everyday is halloween: the brain that wouldn't die [1962]

 

those fucking mad scientists.  getting all weird & obsessive.  a crazy idea, or technique leads them to commit atrocious acts of violence.  & this movie is proof of it.  dr. bill cortner, played by jason evers, is a master surgeon who synthesized a solution that can reanimate dead tissue.  he also has surgical skills par excellence.  but his methods, to quote another movie about another madman, apocalypse now [1979], dr. cortner's methods are unsound.  

you see, this flick starts out with a surgery.  cortner & his surgeon father, played by bruce brighton, is doing some kind of brain surgery.  the father takes the lead on the operation but loses his patient.  but wait, bill says he he can bring the patient back from the dead.  he does with his magic solution & messaging the dead guy's brain.  sure, this brings the patient back to life but bill's father is freaked out by his son's methods.  & of the doggedness of the younger doctor's unorthodox ways.

still, what the hell.  bill gets a telephone call from his assistant.  come to their hidden compound in the mountains, where bill & assistant had been working in secret, right away.  something terrible has happened.  so bill & his lovely fiancé, jan compton, played by virginia leith, race thru the mountain roads with bill behind the will.  bam!  a car wreck & jan loses her head.  no worries, bill takes her head & tootles off to his compound.  

what now.  bill fixes jan's head in a tray with his magical potion pumped into it.  yep, a disembodied head.  while bill's assistant, kurt, played by anthony la penna, shows our young mad doctor that the thing they've been working on, a kind of frankenstein's monster, has mutated into a homicidal maniac.  kurt keeps the monster locked up in a room adjacent to the lab where jan is just gaining consciousness.  but bill has other plans.  he needs to get a body so he can graft jan's head on it.  he leaves jan, kurt & monster to go hunting for a suitably sultry young woman.  where does he go?  to a burlesque show!  why not.  

turns out kurt is a victim of bill's earlier work.  the monster is a collection of sewn together body parts animated by bill's magic liquid.  & jan, now simply a head, can communicate telepathically with the monster locked in the room.  you can see where this story is going.  the movie is short on action & long on dialogue.  while watching the exchanges between kurt & jan i wondered how samuel beckett would craft these scenes.  cuz this movie is bleak.  but it is also, despite its salacious nature, kinda boring.

bill is a putz.  kurt is a dimwit.  the monster is a mere thought by the writers.  & jan, the most interesting character in this movie, is given very little meat to chew.  beckett would've created speech, i think, of such profound existential despair that would shake the core beliefs of even the most hardened viewer.  the movie is dumbly directed by joseph green.  the production must've cost only a couple of bucks while the sound design is atrocious.  but hey!  who is complaining!  this movie was shot in 1959 but released in 1962 when it almost immediately went into the public domain.  this flick is flawed for sure but i sitll can't stop myself from thinking about it.  i even think there might be poems in it from both the monster & jan's point of view.  this is must-see movie for those of us that demand a fair chunk of cinematic cheese.  it's not fine cheese.  it is more like velveeta, in all its anti-glory, rich, gooey & so delicious!

boo!

everyday is halloween: heatwave! [1974]

 

how about a made for TV disaster movie.  i was gaga-crazy for disaster flix when i was a lad & i tried to watch all of them.  producer irwin allen had a lock on this sub-genre of horror-melodrama with movies like the towering inferno [1974] & the poseidon adventure [1972] in the '70s but there was a rout of these pics such as this one under review.  it is a curious document of life in 1970s america.  for in this movie it is the women we see at the supermarket doing the shopping, or at the laundry mat.  while the men are doing the he-man shit by going into the office.  & when the shit hits the fan it is the men who are expected to take on leadership roles.  

still, this is an interesting slice of life of a twentysomething couple, frank & laura, in the midst of a 17 day & counting heatwave in los angeles.  how hot?  the cut shots of a digital clock & thermometer, the type you'd see on a bank display from the street, tells you not only the time of day but how miserable you are going to be with temperatures hovering between 116-117 F [47 C].  that's surface of the sun hot.  top it all off is a wonky grid that makes for brownouts & blackouts, along with disruptions of the municipal water supply.  in short, frank & laura, who is seven months pregnant, are having a tough time.  

did i mention frank is played by ben murphy & laura is essayed by bonnie bedelia?  they do a serviceable job as an ordinary american young couple.  frank works as a junior stockbroker.  laura is a stay-at-home wife, natch.  but when laura's mother offers the couple their mountain cabin shortly before the city suffers a blackout, bam!, our young couple is soon driving the mountain roads in their VW bug worried about running out of gas.  man, that was the '70s!

still, this is not an apocalyptic movie.  the world continues to function.  people are not cutthroat, blood-thirsty goofballs.  the couple's bug is stolen but not by some faction of a killer road gang.  & when they finally get to their cabin in the woods, they are met by some good people, not crazed zombies, much to my disappointment.  still, the director, jerry jameson, keeps the narrative flowing.  we care for frank & laura, & their baby.  this is essentially a chamber piece focused on our young couple.  & it is interesting to note that these two young persons are utterly & uniquely ordinary.  just like you & me.  

boo!

everyday is halloween: the stanford mansion 'the curse of the gold miner's necklace'

anna & i are determined to get out of our beloved casa de bronson/lopez & do more things.  like walk to the nearby taphouse for a couple of beers.  or day trips to cute little towns like murphys.  or long weekends in mendicino, monterey, & most recently at a wonderful inn called nick's cove on tomales bay.  it is the spooky season so anna got us a pair of tickets to a haunted tour of the stanford mansion.

leland stanford was a robber baron, california governor, & founder of the university that bears his name.  the stanford mansion, located on 8th & N streets, is now a state park but it was for much of the 20th C an orphanage that closed its doors as recently as 1987.  it is a grand house that carries much history.  indeed, the great flood of 1862 saw about 6 ft of mud in the mansion.  you can still see the water line in one of the rooms.  stanford had to crawl out of a window & paddle his way to the capital for his inauguration.  this flood was so severe, so biblical in its destruction, that it changed the city.  all buildings were required to raise to 12 ft.  there are still places in Old Sac & other downtown areas that have underground tunnels of the original building elevations.

& but so, we decided to walk to the stanford mansion.  around 2 1/2 miles.  it was a lovely evening.  the weather decided to cool down.  it was raining yesterday & the day before.  it's also saturday night.  midtown is gonna be alive!  so it was.  not crazy wild but people were out enjoying a night on the town.  but downtown is somewhere else.  quieter.  less action.  even if the buildings were taller with more lights on them like every skyline in every mid to large city.  still, we made it to the stanford mansion for our haunted tour in plenty of time.

the mansion was decorated for the spooky season.  the docent was decent.  the haunted tour was an interactive play based on a few deaths & a missing necklace.  the story made little sense.  it was more of a macguffin to get us thru the mansion in a way befitting the spooky season.  was any of it historically factual.  i don't know & really don't care for when things go bump in the night you go, as frank o'hara said, on your nerve.  it was cheesy but the players were game & the decor of the rooms provided just the kind of halloween ambience this dude enjoys.

i've lived here for all my 59 years & i had not, until tonight, stepped foot inside the stanford mansion.  sure, i've walked past it thousands of times.  i remember when it was an orphanage.  it was fun, if very brief haunted tour.  the decorations were terrific.  i wanted to take a few pics of the layout of the rooms, including the desiccated bodies set out on display, but i didn't want to disturb the flow of the story as it was told to us in real time.  i mean i was standing right next to gov. stanford's butler, mr. platter.  taking out my phone would've seemed rude!  

when the tour was done anna & i meandered thru downtown & midtown.  we walked down the R st corridor & stopped into a gallery showcasing the paintings of several local artists.  there was one painting by jian wang that i thought was extraordinary.  so was its price.  $14500.  fuck me!  then we found our way back to our own place in the great swirl of life, casa de bronson/lopez.  but the evening wasn't done with me quite yet.  i needed to go to Safeway to get a few items like breakfast stuff etc etc.  because that's how our world works.  first there are 19th C ghosts looking for a lost necklace & then there are the immediate needs of the magic of ordinary living in the 21st C.

boo!

everyday is halloween: 'wuthering heights' by kate bush

i've been on a kate bush jag the last couple of days.  i swear this woman's music shreds me.  pure fucking genius.  but for this song, i think, goes well with the spooky season.  bush sings from the perspective of catherine earnshaw's ghost plaintive cry to her beloved heathcliff at the window wanting to be let back into her home.  gothic fiction at its finest.  & when bush gets to the chorus, holyfuckingshit, a sudden irrigation of the eyes.  this is art at its most human in its yearning, desire, & ecstatic pain.  when bush sings in cathy's voice, 'heathcliff, it's me, i'm cathy' goddamn art doesn't get finer.  & again, cathy is a ghost.  who still bone aches for her lover.  spooky as fuck.  & beautiful.  

boo! 

everyday is halloween: the stuff [1985]

 

veteran exploitation filmmaker larry cohen penned & directed this satire on american consumer culture & cutthroat capitalism.  lensed as a tonge-in-cheek but with more than a little bit of blood i remember watching this flick on cable TV back in the day & really digging its tone.  the last time i saw this movie was when i was dating anna.  we were hanging out in her bedroom watching TV.  i was working part-time as the quasi-manager/grunt at the university recycling center & it had been a rather exhausting day at work.  one of the local radio DJs hosted a weekly horror movie show & this pic was the feature for the night.

i remember anna not really digging it.  she's not a fan of horror movies.  but i freaking loved it.  it is funny & loaded with bit parts & cameos from abe vigoda & clara peller [who?  she was quite well-known for the 'where's the beef' series of TV commercials for the fast-food chain Wendy's], paul sorvino, garrett morris, patrick o'neal & danny aiello, among others.  cohen really must've called in the favors!  shot in the neon colors of the 1980s the visual flair of this movie reminds the viewer that the 1980s sure loved neon, day glo & pastels.  

but what is the stuff?  it's some goo burbling from the ground that tastes like yoghurt or ice cream.  soon the mining company that discovered it has marketed it all over the country as a dessert.  but this shit ain't your typical sweet treat.  it is addictive beyond measure.  & it has a mind of its own.  the stuff can move blob-like.  its heavy users eat nothing but the stuff & become homicidal maniacs.  the stuff on its own is a murderous psycho that will kill anyone or anything that prevents it from world domination.  

enter david 'mo' rutherford, played by the always solid michael moriarty.  mo is an industrial saboteur hired by rival companies to find out what the stuff is made of & destroy its company.  however, mo finds out the nefarious nature of the stuff & works for the rest of the screentime to help break america's addiction to the sweet dessert & breaking the company that sells it.  mo is aided by a teen, jason, played by scott bloom, who saw the stuff move on its own volition & watched his family succumb to their addiction to the sweet treat, & nicole kendall, played by andrea marcovicci, an ad exec who was instrumental in selling the stuff to u.s. consumers.

but if you want a deep dive into a critical document of american consumerism you've come to the right place.  for larry cohen has created a black comedy of capitalism.  you'd think mo rutherford would be the bad guy because he is a professional industrial saboteur.  you'd think nicole would be the bad guy because her work in advertising helped the stuff sell like hot cakes.  instead cohen subverts their roles & makes these two superheroes of a kind.  freedom is to choose what products we use & consume.  but freedom, i think according to larry cohen's script, is to reject those products that are marketed to us.  even more so, freedom is to critique our very culture that has created 20th C & 21st C marketing that deliberately targets you so, in a real but paradoxical manner, you are given no choice to choose.  

but then my beloved genre of horror has always been the bastard child of culture where it can shout out the terrors & injustices of our human being.  i've always liked the actor michael moriarty.  he possesses a wit & gravitas that nearly always elevates his stories.  one of my favorite episodes of masters of horror anthology series [2005 - 2007] is the story of two competing serial killers, pick me up (season 1, episode 11), also directed by larry cohen, from a story by splatterpunk maestro david j. schow, features moriarty as a truck driving, high living, candy eating, chain smoking serial killer, called wheeler.  the dude is a force of goddamn nature.

but this is larry cohen's movie.  his skills & talents as a horror/exploitation auteur are abundantly evident in this flick.  there are some laugh aloud moments.  & a few times of sheer terror.  for that is horror in a nutshell.  it can make you laugh just after you are so scared you cry for momma!

boo!

everyday is halloween: the bloody jug band 'roadkill boys'

where the hell has time flown the fuck off to?!  13 days to halloween!  as i've longed claimed halloween is in the heart, & head.  with our time in vegas earlier this month, & spending a few luxurious, wonderful days at nick's cove resort on tomales bay to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversay, i've been a bit busy!  yes, anna & i are married for 30 years!  we've been together for 34.  i told a poet friend at a reading last night that we just got back from marin county for our 30th anniversay he looked at me & said, 'but you look so young!'  ha ha!

on our road trip thru the bay area this song, 'roadkill boys', was stuck in my head on account of seeing all kinds of critters, including whales sounding & breaching in the waters off pt. reyes lighthouse, tule elk, hawks & possibly a bald eagle, & even, yep you guessed it, vultures!  but i couldn't remember the name of the band.  the line, 'we won't kill you but we want you to die' is a kind of macabre refrain in our family.  

plus this spooky season it's been hot!  & it seems to this old, haunted lover of all that goes bump in the night, that a lot of the halloween imagery attendant in stores, & pop culture at large, have been sparse.  but hey, maybe that's just my own limited view of things.  after all, stores & whatnot started their spooky displays in august!  horrors!  but the weather is cooling.  the light is definitely changing.  & the days are getting shorter.  i fucking love it!  so here is a fun song about the art of living told thru the voice of vultures, in muppet form, performed by the bloody jug band, a haunted americana music.

boo!

everyday is halloween: the video dead [1987]

 

goofy fun.  let's get it out there in the open.  yes, you will lose a few critical brain cells watching this flick.  you might say, yeah man, i've seen it all.  & you may be right.  including this movie.  but this late '80s strait-to-video production might just charm you with its invention.  for these are not your usual zombies.  no!  these cats & kittens are the video dead!

what does that mean?  well, a cursed TV set has only one channel & on that channel is a movie called zombie blood nightmare.  this ain't your usual grad-school kinda meta story.  for these zombies within the TV will find their way out & chomp ya!  to death!  the movie proper sets up the scene with a prologue.  a writer is hammering away at this typewriter.  yeah, an honest-to-goodness typewriter.  that alone is proof how much the world has changed.  anyway, this cursed TV is delivered to his house by a couple of dorky delivery dudes.  the writer protests.  he doesn't watch TV.  doesn't matter.  it's been delivered.  the writer sets up the set when it turns on of its own volition.  the guy can't turn it off.  the movie within the movie, zombie blood nightmare, plays.  the writer can't turn the set off.  soon one of the zombies onscreen notices the TV screen & steps thru it.  a few other zombies follow.  soon they are loosed on the world & our writer friend didn't stand a fucking chance.

later, a family buys the writer's house sight unseen.  i think the production was set in marin county which is across the bay from SF.  a great many cool poets, like joanne kyger & duncan mcnaughton, settled in marin in the late '60s when the area was still pretty damn rural & cheap.  even more cool, the late jennifer miro, of the SF punk band, the nuns, has a pretty meaty role in this flick.  but back to the story.  the brother & sister move into the house.  the parents are still overseas.  the brother, jeff, is bored outta his gourd by the pastoral setting of the neighborhood.  he finds the TV in the attic.  he also meets a cute neighbor, april, who dressed like every cute chick i knew in the '80s, e.g. brands like guess & esprit.

miro is The Woman on TV & seduces our young hero, jeff.  The Woman is sultry, scary, sexy & dangerous.  why does she want to seduce a young goofball?  i dunno!  i am just going with the flow.  anyhow, The Woman is dispatched back into the land of the TV set where she is promptly killed by a dude who calls himself The Garbageman.  whaaaat???  The Garbageman, thru the TV screen, lays down some knowledge on jeff on just what he is dealing with.  that's right.  the video dead!  & how to protect himself from the zombies.

jeff thinks he is tripping hard & flushes down the toilet his bag of weed that he'd been smoking when The Woman manifested out of the TV & into his lap.  soon the zombies that have escaped earlier & roaming the marin hills make themselves known to jeff, april & jeff's sister, zoe.  but hold on.  another helper to battle the zombies shows up, josh daniels, who knows the score & how to kill these video dead.  whew!

what a confusing mess!  i don't know what filmmaker robert scott did before or after this VHS flick.  the actors are all game in this movie.  a bit stiff, a bit hammy, but overall effective in their roles.  the really fun part of this movie, other than pretty good fx, was watching jennifer miro onscreen.  & the location of the marin county, utterly gorgeous.  i do like a really bad zombie movie.  especially a flick from the age of straight-to-video when the renter at the video store is seduced by the VHS cover art.  i can't in good conscience recommend the casual viewer to this pic.  but i'm not in good conscience!  this is a fun movie!  as the sage once said, turn on, tune in, & drop dead!  

boo!