Back from Summer Vacation and fleeing the World (and something about Son of Frankenstein)

Well as we come to a depressing political debacle wherein the people who didn’t fix any of the problems will have their power taken from them and it will be alas given back to the people who caused the problem in the first place, Charlie Sheen doing something, Bret Favre doing things while wearing crocs that you should never share, and so much else wrong that I refuse to even think about, so I figure I should retreat to the safe and sane world of movies, especially as this is the season, horror films.

As is my want I’ve be viewing the old universal horror films from Dracula onward. I didn’t really discover anything new this look around in most of the films – other than one wonderful throwaway line in Bride of Frankenstein where David Frye says to his fellow grave robber after a confrontation with Dr. Pretorius “this is no work for honest murders.”

Indeed. Not quite as pithy as “I never drink...wine.” from Dracula but still not bad.

I have to say one film that disappointed me or well annoyed I guess was Son of Frankenstein – this was Karloff’s last go round as the monster and he really wasn’t given a lot to do he just lumbers about growling and killing and what not. There is one movement where he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and gets angry at it but that’s really about it. You get no sense of anything deeper or tragic about the monster like you do in the first two films.

Not that the film doesn’t have good parts – for example Bella Lugosi actually does some good work in the film as Ygor (spelled Igor in the next film and forever after) as the man they couldn’t kill by hanging who uses the monster to do his bidding, but still it annoyed me this go round.

One is the kid – maybe I’m just getting older but kids in films just annoy me – they never act like real children and the filmmaker’s emphasis on making them cute grates on me. Kids can be pretty cute all by themselves they don’t need help with that – it’s like too much sugar and it makes my teeth hurt.

The other thing that bothered me was I’m sorry to say Basil Rathbone – when he wasn’t chewing the scenery he was getting ready to chew the scenery, it was an over the top performance which made Bella with the neck thing and Boris as the monster look restrained. And since he is the main protagonist that I found myself hoping the villagers did lynch him isn’t a good sign.

But anyway after Universal off to the Hammer Horrors.

I think one of the reasons I have blogged much is that while busy I kept trying to do long posts which I just don’t have the time to do so – we’ll try these one subject deals for a while. See if we don’t do more.

Peace, Love, Shonen Knife