Saturday Scream Queen: Elizabeth Montgomery

Born in 1933, Elizabeth Montgomery will probably always remain one of the most beautiful and graceful actresses to grace the small screen. Her career spanned forty years, beginning with her portrayls of a wide range of characters in over 200 live broadcasts of legendary early television anthology series such as "Robert Montgomery Presents," which produced by her father, "Kraft Theater" and "Studio One in Hollywood". She is best known for her role as Samantha Stephens, the witch turned would-be average suburban housewife during the 8-year run of the "Bewitched" television series. She ended her career starring in a string of critically acclaimed television movies during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Although born into show-business, Montgomery spent her childhood and teenage years being formally trained as an actress, earning her breaks by more than just accident of birth. Although best known for her comedic acting, Montgomery appeared in numerous moody and highly effective horror and thriller television programmes, including an episode of the always-excellent Boris Karloff hosted anthology series "Thriller", and the 1972 killer-in-the-house movie "The Victim".

Montgomery's final role was crime reporter Edna Buchanan in a pair of films loosely based on real-world murders, "The Corpse Had a Familiar Face" and "Deadline for Murder". Montgomery was dying from cancer while the last film was being shot, and she passed way in May of 1995, mere weeks after it wrapped.

Like an episode of a TV anthology series with padding

Fell (2012)
Starring: Jeff Dylan Graham, Kristian Day, Katie Walters, and Barron Christian
Director: Marcus Koch
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Bill (Graham) has problems. His psychiatrist has put him on medication that is distorting his reality, his relationship with his girlfriend has fallen apart... and there's a dead girl in his bath tub, but he doesn't know how she ended up there.

If you're like me, you enjoy movies that present mysteries that you can try to solve as the film unfolds, opportunities to get ahead of the filmmakers and then be proven right or wrong in your assumptions.

"Fell" is one of those movies. And being that it's a film that takes place almost entirely within the apartment and/or the mind of a madman, it presents numerous puzzles for the viewer to try to piece together ahead of time. While most of the answers to what is happening in the film aren't surprising, the build-up to them is effectively staged. Transformations in the apartment gives viewers hints as to what is really happening, as do the behavior of the characters. And while I correctly guessed almost every fact of what was going on in the film, there was a final twist at the end that made me change my overall evaluation from "that was predictable" to "that was predictable but cool!"

Unfortunately, as I mention in the headline, "Fell" suffers from too much padding, especially in the first half hour. It's got the story of an intense episode of "The Hitchhiker", "Tales From the Darkside" or "Hammer House of Horror", but the director makes the all-too-common mistake of either thinking his audience dim or not trusting his own ability to get his point across and thus ends up repeating himself to the point of tediousness in his effort to make sure we get that Bill is crazy and can't distinguish reality from hallucinations. Some trimming would have made this film even more intense than it already is.

Despite being a little flabby, I still think this film is well-worth a look by anyone who enjoys psychological horror... and for anyone who wants to see a perfect example of how to make a fine movie for very little money.

(This review was based on a preview screening copy provided by Distributor Chemical Burn. "Fell" will be in stores on June 6, 2012... but, strangely, not at Amazon.com.)

Jess Franco does good!

Count Dracula (1970) (aka "The Nights of Dracula" and "Night: When Dracula Awakens")
Starring: Christopher Lee, Fred Williams, Herbert Lom, Soledad Miranda, Maria Rohm, and Klaus Kinski
Director: Jess Franco
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

The immortal vampire Count Dracula (Lee) leaves his Transylvanian home for the fresh hunting grounds of London, preying upon women connected to his attorney, Jonathan Harker (Williams).

There is little question that Jess Franco is a hack of small talent. Even at his best, he ends up showing off how inept he is as a director, producer, what have you. So, to say that "Count Dracula" ranks among the very best of Jess Franco pictures sounds like I'm damning it with faint praise.

I am not, however. "Count Dracula" not only ranks among Jess Franco's best pictures, but it should be counted among the most faithful adaptations of Stoker's "Dracula" that has ever been committed to film. (In fact, the only one I've seen that's more faithful is John Johnson's oddly titled "Alucard"... which I just discovered I never posted a review of. I'll have to fix that ASAP.) Although it appears to be based on the stage play rather than novel, as was the famous Bela Lugosi flick for Universal 40 years earlier, this film captures the tone and intent of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" with far greater accuracy than the Lugosi vehicle or the film from Francis Ford Coppala that falsely passed itself off as "Bram Stoker's Dracula."

Christopher Lee is especially excellent in this film, portraying Dracula as the coldhearted, barely human maniac that he should be portrayed as--a being where humanity is a badly maintained mask that is barely skin deep. There is no romance surrounding this Dracula... only evil. Franco promised Lee that he would get to play Dracula as Stoker wrote him, and Franco was true to his word... Lee even gets to deliver the "children of the night" lines word-for-word, and with greater power than any other film actor before or since. The only complaint I can level against Lee's grand performance is that he comes out of the starting box a little too strong. The film maintains the creepy bits from the novel where Dracula gets younger as he feeds on the life-force and blood of innocent young English women, but the viewer doesn't get the full impact of Dracula's rejuvenation, because the transformation from old to young is little more than a make-up job, because Lee plays Dracula the same way.

Another shining performance in the film is delivered by Soledad Miranda. She literally commands every scene that she's in, being not only beautiful but also possessed with immense charisma. And when she goes from victim to vampire, she shows that she can be cute as easily as she can be creepy. It is one of film history's great tragedies that she was killed in a car accident on literally the very day when she was going to sign the contract that would have been her big breakthrough. If she had lived, perhaps even Jess Franco would have left a less foul legacy, as Miranda seems to be the common element between some of Franco's best pictures; the five-picture deal Miranda was about to sign would have seen Franco come along as the director on the films.

As for the rest of the cast, there isn't much to say other than that they showed up, they did their lines, and no one embarrassed themselves. Herbert Lom is an okay Van Helsing, and Klaus Kinski is a decent Renfield, but everyone else is perfectly forgettable... including Fred Williams' bland Jonathan Harker. (In fairness to Williams, though, anyone would look bland in comparison to Lee's Dracula in this flick.)

With the actors being excellent to okay, and the film being as faithful-as-can-be-excepted adaptation of "Dracula" within an 100-minute running time, why am I only giving it an Average rating, you might ask? Well, that's because despite everything that's good about the film, it is STILL a Jess Franco production.

Like most Franco films, he is working with a budget that is very small. And like most Franco films, Franco doesn't appear capable of judging where the money is best spent, or he is incapable of devising ways to hide the lack of budget. For example, when Terrence Fisher did his "Dracula" in 1958, the final battle between Dracula and the vampire hunters was completely revised to reflect the limitations of budget and production realities. Franco, doing a more faithful rendering of the source material couldn't be as radical as Fisher and writer Jimmy Sangster, but a more skilled director and manager could have devised a better solution than fake boulders being dropped on horsemen in a badly staged stunt sequence... and he certainly could have done better than the tragically anti-climactic demise of Dracula at the very end. (It's not only lame, it's barely within the "faithful" zone.)

The bonus features on the disc contain an interview with Franco that sheds a little light on why the ending to the film is so weak, but it really boils down to bad management on his part. That said, the interview also shows how committed he was to making this film, and, despite my describing him as a hack, gives me respect for him and this film.

The Franco interview is one of those rare DVD extras that is actually more than just filler... it's worth the time it takes to sit through. The same can be said about the dramatic reading of a condensed version of "Dracula" by Christopher Lee that's also included, as well as the essay about Soledad Miranda. All in all, the bonus features on the "Special Edition" disc that formed the basis of this review add real value to the package.

Saturday Scream Queen: Lisa Zane

Lisa Zane is a successful singer/song-writer who specializes in cabaret-style performances and who in 2006 was recognized by The Songwriter's Hall of Fame recognized as one of their new songwriters of the year. Zane, however, has also maintained a steady sideline in television and film acting, with numerous horror films to her credit.

Zane is probably best known to horror fans as the girl with a mysterious tie to Freddy Krueger in the closing chapter of the original "Nightmare on Elm Street" series, "Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare" (1997). Among her other horror credits are "Terrified" and "Her Deadly Rival" (both from 1995), and the sci-fi chillers "The Age of Insects" (1990) and "Natural Selection" (1994)

If Zane's last name seems familiar, it's because she is the older sister of Billy Zane, who's appeared in close to 100 horror films, including five in various states of production.

'Evidence of a Haunting' is a mess

Evidence of a Haunting (2010)
Starring: Jessica D. Fulling, Scott Evans, Renee Wiggins, Korin Medina, Christopher Cassarino, and Robert M. Alford
Director: Joey Evans
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Six ghost hunters on a reality TV show come up against increasingly dangerous spirits in their final three investigations.

"Evidence of A Haunting" is another one of those movies that draws its inspiration from the ever-increasing slate of shows like SyFy Channel's "Ghost Hunters". I haven't seen many episodes of any of them, but if the reality show that the characters in this movie star it existed, it would probably be like a cross between "Fact or Faked" and the aforementioned "Ghost Hunters".

I say "probably," because while we, in theory, are presented with at least one investigation as it would appear on the show, and we are given clips throughout the film of the kind that would appear on such a show, we never really get a sense of what the show is actually like. I suspect it would be a highly produced, high-end show like "Fact or Faked," but the film never gives us enough to work with to know where the characters fit on the hobbyiest to successful professional spectrum.

This problem could have been fixed if a little more time had been spent on the script in the character development department. The characters really needed to be explored more, as did their place in the world.

And if that had been done, maybe the filmmakers would have realized that their film was lacking in a consistent tone, or any sort of cues to the audience that the film would be shifting between "documentary"/"cinema verite" style and a regular, plainly fictional film, and eventually completely abandoning the conceit that we're watching footage culled from the team's final investigations.

A problem that no amount of improvement in the script, or a more consistent story-telling style used, would have fixed, is the wide variety of acting talent on display from the cast. A couple of the stars do almost professional-level work, but the majority of the cast are so wooden you almost have the feeling they were only making the movie because their families were being held hostage somewhere.

All in all, a film you can probably skip.

Saturday Scream Queen: Jessica Morris

Jessica Morris' first professional acting job came at the age of 16... in a Japanese commercial for crackers. After a few bit parts on television and in film, she landed a major recurring role on the soap opera "One Life to Live" in 2001.

Jessica remained on the series until 2005, at which point she moved to California and became a regular face in the quirky low-budget horror films from Charles Band's revitalized Full Moon production companym usually appearing in the films he directs instead of just produces. She has so far appeared in "The Haunted Casino" (2007), "Decadent Evil II" (2008), "Dangerous Worry Dolls" (2008), and the just-released "The Dead Want Women" (2012).

She has also starred in other low-budget horror flicks along the way, including "Venom" and "The Fading of the Cries" (both in 2011), "Demons" (2007), and "Bloody Murder" (2000), a film she claims to have hated making.

Skip the prequel, go straight to this one

"The Thing" (1982)
Star: Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, Keith David, and David Moffet
Director: John Carpenter
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

A group of scientists cut off from the rest of the world in Antarctica must deal with an ancient creature that is capable of taking on any form it desires... and that is bent of killing them.


As I sat down ot watch this movie, it dawned on my that I've never actually John Carpenter's version of "The Thing" before. Well, I should have filled that hole in my trashy movie knowledge long ago!

"The Thing" is a text book example of a nearly perfect horror movie. If I was teaching a class in horror films, it would be required viewing and papers would have to be written on it. And it should be required viewing for ANYONE intending to write or direct a horror movie or a monster movie.

In fact, it may be a little too perfect. Because it is so exactly constructed according to the pacing and template that has evolved from "White Zombie" through "Creature from the Black Lagoon" to "Baron Blood" and Carpenter's own "Halloween", few things here surprised me. I was creeped out and shocked at a couple of times, but it pretty much delivered what I expected it to, when I expected it, and pretty much in the manner I expected it.

The one exception is what follows after one of the team members has a heart attack. While I knew something was going to happen, I did not expect what DID happen, nor where it went from there.

If you want to see an extremely well-made horror movie, check out "The Thing". It might not have brought anything new to the genre, but it's still far, far better than 90% of the films being made today.