Oct 31
AIP’s strangely belated Jaws rip-off sees a Californian community terrorised by a giant octopus driven to madness and murder by what it hears on the radio. Given that this was 1977, you can hardly blame it.
A handful of big-name American stars and a supporting cast of familiar Euro-faces struggle gamely, but are thoroughly out-acted by two trained orcas and a tank-bound cephalopod…one of which, tragically, did not survive to the end of filming.
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Oct 30
Why not close out Lovecraft Month with a movie that stretches “based on the works of HP Lovecraft” well past the point of being a plausible claim.
In recent reviews, and as we continue to discuss movies based on the literary works of pulp horror/sci-fi author HP Lovecraft, the names Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon have popped up a lot. More specifically, the title Re-Animator keeps getting dropped into impolite conversation. The team of Gordon and Yuzna have enjoyed considerable acclaim from fans for their adaptations of Lovecraft material and for their ability to take Lovecraft’s work and make it something new without losing the essence of what made the story work in the first place. They did this in a number of ways, but probably the wisest decision they made was to confine themselves to the periphery of Lovecraft’s bibliography, selecting lesser known and all-but-forgotten stories rather than Lovecraft’s best known and most beloved. The first of the author’s story the duo chose to tackle was Herbert West, Re-Animator.
It wasn’t one that Lovecraft fans rallied around, so it would be less likely to get dissected or draw ire for departing from the source material. In terms of mind-bending weirdness, it was relatively straightforward, meaning that the filmmakers would not have to grapple with the more abstract horrors with which Lovecraft so often dealt. The resulting film, Re-Animator, is often heralded as a classic of American horror, combining the chills of Lovecraft with a black sense of humor, over-the-top gore, and something lurking beneath it all that means even amid all the mayhem and outrageousness, there’s something that just feels… icky. Almost sordid. Certainly unsettling. I’m not one to argue with consensus in this case; I think Re-Animator is fantastic. I think it’s a cornerstone not just of American horror, but horror in general. It’s a film that one can return to over and over without ever growing tired of it. And it’s amazing still what they were able to get away with. Over twenty years and at least as many viewings later, it’s still as shocking and gleefully unbelievable as it was the very first time I saw it.
So naturally, I’m not going to review that film.
Oct 29
I know, I know. There are some of you out there who are questioning what I have decided to review today for two reasons. The first is that Ziggy’s Gift, while unknown, is not a movie. The second is that it is Christmas-themed, and the actual holiday is still some distance away. But I want to get the word out on it, to plant a seed that may take a little while to sprout and eventually convince people to check this special out before the holiday passes. This special is really special. Trust me.
And what theme ties together the last two movies featured in Month of the Living Dead? Easy. They’re both Spanish-language. And I swear I didn’t plan this.
(Their titles both begin with “G,” too, at least in the versions I watched. How crazy is that?)
Oct 28
Ironically, I was literally discussing this show with a friend just last night at the Portage Theater last night, where they were showing a John Carpenter double bill. Moreover, there was a guy selling a pirate set of the program in the lobby, which I actually stopped to look at. Glad I didn’t buy it!
From Tim Lucas, no less, the publisher of Video Watchdog: “Universal has sublicensed the rights to the classic Boris Karloff series THRILLER to Image Entertainment, which plans to release a single box set of the complete series sometime prior to Halloween next year. I recently returned from Los Angeles where I recorded audio commentaries for the episodes “The Grim Reaper” and “The Premature Burial” with screenwriter and film historian David J. Schow and director/cinematographer Ernest Dickerson. David, who wrote the classic reference THE OUTER LIMITS COMPANION and edited several books of stories by THRILLER scribe Robert Bloch, has been playing host on most of the commentaries — he had done six before I showed up. I’m also told that the set will include isolated music tracks for every episode! ”
This has been on my Top Five Want List for a loooong time. Great news! And it sounds like they’re really going to do a bang up job on it. And one big set, rather than season sets! Whoo-hoo!
FROM BEYOND
The choice of “From Beyond” as the source story for a movie is not necessarily an intuitive choice. It’s seven pages of things that the human eye cannot behold, and really it doesn’t have much “story” to it other than “I saw stuff and almost died, but then I shot the machine and lived, only to wish I hadn’t.” Other than the framing device, the whole story consists of sitting down in front of a machine. Character development consists of describing what a shriveled gargoyle Tillinghast has become. And, again, all of the visuals are meant to be literally impossible things which the eye is incapable of perceiving. But then, Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna’s first choice was not this story. After the success of Herbert West: Re-Animator, the follow-up effort was originally slated to be Dagon. That didn’t end up happening, though, because Charles Band didn’t think that fish-people were sufficiently scary. With the potential for special effects in the mid-1980s for this crew, maybe he was right… but then, given that my experiences with Full Moon films have basically been a string of letdowns, I dunno if Charles Band is the authority I’d bow to in terms of what’s scary.
Only one more review to go before the gate is unlocked and we all go mad…
David continues to stretch the definition of “based on the works of HP Lovecraft” to the snapping point…
Neill’s role in In the Mouth of Madness harks back to his first big break, which was as Damien Thorn in The Final Conflict. The film was the weakest of the three original Omen films, but Neill showed he could be charming, charismatic and devilish too. Here, as Trent, he is snide, sarcastic and cynical — not the nice ‘everyman’ we are used to. His job as an insurance investigator has made him this way after years of uncovering fraudsters and phonies. His view of humanity is somewhat jaded. Yet, somehow, he sees him self as being above this corruption. He also sees himself as a man grounded in reality — at least when the film starts. But then he slowly, after delving into Sutter Cane’s book, begins to have hallucinations. As the story arc continues these hallucinations become a bigger part of Trent’s life until they are in fact reality, and the vestiges of the real world are fantasy.
At the end, the film spins into a deliberate self-referential vortex, where the film In the Mouth of Madness tells the story of a book called In the Mouth of Madness, which is then made into a film called In the Mouth of Madness.
The long-awaited day is here. Generations which have long since slumbered in the dust have looked forward to this time, as if to a new golden age, when their descendants would bask in the life-giving light of the greatest movie ever made, finally release on DVD.
I’m speaking, of course, of Night of the Creeps, which has heretofore been available only as deteriorating ex-rental tapes or as bootlegs copies from late-nite TV. And because it’s coming both to DVD and Blu-Ray, you’ve got the choice of TWO suck-ass covers!
Me, I plan to find a good large copy of one of the old posters (maybe from here) and photoshop some custom cover art.
NECRONOMICON
Necronomicon is an anthology film — as mentioned in my review of Alien Zone, a format that never really clicks with me. But considering the names behind this anthology — besides Yuzna himself producing the movie and directing two segments (the final story as well as the wrap-around story that features Jeffrey Combs as HP Lovecraft), two other directors were called in for the project, both of them relatively unknown at the time of the film’s production. But they would both make names for themselves years later, and since I didn’t see Necronomicon until years later (its distribution in the United States has been, at best, spotty), I already knew and had high expectations for the names Christophe Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf, Silent Hill) and Shusuke Kaneko (the Gamera films from the 1990s, of which I think the second is one of the greatest giant monster movies ever made). The fact that I liked both directors so much, coupled with Yuzna’s track record with Lovecraft (even when he makes a bad movie, Yuzna doesn’t make an un-entertaining movie) was enough to get me over my initial dislike of the anthology film.
Footsteps in the Fog (1955), in which the Edwardian thriller template is driven pleasantly haywire by a heroine who turns out to be just as crazy and amoral as the villain…
Mimic (1997), in which the usual giant, killer, B-movie bugs evolve a cunning form of camouflage…
Naked Fear (2007), in which people are still ripping off The Most Dangerous Game after all these years…
Scanners (1980), in which David Cronenberg comes even closer than I’d remembered to just flat-out remaking The Power…
and…
12 to the Moon (1960), in which– and you’ll never see this coming– twelve people go to the moon.
