The Wolf Man (1941)

The Wolf Man (1941) Now we arrive at one of the Universal Monsters that doesn't hold up all that well when compared to it's brethren. Right off the top the casting is just plain bizarre as some how the studio thought Lon Chaney Jr. could even remotely look or act like the son of an English Lord or be genetically at all related to Claude Rains. Of course Larry Talbot was away for 18 years so maybe that's how he lost the accent and maybe his mother cheated on Rains so that's why she gave birth to a hulking lummox like Chaney. But Lon Chaney Jr. wasn't the only the case of weird casting as the Europeland village he returns to seems to be inhabited by 80% Americans with the occasional gypsy thrown in for colour. Casting aside the story and script is really the main problem.

Weirdness Abounds:
• Larry Talbot has a meet cute that involves him using a telescope to peak into a woman’s bedroom window. Later he continues to mack on her even after finding out she is engaged. Our Hero?
• Every bloody person in this village knows the “Even a man who is pure of heart” poem and will recite it at the drop of a hat.
• Bela Lugosi was a werewolf but Lon Chaney becomes a Wolf Man when bitten and not a full wolf like Bela was. What’s up with that?
• When Talbot is brought home after the attack all covered in blood no one dresses his wounds. He’s just sent to bed. Then in the morning everyone thinks he imagined being bitten when he appears to no longer have injuries.
• Larry Talbot strips down to his undershirt and pants when he first transforms yet the Wolf Man is clearly seen wearing a long sleeve shirt. Did the monster throw on a fresh shirt before leaving?
• The old gypsy lady has a poem of her own that un-wolf man’s you. Neat.

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) In a rare cinematic moment we are given a sequel superior to the original as James Whale returns us to the dark countryside of our nightmares. In the original The Monster was much more a frightened child than a murderous beast, but in the sequel he is very complex character; enraged, scared, harried, lonely and vengeful are the elements that make up The Monster this time out. In the first few minutes he brutally murders the parents of Maria, the little girl he accidentally drowned in the original, but then what follows next contains my only criticism of the film and that is that the monster doesn't then immediately murder the screaming hysterical Una O'Connor whose comic stylings I've never come to appreciate. A minor quibble. Now the one addition that really sets this film above it's contemporaries is that of the character of Doctor Pretorius who seduces, blackmails, and threatens Frankenstein into returning to his dark work. It is briefly mentioned that Pretorius was a professor of philosophy which makes one wonder how that lead to creating little people and jars. Maybe he picked that up at a learning annex? Dwight Frye returns as a lab assistant (a different one as he was killed by The Monster in the original) and he is even more twisted and sadistic. The labor pool in this neighborhood must be very shallow. Elsa Lanchester's on screen moments as the titular creature is limited but she makes the most of them and in the most striking make-up a monster could hope for. This is easily the best of the Universal Classic Monsters.

Things I Love:
• The actors in this film crank the melodrama up to eleven!
• The Monsters run through the splindly trees with the mob at his heels.
• “Alone: Bad. Friend: Good!”
• The laboratory creation scene easily tops the original.
• Elsa Lanchester’s birdlike mannerisms as The Bride.
• “We belong dead!”

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Creature from the Black Lagoon is bloody fantastic on Bluray, not only is the remastered picture gorgeous but we now get to see it in glorious 3D. I've only seen this in 3D once when it aired on TV back in the 80s with cheap 3D glasses you picked up at your local 7-11 and I can remember it not being all that impressive, but now in all it's hi-def glory it is something to behold. From the very start with the fossil of the Gill Man's hand jutting out at you to the immersive depths of the Black Lagoon the effects are just wonderful. The creature design is still one of my favorites and the underwater shadowing scene between Julie Adams and the Gill Man is simply beautiful. I could easily run out of adjectives describing the awesomeness of this transfer but I should save some for the rest of Universal Classic Monsters: The Essentials Collection.

Note: You have to love a film that's starts with a voice over that begins quoting the bible and then almost immediately starts talking about evolution.

Things I love:
•    Spear-gun Attack!
•    The Creatures stealth shuffle.
•    Ever present kookaburra call even in the Amazon jungle.
•    The Creatures trumpet theme.

Frankenstein (1931)

Frankenstein (1931) Universal's follow up to Dracula shook the foundations of horror with one of the most interesting of creations. Boris Karloff's portrayal of the innocent creature thrust into a world he did not understand is still the gold standard of the sympathetic monster. Now Karloff's performance and the monster make-up created by the legendary artist Jack Pierce may be the most memorable elements of the movie but I will always have a soft spot for Colin Clive's tortured Dr. Henry Frankenstein as this may be the only movie that has a mad scientist driven sane by his creation.

Things I love
• Frankenstein’s laboratory which is the basis of every mad scientist’s lab since.
• “Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!”
• The Creature reaching up for the sun.
• The Creature actually never murders anyone as the death of Fritz and Dr. Waldman could be labeled manslaughter and self defense and the poor death of little Maria accidental.
• Insta-Mob!

The Mummy (1932)

The Mummy (1932) is quite a different type of horror movie than the rest of the Universal Classic Monster Movies as the bandaged wrapped shambling mummy has only a few seconds screen time and the rest of the film Boris Karloff is Ardath Bey whose creepy aged visage is more striking and terrifying than any clothed wrapped mummy seen stumbling around in the sequels. And like the best of the Universal Monsters he does have sympathetic side, as Imhotep he was deeply in love with the Princess Ankhesenamón and she him but when she dies he doesn't take it as stoically as rest of the Egyptians and he steals the Scroll of Toth to resurrect her. This is a sacrilege so he is condemned to be buried alive. Now awakened in the modern world he seeks only to bring his love back and is a bit shocked to find out that she's been reincarnated as Helen Grosvenor a British/Egyptian beauty.

Things I Love
• The “heroes” immediately figure out that Ardath Bey is in fact the now alive mummy of Imhotep.
• Helen Grosvenor becomes lustfully alive when she meets Ardeth Bey.
• The heroes fail at rescuing. It is Helen who defeats Ardath Bey by calling on Isis.
• The Mummy’s jaw never distends to scream. He’s actually really laid back in this movie.
• Jack Pierce’s fantastic make-up.

Galactica 1980

While we await the return of the new Battlestar Galactica I thought it would be nice to take a look back at one of the landmarks in television history… Galactica 1980. The original Glen Larson series was canceled after only one season, even though it had huge ratings it was just too damn expensive. A massive letter writing campaign made the execs at ABC and Universal rethink the cancellation (And yet we couldn’t save Firefly?) and so they decided to bring the show back, but with a few changes (i.e. less money spent). Having the series spend at least 95% of it’s time on Earth saved them a bundle but with Cylons missing from most the episodes (reduced to glorified cameos in most) it really makes for a poor spin-off. On the plus side Galactica 1980 is damn fun to watch as it is simply one of the goofiest things I’ve ever seen aired on Network television (this from a guy who watched Manimal and Automan), and that kind of entertainment value is pure gold in my book.

“The great ship Galactica, our home for these many years. We've endured the wilderness of space, and now we near the end of our journey: We have at last found Earth.”

The first three episode story arc is entitled “Galactica Discovers Earth” and takes place thirty years after the original series had ended (main reason for this being that Dirk Benedict wasn’t available and Richard Hatch wanted nothing to do with the project), and starts with the Colonial Fleet finally reaching Earth. Things unfortunately are not as good as Commander Adama (Lorne Green) had hoped as he finds out from Dr. Zee (Robbie Rist who played cousin Oliver on The Brady Bunch), resident boy genius aboard the Galactica, that Earth isn’t advanced enough to help defeat the Cylons (Adama is shown stock footage of our movies and television shows as proof of this), and worse yet it appears that the Cylons have been sneakily following the fleet these last few years. So basically the Galactica lead the Cylon Empire to the last humans in the universe. Way to go Adama.
Dr. Zee shows video of Cylon raiders attacking footage from 1974’s Earthquake to an assembled group of the fleet’s top personal, this includes Lieutenant Dillon (Barry Van Dyke), Captain Troy (Kent McCord playing a grown up Boxey), and Commander Xavier (Richard Lynch), but lucky for us the images shown are just a simulation of what would happen if the Galactica was land in a 70s disaster movie. So their big plan is to have the fleet veer off away from Earth before the Cylons figure out that it was the original target, while several groups would fly down to Earth (equipped with cloaking devices and flying motorbikes) to visit several different countries and secretly help the scientific communities so that some day they will be ready to fight off the Cylons. Dillon and Troy get the United States as their goal and their first mission is to contact renowned scientist Doctor Mortinson (Robert Reed), and the first step in doing this is to rip-off The Day the Earth Stood Still by barging into the Doctor’s lab, fix the formula he had been working on for three years, and then leave.
Meanwhile back on the Galactica Commander Xavier is not happy with the current plan and tries to convince Adama that he himself should lead a team back in time and accelerate Earth’s technological advancement so that when the Cylons do arrive the Earth will be ready for them. Though time travel is possible (like everything else on this show it was invented by super whiz kid Dr. Zee) it has never been tested and the dangers of meddling with the past is too much for Adama and he refuses to support the plan. Xavier of course just goes ahead and steals a ship equipped with time warp capabilities (apparently untested and dangerous doesn't mean you shouldn't equip all your ships with it). Dillon and Troy are quickly recalled from their original mission and are sent after Xavier, now teamed up with local Los Angeles reporter Jamie Hamilton (Robyn Douglass) the trio must travel back to 1940’s Germany to stop Xavier from helping the Nazis with their rocket program. Of course our heroes thwart Xavier’s dastardly plan, but even so Xavier manages to escape through time at the last minute. Adama later informs the trio that Xavier has headed back to the 18th Century America to muck around with the Revolutionary War. Jamie agrees to continue to help the Galactica group in their attempts to stop Xavier.
Unfortunately the Network wasn’t to keen on the time travel aspect of the show and the producers were asked to jettison that idea. So the threat of Xavier altering time was abandoned and left completely unresolved. One can only hope that Richard Lynch is still out there somewhere, somewhen doing his best to make our world a better place.

“Super Scouts” is two part story that deals with Troy and Dillon being forced to land a shuttle full of Galactican children on Earth. Dr. Zee (now being played by James Patrick Stuart) thinks that with the Cylon threat growing daily it’s best to get all the Galactican children safely to Earth and quietly integrate them into society. Aboard one of the Colonial ships Troy and Dillon are schooling the kids about Earth culture when it comes under Cylon attack, and they are forced to head to Earth ahead of schedule. The kids are delighted to find that with Earth’s gravity being less than what they were use to on board their ships that they can now leap thirty feet in the air (That Troy and Dillon never used this ability in the first three episodes is a bit odd and proof that the writers were thrown for a bit of a loop when the time travel story line was abandoned). They quickly disguise the group as boy scouts but unfortunately three of the kids drink from a nearby lake and get very sick as the local chemical plant is dumping their toxic waste into it. Yes, why have a battle through time against a madman bent on world domination when instead you can battle corporate irresponsibility and greed. Much more exciting. Also introduced in the “reboot” of the season is Air force officer Colonel Sydell (Allen Miller) who is charged with investigating UFOs and hounds our rag-tag bunch. I assumed he was intended to be the Inspector Gerard of the series but strangely he only lasted one more episode. Also introduced in this episode is a Super Flying Saucer that, no surprise here, was also invented by Dr. Zee.

“Spaceball” (Mel Brooks not involved) This episode has Troy and Dillon being lured away on special mission by the evil Xavier, who has apparently returned to the present (no explanation is given as to what he may have done while back in time), and is now disguised as Captain Nash (Jeremy Brett of Sherlock Holmes fame). Xavier plans on kidnapping the children to use as bargaining chips in his bid to remove his now outlaw status. Troy and Dillon find themselves floating dead in space in a Viper sabotaged by Xavier, and with their oxygen supply slowly diminishing. Meanwhile Jamie does her best to handle the twelve kids dropped in her laps while also avoiding the investigating Colonel Sydell who is sure those kids are extraterrestrial. The episode ends with a climatic little league game with the kids using their extra strength to defeat their opponents (thus the "clever" episode title) as Troy and Dillon arrive in the nick of time to run off Xavier. Unfortunately Colonel Sydell gets a laser blast in the gut from Xavier during the fight, and is replaced in the next episode by Colonel Briggs (Mark Peter Richman). I guess Barry Morse was busy.

“The Night the Cylons Landed” In this two parter a highly advanced Cylon scout ship crash lands outside New York City on Halloween night. Aboard the ship are Cylons that can pass for human (though inside they are still all wires and hoses), one of these new models and a classic centurion survive the crash and seek out way to send a transmission to the Cylon armada to alert their brethren that the lost colony of humans has been found. Troy and Dillon take a commercial jet to intercept the invaders and while on route end up thwarting a hi-jacking. Upon arriving in New York the two spend as much time dodging Colonel Briggs’ dragnet as they do tracking down the Cylons. Meanwhile the Cylons crash a Halloween party, kidnap Wolfman Jack, and force him to take them to the radio transmitter atop the World Trade Center. Of course once again our heroes arrive in just the nick of time to shoot it out with the bad guys. This is the last episode to feature the government trying to track down and I must mention the wonderful disclaimer that follows each of the episodes that includes the Air Force, “The United States Air Force stopped investigating UFOs in 1969. After 22 years they found no evidence of extra-terrestrially visits and no threat to national security.” Well, that’s a relief.

“Space Croppers” Cylon Raiders attack the fleet, especially targeting the Agro Ships, in the attempt to force the Galactica to lead them to Earth as the Colonial fleet will be quickly out of food. Troy and Dillon partner up with a down and out Latino farmer who is being oppressed by Rich White Man (Dana Elcar), who rules the local Grower’s Association with an iron hand, and who also has dammed up the river to prevent water getting to those people he feels are beneath him. The Super Scouts return, and with reporter Jamie tagging along, they use their powers, along with Galactica’s superior technology, to plow the fields and plant the seed in record time. Then the Galactica Super Flying Saucer creates and seed clouds with super nutrients that grow them a crop over night. The episode ends with the Rich White Man losing his stranglehold on the valley. This was certainly the lamest of the series.

“The Return of Starbuck” This episode begins with Dr. Zee stating, “Adama, I had a dream.” And it’s from that we get the best episode of the series (and I'd say better than anything we saw in the original series) as Dr. Zee tells of his dream about a great warrior named Starbuck. So we finally find out what happened to Starbuck in what is basically an interesting remake of Hell in the Pacific. Starbuck’s ship, damaged in combat, crashes on a desolate planet marooning him as the fleet dares not return to find him with the Cylons so close on their heels. At first he believes himself to be all alone, but then he finds the remains of a crashed Cylon Raider and his loneliness (three days of being alone is enough to crack Starbuck) causes him to repair one of the “dead” Cylons. After he convinces the Cylon not to kill him the two become a nice "odd couple" as they bicker and argue about what it is to be a Cylon opposed to being a human, and a bond begins to form between them. One night the Cylon realizes that his companionship is not enough and that Starbuck needs a woman, so he goes off to find him one…and he does. This episode is so good I dare not spoil any more of it.
Dirk Benedict (as a favor to Glen Larson) returned in what was basically a last ditch effort to prevent cancellation. Alas it failed and many questions have been left unanswered. The dialogue in this episode reaches levels brilliance never achieved before as the Cylon, named Cy by Starbuck, develops quite the sense of humor, and reminded me a lot of Marvin the depressed robot from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Aside from the farming episode I found myself really enjoying this show immensely, well worth the $25 bucks I paid for it, and I can heartily recommend it to any fans of good campy fun. The one thing that may annoy viewers (even more than the introduction of the Super Scouts) is the character of Dr. Zee who mainly sits in a chair and bosses Adama around. Worse is that Adama, at times, seems like a doddering old man waiting for Matlock to come on. Overall the acting is what you typically get from an 80s show of this genre and the highlights really come from the cameos. The effects are low grade and laughable, and you could make a drinking game with every time they use the exact same shot of the flying motorbikes taking off over the city, but all said and done this show is a great way to kill ten hours.

The Last Legion

The Last Legion follows in the footsteps of Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur in that it gives us Roman origins for the Arthurian stories, and sure there are historians who believe that Arthur may have been a Roman soldier, and who knows they might be right, but I for one would rather see the end of such movies that expand on this idea as these two attempts have seemed clunky, forced, and lacking in…what’s the word…oh yes, MAGIC!

Today's film is directed by Doug Lefler who is most notably a storyboard artist but has directed episodes of Xena and Hercules as well as the straight to video sequel to Dragonheart, and truly this movie could easily have been just an extra long episode of Xena as the Warrior Princess was constantly running into historical figures like Caesar, but the script provided for this film by Jez and Tom Butterworth wouldn’t even have made a particularly good episode. The movie does have its Xena equivalent character with the Eastern warrior woman Mira (a very hot Aishwarya Rai), and her fight scenes are one of the few good elements of this film, but not enough to save a film that is loaded with dialogue so cheesy that it wouldn’t be out of place in a Spanish sword and sandal flick. The cast is overall not that impressive with only a couple real “marquee” names in the credits, Colin Firth who plays the heroic General Marcus Aurelius (for those of you that have dying to see Mister Darcy wielding a Roman sword and spouting clichéd speeches, well this film is for you), and Sir Ben Kingsley (I really wonder how many bad films you have to do before they revoke your knighthood) who plays Ambrosinus, the young Caesar’s teacher, and not to spoil anything but….psst he’s actually Merlin.

The film starts with the usual ponderous narration by Kingsley about a sword of great power that was forged for the conqueror Julius Caesar and passed down the line of his descendants until it reached that of Emperor Tiberius, and on his death it was hidden away safe from evil men. For generations it lay hidden in a secret place and marked by the symbol of the pentangle and sword, under the Very gaze of Caesar, while many searchers, such as Ambrosinus, sought its mysterious location. Later we find out the sword was forged from a fallen star and given to Julius Caesar, and I must say it’s a shame my history teachers left out that cool factoid.

The story proper starts off with the coronation of the last descendant of Caesar, and to our dismay it turns out to be Romulus Augustus (a ten year old kid with the survival instincts of a lemming), and whose reign is cut short when the Goths, who claim to have been short changed by the Romans, storm the palace and capture the city. The capture of Rome is pretty easy and apparently only takes about 10 minutes. Odoacer, the Goth king (Peter Cullen), spares the young Caesar, and banishes Romulus to the island of Capri under the watchful I of the villainous Wulfila (Rome’s Kevin McKidd), and he’s the character I had most sympathy for as he wanted to kill the little snot.

General Marcus Aurelius survives the attack and with the help of Mira manage to rescue some of his men, and so this loyal band, which includes a large black Rastafarian and an Orlando Bloom wannabe, set off to rescue young Romulus. It’s while running around the island fortress that Romulus finds the secret chamber that holds the sword, which is located under the giant pentangle symbol that everybody seems to know represents the sword of power. That the fortress was created by the last person to own the sword makes you wonder how hard these searchers were looking. What is even more ridiculous is that after the kid activates the secret way in it’s revealed later that the chamber has so many entrances that I’m surprised they didn’t have a hotdog concession down there. One of the entrances was even a bloody grotto that opens onto the sea! Exactly how this place remained hidden for so long is the true mystery. Now the important thing is that on a plaque by the sword is prophecy (and really what kind of film would this be without a prophecy) that says “One edge to defend, one to defeat, in Britannia was I forged to fit the hand that is destined to rule.” It’s an easy prophecy to remember as it’s repeated a half-a-dozen times during the course of the film lest we forget.

Shortly after the escape from Capri they find out that the Senators have thrown in with the Goths and that the only chance our group of heroes has is to find the 9th Legion who are stationed in Britannia. Wow, who would have guessed they’d end up having to go there? Well that’s all the detail I’m going to go into for this review, but here are some highlights I just have to mention:

• Our heroes trek to Britannia has them crossing snow covered mountains in such a manner that I kept waiting for someone to complain it was too cold for the Hobbits.

• Wulfila manages to track them all the way across Europe (I bet he can track a hawk on a cloudy day), and teams up with Vortgyn, an evil bastard who is trying to conqueror Britannia. His most notable feature is a gold mask that he wears that has him coming across like a low rent Doctor Doom, right down to the burned face. The mask itself resembles that of Mordred’s from John Boorman’s Excalibur. Why do filmmakers insist on reminding us of better movies?

• During the final battle at Hadrian’s Wall, Romulus, the idiot everyone is fighting and dying to protect, actual wanders up onto the wall, scurries around the fighters, and believe it or not climbs down the other side, and right into the thick of the battle. And for no apparent reason. WTF!

• After the battle is won Romulus declares that there will be “No more blood, no more war,” and he chucks the sword through the air where it of course lodges itself into a stone.

My parting words are simply this, “Can we have magic back in our Arthurian stories, please?” Really, cause if filmmakers are going to make supposed “historical films” that are this ridiculous they might as well put in more fantasy elements. I mean come on, they cast Colin Firth as a great Roman general, how much more fantastical can one get?