Chadwick H. Saxelid's Blog: Ghoulies, Ghosties, and Long-Leggedy Beasties, page 37

Isle of the Dead (1945) / Zombies on Broadway (1945) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - March 6, 1946
Twenty or so years ago, more or less, I purchased a DVD box set of the horror films Val Lewton produced for RKO. I watched them all, of course, but some lodged in my memory and others did not. Isle of the Dead is one of the latter.

Citing Arnold Böcklin's painting The Isle of the Dead as its inspiration (the painting is used as a backdrop for the film's opening title) and namesake, Isle of the Dead was directed by frequent Lewton collaborator Mark Robson.

While Robson had a lengthy directing career filled with all manner of notable titles, I knew him best as the director of Earthquake (1974).

The second half of this RKO first run double-bill is Zombies on Broadway, which was the studio's attempt at an Abbott and Costello style comedy. I have not seen it. But... John Stanley, in his book Revenge of the Creature Features Movie Guide, said, "Taken as a period piece, it is quite funny..." I'll take his word for it.

But I did learn a couple of interesting tidbits about the film. One being that Darby Jones, whose zombified countenance provided memorable nightmare fuel in Lewton's 1943 production I Walked with a Zombie, played one of the zombies commanded by the mad scientist Paul Renault (Bela Lugosi, of course). Another being that the film was directed by Gordon Douglas, who helmed the classic giant monster movie THEM! (1954).

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage [L'uccello dalle Piume di Cristallo] (1970) - Soundtrack

There was a healthy stretch of Christmas mornings wherein I was gifted with a plethora of horror, science fiction, and fantasy stuff. One such item was the soundtrack album for The Bird with the Crystal Plumage released by Cerberus Records in 1981. I still have that album, in fact.

But today's subject will be this expanded release from Cinevox, which presents the complete score in stereo, for the very first time.

The liner notes for the Cerberus album describe Morricone's score as "innovative and effective," to which I agree. The notes also point out how the score "is more modern in contrast to what was the more conventional 'gothic' style [of the time]" and "laced with ominous sighs and the constricted breaths of fear."

About that latter example. Both albums feature a one minute and twenty-or-so second(s) long track titled The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, which features a woman's 'constricted' gasps of fear and desperation, underplayed by a thumping percussion that starts off slow, but gradually quickens.

While I can understand what Morricone was attempting to achieve, that does not prevent me from thinking the track sounds less like a woman in duress and more like a woman, um, working herself up to a rather satisfying la petite mort.

If you know I what I mean, and I think you do. 

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #29

Josh's Report
It was the morning of their second day in the forested wilderness. Half-asleep, Josh commented that he was kept awake during the night by strange sounds coming from outside the tent. "You heard noises last night?" asked Heather. "It was like there were two separate noises coming from two layers of space over here," explained Josh, still in his bad. "One of them could have possibly been an owl, but the other was a cackling. It was a total cackling." 

The Godsend (1980) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - March 5, 1980
I find it rather amusing that I have a far stronger memory of seeing Bernard Taylor's source novel in the spinner racks or shelves of our local retailers than of this film adaptation's theatrical release at our local theater.

Like yesterday's The Bad Seed, The Godsend is a gap in my reading and viewing that may or may not ever be filled in.

John Stanley's review of the film in his Revenge of the Creature Features Movie Guide describes The Godsend as "a fair British horror film focusing on psychological aspects rather than grisly details." That sounds promising. Maybe I should watch this on a double-bill with Cathy's Curse? Just a thought.

I also pulled Grady Hendrix's Paperbacks from Hell off my TBR mountain and gave it a thumb through, hoping there might be something to share. Nope. The paperback cover is shown without zero comment or critique. So it goes.

Alien (1979) - Trading Card #26

This picture is less "A Pensive Kane" and more a candid of an actor on the film set, either resting or preparing for another take, considering there is a visible crew member behind him. 

The Bad Seed - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - March 4, 1956
The Bad Seed is a long neglected gap in my reading and viewing to do list that I really need to get around to closing, some day. 
I did grow up with an awareness that William March's novel existed, because I would see it at the local bookstores on occasion. Ditto for the film adaptation of this stage adaptation by Maxwell Anderson of March's novel.

I can also hope that the play gets a revival somewhere some day. Who knows. I might even watch the 1985 and 2018 remakes. Maybe. Maybe not. How is that for decisive?

Big Trouble in Little China (1986) - Soundtrack

I was every bit as happy as Jack Burton was overly confident when La-La Land Records released this expanded upgrade of John Carpenter and Alan Howarth's score for Big Trouble in Little China. No more would I have make do with the truncated and paltry 45 minutes of music that had been released by Enigma Records, way back in 1986.

Now I have the complete score and what a score it is...

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #28

Coffin Rock
Heather's narration (continued): "On each man's sun-bleached face was inscribed indecipherable writing, cut into his flesh with eerie precision. The (rescuers), still entranced by the horror of what had happened, left the scene to find the sheriff, and did not sketch the writing and did not remove the bodies from the rock. Upon return, the bodies and had been removed by persons unknown. The search party claimed that the stench of death was still thick, and whoever had taken the bodies had done so in a matter of hours." 

The Mangler (1995) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - March 3, 1995
I remember studying one of the newspaper ads for The Mangler with no small degree of incredulity. How did this thing manage to get a theatrical release? By 1995 this kind of stuff was released direct-to-video, not to big screen venues.

Perhaps it was the film's source material. The Mangler is one of my all-time favorite stories from Stephen King's Night Shift anthology, so I knew I would be seeing it. 

Although Tobe Hooper had done an impressive job directing the 1979 Salem's Lot mini-series, his work post The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 wobbled between disappointing, at best, and dire, at worst.

Robert Englund being in the film did not hurt, but it also might not help all the much. While Englund was game for becoming a Vincent Price style horror icon, his on screen charisma could only carry a film like this so far. Hooper would need to bring his A-game, if that were still possible.

Those were all the pluses I saw in the ad. Yet there was one gigantic minus that eclipsed them all and raised my doubt level all the way up to critical. The name Harry Alan Towers.

Towers was an exploitation writer-producer best known for his numerous film adaptations of works by Sax Rohmer, Agatha Christie, Marquis de Sade, and/or Edgar Wallace. He also produced several of the more "notable" films made by the euro-sleaze-exploitation titan Jesus Franco in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Towers earned my eternal distrust by producing the lackluster sleaze-fest Edge of Sanity, which starred a slumming it for the paycheck Anthony Perkins. The friend I was unfortunate enough to see it with can and will attest that I writhed in my seat throughout most of that film's runtime.

So I was a tad suspect of The Mangler.

It is unfortunate that those suspicions proved to be well founded. While there were some things I liked about The Mangler, such as its production design, theatrical to the point of camp tone, and pitch black humor, I thought it dragged horribly. Cut some ten to fifteen minutes, starting with the extraneous, over-the-top, and painfully drawn-out dialogue exchanges between Ted Levine and Daniel Matmor, and maybe, just maybe, this could have become a campy horror hoot drawn from the same horror-comedy vein as HBO's Tales from the Crypt series.

But it was not to be. So it goes.

Big Hero 6 (2014) - Soundtrack

I have little to no comment to make about this collection entry, other than it is an energetic and peppy score that is fun to listen to.