Along with Dracula, Frankenstein and Frankenstein's Monster (or Creature) have been the subjects of movies since the days of Edison.
Most people think of James Whale's Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein from Universal in the 1930's. Hammer Films had their own version of the franchise in the 70's and there have been any number of stage and television productions of the story. Portrayed in various versions by Boris Karloff; Bela Lugosi; Lon Chaney, Jr; Glenn Strange; Fred Gwynne; Christopher Lee; Peter Boyle; Peter Hinwood; Shuler Hensley and Robert DiNiro (among many others) in I, Frankenstein, Aaron Eckhart is the Creature from Mary Shelley's novel, still alive after 200 years and apparently drawn into a fight with gargoyles or some such nonsense. The movie comes from the same people who keep making those deplorable Underworld movies. Eckhart and British character actor Bill Nighy (Shaun of the Dead; Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest) are the headliners among a cast of unknowns in a cheesy Underworld/Legion mash-up of some kind. Based on the "Unpublished" graphic novel by actor and Underworld writer Kevin Grevioux, I, Frankenstein is conceptually interesting, but...
Personally, I haven't seen a trailer ever work so hard to convince audiences to stay away from what looks to be an absolute piece of Winter Cinema Garbage.
I don't know if it's the ridiculous dialogue ("Frankenstein must be destroyed!")*; the atrocious CGI FX (1997 called, they want their Macs back) or Eckhart's impersonation of Christian Bale's Batman... Well, they all contribute to what looks like traditional January/February studio crap dump. It makes me glad they waited until after Halloween. Both Eckhart and Nighy are better than this. I just hope they invite me to the latest summer house it bought them.
*
More, anon. Prospero
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If you met my father or worked with him, you would have thought he was a pretty great guy. Often funny; fairly intelligent; somewhat handy and occasionally a good cook, my dad presented himself as a perfectly decent human being.
Those of us who lived with him, knew better. A racist, anti-Semitic homophobe who was fascinated by Alexander the Great; Napoleon and Hitler, my father was actually quite a jerk. He cheated on my mother (who foolishly took him back after the first time he left her for the woman who gave birth to my half-brother) at least twice that I can confirm. His vacations were spent painting the house or doing other things that excluded the rest of the family and never took us anywhere for more than a day (and even then, only when he had free passes to wherever it was we went). Of course, I didn't realize what a jerk was when I was younger.
Truth be told, as a child, I idolized my dad. As most kids do. I have tons of happy memories spent with my father at the movies; at family cook-outs; on day trips to the Jersey Shore; learning to cook my grandmother's recipes... He instilled in me a love of classical music and certainly informed my sense of humor. He taught me about classic movies and introduced me to the Universal Monsters. He showed me how to build a perfect wood grill fire and attempted to teach me how to drive. He told lots of jokes and taught me accents which I use to this day.
As I got older and reached adolescence, it became clear that my father resented my mother, my sister and I. And although I never officially came out to him, once he realized I was gay, he shut me out completely. He often quoted Thoreau to me: "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." He complained, "There are men exploring uncharted regions of the world while I am stuck here, paying bills and painting walls." And whose fault was that? As a young adolescent, he repeatedly reminded me that I had an acne problem (his face was heavily scarred from his own, much worse bought with it) and complained because I didn't participate in sports. He absolutely HATED the fact that I discovered Theatre and constantly berated me for not wanting to become a doctor, lawyer or some sort of executive at a boring, soul-crushing corporation.
Don't get me wrong. I loved my Dad. I loved him right up until the day he died from a neuroblastoma at the age of 59 in 1998, less than ten years after he left my mother for the second time and married a trashy, wealthy widow who dragged him to Las Vegas for the last five years of his life. That wedding was one of the unintentionally funniest events I have ever attended, though it's a story for another time. I loved him, but didn't like him very much at all.
Dad died alone, with no one from his real family nearby. Six months before he passed, we had a phone conversation in which he said "I love you" to me for the first time in my memory.
I was camping with my then boyfriend in Provincetown when he passed-away on July 5th, just three weeks shy of his 60th birthday. When Ric and I got home that afternoon, Mom told me he had passed and honestly, I felt nothing. Just like the gal in that number from A Chorus Line. And for the longest time, I felt guilty for feeling nothing. I mean, this was huge. My father had died. I should feel something, shouldn't I?
After several weeks of legal wrangling (impeded by the meddlings of the aforementioned second wife), Dad's ashes were finally sent back East and we buried them along with his father mother in St. Stephan's Cemetery in Trenton, NJ. The ceremony was attended by myself, his sister and exactly five other people (one of whom was the funeral director). It was then that I finally realized that everyone else who had known my father knew what a jerk he was and that they had stayed away in droves. And while I have long ago forgiven him for being such a creep, every Fathers' Day I resent the fact that I don't get to share with everyone else who has or had a really great Dad. And then I realize that given the chance, I would have made a pretty great Dad, having learned so much from having such a jerk for a father.
I know I'm not alone in this. Plenty of folks have absolute monsters for fathers. He never beat us, or stole money to support a drug habit or killed anyone. He worked hard to support, feed and clothe his family. He just wasn't all that into it, I guess.
I hope you have or had a better Dad, than mine. I'd like to imagine that given the opportunity, I would have been a better father than mine was. And I do have to thank my mother, whose kindness, compassion and love of Rock 'N Roll counterbalanced all of his negativity. I have no idea how or why she put up with him as long as she did. Without him, my sister and I wouldn't exist, so I have to give him credit for that, too. Still... I wish I had a Dad I would want to wish a Happy Fathers' Day.
To all of the fathers reading this, please know how much you mean to your children. Love them no matter what. Don't give them reasons to hate or resent you. Make them want to be at your side on your deathbed and give them reasons to mourn your passing. They'll be all the better for it.
More, anon. Prospero
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Universal Pictures practically invented the American Horror Movie in the 30's and 40's: Dracula; Frankenstein; The Mummy; The Invisible Man... and one my all-time favorites, The Wolf Man. It was the transformation that always got me. Of course in 1941, makeup artist Jack Peace couldn't have even imagined CGI effects, so it was done the old-fashioned way: replacement photography. They would take a shot of Lon Chaney Jr. lying on the ground, stop and apply some makeup and yak hair, take another shot, stop again and and more makeup, and so on. It was a long and laborious process that yielded mediocre results, at best.
In the 50's and 60's Hammer Studios revisited many of these characters, usually starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. They never took on werewolves, though there were plenty of (usually) bad werewolf movies. It wouldn't be until 1981 and director Joe Dante's The Howling, that the werewolf got scary again. For the first time, thanks to makeup wiz Rob Bottin, we got to witness a transformation that used neither replacement photography, nor hand-drawn animation. Using a series of bladders under latex, Bottin showed the audience painful stretching of skin and re-shaping of bone that would accompany an actual physical transformation into a monster. I was 20 and immediately decided I wanted to go into FX makeup (thankfully, I didn't, because I couldn't imagine CGI, either). And even though Dee Wallace ended up looking more like a cute little were-Pekingesepuppy than a werewolf, the movie (with a screenplay by John Sayles), was actually pretty good.
Of course, later than same year, Bottin's protege, Rick Baker, would create a full-body transformation for director John Landis' An American Werewolf in London:
Landis' and Baker's work remained the standard (the team worked again on Michael Jackson's Thriller) and An American Werewolf... would be the best werewolf movie ever made for almost 30 years.
Then along came Jurassic Park, and CGI changed movie FX forever. And in 1999, Stephen Sommers got lucky with his new version of The Mummy, resurrecting a Universal monster that had appeared only in comedies like The Monster Squad and cartoon shows like Scooby Doo. Sommer's action-adventure movie took the shambling, decayed monster and turned him into a powerful (and yummy) magician as the antagonist, a soldier of fortune and a plucky (if klutzy) librarian as the heroes and used state-of-the-art CGI to create an amazing sand storm in this rollicking horror adventure.
Universal, thrilled to be able to revive a long-dormant franchise, greenlit a sequel and then allowed Sommers to make Van Helsing. The Mummy pictures had been so successful, they figured they'd let him use not one, but three of their classic monsters - Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolf Man - in what would become an overly-loud, overly-CGI'ed, over-blown mess of a picture. Bad acting, a ludicrous plot, corny dialog, ridiculous effects and star Hugh Jackman being shirtless for only a few seconds all contributed to a true epic fail.
On February 12, Universal tries again, reviving Kurt Siodmak's original plot and characters in The Wolfman, starring Benicio del Tor; Anthony Hopkins; Hugo Weaving; Emily Blunt and Geraldine Chaplin. Directed by Joe Johnston a hit (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids; Jumanji;) or miss (Jurassic Park III; Hildalgo) kind of guy, the plot once again concerns Larry Talbot (del Toro), and English ex-patriot returning from American to attend his brother's funeral. Talbot has a strained relationship with his father (Hopkins) and later runs afoul of a cursed gypsy on the moors, one night.
The movie has been bounced around for quite a while. Originally scheduled for release in 2009, it kept getting pushed back for re-shoots and re-edits (not usually a good sign) and composer Danny Elfman didn't get to finish his original score because the delays cut into his commitment schedule. Most recently, Elfman's replacement was removed and Elfman is back in. If it weren't for the movie's terrific cast (and even the best actors have made some stinkers), I don't know that I would be so anxious to see it. But the trailer still looks terrific:
D and I already have plans to see it. You know I'll be reviewing it when we do. Can The Wolfman be as successful as The Mummy in reviving a Universal Monster? Will it be a better movie than Landis' and Baker's classic? I'll be attending with not-quite high expectations, something worked out quite well for Sherlock Holmes, earlier this year.
More, anon. Prospero
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"Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers by night/Becomes a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the moon grows full and bright."
That infamous bit of doggeral from the original 1941 film, The Wolfmanis first uttered by the late Maria Ouspenskaya, a Russian actress who would rise to marginal fame in Universal Studio's horror flicks from the 30's and 40's. When prodigal son Larry Talbot returns to the homeland, he is attacked by a peculiar beast and soon finds himself (via then state-of-the-art replacement photography) turning into a monster. Lon Chaney, Jr. - the less-talented son of "The Man of 1000 Faces" - had the titular role and no less than Claude Rains played his father and Bela Lugosi played the poor afflicted son of Ouspenskaya's ancient gyspy.
Now, the inevitable remake is soon upon us. Delayed for a very long time, The Wolf Manis finally scheduled for release in 2010. Sadly, it's in February of 2010. And you all know what that means. Or not. There have been those occasional February gems... I think... um, let me get back to you on that. Anyway. the good news is that is not being directed by The Mummyand Van Helsing(what a waste of everyone's time) schlockmeister, Stephen Sommers. The bad news, it's directed by Jurrasic Park III's Joe Johnston. Now Johnston is an okay director. I like The Rocketeer (I first feel in lust for Billy Campbell then) and Jumanji is just fun. Hell, I even enjoyed Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. I haven't seen 2004's Hidalgo, but this is Johnston's first film since then. Six years is sometimes very long to be away in the business. JP3 was a complete piece of crap and I have to wonder whose fault that is. And Hidalgo didn't exactly break any box-office records, despite the presence of Viggo.
Well, at least I know they'll never remake this 'classic:'
Oh wait! They did:
God bless Larry Cohen. Of course, watching that made me think of this:
I wonder if there's a Rifftrax version of Reign of Fire? There must be, don't you think? Oh, well. I suppose I should round the whole thing out with this trailer:
And maybe just one more:
"It's Scare-ewey!" Get it? Scary and screwy? Get it? And 10 bonus points to whoever can tell me what future icon of Horror has a voice cameo at the end of that last movie.
More, anon.
Prospero
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This is a still from a 2007 Japanese monster movie entitled (I kid you not) Big Man Japan. The eponymous hero is some kind of mutant who can apparently inflate himself to Godzilla-sized proportions in order to fight surreally weird rubber-suit monsters like the pink squid-thing in the picture (is it me, or does the look on its face imply that it is relieving itself against that cardboard skyscraper?).
Anyway, I found the trailer below on a blog I visit daily and keep meaning to mention. BitsandPieces is a fairly random, but often funny collection of flotsom and jetsom from all over the Internets. I often post YouTube clips from them on my Facebook page. They're motto is "We Search the Web, So You Don't Have To." Blogger Jonco is a pleasant gentleman from St. Louis who often incorporates some very amusing Southern philosophy into his posts. If you haven't found his blog, I urge you to go. There is certain to be something to amaze and amuse almost everyone.
And now, without further ado, the latest WTF?!?!? moment. Ladies and germs, I give you the trailer for Big Man Japan:
Truly - do we need more proof that the Japanese have lost their pop-culture minds? Between this and films like RoboGeisha, I am convinced that modern Japanese Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror filmmakers have rejected the perterbing and inexplicable 'J-Horror' style of the late '90's/early 00's and re-embraced the over-the-top ridiculousness of Japan's Atomic Age cinema.
Along with the Universal Monsters pantheon, I grew up on Toho Studios movies. Godzilla, Mothra, Ghidra, Rodan and Gammera were both to be feared and revered and "Ultraman" was the world's greatest giant hero (even though by age 6 I knew they were just stunt-men in latex). Like Lugosi, Karloff,Lorre. Chaney and Price, those rubber monsters were icons of my youth and certainly influenced my appreciation of both the absurd and the inept... and how they often intersect.
Hope you got a giggle out of that, at least.
More, anon.
Prospero
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