Halloween image No. 4

Because I always feel the urge to celebrate at least a part of the 31 days of Halloween with Disney animation this image always makes me smile. I love the Haunted Mansion! Did anyone else out there listen to these LPs when they were kids?

NaschyCast #21 - THE BEAST & THE MAGIC SWORD (1983)

In the past I have heard some fans of Naschy claim that THE BEAST AND THE MAGIC SWORD is one of his best movies. Having spent several hours going through the film with great attention to detail I’m ready to debate that idea and so is Troy. I personally believe that the reason for the reverence this one engenders is that for decades the only way to see it was in washed out, third generation video tapes that barely hinted at the perversity and violence onscreen. Now that it’s possible to see a clear, sharp version of the film its time to reevaluate and decide where this one falls on the mighty Daninsky scale. Is it one of the best Wolf Man movies of all time or…… something else? No matter what side you come down on it cannot seriously be argued that this film lacks boldness. Starting in the year 938 we are finally shown the genesis of the Daninsky Curse that forces every seventh son born under a full moon to become a werewolf….. or was that every son born on the seventh full moon during…….. or one son every other generation or something. I say the Hell with it! THE BEAST AND THE MAGIC SWORD starts out in Europe but quickly moves the action to 16th century Japan for the world’s first werewolf vs. samurai battles. Ya gotta love that! This is a film that seeks to combine as many disparate ideas as possible into one big lycanthrope adventure and the different elements seem to only occasionally fit together smoothly. I’m still trying to forget the inclusion of freakin’ Ninjas in the story!

 

Join us as we chat this one to death with tangents into The Jungle Book, Riki-Tiki-Tavi, the Spanish Inquisition, masculine facial hair, long distance travel and well staged tiger fights. The discussion is our usual in depth, scene by scene dissection that goes on for longer than either of us thought probable or possible. The body of the show is two and a half hours long with the mailbag section stretching for the last forty minutes! I hope everyone likes long podcasts. Remember to drop us a line at naschycast@gmail.com or talk to us over at the Facebook page. If you listen through iTunes please think about giving us a review there - five stars would be nice – and, as Troy says at the end of the episode, have a Happy Halloween! 

  NaschyCast #21 LINK 

Horror Movie Poster Art

OK. So, VALLEY OF THE DRAGONS isn't really a horror film but it is a monster film based on a Jules Verne story. For that reason it is worth seeing!

Halloween image No. 3

Belle Dee's fantastic bit of Halloween artwork for 2011.

Poster art for THE THING (1982)

Carpenter's THE THING is one of my favorite horror films and I'm amazed at how many fans have created excellent alternative posters for this modern classic. Of these images only the bottom one is an official poster - I think.

Eerie Publications mash-up with a classic Horror Record!

This is simply brilliant! Someone has taken the amazing artwork from the covers of the Eerie Publication horror magazines and matched it to the classic Johnson-Smith Novelty Company Horror Record from 1973. Go full-screen for the best effect.

What I Watched In September

I only got in twenty movies last month? I guess I was busy out in the world doing stuff. I guess.

Anyway, I saw a number of good ones and only a couple of real duds. I made it out to the theater twice and each visit was worth the ticket price. The Guillermo del Toro produced and scripted remake of the 1970s TV horror chestnut DON’T BE AFRIAD OF THE DARK was very good. It is actually a textbook case of how to do a remake well: it uses almost every element from the original but puts a smart new spin on each thing. The smartest move was to recast the lead as a young girl feeling despondent over a recent move to a new place. The atmosphere is prefect, the additions to the story are well conceived and the entire film feels like it was made by people who wanted to craft a solid movie. DRIVE is that rarest of action movies: a smart one that doesn’t keep trying to tell you how smart it is. Owing a real debt to Walter Hill’s excellent 1970s (I sense a theme) film THE DRIVER but based on a novel the film is remarkable for what it doesn’t do more than what it does. So much is communicated by the meaningful silences between people that when words do finally come they carry that much more weight. The film has an excellent cast and each character feels real and alive with full deep relationships to the world we’re watching. This is a film that knows that the details tell us everything we need and gives them to us carefully. DRIVE is a great movie and one I’ll be watching again in the future.


I was disappointed by the full length version of a Toho SF film I’ve been hoping to see for years. THE H-MAN turns out to be far too long with a plot that drags out to the breaking point. When the science fiction elements kick at various points it is really creepy and exciting but the endless scenes of police officers working on a criminal case go on forever. I may have to check out the shorter American version to see if in this instance they made some good deletion choices.

I finally read Bram Stoker’s novel ‘Jewel of the Seven Stars’ after wanting to for years and although I liked the book I felt it had a pretty lame non-ending. The book has been adapted a couple of times and I had vague memories of the 1980 version called THE AWAKENING. I caught it in the early days of HBO and remember not being very thrilled by it as a young'un but now that I had the novel under my belt it was time to see it again. In a way it was like seeing it for the first time. I doubt most folks will have the reaction I did but I really enjoyed this adaptation. The film deviates pretty heavily in the details while retaining the broad story fairly well. The second half feels as if some scenes were left out to speed up the narrative but I enjoyed the slower pace that modern films seem to rarely attempt. Also, I loved the ending the film weaves out of hints in the book that gives the story a great sense of malignant wonder. The cast is very good across even if Charlton Heston isn’t how I pictured the character from the book. And while I’m on the subject, I’m sick of people talking about Heston as if he was always overacting all the time. I could edit together an over-the-top series of scenes for most leading actors that would make them look like maniacs. Focusing on the brief sequences in a few iconic movies to paint Heston as a scenery chewing freak is insulting. (I’ll climb down from the soapbox now.)

Thanks to TCM I got to check out a couple of silent movies I’ve been interest to see for a while. THE HANDS OF ORLOC tuned out to be far too long dragging out the story for at least thirty unneeded minutes. I much prefer the remake from 1935 with Peter Lorre called MAD LOVE. The Lon Chaney film MR. WU was a very entertaining drama of cultures clashing and the drive to take revenge on someone- even if the focus of the vengeance should be a larger target. Chaney is fantastic and the film moves along nicely.

ZARDOZ (1974)- 8 (rewatch) (mad, pretentious and enthralling)
DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK (2011)- 7 (good new version of the tale)
THE HANDS OF ORLAC (1924)- 5 (good silent film but a little too long)
MR. WU (1927)- 6 (Lon Chaney melodrama with a fine ending)
THE MECHANIC (2011)- 7 (solid remake doesn’t improve on the original but isn’t bad)
THE H-MAN (1958) – 5 (glacially paced Japanese combo of THE BLOB and a police procedural)
SUPER (2010)- 7 (harsh drama of an unhinged man pushed into a brief madness)
HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP (1996)- 2 (abysmal remake)
COUNT DRACULA (1973)- 6 (rewatch)
BLACK DEATH (2010)- 7 (good companion to THE WICKER MAN and WITCHFINDER GENERAL)
THE FOG (1980)- 9 (rewatch)
THE EXTERMINATOR (1981)- 7 (rewatch)
DRIVE (2011)- 8 (existential action movie)
VANISHING ON 7TH STREET (2010)- 6 (good but unremarkable Twilight Zone style story)
CRY OF THE BANSHEE (1970)- 5 (rewatch)
MOH: DEER WOMAN (2005)- 8 (rewatch)
POSSESSED (1931)- 6 (good pre-code drama with Joan Crawford & Clark Gable)
THE AWAKENING (1980)- 7 (slow but satisfying adaptation of ‘Jewel of the Seven Stars’)
THE BEAST & THE MAGIC SWORD (1983)- 5
THE DROWNING POOL (1975)- 8 (excellent detective story)