Monster Madness: The Golden Age of the Horror Film (2014)

Introduction:

I’m a bit of a fan of horror films, if you haven’t noticed by all the horror films I’ve reviewed and talked about on this site. But I do have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to the golden age classics. Sure I've seen King Kong and a couple of silent classics like Nosferatu, but I haven't seen too many of the Universal films from the 1930s. This documentary sounded like a good place to start, so I gave it a try.

Summary:

This documentary covers the history of horror films in Hollywood from the silent era with Phantom of the Opera all the way up to the 1940s with Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Along the way you see trailers from the films, hear from folks who worked on them, and of course hear from critics and fans discussing the impact of these classics on modern movies.

The documentary also explores how current events shaped the films and their popularity. This gives you some idea how you could go from a gothic masterpiece like Frankenstein and then about a decade later have a crazy monster mash up of House of Frankenstein. The documentary even includes some surprises like Val Lewton’s films and Mighty Joe Young.

Good Points:

• Provides a informative mix of plot summary and impact for the classic films
• Includes some interesting interviews with cast, crew and critics
• Moves briskly to fit all the key points into a little over an hour

Bad Points:

• Feels disorganized, doesn’t move in chronological order
• Moves a little too briskly - a bit more information or films could have been included
• Hard core fans of this genre will not find anything new here

Overall:

While I’m not well versed in the golden age of horror, I do know a little bit about their place in the scheme of things (watched quite a few of Cinemassacre’s horror episodes). So a lot of the material here was not new to me. It was presented well, but would jump around sometimes, feeling a little less cohesive than it could. This might be a good place to start for newbies, but I think most fans of the genre and film history buffs will find it engaging, but a little lacking.

Scores (out of 5)

Visuals:  3

Sound: 3

Acting:  n/a

Script:  3

Music: 3

Direction: 2

Entertainment: 3

Total:  3

Curious about a full review, sent me an email and I’ll make additional thoughts to this review.

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Werewolf (1996) - MST3K Review

Summary:

An archeological team lead by Noel (Richard Lynch) discovers the bones of a native American werewolf. After an sudden bout of fisticuffs, one of the diggers scratches himself on the bones and becomes a werewolf. Yuri (George Rivero), one of the other workers on the dig starts seeing dollar signs. He goes out of his way to create another werewolf in order to gain fame and fortune. 

This leads to him infecting Paul Niles (Fred Cavalli) a writer who is interested in giving money to the research. Now Paul is transforming all over the place, and the only one who can help him is Natalie Burke (Adrianna Miles) another archeologist involved with the dig. Can the combined forces of Joe Estevez, mutating hair pieces, a grubby looking grounds keeper, a woman with no pants and a champagne swilling security guard save the city of Flagstaff from an assault of bizarre accents and a rampaging Werewolf?

Review:

Beware the were-bat-dog-bear-wolf... um... thingie.

This movie really is a mess: poorly acted, poorly written and poorly directed, there really isn’t anything effective in the final product at all. But let’s take it apart and see what we have.

The story is constructed very badly, with a good 15 to 20 minutes of the film not even involving the main character Paul, which you could argue is a good thing, but I digress. Instead time is used to set up the dig, discovery of the bones, establishing our scientists and the legend of the native American lycanthrope. Viewers begin to think that maybe Yuri is our leading man, which is alarming because he is a real jerk.

No this is not one of the cheap werewolf effects, it is
only Sam the groundskeeper.

When Paul shows up in Werewolf it seems like he’s in a wacky sitcom, arriving at a new home, and meeting the bizarre groundskeeper Sam (R.C. Bates) who is channelling his inner "old coot" right from the first second you see him. You begin to wonder if you’re watching a totally different film, one about the hi-larous adventures of a young writer and his off the wall friends in beautiful downtown Flagstaff. Finally Paul interacts with the scientific trio during a party scene (that seems to come out of no where) and the stories connect in a barely coherent way.

Still some things never make any sense. How does the native American werewolf work? Lots of shots are given to the full moon, but the movie happens over the course of several days – is it always full? Paul just seems to transform whenever the mood strikes him. He attacks randomly, and not for food or defending himself, just because he’s bored or something. He claims to be out of control at one point, and yet Sam and Natalie are able to calm him. Just what’s going on here?

Paul suddenly realizes that the blinds are out acting him.

Combined the unclear script you’ve got unclear direction and bad acting on top of it. Werewolf doesn't stand a chance. Based on the way the story is constructed, it seems like the audience is supposed to feel bad for Paul at the end of the film, but no effort was made to make us care about him. The most we know  is that he’s a writer who is never seen writing. Yuri is a jerk because… um, he’s a jerk. And then there’s Natalie, who is one of the least convincing scientists I’ve seen since Denise Richards in The World is Not Enough. Some scenes attempt to create tension and suspense but only serve to make things a lot sillier.

Adding to the haphazard nature of the script is the thoroughly bad and inconsistent werewolf effects. At times the werewolf is only a hairy man. Sometimes he’s more of the Lon Chaney Jr. Wolf Man variety. Then other times he’s a bat headed looking puppet. And then you’ve got the bear suit with a sorry looking wolf mask on top of it. All of these are used without any reason or rhyme, it just seems to fall on how the director wanted the thing to look at that moment. The scenes are then jumbled during the editing creating entire scenes where the werewolf looks completely different over a three minute sequence. For a movie called Werewolf you expect something a little more consistent.

Yuri holds the head while Noel makes the mouth work.

The three leads deliver various bad performances. The best is George Rivero as Yuri. He’s a real jerk from the first scene you see him in. He rants and raves and growls. The first scene he is in involves him getting into a fight for basically no reason. This "character trait" is repeated throughout the movie. In many ways he’s more intimidating and unpredictable than the actual werewolf (something the director really could have worked with). Unfortunately there is his hair, which seems to change in just about every scene he’s in. Was it a series of wigs or just bad continuity? We’ll never know, but it’s very distracting. Then you have his accent, which is pretty thick at times and ends up making his lines hard to follow.

Fred Cavalli as Paul has a slightly less noticeable accent, but his acting is less convincing. He is bland. You never believe that he is much peril because he seems pretty nonchalant about the whole thing.  I would think transforming into a flesh tearing monster would be at least a little frightening. But what do I know? Without that element we never connect with Paul and you just end up wondering how goofy his werewolf effect is going to look in the next shot.

"Rack 'em" "Why do people always say 'rack' around me?"

I’ve saved the best for last. No way to sidestep around this. Adriana Miles as Natalie is really bad. Her accent is thick, her performance is wooden. Her chief assists are under the tight shirts she wears. As a scientist she’s completely unconvincing. You really get the feeling that half the time she doesn't know what she is saying, doesn't really follow the script - or maybe just doesn't care and is there to pick up a paycheck.  As a woman who’s grasp of English is very slight, she’s very convincing. I understand she spends most of the love scene topless and I think that is the real reason she was hired. But with the MST3K version of Werewolf, we get an edited love scene, so we just have to make due with her performance. Lucky us!

Not even the power of an Estevez can save this movie!

Supporting cast is surprisingly good. Joe Estevez does his best with a very small part as the digger Joel. He reacts with real horror to what is going on in the film (must have seen the finished product). Sure he had a juicer role in Soultaker but it's nice to see him in this one. Richard Lynch is a veteran of low budget films and television, and he knows how to actually bring some seriousness to his parts. His scenes of explaining the legends of the werewolf actually contain the best acting in the film. Too bad they stuck in him some truly stupid looking outfits. Then there’s the completely random role of Sam the groundskeeper. Bates looks like Castro, talks like Yosemite Sam and is a breath of fresh air in the stale film. His character serves no purpose other than comic relief, and even if he isn’t that funny, he goes for the part with gusto.

Looked at as a whole, Werwolf doesn’t scare, doesn’t thrill and really doesn’t make sense. It sounds like a perfect candidate for Mike and the bots.

MST3K Review:

And then the werewolf savagely kills Bob Villa!

By this time in the show’s run, Mystery Science Theater hadn’t tackled too many werewolf films. There was Mad Monster back in Season 1, and I Was a Teeneage Werewolf in Season Eight. But other than those they hadn’t really been delving into the lycanthrope scene. Well it seemed right to jump from a Puma Man to a Werewolf, because – well give equal time to all animals. On top of that, this is the most recent movie they had done up to this point, with Werewolf being released in 1996, and this show first airing in 1998. It ended up becoming one of the funniest episodes of season nine.

Werewolf, or warwelf, or vilvulf or who the hell knows!

There’s a lot to like about his episode. The riffing is spot on, with all kinds of things providing laughs and sources for running jokes. Yuri’s constantly changing hair provokes the bots to figure out who he’s trying to look like in this scene. 

The transformation scenes in Werewolf are a random mess of the victim flopping around interspersed with shots of the full moon and the werewolf skeleton found at the opening of the film. Mike and the bots start wonder about lunar cycles in Flagstaff (where the movie is supposed to take place). The film takes place over several days (and possibly weeks). Yet there is always a full moon. No some werewolf mythologies don't tie into the moon at all, but the director keeps showing it, as if it has some significance. The constant cutting to the bones, with the skull's jaws flapped open leads Tom to sing Ave Maria every time it is on the screen.

The werewolf driving the car cracks me up every time.
And then the boys riff on it, and it is even funnier.

But it is poor Natalie who just opens the door for all kinds of comedic lines. Her bad line readings, thick accent and pointless actions are the real goldmine for the show and they run with it. Her line, “Diss ees obsoluely fusscinating,” becomes a running joke in the film and crops up when you least expect it. Added to that is that not a single of our foreign friends can pronounce the word “werewolf” correctly or the same from scene to scene.

There are a few slow spots here and there, mostly because Werewolf is so aimless and there is a lot of reuse of random footage (the moon again, the bones again, Paul flopping around on his bed again), that they begin to run out of creative lines for the redundant scenes. Aside from that, it’s a very good riffing session.

They actually nail the 1950 girl group ballad style, even
dressed like this.

The host segments aren’t bad either. It starts with Mike channeling James Lipton from Inside the actors studio and then attempting to escape from the Satellite of love via a very long ladder – it doesn’t work out so well. Then they run through what famous siblings they would want in their werewolf film (inspired by Joe Estevez). The third segment has Mike and bots dressed as a 50’s girl group and singing about their main squeeze who happens to be a werewolf. When Mike stumbles on Crow while leaving the theater, he begins to transform into a were-crow: silliness ensues. The last segment has the Crow, Were-crow and Tom (now turning into a Were-Mike) chatting with Pearl as she attempts to create her own werewolf. But Bobo botches it all by brining a cute cocker spaniel instead of a wolf. I’d love to see a were-cocker!

Werewolf is one of my favorite episodes of season nine. I give it four full moons out of five. Just hope I don’t turn into a wurwelf, or werewulf, or warwilf – or however you say it.

This episode is available in the MST3K 20th Anniversary box set.

And now, the many hair styles of Yuri...

Yuri Mark 1 - Ernest Scientist hair

Yuri Mark 2 - Puffed up Prick hair

Yuri Mark 3 - Dr. Chad Feelgood hair

Yuri Mark 4 - Sleek and Sneaky hair

Yuri Mark 5 - Agressive Pool Player hair

Yuri Mark Dead - Now my hair can be free in the wild

The Mad Monster (1942) – MST3K Review

Summary:

Dr. Lorenzo Cameron (George Zucco) has his panties in a twist because none of his peers understand him. They call him crazy because he wants to fuse the essence of animals into humans and create a race of super soldiers. I mean, that’s not insane, just different thinking. So he drags his daughter Lenora (Anne Nagel) to an isolated mansion on the edge of a swamp to continue his work. He enlists the aid of Petro (Glenn Strange) who seems to be channeling Lenny from Of Mice and Men. Dr. Cameron injects Petro with the essence of wolf.

Quicker than you can say lunatic, Petro grows fur and sprouts fangs and terrorizes the swamplands. Cameron hatches a plan to unleash Petro on his mocking colleagues, to simultaneously prove his point and to maul them. But plucky reporter Tom (Johnny Downs) is on the case, and has the hots of Lenora. Can he unravel the mystery of The Mad Monster before the movie stumbles to its conclusion?

Movie Review:

This episode starts with an episode of the Commando Cody serial Radar Men fro the Moon. It’s entitled The Molten Terror and is the second in the series. It has the same production values as the previous episodes. Everything is low budget, and looks hastily thrown together. But there is a verve and energy to the editing that keeps things fun. Sure, its pretty dumb when you get down to it, with Cody flying around in his rocket suit, beating up aliens and getting into one jam after the other, but that was the point. I did like the finale where the aliens use a beam to melt the side of a mountain in on our heroes. For a low budget serial it looks pretty cool. But yeah the acting stinks and the script is lame.

The Mad Monster is like a classic Universal horror film on life support. It’s got a gothic set, but it looks cheap. It’s got a terrifying creature, but he’s not scary. It’s got a mad scientist, but he’s just stupid. It’s got an intrepid reporter, but he’s dorky. It’s got a damsel in distress, but she’s barely in the movie. Honestly it’s just a mess.

The best character is Dr. Cameron. Zucco is obviously enjoying the over the top antics of his character, shouting lines, glowering and just behaving like an ass. It’s unfortunate that the script is so poor that his motivations and behavior don’t come across as mad, but more like moronic. If he were so brilliant you’d think he’d have a better plan to use his monster, but no, it’s all pretty slapped together depending on coincidence more often then not. Luckily the writer provided plenty of that too. My favorite moments with Cameron are at the beginning of the film when he envisions his colleagues watching his experiment. They all appear in ghostly form like some kind of dead Jedi council from Star Wars frowning at him and mocking him. His responses to them confirm that he is in fact mad as a hatter. It’s the best sequence for him and one of the best in the film.

The rest of the folks look a bit lost to tell you the truth. Strange plays Petro as the lovable, but simple gardener. He’s like a bulky version of Forrest Gump but way less annoying. When he transforms into the monster, well he still looks like he’s playing the same part, but with more grimacing. He’s never scary, just silly looking in all that hair and fake teeth.

Nagel seems to be channeling Judy Garland for some reason. She’s OK, but barely in the film. Downs plays Tom as the bright eyed report out for the scoop. But he’s so eager and bright that you want to pop him one. He’s supposed to be our hero in the climax, but he’s acting like an 11-year-old boy the whole time, so you figure he’s going to get eaten by the monster. Kind of a surprise when he makes it.

The main issue with the movie is that it’s slow, really damn slow. It clocks in at 77 minutes, but it takes so long to do anything that you’ll think the movie is three hours long. The issue here is that the plot is so skinny that director Sam Newfield stretches everything out to pad the movie. Now at the best of times Newfield can make competent films, but his work has appeared on MST3K numerous times for a reason. Here there are endless walking scenes, endless scenes of Petro standing around looking constipated, and scenes of Dr. Cameron looking out a window with various expressions on his face. Just odd. There’s no tension, no horror, no fun to be had.

When the movie finally staggers over the finish line, with the blazing house and scattered corpses you’re happy that it’s over. Do Joel and the bots have a chance against this beast?

Episode Review:

This is one of those episodes that improved after my initial viewing. This seems to happen a lot with the early episodes of the show, because I have to keep in mind that the riffing rate is just going to be slower and that the jokes haven’t evolved to the point they got to in Season three. The first time I watched this episode I was bored to tears. The movie is turgid and the riffing is sparse. Lots of the jokes are just statements of the obvious and it really didn’t work for me. I thought I’d found one of the worst episodes of the series.

Watching it gain I’ve found some more bright spots and it’s gone up a bit in the ratings. It’s far from the worst episode, but it’s nowhere near the high points of the series. Let’s start with the short. MST3K did a good job with the shorts, and this is no exception. They have a lot of fun with Commando Cody and his adventures on the moon. They comment on everything from the wonky science to the hilarious sets and special effects. The finale with the molten mountain flooding in our heroes provides a steady stream of comments from the boys as they try to identify what is being used as the molten lava. All in all, it’s one of the best Cody shorts they had to work with and it’s a funny one.

When it comes to the movie, they do their best work when the plot is actually moving along. My favorite scene in the movie is also one of the best riffing scenes. As Dr. Cameron envisions his ghostly peers and converses with them Joel, Tom and Crow provide all kinds of alternate answers and counter arguments for the scientists. It’s great stuff, a highlight of Season One for sure.

Tom Servo is known for singing during the film, but I always associated that with Kevin Murphy who has a really nice voice and singing ability. So I was surprised when Josh Weinstein (playing Servo in Season One) burst into song during the film. A swamp dweller appears out of the mist, shotgun in hand. Immediately Servo starts singing the theme song to Beverly Hillbillies but immediately takes the lyrics and folds them to fit the plot of Mad Monster. It was hilarious, probably the high point of the episode.

I also loved the transformation sequence where Joel and the bots run through what Petro looks like with each frame of the transformation. Comments include Abraham Lincoln and Isaac Asimov.

But in the end the movies inertness overcomes them. There just isn’t enough to work with, and the energy of these episodes is more on the slow side. For a movie like this you need high energy and lots of riffing. But I realized that Season One is still focused on watching the movie, not really using it as the main vehicle for the comedy. That shift occurs near the end of the season, but this is still an early episode. You get the feeling that Joel and bots are there, watching this with you, and chiming in when they feel like it. It’s kinda nice in a way.

The episode starts with the Mad scientists reminiscing about when they became “mad” and then calling Joel up. The invention exchange starts with Joel showing a purse with automatic protection from purse snatchers called “Hell in a Handbag”. The Mads create a real dangerous toy, a fire-breathing lizard to torch your army men. Then it’s off to the movie. The first break starts with Tom Servo happening upon a blender, who he believes is another robot. He starts hitting on it, with a series of doofy robot based come-ons. It’s pretty funny stuff. The next break Crow and Tom question Joel about how the werewolf in this movie works. The next break has Joel inspired by the film to switch Tom and Crows heads on their bodies. All hell breaks loose! After the movie ends, Tom and Crow try to come up with one good thing and one bad thing about the movie. They don’t do so hot. The Mad scientists are in morning because Dr. Cameron died, and the world is out one more mad scientist.

The Mad Monster has its moments and Commando Cody helps out, but it’s not a stellar effort. Compared to its brethren in season one, it falls in the middle, providing some solid laughs for a Sunday afternoon, but not something you’ll be seeking out for serious comedy. I’d reach for later episodes to scratch that werewolf itch like Season Eight’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Season Nine’s Werewolf. As with all these season one episodes I’d drop one level of rating when comparing it the series as a whole. But with the other season one episodes I give it three ghostly scientists out of five.

This episode is available on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection Volume XIV.