23 posts tagged “film”
I promised I would write about the second of our classic horror movies we watched at the weekend, so here it is.
The film was “The Killer Shrews” (1959), directed by Ray Kellogg (“The Giant Gila Monster”, 1959) and starring James Best and Ingrid Goude (Miss Sweden and 2nd runner up in the 1956 Miss Universe pageant). Best is probably most well known for his role as the sheriff in “The Dukes of Hazzard”, the TV series.
The movie tells the story about a boat captain and a group of scientists trapped on an island during a hurricane. But that’s not the end of it. Mutant giant killer shrews populate the island!
This was, of course, before animatronics, so the shrews are in fact dogs (we even recognised a Dalmatian by its spotted legs) dressed up. The close ups involve puppets that look more like demented hyenas, but anyway.
According to Wikipedia, shrews eat “seeds, insects, nuts, worms and a variety of other foods in leaf litter and dense vegetation”. In the movie, these giant shrews like horses and humans. Interestingly, according to the same article, some species are venomous. Those in the film certainly are.
The film is also known as “The Attack of the Killer Shrews”.
This weekend the minister of home affairs and I managed to watch three of the horror classics in our collection.
The first was the bizarre "Maniac" (1934). The film starred Bill Woods as Don Maxwell, an actor and impersonator who works as a lab assistant to a Dr Meierschultz (Horace B Carpenter), a mad scientist who is working on reanimating dead people.
Maxwell kills Meierschultz and disguises himself as the dead doctor, taking over his life. The film then degenerates into a surreal mess of plots and subplots, most of which make no sense. The acting was also quite amateur and some of the lines are awful.
In one scene, for example, a roomful of women are chatting. One mentions the press. "The press?" responds another. "That reminds me, I have pressing business!"
"Maniac" was directed by Dwain Esper, the same man who produced the now-notorious "Reefer Madness" (1936) and the same year directed "Marihuana", also known as "Marihuana, the Devil's Weed" and "Marihuana, the Weed With Roots in Hell!"
The interesting thing about "Maniac" is that it has several scenes where the women are topless. I wasn't aware that filmmakers could get away with that back then.
The second movie was "The Vampire Bat" (1933), starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray (she of "King Kong" fame) and Melvyn Douglas. In the village of Kleinschloss, people start dying. The victims have two puncture marks in their necks and are drained of their blood. The villagers believe vampires have returned to the area, but police inspector Karl Brettschneider (Douglas) is not a superstitious man, and suspects something else is afoot.
It was the best of the three films we watched. The plot was decent and the acting good.
The director, Frank R Strayer, is famous for directing about a dozen of Blondie and Dagwood films between 1938 and 1943, as well as "The Sickle or the Cross" (1949).
Atwill (who starred as Dr Otto von Niemann) appeared in several films, including "To Be or Not to Be" (1942), and several Sherlock Holmes movies. Douglas had a long career. His first film was in 1931 ("Tonight or Never") and his final screen role was in 1982 ("The Hot Touch").
The third film was "The Ape" (1940), starring Boris Karloff as Dr Bernard Adrian, a shunned scientist who seeks to restore a young woman's ability to walk. His method is unorthodox - he uses spinal fluid as a serum. At the same time, an ape has escaped from a circus in town and is attacking the townsfolk.
The ape, of course, looks like something from a Halloween party rather than a circus.
The film was directed by William Nigh, of "Where Are Your Children?" (1943) fame. We recently watched his "The Fatal Hour" (1940) and "Black Dragons" (1942).
A pretty mediocre film, but watchable, nonetheless.
This is very amusing. The movie "Speed" as it would have been seen in the black townships during the apartheid years (that is, of course, if the original movie had been released when apartheid was still around).
What's the most famous movie you've never seen?
Submitted by Mike.
"Gone With the Wind".
Why would I want to watch that?
The title of this post doesn't refer to New England's loss against Indianapolis, although that is a horror in itself.
No, it has to do with the fact that the minister of home affairs and I watched another two movies in our collection of horror films.
The first was "The Fatal Hour" (1940), which was not a horror at all, but a murder mystery. I cannot fathom why it was included in the set, unless the compilers spotted that Boris Karloff was the lead actor and assumed that it was a horror.
Nevertheless, it was actually a pretty good movie if you ignore the fact that Boris Karloff, very much a Caucasian, is portraying a Chinese detective, James Lee Wong. The plot was decent and the acting was not at all bad.
The film was directed by William Nigh, who, you may remember, also directed "Black Dragons", which I blogged about earlier. He also directed such films as "Where Are Your Children?" (1943) and several other Wong movies, including "Mr Wong, Detective" (1938), "The Mystery of Mr Wong" (1939), and "Mr Wong in Chinatown" (1939)..
"The Fatal Hour" also featured Grant Withers as Captain Street and Marjorie Reynolds as reporter "Bobbie" Logan. Reynolds played Logan in several Mr Wong films, and in other of Nigh's films, such as "Doomed to Die" (1940).
The second film we watched was "Dead Men Walk" (1943), about a man who rises from the grave as a vampire and seeks vengeance against the brother who killed him.
George Zucco plays both brothers, while the role of Gayle Clayton, who is victimised by the vampire over a long period, was played by Mary Carlisle. As far as I can tell, this was her 59th and final film, even though she was only 31 at the time. Apparently she then took a job as manager of the Elizabeth Arden Salon in Beverly Hills.
Zucco is best known for his role as Professor Moriarty in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (1939).
"Dead Men Walk" is a somewhat quaint movie, and one of the more enjoyable ones in the collection. It was directed by Sam Newfield, who directed more than 200 "B" movies - sometimes more than 20 in a single year!
Last night the minister of home affairs and I watched another in our collection of classic horror movies: "The Giant Gila Monster" (1959).
Despite the title, it wasn't a bad movie for its time. For once, they didn't use some pathetic man-made monster, but used footage of a real animal around Dinky cars and miniature trains. Of course, you never saw the monster and humans in the same shot, but somehow it worked, even though modern audiences are used to better creature features.
The film was directed by Ray Kellogg, who was mainly a special effects man in his career. He was second unit director on Cleopatra (1963), as well as Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970).
He directed only four films - The Killer Shrews (1959), The Giant Gila Monster (1959), My Dog, Buddy (1960), and The Green Berets (1968).
The star of the movie was Don Sullivan as Chase Winstead, the singing, drag-racing teen hero who slays the monster. Winstead acted in only seven films, six of which were in 1958 and 1959, with the last one, Paradise Alley, in 1962.
I don't recommend the movie "Revolt of the Zombies" (1936), one of the classic horror movies in our collection of 50.
The minister of home affairs and I watched it this weekend, and were not very impressed with it. Set in Cambodia after World War I, it centres on a love triangle. Clair Duval (Dorothy Stone) accepts a marriage proposal from Armand Louque (Dean Jagger), but only to arouse the jealousy of Clifford Grayson (Robert Noland).
Her plan works, and she accepts Clifford's subsequent proposal, which enrages Armand, who sets out for revenge, using a zombie army he creates using some occult information gleaned from his translations of ancient Cambodian documents.
The acting was not very good and at times the story line was far too unbelievable, even for a horror movie (and this is more a weird drama than a horror).
The film was directed by Victor Halperin, who also wrote it. I suppose we should have known it would be bad, given that he also directed "White Zombie", which we watched not too long ago. Halperin reuses footage from that movie - the close-up shot of Bela Lugosi's eyes - to indicate that the zombies are being controlled.
Dorothy Stone acted in only four movies, all between 1932 and 1944. "Revolt of the Zombies" was her third. The movie was the only one that Robert Noland acted in.
Dean Jagger (1903-1991), on the other hand, got 133 acting credits between 1929 and 1987. He received an Oscar for best supporting actor for his role in "Twelve O'Clock High" (1949). Most of his acting in his later years was on TV. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
During my week off work, the minister of home affairs and I watched only one of our collection of classic horror movies. The reason was that I received a Tintin DVD box set from the minister as a birthday present, so we watched a lot of those instead.
The horror we watched was "The Terror" (1963), starring Boris Karloff and co-starring a young Jack Nicholson. It was directed by Roger Corman, who also directed some previously seen movies in the collection, namely "The Little Shop of Horrors" and "Creature from the Haunted Sea".
The Terror is about an officer in Napoleon's army (Jack Nicholson) who encounters a woman (Sandra Knight). She turns out to be the ghost of the wife of a local baron (Karloff) and is under the spell of a witch who wants to drive the baron to suicide.
The movie was apparently filmed in four days, and Corman used the same set he used for filming "The Raven", which he had just completed recording and which also starred Karloff and Nicholson.
Can't get away with that kind of thing these days. But it wasn't a bad movie at all. It's worth noting that it is the first movie in our collection that is in colour and not monochrome.
Last night the minister of home affairs and I watched "The Beast of Yucca Flats" (1961), the latest in our horror movie collection.
We both agree it is by far the worst of all the movies we have seen from the collection so far. And the minister thinks it is the worst movie yet made. I think "Ishtar" still beats it, but only just.
A defecting Russian scientist (Tor Johnson - a former Swedish wrestler) is driven into Yucca Flats by pursuing Soviet agents. There he is exposed to radiation from a nuclear blast (or "A-bomb" as they called such things back then) and turns into a monster who has a lust for killing people.
The movie is really just two men hunting a monster (with a short diversion as they start shooting at the wrong man at one stage). Then the monster is killed and the movie ends with a hare sniffing at the corpse (although it looks somewhat like the hare is contemplating becoming carnivorous).
An annoying narrator, who constantly refers sarcastically to "progress" talks throughout the movie, making it seem like an anti-nuke propaganda film. The narration was done by the director, Coleman Francis.
Apparently "The Beast of Yucca Flats" was filmed with no sound, that being added during post-production. There is talk that it was in fact filmed with sound, but the soundtrack was lost.
The movie was featured on the old TV series, "Mystery Science Theater 3000".
Do yourself a favour - avoid it at all costs!
The latest in our horror movie collection, which the minister of home affairs and I watched last night, was "The Screaming Skull" (1958).
John Hudson stars as Eric Whitlock, who brings his new bride, Jenni (Peggy Webber) to the mansion where he lived before with his late first wife, who died on the grounds in an accident.
Jenni is extremely wealthy, and it seems Eric wants to get his hands on her money.
Soon, Jenni starts seeing skulls appearing in various places around the house.... Is the former Mrs Whitlock haunting her? Or is Eric trying to drive her mad?
It was an acceptable movie, charmingly primitive, as many of the old horror classics are. The really amusing thing was the opener, in which a narrator says that the movie is so scary that it might kill its viewers, so the producers promise to foot the burial costs of anyone dying while watching the film. A coffin on the screen has a card on it that reads: "Reserved for you".
The film was directed by Alex Nicol (1916-2001), who also acted as Mickey, the gardener. The last movie he acted in was "Woman in the Rain" (1976).
