Category: 31 Days of Horror

Each October, I watch and review 31 horror movies during 31 Days of Horror Cinema at the expense of my mental well being.

31 Days of Horror Cinema

The Dark (1979): 31 Days of Horror

Post author By jdp
Post date November 19, 2018
No Comments on The Dark (1979): 31 Days of Horror

#19. The Dark (1979)

Nature of The Dark Shame:
Unopened The Dark Blu-ray that I ordered for some really good reason I’m sure.

Hooptober Challenge Checklist:
Decade: 1970’s
Tobe Hooper directed (co-directed)

At certain points during any carefully curated movie marathon, one grows tired of watching quality movies. You might even need to crack open something that’s sure to disappoint.

And yet… and yet…

If your expectations are set for disappointment, you can’t be disappointed by subpar moviewatching. You could possibly be whelmed or nonplussed, but disappointment in that instance would necessitate enjoyment. Let that simmer.

‘The Dark’ Elevator Pitch

I took this from the Google profile for The Dark:

A writer (William Devane) and a TV newswoman (Cathy Lee Crosby) link a California killing spree to an alien werewolf in blue jeans.

While I never rely on these listings for my own elevator pitchers, I found that in this instance nothing else would do. I’d just like to point out the part where it says “alien werewolf in blue jeans” because that’s what happens and even while you’re watching The Dark you can’t help but think that someone misread the script at some crucial juncture.

William Devane plays an author trying to uncover the truth about his son’s killer. A move interesting story would have been his struggle to come to terms with his wardrobe — part lumberjack chic and part Tom Wolfe’s yard sale.

In ‘The Dark’ Hell of Last Minute Rethinks

I’m not going to bury the lede here. The Dark stinks. The Dark stinks because someone clearly put one idea into production and at some point before that production hit the can, it became something else entirely. You don’t need Google to suggest that something went terribly, horribly wrong. You do need Google to tell you exactly what it was that went terribly horrible wrong.

Courtesy of The Den of Geek, I learned why The Dark featured an alien werewolf as a the principle laser beam wielding baddie. In blue jeans.

Note the semi-attached laser beams.

I’ll paraphrase because if you want the whole story you might as well hop over to the Den of Geek. After making Eaten Alive, Film Ventures hired Tobe Hooper to make a movie about an abused autistic child held captive in his attic. The house burns down; he escapes and begins ripping off people’s heads.

Hooper fell behind schedule so the producers replaced him with Bud “Kingdom of the Spiders” Cardos and then at the last minute those flippant producers decided that there wasn’t any money in a murderous autistic attic kid movie so they made him a killer alien. To punctuate this point, they added laserbeams to his kills in post production and an “elaborate” two-minute climax battle featuring the lumbering alien.

No One Expects ‘The Dark’ to Fall

And yet! No. I’m sorry. There’s no deus ex machina here. The Dark stinks. In fact, it’s even worse than that, because — despite all that silliness about aliens and werewolves and laserbeams that explode heads — it’s still boring.

Filmed with all the panache of a mercifully forgotten TV movie, The Dark even looks bored with itself. Missing Manson cult member and writer William Devane and blonde TV reporter/cardboard cutout Cathy Lee Crosby operate completely outside each other’s orbits — and they’re certainly not acting in a movie about a head ‘sploding laserbeam spewing alien werewolf.

The police proceduralness of it all comes to a head in a scene featuring police pathologist Casey Kasem who dutifully informs a bunch of cops that the perpetrator has gray skin. GRAY SKIN! Set the world afire with your far out observations, Shaggy. Thank goodness for Casey Kasem because he’s one of only a couple people in this production that seems to grasp the rampant stupidity — but on the other hand, that just might have been his natural cadence.

Final ‘The Dark’ Thoughts

I won’t bother you about The Dark anymore. It’s a movie that might have been interesting in another life, with a different script and something interesting to say about an autistic child with rage issues. It’s also another movie that might have been interesting in another life, as an incompetently constructed Z-movie about an alien werewolf in blue jeans. Unfortunately for us, it became none of those things and settled for lukewarm green bean casserole.

I’m sorry. I’m supposed to start criticisms with something positive. That’s what my Creative Writing workshops always suggested. Not that I’m worried about hurting The Dark‘s feelings — just that it’ll seem more level-headed to mention something I liked beyond “incomprehensible mess” that might be entertaining in the right state of mind.

Jacqueline Hyde tries to decide if Cathy Lee Cardboard Cutout has a soul inside her pretty blonde head.

Okay, so… the red-headed, quirky psychic played by Jacqueline Hyde stole two scenes but ultimately became a contrived narrative device, and the “score” features someone whispering “the darknessssssssssssssssssss” over and over again. You just won’t get that in a quality production. Happy now?

‘The Dark’ Review:

Availability:

Lucky (?) for you, Amazon has made The Dark available to view via Amazon Prime Video. That way, poorly conceived notions to watch The Dark may be satisfied for free.

The Dark is also available via Code Red Blu-ray on the Ronin Flix site. Code Red has “blessed” us with a release that looks better than this film ever deserved.

2018 @CinemaShame / Hooptober Progress

#1. Deep Rising (1998)
#2. The Mist (2007)
#3. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
#4. Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)
#5. Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)
#6. Maniac Cop (1988)
#7. Nightbreed (1990)
#8. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)
#9. In the Castle of Bloody Desires (1968)
#10. Chopping Mall (1986)
#11. The Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
#12. The Legend of Hell House (1973)
#13. Messiah of Evil (1973)
#14. Possession (1981)
#15. Blood Diner (1987)
#16. Inquisition (1978)
#17. The Bloodstained Shadow (1978)
#18. Hold That Ghost (1941)
#19. The Dark (1979)

James David Patrick is a writer. He’s written just about everything at some point or another. Add this nonsense to the list. Follow his blog at www.thirtyhertzrumble.com and find him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Tags 31 days of horror, bud cardos the dark, hooptober, hooptober 5, the dark 1979 review, the dark casey kasem, the dark review, tobe hooper the dark

31 Days of Horror Cinema

Hold That Ghost (1941): 31 Days of Horror

Post author By jdp
Post date November 14, 2018
2 Comments on Hold That Ghost (1941): 31 Days of Horror

Left to right: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Evelyn Ankers, Joan Davis and Richard Carlson in HOLD THAT GHOST (1941), directed by Arthur Lubin.

#18. Hold That Ghost (1941)

Nature of Shame:
No Hold That Ghost Shame! Sharing with my girls.

Hooptober Challenge Checklist:
Decade: 1940’s
Pre-1970

My 6yo ran through the Abbott and Costello Meet… movies and when she wanted to watch another from A&C I knew I had one more up my sleeve to satisfy some of those Hooptober requirements.

Hold that Ghost had her doing Lou Costello impressions for at least another week. I take great pride when she assaults adults with her cries of “OH, CHUCK!! OH, CHUCK!!” and shames then when they don’t know Hold That Ghost. I’m raising my own Old Movie Weirdo. She’s hoping to become a card-carrying member by age 8. You’ve got to have goals and she’s decided that mastering subtraction is a secondary skill.

Hold That Ghost Elevator Pitch

Cue the Andrews Sisters. Bud and Lou play gas station attendants named Chuck and Freddie who dream of a high class occupation at a nightclub named Chez Glamour, but when they screw that up they’re back at the gas station and accidentally wind up in the backseat of a gangster during a high speed car chase/shootout. The gangster gets it, see? And due to their proximity to the deceased at his time of demise, they inherit his entire estate — a creepy old mansion. But where’s the dough? Cue the Andrews Sisters again.

In the Not-So-Bloody Villa of Safe Scary Delights

Hold That Ghost clearly provided the blueprint for the Abbott and Costello Meet… movies that would follow a few years later. The film borrows its narrative from the early “old dark house” movies such as The Cat and the Canary (1927). Movies that sold a “haunted” old house but explained away all the scary bits by films’ end. Producers believed that movie audiences would find “real” haunts a little too unsettling. Thus, Scooby Doo was born. Safe scares for impressionable moviewatchers.

In 1932 The Old Dark House simultaneously created and broke the mold for the genre, parodying the genre from within. Thus comedy and “the old dark house” became natural companions; The Old Dark House left no legitimate avenue for sincere advancement of the genre. Once viewers became accustomed to being frightened by the prospect of real ghosts, horror movies had to provide that payoff. Comedies, however, could manipulate the form and wink at the audience. Hold That Ghost winks, nods and holds the flashlight up to the “spooks.” We must always believe that Lou is legitimately frightened and that Bud is dismissive and skeptical. It’s all good clean fun, except for the dead bodies.

Everyone Expects Abbott and Costello to be frightened and skeptical, relatively speaking.

I assume that most viewers in 2018 view the Abbott and Costello Meet… movies because of the monster pedigree, but Hold That Ghost offers the most natural utility for their schtick. The latter movies become more finely turned, variations on the same theme (Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man excepted). Hold That Ghost doesn’t feel like a Universal brand (and no, obviously, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein wasn’t either because it was a surprise success and spawned four more monster mashups). It feels like the comedians have been tasked with an improvisational bit about a gangster’s money and a haunted house and they’re navigating the pratfalls of the relatively new horror comedy genre.

Joan Davis with Lou Costello performing a delightful routine with an uncooperative candle.

The ambling rawness of the premise along with the cast of assorted supporting characters lends Hold That Ghost an off-the-cuff freshness that dwindled as the parade of monsters rolled on in the 1940’s. Joan Davis proves to be a particularly wonderful comedic partner for Lou, providing something more than the usual assortment of sarcasm and rebuffs. If Hold That Ghost surpasses other Bud and Lou horror comedies, it’s because the entire cast chips in to perform some of the heavy comedic lifting rather than leaving frantic Lou to flail all by his lonesome.

The wonderful and potentially underappreciated Evelyn Ankers also deserves a mention. As a 1940’s cog in the Universal machine, Ankers found herself in the thankless shrieking damsel roles of the 2nd Universal horror cycle. She perhaps owes that stint to her role in Hold That Ghost — the first of those performances. In this very same year she’d make her big movie monster debut alongside Lon Chaney, Jr. in The Wolf Man (1941), followed closely by The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Son of Dracula (1943), Captive Wild Woman (1943), and The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1943) among many others. As a steady anchor for Universal’s monstrous, she provided more than just a pretty face.

How Does One Hold That Ghost Anyway?

Though the title alludes to some ghost catching, you’ll have to wait a few years before anyone bothers with the capture and containment of spooks or specters. The film’s origins shed some light on the patchwork quality. It began life as a movie called “Oh, Charlie!” which makes sense when you hear how many times Lou says, “Oh, Chuck!”

The original narrative had the displaced gang members trying to scare Chuck and Ferdie out of the inherited tavern when another rival gang shows up to fight over the hidden loot (which turns out to be counterfeit. Production was put on hold after Buck Privates became such a smash success and Universal rushed a follow up In the Navy into theaters. For the capper, Universal brought back the Andrews Sisters to open and close the film because they’d appeared in both of the prior Abbott and Costello service comedies. Because how else would you bookend an old dark house horror comedy but with bandleader Ted Lewis and the Andrews Sisters — clearly the keys to all of these productions. Even contemporaneous critics called out the superfluous use of bookending musical numbers to pad the run time.

Final Hold That Ghost Thoughts

I found it useful to revisit Hold That Ghost immediately after a tour through the latter Abbott and Costello Meet… series because it placed the films in a different context. It’s easy to forget that the formula began in 1941 with Hold That Ghost and didn’t magically come together seven years later for a hair-brained scheme to revive Universal’s slagging former moneymakers.

It’s no great surprise that Hold That Ghost feels fresher than the latter iterations of the formula. Just because it doesn’t have the monster branding doesn’t make it less worthwhile. I’d wager that if Hold That Ghost were called instead “Abbott and Costello Meet the Spooks” it would be probably considered the best of the lot and remain one of the duo’s best known films. Though I do wish the film didn’t have seven minutes of the Andrews Sisters.

Did someone say the Andrews Sisters?

Hold That Ghost Rating:

Availability:

Once again let’s revisit the availability of the Abbott and Costello films for the uninitiated and the cheap seats.

Universal has given you dozens of opportunities to own the branded Meet the Monster films on Blu-ray and DVD through the The Frankenstein Complete Legacy Collection, The Dracula Complete Legacy Collection and The Wolf Man Complete Legacy Collection.

If you’d like a complete collection of the Abbott and Costello Meet… movies, that’s more difficult. There’s the brilliant (but OOP) 28-film Abbott and Costello: The Complete Universal Pictures Collection steamer trunk that solves all problems. The Meet the Monsters DVD set contains Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which is currently not available on Blu-ray), but is missing Abbott & Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff because… I have no idea. In order to get that one, you’d need to purchase The Best of Abbott & Costello, Vol. 3 DVD. Got that?

Now, Hold That Ghost is available on The Best of Abbott & Costello Vol. 1 DVD set alongside the aforementioned Buck Privates and In the Navy. Now you’re set. Go forth and watched Bud and Lou.

2018 @CinemaShame / Hooptober Progress

Tags 31 days of horror, abbott and costello, abbott and costello hold that ghost, hold that ghost review, hooptober, hooptober 5

31 Days of Horror Cinema

The Bloodstained Shadow (1978): 31 Days of Horror

Post author By jdp
Post date November 8, 2018
2 Comments on The Bloodstained Shadow (1978): 31 Days of Horror

#17. The Bloodstained Shadow (1978)

Nature of Shame:
Later-era giallo that takes cues from the best of the genre and I will pretty much watch anything labeled “giallo.” Unwatched 88 Films Blu-ray.

Hooptober Challenge Checklist:
Decade: 1970’s
Anniversary: 40th

I read about The Bloodstained Shadow in Troy Howarth’s So Deadly So Perverse Vol. 2 and subsequently picked the Blu-ray up from 88 Films. It’s been on my shelf for ages, but with the arrival of the Underrated ’78 lists on Rupert Pupkin Speaks, I had to finally crack the seal and do the deed.

The Bloodstained Shadow Elevator Pitch

It’s a murder mystery and insular society whodunnit with strangulations, mediums, unsolved murders, repressed psychoses and black gloved killers! In Venice!

In the Bloody Laguna of Venitian Delights

Antonio Bido’s The Bloodstained Shadow (aka Solamente Nero) recalls Lucio Fulci’s Don’t Torture A Ducking in that in focuses on the crimes committed within an insular society. Where Fulci goes bombastic to unearth the message in his film, however, Bido peels back layers with tweezers.

Stefano visits his priest brother in the Venice laguna whom warns of a decadent community of evildoing and makes vague allusions to a medium. And because this is a giallo, Stefano then witnesses the strangulation of the medium by a killer (dressed in black, naturally). When Stefano investigates and uncovers the truth about a string of murders, he becomes a target for the murderer himself.

No One Expects the Venetian Priest #SpoilerAlert

So Bido might telegraph the identity of the killer rather early on in the film, but the fun of The Bloodstained Shadow has nothing to do with uncovering the truth. It’s about how you got there — and you’ll cross multiple genres and wildly erratic pacing to make it happen.

Like Bido’s other successful film, Watch Me While I Kill, it sometime feels like the director merely flies by the seat of his pants, piecing together genre aesthetics and cues like mismatched puzzle pieces. While it’s easy to interpret that as a lack of vision or incompetence, Bido appears (feel free to argue) to use his lack of convention to keep viewers off balance. Seeing as how he’s working within a very restrictive genre, this methodology has less madness than you might think.

How Does a Shadow get Bloodstained Anyway?

In certain ways, Bloodstained Shadow reminded me of Francisco Barilli’s Pensione Paura, another film that dances between predictable genre beats to create something resistant to categorization. Bido manages to include a smattering of visual tropes that still ground the film within the giallo genre range. This has probably served Bido better than Barilli’s non-conformity.

As a result of the style of the murders and procedural drama, Bloodstained Shadow gets that genre credibility. Viewers will remain interested in giallo-classified films, whereas Barilli’s film floats outside the genre and therefore off of most horror fans’ radar. It’s not even currently available on DVD to my knowledge and that’s a bloody shame.

Final The Bloodstained Shadow Thoughts

The Bloodstained Shadow has such awkward pacing that you’ll forget for long stretches that what you’re watching is supposed to be a horror film. Normally, I’d use that very same line as a complaint. In this instance, however, Bido so effectively deploys exotic cityscape cinematography an score (by Stelvio Cipriani and mixed and re-recorded by Goblin) that the languid pacing feels more like a strength. The film has plenty of other weaknesses, but it largely overcomes them by having a unique feel in an otherwise narrow genre bandwidth.

The Bloodstained Shadow Rating:

Availability:

The Bloodstained Shadow is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video. The film looks rather dark and colorless on the stream, but it’s quality enough to sample for free.

I watched the film on 88 Films’ Region B Blu-ray release, which offers better color and sharper black contrast.

It’s not a major upgrade, however. I still hope that the film will received a nice Region A offering in the near future from a caring distributor willing to do some restoration work. The visuals and score are the most important parts of the film — so it’s a shame that we can’t view a better source.

2018 @CinemaShame / Hooptober Progress

Tags #31daysofhorror, antonio bido, hooptober, hooptober 5, the bloodstained shadow 1978, the bloodstained shadow review