Val Lewtonnnnnn. As tempted as I am to just end the post with that, I guess I should say some more about The Ghost Ship, if for no other reason than its perennially underrated status among the other horror movies from producer Val Lewton.
Lewton, in case you don't know, specialized in low-budget horror movies for RKO. The studio would give him a title and a poster, and he was free to pretty much do as he pleased as far as the script, casting, and directing was concerned. Luckily for us, Lewton's taste ran dark and mysterious, and his body of work is one of the most consistent of any producer. His movies are characterized by their bleak themes, ambiguous supernatural elements, and stark, noirish lighting and camerawork.
Though I've made it a habit to rewatch as much Val Lewton as possible every October since I first discovered him a few years ago, this was only my second viewing of The Ghost Ship. My impression was that it was a lesser entry in the series, but now I'm pretty sure it's just as good as his other more famous horror movies like Cat People or I Walked With A Zombie. Unlike his other movies, though, the only supernatural element is in the title. The menace here, rather than a woman who morphs into a cat or a zombie, is an overzealous, deranged, and fascistic ship captain played by Richard Dix. He's great, too, the kind of villain you just want to punch in the face well before he starts bumping members of the crew off.
There's a great and terrifying set piece when they finally DO start getting bumped off, as one guy stupid enough to mouth off to the captain ends up being suffocated in a room that's having really long chain getting fed into it (I'm sure there are nautical terms for this but I don't know them). This is a great horror/thriller that deserves to be as famous as Lewton's other stuff. Just don't expect to see any ghosts.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Night of Terror #16: 'The Black Camel' and 'Charlie Chan at the Opera'
Tonight I watched a pair of quasi-horror movies in the 20th Century Fox Charlie Chan detective series. The first one, The Black Camel, features a performance from horror icon Bela Lugosi, while Charlie Chan at the Opera features a performance from another horror icon, Boris Karloff. Hence their inclusion in this blog.
I guess I should talk about whether or not these movies are scary, first of all. I'd seen both of them many years ago, but couldn't really remember much about the horror elements of either of them. It turns out that despite the presences of Lugosi and Karloff, the horror elements in both of these are quite minimal. They're a bit stronger in ...at the Opera, with Karloff stalking the halls of the Opera house as a maniac maybe-killer. There's even a jokey reference to his famous horror career: "this opera is going on tonight even if Frankenstein walks in!" Ha ha.
Although I'm planning on writing up at least one purer horror movie from each actor this month, now is as good a time as any to discuss the great Karloff/Lugosi dichotomy. It's one of those great pop culture debates, like The Who/Led Zeppelin, Buster Keaton/Charlie Chaplin, or Pokemon/Digimon. I think it boils down thus: Lugosi is a more bizarre presence, while Karloff is the better actor. In these two Chan movies, Lugosi downplays the weirdness of some of his other characters to play a suave psychic, and I've never seen him more charming in a movie (no, not even in Dracula). Karloff is playing a more typical role for him, as the psychotic but fundamentally sympathetic Gravelle.
On the movies themselves: They are both delightful little whodunits, just like all the Warner Oland Chans. I especially like ...at the Opera because of the presence of Keye Luke as "Number One Son" Lee Chan, although his role isn't as big as I would have liked.
Sorry about the rambling nature of this post, I guess that's what happens when I wait until after 1 in the morning to do these. Check out both of these movies if you get the chance.
I guess I should talk about whether or not these movies are scary, first of all. I'd seen both of them many years ago, but couldn't really remember much about the horror elements of either of them. It turns out that despite the presences of Lugosi and Karloff, the horror elements in both of these are quite minimal. They're a bit stronger in ...at the Opera, with Karloff stalking the halls of the Opera house as a maniac maybe-killer. There's even a jokey reference to his famous horror career: "this opera is going on tonight even if Frankenstein walks in!" Ha ha.
Although I'm planning on writing up at least one purer horror movie from each actor this month, now is as good a time as any to discuss the great Karloff/Lugosi dichotomy. It's one of those great pop culture debates, like The Who/Led Zeppelin, Buster Keaton/Charlie Chaplin, or Pokemon/Digimon. I think it boils down thus: Lugosi is a more bizarre presence, while Karloff is the better actor. In these two Chan movies, Lugosi downplays the weirdness of some of his other characters to play a suave psychic, and I've never seen him more charming in a movie (no, not even in Dracula). Karloff is playing a more typical role for him, as the psychotic but fundamentally sympathetic Gravelle.
On the movies themselves: They are both delightful little whodunits, just like all the Warner Oland Chans. I especially like ...at the Opera because of the presence of Keye Luke as "Number One Son" Lee Chan, although his role isn't as big as I would have liked.
Sorry about the rambling nature of this post, I guess that's what happens when I wait until after 1 in the morning to do these. Check out both of these movies if you get the chance.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Night of Terror #15: 'Homicidal"
Let's get one thing straight about William Castle: He weren't no artist. He didn't think of himself as one, anyway. And when you watch his movies, it's clear to see he didn't have that cinematic verve that, say, Hitchcock has. Same with the performances - they're mostly flat (unless Vincent Price was involved), and delivering the kind of ridiculous expository dialog that seems fundamentally disconnected from real life. And yet there is a kind of artistry to William Castle's movies. If Hitch is The Beatles, William Castle would have to be, I dunno, The Stooges or something. Maybe they didn't know how to play their instruments, but holy shit, they could play anyway.
That's actually a horrible analogy because Castle's movies aren't particularly exciting in the conventional sense, but there's something so thrilling about them anyway. Which finally brings us to Homicidal, a blatant Psycho knock-off from 1961. It's got Psycho's stark black-and-white cinematography, a violent plot about a serial killer, a couple stabbings/dismemberments, shots of driving in the rain, and a twist ending.
It also has something Psycho does not: A "Fright Break," in which a clock appears on the screen and faint-hearted members of the audience are invited to leave before things get too intense. Gimmicks like this are a huge part of the Castle oeuvre, and they give his movies a kind of Pop Art weirdness that I really love.
It occurred to me about halfway through this that my aim of keeping the blog free of heavy spoilers means I won't be able to talk about by far the most interesting aspect of the movie, which is the big "twist" and its ramifications. Oh well. Instead I'll point out that the character of Helga seems to be at least one inspiration for the wheelchair-bound and mute Hector Salamanca on Breaking Bad. Only instead of a bell, she has some kind of gavel thing. I wonder if Vince Gilligan ever saw this movie?
That's actually a horrible analogy because Castle's movies aren't particularly exciting in the conventional sense, but there's something so thrilling about them anyway. Which finally brings us to Homicidal, a blatant Psycho knock-off from 1961. It's got Psycho's stark black-and-white cinematography, a violent plot about a serial killer, a couple stabbings/dismemberments, shots of driving in the rain, and a twist ending.
It also has something Psycho does not: A "Fright Break," in which a clock appears on the screen and faint-hearted members of the audience are invited to leave before things get too intense. Gimmicks like this are a huge part of the Castle oeuvre, and they give his movies a kind of Pop Art weirdness that I really love.
It occurred to me about halfway through this that my aim of keeping the blog free of heavy spoilers means I won't be able to talk about by far the most interesting aspect of the movie, which is the big "twist" and its ramifications. Oh well. Instead I'll point out that the character of Helga seems to be at least one inspiration for the wheelchair-bound and mute Hector Salamanca on Breaking Bad. Only instead of a bell, she has some kind of gavel thing. I wonder if Vince Gilligan ever saw this movie?
Friday, October 14, 2011
Night of Terror #14: 'Onibaba'
Holy shit. Today I watched Onibaba, which is just one of seemingly billions of movies made by Kaneto Shindo (Shindo Kaneto?) over the course of his career, still going strong well into his 90s.
Not sure what to say about it, at least not right away, so I guess I'll start with the basic plot. This woman and her mother-in-law earn a modest living in 14th century Japan by murdering wandering samurai, stripping them of their belongings, and tossing them into a giant dark pit. When one of their neighbors who accompanied the man who links the two women by marriage (the younger woman's husband, the older woman's son), comes back alone, saying he was killed in battle, things get weird.
The daughter-in-law starts having sex with the neighbor, causing the mother-in-law to fly into a complicatedly motivated jealous rage. I don't want to give too much away, but she tries to scare her daughter-in-law from visiting the man by putting on a creepy-as-hell demon mask and shouting at her. This has pretty macabre results, in the end. I guess the moral is don't put on a demon mask, for any reason.
Onibaba, like a lot of great horror movies, taps into universal emotions. In particular, this movie deals with the feeling of jealousy - more particularly, that vague, uneasy kind of jealousy where you don't even have a rightful claim on the object of your jealous anger.
This is truly a one-of-a-kind horror movie, or at least one that isn't bound by typical horror conventions. But it's still scary as hell, especially if you have a phobia about mangled faces.
Not sure what to say about it, at least not right away, so I guess I'll start with the basic plot. This woman and her mother-in-law earn a modest living in 14th century Japan by murdering wandering samurai, stripping them of their belongings, and tossing them into a giant dark pit. When one of their neighbors who accompanied the man who links the two women by marriage (the younger woman's husband, the older woman's son), comes back alone, saying he was killed in battle, things get weird.
The daughter-in-law starts having sex with the neighbor, causing the mother-in-law to fly into a complicatedly motivated jealous rage. I don't want to give too much away, but she tries to scare her daughter-in-law from visiting the man by putting on a creepy-as-hell demon mask and shouting at her. This has pretty macabre results, in the end. I guess the moral is don't put on a demon mask, for any reason.
Onibaba, like a lot of great horror movies, taps into universal emotions. In particular, this movie deals with the feeling of jealousy - more particularly, that vague, uneasy kind of jealousy where you don't even have a rightful claim on the object of your jealous anger.
This is truly a one-of-a-kind horror movie, or at least one that isn't bound by typical horror conventions. But it's still scary as hell, especially if you have a phobia about mangled faces.
Night of Terror #13: 'The Thing'
Hello, all. My friend Mark Young of New York Movie Klub and the author of The Question Blade has written a piece on one of my favorite movies, John Carpenter's The Thing. I had the occasion to watch this again last night so I might chime in with some thoughts in the comments as well. Enjoy.
You know what the worst shot in John Carpenter’s The Thing is? The very first one. We don’t need to know where the strange shapeshifting creature comes from; let us infer for ourselves. I prefer to think that it’s not an alien, but instead something prehistoric; something that the dinosaurs and hominids could sniff out and avoid, its survival under the ice a sort of evolutionary punishment to humanity for expanding our brains at the expense of our hunting instincts.
From then on this movie doesn’t make a single mistake. It has a tough path to walk, because it has to establish its own identity as a film even though it’s a remake (of Howard Hawks’ 1951 film The Thing From Another World) and it only got made as a result of the huge success of Alien. Both The Thing and Alien are haunted-house movies with a setting that artificially removes the question, “why don’t they just leave the house?” Both care very little about the actual science, and focus on a bunch of working stiffs straining to stay alive.
The big difference is that The Thing really emphasizes the monster. With Alien, as with a lot of monster movies, it doesn’t really matter what the enemy can do; the key points are that it’s bigger and stronger and it’s going to eat you. I liked that The Thing gets the maximum amount of milage out of what its monster’s abilities are, and does so slowly. The creature kills a few dogs, and we get a good look at it and know it to be bad news, but the idea that it could replicate a human being still seems far-fetched, until…
…well, I don’t want to spoil it. Suffice it to say that this is not a movie where the monster leaps out of the dark accompanied by a musical stinger. Instead, the Thing’s first attack on a person is built around the best special effect I’ve ever seen, courtesy of the great master Rob Bottin (Total Recall, among others). It’s not gory or ugly, it’s unsettling: something which is trying to be human and not quite getting it yet.
There are other great effects in the movie, which film buffs have learned to describe by the scenes they turn up in: The Autopsy, The Blood Test. The amazing thing is how real they look. Even when the Thing is taking shapes that no Earth creature has ever imagined, it still looks completely real, as though Baker found it in the wild somewhere instead of building it out of plastic and wire. The actors in this movie are great, and I love the paranoid mood the script creates, but my mind always comes back to those monsters. There’s just nothing like them.
As I’m sure everyone reading this knows, they’re remaking The Thing; it’s being released this month. I’m not opposed to that. I doubt that any special effect will ever be as horrifying as Bottin’s original work, but why not try? After all, Carpenter’s film was itself a remake: I like to imagine people like my parents remembering the campy Thing from the ‘50s, frowning at Carpenter’s gritty realism and graphic violence, and wishing there was some kind of series of tubes whereby they could find other frowners. It’s the circle of life.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Night of Terror #12: 'Horror of Dracula'
Before this year I was a Hammer Films virgin. I'd read a lot about the horror movies to come from the British studio, but for one stupid reason or another I'd never actually watched any. I guess I'm more of an AIP man, when it comes down to it. Anyway, this month I've been finally introducing myself to some Hammer Horror movies, including some lesser ones from the 60s. Horror of Dracula is the first one with a good reputation I've watched, and I'm definitely not disappointed.
The Hammer MO, at least in the early years, appeared to have been "take a Universal horror classic, ramp up the shock and terror, add bright Technicolor, release to audiences." Can't say I have any objection to this way of doing things. In the case of Dracula, they took the Bela Lugosi version of the story, all horror and atmosphere, and added Christopher Lee with a big set of fangs and blood smeared all over his face (plus bright red contact lenses) literally throwing one of his female vampire slaves across the room. It reminds me a little of Mario Bava, who also had a penchant for cranking horror tropes to 11 (in his vampire movie, Black Sunday, instead of a coffin creaking open in the dead of night, it explodes)
Adding to the "Universal classic shot with adrenaline" mood is the changes made to the plot. In this version of the story, Johnathan Harker intentionally gets a job with Dracula whom he knows to be a vampire in order to kill him. He fails, is turned into a vampire by Dracula, and gets offed by Dr. Van Helsing. Honestly, no 15-year-old could come up with a cooler variation on Dracula without getting completely ridiculous.
However, this was 1959, and the movie doesn't really sustain the breakneck energy you might be envisioning given my description. I fully expect the Hammer Dracula sequels to up the stakes (har, har), but this movie certainly feels like a first salvo as far as reinvigorating the horror genre is concerned. I guess I'll write more when I see more Hammer Horror movies. Still, this movie is a fun and spooky horror movie that I'd recommend to any fan.
The Hammer MO, at least in the early years, appeared to have been "take a Universal horror classic, ramp up the shock and terror, add bright Technicolor, release to audiences." Can't say I have any objection to this way of doing things. In the case of Dracula, they took the Bela Lugosi version of the story, all horror and atmosphere, and added Christopher Lee with a big set of fangs and blood smeared all over his face (plus bright red contact lenses) literally throwing one of his female vampire slaves across the room. It reminds me a little of Mario Bava, who also had a penchant for cranking horror tropes to 11 (in his vampire movie, Black Sunday, instead of a coffin creaking open in the dead of night, it explodes)
Adding to the "Universal classic shot with adrenaline" mood is the changes made to the plot. In this version of the story, Johnathan Harker intentionally gets a job with Dracula whom he knows to be a vampire in order to kill him. He fails, is turned into a vampire by Dracula, and gets offed by Dr. Van Helsing. Honestly, no 15-year-old could come up with a cooler variation on Dracula without getting completely ridiculous.
However, this was 1959, and the movie doesn't really sustain the breakneck energy you might be envisioning given my description. I fully expect the Hammer Dracula sequels to up the stakes (har, har), but this movie certainly feels like a first salvo as far as reinvigorating the horror genre is concerned. I guess I'll write more when I see more Hammer Horror movies. Still, this movie is a fun and spooky horror movie that I'd recommend to any fan.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Night of Terror #11: 'Raw Meat'
Due to birthday festivities (read: watching movies) I am unable to do a post for today, the 11th (technically the 12th, but oh well). So my good friend Ira Brooker of A Talent for Idleness has agreed to step in, covering the movie Raw Meat. Enjoy!
A lot of adjectives come to mind when I think of Donald Pleasence. “Commanding.” “Mannerly.” “Bald.” Viewing Raw Meat added one more to the arsenal: “Bitchy.” Pleasence fairly radiates peevishness as a Scotland Yard inspector tasked with investigating the mysterious disappearance of a civil servant in the London Underground. He brings an off-kilter, endlessly entertaining energy to his portrayal of a man utterly fed up with the base stupidity of everyone in his sphere, from criminals to colleagues to cannibals.
The sublime bitchiness of Pleasence’s performance is all the more enjoyable because it stands in stark relief to the rest of the film. The missing civil servant turns out to be the latest victim of the aforementioned cannibals, a grotesquely deformed couple living in the depths of London’s subway tunnels. The reveal of their lair is a masterpiece of cinematic gore, as director Gary Sherman’s camera pans patiently over a human slaughterhouse rendered with surprising, sickening realism. There aren’t a lot of elaborate kill sequences in this film, but when Raw Meat abides by its title, it’s just as unsettling as any splatterfest.
The Pleasence and the unpleasantness would be enough to make Raw Meat worth watching, but what really elevates it is the treatment of the cannibals. Hugh Armstrong’s turn as the mutant family’s breadwinner (so to speak) brings unexpected humanity to a fundamentally inhuman character. Sure, this dude plays it a little loose when it comes to society’s hang-ups about killing/raping/eating your social betters, but he’s a product of his environment if ever there was one. He’s an unwitting devil straight from the King Kong school of movie monsters. Armstrong wisely plays him straight, investing his frustrated grunts and moans with enough soul to make Raw Meat genuinely moving in places.
I don’t mean to imply that this is some kind of forgotten horror masterpiece. There are plenty of problems with Raw Meat, most of them involving the spectacularly dull hipster couple played by Sharon Gurney and David Ladd (son of Alan, though his performance here is more reminiscent of a young Harrison Ford on a barbiturate bender). They play the last witnesses to see the civil servant alive, but they’re mostly here to give the audience something nicer to look at than pus-oozing inbreds and Donald Pleasence. Their lazy, bickersome interludes serve mainly to bog down the proceedings of what’s a pretty low-key horror flick regardless.
Still, those minor failings only downgrade Raw Meat from a must-see to a should-see. As artsy, exploitive, ‘70s British subway cannibal movies with Donald Pleasence as comic relief go, this is pretty much your best-case scenario.
A lot of adjectives come to mind when I think of Donald Pleasence. “Commanding.” “Mannerly.” “Bald.” Viewing Raw Meat added one more to the arsenal: “Bitchy.” Pleasence fairly radiates peevishness as a Scotland Yard inspector tasked with investigating the mysterious disappearance of a civil servant in the London Underground. He brings an off-kilter, endlessly entertaining energy to his portrayal of a man utterly fed up with the base stupidity of everyone in his sphere, from criminals to colleagues to cannibals.
The sublime bitchiness of Pleasence’s performance is all the more enjoyable because it stands in stark relief to the rest of the film. The missing civil servant turns out to be the latest victim of the aforementioned cannibals, a grotesquely deformed couple living in the depths of London’s subway tunnels. The reveal of their lair is a masterpiece of cinematic gore, as director Gary Sherman’s camera pans patiently over a human slaughterhouse rendered with surprising, sickening realism. There aren’t a lot of elaborate kill sequences in this film, but when Raw Meat abides by its title, it’s just as unsettling as any splatterfest.
The Pleasence and the unpleasantness would be enough to make Raw Meat worth watching, but what really elevates it is the treatment of the cannibals. Hugh Armstrong’s turn as the mutant family’s breadwinner (so to speak) brings unexpected humanity to a fundamentally inhuman character. Sure, this dude plays it a little loose when it comes to society’s hang-ups about killing/raping/eating your social betters, but he’s a product of his environment if ever there was one. He’s an unwitting devil straight from the King Kong school of movie monsters. Armstrong wisely plays him straight, investing his frustrated grunts and moans with enough soul to make Raw Meat genuinely moving in places.
I don’t mean to imply that this is some kind of forgotten horror masterpiece. There are plenty of problems with Raw Meat, most of them involving the spectacularly dull hipster couple played by Sharon Gurney and David Ladd (son of Alan, though his performance here is more reminiscent of a young Harrison Ford on a barbiturate bender). They play the last witnesses to see the civil servant alive, but they’re mostly here to give the audience something nicer to look at than pus-oozing inbreds and Donald Pleasence. Their lazy, bickersome interludes serve mainly to bog down the proceedings of what’s a pretty low-key horror flick regardless.
Still, those minor failings only downgrade Raw Meat from a must-see to a should-see. As artsy, exploitive, ‘70s British subway cannibal movies with Donald Pleasence as comic relief go, this is pretty much your best-case scenario.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)