A RETURN TO SALEM'S LOT

When you really love a given work it becomes difficult to render an appropriate review. This issue becomes even more burdensome when this work is, by most movie-quality-barometers, a complete and utter stink bomb. A Return to Salem’s Lot, a sequel in name only, to Stephen King’s heralded original work, Salem’s Lot, is quite possibly the most absurdly underrated “crappy in-name only” sequel in history. This film is truly up there with the likes of Halloween III and Zombi IV in the “would be a classic under a different name” category.
 

The soundtrack is memorably creepy, harpsichord-ridden, and begging for a techno remix; allowing for the film’s atmosphere to set in without any defense. Those of you with lifetime experiences in the American Northeast will have no difficulty attaching your receptors to this setting. Bovine country indeed.

Donning Hollywood starlets, horror cheese mainstays, and decorated actors from the golden age of cinema; this film has the cast alone to separate itself from the pack of oft-forgetten straight-to-video sequels. Famed Charles Grodin lookalike Michael Moriarty (The Stuff, The Stand) turns in a tour-de-force performance as the only character he knows how to play; a hard-as-nails, woman-ravaging, manly-man in the body of a shoe store manager from Seattle. Andrew Duggan and June Havoc also chime in as the undead Aunt Clara and Judge Axel, the latter of which is the “king of the vampires” type, who eerily resembles my grandfather.

Speaking of star power, A Return to Salem’s Lot features former Hollywood slam-piece Tara Reid (American Pie, recipient of botched boob job, seen here with melted face) in her first performance, as a lovable pre-teen vampire who tries to seduce Michael Moriarty’s smart-ass son, Jeremy; an unforgettably ginger badass with a mouth like a trucker and a filmography that could fit on a fortune cookie paper.

These casting accolades are a clear second place to the involvement of screenwriting, acting, and low-budget film legend, Samuel Fuller. This self-described “nazi killer, not nazi hunter” is a breath of fresh air, as he is halfhazardly thrust into a plot involving vampires for NO DICERNABLE REASON WHATSOEVER. This is the beauty of cheese-cinema. If you can’t have an elderly nazi hunter in a vintage Studebaker randomly plop himself into a  script about vampires, then you just aren’t living; screenwriting-wise. 

 Ensemble cast aside, A Return to Salem’s Lot makes it’s bacon on being an extremely well-balanced horror film; engorging the viewer in appropriate doses of eerie music, scares, good movie makeup, and a quickly developing plot. Director Larry Cohen is far from gunshy, racking up a healthy body count of vampires, humans, and drones (see the film) alike.At one point, a plethora of doped up cyber-punks (Think Bill Paxton in Terminator) are viciously murdered by seemingly elderly townsfolk. At another juncture, Andrew Duggan rips a vagrant’s face off! Look mom, one hand! 

 Another aspect of A Return to Salem’s Lot that garners my respect is a homage to the time-tested tradition of writing stock footage of the wilderness into a given horror plot. This goal is handily achieved through the creative writing of Michael Moriarty’s character as an anthropologist; Allowing for not only gratuitous scenes of tribal sacrifice, but also ample shots of the rainforest and wildlife, even if grossly overused. Hey, anything to add some gore and tribal mamories, right?

 I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this film would have been an 80’s horror-cheese smash hit if it were released under a different name. Maybe, “writer of the vampire bible” or “nazi killer vs. the geriatric vampire horde.” Literally anything would have sufficed. Maybe we would be giving this film the respect it deserves today, instead of taking the Stephen King route and filing suit to ensure that his name will never be associated with this work. Apples to Oranges.After all, A Return to Salem’s Lot has very little to do with its alleged predecessor. No character’s transcend the works, nor do the antagonists share any similarities, absent a slight resemblance, and vampirism. Maybe they are second cousins? Regardless of the title or classification, this film is very enjoyable; seek it out!

There. I did it. I Reviewed a horrible film that I love more than most Oscar nominees. *exhales* 

WTF = 21

W - 6 (not all that witty, but still disturbing at times)

T - 7 (great post-CGI effects when employed)

F -  8 (thoroughly enjoyable)
 

HAUSU

OK KIDDIES HERE WE GO!

Hausu is an exercise in awesome, a queen of kitsch foriegn cinema.  I first saw this in a movie theater, so I got to experience the film in its full beautiful colorful glory.  

Basic premise is the main character is a young girl grapples with the loss of her mother, the addition of her new stepmother, and decides to go with her schoolmates on a summer trip to her distant aunt's house.  What these girls do not know about the aunt and her home is what makes the story.  

But I think what makes the movie is the fucking hilarious characters like some real-time Sailor Moon (on acid) meets Abbot and Costello (on acid). *

*Note: unfortunately, whilst I have never actually done acid, I like to speculate that this movie is exactly what it would be like.  What this also translates to is: I have a lot of trouble imagining that sober people created this film. But maybe that's just me. 

Case in point severed head of girl biting the ass of other girl at random point in the film which will be explained during the film but not really. 

This is the beauty of some films...many of them foreign because we Americans like to have everything tidily explained n wrapped up.  Maybe that's a mean generalization, but maybe my generalization is true.  This isn't artful, gorgeous hole-in-the-story ambiguity we get in movies like 'Antichrist', but it is a horror movie that is all about going along for the ride and enjoying the trip...whatever it is you are tripping on be it your own unique brain chemistry or a can of rubber cement.   

I would recommend this movie as a must see even though I'm not planning on giving it a super high score.  The plot is really dumb, not gonna lie.  The characters are a step above mental retardation.  And I imagine the effect was more scooby-doo than fear-inducing.  But there you have it, in spite of my well-crafted scoring system, we have a kick ass movie that everyone who enjoys the variations of the field of horror films should SEEEEE!

It's visually gorgeous, ridiculously funny, a self-parody probably (?)  The music is laughable with it's own flare of late seventies ballad gold embedded in parts of the film.  The characters are cartoons, and if you can deal with that and not expect depth or explanations of what you are seeing, this movie may also earn its place as one of your own favorite horror flicks.  Think of it as a cross between scooby doo, a bubble gum commercial, and an art film.


Watch it folks!


WTF = 20


W= 5
T = 10
F= 5

Here is the film's trailer:

LOVE LOVE LOVECRAFT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have previously rattled on about how this guy is A 100% ACTUAL MASTER OF HORROR WITHOUT QUESTION, but only in agony at directors making craptastic crapflicks out of his stories.  This review is all about his fiction, which countless other authors and directors have circled around in hopes of raising its darkness from the bottom of the abyss.  You will have to trust me and take the time to read the insanely awesome works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft if you have any faith in any of the other horror stuff I've recommended.  It is not an easy read at first (especially for people who are not very literate  - we don't do much booklearnin' these days wen we gotz the teevee).  I've known several college-educated people who could not really understand his sentences, and while I might say "that's okay, it's just not your style" to help them save face, I will also say to my esteemed readership that this book is not for you if you are not past an 8th grade reading level.  At least.  Ok nuf said.

One vein of thought that I will repeat is that there are not many writers out there who have managed to invent their own mythology.  Lovecraft is one of them.  Ironically, what got me into Lovecraft was the FANTABULOUSLY twisted and kinky conspiracy-theory of all conspiracy-theory books Wilson and Shea: The Illuminatus! Trilogy (also not for the feint of reading comprehension).  I discovered in these two authors' heavily-layered fact-o-fiction the deep lures of many Lovecraft shout-outs, allusions I would later find in countless other books and movies and TV (X-files included, lol).  I now take a huge amount of nerdy amusement in identifying the embedded Lovecraftian images in sci-fi, horror, and fantasy.  After Illuminatus, I had to find out what all the fuss was about this guy, as isolated and tragic in his own way as Poe, and ever-surrounded by the mysticism that he helped create.  

I should say that I'm not a huge Poe fan.  I realize he was one of the greats to the audience that was his audience, and certainly a score for us American writers, but for some reason I never really bought in, much much much as I wanted to.  Possibly because he was one of many blunt instruments used by one or two overpaid officials of the American public school system to ram "culture" into my brain.  While I admit he was dark and creeptastic in his own pre-ghetto Bronx way, I always saw him as a tad bit of a drama queen.  More melodramatic than hardcore, getting his panties all in a bunch because of a metaphorical bird and such.  Yes, I'm dissing The Raven.  I did it. It is rare that I find myself looking to be frightened by metaphorical birds.  I can be saddened by metaphorical birds, but not necessarily frightened, and I guess that is one difference between the whimsical and the absolutely horrifying.  I wanted the nitty gritty details of what exactly scared you shitless, not your description of the conniption you had after being scared shitless.  I thought he'd do much better as a director of macabre theater in 1965 or something, curse my soul for saying it but it's true, as wondrous a wordsmith as he was.  But then came HP, and I was knocked backward and upside the head.    This was something that just felt intrinsically different than any genre of horror I had ever attempted before.  It was like I was finally finding this essential piece of my love of horror fiction that was missing all the while.  This was truly dark, as in dark under thousands of feet of black ocean current, dark as in dark beyond eons of cold glittering stars, dark as in the heavy metal lord of horror.  

WTF = 29
W = 10
T = 9
F = 10 

This was the kind of horror that had me up at night, feeling ill-at-ease.  Written by a guy who died before 1940, his work is still as wild and relevant as it was when it was initially printed in the pulp mags.  The eternal leavings of Lovecraft's self-termed "cosmicism" are items like the Necronomicon, and creatures like Cthulu, Dagon, and the Old Ones, including a language much more metal than Tolkein's elf talk that all those dorks buy rings with the inscriptions and such.  That being said, I have fallen victim personally to Lovecraftian merchandise (though nothing as lame as some locket with something an elf said, I'll give you that at least.)  For some reason I felt while reading all of this crazy stuff, that somehow, Lovecraft was basing his stories on some tangent of reality.  That it could very well be that aliens landed here long before humans ever populated the earth, and that their technology or aims were unimaginable to our feeble linear minds.  

While I continued to tell myself I was just reading epic and hysterically well-worded pulp fiction, I dug up the old X-Files phrase almost immediately, because I found I could not help but apply it to the pilots and scientists in the face of the "At the Mountains of Madness", or the poor fellow in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", or the simple farmers in "The Color Out of Space".  There was nothing else but to admit it to myself loud and clear, assuming that perhaps this was what other writers and directors were feeling when they pulled imagery and relics out of Lovecraft's prose either as a lovingly-made allusion or a half-assed attempt to pass off genius as one's own:

"I want to believe." 

And oh did I ever.  I guess if the slew of other famous names of those who profess him to be a complete genius and an influence to create does not convince you to read this stuff, hopefully my testament that this guy managed to scare the living shit out of me while keeping me interested in not only his twisted, gnarled plots but also his characters will add to the ranks.  You may find at first that, like his drawn influence from Poe, Lovecraft's also a tad bit dramatic too with his lengthy flourish of language and multi-syllabic vocabulary, but when you are standing in the ancient dead hallways of a million-year old cavern built by all-knowing slumbering alien minds creating technology far exceeding anything humans could come close to imagining you just try not to have a panic attack.

As a new reader of Lovecraft stuff, I would start fairly simple.  Had I begun with "At the Mountains of Madness", I might not have gotten far with his work, though that is definitely the place to end it with a bang!  It seems all so archaic at first, like nothing out of the 20th century.  You will stumble at first with his writing style unless you generally read stuff from pre-1900, and this is to be expected I think even from the seasoned reader despite our desires to make others believe our brains comprehend everything instantly.  I'd advise starting with something like "The Colour Out of Space", or even "The Call of Cthulu".  I remember "The Curious Case of Charles Ward" was also one of the early ones I enjoyed.  There are several editions of Lovecraft collected short stories that are great, but I will suggest two sets that I have and quite enjoyed.  

I would suggest starting with this edition titled Tales of H.P. Lovecraft (selected and edited by Joyce Carol Oates).  This is a good little stack of Lovecraft stuff and a great way to get started before you go for the extended additions: Omnibus 1-3.  These books are super-chunky with a huge cross-section of Lovecraft's writing, including some of the less-stellar stuff, so you'll more or less have to do some sifting.  I don't care if Joyce Carol Oates or Jesus Christ did the intro for the book - the reason I picked this edition first is because the stories contained are good examples of Lovecrafty goodness.  I generally don't read introductions as a rule unless I'm bored and stuck on a plane with nothing better to do than pick my nose.  And even then, nasal spelunking is usually way better than the contents of most introductory material.  If the author you are reading is THAT good, their work should usually speak for itself and I find biographical stuff online. 

And here be the Omnibusssses.  All told, you have about a year's worth (at least) of screaming space madness the likes of which will creep you out indefinitely.  And while it would most definitely be one hell of an experiment to see what happens to your general mentality and life after one full year of reading nothing except Lovecraft...I probably would not advise it.  You would inevitably fall apart like the author did. 

I actually found that, as much as I loved his writing, I felt always a little sick when I read it.  This is the only stuff that gave my husband nightmares...he's the logical type that doesn't dream.  Possibly because the guy manages such an intense feeling of ominous foreboding that if you're into the stories you can't help but feel kind of ill with this dull kind of constant worry in the back of your mind.  It's maddening after a while and I discovered that what worked for me is to vary what I read and when I have a random rainy day where I can get away with a good hour or two's delve into something epic, I'll grab one of these and see what I find. 

Get into Lovecraft to get in touch with your ageless, slimier self, the part of you that wouldn't mind descending into a thousand-mile-deep oceanic abyss to learn the secrets of the Universe...and possibly be eaten alive by a creature four hundred times your size.  Lovecraft awakens in all of us, through the Cthulu mythos and his other tales, the sense that everything on earth and in the space around us is so much older than we can really fathom.  That we are at the brink of some insanely ageless magical violent and indifferent mystery.  I think what ultimately draws readers into this kind of writing is the realization that we humans know so little of the truth of what makes us sentient beings in what often appears to be endless dead space.  And so we ask: what else is there?

Heavy metal horror...

 

Nerd Alert: bought one of these cuties for my husband.  An adorable fluffy eater of souls :)

And lastly, some old Metallica (before they became a country band)...

CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD

It had to be done.  And it was not an easy decision: in prefacing the many zombie movies to come into this collection I had before me several questions.  The first was - do I give my esteemed readership a classic or do I surprise them with something modern and hyper-real?  The answer, searching my ghastly heart of hearts, whispered...no shouted: CLASSIC!

Ah, but then I had to ask further: do I give them what they're expecting...which frankly is Romero?  This is not to say that I will not rant AT LENGTH about Romero's fabulosity and shortcomings at some point in the future.  What it came down to is picking the single zombie movie that had the most impact on me personally, and the answer to that complicated question is:

WTF = 25
W = 9
T = 8
F = 8

Yeah, yeah.  It may not be the scariest zombie movie out there, but in my mind, it's one of the most creative.  Fulci is a pro at this, so there are going to be a lot of readers in my readership that feel differently and that's ok.  Your opinion is valid.  And validly denied.  If I were to recommend a zombie film to someone who never saw a zombie movie before, I would tell them to see this - yes even before Night of the Living Dead - for the sole purpose of seeing zombies in their Italian-American overdubbed heyday.  I'd tell them to see Night...etc. to get the backstory of how it all sort of began, but only after seeing the cheesetastic and somewhat creepy creation of City of the Living Dead.  For the record, this is a decent story with hilariously horrific details.  

I'm talking about religious overtones.  For once, forget the science of zombies.  While (as I have said a'many times before) I quite enjoy it when directors/writers try to provide evidence-backed explanations for extraordinary plots, this is one movie where I kinda like the blurred meaning and the idiocy of the characters.

As is true to most Italian horror movies, the plot is really of no import.  But I'll give you a briefing.  In this case, we begin a creepy macabre priest who commits suicide on hallowed ground, thereby opening a portal to hell.  I love/hate it when that happens.  Sometimes you get an awesome splash of zombies battling humans to the last man.  Other times you get a Republican electoral win.  Saying that I prefer the undead is a blurry statement, so I'll be specific: I prefer the fictional outcomes and this is one film that by far exceeded my expectations.  After the priest hangs himself, you have a seance with a bunch of psychic mediums that gets broken up when Mary Woodhouse (aka Catriona MacColl) has some sort of a seizure and they have to call 9-11.  The paramedics pronounce her dead, and the police think it's a bunch of druggies in their investigation.  A psychic with a low voice and a white-girl-afro (a hilarious product of the 70's that I truly wish would come back into fashion merely so I could laugh at them all over again) claims that this is the end of the world or some psychic blibblab, and we are instantly launched into zombie fun, beginning with...

...Woodhouse's burial.  A snazzy scene.  For some reason or another the poor woman wakes up in her coffin (this is why cremation is kinda preferable to me) and is rescued by the cigar-smoking Christopher George playing Peter Bell.  I have to say that the coffin scene here is not to be beat.  Rather epic in terms of lighting, timing, and dare I say: acting! I'm not sure how little or how much of this film is overdubbed, but the lot of it is self-aware and awesome.  George rescues MacColl and they begin a fun adventure to finding this portal to hell so that they can close it before the apocalypse begins. 

In a fight between Columbo and Christopher George, I'd vote for George any day.  This guy is like a less stylish Lou Reed with a few really bad acting classes.  Just a joyride to watch as he tries to man up to Woodhouse in their quest up the East Coast to the source of the undead scourge.  He manages to smoke cigars for the majority of his speaking roles and to not appear actually affected by the majority of the whole 'rising from the grave' thing as is the trend in Italian zombie movies (until it's too late and such).  Once they make it to the town a whole series of weird happenings has already passed and people are beginning to suspect that something is seriously wrong.  Couples pick the wrong make-out spots.  A poor young girl dies too soon, leaving a little brother looking out the window for her to return.  Suspicious men in provincial bars begin to talk amongst themselves...somewhat Lovecraftian. 

By the time Woodhouse and Bell arrive, it seems already too late.  What follows is a series of powerfully awesome scenes of horror that you will not forget anytime soon.  Not in the sense that they are scary, but only in the sense that they are classic.  And in some cases - even by 1980 - classic rip-off material.  I think this is partially where Fulci rips off Argento (once you see the maggot scene, you might be somewhat reminded of my dear Suspiria).  This is a moment where you're like...uh...are these directors simply putting in flying maggots everywhere because they know people are grossed out by them?  It's definitely not scary, more like one of those TV extravaganzas they have in Latin countries where you have girls in skimpy sequined dresses speaking with lots of rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr's and fruit hats and crappy bands and dudes with false teeth and tuxedos (not much different than MTV, but at least MTV as a bit more tact and by tact I mean less fruit hats and more guys with gold teeth and shitty new pre-teen music releases that nobody over 14 and or over 110 IQ would purchase).  

But...again...I digress!  I will preface my next statement in stating that above all things in the world including pain, bleeding, breaking of bones, bending of ligaments and tendons beyond their natural capacities, etc.., my GREATEST MOST HATED THING IN THE UNIVERSE is puking.  I would rather have someone break my fingers one by one than deal with a stomach virus or food poisoning.  I hate doing it, and I hate hearing it, and MOST OF ALL I hate watching it.  BUT!  This movie quite possibly contains the #1 best and unbeatable puke scene ever.  An unfortunate couple drives up to some make-out spot and starts doing the nasty in the front seat of a car...which I never EVER understood as I do not find gear-shifts or consoles or dashboards, glove compartments and seats designed to fit people as snugly as possible conducive to lasciviousness. I mean, if you're going to drive all the way to some secluded spot, why not bring a sleeping bag or something?  Why get it on in the most uncomfortable way possible?  I do not understand.  But for some reason, it works on film and it always has worked on film, because you can simply stick a camera in the window.

The girl gets the creeps, the undead priest shows his face, and suddenly, slowly, with almost unbelievable ridiculousness, the poor girl voms out her entire internal organ system.  I feel SO SORRY for the actress who had to film this scene.  I'm not sure what they used, sheep or pig or cow or whatever, but I'm QUITE POSITIVE it was not worth whatever she was paid to do it for.  Anyway, because of the unique total grossitude of this one scene, I have to cite it as the most intense internal organ vomming ever to be filmed ever.  To date.  You may not find that an achievement, and to be honest, I'm not sure if I do either, but there you go.  The glorious part of this scene is (for those of you who share my phobia) the that vomming is so absolutely ridiculous and filmed in a horrid piecemeal of cuts where the model obviously had to shove various pieces of raw organs and fake blood in her mouth.  I think finally it got too much for the actress so they put an obvious dummy in her place for when she pukes up her own stomach or her liver or what-have-you.  It's too fake to trip the gag reflex, but too awesome to ignore.  

The remainder of the film is a mix of people teaming up to attempt to understand/counteract the series of evil events that has taken over the small town and its inhabitants.  Naturally the team of pure genius uses the old and unbeatable horror fuck up methodology to deal with said events:

Let's split up!

Aaaaahahahah!!!!!!!  Gets me every time.  Like any non-suicidal group of frightened human beings would EVER use that plan EVER in a situation where dead people were getting out of coffins and eating the living?  Who comes up with this bullshit?  Answer: directors.  On speed perhaps.  And on a small budget.  Further elaboration: because the movie would end too soon if they didn't split up.  Ah.     

But let us not dwell in the nonsensical ridiculousness of this 1980 production of cheesetastical zombificiation.  Instead we should rejoice in the nonsensical ridiculousness of this 1980 production of cheesetastical zombification!!!!!!  This is the timeless rhetoric of horror: whatever you hate about it can also be loved (unlike puking).  While this movie makes little sense in terms of a scientific explanation (biblical being the total opposite of scientific) of the scourge of the undead rising to claim the earth, this is a 93 minute joyride of zombie shenanigans that winds the viewers down and down into the catacombs to the end of the world.

There's something refreshing about zombie movies that does not request but DEMAND that you take them as they are, flawed plots and all.  I suppose that this is ultimately what I love and hate about zombie movies.  They are in various ways true 20th century creations in that they give us big fireworks - displays of blood and gore and maggots and intestine barfing and soundtracks worthy of Wesley Willis - with little explanation other than 'this is a reflection of ourselves!!! oooooo!!!'.  They are often poorly cut, acted, directed, overdubbed, and produced, but they are also often barrels of fun n' gore with a few religious/biological/social undertones here and there.  City of the Living Dead is among said barrels of fun that is not to be read deeply but definitely to be enjoyed as a preface to all that came before and all that followed.  It is what it is!!!
 

THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES

WHAT COULD BRING IN A HAPPIER NEW YEAR THAN... 

A jolly old film to bring out the new and bring in the old.  This Vincent Price masterpiece was recommended to me by one of the best horror movie critics out there and I put it on the back burner at first because the title seemed so ludicrous - even though I've never been unamused by anything starring Price.  Serves me damn right, this rocked!

Let us take a few minutes to give Vincent Price his due.  He is BAD ASS.  There are a lot of actors out there who fear being typecast into a specific role, and at times, Price was one of them.  Even though he was admittedly typecast into the dark twisted well-spoken villians or the dark twisted well-spoken victims, he did a damn good job at dark twisted and well-spoken.  So what if he got typecast?  He rocked the roles better than anyone else I could imagine in his place. 

How awesome is this guy?

- succeeded in oodles of high & low-budget films

- was well-known for memorizing not only his own lines, but also the lines of the other actors (aka, dude did his homework) 
 
- Yale educated (and not even bought in!)

- patron of the arts, so to speak: donated almost a hundred pieces to a college in the 50's to help their art program

- appeared in Thriller (here be hilarious audio session)

- appeared on The Brady Bunch (lol!)

- appeared on the Muppet Show (happy new year)

- appeared on The Lucy Show

- celebrity roasted Bette Davis 

- made an instructional video for Sear's Roebuck employees to sell another of his art collections? 

- managed to make TV commercials humorously reusable:
(Tilex, Easter Seals, Polaroid, Wine Coolers, Stay Alive, 3D Cameras, Nestle)


- did voice-over for Burton's Vincent, a short film (Edward Scissorhands, much?)

It is also worth noting that Price wrote at least two books when he wasn't busy being a horror tycoon.  One was an art book on American Art - he gives an interesting interview on Carson, more or less commenting that too many people confuse art with galleries and price tags.  The second was a cookbook entitled A Treasury of Great Recipes, written by him and his wife Mary.  Putting the Kitsch in kitchen.

In Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee, you've got your classic horror dude triad of the 60's & 70's, which is in many ways my favorite film era because of the risks directors actors and designers took - stuff that doesn't necessarily look risky from the vantage point of now, but might not have happened if not for the originals.  This isn't to say that other decades aren't awesome (it's the recent stuff that's succeeding at actually scaring me the most - you know, when you're sitting there with your fingers plugged in your ears waiting for the thing to strike), but there was something obviously special about this time that makes me kind of envious of those who were young then (I wasn't borned yet).   I just like the colorization, the crazy half-method/half-classic hybrid acting, and the daring and possibly drug-induced plot twists.  

One of the problems with films in the last few decades is that while we can scare, there are pray few truly WEIRD gems - we often substitute succumbing to the weird with various unstable attempts at either being overly funny so that a huge audience of total morons can laugh at your stupified movie or being overly serious - since CGI can rationally make Jeff Bridges look 20 years younger (except his teeth) and you can always tack on another number to the end of The Ring and make people pee themselves at little girls with hair over their faces crawling out of televisions (the Ring wasn't that bad though, I'll admit).  We are afraid - no, terrified - of looking silly or stupid in front of an audience, and many films reflect that fear until it becomes a downfall.  The disease of taking oneself too seriously sets in (introduction to Overpaid Hollywood Actors 101).  But NOT TO WORRY FOLKS:  The Abominable Dr. Phibes is none of those things.  It is quite simply an opus of weirdness.  

I was caught by surprise by this fabulously self-aware tongue-in-cheek horror, which brought back from memory playfully-made stuff like The Prisoner and Help!.  For the first bit of the film, I was sitting there in half suspense, wondering what the hell was happening and whether or not the filmmakers were serious or joking, and the answer is really: both.  Dr. Phibes is a (for all intensive purposes 'dead') famous organist and scientist on a mission of vengeance.  He's also hideously deformed and speaks through a tube which he connects to various gramophones around his humble marbleized digs.  

Working with Phibes is his lovely sidekick "Vulnavia" (porn name much?) who carries out each task in total silence like a magician's assistant.  I would love to get my hands on her kick ass costumes, which are these 60-70's odd takes on 20's clothing and enough silly hats to make the pope jealous.  In some costumes, she looks angelic, and in others, she looks like a supervillian in the making.  

Although Vulnarnia Vulvana Vulvina Vulv.. Vulnavia is gorgeous and sleek and an interesting kind of straight-faced accomplice to the at-times laughable Price in all of his grandiosity, I was really confused about who the hell she was, or how an undead organist/scientist managed to get this hot chick working for him who doesn't say anything at all while he blowtorches life-sized wax busts and sorts brussel sprouts.  I mean did he stop by a school for hot and sadistic mute chicks on his way back from the undead? (note to self: start school for hot mute sadistic chicks - i'll be rich!!!!)  I thought she was his daughter or his dead wife or something, so that part could have been a little more clear than just re-using a Bond girl for sidekick's sake.  

I was also simultaneously amused and confused by the death scenes in this movie.  While the murders plotted and executed by Phibes and the lovely Vulvarnia Velveeta Vulva Vulnavia are hysterically ingenious and varied, I was bewildered at how all of the victims just froze where they stood and let the killings happen (with exception to the "unicorn" death - my favorite - that guy had no heads up and neither did the audience - don't worry, I didn't spoil it for you).  I thought they could have invested a bit more time into the whole 'struggle' idea.  I don't know anyone with working arms and legs who would just sit there and let themselves be devoured by vampire bats without at least attempting to get up and run. 

But then again, this film is what it is, a total horror joyride with a cast that obviously had a metric buttload of fun in the creative process.  Price supposedly had to repeatedly have his make-up reapplied because he kept laughing so hard during the filming.  I will be the first to admit that I have repeatedly misjudged Vincent Price as a total stock character of himself, and to a degree I'm not entirely wrong: the truth is that nobody does Price better than Price and there will never be another like him.  He has yet to disappoint me in a role.  I should have queued this movie up long ago, but I'm glad I finally did. 

WTF = 21 
W =  7
T = 7
F = 7


OMG: action figure desire -------------------->
(Vincent Price Masque of the Red Death)


And now, for your New Year's Eve enjoyment, the movie - follow links in 10 parts!
(one of the BEST opening scenes ever!)

THE DUNWICH HORROR

This blurb should have been the Brady Bunch theme tune.

I would like to begin this voluptuous rant with a word of warning to the reader: I FREAKING LOVE LOVECRAFT.  LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVECRAFT.  If I wasn't already married to the hottest mo-fo in the land....and if old H.P. wasn't so creepy (and dead)..... and if I was suddenly a polygamist, I would definitely marry him .....(and John Lennon - also dead, no dice).....(and possibly young Bruce Campbell circa 'Evil Dead' era).  I am very unrealistic about hotties.  Not that Lovecraft was hot or anything but there's more to being sexy than looks.  I'll tell you what's sexy: HE INVENTED HIS OWN FUCKING MYTHOLOGY!!!  And it caught on!!!  There are warped burnout conspiracy theorists out there who actually think Cthulu is real!!  How many of us suckers can in all honesty boast an achievement like that?........(crickets...brief creaks from the graves of the apostles and L. Ron Hubbard)......... Yeah, I thought so.  Guys: I would be tickled pink if I had warped conspiracy theorists believing in the shit I came up with.  For about five minutes, it was my goal in life and so I tried to think of my own mythological beast.  It was named "Octobagus"....I had no idea what it looked like but it had lots of tongues and occasionally hid in people's swimming pools.  It also came with a set of stickers that said: "Hello!  My name is Octabagus!".......I decided not to quit my day-job.     

But that, ye children, be utterly besides the point.  

The point is "The Dunwich Horror" is hysterically bad at its best.  A inbred cross between "The (original) Wicker Man" and a bad episode of Star Trek. "Half-witted" if you will.  I've been using that phrase a lot since I saw the poster:  "Hey bro!...I'm doing gooooood.  Feeling a bit half-witted lately.  That dinosaur birthday card you sent me was so half-witted, yeah...well, if I wasn't so half-witted, I'd consider not putting my underwear over my pants again...[screaming out of car door] HALF-WIT!"...and so on.

It's also my buzzword for the mental state required to enjoy this film.  

Here is my overly-generous review:

WTF = 16 (yeah, for realz)
W = 5
T = 6
F = 5 

I am ever so glad that Lovecraft died long before this atrocity came out because he probably would've thrown himself feet first into a woodchipper if he saw the level of mockery this film makes of the awesomely metal power of his awesomely metal horror vignettes.  What hits me even harder is that his short story, "The Dunwich Horror", is one of the best I've read in the vast and chunky anthologies of his self-made lore.  YOU DON'T NEED TO CHANGE THE GODDAMN PLOT, HOLLYWOOD!!!!!  I really don't get it, was it a copyright issue?  Did the keepers of Lovecraft's estate see what a laughable shitcake film this would be and decide to deny any actual plots being used? 

Now, readership, don't get me wrong here.  It's not that I have anything against a movie that is so bad it crosses another line into the land of hysterically good.  In fact, I love those kinds of movies!  Every time one of those movies gets made an angel gets its wings, we ALL know that!  I guess I just get a little bit homicidal stabby bludgeony antsy when you take something as gloriously intricate and beautiful as a good Lovecraftian tale and distort it into something non-ironically funnier than the episode where Batman battles the armed hippies.  And so here we have Lovecraft vs. ...................the flower children?

Normally, I would find this shit priceless.  It's just disgusting to me that you had such a sick plot already laid out there for you!!!!!  Why change it?  Reminds me of when people make history-based TV shows and change up the real history for these stupid TV plots...when the lives of the people they are blurring were totally interesting and novel and weird all by themselves.  If this were a completely different movie with a wacked out story all its own, not ripped off of one of the primordial horror writers of our time, I would be cool as a cucumber with it.  But quite simply: you don't mess with H.P. on my watch.  Dig?

I'm also going to put this out there: I was kinda uncomfortable with two things.  The first thing that made me feel weird was the quantity of Sandra Dee side-butt shots during the whole initiation/impregnating scenes.  I tried to imagine myself as a lesbian or a guy to see if this weird shit would turn me on.  Epic fail.  Totally not turned on by lengthy self-grabby side-butt shots.  Either show the whole damn thing or leave it out.  This made me realize the movie was a step away from bad soft-core porn.  So the side-butt was the first thing that weirded me.  The second thing that weirded me was Dean Freakin Stockwell.  And don't give me this "but he saaaaved the film!" bullcrap I keep hearing from the "Quantum Leap" fiends.  All I can do is conjecture as to what specific type of acid he took prior to filming in hopes that I never NEVER take it myself. 

That being said, I will briefly expostulate on what is good about this movie.  What is good about this movie is the color.  That was actually pretty much it for me - lots of high contrasty stuff typical of 70's horror films.  But there was something a bit more neat-o about it, as if the set designers were perhaps the only truly creative people in the entire production.  I think that aspect saved the movie from becoming something hopelessly forgettable.  That being said if you happen to be drunk and high on paint fumes, you will absolutely love this movie and it will reside on your 'favorites' shelf.  I was in neither of those states when I watched it having left my 1000% proof and paint fumes in the garage next to the cleaning products and laundry detergent.  It made me briefly wish I had the addictions required to thoroughly enjoy this movie but I just don't have the gusto or level of self-loathing to cultivate them.  Being my just plain sober insane and egomaniacal self, I can only categorize this film as a colorful piece of half-witted side-butt. 

And here is the preview for said half-witted side-butt for your paint-fuming pleasure: