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Frankenstein IS…

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Screenshot from The Curse of Frankenstein, 1957 (source: Wikimedia commons)

I settled on a theme for my 31 Days of Halloween blogging project, and it will revolve around a classic monster and one hell of a novel.

I don’t know what kind of place Frankenstein has in modern horror movements (it does have a very important one) but at the dawn of horror cinema and Gothic literature, the man and the monster were there. The novel’s transcendent ideas have seeped into all kinds of fictions, possibly more than we can imagine.

I’m going to take a dive on this blog (not a terribly deep one), but I’ll start with some basic, 9th grade English class research – a Google of all kinds of thematic guides to help you write papers.

Frankenstein is…

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Satan’s School for Girls – The Public Domains of Terror!

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October 14-15, 2017

Do you need any other reason to take in this film beyond the terrifically sleazy title? Did you not catch this psychotronic beauty on your local TV channels before the days of streaming and the Internet, when ANY horror movie would do, no matter how bad?

If either of the above is the case, let me inform you that this 1973 film is highly notable for being an Aaron Spelling production and for featuring not one but two Angels – yes, angels and not devils – Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd!   Continue reading →

‘Horror Hotel’ aka ‘City of the Dead’ – The Public Domains of Terror!

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October 7-8, 2017

Dear friends, public domain horror movies are a delightful resource when you need some free, guilt-free, lurid, trashy, corny thrills! For your viewing pleasure this weekend is Horror Hotel, also known as City of the Dead.  This film is out of 1960 and features severe and mannish Salem witches, devil cults, va-va-voom coeds doing research back in the days where an academic career in the history of witchcraft and the occult was a viable path, sneering 50’s toughs, and of course, the great Christopher Lee at his tall, elegant, villainous deep-voiced best. Continue reading →

“31” (Chillerpop at Sundance 2016)

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31

Written and directed by Rob Zombie. Starring Sheri Moon Zombie, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Richard Brake, Meg Foster, Lawrence Wilton-Jacobs, Judy Geeson, Malcolm McDowell, Jane Carr, E.G. Daily.

(WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW)

Plot: It’s Halloween, 1976, and a group of skeevy carnies are driving their van through the desert. After encountering a sinister roadblock and a gang of masked kidnapper-murderers, they awaken to find themselves in 31, a sadistic kill-or-be-killed game that pits its victims against inventively gruesome psychopathic clowns with motifs like ‘Sick-Head’, ‘Sex-Head’ and more.

 

Like the majority of his work, Rob Zombie’s “31” is an unrelentingly brutal Impressionist white trash nightmare. Meant to be an adrenaline-fueled gorefest, it’s actually haunting and thought provoking once you process it. Maybe it shares themes with other films about death games and gladiatorial combat, but it’s spiritual parent is definitely “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

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Pazuzu, Kokumo, Ooo I Wanna Take You: The Chillerpop Exorcist Retrospective, Part 2

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“Once the wings have brushed you, is there no hope?”

I love Exorcist II: The Heretic.

There, I said it. It’s liberating. I have voiced the most shameful secret any horror fan could harbor. I and others like me can now march in the streets with our locust flags flying high, in pride.

I adore this loony, insane, beautiful mess. And a mess it is. Universally reviled, considered one of the biggest turkeys in cinema, Heretic holds up for me as an unintentional comedy and as a weird, original, meta-philosophical bit of art house cinema. It is the perfect example of the 1970’s excesses of visionary egomaniacs with relative carte blanche to make vanity masterpieces, or disasters.

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Black Mass (2015) (Chillerpop at Telluride)

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Growing up in the Northeast, the figure of the tough Boston “Southie” loomed large, although New York City was closer in influence and distance.  The accent, the crassness, the hotheaded willingness to fight over everything, were always intimidating, even if that culture gave us The New Kids on the Block and Marky Mark.

I had never heard of Whitey Bulger or his crimes until I previewed Black Mass (based on the book Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, The FBI and a Devil’s Deal) this weekend at the Telluride Film Festival.  I can’t do a recap or full critique, but I can tell you that it’s excellent, and bloody brutal.  Performances to watch here include Benedict Cumberbatch as Whitey’s brother, former state senator Billy Bulger and Joel Edgerton as Whitey’s childhood friend and corrupt FBI agent John Connolly.

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