All Flicks Bright and Shiny, All Films Timeworn and Used...

Heading into the last two weekends of the Halloween season proper (I say proper because I tend to extend the holiday up until right before Thanksgiving), I am scrambling to line up appropriate movies in my Netflix cue and am scrounging On Demand for any films I simply have to cram in for a viewing in time for the big day.

My theme this year was to catch up on a lot of films from the past few years that I have either largely avoided or just didn't have the drive to go see when they came out. So many of these films are remakes of films I love too deeply in their original form to give the new versions a chance or they were overly hyped productions of the sort that always make me wary of dropping serious coin to risk seeing them. And some, like the odd Trick 'r Treat, was something about which I had not heard very much, negative or positive, so the result was a very pleasant and often scary surprise.

I've been trying hard not to revisit old favorites this year, but I am sure that as I edge closer to Halloween, that instinct will kick in and I will begin dragging out the usual suspects. I've been trying to ease myself out of that mode by watching a handful of films that I have not seen for eons, such as Something Wicked This Way Comes, Alone in the Dark or the Rankin-Bass giant killer sea turtle and ghostly girl TV flick from the '70s, The Bermuda Depths (which I purchased online from the Warner Archives). Overall, I have only previously seen 6 of the 33 genre films that I have watched since October 1st (Halloween for me allows sci-fi into the mix, and I am also counting films with slight horrific elements into it as well, such as Scorsese's horror-tinged atmospheric Shutter Island and also that ultimate desecration of our revered horror archetypes, New Moon (yes, I did go there. I consider myself a chronicler of horror trends, and if asked, I would have to answer that where Stephenie Meyer is concerned, I am a founding member of Team Death Sentence).

Apart from the surprise of Trick 'r Treat and the thoroughness and excellence of the Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown doc, my favorite discovery thus far this Halloween was finally seeing the British/Italian zombie flick, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie. Seen pictures from it for so many years, but finally got down to seeing it. Catching these films is precisely the reason why I chose to concentrate on unseen films this year: I needed some new blood, whether from films new or old. As long as I have a good time watching them.

Genre films seen since October 1st:

10/01/10    Bermuda Depths, The    1978
10/02/10    Halloween II    2009
10/02/10    Them [Ils]    2006
10/03/10    Trauma    1993
10/03/10    Red Hook    2009
10/04/10    Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown    2008
10/05/10    Death Bed: The Bed That Eats    1977
10/06/10    Let Sleeping Corpses Lie [aka Don't Open the Window] [Non si deve profanare il sonno dei morti]    1974
10/06/10    Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural    1973
10/07/10    Twilight Saga: New Moon, The    2009
10/08/10    Devil's Bride, The [aka The Devil Rides Out]    1968
10/09/10    Slash    2002
10/09/10    Monsterwolf    2010
10/09/10    Day the Earth Stood Still, The    2008
10/12/10    Trick 'r Treat    2007
10/13/10    Invasion, The    2007
10/13/10    Paranormal Activity    2007
10/14/10    Vampire Circus    1972
10/14/10    Underworld: Evolution    2006
10/15/10    30 Days of Night    2007
10/15/10    Crazies, The    2010
10/16/10    Shutter Island    2010
10/16/10    Something Wicked This Way Comes    1982
10/16/10    My Soul to Take 3D    2010
10/17/10    Brain That Wouldn't Die, The (Elvira’s Movie Macabre)    1960
10/17/10    Reptile, The    1966
10/17/10    Staunton Hill    2009
10/17/10    Mummy's Shroud, The    1967
10/18/10    Blood from the Mummy's Tomb    1971
10/19/10    Zombie Strippers    2008
10/19/10    Doomsday    2008
10/19/10    Friday the 13th    2009
10/20/10    Alone in the Dark    1982

Flickchart Comment #27: Trog (1970) vs. The Beast With A Million Eyes (1955)

You see, this is exactly what Flickchart is all about. Just the other day, I posted a comment wherein I chose Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive, an fairly famous awful film, over Trog with Joan Crawford, which I found to be just a tad more awful than the atrocious King film. But every Trog can have its day on Flickchart. All you have to do is see that more terrible film of the two matched up against something which is truly dreadful.

Which is where we are with this match-up. Trog may suck beyond belief, but it at least has a handful of interesting scenes along the road to Crapville. The Beast with a Million Eyes, which betrays nothing of its true nature in the poster you see above, as there is no actual visible beast with all those eyes, might be considered the Chinese Water Torture of '50s sci-fi films. It is so deadening in its pace that you sometimes swear the DVD is on pause for a full hour. It will disappoint you at every turn, and it will make you wonder just how someone can create a script so utterly lacking in even the most basic logic or even make a halfway attempt at what might be recognized as an actual human emotion. (I didn't even mention how much the sound sucks on this film.)

Trog, despite how lousy you are, this battle is yours...

Buzzing Thru the Pylon: Halloween Free-For-All, Pt. 3: Karloff

The Boris Karloff Collection: The Franchise Collection
featuring:
Night Key (1937)
Director: Lloyd Corrigan

Tower of London (1939)
Director: Rowland V. Lee
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

The Climax (1944)
Director: George Waggner

The Strange Door (1951)
Director: Joseph Pevney

The Black Castle (1952)
Director: Nathan Juran

Icons of Horror Collection: Boris Karloff
featuring:
The Black Room (1935)
Director: Roy William Neill
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

The Man They Could Not Hang (1939)
Director: Nick Grinde
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Before I Hang (1940)
Director: Nick Grinde
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

The Boogie Man Will Get You (1942)
Director: Lew Landers
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Sometimes you have to jump on these things before they're gone.

Trying to play catch-up with DVD releases already out of print has left me a little short-winded -- which would prove a surprise for anyone who knows me personally -- and so I decided to take another tack for once. With my interest drawn in other areas, I have been putting off, for quite some time now, the purchase of a couple of sets -- one released by Universal, one by Columbia -- featuring decent handfuls of old Boris Karloff flicks. Not the latter day, mostly-miss efforts in his catalog from his dotage, but films that largely comprised his constantly working but constantly typecast days of the late 30s and early 40s. With the exception of two films from the early 50s, these films all stem from that era.

Naturally, one would assume that I'd have jumped on these sets from the day of their release a couple years back, but as I said, I get distracted. And I only have so much money to spend at one time. That said, with the recent release of a couple more entries in the "Icons of..." series (but all Hammer films this time), I figured it might be only so much longer before what appears to be an excellent slice of Karloff ends up in the hands of evil speculators, and not true fans. As for the Franchise Collection above, I cannot explain why I didn't leap at it since it contains four out of five films (I have seen Tower of London numerous times) that have remained stubbornly out of my reach for double-four years.

And now I have them. To be sure, not even having seen those four films, I can still say with relative assurance that the gem out of these nine flicks is going to be The Black Room, a most entertaining Roy William Neill (director of a majority of the Rathbone/Green Holmes mysteries) venture with Karloff in dazzling form as twins at odds whilst encased in power struggles and murder in a tiny European country. The Icons of Horror Karloff set replaces this film in my VHS collection, as it also does for the other films in the set, which represent three of the so-called "Mad Doctor" series Karloff churned out while under contract with Columbia. The Mad Doctor films might seem like more of the same for good Boris on the surface (and he may have felt that way at the time), but they all good fun, and Nick Grinde, director of the two Hang features, keeps things moving along quite briskly, and may have had something of a rapport with his famous star, judging from how lovingly the films frame Karloff throughout. Somehow, despite their lower origins, they come out oddly engaging to this day.

I wish I could speak with any comfort on the rest of the films, not having seen them, but that is precisely why one dives in to buy sets like this. And, of course, the purpose of getting them in the month of October is to add to the Halloween spirit. So, I don't know what you are going to be watching as the spirits accumulate throughout the month -- hopefully not Saw V -- but I'm going use my spare time to catch up with an old friend. Having four unseen Karloffs ahead of me, I can't think of a better time, no matter the quality.

Buzzing Thru the Pylon: Halloween Free-For-All, Pt. 2

Phase IV (1974)
Director: Saul Bass
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959)
Director: Terence Fisher
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

I remember exactly where I was when I first saw Saul Bass' insect politics thriller, Phase IV. I just don't remember the "who" of the story.

It was a Friday night, and there was someone at our house. Was it an uncle, and not one with quotations around it? Was it just a friend of ours from the neighborhood, or my cousin Brad, and was my father actually even around for this? Was it him? I don't fully recall the name of the person who filled in that particular role in this story, but I am fairly certain it was one of her abhorrent dates following my parents' then soul-wrenching but actually perfectly timely divorce.

I only recall that this person who probably ended up banging my mom bet me a dime for every thirty minutes I could shut completely up for the evening. I was still young enough where a thin dime still meant a good deal to me -- 10 cents would still buy me a pack of baseball cards at that time -- but I was already engaged enough verbally where I could drag any sane adult to the dark side in no time flat. Much like today, it seems. And thus, the deal was born. I sat down, shut up, and decided to watch whatever movie was coming on that evening. In the '70s, ABC had an amazing penchant for showing horror and science-fiction movies in prime time on Friday nights, most of them made-for-TV (and that is no knock on their quality, for there were some excellent ones) and some of them theatrical releases. (Click here for the opening to their show.)

This evening, they were showing what appeared to be a really spooky looking film called Phase IV. Anything with bug attacks at that age, I was there. It's what tricked me into actually seeing The Swarm in a theatre. And so, having dragged a sleeping bag into the living room, I crawled inside and shut my trap, counting out how many cards I could buy if I did not squeak a single word for the next three hours. (That would be, for the curious, sixty cards.) And then, over the next two hours, I found myself losing the ability to speak anyway. Thanks to Phase IV, which had me so scared I couldn't even get out of the sleeping bag to go down the hall to the bathroom on commercials, I was cheating whoever it was out of their money.

At first, I remember being bored, but then, as the implications of what was happening in this oddly located film were growing, and as the tension built up, I found myself unable to turn away. I didn't really understand what was happening, but that didn't matter. It was about the moment, and that moment found me not just easily earning the first two hours of that cash, but in the end found an entire dollar being slapped into my hand. Never has silence been so golden. I maintain that if the entire world would just pay me hush money in this same manner, I would leave everyone alone. I wouldn't yell about organized religion and idiot Republicans (and, occasionally, idiot Democrats) and crazy Hollywood cults and everything else that pisses me off.

If only I could get people to listen to me in the first place, this would be a great way of life for me.

I also remember where I was when I first saw The Man Who Could Cheat Death. OK, not the full movie, but I did see it in sixth grade at our graduation prize summer camp. The people running the camp had a series of 8mm ten-minute versions of various monster films -- the kind that I would ogle in the back pages of Famous Monsters magazine but never have the guts (or the cash -- I apparently wasn't being paid to shut up enough) to order them -- and as a gift for winning Capture the Flag earlier that morning on our second day there, our class was treated to a night at the movies, camp 8mm style. Popcorn, hot dogs and condensed versions of Christopher Lee Dracula and Peter Cushing Frankenstein films.

In this mix was the miniaturized version of The Man Who Could Cheat Death, with Anton Diffring as a sculptor who appears to be 40ish, but is in reality an increasingly mad Dorian Gray type who has lived for 104 years by replacing certain glands in his body with those of gullible, much younger victims. Chiefly, I remember the final sequence, which I will not relate here in the interests of those who have yet to see what is actually a middling though handsome Hammer production. Of course, being a Hammer film, most likely all will not work out for the villain in the end, so if I were to say that the sculptor is not just flaming in spirit, you can work it out for yourself. The scene, though, did make quite an impression on me, as did the appearance of Christopher Lee, with whom I was beginning a definite fascination. Within the next year, I would start watching the full versions of these same Hammer horror films.

But I got my Hammer start by watching the 8mm renditions, all truncated and jumpy on an old projector -- also, completely silent, so we had to provide our own soundtrack -- inside a cabin that split the difference between a cafeteria and a congregation room for this camp usually attended by the biblically minded. That I would totally discard any attempt at connecting with established religion within the next couple of years, and then possibly replaced such worship with a devotion to the very films that I saw that night in the camp is perhaps an irony worth far more delving on my part. But, I will save that for another time. For now, and for once, I will just shut up.

After all, it's your dime. And soon it will be mine...

Buzzing Thru the Pylon: Growling at Best Buy's Exclusivity...

Warner Home Video Sci-Fi Double Features
Disc #1
Moon Zero Two (1969)
Director: Roy Ward Baker
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)
Director/Writer: Val Guest
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Disc #2
Battle Beneath the Earth (1967)
DirectorMontgomery Tully
Cinema 4 Rating: 3

The Ultimate Warrior (1975)
Director/Writer: Robert Clouse
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Disc #3
World Without End (1956)
Director/Writer: Edward Bernds
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Satellite in the Sky (1956)
Director: Paul Dickson
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

Quite regularly, I sift through a seemingly endless list of titles which I am hoping will get released onto DVD so I can replace old versions of these same films. Most of these films were taped off of cable television anytime in the past twenty to five years, though a certain number of them were prerecorded version officially released by their respective studios. No matter how I might have them in my collection, it is still my fervent hope that they shall be released onto disc form, and thus save space in our crammed little hovel (it's amazing the space saved when comparing discs versus tapes) and also, the hope remains that the print in which they are burned onto disc will far outweigh my previous versions in overall quality.

One of the films on this list, which I began compiling a full decade ago, was Hammer Films' special effects-heavy follow-up to One Million Years B.C., When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.

Every couple of months since I moved down here to Cali, I have gone through most of this list, and one of the first films I always look up is When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. Not that it is any great shakes as a film per se, but it is highly sought by fans of stop-motion animation for its exquisite dinosaur footage by Jim Danforth and Roger Dicken. (While I am at it, I should mention that David Allen, amongst others, also worked on the effects as an assistant, though only Danforth and Dicken were actually nominated for an Oscar at the 1972 awards.) It is for this reason alone (OK, the cave girls play a part too) that I embraced the film as a teenager, and made sure to grab a copy on VHS when it came out in the '90s. And this is without knowing that the original story for the film was devised by none other than J.G. Ballard, writer of Crash (the wonderfully twisted and kinky Cronenberg one) and Empire of the Sun.

But I had always heard there was a slightly longer version of the film, one that took the cavegirl stuff even further than when Raquel Welch leaped about in a fur bikini in B.C. Supposedly, the film originally held a handful (more than a handful, as they say, is a waste) of topless shots, both innocent (swimming about in mucky, sea monster-infested waters) and randy (mild cavepeople whoopee, apparently), as well as a scene where lead Playboy bunny/"actress" Victoria Vetri gets stripped down in a cave (appropriately) by her would-be cave beau. Gee, I'm was actually only here for the dinosaurs, but I can you heap some of this, too, on my plate? All the more reason to remain impatient over an official special edition.

And yet, I could never find this one, even while the entire Harryhausen oeuvre and much of the Hammer library had been released already. I felt certain that it was bound to come out sooner or later, because if there is one diehard fanbase out there, it's the one for special effects epics -- dinosaurs, spaceships, aliens, or what have you. But, as I kept checking over the last few years to find news of its arrival on DVD, I found nothing. My searches came up empty, over and over again. And then, the other day, I found out why: I had been primarily looking on Amazon.

Cut to last week, as I decided to take a quick first look at the new neighborhood Best Buy store. There, sitting in plain sight on a shelf in the science-fiction DVD section, was a single copy of a Warner Home Video Sci-Fi Double Feature disc holding, of course, two movies. The first was of no real consequence to me, though I had seen it years earlier: Moon Zero Two, often described (self-described, really) as the "first space western." But who could care when the other film on the disc was When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth? After the usual shake of the head and pinch of the skin to clear things up for me in as cartoonish a way as possible, I grabbed the copy and refused to let go of it until I arrived home.

I didn't get a chance to watch the film until yesterday, but in the meantime, mostly out of consternation over how I discovered the disc, I went online to research it once more, knowing full well I had been on Amazon just a couple of months prior and had seen nothing on WDRTE. It turns out there is now an entry for it on the site, but it is for an outside party trying to make some cash selling "used/new" copies of the disc. And in the description? The words "Best Buy Exclusive."

This is not the first time I have come at odds with this "Best Buy Exclusive" scenario. I also did this for years looking for Ernest B. Schoedsack's sweet 1940 mad science thriller Dr. Cyclops (the absolute inspiration for The Krofft Supershow's Dr. Shrinker, a crappie but fun show from my youth). I had the Universal VHS release, but was hoping for it on DVD, to accompany the rest of my Cooper and Schoedsack DVD library. Then I found out that Best Buy had been selling it for months as an exclusive set with several other prime golden age horror and sci-fi flicks, including two more on my list, The Land Unknown and The Deadly Mantis. A rush to Best Buy found me a copy all right, but the fact that it said "Volume 2" on it meant that there was an entire first volume of five possible films that I didn't have, and I finally procured a copy off of someone on Amazon for about fifteen bucks over retail in new condition. Which is how I landed The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Mole People and Tarantula in my DVD collection, after years of frustration, and also how my ire was first raised over these exclusive deals with Best Buy.

This wouldn't be a problem with me if they would do a general release a few months later, but from what I can gather from some movie boards is that there is a group of people who rush out and buy up every copy of these exclusives just so they can sell them later to needy, hungry fans once the discs go out of print. It's ticket-scalping without the tickets, I guess -- if you really want to see the movie, you are going to have to pay the price. As proof of this, another "exclusive," a set of generally low-grade horror thrillers thrown into a box called the Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive, is already selling for far above what I would be willing to pay for it (example: click here). Even though the undiscerning horror fan in me (which is the same one that embraces even the truly terrible films on the discs discussed above) would love to add those films to my overall collection, I already own four of them on tape, and none of them are truly essential by any means.

None of the six films in the three discs I did discover at Best Buy as exclusives last week were really essential to me either... except for the Hammer cave girls and dinosaurs epic. Truthfully, I could have saved the money on the other two discs, though I really did love Yul Brynner's The Ultimate Warrior as a kid, and also watched Battle Beneath the Earth lo those many years ago on that beloved after school sci-fi matinee show on KTVA. The upside is that I will be replacing five different tapes in my collection with these three discs (Satellite in the Sky is the only one of the six I did not previously own), and the purchase does give me widescreen versions of all of these films, which is a great addition to the collection too.

And now I have the apparently uncut version of WDRTE. Yes, the disc does say it is rated "G" on the case and shows a running time of 96 minutes. Watching it, you get at least some PG nudity antics and 100 minutes of cave girls tumbling about the animated dinosaur attacks. I found a few entries online talking about Warner recalling this disc from the Best Buy stores, but also some entries offering up different versions of the confusion from various locations. Who knows why it was recalled? My disc works, Vetri doffs her clothes, I couldn't care less about film ratings anyway (I am an adult, can watch anything I damn well please, don't believe in censorship at all, and do not pay attention to ratings or the bluenoses who maintain them), and everything is peachy keen once again in my universe...

...until I remember to ask: Where the hell is Roogie's Bump? Or It Happens Every Spring? Damn it...

How did I miss this one? I'll tell you...

As much as I try to not get involved in this whole "Christmas rush" nowadays, I couldn't help it. I had some purchases to make -- and damn it! I was going to get out there and take care of it! So, Jen and I hit the densely packed freeways and hit that big box store that steals my heart and wallet away every time: Best Buy.

When I lived in Alaska, Best Buy was about 15 minutes away on the bus, and my friends often went there as well, so I practically lived in the place. Here in OrCo, there are Best Buys around, but I have to go a little bit further and work harder to get to them. As a result, I rarely get over to Best Buy, so a trip there leaves me a little flabbergasted when I walk through the doors. In its way, due to the rarity of my appearances, every time I go to Best Buy, the moment almost become like a second Christmas for me. The prices are better than most places, and the selection is excellent, if a little confusing at times. And everything shines and glistens with that New Technology Glow, practically shouting "Purchase me! Me! Me!", whether I am interested in picking it up or not.

My intentional purchases for the evening were done in mere seconds, but then I started to look around to satisfy my own curiosity. Scanning the Science-Fiction section, I saw a cover with cheesy "monster-ific" lettering that shouted these words at me: "The Classic SCI-FI ULTIMATE COLLECTION"!!!

What the hell? I hadn't heard about this set. Just a couple months ago, I went onto Amazon to look up the status of one of my favorite sci-fi flicks, The Incredible Shrinking Man, because I had been set to wondering why it had not been released yet on DVD. The Mole People, a far inferior but still schlockily fun flick which also sprang from Universal's 50s run, was another one that I looked up, and the results for both were zip, zero, nada. Nothing at all except some VHS copies that I could purchase from yokels across the country, but absolutely zero in the way of a disc format. And yet, HERE on this collection that I was suddenly gripping with shock and awe in my cold, little hands (Hey, it actually hit 35 degrees here the other night! Go ahead and write in, Alaskan pals, and call me a whiner... heh, heh...), both of those movies were lodged onto a trio of discs with three other films, two of which I quite like: Tarantula (which is pretty fun and which also has Clint Eastwood in a very early uncredited role), The Monolith Monsters and Monster On the Campus, which I must admit I have never actually seen. All of the films are short -- the longest two being only 81 minutes each -- so Universal crammed two each on the first two discs, but then inexplicably left Campus plenty of room on the third disc. Why, when there are still other old sci-fi/horror films in Universal's possession that could be placed on there?

Of course, I don't know if this was entirely a decision on the part of Universal, because there is another partner at play here, which is also the reason why I couldn't find word of this in the locales that I searched on the net. The set was released as a "Best Buy Exclusive", and there is even a fourth disc inside the set called Battlestar Galactica: The Story So Far. So, the set is not just designed to drive the monster-loving public from Amazon and its brethren and over through the doors or webportal of Best Buy, but is also made to launch a little marketing action to the captive audience. Clever... don't know if this type of advertising works, because the audience that is going to purchase this set is fairly select, and I would warrant that many of them already frequent the Sci-Fi Channel and have more than a nodding acquaintance with Galactica. But, what the heck, hey? Do what you've gotta do, marketers -- as for me, I'm going to toss the extra disc out because I don't want to know much about what has happened on the show until I actually get caught up on watching it. But nice try...

Looking back, especially after checking on Amazon again and noticing that there is indeed an entry for this set on the site, though sans cover photo (because you can only buy it secondhand on Amazon), I probably had pulled this title up when I looked before, only I didn't pay it any attention because of the lack of that photo. It will teach me to pay a little closer attention when researching titles in the future. And it is also going to teach me that I need to make my constitutionals to Best Buy a little more frequent than every six months or so.

Now excuse me, I've got some old pals to catch up with...