Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978)

This is both a review and an analysis; as such, it contains spoilers.

Anyone hearing the rather lurid title "Mountain of the Cannibal God" and anyone familiar with cannibal movies might be expecting an unrestrained trashfest. While Cannibal God has some scenes thrown in for the exploitation market, the direction and writing of the film is outstandingly sharp. It is not just a good cannibal film, it rises above its subgenre to investigate the spiritual and bestial aspects of humanity the exist side-by-side, the lust for progress and wealth in contrast to the desire for peace and purity.

The film concerns a woman, Susan Stevenson, and her brother Arthur, trying to mount an expedition to a forbidden New Guinean island in search of her missing husband. The only man who can take her is Prof. Edward Foster. It doesn't take long for them to convince him to come, along with his aboriginal team. It gradually transpires that all of these people have hidden motives for wanting to go to this mountain.

(Spoilers start now)

The motives each of the characters have for going to the mountain are thematically very important. While Athur believes Foster's interested in the money, Foster is actually seeking release. By saving the life of a cannibal, he had been taken into their tribe as one of them. Having eaten human flesh, he's haunted and feels trapped, cursed. He believes by going up the mountain and killing the cannibals, he will have spiritual release; he'll be purged. This aspiration makes Foster a very spiritual character, as do his strong morals. He shows respect for others and their rituals. In the mission village, he alone doesn't have sex out of the group. He represents the higher aspirations of humanity.

Arthur and Susan, on the other hand, are interested in earning wealth from the uranium on the mountain. Susan misrepresents her interests as interests of spousal love and her husbands interests as scientific. In reality, her husband left her behind so as not to have to share the wealth with her and she's well aware of this. Susan and Arthur are representatives of 'progress,' which is spoke of often in the film as the opposite to the spiritual and more human concerns of others. Their interests are material and self-interested.

One of the major motifs of the film is ritual and the film is structured such that a ritual occurs at each major position of the expedition. The first ritual occurs early in the expedition, right after a spider is killed, in order to purge the group of incurred bad luck. The ritual involves the skinning, gutting, and eating raw of a lizard. Immediately the ritual motif links together two notions: barbarism and spiritual aspirations. This ritual is meant to appease the gods for an offensive act and is therefore a spiritual practice. But its performance is brutal and barbaric; much more brutal than the killing of the spider. Arthur expresses his contempt by attacking the aboriginals. Foster, on the other hand, defends them and their rituals. These reactions to ritual contrast, again, the spiritual and material interests of these characters. The man of progress simply tries to crush both the barbarism and the spirituality of the aboriginals without understanding: throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as the proverb goes.

The second ritual occurs in the mission village, when the villagers are mourning the deaths of two of their own. The mission is right at the center of the film, chronologically and thematically. It is the only place in the film that is entirely peaceful and entirely spiritual. The new addition to the expedition from the mission, the physician Manolo, explains that after thirty years in the jungle the missionary has relaxed all of his rigid Christian views; his spirituality is entirely non-denominational. The entrance of Arthur, Susan, and Foster bring with them death and violence, like the Serpent in the Garden. Once they arrive, the cannibals are seen around the village; prior to this, everyone in the village didn't even believe the cannibals existed. A woman cheats on her husband with Arthur; Manolo sleeps with Susan; a cannibal kills the adulteress as her husband hangs himself. Materialistic progress is not compatible with the spiritual village; nor is the cursed, tormented soul of Foster, for having partaken of human flesh. The ritual occurs off-screen, with none of the expedition's members involved; they are not welcome even to see it. The priest and villagers then cast Foster, Arthur, Susan, and Manolo, out of the village for causing the deaths.

In between the second and third rituals, Arthur allows Foster to die by not saving him when he can. Foster never does get to attain his spiritual release. The materialistic Arthur stamps his aspirations out. Manolo, the other spiritual character, continues as the guide for Arthur and Susan. It's interesting that the spiritual characters play the role of guides, as though this were an allegory along the lines of Pilgrim's Progress. What it means that shortly after Arthur is consumed by cannibals and his own sister, moreover, will take some explaining, as the cannibals are certainly not representative of any positive spirituality as the mission is.

The third ritual is performed on the mountain of the cannibals, the mountain which means so many different things to so many different people. The ritual is in honour of their deity who is, it happens, Susan's husband with a geiger counter implanted where his heart was. It's explained that the primitive cannibals confused his geiger counter for an immortal heart. (I guess they never tried breaking it.) A photograph of the husband's depicts him with his wife. Not understanding photographs, the cannibals are convinced this is proof that she is a goddess. So they tie her up, smear her in blood and putrid flesh from her husband's head, and hold a feast on Arthur's body in honour of the god and goddess. There's a lot in here.

First of all, the geiger counter is a symbol that has appeared before. Foster had one in his pack, which Arthur stole. It is the tool to find the uranium, the wealth for which Susan and Arthur have really come to the mountain. The geiger counter for a heart thus depicts a being whose whole 'moral compass' is turned towards personal profit. The cannibals who worship this as a god, then, sure seem representative of a consumerist society, a society in love with wealth. That they consume other people is grim and actually pretty heavyhanded symbolism, which some have also claimed to find in Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust. What Cannibal Holocaust lacks that Cannibal God has is the spirituality. The cannibals are a group of humans whose natural spiritual inclinations have been perverted to profit. All the aboriginals seem like humans in their most basic form; and those with the mission are a humanity whose spiritual side is well-directed. There is nothing religious about this spirituality, nor need it be anything supernatural; just the spirituality of the intellectual and emotional aspects of humanity. The cannibals have a poorly-directed spirituality as their geiger-counter god shows.

The film ends with Manolo successfully saving Susan from the cannibals as they head down a stream. Her final act is to drop a necklace she received from the cannibals into the river. While it's not clear, it seems to me to indicate that the experience has changed her outlook; that Manolo, her spiritual guide, has saved her. Although she had previously corrupted him. What motivates Manolo to forgive and save a woman whom he knows to have allowed Foster to die, to have deceived him and seduced him, to have eaten the flesh of her own brother, is puzzling to me; he could have escaped without her. He also refuses to kill a venomous snake that was near to killing Arthur. Yet he has no reservations about killing the cannibals.

(Spoilers end now)

So Mountain of the Cannibal God, in sum, is a character-based jungle horror film about humanity: primitive or advanced, materialistic or spiritual, consumerist or, I guess, socialist. It doesn't address these themes in an expert way, but I do think it does address them. I find it fascinating and it stirs me, because these themes have always been fascinating to me. It makes the imagery of human brutality to animals, animals brutalizing other animals, less trashy and more a comment on human animality as opposed to humanity's higher possibilities. Mountain of the Cannibal God is not a great film, but it's a pretty good film.

Dracula's Daughter (1936)

For this review, I'm simply going to describe the characters.

- The countess is a complicated character. She initially seems sympathetic, with a strong desire to be a normal woman again. As she goes about trying to become human, she is selfish and petulant, putting the lives of others at risk and become annoyed when her will is not obeyed. She is a manipulator. Yet, she genuinely does want to stop killing others and to be normal; her urgency is in earnest.

- Sandor is a foil to the Countess. While she wants to be a human, he wants to be immortal. It's kind of amusing how he foreshadows the goth subculture of hte '80s, with his greased-black hair, dark lipstick, thick eyeliner, all black clothing, and general talk about 'death' and 'darkness'. The actor is actually a rather handsome fellow, but he's damn creepy as Sandor, particularly when he's introduced at the burning of Dracula's body on this lovely, foggy, chiarascuro studio set. His hopes and dreams are dependent on the Countess not achieving hers, which is a source of much dramatic tension. If she becomes human, he can never be immortal. But since she despises being a vampire, she certainly has no interest in bestowing it on others. He never acts against the countess until the end, but is always pleased when she fails at her goals to be human and tries to discourage her.

- Dracula is an invisible character in the film. The Countess blames all of her troubles on Dracula. She describes it as a voice with such power that it overcomes the grave to call out to her, commanding her to do what she does. Kind of the way Imhotep controls Zita Johanne in The Mummy. The gives way to some discussion about the power of the will. She thought burning Dracula's corpse would free her, but Dracula's spirit lingers, so she seeks to aid of science, hoping it's some sort of hypnotic spell that can be cured.

- Dr. Garth is the doctor to whom the Countess turns for help, and also a friend of Dr. Van Helsing's. Initially her interest in him is as a man of science who can be of service, but soon she's overcome with lust and wants to make him immortal. Her desires are what drive her back to the dark side; she ceases to care about being human. The dark side of love, I suppose? Or childish desire? It seems more juvenile than romantic. At any rate, Dr. Garth is an unusual character for the lead. He is plainly a grumpy man, if very professional. I mean, he makes Harrison Ford's characters seem downright cheerful. He likes things to go very smoothly and is annoyed at the slightest wrinkle in his plans. Like most men of this sort, he is stubborn, won't back down, and a bit volcanic with his temper. Anyway, he has two women in his life now: the Countess and his immature secretary, Esme, who is the daughter of a Baron. While he's lured to the countess for her exoticism, need for him (he likes to feel strong and needed--which is why he resents Esme so much), and apparent maturity, his sparring with Esme is clearly loaded with sexual tension and he cares about her. He's also very dependent on her for just about everything, much to his chagrin. He's a bit of a wanker if you ask me.

- Esme is the well-educated daughter of a Baron who, while unable to get a professional job of her own at the time, is employed as secretary to the doctor. Most of her time is spent locking antlers with him, as she tries to show she's independent and strong and to get his attention. Sadly, he doesn't respect her very much and seems to wish she'd be more dependent on him. The irony is that he can't tie his own tie without her. She's clearly jealous of the Countess' presence in the doctor's life and tries her bestest to get rid of her, until the Countess kidnaps her, forcing the doctor to choose. Funny thing is, the doctor doesn't get to choose. Sandor does that for him. She's pretty much the polar opposite of Sandor, urging the doctor, in her misguided way, towards good.

- Van Helsing, played by the great Edward Van Sloan again, is being tried for the murder of Dracula and Renfield, so he's of very little help in the film. It is more or less structured so that the events involving the Countess serve to exonerate Van Helsing of the murder charge. He's not directly involved in the proceedings.

So there you have it. Dracula's Daughter is very much a character-based story. If you get the psychology of, parallels and relationships between these characters, you see you have a pretty strong and fascinating film on your hands.

Theater of Blood (1973)

It's not easy to be criticized or to accept a bad review. I know. I'm both a creative and a sensitive person. When one of my creations is panned, I'm hurt. If I know I've done a bad job, then maybe I'm amused or unphased. But when I've worked hard and poured my lifeblood into it, then it's personal. On the other hand, criticism is important. We do what we do for other people. If we don't do as good a job as we could have done, then justly are we condemned. If someone is a genius at the craft, then justly is s/he praised. The trouble is that critics are wo/men of letters and this makes them very fond of their own words. A clever turn of phrase, a witty remark, is too great a temptation for most of them to resist. So they become cruel, do a 'hatchet job.' Some critics, like the reprehensible Dale Peck, have made a career out of particularly vicious hatchet jobs. They do not concern themselves with the reality: that real people are being hurt by their words; they're too proud of their phrasing, the adulation they get from those who agree. Frank Langella, after producing, directing, and starring in a performance of Cyrano de Bergerac (based on Les Miserables, of course), says in interview, "It's been really trashed by the critics. Major trashed by the critics. And I read reviews in the vain hope I'll learn something... The need to be quick, fast, cynical, and crude; vulgar and unkind is strong everywhere. It has become the fashion, for some reason, to take a big hammer and hammer hard... But if you have a big hammer, you should be rather gentle with how you use it and you should be rather compassionate and understanding... Say you don't like it; but say you don't like it with some instruction... don't just say 'This is absolutely awful; get it off my stage.'... That sort of criticism says more about the critic than the thing he's critcizing."

Such are the concerns of Theater of Blood, in which an aging matinee idol, whose acting was considered stale and melodramatic by theater critics, begins murdering his worst critics one-by-one in poetic ways. That the murderous actor is played by Vincent Price in one of his finest performances adds another layer to things. Price, ever typecast as a horror actor and deemed a ham by many, received this review for his performance in The Pit and the Pendulum, "The uncredited [sic] scenario violates Poe’s gothic style with passages of flat, modernized dialogue…But the peccadilloes of the script pale beside the acting…Price mugs, rolls his eyes continuously and delivers his lines in such an unctuous tone that he comes near to burlesquing the role. His mad scenes are just ludicrous. The audience almost died laughing." I needn't explain to the readers here the problems with that review. What's important is what Price had to say, "I find I must break a 25 year determination never to answer a critic. Since your review of The Pit and the Pendulum was obviously not meant to be instructive, and therefore constructive, but only to hurt and humiliate, I’m sure you would enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that it did. My only consolation…is that it is the second greatest box office attraction in the country." I suspect Price received many hurtful and humiliating reviews over his career. While watching the film and seeing Price meting out 'justice' (arguably) to the critics, those words of Price's kept surfacing in my mind and I couldn't bring myself not to sympathize with his Edward Lionheart's vengeance. Of this film, the villain is also the hero.

The critics indeed come off as villains--as Langella's quote says, their nasty reviews says more about them than Lionheart's performances; these are cruel people. One scene, where an award-deprived and humiliated Lionheart vents to the critics, gathered for a post-awards dinner, they do nothing but laugh at him. His daughter, Edwina (Diana Rigg, also of Avengers fame), tells him to stop because he is only giving them more opportunity to humiliate him. That is the butt of it. You can see the critics taking delight in their witty chiding of Lionheart right up until he attempts suicide. In other scenes, Lionheart reads out particularly cruel lines the critics wrote or the critics themselves smugly recall a well-turned barb. While these people don't deserve to die, they've made what I consider a major critical error: they've put a love of their own prose above the feelings of the people involved. They're writing to hurt and humiliate rather than to be instructive, as Price puts it. Anyone who reads critics regularly knows they do indeed delight in their own writing.

Or so it would seem. To slightly complicate matters thematically, the one critic we get to know best, Devlin (Ian Hendry, of Avengers fame), isn't really inclined to humiliation. He genuinely believes Lionheart to be an inferior actor and, even when threatened with death, will not back down. This is the one time Lionheart seems petty and a little less sympathetic. He delivers a particularly moving speech to Devlin, "How many actors have you destroyed as you destroyed me? How many talented lives have you cut down with your glib attacks? What do you know of the blood, sweat and toil of a theatrical production? Of the dedication of the men and the women in the noblest profession of them all? How could you know you talentless fools who spew vitriol on the creative efforts of others because because you lack the ability to create yourselves!" This is a common belief: that critics destroy others because they are envious. Sometimes that may be the case, but I think usually it's pride, power, and callousness that motivates them. But because both Devlin and Lionheart are sympathetic characters to some degree, Lionheart's speech forces the audience to make a choice. What Lionheart says is true to a degree: critics can indeed destroy; their 'glib attacks', cynical and heartless, can really ruin talented lives. On the other hand, people can work really hard and still produce crap; is a critic not to say, if he really thinks the work is bad, that it is bad, just because the actor may have worked hard? One can't be too sentimental in a trade like criticism. One must be honest.

As to the story itself, it is successful on all fronts. It is genuinely frightening and gruesome. The first murder was truly nightmarish for me and I was quite taken aback and disturbed. At the same time, while disturbing, the macabre sense of humour pulls through. This film isn't quite a comedy, but there's a sense of wry humour there that really works. Lionheart rolling his eyes in exasperation when his assistant is slow getting a pot to collect the torrents of blood gushing from a victim's recently-slit throat is grimly hilarious.

The film's structure is also praiseworthy. Each murder is based off a murder from a Shakespeare play (of which we get several silent film clips in the opening credits). Each victim is particularly suited to the death in the play. Each victim, moreover, has a particular vice. Robert Morley, as an impossibly camp character with poodles and pink tuxedos, is clearly a glutton; another man is obviously the embodiment of lust. Each murder setpiece is a brilliantly staged vignette with Price doing some Shakespeare, killing, then adding some more Shakespeare as a witty farewell. While you don't need to know a lick of Shakespeare to enjoy the film, it will only enhance your enjoyment if you know the speeches he's reciting and the scenes he's perversely staging.

My favourite Price performance had been The Tomb of Ligeia. It is now Theater of Blood. Price's performance, on which the whole film pretty much hinges, is brilliant. Subtle and over-the-top all at once, he is both frightening, sympathetic, and amusing. The finale, which involves a re-enactment of King Lear, is perverse and perfect.

This proto-slasher nightmare, a film you should think about before you call a film a 'steaming pile' ever again or call someone the 'worst actor ever', is also perverse and perfect.

Terror Train (1980)

I love trains and I love movies set aboard trains. A train is a straight line. You can only go in two directions. Escaping a villain aboard a train will require violence and/or cleverness. There's no escaping from the train save death. Yet it's spacious, stable, and elegant. A train movie should move like a train, along tracks to an inexorable destiny; choices are clear and have direct consequences. Slasher movies, with their predictable final-girl approach, are almost perfectly suited to trains; why there's only one train-slasher hybrid, I don't know. But Terror Train is it and I think it's awesome.

A New Years Party for pre-med students set aboard a train is disrupted by a series of murders linked to a cruel prank three years earlier. Jamie Lee Curtis is the strong girl with a conscience who sees her friends dying around her. Meanwhile (Oscar winner) Ben Johnson, as the conductor, tries to protect his passengers and maintain equilibrium.

I'm not sure why screenwriter T.Y. Drake didn't write more, because Terror Train is very solid at the screenplay level. Each character seems to have a reality and psychology of their own, even if caught only in glimpses. The characters we get to know well are well-rounded, seem to have motives and interests that we never know about but are certainly not just there to service the plot. Why does the character of Doc keep playing cruel pranks on Mo? We never know; it's just the way he is. He clearly really cares about him and is even more devestated than Mo's girlfriend when he dies. Maybe he's in love with him? Maybe envies him? And Carne, the conductor. How little we know about him, yet we feel this simple fellow with his laidback attitude has accumulated a lot of wisdom traversing the dark tracks of the years and his colloquial utterances disguise a sharp mind. I love a moment where he comments on how beautiful it is to see the light of a town. There's something very natural about it.

I've always found slashers pretty effective at delivering scares and Terror Train is no exception. Some moments had me tensed up. My favourite involves a close-up of Ben Johnson's face peering into a cabinet. We know something's in there and by only showing his face, rather than the inside of the cabinet he's looking into, we feel his vulnerability. A fair amount of blood and severed body parts are tossed about, incidentally.

David Copperfield is in this movie as a magician. Not exactly a stretch, there. He does a pretty good job and has a creepy enough stare to make you suspicious of him. There's a pay-off to having him in a slasher movie, too. Whether he is indeed the villain or not, he's not the final girl. Hint hint.

So that's terror train. An above-average slasher that both tastes good and is good for you. Also, the stretch of track traveled in Terror Train? I travel it every Christmas (yep, about the same time the film is set) to visit my family in Quebec. I recognized some spots. How cool is that?

7.5/10

The Haunted Palace (1963)

The Haunted Palace is a telling of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Having seen The Resurrected, which modernizes the story and gives it a hardboiled detective angle, I knew roughly what to expect. In Palace, Charles and Wife move into an inherited castle and Charles is possessed by his warlock ancestor Joseph Curwen, who has also cursed the town (Arkham!) that burned him alive. The absence of the detective angle found in The Resurrected in fact weakens the story considerably. Seeing the events through the point of view of Charles and his wife makes it clear what's happening all along; there's not much mystery. The battle is more an internal one. The 'palace' that's haunted is actually Ward's mind. The villagers end up being sort of enemies, which makes us care a lot less when Curwen's plan is only to kill the villagers.

Some fun is to be had from the mutants in town, explained by Curwen's curse and/or rape-experiments on local women. There is also a pit monster that is glimpsed as a hazy, blurred way, as if it doesn't quite belong in this world--I liked that idea. Price's performance is pretty much a combination of his performance in The Pit and the Pendulum (ingratiatingly gentle) and House of Wax (menacing and revenge-driven); it is quite good, but could have used a bit more naturalism perhaps. The gothic sets are of the beauty and quality you expect from Corman; the dark village and the palace itself are lovely. The pacing is at times too fast and at others too tentative. Corman is better with Poe, I'm afraid.

Overall, I found myself entertained, but a little let-down. This is Lovecraft, directed by Corman, starring Vincent Price and Debra Paget (one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen): it should have been better. There's just not enough to care about in the proceedings. Price's well-being gives a bit of dramatic tension, but just seems like it should have been handled better.

And here's a treat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkVzQ1dJ7I8 - Some Debra Paget seductive dancing action.

6.5/10

Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968)

Amongst the giants of horror acting--Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, etc.--Boris Karloff, who used to be the least to my mind, has fast become my favourite. His quiet dignity, whether he is a villain or a hero, lends itself perfectly to any situation: it can be deeply menacing or soothing kindness. He never steals a scene, but elevates it; he never hams, nor does he telephone in his performance. When Karloff's name is in the credits, you can be sure of some satisfaction. Curse of the Crimson Altar not only gives Karloff top-billing, but also directly references him in-film,

---

Eve Morley: It's like a house from one of those old horror films.
Robert Manning: It's like Boris Karloff is going to pop up at any moment.

---

And so he does.

The film has this before-its-time self-consciousness about it that surprised me somewhat. Barbara Steele and Christopher Lee are also cast with the same self-consciousness about horror. And in one scene the protagonist, Manning, finds a cobweb-making machine as used by special effects teams, in this case used to make a hidden room appear old and creepy by the villain(s).

Manning is an antique dealer who has come to a small town, where a witch named Lavinia is burned instead of Guy Fawkes, in search of his missing brother. He stays with Christopher Lee and his beautiful, blonde niece during his investigation, begins having nightmares of a green Barbara Steele who tries to make him sign a book, annoys Boris Karloff, is seriously creeped out by Michael Gough, and nearly gets shot by Elton John (okay, a guy who looks vaguely like him). He begins to suspect some doings-a-transpirin'.

You never really discover if the supernatural aspects of the film are real or imagined, which should please more than a few viewers. There are hints dropped both ways. Perhaps Lavinia's power does haunt this town or perhaps the villain has just been drugging the relevant people. I happen to think the latter, but one could argue that there really is something supernatural at work. It is, after all, based off Lovecraft's "The Dreams in the Witch House."

What I like most about Curse of the Crimson Altar is the array of characters. They are all distinct, all with carefully-crafted personalities, and they are all fascinating people, including Manning. In one scene Manning interrupts Karloff when he is about to show off some of his collection of antique torture instruments; I wish he hadn't and that the film had allowed the characters room to just sit and chat, shoot the breeze.

At any rate, the film is a bit slow, ponderous, or 'stately' if you will, which translates as 'boring' to some. This is certainly not a film to watch if you're looking for action or anything over-the-top. "Subdued" is the word, here. Maybe it's the influence of Karloff. The only person who could ever shake up a Karloff film was Ernest Thesiger--which is perhaps why James Whale kept casting him with Karloff.

7.5/10

The Unnamable I & II

The Unnamable (1988)
In an interview with Jonathan Ross, Sam Raimi explained that although there are two schools of horror that he respects--the show and the don't-show--he likes to mix them up. Why? Because people have pretty good imaginations, but then again, he can think up some pretty awful stuff too. What I like about Lovecraftian movies is that the writers and/or directors do have to think of some pretty awful creatures. I like seeing monsters; they're fun. The Unnamable thrives on withholding its nasty creature from you until the end (unless you were unfortunate enough to look at the stupid fucking box cover before watching!); the biggest shock is seeing the monster's tits.

The plot has a very constrained quality that struck me as uncomfortable at first. Nearly everything takes place in one abandoned house in the town of Arkham, where Miskatonic University students go and get murdered by a three-hundred year old creature summoned into being by a puttering sorceror. That is basically the whole plot. One of the students just happens to be a folklore scholar who knows what to do. A lot of mysteries occured to me at first: why is the creature staying in this house all this time? why hasn't a real estate agent gotten to this house? why hasn't anyone looted the place? how are doors closing and locking on their own? I was well-surprised when everything is efficiently explained without feeling forced. Basically, it's magic. As for the feeling of being constrained, that remains, but they manage to have enough interesting things happening on the small set that it is a negligible problem.

The biggest strength of The Unnamable, however, is the characters, and the screenwriter/director seems to get that. His protagonists have instantly recognizably distinct personalities that remains consistent to the end--at the expense of some psychological realism, I suppose. The pairing of Carter and Howard is actually strong enough that I think they could have easily held up a series of unrelated films where they go around Arkham dealing with its monster problems, kind of like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby crossed with Ghostbusters. The actors (Charles Klausmeyer and Mark Kinsey Stephenson) are just so perfect in these roles. I guess their agents weren't as smart as me, though--but, hey, who is?--because all they did after The Unnamable was The Unnamable II. So let's waste no time getting to that.

The Unnamable II (1993)
The sequel picks up right where the first left off, with the police arriving. Right away I know that feeling of constraint is thankfully going to be absent in the sequel, but it's replaced by a fear: this film isn't going to be as hermetic; it'll just be arbitrarily constrained to a few characters when it should be affecting many people. Just as the first film surprised me, so does this one. It manages to give a very plausible explanation for keeping relatively localized action that manages to be much more expansive than a single old house.

Another enjoyable feature is that the writer allows himself to indulge in Lovecraft mythos. The seeds had all been planted in the first film, the second just explores them in much more depth and observes how they grow. It even tries to offer some scientific grounds for the mythos, with quantum physics and molecular biology being thrown in. So, on a side note, if you've ever wanted to know what a demon from another dimension's blood cells look like, I can tell you they're black and gray.

This doesn't hold the film back from action. It is largely an extended chase sequence. The monster, it is found, has been overlapping a human body. Once separated, we're left with a young woman and a monster who desperately wants to get that body back. A chase ensues and many kill scenes. Strangely, it's not a very suspenseful movie; I think the first was more of a scare-based film. This is more of a monster movie. Yes, there's some gore and some suspense, but it wasn't as scary as the first.

There are some flaws. While the strength of the first film was the pairing of Carter and Howard, this film, subtitled "The Statement of Randolph Carter" suffers from separating Carter and Howard. Carter and the young woman run and try to find a needed spell, whereas Howard is left with precious little to do. The screenwriter had no idea what to do with him and it shows. Another problem is, as in the first, a lack of psychological realism, only much worse this time. Not only largely unphased by the ordeal of the first film, they return to the house and start messing around with the captured monster after diving gungho into the tunnels under the graveyard. Why? It's servicable to the plot and there's no time for psychologically plausible delays.

On the plus side, the young woman is, as you might have guessed, a hottie and she's naked the entire movie. And yet there's not one nude scene. You never see her breasts or her vulva, just her butt; she has very long hair. I liked this. It makes her more innocent and made me feel the film was respecting her. She goes a long way to making the film. She really feels like an innocent wood nymph, new in the world of Man. She looks like an innocent wood nymph, with magically plucked eyebrows and magically shaved legs. She is magically beautiful. She's overwhelmingly attractive, so very beautiful and shapely. A scene where she discovers how nice a bed sheet feels on her skin should have just about every warm-blooded male wide-eyed. It is one of the cutest and sexiest things I've ever seen. She's played by Maria Ford, incidentally.

We also get both John Rhys Davies and David Warner in this film. I have a feeling Warner had other scenes that were cut, because we only see him once. But there you go.

So, in summary, both very fun creature features with some cool characters--both the leads and supporting cast. I don't see any reason not to like these films. They're made with pure joy, they're made well, and they're deep enough in the Lovecraft mythos.

Spider Labyrinth (1988)

Something about how this film started had me thinking, "Aw god, why the hell am I bothering to watch this? I could be watching a quality film. This film is probably obscure for a reason." The main thing that held my faith that it might be good was a name I spotted in the credits: Stephane Audran. WTF? THE Stephane Audran, one of the greatest actresses in the history of cinema, the star of every one of Chabrol's masterpieces and indeed Chabrol's wife? Yes, that Stephane Audran. I'm so glad I kept watching. Thanks, Stephane Audran!

I'm not the gushing type, and certainly I've seen much better films, yet I want to gush. You know how you have indulgent films from time to time that purport to be grand homages to certain eras of horror--like, say, Van Helsing? And you know how those films tend to suck--like, say, Van Helsing? Well, this one is one of those except it really doesn't suck at all. Spider Labyrinth is an homage to all Italian horror up to that point and it is a glorious homage, never parodical, always measured with just the right level of restraint, indulgent but not self-indulgent, out-there without being stupid.

The plot is pretty much The Wicker Man meets Lair of the White Worm. A professor of oriental languages is working on a Europe-wide project deciphering some script from possibly the most ancient religion ever (or something like that). The best researcher working on the project has suddenly stopped communicating, so our professor protagonist is sent out to Budapest to find him. There he discovers all the locals behave mysteriously and he's given hints by a man in the street that they're not planning on letting him leave--ever. As the professor investigates to figure out what's going on, his major leads keep getting murdered before they can help him--murdered by a hissing, growling, insect-like witch with superhuman strength (http://www.cinema-nocturna.com/spiderlabyrinth1.jpg).

This murder angle gives all the giallo elements for which you could ask. Now, before each murder, the witch tosses a black ball into the room. This trope is a direct allusion to Mario Bava's Kill Baby Kill. The creepy old hotel and the lighting therein are to my mind clearly referencing Argento's work in Suspiria and Inferno. In fact, our own Coventry says in his review that "THIS should have been the final chapter in Dario Argento's Three Mothers trilogy!" There's definitely some Fulci influence in there as well. I've also seen others call it Lovecraftian, and I suppose it is to some extent--if The Wicker Man had been written by Lovecraft.

If you're still not convinced: The last fifteen minutes has a giant spider with a toddler's head. Need I say more?

Definitely recommended for anyone who likes crazy, unrestrained horror films that are really earnest about being a horror film and for Italian horror buffs.
8/10

Calling All Police Cars (1975) & Footprints on the Moon (1975)

Calling All Police Cars - 8/10
Mario Caiano, who directed Nightmare Castle with Barbara Steele, shows himself to be a very competent director with Calling All Police Cars. It's not an amazing film. It's just very skilled. It is never heavy-handed with the exposition, shows you all you need to know, gives you intelligent characters who have depth and conflicts of interest, and the dialogue occurs only when needed, never falling into dull Americanisms (you know, like cops who say all these witty things at crime scenes). Calling is actually just a police procedural investigating a missing and eventually found-murdered girl for the first 72 minutes, then it becomes a giallo of sorts. This transition is smoothly handled--no Rat Pfink a Boo Boo here. There is a generally mature mindset at work that presents quite a lot of full-frontal nudity of teenage women without seeming gratuitous. Overall, a surprisingly good film.

Footprints on the Moon - 6/10
Florinda Bolkan stars in Last Year in Marienbad. No, wait, Last Tuesday in Garma. Basically a woman thinks she was in a place but she doesn't remember being in a place and she thinks other people remember her being in that place but they don't think so then they remember but she thinks they don't remember then she thinks she remembers but some guy tells her she doesn't remember and then someone dies. Oh yeah, and she has recurring nightmares of Klaus Kinski performing experiments on astronauts and leaving them to die on the moon, which she thinks are scenes from a movie called Footprints on the Moon (isn't that this movie?).

It's not a terrible movie. It is definitely intriguing to see Florinda attempting to solve this mystery of why she forgets three days of her life and her relationship to this town and the people in it. But its ambitions--or pretensions--strike me as not having been realized and the answer to the whole film is both mundane and left unexplained.

I watched this movie with high hopes based largely on the comments section right here on imdb. It is called a giallo--one of the most innovative gialli, no less. Well, it's no giallo. It isn't even a thriller. It is a psychodrama mystery film and nothing more--no horror here. Comparisons to David Lynch are unjustified. This is not the intellectual headgame they will have you believe. It is just a mystery film. It's pretty enjoyable while it's going on, mainly because Balkan can carry the film and manage protagonists like this (Flavia-types).

One huge bonus does come from watching Footprints on the Moon. You know that creepy red-haired girl from Deep Red and Baron Blood? Well, Florinda goes all Polanski's The Tenant on her and slaps her in the face--hard!

Lurking Fear (1994)

I actually saw the poster for Lurking Fear in a video store back in '94 and was desperately curious. I never did get a chance to see it. I wish it had remained that way. Lurking Fear is a bad movie. It's not an amusingly bad movie. It's a frustratingly bad movie. It insults your intelligence and doesn't deliver much on the fun.

A handsome, muscular man gets out of prison and goes looking for his criminal father's stash of money. It's in a cemetery in some town where, we learn, the population has been steadily shrinking due to some monster's living underground. Why don't the people just evacuate the stupid town? The only people who seem to be left are Jeffrey Combs, Kirsty from Hellraiser (Ashley Laurence), a priest, and a pregnant woman. Enter Mr. Beefcake, trailed by some caricature mob goons who want the money. All of these thoroughly unpleasant characters bicker, play tough-guy, mouth-off to each other, point guns at each other, take guns from each other, while the monsters occasionally reach a hand up from below.

One hopes and prays the monsters will consume these miserable pieces of human refuse. Only Jeffrey Combs is really likeable--because he's Jeffrey Combs. The rest are just annoying. Ashley Laurence is the most annoying of them all. The tough guy act just never stops with her. If you thought Wolverine from X-Men was annoying, hoo boy, she's got him beat. Speaking of which, Beefcake resembles Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. He also finds an excuse to go shirtless, which had me thinking, "Ah, so this is how women must feel when there is gratuitous T&A."

Long story short: the characters are heinous and poorly written, the monsters are boring and largely ineffectual, the plot is incoherent to put it lightly, and at 76 minutes it still runs too long. Most people here know I like nearly everything I watch. Lurking Fear beat me. It is bad and insulting. Stuart Gordon had actually been set to direct this. I think had Charles Band let Gordon write and direct, Lurking Fear may have been good. Perhaps what makes me hate the movie so much is just that the raw material is good; it's the execution that is repugnantly bad.

Castle Freak (1995)

Stuart Gordon doesn't get his due. Sure, the Re-Animator is a classic of sorts, but what about Gordon the director? Gordon the horror auteur who is always trying for something really new? With each horror film, he departs more from formula and invents his own way, a new way, of delving into the macabre and frightening the audience. He's not as intellectual as Romero, but he's formally a more innovative director.

With Castle Freak, Gordon reveals a particularly mature approach to horror that sort of works and sort of doesn't. It is has the salacious and scandalous seriousness of the more sordid works of gothic literature. Also like gothic novels, the film is predicated on the theme of family, particularly dark family secrets. It also takes place in a castle. Yes, indeed, Castle Freak is a salacious and sensationalist piece of gothic storytelling.

The plot concerns a husband (Jeffrey Combs), his wife (Barbara Crampton), and his blind daughter coming to the castle he has just inherited from his aunt, the duchess. They get more than they bargained for when the chronically abused, mutilated son in the cellar breaks free and wants sex, lots of sex--like Shakespeare's Caliban. In the meanwhile, Combs and Crampton are constantly in emotional conflict because his drunk driving took the life of their son.

The term 'mean-spirited' is often used as a dismissive term. Castle Freak is mature--there's no funny stuff, the themes are serious, the emotions of the characters are given room to be expressed and explored in earnest--but as I noted, also salacious. The combination gives the film a mean-spirited edge. One particular scene gives a whole new meaning to the expression 'eating a girl out.' It is unpleasant, but not unnecessary.

The film deals very much with the theme of sexual frustration. Just as Combs is forever denied by his wife, the freak from the cellar lacks a sexual organ to do anything with the women he captures. Where Combs takes out his frustration in more peaceful ways--or by going to prostitutes--the monster becomes violent.

Castle Freak is actually a very good, thoughtful movie. There are a few stupid moments. For instance, one wonders how a mutilated man kept in a cellar for decades is suddenly strong enough to break down doors and overpower a rather hefty police officer. One also must endure seeing the freak's ballsack a lot, because it's naked during the entire latter half of the film--I suppose that's a touch of realism I should be applauding, but I could have done without monster balls in my face. However, all that aside, one is left really with a mature approach to horror that has largely been neglected due to the general immaturity of the times. Had it been more playful like The Reanimator, it might have satisfied our juvenile tastes better. As it stands, it may be appreciated in times to come. But I myself found it a bit mean-spirited and the drama between Crampton and Combs annoying.

Spielberg's Duel and the Masculine Threat

What is a duel? It's a type of fight. Not just any fight. Were this film called 'Fight,' it would lose a lot of its force. A fight doesn't have the implications a duel has. A duel has stakes of honour and power. The winner is superior, the 'better man'; the winner has shown he has the more powerful hand, the swifter blade. The duel is about two things: power and speed. And Duel the film is about power and speed as well.

The bulk of dialogue in Duel occurs in the opening fifteen minutes. This section serves as a sort of thematic introduction. It gives you the conceptual tools to understand just what's going on in all you witness from there on in. The radio conversation we hear as David Mann drives along is of a radio DJ calling the census bureau and jokingly giving a story of how he can't claim to be the head of his household even though he's the man of the house; how this is humiliating for him; and how he is a 'househusband' who wears a dress and slippers all day. We also get a glimpse into David's life as he calls his wife to apologize for a fight. It seems they were at a social gathering and he didn't stop a man from hitting on his wife--she describes it as practically attempted rape. There are clear implications here that David is henpecked and not able to stand up for himself. He's a wimp. He doesn't drive fast and is probably destined to remain in middle management. He is probably not terribly respected, otherwise men wouldn't try to seduce his wife in front of him. Defending his wife shouldn't have been a point of treating her like property; it should have been a point of fending off a serious breech of respect and not allowing himself to be humiliating and overpowered. So that's David and those are the themes.

Then the duel begins, over an hour of the movie dedicated to the one cat-and-mouse game. Duels in swashbucklers were with swords; duels in westerns were with guns. Yes, duels really were carried out with those items, yet they are clear phallic symbols. These instruments of the duel are themselves symbolic of what's at stake in the duel. One has a cockfight in both meanings of 'cock'. What could be even more phallic than a gun and a sword? Why, vehicles of course! David's bright orange car against a semi: can David out-power or out-run the semi?

The stakes of this duel have been set up in those opening twenty minutes: David's masculinity, his power. When he overtook the truck, he was just trying to escape the fumes. Clearly the driver took this as an offense. He took it as a statement of power. The driver then overtakes David to reassert himself. Later when David waves him past, the driver seems only more furious and repeatedly taunts David with the wave-past throughout the film, because it implies a giving of permission. The whole film works by power dynamics.

David has an interior monologue running throughout the film. At the mid-way point, after his first failure in the duel, he stops in a truck stop and ponders approaching the people he believes might be the driver. He's still very meek but is considering standing up for himself. His thoughts on what he should do generally illustrate the effects the events are having on him, but otherwise the visuals do the work of illustrating the plot. Still beyond the mid-way point he can only ineffectually tell children not to sit on the hood of his car. Nor can he help successfully give push to a bus that the trucker has no trouble pushing. It is not until the end that he finally decides he can't run or hide any more, he has to fight using his wits. The decision to fight is probably more important than whether he wins or not.

It would be a stretch to call Duel a bildungsroman. This is really all one event taking place in a few hours. I'd label Duel a 'turning-point film'. Turning-point films generally consist of meek people going through extreme situations and gaining the inner strength to be more assertive. While She Was Out is an example of a turning-point film. In While She Was Out, we are treated to a before and after, seeing how the heroine of that film uses her experience to take control of her life and dominate her abusive husband. Strangely, Matheson doesn't give us that satisfaction: after seeing David win the duel, we never get to see him go home and kick ass. We are left to imagine what sort of impact the event will have on his life. I think that is a wise decision.

So, Duel is about as masculine a film as one could ask for; its themes all directly concern men and the power dynamics between them, the psychosocial implications of those power dyanmics, and the symbolic representations of these dyanmics in cinema (swashbucklers, westerns). Hopefully anyone watching the film comes away a little less innocent, a little more aware, and with a new hair on his/her chest.

The Devil's Rain (1975)

I'm not going to write much on this film, since it's pretty well-known ('infamous' might be the term). The main draw is the idiosyncratic cast: Ernest Borgnine, William Shatner, Ida Lupino, and Tom Skeritt. I think the film is actually cast perfectly if you're willing to let go of the oddness and take it seriously. Borgnine is really menacing as a villain, especially when he goes all he-goat on you. Shatner as the blustering, gun-toating son isn't a far stretch from Captain Kirk and is therefore thoroughly believable.

The main fault of the film is the plot. It's not that the idea for the plot is bad in itself. However, it seems more like the plot for a video game: the villain wants a book (the Holy Book of McGuffin, in case you're wondering), kidnaps guy's mom, guy goes after villain with gun. Then the other son (Skeritt) goes to rescue mome and bro. I've seen games on the NES with a plot like that! The problem is that either Fuest or the studio cut the film badly, very badly, and things don't make a whole heck of a lot of sense. The film rushes through things and the haste shows in how the characters are forced to behave.

What does work for me is the atmosphere. That's one thing Fuest gets right. When Shatner first arrives in the ghost town, no music plays; it's just silence. He speaks to Borgnine in mostly silence, with just the sounds of the wind breezing through the remnants of a former community. The film has a few moments rich with atmosphere like this and they're beautiful. But they don't save the film from the general incoherency.

It'd make a great double-bill with Argento's Inferno.

Gargoyles (1972)

This might not be an unbiased review, because Gargoyles stars none other than Cornel Wilde, of whom I am a big admirer. A made for TV movie, I was expecting Gargoyles to be a little hokey; and, yes, it is a little hokey. The film begins with a slideshow of gargoyles and demons accompanied by a voice-over explaining that gargoyles are a species that fights with humans for dominance of earth every so often. How they became gutter spouts is a tidbit lost to history, I guess.

Then we skip to the plot. Cornel Wilde plays a pretty interesting character, as the first 5-10 minutes makes clear to us. He's an academic whose research is into mythology, legends, occult, demonology--but all strictly as a non-believer. It's just a dry, academic subject to him. The plot sort of develops out of this. He's going to write a new best-seller on these subjects (these were the days of Eric von Daniken, after all) and wants to check out a story the story of an old curiosity shoppe owner out in the desert. So he takes his lovely daughter (Jennifer Salt, of Brian DePalma's Sisters) and heads out, where the creepy old man shows him the bones of a supposed devil.

This is where things get weird. You expect a lot of build-up before the gargoyles start making appearances. Not so. They show up in the desert and start trashing that old man's curiosity shoppe. This kind of caught me by surprise. This isn't a normal horror film I'm dealing with here, I'm thinking. And I thought right. In fact, after a few more not-really-scary encounters with the gargoyles, we get into a plot about gargoyles struggling to dominate humans and needing human education to do so while Wilde, the police force, and some bikers try to destroy them.

So it suddenly becomes a sort of fantasy epic with horror elements, namely, that the gargoyles have no qualms about savagely killing humans. Oh yeah, and the lead gargoyle tries to put the moves on Jennifer Salt. And she's all like, "Come on, I'm not even sure I'd date a black guy; I'm not ready for gargoyle love."

And that's the gist of it. The gargoyles are clearly guys in suits, but I actually like the costumes. The suits have a nice, skin-like texture that looks plausible enough. The masks are a bit more difficult to accept, but the film does what it can and I felt the film was fun enough to make me want to go along with it.

There are also some moments of unintentional humour, as one might expect in a made-for-tv fantasy horror epic about gargoyles. One of my favourites is when the old curiosity shoppe owner falls down and catches on fire, for no reason Cornel Wilde just declares, "He's dead," grabs the gargoyle skull and runs out of the building leaving the old man to burn. Another favourite is when the gargoyles come to reclaim the body of a fallen comrade and find Wilde and his daughter have slipped out of the window in a matter of seconds carrying a gargoyle body that, it would seem, suddenly weighs no more than a small bag of cat food. Incidentally, there are moments of intentional humour as well.

Gargoyles makes a good effort at entertaining and it succeeds. It is a bit awkwardly structured and doesn't seem 100% certain of what kind of movie it wants to be, but I found myself thoroughly charmed. Old fashioned goofy fun. Check it out.

Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary (1975)

In between his two most famous films, Mansion of Madness and Alucarda, Moctezuma directed Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary. From the title, one might imagine a Hammer film about the Bloody Mary legend. Not even close. In fact, it might as well be called Mexico's answer to Cronenberg, baring, as it does, many similarities to Rabid. It shares some characteristics with Romero's Martin as well.

The plot concerns an attractive female painter who is overcome with the urge to drink blood. She becomes ill, her body cold, until she drinks. So, with her trusty bladed hairpin, she punctures jugulars and drinks. She meets up with an attractive young man by chance and seem to be living happily together until detectives and a mysterious, masked blood-drinker begin closing in on her.

Elements of sci-fi and mysticism are thrown in and not made much of. For instance, we find out that Mary's problem is that her veins keep growing and will eventually start crushing her brain. Nothing's made of this rather fascinating bit of information. In another scene, Mary waxes poetic over an Aztec goddess and her significance. Again, not much comes out of this, but I suppose the connection is there and some vaguely feminist theme is going on.

Yes, I do think there are themes in this film. It is clever, well-developed, with a decent and powerful ending. It isn't the equal of Cronenberg, but it isn't far off. It is a good movie.

However, my experience of watching the movie was not always enjoyable. I can't say why, but the film infuriated me. I hated most of the characters, everything they did and all the words that poured from their slimy mouths. Every time Mary screamed "Bob" I hoped the masked man would kill her. They are just a frustrating lot of characters. It's possible I wasn't quite in the mood for the film; but then, were the characters genuinely likable they would have won me over.

Mark of Cain (1985)

Apparently based off a play, the film takes place in mostly one setting: an old house. In this house identical twin brothers were raised by a fanatically religious family. One brother turned out a lunatic who thinks he's pure evil; the other brother is a normal guy with a normal wife. Normal brother wants to sell the old house because he lost his job and needs money; lunatic brother breaks out of the mental hospital for trying to sell his house.

The film is shot with some film school pretension. I really don't know who Bruce Pittman is, but he has an abtract style that runs wild early in the film. I like this. I think there are some visually fascinating moments. An unintentially funny moment of this sort is the first 15 minutes in the house, where several dramatic moments occur making you think, just maybe, something horrible is going to happen. It reminds one (or me, anyway) of the Sandwich Nightmare sketch from Kids in the Hall.

The writing is actually sufficiently interesting to make one wonder what's going on with this lunatic twin. What drove him mad? Is the other twin possibly mad? What significance does that have? Well, they never explore this. In fact, just in case you were wondering, "When are they going to explore this?" they have a very dull moment where the psychiatrist character is plainly asked about the very subject, to which he, as a surrogate for the screenwriter, says "I don't know."

And that's the answer you get, because the end of the film turns into a series of typical suspense moments that you've seen many a time before. Including, of course, SCDs. What are SCDs you ask? Stupid Character Decisions.

Warning Sign (1985)

What we have here is an unofficial remake of The Crazies. You could also call it a rip-off. Rip-off is a term with certain negative connotations, however; Warning Sign is not a bad film at all. It lacks the cynical bite, the aggression and sprawling vision Romero brings to things, but it is also scarier and with significantly more engaging heroes.

Anyway, the gist of the plot is this: a biotech company, under the guise of working on genetically engineering crops, is in fact a biotech weapons base designed to give the Russians a run for their money. An excellent, very tense opening gives us an almost purely visual account of a biotoxin's outbreak in the facility. The sole member of the security team (mmm, Kathleen Quinlan) follows protocol and locks the place down. A somewhat inept team from the Department of Defense comes in, the local hicks start to get angry and eventually violent, and inside the facility Quinlan must defend herself from an infection that makes its victims into very angry, very violent people.

The characters the film gives us to personalize the tragedy are Quinlan and her husband sheriff on the outside, Sam Waterston. Sheriff enlists a scientist who used to work on an antitoxin in the facility and the three of them try to solve the problem the inept military can't. These characters are all very likable, particularly the scientist, making their plight more engaging than what Romero manages in The Crazies.

The goings-on within the facility are actually very suspenseful. There are enough signs that these people are going to go all George Romero's The Crazies on you, but the film takes its time getting to that. Once it does, it is appropriately jarring. The first kill is done with brutality.

Once one comes to the end, a great deal of suspension of disbelief is required on the part of the viewer. The film had earned my faith enough by this point that I let it go and just enjoyed the film for what it is; but it gets sloppy. An elevator that was jammed to the monsters becomes unjammed just the moment the heroes need it. The scientist figures out an antidote and Quinlan and Waterston, in a ravaged laboratory, manage to find all the ingredients within minutes and prepare it. I've seen episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that were more plausible.

The film is still fascinating on some grounds. Yaphet Kotto's character, who leads the military side of things, is, as in Romero's film, competant, but at the same time gives the impression that these protocols he's following have really only been theoretical up until this point; that he's not entirely sure what he's doing, though he's charged with making it work. This ambiguity is a tribute to Kotto's acting. The character is mostly left behind once the scary climax has to get going.

Also interesting is how the film begins by playing off bio-engineering fears of the time. As it turns out, the engineering of crops is protrayed in a positive light, as the hero scientist engineers crops as a hobby. Long live Norman Borlaug, I guess.

There's a final attempt to humanize the events, to give a nod to those who died (killed by the heroes, mostly) before the antitoxin was discovered that deserves some praise. It could have been glossed over without much notice.

And that's probably more than anybody has ever written about Warning Sign. So there you go.