Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors: #2

Halloween season simply isn’t Halloween season without a regular dose of golden age Universal horror (1923-1963). Every day this October, I’ll be giving you a steady IV drip of it by counting down Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors!

#2. Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948- dir. Charles Barton)

The monster rallies of Erle C. Kenton were basically pulling the entire Golden age of Universal horror into the grave of self-parody. Why not get out the shovel and finish the job? Once and for all, the monsters would be laughing stocks, and Karloff himself was so offended by the notion that he refused to appear in or even see the final appearances of the Frankenstein monster, Dracula, and the Wolf Man in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. The thing is, the monsters weren’t laughing stocks. They basically play it straight despite a couple of fleeting comedic moments such as the Monster shuddering at the sight of Costello or the count cracking wise once or twice. The humor was all up to Bud and Lou, and though they were hesitant about their first full-bore horror comedy, the blend of serious threats and screwball insanity was magical. After all, the monsters’ main allure was never really their scariness. It was the fun lying just beneath their scarred or furry surfaces. Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein draws that fun right out into the air and makes no apologies for it. Bud and Lou and Glenn Strange get top billing, but Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr., give this movie real legitimacy as an essential Universal horror film. The only possible way to have more fun while watching a movie is to check out the one in the next and final installment of Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors…

Baby’s First Exorcism: 10 Movies to Desensitize Your Kids to Monsters and Murder

Every new parent faces the same serious dilemma: When do I first show my child The Exorcist? Age 3? 4? 7? It’s a pickle, indeed, and the answer is a bit convoluted, because if you sit little Johnny or Suzie in front of Regan MacNeil’s pea soup vomiting and crucifix…errr… “play” too early, you might do serious damage to his or her psyche. Wait too long, and your child might spend the rest of her or his life watching the same damn Barney tape over and over, never conditioned to take in hardier fare.

No worries, Big Johnny or Suzie, because I am an experienced parent equipped to guide you down the perfect path toward ensuring your child will one day join you for marathons of horrifying, terrifying, disgustifying movies all Halloween Season long. The key is to systematically expose your child to the following 10 movies guaranteed to desensitize your kids to monsters, murders, and anything else your favorite horror flick may lob at them.

Step 1. Curse of the Cat People

We begin with a film that does not quite qualify as a horror movie despite being a sequel to Jacques Tourneur’s chilling masterwork Cat People. A sequel may seem like an odd starting point, but Robert Wise’s Curse of the Cat People really has very little to do with Tourneur’s picture about a woman with serious sexual hang ups who turns into a blood thirsty panther (or at least thinks she does) whenever she gets horny. Clearly, that movie would not be very appropriate to show to your three year old, but Curse of the Cat People has more in common with Alice in Wonderland. Oliver Reed and Alice Moore from the original film have an over-imaginative little daughter named Ann who finds a photo of her dad’s ex, the now deceased cat-woman Irena Dubrovna, and fantasizes her into existence as a ghostly playmate. Ann also makes friends with an old actress with a penchant for telling especially vivid tales of the Headless Horseman. Curse of the Cat People is ultimately a very charming, moving tale of growing up fit for any tot, but its ghost and scary stories will gives your kid the heads up that there are things more intense than Cars 3 out there.

Step 2. The Wizard of Oz

31 TV Shows for 31 Days of Halloween Season: Day 5

Series: The Monkees

Episode: “The Monstrous Monkee Mash”, in which a vampiric Count and his sultry niece want to plop Peter Tork’s brain into the skull of the Frankenstein Monster. Based on Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, the vampires of “The Monstrous Monkee Mash” one-up Bela Lugosi by turning all The Monkees into famous monsters of filmland. Fuzzy-haired Micky becomes The Wolf Man. Uptight Mike gets wrapped up as The Mummy. Heartthrob Davy’s powers to mesmerize ladies are put to use when he becomes “Count Dracula reborn!” “The Monstrous Monkee Mash” is both a deliriously fun opportunity to see the boys merge with Universal’s greatest monsters and a crazy continuation of the loosening up of the show’s format. More than ever The Monkees seem like they’re working without a script, or at least, not paying that much attention to it. The guys behind the cameras are goofier too, as seen in Micky’s multiple “scare take” outtakes left in the episode to disorienting effect. Plus, all of our monsters and Monkees end the show by grooving to the awesome “Goin’ Down”. Love is the ultimate trip!

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 2

The Date: October 2

The Movie: Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

What Is It?: Dracula wants to stick Lou Costello’s brain into the Frankenstein Monster’s head. Lou and Bud Abbott would rather he did not do that, and they employ The Wolf Man to thwart the Count. Who wins? You do, sucker!

Why Today?: On this day in 1895, Bud Abbott was born.

I Was a Late-Generation Monster Kid

My room would be fuzzed with that vague purple that comes right before the sunrise. I’d be exhausted, because it was 6 AM and little kids need their rest, and because I’d been toiling away in school all week long, probably learning to print or gluing elbow macaroni to paper plates or whatever else it is you do in school when you’re five or six. I don’t remember how old I was exactly, because I can’t find any information about when “Groovie Goolies” aired at 6:30 AM (or was it 6:00 AM?) on Saturday Mornings in the late-seventies/early eighties, but man, do I remember that sickly feeling of trying to fight myself awake every Saturday morning so I could creep downstairs to the still-dark den to take in those cornball Burbank-by-way-of-Transylvania jokes and groove along to those bubble gum pop songs as sugary as the Frankenberry cereal I’d scarf after the closing credits.

The Monkees Meet the Monsters

Demonic deals. Cursed, severed animal parts. Reanimated corpses. Unholy séances. Unwanted brain transplants. These things have long plagued humankind. Four particular young men were unlucky enough to have to deal with all of them. Mike, Micky, Davy, and Peter may have been too busy singing to put anybody down (well, unless we’re talking about Don Kirshner, Bob Rafelson, LBJ, each other…aww hell, The Monkees loved putting people down). That didn’t stop an assortment of creeps, spooks, and kooks from putting them down.

In keeping with its postmodern take on entertainment, “The Monkees” often spoofed well-worn genres: spy pictures (“The Spy Who Came in From the Cool”, “Monkee Chow Mein”, “The Card Carrying Red Shoes”), heist pictures (“Monkees in a Ghost Town”, “The Picture Frame”), gangster pictures (“Monkees à la Carte”, “Alias Micky Dolenz”), sports pictures (“Monkees in the Ring”), beach movies (“Monkees at the Movies”), motorcycle movies (“The Wild Monkees”), pirate movies (“Hitting the High Seas”), westerns (“It’s a Nice Place to Visit”, “Monkees in Texas”), sci-fi (“The Monkees Watch Their Feet”, “Mijacogeo”), even documentaries (“Monkees on Tour”, ”Monkees in Paris”). However, “The Monkees” trampled no genre as regularly as horror.

20 Things You May Not Have Known About Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

A Halloween season without Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is like a Christmas without A Christmas Carol or a Thanksgiving without that movie about Thanksgiving. So this year before you sit down to munch a bowl of brains and laugh yourself stupid while watching Bud, Lou, Drac, Frankie, and Wolfie’s antics, shove this information into your brain hole, a tasty heap of tidbits I call 20 Things You May Not Have Known About Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein!

1. As The Brain of Frankenstein could have easily been the title of any of Universal’s more serious monster movies, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello’s meeting with the Frankenstein Monster was wisely retitled.
 

2. As they themselves trumpet, the opening credits sequence of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was animated by Walter Lantz, who is most famous for bringing Woody Woodpecker to life. Coincidentally, animation designer Nino Carbe, who also worked on Woody, illustrated Illustrated Editions’ 1932 “De Luxe Edition” of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel.

3. Hold That Ghost, Abbott and Costello’s first tentative foray into the supernatural, is most famous for Lou’s moving candle gag, in which only he can see the object move of its own accord. He recreates this famous scene with the help of Dracula’s casket lid in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

4. While Glenn Strange played the Frankenstein Monster as many times as Boris Karloff (three times), he spent a lot less time in his gear. For Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Strange’s latex and foam mask took a mere hour to apply. By Karloff’s account, that is some five hours fewer than it took Jack P. Pierce to apply his cotton and collodion makeup (though a 1932 issue Picturegoer reported that Pierce’s makeup job took a more reasonable three and a half hours).

Review: Zacherely in 'Horrible Horror: The Special Edition'

As a Netflix subscriber, I probably shouldn’t poop on the conveniences of the Internet age. As a retro geek, nostalgia nut, and middle-aged guy, I still can’t help but pine for those days when I’d walk out the door with friends and walk to our local seedy video shop to rent some crappy movie in the pre-Blockbuster © eighties. On the back wall of those holes cramped with shelves stacked with bulky VHS boxes (the tapes were always safe from shop lifters behind the counter) was the real junk: the B-horror and science fiction flicks with the most garish covers in sight (the most garish of all belonged to the porno tapes kept behind a curtain in their own closet-sized section).

Ten Terrifying and Terrific Title Sequences

Setting the mood has a lot to do with what makes a great horror movie great. The viewer may have to be eased into the unsettling atmosphere as if it’s a chilly bath or thrown in to the terror as if it’s an inferno (because when you see a burning building, you should always push someone into it). Sometimes it’s cagiest to sucker punch viewers with a sequence out of tone with the rest of the film or let them know up front that guffaws are in store with a light-hearted approach. Or in at least one of the following cases, you may need to put some extra effort into your opening titles sequence because the rest of your movie sucks.

1. Frankenstein (1931)

Dracula was the first great sound horror film, but though its use of the “Scene 10 Moderato” from Swan Lake is so memorable that the piece has been used as horror shorthand in films such as The Mummy and Black Swan, the music plays out over the Batman insignia, which isn’t too scary. Universal did a better job of getting a title sequence right with its follow up to Tod Browning’s film. After Edward Van Sloan gives his equally corny and creepy opening monologue, Bernhard Kaun’s brassy score shudders forth. On screen we see a clawed monster, most dissimilar to Karloff’s flathead, reaching from the darkness. This cuts to a leering portrait of, presumably, the title doctor, who once again looks nothing like the actor who will play him in the film that follows. Around Dr. Frankenstein’s head, disembodied eyes swirl, both foreshadowing the sundry body parts that will constitute the monster and mirroring the many eyes of the audience watching him from the darkened theater. The monster’s credit is equally memorable, as he is named only with a large question mark, recalling his similar crediting in the first stage production of Frankenstein 108 years earlier.

2. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Seventeen years after Frankenstein, Universal gave in to playing its main monster for laughs. For a picture such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, an opening as eerie as the 1931 one wouldn’t do at all. So Universal reached into its sack of associates and pulled out Walter Lantz, who’d produced the “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” series for the studio from 1928 to 1938. Lantz is best known for cracking up audiences with his creation, Woody Woodpecker, and the style of those classic cartoons is instantly recognizable in the credits sequence of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which begins with the monster raising skeletal Bud and Lou from their coffins before introducing the menagerie of monsters in iconic silhouettes. I could watch an entire movie of this credits sequence.

3. Psycho (1960)

Saul Bass is the only title designer who has become a household name, and not just because of that “Seinfeld” episode in which Kramer thinks Salman Rushdie has been hiding out at his gym under the pseudonym Sal Bass (“He just replaced one fish with another, Jerry!”). Bass’s poster designs for films such as The Shining, Vertigo, and Anatomy of a Murder are as unforgettable as the credits sequence he masterminded for Psycho. Abetted by Bernard Hermann’s jittery score, Bass indicates all the violence and disjointed psychology to follow by slashing the screen with straight lines from every direction and cracking up the title and credits. It’s incredibly simple and incredibly effective.

Landmark Loews in Jersey City Announces Halloween Schedule

The Landmark Loews in Jersey City is always a fine destination for pre-Halloween shivers, and this year the historic movie palace features a particularly strong line up for its holiday program. First up is William Castle's House on Haunted Hill (Friday, October 28 at 8PM), which is fab with or without Emergo... but it would be pretty spectacular if the theater was able to feature Castle's famed gimmick. Keep your fingers crossed. Next is the glorious Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein(Saturday, October 29 at 6PM), in which Dracula schemes to make the Monster more malleable by transplanting Lou's childlike brain into its flattop. Robert Wiene's surreal ground-breaker The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with live organ accompaniment follows (8:15 PM). All of these films made the cut of Psychobabble's 120 Essential Horror Movies, so they all come with the prestigious Psychobabble seal of approval.


The Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre
54 Journal Square
Jersey City, NJ 07306
(201) 798-6055

Psychobabble’s 200 Essential Horror Movies Part 3: The 1940s

In this feature, Psychobabble creeps through 100 years of horror cinema to assemble a highly personal list of the genre’s 200 most monstrous works, decade by decade.

(Updated in September 2021)

33. The Mummy’s Hand (1940- dir. Christy Cabanne)
 

The commercial and creative success of Son of Frankenstein in 1939 revived Universal Horror—and horror as a whole— after a four-year slump. The studio followed with further sequels, beginning with The Invisible Man Returns in the first days of 1940, but hit a more confident stride the following September with silent-film vet Christy Cabanne’s The Mummy’s Hand.

Diary of the Dead 2010: Week 4

Week 4 of Psychobabble’s Monster Movie-a-thon...

October 15th

The Incredible Melting Man (1978- dir. William Sachs) **1/2

I watched The Incredible Melting Man on the recommendation of my friend Kevin, who pulled the film from his personal “Things That Scare Me” files. I can certainly see how an incredible astronaut who melts incredibly with the grotesque help of Rick Baker’s makeup effects might disturb a young kid. Someone seeing the movie for the first time as an adult is more likely to focus on the turgid acting, terrible script, and super ‘70s score. As dated, dopey camp, The Incredible Melting Man is pretty satisfying, especially whenever the astronaut starts tearing people apart. And a note to Ted’s wife: Ted likes crackers.

Inland Empire (2006- dir. David Lynch) *****

Calling David Lynch’s Inland Empire a horror movie is not exactly fair. The only superficially supernatural thing about the movie is a red herring subplot about a cursed film production. Yet this movie is one of the most frightening I’ve watched all month. Lynch professes to dislike horror movies, though I find it hard to believe he doesn’t realize how deeply scary this film’s atmosphere and some of its images are: Laura Dern racing toward the camera with her face twisted into a malevolent rictus, Dern’s hideously distorted face as she confronts a murderer, mysterious figures disappearing into dark recesses or unexpectedly confronting the viewer, the talking rabbits. Trying to sum up the “plot” of Inland Empire in a piece this brief is a little pointless, particularly because it is one of the least important facets of what is more an avant grade experiment than anything. As such, it’s not typical Halloween fare, but it still gives me a profound case of the creeps.

October 16th

From Beyond (1986- dir. Stuart Gordon) **1/2

Despite a groovy cast (Jeffrey Combs! Barbara Crampton! Ken Foree!) I didn’t like From Beyond nearly as much as the other Stuart Gordon movies I’ve seen. The plot—some Lovecraftian nonsense about the pineal gland, an S&M scientist, and flying jellyfish—is muddled and the S&M stuff is silly without being particularly funny. It’s kind of like a bad David Cronenberg movie. It’s still kind of nice to see Gordon, Combs, and Crampton working together again, though.

It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958- dir. Edward L. Cahn) ***

Astronauts aboard a spacecraft are being murdered one-by-one by a towering, blood hungry alien. Sound familiar? Well, it ain’t the movie you think it is, Ridley Scott. This picture came out in 1958 with the tag-liney title It! The Terror from Beyond Space (where no one can hear you scream). The twist here is that no one knows a monster is responsible, so one of the space cowboys is suspected of old-fashioned, earthly murder. Good B-level sci-fi entertainment.

La Belle et La Bete (1946- dir. Jean Cocteau) *****

La Belle et La Bete isn’t a horror movie, but Jean Cocteau’s version of the “Beauty and the Beast” fairy tale is definitely a monster movie. With its combination of fury creatures and romance it isn’t too far removed from, say, The Wolf Man, and nothing in the latter movie is as genuinely creepy as the Beast’s surreal castle, with its candle sconce’s of human arms and living faces glaring back from its fireplace. Still La Belle et La Bete is a fairy tale at heart, and it is only rivaled by The Wizard of Oz as the most enchanting one ever brought to the big screen. The final moments are positively transcendent.

The Mummy’s Hand (1940- dir. Christy Cabanne) ***1/2

The first and best sequel to The Mummy is slight but great fun. It’s kind of like an Abbott and Costello movie without Abbott and Costello. The Mummy was one of the grimmer Universal Monster Movies, but The Mummy’s Hand is strictly lighthearted stuff. The wisecracking heroes—a pair of archaeologists, a magician and his trigger-happy daughter—are a likable bunch of Brooklynites adrift in Egypt. George Zucco’s weird guy with a fez and Tom Tyler’s shambling mummy are no substitute for Karloff though.

October 17th

Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974- dir. Roy Ward Baker) ****

Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires is a blast, an audacious blend of two totally distinct yet totally different genres. In the Hammer horror corner we have a black-caped Dracula, striking color, strident music, and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. In the chopsocky corner we have a longhaired Kung Fu master, nonstop hand-to-hand combat, and some requisite bad dubbing (although, in this case, it is a perfectly sensible plot device). The interracial romances are unexpected in an early 70s B-movie such as this—and quite refreshing. I bet this movie gives Quentin Tarantino a boner.

The Invisible Man (1933- dir. James Whale) *****

I love this movie. Before production, James Whale must have sat his cast down and instructed them to act as insane as possible. Even Gloria Stuart, the relative straight-woman of the film, flies into hysterics on at least one occasion. And Una O’Connor basically reacts to everything she sees and hears as though she’s being ax-murdered. The photo of her Griffin’s room at the inn is hilarious too. Come for the special effects; stay for the deranged performances.

October 18th

The Crazies (1973- dir. George A. Romero) **1/2

Romero’s fourth feature is basically a “Living Dead” movie without the zombies. The more significant difference between The Crazies and his first and greatest film is that it focuses on the bureaucratic reaction to a plague that makes people go psycho more so than it focuses on a small clutch of folks fending for their lives (although there is one of those too). This means it’s less of a horror film and more of a political satire. The editing is exciting but it looks flat and the grade z acting is much more distracting than it was in Night of the Living Dead. Worth watching for Romero completists because of a scene with a sewing-needle wielding old lady. Others may not find it worth an hour and forty minutes of their lives.

The Omen (1975- dir. Richard Donner) ****

Around this time last year I watched The Exorcist, and for the first time, the movie often ranked as the scariest ever made struck me as kind of silly. I think that might be because there are actually people who believe the devil is real. Which is, you know, asinine. For that reason, Rosemary’s Baby holds up as the best devil movie because it keeps its tongue in its cheek even as it doles out sincere scares (“Hail Satan!”). Like The Exorcist, The Omen doesn’t have a funny bone in its demonic body, even though the movie’s final twist is that Damian’s mom is a dog. Which is, you know, asinine. And that priests have special powers for combating evil. Again, asinine. Silly as it is, The Omen is more fun than The Exorcist because it lacks the impossible-to-live-up-to reputation. So we’re left with the big screen’s most spectacular nanny suicide, great creepy performances from Billy Whitelaw and Harvey Stephens, that iconic soundtrack, a baboon siege, and the talent of Gregory Peck and David Warner to lend some credibility to all the satanic mumbo jumbo. Which is, you know, asinine.

October 19th

The Vampire Lovers (1970- dir. Roy Ward Baker) ****

Hammer screams “Fuck it… bring on the boobs!” from the mountaintops with its first full-on, unapologetic fusion of sexploitation and vampiresploitation. You know you’re in for a non-stop boob fest when Ingrid Pitt gets top billing. Fortunately, Pitt transcends that limited image with her energetic presence and committed acting. She plays a lusty vampiress who goes around biting and bedding everyone in sight. Well, everyone but Peter Cushing. That would be gross. The depiction of a predatory lesbian vampire is homophobic, but Pitt plays her with such humanity that she earns our empathy much more so than her vacant-eyed victim, whom she genuinely seems to love. Hammer execs probably would have been happy if The Vampire Lovers was nothing more than a static shot of cleavage for 90 minutes, yet it still manages to house all the atmosphere, color, production values, and fangy fun that made the studio great in the first place. In fact, with its black and white inserts, imaginative use of shadows, and fine sound design, The Vampire Lovers is more aesthetically creative than most Hammers. Check it out; then check out the brilliant parody “Vampire Lesbian Lovers of Lust” from Steve Coogan’s series “Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible”.

At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1963- dir. Jose Mojica Marins) **

Bizarre Brazilian splatter flick has the DIY gumption of a neighborhood spook house. Zé is an evil undertaker who goes around chopping off dude’s fingers and poking them in the eyes and forcing them to eat meat on Good Friday (!). He’s kind of like Mr. Hyde if Hyde never turned back into Jekyll. There’s not much plot, but there’s a big spider. It feels like a movie written and produced by junior high kids. Be sure to look out for the adorable kitten amid the “spooky” tableau behind the opening credits. Yeesh.

Tales from the Hood (1995- dir. Rusty Cundieff) ***1/2

Tales from the Hood has a lot to recommend it, even though it isn’t much fun. Despite a super-campy performance from Clarence Williams III as a sort of crypt keeper, the film is often downright depressing. It’s also mostly effective as unsettling creep-fest and social commentary in the E.C. Comics tradition. The first and final segments—one about a civil rights leader murdered by racist cops, the other an unbearably grim riff on A Clockwork Orange—are kind of messes. But the two central ones, in which a monster is used as a metaphor for an abusive stepfather and a racist politician essentially assumes the role Karen Black played in the classic “Prey” sequence of Trilogy of Terror, are clever, suspenseful little yarns. Like all portmanteaus, Tales from the Hood is not consistently great, but it is consistently compelling.

October 20th

The Black Sleep (1956- dir. Reginald LeBorg) ***

The first entry in this year’s Bela Lugosi Birthday Movie Marathon is pretty light on the Lugosi, who plays a mute butler with minimal screen time, but heavy on the Basil Rathbone, who stars as a brain-tinkering mad doc. His experiments reduce folks to weirdos palyed by the likes of Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, and Tor Johnson. Akim Tamiroff from Touch of Evil steals the show as a scheming artist. The Black Sleep is schlocky nonsense but worth watching for Rathbone and Tamiroff, the gruesome brain surgery effects, and the nifty sets loaded with secret passageways. And though Lugosi, Chaney, Carradine, and Johnson’s parts are little more than cameos, it’s still cool to see such a rogue’s gallery collected in a single picture.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948- dir. Charles Barton) *****

Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein played a greater role in my obsession with Universal Monster Movies than any serious entry in the genre. When my family got our first VCR, we had about five movies on tape, which I’d watch over and over and over. One of these was Abbott and Costello’s historic summit with the holy trinity of monsterdom. Getting to see Dracula and the Wolf Man and the Frankenstein Monster in a single film was an embarrassment of riches. The very kid-friendly humor of Bud Abbott and adult-child Lou Costello further sweetened a pot that was already most sugary. The movie holds up beautifully. Lou is as hilarious as he ever was, Lon Chaney Jr. is as manic as he ever was, and Bela Lugosi gets to play his most beloved character on the big screen for the second and final time. The animated credits sequence is sublime, as is the rest of the picture. The cinematic equivalent of comfort food.

White Zombie (1932- dir. Victor Halperin) ****

The dank odor of German Expressionism is all over White Zombie, with its weird shadows, skeletal graveyards, and floating, disembodied eyes. Bela Lugosi was never more diabolical than he was as elaborately manicured mesmerist ‘Murder’ Legendre. Definitely slow moving, White Zombie is either hypnotic or boring depending on ones personal taste. I opt for the former. The soundtrack, which includes pieces by Mussorgsky, Borch, and Wagner, as well as an original chant by Guy Bevier Williams, is superb.

October 21st

Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974- dir. Terence Fisher) **1/2

The final entry in Hammer’s Frankenfranchise is probably best known for the negligible performance of David “Darth Vader” Prowse as the monster, who looks like a stitched-up troglodyte with lockjaw. Three years before he’d costar with Prowse in Star Wars, Peter Cushing plays the creator for the last time. Hammer’s Frankenstein films were rarely as interesting as the studio’s multitudinous Dracula pictures. This one gets off to a great start, percolating with wacko campiness and sicko humor, but it soon settles into the lethargy that plagued most of Hammer’s Frankensteins. Manages some dopey pathos toward the end, but overall, a washout.

Pin (1988- dir. Sandor Stern) ***1/2

Terry O’Quinn plays one of those ventriloquist doctors who throws his voice to bring an anatomical dummy to life. His son Leon witnesses dad’s nurse fucking the dummy. Dad later uses the dummy to give Leon a lesson on the birds and the bees. Needless to say, adult Leon (a very good David Hewlett) has some pretty unhealthy ideas about sex and dummies. Pin is a tough movie to get a handle on. I couldn’t decide if it was creepy or silly, low key or overwrought. It’s certainly a unique take on the Psycho/Peeping Tom-style thriller, yet less of a pure horror movie than either of those. I liked it.