There is something delicious about watching one of the old classic Universal Horror pictures on a cloudy autumn afternoon. Im up in Vancouver at the moment, shooting a couple of episodes of Supernatural (appropriately enough), but with several days off Ive been indulging myself shamelessly with the new Universal Cult Horrors box set. This is how you can tell just how much of a nerd I can be on this subject. Nerds watch old movies during the day with curtains drawn. It is just a thing that we do. Its not that we dont watch movies in the evening, like regular people. Its just a different experience in the afternoon. If its cloudy, thats an extra, especially if you live in a place without weather like Los Angeles. With that distinctive cloudy light and the curtains drawn, you can pretend that youre only inside watching movies during the day because of the inclement autumnal weather. if you have a really good imagination there can be some strong equinoctial winds setting in. Youd be crazy to go outside on a day like this. Of course, real nerds dont need those kind of excuses. (We watch all of the bonus material, too. Hard core classic horror nerds like I have been known, on occasion, to watch the bonus material and skip the movie altogether.) In October I always feel the pull of the old movies even more than at other times of year. For this trip I brought The Wolfman (The Legacy Collection box-set, which includes The Werewolf of London (1935);Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943); The Shewolf of London (1946), in addition to the great original Wolfman, with Lon Chaney Jr. as Lawrence Talbot, the eponymous lycanthrope. I also have Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein---a weekend afternoon movie if there ever was one---in addition to the above mentioned Cult Horror set. The Cult Horrors are pretty much strictly second tier affairs, but no less wonderful for all that. Titles like House of Horrors, The Brute Man, The Mad Ghoul, Murders in the Zoo, The Strange Case of Dr X and The Mad Doctor of Market Street do not encourage confidence. But you do get a chance to see what some of the great Universal character people could do when out of the shadows of Karloff, Lugosi, Rains and Chaney. These movies feature Lionel Atwill, George Zucco, Eveyln Ankers and the tragic Rondo Hattan in starring roles they would never have enjoyed in Universals A pictures. Rondo Hattan even has lines, which he nearly delivers. Okay, these are not great movies. In some cases they arent even good. An objective critic might call them dreadful. But to hell with objective critics. They should just bear in mind what happened to the critics in House of Horrors who so excoriated the work of artist Martin Koslek...well, Rondo Hattan set them straight, thats all Im saying. So between these movies and a first reading of Kim Newmans great Anno Dracula, my autumn appetites for the weird, chilling and horrible are being well and truly sated. P.S. For KING OF THE NERDS/ZOMBIE MOVIE fans: Joshua and Ivan, from our first season, have a very enjoyable clip up you might want to check out. Heres the link: youtu.be/PjhiGArqXnew.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 22:20:05 +0000
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