The Mummy (1959)

From the back of the DVD box: “In Hammer Studio’s vivid 1959 Technicolor reincarnation of The Mummy, screen horror icon Christopher Lee wraps on the moldy gauze bandages and emerges as the tormented Kharis, an avenger stalking the hills and bogs of Victorian England to track down archeologist John Banning (Peter Cushing) and other desecrators of his beloved Princess Ananka’s Egyptian tomb.”

Another great Hammer rejuvenation of a classic franchise. I love mummy movies, and this is pretty much what I think of when I think of Mummy flicks. This ain’t some cheap normal guy devoid of bandages. Lee sports the bandages through out the movie. He’s a friggin’ juggernaut too, an unstoppable force in all of his door busting, metal bending, crushing strangulation glory. Cushing is as good as ever as an archeologist slowly realizing that the curse of the tomb is real.

I was never bored with this one. It’s the classic definition of creature feature. And the colours are vibrant and pop off the screen, especially during the ancient Egypt flashbacks. This is what Mummy movies should be. I was always disappointed that the newer Brendan Fraser flicks were so adventure-oriented. When the hell did Mummy movies turn into Indiana Jones rip-offs?? Hollywood should make more Mummy movies like this one. They won’t, but they should.

After this, Hammer made three sequels, almost having nothing to do with each other: The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964), The Mummy’s Shroud (1967), and Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb (1971) (which didn’t have a traditional wrapped-up mummy in it).

4 out of 5.

-Deceptisean

Horror of Dracula (1958)

From the DVD box: “Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, Britain’s Premier masters of the macabre, bring the Horror of Dracula to vivid, full-colour death in this retelling of Bram Stoker’s spellbinding vampire tale. Dracula (Lee), a centuries-old nobleman damned to an eternal half-life, travels from his native Transylvania to London. In the lurid nightlife of his adopted city, he finds new victims. He also finds Dr. Van Helsing (Cushing), a scientist who becomes the Count’s implacable foe in a deadly game of bat-and-mouse.”

This is the first of Hammer’s successful Dracula movies, teaming Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as Dracula and Van Helsing respectively. Batman fans will also recognize Michael Gough (Alfred in WB’s 1989 to 1997 Batman films) as the brother of vampire victim Lucy. Christopher Lee starts out charming when he welcomes Jonathan Harker into his castle, but pours on the menace when he is revealed to be the vampire scourge Count Dracula. I love when Dracula is choking Van Helsing toward the end of the movie and a vague smile begins to slowly creep across the Count’s face when he realizes he’s winning the fight. Cushing is terrific as Van Helsing. He has a cool, calm demeanor compared to the panicked victims around him since the character has studied vampirism all his life and is intimately familiar with the creatures to the point of clinical coldness.

Dracula looks his best when ample amounts of blood are dipping from his mouth, complete with bloodshot eyes. It’s a classic look and is best done with Christopher Lee. Dracula’s defeat in the end is spectacular and very graphic. Note that I said “defeat” as, even though it looks like a death, we all know there are eight (count ‘em – EIGHT!!) Hammer Dracula films after this one.

Zippy pacing, great gory effects, terrific cinematography, and cool characters (like Van Helsing and Gogh’s character Arthur that you want to root for, and Dracula who is undeniably evil and terrifying) make Horror of Dracula a real treat.


4 out of 5.

-Deceptisean

The Omen (1976)

Gregory Peck plays American Ambassador Robert Thorn who, while on a trip in Rome (and on June 6 at 6 a.m.), becomes the proud papa of a baby boy – or so he thought. The baby is stillborn, Peck is upset (the mother apparently doesn’t know!), and a Minister offers to switch the dead baby for one that’s perfectly alive (born on June 6 at 6 a.m.), saying “Your wife will be none the wiser!”. Reluctantly, Peck agrees, and so Peck and wife raise this boy as their own, naming him Damien Thorn. But mysterious deaths start occurring when Damien is 5, sending Peck on a journey of discovery and death that leads to the uncovering of a vast conspiracy. You see, some in the church believe that the boy is the son of the devil who has been sent to earth to destroy mankind, and will do anything to make that prophecy in the book of Revelations come true.

Despite some silliness in the premise, The Omen was a huge deal when it came out in 1976. In a time when studios still segregated their releases (big star-powered releases in white areas, blacksploitation in black neighborhoods, sexploitation in gritty, urban centres, and all movies cascading from limited release to wide release only if they were hits), The Omen was one of those few cross-over movies that was so successful, it attracted audiences of all types. Non-white audiences and rural audiences ventured to the rich urban areas to see what all the fuss was about, and as a result The Omen was a huge financial success for its time. Beyond that, Jerry Goldsmith’s score went on to win the Oscar for best original score, and is mostly responsible for all the choral chanting you hear in most scores today (especially in trailer music). As well, and most importantly to me, this is the movie that landed Richard Donner the gig to direct Superman.

Watching The Omen 34 years later, it hasn’t aged terribly well. The movie really picks up steam an hour in (it’s an hour and forty minutes), but I’ll get to that in a bit. First off, as I said before, the premise seems odd. Why would Peck’s character agree to switching his baby for some strange newborn he doesn’t even know the medical history of?? Audiences in 1976 apparently didn’t seem to care. Also, I’ve seen many films where someone is supposed to be some sort of prophesied anti-christ, destined to destroy the world, and then nothing happens beyond a few “accidental” murders here and there immediately around said anti-christ. Nothing on a global scale. Humanity doesn’t suffer, is not enslaved, and is never in any real danger. That’s my problem with these Omen movies. You know, there are four in this series before they remade it. In The Omen II, the kid is a little older, some deaths heppen, and the movie ends. In the The Omen III: The Final Conflict, an up-and-coming Sam Neil plays a grown up Damien Thorn who still doesn’t do much. In The Omen IV: The Awakening, the devil is apparently disappointed with Damien’s performance in the last three movies becaue a new anti-christ is born, this time as a girl. She only lasts one movie, so I don’t think she was terribly successful either.

Aside from all of that, I really liked the second half of this film. That’s when Robert Thorn teams up with this photographer who sees visions in his photos of foreign objects slicing and dicing the subjects in his pictures, foretelling their deaths. There’s a neat impaling death, a cool decapitation, and Damien’s adoptive mother suffers not one, but two very high falls. Damien’s nanny turns out to be some sort of devil worshipper with a really mean dog (whom Peck fights in the final act). Robert and this photographer travel to the Middle east to uncover the truth about Damien, revealing that he is in fact the anti-christ, born under a comet that appeared on the opposite side of the world from where the Star of David appeared (and there’s other stuff about Jews returning to Zion, a Roman empire of sorts building, etc.). Robert, after a lot of coaxing, is then convinced that he must kill his five-year-old son. As you can see from the next three sequels, he doesn’t succeed.

Those final 40 minutes did a good job in setting up an atmosphere of foreboding and really saved this movie for me. Plus, Gregory Peck as the conflicted Robert Thorn is awesome. Just his face and old-world no-nonsense male attitude are cool (nowadays, we have frickin’ Michael Cera and his ilk, representing the wussification of the male in cinema).

The Omen is worth a peak nowadays, if only to glimpse at 70’s era apocalyptic paranoia, coming from a time where people really thought the world was coming to an end (the nuclear arms race, cold war tension, the oil crisis of the 70’s).

3 out of 5.

-Deceptisean

Hammer Dracula: Vampires As They Were Meant To Be

I’m getting into a horror movie vibe as Halloween fast approaches. I dug out some of my Hammer movies on DVD and decided to watch a couple of their Dracula movies. When Hammer started doing reinventions of popular Universal classic monsters in the 60's, Dracula became their most popular character with audiences demanding more Christopher Lee as the dreaded Count in movie after movie (depending on who you ask, there are about 9 Dracula movies – not all of them feature Dracula or Christopher Lee though). The two I decided to watch were Dracula Has Risen From the Grave and Taste the Blood of Dracula.

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave is the fourth in the Hammer Dracula series, after Dracula (a.k.a. Horror of Dracula), Brides of Dracula in which Christopher Lee did not appear, and Dracula: Prince of Darkness where Christopher Lee does appear as the Count, but does not speak. In Risen From the Grave, Christopher Lee does speak. This film features one of my favourite vampire hunters, Rupert Davies as the Monsignor. His authoritative facial expressions are awesome. You can believe that he’s this virtuous man of god that fears no devil as long as his faith is strong.

After Dracula desecrates a church by committing murder there, the Monsignor investigates and sees that everybody stays away from the church. When he asks the villagers if Dracula is dead, they’re not sure, so he goes to investigate Drac’s castle with a drunken priest. But when the priest panics, runs away and falls onto a frozen moat, he bleeds into the cracks of the ice where Dracula happens to be frozen, encased in the ice. Dracula tastes some of the blood and, well, you get the picture. I liked this one, the Monsignor is cool, especially with that giant, golden cross strapped to his back (on which Dracula is empaled in the end).


In Taste the Blood of Dracula, an antiques dealer is shown to have witnessed the impaling death of Dracula at the end of Risen. He collects Dracula’s cape and his blood, which has been turned into powder. Three foolish, rich, old men looking for a thrill are coaxed by a rich, spoiled devil worshipper into buying these Dracula items. He leads them into a ritual to bring Dracula back, but the three bolt in fear at last second, jeopardizing the ritual. The servant dies as Dracula is reborn (Christopher Lee again). Dismayed by the death of his servant, Dracula swears vengeance upon the three men and sets about killing them one by one, biting a couple other girls so they can do some of his evil bidding.

This one is cool. It has a shovel death, some classic Dracula-hypnotizing-girls action, great shots of Lee in the cape coming out of shadows or silhouette, and a lot of good Lee dialogue, delivered in that great menace which made him famous in the role. Whenever he kills one of the men, he snarls “The First!” or “The Second!” and keeps a tally. Dracula is defeated, while fighting the heroic couple of the story high up in a church, by backing into a stained glass window depicting a cross (oops!) and falling, dissolving into dust. This was followed by Scars of Dracula, which I don’t have, Dracula A.D. 1972 (catapulting Dracula into the “modern day” at the time, instead of Victorian England where the other movies took place), The Satanic Rites of Dracula (where Dracula is still in the 70’s and is CEO of a corporation that is secretly funding a satanic cult determined to wipe out all life on earth), and The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (an interesting movie taking place in the 1800’s again where China is battling their own vampire plague lead by 7 golden vampires. The Chinese recruit Van Helsing (Peter Cushing reprising his role from earlier Hammer Dracula movies). But Van Helsing soon discovers that the lead Golden Vampire is possessed by none other than the spirit of his old nemesis Dracula.).

Anyway, these old Hammer pictures can be a little quaint looking nowadays, but I still love them. They're classic and the Dracula movies, especially, really outlined the character as this horrible concentration of evil and plague upon the world that can spread easily, moreso than the Universal movies (though I love the Universals too). And Christopher Lee was a great Dracula. This ain't no romatic, teen dream vampire. Dracula would kill your family and your dog with no hesitation or qualm. He's pure evil, as it should be.

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave 3.5/5

Taste the Blood of Dracula 3.5/5

-Deceptisean

Let the Right One In (2008)

Everyone seems to be dying over this Swedish vampire movie Let the Right One In. The remake is generating buzz for actually being better than the original (and it’s not the first new Hammer movie btw, I thought it was). I finally caught Let the Right One In. A young boy named Oskar living in an apartment complex is constantly troubled by bullies at school. He fantasizes about revenge but never really does anything. A young girl seemingly his age named Eli moves next door and corpses start popping up around the snowy landscape of their neighborhood. Eli, of course, is a vampire and gets her seeming father to drain victims’ blood for her. When he’s caught, the girl has to kill victims herself. She eventually befriends the boy and he starts covering up for her and she starts looking out for him.

This is an alright movie. Maybe I have Attention Deficit Disorder, but I found it really slow. It’s two hours but felt like three. I get it – she’s a vampire and is reluctant to befriend anyone as a result, he’s bullied by three kids which is shown in multiple scenes, the boy is troubled by the bullying so he acts out revenge with imaginary bullies in his head. I get it. I really do. So don’t show me 5 or 6 scenes showing me this stuff. What, were they padding for time or something? When stuff does happen, it’s pretty cool, like one woman becomes a vampire after being bitten and these cats attack her which was a neat scene. Then she spontaneously combusts in huge flames when in the hospital as someone foolishly opens the curtains to let in some light. The final scene where the boy finally gets some revenge is cool too, but all of this is few and far between.

I found it amusing that for all the vampire attack scenes (of which there are a few more than mentioned above, and with an appropriate amount of blood), to me the most suspenseful and terrifying stuff was when the bullies torture Oskar every so often. You never really know what they have in store, and when they beat him or whip him with a cane, or when Oskar decides to inflict some pain of his own, it’s actually pretty horrific and a little unexpected, and you shake your head at the bully tactics some kids use even in real life. These scenes were more affecting then the 4 or so attacks that Eli inflicts. Was this intended?? Because it seems like more time and clever editing was devoted to the bullying scenes than the vampire attacks.

All in all, Let the Right One In is serviceable vampire entertainment. You do get a bloodthirsty vamp and more than a few gore shots. But you have to sit through the boy meets girl stuff, which is the bulk of the picture. I’ve seen the relationship between Oskar and Eli described as “terrifying” in some reviews, maybe because it’s two kids with a promise that murder will erupt from their friendship. But for me, I already know that the movie is about that, and the film doesn’t offer anything beyond what you’re expecting from that scenario. As I said, the bullying stuff is probably the most horrifying thing in the movie to the point that when the bullies finally get their comeuppance, it seems fantastical and deflates the suspence of their a-hole bullying tactics. You be the judge.

3.5 out of 5. This will probably be remembered for about a year as a result of the remake, but will flame out soon enough.

-Deceptisean

Super Halloween post: Hillarious House of Frightenstein, Ghost Hunters clips, Castlevania (NES)

I thought I'd do something more in the Halloween spirit, as the season seems to be wildly popular in recent years (it usually is in times of war or financial crisis for some reason). First, I'll start of with a clip from one of my favourite shows as a kid: The Hillarious House of Frightenstein. Not only did this show feature loving renditions of Universal monsters in a children's show, but it also featured psychadelic sequences like the one below (the best part of the show, and sadly cut out of DVD releases due to an attempt to not pay out royalties for the songs).




Next we have a collection of clips from the show Ghost Hunters. For the past few years, shows about ghostly sightings and paranormal goings on have become hot (like Ghost Hunters, Paranormal State, etc.) and Paranormal Activity is proving to be a financial force at the box-office. I've always been fascinated by horror entertainment purporting to be "real". It ads an element of creepiness and even if I know it's fake, the "realistic", unpolished asthetic is still somewhat disturbing to me at times. That said, I'm not a big fan of Ghost Hunters. They seem to always record one bit of evidence from every place they investigate (suggesting fakery) and there's usually a constant soundtrack over everything, undercutting any creepiness that I would usually feel from watching this stuff. It usually feels too polished. Anyway, enjoy and see for yourself!




Okay, let's end off on a lighter note. below ia a speed run (in two parts) of the classic NES game Castlevania, complete with rediculous end credit sequence with stupid pun-filled names. In its time, Castlevania was the best horror game around (at least it was certainly the most popular) and it used a lot of the horror tropes gamers were still familiar with from movies (namely, Universal horror movies with their castles, wherewolves, and black-caped vampires, etc.). Nowadays, unfortunatley, stuff like that is seen as quaint as today's horror audiences and gamers are more into surprsingly agile zombies, genetic mutations, killer alien warriors and the like. Still, if you were 10 in 1987 and were playing Castlevania for 4 hours alone with monsters constantly attacking you, you'd be a little creeped out too (as well as annoyed by being thrown 2 feet into a pit every time you were merely touched by something).







Happy Halloween!
-Deceptisean

Halloween Costumes: a mask and a bib are all you need...

With Halloween fast approaching, I thought I’d examine an industry that has greatly improved over the decades. If you go to the Disney store or anywhere else for that matter, you’ll see Halloween costumes that have authentic materials and actually look like the licensed characters they’re supposed to portray. But if you were growing up in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, chances are you wore a crappy costume from either Ben Cooper, Halco or Collegeville. How crappy? Well, it’s amazing to think that a hard plastic mask with a fragile elastic band and what amounts to a garbage bag with simply the character’s picture on it to cover your torso were the norm for literally decades, but they were. Kids never complain when they donned their Batman mask with a plastic bib displaying a graphic of Batman doing an action pose. Nowadays, costumes are far more sophisticated with the costume actually looking like the character rather than a walking billboard advertisement for them.

These costumes were uber popular for decades, but really – they were still garbage bag grade plastic draped over your body. So, why were they the dominant force in Halloween attire for so long? Simple: they were cheap and they were everywhere! Ben Cooper, Halco and Collegeville were the masters of mass production. And they licensed the crap out of just about anything you can think of. Sure, there were Peanuts, Bugs Bunny, Superman and other bread-and-butter mainstays, but there was also Small Wonder, Krull, Fire and Ice and Scott Baio costumes, just to mention a few. So come with me now on a trip down memory lane, to a time when your breath would liquify in your semi-toxic hard plastic mask and your garbage bag costume would flap in the cold wind on a Halloween night.

First off, costumes that aren't that bad:

As you can see, some of the costumes actually looked like what they were supposed to. For all you kids of the 90's and 2000's, yes, Freddy was marketed to kids. These were the 80's. Every R-rated movie was marketed to kids because everybody knew they were watching. Oh, and for the uninitiated, the dude up top is Max Ray from the Centurions cartoon and toy line. But that's not the most random costume.

There were many more costumes based on video-games. But these might be two of my favourites (aside from the Missile Command costume, the mask of which I can't find a picture of -- was it a missile on your face or something?). Q*Bert was already the subject of cartoons and colouring books, etc. at this time, but here he gets the typical plaster-a-graphic-of-the-character-on-a-bib treatment common to these costumes. And Asteroids! I mean, you're basically making a costume on an abstract concept. There are no characters in that game. The mask is a frickin' asteroid for eff sakes! What was everybody thinking when they made this costume??

And what kid wants to dress up as Jackie Kennedy wearing a sweater?? (and no, I'm not joking. That really is a costume of Jackie Kennedy wearing a sweater).

Ah, the ever famous costume of Tattoo from Fantasy Island. I can just see kids in the Woolworth agonizing over whether to get the Spider-Man costume or this gem. Truth be told, Fantasy Island was a hit with the kiddies. But then again most everything was when your parents watched stuff like Love Boat and St. Elsewhere and you had no choice in the matter. sigh

I know My Little Pony was popular and all, but what girl wants to be a horse?

Yes folks, kids could even dress up as their favourite food, although why you would pick peas over candy to dress up as is anyone's guess.

Even sitcoms were not free from the wrath of Halloween costume licensing. Small Wonder is relatively obscure today but was inexplicably popular for about 6 months. That said, Tiffany Brissette should sue for this likeness. Not only is she creepy, but she looks 47.

Remember when Rambo walked around with a shirt that had a picture of himself on it? Yeah, me neither.

Today, due to their camp value and the fact that they represented any and every fad in pop-culture in their time, these costumes are heavily prized possessions on the collectors’ market and have risen in price over the years. Sure, you can get masks of this era (some of which are actually pretty cool looking) for a couple bucks on e-Bay, but others, like the 60’s Spider-Man costume fetch upwards of $100.

These sites have a bunch of cool pictures of more costumes. Some are quite good, but a majority are too astonishing for words:

http://www.retrocrush.com/archive2003/costumes/

Worst costumes ever! EVER!:

http://www.retrocrush.com/costumes/

A scan of the 1980 Ben Cooper catalog:

http://www.plaidstallions.com/bencooper/index.html

Until next time,

Deceptisean