Picking Poe's Bones

Films: The Pit and the Pendulum (1991)
Format: Streaming video on Tubi TV on the new internet machine.

If you’re going to make a horror movie, you could do a lot worse than going with a story or two from Edgar Allen Poe. Many of Poe’s stories are incredibly short, which allows them to be easily expanded or combined into narratives that cover a lot more ground then the original stories. Roger Corman figured this out, often adapting multiple stories in the same film. In the case of The Pit and the Pendulum from 1991, frequent Stuart Gordon collaborator Dennis Paoli went with this model. He built up an entire world around the base story and added in an aside that clearly riffs on The Cask of Amontillado for good measure.

We’re going to be right in the middle of the Spanish Inquisition for this story, which is accurate to the original story. Not a lot else will be accurate here, but that’s no matter as long as we get both a pit and a pendulum. Our film opens with one of the truly great gonzo horror movie openings, approaching (but never reaching) the staggering opening of Black Sunday. In this case, Grand Inquisitor Torquemada (Lance Henriksen!) has a body exhumed from a crypt and put on trial. Torquemada accuses the skeleton of heresy, strips the family of all lands and titles, and has his torturer Mendoza (Mark Margolis) whip the skeleton. Naturally, the skeleton falls to pieces. The bones are picked up, ground into powder, and poured into a hourglass. Honestly, it’s one of the greatest openings I’ve seen in a long time.

Fish Heads, Fish Heads

Film: Dagon
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on the new internet machine.

For anyone who has read any H.P. Lovecraft, there’s an intense desire to see his work appear on the big screen. Part of this is because of Lovecraft’s weird descriptions of things never really fully describes things. He used words like “non-Euclidian” without really providing a solid idea of what that should mean to the reader. Lovecraft also loved indescribable horrors from beyond space and time. These days, it’s easy to take these stories at a kind of face value rather than attributing his rampant, severe racism to why there were indescribably horrific alien “things” in the world and instead deal with the critters and monsters and lost drowned gods he actually created. Lovecraft’s work should be easy and welcome fodder for horror filmmakers, and yet films like Dagon seem to come mainly from Stuart Gordon.

Dagon is clearly adapted from the canon of Lovecraft if you know even a little bit about the man’s oeuvre. Specifically, this is an adaptation of the stories “Dagon” and “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” with the biggest change being that it takes place on the coast of Spain rather than the east coast of the United States. It’s also potentially the wettest film I have ever seen, and that includes movies that take place underwater.

Wednesday Horror: From Beyond

Film: From Beyond
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

Some actors have a particular milieu in which he or she is either particularly known or particularly effective. For Jeffrey Combs, that appears to be movies based on H.P. Lovecraft stories. I should be fair here, because that also seems to be the case for Barbara Crampton, who is in at least three Lovecraft-inspired films with Combs. From Beyond is yet another of these, directed by Stuart Gordon and produced by Brian Yuzna. It’s like old home week for the Elder Gods.

From Beyond is based loosely on the Lovecraft story of the same name. The movie alters the story in significant ways, particularly with the addition of a new villainous character to allow Combs to play something like the hero. Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel) is the classic mad scientist. He has created a new, massive device that is designed to stimulate the pineal gland of anyone who stands in its field of influence. His assistant, Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs), turns on the machine one night and discovers that it works, at least in one sense. While the machine is active, spectral beings appear and attack him. Crawford turns off the machine and talks to his boss/mentor.

Wednesday Horror: Castle Freak

Film: Castle Freak
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

You’re not going to get a great deal of subtlety from a direct-to-video movie directed by Stuart Gordon. What you are going to get in this case, though, is plenty of Jeffrey Combs, and that’s never a bad thing. When the movie is named Castle Freak, you should have a pretty good idea of what is on offer. There’s going to be a castle, and there’s going to be a freak inside the castle. Honestly, I had a hard time not having “Super Freak” running through my head for most of the film’s running time.

Enter the Reilly family, John (Jeffrey Combs), Susan (Barbara Crampton), and daughter Rebecca (Jessica Dollarhide). John Reilly has inherited a castle in Italy. We learn soon enough that the Reilly family has suffered some significant tragedies at the hands of John. One night, while driving drunk, he got into an accident that killed his young son J.J. and blinded daughter Rebecca. Things are naturally tense in the family, with Susan blaming all of the problems, evidently quite deservedly, on John.

Wednesday Horror: Dolls

Films: Dolls
Format: Internet video on laptop.

There have been a number of movies that feature creepy dolls. Old movies like The Devil-Doll from the ‘30s, another of the same name (minus the hyphen) from the ‘60s, the ventriloquist segment from Dead of Night, the ventriloquism-based movie Magic, the clown from Poltergeist, and of course the Zuni doll from Trilogy of Terror are all pretty memorable. These days, Chucky and Annabelle are probably the ones that jump to mind, although there’s certainly no shortage of such films. Is it the idea of the corruption of something that should be innocent? Whatever the reason, the modern turn of toy-based horror seems to have gotten its start from Dolls.

The truth is that I went into this prepared for it to be derivative in many ways of Child’s Play or even Puppet Master or Demonic Toys. The opposite is actually true, since Dolls was released before all of these. It’s tamer in a lot of respects. There’s a much bigger dose of fantasy in this film, and while there is a body count, it doesn’t really amp up the gore that much. This came with an R rating when it was released, and it might just struggle down to a PG-13 released today.

Off Script: Re-Animator

Film: Re-Animator
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’m trying to remember the first time I saw Re-Animator. I’m sure I was too young to watch it, and I’m almost positive that I watched it with my brother Tom. I’m pretty sure that Tom rented this from the old video store strictly based on the box art, which featured one of the greatest taglines in B-movie history: “Herbert West has a good head on his shoulders…and another one on his desk!” Needless to say, both of us loved it. We loved the campy fun of it, the gore, the great one-liners, and everything else. Of course, this was in the pre-internet days, and neither of us knew that we were diving head-first into what has become one of the great cult horror films of the 1980s. I recently re-watched The Breakfast Club, which I consider one of my favorite and one of the best films from 1985. I’d be lying if I said something different about Re-Animator.

The story is based roughly on a short story by the great H.P. Lovecraft. It’s one of his stories that doesn’t deal with the Great Elder Gods and C’Thulhu and all the rest. No, in this case it’s bringing back dead people, re-animated corpses, and life after death. Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is a medical student investigating the line between life and death. He arrives at Miskatonic University, where he soon makes a name for himself. First, he shows open contempt to Professor Carl Hill (David Gale) and his beliefs on brain stem death. Second, West moves in with star pupil Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), who is currently dating Megan Halsey (B-movie queen Barbara Crampton), daughter of Dean Halsey (Robert Sampson).