Barbara Crampton had a great run as a scream queen back in the eighties, appearing in several instant classic Stuart Gordon films and minor but no less beloved flicks like "Chopping Mall" and "Puppet Master." It would seem, to horror fans anyway, that Crampton mostly disappeared in the nineties. The truth is she was just doing long stints on soap operas and raising her kids. In the last ten years, Crampton has been making her comeback in films like "You're Next," "We Are Still Here," and "Sacrifice." The most buzzed about film in this Crampton Renaissance is this year's "Jakob's Wife."
Anne is Jakob's wife. He is the beloved minister of their small town, whose milling industry has long since died. Anne fulfills all the duties of a pastor's wife but is growing frustrated with her stale marriage. When she meets an old boyfriend for dinner, they end up snogging inside the abandoned mill... Where both are attacked by a vampire. Anne finds herself revitalized by her bloodsucking transformation, challenging Jakob's authority. When her husband discovers that his wife is now among the undead, and that more vampires are infesting their town, their marriage comes to something of an impasse.
“Jakob's Wife” starts out in a fairly low-key mode, mimicking the lifeless mood of Jakob and Annie's marriage. Yet, as the movie goes on and more of its vampire business is revealed, it becomes a surprisingly wacky horror-comedy. An energetically cut montage of a revitalized Anne dancing around the house to a cover of “Bloodletting,” an invigorating scene, concludes with the hilarious moment of her projectile vomiting cow's blood. Husband and wife's conversation about what to do about this vampire situation plays out, not like grand drama, but like petty bickering between an old married couple. Which is essentially what it is. This amusing mixture of the macabre and the mundane is also evident when Anne and Jakob's neighbors stop by unexpectedly. Or a small child harasses them while sneaking around with a dead body. Shots like a recently revived corpse wandering around the house with a blanket over it's head or an extended, darkly hilarious scene devoted to Anne's visit to the dentist add a nice layer of manic, physical comedy to the film.
The connective fiber here is a pair of top-shelf performances. Crampton is excellent all throughout the film. As a bored, put-upon housewife, she brings an accurate amount of sadness and resignation to the role. A dinner party, where she's quietly prevented from talking several times, is almost heartbreaking. Crampton also excels at portraying Anne's rebirth, showing her effortlessly lifting a couch and embodying her newfound youthful energy. Equally good as Jakob is Larry Fessenden. Honestly, I was surprised when Jakob turned out to be a fairly normal dude, as (great indie horror director turned quirky character actor) Fessenden usually plays weirdos. Yet Fessenden is also excellent, showing the limitations of Jakob's personality without turning him into a bully or an aggressive asshole. He's just a normal guy with some shitty habits but he can learn and become better.
Earlier in the season, I made reference to A.I.P.'s “I Was a Teenage Monster” trilogy. This was, in fact, a debatable statement. While “Blood for Dracula” is connected to “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” and “I Was a Teenage Frankenstein” by its stories and themes, a different film might be a more fitting caper on the loose trilogy. Herman Cohen would only produce the vampire flick, while providing the scripts for the Frankenstein and werewolf movies. Cohen would also do double-duty on “How to Make a Monster.” A film that would also function like something of a meta-sequel to Cohen's previous two teenage monster stories. So which entry is the third prong on this particular trilogy is really up to the viewer.
For two and a half decades, make-up effects master Pete Dumond has created monsters and madmen for American International Pictures. His most recent effort is creating the titular beasts for “Teenage Werewolf Vs. Teenage Frankenstein,” the studio's latest creature feature. It is also the studio's last creature feature. The corporate executives want to shift production to musicals and comedies. This means Dumond is getting sacked. He's none too happy about this and plots an elaborate revenge. He hypnotizes the young actors playing the teenage monsters, while make-up, motivating them to kill the producers that have betrayed him. Yet how long can Pete go about his murderous hobby without being caught?
Yet it's not like an accurate behind-the-scenes glimpse at A.I.P.'s process were what audiences in 1958 expected from “How to Make a Monster.” As a horror movie, this one is pretty goofy and fleet-footed. Robert H. Harris is amusingly histrionic as Dumond, who pontificates with great effort about how betrayed he feels. The monster movie thrills feature the drooling Teenage Werewolf strangling people, the Teenage Frankenstein wrestling in the dark, and Dumont making himself into a Mr. Hyde-esque murderer. Like the previous “Teenage Monster” movies, there's also a mildly diverting subplot about police detectives. The scene where they interrogate Dumont's weaselly assistant is a highlight. Another thing this one has in common with the previous “Teenage Monster” flicks is a random musical number. This time, John Ashley – a minor pop star of the time – sings-asks a set of scantily-clad dancers if they've got “ee-ooo.”
The movie doesn't just reference Cohen's past credits but his future ones as well. A studio tour is invited to watch the filming of “Horrors of the Black Museum,” which would be the producer's next project. (The first of several films he'd produced in England.) Ed Wood, of all people, would claim the idea for the movie was stolen from him. Supposedly his idea would've had a bitter monster movie actor – played by Bela Lugosi – taking revenge. There might be some truth to this, considering Cohen worked with Lugosi early in his career and he was supposedly the first choice to star in the film. Still, I think the two ideas sound pretty different from each other. (And both might as well have been ripped-off from an old “Batman” comic.) While I got some minor entertainment from “How to Make a Monster,” it's a bit too thin to be wholly satisfying. [6/10]
After it made the not-so-prestigious leap from HBO to USA Network in its fourth season, “The Ray Bradbury Theater” would adapt another one of the prolific author's scariest short stories. “The Veldt” takes place in a highly advance, future society. A married couple, George and Lydia, live in a high-tech home that is automated largely by computers. Their young children, Peter and Wendy, are obsessed with the “nursery.” Which is actually a room with wall-sized television screens that project immersive environments. The kids seem especially enamored with an African savanna environment, where wild lions stalk prey. When this fantasy begins to encroach on reality, the parents begin to be concerned.
One of the reasons Bradbury's story works so well is how it plays on a universal truth of the world: All children, to some degree, resent their parents. Peter and Wendy are, in their own way, challenging their parents' authority by playing all day with the nursery. Lydia feels like her role as mother has been usurped by the high-tech house while Peter shows his disrespect for his dad by calling him by his first name. Bradbury's text extends this conflict to a nightmarish extreme, with the children's fantasy life turning on their parents. The TV adaptation maintains some of these ideas, largely in the subplot of a child psychologist being called in to help the troubled parents figure out what's wrong with their kids.
Here's another bit of spooky animation from the sixties, adapted from a poem by Maurice Ogden. The ten minute short depicts a mysterious hangman with “buckshot eyes” arriving in an otherwise peaceful town and erecting a gallows before the courthouse. Every day, the hangman takes another person to his rope. At first, he takes a foreigner to the gallows. Then a Jew and then a black man and yet more people. After each execution, the gallows grow larger and more elaborate. The people in the town ask why each death was necessary and the hangman makes a convincing excuse, which he accepts. The hangings continue until the narrator is the only person left in the town.
Obviously, “The Hangman” is a parable about standing by, and not speaking up, when evil takes power. Probably inspired by Martin Niemoller's “First they came...,” it depicts a public that allows a murderous force to take control. The people kowtow to this authority, believing their reasoning when they execute another innocent person. Though most obviously about the Holocaust, which is made all the more apparent with the Hangman's earliest victims being non-WASP individual, it's a meaningful message to send at any point in time. There is some chilling about the way the story progresses, a singular force clipping away at everyone in town until a single person is left, one man who assumes he could never be the next person on the gallows.
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