David Vining's Blog, page 112

House of Frankenstein

What if Igor was the main character and he was sympathetic? That’s almost what Erle C. Kenton’s House of Frankenstein tries to do, and if that had ended up the focus, even with all of the monster resurrections happening around him, I think something really interesting could have happened. Instead, the storytelling is so jumbled that what initially feels like a series of events that could tie together into one grand ending ends up being just a series of events towards a conclusion. Well, at l...

The Mummy’s Ghost

These Mummy movies are simply not very good. I have some suspicions about why the writing and directing teams simply could not find a way to deal effectively with the mute and slow-moving monster, but all that really matters is what we see on screen. And what we see is repetitive and never all that interesting. There is an effort to make the mummy something a bit more than just a mindless killing machine operating at the whim of the latest in a series of Egyptian characters out to cause havo...

The Invisible Man’s Revenge

I think the Universal Monster franchise has reached a new low in The Invisible Man’s Revenge. There have been lazy films, but this might be the most simply inept film put out by Universal about one of its monsters. Taking some of the laziest setups and then mangling it director Ford Beebe and his writer Bertram Millhauser craft a meandering, pointless tale of revenge that just kind of lurches from one half-formed idea to another. The disappointing thing is that I rewrote this movie in my hea...

Son of Dracula

There are some interesting things percolating around in this Lon Chaney Jr. vehicle in the Dracula universe, but it’s too leaden narratively, overly concerned with lore and rules and explaining them in detail, rather than telling an interesting story. It doesn’t help that Chaney himself is horribly miscast as the titular count, but the director, Robert Siodmak, does some interesting things visually, especially regarding the new setting, and there’s a surprisingly good ending that comes along...

Phantom of the Opera

This feels like an extension of what Carl Laemmle was trying to do with the early sound versions of the Universal Horror franchise. It’s a handsome, expensive production of an esteemed piece of literature with horror overtones. Of course, it was also one of the premiere silent films that Laemmle Senior produced at Universal in the 1920s, starring the father of Universal’s go-to monster man, Lon Chaney Jr. (who did not get the title role in this despite his lobbying for the part). This goes i...

Fritz Lang: A Retrospective

Fritz Lang started his career in film as a screenwriter at Ufa, the main German production company, before quickly moving into directing. Along with his then wife, Thea van Harbou, he made a series of increasingly expensive films as he met with continued success, capped with the one movie he’s truly known for: Metropolis, one of the most influential films ever made. The son of a Catholic father and a Jewish mother, he watched as Nazism steadily overtook his home, including his wife who joined th...

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man

I keep expecting this franchise to maintain a constant descent into silly mediocrity, but it keeps surprising me. The first two-thirds of Frankenstein and the Wolf Man is the best the Universal Franchise has ever gotten up to this point. The last third is rote repetition of cliché, but that first two-thirds is an exploration of guilt and trauma that’s surprisingly effective and penetrating. Anchored by what may be Lon Chaney’s finest performance (which may not be saying too much, but he was ...

The Mummy’s Tomb

The Mummy films have never been the bright spot of the Universal Horror franchise, but with The Mummy’s Tomb, it establishes a new bottom for lazy and cheap filmmaking from beginning to end. Taking the largely unremarkable efforts from the first two entries and doing nothing to make it any more interesting or exciting, turning it into a slow moving monster film, as slow as the titular monster himself. This is Universal producing as cheaply as possible to get what cash it can from a reliable ...

My Best Friend’s Exorcism

So, I also highlighted this trailer. I’ll talk about this movie as well.

I really liked this book by Grady Hendrix, and it’s one of those books that seems to naturally translate well to a screenplay (though the credits call it a teleplay). It’s not a super dense or super long novel. It has a strong focus on its characters. It’s structured in a way that naturally lends itself towards how we think movies work. It seems like an easy lift. I think the film, written by Jenna Lamia and directed...

Invisible Agent

The Invisible Man franchise seems to be the most malleable of the Universal Monsters. Frankenstein is about a specific set of ideas. Dracula is about a specific character and type of horror. The Mummy is built around setting. The Invisible Man, however, is built around a concept. It can be used for comedy like in The Invisible Woman or a revenge tale like The Invisible Man Returns or psychological terror like in the original film. The idea of using the concept in a wartime thriller feels lik...