Recommended Halloween Viewing: Watch "The Mads" (i.e., Trace Beaulieu & Frank Conniff of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 fame) riff Ed Wood's GLEN OR GLENDA (1953) starring Bela Lugosi!
Sunday, October 30, 2022
THE COBRA KING STRIKES BACK by Carlton E. Morse
Recommended Halloween Listening: Yes, it's that time of the year again! To get into the proper spirit of Spooky Season, sit back, relax, and allow yourself to be transported to those thrilling days of yesteryear while listening to Carlton E. Morse's classic radio serial THE COBRA KING STRIKES BACK. These episodes of ADVENTURES BY MORSE first aired in 1944. You can hear the entire series below....
THE COBRA KING STRIKES BACK CHAPTER 1: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
THE COBRA KING STRIKES BACK CHAPTER 2: THE ADVENTURES CONTINUES
THE COBRA KING STRIKES BACK CHAPTER 3: THE MAD KING OF ANKAR
THE COBRA KING STRIKES BACK CHAPTER 4: TEMPLE OF THE GORILLAS
THE COBRA KING STRIKES BACK CHAPTER 5: THE LIVING IMAGE OF CAMBODIA
THE COBRA KING STRIKES BACK CHAPTER 6: TERRORS OF THE HOLLOW MOUNTAIN
THE COBRA KING STRIKES BACK CHAPTER 7: THE FACE OF THE BEAST
THE COBRA KING STRIKES BACK CHAPTER 8: IT WAS NOT CANNIBALISM
THE COBRA KING STRIKES BACK CHAPTER 9: FANGS AND TEETH OF THE ENEMY
MENTAL FLOSS: "10 Spooky Commercials Starring Vincent Price"
From Anna Green's 5-20-22 MENTAL FLOSS article entitled "10 Spooky Commercials Starring Vincent Price":
From the 1930s through the 1980s, Vincent Price was an incredibly prolific actor who was best known for his distinctively spooky voice and his performances in a range of classic (and not-so-classic) horror movies.Price—who was born on May 27, 1911—appeared in everything from the original versions of House of Wax (1953), The Fly (1958), and House on Haunted Hill (1959) to 1959’s campy The Tingler, a novelty 3D movie in which theatergoers’ seats vibrated at scary moments throughout the film. His final on-film performance was in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990).
But the horror legend didn’t just appear in movies; Price was also a prolific commercial actor. In the 1970s and 1980s, Price lent his image or voice to ads for wine coolers, board games, candy bars, and even the American Dairy Association. Full of haunted mansions, spooky music, and clever wordplay (“prices that won’t scare you!”), most of the commercials put Price’s spine-chilling pedigree front and center....
To read the entire article, click HERE.
Saturday, October 29, 2022
VINCENT PRICE'S UNHOLY 13
During the past few years, to help improve your Halloween viewing experience, I posted lists of what I considered to be the top thirteen films of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney, Jr. This year I decided to extend the same courtesy to Vincent Price, who co-starred with Karloff in TOWER OF LONDON (1939), THE RAVEN (1963), and THE COMEDY OF TERRORS (1963), Lugosi in ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948) (though only briefly as the ethereal voice of the Invisible Man), and Lon Chaney, Jr. in THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963), the first official film adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's fiction. Aside from these important films of the fantastique, Vincent Price also starred in a baker's dozen of quasi-surreal, phantasmagoric films over the course of four decades (from the 1940s to the 1970s), all of which will no doubt help enliven your All Hallows' Eve....
WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968)
THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES (1971)
DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN (1972)
THE TINGLER (1959)
HOUSE OF WAX (1953)
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964)
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1960)
THE TOMB OF LIGEIA (1964)
DRAGONWYCK (1946)
LAURA (1944)
THE FLY (1958)
THEATRE OF BLOOD (1973)
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER (1962)
Friday, October 28, 2022
Robert Guffey & Gary D. Rhodes Return to PARALLAX VIEWS!
On this spooky season edition of Parallax Views, film scholar Gary D. Rhodes, one of the foremost authorities on Bela Lugosi and classic horror cinema, and Robert Guffey return to the show to discuss their new edited volume Scripts from the Crypt No. 12: Tod Browning's Revolt of the Dead.
Tod Browning is perhaps best known for director 1931's Dracula. Starring Bela Lugosi as the titular vampire count, a role which he'd become inextricably linked to for the rest of his career, Dracula was a massive success for Hollywood's depression era Universal Studios and launched that studio's foray into making wildly popular creatures features for the next three decades. Before The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and The Mummy there was Tod Browning's Dracula.
Browning, however, wasn't new to either Hollywood or weaving tales of the macabre for the silver screen. Born on July 12, 1880, Browning was fascinated from a young age by carnivals and eventually ran away from home to join a traveling circus. From there he'd transition to acting and, finally, becoming a director. In the silent film era, Browning became known for his collaborations with Lon Chaney, Sr., who became known as "The Man of a Thousand Faces" and whose credits include such classics as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera. Together, Browning and Chaney told macabre tales involving themes like violence and mutilation in films like West of Zanzibar, The Unholy Three, The Unknown, and the infamously lost London After Midnight. Browning would then go on to direct Dracula before making other films such as the controversial Freaks (featuring real-life circus people) and his London After Midnight talkie remake Mark of the Vampire.
In this conversation Gary, Robert and I discuss:
- An introduction to the Scripts from the Crypt series founded by film historian Tom Weaver
- Biographical background on Tod Browning, who was often spoken of as the Edgar Allen Poe of filmmakers in his time and his influence on filmmakers and artists including Ray Bradbury, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Woody Allen
- The critical beating Browning has taken over the years and why Gary argues that it's mistaken; the Spanish Dracula vs. Browning's Dracula; Browning's transition from the silent films to talking motion pictures; Browning's collaborations with Lon Chaney Sr. and the horror elements in them
- Browning's light-hearted murder mystery Miracles for Sale; Browning's early talkie The Thirteenth Chair starring Bela Lugosi (before Dracula) and its taking on the subject of spiritualist conmen/frauds; Browning's silent films such as West of Zanzibar, The Unknown, and The Unholy Three
- Tod Browning's thematic obsessions: trickery, fakery, deception, mutilation, sexual frustration, and more; the different kinds of trickery dealt with in Browning's films; harmless truths vs. dangerous lies and swindling; skepticism towards medium, seances, and the supernatural; women and how they are portrayed in Browning's movies (such as Carol Borland's Luna in Mark of the Vampire); the Scooby Doo-eqsue element of Browning's murder mysteries
- Tod Browning's Freaks; a movie that used real-life circus people; the film's subversive quality by way of its making viewers sympathize with the circus people and treating the "normal" people as the villains; the question of Freaks success and its effect on Browning's career; mentioning how the pop punk band The Ramones were influenced by Freaks; the role of vaudeville, circuses, and sideshow life on Browning's work
- The Browning script/treatment for the unmade movie Revolt of the Dead; the movie would've predated William Friedkin's The Exorcist and Night of the Living Dead in dealing with now common horror tropes like demonic possession and the zombie apocalypse; Revolt of the Dead would've even included human crucifixions; the story would've also included the phenomena of stigmata, the inexplicable appearance of wounds on the wrists like those of Jesus Christ during the crucifixion; the unique qualities of the script
- Tod Browning's London After Midnight, the "Holy Grail" of lost films; the rumors, legends, hoaxes around the movie ever since it was destroyed in a fire at the MGM vault; the iconic image of Lon Chaney Sr;. in scar make-up for London After Midnight; other lost films including F.W. Murnau's Der Januskopf (aka The Head Janus; starring Conrad Veidt and Bela Lugosi) and the 1959 Bela Lugosi-headlining chiller Lock Up Your Daughters
- Robert' novel Bela Lugosi's Dead, which deals with a man searching for the lost test footage of Lugosi as Frankenstein's monster
- The Revolt of the Dead in relationship to White Zombie, William Seabrook's Magic Island book and its success, American military involvement in Haiti, and racist/xenophobic sentiments about Haiti in the early 20th century
- Appreciating early 20th century cinema; getting past the "I can't watch Black-and-White movies" mentality; the rewarding aspect of watching classic movies
- Tod Browning and the Grand Guignol, the theater tradition in France obsessed with the gruesome and grotesque
And much, much more!
To listen to the episode, click HERE.
To listen to Gary's previous appearance on PARALLAX VIEWS, click HERE.
To listen to my previous appearance on PARALLAX VIEWS, click HERE.
SACRAMENTO BEE: "Conspiracy Theories, Racist Posts: What We Know About the Nancy Pelosi Home Invasion Suspect"
From Maggie Angst's 10-28-22 SACRAMENTO BEE article entitled "Conspiracy Theories, Racist Posts: What We Know About the Nancy Pelosi Home Invasion Suspect":
Authorities on Friday identified the suspect who invaded the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and attacked her husband Paul with a hammer as 42-year-old David DePape.DePape was booked into San Francisco County Jail Friday afternoon on more than a half-dozen charges, including attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, elderly abuse, burglary and threatening the family member of a public official [...].
CNN reported that DePape’s Facebook account, which has been taken down by the social media company, contained memes and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines, the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack.
A blog written under the name of DePape — with the domain ‘godisloving.wordpress.com’ and banner that reads “Welcome to Big Brothers Censorship Hell” — includes articles titled ‘pedophile normalization,’ ‘facts are racist,’ and ‘Hitler did nothing wrong.’
His posts contain right-wing conspiracy theories, QAnon beliefs and racists messages. He repeatedly railed against government officials, the media and tech companies for alleged censorship. The blog, created in 2007, was largely inactive until this summer, when he made dozens of posts in the span of just four days in August.
Another website with entries also written by a person who identifies as David DePape similarly contains antisemitic and bigoted blog posts, including denial of the Holocaust.
To read the entire article, click HERE.
"We Are Waiting for Nancy"
From Nikki McCann Ramirez's 10-28-22 article entitled "Intruder Was Looking for Nancy Pelosi Before ‘Violently Assaulting’ Husband With Hammer":
An intruder broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home early Friday morning and “violently assaulted” her husband, Paul Pelosi. According to a statement released by Pelosi’s office, the speaker was not home at the time of the assault, which was reportedly carried out with a hammer [...].
The motive is unclear, but the Associated Press reported that the assailant specifically targeted Pelosi’s home. The New York Times later added that the intruder was looking for Nancy, and that they shouted “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?” after confronting Paul, with multiple other outlets confirming the report.
The mob of Trump supporters who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 made similar calls for Pelosi, with some chanting “Nancy, Nancy” as they roamed through Congress as lawmakers hid.
It was later reported that the assailant was trying to tie up Paul Pelosi “until Nancy got home” and that when the police entered the house, the assailant said, “We are waiting for Nancy.”
To read the entire article, click HERE.
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