If you’re a fan of horror and more specifically the several different versions — both literary and cinematic — of Frankenstein’s Monster, Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years is a book that you simply must own.
It’s really two books in one. The first half of the book deals with the original creation of Frankenstein. It goes into a detail about not only the famous night and game that led to Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein but it also details everything that not only influenced Shelley’s imagination but which led to the world becoming fascinated by her creation. How you react to this section of the book will largely depend on how interested you are in history. Me, I’m an unapologetic history nerd so I loved it.
The second part of the book is a visual history of the Monster through the years, featuring everything from his many film appearances to his use in advertisements and political cartoons to his appearances in various comic books. It’s not just a collection of pictures, though. It’s also a testament to the power of Mary Shelley’s creation and how the Monster has come to be a universal figure, one who has been adopted by every culture and ideology.
Christopher Frayling is a witty and engaging writer, which helps to get through some of the denser sections of the first half of the book. His love for the Monster comes through every page, which makes Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years a perfect celebration of the world’s most famous reanimated body.
The 1971 film A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin is a story of greed, love, lust, repressed desires, bloody murder, and two rather hateful hippies. It’s a surreal tale that manages to combine LSD, politics, therapy, and a good old-fashioned whodunit. It’s a film that clearly a product of the late 60s and the early 70s and yet, it’s also a film that is so shamelessly sordid and wonderfully strange that it feels timeless.
And not surprisingly, it was directed by Lucio Fulci.
Over the course of his career, Lucio Fulci was credited with directing 56 films and one television miniseries. Though we tend to primarily think of Fulci as being a horror director, he actually worked in every genre. He directed peplums. He was responsible for some of the best and most violent spaghetti westerns ever made. He even directed comedies and an adaptation of Jack London’s White Fang!
Still, it is for his horror films that Fulci is best-remembered and his non-compromising and frequently surreal style was perfect for the genre. Though 1979’s Zombi 2 is frequently cited as Fulci’s first excursion into the horror genre, he had actually dabbled in it before with a set of stylish and violent giallo films that he directed in the early 70s.
For example, A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin deals with a horrific crime and features some of Fulci’s most striking and disturbing images. The film deals with Carol Hammond (Florida Bolkan), who is the daughter of a politician (Leo Genn) and the wife of a wealthy attorney (Jean Sorel). Carol is haunted by bizarre dreams involving her decadent neighbor, Julia Durer (Anita Strindberg). In her latest dream, Carol not only has a sexual encounter with Julia but also stabs her to death immediately afterward! It’s only after Julia’s dead that Carol realizes that she’s being watched by two hippies, who appear to be amused by the whole thing.
After telling her therapist about the dream, Carol learns that Julia Durer has indeed been murdered. In fact, she was stabbed in exactly the same way that Carol saw in her dream! Was it just a dream or did Carol really murder of Julia? Or did someone find out about her dream (which she recorded in her journal) and then murder Julia in order to frame her? But who would want to do that? Could it be maybe her weaselly husband, who is having an affair with his secretary? Or maybe someone looking to embarrass her father?
And what about the two hippies? It turns out that they’re real and they have a story of their own tell….
The mystery at the heart of A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin is a convoluted one and while the film’s plot did hold my interest, this film is less about the story and more about the way that Fulci tells it. Dealing with hippies, visions, LSD, and a potentially unstable protagonist gave Fulci whatever excuse he needed to turn Lizard In A Woman’s Skin into a surrealistic carnival ride of psychedelic images and sexually-charged dream sequences. From Carol’s nightmares to the scene where an intruder chases Carol through a sanitarium, A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin is full of strange images that are designed to keep the viewer just as off-balance as Carol. The film’s most shocking scene — which involves Carol coming across four dogs being used in a medical experiment — actually led to Fulci and special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi being taken to court and forced to prove that the dogs in the scene weren’t real. (Fortunately, Rambaldi brought his dog props to court with him.) It’s a shamelessly sordid film, one from which you will not be able to divert your eyes.
Florinda Bolkan gives a great and sympathetic performance was Carol while Antia Strindberg is properly decadent as Julia. Penny Brown and Mike Kennedy plays perhaps the most hateful and callous hippies of all time and Kennedy especially makes a strong impression. Trust Lucio Fulci to make a film where the hippies are just as frightening as the zombies who populated his later work!
A Lizard in A Woman’s Skin is a classic giallo and one of Fulci’s best.
Last week the internet was abuzz after the release of an extended, five-minute trailer for Aquaman. That trailer kicks off this week’s trailer round-up. Aquaman will be released on December 21st.
Coming out the week before Aquaman, the animated Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse will provide a new look at everyone’s favorite webslinger and will help us all emotionally recover from the end of Avengers: Infinity War. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is in theaters on December 14th.
Clint Eastwood is a machine. At an age when most people are retired, Eastwood is still cranking out movies and winning awards. The Mule is based on the true story of the world’s oldest drug runner. Eastwood directed and, for the first time since Trouble With The Curve, stars. The Mule will be released on December 14th.
In Vice, Christian Bale is transformed into former Vice President Dick Cheney. This film was directed by Adam McKay so it’s portrayal of Cheney and George W. Bush (played by Sam Rockwell) will probably not be a positive one. Vice will be released on December 25th and will answer the question: “Does anyone other than Adam McKay care about Dick Cheney anymore?”
Vice will be getting some competition on Christmas from another politically charged biopic. On the Basis of Sex stars Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Finally, if you’d rather escape the real world in December, Mortal Engines will be released on December 14th.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Today we celebrate October’s favorite planet, Mars!
4 Shots From 4 Martian Films
A Message From Mars (1913, dir by J. Wallett Waller)
Invaders From Mars (1953, dir by William Cameron Menzies)
Devil Girl From Mars (1954, dir by David MacDonald)
Santa Claus Conquers The Martins (1964, dir by Nicolas Webster)
The aliens have arrived! They landed one night in the middle of a thunderstorm and now, they’re hiding underground in a sandpit. Only David McClean (Jimmy Hunt) was awake to witness their arrival. He was supposed to be asleep but who could sleep through all that thunder and lightning? (Not to mention the sound of the flying saucer!) Unfortunately, no one’s going to believe David because he’s only 12 years old!
That’s the premise at the heart of Invaders from Mars, a nicely surreal science fiction film from 1953.
In order to humor David, a few people do go to the sandpit to look for this supposed UFO. They include his scientist father (Leif Erickson) and a few local cops. They all return saying that they found nothing. They also all return in a really bad mood. David’s formerly loving and humorous father is suddenly distant and rather grumpy. And he no longer speaks like himself. Instead, he is now rigidly formal, like someone still getting used to speaking a new language. Maybe it has something to do with the strange mark on the back of his neck….
David goes into town and soon discovers that several townspeople are acting just like his father. It’s almost as if something is controlling them! Well, what else can David do but go to the local observatory and get the U.S. Army involved!?
Invaders from Mars may be disguised as a children’s film about a flying saucer but it actually deals with some very adult issues. What do you do when you know that you’re right but no one is willing to listen to you? Do you stubbornly cling to what you believe or do you just become a mindless and unquestioning zombie like everyone else? Do you remain independent or do you get the mark on your neck? Of course, it should also be pointed out that Invaders From Mars was made at a time when people were very much worried that America was being invaded from within by communists and subversives, all of whom would rob Americans of their individual freedoms just as surely as the aliens in David’s town. Invaders From Mars came out two years before Invasion of the Body Snatchers but they both deal with very similar issues.
What sets Invaders From Mars apart is that it’s told from a child’s point of view. It plays out like a nightmarish fairy tale. The film was directed by the famous production designer, William Cameron Menzies and he gives the entire film a nicely surreal look. The town is just a little bit too perfect while the inside of the spaceship is a maze of corridors, all overseen by a ranting head in a crystal ball.
The film’s ending was probably chilling to audiences in 1953. For modern audiences, it’s a bit of groan-inducing cliché. Still, the ending itself makes sense when viewed in the context of the entire film. (It’s literally the only ending that makes sense.) Still, ending aside, Invaders From Mars is a classic sci-fi film and one well worth watching this Halloween season.
For over half a century, Gahan Wilson’s macabre cartoons have been sending shivers of laughter down the reader’s spines in magazines like Playboy, National Lampoon, The New Yorker, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Here is a gallery of ten ghastly giggles from the wonderfully warped mind of Gahan Wilson:
Today’s horror film is a true classic of its kind, the 1953 science fiction epic Robot Monster.
Now, I should admit that this is not the first time that I’ve shared Robot Monster in October. I share it every year and, every year, YouTube seems to pull the video down in November. That sucks because Robot Monster is one of those weird films that everyone should see. So, I’m going to share it again. And, hopefully, YouTube will let the video stay up for a while.
As for what Robot Monster is about…
What happens with the Earth is attacked by aliens? Well, first off, dinosaurs come back to life. All of humanity is killed, except for one annoying family. Finally, the fearsome Ro-Man is sent down to the planet to make sure that it’s ready for colonization. (Or something like that. To be honest, Ro-Man’s exact goal remains a bit vague.)
Why is Ro-Man so fearsome? Well, he lives in a cave for one thing. He also owns a bubble machine. And finally, perhaps most horrifically, he’s a gorilla wearing a diver’s helmet. However, Ro-Man is not just a one-dimensional bad guy. No, he actually gets to have a monologue about halfway through the film in which he considers the existential issues inherent in being a gorilla wearing a diver’s helmet.
Can humanity defeat Ro-Man? Will Ro-Man ever get his intergalactic supervisor to appreciate him? And finally, why are the dinosaurs there?
All of those questions, and more, are cheerfully left unanswered but that’s a large part of this odd, zero-budget film’s considerable charm. If you’ve never seen it before, you owe it to yourself to set aside an hour and two minutes in order to watch it.
Last night, I caught a show called ‘The Music of Cream’, featuring the sons of bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker, along with guitarist Eric Clapton’s nephew, jamming to the psychedelic blues-rock of their musical progenitors. Which brings me to “Strange Brew”, whose lyrics kinda fit in with the whole ‘Halloween Havoc!” theme this month. Plus, it’s a damn good tune! From the 1967 LP “Disraeli Gears”, here’s Cream lip-synching along to “Strange Brew”. Enjoy!:
And if you get the chance to see ‘The Music of Cream’ in your neck of the woods, by all means do so… you won’t be disappointed!
One of the highlights of Autoptic 2018 for yours truly was making the acquaintance of Minneapolis’ own Peter Faecke, who is producing some of the most distinctive and classification-destroying minis around — and doing it just a few blocks from my own house? Yeah, it’s a small world and all that, but the coolest thing about Faecke’s work is that it’s proof positive that he actually lives on a different world than most of us altogether, one where the rules and conventions of sequential storytelling aren’t so much subverted as they are both adhered to and utterly dispensed with simultaneously.
Before you jump all over me for saying something so blatantly contradictory on its face, relax — I know that last sentence makes no fucking sense whatsoever. But then, neither does much of what’s on offer in Faecke’s comics — yet that doesn’t mean they don’t all work within the…
Through the Shattered Lens 