jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Black Sunday - The Eyes That Paralyze)
Title: Dracula Has Risen from the Dance Floor
Song: Dragonette - Fixin to Thrill
Source: Hammer Dracula
Length: 4:00
Warnings: Metaphorical sexual violence. Violence. Blood.

Summary: If Drac is a DJ, death is a dance floor, blood is the rhythm, your screams are the music.

Password: vampires

Dragonetteula from Jetpack Monkey on Vimeo.



Download MP4

Notes: This vid uses at least one clip from every Hammer film that features either Christopher Lee's Dracula or Peter Cushing's Van Helsing. I've been meaning for years to do a companion piece to Don't Stop Me Now, my Hammer Frankenstein vid. One day in IRC, [personal profile] joyo raised the challenge: more vidders should be making vids to Dragonette songs. I popped into Rdio and the first song that came up started with this dark, minor key dirge that sounded similar to but distinct from James Bernard's score for 1958's Horror of Dracula. And thus, Fixin to Thrill became my vidsong.

My vidding process on this one was a bit different. I literally just pulled every clip I liked down onto the timeline. My hope was to create a visual melange based on the qualities of the footage divorced from the narrative context. My multi-source vids tend to collapse the narratives of multiple sources into one meta-narrative and I wanted to break away from that a bit. Unfortunately, my brain is just organized the way it's organized, and the end result is once again a meta-narrative. Sorry if you wanted something new from me, folks.

The one major issue I ran into while making this vid is that my fannish devotion to the source began decades before my personal social justice awakening. The dubcon/noncon subtext of the films turned me off a bit. Ultimately, I decided to turn into the skid and acknowledge the problematic nature (even if I was doing so in the midst of a vid that was supposed to be dancey fun).

I don't even remember everyone who looked at the vid ahead of time. I really must keep better notes. I know that [personal profile] thirdblindmouse took a gander, for which I am grateful.

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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Henry Frankenstein - l33t g33k)
Missed yesterday, so today you get two responses!

[livejournal.com profile] elipie wants to know: "What's your earliest memory of gaming?"

A bunch of possible answers come to mind depending on what kind of gaming you mean. I played all sorts of board games with my parents and friends growing up -- mostly Sorry! but some Scrabble, Monopoly, and Clue: Master Detective.

My earliest experience with video games was probably on a friends' Nintendo (my parents never let me have my own), but I remember most clearly the computer that Mom and Dad bought for the house when I was 7 or 8. It was ancient even for the time, ran on DOS, and had a three-button mouse that worked with only a handful of programs, one of which was a very early version of Microsoft Works.

However, the best part was that the computer came with a whole suite of shareware and freeware games on 5.25" floppy disks. My favorite game was, unsurprisingly, based on Dracula by Bram Stoker. You played the good guys (Jonathan, Mina, Arthur, Quincy, Dr. Seward, and Van Helsing) investigating reports of Dracula and other vampiric sightings, hoping to find where the vampire kept his lair and his vampire brides. The flavor text was largely out of Stoker's book (something I only realized in retrospect when I actually read the book in my 20s). Each team member had a special skill, but you could only bring three or four with you on a given mission, so you had to balance it out.

Ah-ha! Found someone else who'd played it. Oooh, and another article.

I also played a lot of Castle Adventure, another ASCII-based game.

---

[personal profile] greenet asks: "Favorite haunted house film? Or what makes for a good haunted house film?"

I like your standard, creepy, all-atmosphere-all-the-time, skin-crawling, corner-of-your-eye ghost story. It's one of the few horror genres where there's still consistently good material coming out. The Woman in Black was excellent, as was The Orphanage (except for one major plot hole). Over in Japan, you get Ju-on: The Grudge, which terrifies the living crap out of me because it wantonly breaks a major rule of the genre -- leaving the house does not help (and it's not like Paranormal Activity, where they keep saying that, but we never see it, so it becomes the world's lamest excuse for not having an additional set).

Farther back, I've really enjoyed (or been terrified by or both) The Others, Ghostwatch, The Changeling (1980), Shock (1977), The Legend of Hell House, and The Uninvited (1944). Poltergeist and the 1999 version of The House on Haunted Hill are a lot of fun, if not particularly scary in the sort of goosebumpy way I like.

I also like the somewhat goofier "Old Dark House" subgenre, where the "ghost" is usually an unscrupulous (living) individual after the ingenue's inheritance or something. These kind of movies have rotating walls, hidden passages, death traps, searches by candlelight, and, if you're lucky, a very good murder-mystery tied into the "haunting". Some great examples include The Cat and the Canary (both the 1927 and 1939 versions), The Bat (1926), Horror Island, The Black Cat (1941) and the original House on Haunted Hill with Vincent Price. There are some nuttier variations -- Night Monster has a supernatural twist (but still not ghosts) and Doctor X and The Door with 7 Locks throw mad science in for extra fun. I'm still trying to figure out a way to vid that whole subgenre.

Finally, beyond any categorization is the batshit insane Japanese horror flick, Hausu. I am still not entirely sure what I watched. I couldn't describe it to you. I can only tell you it is highly recommended, especially if you like a lot of surreality and experimentation and what-the-f**kery.
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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Karloff-Lugosi - Masters of the Macabre)
From [livejournal.com profile] elipie : Ramble on about your favorite Universal monster.

For sheer power an emotional resonance, nothing beats the Frankenstein Monster as played by Boris Karloff in the 1931 film Frankenstein (and to a lesser extent in Bride of Frankenstein and a much lesser extent in Son of Frankenstein). Anyone arguing that monster acting is somehow less than "regular" acting should immediately review the scene where we meet the Monster for the first time. Karloff, under heavy makeup, uses awkward, stilted-but-not-stiff movements to evoke the otherness of this hapless being.  Then, in one of my favorite movie moments, Doctor Frankenstein opens a slat in the roof and lets the sunlight pour in. The Monster, who in his brief time on Earth has only known the darkness of the lab and its dungeon, reaches up, stretching for the light, his eyes full of confusion and wonder. And just as soon as he finds something hopeful in his life, the doctor closes the slat, his experiment moving on. And Karloff's hands go out in this helpless, pleading gesture and I. just. fucking. break.

Karloff's performance throughout really captures the soul of the Monster, an Other born into a world that didn't want him and that he didn't ask for. It's a 75-minute commitment that I suggest you make. Now. I'll wait.

While I do love Bride of Frankenstein, I think it loses some of the Monster's pathos for a number of reasons. The movie is played much more strongly for comedy, for one thing. The Monster also spends a good chunk of the film playing henchman for Dr. Pretorious, which becomes his go-to role for the next several films, serving one human master after another, until he becomes a pawn to be left off the play board until the end of the movie by the time House of Frankenstein rolls around in 1944. Of course, Karloff exited the role after 1939's Son of Frankenstein, an excellent film that, unfortunately, reduces the Monster's role to boogeyman at the beck and call of Bela Lugosi's Ygor. Don't get me wrong, I love their dynamic and Lugosi kills it in that movie, but it's clear that they've burned through all of their interesting ideas for the characterization and development of the Monster.

If I had to pick a Universal monster that absolutely did it for me in all of the films in which it appeared, it would have to be The Wolf Man/Larry Talbot. But that's an essay for another day.




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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Naked Lunch - Writing on the Brain)
The great Festivids redactening has begun!

I'm not actually sure I'll make a vid of the film I saw last night, but I want to leave my options open. Also, it makes writing this post super-easy.

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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Jigoku poster)
Cheating again, but I figure that a horror experience is kind of the same as a horror movie? 

Anyway, [livejournal.com profile] elipie and I went out to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood last night. It's a good idea when you're going to one of these things to bring a close friend who you don't see as often as you'd like. You're going to spend a lot of time in lines, so it's a great opportunity to catch up or just philosophize (or yammer endless movie trivia if you're me).

We only ended up going through three of the mazes -- the Evil Dead, the Terror Tram, and Universal Monsters Remix, because lines. We also didn't get to the Bill and Ted stage show. Next year, I swear. We did go on the Jurassic Park and Mummy rides, though, both of which are consistently fun. Eli got soaked on Jurassic Park.

There's actually a funny story about that ride. So, the park is split into an upper and lower level. The Jurassic Park ride is on the lower level. Also on the lower level, there were generic monstery things walking about on stilt legs. Eli and I passed them by and got into line for the Jurassic Park ride behind a man and a woman. The woman glanced back, looked at me, and jumped. Then she laughed and turned to her friend/partner/husband/whatever and said, "Oh geez, I thought one of the stilt things followed us here." And then Eli laughed and said, "He's tall, but he's not *that* tall." It was amusing.

I didn't get a lot of joy out of the Evil Dead maze, since it was apparently entirely based on the remake. I was hoping for something along the lines of last year's Texas Chainsaw maze, which paid homage to the entire history of the series (including multiple versions of Leatherface), but nothing I saw really struck me.

The Terror Tram was fun, although I think I would get more out of it if I actually watched The Walking Dead (which is the theme of the maze). You do get to walk past the Bates Motel from Psycho and the crashed plane from War of the Worlds. Eli and I also went and did the Bates house photo op, which I'll post separately under a lock later (or Eli will).

Universal Monsters Remix... sigh. They replaced most of the monsters with either generic looking ones or stuff out of recent vintage horror movies. The Frankenstein lab (my very favorite part of the whole experience) had no actual Frankenstein monster in it, but instead some sort of weirdo creature with an exposed brain. There were a couple Nosferatus running around, which was neat, and the Chucky they had running around was an actual little person, which was disconcerting for those of us with very high fields of vision. However, the section with werewolves was entirely populated with Benecio del Toro-style lycanthropes. All-in-all, I think it's really sad that their one permanent haunted house maze turns its back on the classics during the Halloween season in some sort of weird effort at being hip.

Overall, I had a lot of fun, even if it sounds like I didn't. The atmosphere was great, the lines were non-annoying, and the company was good.

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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Default)
This is just a quick post, because I don't have a lot to say about this one. It's the first of three feature spin-offs from HBO's Tales from the Crypt anthology series, followed quickly by Bordello of Blood and much less quickly by Ritual (which is also somewhat interesting in that it is a remake of I Walked with a Zombie, although I suspect with actual horror*).

Basically, this is a fun, dumb horror-action flick with some gross makeup effects and a delightful performance by Billy Zane as a demonic tempter trying to get his hands on a relic that will bring on the apocalypse. Most of the film is a mix of an amped-up Night of the Living Dead and an amped-down The Evil Dead with some crazy-ass comic-style visuals courtesy of director Ernest R. Dickerson (a fantastic director who mainly does television now). Also in the cast (and uniformly great) are William Sadler, Jada Pinkett Smith, Brenda Bakke, CCH Pounder, Gary Farmer, Thomas Haden Church, and B-movie stalwart Dick Miller.

I Walked with a Zombie lacks an element necessary to a horror-film-as-horror-film in that, discounting xenophobia, there is at no point any real threat toward any of our protagonists. This isn't revealing the big twist. It's just not there. It's a bunch of people in a mess with some voodoo at the edges.

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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Default)
So every few years I watch Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining, not because I love the film, but precisely because I don't.

It's a much-beloved and highly-regarded horror classic and I've never been able to key into why. I appreciate the technical craftsmanship, but I've always been left with the impression that Kubrick felt like he was above the material. Additionally, I always felt that Jack Nicholson was just hamming his way through the part.

This latest rewatch failed at the 50-minute point for technical reasons -- my HD-DVD player is dying, apparently -- but what I did see left me with a slightly raised estimation of the film. For the first time, I could see Jack Nicholson's performance for what it was -- the picture of a man barely on the edge of civility, frustrated in his writing career, and feeling trapped by his marriage and fatherhood. I still think he's a bit too Jack in places, but you know, there's some bravura work being done if you can move past his usual tics.

The score by Wendy Carlos is creepy as hell and some of the tracking shots definitely add to a sense of unease.

That said, there's still this veneer of artifice over everything. The overabundance of Steadicam shots feels like a child playing with a new toy. The huge cavernous spaces of the Overlook definitely add to the feeling of isolation for the characters, but they also served to isolate me from the proceedings. As the film went on, I started getting an annoyed pang in the back of my neck, so when the disc died... I didn't really put any effort into finding an alternative means of finishing the film.

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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Jack Skellington - What Does It Mean?)
Once again, incredibly early, but I love Festivids and I get very excited.

Dear Festividder,

Here we are again. This is my third year in Festivids. This could be your first, your fourth, or somewhere in between. If it is your first time, I hope my requests do not terrify you in their verbosity. If you've been doing this for a while... I hope my requests do not terrify you in their verbosity. In any case, thank you for being awesome and adding to the Festivids experience!

Festivids is probably my favorite time of year, because vidders get to share the things they love with each other!

I hope that you have fun making whatever vid you make and that you love the end result. Festivids is about sharing love and squee and feelings and I will be happy with whatever you make for any of these seven fandoms, especially if you love them even one-tenth as much as I do.

Music-wise, I am easy-going. The right song is the right song for a vid. I do have a bulletproof musical kink for Celtic-infused folk and/or rock music, but in general, my tastes are cast far and wide -- rock, pop, folk, bluegrass, dance, alternative (whatever that means), singer-songwriter, rap, metal, emo, punk, New Wave, etc. I've found that genres I don't care for become amazing when they are the right choice for a vid, so there's nothing you should really avoid, as long as it's appropriate to whatever you're making.

The shortlist:
Almost Famous (2000) [safety]
The Body Snatcher (1945) [safety]
Gravity Falls (2012)
The Howling (1981) [safety]
Raumpatrouille / Space Patrol Orion (1966)
The Thin Man series
Vertigo (1958) [safety]

Almost Famous (2000) )

The Body Snatcher (1945) )

Gravity Falls )

The Howling (1981) )

Raumpatrouille / Space Patrol Orion (1966) )

The Thin Man series )

Vertigo (1958) )

Thank you so much for taking part in this amazing time of year. I just know that you're going to come up with something great!

Hugs and squee,
Jetpack Monkey

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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Default)
This is cheating, but I had to go to bed early last night and I'd already watched the haunted house episode of Haven. So, um, yeah. Enjoying my watch through of Haven. Sometimes it's a fun distraction/background noise and sometimes I get really invested... mostly in Duke Crocker. Duke is the best.

--

Festivids sign-ups open today! I'll be signing up just as soon as I figure out what I'm requesting/offering.

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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Karloff-Lugosi - Masters of the Macabre)
Needed something more sedate after Ghostwatch, so I plugged in Michael Curtiz's The Walking Dead, which is about as horror-lite as you can get while still qualifying as a horror film. Boris Karloff plays an ex-con who is framed for the murder of a judge. He's executed just before the evidence that would have exonerated him comes to light. A kindly scientist resurrects him with New Science, but he comes back an amnesiac. However, he seems to recognize the people who framed him -- even the ones he never met before. One by one he confronts them and one by one they die.

Oddly enough for a horror film, his confronting them and their dying are not connected by murder. In each case, they suffer an accident brought on by a combination of tension and guilt. Karloff's character never kills anyone and there are suggestions throughout the film that he is acting as an agent of God.

It's a very strange little film, but recommended for a bravura Karloff performance and Curtiz's excellent direction.



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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Father Merrin - All Your Demons)
Pipes lives under the stairs. Pipes is in my room. Pipes is coming for me. Pipes is coming for you. He's here. He's here. We are all of us doomed.

So, basically, the scared the ever-living crap out of me and gave me nightmares. I won't say much more on it, except that if you want a good solid spooky experience, this BBC production from 1992 is an unusual but effective means to that end.

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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Dale Cooper - Damn Good Coffee)
I forgot to post yesterday and I, um, neglected to watch a horror film because Spartacus. Blame [livejournal.com profile] sweetestdrain . Anyway. Luckily for everyone, on Saturday I watched two horror films, so I can post about both now.

The Howling, watched via DVD.
I have a lot to say about this one, but I'm saving it up for my Dear Festividders letter. Man I love this movie, though. Good stuff.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, watched digitally.
An entirely appropriate film to watch after Night Vale Live. There's a lot of Twin Peaks in Night Vale, just amped to 900. Anyway. This is a weird capper on the series in that it's (mostly) a prequel. Most of the events in the film are familiar because Dale Cooper already found out about them in the course of his investigation in the series. However, that doesn't rob them of their nightmare quality as Laura Palmer's last days are laid out. It's a David Lynch movie, so there are moments of exquisite weirdness and overplayed mundanity in equal share. I love this movie even as it irritates the ever-loving s**t out of me.

A few of my next few entries may be brief as I may be watching some horror movies for secret Festivids purposes. Shhhh.  

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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Henry Frankenstein - l33t g33k)
Island of Lost Souls watched via Criterion Blu-ray

In 1956, Paramount Pictures sold the majority of its pre-1948 film library to MCA for quick cash. MCA later merged with Universal, leaving Paramount's early film catalog with that studio. This presented a problem in the question of releasing Paramount's early horror films on DVD, because Universal had its own horror brand that was strongly linked with films that were explicitly produced by that studio. Universal tended to release its horror films in sets or special editions centered around a particular monster. Paramount's horror films were few and tended not to fit in with Universal's marketing/groupings.

At least two of the films, 1932's Island of Lost Souls (adapted from H.G. Wells' "Island of Dr. Moreau") and 1944's The Uninvited (a haunted house tale starring Ray Milland), are bona fide masterpieces, but for a while it looked like they would never see a proper release beyond the existing VHS versions*. In the case of Island of Lost Souls, prospects were particularly bleak, as no original negatives survived -- only some prints that were in less-than-stellar condition.

Thank the cinema deities for Criterion Collection, which licensed both films from Universal for release on both DVD and Blu-ray. Island came out in 2011 and The Uninvited will come out later this month.

I watched this last night after not having seen it for decades and it really holds up. It came in right before enforcement of the Production Code started, so there's a lot of surprising elements, like a quick scene of mad scientist Dr. Moreau (an excellent Charles Laughton) performing surgery on one of his man-animal creations. The ending was just as brutal as I always remembered it being (while being mostly suggested after a tasteful pan away).

There are, unsurprisingly, some major problematic elements. The evolutionary scientist is an unscrupulous madman who casts himself as the god of his creations. There's also a lot of sexism and gender essentialism surrounding the two female characters. One of the underlying themes is "there are things man is not meant to know", but thankfully that's buried under "brutality begets brutality" and "maybe science works best with patience and possibly some control groups" (I may be bringing my own prejudices in here a bit on that last one).

In any case, it's a brilliant, brilliant film, featuring great performances from Laughton as well as Bela Lugosi in a small role as the furry, wide-eyed Sayer of Law. The screenplay is succinct and to the point, while still weaving in the themes I discussed earlier (and a few others). Director Erle C. Kenton works with cinematographer Karl Struss to create some visually dynamic sequences, including some unnerving uses of shadow.

Whatever Criterion did to restore the film works, because it's looking gorgeous. They also put together a rich package of extras. I only had the chance to sample two of them. One is a featurette where Devo's Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh discuss the influence that Island of Lost Souls had on the underlying philosophy of the band during its formation. The other is Devo's difficult-to-watch-but-impossible-not-to-watch 1976 short film In the Beginning Was the End: The Truth About De-Evolution, which features them performing Secret Agent Man and Jocko Homo.

I will post about Night Vale Live separately later on. Probably. I will say that Bobak Ferdowsi was there, sitting across the aisle from our group. That was frickin' awesome.

* Paramount had at least one other horror masterpiece from that era, 1931's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but that is owned by Warner Bros. for complicated reasons.
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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Plan 9 from Outer Space)
Watched via Youtube

Last year during Festivids nominations and disputes, I had a huge stick up my butt about fandoms being complete (I disputed Land Before Time and argued that the nine billion sequels should be part of the fandom -- yeah, I was an asshole). Anyway, when I nominated The Howling, I nominated The Howling II alongside of it, because I knew that it followed on the events of The Howling.

I was wrong. So very very very wrong.

Yes, technically the film opens on the funeral of the main character from the first Howling and her brother is one of the main characters, but beyond that and the werewolves being the monsters, there was nothing in common. From a pure canon standpoint, they altered the ending of The Howling and also the established canon (mixing in a lot of religious mumbo-jumbo and vampire lore).

From a visual standpoint... I don't know how to really describe it, but the director loves randomly intercutting bits from other parts of the film. This is a great technique in vidding when used with restraint. It's a lousy technique when it runs rampant over a 90 minute film. There's a variety of wipes used throughout the movie... it's like somebody gave the director a catalog and he said, "I shall have them all!" The action is confusing and muddled, but there are flashes of inspiration here and there.

The acting is terrible. Sybil Danning plays the the werewolf queen, Stirba, in a manner that I think is supposed to be sexy, but kind of comes off as nonchalant and wooden. She's not helped by the number of "I am describing the evil things we will do now" speeches she has to give, which seem straight out of bad children's television. Heroes Reb Brown and Annie McEnroe hit their marks and speak their lines and no more can really be said for them. Only Christopher Lee does his stentorian best with some terrible dialogue and comes off the best of anyone in the film.

Oh and they either didn't have money for either music or they really liked the song "Howling" by Stephen Parsons, because it pops up five or six times throughout the film, including over the end credits.

So, yeah, it's terrible. Enjoyably awful in some ways, but just embarrassing and difficult for the most part.

--

Going to Night Vale Live tonight. I'll post about that tomorrow along with whatever movie I end up posting about.

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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Default)
Watched through Netflix Instant.

Alas and alack, this is not related to the bats**t genius Japanese film Hausu. It is a head-scratcher, but for less awesome reasons.

The story is that a horror author (William Katt) moves back into his childhood home to work on his next book, a memoir of his time in Vietnam. This same house is where his aunt recently committed suicide and where, a few years back, his son went missing. The set-up is for a dark, moody haunted house film that uses the haunting to highlight the author's tragedy.

What happens instead is a series of wacky supernatural vignettes, several of which either seem to call back to The Evil Dead or predict Evil Dead II (released the following year). Interspersed throughout the film are a series of 'Nam flashbacks that only (barely) become relevant at the end of the movie.

There's a number of funny parts in the movie and some great uses of unexpected space (there's a bigger-on-the-inside moment that was very familiar to me as a Doctor Who fan). The mood whiplash, though, was a bit too much to take. I really wish the filmmakers had figured out what they were doing and where they were going with this.

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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Plan 9 from Outer Space)
So I decided to get on the posting once every thirty days bandwagon and decided to tie it into something else I'm trying to do every day this month: watch a horror movie.

Since Classic-Horror.com shut down in June 2012, I haven't been on a really good horror binge, so I thought now was a good time, being October and all. I'm making a concentrated effort to focus on films I haven't seen or that I haven't seen in a really long time.

I might post about other stuff (Festivids is a thing that is happening that is amazing and I cannot wait for sign-ups), but I will at the very least try to make a post talking about what I watched the previous night.

Last night: The Black Sleep (1956) via Netflix Instant.

It's a mad science movie about a doctor who is experimenting on the human brain in the 19th century to save his coma-bound wife. And he's not gonna be bothered with ethics! 

This is mostly notable for featuring a roster of horror greats -- Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, Tor Johnson (for values of great), and Basil Rathbone. Of the four, only Rathbone has anything to do as the mad doctor. The rest all play the various results of Rathbone's experiments, dull-eyed (very dull-eyed in Johnson's case) and mostly mute (Carradine has lines and they are delivered with all of the theatrical pomposity one expects from the man).

This could be considered Lugosi's last legitimate film role. Although Plan 9 from Outer Space came out a few years later, Lugosi's part was scraped together from unrelated footage filmed for another project.

The IMDb just confirmed something I suspected -- that Akim Tamiroff's role as a conniving body-snatching Romani was originally intended for Peter Lorre. It had some serious Lorre vibes to it.

There were some interesting visual choices made here and there, but it was mostly a pretty rote mad science affair. Rathbone was excellent, however, as he always is.
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jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Default)
[personal profile] par_avion pointed me in the direction of an Ain't It Cool News post where Harry Knowles talks about one of the formative experiences of his youth -- a collection of classic horror film clips set to music that he bought on 16mm when he was very wee. He also put that video up on Youtube for others to view.


In the comments on the Youtube page, the maker, Cortlandt Hull, left a comment with a little more information. The piece, which had a title card that was cut off in the version Knowles uploaded, is called "Rendezvous" and it debuted at the Famous Monsters of Filmland Convention in 1975. 1975 is also the year that Kandy Fong started doing her thing with Kirk and Spock stills.

Hull had the advantage of having access to the actual films -- probably either 16mm dupes or the 8mm home movie versions released by Castle Films -- but it must have been insanely difficult to put together in any case.

There's a version with the title cards intact but crappier visual quality over here.

I'm afraid I'm no historian when it comes to horror fanworks, so I don't know if this was the first such horror songvid or if there was a tradition that continued from it. I know that Hull made a sequel later.

It's just interesting to see the parallel developments. If horror fandom picked up vidding in the 1970s/1980s, they'd dropped it by the time I came onto the scene (I think -- admittedly I was more of a horror fan than a member of horror fandom). The horror vids that we see today developed out of the tradition and community that came from media/slash fandom and AMVs.

DW Post: http://jetpack-monkey.dreamwidth.org/477586.html (comment count unavailable comments). Comment at either location.
jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Victor Frankenstein - Weird Science)
Title: Slippery Slope
Source: The Wicker Man (1973)
Song: The Dø - Slippery Slope
Warnings: NSFW nudity, cruelty to insects, violence.

Summary: Sgt. Howie comes to Summerisle in search of a missing girl.

Password: summerisle


Download 24.9MB MP4 file (right/ctrl-click and "Save link as...")

Notes behind the cut )
DW Post: http://jetpack-monkey.dreamwidth.org/474400.html (comment count unavailable comments). Comment at either location.
jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (D'Argo - Entertained?)
Title: A Quite Serious Thematic Analysis of the Works of David Cronenberg
Source: The films of David Cronenberg
Song: Justin Timberlake feat. Timbaland - SexyBack
Warnings: NSFW nudity. Gun violence with muzzle flash. Strobing lights. Violence, sexualized violence, body trauma, gore... pretty much everything, to be perfectly frank.

Summary: Visceral sexuality in cinema.

Password: shapeofrage

Cronenberg from Jetpack Monkey on Vimeo.


File download: 25.9MB MP4 (right/ctrl-click and "Save link as...")

Notes below the cut... )
DW Post: http://jetpack-monkey.dreamwidth.org/473555.html (comment count unavailable comments). Comment at either location.

Roger Ebert

Apr. 4th, 2013 05:04 pm
jetpack_monkey_ljarchive: (Default)
Kind of a mess right now. Roger Ebert was a huge, huge influence on my writing as a film critic and he was just a generally decent person to boot. And now he's gone. Two days ago he posted that he was doing something new in his life and only reviewing the films that he wanted to review. I cracked to my mother on the phone this morning, "I guess he only wanted to review Ingmar Bergman's new works."

Ebert intersected my life twice. The first time he, unknowingly, put me back on the right course after I detoured. The second time, he helped me clarify my convictions.

2002: A Film Critic's Odyssey )

.

The Discreet Charm of the Dead Teenager Movie )

That got really long. I apparently have a lot of feelings pent up on various things. Ahem.

Anyway. I'll miss you, Roger. The way you communicated your feelings on movies was unparalleled. When you loved a movie, it was sublime. When you hated a movie, the flames of enmity burned through your words. But where you really were different was when a film bored you. There you were able to riff on movies in general and the expectations we hold for them and any number of other subjects, all loosely tied to the film under the glass -- and somehow all of that divergence from the movie communicated exactly your feelings on it.

DW Post: http://jetpack-monkey.dreamwidth.org/469874.html (comment count unavailable comments). Comment at either location.

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