Halloween 2026: September 14th

 

The Bride! (2026)
 

On the page, she was less of a character and more of a plot device. In chapter 22 of Mary Shelley's novel, Victor Frankenstein's creation demands his “father” make him a companion. At the last minute, Vic gets the jitters and tears the un-animated flesh homunculus apart. That was the extent of the character's original appearance. When William Hurlbut very loosely adapted the story to cinema in 1935, she was at least given a pulse, a swan's hiss of a voice, and an iconic hair-do. Her screen time also maxed out at about four minutes and she was still without name. She was The Monster's Mate in the credits. On the marquee, and in the public consciousness, she'll always be The Bride of Frankenstein. As men often do, we became enamored despite only getting a glimpse. Despite the briefness of her roots, the Bride has often reappeared alongside her groom. Sometimes she gets a name of her own too, like Eva or Pandora or Lily. Feminist readings of Shelley's work are, obviously, common. This has lead to many attempts to provide such a reading of a character who has always been known as an extension of a man. A big budget attempt arrived in March of 2026, emphatically entitled “The Bride!” Some accused it of being a fiasco, others admired it, a few said it was a future cult classic. Obviously, as a bit of a “Frankenstein”-head myself, I was waiting to formulate my own opinion. 

In 1936 Chicago, the spirit of Mary Shelley possesses a gangster's moll named Ida. She is pushed down the stairs, snapping one leg and dying from a blow to the head. Not long afterwards, Frankenstein's monster seeks out a doctor named Cornelia Euphironius. He asks of her to make him a companion, after being alone for a hundred years. They dig up Ida's body and reanimate her. She has only brief remains of her memory and is furthered scattered by Shelley's spirit continuing to randomly speak through her. Frank tells her that she's his bride. After some jerks assault her outside a night club, the monster gruesomely murders the men. The reanimated corpses are now fugitives. Their bond grows as they travel the country. They see a bunch of movies starring Frank's favorite song-and-dance man, Ronnie Reed. Ida, now convinced her name is Penelope, accidentally triggers a revolution of feminist rage. Sometimes, they kill some more people. A detective named Jake Wiles, along with his hyper-confident secretary Myrna, pursue the monsters. He has a connection to Ida's past, which the newly christened Bride will soon uncover herself. 

Most of the negative reviews of “The Bride!” high-lighted the film's biggest swings. The movie quite sincerely begins with Mary Shelley's ghost announcing herself as the author of “Frankenstein.” Multiple visions or dream sequences are featured. Sometimes these will roll over into the stated reality of the film without warning. There are multiple musical numbers. Sometimes featuring willfully anachronistic song choices, at least two of which are songs already associated with “Frankenstein.” The climax is a slo-mo shoot-out. It is, to say the least, bold. It is also a lot. The performances are pitched at Nic Cage-ian levels of over-the-top from the first minute and never really calm down. The dialogue is laced with screamed profanity. There are several frantic monologues. When violence and sexual assault occur, it's graphic. The script rarely stops to give the audience much time to catch up with some of its narrative choices and the thematic ideas are often endlessly jumbled atop each other. The film is coming at you so hard, all the time, that the result is both impressive and embarrassing for everyone involved. 

Sometimes, the film's full-throated belief in its own ideas left me staring in disbelief. Such as whenever Mary Shelley's ghost interacts with the title character, which usually results in her spitting out loosely linked words. One of those aforementioned dance numbers has the main duo being backed up by the people around them going into bone-crunching, spasmodic gyrations for no particular reasons. Other times, I found myself enjoying the film's unbalanced amalgamation of various thirties film genre. Frank's love of classic musicals is a cute reoccurring detail, the ultimate outsider imagining himself as a smoothly moving star on the screen. The film most finds its footing when the monster couple emerge as undead Bonnie and Clydes, road tripping across depression era America and causing trouble whenever it suits them. Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale's theatrical vamping can sometimes be overbearing, both performers very aware of how much Acting they are doing. Penelope Cruz, meanwhile, is operating on the exact right level of stylized camp as a fast-talking, hyper-observant “His Girl Friday” type character. Maybe Maggie Gyllenhaal should have just made the whole movie about her instead. 

If “The Bride!” was just an overly ambitious mash-up of Frankenstein, classic gangster flicks, and old-time musicals high on its own supply, it would probably have been better received. However, Gyllenhaal's film also had to be a grand feminist statement. By which I mean, the film contains a half-formed subplot that is basically “Joker For the Ladies.” Ida/Penelope seems able to intrinsically or psychically feel other women's trauma. This leads to a scene of her listing off grievances in a crowded dance hall. It seemingly inspires women all over the country to paint their faces and tongues like her ink-splotch pattern and go on violent rampages against men, while screaming out catch-phrases and slogans taken from Ida's ramblings. It's another willfully anachronistic element in the film, as it's difficult to imagine a Fourth Wave Feminist uprising like that appearing in 1936. Much the same way “Joker” featured its murderous clown protagonist inspiring indiscriminate violent protests that did not seem to have any actual political ideology or rationale behind them, this subplot comes across as vague gesturing at broad social injustices. In this case, Women Be Persecuted, that has no depth nor any actual scruples behind it.

We can tell that “The Bride!'s” womanly rage is, if not insincere, at least poorly thought out. From the moment the Bride and Frankenstein meet, he is constructing their past together. He invents stories about how they met, how they got married, their sex lives, and more. He's been lying to her and manipulating her. When Ida discovers this, she's understandably upset and decides to call off their relationship... Before the last act essentially sees her take him back through a convoluted series of events. This dovetails with the detective subplot, which has Peter Sarsgaard – Gyllenhaal's husband, it must be noted – apologizing for all his past grievances against specific women and women in general. The way that thread resolves itself feels like one long asterisk on the movie's man-hating philosophy. Yes, personal and social boundaries between men and women are very complicated. Where love and desire fit in throughout true equality between the sexes and reparations against the historically awful treatment of women is a lot to consider. At the same time, stopping your diatribe against the mass abuse of womankind to insert a few “#NotAllMen!” moments feels curiously wrongheaded. 

Then again, “curiously wrongheaded” is probably an apt description for “The Bride!” overall. In addition to all its other high-minded ideas and various pastiches, I think the movie is also a meta-textual riff on the creation of “Frankenstein” itself. Making Mary Shelley a character suggests that the story of “Frankenstein” exists as both a fictional narrative and a real event within the film's universe. Light spoilers here, possibly: I think the ending of implies that somehow the knowledge of these events was sent back in time and inspired the writing of the novel in the first place? It's not very clear. Tie these weird narrative swings together with the bizarre tonal shifts, ruminations on men and women that are both way too obvious and contradictory, and a general tendency for the movie to be nutty or abrasive a lot of the time... It's not surprising many critics were simply baffled by “The Bride!” At the same time, I can't entirely dismiss the movie simply because it is so bold and so specific. Gyllenhaal had Some Thoughts and Feelings and this motion picture is an expression of them. It is confused mess, the kind of campy spectacle that begs people to hate it, but I can't dismiss it either. [6/10]

 

Bates Motel (1987)

“Psycho” becoming a multi-media franchise is kind of funny, when you think about it. It's a story of murder and sex, considered so shocking and upsetting in 1960 that it nearly changed the direction of horror single-handedly, and based on an extremely gruesome true crime case. How does that end up on lunch boxes and doing cross-band synergy with Hello Kitty? However, the facade of the hotel and Bates house have been part of the Universal Studios tram tour since 1964. While the theatrical “Psycho” sequels were a little more respectable to the legacy of the original, this cannot be said for all the cinematic extensions of the Bates brand. In the late eighties, “The Hitchhiker” creator Richard Rothstein would attempt to build a similar quasi-anthology show around “Psycho's” most infamous landmark. The pilot was poorly received and NBC burnt it off as a TV movie in the summer off-season of 1987. I'm fascinated by ill-conceived spin-offs of beloved properties, which meant I obviously had to write about this.

Well, everyone knows Norman Bates was paroled in 1983 and resumed his stabby shenanigans shortly afterwards. What “Bates Motel” presupposes is... Maybe, while institutionalized, he would befriend a young psycho-in-training named Alex West. The two would become so close that, after his passing, Norman would will the family hotel and home to this guy. With Norman's ashes in hand, Alex heads to Fairvale fully intending to honor his late friend's wishes. He learns that, in addition to the reputation of Norman and his mom's murders, the motel is also said to be haunted. He instead finds a struggling actress named Willie squatting in the derelict hotel. The two misfits become pals and Willie helps Alex re-launch the business. That's when a suicidal woman named Barbara arrives and rents the room, encountering some ghosts of her own.

The role of black comedy within Alfred Hitchcock's work has often been discussed and analyzed. Grim as “Psycho” is, it too has shades of a puckish sense of humor within it. This makes the idea of a comedic “Psycho”-inspired series not as unexpected as it sounds. However, that doesn't explain the logic behind the decision to turn “Bates Motel” into a full-blown farce. And not like a good, Marx Brothers farce either. The tone throughout much of “Bates Motel” is that of hacky, eighties sitcom buffoonery. Billie is introduced in a colorful chicken mascot costume, a gag that comes back several times. Billie's aggressively eccentric shenanigans includes dropping a plate while making meatloaf and leaving the shards of porcelain in with the meal. An earlier scene has a pair of bums – Buck Flowers and Carmen Filip, forever type-cast – attempting to drink the urn of Norman's ashes, mistaking it for a liquor bottle. The opening montage establishes a flippant tone, aggravatingly self-aware of its own corniness. This is consistent throughout, resulting in a “Psycho” spin-off that feels like an episode of “Three's Company” or something. 

It is a very odd tone to attach to what is ostensibly a sequel to one of the all-time great horror films. It is far from the only odd choice made here. The perspective “Bates Motel” series would have featured something like a “Fantasy Island” or “Love Boat” type set-up. While Alex and Billie would presumably be reoccurring characters, a new motel guest every week would bring with them a new B-plot. This element of “Bates Motel” doesn't appear until the movie is half-way over, after nearly an hour devoted to Alex buying and refurbishing the motel. The result is a lumpily paced film that randomly introduces a new story in the last third. The plot itself is of debatable merit. Khrystyne Haje is a suicidal woman whose depression manifests more as bursts of moping, that quickly turn around when people are nice to her. She encounters a group of partying teenagers with a strangely fifties style about them. It's obvious immediately that these kids are ghosts, youngsters who took their own lives and have returned from the great beyond to convince someone on the edge to do otherwise. The script approaches a very morose premise with nothing but a detached sentimentality, making it clear that a depression so crushing that someone considers ending themselves was not being taking very seriously. Sling-shoting from the slapstick comedy of the first half to the maudlin, if deeply insincere, melodrama of the second is baffling

I suppose one must also consider the validity of the premise, of the Bates Motel becoming a nexus point of supernatural activity. I mean, stupider premises have supported longer running shows. However, a nostalgic party of ghostly teens does seem like an odd companion piece to a story of serial murder and repressed sexuality. The other horror element of the film does feature a approximation of Mrs. Bates, wielding a knife. The conclusion of which is rather “Scooby-Doo”-ish, in both execution and resolution. Whether Alex and Billie could support a weekly series is also questionable. The recently passed Bud Cort, with his diminutive form and bug eyes, could easily bring an air of weirdo menace to the part. Instead, he plays Alex as almost childish in his naivety, such a pure soul that it's weird when you remember the character is already a murderer. Lori Petty plays Billie and it's the typical kind of role you got Lori Petty for. The character is a textbook Manic Pixie Dream Girl, existing only to uplift a socially awkward guy. Petty's always charming eccentric energy is a plus though. A scene where the two share a kiss is one of the few moments when I feel like I was watching actual human beings in “Bates Motel.” 

One cannot be surprised that “Bates Motel” would fail to go to series. The entire film is so stiflingly ill-conceived that I'm a little surprised it made it to air at all. I was left being reminded of the “Star Wars Holiday Special,” a made-for-TV spin-off of a beloved and highly influential film franchise that, rather than attempt to adapt the original's tone to the medium, sticks it within the crushing constraints of then television cliches. It even ends with a fourth wall break, furthering the campy TV artifact atmosphere. Perhaps some musical numbers or unsubtitled Wookie shenanigans would have enlivened this. Unlike that notorious piece of television, Universal has made no efforts to suppress “Bates Motel's” existence. It used to re-air on the Sci-Fi Channel with some regularity and has remained in-print on DVD. And eventually someone did launch a successful “Psycho” TV show named “Bates Motel,” though it was more connected to the film. Now, whether I would rather watch this again or endure more serialized genre television tedium is a question I would rather not consider... [3/10]
 

 

Dead of Night: Return Flight
 

Another partially lost BBC horror short-runner from the seventies, the two episodes of “Dead of Night” I previously wrote about are among the eeriest horror television I've ever seen. “Return Flight” is the last of the series' installments know to still exist. It concerns Captain Hamish Rolph, an airline pilot whose wife has recently died. On a late night flight, he must suddenly steer the plane to avoid colliding with another plane... He seems to think it was a WWII bomber but that couldn't be possible, could it? His boss and friend Frank Warley tries to check on Hamish's mental health. He longs for his dead wife, resents his absent daughter, and is nostalgic for his brief days as a pilot in the war. He's also having reoccurring visions of events from the Blitz, as if the past is interrupting the present. Further investigation shows that a landing strip used to exist near where Hamish had his incident. This has deadly consequences. 

From the episodes that remain, it is clear that “Dead of Night” represented an extremely British style of horror story. Namely, one that favored foreboding atmosphere over any loud shocks or visceral thrills. The chills “The Exorcism” and “A Woman Sobbing” generated existed almost entirely in the realm of implication. Both episodes created an unsettling feeling by focusing in on a protagonist's journeys. They also made the limited settings of a British television budget work for them, creating an enclosing sense of isolation. “Return Flight” is similarly low-key in its attempts at scares. This is an hour mostly devoted to people standing around in rooms and talking. There are no attacking ghosts or obviously disturbing visions. The horror of the situation does not reveal itself until the final scene, which is delivered with the same understated dryness that you expect from those Brits and their stiff-upper-lips. 

Peter Barksworth gives a good performance as Hamish, subtly conveying the complicated mixture of grief and bitterness his wife's death awoke in him. Like many an older gentlemen, he longs for his youth. In particular, he longs for a glorious wartime experience he never got to live out. The war ended right after Hamish got drafted, denying him the chance to kill Nazis or die on the battle field. It's an interesting idea but “Return Flight” is sadly too understated. We are not fully allowed into the protagonist's mind. We only get brief mentions of his absent daughter. Or of how the memory of his wife's first husband hung over their marriage. The script is mostly about other people talking about the man's history. The episode would've done better to actually show us these things. Or, at least, give us more of a peek into the lonely life the man is now living. 

Also in keeping with the style of BBC ghost stories, “Return Flight” never outright explains the circumstances of what is happening. Clearly, this is a story about the past lingering around and refusing to stay dead. This was also true of “The Exorcism” and “A Woman Sobbing,” both tales of past spirits taking control of or beckoning to the living. (From what information we have about the lost episodes, it sounds like this was true of most of “Dead of Night.”) However, those scripts married the premise to themes of class inequality or feminine isolation. “Return Flight” can't quite make the same point about boomer idealization of the golden age or the scars World War II left on London. The result is an installment where it feels like nothing much happens, delivered in such a manner as to feel dull. A little bit of tension rises in the lead-up to the final note, getting at the idea of professionals trying to stay calm and not panic as the situation begins to spiral out of control. Exactly what you would expect the feeling on an airplane about to drop out of the sky to be. “Return Flight” needed more of that. [5/10]

Friday the 13th: The Series: Hellowe'en
 

Every TV show with even a little bit of a spooky vibe about it should do at least one Halloween themed episode. “Friday the 13th: The Series” got to it pretty early, by the fifth broadcast. Ryan throws a Halloween party in the antique's shop. Micki is a little uncertain about having so many people In the building but is reassured that all the evil objects are safely kept in the vault. Jack entertains the guests before some trouble-makers sneak into the aforementioned vault of evil. They awaken a ghastly presence: The ghost of Uncle Lewis. He tricks Micki and Ryan into grabbing a pendent that makes his spirit flesh. With the assistance of a mischievous imp sidekick, Lewis or the demon impersonating him attempts to fulfill a diabolic ritual before the sun rises. 

Five episodes in was definitely too early for “Friday the 13th” to set a story within its own collection of horrific artifacts. The heroes haven't been collecting them for that long! Despite that, Curious Goods is the best location the show has and I don't blame the producers for wanting to take advantage of that. The place looks cooler yet when decked out for a Halloween party. Once again, the scenes of Jack simply vamping in a silly costume and intoning about some bullshit like Tarot or Arthurian lore is the most entertaining element of the show. A shot of a glowing crystal ball or fog billowing across the location's floor, while Jack-O-Lanterns and costumed revelers are near-by, is this show reaching “The Haunted Mansion” levels of corny Halloween vibes. I approve of that. 

Unfortunately, “Friday the 13th: The Series” does not build the entire episode around its Halloween party premise. In fact, that side of the story and most of the October 31st energy is abandoned once Uncle Lewis' ghost shows up. I like the idea of the show centering its nebulous collection of threats around a single villain. Uncle Lewis immediately turning evil after coming back as a spirit seems to run counter to his crisis of conscience in the first episode. I do enjoy R.G. Armstrong getting a chance to ham it up a bit. This is the sole credit of Victoria Deslaurier, the short actress who plays the demonic little person. She's having a good time but I always feel a little bad when a small person gets cast as some sort of fantasy creature. There are some amusing shenanigans in this one, such as when Micki almost gets cremated alive. Jack and Uncle Lewis' ghost have a chant-off at the end, which made me chuckle. I do like how the final scene builds on the lore a little – Jack was in love with Lewis' wife – and ominously points towards the impending Friday the 13th as some sort of climatic event. [6/10]

 

Director Report Card: Guillermo del Toro (2025)

13. Frankenstein

 

Like many a young monster kid, Guillermo del Toro had his life changed by James Whale's 1931 version of “Frankenstein.” He has described Boris Karloff's performance as his equavelent to witnessing a saint. Like many a monster kid who has managed to transfer into a successful film making career, del Toro also dreamed about making his own version of the often told tale. Since at least 2007, he's been talking up his epic “Miltonian tragedy” take on Mary Shelley's iconic story. (Which he has also called “his favorite novel of all time.”) Bernie Wrightson's beloved illustrated edition of the book was cited as an inspiration for what the creature might look like with del Toro's regular monster man, Doug Jones, being cast in the part. As with del Toro's adaptations of “At the Mountains of Madness” or “The Hobbit,” it also looked like his “Frankenstein” was destined to remain unfilmed.

That all changed when Guillermo got his Academy Awards for “The Shape of Water” and Netflix stepped up with the offer to fund his dreamiest dream projects. After making his equally long-discussed “Pinocchio” movie, del Toro's “Frankenstein” was on the docket next. As another life-long “Frankenstein” obsessive who also considers the Whale's film his favorite movie of all time, the idea of what del Toro might do with the material tickled my brain. What would an adaptation of the greatest monster story from our greatest modern lover of monsters look like? The director himself has talked about the pressure of adapting such a beloved, frequently filmed story. About whether he could live up to his ambition of making the greatest “Frankenstein” of all time. Well, now the film is done and available for all to see. Reactions have been divided. What do I, as simply another classic horror nerd on the internet, have to say? 

Unlike many past cinematic “Frankensteins,” del Toro's film follows the general outline of Shelley's novel relatively closely. A Danish ship captain attempts to lead his crew on a perilous journey through the frozen Northern corners of the globe. Their journey is interrupted by two figures on the ice. The first is the eccentric Victor Frankenstein, nearly consumed by the cold. The second is an inhuman creation with monstrous strength who pursues the doctor endlessly. Within the bowels of the ship, Victor relates his tale. Of his quest to conquer death by assembling a man from pieces of the dead and reanimating it. Of how he succeeded in his goals but created a monster in the process. Finally, how he and his creation devoted themselves to destroying each other. The Creature tells his version of events too, of how he was brought into this world, how he learned to read and interact, and learned about cruelty and being feared. 

Of all the many films to feature the name “Frankenstein,” only a few have earnestly attempted to adapt Shelley's words. The general concept of the novel has spread through pop culture so far and so wide that the “Frankenstein” legacy is both almost insurmountable seeming and also potentially worthless. Everybody thinks they know what “Frankenstein” is about, even if they actually don't, to the point that there's little novelty to doing it again. At the same time, every meaningful reinvention or run-through of the material must contend with those preconceived notions about the story. For whatever my opinion is worth, I believe del Toro does a decent job of synthesizing Shelley's book with his own ideas and the more iconic elements of what “Frankenstein” is that have emerged over the decades. The narrative is a rough approximation of the book while the director also incorporates lightning animating the monster, a stone tower reaching to the sky, and a Dr. Pretorius-like mentor to Victor into the story. Visuals like the creature crouching among a mill's massive turning gears or being shot very specifically in the eye seem like deliberate homages to the Universal and Hammer versions. 

Of course, the reason why “Frankenstein” has proven so endlessly adaptable for so long is that the themes of the tale are extremely mutable. Purists argue that “Frankenstein” is a reflection of Mary Shelley's specific thoughts and feelings as a young woman and mother to a dead child. At the same time, “Frankenstein's” ideas about creating and being created are as universal as they come. Every adapter zeroes in on the element that speaks the most to them. To del Toro, “Frankenstein” is a story about fathers and sons. Victor's foundational trauma is the death of his mother and being raised by a cruel, perfectionist father. Like many boys before and since, he is doomed to inherit the tendencies of his asshole dad when rearing his own offspring. Just like his dad whipped him with a switch when he was anything less than ideal, Victor smacks the creature around when it disappoints him.  Father and son grimly mirror each other in their quest for mutually assured destruction, on the path towards a resolution of sorts. 

This, to me, is as valid an interpretation of the text as any other. Not the least of which becomes these earthly themes have cosmic ramifications too. Del Toro's lapsed Catholicism often informs his work and its presence is unmissable in his “Frankenstein.” Victor prays to a grand statue of an archangel, which becomes a foreboding symbol throughout. The creature is raised into a crucifix pose as it is brought to life. Adam and Eve are mentioned and a purloined fruit is presented as a symbol of plucked innocence. As Colin Clive observed nearly a century ago, bringing a body to life makes Dr. Frankenstein a lot like God himself. As a hundred dissertations about the references to “Paradise Lost” within the novel have discussed, the Monster is rejected by his creator like Lucifer was rejected by his. He did not request his Maker to mould his clay nor solicit to be promoted from darkness. Neither did any of us. If Victor is God and we are all the Monsters, that means we are all the abandoned children of a father that brought us into this world without ever asking our opinion about it. This is how del Toro grafts his themes of Daddy Issues to Shelley's grander ideas about making and being made. It is an interesting take.
 

Classically, Victor Frankenstein is classified as a Byronic hero, a proud and brooding protagonist whose passions are so great that they inevitably seal his own fate. Frankenstein's quest to create life ensures the end of his own. Del Toro visualizes the irony of Victor and his Creation's link. As he stitched together a man from different body parts, the doctor slowly looses more and more of his own pieces throughout the narrative. This is also a rather heavy-handed visual metaphor for Frankenstein's dwindling humanity. The creature, meanwhile, is given a Wolverine-style healing factor that sees him recovering from any wound, no matter how fatal. In other words, the monster can take any and all abuse Victor dishes out but Victor is inevitably going to break. 

Adaptations of “Frankenstein” have often zeroed in on the homoerotic undercurrents of a story about man trying to remove the feminine from the procreative process. Of two males becoming obsessed with each other. Del Toro's rendition sees Victor actually attempting to rear his offspring, who acts like a giant ripped toddler in a swaddled diaper. He keeps him chained up in the bowels of the phallic castle before ejecting him from the stone womb into the cruel world via an orgasmic explosion. As the two become fixated on punishing one another and destroying each others' bodies, the rivalry takes on a sadomasochistic energy. In its earliest form, the creature is introduced in a kneeling posture. By the end, he refuses to be submissive and punishes his master instead, the power transition being fulfilled. Is “Frankenstein” not a weird incestuous gay BDSM fable? Is Victor Frankenstein not literature's first Dom Daddy? Maybe not but I don't think del Toro is ignorant of some of the images he invokes here. 

How much of that was intended by del Toro is debatable. However, other reoccurring themes of his are certainly present in his “Frankenstein.” Christoph Waltz appears as Harlander, the Dr. Pretorius-like figure that appears to fund Victor's unorthodox experiments. He is an arms manufacturer, a war profiteer, who sees Frankenstein's work as a way to heal his own ailing, syphilitic body. (Another image of flesh falling apart.) The monster is partially stitched together from bodies dug out of a war zone while other parts come from prisoners about to go to the gallows. In other words, this Frankenstein monster is rather literally an offspring of the military industrial complex. Whether than embed with free will by a God above, he is the result of the rich exploiting the poor and the senseless destruction of life on the battlefield. This ties into war as a wasteful, only destructive exercise as depicted in del Toro's “Pan's Labyrinth” and “The Devil's Backbone.” 

This idea also points to how the creature is destined to be an outsider, assembled from pieces of underclassmen who have already been discarded and destroyed. That leads to a characterization of the offspring as more victimized than victimizer. The observation that Frankenstein's creation is not born a monster but rather made one by a cruel and unaccepting world is the most surface level reading of Shelley's material as possible. Del Toro's telling is so laser-focused on this idea that it almost totally takes the monster out of Frankenstein's monster all together. The creature's bond with a blind man and his subsequent rejection by the other people in the cabin are maintained. Almost every other interaction the creature has with the outside world is excised. The creature's quest to take away everything his creator loves is almost entirely neutered, as Victor's bond with his family is very different here. Frankenstein's monster should be misunderstood. However, del Toro is so determined to make the creature an innocent that is a victim of others' cruelty – mostly his dad's – that it takes a lot of the blood out of the story. 

This represents the film's biggest weakness. Del Toro talks often of his love for the gothic romance as a literary genre. If “Crimson Peak” already bordered on a parody of the style, his “Frankenstein” is an even deeper embracing of baroque melodrama. The climax of Shelley's novel, of Victor's creation being with him on his wedding night, is greatly altered for this telling. The exact machinations of how that plays out border on the improbable and then ends with someone looking at the doctor and literally telling him he's the real monster. This proceeds an ending which is unsightly in its sappiness. To tell you the truth, I've always felt that Shelley's book had an abrupt and somewhat unsatisfying ending. Victor dies, the Creature ruminates on the nature of this relationship, and then he walks out onto the ice. Del Toro attempts to come up with a more fulfilling conclusion than this but layers on the weepy emotions instead. It takes a movie otherwise tailor-made to appeal to me out on a disappointing note. 

And what of Elizabeth, traditionally Victor's bride-to-be? Del Toro's reshuffling makes her the intended of Victor's younger brother, her relationship with the doctor more flirtatious and unrequited. In a move all too aware of its Freudian implications, Mia Goth is cast in both this role and as Victor's not-long-for-this-world mother. Much as Victor's mom is a perfect beacon of love and acceptance, whose death leads her son down a path of heartlessness, Elizabeth is a symbol of pure accepting love. She immediately sees the creation as the innocent he is. Bringing the promise of Goth's dual role to fruition, Elizabeth emerges as both a motherly figure and a romantic one to the monster. (Also robbing the movie of a purer example of a Bride of Frankenstein character, which is mildly disappointing.) A lot of very angry people have already pointed out how this treatment under-serves both Elizabeth's role in the story and the Monster's own sexism, in favor of a cuddlier reading. Accusations of sexism have been tossed around but I rather see it simply as making the story a lot flatter, less nuanced and complex than it could have been.
 

This “Frankenstein” is, undeniably, a handsome production. The costumes are gorgeous. Goth, in particular, gets to sweep through her scenes in a succession of colorful, intricately designed gowns. The production design is gorgeous. The elaborately carved caskets that Victor's parents are put to rest in are unforgettable. The sets, especially that towering lab with its vein-like tunnels and ventricular chambers, are impressive. Some have criticized the cinematography as murky or too digital. I think it looks pretty damn good, especially the use of light cutting through dark rooms. The make-up effects are subtle, the creature looking seamless in his undead assemblage but also like something that could actually exist. The performances are strong all around. Oscar Isaac is the right level of blustering ego and bruised desperation as the doctor. Jacob Elordi is extraordinary as the gentle golem of flesh and blood, the actor totally absorbed in the role of an outsider possessed of an animal rage. Christoph Waltz does exactly what you pay him for as the scheming but poetic Harlander. This is a lovingly assembled and acted film.

Ultimately, I have my qualms about this “Frankenstein.” I wish del Toro was willing to make his monster as much of a terror as he is a misunderstood victim. I was looking forward to seeing the director's take on the more alchemic origins for the creature presented in Shelley's writing, something that is reduced to a passing mention here. As grand as the ambitions are, the film ends up feeling rather cloistered instead, trapped so much within the interior worlds of its protagonists and their spurned feelings. One can't help but wonder if this would've been a stronger film if its director had made it twenty years ago, when his work was meaner. However, I also think there's a lot of good work on display here and plenty of interesting ideas. There's going to be many more “Frankenstein” movies made after this one. Another big budget studio take is scheduled to come out in a few weeks already. There's plenty of room for del Toro's interpretation of this age-old tale. For all its flaws, it is still uniquely his version. [Grade: B]

 

Halloween 2025: September 20th

 

The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971)
Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh

I've been doing this all ass-backwards, as is too often my nature. Completely unintentionally, I realize now that I've been watching Sergio Martino's acclaimed run of seventies giallo in reverse order. In 2022, I started with the sleaziest of the lot, "Torso." The next October, I progressed backwards to the dreamier "All the Colors of the Dark." Finally, during last year's Blog-a-Thon, I covered "Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key." That was the one that finally truly won me over to Martino's particular take on the Italian style of murder thrillers. Now, I return to the beginning and reach "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh," Martino's first stab at this subgenre. Made after he directed two mondo movies and a spaghetti western – not to mention years working as a writer, assistant director, and cinematographer – it would be Martino's proper breakthrough and establish him as a voice onto his own in the Italian film industry. 

Once upon a time, Julie and Jean were lovers. A cruel man, he allowed her to explore her sadomasochistic fantasies and erotic fascination with blood. Eventually, the abuse became too much and Jean married Neil Wardh, a diplomat. The couple arrive in Vienna at the same time a razor blade-wielding murderer is targeting the city's women. Julie begins to receive flowers with threatening notes, signed by Jean. At a party, she meets the handsome George and his cousin, Carol, who recently inherited a great deal of wealth. Neil is an inattentive husband and Julie falls into George's arms. The sinister notes continue, soon escalating to threatening phone calls and black mail. Carol is killed by the same murderer terrorizing the city. The man sets his sights on Julie next. Jean insists he has an alibi. Julie, overcome with frighteningly erotic nightmares and pulled in different directions by the men in her life, feels like a sinister force is closing in on her.

There is a scene about half-way through “The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh” that might be emblematic of what we think of as a giallo. It concerns Julie's friend going in her place to meet the blackmailer in the park. She is watched by a man wearing black gloves, the camera assuming his point-of-view. He soon reveals a straight razor and attacks the woman, slashing her to death. Martino doesn't bring the style, intensity, beauty or poetry to the table of an Argento or Bava. He makes up for it by giving the audience exactly what they want. Another stalk-and-slash sequence in a parking garage is more suspenseful, focusing on Julie's panic as she's pursued by the armed man. It concludes with a brilliant misdirection involving someone coming up the stairs to her apartment. If the film wasn't made during the peak of the genre's popularity, I would almost take it as tongue-in-cheek at times. The ending has two accomplices swerving around on a country road in a way that seems deliberately absurd to me. But the audience paid for razor blade slashings and that's what they get.

This is not the only way in Martino's film is unapologetically lurid. The movie is filled with female nudity, women having their gowns tore off more than once. As the title indicates, the sexual fantasies of Mrs. Wardh are a frequent topic of conversation. Edwige Fenech and her male co-stars kiss and entwine and jiggle their asses. More than once, the film takes us inside her troubled dreams. I don't know how “strange” these vices are exactly – I've seen “Singapore Sling,” this shit ain't nothin' to me – but they certainly are very vice-ful indeed. Such dreamy imagery are paired with a score from Nora Orlandi. It mixes the groovy bass lines and jazzy dissonance with electric organ, mournful flutes, and sigh-like choral singing. When combined with the similarly flashy sets and costumes, as indicative of hip Europe in the swingin' seventies as possible, the tone of a confused but irresistible erotic nightmare slowly encloses around the viewer. 

Perhaps “The Strange Vice” is preoccupied with taking us inside the troubling, lurid fantasies of the titular character simply because it provides the most flesh and blood to the audience. In gialli starring men, the protagonist are usually logical detectives trying to figure out the limited clues before them. When women are the stars, the stories usually concern a descent into madness. This says some clear things about traditional gender roles in Italian culture. At the same time, Martino's film comes off as entirely sympathetic to poor Mrs. Wardh. Her husband can't please her. Jean could but was also a creep and an asshole. George seems like the kind of swarthy lover she needs but he has secrets as well. No wonder her desires are driving her mad. This woman can't get a good fuck and a man who treats her like an actual human being. One imagines this is a plight that many a female has had to navigate. The film doesn't come close to escaping the leering sexism of seventies Euro-sleaze but, simply by centering the audience with a troubled missus, it forces us to consider the pain of a woman beset on all sides by vile, manipulative men. 

I do wish, however, that Mrs. Julie Wardh was a little more fleshed-out. Despite the whole movie revolving around the interior life of the main character, she remains somewhat distant to us. She is tossed back and forth by the different men in her lives, each one controlling her in diverse ways. Edwige Fenech looks as glamorous as can be in and out of a succession of trendy outfits. Ultimately, her history and what actually motivates her is kept obscure from us. This is probably because the film must leap through the hoops of a classically convoluted giallo plot. The last thirty minutes is a mishmash of double crosses, intersecting schemes and ploys playing against one another. Rather than center in on the heroine, the film devotes time to supporting players that exist to be red herrings or another branch of the conspiracy targeting Fenech. All in the name of catching the audience off-guard and leaving us as confused as the protagonist. 

These are flaws that Martino would improve upon in his future gialli. “All the Colors of the Dark,” which this film plays a lot like a prototype for, leans into the paranoid, dream-strewn mindset of its heroine more, determined to let us get to know her better. “Your Vice is a Locked Door and Only I Have the Key” – which takes its title from a line of dialogue here – doubles down on the depravity, madness, and style to considerable improvement. Still, there's no denying that this one is a strong slice of the kinky, twisting, bloody thrills we come to expect from the giallo concept. I guess next year I have to watch “The Case of the Scorpion's Tail,” one of these Martino made between Fenech collaborations that nobody seems to talk about much? That would break the backwards movements I've been making though... [7/10]

African Kung-Fu Nazis (2019)

 

Cinema made on the African continent has been making some global in-roads within the last decade. My Horror Around the World tour last year included a stop-over in Nigeria, which seems to have defined the West African school of film making for most people globally. Near-by Ghana would seem to have a thriving movie industry of their own, however. (Though the Wikipedia article on the subject currently carries a disclaimer that it might contain “hallucinated information” generated by A.I., because we live in the stupidest dystopia.) Outside of the colorful and bizarre home-made posters for imported pictures, Ghanese cinema is almost completely unknown among English-speaking film fans. Simply put, it's not often distributed over here. However, proving that a silly title and an outrageous premise can still garner attention, there is one recent exception to that rule. “African Kung-Fu Nazis” would seem to be the first martial arts movie made in Ghana. It is also, one assumes, the first Nazi-ploitation movie made in Ghana. I don't know if it's the country's first zombie movie but it's probably the most prominent example, at the very least. 

Recorded history would lead you to believe that Adolf Hitler died in a bunker under Berlin in 1945 and that Hideaki Tojo was executed by hanging in 1948 for his war crimes. The truth is, however, that both leaders escaped and fled, via submarine, to Ghana. Having mastered the secrets of Japanese karate, both men have reached peak human strength and conquered aging. Decades later, the Fuhrer and his minions have re-emerged in Ghana with the goal of establishing a Fourth Reich. He uses a magical flag to hypnotize the locals into Aryan zombie warriors, to build an army of super-powered slaves. Meanwhile, young martial artist Addae returns to his home town. He practices Shadow Snake Style kung-fu with the other members of his dojo. His master agrees to compete against Hitler and his Ghan-Arian goons in a contest of skills but end up murdered by the dictator instead. He also brainwashes Addae's girlfriend into becoming his new Eva Braun. Determined to avenge his sensai and save his community, Addae seeks the teachings of three great masters to become the greatest kung-fu fighter in all of Ghana. 

Here in the west, the perception of African film making has mostly been shaped by the likes of “Who Killed Captain Alex?” or “Pretty Liars 1.” Basically, reducing entire nation's cinematic output down to out-of-context clips or wacky trailers marked by awkward dialogue, stilted acting, zero-budget special effects, improbable stunt work, and archetypal plotting. White nerds laughing at foreign productions because of their perceived cheesiness is a long-held practice heavy with racist connotations. However, that doesn't mean local directors in those countries aren't willing to play into international perceptions. Ghanese studios are closely linked to Nigeran ones, my sources tell me. This means “African Kung-Fu Nazis” has the heavily accented English dialogue, amateur acting, low production values, and After-Effects provided muzzle flashes we ignorant Americans associate with Nollywood productions. It is an aggressively silly movie and very self-aware of that fact. The plot depending on unlikely occurrences, like two of the Axis power leaders surviving into the modern day or entire schools of African kung-fu, is only the beginning. A portly fellow being a master of drunken kung-fu, Hermann Göring being resurrected as a large black man named Horse-Man, Tojo developing a taste for African woman alongside glowing fists and a giant dong, or Ghanese people becoming Aryan through the magical application of flour are only a few examples of the tongue-in-cheek shenanigans on display here.  

I have a strong stomach for campy, self-mocking gaggery like this. “African Kung-Fu Nazis” certainly has some amusing moments. Each of the battles to the death concludes with hilariously over-the-top fatal blows, usually accentuated with knowingly clumsy digital effects. Some of the jokes are pretty good, such as Hitler describing his replacement Eva Braun as just like the old one but “tanner.” My favorite bit is the sudden appearance of a masked luchador among the combatants, who sounds a lot like “Macho Man” Randy Savage. Gratuitous product placement for a liquor brand known as Adonko Bitters – a real product, it seems – is a decent running gag. It must also be said that the fight choreography on-display isn't bad either. However, the kind of energy necessary to make fast-paced goofballery like this consistently hilarious can be difficult to come by. By the time Addae is training with the third master – a priestess in the woods who mostly speaks in non-sequiturs – or having a climatic shoot-out with Hitler, the joke has worn a little thin. You can only have a movie yell “Look at how irreverent and campy we can be!' for so long before it gets tedious. 

Obviously, the mixture of classic exploitation movie tropes is part of the joke here. Conspiracies about Hitler's survival and Nazi plots, kung-fu treachery, and zombies are exactly the kind of outrageous plot points the public at large associates with grindhouse cinema of old. To the point that all three – but the Nazis mostly – have been reduced to “le epic bacon meme” status within contexts such as these. I have no idea what significance the memories of Nazi Germany and the tenants of National Socialism has among the citizens of Ghana. One imagines these plot points were picked because of their easily recognized absurdity. Nazis being rendered as cartoon supervillains in comic books, video games, and movies like these is probably part of why fascism has so successfully re-emerged in the 21st century. If we can distance ourselves from these ideas by treating them as ironic bits, it's easy to say that we “aren't like” the villains of the past. However, the plot point that Hitler is literally swaying people to his will via the power of a flag does strike me as a commentary of sorts on the insidious appeal of fascism. All throughout the film, the German tyrant repeatedly emphasizes how this is a specifically Ghanese version of Nazism. Almost as if emphasizing an idealized cultural identity, no matter how vague or detached from the actual stated goals of a movement it might be, is an important part of the fascist playbook. 

Or maybe it's all merely a joke. Neo-Nazis have become obnoxiously difficult to get rid of but the iconography of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan should always be held up to mockery, right? I'm almost certainly reading way too much into an intentionally ridiculous movie. I certainly had some fun with “African Kung-Fu Nazis.” Everyone involved is clearly enjoying themselves. There's something very much to admire in directors and actors not letting a lack of resources keep them from making movies. However, this is an example of a joke that probably shouldn't support a feature length runtime. It also needed more of those pancake batter zombies. I guess their presence, the exaggerated violence, and multiple fantastical plot points is more than enough to qualify this for autumn viewing. A sequel was made this year but I think I'll want to see a Ghana-made film not pitched so clearly at snark-poisoned internet commentators in other countries next. [6/10]

 

 

 

Supernatural: Night of the Marionettes

Long before the Winchester brothers started their fight against evil, a different “Supernatural” aired on BBC1. The eight episodes were designed to replicate the tone of the gothic horrors of the twenties and thirties. This is evident in “Night of the Marionettes.” “Supernatural” had a framing device, where applicants to the Club of the Damned would tell a frightening story, the quality judged by whether they are allowed to live. “Night of the Marionettes” follows Howard Lawrence, a literary scholar in the 1890s, obsessed with Byron and Shelley. Alongside his wife Elspeth and daughter Mary, he is retracing the steps the poets took on their way to Villa Diodati. They stop at a mysterious inn in the Swiss alps. The remote building is staffed by strange figures. Howard discovers books related to Shelley in his room, coming to believe that the group must have stopped here on the same journey sixty years before. The inn attracts an audience with the macabre, life-sized marionette shows they put on. The puppet show – about a stitched-together corpse brought to life before it attacks and kills a maiden – disturbs Lawrence and his wife but fascinates their daughter. Lawrence begins to suspect that this bizarre performance inspired Mary Shelley to write “Frankenstein.” Also, that it's not merely a work of fiction. 

“Supernatural” does a good job of matching the literary tone of the Victorian horror stories it is emulating. There are quite a lot of period costumes, proper accents, and high-minded discussion here. This program definitely had a slightly bigger budget than the anthologies series that aired on ITV. “Night of the Marionettes” layers in references to “Frankenstein,” obviously, but “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” as well. The stage-play recalls the expressionistic visuals of that film, with this monster looking quite a bit like Cesare. The play is also rather sexually explicit, the revenant pulling the sleeping maiden from her bed and humping her before thrashing her to death. That Lawrence's daughter, also named Mary, begins to mirror Mary Shelley's writing style in her journal suggests a parallel history here. When the monster inevitably invades her bedroom at the end, it brings the simmering sexuality of Shelley's book – and most gothic horror of the period – to the surface. The Frankenstein monster is the Jungian shadow of the Victorian era, all the impolite and lowly tendencies the proper society of the time sought to repress. Naturally, its rampaging libido is unleashed on the virginal young girl.

This is also one of the few riffs on “Frankenstein” that acknowledge something that's always been implied in the text: That the monster is uniquely repulsive to the living because he represents a violation of natural law. The marionette show the innkeepers put on is certainly weird. Human beings moving as if they are stiff puppets on strings does create an uncanny effect. At the same time, it's not like the performance is that horrifying. However, the show seems to shake Lawrence, his wife, and daughter to their core. After Lawrence forces his way into the laboratory, what he sees seems to briefly shatter his sanity. Over the many faithful and loose adaptations of “Frankenstein,” there's been much discussion of man tampering in God's domain. Few actually entertain the idea that the monster's mere existence – a dead thing made living again – would have the same effect on a sane man as locking eyes on one of Lovecraft's Elder Gods. Truly, there are some thing we are not meant to know.

“Supernatural” definitely seems to wear its very English pretensions on its sleeves a bit. It's as stage-like and dialogue-driven as many of the other British anthologies I've been watching this month. However, “Night of the Marionettes” does pack in some solid, old time ambiance. The isolated inn is a shadowy location. The unusually pale staff certainly reminds one of Bela Lugosi's Dracula and Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera. The largely silent presentation of the marionette play does build an eerie feeling. That carries into the increasingly grim final act. I was surprised at the amount of tension this one built up before the end. It is slow and stuffy but quite interesting from a writing perspective, with some strong performance. Maybe they should've shot it in black-and-white though... [7/10]

 

The Addams Family: Ophelia Finds Romance

 

Someone must have decided that Ophelia Frump was too fun of a character to only use in flashbacks. Morticia's even more eccentric twin sister appears again, sending the family a message that she has been dumped by her latest boyfriend and is distraught. Minutes afterwards, she appears at the Addams' home... With her new beau besides her. That would be Horatio Bartholomew, an enthusiastic man who seems to be fabulously rich. Gomez and Morticia are immediately suspicious, suspecting he is a cad that is only after the family fortune. They go about investigating the man, discovering that the local rich boys' club haven't heard of him. Morticia then attempts a mock-seduction of Horatio, to test his loyalty. This goes quite wrong, Gomez quickly getting into a sword fight with his sister-in-law's new husband-to-be. 

In her second appearance, Ophelia does get a bit more fleshed-out. It would seem being a fool for love, always seeking men who ultimately dump her, is a habit of her's. Her super-strength and fondness for Judo throws is still present. However, she comes across as a much weirder, more bipolar figure. Her mood swings wildly between giddy and depressed. That would explain why Morticia is both protective of her and a little weary around her. You can tell Carolyn Jones enjoyed playing a character that does not have Morticia's calming sensibilities smoothing out her eccentricities. A little bit where Ophelia offers Horatio a daisy to pluck out of her hair, resulting in her leg kicking upwards, is probably my favorite physical gag in this one.

A big problem facing this episode is that the conclusion is evident to the viewer early on. Our protagonists believe Horatio to be a con artist. The rules of comedic pay-out dictate that they turn out to be wrong, the man actually being a genuine millionaire who inexplicably loves oddball Ophelia. That diffuses a bit of the punch from this one. Many of the joys in “The Addams Family” emerges from watching the lovable cast play off each other Putting a new character into the mix and building most of the episode around Gomez' interaction with him isn't as much fun. Robert Nichols – previously seen in “The Thing from the Another World" – is a decent guest star, though his ridiculous mustache tells you most everything you need to know about the character. The scene where Morticia attempts to seduce him does provide us with a chance to see the usually faithful wife being a bit more seductive. I enjoyed that. That same scene features a good bit of physical comedy with Thing. Probably the best joke in this episode is when Gomez excites himself by using some French. Not a stand-out episode but Ophelia is growing on me as a character. [6/10]

Halloween 2025: September 2nd

 

The Monkey (2025)

How does an otherwise mundane object acquire a sinister reputation? The earliest ads for a toy inspired by the organ grinder's monkey are from 1932, advertising a product from Louis Marx & Co. Starting in the fifties, Japanese companies would begin to produce mechanical toys depicting a small ape that banged cymbals. The most iconic example was made by Daishin and sold as the Musical Jolly Chimp. The primate wore a yellow vest and striped pants, banged its cymbals, bopped its head, bulged its eyes, flared its lips, and screeched. While that sounds innocent, these toys were a frequent source of terror for people who grew up with them. The sudden noise of the cymbals, the jerky mechanical movements, the deranged facial expression and obnoxious sounds combined to create an uncanny, startling appearance. In the decades since, such toy monkeys have often appeared in pop culture, almost always as an ironic source of fear. They've pop up in video games, an especially freaky example appeared on the "Monkey Shines" poster, and Disney used it as a minor antagonist in "Toy Story 3." 

An obscure 1984 horror movie called "The Devil's Gift" made such a monkey into a demonic force of evil. (The film was later recycled as a segment in the anthology feature, "Merlin's Magical Shop of Mystical Wonders," which was mocked on one of the last episodes of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" to debut on the Sci-Fi Channel.) However, "The Devil's Gift" lifted its premise from a 1980 short story by Stephen King called "The Monkey," providing the cover image for King's collection, "Skeleton Crew." Which is how this old toy worked its way into my childhood nightmares. Frank Darabont wrote a script for a feature adaptation of "The Monkey" in 2007 but it wasn't until earlier this year that the foreboding chimp finally appeared in theaters. As director Osgood Perkins' follow-up to "Longlegs," and given a similarly clever advertising campaign, "The Monkey" received a good deal of hype and opened to solid box office back in February.

Twin brothers Hal and Bill Shelburn were raised by their single mother. While going through their absentee father's possessions, they discover a drum playing mechanical toy monkey. The monkey banging its drum seems to trigger horrible accidental deaths. While mad at Bill, Hal cranks the monkey's key and hopes it'll target his brother's. Instead, their mother dies of a freak embolism. Attempts to destroy the monkey are unsuccessful and the boys decide locking it in a box and tossing it down a well is their best bet. Years later, an adult Hal remains distant from his brother and his own son, Petey. During what was supposed to be his final weekend with Petey, before surrendering custody of the boy to his mom and step-dad, horribly fatal accidents begin to happen around Hal. The monkey has returned and it's banging its drum more often than before. Attempts to locate the cursed toy leads Hal back to his now reclusive brother. 

Why those old chattering monkey toys unsettled so many people seems partially based in their tendency to go off unexpectedly. King's story largely used that randomness as a symbol of the chaotic nature of life and death. Perkins' film jumps off from that point. The monkey – its cymbals traded out for a drum due to some Disney copyright screw job – doesn't merely foretell bad luck, as in the text. Instead, its drumming always sets off a chain reaction that causes horribly violent fatalities. You never know who the malevolent magic of the monkey will strike, only that death will surely follow its drumbeats. Its arm raised above its head is very much like the sword of mortality hanging over all of us. We've all got a limited amount of time on this globe, with no say in when the end might come. Not all of us are going out peacefully in our sleep but in tears and blood and random accidents. "The Monkey" was sold with the astute tagline "Everybody dies and that's fucked-up." Indeed it is. Perkins' film finds a potent stand-in for the ever-unpredictable, and often cruel, finger of fate in the teeth-baring toy simian. The jolly music and lifted lips of the Monkey seem to mock us, taking joy in engineering horribly elaborate outcomes for any person unlucky enough to be hit by its bad juju. It can't be destroyed. It can't be reasoned with. It can only be delayed. 

Oz Perkins' screen icon dad died of AIDS while still publicly denying his homosexuality. His mother was on American Airlines Flight 11 the day it was hijacked and crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. If anybody knows about how fucked-up fate can be, it's him. If “Longlegs” found chills in the tension that arises from the secrets parents keep from their kids, “The Monkey” digs through the debris of childhood trauma. Theo James as Hal – excellent audio-book voice, by the way – narrates much of the film, providing us with a reflective tone to begin with. The childhood sequences are set in 1999 and include plenty of visual signifiers of the time. Such as a Goosebumps poster, hip hugger jeans, and CRT TVs. The toy monkey itself, of course, hearkens back to an older time. When the boys are adopted by their aunt and uncle, we see facial hair and clothing fashions that recall the seventies. While the modern scenes feature air buds and smart phones, the dingy motels, a bus full of retro cheerleaders, and “Halloween Ends'” Corey with a Ramones haircut continues a feeling of unmoored time. When combined with a story swimming with childhood resentment and long-buried feelings, “The Monkey” feels like digging through the past in search of some sort of answer to the random chaos of the universe. 

From its somber and reflective subject matter, you might get the impression that “The Monkey” is a pretty serious horror movie. This was apparently the tone of Frank Darabont's first script. When Perkins rewrote it, however, “The Monkey” became an extended act of gallows' humor. The death scenes go for outrageous gore comedy, the first scene featuring an unspooling length of intestines and the movie only getting wilder from there. “The Monkey” clearly delights in elaborate undoings of the body, weaponizing unlikely objects and impaling, melting, and flattening human flesh. In fact, “The Monkey” bends towards cartoonish splat-stick almost immediately. People explode like water balloons, tossing limbs and blood in an exaggerated downpour.

Much like in the better “Final Destination” flicks, “The Monkey” engineers its elaborate death scenes like vicious Rube Goldberg machines, often deriving a sick sort of amused anticipation. Sometimes the intention is to make you cringe, sometimes laughs are the only objective. Either way, Osgood Perkins' trademark style that he's built up over his last four features is still present. Nico Aguitar takes over the cinematography but maintains the deep fields of vision, wide frames, and precisely placed set dressing of “Longlegs” and “Gretel & Hansel.” Such a tightly controlled visuals work great for creating an unsettling feeling of dread. What about for comedy though? Well, it mostly works but sometimes – during the wackier beats, most notably during a visual gag in the last scene – feels a bit awkward. A few fantasy or dream sequences are inserted, placing the monkey's face in unexpected places, which are probably the scenes in the film that struck me as most off-balanced. 

Still, “The Monkey” is a good time at the movies for horror nerds like me. Perkins' script captures King's authorial voice, using specific language and odd turns-of-phrase to good effect. Theo James makes for a compellingly anxious lead, while Tatiana Maslany brings some heartfelt pathos to the ill-fated mother. In the most recent wave of King adaptations to release over the last few years, I'd put this one way above “The Boogeyman” or the “Pet Sematary” remake. We're talking a solid, mid-level “Silver Bullet,” “Cat's Eye” flick here. Lastly, I suppose the titular toy primate is suitably creepy. I don't like his toothy smile. It makes me uncomfortable. [7/10]

The Sorcerers (1967)

In 1968, via the fictional proxy of Byron Orlok in the film “Targets,” Boris Karloff observed that the modern day horrors and social upheaval of the late sixties made the kind of so-called scary movies he used to star in totally irrelevant. It was meaningful commentary on a world that seemed like it had changed an awful lot in not an especially long amount of time. Despite this statement, Boris Karloff actually had an extremely good sixties. In the last decade of his life, the star would re-emerge as a respected elder statesmen of the genre who was sought out by up-and-coming filmmakers like Roger Corman, Mario Bava, and the aforementioned Peter Bogdanovich. Another such example was Michael Reeves. In-between his debut with Barbara Steele and the iconic “Witchfinder General” with Vincent Price, Reeves would direct Karloff in “The Sorcerers.” In its own way, the film comments on the rapidly changing times as much as “Targets” did the next year. 

Marcus Monserrat is an elderly scientist who has sought out the psychological and medical uses of hypnotism. Alongside his wife, Estelle, he is about to launch his most groundbreaking research yet. Dr. Monserrat heads into a common bar and meets Matt Roscoe. Matt is a young man bored of London's night life and in search of new experiences. The old man promises him one. Roscoe is taken back to his lab and exposed to a bizarre test. The experiment establishes a hypnotic link between Monserat and the younger man, enabling the former to psychically control the latter from afar. Marcus wants to keep the procedure as scientific as possible but Estelle – who discovers she can share the psychic link by touching her husband's hand – has other ideas in plan. She uses the younger man's body to act out her repressed impulses. It's not long before, by seeing through someone else's eyes and willing him to act, that Estelle develops a taste for murder. Dr. Monserrat does what he can to stop his wife before she's totally out of control.

Notoriously, Michael Reeves would die far too young, after completing his third motion picture. However, over his short filmography, he did show some interesting reoccurring themes. “Witchfinder General” saw a tyrannical older man using his position of power to abuse those lower on the social ladder than him with impunity. In “The She-Beast,” the spirit of an ancient witch would possess a younger woman. “The Sorcerers,” meanwhile, is also about the older generation literally taking control of someone younger than them. While the Monserrats insists that their reputation has been ruined by his highly publicized past failures, they still seem to live a fairly comfortable life. Roscoe is someone plucked randomly, after the two scheming old people decide any younger person would do for their purposes. In its own way, this is a clear depiction of the generational divide that was all too evident in 1967, of an older generation desperate to maintain control over youths that were deemed wild and unruly. 

“The Sorcerers” makes this gap apparent in other ways. The title brings a story of witchcraft and ancient rites to mind. This stands in contrast with a story that very much set in the modern day. Though ostensibly presented as a scientific experiment, the Monserrats' powers are indistinguishable from magic or any other supernatural ability. Despite that, the film makes multiple attempts to represents its modern day setting. The process that puts Roscoe under the doctor's control is a psychedelic light show of swirling, wild colors. The film takes place in the swingin' rock clubs of the time and the gritty back allies of the modern city. It's easy to see “The Sorcerers” as a condemnation of the wild in the streets youths of the sixties. However, that the young man is forced to kill at the sadistic impulses of an old woman reveals the truth: It's not that society has abandoned any sense of morality. These tendencies to violate ethical codes have always existed within mankind and our only brought out by a change of circumstances. Roscoe is kind of an asshole but he's not a bad guy. Estelle realizing she can abandon all restrictions and run amok in another human's body reveals her as a much more insidious threat. 

The original screenplay for “The Sorcerers” was written by John Burke, a prolific writer of short horror stories and film and TV novelizations. Supposedly, his script was greatly rewritten by Reeves, to the point that Burke would only receive a story credit. Among the changes made, reportedly, were done on-set to make Boris Karloff's character more sympathetic. The film repeatedly implies that Dr. Moserrat does get some pleasure out of taking over the mind and body of a younger man. The contrast between his fragile old body and the virile young Roscoe is too obvious. His wife takes it way further, becoming the Lady MacBeth in this story and eventually making her husband a prisoner in their home. It's hard to find Karloff sympathetic, playing a rather Dr. Frankenstein-ian role of a scientist who looses control of his own creation. Making his wife the film's villain might've been a weird sexist move and it might still be. Luckily, Catherine Lacey makes Estelle into a deliciously depraved character. She shows so much long-buried venom coming to the surface as she's given a chance to unleash her darker desires. It is an at-times chilling portrayal of an unchecked id set loose to act out its worst tendencies.

Much like “The She-Beasts,” “The Sorcerers” still feels quite rough around the edges. The story is a bit shapeless at times. Roscoe and his young friends are never given much personality or depth. Especially since he spends most of the movie as a literal cipher for somebody else's wants. His day job at an antique shop – amusingly called The Glory Hole – feels like an afterthought. There's more scenes of a slightly off-note singer grooving and crooning in the clubs than I'd think necessary. There's some tacky crash-zooms. Mostly, the film feels held back by an inability – either a creative choice or the pressure of censorship – to get nastier. The idea of infirm old people invading the mind of a young man, let loose to fuck and kill however they want, can never be as fully explored as the material demands. Still, “The Sorcerers” is an interesting one. Karloff is as sturdy as ever, Lacey is fiery and unforgettable. The film is overflowing with ideas, some better utilized than others. The ending struck me as abrupt but leads into a haunting final image. It's a real shame Reeves died so young, as he was clearly only beginning to come into his own as an interesting filmmaker. As it is, “The Sorcerers” is definitely a unique and interesting snapshot of the horror genre in transition. [7/10]

Tales of Tomorrow: Frankenstein

In August of 1951, “Tales of Tomorrow” debuted on ABC. It was the first science fiction anthology series to air on American television and was, like many such programs at the time, broadcast live. The series adapted contemporary sci-fi writers like Arthur C. Clarke, Theodore Sturgeon, Philip Wylie, Lewis Padgett, and Fredric Brown. The show delved into classics sometimes too, condensing “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” or Wells' “The Crystal Egg” to a half-hour runtime. One such episode was a version of “Frankenstein.” The show grabbed Lon Chaney Jr. to play the reanimated corpse which probably seemed like a great idea... But this was Chaney in the twilight of his career, when he often showed up to set sloppy drunk. Supposedly, he was so sloshed while starring in “Tales of Tomorrow” that he mistook the live broadcast for a dress rehearsal. When scripted to smash some furniture, he is said to have gently placed it down instead and mumbled “Save for later.” I first read this trivia as a kid – probably in the Crestwood Monsters books or something by Daniel Cohen – and it always sounded a bit far-fetched to me. This particular episode of “Tales of Tomorrow” survives and can be easily found online, meaning it's time for me to see if there's any truth to this oft-told tale. 

This iteration of “Frankenstein” has little to do with Mary Shelley's novel. Set in the modern day, this time Baron Frankenstein is depicted as operating out of a castle on an obscure island. He talks passionately about creating artificial life, which spooks his fiance Elizabeth, her dad, and her little brother. That's because the Baron has already assembled his creation, bringing the stitched-together being to life with a jolt of electricity. The hideously ugly monster breaks out of confinement, frightening the servants and child before throttling the butler's wife to death. Horrified by his own creation, Frankenstein sets out to destroy the beast. However, the only thing that can stop Frankenstein's monster is the same thing that brought it to life: A bolt of lightning. 

To sate anybody's curiosity: Yes, ol' Lon does pick up a chair and a table, shakes them as if he's about to throw them, before slowly putting them back. I didn't catch him mouthing anything about smashing the furniture later, so I'll say this urban legend is only mostly true. I can't say if Chaney was actually drunk. He spends the entire episode thrusting his hands out, scowling, screeching and grumbling. It's not his proudest moment but it's also a totally serviceable take on the Frankenstein monster. Despite the extremely abbreviated take on the material, I do like that the script repeatedly emphasizes that the creature is an innocent rejected by the world for reasons he has no control over. A scene where he encounters the little boy in the middle of a spirited playtime, the kid quickly comparing the monster to the ugly invisible enemies he's fighting off, illustrates that nicely. Chaney was excellent at making his monsters equally pitiable and threatening and we get a little bit of that here, despite the rushed execution of the material. 

The limitations of live television are fairly evident. The entire story is confined to the castle set. When Chaney tumbled through a window and into the lake below, all the falling and splashing occurs totally off-screen. Shoving the doctor's entire arc – of being obsessed with making life, being horrified by his creation and promising to destroy it – into a half-hour feels very rushed. Seven years before hosting “One Step Beyond,” John Newland appeared here as the doctor and does what he can for the limited material. The episode makes decent use of its shadowy setting. I do like the shot of Chaney reaching his hands out towards the camera. However, “Tales of Tomorrow's” take on “Frankenstein” is fairly stagey and abbreviated. I'm glad I was able to finally watch this notorious bit of horror history but it's not that notable outside of Chaney's lack of sobriety. [6/10]

 

The Addams Family: My Fair Cousin Itt

I had a reasonably kooky, creepy time with “The Addams Family” last September so I'm back with season two. The fan favorite extended family member/vocal hairpiece is back in “my Fair Cousin Itt.” For Wednesday's upcoming birthday party, Gomez has written a play full of the required amount of tragedy and intrigue with starring roles for members of the family. Noticing that Itt's self-esteem is a bit low lately, the decision is made to give him the leading role. A director is recruited in the form of snooty professional Erich von Bissell, who is reluctant to accept until he sees the wad of cash Gomez is offering. Von Bissell insists he can't work with Cousin Itt's chattering voice, prompting Morticia to give the walking wig some elocution training. This works too well, as Itt develops a deep baritone and a pretentious actor's attitude along with it.

“My Fair Cousin itt” is perhaps not the most structurally sound episode of “The Addams Family.” The direction of the plot changes several time. Initially, it seems that Uncle Fester and Lurch being jealous of Itt getting the lead role – and plotting to lock him up somehow – is going to be the main gag of the episode. Once von Bissell enters, the direction shifts to a more typical episode set-up. Namely, an outsider being continuously freaked out by the Addams Family. The stiff, egotistical and broke Von Bissell would certainly be a fine foil for Gomez and the gang. He abruptly exits the episode half-way through, at which point the focus turns towards Itt remaking himself into a star of the stage with an inflated perception of himself. That's kind of a lot of premises to cram into one half-hour.

Not that I didn't enjoy “My Fair Cousin Itt.” The gags come fast and frequently. A reoccurring bit about Gomez balancing a succession of unlikely objects on his chin opens the episode before returning at the end in an amusing manner. Ted Kassidy gets some good moments, especially when a surprised Lurch is asked to repeat his mumbled response. The amusement factor in the usually jibbering Cousin Itt speaking with an expressive, theatrical baritone is limited. However, I did like it when he entered a scene on the back of a sheep dog. It's weird that Wednesday motivates the entire plot of this episode but is only in one scene herself though. [7/10]