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Cinema

The End is Silence: The Masque of the Red Death

The following is an entry in @NitrateDiva’s Vincent Price blog-a-thon. The Masque of the Red Death has long been one of my favorite flicks and I jumped at the chance to commit some of my love to paper, or in this case bl-g. This was my first viewing of the film in many years and my first evar! in high-def. Horror fans must pick up the new Vincent Price Blu-ray Collection from Shout!/Scream! Factory. You’ve never seen these movies look anywhere near this good. Especially Masque‘s gaudy colors and set design. But enough of all that… some newly formed (old) thoughts about Masque of the Red Death starring Vincent Price. I would have loved to dissect the film in far more detail, but the Patrick family Halloween festivities have seriously taken a toll on my psyche. (He said as the two children lay waste to the entire house while he desperately tries to finish this bl-g.)

The End is Silence: The Masque of the Red Death

30Hz Horror - Masque of the Red Death

Though Vincent Price made scores of movies of without Roger Corman, it is for his seven collaborations with Roger Corman on the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations that he is probably most recognized by modern audiences. Before he became the King of the Grand Guignol or the Merchant of Menace (choose your own nom de guerre), Vincent Price acted in a wide variety of films from noir to comedy. It seemed, however, from our point of view that Price was always destined to be the face of horror. His on screen presence, the intensity in his eyes… his low-pitched, rasping voice. Before his first successful starring role in Corman’s House of Usher (1960) – 22 years after his debut, Price had been predominantly a character actor with a few minor starring roles mixed in. This is a notion that’s difficult to reconcile with our conception of the legendary actor.

Categories
Cinema

31 Days of Horror by Kerry Fristoe

Regular #Bond_age_ contributor and fanatical movie fiend Kerry Fristoe has volunteered to further contribute to  30Hz 31 Days of Horror. Follow her on Twitter at @echidnabot and chat her up about movies.

31 Days of Horror at 30Hz

Follow the 31 Days of Horror watchers on Twitter with the #31DaysOfHorror hashtag.

1. The Dunwich Horror (1970)

30Hz Horror - The Dunwich Horror

Set in the mythical Miskatonic Valley like many of H.P. Lovecraft’s tales, The Dunwich Horror revolves around Dean Stockwell in a role even creepier than the one he plays in Blue Velvet. Stockwell’s Wilbur Whately lives in Dunwich, Massachusetts with his raving grandfather Sam Jaffe, and where the natives, who often speak with southern accents, avoid them.

Anyway, Wilbur Whately wants Ed Begley’s Necronomicon so he can summon some of his buddies from a parallel universe to come and play with him and Sandra Dee. Sandra digs hanging with Wilbur because he adds copious amounts of hallucinogens to her tea which make her woozy and dream she’s watching a revival of Hair.

I won’t spoil it for you but the trippy lighting and creature effects and projections onto canvas gave the film a distinctive look and the breathy heartbeat sounds added to the spookiness factor.

Along with the cast I’ve mentioned, Lloyd Bochner, 70’s staple, and Talia (billed as Coppola) Shire also appear in small character roles.

I haven’t read the original Lovecraft story but I know many of them take place in a fictionalized version of Wilbraham, Massachusetts (the real home of Friendly Ice Cream) which sits about 160 miles inland so the ocean puzzled me a bit but no matter.

It was a fun 60s, 70s, witch hunt, hippie, parallel universe, Satanic ritual, acid flick.

Yog-Sothoth!

Categories
Cinema

The Shriek of the Devil Bat

For my #31DaysOfHorror movie for today I watched Bela Lugosi in THE DEVIL BAT. The shriek of the Devil Bat so moved me, I was compelled to isolate the shriek and create my very own Devil Bat ring tone for the Halloween season. Yes. This is called procrasternation.

Here’s the full movie, available on YouTube. It’s fun purely because of the Devil Bat effects. Its a rubber bat on a wire. SPOILER ALERT!

And here’s the Devil Bat ring tone:

Devil Bat Ring Tone