Halloween Havoc!: Bela Lugosi Meets The East Side Kids… Twice!

Posted on October 19, 2016 by gary loggins

Ten years after making horror history as DRACULA, Bela Lugosi signed a contract with Monogram Studios producer Sam Katzman to star in a series of low-budget shockers. The films have been affectionately dubbed by fans “The Monogram Nine” and for the most part are really terrible, redeemed only by the presence of our favorite Hungarian. Two of the films were with the East Side Kids, SPOOKS RUN WILD and GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE, making them sort of Poverty Row All-Star Productions for wartime audiences.

I won’t go too deeply into all the Dead End Kids/East Side Kids/Bowery Boys variations here. Suffice it to say original Dead Enders Leo Gorcey (Muggs), Huntz Hall (Glimpy), and Bobby Jordan (Danny) landed at Monogram after their Warner Brothers contracts expired, much to Jack Warner’s relief. The young actors were a rowdy bunch, and Jack was probably glad to be rid of them! Anyway, the trio were popular with the masses, and…

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Halloween Havoc! Extra: A Brief Interlude with Tor Johnson on His Birthday

Posted on October 19, 2016 by gary loggins

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Ed Wood’s favorite ghoul, Tor Johnson was born on this date in 1903. The wrestler-turned-actor (long before Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson!) began appearing in films in the 1930’s in bit parts before being cast as Bela Lugosi’s henchman Lobo in BRIDE OF THE MONSTER, and becoming one of horror’s iconic characters (so iconic, a Halloween mask created by Don Post in Tor’s likeness became Post’s biggest seller ever!).

In 1959, Tor made an appearance on Groucho Marx’s YOU BET YOUR LIFE quiz show. The acerbic Groucho needled the former “Super Swedish Angel”, and as you can see in this clip, TOR NOT LIKE FUNNY LITTLE MAN!:

Happy birthday, Tor!!

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Halloween Havoc!: MAN IN THE ATTIC (20th Century Fox 1953)

Posted on October 18, 2016 by gary loggins

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The story of notorious 19th Century serial killer Jack the Ripper has been told countless times on the screen. The case has never been officially solved, and there are probably more theories about Jack’s identity than there were victims. Author Marie Belloc Lowndes wrote “The Lodger”, a speculative fiction novel based on the Ripper murders, that was in turn made into a silent film by the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock in 1927. The film was remade in 1932 with the same star, Ivor Novello, then again in what’s probably the most famous version, 1944’s THE LODGER , starring Laird Cregar, Merle Oberon, and George Sanders. Almost a decade later, the tale was again remade, this time with Jack Palance as the mysterious MAN IN THE ATTIC.

Fog shrouded London’s Whitechapel District is being terrorized by a fiend known in the press as Jack the Ripper. Scotland Yard is baffled, police patrols have been…

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Halloween Havoc!: Lon Chaney in THE UNHOLY THREE (MGM 1930)

Posted on October 17, 2016 by gary loggins

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Hollywood’s first true horror star was the inimitable Lon Chaney Sr, ‘The Man of a Thousand Faces’. Chaney’s superb pantomime skills, having been brought up by deaf parents, served him well in silent cinema, and his grotesque makeups in PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME sent shivers down 1920’s audience’s spines. Most notable were his ten bizarre collaborations with director Tod Browning, including THE UNKNOWN (with young Joan Crawford ), LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT (Chaney as an ersatz vampire, now a lost film), and WEST OF ZANZIBAR (remade as the Pre-Code shocker KONGO). Chaney and Browning scored a big hit with 1925’s THE UNHOLY THREE, which Chaney remade in 1930 as his only talkie before succumbing to throat cancer later that year. While THE UNHOLY THREE isn’t an out-and-out horror film, it’s got enough weird elements in it and, since it’s you’re only chance to see the great Lon Chaney talk…

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Halloween Havoc!: THE NEANDERTHAL MAN (United Artists 1953)

Posted on October 16, 2016 by gary loggins

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I’ve seen a lot of horror movies. All the Universal classics, Hammer horrors, big budget, low budget, no-budget, you name it. THE NEANDERTHAL MAN is without a doubt one of the worst I’ve ever laid eyes on. It’s not even so-bad-it’s-good. It’s just so-bad-it’s-bad.

This totally unlikeable turkey involves a mad scientist whose experiments in evolution lead him to create a serum that devolves species. After success with turning a cat into a saber-toothed tiger (via stock footage and some really bad fake tusks), Professor Groves injects himself with the stuff and becomes Neanderthal Man. The prof goes on a pretty tame killing spree before getting his inevitable comeuppance. In a part that begs for John Carradine (or better yet, Bela Lugosi!), we get Robert Shayne of TV’s THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN fame. The erstwhile Inspector Henderson is all over the place, overacting in some spots, underacting in others. Whereas a…

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Halloween Havoc! Extra: SCREAMING JAY HAWKINS, the Original “Shock Rocker”

Posted on October 16, 2016 by gary loggins

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Before Alice Cooper brought his theatrical “shock rock” to audiences, before Black Sabbath sang hymns to Satan, there was Screaming Jay Hawkins! A blues belting maniac from Cleveland, Hawkins incorporated horror into his stage shows, the likes of which had never been seen. Crowds ate it up as Screaming Jay popped out of his coffin, dressed as a voodoo priest complete with cape, top hat, and a smoking skull named ‘Henry’ atop his staff, performing his best known hit, “I Put a Spell On You”:

The story goes Hawkins and his band originally planned “I Put a Spell On You” as a slow blues ballad, but they all got roaring drunk at the session, resulting in Hawkins guttural screaming, and turning the song into a frenzied rock classic. The tune has been covered by dozens of artists, from Creedence Clearwater Revival to Annie Lennox and beyond. Screaming Jay recorded many other horror-themed hits like…

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Halloween Havoc!: PEEPING TOM (Anglo-Amalgamated 1960)

Posted on October 15, 2016 by gary loggins

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PEEPING TOM had been sitting in my DVR for a year before I finally got around to viewing it recently. I shouldn’t have waited so long, for this is absolutely one of the best horror films I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them. This movie, released the same year as Hitchcock’s PSYCHO, is an outstanding look at voyeurism, mental illness, and murder, and along with PSYCHO helped usher in the slasher genre. It’s ‘movie within a movie’ backdrop makes it a bonus for film fans, putting it in a category beyond horror as a great film period!

The opening sequence sets the stage for the madness yet to come, as we salaciously watch the murder of a prostitute through the lens of the killer’s camera. Then we see the killer go home and view the footage in his darkroom, obviously getting off on it. It’s a chilling…

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Halloween TV Havoc!: THE MILTON THE MONSTER SHOW

Posted on October 15, 2016 by gary loggins

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The Monster Boom of the 1960’s saw kids of all ages craving their horror fix, and television supplied us with a steady stream of Monstermania. There were creepy comedies (THE MUNSTERS, THE ADDAMS FAMILY), anthologies (THRILLER, THE OUTER LIMITS), and monsters galore lurking on LOST IN SPACE and VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. Even Saturday mornings cartoons weren’t safe, as ABC-TV began running THE MILTON THE MONSTER SHOW in 1965.

MILTON THE MONSTER was a limited-animation series about a man-made monster (ala Frankenstein) created in vat by Professor Weirdo and his sidekick Count Kook. Weirdo accidentally spills too much “tincture of tenderness” into the mix, resulting in a too-gentle monster who sounded a lot like Gomer Pyle. Milton’s fellow monsters were Heebie & Jeebie, the former a top-hatted skeleton who talked like Peter Lorre, the latter a hairy, one-eyed, snaggle-toothed goofball. Professor Fruitcake was their rival, the mad scientist next door…

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Halloween Havoc!: Fredric March in DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE (Paramount 1931)

Posted on October 14, 2016 by gary loggins

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Robert Louis Stevenson’s DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE was first published in 1886, causing quite a stir in its day. The tale of man’s dark side was a huge hit, and over the years has been adapted on stage, radio, and numerous film and TV versions. John Barrymore (in the 1920 silent), Spencer Tracy (a lush 1941 MGM production), Boris Karloff (Meeting Abbott & Costello), Paul Massie (Hammer’s 1960 shocker), Jack Palance (Dan Curtis’ 1968 TV movie), and Kirk Douglas (a 1973 TV musical) are just a few actors who’ve sunk their teeth into the dual role. The best known is probably this 1931 horror film with Fredric March in an Oscar-winning turn as good Dr. Henry Jekyll and his evil counterpart, the snarling Mr. Hyde.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave the past 130 years, you’re familiar with the story, so let’s look at the performances of Fredric March and Miriam…

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Halloween Havoc!: GOD TOLD ME TO (New World 1976)

Posted on October 13, 2016 by gary loggins

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Last year during “Halloween Havoc!”, I took a look at writer/director/producer Larry Cohen’s cult classic IT’S ALIVE . This time around, it’s GOD TOLD ME TO, a creepily twisted tale tackling mass murder, aliens, Catholicism, and the nature of God himself that could’ve only been made in the paranoiac 70’s, and may be Cohen’s best film.

There’s a sniper on a rampage in New York City perched atop a water tower. Fourteen people are dead, and police have the scene surrounded. Det. Lt. Peter Nicholas, a devout Catholic who was orphaned as a child and goes to confession daily, climbs the ladder in hopes of engaging the shooter before he kills again. When Nicholas asks the killer why he’s caused all this carnage, the man simply replies, “God told me to”, then jumps off the tower, plunging to his doom.