From Zombos' Closet

U.S. Stamps Honor Twilight Zone and Others

The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, appear on one of 20 first-class stamps released by the U.S. Post Office, featuring 1950's hit television shows. The stamps include images of Dragnet, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, Lassie, The Lone Ranger, Ozzie and Harriet, Howdy Doody, and Perry Mason.

(Don't miss the Edgar Allan Poe 200th birthday commemorative stamp either.)

Here's the press info on the classic TV series:

One of America’s most revered canines was among 20 television icons that came out of retirement today to be honored on the U.S. Postal Service’s Early TV Memories 44-cent commemorative First-Class stamp sheet. Lassie participated in the first-day-of-issue dedication ceremony that took place at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in North Hollywood.

Movie Review: Masterpiece Theatre's Dracula (2007) A Forgery

Zombos Says: Poor

From the Journal of Iloz Zoc

Feb 11. Westbury— Oh, the horror!  In this age of reimaginings and adaptations based on mere fancy and egotistical hubris, to be subjected to this singular carriage-wreck of a teleplay is more than I can bear. What mind could conceive such a thing; to put pen to paper with such disregard, such wretched villainy in this version of Dracula, and to put Bram Stoker's name upon it?

I hear the pounding now, like the beating of my racing heart, as he pummels the lid of his coffin, seeking retribution for this vile act.

I feel faint. I must lie down.

Excerpt from the front page of Victorian Variety — Who Do This Hoodoo? A Stinkeroo.

Feb 12. London—From the What-Were-They-Thinking social club comes this switch on the Stoker-coker pot-boiler, mangling Count Drac with so-called Brotherhood of Undead and syphilis shenanigans. Poor Van Helsing (David Suchet) is reduced to switcheroo role with Harker (Rafe Spall) and becomes head vamp's captive, set free in last half-hour to lead lackluster wooden-stake charge against is-that-all-you've-got? blood-sucker in a chamomile tea-paced climax.

Ninety minute walk-through-park story has Lord Holmwood (Dan Stevens) contracting syph from over-sexed Dad, forcing him to postpone nuptials with hot-to-trot Lucy (Sophia Myles) as he goes off to find cure from undead count using social ties with Brotherhood of the Undead, headed by a chap named Singleton, who dresses better than the count, clothed in simply gorgeous Freemason, secret society-style robe and hat.

Using Singleton (Donald Sumpter) as his go-between, Holmwood foots bill to have Dracula take longer than three-hour cruise to England aboard doomed ship Demeter. Due to minuscule budget, not much happens during faithful trip as weather doesn't get rough and the tiny ship doesn't get tossed.

Why does every movie miss potential, terror-filled carnage aboard the Demeter? Then again, why bother writing this snooze-fest?

Bat-man (Marc Warren), smitten by Harker's snippet of Mina's (Stephanie Leonidas) hair, decides to woo said Mina while chewing on Lucy's neck as an aperitif. Lucy, who's not been getting any lately, is only too anxious to oblige, sending would-be paramour Dr. Seward (Tom Burke) into spasms of impotent rage; or something like that, as his acting is a shade past monotone.

Meanwhile, at the Brotherhood of the Undead's office, Singleton and another member profess their adulation for the undead guy, only to have him wring their necks. Drac keeps pining for Mina, while Holmwood and Seward pine for Lucy, and this reporter pines for the big stake-o' pine in Drac's chest to end this unbelievable tedium.

In the basement, Seward finds Van Helsing—cowering un-Van Helsing-like—in a corner. David Suchet plays Helsing like a man running for the bus. Wisely choosing to hide his features in a white wig and beard, he routinely pulls out the crosses and stakes for the big showdown.

Gearing up for the anxiously-awaited—by this reporter—ending, Helsing, Seward, and Holmwood head over to Lucy's vault in order to test the sharpness of their stakes. Puzzlement here as to why Holmwood doesn't just let Lucy bite him in the neck to cure his syphilis—the whole reason for this mess—but why bother with good scripting so late into the story? With amazing ease, Holmwood plunges a large stake into Lucy's chest and she goes down for the count.

Speaking of the count, next stop is Drac's place of unrest, and after a little polite mayhem, Drac and Holmwood wind up dead (with Drac presumably deader than he was), mercifully ending this life-less version of Bram Stoker's classic.

Or does it? In a sequalization-antic, Drac appears to not be really dead after all.

Lord help us all if there’s a sequel.

Telegram to David Suchet from his agent, undated.

Hollywood—Look David, if you insist on appearing in these things, you better wear a white wig and beard to hide yourself. As your agent, I only want what's best for your career, and believe me, this ain't it. STOP

But go ahead, do whatever you think best; I can only recommend what I believe to be a saner course of action for you. STOP

Journal of Iloz Zoc, cont.

Feb 12. Westbury—I feel much better now. Chef Machiavelli brought me a nice cup of chamomile tea to calm my nerves. The life of a movie reviewer is not an easy one, and there are moments of real terror as well as joy. Why attach Bram Stoker's name to such a cinematic detour as this version, nay, this base use of his characters in such a folderol? Dracula himself is nothing more than a mercurial, long-haired rock star impersonator, showing no cunning, no evil wisdom garnered from living for centuries. And where is his foreign accent? And how can you relegate a novel, full of terror and action, to a mere ninety minutes?

Sadly, commercial interruption here would have been much appreciated.

Worst of all, key dynamics of Stoker's masterpiece were removed entirely, or presented in abridgment.

Harker is dead, and does not return to lead the fight against the count, and the sweep of action from Transylvania to England and back to Transylvania is gone. Van Helsing, once the self-assured powerhouse, the catalyst for action, is nothing more than a shell of his former incarnations.

Subtexts of vampiric sensuality and Victorian prudeness are lost against the flagrant syphilitic-focused plotline. Dracula himself is relegated to a supporting role, and displays no charisma, no depth, no fear-inducing terror. More effort was spent on his hairdo and self-conscious preening than playing an undead creature that has survived for centuries, knowing only the lust for blood.

Curse the day I started using TiVo, and the ease at which one can watch such an abomination, unsuspecting. 

Chindi Speaks: The Dresden Files

Although I missed the premiere episode of The Dresden Files on the Sci Fi Channel, all-knowing, all-TV-viewing Chindi wrote up a review for us. And anyone who can use the word "nictitating" in a sentence can write a review for Zombos Closet anytime.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have not yet read Jim Butcher’s original fantasy books upon which the SCI FI Channel's new, original series, The Dresden Files, is based. I suppose that means I may have saved myself from the all too familiar disappointment when a TV adaptation fails to live up to the vision created by the author. On the other hand, I was quite taken with the premiere episode of The Dresden Files, “Birds of a Feather”.

Movie Review: Trilogy of Terror (1975)

Zombos Says: Very Good

The year 1975 was a banner year for horrorheads. Stephen King's Salem's Lot was chewing up the bookstalls, a hungry and demonic shark was chewing up anything that moved in Jaws, and the gender-bender Rocky Horror Picture Show, with Meat Loaf, was chewing on some tasty morsels of iconic horror like a bat out of rock and roll hell.

And on television, horror and terror were being introduced to a new generation of viewers by producer and director Dan Curtis. In 1967 he thought long and hard on his failing soap opera, Dark Shadows, and out of desperation tossed in a vampire to shake things up.

Sure, when all else fails, call in the monsters. It worked.

Dark Shadows, with the help of passionate and pathetic vampire, Barnabas Collins, grabbed the ratings like a banshee screaming in the wind. Like many boys in 1975, I became hooked with the goings-on at the decaying Collinwood Mansion, and I hurried home from school to watch each episode. I even took Barnabas as my Confirmation name. And while the priests thought I took the name of Saint Barnabas, one of the first prophets and teachers of the church at Antioch, I knew the truth.

Dan Curtis' horror express sped into high gear after that, and the stops along the way produced some of the best terrorific television series and movies the genre has seen, heavily inspiring future fright-meisters and their cinematic and literary creations.

He also had the good sense to work with one of the best writers in the field, Richard Matheson. Together they brought Trilogy of Terror to the small screens of millions of viewers in 1975, and created a diminutive image of horror that still brings chills and thrills today.

Originally conceived as a pilot for a television series, Trilogy of Terror takes three of Matheson's stories, adds the talented Karen Black in numerous roles, and for an extra dollop of terror, peppers in a little Zuni Fetish Warrior doll with a hideous grimace of pointy teeth and a penchant for bloody mayhem. Throughout the three stories there is also the quintessential Robert Cobert music, so much associated with Dan Curtis' gloomy cinematography.

While the first two stories, adapted by William F. Nolan, may seem cliche today, they were highly original back in1975. In the first, Julie, Karen Black plays a reserved, plain-looking English professor who unwillingly becomes embroiled in a sexual tango with one of her students. Or so it seems. In the second story, Millicent and Therese, Ms. Black plays two sisters at polar opposites in their personalities, and heading for a violent confrontation because of it.

Richard Matheson wrote the screenplay for Amelia, the third episode which is based on his short story Prey. And it is this story that stands out as an important and memorable entry in cinematic horror. Indeed, in the audio commentary provided by Nolan and Black, Nolan jokes how he was always congratulated for the Amelia episode—the one he didn't write—when approached by fans. He eventually stopped telling fans he didn't write it and just accepted their appreciation.

The story is that good.

Take a lone woman, psychologically battered by her mother, add a little present wrapped in a curiously odd-looking box for her anthropology boyfriend, and toss in a warning not to remove the little chain that holds the savage warrior’s spirit at bay, and you have a simple recipe for…disaster!

As the chain falls from the little, and hideously looking, doll, you know what's coming. Curtis builds it slowly, with a little foreshadowing as Amelia cuts her finger on the very sharp spear the doll carries. After her bath, Amelia, dressed only in a bathrobe, notices the doll is no longer on the table. Curtis also changes the camera angle, and moves it lower to the floor, heightening our fears of what is to come. As Amelia reaches under the couch she again gets cut, and reaching further, pulls out the spear. Even with the lights on, her apartment is dark—Dan Curtis dark—and Cobert's music hits its ominously strident tones.

Out of the corner of her eye, a shadow scampers across the floor. She begins to suspect something crazy is going on, and just before you can say ‘Zuni Fetish Warrior Is Alive!’ the lights go out, and the bolt on her front door is reshaped into a metal pretzel, trapping her in the apartment.

The first frenetic attack is sudden, loud, and brings her down to floor level as the little savage uses a knife swiped from the kitchen counter to stab her feet and ankles again and again. The rushing of the little doll, screaming as it relentlessly attacks her, is still amazingly effective and scary. Locking herself in the bathroom does no good, as the little monster is very resourceful. She tries to drown it in the bathtub, but that also fails. The scene, as it climbs out of the tub with the big knife firmly gripped in its mouth, borders on almost funny, but Curtis' direction keeps this story deadly serious.

Karen Black, speaking in the Three Colors Black featurette on the DVD, describes the fear of vaginal entry that this episode plays on. She also mentions the humorous troubles the special effects people had in animating the little bugger. In the first attack, where she stumbles to the floor, she describes how they had trouble keeping the limbs on the doll as they rapidly pulled it along the floor. In the scene where it clamps down on her neck, she also describes how she had to hold onto it and act like it was alive and biting her. In the hands of lesser talent, this episode would have become a quirky absurdity; instead, it remains one of the most intense sessions in terror committed to the small screen. Interestingly enough, she explains that the dental work appearing at the end was actually her idea, which Dan Curtis did not agree with at the beginning. But it works well, and provides a lasting image of horror that speaks volumes even to this day.

Additional featurettes on the DVD include Terror Scribe, in which Richard Matheson talks about himself and the film, and the audio commentary by Karen Black and William F. Nolan. Dark Sky Films has done a wonderful job in releasing this horror classic again on DVD.