Peter Falk first starred with 'The Bloody Brood'

The Bloody Brood (1959)
Starring: Peter Falk, Jack Betts, Barbara Lord, Robert Christie, and Ron Hartmann
Director: Julian Roffmann
Steve's Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A small-time hood and drug dealer (Falk) becomes enamoured with the beatnik lifestyle and with nihilism. He concocts the murder of a messenger boy, as a sort of performance art piece to show how meaningless life and death are. However, he didn't count on the boy's brother (Betts) who is willing to go to any length to find the killer.

"The Bloody Brood" is a lowkey crime drama set against the backdrop of beatnik clubs and parties. It's a rare film in that it doesn't paint the counter-culture as inherently corrupt and evil, but instead shows outsiders coming in and ruining it, such as Falk's gangster character Niko, and his spineless partner-in-murder, Francis (Hartmann). Instead, the film shows the true beatniks to be into harmless "kicks", and as young people who feel alienated from society, such as Ellie Brook (Lord).

The star of this film is, in every way, Peter Falk. He plays his character with a sense of quiet menace that commands the attention of the viewers. It's easy to see how Niko manages to become the center of the beatnik group--it's not just his money, his access to party-pads, or his ability to spin pop-culture nihilistic philosophical discussions out of the tiniest of logic threads... it's his charisma. And Falk shows a charisma in this role as I've never seen him display in any other role. (And it's not that he is the only good actor in the film--everyone in the cast maes a good account of themselves.)

The film is also well photographed, taking full advantage of the black-and-white medium, as well as the beatnik settings. I found it interesting how the only soundtrack present was whatever music might be playing at a club or a party, but that this music still underscored the drama tremendously.

'Zombies Calling' is top-notch zombie comedy

Zombies Calling (Published by SLG Publishing, 2007)
Story and Art: Faith Erin Hicks
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

When a Canadian university is overrun by zombies, it's up to geeky horror film lover Joss to save herself and her roomates, armed only with the Rules of Survival gleaned a lifetime of watching zombie movies and a spork.

For about two decades, SLG Publishing (formerly Slave Labor Graphics) and its imprint Amaze Ink has been one of the American comic book industry's best-kept secrets. They have quietly been publishing high-quality, quirky comics and graphic novels that really deserve far more recognition and readership than they've ever gotten.

One such book is Faith Erin Hicks' hilarious "Zombies Calling", a breezy graphic novel that moves effortlessly between drama, humor and horror. It's a well-crafted book that entetains and amuses from the first page to the last. Writer/artist Hicks presents a cast of characters that are likeable and funny and that she gets us to care about. Like a good zombie movie, we want them to escape the brain-hungry hoards because we like them... and when Rule Two comes into play ("One person makes the ultimate sacrifice so the rest can live"), the book as as suspenseful as any zombie movie you've seen.

In fact, this book will remind you so strongly of "Zombieland" that you may think Hicks was copying that movie. The truth is, Hicks' book predates "Zombieland", and it's either proof that Great Minds Think Alike, or the writers of "Zombieland" are familiar with the well-kept secret that is SLG Publishing, and intimately familiar with "Zombies Calling".

If you're looking for some light Halloween reading, or perhaps a gift for a zombie lover in your life, you can't go wrong with "Zombies Calling".

Picture Perfect Wednesday: Nan Grey & the Great Pumpkin

'The Seventh Victim' has more emphasis on mood than story coherence

The Seventh Victim (1944)
Starring: Kim Hunter, Hugh Beaumont, Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, and Mary Newton
Director: Mark Robson
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Mary (Hunter) leaves school to find her older sister (Brooks), who has gone mysteriously missing after selling the family business. After a detective she hires is murdered, Mary turns to the man her sister was having an affair with (Conway) and her sister's husband (Beaumont) for help, but when it becomes apparent that her sister had become involved with a secretive cult of devil-worshipers, will there be anyone she can trust?

There is no question that "The Seventh Victim" is a highly unusual and artfully made horror film. Every scene, and nearly every frame, is full of horror, dread, and a mysterious dream-like quality. Almost every scene holds within it either a double-meaning, hidden meaning, or foreshadowing or illumination of a plot development that is so subtle that viewers may not catch it until they watch the film a second time. Like a dream, the film unfolds like a jumble of barely connected scenes and events, events that on the surface seem simple or perhaps a bit nonsensical, but each has a deeper meaning that ties them to one another and the overall theme of the movie.

And the theme of the film can best be described as "no one gets out alive." Although a simple mystery tale on the surface, the deeper thrust of the film is to present life as a journey that takes us from innocence, to corruption, and ultimately death.

Of course, I may be imposing something on the film that isn't actually there, because, like the dreams it seems to emulate, many of its elements are only half formed. The relationship between Mary and her sister remains murky to the viewer, despite Mary's insistence they are close; there are two romantic plots that are even more murky; the Satanic cult at the film's heart is a bizarre and ill-defined contradiction in that they abhor violence yet are committed to spreading death in the world; and it's never quite clear whether the Tom Conway character is a hero, villain, or something in between. That said, the fact that the first place Mary visits after leaving the all-girl's convent school she had been living at is a shady restaurant called Dante's, and the recurring themes of darkness and death throughout the movie provide more than ample support for my interpretation.

Like all of the films Val Lewton produced for RKO, "The Seventh Victim" is a remarkable and unique film. Although not as groundbreaking as "Cat People" or as intense as "The Body Snatcher", it is still fascinating to watch, especially because its vagueness of meaning and plot, and the way its various scenes don't seem to quite connect to one another, should be weaknesses yet become the very things that keep viewers engaged as chills run down their spines. It may not be the sort of film to show at a free-wheeling Halloween party, but anyone who claims to be a fan of "intelligent horror" needs to experience this movie.

Mohammed Monday: Mo Goes for Coffee

Today's cartoon originally appeared at Daily Campello Art News.

The reason for "Mohammed Mondays" can be found in this post.

'Werewolf By Night' is one of Marvel's best

Essential Werewolf By Night, Vol 1 (Marvel Comics, 2005)
Writers: Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Mike Friedrich, et.al.
Artists: Mike Ploog, Don Perlin, Tom Sutton, Gil Kane, et.al.
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

"Essential Werewolf By Night, Vol 1" presents 500 pages from a series that ranks among Marvel's finest output during the 1970s, and that presented some of the best chillers from the House of Idea's horror wave. It also happens to be one of the best bit of pulp-style werewolf fiction ever produced, be it in movies, books, or comics.

The star of the stories is Jack Russell, a typical, upper-middle class 18-year-old who doesn't like his apparently over-judgemental step-father, but otherwise gets along with this family, namely his mother and his sister Lissa. On his 18th birthday, Jack discovers a problem bigger than his step-father... a family curse manifests itself, and Jack turns into a werewolf. From then on, for at least three nights a month, under the full moon, Jack turns into a beast-man and stalks the hills and streets of Southern California.

"Werewolf By Night" is a series that has weathered the passage of time well. While we have some references to swingin' singles and the occasional hippy finds his way into the series, most of the stories draw upon traditional sources of horror stories (like the aforementioned werewolves, ancient curses, psychics, demons, mad scientists, and even legendary creatures like the Wendigo). Two of the very interesting aspects of the stories in the book is Jack's flirtation with the movie industry--it is set in Southern California, so how could he not find a job with a movie studio?--and the shadowy Committee, which is pops up every now and then to threaten Jack's family and his furry alter-ego. The series pulls off a great mix of horror, adventure, and pulp-fiction sensibility.

Another reason for the book's timelessness is that it is brimming with top-notch stories where the creators are at their finest. Mike Ploog does some of his best work ever during the first six tales in the book, and his art continues to be top-notch on every story he illustrates. Similarly, Tom Sutton and Gil Kane turn in excellent work on the stories they illustrate, with Sutton doing some of the very creepiest work of his illustrious career. (Only one or two of his "I, Vampire" stories a decade later would even come close to the terrifying atmosphere he brought to the "Terror Beneath the Earth" story.)

Similarly, the writers on the strip do some of their best work, with Len Wein and Gerry Conway bringing Jack and the supporting cast around him to fully realized, three-dimensional life. Even many of the villains that Jack fights are intriguing because they have depth to them. The series also manages to maintain a tight control of its direction and continuity, something that the contemporaneous book "Ghost Rider" failed to do. In fact, the only time the sense of internal consistency and believability of the series falters is during its cross-over with "Tomb of Dracula." (There are just a few too many coincidences in the story, and the background for Jack's curse doesn't seem to quite fit with what we've learned previously.) This misstep is minor, however, and it hardly detracts from the over all excellence of the work that everyone did on these comics. Heck, even the team-up between the Werewolf and Spider-Man is a great read, something which I wouldn't have thought likely!

"Essential Werewolf By Night, Vol.1" is a high watermark for comics in general. I recommend it highly for all comics fans. (Sadly, it appears to have gone out of print.)

Get Down Goblin!

Here's a black-and-white music video from the "so bad it's good [or at least amusing]" category, presented in anticipation of Halloween. Love it or hate it, you may find yourself humming song's refrain after you've watched it.

 

A rarely thought-of Halloween classic

October is here, and ghosts and goblins and creepy crawlies will soon be showing up all over the place. I'll be celebrating the Month of Monsters with reviews of some of the very best Creature Features to ever grace the silver screen all this month at Terror Titans--click here to check them out--and with a special series of Halloween-themed images on Picture Perfect Wednesdays, here.

However, I'm kicking it all off with one of the best yet often-overlooked Halloween-themed pictures I'm aware of.

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Starring: Cary Grant, Jane Adair, Josephine Hull, Peter Lorre, Raymond Massey, Pricilla Lane, and John Alexander
Director: Frank Capra
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

It's October 31, and on the very day celebrity theatre critic Mortimor Brewster (Grant) is to secretly marry his fiance (Lane), everything that can go wrong does go wrong. He discovers his spinster aunts (Adair and Hull) are serial killers who have been murdering lonely old men out of what they consider kindness, and that his uncle (Alexander), who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt, has been burying the bodies of in the Panama Canal he is burying in the basement. To make matters even worse, Mortimor's homicidal brother (Massey) shows up, along his unscrupulous plastic surgeon (Lorre) partner-in-crime.


"Arsenic and Old Lace" is one of the best comedies ever made. It's a dark screwball comedy that's driven by its sharp, witty dialogue and characters so loveable you forgive them for being insane serial killers.

Technically, the film is also a masterpiece of direction and staging. The multi-layered routines that take place at several points in the film are gut-busting hilarious, with the one where Grant is describing a bad play he once reviewed to Lorre, while the action of the plot he is relating unfolds behind him. It's even more spectacular the way the film hits the ground running and never stops to catch its breath until the final, snicker-worthy scene. It also doesn't let the audience catch their breath, but keeps viewers giggling and laughing as the film's pace grows more and more frenetic.

Everyone in the cast is perfect, with the interplay between Grant and the two murderous little old ladies--with Grant becoming increasingly agitated and panicky, and Adair & Hull growing increasingly confused because they see nothing wrong in what they do--being particularly hilarious. In fact, Grant's comic timing was probably never more perfect than in this film, and that even includes the one I rank as my favorite comedy starring him, "Bringing Up Baby".

Special mention also needs to go to Lorre, who mumbles his way through his part with hilarious, drunken obliviousness; and to Massey, who manages to be funny and menacing at the same time, in his Boris Karloff-spoofing role.

With its October 31 setting, its dark subject matter, its intelligent script, its perfect staging, and top-notch performances by some great actors, "Arsenic and Old Lace" is great Halloween viewing no matter what sort of movies you're into. (I don't think it makes for good party viewing/background noise, as it's a film that deserves and requires your attention, but it's a definate must-see.)