Easter Greetings From Sam!

Everyone's favorite imp of Halloween horror (thank you TRICK'R TREAT) is busy throughout the year. Here he marks the coming of our greatest holiday by making Easter a little bit terrifying for a happy family.

Jess Franco Poster Art -Part 19!

Known under several titles including LES GLOUTONNES (1973) and LES EXPOILTS EROTIQUES DE MACISTE DANS L'ATLANTIDE this is another of Franco's Fantasy/Adventures from the 1970s that I have yet to see. The description on IMDb makes it sound very interesting -  

"According to legend, a group of women escaped from Atlantis just before the destruction of the continent. They took refuge on a mysterious island, and founded a kingdom. Men who dared approach the island, were devoured by these sexually voracious Atlanteans, and thus they were called "gobblers"."

Sounds like there is LOTS of sex! What a surprise. 

Vote in the Rondo's!

The 11th Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards are still open for voting. You have until April the 7th to let everyone know your picks for the best in the fields of monster research, creativity and film preservation. Of course, I'd be thrilled if you voted for the NaschyCast under the BEST HORROR MULTIMEDIA (AUDIO OR PODCAST) selection but there are many fine podcasts nominated so I'll understand if another deserving show gets your vote. I guess.

Another item on the ballot worth your time is Ethan Black's fantastic short animated film nominated in the Best Short Film category. Here it is--



Go on over and check out the entire ballot. If nothing else you'll learn about a lot of great DVD releases and fantastic articles you might not have known about otherwise.

RONDO AWARDS!

Everything Wrong With The Hobbit An Unexpected Journey In 4 Minutes

I enjoyed the film well enough for something that should be much shorter but this is hysterically funny.

HOUSE OF SHADOWS (1976)- Ugh!

If this blog is any indicator (and, of course, it is) I am a big fan of movies. I may gravitate to the horror, mystery and science fiction genres but I really do love all kinds of movies. And for decades I have had a hard fast rule that once I start watching a film I must eventually finish it. It might take a long time for me to come back to a particular movie but no matter how unimpressed I have been so far I WILL finish the sucker. To be honest I am still trying to work up the mental strength and sheer willpower to finish the atrocious Euro-Trash crapfest CANNIBAL TERROR (1980) but I promise I will. Really. Seriously.

I’m not saying that I have never decided to walk away from a film and forget about checking out the remainder of the running time. There are a handful of movies over the past five or so years that have bored me or not engaged me well enough that I have felt it was not worth returning to give it more of my time. Several of these are romantic comedies and that is all I will say. But as of last night I have found another film that I am just going to walk away from and never return to discover what happened. HOUSE OF SHADOWS (1976) has been lurking in my NetFlix cue for years now. With its fairly compelling poster art and a couple of cast members I enjoy watching I thought it looked intriguing enough and last night was finally its moment. I fired it up thinking I could get about an hour of it watched before I needed to go to bed but after 10 minutes I threw up my hands and stopped it. And this was after I had backed it up once because I thought the streaming service had somehow screwed up and skipped part of the film! As soon as the opening credits ended the film jumped forward and completely past a sequence that all the characters onscreen were TALKING ABOUT! And they were talking about it as if we had seen what they are discussing! I was confused but I let it go thinking that maybe there was some explanation coming but there wasn’t. I pushed the old stop button and called it a night. I don’t need this crap! Maybe what NetFlix offering is a butchered version of the film – I don’t know - but I’m done with it. I’m moving on to some other obscure film in my giant cue. Maybe TIMESTOPPERS? Or REC 3?

NIGHTMARE ALLEY (1947)

This past week I finally got around to crossing a classic Film Noir off my “Need to Watch’ list. I had read for years about NIGHTMARE ALLEY (1947) and its supposedly harsh story of a smart, charming sociopath who is able to move from Carnival hustler to Séance conductor as he furthers his goal of becoming as rich as possible. I was curious as to how a film produced in the 1940s would portray such a character and if indeed the ending would come off as rough and nasty as I had been lead to believe. Or would the film find a way to cop out?

The other point of interest I was curious to check out was that the self-centered con-artist is played by Tyrone Power. I’ve been a fan of his for a long time based mostly on his fun adventure movies such as THE BLACK SWAN and THE MARK OF ZORRO so I knew his onscreen persona. I wondered if the studio system as it stood in the post-war era would really let a handsome leading man like Power depict a character that the audience would have to eventually come to hate. Also, could the actor make me believe that he was that sociopath monster? Could Tyrone Power convince me he was someone capable of the hideous actions I knew he would have to engage in to be seen as a credible high level scammer?

The answers to these questions are complex. First, Power is very good in NIGHTMARE ALLEY. He turns in a fine performance and proves himself able to communicate a wide range of the complex emotions required even when the script sometimes falls down. It is these rare script failings that I think are the only problems the film really has. This trouble is best illustrated in an early dialog exchange between Power’s character Stan and Joan Blondell as Zeena when he actually says something to the effect of “I wonder why I am this way. Why do I never think about anyone other than myself?” This is a terrible scene and is so bizarre that it nearly made me laugh out loud. Although this is early enough in the movie so that we are not yet aware of how dark his chosen path will be, the fact that he is self-reflective enough to ask this question is silly. For Stan to have recognized this aspect of his personality would mean that he was aware that it IS a problem. But by his actions and statements throughout the remainder of the story it is clear he does not think his way of looking at life and the people around him is a problem at all. He is a user of people and others are only as useful to him in that they might benefit him in some way. He has no concern for people or their feelings and he proves it repeatedly. Self-reflection is just not going to be in him! Of course, I suspect this odd bit of dialog was placed in the film as a sop to the suppressive Hayes Code in effect at the time. The de rigueur censorship of the time would require a great deal of care if this tale was going to be brought to the screen in any form. This bit of verbal explication of Stan’s lack of empathy is tin eared in the extreme but I’m sure when the film was produced it was seen as the best way to get this character onscreen in any form. Having him spell out his internal defect so bluntly might have been considered necessary to show the audience of the time that something serious was wrong with him. It doesn’t play well now but it may have in 1947.

So, as far as the film showing us a dark portrait of a disturbed but high functioning, ruthless man it succeeds even as it trips itself up in a few scenes. The parts that ring false in the movie don’t stop it from showing us a malicious man who is dealt a harsh fate by his own hand. The movie is very compelling and it’s always fun to watch an evil person go about their business in an entertaining way. As for the ending- I’ll leave it for fresh viewers to discover it for themselves but I must say I was impressed. The film telegraphs the final turn far too clearly, far too early but it works just the same. This is a very good Noir and one I know I’ll return to in the future. I’m sad that it took me so long to finally see this great movie.

James Bond Poster Art - Foreign Edition