The Evil of Hammer Films

I'm watching The Evil of Frankenstein from Halloween night's WPIX Chiller Theatre (hosted by Elvira) on my DVR, and a thought occurred to me.
The monster is wearing super-heavy shoes or boots with soles that look and sound like they are made of iron. Is it possible Dr. Frankenstein made him wear these boots for the same reason you put weights in a plush toy so it stands correctly?
My other idea is that film-makers were so savvy on the Frankenstein novel knowing the monster was actually "swift" and "agile," that they needed to put him in heavy boots to continue selling him as the lumbering idiot.




I miss when Chiller happened all the time. My six-fingered friend is such a cutey.

EVERY Zombie film!

My friends over at the Zombs sent me this link by Action Flick Chick to every zombie film ever made! I can't vouch for it not missing a single film, but this list is impressive. A great source to check which films you think are worth checking out.

Thanks go to Action Flick Chick. You are my heroine.

Every Zombie movie ever made.

Salem's Loot

So, there I was watching Salem's Lot from 1978 with my ghoulfriends, when I was struck by this scene in which the constable has decided to skip town. Constable Parkins Gillespie is in the station wagon with his family heading to North Carolina. He's running from the vampires, because they're turning everyone in Salem's Lot.

Ben Mears played by David Soul of Starsky and Hutch fame tries to stop the constable unsuccessfully, but Gillespie has enough sympathy for Ben Mears' mission that he gets out of the family car, reaches into the OPEN WINDOW of his patrol car, and pulls a pistol out of the passenger seat. He gives it to Ben to use since he's staying in Salem's Lot.


Get the picture? The constable had every intention of leaving town with his patrol car window open for rain to get in and ruin the interior. Oh, and the pistol being left on the seat would be a safety issue, but what about the car interior??? Those vampires pay your salary through taxes, mister!

Chiller Theater returns! again.

Elvira is hosting this year's Chiller Theater.

WPIX is teasing us again with a comeback of Chiller Theater. Why, oh, why won't it stay for good? I liked it better when they did it all the time instead of just on Halloween.

Elvira will be hosting this year, and the movie will be The Evil of Frankenstein from 1964.

Here's WPIX's official announcement with all the details.

And for those interested in Bogey news outside of the entertainment realm, my good friend LilyBat is also a fan of Chiller Theater.

Format Change

Hi, Sweeties! I'm just posting to let you know I'm going to be changing my blog's format. As a monster, I am super-busy doing scary stuff, so it becomes difficult to take the time to give a quality review for all the monster movies and scary movies I watch.
So, I've decided to not necessarily always dedicate an entire post to only monster movie reviews. From now on, I want the freedom to share my love of the spooktastic and cheesy with you through simple comments, and maybe some pics. I'll still do some full-on reviews, but I want to go back to basics:
Eat some Goobers, watch some scary movies!

And, by the way, Happy Halloween!

War of the musicals

Movie • Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS • 1978
I try to remember to listen to Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War Of The Worlds at least once a year since I found the double CD at a stoop sale in the late 90s. It is SO cheesy delicious, and fun, I can't help myself. I have to sing, hum, and whistle along.

Here's the official The War of the Worlds Musical site.

It was a complete happy accident to find this CD, and now that I'm aware I'm going to keep my eyes out for the 30th Anniversary. This is a better cult classic than the Rocky Horror Picture Show in my opinion, but who am I except a cute little corpse who know no better.

We begin with a short narration to get you in the mood of what's about to happen. We've all heard the 1938 radio program, right? If not you must have seen one of the movies, so there's little risk of spoilage to tell you about the invaders from Mars. "♪ ♫ The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one ♪ ♫," he said.

My best description of this CD would be Emerson, Lake and Palmer meets Doctor Who.

The story doesn't change much, but there's a nice little surprise at the end. You'll be doing yourself a favor to pick this up, and listen.

Rabbit's Moon

I was just alerted to this film, and I LOVE it to pieces! It's called Rabbit's Moon. The song that goes along with the short silent film is a mystery to me, but I kind of like that too if anyone knows who it is.

Please to enjoy Rabbit's Moon:

Rabbit's Moon

Here's The Wikipedia link explaining the film.

The Haunting in the least scary sounding state possible

Movie • THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT • 2009
I was invited to a good friend's house for a "Fright Night" evening of scary movies the other night. We voted on which movie to watch, and luckily it was the one movie in her entire collection I hadn't already seen.
The new fashion in ghost story movies is to find some "true story," and twist the truth just enough (like a braided string of licorice) to turn the unappetizing facts into a bag of Twizzlers. The Haunting in Connecticut really wasn't all that bad :)
I haven't loved contemporary scary movies the way I love classic scary movies, but for this kind of movie The Haunting In Connecticut was better than most. There was a nice build up of creepiness that I enjoyed like a bag of caramel cowtails.
A family must relocate to be closer to a specific treatment center for the son. He's got the ills, and his chemotherapy and experimental treatment wreak havoc on his mother's driving skills. She makes the "executive decision" to rent the creepiest looking over-sized house possible. It turns out to be an old funeral home where seances were held. There's more about the mortician, and his mummifying, and thieving of the bodies (this is where all the great images come from).
The son, Matt is slowly learning more about what happened through visitations from Jonah, the spirit medium who reluctantly helped steal the bodies. Not sure why he had to stick around to watch the mortician carve his diary into the bodies, but he did.
With everything they witness, I'm not sure why the family continues to stay. They are just as slow to react as the families in Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror, and Burnt Offerings.

It's quite enjoyable for a few good jumps and goosebumps.

Un everything

Movie • THE UNBORN • 2009
Another "un" movie, I know. I just had to watch it because it was sunny one day last week, and I wanted to take advantage of the time inside.

The creepiest scene in "The Unborn."

Before I get all negative on this upside-down buttered toast on a shag carpet of a movie, please take a look at the above pic. It's the only moment of chills I felt in the entire hour and a half. It's a dream sequence where the main character Casey Bell (played by Odette Yustman) is trapped on the ceiling of her bedroom while looking down at herself in bed with her unborn twin. That was the creepy. Then they ruin the scene with him reaching into her belly.

Okay, so let's get started on the knocking of the eye-candy-ization of horror. It's been done forever, but it just seems to be getting more blatant, and I'm starting to get bored of it. Boys can get their eye-candy fix on any cable channel or reality show. Let's keep the scantily clad pretty teenagers to a minimum… or at least limited to sorority murder flicks. Sure, I hear everyone thinking, "But, the Psycho shower scene!" Stop right there. That was not about showing us the texture of what is beneath a thin layer of cotton. That was to put the character in a vulnerable situation we can all relate to to put the fear in the viewer.

Nothing really said, yet, The Unborn was not a terrible movie. I stayed to the end. It had its interesting features. Instead of the typical Catholic possession and exorcism we were treated to a Jewish possession and a multiple-faith exorcism. There are a few confusing twists that involve non-familial pregnancies and a demon from a time before religion… named Jumby :P
To be fair, Jumby was the nickname given the boy twin before he was born and died in the womb.

Apologies for reviewing a movie like this after such a long hiatus. Apologies for calling it a review.

Totally invited… come on in!

Movie • THE UNINVITED • 2007
Twilight really put me off for a bit. I was so ghastly disappointed in it (book, movie, phenomenon, etc.) that I've all but stayed in my corner cowering from what might come after that. LOL, just kidding! I was baking cookies - lots of cookies :)
Recently, I had to fly on a real live airplane (not a pterodactyl), and I decided to catch an in-flight picture. There weren't many choices, so I decided upon a movie that was only recently released - one I'd originally intended to skip. Contemporary fright films are beginning to annoy me, and I'd rather be eating cob-webs on my crumpets that sit through another.

But Wait!

I sat through Hollywood's The Uninvited" for almost an hour before I realized I was hooked, but hooked the way you might be hooked watching 90210 or The OC. I wasn't there for the spook, nor the fright, nor the shivers. I liked the main character, and I wanted to know how she was going to resolve her issues.

By the end, I was attacked by the creepers. My spine tingled, my eyes welled up, my jaw dropped on the floor… literally. The flight attendant ask me to store it in the over-head compartment after that.

The story was very basic, but as the best stories go: keep it simple, stupid. Sure there were a few cheap scares, but I blame modern audiences, and their demand for crooked, disfigured spirits in anything that's supposed to resemble a ghost story.

I recommend watching The Uninvited thrice!

highlight the text below for bonus spoilerish information:
I klonked my noggin over and over when I realized that The Uninvited is a retelling or remake of the Korean film, A Tale of Two Sisters. There's even a Japanese version of The Uninvited! Now that I think about it, it reminds me of Alice Sweet Alice too!

I'm a buff, not an expert! Here's my review of the Korean version :)