31 Days of Horror 2013: Days 14-19

15. Nosferatu (1929)

16. The Reptile (1966)

17. The House that Dripped Blood (1971)

18. Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

19. Kiss of the Vampire (1963)

This week we've watched mostly European horror, starting with F.W. Murnau's silent "Nosferatu."  The

absence of audible dialogue in silent horror movies gives them a kind of other worldly eeriness.  It can also give them an element of authenticity that's often missing in sound movies, making them feel like reel-to-reel footage of actual events that happened in the distant past.  As a result, although I've lost all interest in vampire movies, I'm always up for a viewing of "Nosferatu."

I had no idea what to expect from "The Reptile," another Hammer Production, but it's been one of the most entertaining movies of the month.  It's essentially a re-working of the basic vampire myth that replaces the vampire and its vulnerability to sunlight with a humanoid cobra that must be kept warm throughout the British winters.  The Reptile is the daughter of an anthropologist who intruded in the lives of the secretive snake people of Borneo.  In response, they kidnapped his daughter and then returned her several months later after having transformed her into one of them.  The anthropologist returns to England along with his cobra-daughter and a snake charmer to help control her.  Soon, residents of a British village begin dying mysteriously with two punctures wounds in their necks.  "The Reptile" enthralled me with its sheer bizarreness, but it also does a good job of creating suspense by drawing suspicion on its many oddly behaving characters and keeping viewers guessing until the end about the identity of the the reptile and the involvement other villagers might have in the murders.

An Amicus anthology, "The House that Dripped Blood" contains four stories that supposedly illustrate the evilness of an old house.  The protagonists of all four stories are residents of the house, but the connection between the horrors they experience and the house they live in are mostly unrelated, a fact that doesn't make the movie any less entertaining.  The first segment features a horror writer who keeps having visions of the the killer from his latest novel appearing throughout the house.  This one is a bit dull, but it's saved by a strong ending. The second is an oddity about two aging men who become obsessed with a figure in a wax museum that resembles a woman they both loved when they were younger.  It's hard to go wrong with wax-museum horror, an underrepresented sub genre that I wish more filmmakers would explore.  The third segment is about a man played by Christopher Lee who is terrified by his young daughter who turns out to be a witch.  Seeing Christopher Lee terrified by anything, especially a little girl, is reason enough to watch this one.  The final segment is a deliberately campy tale about a horror actor whose vampire costume turns him into a real vampire.  Jon Pertwee, better known for his role as the Third Doctor in "Doctor Who," plays the vampire, and the scene in which he flies with the assistance of very visible strings adds a nice dose of laugh-out-loud comedy to an otherwise fairly straightforward horror anthology. 

The only American movie of the week so far, "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" felt like a lame attempt to bore Brad to death.  It has a strong ending, but after I had to watch hippies sitting around a farm house playing music for an hour, even Godzilla appearing from nowhere, stomping on the house, and killing everyone inside wouldn't have saved it for me. 

Hammer Production "Kiss of the Vampire" starts strong with a drunk, hard-boiled priest interrupting a funeral by spearing the coffin with a shovel, piercing the heart of the dearly departed, and sending blood spewing out of the coffin.  It then bores with a lot of bullshit about a newlywed couple running out of gas near a chateau and going to lots of parties with the residents who turn out to be vampires.

After a double-feature of snoozers, we're going to have to inject new life into 31 days of horror by watching something more intense.

31 Days of Horror 2013: Days 2 - 6

2. From Beyond the Grave (1974)

3. Repulsion (1965)

4. The Mummy (1959)

5.  An American Werewolf in London (1981)

6. Monster House (2006)

7. The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)

Six days into the month, and we've made it through seven movies and consumed one box of Frankenberry, one box of Frute Brute, and half a box of BooBerry.

The most enjoyable movie from the first week was "From Beyond the Grave," an anthology film from the British production company Amicus, which was active throughout the 60s and 70s and known for its horror anthologies.  "From Beyond the Grave" features four stories tied together through their connection with an antique shop.  Each segment begins with a man buying or stealing an item from the shop and then taking it home where it soon begins unleashing horrors.  In my favorite segment, a man pays 5 pounds for a 40 pound snuff box after switching its price tag, and quickly realizes that the box contains an invisible elemental that has latched onto to his shoulder.  After it tries to kill his wife, he has it exorcised in a ceremony that frees him from its control, but it continues to haunt him.  Other segments feature a haunted mirror that demands blood sacrifices from the man who bought it, a door that leads to a castle where an occultist is waiting to steal the souls of those who enter, and a stolen war medal that has a very tenuous connection to a story about a father-daughter killing team that answer the wishes of a child wanting to be free of his parents.

I often think horror movies work best in shorter segments because there's no time for bullshit and they get straight to the horror.  They can sometimes be formulaic because they tend to rely on twist endings, but in the best anthologies this doesn't make them any less enjoyable.  "From Beyond the Grave" was so much fun to watch because each segment is bizarre in its own way, and although I knew to expect twist endings, each one kept me guessing.

"Repulsion" is an early Roman Polanski film about a woman repulsed by men.  Men find her irresistible and pursue her obsessively.  I wasn’t very interested in this one at first because it moves slowly, but when its protagonist begins to crack and tries unsuccessfully to isolate herself from the outside world and the men who won't leave her alone, the psychological horror that unfolds made me glad I stuck with it.

Mummy movies usually bore me, and this is particularly true of the

Universal films featuring Boris Karloff, but Vicki wanted to watch the Hammer Studios version of "The Mummy" featuring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and I'm glad I gave it another chance.  All mummy movies have the same basic plot--archaeologist finds tomb, an Egyptian warns him not to to disturb it, he doesn't listen, and a mummy later terrorizes him back in the UK--but in this one the mummy's coffin falls in a bog while he's being transported to the UK, so when he rises to seek revenge on those who disturbed his rest, he appears part mummy and part swamp creature.  Moreover, he's also pretty fast for a mummy, and he has an entertaining habit of bursting through locked doors.

 

"An American Werewolf in London" is the best werewolf movie ever made.  Its characters are likable, and viewers even sympathize with the werewolf.  He's more like a person with a contagious terminal disease than a monster.  Its transformation scene has yet to be surpassed, contrary to what some misguided critics have written about "Hemlock Grove.”  It also manages to horrify while having a sense of humor. 

"Monster House" is a great animated horror movie about a haunted house that eats anything that ends up in its yard.  The boy who lives across the street decides to investigate and he and his friends discover the secret of the house.  "Monster House" always reminds me of what it was like to be a boy and find adventures in my own neighborhood.

We ended the week with another Hammer production, "The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll."  Like Amicus, Hammer was a British production company, but it was active for longer and much more prolific. (It was recently revived and has released several good movies in the past few years, the best of which have been "Let Me In" and "The Woman in Black.")  While Amicus is best known for anthologies, Hammer is famous for gothic horror, particularly its Frankenstein and Dracula films, but the studio produced a wide variety of horror movies from the 1950s through the 70s.  "The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll" is less a horror movie than a slightly comedic psychological drama.  It would be entertaining if it ended about 20 minutes sooner.  It has some unique aspects such as making Dr. Jekyll look more horrifying than Mr. Hyde and portraying his neglected wife as an adulteress who refuses to wait around while her husband works in the lab.  Racy for 1960, it features a dance scene in which a mostly naked woman rubs a snake on her crotch and then puts its head in her mouth.  It’s worth viewing once, as long as you stop it after an hour.

The next week of horror begins with the silent film "The Hands of Orlac" (1924).