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.

   This one is a very unique trailer. AIP released this comedy-horror cult film with a particularly compelling trailer that horrifies with humor. Notice one of the stars of the film is Eugene Levy, who went on to a stellar comedy career. The director is Ivan Reitman, who later went on to do Ghostbusters.

SILVER BULLET. Paramount Pictures, 1985. Gary Busey, Everett McGill, Corey Haim, Megan Follows, Terry O’Quinn, Lawrence Tierney, Bill Smitrovich. Narrator: Tovah Feldshuh. Screenplay by by Stephen King, based on his novel. Directed by Dan Attias.

   This is a quintessentially Stephen King movie. What do I mean by that, exactly? Well, for starters, the official title of the movie is Stephen King’s Silver Bullet. Or so that’s what it says on the VHS box cover. Also, the screenplay is by King, adapted from his novelette, “Cycle of the Werewolf” (1983). The movie is well-entrenched in the horror genre, set in a small town where evil lurks just under the surface, and where kids can be insightful, cruel, and far wiser than adults. Sounds like King to me.

   The plot. Evil comes to Tarkers Mills, a small town with the usual coterie of King characters. Here the darkness comes in the form of a judgmental local religious leader, Reverend Lowe (Everett McGill) who – it just so happens – also is a werewolf.

   Ultimately, it’s up to wheelchair bound teenager Marty Coslaw (Corey Haim) to both discover Lowe’s dark secret and to convince his skeptical Uncle Red (Gary Busey) that the local minister is a lycanthrope. There’s also a subplot about Marty’s strained relationship with his older sister Jane, who is weary of having to play second fiddle to her paralyzed younger brother.

   Look for Lawrence Tierney as a bar owner who joins a vigilante mob that tries to hunt down the serial killer responsible for a number of local gruesome slayings. (Hint: it wasn’t a serial killer). Tierney has an oversized presence in any movie that he’s in, so much so that even though he probably doesn’t have more than forty or fifty words of dialogue, he’s very much a primary character.

   Watching on VHS was an experience. It gave the movie that subdued analog feel that seems fitting for a 1980’s King movie. This wasn’t the first time I watched Silver Bullet. I remember watching it when I must have been eleven or twelve. It must have been on HBO. And I was absolutely terrified. Well, I can say I was less scared this time. Time and age has a way of doing that to people. But it’s still a hair-raising experience. Pun intended.

   Silver Bullet isn’t really a good movie, per se. But it’s a highly nostalgic one. Both in terms of my own childhood memories and in terms of its content.

THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Hammer Films, UK, 1957. Peter Cushing (Victor Frankenstein), Hazel Court, Robert Urquhart. Christopher Lee (The Creature), Melvyn Hayes, Valerie Gaunt. Screenplay: Jimmy Sangster, based on the novel by Mary Shelley. Director: Terence Fisher.

   The previous time I had seen Hammer’s Gothic classic, The Curse of Frankenstein, it was at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Screened in glorious 35mm as part of a Halloween lineup, the movie’s aesthetic definitely made an impression on me.

   Much like the Universal Monsters films from the 1930s, the Hammer Films have the capacity to transport the viewer into a self-enclosed universe of ghouls and monsters. Everything from the costumes to the lighting works in tandem to create a celluloid dreamworld that is – in my humble opinion – simply unmatched in contemporary horror film-making.

   So when I came across a VHS copy, I jumped at the chance. It wasn’t that expensive ($10), and the box is in relatively good condition. Plus, it’s got somewhat atypical cover art that admittedly captures Peter Cushing’s eyes quite well!

   Now there’s nothing new under the sun here in terms of storytelling. If you know the Frankenstein story (legend?), then you’re not going to be surprised by all that much. Young Baron Frankenstein (Cushing) hires Paul Krempe (Robert Urquhart), a tutor to help him with his studies. As years go by, Frankenstein emerges as a scientific genius with a penchant for danger.

   It doesn’t take long for the tutor to disavow his former student’s desire to create life from death. Complicating matters even further is the entrance of the beautiful Elizabeth (Hazel Court), Frankenstein’s cousin who threatens to pull the mad doctor not only away from his work, but also from the chambermaid he’s been having an affair with!

   Christopher Lee doesn’t speak a word, but he’s quite convincing as the scarred, deformed, and ultimately tragic Frankenstein monster – or, as the film credits state, “The Creature.” There’s a great scene in which Baron Frankenstein lords over a chained and terrified Creature, reminding us just who the monster in this movie really is.

   I appreciated watching this one on VHS as it allowed me to focus a bit more on the characters than I did when I saw it at the New Beverly. Altogether, well worth the ten bucks.
   

FRIDAY THE 13th, PART VIII: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN. Paramount Pictures, 1989. Todd Caldecott (as Todd Shaffer), Tiffany Paulsen, Timothy Burr Mirkovich, Kane Hodder, Jensen Daggett, Barbara Bingham, Alex Diakun, Peter Mark Richman, Ace. Screenwriters: Rob Hedden & Victor Miller. Director: Robert Hedden.

   Directed by Robert Hedden, this installment in the seemingly never-ending Friday the 13th franchise apparently was not a financial success. Which is kind of important for a movie such as this. After all, it’s never going to win an Oscar. So what else is there? While I enjoyed watching it on VHS – what better format for a movie such as this? – I can’t say that it left me wanting to watch it again in this format anytime soon.

   The main problem with Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan is that, well, it’s all kind of flat. Jason, although portrayed with great physicality by Kane Hodder, doesn’t exactly take anything, much less Manhattan. In actuality, the majority of the screen time in this mid-tier slasher is devoted to Jason, the goalie mask-wearing unkillable villain, wreaking havoc on a New York-bound ship filled with teenagers. Now that’s not to say that there isn’t some style and penache to the movie. There is, for instance, a well choreographed kill scene on a dance floor. Death to disco indeed. But the Manhattan scenes come much later and, apart from a Times Square sequence, were pretty clearly filmed on a studio lot or some equivalent.

   The plot, such as it is, follows teenager Rennie (Jensen Daggett) and her guardian Charles McCulloch (Peter Mark Richman) as they embark on a group boat ride to New York City. Richman is an actor who I like a lot. Not sure how he ended up in this feature. But I’ve appreciated his numerous television appearances in the past, including in Three’s Company where he portrayed Chrissy’s father. He exudes a certain understated dryness which makes him stand out from the sundry other character actors of his generation.

   Back to the movie.

   Ok. Jason somehow – does it really matter? – ends up on board and begins his inevitable killing spree. There’s a subplot with one of the teenage girls entrapping McCullogh into a risque position which is then captured on good ol’ videocassette. But other than that, there’s nothing particularly interesting about what happens on board. Except that is for Rennie’s hallucinatory flashbacks in which she envisions a young innocent Jason drowning. Those moments were pretty cool, to be honest.

   Pretty standard mid-tier slasher stuff. Important to keep in mind: this entry into the Friday the 13th canon is from 1989. By then, the slasher formula had more or less run its course and there was little to nothing new under the sun. It wasn’t until Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) that the stale genre was given a much-needed reboot.
   

THE WALKING DEAD. Warner Brothers, 1936. Boris Karloff, Ricardo Cortez, Edmund Gwenn, Marguerite Churchill, Warren Hull, Barton MacLane, and Joe Sawyer. Written by Ewart Adamson, Peter Milne, Robert Hardy Andrews, Lillie Hayward, and Joseph Fields. Directed by Michael Curtiz.

   Formulaic but fun.

   Warners made a few Horror movies in the 1930s and 40s, some of them quite good, but even at their ghouliest, they never abandoned the tough-guy outlook that was the studio’s stock in trade. Mystery of the Wax Museum, Return of Dr X, The Smiling Ghost and even Beast with Five Fingers to some extent feature dense cops, detectives of varying competence, smart-ass reporters, hardened criminals, and underworld hangers-on. The Walking Dead is distinct from these only in that it features somewhat more organized crime, nicely reinforced by the stylish direction of Michael Curtiz.

   Karloff stars as John Elman, an ex-con who falls into the gears of mob-lawyer Ricardo Cortez’s scheme to rub out an uncooperative Judge, and ends up as the fall guy, fretting on Death Row while a young couple who witnessed the actual killing agonize over whether to come forward to clear him and risk the wrath of heavies like Barton MacLane and Joe Sawyer. There’s a beautifully-done and melancholy “last mile” walk to the hot seat – precursor to the similar trek in Angels with Dirty Faces — word from the Governor comes just as the lights go dim, and then….

   Well, it happens that the young couple who came too late to Elman’s rescue are in the employ of eccentric medico Edmond Gwenn, who has just kept a human heart beating outside the body for two weeks and is eager to try a Revival Meeting with Elman’s corpse.

   I use the term “Revival Meeting” because there is a strong spiritual component to the last half of this film. The revived man now knows who framed him, and exerts a frightening influence over the nasties that lead to some not-always-convincing fatal accidents. At the same time, Doctor Gwenn is pressuring him for details about things on “the other side” and the source of Elman’s newfound powers.

   Karloff sports a frizzy hairdo with a shocking white streak for this part, and walks with the eerie, half-paralyzed shuffle later adopted by Kharis. How much of this is due to his acting or to Curtiz’ direction may be debatable, but the result is quite effective, and the film itself moves along so fast there’s no time to get used to it. It’s a case of actor, director and studio at the top of their form, and a film not to be missed.

THE UNDYING MONSTER. 20th Century/Fox, 1942. James Ellison, Heather Angel, John Howard, Bramwell Fletcher, Heather Thatcher, Aubrey Mather. Based on the novel (1922) by Jessie Douglas Kerruish. Director: John Brahm.

   The Undying Monster offers that archetypal cowboy of the Hoppy films, Jimmy Ellison, as a Scotland Yard forensic investigator (!) assisted by Heather Thatcher as a distaff Watson, looking into the Mysterious Curse that haunts John Howard (a Ronald Colman look-alike who starred in Paramount’s Bulldog Drummond series) and his sister, Heather Angel.

   This is an oddity: A Werewolf movie almost totally lacking in excitement. It’s directed by John Brahm, a director who had his moments (Hangover Square, The Lodger, Guest in the House),  so it’s not without some atmosphere and plenty of nifty camerawork, but overall, there’s just too little going on to sustain it.

THE CLIMAX.  Universal Pictures, 1944. Boris Karloff, Susanna Foster, Turhan Bey, Thomas Gomez, Gail Sondergaard, George Dolenz, June Vincent, Ludwig Stossel, Scotty Beckett. Screenplay by Curt Siodmak and Lynn Starling based on the play by Edward Locke. Directed by George Waggner.

   What do you do when you have lavish opera house sets left over after making a major production like Universal’s remake of The Phantom of the Opera with Claude Rains in the lead?

   If you are Universal Studio in the Forties you make another horror movie with an operatic background capitalizing on those sets, film it in Technicolor as you did the first, and fill it with familiar faces and best of all a famous horror star to lead, Boris Karloff.

   The Climax for reasons unknown to me is one I had never even heard of before, much less seen, and while it is, like the Claude Rains Phantom, as much musical romance with comedy elements as horror or mystery, it is still well worth seeing for it handsome sets, and variations on the original.

   We know from the beginning, so no spoilers are involved, that Dr. Friedrich Hohner (Karloff) the physician who cares for the performers at the opera house murdered the beautiful soprano Marcellina (June Vincent) and hid her body using the secret passage between the opera and his nearby dwelling so it appeared she ran off. He was her rejected lover, and furious that her voice gave her such fame it was taking her away from him.

   He is, of course, quietly mad in only the way Boris Karloff could be quietly mad, but it is nice to see him getting to be so in white tie and tails in beautiful Technicolor lush surroundings and not so much as a mad scientist hair out of place. He must have appreciated the change too because there is no sense of overacting to his subtle, and more threatening for it, killer even when he finally cracks.

   I suppose for many that was a drawback, but I for one appreciated the break.

   Enter the beautiful soprano Angela Klatt (God that name!) played by Susanna Foster and her musical coach and young want to be lover Franz Munzer (Turhan Bey). They are auditioning at the opera house operated by director Thomas Gomez when Hohner overhears Angela singing exactly as Marcellina did and passes out in a dead faint.

   Not too shocking considering he murdered her to silence that hated voice.

   Gomez, who is of course having trouble with his annoying current Diva Jarmilla (Jane Farrar) and obsequious tenor (George Dolenz), is delighted to have such a great talent at hand and immediately cast her in a key role in his current production. Her debut is brilliant, and with its success Gomez determines to produce again the opera Marcellina was to star in when she disappeared.

   But unknown to any of them the night of her debut Hohner convinces Angela to come back to his office where he must examine her after her performance and there he hypnotizes her telling her only he can control her voice and gives her a spray which reinforces his hypnotic suggestion each time she uses it.

   When she leaves he goes upstairs to the locked room where the beautifully preserved body of Marcellina is kept on a filmy tier among lush satin curtains and swears he will destroy the voice that once took her away from him again.

   At the press affair announcing the new production her voice does fail, and Karloff suggests she must stay with him while she recovers. But of course under his hand she does not recover.

   Munzer is suspicious though. With the help of old soldier and opera employee Carl Bauman (Ludwig Stossel) Munzer sets out to free Angela though he has no idea from what exactly. When Gomez reluctantly cancels Angela’s performance, Munzer and Carl, using Carl’s status as a highly decorated soldier get the boy king (Scotty Beckett) to order Angela perform at a command performance.

   With the help of Carl and Hohner’s housemaid (Gale Sondergaard) who had been Marcellina’s maid and worked all these years for Hohner hoping to prove he murdered her mistress, Munzer gets Angela away from Hohner and summons the police.

   At the opera Munzer smashes the bottle of throat spray freeing Angela from Hohner’s hypnotic grip, but just as she begins to sing Hohner overpowers Carl and …

   For most of you, I assume there will be far too much light operatic singing, too many musical numbers, nowhere near enough suspense, horror, or drama, and while attractive neither Bey nor Foster quite romantic enough to compensate, but despite that the film is handsomely produced, well directed and written, and has a certain charm of its own. Sans the big dramatic moments of Phantom I frankly liked it a bit more than the Rains film, maybe because I didn’t have to put up with Nelson Eddy or Edgar Barrier chewing scenery or compare it to the Chaney original.

   It’s a curious little film, something different on Karloff’s resume, and one I suspect he enjoyed filming having a decent budget for once, elegant costume, and no prosthetic make up to suffer under. There is something to be said for getting to see a master flex his muscles without breaking a sweat.