Tag Archives: cheesy horror movies

Some Intrepid Girl Reporter

I think back pain must also effect the brain (cue brainless jokes) (you know who you are), because I had completely forgotten about another horror classic I watched on Saturday, The Corpse Vanishes (1942) starring Bela Lugosi.

Of course, starring Bela Lugosi is not a guarantee a movie will be any good or even that it will be a horror movie (remember when Boris Karloff played that Chinese detective?). Still, with the word “corpse” in the title, I figured we’d at least get to see those famous scary eyes.

The movie starts out quickly enough with a bride dropping dead just as she’s about to say “I do” (cue anti-marriage jokes). A photographer rushes in and takes a picture (paparazzi in 1942?). The undertaker takes the body away, and we catch a glimpse of some scary eyes in the back of the hearse. Oh boy! Then the real undertaker shows up. Oh no!

“Another kidnapping of a dead bride!” exclaims a girl from a newspaper who has just been denied an interview with the bride’s father. “What a story!”

At this point I sat up as straight as my bad back would allow and cheered. An intrepid girl reporter! Yay!

As per usual, Intrepid Girl Reporter gets no respect from her paper. The editor sends her to the next society wedding and he ONLY wants her to find out who’s there and what the bride is wearing.

“But what if I get a clue?” she asks. He does not deem this likely.

The mother of the bride in this wedding has demanded police protection. As the bride prepares, a mysterious orchid arrives, which she naturally pins right on. It MUST come from the groom, right?

Hello! Two minutes earlier the groom was at the door and was denied admittance. Would he not at that point have said, “Oh, well, give her this orchid from me.” That occurs to no one, and apparently the police protection does not extend to questioning deliverers of mysterious orchids.

Predictably, this bride also drops dead. They make sure the coffin gets on the right hearse, which is surrounded by motorcycle cops, but Bela cleverly steals it anyways. Intrepid Girl Reporter ends up with the orchid, which she — and nobody else — immediately recognizes as a clue.

Meanwhile, we follow Bela to his lonely mansion, castle, whatever it is (I missed the exterior shot), with the mysterious laboratory, and we find out why he wants the corpses of beautiful young women. He uses them (by means which are not clear but that hardly matters in a movie like this) to keep his wife young and beautiful. Does she have a wasting disease that makes her look old before her time? NO! She’s just old and doesn’t want to look that way! Come on, lady, none of us do! Slap on some Oil of Olay, schedule a Mary Kay makeover and drive on!

Perhaps I should be a little more understanding. These were the days before botox, after all. And, without this woman’s desire to look young, there wouldn’t be any movie. But she is so annoying! She’s crying with these big, loud sobs that go on and on, begging her husband to hurry, she needs [whatever he does] NOW! I was wishing he would give her a mysterious orchid so she’d just shut up already.

Intrepid Girl Reporter tracks down Bela through the orchid, which is surprisingly easy. What dumb cops they have in these movies. Law enforcement ought to sue Hollywood for defamation. Come to think of it, so should intrepid girl reporters, because this one is not a good representative. She spends a lot of time screaming and fainting (I think Fay Wray screamed once in The Mystery of the Wax Museum, but you really couldn’t blame her and she was intrepid the whole rest of the time).

It’s not a bad movie, in spite of Boo-Hoo Wife, Dumb Cops and Not So Intrepid Girl Reporter. There are some scary parts and a few creepy minor characters I haven’t mentioned (thought I’d save you something). One might wonder if it was really all that memorable, seeing as I forgot I had watched it till Monday morning when I was pondering my blog topic (it was kind of like, “Wait a minute, didn’t I see three movies on Saturday?”). But on looking back, I will give it this accolade: it was fun at the time.

Shopping with Corman

As I mentioned yesterday, due to a bad back all I was good for was watching cheesy movies — uh, I mean horror classics. I continued my viewing with Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors (1960).

The movie later became an off-Broadway musical, which was also made into a movie with Rick Moranis and Steve Martin. I never saw the play, and I did not like the movie (although in general I like both Moranis and Martin). However, I saw a trailer for the original movie on the Extra Features of Horror Hotel, and I was intrigued. I found it in Steven’s Collection of 50 Horror Classics.

In case you’ve never heard of the movie or play, it is about a man-eating plant. The plant is raised by a nebbishy loser who is on the verge of getting fired from a Skid Row florist at which he works. He doesn’t exactly know what he’s raising and discovers quite by accident that the plant craves blood and eats people. Complications ensue.

I have to say I liked it. Corman throws in a lot of comedy, some of which is heavy handed. For example, at every opportunity, the nebbish sticks his foot in a bucket and trips. It takes some finesse to pull off a bit like that and not have your audience say, “Where do all these empty mop buckets keep coming from?” Roger Corman films are not known for use of finesse. However, that is part of their charm, and I did get enjoy a chuckle or two.

I especially liked the florist’s one regular customer, a lady with an apparently infinite supply of relatives who died and needed flowers sent to the funeral. I also like the florist, the struggling businessman who is alternately ready to fire the nebbish or adopt him as a son and is reasonably torn between doing the right thing and making money.

The big name in the cast is Jack Nicholson. I had known he was in the movie, but I was under the impression he played the sadistic dentist later portrayed by Steve Martin. Not so: Nicholson is hilarious and a little scary as a masochistic patient. It is not a large part. At Nicholson’s stature now it would be a cameo. At his stage of career then, it is a memorable bit.

Leonard Maltin in his 2007 Movie Guide (Penguin Group, New York, 2006) says the movie is now seen as one of Corman’s best. I can see why. The plot moves right along, there are some good scares, and the dramatic conclusion is fitting. An enjoyable interlude on a Saturday afternoon. I may try it again sometime without the backache.

Saturday Movie Matinee

I am hoping that this blog does not degenerate into All Back Pain All The Time, but can I just say, Ow. There was not a chance that I could run this morning and write a blog post about that. I thought I might manage a walking post, but I tried it and no dice. I did, however, watch an old horror movie and I’d like to write about that.

Spoiler alert! I may even give away the ending this time. We’ll see how it goes. I will say right up front that this is not a bad movie; I do not feel you would be wasting your time by watching it. So if you like this sort of thing, you might want to stop reading, go watch Horror Hotel, then come back and read this (clearly I do not feel that anybody’s time is wasted reading my blog).

Horror Hotel (1960) is the first entry in a DVD collection I got for Steven some years ago called “Horror Movie Classics.” It came in a tin box that makes horror noises when you push a little button on top. I purchased it mainly because it included the silent classic Nosferatu, one of the scariest pictures ever made. But I find I enjoy the cheesier entries as well.

The first thing that struck me about Horror Hotel is that the opening scene, a flashback to a witch burning in 17th century New England, was used in The Curse of the Blair Witch.

Wait a minute, have I written about this before? At this point it would behoove me to check. However, that would entail making my painful way up the stairs to the computer, waiting while it boots up and sitting on a chair which totally exacerbates my suspected sciatica for as long as it takes me to search every entry I’ve written about movies. That ain’t gonna happen. Oh well, they show re-runs on TV all the time. And scripted shows recycle plot lines ad infinitum. Anyways, maybe I never wrote about Horror Hotel in the first place.

Where was I? ah yes, the witch burning scene later recycled by the clever Blair Witch people. It turns out that this is a part of a lecture given by a wild-eyed professor who is, I think, getting just a little too heated about his subject matter. Of course a beautiful blonde student is fascinated by it all. She wants to go to the site of the aforementioned burning and do research, over the disapproval of her science professor brother and varsity sweater wearing boyfriend.

Setting aside the wild-eyed professor, this movie is lousy with foreshadowing. For one thing, here’s the ground level fog which never goes away. Seriously, outside of a haunted house with a good dry ice machine, has anybody ever actually walked through this thick, scary mist on the ground? I never have.

Naturally Blondie ignores the gas station attendant who tells her “decent folk” do not go where she is headed. Naturally she picks up the scary hitchhiker who speaks in sepulchral tones using language from another century, apparently thinking he’s a perfectly nice guy that needs a ride even though it is just a bit odd that he disappears abruptly without saying goodbye or opening the car door. And why wouldn’t she explore that dark, cobwebby basement where there isn’t supposed to be one?

I’ve skipped a bunch of stuff, which I think is a good thing if you ever want to watch the movie. I think I’ll skip a bunch of other stuff, too. For one thing, it is probably going to be painful to sit at the computer and type this in (man, I love writing a blog; you can get away with all kinds of stuff).

The climax is exciting. I may be giving away too much by saying that evil is vanquished, but I just wanted to tell you that I sat there asking, “Why didn’t they just do that 300 years ago and save these kids the trouble?”

Well, over 600 words and my back isn’t hurting too badly. I think I’ll go lounge on the couch some more and watch some more horror classics. That way I’ll have something to write about if I’m not up for more energetic Mohawk Valley adventures soon.

Mid-Week Middle-Aged Memory

Alternative title: “When the Hand Dropped”

Last Sunday while watching It! The Terror from Beyond Space, I suddenly said, “I’ve seen this movie!”

A crew member is missing. The rest of the crew has not yet seen the monster, although the audience has seen its feet (which, come to think of it, look a little bit like the Creature of the Black Lagoon’s). One man is standing next to a ventilation grate, pondering. Suddenly, a lifeless hand drops down, inside the grate, right in front of him. EEEEEEEEEEE!

I remembered that hand dropping down. It is, in fact, the only thing in the entire picture I remember from that viewing. Do you suppose there are other sci-fi monster movies where a hand drops down in a grate? And what occurs to me now as I write this is why is that ventilation grate a great big square at eye level looking for all the world like a window? But that’s neither here nor there. I remember the hand.

It was the ’70s. My parents would go out for dinner and dancing on a Saturday night. These were more elegant times: my mom and her friends would wear long dresses, the men wore suits. I admit to being envious. My older sisters and I, once Victoria was deemed old enough to be the babysitter, got to stay up till Mom and Dad got home.

Oh, the joy and mystery of staying up late! These were the days when cable offered seven channels and some stations went off the air at midnight. It was a challenge to find something to watch. We loved it when one of the all night stations showed a scary movie. Who doesn’t want to see a scary movie? At least, who wants to admit to not wanting to seeing a scary movie? I seem to think I wanted to be scared, then didn’t necessarily like it so much when I was.

So there we were, ready to be scared. When the hand dropped, we jumped.

“I don’t think anything would have scared me more than that hand,” Victoria said.

“What if it was that things head?” I asked. I think the thing’s head would have been more scary.

I took all these fake monsters at face value. If I was meant to be scared, I was scared. I was scared of every monster on Lost In Space, even when I could see where they had recycled a monster from two episodes ago.

Well, maybe not as scared of the recycled ones. Then too, things are always scarier at night, especially when Mom and Dad aren’t home. Lost in Space re-runs were generally shown in the afternoon, so those monsters were automatically less nightmare-inducing.

Sometimes we could catch a scary movie on a Saturday afternoon. Didn’t there used to be a feature called Chiller? A six-fingered hand would rise up out of a swamp and a gravelly voice would say, “Chil-ler!” Those were the days.

I suppose now I could segue into a middle-aged musing about how I am trying to recapture my childhood by watching these old movies. I don’t think that’s it, though; I think I just enjoy writing about them. And, you know, really, what I’d like to recapture is my parents’ young adulthood and wear a long dress to go out dancing on a Saturday night.

Cheese from Beyond Space

After enjoying our Whistler movie on Sunday, Steven and I arrowed down on the DVR list to It! The Terror from Beyond. It was not until we actually started watching that we discovered the full title is It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958). It is a misleading title. The terror in question is not from beyond space; it is from Mars, which is right in space (that’s not really a spoiler; we find that out early on).

This time we got to hear some commentary from Ben Mankiewicz, and I knew my instinct for cheese had not misled me.

“Campy? Yes. Cheesy special effects? Yes,” Mankiewicz says. What could be better? He goes on to praise the plot, which has been credited with inspiring Ridley Scott’s Alien. I remember being pretty scared at Alien, and a little grossed out. I also remember that I ultimately did not like that movie, because I don’t like movies where everybody dies — or everybody but one (sorry, Sigourney Weaver). I hoped everybody wouldn’t die this time out.

The movie opens with the sole survivor of a mission to Mars which came to grief. A second mission is going to pick up the survivor and bring him back to earth to face court martial charges of murdering the other eight (or is it nine?). We see a press conference where a guy announces this and all the reporters rush out of the room. I don’t know why they didn’t stay and ask any questions. For example, why would you thing such a thing?

Cut to the ship. Having picked up the prisoner, they are about to take off.

“Hey! Why is that hatch open?” The guy sees on a monitor that it is open; we don’t actually see it.

“Oh, sorry, I was dumping out some crates.”

Gee, I hope nothing got in, don’t you?

At this point I said to Steven, “Oh, I see what the plot’s going to be. The monster’s going to start killing people off and they’re going to think that guy did it.” The plot is actually nothing of the kind. Maybe it was a silly thing to think. After all, what could the guy gain by killing his rescuers/jailers? They’re on a space ship, for heavens’ sake! It’s not like a bus or car he can hijack and drive somewhere else.

Still, I think that would have made a pretty good plot, especially if at first even the audience isn’t sure there’s a monster. In fact, we see the monster right away and there is no doubt in the minds of the crew that someTHING is doing the killing. First we see the monster’s feet. Then his three-fingered, claw-like hand. Then his ugly head.

This is not as suspenseful as it sounds. I mean, we’re seeing the monster; he is not merely hinted at. Then again, the lessons of Jaws were over ten years away. I suppose, too, that guys in suits are never as scary as CGI or whatever it was they used in Alien. Still, they tried.

I bet the guy that was going to the court martial feels just a little bit glad when people start getting killed by the monster. Well, maybe not glad, exactly, but inclined to say, “I told you so!” Sometimes it takes drastic measures to fight murder charges.

There is a bit of a love triangle among one of the women, court martial guy and one of the wounded crew members. She does a lot of hand holding, and, as usual in these situations, I don’t know what she sees in either one of them.

I thought it was very progressive of them to have women on the ship. Of course, they were the medical personnel not real astronauts, but still. They were on the ship, and they did stuff other than scream and be rescued. In fact, I don’t think they did scream, be rescued or do any of the stupid movie female things I like to complain about. You go, girls!

I enjoyed the movie. Ben Mankiewicz was right: the plot is good. The one thing that cracked me up was that every so often they cut to a shot of the space ship moving through space. Like they need to remind us.

It is a long, tall ship, looking a lot like whatever number Apollo was going to the moon when I was in first grade (roughly 100 years ago). I remember at that time being amazed that most of that big ship was fuel needed for take off. In this case, it’s all ship. The interior has a kind of a town house design. Each floor is accessed from the one below via a steep stairway and a center hatch which closes very slowly. There were a couple of times I would have been jumping on that hatch trying to make it close quicker.

I probably would have broken it and then the monster would have gotten us all. Maybe leaving one survivor. Just like in those movies I don’t like.

Mike Brady But Not Vincent Price

“Don’t ask any questions. Just do exactly what I tell you to do.”

“What do you want me to do?

“I said no questions!”

Those were lines from a cheesy horror flick Steven and I watched on Sunday. OK, the last line wasn’t in the movie; I said it. I thought it was witty, or do I flatter myself?

I asked Steven to pick out a monster movie. When he read the description for Blood Lust (1959) on the DVD box for this one, I had my doubts. A group of teenagers find themselves on an island owned by a bad man. He used to import exotic animals to hunt, but he got bored with that and started to hunt people. In other words, no monsters per se.

Hunting people has got to be one of the hoariest fictional cliches going. I first encountered it in a short story I was forced to read in seventh grade called “The Deadliest Game.” I think it was here that my lifelong aversion to short stories began.

In seventh grade I took most things at face value. Now I ask questions like, how is a man with no gun more dangerous than, say, a lion? Men have no natural defenses. They have no instincts and natural wiles for hiding in the forest. They don’t even blend in particularly well. It seems to me a man would be a pathetically easy target for somebody who used to hunt big game.

And yet the hunted almost always win in these stories (now I’ve given away the ending, and I left off the Spoiler Alert. My bad).

The DVD box (50 Horror Classics) (they use both terms loosely) lists for each title the most well known actor in the cast as the star. In this case, it is Robert Reed.

“You know, Mike Brady,” Steven had to tell me (I don’t have to explain Mike Brady to my younger readers, do I?).

As the opening credits roll we find out Reed is not the star but a featured player. I think he actually did have the biggest part, as the main teenager. I must say it was kind of odd to see Mr. Brady as a teenager. Of course movie teenagers are usually in their 20s at least (hello, 30-something Steve McQueen in The Blob). That doesn’t bother me. It was the wise father voice in somebody who wasn’t supposed to be old enough to drink that I found disconcerting. I got over it, though, and settled in to enjoy the movie.

It starts out with four teenagers on a pleasure boat in the ocean. One couple is fishing and the other is skeet shooting. They can’t figure out what scared the fish. Oh yeah, they’re deadly game.

Apparently they are on vacation and have hired this drunkard to drive them around in his boat. they spot an island they’ve never seen before. When the boat guy passes out, they decide to row ashore and explore till he sobers up and can drive them home.

Excuse me, what? I guess this guy has been piloting them around all week and they are not perturbed by his dipsomania (how’s that for a $4 word?). As they row away in the row boat (Mike Brady can pilot the boat close enough to the island to go ashore in a row boat, but he can’t get them back to the mainland) (seriously, this is what he tells the others), the pilot wakes up and yells after them to not go to the island, you fools. Then he passes out again.

I’m afraid I started to lose track of the movie at this point, but they soon meet Bad Island Guy and his many henchmen. I think the folks that made the movie really really wanted Vincent Price for the part and the actor they got tries his best to oblige. Sometimes this kind of thing works (notably in Mrs. Santa Claus, where the guy playing the villain channels Tim Curry). This time not so much.

Eventually our teenage adventurers find out what going on and the hunt begins. At first it seems that Bad Island Guy gives his prey a sporting chance: limited crossbow arrows for himself, a gun and chance to find ammo for the hunted. I don’t think I’m giving too much away by saying he turns out to be a dirty double-crosser.

The girls get to be a little brave and clever, although the day ends up being saved by… well, you didn’t think I was going to give that away, did you? There are some decidedly creepy moments along the way as well as a few twists and turns. Perhaps I would have seen them coming if I would have been paying more attention. Which is a pretty good argument for watching these silly flicks as casually as I do.

Where’s Charleton Heston When You Need Him?

Our second horror feature Saturday night was The Mad Monster (1942), again starring George Zucco (um, for anyone just tuning in, this is a continuation of yesterday’s post).

This time out, Zucco plays a scientist who is all evil. He has a nice wolf in a little tiny cage. If that’s not evil! I hated that part of the movie. The wolf looked just like a dog. The evil doctor also has a big guy strapped to a bed, but I always feel less sorry for people than for animals.

Before anything too dramatic happened, Evil Doctor starts arguing with some guys that just magically appear around the table. That part confused Steven, who had left the room briefly to get ice cream. Apparently the guys were other scientists who had kicked Evil Doctor out of the club for being mad. Regular readers will guess that I readily understood this part of it, seeing as I spent part of Lame Post Friday explaining about how I have imaginary conversations in my head with various critics. This was a graphic depiction of that phenomenon.

Having mentally disposed of his enemies and promising to dispose of them more literally later on, Mad Scientist (isn’t that a better name than Evil Doctor?) proceeds to turn the big guy into a werewolf. I thought he looked more like something out of Planet of the Apes. Where’s Charleton Heston when you need him?

As the movie progresses we learn that the big guy is Mad Scientist’s gardener and apparently was not clear on all the job duties when he accepted the post. He’s half-witted (these movies abound in half-wits) and, if I’m not mistaken, has a crush on Mad Scientist’s daughter. The daughter believes her father is a brilliant scientist who has been maligned. She sent her boyfriend, who just happens to be a nosy reporter, away, apparently at Dad’s request. She is loyal buy lonely.

I confess I was not following things very well once the murders started. Second feature slump? Or a dull movie, despite the “marvelously theatrical” George Zucco “effortlessly stealing the show” (see previous post for quote sources). To be honest with you (as I usually am) I don’t quite remember how it ended. I seem to think that Mad Scientist got his comeuppance and his beautiful daughter ended up in her young man’s arms. Isn’t it funny that I can’t remember how the werewolf died, as I’m pretty sure he did. At least there were no spurious claims of beauty killing the beast, like in King Kong (the 1933 version, of course; I don’t remember how the remake ended).

I may have liked the movie better if I had been able to catch all the dialogue. For that we can blame my old television (purchased sometime in the last century) or, more likely, the cheap DVD (ten bucks for fifty movies, what do I expect?). However, as a second feature, it was enjoyable enough. As a blog post, I hope it entertained.

We Can’t All Be Bela Lugosi

Saturday night I continued my quest for cheesy horror with a double feature starring George Zucco. I had never heard of him, but the DVD box describes him as “marvelously theatrical,” and Leonard Maltin says he “effortlessly steals the show” in our second feature (Leonard Maltin’s 2011 Movie Guide, Signet, 2010). Who am I to argue with Leonard Maltin?

I don’t know that I need to give my usual spoiler alert, because I’m not sure I followed either movie with any accuracy. Our copies were so bad most of the dialog was difficult to understand, especially since we had two fans running. I do love a horror movie on a hot summer night.

In Dead Men Walk (1943), Zucca plays a dual role of a good twin and a bad twin, both doctors (actors just love to play dual roles and/or writers and directors just love identical twins; I may have to write a whole blog post on the phenomenon). The evil twin is dead as the movie begins, but that’s OK, because, as the they tell us in the title, dead men walk. There is a creepy prologue of a disembodied head double exposured over flame telling us… I’m not sure what. That was some of the dialogue I missed.

As the movie progresses, we learn that the good twin killed the evil twin. I personally could have used a little more information on this plot point. Good twin says it was self-defense. Evil twin says it was an ill-fated attempt to save the daughter/niece (that is, daughter of evil, niece of good).

Oh, and let’s talk about that niece for a minute. Of course, there is usually a beautiful young woman in these things, most often in deadly peril at some point. She must be sweet and vulnerable. Any additional personality is strictly optional. Come to think of it, that can be true for movie males, too, only without the sweet and vulnerable parts. The niece is mainly concerned with her young man, also a doctor. She seems completely unaware of her father’s nefarious activities and, I must point out, not particularly grief-stricken at his passing, although that may have been the fault of the lousy print. I mean, I didn’t hear everything she said. What I did hear, they didn’t give her the snappiest dialogue. I sure wish this movie had had an intrepid girl reporter, but that’s beside the point.

Bad Brother’s funeral is disrupted by a crazy old lady (no, not me) saying it is a desecration to have such an evil one in the church. She’s been nuts ever since her granddaughter was brutally murdered. Any guesses who was responsible? Well, you’re going to have to guess, because we never find out anything else about that subplot. I was grateful I heard that much.

Soon Big Brother returns, making all kinds of threats. Not surprisingly, only Good Brother gets to see him. I suppose with more budget they could have made a trippy movie where you find out at the end they are BOTH THE SAME PERSON. No such subtlety for this flick, which was really fine with me, because those trippy ones make my head hurt.

Bad Brother is a kind of a vampire. He intends to turn his daughter into one, too, but apparently this takes a lot of bites. At night she has mysterious dreams. By day she appears to be wasting away from an unknown disease. At one point her young man insists she be given a blood transfusion. She at once is better, which clues in nobody but the audience that vampires are at work. Oh, and crazy old lady, who brings her a crucifix, which helps. I’ll never understand why people in vampire movies don’t set up a perimeter of crucifixes all around the house and sleep well at night.

Zucca does a pretty good job playing two parts. I did remark at one point, thought, that it was the most professorial-looking vampire I had ever seen. That was just a cute remark, though, because he managed to be scary as well. And, after all, we can’t all be Bela Lugosi.

Things get interesting when the excitable townspeople begin to believe that Good Brother is in fact the murderer. It gets scary as events reach their dramatic conclusion. I shan’t tell you what that is, because I don’t warn you against watching this movie. In fact, if you do watch it, perhaps you could clue me in on a few of the plot points I missed due to my bad sound system. Did the niece know of her father’s evil nature? What all did that disembodied head say during the introduction? What was Bad Brother’s henchman’s name?

As usual, my review is becoming longer than the silly movie. This one runs 65 minutes, giving us plenty of time for our second feature, which I will talk about tomorrow. Stay tuned.