Fear and Film: A Horror Retrospective- 1920's

And we’re back again! Its November now, but why quit a good thing? This entry was a little more difficult, I ended up watching three different films for it. I’ll talk really quickly about the other two, but our main focus will be The Phantom of the Opera, starring Lon Chaney Sr., from 1925. This will be both the first with a ‘feature length’ runtime, and the first Hollywood film I’ve reviewed for this project. So let’s get to it!

First, a couple of quick words on the other two movies I watched. The first one was an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher from 1928. This was a short film at 13 minutes, and it was also super trippy (or avant-garde, as the article for it says). It was hard to discern the story when watching it, because you weren’t sure what was supposed to by symbolic and what was real. It did have a fascinating visual style with distortions of the screen from shooting through a prism, to M. C. Escher-esque set design, and no intertitles to explain what’s going on. It’s an absolutely fascinating film to watch, but I didn’t feel like I had enough to make a full review, so I tried something else.

The second movie I watched was a Swedish film called Körkarlen (The Phantom Carriage in English) from 1921. I was lucky enough to find a version with English captions translating the intertitles, so I thought I’d give it a try. And it was really good. I’d honestly recommend seeing it because I thought it was an excellently-made movie and has some really neat special effects. The acting was also great and at a couple of points I got kind of emotional. So why am I not reviewing this one fully? Well, watching it, it never really came off as a horror movie (even though it’s in my list of horror films for the decade). It has some supernatural/horror elements, but the story is honestly rather akin to A Christmas Carol or It’s a Wonderful Life and I kept waiting for the horror shoe to drop and it just never really did. On the plus side, it’s my second favorite version of this type of story (the first of course being The Muppet’s Christmas Carol). I just couldn’t review it as a horror film.
Finally, I sat down and watched The Phantom of the Opera and this is the one we’re going to talk about in depth. I watched the original 1925 version of the film rather than the 1929 re-edit. There is also a version with partial sound from 1930 (the film is lost but the sounds discs have survived). There was also seventeen minutes of colorized footage, but only part of that is still around. The version I watched was all in black and white and silent, which was fine. It would have been cool to see the color part that is still available, but other than novelty it really wouldn’t change things all that much.

The story of the Phantom pretty well-known in pop culture, so I don’t want to dwell too much on story. It is apparently quite faithful to the original novel (which I haven’t read but should), especially in its depiction of the Phantom’s appearance.

This appearance was created by star Lon Chaney Sr., who did his own makeup for roles, and was apparently kept secret until the film’s release at which time it scared the ever-loving crap out of people. And it’s effective. You can believe this guy was ostracized from society for appearance alone and that’s why he lives in the caverns under the opera house. For comparison, I had a look at some of the other Phantoms without their masks, and it was interesting. I don’t know why Gerard Butler’s Phantom is even bothering with the mask for that bad sunburn he’s got over his one eye; at least Robert Englund’s brought a bit of his Freddy look to it. Either way, Chaney’s Phantom is iconic, and part of that is his amazing makeup work.

Let’s talk about the acting. I’ve come to enjoy the acting of these silent films, and I’m going to miss them since from here on out we’re going to be into ‘talkies’. Phantom was no exception to that. The pantomime, exaggerated style of the silent era is quite different from what I’m used to and I enjoy expressiveness. Again, Lon Chaney Sr.’s acting ability is every bit as impressive as his makeup skills, giving the Phantom a melancholy and gravitas that almost makes you feel for him despite his obsessive perusal of Christine and his willingness to do whatever necessary to get what he wants. Christine herself, played by Mary Philbin, is stuck in a difficult situation, yet is surprisingly resourceful in trying to help her lover Raoul (Norman Kerry) get her away from the Phantom. The rest of the cast is just as good, and indeed the cast itself is huge, with hundreds (maybe thousands) of extras giving life to Paris. The sheer number and quality of all those costumes is staggering, considering most of them are suits/gowns for wearing to the opera and costumes for the Bal Masque party scene.

To that end, the sets are also amazing. The Paris Opera House in the film is a soundstage, which is crazy when you look at the size and complexity of that set alone. Even crazier? That soundstage wasn’t fully dissembled and demolished until 2014, at which time any remaining parts of the Opera House set were preserved and moved.

To be honest, I don’t even know what else to say about this movie. It’s excellent, go watch it. It would do it better justice than listen to me ramble on about it anymore.

So in conclusion, the 1920’s were an interesting decade for this project. I watched three movies, and thought highly enough of all of them to recommend. Whether you’re interested in the surreal, the dramatic, or the horror, I guess I have something for everyone this time. Thanks for coming around again and talking horror films and we’ll see you next time when we get into the advent of sound!

Watch The Fall of the House of Usher HERE
Watch Körkarlen HERE
Watch The Phantom of the Opera (1925) HERE

Fear and Film: A Horror Retrospective 1910's

Hey, everyone, back again and looking at horror films. Also kicking myself for doing a project like this while also armpit-deep in Halloween, but that’s neither here nor there. Let’s instead move into 1912 and talk about one of the two versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde made during this decade. Let’s get to it.

Now, as I said above, this is the first of two versions of this same story. I opted for the 1912 version over the one made the next year because to be honest, I just found I liked this one better. The 1913 film is fine, but it almost seems too long (which sounds strange to say for a film with a 26 minute runtime), since they don’t have a whole lot of variety in what Hyde does. The second thing was I liked actor playing Jekyll/Hyde in the 1912 one better. In the later version, the way he bounces and shuffles around as Hyde I found too comically distracting, and not menacing at all. But enough about the comparisons, let’s talk about the film at hand. 

The first thing I have to say I really enjoyed about this movie was the music, and how it was used to convey the dichotomy between Jekyll and Hyde. Jekyll’s music is calm and sedate, almost dreamy. Hyde’s, on the other hand, is mischievous in an almost malevolent way. It was very striking and I found it fascinating to watch how it emphasized the personalities of both characters. It really adds to the film and heightens the impact of the action.  

The acting is very good, and as I said above, I preferred this version of Hyde over the other. In the 1913 film it was too over-the-top, and I didn’t get the same sense of menace like I did here. I mean, this Hyde straight up kills a man (his fiancée’s father no less!) after attacking her first. This is a huge contrast from the calm, kind Jekyll we see with her only a moment before. I didn’t think that anyone was hugely over-acting, either. They played this film totally straight without any camp. I really felt for the guy when things started going haywire and his evil alter-ego started taking over and wrecking things. Right after the police officer leaves when looking for Hyde, you see a brief shot where Jekyll drops down to one knee and just has this ‘what have I done’ moment. Then, at the end, you see even Hyde in a moment of desperation as his time has run out; he’s destroyed the laboratory and the police are breaking down the door. So then we see him find and take the vial of poison, and end to the madness for Jekyll and one last middle-finger to the authorities for Hyde.   

The transformations themselves are done mostly with cuts, and look good, and I like the way they really made Hyde look so much different from Jekyll. The ratty, opposite-color hair, the blacked-out teeth, the buggy eyes and big eyebrows, and even the way he holds his hands in a gnarled way really emphasize Hyde’s personality and his contrast from Jekyll. 

So, in conclusion, I really enjoyed 1912’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It’s only 12 minutes long, but it’s a very enjoyable film and a really good interpretation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella. I definitely recommend it. Next time we’re going to be heading into the 1920’s, so I hope you’ll join me then! Until next time!    

Watch the film HERE

Watch the 1913 version HERE

Fear and Film: A Horror Retrospective- 1900’s

And we’re back! Sorry for the delay, but now we’re back to talk horror again! Today we are jumping to 1909 and looking at D.W Griffith’s The Sealed Room in our second installment of Fear and Film.

In watching The Sealed Room, you immediately find a number of differences from our earlier entry, The Haunted Castle. The first is that there is a much larger cast in this film, with a number of background people that, while not necessarily impacting the story, give the illusion of there being many inhabitants in the castle and serving as the retinue for the king and as maids for his consort. We have also upped our runtime from three to just over eleven minutes, allowing us time for a more in-depth story. It also delivers the horror aspect of the story in a different way from The Haunted Castle, but in a way that is similar even to us today. So let’s have a look.

The first thing I noticed when trying to decide which movie to choose from this decade was that descriptions for The Sealed Room compared it to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado. As someone who has been known to enjoy the works of Poe, I was intrigued, which led me to watch it. As I said above, the horror is done in a different, more realistic way than in The Haunted Castle, which relied on its special effects to bring you supernatural creatures that provide the fright. Here, the horror comes from much more mundane, human actions and doesn’t really come into play until the end. I thought this was a really interesting change between the two, and since I want to highlight different kinds of films within the genre, it seemed perfect.

The film depicts a king who has ordered constructed a special room for his consort that has only one door and no windows. When the king and his retinue leave, she and the court’s minstrel make themselves comfortable in the room. The king finds this out and, in a fit of anger, (spoilers, I guess?) has masons wall up the only door and mocks the two as they suffocate on the other side of the wall. So the Amontillado comparisons are certainly apt ones. As I said above, I like that this film has human nature as the cause of the horror element. It makes for a bit of a slower buildup to that element, but it’s more of a sinister and horrifying payoff knowing that it wasn’t anything otherworldly, but something very familiar that brought this end to these two. And it’s something that we as modern movie goers can relate to and appreciate even today, as those human actions are no different now than they were then.

As with The Haunted Castle, this film is silent. You could see that the actors were speaking as they were acting, but unless you’re a good lip-reader, the words will be lost on you. You don’t really need them, though, as the actions tell the story well enough. The version I watched did have musical accompaniment, which was nice. It was fairly upbeat, classical music, not turning dark until the end. That really helped with the feel of the movie, and the buildup I talked about earlier. The acting is again somewhat exaggerated to make up for the lack of sound, although not to such a degree that it is goofy. The set is actually based in two rooms instead of one; the aforementioned one-entrance room and a larger one outside it. The costumes are quite elaborate and invoking a more historical time period, even for the 1900’s.

In conclusion, The Sealed Room is a very interesting film. I love the timelessness of the themes and how they still resonate even more than a hundred years later. It is a slower burn in the horror aspect, but overall still conveys the genre well. I mean it must, we’re still making films in this vein even now, looking at themes of jealousy and revenge. I would highly recommend The Sealed Room, it’s well worth a watch, even just to see the advancement of filmmaking from our first entry.

Watch The Sealed Room HERE  

Fear and Film: A Horror Retrospective- 1890's

Hey, everybody! Happy October! Since its Halloween month I wanted to do something special. And so I’d like to introduce: Fear and Film, where we look at one horror movie per decade from the past one hundred and twenty or so years until now. I’m really excited to go on this trip through time and look at these films and how they change and evolve as we progress. So let’s start back at the beginning by looking at Georges Méliès’ Le Manoir du Diable (The Haunted Castle), released in 1896. 

I was thinking about looking at multiple films from this decade simply given the fact that films at this time are very short. To put it in perspective, The Haunted Castle has an ‘ambitious’ runtime of three minutes, 18 seconds. But it feels like a disservice to these films to do shorter reviews of multiple entries, so we will just be talking about The Haunted Castle, considered by some film historians to be the very first horror movie.

To start things off, what I found most fascinating about watching this film was the special effects. This film is 121 years old, what we’re seeing is special effects like the stop trick (or substitution splice) at the time of discovery. And these effects aren’t used sparingly, either. Méliès starts the story off with one, as a bat transforms into Mephistopheles and ramps it up in the ensuing chaos. Even though Mephistopheles is a demon, the bat transformation and other imagery such as the specters/brides have led some to call this a vampire (or perhaps proto-vampire?) movie. If that were the case it would also be the first of that genre. As to the effects themselves, they are really well done. Méliès wasted no time in making the most of this technique with awesome results as things appear and disappear throughout the runtime, from single items or creatures to entire groups of specters. Even jaded, cynical, modern me watched it bright-eyed, exclaiming ‘this is so cool!’ to myself. 

The story of the film is pretty simple: Mephistopheles appears and he and his minion make a woman in a magic cauldron. Two ‘cavaliers’ show up and he proceeds to mess with them as much as possible until he is finally scared off by a large crucifix. The acting is very pantomime, which makes sense for the time, Méliès’ theatre and magic background, and the fact they are conveying the story without the assistance of sound. There is one actually quite funny part near the end when one of the cavaliers decides he wants no further part of this and takes his leave rather… abruptly. There’s another part that I didn’t notice until my third or fourth watch where they actually jog the set and the whole thing moves. It doesn’t distract from the whole experience, though, and kind of adds to it. I looked to see if there was a (hand) colorized version to watch, but if any were made they do not appear to have survived the passage of time. Although to be honest, I don’t think that would affect my level of enjoyment one way or the other, but it would have been neat to see.  It's not scary in any way to a modern eye, but to audiences of the 1890's? Might have been a different story.

In conclusion, this was a fantastic way to start off a retrospective on horror movies. I had so much fun watching Le Manoir du Diable/The Haunted Castle, and I would one hundred percent recommend people check it out. This is the first time I’d ever watched a movie of this kind of age, and it was a wonderful start to exploring movies at their very beginning. I hope you all enjoyed this and come back next time when we are going to look at the film from the turn of the 20^th century!

Watch The Haunted Castle HERE             

Shin Godzilla Spoiler Free Review

Hey everyone, back again with another review. This time, we’re looking at a film I’ve been waiting to see for a while now, and finally got the chance to do so. This week we’re talking Shin Godzilla, the latest installment of the long-running franchise from Toho Studios. This is in fact the twenty-ninth film they’ve made for the big guy, and the thirty-first overall. As usual no spoilers ahead.

This was a fairly highly anticipated in our house. Any new kaiju movie is, to be honest, but Godzilla… Godzilla is top of that list. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an opportunity for us to see this film in its limited North American theatrical run, as the closest place it was showing was four hours away and we couldn’t make it work. So we’ve waited for home release and now we’ve finally gotten to see it. I was surprised to see our version was a dub, also, and not subtitled. And…. I don’t know if it was worth the wait. 

Let’s get something out of the way here; this isn’t a terrible movie. There are some interesting ideas presented and satirized, mainly to do with the ponderousness of the bureaucratic system and how it can be as much of a hindrance as a help in an unusual and emergency situation. They really hammer that point home, too. There is a lot of politics and maneuvering and people in suits yelling about needing to make decisions.

like this

 And that would be a really fascinating study if the story had let you have the time to digest it. This movie flies along at an insane pace. It’s literally boom, boom, boom, with no time to let the previous point sink in before rushing off to the next thing. I’m not entirely sure why the plot needs to rush along so quickly, it’s in such a hurry to get to the end it doesn’t even stop for breath. It was honestly hard to take notes because taking time to write even quick notes made me feel like I was behind. 

I’m not really sure how to talk about the acting. The Japanese actors seemed to be good physically in their acting. The voice dub actors were fine, I mean some were better than others but it was overall good. I wouldn’t mind, if I wanted to watch this again, seeing the Japanese version to compare the two.

I wonder if in the Japanese version the woman in the left corner still talks like Velma from Scooby Doo.

The music was interesting, to say the least. They used the original Gojira theme, which was kind of nice to hear. Not that I think this Godzilla deserved it, but we’ll get into that later. That wasn’t the only re-used track, and in fact there were a number of musical callbacks to earlier films in the Toho universe. There were also a couple of parts where the music cue shifted quite abruptly into a more rock-guitar thing and seemed really out of place. It sounds pretty cool just listening to it by itself, but it was such a weird tonal shift in the film and quite jarring.

One thing I actually really liked was the camera work. There were some very inventive shots especially when the army was called out and the tanks were moving into position. I thought that was really well done. It was shot very much like one would expect a Godzilla movie to look otherwise, but I really liked what they did. There were also a few with characters using laptops and a phone that were done in a way I hadn’t seen before and was impressed by. 

Okay, last but not least, let’s talk about the big guy himself. This was a reboot movie, and as such Godzilla got a massive redesign that while still looking like him, was quite different from what we’ve seen. Not to get into spoilers, but he had more than one look in the film. I’ll be honest, I hated the way Godzilla looked. From the first trailer I thought he looked terrible and that hasn’t changed. He looks more like a zombie version of himself; like a burned, twisted, undead creature.

 I’m not a fan at all, but his final, Godzilla-proper look is miles better than how he looks when he first comes ashore, which is my absolute least favorite.

I'm only not posting it because spoilers

 I’m not sure I like the atomic breath either, it honestly was more like a laser and, without spoilers, went a little too… crazy at times. It felt like they just overdid it. It looked like the arcane enchanted baddies from Diablo III.

this was all I could think of

I feel like I may have been harder on this movie than I should have been just because Goji looked so damn bad. I get that they were going for something different but the tiny, unblinking eyes and the big, derpy, muppet mouth just didn’t do it for me.

duurrrrr....

 It also seems kind of petty that they made Shin exactly 10.5 meters taller than Legendary’s 2014 Godzilla, as if they had to one-up it. The CG was really inconsistent too, and it’s a good thing they used more than one method to bring Godzilla to life because sometimes it was downright bad. Because this is a reboot he also got a new, updated backstory. I’m not sure I like it, as it changes the symbolism and metaphor of Godzilla to something more updated. I get they wanted to do something different with him and a modern retelling of Godzilla’s origin would have to be something different, but it really feels like they’re fixing something that isn’t broken. He did have a really good roar, at least. According to my more knowledgeable other half, his roars were mainly from the Showa era (encompassing 1954’s Gojira up to 1975’s Terror of Mechagodzilla) except for the last roar which comes from the Heisei era (which began with 1984’s Return of Godzilla and ended with 1995’s Godzilla vs. Destoroyah). There’s also that last shot, which all I’ll say is I don’t like the implications of. 

So, in conclusion, I wasn’t crazy about this one. It’s not the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but I wasn’t really feeling it either. This is a really polarizing movie as well; lots of people loved it and lots of people hated it. Well, outside of Japan at least, Shin Goji got glowing reviews in his homeland. If you’re a kaiju or a Godzilla fan, I’d leave it up to you to make up your own mind on it. Not a fan? I’d skip it because you’d probably find it boring. At least Toho’s next feature, Godzilla: Planet of theMonsters/Godzilla: Monster Planet looks really intriguing, and I like the idea of seeing the big guy in animated form for something different.

5/10