Michael May's Blog, page 154

Nosferatu (1922) on the big screen

A couple of nights ago, the Heights Theater in Columbia Heights screened Nosferatu accompanied by the Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra of Minnesota. I've seen the movie lots of times with lots of different scores, but never on the big screen and never with a live band.

Rats and People is great. The Heights has an awesome organ, so that got used of course, but there was also a string quartet and a percussionist, with a couple of the strings switching out on guitar and theramin. I'll say that last one again. There was a theramin!

The score they played was original music composed specifically for the movie; full of discordant, staccato strings, spooky organ, weird electronics, and measured percussion that counted time and increased tension. I'll be looking for other opportunities to see these guys accompany films.



The film itself is one of my favorite horror movies. It's easily the creepiest adaptation of Dracula I've ever seen and Max Schreck is unbelievably non-human as Count Orlok. There's been so much written about Nosferatu that I don't have much to add to that discussion, but seeing it on the big screen did change my perspective on it a bit.

There are details that I've missed on smaller screens, like the enormous pipe that Harding (sort of the Dr. Seward of Nosferatu) is smoking before he rescues Ellen (the Mina character) from sleepwalking on a balcony rail. I'd also never noticed that Professor Bulwer (Nosferatu's Van Helsing) cries at the end; probably because I've always been focused on the part of the shot that he's crying about. In addition to all that though, it's fascinating to see the characters' faces so much larger than I'd ever seen them before. It made me pay more attention to their performances and gave me a really good look at their makeup. But that's a double-edged sword.

The only frustrating thing about seeing Nosferatu on the big screen is seeing it with an audience, some of whom have never seen the movie before or, deducing from their reactions, any silent movie before. I'm not judging or suggesting there should be any requirements for attending a screening like this, but people come at these films from different places and that means that they react in different ways. For a lot of the audience I was in, that reaction was laughter.

I experienced this last Halloween at screenings of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. There are moments in those films - especially Bride - that are supposed to be funny, but there was also a lot of laughter at things that aren't intended as humorous, but are dated. Styles of acting, lines of dialogue; stuff like that. Matt Zoller Seitz wrote a pretty good post about the reactions of an audience to a recent screening of From Russia With Love. He's a lot angrier about it than I am (and his audience sounds much more rude than mine was), but I can relate to his frustration. It's tough to immerse yourself in a movie you like when people around you are laughing at the monster.

Even more frustrating is that it affected my son's experience with the film. He had a great time, but his opinion of the movie is that it's funny and not at all scary. He's seen silent movies and enjoys them, so he's familiar with that acting style, but the audience's laughter influenced him and got him laughing too. I don't think he would have had that reaction had he been introduced to the movie at home.

But I'm not saying he's wrong. Or even that the rest of my audience is wrong. On the big screen, where you can see every detail of Orlok's face, he can come across as comical. Take this shot for instance.



You can read that a couple of ways. If you're into it, Schreck's expression and movements can seem inhuman and creepy. But if you're not as invested, it can look completely ridiculous, especially when it's blown up to giant size on a movie screen. A benefit of seeing the film on the small screen is that you're not picking up as many details, so there's more mystery, which creates more horror.

So I'm torn. For fans of Nosferatu, seeing it on the big screen is a treat. But if you're hoping to introduce it to someone who's never seen it before, and you want them to think it's scary, find a good print that you can show them at home. Buster Keaton and Douglas Fairbanks are better big screen introductions to silent film.

Mummy Monday | The Mummy's Curse (1944)

Who's In It: Lon Chaney Jr (The Mummy's Tomb), Peter Coe (House of Frankenstein), and Virginia Christine (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?).

What It's About: The final high priest of Arkham (Coe) makes a last ditch effort to recover the mummies of Kharis (Chaney) and Princess Ananka (Christine).

How It Is: So much for the Mummy series getting better with each movie. Looks like Ghost was the pinnacle.

Not that Curse is horrible. From a pure plot standpoint, I like how it continues the saga. The swamp where Kharis disappeared with Ananka in Ghost is being drained, which means that both mummies are able to move again, but they've gotten separated and Kharis has to track down Ananka. Sadly for him, she's got amnesia and he freaks her out. Various people from the swamp community try to protect her, but meet their doom one by one.

There's a different actor playing Ananka this time and the movie doesn't try to explain how she turns beautiful after becoming a withered hag at the end of Ghost. She emerges from the swamp mud in pretty rough shape, but a dip in clean water does wonders not only for her skin, but also her hair and clothing. My No Prize answer for how she becomes gorgeous is that the hag look may have simply been a cocoon effect as Ananka transformed from her reincarnated body (played by Ramsay Ames in Ghost) to her resurrected, original body (played by this movie's Virginia Christine).

One last thing I especially like about Curse is how the high priest doesn't fall in love with anyone this time. He's committed to his mission. Not that that's going to make him any more successful at it. And since this is the last in the series, it sounds like George Zucco doesn't have any more high priests in line after this one.

But even though I like the general story of Curse, everything else about it is a total mess. The continuity is the worst: jumping ahead another 25 years (there was also supposed to be a 30-year gap between Hand and Tomb) so that if The Mummy's Hand takes place in the year it was released, Curse has to take place in 1995! The setting has also inexplicably moved from Massachusetts to Louisiana, where a guy named Cajun Joe has a stereotypical Italian accent for some reason. And finally, it's tough to take the mummy seriously when his shambling has unintentionally comical consequences. There are a couple of goofy moments where he's trying really hard to get someone, but not only do people easily get away, they don't even see the mummy sneaking up behind them as they're leaving. He might as well be snapping his fingers in disappointment at losing them.

Rating: Three out of five promenading, preserved princesses.

The Frankenstein Theory (2013)

Who's In It: Kris Lemche (Ginger Snaps), Heather Stephens (The Forgotten), and Timothy V Murphy (Sons of Anarchy).

What It's About: The descendent (Lemche) of the possible historical inspiration for Victor Frankenstein leads an expedition into the Canadian wilderness to prove that his ancestor really did create a monster and that it still exists.

How It Is: My hatred for found footage movies was overcome by my curiosity about Frankenstein movies. I should have paid more attention to my found footage feelings.

It's not all bad. Shot mostly in Alaska, the scenery is gorgeous. And Murphy is quietly amusing as the grizzled guide who's taking no crap from the young, wise-cracking members of the documentary crew. Other than those two things though, the movie's horrible.

My problem with most found footage movies is that they're all about building tension and very rarely do they pay off. The feeling I always get is that the movies aren't structured that way because they're especially interested in tension for its own sake, but because it's a lot cheaper to just film people walking around, arguing, and looking for things. The mistake these movies make - and The Frankenstein Theory is among the worst of them - is to think that just prolonging the reveal is enough to keep an audience engaged.

In The Frankenstein Theory, none of the characters are the least bit interesting. They're just copies of people from other movies who react to their horror scenario exactly like people always do in these things. I had hopes for Lemche's Jonathan Venkenhein, who not only wants to find the creature, but to befriend it. I'm fascinated by that idea too: what would happen if someone tried to treat Frankenstein's monster with compassion and kindness? But Frankenstein Theory isn't actually interested in that as a theme. It's just another symptom of Venkenhein's possibly insane drive to find the creature. And while I say "possibly insane," the movie's not interested in exploring that either. Maybe Venkenhein is crazy and maybe he isn't. He could be right about the monster, but still be insane. That would be a fascinating character study if the movie was as interested in it as it is in having Venkenhein argue with his crew of cliche, whiny unbelievers.

As bad as the build-up is, the resolution is still disappointing. I might forgive the movie if it had a rewarding conclusion, but not only does it fail to say anything interesting about Frankenstein's monster, it doesn't even offer a good look at him. The image on the poster is a better view of the creature than is ever seen in the film and the reveal of the monster is as murky and unsatisfying as the resolution of The Frankenstein Theory's plot.

Rating: One out of five scenic shacks.

Scream of Fear (1961)

Who's In It: Susan Strasberg (Picnic), Ann Todd (The Paradine Case), and Christopher Lee (Horror of Dracula, The Curse of Frankenstein).

What It's About: A disabled woman named Penny (Strasberg) goes to stay with her father and step-mother (Todd) after her caregiver dies. But though Step-Mom claims that Dad is out of town, Penny keeps seeing his dead body around the estate.

How It Is: Scream of Fear would almost be more thriller than horror, but the reappearing body is pretty darn scary. That's partly because you never know when it's going to turn up, but partly because Fred Johnson just looks very creepy as a corpse.

If it's weren't for that element, the movie would go neatly into the sub-genre of psychological thrillers where the protagonist questions whether she's actually going insane or if someone just wants her to think she is. It's a really good one though, filled with great twists and turns and a fun appearance by Christopher Lee as a sinister doctor who keeps turning up at the estate as a guest. Don't want to say too much, but I highly recommend this one and the less you know going into it the better.

Rating: Four out of five paraplegic people in peril.

Penny Dreadful | "Possession" and "Grand Guignol"

Like “Closer Than Sisters,” “Possession” focuses primarily on Vanessa and Sir Malcolm. It doesn’t dig more into their past though; it questions their future. Whatever has been possessing Vanessa is making a final push to completely take her over, turning the episode into an homage to The Exorcist. All the other main characters are there, but the action is contained to Sir Malcolm’s house where everyone is keeping vigil over an increasingly tortured Vanessa.

I said before that Eva Green is an incredibly game actress and that’s never showcased more than here. It’s hard to watch her performance because she’s so convincing that she’s going through something despicably horrible. How the others react to that though is telling about their characters and makes the episode compelling. For most of them, it's varying flavors of compassion, but Malcolm is the one to watch. He’s determined that Vanessa not die, but Ethan (who’s especially nurturing to Vanessa) questions Malcolm’s motivations. Whatever inhabits Vanessa is also somehow connected to Mina, so if Vanessa dies, Malcolm’s only tether to his daughter is lost.

By the end of the episode, Vanessa is freed of her demon. It’s not entirely clear how that happens, because it involves one of the characters’ displaying a previously hidden ability, but it comes off as intentionally mysterious and I bought it. That leads into “Grand Guignol,” the final episode of the season.

My biggest hope for the season finale was that it would resolve at least one of the character arcs introduced so far. It certainly does that and I kind of don’t want to spoil it, even though I’ve talked freely about the rest of the show so far. What I will say is that Vanessa has been the heart of the season and it’s appropriate and satisfying that her story is the one to get a resolution. And while that’s happening, Victor Frankenstein and Ethan’s stories both reach major turning points that will propel the show into Season Two. It’s a perfect way to wrap things up for the year.

All in all, I've loved Penny Dreadful. The plot lagged in places, but the characters were always enjoyable to watch and spend time with. Very much looking forward to the next season and I may even spring for Showtime to watch it live.

The War of the Worlds: Adapt or Die [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

HG Wells inspired so many branches of the Science Fiction tree: time travel, human-animal hybrids, invisibility, moon men, giant animals, super intelligent animals, and alien invasions. When I skim through The Great Book of Movie Monsters (1983) by Jan Stacy and Ryder Syvertsen, I can identify that at least one third of the films included have Wellsian roots. HG Wells is surely the single most important writer of SF in Hollywood.

That being said, the adaptations of his works have been confused, cheap or downright stupid. Every giant insect drive-in thriller is his legacy as much as objects on strings, giant killer ants chewing up Joan Collins, or men in rubber suits. Not to mention the entire Irwin Allen disaster movie and Godzilla genres. Wells was a great thinker; a controversial social critic, but his films usually come off as silly screamfests.

To my mind, his masterpiece is The War of the Worlds (1898). Wells imagines an invasion of earth by Martians who come in meteor-like canisters that open and produce killing machines on tripod legs and armed with death rays. The narrator journeys through the London landscape, seeing the devastation until the invaders die from earth bacteria. (This is bad Science but Wells was making a comment on Socialism not bacteriology.) This novel, due to its scope, has had fewer adaptations than most: four, not including Orson Welles' famous radio scarefest of 1938 and other media. (The most popular film product is The Invisible Man with twelve.) Destroying all of London (or is it New Jersey?) is a big enterprise, so the low-budget schlock makers have avoided it for the most part.

The first adaptation in film was the 1953 George Pal classic with its saucer-like machines. Garishly brilliant in color, it plays out Wells' novel in a modern setting and philosophically misses the boat with its churchy ending. (Wells must have spun in his grave faster than the Lord of the Dynamos.) An Oscar for special effects proves it typical SF fare in that the effects take center stage, making Gene Barry and Ann Robinson even more forgettable. To my mind, I missed the tripods but understand that flying saucers were all the rage in the 1950s. Pal would have been crazy to use the great stalking machines.

The 1960s and '70s did not produce a new film version. We had the cool, if superhero-sized comic book Amazing Adventures featuring Killraven created Roy Thomas and Neal Adams. This Marvel comic supposed an earth overrun by the Martians and how they would reshape our planet. Even better was the Jeff Wayne musical starring the voice of Richard Burton as the narrator. Wayne leaves the Victorian setting in place with tripods and all, though he did reshape the story a little to create scenes worthy of emotional duets.

The next adaptation on film was the 1988-90 TV series that was begun in the 1970s by George Pal, but took another 10 years to be realized. The Canadian-filmed show starring Jared Martin and Adrian Paul offered a more modern alien invasion. The Martians from 1953 have been sealed up by "the Government" and hidden from the public. Rather than being dead they are actually in suspended animation. Once released they assume the bodies of the terrorists (I didn't know they could do that!) who have stolen and released them. Their plans to take over the world are back on. The themes of government cover-up, UFOs, toxic waste, and terrorism are the flavor of the show rather than Wells, whom they piggybacked rather unnecessarily. Everyone in the first season dies and is replaced (along with the creative team) for a second season that was no more successful. The show was cancelled after two seasons, pretty much guaranteeing nobody would touch the property in the 1990s.

The next adaptation is one of my favorites, despite being reviled by some. This was M Night Shyamalan's Signs (2002) starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix. Shyamalan does something amazing and gets no love for it. First, he does an alien invasion movie without showing a thousand buildings falling down, tripods, or ray guns. Instead, he focuses on one family and how it affects them and only hints at the mayhem and destruction. That alone is amazing. This same technique will be used in Cloverfield (2008) (and receive much more praise).

The second and even better thing he does is to play his own philosophical riff from Wells. One of the strongest themes in the novel is that aliens have come therefore everything we thought was real has changed. How can a world with aliens in it believe in religion? Wells uses the character of the curate to explore these ideas. Shyamalan turns this on its head and actually finds a way to say, yes, religious belief is possible. Though I side with Wells on this personally, I still found Signs a wonderful rebuttal to the curate. I may be the only person on the planet that liked Signs, but as a Wellsian I'd love to see more films like it.

The last adaptation of War of the Worlds was the 2005 Steven Spielberger starring Tom Cruise. Now that it's ten years old I think I can look at it with some perspective. Visually the film is stunning. It also does a good job of being truer to Wells, having the Martians injecting human blood directly into their veins and such details, while at the same time being faithful to the New Jersey version of Welles and Pal. It uses the tripods, which is a big thumbs up from me. There were some justifiable criticisms about Cruise being able to drive from New Jersey to Boston without running into car jams. I could make the same criticism about a lot of recent disaster films too. Tim Robbins is great as a combination of the Artillery man and the curate. Cruise and Miranda Otto are able to bring some romantic energy to the tale, most likely inspired by Jeff Wayne's rock opera. Even Wells was not much for romance in his novel.

This film is likely to be the last for a while since it featured cutting edge special effects that haven't dated much. When CGI advances to the point where it can do something more, then perhaps we will get a new version. My personal hope is that the BBC does an incredibly faithful version as they did with The Day of the Triffids in 1981. I'd love to see the Victorian setting with really good CGI. John Wyndham's pal and fellow Wellsian, John Christopher's Tripods series would also be up for a remake with a good special effects budget. Until then, we'll put up with the schlock. Syfy's Sharknado Meets the Martians, anyone?

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Mummy Monday | The Mummy's Ghost (1944)

Who’s In It: Lon Chaney Jr (The Wolf Man, The Mummy’s Tomb), John Carradine (House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula), Robert Lowery (Batman and Robin serial), Ramsay Ames (Calling Dr. Death), and George Zucco (House of Frankenstein, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes).

What It’s About: The new high priest of Arkham (Carradine) is tasked with returning the mummies of Princess Ananka and Kharis from the United States to their Egyptian tombs, but the job gets complicated when the spirit of Ananka is transferred into a local woman (Ames).

How It Is: This isn’t how you’d think it would go, but the Universal mummy movies seem to be getting better as they go. This is my favorite so far. As I said about Tomb, the traditional, shambling mummy is a powerful image and Ghost improves on it by having the monster skulk around the suburbs of a small, college town as opposed to the rural area of Tomb. It’s eerie enough seeing the mummy wander through woods and old mansions, but it’s a special thrill when he step-drags his way down what looks like could be your street.

There are other improvements too. For starters, John Carradine is always a welcome addition to any cast. It’s a little strange that George Zucco is still running the show back in Egypt after seemingly passing the torch to Turhan Bey in Tomb, but after what happened with Turhan's character, it’s understandable that Zucco may have rethought his retirement. As expected, Carradine makes a cool, creepy villain, even if he eventually falls prey to the same passions that ruined both Turhan and Zucco's efforts. Those priests of Arkham are a horny bunch.

In Ghost, the woman the priest falls in love with is an Egyptian American played by Ramsay Ames. I haven’t talked about the titles of the Mummy films yet, but they’re mostly interchangeable and unrelated to their plots. Hand doesn’t especially focus on Kharis’ hand any more than Tomb features his burial place. Kharis isn’t actually a ghost in this one either, but the title is still appropriate if you look at it sideways, because this movie does sort of resurrect the spirit of the original Mummy film starring Boris Karloff. It brings back the concept of an Egyptian woman who possesses the reincarnated soul of the mummy’s true love. And of course her boyfriend (Lowery) has to save her.

Ghost also brings back the mummy as an independent agent. Tomb offered a glimpse of that, but this time when the priest tries to possess the woman for himself, Kharis is having none of it. I thought I was fine with the mummy as a weapon in the last two movies, but he’s way cooler and even more terrifying when he's acting on his own.

The final thing that makes Ghost greater than its predecessors is the way it ends. I’m totally going to spoil it because it’s so cool, but skip the rest of this paragraph if you don’t want to know. Instead of the expected ending where the boy saves the girl from the monster, Ghost goes with a tragic finale. The whole movie, every time Ames’ character sees the mummy, she gets a shock of white hair. At first I thought that was just an aesthetic thing, but it turns out that it’s part of her transformation into Kharis’ mate. By the end of the movie, the change is either completed or almost completed and she’s starting to look like a mummy herself. As the hero and his posse pursue, the mummy carries her into the swamp where they both presumably drown. Forgetting for a second that there’s no way that would destroy the monster (and of course there’s one more film to go in the series), it’s an awesome twist to have the creature succeed in his plans. It elevates the movie above kids’ fare and gives it a shocking, somber finale that reminds me of old EC horror comics.

Rating: Five out of five disentombed darlings.

Penny Dreadful | "Closer Than Sisters" and "What Death Can Join Together"

In "Closer Than Sisters," Penny Dreadful finally reveals the story behind why Vanessa Ives is so invested in helping Sir Malcolm find Mina. In fact, it dedicates the entire episode to that without checking on any of the other characters or the show's main plot. I won't go into detail about the answers it reveals though, mostly because they don't matter.

On it's own, this is a fine episode. I enjoyed seeing younger versions of the characters and the story of their changing relationships is a good one. It's also a fantastic showcase for Eva Green's acting talent. The woman has absolutely zero self-consciousness and throws herself completely into whatever her role demands, whether it's in Penny Dreadful or Casino Royale or Dark Shadows or 300: Rise of an Empire or Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. Whatever the quality may be of what's going on around her, she's amazing to watch. But as good as "Closer Than Sisters" is on it's own terms, its answers are totally mundane and not worth all the build-up they got in the previous four episodes.

The show gets back on track in "What Death Can Join Together," even if it doesn't progress the story very far (or at all). One interesting thing about having "Closer Than Sisters" in the rear view mirror though is all the questions that it didn't answer. Before I knew her story, I was fascinated by the way Vanessa interacted with the other characters, especially Dorian Gray. On the surface, she seemed attracted to Dorian, but I always wondered if there was something else going on with her. She seemed too smart simply to have fallen for his superficial charm. But "Closer Than Sisters" doesn't give any evidence that Vanessa is especially insightful about men. Instead, when she and Dorian continue their relationship in "What Death Can Join Together," it appears that she really is just smitten with him. That humanizes her character a lot while making Dorian even more dangerous.

The quest for Mina takes a false step forward when Vanessa's tarot cards suggest a ship and Malcolm leads an investigation onto a quarantined vessel from Cairo. Vanessa's off on her date with Dorian, but Ethan Chandler joins the party along with Malcolm's manservant, Sembene. They find Dracula there, along with Mina and three other of Dracula's "wives," but Dracula and Mina escape and no real progress is made.

The best part of Malcolm and Ethan's section of the episode is a conversation between the two men about Ethan's dying girlfriend Brona. Though Brona sort of broke up with Ethan in the fourth episode, that was really about something else and she's too in love with Ethan to really want him out of her life. They quickly get back together in "What Death Can Join Together," though the issues Brona cited when breaking it off haven't gone away. She's still not long for this world and Ethan is in for a lot of heartbreak that he seems ready and willing to bear for her sake. It's a lovely relationship and Ethan describes it perfectly when Malcolm warns Ethan that Brona will "cease being who she is." "Then," Ethan replies, "I will love who she becomes."

That's such a beautiful, mature idea. It's the definition of unconditional love and it of course raises the question of whether Malcolm feels the same way about Mina. If Mina is forever changed by her experience with Dracula, will Malcolm continue to love her anyway? Or will he write her off as no longer being his daughter? From what we know about Malcolm so far, he could go either way.

"What Death Can Join Together" also revisits Frankenstein, his Creature, and Van Helsing. A couple of episodes ago, I questioned why the Creature seemed so happy at the Grand Guignol, but so upset around Frankenstein. This episode explains that by going deeper into the Creature's experience at the theater. He's attracted to the show's main actress and she treats him kindly, so it's easy to understand why he would be happy when he's working around her. But he's also afraid of being rejected by her, which has to be part of what's driving him to want a Frankenstein-built companion of his own.

As for Frankenstein himself, he spends the episode hanging out with Van Helsing and learning some more about vampires. At least until the Creature shows up to remind Frankenstein in a violently dramatic way not to let himself get distracted. Like the rest of the episode, the plot doesn't move forward any, but we've now checked in with all the characters again after a week away from most of them, and even learned a thing or two about where their heads are at. Hopefully that tees us up for a slam bang couple of last episodes. I don't expect everything to be resolved by season's end, but I would love for it to finish with a satisfying arc for at least one of these characters.

Penny Dreadful | "Resurrection" and "Demimonde"

In "Resurrection," the third episode of Penny Dreadful, there's a lot of time dedicated to catching up with Frankenstein's first creature. The beats are all familiar, but tweaked enough to keep it fresh. Frankenstein did abandon his creation in fear and loathing, but the flashback to that night reveals the horror of it, for both creature and creator. The creature screamed and carried on out of its own fright and that's what made Frankenstein freak out and leave. This isn't Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein, but a man who wants to do good and has made terrible mistakes.

Instead of a blind hermit, the creature finds acceptance with the actor who runs an English version of Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, but he still wants an immortal mate like himself and that's why he's tracked down Frankenstein. Frankenstein seems to agree, but he'll need money and resources, so that sends him back to Sir Malcolm Murray.

The "previously on Penny Dreadful" segment replays some of Vanessa Ive's outburst during the séance, narrowing it down to a few bits that make it clear that she was channeling Mina at least part of the time. During that episode, I had a hard time following what Ives was saying, but some of it sounded like a different Murray child who had maybe passed on. The fourth episode kind of confirms that, but "Resurrection" is focused on Ives' connection with Mina. In fact, Ives has a dream or vision about Mina that suggests Murray's daughter may be in the zoo. Ives and Murray put together a party to investigate and hopefully rescue Mina. Ethan Chandler even joins, because he needs medicine money for his consumptive friend Brona.

Mina's not at the zoo, but a couple of weird things happen there. First, a pack of wolves surrounds the hunters, but Chandler's able to calm them and send them on their way. I was trying to figure out in the first two episodes if Chandler is a literary character, but the show is now hinting strongly that he's a werewolf. He confirms that he's spent time among the American Indians and while it hasn't come up in the show yet, there's plenty of shapechanger lore in various native tribes. Then of course there's all the talk of Chandler's dark past and inner demons, and he gets really nervous when people talk about a recent spate of Ripper-like murders. But mostly there's him calming those wolves.

The other weird thing to happen at the zoo is that the group does find a vampire, though still not Dracula (who's unnamed in the series so far). They have hopes that he'll lead them to Dracula though, so they capture him and keep him chained at Murray's house in order to run experiments. This is where Frankenstein comes in, though he doesn't work entirely alone. In the fifth episode, "Demimonde," he takes a sample of the vampire's blood to a hematologist named Van Helsing (it's awesome seeing David Warner again) who analyzes it and discovers an anticoagulant property that helps vampires digest blood.

Murray begins to suspect that Dracula only took Mina to get to Ives. It's revealed that Ives and Mina had some history together and that Ives betrayed Mina in some way, which probably explains her dedication to finding the girl. At any rate, Dracula seems to be using Mina to draw out Ives, while Murray uses Ives to get to Dracula and Mina. It's a fun cat-and-mouse game.

"Demimonde" comes to a head when several characters end up at the Grand Guignol. Ives is there, as is Dorian Gray, whom she flirted with earlier in the episode after a chance encounter at a conservatory. I was surprised to see that Frankenstein's creature (nicknamed Caliban by his actor friend) still works there. The flashbacks in "Resurrection" didn't show him leave the Grand Guignol, but there's such a huge difference between his anger when he's around Frankenstein and his joy at working in the theater. I really thought they were depicting different times in his life. That's a strange disconnect that I hope the show is able to fix.

The other characters at the theater are Chandler and Brona, out on a date. The play that night is all about werewolves, so I expected a strong reaction from Chandler over that, but he was cool and collected the whole time; more interested in Brona's enjoyment of the show than of the monster on stage. That could be misdirection though.

During the intermission, Chandler and Brona run into Gray and Ives, which makes things awkward for Brona who knows Gray "professionally." As Gray, Ives, and Chandler chat, Brona becomes increasingly uncomfortable until she has to leave. Chandler follows her into the street, but she breaks up with him, realizing that there's no future in their relationship. Even if she weren't dying of tuberculosis, he's part of another world that she doesn't believe she'll ever be included in. I don't know if it's a major plot point, but it's a nice bit of drama that ends with her huddled in an alcove, coughing up blood, as strangers pass her by. It's a truly touching moment that highlights the need for friends and family in this impossible world, a major theme in Penny Dreadful.

The House of Seven Corpses (1974)

Who's In It: John Ireland (Spartacus), Faith Domergue (This Island Earth, It Came from Beneath the Sea), John Carradine (House of Dracula), Carole Wells (TV version of National Velvet), and Jerry Strickler (who wasn't in much else, but reminds me a lot of
What It's About: The worst director in the world (Ireland) shoots a horror movie in a haunted house.

How It Is: Utter crap. Although I lied when I said a second ago that the only entertaining thing was Jerry Strickler's passing similarity to Thomas Lennon. John Carradine is in it and I always enjoy watching him, even when he has nothing to do like in this movie.

Carradine is the caretaker of the Beal mansion, a cool old house in which seven murders and/or suicides of family members took place. While the film's cast and crew are there, his main job is to warn them against being too light-hearted about the place; not that he gives them any good reason to be concerned. He tells them no stories about the place except to run down the list of deaths. For all anyone knows, including the audience, it's just a house where something horrible once happened. There's no tension around it at all.

And that's the movie's big problem. It's just dull. Scenes drag on forever. I imagine that's intended to build suspense, but since nothing is happening, it's boring. No one dies or is even seriously threatened for the first two-thirds of the movie at least, so all the focus is on the miserable people making the fictional movie within the movie. Ireland's character bullies his actors, especially Gayle (Domergue) who's no treat herself. One of the other actors is a pretentious prick who quotes Shakespeare whenever he leaves a room and tries to rape Gayle at one point. The only characters I liked were Wells and Stickler's married couple, but House of Seven Corpses doesn't spend enough time on them and when it does it's only interested in her being creeped out by the house and his sort of digging it.

There's meant to be a mystery aspect to the plot. Carradine's caretaker starts doing some strange things and someone decapitates Gayle's cat, but there's never a clear resolution to either of those things. They're abandoned in favor of a zombie's rising from its grave in the third act for reasons that seem to be connected to one of the filmmakers, but are super muddy.

Rating: One out of five assassinated actors.