by ·Comments Off on The Haunted Palace (1963, Roger Corman)

“One becomes accustomed to the darkness here.” Another year, another lovely Corman/Price/Poe movie, this one with some Lovecraft mixed in. The Raven came out in January, The Terror in June, X in July, and this in August – Corman was a powerhouse in ’63.

Vince prepares the waffle iron:

110 years after Vince got burned as a witch, his descendant (also Vince) comes looking for his haunted palace inheritance, along with his useless woman Debra Paget (of Tales of Terror, Lang’s Indian Tomb star). They find Lon “The Wolf Man” Chaney claiming to be the caretaker, but he’s standing in the dark and has cleared out none of the cobwebs.

Elisha debuts his famous wide-eyed stare:

Possessed Vince with Lon and their bald friend:

Ancient Vince had possessed the Necronomicon (this is a good movie to watch right after The Ninth Gate) and his vengeful spirit still lives in the basement. With Chaney’s assistance he possesses Current Vince and summons hellfire against his enemies’ families who all still live in town – first Leo Gordon (villain of Riot in Cell Block 11) then the great Elisha Cook Jr. (in his first of many demonic and scary-house movies). The only normal guy who advocates against revenge and mob violence is Dr. Frank Maxwell (also the only normal person in The Intruder), but you can’t stop mob violence – at least the townspeople pause outside the castle to call Vince’s name a couple times before they charge in and set the place on fire.

How people in New England say “let’s do this”

by ·Comments Off on House of Usher (1960, Roger Corman)

“That almost looks like an image from a Roger Corman Edgar Allen Poe movie” says the Messiah of Evil audio commentary the first time the lead girl gets to the beach. “Don’t mind if I do,” said I. This was the first of the Price/Poe movies, made the year after A Bucket of Blood, and the color is really nice but they didn’t have their groove down yet, it feels draggy and drawn-out.

Visitor Phil makes a poor first impression, throwing a fit over being asked to remove his shoes indoors, then insists he’s the fiancee of sickly Lenore and is taking her away with him. Her brother Vincent disagrees (a delicate shut-in, this must be the performance the Burton cartoon was based on). Vincent goes on to explain that all his ancestors were evil and so is the house itself, and anyway, whoops, Lenore just died. But the butler slips and mentions catalepsy, so Phil goes barging through the family catacombs trying to rescue his beloved. She’s either driven insane from being buried alive or just wants revenge on her gothy depressive brother, and they go up in flames together.

Ever since Tales of Terror I’m collecting shots of Price being throttled in front of fire:

Phil was Mark Damon, who went on to exec-produce Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, and Lenore would guest-star on TV’s Batman. The butler is Harry Ellerbe of The Haunted Palace, which also has Elisha Cook Jr., so could’ve been an equally smart double-feature with Messiah of Evil.

Phil, having a foggy dream that used up the movie’s entire dry ice budget:

by ·Comments Off on Theater of Blood (1973, Douglas Hickox)

RIP Anthony Hickox – on the day he died, I watched a film by his father. Vincent Price is in disguise as a fake cop, not helping some housing bigwig evict murderous squatters. Turns out Price is back from the near-grave, having suicided in front of the critics association after losing an acting award, rescued by cartoonish winos and become their king. Daughter Diana Rigg handles his above-ground affairs while Price contrives new ways to kill his tormentors (beheading in sleep, being fed their own beloved dog on a fake game-show set) in connection with his Shakespeare roles. They don’t necessarily deserve to die for thinking Price is a cheesy actor, but for other reasons, they mostly do. In fact it’s annoying that the boring critic Ian Hendry gets to survive, but I can’t stay mad at a movie that stages a swordfight on trampolines.

I forget which Shakespeare play this was:

by ·Comments Off on The Raven (1963, Roger Corman)

Corman the year after The Intruder and Tales of Terror, same year as X, lightens things up with a very silly Poe comedy. Based on the opening poem and magician Vincent Price casually drawing with light in his living room, you don’t get a sense of the movie’s tone, but as soon as the raven transforms into Peter Lorre you know what you’re in for.

Adventurers Price, Lorre, and their kids Jack Nicholson and Olive Sturgess:

Rival magician Boris Karloff has got the traitor Lenore (Hazel Court), and speaking of traitors, Lorre has been sent to retrieve Price by claiming to be in trouble. There’s a henchman named Grimes; Price zaps his brains with magic finger-bolts. Lorre gets turned into goo during the ensuing magician’s duel, I think the kids survive, and Price goes back to his happy place: giving soliloquies to birds.

Price and the gang are all good but the real MVP is the trained raven:

by ·Comments Off on Laura (1944, Otto Preminger)

Laura is Ghost and Mrs. Muir star Gene Tierney, and she is dead. Detective Dana Andrews (moving up from playing the mob guy in Ball of Fire) is the detective, inviting Laura’s friend Clifton Webb to join the investigation since he’s a writer who loves murder cases. Prickly gossip columnists make good movie characters. Our chief suspect is Laura’s fiancee Vincent Price, but Dana keeps up the heat (incl. some weird tactics: one time he gets everyone over to drink cheap whisky then dismisses them a minute later). Laura turns out to be alive, a friend of hers having been shotgunned in the face and presumed to be her, and at her still-alive party, jealous Webb is outed as the killer.

“Dames are always pulling a switch on you.” I like Andrews – he has an interesting face, but he underplays hard in this. He’s better than Dorothy Adams as Housekeeper Bessie, who must’ve improved by the time she appeared in The Killing, since I don’t remember anyone derailing that movie like this. It’s one of those perfect-looking 40’s films – besides all the great closeups and composed shots there’s such smooth camera movement.

by ·Comments Off on Witchfinder General (1968, Michael Reeves)

This was pretty good, and less than half the length of Woodlands Dark & Days Bewitched, which I watched as an extended intro. After his men and horses died with bright red paint for blood, romantic lead Ian Ogilvy (Puppet Master 5 and a Peter Cushing haunted junk shop movie called From Beyond the Grave) returns home to marry his beloved Sara (Hilary Dwyer, who’d return to Vincent Price and witches in Cry of the Banshee) with the blessing of her preacher dad. Meanwhile, Vincent Price is going from town to town with his brute beardo torturer sidekick Robert Russell (of the pre-Revenant Man in the Wilderness) getting paid for ferreting out witches, who are drowned using the Monty Python & The Holy Grail technique or burned or whatever’s convenient.

Villains:

Next time Ian is away, the witchfinders roll into town. Price’s game is to get cash and get hot women. Sara agrees to sleep with him for a time, but he drowns her dad and brands her a witch, and Ian forgives her (weird for a dude in a period film) then sets to hunting the hunters. Price is on the outs with Beardo and has to hire a substitute torturer in the next town, finally gets beaten to death when Ian catches up.

Appreciate that the townspeople left her alone except to enter her house with ladders and put up this witch sign like a happy birthday banner:

Reeves and DP John Coquillon (soon to join Peckinpah) acquit themselves nicely, with a lotta zooms, some nicely framed closeups, a real cool water-to-fire transition. The sound editor however had a minute of anguished cries and kept looping them.

by ·Comments Off on World of Tomorrow 3 & Stump the Guesser

World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime (2020, Don Hertzfeldt)

Hertzfeldt comes up with his biggest horror yet: embedded-HUD popup ads. A future Emily backup clone contacts a past David and sends him on a disfiguring journey to retrieve secret messages about the clandestine between-time assassinations of various Davids by other Davids. It’s twisty! And excellent, and full of more wonderful quotes, and I’ll be watching these forever.

–
Stump the Guesser (2020, Maddin/Johnson/Johnson)

The Odenkirk-looking Guesser (The Editor from The Editor) is renowned for his abilities, but when he runs out of guessing milk, things go bad and his guessing license is revoked. But during this time he falls in love with his long-lost sister, spends some time scientifically disproving theories of heredity in order to marry her, but things go badly at the end when he has to guess which door she’s behind. Some fun leaps of logic and distorted visuals here, but I wasn’t feeling it as much as other Maddin films.

–
Accounting for some other things watched recently… The Mads from MST3K have been doing monthly live shows. I checked out Glen or Glenda, a movie that’s so busy explaining itself that it never gets to the movie, and told Neil:

That was… really fun. That’s the most I’ve enjoyed a MST3K-related thing since the end of the sci-fi channel years. I don’t know if it’s because of their obvious affection for the material, or if I’m just in the right mood. I’d never seen the feature either – shame on me, after digging the Tim Burton version for 25 years now (oh you just tried to watch it, is it cringey now? Is it Johnny Depp’s fault?) and the Mads nailed it in their intro when they said this movie has everything, but it also has nothing.

Next was The Tingler, which I already just barely remember (also explainy, features Vincent Price)… then the truly baffling, tensionless version of The Most Dangerous Game called Walk The Dark Street. I think the guy from The Rifleman played the baddie. Then some shorts I should track and name, but am not gonna.

–
Hannah Gadsby’s Douglas is her stand-up comedy special to follow Nanette, which was the special to end stand-up comedy, and yet she pulls off the follow-up by creating another perfectly-constructed show and this time being breathtakingly funny. That sounds like a cliche, but I had to pause the show to catch my breath.

And Katy and I watched something called Australia: Land of Parrots, which is everything you’d dream it would be, and I should just play it on a loop.

by ·Comments Off on The Invisible Man Returns (1940, Joe May)

I thought I’d be a clever boy and watch the 2020 remake followed by the 1940 sequel and see which is better. Neither really holds a candle to the James Whale movie, but remake definitely has the edge over this clunky, cheapie sequel. As far as German directors who worked with their wives, directed versions of The Indian Tomb, and emigrated to the USA in 1933 go, I prefer Lang – who made his own sequel with the word “Return” in the title this same year. Fellow German Curt Siodmak (Robert’s idiot brother) was beginning his Hollywood writing career, having wowed his home country with classics like F.P. 1 Doesn’t Answer.

Nan Grey (a soft-voiced automaton) was supposed to marry a very young Vincent Price (a full decade before The Baron of Arizona), but he’s inconveniently on death row because he killed his brother… or DID he?? (he did not). Fortunately, Price is friends with another man with a dead brother – O.G. I.M.’s bro Frank (John Sutton would also appear in Return of The Fly). Frank, not a great scientist (he lets cigar-smoking cops into his chemical lab), turns Price invisible to spring him from prison, then hopes he’ll find a cure before Vince goes mad (the movie lets this drop, Vince never starts slipping). So this time the girl’s in on the plan and the invisible man’s a good guy – kinda anticlimactic as far as horror sequels go.

I.M. sits down for a nice meal with his girl and his brother’s killer:

Cedric Hardwicke (Hitchcock’s Suspicion) likes Nan and is sadly obvious about it, seems so glad to have Vince out of the way that you almost suspect him of having murdered the brother, ah, of course he did, as Vince learns after playfully tormenting a drunk whom Cedric confided in. Movie is extremely British, and plods along… the dialogue obvious, the invisibility effects good but some other filmmaking techniques lacking (they have animals “die” by freezing the picture, a non-barking dog is overdubbed by a very-barking dog). Vince kills the killer and I suppose nobody can prove it was him, then gets his body back.

Mouseover to watch a guinea pig get visible:
image

by ·Comments Off on Last Man on Earth (1964, Ubaldo Ragona & Sidney Salkow)

This has a decent reputation, and is based on an acclaimed novel, so maybe I was just in a mood – I found it weak, clunky, unconvincing in every way. Fun in theory to watch a tormented Vincent Price (same year as Masque of the Red Death) as the sole survivor in a world overrun by zombies, searching for other uninfected humans by day, trying to ignore the monsters yelling his name outside the house all night. I’m gonna blame Addams Family director Salkow and his mysterious Italian codirector for the clunkiness.

Price narrates, and shows us his lost family in flashback, eventually locates “survivor” Ruth, who turns out to be a zombie spy sent to flush him out. This is four years before Living Dead, so I shouldn’t call them zombies, but they’re ex-humans who only need to dispose of Price in order to form a completely ex-human society. This was remade with Charlton Heston (The Omega Man), then Will Smith (I Am Legend) – maybe fourth time’s the charm.

Oh dear, it’s almost Christmas and I’m still catching up with SHOCKtober movies…