hazy shots of passengers led me to believe. Mostly he's good at profiling, as he picks out people who look the most threatening (and are, of course, not at all), but since most of Non-Stop is predicated on not being able to trust anybody on the flight Bill is on from New York to London, I guess it's okay for director Jaume Collet-Serra (Unknown)  to prey on our jingoistic prejudices at the outset, since he's going to totally blow our minds later in the movie. (SPOILER ALERT: the "Suspicious Muslim" stereotype is a doctor and the vaguely Easter European dude who doesn't say anything until halfway through the film is an NYPD officer. Gotcha, racist audience members!).

 Now I'm being unfair to some degree, because Collet-Serra and screenwriters John W. Richardson, Christopher Roach, and Ryan Engle do a fair bit of twisting our expectations around, even if they sometimes cheat a little bit to do it. Since we know almost nothing about any character other than Bill until well into the movie, the audience is left only with our preconceived notions about "suspicious" people on airplanes, which they toy with repeatedly. The mystery of who is sending Bill these messages (which eventually appear on screen, so we don't have to also look at his tiny phone throughout the film) and how people are going to die on a crowded flight is a pretty good one. In fact, the execution of the plan goes in a few unexpected directions early on, to the point that I was pleasantly impressed, but it doesn't last for very long. By the time that Non-Stop shifts into full on hyperbole and (SPOILER) the TSA agents believe that Marks is hijacking the plane, things strain credibility. And that's before we get to the big reveal and the even dumber thing that happens after that.

 But, just in case you wanted to watch Non-Stop, I won't give it away. It's almost ridiculous enough to recommend in and of itself, but the fact that the first half or so is also a decent game of "cat and mouse" works in its favor. In the "Liam Neeson, man of action" genre, it falls somewhere between Taken and Taken 2 - neither as enjoyable stupid as the former, nor as inane and redundant as the second. I haven't seen Unknown, so I couldn't comment, but Collet-Serra also made that, as well as Orphan, another movie with a "really?!?" twist. If you're inclined to enjoy movies like this, or saw the poster and said "I'll rent that," you're better off watching Non-Stop than, say, Drive Hard. If you're more predisposed towards, say, Neeson in The Grey, this is not going to be your cup of tea, but if you liked Flightplan... well, um, you liked Flightplan. Congratulations?

There's a surprisingly high ratio of "really, they're in this?" in Non-Stop, including Academy Award Winner Lupita Nyong'o (flight attendant "Gwen," sporting the same high-top fade she had at the Oscars), Academy Award Nominee Julianne Moore (Jen Summers, woman sitting next to Bill who ends up helping him), Guy who has been in back-to-back Best Picture Winners Scoot McNairy (Tom Bowen, dude who is going to Amsterdam), and of course, Academy Award Presenter Liam Neeson*.
Also, lots of familiar faces, like Downton Abbey's Michelle Dockery (flight attendant Nancy), Ain't Them Bodies Saints'sNate Parker (Zack, dude who Bill is a jerk to), and House of Cards and Midnight in Paris's Corey Stoll (Suspicious looking dude).

 While we're at it, why not Linus Roache (Batman Begins) as the Captain, and Anson Mount (ummm, Crossroads) as a passenger with a secret, although for a minute I thought it was Eric Bana rocking a Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code wig. But, alas, it's just Anson Mount, dude who is (SPOILER) secretly also an Air Marshall and who (BIGGER SPOILER) gets his neck broken by Bill in a pretty violent bathroom fight and who also (EVEN BIGGER SPOILER) got killed because he thought Bill knew he was smuggling a briefcase full of cocaine on the flight but (SPOILER FOR THE "BIG DUMB" ENDING) was actually smuggling a briefcase with cocaine that had a bomb hidden inside so that the mystery texter could blow the plane up. Nice job (SPOILER FOR A DIFFERENT MOVIE), "Final Boy" from All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. Bana would have had that on lock down, and wouldn't have made fun of Bill for having "drunken Liam Neeson red eye" before the flight.

  Finally, although you're likely not going to be asking "who is that guy on the phone from the TSA who won't 'negotiate with terrorists'" (e.g. Bill), it turns out to be a fairly familiar actor, particularly if you watch Boardwalk Empire. It's one last surprise, and probably the most welcome one considering that the end of this movie is so stupid that Passenger 57 looks downright plausible by comparison. Or Air Force One, for that matter. Or the one with Steven Seagal and Kurt Russell. Executive Decision? Sure, why not. That ought to give you some idea of what you're in for. But for a while, you might actually enjoy it, and depending on your level of sobriety, then you might really enjoy the ending.


 Die, Monster, Die! - Based on H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space in the same way that The Haunted Palace is based on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (loosely), this AIP production has some effective imagery, but finds a way to drag on long enough to make 78 minutes feel like two hours. It's not lacking in atmosphere, and Boris Karloff certainly gives as much as he possibly can (which is saying something, as the actor was in poor enough health that he spends most of the film confined to a wheelchair), but I had trouble remembering much about the film hours after finishing it.

 Lovecraft's town of Arkham, Massachusetts, is relocated to England so that American student Stephen Rinehart (Nick Adams) can travel to the Whitley manor on the outskirts of town. Nobody in Arkham wants to talk to him about the Whitleys, nor will they provide him with any means of transportation, so Rinehart has to walk. It gives us the opportunity to see the desolate lands on the outskirts of the manor, and what looks like a huge crater, surrounded by dead trees that crumble to dust when touched. After dodging a bear trap at the gate, he enters the Whitley manor to find himself unwelcome by its patriarch, Nahum Whitley (Karloff), despite having been invited by Nahum's daughter, Susan (Suzan Farmer).

 Something is obviously very wrong at the Whitley house, and Nahum's wife Letitia begs Stephen to take Susan away (they were students at an unnamed university in the U.S.), against Nahum's objections. Letitia is bedridden and refuses to let anyone see her, and Nahum is opposed to taking her to a doctor in town. Their maid went insane and lurks around the grounds under a black veil, and their butler Merwyn (Terence de Marney) is barely capable of lifting silverware without collapsing. A strange glow is coming from the (locked) greenhouse, and it's rumored that Nahum's father, Corbin Whitley, practiced black magic (because, you know, it kind of makes it sound like it's connected to The Haunted Palace, maybe?), which seems to be confirmed from the artwork scrawled in the cellar of the mansion.

 Unfortunately, for all of the mystery surrounding the Whitleys and what writer Jerry Sohl cobbled together from The Colour Out of Space and more topical concerns (circa 1965) about radiation, Die, Monster, Die! is mostly a movie about wandering around a spooky house with candles until something jumps out. Audiences who bemoan "jump" scares in modern horror films will roll their eyes at no less than three such moments in Die, Monster, Die!, all of which have the bad form to continue well after it's clear they aren't scary. There are some nice images - the matte painting of the meteor crash looks very good, and the "zoo" of deformed creatures / aliens (it's never very clear) in the greenhouse "shed" make an impression, but the pacing of the film drags on endlessly.

 Lovecraft fans will, in all likelihood, not enjoy the explanation given to why the meteorite causes strange and horrible things to happen to the vegetation (SPOILER - it's Uranium) or the way that Die, Monster, Die! devolves into a "we have to fight the monster before we escape," wherein Boris Karloff is replaced by a stuntman wearing a glowing prototype of the "Green Man" outfit under his suit. I honestly can't remember if they even explain what happens to the maid after she tries to attack Stephen and falls down, but it's not the kind of plot point I'm even worried about following up on. While I've seen worse adaptations of Lovecraft stories, I'd be hard pressed to say I've seen one that's more of a slog to get through than this one.



 * I'm just messing with you - he was nominated for Kinsey, but I had you going there for a second, didn't I?

Blogorium Review: Corman's World - Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

 I may be totally wrong about this, but one of the points made in Alex Stapleton's fine documentary Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel is that the average "twenty year old film buff" doesn't know who Roger Corman is. During an interview late in the film, Martin Scorsese (who made Boxcar Bertha for Corman) says "I think it's very important to let the generation of today know who he is, and we all, we knew it almost forty years ago, so it's time to reintroduce him as a director, but also what he represented to American entertainment." It's probably true that the average moviegoer doesn't know who Corman is, and I don't totally disagree with Scorsese or Penelope Spheeris (who makes the earlier point about his obscurity), I would argue among film buffs that the prolific exploitation director / producer is not only well known, he's revered.

 Roger Corman is credited with producing over 400 films, most of which are some variety of exploitation if not outright schlock. He's known for making films on a shoestring budget, sometimes in less than a week, and for providing many writers, directors, actors, and producers their first "break" in Hollywood. That list includes Jack Nicholson, Joe Dante, Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, John Sayles, Pam Grier, Dick Miller, Johnathan Demme, Spheeris, Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Allan Arkush, William Shatner, David Carradine, Robert DeNiro, Monte Hellman, Francis Ford Coppola, and Ron Howard (who directed his first film, Grand Theft Auto, for Corman). Many of these "Corman School" graduates appear in Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, to help tell the story of a fiercely independent filmmaker.

 Corman started his career as a script reader at 20th Century Fox, but when the story editor took his notes for The Gunfighter and took credit for it, he decided to go at it alone. He produced and assistant directed Monster from the Ocean Floor, then The Fast and the Furious (using borrowed sports cars from dealerships), and learned the keys to making films cheap in order to always turn a profit. He teamed up with American International Pictures and produced and directed a string of no-budget films (Dick Miller points out a scene in Apache Woman where he, as a cowboy, kills himself as an Indian).

 Corman's World breathlessly covers his stock actors, his period at AIP, the success Corman had producing a series of Edgar Allan Poe stories with Vincent Price, and the development of "teenage" pictures with Nicholson. The influence of The Wild Angels on Easy Rider (a film that AIP refused to make with Hopper as director and accordingly lost Corman a producer's credit), the decision by Corman to take LSD before The Trip, and the only Corman movie that ever lost money, The Intruder, are covered in some degree. Jack Nicholson makes his case why The Terror doesn't make any sense (the film had at least four directors, one of which Corman can't remember), and Scorsese used the "no-frills" schedule on Boxcar Bertha to make Mean Streets (which, had Corman produced the film, would have been changed to Blaxploitation!)

 The Intruder, in fact, may be the surprise for many people who only know Corman for films like Attack of the Crab Monsters or Little Shop of Horrors. Made in 1962 by Roger and his brother Gene and based on the novel by Charles Beaumont (who also wrote the screenplay), the film is a condemnation of the segregated South, told through the perspective of a racist rabble rouser named Adam Cramer (William Shatner), who arrives in the fictional southern town of Caxton to incite riots as a result of court-ordered integration of schools. The film, which is surprisingly un-exploitative, reflects Corman's own view of racial tensions, but was met with hostility when released. When he lost money on the film, Corman opted to go back to the formula that worked, and The Intruder, while highly regarded, remains unseen by many of his exploitation devotees.

 The documentary uses a wide cross section of Corman's output, from the monster flicks to biker films, women in prison films, blaxploitation films, and science fiction cheapies, and once the rating system came into being, the gore and gratuitous nudity required every few minutes. Stapleton also includes the tidbit that when Corman left AIP to form New World Pictures, he not only distributed his own films, but also provided US releases for Bergman's Cries and Whispers, Fellini's Amarcord, Laloux's Fantastic Planet, Fassbinder's The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum, and Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala. The desire to distribute foreign films when no one else would and, in some instances, play them in drive ins, reflected Corman's actual taste in films, despite his reputation.

 Also appearing in the film are Corman's wife Julie, herself a producer, director Eli Roth and Paul W.S. Anderson, the latter a director of the remake / sequel Death Race. At the beginning and near the end of the film, Corman's World shifts to the production of Dinoshark, one of the new films Corman is producing in a partnership with the Syfy Channel (you might have seen Sharktopus, another entry last year). It's star, Eric Balfour (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) talks about the guerrilla filmmaking techniques employed and general cost saving techniques that can make shooting the film difficult (including walkie talkies that don't work because they were made for children to play with).

 It's not too far away from the experiences of Corman's previous collaborators, who made do with too few extras, too little time, and not enough money. Bogdanovich's first "job" for Corman was taking a Russian science fiction film and turning it into The Gill Women of Venus, despite the fact that there were no women in the original film. He shot footage with Mamie Van Doren and other scantily clad women on the beach, and was told to shoot it with no sound. Once he delivered the footage, Corman decided that it needed dialogue, so the silent footage was overdubbed even though no one was speaking. Because he delivered the film in time and under budget, Bogdanovich had the opportunity to use an extra day of shooting from The Terror and made Targets. Corman may be fiercely independent and incredibly cheap (Nicholson mentions this repeatedly), but he knows how to spot talent and nuture it. Arkush and Dante started their careers as trailer editors for Corman before going on to make their own films.

 Corman's World manages to be both breezy and thorough in most points of Corman's career, but there are a few points of contention the film raises when dealing with his period running New World pictures. There's a distinct lack of coverage for the films Corman produced at New World (they instead focus on the distribution of respected foreign directors). The reason, at least one might argue, is that those films directly contradict an argument that Corman and Eli Roth make: in the wake of Jaws and Star Wars, Hollywood figured out the "Corman formula" and beat the schlockmeister at his own game. Accordingly, Corman couldn't compete with the major studios.

 What the film glosses over is the fact that a great deal of Corman's New World Pictures were ripoffs of the Hollywood films he claims beat him at his own game. It explains why Joe Dante's Piranha is moved around in such a way that the fact it was designed to cash in on Jaws never seems to come up, and other pictures like Battle Beyond the Stars (Star Wars), Forbidden World (Alien), and Galaxy of Terror (also Alien) aren't mentioned at all. Corman also claims he had no interest in slasher films, even though he put his name on a boxed set of the Slumber Party Massacre films (he produced parts 2 and 3) and The Sorority House Massacre parts one and two.

 It's not a serious problem, but Corman's World does gloss over a lot of the 1980s and 90s in favor of leaping forward into his work with the Syfy Channel (specifically Dinoshark). The "New World Pictures" section of the film is more devoted to footage from an earlier documentary about Roger Corman explaining his interest in distributing foreign films and also including interviews with director Jonathan Kaplan (Night Call Nurses) the late Paul Bartel (Death Race 2000, Eating Raoul). While it may be an odd omission, Stapleton's chronology does smoothly transition from the birth of the blockbuster to the death of the independent film (including a pointed comment from Nicholson to that effect) to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences awarding Corman a Lifetime Achievement Oscar. At the ceremony, many of the faces we've seen during Corman's World are in attendance, as well as Quentin Tarantino, an acolyte of the Corman style. The section caps the story nicely, although it is clear that Roger Corman is far from done producing exploitation films.

 And folks, that's not a bad thing. Even if it is the Syfy Channel.

Quick Review - Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows

Forgive the brevity of this review, but Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows is a captivating glance into the working process of what can best be described an auteur producer, a man of whom there is no audio, no home movies, but who influenced horror in a more profound way than anyone not named James Whale or Tod Browning. Val Lewton's inventive approaches to overcome budget limitations resulted in hypnotic, uncanny, and suggestively disturbing films, and The Man in the Shadows covers his story, the films, and analyzes themes and recurring motifs in 76 minutes - just a little longer than most of his RKO pictures.

Narrated by Martin Scorsese (who also "presents" the film above the title), Kent Jones' The Man in the Shadows begins with the regime change in RKO that effectively sullied Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons forever. In the wake of this shift, however, RKO also decided they wanted to compete with Universal's successful horror division. They hired a script editor and assistant of David O. Selznick, Val Lewton. Lewton, the child of Russian immigrants, was raised by his mother (a script editor) and aunt (a star of stage and film), and the film hints the impact of their upbringing has something to do with the female protagonists of most of his films.

When he joined RKO, the creatively frustrated Lewton decided to build his own team to make "A pictures with B budgets," so he brought in director Jacques Tourneur, editors Mark Robson and Robert Wise in order to make the best of hectic schedules and little money - a run that included Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Seventh Victim, and The Leopard Man. The result, as The Man in the Shadows examines film by film, are ethereal, suggestive films where characters wander into danger rather than recoiling in terror. His working relationship with Boris Karloff in Isle of the Dead, The Body Snatcher, and Bedlam are given ample examination, particularly into the question of how much "horror" really exists in the horror films. The documentary also covers his two non-horror films at RKO (Mademoiselle Fifi and Youth Runs Wild), before briefly covering the change in regime that swept Lewton (like Welles before him) out, and his troubled period of bouncing from studio to studio prior to his death at age 46.

Because there is no footage of Lewton, or audio recordings, excerpts from his correspondences with studio executives are read by Elias Koteas, the only glimpse into the mind of a man highly critical of his own work. The documentary also includes interviews with Robert Wise, film historians Alexander Nemerov and Geoffrey O'Brien, psychologist Dr. Glen Gabbard, Lewton's son, and admirers Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, Cure) and producer Roger Corman. Much of the interview footage is devoted to exploring themes, rather than specific technique, of delving into Lewton's melancholic stories and uncanny subtexts, and the film could be regarded as much a psychological sketch of the producer as it is a Hollywood narrative. The documentary is never dull, and feels greater than its slight running time might suggest.

A word of warning: the documentary features a considerable number of clips from Lewton produced films, including scenes that are more than likely going to spoil Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie for first time viewers, as well as giving away major plot points in Curse of the Cat People, Isle of the Dead, and Bedlam. I'm not sure how many horror fans that don't know who Lewton is (or, more importantly, haven't seen many of these films) are going to seek out a documentary about his impact on horror, but I advise you save The Man in the Shadows until after watching at least I Walked with a Zombie, Cat People, and The Seventh Victim. The films are all worth your time and will only enhance watching what is already a fine documentary.

From the Vaults: Frankenstein

editor's note: continuing with the past two weeks, here is another critical essay from Hollywood Horror and Beyond.

Film Report:

James Whale’s Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, it could be argued, has little in common with James Whale’s Frankenstein (and, indeed, this is James Whale, not Universal’s, picture). Granted, the core of the story remains the same: Frankenstein defies the laws of man and creates a “monster” designed from cadavers and given life through electricity, but the similarities end shortly thereafter. Shelley’s is a tale of science gone awry; Whale’s a veiled commentary on persecution.

James Whale was perhaps most famous for being a homosexual at a time when it was not considered wise to be open in such matters, and his films are infused with a perspective unlike that of many horror directors, and in time would come to be identified as “camp”. With subsequent pictures The Old Dark House and Bride of Frankenstein, Whale’s wicked sense of humor grew more refined, but Frankenstein is nevertheless infused with his unique outlook on the world.

After a prologue William Castle would be proud of, Frankenstein begins proper with two title cards. Whether the art on these cards was the conception of Whale or of Carl Lammele Jr., we are unsure, but they speak some volume of what is to come. The first such image, superimposed by the film’s title, is of an ominous half-face peering above a wall, eyes casting beams below, and hideous claws outstretched. Clearly, this is meant to set about unease in the 1931 audience’s mind, but the second image is less clear. As the cast, crew, and director are identified, a series of disembodied eyeballs rotate on the screen like some hypnotist’s wheel, and in the center, a bodiless head which resembles nothing so much as Nosferatu himself, with its bald head and elongated ears and chin. This image has nothing to do with the film to come, does it?

From the outset, Whale begins toying with his audience. The camera begins on a coffin, panning up and around to a series of grieving and pious villagers, and as it moves past them, to a statue depicting Death as the Grim Reaper. Then, behind an iron fence, the hideous face of Fritz (Dwight Frye), who cannot contain his enthusiasm and must be reined in by Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive), who is only just visible behind Fritz. After the funeral ends and everyone leaves, Frankenstein and Fritz dig up the body frantically, and one subtle joke passes almost unseen: as Frankenstein hurls dirt with his shovel, he quite literally throws dirt into the face of Death.

As we follow Frankenstein and Fritz along their path of grave and gallows robbing, something seems off. Clearly, this is supposed to be outdoors, but by shooting these sequences in studio, Whale creates an “unnatural” sensation using the artificial as an exaggerated version of reality (he will continue to play on expressionistic influence as we move into Frankenstein’s refuge, with high ceilings and curiously angled stairways and walls).

A major point of contention in Whale’s adaptation is the inclusion of a sequence where Fritz is dispatched to find a suitable brain for Frankenstein’s creation, culminating in his break in of the village university. Immediately preceding this, Dr. Waldman (Edward Van Sloan) lectures his students on the danger of the “abnormal” brain, and explains that the specimen on display there belonged to a brutish, violent man. When Fritz accidentally destroys the “normal” brain specimen, he is forced to take the “abnormal” sample. Some point to this is a prime example of shifting the cause of the monster’s actions later in the film, but perhaps, knowing what we know about the director, there is an alternate reasoning behind the “abnormal” brain.

Running concurrently with this is a side plot involving Henry’s fiancée, Elizabeth (Mae Clark), and her increasing concern over Frankenstein’s “experiments”. She appeals to his friend Victor (John Boles) to contact Dr. Waldman and bring some sense to Henry, who she fears is increasingly becoming distant from her. When Elizabeth, Waldman, and Victor discover Frankenstein’s “secret”, their reaction is shock. Frankenstein has created a man from the cadavers of other men, and intends to bring his creation to life using the power of a heretofore unknown ray.

The monster himself, played with nuance by Boris Karloff, is conceived in a womb of electrical pulses and birthed in a flash of lightning, to the awe of Frankenstein’s spectators, who are unsure what to make of Henry’s obsession, a being he “created with [his] own hands”. Waldman urges Frankenstein to destroy his creation, viewing it to be an aberration of God and Science, a viewpoint which, with some subtle word shifts, could mean something entirely different. (The elder figure disapproves of his protégé’s choices, and urges him to recant.)

As Frankenstein welcomes his creation into the world, Victor and Elizabeth return to Baron Frankenstein’s home, concocting a story to distract the Baron (Fredric Kerr) from the truth about his son. Here, for the first time, Whale’s sense of humor comes out through Baron Frankenstein, who is nothing so much as a cantankerous old man with disdain for authority figures and being duped. He is convinced Elizabeth is disguising Henry’s infidelity under the guise of “scientific experiments”, and that there is “another woman”, who he will root out. In a sly twist, there is, of course, no other woman, but rather another man, whom Elizabeth and Victor are willing to lie about for the sake of Henry.

We are introduced to the monster in a dimly lit room, coming through the doorway backwards, and turning around to maximize the effect of his appearance to the audience (indeed, Whale cuts to his face with three successive close-ups). The monster, however, is little more than an oversized infant, unsure of his ability to walk erect and bent in angles that seem to accentuate the set. But the monster with the “abnormal” brain is not a brute initially; in fact, he seems confused and susceptible to directions like “sit down”, and only becomes physically active in response to the sadistic torture from Fritz, who delights in tormenting him with torches.

Eventually, through conditioning, the monster becomes hostile in defending himself, killing Fritz and attacking Henry before Waldman is able to sedate him. Not coincidentally, the struggle occurs immediately before Elizabeth and Victor arrive, with The Baron in tow. Waldman hides the monster, and Henry is taken back to the village with his fiancée.

If the first act of the film is an expressionistic world of high angles and long shadows, then the second is one of stark contrast, with well lit, formal interiors and natural location shooting of villagers and forests. Henry is seen rehabilitating with Elizabeth, who seems relieved to have the man she loves come back to her, and for his part, Frankenstein is happy to be in the care of a woman. A wedding is arranged hastily by Baron Frankenstein, who frequently references his desire for Henry to have “a son”, blissfully unaware of the “abnormal” son in the laboratory.

Waldman, ever the skeptic of Frankenstein’s experimentation with humans, dies trying to dissect the creature, and the monster, free for the first time, enters the world. We see the monster interact with nature, where his rigid stature begins to loosen, but he remains in stark contrast to the “natural” world, a being of vertical angles primal grunts. He ventures closer to the village, meeting the first (and last) true stranger shortly thereafter.

Universal demanded two key alterations to the film before release (numerous local censors made more drastic changes): one, that the line “I know what if feels like to be God” be removed, at it was considered blasphemous, and two, the shortening of a scene that considerably alters the monster’s storyline. The monster, upon meeting a young girl, is amazed and curious about this strange creature, who casts no judgment upon him. In fact, she wants to play with him, and casts flowers into a nearby lake. The monster also throws his flowers into the water, and squeals in delight as they float. But he runs out of flowers, and not capable of differentiating, throws the girl into the water, accidentally drowning her. He tries to help, but only makes things worse, and panicked, flees. At least, this is what Whale shot. Universal insisted the scenes of the monster throwing her into the water and trying to save her be removed, deeming it too horrific. As a result, prior versions of the film simply have Karloff reaching for the girl, followed by a scream, and then we next see her dead in her father’s arms. The alteration renders the monster more horrific; instead of accidentally killing her, the audience has no idea what he did prior to her death, and the mob revenge is more apropos. Because of the removal of two shots, the monster goes from misunderstood and confused to brutish and violent.

Of course, the third act of the film takes curious directions which support both possible interpretations, for the monster’s actions from this point on alternate wildly from scene to scene. Elizabeth is attacked by the monster while locked inside of her room, perhaps because she stands between Frankenstein and his creation, or is it because the monster has developed a predilection for killing females?

While Elizabeth survives, Henry is convinced he must destroy his creation, and joins the mob growing outside. Armed with torches (which, although they have no notion of this, is the only thing the monster fears) the mob splits up and searches the forest, marshes, and mountain trails. After taking considerable effort to show the audience both the forest and the marshes, Whale once again takes us into the realm of the “unnatural”, returning to his false exteriors for Frankenstein’s final encounter with his doppelganger, his automaton, where both men must meet their fate.

As Henry once again comes face to face with his “experiment”, his ability to scare the monster with fire is met with failure. He is unable to exert control over his creation, and the monster overpowers him, taking an unconscious Frankenstein to a nearby windmill, as the mob closes in.

The final sequence, taking place with the monster and Frankenstein in the windmill and the angry mob outside (using a heretofore unseen battering ram to breach the door - how curiously phallic) culminates with the monster rejecting Frankenstein and throwing him to the mob below. The villagers react by setting the windmill ablaze, taking Frankenstein back to the village to recuperate, and leaving the “deviant” monster to burn in his figurative funeral pyre. Surely this is reminiscent of the practice of burning witches, also considered to be unnatural and deviant, and with little stretch of the imagination could be applied to the persecution of homosexuals.

Whale’s film, which is finally available in its uncut form, uses the Frankenstein story as a springboard to address what is perceived as unnatural by people (the villagers) and frowned on by respectable people (Dr. Waldman), but is, in the end, something a person decides to do, regardless of how much “experimentation” he or she does. The Baron Frankenstein ends the film reiterating his desire for a grandson to the “House of Frankenstein”, and with Elizabeth and Henry together, perhaps all’s well that ends well. Of course, Whale would have the last laugh with Bride of Frankenstein, but that is a different matter altogether. Perhaps the monster is not some murderous brute, but rather a confused young man who has no conception of what he is here for; condemned as “abnormal”, and punished for being only what he was created to be.

Horror Fest IV: The Final Chapter (official announcement)

October 29th - November 1st

Join Cap'n Howdy and friends for four days of non-stop horror movie action! This will be my last October in Greensboro, so I'm looking to give folks the best Horror Fest ever!

On Thursday night, we'll take a Horror Fest Field Trip to Zombieland, followed by more movies afterwards.

Friday is Cap'n Howdy's picks, a collection of movies hand picked by yours truly.

Saturday is Fan Favorite Night: vote on which past Horror Fest movies you want to see again, then sit back and enjoy a night of the best the Fest has to offer.

Sunday is is anything goes night!

New Films for this year's Horror Fest include:

Join us for any and all nights of the festival. I guarantee you'll enjoy it!

Hobo Bug Juice and Tripwire will be served to anyone brave enough to try them.