I’m logging my Monster Movie Month © viewing with ultra-mini
reviews at the end of every week this October. I write it. You read it. No one
needs to get hurt.
Captain
Kronos—Vampire Hunter (1974- dir. Brian Clemens) ****
At a time when Hammer was doubling down on its exploitative
rep, the studio produced this comparatively light-hearted romp in which a swashbuckler
trots across the countryside looking for vampires to stab. Captain Kronos—Vampire Hunter may be Hammer’s freshest film of the
seventies. James Needs’s editing is very stylish (a pub swordfight is
pricelessly executed), and Horst Janson is reasonably appealing as the vamp
slayer (though his penchant for violent sex is a gratuitous capitulation to the
era’s nastier ethos). Caroline Munro and John Cater as Kronos’s more personable
sidekicks are better. It’s too bad this did not lead to the series it was
intended to because it would have been great fun to watch this dynamic trio
swashbuckle their way through other adventures.
The world had basically forgotten that the Blair Witch
phenomenon consisted of anything but the terrifying movie that started it all. So
why churn the sediment with another cheesy sequel? Blair Witch may not be as incongruous as Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, but the decision to revisit this
story as a slicker, more graphic, louder found-footage fiasco was dumb. Twenty
years after Heather Donohue went missing, her little brother sees some footage
of her lasts days on the Internet. He and his photogenic pals (as well as the
dullards who found the footage and insist on tagging along for the sake of some
forced conflict stirring) then go looking for her in those familiar
Burkittsville woods. The gang’s use of smart phones, DV, GPS, and drones emphasizes
the passage of time, but there’s no progress as far as the recycled scares and
reality show arguments are concerned. Old hat.
October 20
The Satanic Rites of
Dracula (1973- dir. Alan Gibson) **½
By 1973, Hammer had driven its Dracula series deeper into the ground than the Count’s coffin. I’m actually
fond of the campily contemporary Dracula
A.D. 1972, which precedes this direct sequel. However, with Satanic Rites, the novelty of a Dracula
tale set in the seventies has lost its zing, and this picture ends up being
distinguished by such periphery things as its status as the second film to find
Peter Cushing playing Larry Van Helsing’s descendant Lorrimer and some cool
cast members, such as Freddie Francis and Joanna Lumely, who takes over the
role of Van Helsing’s granddaughter from Stephanie Beacham. Christopher Lee
continues to go through the motions as Drac.
October 21
Tower of Terror (1997-
dir. D.J. MacHale) **
I’m not entirely sure why my wife decided to rent this made-for-TV
movie for kids based on a Disney ride based on The Twilight Zone, which this movie doesn’t reference once. Yet I
agreed to watch it because she tends to spend the majority of October sitting
in the other room while I gorge on horror movies and I like spending time with
my wife. Perhaps it was also the allure of watching the magic pairing of Steve
Gutenberg and juvenile Kirsten Dunst as an uncle/niece team who investigate a
haunted hotel. Tower of Terror is too
inoffensive to outright hate, unless you hate inoffensiveness, and if you do,
fair play. Gutenberg’s name is “Buzzy.” That’s all I got.
October 22
Under the Skin (2014- dir. Jonathan Glazer) ****
An alien takes on the form of Scarlet Johansson to trap Earth men. Solid plan. What the creature does with these men is open to interpretation unless you’ve read Michael Faber’s novel on which the film is based (basically, her victims are lunch meat). Under the Skin will be too cold and too repetitious for a lot of viewers, but it is the kind of experimental, risk-taking, atmosphere-above-all-else filmmaking too rarely seen in the 2010’s. Give it a gander if you’re open-minded and patient.
Daughter of Darkness (1990- dir. Stuart Gordon) ***½
Mia Sara is searching Romania for the father she never knew,
and with a little help from Anthony Perkins as a Romanian glass blower, she
learns the old man was a political dissident who may or may not be dead. When
the search leads her to Transylvania… well, you can probably see where it’s
going. For its first half, Daughter of
Darkness works as a reasonably sober mélange of mystery, political
thriller, and love story with a smattering of horrific dream sequences. When it
commits to being a vampire movie, things get pretty silly. Sara’s commitment to
this bosh makes it watchable, though Perkins clearly needed a lot more time
with his accent coach. This goofy made-for-TV movie from Stuart Gordon of Re-Animator fame earns an extra half
star for never being boring and introducing one of the weirdest spins on
vampire anatomy I’ve ever seen.
October 23
Vampire (1979- dir. E.W.
Swackhamer) **½
Yay! More made-for-TV vampires! Clearly made to cash in on
the popularity of Frank Langella’s sexy count, Vampire features another blow-dried Prince Charming of Darkness who
nets soap opera refugees in his sexy thrall. The vamp’s escape from the grave
is highly atmospheric, and the swiftness with which Steven Bochco’s script
abandons its erotic angle, only to replace it with a pervading sense of grief,
is surprising, but Vampire is listless
and undistinguished even by seventies TV standards. Even a good performance by Jason
“Father Karras” Miller can’t pump life into this talky, bloodless thing. I
expected a lot more from a director named E.W. Swackhamer.
Night of Terror (1933-
dir. Benjamin Stoloff) ****
An old dark house, a monstrous serial killer, a séance, a
scientist experimenting with suspended animation who demands to be buried alive,
Wallace Ford as a mouthy reporter, and Bela Lugosi as a sinister butler in a
turban. Night of Terror is B-grade bunk
from the golden age of horror. Yippee! There isn’t a serious bone in its
skeleton, which is all for the best since there is barely a brain in its skull.
Benjamin Stoloff’s direction is as lively as the jazzy cast. Lugosi gets to
intone things like “Death is always very close” in his slow quaver, skulk
through the shadows, play the prime suspect, and smoke a joint with a cop. A
fourth wall-breaking coda is the cherry on this delicious schlocky-road sundae.
October 24
X: The Man with X-Ray
Eyes (1963- dir. Roger Corman) ***½
Ray Milland’s Dr. Xavier wants to see what the human eye was
never meant to see, so he whips up some sci-fi eye drops that grant him the
ability to see through solid paper. At first, he puts his new found ability to
good use by seeing through a sick girl’s abdomen to detect a tumor. But before
you know it, he’s using it as any self-respecting 11-year old boy would: to see
through underwear. If that sounds sexist, keep in mind that he also uses this
ability to see through John Hoyt’s kit. Boing! Soon Xavier’s doing the twist
with all the swinging rhythm of a rusty automaton and committing murder. What’s
more diabolical? You decide. X is
somewhat renowned as an early taste of mid-sixties psychedelia for its
(overused) kaleidoscopic pov shots and it is often considered to be fairly
shocking for its blink-and-you’ll-miss-it gruesome climax (its nudie scene, however,
is shocking only for its extreme chasteness). However, this movie gains most of
its interest from Roger Corman’s stylish production values and Don Rickles’s
terrific turn as the sleazy manager who oversees Xavier’s stint on the sideshow
circuit.
October 25
Troll (1986- dir.
John Carl Buechler) ***½
This post-Gremlins
“tiny monsters running wild” flick was an HBO staple in the eighties. In short (get it?!??), an ancient troll
awakens in the basement of an apartment building to transform the place and its
inhabitants into a more troll-friendly landscape. Despite thinking Troll was a pretty bad movie, I found
myself watching it pretty much every time it aired. I’m almost embarrassed to
say that three decades later, I still find Troll
highly watchable. The film’s affection for genre pictures and fairy tales, its fantastical
sets, stop-motion effects, and ugly puppets, however, are charming, the
characters are committed to sheer wackiness, and the cast is a great
assortment. Moriarity is always fun (let’s call that painful air guitar scene
the exception that proves the rule) as the legendary Harry Potter, and so is
Shelley Hack as his sitcomy wife, The
Neverending Story’s Noah Hathaway as his geeky son, Julia Louis Dreyfuss as an
actress who gets transformed into a giggly wood nymph, WKRP’s Gary Sandy as a right-wing loony (redundant), Sonny Bono as
a sleazebag, and June Lockhart as a sassy witch who hangs out with a mushroom.
The Most Dangerous
Game (1932- dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel) ****½
The team that would soon bring you King Kong conducts a sort of jungle thriller dress rehearsal by
adapting Richard Connell’s classic short story about a psycho big game hinter
who believes the biggest game walks on two legs and does crossword puzzles. The Most Dangerous Game is a superb
macabre adventure with a bloody shark attack, a jungle citadel as creepy as
Dracula’s castle, a truly grotesque trophy room full of preserved people parts,
exterior sets so cool they were reused for King
Kong, Noble Johnson as the long-lost brother of Karloff in The Old Dark House, Kong stars Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong as a
plausibility-stretching pair of siblings, and Leslie Banks as the oily,
Mephistophelean hunter. There’s even an unexpected underlying message about the
barbarity of hunting. No giant ape necessary.
