From Zombos' Closet

Captain Company's Star Wars Goodies

The Star Wars Van Kits are goofy, yet so much fun. Wouldn't mind customizing my Mustang like the Darth Vader one (although my convertible top does present a problem).

 

1975 Famous Monsters Convention Creepy Magazine Ad

Here's a magazine promo (Creepy, issue number 74, back cover) for the 1975 Famous Monsters Convention. (See the 1975 Famous Monsters Convention Program Booklet)

 

1974 Famous Monsters Convention Eerie Magazine Ad

Here's a psychedelic promotion for the first Famous Monsters Convention, held in New York City, 1974; from issue number 61 of Eerie magazine. Between comic conventions and this, I was a very happy young fan back in the 1970s. Only wish I still had the swag I purchased back then. (See the Famous Monsters 1974 Convention Booklet)

 

Creepy's Vampirella Sticker in Full Color

In the words of that crass, smarmy game show guy in Robocop, "I'd buy that for a dollar!" This advertisement is from the inside cover of Creepy, issue number 74.

 

Eerie's Vampirella Movie Advertisement

Still waiting...Hammer? How about The Woman in Red next? This promotion is from the inside cover of Eerie, issue number 70, 1976.

Magazines: Playset Magazine 11 Marx Monster Mansion!

Playset Magazine #11, 2003, provides a monstrous issue for monsterkids with its glimpses of the prototype for the Marx Monster Mansion and other cool plastic monster toys every boy (and some girls) howled for back in the 1960s and 70s. "The mansion would have been 23" x 13" x 11" tall, the exact same dimensions of any Marx castle in this configuration."

My favorite playsets to pretend-play with included Fireball XL5 Space City and Hamilton's Invaders (giant bugs, pull the string to make them walk, military victims included). Now, had I the Monster Mansion to hang my action figures and plastic creatures from the gallows, or drop them to their doom from the walls, well, I might never have grown up. 

I wish I still had my MPC Haunted Hulk. I took it for a sail every time I took a bath, which was once or twice a month. I would load it up with those MPC pop-top horrors and push the green-slime colored hulk through the bubbles--I mean post nuclear mutating mist--and spray crazy foam at the monsters. I miss crazy foam. 

Usually illustrations and photos are in black and white, but the full-color spread on the Monster Mansion is eye-popping. So be prepared to pop them back into place if you haven't seen this issue yet. Those eyeballs can roll around the floor like crazy.

 

 

 

Magazines: Monsterpalooza 1

Zombos Says: Very Good

There's a smorgasbord of well-written articles to be found in this first issue of Monsterpalooza, although a little too varied to bring focus to the magazine's tagline "The Art of Monsters." The cheeky editorial doesn't help much either to provide a clear mission statement; it repeats Jack Torrance's dictum about dull work and no play, but doesn't give insight into why another horror magazine is vying for my torch-wielding enthusiasm and yours.

The coverage is both old and new movies and monsters, makeup, a fun little Halloween pop culture insert for this issue, a Vincentennial report, and interviews delivered in a snappy layout filled with photos and welcomed three-column text. David Gerrold's State of the Art (continuing column?) on summer movies is the usual harangue over movie quality for the massess, but it's well written and totally off target for that art of monsters thing. Maybe if he focused the article on specific summer horror/sci fi movies, I'd appreciate it more. 

The reading gem for me is Jeff Baham's The Happiest Haunt On Earth, which for Jeff, me, and many others I'm sure, would be Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion. Baham outlines the history, the influences--an early version called Bloodmere Manor was definitely not so happy--and explains how Walt's originally planned walk-through ride became the Doom Buggie journey we love today. A sidebar relates how some foolish mortals even go so far as to spread cremated remains of die-hard fans along the spooky hallways. But now that he mentions it....

However, one film that did have a lasting impact on the WED designers was the fictional house in Robert Wise's 1963 film 'The Haunting." In Wise's film, the house itself becomes a living, breathing character, which is an idea that resonated with the Imagineers. (Jeff Baham, The Happiest Haunt On Earth)

More treasures to plunder here are Dan Rhodes Dracula at 80, Pierre Fournier's Dare You See It, and Frank Dietz' Bob Burn's Burbank Spooktaculars. Rhodes basically repeats his argument from his lengthier article in Monsters From the Vault (volume 16, #29), but here he summarizes the critical importance of Dracula, a movie many older horror fans love to bash. If you like what he says here, I recommend you read his exhaustive analysis in MFTV.

For a more substantial read, Fournier delves deep in Dare You See It as he examines the research, and the newspaper clippings of the day, to track the evolution of Frankenstein as it bounced from actor to actor, director to director, and screenplay to screenplay. "Through spring and summer of '31, in a Thirties version of viral marketing, Universal's publicity department fed news items to gossip columnists, planting highly speculative and often contradictory articles, building interest." You can sense the feeling of anticipation and excitement potential audiences must have felt here, building up to the premier as the movie progresses from fancy to fact. 

On a lighter note, Dietz brings us personally closer to the out-of-this-Halloween spooktacular with The Thing From Another World, put on by Bob Burns in 2002 with a lot of help from his friends, all for a 4-minute live performance, repeated a heck of a lot for trick or treaters and diehard fans. It's amazing how concise and well-executed these events were, and this one in particular was written by Star Trek's D. C. Fontana, an "old friend of Bob and Kathy." 

There's more, like Ted Newsom's I Was Just Earning Me Wages, giving us a closer look at the career of Jimmy Sangster, and how he switched from producer to script writer with his first job, X the Unknown, and Mark Redfield's article Karloff and the Creation of the Screen Actors Guild. Given the wealth of talent in this issue, I hope the next one sustains it, and also defines more clearly the art of monsters, both present and past.

They're certainly off to a good start.

Magazines: CineAction 82, 83 Black Christmas and Frankenstein

Zombos Says: Very Good

I'm not a regular reader of CineAction, although it does touch on horror-genre subjects with probing and fascinating articles. I just find it difficult to keep up with the more academically-oriented analyses and arguments. Reading academic jargon-filled discursive suppositions gives me a feeling I can only describe as watching a textual dog eating it's subtextual tail, round and round in a circular narrative. I get dizzy when the words semantic, syntactic, trope, and anthropomorphic are used in the same paragraph. I know. It's me.

But this issue has two horror movie-related articles that piqued my interest enough for me to pick it up: James Whale's Frankenstein: Re-animating the War and Black Christmas: The Slasher Film Was MADE IN CANADA.

Sara Constantineau's excellently argued Black Christmas: The Slasher Film Was MADE IN CANADA is a blunt statement inviting discussion, so let's talk about it first.

She posits that 1974's Black Christmas not only predates John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), but it also contains many of the slasher movie tropes Halloween adopts (and many later slashers bore us to death with). No argument from me there. There are important differences, however, which she contrasts and compares along a main theme of how Black Christmas uses a "prominent feminist subtext," because Jess, the Final Girl, is sexually active and lives, while Halloween is more sexist-oriented: women who aren't chaste incur punishment while the virginal Laurie, the Final Girl, lives.

Another key difference involves how patriarchal authority is viewed: Black Christmas pokes fun at authority figures while Halloween, through the sage Dr. Loomis, positions them as "privileged." Constantineau sums it up best: "Black Christmas has the same generic principles as the American slasher, but it does not propagate the same ideology. Halloween arguably punished female sexuality."

Yes, it did, but considering that promiscuous males in Halloween and other American slashers, generally speakig, get their gonads handed to them (sometimes literally) , I don't fully accept the sexist argument as a complete one. I'm sure a body count taken across the slasher movie spectrum may quantify this issue for better clarity, but for now I don't have any qualms saying there is a sexist element to all slasher movies, but I'd also give equal weight to the thematic subtext of miscreant youth being "corrected" for their misbehavior in order to preserve societal norms (aka, making the slasher movie commercially reputable by including a strong moral message).

Looking at Constantineau's notes for her article I'm not sure she went back far enough, however. Wikipedia's entry on slashers mentions one movie I wasn't aware of, and one I already consider a slasher:

Possibly the earliest film that could be called a slasher, Thirteen Women (1932) tells the story of an old college sorority whose former members are set against one another by a vengeful peer, seeking penance for the prejudice they bestowed on her because of her mixed race heritage. Another film important to the sub-genre is Michael Powell'sPeeping Tom (1960). (from Forerunners of the Slasher Film, Wikipedia)

Granted neither of these movies contains the more intense structural and semantic elements now comprising the slasher as we know it--including Black Christmas and Halloween--I'd still include them in any discussion of the slasher genre, which makes Constantineau's presumption that slashers were MADE IN CANADA appear somewhat presumptuous.

On another note, the real wonderment in James Whale's Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein is to be found in the diverse ways you can view and interpret them. That's when all those subtexts and hidden narratives pop up to amaze and befuddle you, providing new depth to a familiar landscape and revitalization of enjoyment. Christiane Gerblinger's James Whale's Frankenstein: Re-animating the Great War, is enlightening in its juxtuposition of Whale's wartime experiences and his direction of Frankenstein, and how the destruction of a world war permeates Frankenstein's laboratory (when seen as metaphor for the battlefield) and the Monster (when understood as a simulacrum for the shattered soldier reborn).

I love this stuff.

Whether you agree with Gerblinger or not, it's an informed argument that helps us appreciate the reality inherent in all cinematic artistry, and allows us to understand, a little more, how a director's life experiences can influence his movie in overt or subtle ways, even when the script, written by others,  is firmly envisioned and budgeted.

Whale was a second lieutenant in World War I and spent most of his time held as a prisoner of war. His experiences led to fame through his stage play, Journey's End, in 1928; a play about "war's conflation of life and death." Whale's early movies also carried war themes, including his Old Dark House, whose "lead character was a cynical war veteran."

Gerblinger views Whale's indelible, life-pummeling wartime moments through the actions of the Monster and the villagers, and the set pieces of his Frankenstein ("Whale re-used the outdoor sets [from] Universal's 1930 film adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front"). When filtered this way, the Monster becomes an amalgum of the Everyman and the sacrificial soldier re-animated from the dead toward a higher purpose, and the villagers become the disheveled society left behind, economically displaced and uncertain after the war. Turning on the Monster they reject their own guilt from failure to live up to the immense sacrifice by rejecting Frankenstein's re-animated creature.

Even more interesting is the notion that Frankenstein's failure to accept his responsibility toward his laboratory offspring is reflected by the community at large in their refusal to recognize the Monster as anything but a monstrosity to be feared, hunted, and chained. 

While Shelley's Frankenstein's refusal to meet his creature's requirements was portrayed as an abnegation of basic responsibilities, in Whale, this is transposed onto the villagers and their efforts at persecution. These instances of "increased callousness and neglect towards the weak in general" grow in force and vehemence in the 1935 film. This suggests that it is the conduct of the masses being held up to scrutiny, not Frankenstein's irresponsibility, because Whale's emphasis seems to be overtly upon the mass positioned against the individual (echoes of Metropolis reverberate).

Gerblinger broadens her discussion to include the forces of the Great Depression and the Forgotten Men of World War I, and briefly hits on a revelatory explanation--to me, at least--for the reason everyone is dressed in that hodgepodge of time periods fashion, one which goes beyond the obvious budget and production rationales. 

There's a lot more to enjoy in CineAction # 82/83, especially the article on Georges Melies' influence on sci fi cinema. Considering how much I enjoyed this issue, I may even bite the bullet and read more CineAction. I wonder what they've written about zombies? Their so academic these days, you know.

Magazines: The Paranormal Special SFX Edition

Zombos Says: Very Good

Okay, I'm a sucker for UK horror and sci fi magazines. For one thing, they're larger magazines. When ours keep shrinking--I wonder how much shorter and narrower our magazines and comic books will get--the Brits keep their format robust: a tad larger and you could easily display your tastes quite well on any standard coffee table. Forget digital: no current horror or sci fi magazines do it well.

For another, the coverage is fairly good, even when you toss in the usual publicity accolades and shallow interviews for upcoming movies, current movies, and most everything in-between; it's written without that snarky, glammy, and sometimes pretentious Video Watchdog tone you've got to suffer through from our Canadian and American creepy-print cousins. Instead there's a nicely sophisticated understatedness replacing the know-it-all bombast, you know what I mean? Toss in a few stickers, a keyring Ghost that smells and looks a lot like one of those plastic-goop Mattel Creepy Crawlers, and a 2012 Cult Movie Calendar and, zoinks!, I'm an easy target.

Of course, you might shake your head and counter that Gorezone (or GZ) didn't fit this rosy picture I've painted. You would be right. I admit it didn't. It was in a category all its own; and not a good one, either. It lost its direction a while back and became insufferable to read. Then again, I don't think reading was the actual goal as the male-centric eye-candy was more prominently positioned for attention.

But given all this, is this special SFX edition magazine, The Paranormal, any good? Well, yes, definitely. Television shows and movies, a look at Daniel Radcliffe's upcoming The Woman In Black through an interview with director James Watkins (Eden Lake), and an excellent examination of one of my favorite literary supernatural investigators, Carnacki, the Ghost Finder, created by William Hope Hodgson, are worthy of your attention. (I double-dare you to read The Whistling Room in the dead of night, alone, without the television or iPod on.) The only onscreen portrayal of Carnacki was ably done by Donald Pleasance for The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes television series in the 1970s. They chose The Horse of the Invisible story for that episode, probably due to budgetary reasons. How Hollywood and the Indies haven't yet exploited Carnacki is beyond me.

Also in Jane's script, one of the big references we talked about, believe it or not, was J-Horror. We're both really big fans of films such as Dark Water and Ringu, and they are very definite sources when it comes to approach and tone. I think those films have a real mastery of dread. So it's an English ghost house film meets Japanese horror--there's your high concept! (from James Watkins' The Woman In Black interview)

A listing of ghost stories in print to savor on long winter nights, a top 50 list of ghostly movies, a top 10 list of best Supernatural episodes, and more in-depth interviews (note the key term here, "in-depth" ) fill in the main-article crevices. Even author Colin Wilson's work is examined, and there's a brief go at Ti West's The Innkeepers, which I'm hoping is much better than his lacklustre and boring House of the Devil. While the focus is on Britishly works (The Stone Tape, for instance), the coverage is broad enough to entice and satisfy most horror fans, even if you don't drink tea and think a scone is something orange and placed by road workers onto busy streets. And if you're ever headed to the UK, there's a haunted pubs guide for you, although I wonder if Will Salmon, the bloke who compiled it, was sober at the time.

Joe Dante's Dante's Inferno And Other Worse ThingsBy Professor Kinema

With Thanksgiving under my belt, my thoughts always turn to turkeys. Not only conjured up images of the on-the-table-carving-kind with stuffing and cranberries, but also movies considered the worst on the silver screen--past and present. One web site I'm always checking out, as well as occasionally contributing to--at least in submitting an occasional vote--is the Razzies, where candidates for the past year's worst achievements are listed and voted on. The Golden Raspberry Awards have been around, and going strong, since March 31, 1981. A similar site, Rotten Tomatoes, was launched August 12, 1999. Pre-dating them is the yearly Harvard Lampoon "Worst of... " Awards. On Saturday, April 23rd, 1966, Natalie Wood made history when she became the first performer to show up at Harvard and graciously accept her award after being voted the year's Worst Actress .

Speaking of the Worst...

In the early 1960s, in the uncharted wastes of New Jersey, dwelled one young fan who was caught up in monsters, both classic and modern. Through the pages of magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland and Castle of Frankenstein he was made aware of other kindred spirits who existed. They were appearing in FMoF's and CofF's pages since any and all were invited to submit letters, photos and mentions of fan clubs. This young fan was determined to have a letter, or at least a mention, in FMoF. He wrote to editor Forry Ackerman of his love for monster films and how much he loved reading FMoF. No response. He wrote of what he and his friends did when they were not attending school. Again, no response. He submitted a list of what he thought were the best classic and contemporary fanta-films. Again, no response. Maybe a serious re-thinking and change of concept was in order? So this young fan compiled a list of monster (and science fiction) films he thought were the worst. Although thematically cynical, this list was ahead of its time. This cynical young fan was future film director Joe Dante.

I digress...

Prior nods to the not-the-greatest horror and sci-fi films had been in the pages of FMoF and another Ackerman-edited magazine running concurrently, Spacemen. The premier issue of FMoF (1958) in the Out of This World Monsters article featured a still of the Ro-man with the caption "Robot Monster, the film so horrible it was not released, it escaped." One could easily ascertain the usage of the word "horrible" was used here not to mean anything horror-filled, but rather to imply a bad quality. The premier issue of Spacemen (July 1961) ran a full page photo of the aliens from Invasion of the Saucermen with the less-than-complimentary comments of them resembling "cabbage heads" and "heads that resemble meatballs with spaghetti" in the Orbituary Department. Issue #3 (April, 1962) contained a request from readers (one cheekily named 'Hans Orlac'), also in the Orbituary Department, to see a photo of "those unbelievably ridiculous popeyed planetmen from Killers From Space."

The young fans of FMoF and Spacemen (both periodicals presumably originating from the same typewriter of Unkka Forry) took no exception to the less than sterling comments of the films they were enjoying both on TV as well as on the big screen. Good films were enjoyable. Bad films were equally as enjoyable, mainly because they were bad. It was all taken in fun.

Okay, now back to Joe Dante...

A few weeks later his telephone rang. It was Forry Ackerman. Bang! The Ackermonster himself was calling him from the other side of the country...from the Ackermansion! He had read his list of 50 worst horror and sci-fi films with the utmost interest. Permission was asked if it could be expanded and embellished to be featured in the next issue of FMoF. Now a starry-eyed fan, he would be credited as the author!

Within a few months a huge envelope arrived with complimentary copies of FMoF #18 (July, 1962). On page 14 began what had now morphed into Dante's Inferno. There it was, a full-fledged article! Containing, as Dante later commented, "words that he didn't even understand." The 50 "worst films" listing was in alphabetical order begining with Adventure Island (1947) and winding up with Zombies on Broadway (1945). Two of Ed Wood's films were included: Bride of the Monster was listed as #7, and sandwiched between The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues (listed as Phantom of 20,000 Leagues) and Revolt of the Zombies was Plan 9 From Outer Space at #39. The entire comment was "I had heard a lot about Plan 9 From Outer Space and saw it to see if it was as bad as they said [although he doesn't elaborate on who "they" were]. It was even worse! There is a distinct possibility that it was the cheapest film ever made. The entire cast was awful. Special effects were laughable and even the old clips of Bela Lugosi were poor. The scene where Tor Johnson rose from the grave was the only good 5 seconds in the whole film. Vampira, Johnson, Lyle Talbot all wasted."

Similar pans described the other titles in Dante's Inferno. Soon after, Joe Dante was listed in CofF #3 (1963), and by issue #4 was a contributing editor. His editorial duties included compiling the Frankenstein (TV) Movie Guide. In his reflections of FMoFs 1 though 50 in  Famous Monster of Filmland (Imagine, 1986), Forry Ackerman, writes about Dante's Inferno and the repurcussions it caused. He wrote that the young fan from New Jersey was a "Joe Nobody" and that he truly felt no one would take the article seriously. However, FMoF's publisher Jim Warren irately told him American International's president James H. Nicholson was fuming. His company was planning to reissue a few of the titles panned in the article. It was also made known that if FMoF were to now run articles putting down Imagi-Movies, it could be devastating. Producers and releasing companies would not want to promote anything, past or present, on the magazine's pages. Warren flatly told him "Don't ever run a criticism of another picture!"

So...

Two issues later a full page photo was printed in the beginning of the magazine. It depicted a large trophy sitting on the desk of a beaming James H. Nicholson. The trophy was the (first) Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine Producer's Award for "the horror hit of 1962 - AIP's The Pit & the Pendulum." Pacified, Nicholson was smiling as Warren was proudly admiring it.

And what's more...

Evidently, one of the auteurs whose films Dante panned, Roger Corman, with Teenage Caveman #44 on the list, either forgave him or paid it no attention. Less than 20 years later Corman's New World Productions handled Hollywood Boulevard, and Piranha--both featuring early directing duties by Dante. Corman functioned as Associate Producer for both films.

By the time I had read Dante's Inferno I had caught an airing of Plan 9 on television. As a pre-teen monster fan I thought of it as a bit odd. Other fanta-films seemed to have more substance and looked better. Now here was someone out there in the world that caught the same eccentricities I was observing while viewing these films. Here with this listing were many more. To me it all fell in to the general appreciation for them. Watching a film either on TV or in the movies, especially with friends, was all part of fandom. The fun was in either being generally thrilled by a truly scary film, or having a good laugh with it. Plan 9's (as well as Bride of the Monster's) auteur was not mentioned in Dante's Inferno, but recognition would come soon after his death. His body of work would be resurrected, reappraised, reevaluated and heralded...as the worst.

Now about Ed Wood Jr...

1978, the year Edward Davis Wood Jr. died at the age of 54, saw the publication of a book titled The 50 Worst Films of All Time (Popular Library). The authors were listed as Harry Medved with Larry Dreyfuss. Listed were films af all genres, touching on a few horror and sci-fi films. Mixed in with titles like The Conqueror, Myra Breckenridge, Lost Horizon and Valley of the Dolls, were titles like Eegah!, The Horror of Party Beach, Robot Monster and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. All truly deserving of inclusion in a book listing the worst. Hidden in the back of the book on page 284 was something unique, a form to be cut out (or xeroxed like I did) and sent to Michael Medved in Venice, California, listing your (the reader's) favorite worst films. This little element gave a hint as to who really authored The 50 Worst Films of All Time. As was revealed a few years later, Michael Medved did the bulk of the writing. He didn't want his name associated with the book mainly because he was working at establishing a career in Hollywood as a screenwriter. It has also been established he was working as a script doctor.

Anyway, the mail-in-your-worst-films poll was counted (with yours truly prominently among the results), instigating a follow-up book, Golden Turkey Awards (Perigee Books, 1980). Here was a listing by brother authors Harry and Michael Medved (whatever became of Dreyfuss?) naming and awarding film turkeys, "Golden Turkeys" no less. This bad film label sat a little better with readers than what a popular TV critique show running at the time was using. At the end of the Siskel and Ebert show they would comment on a film they determined to be the Dog of the Week. This didn't endear them to viewers who had and loved those cinematic pet dogs.

But what about the poll's results?

As a result of the 50 Worst Films of All Time mail-in poll, the two movies that came out on top as the undeniably worst were The Exorcist II, the Heretic and Plan 9 From Outer Space. Neither were originally listed in their previous 50 Worst Films of All Time. This dubious distinction sparked the interest in Ed Wood Jr., who to this day still holds the title of the Worst Director ever. Extensive comments were included about Plan 9, Ed Wood Jr., and an overview of his films.

Four years later the Medveds published The Hollywood Hall of Shame, subtitled The Most Expensive Flops in Movie History. Nowhere is listed Ed Wood Jr. or any of his films.

And then...

Bill Warren, in his early editions of Keep Watching the Skies states "In The Golden Turkey Awards, the reprehensible Harry and Michael Medved, who consistently display a repulsively arrogant attitude toward the efforts of helplessly untalented but comparatively more sincere people..." in his commentary on Plan 9, calls their book "contemptible." By the 2010 edition of his book Warren omits the "reprehensible" and "contemptible." He adds that Harry "has reformed [at least by his standards] and has become a good writer on film subjects with a fondness for Plan 9."

In 1996 another book listing movie turkeys was published: The Worst Movies of All Time, or What Were They Thinking? (Citadel) by Michael Sauter. Not particularly well researched, it covered much the same ground as the Medved books, and then some. Wood and his films were given sporadic mention in the final part, The Baddest of the B's.

Now back to Joe Dante...and a wrap up with Bela and Ed Wood...

At Unkka Forry's 75th Birthday party I sat at the same table with Joe Dante. In between his signing autographs we chatted. We briefly touched on his Dante's Inferno article. Also at this party was Mark Carducci, who was finishing up filming his documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood, a Plan 9 Companion (1992). Dante, along with several others, spoke to the partygoers. He mentioned the whole incident about writing to Forry and eventually getting his letter listing the 50 worst films published. This section of his talk made it into Carducci's documentary. Also in the documentary are comments by Harry Medved. He revealed that he was influenced, of sorts, by Dante's Inferno. Ironically, none of the films listed in Dante's article were listed in the 50 Worst Films of All Time book. It took solicited reader response and another book to re-discover Ed Wood Jr. and his films.

Viewing and evaluating the films Bela Lugosi was appearing in towards the end of his life one can see his association with Wood wasn't the worst that could've happened to him. Wood maintained a genuine fondness for Bela and was always looking to include him in some sort of project he had going. This was to keep him active and possibly provide some money.

Two films he had appeared in just one year before Glen or Glenda stand out as being worse than anything Wood could have ever concocted: Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (aka Vampire over London, My Son the Vampire, King Robot, The Vampire and the Robot, ad nausem) and Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (aka The Boys From Brooklyn).

The titles of these films alone could warn anyone away from a theater showing them. Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (released or escaped in the US in 1962), came about at a time when Bela was being shamelessly exploited by the Gordons, Richard and Alex. William 'One Shot' Beaudine, director of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, has subsequently been derided in print by Warren as well as the Medveds. How many remember Arthur Lucan, aka, Old Mother Riley? How many remember Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, the Brooklyn boys in Brooklyn Gorilla?

ZC Note: Just us bad movie buffs, at least, remember. And I'm from Brooklyn!

Monsters From the Vault Vol 16, No 29

Zombos Says: Very Good

Drop everything and make like Renfield to pick up the latest Monsters From the Vault magazine, volume 16, issue number 29. In a detailed and exhaustive examination, analysis, and rebuttal that fills more than half the magazine, Gary D. Rhodes pins the fat, juicy spider of 1931's Dracula's growing cadre of deriders to the wall with academic gusto in The Curious Undead Life of Todd Browning's Dracula.

I can't think of anything Rhodes leaves out of his argument: the mystery of the now infamous piece of cardboard seen obscuring the lamp in Mina's room and the supposition that the Spanish Dracula, shot on the same sets, is superior to Browning's version are dissected frame by frame, scrutinized and compared with fervor, and refuted with quantitative information delivered deftly, blow after blow. 

Rhodes analyzes the movie within the context of the criticisms delivered by "it's key critics," disputing their assumptions. That Browning's Dracula adheres stultifyingly too closely to the play, or its cinematography is lacking when compared to the Spanish version (directed by George Melford, cinematography by George Robinson), or how Browning's pacing is slower, are some of the critiques Rhodes sinks his teeth into, managing to take quite a bite out of them in the process.

I'm not sure any other movie historian has resorted to using z-axis space to weigh the pros and cons of George Robinson's and Karl Freund's use of scene depth (Freund shows more), or has counted up the shots to prove Browning moves the camera more, and pans and tilts more than Melford did, or can state for certainty that the pacing is slower for Melford's movie at a running time of 102 minutes compared to Browning's 73; even when average shot length is taken into account. Rhodes details how Robinson uses proscenium framing considerably more than Freund, and highlights editing faux pauxs by Melford, such as the wine spilling redundancy, and the Dracula-as-bat bumping into Mina's bedroom windowpane with an audible thunk.

With a discussion of Carlos Villarias's bug-eyed acting and the use of mise-en-scene between both movies, Rhodes drives the rebuttal stake even deeper into the heart of Browning's Dracula nay-sayers. If you love the Browning/Lugosi Dracula as I do, you must read this article; if you love the Melford/Villarias Dracula, you still must read this article: hopefully it will bring you to your senses to realize Bela is best.

Famous Monsters of Filmland: The Annotated Issue # 1

Zombos Says: Very Good

Having acquired a distributor, Warren phoned me. "I know you're quite serious about your films," he said, so I'm going to tell you something and then I'm going to hold the phone a yard away from my ear because I'm sure I'll hear you scream all the way to New York." You, Forrest J-no-period Ackerman, are about to become editor of -- are you ready for this? -- FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND!"

"Oh, no! [groaned Forry Ackerman] Do I have to put my name on it!"

 

In Famous Monsters of Filmland: The Annotated Issue # 1, Joe Moe opens the vault to bring Forry's original hand-typed and pencil-edited manuscript for the first issue of FM to light, and Kevin Burns and Dennis Billows remember the sci fi man who crash landed on Planet Horror with a shock wave still reverberating today.

I took the above quote from Forry's Birth of a Notion, wherein he describes how FM evolved from an initial idea of doing a oneshot magazine based on the French Cinema 57 issue devoted to classic monsters, then to the idea of doing a oneshot called Wonderama (The Mag of a Thousand Faces), comprised of movie stills from Forry's vast collection, and eventually to fate stepping in with lucky timing. Teenage horror movies were becoming hot and the magazine distributors Warren failed to impress at first with "his mad idea" suddenly remembered him: now they craved the monsters. And soon thousands of kids would crave them, too.

Burns follows with an affectionate recollection of meeting Forry for the first time, Following Forry, and Billows, "one of Forry's most valued assistants" provides glimpses into the mettle of the man with a selection of Ackermanisms culled from tape and written interviews on why Forry collected, his first movie,  his friendship with Fritz Lang, and Forry's touching recollection of Boris Karloff.

A room by room photo tour of the treasures in the Ackerminimansion, Forry's last residence and smaller repository for wonders and terrors, rounds out these prefatory articles, leading into the hand-written outline for the issue's contents and the old-fashioned typed pages, with penciled edits here and there, revealing Forry's creative process in bringing the first issue of FM to the newstands. Earlier in Birth of a Notion, Forry mentions how Warren would hold a card in front of him as he typed. Written on the card  were the words "I'm 11 and 1/2 Years Old, and I am your reader. Forry Ackerman, Make me laugh."

It worked.