John Rozum's Blog, page 62

31 Days of Halloween - Day 19

Ida Lupino

31 Days of Halloween - Day 18 - Movie 2

Baron Boris von Frankenstein (Boris Karloff) creates the means of ultimate destruction and summons all of earth's monsters (except one) to his island castle in order to announce his discovery and his retirement as leader of the Worldwide Organization of Monsters, a role he plans to pass on to his clueless, human, nephew Felix. This leads to a number of the monsters and Frankenstein's assistant, Francesca, scheming to get their hands on the secret formula for themselves.

Mad Monster Party (1967) was created by the same people that brought us Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and other beloved holiday classics. Like Rudolph, Mad Monster Party was created using stop motion animation on miniature sets with characters designed by Jack Davis. There are also a number of musical numbers.

Unlike Rudolph, and most of the other Rankin/Bass classics, Mad Monster Party has never won me over. I love stop motion animation and think it's a perfect choice for this film. I love the character designs and the sets too. I just think the characters themselves and the story (written by Harvey Kurtzman and Len Korobkin) are a bit flat and uninteresting, especially for a feature length movie that was clearly padded out to extend its running time with several scenes in the middle that serve no other purpose. This is similar to my reaction to A Nightmare Before Christmas. Both of these movies feature lots of things that appeal to me and I feel that I should love them, but I don't. The biggest problem here is that Felix is such an unlikable dweeb that it's hard to root for him and harder to believe in the romance that develops between him and Francesca.

I'm a big fan of Rankin/Bass, but as much as I want to love this movie, it just doesn't do much for me beyond the visuals.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 18 - Movie 1

Andy (Alex Vincent) receives a "Good Guy" doll named Chucky for his sixth birthday little knowing that his new best friend is really the soul of a voodoo practicing serial killer (Brad Dourif) inhabiting the doll until he can transfer his soul to the first person he revealed himself to in this form -- Andy.

I haven't seen Child's Play (1988) since it's opening weekend and I don't think I've ever seen any of the sequels. On its own, this film holds up really well. It maintains a sense of logic that is absent from many genre films these days and the suspense isn't built upon people being stupid. In fact a few characters catch on the what's going on pretty quickly, but how to convince anyone who can do anything that a living killer doll is responsible for a pair of violent crimes which are being attributed to Andy. The film really revolves around the relationship between lonely Andy and his mother, and Andy and Chucky instead of a gimmick, which makes almost heartbreaking when Andy realizes that Chucky never really was his friend to the end.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 18

Lillian Wells

31 Days of Halloween - Day 17 - Movie 2

After the still birth of their third child, a couple (Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard) decide to adopt nine-year old Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) an adorable, polite and precocious child hiding a dangerous secret which tears her new family apart.

Orphan (2009) is one of those movies that depends on characters acting stupidly in order to sustain its running time. It also chalks up a lot of obvious creepy bad seed child moments that don't challenge the audience either. In spite of all of that, I actually enjoyed this movie quite a bit. The adult characters are all played by very talented actors, but it's really Isabelle Fuhrman and Aryana Engineer as the younger, deaf daughter, Max, who make this movie worth watching. Not only do they both give outstanding performances, but their onscreen relationship is what holds the whole movie together and makes what otherwise would have been a completely mundane movie rise above it's clichés into something that kept me, at least, engaged throughout.


 

31 Days of Halloween - Day 17 - Movie 1

Thirteen-year old Lila (Cheryl Smith) the beloved singer in a church, receives a letter from a woman named Lemora (Lesley Gilb) telling her that she needs to come visit her gangster father before he dies. Lila leaves the reverend she lives with to do so, because she feels it's the good Christian thing to do. Her trip is like one long weird fairy tale journey into the haunted forest, or through the underworld. The town where she needs to catch her bus is populated by the dregs of human society, and the bus is meant for her alone. The bus is assaulted along the way by strange, formerly human creatures. From there Lila is dropped into the hands of witches and vampires including a batch of creepy undead children. Lemora is an odd, distant, cold, beauty like one of Disney's evil queens by way of Dracula's daughter, and her interactions with Lila are a predatory lesbian seduction. Each time Lila's will is tested, she takes strength in her beliefs as a Christian to turn away from sin, leading one to suspect that this movie is really a cautionary tale for teenagers thinking of running away from home made by a religious organization. That is until the end of the movie.

Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1973) is an odd movie. It's pretty amateurish in its production, screenwriting, and much of its acting, but it never seems laughable. In fact it's really compelling to watch. The various creatures on screen have pretty rough make-up, so that I couldn't honestly tell you how many different types of monsters there are. There could be vampires, werewolves, and whatever those things were that attacked the bus, or they could all be vampires. Instead of being a detriment, this is a real strength. The no frills make-up seem to make these creatures a bit disturbing, as does the choice of sound effects applied to them to create their growling and snarling. Likewise, the vampire children, who look like normal kids, only their laughter is too loud and obviously not coming from them, making it far creepier. The one touch to make the kids physically monstrous is a nice surprise, and not over the top. Lesley Gilb as Lemora is the best part of the movie. There's a very quiet stillness to her predatory role, making her seem like a spider slowly trying to draw her prey across her web to where she can snatch it. She never even seems to blink, adding a further hypnotic element to her performance.

I think people will either love, or hate this movie, but it will stick with them either way.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 17

Betty Grable

31 Days of Halloween - Day 16 - Movie 2

Hammer tackles the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960), in which the obsessed scientist played by Paul Massie uncovers a means of unleashing his inner dark side in the form of Mr. Hyde (also Paul Massie).

Hammer played against expectations by making Jekyll the hirsute unattractive one and Hyde the clean cut handsome one. While Hyde is a loathsome, sadistic, sociopathic, hedonist and completely unlikable,   Jekyll's no one to root for either. He cares nothing for anyone except his experiments. His inattention to his wife has driven her into the arms of his alleged friend, Paul Allen (nicely played by Christopher Lee) who also sponges off Jekyll's generosity, using the scientist to pay off his own huge gambling debts. There are no characters to sympathize with, or root for here. The bulk of the supporting characters are criminals, drunks, prostitutes, and self centered hedonists like Hyde, including a young Oliver Reed.

Terrence Fisher's direction is up to his usual high standard with nice use of color and staging that takes advantage of the depth of the sets by using foreground, middle ground and background to tell the story. Unfortunately all of the colorful Can-Can girls and other visual spectacle cannot elevate this movie beyond a well made curiosity. Attempts at suggesting a love story, and setting up a tragedy are wasted because the love is between back stabbing adulterers, and tragedy befalls characters who seem to deserve what they get.  The problem really comes down to neither of Dr. Jekyll's two faces being part of a character we care about.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 16 - Movie 1

On her 21st birthday, Janet (Gloria Talbott) visits her benefactor (Arthur Shields) and learns that she's the daughter of the infamous Dr. Jekyll, and that his lycanthropy might be hereditary. She then begins to experience strange dreams in which a feral version of herself is slaying people who are found dead the next day. She becomes more and more troubled, and the locals more and more determined to destroy her. Only her fiancé (John Agar) believes her innocent and must find out the truth before it's too late.

There are a number of goofy elements to this film, and it's six day shooting schedule kept this from becoming a masterpiece, but Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957) has a few things going for it. Director, Edgar G. Ulmer brings plenty of strong visuals to the film from fog shrouded woods and mansions to Janet's weird dreams. Gloria Talbott also turns in her best performance aside from her outstanding performance in I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) as a woman falling apart from the strain of wondering if she changes into a killer monster at night. Bewildering is John Agar's striped jacket which makes him look like he should be selling ice cream.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 16

Dusty Anderson, 1945.