Ten Days of Terror!: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

Film: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
Format: Internet video on Fire!

There are a lot of holes in my viewing history, something that is certainly true of just about everyone. For the sort of bog-standard “everyone’s seen them” films, my biggest gaps are probably Home Alone and The Goonies. For horror movies, the original 1923 Lon Chaney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame was probably my biggest miss until now. I’ve seen other versions, notably the 1939 version with Charles Laughton, but this one is, in the slang of a few decades ago, the O.G.

There’s a lot to unpack right at the start with something like The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It’s one of those rare stories that everyone seems to know even if they haven’t seen it or read it. It’s kind of like Robin Hood in that respect—there’s a sort of cultural knowledge of the story that we learn by osmosis. Of course, some of that is going to come from the title. We know going in that this is going to take place in Paris and that there’s going to be a hunchback who is our main character. Of course today, people are going to associate this story with the Disney version, including plenty of songs and animated gargoyle sidekicks.

Ten Days of Terror!: Murders in the Rue Morgue

Film: Murders in the Rue Morgue
Format: Internet video on Fire!

When a novel is turned into a movie, most of the time, large parts of the story are removed. We lose subplots and detail simply because of time. Even larger projects do this—watch (for instance) any adaptation of Dune and we lose tons of nuance, even in the miniseries version. The reverse is true when it comes to short stories. With something like he 1932 adaptation of Murders in the Rue Morgue, a bunch gets added to the basic story. This is true even in the case where the movie just barely creeps over the hour mark.

I’m going to spoil the original story here, and I’m going to do this unapologetically—it was written more than 180 years ago. The original Edgar Allen Poe story essentially invents the modern detective tale. We’re introduced to a detective who solves a bizarre crime of terrible murders where witnesses identify the language being spoken by the perpetrator as a variety of other languages—one person thinks the killer is German, another says Italian, etc. In truth, the murders are being carried out by an orangutan.

Ten Days of Terror!: Daybreakers

Film: Daybreakers
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

It’s not easy to do something really new and interesting with vampires. Make them romantic, and you’re tapping into much of the original Dracula story and also invite immediate comparisons to Twilight. Make them feral, and you’re going to court a different crowd, and you will bring up thoughts of 30 Days of Night, Blade II, and maybe Stake Land. So what kind of story is really different? Daybreakers looks to explore that concept by looking at vampirism taking over the world and dealing with what happens when the human population—and the blood—runs out.

The film takes place 10 years into the future of when it was made, back in the halcyon pre-pandemic days of 2019. At this point in the film’s story, vampirism has essentially taken hold of the world. The vast majority of people have been turned and the economy more or less carries on as it always has, albeit one formed around blood. With so many vampires, though, the human population has dwindled. Some of this is simply the rise in the vampire population, since it appears that anyone surviving a bite is quickly turned. Much of it, though, comes from the hunting of humans. The vampire population survives, barely, on animal blood mixed with lesser and lesser percentages of human blood.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Return of the Vampire

Film: The Return of the Vampire
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

With the popularity of horror movies in the early days of talkies, it didn’t take long for things to take a turn for the goofy. Since these movies were also considered kids’ stuff, they weren’t taken very seriously, given much of a budget, or given much of a running time. That’s certainly the case with The Return of the Vampire, a film that desperately wants to capitalize not only on the Dracula story, but on the fact that they managed to get a fading Bela Lugosi (albeit a few years before his full descent) to play the titular creature.

We start in World War I with a vampire named Armand Tesla (Lugosi) stalking the streets of London. His latest victim is admitted to a clinic run by Lady Jane Ainsley (Frieda Inescourt) and Doctor Walter Saunders (Gilbert Emery). They are nonplussed when their patient dies of evident anemia. Shortly after, the doctor’s young niece Nicki (Sharliee Collier as a child, and then Nina Foch as an adult) is attacked. Lady Jane and Dr. Saunders track the vampire down and kill him, fighting off his werewolf assistant (Matt Willis). With the vampire dead, staked through the heart, the werewolf changes back into a human, restored to his humanity.

Ten Days of Terror!: Lust for a Vampire

Film: Lust for a Vampire
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

The early 1970s were a weird time for Hammer horror movies. On the one hand, they were still very much enmeshed in that world of Gothic horror. Films took place in the 17th-19th Century, dealt in some respect with the aristocracy, and often tended to take place all or in part in castles. However, the horror world was changing and becoming harder and harsher. While Hammer couldn’t get away from the Gothic ideas, they could try to incorporate more sex and nudity. The Vampire Lovers was a slight indication of this, as was its sequel, Lust for a Vampire. As with the first film, this sequel has a much more titillating title than it does content. If you’re expecting a lesbian vampire orgy, you’ve come to the right movie title, but the wrong actual film.

In truth Lust for a Vampire is the middle film in Hammer’s Karnstein Trilogy, and was followed the next year by Twins of Evil. In this case, it seems that this is the serious low point: both the first and third film are much more favorably reviewed. I have to think that a part of that is going to be the disconnect from the title to the content. It would be hard not to be disappointed going into a film with this name to come out the other side with a few hints of lesbianism and a couple of bared chests to show for it.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Addiction

Film: The Addiction
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

The Addiction is a film that I had heard of and been interested in for a number of reasons. Abel Ferrara is an interesting director, for starters, and when he delves into horror, the results are worth watching. I also like it when there is a very different take on a classic monster or myth. The Addiction is a vampire story, and interesting not because of that, but because it addresses the idea of vampirism as one of a sort of drug addiction.

Admittedly, that’s a natural place to go, and that in and of itself isn’t entirely unique. The idea that vampires are addicted to blood is, after all, a very obvious place to take the vampire story. The difference here is that our main character, Kathleen Conklin (Lili Taylor), is a doctoral candidate in philosophy. So, while we’ve seen vampires dealing with concepts of their lives being controlled in some way by addiction, but we have rarely had a protagonist who has the philosophical chops to really address the idea in anything more than a visceral and basic way.

Ten Days of Terror! Here We Go!

It’s that time of year again, and while I don’t post as much as I used to, I’m starting to post at least a little more regularly. Nothing, though, will stop me from posting a ton around Halloween, the true greatest holiday of the year, at least for some personal reasons. And so, once again, 40 posts in the next ten days, four posts per day.

Like the last couple of years, I’ve themed the days (at least I’ve themed nine of the ten. I don’t actually plan any of this out—it just works that I got nine groups of four, with a catch-all category at the end. Here’s what’s coming in the next 10 days: