Tag: horror movies

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)

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In 1974 Shaw Brothers Studio teamed up with Hammer Films to produce The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. On paper that sounds like a dream come true. Both studios are known for making terrific genre films with high production values on low budgets. Hammer was the king of remaking classic monster movies with gothic style and extra violence and sex appeal. Shaw Brothers mastered the art of kung fu style. Mixing them should have created an incredible film full of beautifully drawn castles whereupon kung fu masters battled vampires, werewolves, and other assorted demons.

Sadly, the actual film is rather dull and poorly produced.

The plot is a simple thing. Kah (Chan Shen), a Daoist monk, travels to Dracula’s castle in hopes that he can restore the glory of the 7 Golden Vampires who have ruled a small Chinese village for centuries, but when a poor villager killed one of them, their power was drained.

At first Dracula (sadly not Christopher Lee, but here played by John Forbes-Robertson) is like, “Nah, I’m good,” and “I don’t take orders from people like you; I make them my slaves.” But then he realizes he’s been stuck inside his castle for some reason, and the only way to get out is to take control of Kah’s body. Once that happens, he figures he might as well see what the whole Golden Vampire thing is about. Then he disappears for almost the entire film, only showing back up at the very end.

Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing, yea!) is lecturing at a Chinese university about vampires but gets the shrug-off by most of the intellectual community there. Only one kid believes him. Hsi Ching (David Chiang) is from the village of the Golden Vampires, and it was his grandfather that killed one of them.

He convinces Van Helsing, along with his son Leyland (Robin Stewart) and a rich blonde woman, Vanessa Buren (Julie Ege), who is financing the entire thing, to follow him and his martial expert six siblings to travel to the village and kill the Golden Vampires.

The journey is long and difficult and filled with many battles. Eventually they get to the village, fight the Golden Vampire, and then Dracula comes out to fight Van Helsing one on one.

So what went wrong? It was a troubled shoot from the beginning. They shot at Shaw Studios in Hong Kong with a British director (Roy Ward Baker), a mostly English cast (at least for the speaking roles), and a Chinese crew. Communication was difficult as most of the Chinese didn’t speak English and vice versa.

Baker had made some decent films for Hammer, but he doesn’t seem to know what to do with the kung fu aspects of the film. Eventually the Shaw Brothers people hired Chang Cheh to handle the action sequences because Baker was out of his depth with them.

Trouble is they shot most of the film outdoors on the rather barren, scrabble mountains near Hong Kong. Hammer Films is known for its great use of gothic castles, intricate sets, and bold color designs. You get very little of that by shooting outdoors in the sunshine. There are a few scenes indoors, and Baker really shines there, but there are far too few of them to make things interesting.

The kung fu scenes are mostly unremarkable as well. There is none of that jaw-dropping stunt work that made the Shaw Brothers famous. The story is mostly dull. Even Peter Cushing seems to be phoning it in.

Truth is Hammer Studios was running out of steam. Their glory days were behind them. Shaw Brothers would keep making numerous films well into the 1980s, but even though this was shot on their home turf, they seem to have been relegated to the second string.

In the end, this is a curiosity piece. If you are a fan of both studios, it is worth watching, but you’ll probably end up much like I did, wondering what could have been.

Westerns in March: From Dusk Til Dawn (1996)

from dusk till dawn poster

I first watched From Dusk till Dawn in the theater when it came out. I liked the first half a lot more than the second. It felt more like a Quentin Tarantino film with its interesting dialogue and stylistic flourishes. The back half was too goopy and gore-filled for my tastes at that moment. It had some fun dialogue, and I certainly wasn’t going to complain about that Salma Hayek dance number, but it seemed like a completely different film than the first half, and I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much.

I do remember immediately after watching it having long conversations with my buddies about the film. We loved that opening scene and those little stylistic flourishes, like how Richie Gecko (Tarantino) imagines Kate (Juliette Lewis) saying something crude to him, or how they do a little X-ray vision of the trunk of the car showing the kidnap victim inside. We all agreed that once the vampires show up, the film takes a dip.

I can’t remember if I watched it anymore during my college years, probably so, but then I took a very long break from it. I watched it again maybe ten years ago, and I didn’t like it at all. I felt the first half felt more like someone trying to write like Tarantino instead of an actual script written by him. It no longer thrilled. And the back half was even worse, just puerile horror that was more interested in goopy explosions than telling a story.

But Ryan Coogler was clearly influenced by this film, and I keep seeing people on the worst social media site basically saying that Sinners was a poor imitation of From Dusk till Dawn, so I wanted to give it another chance.

I think I liked it this go-around more than all the previous viewings. The first half does feel like Tarantino-lite. This was early in his career. He was paid to write this film in 1992 on commission. They say Tarantino took the best parts of this script and put them into Pulp Fiction. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but this is definitely not his best work.

The Gecko Brothers, Richie and Seth (George Clooney) are on the run after a daring escape from the courthouse where Seth was in custody. They’ve killed several people, including two cops, and have a hostage in the trunk of their car.

They stop at a hotel in El Paso, to plot how they are going to cross the (heavily guarded) border and into Mexico, where someone Seth knows will hide them until things cool down.

When Seth steps out to get a better view of what they are up against, Richie rapes and murders the hostage. Seth is a criminal who will not hesitate to kill someone when he deems it necessary, but Richie is a psychopath.

Salvation (or damnation, as we’ll soon find out) comes in the form of a loving family and an RV. Jacob Fuller (Harvey Keitel) is a former Baptist minister who lost his faith when his wife died in a car accident. He’s taking his two kids, Kate and Scott (Ernest Liu) to Mexico as a getaway from their grief.

There are some nicely tense scenes with the Gecko brothers forcing the Fuller family to drive them across the border and not get caught. Then they head to a skeevy biker/trucker bar called the Titty Twister. It is open from Dusk to Dawn and is the seemingly perfect place for them to hide out until the man can come and give the brothers safe passage.

After some minor confrontations and a pretty darn sexy dance, the vampires come. Things get wild and blood-soaked from there. Tom Savini plays a biker named Sex Machine. It doesn’t seem that he did any of the special effects/makeup work, but this is the type of thing he became famous for doing. There are lots of great practical effects. The vampires have grotesque faces, and they turn to slop when staked and sometimes explode.

It can be a bit much.

When this came out, I thought Quentin Tarantino was the bee’s knees. I saw Pulp Fiction in the theater and thought it was amazing. We watched Reservoir Dogs in the dorm room and went nuts. I also very much liked Robert Rodriguez (who directs this film; Tarantino just wrote it.) I thought Desperado was a lot of fun, and El Mariachi was brilliant for a no-budget film from a first-time director.

But I’ve since very much cooled on Tarantino. I think he is a very talented director but kind of an obnoxious human. I always watch his films and often enjoy them, but the days of them being an event for me are over. The days of me having to see them in the theater are long gone. I now think Rodriguez is a hack.

This feels like the best and worst of what a collaboration between Rodriguez and Tarantino could be. There is some clever writing from Tarantino (and I find it hilarious that he wrote his character as a foot-loving, psychopathic pervert), but it’s also sloppy and disjointed. Rodriguez is at his best when he’s able to let go and just have fun with all the vampire carnage. He doesn’t do nearly as well when he’s dealing with Tarantino’s more dialogue-heavy front end. The two are very good friends, and they seem to let each other indulge in some of their worst instincts. For example, Rodriguez once again uses a crotch gun, and Tarantino gets a scene where he literally sucks beer off of Salma Hayek’s toes.

This definitely falls into the category of movie where you just have to let go and enjoy the ride. I definitely did this time around.

I know this barely qualifies as a western. It takes place in modern times and no one wears a cowboy hat or rides a horse. But it is set in the barren landscapes of Texas and Mexico and its characters would certainly fit into the lawless wild west. So I’m counting it.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Funhouse (1981)

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In a scene that is clearly aping the opening moments of Halloween (1978), our movie begins with a point-of-view shot of someone walking ominously through a house. There are horror posters hanging on the room and a torture chamber’s worth of weapons and devices hanging on the wall. A hand reaches out and grabs a knife. A teenaged girl takes off her robe and steps into the shower. 

From Halloween, our movie switches to Psycho with the camera inside the shower and a knife-wielding maniac seen in shadows through the steam. The curtain opens. The blade stabs. The girl screams.

Our killer is the girls’ young brother. The knife is rubber. The scene turns from horror to goof.

With the runaway success of Friday the 13th (1980), Universal Studios was looking to get into the teenage horror game. They hired Tobe Hooper, still riding high off the triumphs of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Salem’s Lot (1979). It would be his first film for a major studio.

That girl in the shower is Amy (Elizabeth Berridge), and she’s got a hot date. Her father warns her not to go to the carnival, for two kids were killed at one not that far away a few weeks ago. She promises she won’t, but her date Buzz (Cooper Huckabee) insists, and besides, they already told their two friends Liz (Largo Woodruff) and Richie (Miles Chapin) that’s what they were going to do.

It’s a pretty cheap and sleazy carnival with deformed animals and half-naked ladies on display. Our heroes have a good time, and Amy begins to fall for Buzz. They visit a psychic (Sylvia Miles, having a blast) but get kicked out of her tent for giggling too much. Meanwhile, Amy’s little brother sneaks out of the house and visits the carnival. 

Our heroes decide it would be fun to stay the night at the funhouse, so before everything shuts down, they find a place to hide. And have some sexy fun times. But before things get too heated, they hear something. Someone has come into the room below. It is the psychic and a large man wearing a Frankenstein mask. He’s nonverbal. She tells him if he wants it, he has to pay. He finds some cash, and she strips down. But our boy’s a little too excited, and he finishes before even getting his pants off. When she says there are no refunds, he kills her.

Yikes! Zoinks! Our heroes find that they are trapped inside this funhouse with no way to escape. Frankenstein’s (Wayne Doba) daddy, the Carnival Barker (Kevin Conway), scolds him, then beats him, knocking the mask off his deformed, monstrous face.

One of the kids drops a lighter, alerting our villains, and the rest of the movie has them chasing our heroes around the funhouse. 

Periodically we’ll find the little brother wandering around the carnival, oblivious to everything. The film hints that he’s going to be killed, even having him caught by some creepy-looking dude. But he turns out nice and calls the boy’s parents, and the boy is never seen again.  It is a nice little fake-out. The film does that a few times when the story will lean one way and then go another. 

It is a film best left with your brain checked out.  Otherwise you’ll find yourself wondering why a roaming carnival has a funhouse with multiple stories, a long hallway with a giant ventilation system, and a room full of killer gears and rotating hooks.  Seriously, that temporary funhouse is enormous.

But if you can push such analytical thoughts aside, you might find there is a lot of fun to be had in this film. Hooper dives into the goofiness of the carnival aspects. It comes across like a mix between classic 1980s slasher films with something even more classic from Universal with a dash of Freaks thrown in for good measure. Not a great movie by any stretch, but an interesting one.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Jason X (2001)

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There comes a time when a horror fan has to admit that the Friday the 13th films aren’t very good. I grew up in the 1980s, otherwise known as ground zero for slasher films. I loved the Friday the 13th films. Jason Voorhees is one of the greatest, most iconic villains of horror.

The reality is I never watched the full, uncut versions. I always watched them on the USA Network and TBS, or some other basic cable network where they were edited for television. Basic cable was different back then; they had to cut out the harder swear words, the nudity, and the more blood-soaked violence. I think I liked those films in part because my pubescent brain filled in those edited parts. I imagined what happened when the screen cut to something different.

I didn’t watch the uncut versions until I was in college. I gotta admit I was a little disappointed by them. What I had imagined was so much more gnarly and titillating than what was actually shown.

But also by that point I was fully into my film snob cinephilia. I was discovering the films of Martin Scorsese and Alfred Hitchcock. I had realized that films could be more than entertainment. That horror could be more than just fun kills and naked flesh. I was starting to turn my nose up at films like the Friday the 13th franchise.

I went to see Jason X in the cinema when it came out in 2001. I was a full-on film snob by then, but I was also feeling some nostalgia for the films of my youth. I was hoping for some dumb fun, and maybe a little self aware humor like the Scream film (the third of which had come out the year before.) What I got was dumb, but it sure wasn’t fun, and while there were some jokes, they weren’t the self-referential kind. 

I have not watched this film since that first viewing. But I own it on DVD. I’m still a horror nerd after all, and I own the first 8 films via a nice boxed set (which I reviewed, and you can read about at Cinema Sentries), so I just had to own the remaining films in some way.

And now, since it is Friday the 13th, I figured I’d give it a watch.

It begins in the Crystal Lake Research Facility, something that never existed in the other films. It seems to be designed solely to hold Jason and nothing else.  At least judging by how empty the rest of the facility is. Even though this film acknowledges that Jason is an unstoppable killing machine, they’ve left him in an unguarded, very large room. He is chained up and hanging from the ceiling, but why he wouldn’t be locked in a cell is unexplained.  Why there aren’t numerous guards all around him is also unexplained. There is one kid, and he does at least have a gun, but that’s it.  

The kid places a blanket over Jason’s head (the better for us and incoming soldiers to not be able to see who exactly is under the blanket in the coming moments). Rowan LaFontaine (Lexa Doig), the head of the research facility, has plans to cryogenically freeze Jason so that some future generation can deal with him. But before that happens, some dumb soldiers enter the room and demand his release. They are led by Dr. Aloysius Wimmer (David Cronenberg, who was apparently excited to be in a Friday the 13th film and rewrote all of his dialogue), who hopes to figure out how Jason is unable to die. 

Jason, of course, has already killed that boy from (and placed him in the chains and under the blanket) and wreaks havoc on the soldiers. He chases Rowan in the room with the freezing chamber, and she manages to shoot and push him into it. But just as he’s freezing, he pushes his machete (yes, for some reason these people kept his machete within grabbing distance of the supervillain) through the chamber door, stabbing Rowan and filling the room with freezing fog.

Despite all this carnage inside what one assumes is a famous and very expensive science facility, apparently no one bothered to come in and clean up. Or do anything at all.  For the film, flash forwards to the year 2455, and both Jason and Rowan are exactly where they fell, still frozen. 

A group of randy scientists and jokey soldiers find them and take them to their ship.  The Earth has long been abandoned due to massive pollution, but these guys like to visit once in a while and salvage what they can for resale.

They use their special futuristic microrobots to fix and heal Rowan, but figure Jason is too far gone to be saved.  Naturally, he comes back to life once he thaws out.  Lots of killing ensues. 

Some of it is pretty cool; a lot of it is pretty bad.

While some of the scientists are studying Jason, and letting Rowan know she’s now in the future. Others go off to have sex. Because this is a Friday the 13th movie, and you can’t have one of those without sexy teens doing what sexy teens do.

The leader of the ship is a greedy professor who hopes to sell Jason to the highest bidder (he’s still pretty well known in the future, and rich weirdos would like to have his corpse.). And if that doesn’t clue us in to how skeevy he is, there is another scene where he talks one of his students into having (kinky) sex with him – he dresses up in women’s lingerie, she twists his nipple (which by 2001 standars is extra wild!) in order for her to get a good grade.

There is also an android named KM-14 (Lisa Ryder). And if all of this is starting to sound like an Aliens riff to you, you are not alone.  This film was conceived because the Freddy vs. Jason film was locked in development hell over rights issues, and they wanted to have some Jason film out to keep fans interest up. They hired Todd Farmer to write the film, despite him having zero credits to his name. After some thought, he figured the only thing they could do to the character was send him into space and riff on the Alien films. 

But back to the kills. Most of them are fairly standard stuff – Jason hacking folks to pieces with his machete. (Poorly rendered) CGI allowed for them to do things like hack heads and arms off without too much blood and guts, or cut a guy basically in half. One lady has her head stuck in a bowl of liquid nitrogen, and then Jason cracks it like glass. One guy gets tossed onto a massive mining drill, and we watch him slowly slide around and round to the bottom (causing another character to say, when asked how the guy was doing, “He’s screwed”)

Yeah, there are a lot of jokes like that. One-liners coming after someone gets killed. They are more like the kind of thing you get in action movies from the 1980s than ironic in-jokes from a post-Scream world. At one point, to distract Jason, they use a holographic simulator to project a version of Camp Crystal Lake to him. Out come a couple of scantily clad girls who look him in the eye and say something like, “We love having casual sex.”

Jason eventually gets destroyed, but those fancy nanobots have a mind of their own, and they put him back together, but this time they add a bunch of Terminator-esque robot parts and create an Uber Jason.

This is a bad movie.  Probably the worst in the franchise. But you know what? I’m not mad I watched it. All the Jason movies are bad, but there is a certain level of fun in them. If you can turn your brain off before it begins and revert to some dumb teenaged version of yourself, you might find yourself entertained.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Vengeance of the Zombies (1973)

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As it is Foreign Film February, I wanted to do a non-English language film for my Friday Night Horror flick. It has also been a long day, so I grabbed the thing closest to me, which was my Paul Naschy boxed set. There are five films in that set, and I hope to watch and review them all over the next couple of months. I love the idea of reviewing all the DVDs I own, but that is a monumental task.

Vengeance of the Zombies is an absolutely bonkers film. In the booklet that came with this set, Naschy (who wrote the film) is quoted as having probably been on hashish when he sat down at his typewriter. That definitely checks out.

It also checks out that this was a chepie exploitation flick. Technically there is a plot, but it is so haphazardly put together it is impossible to make sense of.  

Someone is killing a bunch of women in London. Then someone else, a voodoo priest named Kantanka (Paul Naschy), is bringing them back to life as part of his zombie horde.  Naschy also plays Krisna an East Indian mystic.

Elvire Irving (Romy) thinks Krisna is one cool cat and follows him to his big mansion out in the country. The big mansion was once the home of an evil family who were eventually murdered and hung upon the trees in the yard.

There are a lot of dream sequences where Kantanka and some other foul faced fiends attack Elvire. In one particularly groovy dream sequence, Paul Naschy plays Satan, to whom various others make sacrifices.  Another sequence (which may or may not be a dream; it is difficult to tell), a lady wearing a big box painted like a man’s face dances around while Kantanka pours blood onto corpses to turn them alive.  Or something.

Scotland Yard gets involved but is mostly useless. 

Seriously, I just watched this film, and I’m having a hard time remembering anything about the actual plot.

There is lots of murdering. Plenty of ladies wearing sheer nightgowns. And loads of gratuitous sex.

I do love the sex scenes in these types of films. During one scene, the housekeeper is upset over something. Krisna tells her everything is going to be ok. Then he looks at her, the music starts up, and he then pulls down the covers, pulls down her top, and gropes her breasts three times. She then sits up and passionately kisses him.

In another scene, Elvire goes into a barn only to find a woman with her head nearly chopped off. Then she is attacked by a dude with a scythe. Krisna jumps in and saves the day. They then go to the house, where she tells him that he should call the cops. He brusquely says “no” to which she responds by making out with him.

I’ve been doing my seduction techniques all wrong, I guess.

The music is a wild mix of popular rock and funk. It is so crazily inappropriate for most of what’s happening on screen.

This is a ridiculously bad film in every imaginable way. But it’s also a lot of fun to watch. It is the kind of film you want to watch late at night with a group of friends while getting loaded. Check your brain at the door and get ready for ridiculousness.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Horror Rises From the Tomb (1973)

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Paul Naschy was a Spanish writer/actor/director who is most known for a series of horror films he made where he starred as a werewolf named Count Waldemar Daninsky. The films are mostly unconnected to one another except that he plays a werewolf with the same name, but there is no continuity to be found within them. I’ve seen a couple of them and quite enjoyed the watch. So much so that I found a collection of Naschy films boxed up in a Blu-ray set and put them on my wishlist for Christmas.  My lovely wife bought them for me, and I opened them up tonight to start watching.

What I failed to recognize when I put this set on my wish list was that these films are just random Paul Naschy films, not a collection of his werewolf movies. Still, in for a penny, in for a pound, so I put on the first one and hoped for the best. 

According to the liner notes (and Wikipedia), Naschy was told by the producers they wanted to make a film with him, but in order to do so, they needed a script ASAP. So he popped some pills and sat down to write, pounding out the script to Horror Rises from the Grave in 36 hours.

It definitely feels like a movie whose script was written in 36 hours. There is very little story to it, and it plays like Naschy just took every horror movie he loved and blended them together. Then added copious amounts of gore effects and enough naked breasts to make Cinemax on a Saturday night blush.

Still, it is pretty fun to watch.

It begins in medieval times, where a warlock called Alaric de Marnac (Paul Naschy) and his witch companion Mabille de Lancre (Helga Line) are executed (he has his head chopped off, she is burned alive) for Satanism.

Flash forward to the present, and a group of young people, including Hugo de Marnac (also Paul Naschy) head out to Hugo’s ancestral grounds, where a psychic medium told them the bones of Alaric de Marnac are buried. They figure it will be fun to dig up an old warlock (also there might be treasure).

Naturally, they find the bones. Naturally, when they do, all hell breaks loose. But it is a strange sort of hell. This is where the rushed script becomes apparent. Eventually old Alaric de Marnac will rise from the grave, but first his severed head seems to mesmerize some local townsfolk, and then some of Hugo’s friends, where they go about killing everyone in sight. Later, some of those dead folks will rise, zombie-like, and wreak havoc. Alaric de Marnac takes a couple of our heroes as slaves, and one pretty (and scantily clothed) lady has her blood drained onto the bones of Mabille de Lancre, which brings her back to life.

The movie pretty much exists so that our villains can kill our heroes with full gruesomeness and pretty ladies can run around in sheer nightgowns taking their tops off (with echoes of the vampire films of Jean Rollin).  It does do both of those things very well, so who am I to complain? There are some interesting transitions, and the gore effects are good. It is goofy and dumb, but if you like that sort of thing, this film is pretty fun.

One of the bonus features on my Blu-ray is a selection of alternate “clothed” scenes. Some theaters in Spain at the time didn’t allow nudity, so they shot those scenes twice, once without clothes once with them on.  I thought that was pretty funny.

Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror (1968)

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I’ve written over 1,300 articles for Cinema Sentries. I don’t know what the breakdown is between reviews and other things like Picks of the Week and Five Cool Things. I regularly try and do a post on this site with a link to my Cinema Sentries articles, but I’ve still got a ways to go.

I try to keep up with my new writings, but sometimes I get distracted. And when I have caught up, I try to dig into much older posts. I know none of this matters to anyone, but I’m kind of astounded I’ve written that many articles for Cinema Sentries. I really ought to branch out and write for some other publications.

Anyway, I forgot to post this review when I wrote it in August. Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror isn’t a Frankenstein movie at all, but rather it is Paul Naschy’s first werewolf film. He directed and starred in a whole bunch of werewolf films back in the day. I actually got a collection of them for Christmas. They are a lot of fun, as you can read in my review.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Cronos (1992)

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I find I have mixed feelings about Guillermo del Toro. He’s clearly a great visual stylist, and his apparent love of cinema imbues all of his films with a certain reverent love, but I find his stories to be hit or miss.  Because of that, I’ve been putting off watching his first film, Cronos, afraid that I’d be disappointed.

I was not.

With caveats.

Cronos is basically a vampire story, though one that is different from any vampire story I’ve ever seen. It begins with a prologue where we’re informed that in the 1500s some alchemist invented a scarab-looking device that will prolong one’s life forever. 

Flash to the present, and Jesús Gri (Federico Luppi) finds the scarab hidden in the bottom of a statue a strange man left in his shop. He fiddles with it, and it opens; the scarab’s legs extend, grabbing his arm, while a stinger pricks his skin. Inside the scarab, we see a living creature sucking the blood.

The next morning, Jesús feels good.  And he looks younger. Also, he’s got a hankering for some blood. At a party a man has a nosebleed, and Jesús laps it up like a dog.  Then he’s bumped on the head and killed. Or not killed, as he can no longer die.

The killer is Angel de la Guardia (a young Ron Pearlman). He’s the son of Dieter de la Guardia (Claudio Brook), a rich, dying man who’s been trying to find the scarab for many years. He’s got a book that tells you how to use the scarab. He wants to make a deal with Jesús so they can both live together.  Or he’ll just kill Jesús and take the scarab. Either way is fine.

There is also a little girl named Aurora (Tamara Shanath) who is Jesús’ granddaughter, and Mercedes (Margarita Isabel), his wife. Del Toro tries to do a lot with them emotionally, but they feel underwritten. Especially Mercedes. 

There are some of the tropes of vampire movies – Jesús feels pain at sunlight, Aurora builds him a coffin to sleep in. And some utterly wild additions – Jesús’ skin peels off revealing a blindingly white skin underneath.

It definitely feels like a first movie, but the practical effects are mostly terrific. Del Toro has always been a master of those. It is a lot of fun watching Perlman at this stage of his career, acting a bit more goofy than menacing. The whole thing is well worth your time.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971)

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As I put on this film, my wife asked me if I would watch as many Hammer Horror films if she wasn’t around. She doesn’t like horror films, you see; she can’t stand the violence, the gore, and the scares. But she enjoys the Hammer films, as they are a little bit cheesy but well produced and not all that scary. I answered in the negative, as I probably would not watch as many films from the famed studio without her. Oh, I’d still watch their films, but I do have a habit of putting them on when I want to watch a horror film with her. It is either Hammer or Universal, and I’ve seen all the Universal films.

As you have probably surmised, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde is based on the novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. This was the third time Hammer Studios had adapted that novella. The previous two were The Ugly Duckling (1959) and The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960). 

As the change of title suggests, this film takes quite a few liberties with the text and throws in some strong references to Jack the Ripper and Burke & Hare (the historical grave robbers/murderers). 

Dr. Henry Jekyll (Ralph Bates) has dedicated his life to creating an elixir that will cure all known illnesses. But when his friend and libertine Professor Robertson (Gerald Sim) points out that it will take him more years than he has left to create such an elixir, Jekyll becomes obsessed with finding a life-extending potion.  He believes that since women live longer than men on average, the solution to his problem lies in female hormones.

He at first enlists Burke and Hare to provide him with fresh corpses from which to extract those hormones, but soon enough he’ll turn to murdering sex workers. His elixir transforms him into a woman whom he pretends is his sister named Mrs. Hyde (Martine Beswick). While Jekyll is a bit reserved, and shy (especially around women, specifically his upstairs neighbor Susan (Susan Broderick)), and dedicated to his work, Hyde is wild, sexy, passionate, and a bit mad.

There is no actual indication the elixir will prolong life, but Jekyll is obsessed with it anyway. The more hormones he extracts, the more often he changes into Hyde. The more often he changes into Hyde, the more she wants to be the dominant person. Eventually, she’ll stop needing the hormones and be able to change him at will. This then becomes a battle of wills, with each personality fighting for dominance.

There are some fascinating queer/trans readings of the films that I don’t feel qualified to comment on, but they are out there if you look for them. I’m not sure the film is all that interested in diving into gender and sexual politics, but it is quite fascinating to ponder them nonetheless. There is a rather funny scene when Jekyll first transforms into Hyde where she fondles her naked breasts with curiosity. I found the gender twist to be a fascinating change to the usual Jekyll/Hyde story.  Martine Beswick is quite good as Hyde, giving the character a heightened sexuality and freedom. She’s not evil exactly (well, I mean she does quite a bit of murdering), but rather she longs to be freed from the body of Jekyll and his rather oppressed nature. 

Production-wise, the film enjoys Hammer’s usual excellent set designs and costumes. Director Roy Ward Baker and cinematographer Norman Warwick make great use of fog machines, making the nighttime London streets look quite eerie and beautiful. There are some wonderful transition scenes as well, making Jekyll’s transformation into Hyde quite believable. 

The romantic scenes between Jekyll and Susan feel a bit superfluous and dull (Hyde’s seduction of Susan’s brother is much more fun to watch), and its attempts to either turn Jekyll into Jack the Ripper or at least make him some sort of copycat feel a bit tacked on, but mostly I quite enjoyed this film.  If you are a fan of Hammer’s Horror output or Dr. Jekyll adaptations, I highly recommend it.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968)

dracula has risen from the grave

Hammer Studios made nine Dracula films. I’ve seen all but one of them (Dracula A.D. 1972), but I’ve watched them all randomly and out of order. Which makes me get the timelines all screwed up in my head. I thought this one was the third in the series, but it is actually the fourth.

One year after the previous film (Dracula: Prince of Darkness), the village that Dracula terrorized still lives in fear. A visiting Monsignor, Ernst Mueller (Rupert Davies) berates the local priest (Ewan Hooper) for not holding mass. The priest, who has lost his faith and is found sitting drunk in a tavern, informs the Monsignor that his flock will no longer enter the church for the shadow of Castle Dracula still falls upon it.

The Monsignor grabs a giant cross, takes hold of the priest, and climbs the mountain toward the castle. The priest stops short of the castle while the Monsignor gives it a good exorcism and plants the cross at the front door.  The poor, dumb priest stumbles, cuts his head, and falls onto the frozen creek where Dracula (Christopher Lee) died in the last film. The ice cracks, the priest’s blood pours into Dracula’s mouth, and we get our title for this film.

The priest becomes Dracula’s slave, and Monsignor goes home. Dracula, unable to enter his castle, vows his revenge on the Monsignor and goes after his niece Maria (Veronica Carlson). She’s very much in love with our dopey hero, Paul (Barry Andrews). He’s an atheist, which very much annoys the Monsignor.

There are a lot of boring bits in the middle of this film. That beginning is pretty great, and the finale is excellent, but between the two are lots of filler. Paul works at a bakery/inn, but he studies at night to become a doctor or something. There are scenes of him working and talking to the flirty waitress (Barbara Ewing). He visits the Monsignor and Maria’s aunt. He gets drunk, and he kisses Maria. Etc. It all seems to exist to stretch the budget and the runtime to the appropriate amount. Dracula eventually shows up, sucks the neck of the waitress, and seduces Maria. It will be up to the Monsignor and Paul to save the day. The final battle is a good one, but lord, does it take its time getting there.

It does look amazing. Hammer was always good at making wonderful sets that look completely lived in and painting spectacular backdrops, and they certainly did that here. Maria often sneaks out of her home and walks across balconies and rooftops to visit Paul, and this gives some wonderful views of the town below from above. I believe it was all set work, and it looks great.

All in all, it is another fine addition to the Hammer Horror annals. It could have been a real classic if they’d spent a little more time developing the middle section, but the beginning and ending is well worth the watching.