THE TOMB OF DRACULA {1980}

 DRACULA - SOVEREIGN OF THE DAMNED! 

As you can tell by the "TOMB OF DRACULA" logo, this takes as it's jumping-off point the classic 1970's Marvel Comics run written by Marv Wolfman and pencilled by Gene Colan.  Now, I've only read issues here and there of the classic comic book but did all the wild and wacky stuff shown in this Japanese anime-version actual come from the comic?!?!?!  I can't believe it if it did because this is bat-shit crazy (pun very much intended).  Because it's the seventies, a Satanic mass is going on and Dolores is being offered to Satan as his new bride.  When summoning Satan, the cult must've gotten the wrong number because Dracula shows up and falls in love with Dolores at first sight; whisking her away into the night.  The cult apparently text-messages Satan because he appears finally and is none too please that his bride sacrifice was . . . . um . . . . bridenapped. . . . . even if her name WAS Dolores.  We get quite a big romance story involving Dolores and Drac (which many find to be less than exciting).  Meanwhile, the vampire hunters from the comic book (Frank Drake, Rachel Van Helsing and Quincy Harker)

are hunting down the King of Vampires to put the stake in him but good.  At one point (I can't for the life of me remember why . . . ) Dracula is unvampirized and becomes human (now I think of it, it was probably Satan that hexed him).  Drac goes to New York City to get the vampire Lilith to bite him and turn him back into a vampire . . . . although she's called Layla in the English dub. 

Lilith/Layla isn't too cooperative.  Don't worry, Drac doesn't stay human for too long.  Oh yeah, at also at some point Dracula becomes a mugger and steals a guys wallet

so that he can go to a restaurant and get himself a burger (Yum Yum Eat 'Em Up!). 

Somewhere in all this mess, Dracula marries Dolores and they have a bouncing baby boy named Janus.    And then baby Janus gets killed.  And then buried.  And then resurrected.  And then he turns into an adult in a superhero suit. 

Who's out to get Dracula for being a naughty vampire.  And copious amounts of other crazy stuff happens.  Worth a watch simply for all the bonkers shenanigans that happen.   

COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN 2022

 "Light thickens, and the crow makes wing to the rooky wood.  Good things of day begin to droop and drowsel; While night's black agents to their preys do rouse."

  We here at the Land of Cerpts and Honey rouse ourselves from our coffins once again to the arrival of October and the new Countdown to Halloween.  Now in my third decade of doing these (Wow!), I'm pretty much going to keep things in the same (jugular) vein:  reporting on a spooky movie a day throughout the month of October.  I invite you to stop on by with your trick-or-treat bags open and I'll drop in a movie review for Halloween viewing.  Hope to see your gruesome masked faces all month long.

It is said that the Spirits of buried men

Oft come to this wicked world again;

That the churchyard turf is often trod

By the unlaid tenants of tomb and sod.

That the midnight sea itself is swept

By those who have long beneath it slept.

And they say of this old, mossy wood

Whose hoary trunks have for ages stood

That every knoll and dim-lit glade

Is haunted at night by its restless Shade.

                                                                                        -- Isaac McLellan

                                                                                            From the Haunted Wood

Harry Clarke

Arthur Rackham

Edmund Dulac

Gustave Dore

Joseph Anton Koch

Virgil Finlay

 HARKEN.  THIS IS YOUR DOORWAY TO THE ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE OF THE 2022 COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN!

Tomorrow morn the calendar will turn to the month of October which will signal our embarkation into this blog's Jekyllian transformation into THE LAND OF CREEPS AND HORROR.  Although that's not too much of a transformation from what this blog is like all the REST of the year . . .

. . . so here's your frightening invite to come back around tomorrow for the beginning of the Countdown to Halloween Hijinks.  I know, I know, some of you fiends are just chomping at the bat . . . . er I mean BIT . . . to get into the Halloween month but ghoul . . . er YOU'LL just have to wait until tomorrow.  While you're waiting, maybe you should play a game or two of DOORWAYS TO HORROR; that 1980's video game I know you all must have.

What?!?!?!  You mean to say you don't have that game?!?!?!  Well, then . . . you MUST have the NIGHTMARE VHS board game, then.

 But remember . . . . if you wanna play that game you have to bring the Ollllllllllllllllllllllld one!

So, hope to see you here tomorrow for the kickoff of the 2022 Countdown to Halloween.  Don't be square!  All the best creeps will be there!

September 2022 Top 10 List

 HERE ARE MY FAVOURITE MOVIES I WATCHED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN SEPTEMBER 2022.

1. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE  (1969)
2. FILM STARS DON'T DIE IN LIVERPOOL  (2017)
3. TEA WITH THE DAMES  (2018)  aka NOTHING LIKE A DAME
4. LAKE OF THE DEAD  (1958)
5. ALL ABOUT EVIL  (2010)
6. THE BOB'S BURGERS MOVIE  (2022)
7. BLOODY MUSCLE BODY BUILDER IN HELL  (1995)
8. THE GRIFTERS  (1990)
9. HICKEY & BOGGS  (1972)
10. VIRGIN WITCH  (1972)

Bell Peppers and Beef from Cowboy Bebop | Anime with Alvin

A STAR IS HATCHED [1938]

 #2 IN A SILLY SERIES IS THE 1938 WARNER BROS. MERRIE MELODIES CARTOON "A STAR IS HATCHED". 

This is another of the cartoon loaded with contemporary Hollywood celebrities I tackled in the first of this series:  HOLLYWOOD STEPS OUT directed by Tex Avery.  This time around we have Friz Freleng in the director's chair and we're three years earlier than the Avery cartoon.  This one's kinda cute but there was a lot of progress between this one and the Avery 1941 cartoon and it's nowhere near as good.  Emily the Hen lives in Hicksville U.S.A. and dreams of becoming a star in Hollywood.  Sara Berner voices Emily in a barely-passable Katharine Hepburn imitation; obviously linking it to Hepburn's Oscar-winnning performance in MORNING GLORY as the aspiring actress Eva Lovelace back in 1933.  Reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaly she is.  The Hepburn imitation drops as often as it's used and without the stereotypical "Reaaaaaaaaaaaally, I am" (in the same vein as the nonsense Cary Grant imitator's "Judy Judy Judy"), it sometimes isn't a Katharine Hepburn imitation at all.  Emily's room is plastered with 8X10's of Hollywood stars of the thirties and you don't REAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLY think I'm gonna name them all, do you???  Among them are Claudette Colbert, Janet Gaynor, Robert Montgomery, Bette Davis, Dick Powell (more on him later), the wavishing Kay Francis, Fred Astaire, Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, Charlie Chaplin, Dorothy Lamour and a gaggle of others.  Emily the Hen gets up from her bed of movie magazines and recites "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo"; a speech Katharine Hepburn notable did in MORNING GLORY as well.  A hick from Hicksville brings Emily some posies and Emily does her Greta Garbo impression:  "I vant to be alone!"; a cliched line Garbo imitators always do a la "Reaaaaallllllly I am" and "Judy Judy Judy".  Hollywood director J. Megga Phone drives by and tells Emily to look him up if she ever wants to get into pictures.  You may be tempted to think this is a cariacature of J. Arthur Rank (similar name, natch) but of course, it really isn't.  Rank wasn't known widely at the time in the U.S. (since he was a British   film mogul who became better known here in the 1940's with his film logo of the body builder hitting the gong.  So here, J. Megga Phone is probably just a generic representation of a 'typical' Hollywood director a la Cecil B. DeMille.  

Emily gets herself to Hollywood (cue travel montage).  We see Hollywood & Vine where stars including Edward G. Robinson, Greta Garbo, Joan Blondell (? - my best guess in the red dress), Adolph Menjou (my best guess of the guy in the white suit).  We cut to a head on shot of John Barrymore in red suit and yellow shirt.  No matter which direction he walks, his head shows his left profile.  Barrymore's nickname was "The Great Profile".  A paperboy is next seen.  This is Freddie Bartholomew, child star of such 1930s movies as CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS and DAVID COPPERFIELD.  Clark Gable (and his enormous ears flapping in the breeze) is a streetcar driver and W.C. Fields is a traffic cop.  Interestingly, during this scene the song "HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD" has been playing and when it gets to the line "Go on and try your luck, you might be Donald Duck" is changed to "Go on and try your luck you might be DAFFY DUCK".  This IS a Warner Bros. cartoon, obviously so they're not gonna advertise a Disney fowl!!!  We next go to Graumann's Chinese Theatre with the film PRINCE AND HIS PAPA on the marquee; I'm assuming this is a pun on THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER:  the Errol Flynn film of 1937.  We pan across the famous 'Walk of Fame' with the hands and feet of Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson and (here's the joke) Greta Garbo (all the names altered to protect the innocent, I guess.  The joke here is that Greta Garbo's footprints in the cement are humongous; the joke was that Garbo had big feet.  

A tour bus showing "Homes of the Stars' goes by and we see the home of the Thin Man (William Powell) represented by a skinny house, two houses side by side both with signs saying "SEMOAN" (this admittedly escapes me completely), and then the home of Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) which has a large tree emerging from the top of it with Tarzan sitting in an easy chair on a branch.  Fade to Super Colossal Studios and the office of J. Megga Phone which is filled with hens the director has promised to put into movies.  Emily tries to enter but is stopped by a sign saying "Do Not Enter When Red Light is On".  The red light turns out to be W.C. Fields' nose (he was a drinker, you know).  Fields exits with a little guy he calls "My little pine nut".  This is Charlie McCarthy, Edgar Bergen's ventriloquist dummy whom Fields' famously had an ongoing radio 'feud' with.  The dummy looks absolutely nothing like Charlie McCarthy (it has a moustache, fer God's sake!).  Emily looks in the door of a casting office and sees several men (meant to represent no one in particular) are seen 'casting' fishing rods.  These are the jokes, folks!  On the sound stage, we see a dressing room with a door shaped like an hourglass; Mae West sashays out of it.  The door is shaped to fit her hourglass figure. The next dressing room has a door that is wide at the bottom for Charlie Chaplin; the bottom accomodates his oversized tramp shoes.  We next go into the sound stage where J. Megga Phone is directing a film along with his 'yes men' assistant directors.  The film (as we see on the slate) is called BROADWAY BROADCAST and is directed by Buzzard Berklee starring Dick Fowl.  I guess this film has 2 directors.  Buzzard is Busby Berkeley who specialized in those lavish 1930s musical which featured millions of dancing ladies in geometric patterns; we see this represented in a second as a group of woman march in pinwheel formation.  The star represents Dick Powell who, at the time was known for singing in musicals lilke 42ND STREET; later in the 1940's he would change his image to a tough guy private in in pictures like the classic MURDER, MY SWEET where he played deteective Philip Marlowe and, on radio, played RICHARD DIAMOND, PRIVATE DETECTIVE.  The vocal singing is pretty accurate; Powell was an Irish tenor.  Back to Megga Phone's office which is filled with all those hens looking to become Hollywood starlets.  Emily the Hen is left behind in tears.  A jarring cut takes us to a domestic scene where Emily apparently has married the Hick with the posies and had a passel of baby chicks.  One of the chicks announces, while reading a movie magazine, that she knows that someday she too will be a great actress.  Emily backhands her with an epic bitch-slap.  Th'End.  This is a mildly amusing cartoon which would do this kind of thing much better in other Merrie Melodies & Looney Tunes i.e. in HOLLYWOOD STEPS OUT.  The jokes here are not too sharpened and some of the vocal imitations and caricatures are not spot on; the Joan Blondell and Adolph Menjou figures who could be (and possibly ARE) meant to be someone else but are to vaguely 'someone' to be affective.  And that oddly troubling caricature of Charlie McCarthy is just kinda disturbing.  So as a Warner Bros. Hollywood celebrity parody, A STAR IS HATCHED is not your best choice.

August 2022 Top Ten List

 HERE ARE MY FAVOURITE FILMS THAT I WATCHED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN AUGUST 2022.

1. THE BLACK PHONE  (2021)
2. FUTTOCKS END  (1970)
3. TOO LATE FOR TEARS  (1949)
4. THE GUNS OF NAVARONE  (1961)
5. FOR ALL MANKIND  (1989)
6. FEAR IS THE KEY  (1972)
7. SUBURBAN SASQUATCH  (2004)
8. MEN  (2022)
9. THE GREAT TEXAS DYNAMITE CHASE  (1976)
10. ISLAND OF DEATH  (1976)

MERRIE MELODIES - HOLLYWOOD STEPS OUT [1941]

 IN THE FIRST OF (POSSIBLY) A SERIES, THIS POST ENDEAVORS TO BE A GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING ALL THE REFERENCES IN THIS CARTOON FOR THOSE "KNOW-NOTHING TOTS" WHO MIGHT HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S GOING ON. 

But seriously, ladies and jellyspoons, if you're not familiar with 1930s and 1940's pop culture you'll have no idea who these cariacatured people are or any of the injokes surrounding them.  The concept of this Warner Bros. cartoon directed by Tex Avery is a to parody many Hollywood movie stars of 1941 (and before) during an evening out at a Hollywood nightclub.  The opening shot pans across Hollywood to the famous Hollywood nightclub Ciro's. 

This was a real nightclub on Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood that opened on New Year's Eve 1935 and closed in 1957.  It is the current location of The Comedy Store since 1972.  A right-pan inside the nightclub shows several stars seated at tables.  In the screenshot below, we see (from left to right):  Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, Adolph Menjou (obscured in this shot), Norma Shearer and finally Cary Grant.

Next, Cary Grant enthuses about what a wonderful place Ciro's is by quoting the names of several of the movie he starred in:  MY FAVORITE WIFE, THE AWFUL TRUTH and THE FRONT PAGE (which is actually an incorrect reference to the remake HIS GIRL FRIDAY).  The cigarette seller who approaches his table is Greta Garbo.

Next we have Ann Sheridan (nicknamed 'The Oomph Girl' because she had 'oomph) being greeted by Edward G. Robinson.

Next is a pan across several tables peopled by Warner Bros. execs Henry Binder and Leon Schlesinger (we know this because the soundtrack plays the MERRIE MELODIES theme song "Merrily We Roll Along"), 

a table with a reserved sign for Bette Davis (in order to set up the next joke), a table reserved for Kate Smith (with a massively-wide chair because Ms. Smith was . . . er . . . Rubenesque), and a table reserved for the members of the Bumstead family in the BLONDIE Series of films (starring Penny Singleton as Blondie and Arthur Lake as Dagwood).  Next Johnny Weissmuller (the most famous cinematic Tarzan) hands his coat to the coat check girl.

Next the coat check girl is handed a small fur wrap by a woman's arm.  The coat check girl says "Good evening, Miss Rand" indicating Sally Rand the famous stripper.  However, later on in the cartoon, she is introduced as Sally 'Strand' for unknown reasons before doing her bubble dance.  We next see 3 actors known for gangster movies (at the time, anyway):  left to right James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and George Raft.  Raft is seen flipping his trademark coin.

Harpo Marx then gives Greta Garbo a hot foot.

A lady in red (meant to represent no one in particular and accompanied by the song "The Lady In Red" on the soundtrack) passes by Clark Gable's table and then M.C. Bing Crosby appears on stage accosted by a jockey on a horse.  This is an inside/running joke at the time because Crosby owned racehorses which were famous for coming in last.

Bing introduces famed orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski.  Believe it or don't Stokowski was widely known at the time due to his long run presenting weekly symphony radio broadcasts

We next find Jimmy Stewart sitting at a table with Dorothy Lamour (shown in her trademark sarong).

As Lamour boogies off, the timidly-frightened James Stewart runs away leaving a sign saying "MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON"; the 1939 film in which he starred.  We see Clark Gable stalking the Lady in Red next.

We now see Tyrone Power dancing with the ice-skating movie star Sonja Henie,

The Frankenstein Monster, The Three Stooges, 

Oliver Hardy (of Laurel & Hardy) dancing with 2 blondes (who represent no one in particular but are just another fat joke), 

Cesar Romero dancing with Rita Hayworth; they look really elegant from the waist up by when we pan down we see their legs chaotically all over the place.  The joke here being both were really excellent dancers (Hayworth as a child actually danced with Fred Astaire who was a friend of her father's: famed dancer Eduardo Cansino).

Real life best buddies Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland are brought the bill by a waiter.  Mickey sees the total and panics; leaning over to Lewis Stone behind him.  

A cut and we see Stone and Rooney in the kitchen washing dishes because they can't pay the bill

Lewis Stone played Mickey Rooney's movie dad in the series of Andy Hardy films.  Clark Gable is still following the lady in read.  Bing Crosby introduces Sally 'Strand' and her famous bubble dance.  

Kay Kyster points and yells "Students!"; this is a reference to band leader Kay Kyser and his Kollege of Musical Knowledge radio show where a yelled "Students!" was his catchphrase.  We pan over to a group of Hollywood actors giving Sally the ole 'wolf whistle' (this is a Tex Avery cartoon, after all).  Pictured are William Powell, Spencer Tracy, Ronald Colman, Errol Flynn, Wallace Beery and C. Aubrey Smith.  

Sighing dreamily at his table is Peter Lorre.

At another table sits a mesmerized Henry Fonda.  Off camera a woman's voice yells "Henry!  Henry Fonda!" and Fonda replied with a cracked voice "Coming mother!".  This is a reference to the radio show THE ALDRICH FAMILY which began each week with Henry Aldrich's mother yelling "Henry!  Henry Aldrich" and the pubescently-cracking voice of Henry yelling back "Coming mother!"

Next we see J. Edgar Hoover, head of the F.B.I. so taken with Sally's bubble dance that he repeats "Gee!  Gee!  Gee".  He's the Chief 'G'-Man, get it?

We pan over to an assortment of actors known for their glowering stone-faces (on screen at least):  Boris Karloff, Arthur Treacher, Buster Keaton, Mischa Auer and (standing) Ned Sparks.

Comedian Jerry Colonna uses a pair of binoculars to get a better view.  Sitting next to him is the Invisible Man whom Colonna refers to as "Yahoodie!".  'Yahoodie' was a running joke Colonna used on the radio.

Harpo Marx emerges from underneath a table and bursts Sally Rand's bubble revealing her wearing a wooden barrel.  

Clark Gable finally catches up to the Lady in Red who is revealed as Groucho Marx in drag.  And you have now safely navigated through the looney world of HOLLYWOOD STEPS OUT.

As a huge fan of not only film but old time radio shows, this cartoon has always been a complete joy to watch for me!  I love when Warner Bros. did these kind of cartoons and, who knows, maybe I'll tackle another one in the near future.

 

   

July 2022 Top Ten List

 HERE ARE MY FAVOURITE MOVIES THAT I WATCHED FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME IN JULY 2022.

1. THE NEW CENTURIONS  (1972)
2. MARTIN  (1977)
3. NIGHT OF THE DEMON  (1980)
4. JIGSAW  (1962)
5. SHALLOW GRAVE  (1994)
6. THE EAGLE AND THE HAWK  (1933)
7. THE LAST MATINEE  (2020)
8. RIGHTING WRONGS  (1986)
9. MIAMI BLUES  (1990)
10. HUMAN LANTERNS  (1982)

THE WONDERFUL, HORRIBLE LIFE OF LENI RIEFENSTAHL {1993}

 I WATCHED THIS A COUPLE MONTHS AGO AND I'M STILL TRYING TO SORT OUT HOW I FEEL ABOUT IT. 

As a rule, I try to separate the presence of a single person in a film (or directing a film) from the film itself since scores of other people worked on it.  For instance, I love SEVEN, THE USUAL SUSPECTS, THE SHIPPING NEWS and BABY DRIVER but Kevin Spacey is in them.  I'm not going to stop watching those films because of one shitty person.  FAUST and THE BLUE ANGEL are still favourites even though they star Hitler booster Emil Jannings in them.  I grew up listening to Bill Cosby's comedy records so many times that I know all of them by heart.  And loved them.  But they're Bill Cosby.  This is a dilemma a lot of us have to sort out for ourselves.  As a way of introduction, this is the same dilemma which confronted me when I've watched films that were directed by Leni Riefenstahl  (TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, OLYMPIA PART ONE & TWO).  Undoubtedly technically innovative and pretty brilliant that would be wonderful to celebrate as the work of a female director in the 1930's -- except for that whole Nazi thing.  Oh well, at least we still have Dorothy Arzner.  Ray Muller's documentary tells the whole life story of Riefenstahl from her early days as a model then actor in the German "mountain" films on through her work as a film director and on to her odd (mostly unseen) work done in Africa and, late in life, underwater photography.  Interestingly, no one is interviewed in the documentary except for Riefenstahl herself.  However, this decision becomes self-evident when you think that anybody else Muller interviewed would pretty much have the same things to say about her.  Muller deftly juxtaposes Riefenstahl's rather rosy depiction of her life with cutaways which comment of the actual truth about her.  Of course, Riefenstahl is full of excuses why she was not actually a Nazi or even a Nazi sympathizer, had nothing to do with the rallies other than filming them, was always at odds with Goebbels because she had no Nazi sympathies whatsoever.  No, of course not. 

Leni Riefenstahl not being in any way chummy with Hitler

These ridiculous statements are juxtaposed with countless photographs, motion picture footage, letters and telegrams which show she was quite sympatico with Nazism and was a Hitler booster.  The chummy shots of Riefenstahl alongside Hitler do not show someone who is gritting her teeth and baring it; she's one of the family.  Riefenstahl puts on a meek and mild, butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, facade when on camera; it is when she thinks the camera is off (but Muller keeps it running) in which her rather sharp, nasty side can be seen quite clearly.  Muller's job here is not in any way to try to make anyone reevaluate the director or her life; it is to present this paradoxical question mark of a person's life in as clear a light as possible.  This the documentary does; if it takes a little too long to do it; at 180 minutes even I got fatigued with the subject.  That's way longer than it needs to be.  While Muller shows Riefenstahl to be the Nazi that she was in no uncertain terms, I still got a sort of queasy feeling several times while watching.  I think that perhaps it was because of Riefenstahl's angelic "Who?  Me?" bullshit demeanor that kinda made me sick.  I know she's scrambling to save face and outright lying much of the time, but just watching her continually speak and act like she's been misunderstood all these years really stuck in my craw.  Having said all that, Muller's doc is a definite must-see if you're at all interested in filmmaking and is beautifully done if a tad long.  

June 2022 Top Ten List

 My favourite movies that I watched for the very first time in June 2022.

1. THE GREAT WHITE SILENCE  (1924)
2. CATWOMAN:  HUNTED  (2022)
3. SCOOBY-DOO! AND BATMAN:  THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD  (2018)
4. ASSASSIN  (1973)
5. NO MAN OF HER OWN  (1950)
6. HIGH TIDE  (1947)
7. WE GO ON  (2016)
8. THE BRAVADOS  (1958)
9. THE WITCH IN THE WINDOW  (2018)
10. EDGE OF SANITY  (1989)

My rule is that short films are not eligible for this list but I have to give honourable mention to 2 excellent short films: the 1953 British "THE TELL-TALE HEART" starring Stanley Baker as it's just superb! And also POSSIBLY IN MICHIGAN which is the weirdest thang I've seen in quite a while. It would make a great {short} double feature with PICKLE SURPRISE!