Die, Monster, Die! (1965)

by Kimberly Lindbergs | November 22, 2009

Categories | Movie Reviews, Horror, American Cinema, Blogathons, Roger Corman

Frankenstenia is celebrating the life and career of one of my favorite actors with The Boris Karloff Blogathon taking place Nov. 23-29th. I didn’t sign-up to participate because I couldn’t commit to anything. My current blogging schedule is sporadic and a bit crazy because at the moment most of my attention is focused on trying to buy my first home. But I did mange to find some time to write a little something about one of my favorite ’60s era Karloff films, Die, Monster, Die!

Die, Monster, Die! was produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff for AIP (American International Picture) and directed by horror film veteran Daniel Haller. Haller started his career as an art director and production designer and he worked with AIP for many years before he began directing films for the company. Haller’s early work with Roger Corman is especially noteworthy since he helped give Corman’s Edgar Allen Poe adaptations a distinct look and feel. During the ’60s Daniel Haller collaborated with Roger Corman on some of his best films including Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Premature Burial (1962), The Raven (1963), The Haunted Palace (1963) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964) before directing his first film; the Karloff feature Die, Monster, Die! in 1965.

In the film Boris Karloff plays a crazy old curmudgeon named Nahum Witley who is keeping a dark secret from his family in an attempt to better their fortune and bring honor to the family name. The plot of Die, Monster, Die! is based on H.P. Lovecraft’s short story The Colour Out of Space which was originally published in 1927. Haller’s film plays fast and loose with Lovecraft’s original tale but it’s an entertaining mess of a movie that benefit’s greatly from Karloff’s presence. Die, Monster, Die! is notable because it gave the 78 year-old Karloff one of his last opportunities to play a monster in a horror film. Although Karloff’s transformation from stately Nahum Witley to radioactive zombie in Die, Monster, Die! is all too brief and a far, far cry from his amazing and better known performance as Frankenstein’s monster in the classic Universal horror films, Karloff did seem to have some fun with his role. Die, Monster, Die! isn’t one of Karloff’s best movies but it does hold some appeal if you happen to to be a Karloff fan and appreciate gothic horror films as well as creative adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories as much as I do.

I happen to own the 1966 Dell comic book adaptation of Die, Monster, Die! and I thought it would be fun to share some pages of it with my readers as well as other comic book fans. I’m afraid that I don’t know who the original artist is and an extensive online search didn’t provide me with any clues* but I like the artwork and figured other Karloff fans might appreciate it too. I’ve posted a small sample of the comic book below but if you want to see more (and larger) pages from the Die, Monster, Die! comic book you’re going to have to visit Curt Purcell’s always fabulous Groovy Age of Horror blog.

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Modern Mondays: Gus Van Sant’s “Death Trilogy” 2002-2005

by Kimberly Lindbergs | November 16, 2009

Categories | Movie Reviews, American Cinema, Modern Mondays, Gay Interest

“Ours is a culture notoriously uncomfortable with death. We’ve minimized and sterilized our rituals for processing it; we pack it away in Styrofoam and plastic wrap at the grocery store; we worship our children and pour our resources into the fantasy of postponing old age. Yet it courses into our collective consciousness with renewed insistence every day. Death in Iraq, death in New Orleans, death in Sudan, Afghanistan, Israel, Indonesia. Death on local streetcorners and in apartment buildings down the block. More death than it seems possible to comprehend.”
- Holly Myers

I’ve admired Gus Van Sant’s films since first seeing Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991) in the early ’90s but my relationship with the director’s work has occasionally been strained. I still don’t understand why Gus Van Sant thought remaking Hitchcock’s Psycho (1998) was a good idea and I’ve found some of his films such as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993) unwatchable but I keep coming back to his work. Van Sant has been very active in the last 10 years and his films have received a lot of critical attention but I think his “Death Trilogy” which included the movies Gerry (2002), Elephant (2003) and Last Days (2005) are the director’s most interesting recent films. They’re good movies on their own but together they make up one of the most compelling cinematic experiences I’ve had in the last 10 years.

The three movies that form Van Sant’s “Death Trilogy” are not easy viewing and demand a lot from their audience. They also deserve more attention than I can give them at the moment so I thought I’d share some excerpts from one of my favorite pieces written about the films by the Los Angeles based critic Holly Myers for n+1. In Myers’ lengthy piece called Nothing Happens to No One: The Death Trilogy of Gus Van Sant she brilliantly explains exactly why I find the director’s “Death Trilogy” so intriguing. She also does a terrific job of pointing out the importance of these American films and why they’ve made such a lasting impression on me.

“Like the two subsequent films—Elephant (2003), based on the 1999 Columbine High School shootings, and Last Days (2005), a fictionalized account of the death of Kurt Cobain—Gerry cuts through the shock, the bafflement, the extravagant displays of empathy and moralistic hand-wringing that invariably characterizes Hollywood and the media’s treatment of death-stories by dispensing with the basic conventions of narrative and character. Van Sant does not sensationalize. Instead, in each film we see plot distilled to a single, profound arc: the slow, strange transition of a body from being alive to not being alive. Taking the silence, the mystery, the essential unknowability of death as a given, Van Sant makes no attempt to interrogate or explain. He simply enacts this transition and encourages his viewers to watch.

The result is closer to meditation than to storytelling, and the films are difficult in the way that meditation is difficult, which has made them—Gerry in particular—a hard sell.”

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Modern Mondays: Cloverfield (2008)

by Kimberly Lindbergs | September 14, 2009

Categories | Horror, American Cinema, Modern Mondays

During the recent media barrage following the annual 9/11 anniversary, I was reminded of the Matt Reeves and J.J. Abrams’ giant monster movie Cloverfield (2008). I’ve seen Cloverfield twice since my first viewing and it remains one of my favorite horror films of the last decade.

When the movie was originally released it created a mild media controversy after many critics berated the film for being insensitive to 9/11 victims and the events that scarred a nation. People also seemed to enjoy spending a ridiculous amount of time pointing out the improbabilities of this giant monster movie as if they were critiquing a documentary. I think those kinds of criticisms of a fantasy thriller are fascinating and pointless, but they’re also a credit to the director who managed to give the film an incredibly authentic look and feel.

At the time I was bothered by a lot of the negative criticism the film was receiving and I wrote a lengthy defensive of it that you can still read here. Since the film’s initial release it has gotten more critical respect and I suspect that will only continue over time.

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Congratulations Mr. Corman!

by Kimberly Lindbergs | September 11, 2009

Categories | News, Directors, American Cinema, Oscars, Roger Corman

One of my favorite filmmakers will be getting an Honorary Oscar this year! Surprising news came out of Hollywood this morning when the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that Roger Corman, along with actress Lauren Bacall and cinematographer Gordon Willis will all be recipients of a much deserved Lifetime Achievement Award.

Disappointingly, the Academy has decided not to televise the event and viewers will no longer be able to see these people receive their Lifetime Achievement Awards. Since my main motivation to watch the Oscars every year is to see the Lifetime Achievement Awards handed out to previously neglected artists I find this turn of events extremely disappointing. I guess the Academy plans to fill airtime with more terrible musical numbers? Who knows. But I suspect that they’ll be loosing lots of viewers like myself who get the most enjoyment from the montage sequences and hope for an opportunity to see old Hollywood mix with new Hollywood. Sadly it seems that old Hollywood isn’t worthy of television time anymore.

Corman is no stranger to getting Awards. He has his own star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame and in 1996 he was honored by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association with a Career Achievement Award just to name a few of his career accomplishments, but this will be Roger Corman’s first Oscar.

Congratulations Mr. Corman!

News Links:
- Offical Press Release from the Academy
- The Los Angeles Times Story
- The New York Times Story

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The Fool Killer (1965)

by Kimberly Lindbergs | September 2, 2009

Categories | Movie Reviews, Horror, American Cinema, Anthony Perkins, Lee Marvin, Drama, Mexican Cinema

I first saw Servando González’s 1965 film The Fool Killer (aka El asesino de tontos) almost twenty years ago and it’s haunted me ever since. The film features Anthony Perkins in one of his best roles and I got the urge to watch it again last year while I was obsessing over Perkins’ music career. For some unknown reason The Fool Killer isn’t available on DVD yet so I had to purchase a used VHS copy of the film to see it.

I shouldn’t have been too surprised that The Fool Killer was unavailable on DVD because Mexican director Servando González is almost unheard of in the United States. I haven’t had the opportunity to see any of the director’s other films myself so my own appreciation of his work revolves around my deep affection for The Fool Killer, but I was disappointed to learn that the director had passed away in October of last year. Servando González’s death appears to have gone almost completely unnoticed by the film community except in Latin America. This is really unfortunate because The Fool Killer clearly shows that González was a talented filmmaker with the ability to create wonderfully atmospheric films that could remain with viewers long after they had ended. Trying to find any noteworthy information about The Fool Killer is nearly impossible, but I thought I’d share some of my own thoughts about Servando González’s exceptional film in an effort to broaden appreciation of his work.

The Fool Killer is an extremely dark and ominous film starring thirteen year-old actor Edward Albert as a deeply troubled young orphan named George. After a brief opening montage filled with idyllic images of the American countryside, the film begins with George receiving a nasty beating from his foster parents while they recite Bible verses in an effort to soften the blows. Poor George blames himself for the beatings he receives because he thinks that the “foolish things” he’s done shouldn’t go unpunished. But dropping a butter churn and playing with dandelions are clearly not acts worthy of the beatings he gets. After the physical pain wears off, the emotional scars become evident when young George decides that he’s had enough abuse and heads out into the world on his own. His odyssey will take him through the dusty back roads of rural Tennessee where he’ll encounter an unusual cast of characters who consciously and unconsciously guide him on his journey.

The film is based on a novel of the same name written by Helen Eustis, but the legend of the Fool Killer was first written down by author O. Henry (aka William Sydney Porter). I’m not sure how much of the legend is based on fact or if the whole concept is a work of fiction conjured up by the author’s absinthe fueled imagination, but according to O. Henry his tale of the Fool Killer was based on an old southern myth, “like Santa Claus and Jack Frost and General Prosperity and all those concrete conceptions that are supposed to represent an idea that Nature has failed to embody.”

In his short tale O. Henry’s also tells us that the Fool Killer was a “terrible old man, in gray clothes, with a long, ragged, gray beard, and reddish, fierce eyes” who “come stumping up the road in a cloud of dust, with a white oak staff in his hand” and would “kill anyone who perpetrates some particularly monumental piece of foolishness.”

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Modern Mondays: Mulholland Dr. (2001)

by Kimberly Lindbergs | August 31, 2009

Categories | American Cinema, Modern Mondays

David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. has been over analyzed and written about ad nauseam since it’s 2001 debut that I’m hesitant to add to the cacophony of noise surrounding the film. But I will mention that it is one of my favorite films of the last 10 years and it’s also the movie that brought me back to Lynch since I had lost interest in his work after Wild at Heart (1990) and Twin Peaks (1990-91). For one reason or another I didn’t get around to seeing The Straight Story (1999) and Lost Highway (1997) until long after their release, but Mulholland Dr. remains one of my favorite David Lynch films along with The Elephant Man (1980) and Blue Velvet (1986).

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Being Hal Ashby

by Kimberly Lindbergs | July 31, 2009

Categories | Books, Directors, American Cinema

Hal Ashby on the set of Harold and Maude (1971)

With the exception of Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman and John Cassavetes, I can’t think of many other directors who have had more influence on modern American cinema in recent years than Hal Ashby. And yet, Ashby’s name still remains relatively unknown among the general film-going public. This seems partially due to the fact that all of the other directors I mentioned have been the subject of many books and formal studies. But since his early death in 1988 at age 59, Ashby’s troubled life has remained the stuff of Hollywood legend.

Thankfully that’s all changed with the release of Nick Dawson’s new book Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel recently published by the University of Kentucky Press. This fascinating account of the life and death of Hal Ashby is the first biography written about the director and it’s an important as well as informative read.

Hal Ashby is often remembered for his rebellious spirit, drug addiction and outsider status in Hollywood during the ‘70s. But Being Hal Ashby debunks a lot of the myths that have surrounded the director for years. It also sheds light on the creative choices Ashby made throughout his career without sensationalizing the darker aspects of his life. I really appreciated the tone of Nick Dawson’s book since it shied away from the tabloid style of so many other current biographies. The writer’s self-assured and thoughtful approach to his subject is really refreshing.

The ’70s proved to be an extremely productive decade for many Hollywood filmmakers, but few directors had such an incredible run of first-rate movies throughout the ’70s as Hal Ashby. In contrast to some of his more somber contemporaries, Ashby’s films managed to reflect the underlying anxiety felt in post-’60s America while still celebrating the country’s boundless optimism. Between 1970 and 1971 Hal Ashby directed The Landlord (1971), Harold and Maude (1971), The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), Coming Home (1978) and Being There (1979). But before becoming one of the decade’s greatest filmmakers, Ashby was an Oscar winning editor who worked on some of the best films of the ‘60s including The Children’s Hour (1961), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), The Loved One (1965), The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966), In the Heat of the Night (1967) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).

Being Hal Ashby provides readers with a well-rounded examination of Ashby’s career and doesn’t bypass the films he continued to make into the ‘80s before succumbing to the cancer that finally killed him. It’s obvious that Nick Dawson has a deep appreciation of the director’s work and his enthusiasm is contagious. After finishing Being Hal Ashby I was inspired to seek out some of the director’s later films such as Lookin’ to Get Out (1982) and 8 Million Ways to Die (1986) that I may have dismissed in the past. I suspect that I’ll now view them with new appreciation and respect. When a book inspires me to reevaluate my own opinions about a filmmaker’s career, it’s well worth recommending.

Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel retails for $37.50, but you can currently purchase copies of the book at Amazon for just $30. Whether you’re a fan of Hal Ashby and his films or just interested in what Hollywood was like in the ‘70s; Being Hal Ashby makes for some great summer reading.

Recommended Links:
- You can read an excerpt from Being Hal Ashby at the Film In Focus Website
- Being Hal Ashby @ Twitter offers news & updates about the book

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