Dwight Iliff Frye (February 22, 1899 – November 7, 1943) was an American stage and screen actor, noted for his appearances in the classic horror films Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man (1933), and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). He is frequently seen on-screen as a simple, sometimes deranged, sycophantic assistant to a more intelligent, malevolent character.

Born in Salina, Kansas on February 22nd 1899, after which his parents relocated to Denver, Colorado, Dwight was given voice training and piano lessons, showing signs of a promising career as an accomplished concert pianist. His unusual middle name derives from a character in Tennyson’s poetry cycle, Idylls of the King, one of the few nods towards the arts his parents gave.

An appearance in a school play led to Frye catching the acting bug, to the dismay and alarm of his parents, particularly his mother who was a devout Christian Scientist. Despite their concerns, he followed his dream to Washington, appearing on-stage in a variety of roles, with the ambition of appearing on Broadway.

After a series of successful theatre notices and being described as one of the ten most accomplished stage actors in the country, Broadway did indeed come calling, culminating in a play which opened in 1926 and ran for 165 performances – The Devil in the Cheese. This play is particularly notable, not only for its successful five month run but that it pitched him against two particular actors; Fredric March, best known for his Oscar winning performance in 1931′s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and one Bela Lugosi. Remarkably, the omens did not stop there, Frye appearing a Renfield opposite Frederick (“not very scary”) Pymm in a stage production of Dracula in 1929/30. It was in New York that Frye made his first screen appearance, unbilled in a wedding scene for Universal’s  comedy, The Night Bird (1928). Marrying Laurette Bullivant the same year, his stealthy rise to fame was unexpectedly stifled by the stock market crash of 1929 – however, it was during this period in which he appeared in provincial theatre to make ends meet that he was spotted by a Warner Bros. executive.

Before working for Warner’s, it was Universal that gave him his first major role, that of the fly-eating, wide-eyed, babbling Renfield in Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931). Despite actively campaigning to win the coveted role, the actor who played him on Broadway, opposite Bela Lugosi, Bernard Jukes, was unsuccessful – indeed his career never recovered. Frye’s portrayal became the template for all future portrayals of the character, his high-pitched, hissing voice and the creepiest laugh in film history. Sadly, it also typecast him for the remainder of his career – despite superb notices from the press for his role, he was a new face to most of the watching public and their attention was constantly dragged to the fruity-vowelled Lugosi – Frye was the mental one.

Dwight appeared in the first film version of The Maltese Falcon, (known as Dangerous Female in America), as the neurotic psychopath Gunsel Wilmer, but although some of his scenes, like so many others in his future appearances, ended up on the cutting room floor. Back at Universal, a  brief stop-off in The Black Camel followed, opposite both Lugosi and Charlie Chan-favourite Warner Orland (also seen in Werewolf of London) but it was in another film that Dwight once more found his calling as a subservient lunatic, this time as Fritz in James Whale’s game-changer, Frankenstein (1931). But for Fritz mistakenly swapping over the required brains needed to give life to Frankenstein’s creation, who knows where the film would have gone; it was actually something of a slight role yet Frye captured the ghoulish glee and castle-dwelling torch-wielding of the character magnificently. It says much about Colin Clive and Boris Karloff that they were not blown off the set, Whale having seen his potential and giving the role of Fritz a far more expanded role than the book, for the first time with dialogue. Reporting to the make-up chair of Jack Pierce every morning for his hunched-back and smeared-on mask, his enthusiastic method acting slightly reduces him to comic relief, in a film where Karloff’s portrayal literally had audiences running for the exit in fear. It reinforced his reputation for playing supporting roles of a certain mentality.

In 1933 Dwight was back at Universal for an unbilled role as a reporter in The Invisible Man, primarily as a favour for his friend James WhaleHe had been determined for typecasting not to happen and had taken roles in film genres ranging from comedy to gangster but none had lead to the wide-spread acclaim as his horror roles. Inevitably then, his role as Herman Glieb, the village idiot in The Vampire Bat, returned to gibbering, sound-bites and furtive looks to the camera. The feature was filmed on the Universal back-lot for Majestic Pictures and starred Lionel Atwill as mad scientist Otto von Neimann and Fay Wray. Herman’s fondness for furry bats makes him the number one suspect in a series of ‘bat killings’ that are plaguing the town of Kleinschloss. It’s a brilliant, rather overlooked role, with some wonderfully perverse dialogue:

“Bats…they soft, like cat! They not bite Herman!”

“See? Blood! Herman like you…me Herman! You give me apples, Herman give you nice, soft bat!”

In 1935, a good cast was indeed well worth repeating and Bride of Frankenstein was released, perhaps the greatest film from Universal’s golden period. So enamoured was Whale with Frye’s earlier performance, that he essentially gave him three roles; Fritz, the loyal, disturbed assistant of the doctor; Kark, the village local who murders his family and blames the Monster and an unnamed grave robber who assist Ernest Thesiger’s Dr Pretorius procure fresh corpses. Ultimately these roles were combined into the role of Karl. Note, Frye never appeared in any film as the oft-misquoted ‘Igor’. Some of Frye’s role ended up on the cutting room floor, most famously the scene of him murdering the village burgomaster, (E.E. Clive) but also scenes of him murdering his aunt and uncle, some more background on his character and some more scenes opposite Thesiger. It was perhaps the only vehicle outlandish enough to make Frye’s performance seem appropriate but it was the final nail in his coffin as far as his acting career was concerned – despite putting every last bit of energy into capitalising on his fame, he was destined never to have a break-out role.

He did actually receive top-billing (nearly) in one of his next films, the much over-looked The Crime of Dr Crespi,  alongside acting titan, Erich von Stroheim. Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Premature Burial and sporting the poster tagline, ‘It Starts Where “Frankenstein” Left Off!’, it again features him in the shadows of the medical profession and again with shovel in hand bothering the dead.

For the remainder of the 1930′s, Frye worked tirelessly, both on camera and in the theatre but none of his roles were anything more meaningful than ‘supporting’. A potential return to the ‘big’ time was denied him with 1939′s Son of Frankenstein, in which his role as an angry villager (allegedly) was lost entirely due to studio tomfoolery, being unable to decide whether Technicolour was the way forward – an eventual decision to stick with black and white meant Frye’s parts were unusable. Without the out-of-favour Whale at the helm and with chaotic shooting, the film was, incredibly, a box-office success. Frye was appalled. Ironically, this is the film with Igor (actually Ygor) in it, played by…Bela Lugosi.

Frye did appear in two further Frankenstein efforts, yet another angry villager in Ghost of Frankenstein and a tailor in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. These incredibly reduced roles must have been a real kick in the teeth for an actor so integral to the success of three of the biggest horror films of all time. Frye’s final notable role was that of, yes, a hunchback in 1943′s Dead Men Walk. Low-budget and relatively little-seen, the film echoes much of Dracula and is surprisingly effective. It did little to help either Frye’s career or his ailing health – Frye had secretly being harbouring a heart problem for many years and the stress and toil of his endeavours was beginning to slowly draw the curtain on a frustrating career.

Not only price prevented Frye from attending to medical matters – his faith as a Christian Scientist forbade the intervention of professionals and, alas, it was to cost him his life – Frye died of a heart attack whilst taking a bus journey to the set of a film he was shooting, 1944′s political biopic, Wilson. He is interred at Glendale’s Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, alongside such appropriate luminaries as Forrest J Ackerman, Lon Chaney Snr, James Whale and composer Max Steiner. Frye’s legacy can be both seen and heard – Alice Cooper’s 1971 song, “The Ballad of Dwight Fry (sic)” is sung from the perspective of one of the actor’s creations,

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Although the continuity is a little wayward, the events of many of the Golden Age of Universal horror films actually take place in one of two fictional locales – the village of Frankenstein and that of Vasaria (sometimes spelled Visaria). In turn, these were generally filmed in the same place too, the sprawling Universal back-lot, nicknamed ‘Little Europe’.

Frankenstein Village is home, naturally enough, to the famed Frankenstein family who resided in the area for 700 years. Taking elements of the setting of Mary Shelley’s novel, Ingolstadt in Bavaria, it is referred to in House of Frankenstein as being located near the fictional town of Reigelberg in Switzerland (the country is also referred to in a 1930 shooting script for Frankenstein).

Notable places of interest in the village include a castle on the edge of the village, the ancestral dwelling of the Frankenstein family, latter inhabitants being the Baron and his son, Henry. Located behind the castle was an old watchtower where Henry Frankenstein drew notoriety for his attempts to grant life to cadavers. The building also had a crypt and a windmill is to be found nearby. Overseen by a burgomaster, the locals partake in many traditional trades and much of their economy appears to be based on the large forested area at the edge of their community.

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Generally assumed to be in Switzerland, Vasaria is nestled in the mountains of Eastern Europe, rather isolated from the outside world and approximately a three-day journey from the nearest hamlet – Frankenstein. Vasaria was also home to men of medicine – Dr. Gustav Neimann (played by Boris Karloff in the film House of Frankenstein), and the youngest son of Henry Frankenstein, Ludwig (Cedric Hardwicke in Ghost of Frankenstein). Vasaria also became the residence of Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr), better known in furry mode as The Wolfman.

For the narrative to make any sense at all, the events of the films should take place in roughly this order:

Frankenstein (Frankenstein Village)

Bride of Frankenstein (Frankenstein Village)

Dracula

Dracula’s Daughter

Son of Frankenstein (Frankenstein Village)

Ghost of Frankenstein (Vasaria)

The Wolf Man

Son of Dracula

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man

House of Frankenstein (Frankenstein Village)

House of Dracula (Visaria)

Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (ironically the one film which attempts to put all the monsters in a ‘believable’ real world where they could cross paths). Both towns have a surprisingly high quota of hunchbacks and hanged criminals.

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Stage 12 at Universal Studios was built in 1928, covers 29,500 square feet and was originally created for the 1929 film, Broadway. The sprawling nature of the set meant that in leant itself to epic productions where entire communities had to be housed – these included Dracula, Frankenstein ( both 1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Alas, a devastating fire in 1967 means that the current replica of a town available to visit is not the original.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

With thanks to Universal Monster Army website and Monster Kid Classic Horror Forum

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‘Can you face the ultimate in diabolism …..can you stand pure terror?’

Die, Monster, Die! (British title: Monster of Terror) is a 1965 sci-fi horror film directed by Daniel Haller (the art director for Roger Corman’s Poe films) from a screenplay by Jerry Sohl, loosely adapted from H.P. Lovecraft‘s story The Colour Out of Space. It stars Boris Karloff, Nick Adams (Godzilla vs. Monster Zero), Freda Jackson, Suzan Farmer, Terence De Marney and Patrick Magee (Dementia 13; Asylum; The Black Cat).

It was shot in February/March 1965 at Shepperton Studios and on location in Shere village and Oakley Court under the working title The House at the End of the World. Haller also directed The Dunwich Horror, a 1969 Lovecraft adaptation.

In the USA, American International Pictures released the film  on a double bill with Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires (1965). In the UK the film was released on a double-bill with Corman’s 1963 film The Haunted Palace (also based on a Lovecraft story).

Plot teaser:

An American college student (Nick Adams) pays a visit to the estate of his fiancée’s family. During his journey, he finds an area of countryside burned out and an enormous crater, as well as townspeople reluctant to the point of hostility to either drive to his destination or even talk about the family that lives there. The source of all these problems is later revealed to be a radioactive meteorite kept hidden in the basement by his girlfriend’s father (Boris Karloff), who has been using the radiation to mutate plant and animal life, with horrific consequences. Worse yet, family members may have been affected, too…

Reviews:

“The plodding plot would be more painful if the flick were longer, but the intriguing meld of gothic horror and contemporary sci-fi is hard to pass up.” G. Noel Gross, DVD Talk

“Despite the old school Gothic setting (large castle, fog-shrouded forests and graveyards), this seems strangely modern at times in terms of character actions, pacing and sound design. Haller and his crew make it all quite atmospheric, there are some interesting aural and light effects used at the finale, nice use of matte paintings throughout, some mildly icky make-up fx (such as a face melting down) and an interesting metallic-looking meteor monster that shows up at the very end.” The Bloody Pit of Horror

“Despite game performances from all involved, Die, Monster, Die! is ultimately undone by its generic and uninspired approach. The effects of the meteorite – kept squirreled away in the basement – are erratic and highly selective.” Aaron Christensen, HorrorHound magazine

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Cast:

• Boris Karloff as Nahum Witley
• Nick Adams as Stephen Reinhart
• Freda Jackson as Letitia Witley
• Suzan Farmer as Susan Witley
• Terence De Marney as Merwyn
• Patrick Magee as Dr. Henderson
• Paul Farrell as Jason
• Leslie Dwyer as Potter
• Sydney Bromley as Pierce

Wikipedia | IMDb | Image thanks: Wrong Side of the Art! | Psychotronic 16

Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks (originally: Terror! Il castello delle donne maledette – “Terror! The Castle of Cursed Women”) is a 1974 Italian horror film produced and directed by exploitation entrepreneur Dick Randall. It is very loosely based on the Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein.

The film is also known as Dr. Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks (American video title), Frankenstein’s Castle (British video title), Monsters of Frankenstein, Terror, Terror Castle, The House of Freaks and The Monsters of Dr. Frankenstein

In a non-specified time in an undisclosed European country, neanderthals roam the countryside, upsetting the local villagers. Seeing an opportunity to rid themselves of their tormentors, they corner one of the brutes (Goliath, Loren Ewing from Devil in the Flesh), evading the tree trunks and rocks he hurls, to bash him over the head and kill him. Leaving his corpse, this is soon collected by some shadowy individuals and taken to the castle laboratory of Count Frankenstein (Rossano Brazzi, slumming it somewhat post-The Barefoot Contessa and The Italian Job) so that he can continue to conduct his unholy experiments. The Count is most disappointed that the other (female) cadaver collected up has been tampered with by his necrophiliac dwarf assistant, Genz (Michael Dunn, The Mutations, The Werewolf of Washington)

The locals are becoming alarmed – they’re suspicious as to what is going on at the castle and also a tad unhappy that the graves of their loved ones are being robbed. Not for the first time in the film, they are told to go away and stop being silly by the hopelessly inept head of police, played by familiar trash movie face, Edmund Purdom (The Fifth Cord; Absurd; Pieces) in fairness it’s a very sparse mob with a touch of the Monty Pythons about it. Elsewhere, Genz has befriended the other marauding caveman, Ook (the brilliant character actor Salvatore Baccaro, aka Sal Boris but here under the worst pseudonym ever, Boris Lugosi) and… if you’ve made it this far, it probably doesn’t matter.

Some female nudity, comedy caveman grunting, some pervy dwarf action and some endless experiments with the world’s smallest lab set-up, the ending can’t come quickly enough – indeed, rather like the opening scene, when it does come it seems out of place.

Directed by Dick Randall (here as Robert H. Oliver), best known as a producer of low-budget schlock and horror (The Mad Butcher; Pieces; The Urge to Kill), the film was made in Italy and features many bit-art actors from genre of the time – or more correctly, slightly before the time, many of them clearly having fallen on bad times – also along for the ride are the likes of German stunner Christiane Rücker (Castle of the Walking Dead), buff strongman Gordon Mitchell (Satyricon, Frankenstein ’80), Xiro Papas (The Beast in Heat) and Luciano Pigozzi (Blood and Black Lace, Baron Blood, All the Colours of the Dark).

The real wonder of Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks is that it conspires against the odds so wilfully to become one of the most painful horror films to watch. As the script is at pains to clarify, the story is broadly speaking that of Frankenstein and so one might assume the hard work has been done… but no, endless, pointless twists, cut-aways, a breathtakingly slow operation (Frankenstein spends longer shaving Goliath’s head than Colin Clive did making two monsters come alive) and some mild hanky panky spiced up with the inclusion of a dwarf and a caveman who communicates through grunts, only serve to make this a harrowing mess.

Worse still, bad enough that the likes of Brazzi are disgracing themselves but that the film is so bad that even aforementioned Dunn and Baccaro (also seen in The Beast in Heat and briefly in Deep Red), usually arresting and air-punchingly fun in their performances are unable to save this is alarming. The squelchy, grimy score is by Marcello Gigante, better known, and suited, for his work on Italian Westerns. The settings are meagre and rather harbour the feeling that if the camera moved slightly to the left they’d get a decent shot of the car park; as it goes, the gothic flavour is one of the few nearly-ticks.

Picked up by Harry Novak‘s Boxoffice International Pictures and unleashed in cinemas during 1974, the film has not improved with age and is so ponderous it’s difficult to even reappraise it as kitsch. The film found its way onto the home market initially through the likes of Magnum Video and later seen alongside Randall’s far more accomplished production, The Mad Butcher, through masters of lo-fi Something Weird.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Leviathan is a 1989 science fiction horror film about a hideous creature that stalks and kills a group of people in a sealed environment, in a similar vein to such films as Alien (1979) and The Thing (1982). Leviathan was directed by George P. Cosmatos, and stars Peter Weller, Richard Crenna, Daniel Stern and Amanda Pays. The film’s story was written by David Peoples and Jeb Stuart. Stan Winston was the producer for the creature special effects.

On the dark and forbidding ocean floor, the crew of a deep-sea mining rig discovers a sunken freighter that harbors a deadly secret: a genetic experiment gone horribly wrong. With a storm raging on the surface and no hope of rescue, the captain  and his team are propelled into a spine-tingling battle for survival against the ultimate foe – a hideous monster that cannot die…and lives to kill!

Leviathan is one of many underwater-themed movies released around 1989, including The Abyss, DeepStar Six, The Evil Below, Lords of the Deep, and The Rift (Endless Descent). It ended up the second highest grossing of these films with $15.7 million at the US box office.

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 “It’s better than Deep Star Six, and it lacks the swollen running time of Spielberg’s sleepy-time lullaby for mainstream popcorn munchers. Plus, you get a little gore, some crazy mutations, and Peter Weller delivering one of my all-time favorite one-liners. It’s stupid, it’s pointless, but God bless him, Peter Weller knocks it out of the park like a champ. Cosmatos may suck at directing everything else, but he managed to make Leviathan a fun, light-hearted attempt at sci-fi horror.” The Film Fiend

“Now here is the dilemma I face: Is this film mediocre because of its implausibility and accompanying predictability, or is it a result of its blatant similarity to its superior counterparts? Fortunately, the film is entertaining enough to recommend, so you should discover for yourself.” The Parallax Review

“Something of a minor cult favourite amongst sci-fi-horror fans, Leviathan is a film which doesn’t have a shred of originality running through its body. But it’s a polished production with enough goo, gore and gratuitous hamming up by some of the cast to keep it entertaining, rarely dull and with an odd moment which promised a whole lot more.” Popcorn Pictures

Wikipedia | IMDb

WH

Poseidon Rex is a 2013 American sci-fi horror film directed by Mark L. Lester (Class of 1984; Firestarter). It stars Brian Krause, Anne McDaniels and Steven Helmkamp.

Plot teaser:

A small, secluded island off the coast of Belize suddenly finds itself terrorized by a deadly predator from the planet’s distant past when deep sea divers accidentally awaken an ancient evil…

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“The often inane screenplay, by frequent Lester collaborator Rafael Jordan (Dragons of Camelot, Pterodactyl), vaguely recognizable cast struggling to make the script seem intelligible and strictly functional cinematography betray the movie’s most earnest intentions, however. Lacking sufficient self-parody to entertain as a campy monster-movie spoof or the budget to thrill as action-adventure or sci-fi, much like the creature it depicts, Poseidon Rex represents a throwback that even its own distributor can’t really get behind.” Justin Lowe, The Hollywood Reporter

“I have seen numerous films in this current, decade-long wave of cheap monster movies – from Sharknado to Spring Break Shark Attack to Megalodon – andPoseidon Rex, by measuring against its peers, stands a mite taller. It’s not a hidden gem by any means, but it has a slickness and a professionalism that is certainly lacking from the relatively snarky Sharknado or the even-cheaper mockbusters produced by The Asylum. One can always tell if the makers of a B-movie are sincere about making an entertaining film, or if they’re just being cynical. The makers of Poseidon Rex clearly meant it.” Witney Seibold, Nerdist

“The action sequences are nonsensical and cheesy, as expected, but Poseidon Rex fails to get even remotely creative with its kills, which greatly damages the final product and the primary reason most people will watch the movie. Most would be willing to endure unbearable dialogue and a groan inducing love story for a few spectacularly silly dinosaur kills, but we are deprived of such.” Cliff Wheatley, IGN

IMDb

WH

Cry of the Werewolf, also known as Daughter of the Werewolf, is a 1944 film starring Nina Foch, based on a story by Griffin Jay and directed by Henry Levin. Following The Return of the Vampire, this was Columbia studio’s second broadside-attack on Universal’s stranglehold of the horror market.

Plummy-toned tour guide, Peter Althius (John Abbott, the voice of the wolf in Jungle Book) enthrals a captive audience with tales of the strange goings-on in the stately home of the deceased Marie LaTour, rumoured to have been a werewolf.

John Abbott as the guide

To cover all bases, voodoo and vampirism are thrown into the talk as well, though we are informed that being a werewolf is the worst of the lot, a fact proven by the evil quotient being so high that the being cannot help but transform into a bestial form to conduct its killings.

Dr Charles Morris (Fritz Lieber, previously glimpsed in Charles Laughton’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame) , the museum’s director, believes he has discovered the sinister secret about the lupine history of the house, prompting the museum’s janitor to warn LaTour’s daughter/gypsy princess, Celeste (the film’s biggest acting draw, Dutch-born Nina Foch, also seen in the aforementioned The Return of the Vampire and later in epics such as Spartacus and The Ten Commandments).

Celeste acts (at least in the movement sense) and burns the offending evidence and we are introduced to a secret series of rooms accessed by a secret panel in the mantlepiece. Morris is also found dead and his son Bob (Stephen Crane, barely acted again, if you count his appearance in this as acting – he went back to being Lana Turner’s husband – briefly) and future Transylvanian wife, Elsa (Danish-born Osa Massen, later seen in Rocketship X-M) try to piece together the evidence to solve the mystery of the house, past and present.

Also along to fight crime is hard-boiled Lt. Barry Lane (Barton MacLane, The Mummy’s Ghost, 1941’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) who starts as he means to go on, barking (or howling) up the wrong tree and ignoring the supernatural elements and pointing fingers at more obvious suspects. Amidst the perpetual long shadows, Celeste and Elsa face-off to hide/uncover the wolfy goings-on, whilst the men of the picture wander around haplessly spending more time preening and checking legal paperwork than stopping marauding monsters.

Is this the worst werewolf film ever made? Well, latter-day shot-on-video or CGI efforts would definitely take that crown but this is a genuine contender, made worse by the fact that Columbia were making a concerted effort to erase all Universal’s efforts in the process. Their previous horror outing, The Return of the Vampire had been well-received in many quarters but had the added attraction of Bela Lugosi and a thinly veiled (and copyright-dodging) storyline which expanded on 1931’s Dracula, in all but name. Cry of the Werewolf has none of this; Foch is alluring but unbelievable as either a werewolf or gypsy royalty; MacClane is fun but clearly hasn’t been told he’s in a horror film and turns the whole film into a plodding noir crime yarn – elsewhere, some of the acting is excruciating, Crane, it goes without saying but also Abbott who sounds like jumper-wearing comic-folk minstrel Jake Thackray.

In pre-production, film was intended to build on their previous success and be titled Bride of the Vampire, elements of this evidently remaining in the plot, but the success of 1942’s Cat People and the opportunity to exploit a more tragic angle proved too enticing and by the time of filming, vampires has taken more of a back seat. The frantic re-write by Griffin Jay who had, it must be said, more of an affinity with bandages (The Mummy’s Ghost, The Mummy’s Hand and The Mummy’s Tomb were all his) lacks any threat whatsoever, has far too many irrelevant characters and still wasn’t entirely sure where it was going – even at filming stage, it was due to be titled Daughter of the Werewolf. The film marks the debut of director Henry Levin who had a long career, fortunately avoiding further horror films – his most famous effort is probably Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Perhaps inevitably, given that World War Two was raging, the budget was meagre… and it shows. There is a distinct lack of music in the film, what there is being recycled stock cues. The ferocious werewolf is actually an alsatian, the remedy for the poor hound’s lack of terror being an elastic band wrapped around his muzzle so that it permanently exposes its teeth. Of course, this is also visible to the audience. Inevitably, even War-weary audiences failed to warm to the film and it was hastily repackaged as a double-bill with The Soul of a Monster, at least offering twice the value if not twice the quality.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Thanks to Horrorfind.com for some of the pics.

Choice dialogue:

“A woman likes to have a man a little afraid of her.”

Nina Foch and Osa Massen

Milton Parsons as Adamson, the exuberant funeral director

Osa Massen

Cast:

• Nina Foch as Marie Latour
• Stephen Crane as Robert Morris
• Osa Massen as Elsa Chauvet
• Blanche Yurka as Bianca
• Barton MacLane as Lt. Barry Lane
• Ivan Triesault as Jan Spavero
• John Abbott as Peter Althius
• Fred Graff as Pinkie
• John Tyrrell as Mac
• Robert Williams as Homer
• Fritz Leiber as Dr. Charles Morris
• Milton Parsons as Adamson, the funeral director

Wikipedia | IMDb

US one sheet

It! (aka It, Anger of the Golem and Curse of the Golem) is a 1966 (released 1967) British/American horror film made by Seven Arts Productions and Gold Star Productions, Ltd. that features the Golem of Prague as its main subject. It is directed by Herbert J. Leder (The Frozen Dead) and stars Roddy McDowall (Planet of the Apes; The Legend of Hell House; Embryo), Jill Haworth (Tower of Evil; The Mutations) and Paul Maxwell (How to Make a Monster; Aliens). It was Ian McCulloch‘s debut film – he later starred in Zombie Flesh Eaters and a slew of Italian horror films.

Plot teaser:

After one of their store houses burnt down, museum director Grove and his assistant Pimm (McDowall) find everything destroyed – only one statue withstood the fire mysteriously undamaged. Suddenly, Grove is discovered lying dead on the ground – killed by the statue? Pimm finds out that the cursed statue has been created by Rabbi Loew in the 16th century and will withstand every human attempt to destroy it. He decides to use it to his own advantage…

Director Herbert J. Leder apparently wanted the film to have the style of the Hammer horror films that were popular. He directed the camera work and audio effects to have the characteristics of a Hammer film. Although it was shot in colour, U.S. theatrical release prints were in black-and-white.

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Reviews:

“This colorful, whacked out version of the classic tale of the Golem is really fun and finely acted. Sure, it seems a little slow and outdated, but that just makes it all the more charming. It’s a classy little horror show with just enough eccentric and sexy touches in it to keep you interested.” Brutal as Hell

“McDowall is so over the top, the characters so odd and the plot so loopy that it’s actually fun to watch, if you’re the kind of person who enjoys a good bad movie.” DVD Verdict

“Some amusing touches to kiddie-orientated plot which progressively becomes more ridiculous to thoroughly ludicrous conclusion.” Castle of Frankenstein

“With echoes of dozens of other films, It stands on its own as a delightfully dark, tongue-in-cheek horror film that’s riddled with low budget nonsense, over-the-top hammy performances, and enough cheese to feed a third world country for decades.” Dread Central

Wikipedia | IMDb

WH

‘A terrifying creation of the nuclear age!’

Island Claws (aka Giant Claws) is a 1980 American horror film shot in Florida and directed by Herman Cardenas and starring Robert Lansing (4D Man; Empire of the Ants; The Nest), Steve Hanks, Barry Nelson (The Shining) and Nita Talbot. Special effects were by Glen Robinson (King Kong, 1976)

Plot teaser:

A biological experiment in Florida goes awry. The result: eight-foot long land crabs which roar loudly and kill everything in sight…

Island Claws is set to be released on Blu-ray from Scorpion Releasing

Reviews:

“The movie’s not scary or exciting or very good at all, but it has a seedy Floridian atmosphere that I kind of liked, and it did work hard at creating characters and a story, which I respect even if it didn’t work very well and ate up a lot of potential crabtime! And the movie’s theme music is a jaunty piece of lounge-jazz that you’ll really enjoy!” Ha Ha its Burl!

Clip from Island Claws:

“Like a lot of ‘50s B-movies, Island Claws is neither scary nor strongly scripted. The only reason worth watching is for the campiness of the film; otherwise, these crabs won’t really tickle your fancy.” Horror News

“Thrills are minimal until the monster crab attacks. The story (by Jack Cowden and underwater stuntman Ricou Browning) is predictable”. John Stanley, Creature Features

IMDb

WH

Bud Westmore (13 January 1918 – 24 June 1973) was a make-up artist in Hollywood and son of George Westmore, a member of the Westmore family prominent in Hollywood make-up. He is credited on over 450 movies and television shows, including The List of Adrian Messenger, Man of a Thousand Faces, The Andromeda Strain and Creature from the Black Lagoon. For his involvement in Creature from the Black Lagoon he assisted the designer of the Gill-man, Disney animator Millicent Patrick, though her role was deliberately downplayed and for half a century, Westmore would receive sole credit for the creature’s conception – not, alas, the only time the work of others was overlooked somewhat. Westmore was also famous for the make-up for TV show The Munsters.

The Westmore Hollywood dynasty was actually headed up by Bud’s father, George, who alongside work on many Douglas Fairbanks Snr films (1924’s The Thief of Baghdad and 1921’s The Three Musketeers, to name but two) could also claim the have been Winston Churchill’s barber. After taking his family across the Atlantic to America from England, he set up Hollywood’s first make-up department.

After George’s suicide (the appropriately theatrical swallowing of mercury), his sons carried on the dynasty; Monte was much associated with MGM until his early death of a heart attack following surgery; Perc became head of Make-up at Warner Bros; Wally himself became Make-up chief at Paramount; Ern worked at 20th Century Fox and low-budget film studio Eagle-Lion, but his career was hampered by an alcohol problem; Bud became head at Universal, and the youngest, Frank, was more freelance and later wrote a book on the family, The Westmores of Hollywood in 1976.

Bud Westmore was born Hamilton Adolph, but changed his first names to George Hamilton both in tribute to his father and after the rise of Hitler made Adolph an unpopular name in the US. After free-lancing in the 40s (including work at “Poverty Row” studio PRC on the classic noir Detour in 1945), Westmore joined Universal, replacing the Godfather of monster make-up, Jack Pierce, as head of the make-up department. Although Bud worked on every conceivable genre of film, it was for his work creating monsters and aliens for horror, science fiction and fantasy films that he is best remembered, beginning with mega-cheapies such as Strangler of the Swamp, The Flying Serpent and Devil Bat’s Daughter (all 1946) until he finally made something of a breakthrough in 1948 in the (slighter) higher budget, Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein – later to cover the comedy duo’s meetings with The Invisible Man, The Mummy, The Killer, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Keystone Cops.

Westmore worked at a furious pace and, truth be told, this can be seen in his somewhat basic style, lacking the intricate and ingenious work of the likes of Pierce and making easy to apply prosthetics and cheap and cheerful frights. Many have also questioned how much of the work Westmore is credited for can truly be attributed to him, never more so than with 1954’s Creature From the Black Lagoon. For many years, the creature’s design and creation was solely credited to Westmore, though we are now able to cite the original conceptual designs, drawings and paintings to Millicent Patrick and a good deal of the actual creation as being from the hands of Jack Kevan.

Westmore continued to work relentlessly (or appear to at least), throughout the 50’s and 60’s, amongst the atomic age beasties were particularly notable works on James Cagney for the Lon Chaney biopic, Man of a Thousand Faces, and the creation of the make-up for the long-running television series, The Munsters. Here he was able to fully lampoon not only the work of others but also himself, at last the perfect marriage. Sadly, a combination of industry back-biting and financial belt-tightening meant that by 1970, Universal had cast Westmore adrift and the insolvent make-up artist did his final work for MGM’s Soylent Green in 1973. His legacy may be over-shadowed by doubts over his hands-on input but there can be little doubt that the giant bud-headed creatures of the 1940’s and 1950’s would be a little less memorable without him, to the extent that the largest building in Universal’s back-lot is named after him.

Selected filmography:

The Strangler of the Swamp
The Flying Serpent
Devil Bat’s Daughter
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
The Strange Door
The Black Castle
Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
It Came From Outer Space
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Revenge of the Creature
The Mole People
Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy
Cult of the Cobra
This Island Earth
Tarantula
The Creature Walks Among Us
The Deadly Mantis
The Monolith Monsters
The Thing That Couldn’t Die
Monster on the Campus
Curse of the Undead
The Leech Woman
The Night Walker
The Munsters
Dark Intruder
Let’s Kill Uncle
Eye of the Cat
Night Gallery
The Andromeda Strain
Soylent Green

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Though it goes without saying that King Kong continues to hold the crown as the reigning monarch of the great apes in film, spare a thought to consider the long parade of committed actors who sweat, pestered picnickers  and sweat some more in the demanding field of gorilla impersonation. Before we begin, it is worth noting that it wasn’t until the 1860’s that Westerners were first able to lay their eyes on the real beast, being something of a curiosity even at the beginning of the 20th Century. Consider this an apology for some very dodgy early costumes.

The Gorilla is a 1927 American silent horror film directed by Alfred Santell based on the play of the same name by Ralph Spence. The film stars Charles Murray, Fred Kelsey, and Walter Pidgeon (in virtually his first screen role). The plot of the film revolves around a series of murders committed by a man in an ape suit. The film was remade with sound in 1930 and 1939. The creator of the suit was Carlos Cruz Gemora (June 15, 1903 – August 19, 1961), commonly known as Charles Gemora, a former Hollywood make-up artist renowned as “the King of the Gorilla Men” for his prolific appearances in many Hollywood films while wearing a gorilla suit.

Gemora was born on the island of Negros in the Philippines, and arrived in San Francisco as a stowaway. He quickly found work at the Brentwood fruit farm in Colusa, CA. and eventually moved to Los Angeles. He earned money doing portrait sketches outside of Universal Studios where his talents were discovered and put to work in the studio’s sculpture department for The Hunchback of Notre Dame. When creating a gorilla suit Gemora found his 5’4″/163 cm stature made him a natural to wear the suit himself beginning with The Leopard Lady in 1928.

Gemora’s study of real gorillas at the San Diego Zoo and his expertise on makeup gave him an extensive career as a gorilla opposite such luminaries as Our Gang (Bear Shooters), Lon Chaney (The Unholy Three), Bela Lugosi (Murders in the Rue Morgue), Laurel and Hardy, (The Chimp & Swiss Miss), The Marx Brothers (At the Circus), Bob Hope and Bing Crosby (Road to Zanzibar), The Great Gildersleeve (Gildersleeve’s Ghost), Abbott and Costello (Africa Screams) and Robert Mitchum (White Witch Doctor).

With men in gorilla suits no longer providing the same scares in the 1950s as they did in the 1930s and ’40s, Gemora moved his creature expertise into science fiction films such as the Martian in War of the Worlds and I Married a Monster from Outer Space. Gemora died of a heart attack in August 1961 while he was working on the make-up of the film Jack the Giant Killer.

The rise of the Tarzan movie led to shonky gorillas enjoying their heyday in the 1930’s. Two actors in particular were responsible for inflicting jungle mayhem upon cinema audiences around this time – Ray ‘Crash’ Corrigan and Steve Calvert.

Steve Calvert (born Steven Stevens in June 1916, died 5 March 1991 in Los Angeles) was a prolific gorilla suit performer in many Hollywood films and television shows from the late 1940s through the 1950s. He took the stage name Calvert from Calvert Whisky. Calvert appeared in Bride of the Gorilla, The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters, the serial Panther Girl of the Kongo, Ed Wood Jr’s The Bride and the Beast, in Road to Bali with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby and appeared in the second part of the title role of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla.

Subsequently, Calvert appeared again with Lugosi at the 1953 Hollywood premiere of House of Wax, at which Lugosi arrived in his Dracula costume, leading the furry-suited Calvert on a leash. Among his television work is at least one appearance with Buster Keaton which Calvert called “the best thing I ever did. He was a pure pantomime artist.”) and an episode of Adventures of Superman, “Jungle Devil.” In the tradition of other gorilla men playing space monsters, Calvert played a robot that was meant to be an entire army of robots in Target Earth as well as the robot in The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters in scenes which did not involve the ape. Circus clown Billy Small frequently came aboard when Calvert needed a second “ape,” such as in Bride and the Beast..

Dismayed by a lack of steady work and suffering a heart attack, Calvert retired from film work in 1960. That year, Target Earth producer Herman Cohen approached Calvert about playing the title role in Konga but as Calvert had sold his costumes to Western Costume, Cohen was forced to rent an alternate ape suit from stuntman/actor George Barrows, though Barrows himself did not appear in the suit in the film. The hallowed role was ultimately played by Paul Stockman, also seen in 1965’s The Skull and Dr Blood’s Coffin (1961).

Ray “Crash” Corrigan (February 14, 1902 – August 10, 1976), born Raymond Benard, was an American actor most famous for appearing in B-Western movies. He also performed stunts and frequently appeared in a gorilla costume at both the beginning and end of his film career; Corrigan owned his own ape costume. His career in Hollywood began as a physical fitness instructor and physical culture trainer to the stars. In the early 1930s he did stunts and bit parts in several films. Many of his early roles were in ape costumes – for example, as a Gorilla in Tarzan and His Mate (1934) and an “Orangopoid” in the original Flash Gordon serial. In 1936 he got his break with starring roles in two Republic serials, The Vigilantes Are Coming and in Undersea Kingdom from which Benard adopted his character’s name “Crash Corrigan” (that evoked memories of “Flash Gordon”) as his own.

Despite his best efforts, his on-screen work largely returned to appearing in ape costumes – for example, the title roles in Captive Wild Woman (1943), Nabonga (1944), White Pongo (1945) and as a prehistoric sloth in Unknown Island (1948). The original gorilla “mask” seen in films like The Ape (1940) was replaced with a subtler design with a more mobile jaw. In 1948 he sold his gorilla suits and provided training to Steve Calvert. Calvert stepped in Corrigan’s pawprints beginning with a Jungle Jim film. Despite reports to the contrary, Calvert and Corrigan never appeared together in ape costume. Since both Corrigan and Calvert eschewed screen credit as gorillas, credits are often confused. Any appearance of the “Corrigan suit” after 1948 is Calvert. Corrigan’s last film was playing the title role of It! The Terror from Beyond Space.

And so to George Barrows, if not the most famous then surely, historically, the most-unloved, the majority of his performances being uncredited. George D. Barrows (February 7, 1914 – October 17, 1994) was an American actor known for playing Ro-Man in the film Robot Monster. He was the son of actor Henry A. Barrows. Excluding his gorilla roles, Barrows usually played bit parts in films and was rarely credited for his work. Barrows built the gorilla suit he used in Robot Monster, Gorilla at Large, and other films. It is currently in the collection of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Easing himself to the world of apes, he appeared only as a henchman in the 1951 film, Mark of the Gorilla but by 1953 had donned his famous suit as part of an Abbott and Costello television show before the infamous semi-gorilla suit of Ro-Man.

Further roles included Gorilla At Large (1954), a spot on The Red Skelton Hour, Black Zoo (1963), The Addams Family, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966) and other TV show such as The Beverley Hillbillies, The Lucy Show and The Incredible Hulk in the 1978 episode, ‘The Beast Within’. As mentioned, his suit was used in the film, Konga in 1961 but it was a stuntman who was cast within. Sadly, little care was given to the suit and various holes and adjustments were made to allow the actor to fit in – the suit was never fully returned to its ‘spectacular’ original state.

Cinematic apes were nearing their natural lifespan. Special effects were moving on and it would be almost disrespectful to both parties to mention the Planet of the Apes cycle of films in the same breath. The ‘art of ape’ did live on in one man, however – Rick Baker. A student of make-up artists from eras past, it was entirely in Baker’s philosophy to eschew special effects and commit to reality-based illusions. From one of his first paying gigs in John Landis’ Schlock (1973) to going the whole hog with a two-headed ape in 1978’s The Thing With Two Heads, right through the 1980’s Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan of the Apes, Gorillas in the Mist) and as late as 1998’s Mighty Joe Young remake, men in suits have continued to give life to gorillas.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia.

With thanks to http://www.bloodsprayer.com

Dawn of the Dead (also known internationally as Zombies and Zombi) is a 1978 American horror film written and directed by George A. Romero. It was the second film made in Romero’s Living Dead series but contains no characters or settings from Night of the Living Dead, and shows in a larger scale the zombie plague’s apocalyptic effects on society. In the film, a plague of unknown origin has caused the reanimation of the dead, who prey on human flesh, which subsequently causes mass hysteria. The cast features David Emge (Basket Case 2, Hellmaster), Ken Foree (Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3, The Devil’s Rejects), Scott Reiniger (Knightriders) and Gaylen Ross (Creepshow) as survivors of the outbreak who barricade themselves inside a suburban shopping mall.

The chaotic WGON television newsroom is attempting to make sense of the evidently wide-spread phenomenon of the dead returning to life to eat the living. Their main efforts are being channelled into simply staying on air to act as a public information system for those still alive to find places to shelter. Outside tensions have erupted at a tenement building where the residents are refusing to hand over the dead bodies of their loved ones to the authorities for them to dispose of, resulting in a SWAT team assembling to resolve the issue by force. As both sides suffer casualties at their own hands and those of the reanimated corpses, four by-standers gravitate towards each other and plot to escape this madness; SWAT soldiers Roger (Reiniger) and Peter (Foree) and a couple who work at the station, Francine (Ross) and Stephen (Emge) – it is agreed that they will take the company’s helicopter and seek sanctuary.

With the helicopter liberated, they stop off for fuel, narrowly avoiding the attention of both zombie adults and children – on a human angle, it is clear the soldiers come from very different worlds to Fran and Stephen. Still short of fuel, they set off again and happen upon a shopping mall – though surrounded by the living dead, the opportunity presented by an abundance of food and provisions, as well as a place to the secrete themselves is irresistible. Devising a system of clearing the zombies already in the mall, during which Roger is bitten but survives, and creating their own living quarters behind a false wall, they learn (Stephen included) that Fran is four months pregnant. Roger and Peter are keen to look for other survivors but under the circumstances, the others feel that staying put and essentially quitting whilst they’re ahead would be the safest option.

The images they witness on their looted television give little hope but before a decision can be agreed upon, they realise that the mall has also attracted the attention of an army of local bikers, not looking for anything except target practise and goods. Their defences breached, the foursome face a seemingly impossible situation where both human and zombie foes have designs on their hides. Can they reclaim the mall or get to the helicopter before they find themselves wandering the mall for eternity?

Although in gestation for some years before making it to the screen, the follow-up to Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead appeared a full ten years later. The slow-burn effect of this film, plus George’s notoriously poor grasp of finances led to producer Richard Rubinstein looking further afield for investment to get the project off the ground. Salvation came in the form of the genius Italian film director, Dario Argento (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage; Deep Red; Suspiria) who had long admired Night and could see the value in producing a sequel of some kind.

And so began an arrangement whereby the funds were made available to make the film in exchange for international distribution rights and Argento’s option to make an entirely different cut of the film for a Continental audience. Romero ensconced himself in a small apartment in Rome where he quickly wrote the screenplay, allowing for filming to begin in Pennsylvania in November 1977. Key to Romero’s vision for the film was the iconic mall setting, already firmly imprinted in his mind due to the owners of the Monroeville Mall, east of Pittsburgh, in existence since 1969 and one of the first really large out of town shopping districts. His connections were enough for the owners, Oxford Development, to allow out-of-hours filming. Romero had been given a private tour of the facility and was privy to sealed off areas which had been stocked with civil defence equipment in case of a National emergency – a fact fully exploited in the film.

Casting for the film was the responsibility of John Amplas (star of Romero’s Martin and later Day of the Dead) who also has a small role of a Mexican, shot by the SWAT team in the early exchange of fire. The cast was made up of largely local actors who had featured in theatre rather than film roles – indeed few of them went on to have significant film careers but still trod the boards at provincial theatres. Friends and acquaintances were coerced into appearing, amongst their number, George’s wife and assistant director, Christine Forrest (also appearing in several other of his films in an acting capacity, including Martin and Monkey Shines) George himself (seated alongside her in the TV studio sequence), Pasquale Buba (later to edit the likes of Day of the Dead and Stepfather 2), special effects guru Tom Savini and Joe Pilato (Day of the Dead‘s Rhodes). Such economy and camaraderie was to pay off spectacularly. Even minor characters are given hinted-at histories which are endlessly intriguing – an eye-patched Dr Millard Rausch (Richard France) opines thoughtfully on television: “These creatures cannot be considered human… they must be destroyed on sight! … Why don’t we drop bombs on all the big cities?”

Filming at the mall could hardly have commenced at a more inconvenient time, the freezing cold temperatures and busy festive season meaning that shooting times were extremely tight (between 10pm and 8am), resulting in several occasions when members of the public were forces to consider why their shopping trip looked more like an ghoul-invested abattoir. Exterior shots were even harder to come by, only half a day a week was allotted to get the shots of the swarms of zombies roaming the car park, without pesky customers getting in shot. Scenes such as mall breakers revelling in the local bank’s bundles of bank notes necessitated a great deal of care to ensure light-fingered crew members didn’t make off with the ‘props’. The most familiar location in the mall, JC Penney’s department store, has since closed, though the mall remains, in a surprisingly familiar state (see below). Other locations employed, such as the abandoned airfield, the gun store and the quartet’s hideout, were shot locally too, the latter being constructed in Romero’s production offices, Laurel.

Make-up and special effects were the responsibility of Tom Savini and team, also including Gary Zeller and Don Berry, who later both worked on such films as Scanners and Visiting Hours. Having already developed his talents on Deranged and Martin, Savini was far from an enthusiastic amateur, though it was this film and the free reign Romero gave him, that helped establish his name as the go-to for gore effects for many years to come. Signature effects on Dawn include the flat-headed zombie being semi-decapitated by helicopter blades (a ludicrously dangerous effect involving an admittedly obviously fake head-piece) and the exploding head in the tenement sequence (so redolent of a similar effect in Scanners) by shooting a fake heads packed with condoms filled with fake blood and scraps of food. One bone of contention with many is the unrealistic blue/grey make-up the zombies sport, a mile away from the decaying cadavers of, say, Lucio Fulci’s Zombie Flesh Eaters. Romero has ‘validated’ this by claiming it was always his aim to have a comic-book feel to the film, though this smacks slightly of convenience. What is true is that the never-redder blood is a real eye-opener and lends itself to large-screen viewing. What the zombies lack in biological realism, they certainly gain in back story (all walks of life are considered from bride, to Buddhist monk to nurse) and gait – the now familiar stagger now being the blueprint for the correct way for all animated corpses to adopt.

Buy Dawn of the Dead 4-disc DiviMax Special Edition from Amazon.com

DISC 1: The original unrated director’s cut. NOT THE EXTENDED EDITION, which is not truly Romero’s director’s cut. This disc includes commentary with George Romero, Tom Savini, and Chris Romero along with Theatrical trailers and radio spots.

DISC 2: The extended edition, often mistaken for a ‘director’s cut.’ This disc includes an additional 12 minutes of glorious footage. Also includes commentary by producer Richard Rubinstein. The disc has a commercial for the Monroeville Mall and a memorabilia gallery.

DISC 3: The Dario Argento cut. This version of the film has less humor and more drama, released in Europe with additional music from Goblin. This version includes commentary by all four stars of the film.

DISC 4: This disc contains several documentaries including the all new ‘The Dead Walk’ (75 min) and the classic ‘Document of the Dead'; a feature-length documentary shot during the making of Dawn of the Dead. This disc also includes home movies from the set and a tour of the Monroeville Mall with actor Ken Foree.

To complement the garish visuals, Romero favoured library music, a technique he used to good effect in Night of the Living Dead. The De Wolfe library, still in regular use, was employed for this task and a variety of styles from the waltzy muzak of the shopping centre to atmospheric electronic drones to a song by The Pretty Things, “I’m a Man”, a song co-written by one Peter Reno, better known as Mancunian zero-budget film legend, Cliff Twemlow and his working partner, Peter Taylor. The most famous piece, unavailable until relatively recently, is The Gonk, by Harry Chappell (who had his own library business), written in 1965.This trumpet/xylophone led polka-like march is deliciously out of place and yet completely in keeping with the absurdity of the situation. Argento’s vision of the film as a fast-paced action movie with geysers of blood throughout required a different approach and he used the Italian-based band Goblin (incorrectly credited as “The Goblins”) extensively. Goblin was a four-piece Italian/Brazilian band that did mostly contract work for film soundtracks. Argento, who received a credit for original music alongside Goblin, collaborated with the group to get songs for his cut of the film.

A completely different ending was originally planned and, rather like its predecessor, had a resolutely unhappy ending with Peter shooting himself and Fran either purposely or accidentally stepping into the helicopter blades, only for the blades to stop spinning at the conclusion to the end credits, an indicator that they were doomed anyway. These are both hinted at in the filmed version though all signs point to them being ultimately only existing on the page.

Dawn of the Dead has received a number of re-cuts and re-edits, due mostly to Argento’s rights to edit the film for international foreign language release. Romero controlled the final cut of the film for English-language territories. In addition, the film was edited further by censors or distributors in certain countries. Romero, acting as the editor for his film, completed a hasty 139-minute version of the film (now known as the Extended, or Director’s, Cut) for premier at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival. This was later pared down to 126 minutes for the U.S. theatrical release. In an era before the NC-17 rating was available from the Motion Picture Association of America, the US theatrical cut of the film earned the taboo rating of X from the association because of its graphic violence. Rejecting this rating, Romero and the producers chose to release the film un-rated so as to help the film’s commercial success. United Film Distribution Company eventually agreed to release it domestically in the United States. It eventually premiered in the US in New York City on April 20, 1979, fortunately beating Alien by a month. The film was refused classification in Australia twice: in its theatrical release in 1978 and once again in 1979. The cuts presented to the Australian Classification Board were Argento’s cut and Romero’s cut, respectively. Dawn of the Dead was finally passed in the country cut with an R18+ rating in February 1980. It was banned in Queensland until at least 1986.

Dawn Of The Dead was submitted to the BBFC in Britain for classification in June 1979 and was viewed by six examiners including the then Director of the BBFC, James Ferman.

BBFC examiners unanimously disliked the film, though acknowledged that the film did have its merits in terms of the film-making art. The main bone of contention were the zombies themselves – were they shells without feelings or dead people with families? One examiner felt so strongly that the film glorified violence that he excluded himself from any further screenings or discussions surrounding the work.

It was agreed that cuts to the film were necessary, Ferman as self-appointed editor extraordinaire, stating that the film featured violence perpetrated against people which was “to a degree never before passed by the Board” and subsequently issued a cuts list that amounted to approximately 55 separate cuts (two minutes 17 seconds). These included images of zombie dismemberment, the machine gunning of a child zombie, a machete cutting open a zombie’s head (one of the most famous scenes!) and the shot of a zombie’s head exploding.

The following month a cut version of the film was re-submitted for re-examination and this time another team of examiners viewed the film. All of the examiners still disliked the film and some were convinced that cutting was not the solution to alleviating the possible desensitising effect that the film might have on vulnerable audiences. Despite this view, the suggestion of further extensive cuts was made and the film was once again seen by James Ferman, who subsequently issued a further one minute 29 seconds of cuts to more scenes of gory detail. At this point the distributor (Target International Pictures) was worried that the film would not be ready in time to be screened at the London Film Festival, so James Ferman suggested that the BBFC’s in-house editor create a version that would be acceptable within the guidelines of the X certificate.

In September 1979 Ferman wrote to the distributor exclaiming that “a tour de force of virtuoso editing has transformed this potential reject from a disgusting and desensitising wallow in the ghoulish details of violence and horror to a strong, but more conventional action piece…The cutting is not only skilful, but creative, and I think it has actually improved a number of the sequences by making the audience notice the emotions of the characters and the horror of the situation instead of being deadened by blood and gore”.

When the work was first submitted for classification for video in 1989 it arrived in its post-BBFC censored version, now clocking in at 120 minutes 20 seconds. However, under the Video Recordings Act 1984 (VRA) , the film was to be subjected to another 12 seconds of cuts to scenes of zombie dismemberment and cannibalism. In 1997 Dawn Of The Dead was picked up by a new distributor (BMG) who took the decision to submit the film in its original uncensored state, with a running time of 139 minutes.

This time the BBFC only insisted on six seconds of cuts. However, it was in 2003 that the film was finally passed at 18 uncut by the BBFC, with the examiners feeling that under the 2000 BBFC Guidelines it was impossible to justify cutting the work.

Internationally, Argento controlled the Euro cut for non-English speaking countries. The version he created clocked in at 119 minutes. It included changes such as more music from Goblin than the two cuts completed by Romero, removal of some expository scenes, and a faster cutting pace. Released in Italy in September 1978, it actually debuted nearly nine months before the US theatrical cut. In Italy it was released under the full title Zombi: L’alba dei Morti Viventi, followed in March 1979 by France as Zombie: Le Crépuscule des Morts Vivants, in Spain as Zombi: El Regreso de los Muertos Vivientes, in the Netherlands as Zombie: In De Greep van de Zombies, by Germany’s Constantin Film as Zombie, and in Denmark as Zombie: Rædslernes Morgen.

Despite the various alternate versions of the film available, Dawn of the Dead was successful internationally. Its success in the then-West Germany earned it the Golden Screen Award, given to films that have at least 3 million admissions within 18 months of release.

Recently, Romero has claimed that to be successful artistically, all horror films must be either political or satirical. Such a ludicrous statement may explain the director’s poor run of recent films but here it is rarely more apposite. The consumer-angle to the zombies mindless wandering is difficult to argue, though has now been stated so many times it’s in danger of overtaking the fact that the film is a magnificent piece of work; multi-layered in both character and plot (whatever became of the soldiers taking their boat down the river?) and influential to a generation of film-makers, as a horror film there are few better, a view echoed many, even the notoriously fickle Roger Ebert who gave it a great many thumbs up. The film has also spawned a range of spoofs, copycat films, a 2004 remake by Zack Snyder, toys, games and merchandise. In 1985, Romero temporarily concluded his zombie fascination with Day of the Dead.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

With thanks to the BBFC for details about the film’s UK release and Nick Richmond for his recent snaps of Monroeville Mall.

Buy Dawn of the Dead on Arrow Video Blu-ray from Amazon.co.uk

Offline Reading:

101 Horror Movies You Must See Before You Die – Edited by Steven Jay Schneider, Cassell Illustrated, 2009

Monroeville Mall – then and now:

Nick takes the easier route.

Zombie-fleer or lift vandal, you decide.

King Kong is a 1933 American fantasy monster/adventure film directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. The screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose was from an idea conceived by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. It stars Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot and Robert Armstrong.

The film tells of a gigantic, prehistoric, island-dwelling ape called Kong who, after being captured by exploitative film-makers who see the gigantic beast as an excellent money-maker, pursues the blond human female who caught his eye on the island across New York City. Kong is distinguished for its stop-motion animation by Willis O’Brien and its musical score by Max Steiner. The film has been released to video, DVD, and Blu-ray Disc and has been computer colourized. King Kong is often cited as one of the most iconic movies in the history of cinema. In 1991, it was deemed “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It has been remade twice: in 1976 and in 2005.

Setting sail from New York harbour is the good ship Venture, chartered by documentary film-maker Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong, Son of Kong and one of many who also appeared in The Most Dangerous Game) who has taken the homeless, pretty blonde, Ann Darrow (Fay Wray, The Vampire Bat, The Most Dangerous Game) under his wing, with the aim of making her a huge star, failing to mention that no-one else was stupid enough to accompany him on such a dangerous trip. We are introduced to Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot), the first mate who takes an instant fancy to Darrow and the ship’s captain, Englehorn (Frank Reicher, House of Frankenstein, Dr Cyclops), who guiding the ship in the vicinity of Indonesia, is finally told of the un-chartered island they are actually looking for.

As they breach the fog-bank to the sound of tribal drums, the see a native village backed by a huge stone wall which separates it from the rest of the forested  island – Denham finds this an apt time to tell them of the monstrous entity which is reputed to reside on the isle. Greeted by the native chief (Noble Johnson, The Most Dangerous Game, 1932’s The Mummy) they see a local woman chained to the rock, apparently waiting to be sacrificed by the rumoured beast and decline his generous offer of trading Darrow for six of his own clan. The refusal doesn’t go down well and lo, Darrow is captured in the dead of night by the tribe and is shackled to the wall like her poor, unfortunate predecessor. The crew of the ship attempt a rescue but not before the mysterious behemoth enters stage left, a gigantic ape who snatches her and disappears into the jungle.

The New Yorkers give chase and find that the island seems to have remained in a forgotten age and is populated with similarly enormous and ferocious creatures – they first encounter an enraged Stegosaurus, (which they kill); a lethal Apatosaurus (which capsizes their raft, killing several of the crew and causing them to lose their weapons); and, eventually, Kong himself, who prevents the men from following him across a ravine by shaking them off a fallen log bridge. Only Driscoll and Denham are left alive.

When a Tyrannosaurus attempts to eat Ann, Kong departs the ravine to fight the carnivore, killing it by breaking its jaw and neck with his bare hands. Driscoll continues to pursue Kong and Ann while Denham returns to the village for more men and weapons. The giant ape takes Ann to his cave at the summit of Skull Mountain, where she is newly menaced by a snake-like Elasmosaurus, drawing Kong into another battle to the death to save Ann. Driscoll sneaks into the cave as Kong takes Ann to a crag and begins inspecting her. He then hears noises made by Driscoll inside the cave and goes to investigate. While Kong is away, Ann tries to escape but is attacked by a Pteranodon. Again, Kong is alerted, and he snatches the Pteranodon out of the air, freeing Ann from its clutches. After winning this latest battle, Kong inspects the dead Pteranodon while Driscoll and Ann use this distraction to escape by climbing down a vine dangling from the cliff’s edge. Kong discovers the escape and starts pulling the vine back up. Ann and Driscoll let go, falling into a river and making it back to the village, but not without an angry Kong on their trail. The ape breaks through the large gate in the wall, and storms the village, killing many natives. Denham hurls a gas bomb at Kong, knocking him out, whereupon he exults in the opportunity presented: “We’re millionaires, boys! I’ll share it with all of you! Why, in a few months, his name will be up in lights on Broadway! Kong! The Eighth Wonder of the World!”

Amidst blinding camera-flashes and much hoopla, the day of Kong’s unveiling to an unsuspecting New York public approaches. Guests of honour are Darrow and Driscoll, who arrive just in time for the curtain to rise. The blinding flashes of the assembled army of photographers’ cameras startles the manacled ape, who frees himself from his bonds and goes on a rampage, sending the masses fleeing for their lives. Evidently blessed with incredible eyesight, Kong makes a beeline for Ann, even when in the apparent safety of his lofty skyscraper apartment. Breaking and entering as skilfully as a gigantic ape can, Ann is ferried ever-upwards by the ape until they find themselves with no further to go atop the Empire State Building. Denham and Driscoll inform their friendly neighbourhood biplane squadron and the race to the top floor to try to rescue Ann. Planes. Ape. Empire State Building. There are few more iconic scenes in film.

Early cinema was an opportunity to take audiences to places they would never dream of being able to travel to in reality – to take this yet further and bring wonder to their lives, the temptation to embellish these fantastic journeys was irresistible.  As early as 1918, only six years after the publication of the book, Tarzan films were hugely successful, their combination of exotic backdrops, hero and villain and never-seen-before wildlife were a huge hit with audiences. Also prior to Kong, films such as 1913’s Beasts in the Jungle and 1925’s The Lost World explored distant worlds and combined both real and fake locations with similarly vrai and faux creatures.

Kong’s birth is forever entwined with that of The Most Dangerous Game, an equally startling and pivotal film. Cooper and Schoedsack (Mighty Joe Young, 1933’s The Monkey’s Paw) were already friends and business partners when they made the film with Robert Armstrong and Fay Wray as the stars and an impressive jungle set constructed. To follow, a film called Creation was planned, with the plot concerning castaways finding themselves on an island populated by dinosaurs. The expense of bothersome Komodo dragons on a foreign location and an already dubious studio (RKO, who stepped in when Paramount declined) focussed Cooper on the TMDG set and the talents of stop-motion wizard, Willis O’Brien. Still with several concerns, not least the fact that the country had entered The Great Depression, RKO gave the green-light.

Employed on screenplay duties was the popular British mystery writer, Edgar Wallace, though his initial draft was met with resolutely stony faces. Before a full re-write could be attempted, Wallace died, incurring the rather unreasonable wrath of Cooper who insisted he hadn’t written a word – the film’s producers were more merciful and gave him a joint credit. Taking up the baton was TMDG’s James A. Creelman who, though managing to have more elements remain in the eventual end product was too dispatched in favour of another, this time, Ruth Rose (coincidentally Mrs. Ernest Schoedsack) who trimmed the lengthy plot. Having grown from The Beast, to The Eight Wonder, the bones of Kong were forged.

Marcel Delgado, who had already worked on The Lost World, constructed Kong (or the “Giant Terror Gorilla” as he was then known) as per designs and directions from Cooper and O’Brien on a one-inch-equals-one-foot scale to simulate a gorilla 18 feet tall. Four models were built: two jointed 18-inch aluminium, foam rubber, latex, and rabbit fur models (to be rotated during filming), one jointed 24-inch model of the same materials for the New York scenes, and a small model of lead and fur for the tumbling-down-the-Empire-State-Building scene. Kong’s torso was streamlined to eliminate the comical appearance of the real world gorilla’s prominent belly and buttocks. His lips, eyebrows, and nose were fashioned of rubber, his eyes of glass, and his facial expressions controlled by thin, bendable wires threaded through holes drilled in his aluminium skull. During filming, Kong’s rubber skin dried out quickly under studio lights, making it necessary to replace it often and completely rebuild his facial features.

A huge bust of Kong’s head, neck, and upper chest was made of wood, cloth, rubber, and bearskin by Delgado, E. B. Gibson, and Fred Reefe. Inside the structure, metal levers, hinges, and an air compressor were operated by three men to control the mouth and facial expressions. Its fangs were 10 inches in length and its eyeballs 12 inches in diameter. The bust was moved from set to set on a flatcar. Its scale matched none of the models and, if fully realized, Kong would have stood thirty to forty feet tall. The iconic building he scales had only been completed two years prior to the film’s release.

Two versions of Kong’s right hand and arm were constructed of steel, sponge rubber, rubber, and bearskin. The first hand was non-articulated, mounted on a crane, and operated by grips for the scene in which Kong grabs at Driscoll in the cave. The other hand and arm had articulated fingers, was mounted on a lever to elevate it, and was used in the several scenes in which Kong grasps Ann. A non-articulated leg was created of materials similar to the hands, mounted on a crane, and used to stomp on Kong’s victims. The dinosaurs were made by Delgado in the same fashion as Kong and based on Charles R. Knight’s murals in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. All the armatures were manufactured in the RKO machine shop. Materials used were cotton, foam rubber, latex sheeting, and liquid latex. Football bladders were placed inside some models to simulate breathing. A scale of one-inch-equals-one-foot was employed and models ranged from 18 inches to 3 feet in length. Several of the models were originally built for Creation and sometimes two or three models were built of individual species. Prolonged exposure to studio lights wreaked havoc with the latex skin so John Cerasoli carved wooden duplicates of each model to be used as stand-ins for test shoots and line-ups. He carved wooden models of Ann, Driscoll and other human characters. Models of the Venture, subway cars, and war planes were built.

The film cut from 125 to a still relatively weighty 100 minutes, with scenes that slowed the pace or diverted attention from Kong deleted. The most infamous deleted scene was what later became known as the “Spider Pit Sequence”, where a number of sailors from the Venture survived a fall into a ravine, only to be eaten alive by various large spiders, insects and other creatures. In a studio memo, Merian C. Cooper said that he cut the scene out himself because it “stopped the story”. Others report that a test screening had people screaming and fleeing the theatre so shocking were the images. Aside from some still photographs and pre-production artwork, no trace of it has ever been found.

Other creatures not appearing in the finished film but appearing in footage from deleted scenes, include Styracosaurus, Arsinoitherium, a giant crab, a giant tentacled insect, Erythrosuchus, Gigantophis garstini and Triceratops.

With half a million dollars already spent on a film about a giant gorilla, the studio was in panic mode, executives cutting costs wherever possible, too late to abandon a project that had disaster written all over it, and not in a good way. The initial plan was to allow the studio’s musical director, the Vienna-born Max Steiner, a budget sufficient to give a ten-piece orchestra 3 hours in the studio to re-assemble pieces already written for existing films. The director, Merian C. Cooper, intent on an all-or-nothing blow-out, gave Steiner $50,000 of his own money to go away and compose a full, original score.

Utilising a 45-piece orchestra, Steiner produced just over 77 minutes-worth of music, for a film lasting 100. Upon release, King Kong broke American box-office records, RKO’s and cinema’s confidence in the film to strong that the ticket price in Hollywood shot up from 10 cents to 75 cents, taking just under $90,000 dollars in its first 4 days, nearly tripling RKO’s investment upon the first release, the first time the company had made a profit. The film had its official world premier on March 23, 1933 at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. The ‘big head bust’ was placed in the theatre’s forecourt and a seventeen-act show preceded the film with The Dance of the Sacred Ape performed by a troupe of African American dancers the highpoint. Kong cast and crew attended and Wray thought her on-screen screams distracting and excessive.

The film certainly saved RKO but also cheered the country during The Great Depression, as well as sporting what can be recognised as the first full-length, original score for a major motion picture. It would be churlish to say the score was the reason for the film’s success but there can be no doubt that it was an important contributory factor.

The score itself is, well, very ‘1930’s’. It’s booming, portentous and is studded with what are known musically as ‘leitmotifs’; a ‘leitmotif’ being the process of assigning a musical theme or sound to a specific character or setting. One might, therefore, suspect that for Fay Wray, there are lush, romantic melodies, for Kong, dramatic, aggressive horns and percussion, for scenes on the island, jungle drums and tribal-sounding gongs – you’d be correct. It is easy to view the score now as being far too literal, the tribal accompaniment really does sound twee to the point of ridicule, especially when the Tribal Chief’s footsteps are, well, ‘aped’ by plodding instrumentation, though it still succeeds in inspiring an early empathy for Kong with the audience.

Elsewhere, lengthy experimentation was needed to create Kong’s trademark roar. The eventual sound, a combination of lion and tiger roars combined, then slowed down and reversed, displays a level of attention not previously seen in any genre of film sound departments. With such a large amount of money being committed to the film, the threat of a film about an animated gorilla terrorising New York could so easily have descended first into farce, then quickly to comedy and financial ruin for Universal; making the monster credible and believable was crucial.

It is interesting that the pivotal moment in the film, with Fay Wray and Kong atop the Empire State Building, takes place in musical silence. Whereas Kong’s world is full of musical tonality from the foggy approach to Kong Island to his capture, the absolute antithesis, at the top of Man’s Modern-Age art-deco masterpiece, takes place only with the drone of swarms of bi-planes and the crackle of machine gun fire. The reintroduction of music at the film’s finale thus becomes even more arresting and a rather subconscious nod to the audience as to the who really displays brutality in the film (before the more obvious legend of ‘it was Beauty killed the Beast’ appears).

What seems obvious to us now, should not be brushed off so easily. Although opera tradition set down these markers many years before, indeed Steiner’s approach could certainly be described as ‘Wagnerian’, there was no precedent for employing this over the course of a whole movie. There was no evidence that Cooper’s confidence in Steiner would pay any dividends (literally), nor that the studio, even though not paying for it, should back him. For Steiner, there was nothing but a blank canvas to work from. Maybe this was a blessing. The only nod to something familiar-sounding is the “King Kong March”, the beginning of which is almost identical to what would become 20th Century Fox’s fanfare. There is no evidence of court action being taken over this – it’s never too late, guys. Max Steiner created something entirely new to film, something that was immediately seized upon and can be said, without any fear of exaggeration, to have changed the way we watch films and how they were made forever. Cooper, who never directed a film again, and Steiner are amongst the most important visionaries cinema has produced. A sequel, Son of Kong, was released just nine months later.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

‘Man is the warmest place to hide’

The Thing (also known as John Carpenter’s The Thing) is a 1982 American science fiction horror film directed by John Carpenter (Halloween, The Fog), written by Bill Lancaster, and starring Kurt Russell (They Live, Escape From New York). The film’s title refers to its primary antagonist: a parasitic extraterrestrial life-form that assimilates other organisms and in turn imitates them. The Thing infiltrates an Antarctic research station, taking the appearance of the researchers that it absorbs, and paranoia develops within the group.

The film is based on John W. Campbell, Jr.’s 1938 novella Who Goes There?, which was more loosely adapted by Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby as the 1951 film The Thing from Another World. Carpenter considers The Thing to be the first part of his Apocalypse Trilogy, followed by Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness. Although the films are narratively unrelated, each features a potentially apocalyptic scenario; should “The Thing” ever reach civilisation, it would be only a matter of time before it consumes humanity.

In the Antarctic, a Norwegian helicopter pursues a seemingly normal dog to an American research station, a marksman aboard taking pot-shots along the way. Upon landing the helicopter, a Norwegian accidentally drops a grenade, destroying the helicopter and killing the pilot. A surviving Norwegian pursues the dog, firing a rifle, until he is killed by Garry (Donald Moffat, Monster in the Closet), the station commander. The Americans send a helicopter pilot, MacReady (Russell), and doctor Copper (Richard Dysart, Prophecy) to the Norwegian camp for answers but they find a charred ruin. Outside, they discover the burned remains of a humanoid corpse with two faces, which they bring back with them. Biologist Blair (Wilfred Brimley, The China Syndrome) performs an autopsy on the corpse, finding a normal set of human internal organs.

The attention-seeking dog is placed safely in kennels, where upon it immediately proves unsafe, opting to change into a grotesque monstrosity, a flame-thrower being employed by mechanic, Childs (Keith David, They Live) to prevent it harming both the other animals and the humans at the base. Putting their collective foot on the ball, they perform an autopsy of the mutilated mess of dog, as well as investigating the Norwegians’ journals. The findings are not promising, Blair discovering that the life-form imitates its host perfectly, evidently the inhabitant of a space craft found buried in the ice for millennia, now on the prowl. Blair’s hypothesis is that with such an advantage over Man, it could take over the world, by stealth in next to no time. As such, he shows true fighting spirit and points the finger at everyone else, already suspicious that another of his colleagues could be playing host.

Blair’s fears are confirmed when meteorologist, Bennings (Peter Maloney, The Amityville Horror, Manhunter) goes both gooey and sprouty and is given the torch treatment by radio operator, Windows (Thomas G. Waites, The Warriors) before he can transform completely. Blair meanwhile, has gone loopy, killing the remaining dogs and destroying their only transport and is locked up in a shed. With everyone now deemed under suspicion, all the team are subjected to a blood test which is hoped will determine friend from foe – in a tense scene, MacReady is presumed guilty before trial and threatens to dynamite the base to pieces unless everyone comes to their senses. This doesn’t go strictly to plan, with a ghoulish harliquinade of legs, teeth and tentacles giving more than a quick hint as to some of the ‘men’s’ identities.

The remaining men consider their options and first turn their attentions to the AWOL Blair who appears to be as inhuman as the suspected, not only escaping but evidently part-way through building a space craft to escape in. The station’s power generator is found destroyed and in a somewhat circular plot device, they realise they have been left to freeze to death, their eventual rescuers doomed to suffer the same fate as the rest of their men. Ultimately only two survive – but who are they really and what will become of them?

In 1982, Carpenter’s star could scarcely have shone brighter, Halloween, The Fog and Escape From New York cementing him firmly as America’s most consistent and exciting new director. The Thing would be his first under the umbrella of a major studio, Universal. With a source novella and film version, of which Carpenter was extremely fond, the screenplay was entrusted to the relatively un-tested Bill Lancaster, son of screen legend, Burt. Lancaster junior was unfamiliar with either of the two earlier sources, a poisoned chalice or huge advantage, depending on your viewpoint. His vision was to concentrate on the men themselves, their paranoia and lack of trust being at least the equal of the other menace at the base. With the action of the film beginning part-way through a crucial incident integral to the plot, we are immediately put on edge and are as in the dark as the rest of the camp, discovering the background to the Norwegian incident at the same time as them. Ultimately, even by the film’s end, we are left to make our own conclusions, the film being most concerned with the aftermath and nature of fear itself, rather than the mechanics of the reasons for the events happening. Incredibly, despite the film being particularly talky and an unusually large cast (considering the small filming area) all with necessarily individual quirks and motives, the script remained essentially untouched throughout shooting, save for the odd name change and budgetary reining in of some planned effects work.

The film was shot near the small town of Stewart in northern British Columbia and the research station built by the crew during summer, with the movie shot in sub-freezing winter conditions. The only female presence in the narrative is the voice of a chess computer, voiced by Carpenter regular (and then-wife) Adrienne Barbeau, as well as the female contestants viewed on a videotaped episode of Let’s Make a Deal. The all-male cast has provoked a certain amount of criticism over the years, ranging from Carpenter exhibiting macho chest-beating, to a very basic anti-female bent. The lack of female characters was certainly intentional and adds an unusual texture to the film – the decisions made are often knee-jerk and regrettably far-reaching, the lack of a clear alternative view point ramping up the odds and the tension. MacReady is regularly discredited and both science and fight or flight are all met with similarly disastrous results. It is also entirely reasonable for a late-70’s/early 80’s Government-funded scientific project would be all-male in any case.

The Thing took three months to shoot on six artificially frozen sound stages in Los Angeles, with many of the crew and actors working in cold conditions. The final weeks of shooting took place in northern British Columbia, near the border with Alaska, where snow was guaranteed to fall. John Carpenter filmed the Norwegian camp scenes at the end of production. The Norwegian camp was simply the remains of the American outpost after it was destroyed by an explosion. The factor of the weather and also an expected strike at Universal gave Carpenter the luxury of the opportunity to view footage as it was shot, crucial in ultimately ironing out issues which could have blighted the film.

The special effects, some of the most innovative and effective in any horror film, were the work of Rob Bottin and his crew, with the exception of the dog creature, which was created by Stan Winston (Gargoyles; The Bat People; Pumpkinhead). Winston was brought in when Bottin’s team found themselves overloaded with work on the other creatures seen in the film. Bottin had already worked on Carpenter’s The Fog, as well as the likes of Piranha and The Howling.  During one scene, where a character’s head stretches, Bottin decided to melt plastic to aid the effect. Little did he know that the melted plastic released explosive paint thinner so when the director decided to put flame under the camera lens the entire prosthetic exploded. Ironically, upon release, the effects, though hailed as visionary, were deemed by some to detract from the ‘unseen menace’ and muddle the psychology with schlock. Perhaps time has been kind but it’s difficult to support this view. When re-watching the film, what is remarkable is what remains un-filmed, some deaths remaining a complete mystery as to the culprit and a large part of the assumptions of the characters remaining just that.

The films ending has caused much discussion also, the ‘is he, isn’t he?’ aimed at MacReady’s character never being resolved (on-screen that is – Carpenter has since revealed his own verdict – one you will have to seek elsewhere rather than on this uber-spoiler free piece!) The nihilistic ending was originally due to have a cheerier counterpart, ready in the wings should test screenings or bawlking from Universal dictating that moderation should prevail. Carpenter ultimately didn’t give either the option but sadly, this wasn’t the factor which hobbled the films initial release.

Buy The Thing Collector’s Edition on DVD from Amazon.com

In a hugely unfortunate coincidence, the film appeared just two weeks after the air-punching glee of another alien film, E.T., and on the same day as the artier leanings of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (actually another misfire at the time). The Thing opened #8 and remained in the top 10 at the box office for three weeks. The film was released in the United States on June 25, 1982 in 840 cinemas and was issued an “R” rating by the Motion Picture Association of America (limiting attendees to 17 and older without a guardian). The film cost $15,000,000 to produce. Film critic Roger Ebert called the film “disappointing”, though said he found it scary and that it was “a great barf-bag movie.” However, he criticized what he felt were poor characterisations and illogical plot elements, ultimately giving the film 2½ stars out of 4.

After its cinema run, the film was released on VHS and laserdisc, and a re-edited version was created for television by TBS and Universal Studios. The edited version was heavily cut to reduce gore, violence, and profanity; additionally it featured a narrator during the opening sequence (in the same manner as the original 1951 film), a voiceover during Blair’s computer-assisted study, and an alternate ending. In the alternate ending (aside from Carpenter’s aborted plan), the “Thing”, which has once again mimicked one of the sled dogs, looks back at the burning camp at dawn before continuing on into the Antarctic wilderness. Subsequent releases of the film have garnered it a huge following, the film regularly featuring in top five lists of ‘scariest films ever made’.

Given a Universal-sized budget capable of achieving it, Carpenter fulfilled another ambition by hiring the services of Italian maestro Ennio Morricone to provide the musical score. Whilst Carpenter’s initial involvements in soundtrack creation were sparked by financial necessity, there was now the opportunity to employ a dedicated composer. Morricone had done very little in the horror field, aside from the films he created with Dario Argento (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Cat o’ Nine Tails, Four Flies on Grey Velvet) , so he wasn’t an obvious choice in that sense. The notion of having such single-minded auteurs working together was fraught with dangers, most of which, sadly, they failed to avoid.

The attraction to Carpenter to Morricone was his ability to marry together differing styles and instruments to characterise both actors and environment, key to a film where the Antarctic backdrop is as domineering as any person. As such, Morricone’s brief was to create a score which was both ‘cold’ and reflective of the in-escapability of their plight.

The initial problems were obvious, Morricone being proud to this day that he hasn’t felt compelled to learn English, Carpenter not speaking Italian. Through telephone interpreters and cuts of the film being shuttled across the Atlantic, a blueprint was drawn up, the composer tasked with using an absolute minimum of notes and key changes; the audience was to know from the very beginning that in the very real sense of the word, that the character’s were in a hopeless situation with the doom escalating as the story progressed.

Morricone perhaps had selective hearing or maybe there was a problem with the translation. Having recorded in Rome, the tapes were sent to Carpenter in America. Carpenter immediately had a problem with it. It was entirely orchestral. It was as perfectly bleak and ominous as Carpenter could ever have wished for but his vision was for a synthetic score to replicate the un-Earthly alien changing at will. How this was conveyed to Morricone is unclear but he was gracious enough, having been given both Halloween and Escape from New York to listen to, to re-score using synths.

A steely pulse dominates the sound of the score, neither driving it forward nor allowing it to stagnate, it is simply always there. The two repeated tones of the main theme suggest the rises and falling of an ever-present entity, never obviously breaking out but looming throughout. Morricone himself explained:

“Nothing happens. It seems to suggest that something is going to happen; however, nothing happens. You could describe it as a flat encephalogram;; it’s starting to move, something happens – no, nothing happens; but still it moves. That’s the characteristic. It’s like a big question mark”.

For Carpenter it still wasn’t what he had envisioned. Eventually, only a small number of the many cues Morricone had created were used in the film, Carpenter utilising ‘re-imaginings’ of his primary theme ‘Humanity Part 2’ to suggest an omnipresent threat throughout. This is used particularly powerfully in the final scene as the two survivors find themselves in isolated despair, the audience unclear as to whether they have ‘won‘ or they too are victims of the alien invasion.

Never craving the plaudits of Hollywood, Morricone couldn’t really have cared less  what Carpenter thought. At the same time as scoring The Thing, he was also creating the soundtrack to Sam Fuller’s terrifically mental racist dog flick, White Dog and Ferdinando Baldi’s much forgotten 3D Indiana Jones rip-off, Treasure of the Four Crowns. Here indeed is the case in point. Morricone did not compose, as a rule, to fit specific timings; he composed according to instructions given from the director, the script and his own impressions made from viewing the film without music. Neither did he score for films based on the fact he felt they were Oscar-worthy or delivered an important social message to the audience – he composed simply because that’s what he did.

With Morricone distracted in Italy, Carpenter approached Alan Howarth to fill in the gaps he felt were still there, largely electronic cues seen as necessary to punctuate specific events and his now trademark ‘drones’ which were used to add bulk to Morricone’s incredibly subtle and delicate suites. The combined efforts of all three composers are what eventually what the audience experiences.

The fascination is that what we now have are three versions of one score written for ‘The Thing’ – Morricone’s original, largely orchestral version, the amalgamation of this with Carpenter’s electronic soundscapes added and, 30 years on, Alan Howarth’s own interpretation of Morricone’s vision, played entirely on synths. Which is best? You can only ever argue the one that was eventually used – the electronics do indeed add a malevolent edge, describing something nearly human but clearly of unknown origin. Morricone’s original work is beautiful and is exactly what he was asked to produce but borders on being too subtle. Either way, Carpenter has spent the years since hailing Morricone’s work whereas the Italian has expressed extreme dismay, certainly at the time, as to how his material was manipulated. Recent attempts have seen both distancing themselves from their earlier standpoints but a huge question mark over the score remains.

The Sci Fi Channel planned to do a four-hour mini-series sequel to the film in 2003. Carpenter stated that he believed the project should proceed, but the Sci Fi Channel later removed all mention of the project from their homepage. In February 2009, a positive review of the abandoned screenplay for the Sci-Fi miniseries was published on Corona’s Coming Attractions.

In 2004, John Carpenter said in an Empire magazine interview that he has a story idea for The Thing II, which centres around the two surviving characters, MacReady and Childs. However, Carpenter felt that due to the higher price associated with his fee, Universal Studios will not pursue his storyline. Carpenter indicated that he would be able to secure both Kurt Russell and Keith David for the sequel. In his story, Carpenter would explain the age difference of the actors between the two installments by having frostbite on their face due to the elements until rescued. The assumption of the sequel would rely on a radio signal being successfully transmitted by Windows before Blair destroyed the communications room. Thus, after the explosion of the base camp, the rescue team would arrive and find MacReady and Childs still alive. Carpenter has not disclosed any other details. Ultimately, a largely disappointing remake took the place of this, 2011’s The Thing.

In 2007, the Halloween Horror Nights event at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, the film property was designed as a haunted attraction called The Thing – Assimilation. Guests walked through Outpost 3113, a military facility where the remains of Outpost 31 were brought for scientific research. Scenes and props from the film were recreated for the attraction, including the bodies of MacReady and Childs. In 2009, the event’s icon house, Silver Screams, contained a room based on the film.

Universal Studios also featured Haunted Attractions based on “The Thing”‘s 2011 prequel at both the Florida and Hollywood editions of Halloween Horror Nights in 2011.

A novelisation of the film based on the second draft of the screenplay was published in 1982 by Alan Dean Foster. Although the novel is generally true to the film, there are minor differences: the Windows character is named Sanders, and an episode in which MacReady, Bennings and Childs chase after several infected dogs which escape into the Antarctic wastes was added. The disappearance of Nauls is also explained in the novel; pursued by Blair-Thing into a dead end, he kills himself rather than allow it to assimilate him.

In 2002, The Thing was released as a survival horror third-person shooter for PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox, acting as a sequel to the film. The video game differs from the comics in that Childs is dead of exposure, and the audiotapes are present (they were removed from Outpost 31 at the start of The Thing from Another World: Questionable Research). At the completion of the game, R.J. MacReady is found alive and helping the main character complete the last mission. The game used elements of paranoia and mistrust intrinsic to the film. Some retailers, such as GameStop, offered a free copy of the 1998 DVD release as an incentive for reserving the game. In 2011, a region of the Entropia Universe was created based on the theme of The Thing.

The story follows on where the film left off: Childs is found dead and frozen where he was last seen at the end of the film, but at the end of the game it is revealed that R.J. MacReady survived as he evacuates the game’s main character in a helicopter.

In September 2000, as part of the third series of its “Movie Maniacs” line of toys, McFarlane Toys released two figures based on the film. One was the Blair Monster seen near the ending of the film, and the other is the Norris Creature seen during the defibrillator scene. The latter included a smaller figurine of the disembodied head with spider legs also seen in the film. Sota Toys also released a bust of the spider head, as well as a box set of the kennel scene showing the Thing imitating the dogs.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Wikipedia | IMDb

Beaster Day: Here Comes Peter Cottonhell is a 2014 American comedy horror film written and directed by Zack and Spencer Snygg. It stars Peter Sullivan, Marisol Custodio, John Fedele, Jon Arthur, Bill Joachim, Darian Caine, AJ Khan, Kerri Taylor, Jackie Stevens, Autumn Bodell, and Violetta Storms.

Part of the financing came from a successful Kickstarter funding campaign.

Plot teaser:

Deep in the woods stalks a giant killer mutant Easter Bunny. Unsatisfied with nibbling on grass, he craves, chews lives on human flesh. Rock climbers, hitchhikers, and nudists alike all end up in his jaws as he devours everyone in his way. One by one the townsfolk are consumed by the evil hare, but he still remains a mystery to most of the habitants.

Knowing that a flesh eating giant rabbit might affect tourism a bit and the upcoming Easter Day corporate sponsored parade, the corrupt mayor quietly covers up the deaths hoping to rake in as much cash as he can for the Easter Day celebrations. The mayor tells the townsfolk that there is nothing to fear from the horrific decapitations and intestine removals. The deaths are all accidental demises due to hazardous farm tool equipment…

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The Catman of Paris is a 1946 American horror/mystery film, directed by westerns specialist Lesley Selander (Fury, The Vampire’s Ghost) and starring Carl Esmond, Lenore Aubert (Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein), Douglass Dumbrille and Gerald Mohr (The Angry Red Planet).

It’s 1895 and the upper echelons of Parisian society are gathered to welcome returning hero, Charles Regnier (Esmond) to their midst, after the runaway success of his latest book. Sadly for Regnier, this turns out to not quite be the case, The Men In Suits being more than a little concerned that his writing appears to be informed by top-secret government documents. To make matters worse, the very same evening, an official who is connected to the documents is brutally murdered, suspicion immediately being focussed on the author.

The finest police minds of the French capital are scrambled (Inspector Severen, Mohr and the Prefect of Police, Fritz Feld, The Golem), the results being a beautifully-crafted diorama of the local streets and the somewhat wild shot in the dark that the savagely-scratched victim pointed to the culprit being a metamorphosed human, there being a history of “man turning into wolves and vultures”. Yes, vultures. Regnier, we learn, has suffered from bouts of amnesia since he returned from a jaunt in the Tropics, and he is concerned when it is pointed out by Severen when interviewed the following morning, that he is still wearing his clothes from the previous evening. He is not arrested but the police have him nailed as their prime suspect. Alas, the next victim is his fiancée, Marguerite (the stunning Adele Mara, Curse of the Faceless Man), the killer has his identity hidden from us, though is heralded by a bizarre transformation scene showing large waves and a bobbing buoy followed by a yowling feline.

Regnier is now convinced of his guilt but is offered words of comfort by his friend, Henry Borchard (Dumbrille) and the daughter of his publisher, Marie (Aubert), who warns him that he must flee to safety before the police inevitably come for him. After a thrilling horse-drawn carriage chase, Regnier bemoans his fate, whilst the audience is treated to a fanciful explanation for the monster, the celestial heavens conspiring to periodically curse a man with murderous feline tendencies, the last time in 1845, this time, the ninth, doomed to be the last of the ‘cat’s’ lives. By the time the police do arrive, Marie’s life is in real danger and as the mist descends in the mansion’s grounds, the mysterious creature threatens to claim yet another victim.

It’s interesting to see how horror films managed to be made whilst the Second World War raged, and in its immediate aftermath, The Catman of Paris offers no moral posturing or knowing nods, only an hours worth of rather aged thrills. An unusual influence is the undervalued Werewolf of London, Henry Hull’s doomed travails in Tibet essentially echoing the protagonist of this film, though why ‘the tropics’ should be evocative of waves and sea furniture is a little bemusing. Other more superficial influences include Val Lewton’s Cat People, the dark streets and top hat and cape of Jack the Ripper and even the lost Lon Chaney film, London After Midnight, the latter allegedly offering almost as brief a glimpse at the monster as this film. The make-up by Bob Mark (Valley of the Zombies) is excellent, though, being a whodunnit, it is sadly necessary to keep the identity of the Catman a mystery until, literally, the last five minutes.

At only 65 minutes, there is still an impressive amount of action crammed in here, of particular note the carriage chase, which threatens to break out into 19th Century French Connection insanity. There is a fundamental problem, that of the almost perverse insistence at convincing us, the audience, that cats are in any way frightening – rats or bats maybe but the friendly moggy that keeps popping up to remind us what we’re watching does nothing to support this ludicrous notion. The hypothesising is terrifically silly, culminating in an Allo, Allo-accented cry of, “Wi zer faytures of ay kit!”. The largely internationally-flavoured cast of B-movie nearlies have their hearts in the right place, even if they’ve mislaid their scripts. A product of Republic Pictures, known for their Poverty Row, ‘schlock and flaw’ conveyor belt of trash, the surprise ending, at least, is certainly worth sticking around for.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

” … even a mouse should be able to watch without too much great alarm. For the ‘cat’ in this case is permitted such infrequent appearance on the screen and is such a decrepit looking monster that it is more to be pitied than feared.” The New York Times, 1946

IMDb

The Descent is a 2005 British horror film written and directed by Neil Marshall. The film follows six women who, having entered an unmapped cave system, become trapped and are hunted by blood-thirsty human hybrids lurking within.

A year after the tragic death of her husband and young daughter on the drive back from an adventure holiday, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) and her adventurous girlfriends, Juno (Natalie Mendoza), Beth (Alex Reid, Arachnid) , Sam (MyAnna Buring, Kill List) and Rebecca (Saskia Mulder) are reunited at a cabin in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, USA (admirably portrayed by the wilds of Scotland and Buckinghamshire). Holly (Nora-Jane Noone), Juno’s new friend, is introduced. Whilst Sarah begins to imagine the time she had with her family just 12 months prior, she is whisked along to a potholing jamboree in a cave-system kept as a surprise by Juno. Alas, no sooner have they begun to explore, than the passageway collapses behind them, shutting them in what, Juno now admits, is a completely unmapped labyrinth of tunnels and caverns. Despite the group’s previous disastrous holiday, no-one thought to inform anyone where they were going.

As the unhappy group progress through the gloom, they find evidence of previous explorers and, more pertinently, cave drawings describing a second exit from the cave, towards which, they hopefully advance. No sooner have they set off than Holly falls and suffers a pleasingly graphic compound fracture of her leg; Sarah applies a splint, though you imagine the entire group is relived it happened to the most annoying of their number. Whilst collecting their thoughts, Sarah fleetingly spies a figure in the murk, the others essentially patting her on the head, assuming she’s still suffering mental trauma. Exasperated and frightened, Sarah is proved right as the girls find that indeed they are not alone and something humanoid is hunting them down, like lions in the savannah, attacking the weakest (Holly) and ripping out her throat. In the melee of pickaxes and claws, Juno accidentally plunges her rock climbing equipment into Beth, a fact she is not too happy about but does little to resolve.

Briefly the group are separated but Juno locates Sam and Rebecca, dispatching another of the ever-increasing number of troglodytes before further casualties are inflicted. She convinces the duo to continue on with her towards the exit, despite Sarah being missing. Fearing for their lives and owing something of a debt of gratitude, they relent. Sarah meanwhile is still alive, slightly more-so than Beth who is more blood than flesh but still manages to inform her friend that not only had Juno done her a mischief but had also been having an affair with Sarah’s dead husband, which she proves by producing a pendant she snatched from the increasingly unpopular ‘friend’. Now in a clouded rage, she mercy-kills Beth and slays a family of the pale creatures en-route to find the others.

Most of the ladies have by now realised the creatures are blind, a result of their evolution underground, though have excellent hearing. This knowledge is ultimately redundant, as the creatures mastery of their domain means that escape is almost impossible, First to demonstrate this are Rebecca and Sam, leaving only Juno and Sarah to fend off their attackers and seek salvation. They’ve come so far but is Sarah in the mood for forgiveness, and even if she is, is there any chance to escape?

After the huge critical and commercial success of Neil Marshall’s debut effort, 2002’s Dog Soldiers, everybody waited expectantly to give him a polite ripple of applause for his follow-up but not to push his luck. Much eating of head-wear followed when it was clear that Marshall had at least equalled his efforts and had pushed himself and his team yet further, filming a low-budget horror film with a small cast in a near to pitch-black environment. In fact, no caves were harmed during the making of this movie, the immersive and believable sets being made at Pinewood.

The Descent has, aside from the creatures and a brief appearance by Sarah’s husband, an all female cast, an intentional device but one which is somewhat nailed-on and for the most part, glaring. The film doesn’t suffer as such, the group still has an alpha female, a brash annoyance and a baddie but it’s an unnecessary ‘first’ and not the only example of the film-maker perhaps trying a little too hard, when their storytelling skill and understanding of what it means to be frightened were already sound.The actresses all do a sterling job both emotionally and physically, their rock-climbing exertions regularly being wince-inducing for the audience. Helpfully, they are given different accents, a huge help in distinguishing who’s who in the necessarily dark filming environment.

It’s frustrating to watch a film which feasts on such raw human fears – the dark, being lost, claustrophobia, loneliness, things going bump in the dark  – knowing that if every horror film director tapped into such universal emotions, we’d be left with far less chaff. The dark is dealt with bravely and skilfully, the only light being of provided sources, torches, helmets, watch displays and the like. The creatures, known retrospectively as crawlers, are well-devised in many respects, pale and pathetic on one level, possessed of cunning and finely-honed senses on the other. There are niggling gaps – their excellent hearing makes up for lack of sight but whispering is apparently fine (take heed of the zombies of the Blind Dead series, able to hear even the beating of your heart!) and one might think that a sense of touch would also be similarly keen but their ability to sense the heat of flaming torches and indeed the trapped party’s body-heat is lacking. Curmudgeonly sorts may point to their similarity to Gollum of Tolkein fame. Though an effective score is provided by David Julyan (The Cabin in the Woods), the traditional musical stingers designed to make the audience jump, are instead easily facilitated by the rasping crawlers appearing out of nowhere.

As is many a film’s wont, despite the presence of the crawlers, the human participants pose at least the equal amount of physical and psychological danger. The film just about stays the sensible side of the 2000’s version of the 80’s trapping of ‘it was all a dream’, fortunate – although it was felt a statement had to be made beyond the basic plight of the cavers, it would be refreshing to have a horror film that didn’t fall back on ulterior factors, as if to suggest just being a horror film wasn’t enough. The crawlers themselves, humanoid enough to clarify that they have evolved from Earth not from Mars, are the work of Paul Hyett (The Facility, Eden Lake) and his team, the prosthetics being anatomically sensible but still repulsive, their appearance being hidden from the actresses until filming started, ramping up the tension yet further. The film spawned one, ill-advised, sequel, whilst Marshall has yet to recaptured his early vigour and invention on the big screen.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Humanoids from the Deep (alternatively known as Monster: Humanoids from the Deep) is a 1980 science fiction monster movie, starring Doug McClure (At the Earth’s Core), Ann Turkel, and Vic Morrow (The Evictors). Roger Corman served as the film’s (uncredited) executive producer, and it was distributed by his New World Pictures. It was directed by Barbara Peeters (aka Barbara Peters) with additional scenes of nudity and gore added. The musical score was composed by James Horner (Wolfen; Deadly Blessing; The Forgotten and many Hollywood blockbusters)

The movie was originally offered to Joe Dante  (Piranha, The Howling) but he turned the project down. Barbara Peeters took the job instead, and shooting commenced in October 1979. Peeter’s version of the film was deemed to be lacking the required exploitation elements needed to satisfy the movie’s intended audience. Second unit director James Sbardellati, who would eventually direct Deathstalker was brought in to spice up the movie, and it was he who was reportedly responsible for filming the sex, nudity and gore scenes.

After Peeters and Ann Turkel saw the additional sequences they asked for their names to be taken off the movie but this was refused. Several people who went on to bigger and better things worked on the film, including composer James Horner, make-up artist Rob Bottin (who designed the humanoid costumes), editor Mark Goldblatt, and future producer Gale Anne Hurd (Aliens, The Walking Dead TV series) who worked as a production assistant. The actress who portrays the Salmon Queen (Linda Shayne) later became a film director.

In 1996, a remake of Humanoids from the Deep was produced for Showtime cable TV by Corman’s production company, Concorde-New Horizons, starring Robert Carradine and Emma Samms. Although it included some special effects footage from the original version, the sex and gore aspects — the very elements that had distinguished the first film — were toned down for TV and it was not a success among fans or critics.

‘Humanoids from the Deep is a fast-paced and energetic camp classic that should please horror and sleaze fans with its graphic gore, abundant female nudity, and sardonic humor. The creepy humanoid costumes were designed by makeup legend Rob Bottin (The Howling, Legend). They look pretty slimy and cool, especially for such a low-budget film, and in fact the production crew only had three of them! Through the use of some clever camerawork and tight editing, there seems to be many more of the ghoulish creatures prowling around and creating bloody mischief.’ GoArticles.com

Buy Mind Warp! Roger Corman’s New World Pictures book from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Buy Humanoids from the Deep on Blu-ray Disc from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

New high-definition transfer of the Uncut international version presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1)

Never-before-seen deleted scenes

Trailer, TV and radio spots

Leonard Maltin’s interviews with Roger Corman on the making of the film

“The Making of Humanoids from the Deep,” featuring new interviews with composer James Horner, second unit/assistant director James Sbardellati, editor Mark Goldblatt and more!

“Whatever Peeters’ vision might have been, it’s inarguable that the grotesque and silly “assaulted by sea creatures” moments make this movie, elevating it from talky pseudo-scifi yawner to something akin to exploitation classic. Certainly, the less said about the storyline, the better, and while there are some nicely suspenseful moments, the payoffs that don’t involve non-naked girls are lacking. Besides—and how anyone associated with the film wouldn’t understand this going in is beyond me—without the boobs and grue, it just wouldn’t be a Corman film.” Tom Becker, DVD Verdict

“Humanoids from the Deep has everything that I like about horror movies. There is a decent story, cute girls get naked, gory monster attacks abound (especially during the chaotic finale), and the cast consists of a number of name actors spouting off cheesy lines.” The Video Graveyard

“Finally, lets not forget the effects by the soon-to-be-legendary Rob Bottin. While they may just be creatures in rubber suits, they’re impressive looking rubber suits for a low budget flick. The attacks that take place also have some decent makeup effects. Thankfully Shout! Factory has released the uncut version of Humanoids, titled Monster as it was originally released in International markets. I know one additional scene includes a decapitation. Good stuff, indeed.” Horror Digital

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Posted by Will Holland

Thanks to Movie Blog Spot for kind use of the images with caption Moviequiz.blogspot.com

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Paul Naschy (born Jacinto Molina Álvarez, September 6, 1934 – November 30, 2009) was a Spanish movie actor, screenwriter, and director working primarily in horror films. His portrayals of numerous classic horror figures—the Wolfman, Frankenstein’s Monster, Count Dracula, the Hunchback, and the Mummy – have earned him recognition as the Spanish Lon Chaney.

His signature role was that of the werewolf, Waldemar Daninsky, whom he played a staggering twelve times. He had one of the most recognizable faces in Spanish horror film, though his long filmography reveals Naschy also starred in dozens of action films, historical dramas, crime movies, TV shows and documentaries.. In addition to acting, Naschy also wrote the screenplays for most of his films and directed a number of them as well. King Juan Carlos I presented Naschy with Spain’s Gold Medal Award for Fine Arts in 2001 in honour of his work, the Spanish equivalent of being knighted.

Jacinto Molina Álvarez was born on September 6th 1934 to an artistic family – his father, Enrique, was a renowned fur and leather craftsman, his grandfather, Emilio, a celebrated sculptor of religious iconography. His family members’ success in their respective fields allowed Jacinto a relatively comfortable upbringing. The tranquillity of his childhood in Madrid was dramatically punctuated by the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, an event, along with the rise of the dictator General Franco, staining his view of the world and inevitably influencing his later career. Despite his young age, Molina’s mind was etched with images of spiralling aircraft, a disembodied soldier staggering for a few brief seconds before collapsing in a twitching heap, rows of executed traitors, as well as the tales from his father who served on the frontline.

As the Civil War gave way to the Second World War, further horrors revealed themselves, not least the German school Molina attended, bedecked with Nazi paraphernalia and a mourning assembly when news of Hitler’s death filtered through. At home, comics occupied his mind with more fantastical thoughts, though his uncle’s gory tales of sights he’d witnessed at local bull fights continued to draw Molina back to the death and the brutality of both life and death.

Cinema soon became a big attraction, initially the weekly serials which demanded you return to learn the resolution of the cliffhanger – particular favourites were The Drums of Fu Manchu and Mysterious Dr Satan. The real revelation was a screening of a reissued Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, Lon Chaney Jr’s portrayal of the doomed Larry Talbot changing Molina’s life forever. When asked by his mother what he wanted to be when he grew up, Jacinto replied, “a werewolf”. After briefly befriending the ‘spree killer’, José María Jarabo Pérez Morris, a man with such a muscular neck his eventual execution by garrotting took over twenty minutes, Molina’s first obsession away from cinema was weightlifting, another passion which stayed with him throughout his life.

By his twenties, Molina concentrated on both weightlifting and acting, the first presenting him with almost immediate success, decorating him with an array of titles and accolades, the latter proving significantly more difficult to break into. Molina had an uncredited bit part in the classic 1961 Biblical epic King of Kings and a few other films of that period, and the experience drew him further into film-making.

While appearing as an extra in an episode of the American TV show I Spy that was being filmed in Spain in 1966, Naschy met horror icon Boris Karloff on the set, a thrill he never forgot. Karloff, in poor health, having difficulty walking and suffering with cold, broke down in tears one day, the frustration and pain just too much. The sight of his hero displaying emotion in this way, despite his history of terrorising and killing on the Big Screen was also to have a profound effect on Molina’s future acting career.

Tired of waiting for success to find him, in 1968 Molina penned the screenplay to what would eventually become the film The Mark of the Wolfman (La Marca del Hombre Lobo) a film following the Polish Count, Waldemar Daninsky, who, afflicted with lycanthropy, battles both other werewolves and vampires in a bells and whistles fest of the gory and the Gothic. The screenplay was picked up by German producers who, when finding their first choice for the role of Daninsky, Lon Chaney Jr, was far too ill with throat cancer to take the part at the age of 62, offered it to Molina. Though not his intention, Molina gratefully accepted but was required by the financiers of the film to adopt a more Teutonic-sounding name. Thus Paul Naschy was born, ‘Paul’ after the then Pope, Paul VI, ‘Naschy’ after the Hungarian weightlifter, Imre Nagy. A Spanish name would simply have been too uncommercial for worldwide distribution – at the time, Spain was churning out endless dismal ‘comedies’ and little else, apart from providing many of the settings for Italian-made Westerns.

The success of the film was enough to allow Naschy the comfort of continuing to develop his own projects – regrettably, a swift return outing for Daninsky in Las Noches del Homo Lobo, is now considered a lost film, though it was only two years later when his most famous creation was to reappear, in both 1970’s Dracula Versus Frankenstein (Los Monstruos dos Terror) and 1971’s The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman (La Noche de Walpurgis). Over the course of the twelve films Naschy made featuring Waldemar Daninsky there is little narrative connection, the wolfman existing essentially only as a recognisable and well-loved monster, the tenuous links between films either ham-fistedly managed or non-existent.

Naschy’s ‘straightforward’ horror career was punctuated by many notable films outside of the cobweb-strewn fang-baring type. 1971 saw him star in the Tito Carpi-penned giallo Seven Murders for Scotland Yard, as well as perhaps Spain’s most famous entry into the cycle of usually resolutely Italian thrillers, The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1973), though purists may argue convincingly for the same year’s A Dragonfly for Each Corpse.

Also of note around this period are Naschy’s turns as the warlock Alaric De Marnac in Horror Rises from the Tomb (El Espanto Surge de la Tumba, 1973), the eyebrow-raising Vengeance of the Zombies (1973), the role of the priest in the Spanish Exorcist take-off, Exorcismo (1975), the witchfinder of his directorial debut, Inquisition (1976),  and the effective, gloomy apocalyptic vision of The People Who Own the Dark (1976).

Buy Horror Rises from the Tomb on DVD from Amazon.com

Despite, this, it was his more direct horror films which continued to make him such a star, especially in his home country where he had affectionately come to be known as  “El Hombre Lobo”. Many of his most successful films were directed by the Argentine, León Klimovsky, who forever yearned to make blockbusting mainstream films but had to settle for a career making horror, exploitation and schlocky westerns – he needn’t have worried, his films are rarely anything less than excellent entertainment.

Having now played all the major monster roles, including The Mummy in Vengeance of the Mummy (La Veganza de la Momia (1971), Count Dracula in 1973’s Count Dracula’s Great Love, the hunchback in the terrific The Hunchback of the Morgue (1973) and an attempt to do all of them at once in 1987’s Howl of the Devil, by the mid-80’s he was spreading himself a little too thinly and making several curious decisions.

1983’s Beast and the Magic Sword (La Bestia y la Espada Mágica) was just one of several projects Naschy produced either in Japan or with Japanese involvement. They proved surprisingly popular in Japan but less so back in Europe – Naschy’s eagerness to please the Asian market with films of Samurai and warriors simply proving impossible to satiate both markets’ demands and tastes. Even more upsetting was 1982’s Spanish-made Buenas Noches, Señor Monstruo (Goodnight Mr Monster), which, although made for children, upset horror fans with its musical japes involving the classic monsters Naschy had done so much to revive in the post-Universal wastelands.

On June 20, 1984, Naschy’s father, Enrique Molina, died of a heart attack while fishing alone on the shores of a lake. Some boys playing in the woods discovered his body, too late to revive him. The unexpected sudden loss of his father (with whom he had always been very close), coinciding with the bankruptcy of his production company, plunged Naschy into a lengthy period of depression, only returning to filmmaking in 1987 with his cult classic El Aullido del Diablo. Naschy’s son Sergio starred in the film, along with famed horror icons Howard Vernon and Caroline Munro (the film was very poorly distributed unfortunately, and is still not available on DVD).

There is a chapter about Paul Naschy in Fear Without Frontiers
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Brief film roles followed in the late 80’s and early 90’s but it was a return to weightlifting which occupied his time; despite his advancing years, he was still in enviable shape and was still both entering and winning many competitive events. Sadly, he suffered a near-fatal heart attack himself on Aug. 27, 1991, triggered by weightlifting in a local gym. He was hospitalised for more than a week, then had major heart surgery performed on September 5th. A rumour circulated throughout horror film fandom that Naschy had died, since he disappeared from the film scene for a while after his operation. He had to later contact a number of fanzine publishers in various countries to inform them that he was still very much alive – he also appeared at film festivals and conventions such as Eurofest in 1994.

This virtual rebirth revitalised both the actor and his audience but his efforts lacked the imagination and vitality of his earlier roles and they were largely critical and commercial disasters. Even in this relatively short time, the Spanish film industry had become, in his words, “corrupt” and his efforts were on miniscule budgets and Naschy’s attempts to invest his own money into them left him on the verge of bankruptcy (his Japanese-based production company, Aconito Films, had already gone bust a decade earlier).

 Buy Paul Naschy: Memoirs of a Wolfman from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

After penning his autobiography, Memoirs of a Wolfman, in 1997 and further filmic misfires, he fled to Hollywood in what would be a distinctly lacklustre final hurrah working for directors who certainly revered Naschy but had no vehicle suitable for him; both Brian Yuzna’s Rottweiler (2004) and Fred Olen Ray’s straight-to-video Tomb of the Werewolf, were a poor reflection of an actor who once could have claimed to be one of the biggest horror stars in the world. Fortunately, he managed to make one final classic, 2004’s Rojo Sangre, directed by the unrelated Christian Molina.

Naschy died of pancreatic cancer on November 30, 2009 in Madrid, aged seventy-five. Although he ended his life in poor financial straits, Naschy always received a tremendous outpouring of love from his many fans and died knowing he would always be regarded as a major horror film icon.

Naschy was married only once, on October 24, 1969, to a woman named Elvira Primavera, the daughter of an Italian diplomat living in Spain. They were still happily married 40 years later at the time of his death. He was survived by his widow Elvira and his two sons, Bruno and Sergio Molina.

Naschy’s legacy is one which reflects his passion and understanding of horror film. His evil characters often have a very human side, a sympathetic and anguished counterpoint to the fury and violence of the monster. His best work often had magnificently evocative Gothic backdrops and, equally regularly, voluptuous, disrobed ladies, eager to fall at Naschy’s feet.

He can be credited with perpetuating the popularity of characters largely already abandoned by Hollywood, if his later choices were sometimes a little wayward, it wasn’t for lack of enthusiasm. Perhaps more often forgotten is that Naschy at his best could be a superb actor, the most athletic of wolfmen, a believable romantic lead and a hypnotically-eyed icon. In 2010 a documentary about Naschy called The Man Who Saw Frankenstein Cry was released.

Selected Filmography:

A much truncated overview of his huge output. Collecting Naschy films can be a frustrating task, the numerous re-titlings almost inevitably leading to duplicate purchases.

1968 Mark of the Wolfman (La Marca del Hombre Lobo) aka Hell’s Creatures/Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror –  the first outing for Waldemar Daninsky

1968 Night of the Wolfman (Las noches del Hombre Lobo) – now lost

1970 Dracula Versus Frankenstein aka Assignment Terror - Daninsky again

1971 The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman aka Shadow of the Werewolf – Daninsky

1971 Seven Murders for Scotland Yard 

1972 Fury of the Wolfman – Daninsky

1972 Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf (Doctor Jekyll y el Hombre Lobo) – both Daninsky and Mr Hyde

1973 The Man With the Severed Head (Las Ratas No Duermen de Noche)

1973 Curse of the Devil (El Retorno de Walpurgis) – Daninsky

1973 Hunchback of the Morgue (El Jorobado de la Morgue)

1973 Count Dracula’s Great Love (El Gran Amor del Conde Drácula) aka Cemetery Tramps

1973 Horror Rises From the Tomb (El Espanto Surge de la Tumba) – a first outing for Alaric de Marnac, based on Gilles de Rais

1973 Vengeance of the Zombies 

1973 Bracula, the Terror of the Living Dead (La Orgía de los Muertos) aka The Hanging Woman

1973 The Mummy’s Revenge (La Venganza de la Momia)

1973 The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (Los Ojos Azules de la Muñeca Rota) aka House of Psychotic Women

1974 A Dragonfly for Each Corpse (Una Libélula Para Cada Muerto)

1974 Devil’s Possessed (El Mariscal del Infierno) – a second outing for the Knight of Marnac under his more familiar Gilles de Rais moniker

1975 The Werewolf and the Yeti (La Maldición de la Bestia) aka Night of the Howling Beast. Daninsky. Possibly his best recognised title due to it falling foul of the DPP and becoming labelled as a video nasty. It’s actually one of Naschy’s dullest during his prime period

1975 Exorcism (Exorcismo)

1975 Los Pasajeros – Rarely seen, it is based on the urban myth of snuff films

1976 Inquisition (Inquisición)

1976 The People Who Own the Dark (Último Deseo)

1978 El Huerto del Francés – much overlooked but highly lauded serial killer film

1980 Human Beasts (El Carnaval de las Bestias) aka The Beasts’ Carnival – his first Spanish/Japanese co-production

1981 Night of the Werewolf (El Retorno del Hombre-Lobo) aka Return of the Wolfman – Daninsky

1982 Buenas noches, Señor Monstruo (Goodnight, Mr Monster)

1983 Panic Beats (Latidos de Pánico) aka Cries of Terror - a final outing for Alaric de Marnac

1983 The Beast and the Magic Sword (La Bestia y la Espada Mágica) – Daninsky

1987 Howl of the Devil (El Aullido del Diablo)

1989 Shadows of Blood – more serial killer action

1989 Aquí Huele a Muerto – abysmal Dracula spoof which was inexplicably a Spanish box office hit

1993 The Night of the Executioner (La Noche del Ejecutor)

1996 Hambre Mortal (Mortal Hunger)

1996 Lycantropus: The Moonlight Murders (Licántropo: El Asesino de la Luna llena) – Daninsky

2001 School Killer (The Vigilante)

2004 Tomb of the Werewolf  – Daninsky’s final appearance

2004 Countess Dracula’s Orgy of Blood

2004 Rottweiler

2004 Rojo Sangre

2010 La Herencia Valdema (The Valdemar Legacy)

2010 The Valdemar Legacy II: The Forbidden Shadow (La Herencia Valdemar II: La Sombra Prohibida)

2010 Empusa 

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings is the 1994 American direct-to-video sequel to the 1988 horror film Pumpkinhead. It was directed by Jeff Burr and stars Andrew Robinson, Ami Dolenz,and Soleil Moon Frye.

Plot teaser

When five teenagers unwittingly resurrect a demon, nobody is safe from the creature’s bloody rampage. But this monster is different: inside its demonic frame dwells the soul of a boy murdered years ago. Can the evil creature be killed without destroying the innocent boy trapped within?

According to Jeff Burr on the DVD’s audio commentary, a few short seconds were cut from the film in order to avoid an NC-17. These were mainly from Pumpkinhead clawing up the farmer in the first death scene, and from the monster’s own death at the end.

A video game adaptation, Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead’s Revenge, was released for DOS in 1995. The game sold poorly at the time of its release and received little attention. The game is a first-person shooter and includes several video clips taken from Pumpkinhead II.

Buy Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings on Blu-ray from Amazon.com or on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

Reviews

“Pumpkinhead II is a low-budget, direct-to-video horror sequel to a moderately well-known film that does enough fun stuff to not make me hate it. Director Jeff Burr has crafted a fairly entertaining hard-R little creature feature tossing plenty of overblown gore and corny story elements my way for me to get on board with it. Bottom line: I had fun watching this film.” DVD Verdict

“It’s a bit of fun while it lasts, at least the direction is half decent on this one and there are glimpses of the original’s rich atmosphere, albeit glitzier. After the first half hour or so the kills come fast and furious and a decapitation is the highlight, amongst some limbs lost, a great impaling and lots of blood splattering on walls.” Oh, The Horror!

“Plot holes and logic gaps abound for sure, but dammit, I’m just gonna let Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings be great. Well, not great. As I said, not even good. It’s certainly inferior to the original film. Geez, I was expecting to point at this movie and laugh…but we had a good time together, ol’ P-Head and I. And that’s one to grow on.” Final Girl

Wikipedia | IMDb

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