REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PASSED: VHS covers I will never forget, movies I will never see

I cannot remember the first time I went into a video store. Like church and grandma's house, they were always just there. I would look around the horror section to see if a Godzilla or Frankenstein was lurking among the more salacious titles. Over the years there were certain VHS covers that left an impression. As a child, I was too scared to rent one (plus mom and dad, being sane, would have said no) but now I'm old enough to know that without question the covers are exponentially better than the actual movie.

What prompted these memories was a journey to Richmond's KO Video: a creepy little piece of 1982 preserved in 2009. The carpet was the first thing that got my attention. It's a shade of green that's both dingy and strangely fluorescent at the same time. After, I recovered from the Lovecraftian carpet, I noticed that the place is filled with broken televisions and VCR parts. A dusty display case contains Disney Beta-max and strange electronics with brand names long forgotten. At the horror section, I recognized several childhood cover traumas.

Look at the blurb. "Famous Monster" magazine loved this movie! It was endorsed by Forest Jay Aickerman himself!

I'm sure that this was not a pleasant photo shoot for that actress.

Despite having Vincent Price, I never wanted to check this one out. I thought Elvira was not going to give the material the proper respect it deserved. Seriously.

Screenplay by Gloria Steinem. Who knew?

Rutger Hauer is a future cop fighting a Creature from the Black Lagoon. On second thought, that sounds awesome.

The prequel to Microwave Massacre or Jeff Foxworthy meets Ed Gein?

I heard that the commentary track for the Criterion Collection edition will feature Ned Beatty AND Sheb Wooley.

Fox News is running this as a documentary about Canadian healthcare.

SPECIAL BONUS: A Mickey Rooney Pervtacular Double Feature! With cover art like this, who wouldn't want to rent these cinema treasures:

I got some of these images from here. Whoever keeps the site up is doing God's work.

Insects Have No Politics: PHASE IV Review

My grandfather told me about this movie when I was a kindergartner. I specifically remember his recounting of the scene in which the MENSA ants make little rafts to sail across a moat of gasoline. It sounded like the most amazing thing ever committed to film. Anybody could make a movie about ants on a rampage (The Naked Jungle, Them, It Happened At Lakewood Manor a.k.a Ants! etc.) but it took a real genius to make a film about ants who were also geniuses.

That genius was legendary graphic designer Saul Bass. This is the same Saul Bass who worked with Alfred Hitchcock and invented the modern title sequence. It’s natural to attempt to try to visualize a film before it is viewed. I could not do that with Phase IV. How can you imagine a film about intelligent ants that is directed by the guy who did Jimmy Stewart’s Vertigo nightmare?

The plot is simple: scientists build a base to study strange ant activity in the Southwest. Along the way, they take in a young farmer’s daughter whose family was killed by yellow pesticides intended to deter the ants. Bass’ talent as a designer is in full swing here. The most effective scenes are dialogue free and appeal to a sense of unreality and inhumanity that is scary in a much more disorienting way than the traditional sense of dread carried by horror films. The insect photography is top notch. It’s only surpassed by the similarly themed The Hellstrom Chronicle. Ants live right beside us (there’s probably some in my kitchen now) which makes their alien nature so unnerving.

The cause of the ant’s new power is not a chemical spill or atomic radiation but something much more esoteric. It’s time for Earth to move to the next phase and a cosmic force has chosen the ants over the humans. If this sounds very Aquarian, it’s because it is. This is a film that is very firmly in the tradition of 1970’s eco-occultism. I remember and episode of In Search of…. with Leonard Nimoy about people who hooked lie ditectors to plants. Phase IV is of that era. Just look at the posters. This is a movie that made a lot more sense in 1974.

Even though the film is primarily visual, the central performances are strong enough to give a sense of urgency and realism to a pretty outlandish and hippy-dippy premise. Nigel Davenport plays the physically and mentally deteriorating scientist with a ruggedness not seen in many obsessed scientist roles. The great Michael Murphy (of Allen's Manhattan and Altman's Nashville) is the scientist who is simply trying to communicate with the ants so that humanity can be given a second chance. Lynne Frederick does not get much to do besides be terrified by the super-colony and but she provides a beautiful and innocent face that contrasts nicely to the black mandibles of the film's monsters.

Phase IV is not an extremely entertaining film. It can be dull and obtuse. There are portions where the camera lingers a little too long on ant hills. Also, there is a five minute strectch where the base's ant alarm is going off. It’s a godawful sound and I had to mute the TV. I was worried that my neighbors were going to complain. “Sorry, just watching a movie about mystical ants! Won’t happen again!” I do give the filmmaker's credit for boldly making the film so unpleasant.

It’s lens flares and hallucinogenic sequences can date film terribly. I almost expected Billy Jack to show up a start kung-fuing the ants. The film did wind up on and episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. This is not completely undeserved. The film's metaphysical pretensions only draw attention to the fact that at the end of the day it's covering the same territory as Bert I. Gordon. It's those pretensions and Bass' graphic compostions, however, that make Phase IV a forgotten classic. It is unusual to find an animal invasion film with such intellect and scope. The film is worth watching if only to see the master title designer tell his own story.

Watch the trailer!

IMDB!

Doctor Who A-Z: A is for Axons

Universal Appeal II: FRANKENSTEIN!

James Whale’s Frankenstein still stands as a classic in both its……ugh I’m going to stop there. Why bother? You know this movie is a great gothic masterpiece. People have been talking about this movie for nearly eighty years. I’m going to skip to the pictures and the Universal Appeal index.

Every film needs to begin with a disclaimer announcing that what you’re about to see may #*&$ your &#!% up.

What should we put on Grandpa’s marker? A sunset? A bass? A tractor? How bouts we get him a giant scary grim reaper statue instead?

“I speak with a 100% certainty when I say my scheme to defy nature and build a freakish looking super-strong giant would have been completely successful if my idiot assistant had gotten the correct brain.”

Baron Frankenstein as played by Frederick Kerr is one of the greatest harrumphers to ever harrumph a harrumph.

How amazing would it have been to see that for the first time? Still the greatest film make up design of all time. Don't believe me? Name something better.

Nothing funny here. Great shot of a great set

How abnormal does your brain have to be to not realize a seven year old child weighs more than a flower?

Now it's time for the Busch Gardens Sausage Grasping Dance!

In retrospect, the villagers probably shouldn't have burnt down that windmill. It probably provided a lot of food.

Universal Appeal: Strong. A little slow to modern audiences and its supporting players a little stodgy (with the exception of the Baron) but this one gets high appeal for maintaining its iconic atmosphere. Dracula quickly becomes everything modern viewers hate about old movies but most of Frankenstein would still be recognizable as a movie to audiences familiar with Tim Burton and his imitators. When judging the appeal to modern audiences it’s important to realize they have much more in common with fairy tales and The Corpse Bride than a modern viewer’s idea of horror.

Is too much to hope for a day when Frankensteins are more popular than vampires? Where kids wear neck electrodes to Anime club instead of fangs?

“Parent and town not understand me either. I take you away from all this. Me dangerous yet completely non-threatening. Popular girls and fire no bother us anymore!”

Where's the love?

Entertainment Weekly has made another list. This time it's counting down the 20 greatest vampires. As expected, the luvvy vampires ranked pretty high. They also rank Klaus Kinski's portrayal of Dracula for Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre pretty high so kudos. What is unacceptable is that this guy was left out:

Make no mistake: without Barnabas there would be no Lestat, no Bill, and no E.C. He was the first romantic vampire hero. He was the first vampire who was more about the melancholy than the rubber bats. They put friggin' Kate Beckingsale on that list but they missed out the one who started it all. That's like making a list called "The 20 Greatest Movie Sleds" and mentioning Cool Runnings instead of Citizen Kane. For shame EW, for shame!

Mad Scientist of the Month: DR. CYCLOPS!

Indiana Jones has given children of the eighties, nineties, and naughties a somewhat skewered view of 1940’s adventure stories. They weren’t all art deco swashbucklers. They weren’t all adventurous romps through strange locations populated with bizarre villains. In fact, most serials and genre movies from the period were no-budget affairs that will put most modern movie goers to sleep faster than CSPAN and a bucket of Dimetapp. Dr. Cyclops is not one of those movies. It’s an old movie with everything we think that is fun about old movies but it's in glorious Emerald City technicolor. It's got fake jungles. It’s got an incredibly sinister and funny looking mad scientist. It’s got weird zapping machines. It's got ethnic stereotyping and possible animal cruelty!

That is the Platonic Ideal of Mad Scientist....still the best Shrinkologist in movie history (sorry Moranis).

Albert Deker is delightfully evil and nerdy in this movie. It’s one of my favorite classic horror performances. He’s telling his cat jokes one second and sadistically poisoning a tiny professor the next. When I was a kid, I obsessively read and reread the orange-spined Mad Scientists entry in the Kong endorsed Monsters line from Crestwood House books. Dr. Cyclops received a very generous write up.

One day I taped the legendary (at least to me) Dr. Cyclops on AMC. This was when AMC showed good movies and had crummy original programming (remember Remember WENN?) instead of the reverse. It was a favorite; that old VHS was watched and rewatched depite the fact it was a scratchy you could see a previous recording of China Beach bleed through. It was a treat to see the first great film on the subject of shrinking in glorious, moving color as opposed to a grainy black and white photo covered with the smears of library book abuse.

For me, Dr. Cyclops was a more important childhood film than any of the Indiana Jones movies which is odd considering my grandma was an infant when it was released. I didn't need fancy effects. I just needed a bald headed bespectacled weirdo with a power complex and a shrink ray. Now I’m a bald headed bespectacled weirdo with a power complex! Thanks Dr. Cyclops! I'll get that shrink ray someday!

Dr. Cyclops teaches a miniature colleague the dangers of huffing and being a meddling fool.

It's very easy to shrink people when they are morons. "Come look at my insane ray project! I'll just stand outside so everybody has room to get a closer look."

The Caucasian menfolk get distinguished little togas while the ethnic comedic relief gets a diaper made out of a bandana.

There are several severely distraught Hollywood critters in this movie. "Hey, easy with the rain hose! That's our last parrot!"

Hey, alligators have really tough skin! I bet he didn't feel any of those flaming sticks they threw in his face. Ah, simpler times!

Note: Look up Albert Deker and his sad death on Wikipedia. His death made Bob Crane's look like William Wallace's. It involved obscenities written on his body with lipstick. Ewww.

Universal Appeal: Dracula

Seventy years before Stephanie Meyers sent many of the double X chromosone possessing population into inexplicaple hysterics with her own brand of Byronic Blandness there was another (literally) toothless vampire tale that made audiences quiver.

How could a movie as slight as Tod Browning’s Dracula become one of American cinema’s most culturally important films? Even for 1931 standards (as its Irish twin Frankenstein illustrates) most of the film is extremely dull stuff. The real shocker of the film is how quickly the dreamlike monster fable becomes a nearly unwatchable parlor based melodrama. The atmospheric sets are replaced with some of the most humdrum interiors ever committed to film. In this setting Lugosi’s undead predator is transformed into a middle-aged weirdo whose second language is English and has a wooden stake up his coattailed posterior.

From this...

to this...not as creepy as spider castle of doom although that fireplace is pretty weird

Is it just me or does Dracula look like he is struggling to read his contract? "I shood hav paid more attenshun in schooel"

Did Dracula make dinner for Renfield or did he make the brides do it? Was he in the kitchen trying to remember what humans eat?

I know what would make this movie less boring....

..a PHILIP GLASS soundtrack!

Honesty time: Lugosi’s Dracula is one of my least favorite Lugosis. It’s not the demented hammery or spectacular oddness I like in my Lugosi roles. It’s a scientific fact that the following Lugosi performances outshine his most famous role:
• Son of Frankenstein
• The Murders of Rue Morgue
• White Zombie
• The Raven
• The Black Cat
Actually, just about all of his Universal performances (and some of his cheapos) are better than Dracula but the performance is so mythic that it's undeniably powerful.

"This one is MINE!" (That's a True Blood reference btw)

Universal Appeal: Strong and Weak. The iconic eeriness of the first 20 minutes is a large part of our collective mythology. The beautiful matte painting mountains, the “children of the night” line, the brides, and Dwight Frye’s freak out on the boat are all immortal classics. The rest of the movie (with the exception of the cigarette case mirror smash) is immediately forgettable. As someone who was born six years after Star Wars it is impossible for me to understand how audiences felt seeing and hearing the first talking supernatural horror picture. I would assume that the novelty of the original mix of sex and death (and phony fireplaces) kept Depression Era audiences captivated despite some seriously lazy filmmaking.