Son of Classic Horror Films (50s & 60s)

[Space Cop The Dandy Find all posts View Profile Close Space Cop]

Witchfinder General (1968)...A chilling and morbid tale, but absolutely worth seeing.

That IS a good one. I actually saw it on blu-ray at the convention I just got back from and considered it, but it didn't quite make the cut. There were just too many good movies to get all I wanted.

[Trey Strain Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Trey Strain]

That IS a good one. I actually saw it on blu-ray at the convention I just got back from and considered it, but it didn't quite make the cut. There were just too many good movies to get all I wanted.

That is good.

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

The Mummy (1959)

"Seems I've spent the better part of my life amongst the dead."

At long last, I watch for the second time the first Mummy film that I ever saw. I caught this on TV as a kid, and it's still pretty enjoyable now that I'm an adult.

I like that Hammer chose the story of Kharis and Ananka over Imhotep because it gives those characters a chance to be refreshed and improved, rather than left to wallow in a series of increasingly-weak sequels. Those characters didn't get the worst treatment, but they deserved better than the dragged-out rehashing Universal gave them.

Anyway, Hammer takes things back to the mystique-laden 1890s, specifically 1895, and has yet another fez-wearing-priest-of-Karnak-named-Bey (played by George Pastell) warn two archeologists (Felix Aylmer and Raymond Huntley) that they'll die if they break into the tomb of Princess Yvonne Furneaux -- I mean, Princess Ananka. As usual. I can't help but feel that Hammer (specifically Jimmy Sangster, who did the screenplay) missed a chance to have a great argument between Aylmer and Pastell about the difference between graverobbing for the sake of personal gain and gravesite unearthing for the sake of historical preservation, but c'est-le vie.

Gotta love the sand-pressure traps in those old tombs, and when Aylmer removes the Scroll of Life, I had a flashback to Valley of the Pharaohs.

I'm kind of conflicted about Peter Cushing with not-old-man hair color, playing Aylmer's son. I mean, with dyed hair, it at least looks plausible, but the dude is still visibly old enough to be his brother instead of his progeny (then again, the English did marry 13-year-old girls to 40-year-old men in some cases). As is often for him, Cushing does a solid job overall, and I have to say I was surprised when he rolled over the desk and did a leaping impalement of Lee.

I also (somewhat) enjoyed his banter with Pastell over the nature of buried persons being dug up and religion in general, though I honestly feel like the argument was hamstrung specifically because Cushing's character goes there to bait Pastell's character, and that he does not himself believe half of what he's saying.

Lee was great as Kharis/The Mummy. He's this huge, unrelenting force, but he isn't indestructible: contrary to earlier films, he's somewhat vulnerable to bullets, because he can't regenerate. Very ancient and monolithic. And as Kharis, well, he had more limited screentime but he still did a decent job during the flashbacks.

One thing I noticed was that of the two drunk workers who drove the wagon, one of them was absolutely the same guy who says "Strange business" to Dr. Edelmann in House of Dracula (it's either Harold Goodwin or Denis Shaw, but IMDB comes up short on giving accurate enough credit to tell).

Seeing this reminds me I need to start building a proper Hammer collection. Next us is Mummy's Shroud, I think.

[Space Cop The Dandy Find all posts View Profile Close Space Cop]

The Mummy (1959) ...

That is a good one. Although, I find their Dracula more fun, The Mummy is probably the superior production.

. . . Seeing this reminds me I need to start building a proper Hammer collection. . .

Too bad they're a b***h to collect. There's several collected editions of the DVDs, but with no logical grouping (thematically* or chronologically). I'd have finished up the Dracula movies (and probably Frankenstein and the Mummy too) if they just released them in sets like Universal.



*There is, iirc, one Dracula set of 4, but it's not the whole series and I think there's overlap with at least one other box set.

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

The Mummy's Shroud (1967)

"Only he who holds the shroud can speak the words of death!"

I was rather looking forward to this, because it's one of the last Mummy films I'm interested in seeing (I don't intend to watch all of the Hammer Mummy line, even if there aren't that many of them). In comparison to the Cushing/Lee version, this feels a little underwhelming.

I did like the backstory involving Prem and Kah-to-Bey, that was pretty good. The douchebag financier (John Phillips) was fairly well acted, but his eyes were weird as hell, always one eyebrow raised and the other squinting, it became an amusement and a distraction. He also got the same death as that one dude in Friday the 13th Part III, and it's funny I should mention that, because the archeologists in the beginning mention they set out on that same date for the dig.

Michael Ripper was completely different than I was used to seeing him. Before I always saw him as a regular joe character, but here he's bookish and mousey. He does get a hella-brutal death though, and right after straight-up comic relief happens to him.

Claire (Maggie Kimberly) was a weird character. She has this premonition sense that guides the party, but she isn't a reincarnation of any Ancient Egyptian character (which precludes her from the oft-used romancing-the-Mummy plot device).

On Claire's note, I find it kind of weird that the kill-happy fortune teller (Catherine Lacey) would just abruptly help her. Yeah, she gives her the card in the hotel, but I assumed that was to lure her in like she did with Andre Morell (the janitor finding his body was another funny-yet-scary moment). There's no real explanation for her suddenly betraying her murderous son-partner, she just goes from laughing her ass off as a crippled old man gets murdered right in front of her to telling a target on her hit-list how to escape certain death.

I did get a laugh out of the inspector (Richard Warner) just shooting the villain Hasmid (Roger Delgado). Such a no-nonsense approach.

The death scene for the Mummy Prem (Dickie Owen as Prem, Eddie Powell as the Mummy) was perhaps the best the character has ever had, no joke. Those were some brilliant effects designs, and I'm sure audiences were bowled over watching it for the first time on the big screen.

Overall worth checking out, but definitely not the most cohesive of the lot.

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

Them! review

[Trey Strain Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Trey Strain]

Them! was an outstanding movie. I had a link to it posted in the Videos forum a while back.

[Trey Strain Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Trey Strain]

I mentioned in that thread that Walt Disney went to see Them! because he was thinking of casting James Arness as the star of his Davy Crockett mini-series, but he spotted Fess Parker in the movie and decided to cast him instead. The role of Davy Crockett made Parker a star, but Arness got a pretty fair consolation prize by getting the lead in Gunsmoke. I'm sure Parker would have loved to trade places with him. Especially since he disclosed years later that Walt never paid him more than $500 a week, which even in the 1950s was a poor salary for a television and movie star.

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

The Black Scorpion (1957)

"I'm a stowaway!"

Significant volcanic activity in Mexico causes gigantic scorpions to come up from underground caverns and attack ranches. Sealing the crevasse only delays the inevitable climactic battle when the largest scorpion attacks Mexico City.

Not as good as Them!, but still better than expected (and I'm pretty sure it's better than Monster from Green Hell, which I've yet to watch and have on the same disc). The acting is fairly good, you get some decent scenic shots (including some nice architecture at the end), and the stop-motion animation is actually very impressive, with the scorpion's initial attack grabbing a man as he scrambles up a telephone pole, very reminiscent of some of the stuff from King Kong. Later on you even get fights between the scorpions, which only serves to further highlight the animation skills. We also get that great shot of the destroyed patrol car, with the front all ripped open, a pretty good homage to Them!.

While the romantic subplot is expected (gotta let the man take charge, and he needs a woman at his side, of course), it's a little less dated, at least at first. Mara Corday (of Tarantula fame) has a strong presence initially and holds up well enough as the story continues. We also get Carlos Rivas as a strong secondary character (I liked his joke about his dad's marital advice near the end of the film, that was a good character moment).

Overall worth checking out.

[Space Cop The Dandy Find all posts View Profile Close Space Cop]

The Black Scorpion (1957) ...The acting is fairly good, you get some decent scenic shots (including some nice architecture at the end), and the stop-motion animation is actually very impressive, with the scorpion's initial attack grabbing a man as he scrambles up a telephone pole, very reminiscent of some of the stuff from King Kong...

There's a good reason. Willis O'Brien did the stop motion. His final movie actually. The story's mediocre in Scorpion, as you basically say, but the monster stuff is great.

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker Moisture Farmer Find all posts View Profile Close Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

Willis O'Brien was amazing. How many film makers did he inspire with his work?

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

Yeah, I forgot to mention him, but I knew his name was familiar.

I also forgot to mention how god-awful the scorpions' face(s) looked during the close-ups. I guess they wanted to give it a more "humanly demonic" look or something because even grown to enormous size, they wouldn't resemble that (and the drool was just silly).

[Space Cop The Dandy Find all posts View Profile Close Space Cop]

Willis O'Brien was amazing. How many film makers did he inspire with his work?

Probably more than we can guess. There's the obvious thing of the many, many spfx guys who went into the business because of O'Brien,* the people who probably didn't even know his name but were sparked by Kong, and then there's the second-hand effect like the many, many who went into it because of Harryhausen who idolized and apprenticed under O'Brien.

*When I met Tom Sullivan, who did the spfx for Evil Dead, we got to chat and despite the fact he would've been a young child when O'Brien died, he whole-heartedly admitted that he wanted to go into movies because of the stop-motion Kong. Who would guess that?

Yeah, I forgot to mention him, but I knew his name was familiar.

I also forgot to mention how god-awful the scorpions' face(s) looked during the close-ups. I guess they wanted to give it a more "humanly demonic" look or something because even grown to enormous size, they wouldn't resemble that (and the drool was just silly).

Yeah, there are multiple spfx credits on that film. I don't know for sure, but I'd be willing to bet that O'Brien did not do those close-up models. They're not even on the same general level.

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker Moisture Farmer Find all posts View Profile Close Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

You got to meet Tom Sullivan? That's so cool.

[Space Cop The Dandy Find all posts View Profile Close Space Cop]

You got to meet Tom Sullivan? That's so cool.

Yeah, at the first Monster Mania I went to. He was real personable, even chatty. He signed my Evil Dead DVD (the OOP Book-of-the-Dead edition) and a mini-poster of weapon designs and each time drew something different on them.
I think because we talked about something other than ED (or because I was a in a wheelchair) he even remembered me later in the con and we chatted again (about The Ring, IIRC) while waiting for the room to clear for his talk.