BACK FROM THE DEAD. Twentieth Century Fox, 1957. Peggie Castle, Arthur Franz, Marsha Hunt, Don Haggerty. Director: Charles Marquis Warren.

   Don’t let the title of this Gothic misfire fool you. Back from the Dead is, despite its title, an altogether lifeless affair that plods along without much in the way of visceral horror or even suspense. Set in Carmel on the California coast (although filmed in Laguna) with a coterie of presumably Old Money types, the movie features Peggie Castle as a woman who becomes possessed with the spirit of her husband’s ex-wife, Felicia.

   The husband, Dick Anthony (Arthur Franz), doesn’t know what’s going on, so he enlists the help of his sister-in-law Kate (Marsha Hunt) to investigate. This leads them to Felicia’s parents who are, or were, part of some black magic cult. And apparently it was Felicia who got them into it. You see: there is a Satanic mystic guru living in the area who is able to get young women under his spell, and she at one point fell under his control.

   It was probably all very intriguing on paper. The problem is that the movie has such a lack of style that what could have worked, doesn’t. The movie isn’t scary or salacious; it’s overall rather dull, despite the cast taking the material seriously.

   There is one scene though – and it’s in the beginning of the movie – which is truly captivating. The viewer sees two people, a man and a woman in cloaks, throwing a body into the water. It’s chilling and reminded me of the Val Lewton horror films of the 1940s.

   Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from there. Overall, a disappointment. But there’s enough in the source material that it could work as a remake someday.

VALLEY OF THE ZOMBIES. Republic Pictures, 1946. Robert Livingston, Lorna Gray (as Adrian Booth), Ian Keith. Director: Philip Ford.

   By the title alone, you might think this was a horror movie set in Louisiana or Haiti with menacing zombies at every turn. In this case, however, you’d be wrong.

   In fact, I’m not even sure that there is a single legitimate zombie in this Republic Pictures programmer. Rather, there’s a criminally insane man named Ormand Murks (Ian Keith) who has come back from the dead to take revenge on those who have wronged him. He has a thirst for human blood, making him more a vampire than a zombie. I guess technical definitions weren’t that important to the filmmakers. Vampires? Zombies? Who cares? Just make the villain unexplainably spooky and hope the audience slops it up.

   But don’t less this oversight dissuade you. Valley of the Zombies is a fun, supernatural thriller with a romantic duo of doctor and nurse (Robert Livingston and Lorna Gray) playing sleuths. When their boss is killed by Murks, they begin to seek answers. Along for the ride are some bumbling (and not so bumbling) detectives and policemen who don’t believe for a minute that an undead man may be behind a recent spate of murders.

   There’s some humor in the film as well, including a giant cop named Tiny. It’s all dismally mediocre B-film material, but as I said before, it’s actually kind of silly fun.
   

DAN CURTIS’ DRACULA. CBS, 1974. Jack Palance, Simon Ward. Nigel Davenport, Pamela Brown, Fiona Lewis, Penelope Horner/ Murray Brown. ScreenplayL Richard Matheson, based on the novel by Bram Stoker. Director: Dan Curtis.

   Dan Curtis’ Dracula, while steeped in a foreboding Gothic atmosphere, lacks the bite that a vampire movie should have. Filmed as a faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker’s horror novel, the movie stars Jack Palance as the titular villain. Palance rages and sneers throughout the proceedings, each time making him a little less supernatural than a fearsome vampire should really be. That isn’t to say that he doesn’t put on a good performance. Rather, it’s that Richard Matheson’s screenplay is – to be perfectly blunt – somewhat dull and muted.

   Another problem with this made-for-television adaptation is that it’s all plot and no story. After watching it, I can’t seem to recall any moment in the entire film where the audience is asked to identify in any meaningful way with the characters who get caught up in Dracula’s web. Everything seems to be held at an emotional distance. There’s a lack of energy that’s hard to describe, but easy to feel. Case in point: Dr. Van Helsing, as portrayed by Nigel Davenport, is rather lackluster. Surely the famed vampire killer should have some passion?

   There are, however, two very important plusses that the movie does have. First, the set design and lighting were exquisite. Second, the score by Robert Cobert fits perfectly with the aforementioned Gothic atmosphere. But these aren’t enough to make me recommend this Dracula adaptation over either the original with Bela Lugosi or the Francis Ford Coppola-helmed one in which Anthony Hopkins portrays Van Helsing.
   

TRAP. Warner Brothers, 2024. Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Night Shyamalan, Alison Pill, Hayley Mills. Written & directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

   Picture it: a middle-aged man and his pre-teen daughter are at a pop music concert. The performer in question, one Lady Raven, is on the top of her game and has legions of devoted fans. Then imagine the middle-aged man starts noticing something is off-kilter; there are simply way too many police around. What might be going on?

   That’s the premise of Trap, a recent film from prolific director M. Night Shyamalan. Josh Hartnett, whose performance carries the film, stars as Cooper, a seemingly normal guy from the Philadelphia suburbs. As it turns out, he is far from normal. In fact, he’s “The Butcher,” a serial killer that has been stalking the city. And the concert? Well, that’s an elaborate trap that has been set for him.

   Now, that might sound like a ludicrous premise. But trust me: when it works, it works. As a suspense flick filmed with a sense of fun and one that fortunately doesn’t take itself too seriously, Trap is an above average escapist thriller.

   It’s important to remember that screenplays need to be original, but not too original. They can’t be so off the beaten path as to confuse audiences. There’s a reason why genres and subgenres have tropes. Trap succeeds in being both a familiar “serial killer” movie and something entirely new. While it might not be palatable to all tastes, there’s a lot here to appreciate. For the squeamish, don’t worry. The movie relies on suspense rather than gore to get its point across.

THE PHANTOM SPEAKS. Republic Pictures, 1945. Richard Arlen, Stanley Ridges, Lynne Roberts, Tom Powers, Charlotte Wynters, Jonathan Hale. Screenplay: John K. Butler. Director: John English.

   The Phantom Speaks is an unusually downbeat crime/horror hybrid programmer from Republic Pictures. Overwrought and over explained, the story centers around a paranormal researcher’s quest to bring the dead back to life, albeit in spirit form. Dr. Paul Renwick (Stanley Ridges) is about as sincere as can be. He truly believes in the supernatural, even though he knows he is an object of ridicule for his obsession. When Renwick learns that convicted murderer Harvey Bogartus (Tom Powers) is about to be put to death, he arranges for a brief meeting in which he explains his desire to bring Bogartus’s spirit back from the grave following the execution.

   As one might imagine, things don’t go entirely according to plan. While Renwick is able to bring Bogartus back, it doesn’t play out the way he expected. Bogartus, a thug to his core, fully takes over Renwick’s body and uses it to commit a new string of heinous murders. Renwick, for his part, becomes the victim of his own hubris and doesn’t even realize how his body has been co-opted by an evil spirit. Investigating the weird occurrences is reporter Matt Fraser (Richard Arlen), who in ths one isn’t a particularly compelling protagonist.

   All told, The Phantom Speaks is a rather mediocre horror film. But, at a running time of less than seventy minutes, it doesn’t get a chance to wear out its welcome. It’s watchable, but nothing really more than that.

MICHAEL & JOHN BRUNAS and TOM WEAVER – Universal Horrors.The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931-1946. McFarland, hardcover, 1990, softcover, 2017.

   Fans of that sort of thing should drop what they’re doing and rush out in the street to buy this book. Handsomely produced, exhaustive but never tedious, this is the survey of those wonderful (and sometimes wonderfully inept) Horror Films put out from 1931 to 1946 by the Horror Studio.

   There are fascinating bits of information on budgets and stock footage, intelligent interviews with the surviving principals and minor character actors, and even an occasional bit of critical depth.

   It’s all too rare that a book manages not to insult the reader’s intelligence even while seriously discussing films that do, but Universal Horrors actually manages to chart its way from the giddy heights of Bride of Frankenstein   and The Black Cat all the way down to things like Night in Paradise and The Brute Man without putting a foot wrong.

   Of course, there are a few mistakes in critical Judgement, by which I mean that the authors don’t always agree with me. I have always been struck by the contrast in Universal Monster Movies between the bland, unengaging “heroes” of these films and the intriguing treatment of the hairy outcasts who are supposed to be the Bad Guys.

   I’ve reflected that kids watched these things in movie houses, where they were re-released right up to the early 50s, then stayed up late a night to catch them on television through the 60s, and I’ve always wondered if this was how the Hippies got their start.

   Weaver and the Brunases don’t bring this up — perhaps just as well — nor do they cite the bit of Invisible Man stock footage that was always [any good Sherlockian’s] favorite bit of Holmesian Trivia, but they do manage to run to earth just about every other bit of stock footage, retreaded script and reused actor from almost a hundred movies that most film historians wouldn’t give the time of day.

   And they do it in a way that is almost compulsively readable. I recommend this one highly.

   When I interviewed Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) in 1994, he explained the genesis of his novel The Halloween Tree (1972), whose youthful protagonists were based directly on his own childhood experiences and friends, “In many ways, or experiences I had later in Mexico. It’s an amalgam of memories and my interest in Halloween. I painted a picture [in 1960] called The Halloween Tree, a large tempera painting, it’s about three feet by four feet…I was having lunch with Chuck Jones, the animator, one day…It was the day after Halloween and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown [10/27/66] had been on, which I hated, and all my children ran over and kicked the TV set because they promised you the Great Pumpkin and [then] he never appeared.

   â€œWell, you can’t do that to kids, you know. You cannot promise them something that exciting, you’ve got to have [him] appear. Maybe it’s an illusion, maybe it’s a trick, whatever, the children think they see [him] and we the audience know that they don’t see him. But nevertheless, one way or the other [he’s] got to show up.

   “So I was complaining about this to Chuck [who made the classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (12/18/66) for MGM], and he said, ‘Well, hell, why don’t we do our own film on Halloween and do it right?’ [So] I brought him my painting and lugged it over to the animation studio and he said, ‘My God, that’s it, that’s the genetic tree, that’s the family tree of Halloween.

   â€œâ€˜Let’s go back in time to the caves and the Greek and Roman myths, and come on up through Europe with the Druids and into Ireland and Scotland and England and America and Mexico. You write the screenplay,’ which I promptly did in the fall of [that year], I believe.

   “And in about two months I had the thing ready to shoot, at which point MGM tore down all of its animation studios and fired everyone. We were all out on the street suddenly. I peddled the screenplay around and optioned it to various animation studios off and on for many years, and it took a good part of twenty years to finally get someone else interested,” during which he converted it into a novel illustrated by Joseph Mugnaini.

   In “a small town by a small river and a small lake in a small northern part of a Midwest state,” Tom Skelton and seven other boys dressed for All Hallows’ Eve are perplexed by the absence of Joe Pipkin, “the greatest boy who ever lived.” Emerging from his home pale, unmasked, and holding his right side, he pledges to catch up with them at “the place of the Haunts” in the inevitable ravine, whose tall, black-clad resident, Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, slams the door with a “No treats. Only — trick!”

   Behind the house, they see the titular tree hung with 1,000 jack-o’-lanterns, and after rising from a pile of leaves in the guise of a skull, he offers to reveal “all the deep dark wild history of Halloween…”

   For this, they must travel to the Undiscovered Country (i.e., the Past), and when they say they must await Pip, he appears, feeling unwell, but in the ravine, his pumpkin light goes out, and he vanishes. Moundshroud says Death has “borrowed” Pipkin, “perhaps to hold him for ransom,” and taken him to the Undiscovered Country, so the lads can “solve two-mysteries-in-one.”

   He has them build a kite out of circus posters covering an abandoned barn, a pterodactyl with the boys (including Ralph Bengstrum and Wally Babb) as its tail, followed by a scythe-carrying Moundshroud, his cape serving as wings; they fly over the town and into Egypt, 2000 B.C., where food is left on doorsteps for homecoming ghosts.

   Deducing that the youthful mummy in the funeral procession they are watching is Pip, his friends are eager to save him, but Moundshroud cautions patience, proceeding to explain how fire got the cavemen through the night, wondering if the sun would rise the next day. Atop a pyramid, they see similar offerings being made in ancient Greece and Rome; from there, the wind blows them off to the British Isles to see “England’s own druid God of the Dead,” Samhain, who turns the dead to beasts for their sins. A dog amidst this maddened menagerie, Pip eludes them again before they watch animal sacrifices being made by the druid priests, cut down by Roman soldiers who themselves are cut down by Christians…

   In the Dark Ages, the boys are carried off by brooms, prompting a lesson in how “anyone too smart, who didn’t watch out,” was accused as a witch; they “liked to believe they had power, but they had none…”

   In Paris, Pip is chained as the clapper of a bronze bell on a huge scaffolding, and as they ascend to free him, Notre Dame builds itself beneath their feet, its giant shadow banishing the witches. Reaching the top and finding Pip gone, they whistle for gargoyles to ornament the cathedral, realizing that one figure is Pip, who says he is not dead yet, with parts of him in the places they’ve been and “a hospital a long way off home,” but a lightning bolt knocks him off before Pip reveals how they can help him.

   Moundshroud says they must reassemble the Autumn Kite and fly to Mexico, the night’s “last grand travel” and a place of powerful association for Bradbury, who was frightened by the mummies in the catacombs of Guanajuato and set several stories there.

   On El Dia de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead Ones), the boys see the graveyard filled with people singing and placing flowers, cookies, sugar skulls, candles, and miniature funerals on the graves of their loved ones. Opening a trapdoor in an abandoned cemetery, Moundshroud says they must bring Pip up from the catacombs below, where they find him at the end of a long hall, both he and they too terrified to run the gauntlet with 50 mummies on a side.

   Moundshroud proposes a bargain: breaking a sugar skull bearing Pipkin’s name in eight pieces, he says they can ransom him if each gives a year from the end of his life, so they agree and eat the bits. Freed, Pip races right past them and disappears, so Moundshroud transports them back to Illinois, noting that “It’s all one…Always the same but different, eh? every age, every time. Day was always over. Night was always coming….Summer and winter, boys. Seedtime and harvest. Life and death. That’s what Halloween is, all rolled up in one.” The boys learn that Pip’s appendix was taken out just in time and, after decorating his porch with lit pumpkins to await his return, drift back to their own homes.

   Continued Bradbury, “finally David Kirschner…of Hanna-Barbera, came into my life. We talked about it for a year or so, and then finally two years ago he came back and said, ‘Hey, we got the money, Ted Turner’s one of our new bosses, and we want to buy The Halloween Tree. Will you freshen up your screenplay?’ I said, ‘I sure will.’

   “So I spent a couple of months [on it]…and that was it…Nothing was changed after that. We added a little more narration…They said, ‘Look, you’re ignoring your own best qualities here. Let’s add more of your individual voice, and let’s have you read it, hunh?’ And by God they were right. I went into the studio and read the narration, and it’s a nice addition.”

   The film halves the trick-or-treaters to Jenny (voiced by Annie Barker), replacing Henry-Hank Smith in the Witch costume, Tom (Edan Gross; Skeleton), Ralph (Alex Greenwald; Mummy), and Wally (Andrew Keegan; Gargoyle).

   Backed with evocative music by John Debney, an Oscar nominee for The Passion of the Christ (2004) who’d also worked with producer — and in this case director — Mario Piluso on Jonny’s Golden Quest (1993), the narration is almost verbatim from the book. After seeing Pip (Kevin Michaels) taken off in an ambulance, they find a note urging them to “Go ahead without me,” but seek to visit him instead; a shortcut through the ravine takes them to Moundshroud (Leonard Nimoy).

   Pip’s ghostly form takes a pumpkin bearing his likeness from the titular tree, vanishing in a tornado; this becomes a concrete cinematic MacGuffin rather than his peripatetic person or spirit, continually eluding Moundshroud, who seeks his soul.

   After the kite takes them to ancient Egypt, a more kid-friendly druid episode — sans Samhain, sacrifices, or Roman soldiers to “Destroy the pagans! ”— is set in Stonehenge, segueing via the Broom Festival to Notre Dame, which Moundshroud says, echoing Quasimodo, offers “Sanctuary!” The gargoyles’ connection with the monster mask worn by oft-aghast Wally (a drinking game based on each time he gasps, “Oh, my gosh!” would imperil the liver) is now established.

   Evoking Bradbury’s Playboy story (September 1963) and Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode (10/26/64) “The Life Work of Juan Diaz,” the final stop finds a more assertive Tom braving the mummies to reach Pip, taking the blame for wishing that something would happen to make him the group’s leader. But at the moment of forgiveness, Moundshroud grabs the pumpkin: “Children, it’s business. With his illness, his rent came due, and there was no payment. He’s mine now,” leading Tom to suggest the bargain instead. Pip flies off with his pumpkin and they are all whisked home, where it is found adorning his porch rail, Pip having narrowly survived the surgery, while Moundshroud delivers his summation about the universality of Halloween, and flies away with the remaining pumpkins from the tree.

   â€œ[I]t’s a nice film, and I…won an Emmy for it [it was also nominated for Outstanding Animated Children’s Program]. I had a wonderful relationship with the studio, and no problems, no friction. The film is…available…so people can buy it, and it’s been on two years running…It’s hard to find the damn thing. They’ll have it on in the middle of the afternoon or late at night, and I hope maybe next year they’ll have it at a decent hour.”

   But I’ll leave the last word to his literary characters: “They were stopped by a final shout from Moundshroud: ‘Boys! Well, which was it? Tonight, with me — trick or treat?’ The boys took a vast breath, held it, burst it out: ‘Gosh, Mr. Moundshroud — both!’”

         — Copyright © 2023 by Matthew R. Bradley.
   

   Excerpted from the forthcoming (God willing) The Group: Sixty Years of California Sorcery on Screen.

      Edition cited:

The Halloween Tree: Bantam (1974)

      Online source:

https://archive.org/details/the-halloween-tree_202106

   Take a look at this. I promise you the movie isn’t nearly as enthralling as the trailer makes it out to be, but it is nonetheless a fun time. Bring your suspension of belief. A lot of it!

FRIDAY THE 13th, PART VI:  JASON LIVES (1986). Paramount Pictures, 1986. Thom Mathews, Jennifer Cooke, David Kagen, Kerry Noonan, Renee Jones), Tom Fridley, C.J. Graham (Jason). Written and directed by Tom McLoughlin.

   Earlier this week, my father and I had  the opportunity to attend a special screening of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. Which to some people probably doesn’t sound like much; after all, it was just another installment in the gruesome long-running slasher franchise which exploited suburban fears and terrors. Those people couldn’t be more wrong.

   Directed by Tom McLaughlin, in photo to the left, this entry in the Jason series is a clever, fun, and dare I say – meta – film that provides an equal amount of scares and self-referential laughs. With a Gothic vibe (the movie was filmed in semi-rural Georgia), Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is, in many ways, an updated 1930s Universal Horror film. Here, Jason isn’t just a crazed man with a hockey mask; he’s a supernatural entity brought back from the dead. And it’s up to the person who resurrected him to put him back where he belongs; namely, dead in the infamous Crystal Lake.

   What made this viewing at the American Cinematique in Los Feliz CA particularly special was seeing director Tom McLaughlin introduce not only the film, but a large number of cast members, many of whom shared their experiences working on the project. [See photo below.] One thing that struck me was how he mentioned that he had no idea (and I certainly believe him) that, some 37 years later, people would be gathering en masse for a sold out screening of his sole entry into the franchise.

   
   Many consider this to be the best of the series, including all of the  fans watching it one more timein a sold-out theater,  It’s difficult to disagree.

Bonus: The soundtrack by Alice Cooper  gives the film some rebellious theatrical vibes that stay with you long after the lights come back on.

   This trailer for Critters (1986) doesn’t do the film justice. It’s a lot funnier, livelier, and creative than what you see in this video clip. Rather than just a straightforward sci-fi/horror film, Critters is a cult favorite.

   And understandably so. You’ve got some great characters, a good rural Kansas setting, and a sense of humor and fun that ramps up the laughter. I recently had a chance to see a sold-out screening at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema and the crowd loved it. I did too.