48 Scares of Casper #28

Doomed to Die (1940)

Who's in it?: Boris Karloff; those other people from the Inspector Wong series.

What's it about?: Wong, Street, and Logan investigate the murder of a shipping magnate.

How is it?: It's a forgettable mystery, but has the same advantages of the other one I watched. That is, Police Captain William Street and reporter Bobbie Logan have some fun chemistry and I enjoy watching them argue and try to beat each other to the mystery's solution. Of course, Wong's always going to outdo both of them.

I wouldn't mind watching all six of the Wong films some day (this was the fifth, and the last one for Karloff; Keye Luke took over for the final movie), but I'm frustrated by 50 Horror Classics' including two of them in the set. One was a novelty; two feels like a rip-off. As much as I can be ripped off when I only paid 50 cents per movie, I guess. I really don't have room to gripe.

Anyway, under other circumstances I'd enjoy these more, but right now they just make me want to watch an actual horror movie. Or Charlie Chan.

Rating: Bad.

31 Days of Dracula | Count von Count (1972)

Kids love monsters, so the only surprising thing about Sesame Street's introducing a Lugosi-esque vampire to teach counting was that it took them four seasons to get around to it. Because of his Dracula inspiration, the Count has always been one of my favorite Muppets. I love his castle, his Countmobile, the way he laughs maniacally after finishing a numeric sequence, and I especially love "The Batty Bat."

Sadly, we lost Jerry Nelson this year, who performed the Count from his first appearance. Matt Vogel is the current Count.

48 Scares of Casper #27

Kid Hellboy hates cephalopods

By Dela Longfish.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

SPOILERS FOR THE END OF NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD BELOW

Who's in it?: I'm kind of shocked that people like Duane Jones and Judith O'Dea didn't go on to do other things, but they didn't. So, no one you know unless you know them from this.

What's it about?: A small group of people hole up in a farmhouse for safety against a ghoul attack.

How is it?: George Romero is on record as saying he was heavily inspired by Carnival of Souls when he made this and it shows. Night of the Living Dead has that same sparseness that makes everything feel lonely and surreal. It creates unease and increases the sense that anything can happen.

It spawned countless sequels, remakes, and rip-offs, but Night of the Living Dead isn't a typical zombie movie. In fact, the walking corpses are never called zombies in the film. News reporters call them ghouls, but the main characters mostly refer to them as "those things." There's also surprisingly little gore in the design of the creatures themselves, something else Romero borrowed from Carnival of Souls. They get their creepiness by being pale and shambling, not by having open wounds and spilling guts. There's gore in Night of the Living Dead, but it's reserved mostly for scenes of the zombies' eating people. That's where the real shocks of the movie occur.

It's because it's an atypical zombie movie that I love it like I do. I don't find gore scary, but I do shiver at the sight of soulless, dead people shuffling around. That's why I tend to prefer voodoo zombies to the ones inspired by Romero. The cannibalism in Night of the Living Dead is gross, but it's really just there to give a consequence to being caught by the already horrifying creatures. The movie doesn't spend a lot of time on zombie dining, because it doesn't need to. It's already plenty scary.

Monster movies are made or broken by their casts of victims though, and that's another place where this one excels. There are a couple of archetypes and cannon fodder in the group, but they're just there to give the main characters, Barbara (O'Dea) and Ben (Jones) someone to interact with. Barbara and Ben are both tough and resourceful people, which makes what happens to them all the more heart-breaking. That's also what makes me keep revisiting the movie though, hoping each time that it'll end differently.

Rating: Classic.

31 Days of Dracula | The Tomb of Dracula (1972)

Leave it to Marvel, man. They're the company that took superheroes out of the silliness of DC's Silver Age and made them real and relatable, so it makes sense that at a time when the classic monsters were mostly seen as silly camp, Marvel would come along and make them cool and scary again.

The flagship of Marvel's horror line was Tomb of Dracula by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan. Wolfman kept Dracula menacing by making him the villain who menaced a group of vampire hunters. And though Colan kept the vampire's famous cape, he gave him a unique look by basing him on Jack Palance instead of Lugosi or any other actor who'd played him on screen. Although...

Palance didn't make the cut for my 31, but the year after Tomb of Dracula was published he actually played the character in a made-for-TV movie that also starred Sarah Douglas (Superman II, Conan the Destroyer) as one of Dracula's wives. Need to see that.

48 Scares of Casper #26

31 Days of Dracula BONUS | "In the Night" with the Mad Monster Party

Adventureblog reader and YouTube user XOtericate showed me this awesome video he made of scenes from Mad Monster Party? re-mixed to "In the Night" by Famous Monsters. It's got some great clips that weren't in the trailer I posted the other day. One of them is a spoiler, but if you've already seen the movie (or don't care about spoilers), you'll love it. Thanks, XOtericate!

The Corpse Vanishes (1942)

Who's in it?: Bela Lugosi; Luana Walters (Superman's mom in the Superman serial); Tris Coffin (King of the Rocket Men)

What's it about?: A girl reporter investigates the mysterious deaths and disappearing bodies of society brides.

How is it?: People come up to me and say, "Mike, I like Bela Lugosi in Dracula, but I what I really want to do is explore his crappy, B-movie horror films. Where should I start?"

Okay, no they don't. But if they did, I'd point them towards The Corpse Vanishes. It's full of bad actors and cornball sequences, but it's also got a some legitimately great moments and an excellent main character in Patricia Hunter (Walters) to take us through them.

The cheesy stuff is super cheesy, starting with the very first scene at a wedding in which the actor playing the groom has no idea where to look or what to do with himself during the ceremony. Hunter gets off to a shaky start too. She's callously exuberant in front of grieving family members because a dead bride means a huge story for her. I usually gloss past that kind of sloppy characterization in these movies, because I know that the filmmakers just couldn't be bothered to do something human and realistic. I think the first time I saw The Corpse Vanishes I just rolled my eyes and thought, "Oh, THAT'S what kind of movie this is."

What's surprising about The Corpse Vanishes though is that it doesn't stay that way. At least, Hunter doesn't. She turns out to be quite smart and resourceful. Lugosi's Dr. Lorenz is an incompetent body-snatcher and does a horrible job of covering his trail, but he's still smarter than the local authorities and has gotten away with several murders/corpse-thefts before the movie even begins. Hunter puts it all together though and chases down the story, seeing it as her way off the newspaper's society page where she's been stuck for a while.

Gender politics are all unspoken in the movie, but they're present. No one ever says why Hunter's been stuck covering weddings, but it's obvious that her editor doesn't have a lot of confidence in her, even when she comes up with reasonable theories about what's going on with the missing brides. He shoos her off on her story mostly to get rid of her and later seems to forget that he gave her permission to investigate. Because of how little he supports her, I almost forgive her for her early, inappropriate excitement over the opportunity to report a real story.

It leads her of course to Lorenz' creepy house full of misfits, hidden tunnels, and secret laboratories. Things get silly there - I especially love the part where a mute necrophiliac stalks Hunter while eating a turkey leg - but Hunter keeps it all grounded enough that it never goes off the rails. I also like her relationship with Dr. Foster (Coffin), a local physician helping Lorenz try to cure his wife. Foster is kind and appropriately concerned for Hunter's safety, but he never tries to swoop in and take over. She's the star and he supportively lets her be it. That's pretty refreshing for 1942.

Rating: Good.

31 Days of Dracula | Blacula (1972)

In the '70s, it was inevitable that the growing blaxploitation fad would collide with the still-going monster fad to produce movies like Blacula, it's sequel (Scream Blacula Scream with Pam Grier), and Blackenstein. In Blacula, an 18th century African prince is turned by Dracula and locked in a coffin. He gets released in modern L.A. to stalk a woman he believes is his reincarnated wife. Scream Blacula Scream came out the following year and featured the resurrected vampire's getting involved in a voodoo war.

My experience with blaxploitation films is limited to The Last Dragon and  I'm Gonna Get You Sucka, but I've been aware of and curious about Blacula my entire life. I have no idea why I've never made time to watch it. Need to correct that.