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,

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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.

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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.

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.

The Resurrected (1992)

Lovecraftian horror, an elaborate mythology of the unseen and the incomprehensible forces of ancient, eldritch terrors that lurk in unspeakable nooks of forgotten time, hidden space, and unimaginable dimensions. It also involves a lot of adjectives. This is all notoriously difficult to represent in the cinematic medium, and those few that have been successful are worth clinging to with religious fervor.

I present to you, then, The Resurrected (AKA Shatterbrain) (1994), an all-too-neglected masterpiece of Lovecraftian horror and generally a very good horror film. It succeeds where many have failed. It brings The Case of Charles Dexter Ward to the screen with a fair number of alterations, but they all work; it shows as much as it can, but it all scares and leaves one thinking that this was only the tip of the iceberg.

Director Dan O'Bannon also happens to be the screenwriter behind Alien, The Return of the Living Dead (which is also his only other directing credit), and Total Recall, amongst others. As a screenwriter, his talent has been established a strongly coherent fusion of grotesque, all-too-visible horror, action, intelligent characters, and excellent suspense. Although not the obvious choice to adapt Lovecraft, this was clearly a personal project for O'Bannon.

O'Bannon's technique in The Resurrected is to fuse Lovecraft with his contemporary pulp writer Dashiell Hammett, bringing together the weird tradition with the hardboiled tradition.

Naturally, then we begin the story--after a gripping, gory frame segment--in the office of a private detective being visited by a gorgeous, classy dame. She informs him that her husband might be in trouble. It seems he's looking rather ill and has been holed up in an old house he inherited with an Asian heavy guarding the door.

The private detective's investigation takes the role of the reader in any Lovecraft story. One digs deeper into information that seems at the surface almost innocuous, if a little creepy, until its full horror detonates in one's mind. So does our detective dig himself down deeper until he finds himself in the midst of alchemical experiments and a long-dead necromancer's sinister designs.

As stated before, O'Bannon's modus operandi is to show rather than suggest. The horrible mutations are brought to life in full-bodied latex creations. These may seem a little hokey to some, to others, who still have a place in their heart for traditional horror special effects, they will be truly unsettling.

A testament to how deft the direction is, there is one scene in nearly pitch black, lit only with a match, that is so frightening it had this reviewer with his head against his knees in the middle of the day. It shows just enough and hides just enough to immerse one in the full primordial fear of the dark.

While The Resurrected has gradually been undergoing a favourable critical reevaluation since released on DVD, it still doesn't get the attention of many lesser horrors of the '90s, or indeed of many lesser Lovecraftian horrors. As a uniquely successful fusion of two diametrically opposed trends--suggest-don't-show from Lovecraft and the show-it-all from O'Bannon--this is film is particularly worthy of a wider audience and greater scrutiny.