And then he’ll see you again, and again, and AGAIN:
Before I Hang (1940), in which Boris Karloff plays a doctor who becomes a serial killer when he has himself injected with an experimental serum made from the plasma of an executed murderer…
The Devil Commands (1941), in which Boris Karloff plays a doctor who becomes obsessed with transdimensional telepathic communication when his wife is killed in an auto wreck…
The Man They Could Not Hang (1939), in which Boris Karloff plays a doctor who gets himself resurrected in order to take revenge on the people who got him unjustly executed for murder…
and…
The Man with Nine Lives (1940), in which (you guessed it) Boris Karloff plays (you guessed it again) a doctor who accidentally freezes himself and several of his enemies for ten years using an experimental cryogenic technique, and picks up the feud where he left off when a second doctor finds and defrosts all the preserved bodies.
And in addition, because I just couldn’t bear to do an update devoted solely to turn-of-the-40’s mad doctor moves, I also give you:
I Am Legend (2007), in which Will Smith is not only much better than Charlton Heston, but is nearly as good as Vincent Price…
Let the Right One In (2008), in which the Swedes show us all the correct way to do an adolescent vampire love story…
and…
The Toolbox Murders (1977), in which a guy with a toolbox commits a whole bunch of murders.
#1 by The Mud Puppy on December 5, 2010 - 11:06 pm
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The thing I find staggering about the ending of I Am Legend–and make no mistake, to make it through a flawed but intriguing adaptation and be confronted with that pissed me off and left me walking out of the theater grumbling–is that it was clearly a studio-mandated ending and I cannot understand why.
I can say this because, thanks to the internet, I saw the original ending a few months later. (It’s also available on some editions of the DVD as an alternate cut of the film)
*SPOILERS, obviously*
Okay, so, for one thing the original ending made good on the obvious implication throughout the movie that all the intelligent vampire wanted was to have the vampire girl that Neville kidnapped returned to him. Granted, this was spelled out as blatantly as possible: the vampire girl has a butterfly tattoo, her mate draws a butterfly in blood on the reinforced glass after Neville is trapped, and Neville flashes back to his daughter in the car during the evacuation talking about seeing a butterfly.
Still, the idea of Neville having been the monster–which was set-up but not paid off in the theatrical version–is thus kept. He returns the vampire girl to her mate and–the vampires promptly leave. It ends with Neville, alive, leaving Manhattan with the human woman and her son.
Obviously, that’s still a huge departure from the novel–but at least it’s in the spirit of it. And what’s most baffling about it is that it’s a happier ending! Why did the studio want that changed?! Did they really believe the audience couldn’t handle the idea of the movie boiling down to, as Cracked.Com put it, So I’m The Asshole?
#2 by Read MacGuirtose on December 6, 2010 - 3:05 pm
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Because test audiences didn’t like it.
I have no idea why test audiences didn’t like it, but that was apparently the rationale for the change. (Which, actually, makes sense, in some ways… if it had just been a matter of the studio heads not liking the original ending, one would think they’d have interfered sooner, before all the money was spent to shoot it.)
I looked around for sources so I could back this up with something more than “I heard somewhere that…”; nothing’s mentioned about the changed ending on the movie’s IMDb page, but its Wikipedia page does attribute the change to “test audience dislike”, and… oh, wait, it is mentioned on the movie’s IMDb page after all, just in the FAQ and not in the Trivia section where I was looking.
According to said IMDb page, the “test audience… apparently did not like [the original ending] for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it changed the ending of Richard Matheson’s novel.” Uh… wait… granted that neither ending exactly matched the ending of the novel (technically a novella, really, but that’s beside the point), which one was closer?…
#3 by The Mud Puppy on December 6, 2010 - 3:25 pm
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Well, the theatrical ending does resemble the novel in that Neville dies. But the original ending actually keeps with the spirit of the novel.
So, if the issue was that it “changed the ending of Richard Matheson’s novel”, the ending that they actually went with really didn’t fix that.
#4 by Read MacGuirtose on December 6, 2010 - 3:40 pm
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Yeah, that’s what I figured; the question was mostly rhetorical. Though honestly, regardless of what the IMDb says, I doubt that was really a big issue with the test audiences. What are the chances that the majority of the test audience had even read the novel? (Unless the studio specifically sought out a test audience familiar with the original material… but I’m not sure why they would do that. Surely people who have read the novel were not the intended primary target market.)
Maybe the test audience thought the ending was changed too much because they only knew the story from the previous movie adaptations, and wrongly assumed they had been faithful to the novel?
I guess the moral of the story is that the studios really need to find better test audiences?
#5 by The Mud Puppy on December 6, 2010 - 4:09 pm
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I’ve felt that test audiences were a mistake ever sibce I discovered how awesome the original ending of Little Shop of Horrors was.
I mean, yeah, sure, it’s great to see Seymour and Audrey get their happy ending–but we could’ve had giant plants destroying the world!
#6 by Blake on December 6, 2010 - 4:17 am
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Well El Santo, you sold me on those Boris Karloff films. Now I must track them down over here. Curses!
#7 by The Rev. on December 6, 2010 - 10:04 am
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I had a pretty good time with The Devil Commands and The Man They Could Not Hang. Neither is among Karloff’s best, but they’re good bets for entertainment. I’ve yet to see the other two, but knowing TCM, I’ll get a chance sometime.
El Santo: I think that’s the most positive opinion of The Toolbox Murders I’ve read. You’ve actually piqued my curiosity on it now.
Incidentally, have you seen the remake? I rather liked it. A large part was Angela Bettis, who plays against her usual May-type weirdo (which, to be fair, she’s very good at) and is just a normal young newlywed in a very abnormal situation, which was refreshing and showed she’s got some range along with her talent. It has some interesting ideas behind the killer’s motivations, some fun with the normal gender roles in slashers, and some gruesome setpieces. I can’t compare it to the original, but it’s good stuff on its own merits.
#8 by El Santo on December 6, 2010 - 11:00 am
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“Incidentally, have you seen the remake?”
No, but it’s on the way. A complete stranger just handed me a copy at a now-defunct local record store a few years back, and I’ve been sitting on it ever since. Really, you could consider clearing the decks for upcoming reviews to be the secret theme of this whole update.
#9 by Jen S on December 6, 2010 - 12:15 pm
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I loved Let The Right One In, and the remake as well.
The remake, incidentally, gets more explicit about Eli and Hakan’s relationship, but in a direct 180 from the book:
***SPOILERS!***
About two thirds of the way through the film, Oskar (or his US equivalent) finds a strip of photo booth pictures from the 1950s, showing Eli and what is clearly a young Hakan (he has a distinctive facial birthmark, that was probably the source of bullying for him.) The unspoken sorrow in the film is that while Eli has clearly been a lot of boys’ first and only overpowering loves, she has been through many, many of them, to the point where it’s hard for her to even pretend not to know the ending of each relationship.
But what can she do? She’s twelve, small and permanently helpless, and no matter how much society changes it won’t allow a twelve year old to live on her own for long. It’s such a well worn groove for her that she automatically knows when a familiar is past his prime, is a danger to her survival, and instinctively hones in on the next lonely boy, out in a cold, dark courtyard.
#10 by Jason Farrell on December 6, 2010 - 7:15 pm
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I have to say that Tobe Hooper’s TOOLBOX MURDERS is more a reimagining (yeah, I don’t like the term either but is there a better one?) than a remake. It’s also very atmospheric, with an odd, floating, LSD kind of pace.
I don’t know why the test audience forced in the ending that finally landed in I AM LEGEND; the main compaint I heard from non-genre, mainstream movie-watchers (i.e. people who would only get confused if they ever stumbled across the B-Masters) was that it was too depressing. Apparently, you can’t kill Will Smith, although nobody ever cared when Price and Heston bought the farm in their versions.
LEGEND lost more than it gained when it jetttisoned the siege conditions and “Come out, (Neville)/(Morgan)!” And was it just me or was the left-wing, ganja-hippie vibe a complete and deliberate reversal on OMEGA MAN’s Ayn Randian, Civilization vs. Barbarism, conservative aura?
Still, that damn dog dying would have had me choking back tears if I ever cried. There are actually emotions in this one; both the Price and the Heston are sort of distanced and cold.
#11 by craig york on December 7, 2010 - 3:47 pm
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The Will Smith I am Legend was alright, but didn’t leave that strong an impression. I’d cheerfully
drive a stake through any part of an Undead Ayn Rand
that required it, though. Repeatedly, even.
Let the Right One In though…wow. I’d glad to see I wasn’t the only one who picked up on the horror
of how many times this story might have repeated itself.
The film is helped a great deal by having no-one among
the living really come across as sympathetic, as a
character the audiance would want to identify with-
while Eli isn’t sugar-coated, she comes off as more
survivor than monster. Glad I know to avoid the book . The topic of “better than the Book” adaptations
might be fodder for a future roundtable, though. Off the
top of my head, Dreamcatcher (from the S. King
novel ) is another that struck me as better than its source. ( You may commence chucking the brickbats.)
#12 by El Santo on December 7, 2010 - 9:39 pm
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I’ve neither read nor seen Dreamcatcher, but it in no way surprises me to hear that the film is an improvement over the book. King’s writing has ranged pretty consistently from disappointing to hideous since about 1990.
#13 by Joshua on December 8, 2010 - 3:24 am
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I, for one, enjoyed the hell out of the book Let The Right One In, of for no other reason than because the vampires were monsters instead of tortured souls cast adrift on the seas of fate.
I hear terrible things about the subtitling for the DVD release. Did the version you saw have the proper theatrical-release subtitles, or the half-assed titles from the initial video? Or are you fluent enough in Swedish to watch the original?
#14 by MatthewF on December 8, 2010 - 5:03 am
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I found that the movie of the Let the Right One in was bleaker than the novel because it seemed more explicit at the end that Oscar is simply the replacement for Hakan.
I too hated the “She’s a boy!” twist in the novel because,. as you said, it added nothing. Beyond that though, I liked it a lot.
#15 by El Santo on December 8, 2010 - 8:41 am
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Joshua: I saw it in the theater, so I definitely got the good subtitles. The AFI Silver (a hoity-toity arthouse multiplex– yeah, who knew those even existed?– outside of Washington DC) ran it as part of their Halloween-themed October lineup, and the review just took that damn long to write to my satisfaction.
#16 by rjschwarz on December 9, 2010 - 10:37 am
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In defense of test audiences, I think it depends upon how you work with them. Roger Corman always swore by them but I suspect he knew the questions to ask most of the time.
The audio commentary on Event Horizon had some intersting bits on test audiences as well. I guess they tested three versions. In one they found one scene of a child’s mangled legs a bit to gross and it turned the audiences against the movie from that point on. Clip that scene down a bit and try again and they got a better response. Having said that the studio still chopped a half hour out of the final cut so who knows.
#17 by anktastic on December 18, 2010 - 1:50 am
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Mr Santo: Three stars for “I am Legend”? It should be a zero! Presented for your consideration (spoilers follow):
– Deus ex machina ending
– Bob Marley crap (made me roll my eyes into the skull so far I’m still looking for my irises.)
– Somehow the kid and the woman manage to not only survive but also *save him*.
– Religious feeling that everything’s going to be fine.
– Hunting on a car? seriously? WTF. It’s not even cool.
– The acting… oh god. the acting. Bring me back The X from outer space.
– Horrible CGI
– Smart zombies that are dumb… or maybe smart… you can never tell, entirely random
– Zombies are bald *because it’s easier to animate them in CGI*
– The trap the zombies set. WHAT. The zombies are smarter than he is? Come on!
– The trap he sets. Come on! durr.
– You wrote: “There’s an intriguing hint here that the virus has a special affinity for creatures adapted to life in a human-transformed world” –> No. That’s completely wrong – the movie is too dumb to say or imply anything like that. That was your brain trying to fill in the gaps of nonsense. That means you are much smarter than the writers.
– It takes itself very seriously. Hell, at least Jason X didn’t… (a movie which, in my opinion, is a lot better than this one, mostly because it doesn’t try to take itself seriously – it’s just a turd and everyone knows it)
– I am supposed to believe he is a scientist and finds a cure? After all of the above? Give me a break.
– The town the survivors get to. With the american flag. God, oh god.
– You wrote “Will Smith is a great Robert Neville.” Please, I implore you, can you show me when that happens? When is it that he is a great Robert Neville?
Note that I’m not complaining about how they completely ignored the book – as you very well say, we are all used to that.
But… I downloaded that movie for free, watched it, and it still managed to make me physically sick. This is, without question, the worst movie I’ve ever seen.
In your scoring system, this is a perfect zero. Pretty much like “Perfect Storm.”