Review: 'I Am the Night: The Ultimate Unauthorized History of Batman: The Animated Series'

Batman has gone through uncountable on-screen iterations (or, at least, two dozen), and each batfan has their favorite. Personally, I'm a campy Adam West fan. But even I will admit that the best realization of the caped crusader was Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski's. Batman: The Animated Series pleased fans to no end by capturing both the darkness and the fun of the comics, which is something that no other on-screen Bat-property has managed. It was beautifully animated, especially for an after-school cartoon from the nineties. The voice talent was top notch and the stories were often excellent. All the Batman movies or TV shows followed in the Animated Series' wake were merely sucking its fumes.

Review: 'Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas: Beyond Halloween Town'

Unlike a lot of Generation X'ers with similar sensibilities to my own, I was never overly enthralled with Nightmare Before Christmas because I don't think there's much of a story there. Jack Skellington's biggest problem is he's sick of Halloween? Sorry, but I cannot relate.

However, I think that a lot of the members of the massive Nightmare Before Christmas cult are mostly enthralled by the movie's images, and that is something to which I can relate. It's a friggin' great-looking movie, with delightful character designs brought to life with marvelously organic stop-motion animation. While I tend to zone out half-way through the movie (which I rewatch more than I would if I didn't have a kid), it's impossible to be a total Nightmare Scrooge because of its style, visuals, and technique.

Review: Lol Tolhurst's 'Goth: A History'

If you'd asked one of the original punk groups in the seventies--say, the Clash or the Sex Pistols--if they were punks, they would have sneered at you and damned the very idea of being labeled. Same goes for the original Goths--say, Siouxsie and the Banshees or The Cure. Lol Tolhurst, drummer of the latter group, says as much in Goth: A History. But with time comes a certain perspective, and today Tolhurst obviously embraces that old label, hence his new book celebrating some fifty years of pallor, gloomy songs, wiry hairstyles, black garb, and black moods. 

Review: 'Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration'

With the release of Ed Wood in 1994, “Karloff! That Limey cocksucker!” quite nearly replaced “I never drink…wine” and “The children of the night…what music they make” as the go-to phrase when doing a bad Bela Lugosi impression. Tim Burton’s movie hipped the larger film-going public to some of the real-life seething that went on during the filming of such Lugosi/Boris Karloff collaborations as The Black Cat and The Body Snatcher. However, Burton’s superb yet cartoonish film provided little of the complexity behind this classic Hollywood “rivalry.” For that, one would have to take a trip to the local Waldenbooks and pick up a copy of Gregory Mank’s Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Story of a Haunting Collaboration.

Originally published in 1990, the over 350-page book attempted a more nuanced view of a relationship that couldn’t simply be boiled down to a venerated horror star and a jealous, drug-addled also-ran. Swelling with an additional 250-or-so pages in 2009, the now Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration went into even greater depth with additional information and interviews. By Mank’s analysis, Lugosi and Karloff may have enjoyed a rather friendly working relationship while making Son of Frankenstein, and the alleged hatred Lugosi felt for Karloff may have really been directed at a Hollywood system that constantly ground the vampire under its merciless stake.

Karloff is not completely without blame in this mostly one-sided clash of titans. While he never had an explicitly nasty thing to say about Lugosi, his patronizing insistence on referring to his co-star as “poor Bela” in private and public could not have endeared himself to the actor who could be quite proud despite demeaning himself in Poverty Row and Ed Wood pictures.

Mank’s valiant attempt to uncover how Lugosi and Karloff really felt about each other was doomed to go without a definitive answer, but that barely matters when the rest of the story is so fascinating and well told. Mank goes deep into the movies they made together with nearly scene-by-scene analyses without neglecting the most important pictures they made without the other. So we get very satisfying histories of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and other key films, as well as quite a bit of information about other key players in those films such as James Whale and Colin Clive.

Last updated nearly a decade ago, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration is now enjoying a new printing though not another updating. That’s generally fine since there probably haven’t been many new revelations about the Karloff/Lugosi rivalry in recent years since so many of their other collaborators have died. Mank’s incessant leching over Lugosi and Karloff’s female co-stars is more than a little dated and brings nothing but discomfort to the storytelling, but if you can get past that, you will find that Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration remains one of the great studies of classic horror films.

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

Review: 'The Many Lives of Catwoman: The Felonious History of a Feline Fatale'

With the exception of The Joker, Catwoman has to be the most popular super villain in superdom—more infamous than Lex Luthor, the Green Goblin, Dr. Doom, or Batman’s other top nemeses, The Penguin and The Riddler, neither of whom has received his own comic series. And even The Joker has never been the title character of his very own feature film— though I’m pretty sure Catwoman isn’t too proud of that ammonia-scented stink bomb starring Halle Berry.

Nevertheless, Selina Kyle has had a decidedly rocky history. Despite debuting as an atypically in-control and unpunished woman at a time when virtuous female characters tended to reflect the extremely limited concepts of femininity common in the forties and femme fatales always received their comeuppance, Catwoman eventually succumbed to the nasty whims of her mostly male creators. She might be declawed in plot lines that wed her to bland Bruce Wayne or tortured luridly. Even when more progressive minded writers gave Catwoman something to do, childish artists depicted her as a sex object to be ogled. And on the number of occasions when she became too much of a handful, she was erased altogether. In fact, after she had the distinction of being Gotham’s only villain to get a mention in Frederic Wertham’s comics-industry-rocking excoriation Seduction of the Innocent in 1954, Catwoman was isolated in the kennel for twelve years until Julie Newmar repopularized her on TV.

Needless to say, the fact that Catwoman is a woman is intrinsically tied to her difficult history, which Tim Hanley relates in his new book The Many Lives of Catwoman: The Felonious History of a Feline Fatale. The author studies how his topic was treated in comics, television, film, and video games, noting the positive depictions (her initial appearances in the comics and later ones in The Long Halloween and Catwoman: When in Rome, her treatment on Bill Dozier’s sixties TV series and today’s Gotham, as well as Tim Burton’s Batman Returns) and the less positive ones that objectified and patronized her. The take away from this book is that Catwoman was a great female character full of potential, but the small minds in the patriarchal comics industry rarely knew what to do with her.

Hanley supports his thesis with an intense look at Catwoman’s many appearances (and absences). This can get a tad tedious since he spends a lot of time summarizing comics arcs, and while his constant quoting of the awful dialogue in Batman Returns doesn’t undermine his argument that the film offers a positive, feminist depiction of Catwoman, it does fog up a discussion of the film’s most positive attribute by continuously reminding us of its shittiest one.

The Many Lives of Catwoman still manages to be an excellent study as a whole, achieving a skillful balance of history and analysis. Hanley integrates his cultural findings with neat details about the Catwoman film Burton and Michelle Pfeiffer intended to make, the original casting choice for her first TV incarnation (not Julie Newmar), and the woman who quite possibly inspired her in the first place (not Jean Harlow or Hedy Lamarr as Bob Kane would have you believe). The Many Lives of Catwoman definitively captures Catwoman’s history, compellingly explains how she has bucked and reflected society’s treatment of women, and relates it all with attentiveness and humor. Hanley

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 330

The Date: August 25

The Movie: Beetlejuice (1988)

What Is It?: An ace melding of the darkness of Frankenweenie and the freewheeling, plot-be-damned comedy of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Screenwriters Michael McDowell and Warren Skaaren pull the neat trick of making their heroes recently deceased young marrieds whose newly purchased home is invaded by a ghastly nuclear family. As the title spook, Michael Keaton doesn’t so much steal this show as he hijacks it with dynamite strapped to his chest. Drawing on classic cartoons (particularly those of Max Fleisher, Tex Avery, and Chuck Jones), Salvador Dali, and his own trademark stripey, swirly design scheme, Tim Burton builds a detailed environment spewing imagination.

Why Today?: On this day in 1958, Tim Burton is born.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 202

The Date: April 19

The Movie: Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985)

What Is It?: Dark exploration of loner/rebel’s ruthless quest to recover what was taken from him. No biker is safe. There is no place in the Alamo he won’t trespass, even its basement. He has no time for romance. He’ll hitchhike with a convict or rest in the mouth of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. His story is epic. His name is Pee Wee.

Why Today?: Today is Bicycle Day!

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 71

The Date: December 10

The Movie: Ed Wood (1994)

What Is It?: Tim Burton’s greatest film sacrificed none of his signature aesthetic quirks to tell the story of notoriously awful filmmaker Ed Wood, who liked to dress in panties and angora sweaters while hanging out with Hollywood kooks and making movies about space vampires. Needless to say, Martin Landau stuffs the film under his cape and walks away with it.

Why Today?: On this day in 1978, the real Ed Wood died.

Diary of the Dead 2013: Week 4

I’m logging my Monster Movie Month © viewing with ultra-mini reviews at the end of every week in October. I write it. You read it. No one needs to get hurt.

October 18

Phantom of the Opera (1943- dir. Arthur Lubin) **½

With the original era of Universal horror having its last hurrah with 1941’s The Wolf Man, the studio started dipping back into old properties in earnest throughout the forties. This usually manifested in sequels uniting the Wolf Man, Dracula, and the Frankenstein Monster in various configurations, but there were also a couple of Full-on remakes in order. The first was Charles Laughton’s reinterpretation of Chaney in 1939’s Hunchback of Notre Dame. The second found another formidable actor attempting to fill the Man of a Thousand Faces’ boots. No doubt Claude Rains is a superb actor and one of Universal’s most unforgettable horror stars, but the version of Phantom of the Opera in which he starred is utterly forgettable. Because of the U.S.’s recent entry into World War II, the studio got cold feet and decided to tone down too many of the elements that made the original so chilling, most notably doing a half-assed job on the Phantom makeup for fear of reminding viewers of those who’d been disfigured in the war. It gives the key unmasking sequence the impact of a soggy washcloth. The rest of the movie is pretty lame too, with an abundance of corny musical numbers that go on and on, soppy romance, and fatigued comic relief where the horror should be. Rains is very sympathetic but not at all menacing as the Phantom with none of the delicious mania he supplied in The Invisible Man. While the decision to shoot in color made commercial sense—and the film certainly looks sumptuous— it also made this Phantom the odd-man out from Universal’s greatest monster pictures. Tellingly, the other second-wave monster pictures would return to black and white. This is less essential than even the monster rallies, which are at least terrific fun.

Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula (1979- dir. Harry Hurwitz) *½

Nearly every detail of this soft-core disco vampire comedy seems consciously designed to make it rank as one of the worst movies ever made. The awful script. The cheesy, gratuitous nudity. The absolutely horrid acting. The rhythmically-challenged dancing. The sad appearances of John Carradine as the count and Yvonne De Carlo as his old flame. Brother Theodore’s hammy mugging as a werewolf/Renfield type character who longs for the title vamp. She is really the one who brings the terrible Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula to unprecedented heights of terribility. Crazy-eyed, perpetually grinning Nai Bonet must have taken a page from the Bela Lugosi book of acting by learning her lines phonetically, because there isn’t a trace of expression in anything she says. This would be prime stuff for at-home Mystery Science Theatre sessions if it wasn’t so boring. That half star is for some pretty good numbers by a disco group called Moment of Truth.

October 21

Blackenstein (1973- dir. William A. Levey) **

Diary of the Dead 2012: Week 1

I’m logging my Monster Movie Month © viewing with ultra-mini reviews every Monday in October (as was the case last year, I’ll only be discussing movies I haven’t reviewed elsewhere on this site). I write it. You read it. No one needs to get hurt.

 September 29

Thinner (1996- dir. Tom Holland) **½

Entertainingly bad Stephen King (oops, I mean “Richard Bachman”) novel becomes entertainingly bad Tom Holland movie. Holland directed some good movies (Psycho II, Child’s Play), but this isn’t one of them. An old “gypsy” stereotype curses a big-boned chap with unceasing weight loss after he accidentally runs over her daughter while getting a blowjob. The fat prosthetics make actor Robert John Burke look like Jiminy Glick. The skinny prosthetics misguidedly attempt to make Burke look skeletal by building up his features, so he looks just as fat when he’s supposed to be thinner. Still, Thinner is fast paced, there are a couple of effective gross-outs, and the lousy acting is campy fun. Plenty of material for a home session of Mystery Science Theater 3000. 

Review: 'Tales from Development Hell: The Greatest Movies Never Made?'

Moviemaking is a tough job, not least of all because so many long-labored projects never even go into production. A screenplay can just as easily linger for decades before being made as it can get batted around, second-guessed, and (often needlessly) revised for the same number of years without ever even moving beyond the page. This painful, protracted process is known as “development hell,” and David Hughes explores more than a dozen such afflicted screenplays in his new book Tales from Development Hell: The Greatest Movies Never Made? As the writer of more than ten unproduced scripts, Hughes knows the pain of development hell well, but it apparently hasn’t made him so bitter that he was unable to tell these tales with lively humor and entertaining briskness.

Despite the book’s title, not all of these movies were “never made,” nor do they all sound like they had the potential for greatness. Hughes deals with a succession of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and comic book flicks with varying fates. Some died on the vine, such as an ill-conceived remake of Fantastic Voyage and a Sylvester Stallone vehicle called Isobar described as “Alien on a train.” Some were actually produced to great success, such as Lord of the Rings and Batman Begins. Some were made, but probably would have been best left in development hell, such as the laughable Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Tim Burton’s awful Planet of the Apes remake.

No matter what came of each film he discusses, Hughes treats each with the same impeccable attention to detail, tracking the projects over their unfortunate speed bumps and through their various permutations, providing provocative synopses of key script and treatment drafts. Several went through some pretty interesting incarnations along the way. Lord of the Rings passed through Forrest J. Ackerman’s hands before landing with The Beatles, who allegedly would have starred as Frodo (Paul), Gollum (John), Gandalf (George), and Sam (Ringo) (I suppose that means Victor Spinetti was a shoe-in for Aragorn). Batman Begins could have been a straight adaptation of Frank Miller’s nitty-gritty Batman: Year One directed by Darren Aronofsky or a dark superhero rally called Batman vs. Superman.

Hughes devotes his final chapter to his own unproduced projects, though I have a feeling the world is no worse for lacking T.J. Hooker: The Movie or Stigmata: The TV Series. Having written such a fun, well-researched book about his chosen business, he may want to consider quitting his day job.