Tag Archives: Horror

Sunday Night Movie: The Ghoul

So, yesterday I was cruising through instant view movies on Netflix and I came across a 1933 film, The Ghoul, with Boris Karloff. In the mood for something different, I added it to my queue to be my Sunday Night Movie.

The Ghoul is  story about an Egyptologist who has become so enamored with his subject that he now believes that the religion of the ancient Egyptians is factual. He spend the majority of considerable fortune on acquiring a mystic gem that reputedly can grant immortality to a person if it is sealed with the person in their tomb.

(Apparently it is immortality on the other-side, not here. on Earth.)

Because the gem is very valuable there are a lot of people willing to do violence and deceit to steal it. Because he was rich and spent it all there are heirs who are cross and unsure what is happening. Of course no one believes the ancient story and dismisses the notion that to steal the gem from the tomb will cause said Egyptologist to rise from the dead and seek out the gem, murdering all who stand in his way.

Okay, that is a pretty decent set-up for a horror film. Sadly, this is not the film they delivered. This is a scooby-doo movie. Everything at the end of the movie has a ‘rational’ explanation. Rational is in quotes because if I think it through the explanation cannot stand up to fact as presented.

Spoiler alert……proceed no further if you care about spoilers concerning a film released in 1933.

The Egyptologist is shown weak and dying in his bed (see above). He can bare sit up he is so weak. Later, after he escapes his tomb because he had been ‘buried alive’ he’s running about, overpowering much young men and killing them, and bending iron bars with his bare hands. For a guy on his deathbed just hours earlier he’s one kick ass dude!

While there are plenty of interesting ideas and set-ups, this film just doesn’t work. I would have preferred something with the supernatural in it rather than meddling kids.

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DVD Review: The Lost Skeleton Returns Again!

A few years ago, before I had met my lovely sweetie-wife, I saw a charming movie at the local Art House theater. The movie was The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. A tongue in cheek send up of bad SF/monster movies of the late 50’s and early 70’s. the film gave us many memorable comedy bits including the famed Amish Terrarium. If you have not seen this movie you need to see it.

Yes, not every scene works as well as it could have. Some scenes drag on too long, but overall I enjoyed the movie.

This week the sequel hit the DVD shelves. It’s rare that I buy a DVD without having seen the movie, but I was willing to take that risk with a Lost Skeleton sequel.

The good news is I felt I got my money’s worth. This was charming and funny. It was clear that the cast enjoyed working with each other again. (those whose characters had died in the first film were playing the twins of those original characters.)

Unlike cheap SF films of the era they actually tried to  shoe-horn in character  growth as part of the comedy and it mostly worked.

What didn’t work was that this film by its very nature could not be as original at the first. Many of the jokes are extensions of gags and jokes used in the first film. Because of that they lose punch and comedy needs punch.

There is nothing in the film as original or as quote worth as the aforementioned ‘Amish Terrarium.’

I can’t wholeheartedly recommend buying this DVD unless it really strike your fancy. Best rent it first.

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Sunday Night Movie: Incubus (1965)

So yesterday my sweetie-wife and I watched a film called Incubus, from 1965.

Now this was a film I had heard about, but one I had never seen. It stars — as you can see from the screen cap — William Shatner just a few years before he began his five– no three — year voyage as Captain James Kirk.

As the title suggests, it is a horror film and a demonically based horror story. (Though much better than Shatner’s other foray into devil worship The Devil’s Rain.)

What made this film so utterly mysterious and difficult to see is two factors.

One, it was thought that all know prints had been lost and or destroyed. The film failed miserably at the box office and this was before there was a home-video market to rescue turkeys like Manic Cop 2.

Second this movie was and is the only film to be entirely in Esperanto a wholly artificial language invented in the late 19th century. Continue reading →

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A bygone age

Last night I did not video game as late as usual because I was suffering from pulled muscles that made sitting forward uncomfortable. I ended up surfing the channels on my TV looking for something to watch while I waited to unwind and get ready for bed.
On TCM (Turner Classic Movies) I spotted something that could have been a low-budget horror film from the late 50’s or early 60’s, but alas it was what looked a murder mystery. (Turns out to have been Girls On The Loose)

For the first time in years I thought about my Saturday night as an adolescent in Ft. Pierce Florida. Every Saturday night at 11 pm the local TV station would start Creature Feature. A double bill of horror and genre films that would play into the early morning hours.

I saw many an entertaining movie late Saturday night with a bowl of popcorn by my side. It was on Creature Feature that I first saw many classic movies such as The Creature From The Black Lagoon and quite a few of the Roger Corman ‘Poe’ Movies from the sixties.

Those days are gone. Late night TV now is a collection of infomercials — one of the sins of the Reagan era — and second rate TV shows. There isn’t much in the way of a Creature Feature with classic and cheesy movies I haven’t seen before. Now I know that we have DVD, Blu-ray, Movies on Demand, and Instant View movies on Netflix and I utilize all of those in my movie watching habits, but there is a real shortfall in this aspect of home video. It only shows me movies I have asked it to show me.

I never get surprised or exposed to a new movie this way because I search out the films I want to rent, buy, or view. Oh there is the occasional that I find by surfing the sites or rarely one that is recommended to me by the software actually looks interesting, but this is a different dynamic than the Creature Feature.

Every Saturday night I would lay back on the couch, the rest of the house asleep, and I was watch a genre movie. I usually knew no more than that when the features started. It was genre and that was enough to spark an interest. Sometimes the movies would be so bad or dull I would go to be, most of the time the movies were forgettable and have now been forgotten, but occasionally the movies would leave an impression that echoed through the decades.

I remember watching Planet Of Vampires on Creature Feature, a stylistic though flawed Italian SF movie. Years later I found it on DVD and bought it for a friend. We watched the film and man the makers of Alien were clearly influenced by this movie. Sadly I did not buy a copy of the DVD for myself and it is now out of print. I never would have seen this movie had it not been for Creature Feature.

This is terribly saddens me. Young people growing up today will not get the same exposure to the classic genre films that I got. They’ll see remakes of the really big name movies, such as The Day The Earth Stood Still, and perhaps track down the original, but that random sf/horror film of the weekend is a thing of the past. Many films that are not classics are going to be rarely seen just because of the death of Creature Features across the country. While The Killer Shrews is a film with more flaws than charms I am still happy that I saw the movie and when it turned up in a 50 movies boxed set I bought I was happy to watch it again.

Perhaps this is why I am a fan of our local club, San Diego Vintage SF, though my life has made it tough to attend in months. Every month a genre film from before 1968 is shown, along with a serial and cartoon. (Frankly I could skip the serial as it was never part of my movie going experience.) However SDVSF does not make up for the Creature Feature.

It would be wonderful is TCM did a regular program dedicated to SF,Horror, and Fantasy films. They already have these movies and they play them, but not as part of a generalized programming about them with a host, introduction and such. There is a richness in the genre and it extends beyond the recognized classics. A treasure likely to be rarely seen and forgotten with the years.

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