horror films – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Svengoolie Movie: “The Brides of Dracula”!

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

It’s almost Christmas and while I was watching the Svengoolie movie “The Brides of Dracula” last night, it struck me that the chief vampire Baron Meinster’s eyes reminded me of holly berries. Yo, Hondo, somebody needs to break out the Extra Strength Visine!

You probably don’t remember the sequels to this film:

The Rides of Dracula, about a vampire’s collection of fancy horse drawn carriages; he’s sort of like the Jay Leno of wealthy car collectors.

The Double Wides of Dracula, about a vampire who’s the landlord of a mobile home park and charges extravagant “rent” (several pints of blood).

Just to clarify, despite the title of the 1960 British bloodsucker movie from Hammer Film Productions, the boss biter is not played by Christopher Lee (because he wanted too much money) but by David Peel so he’s not Dracula but both vampires roll their bloodshot eyes at every girl they meet.

What’s refreshing about this flick is Baron Meinster the monster actually talks, which Dracula didn’t. In fact, Meinster is articulate and suave, as befitting the wealthy nobleman who just happens to sharpen his fangs on the necks of pretty girls.

And Peel actually gets a sarcastically funny line you might miss unless you listen closely. It’s when Baron Meinster meets the headmaster of the Transylvania School for Ladies Who Want to Cultivate Longer Teeth. Herr Otto Lang (Henry Oscar) gets his comeuppance after he threatens to throw Baron Meinster (whose real identity is at first unknown to him) off the school property when he comes to woo the new teacher Marianne Danielle (Yvonne Monlaur). But after the gracious Meinster reveals who he is, which is the baron who owns the property on which the school sits (after which Herr Lang abruptly changes his tone), the baron reminds Lang that his school does a great job “for such low rent.”

There’s a fair bit of comedy in the few scenes in which a local country medical man, Dr. Tobler (Miles Malleson) meets Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing). When Tobler reads Van Helsing’s business card, he discovers that Van Helsing is a doctor of many disciplines—except medicine. Earlier, Dr. Tobler prepares a quackery-type vaporizer steam therapy home remedy for himself, which includes myrrh of all things. It turns out you can inhale things like frankincense and myrrh via vaporizer; it sounds so three-wisemen-Christmasy that it fits the season!

On the other hand, Dr. Tobler doesn’t buy Van Helsing’s vampire explanation for why so many villagers are dying (in the undead sense), though he is open to taking a cut of the fees for applying the usual remedies like stakes, garlic, crucifixes, and the occasional self-branding with hot coals that goes way beyond vaporizers.

The bats look arthritic, but other than that the movie is OK. I give it a 2.5/5 Shrilling Chicken rating.

Svengoolie Movie: “The Thing That Couldn’t Die”

The thing about this movie we saw last night on the Svengoolie show, “The Thing That Couldn’t Die,” is that it heads in the wrong direction from the start—with a woman who douses for treasure. Dousing or witching for water or other things employs a special stick or rods to find objects buried underground. I actually saw this many years ago when I worked as a land survey crew member and watched an old guy use dousing rods to find buried water tile lines in a field. I remember one guy in my crew mentioned under his breath that the guy was probably old enough to remember where the tile line was originally buried.

Anyway, this film was released in 1958 and the general idea is that a sorcerer named Gideon Drew was beheaded by Sir Francis Drake 400 years ago. The head was buried in a box and the rest of the body was buried somewhere else. This would ensure that Gideon would suffer for all eternity—as long as nobody used his head to figure out that if you reconnected Drew’s body and his head, he could again commit mayhem.

Jessica is a seemingly empty-headed woman who is really able to find important objects by dousing. She finds the box containing Gideon’s head and a special charm necklace that protects her (at first) from Gideon’s ability to get inside your head.

Gideon possesses the deadhead character Mike because he’s the one who first opens the box. He then kills his controlling buddy, Boyd, who yells his head off, waking up Peggy’s Aunt Flavia, the owner of the land on which the box was found. Aunt Flavia has a head for figures because she runs the dude ranch where all the characters are and realizes that the box contained something valuable, learning later that she could get $5,000 for it from an archaeologist.

Mike drags Boyd’s body around in the woods by the head for a while, eventually dropping it into the hole where the box was originally found, but then gets killed off early in the movie. The actor, Charles Horvath, was ticked off about it and later went on to form the well-known rock band, the Ungrateful Head.

Meanwhile, Linda, who earlier invited Jessica to a square dance who declined because she preferred head banger music, gets hypnotized by Gideon. Linda then puts Gideon in a hatbox, which she gifts to Jessica after Jessica’s wannabe boyfriend, Gordon, takes the charm away from her to get it cleaned up. When Jessica opens the hatbox, Gideon zaps her, causing her to become a bad girl. Linda slaps her boyfriend Hank in the head a couple of times, which leads him to head back to their cabin to tear up his painting of her portrait and get his head bad by drinking whiskey.

Linda, Jessica, and Hank all get pretty drunk, and eventually Jessica decides to witch for the body of Gideon Drew, which she finds and the action starts coming to a head—Gideon’s head that is.

Jessica replaces Gideon’s head on his body. He integrates into the consistency of grayish head cheese and his vocal cords start working. The gang’s all there and Gideon threatens everybody and starts to bully them. Gordon tries to shoot him but bullets don’t work, and he then gets his head on straight, remembering he has the charm necklace. Gordon points it at Gideon, who reacts like Dracula does to a crucifix and almost immediately jumps back into the coffin his body was buried in, where he disintegrates.

Gideon’s spell is broken and a good time was had by all with nothing left to suffer but a mild headache from the whiskey hangover.

The moral of the film’s story is lost in all the interpersonal drama, but it might be that if you’re having trouble with water witching for drain tile lines, you should not lose your head because you can probably find a map of tile line locations in the city engineer’s office.

The Amaryllis Trio and Other News

The Amaryllis Trio in the living room are growing pretty fast, comparing them to a couple of weeks ago.

Other upcoming holiday news is that Sena ordered a Svengoolie holiday sweater for me. I’m not sure it qualifies as an ugly sweater. I hope it fits.

That reminds me that the upcoming Svengoolie film this Saturday is “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.” That’s another kind of trio. They also meet other monsters, including the Wolf Man and Dracula.

This movie, released in 1948, has also been shown on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). You don’t need to try to puzzle that one out. Go to the TCM web site and read what they say about the film. Hint: it’s definitely not satire.

We’ve never seen this one. Sena thought Abbott and Costello were a lot like the 3 Stooges, but I spoke up in support of the pair of comedians. The 3 Stooges were slapstick guys, but I often think of the Who’s on First routine by Abbott and Costello.

Thoughts Arising from the Film Dr. Phibes Rises Again

On Saturday night we watched the sequel to “The Abominable Dr. Phibes” movie, which is “Dr. Phibes Rises Again.” It was released in 1972. We also discovered that Turner Classic Movies (TCM) has shown the film. The TCM link has what I think is the best plot summary.

It makes us wonder what qualifies for classic status if TCM has this movie in its library. Incidentally, TCM also shows the other Svengoolie movie we saw recently, “Invaders from Mars.” I’m pretty sure I saw this on TV when I was a little kid. I have a vivid memory of the stocky green Martian stooges running stiff-legged through tunnels.

Anyway, I couldn’t find a clear definition of what a classic is. I think it depends on the category, in this case for shlock movies. Even Roger Ebert was all over the map about it (about films in general, not schlock horror films).

Anyway, TCM seemed to echo what Svengoolie and company speculated about as far as the last names of a few of the characters (in the trivia section, although I’m not so sure about the reference to jazz trumpeters). Svengoolie also mentioned the connection. Four of them happened to have last names that a few famous musicians had:

Darius Biederbeck: I start with that one because the jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke (note the spelling difference) has an Iowa connection. He was born in Davenport, Iowa.

Harry Ambrose: There might be a connection to Benjamin Baruch Ambrose, known professionally as Ambrose, who was a violinist and bandleader.

Hackett: Bobby Hackett was a famous jazz trumpet and cornet player. Just an aside, I usually mistakenly come up with the name Buddy Hackett when I try to remember Bobby Hackett. That might still be an interesting connection because Buddy Hackett played Marcellus Washburn in “The Music Man” film adaptation in 1962. Of course, this also has an obvious Iowa Connection. I found a reference which says that Marcellus had a song and dance routine in the “The Music Man.” I’m from Mason City (River City in the musical) and I’ve never seen the play or the movie.

Lombardo: Guy Lombardo was a violinist and bandleader who had a jazz style.

What makes the connection important and whether it figures into whether the movie is a classic or not is beyond me. However, music is an important feature in “Dr. Phibes Rises Again” as it was in the first film, “The Abominable Dr. Phibes.” Phibes is frequently playing an organ and waving his arms around like a drunken bandleader.

And then there is the mechanical band. It’s probably not a real mechanical band, but actors who try to mimic the movements of robotic musicians. I found a comment about this in a web article in which the commenter thought he saw one of the robots moving a little too smoothly.

Humor is a feature in “Dr. Phibes Rises Again” as it was in the first film. The clownish and incompetent police officers, Inspector Trout and Superintendent Waverley reappear. This comedy relief may be an attempt to offset some of the more vividly horrifying murder scenes. Trout makes a jarring joke about one of the characters who was crushed in one of Phibes’ diabolical torture machine- “Baker had a bad night.”

This reminds me of what I appreciate about Svengoolie, who always warns the TV audience when grisly scenes that might be too intense are coming up. If you decide to see the film, you might want to skip the scorpion scene.

Svengoolie Chicken Juggler Insanity!

Here’s yet another take on the Svengoolie TV show fan insanity. Maybe we’ll get over it someday, but for now I doubt it.

Sena gets in on the act this time as she throws the chicken at me after I tell cheesy jokes Svengoolie style before I juggle the Shrilling Chicken along with a couple of glow balls while wearing my brand new Svengoolie glow in the dark T-shirt. It’s a total fart—I mean gas.

I’m wearing gloves for a couple of reasons. Number one, the first time I tried to juggle the chicken, it dropped awkwardly on my right hand and made my index finger swell up. I had to let that heal up for a few days and I don’t want to reinjure myself. Number two—they just look cool.

Juggling items of different shapes, sizes, and weights is much harder than I thought. I never knew which way that chicken was going to fly. Catching it was total luck.

Doing stand up was a new thing for us. I never knew how hard it is to get your lines right. We had to do several takes to get the joke routines down. Muffing my lines was almost as funny as getting the jokes right.

But those jokes are so lame they’re great! The rim shot sound effect was a free download on pixabay.

Just another plug for Svengoolie. It’s a MeTV channel cheesy horror flick fan favorite. The show airs every Saturday evening at 7:00 PM. Svengoolie has been hosting it for decades and he introduces the movie and shares interesting background about the films and actors. He also tells these really groaner-style jokes which triggers the audience to throw chickens at him.

Tomorrow night’s movie is The Time Travelers.

The Svengoolie Phenomenon

I wrote about Svengoolie a couple of years ago and just for old times’ sake, I watched the 1960 horror film 13 Ghosts on the Svengoolie broadcast by MeTV a few days ago. It had been a while since I watched Svengoolie and I thought I would have the usual experience of being able to sit through the opening credits and then being unable to watch more than 5 minutes of one of the cheesy movies for which Svengoolie is well known.

In fact, I watched and even enjoyed 13 Ghosts which I suppose makes me a hopeless case. The movie is about a family down on their luck and about to become homeless but a rich uncle leaves them a haunted house. It turns out to be haunted by a dozen ghosts, and the surprise ending reveals who the 13^th ghost turns out to be.

Back in the day, William Castle, the maker of the film, had a knack for coming up with neat gimmicks for his films. The gimmick for this one was a set of special glasses for the audience, which allowed them to see the ghosts or not, depending on which part of the glasses you looked through.

I recognized a couple of the actors in the movie. One of them was really well known to me and thousands of others. It was Margaret Hamilton as the housekeeper, who played the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz (1939). The other was Martin Milner, who was in the TV crime drama, Adam-12, which ran from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. Hamilton obviously teased viewers by holding up a broom and smiling broadly in one scene.

I really didn’t get a lot of nostalgia from watching 13 Ghosts since I was too young to see it when it first opened. But I watched it from start to finish, something I could never do in the past when watching Svengoolie. Don’t get me wrong; I actually got more of a kick out of Svengoolie’s cornball jokes and gags complete with rubber chicken firing squads.

One thing I am still amazed about is the popularity of the Svengoolie show. There were over 3500 comments about 13 Ghosts the last time I looked, which was days after the movie. There were over 2,000 just during the show!

Another thought about Svengoolie and his rubber chickens. I looked all over the web for a free picture of a rubber chicken. I found only one. Why is that?