John Rozum's Blog, page 59

31 Days of Halloween - Day 29

June Collyer

31 Days of Halloween - Day 28 - Movie 2

A writer travels to a Caribbean island in search of material for his next novel and stumbles across a scientist allegedly working on a cure for cancer but really creating an army of zombies.

I Eat Your Skin (1964) contains nothing as lurid as the title would suggest. There's one beheading in the movie, and a lot of hijinks with the protagonist unscrupulously going from one woman to the next while avoiding jilted husbands. The scenes of horror are pretty sparse, but the zombies themselves are pretty eerie looking. It's not really worth seeking out, but makes for a passable late night, or rainy Sunday afternoon viewing.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 28 - Movie 1

A Jazz Pianist living on an island is visited by an ex flame who will do anything to keep him from marrying his new beau. To prevent this, he lets her fall to her death from the top of a lighthouse rather than save her. Her body vanishes, but her ghost sticks around to torment him, or is it just his guilty conscience driving him mad and compelling him to commit more horrible acts.

Tormented (1960) is a bit on the goofy side and feels a bit like a William Castle movie without the built in gimmick. It was actually the work of Bert I. Gordon who took a break from his obsession with giant people and monsters to make this film. Richard Carlson stars in a role that's a real divergent from his usual casting as the heroic scientist. Here he's driven to distraction by ghostly visitations and a pair of witnesses that force him into committing more direct means of murder. Overall this movie is pretty fun.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 28

Judy Garland

31 Days of Halloween - Day 27 - Movie 2

The Munsters find themselves the targets of a criminal investigation when a series of crimes are committed by the wax figures, which are really robots, including replicas of the Munsters.


The Munsters Revenge (1981) was a reunion tv movie which reuinted Fred Gwynne, Yvonne De Carlo, and Al Lewis, but gave us a new Marilyn and a kid who looks like Juice Ortiz from Sons of Anarchy as the new Eddie. Within just a few minutes you could tell how bad this movie was going to be by the lameness of the jokes. The jokes were always pretty corny on the original television series, but they had an endearing charm to them and were actually funny on occasion. Not so here. This movie is just sub par all the way through. Sid Ceasar is terrible as the mastermind behind the robots which are actors wearing various Don Post masks, and a pretty great Creature from the Black Lagoon suit. The best feature is that the Wolfman sounds like Turu, the pterodactyl from Jonny Quest, also the vocalization of half the monsters on Space Ghost, The Herculoids, and the like. The make-up on the Munsters is not nearly as good as it was in the tv series, or previous movie, and no amount of it could hide how much Yvonne De Carlo had aged in the nearly twenty years since she'd last played Lily. We do get to meet a new member of the Munster family; Cousin Phantom of the Opera. That's what they really call him. He's an annoying one note character whose singing is constantly shattering nearby glass. It was pretty painful for me to see the Munsters brought so low in this movie. I recommend staying away from it.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 27 - Movie 1

The Munsters learn that they have inherited a manor in England and Herman, the title of Lord Munster. Unfortunately, the English side of the family, not happy with this arrangement, initailly determine to frighten the American Munsters away, then when that fails, to kill them. There's also an automobile race.

Munster Go Home (1966) is a theatrical motion picture that would show the world the Munsters in color (which is jarring, and really threw me as a kid). The movie is essentially an episode of the tv series on a grander scale. The comedy is the same, which means lots of corny material, but also some really fun stuff too. The anticipation of how the English Munsters' plan to frighten their American relatives out of the spooky manor backfiring leads into a satisfying play of spookshow antics which the Munsters find delightful and welcoming instead of frightening. This movie is a lot of fun and would make a nice Halloween double feature with The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.



 

31 Days of Halloween - Day 27

Vera Ellen

31 Days of Halloween - Day 26 - Movie 2

Two brothers (William Shatner, Tom Skerritt) try to bring down the satanic cult led by Jonathan Corbis (Ernest Borgnine) who has been tormenting their family for generations, determined to get his hands on a book in their possession which will increase his power.

I decided it was time to revisit a film from my childhood. More often than not this turns out to be a terrible mistake, but I actually really liked The Devil's Rain (1975), probably more than I did as a kid. Yes, there are some hoaky bits, but the pace of this movie is phenomenal. It really throws you into the story with no preparation and no explanation for anything going on, but it's never hard to grasp onto. It even throws some startling imagery on the screen really quickly, with the figure of a melting, eyeless man disolving in the rain. The eyeless people and melting flesh is a recurring visual motif in this film which features rather nice make-up effects and some decent special effects depicting the souls of Corbis' converts within a large windowed jar. It's not a classic, but it's certainly a lot of fun.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 26 - Movie 1

A trio of kidnappers, out to deliver a pair of hostages to their cruel boss, take a wrong turn down a road that they can't seem to get off of. Things start to go wrong and get really strange for them as their situation grows increasingly desperate.

Devil's Mile (2014) is a film with very little substance pretending to be something more fulfilling. It has some nice moments, but far more stretches of little interest. The characters aren't particularly engaging and presented as such despicable creatures that it's not possible to empathize with them in their plight. The kidnapped women aren't really presented as anything, so you often forget about them entirely. The twist at the end is also flimsy and clearly meant to be mind blowing, but isn't, and adds nothing to a movie very much in need something to give it some heft. It was nice to see the crew of Rue Morgue magazine in a cameo though.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 26

Colleen Moore