G Watch: Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

Watched:  12/23/2023

Format:  4K disc

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Adam Wingard

This is the first Monsterverse movie that finally understood why people show up for a Godzilla movie.  That seems remarkable given the money spent, audience participation in prior films, etc...  This was maybe the first one not made for the edgelord 18-24 y.o. market in mind.  

Way back in April of 2021, Godzilla enthusiast Stuart and I discussed the movie for the podcast.  I invite y'all to listen to that podcast at your leisure.

On a rewatch, and knowing what I was getting into, it's still a fun watch.  I don't know if I'd say "this is a good movie" because it's definitely YMMV territory.  It's big and ridiculous, and, arguably, there's way too much continuity in these films and not enough "hey, a new monster for Godzilla to fight".  Like, Godzilla existed over at Toho for decades and decades just showing up from time to time, and no one was trying to worry about 10,000 years of Titan history.  Godzilla just was, and everyone had to deal with it.

But when I get to see Kong slug Godzilla across the jaw while both are standing on an aircraft carrier, I almost want to stand up and salute these filmmakers for giving me the thing I did not know I needed to see in a movie, but had waited my whole life to see.  

G Watch Take 2: Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Watched:  12/7/2023

Format:  Alamo

Viewing:  Second

This is the first time in years I've seen a movie twice in the theater.  I intended to see Marvels again, but, hasn't happened.  

My reasons for returning to the cinema were two:

1. I could tell that when I effused about the movie, Jamie was like "yeah, you'll watch anything with Godzilla in it.  Stop telling me it's a good movie." so I wanted to just get her in a seat.  Thus, I lured her there with Alamo's chicken nuggets.*
2. I wanted to see everything again so I wasn't just dealing with the audio and visual input being shoved in my eyes on a first viewing and see how the movie sat with me when I knew what was coming.

I am happy to report that, much as I'd been told by Stuart who had already seen it twice, the movie may work even better on a second viewing.  

That's not to dismiss the impact of the first viewing, but I can say my first watch was pretty visceral in nature.  There's a lot going on.  World War II, after-World War II, subtitles, grief, a 15-story atomic monster...  So I was curious how it would hold up, and how it would feel different knowing how the movie works and ends.

SPOILERS

G Watch: Godzilla - Minus One (2023)

Watched:  11/29/2023

Format:  AMC IMAX

Viewing:  First

Director:  Takashi Yamazaki

Where to start?

Over the years, Godzilla has been many things.  Like Batman, he's been a children's character while also being a thing adults could appreciate.  But he's also been cast as a walking analogy in two very, very good films (Gojira and Shin Godzilla), a villain in others (Godzilla Returns and Raids Again), a dad (Son of Godzilla) a hero (most of the Shōwa era), a goof, a buddy, a ruffian...  

The American-produced Godzilla movies have done well financially, but, to me, struggled with an actual story until Kong vs. Godzilla.  But it would be misleading to say the Toho Studios produced films didn't struggle with same.  The Toho movies responded to the challenge by getting progressively crazier as the need to fill screen time with something other than expensive monster fights (models and custom 7' rubber suits are not cheap) became a clear necessity. 

To fill that run time*, both US and Toho films needed a story for humans - humans that Godzilla likely will not even be aware of during the course of the film  - that is compelling and meaningful.  But, man , have the results been mixed.  You get aliens, faeries, conspiracies, what-have-you.  And some of that is great!  Final Wars is like a party of a movie.  Watch it sometime.

G Watch: Godzilla (2014)

Watched:  11/04/2023

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Second, I think

Director:  Gareth Edwards

In a couple of weeks, Apple+ is dropping their decade-spanning, genre-mixing show about the Monarch organization, which is the group that.... something something.... in a world of giant beasties, based on Godzilla (2014) and the series of attached movies.  I've heard where/ when in the movie timeline the show takes place - just after this movie, and it had been a while, so I finally rewatched the first of the Monsterverse films to remind myself what the hell happens in the flick.

I remember going into Godzilla (2014) with some trepidation.  The last American-made Godzilla movie I'd seen was the 1998 trainwreck that just piled on all the worst habits of 1990's-era blockbuster entertainment, and then curb-stomped you with them.*

The trailers for the 2014 edition certainly looked cool, but the fact is that at the time of the film's release, Hollywood was doing this thing where they would come up with cool stuff for trailers and then maybe make a movie that tied those scenes and lines together.  

It was promising a movie for all-ages, including adults - casting thinking-person's stars like Bryan Cranston, Juliet Binoche, Ken Watanabe, David Strathairn and Sally Hawkins (a curious trend that has continued through Godzilla v. Kong with Rebecca Hall as our lead).  So it was literally *buying* gravitas with the casting choices.  Which was maybe needed after the 1998 debacle.  

Leaving the movie, I remember a vague sense of disappointment, but wasn't blogging at the time, so there's no record of what I was thinking.  In the 9 years since I've re-watched the movie, I'd kind of forgotten what the deal was.  Certainly I remembered them bumping off Binoche in the film's first five minutes, and that Cranston similarly exits the film in the first act, when I thought he was going to be our lead.  

Godzilla Day Watch: Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003)

Watched:  11/03/2023

Format:  Amazon 

Viewing:  Second or Third

Director:  Masaaki Tezuka

So, I'd seen this one before, and as near as I can tell, it's a favorite of the Millennium Era (spoiler, y'all.  I kind of dig all eras for their own reasons).  And that's not a bad take.  The suit in this one is pretty rad and toyetic, Godzilla is in "unstoppable natural force" mode, and the story is just absolutely bananas in the best way.  And, man, so much monster-fighting.

Our story - Mothra and a pair of Faeries (is there any other kind from Infant Island?), show up to tell one of their old contacts from the original Mothra movie that Mothra wants the JXSDF to return 1954 Godzilla's bones to the ocean.  Where are 1954 Godzilla's bones?  Inside of MechaGodzilla.  Why?  REASONS.  Apparently that's what they used as the support structure.  

So, yes - (a) the Godzilla you've known since Godzilla Raids Again is NOT OG Godzilla (which makes sense since he's very dead at the end of the first film.  And (b) there are mystical forces at play that want those bones in the ocean, and those forces talk to the Faeries and Mothra.  

Of course there's a very earnest and hard working mechanic who met Mothra who, by day, is on the flight crew for MechaGodzilla.  There's a bunch of other characters, but I'll be honest - they kind of don't really matter.  This is about Current Godzilla wanting to fight the bones of his counterpart, Mothra showing up and self-sacrificing, and MechaGodzilla being haunted.  It is a ride.

I won't hard sell you on this movie - it's part of a series and I didn't mean to watch it.  But we pulled together a last-minute watch party and I intended to watch Godzilla versus Astro Monster, but apparently that got pulled from Prime on Nov. 1 and I panicked.  

If you're going to panic, there are worse movies to decide to watch.

HalloWatch: Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Watched:  10/31/2023

Format:  Max

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Frank Oz

It seems unfathomable that I've never done a post on Little Shop of Horrors (1986) but a quick glance my history here, and I haven't.  We did watch it back in 2020 during Halloween season, but I seemed to think we were about to podcast the movie.  We did not.

So, the way I first saw the movie was a tad unlikely.  Some kids at my school figured out there was a pay phone outside, and they called in a bomb threat with about two hours left to go in the day.  So, we stood around in the drizzling rain until the buses came, and then we just went home without our books or homework.  

Over dinner, The Admiral realized I had nothing to do, found the next movie on, and he and I jumped in the car and drove over to Showplace 6 to see Little Shop of Horrors.  I was delighted.  Loved the movie.  Sci-fi/ horror/ comedy/ musical?  Slam dunk home run.

We were a family that attended a lot of musicals and theatrical productions, so the language of a movie musical was no real surprise to me, but I'd never seen anything that also squarely jived with a comedic sensibility of the time in that format, and which featured some of my favorite comedians.

Of course, Rick Moranis as Seymour, but cameos from Bill Murray, Steve Martin, John Candy and more.  And, of course, a giant, singing, talking plant bent on world domination.  The music was reminiscent of what I was listening to on Oldies stations (I missed the gag about our chorus' names until college), and it's kind of banger after banger.  We forget Howard Ashman and Alan Menken did this off Broadway before they were the Disney-famous Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. 

HalloWatch: Young Frankenstein (1974)

Watched:  10/30/2023

Format:  Max

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Mel Brooks

I don't watch this every year, but I sure like it!  

Anyway, one of my personal favorite comedies.  

HalloWatch: Werewolf of London (1935)

Watched:  10/29/2023

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  First

Director:  Stuart Walker

Every year, Jamie and I each carve a jack 'o lantern.  Usually we put on a movie something we've seen before, often a comedy or horror-comedy.  But this year I squeezed in one of my Halloween bucket movies for the year, but I can only say I *partially* watched this one, because I was also carving a pumpkin and then cleaning up the aftermath.

this year's effort.  Jamie's Dracula on the left, my ghoul on the right

I had just never gotten around to Werewolf of London (1935), which is a bit of a surprise even to me.  I am a fan of Lon Chaney's take on The Wolfman that would pop up 5 years later, but I never make it through the rest of the werewolf films in the box set.  I'm trying to get a picture of 1930's and 40's horror, one Halloween at a time, and have tried to watch offerings from Universal and RKO.  Also, I exist in the same world as Warren Zevon, so you'd think I'd eventually just be curious to see the damn movie.

The plot is nowhere near as tight as The Wolfman, and the performances not as punctuated.  But that doesn't mean it doesn't have anything to offer.  I liked the make-up, the transformation FX, and the general idea of the story.  

Scientists visit Tibet to find a flower they've heard only blooms in moonlight, and while securing the plant, are attacked by a werewolf.  Returned home, renowned biologist, Wilfred Glendon, begins acting anti-social and ignoring his wife (played by Bride of Frankenstein's Valerie Hobson), who just happens to have her childhood boyfriend show up at the same time.  A doctor Yogami appears and is also looking for the flower, which he says alleviates the symptoms of werewolfery.  

Anyway, mayhem ensues, the doctors both are werewolves, etc...

All in all, it's really not bad, but the lead - unlike most Universal films - doesn't really have a sympathetic motivation in the same way we see Larry Talbot - a victim of chance.  There's a dash more Jekyll and Hyde to the story than in the case of The Wolfman, but not enough to get hung up on thinking it's borrowing too heavily.   

In general, it's an okay movie.  I didn't dislike it, and will watch it again with my full attention.  A highlight was seeing Valerie Hobson in another movie shot at literally the same time as Bride of Frankenstein, but given far more to do.  She's good!  

But, yeah, I need to watch it again next year to say much more.  But I've 100% seen far worse.

HalloWatch: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Watched:  10/28/2023

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  James Whale

Some of my pals were over Saturday night, and I made them watch Bride of Frankenstein (1935).  It's no secret it's one of my favorite movies (easily top 10, perhaps top 5), and it was a delight to share it with folks who would otherwise likely never see it.  

Anyway, we kind of talked over the movie, so they missed some good lines and good moments, but it's a first viewing, and it was all excited chatter, so they were enjoying it, which is all that matters.  

Matt did wisely point out how the comedy worked within the movie much how Shakespeare inserts fun stuff into even his tragedies - Matt watched a bucket-ton of movies that I mostly do not ever see - and it was all a good talk.

Anyway, glad to get to this year's screening of the movie.

PodCast 257: "The Invisible Man" (1933) - A Halloween 2023 PodCast w/ Jamie and Ryan

Watched:  10/21/2023

Format:  BluRay

Viewing: Unknown/ First

Decade:  1930's

Director:  James Whale

For more ways to listen

Jamie and Ryan are transparent in their madness about this 1930's cinema classic! It's a ghostly good time as they get wrapped up in a conversation that makes it clear, you can see right through them when it comes to their enjoyment of this film.

SoundCloud 

The Signal Watch PodCast · 257: "The Invisible Man" (1933) - A Halloween 2023 PodCast w/ Jamie and Ryan

YouTube

Music:

Invisible Man Theme - Heinz Roemheld 

The Invisible Man - Queen, The Miracle 

Halloween 2023

The Signal Watch PodCast · Halloween 2023

All Halloween and Horror Playlist

The Signal Watch PodCast · Halloween and Horror

HalloWatch: Frankenstein (1931)

Watched:  10/24/2023

Format:  Peacock

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  James Whale

Every year during the spooky season I try to give Frankenstein (1931) a watch.  The past several years, I've double-billed Frankenstein with Bride of Frankenstein, usually the night before - or night of - Halloween.  

But this year I wanted to give the movie a bit more time to percolate and watch it as its own thing.  

It's a movie I've seen *a lot* and so I can spot the places where the dolly shot bounces on the tracks, and I can see the literal creasing in the backdrops used in the forest scenes.  I laugh with anticipation at the jokes and know which bits work best as scares.

I make a lot of notes about how Dracula movies don't match the novel, because there's usually some adherence to the book and seeing where and why they diverged is a curiosity.  But by the time you get from the publication of Mary Shelley's novel in 1818 to the play and the movie, this story was well over 100 years old, and folks were going to do their own thing.*  There's barely any of the novel left in this film.  Themes.  Some names.  Some settings.  A wedding.

So I tend to separate them and consider them their own thing, and it's usually in subsequent adaptations that I look for whether they're borrowing from this film or from the novel or doing something entirely new.  

Even if the film is nearing the century mark, it still plays.  The creatures' pathos is as real as the novel, if reduced to a child-like state of confusion rather than a sort of existential crisis of existence.  The performances are of their time but would absolutely put fire in a modern adaptation.  You simply won't beat Colin Clive going mad in the moments of success after the monster is lowered from the tower.  

The look is borrowed from German Expressionism, and between the Gothic horror of Dracula's settings and this film, we get a language for how the best sets and scenes should look in horror that will be endlessly copied, parodied, stolen from and refracted for the next 90 years.  That's not to say this was the final word, but the starting line and the thing to which everything else can draw comparison.

Further, the themes of "who is the real monster?" would echo throughout horror and science fiction, and are often the best part to chew on in a film (and something zombie movies picked up and ran with).  But I think this movie does the best job of bringing a Dr. Frankenstein to life who really thinks he shut the door behind himself and his experiments, only to have it come roaring back.

I'm now curious to read the play upon which the movie is based.  Curiously, next year sees the publication of the script for what I believe to be the first time.  

Some time I will write a much longer bit on this movie, it's sequel and the novel and why I keep coming back to them, but not today, kids!

But for the best Halloween spookiness for the whole family, I humbly submit this classic.

*worth noting, this film will be 100 in just 8 years

Vamp Watch: Daughter of Dracula (1972)

Watched:  09/04/2023

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jess Franco

If the 1970's brought us anything in cinema, it was sexy vampires.  I mean, there's no shortage before.  Ask me about Brides of Dracula.  But by the time we got to the 1970's, we had moved into a weird twilight zone of art film/ exploitation film/ horror film where nudity was rampant and sex was not just implied in knowing cut-aways.

As far as I know, of the Jess Franco movies, I'd only ever seen Vampyros Lesbos.  And, somewhat (in)famously, Franco was one of the foremost purveyors of cheap, wandering "horror" films that bordered on a Cinemax late-night entry and what cable would play on weekends in the 1980's while also absolutely existing as in-no-way-scary horror films.

The movie is one of five directed by Franco in 1972 alone.  Whatever the market was, it was quantity over quality, and I suspect few scenes were actually scripted or anyone really did much to prep for the movies after getting a set of fangs, a Dracula cape and a location.  The movie uses a lot of 1970's film language, from racking focus into a scene (usually onto some natural object) and lots of lingering shots of people walking and not saying much.

Drac Watch: Renfield (2023)

Watched:  07/06/2023

Format:  Peacock

Viewing:  First

Director:  Chris McKay

I had actually intended to see Renfield (2023) in the theater, but it seemed like before I knew it was released, it was gone and being offered on VOD.  Here we are about 2.5 months out from the release date, and I saw it on Peacock.  So, we are in interesting times.

Longtime followers of the blog may know I'm a bit of a Universal Monsters fan, not least of which is 1931's Dracula.  I've seen a few other versions, read the novel, seen a stage play, etc...  I figure I've done my Drac homework.  And so it was that seeing a movie pitched as a goofy, dark comedy about the woes of being Dracula's familiar (Renfield from novel and the 1931 film, played by the great Dwight Frye) with no one less than Nic Cage as Dracula had a strong appeal.

The trailer featured Renfield (played by Nicholas Hoult, who I think people rightly say they dig), attending group therapy for folks in abusive relationships, which, in retrospect, is maybe not innately hilarious to the twitter generation.  So I expected the movie was going to be Renfield and Drac's odd-couple relationship with some gross-out gore humor.  And that's... partially correct.

Weirdly, Awkwafina, who had just come off of Shang-Chi, and twitter's flying attempt at a good canceling, was not featured in the ads at all.  And she's arguably as important to the movie as Hoult or Cage.  She plays a police officer in a cartoonishly corrupt New Orleans police department whose father has been murdered by the Lobo crime family - who are also not in the trailer but feature Ben Schwartz as a wormy heir-apparent and the always phenomenal Shohreh Aghdashloo.  

Here's the thing I did not know:  the movie is an action-comedy-horror film.  There's a whole plot about Renfield maybe wanting to be a better person and it leading to him performing heroic deeds/ teaming up with Awkwafina, and Dracula thinking he's been thinking too small.

If you're like me, and you find acts of horrific violence geared for comedic value to be, in fact, funny as @#$%, this may be a good reason to stream it on The Cock.  This movie realized a little CGI blood costs about the same as A LOT of CGI blood, and they went bonkers.  But, honestly, the best parts of this movie are:

• the use of Dracula (1931) as a set-up and perfectly recreating scenes from the film
• Nic Cage's unique (in the best way) version of Dracula - that kind of makes you wish someone thought to cast him as the center of the Dark Universe giant mess Universal pondered a few years back.  Like, you realize, this totally makes sense, even when he's having a goofy scene with Hoult.  
• Shohreh Aghdashloo in general
• Brandon Scott Jones is absolutely perfect as the therapist/ pastor.  Give that dude more work.

I wish I could say it all hangs together, but it feels weirdly rushed - like director Chris McKay decided all the scenes were too long, and so the movie never really breathes and nothing lasts long enough for a comedic beat even when funny stuff is happening.

The movie did get some advertising, but I can't figure out what the thinking was.  It's *possible* heavily referencing a 90-year-old movie was not the right choice for The Youths.  Or that the premise sold in the ads didn't appeal.   Or that Dracula is more of a concept these days than something people actively seek out (which is probably worth discussing).  I dunno.  But it does feel like 2023 audiences are incredibly finicky and aren't going to drop $17 or whatever on a ticket for a 90 minute movie unless it's going to be a slam dunk.

PodCast 243: "Gremlins 2" (1990) - a Ryan Canon Film PodCast w/ SimonUK

Watched:  05/05/2023

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  Unknown

Decade:  1990's

Director:  Joe Dante

For more ways to listen

Simon and Ryan once again break the three rules and now it's chaos in the big city! Join us as we discuss a sequel that maybe outshines the original and is always a joy to watch. It's a movie that was ahead of its time no matter what year it came out, and a throwback to an era that probably never existed. A satire, a spoof, a comedy and a monster movie. And, of course, it gave us Marla Bloodstone.

this is a pro-Marla website

SoundCloud 

The Signal Watch PodCast · 243: "Gremlins 2" (1990) - a Ryan Canon Film PodCast w/ SimonUK

YouTube

Music:

Gremlin Credits - Jerry Goldsmith

New York, New York - Tony Randall and the Moonlight Gremlins Orchestra

Additional Audio

Key & Peele - Gremlins 2 Brainstorm

Ryan's Random Cinema

The Signal Watch PodCast · Ryan's Random Cinema

PodCast242: "Deep Rising" (1998) - An Angry (Sea) Animals PodCast! Jamie, SimonUK and Ryan

Watched:  05/01/2023

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Stephen Sommers

For more ways to listen!

SimonUK, Jamie and Ryan head for the high seas, and think deep thoughts on things from the deep! We take a look at a forgotten late-90's gem that floats on an ocean of charm and will surprise you from all new angles. Join us as we get aboard this suspence, sci-fi horror voyage!

SoundCloud

The Signal Watch PodCast · 242: "Deep Rising" (1998) - An Angry (Sea) Animals PodCast! Jamie, SimonUK and Ryan

YouTube

Music:

Main Titles - Jerry Goldsmith

The Girl from Ipanema - Walter Wanderley

Playlist - Angy Animals

The Signal Watch PodCast · Angry Animals

Ricou Browning Has Merged With the Infinite

Ricou Browning, the man inside the Gill Man, has passed.  Browning was 93.

Many of you know The Creature from the Black Lagoon is part of my personal film canon.  And, so, we need to take a moment to address the loss.  

Browning wasn't just a one-hit wonder.  He was involved with several things you know - he did stunt work on Sea Hunt and started the show Flipper! as well as had involvement with the show Day of the Dolphin.  His work included item I genuinely love, like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Thunderball.  Browning remained in touch with the massive CFTBL fanbase til the end.

I have several action figures in the house and a picture of the Creature in my living room (signed by co-star Julie Adams), so Browning has been in my world all my life as a 70's kid given monster content, and has continued on as a fixture, often on a daily basis one way or another.

PodCast 225: "Gremlins" (1984)- a Holiday 2022 PodCast w/ Stuart and Ryan

 

Watched:  12/10/2022  

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing: Unknown

Decade:  1980's

Director:  Joe Dante

For more ways to listen

What's more festive than a pack of insane asexually reproducing hyper-intelligent chaos monsters on Christmas Eve? Nothing. We get stuck in the chimney of good cheer as we talk this 1980's favorite which has become an unlikely holiday staple. So, dunk yourself in water, grab a bite after 12, and turn off the lights. It's time to talk The Best Movie Audience Ever.

SoundCloud 

The Signal Watch PodCast · 225: "Gremlins" (1984)- a Holiday 2022 PodCast w/ Stuart and Ryan

YouTube

Music:

Gremlins Rag - Jerry Goldsmith

• All Holiday Movies ever covered
• All Horror(ish) movies ever covered

Holiday Selections 2022

The Signal Watch PodCast · Holidays 2022

Halloween Watch Party Watch: House of Dracula (1945)

Watched:  10/28/2022

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Erle C. Kenton

I'd seen this before and couldn't really remember it.  But when I saw "Hunchback" on the poster, I was like "oh, yeah.  This one."  

Dracula (John Carradine) goes to a Dr. Edelman trying to figure out if he can be "cured".  Edelman being a movie scientist/ doctor is like "why not?"  The same day, frikkin' Larry Talbot shows up *also* looking to be cured of being the Wolfman.  And in the cave below the house?  Frankenstein's monster.  Because why not?  

Whether Drac was serious or not about his cure and whether he was overwhelmed by his own innate evil or not is never explained as he throws the plan out the window to get un-vamped in exchange for trying to turn one of the two nurses into a new bride.  Along the way, Dracula turns the doctor into a sort of quasi-vampire.  Shenanigans ensue.

We have to talk about Nina.

Look, this whole movie is not about Nina, but she's in, like, 1/3rd to 1/2 of the shots the movie.  And I do not know why.  She's set up as a major character, but is not.  She's just... there.

Nina (Jane Adams), the dutiful nurse to Dr. Edelmann, is the poster-specified a hunchback, which is mentioned like once, but otherwise goes unremarked upon.  So she's, visually, always there in bright white nurse-gear and trying to be helpful and has an obvious difference.  

Actress Jane Adams was not a hunchback, and whatever prosthetic they put on her seemed to really bend her over and make her arms hang a certain way.  The character has not a negative bone in her body.  She's sweet and helpful and literally everything points to things working out well for Nina.  Like, they introduce a potential cure for Nina's bone difference - which she gives up to help the frikkin' Wolfman instead.  That's Nina!  Always helpful.  

But at the movie's climax, Nina is just thrown in a pit to her death as a bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Which...  weird flex to suddenly go dark in a movie that feels very much aimed at kids.  

I have no ideas or no theories as to what happened here.  Was there supposed to be another fate for Nina?  Was Nina always doomed?  Was she accidentally in more of the movie than they intended thus drawing focus?  Why take a super cute actress and suggest she needs work and then bump her off with her storyline unresolved?  

It's a mystery wrapped in an enigma and smothered in secret sauce.  But what reading I did do tells me that this movie was on a conveyor belt through pre-production to post-production and while Adams had a swell time working on it, the veteran actors were less than impressed with the industrial approach to movie making that they compared to how TV would be made in a few short years.

Anyway - Nina going down into the pit will now haunt me forever.  

Adams' career in film and TV was not terribly long.  She showed up in 1942 and sort of petered out in the 1950's, finishing with an appearance on The Adventures of Superman in 1953.  It looks like she did a lot of B's, monster and cowboy movies.  She was kind of short for Hollywood, I guess, at 5'3" (which doesn't seem that short), but she attributed that to how she wound up in less than glam-girl roles.

We think she's peachy.

So here's Jane Adams without her prosthetic.  Lovely girl.  Not exactly in the Dwight Fry in weird make-up mode.

Marvel Hall-o-ween-Hall-o-Watch: Werewolf By Night (2022)

Watched:  10/10/2022

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  (checks notes)  Michael Giacchino.  Huh.

This fit the dictionary definition of "fine".  I'm not mad I watched it, I wasn't against what the story was trying to do, but as pal JAL rightfully pointed out, the Marvel machinery seems to have taken over for a portion of the film, and I'm not sure it was to the movie's benefit.  

Werewolf By Night is no one's favorite thing in comics, and if I'm tracing the lineage correctly, the character (Jack Russell, which surely is someone @#$%ing about) appeared in 1972 at what I'm assuming was part of the 1970's monster explosion as classic horror became hip for kids again.  But, also, the Comics Code was no longer nun-teacher strict about rules, and things like "no vampirism, no werewolfism" were stricken from the code.  

This thing is a kind of neat experiment by Marvel - making essentially a TV special that works much in the same way we used to get both the famous kids' stuff like Charlie Brown, but also some older-skewing fare.  Werewolf By Night is maybe 45 minutes, has a more humble budget than, say, Endgame, and exists as a fun holiday treat.  But it's Marvel, so it's also opening the door to the weird and horrific corners of the Marvel U from whence we get Blade the Vampire Hunter (still in development), actual Dracula, but also fellows like Man-Thing.  

But as a 45 minute, moderately budgeted film, it's also led by a first time director in Michael Giacchino, who you know as one of the current wave of actually very talented film scorers.  Why direct?  I have no idea.  But I do think, the oddball impact is that you can see what rails Marvel clearly puts around directors as a support system and to ensure certain bits of quality are maintained.  But, in this case, I'd say that's where the film gets away from them.

The film has the vibe of someone trying to borrow from Universal horror pictures who doesn't actually know what made up the 1930's and 40's Universal cycle of horror's look and feel.  It is definitely in black and white (which some Marvel horror was in the 1970's, natch), but it lacks a certainly visual moodiness and the weight of scenes moored by cameras the weight of an automobile.  I am not insisting that anyone shoot everything in American shots for 45 minutes on grainy film, but continuous camera movement is not how Tod Browning and James Whale were shooting movies.  It lacks the expressionistic ethos or methods used in both Universal and RKO horror - ie: anyone can turn down color-gradient, not everyone knows what to do next.  

Vampire Watch: The Velvet Vampire (1971)

Watched:  10/02/2022

Format:  Criterion Channel

Viewing:  First

Director:  Stephanie Rothman

You can't go wrong when your Dracula has a dune buggy.

I'm making light, but The Velvet Vampire (1971) was better than you'd figure with some stunning visuals and occasional actual sexiness, while being hampered by the budget and issues usually plaguing anything bearing the New World Pictures marquee from pre-1982.  

A lovely woman (Celeste Yarnall) who is absolutely and clearly our titular vampire stops for some death along the way to an art gallery show where she meets two dim-witted hip post-Summer of Love 1970's types.  The woman, Susan (Sherry E. DeBoer) rightly perceives Diane as a threat, but her husband, Lee (Michael Blodgett) sees a good looking dame who seems game and goes about telling his wife she has hang-ups and she should trust him.*  She absolutely should not.

The pair drive out to the desert where there's evil foreboding stuff and their car breaks down.  Fortunately, Diane appears driving a yellow dune buggy in full sunlight.  

At dinner (steak tar-tar, of course), Lee and Diane are basically announcing their intention to bang while Susan objects.  And then a bunch of vampirey stuff happens.  

If you showed up for partial nudity, you're in luck.  This is New World Pictures circa 1970 and they deliver on the spectacle you're hoping for.  If you showed up for Oscar-worthy performances, you may find yourself wanting.  But director Stephanie Rothman (the first woman inducted into the DGA, apparently?) does not screw around when she has an opportunity to do something cool.  And so we get some fascinating dream sequences and other bits that do a lot with some trick visuals, a fan and red negligee against the backdrop of the desert.

There's also a few other sequences that don't look like it was a crew fighting a losing battle with white walls and lighting, including a shot of Diane in a grave and two versions of voyeurism that appear in the movie.  

I can't say I loved the ending of the movie, but it's... fine.  I guess.  I would have ended it a full ten minutes earlier, but it's not my movie.  I'm just not sure how scary "vampire on a Greyhound" is.  But mostly I feel like it's a shame it appears Rothman never quite escaped doing exploitation films before hanging it up.   For example, I believe her take on the male hero of this film has to be satire in a way.  He's a being completely navigated by his dick who constantly gaslights his younger, vulnerable wife - even telling her it's no big deal when she witnesses him having sex with Diane.  The entire stance seems set up to get him murdered in the final reel.  

Susan's vulnerability and guilelessness is, frankly, unappealing and you can't blame either she or Lee for falling for the vampire's charms (there's definitely overt vampire lesbianism that never quite sticks the landing).  But it also makes Susan hard to follow as a character as the dramatic irony piles up around her.  And it all feels very intentional.  

I didn't love this movie, but as a curiosity, I'd recommend it.  It's not paced as glacially as some European films of the era, and you can feel okay about rooting against the leads.  I just wish the movie had left off much earlier and not decided a chase sequence was needed.  

*this, friends, is a red flag in your personal life as well as in vampire movies