I’m logging my Monster Movie Month © viewing with ultra-mini
reviews at the end of every week in October. I write it. You read it. No one needs to get
hurt.
September 30
Horror Express (1972- dir. Eugenio Martin) ****
Christopher Lee is a scientist transporting a “fossil” from
China to Moscow aboard the Trans-Siberian Express. Lies! The parcel is really a
monkey man, and not the good kind like Mick Jagger. This is a bad monkey that
makes people bleed out of their eyeballs. I don’t have to tell you that it’s
always a pleasure to watch Lee and Peter Cushing, who plays a fellow scientist,
at work together. The pace is brisk, the production values are quite nice, and
the horror-movie-on-a-train concept is pretty original (with all due respect to
Agatha Christie). The villain is grotesque enough that he manages to recapture
a bit of the classic monstrosity of the Mummy or the Wolf Man, which is good
since apes are always such disappointing monsters. The third act introduction of
some totally unexpected gonzo humor by way of Telly Savalas’s Cossack captain
and a sci-fi twist that must have gotten Chris Carter’s attention elevates Horror Express from schlock masquerading
as art to the other way around. A great start to this Halloween season… hoorah!
Dracula [Spanish Language Version] (1931- dir. George Melford) ***
You probably already know the story: to increase the
international appeal of its new horror cycle, Universal produced a
Spanish-language version of Dracula on
nights after Tod Browning’s English version wrapped for the day. Director
George Melford would watch Browning’s dailies in a conscious effort to figure
out how he could upstage his counterpart, which he did with more thoughtfully
designed shots and more fluid camera work. While many commentators will tell
you Melford ended up with the superior film, I believe his Dracula is inferior for two reasons: no Lugosi and no Frye. As the Count,
Carlos Villarias’s comic mugging can’t hold a candle to one of cinema’s most iconic
performances. As Renfield, Pablo Alvarez Rubio goes for screaming hysteria, but
Dwight Frye’s intense interpretation is infinitely creepier. The
Spanish-language Dracula also runs a
saggy, talky half-hour longer than Browning’s tidy film. The one choice that resoundingly
trumped the English-language Dracula
was casting Lupita Tovar as Eva, this film’s Mina. Tovar is sexy dynamite while
Helen Chandler is a slightly damp sparkler at best.
October 1
The Boogens (1981- dir. James L. Conway) ***
This movie was a big topic of discussion in my household
when I was a kid solely because my parents thought The Boogens was a hilarious title for a scary movie. So does The Boogens get the title it deserves? Well, yes in the sense that
it’s fairly amusing and not always unintentionally. Miners awaken a monster
after a century of slumber, and it starts doing its thing amidst a pretty,
snowy landscape. To make up for the paucity of monster time, we get a cast of
likably goofy, perpetually horny characters led by Rebecca Balding, whom you
may remember from “Soap,” and Anne-Marie Martin, whom you also may remember
from the wacko ’80s comedy “Sledgehammer.” Once the Boogens finally started
boogening, I was sorrier to see these people go than I usually am while
watching a movie of this sort. The
Boogens reaches it’s full goof-ball potential with the appearance of
creatures that look like rubber turtles with tentacles, which probably explains
why we don’t get a good look at them until six minutes before the closing
credits.
October 2
Leviathan (1989- dir. George P. Cosmatos) ***½
More mining mishaps! Precious metal miners go rummaging
16,000 feet in the ocean where no one but the fishies can hear you scream. They
rustle up a body-invading sea monster. Leviathan
is a straight-up Alien rip off, right
down to its Nostromo-copy submarine and its co-ed character actor cast. That
cast—featuring Peter Weller, Richard Crenna, Ernie Hudson, Daniel Stern, and
Hector Elizondo—and a few body horror effects nicked from John Carpenter’s The Thing make Leviathan
entertaining even if Ridley Scott did it a lot better in 1979 (Amanda Pays is
no Sigourney Weaver). A bonus half-star for the absurd decision to become Jaws in the final five minutes.
Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961- dir. Roger Corman) ****
Snazzy, jazzy attitude and in-on-the-joke comedy elevate
another Roger Corman no-budget amateur hour to brilliance.
Counterrevolutionaries hire an American gangster to smuggle the gold treasury
out of Cuba. An American agent (played by future Chinatown scribe Robert Towne under an alias!) is aboard the escape
vessel to topple the scheme. An unexpected interruption from a heap of moss
with cue ball eyes complicates matters further. Corman doesn’t take a frame of
it seriously, and his depiction of the Americans as utter buffoons was pretty
daring at such a hot stage of the Cold War (Kubrick wouldn’t try this trick for
another three years!). A drive-in movie for kids who thought Little Shop of Horrors was too solemn.
This Is the End (2013- dir. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg) ***½
Judd Apatow’s stock company holes up in James Franco’s pad
while the world outside goes to shit. Is it the Biblical Rapture? Alien attack?
Zombiepocalypse? Doesn’t really matter. What matters is the onslaught of gags,
which is quite the bombardment. They’re pretty hit-or-miss and often dependent
on your tolerance for dude humor, Hollywood in-jokes, and the Back Street Boys.
There’s something a little lonesome about knowing I’m not having nearly as much
fun watching This Is the End as the
guys had making it, but a movie in which Emma Watson axe-murders a giant penis
sculpture and Michael Cera gets impaled on a telephone pole can’t be all bad.
October 3
Cujo (1983- dir. Lewis Teague) ***½
I’ve tried making it through the novel Cujo a couple of times, but Stephen King’s looong build up to what
I know will be a killer pooch story always kills my progress. I also tried
making it through Lewis Teague’s adaptation once before but couldn’t do it. Maybe
I just wasn’t in the mood, because Cujo
is actually a good minimalistic horror movie. The little town setting is
pleasing even when not much is happening (which is fairly often), and Dee
Wallace retains her tiara as the most accomplished scream queen of them all. As
many have pointed out before me, little Danny Pintauro of “Who’s the Boss” is
good as Wallace’s monster-phobic son, and he pulls off the movie’s most
effective scare when suffering a seizure. Teague also wrings as much exhausting
tension out of the climactic showdown between mother, son, and dog as is
imaginable, but the story’s central issue remains hard to ignore: no matter how
much they may need a bath, St. Bernards are not scary. Even after Cujo had been
pounding on Wallace’s car with egg yolk on his face for 40 minutes I still
wanted to scratch him behind his ears and give him a biscuit.
So this has been a pretty good opening week for Diary of the Dead 2013. None of the
films have won the elusive five-star review, but none dipped below a
respectable three-stars. Don’t fear though. I’ll be sure to watch some real
pieces of crap next week. Stay tuned…
