Category: Horror

Twilight Zone: “Time Enough At Last” [Season 1, Episode 8] / Z-View

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Twilight Zone: “Time Enough At Last” [Season 1, Episode 8]
Original Air Date: November 20, 1959

Director: John Brahm

Writer: Rod Serling based on a short story by Lynn Venable

Starring: Burgess Meredith, Vaughn Taylor and Jaqueline deWit

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Poor little, nearsighted, henpecked Henry Bemis [Meredith] loves to read.  Reading is his passion but sadly life deprives him of it.  His boss at the bank, Mr. Carsville [Taylor] won’t allow reading at work.  Bemis’ wife [deWit] destroys his books at home.

Bemis decides to take his lunch in the bank’s underground vault so he can sneak in some reading as he eats.  While in the vault a massive explosion is felt. Bemis emerges to a world destroyed by nuclear war.  He is totally alone.

At first frightened, Bemis finds food and water to ensure his survival for years.  When he discovers a library Bemis realizes he now has time enough at last to read everything.  Of course this is the Twilight Zone and the episode concludes with one of its most famous twist endings.

Final Thoughts:  Meredith owns his role as Bemis.  A classic episode worthy of its reputation.

Rating: 5 of 5 stars.

Z-View: “House of Frankenstein”

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House of Frankenstein (1944)

Director: Erle C. Kenton

Writers: Edward T. Lowe Jr. from a story by Curt Siodmak

Starring: Boris Karloff;  Lon Chaney, Jr.; J. Carroll Naish; and John Carradine.

The Pitch: “Let’s make a movie with all three of our biggest stars: Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man!”

The Tagline: “All the Screen’s Titans of Terror – Together in the Greatest of All SCREEN SENSATIONS!”

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Although House of Frankenstein promises Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man together; the promise is kept but not to the fullest extent.  While Frankenstein and Karloff are in the film, Karloff doesn’t play the monster.  Dracula also stars, but isn’t played by Bela Lugosi [who isn’t even in the film], but instead by John Carradine.  Happily, Lon Chaney, Jr. does return as the Wolf Man, but sadly never shares any scenes with Dracula.  Neither does Frankenstein for that matter.

Still, we do get one movie with the three biggest classic Universal monsters and that goes a long way in satisfying monster fans of all ages.

Karloff plays the mad scientist Dr. Niemann who with the help of his hunchbacked assistant [Naish] escapes prison and heads toward Frankenstein’s old stomping grounds to continue his work.  Along the way they encounter a traveling horror show that claims to have the skeletal remains of Dracula.  Seizing the opportunity [and the road show owner’s neck], Karloff has his assistant kill the road show’s owner so that Karloff can assume his identity and they can travel freely through the countryside.

Before too long they’ve revived Dracula and after a near capture by angry villagers, Karloff and Naish make their escape into the rising sun.  I’ll leave it to you to figure out Dracula’s fate.

Soon enough they find the frozen remains of Frankenstein and the Wolf Man.  Once the two monsters are thawed out we’re left with a battle royal of sorts.  The hunchback wants his brain put in Chaney’s body (so he can woo a gypsy girl).  Karloff isn’t too keen on that idea, not because he doesn’t want a little hunchbacked werewolf running around, but because he has other plans for both the Frankenstein Monster and the Wolf Man.  Of course the village townsfolk come up with their own ideas on what to do with the whole monstrous crew and things really, uh, heat up.

Rating:

Z-View: “The Cat and the Canary”

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The Cat and the Canary  [1939]
Director: Elliott Nugent
Screenplay: Walter DeLeon and Lynn Starling based on the stage play by John Willard
Starring: Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard.

The Pitch: ”Hey, let’s team Bob Hope in a film with Paulette Goddard.  We could do a remake of the 1927 silent film The Cat and the Canary which is based on the 1922 stage play of the same name.”

The Tagline: “A Chill-and-Chuckle Chase!… A Fortune at Stake and a Monster at Large!”

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Ten years after the death of an eccentric millionaire, Cyrus Norman, his remaining family members are brought to his spooky-looking mansion deep in the bayou.  Before the will is read, his former caretaker informs the group that the spirits have said one of them will die that night. Sadly there is no way to leave the mansion until the next day.

Norman left two wills: The first leaves everything to Paulette Goddard [much to the disappointment of all except Bob Hope]; the second will is to be opened only if Goddard dies or goes insane before the month is out.  The second will leaves everything to one of the others [although who is unknown until Goddard dies] which of course puts Goddard’s life in danger.  To make matters worse, the group learns that a homicidal maniac known as the Cat has escaped from a nearby insane asylum and is in the area.

As the night wears on things get progressively worse – lights go on and off, people disappear, real eyes in paintings are watching, secret passages are found and what? Someone has been murdered!

Rating:

10 Not-So-Scary Facts About “Monsters, Inc.”

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Tara Aquino and Mental_Floss present 10 Not-So-Scary Facts About Monsters, Inc.  Here are three of my favorites…

5. PAUL DOCTER’S ORIGINAL PITCH WAS TO HAVE A GROWN MAN BE HAUNTED BY THE MONSTERS HE DREW AS A KID.
On Jeff Goldsmith’s Creative Writing podcast, director Pete Docter recounted his original pitch: “My idea was that what it was about was a 30-year-old man who is like an accountant or something, he hates his job, and one day he gets a book with some drawings in it that he did when he was a kid from his mom. He doesn’t think anything of it and he puts it on the shelf and that night, monsters show up. And nobody else can see them. He thinks he’s starting to go crazy, they follow him to his job, and on his dates … and it turns out these monsters are fears that he never dealt with as a kid … And each one of them represents a different kind of fear. As he conquers those fears, the guys who he slowly becomes kind of friends with, they disappear … It’s this bittersweet kind of ending where they go away, and so not much of that stayed.”

6. THE FILM WAS THE FIRST TO INTRODUCE THE ONSCREEN REPRESENTATION OF FUR.
In order to animate each individual strand of hair on Sulley, which reportedly took 12 hours to fill a single frame, Pixar developed a new software program called Fizt. According to WIRED, the software was extremely advanced for its time, as it had the power to simulate each of the three million hairs that covered the lovable monster. “We made the simulator able to digest anything,” said Andy Witkin, one of the studio’s senior animation scientists.

7. JOHN GOODMAN AND BILLY CRYSTAL RECORDED THEIR LINES TOGETHER—A RARITY IN ANIMATION.
Typically, voice actors get into the booth at separate times to record their dialogue. But Billy Crystal pushed for the opportunity to work alongside his co-star, John Goodman. “I did the first two sessions alone and I didn’t like it,” Crystal told Dark Horizons. “It was lonely and it was frustrating.” Goodman was also a fan of the joint process; he told the BBC: “When Billy and I got together, the energy just went through the roof, so it was great.”

15 Facts About “Silence of the Lambs”

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Hollywood.com presents 15 Facts About Silence of the Lambs.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. The moth cocoons Buffalo Bill placed in his victims throats were actually made from a combination of Tootsie Rolls and gummy bears, in case they were swallowed.

9. Jonathan Demme always had characters speak directly into the camera for conversations with Clarice, yet he always filmed Jodie Foster looking slightly off camera.
The idea was to make audiences directly experience her point-of-view to more easily empathize with her character. We think anyone who has watched those gripping last few moments of the film can confirm the success of this technique.

10. Anthony Hopkins is only on screen for 24 minutes and 52 seconds. This makes his performance the second shortest to ever receive a nomination for Best Actor.

Jack the Ripper Identified as Poet Francis Thompson

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The famous poet Francis Thompson was the even more infamous Jack the Ripper.  Twenty years of research has led Richard Patterson to this conclusion.  Patterson sites some of the evidence that identifies Thompson as the Ripper:

Thompson…

… had surgical experience and hinted at his double life in some of his poems…

…kept a dissecting knife under his coat…

…was taught a rare surgical procedure that was found in the mutilations of more than one of the Ripper victims…

For the full story check out The New York Daily News: Jack the Ripper’s Real Identity.

The Best Cities for Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

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Ok, so the zombie apocalypse breaks out… where do you go?

Kiona Smith-Strickland and Gizmodo might have the answers in These Are the Best Cities for Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse.  The worst cities are also listed.

Neither my home town [Port Orange, Florida] nor my birth town [Terre Haute, Ind.] made the best cities for survival list.  Of course they also managed to stay off the worst cities list as well.  So I do have that going for me.

7 of the Creepiest Coincidences in Movie History

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Hollywood.com provides us with 7 of the Creepiest Coincidences in Movie History.  I thought this was the creepiest of the bunch…

3. Poltergeist
In the classic horror film, Poltergeist, there’s a poster hanging above Robbie’s bed that reads “1988 Superbowl XXII”

You’d expect a little kid to a have a football poster up in his room, but what makes this weird is the fact Poltergeist was released in 1982, but Superbowl XXII wouldn’t be played for another six years.

So why did they use a poster from a future game? Well, no one really knows, but on January 31, 1988, the day Superbowl XXII was held, Heather O’Rourke (the actress who played Robbie’s younger sister) became violently ill. She passed away the next day at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, less than five miles away from Jack Murphy Stadium where Super Bowl XXII was played.

12 Fiendishly Fun Facts About “The Munsters”

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Kara Kovalchik and Mental_Floss present 12 Fiendishly Fun Facts About The Munsters.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. THE CHOICE OF MONSTER CHARACTERS WAS STRICTLY INTENTIONAL (AND ROYALTY-FREE).
Universal Studios owned Universal Television, which owned The Munsters. Universal Studios also owned the copyrights to most of the classic monsters, including Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein’s monster. The studio had been running their old classic horror films on television since the 1950s and found that there was still an impressive audience for these decades-old monster movies. When Connelly and Mosher pitched their series idea, CBS executives knew that they had one advantage that ABC lacked with The Addams Family: the ability to use the Universal monster characters. The Munsters regularly topped The Addams Family in the ratings, mainly because of the instant identifiability of (and built-in fan base for) Dracula, Frankenstein’s bride, et al.

10. HERMAN’S COSTUME WAS A PERSONAL TORTURE CHAMBER FOR FRED GWYNNE.
Even though Gwynne would eventually reminisce that Herman was one of his favorite characters, the time he spent on The Munsters set was often fairly miserable, thanks to the various devices necessary to transform him into the lovable Frankenstein monster. On his feet he wore asphalt paver’s boots with four-inch soles, and his thighs, arms, and torso were covered in 40 pounds of foam rubber padding. He contended with back pain daily caused by the weight of the suit and inflexibility of the shoes. His head was fitted with a foam latex piece to flatten the top of his head and then he had to endure two hours in the makeup chair. He perspired freely under the heavy costume and hot studio lights and lost 10 pounds in one month despite consuming gallons of lemonade between takes. The producers eventually rented a compressed air tank and would poke the nozzle inside Gwynne’s collar to blow cool air on him.

11. THE COSTUME HAD ONE BENEFIT: IT EXCUSED GWYNNE FROM PERSONAL APPEARANCES.
As The Munsters gained popularity, its stars received more and more requests to appear at various functions. The producers, of course, sent the actors out as often as possible since such appearances not only promoted the show, they also propelled the sales of the variousMunsters merchandise that saturated the market at the time. Only Fred Gwynne was able to relax on his days off (for the most part), since the time and expense required to get him into character outweighed the publicity value of cutting ribbons at supermarket openings. One of the rare times he played Herman in public was alongside Al Lewis in the 1964 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Gwynne confessed to TV Guide that he’d been taking slugs from a bottle of whiskey the entire time, because he “had to get bombed so I could say ‘hello’ to the little kiddies for 40 blocks.”

13 Foreboding Facts About “The Omen”

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Stacy Conradt and Mental_Floss present 13 Foreboding Facts About The Omen.  Here are three of my favorites…

9. GREGORY PECK AND RICHARD DONNER HAD ONE ARGUMENT DURING FILMING.
Peck wanted to angrily smash a bunch of stuff during the scene where Robert finds out his wife has died. Donner disagreed; he wanted to cut in on Thorn well after the discovery, not in the moment. According to Donner, he and Peck argued about the scene for an entire day before Peck told him, “You’re wrong. I’m right. But you’re the director, and therefore I have to do it your way.” After the scene was shot, Peck reviewed the dailies and conceded that Donner had been right about how to film Thorn’s reaction.

11. THE MOVIE CAME WITH A TERRIFYING AD CAMPAIGN.
To promote the movie, gloom-and-doom posters and promotional materials went up all over the U.S. They contained uplifting messages such as:

  • “Good morning. You are one day closer to the end of the world.”
  • “Remember … you have been warned.”
  • “It is a warning foretold for thousands of years. It is our final warning. It is The Omen.

 

12. THE PRODUCTION MAY HAVE BEEN CURSED.
Like many other horror movies, some spooky things happened to the cast and crew that made them wonder if they had angered some higher power. Here are just a few of the incidents:

  • Peck, writer David Seltzer, and executive producer Mace Neufeld were on planes that were struck by lightning or had a near-miss.

  • The crew had planned to charter a plane to get some aerial shots, but had to switch at the last minute due to a scheduling conflict. The original plane ended up crashing, killing everyone on it.

  • Director Richard Donner’s hotel was bombed by the IRA the day after they shot the safari park scene.

  • A zookeeper at the safari park was killed in the lion area, which also happened the day after filming.

  • The stuntman standing in for Peck was attacked by Rottweilers during the graveyard scene; they managed to bite through the protective gear he was wearing.

  • After the film wrapped, special effects director John Richardson and his assistant, Liz Moore, moved on to the film A Bridge Too Far. While filming in the Netherlands, the duo was in a serious car accident. Richardson survived, but Moore was decapitated. This was especially eerie since Richardson was responsible for the infamous decapitation scene in The Omen.

The “400 Days” Trailer is Here!

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The 400 Days  trailer is here!

400 DAYS is a psychological sci-fi film centering on four astronauts who are sent on a simulated mission to a distant planet to test the psychological effects of deep space travel. Locked away for 400 days, the crew’s mental state begins to deteriorate when they lose all communication with the outside world. Forced to exit the ship, they discover that this mission may not have been a simulation after all.