Geekboy's Movie Poster Collection: Part 2

New year equals new posters right?  Yeah, 'Buy more posters on Ebay' was more or less the extent of my New Years resolutions.  Nothing beats setting personal goals and striving to make oneself a better person, amiright?  Anyway, when I bought my first wave of posters, the plan was to eventually expand my collection and rotate the ones I had on display every couple of months.  Sort of like pictures on a calendar.

First up we have William Castle's 1959 film 'House on Haunted Hill'.  This movie is a throwback to the Old Dark House genre - 'Cat and the Canary' and 'And then there were None' type stuff.  Love the way it looks like a pulp mystery novel cover.

And while we're on the subject of mysteries, here's the 1946 republic serial 'The Crimson Ghost'.  It's been a few years since I've seen this one, so I don't remember many of the details, but it's one of those 'One of these four-to-six people on a board of executives is secretly a masked villain running the criminal underworld - - - and we only have twelve-to-fifteen chapters to figure out which one!' type serials.  A bit like 'Manhunt of Mystery Island'.  And speaking of 'Manhunt' 'Crimson Ghost' also has serial queen Linda Stirling as the Leading Lady.

 No movie poster collection is complete without a few Universal Monsters.  Here's 1943's 'Frankenstein meets The Wolf Man!'  This is the first in a series of crossover Monster films.  Nerds and Hipsters site this as the first example of the Cinematic Universe.

And speaking of the Universal Monsters, here's the one that INTRODUCED me to the franchise.  1954's 'Creature from the Black Lagoon.' I think this one will look nice hanging up next to my 'The Green Slime' poster.

-Geekboy.

The Alligator People (1959)

Most people wouldn't consider this a good movie.  You've probably noticed by now that the ol' Geekboy isn't most people.  I know 'The Alligator People' left an impression on me when I first saw it, but I forgot just how much I liked it until I re-watched it for review purposes.

What's so great about this movie?  Firstly, it's set in the swamps of Louisiana, and you can't go wrong with the spooky and exotic atmosphere that come with setting your movie in the swamps of Louisiana.  Secondly, for the first half of the movie, the story is equal parts Mystery and Horror.  Thirdly, the one doing all the detective work is our Heroine who has a lot of actual purpose and stake in the story in a genre that usually reduces the female lead to someone who trips, screams, and gets carried off by the monster.

The story starts with a frame story.  The frame beginning and ending is actually my least favorite part, as it strains credibility and doesn't serve much purpose other that to give our heroine some occasional first person detective narration.  We start in a Psychologist's office who has been experimenting with hypnosis and accidentally uncovers repressed memories while performing an experiment with his assistant, Jane Marvin (played by Beverly Garland).  Under hypnosis she reveals that she lived a tragic past life under the name Joyce Webster.

Now that we have that cheesy (and pointless?) intro out of the way, we get to the cool stuff.  Joyce is a newlywed ex-army nurse on her honeymoon.  Her husband, Paul, had been horrifically disfigured in a plane crash, but is now mysteriously as good as new.  However Paul gets an urgent telegram and leaves the train at the next stop is a state of panic, and the train leaves without him.  Paul has disappeared, and Joyce discovers that she doesn't know that much about her new husband.  She does some detective work and follows his trail to a desolate train-station in the middle of the swamps.

She talks a hook-handed local - played by the one and only Lon Chaney Jr. - into driving her to the nearby Plantation house which is also the last know address of her husband.  Chaney is the town drunk with a vendetta against alligators because one took his hand.  He seems like a harmless eccentric at first, but he proves himself dangerous later on.

So she arrives at the Plantation which is owned by the secretive and disagreeable Mrs. Hawthorne.  Mrs. Hawthorne claims to have never heard of Paul and wants Joyce out of her house as soon a possible, but as there won't be another train until the next day, she allows Joyce to stay the night so long as she doesn't leave her room under any circumstances.   After hearing spooky night noises Joyce discovers that she is LOCKED in her room (Southern Hospitality, am-I-right?) but manages to snitch the skeleton key from under the maid's nose.

In the middle of the night she hears the sound of a lonely piano downstairs, and she can't help but investigate.  She discovers a figure in shadows hunched over the keys.  He flees into the night at the sight of her and she is left with just a glimpse of his scale-covered face.

Mrs. Hawthorne is not to happy that Joyce was out of her room that night, and she's even less happy when she discovers that Joyce has no intention of leaving by the morning train.  Joyce needs answers and she's willing to out-stubborn Mrs. Hawthorn to get them.

Mrs. Hawthorn reveals that the piano player was in fact Paul, and that she is secretly his mother.  That's a great way to meat you in-laws.  So, Joyce waits up to see Paul again that night, and once again he flees at the sight of her.  This time she chases him out into the swamps.  It's raining buckets, and she's menaced by alligators and snakes, and she loses her way.  But she's 'rescued' by Lon Chaney's character.  He's drunk, and starts hitting on her.  She is rescued by Paul who barges into the little cabin and attacks Chaney.  Paul carries her off after she is knocked unconscious - so we can have that shot of the monster carrying the pretty girl that all these movies have to have - and Chaney drunkenly swears revenge on the 'two legged alligator'.

It is revealed that Paul is turning into a reptile due to an experimental medical procedure that involves combining human DNA with that of a regenerating reptile.  This is what had saved his life after the plane crash, but an unfortunate side effect is that all the test subjects are turning into - wait for it - ALLIGATOR PEOPLE!  The telegram on the train was from the doctor who did the procedure warning Paul of the side effect, and he left because he didn't want Joyce to see him like this.

The doctor has been working on some sort of death-ray type device that's supposed to reverse the side effects.  Paul insists that they try it out on him so that he and Joyce can be together again.  The doctor warns that they have no way of knowing what will happen if there is an overdose of the radiation.  So they start the procedure, and of course, our hook-handed villain bursts in just then to get his revenge on Paul.  Because of the distraction Paul gets an overdose of the ray, and is transformed into an Alligator person.  Meaning the actor had the pleasure of wearing what looks like an alligator puppet on his head.  Prior to this, we just had the scale makeup on the face and hands, which isn't great, but it's a passable monster movie costume.  The alligator puppet?  Not so much.

Lon Chaney's character is electrocuted when he gets his hook tangled in some wires, Joyce screams at the sight of Paul, and he once again runs off into the swamp.  Joyce runs after him, but after seeing his reflection in the water and realizing how monstrous (or silly) he has become, he wanders into the quicksand and is never seen again.

We cut back to the psychologists' office, and Jane/Joyce has no memory of her past now that she's out of the hypnotic trance.  The doctor decides that this is for the best as she happier this way.  So I guess they tacked on the frame story to make the ending less of a downer?  Still seems a bit silly to me.

If the story of scientists using reptilian DNA to regenerate human tissue and inadvertently creating a monster sounds familiar, you may be thinking of the Spiderman villain Dr. Kurt Connors AKA 'The Lizard'.  The Lizard first appeared in 1963, four years after the release of 'The Alligator People'.  I don't think it's too big of a stretch to say this movie may have influenced the creation of the Spiderman villain.

Most people probably haven't heard of this monster movie, but it's worth watching in my opinion.  The swamp scenes have great atmosphere, Beverly Garland is compelling as the female lead and Lon Chaney Jr. is always fun to watch.  Only things I hold against 'The Alligator People' is the repressed memory plot device and a couple of less than stunning effects, like the alligator costume.  First and foremost I like the way the story unfolds like a mystery.

-Geekboy

Manhunt of Mystery Island (1945)

'Manhunt of Mystery Island' is a 15 chapter Republic serial.  I feel like it's a bit of an underdog as far as cliffhangers are concerned.  Odds are good you won't hear about it in the same breathe as 'Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe' or 'The Adventures of Captain Marvel'.  'Manhunt' probably wouldn't make anybody's 'Top Ten favorite cliffhanger serials' list.  Until today.  Because I rank 'Manhunt' in my top 2 right after 'Jungle Girl'.

Linda Stirling, one of the serial queens of the 1940's, plays the female lead.  Ms. Stirling is probably best known for 'The Tiger Woman' and 'Zorro's Black Whip,' but in my opinion 'Manhunt of Mystery Island' is her best work.  In 'Manhunt' she plays Claire Forrest, whose scientist father has been captured by the legendary pirate 'Captain Mephisto'.  Mephisto is trying to force Dr. Forrest to build a 'radio-atomic power transmitter' a device the evil Captain wants for some unclear but nefarious reason.  So Claire teams up with world renowned criminologist Lance Reardon, and the two pick up her father's trail to the titular 'Mystery Island'.

Mystery Island is owned by the four descendants of Captain Mephisto.  Some believe that the ghost of Mephisto still haunts the island, but in reality it is one of the owners masquerading as the pirate with the aid of a transforming ray.  Hopefully you enjoy seeing Mephisto's transformation, because you get to see is over and over again over the course of 15 chapters.

This story uses the fairly common cliffhanger serial plot device of 'One of these guys is secretly the villain but we don't know which one! Is it you? Whoops, you have a knife sticking out of your back. I guess it must be somebody else.'  But usually the villain is a mysterious hooded figure or just a voice heard over the radio rather than somebody with a transforming machine.

Lance Reardon - played by Richard Bailey - is a little flat or deadpan at times (fairly typical of cliffhanger serials) but he holds his own in a fight, and at time his crime solving abilities manage to convince the audience that he really is a brilliant criminologist.  For example, at one point he finds a discarded envelope, turns it inside out, and uses a mirror to read the impressions left by wet ink.

Claire Forrest spends most of her spare time getting kidnapped so she can be used as leverage against her father by Captain Mephisto.  Though often imperiled, she is rarely shown as helpless.  She's quick witted, resourceful, and fast acting.  When she's captured she usually finds a way to leave a trail for Lance to follow, at one point using thread from her sewing basket to show Lance the entrance to a secret passage.  Tying her up won't keep her out of the action either - in a moment of pure awesomeness she pounces on a discarded gun and shoots one of Mephisto's henchmen whilst bound hand and foot.

Lance and Claire are one of my favorite serial couples.  They work so well together as a team and that's what really makes 'Manhunt' stand out so much in my mind.

While Lance and Claire are trying to rescue Dr. Forrest from the evil clutches Captain Mephisto, Dr. Forrest complicates matters by trying to escape from the evil clutches of Captain Mephisto by his-own-self.  Several of the cliffhangers are actually traps that Dr. Forrest sets for Mephisto that our heroes happen to stumble into.

'Manhunt' uses the island setting very well.  The island mansion where the four suspects hang out has some Scooby Doo stuff going on, complete with secret passages and henchmen spying through suits of armor and pictures on the wall. There's dockside action, speedboat chases, and a network of coastal caverns for our heroes to explore.   Lance and Claire return to the mainland for a couple of chapters as well just to shake things up.

One unfortunate aspect of crime-fighting serials is that they tend to have a re-cap chapter.  In this case it's Lance and Claire sitting around stroking their chins in deep thought trying to figure out which of the owners of the island might be Mephisto in-between back-flashes of exciting bits you've already seen.  Each of the suspects is equally suspicious, so they get nowhere.  Serials where the identity of the villain or masked hero are unknown often have one of these chapters - the only difference is if it's a superhero/vigilante story it's the bad guy and his henchmen stroking their chins in deep thought trying to figure out who the hero is.  Whenever a serial uses a re-cap chapter I suspect them of not having quite enough story for a full 15 chapters.

Another common theme of later serials is using stock footage from other chapter-plays for the cliffhanger endings.  If you watch enough serials you'll see the same endings over and over.  'Manhunt' is guilty of borrowing that flooding tunnel scene from 'Jungle Girl'.

This serial does have some notable chapter ending however.  One of my favorites has Lance dangling out a skyscraper window from the end of a fire-hose.  Mephisto's henchman is inside disconnecting the hose from the wall.  What I like best about this chapter ending is that it has a really clever resolution in the beginning of the next chapter.  Another of the best endings takes place inside a winery.  The bad guys use a wine press as a deathtrap.  This makes for an interesting variant on that 'the walls are closing in on us!' cliche.

If you need a serial recommendation, check out 'Manhunt of Mystery Island'.  It's one of the best.

-Geekboy.

Real life Scooby Doo..?

You may have noticed that I've been posting pretty regularly since mid April of this year (2016).  You may have also noticed if you'd been paying particularly close attention that I usually post of Mondays.  Today is not a Monday. It's a Friday.

"How dare you Geekboy!" you find yourself exclaiming.  "A blog schedule is not something to be taken seriously!"  You take out your vintage style pocket-watch and tap it to emphasize how late this post is.  Also, you say 'schedule' funny, because you're suddenly a cranky middle aged British man with mutton chops.

Truth be told I was on vacation in Virginia with my family for most of this week.  In our many travels we stopped at Grand Caverns, which we soon learned is the oldest touring cave in the US of A.

One of the rooms on the tour is called 'Dante's Inferno'.  Our tour guide told us a cool story about this part of the cave.  She told us about how miners found some valuable minerals in this section of Grand Caverns, and they wanted to keep their cache a secret.  So they started a little ghost story to keep the tourists away.

The miners noticed that their candles would go out when they reached a certain part of the cavern.  It was easy to convince everybody that it was 'Evil Spirits' that blew out the candles, even though it was a natural phenomenon.  You know what this sounds like?

Yep, that's right.  It sounds like the plot for a classic episode of 'Scooby Doo, where are you?'  Buried Treasure of some kind, and a creepy story to keep everyone else away.  The only things missing is the miners never dressed up in ghost costumes, never said "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids!" and also, there are no meddling kids.

My favorite part of this tour was where they turned all the lights out.  And I know what you're thinking.  "But Geekboy," you say as you roll your eyes, "They always turn all the lights out."  And they do.  Every single time.  I think it's a requirement of being a cave tour guide.  But our guide did it in a way I'd never seen before.  She lit a candle first, showing us what it would have been like for the original spelunkers exploring these caves in the 1700s.  Then she had one of the kids in the tour blow out the candle.  Normally turning out the lights is like a cheap jump scare in a horror movie.  It's there to get an extreme reaction from the audience.  But this time it wasn't like that.  It was subtle and classy, and when she turned the lights back on we got to see just how much those early spelunkers were missing by exploring these caves in the candlelight.

If you're in the Virginia area, make sure you take in a cave or two.  And if you've seen a few caverns before, feel free to leave your favorite memories in the comments.

-Geekboy.

Old Dark House Mysteries - A Crash Course

 You walk towards the creepy old house (or maybe it's a crumbling castle) in a driving rain.  Thunder rolls in the background.  Perhaps your car broke down and you are seeking shelter from a storm.  Maybe you took the last ferry for the evening and cannot return to the mainland until morning.  Perhaps the bridge has washed out

Are you here as a guest?  Is an eccentric millionaire throwing a dinner party in order to lure all of his greatest enemies to the same place at the same time?  Perhaps you are in the will of your late rich uncle.

Regardless of your reason for entering the spooky old house on a dismal night such as this, you can expect the following to await you within: A collection of colorful guests with diverse reasons for being there, secret panels and passages, a lost treasure or hidden fortune that drives men to kill, and a killer on the loose (often a hooded figure to unmask or perhaps a gorilla with a taste for human flesh).

This is the 'Old Dark House' genre.  Repetitive, cliche, and oft parodied, but undeniably nostalgic.  If you've watched 'Abbot and Costello', classic 'Scooby Doo', or played the board game 'Clue' (or 'Cluedo' in Europe) you'd probably recognize an Old Dark House mystery when you saw one.

Where I live it's been a really wet spring, with rain for a solid week in May, and off and on so far in June.  There was a storm this afternoon.  It's the perfect time of year for this kind of story.

I just recently read John Willard's 1922 stage play 'The Cat and the Canary' which is said to be one of the first, and perhaps most influential, examples of the genre.  I had seen the 1927 silent film, and the 1939 version with Bob Hope, but a silent movie often has minimal dialog, and inflection is lacking.  The Bob Hope movie is a comedy, and I wanted a serious take on the story.  It never hurts to go back to the original source material.  I really enjoyed the play, reading it in a single afternoon, and would recommend reading it if you're interested.

"So, now that I've read 'Cat and the Canary' what next?" you may ask.  I'm glad you did.  I'll tell you.  Here are some Old Dark House movies that I personally enjoyed:

#1: House on Haunted Hill (1959).  This is a later Dark House movie, and I really feel like it dodges and plays around with the cliches.  Also, Vincent Prince is in this one.  'Nuff said right?

#2: And Then There Were None (1945).  Based on the Agatha Christie mystery of the same name.  This suspense story features 10 people trapped on an island.  Soon they are killed off one by one...  This movie is missing several common elements of an Old Dark House picture, such as secret passages and a killer in a mask, but it's still a very influential Old Dark House film.  The climax is different from the original book, however, giving the story your typical Hollywood happy ending.

#3: Dark and Stormy Night (2009).  An independent comedy from the creators of 'The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra'.  This movie spoofs a ton of classic Dark House movies.  Perhaps the most noticeable is 'Cat and the Canary,' because most Dark House stories take so many queues from the classic play.

#4: The Monster Walks (1932).  Been a while since I've seen this one, but it's a good Old Dark House movie of the gorilla suit variety.

#5: Horror Island (1941).  This movie is very Scooby Doo, with a get-rich-quick Sea Captain who tries to con tourists into staying at a 'Haunted' pirate castle and search for buried treasure.  Unfortunately, a 'Real' ghost shows up.

#6: Hold That Ghost (1941).  Abbot and Costello inherit a gangster's haunted house in this classic comedy.

#7: The Gorilla (1939).  Again, it's been ages since I've watched this one, so I forget the details.  But I enjoyed this comical mystery, and should watch it again in the near future.

So, there are a few suggestions for your next summer thunderstorm.  If you're already a fan of classic mysteries, and I missed your favorite Old Dark House story, be sure to tell me about it in the comments.