I don’t recommend Frankenstein, either the novel or the film, but do note that the two are very, very different.
Frankenstein
Thursday, October 31st, 2013The Circus of Dr. Lao
Thursday, October 31st, 2013If you’re looking for Halloween reading, I might recommend The Circus of Dr. Lao — but pass on the movie adaptation, Seven Faces of Dr. Lao.
Collected Ghost Stories
Thursday, October 31st, 2013If you want to read some good, classic, ghost stories — for Halloween, or for Christmas, which was the tradition when he wrote them — I recommend M.R. James’ Collected Ghost Stories.
The Castle of Otranto
Thursday, October 31st, 2013The Castle of Otranto is arguably the first gothic novel. It is also terrible.
Lovecraft’s influence has been wide, but superficial
Thursday, October 31st, 2013Lovecraft’s influence has been wide, but superficial. Perhaps because his works were, in some ways, reactionary.
Pigeons From Hell
Thursday, October 31st, 2013I recommend reading Robert E. Howard’s horror classic, Pigeons From Hell — but not the updated graphic novel.
Total Film’s 50 Greatest Horror Movies
Wednesday, October 30th, 2013If you’re looking for viewing material this Halloween, you might turn to Total Film’s 50 Greatest Horror Movies — or to my commentary on that list from a few years ago:
I’ll have to hunt down a few of those, which I haven’t seen yet — I spent last Halloween weekend catching up on horror movies — but first I must fulfill my obligation to disagree with those rankings.
I won’t quibble over one and two; they’re obviously horror classics. The first Halloween, by the way, is remarkably low-gore. Let’s skip to three. Last year I anxiously awaited seeing Suspiria for the first time — thank you, DVR and obscure cable channel — and I can say it was a total waste of time. It wouldn’t make my top 50.
Dawn of the Dead definitely deserves to be high on the list — even the fast-zombie remake — but the original Night of the Living Dead deserves to be higher — and way, way higher than 21.
The Shining is definitely super-creepy. Psycho, on the other hand, has one utterly, fantastically horrifying shower scene — and not much else. I’d rank it much lower. I don’t know The Wicker Man.
Rosemary’s Baby is brilliant. I don’t know Don’t Look Now or Cannibal Holocaust, but I have my doubts. The Thing, Carrie, and The Exorcist all belong high on the list. I only caught Carrie for the first time last year — again, huzzah for the DVR! — and it might be one of the best horror movies I’ve ever seen. It’s so much more than that one famous blood-bath at the end.
The Blair Witch Project worked for me. The Haunting didn’t. At all. I don’t know Witchfinder General.
Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead is a classic, of sorts, but it’s better known for its extremely quotable sequels, the tongue-in-cheek Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness. I don’t know Peeping Tom.
Alien may be my favorite “horror” movie of all time, but I understand why not everyone would rate it as one of the top horror movies of all time: it has all the trappings of serious science fiction.
Bride of Frankenstein may be a classic, but it’s awful. Of course, the original Frankenstein is really, really awful — but it introduced an iconic character design for the monster, and it had some wonderfully gothic imagery. Still, I can’t believe the abnormal brain bit from Young Frankenstein was in the original.
I haven’t caught Curse of the Cat People yet, and I don’t know Switchblade Romance, but I did rewatch A Nightmare on Elm Street last Halloween, and I wasn’t impressed. I haven’t seen An American Werewolf in London in years, but I remember it as good ‘n’ creepy.
Syd Mead’s Walkers
Tuesday, October 29th, 2013“Visual futurist” Syd Mead imagined these walkers for US Steel’s 1969 Portfolio of Possibilities:
The four-legged, gyro-balanced, walking cargo vehicle shown on pages 80-81 is from the US Steel Interface portfolio series [published in 1969 — see image below].
The environment is arctic and the mission is to deliver goods and critical supplies to an isolated exploratory colony beyond the DEWline. Like several of the preceding designs, the ‘feet’ can be rotated and locked to form powered wheels for rolling over smooth terrain but, seen here in the walking mode, they are covered with ice that is breaking up into radial slivers as the pneumatic pods flex.
Defining this part of the design concept more closely, Mead explains that “the largest land animal now extant is the elephant. As he puts his weight on each foot the metacarpals and tarsals fan out from the ankle and the foot spreads, distributing the pressure. Conversely, as the weight is retracted the foot contracts and never gets stuck in the mud. The same principle was incorporated here; the ‘foot’ structure would be alternately inflated and deflated in the walking mode to duplicate the natural function of the elephant’s foot.
As a matter of fact, when I did this the US Government had already funded a military project for a walking machine [RH-2010 — the GE Walking Truck] and had built an analog computer-co-ordinated prototype that successfully walked over loosely stacked railroad ties. The seated driver not only operated extremely sensitive hand and foot controls that duplicated and amplified his motions, but also had calculated feedback that allowed him to ‘feel’ the feet making ground contact!”
Looks familiar…
Escape from the Deathstar
Monday, October 28th, 2013Star Wars borrows from a number of films, especially World War II films. The escape from the Deathstar borrows from Howard Hawks’ Air Force, which came out during the war:
While it is immediately obvious, as shown in the side-by-side scenes in the Empire of Dreams documentary, that the movie inspired the gun turret scenes on the Millennium Falcon. What may not be as obvious is that the underlying structure of several sequences are quite similar to scenes from Star Wars. One scene in Air Force has the crew of the Mary Ann, as the B-17 is called, scrambling to get onboard and take off as japanese soldiers appear in force from a tree line, much in the same way that the Falcon blasts its way out of Mos Eisley with stormtroopers hot on its heels. And though the order is different, it’s hard not to draw direct parallels between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the destruction of Alderaan, both of which happen as the respective flights are on their way to it as a destination, catching their crews by utter surprise.
As the B-17 arrives in the Philippines, the crew chief learns that his son died just as the the first attack began, but has no time to grieve as another Japanese attack forces the Mary Ann into the air, where the crew man the gun turrets in almost identical fashion to the scenes following the death of Obi-Wan on the Deathstar, complete with the donning of headsets and a “Here they come!” opening from the cockpit as the zeroes dive into the B-17. The hexagonal designs of the Falcon gun ports and cockpit, including the exact framing and angles they’re shot at are straight out of Air Force.
Unfortunately, while the Falcon survives, the Mary Ann makes a belly landing, and the similarities come to an abrupt end. That said, there are other similarities throughout, including many echoing smaller scenes in The Empire Strikes Back (huddles of pilots and mechanics scurrying around, working on the planes), but most fascinating is the fact that the way Hawks used the same aircraft throughout the film, having it serve almost as a character in its own right, complete with a name, also informed Lucas in the way he used the Millennium Falcon; not merely in terms of it providing the stage for the same kinds of scenes, but in it providing a character of its own throughout the trilogy.
20th Century Headlines
Monday, October 28th, 201320th century headlines rewritten to get more clicks:
Luke’s Landspeeder
Sunday, October 27th, 2013
Flash Gordon
Saturday, October 26th, 2013When George Lucas’s family got its own TV set in 1954, he was transfixed by the 1930s Flash Gordon serials that found their way onto the air:
“I was appalled at how I could have been so enthralled with something so bad,“ [Lucas] recalls. ”And I said, `Holy smokes, if I got this excited about this stuff, it’s going to be easy for me to get kids excited about the same thing, only better.’”
Flash Gordon was a reaction to Buck Rogers, which had really taken off when it moved from novels to comic strips:
Seeing this popularity, King Features decided to get onboard the science fiction train, and the young Alex Raymond was paired with writer Don Moore to come up with something that could rival Buck Rogers. What Raymond and Moore created did away with the science-centric approach of Buck Rogers in favor of a much more fantasy-like setting. Dragons, shark-men and gleaming castles were as prevalent as spaceships and laser pistols on the planet Mongo where the stories predominantly took place. Where the novelty of science was often at the center of Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon was characterized more by Flash’s courage and the fantastic creatures and situations on Mongo.
The movie serials soon followed:
Today the serials seem quaint, not only for the stories and characters, but for the production quality, which is by all modern standards laughable. But for its time it was astonishing, easily living up to its beloved comic strip predecessor. Each episode brought a new danger to bear on Flash and his friends, monsters of every kind and tribes from all over Mongo (most often some sort of animal-based men; hawkmen, lionmen, apemen, sharkmen and so on).
And though it was touted as being the most expensive serial production ever, every opportunity for saving money was jumped upon. Footage from Leni Riefenstahl’s silent 1929 film Die weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü would pad out the snow-climbing sections (and provide some much needed scale to an otherwise studio-bound production), and Flash would do battle on the steps of a medieval tower from The Bride of Frankenstein. In fact, the music that opened many of the serial’s episodes was a theme from The Bride of Frankenstein that had been co-opted (as was much of the other music used).
The impressive idol footage in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe was from the 1930 musical Just Imagine. Other medieval sets were used from Tower of London (1939), and footage was brought over from Perch the Devil (1927). In an unprecedented move the production shot on the sets of James Whale’s 1940 film Green Hell before he himself had put them to use!
So, how quaint are the old serials? Behold!
Mr. Peabody & Sherman
Friday, October 25th, 2013Hop into the WABAC (“way back”) machine and enjoy the original Mr. Peabody & Sherman, from the 1960s:
The upcoming movie seems more whiz-bang, judging from the trailer.
Disney Princesses Dressed as Heroines
Friday, October 25th, 2013Isaiah K. Stephens has produced these images of Disney princesses dressed as heroines for Halloween:
Scum and Villainy
Friday, October 25th, 2013Everyone’s favorite hive of scum and villainy was mashed together from a number of classic films — Casablanca; The Good, The Bad and The Ugly; The Magnificent Seven; and Yojimbo: