Monster of the Day #3507

This made me go and look to see if there were any photos of the Karloff Frankenstein Monster having tea in full makeup. Needless to say yes, there are. It feels quite surreal to see the Monster having a good cuppa with the rest of the cast like the gentleman he is.

October 10, 2024 – today is the centennial of Edward D. Wood's birth.

Tonight's features–

4K – …You've all seen it. You know it. Here's a quote. "I've lost the bleeps, I've lost the sweeps, and I've lost the creeps." Here's another quote: "Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb." There are a lot of funny bits here, but the most biting is the "Merchandising" bit. Nothing else approaches that level of satire, which is kind of a shame. Still, it's a lot of fun and there are worse ways to spend your time. Image is great, but the sound seems to fluctuate between too loud and too soft. I bought it on sale, which is probably the best way to buy it.

Blue-ray – "The Time Travelers," an Ib Melchior film from the 60's. This was probably very cheaply produced, but the money is all on the screen. The oddest looking androids you've ever seen–they look like Dr. Seuss designs. A very entertaining Saturday afternoon TV viewing for almost anyone. The one off-note is the "Timmy and Sue Go to the World's Fair" music during the tour of the android factory. The Kino-Lorber image and sound are really great. Kind of surprising how good the effects are, given the budget (250K according to Wikipedia). If, for some reason, you have little kids who need to be entertained, this fits the bill for the moment. Poor old Ib needs a box set.

Got a bunch of these still to go through. Sorry.

She was only 5' 3", she looks tall here.

Bats are freaky in the way they fly.

There is a big bathtub in the Idaho place that mice always get trapped in. I kid the cats that it has killed more mice than they ever will.

I was looking at TV Tropes for information on old horror movies I favor, and was surprised to read that the police officer who gets burned alive for a human sacrifice in The Wicker Man actually 'had it coming because Christian'. The heck?

That said they didn't approve of the remake at all, which seems to be a near universal opinion among fans of the original film.

Tonight's blue-ray double feature was the Criterion's version of "Ugetsu" from Kenji Mizoguchi. It's a beautiful film, and Criterion does a wonderful job. Image and sound are terrific. The overall story is about how war, and the attendant chaos, affects the ordinary people. Some try just to survive, while others see it as an opportunity to rise in status. Highly recommended, though the main message seems to be "Sure, follow your dreams, but ultimately do what you're best at." "The Nightmare Before Christmas" had the same message, as did a number of Disney films from the same vintage. Still, a great film, one of the masterpieces.

The second blue-ray was Kino Lorber's "A Star is Born" with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March. This is a sentimental favorite, and I'm not sure how it stacks up against the other versions (I'm sure Lady Gaga kills it) but I'll take this one. Lots of great character actors here, Andy Devine, Lionel Stander, Edgar Kennedy, Olin Howard, Franklin Pangborn (for about five seconds) and other familiar faces. Unfortunately, while the sound is fine, the image looks pretty awful. I mean, it's watchable, and you can see everything, but it looks more like a VHS tape than blue-ray. Fredric March is great, but to me, Janet Gaynor just looks kind of odd. "Off-beat" I think they'd say back then, today, they'd say "Wow, what a hater you are."

Say, does anyone know when Ken will be back? I'm beginning to wonder if something happened to him. May Heaven forbid.

Tonight's blue-ray feature was "Caltiki – The Immortal Monster." I've seen this before, and the prints always look like they were run off a mimeograph. Arrow Films' version is gorgeous. I'm sure the sound is great too, but I listened to the English soundtrack (which Arrow warns was patched together from various sources).

Image-wise, you get beautiful Toho-level miniatures, Caltiki itself (which looks like wet bubble-rap) growing, pulsing, and breaking stuff, and gruesome gore effects (which must have vexed censors back in 1959). Beautiful photography from Mario Bava, who also directed a bunch of it (accounts vary). Additionally, just to mention it, star John Merivale looks so much like Kyle MacLauchlan that it gets distracting. (It would be great if they did a remake with Kyle, and he said "Years ago, my father…")

The plot? Well, there's a blob monster that runs amuck. In a call-forward to "The Brainiac," it's tied to a returning comet (and is dispatched in the same manner as Mr. B). There's a rather needlessly complicated first act set in Mexico, in which people act bitchily to each other, there's a sudden discovery of gold, and our secondary villain has his origin story. And our secondary villain is the love child of Klaus Kinski and Dwight Frye, so there's that.

If you're a Mario Bava completist, Arrow's version is the one to get. For the rest of you, it's pretty entertaining though made up of familiar elements (Kim Newman, in a supplement, notes its similarity to "The Quatermass Experiment").

The one baffling element (well, the one that baffled me the most) was a car crash near the end. What the heck, is what I was thinking. Did they just have the footage and needed to use it? Poor professor old guy.