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Chindi, with thoughts of summer lovin' and roastin' over a hot Bar-B-Q, sends this one with love and aprons for Hot Horror-Dog lovers everywhere. Crack open a bottle of Shoggoth relish and slather it on good. I can taste those lugubrious, slimy tendrils of sauerkraut now. Yummmm.
Cthulhu Weenie Roaster at bbum's weblog-o-mat.
ZC Rating 6 of 7: Classic
Of the three major Universal Studios monster movies, Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man, The Wolf Man did not spring from a notable novel. While many legends of werewolves abound in print, it took the skill of screenwriter Curt Siodmak, the talent of makeup artist Jack Pierce, and the acting of Lon Chaney Jr to tell the story of a man doomed by an eternal curse to kill the ones he loves by the light of the full moon.
The Wolf Man was originally intended as a vehicle for Boris Karloff, but as often happens in Hollywood, intentions change, as well as script ideas. Only the title remained as the movie was eventually assigned to director George Waggner and scriptwriter Curt Siodmak. While Waggner's uninspired and straightforward direction is adequate, it is Siodmak, first drawing on European Folklore, then creating his own, who weaves a fairytale spun out of Greek tragedy, blooming wolfbane, moonlight, and a sympathetic, doomed hero.
Lon Chaney Jr has the distinction of being the only actor to portray the tragic Larry Talbot, cursed to change into the Wolf Man and kill against his will, in five of Universal's horror offerings, thus making the role uniquely his own. His sympathetic performance as Lennie in Of Mice and Men typecast him as a hulking, sympathetic type, but that proved a perfect fit for his portrayal of the agonized, guilt-ridden Talbot and his demonic alter-ego.
Another oldie but goodie from my Blogger site...
George Romero had come to Long Island, along with actress, Lynn Lowry, to grace a showing of his 1973 film, The Crazies.
What more can any sane horrorhead ask for? To have the chance to meet one of the most influential directors in modern horror cinema is always a gold star in my book. And Lowry, who starred in The Crazies and Shivers, was charming. Oh, and Zombos tagged along, but managed to stay out of trouble. Perfect.
ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good
"I don't understand."
"Yeah, you do, but you don't want to understand." The man leaned back and laughed. "Hell's a-coming, little Scarecrow. Hell's a-coming and we all gotta learn to play the blues."
Something wicked refuses to leave Pine Deep, the small town in Jonathan Maberry's Ghost Road Blues. It took up residence years before and simply refuses to leave, or die. Back then, the townspeople started dying instead, and only one person, the Bone Man, could stop it. But he was stopped, too, before he could complete his mission. And now it's waited long enough. People are dying again.
"Iloz Zoc, move your left hand."
I stopped typing and looked up from my laptop. "What? Who said that?"
"Me, the something wicked you just wrote about."
Long time reader, WarCraftPhil, alerts us to this important public service announcement. Would you know what to do in case of a zombie attack? I'm not sure I would.
Let's thank our lucky stars that director Jose Carrillo and Lone Banana Productions had the foresight to produce a series of 1950 short films on how to survive a Zombie Holocaust.
Bone up now before it's too late: How to Survive a Zombie Attack.
Tap Dancing to Hell and a Pot o'Gold
Part 5 (Part 4)
ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good
"I tell you I smell popcorn," said Curly Joe. We had been walking for some time without any luck finding Zombos or Chef Machiavelli.
I sniffed the air again. My stomach grumbled. "I think you're right, and smothered in butter with lots of salt." My stomach grumbled louder.
Curly Joe started sniffing the wall. "Over here. It's comin’ from this crack in tha brick."
We leaned against the brick wall to get a better whiff. It gave way. We tumbled into a brightly lit room filled with ornate, comfortable furniture and the smell of freshly popped popcorn. Zombos was sitting in the corner with his feet resting in a large basin of water and Chef Machiavelli stood by an antique coal stove applying liberal amounts of salt to a big bowl of steaming popcorn. Puffing away at a church warden, a little, red-bearded, fellow watched us as we pulled ourselves up off the ground. He stood up from his overstuffed armchair.
"You!" said Curly Joe. "That's tha little creep I was arguin’ with."
"Oh, Sebastien's all right," said Zombos. "He was quite happy to get his tap dancing shoes back. They took me right to him, actually, and not soon enough, I can tell you."
"My wife, god-bless her, hates my tap-tap-tapping, so she hid my pride and joys. I've spent the year searching for them. They missed me, too," said Sebastien, picking up his shoes by the chair. They clicked together in agreement.
I stared at our diminutive host. "Forgive me for asking, but—"
"I know, I know, Sebastien's not an Irish name and I don't have an accent," he said. "I grew up in France. Long story. You've been watching too many Barry Fitzgerald movies, I take it."
Chef Machiavelli brought the popcorn over.
"This is wonderful. I've not had this much company in a long time. My wife hates visitors. I only married her because she looks and talks like Barbara Steele, my favorite horror movie actor," he sighed.
"So she's the one I heard callin’ ta me?" said Curly Joe.
"Yes, she's a bit of a flirt, but I still love her. Sorry I conked you one, but she gets me so jealous and angry when she's off and dallying around. But she's away to her mom's—nasty witch there, too—and I've got guests and popcorn and this new LED TV is hot to trot. "
"Do you get cable or satellite down here," I asked.
"Cable of course."
"Hey, you've got a lot of DVDs here," said Curly Joe, looking over the titles. "Haven't seen this one in ages." He held up House.
"Ah, you've found my pot of gold you have. Yes, I can't get enough DVDs. Let's watch it, then," said Sebastien.
In Steve Miner's wickedly quirky House, William Katt (Greatest American Hero) plays Roger Cobb, a Valium pill-popping, flashback-plagued, Vietnam veteran and popular author who lost his son and separated from his wife (Kay Lenz). He's suffering from writer's block trying to finish his book, One Man's Story: A Personal Account of the Vietnam War. With his agent on his back, and unresolved conflicts simmering in his subconscious, he's guilt-ridden and close to a nervous breakdown. So what happened in Vietnam, making it difficult for him to write or get on with his life? The answer lurks in the house he inherits after his eccentric aunt hangs herself. The house is also where his son vanished from the center of the swimming pool years before.
Unlike the trendy taste for horror being darker, queasier, and ichor-drenched, Mac Ahlberg, who did the cinematography for Re-animator and From Beyond, uses a lighter hand here and bathes the house’s oddball rooms in cheery colors, giving them an apple pie atmosphere until the clock strikes midnight, when Cobb’s nightmares really do come out of the closet in the form of the War Demon: a fused amalgam of napalmed bodies.
Something not quite right about the house is hinted at early when the grocery delivery kid enters, hears odd noises coming from upstairs, and goes to investigate. We follow him through the house, seeing the quaint furnishings and old-fashioned rooms bathed in sunlight. Wait a minute. Those Night Gallery-esque paintings on the walls, painted by Cobb's Aunt, don't quite match the decor. She’s a bit of an oddball, apparently, judging by those paintings. She could also do a mean Grand Mama from the Addams Family for Halloween by the look of her, too.
With her departure comes Cobb's arrival to the place he last saw his son. The police never bought Cobb's bizarre explanation of how his son disappeared. Should we? Is Cobb suffering from delusions, or is there something abnormal about the house? If you’ve read William Hope Hodgson's House on the Borderland, you all ready know the answer. The first night his Aunt pays him a visit to warn him about how the house likes to play tricks on people. But is it really her or the house playing tricks? It's not merely haunted, it's possessed; and it stands on the crossroads to the mundane and supernatural worlds.
The following morning he meets his pesky neighbor, Harold (George Wendt from TV’s Cheers). Harold recognizes him, chats about his books, and finds it difficult to stay. He brings over the brewskies, begins to worry about Cobb’s mental health, and calls Cobb’s wife out of concern. There’s one especially traumatizing event buried among the others plaguing Cobb, and it’s not his missing son. Working it out involves dressing in army fatigues and readying lights and cameras to confront the War Demon. And more grotesqueries put in appearances to bedevil Cobb, even sharp lawn and garden tools take aim in his direction, escalating his daymare encounters.
The foam and polyurethane nightmares created by James Cummins are similar to his comically designed monsters in The Boneyard, but here they’re an advantage: they meld an off-beat, playful, gruesomeness to match Cobb’s mood and the electric-koolaid-acid-trip tone of the movie. In one surreal encounter, Cobb tries to bury a headless, but still moving, purple Morlock-looking monster in his backyard, only to be interrupted by yet another neighbor taking an uninvited dip in his swimming pool. She ingratiates herself while he quietly steps on the monster's dismembered hand before it can grab her bare ankle. He finally gets rid of her and hacks up the monster, burying the pieces to the tune of Linda Ronstadt's “You're No Good.”
She shows up later that night with her son in tow, begging him to babysit. He declines the offer until he discovers the pesky purple monster’s hand is back and holding fast to the boy’s shirt. Is he hallucinating? She hurries to her date and he eventually manages to flush the digit-terror down the toilet (damned if I’d sit on that bowl again). Another misadventure begins when troll-like creatures snatch the boy up the chimney.
Trying to get a handle on all these bizarre happenings, Cobb coerces Harold into joining him in a midnight romp with the War Demon. Harold, naturally, isn't much help, and Cobb gets sucked into the closet and back in time to when he was in Vietnam. It’s there we learn the reason for Cobb's flashbacks as he confronts Big Ben, played by six foot, nine-inch Richard Moll (TV's Night Court).
But what does Cobb's missing son have to do with all this? It takes a journey through the bathroom medicine cabinet above the sink to find out. In a Lovecraftian-esque encounter with a stop-motion winged nightmare and other nasties, Cobb must fight for the answers, and to save himself from guilt and an EC Comics-looking Big Ben who's out for his blood.
Will Cobb find his son and stop the nightmare? Or will Big Ben finally get the payback he's been looking for all these years? Don't let the second and third story sequels fool you; they didn't continue the storyline started in House. It begins and ends here, although House II extends the weirdness. House is one of those 1980s B-Movies that still vibrantly remains a quirky excursion into horror-comedy. It has top-notch actors, fast pacing, and classic stop-motion and polyurethane monsters to sell its off-beat, dry humor terrors.
This is one house you should rent.
Are you into making monsters?
Just about every horrorhead has at one time or another assembled his or her own garage-kit Frankenstein, or ghoul, or zombie, or creature from some lost lagoon or godforsaken planet in resin, styrene or vinyl. I can't say for sure that it started with Aurora's monster kits, but it's the ghost of Aurora that remains deeply impaled in many a kit-building horrorhead's beating heart.
But today's kits are more sophisticated, and today's modelers more passionate about their art; both demand more expertise with the tools that will turn those unassembled and unpainted pieces of a dream kit into that bashed diorama of fiendish delight.
Lucky for us there's CreatureScape, the online magazine for monster model lovers everywhere to help.
Continue reading "CreatureScape: The 21st Century Monster Model Zine" »
Horror author and Monster Kid Tim Curran freely, and of his own will, steps into the closet after his long terror-filled voyage in Dead Sea to talk about his latest novel, and the singular craft of writing horror.
When did the horror bug first take a bite out of you?
It took hold of me when I was very young. I remember my mom taking me and my sisters to the movies to see that Vincent Price/Poe adaptation, The Oblong Box. I knew we were going for days and I was terrified about it. There was an ad for it on the back of a magazine my sister had--a coffin, I think, with hands rising from it. That image burned itself into me and wouldn’t let go. The movie scared the hell out of me. I had nightmares for weeks. My older sisters were all Dark Shadows fanatics and they made me watch it with them. By then I loved horror. They were always dragging me to scary movies, a lot of the Poe stuff and Hammer films. We were always watching Night Gallery and re-runs of The Hitchcock Hour and Thriller with Boris Karloff, One Step Beyond and The Outer Limits. Wasn’t long before I traded in my Batman comic books for Monster of Frankenstein, Dead of Night, and The Vault of Evil.
I started buying Famous Monsters and Creepy, catching the old Universal flicks on Eerie Street out of Green Bay. And when we got cable, I became an addict of The Ghoul and all those great ‘50’s B-movies like Fiend without a Face, Not of This Earth, and Frankenstein 1970 that they showed along with the usual Saturday Night madness.
I was like any horror/monster fan of the 1970’s…I built all the Aurora monster models, Monster Scenes, Prehistoric Scenes. Collected the magazines and books and Don Post masks, put posters of Frankenstein and Dracula up on the walls.
Before Chindi is stoned to death for that Last Supper thing, I should point out that he also found these groovy-gruesome portraits by the "masters," a while back. There's nothing like a classic horror done up classy, I always say.
Go to Worth1000.com and scroll down the page to view the Monster Modren 4 entries and more!
Why don't I ever see any of these priceless paintings on Antiques Roadshow?
Before EC Comics, before TV Horror Hosts, and before the mad scientists, psychos, and domestic and foreign ghosties and beasties took over the megagoogaplex screens, there was dramatized horror on radio just a twist of the dial away.
I fondly remember pulling out the old Webcor reel to reel tape player to listen to old time radio shows, and my favorite will always be Three Skeleton Key with Vincent Price, otherwise known as "that one about the rats."
Imagine being trapped in a lighthouse with a horde of ravenous rats that have eyes and taste buds only for you; inexorably finding their way in until you have no where else to run. To find out how it all turns out, you will have to go to Old Time Horror Radio and listen, with the lights turned off of course.
With the advent of MP3 players, it is now easier than ever to rediscover the sinful pleasures of old time horror radio drama. Much of it is in the public domain these days (script writers and budding horror authors take note!), and can be found online or in CD collections for a nominal charge.
Hot on your list should be audio plays from Lights Out, Suspense, Inner Sanctum, The Creaking Door, and The Haunting Hour, though there are many more series extant.
Aside from Three Skeleton Key, other superb radio dramas to listen to are Sub Basement, and Spider, from Lights Out, and The Dunwich Horror and The House in Cypress Canyon from Suspense.
In Sub Basement, a man takes his wife to the sub basement of a big department store with plans of murder on his mind, but something else in the basement has other plans for them. And in Spider, two weary jungle hunters meet their match in another furry, but not so little or cute multi-legged, and very patient hunter. Just what, exactly, is in the closet in The House in Cypress Canyon will make your neck hairs stand on end.
Listening to horror can be quite frightening indeed. As you hear these chilling tales of terror and horror, be careful your imagination does not run too wild.
And remember, listen with the LIGHTS OUT!
ZC Rating 6 of 7: Classic
Zombos was gloomier than usual. The ageless Grandpa Munster had finally passed the veil. I must admit that I was also saddened by the passing of Al Lewis. Nothing reminds us more of our own looming mortality than the death of those traveling along with us through life’s journey.
“The man had history,” said Zombos, sipping his claret. “So few performers today have history.”
I nodded in agreement. The fireplace crackled in agreement. The Promoli fantasy clock on the mantle chimed in agreement.
I felt a spell of reminiscence coming on.
“You know,” said Zombos, “I remember when he had his Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village, back in the eighties. It was late one night, and we were just walking along, and there he was, sitting in front of his restaurant—I believe it was called Grampa’s—chomping on a huge cigar. As we stopped to take a look, he jumped up, opened the door, and said 'Are you hungry?' Well, of course we could not pass up the invitation. Such a wonderful personality; earthy, yet vastly talented and resourceful, with a true zest for life.” Zombos fell silent.
Our peaceful mood was soon broken by the arrival of Uncle LaVey, the blackest of the black sheep in Zimba’s family tree. Dressed in his black shirt and pants, and with his black widow’s peaked hairline and black goatee, he presented quite the look of the Satanist about town.
“Zombos!” he said, “I thought you might like to see this again.” He tossed over my copy of Freaks, directed by Tod Browning.
“Well, it’s about time you returned it,” I said. He smiled.
A peal of thunder echoed outside, followed by a flash of lightning. Rivulets of water started sliding down the narrow windowpanes of the library; a perfect setting in which to view one of cinema’s more outré films. Zombos passed the bottle of claret over to Uncle LaVey, and I inserted the DVD into the player.
Continue reading "Still Freaky After All These Years
Freaks (1932) " »
ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good
I'm happy to say Night Watch is not a clunker. Instead, it is a whirlwind of special effects, odd characters, and a story that definitely puts Russian horror on the genre map. While the filmed story is different from the book it is based on in some important respects, the movie is still an entertainingly fast-paced and strong first entry in the Night Watch trilogy.
The director, Timor Bekmambetov, did the movie for Russian audiences, which explains the more melodramatic and flowery-mouth approach to mis-en-scene and dialog. But it's these Russian nuances, composed alongside the standard but well-executed horror trappings we all know and love—CGI and gore effects—that give this film's quirky, good versus evil, story a fun and very watchable spin for any discerning horror fan.
It opens with a battle between the forces of good and evil (like in Lord of the Rings and Thor)—here it’s the light and the dark squaring off—as they each fight for foothold on a narrow bridge. Both soon realize they are equally matched and neither can win. So a truce of sorts has them divvying mankind's fate into having Light rule by day, and Dark rule by night.
Jump ahead a few millenniums and we're in Moscow, where Anton (Konstantin Khabenskiy), our soon to be strong-willed but hapless hero, pays a visit to a witch, hoping to keep his girlfriend from having someone else's child. Bad move on his part as it brings him into direct contact with Night Watch, the forces of Light.
In short order the witch is subdued, suddenly and chaotically, for engaging in witchy kinds of things, and Anton, caught in the middle, discovers he's a seer and a Light Other—which means a good guy, sort of. The Dark Others are vampires and other nasty things that go bump in the night, and the Light Others are shape-shifters and magic wielders, who try to constrain the Dark Others from doing harm. It’s been this way for centuries: both sides fighting each other to maintain balance. For those of you who work in a corporate office, just substitute "managers" for Dark Others, and your workmates for Light Others, and you'll understand the whole concept perfectly.
From the opening salvo with Anton, the witch, and the Light’s shapeshifters, it's a wild ride. Anton's entry into the light and dark world will leave your head swirling, but stay with it and all will be revealed in time. Night Watch is a kinetic movie of visualizations first, done in fast cut actions, speeded-up and slowed-down, and herky-jerky scenes spliced with CGI. Short pauses for explanation flitter by before plunging you into yet another whirlwind of chaotic visualizations, which for a limited budget are skillfully done.
Much of the special effects are devoted to the Gloom: the twilight state where the natural and supernatural worlds converge. Director and co-writer Timur Bekmambetov heralds its onset by swirling mosquitoes, which he says remind him of vampires, but, unlike the novel, he does not focus on the Gloom much.
One fast and furious scene in an old Russian barbershop has Anton fighting a vampire who pops in and out of the Gloom to attack him, otherwise remaining invisible. The bloody and gorific fight is a special effects treat that ends with a snap, crackle, and pop.
Other memorable touches include a yellow maintenance truck (think Ectomobile from Ghostbusters), recognizable to Russian audiences as a very slow moving vehicle, but is made fun of in the movie by adding rocket jets to have it speeding madly through the Moscow streets.
And then there's the owl, a stuffed bird brought to life to help protect Anton, now that he's gone and killed a vampire. The Dark Forces will not forgive him for that. No sooner does the owl follow him home then it turns into Olga (Galina Tyunina), a sorceress, in a flurry of feathers and goo (looking like the Chinese fast-food MSG variation of goo). Being forced into owl shape was her punishment, but for what is not explained. Since the owl can stand for either good or evil in Russian folktales, we can't be sure what type of past Olga had, or which side she’s really on.
Did I forget to mention the Vortex of Damnation Curse? Aside from Anton's issues with vampires, there's this cursed woman who’s about to bring down the apocalypse (and she’s not even a zombie!) so the forces of Light and Dark can battle again. Considering they were at a standstill a millennium or two ago, I'm not sure why they want to bother.
Why this woman is cursed can almost be taken as a joke by American audiences. Why she's cursed, and why Anton is causing bad things to happen, is due to the bad decisions they made when they had more control over their lives. Since their destiny is intertwined with everyone else's, one bad decision becomes everyone's problem. The premise of Night Watch is simple: each person chooses to join the light or the darkness by the decisions they make; and those decisions affect everyone else. In American horror films, people are usually put into situations beyond their control, then they make bad decisions making things worse – often terminally. So instead of a taste of Hamlet in our horror, we prefer hamburger with lots of onions and bloody red ketchup. We don't savor the bun or its relation to the burger; we just want to eat it.
Night Watch savors the bun with its moral story, and adds a dash of Shakespearean ketchup to provide a unique and colorful tale combining fantasy, horror, and the choices made by all of us that will lead to either the Light or Dark path. The Russian sensibility of horror is summed up best by this dialog between two characters:
"Damn!"
"Careful what you say. Damn is more than just a word."
ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good
"What's all that yelling about?" Zombos asked , putting his book down. We were in the study on a beautifully foggy morning.
"It sounds like Pretorious," I said.
"Well, see what the blasted fool is yelling about now. If it's not ducks, it's something else."
I went down to the front door, opened it, and found the groundskeeper waiting for me. He tossed a small package into my hands.
"What's this, Pretorious?" I asked.
"Your damn fool something-or-other. Postman barely slowed down before he threw it over the fence. Hit me on the head, it did." The groundskeeper adjusted his large straw hat. "Now maybe I can trim those corpse plants around the back in peace. Damn things grow like weeds."
As he walked off, I tore open the package. There it was; my screener of Anchor Bay Entertainment's release of Cemetery Man.
Continue reading "Zombies, Sex, and Guns
Cemetery Man (1994)" »
ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good
“That was disturbing,” Zombos said . We were leaving the theater after seeing The Hills Have Eyes .
“Yes, the hard-horror situations were—”
“No, no, I meant the annoying political barbs,” he interrupted.
“Oh,” I said, “you mean the father being a republican and getting them into the hellish predicament in the first place, and the milquetoast democratic son-in-law who rises to the occasion and unloads a truckload of whoop-ass on the radiation-mutated hill people after being pushed to the edge of sanity? I hardly noticed it.”
“The director is French?” Zombos asked.
“Alexandre Aja? Yes, I believe so.”
“Then that explains it,” he concluded.
“Actually, I think hubris plays a much greater role than politics. The father's cocksure attitude left him prone to making bad decisions. Oh, right, that does apply to most politicians, doesn't it?”
“Politics,” we agreed and continued walking.
