Monster of the Day #3525

Updated on June 10, 2024 By Ken Begg 6 Comments

As Corman’s Poe series started to wane (if not artistically), his use of monsters was nearly over. Most of the Poe films didn’t feature monsters per se. The Masque of Red Death, generally considered the best of the bunch, featured the ultimate monster: Death. The series ended next with the still pretty great The Tomb of Ligeia.

Corman made a couple of movies for major studios, but found the work unsatisfying. Amusingly, he bridled at the producers of 1967’s The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre because they were annoyed that he kept trying to save money while filming. He went back to independent films like Bloody Mama, then tried studio work again with 1971’s Von Richthofen and Brown. At this point, having made achieved what most independent producers lust their whole lives for, he decided he could make more money solely producing and stopped directing altogether. He founded New World Pictures and that was that. (For quite a while, at least.)

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  • Off Topic: They're releasing the First Doctor story "The Celestial Toymaker". This is one of the Missing Stories, so they've used animation to restore what was lost. This has been done in a new manner, or by a new studio, I'm not certain which. All I do know is that it is much worse a job in terms of animation than what has come before. That's quite the achievement.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Tonight's blue-ray feature was the film that proved the Oscars are a sham, as Orangey failed to win Best Supporting Actor. Yeah, it's "The Incredible Shrinking Man," from Criterion. As usual from Criterion, everything looks and sounds great, thought I should note that's "for the time." Some of the footage is quite soft, and (of course) Scott Carey has no shadow in the process shots where he's walking around.

    Naturally, I would rather they kept those flaws than try to "fix" them with (shudder) CGI.

    The giant props and spider footage are great, and there's a nice moment where Scott reflects that the spider isn't evil, it just wants to survive, as he wants. (I wonder what Lyz AYCYAS thought of that.) And the ending is very philosophical. You've all seen it, and you all know how great it is.

  • Ken_Begg

    The first Doctor? That little black girl?

    IT"S CANON, HATER!

    Yes, I'm heard that the new animation is worse, and it's not like the previous stuff was Ghibli quality or anything.

  • Worse? Is that even possible, because frankly, I've quit even considering buying the animations as they are so awful as to completely take me out of the stories. Even the first few single episodes that Cosgrove-Hall did were so far below their 80s standards that I found them nearly unwatchable. With the move to other, cheaper studios, 'nearly' went right out the window.

    They did re-release all the lost episode audio box sets through Amazon Audible a few years ago, and that's how I prefer them, audio only. Or the telesnap reconstructions, which give enough visual cues for the imagination to work off of without the distraction of constant off-model characters with almost as much life as a Clutch Cargo cartoon.

    Unfortunately Loose Cannon quit doing the telesnap reconstructions when the animated stuff started to come out, whether that was because the BBCs long-standing tolerance of the (non-commercial) project would have been no longer forthcoming, or simply because it was always a labor of love and there was no longer the same impetus to carry on, I don't know. Some of the earlier DVD releases of classic Who, even included the Loose Cannon stuff for the missing eps.

    I do suspect that a lot of the impetus at this point to get them out fast and cheap is in order to be able to get out more first and second Doctor Blu Ray box sets. Although both Hartnell's first season and Troughton's last are missing no more than one story each IIRC and the Troughton particularly should have had a release by now as there has not been a single Blu Ray release of any of his stuff (Hartnell at least got a second season box set a year or so back).

    If there is any interest here in the telesnap versions, they are all online for free here: www(dot)dailymotion(dot)com/DavidAgnew

  • Whatever do you mean? Doctor Who ended in 1989, with a less than stellar attempt to restart in 1996. There's been nothing of note or worth remembering since then.

    Seriously, current year Who hurts more than the Nineties Wilderness years, where all we Whovians had were edgy book after edgy book. About the only comfort I get now is that I can experience the whole Classic series now if I want to.

  • Telesnap never worked for me. I've enjoyed the animated stuff I've got, despite the animation quality, but what does that mean? I've never bragged about my good taste.

    This stuff, though… Oh, is it awful. I can't decide if it looks like high quality Playstation One or Playstation Two computer graphics. It's almost insulting, is what it is.

    Hopefully that season of Hartnell will come with it collected, cause I'm not paying good money for that kind of animation.