This is how I know I'm getting old: My favorite character actors are dying. Here in 2022, we lost two big ones. Fred Ward always brought a keen mixture of grizzled but strangely vulnerable to everything he did, appearing in cult classics like “Tremors” and “Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.” David Warner, meanwhile, seemed like a constant presence in my childhood, thanks to plum roles on “Batman: the Animated Series” and the second “Ninja Turtles” movie. He too was a regular in the kind of nerd-friendly fare I've eaten up my whole life, ranging from “The Omen,” to “Star Trek.” I wanted to pay tribute to both actors this October... And they both happened to appear in a pretty interesting little film from 1991 called “Cast a Deadly Spell.”
The film takes place in an alternate version of 1940s Los Angeles, where magical spells and creatures of legend and lore are everyday realities. Seemingly everyone uses magic to make their lives easier. Except for one man: A private detective named Harry Philip Lovecraft. Harry is hired by millionaire Amos Hackshaw to retrieve a book. A chauffeur disappeared with a particular tome known as the Necronomicon, delivering it to a sleazy nightclub owner named Borden. Lovecraft attempts to locate the grimoire, coming in contact with Hackshaw's unicorn wrangling daughter, an old flame who's now a nightclub singer, and a whole host of monsters. Soon, he uncovers a plot to awaken the Great Old Ones and overturn the world as we know it.
Maybe combining these well-worn tropes with monster and magic is what makes it all feel so fresh. The special effects throughout “Cast a Deadly Spell” are endlessly clever, doing a significant degree of world-building. You'll see a floating wine glass or some sort of magical ritual in the background with no explanation, giving us hints of a bigger world. A werewolf is being interrogated, a vampire sits in the holding cell, and zombies work on construction sites. The clever mixing and matching the film does is evident in scenes like a frustrated landlord cleaning gremlins out of his car or a demonic summoning happening in the back of a greasy spoon dinner. Or a mob hitman turning a pile of cash into a deadly weapon. The film's creature effects are beautifully realized. A gargoyle that appears throughout is a cool but classical design and the climatic appearance of none other than C'thulhu himself is a hell of a payoff.
If you're wondering why you've never heard of this delightful little hybrid, that's probably because it never played in theaters. Despite noticeably high production values, “Cast a Deadly Spell” was made for and debuted on HBO. I don't know if the film was ever considered for a theatrical release or if it was designed for the small screen. Either way, it never looks anything less than totally cinematic. Even in our modern age, when the marquee value of H.P. Lovecraft is a lot higher than it sued to be, “Cast a Deadly Spell” remains largely overlooked. If you're a fan of the eldritch author, film noir, or just crazy creature effects, absolutely track it down. As for Fred Ward and David Warner, they will both be dearly missed. [9/10]
From a certain perspective, the western and horror genres meeting up was inevitable. The western was the main populist genre all throughout Hollywood's Golden Age. Into the sixties, it dominated on television. Horror, meanwhile, has been popular since the thirties. Someone deciding to stick a cowboy hat on a vampire was only a matter of time. Horror and westerns were usually also B-pictures, produced cheaply to turn an easy buck. It is then unsurprising that most horror/westerns aren't very good. The combo of “Billy the Kid Versus Dracula” and “Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter,” two mash-ups filmed back to back by the ridiculously prolific William Beaudine, have long been regarded as legendary bad movies. Well, I watched “Billy the Kid Versus Dracula” a few years back and kind of liked it, so let's give the other one a shot.
Reports of Jesse James' death have been greatly exaggerated. The infamous outlaw rides into a western town with Hank, a dimwitted muscle man. They meet up with another gang, who are planning a stage coach robbery. Following a betrayal by another robber, Jesse and the injured Hank flee into the countryside. A kindly woman named Juanita leads the desperate duo to the laboratory of Maria and Rudolph Frankenstein. Maria has been transplanting brains in an attempt to create perfectly obedient slaves, which has decimated the population of Juanita's village. One look at the musclebound Hank and Maria knows he'll be a perfect brain-swapped creation.
After an introductory scene at the beginning, the film takes far too long to reintroduce the Frankensteins. When they do appear, Maria spends more time arguing with her well-intentioned brother, Rudolph, than with doing mad scientist shit. Which mostly entails wearing hilariously goofy helmets and fiddling with anachronistic diodes. She doesn't assemble her monster from corpses, instead plopping an artificial brain into a living body. Once Hank is transformed into a lumbering brute, even renamed Igor, he doesn't do a whole lot. He stiffly walks around a few scenes, not strangling anyone until the climatic scene. Underwhelming, even by the standard of low-budget Frankenstein riffs.
As far as the kind of unintentional humor you might expect from a goofball B-movie like this, “Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter” is sadly short of that too. The only time I chuckled was when Juanita announced her love for James in the most overwrought way possible and the hilariously on-the-nose epitaph on a gravestone in the final scene. “Billy the Kid Versus Dracula” was kind of charming in its thrown together sincerity and low-fi melding of genre clichés. The follow-up, sadly, is just lame. With insubstantial monster action and totally underwhelming western tomfoolery, this one is best forgotten. [4/10]
The CW would draw inspiration from internet horror stories for “Two Sentence Horror Stories,” an anthology series that has run on the network for a few years now with little fanfare. That's undeserved as both episodes I've seen now are good. “Tutorial” begins as if it's a make-up tutorial video, Karine speaking directly into her webcam and talking to her followers online. When she's away from her screen, we see a man sneak into her home. As more strange things begin to happen throughout the house, Karine slowly becomes aware of the intruder. And that's when the startling truth is revealed.
The format of a two sentence horror story necessitates that the second line puts a dramatic spin on whatever information the first line gives us. “Tutorial” follows this structure, as it's essentially two types of stories in one. The first is a standard home invasion tale, not too dissimilar to “Hide,” the episode I watched last year. The episode works best when limiting its point-of-view to Karine's webcam. Seeing a hooded figure sneak into your home is scary enough. The handful of times the episode cuts to other locations around the house is distracting. I guess Karine has her whole home wired for broadcast? It gets even weirder when text appears on-screen, interacting with various objects and events in a manner that, I guess, is typical for make-up tutorial videos.
On account of Henry Selick's “Wendell and Wild” finally coming out – expect a review of that in the near future – I felt it was fitting to look back at one of his earlier shorts. “Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions” was designed as a pilot for MTV, back in the days when they were showing a lot of weird animation. Its vague and extremely weird plot follows Robert Potemkin, a man who lives in the attic with his collection of talking iguanas. He can use the iguanas to enter an alternate universe, populated by living photographs. After saving the photo people from hostile scissors, Bob's conjoined twin sisters play a cruel prank on him.
Even describing “Slow Bob's” plot doesn't give you a clear idea of how unusual it is. The iguanas talk in gravelly voices and they drip a strange fluid, Bob crawls around on the ceiling. In the house, Bob is played by a live actor. He receives a message through a spider web, the letters appearing in the silk. When he enters the photo dimension, he becomes a piece of cut-out animation and fights off a race of hostile, living scissors. His sister(s), meanwhile, are brought to life with classically Selickian stop motion effects. They torment Bob by painting him yellow and blue, leaving little X marks all over his clothes. The entire thing is given a sinister, ambient score from the Residents, who are exactly the kind of weirdos I'd expect this sort of thing to appeal to.
Even as someone who likes weird shit, I'm a bit baffled by “Slow Bob.” It's such a concentrated blast of oddness, packing so much insanity into an eleven minute run-time. But you can't say that it isn't creative. In fact, the sheer number of odd ideas on-display here suggest a limitless amount of creativity. Everything is brought to life in an inventive fashion, from the frame-by-frame way the photograph people move. Or the odd ball way Bob moves around the house. I can't imagine the amount of work and details that went into such an elaborate production as this. I also can't imagine what a series version might've looked like. I can imagine Tim Burton loving this, which supposedly he did and that's why Selick directed “Nightmare Before Christmas.” I don't really know what to make of “Slow Bob” but it's impressive, that's for sure. [7/10]
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