Bela Lugosi
Mr. Horror Himself
Bela Lugosi, Mr. Horror himself, appearing in Trenton, New Jersey, the day after Christmas.
Halloween 2011: Miniature Halloween Tree Ornaments
Saw these miniature Halloween Tree ornaments at T. J. Maxx today.
Mexican Lobby Card: Terror En El Amazonas
Superbly lurid illustration makes this an exciting Mexican lobby card. And, once again, the gasping woman stereotype (aided by a strategically drooping shirt), sells the terror to potential male audience members. Blood-drooling gorillas do it for me, too, by the way.
Mexican Lobby Card: Humanoids from the Deep
This Mexican lobby card for Humanoids From the Deep perplexes me. Usually the photograph is not so prominently placed as shown here, and there's a large amount of dead space between it and the text and illustration.
Mexican Lobby Card:
The Beast With a Million Eyes
Scantily-clad, screaming women are a staple of bad horror movies. What's interesting here is the contrast between the fully-clothed screaming woman in the movie, and the imagined screaming woman in the illustration. Artistic liberty? Good, suggestive advertising? Cheap gimmick? You be the judge.
Final Destination 5
Ode On A Deathly Turn
THOU 5th installment of gory loudness,
Thou oft repeated script of messy deaths in time and time again,
Cinema horror fan, who canst thus express
Such bread and butter tales more bloodily than our rhyme:
What bowel-fringed tissue fragments haunt about thy screen
Round loose heads or flopping appendages, or of both,
In air flying or across floors smearing, outside or in?
What victims are these? What maidens quartered thus?
Which death pursues? What struggle to escape when sequels beckon?
What screams and entrails? What wild ecstatic gore?
Seen terminus’s are sweet, but those bleeding reddest
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft impalings, gut on;
Not to the sensual eye, but, more endear’d,
Slice to the entrails, tear the eyes, these messy ditties:
Fair youth, beneath the car, thou canst not breath
Thy song of fear, nor ever can these scenes be fair;
Bold victim, never, never canst thou live,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
You cannot fade, though thou hast not thy stomach nor other bodily parts,
For ever wilt thou die, for Death be not fair!
Ah, happy, happy fans! that cannot shed
Your quest for gore, nor ever bid the grue adieu;
And, happy dramatist, unwearièd,
For ever piping scripts for ever over and over again;
More happy death! more happy, happy death!
For ever breathing warm, and wet, sopped to overflowing,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human misery far above,
That leaves a heart bursting forth, and cloyed over rest,
On burning forehead, a dislodged tongue, or cleaved breast.
Who are these critics coming to the sacrifice?
To what film altar, O mysterious critic,
Lead’st thou that review lowing at the tale,
And all its slimey flanks with gorelands drest?
What nestled town by river or sea-shore,
Or home-built citadel in city or temple,
Is emptied of its victims, this pious morn?
And, nestled town, thy streets for evermore
Will no longer silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou’s art’s so desolate, can e’er return,
Till sequel plays havoc once again.
O terror shape! fear attitude! with dread
Of creature men and bosomy maidens overwrought,
With frightful branches thick with the trodden bowels;
Thou, noisome form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold tableau!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, to kindle other woe, more
Than ours, a fiend to all, to whom thou say’st,
‘Horror is truth, truth horror,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,
Till the next final destination.
by John M. “Keets” Cozzoli
Final Destination 5 (2011)
Murder By Death
Zombos Says: Very Good (but no surprises)
First, Final Destination 5 is slick slacks franchise-pressing, albeit drenched in body tissues and glistening blood most of the time. Second, because of this, there are no surprises. I don’t recall the take a life, live a life gimmick used before, but everything else is the same: pretty people die horribly, the END. The ways they die is the kicker that brings us back again and again. But for how long?
We all ready know you can’t cheat death because Coroner Bludworth (Tony Todd) tells us so in every installment. But an important question is brought up by Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto). He’s the one who sees Death’s de facto dire predicament ahead of the appointed departure time and warns everyone. He’s confused. Why get a glimpse of doom if you can’t change the outcome? My simple answer is it would kill the fun of watching people being mashed, mushed, and medlied in escaltingly convoluted ways. But is that all there is to it? Will Final Destination xx be the same formula setups, the same befuddled victims, and Tony Todd’s (hopefully) Coroner Bludworth repeating the same dictum: Death will always crash, crush, spindle, mutilate, and amputate your pajama party? I hope not. That would be worse than death.
A company retreat brings a busload of employees to their rendevous with a bridge collapse. Sam’s frantic warning after hearing Dust in the Wind saves his boss (David Koechner) and his friends Molly (Emma Bell), Peter (Miles Fisher), Candice (Ellen Wroe), and Nathan (Arlan Escarpeta). He also saves Isaac (P. J. Byrne), but Isaac is a cretin, not a friend. Seeing the collapsing bridge and how everyone is supposed to die will make gore fans happy. Personally, I don’t think computer- generated gore is as viscerally pleasing as the old fashioned, hand-turned variety because it shows up too ‘succinct’ on screen, especially with how entrails burst out and splatter. Am I wrong?
Death’s cheekily improvised ways for gruesomely killing off escapees from the precipitating mayhem are succint also, but Steven Quale manages to build adequate suspense around each personally constructed building-blocks-for-quietus and red herrings by muddling the how of what we all ready know must happen. The imaginatively messy demises include a very spirited gymnastic body split, an acupuncture misadventure, and a laser eye surgery flop-plop-squish I’m sure will annoy medical professionals. Then again, acupuncturists will not be happy, either. I’m sure the very long and rediculously thick needle Isaac pulls–nice big closeup here–out of his chest is definitely not one used by any acupuncturists I know ( or want to). If it’s metal fatigue tiring, electricity shorting sparkily, water puddling deeply, wrenches left around carelessly, fan blades whirring ominously, or flames licking closely, Death is sure to capture the anticipated moment.
Since Isaac is a cretin and Sam’s boss is a company toadie, we don’t care about them much and–yes, I’ll admit it–we enjoy watching them die. The piece de resistance is the Buddha bust finale, even if heads really don’t easily burst open like watermelons. But Sam and his friends are young, hip, and darn cute. They even act well beyond the needs of Final Destination‘s Dr. Deadly’s Monster Scenes requirements of victimization and terminus. There’s a stronger story of desperation waiting to be emancipated in this franchise: and when will Coroner Bludworth make a stand?
Although Final Destination 5 is shown in 3D, I didn’t get a strong sense it was entirely shot in 3D. The now standard pointy-objects-jutting-in-your-face are handled on cue, but the strongest dimensional effects are seen in the lengthy opening credits, shattering glass montage. The 3D effects in The Final Destination 4 are better.
Movie Pressbook: Who Slew Auntie Roo? (1972)
Well behaved kids? Christmas Eve spent in a big dark house? A creepy aunt and an empty nursery? Mysterious, perhaps, but the bigger mystery is why this movie's name was changed to Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?
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