Island Of Lost Souls

Again, kinda feel like an ass for not seeing this sooner!

Originally produced by Paramount yet somehow finding it's way to the Universal Monsters Classic Collection in the 90s, Island Of Lost Souls is a damn good movie. Made slightly before the Hays code went into effect this is one of the most grotesque and disturbing horror films you can find from that era. Concerning a shipwrecked man named Edward who gets rather unceremoniously dumped on the island of Dr. Moreau and after quickly discovering the sadistic doctor's experiments on animals has to find his way out alive. But the madman has plans and aspirations of his own in a truly gross and unsettling test of his most prized experiment Lota to see if the change from beast to human can go...all the way, shall we say. I can't even express in words how easily this film can get under your skin, and the worst part is it doesn't take much provocation for your mind to start imagining such gruesome surgeries and to really peer into the mind of Dr. Moreau. Admittedly he's played to perfection by Charles Laughton who if you really pay attention to any of the actors, more specifically him and Kathleen Burke as Lota, they put so much into these roles through body language alone and it rewards your attention. He plays this sick, demented, totally unshakeable in his work scientist and to see him just study Lota with Edward in such a voyeuristic tendency, his utter dismay at the thought of his horrific experiemnts potentially not working, his chilling delivery of the line "Do you know what it means to feel like God?", just eeeuuugghh! He freaks me right the hell out! Fantastic performance and really an unsung great actor our Charles was. And like I said Kathleen Burke as Lota is lord where do I even start, she's undoubtedly a tragic character who's went through I don't even know what to become the woman she is and again a lot of the performance is in her body lamguage. I know people will get hung up on the more sexualized aspects of her feline nature and dress, but she comes off so sweet and curious and quite gentle. That scene where she views herself in a mirror and you can see the tears filling her eyes...that hits like a fucking BRICK, I will remember that for a very long time to come! And don't even get me started on Kathleen being typecasted and only ventured in the domain of filmmaking for about 6 years, she's acting her heart out here in her first movie role no less, and yeah I know the movie is gonna be 100 years old relatively soon but goddamn it I'm upset over that! They are easily the highlights of the entire picture and I can strongly recommend watching it just on the backs of them two though of course the rest of the cast does well. Richard Arlen is quite a strapping fella and conveys the horror and intelligemce when dealing with such a sociopath very well. And of course like everyone else I have to shoutout Bela Lugosi in this film, even despite it being a very minimal role it's still a memorable performance and visual, my almost lifelong stance as a fan not withstanding. It's a very visually similar film to The Most Dangerous Game, an island, a dense jungle, the fotress of the main antagonist, but it still works and the set design is rich. Another interesting note is the film score is dead silent, you hear music at the very beginning and end but no musical accompaniment which admittedly heightens the horror and uneasy tone. But yeah this is a standout movie that I know is considered more a minor classic, but I can strongly urge people to watch it. High recommendation, 4 stars, 8.5/10!

That was a fun little trip, I know I'll have to find more time to write reviews in the future cause it still is an enjoyable and gratifying experience. Definite new release next week so tune in for that and as always be safe!

White Zombie

The first Zombie movie and what an opening entry.

Of course this is before the gut devouring shambling zombies, but traditional haitian zombies and one I feel we need to see more of. If ever I was to make a zombie movie it would be voodoo zombies, though even in this film they call them the living dead. So the story follows a couple in Haiti who are about to be wed, but their host for the wedding is smitten by the bride and enlists the help of the zombie lord, played outstandingly by Bela Lugosi, leading the husband and a local preacher to try to break the hypnosis and rescue the girl. For a film made in 1932 it actually has a ton of ambition and really more modern techniques employed throughout it. We get split screens, screen wipes, a scene shot in one long continuous take and ends exactly where the scene began, framing through objects, it really is a very fine looking film and not just because I found a really damn good print for free on YouTube by Cult Cinema Classics. Yes this is one of those public domain movies and the fact you can get it in such great quality and the movie is barely over an hour long, you have precisely nothing to lose. I feel this is Bela Lugosi's most devilish, creepy, and evil performance and I treasure him in Dracula, and while the menace is undoubtedly there in that movie there is just something here that strikes me. I still stand by my claim that eyes can be the most terrifying thing in the world and Bela firmly proves that here. He's on top performance and you can tell he is relishing every moment. Never to shy away from the rest of the cast, I think the couple does fine and while John Harron is very much the straight laced dashing young hero he does bring a bit to the part, and Madge Bellamy is the epitome of what I think women looked like in the roaring 20s and the early 30s, I actually quite liked the preacher who is a more light hearted character but comes through in the end. It's great to finally see it after so many years of seeing it through different films, shows, and even music. I doubt it's any surprise Rob Zombie named his first band after this film, and he just has a lot of appreciation for cult horror from the early days of cinema which I in turn appreciate. It is well worth seeing, one stop short of classic but it has it's abundance of fans and I'll gladly be one. Join in and get hypnotized, zombified, and creepified by this film. 4 stars, 7.5/10, and it's tradition at this point to review at least one black and white horror movie but considering this is the last full week of October, and a good chunk of this month has been non-horror related stuff, stay tuned throughout the week for even more classical noir thrillers.

The Black Cat (1934)

We've made it. It's finally here! Happy October!

I wanted to get at least one movie from the 1930s in this month and I realized I never talked about The Black Cat which is one of my favorites from the Universal golden age of horror that not many people know about. If I remember correctly this was the first film to bring the two biggest horror stars of the time in one picture, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff and I have to say they bring their all into this movie. The story follows a couple on their honeymoon that meet a doctor by the name of Vitus Werdegast played by Lugosi, who suffer a car crash on the way to Hjalmar Poelzig's house with Poelzig played by Karloff. Very soon when you meet Werdegast you suspect there's something more to this trip and it is soon revealed that Poelzig betrayed him during wartime and now he seeks vengeance. That's the basics but there's more to touch on later. Besides the two titans of terror how's the rest of the cast? Well at first I found the couple to be pretty standard for 1930s cinema but they grew on me a little and you don't wish any ill will toward them, but let's be honest you see this movie because of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff and they play their parts expertly. Lugosi plays the part with sophistication and determination, fuelled by his hatred for the man who ruined his life, he was tortured during a war and says his soul was slowly killed so there's a level of madness to him though he is our protagonist. Karloff is imposing and devilishly evil, and rightly so because it is revealed he is a Satanist and intends to sacrifice the newly wedded wife, but the film builds his character up incredibly well and you want to see him get his comeuppance. This is a wonderfully shot movie with beautiful set design that feels both gothic and surprisingly modern. Poelzig's home is amazing and wouldn't feel out of place even in today's market, but has a dark underbelly that is creepy and morbid. I'm always surprised by the cinematography in this film, you just hardly ever saw such films being made this way, with switching focuses on foreground and background, seeing characters through the use of mirrors, and the use of light and shadows throughout, it might not be much but such experimental effort gets bonus points from me. You saw this type of filmmaking more often in foreign cinema than the Hollywood industry. I have no doubts the movie was banned in certain places in it's time, dealing with torture, revenge, Satanism, necrophilia, and human sacrifice, this was an entirely different beast for that time period. But it has that atmosphere, class acting, and grim subject matter to entertain any horror fan. I will say though they took the title from a story by Edgar Allan Poe, it has nothing to do with it, there is a black cat but it's used as a symbol of undying evil and is the phobia of Werdegast. Me personally, I would treasure such a creature, so deem me a Satanist if you wish but I'm a great admirer of black cats. This is a lesser known gem of the Universal library and you should see it, don't worry about runtime, you can finish it in barely over an hour. Yeah, I'm almost certain it was part of a double bill but it can be viewed on it's own. Definitely recommend it, 4 stars, 7.5/10, this showcases the acting talents of two great stars beyond their most iconic roles so check it out!

Well I think you know what's next, and I'm going to have the biggest smile on my face this Friday.

Plan 9 From Outer Space

I think I've seen worse.

For decades the reputation of this movie and Ed Wood himself has been the crowning achievement of bad movies, but has the king been toppled from his throne? In this humble critic's view yes. In 1959 and the subsequent decades, there wasn't a masterpiece of shlock like Plan 9, but now....I don't know, I feel kinda jaded when it comes to bad movies to the point where Plan 9 is utterly a less than okay movie. When a movie has a 4/5 star rating on Amazon, and most of the user reviews on IMDB rate this above an 8, there might be something there. But the whole time I watched the movie I was underwhelmed kind of. The acting is average if a bit off from time to time, the sets are basic, the editing is screwy when it goes from day to night to the point where I came up with a not altogether untrue theory about a cemetry shrouded in forever darkness, the plot is weird concerning aliens ressurecting the earth's dead in some odd half baked plan to get humanity from creating a weapon that will destroy the universe. I have no idea why they are creating zombies in order to solidify galactic peace, and it does make you wonder what the hell the other 8 failed plans were. But of course the solution to everything including peaceful negotiations to save the literal universe is violence, no really the humans hear all this then proceed to exploit the alien's weakness of american fists and blow their ship up! Oh, and don't forget the blatant sexism towards women, because all they are good for is baby and sandwhich making. The 50s, Grease lied to you!! But anyway, it's just average. Maybe I wasn't in the right mood but I've watched Bride Of The Monster, another Ed Wood movie and I greatly enjoyed the so bad it's good quality. With this, I noticed the off shots and cheap effects but didn't really glance twice at the less than good elements of the movie. Is it because I've seen chunks of this movie time and time again in conjecture with the Tim Burton movie so I just can't really bring myself to hate the movie? Or is it the fact I've seen movies that I think are far worse to the point I get blood boiling pissed off? A bit of both, I've never seen a movie so laughably bad before, or at least not yet. I do not laugh at bad movies, I get hostile. Bleeding Steel was an odd movie, completely in it's own world, but was so unapologetically bizzare that it was hard not to enjoy and laugh at the absurdness. I still do not think that is a bad movie, I don't know what it is beyond one of the most entertaining movies I've seen in my life. So Plan 9 fell flat for me, and I know it has a cult fanbase and holds a place in movie history but it is by no means the "worst movie ever". I've seen worse in my time, but you can watch both the movie and the Rifftrax of the movie on Amazon right now, so maybe you can enjoy this movie one way or another, vastly more than me. I give it a solid 2 stars, smack dab in the middle.

Next time though, we go straight to more modern movies with a sterling example of cinematic atrocity, Marky Mark play us out.

Dracula (1931)

The very first week of horror reviews, we look at the Universal Monsters collection.

Dracula has all the elements of a proper chiller. Fog, castles, bats, bonechilling atmosphere and acting from the great Bela Lugosi, and one of the best adaptations of the Bram Stoker novel. The film is one of the earliest and one of the greatest horror films, and one of the big advantages it has is being one of the first sound horror films. True, there is a lack of music but it only enhances the fear and the atmosphere in the film. Need I even say anything about Bela Lugosi's immortal performance? The first line he ever says is unforgettable, "I am...Dracula." and his performance is all in his presence. It's how he walks, and speaks, it's all in the eyes and the voice and the hands! Dwight Frye is perfect as the insane Renfield, with a amusingly creepy laugh and a manic personality that leaps from the screen. In fact, all the cast is very good but it's Lugosi that of course steals the show. One of my favorite things about not only this movie but all the Universal Monsters movies is both the impact they still have on today's culture and strangely, how very short the movies are. The films are barely an hour and a half long but still can pack so much grand things in them that really you don't mind that they are that short. If you aren't even a horror fan you should really watch the most iconic of the Universal Monsters movies, you will enjoy them and would most likely view them again around Halloween time.

Well, that's it for today. Tune in tomorrow where we look at the most famous monster of all time.

Ed Wood

One of my favorite movies of all time is also one of the best movies, not only of all time but also about making movies.



Ed Wood is one of those movies that really sticks with you for the rest of your life. It's the story of the so-called "Worst Director Of All Time", chronicling the making of three of his most famous or infamous movies. This film was directed by Tim Burton, it's shot gorgeously in black and white with a few odes to German Expressionism and a bit of Film Noir, and it has an ensemble cast leaded by Johnny Depp. This is easily one of Johnny Depp's greatest performances, playing a humble film director who has an enormous passion for movies and storytelling and his enthusiasm bleeds through the screen so much so that you get excited and happy for him when things go good for him. This film has so many stars in it. We have Martin Landau playing Bela Lugosi so perfectly that you actually forget that he's not really Bela Lugosi and he totally deserved the Academy award for "Best Supporting Actor", and if you're a big horror movie fan and Bela Lugosi fan you will not be disappointed. We have Sarah Jessica Parker as Ed Wood's girlfriend who is a bitch in this movie, she's horrible to poor Ed! But then he meets Patricia Arquette's character who is this absolute sweetheart, that Ed gets married to. Bill Murray plays Ed's best friend and he is absolutely hilarious because that's what Bill Murray does! We have a menagerie of actors who play the faithful crew of Ed Wood who are fantastic. So the entire cast is brilliantly chosen, and the entire production of this film is quite well done and is very accurate to the films Ed Wood made and how they were made behind the scenes. The music by Howard Shore is very unique and the inclusion of the "Finale" from Swan Lake almost brings tears to my eyes every time it plays. The film is very funny, but has serious emotional moments that could really get to you, and even might have a few scenes that can make you cry. It even has a scene where possibly the worst director of all time has a conversation with possibly the greatest director of all time, Orson Welles played by Vincent D'Onofrio and yet is voiced by Maurice LaMarche who also does a Orson Welles impression in Pinky and The Brain, but that's getting off topic. And the conversation they have really has a great message and words of wisdom to filmmakers for generations to come.


Ed Wood is actually my favorite movie about making movies. Yes there are very few movies that are better than Ed Wood about telling a story about how a movie is made, for example American Movie which by some is considered the greatest movie about making movies ever made but Ed Wood is my favorite. If you are a fan of movies and really like movies like American Movie, check out Ed Wood. It is a fantastic movie and just a great story about a director who was considered to be the worst but really was one of the most passionate filmmakers in history.