From Zombos' Closet

Book Review: The Art of Hammer

Zombos Says: Very Good

Carreras was a charismatic salesman, and the only British producer to strike distribution deals with every major American studio. He was often able to do this without a script or the promise of major stars, but he rarely went into negotiations without provisional poster artwork and a title. (from the Introduction, The Art of Hammer)

 

Let's be clear: the art in Hammer Studios' movie posters is promulgated on crass commercialism and designed toward a preponderance of lurid, gamy imagery, and deplorable subject matter. Thank the lord all of this sordidness is captured in Titan Books The Art of Hammer, a necessary reference for that studio's movie poster art, which was created when posters really mattered for whetting the appetites of production backers and selling theater seats.

With no Internet viral campaigns, no chit-chatty forum quorums, no message board hype, and certainly no social networking picky-pecking, blurby-wordies to sell a movie, Hammer's artists combined bold imagery, screeching colors, and pow-zam-boom verbiage to titillate the vulgar interests of movie goers, stimulate the monetary interests of distributors, and annoy everyone else enough so they took offense and complained, providing even more word of mouth promotion.

Movie poster art became a passion of mine starting around 1968, when, in a small Hawaiian theater showing The Love Bug I saw a hand-painted poster for the movie in the lobby. Now, before you wonder why anyone would do a hand-painted poster for thatmovie (or whyI would go and see it), I'll cut you short and tell you to focus instead on the word hand-painted. Maybe they didn't have enough printed posters to go round, or maybe they couldn't afford more than a few, but whoever did the painting knew exactly what a movie poster needs to do. That person copied the print poster but made it more fun, more vibrant, so Herbie jumped out at you as you walked past, exclaiming "you must see me in this movie!" That's when I realized how important movie poster art really was, and still can be, once you look past the lenticular novelties and static photographic ensembles posturing for your attention in the theater lobby today.

Marcus Hearn (Hammer Glamour) returns to annotate an array of horror, comedy, potboiler, and exploitation posters that scream "you must see this Hammer movie!" beginning with 1950's screen-printed The Dark Light, and continuing up to 1979's The Lady Vanishes. Not all of Hammer's movies are represented due to lost artwork, but what's here is a grand sampling of styles and artifice. Hearn points out the prevalence of victimized and terrified women in posters that began in earnest with the Gothic Horror offerings. Up until then, men and women are shown together (usually embracing), or a dramatic depiction of action from the movie comprised the composition; afterward, it's mostly women and monsters in various postures of terrified and terrorizing hawking the movie, with American poster versions usually rendered more sensationally. Indeed, much of the fun in viewing these posters comes from comparing the British, American, Spanish, German, and Belgian versions for the same movie, each doctored to the acceptable (or barely tolerable) limits allowed by that country's standards.

Movie posters are arranged by decade and Hearn adds brief comments here and there explaining important changes in style and provides notes on the artist or artwork involved. My favorites are, of course, the mix of horror's vampires, mummies, and Frankenstein Monsters. They fostered an artistic expression leading to interesting interpretations, such as The Mummy's title monster having a gaping hole in its chest through which a pursuing bobby's flashlight shone through:

"The Mummy was still in production when Peter Cushing first saw Bill Wiggins' painting. Concerned that it misrepresented the film, Cushing asked director Terence Fisher if he could add a scene where his character drove a harpoon through the mummy's body."

The influence of pop art can be seen in the 1970s as more psychedelic colors and groovier layouts kick in, eventually followed by more photographically oriented compositions to trim the budget. Surprisingly, I never noticed the phallic inferences Vic Fair drew into the British Vampire Circus poster until Hearn pointed them out. How that got passed through the stringent British Board of Film Classification is a wonder.

If I were pressed to find one fault in The Art of Hammer, it would lean toward a preference I have. All posters are oriented in portrait, which does make the book easier to browse through. Given its coffee table size I agree it would be a bit of a bother to swing the book from portrait to landscape orientation to view posters, but some posters that would easily fill a full page in landscape view are short-changed by presenting them in the smaller, portrait view. Nonetheless, I recommend this as a superb horror fan gift to give or to get. It's naughty and nice and filled with spice.

 
A courtesy copy of The Art of Hammer was provided by Titan Books for this review.

Comic Book Review: Victorian Undead Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula 1

Zombos Says: Good

After defeating Professor Moriarty's army of zombies in Victorian Undead, Holmes and Watson are confronted with the puzzle of what happened to the Demeter's ill-fated crew. Called on by Lloyd's of London to investigate, the world's first consulting detective and his faithful Boswell will soon learn there are far worse things awaiting them than zombies.

Or will they?

While the story is crisply paced, with Ian Edginton carefully dropping period elements (like references to the Lutine Bell and Shank's pony) into his pages, his Holmes and Watson seem to be falling into a Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce relationship. I do love them in the Universal Studios' movie series (especially the cleverly updated ones), but it doesn't match the tone of what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote and tends to undermine the strengths of both characters in this graphic novel format.

Tom Mandrake's single page depicting Dracula aboard ship stands out dramatically from Fabbri's smooth, tidy lines for London and therein lies another departure from the quintessential element of the Holmes' Canon: Victorian London's shadowy byways, cramped quarters, foggy and sooty streets, and colorful denizens. Fabbri puts everything through the dry cleaners instead, including Holmes.

Look at the splash page (click to enlarge) and you'll see a surprisingly neat and orderly crowd in the hustle and bustle. Doyle once remarked that London was "the great cesspool into which the loungers and the idlers are irresistibly drained." Granted much of that cesspool was raised by fire in the first volume of Victorian Undead, in an effort to stop the zombies, but Fabbri's penchant for commercial cleanliness throughout his panels spills over onto Holmes, whose "bohemian" habits and lifestyle, as Watson wrote, are nowhere to be seen.

Perhaps I'm overly spoiled by watching the Granada television series and Jeremy Brett's virtuoso eccentricities. Looking at Fabbri's opening splash page , I know he can muster more of that atmoshpheric energy across the next four issues.

Come on Fabbri, give us some foggy streets at least.

Movie Review: Skyline (2010) Not Much to See

Zombos Says: Fair

Here it is in a film cannister: if you've seen the trailer for Skyline, you've seen the most exciting part of this slimy-aliens-from-space pulp drama of Borg-like ( part machine, part organic, all regenerating),  Matrixy-looking, multi-tentacled creatures vacuuming up humanity through a sparkly blue light as easily as dust mites are sucked up an Oreck.

In this war of the worlds special effects opus of us losing against them big time, the kicker here is they want our brains, which they use like Energiser batteries to power either themselves or their machinery, or maybe it's both. I will, with difficulty, refrain from making any dead battery jokes just because they're attacking Los Angeles, but feel free to infer whatever you like, or even change the locale to suit your preference.

It looks like Independence Day, but it doesn't have that movie's patriotic enthusiasm or energetic characters; it looks like War of the Worlds (old and new versions), but it doesn't have either of those movies' overwhelming sense of decimation, growing futility, or soul-numbing despair; it even looks like 1954's Target Earth, whose hunting mechanoids scour the city's streets for survivors in hiding. With Skyline  mashing dramatic ingredients from many science fiction movies, the Brothers Strause fail to add any of their own sugar and spice to the familiar effects to make this more satisfying than the Coke and Reese's Pieces I had while watching it.

I will pin much of the blame on the dialog: it's stultifying.  None of the pretty people trapped in Terry's (Donald Faison) penthouse speak in their own words. They bicker, they yell, but in stock, one-line sentences. Pick any two people and switch the dialog around; there would be no difference. The ugly aliens have more personality and they don't talk.

As Los Angeles is vacuumed clean of residents, Terry's house guests hide from the invaders with the blinds drawn. His automatic window blinds reminded me of the house shields in Forbidden Planet. They weren't very effective either. There's Jarrod (Eric Balfour), his girlfriend Elaine (Scottie Thompson), Terry's girlfriend Candice (Brittany Daniel), and Terry's personal assistant (emphasis on personal) Denise (Crystal Reed).

They disagree on whether to stay or make a run for it. Eventually they reluctantly run, but a giant alien stomps on their escape. Oliver (David Zayas), the concierge, comes to their rescue. He and Jarrod disagree on whether to stay or make a run for it. Much of the movie seems to be spent on everyone disagreeing on what to do next. A possible tension-mounting relationship between Candice, Denise, and cheating Terry is quickly stomped on, too.

They watch as the military shoots nukes at the motherships--over Los Angeles--but the blown apart ships regenerate.  A few soldiers are dropped by helicopter to fight the maruading aliens, but they lose. Jarrod takes Elaine up to the roof, hoping they can escape by helicopter. The aliens intervene and they are captured. We get to see inside the mothership, how nasty the aliens are, and the groan-inducing potential for a sequel. However, I'll admit I do like the ending: it's hokey but pure pulp science fiction in tone.

Skyline is a straight to DVD movie that somehow got a lot more money to add a lot more fiery special effects. Now that's science fiction.

Professor Kimena's Monster Kid Reflections

Professor Kinema (Jim Knusch) shares his ghoul-times growing up as a Dr. Denton's attired Monsterkid, his discovery of Shock Theater, and his ongoing passion for fantastic cinema, horror hosts, and monster magazines. Along the way, he picks some bones to rattle in the closet, contributes to the first Horror-Thon in New Jersey, and talks about the Zacherley fan clubs. (Those rattling noises you hear may sound familiar.)

Copies of what’s housed in Professor Kinema's Archives, whether they be DVDs of video material, CDs of audio material, or reproductions of any and all printed material (stored on discs, flash drives or hard copy printouts) can be made available to the serious researcher. Specific listings can be provided along with proper arrangements.

 

A strong early childhood memory of mine is lying in bed, wide awake, listening to the muted sounds of the TV set in the living room. Dim light patterns were visible on the hallway wall just outside of my bedroom door, changing with the muted sounds. Naturally I wondered what these sounds and shadow plays looked like after my bed time.

Earlier in the day, up until bed time, I was allowed to view what one of my teachers referred to as ‘the one-eyed monster.’ This consisted of kid’s and family programming I could identify with. What was being broadcast after I was sent to bed became very mysterious. I posited that one of the acquired privileges of being a ‘grown-up’ meant that one could stay up as late as they wanted and watch TV.

Eventually, on Friday and Saturday nights, I was allowed to stay up late and see what the tube had to offer. Sitting there in my Dr. Denton's (yes, one button was always undone) I discovered that what I was imagining to come over the TV airwaves was a bit different from what I was viewing. It was ‘grown-up stuff’ that I found I didn’t really understand and wasn’t interested in. But wait! Later at night, after the news and weather, came something unique…vintage monster movies. My two younger brothers usually bailed out by this time and went to bed. The only light in the living room came from the TV. Now the shadows were happening all around me. The sounds were low, but sharper. No one else in the household found such fare interesting so my next strong childhood memories consist of sitting by myself, enjoying the exploits of all sorts of grotesqueries that included Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man and the Mummy. Here in the late 1950s a Monsterkid was born.

This Monsterkid still sits up late at night, alone, watching vintage monster movies.

In the household, I was the one, albeit self-appointed, who was mainly responsible for getting the best signal on the TV. Cable, or ‘pay TV,’ was an entity not even heard of at this time. The roof antenna was of a bargain basement variety type, made of cheesy, easily breakable aluminum. Pointed in one direction, the airwaves from the west, from New York City, came in the strongest. Pointed more toward the North, the few stations from the nether regions of Connecticut, ‘across the pond (the Long Island Sound)’ from our residence on Long Island, came in stronger. Late Friday and Saturday nights, the horror films permeated the airwaves, beaming in from Connecticut.

Naturally, I was the only one willing to climb up on the roof to position the antenna. My kid brother, by no real fault of his own, was very little help in determining what the best signal was. He would yell back to me, “Yea, that’s the best picture!” But when I climbed back down he would announce, “It was really better before,’ and so on…ad nauseum. To be able to settle in and enjoy a late night’s fare of grainy B&W, flickering iconoscopic fantasma, and be an accomplished Monsterkid, I had to shift for myself.

By the 5th grade it was ‘cool’ to discuss what we were watching on TV, as well as what we went to see in the movies. Monster movies usually dominated the conversation. The exploits of the current monster movies (the ones that parents let their kids see, or simply didn‘t care) were usually culled from Saturday afternoon ‘kiddie matinees.’ The topics of the more vintage ones was from the fare I discovered late on Saturday and (sometimes) Friday nights.

One day a classmate said to me, “You ought to check out this man who just started on TV on Saturday night. He looks like a monster, but he’s funny.” This piqued my interest. That next Saturday night I tuned in and discovered Shock Theater (marketed as Shock!) and it’s bizarre host…Zacherley. Yes, he definitely looked like a monster, but he was most assuredly funny. For the remainder of 5th grade, talk always included the most recent TV escapades of Zacherley.

Shock! had existed in the New York area in the 1957-58 season, but sans host. By the beginning of the 1958-59 season (Son of Shock!) , scores of horror host fan clubs had materialized around the country. Zacherley, who had been hosting Shock! on WCAU in Philadelphia as ‘Roland’ (accent on the second syllable), had the most fan clubs of all the Horror Hosts who were haunting the airwaves. Because of this popularity he was invited, with an increase in salary, to haunt the airwaves of New York City (on WABC).

Fading in with an accompanying wolf howl, the show would begin, framed on some close-up section of the set. This was often a flickering candle, hypodermic needle, or skull--usually covered with cobwebs. To our sensibilities this was the ‘house of Zacherley.’ Strange things were hanging on the walls and occasional strange sounds were coming from somewhere off screen.

The camera would pan either right or left to frame Zacherley actively involved in some sort of bizarre activity. At this time he would then notice the viewer and speak directly to the camera with a cheery, “Hello! Zacherley here!” and give some sort of explanation as to what he was up to. One got the impression that he lived in these surroundings with cameras all around, poised and ready to go 24/7. At this particular time of the week these cameras would suddenly turn on to catch whatever he was doing at that time. Accordingly, when the show ended, he would continue with his bizarre activities until next week, when the cameras would reactivate and we, the viewers, would again visit via the magical realm of TV.

When the week’s movie began, the anticipation became high: when was he going to be briefly seen during the movie’s run? Eyes were glued to the screen, eagerly awaiting that moment. He didn’t disappoint. After the commercial break he was back in his usual surroundings, making a few off-the-cuff comments about the movie and continuing with the bizarre activity. His standard closing at the end of every show was the memorable, “Goodnight, whatever you are!” I, as well as tens of thousands of other viewers, had never seen anything like him. He was unique, he was bizarre, he was funny, he was entertaining. Therein is the essence of his cult status.

Movie Review: Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) Pavlovian Horror Redux

Zombos Says: Good (but stretches camera POV thin)

Watching Paranormal Activity 2 I felt like one of Ivan Pavlov's dogs, but instead of salivating at the sound of a bell, I would watch the screen more intently each time a low rumbling noise alerted me to the onset of a supernatural event. I can't readily recall any other horror movie franchise that purposefully conditions you to wait for something to happen by making you watch near endless home video recordings of the same scenes, again and again, in anticipation of something happening. Either this is an ingenious use of minimalist cinema verite and camera POV, or we're being suckered big time. Maybe it's a little of both.

A prequel and sequel rolled into one, the reason for the haunting is also hinted at, removing the unsettling feeling of this-could-happen-to-anyone you get in Paranormal Activity, but leaving room for another franchise entrant. Since the explanation involves family members back in the 1920s, you'd have to show it through box camera and scrapbook photographs, and hand-cranked newsreel footage instead of modern handycams and convenient home security cameras, like the ones watching Hunter's bedroom, the swimming pool vacuum cleaner, the living room, and the front door during the night. Their use is a creative and necessary extension to the first movie's handycam-only point of view, but this camera POV storytelling is wearing its compensating techniques thin through overuse, to a point of creating a self-conscious persistance that erodes believability. How many people, young or old, have a handycam glued to their hand to record everything, including lengthy poolside chit-chat and room-roaming discussions?

Recordings from the security cameras are shown again and again, each night, until the family takes notice (and us) of the escalating activity around Hunter, the German Shepard, and Kristi Rey (Sprague Grayden), Katie's sister. Katie was haunted and possessed by the demon in the first movie. The events in this one take place two months before that happens and explain why.

I suppose demons have all eternity to mess with mortals, so that's why not much happens for a while:  the pool's vacuum cleaner strangely winds up outside the pool each morning; the German Shepard barks and growl's at empty air; Hunter keeps staring at empty air; kitchen pots rattle and drop off their hooks with a bang in the dead of night; the family's nanny, Martine (Vivis Cortez), keeps cleansing the house of evil spirits. Like Maleva, the old gypsy woman in The Wolf Man, Martine knows something bad is happening. They didn't listen to Maleva until it was too late, either.

After her continual religious-based cleaning smokes up the house and irks Dan Rey (Brian Boland), he sends her away. The haunting begins in earnest after she leaves, and Dan's daughter Ali (Molly Ephraim) turns to Google to find out what's going on. In the older horror movies characters turned to moldy books, dusty parchments, curled scrolls, and bloody scrawls, and spent much of their time seeking them out (except for bloody scrawls of course: you just stumble across those); now every teen in a horror movie goes to the Internet to learn everything about the supernatural and demonic: same motif, different notes.

And yet it still works its magic. I jumped at the kitchen jump-shock, and waited uneasily for those payout moments that built from little innocuous events to the terminal ferocity in the basement.

In a horror movie, the basement is always the place you don't want to be.