Movies I Watched in October, Part 3

It's already December (!) so I figure I'd better finish the recap for October (!). Hang onto your hats, gang -- this one's going to be quick!

This movie was on the same Bela Lugosi/Boris Karloff set that included Bela's oddball semi-sequel to "I Walked with A Zombie" (read the write-up here). This musical comedy, dating from 1940, isn't quite as strange, but it is just as oddly enjoyable. Though it co-stars both Bela and Boris (plus Peter Lorre), it's really a vehicle for once-huge-now-forgotten bandleader and radio star Kay Kyser. The plot is your standard "weekend in a mansion with a killer on the loose," but there are plenty of fun elements to liven things up, including Lugosi as a fake medium, Karloff and Lorre as badguys pretending to be good guys, Kay Kyser's amusing dated comedy (and admittedly entertaining music) and plenty of secret passages, trap doors and hidden chambers. (Old movie fans will want to keep an eye out for the scene in the basement lab, where models from the original "King Kong" are used as set decorations -- including some insects from the famously deleted scene.) I say this about a lot of movies I watch, but they really don't make 'em like this anymore. That's a damned shame.


I'd heard good things regarding this drama/thriller about a couple who attend a dinner party in Los Angeles only to discover that it's all (probably) a set-up to get them to join some sort of cult. It's not bad, exactly, but it just didn't have that building intensity I was looking for, and the solid cast -- including the great John Carroll Lynch -- wasn't given much interesting to do. It ends in a surprisingly violent manner that hints at some sort of apocalyptic development, but "The Invitation" never felt like it got there in any sensible way, and instead kept upping the stakes (and the violence) whenever the movie needed a jolt of energy. 

I've seen this Roger Corman comedy more times than I can count, starting on "Big Chuck and Little John," the Friday night monster movie show I watched as a kid, and continuing to the current day, when I try to catch it every time it airs on TCM. And though I've always loved it, I don't think I realized just how truly great a comedy it was until this most recent viewing. If you know anything about this movie, you probably know it was produced for virtually no movie in just a few days, and you've probably seen the big budget musical remake. I'm here to tell you that none of that matters. Sure, "Little Shop of Horrors" was cheaply made and looks it, but that aesthetic perfectly fits this tale of a schhlemiel who works in a Skid Row flower shop and accidentally breeds a carnivorous plant. And though the musical is a lot of fun, for my money it's not nearly as witty as this original model, which manages to include at least a half-dozen memorable supporting characters, that famous trip to the dentist where a young Jack Nicholson plays a masochist who gleefully reads PAIN magazine, one of the most memorable movie monsters since the Universal glory days, a dead-on "Dragnet" parody (complete with door knock that mimics the "Dragnet" theme song) and sequences of truly fascinating vintage late-night Los Angeles cinematography. Plus, giving credit where credit is due, as florist Gravis Mushnick, Mel Welles gives one of my favorite comedic performances, making with the Yiddish wisecracks and endless malapropisms. It's a truly great film, deserving a spot on the all-time great comedies. If you've never seen it, by all means check it out -- as a bonus, it accomplishes all that in a mere 72 minutes.