Tag: Freddy vs. Jason

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.

Predator and The Most Dangerous Game

 

PREDATOR (1987) & THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932)

It’s been duly noted over the years that PREDATOR combines elements from ALIENS and RAMBO into one blockbuster.

Until only recently, I did not realize PREDATOR also updated a 1932 horror movie named THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME for modern times and weaponry. That relatively unknown classic centers around the concept of a big game hunter (Leslie Banks) who moved on from animals to humans on his own island reserve. The big game hunter finally meets his match in another legendary hunter (Joel McCrea) shipwrecked on the island, due to the big game hunter’s dastardly design of sabotaging ships and hosting then hunting the shipwrecked survivors. The two great hunters contest their most dangerous game on the same jungle sets as KING KONG. Ernest B. Schoedsack co-directed both MOST DANGEROUS GAME and KING KONG, films released several months apart. Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong appeared in both. I say go check out THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME.

In a two-star review for THE PREDATOR, I summed up the difference between the 1987 original and the 2018 retread.

“PREDATOR ‘87 does not have perfunctory dialogue and dead weight, and it does not drag. It plays like ‘a lean, mean fighting machine’ (in the great words from STRIPES) and it’s a streamlined entertainment that moves faster than this, er, last year’s model (an Elvis Costello reference following STRIPES).

“The cast of the original PREDATOR amounted to 16 actors.

“By comparison, THE PREDATOR features approximately 50 credited and 20 uncredited cast members.

“Favorite character: ‘Sobbing veterinarian.’ Second favorite: ‘Cantina bartender.’ Show: ‘Halloween mom.’”

Let’s face it: PREDATOR star Arnold Schwarzenegger could do very little wrong at this stage in his career and he’s a presence missing from the PREDATOR movies that have followed. This is a different Schwarzenegger film in one key aspect: When his Dutch faces off against the title character in the final act, it’s an incredibly tense final showdown because, for a change, we are not sure Schwarzenegger’s character will make it out alive. Kevin Peter Hall’s Predator knocks Schwarzenegger around real good, something that we just don’t see every day. Hall stood at 7-foot-2 and he towers over everybody, including Schwarzenegger.

The film’s marketing campaign proved to be misleading, since Schwarzenegger is not the predator, he’s the prey.

The supporting cast around Schwarzenegger forms one of the most macho in history, with such luminaries as Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura, and Bill Duke around to chew the scenery. Their machismo ultimately descends into terror as the title character begins systematically eliminating them. They sure do make great trophies for the intergalactic hunter. They’re the best of the best, at least on this planet.

PREDATOR director John McTiernan (DIE HARD) and crew made the film in the real jungles of Mexico rather than some back lot. Like PLATOON, PREDATOR turns the jungle into another character and it exerts a force seemingly every bit as potent as the title character. If that intergalactic hunter don’t kill you, then the damn jungle will for sure.

Like JAWS, behind-the-scenes difficulties benefited the finished product. Originally, Jean-Claude Van Damme signed on to play the Predator, but was fired during production for reasons that nobody has ever been able to agree on. Apparently, some of his footage survived and made the final cut. The 5-foot-10 Van Damme would have made a radically different Predator, one definitely not quite as imposing and intimidating and one more ninja-like than Hall, who played the role in the first two PREDATOR movies before his 1991 death.

The first Predator suit failed, so the filmmakers called on special effects guru Stan Winston (1946-2008) to solve the problem. Winston is another one of those behind-the-scenes figures who developed a legendary reputation and just reading some of his credits justify the legend: PREDATOR, ALIENS, THE TERMINATOR and TERMINATOR 2, STARMAN, A.I., FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III (uncredited), THE THING, and PUMPKINHEAD (Winston also made his directorial debut with this 1988 horror feature).

Like a classic horror movie, we have a gradual build-up to the full reveal of the monster in PREDATOR. Characters also build him up in our imaginations with their dialogue. Of course, we see the effects of an escalating body count and this only fuels our anticipation for seeing this predator in his true form. When we do see this intergalactic villain, it’s worth the wait. The final showdown between Schwarzenegger and Predator definitely lives up to our expectations, and it’s on par with the big fights in KING KONG VS. GODZILLA and FREDDY VS. JASON, though PREDATOR is overall a better film than both KING KONG VS. GODZILLA and FREDDY VS. JASON.

You have not lived a full cinematic life until you have seen Schwarzenegger’s Dutch tell the Predator, “You’re one ugly motherfucker,” as he takes off his mask.

PREDATOR (1987) Three-and-a-half stars; THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932) Three-and-a-half stars