“Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep.”

So I’ve written a lot of words about various classic monster franchises, but haven’t really gone into more recent categories. THAT CHANGES NOW with one of the biggest names in 80s horror, as we begin a long, nightmarish journey to Springwood, Ohio. That’s right, its 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Plot
Nancy Thompson is a normal teenager with normal (if archetypal) teenage friends, who are all having similar dreams of a horrifically burned man stalking them in a boiler room and attacking them. When they awake they have actual wounds like those they got in their dreams. At first, this is just weird, but when one friend is horrifically killed by the guy in her sleep during a sleepover, Nancy starts to freak out and wants answers, and it becomes clear that the parents of Elm Street are hiding something.

Characters
Nancy Thompson: Heather Langenkamp is our hero, an everygirl type of character who just wants the nightmares to end. She’s bright though, and starts working out some ideas on how to confront the murderer who stalks her dreams. She picks up a white shock of hair after one close call.

Glen Lantz: Introducing Johnny Depp! He’s Nancy’s boyfriend. Questionable taste in midriff exposing t-shirts aside, he’s a decent fellow but a fairly bland character.

Tina Gray: Amanda Wyss is Freddy’s very first victim. Like most 80s horror victims, she’s a promiscuous teen. The results are messy.

Rod Lane: Jsu Garcia as Nick Corri as Tina’s greaser boyfriend. He’s a crude, rebellious youth and the prime suspect for Tina’s death. Freddy makes short work of him.

Marge Thompson: Ronee Blakley is Nancy’s mom and denies up and down that anything could possibly be wrong and that Nancy is just imagining things and should really get some sleep. Marge is in deep denial. Marge also likes booze. A lot.

Lt. Donald Thompson: John Saxon! He’s Nancy’s father and a police lieutenant. Like all movie cop dad’s he’s a good man but busy and overworked and doesn’t have much time for his daughter.

Fred Krueger: Robert Englund is one hell of a creepy monster in this. I should point out that Freddy’s look is extremely effective. Trousers, a tattered red and green sweater, horribly scarred face, a weird clawed glove and a dapper fedora. Freddy’s backstory is that he was a child murderer back in the day and the parents of Elm Street banded together to take him down in a fit of vigilante justice, locking him in a basement/boiler room and burning him up. But he’s apparently too evil and too pissed off to let that stop him, so he’s bided his time and now starts taking revenge on the children of those who killed him.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Wes Craven, the movie certainly shows its modest beginnings with a modest budget. Elm Street itself certainly looks generic-suburban enough but other locations for Springwood look nothing like any Ohio location I’ve ever seen. In fact, they look suspiciously like Southern California. The Ohio setting makes sense, since Craven himself is a native Ohioan, but yeah…palm trees. In Ohio.

Now, obviously the dream sequences get the lion’s share of effects work, and the practical effects are actually pretty good. Tina’s death near the beginning is a particularly effective scene, along with some of Freddy’s menacing approaches (backlit in an alley and pushing through a wall over a sleeping Nancy, for example).

Writing
Written by Wes Craven, the storyline is fairly interesting and nicely self-contained. The pacing works very well and by the end of the movie, the line between awake and asleep is blurred as the tone gets increasingly desperate for a solution. As far as “flaws,” Nancy’s plan to confront Freddy in the real world with assorted homemade traps is a little hard to take seriously in a post-Home Alone world, though it does work to show Nancy showing initiative. The other nit to pick is that its interesting to see Freddy being deadly serious in this one. He really only cracks a few jokes (like the infamous ‘I’m your boyfriend now” line) and most of the rest of the time he’s just a sadistic monster with no redeeming qualities. Which, considering that’s what he is, works just fine. It just stands in contrast with the heavy merchandising of the brand that occurred later when Freddy’s personality solidified (or perhaps congealed).

Sound
Original music by Charles Bernstein and, well…it’s the early 1980s. Yes it is atmospheric and suitably creepy at times, but there’s a lot of electronic effects. A LOT. What’s aged better is the children’s nursery rhyme that herald’s Freddy’s approach.

Conclusion
A Nightmare on Elm Street is actually a rather intelligent movie that gives the viewer a sympathetic heroine and a mysterious and effective villain. There’s also subtext you can look into, like a critique of suburban culture and the theme of teen sexuality and the loss of innocence of growing up, and so on. There’s stuff open to interpretation. Obviously the movie’s got stuff for the blood seekers out there, and that stuff’s imaginatively done. Its just nice to have some brains hiding behind the slaughter as well. Recommended.

“We journey to Hell, but God travels with us.”

Conceptually, 2010’s Black Death is something that should appeal to me. It’s set in the Medieval period and stars Sean Bean. And when it very quickly disappeared to video, I was curious why it didn’t do better than it did. I am no longer curious.

Plot
It’s 1348 and the narrator informs us that the Black Plague is EVERYWHERE. Some see it as a punishment from God, while others see the plague as the work of witchcraft and seek to hunt it down. Our protagonist is a monk who volunteers to accompany a heavily armed Bishop’s envoy to a village untouched by the plague and where the people are said to be led by a witch. They head out there and things go badly, with most of the characters dying, ironically not from the plague.

Characters
Osmund: Eddie Redmayne is our protagonist. He’s released from quarantine after not showing any symptoms of disease. He’s not a very good monk, since he’s got a girlfriend on the outside with whom he’s broken his vows of chastity, and he urges her to seek shelter away from the village and will meet her in the woods. This is precisely the reason why he volunteers to go with the warriors. Osmund is both something of an idealist and a giant weenie. Being a monk, he’s not a good adventurer, but he’s not good at being a monk either. He gets into some difficult moral quandaries.

Ulrich: Sean Bean is our badass and pretty much the only likable character. He’s a cynical realist with an unshakable faith. Along the way he interferes in a peasant witch trial by shanking the woman suspected of witchcraft to give her a quicker, more merciful death than the peasants would have. He gets real pissed at Osmund when the monk wanders off to look for his girlfriend and ends up drawing back a bunch of bandits/goons and in the ensuing fight one of Ulrich’s men is killed. Ulrich tears him a new one for going off on his own and for being a little bitch.

Ulrich’s crew: The fighters in his little band are all rough-and-tumble guys who aren’t nice people. That’s pretty much the extent of their characterization, as I don’t even remember any of their names. The one that stands out from the rest is Bearded Veteran (because that’s what he is) because he shows some personality.

The Abbot: Hey, its David Warner! David Warner is always a good thing, even if he’s only at the beginning and end of the movie.

Langiva: Carice van Houten is our villain (OR IS SHE?!) She’s pretty much in charge of the little village our protagonists travel to. She’s pretty obviously the witch they’re looking for (OR IS SHE?!) and is very keen on spilling Christian blood to keep that Christian disease out of her village. The thing is, she’s a colossal liar and a smug bitch and starts needling the weak link of the group, Osmund by bringing back to life his dead girlfriend (OR IS SHE?!)

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Christopher Smith, the movie is clearly working with a lower budget judging from the small cast and with most of the action taking place in fields and forests. What few fights exist are nicely done, as are the few special effects. However, the movie is plagued by the vile demon that is Shaky Cam. If there is any devil’s work truly at play, it is whoever decided to use Shaky Cam for a Medieval movie. God I hate that.

Writing
The screenplay by Dario Poloni is…problematic. On the one hand it sets an appropriately grim and dark mood for the proceedings. So grim and dark that it would almost work better in the Warhammer 40K universe. On the other hand, by the end of the movie, its clear that while the villagers may be pagan, the reason the plague hasn’t touched them is because it hasn’t actually touched them. As in, it was just isolated from it. That’s one thing, but compounding it is the fact that Langiva and her henchman Hobb come out as atheists turns the movie into yet another question of "Christianity vs. Atheism and isn’t religion so very brutal, superstitious, and unenlightened?"

Yes, I get it, it asks the viewer to challenge and examine dogma under the lens of what it does in extreme conditions, but you know what? Its been done to fucking death. Just about every major medieval movie of the last twenty years has asked or implied that question (Ridley Scott did it twice), while other time periods like Ancient Rome (again, Ridley Scott) get a pass. What is it about the Middle Ages that brings this out? Was it Gibbon’s history? Is it a general anticlerical sentiment? Is it the Crusades? Because if religious atrocity is the subject of scrutiny, I can assure the Middle Ages had no monopoly on that. Hell, the age of the Reformation and the 30 Years’ War is full of inhuman behavior (and witch hunting was far more popular then than in the Middle Ages), why aren’t there more movies about that? Or rather, why are all of those elements squashed into a single time period? As a medievalist I am genuinely curious about this as much as I’m disappointed by this pigeonholing.


Sound
Original music by Christian Henson, and the music is largely forgettable. It’s been a few weeks and I can’t remember any of it.

Conclusion
I was hopeful for Black Death. I liked the premise. Did I want to see a group of warriors hunting down an evil cult while a witch tried to ensorcel them with evil magic? HELL YES I DID. If the movie would have stuck with that premise instead of backpedaling on the witchcraft, I probably would have been able to forgive even the sin of Shaky Cam. But NO. The twist flings the movie into the pile of generic postmodern medieval stereotyping AND features Shaky Cam.

But Sean Bean and David Warner were good, so there’s that at least.

“I couldn’t have an ordinary ghost on my hands, I got a rummy! A big, ugly, booze-soaked rummy!”

After last week, I’d say we’re done with mummies. OR ARE WE?? This next film carries a lot of nostalgia for me, since it was on a VHS that encompassed most of what I loved as a kid. Disney, ghosts, pirates, the 60’s aesthetic (before I knew how to spell “aesthetic”), and comedy. It’s time for 1968’s Blackbeard’s Ghost.

Plot
After an opening title crawl boasting about how badass a villain Blackbeard the pirate was, we head to the coastal town of Godolphin. The new track coach drives into town one night and will be staying at the Blackbeard Inn, a suitably piratey establishment run by a group of kindly old spinsters called the Daughters of the Buccaneers who claim to be the descendants of Blackbeard's crew. A local nightclub owner has bought their mortgage and is trying to run them out so he can build an off-shore casino.

Our hero arrives during a fundraiser, buys an old warming pan to impress a female professor at the college, gets assigned to Blackbeard’s old bedroom and accidentally sits on the warming pan, breaking it. Inside the handle, he finds an old fragment of parchment containing part of the spell book of Aldetha Teach, one of Blackbeard’s wives who was burned at the stake for witchcraft and cursed him to spend eternity in limbo until he displayed a shred of human kindness. Naturally he ends up summoning Blackbeard from said limbo and has a raging alcoholic ghost that only he can see tagging along as he tries to get his track team in shape for the Broxton Relay, steal the football coach’s girlfriend, and find a way to keep the Daughters of the Buccaneers from being kicked out of their home.

Characters
Steve Walker: Dean Jones (star of most of the Herbie the Love Bug related projects and other Disney films) is our hero. A straight-laced, teetotaler of a track coach, he’s a decent, charitable fellow but also a fish out of water in Godolphin. He inherits the worst track team in the state (his shot putter, Gudger Larkin, looks like he weighs 90 pounds soaking wet) and only has a few weeks before the big relay. Blackbeard is a huge annoyance for him (and causes people to think he’s gone crazy like the previous track coach) and he tries to get the old salt to do a selfless act.

Edward Teach/Captain Blackbeard: You can tell Peter Ustinov was having an absolute blast as Blackbeard. More of a poltergeist than a regular ghost, since he can affect the mortal world (like stealing bottles of hooch, stealing a motorcycle, stealing fat wads of cash, and steali--, er, punching goons in the face), Blackbeard is gleefully reprobate and tries to teach Steve to loosen up and have some fun. He lies, he cheats, and he has mood swings like a spoiled child, Ustinov’s Blackbeard is a hoot in this and reason enough to watch the film.

Jo Anne Baker: Suzanne Pleshette is a psychology professor at Godolphin College. Steve meets her when he mistakenly thinks she runs the kissing booth at the Buccaneer fundraiser. She’s spunky and dedicated to saving the Blackbeard Inn. After Steve picks up Blackbeard, she kind of volunteers to keep an eye on him and see if he’s really crazy. Initially she’s dating the football coach, Purvis, but he’s a smug jerk with no personality.

Emily Stowecroft: Hey, its Elsa Lanchester! A good few decades removed from Bride of Frankenstein, she plays the leader of the Daughters of the Buccaneers and when Steve meets her, she’s reading fortunes in a tent in full-blown crazy lady mode. She also provides incredibly hammy exposition (which is difficult to do) and is great fun to watch.

Silky Seymour: Joby Baker plays our villain. Black suit, goons, and a pencil-thin moustache, he’s stereotypically evil and plays the part with oily smugness. He encourages gambling but naturally cheats when it goes against him.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Robert Stevenson (who was behind the camera for numerous Disney pictures, like Mary Poppins), the film’s strengths are set design (for the Blackbeard Inn) and special effects, which are pretty good for 60s live-action. Doesn’t hurt that most of the scenes are set at night to better cover the wires. There’s quite a few fun scenes where Blackbeard takes an active role in the shenanigans, such as stealing a police motorcycle, interfering in the track meet, and being a trump card in the final brawl between Steve and Silky’s goons (there’s even a nice finger-gun shootout).

Writing
Based on the book by Ben Stahl. Screenplay by Bill Walsh & Don DaGradi. The screenplay mixes a whole lot of plot elements in but keeps things well connected, but right after the track meet the movie slows down quite a lot before rallying for the ending. The real draw is Blackbeard misbehaving and trying to show a spark of human goodness so he can move on from limbo.

Sound
Original music by Disney regular Robert F. Brunner. The score is actually quite good, throwing in a lot of nice piratey touches like concertinas and harpsichords. The few songs in the film (because this is Disney, after all) are also quite catchy.




Conclusion
Pacing issue aside, I’m glad that it wasn’t mere rose-tinted glasses that led to fond memories of Blackbeard’s Ghost. Its actually a very solid family film that is 100% carried by Ustinov’s gleeful scenery chewing. If for no other reason, the movie’s worth watching for that.

Can't find a trailer, but you get the idea.

“The mummy’s on the loose and he’s dancin’ with the devil!”

Closing the week out while also closing out the Universal Mummy series. Curiously, this sequel is also from 1944. That means Universal released two mummy movies in one year. That’s a lot of mummy. Anyway, here’s The Mummy’s Curse, the last of the Universal mummy franchise and its got the biggest continuity headscratcher of them all.

Plot
We start with a musical number in Louisiana. Huh. 25 years after The Mummy’s Ghost, a government-sponsored work crew is draining some swamplands in Louisiana when the workers start getting real suspicious since a generation ago a mummy disappeared into the swamp. Yes, the movie blatantly moves the entire setting from Mapleton, New England, to the bayou. Why? I don’t know. Maybe they wanted to put a mummy in Cajun country.

Anyway, an academic from the Scripps Museum comes down and asks the foreman for cooperation in letting them dig around after they’ve drained some swampland when the work crews find a dead laborer and a mummy-shaped hole in the ground. Kharis is out there, somewhere. Later, some earth gets loosened and the Princess Anaka digs herself out of the dirt as well. She ends up washing the dirt and crud off and returning to normal human form and the workers and archeologist try to help her out, but her memory’s foggy and she knows an awful lot about Egyptian history. There’s a new High Priest of Arkan in town looking to get both mummies back home and Kharis really wants his woman back.

Characters
Pat Walsh: Addison Richards plays the skeptical and flustered foreman trying to get part of the swamp drained. Mostly around to provide a voice of grumpy cynicism about the possibility of a mummy being in the area.

Betty Walsh: Kay Harding is Pat’s daughter and secretary. She’s there to provide a love interest for…

Dr. James Halsey: Dennis Moore is the archeologist sent by the Scripps Museum to try and recover the mummies if he can. He develops a thing for Betty.

Princess Ananka: Virginia Christine is our real protagonist. Ananka is actually Amina who was killed at the end of the last movie, now revived and psychologically messed up because she’s got the memories of two people in her head and she still swoons into trace-like states when Kharis is near. The most sympathetic character who gets the most character work, she’s actually rather interesting.

Ilzor: Peter Coe is our resident fez-wearing Priest of Arkan, and unlike every one of his predecessors, is actually focused on the mission and not subject to temptation. He’s also kind of a jerk to Halsey after Ananka is revived, constantly decrying the search efforts for her (she tends to wander off a few times) as futile and hopeless.

Ragheb: Martin Kosleck is Ilzor’s henchman and embedded in the work crew. He ends up desiring Betty and ultimately betrays his vows. He’s a stab-happy goon and probably the most outright villainous character in the whole series.

Cajun Joe: Kurt Katch plays a veteran of the swamps who’s a kind of unofficial leader among the work crew. He’s the first person to find the revived Ananka and tries to take care of her. He learns that shotguns don’t impress Kharis at all. He, like most of the crewmen, is painted in broad, stereotypical strokes.

Goobie: The awesomely named Napoleon Simpson is another member of the work crew and also happens to be a black guy who survives a horror movie. Goobie’s quite likable actually, being funny and observant when he’s around, though he too is fairly stereotypical.

Kharis: Lon Chaney Jr. one last time as the mummy. Kharis is quite a bit darker in this movie, strangling a surprising number of innocent people who just wanted to help Ananka. He also seems to have greater strength in this movie, being able to topple some ruins at the end of the film as a kind of avenging agent hell-bent on punishing Ragheb.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Leslie Goodwins, the film actually does pull off some neat techniques. Kharis appears several times as a backlit silhouette against a tent, which hasn’t really been done since the 2nd movie. The mummy effects by Jack Pierce continue to be good, but Kharis' face isn't quite as good.

However, the most impressive scene for me was Ananka’s resurrection. First she kind of digs her way out of the dirt, her skin completely covered in dirt and looking mummified. She stumbles out of the ground and her eyes are pretty much closed as she shambles through the swamp, but she’s not slow like Kharis. They played with the film speed too because her movements are just jerky enough to be inhuman without being grossly exaggerated (and you can tell from the way the leaves on the trees move). That coupled with the music yielded a surprisingly melancholy and creepy scene that worked really well, I thought.



Oh yes, and they recycle footage like crazy during flashbacks, so that tradition continues.

Writing
So Original Story credits to Leon Abrams and Dwight V. Babcock (and uncredited Ted Richmond), adaptation by Leon Abrams and Dwight V. Babcock (and uncredited Oliver Drake), and Screenplay by Bernard Schubert. So, the elephant in the room is the drastic shift in location. Going from New England to Louisiana is really difficult to swallow and really breaks the suspension of disbelief.

But once you get past that, it IS interesting setting a mummy movie in the bayou just because that never happens. The movie also really highlights for me a major feature of the Universal Mummy series. While there’s a definite pulpy feel to the stories, Kharis also straight up kills good/innocent people. Sure Kharis usually kills off a bad guy or two, but most of his victims are nice people who either get in the way accidentally, are searching for knowledge, or, in the case of this movie, just trying to help an amnesiac woman out of sheer human kindness. Rather interesting when you compare it to, say, 90s horror movies where just about all of the victims of the monster are unlikable jerks. Another notable element is that the movie ends on a downer again.

Sound
Original music by (uncredited) William Lava and Paul Sawtell. The music continues to work well with appropriate cues for action, suspense, and melancholy.

Conclusion
So The Mummy’s Curse actually takes the series out on a high note in my opinion. Despite taking the biggest liberty with continuity yet, they do some really cool stuff with Ananka and the setting eventually works.

Now, as for the series of films, the Karloff one stands alone, both as its own story and the best made. The Kharis films are about 50/50 for me in terms of quality, with the middle two being the weak ones. However, as a whole they provide an interesting experience, with a slower, more deliberate pacing than other Universal horrors from the 40s. The Kharis films are also a bit more coherent than the “House Of…” monster mashes with Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man, but at the cost of being way less batty.

Contradictorily I am going to recommend the Mummy series as a whole but not the individual films as stand alones. Because the story generally makes more sense if you follow Kharis along from the start despite the heavy retcons they make with each subsequent film. They're just more fun as a whole.

“Looks like somebody else was messing around with tana leaves.”

Universal returned to Mapleton in 1944 and resurrected Kharis for another go around, burning mansion be damned. Leaving the Banning family behind, the franchise takes it to new territory: A college campus. So will we be seeing a mummy undergoing fraternity hazings and doing keg stands? Of course not, but the results are still rather interesting anyway. Its The Mummy's Ghost, which doesn't actually feature any ghosts.

Plot
Mapleton is recovering from its last Mummy problem when the priests of Arkan (not Karnak anymore) send a new representative to America to recover the mummies of Kharis and Ananka, the latter being on display in the Scripps Museum. We then turn to Mapleton College, where a professor dabbles in translating hieroglyphics and brews up some tana leaves. Right as rain, he gets choked out by the mummy Kharis and the town goes into a fit over the new killings. One of the deceased professor’s students is dating an Egyptian student who starts to feel weird. She also tends to go into trances and wander around the campus and faints when she sees the mummy. Things progress along familiar territory when the priest sent to exact revenge falls for the girl, and then the movie ends on a real downer.

Characters
Tom Hervey: Robert Lowery is our “college aged” hero. He looks to be in his thirties at least. Anyway, he’s skeptical about mummies and the supernatural. He’s also got a cute little dog as a kind of sidekick, but a pet is not a substitute for a personality. Probably our blandest Mummy hero yet.

Amina Mansouri: Ramsay Ames plays our actual protagonist. Beautiful, but not really “Egyptian-looking,” she is actually the reincarnation of the Princess Ananka. Which explains why she goes into trance states when Kharis is near. Sort of. Anyway, she’s actually an interesting, sympathetic character since she’s mystified by all that’s going on and trying to do something about it.

Andoheb, High Priest of Arkan: George Zucco again, and again under the weathered, old-man makeup. Why is he a Priest of Arkan instead of Karnak? Who knows. Maybe their lease was up and they got a better deal. Anyway, he’s only in the beginning of the movie, but it is kind of amusing that he seems frustrated in the failure of his previous successor when appointing another.

Yousef Bey: John Carradine! Looking a little tanned! He’s the new priest sent to America to get Kharis and Ananka back. Interestingly, reclamation is the sole mission as opposed to the revenge angle. Needless to say, he too falls victim to the whims of lust and falls for Amina and would like to make both her and himself immortal, just like the last two guys tried. Still, the fact that its John Carradine means that he chews the scenery with exceptional relish. It also ends about the same too, with Kharis defenestrating him near the end of the film.

Kharis: Lon Chaney Jr. again and he seems more comfortable in the role. This time around Kharis is a bit more proactive, hiding out in some guy’s barn before Yousef arrives and being very, very adamant about taking Ananka, regardless of whatever body her spirit is in, home to her proper resting place.

Prof. Matthew Norman: Frank Reicher, who was in the last movie as a minor character doing forensic work for the police (maybe a live mummy limping around got him interested in Egyptology), returns in this one as somebody who can be the first victim of the mummy. His death is quite accidental, in that he dabbled too eagerly with the tana leaves and got a throttling.

This kind of shot has been in Every mummy movie so far.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Reginald Le Borg, makeup by Jack Pierce. Again, visually there’s not a whole lot of interesting flourishes, but the camera work is dependable and the makeup effects are great. The movie also makes liberal use of stock footage of Egypt and recycled footage from the Karloff film.

There is one standout scene in the Scripps Museum where Yousef sneaks around after hours and summons Kharis and a security guard gets in the way. It’s quite well done and Carradine’s smile as he sees Kharis sneaking up is nice and creepy, as is Kharis’ temper tantrum when he realizes that Ananka’s spirit is not with her mummy anymore. The last scene is also rather impressive, with Kharis carrying the body of Amina/Ananka into a swamp as he’s being chased by (you guessed it) an angry mob.

Writing
The screenplay is by Griffin Jay, Henry Sucher, & Brenda Weisberg, and here things are actually quite a bit more interesting than the last film. Sure, Tom’s as boring as a rock, but the merging of Amina with Ananka is genuinely an interesting development cribbed from the Karloff film. I also really liked the fact that after the professor’s death, the local police don’t waste any time in suspecting it could be anything other than a returned Kharis. That’s a nice bit of continuity there. What’s also fun is that the cops try to recreate the situation that got Professor Norman killed, only they plan to trap Kharis in a pit trap, since that’s the best idea they’ve got because they know bullets don’t work on him. Sadly they never get to use it, but the fact that they showed the cops being savvy enough to try is a nice touch. Sadly, the random continuity breaks persist, with the priesthood suddenly becoming that of Akran. Maybe they weren’t comfortable with Karnak anymore, since the actual Karnak was a real city and a seat of theological importance? I dunno.

Sound
Frank Skinner (uncredited) on musical duty, and the score continues to be good. This time the themes are changed up a bit and its more sweeping and a bit less melancholy.

Conclusion
The Mummy’s Ghost is better than the previous entry. Some interesting writing touches are done and Kharis displays more personality and then we get a genuinely unhappy ending. Definitely a step up, but it kind of requires seeing The Mummy’s Tomb to appreciate it more, continuity issues notwithstanding.


Wooden fences are no match for the might of KHARIS!

“Three tana leaves to keep him alive, nine to give him movement.”

The first Kharis movie was successful and it took only 2 years for the next sequel, The Mummy’s Tomb, to come out. This time around, it’s a direct continuation of the story, only set 30 years after it. But despite this, things start to get a little…wonky.

Plot
Its 30 years later and an old Steve Banning is now a retired archeologist with a grown up son who’s got a girlfriend/fiancee of his own now. He tells a tale of his adventures as a young man, told through recycled footage of the last two films, and his son doesn’t really believe it. Meanwhile, Priest Andoheb is still alive and appoints a new priest to act as his successor and caretaker of the mummy, Kharis. Princess Ananka was taken to a display in America and the new guy is sent with Kharis to get her mummy back and exact revenge on those who defiled the tomb 30 years ago. The priest arrives in the town of Mapleton (which is somewhere in New England) and immediately starts sending out Kharis to do his strangling thing.

Characters
Steve Banning: Dick Foran continues to be likable, this time as a mustachioed professor-type who pretty much does a bunch expository narration over some flashbacks before becoming the first victim of the “Mapleton Monster.” Which I’ll admit, is kind of interesting. You bring the hero back from the last movie, then kill him off ten minutes in. Didn’t exactly expect that in a 40’s movie. Its also kind of a shame, since Foran’s performance is more nuanced in this one.

Dr. John Banning: John Hubbard is our actual hero. The skeptical son of Steve Banning, John’s a pretty boring character who doesn’t do anything except be the useless voice of scientific skepticism in a house where his dad straight-up fought a mummy in his youth. He’s kind of a useless character until he finally believes in Kharis, and then he finally does something about it (like helping organize an angry mob). It just takes several deaths to get him there.

Isobel Evans: Elyse Knox plays John’s girlfriend. She’s a bit more intrigued by Steve’s stories, but other than that she’s another standard character without much personality. Pleasant, virtuous, and eventually the object of Mehemet Bey’s affections, she’s more of a plot device than a real character.

Babe Hanson: Wallace Ford returns. I have no idea why his last name’s “Hanson” instead of “Jenson” this time around but whatever. He arrives in Mapleton, also wearing a dapper moustache (and spectacles) after Steve’s murder and he knows exactly what’s going on: Kharis followed them to America and wants revenge. Except nobody believes him. Though the newshawks that descend on Mapleton for the story are eager to hear his tale. He too becomes a victim of Kharis’ wrath.

Andoheb: George Zucco returns. He survived the gunshot that took him out of the last movie and here is shown under a lot of old-people makeup. Humbled from his attempt to use a mummy to steal a girl for himself, he tasks his successor to finish his job, but not before warning him to stay true to his vows and avoid temptation. Guess how well that works out?

Mehemet Bey: Turhan Bey (who’s half-Turkish; which is as close as the series gets to an actual Egyptian High Priest), is our villain this time. He’s a young High Priest of Karnak following his mission. He’s an interesting character since he’s quite polite, kind of nice and not really intimidating in the way you’d expect the handler of a thousand year old mummy to be. He’s fairly level-headed and treats his mission like the job it is. He’s got nothing personal against Banning and company. That all changes when he spots Isobel. His heart goes aflutter and the plan starts to go off the rails.

Kharis: Lon Chaney Jr. takes up the mummy mantle (and continues to do so from here on out). His Kharis is a little bit singed and one eye has swollen shut, but he’s still mute and shambling. Sadly, they didn’t bring back the rotoscoped effect for his eyes this time. It doesn’t feel like Chaney found his footing with Kharis this time around, though the mummy is surprisingly spry and capable of climbing a trellis to the second floor of a house.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Harold Young, the movie has a workmanlike quality to it that isn’t bad, but lacking in any real identity. It is kind of novel bringing Kharis to an American setting, and the Jack Pierce makeup effects are still top-notch, but it lacks the wit of the previous film and the artistry of Freund’s film.

Writing
Story by Neil P. Varnick and Screenplay by Griffin Jay and Henry Sucher. The story is…okay. It recycles a few beats from the last one (and a lot of footage) in that the mummy’s handler falls for a woman and succumbs to temptation and then suffers for it. Like I said above, the real interesting element at play here is bringing in the heroes from the last movie and murdering them, which kind of displays the mummy’s patience and persistence at getting his revenge (though in a lot of ways Kharis is just a tool of the Priests of Karnak). What’s also interesting is that the internal continuity of the series is beginning to, ah, unravel, with Babe’s sudden change in last name. Oh, and big surprise, but there’s an angry mob in the movie.

This happens a lot in the series

Sound
Musical Director Hans J. Salter, and the score is really nice and appropriate. Pretty much the stuff I said for the last movie applies here as well. A good, solid score.

Conclusion
The Mummy’s Tomb is a pretty weak entry into the series. Its watchable, certainly, but it lacks real vitality to make it stand out. It’s got a strong start and then only picks up again at the end when a house is lit on fire with the mummy in it. Also, the movie wants you to buy War Bonds.

“Hey Steve, can a woman go nuts from getting sawed in half too many times?”

It was almost 10 years before Universal revisited the Mummy franchise, but revisit they did in 1940, producing The Mummy’s Hand, which was more of a reboot since it completely did away with the Imhotep plotline. Sort of. Actually, quite a lot of the movie has changed, going for a more pulpy feel to the proceedings than the eldritch tone of the original. Is that a good thing? We shall see.

Story
Once more we begin in Egypt, only this time our protagonists are Steve Banning, a down-on-his-luck archeologist trying to make a big discovery, and his best buddy, Babe Jenson. In a bazaar they find a piece of pottery clueing them in to the location of the Tomb of Princess Ananka, which is somewhere in the Hill of the Seven Jackals. Unfortunately, the ancient line of the Priests of Karnak are the caretakers of said tomb, and their sacred duty is to ensure the tomb is undisturbed. Banning and Jenson finally get funding, in the form of an eccentric American magician and his beautiful daughter, and they set out for the Hill with another archeologist in tow. To defend the Tomb of Ananka, the Priest of Karnak awakens the ancient mummy Kharis to seek out and destroy the would-be defilers.

Characters
Steve Banning: Dick Foran is our hero, and is a fairly standard one, albeit more proactive than usual. A disgraced archeologist trying to make enough scratch to go home to New York, its his idea to go digging in the desert when he learns of the Valley of the Seven Jackals, its his idea to get funding, and so on. He’s all about going off on an ADVENTURE! Which makes him reasonably likable.

Babe Jenson: Wallace Ford is Banning’s sarcastic, very-much-a-New-Yorker sidekick. He provides a lot of the comic relief and a hefty dose of skepticism towards the supernatural. He’s also reasonably competent in a lot of things, like marksmanship, when it counts.

Dr. Petrie: Charles Trowbridge plays the academic who believes in Banning’s mission. He goes along to provide added academic support, and someone for the mummy to kill.

The Great Solvani: Cecil Kelloway plays the traveling magician who instead of using his money to get back home, invests in the expedition because he thinks it’ll be fun. He provides the rest of the comic relief as he’s able to out con Babe in a few bar tricks when they meet.

Marta Solvani: Peggy Moran is Solvani’s much more level-headed daughter and at first tries to get the money her father invested back by confronting Babe with a (trick) revolver. Naturally, she becomes Banning’s love interest.

Professor/High Priest Andoheb: George Zucco! In a fez! He’s “Egyptian” in this and while a respected scientist, he is also the new High Priest of Karnak, tasked with protecting the tomb from defilers. Eventually sees Marta and decides that he’ll make her and himself immortal through some kind of ritual.

Kharis: Tom Tyler plays the title character, and through a backstory that heavily recycles footage from the last mummy movie, is changed around that Ananka was the princess who died prematurely and whom he tried to revive by stealing, not the Scroll of Thoth, but the forbidden tana leaves. He was caught and mummified alive, but with the added feature of having his tongue cut out, so he’ll never speak any lines. Anyway, a tea brewed from the tana leaves has kept him sort of alive/undead all these centuries. 3 leaves will keep him alive, and 9 leaves will give him mobility. Any more than 9 leaves and that’s going to be a problem. Still, Kharis is a pretty good monster, despite being a mute, undead errand boy who’s whole shtick involves strangling his victims to death.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Christy Cabanne, the movie lacks the artistic touches that Karl Freund brought to the table. Instead, this film is competently shot with some nice set design, which isn’t a bad thing. What is kind of a bad thing is the rather blatant recycling of footage from the first mummy movie, only with Tom Tyler inserted into scenes where Boris Karloff’s face was visible. On the one hand, yes it makes sense, since its not Imhotep this time, but on the other it is a pretty blatant way to recycle footage and plot details whole cloth. Oh well, it works well enough, I suppose.

Not pictured: Zucco's fez

Oh yes, and Jack Pierce returned as the makeup effects artist. And this movie marks the biggest difference between Imhotep and Kharis. Remember how Imhotep was only in the wrappings for a few seconds of screen time? Here, Kharis is all wrappings all the time, so you really get your money’s worth of on-screen shambling mummy action. One more thing of note is the (I guess) rotoscoped effect on Kharis’ eyes that covered Tyler’s human eyes with dark circles. It’s a neat effect, and not visible in the trailer, but adds to the otherworldly quality to the character. Shame its only used in this movie.

Writing
Screenplay by Griffin Jay and Maxwell Shane, who divided this movie into what is effectively two parts. The first is a straight up comedy with Banning & Jenson bumming around Cairo, trying to get funding, and meeting Solvani by Babe trying to hustle him into buying a round of drinks on a bet. There’s a lot of banter and a fair bit of comedy with the horror placed on the back burner. Once they get to the dig site, the horror plot really kicks in as characters start dying off and Kharis makes off with Marta, while still holding onto the more lighthearted characterization of the heroes. Its an odd thing, but kind of works in its weird way. Banning’s cut from a very familiar cloth of bland horror heroes, but through his proactive and good-natured, er, nature, he kind of rises above his more generic ilk. That and Babe is not only a likable goofball but also really handy in the clutch.

And the tana leaves thing is actually kind of a neat idea that allows Kharis to get stronger or weaker as the plot demands. As a writer, I can appreciate that kind of built-in flexibility to the rules of animating a mummy.

Sound
Original music by Hans J. Salter & Frank Skinner (both uncredited), the music is definitely 40s era Universal horror music (sweeping cues, flexibility between melodrama, tension, and bombast, that sort of thing).

Conclusion
You know, I liked The Mummy’s Curse. While The Mummy was a product of Universal’s "Classy Horror" period in the 30s, The Mummy’s Curse has the pulpy feel of 40’s Universal horror. I was not originally ready for the comedy elements to be so strong, but they weren’t badly done and the flick’s able to balance between Babe cracking one-liners and Kharis strangling people quite well. Quite fun, actually.

“Your pardon, I dislike to be touched! An…Eastern prejudice.”

Once more its that time of year again. Dead leaves flying through the air, pumpkin ale flowing through taps, and nothing but horror-related stuff here at Castle RMWC. That’s right, its back for a third go, and hopefully it’ll be more like the first year and not like last year. So, where do we begin? Universal’s always a good place to start.

Capitalizing on the popularity of the discovery of King Tut’s tomb in 1922 (and the mystique about the curse which supposedly claimed the lives of several members of the discovering expedition), Universal cast Boris Karloff for a 1932 movie featuring, what else? The Mummy.

Story
So we’re in Egypt in 1921 and an expedition discovers the mummy of Imhotep, a pretty big deal back in the day who apparently did something bad to get himself mummified alive and buried with a curse over his head. A foolish young archeologist deciphers the Scroll of Thoth and reads it out loud, awakening Imhotep, who grabs the scroll and shuffles off. The archeologist goes mad from the experience and we flash forward to “now.” That took all of six minutes.

Ten years later, Imhotep (as “Ardeth Bey”), cleaned up and now fluent in English, arranges for the discovery of the tomb of Princess Ancksenamen, his long lost love. He finds that she has been reincarnated as a modern woman, Helen Grosvenor, and he sets his eyes on her. Trying to oppose him are archeologist Frank Whemple (who’s taken with Helen himself) and Dr. Muller, an expert on Egyptian occultism.

Characters
Imhotep/"Ardeth Bey": The real draw here is Boris Karloff. He just dominates the screen whenever he’s on. His performance as “Ardeth Bey” is incredibly restrained and subdued, as befit’s a man who’s body is shriveled, dried, and fragile. It also helps that Imhotep is an incredibly tragic figure. Sure he’s the villain of the piece, but everything he does he does for love. In life, it was a sad, desperate love to revive his beloved which led to his condemnation to his fate. After his revival, all he wants to do is be reunited with her, first with her mummy and then with her reincarnation. Naturally, he goes about it in a horribly creepy way that involves hypnosis and murder (and the wearing of a dapper fez). He’s fantastically sympathetic.

See? Dapper

Helen Grosvenor: Zita Johann is suitably exotic looking and kind of pulls off the half-Egyptian thing to her character. She’s likable and rather active in trying to figure out just what’s going on with her. Definitely one of the better Universal Horror heroines.
Frank Whemple: David Manners is the male hero and about as generic as other contemporary male heroes in horror films. Frank is the son of the leader of the previous expedition, Dr. Joseph Whemple, and his dad knows that the Scroll of Thoth is a mysterious and potentially dangerous artifact. Frank doesn’t do much except fall in love with Helen.

Dr. Muller: Edward Van Sloan, once again playing a professor type. He does it well, so I’m not complaining. This time he’s also Helen’s doctor, which enables him to keep an eye on the plot after the intro sequence.

Visuals/Effects
Interestingly enough, the famous “mummy” look by Jack Pierce is only used in the beginning, where Imhotep is found in the 1920s and inadvertently reanimated by the Scroll of Thoth. The scene itself is quite effective where little is actually shown of the mummy. The rest of the time he wears makeup that gives his skin a dried, drawn look without being too obviously undead.

The other real thing to note is the direction and cinematography of Karl Freund, who was a successful director of photography before becoming a rather unsuccessful director. Freund worked on a hell of a lot of projects, including Metropolis and the 1931 Dracula, but he was only a film director for a few years during the 30s. Shame, really. Set design, lighting, and so on are all very well done AND the film makes extensive use of a steadi-cam, which wasn’t all that common in 1932.

Writing
Screenplay by John L. Balderston from a story by Nina Wilcox Putnam & Richard Schayer. The storyline borrows more than a few elements from Universal’s Dracula (professor-type character, ancient, foreign villain, hypnotism, etc), but there is significantly more tragedy involved. Imhotep was cursed because his great crime (necromancy) was committed in the name of love, which instantly adds sympathy to the character.

Also of interest is that the other male characters are actually rather ineffective. Dr. Miller provides a lot of exposition and Frank is really rather useless aside from falling in love with Helen. The real protagonist and hero is Helen, and aside from frequently falling under Imhotep’s mental influence, the resolution ultimately comes down to her actions. That’s actually pretty interesting, considering the times.

Sound
Original music by an unaccredited James Dietrich, and the soundtrack is really quite good. Full of intrigue and romantic cues, it fits the proceedings excellently. They also use Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake music for the intro (as did Dracula).

Conclusion
The Mummy truly is a fantastic work of cinema. Moody and atmospheric, it has an interesting etherealness to the proceedings and follows a methodical, measured pace that actually works quite well. Karloff in particular shines as the main character, and while the mummy wrappings disappear after a few seconds of screen time, Karloff himself remains magnetic on the screen. Which is a shame, since he’s got nothing to do with any of the sequels. Totally recommended.

“I am your pallbearer.”

Well, the previous Sartana movie got me hungry for more, so I tracked down the first in the series, If You Meet Sartana, Pray For Your Death AKA Se incontri Sartana prega per la tua morte from 1968. Starring the original Sartana, Gianni Garko.

Story
It all starts with a stagecoach getting ambushed by a gang of bandits. A mysterious, impeccably dressed drifter deals with most of them and examines the wreckage before traveling to the small town of Goldspring where the plot begins in earnest and swiftly spirals into a game who’s going to double cross whom. There’s a Mexican general who entrusts his money to two crooked bankers, who are in league with a gang that’s raiding stage coaches. It all comes down to a large stack of gold and who’s going to walk away with it.

Characters
Sartana: Gianni/“Johnny” Garko plays our protagonist; a soft-spoken, well-dressed anti-hero with a dark sense of humor. He’s well armed, great at poker, and constantly prepared for any situation. My earlier assessment of him as a Western Batman stands. The four-barreled palm gun also gets a lot of spotlight, and even that thing’s got some surprising tricks up its sleeve. There’s also a hint that Sartana is more than a mere mortal. A smooth, cool badass in every way.

Dusty: Franco Pesce plays the short, elderly undertaker of the town. He latches onto Sartana as soon as the gunslinger rides into town. Dusty was once an artist in Boston but its hinted he threw that away in favor of booze. Provides comic relief, but the voice dubbed for him is gratingly annoying.

General Tampico: Fernando Sancho plays the Mexican general with a comically overlong name (shorted to General Tampico). He’s somewhat comical, but little more than a thug with a bunch of goons that sure don’t act like soldiers. He invests his gold with the bank and gets understandably upset when it vanishes.

Lasky: William Berger hams it up royally as the real villain of the movie. Lasky is a great counterpoint to Sartana since he’s an emotional psychopath who thinks on the fly. Berger’s great in this, whether he’s swaggering into town, smugly cheating at cards, mowing down his own gang with a Gatling gun, or freaking out when Sartana plays a musical watch from some hiding place just to mess with him. Carrying forward the Batman analogy, there’s a fair amount of the modern Joker in his performance as an untamed psychopath. A great villain.

Morgan: Hey, its Klaus Kinsky! He’s Lasky’s right hand man and fond of knife throwing and wears bells on his spurs, which in fact DO go jingle-jangle-jingle. Not a major character, but a fun one.

Jeff Stewal and Al Alman: Sydney Chaplin and Gianni Rizzo are the pair of bankers who are scheming to get away with the gold through an insurance fraud scheme. Alman’s a fat fellow with a fondness for candy and Stewal is juggling two affairs: one with the widow of the mayor, and the other with Alman’s wife Evelyn (Heidi Fischer). Pillars of the community, they are.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini (as “Frank Kramer”) and with Cinematography by Sandro Mancori, the movie has some nice shots here and there, but is otherwise fairly standard as a Spaghetti Western, with a few spots that are rough around the edges. The pacing is nice and we never forget that its all about the gold. The action sequences are a definite positive for the film, since they show off Sartana’s resourcefulness and cleverness. Probably the most amusing is where Sartana has set up a trap in his hotel room where he can snare anyone coming in through the window.

Writing
Adolfo Cagnacci, Luigi De Santis, and Fabio Piccioni on story and Werner Hauff, Renato Izzo, and Gianfranco Parolini as writers. That’s a lot of people working on one script, but things seem to work out okay. The plot is horribly convoluted, but that’s not the real draw here. Solid character work, reprehensible villains and Sartana being awesome are the draw.

Sound
The score by Piero Picconi is serviceable but sparse. The musical watch gets a lot of screen time and those scenes work, but that kind of thing gets done better in For A Few Dollars More (I’ll get to that review when I can). The music’s not bad and has a few high points that dips into that whole “swingin’ sixties” vibe, but not one of the film’s strong points.

Conclusion
If You Meet Sartana Pray For Your Death is a solid foundation for a “franchise” of nearly 20 movies with the gunslinger’s name attached. The action’s good, the plot is confusing (par for the course with a lot of Spaghetti Westerns, I‘m noticing), and the characters are well realized, even if they are caricatures. What it may lack in budget it more than makes up for in attitude and charm. Sartana is, frankly, an Awesome character and thoroughly entertaining.


Boy that trailer sure asks a lot of questions. Don't expect most of them to get answered.

“What was I supposed to do? Call him for cheating better than me, in front of the others?”

Right, so, Real Life has been kind of getting in the way of working on a side project such as this for a while now, which explains the big gaps in updates. Fear not! I have something big planned to get back in the swing of things come next month! In the meantime, September will likely continue to have spotty updates.

Such as this one!

Regarded as one of the greatest con man movies ever made, The Sting boasts an impressive roster of talent and the awards to match, winning Best Picture and 6 other awards for 1973. And it totally deserves those accolades.

Story
Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) is a talented but small time con man in Joliet, Illinois during the 1930s. He’s partnered up with Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones) who’s looking to retire soon since he’s getting on in years. The two of them con a delivery boy for a mob and end up with way more money than they expected. Johnny pisses the money away gambling and he gets shaken down by crooked cop Lieutenant William Snyder (Charles Durning) who informs him that the money belongs to New York big shot Doyle “The Big Mick” Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) who’s none too pleased that a chunk of his money has gone missing. Luther is killed by Lonnegan’s thugs and Hooker escapes to Chicago, looking for a near-mythic friend of Luther’s named Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman). Hooker wants revenge on Lonnegan and Gondorff agrees to help him pull the Big Con on the crime lord.

What follows is a steady buildup to the Con that involves gathering a big team that includes Gondorff’s gal Billie (Eileen Brennan), the fast talking J.J. Singleton (Ray Walston), and the dapper Kid Twist (Harold Gould) among others. Lonnegan has a fondness for gambling, so the plan is to scam him out of a lot of money without him knowing he was even played. But things are tricky. Lonnegan’s no fool and while he doesn’t know what Hooker looks like, his men know he’s in Chicago. Lt. Snyder and a mysterious assassin named Salino are on Hooker’s trail, and the FBI are very interested in nabbing Gondorff at any cost. You better believe things are going to get interesting.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by the very talented George Roy Hill with Director of Photography Robert Surtees. Its quite a testament to the filmmakers’ skill that while the movie was made in the early 70s, it looks like it was shot back in the 1930s. I don’t mean the period clothing and props (though that’s an obvious requirement), but rather the whole visual feel of the film. It feels like it was made right before the Hays Code (and in color).

Pacing is also marvelously quick and the audience doesn’t get a moment to breathe from the moment Hooker gets to Chicago. It adds a feeling of underlying tension and urgency to even the more relaxed scenes.

Writing
Written by David S. Ward, the movie fires on all possible story cylinders. The character work is fantastic. Redford and Newman work exceptionally well together and their characters have a mentor and student relationship with some interesting twists that play on the inherent paranoia of men who make their livings by lying for big stakes. Shaw’s Lonnegan is also very well realized: Tough, craggy, ruthless, but oddly vulnerable when the con begins. The rest of the cast are well realized as well and given plenty of moments to shine.

The plot also deserves mentioning, because its incredibly well thought out. Unfortunately, I can’t say anything more about it without going into spoiler territory, and that would be a huge disservice to anyone who hasn’t experienced this movie yet. Suffice it to say that its one hell of a ride and rewards multiple viewings.

Sound
The soundtrack doesn’t have an original score. Instead a number of Scott Joplin tunes were conducted and adapted by Marvin Hamlisch. It took a while for me to warm up to the soundtrack because ragtime was old hat by the 30s, but after a while it grew on me. The innocence and above all, playfulness of the music really cuts the tension in some places and in others reminds you that this is a movie and you’re watching it to have fun, so relax.

Conclusion
The Sting is rightly regarded as a classic. Everything works exceptionally and the movie demands that you keep on your toes while you’re watching it. Absolutely recommended, to the point where it should be required viewing.

“One half isn’t any good without the other.”

In looking for info on the next entry, 1966’s Johnny Yuma, I came across a whole lot of stuff pertaining to the TV series “The Rebel” and a Johnny Cash theme song. This spaghetti western doesn’t have anything to do with that series, which ended about a decade before the movie was released. What does that ultimately mean for this review? Nothing! So off we go.

Story
Johnny Yuma (Mark Damon) is a happy-go-lucky gunslinger and gambler who’s picked up the nickname of “Yuma” from a shootout he was involved in there. Johnny likes womanizing, shoots well left-handed, wears a vest as his signature costume piece, favors really bright shirts (that, impressively enough, he changes several times through the course of the movie instead of wearing the same thing over and over), and in some scenes seems to be wearing eyeliner. Huh.

Anyway, Johnny’s uncle, Thomas Felton (Leslie Daniels) owns a profitable ranch in Santa Marco and makes Johnny his heir. This doesn’t please his wife Samantha (Rosalba Neri) one bit since she was hoping he’d make her brother Pedro (Luigi Vannucchi as Louis Vanner) the heir. The two don’t waste any time in murdering Thomas and pinning it on a servant. These two have an interesting relationship. Pedro is a sadistic bully, little better than a simpleton. Samantha is much more subtle in her manipulations and the brains of the duo, mixing cunning with evil. Sexy evil.

Felton invited Yuma to the ranch before dying, so Samantha & Pedro figure they have to take care of him. Samantha sends a letter to an old flame, a gunslinger named Lawrence Jerome Carradine (Lawrence Dobkin). Carradine’s a classy, well dressed gent who like chess, fair play, and has an interesting holster where the gun basically hooks onto the belt with a quick release. He agrees to come because she’s offering a lot of money, but he’s quite bitter about how their relationship ended in the past. Despite the fact that she’s crazy hot.

Carradine and Yuma happen to meet up by chance in a bar brawl and develop a mutual respect for each other, even going so far as to trade guns and holsters without knowing who the other is. Johnny’s also (largely against his will) picked up a sidekick in Sorito; a cowardly, sniveling fellow who Yuma tends to browbeat on occasion because of his big talk.

The stage gets set for some confrontation and a lot of goons are going to end up dead by the end of the movie.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Romolo Guerrieri and cinematography by Mario Capriotto. The film is very well shot. Scenes are well lit and framed, and there’s a fair amount of nice camera movement. The fight scenes in particular are nice, especially the bar brawl which mixes nice stunts and camera work.

Writing
Written by Fernando Di Leo, Romolo Guerrieri, Sauro Scavolini, Giovanni Simonelli, the movie covers fairly standard ground for a western. Family member is murdered for his money, hero seeks to avenge him. People cheat at poker, bar brawls break out, there’s showdowns and shootouts, and the villains are villainous. People expect that in a western, and this movie does those elements very well. The interesting stuff comes about with character interactions. Johnny Yuma’s a lovable rogue but there’s not a whole lot to his character other than being fun to watch and root for. Samantha Felton is a stone cold bitch, sending her lover and accomplice to deliver a letter to Carradine implicating him in Felton’s murder with half of a reward just to get him out of the picture.

The real interesting character arc goes to Lawrence Jerome Carradine. He’s got sad eyes and his past with Samantha is hinted at being painful. Apparently she left him because they were poor. He claims to not have any feelings left for her but its obvious he’s got something still there. On the one hand, he’s willing to work for her, but on the other its pretty clear that he’s all kinds of angry at her for breaking his heart. He’s the wild card of the film, and its quite fascinating to watch how his arc plays out.

One other thing the movie does is not pull punches with some character deaths. Not so much in showing gore and gruesomeness, but in the way that when it happens you go “well damn.” It adds a little more weight to the consequences of character actions, but if I say more, we’re getting into spoiler territory.

Sound
Music by Nora Orlandi, and the soundtrack is fairly standard Spaghetti Western fare. Trumpets, guitars, and lots of whistling. The score also has a few comical tags for lighter scenes without getting obnoxious, which is appreciated. I have to add that the theme song that plays at the beginning and end titles is also quite catchy.

Conclusion
There is nothing revolutionary about Johnny Yuma, but that’s not a bad thing. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel all the time. Its quite well shot, has a good sense of humor, brings a lot of intrigue to the table and tells a good, if straightforward, cowboy revenge tale. It does its job solidly with some great atmosphere, acting, and good action scenes. And seriously, Rosalba Neri is gorgeous in this. Totally recommended.


See? Catchy.

“You’re lucky today. I never kill on Thursdays. I promised.”

Ah Spaghetti Westerns. Movies Italians made about the American Southwest in the Italian countryside with mostly-Italian casts and crews and a few American lead actors. The very concept is a bit on the surreal side and I’ll admit before recently, I’ve not seen any of them. Inherent goofiness aside, I suppose its time to change that. Now where to start?
I’ll just be an ass and not pick The Man With No Name Trilogy and instead take one of the Sartana films. Who’s Sartana? From what I’ve gathered he’s another mysterious bounty hunting drifter who’s been the focus of a great many awesomely titled films with several actors playing the lead over time (and several knockoff films of much lesser quality). Guy’s got a cult following. Today’s entry is I Am Sartana, Trade Your Guns For A Coffin, AKA C’e Sartana…vendi la pistola e comprati la bara AKA Fistful of Lead from 1970. It’s not one of the “Big 4” of the Sartana movies, but it definitely leaves an impression.

Story
We start out with an impeccably dressed rider sitting down for a lunchtime picnic on his travels and witnessing a stagecoach get ambushed, slaughtered, robbed and a stick of dynamite thrown into the wagon to destroy it. Deciding to investigate, since a bounty he was looking to claim just got shot dead, he throws his canteen up into the air and shoots it, the water from it landing squarely on the dynamite, diffusing it. This told me two things: That Sartana is one hell of a shot, and that it’s going to be THAT kind of movie.

Sartana (George Hilton here as opposed to Gianni/“Johnny” Garko who was the original and definitive Sartana) discovers that the bags of gold the coach was carrying were full of sand. He follows the trail of a bandit leader named Mantas (Nello Pazzafini) clearing out one of his hideouts of henchmen and heading to the crooked town of Appaloosa where the head of the local mining company, Samuel Spencer (Piero Lulli as Peter Carter) and his henchman Baxter (Carlo Gaddi) are looking for hired guns to protect the gold shipments to Dodge City. Sartana quickly finds himself surrounded by intrigue and backstabbing and catches the eye of local hotel owner Trixie (Erika Blanc).

Sartana proceeds to outfox his enemies with Batman-like resourcefulness and planning. Things take another turn when another gunman rides into town; the poetry reading English dandy Sabbath (Charles Southwood) who’s no slouch himself when it comes to elaborately planned badassery.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Giuliano Carnimeo (as “Anthony Ascot”), there are some interesting camera angles used (mostly spins and whip-pans) that add some different touches. Otherwise, visually the film’s not what I’d call innovative, though still well shot.

Writing
Tito Carpi on writing duty and the film mixes equal parts badassery and cheesiness. There’s a lot of entertainment to be found between the occasional cheesy one-liners, Sartana’s crazy preparedness for any given situation, and interesting little touches, like the four-barreled Derringer he carries around and a friendly game of checkers…using shot glasses. That’s badass. Horribly, horribly bad for your, but still pretty awesome.

Sound
Music by Francesco De Masi, and you know, its pretty good. Nice and catchy with a fair amount of swagger that fits the character nicely.

Conclusion
Fistful of Lead was a fantastic surprise. Sartana is one hell of an interesting gunslinger and I’m going to make it my mission to track down the rest of these films. Totally recommended both as a Spaghetti Western and as a part of “Cinema of the Awesome.”



BONUS REVIEW!

Oh, and the disc also contained Trinity and Sartana Are Coming AKA Trinità e Sartana figli di... from 1972. You would think it was connected in some way, but no. It’s not. It’s a long, dull, Buddy Comedy Western about two thieves/bank robbers who get into all sorts of not-actually-hilarious hijinks as they score loot and can’t seem to keep any of it. They pretty much used the names of popular gunslinger characters (Trinity’s another Spaghetti Western badass). The fights are childish (and I presume targeted at a younger audience), the music annoying, and everybody seems to have graduated from the A-Team School of Marksmanship. The one interesting thing it does is make “Trinity” a native of Trinidad, but its really not worth putting up with the rest of the movie. This film really isn’t worth your time, nor is it worth a full review write-up.

“It's a pity we can't send Jet Jaguar to go and get Godzilla!”

Ah Godzilla. Haven’t really discussed any of his films here yet, which is a shame, since I’m a fan of giant monster movies. 1973 Gojira tai Megaro (Godzilla vs. Megalon), is considered one of the lesser Gojira films, though.

Story
So, we’re obviously in Japan and the boring human characters we have to follow are an annoying kid, his inventor older brother and another guy who… I don’t really know what he does. Anyway, the inventor has created a robot, Jet Jaguar (he has nothing to do with jaguars), that can fly and do other robot stuff. Unfortunately, the subterranean civilization of Seatopia is pretty angry about nuclear experimentation below the surface of the earth, and they decide they’ve had enough of our nonsense, so they send a giant beetle monster named Megalon up to teach us a lesson by destroying model tanks and buildings. Jet Jaguar is useful to the Seatopians because if controlled, he can help guide Megalon. Naturally, Jet Jaguar breaks free of that control and gets a message to Godzilla on Monster Island. And then suddenly he becomes sentient, taking control of his own programming, decides he has to take things into his own hands, and then grows to kaiju size because he subscribes to the Megatron school of Physics (where the laws of conservation of mass are optional), and he fights Megalon. It goes well too, until another Godzilla foe, Gigan, shows up and he & Megalon double team our hero. Can Jet Jaguar hold out long enough for Godzilla to show up and even the odds?

So its really a Jet Jaguar movie and Godzilla only shows up near the end.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Jun Fukuda, it provides about what you’d expect from a Godzilla movie, though production values seem a little lower than some others. Regardless, we do get four monsters in a tag team match by the end of the movie, so you can’t say they didn’t deliver on the kaiju. The designs themselves are also fairly interesting. Megalon and his drill hands and Gigan with his hook hands and buzz saw belly are both really damn weird, but that’s why they’re likable. Godzilla doesn’t get much screen time at all, but when he shows up he wrecks some faces and does a really goofy tailslide kick that is so insane that they show it to the audience twice to prove to you that it just happened. And as for Jet Jaguar, I dunno. I just really like the guy, with his Ultraman-like body and giant hammy grin. That grin really adds a lot.

Writing
Written by Jun Fukuda, and story credits to Takeshi Kimura (for "Gojira tai Uchu Kaiju") and Shinichi Sekizawa. The plot is ridiculous, but then again, who watches a kaiju film for the plot? The human stuff is boring, the military tries to stop the giant monster of the week, fails and then Godzilla shows up (in this case with an ally). Its not complicated, just thoroughly formulaic.
Sound
The score by Riichiro Manabe is totally suitable for the movie. The sound effects work is fine, but I just wish Jet Jaguar had more than just futuristic clanks for when he talks to the monsters. I know R2-D2 was still four years in the future, but something that sounded like robot speech would’ve been preferable.

Conclusion
I know its considered one of the lesser Godzilla movies, but I have an incredible level of fondness for Gojira tai Megaro that I don’t really have an excuse for. No, Godzilla’s not really in it all that much, but Jet Jaguar is a perfect blend of goofy and badass and the two vs. two battle at the climax is really damn entertaining.

I make no excuses for myself.



And then there's this:

How can you hate that??

“I have the sky as a roof and I sleep wherever I may.”

A year and some change ago I reviewed Legend of Drunken Master. Which, while an awesome movie in its own right, was also a sequel. Well, I finally saw the original film, Jui Kuen (aka Drunken Master in English), which, while still starring Jackie Chan, was made in 1978. So yeah, young Jackie Chan. So young he was credited as Jacky Chan.

Story
Wong Fei-Hung (Jackie Chan) is an extremely talented but precocious youth who’s father wants to drill some sense into. Dad calls in a relative, the wandering drunk Su Hua Chi (Siu Tien/Simon Yuen) to pound some humility into Fei-Hung. Fei-Hung naturally resists, butting heads constantly with his teacher. Meanwhile, the assassin Thunderleg (Jang Lee Hwang) is hired to take a contract out on Fe-Hung’s father, and naturally its up to our hero to save his father from getting kicked into the grave, but only after a grueling training period where he learns the intricacies of drunken-style kung-fu. That’s pretty much the plot right there. Refreshingly simple.

Visuals/Effects
Woo-ping Yuen (who’s kind of a big deal in the fight choreography world and the director of RMWC favorite Iron Monkey) directed this movie, and make no mistake, the entire movie revolves around martial arts (and fight scenes). It is important to note that it’s a fairly low-budget film, so many of the action sequences lack the flair of a lot of the sequel’s set-pieces. This movie gets by with the sheer athleticism of the cast, which is a different level of impressive. This was Jackie Chan’s breakout movie for a good reason, after all.

Writing
Written by Lung Hsiao, See-Yuen Ng, and Woo-ping Yuen, the story is quite straightforward in terms of plotting. It serves to follow Fei-Hung’s development from immature, selfish boy to more mature, less selfish young man. Simple, really. There’s also a fair amount of slapstick and most of the comedy is physical and broad.

Sound
Original music by Fu Liang Chou, which works great for the film. There’s also the issue of dubbing (which listening to the commentary enlightened me about). Apparently not all of the original Chinese audio track survives and so parts of the film use the English dub track, even when you go for the Chinese with English subtitles option on the DVD. Such is life.

Conclusion
Jui Kuen is a different experience than the more commonly seen sequel. This isn’t bad, just different. For instance, its much more self-contained, less concerned with geo-political situations and is much more…permissive of a hero who’s abilities are essentially “Popeye with booze instead of spinach.” It also has a smaller budget and lacks the polish of the sequel. However, both feature excellent martial arts and showcase Jackie Chan doing what he does best, and when you get right down to it, isn’t that what’s really important here?

“What we have just heard are the first words of the inhabitants of a new planet; a cosmic document!”

This next dip into old sci-fi is an interesting case, not because it’s good, but because of its origins. It’s a joint East German/Polish production from behind the Iron Curtain made in 1960 as Der schweigende Stern in German and Milcząca Gwiazda in Polish. It was edited, dubbed, and released in the US as First Spaceship On Venus (the version I saw) in 1962. Let’s find out if it’s an early victory for glasnost, or a bowl of bad borscht.

Story
Remember the Tunguska explosion? Of course you don’t, it was in 1908, well before you were born. But you’ve heard of it, yes? Well, according to this movie, it wasn’t a meteor that exploded, but a Venusian spaceship and some equipment will be recovered in the far future of 1985 and get scientists all in a tizzy. Fast forward a few years after that and SCIENCE is getting around to checking out Venus to see what’s going on. An international crew is assembled (naturally bringing a robot with them) and off they go in the rocketship Cosmokrator. There’s too many characters to really go into them (and they don’t really have too much in the way of personality). On the way to Venus, they pick up a signal and the linguist is able to eventually decipher it, and the astronauts learn that the Venusians planned to attack Earth, but its an old signal.

Instead of going back to warn Earth, they press on, reach Venus and discover that the planet is pretty much uninhabited. They do some exploring, some accidents happen, some scientists die and they learn that the Venusians blew themselves up with atomic weaponry a long time ago. So its basically an anti-nuke message, but coming from the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Kurt Maetzig, the special effects aren’t actually that bad for Soviet Bloc Sci-Fi. Its standard rockets on strings stuff for the space ships, but I’m okay with that. The robot is a bit less interesting, being a squat little thing that looks like it gets underfoot.

Writing
Based on the novel “Astronauci” by Stanislaus Lem (a well respected Polish novelist who’s had works adapted into other films, such as George Clooney’s Solaris). Adaptation by Jan Fethke, Wolfgang Kohlhaase, Günter Reisch, Günther Rücker, and Alexander Stenbock-Fermor and Screenplay Collaboration by the director Kurt Maetzig. Aside from giving short shrift to most of the character development, I don’t have much to complain about in terms of writing. It gets the job done and some of the ideas (a hostile and belligerent Venus that screwed itself over with nukes before man gets there serving as an anti-nuclear weapon message) are kind of novel. Still, the adaptation doesn’t really bring anything new to the table aside from a few suspect scientist deaths. They flat out leave the black scientist on the planet when they leave with the fairly flimsy excuse of “being hurled off the planet.” Hmmm…

Sound
Original Music by Andrzej Markowski is your typical orchestral spacy stuff from the rocket age. Nothing fancy or unexpected.

Conclusion
Its not bad, actually. Its not great, but you can tell they actually tried to make a legitimate, somewhat accurate (for the period it was made in) science fiction film. Given the constraints of the time and the fact that it was made in the Soviet Union, they did a pretty good job of it. Still, its value exists more as a curiosity and a look at filmmaking from behind the Iron Curtain than it is a movie that can stand up on its own merits. You’re better off tracking down the MST3K Version to enliven this otherwise dull movie.