This is this week’s Saturday night pizza and bad movie offering. Good thing the pizza and cabernet were good.
Plot:
Bald Dr. Nadir (Lou Cutell) informs Princess Marcuzan (Marilyn Hanold) that they continue to hear “a modulated hydrogen frequency signal of twenty-one centimeters.”
When the Princess asks what that means, Dr. Nadir replies he’s not sure, but it’s the same signal they’ve been following since they left their planet. The source is the planet they’re approaching and seems to indicate intelligent life.
Oh, look! They’re firing a missile at them! The Princess orders the crew to destroy the missile.
Oh earth, NASA is confounded by yet another missile going kerflooey. Never fear! Dr. Adam Steel (James Karen) has an answer to that: a robot astronaut named Col. Frank Saunders (Robert Reilly). We know he’s a robot because we’re given a (not terribly) convincing glimpse of a vacuum tube under his scalp.
While traveling in space, the extraterrestrial ship looks like a spinning globe surmounted on a visible axis. Upon seeing a parachute, the aliens realize they’ve destroyed a spaceship and not a missile. They must land and kill the pilot. (…makes sense…?) The extraterrestrials shoot him down, and he lands somewhere in Puerto Rico.
When the alien ship lands, it no longer looks like a spinning globe but like the Jupiter II from Lost in Space.
An extraterrestrial in a spacesuit attacks the robot pilot who’s already having a bad day, injuring him. The attacker, in turn, receives a good thumping and limps back to the spaceship.
The Princess is not happy to hear the pilot lives. She feeds the unfortunate crewman to the Mull, the space monster of the title. The Mull looks like an ape with long claws and a Skeletor’s head.
The damaged pilot/robot wanders around Puerto Rico, scaring and killing people. No little girl gets thrown in the lake, though. In the meantime, NASA officials fly to Puerto Rico, and the aliens get about the mission: kidnapping women to help repopulate their planet.
Thoughts:
According to IMDB, this was originally supposed to have been a comedy. There is enough goofiness in it a comedy would have been feasible. On the other hand, too little of it made sense to be anything but what it was. The aliens (they’re called Martians, but their planet is never named) want to kidnap women, “good breeding stock,” because their planet was wiped out in a nuclear war. The only woman left is the Princess.
Why sacrifice a crew member to the Mull for such a trivial shortcoming? What is the purpose of keeping the Mull in the first place?
Not to mention the convenience of everyone speaking English—except for one guy in a kiosk in Puerto Rico. Adam Steele then had to make his wishes known by asking for “el teléfono.”
At one point, Adam Steele and his assistant Karen Grant (Nancy Marshall) hop on a scooter to go looking for the injured robot. Tender-hearted Karen is concerned. Steele doesn’t want to lose ten years of his life’s work. In the background, a romantic love song—with maracas and a Spanish guitar—plays: “To Have and to Hold” by someone called the Distant Cousins.
The lyrics have lovers “walk in the rain,” “two by two,” “To have and to hold you, this, I’ve often told you I love you, yes, I do…”
Not even remotely appropriate. Nor is it the last instance of weird musical choices for this flick.
Another instance of weirdness is Princess Marcuzan “inspecting” the first girl they’ve kidnapped for their breeding program. She happens to be wearing a polka dot swimsuit. The aliens have killed her male companion. (Father? Boyfriend? It’s never specified) The Princess has the girl raise and lower her arms several times, then turn around. I was waiting for, “You put your right foot in, You put your right foot out, You put your right foot in…”
That’s not even mentioning the group of women kidnapped from a party and laid out on a conveyor belt of cots for evaluation.
It’s just not credible. Oh, hell. It’s barely coherent. But there is delightful goofiness about it that makes it watchable—the glee Dr. Nadir shows in blowing up Earth vessels, for example.
If for some reason anyone wishes to watch this, it can be seen here:
Title: Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965)
Director:
Robert Gaffney
Writers:
R.H.W. Dillard (story)
George Garrett (story)
John Rodenbeck (story)
Cast:
Marilyn Hanold as Princess Marcuzan
James Karen as Dr. Adam Steele
Lou Cutell as Dr. Nadir
Nancy Marshall as Karen Grant
David Kerman as Gen. Bowers
Robert Reilly as Col. Frank Saunders
Released: 1965
Length: 1 hour, 19 minutes
Review of “House of Frankenstein” (1944)
This is this week’s Saturday pizza and bad movie offering. We watched it with Svengoolie and just about every frigging Universal monster.
Plot:
From the slot in his jail cell in Neustadt Prison, Doctor Gustav Niemann (Boris Karloff) grabs the throat of a jailer (an uncredited Charles Wagenheim) and demands chalk. From inside, the viewer understands why he’s run out. The walls of his cell are filled with (*cough*) scientific diagrams and formulae. He describes to his hunchback assistant, Daniel (J. Carrol Naish), how he placed a human brain into the body of a dog, an act that landed him in jail.
Imagine that.
Daniel asks if this is how he could get a new body, a normal body. Dr. Niemann assures him he could give Daniel a perfect body if he had Frankenstein’s records.
While they’re talking, lightning strikes the castle in which they’re imprisoned, bringing down the walls of their cell. They are free.
Imagine that.
Along the way, they meet up with a traveling horrors roadshow run by Professor Bruno Lampini (George Zucco). One of Lampini’s exhibits is the bones of Dracula, complete with the wooden stake through the spot where the heart once was. If someone were to remove that stake…
When poor Lampini refuses to take Dr. Niemann to Reigelberg, the first step toward those for whom Niemann has “unloving memories,” Daniel dispatches Lampini and his driver. Niemann assumes Lampini’s identity. Wouldn’t a revived Dracula (John Carradine) be just the thing to help one get vengeance on the respectable citizens for being pitched in jail? Especially since the vampire knows you could un-revive him at any time? Yeah, it could work.
But nothing lasts forever. So on to Visaria to hunt for Dr. Frankenstein’s records. Before long (I so wanted to see the title How I Did It by V. Frankenstein). Daniel again asks for a new body. Niemann says if they find Frankenstein records, “I’ll make you an Adonis.” Daniel is sweet on Ilonka (Elena Verdugo), a gypsy girl he rescued.
Daniel falls through a floor, and they find an ice cave. Frozen in the cave are the Frankenstein monster (Glenn Strange) and the wolfman, Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.). What are the chances?
Thoughts:
This bizarre flick tries to shoehorn in as many of the classic monsters as possible, using the mad scientist Dr. Niemann as a framework. In seeking his revenge, he briefly controls Dracula (John Carradine), who goes by the name Baron Latos (a bump in rank! Social climber!) and sends him on out to assassinate those he holds responsible for his imprisonment.
On to find Dr. Frankenstein’s papers to help Niemann with his projects—er, Daniel’s surgery, right? To be honest, he has a full slate. There are still two solid citizens he wants to work his vengeance on. He has to revive the monster and solve the werewolf problem. All this involves a series of brain transplants. Even with the lab equipment back home in Visaria working, taking care of all that is a mighty tall order.
In the meantime, the viewer gets treated to Lon Chaney getting hairy, John Carradine becoming a bat, and a bat becoming John Carradine, townsfolk with torches running through the woods, a lab full of electrical doohickeys going buzzzzz vooop-vooop, a stumbling monster with a vacant look on his face wreaking havoc, and a proper castle burning.
Is this meant to be taken seriously? Or is this just a good romp? Does it matter? It’s fun, silly, and a bit much to swallow.
This can be watched for free here. (Thanks for the heads up, Tommi!)
Title: House of Frankenstein (1944)
Director
Erle C. Kenton
Writers
Edward T. Lowe Jr. (screenplay)
Curt Siodmak(story)
Cast:
Boris Karloff…Doctor Gustav Niemann
Lon Chaney Jr…Larry Talbot (as Lon Chaney)
J. Carrol Naish…Daniel
John Carradine…Dracula aka Baron Latos
Anne Gwynne…Rita Hussman
Released: 1944
Length: 1 hour, 11 minutes
Viewed: October 24, 2021
Letter to Santa
*Unlike my usual reviews, this is a joke for a friend.*
Dear Santa:
I hope you and Mrs. Claus and the elves and reindeer are all doing well. I hear the North Pole may be a bit warmer than usual. Does this interfere with your operations?
I have been a good girl. I don’t smoke and drink only on Saturday night with pizza and a bad movie or maybe as a secret ingredient with some hot chocolate. As for swearing—well, at least I’ve paid all my bills on time this year. And my cat gets fed on time regardless of what he tells you.
I want to thank you for your presents last Christmas of another year of good health with my dearly beloved. The roof over our heads and a full, working fridge were also good things. I’d like to keep those going for next year. Now about the slender me and the fat bank account—it seems you confused those two.
The first item on my list this year is for my friend of many years, A. D-G. He asks for a winning lottery ticket. It will make him happy, and I’m sure he’ll put the winnings to good use.
The next item is to remind our elected officials that they work for us, the people, the demos in democracy. The demos come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. English may not be our first language. We may practice a religion other than evangelical Christianity—or no religion at all.
Those who don’t like working for the demos can get other jobs, preferably ones that involve a shovel, a mop and bucket, or phrases such as “Would you like fries with that, sir/ma’am?” Not that these jobs are anything to be ashamed of. It’s just that the ex-officials haven’t learned the dignity of those jobs and could really use the gift of that understanding.
I think that about wraps my letter up for this year. Will I promise to work on the swearing? Of course, if you want me to, but with this much practice, I think I’ve nearly perfected it.
Please give my best to Mrs. Claus!
Review of “The Cosmic Code”
I read this book on a dare some time ago.
This is the sixth book in the late Zechariah Sitchin’s (1920-2010) Earth Chronicles series detailing his ideas on how humans and human culture are the byproducts of ancient extra-terrestrial meddling. He sees evidence of this in Sumerian mythology, in particular, positing that Sumerian gods were, in fact, aliens from other worlds.
I will go out on a limb and say that cosmologists don’t see much in his cosmology, nor do sumerologists think highly of his interpretation of Mesopotamian mythology and/or history.
But that isn’t to say his works are without an audience. Even the History Channel has disseminated programs that support the ideas we’re all here because of some clever ancient aliens. Despite little evidence, narrators always ask, “Could it be…?”
A thumbnail sketch of Zechariah Sitchin’s ideas:
Aliens from a planet called Nibiru came to earth in the distant past to mine gold. (Hey. It could happen). The name of their planet, which takes 3600 years to orbit the sun, is a word based on the Sumerian for the city of Nippur. Their reason for going to all that trouble must be explained in another book. Their “splashdown” in the Persian Gulf is recorded in the Sumerian myth Sitchin refers to as “Ea and the Earth,” which may or may not be the myth more commonly known as “Enki and the World Order.”
Sitchin also refers to a myth he calls “The Erra Epos,” which he claims describes a nuclear holocaust. Because the winds blew the right way, it destroyed the older cities and allowed newer ones, like Babylon, to flourish. I could not find anything with the title “Erra Epos,” either in print or online, but there is a story in From Distant Days by Benjamin Foster titled “How Erra Wrecked the World” (pp. 132-163). While it talks about destructive winds (Tablet 4, lines roughly 38-40), it is rather a leap to assume they must have come from a nuclear blast.
I offer a single sample of Sitchin’s writing:
Indeed, as we contemplate this limitation to twenty-two [letters in the Mosaic-Semitic alphabet]—no more, no less—we cannot help recalling the constrictions applied to the sacred number twelve [Huh? 22 equals 12? Granted, math was not my strongest subject, but I don’t think that’s the case. Maybe I was out sick that day.—Ed. Note ] (requiring the addition or dropping of deities in order to keep the “Olympic Circle” to precisely twelve). Did such a hidden principle—divinely inspired—apply to the restriction of the original alphabet to twenty-two letters?
The number ought to be familiar in this day and age. It is the number of human chromosomes when The Adam was created before the second genetic manipulation had added the sex chromosomes “Y” and “X”!
Did the Almighty who had revealed to Moses the secret of the alphabet then, use the genetic code as the secret code of the alphabet?
The answer seems to be Yes.
(pp. 148- 149)
I found most of the writing to be this tedious and overblown, not to mention, well, nonsensical. It is the only book of this author’s that I have read. I will not be reading another. It is sad because the man was obviously quite bright but inextricably caught up in a personal mythology that facts can’t reverse.
I cannot recommend it unless one wants to read it out of curiosity.
Title: The Cosmic Code Book VI of the Earth Chronicles
Author: Zechariah Sitchin (1920-2010)
Review of “Contamination” (1980)
Plot:
A cargo ship speeds toward New York Harbor. The crew is not aboard, although the life rafts remain. Half-eaten meals sit on tables. The log book reveals nothing. But the investigators find corpse after bloody corpse looking as if they’ve exploded from inside.
Spilling out of boxes marked “café” (coffee) are what look like giant green coffee beans. The investigators find one pulsating, turning orange, and… singing. One member, NYPD Lt. Tony Aris (Marino Masé), warns another not to pick it up. “Oh, don’t worry,” says the other.
Yeah, it explodes, and all but the guy who warned the others die in agony, spilling their guts, despite their protection suits.
The viewer next sees the surviving man in an isolation unit wearing nothing but a blanket, understandably upset about his treatment. Through a window, he complains to Col. Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau). The news of his rank forces him to salute and drop the blanket.
The giant coffee beans turn out to be not eggs per se but a “concentration of bacteria of unknown type.”
Our heroes trace the shipment of the “coffee” to a warehouse and get a warrant. While serving the warrant, they are met with gunfire. Our heroes do the only logical thing—drive their truck through the warehouse door. Realizing the jig is up, the three warehouse workers (the uncredited Nat Bush, Angelo Ragusa, and Martin Sorrentino) kill themselves. Worm-like beings explode from their chests.
Yeah, that rings a bell.
Holmes orders that all the green coffee/eggs things be burned. After consulting with the scientific team, she concludes that the eggy/bacteria thingies must come from nearby. There was that expedition to Mars two years earlier. One man is now dead, and the other, Commander Ian Hubbard (Ian McCulloch), mentally unfit to serve.
She pays him a visit.
Commander Hubbard has seen better days. He stumbles over the empty beer cans in his apartment but recalls his expedition to Mars. It differs materially from his partner Hamilton’s (Siegfried Rauch). But Hubbard drew pictures of the eggy bacteria when he first arrived back. He’s seen them.
Our heroes find the shipments of coffee come from a plantation in South America. There, they find the biggest coffee beans you ever did see growing on the ground.
Thoughts:
Other than the Alien borrowing/rip-off, this suffers from a whole lot of speechifying and some terminal misogyny. When Col. Holmes tries to get Hubbard to end his pity party and help the fight the alien, she tells him she wonders if he’s a man—a pretty miserable thing to say to anyone. He slaps her across the face. They then agree they understand each other.
Down in South America, Col. Holmes wants to shower before getting some dinner, much to the annoyance of Hubbard and Aris. The evil coffee plantation owners are watching them, though, and slip an egg into the bathroom while Holmes is enjoying (…yes, enjoying…) her shower and lock the door from the outside. For a pièce de résistance, they hang a “Do not disturb” sign outside her room.
Holmes realizes someone has been in the bathroom. She sees the egg, pulsing and singing to her. Frantically, she pounds the locked bathroom door, screaming for help. Poor helpless woman, even if she’s a colonel in the military. Going through her cosmetics bag, she finds a nail file and other implements to try to pick the lock. Rescue comes via the disgraced/crazy Commander Hubbard, who breaks down two doors to get to her.
Pro tip: if you’re locked in a bathroom with an alien life form that’s about to explode and kill you, you can do any of the following as the situation demands: 1) douse it with caustic cleaner, 2) set alien life form afire with a scented candle, 3) throw the plastic shower curtain over it and/or, 4) use the top of the toilet tank to break down the door.
The movie is known by the alternative titles Alien Contamination, Toxic Spawn, and Larvae.
The English dubbing from the original Italian is obvious, but I find this forgivable. The acting is fair. The script is abysmal. Why does Holmes need either Aris—a NY cop—or Hubbard—a disgraced and reinstated astronaut—to help her investigation the eggs? Why is she investigating the eggs? The special effects as gory but fall short of convincing. People’s chests explode regularly with a lot of blood to show, but it’s clearly a costume rig.
And the dialogue… the kindest things I can say is that there’s a lot of it. People flap their gums. Controlled by the alien and does its bidding, the bad guy gives a speech about how the meaning of life is to kill or be killed, the strong control the weak, yadda, yadda, yawn. The closing scene is supposed to be profound. Perhaps there is some thought in it. Holmes says she’ll never look at the night sky the same again, wondering what else is out there.
I cannot recommend this. It takes itself too seriously to be fun. I guess the exploding torsos earned it the R-rating.
If, for some reason, you want to watch this, it is available for free on YouTube
Title: Contamination (1980)
Director:
Luigi Cozzi
Writers:
Luigi Cozzi (screenplay)
Erich Tomek (screenplay)
Cast:
Ian McCulloch as Cmdr. Ian Hubbard
Louise Marleau as Col. Stella Holmes
Marino Masé as NYPD Lt. Tony Aris
Siegfried Rauch as Hamilton
Gisela Hahn as Perla de la Cruz
Carlo De Mejo as Agent Young
Released: 1980
Length: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Rated: R
Review of “Son of Frankenstein” (1939)
This is this week’s Saturday pizza and bad movie night offering, another classic. We watched it with Svengoolie.
Plot:
In a German village, children run down a lane. One pauses to pick up a rock and throw it toward a building where a sign hangs warning Eingang Verboten. A man with wild hair and beard (Bela Lugosi) looks down at them from a broken second-story window, sending them flying.
In the town hall, the burghers debate the problem of the arrival of the new Baron von Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone). They remember all too well the death and destruction wrought by the monster, the creation of the Baron’s father, and want nothing to do with any Frankenstein. Nevertheless, the Burgomaster (Lawrence Grant) is determined to hand over a box of papers the old baron left for his son to the present baron. He will meet him and his family at the train when they arrive.
Aboard the train, Elsa von Frankenstein (Josephine Hutchinson) tucks in her son, Peter ((Donnie Dunagan), then remarks to her husband, Wolf, how odd the countryside looks. They’re both excited about their new life, but Wolf notes the castle is haunted because of the misdeeds of the creature his father created. He blames the horrors on the blunder of his father’s assistant, Ygor.
It’s pouring rain when they arrive. A sea of umbrellas meets them. True to his word, the Burgomaster gives the Baron the chest of his father’s papers. The Baron addresses the townspeople, but they fade away.
At Castle Frankenstein, Butler Thomas Benson (Edgar Norton) tells him he had to hire staff from out of town. None of the local people will work in the castle. The Baron reads from his father’s papers, which promise to divulge the secrets of his work before a portrait of old baron. Outside, the rain continues unabated. Over Wolf’s shoulder, the viewer can see the face of the same man with wild hair and beard who frightened the children earlier now looking in through the window.
Inspector Krogh pays a visit to the household to warn the baron that while he is protected as long as he is in the castle, he remains in danger. Six men have been murdered recently. None of the murders have been solved.
The inspector’s right arm is wooden. He pushes it around when he needs to hold things, like a monocle, while he polishes it with his left hand. He also promises to come at any time should the baron summon. Wolf says while he did not receive a warm welcome, he does not feel he is in danger. He continues to throw darts at a target. Besides, what proof is there that the monster was all that destructive, anyway?
The Inspector (Lionel Atwill) relates how he lost his arm to the monster while his father shot at it to no avail. The injury prevented him from joining the army, relegating him to the police force of a tiny village.
The next day, Wolf investigates the remains of the old baron’s lab, blown up in the troubles of times past. A gaping hole stands in the roof. There, the same man attempts to kill him by rolling a boulder into him. He misses, as does Wolf when he fires his rifle in retaliation. The wild-haired man is Ygor, his father’s assistant, who talks about himself in the third person. His neck was broken when the town council hanged him and pronounced him dead. They did a poor job of both. He’ll show the Baron something…
He leads him down to the family crypt. There, Wolf finds the coffins of his grandfather and his father, who, according to the inscription, created monsters. He also sees the monster (Boris Karloff) laid out on a slab. Ygor explains he’s “sick” and wants the baron to make him well again.
Thoughts:
This is the third of some eight classic Universal Frankenstein monster movies made between 1931 and 1948. It falls between 1935’s The Bride of Frankenstein and 1942’s The Ghost of Frankenstein.
It is moody and somber. The present Baron von Frankenstein admires his father, whom he never knew, though he abhors his legacy of death and destruction. At the same time, he can’t help but be intrigued by his father’s scientific investigations. On seeing the monster for the first time, he cries, “It’s alive!”
Too late, he realizes his error, that Ygor, and not he, controls the monster. To make matters all the more horrifying, he fears for his son—and with good reason.
The interior of Castle Frankenstein is full of shadows. The windows have non-parallel edges. The grand stairway at the entrance winds and bends at odd angles, with steps that grow and shrink in size for no apparent reason. Of course, the walls move and lead to secret passageways.
There is little gore in this movie. Of course, the monster meets a suitably horrible end (I trust I give away nothing), but most of the film is atmosphere and anticipation. It presents a moral dilemma: Wolf knew he was treading on thin ice, and now he can’t get himself out of a quandary he didn’t see (but should have seen) coming.
A lot of this movie would later be parodied so well in Young Frankenstein (1974), but the original is worth watching on its own.
I liked this film. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it available for free download. If you’re interested, though, I’d say it’s worth a rental.
Title: Son of Frankenstein (1939)
Director
Rowland V. Lee
Writers
Mary Shelley (suggested by the story written in 1816)
Wyllis Cooper (screenplay)
Cast:
Basil Rathbone…Baron Wolf von Frankenstein
Boris Karloff…The Monster
Bela Lugosi…Ygor
Lionel Atwill…Inspector Krogh
Josephine Hutchinson…Elsa von Frankenstein
Released: 1939
Length: 1 hour, 39 minutes
Review of “Frankenstein” (1931)
This week’s Saturday pizza and bad movie offering is a film about as classic as they come. The clip you’ve probably seen of Boris Karloff’s (as the monster) fingers twitching while Colin Clive, as Henry Frankenstein, dances around crying, “It’s alive!” is from this movie. The scene is imitated and parodied so often it’s easy to forget where it got started.
Plot:
The movie opens with a stage curtain—as if this were a play—parting. Out steps Edward Van Sloan (who will later appear as Dr. Waldman) and says to the audience:
How do you do? [Producer] Mr. Carl Laemmle feels it would be a little unkind to present this picture without just a word of friendly warning: We are about to unfold the story of Frankenstein, a man of science who sought to create a man after his own image without reckoning upon God. It is one of the strangest tales ever told. It deals with the two great mysteries of creation; life and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even horrify you. So, if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now’s your chance to, uh, well––we warned you.
The viewer next sees a family in mourning burying a loved one. They’re being watched by a young man (Colin Clive) and his hunchback assistant, Fritz (Dwight Frye). They wait until the family departs. Once the coast is clear, they unearth the buried coffin. For good measure, the young man, a scientist by the name of Henry Frankenstein, orders his assistant to cut down the hanged body of a criminal. The two roll the cart with their prizes to the laboratory in a castle.
Henry plans to stitch together bits and pieces of various dead bodies and reanimate the corpse. He sends Fritz to the university classroom of his old professor, Dr. Waldman (Edward Van Sloan). The good doctor is lecturing with a demonstration on two brains: a normal and an abnormal brain. After class is dismissed, Fritz slips in and picks up the jar with the normal brain. Unfortunately, he drops it, sending brain matter and glass all over the floor. He takes the remaining abnormal brain instead.
Back home, his beloved fiancée, Elizabeth (Mae Clarke), receives a disturbing letter from Henry, telling her that his work must come first, even before her. She worries and confides her concern to old friend Victor Moritz (John Boles). Baron Frankenstein (Frederick Kerr) thinks his son Henry is putting her off because there’s another woman. They decide to go, knowing Henry won’t be happy to see them.
They arrive on a stormy night, the kind that produces lightning enough to animate corpses. Yeah, the timing could have been better.
Thoughts:
Frankenstein originally came out before the Hayes Code, more properly the Motion Picture Production Code, came into effect. There were several scenes and bits of dialogue that were later subject to censorship. For example, when Henry first animates the creature, he cries, “In the name of God? Now I know what it feels like to be God!” This was considered blasphemous, and in most places, the thunder grew pointedly louder when he spoke. Also, a scene where the monster accidentally drowns a little girl, Maria (Marilyn Harris), is cut short. Most modern copies restore the censored scenes.
The monster never becomes articulate, but he is not a brute beast. He expresses joy and wonder at seeing sunlight, turning destructive only when he’s abused. Fritz taunts him with a lit torch, frightening him. When the monster later seeks Henry Frankenstein’s death out of revenge, the audience can understand his motivation. The monster meets his own end (I trust I give nothing away), caught under a heavy beam in a burning windmill. It is a tragedy if a necessity. The townspeople are out for blood after the death of little Maria.
Henry Frankenstein’s sin is tampering with things human beings are not meant to know. He thinks he’s become akin to a god. (I don’t suppose I’m the only woman who watched the scene and thought, Dude, there’s an easier way to create life, ya know…). Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein sins in abandoning his creation, not in its creation per se. The monster is then thrust upon the world as an outcast. The revenge the creature exacts is terrible and complete. Hollywood cannot accept that, of course. There has to be a happy ending.
The movie set a lot of precedents—the castle on the hill with the lightning, the look of the monster (which is still copyrighted by Universal Studios), the elaborate electrical gadgets used to reanimate the corpse, to name a few. (Shelley’s book is deliberately vague on the method of reanimation).
The big draw is Henry Frankenstein’s twisted obsession with reanimating a corpse that he’s sewn together. A little nutty? He’s put off his wedding to the lovely Elizabeth, who cares for him when she has a good argument for moving on. For a moment, it seems like the nutty idea might work. Boris Karloff, without lines, portrays the wonder and delight of any creature might on seeing the world for the first time until he is betrayed.
This is a classic film that has stood the test of time. There is some melodrama, but any horror fan or fan of the weird will enjoy this. I did. I’ve seen it before. I enjoyed watching it this time, and I hope to see it again.
Unfortunately, I could not find it for free download.
Title: Frankenstein (1931)
Director
James Whale
Writers
John L. Balderston (based upon the composition by)
Mary Shelley (from the novel by)
Peggy Webling (adapted from the play by)
Cast:
Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein
Mae Clarke as Elizabeth
Boris Karloff as The Monster
John Boles as Victor Moritz
Edward Van Sloan as Doctor Waldman
Frederick Kerr as Baron Frankenstein
Released: 1931
Length: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Review of “Nightmare Alley” (1947)
This was our Saturday pizza and bad movie offering. The movie was good, but boy, was it depressing little film noir.
Plot:
Stanton “Stan” Carlisle (Tyrone Power) finds himself fascinated by everything at the carnival. How does one sink so low as to work as the “geek,” eating live chickens?
“It can happen,” says Madam Zeena (Joan Blondell). Stan works as a barker for the mentalist show Madam Zeena performs with her drunken husband, Pete (Ian Keith). Stan is grateful for the opportunity. He feels great sticking it to the rubes. He was “made for it,” in what becomes a tagline.
One night, Stan buys a bottle of moonshine. When Pete comes along, he stows it in a trunk because he doesn’t want to get in Dutch with Zeena. However, Pete is in such a sorry state that Stan reaches inside the trunk and passes the bottle on. The next morning, Pete doesn’t wake up. The empty bottle next to him is not the one Pete bought, but one of Zeena’s stage props, a bottle of woods alcohol.
“Pete wouldn’t drink this!” Zeena says.
Stan looks into the trunk. His bottle is still there.
Stan quickly makes himself indispensable to the carnival, not just to Zeena. Zeena teaches him a code, using words and syllable stresses, she and Pete used when they were on the top of vaudeville in a mindreading act. They charm audiences. Using cold reading techniques, he learned from Pete, talks a sheriff out of investigating the carnival. He makes a play first for Zeena, then for a younger woman, Molly (Coleen Gray), the object of affection of the circus strong man, Bruno (Mike Mazurki). This leads to their expulsion from the carnival.
Stan and Molly marry and set out on their own, using the mind-reading act in nightclubs. They’ve made the big time. They just didn’t count the perception of some in their audiences.
While things are going so well, Stan decides to take things one step further and get into the “spook” business,” that is, communicating with (*cough*) spirit world. He’ll need the help of one more corrupt partner.
Thought:
You can fool some of the people, according to the old saw. Stan has a bit of Icarus in him as well, flying too close to the sun.
This is a cautionary tale and a warning against demon rum and getting too greedy. The main character is unsympathetic, yet he comes from a background that might have lent him some sympathy from viewers. He was abandoned by his parents, raised in an orphanage where he was beaten and abused until he ran away. He’s had to make his own way in the world. Zeena gave him a break.
Three strong female roles play in this movie: first, Zeena, followed by Molly, and finally Lilith Ritter (Helen Walker), a psychologist. Molly is perhaps the most sympathetic character in the movie. She loves Stan, but she is hardly a doormat. At one point, she is ready to leave him.
The story also points out that those deceived by these tricks also enjoy it (to a point) because the deception gives them hope. One might accept harmless little practical jokes as simple entertainment, but the bilking of people out of money for communication with deceased loved ones or “cures” is an entirely different matter.
This movie was a departure for Tyrone Power, who generally played romantic or swashbuckling roles in films such as The Mark of Zorro (1940). (The Razor’s Edge (1946), about a traumatized WWI veteran, another departure, was made when Power returned from active duty after WWII.) Power read the novel on which Nightmare Alley is based, a book of the same name written by William Lindsay Gresham, and thought it would make a great movie. The movie is good, and Power’s acting was praised, but the film didn’t do well at the box office. Perhaps it was too dark a story.
In short, Nightmare Alley is powerful film noir. It’s not for the kiddies, though. There’s no sex or violence to speak of, but the matters it deals with are thoughtful and pretty damn depressing.
This movie is being remade and is schedule to be released in December 2021.
Nightmare Alley can be watched here.
Title: Nightmare Alley (1947)
Director
Edmund Goulding
Writers
Jules Furthman (screenplay)
William Lindsay Gresham (novel)
Cast:
Tyrone Power as Stanton ‘Stan’ Carlisle
Joan Blondell as Zeena Krumbein
Coleen Gray as Molly
Helen Walker as Lilith Ritter
Taylor Holmes as Ezra Grindle
Mike Mazurki as Bruno
Released: 1947
Length: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Review of “Blood of Dracula” (1957)
This week’s Saturday pizza and bad movie offering is a black and white vampire tale set in a girls’ school that involves not even a whiff of Dracula. Forbidden topics include cigarette smoking. The trailer hints at lesbianism, but the movie was made in 1957—you know, before such things existed. An interesting ploy.
Plot:
Eighteen-year-old Nancy Perkins (Sandra Harrison) lost her mother six months before the start of the story. Her father (Thomas Browne Henry) and her shiny new stepmother (EEEW) (Jean Dean) are driving her to the Sherwood School for Girls. Nancy objects and shows it by grabbing the steering wheel from her father and forcing the car off the road. No one is hurt, but dad and stepmom raise understandable complaints. Dad slaps Nancy, then says that while he disapproves of her smoking, one last cigarette can’t hurt her now.
Mrs. Thorndike (Mary Adams), the head of the school, welcomes Nancy with understanding. She realizes this is a strange new environment for her and has placed her with five “very sweet girls.”
Uh-huh.
Those five girls call themselves the “Birds of Paradise,” and, as one of them—Myra (Gail Ganley) — puts it, “Just remember, there’s no such thing as a lone wolf here at Sherwood. We can make life awfully miserable for oddballs.” She goes on to give Nancy the lay of the land. For starters, Myra is the teacher’s assistant in chemistry. Another Bird of Paradise, Nola (Heather Ames), is an English assistant.
And then there’s the science teacher, Miss Branding (Louise Lewis), who’s working on a thesis about the evil capabilities of every human being. Once this is made known, she’s certain it will cause the nuclear scientists to put away their bombs. But she needs a test subject, someone with a little bit of fire, who does things like pulling a girl’s hair when a science demonstration in class goes bad, and she gets injured. All she needs to do is control this test subject with a cat’s eye amulet from the Carpathian Mountains.
Remember, this is for the good of all mankind. And to get Miss Branding’s thesis accepted.
Thoughts:
The Birds of Paradise are something between a sorority and a gang. Myra admires Nancy’s spirit and is a suck-up to Miss Branding. She sets Nancy up to lose her temper in a science class demonstration where she suffers a minor but painful injury. Miss Branding talks her into letting her hypnotize her with that amulet for the Carpathian Mountains. Not only does she no longer feel pain, but she also finds herself subject to Miss Branding’s control.
One night, while the girls are having a party (don’t they ever study?), they annoy Miss Branding as she works on her thesis across the way. She takes out the amulet and puts her whammy on an unsuspecting Nancy. Nancy starts feeling woozy all of a sudden. Housemother and art teacher, Miss Rivers (Edna Holland), breaks up the party. Did she hear men’s voices? Maybe she ignores the open window. She sends Nola down to the basement for supplies for class the next day.
Nola doesn’t make it to that class.
The viewer understands Miss Branding’s frustration with not getting her thesis accepted. The viewer also understands how tightly wound she is and how utterly bereft of ethics she is to use a student, especially a student she knows is troubled and vulnerable, in her “experimentation.”
Nancy doesn’t get much choice in the matter of anything. She lost her mother, her parents dumped her off at the Sherwood School over her protests, the Birds of Paradise pressured her into joining their gang, and now a mad scientist with a wingnut idea for world peace has hypnotized her into a vampire to kill teenagers—especially those who annoy her. It really is a lot for one person to handle. No one will stick up for her. Her story is sad
Her transformation is unconvincing. She gets a high forehead, a widow’s peak that would turn Lily Munster even greener with envy, and eyelashes that would keep the rain out off her face. And then there are the teeth.
Since this movie was made to appeal to teenagers, there is a musical number, “Puppy Love.” Jerry Blaine, who played Tab, one of the guys who crashed the party the Birds of Paradise threw, wrote and performed the song. He also wrote “Eenie, Meenie, Miny, Mo” for I Was a Teenage Werewolf, which has an eerily similar plot to the present movie.
The last line of the movie goes to Mrs. Thorndike: “There is a power greater than science that rules the earth, and those who twist and pervert knowledge for evil only work out their own destruction.” So what’s the next step? “I’ll call the police.”
As for a recommendation: there are no surprises in this movie. There are some reminders as to how long ago 1957 was, of course. It is a short movie, hardly more than an hour. But it’s not an unpleasant way to spend the time if one is not too demanding. There are unintentionally amusing moments. The movie itself is deadly serious. I liked it, but I’m not in a hurry to see it again. Poor Nancy. She didn’t have a chance.
The movie can be viewed on YouTube here.
Title: Blood of Dracula (1957)
Director
Herbert L. Strock
Writer
Aben Kandel (story and screenplay)
Cast:
Sandra Harrison…Nancy Perkins
Louise Lewis…Miss Branding
Gail Ganley…Myra
Jerry Blaine…Tab
Heather Ames…Nola
Released: 1957
Length: 1 hour, 9 minutes
Review of “History of the World: Part 1” (1981)
This is our Saturday pizza and bad movie offering, one we’d both seen before but not for many years. We’d tried a new wine, something called a Malbec. To my (*cough*) discriminating palate, it tasted a lot like a cab and was quite yummy.
Plot:
This Mel Brooks farce is told in five historical vignettes centered on 1) The Stone Age, 2) The Old Testament, 3) The Roman Empire, 4) The Spanish Inquisition, and 5) The French Revolution.
The Stone Age opens with men arising at dawn to the overture of Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra.” After, um, exploring themselves, Stone Age man goes on to invent art—with the inevitable art critic, marriage, and music. The “Hallelujah Chorus” is apparently a lot older than you think.
The Old Testament is brief but explains why there are ten rather than fifteen commandments.
During the Roman Empire segment, Mel Brooks plays Comicus, a stand-up philosopher. He gets a gig at Caesar’s palace before Emperor Nero (Dom DeLuise). Unfortunately, he forgets where he is and tells the wrong jokes. As Comicus says, “When you die at the Palace, you really die.”
Mel Brooks plays Tomás de Torquemada (1420-1498), the first Grand Inquisitor. He is known for the use of torture against those who didn’t convert. Funnily enough, he came from a converso background. (“Torquemada this, Torquemada that. I can’t Torquemada anything.”) The segment is portrayed in a song and dance number that concludes with synchronized swimming that hints at water torture of Jewish victims. It is grandiose, absurd, bizarre, and not exactly in the best of taste.
The final main segment depicts events around the French Revolution. Mel Brooks is King Louis XVI, and the plot borrows from such works as Dumas The Man in the Iron Mask and Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper.
A few unexpected “coming attractions” at the very end round out the silly movie: Hitler ice skating, a Viking funeral (you find out why those horned helmets weren’t real), and a final segment obviously influenced by Star Wars.
Thoughts:
I saw this movie way back in 1981 in something called a “theater.” I thought it was hysterical, even if parts crossed some boundaries. It has great scenes. Louis XVI declaring his love for the peasants while skeet shooting with them—as targets (“PULL!”)—is classic. So is the first art critic. These bits can still make me laugh.
Having said that, I can’t say that as a whole, this movie has aged well. For starters, its crude adolescent humor (“Do I have any openings this man might fill?”) and its ridicule of gay men don’t work for me.
While hardly a scene fails to show Mel Brooks’ face, there are many other fine actors in this. Gregory Hines is a tap-dancing, chariot-driving, very-large-joint-rolling Josephus in Rome. Cloris Leachman is a rabble-rousing Madame Defarge. Madeline Kahn as Empress Nympho makes Emperor Nero’s cringe-worthy wind-breaking funny by rolling her eyes.
I wish this film had been as good as I remembered. The high points were really high and enjoyable. Sadly, they didn’t make up for the low points.
Title: History of the World: Part 1 (1981)
Director:
Mel Brooks
Writer:
Mel Brooks
Cast:
Mel Brooks as Moses, Comicus, Torquemada, Jacques, King Louis XVI
Gregory Hines as Josephus
Dom DeLuise as Emperor Nero
Madeline Kahn as Empress Nympho
Harvey Korman as Count de Monet
Cloris Leachman as Madame Defarge
Ron Carey as Swiftus
Released: 1981
Length: 1 hour, 32 minutes
Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old 