Halloween Movie #4: The Tingler

I had to take a short break to get dinner and some laundry started. Now I'm back for one more before Papa Cash and I have dinner....and then we'll see how many films I roll through before bed.

This is another one I try to watch every October. I'm a fan of just about every film Vincent Price did, but for some reason I like to watch House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler around Halloween time. They're also two films that Price did for William Castle.

In this one, Price plays a scientist who is studying fear and its effects on the body. He is sure that there is something he can isolate that causes physiological effects of fear and sometimes death. He's also in an unhappy marriage (again!) He's married to a mean lady whose younger sister just happens to be dating the other scientist Price is working with.




This film is also noted for being filmed in Percepto Vision,
which was a gimmick courtesty of William Castle. In the film, if the Tingler attacks, the only defense against it is to scream really loud. In the theater, a handful of seats would be wired with buzzers that would go off at appropriate times in the movie- making the person sitting there scream and inspiring others to scream as well.

Not much else to say about this film- there's a side story involving a mute woman who can't scream to release her fear, and they do eventually find the creature that feeds on fear, 'The Tingler'. I find it a fun one to watch every year and I love watching the glee with which Price investigates 'The Tingler'.

the film is also notable for being the only time that I'm aware of that Vincent Price trips out on LSD- which, according to the special features, was NOT illegal yet. Neato!

Till a little later tonight-
Mother Firefly

Halloween Movie #3: Bubba Ho Tep

Bubba Ho Tep.
Bruce Campbell stars as Elvis. Seems that back in the 70's, Elvis got tired of being well, Elvis. He made a deal with an Elvis impersonator to switch so he could get a break. Unfortunately, during the time of the switch- the Elvis impersonator died. Since the real Elvis lost his copy of the contract they signed in a barbeque mishap, real Elvis had to continue to live his life as the Elvis impersonator.

Still with me? Yes, I swear this is a movie fit for Halloween.

Then one night while performing as an impersonator of himself, he falls off the stage and breaks his hip. We find Elvis in the present day stuck in a nasty nursing home telling everyone he's Elvis and the staff thinking he's just a crazy old man.

Oh, and down the hall lives Ossie Davis, who says he's JFK as well. He was altered to look African American and hidden away after the attempt on his life.

One night Elvis awakens to find a big old NASTY looking bug in his room...which he has to fight....oh and people are dying off at the nursing home...and both incidences are due to an ancient mummy who has taken up residence in a nearby swamp.

So Elvis and JFK combine forces to fight the mummy and save their fellow residents.

If that doesn't make you want to see this movie, nothing will.

Halloween Movie #2: Night of the Ghouls

Ed Wood is probably best known for Plan 9 From Outer Space, but Night of the Ghouls is probably my personal favorite.

It's about a scam artist , Dr. Acula, who pretends to be able to contact the dead. I love the fake seances, Tor Johnson, and 'ghost' lady who hangs out in the yard.

One great scene involves a widow who wants to contact her husband. For some reason, Ed chose to have the man's corpse lying in a casket, then sitting up and speaking to his wife from 'beyond the grave', even though he has been dead 'several years'. Favorite part within this scene is when the dead man in the casket (obviously a young man with a lot of bad aging makeup) closes his eyes and says 'I grow weary now'.....classic.

Another fun part is the cop who wanders around the property looking to bust the scam artist. He has a continuous inner dialogue that is pretty amusing but led me to wonder, can't this guy have a partner or something?

Let's Scare Jessica To Death

Jessica is newly released from the mental hospital. She and her hubby (and a family friend of the male variety) are int he process of moving to a new home. Family transportation includes a hearse, and Jessica's favorite hobby is doing rubbings on gravestones.

So Jessica and her crew move into their new house, and everyone is happy and upbeat because Jessica's all better, and surely EVERYTHING IS GONNA BE OKAY NOW. Right? Sure it is. Because right away they find their new home comes with a mysterious woman who's been staying there. And since this is the 70's, they invite her to stay the night.



Then the whispery whispering starts. And it pretty much goes on throughout the whole show. It pretty much lets us know right away that Jessica is not maybe completely better since she keeps hearing her name whispered (among other endearments, some of which are not so endearing) everywhere she goes.

It doesn't take a college degree to figure out at this point that recent release from mental hospital + whispering + mysterious stranger + old creepy house in an small creepy town = something not good is gonna happen.

But why I like 'Jessica' so much is because it's just a total creepfest. It's a good, old fashioned scary (ghosts? vampires? maybe both) story that is just great fun and still manages to creep me out if I watch it alone late at night. I first saw this one day when I stayed home from school and it was the morning movie on the local tv station.

Scared the SHEEE-IT out of me. It's never been real easy to find. For years I only had a crappy copy of a VHS copy. The sound was horrible, and in order to hear all the 'whispery whispering', I had to crank the sound so loudly the tape gave off an awful hiss. Not fun. A couple of years ago it finally arrived on DVD and I ordered it right away- not my usual mode of 'watch and wait' for the lowest price but I didn't want to risk the chance of it going out of print.

If you are the type of person who likes the occasional scary film but yet needs character development and doesn't want gore, 'jessica' belongs on your must-see list.

One other thing I really enjoy about this movie is the lady who plays Jessica, Zohra Lampert. I think she does a great job of coming off natural and also a little fragile. She also seems very real, like she could have been any of my friend's moms from my childhood in the 70s. And that just makes it even more terrifying- if it can happen to Jessica- well, then, none of us are safe.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!!

The day is finally here! And since I really haven't been able to enjoy my favorite month in the way I'd like to- I'm going to take today and combine my favorite thing in the whole world- watching horror movies- with my number one past time for the last year- doing homework. I wish I could just blow off the whole day, but I really need to accomplish SOMETHING today. So since I have quite a bit of literature searching I could do, along with other things I need to find online- I thought it would be good to do all those things in one day- because then I can feel like I'm sort of celebrating the holiday- and I can also get a lot of work done. Then tomorrow I can do the kinds of things that I need quiet for, like writing papers.

On with the Halloween marathon!
Mother Firefly

Day 29 - Rockin' it Old School

I can't say I did anything especially Halloween- spirited on the 28th- but I did get to do something pretty wonderful tonight.

I am fortunate to live in a town that has two - count 'em, two- theaters who like to bring out the older films for people to enjoy. Because of these theaters, I have been lucky enough to see all the original Universal monster movies (and many of their sequels) on the big screen. Not to mention King Kong, Night of the Living Dead, Freaks, and many others. I've also been almost more fortunate than I deserve and have been able to see House of Wax, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and a few other sci-fi oldies in their original 3-D incarnations, complete with red and blue glasses.

And for a couple years, for about 8 months out of the year, every third Saturday of the month, I could go to the Oriental for Silent Saturdays. I'd pay 8 dollars for a show that lasted about three hours and included a cartoon, a short, a live act such as a juggler, a main feature, and door prizes. All set to the wonderful old organ that comes up from under the stage in the Oriental. I saw all kinds of wonderful films from comedies to horror to drama to a Christmas show or two. There were always a fairly decent amount of people there, from families with small children, to people who might have just been old enough to see the movie the first time around!

Then one day Silent Saturdays stopped. It was supposed to move to another facility but it never showed up again. It took me another two years to find out why- the event's largest source of funding dropped out. Which is why, when I win the lottery, bringing back Silent Saturdays will be my first act of philanthropy.

Anyway- since SS ended, there have been silent offerings here and there at the Oriental and at The Times. I was able to see Nosferatu at The Times a couple years ago with the Alloy Orchestra, and it was wonderful.
So when I saw the flyer for Phantom of the Opera at the Oriental, accompanied by the Alloy, I knew I had to be there. And they didn't let me down.

Phantom is so wonderful. Lon Chaney is amazing, and the story is timeless.
If you ever get a chance to see a silent film in a theater, DO IT. Even if you think you'll absolutely hate it, do it if it's only to support film heritage. And who knows, you might end up halfway through the movie realizing that you were so into the movie, you forgot it was silent.

-Mother Firefly

Lycanthropy 101 - Day 27

I know, technically, it's day 28....but I watched this movie yesterday so .... there.
The Howling only made me want MORE! MORE! werewolves, so I decided to revisit American Werewolf in London.

Wow. What a great film. I always have a special place in my black heart for this movie, but after watching it again, I'd have to say it would probably end up on my top 10 of all time.


I'm sure that I can't say much about this film that hasn't already been said. It's scary, it's funny, it has characters that we care about, it looks freaking awesome after all these years, and even though it's a story we're all familiar with (the wolfman) we're still on the edge of our seats wondering how it will all play out.

One other thing that is pretty amazing about this is how well the transformation scene holds up. I remember back when this came out how much attention that scene received (deservedly so) and how ground breaking it was. Rick Baker won the first Oscar for makeup FX that year. Even though I've seen this movie and THAT particular scene more times than I can count, I found myself watching intently and wondering again, how did they do that? I don't know that the best CGI werewolf transformation could compete with this one. David Naughton's performance and Rick Baker's effects make for a werewolf transformation that is at the same time painful to watch and impossible to pull your eyes away from. We believe that he really is turning into a werewolf (after all, it's happening to the actor right in front of our eyes) and dammit, it's scary and it really HURTS.



Which is another reason this movie works so well. We feel so much for this handsome, nice, young man who just wanted to backpack across Europe - his best friend has just been brutally murdered in front of his eyes- he doesn't quite recall what happened, but what he does remember, nobody believes. He's got a KILLER case of PTTSD, he's in a foreign country, he's become the total opposite of what he is -a brutal killer- completely against his will and beyond his control. Oh yeah and his best friend keeps visiting him from beyond the grave and encouraging him to kill himself- because once the werewolf cycle ends, he and the rest of the werewolf's victims can be at peace.
Did I mention that even with all of that going on, the movie still manages to be funny? I think we need all that humor to break the tension and help us to forget how freaking sad this whole situation is. Because, after all, it's still a wolfman movie, and we kinda think we know where this might be going.

But-in the very small case that you haven't seen this- I'll stop here. And if you have seen it and maybe it's been a while.......take some time and revisit your old friends. And then flip out when you turn the box over and realize this movie is now 27 YEARS OLD.
Yeah. 1981, my loves. Crazy.
Mother Firefly