An Evil Thought" and "The Man Who Came Back" -- that we will hear no more of for a long time. (He did make one more film appearance in "Tarantula," but that's about it.)
Yet, here he is again as a ghost. He appears in a scene in "The Haunted Palace," a 1949 low-budget horror film based on Richard Matheson's novel. It was the first of five collaboration between Matheson and Vincent Price.
The film actually started out as a horror script by Matheson, but Price and director Roger Corman (who became a master of low-budget sci-fi films) decided to turn it into an "imitation Shakespeare" horror comedy, complete with Shakespearean settings, a Shakespearean background score, and even Shakespearean actors (including Christopher Lee, who was billed as "Dr. Strangeglove").
The story starts out as your basic Gothic horror story. A mad doctor (John Carradine) has amassed the greatest collection of medical oddities in the world and decides to exhibit his collection to the world. But there's a twist in the tale that adds a different angle. This particular collection has been secretly gathered by the doctor to try to find the one "perfect" human being on earth and use him for his experiments. If that were the only thing, we'd have a fairly standard Gothic tale, but Matheson throws us a curve by adding that it's "based on a play by Shakespeare" and that the doctor is going to use his creation of perfection, an actor named John Halliday (Price), in an experiment of such perfection that he'll kill himself when the experiment fails.
I know this sounds like the sort of thing I would watch only if I was trying to kill time waiting for something more substantial to come on. I assure you, you'll forget this film has any other virtues. Even the location shooting -- which includes some shots from one of my personal favorites of early horror films, "Night of the Demon" -- can't save this film.
I know I just told you about the twist in the tale, but now I've forgotten it. It's just one more example of how this film does its job. I can only hope that when your brain has a chance to relax you can figure out the whole thing on your own. So you've got to be looking for it.
This is one of those films that can become an obsession for the fans. I remember the day I realized that the actor who plays John Halliday in this film was none other than Vincent Price. No idea how it came to mind. But Price's fans will eat this up like it was some amazing Easter egg.
On the other hand, those of us who can't understand a word of the film will never know if that moment of brilliance was all Price or Matheson.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
"The Devil and Daniel Webster" is a 1948 American film starring Walter Huston as the title character.
Daniel Webster is a lawyer who is on the trail of a missing man. The trail leads him to a castle inhabited by an aristocrat named Bannon (George Macready), who is a devil in disguise. Bannon has plans to destroy all the leaders of Boston and make Boston's people submit to him.
This is a pretty entertaining version of the story. Although it's pretty much standard B-movie fare, with low budget special effects and actors taking the roles of their characters in a variety of crazy ways. In my opinion, Daniel Webster's appearance is a bit silly, and yet another silly performance by him. (He's not even close to convincing as Daniel Webster.) Macready does well with Bannon, and although the villain's method of "punishment" is not that original, it doesn't even bother me as much as it should.
For this kind of picture, it's pretty well done. I think it's worth seeing if you can find it.
Friday, December 6, 2013
The new Mister Peepers has returned from the grave. Although it doesn't look a whole lot like him, we certainly do have two former Mr. Peepers to take his place.
He is a zombie.
Actually, they're not exactly zombies, but rather creatures that take on the appearance of Peepers in his various incarnations. And since they were all actors with him in his films, it's entirely appropriate that we are also watching him in a sequel to one of his movies.
In "Mr. Peepers," his first movie is about to get back on its feet after a long layoff. Peepers (Joe Spinell) is getting ready to start a new life with his girlfriend Jenny (Valerie St. Germain). He meets a girl (Suzanna O'Shea), but he falls in love with Jenny.
They're getting ready to move into their new home, but things are complicated by ghosts. It appears they have been given the souls of Peepers' victims, which need to be taken care of. But since they can't be taken care of, they have to be killed. But how can you kill ghosts?
This is one of the more entertaining things I've seen in years. This is all done by a trio of unknowns, so there's nothing here for the hardcore fans to take too seriously. But for fans of Peepers, it's more than fun. (One of the actors, Bruce Locke, appeared in the Peepers film "The Stalking Moon." And the director, Bill Rebane, makes a cameo in a short cameo.) There are some interesting sequences with some of the ghosts as well. They look like an old silent comedy special, and the actors did a great job with their dialogue.
A few times I was thinking "This isn't quite the movie it was trying to be." That's probably the best thing I can say about it. One of those times was when one of the ghosts is accidentally killed by a real cop (Chuck Bittner). It actually wasn't totally clear to me what was going on in that scene, and it seemed like it had the potential to get even goofier than it did. But it had a good payoff.
It's one of those movies where if you're looking for a good time and don't mind a little oddness, you'll probably find it. It's a fun film in a genre that needs some more variety.
On the other hand, don't go in looking for the subtler humor and imagery of, say, the old Peepers movies. This is strictly one of the horror/comedy films that were far more common in the 1980s. If you need a comparison, this is "Scooby Doo meets Cthulhu." I have to admit I enjoyed it, and I laughed a few times. But I can't recommend you stay for the whole thing.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
The first couple of Star Trek movies were the work of director Roger Corman, who loved to bring low-budget fare to the screen, but only after he had tinkered with it.
When he did it for the first movie, it was with a production company called World Box Office. When the production got bigger and more expensive, he set up another company, New World, and made the other movies. And it was that company, which, with his financial backers, paid for the rights to adapt the early James Blish novels "The Caste of Engineers" and "The Entropy Effect" into scripts. Those were actually pretty decent action adventure stories, and had a lot of interesting ideas about the future, so they seemed ideal for a film franchise. It's also a great combination of the literary sense of those novels and the sense of humor of the two authors, which are represented in their stories as well.
The original "Caste of Engineers" is a big hit in the Federation, and they decide to start planning to build a station to be used in the exploration of space. The trouble is that they have to deal with their enemies the Klingons, who are trying to disrupt everything they do.
I have to admit, it has the feel of a low budget version of Star Wars, except there's less violence. And the main focus of the story is more of a romance between one of the characters and the main female character. But at least it's more interesting than some of the other cheap space-opera films of that era.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
"They Came from Beyond" was a 1950 science fiction serial that was part of a show on TV. It starred Richard Carlson, and this is his first time in the "Lost in Space" role. In this particular segment, he and his daughter Jane (Judy Lovett) are trapped on a desolate planet where they try to escape from an evil female robot called Medusa. I'm not
