Monday, August 29, 2022

Getting in the mood.

Summer is almost over and Autumn is around the corner and I figured we could get into the spooky season with some light practice. So I have a trio of horror parodies for your amusement. 

Please enjoy and join me again next time, and until then, have a great and safe week!  


 

 

  

 

 

Monday, August 22, 2022

Funny Ads

I have had a busy week so today we're doing a bit of blast from the past with funny commercials. It's been a while since we did this so I hope you enjoy!

Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!



 

 (One of these is muted due to copyright)

 

 

Monday, August 15, 2022

The House that needed a Bandaid

Last night, I watched:

The House That Dripped Blood (1971).

Despite the macabre title, the house itself does not drip blood, nor is there any blood in the entire film. It is the setting for four stories that make up the movie, all of who were written and scripted by horror veteran Robert Bloch. The movie is directed by Peter Duffell who has mostly got TV credits in his resume and it doesn't surprise me. The House That Dripped Blood feels like a TV show more than a movie, not that it really matters. The House That Dripped Blood was distributed by Amicus, the second fiddle to Hammer Horror. It can be hard at times to distinguish the difference between the two studios, but it is classic British horror in the end anyway.

The house is the central theme that unites the stories, and the plot is driven by a Scotland Yard inspector who is investigating the disappearance of a famous actor who rented the house.

The first episode Method for Murder is about a horror writer, Charles Hillyer (Denholm Elliot) and his wife Alice (Joanna Dunham). They rent the house in order to help Charles get over his writers block. This works too well as he invents a mad strangler and can't stop writing. Soon he starts seeing his creation in real life and things spiral out of control.

The second part is called Waxworks and stars Peter Cushing as the retired stock broker Philip Greyson. He wants a quiet life and is content to listen to music and work on the garden. He broods over a woman he was obsessed about and is shocked to find her likeness in a local wax museum of horror. An old friend and romantic rival, Neville Rogers (Joss Ackland) visit him and well, things don't go well.

The third entry is Sweets to the Sweet and here we find that John Reed (Christopher Lee) movies in with his strange daughter Jane. He soon hires Ann Norton (Nyree Dawn Porter) to be the girls tutor as he insists on keeping Jane isolated. Ann is puzzled by his decisions but he promises to tell her everything in time. I'm sure you can see the pattern as horrible things soon happen.

Last but not least, we have The Cloak starring Jon Pertwee as Paul Henderson, a veteran horror actor and amateur occultist. He and his costar/girlfriend Carla (Ingrid Pitt) are starring in a new horror movie together and he likes the house as it is convenient for him. He is however disgusted at the cheap props that are being used and goes off to buy a cloak from a creepy shop. The cloak however causes him some... trouble.

The four stories themselves are not really anything new, but they each contain something different. A twist on a familiar trope, a variation on a common theme and so on. The direction is fine, nothing to really comment on, but the music is a bit atrocious. The actors are outstanding as you can see above. Cushing, Lee, Elliot, Pitt and Pertwee who at the time still portrayed Doctor Who are excellent and to be fair carry the movie a great deal. The atmosphere is surprisingly good though. Even in the weaker stories, there is a good sensation of doom lurking around the corner.

So, do I recommend this movie? Yes, I think I do. Seasoned horror fans will likely fall asleep unless they love older movies like this, but for someone who wants to dip their toes in the murky waters of horror, The House That Dripped Blood might be just scary and tense enough.


That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!

 

Monday, August 8, 2022

Horror Express

I found the time to finish the movie I mentioned last week so today we're talking about:

Horror Express (1972).

Starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Telly Savalas and directed by Eugenio Martin, Horror Express is a great horror story wrapped in a stiff movie.

Minor Spoilers ahead! The plot is loosely this: In 1906, an anthropologist, Sir Alexander Saxton (Lee), discovers a frozen half man - half ape in Manchuria. He intends to bring it back to Britain on a Trans-Siberian train. He runs into his rival Dr. Wells (Cushing) who is curious about what Saxton has and accidentally help set the evil free. The monster, an alien intelligence that can kill with a look, leaving its victims with white bleeding eyes, is a real treat. With everyone confined to a train hurtling through the Siberian winter, the tension and the danger ramps up quickly.

End of minor spoilers. I say minor, because if you google the movie, you will get the above info immediately.

The actors are good, particularly Lee and Cushing, and Savalas is entertaining even though he is barely in the film. Cushing had just lost his wife so it is understandable that this is one of his weaker performances. In fact he nearly left on the first day as he felt unable to work due to his grief, but Lee talked him around and went out of his way to make his old friend as comfortable as possible.

The story is possibly plagiarized from John W. Campbell's story “Who Goes There?” which is sometimes re-titled “The Thing (from Another World)”. This story is the origin of The Thing from Another World (1951) and The Thing (1982). This comes as no surprise to me as I was struck by how similar Horror Express is to The Thing, even though Horror Express is nowhere near as grisly as The Thing. That is not to say Horror Express is without blood. There is some but the “Ick Factor” mostly comes from the bleeding white eyes and some pretty gruesome autopsy scenes.

My biggest gripe with the movies is how stiff it feels. Several scenes feel clumsy as the actors stand around awkwardly and it is mostly the experience of the actors that save the scenes. The story itself is good, and although the movie is low budget, they did a lot with what they had. It's hard to nail down the problem, perhaps the director wasn't up to it, perhaps it took too long to redress the few train cars they had between scenes, I don't know. I do know that I actually want to see a competent remake.

I also loved the ending. As with many horror movies, everything accelerates towards the end, and Horror Express is no different. All in all, this movie does it's thing differently and with intelligence rather than relying on shock factor and nudity.

So, do I recommend this movie? Yes, absolutely. Horror fans should give it a look if they haven't already, and even occasional horror watchers could have a good time here. It's not a great forgotten gem, but Horror Express does deserve its cult status.


That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!


Monday, August 1, 2022

Not what I had planned.

I started watching a Hammer Horror movie starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, but I didn't have time to finish it, so that is on next week's agenda.

This left me in the lurch for this week, so I'm forced to improvise. Thus I present History of Japan by Bill Wurtz, the same genius that made the History of Everything video I shared a couple of years ago. Then I also have The Fallen of World War II, which is obviously very somber but a very interesting watch.

So, enjoy and join me next time, and until then, have a great and safe week!