Journey Through Classic Horror Films, Part 3

On our meandering movie watching tour, we hit up another couple of classic Universal horror films, both from the 1940s:

The Wolf Man, from 1941, was a second go at the werewolf concept, this time starring Lon Chaney Jr as Larry Talbot, the estranged son of Sir John Talbot, the patriarch of, er, Castle Talbot in the Welsh countryside. The dad is played by Claude Rains, an English actor who played the Invisible Man in that classic.

They try to make the story something like, "Larry was successful off in America," as an explanation to why, eh, Larry is clearly a big ol' American lug, while his father is the tiny and calculated Claude Rains. Think...Channing Tatum and Derek Jacobi?

Anyway...something my mom mentioned in a comment is the rampant sexism in these (and most) of the older films. In the beginning of the Wolf Man, Larry helps his father with his telescope. Then he starts looking around the Welsh town where they live, and then peeps a lady in her room. Soon he's using information he's gotten from said peeping to ingratiate himself into her zone, and soon enough he's in love. This prompted a conversation with our kids about love and spying and real things in life, like honestly falling in love, no spying or false pretenses needed.

Bela Lugosi plays a gypsy named Bela, who gets beaten to death---as a wolf---by Larry and his silver-handled cane, but not before he bites Larry, turnign him into the next werewolf.

It's quick, breezy, and hits its mark.

The Phantom of the Opera, from 1943, was shot in Technicolor and was wildly bright and colorful, the production using the new tech to its fullest. It won an Oscar for production design, making it the only Universal horror film to be recognized by the academy in any year.

Here, Claude Rains is back playing Claudin, a violinist with the Paris Opera. His skills seem to have evaporated as his fingers on his fret hand on the violin has lost feeling. He's let go, which puts his secret payments to a singing coach for an understudy from his same village in jeapardy. 

I was convinced the whole time that Claudin was the singer's grandfather, but it turned out he was only 48 (!!) (he looks 75), so then I was convinced he was secretly her father. 

It turns out he was just obsessed with her, but not in a sexual way. Um...sure. Whatever you say.

Claudin tries to sell a concerto he's written, and, to cut a long story short (too late), he mistakingly thinks a jerk has stolen it, gets his face all burned up by acid, steals a master key for the Opera house (a real palace in Paris) which gives him an impossible level of access.

They filmed much of the movie on the same sound stage that they'd constructed for the famous silent Phantom from 1925, the one that stars Lon Chaney Sr.

The very last scene of the movie I enjoyed. Christine DuBois, the understudy-turned-star, has been linked to two fellas who both think they're perfect for Christine. For what it's worth, Christine has a type: the two dudes are at the top of their professions (one is a decorated military and police detective; the other is a decorated opera singer, the star of the Paris Opera), and they both have dark hair and thin mustaches.

The last scene has each guy show up to her room at the opera house trying to woo her, each having brought identical flower bouquets. Finally they tell her she needs to choose. She smiles, laughs, and walks out her door to the waiting and adoring crowd, leaving both men dejected in the room. The detective, half-joking yet half-serious, asks the singer if he wants to join him for the dinner reservation he'd made earlier for an evening with Mademoiselle DuBois. The singer accepts, and they laugh as they interlock arms and try walking out the door together.

That ending was less sexist than most of the scenes we've seen from these classics.

This movie takes a while to get going, and there is so much opera in it that it almost seems like a musical, but the sets are lavish, as are the colors splashed everywhere. It's not a bad time, for sure.

At one point, Claudin takes Christine to his underground lair, and mentions an underground lake. In reality, there is an enormous cistern under the Paris Opera house, the palace itself, that is still used today to train firefighters to swim in the dark.

And that's pretty cool.

Gracie, Crump, and Madame Leota: Surprisingly Strong Binding Threads

This seems as a good time as any, since it is the season, and I have put a few things up about movies and all...

One of the family movies we all enjoy (like The Sleepover or The Princess Bride) is the 2023 version of Haunted Mansion. I thought I brought up this movie while back, but I can't find it. It brings up safe scares, and legit feelings, and I'd watch Lakieth Stanfield in most anything, and Rosario Dawson, Danny Devito, and Tiffani Haddish are all American treasures.

Owen Wilson is...less insufferable here as well. This movie is a good family time. Is it a masterpiece? Does it have to be?

The other day, though, after the Werewolf of London movie, we put on the Eddie Murphy version of The Haunted Mansion from 2003:

This was the first time I watched this version, despite my affection for Eddie Murphy.

So...in the Lakeith Stanfield/Rosario Dawson version, a William Gracie owned the mansion which was eventually haunted both in life and in death by the evil Crump, who needs souls to, er, come back to the world and wreak a new kind of havoc. A character named Madame Leota, played by Jamie Lee Curtis here, is a head in a crystal ball, a medium who knows the real background.

Watching the Eddie Murphy version, my ears picked up when I heard the owner of the mansion who had lured the realtor married couple was named William Gracie. Later, a crystal ball was discovered and inside a "gypsy" named Madame Leota, played by Jennifer Tilly, has, eh, things to say.

It was then that I cracked open my Internet access and looked up some info. Why weee these names the same? What the heck?

Madame Leota is the name of a crystal ball head in the ride. And then I found out some critical info: two of the main Imagineers of the original Disneyland Haunted Mansion were named Rolly Crump and Yale Gracie. 

Honoring the workers and engineering talent that built the place...pretty cool.

Old School Horror Movie Journey, Part 2

Our journey through the old movies slowed a bit, but we hit up three more classic-era flicks:

The Bride of Frankenstein was released in 1935, stars Boris Karloff again, and has some interesting moments. There's a second mad doctor, this time Dr. Pretorious, and he's pushy as all hell. He wants to build Frankenstein's creature a wife. There's an extended scene where Pretorious shows off his own creations, each a miniature human being. The Bride herself may be on screen for less than 100 seconds, and wants nothing to do with her male counterpart. This movie, with an extended runtime of nearly 80 minutes, FEELS like a hundred more.

Freaks, from 1932, is a brisk 62 minutes, and is tightly packed tragedy about a-hole normies running a scam on some dignified and united workers of a sideshow. It holds up pretty well, but the ending is a bit forced. We watched this on my DVD, which has alternate ending cuts, and you can see the studio fighting with itself and the endings. It...it was a hard needle to thread, and the last two minutes may not exactly be perfect, but the movie's worth a look.

Werewolf of London was the first Universal Studio werewolf movie, from 1935, and...Cass and Corrie watched it whule I was making dinner and walking with Camille down to the store. I was interested in the Lon Chaney Jr. Wolf Man movie, from 1941, which I thought was the OG cannon wolf movie. That was incorrect, but this seemed kinda fun. The transformation effects were pretty well done for 1935, and the shots in Tibet, or maybe, "Tibet," were interesting and serious. Maybe worth another look by me, but I can't imagine getting back to it anytime soon.

Heat and Cancellations

I grew up in the vicinity of Sacramento, and for anybody who knows the area, the summer gets hot. HOT. Like, WTF, Robin Williams from Good Morning Vietnam, "Were you born on the son? Man...it's HOT."

And I can't say I remember any rules about not being able to play outside during recess, or having sports canceled...but I also didn't play a whole lot of outdoor sports after the age of, eh...ten?

But my kids routinely have their recesses canceled because of excessive heat, and Camille's soccer practices and games have been canceled multiple times.

At first I was like, Wait, what? We can't let the kids play because of heat? What are we doing to our kids?

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized my position was: KIDS MUST PLAY OUTSIDE IS UNSAFE CONDITIONS. And that's when some of these new rules didn't seem so bad. I don't like the fact that our kids can't go roam the neighborhood unattended for a few hours (shouldn't the be afforded the same unsupervised play that we had?). But helping them avoid heatstroke will be a valuable skill going forward in out new normal.

And...like...it's been in the high 90s and low 100s in OCTOBER. So...sheesh.

Halloween Horror Film Journey, Part 1

Cass has always liked being in on things from their beginnings. He loves my old toys and baseball cards; he loves old comics when they sell the facsimiles; he loves the old black and white Ub Iwerks Disney cartoons, as well as pretty much any old B&W animation; and now he's getting into---by way of our access to Peacock---the Golden Age of Universal Horror.

So far:

We just sort of started. A few things worth mentioning before too much longer: These films are "horror" with the quotation marks, and by that we mean they're okay for the six-year Camille to flit in and out of and not be too bothered; also, none of these four is even 80 minutes long.

In 1931, Universal released Dracula (two versions made at the same time and using the same sets: an English language version and a Spanish version (the Spanish is often considered superior)). It was met with success, and like anything from the studio system: if it hits, they do it again and again.

The rights to Wells' Invisible Man were secured, but James Whale went with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein instead, and it was released that same year, 1931. In 1932 Karloff was back as Imhotep in the Mummy, and they finally got to The Invisible Man by 1933.

Tod Browning, who directed Dracula, made Freaks in 1932, and King Kong was released in 1933, so this does seem like quite a Golden Age.

Anyway, these movies are tame by today's standards, but hold certain charm. There is almost no score at all in Dracula, and very little in Frankenstein. We're so used to manipulative music that when it's absent, it's jarring. The sets and extras are all very exciting, and while I would have picked the side of Dracula over Frankenstein when I was a kid, the Frankenstein movie is the better achievement for me at this age.

I'm not sure I'd ever seen either movie from start to finish. The Mummy is another I hadn't seen, at least not the Boris Karloff version. The Hammer version, sure; and Brendan Frasier, of course. With this one, I was pretty surprised that the museum honcho, played by Edward van Sloan, pretty much figured that Karloff's Ardath Bey was in fact Imhotep, having returned to raise his former lover from the dead.

So...the mummy, Imhotep, wakes when a guy opens a cask that says "Anyone who opens will be cursed and killed." He doesn't kill the guy, just takes the scroll, leaves, and soon is barely more fleshed in and has returned to the museum calling himself Ardath Bey. Bold, baby!

So, I mentioned Edward van Sloan earlier, and not for no reason. He played Dr. Van Helsing in Dracula, he was the mentor doctor in Frankenstein, and he was the (what we'd call) the Egyptologist who kept his wits about himself in the Mummy.

Van Sloan was not in The Invisible Man, but so what. The special effects were awesome. The guy, Dr. Jack Griffin, was great as a serious bad dude, and I don't think enough was made of his having-to-be-nude all the time. What a crazy story---it goes where you'd expect a madman who becomes invisible to go, besides only mentioning the nudity in passing.

We're moving onto the Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Wolf Man (1941), the Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954), and then possible Hitchcock's The Birds (1965). I showed Cass that with Kanopy (a nice streaming service that is free with a library card) we can watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), two silent era classics.

This is low-stakes and fun. Plus, I haven't seen many of these films, or not in a very long time. Psycho, maybe? Monster Squad? Maybe we'll graduate to the slashers before too long...maybe even Kurt Russel's The Thing.

Maybe a double feature, like The Thing from Another World (1951) and The Thing (1982)...we'll see.

So...it begins with a Y?

In the American League this year, there's a very quiet chase for the Triple Crown occurring. That player got my attention and rekindled a list I had working in my head over the years.

The first point where I noticed this, a decade ago, caused me to look dive into the info, and some sense became apparent.

Check out this list of names:

• Yasiel Puig
• Yoenis Cespedes
• Yasmani Grandal
• Yordan Alvarez

What do they all have in common?

I mean, jeeze. I see a lot of names, and rarely have I seen one like these. Besides all of their first names begin, oddly, with the letter Y, they are all Cuban baseball players.

And I thought: What's up with Cubanos and Y-names?

Well, turns out, after the Commie revolution, when the US spurned helping the Caribbean nation, the Soviet Union came through with aid. The friendly nature of the Soviet government lead to a friendly view of Russian, eh, stuff. And Y-names are something that occur naturally far more in Russia than here. Like, a couple of big boys here, the first human in space and an actor, the King himself:

• Yuri Gregaran
• Yul Brenner

I did once have a manager who's name was Yurii, but he wasn't Cuban as far as I know. Maybe his folks?

Yordan Alvarez plays for the Houston Astros right now, and leads the league in batting average, is second in homers (only two off the lead), and second in RBIs (only four off the lead). Triple Crowns are quite rare, with the last one being captured in 2013 by Miguel Cabrera, and then the most previous one was Yastremski in the '60s. Quite the year in baseball, and maybe the last one for a while. Fingers crossed the lockout doesn't obliterate the upcoming season.

Auditory Illusions

We have a big ass fan in our bedroom, and by that I mean something like this (not this brand) and not an actual Big Ass Fan:

In the summer months (and often later) we bring it out of the depths of storage to put it on the dresser and aim at the bed, even when we have our AC blasting the cold air enough to make the inside of the apartment pleasant. 

While our fan is as loud as a small airplane, I can't say the effect is mind-blowing in terms of cooling us. It's like a tepid breeze, maybe. Lotsa bluster, but tiny effect.

Anyway, if I finish brushing my teeth and shaving and other bedtime ritual activities before Corrie and get into bed with this thing on, I lay my head on my pillow and wait. Usually my left ear will be down on the pillow, and during this time my brain tries to work with the blaring sound of this fan. 

Sometimes it will sound like a sprinkler is going, often of the type Ron uses at the Farm. Sometimes it will sound like Corrie's using her electric toothbrush, even though I was there next to her as we both used our toothbrushes at the same time for the pre-programmed two minutes. (On a side note: until I got an electric toothbrush, I'm not sure I ever brushed my teeth long enough.) Sometimes my brain tells me that the faucet is still on.

Every time I experience this phenomena, I've found that once I sit up and let both ears hear, whatever my brain was telling me it was hearing instantly disappears, and the roaring drone of the big ass fan surrounds my skull. 

And even though I know that my brain is just trying to work out the auditory information and put it into terms that it, and I, can understand, the illusion is something I oddly enjoy.

Somewhere my Youtube algorithm had a video that I actually watched, and I was thinking about it in terms of my auditory illusion with our fan. Now, just, follow me here...there's a scene in Christopher Nolan's Odyssey towards the end where we see the results of the Trojan Horse scam, and Odysseus and the guys sneak out of the horse, quietly kill a few guards and work their way to, and then open, the gate, letting in the rest if the Achaens (assembled Greek armies).

The scene has a pulsating percussion beat that keeps you keyed up, getting tenser by the second, until you find yourself white-knuckling the (uncomfortable) chair in the theater. (Side note #2: why were the chairs in our DTLA IMAX theater far shittier than the ones at our local DTLB theater?)

The video I watched that glommed onto this idea of auditory illusions is about the illusion that the film's composer Ludwig Goransson devised that sounds like an infinitely increasing tempo. It sounds like it amps up infinitely while remaining able to both be heard by human ears and played by human musicians.

If that sounds like something up your alley, a discussion of how that works, with the explainer trying to do his best to replicate something similar in his studio, then just click this link, baby: The Impossible Rhythm Illusion from The Odyssey.

The one who hates out fan the most, unsurprisingly, is Picasso. Sorry, bud.