Bedlam(1946)

3/5

A sane woman is committed to a mental asylum by the rich and powerful elite who view her as a threat. Karloff plays the evil chief of the mental institution and enjoys tormenting her. The woman used to be all cold and heartless but a local Quaker became a friend of her’s and her into a real angel. Now she’s tending the lunatics in the asylum which just pisses Karloff’s character off.

The Christian overtones are annoying and it feels like they’re just using these blatantly obvious moral lessons to sell their own dogma. What I mean is the message of compassion and altruism is good but it doesn’t need the religious mumbo-jumbo that just distracts from the main point of the film.

The film is pretty well made but it starts quite slow and never really becomes that exciting.

Subconscious Cruelty(2000)

4/5

This movie is fucked up. Its barely an anthology and the plot is very vague. The first segment is about a brother who is planning to do something terrible to her sister. There’s also a segment about a businessman and one about Jesus. Its that kind of a movie.

The movie is pretty much just a collage of sexual violence combined with religious imagery. Its beautifully shot and well acted but its also extremely slow and weird and many will probably find it boring.

The crew of the film started making this with a ridiculously low budget of 20.000 Canadian dollars in the mid nineties and finally finished it after 6 years. Thats some indie film making for you.

Son of Frankenstein (1939)

4/5

The third film in the Universal Frankenstein series. This takes place some unknown time after Bride of Frankenstein. Frankenstein’s son Wolf von Frankenstein comes to live in his father’s old castle and the villagers aren’t too happy about another Frankenstein. First he has no intension of doing anything that dramatic but he meets this weird hunchback with a broken neck called Ygor(Played by Bela Lugosi). Ygor explains that he once worked for Wolf’s father and wants Wolf to help revive his father’s creation who somehow is still barely alive. Ygor than uses the monster to kill the jury that convicted him of grave robbing and sentenced him to death by hanging. Yeah, thats his reason for the broken neck. He was hanged but somehow survived.

Karloff plays the monster and Lugosi plays Ygor, Awesome. Not as good as the first two films but still really fine. This was made with a bigger budget and you can see that from the big expressionistic sets and its also the longest in the series.

I think this is my second favorite of the series Frankenstein being my fav. I prefer this to Bride of Frankenstein even though its a better movie in many aspects.

Der Fluch der grünen Augen[Cave of the Living Dead](1964)

Inspector Dorin is sent to a  countryside village to investigate some strange disappearances. He finds out that the seven virgins who had thought to have gone missing had actually being turned into vampires and they are now lurking in an underground maze of caves and dungeons. He is helped by the town loony who is a witch of some sort and a black man who is constantly being ostracized by the towns people. Not that subtle anti racism statement but I think its good that its in you’re face like that. The more famous Living dead film Night of the Living Dead went further and actually had a black man in a starring role which was unheard of at the time.

The sets are creepy as hell and there’s good use of sound effects although some times the music used is way to happy and upbeat. Acting and story is tolerable and in general the film is OK.

3/5

 

 

The Gorilla(1939)

Yet another one of these “Old Dark House” films. Seriously it doesn’t cease to amaze me how many of these films there are. Of course there are tons of Slasher films and mummy films and werewolf films and zombie films but this just doesn’t feel like a genre. Maybe its just me. This is a remake of a 1927 silent film which was also remade in 1930. Both of those versions are lost now I think.

A bunch of people are spending the night in a large old mansion and the owner gets a threatening letter from a serial killer called “Gorilla”. A bunch of usual dark house stuff happens. Secret passages open, lights go out, we see a hairy hand come out of a hidden panel…The Cat Creeps much?

Its pretty average for these kinds of films. There’s some laughs and some chills and there’s Bela Lugosi whose talents are totally lost here. He’s just a prop. Its worth watching but you might just as well watch  The Old Dark House or The Bat instead and have a better time.

2.5/5

Dementia(1955)

This is just so bizarre. The film is basically just an hour long nightmare scene with exaggerated shadows and German expressionist aesthetic.

From what I understood the film seems to be about a woman who is having hallucinations of her childhood when her father killed her mother and she killed her father. Its extremely weird, slow paced and atmospheric. Its like a dream, like a nightmare. I saw the Daughter of horror version which is the one with the narration. I can’t imagine how confusing it would have been without the narration. More serious and less cheezy perhaps but probably too weird. Maybe I’ll check the other version out someday.

4/5

Psycho(1960)

One of the biggest horror thriller and film classics of all time. The book is also very good and the film is really true to the book.

Marion Crane is a good trustworthy girl who works in a real-estate agency. Suddenly Marion gets a chance to easily steal a big pile of cash and possibly get a brighter future in some place else. She quickly gets paranoid and acts very suspiciously and changes cars 3 times a day. Finally on a rainy night she ends up at the Bates’ motel and meets Norman. Norman has been working the motel alone with his mother for years and after the new highway the business has been bad. Something unfortunate happens to Marion and her sister and boyfriend start looking for her and unravel the mystery.

The story is excellent but I can’t really say much without spoiling it. There’s tons of mystery and twists and turns. Its extremely suspenseful and stylized and the overall production is top notch. Anthony Perkins is fabulous as Norman and even though he doesn’t really look like the guy in the book he’s still the real Norman.

Like most Hitchcock films this also has a cameo by the director. Look for him outside real-estate company.

Of course Psycho is also considered extremely violent for its time and it is. Although the book was actually more violent. Its all due to the fast editing, music and camera work. In my opinion not Hitchcock’s best film but still excellent. I also recommend the book by Robert Bloch.

5/5

The Mummy’s Hand(1940)

Unlike popular belief this actually isn’t a sequel to The Mummy but more of a remake of sorts.

A bunch of archeologists go to Egypt to search for something big and eventually come across the tomb of princes Ananka. Yes Ananka not Ankh-es-en-amon. The tomb is of course guarded by a living mummy buried alive for sacrilege. However the mummy is not Imhotep but Kharis. So as you can see its very similar to the original Mummy movie but with slight difference’s and different character names. There’s also a creepy guy called Professor Andoheb who is secretly a high priest of Karnak which means that he is one in the long lineage of people who keep Kharis alive. Andoheb is pretty much the equivalent of Boris Karloff in The Mummyafter he has regained his human form.

This film has 3 sequels which all feature Kharis and all have the same classic beginning with the priests talking about the magical Tana leaves which keep the mummy alive. The thing that makes this all so confusing is that all of these films are very similar in plot and also very similar to the Karloff movie. This one even has lots of footage from that movie and in some parts Karloff is clearly identifiable. Sequel, remake both or neither? Who knows.

Anyway The Mummy’s Hand is a pretty solid early 40s horror picture. The story is good although not completely original, actors manage to do their job pretty well and it has that creepy black & white chiller atmosphere.

3,5/5

Dementia 13(1963)

According to wikipedia this was supposed to be a Psycho rip-off with brutal killings and gothic atmosphere. Psycho rip-off probably means like a slasher film because this is actually not that similar in other respects. It does have a fake lead character though.

Louse and Richard Haloran are row boating when Richard gets a heart attack which would result in Louse not inheriting Richard’s family’s fortune. So she throws the body in the lake. Louse then goes to meet Richard’s family in their family castle like she was supposed to. The family is all messed up because of the death of Richard’s sister many years ago. Louse starts to plot to make Richard’s mom go completely insane as she is already pretty unstable in order to hasten her death. Suddenly things change and Louse get’s axe murdered. Its quite a mystery and very entertaining and you are really wondering who is the killer.

The film is very creepy and atmospheric even though it was thought to be a total gore fest when it was made. The soundtrack also really helps to enhance the mood. The kills are good and actually pretty gruesome but you don’t really see any blood. Most of the film is actually the slow stalking and wandering in the dark woods moors or cellars but with the good balance of violence and plot it makes a really fast moving and entertaining yet atmospheric and creepy film.

4/5

The Human Monster [The Dark Eyes of London](1939)

Bela Lugosi portrays a mad scientist version of Murder Legandre from White Zombie who instead of having zombies work for him uses blind people. One of his victims is found from the river and the a couple of detectives are sent to investigate. Lugosi also has a Gorilla/Frankenstein’s monster helper who is supposed to be really scary and he is obviously one of the main selling points. His face is in the art work and the film’s name has “monster” in it but actually the “monster” only has a few brief appearances and is just an unimportant prop. Its tolerable, some laughs and some scares and obviously there’s Lugosi as Dr. Orloff which makes it all worthwhile.

3/5