Category: Horror

10 Colorful Facts About “The Munsters”

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Me-TV presents 10 Colorful Facts About The Munsters.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. The idea dates back to 1943.
The idea for a family of comedic Universal monsters dates back to the heyday of Universal monster pictures. In the early 1940s, the studio was still flying high off its monster franchises. It had recently launched The Wolf Man and The Phantom of the Opera. Lon Cheney Jr. was shambling along in The Ghost of Frankenstein. In 1943, Bob Clampett, an animator who worked on Looney Tunes cartoons, pitched the idea of a funny Monster family to Universal. After a couple years developing the concept, nothing came of it for two decades. Even in the 1960s, as interest picked back up, some at the studio believed it should be a cartoon.

8. The original Marilyn quit acting after 13 episodes — and a third Marilyn was used in the movie.
No Munster family member changed like Marilyn, Lily’s niece. Initially, Beverley Owen (pictured here) filled the role. Midway through season one, Owen quit the business entirely, to get married and focus on her family. She would later earn a masters degree in Early American History. Pat Priest popularized the role of Marilyn thereafter on the show. However, Universal recast the character for Munster, Go Home! The studio inserted Debbie Watson — 12 years younger — into the role, in hope of building the contracted starlet’s career.

9. The Drag-U-La was made with an illegally purchased coffin.
Reportedly, according to legend, a real coffin was used to make the awesome DRAG-U-LA hot rod seen in Munster, Go Home! The only catch that it was supposedly illegal to purchase a coffin without a death certificate in the state of California at the time. Richard “Korky” Korkes, the man who built the dragster, claimed he passed money under the table to a funeral home in North Hollywood, who left a coffin for him outside the back door.

 

Jonathan Maberry Going Down George A. Romero’s “Road of the Dead”

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Remember last year when George Romero announced his next zombie film, George Romero Presents Road of the Dead?  While I was glad Romero was taking part in a new addition to his zombie films, I wasn’t thrilled with the concept which to me sounded like Death Race 2000 meets Dawn of the Dead.

Then in July of last year, Romero gave an interview talking up George Romero Presents Road of the Dead and more.  Sadly, three days later he died.

Today at Comic-Con, IDW announced that Jonathan Maberry will write a 3 issue mini-series based on Romero’s Road of the Dead.  Maberry is the perfect choice for this project having worked with Romero on Nights of the Living Dead anthology last year.  That and the fact that Maberry is a fantastic writer.

In addition to Maberry writing the series, I was pleased to see that my pal, Drew Moss will be providing covers and interior art!

Source: Bleeding Cool.

 

10 Facts About Steven Spielberg’s “Duel”

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Sean Hutchinson and Mental Floss present 10 Facts About Steven Spielberg’s Duel.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. THE MOVIE WAS INSPIRED BY A REAL-LIFE INCIDENT.
Author and screenwriter Richard Matheson based his original novella, which first appeared in the April 1971 issue of Playboy, on an actual road rage incident. Matheson had played a round of golf on November 22, 1963, the same day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. On his car ride home, and in a daze after receiving the terrible news, he was ruthlessly tailgated by a truck driver.

Matheson initially pitched the idea to TV producers but, after it was rejected numerous times, he decided to put his real-life incident into prose form. In order to gather details of the open road, Matheson set out from his home in Ventura, California with a voice recorder in hand and simply described what he saw. Those descriptions of the desolate landscape ended up in the novella.

3. DENNIS WEAVER’S WORK WITH ORSON WELLES GOT HIM THE LEAD IN DUEL.

For the lowly protagonist, David Mann, Spielberg hand-picked character actor Dennis Weaver because he loved his performance as the jittery and feeble hotel night manager in Orson Welles’s 1958 film Touch of Evil.

Weaver drove more than 2000 miles while shooting his scenes, and did many of the stunts himself, including the dangerous phone booth scene at the “Snakerama” gas station in a single take.

Of working with the rookie director, the veteran Weaver later said, “I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I said, ‘There’s no reason for me to judge him because of his age. Let’s see what he does.’ And he did extremely well … I really think it’s one of the most creative jobs he’s ever done.”

10. SPIELBERG HAS REVISITED DUEL MORE THAN ONCE—AND PEOPLE HAVE STOLEN FROM HIM, TOO.
Duel was something of lucky charm once Spielberg’s career began to take off, and he’d continually reference parts of the movie in subsequent films.

The Snakerama gas station seen in the film also appears in Spielberg’s 1979 World War II comedy, 1941, with actress Lucille Benson again appearing as the proprietor. The two elderly people Weaver tries to flag down in a car also appear as helpless motorists in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

But it wasn’t all good luck. Spielberg was not happy when stock footage of both vehicles was later used in an episode of the television series The Incredible Hulk, titled “Never Give a Trucker an Even Break.” The recycled footage was completely legal since the show was also produced by Universal

11 Astonishing Facts About “Freaks”

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Matthew Jackson at Mental Floss posted 11 Astonishing Facts About Freaks.  Here are three of the most interesting…

2. MGM WANTED IT TO RIVAL DRACULA AS A HORROR FILM.

Though there were certainly monstrous characters populating various silent films (particularly those portrayed by Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera and London After Midnight), the horror film as a genre didn’t really take off until the era of talkies began. Shortly after Chaney’s death due to complications from lung cancer, Browning was off at Universal Pictures, helping to lead the horror wave with his now-classic adaptation of Dracula. When Browning returned to MGM in the wake of Dracula’s success, head of production Irving Thalberg wanted to capitalize on the horror boom. The hope was that, with the director of Dracula back at the studio, MGM could best Universal with something even more horrifying, and so Browning was finally given the go-ahead to make Freaks, which had remained a pet project of his for years.

According to Skal, it became a classic lesson for Thalberg in being careful what you wish for: The story goes that after he was presented with the screenplay for the film, Thalberg reportedly hung his head and said, “Well, I asked for something horrible, and I guess I got it.”

10. IT DERAILED BROWNING’S CAREER.

Before Freaks, Browning was one of the most successful directors in Hollywood, and his success had earned him enough clout to get the ambitious and gutsy film made after Dracula hit big at Universal. After Freaks, he never quite recovered. According to Skal, this was not just due to that film’s failure, but due to Browning’s continued discomfort with the change in the filmmaking process that came from the rise of talkies. That discomfort, coupled with an increasing inability to get more personal projects approved by the studios in the wake of Freaks, led to his decline in the 1930s.

Browning directed just four more films (two of them uncredited), with his final directing credit coming on the MGM mystery Miracles for Sale in 1939. He retired with enough savings from his directorial successes to live comfortably in a pair of homes in Beverly Hills and Malibu, and died in 1962.

11. IT FOUND A NEW AUDIENCE IN THE 1960S.

After its critical and commercial failure in the United States, Freaks faded into the background as a kind of Hollywood curiosity, and was banned in several countries (including the United Kingdom) for decades. The film was licensed by distributor Dwain Esper in the late 1940s, and played on the grindhouse circuit at various independent theaters, but it wasn’t until the 1962 Cannes Film Festival that the film’s revival really began. After screening there, it was heralded as a kind of forgotten classic. Noted film collector and archivist Raymond Rohauer picked up the baton from there, landing the rights to Freaks and showing it as a cult film. It gained prominence on the midnight movie circuit, and found particular success with members of the 1960s counterculture movement, who saw kindred spirits in its cast.

 

15 Facts About John Carpenter’s “Christine”

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Sean Hutchinson at Mental Floss posted 15 Facts About John Carpenter’s Christine.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. JOHN CARPENTER SIGNED ON SIMPLY BECAUSE HE WANTED A JOB.
Kobritz approached John Carpenter after the critical and financial failure of his 1982 adaptation of The Thing, which is now widely regarded as one of the filmmaker’s best.

The pair previously worked together on Carpenter’s 1978 TV movie Someone’s Watching Me! and Carpenter agreed to take on the project because he wanted to jump immediately into another movie after his first high-profile box office flop.

8. KEVIN BACON WAS ORIGINALLY CAST AS ARNIE.

Carpenter held auditions in California and New York, looking for the right fresh faces for the teen characters in the film, and he found the perfect newcomer for Arnie: Kevin Bacon.

The now-famous actor’s only other significant work at the time was bit parts in Animal House and Friday the 13th, and Kobritz and Carpenter thought Arnie’s transformation from dweeby hero to suave villain was a perfect fit for Bacon. But after being cast, Bacon dropped out when he was offered a starring role in Footloose.

Carpenter went back the the drawing board to cast Arnie, and eventually found actor Keith Gordon in a play in New York City. Carpenter initially took to Gordon as Arnie because of the actor’s previous appearance in Brian De Palma’s thriller Dressed to Kill.

7. CARPENTER DIDN’T WANT TO CAST MOVIE STARS.

Columbia execs wanted a star-studded cast to round out their King adaptation, and suggested that Brooke Shields—coming off the hit film The Blue Lagoon—be cast as Leigh, and Scott Baio be cast as Arnie. But Carpenter didn’t want recognizable faces in the movie as a way to stress that the titular car was the real star of the movie.

The 100 Best Horror Movies of All Time, According to Critics

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Josh Lynch at Business Insider posted The 100 Best Horror Movies of All Time, According to Critics.  Lynch’s list is a good one worth checking out.

Here are three of my favorites and some comments…

69. “28 Days Later” (2003)

Critic score: 86%

Audience score: 85%

What critics said: “The movie’s craft makes the dread of a killer virus contagious: viewers may feel they have come down with a case of secondhand SARS or sympathetic monkeypox.” — Time

What Craig said:  I’m a huge fan of 28 days later.  While quite a few folks like to argue if 28 days later is truly a zombie film or not, I’d rather spend the time re-watching it.

39. “Train to Busan” (2016)

Critic score: 95%

Audience score: 88%

What critics said: “A zombie movie content not to aspire to any loftier subtextual readings needs little more than a skilled choreographer of action, and there’s plenty of evidence that this film had one in Yeon.” — The AV Club

What Craig said:  Train to Busan came out of nowhere to be one of my favorite horror films in recent years.  I hadn’t heard the buzz before seeing it.  This is a zombie movie with heart.  Dong-seok Ma should be a breakout star.  If you haven’t caught the Train to Busan you owe it to yourself to give it a ride.  Just be aware that not everyone makes it to the final stop.

2. “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (1920)

Critic score: 100%

Audience score: 89%

What critics said: “Undoubtedly one of the most exciting and inspired horror movies ever made.” — Time Out

What Craig said: Of the three movies from this list that I chose to highlight, I’ll bet that The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the one that has been seen the least by those reading this.  It has three strikes against it:

1.  It is a silent film.

2.  It is a foreign silent film.

3.  It is nearly 100 years old.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has a twist ending that would make M. Night Shamalan and Rod Serling high-five.  When I first watched The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari I thought the choices being made in set design were due to budget restrictions and experimentation with expressionism and the relatively new form of story-telling called film.  I was wrong… at least partially.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari tells the tale of a serial killer hypnotist who uses a somnambulist to commit murders. The film takes advantage of the lack of color film and makes the most of a light and shadow with sets that are off-kilter.

If you haven’t seen The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and you’re a film lover, give it a try.

James Byron Huggins Podcast Interview!

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Because we have so many James Byron Huggins fans here, I thought I’d let everyone know that James did a podcast interview and a reading from The Reckoning for The Other Stories.org.

Huggins is probably best known as the author of Hunter which he specifically wrote with Sylvester Stallone in mind as the book’s hero.  Hunter is one of my all-time favorite novels and I’m not alone in that regard.  Stallone fans continue to hope that Sly will helm a movie version of Hunter even if he doesn’t star in it.

Huggins also wrote The Reckoning, Cain, Leviathon, Rora, and other novels. I recommend each of them to fans of thrillers, action-adventure, horror and great writing.