Podcast: Morbius the Living Vampire!

Have you seen the trailer for this year's Morbius yet? It's ... fine!? I'm too excited about the prospects of getting a movie adaption of "the living vampire" to nitpick at this point. And the release of the trailer feels like a good excuse to dig one of our podcasts out of the vault.

In the second episode of The Collinsport Historical Society Podcast, recorded way back in 2013, features an interview with comics legend Roy Thomas about creating Michael Morbius, Marvel's first vampire, in 1971. Also in this episode: Patrick McCray speaks with comics creator Joe Keatinge, who was writing a new Morbius series at the time.



What does this have to do with Dark Shadows? I'm glad you asked! Morbius was at the crossroads of several historic changes in comics. Not only was his introduction the first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man not written by Stan Lee, but he was also the first vampire character at Marvel following changes to Comics Code Authority's prohibition for supernatural characters. In our interview, Thomas speaks about the events that led to Morbius sparring with the web slinger in 1971, his script for the Marvel Comics Dark Shadows parody "Darn Shadows," and how the Marvel office was not allowed to disturb him when a television show featuring a certain cane-carrying vampire was on.

You can listen to the episode below.

Podcast: The Dark Shadows Daybook

Diabolical Daybook diarist Patrick McCray is joined by the Fabulous Alexis Latshaw to resurrect Barnabas Collins and argue that TV’s greatest villain is its greatest hero in a bizarre act of unnatural fan love.

You can download the episode HERE, stream it below or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio and YouTube.

Podcast: The Dark Shadows Daybook

Another day, another Dark Shadows podcast! Patrick McCray and Justin Partridge have a drink at The Blue Whale and talk about the Master of Dark Shadows documentary, how the series speaks to the lonely, and why the 1897 storyline is essentially an episode of Fantasy Island for Barnabas Collins. Pull up a seat at the bar and give it a listen!

You can download the episode HERE, stream it below or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, YouTube where ever you find your podcasts.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: JUNE 29

By PATRICK McCRAY

June 29, 1966
Taped on this date: Episode 13

Roger finds Burke in the drawing room, and pours a drink as he listens to Burke’s reasons for being back in Collinsport. Roger thinks Burke still blames him for going tp prison, but Burke says he wants to forget the past. He wanted to see home and prove to others that he’s a success. As far as prison? A man was killed, Roger gave testimony, and the jury sent Burke to jail. Why is he meeting with people, now? Just to get to know them. Elsewhere, Vicki visits Matthew. She wants to know what the family’s connection to Bangor is. Matthew says that’s where Burke’s trial happened. But that’s old business. In the drawing room, Roger is alone with Burke and presses him for the truth. Roger threatens to make life from prison seem to be a paradise if Burke’s lying. Burke counters by asking about Roger’s wife. They agree it’s all past history. Over muffins, Vicki learns that Roger only recently came back from Augusta, and it’s a terrible thing for Liz. At Collinwood, Burke exits, dropping hints that he might want to buy Collinwood or the business… maybe both. He then asks Roger to meet him later that night at the Blue Whale for a business proposition. Meanwhile, Matthew describes a near fatal car accident of the past. Matthew receives a call from Liz for firewood and learns that Vicki lied about having her permission to visit him. She leaves, only to find Burke by Roger’s car, with a tool he said was on the front seat. Burke implies that all is patched up. Up in the drawing room, Roger fills in Liz. Are they in the clear? He is awfully unwilling to forget. The only way for Roger to know is to visit Burke at the bar. Vicki then checks in with Liz, and asks if Roger is using his car that night.

The great highlights in episode 13 are the inversions of character that we see in Burke and Matthew. Any whiff of sincerity that Burke might have mustered is gone. His visit to Collinwood has so much forced innocence, it’s like he’s channeling Eddie Haskell. Then, once he has Vicki alone by Roger’s car, his stab at appearing innocent is equally insincere. It’s not too far to say that he even seems a tad unhinged. The universe would be completely unsafe were it not for the cranky, high-hatted warmth shown by Matthew Morgan. He has every reason to call the cops on Vicki, but instead, he is very inclusive towards her. I really wish they had not switched to Thayer David. David played the part he was handed, but by then, Morgan had devolved into a cartoon. This is far more nuanced.

June 29, 1967
Taped on this date: Episode 276

At the Old House, Willie shoves jewels at Jason in the Old House, but they’re not enough for him. He thinks they’re in the coffin. Jason’s last living act is to open the coffin before Barnabas strangles him. Awake, Barnabas finds that Jason forced his way down there past Willie. This placed Barnabas in danger, but they must dispose of the body, first. They can bury him in the secret room of the Collins tomb. Willie is squeemish over the body of his friend, and Barnabas reflects on his own friendship with Sarah. They carry the body out, leaving Jason’s fallen cap for later. In a corner, Sarah plays with a ball. She places the cap on the coffin lid. At Windcliff, Woodard studies a drawing of Sarah, convinced that the girl is the connection that will connect Maggie to the kidnapper. Woodard insists on showing the picture to Maggie. Maggie doesn’t seem to recognize the sketch until she blurts out, “Sarah.” She says that Sarah came to the room. What room? Maggie begins to panic. She tried to escape from the room, and then she repeats the riddle. Although she screams clues, Julia has her sedated. Woodard sees this as progress. The girl will lead them to the kidnapper. At the mausoleum, Willie and Barnabas trigger the secret door to deposit Jason. As they leave, Willie asks about Barnabas’ relatives in the tombs. He emphasizes Sarah’s sweetness. After they leave, Sarah appears under her own headstone.

Call Jason ‘Mint Jelly,’ because he’s on the lamb. But not for long. It almost feels as if they were contractually obligated to stretch the courtship and wedding out for x-number of episodes. Completely arbitrary. With that wrapped up, we get an episode where Major Things Happen, but at a thoughtful pace. It feels as if the shows was straining to get back to the macro-arc of Barnabas, and with Jason gone, the potboilerish pettiness seems officially over. DARK SHADOWS is moving on to be a supernatural thriller within the soap opera format rather than a real world soap opera with supernatural implications. It’s about time. It’s also the first episode narrated by Kathryn Leigh Scott. With that, DARK SHADOWS is no longer just the story of a woman whose name is Victoria Winters.

June 29, 1970 
Taped on this date: Episode 1051

1970PT. At Loomis House, the blade-wielding stranger embraces Roxanne, says he was foolish to let her go. The man angrily searches for Stokes and tries to get through to his semi-catatonic lover. He is Claude North. Perhaps the blade will remind her. It no longer has the effect it once had… he will undo whatever Stokes has done. At Collinwood, Maggie reveals that “Alexis” has had another seizure and insists on seeing her father. Hearing this, Barnabas rushes to Loomis House. There, Claude is unable to reach her by hypnosis. He doesn’t care about the deal he made with Stokes… he’ll return the money, but he must have her. He hears Barnabas entering and hides. Barnabas asks how she got up to the main floor. Spotting the knife, he asks if Claude North is there. No answer. He takes her down to the basement. Claude leaves, quietly vowing to come back for her. Time passes. Barnabas comes upstairs to see that the blade is gone… that can only mean that Claude was there. He calls Buffie, telling her he needs to hide Roxanne with her. At Collinwood, Maggie hears footsteps outside her room. No one is there. Meanwhile, Claude returns to Loomis House and finds the lab equipment in the basement. He hears Maggie calling for Barnabas and accosts her. He demands she look into his eyes and tell what she knows of Barnabas. Where has he taken her. Maggie is bewildered. He locks eyes with her and commands her to tell him he’ll be back. Maggie staggers back to Collinwood and describes her encounter to Barnabas. Maggie is convinced there is a murderer in the house -- Quentin -- and she will be leaving directly. If Quentin isn’t guilty, where is he? How do you explain everything else that’s happened? Quentin overhears her concerns from his hiding spot. Later, Barnabas looks over Roxanne, knowing that she must be restored, both to save Quentin and to fulfill his curiosity. Several rooms over, Maggie dreams of Quentin coming home in a chipper mood, greeting her merrily. He cut short a board meeting… he wants to take her away for six months. She’s elated. No planning! Just go! Start living! Things change when he spots a bouquet… the flowers Bruno used to send Angelique. Quentin accuses her of seeing Bruno! He says that Bruno is why she doesn’t want to go away with him. How long has the affair been going on? Quentin begins to strangle her. She awakens to find him leaning over her.

It’s the first appearance of Claude North, a formidable character whose brief life in the series almost seems like a non sequitur. Brian Sturdivant plays a forceful antagonist with crisp, shrill intensity. That he should only be around for a few episodes is a shame. Several years later in 1979, we would say goodbye to Jane Rose on this date. She played Mrs. Mitchell, the old woman with whom Vicki spoke on the train, and who informed her that her solitary trip to Collinsport had been more than enough. 

MONSTER SERIAL: Child of Dark Shadows, 1973

By PATRICK McCRAY

Was it just me, or did CBS used to show movies opposite Carson? Or maybe Letterman? That’s where I saw scads of vital films. THE OMEGA MAN (the second time). THE LAST OF SHEILA. And this. Before I had any idea what DARK SHADOWS was, CHILD OF DARK SHADOWS sounded like some kind of documentary about runaways or drug abuse or something similarly instructional, but Snyder was a rerun, and so during those lazy, insomniac-by-choice summers of my misspent middleschoolism, it was the only game on the three channels we called choice back in the wilds of the early Eighties.

When I ended up watching the show, the film was so different that it took two years and a fresh Fangoria to explain that, yes, Virginia, this was the third DARK SHADOWS film. Not that I was dissatisfied with it. Schoolgirls in panic! Haunted portraits. The I Ching. Occult heroes. It was all there. By Jove, I was a fool not to have put the pieces together myself. If anything, I kept waiting for the TV show to get like the movie. Where was Anton Castille when Collinsport needed him?

By 1973, Dan Curtis was in an odd position. The name DARK SHADOWS still had bankability, but you have to give the audience some, you know, DARK SHADOWS. If NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS taught what was left of Team Curtis anything, it was that. Unfortunately, with Jonathan Frid and David Selby gone, it was going to be an uphill battle. He was wise to very carefully sift through what was left to give the audience as much familiarity as he could. No, Julia Hoffman is dead, but there’s Joanna Hoffman. Sure. Just trade the tweed for a pantsuit. Check. Jerry Lacy as a failed televangelist Trask, desperately trying to start his own campus in Collinsport. The important question was, “Is he still an asshole? Yes? Then it’s DARK SHADOWS.”

Were Nancy Barrett and Alexandra Isles a bit, um, august to be playing high school girls? Yes, but who cares? We never see any classes other than those run by hottie hipster, Jason Kane (John Karlen), and that’s “figure modeling,” so maybe it’s a finishing school. I don’t know, and I’m not sure it matters. The crucial thing is that Curtis and Hall were doing what they did best — reconfiguring other works of horror into their own narrative.

Left, the 1984 home video release by MGM. Right, the novelization by David Gerrold.

By doing this, they gave the audiences of 1973 everything they wanted then. It was almost as if DARK SHADOWS, the television version, worked from the literature of the past. Now, we have the literature of the present, and Curtis was in the thick of 1970’s neo-pagan-christian-mysticism with several audacious twists. (Roger’s snarling, driverless Jaguar is a personal favorite.) The smartest thing that I think Curtis pulled off was to return to the familiar turn of time travel, but with a twist he’d never done, and with a strange moral inversion that caused bad behavior for years to come in junior highs across America.

Yes, hauntings and deaths and an old portrait. Got it. There were girls dropping like flies at the school and the word “poltergeist” was invoked in cinema for the first time to my knowledge without bothering to google it. It’s clear early on that Joanna Hoffman and Isiah Trask are in cahoots in their bizarre scheme to begin the End Times. This was a dash of Hal Lindsey that needed a send-up, and by having Grayson Hall and Lacy pair up over ceremonies based on the forbidden “Third Testament,” we not only get great storytelling/satire, but we also get to see what Spielberg totally ripped off for the climax of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.

Front and back cover art for Robert Cobert's soundtrack.

Smarter still was the idea that, if DARK SHADOWS were to continue as a franchise, it would need a new, continuing central character. Enter Christopher Pennock, as the Avanti-driving, kickass, good-guy Satanist (!), “Anton Castille,” cousin to the late Tracy Collins (Kate Jackson), there to investigate her death. Thanks to his own set of I Ching wands (and a helpful trance or two), we learn that the Victoria from the painting found in the Old House is not an ancestor ...  it really is Victoria. The footage of her trip back to 1738 is still missing, but the film cuts around it nicely. I would have enjoyed seeing her go back to that era to burn the Third Testament when it’s fresh off the boat, but the way they handled it was just as clever. The seance and the monologue that Isles delivers in it finally justifies the faith I had that she really could understand things. That she would (so the stunning monologue tells us) go back to 1738, die at the hands of Bishop Trask, only to come back and haunt Collinwood to stop his descendant was maybe the only ghost gag that Hall and Curtis had not tried. When the sniveling Trask begs Castille to perform the exorcism and he refuses, knowing that the Right Reverend is the ultimate target of the spectral attacks? That gave me no end of ammo in religious debates with my mother for years to come.

Italian one-sheet poster for CHILD OF DARK SHADOWS, 1974.

Is it a mess of a movie? Yeah, but it’s never dull, and you can’t say that for NIGHT. It was banned in Little Rock, and you have to love that. Of course, MGM shit its pants at the idea of a continuing series of DARK SHADOWS films with Pennock as Castille, battling black magic with even blacker magic, so CHILD truly was the end of that phase of DARK SHADOWS. A shame, because Pennock shows genuine star power in the part, finally taking on the mantle of male lead with Barnabas and Quentin written out. Would audiences have supported the film more had the advertising made Dan Curtis’ new direction more evident? Of course. (I’m not so sure about DARK SHADOWS fans getting behind someone not a Collins… yet.) Thankfully, MGM had no real power over the novelization and the four successful print sequels, all of which focused on Castille, a man we eventually learn is, of course, a Collins.

Of course, he’s a Collins. It took three books to get there, but come on. This really is DARK SHADOWS.

Melissa Snyder's 2012 DVD review of CHILD OF DARK SHADOWS, from Monster-a-Go-Go Magazine.

Spend Black Friday in Collinsport

By PATRICK McCRAY

On Black Friday, I’m gonna party like it’s 1991.

Okay, I apologize for that. I don’t even like Prince. Starting with such a line is part of the ritual, and now that it’s out of the way, I want to talk about why I’m watching all of the 1991 Dark Shadows in a day.

(Oh, and to get something else out of the way, “blame the Gulf War, blah, blah, blah.…”)

I had no contact with Dark Shadows fandom until 2012, when I watched “The Twelve Twenty-Five” (meaning all 1,225 episodes) in 45 days. As fandoms go, there are few more dedicated, passionate, and firm in opinions. And the legend I heard was that many fans were not fond of the 1991 series. I heard legends that Festivals tried to include some 1991ian involvement, and that did not, um, go well. Maybe it’s apocryphal.

Anyway, this surprised me.

Was it just me, or did they cast the 1991 show and start filming nearly a year before? I feel like I saw the first picture of Ben Cross as Barnabas in 1990, as I was graduating high school. If so, that was a significant picture, because I felt like I was seeing “my Barnabas.” Coming from the paradigm (finally) set by Star Trek: The Next Generation (as well as, more importantly, Love Boat: The Next Wave), I now looked at the major franchises a bit like comic books or James Bond. They’d always be around. They’d be freshened by necessity. The only question was if they’d maintain continuity or be remakes.

I’d always hoped for a “new” Dark Shadows. Given that Mr. Frid didn’t seem very interested, a remake was the most I could hope for. When it was announced as a big budget, nighttime production by the Wouk-powered Dan Curtis on ratings titan NBC, it seemed that I’d finally be able to show people Dark Shadows and have them “get it.” This was the age of Twin Peaks, which might have made it possible. Between that and STTNG, I suspect that NBC was more than willing. They saw what I still see: Dark Shadows is the untapped Star Trek of horror. It’s a potentially expansive universe starting with a core cast of characters and central location. This was the best way to see that happen, I thought.

I remember liking it. And I also remember reluctantly acknowledging that the changes were made to appease 1990 audiences. I dealt with it. Would I have done things differently? Sure. And I may go into those things. But at its essence, is it Dark Shadows? Yes. Wrongdoings, regret, and ramifications abound. What it never had the chance to explore was atonement and forgiveness. I think it handled “1791” with a respectable tightness, and it played well with the whole Josette Doppleganger thing, making it dramatically pertinent to our audience surrogate. The most important change was that of Barnabas. He’s a bit too comfortable twirling his metaphorical mustache, a bit too confident in lying, and a bit too oily in romancin’ the gals. Jonathan Frid specialized in putting a barely concealed terror behind everything Barnabas did. Meaning that Barnabas felt a barely concealed terror. When he’d proclaim a plan would work, it always sounded like he were trying to convince himself. Ben Cross had a strength and confidence that was very different. Yet I bought it as a viable interpretation of the text. Will I now? I’m not sure.

I’ve watched it a few times over the years. Usually, to bring new girlfriends into the Collinsport fold. But this is the first time since I pretty much chucked all fandoms over to have no other franchise before Dark Shadows. I just hope they solved the day-for-night issues. Even if they didn’t, I’ll shut up and deal. We’re Dark Shadows fans. It’s what we do.

It’s worth it.

(Editor's Note: You can find a schedule for the day's events HERE.)

---

Patrick McCray is a comic book author residing in Knoxville, Tenn., where he's been a drama coach and general nuisance since 1997. He has a MFA in Directing and worked at Revolutionary Comics and on the early days of BABYLON 5, and is a frequent contributor to The Collinsport Historical Society. You can find him at The Collins Foundation.

Watch the DARK SHADOWS revival with us!

Patrick McCray will be haunting Twitter on Friday, Nov. 27, bringing his latest DARK SHADOWS EXPERIMENT to the masses. (Editor's Note: You can read Patrick's introduction HERE.)

In the past, he's mainlined the entire original DARK SHADOWS television in increasingly shorter time spans, coming up with some fascinating takes on the series (my favorite is that Angelique is the true protagonist of the series, thanks to her driving involvement in every major conflict in Collinsport over the course of several centuries).

This month's experiment is a bit more modest: Patrick is watching all 12 episodes of the 1991 DARK SHADOWS "revival" series on Friday, Nov. 27. Beginning at noon, he'll be tweeting about the show and has invited you to join him.

Unlike the recent "binge" on the Decades Channel, there's no accompanying broadcast of DARK SHADOWS to help everyone participate. Patrick will be using DVDs, but Hulu has all 12 episodes currently streaming. The first three episodes are available for free, but a subscription is needed to access the remaining nine episodes.

The event kicks off at noon EST on Nov. 27 with the "pilot." I'll be posting hourly reminders throughout the day as we begin each new episode. Join us on Twitter to talk about the series. And don't forget to use the hashtag #DarkShadows on all of your tweets, otherwise we won't see them!

You can follow Patrick on Twitter @TheRealMcCray

Here's an episode schedule for Nov. 27:

NOON
Episode One: Convinced of an old Collins family legend of buried treasure, Handyman Willie Loomis accidentally releases vampire Barnabas Collins from his tomb. Barnabas introduces himself as a distant relative from England and begins to romance Victoria Winters, the new governess at Collinwood Manor. At the same time, the town of Collinsport is being upset by a series of deadly attacks.

1 p.m.
Episode Two: After being bitten by Barnabas, Daphne Collins dies and rises a vampire. Dr. Julia Hoffman discovers Barnabas's secret and offers to cure him of his curse.

2 p.m.
Episode Three: Dr. Julia Hoffman experiments to cure Barnabas of his vampirism. Professor Michael Woodard attempts to uncover the identity of the vampire.

3 p.m.
Episode Four: The ghost of Sarah Collins leads Victoria to her diary. An evil apparition of Angelique (nemesis from the past) begins to haunt Barnabas.

4 p.m.
Episode Five: Learning of Barnabas’ affection for Victoria, a jealous Dr. Hoffman decides to sabotage the progress of the cure for Barnabas.

5 p.m.
Episode Six: When a séance is held to contact the spirit of Sara, Victoria mysteriously vanishes. In her place appears a stranger from 1790.

6 p.m.
Episode Seven: Transported to the year 1790, Victoria meets the residents of Collinwood and becomes a tutor for Daniel and Sara Collins. Abigail Collins suspects Victoria of sorcery.

7 p.m.
Episode Eight: A jealous Angelique uses witchcraft to prevent the marriage of Barnabas and Josette Du Pres. A deadly duel ensues.

8 p.m.
Episode Nine: Josette Du Pres accuses Barnabas Collins of killing her true love. Abigail Collins enlists the aid of Reverend Trask to have Victoria Winters jailed for witchcraft.

9 p.m.
Episode Ten: The Collins Family mourns the apparent death of Barnabas as they move into the new Collinwood mansion. Barnabas rises as vampire.

10 p.m.
Episode Eleven: Victoria’s witchcraft trial begins. Angelique’s spirit seeks to prevent Barnabas from making Josette his vampire bride.

11 p.m.
Episode Twelve: Barnabas’ vampirism is discovered. Peter Bradford attempts to save Victoria from being hanged as a witch.

Monster Serial: THE BLACK CAT (1934)

By PATRICK McCRAY

Feast your eyes on the Art Deco inferno of Weimar angst and fury!  The scars of the Great War will never heal!  Satanism runs amok, with potential necrophilia skipping not far behind!  Look there, on the screen; it’s THE BLACK CAT!  Boris and Bela at last match wits and share the screen for the first time!

It can reduce/elevate any horror fan to express the passion of a Sam Kinison.

Plot is not the essential element to THE BLACK CAT, but so what?  There’s no plot to a piece of music by J.S. Bach, but that doesn’t stop it from being a compelling and hypnotic narrative journey. So, it’s much the same for Edgar G. Ulmer’s classic, black and white tone poem, THE BLACK CAT. This is a 66 minute feast of strange and wondrous details from a world of secrets too dark for us to completely know.

At least, that’s what it feels like.

Let me get some things out of the way right now, before the Mikes and Joels of the world make hay. (I feel the need to do this since I once had to halt a screening for a group of MST3K-trained adults who thought they were cleverer than the movie. Spoiler Alert: they were not.)

Okay, so here’s the disclaimer.  As horror movies go, it is neither traditionally scary nor impishly charming, although there are bickering police officials who get solid laughs while debating about tourism.  And, come to think of it, David Manners and Julie Bishop seem to have a lot of fun as the American couple who find themselves in the midst of the war on morals and memory that exists between the protagonists.  The writing is sometimes stiff.  Although only sixty-six minutes, there are moments when it drags. (Perhaps because of the reported interference by Universal.)  But none of those things are the point.

The film still remains one of the most compulsively watchable symphonies of amazing details in all of cinema.  It does what movies are supposed to do; it shows you things you never imagined or possible, with people you never dreamed could have existed, in conflicts beyond the reckoning of anything average or mundane.  Although I would not call it “scary,” it is seeped in dread and mystery and sadness and repressed rage.  That’s a trade I’ll take.

The plot concerns Bela Lugosi as Vitus Werdegast, a brilliant psychiatrist and survivor of a POW camp where he encountered his greatest nemesis, Hjalmar Poelzig, played by Boris Karloff. Poelzig is a visionary architect and Satanic leader, somewhere between Gropius and Crowley. He had stolen Vitus’ wife and child, and then married the latter as the former seems to be held in suspended animation.  Yes, in a 1934 movie.  Vitus has “accidentally” arrived at Poelzig’s home with two American tourists in tow, and the film becomes a sometimes quiet, sometimes furious, always intense test of wills between Vitus and Hjalmar, often with human lives at stake.

By the end, a Satanic ceremony has broken out (with worshippers wearing tuxes and gowns beneath the robes in a touch of class that would have made Dok LaVey proud.)  Guns are brandished.  Bela skins Boris alive.  Manners and Adams escape.  And, in a motif that would be echoed in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, Vitus concludes that they belong dead, too.  The house is demolished in an explosion he detonates, taking the prison camp upon which it was built, with it.

It’s a grim movie, so what makes it work?

I remember when I first saw it on the late movie when I was thirteen (a good year for me to see old films.)  There were Boris and Bela, dressed to the nines and showing class, panache, and restraint as they went about their war of wits.  (And let this be another nail in the coffin of the argument that Lugosi was incapable of subtlety.  Both he and Karloff show a kind of quietly meditative intensity worthy of a Pinter play.)  The set, though, seemed to be from the future.  I asked my all-knowing mother about this, and she explained that it was Art Deco.  I had seen the style before, but usually in recreations or as small, architectural elements.

I had never witnessed an entire world sliced by its severity.  While it should have been a clean, calming, fear-free setting, Ulmer presents it as a Kryptonian Hell.  It is as icily merciless and nakedly decadent as Poelzig, whose makeup and hair seem equally angular and severe.  The architecture is the story.  It is the mechanized and perfected new world, mercilessly ready to highlight>copy>replace the pomp, ceremony, and style of Vitus’ old world charm. You know, basically the Borg Cometh.  The angst of a Europe desolated by one war and then rebuilt for another is made excruciatingly clear… and nauseatingly seductive at the same time.  What a duality with which Germany was faced. Seductive, simple solutions for living, indeed.

It all seems so clear after World War II. What’s amazing is that the film was sending such a resonant warning and, perhaps, plea for action prior to the war. Of course, Hollywood inherited so many refugees from Germany that it’s also not surprising.

Ironic.  The horror genre is so often marginalized, and yet, had it not been a horror film, would we be looking at it, today?

And was I the one talking about the film being more style than substance?

I take it back.

---

Patrick McCray is a comic book author residing in Knoxville, Tenn., where he's been a drama coach and general nuisance since 1997. He has a MFA in Directing and worked at Revolutionary Comics and on the early days of BABYLON 5, and is a frequent contributor to The Collinsport Historical Society. You can find him at The Collins Foundation.

Monster Serial: DRACULA vs FRANKENSTEIN

By HERB GILLMAN

DRACULA vs FRANKENSTEIN.

Words to thrill the inner five year-old in all of us.  And for the five year-old, I think it delivers.
Do the two giants meet?  Yes.  Do they fight?  Yes.  Extended grappling.  Decapitation of Frankenstein, as I seem to recall.

And here is a fine point of order.

With the intense emotional regression living in director Al Adamson’s vision, he is not “the creature,” or “the monster,” or “Frankenstein’s monster.”

This film is made by and for all those who simply call the creature, Frankenstein, and they know a Frankenstein when they see one, goddammit, so don’t tell me it’s “Frankenstein’s Monster!” It’s Frankenstein.

If you approach the film from that perspective, you’ll be fine.

Dr. (okay, now we’re getting correct) Frankenstein’s descendent, Dr. Duryea, labors in a lab under a Venice Beach spook show.  He’s brought back the Creature.  He’s making deals with Dracula to do science stuff while a comet passes over.  He’s using injections to turn a non-speaking Lon Chaney, Jr. into a murdering mutant, killin’ gals under the boardwalk. I’ve seen it several times and the details of it go in one eye and out the other.

A showgirl goes in search of her missing sister (a victim of Duryea’s), only to find companionship in adventure and social release with a middle-aged, bead-wearing “observer,” who oversees a commune of white, suburban, immaculately bathed hippies.  He’s great ... like Ron Burgundy’s uncle.  He can talk about his feelings, make a woman feel whole, but still has a mellow sense of authority that rolls off him like the scent of bourbon Borkum Riff over a Moscow Mule.  When he needs to Help Investigate, Mike Howard is on the scene, yinging and yanging his way through the shit, man. Through the shit.

And arguably, there is a lot of it here.

The two of them are the foci for occasional revisitation for the film as it comes up with stuff to happen between when it starts and when it ends.

That’s pretty much what it feels like.

By all fair measure, it is a Bad Movie.  On a Ron and June Ormond level.  It doesn’t have the blood and bosoms of an HG Lewis movie nor the ascetic indulgence of an Ed Wood opus, but it still works.  Yes, bad movies can work, and it’s actually making me uncomfortable to use the phrase “bad movie.”

Because I don’t believe in the “good” bad movie.

It’s either bad because it doesn’t entertain me, or it’s good because it does.
 
Look at the films of Ed Wood. They are tight, bizarre tales of strange urgency and poetic fervor. They almost feel like Medieval morality plays with strange masques and choruses pronouncing odd cant and shamanic portents.

No, I’m not kidding.

Cinema, prior to video games, was our newest art form and a medium younger than many of the artists still exploring it.  Certain (not all) movies don’t conform to the rules and conventions we’ve agreed upon as acceptable filmmaking.  That doesn’t make them bad.

Bad means, well, bad.  You wanna talk “bad”?  Let’s talk UNDERWORLD or CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE or BALLS OF FURY.  These are films that made me angry over the time I’d wasted on them.  They are “bad” as in, “I would never watch them again.”

I’d originally begun this review as a comedy review for Herb (the Creature from the Black Lagoon) Gillman to review in first-person.  I couldn’t get it off the ground, although for fun, I include the beginning below ...

As I told my patient, Steve Sondheim over something we drank out of a skull at Trader Vic’s, in a quote he downright pilfered from me, “Art isn’t easy.”

Truer words, my friend.  Truer words.

Hello, my name is Dr. Herb Gillman.  Most people around Cocoa Beach know me as the “so gentle it’s mental” dentist, but a few peer a little deeper, and still recognize me as the eponymous “Creature” of Universal’s notorious mockumentaries.  Guilty as charged… but only of being one of the last of my kind.  That’s it.  I had been goaded into appearing in three “Creature from the Black Lagoon” documentaries before catching wise to Universal’s exploitation of me.

Universal liked to obscure the truth.  Why?  I don’t know.  Director Al Adamson and I were both well into our cups at the Riverside premier of SATAN’S SADISTS a year earlier.  The subject came up.  We agreed to change things for the better.

Sometimes a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it.

Sometimes it falls and it sounds like a majestic tree-thing that has fallen in a tragic, arboreal manner.
Sometimes it sounds like the mighty oak is hitting my sister, Carol Channing.

All are good, noble sounds.

We made none of them.

Instead, we made DRACULA VERSUS FRANKENSTEIN.

I liked that beginning a lot.  I think it was going to be an attempt at an exposé gone horribly awry.  Maybe Herb was going to be the choreographer of the deliciously wretched, Vegastastic, Ann-Margaret-by-way-of-Big-Lots opening musical number, performed (not sure about sung) by Regina Carroll, the director’s wife.

But, dammit.  I enjoyed watching the strange, haphazard, wooden movie.  It’s just thrilled with the illusion of its absent panache, and there is a perverse enthusiasm in that.  I remember the days when having a video camera (or a computer) was considered tantamount to having a platinum plated Trapper Keeper. (Or a Kenner Millennium Falcon in its first year of production.)  The idea of being able to make a movie at all was a fantasy as distant as a milkshake date with the indescribably sublime Lisa Welchel.  I can feel the giddiness that Al Adamson, roughhewn though he may be, was out to make a Monster Movie, by gum, and his friend Forrest J. Ackerman would be on hand as technical advisor to see that things went right.  The enthusiasm is palpable.

The ridiculousness of the film is piled higher than a sandwich from Canter’s.  You want a money-eating littler person, it’s there.  You want hilarious and nonsensical circular logic in the movie’s attempts at deep dialogue?  Say no more; they will.  Russ Tamblyn?  Yes. We have Tamblyn.  Lon Chaney never speaks, but cradles a puppy in a bizarre homage to OF MICE AND MEN.  (Yes, Chaney in that boozy state is sad, but he was still working and getting a check.  There are worse fates for an actor.  And he looks far less miserable than I know he was during his Mummy stint.)  Heck, we even see the actual electric props from FRANKENSTEIN and a zillion other Universal classics… in full color and going strong!

This essay is one of dozens featured in our new
book, "Taste the Blood of Monster Serial."

I watched the film for a second time with a friend, and we found it imminently quotable and enjoyable.  In all of this, I am not saying to throw critical standards out the window.  Nor am I saying that we merely take ghoulish delight in bad films the way that some treat three-car pileups.  No.  I’m just suggesting that the phrase “so bad it’s good” go the way of “some of my best friends are…” in the lexicon.  It’s an interesting mental exercise.  Take the phrase out, but defend a movie you used to just slather with that bit of rhetoric.  I think you’ll find very quickly why you actually like it.  And it’s not just because it’s “bad.”  Maybe it’s shamelessly overwrought.  Maybe it’s drunk on its own theatricality… which is better than having no theatricality at all.  Or maybe it’s just fun.  Fun is not anathema in cinema.  Even serious films have a jolt of it.  Imagine saying that a film was “so joyless that it was fun”?  Hard to pull off.  Possible, Henry Jaglom, but rare.

Let’s hear it for Al Adamson and fun.

Compare that to the sinking feeling you probably get today as one lugubrious trailer unspools after another at your multiplex.  Zach Snyder could use a little Al Adamson.  Or maybe more than a little.

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HERB GILLMAN is the alter-ego of Patrick McCray, a comic book author residing in Knoxville, Tenn., where he's been a drama coach and general nuisance since 1997. He has a MFA in Directing and worked at Revolutionary Comics and on the early days of BABYLON 5, and is a frequent contributor to The Collinsport Historical Society. You can find him at The Collins Foundation.

Monster Serial: THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964)

By Patrick McCray

If the last man alive... a man who battles zombie vampires by night and faces the existential dread of staking and burning bodies by day ... can be embodied by that rugged and manly survivalist, Vincent Price, then maybe humanity does have a future.

If the above scenario (sans the elegant raconteur and bon vivant, Mr. Price) sounds familiar, it’s because I just described the premise of Richard Matheson’s groundbreaking novelette, I AM LEGEND.  Robert Neville survived the pandemic that either killed the rest of the population or turned them into vampiric mutants.

By day, he works diligently to secure his home and supplies.  By night, he simply holes up in his fortified, suburban one-level and ignores the attempts of the vampires — led by the Oliver Hardy-like Ben Cortman — to lure him out and join them for dinner, wink-wink.

So, in this film version, why is Neville called “Morgan,” while evil neighbor, Ben Cortman, gets to stay Ben Cortman ... and looks like Tab Hunter?

That was the first question on my mind as a teenager when I watched Vincent Price in and as THE LAST MAN ON EARTH… clearly, a film version of Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND?  Not only a film version, but the most faithful adaptation of the three.  The others are Boris Sagal’s dizzying, comic bookish THE OMEGA MAN with Charlton Heston and the 2007 version with Will Smith, written by the man being held on charges for writing BATMAN AND ROBIN and the 1998 LOST IN SPACE.

My relationship with THE OMEGA MAN — one of my favorite movies — has been the subject of a prior rhapsody.  Rhapsody Part Two involved finding the book.  Even with Louisville’s 1980’s plethora of used book stores, that was a task as impossible as finding the supposedly ubiquitous Marilyn Ross DARK SHADOWS novels.  At the time — around 1984 — my father had a lot of business dealings on the west coast.  I still beam with pride at the in-the-name-of-geekdom abuse of power he exercised when he dispatched various assistants and interns to search around San Diego to dig up a copy of I AM LEGEND.  Believe it or not, it wasn’t easy.

I always take this as a good sign.  It means that people like a book too much to trade it out for fifty cents and shelf space.  In the world of the bibliophile, where shelf space is gold, that’s saying something.  

The book was the tie-in copy for THE OMEGA MAN, and so it had a great painting of Heston at his surliest and most jogging suitiest on the cover.  Must be more of the same, right?  I fondly recalled the depth and nuance that Vonda McIntyre gave to the scientists on Space Station Regula One in her novelization of THE WRATH OF KHAN.  Surely, a master such as Matheson must have done the same, right?  I locked myself away to cherish every word, certain that it would add even more detail to the adventure of alienated, middle-aged squaredom that I loved so dearly.

Um, no.

No.  This has nothing to do with THE OMEGA MAN.

Zip.  Nada.

It was better.

In fact, it might have been the most adult book I had read up to that point.  I don’t mean adult in a stolen-copy-of-Erica-Jong sense.  I mean actually, emotionally mature.  What a spare and sad study in the slow torture of solitude.  A book like that might have really helped the kid in LET THE RIGHT ONE IN.  For an only child in a neighborhood populated only by the elderly, living with a single parent who was rarely home, that story made life seem much, much less lonesome.  It felt that way because Richard Matheson understood.  And because he understood, that meant that someone knew what it was like.  And if someone knew what it was like, then I wasn’t really alone.
That was my logic, anyway.

So, that made me Neville.  Who were the vampires?  I dunno.  I never really thought about it.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I knew that I didn’t have to be alone all the time.  I could be playing sports, going to summer camps, or engaged in similarly homoerotic activities, but these held little interest for me. Maybe there were no vampires, but I sure knew what Robert Neville felt like.  If he’d had a life totally unlike the one in the book.  But it doesn’t matter.  You get the idea.
When I taped THE LAST MAN ON EARTH off of cable, it was both delightful and wildly confusing.  It was very much the book.  Only set in Italy.  With changes.

The film was originally supposed to be a more prestigious production (with Fritz Lang in talks to direct it at one point — the imagination boileth over), but Matheson was so unhappy with the direction that things took that he eventually removed his name from the project.  If he’d known what was coming with THE OMEGA MAN and The Fresh Prince of the Apocalypse, he might have counted his blessings.

For all of the areas of similarity, there are just as many differences.  Wisely, to keep it from having that MARK TWAIN TONIGHT vibe, the film spends a lot of time in flashbacks.  The effect of watching Neville’s daughter and wife waste away from the pandemic in both body and spirit is the most horrifying part of the film.  The vampires don’t really form a society so much as they stratify into “vampires” who are almost  cured and ones who are not.  The Almosts are pissed at Neville — um, I mean “Morgan” (Vincent Price) — for doing his Last Man on Earthly duties of staking them during their sunlight slumbers, but how was he to know?  They seem organized.  Why not just leave him a note?  “Hey, Morgan.  We’re going to put on red pajamas when we sleep.  If you see us in red pajamas, leave us alone.  We are not evil.  Oh, and Tuesday is trivia night if you want to come.  Signed, Epstein’s Mother.”



Something like that.  But if they had, we’d have no movie.  Nor would we have the heavy-handed and honestly chilling post-WW2 Italian Guilt portrayed via the Almost Cured’s black-clad police force chasing Neville — hell, I mean Morgan — into a church (one carefully depicted as having no crucifix). The black suited Almost Cured (or Almost Vampiric, if you’re a pessimist) take exception to Morgan denouncing them as “freaks,” claiming that he’s actually the last (real) man alive.  They spear him in the chest and… scene.

Okay, so it’s an ending that falls apart.  It doesn’t have the Christ analogy of OMEGA MAN, nor does it 100 percent fulfill the irony of the novel, in which Morgan — damn, I mean Neville — finds that he’s their boogeyman.  But this is never going to be a story that ends happily.  The journey is the point, and what matters in a journey like this is its passenger.  Again, Vincent Price defies expectations and presents the most credible “last man” imaginable.  Why?  Because he has no real training for this, but he’s pulling it off anyway.  He can’t make fortresses and elaborate traps.

This essay is one of dozens featured in our new
book, "Taste the Blood of Monster Serial."

Morgan — there, I got it — is just a guy.  His home is just secure enough to allow him to survive.  We completely understand the madness he battles. As I have found again and again, Price excels at defying expectations and delivering emotional truth. Be wary of those too eager to cry “Ham!” at classical actors.  Those are the actors who truly play the middle notes on the emotional keyboard so well.  Why?  Because they understand the power of the extremes, and can justify them rather than simply ape them.

Price had several one-man shows in his time, including DIVERSIONS AND DELIGHTS, a stage play in which he played Oscar Wilde.  What perfect typecasting!  It’s to Price’s tribute that his other, great (almost) one-man-show should be the diametrical opposite in character, language, and tone.  Combined with Matheson’s story and (some of his) language, we have a film that is bleak, but never depressing.

Does it beat the idea of Price in Heston’s OMEGA MAN jumpsuit, machine gunning mutants and macking on Rosalind Cash?  I’ll leave the answer to you. For me, the matter is clear.

PATRICK McCRAY is a comic book author who resides in Knoxville, Tenn., where he's been a drama coach and general nuisance since 1997. He has a MFA in Directing and worked at Revolutionary Comics and on the early days of BABYLON 5, and is a frequent contributor to The Collinsport Historical Society. You can find him at The Collins Foundation.