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Post by pippsheadache on Jun 4, 2024 12:53:22 GMT -5
"The Head That Wouldn't Die"... AKA "The Ted Williams Story" Eesh, I hadn't thought of that. What a sad and grotesque situation. |
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Post by pippsheadache on Jun 4, 2024 13:03:58 GMT -5
Classics! Elsa Lanchester played the Bride! Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi! That movie has an excellent cast. One of my favorite character actors Dwight Frye is also in "Bride of Frankenstein. Valerie Hobson is in also that movie. She was also in another horror movie classic called "The Werewolf of London". Una O'Connor is another one of my favorites, she always gives me a good laugh(s), especially in the movie "The Invisible Man". Dwight Frye also as Renfield in "Dracula", the inspiration for our very own poster. Una O'Connor is one of those easily identifiable character actresses. Like Maria Ouspenskaya, who made her first film when she was 60 years old. No wonder it seemed like she was never young. |
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Post by pippsheadache on Jun 4, 2024 13:15:04 GMT -5
Hey Jeep, how do you rate Michael Landon's breakthrough work "I Was A Teenage Werewolf"?  I like the old Universal horror films of the 30s, especially "Bride Of Frankenstein." So do I. I like the Bride of Frankenstein better than Frankenstein which is another classic. By accident, I recently found a channel on Roku that shows a lot of those movies. I totally agree on "Bride" versus "Frank." I remember in "Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion" he had "Bride" as one his 100 favorite films, so that helped validate it for me as a great movie because I had great respect for his critiques. There was something about those Universal movies -- the prop plane circling the globe established a dark mood right from the start. "Dracula" directed by Tod Browning was another of those. Although I appreciate its mood and setting, I don't like it as much as some of the others. A bit too slow-moving and too many pregnant pauses for my taste. Not for Universal but for MGM Browning directed one of the ultimate unsettling movies "Freaks." Even though the studio cut it ruthlessly, it still seems amazing that a film like that would have been released in 1932. Silent film star Olga Baclanova and Wallace Ford are the only recognizable names to me. One of the truly bizarre endings. Browning did a lot of work in silents with Lon Chaney Sr. (a much better actor than his son IMO) including the disturbing "The Unknown" which starred Chaney and Joan Crawford. In which Lon deliberately has his arms amputated. |
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Post by inger on Jun 4, 2024 13:23:17 GMT -5
"The Head That Wouldn't Die"... AKA "The Ted Williams Story" So mean and disrespectful that I chuckled at it… |
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Post by Renfield on Jun 4, 2024 13:23:49 GMT -5
Love reading this stuff. I love old B sci-fi movies--sometimes the worse they are the better. Just saw The Tingler starring Vincent Price this Saturday. A truly ridiculous movie. Loved it. Then there are the classics, many of which are mentioned above, like Them, The Thing, Forbidden Planet, The Day the Earth Stood Still, etc. One of the fond memories of my early youth was my father letting me stay up late on Friday night to watch the 11:00 creature feature.
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Post by inger on Jun 4, 2024 13:25:21 GMT -5
AKA "The Ted Williams Story" Eesh, I hadn't thought of that. What a sad and grotesque situation. it’s been rumored that his head shows damage from being hit with a baseball bat by a disgruntled employee where it’s stored. Definitely not a Red Sox fan, if true… |
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Post by pippsheadache on Jun 4, 2024 13:32:19 GMT -5
Robert Duvall as Boo Radley in his first appearance in a film. Funny when watching a movie and see actors that I didn't know had a role in such movie. Jack Nicholson in "Little Shop of Horrors". Boris Karloff in the 1932 movie "Scarface".
I mentioned the 1932 movie "Old Dark House", Gloria Stuart is in the movie, she was also in the movie "The Invisible Man". Some might remember her as Rose Dawson Calvert in the 1997 movie "Titanic".
The original "Scarface" is also one of my favorites. Karloff as a rather refined gangster. The sick relationship between Paul Muni as Tony Camonte and his sister played by the elegant Ann Dvorak. Along with "Public Enemy" and "Little Caesar" one of the definitive early gangster films. I met Karen Morley, who played the blonde gun moll Poppy, when she was about 90 years old. I almost wish I hadn't. I was so excited and had a ton of questions I wanted to ask, but she was unfortunately almost non compos mentis by then. Right around that same time I saw there was going to be a book signing with Fay Wray, but I decided after meeting Karen Morley that I would pass so that I could retain my image of a scantily-clad screamer intact. Another odd casting -- albeit in a minor role -- was Alvy Moore, later to play Mr. Kimball on "Green Acres" as a hardnosed biker in "The Wild One" with Marlon Brando. I've also seen Hugh Beaumont, immortalized as Ward Cleaver, playing bad guys in several low-budget crime movies before "Leave It To Beaver" changed his trajectory. |
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Post by pippsheadache on Jun 4, 2024 13:37:15 GMT -5
Love reading this stuff. I love old B sci-fi movies--sometimes the worse they are the better. Just saw The Tingler starring Vincent Price this Saturday. A truly ridiculous movie. Loved it. Then there are the classics, many of which are mentioned above, like Them, The Thing, Forbidden Planet, The Day the Earth Stood Still, etc. One of the fond memories of my early youth was my father letting me stay up late on Friday night to watch the 11:00 creature feature. I love every one of those. James Arness as an overgrown vegetable in "The Thing." The original "The Fly" with Vincent Price too. "Help meeee." Ann Francis walking around half-naked in "Forbidden Planet." Ants in the LA sewers for "Them." Also "Tarantula" with John Agar and Leo G. Carroll (Mr. Waverly and Cosmo Topper.) Usually anything that involves distortion through radiation will get my attention. |
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Post by pippsheadache on Jun 4, 2024 13:47:47 GMT -5
I would be very remiss if I did not mention 1958's "The Blob," which was the first starring role for Steve McQueen, with Aneta Coursault, later to be Helen Crump on "The Andy Griffith Show" as his girlfriend. I always found her strangely alluring.
It was filmed in my neck of the woods, using a movie theater in Phoenixville PA and a diner in Downingtown PA, both of which are still around. The theater, called The Colonial, has an annual re-enactment of the scene from the movie where everybody runs out of it. I haven't participated because you have to sign up early if you want to pretend to be in a panic with hundreds of others running from an alien life form.
That theme "Beware Of The Blob" was written by Burt Bacharach and Mack David, brother of Burt's long-time collaborator Hal. Perhaps fortunately for Bacharach's future career he was uncredited in the film, although he later owned up to it.
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Post by inger on Jun 4, 2024 14:36:00 GMT -5
I’ve enjoyed the turn this thread has taken to these older shows and movies. Nostalgia running through me…
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Post by inger on Jun 4, 2024 14:45:33 GMT -5
There was something magical about those often campy horror shoes and movies in black and white. They showed just enough that they made your imagination run wild and made your mind complete the story. Then came the 70’s and 80’s when color was fully established and “special effects” meant bare breasts and who could make the best spurting arteries, and sort of ruined the entire genre…
Sometimes in horror, it was what you couldn’t see that made it special…the blood and gore was never as good as the original product…
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Post by azbob643 on Jun 4, 2024 14:50:36 GMT -5
I’ve enjoyed the turn this thread has taken to these older shows and movies. Nostalgia running through me… That's a straight line you'd jump all over... |
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Post by azbob643 on Jun 4, 2024 14:52:07 GMT -5
There was something magical about those often campy horror shoes and movies in black and white. They showed just enough that they made your imagination run wild and made your mind complete the story. Then came the 70’s and 80’s when color was fully established and “special effects” meant bare breasts and who could make the best spurting arteries, and sort of ruined the entire genre… Sometimes in horror, it was what you couldn’t see that made it special…the blood and gore was never as good as the original product… The first somewhat gory movie I can recall was the original "Night Of The Living Dead"... |
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Post by bigjeep on Jun 4, 2024 15:59:56 GMT -5
I’ve enjoyed the turn this thread has taken to these older shows and movies. Nostalgia running through me… No one can top "Plan 9 From Outerspace"  Also the movie "Ed Wood", a movie about the making of Plan 9! "Ed Wood is a 1994 American biographical comedy-drama film directed and produced by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as Ed Wood, the eponymous cult filmmaker. The film concerns the period in Wood's life when he made his best-known films as well as his relationship with actor Bela Lugosi, played by Martin Landau. Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones, Lisa Marie, and Bill Murray are among the supporting cast." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Wood_(film)#:~:text=Ed%20Wood%20is%20a%201994,Lugosi%2C%20played%20by%20Martin%20Landau. |
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Post by bigjeep on Jun 4, 2024 16:06:03 GMT -5
I would be very remiss if I did not mention 1958's "The Blob," which was the first starring role for Steve McQueen, with Aneta Coursault, later to be Helen Crump on "The Andy Griffith Show" as his girlfriend. I always found her strangely alluring. It was filmed in my neck of the woods, using a movie theater in Phoenixville PA and a diner in Downingtown PA, both of which are still around. The theater, called The Colonial, has an annual re-enactment of the scene from the movie where everybody runs out of it. I haven't participated because you have to sign up early if you want to pretend to be in a panic with hundreds of others running from an alien life form. That theme "Beware Of The Blob" was written by Burt Bacharach and Mack David, brother of Burt's long-time collaborator Hal. Perhaps fortunately for Bacharach's future career he was uncredited in the film, although he later owned up to it. My "Kids" live there! Yes, the Diner and Theater survive! But it is literally such a dark movie, finding anything watching the movie is tough! |
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Also the movie "Ed Wood", a movie about the making of Plan 9!