The Monster That Challenged the World

Well, my first two movies this year were beachy,  so I decided to keep with that theme, so tonight I went with a little twist:  it's an inland beach on a salt lake- California's Salton Sea.

Honestly, the story is secondary to me for that.  I mean, yeah, killer mollusks are pretty cool.  And yes, it's nifty having Disney's Captain Hook, Hans Conreid, play the wise older scientist. (Seriously, in my head, I'm hearing him scream at a boy in an elfsuit).

And as a kid, watching this on a weekend creature feature, one of the monsters got a spear through it's eye and that was...impressive.

The monster is hunted by the Navy, who had a base on the sea til 1978.

But their trips off base, to the vacation destination to close the beach, was what really got me as an adult.

Because of agricultural run-off, the lake became... post-apoclayptic.  Algal bloom, fish die offs, things became unpleasant.  Life on the shores ceased to be as vacationy and things went to Hell in a handbasket.

This movie provides a snapshot of "before".  KQED produced a fascinating documentary, narrated by director John Waters. 

KQED has made available online- enjoy!

Attack of the Crab Monsters

As I was writing the post for Island Claws, it occurred to me that I haven't seen Attack of the Crab Monsters in... probably decades.

I remedied that thanks to Amazon Streaming.

There's a Joe Bob Briggs comment, when asked ,hsow many movies he'd seen,  he quotes a huge number (6,800 drive in movies) and that he'd gone to

"this one drive-in where they start at dusk and show twelve movies every night. And I said there ares't enough hours in the night time to see twelve movies...Joe Bob said 'You han't seen these movies.'"

At an hour and five minutes, this is one of those movies.

A joint navy - science team arrives on a Pacific island to investigate a missing research group.

The island is geologically unstable and there's talk about the impact of nuclear testing in the Pacific, which "explains" what happen to the previous team: crabs got them.  Not just any crabs. Carnivorous crabs that gain the knowledge of the people they've consumes.  As they've consumed scientists, they're clever crabs indeed.  Also, there pretty good mimics, replicating the voices of those they've consumed.

And arrogant as fuck.  Threatening the party, the crab tells them  "So, you have wounded me; I must grow a new claw.  Well and good, for I can do it in a day!  But will you grow new lives when I have taken yours from you?".  It doesn't call them "puny mortals" but that was some serious Doctor Doom level threatening there.

I realize Corman's movies are the big screen equivalent, or ancestors, of SyF surey originals, but they sure are a fun way to pass an overcast afternoon.

Island Claws

Well, I'm horrified.
Horrified that I haven't posted anything here in over a year.

I'm going to change that in 2019, starting with the "it totally should be a classic, why isn't it?" Island Claws from 1980.

On a small Florida coastal island, bad things are happening.  First, there's been a leak at the local nuclear plant.  Then, the local crab population, the subject of a biological experiment, seems to be getting out of control.

The ominous massings of crabs, click-click-click click-click-click, are the first indicators.  The death of the town banjo playing idiot at the hands of a crab swarm let's us know they're not playing around.  To really raise the stakes, a pretty blonde girl is their next victim.

Just to cement the fact: the crabs then kill a dog and cause a small girl to lapse into a coma.

Evil, evil crabs.

Not until the third act do we get to see the kicker that'd been foreshadowed... a GIANT crab.  As fine a special effect as anything seen in a Roger Corman movie (see Attack of the Crab Monsters), Island Claws is  a fun romp that harkens back to the fifties nature-gone-wild, like Them! and The Deadly Mantis, with an ensemble cast including Nita Talbot (the Russian woman from Hogan's Heros), Barry Nelson (Mr Ullman from The Shining), and Robert Lansing (Gary Seven! from Star Trek).

What really surprised me about Island Claws, other than seeing Ricou Browning (Creature from the Black Lagoon) in the writing credits, was how subtle and timely some of the bits were and still are- yes, the Three Mile Island-ness of the local power plant was reminiscent of Fukushima and a subplot involving Haitian refugees echos some of the recent issues with Nicaraguan asylum seekers.

The Boy of a Thousand Faces

The Boy of A Thousand Faces by Brian Selznick  is one of those books that I wish I'd had as a kid. "After the crowd lit their torches and chased the Phantom into the river, after the Hunchback met his death in the darkness of the tower, and after the Creature disappeared back into its black lagoon, Alonzo King went to bed."

Alonzo loves classic horror movies, has a favorite horror host- Mister Shadows- and wants to be the next Lon Cheney.

He's started working on his own collection of a thousand faces when he discovers that Mister Shadows died years ago-  after sending him one of his make up Polaroids.

Soon the beast is spotted in town...

A special touch is one piece of make up that is only on the cover- the Weird-Oh! from Dick Smith's Monster Make Up.    This was found on news stands and through ads in the back of Famous Monsters of Filmland.

Book Review Monday: Fascist Lizards From Outer Space

It's one of those things, that you don't even know exist, but when you find out, it's something you've waited for, for years.

 All of a sudden, the little piece of unknown empty is filled. For some, it's religion. For others, it's love. For me, it was Dan Copp's Fascist Lizards From Outer Space: The Politics, Literary Influences and Cultural History of Kenneth Johnson’s V.

Seriously.

When I saw the title on the list, without the subtitle, I knew I had to read it. Then, discovering it's 1) Non-fiction, 2) From one of the best pop-culture publishers ever, McFarland, and 3) About the coolest science fiction television show of the eighties... well. Sounds like perfection to me. I was able to get an reader's copy, and I was more than pleased.

First, Copp fills a fanboy need we didn't even know exists. V, the original, was two mini-series and a short lived prime time series about lizard aliens in people costumes, who came to Earth for our water and people as food. FLfOS provides an excellent view of the behind the scenes development process, from Kenneth Johnson's original ideas in the original mini-series, to the follow-up mini-series that Johnson wasn't involved, to the weekly series that... had flaws. Copious interviews with not just the production staff, but the stars as well, give the reader not just a terrific background on a cult favorite show, but also allow for a deeper understanding of just what goes into developing a network television show.

For the old-school V fans, Copp provides something that Trek fans take for granted: an episode guide. He's rewatched every classic eighties episode and provides some pretty good commentary.- for example, because it was SCIENCE FICTION and I was a kid, the Diana/Lydia/ Dynasty thing was lost on me. I was all about the lizard people eating rats, or the makeup tricks that seem simple today, but at the time, were pretty spectacular- like the unmasking of one of the Visitors: he was captured by the resistance and unmasked on live-tv in the story, so they made a prosthetic face piece for the actor, of his own face, that went over an alien face piece that went over the actor's skin. I think it was TV Guide that showed how it was done.

Of course, like good cult television, it didn't die just because the show got canceled. There were novels, from Pinnacle then Tor. Several moves ago, I lost my collection of them, but they're easy enough to replace. There was also a short lived comic book. I think the artwork impacted that more than the cancellation of the show- it was by classic Flash artist Carmine Infanto. This was the hey-day of George Perez and John Byrne, and Infanto's art seeemed... clunky.

Copp includes a look at both of those, as well as what might have been- Johnson's generation mini-series, over several years, and even a follow up from Babylon 5's J. Michael Straczynski. But these were not to be, sadly, because in 2009 ABC brought V back with a reimagining for the post 9/11-Obama era.

I found this part of Fascist Lizards a little dryer than the earlier part of the book, mostly because  I never saw the reboot, not a single episode. Apparently, I wasn't alone. Fraught with behind the scenes shakeups, V-The Reboot never really grabbed the audience like the original did.

Copp reminds us, however, that Kenneth Johnson still owns the rights to the movie version, so there's always hope.

As with all McFarland books, Fascist Lizards from Outer Space is lovingly and exhaustively researched. At $19.99 it's more accessable to the fans than most of their other titles, a good shelf companion to a box set of DVDs and yellowing mass market paperbacks. Highly entertaining and informative.

31 Days of Dracula- Day 31: Nosferatu Th Vampyre

The first movie I watched this month was Murnau's Nosferatu, and that's a good way to end the month, with the remake.

I've seen a lot of movies this month, but Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre practically left me speechless, even after previous viewings..

Herzog remade the Muranu movie in the late seventies and it still holds up wonderfully.

First, it's a beautiful film. Composition, lighting, sets, costumes, it's just a joy to look at. It's like the Merchant/Ivory horror film- seriously, even a die hard horror hater that lives to re-watch Room With a View could watch this movie and love it.

Secondly, the acting is superb. Klaus Kinski brings enough melancholy to the role that even with the make up you almost feel sorry for him. It is a little distracting... that sometimes... he sounds... like Peter Lorrie.

Bruno Ganz plays Harker. Watching this made me realize, I don't think I've ever really enjoyed a portrayal of Harker in the movies. He's just... there. He gets the plot moving then it's on to the back burner with him.

Isabelle Adjani, however, I think is probably one of the best Mina's I've seen- even if she's called Lucy in this production. Despite being fragile in the first part of the movie- to the degree that she faints when her husband returns home and doesn't recognize her- she finds her strength in defending her husband and city against Dracula.

And they do call him Dracula, officially, in this version, filmed long enough after Dracula had become public domain that Herzog avoided the problems of the earlier version.

Despite it being released in 1979, I didn't get around to watching it until a few years ago and I don't understand why I took so long to watch this. It's always been on my radar- my favorite reference is from John Skipp and Craig Spector's novel The Light at the End, where a vampire is preying upon New York City and a couple of movie fans realize what's happening during a showing of Nosferatu at a Times Square movie house.

Normally, I try not to include clips in my posts- it just seems like padding to me, but I want to share with you the movie gold that this thing is, so here's a clip- the ship bringing Dracula to Wismar, silently coming into port, piloted by a dead man:

 

 

31 Days of Dracula- Day 30: Waxwork

Some movies are distinctly products of their era.

Waxwork is a quintessentially eighties movie, almost a horror version of a John Hughes film.

Six college classmates are invited to a private showing at a waxworks and are transported into the tableaus. Among the scenarios are zombies, a werewolf, and Dracula's castle

.

It's a light hearted horror movie and the Dracula portion is ghoulishly hilarious.

 

The girl, Chyna, experiencing the Dracula scene isn't particularly nice, so she gets what's coming to her. She get's dinner with Dracula and family, where she's served raw meat.

 

"I haven't had steak tartar in a long time," she tells him.

 

It turns out the meat is the fiancee of the girl she's supposed to be within the waxwork. He's restrained in the basement, as food for the vampires, parceled out a bit at a time, his left leg sliced off under the knee.

 

She dispatches several vampires but eventually falls victim to Dracula, played by Miles O'Keefe, previously seen in Tarzan with Bo Derek and Ator, the Blade Master.

It's a silly little movie that's a delightful tribute to classic horror- to the degree that the Mummy sequence has Swan Lake as the soundtrack, the same piece of music that that introduced the opening credits of Boris Karloff's The Mummy.

I hadn't seen this movie in over a decade, and it's just as much dumb fun now as it was back in '88, which isn't that big a surprise since the director, Anthony Hickox, was the son of Douglas Hickox, director of Vincent Price's Theatre of Blood.