MANT!

Joe Dante's homage to his childhood features John Goodman as the cigar-chomping master of horror hype, Lawrence Woolsey. The character is patterned after the late William Castle and Goodman nails the role.

MATINEE is set in Key West, Florida during the "atom age", that is the days when it was thought a nuke might strike at anytime, and kids were sent flying under their desks once or twice a month in drills anticipating the disaster -- like your school desk would help against radiation.

Having spent some time many years ago living on the Florida Keys (and loving it!), I was, of course, thrilled to see that the movie was set in Key West. Released in 1993, it is currently available on DVD (no Blu-ray yet) and providers like Netflix Instant Play.

The film contains a hilarious "movie-within-a movie", starring a half-man, half-ant mutation called "Mant". Dante spoofs the genre, but does so respectfully instead of letting it slip into the realms of the ridiculous like so many others do.

Presented here in two parts is MANT! and a trailer for MATINEE.

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MOVIE NOOSE REEL -- CAPSULE OPINIONS

Just to show you I'm not totally stuck in the past, I've had the opportunity to watch a few newer flicks lately. Provided here for your thoughts, comments, etc., are my short and sweet gut opinions on each.

WOMAN IN BLACK – Something that I would label as “quiet horror”, this is Hammer’s latest entry and I felt honored to watch it on the big screen. I mean, here I am sitting in a movie theater watching a Hammer film, fer chrissakes! Daniel Radcliffe’s first “adult” role is one I believe he should be proud of. Some would say this movie moves too slowly, but I think the lingering camera shots, art direction, and dripping Gothic atmosphere were all near perfect for this film.

THE GREY – Liam Neeson is fast becoming the new Harrison Ford. He has played a something of a “maturing” action hero in a number of recent films and he’s damn good at it! A favorite nature-gone-wild film of mine is the Anthony Hopkins/Alec Baldwin white-knuckler, THE EDGE, where the pair are terrorized by a full-grown Grizzly with a taste for human flesh. Neeson’s film is reminiscent of THE EDGE, only with wolves. And where THE EDGE’s subplot is a bit trite, THE GREY’s is considerably more substantial, and is an effective counterpoint to the lead character’s motivations. Greg Nicotero continues to amaze with his wolf animatronics. More thriller than horror – although it is horrifying in parts – THE GREY is one not to miss if you’re after a thrill ride.

THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE) – a Tom Six sickfest, watching this movie is like driving by a traffic accident; you try to look away but can’t. A bit seasoned against blood ‘n guts and unsavory special effects, none of this really creeped me out, although it had its moments. I think it was in part a result of zero sympathy factor for the victims – two ditsy chicks (not to be confused with the singing group) and an obnoxious Japanese kid get surgically sewn together in places that are wince-inducing. The cadaverous Dieter Laser as Dr. Heiter, on the other hand, can now be considered among horror filmdom's maddest doctors.

HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN – I can understand this becoming an instant cult favorite. Rutger Hauer has always been a favorite actor of mine, but this Technicolor travesty of a hackneyed revenge flick is crass and downright gratuitous. Buckets of high-def blood and gore only add to the overwhelming sense of disgust. If that’s what Director Jason Eisener was after, he has succeeded in spades. Hauer deserves a better role.

INSIDIDOUS – For the first half-hour of this flick, I thought I was watching THE EXORCIST all over again. Then I figured out that this film is either an homage to numerous horror films that came before it, or it really is just a derivative hack-job. Part aforementioned THE EXORCIST, it then shifts gears and morphs into a combination of GHOSTBUSTERS and POLTERGEIST. After this realization came to me, it ruined the viewing experience. Well filmed and with a few original elements and jump-scares, I still couldn't get over the similarities. Oh, and did I mention there was a bit of THE X-FILES Lone Gunman shtick thrown in, too?

WAKE WOOD – Another Hammer film, this time viewed on the small screen. With echoes of THE WICKER MAN, THE DARK SECRET OF HARVEST HOME, and perhaps even a pea pod or two from INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, this movie goes about its business effectively and with the kind of flair that I think can only be experienced in a British film production. Now, if Hammer would only trot out the monsters . . .

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GODZILLA IS ATTACKING THE CITY ... IN BLU-RAY!

During the years of the classic monster movies, King Kong was the 8th Wonder of the World. In post-war modern times the legendary Gojira (Godzilla in English) can lay claim to the most spectacular giant monster. The japanese even coined a phrase for this and subsequently unleashed giant beasts from Tokyo -- "Kaiju".

The 1954 Toho Productions flick has enjoyed numerous releases throughout the years on home video. Now, The Criterion Collection may have gifted us Kaiju lovers with the definitive and best-ever version in Blu-ray.

The the disc contains these features:

•New high-definition digital restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)

•New high-definition digital restoration of Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Terry Morse’s 1956 reworking of the original (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)

•Audio commentary for both movies by film historian David Kalat

•New interviews with actors Akira Takarada and Haruo Nakajima and special effects technicians Yoshio Irie and Eizo Kaimai

•Interview with legendary Godzilla score composer Akira Ifukube

•Featurette detailing Godzilla’s photographic effects, introduced by special effects director Koichi Kawakita and special effects photographer Motoyoshi Tomioka

•New interview with Japanese-film critic Tadao Sato

•The Unluckiest Dragon, an illustrated audio essay featuring historian Greg Pflugfelder describing the tragic fate of the fishing vessel Daigo Fukuryu Maru, a real-life event that inspired Godzilla

•Trailers for Godzilla and Godzilla, King of the Monsters

•New English subtitle translation

•PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic J. Hoberman

FROM THE CRITERION COLLECTION "PRESS NOTES":
Sympathy for a monster? For Time, critic Steven James Snyder writes, “As I became immersed in the new Criterion Collection release of Ishiro Honda’s original Godzilla this past weekend, I found myself moved to tears—mourning for a doomed dino.” Snyder, who finds some “serious intellectual heft behind all that monster stomping, and some searing things to say about human nature,” wasn’t the only one surprised when revisiting the monster-movie classic. For Home Theater Forum, Matt Hough reminds us that it’s “far more than a popcorn thriller. It’s in many ways a thoughtful and touching piece of popular entertainment with a serious theme at its core.” And San Francisco Weekly’s Casey Burchby exclaims, “Watching Godzilla for the godzillionth time was even more rewarding than I had anticipated. It’s one of those movies that is far better than its iconography and countless parodies might suggest.”

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TCM UNVEILS LIST OF 10 MOST INFLUENTIAL SILENT FILMS

While the currently-running film THE ARTIST may not exactly revive the silent film as a viable market, it has nevertheless stimulated an interest in looking back at movies from the silent era and discussing the origins of one of the most significant creations in modern history.

TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES has released a "10 Most Influential" list of silent films. One is a historical drama/horror film, the other science-fiction.

As with most lists, there is ample room for disagreement. For instance, although Chaney's HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME came first, I would consider replacing it with PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. Hunchback may have been a better film, but who can forget the Paris Opera House and the legendary unmasking scene?

I would also consider THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, for its expressionistic sets that echoed for many years in a number of film productions, not excluding the early Universal Pictures classic horror film cycle.

Here is an article from the Los Angeles Times that discusses the TCM Channel's list:

"With the nearly wordless black-and-white melodrama "The Artist" collecting trophies like it's 1927, a new generation of moviegoer is being exposed to the format of silent films. (Some audiences--according to London's Daily Telegraph -- have even complained to movie houses that they didn't know "The Artist" lacked spoken dialogue.)

For newbies seeking a little knowledge--or die-hards up for a debate--Turner Classic Movies has unveiled a list of the 10 most influential silent films.

Compiled by a committee of TCM's in-house film historians, TCM host Robert Osborne and "The Artist's" French director, Michel Hazanavicius, the list covers the years 1915 to 1928. Highlights include D.W. Griffith's controversial Civil War epic "The Birth of a Nation," Charlie Chaplin's sight-gag-rich comedy "The Gold Rush" and Fritz Lang's science-fiction and visual effects groundbreaker "Metropolis."

"People don’t really know how a silent movie works," Hazanavicius said in an interview about the list. "Usually they are amazed by the experience of watching a silent movie, which is another form of expression. It works with another part of the brain. They come expecting to be bored, and they’re amazed by the fact that it’s easy to watch and it’s a story."

TCM's full list is below, in chronological order. For TCM's detailed explanations of its choices, see TCM.com:

TCM List of 10 Most Influential Silent Films

"The Birth of a Nation" (1915) Griffith's Civil War spectacle is technically innovative and notoriously racist. "You really have to put this movie in the context," Hazanavicius said. "The movie is important because Griffith is inventing a lot of things. It’s more interesting for the history. But it is not so easy to watch."

"The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (1921) Rudolph Valentino tangoed his way to stardom as an Argentine soldier fighting for France in director Rex Ingram's World War I drama.

"Nanook of the North" (1922) For this forerunner to the modern documentary, director Robert Flaherty spent a year following Inuit Eskimos in the North Pole.

"The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1923) Lon Chaney's reign as the "Man of 1,000 Faces" began with director Wallace Worsley's adaptation of Victor Hugo's tale of the deformed bell ringer. "Lon Chaney was known for disguising himself, for making very big, very expressive characters," Hazanavicius said. "It’s impressive."

"The Ten Commandments" (1923) Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 Biblical epic starring Charlton Heston as Moses is the one most familiar to modern audiences, but the director's silent version is equally grand, with 36-foot tall statues of the pharaohs, 110-foot-tall Egyptian gates and a Red Sea made of Jell-O.

"The Gold Rush" (1925) Often hailed as Charlie Chaplin's greatest comedy, "The Gold Rush" contains one of cinema's most iconic sight gags--Chaplin's dancing bread rolls. "Charlie Chaplin was a great clown, a great stuntman, a great acrobat, a great dancer," Hazanavicius said. "The sequence with the bread-- it’s like the Mona Lisa. Everybody knows it."

"Battleship Potemkin" (1925) Sergei Eisenstein's account of a Russian naval mutiny was among the first and most effective films to use the technique of montage to move the story forward, and included one of cinema's classic images, that of a baby carriage rolling down a flight of stairs.

"Metropolis" (1927) Long before "Terminator" or "Blade Runner," director Fritz Lang originated the stylized industrial dystopia. "This movie is a metaphor about society," Hazanavicius said. "It's not really about people."

"Sunrise -- A Song of Two Humans" (1927) Hazanavcius said he had his leading man, Jean Dujardin, watch German director F.W. Murnau's drama about a married farmer who falls in love with a dangerous woman from the city as an example of naturalistic acting in the silent era. "When people think of silent movies, they think of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton," Hazanavicius said. "These actors were beautiful clowns, but they were clowns and their movies were slapstick. But there's another kind of silent movie, a simple, moving story."

"The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928) Danish director Carl Theodore Dreyer forced Renee Maria Falconetti to work under extreme duress while filming her role as the French saint, yielding work that critic Pauline Kael once called "the finest performance ever recorded on film."

--Rebecca Keegan"

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THIS WAS THE FEAR THAT WAS . . . THE MASK

This is a movie about addiction, obsession, and murder -- and it’s pretty good. That it’s also 50-years old this year makes it pretty good, too. With a theme that’s a distant relative of W.W. Jacobs’ The Monkey’s Paw, it is not only the first Canadian film to be widely released in the United States, but it’s also the first Canadian horror film to be widely released as well. Even considering that Canadian horror films were few and far between at the time, it’s still an accomplishment.

Cranking up the cool factor were several sequences shot in 3D. When the voice over exclaimed in a booming, ominous voice to “PUT THE MASK ON NOW!”, he not only meant for the lead to do it in the picture, but for the audience to put on their supplied 3D glasses as well!

In FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FIMLAND #16 (March, 1962), THE MASK was featured in a photo story.

A PACKAGE FOR DR. BARNES

MASK DISPLAY AT TIFF BELL LIGHTHOUSE, TORONTO

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THE GREY: MAN VS. WOLF

Coming to U.S. theaters on January 27 in what looks to be quite a thriller is THE GREY, starring Liam Neeson. While the wolves in this film appear more like the regular four-pawed kind, there are hints of the supernatural to the story. From the trailer shown below, the film's subtitle could easily be called, "Wolf vs. Food".

The "First Look" story is from TOTAL FILM, December 2011.

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HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND

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EL GRAN AMOR DEL CONDE DRACULA

DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE a.k.a. EL GRAN AMOR DEL CONDE DRACULA (1974)

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THE GRUESOME DEATH OF FORREST J ACKERMAN

It didn't take long after the publication of the first issue of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND before its editor-in-chief, Forrest J Ackerman, became a bit of celebrity. Hailing from where he called "Horrorwood, Karloffornia", he lorded over a massive collection of monster, science fiction, fantasy, and other genre memorabilia that included books, magazines, posters, stills, props, models . . . well, you get the idea.

In what was surely a natural progression, FJA found himself in front of the movie camera on numerous occasions. Most of the time they were bit parts, but us Monster Kids waited in rapt anticipation for our Uncle Forry to appear in the movie as much as any cinephile did waiting for director Alfred Hitchcock to make his trademark appearances in his own films.

We usually found out which films Forry was going to be in from the pages of FAMOUS MONSTERS. In 1972, it was no different. The March issue of FM (#89) announced his cameo in yet another movie. And, by the title, it sounded like a doozy.

Well, DRACULA vs. FRANKENSTEIN, one of many Al Adamson fringe fests, was a bit more like a dozer. Kitschy and vaguely charming as a B-movie relic, the rather roughly produced DvF couldn't find any traction with theater-going audiences, even with the likes of appearances by Lon Chaney, Jr., J. Carrol Naish, Russ Tamblyn, Regina Carrol, Angelo Rossitto, and the aforementioned Forry.

Nevertheless, Ackerman promoted the film in FM with his usual enthusiasm as the next big thing in monster movies. Included was a full-page spread with the "horrifying" sequence that depicted FJ's scene as a victim at the hands of the doughy-faced Frankenstein monster. Other pics showed exotic newcomer Zandor Vorkov as the immortal Dracula, this incarnation of the Count hep with the times and sporting a 'fro. Insert shivers . . . or chuckles, here.

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METROPOLIS REVISITED

One of the landmark events of 2010 was the DVD and Blu-ray releases of Fritz Lang's silent film classic, METROPOLIS. Not only did it present the best possible viewing experience to date, but it also included a portion of the film that was thought lost.

Like many filmatic treasures, a more complete copy was known to exist in a film archive in, of all places, Argentina. After its rediscovery and subsequent restoration it was released in its present form by the venerable Kino Video.

This review is from the August/September 2011 issue of the Australian SOUND+IMAGE magazine. The reviewer gives it a 4-out-of-5 star "Cool Blu" rating. I might have bumped it to a "5" if for nothing more than the ostentatious occasion. Maybe that's just the Monsterologist in me, but it was a historical moment for cinephiles.

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SCI-FI FILMS BY THE NUMBERS

We earthlings like lists. Maybe it's to create some sort of order in our puny human binary brains. Maybe it's to reassure the priority of things for our puny human binary brains. Whatever the reason, the film industry uses lists all the time to let us know what's best and to leave the rest . . . in whoever's opinion, that is.

The UK A4-sized TOTAL FILM magazine had two -- count 'em -- two, lists in their August 2011 issue. For your puny human binary brains, here's the list:

1. The 10 Coolest Sci-Fi Films Being Made Right Now
2. The 50 Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Ever Made

And here are the articles: 

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