Boris Karloff is superb in a dual role as twin brothers (one evil, one good), born to the ruling family in the early 1800’s in Czechoslovakia. The bad twin inherits the castle and becomes infamous for his sadistic behavior and murders the good twin, assuming his identity so that he might continue his heinous acts.
The Black Room (1935)
Larry Talbot, the unwilling Wolf Man, is returned to life with the unwitting help of grave robbers. He wishes only to die, in order to avoid hurting anyone else as the Wolf Man. So, he gets the help of the old gypsy from the original Wolf Man film. He is striving to get the assistance of the reviled Dr. Frankenstein … A man who supposedly discovered the secrets of life and death. The doctor isn’t available, but Talbot uncovers his monster (played by Bela Lugosi). With a confrontation between the two monsters being inevitable.
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
Horror Express (1972) starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Telly Savalas – an above-average monster movie with the monster …
Horror Express
In short, The Raven is one of the funniest movies that I’ve ever seen, in any genre. It has some truly scary moments as well, and gives some of the best horror actors of all time — Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre — room to work, and they do so wonderfully.
The movie is ever-so-loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe’s classic poem, The Raven. And, in fact, Vincent Price plays the part of Dr. Erasmus Craven, the previously-unnamed narrator of the poem, who is mourning for his lost wife, Lanore (played by the beautiful and talented Hazel Court) — although his daughter Estelle (played by Olive Sturgess) tries to comfort him, he turns inward, and away from the world, a virtual recluse — until he gets a visit from the titular raven. A talking raven …
The Raven
Yesterday, I ran across a movie titled The Selling on the Chiller cable network. Normally, I don’t bother watching Chiller. It tends to have the blood spewing, goriness that I don’t care for in modern horror movies. But the title — The Selling — intrigued me enough to watch. And I’m glad I did.
The Selling of Scarry Manor
This is the Irwin Allen version of the movie, where the “dinosaurs” are plainly lizards with fins and horns attached, making the “frightening” monsters laughable. And that’s a crying shame. The acting is fine, and the interaction between the various A-list actors (Michael Rennie, Claude Rains, Fernando Lamas, Jill St. John, David Hedison) is one of the best things about the movie. It should also be said that, despite the title, the movie takes large liberties with the basic story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. For example, in the original novel, there were no female characters at all.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World
It should be said up front that Yongary, Monster From the Deep is an imitation of Godzilla. A funny, delightful, cheesy imitation, but still an imitation. The basic plot is very familiar. It has a prehistoric monster awakened, causing massive damage to cardboard cities. It fights toy tanks and helicopters …. And only a brilliant young scientist can devise a way to stop the monster.
Yongary, monster from the deep
In short, aliens from Outer Space plan to destroy Earth by reanimated corpses as an unstoppable army. In that respect, it’s similar to Invisible Invaders – another low-budget invasion movie. However, Invisible Invaders also has good acting and a relatively sensible script. Plan 9 from Outer Space has neither of those.
Plan 9 from Outer Space
