Comic Book Plus Forum
All And Everything => Watcha ... ? => Topic started by: profh0011 on March 11, 2022, 09:31:57 PM
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My latest Blu-Ray:
THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960)
I first saw this on TV. Then, in the early 70s, I saw it again on a BIG screen! A decade later, I recorded a copy off a local UHF station, which was in TERRIBLE shape. (I'll probably be watching that tape "one more time" just to see exactly how awful it is by comparison.
So how nice to finally get a "good" copy after putting up with the other one for 4 DECADES. According to Blu-Ray.com: ""The Brides of Dracula" was previously issued on Blu-ray via Universal Studios in 2016. Shout Factory brings the title back to the market with an AVC encoded image (your choice of 1.85:1 or 1.66:1 aspect ratios) presentation sourced from a "New 2K Scan From The Interpositive.""
There's also 2 slightly-different theatrical trailers, an HOUR-LONG documentary about the career of Terence Fisher (narrated by the editor of "The Little Shop Of Horrors" magazine), a couple of other documentaries (which I haven't seen yet), a radio promo, an images gallery, and optional English subtitles.
The film, visually, is STUNNING. The sound, ditto (though the sound on the trailers is AWFUL, probably standing out all the more because for once, the visuals on the trailers is quite nice).
After watching the entire Hammer series yearly for about a decade, this is probably the longest stretch I've had in a long time without watching these at all. I've been planning to go after these for some time, and it seemed to me that, despite having a CHEAP tv and player, I owed it to myself, looking at the future, to get horror films on Blu-Ray.
As with so many Hammers, this film has scenes that pay tribute to earlier ones (shades of current "007" films). The opening scene of the speeding coachman, the passenger asking them to slow down, the arrival at the small village and the tavern, seems straight out of the 1931 "DRACULA" (or Mel Brooks' "DRACULA DEAD AND LOVING IT", for that matter), which is funny when you consider such a scene was nowhere to be found in the 1958 "DRACULA".
At the other end, the whole sequence at the windmill seems like a greatly-expanded tribute to the climax of the 1931 "FRANKENSTEIN"! I found myself laughing at the thought of the scene where Van Helsing picks up Marianne on the road, imagining how the story might have gone if he'd introduced himself by saying, "I'm a doctor, my name's Frankenstein". 😁
It's been noted there was a lot of tampering and re-writing of the screenplay before-the-fact, with scenes that explain things being CUT OUT. For decades, I thought the guy who hitched a ride on the back of the coach was the priest that Van Helsing met on his arrival-- not an ENTIRELY-different character whose name we never learn. I can only guess that since he bribed the coachman to leave Marianne behind, he MUST have been working for the Countess! I guess that makes him this film's "Klove".
The dialogue in the tavern scenes is painful to listen to in spots. It's such a miracle when Peter Cushing arrives on the scene, every line, every expression, every inflection seems so natural, so "right". He acts very much the detective in this film, questioning people to gather information, always wanting and needing to know MORE about what he's dealing with. It was nice how he tried for some time not to hurt Marianne's feelings only doing so when it became absolutely necessary. (I strongly suspect they wound up getting married after this story, which would be a good explanation why we didn't see Van Helsing for several movies-- heh.)
I took note when he said, "SOME are capable of turning into bats." In light of his comments in the 1958 film, when he also said they're only just beginning to learn all there is to know about vampires, clearly, he's expanded his views. This only raises the question, if SOME vampires can turn into bats (and obviously Baron Meinster is one of them), WHY is it we never see COUNT DRACULA doing so in the Hammer Films? (Then again, the "Little Shop" editor did refer to Dracula as the world's most incompetent vampire-- considering HOW MANY different ways he's killed at the end of all those sequels.)
Now... this Scream Factory Blu-Ray is, so far, the 3RD one I've gotten with a DEFECT. When you pop it in, you get the following message:
"BD-ROM Date (USB) is not ready! Playback is currently active, but Error may occur."
Sure enough, as with the others this pops up on, when you're playing the disc, if you hit "stop", it goes to the beginning and you have to start over.
Has anyone here gotten this specific disc where this HASN'T turned up? At the moment, it seems the be the fault of the disc manufacturer, NOT the player.
I like taking breaks (intermissions) a LOT, so it's a damned good thing these things have "scenes" (or "chapters"), but even so, you still have to wait about TWO MINUTES before the menu comes up, and there's no way to skip past the intro.
So far, I've only run across this crap with SCREAM FACTORY... and DISNEY.
(https://cdn2.highdefdigest.com/media/2020/08/11/660/97923/brides-of-dracula.webp)
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Well, I didn't wait this time. I've been plugging in my VCR on weekends lately, and decided to plow thru my decades-old copy of "BRIDES" and get it out of the way. Turns out it was Philly's channel 57 (really a cable channel out of Georgia, I think), so it was in MUCH-better shape than my Philly channel 48 copy of "HORROR..." had been. That one was missing 15 MINUTES! This one, only 30 SECONDS. That's a hell of a difference.
Apart from being a TERRIBLY-fuzzy, faded film print, the SOUND was completely missing from 2 scenes-- the opening credits & the bit where Marianne tosses the Baron the key. (They call this, "technical difficulties"-- HEEHEEHEE.) Also, I noticed there seemed to be 2 short CUTS. One, which someone online actually mentioned had been "restored" to the film in recent years, when Van Helsing stakes the Baroness, you see a couple seconds of blood (missing here). The other, oddly enough, after he cauterizes the bite wound and pours holy water on it. The couple seconds where the wound completely FADES AWAY was missing here. Isn't that odd?
Mostly, today I took notes of how so often in sequels, they like to do variations on scenes from the earlier movies. Here, Marianne has dinner up at the castle (as Jonathan Harker did in the novel and Renfield did in the stage play and films based on it). "Aren't you eating anything?" "I have very little appetite." You can't help but think, "I never drink... WINE."
After seeing what's going on at the castle (but not being smart enough to understand any of it), Marianne ESCAPES the castle... as Harker did in the novel and a few other film versions.
When Van Helsing goes to the castle to investigate, it starts out like the scene where he did the same in "HORROR..." But it's the Baroness he finds has been turned into a vampire this time. When her son ATTACKS, it suddenly feels like we've jumped to the END of "HORROR...", as they fight across a large dining room table. The Baron tosses a candlestick, Van Helsing slides a cross across the table. When the Baron upturns the table, I'm suddenly reminded of when "Morgan" (Boris Karloff) did this in "THE OLD DARK HOUSE" !! Then the Barons RUNS for it, but unlike in "HORROR...", he's running OUT of the castle, not into it, and when he gets to the carriage, he makes his getaway. Lee's Dracula did the same without a lot less fuss in the earlier film.
The girls' school somehow feels a lot more like Seward's sanitarium as a setting for the middle of the story than Arthur Holmwood's house did in in "HORROR..." Funny enough, when Miles Malleson's Dr. Tobler turns up, he reminds me a lot of Nigel Bruce's "Dr. Watson"-- and Cushing's Van Helsing is a MUCH-nicer character than Cushing's Sherlock Holmes was (at least, in the 1959 Hammer film). This is also a bit funny when I consider someone pointed out that Harvey Korman's "Dr. Seward" seemed very much a tribute to Nigel Bruce as well! Imagine if Miles Malleson had played Watson instead of Andre Morell or Thorley Walters.
Has it ever seemed odd to anybody that David Peel's Baron Meinster gets a LOT more screen time and dialogue than Christopher Lee's Count Dracula ever did?
When Freda Jackson's Greta talks about the "bad company" the young Baron used to keep, and you connect that with Van Helsing's references to "the cult of the undead", it keeps strengthening my feeling that "KISS OF THE VAMPIRE" must very much be the "3rd" film in this series, except since it has neither Dracula or Van Helsing, it's been overlooked for decades. That one's NEXT on my "Hammer" list.
Finally, when Peter Cushing DIVES into action without help from a stunt-man near the end, I found myself thinking, "They couldn't have done this with Edward Van Sloan!" (The last horror story I've written to date, I "cast" both Lee & Van Sloan as characters... though in my case, they were both on the same side.)
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THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925 / 1990)
I just wrote a letter to Rick Wakeman...
Chaney's Phantom has been my favorite silent for decades. I recall when Giorgio Moroder did his 1984 restoration of "METROPOLIS", sitting in the theatre thinking, "If only someone could do with with the "PHANTOM". Then in the early 90s where I was spending an obscene amount of money on expensive import CDs (many of them yours), I found someone had! "PHANTOM POWER" remains among my top 4 out of at least 60 CDs I have of yours.
It somehow took me until about 2000 to get the videotape. At the time, I'd just gotten online, and Amazon had at least a dozen versions of the Chaney film, each with a different score. I'd previously had a dodgy tape that ran at the wrong speed. The "new" version was better-looking, had tints all the way thru, and only the sequence in Christine's chamber had serious damage. I've watched this film at least once a year, only wishing the outfit that issued it hadn't done it on the CHEAP. A 90-minute film should have been at the 2-hour speed (SP), not the 6-hour (SLP) speed.
Some years later, TCM ran a restored version, and it was clear the print was in much-better condition, but crazy enough, the gorgeous orchestral score almost put me to sleep.
I've been looking forward to getting this on DVD for some time. I'm thrilled to finally get it. BUT... I'm afraid I have 3 serious criticisms. First, the Lee intro should be at the start of the film, not as a separate special feature. Second, WHERE ARE THE TINTS? After 20 years, it's shocking to suddenly be watching this in B&W, no matter how clear most of it is. (Even the scene in Christine's chamber, clearly inserted from a much-lower-quality reduction print, is in FAR-better condition than the one on the previous videotape.)
Third... WHAT HAPPENED with the final reel? After the whole film being so clear, the chase & climax is SO DARK I can't see half of what's going on. The action scenes look like a projector was shaking, and when they get to the riverfront, you can't even make out most of the mob when he's holding them back. After 20 years of watching a low-quality videotape that looks BETTER than this, the climax here is a major disappointment.
I'm glad this is out... but if there's any way for it to happen, this version of the film NEEDS a major upgrade. There's a lot of outfits out there who might be interested in getting involved, including Kino Lorber and Flicker Alley.
I feel like, if I were able to get a video editing program for my computer, I might be able to create a better version MYSELF.
By the way, when I went looking for this, I found it from a seller in Florida on Ebay. Also listed were at least a dozen different people selling the videotape, CHEAP. I think it's criminal nobody is manufacturing videotape machines right now. Someone should have the sense to get back into it, making them as a "specialty market" item.
Finally, there's a website called "Silent Era.com" that does reviews of video releases, that has a page with at least a DOZEN different versions of the Chaney film on DVD & Blu-Ray, from 1997 to 2015, and from excellent to terribly-cheap. Yours is NOT listed, so I contacted them and suggested they add it to their page.
(https://prod-images.tcm.com/Master-Profile-Images/thephantomoftheopera1925.86596.jpg?w=1216)
quick response:
Thanks for the feedback, but no, there are no plans to do anything further with this release.
Best regards,
Wayne
RWCC
Tsk!
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Just sent the following to Kino Lorber:
I just got the 2016 DVD of the 1990 Rick Wakeman version of Chaney's "PHANTOM". After enjoying the videotape for 20 years, I was disappointed that the new DVD had NO tints, the Christopher Lee intro was a special feature instead of at the beginning where it belongs, and, WORST, the final reel was inexplicably SO DARK you couldn't see the action. I wrote to Rick suggesting it needed an update, but was told there are "no plans". So I thought I'd contact some outfits who MIGHT be interested. This is my FAVORITE version of my FAVORITE silent, and it deserves better treatment.
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Tonight's movie:
"MARK OF THE VAMPIRE" (1935)
Allegedly, MGM was worried that this film might be the target of a lawsuit by Universal because it was too similar to "DRACULA". The fact that Tod Browning was director and Bela Lugosi was a vampire who dressed exactly like Dracula, and Lionel Barrymore is playing an all-too-obviously "Van Helsing" character may have been the reason. So instead, without anyone telling the cast until near the end of production, they actually wound up doing an uncredited remake of Browning's LOST film, "LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT". This included the twist ending, which allegedly, Bela Lugosi was DEEPLY offended by!
This was one of the later films I ever recorded off cable, from TCM, in fact, so my copy's pretty decent. (If I ignore the non-stop crackle from my current VCR.) I think my sensibilities concerning art keeps increasing, as I find myself more and more aware of what's "good" and "bad" about books, movies, and so on. In this case, we have a film that is VISUALLY every bit as good or better than the 1931 "DRACULA". However, the script, directing, acting and EDITING all seem to be appallingly bad! (NOT Jess Franco bad, for heaven's sake-- just seriously WAY below what one would ever expect from 1930's "MGM".)
Things do improve in the last 15 minutes-- the very part of the film that so many find "controversial", "annoying" or "a total let-down". It's the first 45 minutes that bugged me. Just about every scene seemed as if it was cut too short, they kept jumping from one scene to another to another... Then I read up on the film, and it seems the studio actually CUT somewhere between 15-20 MINUTES out of it after "disappointing" previews. GOOD GRIEF! I wonder if that explains it?
No one is quite sure what was removed... but it does appear a lot of it was comedy bits. There's already a lot of "comedy" bits in the film as it is, but in its current state, they seem out-of-place and off-kilter. Then there's Barrymore's exagerrated, over-the-top performance. Perhaps this worked better BEFORE the studio butchered the movie? Who can say?
A quick glance at Amazon showed the film is going for around $60.00-- which suggests it's currently OUT OF PRINT. Good thing my tape is one of the better ones in my collection.
Funny but true: this film has WAY better BATS than any Hammer Film ever did.
Here's some irony: BELA LUGOSI narrates the film's trailer, and has FAR MORE dialogue in it than he does in the movie. Also, I'd swear there's at least 2 clips from the film in it that are NOT in the finished film! Perhaps they were among the butcher cuts...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyvOdKm0eDo
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NICE write-up on the film...
https://www.classic-monsters.com/mark-of-the-vampire-mgm-1935/
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Well, I just got my 4th Hammer Blu-Ray in!
"THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE" (1963)
Despite watching Hammer Films since the late 60s, I had never seen "THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE" until today!! I just got in the brand-new Shout Factory Blu-Ray, which has 3 different versions of the film (including the extremely-dodgy TV butcher job), plus a pile of extras, including a documentary about James Bernard.
I'd seen Clifford Evans in THE PRISONER episode "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" (the mind-swapping story where Nigel Stock spend most of the story playing Number 6!), as well as "THE LONG SHIPS", 3 "AVENGERS" eps and a "SAINT". Plus, it turns out he was also the main villain in the 8th "SAINT" film, "THE SAINT MEETS THE TIGER" (1941) with Hugh Sinclair. (Not one of the better ones, but oh well.)
Ever since I started reading about this film some time ago, I've been looking forward to seeing it, as it was obvious to me it was meant to be the 3rd in Hammer's "Cult Of Vampirism" series, mentioned by Van Helsing in the 2 previous films. And only last night I listened to the audio commentary on "THE BRIDES OF DRACULA" disc, so that really warmed me up for this, as so much that was written but not used in that film wound up in this one instead. I've actually written stories about a character somewhat similar to Professor Zimmer, so seeing Evans in this was quite a kick for me. It only seems a shame they never did a follow-up with Zimmer & Van Helsing crossing paths.
(https://www.blackgate.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/kiss_of_vampire_poster-675x1024.jpg)
Cool review here:
https://www.blackgate.com/2017/10/07/kiss-of-the-vampire-1963-hammer-october/
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Today's acquisition:
Universal CLASSIC MONSTERS 30-Film Collection / BLU-RAY (1931-1956 / 2017)
An ASTOUNDING item. Pretty much "all" of the series films in ONE PLACE. You can buy 7 separate items, but it's much more convenient-- and actually cheaper-- to get them all in one go this way.
Not only are all these films together in one place, ALL brilliantly restored, with TONS of "extras"-- audio commentaries, documentaries, trailers, image galleries... amusingly, the 1931 Spanish "DRACULA" with Carlos Villarias-- mysteriously NOT mentioned in any of the promotional text-- is included as an "extra", so, really, it's 31 FILMS, not 30!
As some reviewer mentioned at Amazon (I bought mine elsewhere), these have the same "authoring defect" as Shout Factory. HOWEVER... just to COMPLICATE matters-- someone came up with a system where you can apparently "bookmark" the films so when you stop, you can pick up from that exact point later. (But WHY make this overly-complicated? WHAT THE HELL was wrong with just being able to hit "STOP" and then come back later?) The ANIMATED menus in their way seem as complex as the one on that Disney disc I bought last year. Too many designers forget the "KISS" rule: "KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID!"
(You can also buy a regular DVD version of this set. Might have saved a lot of confusion.)
If I knew of this box's existence last year, I would have gone after it before starting my current "1930s" marathon. As it is, I now have 4 films to go back and watch AGAIN, now on Blu-Ray, before moving on to what was the next film in my marathon... "Bride Of Frankenstein".
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91FbC+IYrpL._SL1500_.jpg)
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Last night, after having watched this STUNNING restoration of "DRACULA" (the only criticism I can make is that several scenes, the corners of the screen were TOO DAMN DARK to see anything, it wasn't that way on my rental 25 years back), I watched the Spanish "DRACULA" for only the 2nd time ever.
Most people tear the 3 leads a new one, but, NO real complaints here. Hey, NOBODY ELSE is Bela Lugosi... or Edward Van Sloan... or Dwight Frye. The actors playing Juan and Eva are arguably better in this version.
There's also the varying camera-angles, which I do feel STRONGLY improve the film. Not to mention, the doors that mysteriously open and close on their own in the castle are accompanied with LOUD creaking noises (TOTALLY freaking Renfield out!!). They're not in the Lugosi version. On the other hand, Martin's rifle shot if MUCH louder in the Lugosi film.
It's ALL the extra bits of dialogue that are really shocking. Since the story goes BOTH films used the SAME screenplay... I must conclude that Tod Browning pulled a "Clint Eastwood" and just began tearing out whole pages of dialogue to get it over with faster. But TOO MUCH important stuff got completely lost in the process!
Fans like me may have gotten used to the Lugosi film over the decades, but after seeing the Spanish film, the Lugosi film suddenly seems CHOPPY and butchered. Even if it isn't.
Now, in the Spanish version, Dracula asks if Renfield "burnt" all their correspondence. And he DOESN'T say, "I... dislike... MIRRORS. Van Helsing will explain." (That entire bit, in the Lugosi film, is spoken from OFF-CAMERA!)
Anyway... the important stuff that comes to mind... After consulting with Seward, Van Helsing says "I will come to England with you!" That whole scene takes place in a DIFFERENT country! When we find Mina has had a "dream", they say it happened when her father was away-- in SWITZERLAND. When they first question Renfield, he tells them about his education and credentials as a lawyer. This really sets up a lot of background on this guy who almost a cipher in the shorter film.
Earlier, at the theatre, the hypnotized usher calls out Dr. Seward to tell him he's got a phone call. Dracula interrupts him and says, "Excuse me, I couldn't help overhearing your name." Incredibly, in the Lugosi version, she DOESN'T MENTION Seward's name!! (I just watched it again TONIGHT!) WTF? Somebody should have SLAPPED Tod Browning for this.
There's a bit where John asks "What could have caused this?" and the house-keeper interrupts by announcing the arrival of a guest, "Count Dracula!" This is NOT in the Spanish version-- but a variation of it WAS in the Mel Brooks version!
Later, one of the nurses is put under Dracula's spell, so that she will remove the wolfbane from Mina's room. We see her do it, but we DON'T see her being mesmerized by Lugosi.
The Spanish version shows a down-hearted Van Helsing & John exiting the cemetery, having STAKED Lucy off-screen, before seeing Renfield running across Carfax Abbey's grounds. There's NO indication in the Lugosi version why they're suddenly outdoors. I've read years ago that in the screenplay, it was written that they went to Lucy's crypt and STAKED her-- a scene later seen in the Hammer version, the Brooks version, and several others. WAS that ever filmed in 1931?
Legend has it the epilogue was removed for reissues, and became lost. In the Lugosi version, Van Helsing says, "I will be along presently." WITH NO EXPLANATION. In the Spanish version, however, he says, "I will fulfill my promise to Mr. Renfield", and we see him walk back to Renfield's body.
CRAZY enough-- in one of the documentaries that accompanies the Blu-Ray (I forget which one), they actually had a WRETCHEDLY-bad segment of the missing epilogue!! In it, Edward Van Sloan addresses the audience, trying to calm them down after what they just witnessed. Then, the HILARIOUS punch line, is when he says, "As for all this, just remember..." And then he says the LAST thing you'd expect:
"...THEY DO EXIST!!"
😆
Criminal that this was CUT by the censors in the late 30s.
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Last night, I watched "DRACULA" again with the Steve Haberman audio commentary. He wrote Mel Brooks' "DRACULA", so I have a lot of respect for work he's done, but despite his passing on a lot of interesting stories and info, he got REALLY obnoxious in his commentary by spending a FULL THIRD of the time incessantly BAD-MOUTHING the George Melford SPANISH film.
I think both films are good, but BOTH films are flawed, in different ways. Haberman seemed pathological in his obsessive INSISTENCE that EVERY difference between the 2 films, Tod Browning made "the correct" choices while Melford DIDN'T. Having watched both films last Friday, I must say, I feel this is outright BULLSHIT.
And since last Friday, I've done even more reading about the film online, and I ran across a rather DISTURBING story that... apparently... when the film was reissued in 1936 (or was it 1938?), the Production Code saw 12-15 MINUTES cut from the film!!! The Spanish version was NOT reissued, so apparently, it was NEVER cut to pieces. But the Bela Lugosi film, which already looked "choppy" to me when watched back-to-back with its Spanish counterpart, I suddenly realized, may have been the victim of CENSORSHIP. And while he mentioned the loud groans when Renfield and Dracula die getting removed from the soundtrack, Haberman SUSPICIOUSLY does not mention ANYTHING ELSE from the film being cut.
I also watched the brief "restoration" documentary again. Now, I've seen-- and ENJOYED-- several of these in the last year. But this one, done by UNIVERSAL, where they talk about their 100th anniversary, is so overwhelmed with "style" and excessive editing and cutting from one speaker to another with quick CLIPS here and there, struck me as being incredibly ARROGANT, CONCEITED and FULL of itself. Like, this wasn't, "Here's what we did", it was more, "HEY, LOOK AT WHAT WE DID HERE!!!!!" And while they insist they didn't "add or subtract" anything, there's also one clip where they show before-and-after, mention "making the image lighter or darker", and clearly show a clip where the "after" is TOO DAMNED DARK to see what you're looking at.
I could put up with almost every instance of that in the film... EXCEPT the climax, where Dracula confronts Renfield on that DANGEROUS-looking curved stairway. You can barely make out ANY visual detail AT ALL.
The next time I watch the Lugosi film, I'm going to have to remember to CRANK the brightness ALL THE WAY UP.
I hope to GOD none of the remaining 29 FILMS I've yet to plow through have this problem. (The Spanish "DRACULA" sure as HELL DIDN'T.)
I think I need to do some digging, find the contact info for Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, and GIVE THEM SOME HELL.
👿
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I just sent the following to Universal Pictures Home Entertainment via their website form:
I just got the 2018 "CLASSIC MONSTERS COMPLETE 30-FILM COLLECTION" on Blu-Ray. LLLLOVE these movies. LOOOVE the package design! LOOOVE all the special features.
However...
The disc authoring problem with certain BLU-RAYs-- including these-- where, if you hit "STOP", it instantly goes back to before the menu, preventing you from easily taking a break in the middle of a film, is INEXCUSABLE. It's clearly a corporate decision designed to somehow SAVE money & increase profits, which, to me, is totally at odds with the whole idea of a Blu-Ray set like this being a "major improvement". You need to address this, BIG-TIME.
It almost makes me wish I'd bought the regular DVD version instead.
Second... while the Bela Lugosi "DRACULA" is spotless in its restoration, there are MULTIPLE places in the film where the picture around the edges and even in general becomes TOO DARK TO SEE ANYTHING. It actually flutters darker and lighter in the middle of some scenes. This was most annoying during the climax where Dracula confronts Renfield on that dangerous-looking curved stairway, where you CAN'T MAKE OUT half the visual detail!!
This problem DOES NOT EXIST on my 25-year-old copy of a videotape rental, and DOES NOT EXIST anywhere in the Spanish version. I hope to GOD none of the other movies were SCREWED UP in this fashion. I've been buying a growing number of stunning, crystal-clear restorations of films from the early 30s from a variety of companies, and NOT ONE of them has had this problem. HOW could you screw up such a "classic" film this way?
As a minor point... considering this does include the Spanish "DRACULA"... it's really 31 FILMS... not "30".
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where, if you hit "STOP", it instantly goes back to before the menu, preventing you from easily taking a break in the middle of a film, is INEXCUSABLE. It's clearly a corporate decision designed to somehow SAVE money & increase profits,
That would drive me crazy too.
But I don't see how that would increase profits.
But can't you just hit pause? Works for me, unless you are going away for hours.
I have many blue-ray movies burned to disc on my laptop,and I mostly watch them. When I then go back to disc, its noticeable that that a disc is physical, has to be spun with a physical motor and every time you restart the movie, there is a physical jerk. Disconcerting and there is probably some degree of wear and tear on the machine. Are Blue-rays spun faster than DVDs? Which may be why they are defaulted to stop.
Just a thought.
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One of the reviews at Amazon (I go there for info, then buy elsewhere-- HEEHEE) specifically mentioned if you leave it on pause for more than maybe 2 minutes, it goes back to the beginning.
In the last few years, I've very much gotten in the habit of watching films in 2 parts, with maybe a 5-hour intermission in the middle. (This way, I get to eat 2 meals with my movies.)
This Universal set has a bizarre "bookmarking" feature, allowing you to mark a film at ANY point, and pick up exactly from there. But why should I have to learn some COMPLEX procedure, instead of just hitting "stop"?
It was suggested the disc authoring problem (EVERY Shout Factory Blu-Ray also has it) somehow cuts production costs. I have ONE Disney film on Blu-Ray, and it's a LONG one. The menus on that are so excessively-complex and time-consuming to sit thru. Crazy thing... it came with a free regular DVD... so... I watched that instead. Kinda defeats the purpose of a Blu-Ray, doesn't it? ;D
With these Universals, I'm more concerned that parts of "DRACULA" were TOO DAMNED DARK, and when I watched "FRANKENSTEIN" last night, I went into the "advanced settings" on my TV and CRANKED the brightness and contrast up before I even started. (Sometimes I miss my old JVC TV. The controls on that remote were so WONDERFULLY simple!) I haven't seen this problem from any other manufacturer so far.
Honestly, that short "restoration" documentary they included, compared to every other such one I've seen so far, seemed really ARROGANT. Maybe that's the difference between someone restoring ONE classic film... and doing 31 FILMS all at once. Too "assembly line".
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I've just watched "FRANKENSTEIN" 4 times in 5 days! 3 times on the Blu-Ray, and once on my 25-year-old video copy of a rental. In this case, I'm glad to say, there's NOTHING wrong with the restoration. I had my TV brightness settings normal, and could see EVERYTHING. (Not like "Dracula")
I just finished watching the 2nd of the 2 audio commentaries, each of which deals with things a bit differently. Fascinating stuff, like how there were about 5 different stage versions, plus the script Robert Florey worked on, and how bits of each wound up in the finished film (some not quite coherently) while I noted some turned up in MUCH-LATER films.
For example, the chemical case in "CURSE" came from one of the plays, as did the part about the creature committing suicide by leaping off a cliff (used in both "FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN" and "FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY").
I also didn't realize that in some earlier version, "Victor Moritz" was Elizabeth's FORMER fiance, thrown over because of an arranged marriage with Henry. She wasn't really in love with Henry, but was planning to go thru with the marriage because of certain social commitments. Adds a whole different layer to the thing! When first previewed, the film ended with both the monster AND Henry DEAD at the windmill-- leaving the door open for Victor to marry the woman he really loved. But then the studio decided the film needed a "happier" ending. Oddly, that happy ending was REMOVED by the censors for the 1937 reissue, but restored decades later.
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Tonight, I re-watched "KISS OF EVIL" with the audio commentary. Fascinating stuff that commented n a VERY WIDE range of various Hammer Films! Among the details... it seems in the 80s there was this FIRE at Universal Studios, and many of the "TV" masters were completely destroyed. This included all the material shot for NBC-TV for this film. This explains why the TV butcher job was not remastered... it was submitted to Shout Factory by a fan, from a copy recorded off The Sci-Fi Channel (in fact, you can see their logo in the lower-right corner for the length of the film).
Another bit of insane trivia... in the final epilogue-- part of the "new" padding-- there's not 1 but 2 shots of the village, with a horse-drawn carriage driving thru it... which was reused from "THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN". So, as they said, Pater Cushing & Sandor Eles have a cameo, though it's virtually impossible to make out that it's them n the carriage.
They were discussing how for decades, in many cases, heavily-butchered TV versins of some films were all you could see. But NOW... many of those TV versions don't exist at all!
On the other hand, they did mention that BOTH drastically-different versions of the film "TWO-MINUTE WARNING" can be found on the same Shout Factory disc. Somehow, TV censors found the original theatrrical story SO OFFENSIVE, they reshot half the film, almost completely chaning the story... and that TV story, for decades, was the only version any one could see... even in video releases!
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They were discussing how for decades, in many cases, heavily-butchered TV versins of some films were all you could see. But NOW... many of those TV versions don't exist at all!
A lost made for TV movie I hope will one day be found is "The People Trap". A distopian sci fi film set in 2067 when the earth has a population of 20 Billion and a race is held with the winner getting the last free acre of ground in the USA.
The race is run across the worst irradiated and polluted parts of New York where cannibals and street gangs abound. Runners are killed for their shoes or the oxygen masks that help them survive the polluted air.
A very well made film for its time with many A list actors and special appearances by Pearl Baily and Phil Harris as a married couple who use their cabin cruiser to smuggle cigarettes into the city.
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MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932)
Like a "Bond" film, they pretty much THREW AWAY the original story, but at least some of the visual are cool. While Dupin becomes a medical student with a girlfriend in this, his relationship with his roommate & fellow student reminded me of Holmes & Watson if they knew each other in college.
Naturally, Bela Lugosi steals the picture. While Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) may have been obsessed but sane, "Dr. Mirakle" is a RAVING-MAD LUNATIC scientist in this!
I noted tonight the scene where people are getting drunk at the carnival seemed to have stepped out of "The Cask Of Amontillado"!
(http://pre-code.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/MurdersInTheRueMorgue7.png)
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I was reading about this film last night, and when I watched it again TONIGHT (comparing my 25-year-old VHS copy from AMC) I really noticed what some people were talking about. It seems the first sequence of the movie was SUPPOSED to be the 2 men killing each other at the waterfront, followed by Mirakle abducting the prostitute, tying her up in his lab, having her DIE on him, and his lamenting, "Will I never find what I'm looking for?"
All this was supposed to take place BEFORE Dupin, his friend Paul and their 2 girlfriends go to the carnival and see Mirakle and his ape "Erik". W--T--F-- was Universal thinking when they CHANGED they order of the scenes around??? It makes no sense for him to have found "Camille"-- followed her home-- but THEN kidnap the hooker. Apparently Robert Florey was pissed and spent the next several years making movies regularly at a different studio.
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Insomnia struck again today, so at 4 in the morning, I decided to watch "HORROR OF DRACULA" again. When I bought this Blu Ray last November, I hadn't seen the Hammer series for several years, and I suspect the main thing I noticed was how sharp the picture was, how intense the colors were, and the fact that for the first time ever I was seeing it in WIDESCREEN.
This morning, I saw EXACTLY what the problem was. Yeah, the ENTIRE MOVIE is way too dark. I actually spent the first 10 whole minutes of the film playing around with the settings of my TV, to NO AVAIL. It's impossible to pick up more detail by making things brighter, all you get is more solid GRAY instead of solid BLACK all over the place. WTF did they do to this film???
Suffice to say... this problem DOES NOT EXIST with either the "BRIDES OF DRACULA" or "KISS OF THE VAMPIRE" Blu Rays I've bought since.
The ONE thing I can attest that Warner did right... when you hit "STOP"... although the tiny word "resume" does NOT come up on your screen, when you hit "play", the damned movie PICKS UP RIGHT WHERE YOU LEFT OFF. Even-- when you SHUT OFF the machine! Turn it back on-- and it starts playing again, EXACTLY where you shut it off. EVERY single disc out there should work this way. EVERY buyer of discs should write to complain to companies whose discs DON'T do this. (I already have, to 3 different companies.)
Does anyone else think it's INSANE that at least 3 different adaptations of this story have been SCREWED UP on disc??? I was already intensely annoyed about the Universal "DRACULA" (1931), then I see this Warner Archive "DRACULA" (1958), and while I don't have it yet, I've heard horror stories about what was done with the John Badham "DRACULA" (1979), which I've had a VERY-FUZZY video copy recorded from HBO for the last 40 years. Apparently, that film, some IDIOT decided to drain out 75% of the color, trying to make it look like a B&W movie. My HBO copy isn't like that. I have read more recently that there's a new disc which has 2 different "mixes" of the film, the 2nd being the ORIGINAL, which I saw in theatres 3 TIMES.
What is WRONG with some of these people? They seem so proud of their HIGH-TECH computer remastering equipment... then they DON'T seem to know how to USE them properly. I've seen the same thing for decades with comic-book artists using Photoshop to do the coloring. They don't know when to "stop".
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THE MUMMY
(Universal Pictures / 1932)
I often find it fascinating to discover influences, in various directions. Such is the case here. Repeatedly, reviewers mention there is "no literary antecedent" for this film. The story is clearly inspired by the 1921 discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, which was the first-ever such tomb found that had not been plundered. On the other hand, they were not able to find the tomb of his wife, Nefertiri, and there were these incessant stories in the news about a supposed "curse", as various people connected with the expedition kept dying of bizarre causes.
AND YET... the "B Movie Buffs" site started the following: "The film also came on the tail end and is perhaps the most well-known of early Hollywood?s fascination with Egyptian storylines; early cinema had already produced over forty films on such material." They didn't bother to list any of the "over 40 films". That might prove interesting to look into.
Further, another site mentioned that the film bore an uncanny resemblence in spots to the 1890 short story, "The Ring Of Thoth", by Arthut Conan Doyle! This tells of a student of Egyptology who, while visiting the Louve in Paris, meets Sosra, a priest of Osiris who was born 3500 years ago in Egypt. He had discovered a remedy against death, and wanted to share it with his fiancee Atma, but she died before he could give it to her. I need to read this thing!
www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Ring_of_Thoth
2 different screenwriters worked on the film (separately). Initially about an Italian sorcerer named Cogliostro, the 2nd writer, John L. Balderston, changed the setting to Egypt, and named The Mummy "Im-Ho-Tep", after the real-life architect who designed the pyramids. Balderston had worked on both "DRACULA" and "FRANKENSTEIN", and wound up incorporating elements from the Lugosi film. Various scenes, characters and even a couple of the actors wound up doing variations of bits from the earlier movie. This included David Manners as the wimpy love interest, and Edward Van Sloan as the elder expert on the occult. The young man who goes stark raving mad at the beginning is a parallel for Renfield, while Professor Whemple is a counterpart of Dr. Seward, except in this story, he's the father of the young man, rather than the leading lady.
Zita Johann was a noted stage actress who had a very real belief in the occult and reincarnation, making her perfect casting as Helen Grosvenor. Karl Freund, the German cameraman who shot "METROPOLIS" and "DRACULA", directed the picture, and is described as an unholy terror to work with.
Some have described "DRACULA" as a love story, but anyone who's read the novel knows this is nonsense! The only romance in the novel is between Jonathan & Mina, and, Lucy and her 3 suitors (she winds up choosing Arthur, the rich titled lord-- of course). Any later version of "DRACULA" that involved reincarnation and tried to turn the lord of vampires into a romantic part was borrowing from THIS movie, NOT Bram Stoker's novel!
Watching this weekend, I found it notable that "THE MUMMY" not only inspired a growing list of other Egyptian-themed films, but vampire movies as well. Reincarnation is a huge part of "BLACULA" with William Marshall as African Prince Mamuwalde; the Dan Curtis and Francis Ford Coppopla "DRACULA"s both have Mina as the reincarnation of Dracula's dead wife.
But further, I noticed some influence of this film in Hammer's 1958 "HORROR OF DRACULA"! The first character to see the "monster" winds up dead in the first act. Once Helen's memories of her past lives have been reawakened in her, Im-Ho-Tep tries to summon her to him. Unable to locate where he's set up shop, Muller decides that the next time Im-Ho-Tep tries to call her, they let her go, and follow her, so they can find him, and destroy him-- a scene that strongly parallels one with Van Helsing & Arthur Holmwood (Peter Cushing & Michael Gough). Finally, at the end, following a flash of light, we SEE Im-Ho-Tep TURN TO DUST before our eyes, an act that was repeated with Christopher Lee 26 years later.
I'm happy to say Universal's Blu-Ray is CRYSTAL-CLEAR, while the sound only has bits of hiss here and there. I only wish it didn't have that disc authoring problem. Re-watching one of my 2 videotapes from the 90s (a copy of a rental, I think), the picture's fuzzy, there's damage everywhere, the sound is hissy throughout, and my TV kept fluttering at various times. Well, I'll never have to put up with that copy again.
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7gegJHMpYcA/VDnKwRi7EeI/AAAAAAAAFBg/BVGCmBw7-mY/s1600/The%2Bend.jpg)
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They didn't bother to list any of the "over 40 films". That might prove interesting to look into.
well one of them would have been Cecil B. DeMille's 'The Ten Commandments' 1923.
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THE MUMMY
(Universal Pictures / 1932)
I often find it fascinating to discover influences, in various directions. Such is the case here. Repeatedly, reviewers mention there is "no literary antecedent" for this film. The story is clearly inspired by the 1921 discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, which was the first-ever such tomb found that had not been plundered. On the other hand, they were not able to find the tomb of his wife, Nefertiri, and there were these incessant stories in the news about a supposed "curse", as various people connected with the expedition kept dying of bizarre causes.
AND YET... the "B Movie Buffs" site started the following: "The film also came on the tail end and is perhaps the most well-known of early Hollywood?s fascination with Egyptian storylines; early cinema had already produced over forty films on such material." They didn't bother to list any of the "over 40 films". That might prove interesting to look into.
Further, another site mentioned that the film bore an uncanny resemblence in spots to the 1890 short story, "The Ring Of Thoth", by Arthut Conan Doyle! This tells of a student of Egyptology who, while visiting the Louve in Paris, meets Sosra, a priest of Osiris who was born 3500 years ago in Egypt. He had discovered a remedy against death, and wanted to share it with his fiancee Atma, but she died before he could give it to her. I need to read this thing!
www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Ring_of_Thoth
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7gegJHMpYcA/VDnKwRi7EeI/AAAAAAAAFBg/BVGCmBw7-mY/s1600/The%2Bend.jpg)
I've read that in part the screen play, especially the visuals, for "the Mummy" was inspired by this short story
https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v16n03_1930-09_sas/page/n69/mode/1up
"A Visitor from Egypt" by Frank Belknap Long.
Another source of inspiration was the Bram Stoker novel "the Jewel of Seven Stars".
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Isn't it amazing how people in Hollywood will so often completely avoid crediting certain sources of inspiriation?
Like George Lucas was happy to mention Akira Kurosawa, and Flash Gordon, and perhaps even legends of King Arthur, but years later strongly stressed Joseph Campbell (which I'm pretty sure had NOTHING to do with it), and yet never once mentioned Jack Kirby.
Doing my Poe comics blog project, I've found a growing number of comics which had original elements NOT in Poe's stories, which later wound up verbatim in Poe movies. Someone involved in the films HAD to have seen some of those comics-books!
I finally got started writing again, and the story I'm working on, I'm hoping when it's finished, I'll include a whole LIST of "acknowledgements".
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I've just watched "THE MUMMY" (1932) again with the 2nd of the 2 audio commentaries. This one discussed at great length the techniques of Karl Freund, as well as the evolution of the screenplay, and the likelihood that Freund collaborated with the credited scriptwriter John L. Balderston, who had earlier worked on both "DRACULA" and "FRANKENSTEIN".
While inspired by the 1922 excavation of King Tut's tomb (famous in the papers for its alleged "curse"), and very likely also borrowing from Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Ring Of Thoth" (1890), it started life as an unused screenplay named "Cagliostro", which is described as a very "pulp magazine" thriller with lots of "psuedo-science".
Balderston's massive rewrite borrowed heavily from his own version of "Dracula", but, something I never was aware of before tonight, the entire narrative of the tragic love spread across time appears to be a downright BLATENT swipe & inversion of H.Rider Haggard's 1886-87 novel "SHE", filmed multiple times, including by RKO in 1935!!! Balderston was in fact working on a screenplay for that story for Universal at the SAME time he was working on "THE MUMMY", and in the long run, Universal decided not to film it, but instead, sold the screen rights-- and Balderston's work-- to RKO, who somehow FAILED to credit Balderston for the film!!
So many horror fans often confuse Hammer's "THE MUMMY" as a remake of Universal's 1932 classic, when instead it's really a distillation of at least 3 of their later films-- "THE MUMMY'S HAND", "THE MUMMY'S TOMB" and "THE MUMMY'S GHOST". The reincarnation sub-plot and the climax where the Mummy carries the girl right into the swamp came straight from "...GHOST".
But now I realize, Hammer did a film that parallels "THE MUMMY"-- and it's their version of "SHE"!!!
Now I have more to track down. As it turns out, RKO's "SHE" came out the same day as MGM's "MAD LOVE". Both are now on my "wanted" list. I'm especially interested since I also just learned that "SHE" was considered a "lost" film for decades!! Is this a great time to be buying old movies or what?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/35/She_%281935%29.jpg)
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There's a colorized version of the 1935 She floating around YouTube. According to IMDB, "The sets, costumes, etc., were all prepared for a color film. At the last minute RKO pulled producer Merian C. Cooper's budget, so he was forced to shoot the film in black and white. Friend Ray Harryhausen and Legend Films later colorized the film as a tribute to Cooper." Apparently the film survived because Buster Keaton had a copy of the original print "stored in his garage." Keaton gave it to a film historian for preservation.
I'm not keen on colorized b&w movies, but I must say this is a pretty good job. The movie itself has its moments though overall it's a bit dull. Helen Gahagan is nowhere near as bad as she was reputed to be. Neither is she particularly good. It's worth the watch anyway.
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Glenn Erickson at DVD Savant wrote in 2007:
H. Rider Haggard's 1887 novel She: A History of Adventure is said to be the first of the modern 'lost world' escapist successes, although we wonder why Jules Verne's 'Extraordinary Voyages' don't qualify. Acknowledged Haggard-influenced works include Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1912, a remote plateau in Venezuela), Edgar Rice Burroughs' At the Earth's Core (1914, a land called Pellucidar at the center of the earth), Pierre Beno?t's L'Atlantide (1919, an Atlantean culture discovered under the sands of the Sahara) and James Hilton's Lost Horizon (1933, a refuge from war in the Himalayas). The format has persisted in Science Fiction and fantasy movies, from Universal's anemic The Mole People to the abysmal The Incredible Petrified World.
NOW I'm even more keen to get ahold of this, as I see it relates directly to a project I'm currently working on!
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The movie itself has its moments though overall it's a bit dull. Helen Gahagan is nowhere near as bad as she was reputed to be. Neither is she particularly good. It's worth the watch anyway.
"A bit dull" describes the film of "KING SOLOMON'S MINES" I saw a couple decades back. I don't know how many (few?) stories Haggard wrote, but Hollywood seems hell-bent on making the same 3 or 4 of them over and over and over.
I've just been scouring multiple websites looking for info. It seems Helen Gahagan only ever made one movie, then married Melvyn Douglas, then later had a Senate race. She went up against that arch-bastard Richard Nixon, who smeared her as "a Communist" (the same thing S*** L** called Arnold Drake). That miserable MF is directly responsible for SO MUCH HELL going on in this country right now (since he was the one who pushed thru a Supreme Court judge who believed the INSANE idea that "money is free speech", thereby making BRIBERY of public officials LEGAL), I'd love to read some day that his grave has been violated ("The Haunted Palace" style).
ANYWAY... that just gives me one more reason to wanna get a copy of this film. ;D
My "wanted" list just keeps getting longer. It's gonna be a real FUN summer, I think!
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THE INVISIBLE MAN
(Universal Pictures / 1933)
Just submitted to the IMDB:
Edgar Barrier__Radio Announcer__(uncredited)
In the last year, I've watched "Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror" (1942) 3 times. According to the IMDB, Edgar Barrier was the uncredited "Voice Of Terror" heard on the radio. I've just watched "The Invisible Man" twice in 2 days. I would swear it's the same voice! This would be especially fitting, as the train crash in "The Invisible Man" was reused in "Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror"!
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In the 1933 Invisible Man the IM's voice belonged to Claude Rains. According to TCM (via IMDB) one of the reasons Rains was cast was his clear speaking voice, which could be easily understood even if muffled.
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Of course!
But I'm referring to the voice that came ON THE RADIO when all those people were dancing, warning them of the invisible man on the loose, and that they should lock their doors, etc.
I might never have noticed it or thought about it, if I hadn't been watching the Basil Rathbone films 3 times over the last 2 years.
As it turns out, his 2 earliest listings at the IMDB were a 1930 movie and then episodes of THE MERCURY THEATRE in 1938.
I just looked again, and someone was nice enough to add my info to his page, as well as THE INVISIBLE MAN. I've seen instances where one has to add credits in on both ends manually. An actor might have a movie listed on his page, but he might not be listed on the movie page, etc. Somebody there must be on the ball this time.
It was "funny" (actually annoying) the last time I added some info, there were 4 movies based on the same novel... but they only added the "connections" info to 3 of the films. The 1st of the 4, is STILL incorrectly credited to the WRONG novel. (Go figure.)
Hollywood has this long-standing "tradition" of using the name of one book but the story from a different one. It seems in the case of THE INVISIBLE MAN, Universal had 12 different "treatments" all based on Philip Wylie's THE MURDERER INVISIBLE (1931), and it was only the final screenplay where the writer went out of his way to get ahold of a copy of Wells' novel, knowing full well that Wells had "final script approval". ;D
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"BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN"
(Universal Pictures / 1935)
It's been a few years since I half-heartedly played my (mostly-awful videotapes of) Hammer Frankensteins. Now armed with the (slightly-defective) Universal Blu-Rays, I am slowly working my way thru their "CLASSIC MONSTERS" box set. Tonight, arguably, the peak of their entire output from that era.
As I was a few years ago, I am once again struck my the idea that had this film actually been remade by Hammer, the casting might have been very interesting...
Francis Matthews -- Henry Frankenstein
Peter Cushing -- Dr. Pretorius
Christopher Lee -- The Monster
Michael Gough -- The Burgomeister (replacing Michael Ripper from the previous film-- HEEHEEHEE)
Karl -- Patrick Troughton
Somebody here will have to suggest casting ideas for Elizabeth and Mary Shelly.
The scene where "Karl" (Dwight Frye) goes out and MURDERS a woman in the street to bring back a fresh heart, looks like it stepped right out of "FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED".
What a misguided bit of dialogue:
"We need a young woman victim of SUDDEN death. Can you DO it?"
Later they talk about "accidental" death, but that's NOT what Henry said to Karl! When he returns, he absent-mindedly mutters...
"It was very FRESH!"
Pretorius interjects, "It was a POLICE matter. but let's not worry about that NOW..."
We learn earlier that Karl is already a murderer. When he's tossed right off the toof of the tower, he had it coming. Oddly, we never see what happens to his pal Ludwig.
One of my favorite bits is still Pretorius having lunch in the underground mausoleum, laughing hysterically. The Monster stumbles out of the shadows...
"Nnn."
"Oh. I thought I was alone!"
THAT'S JUST NOT a normal reaction!!!
I still think one of the most bizarre things about the film is that nearly every set and character from the previous film has been replaced with something or someone else (escept for Colin Clive & Boris Karloff), and the mountain-top watch-tower, though greatly expanded, is the FIRST set in the film that actually LOOKS like it did in the previous film.
What a wild, crazy movie.
The accompanying documentary, seems to be SCREAMING that it contains not a single reference to MEL BROOKS. Tsk!
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This one's for you Prof.
I don't know which film they got the images from but apparently a silent version of Nosferatu. Prof, you will know.
But the quality of the restored prints!. Makes me realize just what quality the original silent films actually had. Would be also good to hear the original organ soundtrack. For those who don't know - while the films were without a sound 'track', music was written for them and played live by an organist.
If you like Surf/Ventures/Shadows music you will like that too.
From Turkey
taner ?ng?r, 43.75 -cihangir vampiri
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wVLqmFzw9k
Enjoy!
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I have a restored version of Metropolis and the cinematography and artistic imagery are astounding for any era of film making.
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Tonight's film: "CHALLENGE THE DEVIL" (1963)
Now this is some weird S***!!! I'll just copy & paste a description I found online:
"The movie's working title was "Faust '63" due to director Veggezzi being influenced by Goethe's play "Faust".
Filmed as a gothic movie under the title of "Katarsis" in 1963. Its production company "I films della mangusta" went bankrupt shortly after filming. The movie, which was about 90 minutes long, was bought by production company "Eco Film". They cut out half an hour and added newly shot scenes involving gangsters, a monk and a cabaret dancer. The finished product was 78 minutes long, retitled "Challenge the Devil" and released in 1965.
Sir Christopher Lee's voice was dubbed into Italian by another actor for this movie."
I found it had some very interesting photography, and a lot of mood. The schizo nature of the narrative is explained above, as 2 different writers, directors, directors of photography & music composers were involved, and only ONE actor came back to shoot the new scenes, the "troublemaker" who later became a monk, and who tell the original story as one long flashback.
After the film, I watched an interview with someone who discussed the life of the film's writer & director, and in a sort of sad/tragic way, I could actually relate to some bits. You had a guy who was obsessed with doing work, had long stretches of not being able to, then hooked up with a producer, who ran out of money partway into the project. It was decided the film had "no market" after it was shown only once, and then another outfit acquired the film and did the major reshoots. The original director tried to sue, but the contract prevented him from doing so. Later, he stopped caring. Later still the 2nd company went bankrupt, and he attempted to BUY back the film, but was unable to. He then lost all interest in film-making, became a recluse, a poet and sometime publisher of what was accused of being "pornography", though certain police and local elite defended him and it was decided it was an "art book". He also developed an obsession with LEFT-WING politics, and joined a group of Marxist-Leninist Communists, who were fierce enemies of Trotsky-style "communists" (otherwise known as BOLSHEVIKS, criminals posing as "communists"-- MOST of the world, and especially people in the USA, seem to have NO idea at all of the huge difference).
So far, Severin Films did an INCREDIBLE job with such a (deservedly?) obscure film.
Oh, by the way... NO "errors" in the disc authoring. Once again, small outfits are doing a BETTER job than the "big boys".
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I was just today doing some research about the 1922 "NOSFERATU". It seems there's been multiple versions put out on the market, and multiple restorations, with several different cuts and several different music scores. One particular website, "Brenton Film_com", went into EXTREME detail, and listed what they considered the "top 5" discs currently available. But here's the crazy thing. 4 of them are REGION B only (England & Europe), and the one that isn't, from Kino Lorber, apparently was processed in a way that, to an obsessive fanatic about quality, is somehow a TOTAL BOTCH-JOB. My jaw dropped on reading this.
The writer was strongly urging people to AVOID the Kino discs at all costs, and to bite the bullet and buy a "region-free player". But some of us can't do that so easily. (Regular region-free DVD players aren't bad, but a region-free Blu-Ray player gets REAL pricy!!!)
Crazy enough, a different site, "DVD Beaver", seems to think the British "Eureka" disc is region 0! I actually have at least one disc that is allegedly "PAL" (Europe system), but because the disc itself was "Region 0", will play on my machine. Go figure.
I think I've decided to go for a USED 2001 DVD, from Image Entertainment, which has an earlier restoration on it. I found a 2001 review of that particular disc, and it heaped the highest praise on it. Good enough for me...
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Finding some crazy S______ our there!
Here is Spanish film Los Monstruos Del Terror - Assignment Terror in English - a real horror smorgasborg!
Starring Michael Rennie, so you know its worth watching. And a great soundtrack!
Synopsis!
Aliens from a dying world plot to conquer earth by praying on man?s superstitions. Bringing two dead scientists (Michael Rennie and Karin Dor) back to life, they use their knowledge to re-animate various earth monsters, including the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky, Frankenstein?s monster (both played by Jacinto Molina), the mummy Tao-Tet, and the vampire Count de Meirhoff.
Actually it's not bad at all!
Assignment Terror 1970
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1CYetsu2O0
Enjoy!
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I must have this around here somewhere... but someone at the Hammermaniacs FB group reccomended an online store to me that specializes in rare & import films. And sure enough, they made a big deal at their site saying they were THE #1 source for all things from MEXICO!!
As you might expect, they had a pile of "SANTO" films, and many other things.
Ah, here it is... "Creature Features".
I think some of their products are "quality" DVD-Rs of films you just can't get any other way (similar to "Rare Films And More" or "Sinister Cinema").
One of the items that caught my attention was "FRANKENSTEIN VS. BARUGON", which includes, as an extra, the "alternate" ending, which I saw photos of in Famous Monsters magazine decades ago, and, which ONCE-- just once-- turned up on Philly's channel 17, after the commercial break. They used to run odd things to fill out the 2-hour slot when the film was running under.
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One of my favorite Michael Rennie films is CYBORG 2087. It's has almost the identical plot to THE TERMINATOR, but I like it a LOT more!
Funny enough, during the climax, there's a piece of "KPM Library" stock music that was also used on the 1968 episodes of SPIDER-MAN. I forget which one, but there was no mistaking it.
I gotta get a copy of it on DVD one of these days.
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One of my favorite Michael Rennie films is CYBORG 2087. It's has almost the identical plot to THE TERMINATOR, but I like it a LOT more!
I've often thought the same things about this film. Another inspiration for Terminator was likely "Colossus...the Forbin Project". Which mirrors almost exactly the Skynet takeover of missile defense systems in the USA and Russia.
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One of my favorite Michael Rennie films is CYBORG 2087. It's has almost the identical plot to THE TERMINATOR, but I like it a LOT more!
I've often thought the same things about this film. Another inspiration for Terminator was likely "Colossus...the Forbin Project". Which mirrors almost exactly the Skynet takeover of missile defense systems in the USA and Russia.
OH, man, I only saw that once, and it was too depressing and disturbing for me to ever wanna sit thru it again.
Famously, there were 2 OUTER LIMITS scripts that Harlan Ellison sued James Cameron over...
"Soldier" and "Demon With A Glass Hand"
However, there was a 3rd episode, by Anthony Lawrence-- "The Man Who Was Never Born"-- which, arguably, supplied EVEN MORE of the story. It's about a mutant in a devastated future who comes back thru time to KILL the man who caused the biological disaster. But he finds out he's too early... the man who did it hasn't been born yet. He meets that man's eventual mother, who's engaed to marry an army officer. But she falls for the gentle man from the future, and they run off together. They go to the future... where, because time has changed, HE vanishes. Yikes!
Lawrence never bothered suing Cameron. ;D
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By the way-- I'm not 100% sure about this-- but, I would almost swear-- there's a location, a certain rooftop where some action takes place-- that is the IDENTICAL rooftop in both CYBORG 2087 and Al Adamson's DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN.
It's not as famous as those rocks from the STAR TREK episode "Arena". Those appeared in DOZENS of films and TV shows.
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I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment... or something.
Last Friday, I had trouble keeping my eyes open... which is a real problem when you're trying to read subtitles. Well, today, I watched this again, with a couple of breaks to help keep myself going. And whatta ya know? I managed to get a pretty decent review for the IMDB out if it!
CHALLENGE THE DEVIL (1963 / 1965)
Pre-Psychedelic Haunted House Romp *** (of 10)
6 drunken wastrels invade a seemingly-empty castle for a party, but find an old man who claims to have sold his soul to the Devil to prolong the life of the woman he loved. He offers them all the riches of the castle if they can find her now-dead body and give it a proper burial... but, this leads to what seems unending hellish torment, as the owner of the castle may be possessed by The Devil himself!
I came away from this feeling like it was at least 5 years ahead of its time, more the sort of movie some film-makers who'd done too much drinking, drugs & sex would have knocked out. The location work is very nice, there's lots of excellent, spooky photography, and the eerie music is very fitting. The problem is, the story itself would have probably have worked better as an episode of some TV anthology like "THRILLER".
The history of the film is quite crazy. It actually started out at 90 minutes, but was then acquired by a different company, who cut 30 minutes out and then filmed 19 minutes' worth of entirely-new material as what seems a totally-unrelated framing sequence, with the original "haunted house" story presented in flashback! Even the 60 minutes of the "haunted house" seems too long and stretched out, which is a shame, as with a better script or MUCH-tighter editing, this might have had the making of something pretty cool.
I was actually reminded of no less than 3 later (and all better) films. First, "DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS" (1966), for the way a group of idiots barge into Dracula's castle and find a table with food and drink already waiting for them (I wonder if THIS film might possibly have inspired that scene in THAT one?). Then there's "HORROR HOUSE" (1969) with Frankie Avalon, which I saw on a big screen way back, and, the more-recent and rather infamous "HALLOWEEN: RESSURECTION" (2002), with more idiots stumbling around a dark house. "KATARSIS" (the original Italian name of this thing) makes more sense on that score, because it's easier to believe all this crazy stuff going on in a full-sized CASTLE rather than a mid-sized suburban house.
I'm sure the main draw here is Christopher Lee, who plays 3 different roles in under 10 minutes of screen time, but sadly was dubbed into Italian by another actor (and it appears this was never dubbed into English by anybody, so get ready to read subtitles-- heh).
It's really a schiophrenic experience, between the castle scenes, the "crime" plot added 2 years later, and the long nightclub scenes, which includes a pair of dancers, a cute singer (who oddly enough reminds me of a young Markie Post!) and an overweight and not-pretty solo dancer who's trying to blackmail someone. Sonia Scotti, the cute singer, who's completely out-of-place in the film, I would have asked out to dinner given a chance.
As part of "The Eurocrypt Of Christopher Lee" box set, Severin Films did a FABULOUS job on this deservedly-obscure film. As I used to joke about the Ralph Bakshi-produced episodes of "SPIDER-MAN" (1968-70), this probably makes more sense if you're on drugs while watching it.
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"Bloody Disgusting" does a nice review of the Eurocrypt box set.
bloody-disgusting.com/home-video/3651964/severin-films-unearthed-buried-gems-starring-christopher-lee-massive-blu-ray-box-set/
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CRYPT OF THE VAMPIRE (1964)
Gorgeous Gothic Mystery ******** (of 10)
A Count's daughter is having nightmares, and he fears she may be possessed by an evil ancestor out for revenge against his family. While his house-keeper uses occult rites to try and get at the truth, he hires a librarian-historian to search thru his books looking for the same. And meanwhile, following a brief road accident, a woman drops off her daughter for a few days of rest. WHO is the reincarnation of the evil "witch", and how many will die before the truth comes out?
Italian director Camillo Mastrocinque (absurdly credited as "Thomas Miller") does one of the most BEAUTIFUL horror movies I've ever seen. The locations, the photography, the lighting, the sound-- this is a stunning film from start to finish, though very old-fashioned when it comes to pacing and presentation.
Christopher Lee gets one of his rare opportunities to play the hero, and unlike the 2 earlier films in "The Eurocrypt Of Christopher Lee" box set, he actually got to DUB his own voice for the English version. (The Italian-language version is also nice, and I thought the voice of the young romantic lead was better in Italian than in English. The dialogue seems IDENTICAL between the English dub and the English subtitles.)
This turns out to be the 3rd film version of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla" (1872), although I can only attest to ONE scene taken straight out of that story, which happens about a third of the way in. Given that this very loose adaptation is more MYSTERY story than supernatural thriller, it might be best enjoyed if one doesn't know the source material, as that ONE scene kinda spoils the mystery (I found myself yelling at my TV, "CARMILLA!" --heh).
One of the best parts has to be, after spending two-thirds of the movie trying to track down the face of the evil ancestor, the count and historian finally do-- then, leave the audience in non-stop suspense by REFUSING to say who it is, until the last few minutes of the story! It's a wonderful example of keeping the audience guessing.
Early-on, the scene where the castle-bound count hires a historian reminded me of the opening act of Hammer's "DRACULA" (1958), except, it makes FAR more sense here! The creepy old housekeeper delving into reincarnation reminded me of Grayson Hall in "NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS" (1971), while the plot of an executed witch determined to come back from the grave for revenge reminded me a bit of Roger Corman's "THE HAUNTED PALACE" (1963), which itself I am sure inspired Dan Curtis' 1971 film.
This being an Italian film, it turned out there was only one other actor in it I'd seen before-- John Karlsen, who turns up at the end as Franz. I'd seen him as "the sachristy" in my favorite Italian horror film, "THE CHURCH" (1989)!
Severin Films did an absolutely STELLAR job on their 2021 Blu-Ray, with crystal-clear picture & sound (both languages). Even the English trailer looks spotless, when so many included as extras are not cleaned up at all.
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Tonight's movie:
NOSFERATU, EINE SYMPHONIE DES GRAUENS
(NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF TERROR)
(Jofer-Atelier Berlin-Johannisthal /
Prana-Film GmbH / Germany / 1922)
2 separate online articles described and compared multiple restorations & Blu-Rays of this, and came to the conclusion that the 4 best discs were all ONLY Region 2 / UK, while ripping the recent Kino Lorber disc to pieces due to some bizarre and seemingly-inexcusable technical problem that they felt should never have been allowed on the market. They also highly reccomended upgrading to a REGION-FREE player. Well, I'm sure as hell not going to do that any time soon... so, I opted for Image Entertainment's 2000 DVD with a 1991 restoration, until someone in the US does a better job.
I have no complaints. Sure, the clean-up (assuming there was one) makes it look like it could still use one (lots of scratches and damage everywhere), but nowhere near as bad as some of the Sherlock Holmes films I've gotten ahold of lately. I'm decades overdue getting a copy of this at all, so this one'll do for now.
It's got 2 different musical scores-- a "modern" one by "The Silent Orchestra" which I just heard, which is gorgeous and, in some spots, THRILLING as all get out, plus, an organ score, and, an audio commentary (something to look forward to next week!).
There's also "The Nosferatu Tour", where they compare all the locations to how they look today, and it seems only ONE location in the film is unrecognizable now, the rest, pretty much UNCHANGED in the last 100 years!
This is only the 3rd time I've ever seen this-- the 1st was on TCM (I think) and the 2nd was on Youtube (a few years back). Watching it tonight, I picked up a few things I hadn't quite before. In this version of the story, they combined Harker's boss Mr. Hawkins ("Knock") with Renfield, making this perhaps the first time someone had tried to "fix" Stoker's outright neglect of never explaining (to my satisfaction) what the HELL Renfield was even doing in the novel. (When I read the book, I came away strongly feeling his editor should have insisted he include an explanation-- or, REMOVE the character entirely. Each film that features him "explains" him in its own different fashion, with the Hammer film removing him from the story completely... at least, until one of the sequels.)
Also, the scene where Harker ("Hutter") walks out of the castle, crosses the courtyard, and enters another area from the outside, and goes down to find the vampire's coffin, would seem to me to have MOST definitely been the inspiration for the similar scene in the 1958 Hammer film!!! I don't think I've ever run across anyone else pointing this out, and I now rank it as one more instance of Hammer being influenced by an earlier GERMAN version of a story they were later adapting themselves. (Hammer's "HOUND" borrowed from 2 different earlier German "HOUND"s.)
I can see myself at some future point now doing a new "Dracula" marathon, and finally being able to include THIS film with all the others.
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CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD
(Italy / 1964)
Fun flick!
I just watched the "career interview" with producer Paul Malansky on the Severin Films Blu-Ray. This had to be one of the most mesmerizing, mind-blowing interviews I've ever sat thru! I knew virtually NOTHING about this guy, and was amazed at all of his stories, how so many things in his life and career connected, all the people and projects he crossed paths with or were involved in. Wow.
Among other things... as a kid in the 60s, I always connected in my head "JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS" and "THE LONG SHIPS", as both involved sea voyages in ancient times. Never would have guessed that someone was involved in BOTH movies!
Then there was the story about "RACE WITH THE DEVIL"... and how "POLICE ACADEMY" came about (with Hugh Wilson's involvement-- I just finished watching the "WKRP" DVD box set twice). Hearing about someone who followed his dreams this way felt very inspirational, as it's something I've tried to do (not always with success) in my own life.
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DIE SCHLANGENGRUBE UND DAS PENDEL
("The Snake The Pit And The Pendulum")
(THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM / English title)
(Constantin Film / West Germany / 1 hr. 24 min.)
Okay, this is one BAT-S*** crazy film!! Insane story involving torture and murder, attempted immortalty, a curse, seeming reincarnation, a haunted castle, a blood serum, and yet another tribute to Poe's "The Pit And The Pendulum".
Given the main villain and the main hero-- played by Christopher Lee & Lex Barker-- I can't help but want to nick-name the movie, "COUNT DRACULA vs. LORD GRAYSTOKE", especially as the hero is an orphan who starts out unaware of his true heritage. It's a shame Tarzan producer Sol Lesser was so enamored of the dumbed-down Johnny Weismuller version, as I've read Barker was one of the most-intelligent people to ever work in Hollywood, and would have made an excellent "educated" ape-man.
The locations are cool (and apparently haven't changed much since it was made), the interior sets are jaw-droppingly wild in an amusement park "haunted house" kind of way, and the COLORS look like they stepped right out of a Ralph Bakshi-Gray Morrow SPIDER-MAN cartoon. According to BluRay_com, Severin previously included the film in an earlier box set, but that version was taken from a pair of very-dodgy 16 mm prints, while THIS massive upgrade is a brand-new 4K scan from the original negative. WOW!!
I said last year if I was ever gonna see these films, The Eurocrypt Of Christopher Lee box set was the way to do it, and I've been proven correct. LOTS of extras, I must say Severin really batted this out of the park.
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Just re-watched "THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM" again, this time in GERMAN. As the audio commentary mentioned, the English version removed the music over the prologue & opening credits, and very oddly, replaced the moody music over the finale with the "elevator music" heard earlier in the film.
I'm now convinced MUCH this film was inspired by "D:POD". You have 4 people in a carriage riding to a castle, a scene where people are stranded, a rather "earthy" clergyman with a weapon, a really spooky manservant who's carrying out his long-dead master's wishes, a knife slashing causing blood to drop on the dead corpse bringing it back to life... HONESTLY, if so very, very much of the story wasn't so drastically-different, Hammer might almost have been tempted to cry "PLAGIARISM"!!
And yet between the two, I find "TORTURE CHAMBER" to be FAR MORE fun to watch, and incredibly-gorgeous to look at on top of that. The COLORS in this put anything Hammer ever did to shame!
Perhaps to return such a "favor", Lee gets to repeat his line "At last my vengeance is COMPLETE!" in either 1 or 2 of the later Draculas. What goes around comes around!
Funny thing-- the way this disc is designed, you can actually "toggle" back and forth between the ENGLISH and GERMAN soundtracks without stopping the film! Never ran across something like that before.
😆
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DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS (the saga continues)
Mind-boggling. I've just watched this thing for the 5th time in 8 DAYS!!! The 1st time was the UK version on the Blu-Ray. The following night, I watched the 1980s videotape I recorded off some local commercial channel, which was not only in fullscreen, but had HORRIBLE picture quality. (Oddly, it was ALMOST uncut.) 3 days later, I watched the US version on the Blu-Ray with the 1st audio commentary, and 2 days after that, the UK version with the 2nd audio commentary. (You can watch either UK or US version your choice of 4 ways apiece. Crazy fun, HMM?)
Just now I watched my early-2000s videotape. This is the one I'd been watching over and over as part of running the entire series, about once a year for around a decade. And boy was I shocked. I could have SWORN this was recorded off of TCM (as the 1958 film was). NOPE!!! It was actually from AMC-- no doubt, just before AMC stopped being a "real" movie channel and started running COMMERCIAL BREAKS. So, apart from the opening and closing credits-- which were in widescreen-- the ENTIRE rest of the film was in FULLSCREEN!!! Which means, until one week ago, I had NEVER really seen this film in its visual ENTIRETY. Sheesh. And as I've noticed, most times, even a really BAD film is better, if seen IN WIDESCREEN.
The tape, compared to the disc, was slightly FUZZY. However, I find myself in total agreement with ALL 6 online website reviews I read last week, in that BOTH the UK and US versions on the disc are TOO DARK in different places. The print AMC ran 20-21 years ago, ISN'T. You can SEE EVERYTHING. And it's not "faded" looking. It just seems the way it's supposed to... except for having about 2/3rds of the visual image MISSING on the ends (heh).
Now, arguably, some shots in the film could use some darkening down. In "...PRINCE OF DARKNESS", Dracula's castle looks EVEN NEWER, CLEANER and BRIGHTER than it did in 1958. And to me, Dracula's castle should NEVER look this way! People love to BITCH about "SCARS OF DRACULA", but, to me, Dracula's castle in that rather tacky film looks more like it should than it does in any other Hammer film. Here... well, it's no wonder I read someone sarcastically refer to this film as "Dracula's Bed And Breakfast". It does look more like a fancy hotel than an 600-year-old castle with no servants around to keep it clean.
Somehow, between close-ups being CLOSER due to it being fullscreen, and the image being brighter, allowing me to see everyone's faces, the scenes where the 4 main characters acted STUPID got on my nerves more than it did in the previous 4 TIMES I saw it in the last week. For instance, after all the idiotic things the Kents did before, when Alan decides to put on his robe and go prowling around the castle AT NIGHT to "find out" what Klove's up to, I couldn't help but YELL at my TV, "MY GOD!!! This is the STUPIDEST thing anyone's done in this film SO FAR!!!" And sure enough, 2 minutes later, he's stabbed in a scene STRAIGHT out of Hitchcock's "PSYCHO", and right after, gets his throat cut.
After Charles runs across Father Shandor, the film FINALLY improves. A full HOUR in.
In general... I've been able to put up with this film far more when I do watch it as part of the whole series. It's like, this ISN'T a complete story... it's more like the first chapter of a whole series of stories, that finally climaxes with "THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA". It's like any TV series-- watching ALL the good episodes can often make it easier to put up with the bad ones.
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Prof, are you aware of this Argentine Film, a mash-up of several AE Poe stories.
This is a good print and its not a bad film.
Master Of Horror (1965) Full Movie - Argentinian Horror Anthology About Edgar Allen Poe Stories
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZneHTwuHNI
enjoy!
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DRACULA'S DAUGHTER (1936)
This will never be a favorite of mine, thought it has the occasional interesting moment here or there.
Tonight I noticed that Janet (Margueritte Churchill) at the end winds up in the EXAXT SAME predicament (lying on a slab in a deeps state of vampire-induced hypnosis) that Jessica Van Helsing did in both DRACULA A.D. 1972 and THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA. Also, Sandor arrogant insists to Countess Zalesky that HE was promised vampiric immortal life... making him a much-creepier precursor to Johnny Alucard!
The making of this film was a PROLONGED confused mess, mostly due to NON-STOP interference by the Production Code, and when the film went over-schedule & over-budget, Carl LLemle had to take out a $1,000,000 loan he was unable to replay... causing his family to completely LOSE control of the studio they had started. The new owners had NO interest in horror films, and Universal didn't make any more until 3 years later, when said new owners were themselves BOOTED out by a 3rd set of owners.
The whole viscious story is told here...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula%27s_Daughter
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The fact that you have an OLD Van Helsing, who by the end is working WITH the police... is beginning to make me think, after all these years, that "DRACULA A.D. 1972" was partly inspired by this. Aside from being a blatent remake of "TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA", I mean... 🙂
Just watched my AMC videotape for comparison. Slightly-fuzzy picture, slightly-hissy sound. But otherwise, not too different. I'll have to watch the Blu-Ray again very carefully near the end to see if some of the shots involving the castle are too dark or okay, but otherwise, this film (like, so far, EVERY other film I've watched in the Universal "CLASSIC MONSTERS" box set) is okay, with the outstanding EXCEPTION of "DRACULA" (1931), which is just TOO DAMNED DARK in several spots, just like the 1966 film or the 1958 film (the latter is too dark all the way thru).
More similiarities... they repeatedly mention "Chelsea", and "Chelsea" was almost included in the TITLE of "A.D. 1972". Also, Jeffrey Garth has a CURVED bookcase in his place... JUST like Peter Cushing did in "A.D. 1972" and "SATANIC RITES".
It just struck me, the "high society" party early in the film could have inspired the birthday party at the rich guy's home in "A.D. 1972". Another visual similarity. There's just too many for it to all be coincidence!
It's really like somebody decided to to an "updated" remake of "TASTE THE BLOOD..." (very, very similar story) but wound up being inspired by and borrowing a pile of elements from "DRACULA'S DAUGHTER". Crazy, huh?
Of course, the last act of "...DAUGHTER" is inspired by the novel, with a mad chase to get back to Dracula's castle (as also seen in most adaptations, including the 1958 one, and also in "...PRINCE OF DARKNESS" and "...RISEN FROM THE GRAVE"). By comparison, the stage play and 1931 film, the climax is in "Carfax Abbey". A disused church is ALSO the climax of "HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS" and "A.D. 1972". I love taking note of stuff like this.
Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger) continues to annoy the HELL out of me, he's just not likable, even if he is one of the only people (aside from Van Helsing) to "get" what's going on. I just don't see what Janet Blake (the gorgeous Margueritte Churchill-- my God, those EYES!) sees in the bastard. I see a BAD marriage coming for those two.
So far, the only other film I've seen Kruger is was "MURDER MY SWEET" (1944), where he played the #2 villain. At least there he was a COMPLETE bastard.
Many reviewers complain about the humor with the police at the start (Billy Bevan and Halliwell Hobbes both also appeared in several SHERLOCK HOLMES films), but for me, it's Sir Basil Humphrey (Gilbert Emery) who is by far the MOST-irritating and annoying character in the entire half-baked story. The guy is an ASSHOLE, and it's positively mind-boggling that someone as stupid as he is ever got into such a high position of authority in Scotland Yard.
I keep wondering where they found such a CREEPY-looking guy as Irving Pichel, who played "Sandor". He's got an "Eric The Phantom" haircut in this, and a face & voice that reminds me of Chaney JR. And what kind of vampire's servant acts like HE's the one in charge, and threatens to kill his mistress's intended, as well as her, then goes ahead with it? We're talking serious management-labor problems here.
What baffles me is how the watch-tower stairway from "BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN" replaced the one from Carfax Abbey in "DRACULA" at the beginning, yet, the actual great hall and stairway in "DRACULA" makes an all-too-brief CAMEO at the end of this film. Everything about the final act feels rushed, like they were in a desperate hurry to get the film done and out of the way. Perhaps they were all too aware how far it was over-schedule and over-budget, and just how precarious Universal's financial situation was.
Pieces of the score were later re-used in "FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO MARS", including for the opening titles.
"DRACULA" may have been a flawed classic, but it certainly deserved a better sequel than this thing wound up being.
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THEATRE MACABRE: The System Of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether
Chaos At The Crazy House **** (of 10)
A photo-journalist considers having his depressed, neurotic girlfriend stay at a mental hospital, but things don't seem normal when he arrives. He later returns on his own, and things REALLY prove to be chaotic. Allegedly, the doctor in charge believes in letting patients "cure themselves" by freely acting out their delusions. But something is SERIOUSLY wrong.
A very-loose adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's story itself goes COMPLETELY haywire simply by NOT following the story to it's original and amusing ending. Unlike every other episode of THEATRE MACABRE, which have all been "costume period pieces", this one is updated to the present day (1970). THAT's not the problem. Ignoring what Poe wrote IS. So often, screenwriters are taken to task for not following source material, when a short story needs to be padded out to feature-length, but this anthology TV series should be custom-made for adapting short stories. WHY, therefore, do they repeatedly deviate so wildly from said source material?
Despite that, I still found this one of the more watchable episodes in a series that tends to be needlessly downbeat and pointless. I just wish somebody had done some kind of clean-up/restoration on the SOUNDTRACK, as every single episode in the Severin Films box set sounds muffled and difficult to make out what's being said.
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THEATRE MACABRE: The Rajah’s Diamond
The Stolen Jewels ****** (of 10)
A wife of a rich man conspires with her brother and her lover to steal his collection of jewels. HILARITY ensues.
Seriously, I could go on more about the plot, but that would needlessly blow it for too many people. Suffice to say, what follows is a series of scenes where one person is being chased for having stolen the jewels, the jewels fall into the hands of someone else, and someone else, and it keeps going from there.
Nearly every episode of THEATRE MACABRE has been so depressing. Sure, you might think, it's a "horror" anthology, but there's dark & scary, and then there's just needlessly downbeat. THIS episode went the other way, for which I'm quite grateful.
I guess it's safe to say that Russian writers are absolute specialists when it comes to "depressing". Which makes me wish this Polish TV series had adapted more American or English writers!
I've no idea if this follows Stevenson's original story or not (so far, it seems, EVERY other episode of the series has deviated in ways that tend to be uncalled-for), but, at least, this one DOES work on its own merits, and even includes a doubly-amusing ending.
Now if only Severin Films (or somebody) could have done something about the MUFFLED soundtrack that makes it hard to hear what's being said...
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Just last night I watched "DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE" (1968) for the very 1st time in WIDESCREEN. Unlike the 1958 & 1966 films, the Blu-Ray of this one doesn't have any problem with the picture being too damned dark to see what you're looking at.
Near the end, when Christopher Lee said, "Now at last my vengeance is COMPLETE.", I almost fell out of my chair laughing. I mean, now that I know the line was SWIPED from a German "Poe" film!
At the beginning of the film, when it's discovered there's a girl stuffed and hung UPSIDE-DOWN in the church bell, I suddenly realized after decades that the scene is swiped from Poe's "Rue Morgue", with a church bell taking the place of a fireplace.
"...GRAVE" is fun to watch, but it's never been much of a "story". I guess this was what happened when Anthony Hinds tries to write without Jimmy Sangster's help.
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I'd put off re-watching my Hammer DRACULA videotapes for at least the last 4 years, taking a break with comedies, sci-fi movies, sword-fighting movies, and other stuff. Now that I'm (slowly) buying the series on BLU-RAY, I've been comparing the old (sometimes really old) videotapes against the new discs.
MY GOD, was this a TERRIBLE copy I'd been putting up with with around the last 40 YEARS! It came from Philly's Channel 3, "Saturday Night Dead". So, it had commercial breaks I had to cut out back when. (The film was only missing about 30 seconds.) I believe it was before we got cable, as it looks like it came off the roof antenna-- so it was FUZZY and had "GHOSTS" in spots (depending on how the wind was blowing).
In general, it was in FULLSCREEN, the color was DREADFUL, there were streaks on the print in spots, but, as if all that wasn't bad enough, the sound was HORRIBLE. Totally-muffled all the way through. How in God's name did I ever put up with this for so long?
The nice thing is, the 2015 Warner Archive Blu-Ray has CRYSTAL-CLEAR picture and sound, and I'd rank the quality as drastically-better than either "DRACULA" (1958) or "DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS" (1966). This is more on the level of the discs for "THE BRIDES OF DRACULA" and "THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE", except that, apart from the Trailer (which is in pretty damned good shape) there's NO other extras at all. Oh well!
5 more Hammer DRACULAs to go! I'm hoping to get the rest by the end of the year.
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One of the FUNNIEST "1000 Mispent Hours" reviews yet!
"Dracula’s master plan is to get back at the jerk who changed the locks on his house while he was out."
http://1000misspenthours.com/reviews/reviewsh-m/draculahasrisenfromthegrave.htm
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BiffBangPow just posted a link to this movie, which is a typical 50's monster film, with a tendency in this case, to moralizing, but quite an interesting take on a Dracula movie.
Don't think it could have been very popular, because its not well-known.
BLOOD of Dracula ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN-37tFJcNQ
Link to the book: Famous Monsters Trading Cards
And I just found this one,
The innocents
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRFDqv6GqlU
Excellent print, creepy in a more subtle way. Hithcockian.
cheers!
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Scarlet Street magazine (is that still around?) focused on horror and mysteries-- what a great combo. They once did a pair of articles in one issue covering THE INNOCENTS and THE HAUNTING. I think Deborah Kerr is in both of them.
I got to see both on TCM. I much preferred THE INNOCENTS. It's an adaptation of "The Turn Of The Screw".
But I'd sort of seen it much earlier. The very 1st DARK SHADOWS storyline I saw in the late 60s was "The Ghost Of Quentin Collins", which was clearly based on "The Turn of the Screw". David Selby (Quentin Collins) had the Peter Wyngarde role, while Kathryn Leigh Scott (Maggie Evans) had the Deborah Kerr role.
At the end, just when it looked like the kids were going to DIE, Barnabas used the "I-Ching Wands" they found in Quentin's room, in the hope of contacting Quentin's ghost and finding out why he was haunting the house. BUT INSTEAD... Barnabas found his own spirit thrown back in time to 1897, trapped in his own body (at the time locked in the coffin in the secret room of the mausoleum), and when he was released, he found Quentin was still alive-- MONTHS before the yet-unknown events that would lead to his DEATH!
The "1897" sequence went on for 9 MONTHS... and is considered by most DS fans the best run of the entire series.
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SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES (1983)
I understand this had a long and troubled production history. Whatever happened, and whatever changes were made, from the first time I saw it in the 80s, I've long felt this was one of the most PERFECT films ever to come from Disney. There was about a 15-year stretch after Walt passed away where nearly every single film they were involved with was either flawed or bordering on unwatchable. THIS finally turned things around, creatively. What a shock that it BOMBED badly at the box office, making back only about one-THIRD its budget.
I went to so many movies in the 80s, I wondered how it was possible I missed this and had to tape it off cable. When I saw the release date, I realized what happened. My 1st car had gotten DESTROYED in an accident, and I was without one of my own (and at the mercy of my Dad's schedule and whims) for the next 2-1/2 years. And this movie came out the SAME month as the accident. That answered a long-standing mystery!
I love every single aspect of this film-- the screenplay, the setting, the cast, the directing, the acting, the dialogue, the visual effects, the music, all of it. Of the 2 actors I'm most familiar with, this is almost certainly my favorite film with Jason Robards, while it remains, in my eyes the role of a lifetime for Jonathan Pryce. Thank God Disney decided to cast HIM-- to keep the budget down (they said)!
I currently rank this among the best 4 films Disney ever released-- the others, of course, being 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, MARY POPPINS, and GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE.
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I've wondered how they managed the character played by James Stacy. Stacy had lost an arm and a leg in a motorcycle accident so he was perfect as the mutilated former athlete, but how did they manage to show him later as completely whole and vigorous marching in the parade?
He had lost the leg at the hip and the arm at the shoulder. I don't think prosthetics were advanced enough at the time to have pulled this off so seamlessly.
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I saw Bradbury in person at Rudgers University in Camden in the mid-80s. He spoke for a half-hour, and talked about the film, saying it was, "The first time Hollywood ever got one of his stories right."
Considering how many reviewers at the IMDB complain about what went on behind-the-scenes, and how it's "not as good as the book", and that even Bradbury in later years said it "was a good movie, but not a great one", there seems to be too many people with impossibly-high standards.
As a teenager, I SAW a lot of Disney movies in the 1970s. Most of them were PAINFUL to sit through! When they started trying different things at the end of the decade, they did some BIG-budgeted epics with INCREDIBLE visuals and special effects, which were still PAINFUL to watch, and always because of the STORIES. Among them:
THE BLACK HOLE
THE BLACK CAULDRON
TRON
It is compared to THOSE awful things I compare SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, and from the first time I saw it, I came away thinking, "This is the BEST DAMNED THING Disney has since Walt Disney passed away." If people are blind to the environment it was created in, and can only see its flaws, that's just too damned sad for them.
And I found it interesting-- even HILARIOUS-- that the company name "Walt Disney Productions" appears NOWHERE in the opening credits at all-- and ONLY appears at the very end of the end credits, in the COPYRIGHT notice. "Disney" was EMBARRASSED to be associated with a film this good and this scary!
6 MONTHS later, they started their "Touchstone" subsidiary to do "PG" films and go after the teen audience, and it was INCREDIBLY successful!!!!! It allowed them to do "family" films again and keep the "Disney" name associated only with "CHILDREN's" films.
As an aside... when I first saw 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954) uncut-- I was very surprised by how dark and serious it was in spots. It is NOT a "kids' film". However, it was pointed out on some website I found several years ago that, no sooner did the movie come out, but seemingly EVERY piece of related merchandise was aimed squarely at KIDS. They made every possible attempt to "tone it down", "kiddie-fie" it, and make Captain Nemo seem less of the angry, tragic, vengeful, MURDEROUS character that he was in the film. You can find various examples of it posted at my "Professor H's Wayback Machine" blog.
Here's an example:
http://professorhswaybackmachine.blogspot.com/2014/05/jules-verne-part-12.html
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A few fans of 20,000 leagues have as adults built their own man carrying submersibles modeled after the Nautilus.
I think that is super cool since I wanted to do the same one day.
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One of the coolest things I've seen online is how in Japan they built what looks like a replica of Nemo's volcano base HQ as a tourist attraction.
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Today's movie:
TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (1970)
I first saw this as the headliner of a triple-bill at the Venus Theater in Houston. What a Saturday afternoon that was!
About 9 years later, I taped it off The CBS Late Movie on a Friday night, when it probably came on about 12:40 AM. Apart from being fullscreen, it turned out the film was also cut quite a bit around the commercial breaks, and had at least one major scene almost completely cut, the one where the 3 "pillars of society" KICK THE CRAP out of Lord Courtley and wind up killing him in the desanctified chapel in the cemetery.
I've been putting up with the 2nd-rate copy for 42 YEARS!!! About a year or two back, I finally saw that murder scene in a short clip on Youtube, and was delighted that I wasn't imagining how badly CBS cut the film. (Keep in mind, the picture quality on CBS / Channel 10 in Philly was still way better than some of the UHF stations, or even some of the commercial cable channels.)
I've been taking my time with this too much, but last year I started upgrading my Hammer Draculas to BLU-RAYs, and I'm determined to finish the set before the end of this year. It looks like I'm gonna make it.
What a joy to see this again in WIDESCREEN, and UNCUT-- even more UNCUT than when I saw it on a BIG SCREEN. Notoriously, part of the "brothel" sequence showed a bit of nudity, and was REMOVED before it ever got to theatres in either the UK or the US. Tsk, tsk! SAW it today... and it wasn't all that much... but, apparently, enough to give it an "R" rating NOW. Sheesh!
Back in Houston in 1971, if it had an "R" (or, at the time, it would have been an "M") I'd have been REQUIRED to be accompanied by an adult. That's what PREVENTED me from seeing THE VAMPIRE LOVERS the week the Venus ran that one. Didn't see that until the early 90s!!! I did see THE CONQEUROR WORM at the Venus, but, only because my Mom (who was working as a secretary on weekends) paid a friend of hers to take me-- who wound up sleeping thru at least half of that afternoon's quadruple-feature. (4 films for a BUCK-- can you imagine?)
Just in the last week, I've seen A STUDY IN TERROR, and THE DEVIL RIDES OUT, and I thought how the "Whitechapel hookers" in one and the "Satanic ritual" in the other both managed to find their way into this film, along with the "powedered blood ressurection scene" from D:POD.
This 2015 Warner Brothers Blu-Ray is CRYSTAL-CLEAR, with what I would consider PERFECT picture and sound... better than either HORROR OF DRACULA or DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS. No doubt before the weekend's over, I'll be running my 42-year-old videotape "one more time" just to really compare the two, which has become my habit of late when upgrading.
It's funny, looking back on this after so many years, Linda Hayden physically reminds me a lot of Kaley Cuoco, though the personality's very different. James Bernard's "love theme" (a more-serious arrangement of which really debuted in "D:POD") may be the most beautiful piece of music he ever did, and some years ago I borrowed it for the finale of my own "Horror In Haddon Heights", a story I wrote and then actually compiled a "full soundtrack" for consisting entirely of already-existing music.
TASTE... has long been a favorite of mine for various reasons, and never fails to bring back memories of those 6 months I spent in Houston. I was also quite surprised, the same month CBS ran it on that late Friday night, they also ran A.D. 1972, and I discovered the latter film was actually an updated REMAKE of the former, made only 2 years later! Of course, the later film became my FAVORITE in the series, mostly because they finally brought back PETER CUSHING for it. He was severely missed in the previous 4 films in a row.
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Saturday night, I decided to dig out my 1980 CBS Late Movie recording of "TASTE..." and watch it to compare with the Blu-Ray. I always thought the CBS print was pretty good, apart from being fullscreen and CUT in several places. However, I was reminded Saturday that my previous "regular" TV was MUCH easier to adjust brightness & contrast on, and for many years I had the brightness cranked REALLY high up. Not so on my current flat widescreen TV.
About HALF the film looks right, but the other half is WAY too dark. In fact, there were places where right before my eyes, I saw it get brighter or darker right in the middle of a scene where the brightness should NOT have changed. There were also a few scenes where the colors went totally nuts, and one where I saw electrical bands slowly moving upward across the screen. It seems to me CBS had a print that had started to go bad, before they tampered with the film.
I can't say for sure what CBS cut vs. what was cut in the theatres. I've read about the "brothel" scene being cut. In the CBS broadcast, it went straight from "Felix" sending in the girls, to immediately, Felix in the hall trying desperately to stop Lord Courtley from interrupting his 3 best customers. The entire missing scene, intact on the disc, showed Courtley walking into several other rooms before this, apparently looking for a particular girl, and in each room, you had a brief scene of some girl TOPLESS. This was apparently all it took to give the current version of the film an "R" rating, though it seems very mild to me!
Later, a scene of Alice changing clothes gave us a view of her full back for a moment, also cut on CBS.
When the 3 "pillars of society" KICK COURTLEY TO DEATH, at least HALF of it was missing.
I think there was a couple other things cut, but the most noticable one was when Dracula DECOMPOSES on the altar. The entire last half of that was missing. The strangest cut had to be right in the middle of a sentence (I can't remember the line) where HALF of a WORD was missing. No idea what happened there (it wasn't profanity or anything).
A full 6 MINUTES were missing on CBS!!! Although, I'd have to time the "brothel" scene, it's probably that only half of that was actually cut by CBS, as the brothel scene was cut before it got to theatres.
Seeing this makes me really glad I got the Blu-Ray, as in this case, it's DEFINITELY a big upgrade from my 42-year-old tape. In general, the picture was actually MUCH fuzzier on the tape compared to the disc. The disc allows me to see everything with CRYSTAL clarity... especially Linda Hayden. (There's nothing more annoying with Blu-Rays than when a decades-old videotape LOOKS BETTER. Which has happened several times this year, including on the 1929 MGM "Mysterious Island", where the underwater scenes are MUCH clearer on my old "TNT" copy.)
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I know it's crazy... but I just watched SOMETHING WICKED... 5 times in 2 weeks, alternating between the 80s VHS recorded off HBO and the 2004 DVD. The 4th time I watched, I took note of some 14 different points in the movie, and marked down the time. When I watched the tape again... I took note of those points again, and in EVERY case, the time was increasingly "off". I confirmed my suspicion... BOTH copies were "uncut"-- but whatever HBO ran in the 80s, was running at THE WRONG SPEED. The film was 4 MINUTES shorter than it should have been. And somehow, it was subtle enough that I couldn't be sure without timing all those points.
At the halfway point, it was exactly 2 minutes short.
HEARING the film at the correct speed actually allowed me to make out a lot of dialogue that simply went by TOO FAST on the HBO videotape.
My best friend just told me that Cinemax did the same thing with a film HE watched back in the 80s or 90s. These PAY channels should be ashamed of themselves. I thought it was only The CBS Late Movie that screwed over things this way in the 80s.
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OH my God.... I just finished re-watching my (probably) 40-year-old Philly Channel 29 videotape of "SCARS OF DRACULA". This was in WAY worse shape than "...RISEN..."
Apart from being fullscreen, FADED, FUZZY, and having electrical bands all over the place (bad broadcast signal)... it was missing 9 WHOLE MINUTES. And, unlike "HORROR..." which was missing 16 minutes-- most in big chunks-- this one was cut ALL OVER the place, some big chunks, some short snips here and there. Basically, if there was any blood onscreen, chances are, most of it was cut.
Right at the start, they had some kind of technical problem, as the long shot of the castle, the film froze-- then jumped. You didn't see the girl attacked near the beginning. About 2/3rds of the shots of the corpses in the church were cut. The beginning of the bedroom scene with Paul & Alice was missing, as was ALL of her rear nudity. When Tania was preparing to put the bite on Paul and you saw her fangs... MISSING. You never saw the Count STAB her! He just leaned forward as he was about to lap up her blood... but then, nothing (I read the UK censor cut the lapping scene, and then it somehow NEVER turned up in ANY prints, ever).
Of course, the Count "punishing" Klove-- NOT there at all. (He apparently does it twice, but, only the 2nd time is in the film, so when I saw it uncut, I thought it was cut on the disc, but it turned out, not, you only saw it the 2nd time. On the local channel, not at all.) The priest getting killed-- the bat grabbed his neck, that was it! The shot of Paul hanging on the wall-- mayhe HALF a second. The print was so dark, you could barely make out Dracula scrambling up the wall. About half of the bat attacking Sarah-- GONE! About 5 seconds of Dracula on fire-- THEN, he's falling and screaming. That's maybe an entire MINUTE of his burning that was cut. Sheesh.
The crazy thing is, about a decade before I ever saw this BUTCHER-job, I'd read the novelization. So I "saw" more in my mind than is even in the finished movie. Like, Paul having sex with Tania. HOT stuff. Or... the (subtle?) change, in that, in the book, Sarah is in love with Paul, and she's more concerned with finding him than she is concerned with Simon. Yet we know he doesn't deserve this. And as the story progresses, she slowly falls for Simon. It was a big surprise to me when I first saw the film around 1980 or so that you could see she DID love Simon from the beginning, but he was lacking confidence, because Paul got ALL the girls, Paul was successful, while Simon was still in school.
I still laugh at the climax. First, the cross gets in the way. Then, Klove. Then, Simon. There's this repeated feeling on Dracula's face of, "Now, where was I before I was so rudely interrupted?" And then, when he's about to kill Simon... he gets STRUCK BY LIGHTING. Yes, EVEN GOD wants this bastard dead! ;D
I also thought he had a major labor relations problem. He KEEPS KILLING his employees!
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Combine "THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM" with a bit of "THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS", and toss in a hefty helping of PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING, and you've got...
"SAMSON IN THE WAX MUSEUM" (1963)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ2GeYgPnWQ
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Just watched the 1st of the 2 audio commentaries on the "SCARS" disc last night, which delves in painful, excrutiating detail into exactly WHAT and HOW this movie turned out SO WRETCHEDLY AWFUL.
Perhaps the most shocking part was learning that the entire 1st act of the film was supposed to be almost completely-different... and somehow, it seems to me they never properly explained WHY that part of the screenplay was totally-rejected, in favor of what we got.
Also... Paul & Sarah were supposed to be brother & sister! Who the hell thought it was a good idea to change THAT?
Looking back these days, I keep wishing instead they'd have done a DIRECT sequel to "TASTE..." which would be set in London, and bring back Van Helsing and a Hammer-style retelling of the latter part of Stoker's story.
Someone really should do a film-- or at least, a graphic novel-- telling that story, which, of course, would lead DIRECTLY into "A.D. 1972".
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You know, it really is amazing how much of the film was inspired by "PSYCHO", and somehow, over the last 4 decades, I NEVER noticed this!!! (I didn't get around to seeing either film until around 1981 or 82.)
As I learned the other night, the first act was supposed to involve Paul STEALING something from some rich person, to give to a charity that would help others in need. THIS was why he was supposed to be on the run from the cops... not having at it with the Burgomeister's daughter.
Then after a change of vehicle, he finds himself in some remote spot, the phrase "bed and breakfast" having been mentioned earlier (HONESTLY). Following a short polite chat, he goes to bed...
...and when he wakes up, SOMEBODY yanks aside a curtain and STARTS STABBING a woman to death! Seriously, HOW did this never catch my attention?
THEN, the rest of the film involves the guy's brother and his girlfriend (as opposed to Janet Leigh's sister) searching for them, winding up in the same place, and the owner acting strange.
It was interesting to hear Christopher Lee refer to the castle interior set looking like it came from some "big-budget movie". YES, I do think it looked BETTER than any previous Hammer Dracula castle interior ever did. And it turns out... I never noticed this either... it was built for "HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN" and then redressed. Someone mentioned how as both films were issued on a double-bill, so it was probably more obvious than anyone intended.
My FAVORITE part of the movie was the climax, with Dracula being stymied first by a cross, then Klove, then Simon, and finally, GOD. (heeheehee) Just wasn't his day-for-night. And then 90% of the burning was CUT on the local TV station. Nice to finally see that INTACT.
All the same, I'd have much-preferred a DIRECT sequel to "TASTE..." with Dracula revived again in London, and Van Helsing TRACKING him down there. Lorrimer said his grandfather compiled ACTUAL physical scientific PROOF of a real vampire in London. Would have loved to have SEEN him do that! Among other things, it would have been a wonderful tribute to the STAGE PLAY.
And let's face, ANY movie with PETER CUSHING in it is better than one WITHOUT him. A proper Dracula story NEEDS a Van Helsing.
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DRACULA A.D. 1972
At the Hammermaniacs FB group, one of the moderators has a non-stop hate-filled hard-on for this movie. Every single time anyone ever mentions it in any way, the guy has to be RUDE AND OBNOXIOUS about it. EVERY SINGLE F***ING TIME. So, as I just got the Blu-Ray, I decided to try the diplomatic approach. Before I even get started, I just posted the following message, accompanied with a photo from the film:
I have a favor to ask. For over a year now, I've been building up to this, and this weekend, I finally got my hands on a decent print of my #1 FAVORITE Hammer Film. And I'd like to talk about here in great detail. What I would really, really appreciate is... if anyone here has anything NASTY, NEGATIVE, RUDE, INSULTING or SNARKY to say about the film... could you PLEASE post your comments in an entirely SEPARATE thread? I'd really appreciate it. (I'm trying to be as polite about this as I can be, and I'd hope others would be as well.)
I really don't think that's asking too much. But, we'll see.
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HORROR CLASSIC ~ The Old Dark House stars Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, Melvyn Douglas Movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BoJo_6KPe8
Not a bad print.
enjoy!
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The atmosphere of these old films can no generate today in modern movies. Fortunately, there are enough classics for many a nice movie night. :o
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HORROR CLASSIC ~ The Old Dark House stars Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, Melvyn Douglas Movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BoJo_6KPe8
Not a bad print.
enjoy!
One of my favourite films from my youth. It was broadcast on Canadian TV during the early 1950s, and in addition to 2 of my favourite actors, Boris Karloff and Charles Laughton, it contained a third, Canadian star, Raymond Massey. I love the atmosphere, enhanced by the use of the contrast between light and shadow in those old black and white films.
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HORROR CLASSIC ~ The Old Dark House stars Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, Melvyn Douglas Movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BoJo_6KPe8
Not a bad print.
enjoy!
I got the Blu-Ray of this. ABSOLUTELY STUNNING!!! It blows my mind to be able to see a film that old look SO GOOD it looks like it was filmed "yesterday".
Melvyn Douglas is another highlight of THE OLD DARK HOUSE. Not long after that, he starred in THE LONE WOLF RETURNS (1935), which I'd never seen before. I wound up agreeing with just about every review at the IMDB, that he was the BEST actor in that role (at least in the sound films-- most of the silents are still missing in action, either lost or just not currently available).
I went after quite a few films from the 1920s-30s this year. Kept pushing back my Hammer Dracula upgrading, but that's finally out of the way.
Still got a list of 1920s-30s films to go after, plus a number of film series (the next one on my wanted list is, strangely enough, DR. KILDARE!), and then of course there's the Roger Corman POE films. (So much fun to look forward to!)
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The “Dr. Kildare” series is written by Max Brand, better known as a writer of Westerns, which was the pen name of prolific author Frederick Faust.
I have read some of his Westerns, but have not yet tackled one of his "Kildares'
https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/dr-kildare/
It blows my mind to be able to see a film that old look SO GOOD it looks like it was filmed "yesterday".
The visual quality of early films, shot on film stock, was always superlative, but you rarely see a modern copy created from an original print. In the same way, still photographs from the last century, shot on glass plates, will give you an image that will blow your mind.
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I found myself really reminiscing this weekend. You know, I can't actually remember for certain which Hammer Dracula film I saw first. It could have been "HORROR..." or "BRIDES..." Either way, it was on TV. Somewhere along the line, Peter Cushing became one of my very favorite actors.
We started buying "Famous Monsters Of Filmland" magazine right with the issue commemorating the passing of Boris Karloff some weeks earlier. What an education that was (especially when we started getting back-issues, which tended to be even better-written). I recall reading about "...RISEN..." a lot, but it took several years before I saw it (also, on TV).
My Mom, my brother & I spent 6 months in Houston in mid-1971. The Venus Theatre was an old, run-down "2nd-run" place that used to do triple-bills for a BUCK on weekends. Once a month they ran horror movies. One month they ran "TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA". The week before I saw it, I ran across a paperback movie adaptation in the local drugstore-- "The Scars Of Dracula". I thought it must be the same story under a different name. I got the book, read it, was somewhat blown away... then was shocked on the weekend to find "TASTE..." was a completely-different movie. HOW MANY of these things were there?
Anyway, "TASTE..." was my 1st Chris Lee DRACULA on a big screen! Naturally, it had a huge impact on me.
I finally got to see "...RISEN..." on TV when we came back to Camden. Mom found another tiny 2nd-run theatre, the Glen Oaks Cinema, who used to run old-- and sometimes VERY old-- movies. One week they were going to run "BRIDES..." That may be the first time I went to a theatre to see a film I'd ALREADY seen on TV. Funny thing. The film was running late. It hadn't arrived yet! The manager offered to let us watch the weekday night-time film instead FOR FREE. That's how I first ran across The Marx Brothers-- on a big screen-- with "A DAY AT THE RACES". Isn't that nuts? The next week, we went back and saw "BRIDES..." Loved it even more than when it was on TV. Of course!
In late 1978, "THE NEW AVENGERS" got to America, on the CBS Late Movie. I went crazy over Joanna Lumley. 6 weeks later, this NEW Dracula movie-- WITH Christopher Lee-- was out in theatres. I'd read he wasn't going to do any more. Nice surprise. 15 minutes into "COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE", I suddenly realized it looked familiar. I'd read about it-- and seen photos from it-- in "FM" magazine-- 5 YEARS earlier. How the hell did it take a movie 5 YEARS to get released here? It took me decades to find that out. Anyway, the big thrill for me was seeing Joanna Lumley in 2 different things in the same week. I didn't see her on a big screen again until a few years back, when the "ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS" move came out.
In late 1979, I got my 1st VCR, and in late 1980, The CBS Late Movie ran 2 Chris Lee Dracula movies-- probably, on concensecutive Friday nights. One was "TASTE..." --cut to ribbons. The other was... "DRACULA A.D. 1972". Also, as it turns out, cut to ribbons. I'd seen the coming attraction for that on TV back in '72, but nobody took me to see it. 8 YEARS late, I finally saw it. Totally blew my mind. After seeing most of the Hammer series, that night "A.D. 1972" became my FAVORITE of the whole bunch. I've been putting up with that lousy videotape I recorded for 42 YEARS now.
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"HORROR" as a genre really has a couple of revivals in my lifetime. Presumably, the first was a result of Hammer deciding to do a classic gothic horror adaptation IN COLOR. I'm not sure which came first, but Forry Ackerman's "Famous Monsters Of Filmland" magazine became an institution, and before long, Roger Corman began doing POE films in color. There was "THE TWILIGHT ZONE", "THRILLER", and my favorite (in fact, my introduction to horror), "THE OUTER LIMITS". Eventually we got stuff like "THE ADDAMS FAMILY" and "THE MUNSTERS". I was too young to fully appreciate all this at the time.
But then in the mid-late 60s, another wave started, and this time, it really got carried away! One might say it got re-started with "DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS" or the "DARK SHADOWS" tv series, which almost vanished in its 1st year before, in pure desperation, Dan Curtis decided to do a story about a VAMPIRE (in the modern day!). When "Barnabas Collins" saved the show, he couldn't be killed off, and slowly evolved into the show's anti-hero.
But it does seem to me "DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE" is when the tidal wave really began. It was Hammer's biggest financial success, and in the wake of it, HORROR was unleashed everywhere-- in movies, on TV, in horror comics (first in B&W, then in color once the infamous censorship board, the "Comics Code" was REVISED).
Between 1968-1974, there was, I think, arguably, TOO MUCH horror to go around. Mind you, I love this stuff-- but there's such a thing as over-saturating the marketplace, and we absolutely got that during that period. Horror movies, vampire movies, DRACULA movies... so many that, even if you were a big fan, there were just too many to keep track of! And in the comics, at one point both Marvel and Warren were doing their own "Dracula" series. (Editora Taika in Brazil had started their own in 1959 and it was still going then-- but who the hell knew about comics from BRAZIL back then?)
Although Jonathan Frid's "Barnabas Collins" debuted on April 18, 1967, I've read it suggested that a story that really got the idea of a "modern day vampire" started as a FAD was a single comic-book story by artist Jerry Grandenetti, which appeared in FOR MONSTERS ONLY #7 (Apr'69 cover date)-- funny enough, the very first "monster" magazine my MOM picked up.
"VAMPIRE HUNT'69" was MY 1st exposure to Grandenetti's art. I understand when he worked for DC Comics, it used to drive some of his editors to distraction, as they'd try to get him to draw in a style they considered "more normal".
The whole thing is posted online, so, READ IT HERE!
http://magiccarpetburn.blogspot.com/2010/10/for-monsters-only-7-vampire-hunt-69.html
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When I said "over-saturated", I wasn't kidding. I just spent the whole afternoon compiling this list...
DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS (Jan'66)
BLOOD OF DRACULA'S CASTLE (filmed in 1966, released in May, August & August '69)
DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (Nov'68 in UK, Feb'69 in US)
DRACULA (Mystery And Imagination TV episode / Nov'68 in UK)
NACHTS, WENN DRACULA ERWACHT / EL CONDE DRACULA / COUNT DRACULA
(Apr'70 in West Germany, Nov'70 in Spain, Jul'73 in UK, Oct'73 in US)
TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (May'70 in UK, Jun'70 in US)
COUNT YORGA VAMPIRE (Jun'70)
HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS (Aug'70)
THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (Sep'70 in UK, Oct'70 in US)
THE BODY BENEATH (Sep/Dec'70)
SCARS OF DRACULA (Nov'70 in UK, Dec'70 in US)
LUST FOR A VAMPIRE (Jan'71 in UK, Jun'71 in Sweden, Sep'71 in US)
GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TO COUNT DRACULA? (Feb'71)
LES LEVRES ROUGES / DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (May/Sep/Oct'71)
THE VELVET VAMPIRE (Jun/Oct'71)
THE RETURN OF COUNT YORGA (Aug'71)
DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN (Sep/Dec'71)
TWINS OF EVIL (Oct'71 in UK, Mar'72 in US)
THE NIGHT STALKER (Jan'72)
DRACULA A.D. 1972 (Jun'72 in Denmark, Sep'72 in UK, Nov'72 in US)
DEATHMASTER (Jul/Aug'72)
BLACULA (Jul/Aug'72)
CAPTAIN KRONOS, VAMPIRE HUNTER (filmed in 1972, Apr'74 in UK, Jun'74 in US)
EL GRAN AMOR DEL CONDE DRACULA / COUNT DRACULA’S GREAT LOVE
(Apr'73 in Paris, May'73 in Spain, Mar'74 in US)
SON OF DRACULA (May'73 in Arizona, VARIOUS dates & locations after that)
SCREAM, BLACULA, SCREAM (Jun'73)
THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA
(Nov'73 in West Germany, Jan'74 in UK, Oct'78 in US)
DRACULA (Apr'74 in US, Jun'74 in UK)
THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES
(Jul'74 in Hong Kong, Aug'74 in UK, Jun'79 in US)
VAMPIRA (Oct'74 in UK, sometime in 1975 in US)
COUNT DRACULA (Dec'77 in UK, Mar'78 in US)
DRACULA SUCKS (1978)
NOSFERATU: PHANTOM DER NACHT / NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE
(Jan'79 in France, Feb'79 in West Germany, May'79 in UK, Oct'79 in US)
LOVE AT FIRST BITE (Apr'79)
DRACULA (Jul'79 in US, Aug'79 in UK)
Until I checked the dates, I had no idea when or in what order some of these came out.
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So, I saw COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE at the Coronet Theatre with my parents in October 1978. Quite a pleasant surprise all-round, and loved it. You know, apart from anything else, it's always seemed to me that most Hammer Dracula sequels don't really have any plot. THIS ONE DID. In SPADES. On STEROIDS. Wow. What the HELL was the matter with the idiots running Warner Brothers? They already put up the production money, the film was already made. WHY shelve it and refuse to put it out in America AT ALL? So somebody else had to do it, 5 YEARS late? Monstrously stupid.
Well, it took 2 years before I saw the earlier one. The CBS Late Movie ran TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA on a Friday night, I'm pretty sure at 12:40 in the morning. It was cut (even more than the theatrical release had been, it turns out), but I hadn't seen it since 1971 in Houston, and I taped it, and loved it.
Imagine my shock when they then ran DRACULA A.D. 1972. I could not believe it. It had virtually the SAME PLOT! They'd gone and taken a movie they'd done only 2 years earlier, and done an updated REMAKE of it. The nerve of some people!!! And of course, with CBS running both of them (perhaps only a week or 2 apart), it only played up that fact. This was really par for the course for CBS. Earlier, they'd run THE NEW AVENGERS completely out of sequence, and in the process, took 2 similar episodes-- "Target" and "Angels Of Death"-- made a year apart-- and run them over 2 CONSECUTIVE weeks. This was sure to make unknowing viewers think, "Oh, look, we're only 3 weeks in, and they've ALREADY run out of ideas!" Is it any wonder I loved having my own VCR, earlier than most people, so that I could begin to make a stab at creating MY OWN schedule for watching things?
About the only thing I was familiar with in A.D. 1972 before seeing it was the prologue, as I'd seen photos of Dracula & Van Helsing both getting killed in "Famous Monsters" magazine. The rest of the film was a surprise-- even a shock-- despite already having seen THE SEQUEL to it, 2 years earlier.
The first shock was seeing Stephanie Beachum as Jessica Van Helsing. I couldn't believe it. They did 2 connected films, with 4 of the same characters in it, and they RECAST the lead actress between films? WHY would they do such a thing? Beachum's pretty in her own way, but I was just CRAZY about Joanna Lumley, so right off the bat, I was, to say the least, a bit disappointed. But there's something very strange about this particular bit of recasting. Beachum has BIG KNOCKERS; Lumley is SLENDER. Beachum was BLONDE; Lumley, who's always blonde, was a REDHEAD. What??? How did that happen? Also, while Lumley did walk into a basement full of vampire women in the sequel, and scream a few times, other than that, she seemed to be pretty intelligent, was praised by her grandfather for "knowing more about his work" than he did. Beachum's Jessica seems AGGRESSIVELY dumb, making fun of her grandfather's work, not really seeming to be able to think for herself, and her choice of boyfriends, "Bob", is the dumbest, most annoying character in the movie. I suppose one could argue that in the "2 years" we're told passed between films, she matured a lot-- but this is still very difficult to take. I just watched the sequel again TODAY-- and I find it almost impossible to think of the 2 Jessicas as the same person. If they were SISTERS, well, I know which one I'd ask out!
Christopher Neame as "Johnny Alucard" (a tip of the hat to the 1943 SON OF DRACULA) is really a sonofab****, isn't he? Ralph Bates as Lord Courtley was a lot classier. Both serve the identical purpose-- a servant of Dracula, who uses a group of thrill-seekers, to perform a Satanic mass, to ressurect his master. Although, here, Johnny seems to "get it right" far more. He doesn't get KILLED in the process. I love the bit where he says, "Master! I did it! I brought you back!" --and his master says, "IT WAS MY WILL." Oooh!!!
Another shock was Caroline Munro as Laura Bellows. JESUS. I didn't even know she was in this before I saw it. I'd been a huge fan of hers ever since I saw THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD in theatres twice... and THE SPY WHO LOVED ME in theatres 3 times. I even saw STARCRASH when it came out (dumb as it was). She gets my vote for the MOST GORGEOUS girl in this entire movie, by a very wide margin. Not the brightest, though, to say the least. "NO, Johnny!!! TAKE ME!!!" As Adam West might have said, "Poor, deluded girl." I was HORRIFIED when she got killed the way she did. What a BASTARD! I mean, if I were Dracula, I'd have made HER my consort-- not just tossed her aside like he did.
I know from repeated, incessant reports, that Christopher Lee disliked the scripts he kept getting for all these sequels. And apparently, he particularly disliked the 2 films set in the present day. Well, the scripts, to me, are SO MUCH better, SO MUCH more interesting, than anything they'd done since KISS OF THE VAMPIRE (which I never even saw until THIS year), I have to severely disagree. In fact... I'd say, A.D. 1972 features what is, in my opinion, Lee's FINEST performance EVER as Dracula. He looks better than in most of the sequels, he's SO INTENSE, and he has GREAT dialogue and attitude. If he was pissed off doing this movie, he took that and used it to the film's advantage.
In a replay of a scene from ...RISEN..., he says to Johnny, "She is NOT the one. You have NOT LEARNED to OBEY!" When Johnny demands the power of immortality, there's a look of annoyance on Dracula's face that just tells me, he realizes the best thing is to turn this A-HOLE into a vampire-- knowing that when he does, he won't last long enough to be a problem anymore. And sure enough, Johnny proves to be the most incompetent vampire ever. Sunlight creeping thru his curtains, a sunroof in the bathroom, and running water. He actually got killed in the ways we saw Dracula get it in BOTH HORROR... and PRINCE... --at the same time. I laugh every time I see that scene.
Someone at Hammer must have realized, you really CAN'T do a proper DRACULA film without a VAN HELSING. Peter Cushing came back to the series for the first time since 1960 (12 years earlier!), and, he COMPLETELY STEALS the movie!! Lee may have gotten top billing, but there's no question-- THIS is Cushing's film. And, having watched it again now 3 times in less than a week, I now feel A.D. 1972 is, in my view, Peter Cushing's BEST PERFORMANCE ever. Yep. I said it!
But back in 1980, the first time I saw this film, when it had commercial breaks, was somewhat fuzzy, and was cut to ribbons-- 5 whole MINUTES missing!!-- despite all that-- it became my FAVORITE Hammer Dracula of the whole series.
If only Joanna Lumley had been it it, it would have been PERFECT!
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I'd like to discuss the influences on this film.
The obvious one, mentioned before, is TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA. Both films involve a group of thrill-seekers, infiltrated by a deciple of Dracula, who cons them into unwittingly performing a black mass ritual to ressurect him from oblivion. Before it's done, said desciple winds up dead (though in drastically-different circumstances), the group get murdered one by one (with at least one of them being turned into a vampire in the process), and the "nice" girl winds up the intended target of Dracula... though in both films, she manages (again, under very different circumstances) to escape unscathed. Both have one girl who's discarded, killed, and then dumped into a river! Both have sequences where the hero (Paul, Lorrimer) spends some time preparing to face off against the villain. There's even scenes in both where Dracula HURLS a large piece of metal at the hero in the church (and misses)!
You don't often see a "remake" done only 2 years after the original! The only other instance I can recall would be how THE SAINT STRIKES BACK was loosely remade as THE SAINT TAKES OVER. In that case, the first version was abominably bad, the redo, infinitely better. Both had the same 3 actors as the leads, with only the girl playing 2 different roles between them.
However, the climax of A.D. 1972 is a huge improvement. Instead of Dracula being taken down by a random "act of God" (lightning), Lorrimer works HARD to kill the bastard, tossing holy water in his face (just like in BRIDES...) causing him to fall into a pit and be impaled on multiple wooden stakes simultaneously --which seems inspired by THE RETURN OF DRACULA with Francis Lederer from 1958-- another film set in "the present day"! (How about that?)
I put off re-watching this series for several years, with the intention that the next time I would watch, I'd upgrade the entire series to Blu-Ray. As of this weekend, I now have ALL of them upgraded-- with only ONE left to watch.
But in the meantime, I managed to get ahold of the Univesal CLASSIC MONSTERS 51-film box set, and have been slowly working my way through that. And in doing so, I was quite surprised to notice something that had completely escaped my notice before. Which is, DRACULA'S DAUGHTER (1936) has an extraordinary amount of things in common with A.D. 1972.
Both films, the "Chelsea" section of London is mentioned repeatedly. Both have an older Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan, Peter Cushing) talking with THE POLICE, and trying to explain to them about the existence of VAMPIRES. This is absolutely not something from Stoker's novel, wherein all the characters do whatever they can to avoid the police and any messy explanations that nobody would ever believe. Fortunately, Inspector Murray (Michael Coles) is a HELL of a lot more intelligent, reasonable, and open-minded than Sir Basil Humphrey (Gilbert Emery) was. Humphrey was INTENSELY-annoying as a character; Murray is such a sensible character, he came back for the sequel!
Both DAUGHTER and A.D. 1972, oddly enough, have a scene early in their stories that takes place at a party being held in some rich person's house. Of course, in DAUGHTER, it was where Countess Zeleska got to meet psychiatrist Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger), who perhaps is the better counterpart to Murray, while in A.D. 1972 it's merely a party to show off the over-aged "cool kids" intruding on a private party because a rock band they like happens to be playing there. If anything, the rock party is this film's "nicer" equivalent to the BROTHEL seen in TASTE...
The final act of both films has the "nice" girl kidnapped and put INTO A TRANCE by the vampire. What are the odds? In DAUGHTER, Janet Blake (Margueritte Churchill) is mostly "bait" to lure Jeffrey, while in A.D. 1972, although Dracula wants to destroy Van Helsing, his grand-daughter, Jessica Van Helsing (Stephanie Beachum) is part of his revenge, as he intends to make her a vampire like himself, a situation no doubt inspired by that with Mina Harker in the novel.
Something else I had NEVER noticed before, a minor point, is how Johnny knocks over a porcelain statue, shattering it into a dozen tiny pieces. The way it was perched right on the edge of that table, and the shot of it hitting the floor and breaking, was almost IDENTICAL to a bit in the 1940 Hitchcock film REBECCA-- which, crazy enough, I re-watched the SAME weekend as I did A.D. 1972! Again-- what are the odds??
Crazy enough, I'd been watching this film for over 40 years before I suddenly found out that the 2nd song performed by Stoneground, "Alligator Man", was a cover version of a 1962 country song by Jimmy C. Newman. The 2 recordings are shockingly different, it really is a perfect example of someone taking an existing song and "making it there own".
Doing a search online, I was also rather surprised to learn that the singer, Sal Valentino, whose wild, "crazed" eyes almost outdo those of Leon Russell, had earlier been the lead singer in a group called The Beau Brummels, very mid-60s "British Invasion" in style. You'd almost never have guessed it was the same guy.
Mike Vickers was a member of Manfred Mann, and his score, which some feel is out of place, is one of the most exciting and memorable things about the entire film. When they weren't doing silly pop tunes, Manfred Mann's main interest was JAZZ, and Vickers muct have really loved the chance to do something like this.
I wanted to mention the 2 police characters in here. Michael Coles, who played Inspector Murray, apart from this and its sequel, was also in DR. WHO AND THE DALEKS (I somehow never realized this). I've also seen him in a SAINT, an AVENGERS, a RANDALL AND HOPKIRK (DECEASED), and a PROTECTORS. I was rather surprised to find out he passed away in 2005 at only 70. Seems too young.
On the other hand, his distinctive-looking sidekick, the un-named Detective Sergeant, was played by David Andrews, who in his career split his time between acting (mostly earlier) and directing (mostly later). A.D. 1972 was one of his last acting jobs, and, as it happens, I've only ever seen him in 2 other things-- both quite recently, thanks to DVDs! He was in the 1st-season AVENGERS episode "The Frighteners" (one of the very few still known to exist!), and, in the 1965 Douglas Wilmer SHERLOCK HOLMES episode, "The Red-Headed League", as "Vincent Spaulding"-- in reality, "John Clay", the master criminal! This amazed me to find out, as, under his rectangular glasses, Andrews is almost unrecognizable in A.D. 1972-- unless you hear his very-distinct ACCENT! Seems almost a shame he gave up acting. Born in 1935, he's STILL around at 87!
It's wonderful to finally have this (and all the others) on Blu-Ray disc. The last several in a row, RISEN, TASTE, SCARS, A.D. 1972 and SATANIC RITES, all have what I would describe as "PERFECT" picture & sound. As did BRIDES and KISS. I only wish the Warner Archives discs had audio commentaries and other features like the Shout Factory discs do. Then again, I wish Shout Factory wasn't doing this "CHEAP" thing with the disc authoring problem. Also, it'd be really nice if somebody went back and did FAR-BETTER restorations of HORROR and PRINCE, so you could actually SEE what you were looking at while watching. Both are WAYYYYY too dark.
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Reportedly, Christopher Lee was even more annoyed than usual when he heard the alleged proposed "working title" of Hammer's latest atrocity... DRACULA IS DEAD AND WELL AND LIVING IN LONDON. This was reported in Famous Monsters magazine, but, apparently, was never REALLY seriously considered as the title. Instead, they went with THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA. At least, until Warner Brothers was STUPID enough to decide not to distribute it in America AT ALL. 5 years later, somehow, Milton Subotsky and his new company Dynamite Entertainment (no relation whatsoever to the recent NJ comic-book publisher) picked it up for distribution and put it out under the completely-absurd title of COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE. The US poster, with a terrible painting of Dracula that looks nothing like Christopher Lee, has a tagline on it that reads, "The king of the undead marries the queen of the zombies". This has NOTHING to do with the plot at all! Although Dracula gets Jessica on an altar in a trance for the 2nd movie in a row (what are the odds?) she's in no way a "queen of the zombies", and as for "vampire brides", there were no less than 6 of them in this film, really trying to make up for their only being 1 in the 1958 alleged adaptation of Stoker's novel.
I've also read the film was cut in the UK, and cut perhaps even more in the US. I can't say, it's been 44 YEARS since I saw it with my parents at the Coronet Theatre in Haddonfield. However, comparing my 41-year-old self-recorded videotape (made off of Philly's Channel 3 and their "Saturday Night Dead" show) to the brand-new BLU-RAY, I find there was 3 MINUTES missing (not 4 as listed on the IMDB). This involved mostly all the nudity of the blonde girl on the altar, any nudity in the basement, blood from stakes being driven thru the vampire girls, and the like.
Most of the movie takes place (at least we see the exterior of) a place called "Pellham House". Looking it up, I see in reality, it's a house called High Canons, in Buckettsland Lane, Well End, Hertfordshire. I've seen it in at least 4 films that I can recall, the others being THE DEVIL RIDES OUT (Mocata's house), a PROTECTORS episode, and a Diana Rigg AVENGERS, "Dead Man's Treasure". The IMDB actually has a list of some 49 different films it's appeared in, quite a few others I've seen (but don't remember it being in). Among them, crazy enough, are 3 other AVENGERS episodes, but, they don't have "Dead Man's Treasure" listed. Hmm!
It seems some obscure, tiny department of British Intelligence (perhaps England's answer to "Control" on GET SMART ?) got wind that several high-ranking people were hanging out at this place regularly, so they tried to infiltrate a man there, who got caught and tortured before escaping in a hail of bullets, before passing on what he knew and they dying. One of the people at the house, taking part in what appears to be a Satanic Ritual (the vibe really is that this is a sequel to THE DEVIL RIDES OUT, the same way THE DUNWICH HORROR is a sequel to Corman's THE HAUNTED PALACE) is the government minister in charge of said tiny department. So, to avoid losing their jobs-- or worse-- they recruit "Inspector Murray" (Michael Coles) who's moved up to "Special Branch", and he in turn takes their information to-- who else? --Lorrimer Van Helsing!
And so, for the 2nd Hammer Dracula film in a row, PETER CUSHING completely steals the movie, making an utter farce of Christopher Lee getting top billing (and probably far more money for far less work and screen-time). A lot of people dismiss the 2 "modern-day" Hammer Draculas, but both are among my TOP FAVORITES. How could they not be? They've actually got REAL PLOTS, and they've actually got PETER CUSHING. Plus, the previous one had CAROLINE MUNRO (hubba hubba!), and this one's got JOANNA LUMLEY!
Lorrimer recognizes one of the men involved in whatever it is, is an old friend of his, Professor Julian Keeley, a specialist in blood diseases and the like. So, paying him a visit, we get a sort-of "reunion" of Cushing with FREDDIE JONES, from FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED. And whatta ya know? Jones just about STEALS the movie from Cushing!! Man, it takes a special kind of actor to be able to do that. It starts with, "Evil RULES, you know...", moves on to "The Supreme being is THE DEVIL" and goes on from there.
Meanwhile, the girl from the security office is brutally kidnapped in broad daylight, and wakes up to be assaulted by COUNT DRACULA, who has his way with her without saying a single word. Nice pay if you can get it.
Lorrimer barely escapes getting killed while Keeley winds up hanging from the ceiling. Murray & Torrence (William Franklyn) pay a visit to Pellham House, while Jessica, who refuses to STAY IN THE CAR, sneaks into the basement and almost becomes the victim of no less than 5 vampire girls. I know Lorrimer said she had a "keen scientist's mind" and knows "more about his work" than he does, but I do really find it difficult to believe this is the same girl Stephanie Beachum played in the previous film. They wanted Beachum back, but apparently, she was making AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS for Amicus at the time. At least having the same actress might have made this shocking change in personality more acceptable, but here it feels like Lorrimer's got 2 very different grand-daughters BOTH named Jessica.
Some people complain about various things in these movies, well, I have basically ONE real problem with Don Houghton's scripts, and it's something that turns up in BOTH films. In A.D. 1972, Van Helsing tells Murray to "STAY AWAY" from Saint Barthoff's Church, insisting he'll "never find anything". This goes completely against all common sense with regard to vampires. If you want to search a vampire's hideout, the ONLY safe time to do it is in the DAYTIME. Yet he insists on going in alone, at sundown, and tells Murray to give him an hour before following. Which makes NO SENSE.
So here, in SATANIC RITES, Van Helsing insists that if the police had raided Pellham House, "by the time they got there" they would have found nothing. However, the entire CLIMAX of the film TOTALLY DISPUTES this. All 5 vampire girls are STILL in the basement-- the Satanic altar is still set up in the drawing room-- and as it turns out, the Chinese woman running the house, is ALSO a vampire, bringing the number of vampire girls up to 6!
You wonder how Lorrimer managed to destroy Dracula TWICE in these films!
Another non-sensical thing is, after Lorrimer says to stay away from Pellham House, both Torrence & Matthews (Richard Vernon, seen in such films as A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, GOLDFINGER and THE TOMB OF LIEGEIA) wind up killed by the biker-sniper, and both Murray & Jessica are captured! NONE of which would have happened, if Murray had called n the Special Branch to RAID the damned house in the first place! This is BEYOND incompetence, bordering on SUICIDAL behavior on the part of the good guys.
Lorrimer, meanwhile, in the most amusing part of the film, goes to the skyscraper office building built on the site of St. Barthoff's, to see "D.D. Denham", the ring-leader who apparently doesn't show up when photographed. And, hiding in the shadows (but only barely, it's pretty clear who's sitting behind the desk on the Blu-Ray) is a guy doing an Eastern-European accent. I found it hilarious that Christopher Lee was paying tribute to BELA LUGOSI for that brief scene, and wondered how the entire Hammer Dracula series might have been if he'd done a Transylvanian accent from the beginning in 1958?
More incompetence is at hand, as after taking the time to melt down a silver dagger to create a silver bullet, Lorrimer takes SO MUCH TIME taking aim that his pistol is knocked out of his hand before he can shoot Dracula at close range. I tell you, this hero didn't DESERVE to win in this film.
Then again, neither did the villain. We learn that after the Chinese girl (apparently) ressurected him, he used his hypnotic power to enslave this group of leaders, conning them into believing they were going to stage a coup, taking over the government, and use the threat of a new strain of BLACK DEATH PLAGUE virus. But in reality, he's sick of it all (as was Chris Lee, heehee), and wants to end it-- and, like most sociopaths, he wants to take EVERYBODY else with him. Just as he's about to put the bite on Jessica (for the 2nd film in a row), one of his servants, shocked on finding out he's intended to be a PLAGUE CARRIER, distracts him, so Dracula wills him to shatter the testube in his hand. The others make a run for it, but as Dracula confronts Lorrimer, the ceiling explodes.
It seems Murray got into this intensely-BRUTAL fight with one of the biker guys upstairs, causing the biker to get ELECTROCUTED, and the security equipment exploded-- setting the whole house on fire. Watching this again after all these years, I yelled at my TV, "It's Roger Corman time!" He had several POE films end with a house set on fire, where it didn't happen in the original Poe stories. Now finding himself in a situation similar to the ending of FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED (how about that?), Lorrimer tosses a chair thru a window, then jumps to safety.
You know, NONE of that would have happened if they'd just KILLED Murray along with the other 2 guys. TSK!
I did like when Murray found Jessica, and confirmed that she was still alive, said to himself, "Please, God..." In the midst of all this, it seems he was falling for her. Almost a shame we never got to see either of them again after this film.
This whole last sequence is the BEST and MOST exciting part of the film. The problem is... we still have about 5 minutes to go. Lorrimer finds Hawthorn Trees growing on the property, tricks Dracula into stumbling into one, STAKES him, then watches him slowly disintegrate, finally picking up Dracula's ring at the very end. And the problem is... it all seems to happen in SLOW motion. It kinda crawls to an end... almost the way the Bela Lugosi film did, come to think of it.
John Cacavas supplies a really MOODY and BEAUTIFUL music score... but after Mike Vickers, it's almost TOO subdued and low-key.
A.D. 1972 felt on every score like a "grand finale" of the series. Yet, Hammer planned to do a follow-up even before it was released, maybe even before it was finished. To justify this, SATANIC RITES has a story that is MUCH-BIGGER in scope. As Lorrimer himself says, "It's not just personal revenge this time." NO KIDDING. But to fit into the same time-slot, its more-complex plot is streamlined beyond belief, resulting in a film that, structurally, is actually far-SIMPLER in its telling. On repeat viewings (and I've lost count of how many times I've seen it now), it's amazing how "simple" the film itself is, considering the story it's trying to tell.
It's just a shame that it doesn't FEEL as thrilling, as exciting, as tense, as a "grand finale" should. Is it possible at all they hoped to do a 3rd modern-day story? Hard to imagine. Somehow, with the market being SWAMPED with far too many horror films, vampire films and Dracula films, A.D. 1972 did disappointing business in America, and so Warners insanely decided not to even bother putting SATANIC RITES out in America at all. Which is criminal, as I feel it's a VASTLY-better film than at least HALF of the Hammer Dracula sequels.
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The 7 Brothers meet
DRACULA and the ARMY of KUNG-FU ZOMBIES, in...
THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES (1974)
Without a doubt, absolutely, positively, unquestionably, the single most BAT-SHIT INSANE movie Hammer Films ever made!
Lawrence Van Helsing (Peter Cushing, who else?) is travelling the world, doing research in Chung King, China, when he's invited to take part in an expedition to a remote village somewhere in the mountains, in order to free them from the very vampires he's heard a legend about. "Meanwhile" (more or less), Kah, the evil high priest of the vampire cult, has travelled to Transylvania seeking help from the lord of vampires himself, COUNT DRACULA. And gets more than he bargained for, as Dracula, after first dismissing Kah, decides to POSSESS his body and take charge of the Chinese vampires himself.
This, basically, is what you get if you cross THE SEVEN SAMURAI, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and THE BIG BOSS. Sort of. Warners wanted more Dracula, Hammer teamed with the Shaw Brothers, the resulting film is totally-nuts but mesmerizing-- but then Warners, at the last minute, decided NOT to release the film in America AT ALL. Those stupid BASTARDS!!
Somehow, Milton Subotsky got ahold of this 5 years later, totally butchered it and re-edited it into complete incoherence, and released it as THE 7 BROTHERS MEET DRACULA. Fortunately (?), when Philly's SATURDAY NIGHT DEAD ran it after 1 in the morning, they ran the original version instead, and, if my stop-watch timing is correct, only about 1 minute got cut from its one hour twenty-nine minute run-time. However, as was to be expected from trying to tape something off a local channel, it was in fullscreen, so HALF the visuals and HALF the action scenes can't be seen or appreciated; the picture and sound are fuzzy, the colors are faded, and there's "ghosts" due to a bad antenna signal. And I've been putting up with this CRAPPY copy for 41 YEARS!
Not anymore! Friday I watched the 2019 Shout Factory Blu-Ray, which is UNCUT, in WIDESCREEN, CRYSTAL-CLEAR picture and sound all the way through. Simply-- the movie is STUNNING to look at! Now let me see if I can hit the highs and the lows...
The opening scene, in the underground crypt inside Dracula's castle, I feel is the single best-looking such crypt in the entire Hammer Dracula series. The long, curving stairway, the jagged stone archway, the large stone sarcophagus, all really cool design work. The martial-arts action scenes are very impressively choreographed, and far more impressive and coherent when seen in widescreen. (I really, really need to get a widescreen DVD of ENTER THE DRAGON sometime soon.) James Bernard returns for one more stab at a Dracula score, and for the most part, doesn't disappoint, and is as loud, booming, in-your-face and over-the-top as always. The story is relatively simple and straight-forward, and doesn't outstay its welcome. And, amazingly, Peter Cushing gets physically involved in some of the fight scenes at the climax! Really impressive for such a old, skinny guy!
HOWEVER... I'm afraid, even in this visually stunning, eye-popping, complete version, this is never gonna be one of my favorites, despite Peter Cushing. Robin Stewart as Leyland starts out so wimpy, it's surprising when, as the story progresses, he turns out to actually be handy when the action erupts. All the same, I found myself wishing they'd gotten Ian Ogilvy instead. Julie Ege is pretty, but with her thick accent, I kept thinking it might have been better if they'd cast Ingrid Pitt instead. And then there's John Forbes-Robertson. He's not bad near the end (although he gets killed way too easily after such a long build-up), but at the beginning, all I could think of was, somebody was re-using the bad make-up job from SCARS. I know Christopher Lee refused to do this, but, there are so many different "Dracula" actors from that period who could have been far more-impressive than him-- including Charles MacCauley, Francis Lederer, Louis Jourdan, George Hamilton, or Frank Langella. I mean, David DeKyser was more impressive, and it's only his VOICE in the picture!
There's a cool shot early-on where Dracula rises from his coffin, which seems to have inspired a shot in the Mel Brooks version (except, without Dracula hitting his head as he does it). I'm wondering if there was any other film where they did that-- have a stiff figure actually rise, his feet staying in place, as his head and shoulders rotates upward.
When Vanessa offers to finance the expedition, on one condition-- that she goes along-- and Van Helsing vehemently objects, it reminds me of a near-identical scene in Columbia's JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1959) with James Mason's Professor Lindenbrook objecting to Carla Goteberg (Arlene Dahl), who winds up going along anyway.
About two-thirds in, when the expedition is resting in the cave, and Van Helsing is explaining to the group exactly what vampires are, and how they may be fought and destroyed, it reminded me of 2 other near-identical scenes with Peter Cushing as a scientist in a savage landscape-- DR. WHO AND THE DALEKS, and AT THE EARTH'S CORE!
Just about one-third into the film, the expedition starts, and for about 2 minutes, we see them travelling in the wilderness, before the Tong leader's henchman attack, and Bernard's score explodes. But before that, there's no music at all, and I think it really slows down the film almost painfully. To make up for it, when I watched my tape the other night, during that scene, I filled in the gap by humming Elmer Bernstein's "MAGNIFICENT SEVEN" theme. What could possibly have been more appropriate right then? The western version of the story NEVER slows down, and Bernstein's music is a huge part of that.
Now, apart from pacing and some casting, there's ONE other thing that bothers me about this story-- and it involves time passage and continuity logic. According to a bit of on-screen text, the prologue takes place in 1805. The rest of the film takes place in 1905. But HOW can this be? Are we really supposed to believe that Dracula went to China in 1805 and stayed there for 100 years before being abruptly destroyed by Van Helsing at the end of this film? This contradicts the fact that Van Helsing had confronted and destroyed Dracula, at some unspecified earlier point.
Back at the long-gone IMDB message boards, there was a thread where some fans discussed the continuity (or lack thereof) in the Hammer Dracula series. I recall one fan suggesting there must be 2 different Van Helsings, perhaps twin brothers, to explain this film. But it was also brought up that A.D. 1972's prologue takes place in 1872. I think the easiest way to work this out, is to simply IGNORE the stated dates, and, in the case of this film, specifically, IGNORE the "1805" date as a blatent ERROR.
Simply, the whole thing makes more sense if we figure that at some point, Van Helsing destroyed Dracula, who,many years later, was visited by Kah, then went to China posing as Kah, and some time after that, had his fatal run-in with Van Helsing. It may not reconcile this film with any of the others, but, at least, it reconciles this film WITH ITSELF!
Meanwhile... in the prologue, Dracula suggests he's somehow "trapped" in his mausoleum. How can THAT be-- when Kah just walks right in? And then, the possessed Kah walks right out? There's no explanation!
Perhaps what might help reconcile this film with the others, is if we go with the DARK SHADOWS Barnabas time-travel method. That is, when Dracula possessed Kah, only his spirit went to China, but his actual body remained in Transylvania (or wherever it is in the Hammer universe). I could even see this film taking place in the same continuity as SCARS. Picture this idea: in LEGEND, Dracula has an underground crypt he or anyone can walk in or out of. But in SCARS, he's sealed up his crypt, so only HE can get in or out (without climbing down or up a rope to get to the window).
One final bit: how is it, that in (supposedly) 100 years, NOBODY in the village ever thought to walk to the vampire temple and BURN IT to the ground during daylight hours? This is basic "vampire hunting 101"!
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Okay, MY mistake... I don't know if I read something erroneous, or mis-remembered... but it seems it was Max Rosenberg who got his hands on the last 2 Hammer Draculas and released them 5 years apiece after they came out in England, with this one being BUTCHERED beyond all sense or belief.
I still have to watch "THE 7 BROTHERS MEET DRACULA" on the Blu-Ray.
Strangely-- and I wonder why I KEEP running across stuff like this-- in the audio commentary, there's a story that COMPLETELY contradicts a story I read at least 15 YEARS ago, in a book about Amicus Films. In there, it was said the name of company means "friend", because Amicus was formed by a HANDSHAKE between Max Rosenberg & Milton Subotsky. Later, after "AT THE EARTH'S CORE", Subotsky got tired of their new "epic" direction (which, it turns out, was making them a PILE of money-- "THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT" was allegedly their BIGGEST money-maker ever, which I never knew for decades), they disolved the company, without lawyers, with a handshake. I thought it was a wonderful story.
Well in the audio commentary I just heard TONIGHT, instead, I hear the company disolved in a "very bitter legal battle". WHAT?????
How the HELL do we keep getting such totally-conflicting stories about movie history like this?
It reminds me of the stories about the 1979 & 1980 FLASH GORDON films (and how they're related)... or what went on between RKO Pictures and author Leslie Charteris. I can't shake the feeling somebody is MAKING THINGS UP lately, trying to tell a more "controversial" story than things I read many years earlier.
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I was reminded last night... the "Dracula rising from the coffin" scene was inspired by the one in "NOSFERATU" (1922)!!! There, it takes place on board the ship.
So that makes at least 3 films it was used in. I wonder if there were any more?
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Today's acquisition:
TAJEMSTVI HRADU V KARPATECH
(The Mysterious Castle In The Carpathians)
(1981 / 2016 Region 2 DVD from The Czech Republic)
Since getting my Region-Free DVD player, so far I've gotten Region 2 discs from England, Italy, France, and now The Czech Republic! I thought people here might appreciate this kind of thing.
This is-- get this-- a HORROR-COMEDY based on an 1892 novel by Jules Verne-- "Le Château des Carpathes" (The Carpathian Castle). Apparently, the story has certain similarities with Bram Stoker's "Dracula"-- but came out several years earlier. I can't wait to see it!
(https://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w420/files/images/film/posters/160/457/160457436_729a4b.jpg)
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ELVIRA'S HAUNTED HILLS (2001)
Okay, I have now watched "ELVIRA'S HAUNTED HILLS" for the first time. While the 1st movie got a terrible review at some site (but I loved it, so, what did that guy know) and this one got multiple reviews saying "It's not as good as the first one"), I wasn't gonna let that sway me.
This is a very different movie. But it is also a very FAMILAR movie. I read it was designed to be a "tribute" to Roger Corman's POE films. THEY WEREN'T KIDDING!!! This is almost like a Mel Brooks version of Corman's POE, only on a much-smaller budget.
I was amazed at the structure of this story. They managed to slip in very obvious tributes, in some cases just little bits, to ALL 8 of Corman's films!! One scene at the climax has bits of 3 films going on SIMULTANEOUSLY. When I saw that, I thought, "Hey, this is like something I wrote once."
There's also, to my eyes, at least one tip to Brooks (he loved including a MUSICAL NUMBER in each of his films), and, right at the end, a BOND film. (LIVE AND LET DIE-- that figures, right?)
This is also the MOST violent "Pit and the Pendulum" I have ever seen. And this is a COMEDY!
So, it really figures, in a twisted way, that I should get this now. A while back, the very first DRACULA I got on DVD was Mel Brooks' film. Right now, I'm planning to upgrade all my Corman POE films to Blu-Ray this year... and I wind up getting this one FIRST.
I must also mention this film has one of the WEIRDEST bits in it I've ever seen in a American comedy. One of the characters is DUBBED-- and the lip movements doesn't match the words. So it's like you're watching a foreign film... only, IT ISN'T. Well, except that it was filmed on location in RUMANIA.
The film is dedicated to VINCENT PRICE. But it's also "in memory of Phil Hartman". That's interesting. It makes me think he might have been in line to play one of the main parts in here... if he'd still been around when it got made.
(https://s3.shoutfactory.com/images/31721/div_96/documents/d96c17r31721/EHH_BR_Cover_Slipcase_72dpi.webp)
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Came across this movie, 'Frankenstein 1970' which was shot in 1958. I don't have a copy, but I could have but having seen the trailer I'm not too enthusiastic about it.
Clip HD | Frankenstein | Warner Archive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LdpBq_KwD4
Joe Dante on FRANKENSTEIN 1970
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HCTUBHwVn8
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"1958"
Might make an appropriate double-bill with THE RETURN OF DRACULA (1958), which starred Czechoslovakian actor Francis Lederer.
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Tonight on Blu-Ray:
"THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER" (1960)
Well, I have 3 copies of this now. Back in the 80s, I managed to tape all 8 Roger Corman films off local commercial stations. You know what that means. "FULLSCREEN"-- fuzzy-as-hell-- faded-- and possibly cut (but I'll be checking on that as I go).
In the early-mid 2000s, I managed to upgrade 5 of those 8 off of TCM. Crystal-clear, uncut, WIDESCREEN. Wow. When I do upgrades, I really do 'em. Unfortunately, my cable got cut off before they ever ran the other 3, so, I've still been putting up with really LOUSY copies of those... BUT NOT FOR MUCH LONGER! (And the state of my current used VCR is such that it makes me want to upgrade more stuff as quick as I can manage it.)
I got into the habit of watching all 8 (plus whatever extra films I was in a mood for) about once a year for quite a while there. But when I started buying DVDs and Blu-Rays, I decided to take a nice long break, until I could upgrade all 8 of the films. During that time, I've watched a whole year of nothing but comedies on Friday night... another year of science-fiction films... half a year of "swordfighting" films... several months of my favorite comedies again... and, this past year, a massive marathon of films from the 1920s, 1930s and (so far) 1940s. That's really been fun, as I've been combining horror, crime, adventure, fantasy-- all kinds of stuff, in (more or less) chronological order. Heck, just last weekend I watched JESSE JAMES with Tyrone Power & Henry Fonda... and FANTASIA.
But as of Saturday (it was gonna be Friday, but we had non-stop rain... and, it was SUNNY the next day!) I got my hands on 4 out of the 8 Corman POE films (all in one box), and am planning to order the remaining 4 (if I can help it) over the next 3 weeks!!! (2 of them are only sold separately.) It felt like it took me forever to get all the Hammer DRACULA films, so I really wanna get these Corman films out of the way as quick as I can.
The Shout Factory restoration of USHER looks "perfect". Nothing too bright or too dark, no visual or audio damage. And how about these extras? 3 audio commentaries (3!!!), a Vincent Price interview, 2 trailers, a photo gallery, and an "Overture" (which, fortunately, is on a separate track, so you can hit the "advance" button and skip over it if you choose-- I did).
I can tell these are gonna keep me busy for some time.
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Tonight on Blu-Ray:
"PIT AND THE PENDULUM" (1961)
This could be sub-titled, "Edgar Allan Poe's Greatest Hits". It's a murder mystery (shades of Dupin, or, "LAURA"), it involves a man terrified that he may have buried his wife alive ("Usher"), one of the characters is named "Barnard" ("Arthur Gordon Pym"), there's a shot of someone being bricked up alive ("Amontillado"), oh, and the story is a SEQUEL to "The Pit And The Pendulum" whose main character is the SON of a member of The Spanish Inquisition.
My own personal nick-name for the film has long been... "HOUSE OF USHER 2". It opens with someone making a long journey to visit a huge house to inquire about a woman, the owner of the house is frail and nervous and haunted (in fact, "Nicholas Medina" is MORE like Poe's "Roderick Usher" than Vincent Price was in the previous film!), and halfway thru we find Elisabeth has been buried alive BY ACCIDENT (in the previous film, Madeline was buried alive DELIBERATELY). While the film works fine on its own, there's an added kick to viewing "USHER" and "PENDULUM" back-to-back, as "PENDULUM" FEELS like a sequel, even though it's not. It also LOOKS like it cost 10 TIMES the amount of money to make as the 1st one.
Funny thing... Antony Carbone's "Dr. Leoni" seems vaguely inspired by the un-named doctor in Poe's "Usher", who the narrator said looked "sinister". He did not appear in Corman's film, but here, he becomes one of the film's 2 villains! I always find it hilarious that he falls to his death, and Price doesn't even notice it... and, when others see him, NOBODY expresses any concern that HE's dead!
I remember many years ago thinking Corman seemed to have made a mistake casting 3 actors who looked vaguely similar... UNTIL Carbone got killed, and suddenly, Price thought John Kerr WAS Carbone! Their similar looks then became part of the plot. (If the butler had walked in right then, HE would have gotten strapped down on that slab instead.)
It's also funny that Francis Barnard, who came to find out what happened to his sister, NEVER really finds out the truth by the end-- nor, does anyone else who's still alive by the time the credits roll. He TOLD Nicholas his sister was "a strong-willed woman, not suceptible to morbid impressions" (or something like that). He was RIGHT! HE knew Elisabeth better than her HUSBAND did. (But still, not good enough.)
This is, again, the 3rd copy I've had of this film, following a wretched local commercial channel broadcast, and a stunning TCM showing almost 20 years ago. I'd say the Shout Factory disc is ALMOST "perfect". Crystal-clear picture, slightly-HISSY sound which comes in and out depending on how much music is being played.
The disc comes with 2 audio commentaries, 1 rough-looking trailer, an image gallery, and the "rare" TV prologue (that actually has nothing to do with the rest of the story).
Among its various influences, something I NEVER noticed... was the bit about someone looking for their sister, followed by someone else going insane, beliving they're their own PARENT and dressing up like them... came from PSYCHO !!! How about that? Man, that's how you borrow something and "make it your own".
I always liked Luana Anders in this. 2 years later, she played a somewhat-similar character, a very sensitive woman, in THE OUTER LIMITS episode "The Guests", one of the 2 "gothic horror"/"haunted house" episodes on that show.
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Some things I found out in the last 2 days, apparently, "BLACK NARCISSUS" (1947) with Deborah Kerr had a huge influence on the visual style, action & camerawork of the climax of Corman's "HOUSE OF USHER". Meanwhile, Richard Matheson borrowed a WHOLE hell of a lot from "LES DIABOLIQUES" (1955) when he wrote the screenplay for "PIT AND THE PENDULUM".
I've just added both films to my wanted list!
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THE PREMATURE BURIAL (1962)
"House Of Usher 3" / Variations On A Theme (7 of 10)
In both the US and UK, this film has been ignored in box sets because it doesn't have Vincent Price in it. That's a shame, because it's one one of my very favorite Ray Milland films!
**********SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!**********
This is NOT one of my normal reviews. Read no further if you haven't seen the movie already. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Department of unmittigated nerve: once past the prologue where a doctor pays 2 grave-robbers to dig up a corpse (illegally, I have to guess) for medical research, the story begins-- for the 3RD MOVIE IN A ROW-- with someone arriving at a huge mansion, concerned about a loved one, only to have someone try to turn them away. If you compare this opening to "HOUSE OF USHER", then Emily Gault (Hazel Court) is the "Phillip Winthrop" role; Kate Carrell (Heather Angel) is the "Roderick Usher" of the story; and Guy Carell (Ray Milland) is the "Madeline Usher" this time around! How's that for gender-swapping, decades before it became popular in Hollywood?
Emily is in love with Guy and wants to marry him, but his older sister Kate insists he is SICK and does not want to see her. Of course, beyond the opening, things take quite a different path. Unlike Madeline, who became convinced she was sick when she wasn't due to the influence of her older brother, here, Guy has convinced HIMSELF he's doomed to suffer from catalypsy, and will probably wind up buried alive, because he believes his father died that way. (This is the 3rd movie in a row that mental malady features.) Unlike Roderick, Kate INSISTS it's all in his mind... but there seems to be hints something else is going on.
Guy takes Emily down to the crypt (another scene similar to ones in both "USHER" and "PENDULUM"), but after, succumbs to her pressures and agrees to marry her after all. But then weird stuff starts to happen, like he repeatedly hears someone whistling "Molly Malone" (as the grave-robbers did at the beginning), his pet Collie is struck by lightning and appears dead but recovers, he seems haunted by the 2 grave-robbers which Emily insists she neither saw or heard.
Amidst this, one sequence straight out of Poe's original story involved Guy designing a fantastic mausoleum for himself with MULTIPLE escape devices, on the odd chance he actually is buried alive. This is a point in the story where my attitude varies drastically from the characters in the story. Both Emily & family friend Miles (who's loved Emily for years but was too poor to propose) insist he "must" destroy the "evil" building. I, on the other hand, found myself thinking, if I'd been there, I'd have been laughing with delight, telling Guy what a BRILLIANT design it was, and that he should patent it and license the design out. He could have made a TON of money selling them to other people with his peculiar psychological problem.
Instead, he stupidly dynamites it, and soon after, is SHOCKED into a catalyptic fit because SOMEBODY broke into his father's crypt and moved the body to make it LOOK like he'd been buried alive. (Shades of Elizabeth's corpse in "PENDULUM"-- I just heard in an audio commentary that that was Nicholas Medina's MOTHER, not his WIFE, in that coffin!)
And so Guy is buried alive... Emily tells Miles she "made a mistake" and that it "may not be too late for them"... and Emily's father has the grave-robbers dig up HIS OWN SON-IN-LAW.
And THAT's where the BEST DAMNED part of the movie begins!!!! It was such a slow boil, but it's not until 65 minutes in that you find out, you've been watching a MURDER MYSTERY all this time, and didn't even know it! In fact-- the NERVE of some people-- this movie has the SAME PLOT as "PENDULUM"-- except, it's very well disguised!!
In "PENDULUM", Elisabeth faked her own death, and conspired with her lover Dr. Leoni, to drive Nicholas insane to get her hands on his money. In "BURIAL", Emily hired the grave-robbers and desecrated a dead man's crypt to drive Guy into a catalyptic fit-- so he'd wind up DEAD without her ever having to touch him, so she'd get his money and then be able to marry Miles, who knew nothing about it!
Can you say... "variations on a theme"???
But it GOES WRONG. In "PENDULUM", Nicholas, having gone insane, takes on the persona of his evil FATHER (just as "Norman Bates" took on the persona of his evil MOTHER in "PSYCHO" the year before!!) and kills Leoni and Elisabeth, and almost Phillip & Maximiliian.
In "BURIAL", Guy kills BOTH grave-robbers (who saved his life!-- heeheehee) AND his father-in-law (who apparently knew NOTHING about his daughter's schemes) before then going after his UNFAITHFUL WIFE. Every time I watch the climax, I have the biggest SMILE on my face when he dumps her into the open grave (shades of Chris Lee in "HORROR OF DRACULA") while she tries to "explain"... yeah, right. When she cries out, "NOT THAT!" he replies-- "YES-- THAT!", and begins shovelling dirt on top of her. I love it.
Then Miles shows up and tries to reason with him (that won't work) and tries to stop him (and almost gets KILLED for it) before Kate SHOOTS her brother in the back. When I watched the crystal-clear widescreen print of this on my brand-new Blu-Ray, it suddenly hit me, this was the 3rd time in 3 films someone pulled a gun out (shades of Dupin in "Murders In The Rue Morgue"). In "USHER", Roderick pulled one out to defend himself against Madeline-- but then dropped it in fear the moment she arrived. In "PENDULUM", Nicholas pulled one out to kill himself, but Catherine stopped him. In "BURIAL", Kate pulled one out, and FINALLY somebody got shot and killed. It's like a sign a "trilogy" is coming to a close.
But what a tragedy. Kate had to explain it all to Miles, who couldn't believe Emily had spent so much time planning to murder her husband for his money. I wonder. Kate saved Miles, would she be charged with killing her brother? Guy killed 4 PEOPLE-- if Kate hadn't killed HIM, would HE be charged with murder, since he had already been declared DEAD by 2 separate doctors?? Who can say?
One thing I can't buy is, they repeatedly have shots of the castle turrets from "PENDULUM" in "BURIAL", even though, the Carrell Mansion in "BURIAL" looks NOTHING whatsoever like the Medina Castle in the previous film. It's a little distracting, especially since one of my interests is architecture.
A year before Corman's film, the THRILLER anthology tv series did their own episode of "The Premature Burial". It's one of the very few where host Boris Karloff played one of the characters in the story. I've only seen it once (on Youtube, it's apparently available on disc with the complete TV season), and it's interesting to note both its similarities and differences with the Charles Beaumont movie story. Was Beaumont influenced by the TV version? If you've seen both, it seems impossible for him NOT to have been!
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THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1928)
A Masterpiece of Phantasmagoric Surrealism! (8 of 10)
Roderick Usher's wife Madeline is dying from an unknown illness, and begs his old friend Allan to visit him. The family doctor has been unable to diagnose what the problem is, but every time Roderick works on the portrait of his wife, it seems to come to life more and more, while she is drained of it.
Anyone familiar with Edgar Allan Poe's works can plainly see that this fascinating film (like many classics old and new) has taken many liberties and in particular is combining together elements of both "The Fall Of The House Of Usher" and "The Oval Portrait". Hence, why Madeline has become Roderick's wife rather than his sister. It's often fascinating to watch this kind of "adaptation", where taking 2 or more stories can both add and detract from the source material at the same time. But, as so many previous reviewers have noted, there's a LOT more going on here!
Stylistically, this is one of the most bizarre, MESMERIZING silent films I've ever seen! The design work, the camera angles, superimposed multiple images, the camera shaking, quit-cut edits-- a full gamut that is so all-encompasing it makes the 1922 NOSFERATU seem like amateur hour by comparison. And that's not all!
The music score, composited from existing pieces by various artists (shades of Stanley Kubrick) is as much OR MORE of a work to itself, and I haven't been able to find out if this was of recent vintage or not. And then there's the film having FRENCH titles-- but ENGLISH narration in a heavy French accent. WILD!! Seriously-- is what's on the 2001 All Day Entertainment DVD a true relic of the era when silents were evolving into sound-- or a more modern "tampering"? Either way, I could not take my eyes off this thing for its entire 66-minute length. It's like a surrealistic dream you can't wake up from-- but you're enjoying it so much, you don't want to.
Other details that caught my attention include the opening sequence, where Allan stops at a local inn, asking for a ride to the Usher castle, and gets one, but at some distance, is dropped off by a coachman who tells him, "Nothing on Earth could make me go any closer!" It seems clearly inspired by Stoker's "Dracula", but it also struck me that Roger Corman used this exact bit in the pre-credit sequence of his 2nd Poe film, PIT AND THE PENDULUM (which I love to refer to as "House Of Usher 2").
And then there's the plaque commemorating "Lady Ligeia", Roderick's 1st wife. That's another story wherein a man re-marrries after his first wife dies, only to see his 2nd wife also die... before his 1st wife comes back from the dead in the body of his 2nd!
And then there's the bizzare but very cool repeated close-up shots of the grandfather clock's pendulum swinging in such a way it evokes the giant knife-blade from "The Pit And The Pendulum".
To me, the strangest change in the story is having Madeline buried in the family crypt, which is across a lake and must be reached by rowboat. Must make it hard for Roderick to hear the sound of his still-alive sister fighting to get out of her nailed-closed coffin. The interior of the crypt, by the way, reminded me of the cave from the classic Arabian Nights story "Alladin"!
I was also struck by how midway into the film, Allan has to put out a fire that starts accidentally... and then, at the climax, the electrical storm causes the entire castle to catch fire. In the 1960s, Roger Corman had no less than 5 of his 8 Poe stories end with a fire-- despite NONE of the stories those films were based on involving a fire at all. I keep finding earlier sources of inspiration for his films in comic-books and movies, and I wonder if he might have seen this 1928 film before doing his 1960 film.
By my info, there are currently at least 17 film adaptations of "Usher" (with this being the earliest!) but also, 46 different comic-book adaptations. I currently have 17 of those up at my blog. It's fun to compare different artistic interpretations of classic stories like these.
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I just had to share this excerpt of an IMDB review, by "telegonus" (10-6-2002):
"THE ANTI-DISNEY"
"I can't resist a few sociological comments on the Corman-Poe cycle of films of the early sixties. Tales Of Terror came out in 1962, the high noon of the New Frontier. This was a time of optimism and social change, the start of the space program and the Civil Rights movement, and yet in the middle of it all there was this series of low budget horror films, aimed mostly at children and teenagers, and quite unwholesome in atmosphere and subject matter. These weren't even monster movies, like the horrors of old, they were morbid movies about death, torture, witchcraft and premature burials. They were like anti-Disney films, with Price, Lorre and Rathbone instead of MacMurray, Brian Keith and Dorothy McGuire. If in Disney nothing really bad ever happened, in Corman-Poe nothing really good ever happened. Disney represented the smiling surface of America, while Corman-Poe hinted as anxieties just below the surface, and as such, sad to say, portents of things to come."
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They were like anti-Disney films, with Price, Lorre and Rathbone instead of MacMurray, Brian Keith and Dorothy McGuire.
Really?
Fred MacMurray is most noted for 'Double Indemnity' and was alsoin 'the Caine Mutiny' 'The Apartment', and 'The Swarm' - not to mention the Westerns.
Dorothy Malone? 'The Big Sleep, The Killer that stalked New York, Private Hell 36, The Fast and the Furious, and believe it or not, 'Basic Instinct'!
Brian Keith? Mike Hammer [TV], The Violent Men, The Deadly Companions, Nevada Smith and the The Yakuza.
Conversely,
Peter Lorre? Five Weeks in a Balloon, Around the World in 80 Days and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea [Disney]
Vincent Price? The Ten commandments [!], Master of the World [Jules Verne], and believe it or not, The Love boat, animated Scooby-Do and the Brady Bunch [2 episodes]
Yes, I see the point the Journalist was trying to make,but he made it badly.
It would have been better to emphasize that as far as Hollywood goes, the post-years were somewhat more Jeckyl and Hyde and that there was clearly an audience for both Disney and Corman/Poe, often the same individuals - like myself!
And did eitherr Vincent Price or Peter Lorre ever work for Corman?
There is obviously a Thesis here.
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Fred MacMurray is most noted for 'Double Indemnity' and was also in 'the Caine Mutiny' 'The Apartment', and 'The Swarm' - not to mention the Westerns.
I'm guessing the reviewer who mentioned him was thinking of MY THREE SONS (which I've read MacMurray hated doing!) and several 60s Disney films. I think I saw DOUBLE INDEMNITY once, but I definitely saw THE APARTMENT, and hated it-- and especially, the boss MacMurray played, virtually blackmailing his employee Jack Lemmon into loaning him his apartment on weekends so he can cheat on his wife with a woman he was also abusing. My Dad was a fan of both Lemmon & Shirley MacLaine, and I suspect even HE hated that movie. (I got it for him as a birthday present, and he never once mentioned it afterward.)
Dorothy Malone? 'The Big Sleep
She's my FAVORITE in there! However, the reviewer mentioned Dorothy McGuire. Know anything about her? I don't think I've seen any of her work.
Brian Keith? Mike Hammer [TV]
I grew up seeing him in FAMILY AFFAIR. But he was also in SHARKEY'S MACHINE, perhaps the earliest film of the 1980s I would describe as "EXCESSIVELY-over-violent". Last year I saw his unsold MIKE HAMMER pilot. Jesus!!! Thank God that didn't sell. He was TERRIBLE, totally-unlikable. Mike is supposed to be tough, but not a sociopath. Darren McGavin became my favorite, after I'd seen MANY others playing the part, though I must say, he only just barely edged out Biff Elliot, who I thought was PERFECT in I, THE JURY.
Peter Lorre? Five Weeks in a Balloon, Around the World in 80 Days and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea [Disney]
MR. MOTO! Also, VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA (1961). On the other hand, "Le Chiffre" in the 1954 CLIMAX episode, "Casino Royale". I rate him as one of the BEST James Bond villains ever, but nobody likes to talk about that live TV production. And if you wanna see something REALLY sick & depraved, watch ISLAND OF DOOMED MEN (1940), with Lorre as a sadist running a prison work camp, with Charles Middleton as his main henchman. You can't wait to see the guy get what's coming to him in that.
Vincent Price? The Ten commandments [!], Master of the World [Jules Verne], and believe it or not, The Love boat, animated Scooby-Do and the Brady Bunch [2 episodes]
A recent favorite of mine: HIS KIND OF WOMAN (1951), where Price virtually plays a parody of himself as an egomaniacal Hollywood celebrity. I compare his part to that of Chris Tucker in THE FIFTH ELEMENT. I also love his 5th-season GET SMART episode.
Yes, I see the point the Journalist was trying to make,but he made it badly.
It would have been better to emphasize that as far as Hollywood goes, the post-years were somewhat more Jeckyl and Hyde and that there was clearly an audience for both Disney and Corman/Poe, often the same individuals - like myself!
And did either Vincent Price or Peter Lorre ever work for Corman?
Vincent Price did 7 movies for Corman, Peter Lorre did 2. I'm working my way thru those right now, upgrading the whole set to Blu-Rays!
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Just got on Blu-Ray:
"HISTORIAS DE TERROR" /
"TALES OF TERROR" (1962)
Yes, folks, This is one of 2 Roger Corman POE films that, insanely, Shout Factory has completely ignored. They put out 3 different "Vincent Price Collection" box sets, and this isn't on ANY of them!!! I mean, seriously-- WTF??? Personally, I think it's idiotic beyond belief that neither Shout Factory in the US or Arrow in the UK didn't "simply" put out a box of ALL 8 Corman POE films-- including the one with RAY MILLAND. Really, what kind of drugs are these company owners on, anyway?
So, as it happens, Kino Lorber put both "THE PREMATURE BURIAL" and "TALES OF TERROR" out on separate Blu-Rays, both back in 2015. As it happens, all 3 SF boxes went out of print, as did both Kino discs. Shout Factory put out a 2nd edition of Box 1 in 2020, but the other 2 they've let go, and they're REALLY expensive to find now. In addition, both Kino discs are OUT OF PRINT. Now, Kino has recently put out a growing number of movies Shout Factory completely ignored-- AND, they've even been putting out brand-new discs of movies from SF's Box 2 & Box 3. But NOT these 2. I rather imagine they might, soon-- maybe even in the next few months (though I haven't read anything to that effect). But I'm buying these RIGHT NOW!!!
I managed to find a reasonably-priced copy of "BURIAL" from a seller in Tennessee for only $23.46. Not bad! But NOBODY (outside, perhaps, of some Amazon Marketplace store) had this one for a sane price. And I'm doing my DAMNDEST to avoid Amazon and their whole system, whenever I can.
So... I found a copy of the 2015 Tribeca Blu-Ray-- from a seller in-- it turns out-- The Netherlands!!! --for "only" $34.10. The box art & the menus are in SPANISH. The film comes with SPANISH language, ENGLISH language, Spanish, English, Portuguese or NO subtitles-- and-- get this-- NO dialogue. That's right. It's not an "isolated music score" track-- it's a track with the music and ALL THE SOUND EFFECTS-- but no dialogue whatsoever. HOW the hell did they manage that? (Perhaps it was taken off the Spanish version of the film?)
Now-- on the back of the box, it says "PAL". Which concerned me. I had just read a review of the German Koch Media disc of "BURIAL", which, because it was "PAL", was running at the WRONG speed. (Too fast.) However, I just clocked "TALES", and it came in at 1:28:23-- exactly 10 SECONDS shorter than my TCM videotape did! This HAS to be running at the CORRECT speed! The only thing I can figure for the slight difference, might be an "MGM" logo, which they've been adding to a lot of these old "AIP" films. There's NO "MGM" logo on this Blu-Ray.
All of which means, this disc is FINE. It's a slight hassle to have to make sure it plays IN ENGLISH before I watch it... but, unless Kino does a new version with a pile of extras (there's NO audio commentaries or anything on these 2 discs, just Trailers), I can't see any reason to ever want to upgrade them later.
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The ONLY "extra" on this disc is the TRAILER. And this I found VERY interesting. Dell Comics skipped the first 3 Corman POE films, but published a comic-book adaptation of "TALES OF TERROR". But there was something odd about it. The stories in the comic were...
"Valdemar"
"Black Cat"
"Morella"
...in that order. I've wondered for years, WHY? Then I saw the trailer. Crazy enough, THAT's the order the stories are described as being in, in the movie. Trailers are usually put together MONTHS before the release of films, and comics are usually timed to come out as close to the release of the film as possible. Apparently, the people at Dell saw the trailer, and MISTAKENLY believed that was the order of the stories. Had they been that way, the film would have ended with Locke's mansion BURNING to the ground, just as we saw at the end of "HOUSE OF USHER".
Luckily, someone realized "Valdemar" made for a MUCH-more satisfying conclusion of the film, with my favorite moment in the entire movie being when Carmichael (Basil Rathbone) reveals his true nature, only for him to do a "180" when he sees Valdemar RISE from his death bed to defend his wife Helene. "No-- NOOOOOO!!!!" Makes me LAUGH every time.
When I cleaned the book up (and fixed some 55-year-old coloring mistakes), I re-ordered the 3 stories so they would match the order seen IN THE FILM.
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hYs-COMGv74/XGH0GeKCaII/AAAAAAAApiY/K3Z97x4-eFsgxsxfmxHeXFz9ezp5qkupgCLcBGAs/s1600/1963%2BD%2BToT_cc_HK%2B%2BC700.jpg)
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As has been my habit of late, tonight I dug out my 1980s videotape of the film, recorded off Philly's Channel 3. GOD ALMIGHTY! Apart from being in fullscreen (so you're missing half of the visuals and the pan-and-scaan aspect created repeatedly jumpy images), and cut here and there for commercial breaks (only about 30 seconds were missing from this one), the sound & picture quality on the broadcast were ABYSMALLY bad. Fuzzy, with "ghosts", and the color TERRIBLY-faded, especially in the final story, "Valdemar". No wonder it was such a SHOCK when I taped it again in the 2000s off of TCM.
Well, I'll never have to put up with this MISEARBLE copy again. I honestly don't know how I ever put up with some of these broadcast copies for so long. I'm reminded of when my late best friend Jim once commented in the 90s that, when local TV stations began running VIDEOTAPEs of shows instead of old FADED FILM PRINTS, it suddenly looked like they were BRAND NEW, as if they'd been shot "yesterday" instead of decades earlier. In this case, even the top of the picture was cut off, because the TV camera pointing at the movie screen it was projected on was aimed too low.
I did some reading after, and found that the out-of-print Kino Lorber disc contained multiple extras. Too bad, as it's currently impossible to find a brand-new copy of their Blu-Ray at a decent price (which is why I sprung instead for the one from Spain).
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However, the reviewer mentioned Dorothy McGuire. Know anything about her? I don't think I've seen any of her work.
oops!
Dorothy Malone is one of my favorites too, which is why she came to mind immediately.
Dorothy McGuire.
You probably have seen her work.
She was in 'Ol Yeller!' 'Swiss Family Robinson' and 'Three Coins in the Fountain'.
On the other side of the ledger, she was in Elia Kazan's 'Gentleman's Agreement'
A reporter pretends to be Jewish in order to cover a story on anti-Semitism, and personally discovers the true depths of bigotry and hatred.
Not an easy film to find now, I think.
and Robert Siodmak's ]The Spiral Staircase'.
In 1916, a shadowy serial killer is targeting women with "afflictions"; one night during a thunderstorm, the mute Helen feels menaced.
Dorothy McGuire -Biography
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0570192/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
Cheers!
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I saw SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON on a theatrical reissue sometime around 1972 (I think), as the warm-up film for the main feature, 101 DALMATIONS.
I only recently was reading that SFR is considered one of the all-time worst violators when it comes to "animal cruelty" in the making a a movie. "Disney"!!!
I just saw THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE on Youtube about a month ago!
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(March 26, 2023)
I am now more than halfway thru the Corman set (more or less, not counting the peripheral films)...
THE RAVEN (1963)
The brand-new Kino Lorber Blu-Ray is nice, today was the very first time I EVER got to see a "proper" print of this film-- CRYSTAL-CLEAR picture, WIDESCREEN, theoretically uncut...
Unfortunately, the copy I got has defects in 2 different places on the disc, causing it to stall and start repeatedly. I checked twice, and it's consistently in the same place on the disc, so, I know it's the disc, not my machine. I've put in for a REPLACEMENT-- I don't want a refund, I want another copy. We'll see how this goes.
I got a question ANSWERED today! There was a line I was MIS-QUOTING for years, and today, I found out why. The word "viper" appears NOWHERE in the film "THE PREMATURE BURIAL". That's because, it wasn't Ray Milland, it was Boris Karloff who used the word, referring to Hazel Court! "My precious VIPER", he called her. I can see it was that it was Hazel Court in both instances how I got confused. Court appeared in 3 Corman POE films-- all 3, playing BAD girls.
Dell's comic-book adaptation, with art by Frank Springer.
https://professorhswaybackmachine.blogspot.com/2018/10/poe-1963-pt-7.html?fbclid=IwAR0vVY04UgMWZP_K-vb3-neLywGfEMYV0ICqhr8rpIC80CVHJce6JoCUxbg
I love when Boris talks about Jack Nicholson and says, "Yes, the resemblence is clear." and rolls his eyes. What's clear is he KNOWS Nicholson is NOT Peter Lorre's son.
Just dug out my 1980s videotape recorded off of Philly's Channel 3 (probably from their local "Saturday Night Dead" program which was on at 1 in the morning). As usual, the thing was in fullscreen, slightly cut, a TERRIBLE old, VERY-fuzzy print, with exagerrated colors suggesting it was a COPY of a recording done to edit out commercial breaks. Really ghastly to watch... making me once again wonder, how in the HELL did I ever put up with these awful tapes for so long?
Still waiting to get a refund on the Blu-Ray I had to return. As soon as I get my money back, I'll be ordering a replacement disc.
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THE TERROR (1963)
A film I never had in my collection before was this notorious oddity from Roger Corman.
Jack Nicholson in perhaps his most low-key performance ever, plays a French soldier during Napoleon's time who's separated from his unit, runs across a beautiful woman, then follows her to a spooky castle, where everybody tells him she doesn't exist. What's going on? The owner of the castle, Boris Karloff, is clearly lying, and his butler, the ubiquitous Dick Miller, are anxious to have their unwanted visitor leave.
The story goes, Corman wrapped up filming on THE RAVEN several days early, told the props people to leave the sets up, then got Leo Gordon & Jack Hill to write enough script so he could spend the 4 days left on Boris Karloff's contract to shoot scenes for a 2nd movie. What a guy!
Afterwards, the rest of the film was slowly written & filmed by Francis Ford Copolla, Jack Hale and even Nicholson (it was a non-union project, so Corman couldn't do it himself-- HILARIOUS!), over a 3-month period. When they were just about done, someone realized it still didn't make sense, so they wrote & filmed one more scene there Nicholson slaps Miller around and forces him to tell him what's going on. (ALSO hilarious!)
The film JUST-- BARELY-- makes sense-- and, possibly, works better if you DON'T know the behind-the-scenes details of how it was done. Or maybe not. Who's to say?
I've seen it 3 times over the years (so far): first on a local TV station in the 70s, then on Youtube about 8 years back (the very first movie I actually watched on Youtube, since by then I finally had "high-speed internet"), and now, on a STUNNING, crystal-clear Blu-Ray. It seems the film somehow fell into "Public Domain", so there are COUNTLESS versions of it out there on VHS, DVD & Blu-Ray. But, doing some research, I found that, apparently, the 2011 version from HD Cinema Classics / Film Chest (which comes with both a DVD and a Blu-Ray, to play on whatever machine you have) is alleged to be "the best looking release of The Terror currently available", according to a review at Blu-Ray_com. That was good enough for me! If anything, the film looks UNNATURALLY clean... but given all the horrific old TV prints I've endured over the decades, I'll take that over the alternative.
In general, the film somehow looks and feels like a European horror movie-- something you might see from Spain, France, Italy or Germany-- even though it was wholely a product of southern California.
Some random thoughts about the sets: The main castle hall from THE RAVEN with those huge, dangerous-looking stairs (how on EARTH did poor Boris Karloff manage those things, given how bad his health was getting at the time, with no railings or anything?) look far more impressive than any castle Hammer Films ever managed for Christopher Lee's Dracula!
Also, the wooden scaffolding that leads down to the underground crypt, someone suggested was "left over" from THE HAUNTED PALACE-- but that film was made after this one, not before! Given that PALACE has so little to do with its own Lovecraft source material, I'd say Corman & Charles Beaumont decided to work it in so they could use such an impressive prop 2 films in a row.
But what I really wonder is, that scaffolding looks nearly-identical to the one featured prominently in the 1941 film CONFESSIONS OF BOSTON BLACKIE. Given Corman's habit of reusing existing props from earlier movies, it makes me curious-- COULD it be the SAME scaffolding, found in some warehouse?
Someone pointed out that the finale, where Nicholson kisses a woman who abruptly turns into a rotting corpse, was very similar to the bathroom scene from THE SHINING. Gee, could Stanley Kubrick have borrowed that from here?
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THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963)
After 5 Poe films, Roger Corman decided to tackle something similar but different: H.P. Lovecraft. Some time ago, I found a list online of films that were either adapted from or inspired by the works of Lovecraft, and this was far from the first of those, although, apparently, it was the first time Lovecraft's name actually appeared in a film's credits!
One of the things I'm continually fascinated by, is similarities between various stories, and identifying influences. As it happens, this film goes both ways. The first time I saw it, in the early 1980s, it immediately became a favorite of mine, because its plot was SO SIMILAR to a film that came out several years later: Dan Curtis' NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS. But where that 1971 film ends ABRUPTLY, Corman's film really picks up and starts to get interesting! As a result, I might almost reccomend that people watch NIGHT... before then watching ...PALACE, as Corman's film is far more satisfying!
The story involves a warlock burned at the stake, cursing a town's residents just before being killed. 110 years later, a descendant inherits his castle, not realizing that the ghost of his ancestor is planning to POSSESS his body and continue on with his work. Vincent Price really gets a chance to play 2 drastically-different characters: the relaxed, easy-going Charles Dexter Ward (who I suspect was very similar in temperament to Price himself), and his EVIL ancestor, Joseph Curwen, who makes Price's version of Roderick Usher seem like a nice guy by comparison.
Also on board are Debra Paget (in her last film), Lon Chaney Jr. & Milton Parsons as Curwen's fellow warlocks, John Dierkes & Elisha Cook Jr. among the townsfolk, and Leo Gordon & Frank Maxwell as the most outspoken of them, but on different sides.
I was amused some years ago when I saw THE INTRUDER (also from Beaumont & Corman), in which Gordon & Maxwell played almost the identical characters, but in different situations. In both films, Gordon is the angry agitator, while Maxwell is the calm voice of reason. The irony is, in ...PALACE, the superstitious Gordon is DEAD-RIGHT regarding his fears, while Maxwell is DEAD WRONG, not realizing the danger until he comes across the underground chamber with the other-dimensional being it holds.
Available on its own in England and Germany, ...PALACE is oddly only available in the US as part of Shout Factory's VINCENT PRICE COLLECTION, Box 1. Like the 2nd & 3rd boxes, the 2013 set is out of print and now VERY expensive to find, but fortunately, unlike the 2nd & 3rd boxes, the 1st one has been reissued in 2020, and I was able to find it for LESS than the average cost of 2 films, effectively meaning I got 4 out of the box's 6 films FOR FREE! It's a pity only 4 out of the 6 films are part of Corman's Poe series. I find it baffling that nobody in the US or the UK collected ALL 8 in one set.
I've been putting up with a really HORRIBLE self-recorded videotape from Philly's Channel 17 I got in the 1980s. Fullscreen, a TERRIBLY-damaged print, fuzzy, faded, a faulty antenna signal causing repeated JUMPS in the first 10 minutes, and when I clocked it, I found it was missing 2 minutes-- including all 3 "burning" scenes.
By comparison, the Shout Factory Blu-Ray is absolutely STUNNING, widescreen, uncut, crystal-clear picture & sound-- I would describe it as "PERFECT".
Well, the movie part, anyway. The "extras" in this case really got on my nerves, and they didn't have to. I have to wonder who in the HELL at Shout Factory put together these discs. To begin with, instead of having USHER and PENDULUM together on Disc 1, the 1st disc is PIT AND THE PENDULUM with THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES. The 2nd disc is THE HAUNTED PALACE and THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. In what netherworld does that make any sense at all?
Next, the film has an optional "introduction" by critic Kim Newman. While this is fun, it SHOULD have been its own separate feature. When THE AVENGERS episodes have optional introductions by Patrick Macnee & Honor Blackman, they're usually about 1-2 minutes long. This thing went on for 10 MINUTES before the movie begins, and I had food sitting on my lap waiting for the movie before I started eating.
But as if that wasn't ridiculous enough, there are 2 separate audio commentaries-- and BOTH of them are only about 40 minutes apiece, after which, the film continues running without them. Who the HELL thought this was a good idea, especially as neither commentary actually talks about events in the film as they're running? They should have been combined into a SINGLE feature-length commentary.
You know, between this and the incessant disc-authoring "errors" on every single Shout Factory disc, I'm beginning to wonder about the people running that company.
Now, regarding influences... I want to start with Dan Curtis. Many over the decades have said that the feature film NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS (1971) is partly based on the "1970 Parallel Time" story on the DARK SHADOWS tv series. There's some truth to that. But only to a point.
In "1970 Parallel Time", you have Quentin Collins (David Selby) whose wife Angelique (Lara Parker) has died, he's left home, fallen in love and remarried, but his 2nd wife Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott) is made to feel inadequate & unwelcome by the housekeeper (Grayson Hall). All of this is CLEARLY based on Daphne du Maurier's REBECCA (1938)-- which I recognized the very 1st time I saw Alfred Hitchcock's classic film adaptation from 1940.
However, on DARK SHADOWS, Angelique's never-before-mentioned twin sister arrives. Nearly everyone suspects she's really Angelique, but she isn't. She befriends Quentin, offers him sympathy, then goes to visit her sister's grave. At which point, it turns out, Angelique actually DID fake her own death. She rises from her tomb-- MURDERS her own sister-- then spends the rest of the story POSING as her.
What I didn't know until a few days ago was, the idea of 2 identical characters, where one MURDERS the other and then pretends to be the now-dead one-- was actually part of Lovecraft's story "The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward"!!! In effect, the DS TV story was combining elements of du Maurier & Lovecraft's stories.
On the other hand, the 1971 movie NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS has a version of Quentin who was never the master of Collinwood, but has inherited the estate after pretty much every other member of the family was KILLED in the previous film (1970's HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS). Though he's never set eyes on the place, it feels familiar, and he slowly learns he had an ancestor who painted a portrait of his mistress, Angelique, who was hung as a WITCH. Now, it seems, her ghost is haunting the house, and working to cause Quentin's earlier persona to revive and take over his current body. It's a matter of reincarnation rather than normal possession. The effect is almost the same, though the cause is subtly different. The film ends ABRUPTLY when, just as he was about to leave, he's completely taken over by his previous personality.
So, story-wise, Curtis' NIGHT... is pretty much a lesser, inferior remake of Corman's ...PALACE. The 55-minute mark is exactly where Corman's story continues on, and becomes FAR more interesting, as Curwen tells his cohorts that "Charles Dexter Ward is DEAD"-- and then sets about to get revenge on the descendants of those who burned him alive.
Something I've become aware of in the last couple months, are some of the influences on the Corman films. Apart from the growing number of original elements in various POE comic-book adaptations that were never in Poe's stories, and appeared in the comics years before the Corman films, I'm now finding there were also earlier movies that influenced Corman's films.
For example, BLACK NARCISSUS (1947) is believed to have had a big influence on the visual style of Corman's HOUSE OF USHER (1960). LES DIABOLIQUES (1955) had a huge influence on the STORY told by Richard Matheson in PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961). GASLIGHT (1940, remade in 1944) may have influenced Charles Beaumont's screenplay for THE PREMATURE BURIAL (1962). I'm now planning to get my hands on copies of ALL of these, to compare!
And now, I find that there were at least 5 different influences on Beaumont's THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963)! Apart from Poe's 1839 poem (whose title and a few stanzas of which were slapped on the film at the very last minute by AIP), there's also...
"The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward" (written in 1927, published in 1941), of which the film is only a VERY-loose adaptation, and which deals strictly with Lovecraft's ideas about "mad science"...
"The Shadow Over Innsmouth" (written in 1931, published in 1936), from which the "Necronomicon", the "Cthulhu mythos" and the "elder gods" were all taken...
"Dragonwyck" (novel by Any Seaton, 1944; film by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1946) from which much of the VISUAL style of the film and Vincent Price's personality came from, and...
"ONE STEP BEYOND: The Captain's Guests" (1959), a half-hour story written by Charles Beaumont, about a married couple staying at a "haunted" house and the husband being POSSESSED by the ghost of an evil sea captain whose portrait hangs in the house. Clearly, Beaumont was ripping off HIMSELF here, as so much of the narrative of the film is a REMAKE of what he did 4 years earlier, on a bigger scale. (This itself is similar to how the THRILLER tv series did an episode "The Premature Burial" about a year before Corman did his similar-yet-different movie.) "The Captain's Guests", as one person put it, was NOT "The Ghost And Mrs. Muir", though one could easily say it was a dark, nasty variation on it!
Interestingly enough, when the husband is possessed by the ghost of the sea captain, he starts walking with a pronounced LIMP... which also happens to Quentin Collins in NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS!
I just love finding out about stuff like this.
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For some reason, "NIGHTMARE CASTLE" on the disc is named "NIGHT OF THE DOOMED". What an INSANE movie! Mad scientist keeps his mistress alive with blood transfusions, but gets jealous when his WIFE takes a lover. So he chains them both in the basement and spends weeks torturing them to death, despite his wife saying she left the house (which was in her name) to her "step-sister", who's in an asylum.
So soon after, he gets the sister released and marries her-- which infuriates his mistress. When he then invites her doctor for an extended visit to "help out" (but realy, he's hoping to have her permanently declared insane), the guy slowly begins to piece together what's really going on... particularly, the part about the castle being HAUNTED by the ghosts of the 2 murdered people!
This allegeldy started life under the name "Orgasmo" (NO, REALLY) borrowing from "The Tell-Tale Heart". I also saw bits of "Ligeia", when the spirit of the 1st wife possesses the body of the 2nd. But the middle of the film very much had a "DARK SHADOWS" vibe to it, especially Ennio Morricone's piano theme, which, I WOULD SWEAR, sounds like it inspired Robert Cobert to write the very-similar "Ode To Angelique" for DS's "1970 Parallel Time" 5 years later!! I cannot believe that Cobert never heard this. It's just too similar in style! (Especially given that "1970 Parallel Time" involves 2 IDENTICAL sisters-- one sweet, one EVIL. I think Dan Curtis must have seen this movie, too.)
Apparently this film has been "restored"-- as far as piecing together a complete, UNCUT version. But the film itselw as never propoerly "restored"-- as in, CLEANED UP, as there's some pretty noticable DAMAGE here and there. Plus, WHY in the living hell is it called "Night of the Doomed"? Is it just some THING where Italian movie-makers can never decide what the hell to CALL their movies, so they all end with with a minimum of 6 different titles?
There's a PILE of extras on this. I'm also wondering WHY the menu is SO HARD to read. Also, since there's shrink-wrap on the box when you get it, WHY did Severin Films put a piece of TAPE across the top, as late as 2015? And WHY does this disc have the "authoring error" so common to Shout Factory, when, I DO NOT recall the "EUROCRYPT" box having this problem? The movie's an HOUR and 44 minutes long. For me, that's a lot to go without taking a break in the middle somewhere.
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THE COMEDY OF TERRORS (1963)
Film critic & historian Tim Lucas said in his audio commentary that he felt this was Richard Matheson's FINEST screenplay of his entire career. It's loaded, start-to-finish, with an endless stream of wonderful dialogue. Well, that may be... but, truthfully, it's NEVER been one of my favorites.
Waldo Trumball married the boss's daughter so he could inherit his undertaker business, but, he managed to so completely run it into the ground (heh), that to get by he now regularly resorts to MURDER to drum up business. And meanwhile, his landlord, Mr. Black, has threatened that if the YEAR'S worth of back rent is not paid in 24 hours, he will institute legal proceedings. And thereby hangs the plot. To literally "kill 2 birds with 1 stone", Trumball decides to MURDER his landlord.
But further problems arise when his eccentric, Shakespeare-quoting landlord somehow REFUSES TO DIE. Yep, it's another variation on "The Premature Burial", only, AIP decided not to promote this as one of the POE films, despite how much it looks, feels, sounds and reads like one, simply because Roger Corman was busy elsewhere.
Just think of it as AIP's Poe film # 6B.
What a cast! Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Joyce Jameson, Joe E. Brown, Beverly Hills, Alan DeWitt, and the ever-amazing Basil Rathbone, doing a virtual parody of HIMSELF. It seems Rathbone had such an amazingly-successful stage career, mostly doing Shakespeare, before he set foot in Hollywood, that NOTHING he did on film ever quite lived up to his stage career, in his mind.
Crazy enough, given Peter Lorre's habit of ad-libbing, apparently, everyone involved loved Matheson's script to such a degree that it was shot VERBATIM, without a single line being altered. Dr. Svet Atanasov, in his review at Blu-Ray_com, suggests the LACK of any improvisation from the cast may be why the film doesn't come across as good as it should have.
If I have any problem with the film, it's simply that Price's character Trumball is so thoroughly, completely, relentlessly UNPLEASANT, such a mean-spirited BASTARD from start to finish, that it's just hard for me to actually enjoy watching him this time around. Oh well!
Now, I've been finding out in the last several weeks just how many earlier films and TV shows apparently were among the various source materials for Corman's POE films. It turns out, that goes for THIS one, too. In this case, it wasn't anything Richard Matheson did-- it was something director Jacques Tourneur did-- and it may be WHY he was recommended to direct this film when Corman was too busy.
It seems one of the countless anthology series that was on TV during that era was THE BARBARA STANWYCK SHOW, and one of the episodes was a story called "Dear Charlie", a very black comedy that starred Milton Berle as a boarder who convinces a pair of RICH old ladies to put him in their will, and pits them against each other so they both wind up murdering the other. This leaves "Charlie" with all the money-- UNTIL their CAT somehow knocks a bottle of POISON into his food. Which was what Vincent Price kept trying to do to Boris Karloff in the later movie, but never quite succeeded in doing.
And whatta ya know? The cat in the TV episode is played by the SAME one that later appeared in the movie!
I've never seen this thing, but now I'm interested in doing so.
I had a really miserable videotape copy of the film recorded off Philly's Channel 17 back in the 80s. Fullscreen, fuzzy, faded, and MISSING 4 whole minutes. What a pleasure to finally get it on Blu-Ray-- uncut, crystal-clear, widescreen. Shout Factory had this as part of their 2014 "Vincent Price Collection Box 2", but that's gone out of print and is VERY expensive to find new. Fortunately, Kino Lorber stepped up to the plate and put out a brand-new stand-alone Blu-Ray in 2021. I got one CHEAP from a seller on Ebay, but it seems Kino Lorber has it on sale for EVEN LESS right now. (I didn't know this a few weeks back, but, frankly, it's just easier & more convenient for me to go with Ebay, when it comes to most mail-orders.)
For me, the funniest bits in the film, are when Boris Karloff is overseeing a funeral and can't remember the name of the man they're about to bury; and, when Basil Rathbone repeatedly wakes up in the basement, despite appearing dead moments before. The image of Black lying in his coffin at the funeral, where we see his face TWITCH, indicating he's still not dead yet, strikes me as having come from Poe's story "Berenice", though in AIP-Corman terms, it turned up in 1960's HOUSE OF USHER.
In his commentary, Tim Lucas mentions the recurring line, "What place is this?" does not come from any Shakespeare play. What he seems to have missed, is that Matheson is quoting himself, as it's a line spoken earlier by Rathbone in TALES OF TERROR, when his character, Mr. Valdemar, is in fact ALREADY dead, but still conscious, and is seeing the netherworld he's physically denied access to. (The line is NOT in Poe's short story, either.)
My favorite line in the entire film, is during the struggle in the basement, when Rathbone pops out of his coffin and says...
"I regard your actions as inimicable to good fellowship."
It figures that Rathbone should steal the movie, as the title itself was a take-off on a Shakespeare play, "The Comedy Of Errors".
AIP planned a follow-up with the same cast, plus Tallulah Bankhead, but when Peter Lorre passed away, it was abandoned.
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THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964)
Roger Corman planned to do this for years before finally filming it in England, and after considered it the best of his Poe films-- and possibly the best film he ever directed.
I actually have 4 copies of this now. The 1st was the one I taped off Philly's Channel 17: fullscreen, terribly-fuzzy, colors faded, "ghosts" resulting from a TERRIBLE antenna broadcast signal. And, it's missing 3-1/2 minutes, including the entire end credits sequence.
On 1-18-2006 I taped it off TCM-- UNCUT, widescreen, crystal-clear. I realized that night I had never really been able to appreciate the film before. When I got to the very end, my jaw dropped, and I thought... "This is a WORK OF ART!"
On 2-18-2023, I got it as part of Shout Factory's Vincent Price Collection / Box 1 (2nd edition / 2020). My current VCR has a problem with sound crackling, so I'm really appreciating upgrading old videotapes to discs, and I'm sure the picture is also an improvement in most cases. As I got the set for LESS than the average cost of 2 Blu-Ray movies, that means after USHER and PIT, I virtually got MASQUE for FREE. Isn't that wild? And it had 2 edits of the film-- the familiar "theatrical" cut, and the "extended" cut, which, is presumably what the film was intended to be before censors took a whack at it back in '64. I haven't seen that one yet, but I'm planning to, later this week.
What I watched last week was Steve Haberman's audio commentary. I must say, I think this was, by a mile, the BEST one I've ever heard him do! So it's rather ironic that it's also the ONLY one where he kept stuttering, stammering, hesitating, and repeating himself. He must have been having a rough night, and I guess they didn't have the time or money to have him do it a 2nd time (heh). But it's so good, I cut him some slack.
Among the MANY things he covered were the various REAL-LIFE inspirations for Poe's 2 short stories, "Masque" and "Hop Frog". Then there's the various script drafts by different writers that Corman went through over several years (very unlike most of the series). Charles Beaumont was the one who created the characters of Francesca, Gino, Ludovico and Juliana. But somehow, Corman was still not satisfied, and brought in R. Wright Campbell, who wound up COMPLETELY re-writing Beaumont's story.
As he did so, he turned Prince Prospero into a SATAN-worshipper, added all sorts of interesting levels of philosophy and social commentary, changed the intended swordfight between Gino & Ludovico to the sequence with the 5 daggers, added the entire "Hop Frog" sub-plot, and I believe also added the failed escape sequence which was inspired by “Torture By Hope” (written in 1883 by Auguste Villiers de I’Isle-Adam), in effect meaning there were 3 different stories being loosely adapted, not just 2. For 2 screen-writers who didn't actually collaborate, their combined efforts on this film produced an unforgettable masterpiece.
Haberman also gave a brief run-down on Corman's career, and discussed at some length the characters of Prospero & Francesca. He apparently believes that Prospero at some earlier point in his life had a much more positive view of humanity, but eventually became totally cynical. While Francesca slowly begins to give up hope by the film's end, Propsero is actually finding his earlier self beginning to re-emerge-- but, TOO LATE, as it happens just as his entire castle of party-guests are being slaughtered by The Red Death, who he mistakenly believes is a servant of Satan.
Great, GREAT film-- and to think, this isn't even MY favorite!
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I have just watched the "Extended" version. Basically, 2 scenes were removed before release in 1964. The 2nd one was the beginning of the "falcon" scene, where Francesca tells Prospero about a horrible dream she had about a room filled with evil-- or, as it a dream? Nice, not essential, but it does make the transition to that scene flow MUCH smoother than it did without it.
The OTHER, earlier scene, however... is from the story "Hop Frog". He goes to see Esmerelda, to promise her that no one shall ever abuse her again, and suggests the idea that they leave the castle. She in turn tells him that he is the only person who has ever treated her with affection. It is such a touching, warm, scene-- I'd say the MOST touching scene in the film-- it is CRIMINAL this was ever removed! I believe Steve Haberman's audio commentary (for the theatrical version) says someone decided they didn't want a scene WITHOUT Vincent Price right there. But as Price is in the scenes before and after this one, it fits perfectly, it makes the transition to the scene where he's "wandering the castle at night" seem less abrupt, and it foreshadows what Hog Frog does later in the film.
It's also one of Skip Martin's BEST scenes, dammit! In the theatrical version, after Alfredo slaps Esmerelda, the NEXT time we see Hop Frog, he's telling Alfredo the "tiny dancer" means "nothing" to him. Which makes his suggestion about the ape suit a bit mysterious. But with this important scene reinstated, you just KNOW he's LYING. As he is when he tells Alfredo... "It'll be a performance-- by the cleverest man at the masque." Alfredo think he means him-- but really, Hop Frog is referring to HIMSELF.
Normally I don't go for "outtakes" being added back in after-the-fact, but seeing these 2 scenes tonight for the first time, I think they never should have been cut in the first place. Doing so was VANDALISM.
There's only ONE problem here. It appears the print containing these scenes was a SEPARATE restoration from the theatrical version. And... this ENTIRE PRINT is DARKER than the other one on the same disc. It's not "HORROR OF DRACULA" or "DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS" bad-- but it's BAD ENOUGH. I had to adjust 4 different things on my TV at the same time to get it to look half as good as the other version. What is WRONG with some of the people who supervise these things?????????
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"CASTLE OF BLOOD" (1964)
American reporter Alan Foster, while interviewing Edgar Allan Poe during his visit to England, accepts a wager from the mysterious Lord Thomas Blackwood that he cannot spend the entire night in Blackwood's castle. Though warned that on "the night of the dead", those who died in the castle come back to life to relive the moments leading up to his death, he completely fails to realize-- or believe-- that the people he keeps meeting in the castle are all, in fact, DEAD!
Considered Italian director Antonio Margheriti's masterpiece, this film claims to be "Based on Edgar Allan Poe's Danse Macabre" ("The Dance Of Death", a phrase used by The Red Death in Roger Corman's film from earlier that same year). However, while NO SUCH STORY by Poe exists, apparently, there is a story by that name by a different author. And, it's been pointed out, the theme of the film (if not the details) do correspond with Poe's comedic tale, "Never Bet The Devil Your Head", which not long after this, was adapted by Federico Fellini in the 1968 film "HISTOIRES EXTRAORDINAIRES" (released in English as, "SPIRITS OF THE DEAD").
Georges Riviere stars as "Alan Foster", who never seems as bright as a newspaper reporter ought to be. Umberto Raho is "Lord Blackwood", while Arturo Dominici is "Dr. Carmus", who took on the bet earlier for the express purpose of learning the truth about the supernatural occurances said to be taking place in the castle.
But the standout of the film is, of course, Barbara Steele as "Elisabeth Blackwood", the sister of Lord Blackwood, who tells Alan that her brother sends someone to her once a year to keep her company. Hmmm. Very mysterious, and suspicious.
I first caught this on Philly's Channel 17, in the middle of the night and recorded it with all the commercial breaks intact. I liked it so much that over the years, I watched it multiple times despite all those damnable commercials, and the fact that, since it was recorded off a BAD antenna signal, the print, though presumably in decent condition, looked like CRAP, with fuzziness, "ghosts", you name it.
In recent years, reading about the film online, I came to understand the US print was heavily edited, and longed to see it uncut. Well, I finally have-- but it wasn't as simple as one might think.
Severin Films put out a Blu-Ray in 2015 that featured no less than 3 Barbara Steele films, with the main attraction being "NIGHTMARE CASTLE" (August 1965). That film was advertised with them saying, "Toss away your old butchered TV prints!", as the film had apparently never been issued on home video as intact as it now is. It contains multiple extras, including an audio commentary that is actually a feature-length interview with Steele about her entire career. The other 2 films are included in the "extras" menu"-- "CASTLE OF BLOOD" (July 1964) and "TERROR-CREATURES FROM THE GRAVE" (June 1965).
However, while "NIGHTMARE CASTLE" may indeed be the best version of the film ever released, "CASTLE OF BLOOD" is actually a "brand new high definition scan of the rare US version". This means, while it is in English, it's still the CUT version. And, what blows my mind, the print is in TERRIBLE shape, with damage all over the place. I mean, the print Channel 17 had 40 years ago was in MUCH-better condition if you look past the dreadful broadcast signal!
What I found most amusing (or just plain annoying) was, the recurring commercial break for the film featured Dr. Carmus, in very sinister tones, saying, "And now, YOU are NEXT!" That line was burned into my brain over the years. But on the Severin Blu-Ray, that EXACT moment in the film, the damage is so extensive, half the words in that sentence are missing. SHEESH!!!
Not one to take this lying down... I did some more research (which I probably should have done earlier) and discovered that back in 2002, Synapse Films put out a DVD that WAS uncut. The Mondo Digital site said the following: "Synapse's DVD originates from the longest possible variant, the French Danse Macabre print, with the English soundtrack married to the image wherever possible." I ordered a copy LESS than an hour after I finished watching the Severin Blu-Ray!!!
First, the good news: the picture and sound quality are STUNNING!!! This is by a very wide margin, the BEST-looking print of this films I have have seen (out of the 3 I now have). And, as far as I can tell, it IS uncut!!
Apparently, what they did, was take a crystal-clear FRENCH print (perhaps they couldn't find a crystal-clear ITALIAN print) and superimposed the ENGLISH dub on top of it. However-- since the English print was cut, all the scenes that were cut-- and therefore, previously-missing-- the language is in French, WITH English subtitles. To me, that's not a problem.
I can understand, more or less, why they cut a brief NUDE scene from near the end of the film. Ditto, the scene where the sinister blonde tries to put the moves on Barbara ("LESBIAN" scene). But I cannot understand why ANY of the other scenes were CUT in America!!!
The 1st thing cut was part of Poe's dramatic reading of "Berenice". But then the entire interview was cut. And this was some of the best dialogue in the movie! Poe was explaining his outlook on life, and explains that he feels there is nothing more tragic than the death of a beautiful woman. Which has a major connection to the rest of the story.
One WEIRD moment... at one point, Steele is sitting on her bed, and says to Alan, "Come sit here with me." This was in the US print. But in this UNCUT print--- that one line, is in FRENCH. Can you say, "Oops"? How did that happen?
Now... HERE's the down side. When I see a print that is apparently "widescreen", I automatically set my TV to "ZOOM" (as opposed to "NORMAL" or 'STRETCH"). The first time English subtitles came up, I could only see the top half of them. WTF? I played with the picture setting. This is a VERY dark movie, tons of shadows everywhere. But I found a shot that had white around all 4 edges, and then played with the setting. Turns out, the TOP and BOTTOM of the picture was getting cut off, when it's set to "ZOOM".
This means, the ONLY proper way you can watch this DVD, is if it's set to "NORMAL"-- meaning, you have BLACK BARS on ALL 4 sides of the picture. There's no other way to put this-- Synapse SCREWED UP on the size of the picture. Clearly, this was not WIDE widescreen. The English subtitles go BELOW the bottom of the picture, and they should not. OH well. It's STILL the best version of this film currently available. But it came out 20 YEARS ago. Maybe it's time SOMEBODY did an IMPROVED version of the disc.
Something I found fun... the US TRAILER-- when the film was released under the title "CASTLE OF TERROR"-- was narrated by DICK TUFELD. Just in case you don't know that name, Tufeld was the regular narrator for Irwin Allen, including on LOST IN SPACE and THE TIME TUNNEL-- but more-- he was the voice of "The Robot". SO COOL!!!!!
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WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968)
I saw this in a theatre in 1971. 10 years later, I taped it off a local station. It had nearly ALL the violence REMOVED. It was STILL quite possibly the MOST DISTURBING movie I'd ever seen. 20 years later, I watched that heavily-cut tape again... and the story, ALONE, was still so disturbing, I decided right then I NEVER needed to see it again.
Well... several of Roger Corman's POE films are currently only available on Blu-Ray in Shout Factory's VINCENT PRICE COLLECTION box set. And, as I wound up getting 6 FILMS for LESS than the cost of 2... I figured, what the hell, it's like I got the BEST-EVER RESTORATION of this monstrous thing FOR FREE.
I decided 2 months ago that I would NOT watch the film itself-- but instead, the AUDIO COMMENTARY, with Steve Haberman, one of the producers, and my favorite actor on the planet-- IAN OGILVY. I was right-- doing that did put enough "distance" between me and this ATROCITY to make it tolerable. (I hadn't seen it uncut since 1971.)
One of many things discussed was how, in the 70s, the MUSIC SCORE was replaced in America. Some time back, it was restored to new US prints, and the original score is on the Shout Factory Blu-Ray. (I do wonder what was on the local Philly Channel 3 print? I'd swear it was the same one. Hmm... maybe I shold check, just out of curiosity.)
Director Michael Reeves only made 3 features, ALL 3 with Ian Ogilvy, and ALL 3 with EXCESSIVE violence. Ogilvy jokes that he was "a bit of a sadist". Myself, ever since I read an interview with Ogilvy about this movie over 20 years ago, I've long felt that Reeves had IMMENSE talent as a director-- but LACKED the maturity and restraint to get his "point" about how dangerous violence is across to audiences. As one of the commentators said, there is an argument to be made that leaving some things to the IMAGINATION of the audience can be far more powerful.
The way Reeves treated Vincent Price during the filming merely goes to confirm his lack of maturity. If Roger Corman had done this film, HE would have discussed EXACTLY what he wanted from Price beforehand, and they'd have gotten along wonderfully. Reeves may have gotten an AMAZING performance out of Price-- but he was a TOTAL BASTARD the whole time he was doing it. I know which director I'd rather have worked with.
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"HISTOIRES EXTRAORDINAIRE" /
"TALES OF MYSTERY & IMAGINATION" /
"SPIRITS OF THE DEAD" (1968)
A 3-story anthology, each by a different director, relates 3 POE stories about characters, who, while living lives of power, are abusive, self-destructive, and in the best "EC Comics" tradition, all come to BAD ends.
I just re-watched my 1980s self-recorded videotape made off of Philly's "Saturday Night Dead" series on Channel 3. Fullscreen, fuzzy, FADED (in some place WAY more than others), streaks, "ghosts", bad sound, and CUT TO RIBBONS. If the time listed at the IMDB is correct, this TV broadcast is missing 19 MINUTES of the film Geez!!! And yet, despite this, somehow, this film has continued to grow on me over the years.
Last Friday, I finally managed to see this on Blu-Ray... WOW!!! Widescreen, UNCUT, crystal-clear picture & sound, absolutely STUNNING from start to finish.
The main problem is... each of the 3 stories was recorded in a different language: English, French, and Italian (with one actor speaking English throughout). But depending on which country you saw it in, it was dubbed into English, French, Italian, Spanish... and, get this-- the English subtitles DON'T match the English dub of the film! I find that hilarious.
Now, it seems Arrow Films in England so far put out the ONLY Blu-Ray of this with the ENGLISH dub all the way through all 3 stories. They even included the Vincent Price narration at the start and end of the film, added by AIP for the US release. (My Channel 3 copy DOES NOT have this!) But this 2010 disc is out-of-print and INSANELY-expensive! I saw someone on Ebay doing an auction for a USED copy, but it became impossible to take part because one of the 2 guys already competing for it was using their "auto-bid" function which instantly out-bids others up to whatever maximum amount the person using it is willing to spend.
So instead, for CHEAP, I got the BRAND-NEW 2018 Vértice Cine Region-FREE Blu-Ray... from SPAIN. This one gives you the choice of watching the entire film in Spanish, with optional English subtitles, OR, in the original languages-- English, French & Italian (with English bits in the 3rd story), also with or without optional English subtitles. I figured, until Arrow decides to put out a 2nd printing-- or someone in America has the sense to do one of their own-- this was by far the better option.
Now, Severin Films' Blu-Ray of "THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM" actually allows you to switch between English & German language almost instantly, without really interrupting the film. This one... DOESN'T. See, I tried watching the 1st story-- "Metzengerstein" with Jane Fonda-- WITHOUT subtitles, then, turning on the subtitles for the other 2 stories-- "William Wilson" and "Toby Dammit"-- but it instantly takes you back to the beginning of the film, and forces you to start over, then skip ahead to where you left off. Next time, I'd rather just leave the damned subtitles ON.
On my wretched old videotape, "Metzengerstein" actually looks pretty good, "William Wilson" only a little less so. For some inexplicable reason, the first part of "Toby Dammit"-- the part at the airport and driving throught the streets of Rome-- the thing is not only HORRIBLY-faded, some scenes (not all, just some) looke like they've been DELIBERATEDLY faded and/or COLOR-TINTED. I honestly don't know if the film is supposed to look that weird, but I can assure you, it DOESN'T look that way on the Spanish Blu-Ray! The picture on that is SHARP and the colors CRYSTAL-CLEAR all the way through, with the notable exception of the sequence at the very peculiar TV studio, where everything looks bright and washed out-- when they turn on the TV studio LIGHTS! So that, I'm sure, is supposed to look that way.
Jane Fonda apparently did her own dubbing on both the English & French versions, and someone online reccomended watching her story in French, saying her French was better than her English (ironic, hilarious, or both?). Out of curiosity, I'm planning to watch the film the next time entirely in SPANISH.
Terrance Stamp did a voice-over narration at the beginning of his story in the English version, but for the Italian dub (which I have), someone else speaks the opening narration, before he then speaks in English for the rest of the story, while surrounded by an entire cast speaking only in Italian. WEIRD stuff, to be sure.
There's the longest "alternate versions" page I've ever seen for a film for this at the IMDB, and 3/4ths of it discusses only the various languages available in different countries.
It's rather baffling to me that the Vértice Cine disc DOESN'T have the full English dub, and NEITHER of the 2 trailers I've seen online. The US trailer is rather "normal" and perfunctory-- the sort of thing you expect from American International. But the European trailer-- WOW!!! That thing, if you've ever seen it, is a WORK OF ART unto itself!!! It's disgraceful that this Euro disc does not have it included.
In my time cleaning up, coloring & translating a mountain of POE comics adaptations, I've seen all 3 stories in this film done in comics, though I've yet to tackle "Toby Dammit". Crazy enough, my favorite comics versions of "Metzengerstein" and "William Wilson" both come from BRAZIL-- the former by Flavio Colin, where he expands the story (in very different ways that Roger Vadim did in this film), the latter by Osvaldo Talo, who actually adapts the version FROM THIS MOVIE, though, with the nudity, violence & sexual perversion all removed. The framing sequence with Wilson running into a church to tell a priest his confession is straight from the movie, done only months after the movie came out!
For anyone like me wishing to see this film IN ENGLISH without going broke to do it, I recommend flooding Arrow-- and perhaps several other outfits-- with mail requesting they put out a new edition of the Blu-Ray with ALL the language options and all the "extras" included.
This is a movie more people need to see!
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CITY UNDER THE SEA /
WAR-GODS OF THE DEEP (1965)
Writer Charles Bennett had a long career, at one point collaborating with Alfred Hitchcock. Somehow, by the 1960s, he began working a lot for Irwin Allen-- including a number of episodes of VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. So his working on this film at the time amounts to typecasting.
Nearly everyone involved in this film has said the original screenplay would have worked, but producer Louis M. Heywood insisted on re-writing it, to add comedy, specifically David Tomlinson and that damned chicken. Maybe. But even if it had been played totally-serious, there's still 2 elements in the film that bug me every time I see it. One is Vincent Price's character, who is a megalomaniac who cannot be reasoned with. On one hand, he's fixated on the idea that Susan Hart is somehow his wife reincarnated. On the other, he has the insane idea that "modern science" must have come up with a way to "control" an active volcano. We're talking seriously delusional. I think things could have been handled way better if Tab Hunter had been given a fight scene with Price, to take this MADMAN on in single combat with a sword. If this had been an early DOCTOR WHO storyline, Ian Chesterton (William Russell) WOULD have done such a thing! That would have been a lot more exciting than that underwater chase.
The 2nd thing that really bugs me is the total lack of thinking or consistency to the geography of the underwater city. When Hunter & Tomlinson get there, they walk underground for a long distance, before falling into a pool, at the other end of which they find themselves in the big temple grotto. From there, they walk up one stairway to The Captain's chamber. However, after this, they describe (in dialogue too complicated for me to follow) getting around from one area of the city to another. Then, when they try to escape, to exit through one door, walk a great distance underwater, only to reach the temple grotto. WHAT? And from there, they quickly reach the surface. Only the last time I watched it did it strike me that they exited the grotto the same way they entered it, so it wasn't so much a path to the surface, as an unneccssary detour. Either way it's just maddning.
The film, of course, combines Poe's poem "The City In The Sea" (a favorite of mine, especially the audio version read by Basil Rathbone-- the only actor I rate higher than Vincent Price when it comes to reading Poe) with Jules Verne's JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH and 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA ("Captain Hugh" is NO "Captain Nemo"), a bit of LOST HORIZON, and the British legends of Lyonesse. Lyonesse was also featured in the film SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT (1973) and its lesser remake SWORD OF THE VALIANT (1984). Those films don't make much sense at all, but both are more watchable than this thing.
I put up with this as a horrible print I taped off a local channel for decades. Most films, when you get to see them in widescreen, the whole experience is a vast improvement. But when I saw this a few years ago on Youtube... it didn't help. (HEH)
Kino Lorber's 2015 Blu-Ray at least sure looks gorgeous. I managed to get a USED copy pretty cheap!! It comes with very nice interview with Tab Hunter.
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Here's the complete Dell comic-book adaptation. I found this less annoying than the film, as you can get through it quicker (especially the underwater chase).
http://professorhswaybackmachine.blogspot.com/2014/12/poe-1965-pt-4.html
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Here's the complete Dell comic-book adaptation. I found this less annoying than the film, as you can get through it quicker (especially the underwater chase).
http://professorhswaybackmachine.blogspot.com/2014/12/poe-1965-pt-4.html
Thanks for the link. It's a very good comic book adaptation, and much more enjoyable than the boring film. and the colouring is decent, unlike that of most Dell and Gold Key comic books of that period. I had already stopped even browsing in Dell most Dell comics in late 1964, so I missed this one. Basically, I had stopped buying comic books other than the remaining issues containing Carl Barks' last new work.
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SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN (1970)
The DISORIENTED Movie (6 of 10)
A jogger wakes up in a hospital and finds his legs missing. Somewhere in East Germany, an ambitious, power-mad psychotic is torturing innocent prisoners and murdering his way to the top. A British Intelligence official is dealing with some mysterious problems. And the police are trying to track down an insane serial killer who both mutilates his victims-- and drains their blood. What the HELL is going on, and do any of these plotlines connect?
Back in 1963, Blake Edwards did a movie where multiple plotlines, seemingly unrelated, all converged about a quarter of the way into the movie-- THE PINK PANTHER. 7 years later, Milton Subotsky & Max Rosenbloom of Amicus Films decided to go him one further-- a film with 4 (or 5) seemingly-unrelated plotlines, where you don't see how they all connect until just about the last 10 minutes! A specialty of Amicus was "anthology" horror movies, where 4 or 5 short stories were presented, one at a time, with a very loose linking sequence. But here, all the separate threads actually ARE part one of big story-- but, chances are, you'll have to watch the entire film at least once, then watch it a 2nd time in order to really understand it. (If you're lucky.)
As usual with Amicus, more money was probably spent on the cast than anything else, and this modern-day horror show is far more cold-blooded than anything Hammer ever unleashed on their public.
Among the supporting players I recognize are Peter Sallis (TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA) as an East German official who's murdered; Yutte Stensgaard (LUST FOR A VAMPIRE) as an innocent woman tortured to death by East German police; Uta Levka (THE OBLONG BOX) as a silent, cold-blooded nurse over-seeing slow-motion murder in a surgery; Julian Holloway (DOCTOR WHO: "Survival") as a Detective Constable; David Lodge (THE ALPHABET MURDERS) as a Detective Inspector; Christopher Matthews (THE SCARS OF DRACULA) as a Police Doctor who gets much further investigating the "vampire killer" mystery than any of the police do; and Michael Gothard (FOR YOUR EYES ONLY) as "Keith", the affore-mentioned "vampire killer".
Alfred Marks (who I have not seen in anything else) is "Detective Superintendant Bellaver", who's in charge of the case. I was frankly shocked when HE wound up murdered two-thirds of the way in, not unlike Ray Milland in THE PYJAMA GIRL CASE. When the "obvious" main character of a film gets bumped off unceremoniously like that, you can't help but be reminded of Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO to a degree.
Marshall Jones is "Konratz", the murderous, superhuman East German official. I believe he spent most of his career on stage, but his relatively few movies number among them 3 of Gordon Hessler's horrors IN A ROW. (They're the only ones of his I've seen.
And then there's the "big names". Peter Cushing is "Major Heinrich Benedek", apparently the ONLY East German military official who has even the slightest hint of humanity or a conscience in him, who's onscreen for a few minutes before HE's murdered, apparently for having a conscience.
Christopher Lee is "Fremont", a member of the British Intelligence service. He comes across not so much as a "James Bond" type, but more like an "M", and he seems at least somewhat reasonable-- until the climax of the movie, when his true colors are revealed, and it's NOT pretty!
Vincent Price is "Dr. Browning", who comes across as a rather nice, polite, slightly-eccentric scientist involved in unusual experimentation, whose house seems to be at the center of several mysteries at once. He's apparently got government connections and backing, and when confronted about his work, seems far more relaxed, laid-back and conversational than your average INSANE MAD SCIENTIST. He reminds me a lot of "Dr. Pym", the character he played on GET SMART, whose main concern on getting found out was that his work, which he'd spent so much of his life involved in, should NOT be destroyed! Frankly, Price's performance in this film made me think he was actually just playing himself... except for the part about being involved in MASS-MURDER.
This is a VERY, VERY disturbing "sick F***" of a film. Nowhere near as awful and ghastly as WITCHFINDER GENERAL, but nontheless nothing that will ever become a favorite of mine. I decided to get a copy of this after all these years because of how one of Steve Haberman's audio commentaries went on at great length about the 4 consecutive collaborations between writer Christopher Wicking and German director Gordon Hessler. This was their 2nd film together, the others being THE OBLONG BOX, CRY OF THE BANSHEE and MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE. 3 of those were AIP Poe films ("Allegedly!!") while this was from Amicus. Apparently, a running thread of all 4 films is that in these modern times, "The Establishment" are NOT going to save us from unspeakable horrors-- rather, "The Establishment" are THE PURVEYORS of the unspeakable horrors! And, that's nowhere more true than in this "sick flick".
Crazy enough, I actually read Peter Saxon's novel "The Disorientated Man" (the movie-tie-in being re-named "Scream And Scream Again") more than ten years before getting around to seeing the movie, on TV. It was "nice" (so to speak) to actually watch it again, after decades, in a decent widescreen print on Blu-Ray. One mystery I can't fathom is why the UK print has an exchange the US print is missing: "But what of the dream?" "There is only nightmare."
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Just listened to Tim Lucas' commentary. One of the most bizarre moments was when he said he connected Vincent Price's totally laid-back attitude about creating artificial people with the 2 earlier DR. GOLDFOOT movies.
That's kinda like how Peter Cushing in AT THE EARTH'S CORE seems to be playing the same character he did in those 2 "Daleks" movies. ????
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CRY OF THE BANSHEE (1970)
The problem with the film as it exists is, as perhaps several IMDB reviewers pointed out, there's almost NO likable characters in it at all! Topping the pile is Vincent Price as a power-drunk murder-crazed narcissist of a "magistrate" who can get away with anything, and is absolutely bat-S*** gleeful as he does, laughing hysterically as he abuses people or worse, and the villagers alternately fear him and cheer him on when it's not them getting killed. His entire family takes after him to one degree or another, and even his youngest son winds up killing 2 people while his daughter carelessly endangers the life of a servant by having him in her bed when her viscious, bloodthirsty father barges in at one point.
When a Catholic priest turns out to be the nominal voice of reason (apart from being suspicious of the servant-- BEFORE he's involved in anything wrong-- you've got a dodgy screenplay on your hands. (Never expected that from the guy who played "Konratz" in SCREAM, AND SCREAM AGAIN.)
Shout Factory has BOTH the AIP theatrical cut and the unreleased "director's cut" on the same disc, as part of their VINCENT PRICE COLLECTION Box 3. I haven't seen the uncut theatrical cut yet, but I just re-watched my old 1980s local TV channel VHS, which apparently had TEN MINUTES butchered out of it. Because AIP not only edited the film for theatrical release AND moved at least one (perhaps several) scenes around, there's some arguable continuity lapses as well. In the theatrical version, Oona curses the Whitmans at the beginning of the film. But in the original unreleased director's version, this doesn't happen until 30 minutes in-- so, WHY are there several references to the family being "cursed" already, before this happens? Also, son Harry arrives early in the film, yet, in the theatrical version, he's seen in the prologue-- BEFORE he came back home from college. WHAT?
My old videotape is so fuzzy (picture and sound) I'm looking forward to watching-- and HEARING-- what the film sounded like in theatres, to compare it against the unreleased version, as they have 2 completely-different music scores. It's funny-- CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR is also avaialble with 2 completely-different music scores (though you have to buy 2 separate Blu-Rays to hear both), and this film and that one were both filmed in the SAME huge house! (So many people totally diss "THE CRIMSON CULT", but dammit, I've seen it 6 times so far, and enjoyed it every time! Can't say the same for "BANSHEE".)
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I admit, I was having trouble staying awake last night (more to do with my job and insomnia than the movie), but, I just watched the theatrical cut, where AIP is said to have butchered Gordon Hessler's intentions.
I dunno. ALL THAT uncalled-for NUDITY and BRUTALITY being missing DID NOT hurt the film one damn bit. I did NOT need another F***ing "Witchfinder General".
Moving a few scenes around... not sure there either. The part where those 2 arrogant ASSHOLE sons of Price go into the bar with the express purpose of SEXUALLY HARRASSING (and possibly raping) the new barmaid, only to be interrupted as they suspect another girl is selling OCCULT artifacts, I'm pretty sure, was before the mass-murder scene in Hessler's cut, not after.
I realized that the new barmaid was the one who later got accused of knowing where Oona was, and BURNED ALIVE when she could not answer. Not one scumbag in that village cried out against the magistrate & his goons MURDERING an INNOCENT woman... just because she'd earlier turned down the sons' sexual advances.
The weirdest thing about putting the mass-murder first is how it changes the structure of the story. Harry is there... so, apparently, he took part in it BEFORE going away to college. (If he didn't want to come back, WHY did he?) Sot the mass-murder took place SOME TIME before the rest of the movie, rather than right in the middle of everything else going on.
Oona puts the family under a curse. This explains why they keep saying they're under a curse. But in Hessler's version, they're saying they're under a curse BEFORE they even learn of Oona's existence and go to murder most of her "CHILDREN!"
Also, Roderick is there, called by Oona, right after the massacre. Yet, we then see him with Maureen, having perhaps turned down Oona's request to murder the Whitmans (so now she wants the power to FORCE him to do it).
I'll be watching Hessler's cut AGAIN, if only to hear the audio commentary, which, I assume, is only on the longer version.
Hessler cut: 1:30:34
AIP cut: 1:26:33
Local TV cut: 1:17:44 !!
(That's 10 minutes missing from the AIP version.)
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MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1971)
The final AIP "Poe" film is a shambling, near-incoherent mess that bears little resemblence to anything Poe did. The plot involves a French theatre troupe being picked off one by one by a supposedly-dead man as revenge for what was done to him many years earlier. The troupe are putting on a bastardized version of Poe's story that owes more to the 1932 film with Bela Lugosi, and borrows heavily from the 1943 film "PHANTOM OF THE OPERA", which itself was a totally-bastardized adaptation of that classic story.
Director Gordon Hessler, in an interview, says he felt audiences were so familiar with Poe's simple murder mystery that "one cannot adapt it as a film" and had to "do something different". I call BULLSHIT on this. To me, this film should have had a different title.
Apparently, before its release, AIP drastically re-edited the thing, removed 11 minutes, moved several scenes around, and tinted several "dream" sequences so as to remove the intended vagueness & confusion they might cause. On top of that, my local TV channel cut another 2 minutes out, and I'm at a loss to be sure exactly what was cut by AIP and what by the TV station. Either way, the film I've barely been able to put up with for decades is almost completely-incoherent.
Shout Factory's 2016 Blu-Ray (where it's coupled with "THE DUNWICH HORROR") contains the original unreleased director's cut, taken from apparently the only known intact print of it, from before AIP's mutilation. It's a beautiful-looking film-- bright, gorgeous location filming in Spain, looking like no other "Poe" film in existence. But it also drags on at an insanely-leisurely pace as it bounces between long, long stretches of dull tedium and SHOCKING, completely UNCALLED-FOR brutal murders, with people either having acid thrown in their faces or having their throats slashed.
I would rank this as one of the WORST films I've ever watched more than once, and I'm not sure seeing it in a stunning uncut widescreen print helps at all.
Jason Robards plays "Cesar Charron", the head of the stock company, and according to Hessler, realized 2 weeks into shooting he should have asked to play the other main character.
Herbert Lom is "Rene Marot", effectively reprising his role of The Phantom from the 1963 Hammer film, alternating from intelligent, almost-sympathetic leading man to utterly-insane kill-crazy lunatic.
Michael Dunn is "Pierre Triboulet", Marot's polite sidekick, who has perhaps the most amusing line in the film, when he tells someone he descended from royalty: "An ancestor of mine was a court jester!" Clearly, a reference to Poe's story "Hop Frog".
Adolfo Celi is "Inspector Vidocq", who ceaselessly works to track down the perpetrator of the growing number of horrific crimes.
It was only after trying to re-watch my local TV print that I did a bit of research, and ran across something amazing. Reviewer Eric McMillan ("EditorEric_com"), posted, "Poe's creation of his sleuth Dupin is thought to have been based in part on French criminologist Eugène-François Vidocq, credited as the first real-life private detective."
This led me to a LONG biographical article about Vidocq on Wikipedia, where I learned he had a long career as a criminal before switching sides and working for the French police, then organizing the Surete (the undercover security force featured in the 1925 "PHANTOM OF THE OPERA" film!), later still forming the world's first known detective agency, and was the model for at least 3 different authors' detective characters.
Vidocq having resigned from the police TWICE due to incessant harrassment by new, much-younger superiors, would also seem to be the basis for the MUCH-classier, far-more-entertaining 1986 CBS-TV film "MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE" with George C. Scott in the role of "Dupin"!
It also turns out a man named "César Herbaux" was a fellow convict who, along with Vidocq, was convicted of document forgery. I have to assume the writers of the 1971 film named their main character "Cesar" after him!
I still have Steve Haberman's audio commentary to sit through, and I shudder at the thought of watching this thing once again so soon.
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Steve Haberman spent MOST of his commentary doing run-downs on the long resumes of those involved. The most interesting bit of info I got from him was that the stage play in the film, which I already knew was based on the 1932 film (NOT Poe's story), also borrowed from the 1954 film, in that Karl Malden was having the ape murder women who'd turned down his sexual advances. Which is in fact what it's revealed Jason Robards for real did in the 1971 film!
I was disappointed that he didn't pick up on Vidocq being a real-life person, who was the basis for Dupin in Poe's 3 stories.
Also, I confirmed that there is NO hint anywhere in the film of the identity of Christine's father! It seems clear to me it must have been Marot (Herbert Lom), who fathered the girl BEFORE the mother agreed to marry him.
To me, this HAS to be the case, as it would tie in directly with the 1943 PHANTOM film with Claude Rains, who was written as Christine's father, but that fact was REMOVED before the film was shot for dubious reasoning.
Robards married Christine many years after he murdered her mother who turned him down. Herbert Lom was protective of Christine. It was Michael Dunn's character who was actually IN LOVE with Christine. I must assume her screaming bloody murder when he shows up with flowers in the middle of the night was a result of all the trauma she'd just experienced, having so many people murdered by Lom, including her husband (Robards), and then SHE herself being the one who killed Marot (especially if Marot was, as I suspect, her father!).
I totally agreed that after Robard's decapitation, the film should have ended. Rather than a long, drawn-out SERIES of epilogues, that last murder should have been immediately follow by the chase in the theatre, climaxing with Marot's fall to his death.
I don't know WHAT the hell Gordon Hessler & Christopher Wicking were thinking... and AIP just made it worse with their tampering.
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SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN (1970)
I've just watched the UK print included on the Kino Lorber Blu-Ray as an extra.
It hasn't been restored, many of the colors and skin tones are "off", there's damage streaks in places, the SOUND isn't as clear as on the US print, and in general it looks closer to what one might see on TV in years past than to a brand-new Blu-Ray.
Additionally, exactly as I've read, there were numerous small CUTS made to the US print. Although there's some slight damage in a couple spots where tiny bits of the film are missing, the UK print is more INTACT.
Seeing it just now, naturally, I can't help but wonder. WHY in the HELL did AIP cut the US print? There's 3 short shots of some old man watching the killer make out with the girl in the car which are distracting, and don't need to be there. But there's 2 shots of the police inspector hurling rocks at the killer, the 2nd of which knocks him off the sheer cliff wall he's climbing, while in the US print it looks like the killer just slipped on his own. And then right near the end, when Christopher Lee is arguing with Vincent Price, and Price says, "We must destroy the ones who went bad before it's too late", and Lee replies, "It is ALREADY too late.", they CUT the entire next exchange. "But what of the dream?" "There is only time for NIGHTMARE." And then, under hypnotic control, Price commits suicide.
WHAT THE HELL was AIP thinking when they cut these bits?
And further-- WHY hasn't someone taken those bits-- clean them up-- and INSERT them into the restored US print, to create a more complete, "perfect" print?
Sometimes you just wind up shaking your head in dismay...
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THE SPECTRE OF EDGAR ALLAN POE (1972)
A highly-fictionalized bio of Poe and "Lenore", who he loved and lost before marrying his cousin Virginia. She suffers a bout of catelepsy, is buried alive, rescued, but has lost her mind, and winds up at an "advanced" mental hospital. Unfortunately, the doctor running it is experimenting on his patients, and there's OTHER, even worse troubles going on behind his back! It all leads to a horrific climax, which, apparently, has been heavily censored depending on which bad copy of this already low-budget independant film you manage to see.
With Robert Walker Jr., Cesar Romero & Carol Ohmart.
I taped this movie off a local channel back in the 80s. It's always been a low-budget independant film that borders on home-made amateurish, but it did have some interesting ideas that could have been done better in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing. I've read it was filmed in 1972 but not released until 1974, and, indeed, the copyright notice at the end reads 1972.
This is apparently currently available from several different small outfits that all specialize in rare, obscure, impossible-to-find films. The IMDB claims it's 1 hr. 29 min.; the el cheapo DVD I have (with terrible picture & sound) is 1:26:25. Someone posted it on Youtube with a run time of 1:22:37. From the comments here, it seems like it may only be uncut on a French videotape.
Having just re-watched this tacky thing, I see the influences in here of "Alone" (read near the beginning), "The Premature Burial", "The System of Dr. Tarr And Prof. Feather" (an insane asylum where the inmates get out of control), "The Pit And The Pendulum" (water & snakes replacing heat & rats), "Witchfinder General" (the axe murder at the end), and "The Raven" (read near the end).
Lisa (Carol Ohmart) was Adam's former flame who married Dr. Grimaldi! But somehow she went insane, while the halfwit lab assistant was in love with her and wanted her husband (and his boss) out of the way. I never noticed until today that Ohmart in this film has somewhat of a resemblence to the older Fran Drescher (as Fran looks now).
Earlier this week, I was just watching Robert Walker Jr. in THE TIME TUNNEL episode, "Billy The Kid"! What a bastard he was in that.
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It's been several weeks since I completely polished off the entire AIP Poe series (including all the "extras" on the discs). So, after planning this for a few weeks, and with nothing else specifically on the schedule, I decided tonight was the perfect time to run the series AGAIN! This time, one film PER NIGHT, at a rate of 3 nights in a row per week. (What fun!) Starting off with...
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1960)
It's amazing how Richard Matheson's screenplay turned the characters & their relationships completely upside-down from what Poe wrote. In Poe's story, the narrator & Roderick are old friends; Roderick & Madeline are twins (and she's further along in her illness than he is); when she seems to die, she's put in the basement for 2 weeks as a PRECAUTION... but Roderick is such a pathetic deranged MESS, he's too TERRIFIED to speak when he realizes that she's still alive!
In Matheson's version, Philip & Madeline are engaged; he's never met Roderick; EVERY WORD out of Roderick's mouth reveals that, apart from whatever else is wrong with him, he's a CONTROL-FREAK NARCISSIST of the worst, sickest order; he DRIVES her into a catalyptic fit, then, even after he sees her hand move and KNOWS shes still alive, DELIBERATELY buries her ALIVE! Poe's Roderick may have been a sad victim; but Matheson's Rockerick is a genuinely EVIL VILLAIN.
In addition to Poe's story, I also see elements in here of his "Berenice", "The Domain Of Arnheim", as well as the films "BLACK NARCISSUS" (1947) and "REBECCA" (1940). According to the various audio commentaries, it seems all of Corman's POE films borrowed heavily from previous non-Poe movies for their style and plots. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on those other movies, perhaps next year, to eventually do "before and after" comparisons.
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TOWER OF LONDON (1962)
Now this is one REALLY SICK F*** of a movie. A seemingly "classy" period piece, yet the story is so twisted and violent and disturbing, I wound up really glad the Blu-Ray DIDN'T come with an audio commentary, as I can't see myself wanting to sit through this one again anytime soon.
In the 1950s, without doubt, Roger Corman was the best thing AIP had going for it, by a mile. Knowing this, on at least 3 occasions, Corman attempted to break away from Nicholson & Arkoff, and go out on his own. His first attempt, with THE PREMATURE BURIAL, ended up back at AIP when the 2 executive producers blackmailed his would-be business partner (and film lab) into signing over ownership of the film, or risk losing all of their future business.
Not long after, with his brother Gene, Corman formed his own small company, with the aim of doing smaller, B&W films for drive-ins (as AIP had done all through the 50s). But the smaller budgets and lack of big-name actors resulted in lesser profits, for the most part dooming the effort before it got too far.
One of those films was TOWER OF LONDON, a rather bizarre combination of William Shakespeare's "Richard III" and "Macbeth". Price plays the deformed and, frankly, COMPLETELY-INSANE member of the royal family, who, urged on by his wife, decides to MURDER everyone in his family who stands in the way of his becoming the next King of England. This includes his brother, the nanny of the rightful heir and his brother, his own wife (by accident!), both young boys themselves, a trusted aide and the court physician. As the story goes on, it just gets sicker and more perverse, and I found myself being reminded, more with each passing scene, of a deranged NARCISSISTIC home care client that until very recently, I'd worked for, for more than 4 years! Geez. I don't need to be reminded of him.
I've read about this film for decades, and it always tends to be dismissed as a pale remake of the 1939 Universal film of the same name, which starred Baril Rathbone as Richard III, Boris Karloff as his chief executioner, and, funny enough, a young Vincent Price as Richard's 1st victim! Despite it obviously being a remake, Wikipedia claims it is "not connected" to the 1939 film. WHAT? Then again, every film version of "PHANTOM OF THE OPERA" has virtually NOTHING in common with every other version of that story.
My one disappointment involved Price's main sidekick and henchman, played by Michael Pate. I've seen Pate in countless things, especially quite a few episodes of the Adam West BATMAN, where he was always playing villains' henchmen. This is probably the biggest role I've ever seen him have, and in some ways, he's more evil than Price, since Price is utterly INSANE... but Pate's character KNOWS what he's doing. At the climax, you have to look quick to see him get what's coming to him (run through with a sword during a huge battle). I was hoping for at least one nice close-up of his dying in agony, as he so much deserved.
While one might enjoy watching this and the 1939 film back-to-back for comparison, it struck me a really fitting double-bill might be this and Corman's THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964). Then again, considering its roots in Shakespeare... another fitting double-bill might be this with WEST SIDE STORY, which came out a year later! Shakespeare really knew how to write intricate, prolonged tragedies with bad endings.
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concerning...
OBRAS MAESTRA DEL TERROR (1960)
...a Poe anthology from Argentina:
Been reading about this lately. Somebody needs to go down to hell (you know Jack Harris is there) and really b****-slap his sorry *** for what he did. A "real" importer would have just dubbed the complete film into English and released it as-is-- not cut it up into 2 separate atrocities.
Listening to the various audio commentaries on the AIP-POE films, I've come to the conclusion that just about every one of them was inspired by PREVIOUS non-Poe films-- though TALES apparently was a straight-up remake of OBRAS. That's why "Valdemar" was first in the trailer, and in the Dell comic!
Corman added "The Black Cat" to "Amontillado", though doing so destroyed the logic of both stories. "Morella" subbed for "Tell-Tale Heart"-- "Tell-Tale" is probably WHY the 3 intros all involve heartbeats!!! "Morella" makes more sense first, as it opens the same as the previous 3 films, and acts as a mini-version of them, right down to the fire at the end. (I can't find fires at the end of ANY actual Poe stories... Funny, huh? I think that really came from "REBECCA".) "Valdemar" makes for a better finale, when Rathbone suddenly screams bloody murder. MY favorite moment in the whole film.
MY reccomendation: is for every single person at this board to contact Severin Films and nag them TO DEATH to put out a "proper" release of OBRAS, as described in one of the posts above.
In case ya'll are wondering, I just watched TALES again tonight. I have the Spanish Blu-Ray. It's got the English language version as an option. The Kino went OOP and got too pricey for me.
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ENTER THE DEVIL (1972)
A modern-day horror-western. No kidding. A little bit of "Sam McCloud", a little bit of "Quincy M.E.", and a bit of THE DEVIL RIDES OUT-- or something like that. Every so often, you see a low-budget independant movie with NOT ONE name you recognize on either side of the camera, but it's so well-done it really grabs your attention-- and this one sure does! I got a half-hour in before taking a break, and for me, on Youtube, that's pretty damn good! Looking forward to seeing the rest of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AoxvoSfbt4
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THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964)
"Extended cut"
I ask you, can no one do a job properly???
In 2015, Shout Factory included Corman's "MASQUE" as part of "The Vincent Price Collection". Near as I can make out, the film is "perfect".
However... in 2020, as part of their "Revised Reissue", they included a 2nd version of the film, an "Extended Cut". This is in ADDITION to the other one, not in place of. Good move! The new "Extended Cut" is set as the DEFAULT, meaning you have to click on "Theatrical Cut" if you want to play that one.
2 long-missing out-takes, apparently never seen before this Blu-Ray, were added back in. The 2nd scene, was the lead-in to the "Falcon" scene, where Francesca talks about the previous night as if it were just a dream she had. A nice addition.
The 1st scene, however, has Hop-Toad comfort a crying Esmerelda, who tells him that he is the only person in her entire life who has ever treated her with affection, and he replies by saying he feels ten feet tall, and insists no one will ever hurt her again. And he asks if she would agree to escape the castle with him. This is an extremely-importand linking scene, and I am dumbfounded that it was ever missing from the film! It adds so much to his character, and clues the audience in ahead of time that in his next scene, when he says she "means nothing to me", he's LYING to Alfredo.
That's the good. Here's the bad. This new print is NOTICABLY darker all the way through. It's not bad enough to ruin it like Kino Lorber's THE OBLONG BOX, but still, it's clear the entire film has been re-processed. WHY? Why not just insert the missing footage?
In addition, the sound level is lower. WAY lower. I had to crank my stereo up all the way to hear some of the quieter dialogue.
Also, there's a revised "MGM" logo at the beginning and end of the film. No big deal... EXCEPT...
The "Extended Cut", the very end of the end credits CUT OFF a couple seconds TOO EARLY, and it abruptly JUMPS to the "MGM" logo. It DOESN'T do this on the "Theatrical Cut". The music ENDS PROPERLY, followed by at least a full second of SILENCE before the older "MGM" logo comes up.
WHAT THE F*** is wrong with some people?
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The 1st time I ever saw and heard the full end credits on this film was when I taped it off TCM back in January 2006. Those credits-- and David Lee's music-- were just plain AWESOME. And when they got to the END, I was STUNNED. I practically yelled at my TV, "This film is a WORK OF ART!!!" Well on that "Extended Cut", Shout Factory has RUINED the end of the film.
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Hmm, let's see... favorite Mummy stories:
THE MUMMY (1932)
THE MUMMY'S HAND (1941)
THE MUMMY (1959)
MYSTERY & IMAGINATION: Jewel of the 7 Stars (1970)
DOCTOR WHO: Pyramids Of Mars (1975)
SECRET OF THE MUMMY (1982)
Ooh!!! Somebody put the last one back up online again! COOL! Watch it while you have the chance. It's a BLAST you will not believe!
The music in the opening scene is Mussorgsky's "Pictures At An Exhibition", which is also heard early in Amicus' ASYLUM.
I was so thrilled when I found this available from Sinister Cinema. It's one of the most bat-s*** crazy horror films I've ever seen. Written by Brazillian legend Rubens Francisco Lucchetti !
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8h7tws (https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8h7tws)
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I was reminded, UCLA (funded by George Lucas, funny enough) did the incredible restoration of MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM which I just re-watched last night.
Well, tonight, I just re-watched WHITE ZOMBIE. Ohhhh, man. What a cool film.
The acting in this, yes, does seem "silent film" style, but considering when it came out, and the subject matter, I really have no problem with it. When I began doing a chronological mega-marathon of every movie in my collection, it got to where you see enough movies from the same era, and they start to seem "normal".
Madge Bellamy is WAY cuter than Helen Chandler! Charles Beaumont (where have I heard that name before-- heeheehee) is a jerk, but, AT LEAST he regrets what he did before it's over.
Some of the visuals in this are JAW-DROPPING! The big room in the castle reminds me a bit of the main hall in Castle Dracula. The steps along the cliff remind me of "The Devil's Hopyard" from THE DUNWICH HORROR (1969), as well as 2 different similar settings in John Blackburn's "Coley" comic-book stories. The long shot looking up at the castle, which seems to have been built right into the cliff-face, reminds me of the view of Nicholas Medina's castle in Corman's PIT AND THE PENDULUM!
The witch-doctor calls the owner of the castle "Murder". It's the only time Bela Lugosi's character is referred to by name in the entire picture. He's called "Murder Legendre" by the narrator of the 1952 trailer.
The VERY-scratchy, fuzzy reissue trailer from 1952, the narrator sounds like the same guy who narrated parts of Ed Wood's PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. Could it be?
It's clear to me this particular restoration (which the credits seem rather proud of) was done from at least 2 very-different prints, as most of it's very clear, but certain scenes are VERY fuzzy (probably a much-small size print). The restoration of 1929's DER HUND VON BASKERVILLE (Germany) combined a 35 mm print with a 9 mm print. REALLY!
The sound is HISSY thoughout, but I could hear most of it pretty good, though about halfway thru, the volume JUMPS up for most of the rest of the picture, and a few spots after that, it get fuzzy and then clears up again.
I also noticed a few jumps in the film in the 2nd half.
Overall, partly because I've only got a low-quality 28-inch screen (all I can fit in my room), I usually can't tell the difference between a DVD and a Blu-Ray (when I've gotten both in one package), and this film is "fine" by my standards. Even so, news that there was a "better" one a year later-- and that is will hopefully be a "DEFINITIVE" one sometime soon-- does make me wanna spring for the new one when it comes out.
"Dr. Bruner" really steals the picture for me. "Pardon me-- have you got a match?" (Both the first and last lines in the film.) I especially like the long scene where he tries to explain what he thinks is going on to Neil. Edward Van Sloan's hero in DRACULA may seem like he walked in from some other planet (as did Lugosi and Frye), but John Cawthorne seems like a "regular guy".
A funny thought that crossed my mind tonight: between "Dr. Bruner" and "Murder", it feels like I'm watching some 1932 episode of DOCTOR WHO, with antique versions of "The Doctor" and "The Master"! Especially given how much Roger Delgado's villain loved to HYPNOTIZE people and get them under his power.
WHITE ZOMBIE is another film that would make a great double-feature with the 1931 DRACULA.
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CASTLE OF BLOOD (1964)
Journalist Alan Foster wants to interview Edgar Allan Poe during his visit to London, but winds up accepting a bet he can stay in Lord Blackwood's haunted castle until daybreak. Not a good idea!
This Euro flick has been a favorite of mine since I taped it off late-night from Philly's Channel 57, WITH commercial breaks intact, which made it a hassle to watch over the years.
Severin Films made a BIG DEAL out of having a "Brand new HD transfer of rare US TV print”, widescreen, lot of damage, cut, which is missing 6-1/2 minutes. Insanely, the channel 57 broadcast was only missing 6 minutes, and the Severin print is missing a line that appeared over and over during the station breaks: "And now, it is YOUR turn!"
Well, Synapse Films put it out on DVD in 2002 as an “Uncensored International Version”. NO KIDDING. VERY clear picture, slightly fuzzy SOUND, and wherever something had been cut over here (some mild nudity and the like), it switches to French language with English subtitles and back again. (JUST like my DVD sets of the 1966 ULTRAMAN.) So this 2002 Synapse DVD is VASTLY-SUPERIOR to the 2015 Severin Blu-Ray. GO FIGURE.
Now here's the other crazy part. This was one of 2 DVDs I had of foreign movies that would not play properly on my el cheapo Phillips BR player. What I mean is, on that, I had to set my TV to "zoom" for widescreen films, but, if I did, on this disc (and another one), the English subtitles were at the bottom of the screen, under the image, and CUT OFF if the TV was set to "zoom".
However, my new LG region-free BR player, you set the TV to "stretch", and the player AUTOMATICALLY adjusts the images to the correct size, whether the films are fullscreen or widescreen. And with both of these discs I thought were defective, the English subtitles appear IN FRONT of the image, and so, both discs play PERFECTLY on the LG machine! Cool.
I understand Barbara Steele (who's still around!) is recording an audio commentary for a brand-new version of this film, but, since I already have 3 copies (and am planning to THROW OUT the old videotape), do I REALLY need another one?
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81MufKp-nkL._SL1500_.jpg)
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Tonight's movie:
THE SECRET OF THE MUMMY (1982)
It's not a comedy, but it it REALLY funny in places. And, totally BAT-S*** crazy.
https://glitternight.com/2022/05/03/the-secret-of-the-mummy-1982-1983-movie-review/