Full Moon Mini-Film Festival!

On August 29th, 2015, it's a full moon... and a great excuse to invite some friends for a mini-film festival (or, if you will, a Bad Movie Night) featuring killer doll movies from Full Moon!

I've got the program all laid of you you:  Start with "Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge" (starring classic B-movie stalwarts Guy Rolfe and Richard Lynch), then watch "Demonic Toys" (starring Tracy Scoggins), and cap it off with "Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys (a one-time SyFy Original Picture, starring Corey Feldman and Vanessa Angel)!

Here are write-ups of the three movies to help convince of what a good idea this is!


Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge (1991)
Starring: Guy Rolfe, Richard Lynch, Ian Abercrombie, Kristopher Logan, Aron Eisenberg, Sarah Douglas and Walter Gotell
Director: David DeCoteau
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

When a vicious Gestapo commander (Lynch) murders his beloved wife Elsa (Douglas), Andre Toulon (Rolfe), a puppeteer with the ability to bring his puppets to full and independent life, turns his creations from instruments of mirth and entertainment into tools of hatred and revenge.


"Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge" takes viewers back to a time fifty years before the events of the other films to fill in some of the backstory of the magic puppets that are the main monsters of the film, and to explain why they and their creator is so hate-filled and driven by an urge to destroy.

(It's not quite in step with "Puppet Master II", but then it doesn't seem to fit well with anything else in the series. As a matter of fact, none of the various Puppet Master movies are perfect fits for each other as far as continuity goes.)

The film has a cast that's each perfect in the role that they play, with the classical-featured Guy Rolfe as Andre Toulon and ferret-faced Richard Lynch as the despicable Major Krause being giving especially noteworthy performances, and a script that actually feels like it could been lifted from a horror movie set during the time the film takes place. (In fact, the pacing of this movie and the style of the dialogue is one of the things that makes this movie so good... it has a classic 1940s-era horror film feel to it, while still delivering all the Full Moon stop animation and creepy puppets that we expect. Leech Woman is as gross here as she ever was. That we witness her tragic origin makes her even grosser in some ways' I wonder if Toulon ever had a lucid moment in which he asked himself, "Why in God's name did I do that to what was supposed to be an immortalization of my wife's beauty?!")

"Puppet Master III" is a film I think any lover of cheesy horror flicks can find something to like in. (Plus, we get to watch Nazi Ubermenchen be killed by tiny puppets while shrieking like schoolgirls. How can you not love a movie like that?)


Demonic Toys (aka "Dangerous Toys") (1991)
Starring: Tracy Scoggins, Bentley Mitchum, Daniel Cerny, Michael Russo, Peter Schrum, Ellen Dunning, William Thorne, Robert Stoeckle, and Jeff Weston
Director: Peter Manoogian
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Police Detective Judith Gray (Scoggins) pursues gunmen who have just murdered her partner and father of her unborn child (Weston) into a warehouse full of toys. When a demon (Cerny, voiced by Stoeckle) that has lain dormant for decades under the building's foundation senses her, it decides her baby will be its physical form and it animates toys in warehouse to capture her and kill everyone else inside. Will Judith, together with a teen runaway (Dunning), a hapless fast-food delivery boy (Mitchum), a lazy security guard (Schrum), and a mad-dog killer (Russo) be able to fend off the demon and his cute-but-deadly minions, or will she become the unwilling mother of Hell on Earth?

"Demonic Toys" is another highly entertaining movie from Full Moon's Golden Age of the early 1990s. It offers a perfect blend of horror and comedy, and it's a far creepier movie than the demon-possessed toys that are its main selling point led me to believe.

In fact, while much of the film is definitely played tongue-in-cheek, the concept of a demon seizing a woman so it can possess her unborn child is one that creeps me out just thinking about it. The concept is made even creepier in execution here, as the demon generally presents himself as a little boy (played on-screen by child actor Daniel Cerny, but voiced with great effectiveness by Robert Stoeckle). Seeing a child talk about spiritual rape and murder is very, very disturbing.

The whole "demon replacing the soul of an unborn child" plot of the film actually adds some (perhaps inadvertently) depth and controversy to the film. Judith is barely one month pregnant, yet the film makes it clear that her fetus is most definitely already a baby, complete with a soul that is looking forward to being born and experiencing life on Earth. Fanatical pro-abortion supporters should stay away from this flick, but those right-wing pro-lifers in the audience should check it out (at least those of you who don't mind foul language used with great comedic effect).

The acting in the film is good all around, with the aforementioned Robert Stoeckle providing a great demon voice, and Bentley Mitchum coming across as a young version of Bruce Campbell's Ash from "Evil Dead 2" as he battles the killer toys. Leading lady Tracy Scoggins has a tendency to chew up the scenery, but in a movie featuring demon-possessed killer toys a touch of overacting isn't that big a deal.


Other noteworthy players in the film are the toys of the title. They are more funny than scary, but that's intentional on the part of the filmmakers. In fact, the knife-wielding, foul-mouthed Baby Oopsie-Daisy (and its uncredited voice actor) has some of the film's funniest moments and best lines. The puppetry and stop-motion animation used to bring the toys to life are very well-done, particularly in the case of Baby Oopsie-Daisy, the killer teddy bear, and the toy soldier who joins the fray late in the film. However, as funny as the toys are, they inflict some very gruesome deaths on some of the characters, and thus give rise to some displays of gore effects that are as impressive as the craftsmanship involved in animating the toys.

This is a fun romp of a movie. If you're looking for some comedy-tinged horror that might even inspire a thought or two as the mayhem unfolds, "Demonic Toys" might just be the film for you.



Puppet Master Vs. Demonic Toys (2004)
Starring: Corey Feldman, Danielle Keaton, Vanessa Angel, Silva Suvadova, Nikolai Sotirov and Anton Falk
Director: Ted Nicolaou
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Eccentric inventor and toymaker Robert Toulon (Feldman) and his teenaged daugther Alexandra (Keaton) recreate the secret formula that can bring inanimate objects to life, and they use it to revive some of the puppet's created by Robert's grand-uncle Andre Toulon--Blade, Pinhead, Jester, and Six-shooter. It's a good thing they do, because the sinister president Erica Sharpe (Angel) of Sharpe Toys has been selling demon-possessed toys which will come to life Christmas morning and kill millions of Americans, sacrificing their souls to the demonlord Bael (Falk) and elevating Erica to ruler of Earth. Only the Toulons and the magic puppets can stop them... if they survive long enough.


"Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys" is one of the better movies to come out of the Sci-Fi Channel's original programming department. Yes, it's goofy and illogical and the special effects won't be winning any awards, but it's a fun and funny movie.

Although the creator of both the Demonic Toys and the Puppet Master concepts, Richard Band, had no direct part in the creation of this film, the presence of an old-time Full Moon script-writer (C. Courtney Joyner) and a director who worked on a number of Full Moon features (Ted Nicolaou) the spirit of the original movies is alive and well in this one. In fact, it's better than much of what Band has been producing and directing lately.

Corey Feldman in particular is great fun as the gruff grand-nephew and last male decendent of the Toulon line, and teenaged actress Danielle Keaton gives a nice performance as a cute and well-mannered kid who patiently puts up with the dad's weird nature. The father/daughter relationships in this movie is one of the things that makes it such an interesting film, particuarly when the Toulons are considered in the light of the relationship that Erica Sharpe must have had with her father. There's nothing deep here--like most films from the brain-trust that is/was the Full Moon gang, the emphasis is on gags, gimmicks and gore rather than characterization--but it's enough to make us interested in the characters, enough to make us care.

If you're looking for an unusual movie to mark the Christmas season, "Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys" could be the one to reach for. There might be a few too many fart jokes and exploding eyeballs for grandma's sensibilities, but I think most kids will get a kick out of it.

A Franco foul-up almost saved by unintentional comedy

Neurosis: The Fall of the House of Usher (aka "Revenge in the House of Usher" and "Zombie 5") (1982)
Starring: Howard Vernon, Robert Foster, Lina Romay, Jean Tolzac, Olivier Mathot, and Françoise Blanchard
Director: Jess Franco
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Dr. Alan Hacker (Foster) travels to the castle of his old professor, Dr. Usher (Vernon) where he quickly learns that his old teacher has gone mad. Aside from claiming that he is 200 years old, Usher is obsessed with resurrecting his dead daughter by giving her blood transfusions from girls he’s kidnapped.

With "Neurosis" (as the film was called in the on-screen titles even though the DVD case told me I was going to see "Revenge in the House of Usher"), Jess Franco manages to make himself look worse than usual. Not only does he do a half-assed job of adapting the classic Poe story "Fall of the House of Usher" but he uses 15-20 minutes of footage from one of the few good movies he's made--"Awful Dr. Orlof"--as a flashback sequence so the viewer can compare what he did in 1964 with what he did in 1981. 1981 Jess Franco does NOT look good when compared with 1964 Jess Franco.

The fault in using the old footage is embodied first in the character of "Morpho", Dr. Usher's blind (one-eyed?) assistant who is more in love with Usher's semi-undead daughter than even Usher. Morpho's make-up in the 1981 footage is pathetic when compared with the 1962 footage... when it should have been the other way around, given the improvement in the art in the two decades that passed between the production of the two films. Secondly, the old footage is simply better over all cinematography-wise. The shots are better composed and framed, more interestingly lit, and just more dramatic over-all.

As for the film overall, there is no logic to the story and the scenes appear to be strung together almost as random, with characters dropping in and out--like the horny stable boy; or important characters being introduced out of the blue in the third act--like Usher's wife, who may or may not be a ghost. We never do find out what she is or how she managed to creep around the castle without Usher's loyal housekeeper and would-be lover Helen seeing her (if she wasn't a ghost).

Speaking of Helen... if someone can explain her character arc to me, I will bow down to you as the superior reviewer. She becomes a completely different character all of a sudden. I could chalk it up to delusions on the part of Usher, but Dr. Hacker was the one who was primarily involved with her inexplicable transformation.

While watching the film, I actually did wonder on more than one occasion whether it was a satire of gothic horror films that misfired rather than a serious attempt at making a horror movie. If viewed as such, it suddenly becomes a mediocre movie instead of a terrible one. Certainly, the bad acting on the part of the men dubbing Robert Foster (as Dr. Hacker) and Howard Vernon (as Dr. Usher) gives rise to much hilarity... and the people responsible for voicing Lina Romay and the rest of the cast are almost as effective with their comedic stylings.

But I doubt this was intended as a comedy, so the film ends up here, with the rest of the cinematic trash. There are actually a few well-done scenes of horror sprinkled here and there throughout the film, but overall it's another cheap-jack Jess Franco Failure, with another of his trademark botched endings. (Free advice to filmmakers: If you're going to adapt "The Fall of the House of Usher" and you're going to have a building collapse... for God's sake, budget some miniature shots or buy some stock footage, because the way Franco does it here is a textbook example of what NOT to do.)

That said, the bad voice, the incoherent storyline, and the outrageously random behavior on the part of the characters also make this movie the exact right kind of trash for those who enjoy riffing as bad movies unfold. With the right group of friends, this movie can be a lot of fun.

Orchestral arrangements of great horror themes

Well, time and a dearth of horror films I've felt strongly enough to comment on over the past couple of years have pretty much put this blog out to pasture. But, given that it's the horror month of Halloween, I feel like posting SOMETHING here. So here's a some commentary horror movie theme arrangements by Mac Styran.

Mac Styran is a German composer who's been writing scores for a range of media projects for more than 15 years. He is a classically trained pianist who has several works available through ScoreBuffet.com. More samples of his work can be found on his personal website.

Mac Styran at work

The videos featured here were all edited by his wife Doro Styran. They are all very well done and compliment the music perfectly.

First, here's my favorite of Styran's arrangements -- appropriately enough John Carpenter's "Halloween Theme." Styran adds a number of his own musical elements here, but he keeps what made the original tune great.




Next is Styran's take on "Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds." This version is highlighted by its perfectly timed flourishes and a nice instrumental version of "Forever Autumn"--a tune that most people butcher when they try to cover or rearrange it. I would have liked a stronger callback to the "Eve of War Theme" at the end, but otherwise this is a perfect track.




Finally, Styran has also tackled Fred Myrow & Malcolm Seagrave's "Theme from Phantasm." The original piece is a favorite of mine, and the "Phantasm" movie holds a special place in my heart. It was one of the works that prompted me to be a writer, because I wanted to tell stories like that.

Styran's bombastic arrangement of the "Theme from Phantasm" captures the killer dwarfs and flying silver balls of death perfectly--and the balls are also the focus of the video--but I think it needed more quiet moments. It should either have built up to the powerfully noisy elements, or it should have had a quieter bridge. For me, the quiet stretches contribute even more strongly than the savage scenes to what makes "Phantasm" such a unique and creepy movie. Still, if this is any indication, Styran would be a great choice to score another entry in the "Phantasm" series if one was ever made.

Bonus Scream Queen: Cherie Johnson

For the third year in a row, I bring you a flag-draped Scream Queen for the Fourth of July, officially making it a tradition.

Celebrate Independence Day with Cherie Johnson, a child actress who got her start on "Puniky Brewster" and made a successful transition to adulthood in front of the camera with roles in horror films such as "Dead Tone", "Killer Weekend" (both 2007), and "Raven" (2010).

A film of a child molester's nightmares?

Terror Toons (2001)
Starring: Beverly Lynne, Lizzie Borden, and Kelly Lui
Director: Joe Castro
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Sisters Candy (Borden) and Cindy (Lynne) are left home for the night while their parents attend a wedding. Cindy receives a DVD called "Terror Toons". When the violent, insane cartoon characters of Dr. Carnage and Max Assassin leap from the screen into the real world, the cartoon violence soon causes real blood to flow.


Regular readers probably have probably seen me rant multiple times about filmmakers needing to take their budget and available talent-pool into account when conceiving and executing projects.

"Terror Toons" is exactly the kind of horror film that SHOULD NOT be made on a tiny shoestring budget. It's abo an animated DVD (which looks atrocious) from which cartoon characters emerge to slaughter people in the real world (through painfully cheap effects and in costumes that look worse than the animated world they emerged from) and a need for copious gore effects (which the film's tiny budget apparently couldn't even handle).

There's also an issue with the casting. Candy in particular is problematic. I can't tell if she's supposed to be very young or simply retarded. In either case, the casting is bad, first and foremost because of the very, VERY bad boob job the actress is sporting. (And if she's supposed to be a young kid, then the sort of airbags she's sporting on her chest must mean she's the kind chick convicted child rapist Roman Polanski has nightmares about.)


The difficulty of getting a read on what the viewer is supposed to make of Candy is perhaps also a problem with the script... it doesn't seem like the writers put a whole lot of thought into her or any other of the characters in the film; the two cartoon killers seem to be the most realized characters around. And then there's Satan and his monologuing. Huh?

We can add the direction and camerawork to the to the parade of awfulness that is present in this flick, although all i can say about either is that aside from there obviously was a camera present, I'm not convinced the person running it had much in the way of an idea about how to set a scene. And the acting... it is almost uniformly awful. Lynne and Lui are the only two appearing that seem to have even an iota of talent; everyone else deserves to be murdered by cartoon characters come to life for thinking they should appear on film.

With all the negativity I'm spewing at this film, why did I give it even Two Stars? Well, I'm giving some credit for Lynne and Lui, a couple of semi-bright spots in the otherwise pathetic cast of actors. I'm also giving some credit for some nice looking sets once the cartoon characters invade the house and transform it into a cartoon-house (the place still looks like someone's basement or trailer, but at least some effort was made). I'm also giving some consideration for a neat idea, even if it was one that was far beyond the meager means and talent that were available to execute it.

"Terror Toons", despite a concept that seems appealing to lovers of weird movies, is a film that the vast majority of us are better off avoiding. However, it should be required viewing for those of you out there thinking about making your own movie. It's an illustration of why you need to plan your project carefully and realistically before you start. It's a film that the people involved simply were not able to do justice, and you can learn from their example and not repeat their mistake.

'Knight Chills": A horror movie that captures the reality of the table-top RPG experience?

Knight Chills (2002) 
Starring: Michael Wayne Walton, Tim Jeffrey, Laura Tidwell, and DJ Perry 
Director: Katherine Hicks
 Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A mentally unstable roleplaying gamer (Walton) loses track of the lines between reality and fantasy and kills himself over the unrequited love of a part-time game-group member (Tidwell). The tragedy quickly turns to terror for the surviving gamers, as they are one by one stalked and killed by someone (or some thing) who appears to be the dead player's character.

I really wanted to like this movie. As a long-time roleplaying gamer, as well as a professional roleplaying game writer, I thought the premise of "Knight Chills"--a game group that ends up being stalked by one of the RPG characters coming to life--sounded very, very cool. I still think it's a great concept, but it's not one that is really used to its fullest potential here. Not even close.

While "Knight Chills" is better than many of the low-budget movies of its kind (the ones providing filler for DVD multipacks with names like "100 Horror Films" or "Gory Graveyards"), with overall better acting, better technical competence, and a better score, it is still crammed full of filler material and displays many of the typical cheap movie flaws... with badly scripted and redundant "character development" scenes being the most prominent of those flaws in this movie. To the film's flaws, we can add kill-scenes so lame and without resolution that we aren't even sure if the character dispatched is dead or just fainted due to low blood sugar or something.

Further, "Knight Chills' goes a great job of conveying what is must be like to be a spectator at a roleplaying game. The wife of my friend and fellow writer John Rateliff once described roleplaying game sessions as "two minutes of action crammed into four hours."

The gaming scenes in "Knight Chills" made me more fully understand what she meant than I had before. They rang true to life, with the Gamemaster (Jeffrey) and the I-game-because-my-boyfriend-likes-his-geeky-friends-and-I-like-my-boyfriend chick (Tidwell) seeming particularly realistic. And that could be the problem. RPGs ARE boring, unless you're in the game, playing a character.

So, as much as I wanted to be able to give "Knight Chills" a rave review, I can't. I can't even recommend it, unless you're a GM who wants to show his players what bad gaming protocol is.

'Quicksilver Highway' is one ot stay away from

Quicksilver Highway (1997)
Starring: Christopher Lloyd, Matt Frewer, Missy Crider, and Raphael Sbarge
Director: Mick Garris
Rating: Three of Ten Stars


It's hard to go wrong with an horror anthology movie, and if you're adapting stories by Stephen King and Clive Barker to the screen, you'd think it would be even harder. But no. Screenwriter/director Mick
Garris managed to completely botch the effort with "Quicksilver Highway."

Maybe the idea here was to make an anthology featuring darkly humorous tales, ala the likewise King-based "Creeopshow" anthology films, and they simply failed to be funny. If a desire to make a horror movie that drew upon the absurd, it would explain a lot about the choices of stories, the nature of the framing sequence, and several other quirky aspects of the film. In fact, I am assuming that it's was supposed to be more funny than it is, as it's the only way I can write this review without relegating it "Movies You Should [Die Before You] See."--it's something I would hate to do with a film featuring actors I live, based on stories from writers I like. IF this is a failed horror comedy, the two featured short films ("Chattering Teeth" and "Body Politic") are a little less awful, because one assumes they were intended to be absurd to begin with.

But even so, part of me feels that maybe the Three Star rating I am giving "Quicksilver Highway" is too generous.

The film starts to go wrong with the framing sequence. Having a narrator link the stories via introductory bits is a well-established convention for these movies, but Christoper Lloyd is so off-putting as  a weirdo in a rune-engraved leather collar telling stories to total strangers who made the bad decision to visit his establishment that the smart viewers might have taken it as a sign of things to come. This warning would probably be even more evident to those smart viewers when he repeatedly states his stories have no point. I was not among those smart viewers, so I kept watching.

Of the stories, we first have "Chattering Teeth," based on a tale by Stephen King.  In it, a man who is saved from a psychotic hitchhiker by a pair of over-sized, wind-up toy teeth. At no point does this short even get tense, let alone scary, and to describe the resolution as anticlimactic might be too generous. It does, however,  deliver on the promise of Lloyd's character As lame as this one is, it pales in comparison to the one that follows.

"The Body Politic" is the second tale, and it was adapted from a very bad Clive Barker story about a surgeon whose hands rebel against the rest of his body--and then cause the hands of others to rebel as well. Setting aside the fact that the hands can do nothing without the muscles of the arms--and yet a hospital full of rebellious hands are dragging people around as the story builds to its ludicrous climax--there simply isn't anything scary about the story. It's even too stupid to be funny, although Matt Frewer's over-the-top performance as the doctor at war with his own hands was lots of fun, and it earns the "Quicksilver Highway" an entire Star.

While Frewer's performance was the only really good one in the film, I can't complain about any of the other cast members; they all did excellent jobs with the material they had to work with. I can't even really blame Christopher Lloyd for making me wonder if I really wanted to keep watching, because he was just being Christopher Lloyd doing the best he could with a bad part.

As regular readers know, I love anthology films, so I always hate nt being able to recommend them. In the case of "Qucksilver Highway, the only thing I can be truly positive about is.Frewer's performance--and that's not enough for me to recommend you waste your time on this botched effort.

Saturday Scream Queen: Sybil Danning

Born an Army Brat, Sybil Danning grew up to be one of the most commanding figures in B-movies of the late 1970s and 1980s. Few actresses could look as deadly and sexy waving a gun (or a sword or some weird alien raygun) around as Danning. Most of her resume are action or various exploitation (and sexploitation) films, but she can also be seen in a few horror films, like "The Lady in Red Kills Seven Times" (1972), "Night Kill" (1980), "Julie Darling" (1983), "Howling II" (1985), and "The Tomb" (1997).

In 1989, Danning mostly retired from acting when she co-founded a production company. She remains CEO pf that operation, but still takes the occasional part. Her most substantial horror roles in recent years was in the 2007 remake of "Halloween" and a recurring part on the homoerotic vampire TV series "The Lair" (2009).

One of the great Peter Cushing's worst films?

The Blood Beast Terror (1968)
Starring: Peter Cushing, Robert Flemyng and Wanda Ventham
Director: Vernon Sewell
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A blood-sucking creature is on the loose, and Inspector Quennel (Cushing) is hot on its trail. All the clues point to the household of harmless entomologist Dr. Mallenger (Flemyng). Can his promiscious daughter (Ventham) be a literal man-eater?

Peter Cushing reportedly described this movie as the worst one he was ever in. While it isn't all that good--it's slow-moving, it's requirements for special effects to turn a buxom babe into a giant blood-sucking moth are beyond the meager budget it was produced with, and the ending is one of the most abrupt and badly motivated among the many abrupt and badly motivated endings of British monster movies from the 1950s and 1960--but it isn't anywhere near as bad as "Scream and Scream Again," so I can only assume that either Cushing had a better time making the latter film or he hadn't made it yet when he talked down "Blood Beast Terror".

While it's certainly true that this is one of those very rare occasions where Cushing doesn't seem to be giving the role his all--this is the only time I remember feeling like he "phoned in" his performance--he still brings more life to the scenes he's in than is found virtually anywhere else in the film. In fact, aside from Cushing, the only interesting thing in the picture is Wanda Ventham (or, more specifically, Wanda Ventham's cleavage).

Saturday Scream Queen: June Collyer

June Collyer's film career began in silent movies when she was cast in the 1927 drama "East Side, West Side." She made 11 films before making a successful transition to sound pictures where she was counted among the most radiant leading ladies of thrillers and horror films from the smaller studios; while most of her roles during the silent era were in romantic dramas, most her sound era parts were in mysteries and horror films.

Collyer's greatest chillers and thrillers include "Illusion" (1930), "The Drums of Jeopardy" (1931), "Before Midnight" (1933), "The Ghost Walks" (1934), and "A Face in the Fog" (1936). Also of note is "Murder By Television" (1935), in which Collyer was featured along side the great Bela Lugosi. However, it is not a good film by any measure, and it is only worth viewing for the greatest Lugosi or Collyer fans.

Collyer retired from film after completing "A Face in the Fog" to focus on raising her two children. In 1950, after they were grown, she returned to acting on "The Steve Erwin Show," a sit-com  starring her husand which aired until 1955. The end of that series was also the end of Collyer's acting career, as she retired a second and final time.

June Collyer passed away in 1968. As the years go by, more and more of her films are being lost to time, with many of her silent pictures already gone forever and the same is true of many of her talkies. For some, only one or two known prints are known to survive on fragile nitrate stock and they are not slated for preservation. For all the negative things film snobs like to say about the shoddy transfers on budget-priced DVDs, at least they're keeping otherwise lost classics available for viewing.

An Evening with June Collyer

A favorite actress of mine from the 1930s is June Collyer. Below, I present reviews of a trio of her pictures that make for a great in-home film festival. Have some friends over for an evening of old-time chillers and light-hearted mystery, and discover the radiance of NUELOW Games's unofficial mascot!

Have some fellow movie buffs over for a light dinner, make some popcorn, and then settle in for a fun night of classic movies. All three films can be had on DVD for extremely reasonable prices--and they may even be available for free streaming online if your television is hooked up to the internet. (Me, I still prefer DVDs... there's no risk of load-time lag with them.)

If you and your friends are gamers, perhaps you can even fit in a little roleplaying fun in between or after the films. As mentioned, June Collyer is the unofficial mascot of NUELOW Games, so it stands to reason she'd be featured in one of their products--a product titled "Black Kitten vs. June Collyer" written by yours truly as a supplement for ROLF!: The Rollplaying Game. It's got superheroes, movie stars, and communist zombies... all ready for you to play, or for you to fight with characters of your own creation. (Click here for more information about, and to see previews of, "Black Kitten vs. June Collyer".)


The Drums of Jeopardy (1931)
Starring: Warner Oland, June Collyer, Lloyd Hughes, Hale Hamilton, Wallace MacDonald, Clara Blandick, and Mischa Auer
Director: George B. Seitz
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

When one of the men of the Petrov family makes his daugher pregnant, dumps her, and causes her to commit suicide, but then won't own up to his misdeed, Dr. Boris Karlov (Oland) sets out to gain revenge by seeing them all dead. He persues them halfway around the world, to America, where a secret service agent (Hamilton) and a feisty young American woman (Collyer) end up in the middle of this Russian struggle for survival and revenge.



"The Drums of Jeopardy" is a nifty little thriller from the early days of talkies that's jam-packed with drama, action, and humor. Its fast-paced script hardly gives the viewers a chance to realize that just about everything in this film has become almost painfully cliche in the nearly eighty years since its original release, nor does it pause long enough to really let us consider how outrageous and dimwitted the "brilliant" plan of the Federal Agents who match wits with Karlov is. We're too busy hating the slimy Russian nobleman Prince Gregor (Wallace MacDonald) who not only impregnated and dumped a poor girl, but who then refuses to live up to what he's done and ultimately tries to sell out everyone else to save his own skin; admiring the beauty of the resourceful young Kitty Connover (June Collyer, as great as she's ever been); snickering at the comic relief provided by her sharp-tongued aunt (Clara Blandick), and grinning with sinister glee as Dr. Karlov delivers zingers and pulls tricks on the good guys that allows him to take a place among the great villains of movie history 's zingers as his evil plans fall into place (an honor deserved in no small part due to an excellent performance by character actor Warner Oland who is best remembered for playing Charlie Chan).

Another remarkable aspect of this film that sets it apart from many others from this period is that it has a villain that the viewer can relate to. His daughter was violated and tossed aside by the Petrovs, so, given that this is a melodramatic thriller and we're talking about Russians here, it's only natural he'd take elaborate and final revenge against not only the Petrovs but Russian nobility in general. Karlov is a character who is almost like a tragic hero in his stature within this film and he is must more interesting than most film villains from the early days of film.

I should note that as much as I enjoyed this film, I was a little disappointed in some aspects of how the story unfolded. I've already commented on the moronic nature of the government agents in the film, but a bigger dissapointment was that Karlov didn't really get his full revenge and we don't get to see that rat bastard Gregor die a slow and painful death. (That alone makes me wish for a remake of this movie. I'd love to see Tim Thomerson as Karlov!)

Speaking of Karlov... yes, the villain of this movie is named Boris Karlov. Given that this film is based on an American novel that was originally published in 1920, I think we can chalk this up to one of those weird coincidences. Karloff was an obscure stage actor touring Canadian backwaters at the time the book was written. (Although at least one source claims that Karloff chose his screen name because of the novel.)

All in all, "The Drums of Jeopardy" is a great little film that really deserves better than to be trampled to dust under the marching feet of pop culture and swept away by the passage of time.


  The Ghost Walks (1934)
Starring: John Miljan, Richard Carle, Johnny Arthur, Spencer Charters, June Collyer, Donald Kirke and Eve Southern
Director: Frank R. Strayer
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A playwright (Miljan) invites a theatrical producer (Carle) and his fey secretary (Arthur) to join him in the country so they can discuss his latest play. The writer has secretly hired a bunch of actors who will perform the play, essentially hoaxing the producer with a fake murder, hoping he'll be amazed by the play's realism. His plan backfires, however, when one of the actors turns up dead for real and they receive word that a dangerous lunatic has escaped from a nearby asylum.


"The Ghost Walks" is a highly entertaining comic mystery that takes the mainstays of the "dark old house" genre that flourished in the early 1930s and mixes it with an Agatha Christie vibe and throws in a "mad doctor" (or maybe just the legend of one?) for good measure. Oh, and these elements are mixed up by several plot twists that will surprise and amuse even the most experienced viewer of films from this period.

This is a fine little movie that doesn't deserve the obscurity it has been relegated to. It features a well-paced script filled with great plot twists, snappy dialogue and a brand of comedy that has held up nicely to the passage of time. While the film has plenty of elements that are standard (it's a dark and stormy night, the characters are all trapped in the house with a killer and people keep dying and/or vanishing mysteriously no matter what the survivors try) it's comic relief characters and the overall thrust of the gags are highly unusual for a film from this period. (Basically, instead of the dippy, superstitious black manservant, we have a effeminate secretary to a pompous theatrical agent, both of whom aren't half as smart as they think they are... but the audience has a great time laughing at their expense. And, with the exception of the psychotically PC who can't laugh at anything except rednecks or Christians being lampooned, these comic relief characters and the jokes around them are ones that can be enjoyed today without that uncomfortable feeling of racism.)

The print of "The Ghost Walks" that I watched was very worn and damaged in many places. All the frames were there, but there was lots of scratches on the film and the image was often very blurry. I suspect that digital video and the DVD format came along just in time to rescue this film from oblivion. Director Frank Strayer was definately one of the most talented people working in independent, low-budget films during the 1930s; I've enjoyed every one of his films, with "The Monster Walks" being the only one I haven't given a Fresh rating to.

"The Ghost Walks" is worth checking out if you enjoy lighthearted mysteries, even if you aren't a big fan of early cinema.


A Face in the Fog (1936)
Starring: Lloyd Hughes, June Collyer, Al St. John, and Lawrence Gray
Director: Robert Hill
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When society reporter-trying-to-become-a-crimebeat-reporter Jean Monroe (Collyer) claims to have seen the face of the mysterious killer who is poisoning theatre people in the city, and that she intends to reveal his identity in a future column, she becomes his next target. Her fiance and fellow reporter Frank Gordon (Hughes) teams with criminologist and playwright Peter Fortune (Gray) to catch the killer before he claims Jean's life.


"A Face in the Fog" is one of those weakly written mysteries where there is only one possible suspect, who, after concocting a really brilliant method of committing his murders, subsequently behaves so stupidly that even Barney Fife could have caught him while in the middle of a three-day moonshine bender. The plot also doesn't make a lot of sense, nor do the reasons for who the killer chooses as his victims.

However, the actors perform with such charm and sincerity, and the film moves at such a break-neck pace that you'll hardly have time to notice its shortcomings--which means my criticisms probably amount to no more than nitpicking. June Collyer as the stubbornly brave, career-minded journalist is especially good, in what proved to be her last movie before she left acting for some 15 years to raise her children.

Although this is an entertaining enough movie, with an excellent cast and sharp direction, the script is just shaky enough that I can't give it a wholehearted recommendation. Admirers of June Collyer or Lloyd Hughes should certainly check it out, and I think it's worth adding to the line-up of any in-home film festival you might want to hold centering on either one, but it's not quite a must-see if you're just looking for something to pass the time with.

A naked witch not worth checking out

The Naked Witch (1964)
Starring: Robert Short, Libby Hall, and Jo Maryman
Directors: Larry Buchanan and Claude Alexander
Rating: One of Ten Stars

A graduate student (Short) researching the history of a VERY ethnically German town in Texas digs up the corpse of a long-dead witch (Hall) and restores her to life. She the proceeds to take bloody revenge on the decendents of the transplanted Teutonics who murdered her.


To describe "The Naked Witch" as awful is to give it a backhanded compliment. Awful is the mildest of terms one can apply to this film. To make it even worse, it's BORING. What we have here is enough content to barely fill an episode of "Tales From the Darkside" or "Ray Bradbury Theater" but it's stretched out to twice that length. And, although the film barely clears one hour of running time, it feels like twice that.

The fact the script was suitable for a 23-minute TV show rather than a movie is only part of the awfulness here. It's compounded by the film's cast.

First, there's leading man Robert Short, an actor who was born 50-60 years too late. He would have been perfect for slient movies, because he can act with his face and his body language, but whenever he tries to deliver a line, he spoils everything. I am convinced that if you were to put a loaded gun to Mr. Short's head and say, "Act frightened or I will blow your brains out!" he's say "Please, no. Spare me. I have a wife and kids" in a wooden monotone. And we get to suffer through that wooden monotone as Short narrates many of the movies events.


Second, there's Libby Hall, the Naked Witch of the title. She is slightly better than Short when it comes to the acting but not by much. With her, the problem is more a physical one. Although I like nudity as much as the next guy, there really are some women who should keep their shirts on. Ms. Hall is one of them. I don't mean to pick on her, but someone involved with the production should have realized that if you're going to try to sell you movie with sex, you need to have someone a little more sexy doing it; Hall's breasts would have looked just fine if they had been left to the imagination, but when they're exposed, you find yourself seeing something you wish you hadn't. (That said, we don't get to see much of her breasts--not only does the Naked Witch not spend a whole lot of time Naked but when she does, there are often censor bars across the unfortunate boobies.)


Third, there's the fact the fact that every bit of dialogue in the film is atrociously bad... and it sounds even worse coming from the mouths of untalented actors. This isn't entirely the fault of the actors, but good actors can make bad lines at least sound passable. No such luck here.

The only thing that saves this film from a 0-rating is that Buchanan does show the occassional flare for dramatic visuals. There are some great scenes of the Naked Witch walking through the Texas landscape, and there's an almost-great scene where the blood from one of her victims spreads in a body of water. However, such visual moments are shattered by the bad acting and Buchanan's otherwise incompetent directing. He misses more moments to create spookiness or great visuals than he grasps.

All-in-all, I have to wonder why anyone would think this film was worth preserving and re-releasing on DVD. There is so little about it that is worth anything that it was truly wasted time and effort.

Saturday Scream Queen: Julie Christie

British actress Julie Christie spent her childhood on her father's tea plantation in India before being sent to home to England for her education. Desiring to be an actress at a young age, she soon found success on the stage, but was not satisfied; to Christie, film was how well you did on film was how you measured success.

Pushing hard to leave the stage for the screen, her first major opportunity seemed to be the lead female part in the spy thriller "Dr. No," but she ultimately lost the part to Ursula Andress for not being "busty enough." It all worked out for Christie, however, as bigger and better opportunities swiftly developed and she was soon on her way to super-stardom in celebrated landmark films like "Darling" and "Dr. Zhivago."

At the height of her career in the late 1960s, Christie was wealthy enough to not need to work and she became very choosy about the role she picked. As the frequency with which she appeared on screen diminished, so did her profile as an actress and her career went into an intended eclipse. She then began devoting most of her time to political and social causes.

Christie continues to work vocationally in film to this day, choosing mostly small and unusual films to grace with her magnetic presence and beauty. Along the way, she has appeared in several horror films, all of which have been made better by her presence. Among there are "Don't Look Know" (1973), "Demon Seed" (1977), and "Red Riding Hood" (2011).