I've grouped the three of these together because there's not much to say about them. Not because they're not good but because what new thing could I say? Phantom and Hunchback are the classic silents based on the classic stories starring that classic actor Lon Chaney. And Nosferatu is of course the classic adaptation of Dracula starring Max Shreck. I hadn't seen the Chaney ones before and two things stood out: 1. They're good. Really good. 2. They're long. Really long. I didn't know silents ran that long especially since the talkies that followed were so short. They're amazing pieces and definitely worth watching especially if you've never seen a silent film before.
An executed criminal comes back to life after a scientist performs some experiments on his body. The resurrected criminal is now hunting down those who betrayed him to get revenge.
Nothing special here except the fact that Lon Chaney Jr. as the Indestructible Man doesn't speak. And he dies in a stupid way. In fact it's kind of a stupid movie. Enjoy!
I survive the gradual, and I now fear inevitable, disintegration of our democracy because great literature and poetry, great philosophy and theology, the great works of history, remind me that there were other ages of collapse and despotism. They remind me that through it all men and women of conscience endured and communicated, at least with each other, and that it is possible to refuse to participate in the process of self-annihilation, even if this means we are pushed to the margins of society.
He expands on the idea of meaning through art--specifically literature--that he raised in I Don't Believe in Atheists (which I reviewed here) and demonstrates why he's one of my favorite writers and why I gave that book as much time as I did. He strikes a tone in this essay that's very similar to Arthur Silber's writings (another writer who's shaped a lot of my thinking lately, especially his pieces on Iran). They share a seemingly contradictory revelry in despair. I don't say that to imply that there is any sense of revelry in their writings. The despair is palpable and born of a clear-eyed, uncompromising view of reality. To put it another way, "I have found the cure for hope and it is awareness."
But why do I saw "revelry?" Because there is hope at the heart of both writers' oeuvres and both find release through art. The despair lies in what we are, the hope in what we may be. Despite the ever-repeating histories of depravity, destruction and dehumanization, the pinnacles of beauty humanity achieves endure despite the misery. That's cold comfort, certainly as even Hedges notes:
Thucydides, knowing that Athens was doomed in the war with Sparta, consoled himself with the belief that his city’s artistic and intellectual achievements would in the coming centuries overshadow raw Spartan militarism. Beauty and knowledge could, ultimately, triumph over power. But we may not live to see such a triumph.
Who can say? Maybe we will. Maybe we can only hope to see the minor triumphs in the lives of those around us. And though Arthur thinks it's too late, we are not at war with Iran yet and as long as that is the case we can fight against it. I know this is a penny-ante blog about goofy movies you can download for free, but this post is here because you do what you can. So read through these links and then talk to your friends, talk to your family, talk to your pastor and congregation (if you have one), talk to whoever you know about the moves against Iran (here's Seymour Hersh's latest on the actions against Iran and why they're a catastrophically bad idea). When you see an article in the paper demanding military action against Iran, write to the editor. Tell your representatives that there's been enough death. Do what you can when you can. To paraphrase Richard Nelson Bolles, life is a choice between doing good and doing nothing, so do what good you can.
And to bring it back around to Hedges' finding solace in literature, here are three books. They aren't directly connected to this post, but they are good and that might make the daily vicissitudes of life a little easier to endure, and maybe that's the point after all.
Spaceman Blues: A Love Song by Brian Francis Slattery
Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis by Ali Smith
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
The songs my music player pulled up while I was reading the Hedges piece: "No Mercy for Swine" by Cherry Poppin' Daddies and "Nearer Blessed Lord" by Nina Simone.
While writing this post: "Hateful" by the Clash and "Misery and Famine" by Bad Religion.
While revising: "We Are Alive" by Paul van Dyk.
John Carradine plays an artist who murders the women who sit for his paintings.
This is a PRC picture which means it should be awful, but it's not. It's actually pretty good. I'd go so far as to recommend it unironically, and I don't do that with many movies in this project.
Boris Karloff returns for his final performance as the detective Mr. Wong. A shipping tycoon is found shot to death in his office after one of his ships catches fire and sinks.
Not as good at The Fatal Hour, this one drags a little bit. It's fun to note how often Wong has to break the law to solve the mystery. Ends with a disappointing revelation of guilt, but it's okay until then.
My DVD player seems to be rejecting the abysmal movies from this collection. It's just not playing the discs at all. Plus I'm going out of town for a little bit. So I won't be updating the PD Project for a little bit. I'll be back with the rest of the series on June 11th. Until then, Rubber Ducky.
A surgeon who's been working on reanimating dead flesh nearly kills his fiancee in a car accident, salvaging only her head. He starts looking for a woman to kill whose body he can give to his fiancee while his finacee's head rests in a pan, begging for death.
There's quite a lot wonderfully wrong with this picture and I can't, in good conscience, recommend watching it without the MST3K commentary. It's the first episode with Mike on the SOL and it's high-quality even if the movie's not.
A group of genetically-engineered giant shrews escape their cage and start menacing people stranded on a deserted island.
Here's a drinking game to suggest to people you want to see die of alcohol poisoning--drink whenever someone on screen drinks. You can even have them pick just one character, they'll still drink themselves to death. You'd think I'm unnecessarily focusing on the alcohol consumption in this movie, but there's really nothing else going on. They drink, get "menaced" by the killer shrews (really dogs with shag carpet draped across their back--clearly friendly dogs at that), drink, talk endlessly about the plot, drink, fall into a cliched and half-hearted love triangle and, oh, what else was there? Oh yeah, drink. Hilariously bad.
A plane crashes on an isolated Caribbean island leaving the pilot, an American special agent and his valet at the mercy of a strange German doctor.
If you hop over to the Archive.org page for this movie you'll see a summary of the film in thumbnails and you'll have a pretty good idea of the character of the piece. When I first watched the movie I thought it was the most racist thing I'd ever seen. Then I saw Michael Bay's Transformers. It's not that the film's particularly hateful, it's just the revelatory nature of all these pictures. They all express the latent cultural concepts without thinking about them. What's shocking is the utter disdain that greets Mantan Moreland's character throughout the film.
There are a lot of issues at play. He's playing a stereotypical role, but it's also the role Shaggy and Scooby play in Scooby-Doo. It's the nature of the comic relief in a horor-comedy like this. Things get more complicated in the fact that Moreland's clearly the star. This is an old black and white b-horror and has, of course, a useless white guy as the hero. Moreland has the most compelling scenes. He's funny. I'd go so far as to say it's a good flick--both for his performance and as a window into the culture. Just be ready to shout, "You Nazi bastard!" a lot. It makes things easier.
The silent picture starring John Barrymore based on the horror classic by Robert Louis Stevenson.
S'alright. It's very good actually. Barrymore's great, the story's great, the production's great, lots of funny moments (many lines unintentionally homoerotic), I just don't really like silent pictures. I'm impressed by them but I also like dialog. On the other hand, I have realized that I can put the DVD player on fast-forward and still get the same movie experience.
Next up, Disc 7 with something! And something else! As well as some third thing! Beware!
A failed actor, after killing the mad scientist he works for, decides to take over the scientist's life and continue his work.
An exploitation film that's supposed to portray various mental derangements. Now I'm a fan of mental derangement, indeed, it's the only thing that explains most political decisions. The film's logic takes some odd turns, largely making the turns it does to place women in peril. Silly overall and pretty forgettable.
Metropolis
Fritz Lang's classic film about a population reduced to the roles of cogs in a machine that serves the whims of the rich.
You know, I was a film major and I never say this movie. It's a long picture and pretty neat. Nice images. My print had a crappy score that didn't sync with the film at all. Remember how people tried syncing Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon with The Wizard of Oz? It was like that except instead of syncing up, it was more like someone left an NPR classical station on in the other room.
This film's apparently still under copyright due to some odd legal wrangling but it's that same wrangling that's created sundry versions. I dug through my video tapes and found a copy of Metropolis with a running time 15 minutes longer than the version on this DVD. Wikipedia says the original version of the film ran 210 minutes. My copy is 119. To call the ending abrupt is to make it seem far more languid and relaxed than it actually is.
A mad scientist infects a concert pianist with acromegaly in hopes of convincing the daughter to marry him in exchange for the cure.
The movie's just over an hour and takes thirty minutes to complete the set-up. Two things recommend the film. One is that there are long stretches of silence where you can insert your own jokes. The other is there's a man in a monkey suit--a man in a monkey suit who kills! Almost. Okay, not really. But everything's better with monkeys on it. Except the new Indiana Jones.
One weird twist, it's a woman who proves to be the hero. Not much is said about it though. Where other films would have accolades or congratulations showered upon the hero, nothing of the sort is given the woman here even though she's the one who ultimately saves the day. And for those who are curious, yes, there is a white guy who doesn't do anything. It's a Sam Neufield staple.
A small town is plagued by a series of murders that resemble vampire attacks.
I'm watching this on The It's Alive Show right now which makes me wish I hadn't watched it just a little while ago. Oh man does this movie bite. It features, as its hero, an investigator who initially dismisses claims of vampires only to completely accept the concept for pretty much no reason at all. The only up points are the wha-a-a-acky small-town Germans, the film's goofy logic and the hypochondriac aunt. I think the movie ends with a diarrhea joke, but I can't be sure. Do Epsom salts give you the trots?
Next time, Disc 6 featuring two MSTie classics, one silent classic and a Mantan Moreland flick.
Boris Karloff plays the Chinese detective Mr. Wong as he tries to solve the murder of an undercover cop who was infiltrating a smuggling ring.
Karloff=horror, even when he doesn't. I'm expecting to see a period piece starring an extra from Creature From the Black Lagoon pop up soon. It's the same logic isn't it? As for the film itself, a slightly-convoluted mystery. There's a series of murders and it's not clear until the end who did it and how. It's not bad. And even though Karloff is playing a "Chinese detective," he doesn't play the role as a cringe-inducing stereotype.
A man returns from the dead to wreak vengeance upon his twin, the man who condemned him.
A short, simple and relatively okay vampire-type picture. George Zucco plays both brothers so there's some fun with split-screen filming that generally works out okay.
A scientist, driven mad by his expulsion from the scientific community, develops a serum to turn his assistant into a murderous beast.
This is trying to be a werewolf story, but it can't get past its own incompetence. If you ever need an example of so-bad-it's-good, reach for this film. The mad scientist goes after each of his adversaries who all invite him into their homes and agree to do favors for him even after he berates them and calls them fools. One even comes around to the scientist's side, apologizes and promises to speak on his behalf before their colleagues, and then the scientist kills him anyway. And that doesn't even begin to talk about the brain-dead assistant who keeps getting turned into the monster without his knowledge. It's hilarious.
