The Friday Night Horror Movie: House of Usher (1960)

house of usher poster

As a producer, Roger Corman helped launch the careers of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Peter Bogdanovich, and Jonathan Demme. His films were very low-budget, often exploitive, but they almost always made money. He famously developed a strategy as a producer and distributor that allowed directors to have full creative control (within budget, of course) as long as they had a scene of violence and/or sex every fifteen minutes.

He’s produced an astonishing 512 films in his life (and at the age of 96 IMDB lists at least one upcoming project with his name on it). And though with a few exceptions, he stopped directing in the early 1970s he managed to helm over fifty films.

The most famous of those films are a series of eight films (very) loosely based on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. House of the Usher was the first of those adaptations. It is a good one.

Phillip Winthrop (Mark Damon) travels to the titular House of Usher, a grand, decaying, gothic old mansion, to visit his fiance Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey). He is told by the family butler, Bristol (Harry Ellerby) that she is very ill and bedridden. When he demands to see her anyway he is taken to see her brother Roderick (Vincent Price)

Roderick is afflicted with an illness that enhances all of his senses so that the slightest noise, or light, or rough surface drives him to near madness (well, as we’ll see later to total madness). He says his sister is afflicted with the same illness and tells a tale of their entire bloodline being infected with madness so intense it has affected the house itself.

He begs, no he demands that Phillip leave the house but he refuses. This only serves to drive Roderick further into madness and in turn, he drives Madeline to the very edge. Roderick is so intent in his belief that Madeline should not leave the house, nor marry, nor have children that he is prepared to murder her himself.

Corman makes great use of his sets. The mansion is sprawling with a seemingly endless set of rooms, hallways, and secret corridors. As Roderick’s insanity grows the house begins to crumble.

I’m used to watching gothic horror films being shot in stark black and white with great shadows overcoming the scenes, so it is surprising to see this in full, glorious color. It looks magnificent. There is a dream sequence toward the end that is saturated in color and even a bit psychedelic.

Mark Damon is a bit stiff, and Myrna Fahey is just ok, but good golly is Vincent Price great in this. I’m a huge fan of the actor and he’s full-throttling the role as only he can but it works oh-so-well here.

It is a bit slow to get going as these types of gothic melodramas can be, but once it gets into gear it’s a great deal of fun to watch.

The Movie Journal: August 2023

angels with dirty faces

I watched 52 movies in July of 2023. Only two of those were films that I had seen before. 27 of those were made before I was born. The Criterion Channel was showing a collection of British Noirs and I watched several of them. I love a good film noir and it was interesting to see that very American genre through a British lens. Towards the end of the month, I got a little obsessed with Italian Giallos and I watched several of them. I also continued my little experiment of watching a new movie from every year I’ve been alive in chronological order which has been a lot of fun. Especially as I’ve seen a lot of movies from the 1980s, it is probably the decade that I’ve seen the most films from. This means I’ve had to really look for films I haven’t seen in any given year. I also watched three films from 2023 which is a rarity for me. I tend to watch older films.

My favorite new watches this month were Angels With Dirty Faces, The Petrified Forest, The Small Back Room, and yes, we’ll go ahead and throw Barbie in there too.

We are currently halfway through 2023 so my stats are coming together nicely. I’ve seen 295 films to date. 85 percent of those were new to me. Thriller is my most-watched genre (128) followed by Drama (115), Crime (83), and Horror (80). 248 of the films I’ve seen were in the English language, 20 were in Italian, 10 were in French, and 7 were in Japanese.

My most watched actors of the year look a lot like last month. Wilbur Mack, Boris Karloff, Courtney Cox, Rogers Jackson, and James Coburn all starred in six movies. Mack and Karloff were part of the Mr. Wong series that I watched last month. Cox and Jackson were the Scream movies and I watched that entire thing earlier this year. James Coburn is just awesome.

Most watched directors are also the same. Sam Peckinpah leads the pack with six films. Wiliam Nigh and Fernando Di Leon follow with five films watched. And Peter Hyams, Wes Craven, and Martin Scorsese all had four films.

Did you watch anything interesting last month?

Here’s the complete list:

Thank you, Mr. Moto (1937)
Everly (2014)
To Catch a Killer (2023)
Ishtar (1987)
Asteroid City (2023)
Barbie (2023)
Wagon Master (1950)
The Editor (2014)
The Brides of Dracula (1960)
Nine Guests for a Crime (1977)
Delirium (1979)
Night School 1981
Eyeball (1975)
Bullets or Ballots (1936)
The Time Machine (1960)
Duel in the Sun (1946)
Lured (1947)
Juggernaut (1974)
Meteor (1979)
The Last Gangster (1937)
Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971)
The Hunt (2020)
Each Dawn I Die (1939)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
Journey into Fear (1943)
The Petrified Forest (1936)
Marked Woman (1937)
Think Fast, Mr. Moto (1937)
Lifeforce (1985)
Amityville 3-D (1983)
Amityville II: The Possession (1982)
Runaway Train 1985
Assault on Precinct 13 (2005)
Dreamscape (1984)
See How They Run (2022)
Yield to the Night (1956)
Silkwood 1983
Hanky Panky (1982)
Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970)
The Whip and the Body (1963)
The Night Eats the World (2018)
Nightmare Castle (1965)
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Independence Day (1996)
Outland (1981)
Nine to Five (1980)
Pool of London (1951)
The Woman in Question (1950)
Dark Star (1974)
The Small Back Room (1949)
Obsession (1949)
Green for Danger (1946)

Dreamscape (1984)

dreamscape poster

I’m watching one movie from every year I’ve been alive in chronological order. We’re now up to 1984. I’m also running behind on writing these things as I watched this one a couple of weeks ago. I also skipped ahead and already wrote about my 1985 entry, Runaway Train. As such my brain is already a little foggy on this film, so this will be short.

Dennis Quaid plays Alex Gardner, a psychic who used to get probed and prodded by some big government agency, but then ran away to pursue gambling by way of the ponies. When he runs afoul with a gangster, he joins back up with the feds (run by Max Von Sydow, slumming).

They’ve got a big new project where psychics can link with a sleeping person and interact with their dreams. Alex uses it to help people. In one of the film’s best and dumbest sequences, he joins up with a kid who has nightmares about an awesome-looking cobra-man and teaches him not to be afraid anymore. There’s a nice touch inside that dream. As Alex and the kid are running from the cobra-man they see another man in a suit sitting at a table, the kid says something like “That’s my dad, he won’t help.”

Kate Capshaw is the love interest. This is the type of movie that finds it funny for Dennis Quaid’s character to invader her dreams and try and get sexy with her.

Christopher Plummer is the government agent who figures they can use this dreamscaping to assassinate undesirables. Which includes the President of the United States (Eddie Albert). The President has been having nightmares about starting World War III three and Plummer’s character is afraid that’s gonna turn him into a peacenik. Seriously.

It gets dumber from there. One would hope a film about dreams would be more interesting visually, but other than the cobra-man it is all pretty boring looking. The rest of it doesn’t fare much better.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Brides of Dracula (1960)

brides of drcula

Some of the best Hammer Horror films are the ones where they essentially remake the classic Universal Horror movies. Remake isn’t really the right word for the Hammer versions of the classic Universal Monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, and the Wolfman) often differ greatly from their Universal origins. The Hammer films were much more violent and sexual than the original films, and just as stylish. They all appear a bit tame by today’s standards, but realizing that many of them were made in the late 1950s and early 1960s it is fairly astounding that they got away with so much.

The Brides of Dracula is the first sequel to Horror of Dracula (1958) (they made several more). Christopher Lee was great in that one as Dracula, but he died at the end so they couldn’t put him in this sequel (he is very much missed here and so he shows up again, despite being dead, in the next movie). Peter Cushing does return as Dr. Van Helsing.

A French school teacher, Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur) takes a position at an all-girls school in Transylvania. She takes the usual rickety coach through the usual creepy woods in the usual middle of the night. When they stop off at a little village for a bite to eat, the coach driver gets spooked and abandons her.

The innkeepers fret about, warning Marianne that she can’t possibly stay the night in their village alone. Just about that time in walks Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt). She’s old and creepy but kindly offers to put Marianne up for the night in her castle. Despite the innkeeper’s warnings, she agrees.

There she finds a strange servant and the Baroness’s son Baron Meinster (David Peel) locked in his room and chained to the wall. The Baroness warns that he is ill and maybe a bit crazy, but he’s nice to Marianne, and handsome so she unlocks him.

Of course, he’s a vampire. Of course, he pretty quickly starts turning the pretty ladies of the village into his brides and has his eyes on Marianne.

This is where Van Helsing comes in. He does his usual thing which eventually leads to a showdown with the vampire. I won’t spoil it but it has one of the best vampire kills in all of vampire moviedom.

The thing is I generally find Hammer Horror films to be slightly tedious in terms of plot and pacing. The Brides of Dracula is no different. The plot just kind of plods along. It takes ages for a vampire to show up and ages still for Van Helsing to come along. Even then the action is often broken up by too much talking.

But the real thing is that I don’t ever really mind. I love Hammer Horror movies. They always build these incredible sets and costumes. They light it spectacularly with all of these lovely reds, blues, and greens. Their films always look amazing. The men are always dressed in these fabulous suits and the women are draped in the most marvelous flouncy gowns.

I love Peter Cushing (he is so much more than Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars. He’s surprisingly athletic in this film, running and jumping all over the place. I love Christopher Lee, too and he is greatly missed in this movie (try as he might but David Peel is the palest of imitations).

So, yeah, plotwise The Brides of Dracula isn’t great, but it is so much fun to look at and watch I don’t really mind.

Runaway Train (1985)

runaway train

I’m watching one movie from every year I’ve been alive in chronological order. We are now up to 1985.

I live in a small town that has two major train lines running right through the middle of it. I don’t know how many trains pass through our little burg on any given day but it is a lot. You can hardly drive from one side of the town to the other without getting stopped by a train. Sometimes two. Or three. It is very annoying. I used to carry a book with me in my car and whenever I was stopped waiting on a train I’d read a few pages. I finished more than one novel that way.

Despite this, I still love trains. I remember the first time I ever rode a train. We were riding across France. I sat in my window seat with my headset on, listening to music and watching the beautiful countryside glide by.

Trains are so much better than planes. They might not be as fast, but they are much more comfortable and pleasant. I wish we had more trains in the USA. I’d take them everywhere.

I love movies about trains. I’ve watched Westerns where they are building the first train lines out west. I’ve seen horror films with some crazed killer stalking prey on a train. There are mysteries and thrillers set on trains. One day I’m gonna make a huge playlist of all the movies that have trains in them. That would make a fun viewing.

Not all train movies are good, of course. There isn’t anything special about a train that makes your story interesting. Runaway Train is a good example of this.

Jon Voight plays Oscar “Manny” Manheim a ruthless convict being held in Alaska’s Stonehaven Maximum Security Prison. He’s so terrible the warden has had him locked away in solitary confinement for three years. When the courts say he can’t do that, Manheim is released into general pop.

Though the prison is supposed to be some kind of Alcatraz-like inescapable place, Manheim easily gets out by having fellow inmate Buck McGeehy (Eric Roberts) roll him out in a dirty clothes hamper. Inside the laundromat, they grease themselves up and slip out through a sewer tunnel. From there they hop aboard the titular train.

Darn their luck, the train conductor has a heart attack and falls off the train. In doing so he destroys the brakes and sends the train heading down the line at full speed. Rebecca DeMornay plays a train employee who is pretty useless, honestly.

There are some dispatchers back at the base, who have computerized systems to track where the train is going. They call upcoming stations to try to stop the thing, but they are pretty useless as well, honestly.

The film periodically attempts to ring some tension out of the speeding train, but this is no Speed (1994) and they mostly fail at it. Every time they cut to the dispatch station

Voight is sporting some godawful facial hair and an even worse accent. Everyone else seems to be trying their best, but it all just falls sort-of flat. It is the type of film where after watching it I just kind of shrug my shoulders and go, “that was something,” and the look for something else to watch.

Pledging My Time: Conversations With Bob Dylan Band Members

pledging my time book cover

Bob Dylan is an enigma. A mystery wrapped inside a riddle. He rarely gives interviews and when he does you come out more confused about who he really is than when you began. Even his own autobiography has a questionable relationship to the truth.

Maybe it’s better that way. Maybe that’s the way it should be.

I’ve never been one to obsess over an artist’s life. It is about the art – or in this case the music. That’s what’s important.

Still, Bob Dylan is a fascinating human. He’s arguably the greatest songwriter of his generation, or any if we’re being honest. He’s performed live and on stage more than just about any person ever. If we can’t get to know Dylan through the man himself, then what better way to at least try and understand him, than with the people who have played with him on that stage?

Ray Padgett, through his wonderful newsletter Flagging Down the Double E’s has been chronicling Dylan’s career show by show, song by song, and interview by interview. I don’t think he’s ever interviewed Dylan, but he’s interviewed dozen upon dozen of people who know – or knew – him. As much as anyone can really know Dylan, anyway.

Many of those interviews, with musicians who have played with Dylan throughout his career, can now be found in Mr. Padgett’s new book, Pledging My Time: Conversations With Bob Dylan Band Members. Thanks to a generous contribution from a fan of The Midnight Cafe, I was able to purchase the book and it is wonderful.

I’m not even halfway through it, but I just had to share it with you all. It works, more or less chronologically with Padgett interviewing people who knew Dylan back in his early folk days and moves forward through most of his career. It begins with Noel Paul Stookey (of Peter, Paul, and Mary fame) who arguably helped launch Dylan’s career, and ends with Benmont Tench who played on a couple of tracks from Dylan’s 2020 album Rough and Rowdy Ways.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Bob Dylan book if it didn’t wander in and out of that chronology. Many of the interviewees met and performed with Dylan numerous times, at different stages of his career and Padgett lets them talk about everything.

Padgett mostly lets them talk. He’s not one of those interviewers that injects himself into the conversation, but he hangs back letting his subjects tell their stories. It is a fascinating, wonderful read. Like I said I haven’t finished it. I’m taking my time, soaking it in.

I don’t know that I’ll know Bob Dylan any better when I do finish it, but I’ll know those who have played with him quite a bit. And that’s something. Something pretty cool. Maybe that’s the way it should be.

You can purchase the book in a variety of formats here.

Blood Money: Four Classic Westerns is the Pick of the Week

blood money bluray

Over the last few years, my movie-watching has increased by a large margin. I’ve gone from watching around 120 movies a year to over 300. One of the things I’ve tried to do with this increase in viewings is to increase my overall cinematic knowledge. I try to watch films from different eras and genres, films that I might otherwise not see. I don’t want to just watch the latest blockbusters but to allow my movie watching to increase my understanding of film history. I think that is obvious just from the movies I’ve reviewed on this site.

The Western is a genre that I mostly ignored for large swaths of my life. I didn’t dislike Westerns as much as I just wasn’t interested in them. It didn’t help that my formative years were a time when the genre had mostly gone out of style. But I’ve come to love the genre over the last few years.

I love the wide open spaces of the genre and the gunfights. I love how the films are about expanding and living in a new world, about starting a new country, about etching out a living in a harsh, brave world.

The Italians got into the Western business about the time they were dying out in America. These so-called Spaghetti westerns played with the standard tropes of the genres and made it their own.

Arrow Video is doing what they do best this week – releasing a boxed set of relatively obscure genre films and loading them with extras. Blood Money: Four Classic Westerns includes four Italian Westerns (Mátalo!, Find a Place to Die, Vengeance is Mine, $10,000 Blood Money) that were made from 1967-1970. I don’t know anything about them, and I don’t have to. I want to buy this box and learn about them as I watch.

Also out this week that looks interesting:

Soundies: The Ultimate Collection: Around the time of WWII little jukebox type machines started showing up in bars, honkytonks, and night clubs. For the drop of a coin you could watch what amounted to an early music video (or burlesque shows, or any number of other things). Kino Classics has put together a big collection of the music videos which star folks like Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Hoagy Carmichael, Doris Day and a ton of others. Sounds cool.

Paint: I would have bet you a lot of money that this comedy starring Owen Wilson was a weird biopic of Bob Ross, and I would have lost. Apparently Wilson’s character just looks like that painter of happy little clouds (and paints for a public television station), but that’s were the similarities end. Or something. The reviews have been terrible so I’ve not bothered to dig into it more.

The Broadway Melody: The first sound film to win an Oscar is also generally regarded as the first proper movie musical.

The War of the Worlds: This sci-fi classic from 1953 is getting a big 4K release for its 70th anniversary.

One False Move: Criterion is releasing this neo-noir classic about a police chief awaiting the arrival of some killers in a 4K set.

Chucky 4-7: Shout Factory presents this collection of Chucky films (Bride of Chucky, Seed of Chucky, Curse of Chucky, and Cult of Chucky) in a new 4K boxed set. I’ve never seen any of the Chucky films so this probably isn’t the place to start, but for fans it looks pretty cool.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Hunt (2020)

the hunt movie poster

A group of strangers wake up in an isolated forest with gags locked in their mouths. They stumble about until they find a large crate in the middle of a field. Inside the crate, they find a whole bunch of weapons. They find the key to their gags on the ground. As they are unlocking their gags and grabbing the weapons someone starts shooting at them. Several are killed and the rest scatter and run. They are being hunted.

The Hunt is an update on the classic story The Most Dangerous Game but with a lot of unnecessary and rather clunky political satire thrown in.

It was directed by Craig Zobel from a script by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof. It was produced under Blumouse Production and it has that same dull slickness that so many of his films contain. It looks good and its production values are nice but there isn’t a distinct directorial voice. It is entertaining, but ultimately forgettable.

The hunters pretty quickly take care of most of their prey, leaving only Crystal (Betty Gilpin) as the last one standing. They apparently didn’t do their homework as she is one tough cookie and has been in more than one fight before.

Gilpin is wonderful in this and she makes it all worth watching. She’s tough and savvy, and there is a little more than a glint in her eye as she takes down her attackers one by one. I’m a fan of The Most Dangerous Game stories (and there have been a lot of adaptations of the 1924 short story by Richard Connell) and I enjoyed seeing it in this modern update.

The hunters here are rich, liberal elites and they are preying on poor, illiterate rednecks whom they seem as contemptible (or deplorable if you will). The film tries to satirize both sides but its humor is too broad and blunt to actually be funny. My favorite bit comes when the hunters are choosing their prey by looking through a slide show of potential victims, all of whom have online profiles they disagree with. It is mostly white, bearded dudes but then a black guy in a cowboy hat shows up. Immediately the response is that they can’t hunt a black guy but then someone chimes in that they’ll get in trouble if they don’t have some diversity.

They bang the satiric drum throughout the film, mocking both sides with broad strokes so much that it distracted me completely from the pretty good humans hunting humans thriller aspects of the film.

The cast is filled with names you likely know – Emma Roberts, Ike Barinholtz, Sturgill Simpson, Macon Blair, Ethan Suplee, Glenn Howerton, and Hilary Swank – most of whom are making glorified cameos, many of which are promptly killed. I love when movies do that, and I love how those early deaths give the movie a feeling of anything can happen.

Of course, it then settles down into relative predictability, but for at least a few minutes I thought they were going off the rails in really interesting ways.

Like I said it ultimately winds up being an enjoyable but forgettable film. Gilpin absolutely makes it worth a watch.