Popcorn Kernels: Fangs For The Memories

Everyone, please welcome back our dear friend Scream 101! The podcast has risen from the grave for a second season, and this September we’re all about vampires. Please enjoy a set of mini-reviews about the first two flicks in the lineup.

Dracula (For the Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.)

Year: 1931

Director: Tod Browning

Cast: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners 

Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

MPAA Rating: Approved

C’mon.

I do my best to approach classic horror with the respect it deserves, bringing as much context as possible to understand why people might have been scared of it back in the day, even if it doesn’t phase modern audiences. I get how Psycho shocked a post-Code audience and respect its tense thriller mechanics. I understand Halloween’s game-changing, stylish approach even if it doesn’t particularly spook me. And every time I watched The Exorcist… OK, The Exorcist is still terrifying. I’m just saying, I’m not speaking as a live Tweeting, torture porn-bred millennial when I say that the massively important, influential-even-to-this-day 1931 Universal smash hit Dracula is a pretty awful movie.

Please keep in mind that I don’t hate all Universal horror. Bride of Frankenstein is a doggone triumph. It’s just that Dracula is cut off at the knees twice over by its source material. While Dracula works well as an epistolary novel, its meandering, country-hopping plot is not the stuff of great cinema. And then our Dracula goes one step further by actually adapting its script from a stage play based on the novel, confining that addled narrative into one suffocating location.

The pacing chokes on its own blood as a handful of characters shout at one another, circling back to the same points over and over again. And far be it from me to knock an iconic performance, but Bela Lugosi is no Karloff. His slow-as-molasses line deliveries are just exhausting. The word “boring” is bandied about a lot when it comes to movies released more than a decade before our time, but Dracula truly earns that description. 

There are exactly three things that are genuinely good about Dracula, and they are what prevent it from teetering over a precipice of despair and tedium. First is Dwight Frye, our Renfield. Frye just goes for it, bringing an immutable energy to the role that sends him careening up into the rafters, but appropriately sells the character’s stylized insanity. The second stems off from that over-the-top quasi-expressionism: the production design of settings that aren’t the main mansion. Dracula’s castle is an excellent chiaroscuro nightmare, and the staircase in his London hideout is a deliciously overwrought jagged cliff.

The third and final element is one scene, a bedtime conversation between Mina and Lucy that thrums with naturalistic chemistry, providing a tiny breath of fresh air between all the hammy tagines. But a couple gasps do not a full lung make. I’d rather be buried six feet under than spend an eternity with Dracula, and that’s exactly what this 80 minute expanse of celluloid felt like.

Rating: 3/10

Let the Right One In (For the Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.)

Year: 2008

Director: Tomas Alfredson

Cast: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar

Run Time: 1 hour 55 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A young Swedish boy falls in love with the girl who moves in next door, only to discover that she’s a vampire.

I love the book Let the Right One In, as it’s one of the few works of modern literature that has turned my stomach as I was reading it. That might explain why I’m so chilly toward its film adaptation, which defangs most of its more questionable content in favor of a languorous arthouse vibe. Now I’ll be the first to admit that Let the Right One In is a great arthouse horror movie, but I’m well aware of what it could have been, which is supremely frustrating.

But it’s only fair, I suppose, to focus on what it is. Which is beautiful. Like many a Scandinavian film, Let the Right One In uses sprawling fields of snow as giant canvasses of negative space onto which it paints its frame. Given that vampire films tend to predominately feature blood, this aesthetic is especially suited for the subgenre, juxtaposing lurid reds against the pure white snowfall. This is especially especially meaningful when you consider that both our monster and our twisted protagonist falling for her are children, the traditional innocents.

Yeah, there’s a lot going on in Let the Right One In, though you might not suspect that from its sedate pacing. It truly succeeds in combining thoughtful, thematic imagery with intensely visceral horror, sometimes even in the same frame. Certain moments are achieved so elegantly that they could be framed and put in a gallery, even though they depict, say, a woman being engulfed in flame or a man burning off his own face with acid. … Maybe I’m being too harsh when I judge this movie for not being hardcore enough.

And let’s not discount the film’s love story, which is believably clumsy, childish, sweet, and dark. The two child actors are superb, especially Lina Leandersson, whose Eli has the eyes of someone who has seen a million lifetimes come and go.

Hell, Let the Right One In is terrific. I don’t love it, because I sometimes have trouble penetrating its icy exterior, but I’d be a liar if I didn’t sing its praises and recommend it to fans looking for more intellectual horror fare.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 926

Everything You Know Is Wrong

As somebody in my line of work, I spend a lot of time reading, writing, and thinking about horror movies. I've spent so much time around them that even some of the most obscure bits of trivia seem like blisteringly obvious facts to me.

"Of course Stuart Gordon didn't direct The Howling, that's the film that inspired him to make Re-Animator, duh!"

But skewed as I am, there are a few ideas people have about my favorite genre that are both unshakeable and completely incorrect. It's weird how pop culture does this - it can be everywhere, the talk of every dinner table, but people can have totally incorrect cultural memories.

You know Darth Vader doesn't actually say "Luke... I am your father."? Yeah, neither does anybody you ask on the street and you know they've all seen Star Wars. These things happen and there's no earthly explanation.

I said no earthly explanation.

So sometimes people remember even super obvious things incorrectly despite hard evidence to the contrary. Thanks to my area of expertise, I see now that it is my destiny to return order to the community, at least horror-wise, and correct some of the more persistent myths. 

Now I know some of these are based on a lot of technicality, but suck it up, I wanted an even ten. Here goes nothing...

Ten Common Horror Misconceptions Debunked

MYTH #1: Frankenstein Terrorizes The Villagers

We'll start with an easy one. Most of us have learned at this point that the hideous creation portrayed by Boris Karloff is Frankenstein's Monster. Frankenstein is merely the man that created him. Nevertheless, this won't stop the world (including myself sometimes) from calling him Frankenstein. Even movie titles got in on the fun eventually.

How exciting! I can't wait to watch this classic comedy duo converse with the famed Baron.

Although it's perhaps an incurable one at this point, it's still wrong. We're all wrong. I'm sorry. That's just the way life is sometimes.

MYTH #2: Freddy Krueger Is Funny

OK, OK, OK. Freddy is a hilarious prankster. He spouts off puns as he kills teens by slamming them into TVs, turning them into living cartoons or video games, and other silly crap like that. But did you know that didn't actually start until A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors?

For the first two films, the Kruegster was still a menacing presence. Sure, he took unusual delight in his craft but it was with the wicked sneer of a cat playing with its mouse, not the merry chuckle of a court jester. And in the second one, he was just a little gay, not actively funny.

If you think this is funny, you have a much weirder sense of humor than I do. Text me.

Some people find the original Nightmare unscary because all the 80's stuff is a little cheesy, but that doesn't mean it's humor. At least any more than legwarmers and jelly bracelets.

MYTH #3: That "Cabin In The Woods" Stuff Is Such A Cliché

God, I know, right? Those partying teens have really got to pick a better spot for their vacations. It was the entire premise Joss Whedon's great The Cabin in the Woods and the subject of a long conversation in the also great Dead Snow. But let's take a step back.

In Dead Snow a character asks how many movies are set in a cabin in the woods and the resident horror nerd starts rattling off "Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, April Fool's Day..." But hold the phone. Friday the 13th takes place at a summer camp. And April Fool's Day is a mansion on an island.

That seems a little weird. Wouldn't it be better just to use other cabin movies so people couldn't do a quick Google search and disprove the dialogue? I mean, Bloody Disgusting has a whole Top Ten list of... No, wait. That list includes an RV in the Desert movie, a Tent in the Woods, three Summer Camp movies, the aforementioned satires Cabin in the Woods and Dead Snow, and a movie that isn't even horror at all.

Basically it's just the Evil Dead trilogy and not much else.

But wait, there's more!

What's this? Only two of those movies actually take place in a cabin? Aw, screw it.

MYTH #4: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Is A Gory Bloodbath

Come on! It's right there in the title! A girl gets hung on a meathook, a wheelchair kid is disemboweled, not to mention there's an entire house furnished with body parts.

It's all pretty intense. So intense, in fact, that everyone was too busy cringing and squinting their eyes to notice that there's scarcely even a drop of blood in the entire film. Sure, there's a hitchhiker that cuts his hand and some miscellaneous spatter on the Final Girl, but that's about it. The rest is all implication.

Tobe Hooper has such mastery of the cinematic form that TCM is so brutal and nihilistic that you feel like it's gory and disgusting. But the fact remains that this was a low budget movie and stage blood is just another expense. Leatherface isn't made of gold.

Well, he wasn't at that point.

This scene was basically their entire blood budget.

This doesn't mean you should't watch Texas Chainsaw. No not at all. It's a superb movie that beats at your nerves like a cannibalistic manbeast with a meat tenderizer. Just don't expect too much of the red red krovvy to satisfy your appetite.

MYTH #5: Night of the Living Dead Is A Zombie Movie

OK, this one is a little technical. But think about it. George Romero's seminal classic came out in 1968 and started the zombie movement, leading all the way to today's Walking Dead. So why did Romero call his flesh-eating revenants "ghouls?"

Because the zombie title was already taken, yo.

All the zombie films before NotLD were based on the voodoo idea of reanimated corpses that were servants to the priestess. They didn't eat flesh, they didn't turn unsuspecting victims into them. They just did junk that their mistress ordered them to do, including such horrific acts as *gasp* tending the fields.

Zombies before Romero. Pretty dull.

So be careful when you're renting a zombie film made before the 70's. Unless you need a good nap, that is.

MYTH #6: The Blair Witch Project Is The First Found Footage Horror Film

[REC], Quarantine, Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield. None of these films could have existed without the low budget innovation of The Blair Witch Project. That film ate up the media with the conceit that three documentary filmmakers vanished in the woods and left their tapes behind. Most of the audience had no idea the footage wasn't real, which made it all the more terrifying.

What they didn't know is that, in 1980, a gory little Italian film about a documentary crew's retrieved footage of an excursion to the Amazon was disgusting Europeans everywhere. That's right. Cannibal Holocaust came out a full 19 years before Blair Witch, but was deemed too immoral and distasteful to deserve the proper title of Papa Found Footage.

Providing a strong counterargument to the idea that cannibal films always hit it big at the box office.

It makes sense that nobody remembers it. It wasn't a hit anywhere but in cult cinemas. But still. First.

MYTH #7: Remakes Suck

Ah, the rallying cry of horror fans of the Millennium. And it's not far from the truth. One look at the odious Nightmare, Prom Night, and Halloween reboots would tell you as much.

But remakes have long been a thriving part of the horror community, updating old but resonant ideas with the changing times. If there was a button that could erase all remakes from the world, few horror fans would hesitate to press it. But doing so would rid the world of John Carpenter's The Thing and David Cronenberg's The Fly. The Blob would vanish in a puff of smoke.

The Hammer remakes of classic Universal monsters would be gone, destroying the careers of genre A-listers Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Jekyll and Hyde. The Ring. The Grudge. All gone.

And did you know Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left was essentially a remake of an Ingmar Bergman film called The Virgin Spring?

Ah, yes. I see the resemblance.

And not even all remakes of the past decade are terrible. The Wizard of Gore was unsteady but unspooled a marvelously modern and convoluted story from a pretty tedious Herschell Gordon Lewis gore flick. Fright Night and Evil Dead were pretty great. And I have it on good authority that Black Christmas, Texas Chainsaw, House of Wax, and The Hills Have Eyes aren't too shabby either. So for every One Missed Call (a bland and thoughtless affair) you get a Sorority Row (a lovingly cheesy splatter picture with Bruce Willis' daughter) and that's alright with me.

MYTH #8: Jason Voorhees Terrorizes Crystal Lake Counselors In A Hockey Mask

What am I talking about? This is the plot of every single one of them, right?

...You know where I'm going with this. Let's take a look: As of today, there's 12 Friday the 13th films, counting the remake and Freddy vs. Jason. FvJ, Part V, Part VIII, Jason Goes to Hell, and Jason X don't even take place at Crystal Lake so they're all out - there's no counselors anywhere to be found anyway.

So that narrows us down to 7. Only three of which feature counselors as victims: the original, Part 2, and Part VI. And as we should all know by now, Jason's mother is the killer in the first one so that one's gone. And Part VI takes place at the newly renamed Camp Forest Green which is a technicality, but hey. No Crystal Lake.

So that just leaves us with Part 2. Jason mows down a crop of camp counselors! Surely that counts for something in the saga of this hockey masked buffoon!

Hockey... Wha?

That's Baghead Jason up there. The killer from Part 2. Everything is a lie. All of it.

MYTH #9: Drew Barrymore Is The First Victim In Scream

No! That has to be right! I've seen that movie twenty gosh darn times!

I'm sorry. That's the wrong answer.

Although she dies in the first scene of the film, her boyfriend Steve is eviscerated in front of her before she bites the dust.

Poor kid only got one word out before he kicked it.

Now you have some great info to pull out on some unsuspecting competitors next Halloween on Trivia Night. Or, you know, if a playful madman calls you.

MYTH #10: Escape From Tomorrow Looks Like It Could Be Cool

It's not. Don't go see it. Thank me later.

Word Count: 1804

Splatter University: Part 2 - Creature Features

Serendipitously, over the past two weeks in my horror class, we've been focusing on 50's horror, which is a genre that had, I think, zero entries in my "Movies I've Seen List." I'm well on my way to being the most celebrated horror scholar of 2025.

I will accept applications to be my personal assistant starting Monday.

Please, no signatures.

The Thing From Another World

Year: 1953

Director: Christian Nyby & Howard Hawks

Cast: Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, James Arness

Run Time: 1 hour 27 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

When oh when will we start remembering movies correctly? Vader never says "Luke, I'm your father." Jason kills zero people in Friday the 13th. Dr. Frankenstein's assistant is named Fritz, not Igor.

And it turns out the Thing doesn't shapeshift! John Carpenter, you misleading scoundrel!

That said, turning the Thing into a shapeshifter in the remake is a work of brilliant genius, especially considering that he shows no inclination for doing so in the original film. Good work, John. A+.

Many important horror directors cite The Thing From Another World as a major influence, perhaps because all the other films from the decade were even worse. In the immortal words of my professor, "The best thing about the 50's was that they ended."

Not that The Thing is bad, it's just egregiously slow and overwhelmingly optimistic by today's standards. The state of horror in the 50s was at an all-time ebb and it really shows. In the aftermath of World War II, nobody felt the need to watch scary movies, the real horrors were out there across the pond.

And now that the war was over and the Great Depression was a quickly receding memory, things began to look up for the American people and we entered an age of consumerism and complacency. The advent of TV was a massive blow against Hollywood and the studios hadn't quite gotten on their feet yet.

The Thing From Another World, one of the best films of the entire period, was turned down by all of the major studios until the relatively dinky RKO Pictures finally picked it up with a budget of $40,000.

The fact that it's the best is very indicative of the time period because by God does it take a long time to start up. The Thing doesn't make its first move until about an hour into the film.

Oh, the plot?

An Arctic military base investigates a nearby explosion and finds that a flying saucer has crash landed in the ice. They excavate a body and, when the ice accidentally melts, release a bloodsucking creature out into the snow. They argue about whether to research it for the betterment of mankind or squash it before it can squash them.

Then they fight it and they win because screw you, Science, this is the 50's.

The single best element of the film is Nikki (Margaret Sheridan), the sexy and capable love interest of Our Hero, Captain Patrick Hendry (Kenneth Tobey). Howards Hawks was known for his style of the women being just as tough as the men and in the age of housewives and suburbia the idea of a strong, sexy woman was downright radical.

You go, Howard Hawks.

The Thing is a pretty fun film when all is said and done, but if I were you, I'd go with John Carpenter's 1982 remake and watch that guy's stomach turn into a mouth again.

Rating: 6/10

Creature From the Black Lagoon

Year: 1954

Director: Jack Arnold

Cast: Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Carlson

Run Time: 1 hour 19 minutes

MPAA Rating: G

Television at this time was still stealing viewership from cinemas, so movie theaters fought hard against those tiny black and white boxes with big screen color spectacles, the likes of which were impossible to recreate in one's own home. Thus was born Creature From the Black Lagoon, Universal Studios' second 3D picture and their only successful monster movie of the decade.

The film centers around two ichthyologists, David Reed (Richard Carlson) and Kay Lawrence (Julia Adams), who are not quite married (a weak stab at feminine independence that dissipates as Kay goes from Smart Science Woman to Damsel in Distress, alternating between "standing there and shrieking" and "schmooping with David in his swimsuit") and are currently working for Mark Williams (Richard Carlson), a wealthy man whose lust for the pursuit of science is only matched by his lust for the massive profits he makes off of it. When an archaeologist discovers a partial fossil of a webbed foot deep in the Amazon (despite the fact that the natives are ludicrous Mexican stereotypes), the three travel down to the Black Lagoon, a tropical paradise from which no explorer has ever returned in pursuit of The Missing Link of Man's Evolution from the water.

Black Lagoon is essentially a mashup of the anti-Science themes from The Thing (Man shouldn't interfere with nature! Nature will eat you!) with the forlorn misunderstood monster found in Frankenstein. The Creature (Played by Ricou Browning in water and Ben Chapman on land. Heaven knows what they did in the scenes where he climbs out of the water onto the boat. Maybe they shared halves, like a horse costume.) spies on the scientists from his underwater dwelling and more or less immediately becomes enamored of Kay. His pursuits of her lead to a series of unfortunate crew member killings and the group has to decide whether to capture the monster for Science or kill it in order to, you know, keep being alive.

They end up deciding on Getting the Hell Out of There while they still can as their crew is whittled down in record time, but the monster won't give up that easy. This is a fairly entertaining entry in the Dude in a Rubber Suit Chases People Around genre, but by the third or fourth time the scientists put on scuba gear to go dump chemicals on the monster, I was ready to backstroke my way outta there.

But what of The Creature? What made this movie more successful than any of Universal's other horror attempts in this time period?

Although the stiff rubber suit doesn't do wonders for the monster's credibility, the performance of the men inside is inspired. Somehow while simultaneously drowning in a heavy suit and being blinded by a mask, Browning manages to swim in a manner that suggests that this Creature hasn't evolved for thousands of years and is intimately familiar with its watery environment. That's quite a feat of physical acting for a man who isn't even credited.

Although the suspense slowed down at the two-thirds point (the film did actually creep me out in an early sequence - a rare feat for the film's age and pedigree), the Creature's travails resonated with audiences and both men's performances allowed theater patrons to attach emotions to a frankly ridiculous looking bug-eyed monster.

A quick note before we go: please admires director Jack Arnold's handiwork for a moment. 3D cameras in the 50's were bulky affairs, with two cameras attached side-by-side to an enormous rig. To shoot his majestic and ambitious (and frequent) underwater shots, not only did they have to waterproof both cameras, they had to stick this entire contraption underwater and move it around, all for the sake of a gimmick that is used to sell Smurfs merchandise.

The clincher? Arnold is blind in one eye. He can't even see in 3D.

All the awards.

Rating: 6/10

The Blob

Year: 1958

Director: Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. & Russell S. Doughton Jr.

Cast: Steve McQueen, Aneta Corsaut, Earl Rowe

Run Time: 1 hour 22 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

Before you read the rest of this review, please press Play.

This revoltingly twee Burt Bacharach composition is the theme song to The Blob and there has not been a single second since I first heard that is hasn't been playing in my headphones, on my car stereo, or quietly somewhere in a back corner of my mind.

I bothered Sergio with it when we were in line for Escape From Tomorrow (more on that... tomorrow) and Henri and I have practically choreographed an entire routine that involves us leaping up and down and waggling our arms like a Native American rain dance.

This resolutely unterrifying song is but the first toe in the waters of The Blob, a campy classic sci-fi B movie, and my absolute favorite film screened in class so far.

The film opens like all good 50's movies - at Make Out point, where Steve (Steve McQueen) and Jane (Aneta Corseaut)'s night of passionate starlit smooching is interrupted by one of the aforementioned stars comes hurtling down to Earth. At the crash site, an old man (Olin Howland) finds a gelatinous mass that isn't a big fan of being poked with sticks. It gloms onto his hand and Steve and Jane rush him to the doctor's office.

They are sent out on an errand and return to discover the doctor and his nurse have vanished, and Steve thinks he might have seen the doctor being dissolved in a mass of goo through a side window. Or maybe it was a Jello dessert he made for a potluck, who knows? The cops certainly don't believe him.

On their quest to discover the truth, a friendly gaggle of rowdy schoolboys races them in the streets and assists them in their journey, but not before quipping and goofing and malt shopping and whatever else it is those dang kids did in the 50's when they weren't rock 'n rolling and roller skating.

The Blob is basically American Graffiti with a gelatinous blob monster and this is great.

The effects are astounding considering the time period, Steve McQueen makes his handsome movie debut, a giant blob comes bursting out of the projection room and devours a movie theater, the monster is destroyed with fire extinguishers and airlifted to the Arctic...

What's not to like? This is camp sci-fi at one of its highest points.

Before this day, I had no interest in the film but I have seen the error of my ways. Consider me a Blob convert. Soon you'll see me going door to door asking people if they've found Blob.

If only I can get these dang pamphlets printed.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1728
Reviews In This Series
Splatter University: Part 1 (September 25, 2013)
Splatter University: Part 2 (October 5, 2013)
Splatter University: Part 3 (October 23, 2013)

The Blob (Yeaworth Jr./Doughton Jr., 1958)
Beware! The Blob (Hagman, 1972)
The Blob (Russell, 1988)

Splatter University

As some of you may know, I'm currently enrolled in a class called "American Film Genres" that, by some sinister twist of fate, is focused on horror movies this semester. Hopefully this class will help me be able to enhance my blog by teaching me a lot more about the context in which classic films were made and ways to analyze horror's relevance to society.

Because it is relevant.

More than any other genre, horror reflects the tensions and mores of the society in which it was developed. Afraid of the implications of going nuclear? We got Godzilla. Afraid of the noblemen having too much power? We got the sinister Count Orlok in Nosferatu and the mad asylum director in Dr. Caligari.

Horror is catharsis that allows us to face our fears in a safe environment while at the same time receiving the thrills and chills that keep our adrenaline pumping (and our endorphine levels high). In this class, we're working chronologically through the development of the genre from German Expressionism in the 1920s all the way up to current Postmodernism.

I'll release a series of mini reviews as I go along, so you can catch up with the same horror classics I'm learning about in class! Here's what I've got for my first three weeks in this beautiful beautiful class.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Year: 1920

Director: Robert Wiene

Cast: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher

Run Time: 1 hour 7 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

In the 1920s film was so new that you couldn't turn on a camera without doing at least three things for the first time. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Widely regarded as one of the first horror films, it also featured one of the first cinematic twist endings. This was a studio mandated ending to avoid the "people in power are psychos" theme that I mentioned earlier, so this is probably one of the first examples of studio meddling too for that matter.

Perhaps the most notable feature of Dr. Caligari is the visuals. This film and the same year's Nosferatu ignited the period of German Expressionism in which the setting and costumes don't reflect reality, rather the emotions behind the characters. Caligari is filled to the brim with twisted, spiky scenery that instantly places the viewer in the mind of its less than sane protagonist.

The story really doesn't matter, it's all just in support of the lavish (and outrageously cheap - they were mostly painted backdrops) and surreal sets. So much so that the IMDb description of the plot can hardly  even be considered a sentence (and certainly not a coherent one).

"Dr. Caligari's somnambulist, Cesare, and his deadly predictions."

At 67 minutes, the time doesn't exactly fly by but it mostly avoids the dangers of watching silent films in the modern era by being too short to be reasonably considered boring. Yes, it is slow, but that is more than made up for by its intense design and astoundingly creepy characters in Dr. Caligari and his somnambulist. It's hard to be scared by a film from this era, but there's a layer of chilliness that settles over the film that's quite unsettling.

Rating: 7/10

The Bride of Frankenstein

Year: 1935

Director: James Whale

Cast: Boris Karloff, Elsa Lanchester, Colin Clive

Run Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

This one here is a load of firsts for me personally. I love all aspects of horror wholeheartedly, but frankly I've been very distracted by slasher movies and slacked on some of the classics (I've never seen Alien, eep!). That's one of the reasons I took this class. It's not "slasher class" so I'll have a more in depth knowledge of some of the genres I've been neglecting.

Anyway, this is both my first Boris Karloff movie and my first Universal monster movie! I know, I know. I deserve to be stoned to death in the parking lot of a Walmart for not having seen any of these. 

Anyway, not that I have a frame of reference, but Bride of Frankenstein was an excellent place to begin. Yes, it's a sequel but I know enough about the original Frankenstein and the novel to piece together what happened. Baron Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive - My first surprise. he's not named Victor. Who knew?) is alive but barely. He's being nursed back to health by his fiancée Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson) but ends up on the wrong end of Dr. Pretorious' (Ernest Thesiger) mad attempts to harness his discovery of manmade life.

Furthering the "man playing god" idea from the first film, this one extends even further, drawing heavily from the story of Adam and Eve.

The film draws heavy influence from German Expressionism and the sets are unbelievably evocative and gothic. My professor likes to say that sets are characters in the film and this one more than any other proves him right. From Frankenstein's sumptuous mansion to the baroque arches of the prison interiors, the sets draw more on a sense of old time majesty than realism.

The most stunning example of expressionism at work (perhaps in any film ever) is when Frankenstein's Monster is freed from his fiery tomb and left to wander the forest on his own. Birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, and the brook is babbling. Unfortunately happiness is always transient for the Monster and he is discovered by the villagers who chase him back through the same forest, now filled with dead trees, twisted and black.

Man oh man, what a great scene. This is why film historians should really pay more attention to the horror genre instead of treating it like a sideshow.

Not that the film is ever scary. It's a tragedy through and through, enhanced by Karloff's forlorn performance as the friendless Monster who tries so hard to be good, but nobody can see past his appearance. I think we all have felt like that at one time or another. Whenever he smiles, full of naïve hope and plaintive loneliness, I swear it will break your heart.

Bride of Frankenstein survives a sluggish first act to deliver a staggering tale of longing, heartbreak, and loss as told by a Monster.

Rating: 8/10

I Walked With a Zombie

Year: 1943

Director: Jacques Tourneur

Cast: Frances Dee, Tom Conway, James Ellison

Run Time: 1 hour 9 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

Let me set the record straight. This was 1943. The idea of "zombies" didn't exist yet. The flesh-eating, virus-having, shambling corpse variety wouldn't come into play until George Romero's Night of the Living Dead in 1968. Back then zombies referred only to undead voodoo slaves. Yeah, they're dead, but they won't hurt you. They just do whatever the voodoo priestess commands. 

Does that sound pretty boring?

It was.

Betsy (Frances Dee), a nurse, comes to a lonely island in the West Indies to take care of Wesley Rand's (James Ellison) sickly wife (Edith Barrett). She's bedridden and comatose, only able to follow simple commands but not able to speak or interact with people. Can you guess what she is? Did you guess zombie? Congratulations! You did in 12 seconds what Betsy did in 45 minutes.

At a brief hour and ten, I thought the film would slip by, no matter how slow the plot was. I was wrong. Time passed like molasses to the point where I thought my watch was lying to me.

This film was produced by Val Lewton, one of the few successful horror filmmakers in the 40's, but it certainly does not feel like the best the decade has to offer. 

I really don't have much else to say about this film, considering that I sat there slack-jawed for an hour struggling to stay alert and not slip across into the tantalizing realm of unconsciousness. I will say this though - I hate Betsy. She falls in love with Wesley with absolutely zero provocation despite having no chemistry and him being a huge douche to her the whole time. 

She fell in love because she was in his proximity and this was the 40's.

Betsy is the worst.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1366
Reviews In This Series
Splatter University: Part 1 (September 25, 2013)
Splatter University: Part 2 (October 5, 2013)
Splatter University: Part 3 (October 23, 2013)