Recent Viewings, Part 2

[M.10rda]

THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963):
Well, at least the palace is really haunted in this one. I never really get on with the Corman/Poe/Price canon - they tend to be slow and by the numbers. Corman put his money in Price and whatever was left he invested in art direction and lighting; he just wasn't too concerned about the material. THE HAUNTED PALACE borrows its title from a short Poe-m  but borrows some of its plot from Lovecraft's "Case of Charles Dexter Ward", so in that respect it's a bit less predictable than Corman's USHER or PENDULUM. It also has a screenplay co-written by Francis Ford Coppola (?!) and a few good lines for Price therein. But even so, it's a leisurely stroll.......

Price and his wife Debra Paget move into his spooky ancestral mansion. There's a painting on the wall of his great-grandfather, a lynched warlock who's eager to take over Price's body and get to the bloody work of vengeance. Lon Chaney Jr. is the estate's manservant and it's diverting to watch him and Price play opposite each other. Elisha Cook Jr. and Leo Gordon are the descendants upon which Granddaddy Price wants revenge; AIP fixture Bruno VeSota also pops up. Paget doesn't work too hard, and Price mostly looks confused or intense. He does have a really nice acting moment at the end, as Bad Price, where even Bad Price admits he is a pawn of cosmic forces beyond his ken. (Hey, weak plotting can be scarier than an Elder God!)

Some sort of physical manifestation of evil does appear, briefly and in blurry focus, in a magical portal. Then during a climactic inferno it disappears (off-camera), along w/ Chaney and some other evil henchmen. I wish Francis and Charles Beaumont had explained more what happened at the end, or maybe they did and Roger ran out of money to shoot that part. 

I almost put this in "Bad Movies". It's mostly competent and sometimes enjoyable. For a while I was thinking that the print was discolored because Bad Price and Chaney and company looked so pale and yellow in close-ups. Then floral-pink Paget and another innocent character appears with them and I realized the bad guys were all wearing Evil Undead Makeup and it pleased me somehow.    3/5

[Rev. Powell]

VAMPIRES OF NEW ORLEANS (2026): A woman discovers a trio of New Orleans vampires are behind her sisters' disappearance; this story alternates with a documentary about New Orleans horror folklore. An ambitious low-budget horror film, the vampire story is by-the-numbers, but the way it alternates with the documentary works surprisingly well---the almost 3-hour length is the main obstacle. I watched it in 2 parts on consecutive nights, which I'd recommend. Available for VOD rental now but it will show up free on YouTube on Halloween. 2.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Nightmare City" (aka "City of The Walking Dead," 1980)

A radioactive spill turns city dwellers into burn-scarred, blood-drinking homicidal mutants. A TV news reporter (Hugo Stuglitz) and his wife struggle to find safety before the city is completely overrun by the creatures.
Umberto Lenzi's cheap-crap Spanish/Italian "Dawn of the Dead" wanna-be has become one of my favorite so-bad-it's-good movies. The plot makes no sense, the English dubbing is awkward and stilted, the makeup/gore effects leave much to be desired, and the ending is a total cop-out... but that's all part of its wacky charm. "Nightmare City" is so action packed and silly that it's become a Halloween season perennial for me. Essential Euro-trash!

[M.10rda]

HAXAN (1922):
"...Here, young maiden, take a portion of cat feces and dove hearts, boiled in the moonlight. A drop of this in a man's drink will soften his heart at once." And it does!

I've been revisiting a lot of old silent films recently and most of them haven't held up to increased scrutiny. HAXAN does. I think when I first watched it (likely during inebriation) I was expecting what is advertised "on the tin", as they say: a wild, florid joyride through demonic imagery and bad behavior. HAXAN is actually a lot more subtle than that... and legitimately intellectual/serious in its design. The devil looks cool and scary when he appears, but he doesn't appear often. Most of the film is either documentary-style discussion of archival materials related to spirituality and the occult, or it's dramatizations of human interactions which motivate arcane behavior or reflect the response to that behavior (generally an overreaction).

Therefore HAXAN requires some patience and some - well, sobriety.    It ain't a party movie. It occurs to me on this watch that the devil likely appears so infrequently (and does little besides laughing/gesticulating in encouragement or celebration) because in the moral universe of the film, the devil isn't actually very important and maybe doesn't even really exist. Human beings will carry the majority of the workload for him. Of course this is a belief that I happen to subscribe to personally, so maybe I'm projecting a bit on the film... but the stirring last ten minutes which shift from journalism/docudrama to "message movie" would seem to support my interpretation.

The director (who also plays the devil!) made an earlier silent melodrama that I thought was crap, and then made two thrillers at the end of the decade that I thought were quite good. HAXAN really moves my critical needle in his favor. He was a thoughtful guy and here he made a thoughtful movie in the guise of exploitation.    4/5

Oh yeah - the film's abrupt final intertitle also made me laugh as loud as I've laughed in a good long time. It just means "The End" in Swedish, however in the context of what's preceded it... funny stuff.

[Rev. Powell]

HAXAN is one of my all-time favorites. Potential top 10 movie for me.