Frankenstein Must be Annoyed!

The Horror Fest continues, even after Halloween has come and gone! Since we haven't seen much Hammer Horror, we took on Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969), directed by Terence Hill, starring Peter Cushing as a certain doctor.

We find the good doctor moving out of his laboratory with the police getting a little too close. He happens to notice a young doctor (Simon Ward) dropping a box of cocaine before meeting his girlfriend (Veronica Carlton). He blackmails them into allowing him to set up shop in her boarding house. Soon the young doctor - a cute guy with a blonde Beatle cut - has more than a coke rap against him. Carlton, a busty blonde Hammer Girl, puts up with it all, even when Cushing repeatedly orders her to bring him coffee.

In case you hadn't guessed, Cushing is Baron Frankenstein, and his plan is a cunning one. His past partner, Dr. Brandt (George Pravda - at first!) has gone insane. So Frankenstein will break him out of the asylum, cure his insanity, and they will go on with the work. It goes well enough until Brandt dies. No problem for Dr. F - just put his brain into another body (Freddie Jones) and carry on.

Note that the Frankenstein who must be destroyed is not the monster.

We enjoyed this a lot, especially Cushing's cold and arrogant Frankenstein,. However, we should warn viewers that there is a very disturbing rape scene. I have read that it was put in the movie late in development at the request of the studio, and Peter Cushing hated it. My recommendation: Pretend it never happened.

To Boldly Go

We didn't mean to see Star Trek Beyond (2016) on the same weekend as X-Men: Apocalypso. Two brand-new blockbusters, third of their trilogies. We would usually space them out a little, but that's the way Netflix "Very Long Wait" works - pays your money, takes your chances.

It starts with a jokey scene, with Kirk trying to negotiate a treaty with some belligerent aliens. It doesn't go that well, and you think it's just a gag opening, like the mud-face aliens at the start of Into Darkness. But it actually introduces us to the McGuffin (oh, spoiler, I guess).

When they go to answer a distress call, they find themselves in an ambush (gee, when has that ever happened?). The enemy is a swarm of small, heavily armored one-man ships, who force the Enterprise to crash on a nearby planet. On the planet several groups of crew members have to fight locals, the enemy and the planet to get back to the remains of the ship. Kirk and Chekov meet up with a cute, punky alien named Jayla (after Jennifer Lawrence), played by Sofia Boutella.

I don't want to get into the plot, but I have to mention Starbase Yorktown, a totally cool orbital city in a bubble, with lots of skycrapers set at all angles due to artificial gravity. A great set piece for the last 1/4 (1/3?) of the film.

Once again, my favorite part of this Star Trek series is how well they get the characters. In particular, Karl Urban really nails McCoy's grumpiness. But everyone has just the right touch. Zachary Quinto as Spock spends a bit of time mourning the death of Ambassador Spock - himself from a different timeline (the original series timeline, where Vulcan didn't blow up). It's especially sweet because it is really Quinto mourning the death of the originator of his role, and his mentor, Leonard Nimoy.

Chris Pines' Kirk nature has eluded me up until now, but I think I got it even before he started zooming around on an antique motorcycle. That was presumably director Justin Lin's hat-tip to the Fast and Furious series. John Cho has a few nice moments as Sulu, including a quick meeting with his husband and daughter. Anton Yelchin gets his "little old lady from Leningrad" line in, updated a bit. He has sadly passed on, and I think Chekov won't be seen on the Enterprise again soon. Ah well, he missed the first season of the original series, as well.

And of course, writer Simon Pegg gets some sweet scenes as Scotty. It might have just been me, but I thought this was a slightly silly entry in the series. Like when someone starts playing the Beastie Boys, and Bones calls it "classical music".

All in all, very satisfying. I understand that there are at least a few more in the pipeline. I'm in.

Apocalypse Now

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) might really be the end of the world - the last movie in the X-Men series (not counting Wolverine movies, I guess).

The villain is Apocalypse (they don't call him that, but never mind). He's played by Oscar Isaacs, but under a lot of make-up/facial prosthetics. He was the first mutant, living in ancient Egypt as a god. He finally ends up under a pyramid. Fast forward to the 1980s, and he gets loose. He picks up a Cairo thief, named Ororo (Alexandra Shipp), and makes her the core of his disciples. He also picks up Angel (Ben Hardy) and Psylocke (Olivia Munn).

We catch up with Magneto (Michael Fassbender) trying to live a quiet life in Poland, but you know how that will work out. Soon Apocalypse has his fourth horseman.

On the hero side, Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) brings Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) to join the students at Prof. X's. Havok (Lucas Till) does the same for his little brother Cyclops (Tye Sheridan). Let me say that it took me a while to accept Scott Summers as a late addition to the team instead of a founding member, but remember I guess Days of Future Past really messed up the timelines. Anyway, I feel like they really got Scott in this one. He's a nerd and he's a rebel. His budding relationship with Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) is nicely handled, although it's hard to beat the first trilogy for Jean Grey idolatry.

In fact, I think this movie does a great job on a lot of the characters. We get a nice chunk of Moira McTaggert (Rose Byrne), although she isn't as Scottish as I expected. Nightcrawler is a lot of fun, not Catholic and mopey like in X2. He and Quicksilver do a lot of great work, getting people where they need to be, moving things right along.

Too bad Storm got short shrift - She has a good origin scene, then is mind-controlled for most of the rest of the movie.

Finally, James MacAvoy as Prof. X gets bald. Destiny is fulfilled.

Keep Preying

Predator 2 (1990) is one of those sequels that is better than the original. No offense to Arnold, or any of the original cast or director. This movie has a completely different cast and director, although the writers, Jim and John Thomas, were the same.

The first Predator movie took place in the Central American jungle. This one takes place in the urban jungle: LA, in the middle of a heatwave and a gang war. Danny Glover is the angry cop who plays by his own rules. Him and his buddies try to take down a gang of heavily armed Columbians, but after a pretty good action sequence, they find them all dead, killed up close - none of them shot.

Back at the precinct, Glover gets bawled out by the captain and gets assigned a new partner: Bill Paxton. Bill is a slick-dressing, fast-talking, sexist-joke telling goofball - he was like someone out of L.A. Confidential, but played for laughs. Glover also gets to meet Gary Busey, an agent from some mysterious government agency.  He's the guy who tends to drop out of the sky in a helicopter to tell the cops that this is his case now, and they have no idea what they are up against.

This all plays out against phalanx of news-screamers, including Morton Downey, Jr. as the host of a sensationalist news program. TV news is a constant presence, giving the picture a nice meta touch.

Of course, they begin to figure out that there is a Predator loose, although they don't know what that means. Busey probably knows about the first Predator, but he isn't talking. The team starts to get picked off one by one, starting with Ruben Blades. Finally, it's up to Glover to defeat the beast - and keep him from self-destructing when he does, since that will destroy half of LA.

Maybe it's just that I like urban action better than jungle, but the non-Predator action here is just more fun than in the original. The cast is great, even put up against the original, another classic action team. Glover can out-act, out-angry, and maybe out-punch Arnold, no contest. And the ending gave just enough about the Predator race, without over-explaining. (Plus, a great reveal - no spoilers!)

I might be prejudiced. I had heard that 2 was better than 1, and mainly watched the first to get to the second. But I think it's just plain better.

Now, should we watch Predators and AVP, or quit while we're ahead?

(Not Very) Special Announcement

Hello, blog fans! I find myself all caught up on my blogging backlog, and with a little free time, so I thought I'd do a little random post.

I had meant to commemorate my 1,000th post, but we passed that about 50 posts ago, in early July, say. I've started my tenth year of blogging - when I started, blogging was cool. But I remember back in the 1990s, when I had a movie review program - sort of a Leonard Maltin on a floppy. It let you comment on films, and I kept that up for years. I think I rated about 200 movies before I quit using it. So I was proto-blogging before we really had an internet.

Since this blog is about my Netflix queue, that means Netflix has been around for more than 10 years. Hard to believe. It has changed a lot in that time, becoming a streaming service and a content creator. They want 50% of their content to be created internally. That's fine, they make some great shows. But they seem to be getting to 50% by decreasing the amount of external content available. I like streamed content just fine, but what I really want is selection.

The number of titles available on the DVD/Blu-ray side is much greater, but there are still too many unavailable movies. I have 114 "Saved" movies: movies that are in the system but not going out. Only two are recent releases that aren't available yet. Some are obscure: Old kung fu films, obscure musical documentaries, black-and-white comedies that belong on TCM. But, come on! You can't rent Speed!

Speaking of TCM, there is a new streaming service in town: Filmstruck. It's a streaming service run by TCM and Criterion featuring classic and hard-to-find films. I might give them a try but:

• "Rotating, curated collection": in other words, we choose, not you.
• I've seen a lot of the classics. Are there enough hard-to-finds to make it worthwhile? They advertise "hundreds" of films, not thousands.
• I don't have a way to get this on my TV, and I don't want to watch on my laptop.
• The site doesn't seem very browsable. It might be hard to find anything here, unless it gets "curated" 

And of course, we need to keep Netflix so we can see all the superhero movies that we love, even though it isn't cool anymore.

So we'll see how it goes. I would love to see a platform like the old Netflix, with every DVD you can think of, with some curation available - maybe even third-party curation. I originally thought of this blog that way: Maybe you would want to watch what I'm watching. I was frustrated by a lot of film blogs talking about movies that were only available as bootlegs, or at film festivals. So for now, I'll keep plugging along the old-fashioned 2000s way. Hope you enjoy.

And thanks for reading!

Oh yeah, the reason that I'm all caught up on my blogging is that I BROKE MY STUPID ANKLE! So I have to get around on crutches, so I have plenty of time to blog. That's my announcement.

Phull Price

Carrying on in the Vincent Price vein, The Abominable Dr. Phibes/Dr. Phibes Rises Again! (1971/1972).

Vincent Price is Dr. Phibes, a talented musician whose face was ruined in an accident, the same accident that killed his wife (Caroline Munro). He is hiding out in his London mansion with his wife's corpse (well-preserved of course), while plotting to kill the doctors that failed to save her life. He spends his time with his animatronic ragtime band, with the Dr. himself on theater organ. There he sits, cloaked in a dark cape, gesturing majestically while playing roller-rink music. Everybody skate!

He is assisted in his crimes by the lovely and silent Vulnavia (Virginia North). I'm not sure, but I think she is a robot like his band. Anyway, she loves to do a slow go-go dance before or after a gruesome murder.

And what murders! There were nine doctors and a nurse operating on Ms. Phibes, so the Dr. will kill each based on the ten biblical plagues of Egypt. Very loosely based, unless one of the plagues involves having a spike come out of the telephone, into your ear and out the other one.

There are some great character actors among the victims, including Terry-Thomas and Van Johnson. Phibes is tracked by police detective Trout (Peter Jeffrey). The production is gloriously silly and campy, with great rolling monologues from Price - delivered through a gramophone gadget plugged into his neck because he can't open his mouth. He is backed up by the swirling Vulnavia. The sets are Art Deco by way of Op Art. It is glorious.

Dr. Phibes Rises Again! is more of the same. This time, the Dr. and his good wife/corpse travel to Egypt to find the river of life buried beneath an ancient tomb, that Phibes has decorated like a Deco theater lobby, and installed his organ. His nemesis is Robert Quarry, an unscrupulous scholar who stole Phibes' map. Phibes has to kill Quarry's whole team, this time with an Egyptian mythology theme, hawks, scorpions, cobras, etc. Everything is just a cuckoo, or maybe more so.

In some ways, Phibes seems to have inherited some characteristics of his role in House of Wax: The burns, the immobile face, the waxworks figures and clockwork orchestra. In some ways, he is just that mad Vincent Price, having a ball. This isn't really scary, although some of it is pretty gruesome, but it's a lot of fun.

Half Price

I'd never seen either House of Wax/The Mystery of the Wax Museum but I guess I'm up to speed now.

We started with the remake, House of Wax (1953), starring Vincent Price. Ms. Spenser had seen it before in the original 3-D, but I had to be content with plain old flat film. Trivia - director Andre de Toth was missing an eye, so he couldn't see the 3-D effects. It starts with Price as a mild mannered sculptor with a London wax museum. Although a famous critic praises his work, Price has a business partner wants out of the business. He achieves this through a touch of arson, leaving the partner rich and Price apparently dead.

Some years later, a mysterious crippled stranger opens a new museum, one full of gory and shocking horrors. This stranger, Vincent Price, has hands too burnt to work, but he has a team of assistants to do the actual sculpting, including a deviant drunk and deaf mute. Oh yes, and bodies are going missing from the morgue, and some of the wax sculptures seem to be based on their features. Shades of Walter Paisley!

Price soon finds a lovely young woman to model his masterpiece, Phyllis Kirk. She's a little suspicious because her friend (Carolyn Jones!) has recently died and her body has disappeared, and doesn't that statue of Joan of Arc look familiar?

This version is set in the Gay 90s, and there is a lot of silly period details: German beer halls, strait-laced corsets (in fact an entire dressing scene), gas lights, and so forth. Price is great as always, as are his henchmen, but Phyllis Kirk is a bit wet, especially after we'd seen the original.

Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) stars Lionel Atwill, with Fay Wray as the model of Marie Antoinette (together again!). The story is almost identical to the remake, but the feel is very different. For one thing, Price builds up a lot of charm points before the fire - Atwill less so. Also, Mystery is set in comtemporary times, 1933 New York mostly, so the hokey Gay 90s stuff is avoided.

But most of all, the girl whose investigation brings the whole thing down is played by Glenda Farrell. Like her classic role, Torchy Blane, Farrell plays a fast-talking, hard-partying girl reporter. Her patter is great, whether she's calling her editor Poison or just telling her playboy boyfriend "Don't count on it". She's a real live wire. Maybe her presence unbalances the movie a little, since she shouldn't really be the central figure.

Also, Mystery was filmed in two-strip color, which gives it an odd pink and green look. You can see why they dropped this technology. But it almost makes sense in something macabre like this.

So, two great movies for the price of one, and one movie with Vincent Price. How can you go wrong?