October - Month of the Werewolf!

I'm blogging again. God help us all. It's October, so that means Halloween, which means horror films. I guess, like Christmas, we make these things a month long now. And I like Christmas a whole lot more than Halloween. But why not embrace it? Setting myself a challenge this year (yes, I know, this has been said before) of watching at least one werewolf film a day for the month. Well, it's day 1 and I'm two lycanthropic features in already.

First up is Wolfblood - A Tale of the Forest, from 1925, directed by George Cheseboro and Bruce Mitchell. I believe it's the earliest surviving werewolf feature, with two previous entries now lost (The Werewolf, 1913, and White Wolf, 1914). It's a handsomely mounted silent production with nice performances which I found to be without the usual overacting and melodramatic grimacing typical of the silent era; which is not to say that realism is the key. But that being said, there is a good sense of location, with the story set in the forests of Canada, featuring some beautiful, stark imagery that wouldn't look out of place in the German Expressionist films of the time in Europe. The fact that it's shot in real, frankly majestic locations helps the film a great deal.

Here, the trees are both beautiful and intimidating, cutting sharp, black lines through the frame, sometimes thick and never ending, almost imprisoning the characters or sometimes thin and cut off at the top; we're dealing with rival logging companies and what looked like progress back then now looks like a reduced vision of the Tunguska event in 1908. The trees are broken and jagged at their tops, angry at the tiny people Cheseboro and Mitchell often place at the bottom of the frame. There's a feel that nature is a hostile environment that almost consumes our main character, Bannister (played by co-director Cheseboro) while he believes himself to be more wolf than man.

And that's where the inevitable disappointment comes in - there is no werewolf here, this is a melodrama. Bannister is gravely injured in a fight with the nasty boss of a rival company and requires a blood transfusion when discovered by his love rival, Dr Horton (Ray Hanford), a decent sort who saves the rugged man his fiancé is clearly more interested in. The only shelter is the nearby shack of a local bootlegger who refuses to donate his blood. He suggests using his wolf instead, so Dr Horton proceeds, all the while painfully aware (as we are, due to protracted close up shots of medical text) that there is a theory that any human who receives animal blood may exhibit the characteristics of said beast. And then someone seems to be killed by a wolf. Self-doubt ensues, as it seems to in werewolf movies (Lon Chaney Jr made a career out of werewolf-ish guilt and self-doubt).

Once this is revealed, Bannister's superstitious men turn their backs on him and he too becomes convinced that he's destined to walk the earth as an animal, nicely shown in a scene where he follows a vision of phantom wolves into the forest and almost to his doom over a 1,000 foot drop, only to be rescued by his boss and love interest, Edith Ford (Marguerite Clayton). It's all very much about what nature can do to a person if left out there too long. Well, from a 1920's perspective at any rate (give me some of that forested solitude, or a Hobbit hole of my own). The images of the phantom wolves, done by double exposure, are wonderful. Here, the fear of losing control to primal instincts is defeated by love.

Next up was Universal's Werewolf of London (1935) which I saw as a teenager, so obviously not seen by me for a very long time. In fact, I think this might be the very first werewolf film I ever saw, likely on BBC2 sometime in the mid 1980s; either this or Werewolf of Washington (1973), a very different film. It should obviously be noted that Universal studios will be making quite a few appearances on this blog series.

Werewolf of London is the first sound werewolf feature and brings in more of the tropes we associate with the sub-genre, particularly the influence of the full moon. Dr Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull) is a botanist on a trip to Tibet to retrieve a specimen of a rare plant when he's attacked by a strange wild creature and bitten. Not too much is made of this on his return home to his much younger bride Lisa (Valerie Hobson - she must have been 18 to Hull's 45 years), who he neglects in favour of his research It's bleedin' obvious where that's going when Lisa's old childhood friend turns up, all tall, handsome and an adventurer pilot to boot.

 

 

While Werewolf of London is a full on werewolf film it's also a mad scientist film with elements of science fiction; some marvellous carnivorous plants populate Glendon's lab where ladies faint during feeding time, and he has his own version of Ring Home Security with a video phone operated by a telephone rotary dial. An almost steampunkish look, blending the tech of the time with futurey stuff. Warner Oland turns up, sans Charlie Chan make up, as another botanist suspiciously interested in Glendon's work. Wait, who was that werewolf that bit him again...?

Hull's wolfman is more obviously human in his appearance. There are apocryphal tales of Hull refusing to sit in Jack Pierce's make up chair for the original make up, which would eventually be used on Lon Chaney Jr as The Wolfman, but it seems they went ith a more human look so that other characters would recognise Glendon in his werewolf state.

His werewolf seems to have a bit more agency over his actions, donning a cap and long caot while prowling the streets at night for victims. He comes across as more of a Mr Hyde character this way, even making reference to Jack the Ripper in his choice of victims. Hull's wolfman even speaks, intelligently, as he meets his demise, before he reverts to his human appearance. Werewolf of London seems to work along the same lines as Frankenstein, a cautionary tale against tampering with nature; Glendon is a scientist, after all, with his own lab, complete with Tesla coil and giant frog eating plants. And it is with another scientist he must struggle with in order to try and maintain his own humanity. There was always a price to pay for being a scientist in these movies, and so Glendon pays the price not only for that but for also giving in to primal instincts. Such is the way of the werewolf.

A test of Jack Pierce's original make-up concept, which looks far more familiar than the one used, which would eventually give us Eddie Munster.

Watch This Space

 

I'm back.

Watch out for lycanthropic bollocks this October.

See you soon.

B

The Thing About Being "Angry"

My entry for Sunday 16th April last year mentioned a reason why I had resurrected this blog (I'm aware of the irony of the impermanence of said "resurrection"). In February of last year I was diagnosed as being on the Autism Spectrum; high functioning Apsergers, to be more precise. With a lot of coping methods developed over the years.

To some this came as a shock (with some questions as to whether this is a real thing or not) - one of the most common responses was "I had no idea" from people who've know me for decades. To some, I suspect, it did not come as a shock. Certainly not to myself, as I had sought out a diagnosis for some time after suspecting for the better part of 20 years.

I made that blog entry last year with the intention of continuing it after advice from the psychiatrist who diagnosed me. And he had a point - I find writing a release and incredibly therapeutic. But I'm also lazy and easily put off things I love to focus on after years of being told by responsible adults that I was useless and that what I wanted to do was a waste of time - that stuff stays with you. Be kind to your kids. Encourage them in what they love. I'm glad my parents encouraged my love of writing and science fiction and fantasy, unlike my Principal English teacher who scolded and mocked me for it and forced me to re-write my stories into a contemporary setting. Deep down now, there is a resentment and sense of guilt that exists regarding being creative.

What does this all mean? Who knows? But I find life a serious struggle much of the time. I try my best to be social but speaking to people takes real physical and mental effort, mostly subconscious effort, which is physically draining. Which is highly ironic as most money I make comes from teaching. But talking about films is less exhausting than normal.

Another effect of all this is that I am prone to frightening rages.  People don't normally witness these and they tend to involve my frustration with inanimate objects but I am also acutely aware of how they can frighten those I love, be they two legged or four legged; It's not easy looking after 6 animals while trying to work and deal with the way my brain works - at times it's like walking through toffee, especially hard when your best pal is aging before your eyes and you can't find the right way to express that. And this rage also frightens me. It all leads to intrusive thoughts which compound depression and anxiety. Which in turn stops me from doing anything. I've not made a narrative fiction film in a very long time now and now look a fool after stating my intentions so many times and not following through. Some of that also comes from an inability to speak to people. Dammit.

The crux of all of this is that Asperger's and being on the Spectrum is not always a great thing. The myth is that we're all hyper-intelligent (nope) but lack empathy (nope again). Fact is, I'm an over-emotional geek who's seen by others as a middle aged weirdo. I guess today is just everything welling up so I felt the need to write about it.

But, contrary to popular belief, I'm not angry all the time (can you imagine if I was?). Frustrated and anxious, yes, most of the time. But I'm also consumed with love and joy at people and expressions of art, be they stories, films, music or food.

I'll be honest. I fucking hate it. I hate being on the Spectrum. I hate how people saw me when I was young and how it made me a target. I hate how I fear people see me. And I hate how I see myself.

It's emotionally staggering how I can't find ways to adequately express myself, especially in the moment (this evening in the pub saw me as a stuttering fool whose voice was physically failing, to people I know).

I hate having Asperger's Syndrome. This is just the way I feel today.

As I said, I was advised to keep blogging as a way to deal with my craziness, so I guess I'll keep trying. It is a release. It's taken me more that 18 months to start writing about this as prescribed and here it is, so I guess that's something.

This isn't a cry for help or attention seeking. It's just me writing shit down to try and make sense of myself. And it should be an ongoing thing. And I'm forever grateful to friends and family who continue to encourage me.

As you were.

Back to Filmmaking

Been a while since the last entry. Life can get a bit silly, I guess. Anway...

I wrote a bunch of scripts years ago. There they sat. Aging. Or not. Because the stories are still relevant. I've had to change one or two things in one of them but other than that we're going to shoot it late spring/early summer.

Because I need to make a fucking film again. Oh, sweet shit on a lorry, I need to make a film.

I've a bit of a "slate" of ideas, as some folk might say. This one we're starting with is relatively simple, being mock documentary, but is ironically the longest. I say simple as there aren't many crazy camera set ups. I'll be sticking to an established format in order to tell an out of the ordinary story. A dark comedy. Dark. As in Vantablack dark. And funny. At least, it's funny to me. Of course, funny is always subjective and I've learned over the years that my kind of funny is highly subjective indeed.

The others are less funny. Or perhaps not intended to be funny at all. Dark science fiction and horror. Bits of M.R. James, Lovecraft, mixing with dramatic questions I've been asking myself for years.

My current script is shot listed and out to my Assistant Director for a preliminary schedule and budget. After that, crewing and casting and, most likely, a crowdfund campaign. Doing some serious research into that but if anyone is reading this who has experience then any advice is always appreciated.

So, keep watching for that soon. I'll be bombarding, as I'm told one should with these kinds of campaigns. I've got some cool folks hopefully working with me on this. Should be good and I look forward to disturbing audiences with this little baby.

More bits of oddness on my Instagram: instagram.com/talcy73

October Horror Stymie

October Horror. Well, that fell on it's ass, didn't it?

Work and that goddamned black dog threw a Kong-sized spanner in the works. Feel awful that I couldn't follow through with it all.

Not the end of the world. I still have a big pile of Blurays to get through. Let's see what happens.

October Horror Catch Up Pt 1 - The Devil Bat

 One of the things I love about the great Bela Lugosi was his commitment to a project, on screen at any rate. He appeared in some of the greatest classic horror films ever made and he also appeared in the rock bottom worst of them. And yet in those awful titles he still remained the most enthusiastic presence on the screen. He had a sense of power that could come and go but his charisma and love of acting seemed always there. He just gave it his all.

This is by no means among Lugosi's worst movies, but it's certainly not up there with Dracula or White Zombie.

The Devil Bat (1940) has Lugosi as a mad scientist who keeps his raving mostly to himself (and his bats) but presents that effortless Lugosi charm to the outside world, both to fool his would-be victims and those investigating the giant bat murder spree (more on that in a moment) and also just as an aspect of the character’s natural personality. If he wasn’t sending his mutated creatures out into the night to do his murderous bidding, he seems like a rather affable chap. It’s difficult for the first half of the picture to root against him 100%.

It’s a bit odd seeing Bela Lugosi in a film about “devil bats” and there be no vampirism. One wonders how cheesed off horror fans might have been on watching the film.

 

 The Devil Bat was one of the Poverty Row horrors being churned out in an attempt to cash in on the success that Universal and RKO were having with their own creepy titles. So many complain about Hollywood churning out sequels and jumping on the genre of the year but it’s really always been this way. With the success of Frankenstein and Dracula it was only logical that Universal’s competitors would jump on the band wagon but, it seems, most of them were the smaller, less well financed outfits (hence the  name Poverty Row) that were most attracted to doing the horror thing as well. Enter Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) who gave it their own go with director Jean Yarborough.

It’s a mixed bag and doesn’t really feel like a horror to me. Of course there are the horror elements, as Lugosi’s revenge driven Dr Carruthers mutates bats into slightly larger monstrosities (fruit bats…) and trains them to kill whomever is wearing his specially formulates shaving lotion. Once he realises that his financial backers have stiffed him (although they’re open about the fact that he took their cash without wanting a percentage. The fool!), he decides to take them out, along with their playboy/girl rich kids. So, we have the mad scientist, his lab and his creepy experimental monsters. Now enters our hero, ace reporter Johnny Layton (Dave O’Brien) and his frankly rubbish shutterbug sidekick, “One-Shot” McGuire (Donald Kerr), and the tone of the thing alters. These guys were clearly trying to operate as a comedy double act here (and in some other films) and they’re no Abbott & Costello (who Yarborough would direct in later years). O’Brien comes across as a typical low-budget romantic lead and with all of the lack of effort that incurs. This is your typical reporter with a pistol, ready to step in and save the rich heroine he’s just met from any crazy villain. The best that could be said is that, early on, he comes across as Gregory Peck’s slightly rubbish forgotten brother. Kerr’s photographer is nothing but lame comic relief, an unending parade of crappy one-liners (most aimed at the attractive maid character – he’s going to marry her) that, combined with his earnest face, gave me the impression that he might snap from despair and fucking murder the lot of them. Except Lugosi, of course. These guys appear and all of a sudden the thing feels more comedic and even serial based; I expected some cliff-hangers. It had a feeling more of King of the Rocket Men than Dracula.

Rubbish.

 Why does the seemingly amiable Carruthers make giant bats to kill people before he’s given his reason to start offing his enemies?

Production design is basic. Lugosi’s lab (both secret and not-very-secret areas) looks a bit threadbare, with the usual chemistry set paraphernalia mixed with walls that look painted to appear like stone, and his bats consist mostly of inert bat dummies hung upside down intercut with close up shots of fruit bats that look like they’re chewing on particularly sticky toffees in what looks to be an attempt to make them look scary (I got a bit concerned about their welfare as they seem to have their wings stretched out by human hand). Said Devil Bats, as described in hotshot Layton’s newspaper articles and One-Shot’s phony photos (a plot point, I tells ya!) launch out of Lugosi’s lab window into the night, literally screaming down wires at their intended victims, surely inspiring a young Edward D. Wood Jr.

Ready for a night out at The Hive...

I’m being harsh. It’s all enjoyable silliness meant to amuse of thrill an audience trying not to pay attention to what was going on in Europe at the time. Most chances to see Lugosi in action are worth snapping up.

There is actually one moment that seems to try and evoke a bit of horror through some nice silhouetting of Lugosi as he prepares to do his worst towardsd the end of the film. It;s a shame the rest of the film isn't given more thought like this, insetad chossing to focus on the shenanigans of Layton and One-Shot, as though someone was thinking, "Hey, got an idea for an series of flicks with these newpaper chumps!"

Amusing trivia: our journalistic hero’s boss, who fires him and One-Shot at least once in the film, is played by the wrongfully forgotten Arthur Q. Bryan, whose gruff voice here is not all that recognisable from his most famous role of Elmer Fudd. Mel Blanc is a bit of a hero of mine but I can never really forgive him for insisting on taking almost all the credit for the voices of Warner Bros. cartoon legends in Loony Tunes and Merrie Melodies. After Bryan died in 1959, the character of Fudd* was retired and not resurrected until over a decade later by a noticeably vocally different Blanc.

"No, for de wast time, dere's no one named Woy Kinnear here!"

  I feel a future blog about Arthur Q. Bryan is looking on the horizon.

*Scots readers are giggling at this phrase as you read this.

Interval - Depression is a Bitch

Apologies for the gap in posts. One of the reasons I decided to view and blog about a horror movie a day in October is to combat depression, which has grabbed me by the balls of late. I regret that it got the better of me over recent days and a particularly bleak period has put a bit of a dent into my daily schedule. However normal service is now resumed. That is provided anyone is reading this. *cries out into the abyss*

One of the reasons I resurrected this blog recently was not only due to said depression but also on professional advice earlier this year after an adult Asperger's diagnosis. This subject is something for a future blog, but verbal expression isn't exactly my forte while I find myself far more comfortable with the written word. One of the issues with my own individual Asperger's situation is that frustration from not being able to properly express myself can be infuriating and cause all sorts of short circuits in my head. Unless I'm talking about movies, which is just as well as I teach filmmaking and film history...

So, interval is over. Grab your Cornettos and Cokes and return to your seats. The curtain is about to go up once more. This means that I'll be viewing and posting a couple of times a day to get back up to speed.

Previews of coming attractions: Bela Lugosi in The Devil Bat, Lamberto Bava's bonkers Demons, a Count Yorga double bill and Donald Cammell's White of the Eye.