Horror Film Review: House of Dracula (dir by Erle C. Kenton)

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When last we saw Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein’s Monster, they were all coming to an untimely end in House of Frankenstein.

Dracula (John Carradine) was caught out in the sun by a group of angry villagers and ended up turning back into a skeleton while desperately trying to climb into his coffin. The Wolf Man, also known as Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.), was shot, presumably with a silver bullet, and finally, the world was free of having to listen to Larry whine about his unfortunate condition. The Monster (Glenn Strange) was last seen drowning in quicksand.

Despite all of that, all three of them return in 1945’s House of Dracula. The Monster is at least found in an underground lair, preserved in a state of suspended animation by the quicksand. Dracula and Larry Talbot, however, just show up with neither looking the worst for wear. I supposed that Larry could have survived being shot but Dracula’s return is bizarre because he was literally exposed to sunlight. In the past, reviving Dracula has always required the stake to be removed from his heart. Did someone remove the sunlight from Dracula’s skeleton?

All three of the cursed beings show up at the castle of Dr. Franz Edelmann (Onslow Stevens). Working with two nurses, the beautiful and religious Milizia (Martha O’Driscoll) and a compassionate hunchback named Nina (Janes Adams), Edlemann is researching blood transfusions. He believes that blood transfusions can cure just about anything. Edelmann is so convinced that he can cure Dracula of his vampirism that he allows Dracula to move his coffin into the castle’s cellar. Edelmann is also convinced that he use the spores of a special plant to cure Larry of his lyncanthropy. As usual, Larry Talbot is skeptical and spends the entire movie boring everyone with the details of how much it sucks to be a werewolf. As for Frankenstein’s Monster, he’s in the castle because Edelmann happend to come across him in an underground chamber. Quite a coincidence, that.

Unfortunately, all of the blood transfusions in the world can’t stop Dracula from being Dracula and soon, the Lord of the Vampires is trying to turn Milizia into his queen. Larry is also in love with Milizia, to the extent that he doesn’t realize that Nina is falling in love with him. Meanwhile, Edelman ends up infecting himself with some of Dracula’s blood and soon, his reflection is no longer showing up in mirrors and he’s feeling the temptation to revive Frankenstein’s Monster. A violent murder upsets the villagers, who refuse to listen to Inspect Holz (Lionel Atwill) when he begs them to let the police take care of things as opposed to laying siege on the castle with a bunch of torches. That’s what happens when you allow your house to become the House of Dracula.

House of Dracula is a clear and marked improvement on House of Frankenstein. While Larry Talbot is just as whiny as ever (and Lon Chaney, Jr.’s sad sack performance is a bit dull) and Frankenstein’s Monster is a bit underused, John Carradine makes for a perfect Dracula, mixing old world charm with cunning cruelty. Director Erle C. Kenton directs the film as if it were a film noir, filling the castle with ominous shadows and giving us a cast of morally conflicted characters. Though I think most modern viewers are a bit too jaded to be truly scared by the old horror films, the scene where Edelmann watches as his reflection disappears from the mirror is effectively creepy. I can only imagine how audiences in 1945 reacted to it.

When first released, House of Dracula was not a hit and, as a result it was one of the final “serious” films to feature the Universal monsters. (Chaney and Strange would reprise their signature roles in a few comedies while Carradine would play Dracula in several other non-Universal productions.) Seen today, it seems like the perfect final chapter for the monsters that, for 20 years, defined Universal.

Previous Universal Horror Reviews:

Horror on the Lens: The Headless Horseman (dir by Edward D. Venturini)

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Adapted from the classic short story by Washington Irving, 1922’s The Headless Horseman tells the story of Ichabod Crane (Will Rogers), a stern schoolmaster and a student of the occult. He comes to the town of Sleepy Hollow to serve as the new school teacher and he immediately gets on everyone’s bad side by being a bit tougher on the students than they were expecting. When it appears that Ichabod is interested in Katrina Von Tassel (Lois Meredith), Katrina’s other suitor, Abraham Von Brunt (Ben Hendricks, Jr.) conspires to make it appear as if Ichabod is working with a coven of witches.

Of course, even if Ichabod survives the witchcraft accusations, there’s still the threat of the Headless Horseman who is said to haunt the isolated roads around Sleepy Hollow….

This was not the first film adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. There were two other silent versions that came out before The Headless Horseman but they are both lost films. The Headless Horseman is the earliest surviving film version of Irving’s tale. Historically, it’s interesting as an example of an early horror film. To be honest, the scene in which Crane imagines what will happen to him if he is found guilty of witchcraft is more effective than the Horseman scenes. But Will Rogers does do a good job with the role of Ichabod Crane, even if Rogers is hardly the tall and thin Crane who was described in Irving’s story. Rogers was, of course, best-known for being a humorist and it was claimed that he “never met a man he didn’t like.” Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Ichabod Crane.

Enjoy!

Artwork of the Day: Mystery Tales (by John Walter Scott)

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Dazzling Erin

by John Walter Scott

This frightening cover is from 1939. Do not allow your children to enroll at The Devil’s University.

Music Video of the Day: Anything by The Damned (1986, directed by Gerard de Thame)

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Technically, it is debatable whether or not this is really a horror video but it does have all the hallmarks of the genre, from a gratuitous shower scene to a decadent dinner being held in what is either a gothic castle or the most ornate sewer known to man. It’s close enough for me.

Director Gerard de Thame is best-known for his work on commercials but he has also directed music videos for Erasure, Bruce Hornsby and the Range, and Sting.

Enjoy!

The Unnominated: Play Misty For Me (dir by Clint Eastwood)

Posted on October 1, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.

In 1971, Clint Eastwood made his directorial debut with Play Misty For Me.

Eastwood plays Dave Garver, a DJ at a Carmel-By-The-Sea jazz station who has ambitions to some day go national. Every night, a woman named Evelyn (Jessica Walter) calls Dave and asks him to “Play Misty for me.” Eventually, Dave meets Evelyn in a bar and he takes her home with him. After sleeping with her, Dave tells Evelyn that he’s only interested in having a casual relationship. Evelyn, however, reveals that she has a far different interpretation of casual. Soon, Evelyn is dropping by Dave’s house unannounced and acting rather clingy, even appearing to attempt suicide when Dave tries to tell her that he’s not interested in having a serious relationship with her.

At first, it’s hard not to feel bad for Evelyn. Yes, she’s obviously unstable. Yes, she’s clingy. Yes, the scene in which she intentionally ruins Dave’s interview for a national job is difficult to watch. But there’s something so sincere and desperate about her need to have someone in her life that, again, it’s hard not to have sympathy for her. When she claims that Dave took advantage of her when they first met, she’s got a point. Dave obviously felt that Evelyn was a one-night stand that he would never have to see again. Evelyn feels differently.

Things chance when Dave eventually runs into his former girlfriend, Tobie Williams (Donna Mills). Dave and Tobie tentatively restart their relationship. When Evelyn finds out, she goes from being clingy to be homicidal. She goes from trashing Dave’s place to attacking Dave’s housekeeper to attacking Dave and Tobie themselves.

An assured directorial debut, Play Misty For Me shows that Eastwood had a strong directorial sensibility from the start. (It also shows, during an extended sequence in which Dave and Tobie attend a jazz festival, that Eastwood was always capable of being rather self-indulgent.) Eastwood uses the film to deconstruct his own confident persona, with Dave going from being a somewhat callous womanizer to ultimately being terrified for his life. The film is dominated by Jessica Walter’s performance as Evelyn. Walter is sad and terrifying, often in the same scene. Though the film doesn’t dig into what happened in Evelyn’s past to drive her to such extremes, Jessica Walter’s performance leaves no doubt that she’s someone who has been hurt by the world and is now so desperate for love and protection that she’ll strike out at anyone who she feels is denying it to her.

As a horror movie that was directed by an actor who, at the time, was still not a favorite of the critics, it’s perhaps not surprising that the Academy ignored Play Misty For Me. Still, it’s a shame. If nothing else, Jessica Walter’s performance was far more memorable that Janet Suzman’s nominated turn in the painfully dull Nicholas and Alexandra. It’s a brave performance and one that more than deserved to be honored.

Previous entries in The Unnominated:

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Spellbound (dir by Alfred Hitchcock)

Posted on October 1, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1945 Best Picture nominee, Spellbound, tells the story of Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman), a psychoanalyst at a mental hospital in my least favorite state, Vermont.

Constance has fallen in love with a man (Gregory Peck) who she believes to be Dr. Anthony Edwardes, the newly appointed director of the hospital. Dr. Edwardes is youngish and handsome and idealistic and authoritative …. well, he’s Gregory Peck. However, he also has an intense phobia about seeing any set of parallel lines. Curious to discover the reason for Edwardes’s phobia, Constance does a little digging on her own and discovers that Dr. Anthony Edwardes is not a doctor at all! Instead, he’s a guilt-stricken amnesiac who is convinced that he murdered Dr. Edwardes and took his place!

Constance, however, doesn’t believe that the Amnesiac is a murderer. She thinks that he is suffering from some sort of deep-rooted guilt that had led him to believe that killed the doctor. She wants a chance to psychoanalyze him and discover the truth about his background. Unfortunately, the police do think that the Amnesiac is a murderer and their determined to arrest him.

Constance and the Amnesiac go on the run, heading to the home of Constance’s mentor, Dr. Alexander Brulov (Michael Chekhov, the nephew of Anton Chekhov). With Brulov’s help, Constance analyzes a dream that the Amensiac had, one involving curtains decorated with eyes, the faceless proprietor of a casino, and a man falling off a mountain. Can Constance and Brulov solve the mystery of the Amnesiac’s identity before the police take him away to prison?

Spellbound was the last of the four Hitchcock best picture nominees and it was also the last film that Hitchcock made for producer David O. Selznick. Selznick was quite a fan of psychoanalysis and he insisted that Hitchcock not only make a movie about it but that he also use Selznick’s own therapist as a technical advisor on the project. Hitchcock, for his part, was able to bring in the surrealist Salvador Dali to help design the Amnesiac’s dream sequence but Selznick felt that the 20-minute sequence was too long and too weird and, as a result, it was cut down to two minutes for the final film. All this considered, it’s not a surprise that, despite the fact that Spellbound was a hit with critics and audiences, Hitchcock himself didn’t care much for it and considered it to be more of a Selznick film than a Hitchcock film. And it is true that the film’s total faith is psychoanalysis feels more like something one would expect to hear from a trendy producer than from a director like Hitchcock, who was known for both his dark wit and his rather cynical attitude towards anyone in authority.

For a film like Spellbound to truly work, there has to be some doubt about who the Amnesiac is. For the suspense to work, the audience has to feel that there’s at least a chance, even if it’s only a slight one, that the Amnesiac actually could be a murderer, despite the attempts of Constance and Brulov to prove that he’s not. And Spellbound is full of scenes that are meant to leave the audience wondering about whether or not the Amnesiac should be trusted. However, because the Amnesiac is played by Gregory Peck, there’s really no doubt that he’s innocent. Hitchcock was not particularly happy with Gregory Peck as his leading man. Peck projected a solid, middle-American integrity. It made him ideal for heroic and crusading roles but made him totally wrong for any role that required ambiguity. It’s difficult to believe that the Amnesiac is suffering from a guilt complex because it’s difficult to believe that Gregory Peck has ever done anything for which he should feel guilty. Cary Grant could have played the Amnesiac. Post-war Jimmy Stewart could have done an excellent job with the role. But Peck is just too upstanding and stolid for the role. In a role that calls from neurosis, Peck is kind of boring.

That said, the rest of the cast is fine, with Ingrid Bergman giving one of her best performance as Constance and Michael Chekhov bringing some needed nuance to a role that could have turned into a cliché. Leo G. Carroll has a small but pivotal role and he does a good job keeping the audience guessing as to his motivation. Even at a truncated two minutes, the Dali dream sequence is memorably bizarre and the famous shot of a gun pointed straight at the camera still carries a kick. This is a lesser Hitchcock film but, that said, it’s still a Hitchcock film and therefore worth viewing.

As I mentioned previously, this was the last of Hitchcock’s films to be nominated for Best Picture. Ironically, his best films — Rear Window, Vertigo, and Psycho among them — were yet to come. Spellbound was nominated for six Oscars but only won for Miklos Rozsa’s score. (Ingrid Bergman was nominated for Best Actress that year, not for her role in Spellbound but instead for The Bells of St. Mary’s.) The big Oscar winner that year was Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend.

Horror on TV: The Hitchhiker 4.1 “Perfect Order” (dir by Daniel Vigne)

Posted on October 1, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

During the month of October, we like to share classic episodes of horror-themed television. That was easier to do when we first started doing our annual October Horrorthon here at the Shattered Lens because every single episode of the original, black-and-white Twilight Zone was available on YouTube. Sadly, that’s no longer the case.

However, there is some good news! Twilight Zone may be gone but there are other horror shows on YouTube! For instance, I’ve discovered that there are several episodes of The Hitchhiker on YouTube! The Hitchhiker was an American/French/Canadian co-production that aired on HBO from 1983 to 1987 and on the USA Network from 1989 to 1991. It was an anthology show, one in which each story was introduced by a mysterious hitchhiker (played by Page Fletcher).

Let’s get things started with Perfect Order, an episode featuring Virginia Madsen as a model who works with a famous but eccentric photographer named Simon (Steve Inwood). It turn out that Simon’s eccentricity includes an obsession with death. Along with featuring good performances from Madsen and the underrated Inwood, this episode both satirizes the world of New York fashion and it features a climax that is full of laser beams. What more could one want for the beginning of October?

This episode originally aired on February 17th, 1987.

October Hacks: The Prey (dir by Edwin Brown)

Posted on October 1, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1983 slasher film, The Prey, opens with a wildfire raging through the Rocky Mountains, destroying a community of people who lived in a cave. 32 years later, the only survivor of the fire (played by Carel Struycken, who would later be memorably cast on Twin Peaks as the “It is happening again” giant), wanders through the forest. When he spots a middle-aged couple camping and tending to a campfire, the survivor snaps and kills them both.

The next morning, a van drives through the national park. Inside the van are three young couples, Nancy (Debbie Thureson) and Joel (Steve Bond), Bobbie (Lori Lethin) and Skip (Robert Wald), and Gail (Gayle Gannes) and Greg (Philip Wenckus). They are looking forward to a nice weekend of camping, sex, and mountain climbing. The girls are especially happy when they meet the handsome local parker ranger, Mark O’Brien (Jackson Bostwick). The couples head into wilderness, little realizing that they are being followed and watched by the murderous survivor.

Watching The Prey, I was reminded of why I don’t go camping. I mean, I like looking at nature. I like handsome park rangers. There’s a sweet scene where Mark tells an extremely corny joke to a baby deer and it made me go, “Awwwwww!” But seriously, I would never want to spend my night sitting around a campfire or sleeping on the ground. Not only is the wilderness full of bugs but there’s always the danger of getting trapped in a sudden storm or some other natural disaster. And I have to admit that I’m just not a fan of the way that people act while camping. My fear is that, if I ever did go camping, I would end up with people shouting, “Go! Go! Go!’ at me. If my camping companions insist on going mountain climbing, am I obligated to accompany them? If one of them falls off the side of the mountain, that’s really going to ruin my weekend.

As for The Prey as a film, the plot is standard slasher stuff. Attractive young people end up stranded out in the middle of nowhere and they are picked off, one at a time, by a monster who seems to take issue with anyone trying to have any fun. That said, The Prey has enough strange moments to make it memorable. With an 80-minute running time, The Prey is an oddly paced film. (And yes, oddly paced does often translate to boring.) The majority of the film is just made up with footage of the three couples walking through the forest and having conversations that were reportedly improvised by the cast. (Gayle laughs as she talks about a time that she nearly drowned.) The film is full of skewed camera angles that give the entire proceedings an off-balance feel and occasionally the action cuts away from the main characters to Mark playing a banjo or another park ranger (played by former Charlie Chaplin co-star Jackie Coogan) having a tense conversation with a policeman who calls to ask about the missing middle-aged couple. The survivor doesn’t really go after the main couples until the film’s final 15 minutes and the pace suddenly quickens as if to mirror the relentless violence of the film’s killer. The strange pacing and the weird details gives The Prey a dream-like feel and the ending, in which the survivor reveals that he has interests outside of killing, is fascinating in just how unexpectedly bizarre it is.

The Prey was undoubtedly made to take advantage of the popularity of other wilderness slasher films but it’s just weird enough to establish an identity of its own.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Blackenstein (dir by William A. Levey)

Posted on October 1, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1973’s Blackenstein tells the story of Eddie Turner (Joe De Sue), a black man who served in Vietnam. Unfortunately, while serving his country, Eddie stepped on a landmine and lost his arms and his legs. Now back in Los Angeles, Eddie spends his days laying in a bed in a VA hospital, where he’s taunted by an orderly who, it turns out, is actually just upset because he wanted to join the army but he failed his physical. Because this film was made on the cheap, Eddie’s limbless state is represented by continually having the covers of his bed drawn up to his neck.

Eddie’s girlfriend, Dr. Winifred Walker (Ivory Stone), is upset because Eddie is having a hard time adjusting to life in the States and, having lost the lower half of his body, Eddie has been rendered impotent. She gets a job working with Dr. Stein (John Hart), a doctor who has down amazing things with DNA and RNA. He lives in a castle-like mansion and he has a laboratory that is full of lasers and beakers that are labeled “DNA.” Apparently, Dr. Stein can inject people with DNA …. don’t look at me like that, I didn’t write this movie …. and not only reverse the aging process but also help people regrow limbs.

Eddie is brought to the mansion to be Dr. Stein’s latest patient. Unfortunately, Dr. Stein’s assistant, Malcomb (Roosevelt Jackson), has fallen in love with Winifred and is stung when she tells him that her heart belongs to Eddie. Malcomb sabotages Eddie’s DNA injections so that Eddie, along with growing back his arms and his legs, also transforms into a turtleneck-wearing monster with a flattop. Eddie spends his days in a coma and his nights stalking Los Angeles.

Blackenstein was released at the height of the blaxploitation boom, when filmmakers were reinterpreting classic genres with black actors. Some of these films, like Shaft and Superfly, hold up very well and remain a part of the pop cultural landscape. And others, like Blackenstein, would be largely forgotten if not for the strangeness of their title. Blackenstein was clearly inspired by the success of Blacula, though it comes nowhere close to being as compelling as that film.

Blackenstein has more than a few problems. The pacing is abysmal. The plot requires a lot of smart people to do a lot of dumb things. As opposed to other films based on Mary Shelley’s novel, the Monster is neither scary nor sympathetic. Eddie Turner was played by a non-actor named Joe de Sue, who was hired because he was a client of the Frank Salteri, the criminal lawyer-turned-filmmaker who produced the film. Joe de Sue rarely speaks and when he does, he turns his face away from the camera and it is fairly obvious that his dialogue was dubbed in after the scene was shot. Ivory Stone and Roosevelt Jackson awkwardly deliver their lines about DNA and RNA in a tone that suggests that neither they nor the filmmakers were exactly sure what either one of those were. John Hart is perhaps the most mild mad scientist in the history of horror cinema.

One could argue that there’s an interesting subtext to this film, with its scenes of a white scientist conducting a dangerous medical experiment on a black man who is not in a position to refuse. But let’s not fool ourselves. This film is not Blacula, with its title character being transformed into a vampire as punishment for standing up to Dracula’s racism. Blackenstein had very little on its mind, beyond cashing in on the then-blaxploitation boom. The title promises a certain over-the-top silliness but, ultimately, this film is way too boring for something called Blackenstein.

The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: Deadly Nightshade (dir by Benjamin Rider)

Posted on October 1, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2021’s Deadly Nightshade is not an easy film to describe.

An analog voice asks us to return to a time in the recent past, when people watched movies on VHS tapes and the television was the world’s main source of escape. In Brixton, Victoria (Suzie Houlihan) goes to her flat, excited to spend the weekend in Brighton with her boyfriend, Marcus (Matthew Laird). She finds a mysterious man named Adam (Christopher Blackburn) in the flat. Adam says that he’s a friend of Marcus’s and he’s going to be staying in the flat for the weekend. Adam wants Victoria to listen to a tape recording of what he claims is an exorcism. Victoria is not comfortable with him.

Marcus finally shows up, covered in blood that is not his. Marcus says that he witnessed an accident on the way home and he stopped to rescue one of the women involved. Suddenly, that woman shows up. Her name is Mia (Lottie Johnson) and it appears that she’s planning on staying in the apartment as well.

The analog voice invites us to watch a documentary about the real events that inspired Deadly Nightshade but an appearance by Eric Roberts as occult expert Father Walsh clues us in that the documentary is just as fictional as the film that we’re watching.

Strange things continue to happen at the flat. Victoria’s mother mysteriously appears at one point. Adam has visions of a woman lying in bed and telling him that he’s too obsessed with television. Victoria falls asleep and when she wakes up, Mia is claiming that Marcus is her boyfriend and that Adam is Victoria’s boyfriend and no one really seems to know why Victoria is even at the flat. For all the talk of spending the weekend in Brighton, no one seems like they’re in a particular hurry to leave the flat….

It’s an odd film and I would suggest not trying too hard to follow the plot. It’s a film that plays out like a filmed nightmare, working on its own bizarre strain of logic. Just as in a dream, personalities change randomly and the lay-out of the flat seems to alter from scene to scene. Plot points, like Adam’s exorcism tape, are brought up and then abandoned just to mysteriously be brought up again. It’s not a movie that makes much sense but, if you relax and just go with it, it definitely leaves an impression.

As for Eric Roberts, he’s not in much of the film. It’s pretty obvious that he filmed his scenes in an hour or two, probably at his own home. It wouldn’t surprise me if he provided his own clerical collar. That said, if you’re going to have a mysterious man talking about the supernatural in your low-budget film, I would say that Eric Roberts is who you would want to go with.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed: