Dracula (1931)

DRACULA (1931) ****
I remember being first disappointed by the 1931 Dracula and that disappointment carried over for more than two decades.

Around the turn of the 21st Century, I bought the 1999 VHS release and that’s what I first watched, the one with Classic Monster Collection across the top and then New Music by Philip Glass and Performed by Kronos Quartet immediately below. Of course, I thought Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Dwight Frye as Renfield were absolutely incredible, David Manners as Jonathan Harker and Edward Van Sloan as Professor Van Helsing and Helen Chandler as Mina Harker less so, and I loved director Tod Browning’s 1932 Freaks at first sight contemporaneous with Dracula. Freaks remains one of my absolute favorite movies, so obviously some movies hit people right from the start and others just simply take more time or sometimes they never make that deep, personal connection others do.

For the longest time, at least a decade if not longer, I thought Dracula was overrated and paled in comparison against Freaks, Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man, all of which I first saw around the same time as Dracula and I loved, absolutely loved, and still do love all of them. At the time, I also loved Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein more than Dracula.

It was that darn Philip Glass / Kronos Quartet score that stank up Dracula and I still get a big kick out of the Triumph the Insult Comic Dog couplet, Philip Glass, atonal ass, you’re not immune / Write a song with a fucking tune. I remember my wife complained about Glass’ score for the experimental non-narrative film Koyaanisqatsi and I bristled at his score for Candyman upon revisiting that 1992 film for the first time in several years.

Revisiting the 1931 Dracula in recent years, without the Glass / Kronos score and back closer to how it first appeared in theaters on Feb. 14, 1931, it’s risen in stock from three to three-and-a-half and finally four stars. I cannot deny that it still has a fair share of faults, like those performances I mentioned earlier and the stage-bound production quality since it’s based off the 1924 stage play adapted from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, but I’ve grown appreciation for everything that works from the opening scenes in Transylvania to Lugosi (1882-1956) and Frye (1899-1943), who inspired later songs from Bauhaus (Bela Lugosi’s Dead) and Alice Cooper (The Ballad of Dwight Fry).

It also helps one to catch up with the Spanish language Dracula from the same year and the same sets but a different cast, a different language, and a different director. This Spanish version, rediscovered first in 1978 and then later on video in 1992, lasts 30 minutes longer and it’s better in almost every respect than its famous counterpart. Better shot and better looking, vastly superior cleavage and far sexier women (Lupita Tovar over Helen Chandler any day of the millennium), and less wimpy men in the Spanish version, but Lugosi still prevails against Carlos Villarias.

Several lines had already entered the lexicon decades before I first watched Dracula: I never drink … wine. For one who has not lived even a single lifetime, you’re a wise man, Van Helsing. Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make. Even I am Dracula belongs somewhere in the pantheon near Bond, James Bond. Lugosi’s ability or lack thereof speaking the English language actually benefits the otherworldly nature of his Dracula and I hold his performance in high regard alongside Max Schreck in Nosferatu, Christopher Lee in Dracula, and Gary Oldman in Dracula.

I have a long relationship with vampires.

I remember the 1985 Fright Night being the highlight of a boy slumber party circa 1988 and third or fourth grade.

I must have been 11 or 12 years old and in the fifth or sixth grade when reading the Stoker novel. Right around that point in time, I also read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles and Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I loved all three of them and they each fired up my imagination and creative spirit.

A few years later, I caught up with the Francis Ford Coppola version and talk about a movie that wowed a 14-year-old boy. I remember staying up late and sneaking around (somewhat) to watch this Dracula on my bedroom TV, captivated by all the nudity and sexuality and violence and Winona Ryder and Sadie Frost and it recalled some of what I liked about the novel all while becoming a cinematic extravaganza. I know critics of the 1992 Dracula blasted the film for being all style, no substance and for being overblown, but I think it’s overflowing with creativity and sheer cinematic beauty. I rate it right up there with F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu as one of the best vampire films ever.

Some things simply transcend Keanu Reeves’ horrible accent and Dracula’s at one point beehive hairdo.

The vampire genre itself transcends such duds as Dracula 2000 and New Moon.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (1943) ***1/2
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man starts with an absolute big bang and we have possibly the greatest five minutes in any classic Universal monster movie.

That includes such immortal movies as Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon, all stone cold classics essential to every horror movie lover.

The opening gets everything absolutely right: two grave robbers, a cemetery in the middle of the night, Larry The Wolf Man Talbot’s crypt, a full moon, a whole bunch of wolfbane, the revived Wolf Man’s hand, and enough overall spooky atmosphere for approximately 50 scary movie scenes. Yeah, it’s such a phenomenal sequence that director Tom McLoughlin revived it for his opening in Jason Lives, the one film during that long-running series most influenced by classic monster movies.

The rest of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man does not quite measure up, especially once Frankenstein’s Monster enters the picture, but it’s still a great deal of fun.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt any that Lon Chaney Jr. (1906-73) returns as Larry Talbot, one of the greatest horror movie characters. Chaney Jr. played Talbot five times from 1941 through 1948 — the original Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Talbot’s a tortured soul — in fact, mondoshop.com hypes its Wolf Man poster, The most tortured soul in the Universal Monsters universe is unquestionably that suffering bastard Larry Talbot, a.k.a. The Wolf Man — and we feel great empathy for this character because he essentially doesn’t want any damn part of being the Wolf Man. Your own son Bela was a werewolf. He attacked me. He changed me into a werewolf. He’s the one that put this curse on me. You watched over him until he was permitted to die. Well, now I want to die to. Won’t you show me the way?

In that way, he’s different from Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, and the Invisible Man. Lon Chaney’s Phantom in the 1925 classic The Phantom of the Opera inspires similar feelings as Talbot and the Wolf Man. To his enduring credit, Boris Karloff (1887-1969) worked some pathos into Frankenstein’s Monster, especially in Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein. Still, Talbot stands apart from most cinematic monsters and maybe it’s because he’s the most explicitly human.

Bela Lugosi (1882-1956) passed on Frankenstein’s Monster in Frankenstein, much to his eternal regret, and so he signed on for the Monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man after playing Ygor in Son of Frankenstein and The Ghost of Frankenstein. During the latter film, one might remember that Dr. Ludwig Frankenstein accidentally put Ygor’s brain into the Monster’s head — he speaks poetically at one point in the film, I am Ygor. In a series that paid minuscule attention to continuity from one film to the next, the Monster originally spoke and explained his plight in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, but Universal studio heads apparently laughed their heads off at Lugosi’s dialogue and demanded it be excised from the final cut, rendering the monster absolutely ridiculous and his scenes basically a washout. I am not sure why Lugosi’s voice suddenly became laughable. Lugosi’s stunt double stands in for the 61-year-old man in many scenes. Ironically, though, whenever people imitate Frankenstein’s Monster, it’s the Lugosi version from Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. (Lugosi played Bela in The Wolf Man and Chaney Jr. was Frankenstein’s Monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein after Karloff bowed out.)

We’re not sure exactly why the Monster’s encased in ice or why there’s a production number that must have moseyed on over from MGM. The second half of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man often leaves us feeling awful perplexed.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man finishes strong, thankfully, and we do see our titular monsters slug it out, though it presents an internal struggle because while we’d love more battle royale between the monsters we do love the 90 seconds they give us. This movie paved the highway for King Kong vs. Godzilla and Freddy vs. Jason.

In most every way possible, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man proves to be a red hot mess, but a lovable and thoroughly entertaining one nonetheless.

Odds and Odds: The Vikings, Dolls, The Monster Squad, Scream Blacula Scream

ODDS AND ODDS: THE VIKINGS, DOLLS, THE MONSTER SQUAD, SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM
Richard Fleischer’s The Vikings calls to mind epic grand adventure pictures Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, and The Sea Wolf, not to mention The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad from the same year (1958) and John Boorman’s Excalibur from 1981.

Kirk Douglas’ lust for life recalls Errol Flynn’s in Captain Blood, Robin Hood, and Sea Hawk and Janet Leigh’s incredible beauty compares with Olivia de Havilland’s in Captain Blood and Robin Hood, as well as Helen Mirren’s in Excalibur. Never mind that Leigh and Mirren play characters named Morgana; however, their beauty and first name are where their characters’ similarities begin and end.

In other words, The Vikings belongs to the fine cinematic tradition of swashbucklers, hair-raisers, cliff-hangers, nail-biters, period costume pieces, and historical fiction.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that it has an uncredited Orson Welles narrate. The Vikings, in Europe of the eighth and ninth century, were dedicated to a pagan god of war, Odin. Trapped by the confines of their barren ice-bound northlands, they exploited their skill as shipbuilders to spread a reign of terror, then unequaled in violence and brutality in all the records of history. Good stuff.

Highlights include Douglas’ Einar and Curtis’ Eric having key body parts removed, the former his eye by a falcon and the latter his hand in a bout of capital punishment. These moments undoubtedly make The Vikings one of the most gruesome films in 1958 this side of the British classic Fiend Without a Face. Oh, that’s a golden oldie.

Naturally, one can’t go too wrong with any picture where Ernest Borgnine plays a character named Ragnar and spouts screenwriter Calder Willingham’s dialogue like a bountiful fountain, for example What man ever had a finer son? Odin could have sired him, but I did … and Look how he glares at me. If he wasn’t fathered by the black ram in the full of the moon my name is not Ragnar.

Back in the day, my friend would call on quotes from Airplane and Austin Powers for our amusement, and it’s a crying shame that we had no idea about The Vikings, because I think lines such as You sound like a moose giving birth to a hedgehog and The sun will cross the sky a thousand times before he dies, and you’ll wish a thousand times that you were dead would have perfectly fit a night of carousing, especially for two byproducts of a school with Vikings for its mascot.

Rating: Four stars.

— I finally got around to watching Stuart Gordon’s Dolls for the first time.

Finally, because I love Gordon’s first two features Re-Animator and From Beyond.

I must say that I wasn’t disappointed by Dolls, though it’s a step down from From Beyond and a good two or three from Re-Animator.

Alas, Dolls belongs to a slightly different but no less venerable tradition than Re-Animator and From Beyond, both of which cross mad scientists and low-budget exploitation (nudity, gore, etc.). Think Frankenstein meets Dawn of the Dead.

Dolls, meanwhile, recalls such touchstones as The Old Dark House and The Devil-Doll, not to mention the 1979 Tourist Trap. See if this plot sounds familiar: On a dark and stormy night, six people — a dysfunctional family (husband and father, wife and stepmother, and daughter / stepdaughter) and a young man with two hitchhikers — find the nearest house (The Old Dark House) and they have to fight to make it out of the other end of the motion picture alive because their kindly old hosts are magical toy makers with killer dolls (The Devil-Doll, Tourist Trap).

Like both Re-Animator and From Beyond, Gordon and Dolls screenwriter Ed Naha jump off from their basic old-fashioned plot structure with inspired moments of madness.

Dolls also predates Child’s Play by more than a year and rather than just one killer doll, it has a horde … but Child’s Play, created by Don Mancini, spawned Child’s Play 2, Child’s Play 3, Bride of Chucky, Seed of Chucky, Curse of Chucky, Cult of Chucky, and Child’s Play (2019), plus short films Chucky’s Vacation Slides and Chucky Invades and the TV series Chucky.

So, apparently, not all killer doll films are created equal.

Rating: Three stars.

— The Monster Squad starts with an absolute genius idea: Take a group of kids, horror movie fans one and all, and have them do battle against Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, Wolf Man, Mummy, and Gill Man.

Yes, what an absolutely positively brilliant idea by screenwriters Shane Black and Fred Dekker, whose names ring a bell loud and clear for genre fans. Others will be familiar with their work regardless whether they know their names or not.

Black made his fame and fortune first for the script of the buddy cop picture Lethal Weapon and some of his other credits include Predator (he plays Hawkins), The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight.

Dekker’s other feature directorial credits are the fantastic Night of the Creeps and the not-so-fantastic RoboCop 3.

The Monster Squad gives us both protagonists and monsters that we like, and that goes a long way toward producing a memorable motion picture experience.

The Wolf Man gets his due for a change. The fat kid Horace kicks the Wolf Man in the groin and unleashes the film’s trademark line Wolfman’s got nards! In 2018, Andre Gower, one of the stars of The Monster Squad, directed a documentary named Wolfman’s Got Nards, which looks at the impact one little cult horror film made on fans, cast and crew, and the movie industry.

Anyway, in a movie filled with nifty little moments, I love it when the Wolf Man regenerates after he’s blown up real good.

On the site Drinking Cinema, I found a game for The Monster Squad so drink whenever: 1. Dynamite EXPLODES! 2. A monster dies! 3. You hear a sweet insult. 4. You learn a new monster fact. 5. The cops are having a really hard time figuring out that, um, hello, the perps are various Jack Pierce creations. 6. You see amazing dog acting. 7. You witness a patented Monster Slow-Walk. 8. There’s a monster scare!

I give The Monster Squad a slight deduction for the obligatory music video montage right around the midway point of the picture.

Rating: Three-and-a-half stars.

— Vampirism and voodoo go together rather well and their combination helps Scream Blacula Scream become one of those rare sequels I prefer over the original.

I thought William Marshall’s performance as the title character was the redeeming factor in Blacula and he’s every bit as good in Scream Blacula Scream. Marshall just has a commanding screen presence and he brings both a gravitas to a character and legitimacy to a movie that otherwise might be laughable with the wrong person in the main role. He’s equally effective in every guise of this character — the debonair Mamuwalde who has a definite charm with the ladies befitting an African prince (which he indeed was before the racist Dracula cursed him and imprisoned in a coffin until Blacula awakened in 1972 Los Angeles), the menacing Blacula with his fangs bared, and the more reflective Mamuwalde who hates the dreaded vampire curse.

A highly respectable box office return — not voodoo, no matter what the plot synopsis might read — brought Mamuwalde / Blacula / Marshall back.

In the first movie, Mamuwalde / Blacula comes to believe the lovely Tina’s the reincarnation of his long dead wife Luva. Well, it definitely helps that Vonetta McGee plays both Tina and Luva. By golly, doesn’t this plot thread just get you every single time?

In the sequel, Mamuwalde / Blacula believes in the voodoo powers of Lisa Fortier. She can provide a cure and exorcise the curse once and forever.

Scream Blacula Scream came out two weeks after Coffy and had it been made later in 1973 after Pam Grier busted out as a star playing Coffy, her Lisa Fortier character in Scream Blacula Scream would have undoubtedly been different. Grier plays a more traditional leading lady and screaming and shrinking damsel in distress in Scream Blacula Scream, and she’s definitely no shrinking violet in either Coffy or Foxy Brown. So if Scream Blacula Scream had been produced more in the aftermath of both Coffy and Cleopatra Jones, which came out a month after both Coffy and Scream Blacula Scream, surely American-International — one of the best exploitation film outlets — would have wanted Grier to play one badass mama jama vampire killer rather than her more stereotypical role.

Fair warning: Scream Blacula Scream ends on an extremely jarring note. I remember thinking, in the immortal song title of Peggy Lee, is that all there is? Despite the fact of that ending, you might be surprised to find that I am granting Scream Blacula Scream three-and-a-half stars. Yes, it is just that good.

The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)

THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US (1956) **1/2
I should have already learned my lesson.

I bitch about the yucky suck face between scientists John Agar and the lovely Lori Nelson through most of the second half of Revenge of the Creature, so it only serves me right that I got immediately served with the miserably married couple played by Jeff Morrow and Leigh Snowden in The Creature Walks Among Us, the third and final entry in the Creature series released by Universal Studios. Morrow and Snowden are truly a downer and their scenes drag The Creature Walks Among Us down a notch or two from being a perfectly enjoyable creature feature.

All three Creature features benefit heavily from their underwater photography and Walks Among Us works best when the action takes place underwater. Above water, especially when Morrow and Snowden provide us another unpleasant scene together, it’s not so hot. Watching Revenge and Walks Among Us in close proximity, it’s obvious just how much influence these earlier films had upon the later Jaws series also produced by Universal. Jaws 3 borrowed major plot developments from Revenge, for crying out loud.

In a fundamental way, though, Walks Among Us cheats us. It doesn’t really live up to any part of that title until the very end of the picture, when the title character escapes from captivity. I certainly don’t remember a city screaming in terror and the poster incorporates the Golden Gate Bridge into its promotional campaign. Good job, marketing department. Sure, we see the Golden Gate, kinda sorta obligatory for any film shot for any length in San Francisco, but I don’t recall any character being held up above the Golden Gate by our title character, sure to be thrown to his death. Now, that would be an impressive scene.

I feel like I must make amends in this review for cheating Ricou Browning (born 1930) in the Revenge review. He’s the man in the creature suit in the underwater scenes. In Walks Among Us, Don Megowan plays the Gill Man on land. In Revenge, it was Tom Hennesy. In Creature, it was Ben Chapman. I believe it’s a testament to the quality of Browning’s work in the underwater scenes that he filled the creature suit in all three movies.

Strangely enough, I felt a certain sadness during Walks Among Us, alternating with a sense of overall wonderment toward the Universal Classic Monsters series. Walks Among Us ended a stretch where I watched 16 classic horror films, from 1935’s Werewolf of London to 1956’s The Creature Walks Among Us, for the first time, having already watched Universal’s true classics like The Bride of Frankenstein and The Wolf Man several times before. Because I even sometimes enjoy watching a bad movie, like The Invisible Woman, this stretch greatly satisfied both the historian and the horror movie fan living inside me.

Top 12 Universal Classic Monster Movies
1. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
2. Frankenstein (1931)
3. The Wolf Man (1941)
4. Son of Frankenstein (1939)
5. Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
6. The Invisible Man (1933)
7. The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
8. The Mummy (1932)
9. Dracula’s Daughter (1936)
10. Dracula (Spanish version) (1931)
11. Dracula (English version) (1931)
12. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY (1955) Two stars
Bud Abbott (1897-1974) and Lou Costello (1906-59) enjoyed a phenomenal run for Universal Studios from 1941’s Buck Privates through 1955’s Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

They made lots of pictures that made lots and lots of money and they met lots and lots of interesting people (and monsters) in their pictures.

Their career meeting people for Universal took off with the 1948 hit Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, a title which sells Larry Talbot / The Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.), Dracula (Bela Lugosi), and even for one gag the Invisible Man (Vincent Price) short. After that, let’s see, Abbott and Costello meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (not the killer), the Invisible Man (not Vincent Price), Captain Kidd, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Keystone Kops, and the Mummy. We should pause right here and mention Abbott and Costello visited Jack and his beanstalk, Africa, Mexico, and Mars.

I wanted to like Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

I wanted to laugh at Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

I had a mixed reaction instead.

I liked it without laughing at it once.

Since it’s a comedy and I didn’t laugh even once, I guess I don’t really like it.

I call it a forced smile picture more than anything else, where I see the joke, understand the joke, and finally smile with a sense of resignation.

Maybe I have seen too many Abbott and Costello films in close proximity during quarantine, not to mention imitation Abbott and Costello Don Knotts and Tim Conway in The Private Eyes, but I failed to laugh at humor frequently predicated on Costello fumbling bumbling stumbling into or through someone or something, being terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought or a coherent sentence, and then most often failing to make the skeptical Abbott believe him. I swear, Abbott and Costello must play their favorite routine about 100 times during Meet the Mummy.

Abbott and Costello only call each other by name throughout Meet the Mummy. During the final credits, they’re listed playing Pete Patterson and Freddie Franklin, respectively. That’s about the high point of the humor in Meet the Mummy.

Of all the Universal classic monsters, I must admit that I like the Mummy series the least, namely the four pictures Universal rattled off like machine gun fire in the 1940s — The Mummy’s Hand, The Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Ghost, and The Mummy’s Curse. I like Hand alright, find Tomb elevated by Lon Chaney Jr.’s debut as Kharis, and Ghost and Curse have already blended into monotonous goo in my brain after seeing them back-to-back recently. Don’t even get me started on the Indiana Jones wannabe Brendan Fraser CGI monstrosities and I blissfully missed Tom Cruise’s so-called abomination completely.

Chaney Jr. proved to be the most menacing Mummy on screen, and he’s not in Meet the Mummy. It could be any other guy wrapped in gauze and affecting a lumbering pace. Yeah, it’s a guy named Eddie Parker. Oh, sure, probably a nice guy, but still no Chaney Jr. They call the Mummy ‘Claris’ — not Kharis — anyway in Meet the Mummy.

Meet Frankenstein and Meet the Invisible Man worked because the actors portraying the monsters played it straight rather than knowing they were in a comedy. It’s similar to the acting in Airplane, Top Secret, and The Naked Gun, in that it never received the credit it deserved.

As for Abbott and Costello, there’s always Hold That Ghost, Meet Frankenstein, Meet the Invisible Man, and “Who’s on First.”

The Vampire Bat (1933)

THE VAMPIRE BAT (1933) ***
The Vampire Bat would otherwise be a forgotten horror entry were it not for the presence of four members of the Horror Movie Hall of Fame, three of them surefire first ballot inductees.

Fay Wray (1907-2004) earned her claim to be the First Lady of Horror and the first scream queen through her work alone in the 1933 classic King Kong. Ann Darrow gave Wray instantaneous immortality, but she also starred in Doctor X, The Most Dangerous Game, The Vampire Bat, and Mystery of the Wax Museum in a year period leading up to King Kong. She was no one-hit wonder.

Lionel Atwill (1885-1946) appeared in a variety of horror movie roles over a 15-year period, in such entries as Doctor X, The Vampire Bat, Mystery of the Wax Museum, Mark of the Vampire, Son of Frankenstein, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, and House of Dracula. He generally played a mad doctor or an authority figure, be it Inspector Krogh (Son of Frankenstein) or the Mayor (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man). Atwill essayed an inspector in several Universal horror flicks.

Salina, Kansas born Dwight Frye (1899-1943) received a tribute nearly 30 years after his death when Alice Cooper released “Ballad of Dwight Fry” on the 1971 album Love It to Death, one of those classic Cooper morbid ballads / epics. Babe Ruth once said that he was paid more than Herbert Hoover because he had a better year than the President and Frye should have been able to say the same in 1931, between his roles in Dracula and Frankenstein, but it’s doubtful Universal paid a supporting actor in any movie more than the greatest home run hitter. Renfield’s presence certainly would have made the Kamala Harris-Mike Pence vice-presidential debate more interesting.

Melvyn Douglas (1901-81) enjoyed a 50-year acting career and he won Academy Awards for his supporting performances in Hud and Being There, but he earned his spot in the hallowed halls of horror history by appearing in the 1932 classic The Old Dark House.

In other words, Wray, Atwill, Frye, and Douglas elevate The Vampire Bat.

Kill and Kill Again, Firecracker, Circle of Iron

KILL AND KILL AGAIN, FIRECRACKER, CIRCLE OF IRON

In his 1981 TV review of the South African martial arts spectacular KILL AND KILL AGAIN, Roger Ebert predicted action movie stardom for James Ryan and invoked the names Eastwood, Bronson, and Bruce Lee.

Well, in this business and life in general for that matter, you win some, you lose some.

James Ryan, who? Yeah, not exactly a household name.

Describing the plot, I would like to just string together a bunch of random words: martial arts champion for hire undercover government agent top secret rescue mission kidnapped scientist recruit colleagues alternative energy source megalomaniac uniformed cult mind control world domination bar fight mushy romance mushy talk middle-of-nowhere fight storming fortress explosions fisticuffs flips plot revelations not particularly revelatory.

There you go. KILL AND KILL AGAIN, the sequel to KILL OR BE KILLED, in a nutshell.

KILL AND KILL AGAIN works predominantly because it has a good sense of humor and it finds just the right tone to pull off being a successful action comedy.

There’s one especially fun supporting character and supporting performance, the diabolical genius’ assistant and (significant other) Minerva played by Marloe Scott-Wilson. She looks like she drifted over from ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL or THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION, especially with that ridiculous Day-Glo hairdo. She’s a lot of fun in every scene, especially when she calls residential madman Marduk (Michael Mayer) by these absolutely ridiculous pet names. She comes up with a fresh one every single time. And it rankles Marduk, because good old Minerva says her little terms of endearment right in front of everybody. At one point, Marduk tells her, “I said don’t call me Popsicle.” This running gag even has an explosive payoff in the end.

Guess we should mention that South African beauty queen Anneline Kriel — Miss World 1974 — does her own stunts in the movie. She has to overcome playing a character named “Kandy Kane.” I almost wish they would have named her character “Susan Alexander Kane” or “Emily Kane,” for all us CITIZEN KANE fans in the audience. Now, that would have been an impressive stunt.

Impressive stunts are at the heart of FIRECRACKER, especially during the film’s last 30 minutes.

We’re talking about topless kickboxing and what must surely be one of the weirdest love scenes ever committed to celluloid.

Two sicko creeps pursue our heroine Susanne Carter, played by the luscious Jillian Kesner, and they eventually shed her of her top and bra. She then proceeds to kick their asses viciously. Meanwhile, in the background, we have “Rack Master” boxes. Perfect!

“Rack Master” should have been Carter’s martial arts name and it also should have been a title for FIRECRACKER.

That’s not too much of a stretch, especially since FIRECRACKER traveled as NAKED FIST in Australia.

FIRECRACKER director Cirio H. Santiago plagiarized this topless kickboxing scene from his earlier New World Pictures extravaganza TNT JACKSON.

Now, let us consider that weird love scene. Oh Susanna and her love interest Chuck Donner (Darby Hinton) consummate their relationship, but not before they remove each other’s clothes stitch-by-stitch with a knife. Kinky. Chuck Donner and his incredible mustache, especially his incredible mustache, just scream “Creepy seducer of the ladies who killed Susanna’s sister.” Of course, Susanna does not learn of this fact until after their lovemaking.

Susanna exacts her revenge against Chuck in the ring and we all can be sure that he will never look at another woman ever again.

Kesner passed away in 2007 and she and her late husband Gary Graver (1938-2006) became known for their efforts to preserve the work and legacy of legendary director Orson Welles. I do believe it is time for another reference to CITIZEN KANE.

CIRCLE OF IRON attempts to be something bigger, greater than KILL AND KILL AGAIN and FIRECRACKER. It wants to be a transcendent exploitation film.

We are given the only clue we need as soon as the following title card appears on screen: “Prior to the death of the legendary Bruce Lee he helped to create a movie story that might capture not only the spirit of martial arts but a part of the Zen philosophy he lived by. He was aware that a film with these dynamics would cause controversy, particularly among those unfamiliar with Zen beliefs. But it was this very uniqueness that he believed wound enthrall the moviegoer. Bruce set the story in a land that never was and always is. It is to Bruce Lee that this film is posthumously dedicated.”

I was definitely not enthralled by CIRCLE OF IRON. Not very often.

It certainly did not help that Captain Hairdo, er, Jeff Cooper plays the lead character Cord and this character and performance never quite resonated with me because I kept seeing Roger Daltrey instead and I pretended it was TOMMY.

I kept waiting for Cooper’s cord to break out into song, “Listening to you, I get the music / Gazing at you I get the heat / Following you I climb the mountain / I get excitement at your feet!” and “See me, feel me, touch me, heal me.”

It never happened and I felt extremely disappointed.

David Carradine plays about four roles too many in CIRCLE OF IRON. Okay, I’ll say three roles too many, because we get one of the film’s most entertaining scenes when Carradine assumes the guise of “Monkeyman.” At one point, Carradine’s wig came off and I thought shit like that only happened in SAMURAI COP.

Christopher Lee passed on THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES, a joint venture between Hammer Studios and the Shaw Brothers, because he did not want to play Dracula for the millionth time … but he plays what turns out to be a role that sucks even more in CIRCLE OF IRON, Zoltar, er, Zetan. This is one of those quest movies where you’ll become irritated after hearing a certain name — Zetan, maybe — many, many, many, many, many, many times.

Orson Welles asked me not to reference a certain movie during this review of CIRCLE OF IRON. I must respect his wishes.

KILL AND KILL AGAIN ***; FIRECRACKER ***; CIRCLE OF IRON **

Fade to Black (1980)

FADE TO BLACK

FADE TO BLACK (1980) ***

Vernon Zimmerman wrote and directed FADE TO BLACK, a horror film that shows the darkest side of an obsession with movies. Its main character, Eric Binford (Dennis Christopher), takes cinemania literally, as he kills his victims in the guise of his favorite movie characters. They include Dracula, the Mummy, and Hopalong Cassidy.

FADE TO BLACK reached theaters on October 14, 1980. Nearly two months later, disillusioned Beatles fan Mark David Chapman killed former Beatle member John Lennon outside his residence at the Dakota Apartments in New York City. Chapman shot Lennon four times in the back with a .38 special. Chapman stayed at the scene and read from J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” until the police arrived to arrest him. Chapman became fixated on “Catcher” protagonist Holden Caulfield, who loved to rail against “the phonies,” and Chapman surely considered Lennon a phony.

Eric is barely hanging on at the beginning of FADE TO BLACK. His wheelchair bound Aunt Stella (Eve Brent Ashe), who we later find out is actually his mother, nags at him; for example, her first lines are “Eric! Get up! Well, lookie here. Mister Smart Mouth fell asleep with his nose buried in the screen again! Your one-eyed monster is gonna soften your eyes, much less rot your brain! You spend all your time daydreaming and watching those silly movies on the TV and your projector.” Aunt Stella even blames Eric for her accident and her subsequent paralysis many years ago.

Had she ever seen KISS OF DEATH, she might not have been so hateful to the kid. Eric, though, seems to have a special affinity for Richard Widmark’s Tommy Udo, a precursor to Heath Ledger’s Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT. Udo’s the type of guy who thinks nothing of pushing an old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs to her eventual demise.

Eric is a perpetual fuck up at his job at a film distributor’s warehouse and his boss Mr. Berger (Norman Burton), well, you know, he does what a good boss does in a horror movie built around revenge. Eric discovers Mr. Berger’s weakness, a weak heart that could stop ticking any time if Mr. Berger proved unable to reach his precious medication.

Co-workers Richie (Mickey Rourke) and Bart (Hennen Chambers), especially Richie, give Eric grief every chance they get.

One day, Eric spots Australian model and Marilyn Monroe lookalike Marilyn O’Connor (Linda Kerridge, in a sensational movie debut) eating in a cafe with her friend. Eric works up the courage to strike up a conversation with Marilyn and he asks her what movie Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell watched in THE SEVEN YEAR INCH. (I know this one. May I please answer? THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON.) Eric asks Marilyn out to a movie that night and she says yes. He’s all excited, for a change, about something in the “real world.” …

Marilyn unintentionally stands up Eric, a prostitute treats him like shit, Stella smashes his film projector, and, yes, Eric loses his shit and for the rest of the picture, he seeks vengeance against those who he feels have wronged him.

Even a shady filmmaker named Gary Bially (Morgan Paull) crosses Eric by stealing his idea for a nifty low-budget film named ALABAMA AND THE FORTY THIEVES, which Eric says would be made in the early 1950s style of Samuel Fuller.

I’ve read in several places that FADE TO BLACK fails because Christopher gives a bad performance and/or Eric Binford proves to be such a detestable protagonist. Reviews mentioned that Christopher plays a character totally unlike his Dave Stoller in BREAKING AWAY, Christopher’s last big film before FADE TO BLACK.

An unhinged character like Eric Binford — especially since he loves imitating his favorite movie characters in both appearance and speech — allows the actor latitude to push a performance over-the-top and Christopher definitely pushes those limits for even somebody (like me, for example) who admires his performance in FADE TO BLACK.

I give Christopher a tremendous amount of slack after his breakout performance in BREAKING AWAY; he created one of the more lovable characters in cinematic history and I’ll always be grateful to Christopher for that.

Reviewers, though, apparently forgot Dave Stoller’s obsession with bicycling and everything Italian. Did they not remember “cutter” Dave pretending to be Italian exchange student Enrico Gimondi to impress and then date a cute Indiana University co-ed? Dave even renamed poor Jake the Cat “Fellini.”

Eric and Dave are not as different as reviewers have suggested. Eric just lived a tougher life right from the start and he was definitely not blessed with great friends and family like Dave Stoller. We could get into the whole “Nature vs. Nurture” discussion and when’s the last time a horror movie spurred on that.

What I especially liked about FADE TO BLACK is that it follows Eric’s descent into madness all the way to its inevitable conclusion — especially inevitable since Eric becomes Cody Jarrett from WHITE HEAT — and then it finishes in such a flourish atop legendary movie palace Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to make WHITE HEAT director Raoul Walsh and star Jimmy Cagney proud. “Made it Ma! Top of the world!”

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)

THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES

THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES (1974) ***

It was really only a matter of time before Hammer, the British masters of the macabre, and the Shaw Brothers, the Hong Kong masters of martial arts, would combine forces and make the world’s first martial arts vampire movie spectacular. An exploitation movie fan’s wet dream come true, in other words.

They created THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES in 1974, not the greatest vampire or martial arts movie ever made, of course, but still an enjoyable romp for those who have a hankering for (in no particular order, except for the last item) vampire hunting, neck biting, blood letting, boiling blood, severed hands, throat slitting, stabbings through the heart, vampires turning to dust, fake bats, fake castles, sword fights, martial arts combat between warriors and vampires & their minions, archery, breasts, romance, and one ridiculous, anticlimactic ending. Three stars, check it out.

Christopher Lee first played Dracula for Hammer in 1958 and he returned for PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1966), DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (1968), TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (1970), SCARS OF DRACULA (1970), DRACULA 1972 (1972), and THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA (1973). Lee’s animosity toward the series increased over time and he finally refused to participate in THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES after seven times as the Count. Lee read the script and said “No deal.”

That’s a bummer, especially since John Forbes-Robinson makes for a horrible Dracula. How horrible? They dubbed him with David de Keyser and Dracula only appears in a few minutes at the beginning and end of the picture. In the opening scene, Dracula kills a Chinese monk and takes on his form. (Reportedly, Forbes-Robinson was furious about being dubbed. Hey, it’s not the first time in history. A few years after GOLDEN VAMPIRES, SATURN 3 director Stanley Donen felt dissatisfied with Harvey Keitel’s Brooklyn accent and since Mr. Keitel refused participation in post-production, Donen dubbed over Keitel with a British actor using a Mid-Atlantic accent.)

Granted, we do have Peter Cushing for the fifth time as Professor Van Helsing. Who else would handle the plot exposition through dialogue scenes? How about that plot? Van Helsing, on a lecture stop in China, agrees to help seven siblings (six men, one woman) take back their ancestral mountain village that’s been taken over by seven “golden” vampires (including Dracula trapped in another body) and their living dead minions. Then again, I already described the plot in 44 words in the second paragraph.

THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES can stand with any of the goofiest Shaw Brothers spectaculars and it ranks among the best of the Hammer Dracula films.

Nosferatu (1979)

NOSFERATU

NOSFERATU (1979) ***1/2

German director Werner Herzog’s NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE has often been described as a “slow burn” horror film and every critic seems to want to sound a fire alarm that it’s not the average “creature feature” with cheap thrills every few minutes and that it will disappoint most horror movie fans.

The former is certainly true and I cannot speak for the latter except to say this horror movie fan liked it. I’ll be honest, I did not much enjoy it the first time watching it a good 20 years before my return viewing. I remember having a more neutral reaction that first time. Not sure why.

Looking up “slow burn,” I find that it means “a filmmaking style, usually in narrative productions, wherein plot, action, and scenes develop slowly, methodically toward a (usually) explosive boiling point.”

NOSFERATU definitely fits methodical and perhaps only slow to viewers raised on Attention Deficit Cinema. I’d rather say that Herzog’s remake and F.W. Murnau’s original 1922 masterpiece subtitled A SYMPHONY OF HORROR both move at their own leisurely pace. They play more like fever dreams than the average horror movie.

NOSFERATU does not fit the back end of that slow burn definition, because there’s not an explosive boiling point. Certainly not anything resembling the stereotypical big bang grand finale to a standard Hammer Dracula picture.

Herzog marches to the beat of his own drum. That’s for sure and thank God for that, just as we should be thankful for every great director. I consider his AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD to be the best film I have seen from 1972 and I would put it on a list of the greatest films ever made. LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY and GRIZZLY MAN are on my top 10 lists for 1997 and 2005, respectively. Les Blank’s documentary BURDEN OF DREAMS, which chronicles Herzog’s great adventure making FITZCARRALDO, also makes my top 10 list for 1982. Ramin Bahrani’s 18-minute PLASTIC BAG, a top 10 entry for 2010, utilizes Herzog as its narrator.

I know that NOSFERATU was my first time watching a Herzog movie and I believe I had not yet seen the Murnau original. To be sure, I was more equipped watching NOSFERATU for a second time.

More than anything else, images stand out. Brilliant images are the heart of both the 1922 and 1979 films and both Murnau’s and Herzog’s filmography.

Musophobes should not watch NOSFERATU, because rats take over the screen at crucial points late in the picture. The rats are the source of some legendary stories: Herzog said the rats were better behaved during the shoot than star Klaus Kinski and since real grey rats proved to be unavailable, white rats were given a grey makeover, for example.

The rats call to mind the monkeys from AGUIRRE.

Of course, there’s every time Dracula (Kinski) is on the screen. Since copyright was not a concern for Herzog like it had been in 1922 for the first NOSFERATU, Herzog returned names like Dracula, Jonathan Harker, and Lucy to his version. Dracula’s look echoes Max Schreck’s iconic Count Orlok and both vampires are radically different from the classic bloodsuckers played by Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, as well as just about every other vampire in cinematic history. Herzog and Murnau both show how it is more of a curse to be a vampire and make it far less of a power trip. Herzog’s Dracula and Count Orlok are not suave and debonair, and their striking physical appearances echo vampire folklore. We also have far more complex reactions to the vampires played by Schreck and Kinski, since we feel more empathy for them.

Around her mid-20s at the time she made NOSFERATU, French actress Isabelle Adjani already had a strong claim on the title of most beautiful woman in the world. NOSFERATU did nothing to refute that.

Thinking about the various Jonathan Harkers over time, Bruno Ganz’s performance ranks better than David Manners in the 1931 DRACULA and Keanu Reeves in the 1992 DRACULA. He certainly goes through a wider emotional range than either Manners or Reeves, who are both “mannered” in their performances.

Ultimately, NOSFERATU leaves one with feelings different from how we normally react to a vampire picture. There’s not the standard euphoria that we experience, for example, when Lee’s Dracula spectacularly bites the dust. Instead, we are more pensive and melancholic than excited and thrilled.