Yesterday was the 105th anniversary of the birth of the great actor Donald Pleasence.
(I know that may sound like a wordy way to say “birthday” but I always find it awkward to refer to those who are no longer with us as having a birthday.)
We can’t let October pass without paying tribute to Pleasence. Here is in 1978’s Halloween, playing the role for which he was best-known amongst horror fans.
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 is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
Today’s director: James Whale!
4 Shots From 4 James Whale Films
Frankenstein (1931, dir by James Whale, DP: Arthur Edeson)
The Old Dark House (1932, dir by James Whale, DP: Arthur Edeson)
The Invisible Man (1933, dir by James Whale, DP: Arthur Edeson)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935, dir James Whale, DP: John J. Mescall)
Poor Guy Carrell (Ray Milland!)
The character at the center of the 1962 Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, The Premature Burial, Guy spends his days terrified of being buried alive. Like his father before him, Guy suffers from a disease that can make him appear to be dead despite actually being alive. Guy is convinced that his father was buried alive and swears that he could even hear his father crying for help inside of his tomb. Though his fiancée, Emily (Hazel Court), insists that Guy is driving himself mad with his fears, Guy continue to spend his time trying to invent a coffin from which one can easily escape. Even after Emily and Guy are married, Guy continues to obsess.
Finally, faced with the prospect of opening his father’s tomb to discover whether or not his father truly was buried alive, Guy appears to drop dead of a heart attack. But is he really dead or is he about to be buried alive!? And who is responsible for the series of mysterious events that apparently drove Guy to collapse of fright? Watch the film to find out! Or read the Edgar Allan Poe short story.
This was the third of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations and it’s the first one to not feature Vincent Price as the lead character. For the most part, the members of the small cast all do a good job with their roles. Ray Milland is both sympathetic and a little frightening as the obsessed Guy. Heather Angel is properly enigmatic as Guy’s overprotective sister and Hazel Court will keep you guessing as far as her character’s motivations are concerned. Dick Miller has a small but key role as a grave digger who seems to take just a little bit too much enjoyment from his work. The film’s atmosphere is properly gothic and, if the film isn’t as visually audacious as the first two Poe films, Corman still finds time to include a creepy and psychedelic dream sequence.
That said, Vincent Price is still very much missed. Corman reportedly wanted to use Price but, because Corman produced and financed the film himself, Corman’s former business partners at American International Pictures would not allow Price to appear in the film. (Price was under exclusive contract to AIP.) By the time Corman and AIP worked out their disagreements and again joined forces, Ray Milland had already been cast in the lead role.
While the actors all do a good job, it’s hard to deny that Guy Correll would have been an ideal role for Vincent Price, even if it would have meant essentially re-doing his performance from The Pit and the Pendulum. It’s not just that the film misses Price’s theatrical acting style. The film also misses the energy that Price brought to the previous two Poe films. The Premature Burial moves at a stately pace and, in the end, it’s a bit too slow and respectable for its own good. Price would have jazzed things up and made a decent film into a truly memorable one. Fortunately, Price would return for the later Poe adaptations.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, dir by Robert Wiene, DP: Willy Hameister)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a film that I’ve shared many times previously on the Shattered Lens. The first time was in 2011 and then I shared it again in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022! Well, you know what? I’m sharing it again because it’s a classic, it’s Halloween, and everyone should see it! (And let’s face it — it’s entirely possible that some of the people reading this post right now didn’t even know this site existed in any of those previous years. Why should they be deprived of Caligari just because they only now arrived?)
Released in 1920, the German film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is one of those films that we’ve all heard about but far too few of us have actually seen. Like most silent films, it requires some patience and a willingess to adapt to the narrative convictions of an earlier time. However, for those of us who love horror cinema, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari remains required viewing. Not only did it introduce the concept of the twist ending (M. Night Shyamalan owes his career to this film) but it also helped to introduce German expressionism to the cinematic world.
My initial reaction to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was that it simply wasn’t that scary. It was certainly interesting to watch and I was happy that I was finally experiencing this film that I had previously only read about. However, the film itself was obviously primitive and it was difficult for my mind (which takes CGI for granted) to adjust to watching a silent film. I didn’t regret watching the film but I’d be lying (much like a first-year film student) if I said that I truly appreciated it after my first viewing.
But you know what? Despite my dismissive initial reaction, the film stayed with me. Whereas most modern films fade from the memory about 30 minutes after the end credits,The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has stuck with me and the night after I watched it, I even had a nightmare in which Dr. Caligari was trying to break into my apartment. Yes, Dr. Caligari looked a little bit silly staring through my bedroom window but it still caused me to wake up with my heart about to explode out of my chest.
In short, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari passes the most important test that a horror film can pass. It sticks with you even after it’s over.
For the curious with an open mind to watch with, here is Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari!
Enjoy!
The 2004 film, Last Flight Out, tells the story of Dan (Richard Tyson) and Anne (Bobbie Phillips).
Once upon a time, Dan and Anne were in love. Perhaps they were attracted by the fact that their names rhymed. “Dan and Anne” is just one of those phrases that just rolls off the tongue. Unfortunately, it takes more than rhyming names to make a relationship work. Dan was a cynic and Anne wanted to make the world a better place and, in the end, she decided she could do that better without him than with him.
Now, Anne is missionary, working with Dr. Matteo Barrero (Adriano Gonzalez) at a village in a South American country that is, more or less, ruled by a drug cartel. And Dan is a pilot, flying missions throughout the world and trying not to get emotionally connected with anyone. Anne’s mentor, Tony Williams (Cliff de Young), approaches Dan with a job. The village where Anne is working is currently under siege from a drug lord who demands that all the villagers come to work for him. The payment that drug lord offers for their work is simple. If they work for him, he will reward them by not killing them. If they don’t work for him …. well, you get the idea.
Dan flies to the village, mostly to try to get Anne to safety. But Anne explains that she won’t abandon the villagers to the drug lord. Eventually, Anne is able to convince the village’s chief that the entire villages needs to be moved to safety. That’ll mean putting all twenty of them on Dan’s plan and flying them away from the drug lord’s army. Dan explains that, even if they take all the seats out of the plane, they’ll still be overweight and unable to take off. Both Anne and Matteo tells Dan to have a little faith.
And, while the drug lord’s army fires at them from the ground, the plane does manage to take off! But Matteo is left behind. Back in civilization, everyone is convinced that Matteo is dead. Dan, however, is determined to go back and, if possible rescue Matteo. That, of course, will mean flying straight back into the gunfire and once again, risking his life for another person. And, in this case, his name doesn’t even rhyme with Matteo’s!
Last Flight Out isn’t a bad little film. Of course, those tempted to watch the film on Tubi should be aware that it is a faith-based production, so Matteo is very outspoken in his belief in God and the film does feature prayers while in flight. Naturally, Dan is the atheist who changes his position after witnessing the bravery of the missionaries. That said, the film is smart to emphasize action over preaching and Richard Tyson gives a likable performance as Dan. In the end, one need not be filled with faith to know that slave labor is wrong. Director Jerry Jameson, who directed a host of disaster films in the 70s and the 80s, keeps the action moving at a steady pace and, the end result, is a watchable action film.
What a disturbing movie!
2019’s Do Not Reply is about Chelsea (Amanda Arcui, who previously played Lola during the final seasons of Degrassi), a high school student who is super-excited to have found an online boyfriend. Brad (Jackson Rathbone) seems like he’s funny, handsome, and charming and he’s even got a semi-tragic life story! Now, it should be mentioned that there are some immediate red flags about Brad. Brad seems to be just a bit too perfect and the story of his life — being adopted and having parents who won’t even spend the money necessary to get him a new phone — seems to be a little bit too on-the-nose as far as getting Chelsea to feel sorry for him is concerned.
Brad and Chelsea agree to go to the Halloween dance together. Brad says that he’ll show up as a zombie football player and he requests that Chelsea show up dressed a cheerleader. (RED FLAG! RED FLAG!) To the surprise of no one, Chelsea meets up with Brad at the dance and is promptly kidnapped.
Brad, it turns out, is not a teenager with parents who refuse to buy him a new phone. Instead, he’s a man in his 20s who lives in a surprisingly nice house. He’s been meeting and kidnapping teenager girls for a while. He holds them prisoner in his house, requiring that they wear cheerleader uniforms while cleaning the place. Brad wants the house to be spotless. He wants his prisoners to adore him. He wants them to be very polite and well-mannered whenever they eat the dinners that he prepares for them. One girl who tried to escape was several beaten by Brad and locked in her room, where she suffers as a warning to the others. Meagan (Kerri Medders) and Heather (Elisa Luthman) both seem to be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome and they not only go out of their way to keep Brad happy but also to keep Chelsea from trying to escape.
If he’s in a good mood, Brad rewards his prisoners with “outdoor time,” which means that he allows them to wear a VR headset and visit an imaginary park. Brad spends most of his day wearing his headset, not only searching for new realities but also reliving all of the terrible things he did in the past. Brad is one sick man, his madness apparently inspired by his incestuous feelings towards his deceased sister who was — wait for it — a cheerleader!
The premise is a disturbing one, precisely because it is based on reality. There are internet stalkers out there and there have been internet murderers as well. Most of them aren’t as wealthy or handsome as Brad but they’re still out there, preying on those who are too naive to question their intentions. While there’s definitely more than a small element of exploitation to the film (with the camera tending to linger over the cheerleader uniforms almost as intensely as Brad does), the film is ultimately on the side of Brad’s prisoners. As opposed to the hyperarticulate madmen who tend to populate films like this, Brad is a loser from the start and the moment when his victims finally start to get the upper hand on him is a cheer-worthy moment. Though the film gets off to a rather slow start, Amanda Arcuri, Kerri Medders, and Elisa Luthman all give good performances. It’s a flawed film but it gets the job done.
Christopher Lee often went on record about how much he disliked most of the Hammer films in which he played Dracula, feeling that Hammer didn’t really understand the character of Bram Stoker’s famous vampire. In fact, when Lee agreed to appear in 1966’s Dracula: Prince of Darkness, he did so with the requirement that he would not have any dialogue.
While it’s possible that Lee may have been hoping that his demand would force Hammer to release him from his contract, his requirement actually works to the film’s advantage. In the scene below, Lee shows that he didn’t need dialogue to make Dracula into a terrifying and malevolent force. Lee’s otherworldly and dangerous charisma and Dracula’s feral and vicious nature come through without him saying a word.
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 is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
Today’s director: one of the masters of Hammer horror and the director who brought back to life both Dracula and Baron von Frankenstein, Terence Fisher!
4 Shots From 4 Terrence Fisher Films
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)
The Horror of Dracula (1958, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)
The Mummy (1959, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)
The Devil Rides Out (1968, dir by Terence Fisher)
The new version of Salem’s Lot, which has finally been released on Max after sitting on the shelf for nearly three years, is not very good.
At the same time, it’s definitely not terrible. There are a few effective scenes. The finale, which is a bit different from what happens in the book, is enjoyably berserk. The film made good use of Gordon Lightfoot’s Sundown and, as a history nerd, I appreciated the fact that the movie used the book’s original 70s setting as opposed to trying to update the whole thing. When writer Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) wants to investigate the history of the old Marsten House, he has to go to the library. People looking up stuff on microfiche is always, from a cinematic point of view, more compelling than them pulling up Wikipedia.
Ultimately, the movie is just kind of forgettable. It’s mediocre in the bland way that so many recent horror films have tended to be. The movie’s style has far more in common with David Gordon Green’s unfortunate forays into horror than to anything done by Mike Flanagan. While it may not have originally been meant for a streaming release, streaming is where it begins because it feels like something that would get dumped on Netflix without much fanfare.
It’s a shame because Salem’s Lot really is one of Stephen King’s better novels, written at a time when King was still embracing his pulpy side and without any of the self-important commentary that’s come to mar some of King’s more recent works. The novel is essentially a small town soap opera, documenting the often sordid lives of the citizens of Jerusalem’s Lot. King introduces a vampire to the mix and most of the town’s problems are solved by folks dying and then coming back from the dead. Ben Mears is a typical King protagonist, a writer from Maine who is trying to deal with a childhood trauma and who discovers that ‘Salem’s Lot has a long and apparently cursed history. In both the book and the movie, Ben teams up with a group of vampire hunters to battle Kurt Barlow (played here by Alexander Ward) and his human servant, Straker (Pilou Asbaek).
The book works because it takes the time to turn Salem’s Lot into a vivid community and, as such, it’s hard not to feel the loss as the town dies off as a result of Barlow’s vampiric invasion. Clocking in at less than two hours, the movie really doesn’t have time to do that. The movie’s version of the town just comes across as being another stereotypical New England town, full of flinty characters and mudrooms. The community never comes to life and, as such, there’s not much emotional resonance as the community dies off. (It’s not a coincidence that the most successful adaptation of Salem’s Lot was a miniseries.) Add to that, the 2024 film features some truly unfortunate acting, which again makes it difficult to accept the town as a community with its own traditions and culture.
There are certain character types and themes that seem to appear in all of Stephen King’s novels and the subsequent adaptations. At its worst, the new Salem’s Lot feels like it’s quickly going through a checklist of all of the expected Stephen King elements. It’s like, “Main setting — check! Writer protagonist — check! Schoolyard bully — check! Child in danger — check!” The end result is a film that feels almost like a parody Stephen King, containing all of his familiar tropes without any of the literary flair that made the original book a classic of vampire literature.
The good thing is that the Tobe Hooper adaptation holds up well and it’s also available on Max. Check it out this weekend.
Baron Blood (1972, dir by Mario Bava)
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting Mario Bava’s Baron Blood!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime and Tubi! I’ll be there co-hosting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy
Through the Shattered Lens 