There's something special about this model kit. Hard to pin down, but maybe it's the skull locked in a never-ending scream, or maybe how the tattered clothes reveal the rat-picked bones underneath. It's shades of The Cask of Amontillado and hints of The Count of Monte Cristo.
Although he was lucky enough to escape…
Welcome to Death, a new category for an old theme. Professor Kinema‘s funereal tendencies provide such a wealth of material on Death-speak in the movies, you’ll just die with morbid delight.
Dracula (1931)
Dracula: “To die, to be really dead, that must be glorious.”
Mina: “Why, Count Dracula!”
Dracula: “There are far worse things awaiting man than death.”
Lucy Weston: “Lofty timbers, the walls around are bare, echoing to our laughter as though the dead were there. Quaff a cup to the dead already. Hooray for the next to die!”
The Lost Squadron (1932)
Arthur von Furst, giving instructions to background players in a battle scene: “Listen men, when I take that scene, those who are supposed to be wounded, act like wounded. Those who are supposed to be dead, act like dead. Don’t move!”
Babes in Toyland (1934)
Stannie Dum (to the evil Barnaby): “You better come up, dead or alive.”
Ollie Dee: “Now how can he come up dead when he’s alive?”
Stannie Dum: “Let’s drop a rock on him, then we’ll make him dead, when he’s alive.”
Ollie Dee: “Now you’re making sense.”
Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935)
Ambrose Wolfinger (WC Fields), after his pistol accidentally goes off and his wife (Kathleen Howard) faints: “Did I kill ya?”
Ambrose Wolfinger : “My poor mother in law died three days ago. I’m attending her funeral this afternoon.”
Secretary: “Isn’t that terrible Mr Wolfinger!”
Wolfinger: “Yes it’s terrible. It’s Awful. Horrible tragedy.”
Secretary: “It must be hard to loose your mother in law”
Wolfinger: “Yes it is, very Hard. It’s almost impossible.”
After the company head decides to send flowers, condolences and a mention to the press of Wolfinger’s mother in law…
Peabody: “By the way, what did she die of?”
Malloy: “Bad liquor.”
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Pretorious: “Do you know who Henry Frankenstein is and who you are?”
Monster: “Yes, I know, (he) made me from dead. I love dead, hate living.”
Pretorious: “You’re wise in your generation.”
Monster to Pretorious in laboratory: “You stay, we belong dead.”
It’s a Wonderful Life (1947)
Old Man Potter to George Bailey (the key statement that proves to be totally false): “Why you’re worth more dead than alive.”
Clarence: “So you still think killing yourself is the best idea?”
George: “Well, it seemed like it at the time”
Scrooge, A Christmas Carol(1951)
Opening narration: “Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. This must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come of the story I’m going to relate.”
The Thing From Another World (1951)
Carrington: “I doubt that it (the Thing) can die…at least how we understand dying…think of what we can learn from such an advanced creature!””
Scotty: “The only thing we can learn from it is a faster way to die.”
I may be wrong, but I don't think this really was "perfect for everywhere wear." You'd have to be pretty spaced out to wear this to school or the disco. Just make it easy on yourself and paste a kick my ass sticker to your butt and save the expense.
Then again, I'd go all Battlestar Galactica for a chance to wear this at a sci fi convention. Geeky chicks dig geeky older guys in space adventure battle jackets, right? Get your whole family to dress up, too. How cool would that be? Beats going all Klingon mug-ugly and anti-social*.
(*Not that there's anything wrong with that so please don't beat me up again, okay? I promise not to joke about your Bat'leth, even though you seriously look silly swinging it like for real. Know what I mean? I never have these problems at horror conventions.)
Call it what you like, dirt is dirt. But boy, didn't every Dracula fan want one of these? I wonder who went around the castle digging up the dirt for this "unusual offer."
After posting the Penguin Paperback horror book covers, I rummaged through my shelves to find these Ballantine paperbacks I've had so long I forgot about them. Of course I've read them; Bradbury, Lovecraft, and Burroughs had probably the strongest influence on me as I slid headfirst into teen age.
The last book from ACE, Edgar Rice Burrough's Back to the Stone Age: A Castaway in Pellucidar, is the first paperback book I ever read. I picked it up at Phil Seuling's comic book shop off of 86th Street in Bensonhurst Brooklyn. I picked up a lot of books, Warren magazines, and comics at Phil's. I would ride my bike after school to get there. Phil was a great guy. His wife was wonderful, too. When they hit a rough patch after he started playing around with a younger girl, things sort of faded away, quietly. It wasn't much fun going to the shop after that.
The second I pulled these books from their mylar bags I couldn't resist opening Back to the Stone Age and sticking my nose inside, close to the spine. There's a scent, of browning paper, fading ink, and living memories, also browning and fading, you'll never get from a Kindle. That's a shame.
"In 1953, Mexico mounted its first-ever serious treatment of the Frankenstein myth, El monstruo resucitado. Directed by Chano Urueta, El monstruo resucitado presents Spanish actor José María Linares-Rivas as a deranged plastic surgeon who keeps an ape-monster in his basement and successfully reanimates a corpse, albeit as a mindless zombie. El monstruo resucitado was a success in Mexico. Suddenly, the Western was taking second place on screen to the Horror genre films." (Wikipedia, Horror Films of Mexico )
And this lobby card art is to die for. Oddly though, for a movie that contains gory medical scenes, these photographs are tepid.
The 13 pages promoting The Legend of Hell House do not appear in their printed order, but this is the complete pressbook.
…
by Professor Kinema (Jim Knusch)
In one of life's little oddball quirks, it's truly ironic that a man who's most famous alter ego, Count Dracula, repelled by a crucifix or holy cross, would find his final rest in a place named the Holy Cross Cemetery. He was born Béla Ferenc Dezsõ Blaskó on October 20, 1882, Lugos, Austria-Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania).
In 1931 he became an American citizen, taking the name Béla Lugosi.
On August 16, 1956, at the age of 73 he died, alone, of a heart attack in his home, an apartment on a street named Harold Way, off of Hollywood Blvd. His fifth wife of one year, Hope (more than 30 years his junior), had gone out to buy some groceries. She returned around 7 pm to find him dead.
He had been working with Ed Wood on a loose film project that was supposedly to be called The Ghoul Goes West, or The Phantom Ghoul, or Dr. Acula, or something equally as wacky. Richard Bojarski, in his book The Films of Bela Lugosi, also mentions The Vampire's Tomb and Revenge of the Dead as working titles. Accordingly (some sources say) Lugosi was clutching a copy of the script for yet another wacky Ed Wood project titled The Final Curtain.
The final film he lived to see and benefit from was The Black Sleep. The final film listed in his filmography is, of course, the appropriately wacky Plan 9 From Outer Space. The existing final footage of Lugosi that was ultimately tacked into this film gives no clue as to what project Wood had in mind when he was shooting it. Ironically at least, it does show Béla spreading his Dracula cape onscreen for the last time–possibly the cape he is buried in.
Hope Lininger, a clerk in a film studio editing department and devoted fan, had met Béla while he was in drug rehab and soon after married him. According to some reports, a good portion of his medical treatment was paid for by Frank Sinatra. Consequently, Bela's burial costs were also paid for by Sinatra. Some reports say Sinatra considered Béla a 'pal,' while others state that he had never even met him. Around 60 people attended Béla's funeral, including his son Béla Jr, fourth wife Lillian, Ed Wood, director Zoltan Korda, actress Carol Borland and 'Unkka' Forry Ackerman.
While continually playing Dracula for one theatre group or another throughout his life, he possessed a few appropriate outfits. One, complete with cape, he took with him to his grave. Another made it's way to the vast collection of Forry Ackerman. At one point, during one of my few visits to the Ackermansion, I wore the cape for a few minutes. Tim Burton's film Ed Wood correctly shows him in his coffin decked out in one of his Dracula outfits, but incorrectly shows only a few people attending the funeral.
At Holy Cross Cemetery, in Culver City, LA (not far from LAX) his plot location is Grotto, L120, 1. Nearby are the final resting places of Bing Crosby and Sharon Tate. While visiting the gravesite, I could only wonder, He died alone, he's here alone. Will any family members still alive eventually be buried here with him?
Yet perhaps the biggest irony associated with Béla could be one of his noted quotes – that could almost serve as his epitaph: (on playing the 'undead' Dracula) "It's a living, but it's also a curse. It's Dracula's curse."
The official Hammer Films' Curse of the Werewolf "Bronze" is a beauty to be sure. Good detail, nice pose, and big enough to say 'Hammer Monsterkid!' Bit pricey back then, though. But coming all the way from England, I could see that.
Zombos Says: Excellent
The music oozing like toxic waste from inside is almost enough to turn me around and head me right back home. I brace myself against the toxicity and move past a line of pasty-looking undead wannabes. Every one of them is dressed in black. Up and down the line both guys and girls wear heavy black eye makeup, black lipstick and black nail polish. The androgynous nature of the look makes it difficult to tell the sexes apart. Maybe that's the point, but it makes me wonder exactly when people got the idea that in order to look like a vampire you had to adopt a transvestite-in-mourning look. (Mick Angel, on his visit to the Tomb Room Club)
"What are you looking at?" asks Zombos.
I find myself standing at one of the library windows. I don't know why. Wait, yes I do.
"Pretorius is having trouble with the snow blower again." I nod Zombos' attention down two-stories as he steps over to where I'm standing. We look out the window together.
"Where is he?" he asks.
I look harder. Pretorius is gone. The snow blower is idling, puffing up oily smoke. I shake my thoughts out one by one, grab onto the last image I remember. Oh, right, now I know. I point to the hand sticking up from the voluminous snow bank, its five fingers curling tightly–death grip, really–onto the snow blower's handle.
"Oh, dear Heaven's!" yells Zombos. He runs out of the library. I think about it, but decide he can handle the situation. I have a more pressing task to finish. I'm reviewing Trevor O. Munson's Angel of Vengeance.
I return to the desk I had meandered away from to continue my review. I check my notes: Mick Angel, vampire, private dick, sleeps in a freezer to slow his decay–check; old fashioned, wears a fedora hat and smokes (he's dead, doesn't care)–check; drives a snappy Mercedes Benz 300 SL Roadster (make a note, I think Zombos has one tucked away in third garage)–check; can see his reflection in a mirror, but it's detestable (that's why vampires don't like mirrors)–check; rumored to be the novel that inspired the more romantic Moonlight television series–check.
I kick my chair back and stretch. What else? What am I missing? A gnawing sense of noir nibbles on the gray matter between my ears. Like in a Philip Marlowe Clue mystery there's the game pieces: the scummy rich guy living in the mansion at Beechwood Canyon; a 14-year old missing girl; a stripper who hires Mick to find said missing girl; and a recalcitrant Leroy–pronounced Leh-roy, a drug dealer with a score to tally. What about Munson? Sure, he's just an author, but he kicks around the vampire legend like a Del Monte tomato can down a long alley, leaving some new wrinkles on its worn label.
That's it. I smile with satisfaction. Those new wrinkles. Sure, there's the Dame from the Past, the love-interest, the one-and-only forever more. She's gone yet always there, isn't she? In flashbacks, Coraline fills Mick's thoughts and ours. Thoughts about his drug addiction leading to her addiction. Thoughts on how he's turned into a creature of the night; one who mainlines his blood–old habits die hard, right?– but only takes it from bad guys he slurps dry, like one of those Go-Gurts.
Is Mick vampire-strong? Yes. But not too strong. Munson makes sure to keep Mick's blood habit a workable annoyance, not a twilight walk in the glen. It makes him vulnerable. Funny, too, how Mick hates using cell phones. When he needs to make a phone call he goes to Canter's Deli; even if the smells now nauseate him because of his heightened nasal sensitivity. Why? Memories of the past?
It's always about the past in these stories, isn't it? Vampire ones and hardboiled ones, I mean. Munson writes Mick's case in present-tense (except for the flashbacks, of course), but Mick's living in the past while he's breathing in the present. He won't let go until he's forced to. He's forced pretty hard in Angel of Vengeance. Even with his hypnotic powers he's in deeper than he expects and bullets still hurt, and sometimes you really do have to hurt the ones you love when the truth is gearing up to hurt you.
You know how some books you hopscotch through the paragraphs and some you read word by word? This is one you won't be hopscotching.
A courtesy copy for this review was provided by Titan Books
