Picture Perfect Wednesday: Two Faces of Vampirella

One of the most longest lasting icons of horror is the comic book character Vampirella. She may have fallen on hard times of late--with publisher Harris instituting all sorts of arbitrary changes in a desperate attempt to reverse the trend of ever-dwindling sales figures--but some things stay pretty much the same.

Here's a drawing of Vampirella by the first artist to ever paint her 40 years ago, for the cover of "Vampirella" issue #1 in 1969, Frank Frazetta.


And here's a drawing by one of the artist who has painted some of the most celebrated modern portraits of her, Joe Jusko.



Happy 40th birthday, Vampirella! You don't look a day over 28!

'X the Unknown' is the dirtiest radioactive monster of all!

X: The Unknown (1956)
Starring: Dean Jagger, Leo McKern, Michael Ripper, Edward Chapman, John Harvey, William Lucas, Ian MacNaughton, and Anthony Newley
Directors: Leslie Norman and Joseph Losey
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

A routine military exercise on the Scottish moors brings draws forth a mysterious, formless mud-creature from the depths of the Earth. Research scientist Adam Royston (Jagger) and an assortment of law enforcement and military personnel work to discover the nature of the creature and figure out how to stop it, even as it gains strength and claims evermore victims.


"X: The Unknown" is a rarely seen and underrated monster movie from Hammer Films. Like so many horror/sci-fi films from the 1950, it features a radioactivity-driven creature that seems destined to destroy the world. The creature here is particularly well-conceived, particularly in light of the fact it's perfect for the limited effects budget and technology that the filmmakers were working with.

This is a well-crafted movie, where everyone both in front of the camera and behind it are doing their very best work. The script is suspenseful and perfectly paced, the creature is well-conceived and perfect for a film of limited budget, and the various model and special effects shots are better looking than in films with five times the budget. The actors give top-of-the-line, perfectly believable performances Heck, even James Bernard, whose music I often find overblown and inappropriately loud at all the wrong times, provided a score that works perfectly throughout the movie.

"X: The Unknown" is a film I recommend highly to lovers of 1950s sci-fi.

'Things Happen at Night' is best viewed as sleep aid

Things Happen at Night (1947)
Starring: Gordon Harker, Alfred Drayton, and Gwynneth Vaughan
Director: Francis Searle
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

When his daughter (Vaughan) becomes the conduit for a fire-starting poltergeist, Mr. Prescott (Drayton) teams with an insurance adjuster (Harker) and a paranormal investigator to annoy the spirit and drive it out.

"Things Happen at Night" is a weak attempt at a horror comedy. It features a nice cast of actors who labor mightily with the bad script, but who ultimately can't overcome the material. There's very little reason to watch this film unless you're the world's biggest fan of comedian Gordon Harker... or you're looking for a drug-free sleep aid.

(I came across this film in the "Dark Crimes" 50-movie collection, and it was the odd-film-out, with its supernatural overtones in a set of crime dramas and film noir-type pieces.)


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Dracula returns to menace small-town America

The Return of Dracula (aka "The Curse of Dracula" and "The Incredible Vanishing Man") (1958)
Starring: Francis Lederer, Norma Eberhardt, Ray Stricklyn, John Wyngraf, Virginia Vincent and Gage Clarke
Director: Paul Landres
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Dracula (Lederer) escapes to America by murdering a Czech artist and assuming his identity. He settles in a small California town and sets his sights on corrupting pure-hearted young girls and turning them into vampires.


"The Return of Dracula" is a vampire movie that rises far above its low budget thanks to a good script, a decent cast, and some clever touches on the part of the director. Francis Lederer (who plays Dracula) may not be a Dracula in the class of Christopher Lee or Bela Lugosi, but he holds his own here. He's comparable to--and even a little better than--Lon Chaney Jr.

While one is always hardpressed to describe a vampire movie as "realistic", this one comes close. The characters are all very real-seeming and performed with great skill by the actors. Particularly noteworthy are the high-school girlfriend/girlfriend characters of Tim and Rachel (portrayed by Norma Eberhardt and Ray Stricklyn), as their relationship and behavior reminded me of my own high school love-life... either things were really racy in this movie, my life was really tame in the 1980s, or things haven't change that much for active kids in the real world, despite what pop culture and politicians would have us believe. These characters seem very real throughout the picture, up and including the way in which they ultimately come face-to-face with the full might of the vampire.


The film also has several unexpected moments of artful creepiness, including one of the spookiest vampire seduction scenes ever filmed. Dracula's first victim is Jennie, a sick blind girl (Virginia Vincent) who can see him in her mind's eye as he corrupts her and devours her soul. Jennie also gets one of the creepiest vampire ressurection scenes ever filmed, as well as a very neat death scene. (The cinematography in this movie is its weakest element, but there is a shot of the vampiric Jennie flitting through the graveyard that's very beautiful. Jennie's death-by-stake moments later is also very startling, due to a bit of Hollywood trickery. I won't go into details, because the effect is one that has to be unexpected for it to have its full and starteling impact.)

Like in most vampire movies, the demise of the master vampire is somewhat anti-climactic, but Dracula's death in this film is not as embarrassing as some of the deaths he suffered in various Hammer flicks. At least here he is done in partially by his own evil deeds instead of by complete accident (like when Dracula dies by thorn bush in "The Satanic Rites of Dracula").

If you're a fan of classic horror films, I recommend you seek out "The Return of Dracula". Francis Lederer may not have been the best choice to play Dracula, but the great supporting cast makes up for his slight shortcomings.

'The Devil Bat' is one of Lugosi's best

The Devil Bat (aka "Killer Bats") (1942)
Starring: Bela Lugosi, Dave O'Brien, Suzanne Kaaren, and Donald Kerr
Director: Jean Yarborough
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Everyone loves the ever-smiling chemist Dr. Paul Carruthers (Lugosi), especially the investors in the cosmetics company he's been creating best-selling colognes and perfumes for. When the company owners make what they feel is a nice gesture to reward Carruthers' many years of service, he feels like he's been insulted and he decides to kill his bosses and their entire family. Revealing that he's as talented a mad scientist as he is a chemist, Carruthers transforms otherwise harmless bats into giant hunter-killers that hone in on a special cologne that he's given to his victims for "testing." Will Carruthers get away with his bloody schemes, or will a lazy tabloid reporter (O'Brien) and his photographer (Kerr) manage to stumble their way to the truth?


That's a long summary, but "The Devil Bat" is pretty convoluted. In fact, it's so convoluted that it's one of those films that you need to just watch without thinking too hard, particularly when it comes to Paul Carruthers, his killer bats, and his rambler house with its secret Mad Scientiest Lab and tower for convenient bat launches.

The film's got a decent cast (with Lugosi being particularly fun to watch) a story with plenty of humor (both intentional and unintentional), and a pace that is just fast enough to keep the viewers interested. It's by no means a masterpiece, and its low, low budget is painfully visible in some of the sets (although the bat effects are better than I expected), but it's a fun bit of viewing if you enjoy Bela Lugosi and the nonsense breed of plup fiction-style sci-fi/horror flicks that filled the B-feature slots at movie houses in the 30s and 40s.

By the way, I highly recommend getting the DVD version of the film that I've linked to below. Not because I recommend watching colorized classics, but because I think it's fascinating to compare a colorized version with the black-and-white version. Invariably, you will discover that colorizing saps a film of life rather than enhances it. (I used to think that it was only dramas that were ruined by colorization. Then I picked up the disc containing both the colorized version and original version of "My Man Godfrey." Actually, watching both versions close together changed my mind completely.)

Not much mummy action in this early horror film.

The Eyes of the Mummy (1918)
Starring: Pola Negri, Harry Leidtke, Emil Jannings and Max Laurence
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Albert Wendland (Leidtke) rescues Ma (Negri) from Radu (Jannings), a maniac who kidnapped her and who has been passing her off as a living mummy in an Egyptian tomb. The girl finds fame and fortune as the artist's model and a cabaret dancer in a major European city. However, Radu pursues them, intent on claiming what is his through any means necessary.



"The Eyes of the Mummy" has been touted by some as the first mummy movie. I can't help but wonder if those commentators actually bothered watching it, because there is even less mummy action here than there is in Universal's 1932 "The Mummy" and no supernatural element at all.

Or is there?

There are hints in the film that Radu is more than just a scammer, kidnapper and rapist. In one scene, he seems to appear in spirit-form in Ma's bedroom, and he later commands her through nothing more than the power of his mind. What might these scenes mean?

A generous and imaginative viewer could take these elements and combine them with the story Ma tells for having been dragged from the riverbank by Radu and waking up in the tomb as proof that the spirit of an ancient Egyptian queen dwells within the girl, brought back to life by Radu through magic--her being dragged away from the river was her being brought back from the spirit world to this one.

A less-generous viewer might say that the movie is the cinematic equvilent of an inkblot and little more than a poorly defined melodrama that features a loosely stitched-together selection of gothic fiction elements tossed in with no more thought beyond "well, this'll creep 'em out!"

Whatever the case, "The Eyes of the Mummy" is an unevenly paced movie that never quite manages to invoke enough horror or suspense to make it truly entertaining; some scenes become better when you run the DVD at 2x speed, a hidden advantage to silent movies. The acting is decent (even if you're one of the people who can't stand the acting styles of early cinema) and stars Emil Jannings and Pola Negri are especially fun to watch. Negri's exotic dances are more snicker-inducing to modern viewers than they are sexy, but she shows herself to be both a good actress, dancer and stunt woman--watch for that fall down the stairs near the end of the movie!

Lugosi and forgotten comedy team monkey around in 'The Gorilla'

The Gorilla (1939)
Starring: The Ritz Brothers, Lionel Atwill, Anita Louise, Bela Lugosi, Patsy Kelly, and Edward Norris
Director: Alan Dwan
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

When millionaire Walter Stevens (Atwill) receives a death threat from a vicious murderer and extortionist known as The Gorilla on the very eve his beautiful niece Norma (Louise) and her boyfriend (Norris) are returning to the States, he hires a trio of private detectives (The Ritz Brothers) to protect him and his family. Unfortunately, these detectives couldn't find their way around a well-lit, empty room, so things get hairy when The Gorilla strikes. They get even hairier when a REAL gorilla invades the house.



When I first put this movie in my DVD player, the opening credits took me by surprise. These days, it is being marketed as a Bela Lugosi movie (in so far as it was included in a ten-movie pack of Lugosi films), but when it was first released, the star attraction was a comedy team known as the Ritz Brothers and it was a vehicle first and foremost for them.

As a comedy, "The Gorilla" doesn't quite work, and it works even less as an intended showcase for the Ritz Brothers. Their "stupid detectives" schtick quickly becomes more annoying than funny, and the funniest bits are actualy performed by Patsy Kelly (the household's maid who wants nothing more than to quit) and Bela Lugosi as a creepy butler who seems to have the power to appear and dissapear at will. (This seems to be a minor theme in Lugosi flicks, as he plays a character with a similar talent in "Black Dragons"). It works when played for laughs, like it is here, but it is incredibly annoying when it is featured in a serious drama, like the awful "Black Dragons" was intended as.

As a mystery, the film is somewhat more entertaining. If one can tolerate the antics of the Ritz Brothers, there's actually a clever little story with some neat twists and turns and a Big Reveal that is actually somewhat surprising. (The fact that the gorilla suit featured is better than aveage also helps.)

Of primary interest, I think, is the fact that this film has ended up as an exhibit of the fleeting nature of fame. As mentioned above, I was a bit surprised when I learned this film was a vehicle for a comedy team I'd never even heard of. I did some research, and it seems that the Ritz Brothers may have bene more popular than the Marx Brothers at one time...yet the former are totally forgotten. Similarly, Lugosi and Atwill were big names in their day, but they too have sunken into obsurity. (Hardcore horror fans know Lugosi because he did "Dracula", but Atwill? Only real film geeks have even the slightest inkling about the full output of either actor. Yet, in the 30s and 40s, their names were major draws.)

"The Gorilla" is also worth watching because viewers will once again see that Lugosi was a far better comedic actor than he has ever been given credit for. His part is small here, but he shows perfect comedic timing in every scene he's in. It really is too bad that his career track was such that he didn't get to make more comedies.

In final analysis, howevery, "The Gorilla" is really only of interest to the biggest movie geeks among us... and possibly the truly hardcore fans of Bela Lugosi's work. The rest can safely pass this one by; it's not particularly bad, but it's also not very noteworthy.

(As for the Ritz Brothers, it seems their Main Funny was to be found in musical routines... of which they do none in "The Gorilla". Maybe this film is a case of the wrong vehicle for a particular group of performers. If the Ritz Brothers really were any good, it's a shame their movie legacy doesn't reflect that. This was just one or two films they starred in.)

Does evil or madness move 'The Blancheville Monster'?

The Blancheville Monster (aka "Horror") (1963) Starring: Gerard Tichy, Joan Hills, Leo Anchorez, Richard Davis and Helga Line Director: Alberto De Martino Rating: Six of Ten Stars A young noblewoman (Hills) returns to her family estate to find her older brother (Tichy) has replaced all the familiar servants with newcomers, including a suspicious new family doctor (Anchorez). She soon learns that her brother is attempting to hide the fact their father has gone insane and is now bent on murdering his own daugther before she turns 21 in a few days. Can her lover (Davis) stop the madman, or uncover the even darker truths about the Blancheville family before it is too late? "The Blancheville Monster" is a straight-forward gothic romance with horror overtones and just enough twists to keep it interesting. Fans of Edgar Allen Poe stories like "The Oblong Box" (read it here ) and Roger Corman films like "The Terror" (review here) and "The Pit and the Pendulum (review here) will find this film enjoyable. However, it is far from perfect, as it suffers from a great deal of padding in the form of long walks through the haunted grounds of the Blancheville estate. I'm giving the film a generous Six Rating, based to a large extent on the build-up to the end. I thought i had the story all figured out before the halfway mark, but I wasn't quite right. While the twist was nothing earthshattering, it was clever enough and in perfect keeping with the genre and everything that had happened previously in the film.

One of the better 'bad monster movies' you'll ever laugh at

Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)
Starring: Anthony Carbone, Robert Towne, and Betsy Jones-Moreland
Director: Roger Corman
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

When a general flees Castro's revolution with most of the Cuban treasury, he hires notorious gangster Renzo Capetto (Carbone) to bring him and his aides to safety. Capetto intends to kill his charges and keep the gold for himself, but his plans go awry thanks to a tough-talking U.S. government agent who has infiltrated his gang (Towne), persistant bearded agents of Castro, and a sea-creature that starts killing before Capetto can get around to it.


I came to this movie without any idea of what to expect other than a made-on-the-cheap monster movie. But even before the pre-credit sequence--where a man having his tennis shoes shined and then is chased by killer beatnicks with murderous intent--I knew I was in for something strange. When the tough-talking, film-noir narrator introduced hims as having infiltrated Capetto's gang undercover, but assured us that his "real name is Agent XK150" I realized that I was in for a comedy ala "Little Shope of Horrors" or "A Bucket of Blood."

"The Creature from the Haunted Sea" is a strange, nonsensical litle movie that is performed by a collection of decent to average no-name actors who spout bizarre lines with great conviction and zeal. The movie spoofs monster flicks, spy flicks, pirate movies, gangster movies, and probably one or two genres I missed. The film is very disjoined, and I'm not sure this is intentional at times, but I loved the sort of freewheeling nature of the film and the way it kept getting stranger and stranger as it progressed. (It could have done with a few more appearances by the title creature--despite the utterly awful and giggle-inspiring design)and by the hot chicks living on the island where our cast of weirdos get stranded, though.)

This is by no means a great movie, but it has a certain charm about it. It is included in a wide range of different DVD multi-packs, and its presence should be at least partly a reason to pick one up. It's a strange little film that brighten the proceedings at any Bad Movie Party.

I've placed a link to an edition that includes both the original film and a colorized version, because I am increasingly fascinated by the way films are changed--usually not for the better--when the colorization process is applied. Don't get me wrong, I am NOT some purist that will rattle on about the integrity of a director's vision--I will put good money on many directors during the 1950s and 1960s shooting in black and white because their budgets didn't allow for color film--but most directors and their cinematographers understood how to make the most out of the black and white medium and their scenes are lit and filmed to make the most of it. In the vast majority of cases, colorization drains visual excitement from a film rather than adding to it.

Then again, I'm a guy who enjoys black and white movies so I could be biased. Anyone else have thoughts on the matter? Especially if you've seen the colorzied version of "Creature from the Haunted Sea"?)

The Addams Family was never as creepy as this father/daugher duo

Mark of the Vampire (aka "Vampires of Prague") (1935)
Starring: Lionel Barrymore, Lionel Atwill, Elizabeth Allen, Jean Hersholt, Henry Wadsworth, Donald Meek, Bela Lugosi, Caroll Borland, and Holmes Herbert
Director: Tod Browning
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When a local nobleman (Herbert) is found dead, his body completely drained of blood, the villagers are certain that the vampires Count Mora (Lugosi) and his daughter Luna (Borland) have returned to spread more evil. However, Police Inspector Neumann (Atwill) refuses to believe in such superstitious nonsense as vampires--it IS after all 1935--and he searches for a more down-to-earth culprit. But when the nobleman's daugther (Allen) and her fiance (Wadsworth) come under attack, and the vampires being to menace the home of Baron Zinden (Hersholt), Neumann has to reconsider his sceptical ways and joins forces with the Baron and occult expert Professor Zelin (Barrymore) to destroy the vampires.


"Mark of the Vampire" is a fairly lighthearted mystery/horror movie, with some genuine chills thrown in for good measure. (The scene with Luna Mora winging her way across the vampire gathering while turning from bat into human is creepy as all get-out. In fact, every scene featuring Luna is creepy as all get-out!)

The actors here all to a good job, and the sets and lighting are all well-done. Although Lugosi has top-billing here, he really doesn't do much. He has a nice transformation scene after which he chases some terrified servants down a hallway, and his closing scene is hilariously self-referential, but otherwise all he does is stand around and grimmace. Borland even gets to be scarier than Lugosi.

The overall story isn't anything surprising, even by 1935 standards, but the final-act twist was not one that I saw coming. Its presence was welcomed, and it actually made the movie far more entertaining for me. I would have liked to have gotten a bit more background on the Moras--why does the Count have a bullet wound in his head?--but that may have overburdened the simple story that is already having to bear the above-mentioned twist.

(Speaking of that twist, it probably wasn't all that surprising to the audiences in 1935. It was standard in those days to provide down-to-earth explanations of anything that appeared supernatural in a film. The Lugosi-starring and Browning-directed "Dracula" from 1931 was the first movie to break that standard.)

"Mark of the Vampire" isn't the greatest of the 1930s thrillers, but it's still worthwhile viewing. And it's one of the six movies included in the "Hollywood Legends of Horror" DVD collection, which does include several must-see classics like The Mask of Fu Manchu and Mad Love.