Guillermo Del Toro: At Home with Monsters at LACMA 2016, Pt. 2

[Note: To read Part 1 of this post, please click here.]

As I mentioned last time, the primary focus of the Guillermo del Toro exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (aka LACMA) that we attended yesterday (Oct. 26, 2016) was naturally on the films and artwork of Mr. Del Toro himself. With the massive collection of props, costumes, storyboards, sketches, and fully realized figures representing his monsters and characters on display, how could it not be so?

But the secondary – though equally as important – focus was on his influences, a great many of which (if not the vast majority) also happen to be my influences as well, but Del Toro filters them through his quite remarkable talent and attention to detail that a high percentage of the time produces hauntingly memorable cinematic art for the world. Me, I just take those same influences and go, "Wow, that monster was pretty cool."

As before, much of the artwork and collection is to be found (normally, when they aren't on display in an exhibition at a museum) at Del Toro's Bleak House. If anyone ever needed an absolutely on the nose answer as to what I would do if I had the money to do whatever I wanted, taking a look at this exhibition is pretty much what you would get. Well, apart from the fact that I would also have a life-size Robby the Robot, a Batmobile, and the Robot from Lost in Space. But you get the gist. Del Toro's commissioned pieces include diorama featuring Harry Earles, Johnny Eck, and Schlitzie the pinhead from Tod Browning's horror classic Freaks, a scene showing Ray Harryhausen sitting comfortably in a chair (while wearing slippers) as he handles some of the models he created for his still astounding stop-motion animation features, Jack Pierce applying makeup to a seated Boris Karloff as they work on creating Frankenstein's Monster, and a fairly elaborate scenario featuring the Monster meeting his Bride while a catty Dr. Pretorius stands aloofly to the side. There was even an oversized lifelike bust of master makeup guru Dick Smith.

Dick Smith, makeup artist extraordinaire.

Frankenstein plays a major part in the exhibition. The head of Karloff's monster looms large over the entrance to the room containing many issues of comics and Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, and there are numerous spots where paintings of the monster, original Berni Wrightson drawings from his acclaimed illustrated edition (which I still need to replace; note to myself), various editions of the book, and even a life mask of Boris Karloff from 1960 were on display.

Among the life-size figures were writers who count amongst Del Toro's favorites and influences, including (in totally expected fashion) Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. There were also cases displaying the writings and books of Lord Dunsany, Charles Dickens, Andrew Lang, and many others. The case featuring Dickens also contained an assortment of spirit photographs from the mid-19th century, which proved to be one of the more unnerving displays for me, not so much for the supposed spirits contained in the photos but because they were deathbed images of real people.

Of course, Famous Monsters of Filmland and the other Warren Publications played a role in the exhibit. I was a little upset by the width of the box frame surrounding the issues because, in combination with the lighting from above, it served to create shadows on the top row of the comics and magazines making snapping a picture rather annoying. Scattered throughout the collection, I also found some pretty cool artwork from the Warren mags done by Richard Corben.

Of the vast amount of artwork on display in the exhibit, I was more than a little skittish about shooting photographs of it. I know they were fully allowing photos, but for whatever reason – and believe me, I was also a tad bit shy about taking the other photos – I was weirding out a little about taking pictures of paintings. Eventually, I overcame my shyness, but I really wish that I could go back and see all of them again. There was a fantastic Dave Cooper painting over which my brother Mark and I – seeing it at separate moments during the morning – each went equally gaga. I took a quick snap so I could reference it later and look up information on it, but the result was not clear or good enough to post here. I really wish to go back to check it out again.

Other shelves and cases revealed a vast number of interesting images and models. One case which held special interest for me contained several cast statues by Ray Harryhausen from his original designs, such as Talos from Jason and the Argonauts and the Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth. Most striking to me was a tableau showing Harryhausen at work filming a scene on his table in his garage. The same case also held the mask from Brian De Palma's The Phantom of the Paradise, and a truly strange marionette of Peter Cushing which went largely unexplained, but was fascinating nonetheless. Another case held various memorabilia from assorted vampire movies, such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, Del Toro's own Blade II, and Nosferatu.

Will I get back to the exhibit again before it closes on November 27? Time and money are against me, but I sure hope to find an opening. There was so much there, I really regretted it after I stepped out to get a snack with the rest of the family, because once I left, I could not get back into it. I could have easily done another hour in there, if not more. Short of getting a chance to work with Del Toro in his real Bleak House, it's the closest that I will get. Should the opportunity arise, I will go again.

RTJ

V for Voluminous: Classics of the Horror Film

Classics of the Horror Film
by William K. Everson
Citadel Press | 1974
Paperback | 248 pgs.
5th paperbound edition

I am still waiting to see Murder by the Clock.

This 1931 mystery/horror film has always eluded my grasp, no matter where I have looked for it. I know it's out there somewhere. It is not marked as a lost film anywhere, and if you look for a DVD of it, you can find offers for it on most of the "non-legitimate" sites. I don't really trust any of those offers or sites, but they are out there. Where you don't find Murder by the Clock for sale is on places like TCM.com, BestBuy.com, BarnesandNoble.com, or Amazon.com, which is a pretty certain sign that any DVDs of the film that are floating around out there are most likely highly illegal in nature. I have found sites that say the film is definitely in the public domain and on YouTube, but the provided links are always shown to have been pulled down for copyright infringement, which would say to me the lie was put to their public domain statement in a fairly definite way. Elsewhere, I have found a notice that this Paramount title was sold to Universal along with some 700 other titles in 1958, so it is likely that is languishing in Universal's vaults somewhere.

So, what's the big deal with this Murder by the Clock film anyway? Don't know. Still haven't seen it. I have no idea if it is any good or not. 128 people have rated it a cumulative 6.8 on IMDb, so if you want to trust that rating, it sounds like it is more than good. Then again, 978 people have rated Tod Browning's 1927 film, London After Midnight, a 7.0 on IMDb, and I know that at least 99% of those people have probably never seen the film since IT IS A LOST FILM. It is likely that many of them are rating the concoction that TCM built from intertitle cards and still photographs and released as a special feature on a Lon Chaney collection a few years ago, but they still have not seen the actual film. With IMDb, you have to take popular ratings and any posted reviews with a grain of salt the size of the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota.

OK, wise guy.... then why are you so obsessed with seeing it? Well, it is one of the very few films left (not counting films, such as London After Midnight, that are definitely lost to time) in a certain book called Classics of the Horror Film that I have never seen and to which I cannot find access.

Ages ago, just out of high school and working for the first time, before I finally did have a decent film book library growing on the shelves of my apartment amongst all of my other books, I had only a handful of titles related to the movies. The Leonard Maltin Guide, of course, was standard and in my collection since I first found one as a teenager. I always had the latest edition at hand for a couple of decades. For a chunk of that time, I also kept the latest edition of Steven H. Scheuer's rival guidebook (which actually preceded Maltin's series by eleven years, being first published in 1958), though I never liked Scheuer's book as much. The Making of King Kong was there in those early years, of course, as well as Tarzan of the Movies, as well as the Medved Brothers' series of Golden Turkey Award-related books.

One of those early books, bought near the start of a very long tenure working for The Book Cache and its affiliated companies, was a volume by William K. Everson titled Classics of the Horror Film. As I was still a teenager and no internet existed to find instant information, I had no idea who Mr. Everson was when I bought the book. The volume does not contain an "About the Author" page or even a simple paragraph, nor is there a picture of Mr. Everson. So everything that I would get to learn about the author at that time would be directly through his writing. And while that writing did bear large traces of his personality, I still did not learn of his long reputation as a film society head and movie collector until much later.

But, oh! That personality! To say that it was, for a young film fan, a glimpse into the mindset of a man rather set in his opinions, which ran from a tad snooty but begrudgingly cognizant of changing trends to hardcore unwavering with a steadfastly upturned nose adorned with a clothespin, would be an understatement.

When I first encountered the book, having only seen a small portion of the films contained inside, I felt that I might never get a chance to see most of them. This was largely due to Everson's writing of the time leading up to its publication (1974 being the year), in the pre-video era, where unless you were blessed with a rare film revival, you pretty much had to hope that some local TV channel would play one of these films in the middle of the night or on a daytime matinee show. Everson broke my heart consistently throughout the book over my chances of seeing certain films. He speaks over and over again in the book about how modern audiences may never get the chance to see this film or that one, and even in the chapter devoted to Murder by the Clock, he speaks of it as if it were indeed a lost film. This is precisely how I was led to that conclusion until just recently.

The subtitle for the book is From the Days of the Silent Film to The Exorcist, the latter film having just been released the previous year in 1973. While he admits the film does work with an audience, he was clearly not built to deal with its speed, and calls it "a cheap and shoddy picture" that keeps taking "the easy way out" by dealing in disgusting imagery rather than shadowy thrills. Both points can be argued, but even when I first read the book in the early '80s, after being pretty thrilled to have read his preceding chapters relating, somewhat choppily, the history of the genre through its various cycles (German expressionism, Chaney, Universal, RKO Lewton, Hammer, Corman Poe), and its archetypal characters (vampires, mad scientists, werewolves, zombies, et al) – the final section of the book was the one that turned me off the most at the time when he started dealing far more harshly with modern pictures, especially as films had taken a turn away from monsters of the physical sort and more to those more ethereal types possessing our homes, bodies, and souls.

You can say the situation was either a snapshot of a man for whom the current movies were moving just beyond his grasp, or that he was just a guy who preferred his thrills a certain way -- and why change after all? But the genre was just on the cusp – or in the early years – of introducing us to George A. Romero, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Dario Argento, Joe Dante, David Lynch, and so many other filmmakers who were going to remake the genre over and over again, and Everson was clearly not up to the task of keeping up with these more modern filmmakers. He dismisses Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now in less than a paragraph (though he admires its look) for being too doom-laden from the start because of the supernatural elements of the plot. (Well, yeah, that's kind of the point of the story...) As a young man, I detected a certain fuddy-duddiness that I found somewhat unappealing.

Reading the book again in the modern sense, I was able to rather cast aside this later, and rather short, portion of the book, and enjoy Classics of the Horror Film for what is mostly was then and for what is still is today. It was a primary influence on my attitudes towards films of this bent in my young adult days, written by a man who pretty much grew up with the films of the '30s and especially the '40s (he was born in 1929) in much the same way that my horror consciousness was raised by all of those more modern directors I mentioned above. (Of course, I also had many of the films he was raised on in my range of influence, so I feel that I had it much better off than he did in the end.) What I really like about the book is the devotion he gives to some much smaller, less noticed films such as The Black Room and Strangler of the Swamp, while still paying proper obeisance to bona fide classics like Freaks, The Bride of Frankenstein and The Mummy. Without Everson's book, films like Strangler may never have attracted my notice, at least until I found it in The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film a little while later.

This book was where I first read about the Halperin Brothers and White Zombie, Michael Curtiz's The Walking Dead, and James Whale's incredible production of the original version of The Old Dark House. It is also where I got my first big dose of Tod Browning lore, even if Everson mostly considers him overrated as a director and seems to hold a great fascination over the sudden increased interest in the man's career at the time this book was going to press. And years before I ever got to see Rouben Mamoulian's 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Everson absolutely dominated my opinion over its special effects transformation being far superior to those used in the later versions of the story and even in Universal's 1941 version of The Wolf Man.

Everson's book is a thing of its time, a look at a genre that had reached the end of one major era, running out of black and white steam (you can practically feel Everson's interest in continuing to right about the genre ebbing away the deeper he gets into the book), and that was right on the edge of entering a new, fully full color, far bloodier, far more profane, far more everything era. And, at the risk of sounding a bit of a fuddy-duddy myself, a not necessarily better era, when everything that was involved within the genre in the time since is figured into the equation. These things, like almost anything film-related where mere opinion enters the fray, can be argued to the end of time, and there will never be a resolution. Because there never can be. 

We each have our loves, and we each have our hates, and they are individual unto ourselves. It is clear from Classics of the Horror Film that not only did William K. Everson love old horror films, but that he loved the very idea of film itself. How you wish to interpret his writing is up to you, but for me, while I may not agree with everything he says in the book, it will remain a prime source for me when I need a dose of genre movie obsession.

I just have to skip that short chapter about Murder by the Clock, because not seeing that film is driving me nuts...

RTJ

And for those of you wishing to play along at home, here is a list that I have created on Letterboxd which features all of the movies listed in Classics of the Horror Film by William K. Everson. How many of these films have you seen? Follow the link:
http://letterboxd.com/thecinema4pylon/list/classics-of-the-horror-film-by-william-k/

Monsters We've Known and Loved (1964)

Monsters We've Known and Loved (1964)
Dir.: Jack Haley, Jr.
Episode 15 of Hollywood and the Stars (1963-1964)
TC4P Rating: 7/9

There is nothing that I enjoy more than finding a piece of the past that I never realized existed, except perhaps when I happen upon such an item quite by accident. The thrill that a find like this sends through my system is nothing short of truly exhilarating. Possibly even orgasmic, if I may be so open about it.

Such thrills often come to me in the form of books and comic magazines, where perhaps I run into an obscure writer or character which had evaded up until this point. Sometimes they are odd toys that I find on shelves of an antique store, sometimes things that other people might look over but that I find delightful. Most often, they arrive as feature films and cartoons, and due to my connection to those individual areas, you can imagine the impact that finding such films does to me.

As a couple of examples, a few years ago, I ran into Sh! The Octopus for the first time, a B-grade comedy from 1937 starring Hugh Herbert and Allen Jenkins that left me completely delighted, and just last year, the sudden re-appearance of a truly strange and slightly out of character Cecil B. DeMille film from 1930 called Madam Satan still has me struggling to pick my jaw up from the floor. 

Last week, I ran into a rather crazed 1993 Walter Lantz cartoon called King Klunk that was one of Hollywood's first responses to the King Kong craze then taking the film world by storm. While I had read about the cartoon before, which is surprisingly long for a cartoon short (over nine minutes) and follows much of the real film's plotline, I had quite forgotten about King Klunk for eons. believing that it was simply something that I would never have a chance to see. Why worry unnecessarily about such a thing? Well, I didn't worry about it at all for years, until I flipped a tab on YouTube and ran [smack!] face-first into the film.

And so it goes with a television documentary from 1964 titled Monsters We've Known and Loved. Part of a series produced by David L. Wolper about the filmmaking machine, Hollywood and the Stars, Monsters We've Known and Loved was the fifteenth episode of the short-lived series, which last one year on NBC in the 1963-1964 season. Now, it is entirely possible that I have encountered mentions of this show multiple times over the years. I have read a lot of film books, and a great many of them are horror and science-fiction film-related. So far, in backtracking through my library, it is not mentioned in David J. Skal's The Monster Show nor in Stephen King's Danse Macabre, two places where I felt that I may find reference to the show, owing to the relatively similar ages of the two authors who seem to have been influenced around that period of pop culture.

The description of the documentary on one YouTube channel that features the video, The Monsterverse Channel, gives us this information: "Classic episode of the TV documentary series "Hollywood and the Stars", from 1963 that helped to hook a generation of kids on monster movies. A brief but excellent overview of the horror film from silent classics like Nosferatu to the atomic age and beyond."

I did not find the documentary originally on YouTube. I happened upon it blindly while searching listings for "monster" on Archive.org, a regular haunt of mine for finding obscure items. I saw the title, Monsters We've Known and Loved, and my first thought was, "What a wonderful title for a kids book." Then I started to wonder if it really was a kids book that had slipped my notice, or an adaptation of said book. Nope, it was the very special described above, and within seconds I set myself to watching it, and less than 25 minutes later, I knew that I had found a new keeper for my regular rotation of Halloween (and otherwise) delights.

The documentary is directed by Jack Haley, Jr, who yes, is the son of the man who played the Tin Man in 1939's The Wizard of Oz. (Haley, Jr. was also once married to Liza Minnelli.) The episode is hosted by noted actor Joseph Cotten, who leads us into the darkness of the night (and all in glorious, haunting black and white) with what he describes as "an old Scottish prayer"...

"From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
May the Good Lord deliver us!"

With this slightly altered text, Cotten introduces us to werewolves, vampires, and other monsters. Within the first minute, we shift from film to film swiftly, starting with the werewolf from Return of the Vampire (1943), Peter Lorre being tormented by the disembodied hand in The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), the mutated title monster from Bert I. Gordon's The Cyclops (1957), a woman screaming in full closeup at the alien creatures from Invasion of the Saucer Men (also 1957), and Ray Harryhausen's six-tentacled octopus from It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955). Then Cotten begs us, "Now, don't send the children to bed. We want all of you to meet Monsters We've Known and Loved, on Hollywood and the Stars!" Cue the theme music, title sequence, and opening credits, while a hand slowly claws its way from out of a grave.

When the show returns from what would have then been a commercial break, there is a flash of lightning and the house from Psycho is revealed on the screen. Cotten says, "Vampires, werewolves, and ghouls. These nightmare creatures embody the universal dread of the grave; the shadows, the unknown. They strike some deep chord within us. Through them, and with no risk to ourselves, we dabble in forbidden worlds of mystery, madness, and malevolence. And we have the dubious pleasure of being frightened out of our wits!" While all of this is said, we see a coffin open as a vampire prepares to rise, we see a werewolf transform, and a man is attacked within a tomb by a random ghoul.

With a flourish of the cape of Dr. Caligari and a closeup of Cesare's sleeping face, Cotten then announces that Germany in the 1920s is the birthplace of the horror film. OK, you can make that argument, but it's not totally accurate. Regardless, the shift is towards historical perspective instead of random scenes, which is a welcome one. Other German productions such as Nosferatu and The Golem are granted scenes before the shift jumps over to Hollywood with the original version of The Cat and the Canary (1927). Willis O'Brien's still wonderful effects in 1925's The Lost World are displayed next, but then the timeline reverts quite a bit back to 1920, giving the lie to Cotten's earlier statement, by showing a scene from John Barrymore's still remarkable dual turn as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, including the transformation done without in-camera effects.

Cotten introduces the viewer to Universal Studios, which will become the acknowledged House of Horror for decades, starting with the ascendancy of Lon Chaney, Jr. We see clips of Chaney behind the scenes preparing for his role as Quasimodo, and then a rogues gallery of his other roles, finishing his stellar performance as Erik in The Phantom of the Opera (1925). The silent screen turns to sound, and Cotten gives a full introduction to Bela Lugosi as the "King of the Vampires" but the clips we see are from Return of the Vampire, not from any of his Universal or even MGM work.

Cotten says "The sound era also makes a big to-do about mad doctors and their infernal machines" and we see the numerous actors such as Preston Foster, Lionel Atwill, George Zucco, and Lon Chaney, Jr. Cotten then gives us introduction to "the maddest doctor of them all" (and Lugosi's "rival"), Boris Karloff. At this point in the show, it is clear we are not going to be shown any clips from the classic Universal films, though with Karloff's section we do get stills from some of his famous roles, including those for Universal. (Val Lewton's productions are only name-checked by The Body Snatcher (1945) amongst these roles.) We also get a fun clip from a publicity film of the two "rivals" preparing to play chess for charity.

The documentary was also apparently unable to get (or pay for) the rights to show scenes from King Kong, so when it comes back from the midway break, we only get to see an animatronic lobby version of the creature from newsreel footage while Cotten talks about "the phenomenal success of King Kong that started a trend from which we've never recovered." Clips are then shown from Mighty Joe Young (1949), but while Cotten talks about "a primitive beast on a rampage against civilization," I had to remind myself that the rampage in the clips is Joe defending himself in the nightclub, and that he is the hero of the film, which has a happy ending with Joe saving an entire orphanage from fire and being returned to his job. Joe is not actually a monster (just an ordinary gorilla with a big heart), and Mighty Joe Young is nowhere close to being a monster movie.

"Today, the anxieties of the atomic age and the challenge of the space era open even wider vistas for the monster movie." And so begins the science fiction section of the show, with scenes from Earth vs. Flying Saucers (1956), It Came from Beneath the Sea (again), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958). Roger Corman gets into the show with Attack of the Crab Monsters, and even the Three Stooges sneak in (though they are never seen) with the giant fire-breathing tarantula scene from Have Rocket, Will Travel (1959) (the individual shots in the scene, by the way, are shown completely out of sequence). There is the surprising addition of the big blob from Hammer's Enemy from Space (aka Quatermass 2, 1957).

The Thing from Another World is met in battle by the men at the arctic post, and then Harryhausen is given a little more love in this episode by the inclusion of one of my favorite of his films, 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), featuring the Ymir. Cotten, or rather the writers of the script, misidentify the Ymir as "a Martian lizard," when in fact, the creature comes directly from Venus. But no matter... [Pushes glasses back off of nose and snorts...]

Surprisingly, The Beast of Hollow Mountain's climactic scene is included, with a cowboy tricking the title dinosaur into quicksand to perish (which he probably wouldn't), and then astronauts are attacked by It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958). Another personal favorite sneaks in with The Monster That Challenged the World (another 1957 flick), though once more there is an identification problem when Cotten calls the creature a giant caterpillar. The creature in this film is meant to be a form of prehistoric mollusk, though were it made today, it would probably be identified as an isopod. (To be fair, the monster does look like a giant caterpillar.) Truly awful special effects are represented by the inclusion of The Giant Claw (man, 1957 was a grand year, wasn't it?), a bird flick that really is for the birds (but I still rather love it).

The show moves to its final brief section, shifting the focus to the 1960s and a type of horror film "which is meant to be funny". We see Peter Lorre and Vincent Price as they film their latest feature, Jacques Tourneur's The Comedy of Terrors, and scenes from their previous film together, Roger Corman's The Raven (both 1963). Finally, we get a clip from Ray Dennis Steckler's execrable The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?, which makes Cotten cry, "Oh, where have they gone, the werewolves and the mummies, the Draculas and the Frankensteins. Perhaps if we had shown them a little more love, they would still be with us." THE END

Perhaps if you had paid Universal a little more scratch, David L. Wolper, those werewolves, mummies, Draculas, and Frankensteins would actually be in this documentary. It's hard enough to tell the history of horror films in two hours, let alone a mere 25 minutes, but even without the Universal bunch, this is a pretty fun short doc. Really, it just comes down to loving to watch scene after scene from your favorite monster movies, which is pretty much all that I like to do. To fault Joseph Cotten for a couple of errors in his narration is useless because, well, he's dead, and he didn't write the copy in the first place.

In the end, I am jealous that I didn't grow up watching this collection over and over because it would have influenced me even earlier than I already was. You don't get the basics of a horror film education from watching it (key elements are left out entirely), but really just the "basic basics," like a preschool reader. A preschool reader titled Monsters We've Known and Loved.

See, I just knew it had to be a book after all...

RTJ

*****

And in case you haven't seen it...

You can also find it here on Archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/MonstersWeHaveKnownAndLoved

Recently Rated Movies: Catching Up with Christopher Lee (the actor, not my brother…) Pt. 1

In resurrecting many of the old regular columns on this blog, my favorite was often Recently Rated Movies, wherein I would shorthand my usual long-winded blathering and comment oh so very briefly on a series of films I had recently seen and rated on IMDb. To begin this column regularly again, I am tying it into a project in which I have been engaged for the past three weeks. I have been employing the Charts function on Flickchart to create lists that show me which films of one of my favorite actors I have yet to see. Because I have watched so many films overall (11,000+), for there to be films for someone like, say, Boris Karloff, they would either have to be films I have intentionally putting off for one reason or another, films that were harder to find in the past, or simply something I had little interest in viewing.

I began the project with Bela Lugosi, and quickly knocked out eleven of his films in short order (luckily most of them are barely over an hour long), including the infamously terrible (and justly so) Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla and Mother Riley Meets the Vampire. I then leaped over to the aforementioned Mr. Karloff (there was some slight crossover), and not only also took down eleven of his films, including three out of four of his late ‘60s Mexican flicks (where all of his scenes were directed at the same time by Jack Hill and then inserted into the films proper), but also four of his Mr. Wong films from the late ’30s and early ‘40s.

And now, I am on the chart for the recently departed Christopher Lee. He has 133 films listed on Flickchart (overall, he has 278 acting credits listed on IMDb), and of those 133 films, until the other day, I had seen ONLY 68 of them. That leaves a massive amount of his films left to see, and I doubt I have the time left or the energy to see them all. Lee himself had a quote he was fond of repeating where he is regularly told by fans, “I have seen all of your films!” His reply, “No, you haven’t.” Well, now I have ticked nine more films off that list over the last few days.

[Editor's note: All films are rated on a scale of 9.]

The Puzzle of the Red Orchid [German title: Edgar Wallace: Das Rätsel der roten Orchidee | Alt. English title: The Secret of the Red Orchid]

Dir: Helmut Ashley

TC4P Rating: 4

When is it called for to have the very British legend Christopher Lee, with his deep and memorable speaking voice, to have his dialogue dubbed into English? Specifically, an American accent? When he originally recorded his dialogue for this would-be thriller based on an Edgar Wallace story (as many European films were in the ‘60s), it was reportedly into what I have read in some places as some rather decent German. That aside, it is incongruous to say the least to watch Lee in numerous scenes while hearing a ridiculously square and far too rigidly pronounced American accent pour from his lips (and obviously not matching what he is really saying), especially given that there is no attempt at all to try and match the timbre of his famous voice. 

A minor plus is that this film moves pretty fast, though the characters are involved in a mystery I don’t really care about while Chicago gangsters are kidnapping people in London. There are some fairly stilted attempts at comic relief, but like everything else in this movie, the dubbing also kills the chance for any humor to translate properly for the viewer. It’s not as horrid as you think it will be going into it, but it’s still a bit of a chore to watch.

Hannie Caulder (1971)

Dir: Burt Kennedy

TC4P Rating: 6

Let’s not get carried away here. Sensei Tarantino loves this film and has pointed to it as an inspiration for Kill Bill. It is easy to see why he loves it, and it is also easy to see the inspiration it served. But this is not a great lost classic. It’s merely a fairly decent western with an excellent male lead in Robert Culp, and some good, disgusting supporting roles for Strother Martin, Ernest Borgnine, and especially Jack Elam. 

There is also a dandy small part for Christopher Lee as the expert gunsmith that Culp and female lead Raquel Welch call upon to customize pistols with which Welch’s title character can exact revenge on the raping and murdering trio played by Martin, Borgnine, and Elam. The movie has some wit to it, and is engaging from start to finish. Welch is hardly believable in her gunslinger role, especially in what she is allowed to wear during the era in which they purport to be, though I mark this up to the ‘70s and the need for the studio to sell her remarkable exterior (if only they knew how). 

I do have a complaint about the blood, which gushes forth from numerous bullet wounds throughout the movie, as being too obviously fake. It rather galls me about the third time it happens. Other than that, watch it for a prime example of just how assured and captivating Robert Culp can be in the right role.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)

Dir: Does it even matter?

TC4P Rating: 5

Let’s talk about product. Pure product. Yes, I am one of those original Star Wars kids from 1977. I read the paperback (with the purple cover and the pre-film character designs by McQuarrie) numerous times before the film was released that summer, and I bought the comics, toys, LPs, trading cards, posters, blueprints, t-shirts, puzzles, games, prints, and what have you without a second thought. Like any other religious convert, I gave up my allowance on a weekly basis to the Force reverently for a handful of years, and it never once struck me I was being manipulated at all as I followed the adventures of Luke, Han, Leia and their pals through the next couple of films. Nor would I have cared if I did realize the manipulation at hand. I was in my teens, I loved what I loved, and I didn’t want to hear otherwise.

Though George Lucas has crippled my opinion of his creation due to his obstinate mishandling of it in recent years, I still maintain a soft spot for the original films, enough so that I am like everyone else who can’t wait to see what J.J. Abrams will bring us come winter. Likewise, I am equally excited about Disney’s plans for a new Star Wars Land in the park. While that might further define me as a “sheeple” in regards to blindly going along with the rest of the flock, the quality of the product is likely to be so high that I couldn’t resist if I wanted, lest I be branded a curmudgeon, hipster, or troll or some unholy combination of the three.

But there is a difference between product of a remarkably high caliber and just mere product, rendered to the blandness of pabulum, still to be considered sustainable entertainment but absolutely lacking in real character or emotional depth. Even more interesting is when product of the second variety spews forth from the same factory creating the higher form. And thus, from that off-white void, crawls out Star Wars: The Clone Wars, animated to the far brink of what was accepted as popular animation in the year in which it was released (but no further), brightly colored, swift moving, and sporting the mind-numbing, political denseness that plagued the three most recent Lucas productions. However, it does have several presumably exciting battle sequences, mostly involving the younger Obi-Wan and Anakin, along with a young Padawan named Ahsoka (sadly, Lucas did not name an older brother for her as Supasoka, but I feel he would have), for those that have not already seen similar scenes in many, many other films. Therein lies the key to the film’s existence, both as product and as a part of Star Wars culture. It is also the same key that explains my reticence to embrace the later productions from my once beloved font of space opera entertainment.

I am no longer twelve years old. I might act like it at times. I may still adore most of the things I loved when I was that age. I may even still own most of the things I owned from that time (and I largely do). But I am no longer twelve. I am a 51-year-old man watching a film designed to attract actual twelve-year-olds to a possible entry point into the Star Wars universe, or to keep the kids already inclined to be inside that universe further entertained and to get them to buy the comics, toys, etc. that go along with it. Just like when I was that age.

So, I am no longer the target audience for Star Wars: The Clone Wars. In fact, I am about thirty years past it. But it does not mean that I can’t watch the film, have an understanding of it, nor speak my piece on it. But I can't embrace it like I did those earlier films. It’s just really no longer mine. I knew this when it was released, and so I put off seeing it. And I only watched it last week because it was film highest up on the Flickchart list of Christopher Lee films I had yet to see, and if there was going to be a Chris Lee flick I hadn’t watched, it was not going to be a Star Wars one. And so watch it I did. Mr. Lee voices his Count Dooku character from the later films, and he does his usual excellent job. He is barely in the film, and the rest is taken up by the politics, battle scenes, and Jedi nonsense I mentioned earlier. What the ads should have read is "Come for the Dooku. Stay for the product."

The 46x60 or So Project, Pt. 1: Building a Tower of Film...

I wanted focus, but the question was, "Focus on what?" I began to try and work out exactly where to begin reeducating myself in the film history of my lifetime. Do I start with a certain director and watch all of his available films straight through? It sounded good, but then I was likely to lapse into a state of cinematic paralyzation if I restricted myself to just one style without interruption, and how would I determine the best place to force an interruption if needed? How would I fit those moments into the plan? The same went for choosing one genre outside of my normal path and focusing on the landmark films within that genre. Except who was to establish what I should see within that genre? I considered focusing on stars, cinematographers with whom I have grown enamored and wished to see more of their work, even something as goofy as choosing a random key grip and then watching any film in which they were involved.

But, then it struck me... Considering my concerns regarding The Last Detail and its until-thus-far unseen ilk, it dawned on me that most of the films of which I claimed knowledge (when in fact I didn't beyond what I had read fleetingly) were released within the span of years in which I have been alive, from 1964 to the present. (Yes, I have established my age, but then that has never been a problem with me, as I always feel as if I am 22. Only an increasingly creakier 22...) What if I were to focus on watching the major films, foreign and domestic, that have been released within my lifetime? 

The reasons are three-fold. One, most of the films on which people would confront me would be of more recent vintage, so this would be a great way to capture that knowledge and be ahead of the game, or point me towards films to include in my "to-see" list when I ran into someone who mentioned something I hadn't watched. Two, it would allow me to flit about through most of the major directors and styles throughout my lifetime, without allowing myself to fall into a state of that dreaded boredom, for too long at least. Thirdly, and I was hoping most interestingly, it would allow to actually gain a large dose of cultural and political knowledge by watching films through the '60s, '70s and '80s, and perhaps increase my understanding of the shifting tides of both the American and world consciousness through these decades. (There was also a fourth, smaller reason, that didn't strike me until much later. This was seeing the evolution of the movies themselves through five decades of development, turmoil, and changing technology.)

So, I knew why, but now: what? How to determine which films to watch. The first step was easy: the Oscars. I do not believe that there is ever actually a "Best Picture" in any given year. Styles are so diverse, as are intents, and who is to ever say that a supposedly moving drama about love and loss during wartime is any more meaningful than a mere comedy that seeks to bring nothing but laughter and smiles to people's faces? That's right: simple escape is just as important. I often deride it, or at least those who only go that route, but the use of the movies as mere escape is actually quite important. It is a release for emotions and pent-up frustrations that can prove very necessary to society. Thus, I needed to build a list that gave me a fairly accurate picture of each movie year. The Academy Awards are critiqued by the masses as being not populist enough, and on the other hand, by much of the film community, as being too populist. The Oscars really cannot win in the long run. They just have to endure, and prove themselves enough of a mark of excellence to thrive.

I may not agree most of the time with the Oscar choices, but I do know that it would prove enough of a mix of the high and low to begin building my list using all of the nominees and winners for all categories from films released in 1964 forward. I created an Excel database and begin to construct my Tower of Film. At first, each year ended up working out to about 25-35 films or so, which is what I began calling the project, added a 44 at the front, representing the number of full years of my lifetime to that point. (I changed it to 46 for now, for while I have just turned the corner on 45, I am actually in my 46th year of existence. The title will remain so for a good while though. I am reluctant to change it past this point of establishment, if only out of exhaustion.)

Completing the Oscar list left me delighted with the structure of the thing -- each year neatly blocked off, films alphabetized within each year, and columns for each category, the winners in yellow -- but desperately seeking major films which I had known to have come out in a particular year, but were not to be found within their block. What to do? How to add films without making this list more personally oriented, and not neutrally enriching?

The trick was to turn it personally towards someone else: Danny Peary. Mr. Peary had written a volume in the early '90s (on which I have written before) called Alternate Oscars, which is basically his version of how each Best Picture, Actor and Actress award should have been handled from the beginning of the awards in 1927 through the year of the book's devising, 1992. Peary makes numerous interesting and brave choices, such as the great Karloff getting a Best Actor achievement for his astounding role in Val Lewton's production of The Body Snatcher in 1945. (It is a favorite of mine as well, and I agree, Karloff is exceptional in the film.) Like the Oscars, no one will ever agree with all of Peary's choices (even I don't), and many of them are based on whether he had already rewarded a certain party with an award either farther up and down the line, so it plays heavily on second and even third sight. Alternate Oscars is armchair critiquing at its top-notch best.

And so I went through his book beginning in 1964 and adding in any films not touched or dismissed by the Academy the first time around. This began to flesh out the list a tad more, but it really only added, at most, three or four films per year, if any at all. Scanning my own collection, I began to realize that what the Oscar (and Peary's list) was missing was a foreign influence. Apart from the Best Foreign Film category and the odd stray nomination elsewhere, foreign films were barely represented, with many prominent directors of my lifetime missing wholesale from the list. Since it was a few Criterion Collection discs that caused me to muse on this aspect, I decided to grab the entire Criterion list of releases, queue it up by year, and then add all of those releases from 1964 on up. This made the list bulge out a bit more, sometimes as many as seven, eight or ten films per year, though there was naturally a major drop-off from the mid-'80s to now, seeing as the company really concentrates on older films, with only a few more modern releases in the mix. I was also aware of the European version of Criterion, Masters of Cinema, and though some films were matched on both lists, it did a handful more films of great interest to me, some not released on Region 1 discs at all. (I would eventually purchase a couple of Masters of Cinema discs at Scarecrow Video in Seattle in late July. Region 2, yes, but they will play on my laptop.)

So, I now had a good fifty or so movies per year on my list, and it was looking like it might top out at around 2000 films. But it wasn't enough for me...

(To be continued in The 46x60 or So Project, Pt. 2: It's a Tower Built to the Heavens. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?)

Shock Show Update: Monster Movies on KDOC-TV (Channel 6, Irvine, CA)

Until now, I had only thought of KDOC-TV, a local Anaheim-Irvine station that proclaims itself to be the home of "Endless Classics" and sports a Woody as its logo (don't get excited, pervs -- I meant the style of vehicle, sitting in front of a sunset, replete with surfboard on its roof), as merely a place where I could watch repeats of old Johnny Carson skits right at bedtime. Then, Carson was removed from the schedule, and suddenly, I didn't think of KDOC-TV at all. Sure, they play several series of which I am enamored (The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Cheers, Wild Wild West, The Honeymooners, Hawaii Five-O), but they also play a lot of crappy shows, too, and in this age of the DVD, I would rather just get the series I like on disc or on Netflix, and watch them completely uncut... and also not have to put up with a load of commercials to boot. Classics KDOC-TV may play, but I'd rather watch them my way.

However, this doesn't mean that I pass up the occasional episode of the Zone before I hit the sack. The other night I tuned in, and I received a most pleasant surprise. A commercial came on alerting me to the fact that KDOC was going to be playing "Monster Movies, Every Saturday night!" I figured immediately that I would be hit with the usual lump of public domain titles or more ancient prints of old dubbed Godzilla flicks (something I wouldn't pass up regardless), but then came the second surprise. Lon Chaney, Jr. leaped into the TV frame, resplendently ferocious in his old Wolf Man guise! The hope sprang up in my heart that perhaps these guys had gone the extra mile and secured themselves a Universal package. Even though I own all of the classic Universal flicks (at least, the ones out on DVD currently), I still thrilled at the thought of a regular run of these films on television again.

Tuning in Saturday night, here is what met me: an introduction filled with most of the classic Universal Monster crew, all in glorious black and white! Simple, direct, and to the point: "Welcome to KDOC-TV's Monster Movies!" The gate to a castle opens up and there they are: The Creature, The Invisible Man, Frankenstein's Monster, Ardath Bey, The Wolf Man, The Mummy... all rushing at the viewing so fast one can't help but feel compelled to watch the show. Plus, in the mix, four wonderful images of Boris Karloff -- but strangely, no Lugosi, no Dracula. The intro continues: "This week, the all-time great monster movie, The Wolf Man, starring the great Lon Chaney, Jr.!" Here's the deal: whether this is a designed package from Universal itself, or if KDOC did more than just slap their logo and announcer over the designed package, the effect of both the ads and the intro is immensely appealing, and kudos should go out to whomever is responsible.

Even though I own the DVD for Wolfie's epic, I watched regardless of this fact. The only things I dreaded were the interruption of commercials, and the disappointment I would feel if my eyesight were saddled with a sorry-looking print. But the commercial breaks were swift, and spaced around 12 minutes apart, leaving one time to really sink their fangs into the flick before being jolted away. Best of all, despite a two-hour time slot on the guide, the film ended at 10:31 p.m., meaning that even with ads, the seventy minute film only took just over ninety minutes. (They filled the time with an unannounced Zone.)

Late in the show, they ran a promo for next week's film, The Mummy, and it was especially pleasing to hear them pay the proper obeisance to Karloff, referring to him as "The One and Only Boris Karloff." This is a very important point, because I am not thinking of myself when I feel joy over the airing of this series of films; I am thinking of the next generation of movie nuts and horror fiends. My own personal introduction to the Universal Monsters and many, many others came via an after-school matinee show on KTVA-TV Channel 11 in Anchorage, Alaska, though that particular time-slot filler didn't have any attempt at surrounding the watcher with monster knowledge or imagery; they simply showed the films and didn't comment on them otherwise. But I happily blundered into watching them, in much the same way that I hope younger viewers of today might discover these films for themselves. And part of this process is falling in love with Karloff and Chaney and Lugosi and Rains, and it helps that this show goes the extra step in putting their names quite clearly before their audience.

Looking at the channel's website, I checked out the page where they list the upcoming films through September 1st, and I do indeed have all of the films listed. The last Saturday of August, though, brings us William Castle's I Saw What You Did (which I have never seen) and then September 1st has The Deadly Mantis, an OK film with a pretty sweet monster that is nonetheless nowhere to be found on DVD yet (and that I first saw on that long gone KTVA Channel 11 matinee show in the '70s). 

So, I will definitely be taking the opportunity to sit down to watch these two films, and will certainly have the show on in the background on the other Saturdays, should I fail to have anything else to do outside the home on those nights. Mainly, it will be for the atmosphere (if I really want to watch The Mummy's Curse, I will simply watch it flat out on disc), and to give myself the warm feeling that, somewhere out there, new fans are hopefully being created by some of the oldest denizens of the scare game. They've got to do it; today's fiends simply aren't up to the task.