The Lady From The Black Lagoon

Of Goddesses And Monsters

The Lady From The Black Lagoon -
Hollywood Monsters And The
Lost Legacy Of Milicent Patrick
by Mallory O’Meara.
Hanover Square Press
ISBN: 9781335937803

Regular readers will know that I’ve read more than my fair share of books about the shenanigans involved in various aspects of movie making over a number of decades (a few more decades than I’d like to admit). There are some really terrible ones out there, some really good ones and, just occasionally, a really great one. And when I say great ones, I mean the final outcome of all the research or the way in which the book is structured or the unprecedented archival nature of the material makes it an absolute belter of an essential addition to any film lover’s bookshelves. And, when I say bookshelf, I obviously mean the ‘too many piles of stuff on the floor’ of your daily environment through which it takes a minute to remember the correct path to navigate around all that movie memorabilia.

Yeah, I’m talking about the real cream of the crop, top tier books which have something extra special tucked between their pages. I’m talking about tomes like Mario Bava - All The Colours Of The Dark (Tim Lucas’ hefty and amazing bible on the late, great director), House Of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (reviewed here), Scala Cinema 1978-1993 (reviewed here), The Creature Chronicles: Exploring the Black Lagoon Trilogy (reviewed here), Saul Bass - A Life In Film and Design (reviewed here) and A Thousand Cuts, The Bizarre Underground World of Collectors and Dealers Who Saved The Movies (reviewed here).

Mallory O’Meara’s astonishing The Lady From The Black Lagoon - Hollywood Monsters And The Lost Legacy Of Milicent Patrick... is just such a book. One of the essentials for any movie afficionado’s book shelf/movie shrine/miniature book Everest. I had originally planned to have a review of a famous giallo/horror director’s autobiography in this spot this week* but, when I finally got around to reading this book, which I bought sometime last year, it just floored me. This one was special and it’s still percolating in my mind so, you know, I wanted to get this one up on here as quickly as possible because you all need to read it.

Now, I’d never heard of Mallory O’Meara before but I had, only vaguely, heard of Milicent Patrick. When I was a young ‘un, sometime between the early 1970s to early 1980s, my parents took me to a sex cinema off Piccadilly Circus to see, in 3D and complete with green and red glasses, a proper double feature of IT Came From Outer Space and Creature From The Black Lagoon (a movie I reviewed here). I was thrilled and loved both movies, with the Gill-Man’s cinematic debut rating high on my list. A number of years ago, probably via the internet, I got wind that the creature had been designed by a lady named Milicent Patrick. That’s cool, I thought and then, you know, thought no more of it. So Mallory O’Meara’s thankless quest to bring to light the wonders and personal horrors of one of her heroes (she even has a tattoo of Milicent with the Gill-Man on her arm which, alas, we don’t see in this book, at least not in the edition I bought). is a very welcome publication And it’s a long quest on which she journeyed to give us this incredible account.

So all I knew before going into this one was that Milicent had designed the creature (although I’d also heard other stories and, frankly, now I know why) and that the guy who ran the head of the make-up department got jealous of her credit and basically ruined her career in Hollywood, after which she kind of dropped out and disappeared. So we should all be thankful that this O’Meara gal came along and decided to painstakingly dig a little deeper and do the detective work.

This story didn’t come easily and it’s possibly not a 100% complete picture of Patrick’s life but, one of the nice things about this book, unlike some other biographies, is that Mallory is completely honest about what she writes and she doesn’t seem to give in to wild speculation and present it as fact. There are maybe tiny holes (there always are) but you won’t find them glossed over or filled in here, they’re presented as they are... and obviously that means certain things we’ll never know but, from what I can see, the important stuff is somehow now with us.

And when I say she did the detective work, I mean just that. This isn’t just about Milicent Patrick’s life... take a look at that subtitle and you’ll see Hollywood Monsters mentioned here too and, spoiler alert, she’s not just talking about the beloved beasts you see on the silver screen, she’s talking about some of the less palatable Hollywood predators that have come to light in recent years and were, as we kinda always knew, prevalent in Milicent Patrick’s time too. You know the kind I mean. This book is as much about O’Meara as it is about Patrick. Mallory works on film production, has encountered some of these other monsters first hand and, as you simultaneously read her account of how she managed to track down all the information piece by piece, as she reports the continuing story of Milicent’s life, you realise that there are also some parallels, to some extent, between the biographer and her subject.

And there’s some fantastic stuff Ms. O’Meara turned up. As a taster only, because I really don’t want to spoil the content of this book for first time readers... Milicent Patric was a daughter to Camille Rossi, an architect who eventually worked a long time on William Randolph Hearst’s private castle and grounds (if you’re into Citizen Kane... which you kind of should be if you like to look at astonishing film technique... then Xanadu is based on this and, obviously, Kane is a satirical view of Hearst). Camille was the guy who even managed to turn around an oak tree! Milicent eventually went to study art at the Chouinard Art Institute which, because of an opportunity by the lady who ran the institute, was a direct pipeline into the Disney studios. Patrick was asked to work for Disney in 1938 and became one of the first female animators for the studio on films such as Fantasia. She also took small parts in films and eventually got hired by make-up legend Bud Westmore, whose name I’d heard from time to time, to work in his make up department at Universal, where she designed things like the aliens in their non-human form for It Came From Outer Space, the wonderful Metalunan Mutants from This Island Earth and, of course, The Gill-Man from Creature From The Black Lagoon. Then she got her 15 minutes of fame doing a whirlwind promotional tour for Universal studios but, as O’Meary says in her own, quite witty and wonderful words... “While Millicent was in the skies, filled with excitement, Bud Westmore was in his office, simmering with resentment.” Then Westmore took all the credit for himself, fired her and made sure she would probably never work for a make-up company again. And then she completely dropped out of public consciousness but, her new biographer was having none of that and she followed the few leads she had to finally hit the jackpot and flesh out the rest of Patrick’s life... much of which was spent in a long term, on/off relationship with the original radio incarnation of The Lone Ranger. I should probably insert a joke here about somebody who worked on movie monsters marrying someone who used to make silver bullets to load into his guns but, yeah, it’s not quite coming to me.

And the absolute cherry on the cake here is, it’s not just a well researched book... it’s also both a) an important one when it comes to women standing their ground against the various examples of toxic masculinity that permeates the film industry (and all the other industries and, no, 'toxic masculinity' is not a phrase I thought I would ever need to write in one of my reviews) and b) a really entertaining account of her journey to find this story. This isn’t good in that ‘academic explains things in layman’s terms and gives you total understanding of the subject matter’ kind of way. I mean, yeah, okay it is... you’ll certainly know the score here. Each important person that Milicent Patrick encounters in her life is given a mini biography by the writer as they enter her story and it’s very informative...

But what I really mean is, this girl is funny and she can write in a really entertaining and, towards the end of the book, moving manner. I love that she mostly uses her footnotes not just to inform but to crack extra jokes. So, for example, when she writes the phrase “Los Angeles still has never been devastated by a major earthquake.”, you’ll get the footnote “I’m nervous even typing that.” Or when she writes “There was a massive flood that devastated the crops, followed by a drought, which devastated the cattle.”, she can’t resist adding the footnote, “As in, lots of cattle died. Not that the cattle were like, so devastated about it being dry.” And she comes out with some absolute gems like, when she’s in the Universal archives and pulls out a note about the swimsuit actress Julie Adams should be wearing in Creature From The Black Lagoon, she comments that “My eyes rolled so hard that I was afraid they would get stuck in my frontal lobe.” I’m sorry, I  don’t often quote directly from the books I review but, this one is so good I had to share some of these.

As the book continues, you can feel the author's joys and disappointments as new facts are gleaned or claims made by the subject disproved and discounted. And it’s a real journey and, despite the oodles of humorous quips and nuggets of cold hard fact dripping from the pages, she did move me to tears by the end of the book too. Proper, manly tears, of course... as should be expected from a hard hearted individual such as myself.

And, that’s as much as I really want to say about this one because, I really don’t want to spoil it for you. The Lady From The Black Lagoon - Hollywood Monsters And The Lost Legacy Of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O’Meara is a really cool book and a solid recommendation from me if you’re into Hollywood, monster movies, feminism or, you know, that thrilling combination of all three. This one’s a creature feature you won’t want to miss. 

*Yeah, don't worry, the Argento autobiography review will be coming to this blog very soon.

The Monster Movies of Universal Studios

Universal Challenge

The Monster Movies
of Universal Studios
by James L. Neibaur
R & L ISBN: 978-1442278165

It’s a surprising but no belittling a factor that, in his introduction to The Monster Movies of Universal Studios, James L. Neibaur quickly explains that he has eschewed various of what I would personally say are still very much candidates for the title in favour of, purely, going through the various classic monster movies from that studio which have seen numerous releases over the past twenty years on DVD and Blu Ray and which are nowadays known to fans of that particular sub-genre as The Legacy Collection. Nothing wrong with this, of course and it certainly provides a service for those who are discovering these films in this fashion for the first time... what it does mean, however, is that films that I would personally also consider part of that loose canon... films such as The Mole People, It Came From Outer Space, Tarantula and The Monolith Monsters... especially in light of the fact of the inclusion within these pages of the Creature From The Black Lagoon cycle (not to mention three of the Abbot And Costello crossover movies), are not covered by this book. That’s okay though... perhaps we’ll get a companion volume at some point.

The book starts off by briefly reminding the reader of the climate that brought about the enthusiastic pursuit and production, originally by Carl Laemmle Jr, of these horror vehicles that assaulted the public in the early to mid 1930s and then once again throughout the 1940s in various spin offs and sequels. The success of each movie (sometimes saving Universal Studios from bankruptcy) and the downward plummeting budgets of these movies during the 1940s is subsequently recorded as each film is looked at in chronological order of release. What we have here is a chapter for each film in the recently released (and rereleased on Blu Ray) Legacy collections... so the Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, Mummy, Invisible Man and Creature From The Black Lagoon characters all have separate entries for each and every movie in their respective cycles lasting maybe 7 or 8 pages per piece. Also included is my personal favourite werewolf movie, Werewolf Of London, along with the somehow non-horror movie She-Wolf Of London (I’ve always puzzled why this psychological thriller is included in these sets since there’s no actual monster in the movie at all) and the three Abbot and Costello films... Meet Frankenstein, Meet The Invisible Man and Meet The Mummy.

Each chapter contains a look at how the cast and crew were selected for the upcoming project, followed by a synopsis of the film and a look at how the film fared both critically and at the box office (often two polar opposites when these things were lurking at the cinema). So, for example, in the section on the first Dracula film, he talks about how it was refined down by various writers from the Balderston reboot of Stokers stage version of the novel (as opposed to the novel, on which hardly any of Dracula’s cinematic excursions have been based on) and also talks about Lugosi’s involvement in acquiring the rights from Stoker’s widow, with his subsequent lobbying and accepting of far less money than his fellow actors to secure the role which he had already made his own on stage. Neibaur goes on to make the point about the way the narrative is focused more on the story of the title character as opposed to adding in more significant back story for some of the supporting characters like Lucy, Mina and Dr. Seward, as a more modern take on the material might pursue.

For each film the author makes comments about the stylistic sensibilities of the movie in regard to placement of camera and general cinematography and, sometimes, brings up some interesting facts or observations that I was unaware of (even though I’ve read and watched a lot of documentary material on these films over the years). For instance, in the case of the original script of Cagliostro, The King Of The Dead, which was revised and evolved until it became The Mummy, I was unaware that in that original script, Cagliostro was a 3000 year old magician who remains alive by injecting himself with nitrates. And it’s also interesting to know just a little more detail in the story behind the original make-up for Werewolf Of London, where make-up artist extraordinaire Jack Pearce and actor Henry Hull clashed on how much the make-up would hide the face of the actor... with Hull going above Pearce in the food chain to get his way via the consequences of the original make up to certain things indicated in the script. It’s also interesting to note that when the studio successfully rebooted a werewolf character via The Wolf Man and its subsequent sequels, Pearce went back to his original make-up designs for Lon Chaney Jrs make-up. By the way, in case you are in any doubt, I most certainly disagree with the author’s insistence that Werewolf Of London is somehow inferior to The Wolf Man... not a bit of it.

Another little gem I don’t think I remembered or, perhaps, didn’t know but which this book brought to light is the fact that Son Of Frankenstein was being written/finished on a day by day basis as it was being shot... so I need to go back to that movie sometime soon and see if I can find any plot points or continuity moments which betray that fact. He also talks about the scene in The Mummy’s Tomb where the couple is ‘making out’ in the car but are disturbed by the sound of the film’s main antagonist going past as being the first time this had happened in the horror genre... I’m not 100% sure on that myself because there are so many films from the silent era which are lost to us but I’m happy to take him at his word until other evidence comes to light. That being said, I suspect that one of the later Mummy movies in this cycle may be the first cinematic instance of a living dead person rising up out of the earth but... I’ll get on to that when I eventually get around to rewatching that movie for this blog.

Another interesting point the author makes is that blending comedy with horror was not a new concept by the time of the 1949 movie Abbot And Costello Meet Frankenstein and his musings on various of the films traces the decline of the monster series', noting which films had lower budgets than each previous, why that was the case (in some instances... like the special effects budget being slashed because more money for effects were needed for a film being shot simultaneously) and also takes note, I believe, of the declining running times as the various films emerged.

He also highlights a lot of the errors in these films such as the horrible continuity problems with the time placements and, sometimes, location settings for The Mummy movies... and its kind of refreshing to hear someone else acknowledging those. He goes on to point out that the footprints in the snow of the presumably naked Claude Rains in The Invisible Man are of shoes and not feet so... yeah, I can’t believe the studio went with that solution, to be honest.

That being said... I believe the author is not above making a few errors himself. For instance, when he talks about the Frankenstein monster as being... “... a legend that most audiences knew due to the popularity of Mary Shelley’s nineteenth-century novel.”... then surely that implies she merely popularised an already existing character, rather than fashion the whole story from clay as I believe is the case. Also, he notes that the stage version of Frankenstein gave The Monster the same name as his creator. Really? I’ve not heard that before and would have thought that, if that were the case and it such a bone of contention for people who love this character... that he is often confused with the scientist who created him... then this would be better known.

However, a few 'possible' errors do not kill a book and, although I knew a lot of the stuff covered here before, much of it gleaned from documentaries and commentary tracks, this book wins out because it is a handy guide to the ‘Universal Legacy’ monsters where all the information is gathered into one place and, also, because there is some stuff I didn’t know about in here and, yeah, that always makes a book invaluable. If you are a stranger to the movies covered in this book then I would definitely cite this tome as being a great starting place to jump on for a flavour of what these movies are all about... although it is, of course, no substitute for watching the actual films themselves. For die hard fans, though, this book is also a nice thing to have on hand to look up the quick, odd fact for when this kind of subject matter comes up in conversation, for sure. The Monster Movies of Universal Studios is a book which belongs on the shelf of any admirer of the genre and a big thank you to the coolest friend who bought me a copy of this one for my birthday. It was much appreciated.

The Shape Of Water

Gill Merman Del Toro

The Shape Of Water
2017 USA Directed by Guillermo del Toro
2018 UK cinema release print.

Well there you go then. Only just over halfway through February and we already have a new movie release that absolutely embodies the spirit of cinema and is exactly what the art form is all about.

It would be fair to say I’ve found director Guillermo del Toro a little hit and miss over the years but, in all honesty, much more with the movie speedometer pointing towards ‘hit’ than at the other end of the scale. I am still a bit reluctant to embrace both of his enormously creative works Kronos and Pan’s Labyrinth, for example... I’m sorry, they just left me cold. However, I absolutely loved the two Hellboy movies he did (especially the second one which, it seemed to me, felt like it had less studio interference) and Mimic, Pacific Rim (reviewed here) and Crimson Peak (reviewed here) were all films I could get behind to some extent.

When I saw the trailer for The Shape Of Water featuring Sally Hawkins, who I think is one of the more engaging and wondrous British actresses of recent years, it looked like a movie which would, at the very least, once again enrich an audience’s cinematic experience with a beautifully crafted, heavily stylised piece of art and... yeah... dead right it does.

It also looked like it was taking inspiration from one of my all time favourite monster movies of the 1950s and, yeah, it does that  too.

The film is set in 1962 and details the story of a mute cleaning lady called Elisa, played by Sally Hawkins, who works with a group of workers, including her friend Zelda (played wonderfully by Octavia Spencer), that look after the cleaning duties for a top secret, government research facility. One day they have a new ‘asset’ brought to the facility... an amphibian man played by Doug Jones (who played a very similar character for this director in the Hellboy films, of course). The creature has been captured in a river in South America (another reference to the obviously inspiration of the character, which I’ll get to in a minute) and is treated cruelly as a science project (or worse) by the majority of the scientists at the facility and, especially, by the accompanying security chief Strickland. Strickland, played with the usual villanous relish by Michael Shannon, is the real monster of this film which, actually, is in no way a horror film but certainly has moments of dark terror to be found in both Shannon’s role and in the ‘cold war’ paranoia surrounding the only kindly scientist, played by Michael Stuhlbarg.

However, Elise slowly falls in love and creates a bond with the creature and, when she finds that Strickland has scheduled its termination and vivisection, she enlists the aid of her commercial artist friend Giles (played so poignantly by Richard Jenkins) and the two of them, including a couple of unexpected allies, plot to kidnap and ultimately free the creature. And that’s about as much I want to tell you of the story arc because, well... you’ll surely want to discover that for yourself.

The film starts of strongly with the allusions to Elisa’s unknown start in life and a wonderful homage to cinema and great TV of days gone by (both visually and on the soundtrack). The beauty and charm of Elisa’s daily routine, where she wakes up in her room above the Orpheum cinema and draws a bath before furiously masturbating in the tub prior to going to work, is full of detail and, much like a lot of past cinematic classics, almost threatens to overwhelm the senses as you watch and let the world wash over you in all its glory.

As you would expect from a director of this calibre, it’s not just the incredible talent he calls on which makes the film into a little masterpiece of the visual arts. The set and shot design is superb and he manipulates some nice, often aquatically themed colour palettes to tell his story... a tale filled with a lot of charm and heart (which is something which I found lacking in Pan’s Labyrinth, to be honest). He also does some wonderful stuff with the sound design too. For instance, in a scene where Michael Shannon’s character is roughly having sex with his wife, the background sound of the springs and rhythm of the bed keep going through to the next scene transition and become the ambient noise of the next environment... which I found quite phenomenal and applause worthy, to be honest.

There’s another little moment in the film later where the lighting in a room where Elisa and the Creature are eating dinner suddenly goes fully into an unnatural state in that the whole room dims to black except Elise, in a spotlight, as something truly touching is about to happen... and then the film goes completely sideways into a brilliant sequence which I really can’t spoil here but... it was absolutely not what I was expecting to happen and it involves a monochromatic sequence of 1930s style spectacle.

The creature itself, of course... and the romance with the main protagonist... is clearly inspired by the classic ‘creature feature’ Creature From The Black Lagoon (which I reviewed here) and the whole film, which does include sex sequences and (yay!) Sally Hawkins in a state of undress, seems like the director had watched that film and become inspired by that moment where the gill man is swimming beneath Julie Adams and falls for her. And, as it turns out, from what I understand now that I read a few lines from the director about the movie from other sources after seeing this... that’s pretty much the case. This film is very much a projection of Creature From The Black Lagoon (although it technically bears a little more resemblance in setting, perhaps, to the first of the two sequels, Revenge Of The Creature) and a look at where that relationship could have gone if 1950s cinema had been perhaps a little more relaxed in what it was allowed to depict, story wise, at the time.

All of this is accompanied by a score composed by the great Alexandre Desplat (although there are a lot of sequences, also, where source music from various eras relateable to the period and its direct history are utilised) and, while its probably not one of his best, it is a nice score and I’m hoping a closer listen (the CD has been sitting in the corner of the room for the last week or two, still in shrink wrap) will make clear why it’s been given an Oscar nomination. It’s nice stuff including a lot of whistling which appropriately helps to build the world as seen through the eyes of Elisa.

The film is both romantic and passionate in its portrayal of the beauty of this world but also pushes the limits in such a fantasy in that it doesn’t shy away from going to some really dark places. There are some things which are tough to watch but the director and his cast manage to pull it off so deftly that it never feels like the two opposing emotional styles are threatening to tear the piece apart and I feel del Toro is much more adept at the art of keeping things in balance than he was, maybe, at the start of his career. Like any other artist, he is a creator who grows better and more skilled as he gains more experience at the helm of these amazing worlds he creates.

The denouement of the movie features something happening which I was half expecting would be made more of, when the story first reveals the scars around Elisa’s neck which are held accountable for her inability to speak. However, rather than being a disappointing revelation of something which some people will also, I’m sure, find a little obvious... it’s just where I personally felt the movie needed to go and I was really happy the writers and director did this thing, while we hear Richard Jenkins recite a piece of poetry on the voice-over narrative which is obviously the inspiration for the title of the film.

And that’s more or less all I want to say about The Shape Of Water. Like Elisa, I have no more words to describe the pleasures and wonders of the environment in which this central character lives her life but I do have the words to recommend this to anyone who answers to the somewhat dubious title of cinephile or even the more casual watchers and lovers of the cinematic form such as myself. The Shape Of Water is another gift from Guillermo del Toro and it’s a present which I know I will certainly be unwrapping again for myself when the Blu Ray gets a release. It’s definitely something which cries out to be caught on the big screen of your local cinema so, my advice would be to swim to this one as soon as you can.

1200th Post - 40 Coolest Horror Movies

 
My 1200th Post
40 of the Coolest Horror Films

If you’re reading this now you might realise that there has been a week of inactivity on this blog and, at the very least, this combined Halloween/1200th Post celebration is more than just a little late going up. 

Sorry folks but, what happened is that, two days before this post was due to be published, I got taken ill and it was all very... painful and worrying. It knocked me out of my day job and I have been unable to get out from under it for a while so... yeah... I apologise for being away from the blog all week. The output may be a little sporadic getting back into the swing of things here (assuming I don't relapse again this weekend) but I will do my best to get back to updating three times a week as soon as I’m able. So, if you’re going to read the following post, maybe read it in the context of it still being Halloween. 

Really sorry I missed it guys and gals.

Okay... I really didn’t know what to do to mark the occasion of my 1200th post but, luckily, the timing of it was serendipitous in that I realised it would be going up on Halloween. So I figured I’d do a Top Ten favourite horror movies list. Of course, it’s almost impossible to stop at ten and so, here I now have this monster mutated into a Top 40 coolest list.

As you can imagine, I had a lot more favourite horror movies filled with groovy ghoulies and sexy slitherers but... I had to cut things down somewhere. Didn’t want to end up with a top 200 or I’d still be writing this now. Be warned though... it adheres to my rigid standards of horror movies not being part of the genre unless they feature either a mutated, alien, constructed or supernatural presence. Man as monster driven films really aren’t part of the genre... so you won’t find any classic gialli such as Deep Red or The Bird With The Crystal Plumage here. Neither will you find slashers or serial killer movies such as Psycho, Silence Of The Lambs or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As far as I’m concerned, those are thrillers... nothing more or less.

I now offer you the usual disclaimer about the list not being definitive and, truth be told, it would probably change every year if I decided to ever contemplate such things on an annual basis. Even now I’m regretting not putting one of the Spanish Blind Dead movies on here. Or one of Naschy’s Wolfman movies. Or the unimaginably cool language based zombie virus movie Pontypool. There’s nothing too obscure here... you’ve more than likely seen the majority of them... but if there are any on this list you haven’t looked at, maybe you could give them some consideration at some point. Enjoy.

40. Zombi (aka Zombi 2 aka Zombie Flesh Eaters) 1979
Lucio Fulci’s zombie classic is quite graphic and, although I don’t enjoy this nearly as much as some of his giallo movies, this features the classic scene of a topless lady being chased underwater by a zombie who then fights and bites a shark. Seriously... how can this movie not be in anyone’s horror list with a cool scene like that in it? You can sift through the earth and find my review of this one here.

39. The Exorcist 1973
William Friedkin’s adaptation of Blatty’s best selling book is actually a pretty good horror movie with some really great sound design... sometimes using that old but effective technique of pitching a slow building cacophony and then bringing in a sudden, crashing silence. Still very effective.

38. The Omen 1976
Richard Donner’s franchise opener about a demonic, adopted baby is still the best in the series with some wonderful performances and, more importantly, Jerry Goldsmith’s wonderful score, for which he won his only oscar. My review of the five Omen movies to date can be found here.

37. Cat People 1942
Val Lewton produced this classic ‘is she or isn’t she’ horror directed by Jacques Tourneur. One of the scariest jump scares in cinema is created when the roar of a 'big cat' turns into the sound of air breaks on a bus screeching to a halt, thus giving future jump scares in horror movies the nickname ‘bus’. An expression which I believe is still in use today, to some extent.

36. Drag Me To Hell 2009
This Sam Raimi movie is pretty much an update of M. R. James ghost story Casting The Runes, which was turned into a TV production some years before (and reviewed by me here), not to mention also being the basis for another entry in this list. It’s basically the same ‘pass the curse on or you’ll be gobbled up by a demon at the end of the week’ plot but it’s so well done here and served with a large dose of black humour. Definitely worth a look. You can drag up my very old and short review of this film here.

35. Phantasm 1979
Don Coscarelli’s very weird but ultimately satisfying seventies movie has given us a couple of horror movie icons. One is The Tall Man, played in the Phantasm films by Angus Scrimm. The other one being the flying steel balls which use retractable razor blades to affix themselves to a victims head before a little drill comes out to mush up your brains.

34.  Gojira (aka Godzilla) 1954
Given his character arc over the years in Japan, it’s almost hard to remember when Godzilla was Tokyo’s nemesis, rather than its protector. This movie is actually still quite sobering in places and stars my favourite actor Takashi Shimura in a role (which he also reprised in the first sequel). Watch the Japanese original and not the butchered, rescored, dubbed, ‘with added Raymond Burr’ US version of the movie.

33. As Above So Below 2014
Absolutely beautiful, handheld, first person camera style horror movie set in the tunnels beneath Paris which lead into hell. The main characters are, unusually for this kind of movie, quite well drawn and I would love to see a sequel to this movie. Lovely sound design moments in here too and, coupled with some genuinely terrifying sequences, these elements all make this a winner for me. You can wander around in my review of this here.

32. Dracula Ad 1972 1972
One of my favourite Hammer movies... this one has a small role for the wonderful Caroline Munro and, furthermore, it has Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee battling in contemporary London. It’s groovy and, although not that many people rate this entry in the Hammer Dracula series, for me it’s definitely the best of the lot.

31. The Girl With All The Gifts 2016
This recent British movie, based on a well loved novel, is so wonderful and it feels like what would had happened if anyone had ever asked John Wyndham to write a zombie movie. Truly great performances and a great plot set up make this one of the greatest zombie ‘road movies’ ever made. A true classic of the sub-genre. My recent review of this is here.

30. Le Viol du Vampire 1968
Jean Rollin’s first feature is as surreal and erotic as most of his vampire movies. Some beautiful imagery and with such a confused, inscrutable plot (if there really is one) that it caused outrage, death threats and objects to be hurled at the screen on it premiere. It’s a movie that lives up to that violent reaction of a recommendation.

29. Vampyros Lesbos 1971
Jess Franco’s lesbian remake of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in all but name, is erotic and also has a lot going for it in terms of shot design and music. It also has the wonderful Soledad Miranda playing the film’s main antagonist. My review of this one is here.

28. The Descent 2005
A group of lady spelunkers meet a terrifying fate in an unknown cave system filled with hungry, humanoid creatures. The timing and jump scares in this are all pitch perfect. The original, 'sequel proof' UK ending is much more convincing than the US recut version... which allowed for that unsatisfying sequel to be made after all.

27. Kwaidan 1964
Beautifully shot, colourful and engrossing Japanese portmanteau film of ghost stories. Has a beautiful Toru Takemitsu score which, criminally, is still not commercially released on CD, as far as I’m aware. The UK Masters Of Cinema version is even longer and more complete than the already gorgeous, previously released Criterion version.

26. Kuroneko 1968
This film directed by Kaneto Shindo, who gave us the wonderful Onibaba, teaches us an important lesson and that lesson is... if you are going to get interested in a couple of ladies, make sure they were not previously raped to death and are now supernatural entities who can turn into cat demons at will. This is always a good thing to remember while out shopping.

25. The Earth Dies Screaming 1964
Quite short but quite wonderful low budget sci-fi horror involving the few humans left alive in the world and the invading aliens who they are trying to hide from. Some truly gob smackingly scary and suspenseful scenes in this. It's all so very English and "let's all have a cup o' tea" in it's attitude too... which is kinda cosy.

24. Paranormal Activity 2, 3, 4, and 6 (2010, 2011, 2012 & 2015)
Yeah, this is a bit of a cheat entry because I’ve included four in one. However, I like this series and, although I haven’t included the first here because it doesn’t quite scare like the majority of the others, that's also quite a good movie. Unfortunately, the real clunker in the series is the fifth one, subtitled The Marked Ones. Sad that this series seems to have stopped with the fantastic sixth movie. My review of the entire series can be found here, here, here, here, here and here.

23. Night of the Demon/Curse of the Demon 1957
I can never remember which of these two titles of this movie represents the slightly shorter, truncated American cut of this but it’s a great film and worth watching in its full version. The second on this list to be directed by Jacques Tourneur, this is also another adaptation of the M. R. James story Casting The Runes. My review of this movie is here.

22. Rabid 1977
Early Cronenberg classic which stars porn star Marilyn Chambers as she is taken over by a sex virus which turns everybody into mad, bloodthirsty creatures as the film heads towards its downbeat conclusion.

21. Nosferatu, A Symphony Of Horror 1922
This famous, unauthorised German adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula was, if memory serves, the first and probably only German Expressionist film to use actual location photography rather than just elaborately constructed sets. Still a bit of a classic and still worth a watch every few years. Fans of this one would also do well to check out a neat movie called Shadow Of The Vampire, about the  ‘fictional’ shooting of this movie.

20. Inferno 1980
The second of Dario Argento’s Three Mothers Trilogy, this shares a similarly saturated, Bavaesque colour palette as his earlier hit Suspiria. It is the epitome of an Argento film to the point where it’s almost a cliché in that it has... bad acting, a not so great script, wonderful music (by the late, great Keith Emmerson) and some astonishingly beautiful visuals. It’s also worth it for the 'third mother' sequence in the lecture theatre near the start of the movie...which has an absolutely enthralling, captivating and spooky atmosphere to it.

19. The Thing From Another World & John Carpenter’s The Thing 1951 and 1982
Okay, so out of the two of these, I still prefer the original Christian Nyby film, produced by Howard Hawks... but both his and Carpenter’s films are still out and out classics of the genre and, as it happens, are very different to each other in some ways. Both important films.

18. Quatermass And The Pit 1967
The scariest of the Quatermass productions, at least in terms of movies (the fourth serial is quite unsettling too). This one hooks up a truly great science fiction premise and also manages to tie it into supernatural shenanigans in a credible way. Probably the greatest Hammer movie ever made. You can unearth my review of this one here.

17. King Kong 1933
What a wonderful movie the original King Kong is. So much expression in Willis O Brien’s monster model that you will always feel sorry for him. A lost scene which was truly terrifying to the very first audiences was excised after previews and has, sadly, never turned up since. Apart from kick starting giant monster movies, this film is also very important because Max Steiner showed that a 'talking picture' could also have a non-diegetic musical score to enhance the film to its advantage. If it wasn’t for this movie they might never had figured that out... and John Williams would be out of a job. John Williams did, however, pay homage to this score musically in his score for the second Jurassic Park movie, The Lost World.

16. Rec and REC 2 2007 and 2009
The first two of the four REC films are found footage movies and are... truly pant wetting. Although the storyline doesn’t quite include zombies, the antagonists in this movie are, for all intents and purposes, the living dead and they’re not slow about going in for the kill either. Most zombie movies are just body count movies... these Spanish ones are intense, frightening affairs. The real deal. My review of the second movie is here.

15. It Follows 2014
Another variation on the pass a curse on legacy... this fairly recent addition to the genre is stylishly made, genuinely unsettling and has a truly cool, retro 1970/80s style electronic score similar to what you might find in a John Carpenter movie. I can’t believe there hasn’t been at least two sequels to this thing already. You can follow my original thoughts on this one here.

14. The Blair Witch Project 1999
This movie re-popularised the found footage horror movie and is pretty scary. It’s just as famous for its early viral internet marketing campaign, which was a bit of a ground breaker at the time. Love the ending to this movie. The recent sequel was reviewed by me here.

13. Dawn of the Dead 1978
Zombie King George Romero’s sequel, around a decade later, to his break out hit Night Of The Living Dead. The first movie spawned what we think of today as the modern zombie movie. This one does it all again but in colour and with the main protagonists holed up in a shopping mall. It has a few different cuts and all of them are worth watching to get a different vibe off them. It also has, in some versions, a biker gang versus zombie custard pie fight so... what’s not to love here?

12. Ringu 1998
Based on the novel of the same name, Hideo Nakata’s adaptation is another updated ‘pass the curse’ movie for the video age. Ironically, in the recent franchise crossing sequel Sadako Vs Kayako (reviewed by me here), the technology used to pass the curse in the original is now outdated enough that the characters have to find an old videotape machine in a junk shop. How quickly times change.

11. The Conjuring 2013
Based on the true life adventures of Ed and Lorraine Warren, this first entry in the franchise is an instant classic. Everybody in this movie is completely likeable and that makes the demonic horror element of the story all the more effective. The sequel, set locally to me in Enfield in the UK (which I reviewed here), was also great but not quite up there with this one. You can conjure up my review of this one here.

10. A L I E N 1979
Ridley Scott and Dan O Bannon’s scary sci-fi tale borrows liberally from a few sources and is notable for giving Swiss artist H. R. Giger international exposure and fame. Absolutely beautiful acting and an effective, if misused by the director, Jerry Goldsmith score make this one that everybody should see (and hear).

9. Suspiria 1977
The first of Dario Argento’s Three Mothers Trilogy is like a hypnagogic fairy tale with a saturated colour palette that, if I remember correctly, utilised the last technicolour camera left in Italy. An absolute classic and progressive rock group Goblin’s cool score is the icing on an already very rich cake. Upcoming remake not required.

8. The Shining 1980
Kubrick’s horror masterpiece is actually a little more enthralling than maestro Stephen King’s original novel... which was already pretty good. Imagery such as the twin girls, the carpet pattern of the Overlook Hotel and the elevator doors opening to release a hallway full of blood has become iconic and much referenced in the decades since the release of this one.

7. Son Of Frankenstein 1939
The third of the original seven Universal Frankenstein monster movies and the last to feature Boris Karloff playing the role of the monster, although he would return to the series later in a different role.
As far as I’m concerned this is the closest an American horror picture of that period got to showing German Expressionism on film, with its twisted sets looking like something found in the classic GE movie, The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari.

6. Werewolf Of London 1935
Universal’s first attempt at a wolfman movie, with Henry Hull as the titular creature, was a failure with audiences and it wasn't for another six years until they had another, more successful attempt with Lon Chaney Jr in The Wolfman (reviewed here). This movie, as far as I’m concerned, trumps any werewolf movies that came after it with its classic yet unreleased score, Star Trek rock formations (doubling for Tibet and decades before the crew of the Enterprise were filming in that location), Warner Oland and the hilarious 'two old ladies in the pub' scene. Absolutely brilliant stuff.

5. Creature From The Black Lagoon 1954
Such a good movie. I was lucky enough to catch a showing of this in 3D as a kid in the 1970s in a cinema in Soho and it’s been with me ever since. A film which never fails to weave a hypnotic spell and still has a lot of staying power to this day. My review of this walks among us here.

4. Invasion of the Bodysnatchers 1956 and 1978
I love all the Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers movies we’ve had over the years but these two are absolute masterpieces. I enjoy the first one a little more and it has some great lines in it like “A moment's sleep and the girl I loved was an inhuman enemy bent on my destruction.” The seventies version is chilly and creepy in a different way, with a more naturalistic acting style plugged into the time period and a much more downbeat ending to it... something which the director of the first version wasn’t allowed to get away with after test screenings before new bookend scenes were shot. Slyly, the ending of the first movie starring the original actor, does find itself into a scene very early on in the 1978 version.

3. The Bride Of Frankenstein 1935
Two things elevate this movie above anything else. Firstly there’s the amazing actress Elsa Lanchester, playing a dual role here as both Mary Shelley in a prologue and, later, the creature’s bride herself. The other stand out is Franz Waxman’s gorgeous score which was so well thought of that it was constantly being tracked into Universal’s serials such as Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars, Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe and The Phantom Creeps.

2. The Fog 1980
John Carpenter’s absolutely cool supernatural slasher about a team of marauding leper pirates coming back to wreak havoc on the town that done them wrong 100 years before. Features an outstanding performance by Adrienne Barbeau as the local DJ who has her radio station in a lighthouse. Also features Janet Leigh and her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, working together in the same film. Watch this alone at night with the lights off and the sound up to take in Carpenter’s masterpiece of a horror score that haunts the corners of your ears as you watch. My review is lurking here.

1. The Haunting 1963
The original, 1963 Robert Wise adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s novel, The Haunting Of Hill House, is just amazing and, even though I’ve seen it dozens of times, it still has the power to provoke an atmosphere of lurking dread. Nothing much happens visible to the camera but, when it isn’t happening in abundance, you certainly feel it. A true gem of a movie and still the greatest horror movie ever made.

So there you go. Those are my picks. I’m sure I’ll be regretting the missing stuff almost as soon as I publish this post. If you’ve not seen them and you have a love of the genre, then they are truly worth giving a watch at some point. Enjoy the darkness.

Creature From The Black Lagoon in 3D

Creature’s Pet

Creature From The Black Lagoon in 3D
USA 1954 Directed by Jack Arnold  
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

There’s a reason why I took my Universal Blu Ray box set around to a friend’s house and stayed the weekend just so I could watch one of my favourite Universal monster movies on her television. It was pretty much to relive, to a certain extent, a moment from my childhood. I’ve probably blogged this story before somewhere on NUTS4R2 but since this is one of the films in question, I think it’s worth repeating here...

When I was a youngster in the early to mid 1970s, when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, my parents took me into London to see a very special screening. It was in, I believe, a cinema in Piccadilly which was better known for screening “adult movies” and it definitely wasn’t the kind of place you’d expect to see this happening. The screening was a double bill of two movies projected in their original 3D format... Creature From The Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space. Now, you have to remember that this was the 1970s... 3D was a phenomenon pretty much unseen in cinemas since, maybe, the late 1950s? It was a few years before Star Wars would come out and make a splash on the art of cinema and a rare screening of a 3D movie was definitely something which was an education for this mere slip of a boy.

And this wasn’t the polaroid glasses of colour 3D movies or even the red and blue glasses that came out in the 1980s for certain 3D novelties... these were original prints from the 1950s and we had cardboard glasses with red and green surfaces in them. Now I have to say the fact that these were old movies certainly showed somewhat... It Came From Outer Space was pretty crystal clear but the Creature From The Black Lagoon print was kinda faded, from what I can remember. That didn’t necessarily make the movie lose its 3D but it was more of a struggle to watch without giving yourself a massive headache. But it really didn’t matter... I must have been the only kid in school who saw a 3D movie at that age (let alone two) and I’d always loved these kinds of movies anyway. I think it was the first time I’d seen either of these two, perhaps.

And that’s why, when I found out the basic set of Universal monster movies released on Blu Ray had an option to watch this one in 3D... I immediately rang up my friend and invited myself around. Now, I have to say that it’s ten times better here than I ever remember seeing it. Presented in its original widescreen aspect ratio, which means you don’t get to see the telephone poles rearing up above the undergrowth in the uncharted Amazon in certain scenes, the 3D on this one pops out like it’s not done in a long time and gives me a closer experience, I would suspect, to the movie if I’d seen it on it’s original run, some twenty years earlier than the screening I attended in the 1970s (for the record, I wasn’t born until 1968, people!). Certainly, the whole movie on this newish release looked crisper and more vibrant than I’ve ever seen it looking before and the lady I was watching it with was totally blown away by it, judging from her comments. And not, I hasten to add, on the quality of the 3D (although she did specifically mention how good that was compared to recent movies she’d seen in the format) but also the movie itself... which is nice.

So about the movie... I’ve always had a lot of love for the classic Universal monster movies and this one goes in the same niche as all the others... one of my “comfort horror movies” which I like to watch, not to be scared of (they really aren’t that scary these days) but as something I can sit back to and lazily drift along with, without having to think too hard. Being as it’s the first of the Creature From The Black Lagoon trilogy we’re talking about... I guess you could call it my creature comfort.

The film is based on a tall tale/urban myth that producer William Alland heard at a party one night about a ‘real’ half man/half fish creature and thought the concept would make a great horror movie. Alland went on to produce a lot of sci-fi tinted 1950s creature features but, if readers want to put a voice (at least) to the name, then he played the faceless voice of the interviewer who links all the pieces of Orson Welles classic movie Citizen Kane together... the newspaper reporter, hot on the trail to find out what Kane’s dying word meant.

Anyway, the film was scripted out, cast and produced in 3D and it was a fairly modest hit...  at least enough of a hit to spawn two sequels, Revenge Of The Creature (also originally released in 3D and a great follow up to the original) and The Creature Walks Among Us (which I think is the worst of the three, especially in terms of the monster make-up devised for this third outing).

The film starts off with the birth of the planet and explosions... well, it’s a 3D movie after all. They are constantly having to find things to chuck out of the screen at the audience. This is followed up with the discovery of a 3D ‘popping’ fossilised hand, a clawing living creature hand, the death of some explorers at the hands of the unseen creature and a new expedition to find the rest of the fossilised creature. This takes our fish scientist leading man, played by Richard Carlson, his boss played by Richard Denning and the object of both their affections, Carlson’s fiance played by Julie Adams, on a journey that takes them into close contact and unparallelled peril as they first try to catch the creature, who is fixated on Julie Adams’ character in much the same way that the titular giant ape was fixated on Fay Wray in King Kong. And after the reality of their situation becomes somewhat clearer, then they are just trying to escape it as the creature blocks off their exit from the lagoon which he calls his home.

While the film does trade in the whole beauty and the beast angle which set the cinema screens alight over twenty years earlier in King Kong, it doesn’t follow the same template where the creature is brought back to civilisation, escapes and goes on the rampage... they saved that one for the first sequel. That being said, the creature, beautifully designed by Millicent Patrick (mostly), certainly elicits the same kind of sympathy from the human audience that Kong did back in 1933. That’s one of the strengths of Creature From The Black Lagoon.

Another great strength of the movie would be the underwater sequences which are truly amazing and were the first of their kind in 3D. It was groundbreaking stuff and you can’t help but admire the amount of effort that went into these underwater shots... especially for the various actors in the creature suit. It was very much a case of shoot, air hose, shoot, air hose etc. A truly gruelling time from what I understand. However, when you see sequences like the “underwater ballet” as the creature swims below Julia Adams and her stunt double, mimicking the movements of the character just under her... and then gets bolder and touches her ankle... well, it’s totally worth all the effort and its a truly startling film, for its time.

The music in that particular scene is a little reminiscent of the two note motif John Williams used in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and one wonders if he was aware of that at the time. Certainly the music of this movie is excellent, produced as a patchwork by various composers (as was the norm for these kinds of productions) by the likes of Hans J. Salter, Frank Skinner and even a young Henry Mancini. I was particularly please when I watched it again this time around that my friend actually agreed that the music was pretty good and, seriously, the three note stinger theme for the creature, played over and over throughout the course of the picture, is definitely not going to be something you’re going to forget in a hurry. If you want to get a really faithful rerecording, miked in the right way, then you can grab a beautiful CD of some selected highlights from the score by clicking this link to the record label Monstrous Movie Music here.

The film is an absolute pleasure to watch every time and with character actors like Whit Bissell popping up, it’s one I’m never going to get tired of, especially when the design of the creature itself is so provocative and beautiful. And having this new 3D transfer finally makes it worth having the scene near the end when the terrible, terrible bat special effect pops out of the screen to startle our creature hunting crew... it doesn’t make the effect look any less cheap but, hey, at least now it’s serving its practical function once more.

Honestly, I can’t heap enough praise on this movie and, frankly, nor do I have to. If you like the movie or have enjoyed this review, there’s a big behemoth of a book currently available at the time of writing this review called The Creature Chronicles: Exploring The Black Lagoon Trilogy by Tom Weaver, David Schecter and Steve Kronenberg which can tell you all you’d ever want to know about this particular series of films. The book is available from amazon here (UK) and here (US) and my review of it is here. I’m pleased to say that I had some feedback on that particular review in an email from one of the writers and they seemed pretty pleased with what I had to say about it so, seriously, if you trust me and you like these kinds of movies, go check the book out for yourself.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about Creature From The Black Lagoon. A truly beautiful, black and white movie with a team of rugged scientists, a beautiful woman and a wonderful gill man at the heart of the story... all hanging together pretty well, very entertainingly performed and with a score as ear catching as Julie Adams is eye catching. Definitely a fine moment in horror history and one to watch if you’re into cinema in any way, shape or form. A genuine classic and always a pleasure to watch... in its 3D or 2D version.

The Creature Chronicles: Exploring the Black Lagoon Trilogy

Lagoon But Not Forgotten

The Creature Chronicles:
Exploring the Black Lagoon Trilogy
by Tom Weaver, David Schecter and Steve Kronenberg 
McFarland & Co Inc
ISBN: 978-0786494187

You know, I don’t read that many books on movies these days. Heck, with this busy blog to write and maintain I barely have enough time to read maybe more than 30 books a year, period. I usually manage to get to read 5 or 6 books about some aspect of movie production in a year but I have to say I’ve mostly been less than enamoured with the style of writing on most of them, these days. A lot of them somehow seem to get their facts wrong or completely muddled and I, as a casually interested party, am left wondering why I know more about certain aspects of a subject than a person who’s spent three or more years of their life researching a subject thoroughly. How do these little errors sneak in? I remember 20 odd years ago having to complain a few times at the old Museum Of Moving Image in London (MOMI - now sadly deceased) because some of their stuff was labelled up incorrectly... and that was just on the little bits about their displays that I personally knew about. There seems to be a curious carelessness in some of the research done on film over the past 20 or more years and I think that’s crazy.

Of course, the flip side of this is that, every now and again, there’s a release on the market waiting to be discovered which is a real gem of a book about movies where the writer gets pretty much everything right. These tomes are a real help to anyone with an interest in studying the subject, if you happen to luck into reading any of them. Tim Lucas’ epic work on Mario Bava, All The Colours Of The Dark, for instance, is the first and last word on that director, as far as I’m concerned. Or Kier-La Janisse’s invaluable book House Of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (reviewed by me here), which is a wonderful book to have and sparks the imagination to such an extent, movie wise, that it... you know... it leads to harder stuff (you will be trying to track down movies which really are hard to get hold of once you’ve read that particular book).

I’m pleased to say that Tom Weaver, David Schecter and Steve Kronenberg’s late 2014 publication The Creature Chronicles: Exploring the Black Lagoon Trilogy is just such a book. It’s well researched, engagingly written and, although you might at first think it’s fairly pricey (ok, yeah, it is), it’s more than value for money and there’s a deceptively large amount of information squeezed into its pages because, although generously illustrated with lots of rare stills from the production of the original trilogy - Creature From The Black Lagoon, Revenge Of The Creature and The Creature Walks Among Us - the type size is fairly economical and there’s absolutely loads of good stuff crammed in here.

The bulk of the book is written by Tom Weaver as he diligently takes you through the pre-production, production and post-production of each film. There are also contributions by Kronenberg, as various little factoids compiled into a chapter at the end of each film’s section and, between the two of them, Weaver and Kronenberg also give a good indication of how the movies were marketed and received by the general public at large. And then there’s David Schechter’s magnificent contributions. I’ve always been a bit of a fan of Schecter but... I’ll get back on about him a little way further down in this review.

So, after a forward by actress Julia Adams, an actress who most fans of the first movie will certainly know of, unless they’ve been overdosing on rotenone for any length of time, The Creature Chronicles: Exploring the Black Lagoon Trilogy starts right at the beginning with the genesis of the idea that William Alland, the producer who most people will recognise as the faceless, camera eye actor in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, used to get the ball rolling. Weaver then introduces us to fairly lengthy summaries of various different incarnations and drafts of the script until we get something a lot closer to the final movie. When he does this for the first film, it does start to get a little lengthy but it’s worth persisting with because the research is backed up by evidence and, where he’s had to piece together clues on certain aspects of the screenplays, he lets you know about it so you are absolutely sure that everything he has researched is 100% accurate. What helps all the way through with this is his brilliant, conversational writing style, with lots of asides for jokes and slanted observations... which is what I would more expect from Schecter (and we’ll get that too). So it’s all very easy to read and digest and the research informing it is fantastic.

He then follows up by taking you through the casting process for each film with lengthy information about the cast members, including the titular creature and its design, of course... then, as I said earlier, into production and finally through to post-production. Followed by the same method of presentation for the other two movies too.  All of it, of course, embellished with wonderful stories which have come straight from the mouths of the people he’s been talking to and interviewing for decades... and which he’s used for this book. Now, like anyone you are interviewing many decades after the fact, various people are going to contradict each other’s accounts of the situations that arise at times but, where that’s happened, he flags it up, shows all the angles and then takes his best and, I suspect very educated, guess at the truth behind some of the trickier issues.

And then there’s Schecter.

I’ve been reading David Schecter’s lengthy sleeve notes for years on the wonderful soundtracks he puts out for his label Monstrous Movie Music. He is an absolute expert at talking about the scores for these films, which he does in a chapter for each movie in this book, and he really should know... after all, his reconstruction and recording of some of the music of Creature From The Black Lagoon is easily the finest and most authentic on the market and his skill in researching and identifying various reused cues by various composers and also flagging up where certain cues had been reused in other films, is phenomenal. Not to mention his jokey humour, in the same kind of vein as Weaver’s... oh, wait, I said I’m not mentioning it. It was a real joy to read about the various contributions by composers such as Hans J. Salter, Frank Skinner, Henry Mancini etc and how they all fit into the mix with one or all of the films in the trilogy. This is fantastic stuff and, to be honest, the main reason why I wanted to grab a copy of this lengthy volume.

That being said, the whole book is a joy to read from cover to cover and I can’t imagine a more informed and thorough tome on the subject than the one we have here, written by people who obviously love their subject and are not afraid to show it. The wealth of material is absolutely amazing and a lot of it was new to me. I was getting really angry about some of the actors in the movies who had conducted themselves with less than stellar behaviour over the course of their lives but... well it was all a bit of an eye opener for me, I must say. There’s even a section in the book dealing with various attempted remakes of the film over the years, which were nipped in the bud before they got green lit. This involves a look at the scripts for various ventures including one written by the creator of Professor Bernard Quatermass himself, Nigel Kneale. It also shows you where and in what form these remakes ended up as when elements were recycled or evolved into other movies, which is very interesting to say the least.

And there you have it. The Creature Chronicles: Exploring the Black Lagoon Trilogy is easily one of the most valuable books on film I have in my library and an absolute treasure trove for people who, like me, have a special fondness for the Universal horror films of yesteryear. Particularly, for those who like the titular creature, who is pretty much the last of the studio’s big, mascot monsters (along with the Frankenstein monster, Dracula, the Wolfman and The Mummy). If you read just one new book on film this year, and you have a passion for the particular period being covered, then make it this one. It’s almost unputdownable (yeah, I just made that word up but it’s cool... deal with it) and it very much seems to be a labour of love for the three writers involved. Don’t let this one pass you by.

Mr. No Legs (aka The Amazing Mr. No Legs)

I Am Leg End

Mr. No Legs 
(aka The Amazing Mr. No Legs)
1979 USA
Directed by Ricou Browning
DVD Gear Region 0

Warning: Seriously! You care about spoilers on this?
Are you ever gonna watch it?

I went out of my way to turn up a copy of this movie to be able to review it for you here... and almost wish I hadn’t.

Almost.

Okay... so this appears to be directed by Ricou Browning, who some of my regular readers will recognise as being one of the two primary 'actors' in the gill-man costume in Universal’s iconic Creature From The Black Lagoon trilogy. It’s interesting, though, that if you follow the link from this movie into the IMDB entry for the man himself, you will not see this film listed there as being something he has directed. I suspect he wanted to get this one deleted off his CV, is my guess.

Having seen it now... I can understand why.

Now, when I first heard about this film... and it being a “wheelchair guy of death” movie... I was stunned and imagined it was kind of like a Death Wish meets Ironside kind of deal. I was wrong... but that premise maybe does need looking into at some point (Hollywood take note!). The movie also does put a strain on good taste (if you subscribe to such a ridiculous notion) and it’s really just not as good as its central gimmick sounds. And there are some easy identifiers as to why.

The thing is, this film has an actor called Ron Slinker who genuinely has no legs and out of all the cast in this film, he does a pretty good job actually... although this is the only movie he’s been in, according to the aforementioned IMDB. He isn’t however, in this single role at least, someone who you can sympathise with. In this film, which seems inappropriately titled to me, Mr. No Legs is actually a villain... and for pretty much all of the movie he is just a henchman. This has got to be an unusual phenomena in movie history I reckon. Can you imagine if they’d have named a Bond movie after the villain? We’d have movies like Oddjob or From Grant With Love. My only clue as to what the producers were thinking on this is that Slinker’s act is so much of a novelty that, compared to the rest of the film when he’s not on screen (and he really isn’t on screen all that much), the novelty of his character kind of carries the movie in some respects.

So, okay. Let me tell you about the one good thing in the movie, mostly represented by one scene in which the title character’s boss has sent some assassins to get rid of his insubordinate henchman, Mr. No Legs. This guy is muscular and dextrous enough to be able to jump out of his wheelchair, spin around on his arms and kung fu the bad guys to death (well... badder guys) while making silly Jim Kellyesque noises with his mouth (believe it or not, Jim Kelly actually turns up in a blink and you’ll miss him long shot cameo in this film... which I think may even be a stolen shot for all I know). Slinker also has his trusty wheelchair which is a rolling arsenal of death, since it has shotguns built into the arm rests and a handy ninja throwing star hidden on it, which Mr. No Legs uses in this particular scene.

So yeah. Antagonist with no legs, who does unnecessarily noisy kung fu, has shotguns built into his wheelchair and uses a ninja throwing star. And as brilliant and as mind blowing as that sounds... this still manages to be a drab and terrible movie.

The film features another longtime 50s horror/sci-fi B movie legend, John Agar, as the two main protagonist detective’s police captain but, although there are a few character actors like him scattered around here and there, the majority of the acting is pretty useless. Now some of that might be the very... well let’s just say 'naive' scripting. There’s stuff here which the heroes and villains alike get up to which seems to have no 'real world' impact or follow through and it’s kinda like the whole cast of characters are living in some kind of mythical screen land where the only real rules of cause and effect are dictated by whatever the writers want to happen... as opposed to the natural course of what would actually happen.

The framing is not particularly good either and, though the editing is certainly competent, some of the transitions between scenes seem like they’re not really transitions at all. In fact, they look like weird blackouts in the middle of a scene where the production ran out of money to film the rest of those scenes or just forgot to send the second unit out to do pick-up shots. I’m not saying hand on heart that is what happened, I just don’t know. But there does seem to be a heavy atmosphere of unexpected curtailment hanging over the majority of the movie. At least, that’s the way it seemed to me.

The film ends with what amounts to a massively long car chase which, bafflingly, mostly doesn’t feature the two main protagonists or, indeed, Mr. No Legs... up until the very last few minutes when our 'heroes' kinda cameo in their own denouement. It’s pretty unspectacular, consists mostly of long or medium shots with the occasionally baffling 'in car' shot cut in randomly for good measure but... frankly I was just waiting for it to be over to get to whatever happens next. Which turns out to be the end credits, as it happens.

Overall, while the “what the heck” premise and promise of this film were too tempting for me to resist ever being able to see it, I would have to say that I found the film lifeless, naive and ultimately just very dull. I don’t feel I could recommend this to anyone except those who are as seduced by the idea of the central character and his weaponised wheelchair of mayhem as I was... and only then, not without a severe warning and world of apology.