Tag Archives: Kenneth Tobey

Dracula Does Not Suffer Fools

Movies, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I enjoy joining a group of online groupies, most of whom I’ve never actually met, on Saturday nights when I can to watch, ridicule, and gush about the usually dreadful films screened by Svengoolie on MeTV. It’s a fun, irreverent group of tolerant enthusiasts, mostly younger than yours truly, but then what in the world isn’t.

Many of the participants, if you believe their protestations of innocence, are seeing these dubious gems for the first time. While it’s daunting for a grizzled cinematic dumpster-diver like me to find any comfort in the thought that voting-age folks will be casting those first votes sans (that means “without”…sorry, Groucho Marx joke) the seasoning of multiple viewings of THE RETURN OF THE INVISIBLE MAN, PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES, and KILLER KLOWNS OF OUTER SPACE, I do find solace when I see their delight in discovering;

  •  The power of random flames serving as a modern, purging deux-et-machina when troubles (aka monsters) become insurmountable, yet still flammable (dozens and dozens of European horror flicks).
  • Or that interplanetary, mutant children can be thwarted by imagining a brick wall (Village of the Damned).
  • Or that alien attackers who have just blinded 99%+ of the human race can be driven back by spraying them with sea water (Day of the Triffids).
  • Or that body-less flying brains can be shriveled by a Kenneth Tobey-type guy blowing up an atomic radio station in Canada (Fiend Without a Face).
  • Or that the potential lycanthrope menace can be nipped in the bud when his dad smacks him with a cane (The Werewolf, with Lon Chaney Jr).

It’s comforting to sneer and giggle at these masterpieces, and about as practical as my generation’s intense training in “duck and cover.”

And it’s a pretty nice clambake with no clams being hurt.

Last Saturday though, I couldn’t make it and I kinda wanted to. It was a flick I hadn’t seen (there are still one or two ‘em out there). I thought I’d be experiencing it for the first time like many of the other participants. Might be fun. Hell, I might turn into a twenty-something again.

Old fools…dream foolishly……

I recorded the flick instead and watched it this afternoon. I’m glad I did.

The film was BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA. This is not the 1992 film with Gary Oldman: it’s the British 1974 made-for-TV flick with Jack Palance playing the sanguinary Count.

There are no more menacing actors on the screen than Mr. Palance. This is unrelenting mean-ness. He can’t be reasoned with…or shamed…or redeemed…he is a vector of evil. Sounds like Ol’ Drac to me.

There’s scene where a tuxedo-clad gent who looks like Dudley Moore tries to stop Dracula with a pistol. Our vampire dismisses the impediment and the bullets with a disdainful backhand…just as you’d expect Jack Palance to handle a threat from Dudley Moore. That’s artistic integrity for you.

Disdainful backhand…

That’s what I had when I played at tennis in my 20’s. However, it was my opponents who did the disdaining.

In my 20’s…

…sigh…

Old fools……

Octopi Flicks (er…Octopuses)

Movies, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s an understudied genre.

Why?

And why should we…

Make that…why should I…care now?

Well, I’m always arrested by synchronicity. I noticed and leapt on the opportunity to see the Golden Gate Bridge destroyed on successive nights by movie monsters from the sea. Both films featured a giant octopus. It got me thinking (eight to the bar, no less) about my favorite cinematic cephalopods.

Here’s a useless little list;

Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (2009) is a classic zero on a scale of one to ten, BUT it does posit and show in a flash the implausible result from an aerial giant shark attack on an airplane, and an equally implausible performance by Debbie Gibson. On the positive side, the Golden Gate goes down, and the truly big octopus achieves a deadly draw in his death match with the titular fish…though to honor true disclosure, I should point out there are sequels. I suspect the sea creatures and the sequels should be avoided.

It Came From Beneath the Sea (1953) also destroys the Golden Gate, but this time the octopus gets the assignment and does a much better job.

This flick had serious world-ending talent involved.

Faith Domergue was in the midst of a great few years of weird movies. She was imperiled twice in 1955 in This Island Earth and Cult of the Cobra.

Kenneth Tobey was capping off a trilogy of sci-fi adventures; The Thing from Another World (1951) and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953).

And of course the star of the show was the creation of Ray Harryhausen, genius of stop-action wonders.

All of this talent and effort just to produce instant calamari – a San Francisco treat?

Isle of Fury (1936) is a tedious little film that allows Humphrey Bogart to shuck his impeccable South Sea Island white suit and wrestle with an octopus on the ocean floor. I’m believin’ every minute.

Sometimes the octopus is human. Maud Adams plays the title role in Octopussy (1983). The actual octopi in the film are fairly inconsequential. Ms. Adams is most certainly not.

Two films depict the same octopus. Bride of the Monster (1955) is a dreadful Ed Wood-directed exercise that features a ludicrous performance by Tor Johnson and an even more ludicrous watery struggle between Bela Lugosi and a rubber octopus. Ed Wood (1994) recreates that cinematic moment in a funny and pitiful way. I loved them both.

Without hesitation, my favorite octopus film is Cannery Row (1982). There are special performances by Nick Nolte, Debra Winger, Frank McRae, and M. Emmet Walsh. John Huston’s narration, the great frog hunt, Doc and Suzy thinking they could dance, and the beer milk shake episode are all remarkable elements, but all of it revolves around those eight baby octopi and their ill-fated dangling of a misplaced hope at the edge of the end of the Western World.

What’s my takeaway from this foolish survey?

Perhaps a word of advice to San Francisco;

Yer gonna need a bigger bay.