There's a Monster in the Surf! (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!)

A short clip from the ultra low-budget monster/beach mashup, The Beach Girls and the Monster, directed by former matinee idol Jon Hall in 1965. The puppet is Kingsley the Lion, voiced and operated by the late Walker Edmiston, who you may know better as the voice of Ernie the Keebler Elf, Orson the Vulture from H.R. Pufnstuf, or my favorite, Enik the benevolent Sleestak on the original Land of the Lost TV series.

I had already seen The Beach Girls and the Monster a couple of years ago, and while it is a pretty dismal affair, I also found it to be enjoyably schlocky in only the way that a cheap guy in a monster suit movie can be. At 3:30 a.m. this morning, as I awoke to start what was to hopefully be a 24-hour period of monster movie watching, I ran into this TV print of the film, known as The Monster from the Surf, on one of the nostalgia channels cramming up cable TV these days.

The song reminds me of a tune my brothers and I used to sing when we were young (having created it) called The Monster's on the Loose, which is structured pretty similarly with a simple repeated chorus featuring the song's title, though our long lost verse lyrics (I can only remember a couple of lines) were a bit more complicated than these.

The cutie-patootie with the squeaky voice and the pert you-know-whats is Elaine DuPont, for whom this would be her final acting credit. (She had a lot of uncredited roles in films like Jailhouse Rock and I Was a Teenage Werewolf, amongst others.) I think she is adorable in this film. This film was also Jon Hall's final feature role, after launching to stardom with John Ford's The Hurricane in 1937. Hall not only directed The Beach Girls and the Monster, but also served as the cinematographer (and maybe even wore the monster suit to boot, but I'm not going to tell you that).

I sort of ended up loving this movie all the more after seeing it this morning, and even knocked it up a tick in my rating system, having found enough to make me believe I had graded it too harshly the first time. It's still a really low rating (a 3 out of 9), but when a film makes you smile as broadly as it did to me as I watching it in the pre-dawn haze, you have to give it a little dap.

Good Thing the Clay Was So Red: Interior Decorating with Crimson Peak

Crimson Peak (2015)
Dir: Guillermo Del Toro
TC4P Rating: 7/9

I am not sure that I ever truly believed in ghosts.

Scared of the dark? Early in my life, sure... I wasn't exactly afraid of total darkness, but dark places, yes. Mainly darkened rooms adjacent to hallways down which I was passing that either had an unearthly stillness to them or else had something deep within the bowels of that dark room which was making a noise my brain couldn't explain. 

Or sometimes, my brain invented the cause of that noise. In the house in which we grew up in Eagle River, there was a small furnace room without a door under the stairs at the end of a short expanse of hallway around the corner from our bedrooms, and in that unlit cove was a furnace that insisted in making this long, slow, but repetitive whistling noise. And sometimes, as you were passing the furnace room, that noise would stop cold for a short period, and my little kid brain couldn't cope with staring into an absolute darkness that was now working in concert with my other mortal enemy -- absolute quiet. In my mind, the whistling noise was transformed into the (certainly cartoon-inspired) snore of a sleeping vampire, and when the noise disappeared as we passed, it was a sure sign that the bloodsucking creep in the darkness was waking up to seek out his next victim. As these things tend to do, the scenario evolved into my brothers and I tiptoeing carefully down that stretch of hallway trying to not wake up the vampire, and if the noise stopped before we made it to the stairs, booking it like hell up those stairs, screaming our heads off and hoping the vampire wouldn't catch us from behind. We never once worried that we slept just down the hall from that same vampire in bedrooms without any doors on them (the downstairs, really just a basement, was ever unfinished while we lived there, unlike the upstairs which was constructed much later but completed first). My brothers and I only knew that if we were going to make it alive upstairs for dinner, we often had to weapon up to protect ourselves from the thirsty undead.

But, ghosts? I guess we all think we have seen one at some point. Or that we have heard one. Or that if there is a house that has accrued a lonely, desolate look sitting undisturbed and seemingly uninhabited in a neighborhood, then by all means, it must be haunted. It is the place that kids dare themselves around, the place that gets egged the most on Halloween, and the place where legends tend to grow about those that once owned it or those that dare dwell in it. And while I have found it great fun to join my friends, many of whom are certainly believers in the supernatural, in playing such games with "haunted" houses, rooms, and university theatrical facilities, I have always preferred the more scientific route that one must first seek out natural explanations for phenomena before engaging in or relying on the cryptic for answers. Do I believe in ghosts? At my core, I would have to say that I am ever the skeptic.

Director Guillermo del Toro must certainly believe in ghosts. If he doesn't, he at least believes in their importance in telling his stories. While most of his films tend to be populated mainly by the physically monstrous, he wrote and directed an outright ghost movie back in 2001 called The Devil's Backbone [El espinazo del diablo], which still stands as my second favorite film he has done (right after the Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth). He also executive produced 2007's The Orphanage [El orphanato] by Spanish director J.A. Bayona, which is one of the better ghost movies I have seen, especially among recent entries. And while ghosts may not be at the heart (or plot) of most of his other films, del Toro is justly famous for the haunted feeling that inhabits much of his work overall, whether they feature intelligent bugs, malevolent fairy creatures, or demonic superheroes. So, it's not surprising he is now attached to Disney's upcoming Haunted Mansion feature (and has seemingly used his influence to get the Hatbox Ghost added back into the original attraction at Disneyland).

I await each new del Toro film like the rest of the world waits for Christmas. It is a bad habit to get into, because what do you do when you are even slightly disappointed with the results? I had been getting more and more excited with every replay of Crimson Peak's trailer over the past few months, and as the calendar advanced, I had taken to checking online several times a week to make sure the film's October 16th release date was a real thing. Even though I had learned my lesson so many times before with film after film after film throughout my life, I was still practically breathless with anticipation over Crimson Peak.

Did I like Crimson Peak? Do I like the color red? Because you do have to like the color red if you have half a chance at enjoying the film. Crimson Peak is besotted with the shade living within its title. It crawls down the walls of the mansion that takes up the story's second half. It drips from the pipes, it smears the floor, and it fills up vats in the basement. The clay that comprises the English terrain upon which the manse rests is a brilliant crimson that practically glows through the snow that covers the estate. And when the red red kroovy begins to flow from the violence lurking within Crimson Peak, the world will turn scarlet before your eyes. I can think of few major films (and I won't list outright gore films here) where the color has played such an important part in the story; Schindler's List and Don't Look Now are the two which sprang to mind as I watched the film. (And Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy, of course, though Red was my least favorite of the trio.)

But we will return to the discussion of hues in a second. There is the matter of ghosts and whether I might buy what del Toro is selling (outside of purchasing a ticket that is). Edith Cushing, the fervently Gothic film's damsel in distress (played winningly by Mia Wasikowska), tells us at the very beginning of the film, "Ghosts are real." She says those three small words matter of factly, and adds, "That much I know. I've seen them all my life." 

It is the dilemma of the skeptic who is also a willing participant in fantasy and horror films. How much are you able to tamp down your personal code or beliefs in order to maintain enjoyment in a story? If you are still watching Crimson Peak after the moment that Edith proclaims, "Ghosts are real," and you are not willing to say, "Absolutely, Edith baby. Thrill me!" then you are not going to get very far. Look, I don't believe in vampires at all (except the bats), but I do love Dracula and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I take everything that has to do with the supernatural with a Lot's wife-sized grain of salt, but I still can't miss Sleepy Hollow a single week. And speaking of Lot's wife, I don't believe in practically anything that occurs in the pages of The Holy Bible, but that doesn't mean I was going to skip watching Chuck Heston parting the Red Sea. If you want to have some fun with your movies, sometimes you have to loosen up a bit and just let the filmmakers tell their stories. 

And so I let Edith have her ghosts, though she still needed to prove to me just how real they were within the context of the story she was telling. You can show me anything, but it is in the style in which you tell the tale that will determine whether I come to believe in your fantasies. Crimson Peak revels in its Gothic trappings and turn of the twentieth century architecture. Del Toro's budget is well spent in making us believe that people and carriages alike are sloshing through the mud on the streets of old Buffalo, New York, and even more so in the geographical remoteness of the characters later in the film. We are thrown into Edith's world of Jane Austen-like wit and cotillions (though removed from Austen's time by about a century), and then we are given Edith's natural melodramatic counterparts, a pair of con people suffused with ill intent towards the girl that bear the striking faces of Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain. Such a trio of actors would have to be dream casting for anyone even approaching a Gothic romance, and del Toro is well-served by each one here, especially given that this film is pretty much contained to its three main characters (with some small assistance by a pair of others). 

Because we have been told at the outset that ghosts are real, del Toro wastes no time in producing one for us in which he fervently hopes we do believe. Otherwise, this whole affair tumbles like a epically produced house of cards. This spirit, and others in the film, bear warnings to young Edith about a mysterious place or thing called Crimson Peak, and that she needs to beware it. That this ghost -- the spirit of her deceased mother -- comes to her in violent fashion that seems to threaten far worse than a mere omen regarding future events shows that ghosts really are in need of a public relations director, who might be able to provide some coaching in how to deal first hand with people not trapped within the realm of spirits. 

It would be hard to describe much more of Crimson Peak without revealing major plot points, and I don't want to ruin someone's good time. Much of the fun that I encountered in the film was based on not really knowing where Del Toro was going with the story, and I was happy to bounce from well-stage scene to the next, and to just drift wherever the plot took me. That there is something far more horrific and strange going on behind the basic set-up if fairly obvious to determine, but it is the journey to that point that makes up the reason why we go to the movies in the first place. You want thrills? You are going to see an exceedingly graphic murder almost done in a giallo style (I was not expecting to have a flashback to old school Argento). You want tragic romance? With these actors, how could you have anything but that? You want tons of red clay? Well...

Here is where the film fails for me, and this is not to say that I didn't think the film was gorgeous-looking and precisely what I had hoped it would be. But Del Toro seems to have gotten trapped by a design aesthetic, and ran with it as far as he could go, and his movie sinks or swims depending on the viewer's acceptance of this motif. The movie is so red, it's last name should be Buttons. As I said before, Crimson Peak is soaking in the color. Late in the film, I swear that I was seeing the color peripherally around me in the theatre because it had so overtaken my senses. Del Toro wants you to really feel his title, and you have to admire the commitment of the man and his team in making this aspect come to life. But I had the sense it might have been at the expense of the believability of his story. And his ghosts.

I think back to The Devil's Backbone, where he really had me caught up in the tragedy that befell the ghostly character at the center of the plot in that film, and where Del Toro's technique was less concerned with the design of the character and more with the back story. The effectiveness of that film relied totally on accepting that character's fate and making me also accept he could guide the film's other characters to learn of that fate. In Crimson Peak, we are also dealing with a tragedy (or tragedies) in the past which the heroine must decipher through clues revealed to her by spirits, but Del Toro goes a bit too far in trying to sell the existence of those spirits. They are aggressive and angry, and a bit too detailed in their tangibility. They may even be scary to some, such is the excellence of his effects teams, but they didn't scare me. And I wanted to be scared by them. It may be just a personal preference, given what the ghosts are trying to achieve in the story, that they perhaps should have been more ethereal and less apparently in the same dimension; that they should have been more haunted than haunting. 

Guillermo del Toro believes in ghosts. And I believe in him. But no matter how marvelously he employs his special effects teams in Crimson Peak, I never quite come around to believing in the ghosts in his movie. But, man, can Del Toro's pals ever decorate a haunted house. 

Set designers are real. That much I know. I've seen their work all my life. Especially last week.

It's Alive! It's Alive! The Cinema 4: Cel Bloc

It has been great getting back into blogging full-time and writing every single day for the past month (plus a couple of weeks), but now I am truly excited.

As some of you may recall, when I first started my online life a decade ago with my move to Southern California, I ran a second website called the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc, a site devoted to animation. Its original intent was to be someplace where I posted short one to two paragraph pieces about whatever animated film I watched that day. But, like most plans or cute little pet monsters, it quickly grew into something else altogether. The daily thing ambled on for a few months, but I was dissatisfied with the pieces I was producing. My manner gradually evolved into the style which I have adopted through today, less concerned with the hows and whys in which the film was created and more about how the film has affected me on a personal level or what influence it may have or may yet have upon me. 

As for the cartoon reviews, I felt it was important to give as full a synopsis of the film as possible in order to discuss some of the older gag references, song lyrics, cameos, and visual puns at hand. This made writing the reviews a little more cumbersome, and I burned out on doing them pretty swiftly. However, over the years, every time that I bought a new cartoon collection, I always made mental plans to resurrect the Cel Bloc and work my way straight through the set. Those plans never came to fruition, and my drive to bring the Cel Bloc back from the grave got swallowed up by the general depression controlling my life over the past few years.

The amazing thing (and I am not out of bounds using that adjective here -- so overused on the internet and social media and usually inappropriately as well -- because this fact really is amazing to me) is that the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc was my more popular blog. IS my more popular blog. The total pageviews I have gained on The Cinema 4 Pylon in the past month are still far overmatched by those of the Cel Bloc, even though (until yesterday) I had not posted on there since September of 2008. And that is with me posting more than three times as many articles on the Pylon overall. As excited as I was to see how many hits I was getting on my depression article here a couple of weeks ago, my largest post on the Cel Bloc (for my April 2006 piece on the Fleischer Bros.' Somewhere in Dreamland) has reached ten times that number. Yes, that post has had nine years of sitting dormant on the Cel Bloc to pick up stray visitors and the odd comment (I still get regular comments on films I wrote about ages ago, and far more than I do on the Pylon), but it had already far exceeded my current average Pylon count back in those early days.

As mentioned, last night I posted for the first time on the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc in just over seven years, and it felt really great. In keeping with the Halloween spirit, I tackled the Bugs Bunny and Gossamer the Monster classic, Hair-Raising Hare (the one where Bugs does the monster's nails), and had a great time doing it. What I really enjoy about building these is having to watch the same film over and over to get all the details, even watching sections in slow motion, and so I get to climb into the film a little bit. Doing so (often) builds even more appreciation for the animator's art. And I also get to become reacquainted with old pals in the process.

If you like animation, I hope you will zip over to the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc and check out my new post here. I plan on semi-regular posts there moving into the future, but not the daily grind. I don't want to burn out that quickly. And if you love animation, I hope that you will dig into some of my older articles as well. 

Taking Comfort in a Pilgrimage to Dracula (or Drácula... Take Your Choice)

My life of the past few months has been one of redefining the borders of my personal comfort zone. Since losing my job in February, still battling a depressive state even while being weaned from the medication that was helping me through the darkest portion of it, and with my ego taking a very confused beating in searching for new employment, that comfort zone has been decidedly compromised.

Not finding employment in the areas in which I have experience now has me kicking through the doors of that comfort zone and applying for positions at places I never thought I would. Embarrassment has been swallowed through absolute necessity, and the longer this drought continues, I will likely have to become even more used to the taste of it.

The outside perimeter of that bubble of personal comfort may have been battered by recent events. It might have fluctuated greatly as I adjusted to whatever was confronting me at the time. But it has also proven to be a little too stalwart from the opposite direction: from the inside out. I sometimes rely on it too much to protect me from the outside world. Moving into a new home in a new town and into a living situation that I do not like much of the time has me withdrawing more and more inside myself. As I stated a few posts back, diving back into writing -- on whatever subject -- has allowed me to decrease the pressure and get some of my mojo back. But writing does not get me outside. It does not get me out in public, where I can meet people, shake hands, find employment, or just get comfortable again with society away from the small office in my home where I spend 90% of my time now in an effort to be away from the rest of the household as much as possible.

When I moved to California a decade ago, on my third day here, and not being a driver (nor ever having a license), I took a nine-mile walk. I was in a strange new town (Anaheim -- not so strange, pretty generic for the area, but completely unknown to me apart from that Mouse Park), and I took it upon myself to immediately attempt to gain my bearings and figure out what was up and what was down in the place. Four and a half miles down the road from where we lived, and four and a half miles back. I noted street names, businesses, restaurants, and bus stops. From the start, I established some knowledge of the environs and then took short bus excursions over the next couple of weeks to broaden that geographical "comfort zone".

Until yesterday, I hadn't done that in Eastvale. I am in a different county, and while I had learned the names of the surrounding towns (Corona, Mira Loma, Ontario, etc.) and the major roadways about us, I had done nothing to establish a base for myself. Apart from the shopping center exactly a mile down the road from us where I have taken in numerous mainstream movies, I knew nothing about the area. While I had stared intently at one of the local transit authority buses and told myself that I really should get on one of those and head to parts unfamiliar to get a better feel for the place, after six months living here, I had yet to ride the bus. And a large part of this was because of how withdrawn I have become since the move.

Enter Dracula. It's funny how it takes the undead to prompt myself to get out amongst the living again, but I will have to attribute it to Count Dracula. Over the last few weeks, my eye kept catching commercials and online adverts for upcoming Fathom Events theatrical showings of the original 1931 Universal Studios production of Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi. Even more enticing was the chance to watch the film in tandem with Universal's Spanish language version of the story, which used the same screenplay and was filmed on the same sets at night when the English version wrapped each day. I do like to take the opportunity to see older films on the big screen whenever I get a good chance, and here I could see one of my favorites. And right before Halloween.

There was one problem. How was I going to get there?

Jen had to work on both days on which the showings were to occur (the 25th and 28th), and even if she didn't, horror films (even fun, classic ones) are not in her wheelhouse. I couldn't go to the one on the 28th due to previous Halloween plans (which will be revealed later this week), and so the 25th was my one shot. It was showing locally at two relatively close theatrical complexes, but still 15-22 minute drives by car, and I don't enjoy asking others to drive me to places if there are alternate ways to get there, such as buses, trains, or walking. It had come to this... If I wanted to see Bela Lugosi on a big screen and disappear inside the Universal Monsters universe for a few hours (always a pleasurable experience for me), then I was going to have to kick the doors open on that comfort zone once more.

And so I caught a bus for the first time since moving to Riverside County. How weird it seemed to me, even though I have spent most of my life using public transport. My father even spent twenty-plus years driving buses around Anchorage, Alaska until his retirement, so they have been instrumental within our family as well. I have also employed them to great effect when visiting places such as Seattle, San Francisco, or Orlando. So, my six-month period of ignoring them here in Eastvale is definitely an aberration, especially considering I have been back in the Anaheim area several times since and just hopped onto buses without even thinking. Again, it is based on what and where you are comfortable, and how willing you are to push boundaries if you must.

I pushed those boundaries yesterday, that is for sure. I strode out from our house in the late morning air and marched straight to the bus stop, just down the street and around the corner, where I could have easily caught it many times before if I had only tried. My day-trip was going to take just under two hours to get from here to the Tyler Galleria in Riverside, with a transfer first to another route at the Corona Transit Center. I had previously seen the places to which I was traveling, but learning exactly which roads and side-streets to traverse in getting to them is a different matter. 

In the case of the smaller bus that was heading to the transfer point -- a very bouncy trip indeed -- while much of the trip went in linear fashion down the boulevard off of which our neighborhood lies, the route really uses that boulevard as a center point, and the bus veers off to the left and to the right for sideswipes into surrounding neighborhoods before finally settling back onto the boulevard for a final straight shot through Norco and into Corona. As I was intent on using the trip to get further accustomed to the area, I made mental notes of each street and the businesses upon them, and figured out which direction I would need to get home should I find myself stuck in each area. As I said before, I not only had seen my destination points before, but noticed a great many businesses along the way that we had frequented in the months in this area. Now, because of breaking free of the house, I figured out how I could easily access these places on my own with a simple bus trip.

The transit center in Corona was also not unknown to me. We had passed it numerous times when we were first in the area looking at homes. What I was not prepared for was just how uninhabited it could be on a Sunday morning. Just two other people were on the platform with me while I was there waiting for my connection, and one of those two came off the same bus as me. I only had to wait ten minutes before my next bus came, which turned out to be the normal size of bus to which I was accustomed, and good thing too because it was nearly two-thirds full when it arrived. The more crowded second route went through some much skeevier areas than the first, and I was certain I had never seen any of it before, and really had no intent of stopping anywhere else along the way but for my ultimate destination. After roughly 35 minutes we pulled up to the Tyler Galleria, and one of the first things I could see were the giant AMC letters atop the highest point of the complex, directing me to the movie theatres where I would be watching Dracula.

Pushing boundaries doesn't just include getting out where you have never been, but also learning to get accustomed to those places. Because I was unsure of the efficiency of the bus system in this area, or if I would make my connection in the first place, I left earlier than I normally would have for such an event. As a result, I had two hours to kill before my movies started. After picking up my movie ticket which I had bought in advance from the box office, I made to get acquainted with the mall, figure out if there were any stores worth revisiting in the future, and get the general lay of things in the area. The movie theatres are actually across the parking lot from the rest of the Galleria, and are connected to several other restaurants and a parking garage instead. So I took the opportunity to figure out where things were (with one major exception, which I shall get to later), and took a walk around the mall itself.

A Sunday morning farmer's market was just starting to close down in the parking area in front of the Barnes & Noble on one end of the lot. I strolled through to look over the produce for the tables that were still set up, though it looked like about 75% of the participants had already or were in the process of breaking down for the day. I then made a short visit to the bookstore to pick up the latest issue of Fangoria (with Elvira on the cover) and a couple of small Moleskine notebooks for future outings. Then I headed to the mall itself. While malls fascinated me in my youth (as they tend to do), I no longer get much out of being inside one. This one was pretty generic by today's standard, with the requisite mix of jewelry, fashion, children's, and shoe stores. The internet has pretty much killed my reasons for ever going to a mall, which were movies, music, and books. That the one store that contains all of these items existed in its own box-store outside and across the lot pretty much lessened my chances to ever step inside the actual mall itself again.

But I did stop by the food court long enough to convince the Philly cheesesteak place to lettuce-wrap one of their sandwiches for me. This proved to be a difficult accomplishment for them, and if I ever ate there again (the sandwich was serviceable enough), I would ask instead for a pile of their steak, peppers, onions, and cheese component along with a couple of leaves of lettuce so I could just make my own wraps. It would probably have worked a little better, and might have been a little less messy, not that I minded. Once you commit to the fact that most of your burgers and sandwiches in public places will likely be wrapped in lettuce from here on out, then you get used to making a mess of things. I hated being that messy at first, but have grown to accept and even sometimes enjoy it.

Finally, the time arrived for me to go to the theatre and get my seat (middle seat, row with the bar where you can rest your feet). I sat down (with a Lime Coke... yay, AMC, for those machines with a thousand choices) with twenty minutes to go before the film, and I was the only one in the theatre. Thirty seconds later, in walk two couples -- they were together in a group, so I could have said quartet, but they were definitely coupled off -- who proceeded to sit in the row directly behind me. I said to them, "And here I was wondering if I would be the only here for this," to which one of the ladies replied, "Oh no... you're not the only one with good taste." This said to me that if I wasn't in the presence of horror movie fans, they were at least classic movie ones. 

Eleven more people, including a family of five with a prodigiously oversized child (had to be a teenager) wearing half pajamas and carrying a very large, well-worn Pooh bear, took seats before the show began. So, while the theatre was not necessarily all that full, it was far more than I expected, and gave the viewing a cozy feeling. Though no separate entity talked to another group through the course of the showing, everyone was there outside of the normal bounds of moviegoing, and so it was like an unspoken bond of shared love of classic cinema (at least for the adults who made up the majority of the patrons).

This was my first experience with a theatrical Fathom Event produced in conjunction with Turner Classic Movies, and I must remark on how it appeared to me. I was anticipating an introduction from either Robert Osborne or Ben Mankiewicz (though holding out hope it would be Alec Baldwin), and we ended up with Ben (which is not a bad thing). His introduction was fine if not generic, but it was clear to me that the introduction seemed to have been filmed with television in mind, and came out somewhat fuzzy on the bigger screen. I don't know if this were the actual case, but when matched against the sharpness of the first image of the Lugosi Dracula soon to follow, the difference in quality is remarkable.

However, while I was thrilled to see both of these movies on a bigger screen, I knew that I was really just paying to watch TCM inside a theatre, a network for which we are already paying through the nose on our cable bill at home. Knowing also that there was not a marvelous old print (or even a newly struck and remastered one) spinning its way through a projector back and above our heads took some of the thrill out of the endeavor. Even worse, knowing that a pimply teenager was probably just selecting the film with a remote control off a computer screen took some more off the cool factor. But it was still Dracula on a big screen, the remastered image was brilliant, and Lugosi was fantastic to watch as large as possible in front of our eyes.

Everything worked for this small audience and I: the hypnotic style employed by old Bela; the bat-on-a-string special effects; the cinematic sleight of hand in the scene when Dwight Frye's not yet crazed Renfield finds his path blocked by massive cobwebs where the Count walked just moments before; the humorous asides of sanitarium attendant Martin; Edward Van Sloan's committed explanations of vampirism and how to combat the dread disease ... everything. The film moved so swiftly and deftly on the screen that it was over just as we seemed to be settling in to it. And maybe there actually was one part that didn't sit well, but I only noticed it because someone made note of it out loud, and that was the sudden ending with the offscreen staking of Dracula. "Well, that was over quick," someone remarked behind me, and I had been thinking it too. I wasn't sure if their disapproval was over how suddenly everything gets righted in the film's world, or if they, like myself, were just disappointed that the fun of seeing that particular film onscreen was over too soon.

We shed half of our audience when the lights came up, which I didn't understand since the cost of the ticket was for both films. This happened when Grindhouse came out, and loads of people missed the Tarantino half. I think it is a combination of people not reading the fine print and of no longer being used to double features. (They were the standard when I was a kid.) After a merciful ten-minute intermission (with intermittent counter) for a much-needed bathroom break -- during which two ladies from the family unit in the audience were doing an impression of Dwight Frye's affected, maniacal laugh as they plopped their way down the stairs -- at last, TCM Ben came back to introduce the Spanish language version. He mentioned that some people consider this version to be more atmospheric and often better than the Tod Browning one we just saw. For me, it is debatable, but no contest. Yes, the Spanish one has some interesting camera placements that run parallel to what Browning did, and there are many moments where it does have more atmosphere.

But it is also laden with a less-than-Lugosi performance as Conde Drácula by Carlos Villarías, which means he is good, but has none of the menacing flair that Lugosi perfected on the stage for several years. For some of the audience, some of Villarías' campier mannerisms and movements made them laugh out loud; for me, some of the looks he gave reminded me of Jim Nabors playing Gomer Pyle, and while I restrained myself from chuckling openly, I couldn't help but imagine Nabors playing the role on the dinner theatre circuit in Florida somewhere. The performance I really liked in the Spanish version was that of Pablo Álvarez Rubio as Renfield. I thought his turn in the role was marked by a greater ease with the arc of the character, and a little more subtlety and range on the "crazy" end of the scale, where his Renfield seems to go from zero to sixty and back again in some scenes, as he reacts to the chaos around him. I had seen this version of the film on DVD three times previously, but this is the first time I really noticed how much I enjoyed his take on everyone's favorite madman.

One of the remaining audience members did create some open laughter from the rest of us, as a big guy with a trucker cap and a huge red beard fell asleep not long into the Spanish version (reading makes him tired, I guess). Tucked into his corner of the theatre, Big Guy snored long and loudly through about 45 minutes in the middle of the film. I treat movie snoozers like sleepwalkers. I feel it is more dangerous for them and us if you awakened, especially in the middle of a movie-wrought dream. And so no one shushed or bothered him through his nap time, and at a certain point, he quite noticeably snored himself awake, and when some of us turned to look at him, he acted very embarrassed and quickly took a slug on his soda, and cleared his throat. 

With both films over, it was time for the return trip to the transit center. I mentioned that I had made a big error when surveying this new playground when I arrived, and it almost saw me getting abandoned in the place. I forgot to ascertain where the bus stop for the return would be, and when I got out of the movies (I will admit that I worried about it through much of the second film), I panicked a bit. I assumed the bus would return down Magnolia across the street from where I jumped off at the mall, but when I went over there, there wasn't a bus stop in sight. 

Rather than being caught staring at my phone whilst the next bus that I needed came whipping by, I opted for the "just walk to the next bus stop you find" rule. For me, this is an exceedingly easy plan due to the speed at which I walk, and it wasn't long, near the end of the Galleria area, before I found that next bus stop. But it was covered by a bag on top of the pole, with a green sign reading "This bus stop closed until further notice." So, I flew to the next stop, where I was greeted by yet another bag and yet another sign. Finally, a third stop appeared, about three-quarters of a mile down from where I started, and it seemed to be live, a suspicion confirmed when another lady strode up to wait for the bus as well. I found it just in time, as the #1 bus pulled up to us about two minutes later, and we were on our way.

GoogleMaps may have its benefits, but I'll be damned if I recognized that on this return trip, because it failed me utterly. Sitting on the bus, I consulted the application because I wanted to find out the next #3 bus from the transit center in Corona to my home. The app told me 6:14, and so another panic grew inside me over whether we would make it in time. During a normal weekday, this would not have been a worry, as buses run much later. But this was a Sunday, with the buses cutting off in the 7:00-8:00 range, and I wanted to make sure I didn't miss the last one. Jen's mom texted me all along to see if she could pick me up instead, but I was determined to finish my crawl the trip the way I started it, or else all confidence would be lost. As we neared the transit center at 6:06 p.m., I was excited because clearly we were going to make it in time for me to transfer. Then we arrived, and I was disheartened to find out that there was no 6:14 #3 bus. The time didn't appear on the giant schedule mounted at the terminal, and in fact, it disappeared from my GoogleMaps app as well. Now it was telling me the same time that the bus schedule was: 6:53, more than 40 minutes away at that point.

Not a problem, except the bus stop on a Sunday evening was as devoid of life as it was that morning. And it was getting dark. Fast. Next to railroad tracks and overpasses. Gully cats and queen snakes were sure to be on the rise next. There was me and one other guy who got off my bus, and he left in five minutes on another route. And it was getting darker, and the transit center seemed more and more desolate with every passing minute. A speeding train came whipping by and would have made me jump out of my socks had I been wearing them. As I checked the schedule one more time (with a half hour to go), the sudden appearance of human voice sent a chill up my spine.

"What bus are you catching?" I backed up from the sign and hurriedly looked around it. It was a security officer making his rounds. He seemed bored but genuine in his attempt to make small talk as he told me at which bay I needed to wait for the #3 bus (which I knew, but I was the only one there and had been pacing relentlessly, so he probably was sincerely wondering). We chatted for a few minutes before he shoved off to the other end of the center, but it was good to know there was someone else down here in a very secluded area off the road, surrounded by shadows. As I said, I am not generally afraid of the dark, but in someplace where you have little knowledge, it can rev up the adrenaline to ridiculous levels.

The time passed as time does; a little slower if you pay too much attention to it, and a little quicker the more you ignore it. I found a happy medium that saw the #3 bus arriving on schedule and speeding me off on my way home. Then I found out the kicker from the bus driver: the bus would not return me all the way to the bus stop where I picked it up down the street from our house. The route officially ended for the driver at a stop about a mile from that point, at the same shopping area that we frequent. But it worked out perfectly, because Jen was off work and home by then, and was able to meet me at the last stop. Then we picked up Chipotle there for dinner as well. Win-win.

And so ended my pilgrimage to unknown lands to see an ancient undead friend of mine (and his not so carbon copy). I had broken out of my comfort zone just enough to get me out of the house and traveling someplace new, to try and figure out this new county in which I live, and to gain some measure of confidence moving about on my own once more. And except for a slight hiccup in returning, I came back none the worse for wear, and definitely wiser. 

Now, I just have to return from one of these trips with a new job in tow, and everyone will be happy.

Of Pickaxes, Popped Skulls, and Party Tapes Lost to Time...

The only downside of getting back on the writing track is that it definitely takes time away from sitting down and enjoying films as I have become accustomed. Since one is decidedly more beneficial to my health than the other, so be it. I do not need to keep up my ridiculous two-plus films a day pace of the past few years. (On a good open day, I could even get in anywhere from six to nine films, depending on length.)

Yes, it is a new era for me, though really, I have merely reverted back to my ways of the first few years I was in California, when I was actually eager to be here, start over my life, and cut loose with the verbiage. Let's call it a bold new second edition of an old era. However, I am still watching films, just not at the same relentless pace. As proof, here are some capsule reviews and/or personal musings regarding a few that caught my attention recently:

My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009) [non-3D version]
Dir: Patrick Lussier
TC4P Rating: 5/9

I have a nagging suspicion that I have never given the original My Bloody Valentine film from 1981 a truly fair shake. To be honest, it was one of the few of what I would term the "original slasher bunch" that really gave me a good scare, chiefly through use of the creepy mining mask and pickaxe, but I used that knowledge against the film. Instead of embracing it like I normally would when a film delivers on its promise to be bloody and frightening, I stepped away from it, and I am not sure why. Another thing in its favor would be that it had more plot than the normal slasher film did in those days, but again I used this to turn my favor from it. And once again, I am not sure why. Several scenes from the film have always stuck with me, as has its memorable catchphrase said evilly by the trailer announcer as the ad's tension-fraught editing builds to its conclusion: "Take your pick!" Yeah, that was pretty effective.

It was inevitable, of course, that MBV would get remade, and I guess it was equally inevitable, given the eye-popping gore, that it would come out in 3D. I did not see it in the theatre, and so I have only now watched the 2D version of the film, but one thing has not changed in the 28 years between the versions, no matter the number of dimensions: a coal-filthy surplus of plot and characters. This new version is even more overloaded than the first. They seem to have taken the plot of the original, shaken, stirred, and shuffled it around a bit, twisted some details, and then added even more plot on top of it. If you are looking for the definition of "convoluted" to be summed up by a movie, you have it here. Here, having so much story becomes a detriment because most of the main characters are either so monumentally dull-witted or blind to their environment that you can't believe they even made it past third grade.

I need to talk about Jensen Ackles, and I am sure that I am about to infuriate some longtime Supernatural fans with this. I don't get him. Last year, I finally decided to check out Supernatural myself, and waded about chest high into the first season before I had to stop. I know the show, according to what I see online, is supposed to get AH-MA-ZING a few seasons into it, but I need to get past the first season. And one of the things keeping me from doing it is Ackles, whose performance I find understated to the point of being proclaimed one of the living dead. I assume he gets better in later seasons of the show, or maybe the fandom is simply made up of people who like to watch pretty muscle-boys fight monsters. In My Bloody Valentine, he fits the role he is given I suppose, especially since his ability to not impart any believable emotion at all helps to keep viewers guessing as to his guilt or innocence in the murders in this film.

Maybe the film is better in 3-D, as my friend Aaron mentioned to me the other day, and I just need to get the Blu-ray and watch it that way. Maybe I am wrong about Ackles, and I will get to a later season of Supernatural and find that I really like the guy and I just needed to let him grow into that role. I am pretty sure that I need to revisit the original MBV film and give it a grown-up viewing to establish a modern opinion on it. I don't know. Maybe I will do all of these things. Or maybe I will just take my pick.

Pop Skull (2011)
Dir: Adam Wingard
TC4P Rating: 6/9

So, I went bonkers, as I sometimes do, over a movie a couple of years ago called You're Next (and seeing it again recently, justly so). I noted at the time of my initial viewing the name of the director, Adam Wingard, and it wasn't long before I encountered segments he had directed in the anthologies The ABCs of Death, V/H/S, and V/H/S/2. None of these struck me as much as the grim fun I encountered in You're Next, and to be truthful, didn't really strike me as anything special at all in comparison. Earlier this year, at the behest of Aaron, I dove into a recently produced film called The Guest, starring Dan Stevens and Maika Monroe (whom I had was marvelous in It Follows). I went in knowing Wingard was the director, and really hoped it would at least live up to the promise shown in You're Next. Which it did. While I liked The Guest a little less than that film, and a little less than Aaron as well, it was a very enjoyable horror/action effort that manages to both complement many classic '80s action flicks and also raise the genre artistically. (As I write these words, my brain is compelling me to watch the film again right away.)

In my estimation, following the twin successes of You're Next and The Guest, Wingard has become someone worth watching in regards to future productions. But what about his earlier work? Reviewing his filmography, it turns out I had already seen another of his feature films, A Horrible Way to Die, which garnered some praise and citations on the film festival circuit a few years ago. I found the work underwhelming, and definitely not remarkable enough to make me remember the name of either Wingard or the film's screenwriter Simon Barrett. (It turns out I should have, because Barrett was also the clearly talented screenwriter of the other two films.) I recall that I gave Horrible a middle of the road rating (a 5 out of 9), and never made the connection that the same guys made You're Next one year later. I will probably need to revisit Horrible as well.

And now I go back further in time in Wingard's resume to Pop Skull, before Barrett was in the picture putting words down for Adam to turn into crazy pop culture totems. The title Pop Skull is the truest definition for what this tiny budgeted wonder can do to your psyche should you approach it openly. The story of Daniel (played by Lane Hughes), who spends his days in his home popping pill after pill and having increasingly horrific visions, Pop Skull is like a modern version of The Trip, though this one feel so much more real and terrifying than the bullshit hippie fest that Roger Corman and Jack Nicholson (the director and screenwriter, respectively) foisted upon the world. 

Daniel's visions of murder and mayhem could be many things: repressed memories of something monstrous he has already done, psychic projections of something he is going to do in the future, or just complete, drug-addled hallucinations. The biggest problem though are the spirits/ghosts that seem to inhabit his abode, haunt his every move, and won't let him get his wits about himself. Wingard doesn't want to make it easy for you either. The editing here is manic to the point of distraction at times, with the film flitting from style to style, from pill montage to hallucination to memories of a girl with a catnip-for-guys hairstyle and back to more pills so quickly it once again points to the film's title. For a film whose budget has been reported as a mere $2,000 and is, given the setting of a druggie shack, fairly dingy looking, there are some beautiful images to be found in Pop Skull, amongst all of the screaming, sweat, and blood. This may be a cult film of the future.

Blood Cult (1985)
Dir: Christopher Lewis
TC4P Rating: 4/9

I remember running across the VHS box of Blood Cult many a time in the horror sections of my hometown's video stores back in the late '80s. I had memberships at six different stores (and that's not even counting the memberships for renting from the rival grocery stores I frequented, where the horror content tended to be somewhat tamer), and while I was always looking for new titles or something to thrill me, somehow coming across the truly cheesy looking cover of Blood Cult just never got me excited about renting it. And so I passed time and again.

Twenty-five years or so have passed, and I have just watched Blood Cult for the first time. Was I right to skip it? Yeah, it's pretty bad, so my instincts were probably right. Should I still have watched it back then? Yeah, I should have, because for all its badness, it was kind of fun to see it, and the film is also kind of a piece of history. The story behind the film is that the producers wanted to skip theatrical release altogether and just shoot for the profits of putting the film out directly on video. The other thing they did was actually shoot it on video, thereby saving a lot of film costs as well. This was novel for 1985, and Blood Cult often gets attributed as the first of its kind: a film both shot on video and then released and marketed as a straight-to-video title. In fact, they used this status as a selling point for the movie. "Why would you want to watch something on film in a theatre," I can almost hear them say, "when you can watch something with half the quality of a daytime soap -- and with even worse acting -- on video?" Ah, marketers...

There is a campus, showering coeds are being dismembered, and it all could lead to some sort of "blood cult" out in the woods, hence the title. Who is behind the killings? The town sheriff, who looks like how I imagine Roger Ebert's grandfather to have appeared, wants to know, and it is going to take scene after scene of mind-numbing exposition and chats in small town diners to help him figure it out. I will give the film credit for not holding back on the gore. There are extreme closeups of facial disfigurements on victims in dumpsters and a severed, gushing forearm lying in a bloody shower stall. The second victim in the movie gets beaten to death with the decapitated head of the first victim. (I think that is what happened...) Blood Cult goes for the true grue, even if it ends up being sort of dull. It's utter shit, but its wicked little heart is in the right place. I could see this film being pretty fun at a party. And since it is likely that is exactly how I would have employed it had I rented Blood Cult back in the '80s, there is something to be said for that.

Visiting and Revisiting: The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977) Pt. 1

This is Part I of a two-part article in which my good friend Aaron Lowe (Working Dead Productions) and I discuss the 1977 film version of H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau. To read Part II, click here. 

Rik: The 1977 version of The Island of Dr. Moreau was the first film that I ever saw by myself in a movie theatre. My craving to see the film led to my mother dropping the twelve-year-old me off at the Fireweed Theater in Anchorage, Alaska, while she and my brothers went shopping. At the time, we lived in Eagle River, about fourteen miles outside of Anchorage proper (which is considered to be a "suburb" of the bigger city, but growing up there, we always thought of it as a town unto itself since there is no real physical connection). It was also a very different time, and while I do recall being a little weirded out at being all alone in a movie theatre with random strangers about me, all of that went away when I realized that I was in my element. I had finally found my church. It is a mood that has stuck with me the rest of my life.

What fired me up about seeing the film was a book. Not THE book. Not the novella written by H.G. Wells in 1896, but rather a novelization of his famous story, built around the screenplay for the film. I had picked up a copy of it on a visit to a Mom-and-Pop bookstore in Eagle River (I do not remember the name, but it was same store where I first purchased my Marvel Star Wars comic books that summer). I had seen the trailers for Moreau on television as well, and those had me pretty excited, but the book in my fingers not only had pictures of all the characters on the front and back covers, along with movie credits, but there was also a generous supply of black-and-white plates in the middle of the book mainly featuring photos of the "humanimals" (the trademarked name for the half-human creatures in the film) and some behind the scenes shots as well.

I had not read the original story at that time, though I had read several Wells novels like The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds. And truthfully, I forged through the book not realizing it was a novelization (by Joseph Silva, which does appear on the lowest part of the back cover and on the title page, but not anywhere on the front cover). It was certainly not in Wells' style I knew at the time, but I loved it all the same, and immediately began demanding that we go see the movie. Of course, while just a PG film, it was definitely not material for the younger set, so I totally understand why I ended up on my own at the theatre without my little brothers. [Just to set a time frame a little more, the film that I got to see at the movies in faraway Anchorage before this one was Star Wars, with the whole family (sans my divorced father), and the next film I would see would be The Spy Who Loved Me, which my mom and I took in, sat in the front row, snuck in Doritos and shaky cheese, and watched all the way through the second feature, Won Ton Ton: The Dog That Saved Hollywood.]

I remember being both scared of and awed by the creatures in the film, and fascinated by the story itself and its lead actor, Burt Lancaster, who plays the mesmerizing Dr. Moreau, a scientist obsessed with creating his own race of beings by fusing man and beast together in various combinations. I knew Lancaster mainly from one film at that age, another of my favorites, The Crimson Pirate. Being that there are exactly 25 years between the films, I don't believe that I caught on to the fact they were the same actor until it was explained to me. I just thought Dr. Moreau was an incredible character, though his methods shocked me as I was fanatical at the time about becoming a veterinarian. That said, I find his portrayal of the doctor to be the most humane version at the outset, where he doesn’t appear immediately insane or outrageously flamboyant as in the other versions. You can believe he is a serious scientist deeply involved in research that he believes will better mankind.

Aaron, this is your first time with the movie. What is your history with the film? Did you remember hearing or knowing about growing up, and is there a specific reason why you waited so long to see it?

Aaron: I don’t really have a history with this film, and I can’t think of any specific reason I never saw it, other than the fact that I just wasn’t ever around it. I don’t recall seeing it on the shelves of the nearby Video City that became my second home for many years, though it’s likely that I just kept passing over it on my regular perusals. The first time I really remember seeing the movie on a shelf was when I worked at Suncoast in the early-to-mid 2000s. The DVD featured a menacing Burt Lancaster holding a hypodermic needle, a screaming Michael York, looking rather ridiculous in both facial expression and in the mid-metamorphosis makeup he’s wearing, and a few of the humanimals looking concerned in the lower corner. It was not the most interesting cover, and made the film look like any number of hokey, brightly colored ‘60s/’70s fantasy films.

But then I’ve never had much of a history with H.G. Wells, either. I’ve read a couple of his novels, and of course have a longstanding love of all things War of the Worlds (even the bizarre musical version from Jeff Wayne, featuring members of Thin Lizzy, The Moody Blues, and Manfred Mann), and yet as a writer he’s never been a favorite. I like his plots, and I think he has great striking ideas, but I find his writing at times to be too clinical and detached. Although The Invisible Man has some great moments of dry humor in it.

Or possibly it was my memories of another H.G. Wells adaptation from the same period, and actually part of the same cycle produced by AIP: The Food of the Gods. [Editor’s note: The third film of that cycle is Empire of the Ants.] Now, The Food of the Gods is a film I actually do enjoy, though I think that owes more to the age at which I first saw it, back when I was young enough to not recognize the trickery that went into creating those giant rats and bees. I didn’t think of miniatures or rear projection; I thought they had actually found a giant chicken to menace those people..

There’s also something about a bad movie from the ‘60s or ‘70s that affects me unlike a bad movie from any other decade. While I can find some genuine enjoyment, and even some form of comfort, in a schlocky “B” movie from the ‘40s and ‘50s, or even the ‘80s and ‘90’s, a bad film from the ‘60s and ‘70s will often strike me as unpleasantly cheap and seedy, with an ever-present air of anger and violence. It’s no secret why that is; that period’s rage and frustration made its way into every genre of film, and probably most explicitly in horror films. But while I admire and enjoy that subtext in films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes, I see those as standouts in the field. The period is often called a great turning point in American cinema, and rightly so, but it’s probably my least favorite period for horror. That being said, the movie truly started to win me over only once some of that seediness and anger began to push its way to the forefront, or perhaps I’m just grasping at straws there.

Rik: Aaron, I believe that not that long ago, if I remember correctly, you first saw the far superior 1933 version called Island of Lost Souls when Criterion Collection released it on Blu-Ray. I saw Souls after this one when I was in my teens, and it blew my mind. I had read the real novel by that point, and even though there were naturally some changes, I felt it stuck closer to the true spirit of what Wells intended (though Wells apparently hated the more horrific sequences). How do you feel the two versions stack up? And feel free to riff on the 1996 Brando/Frankenheimer abomination if you wish.

Aaron: That is correct, the first experience I had directly with this story was through my purchase of Island of Lost Souls on the absolutely essential Criterion disc. Just by virtue of my addiction to pop culture I was pretty familiar with the underlying Moreau story, and yet Souls really surprised me. Not only was the violence disturbing, but the sexual content was absolutely shocking. Laughton’s portrayal of Dr. Moreau is less a scientist, and more a vile, leering hedonist, even before he begins pushing Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) into having sex with his animal women. Laughton’s Moreau doesn’t seem to be interested in any real scientific advancement, only in casting himself as a Greek god in reverse, coming down in human form to mate with the animals.

Obviously my heart lies with Island of Lost Souls. I find it has an eerie, slightly unwholesome power, almost immediately from the first frame. That’s not something I would say about the 1977 version, which I found to be a bit dull for the first half. Maybe it was overfamiliarity with the plot (at this point I’ve seen both of the other versions, and, in the case of Souls, multiple times), but this version seemed to have the least personality at the outset. Burt Lancaster is indeed the most humane, and believable, Dr. Moreau in all the films, and while I love him as an actor and enjoyed him onscreen, I think the character needs more of a touch of madness, certainly more than Lancaster brings to the role for most of his screen time. And then you can look at the infamous 1996 version, where Marlon Brando went way too far with the character’s madness, to the point where it just doesn’t seem believable that this guy would have the presence of mind to figure out, and implement, a method for turning animals into humans. I don’t have a lot to say about the 1996 version, because I’ve only seen it the once and better writers than I have already dissected (or should it be vivisected?) that film completely. I will just say it’s the worst of the three versions. I usually love crazy, extravagant fiascos that get batshit insane, and the ’96 Moreau surely fits that bill, but it’s also too meandering and lazy to be entertaining.

Rik: I am so with you on the Island of Lost Souls, sir. For me, it is not just one of the best horror films of the 1930s, but one of the greatest and most perverse of all time. It is truly twisted in a way that is impossible to believe could be achieved in those days. The John Frankenheimer version in ’96 is also a mind-melt, mostly due to Brando’s machinations, but it is also regrettably an unpleasant, sweaty, and uncomfortable experience. It is not the film the already immensely successful Frankenheimer signed on for after the dismissal of original director/screenwriter Richard Stanley (battles recounted in the rich documentary from 2014, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau). It really got out of his hands.

Getting back to the 1977 version now, Michael York plays the lone human protagonist, Andrew Braddock (Edward Prendick in the true novel), who ends up on Moreau's island after being lost at sea. Watching the film again, I am shocked at how thin (though still muscular) York appears, and this may be purposeful since he is supposed to have been at sea with no food or water for a considerable period. I knew York from The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, where he played D'Artagnan, and York was somewhat of a hero of mine at that age. I suppose my swashbuckling fanaticism at that time was another reason I was able to convince my mother to let me see the film, but I am fairly unsure of that point.

Aaron: I believe this is the only version of the story where the Prendick/Braddock character falls victim to Moreau’s experimentation, and it’s through that subplot that my true enjoyment in this film originates. For a while it seems like Braddock might be coming around to Moreau’s way of thinking. If he doesn’t seem entirely comfortable with the experiments being carried out in the compound, he’s at least decided to not rock the boat. That changes when Moreau and Braddock hunt down a humanimal who has shed blood, which is strictly against Moreau’s law. This is punishable by a trip to the House of Pain, where Moreau’s hideous and painful experiments take place. The humanimal is injured in the chase, and pleads with Braddock to kill him instead of hand him over to Dr. Moreau, and Braddock complies. This is in violation of the Law, and Dr. Moreau must punish Braddock for his transgression, or ignite distrust and anger in the population of humanimals. That’s open to debate, of course, because Moreau is such a godlike figure to these creatures that he likely could have avoided punishing Braddock. It actually seemed to me like Moreau was simply curious as to whether he could turn a man into an animal, instead of the other way around. And why wouldn’t he be? It’s something I’d always asked myself while watching the other versions of this story, and I’m surprised it hasn’t been repeated in any of the other iterations of this concept. 

This section of the film was the most compelling to me, and the most chilling, as Moreau calmly describes to Braddock the changes his body and mind will be going through. His thoughts begin to break down and words are replaced by images and instinct. His screams of pain seem to inspire even the sympathy of the humanimals, who certainly know better than anyone what he’s going through. It also inspires the sympathy of Moreau’s right hand man, Montgomery, who opposes Moreau’s decision only to get shot for it. This angers the humanimals, who witness Moreau breaking his own law, and sets the stage for the final confrontation when the beasts storm Moreau’s compound. There’s a nice touch in this section, after the humanimals have killed Moreau, where Braddock and Maria string Moreau’s body up over the compound’s gates and try to convince the humanimals that Moreau is still alive. This actually works, for a few seconds, and I thought that was a nice detail that shows how animalistic the thinking of the humanimals was, and how high Moreau’s stature was in their eyes. He wasn’t another animal, he wasn’t even mortal, he was a god to them, and even seeing their lifeless god hanging from a rope was intimidating.

Rik: This version really downplays the fact that in the original novel, Moreau is a vivisectionist who experiments quite messily to achieve his results in creating the Beast-Men. Once again, I didn't know this at the time, and did not even know the term "vivisectionist," so I suppose if they stuck to the original intent, I would have been even more shocked than I was by Moreau's domineering behavior. Here, the doctor mainly sticks his subjects with a syringe; using some sort of serum he has developed using human genes that can somehow transform the animals into human beings. What a rotten turn for the animals. They were certainly better off before.

Part II of this discussion can be found on The Working Dead Productions blog by following this link: http://bit.ly/1PDclpe.

The Last Halloween Round-Up? Sad Days at Big Thunder Ranch...

Yes, we are all happy that Star Wars Land is going to be a reality. The old fans, the newer fans, the misguided in between, we are all happy. The only problem with the creation of the upcoming and long dreamed of Star Wars area at Disneyland is that one of my most prized areas of the park is going to go away: the Big Thunder Ranch area.

When it was first announced that Big Thunder Ranch was going to be closed for good going into construction, some people panicked and thought Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was going bye-bye as well. Not the case, especially since Disney just spent a lot of money overhauling the ride in making it even cooler only a couple of years ago. No, as far as can be surmised, the popular Western railroad-themed rollercoaster directly across from the ranch area is staying put, making people who like to be tormented by TNT-wielding goats all the more joyous. 

I am not necessarily a fan of barbecue. I have been taken to task by my friends for it, some of whom are carnivores to the near point of cannibalism, as I see it. I prefer to be the omnivore nature meant me to be, and even survive as vegetarian around 60-75% of the time. But I am a burger connoisseur, and so meat never truly goes out of the picture for me. Regardless, I have just never warmed to barbecue and its too damn sweet for me sauces (though I will partake of a good spicy sauce when confronted with it... no turning that down).

As a result, I have never actually eaten in the barbecue dining and theatre area inside the Big Thunder Ranch area. I have walked through many a time, and have stood and watched the occasional group of musicians perform on the stage in the barbecue area. I have even seen Woody and Jessie from Toy Story parade about signing autographs and making every kid go bonkers. But I never felt at home sitting down amongst a pack of ravenous moms and dads and caterwauling kids sucking meat off of ribs and adding an extra color or two to every piece of apparel hanging on their sweat-laden bodies. As pleasant as it sounds, no.

So, why do I love, and why will I dearly miss, the Big Thunder Ranch area? Simple. Halloween. As ballyhooed as Disney's annual money-churning Halloween parties are, as crazy as people get over even trying to secure tickets to at least one of those parties each year, as frantic as my friends get when they do manage to snag tickets themselves, for me, the only area of Disneyland that really says "Halloween" to me is the Big Thunder Ranch area.

Even more so than the Haunted Mansion, which naturally, does have Halloween charm all year around, but because of Jack Skellington, also has Christmas spilled over into it. Quite heavily. And while I am one of those that has never relented his fascination with what he considers one of the most gorgeous animated features ever, I am a little tired of the annual makeovers of the Haunted Mansion for each September-December period. (It actually closes around January 5th, but who is counting?) My longtime chum Alexis, with whom we spent the day on Tuesday while I took these photos at Disneyland, even whispered to me that she really wished the Haunted Mansion was still normal (abnormal) during at least Halloween. It makes sense to me, since the movie takes place as Halloween is ending. If the Haunted Mansion maintained its usual ghostly pallor at least through the 31st, it would be no contest.

The Big Thunder Ranch area even usurps Main Street in Halloween flair. Sure, the entrance has the giant character pumpkin heads standing guard over it (that, frankly, seem a little worn after several years), and yes, there is that giant Mickey pumpkin in the Town Square that is magnificent for family photos. There are decorations all over Main Street, from one end to the other, every little thing is orange and yellow and pumpkin this and that. And none of it warms my heart like the Big Thunder Ranch area. It is most likely due to Main Street being such a busy thoroughfare that is hard to relax and take any of it in for very long, especially when you add horse-drawn carriages, motorcars, marauding packs of Dapper Dans, and a thousand strollers to the mix.

But Big Thunder Ranch still seems so secluded. It is deceptively well-hidden. Everyone knows where it is, but it still feels like everyone kind of forgets it is there until you either leave Fantasyland via the exit by the bathrooms next to the Village Haus (the Pinocchio-themed restaurant), or come from the opposite direction walking along the Rivers of America. You can't mistake it once you are there at this time of year. Pumpkin-headed people greet you at the sign at the entrance and in the woods to your right. The barbecue area is so deeply decorated that it is hard not to imagine you and a hundred other BBQ patrons were traipsing through the insides of a monstrous, record-shattering pumpkin, and you have become wrapped within its colorful entrails. (Well, that's how I see it...)

In visiting this area for the past few years, we have gotten to see special contests and activities that are part of Mickey's Halloween Party (which take place in a walled off fortress-like area open only during the nights the parties are held), but one of the most fun is when they have professional pumpkin carvers onsite, many of whom spend their time carving images of Disney characters, both famous and obscure, throughout the season. Unfortunately, we did not get to see that this year, and to be honest, the lack of actual carved pumpkin attendance was pretty disappointing. There were a handful around, but not like before. I chalk this up to the place going away, as it appears the usual Disney oomph is not being put into it this time. It is probably wise anyway. Shouldn't really entice an audience to want to come back to something that is going extinct.

But my main reason for visiting the Big Thunder Ranch area each Halloween is the log cabin. Built in 1986 simply to be something for visitors to view, and used for many other things in between, including a gift shop and coloring station, at Halloween in recent years, the log cabin becomes the Scare-Dy-Crow Shack, a old-timey Western home for pumpkin people involved in all sorts of mischief, and displaying images from Halloweens past. For me, it is a shot of pure Halloween adrenaline. The best part is that there are rarely more than four or five people inside the cabin at any given time, so you can get a real feel for the place and kind of dig in and enjoy the old posters, postcards, toys, and trinkets, as well as the colorful costumes on the various pumpkinhead people hanging out inside.

Tiny pumpkins are stacked on top of slightly bigger pumpkins to make candle holders. A smiling pumpkinhead sheriff with a draped hat stands in the corner next to his nemesis, a masked pumpkinhead with a more crooked grin bedecked all in black. Across the room is an elegant lady pumpkinhead on a bench, which gives visitors an ample place for a photo opportunity. (Sadly, my one picture of her did not come out well.) And in a nook off the center of the cabin, with stanchions blocking the area to keep people from getting in on the action, are two more pumpkin cowboys arguing over a game of poker.

At the end of the cabin is a gorgeous fireplace area, and set into it a cauldron, which lights up green and has something mysterious bubbling and misting out of the top. It is marvelously atmospheric, even when you have just stepped in two seconds before from a brightly lit Southern California day. The cabin itself has a couple more pumpkin people staging a hoedown in front of the side entrance, and a real life fiddler -- Farley the Fiddler, to be precise -- was there entertaining tourists and handing out stickers, while he played a mix of traditional music and Disney standards. [You can follow Farley the Fiddler on his Facebook page here.] 

Just outside the cabin is the area where one of the large, lovely draft horses is kept, and where you can nuzzle his nose should you wish. (He's a pretty sweet horse.) And right across is the goat petting area which is fairly irresistible to most of the young and some of the old.

I knew this would be my one chance to visit the park before Halloween, though honestly, if I really wanted to go by that date, I would just have to hitch a ride with Jen to work, since that is where she is employed. But it's not as much fun to hit Disneyland on your own (though you can use the Single Rider Lines all you want). [As a note, the Big Thunder Ranch area will close for good on January 10, 2016.]

So, this trip to the Big Thunder Ranch area at Halloween time will have to serve as my main memory of the place, general lack of carved pumpkins and all. If you have ever been able to attend this area, I hope your remembrances are as fond as mine.