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.
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