Saturday afternoon I treated myself to an at home matinee of the 1959 marketing classic The Tingler.

William Castle who made quite a name for himself with marketing ploys to attract people to his films directed this movie. His has done such stunts as offering insurance policies against dying of fright during the screening, having paper skeletons pulled on strings over the audiences heads and for The Tingler he had some seats in some theaters rigged with buzzers to surprise people during key moments of the film. Naturally all this does not translate to home video.

The Tingler stars Vincent Price as Doctor Chapin a pathologist who, in addition to his duties seeing to the remains of executed criminals, is researching the strange effects of people in acute fear. He has a dedicated lab assistant, a shrewish wife, seemingly a common character type in a Castle film, a new friendship with the brother-in-law of a recently executed murderer, and to help him with his research a nifty new drug that induces nightmares, LSD 25.

Chapin’s research not only proves that there is a previously unknown physical effect from unreleased fear, but that it is a living creature found in all of us, the Tingler. Most of the film is actually melodrama about the Chapin’s failing marriage, and mysterious scenes that keep the audience guessing just how far will he go for his research. Is he dedicated or a mad scientist?

This film is worth watching, but the concepts are rarely carried through and it does cheat with its plot twits. That is to say it doesn’t set up the twists but rather springs on the audience without the benefits of Chekov’s gun. The movie does have one fairly original set piece in it. There a sequence where a woman is driven into utter terror and in those scenes while the film remains in black-and-white the blood is a bright, brilliant, saturated red. Here’s a still to show you. Now, remember this was 1959; there were no digital effect to make this now easy process possible. Castle achieved this my making everything, including the actress, on the set monochrome so while the film is color film only the blood is appears to have color.

The Tingler is currently streaming on Shudder.

Just in case you were under the impression it was only Hollywood that produced sequel after sequel to blockbuster successes Japan made four films in the Ringu Franchise.

Based upon a popular novel, Ringu, and its American re-make The Ring dealt with a ghost from a well, a video tape that in view caused your death in seven days, and the single mother reporter that was the story’s protagonist. (Though interestingly the film differs from the novel so much that the main character switched genders.)

In Ringu the single mother has worked out to survive the curse she and her son, who accidently watched the tape, must make a copy and show it to someone else. Mom has already unwittingly done this and her mathematician boyfriend’s death provided the clues to working out the curse. Now to save her son she has had him duplicate the tape and shown it to here father.

Ringu 2 picks up the story where Ringu left off, but now our protagonist is the mathematician’s female assistant who starts down the plot trying to understand what has happened to her mentor. The police get involved, after all they have a number of unexplained deaths on their hands, as does a doctor treating a girl who survived seeing the ghost of Sadako but is now in a mental ward.

Built on mood, atmosphere, and mystery, Ringu 2 continues the stylistic horror that at the start of the century became known as J-Horror. Not all of the Japanese horror films imported under their sudden popularity deserved to be held up as an example of their industry’s superior craftsmanship but quite a few were several levels above the derivative slasher fare that so many in Hollywood pushed into our theaters.

The franchise continues beyond this sequel, producing an inconsistent and unrequired prequel, which the fandom rejected, and then a second revisionary prequel before finally sputtering out.

Ringu 2 is a film worth watching. Moody, creepy, and with explorations of themes raised in the Ringu it is that rare beast, a worthy sequel.

Saturday night a friend and I drove to LA to take in Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Night for 2017. We had managed to attend for a few hours last year but this year wanted to make a proper ruin on the event. Armed with ‘Head of the Line’ passes that allowed us to skip the main lines at the attractions we endured LA traffic, arriving about 40 minutes later than expected.

Let me tell you if you plan to do this, particularly on a weekend night, the ‘Head of the Line’ pass is the way to go. The mazes had long waits in the lines, often 80 or even 100 minutes. Given those sort of lines the best you might hope for is to visit three or four mazes in the night, while our passes allowed us to see all eight with time to spare.

The mazes and the open-air maze that is part of the terror tram attraction were all fun. Naturally we are talking professional special effects and make-up and performed that really enjoyed their gigs.

While all eight of the mazes were indeed fun, there are a few I want to shout out as being a cut above the crest.

Ash vs. The Evil Dead. This maze nailed its property, actors made up as deadites and some wearing Bruce Campbell masks, brought the fun and fear of the series to life.

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shinning. This maze walked you through many of the memorable moments from the classic film. Special effects recreated the images of the twin girls being suddenly replaced with their bloody corpses, the rivers of blood, and Jack Torrance popping out of the walls with an axe is sure to wake you up.

FX’s American Horror Story: Roanoke. I confess I have yet to watch this series, though it is in my queue. The atmosphere and oppressive mood were terrific and it was a memorable maze.

In addition to making sure you have a ‘Head of the Line’ pass, if you go be prepared for walking. Lots and lots of walking. My iPhone reports that I covered 6.5 miles and I can assure you very little of that was backtracking and being inefficient.

Okay, not everything I watch is going to be a chill your blood, tense your muscles, classic of the horror genre. I mean I did watch The Norliss Tapes after all didn’t I?

Anyway, House of Dracula is one of a slew of sequels that Universal Studios produced in their very successful and famous series of horror films running from the early 1930s through the 1950s. By this point in their run the films were produced as ‘B’ features, meaning that they were intended to play as a second film in a double feature bill. B features, in addition to being lower cost were also shorter and House of Dracula clocks in at a very slim 67 minutes. In that one hour seven minutes the studios packed into the plot Dracula, naturally his name is in the title after all, the Wolf-man, Frankenstein’s Monster, a mad scientist, and a hunchback.

The plot goes something like this. Dracula, seeking a cure to his vampiric condition, seeks out the services of a brilliant doctor, Edlemann. Edlemann, who has two nurse assistants, one the hunchbacked Nina, is working on a breakthrough treatment using a compound grown from a mold. (See ripping of breaking science for bad plot devices is nothing new.) On a following night Dracula has come seeking treatment, and to snack on the blonde non-hunchbacked nurse Milza, Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf-Man, has also come to the brilliant doctor seeking a cure for his condition. (There must be an ad running the Monsters Quarterly.) Unwilling to wait for the doctor to complete his appointment with Dracula, Talbot rushes out and get himself locked up in jail. Edlemann comes to the jail, sees the transformation from man to wolf-man and thinks, hey I’m brilliant, and I can fix this. He brings Talbot back to his cliff-side home and clinic but when Talbot learns that he’ll have to spend the full moon nights locked up, he throws himself off the cliff. Really this guy has less patience than I do waiting on book publishers.) The good doctor goes down to save him finds him in wolf form, is nearly killed, but then the moon sets saving the foolish physician. While exploring the caves at the base of the cliff they discover the Frankenstein Monster V3. (This is Glenn Strange as the monster, following Lugosi who followed Karloff.) Wouldn’t you know it, it lives and the good doctor, ever the friend to all things monstrous, bring it back to the lab to restore it to full health because killing it would be murder. Okay we’ve got all three major monsters in the story, but then Dracula misbehaves, mingles his blood with Edlemann’s, and gets killed in the least climatic destruction of vampire ever. The doctor’s corrupted blood turns him into a Jekyll and Hyde. Edlemann manages to operate on Talbot, reversing the werewolf curse, murder a servant, and enrage the peasants. They of course chase him back to the cliff-side clinic where he revives the Frankenstein Monster V3 and then gets killed by Talbot. The Frankenstein Monster V3 goes after the peasants; he never got along with them, but dies when the clinic burns. Talbot, now safe in a full moon, has a happy ending with blond, living, and non-hunchback nurse Milza.

If this sounds like a mess of a plot thats’ because it is. This boys and girls is what happens when you have no unifying theme for your story, it is reduced down to a bunch of stuff that happens.

In my opinion Prince of Darkness is the last film John Carpenter made that I enjoyed from start to finish. His films after this one, starting with They Live are all flawed in such a significant fashion that I cannot ignore the miscues and illogic to enjoy the movie.

Prince of Darkness is a horror film that focuses on the personal level while exploring themes that are cosmic. When the last remaining Guardian Priest, a member of a Catholic sect known as the Brotherhood of Sleep, dies, it exposes a secret society within the Church and a mysterious canister that they have been guarding for two thousands years. The Priest who uncovers this, played by Donald Pleasence and never given a name, turned to a physics professor, Birack, played by Victor Wong, to prove the truth of the canister, and its terrible revelation about the nature of God. Birack recruits a number of gifted post-grad students and a few colleagues for the weekend long examination of the thee canister at its hiding place, an old church in downtown Los Angeles. Very quickly after their arrival things turn ominous, they are threatened by the homeless in the area, the canister starts showing new and unexplainable properties, and the translation of the Brotherhood’s documents illuminate a disturbing history. While the film’s ending seems to promise a happy resolution with the evil defeated and banished, the very final images suggest that at least one survivor will not be able to leave things as they are and though that meddling unleash the doom that they had fought and died to prevent.

As I have stated, I enjoy this movie. I like the cast, I like the atmosphere, I like the slow wind up to a final act that is anything but slow, and I like that even when the characters are at cross purposes they all proceed from a foundation of trying to do the right thing. That said there are issues I have with the film and the logic of the story truly does not stand up to close scrutiny. Spoilers follow as well critique so some may not want to proceed.

In my opinion, gleaned from watching the films and listening to various audio commentaries, Carpenter is more drawn to style, mood, and image than he is to consistent world-building or attentive backstory. For example it is established that the Guardian Priest lived in the church alone, he ventured out once per week for groceries and supplies while checking on the canister everyday. Judging from the sheer number of candles lit in the basement the man’s sole job was placing, lighting, and replacing candles. In the early evening we see the team eating take-out Chinese food and pizza. It is presumed that meant they ordered the food and yet when things go south and people are being murdered there’s not even ‘they cut the phone’ to explain the lack of calling out for assistance. The canister we are told holds the offspring of a god, the anti-god. He buried the canister on Earth in the Middle East before he was banished. Christ was not a divine but a humanoid alien come to warn us about the godling in the bottle. IF he was an alien and the aliens knew about the godling in a bottle why did they leave it with the savages of Earth? That seems pretty irresponsible.

Those issues aside this is one of my favorite Carpenter films and when I got the chance to get it on Blu-ray I did not hesitate. It is film for the season.

As I review my library for films to view during my Halloween Horror festival the issue of categorization moves to the front of my thoughts. Horror is a slippery thing to define and precisely what counts as a horror movie varies from person to person. Is The Silence of the Lambs the first horror film to win Best Picture, or was it a thriller? More to the point of my personal film festival is the classification of the sub-genre of horror, the monster movie.

There is no doubt that some monster movies are also horror movies; Frankenstein in most of it variations is a horror movie, Alien is an SF, Horror, and a monster movie that spawned an entire cycle of imitators. I think the original Godzilla/Gojira is a horror film the enormous monster a stand in for the horrors of war and atomic weaponry. However not all monster movies are horror films.

If we examine the Godzilla franchise it is clear that to me that at some point it stopped attempting to horrify and instead sough to thrill instead. Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster does not seek the make the viewer feel dread from the monster’s impending but excites the audience with a massive battle of giant monsters while making just enough commentary about pollution to have some social relevance.

I think that horror is always personal and by that I do not mean that it is merely individual taste but also that the subject of the dread and terror is experienced on a level that is subjective and intimate. In Gojira there are plenty of scenes where we are masterfully introduced to minor characters that are sketched quickly and competently so we empathize with them as they face the unimaginable horror of a giant radioactive monster. This gives us the horror of the movie and not the man wearing a rubber suit stomping a miniature city.