Unwelcome Caller

Though not one of Buster Keaton’s most iconic shorts, 1921's The Haunted House is, at its best, like one of those uber-fun Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? chase scenes – ghosts, skeletons, demons and other unexpected spooks flitting in and out of rooms and doorways, dodging, ducking, dipping, chasing, and ultimately, scaring our jarred, though still somehow stone-faced, hero. Where it struggles slightly is its setup. Keaton is a clerk, a hard working employee at a small time bank. The larger than life money manager (behemoth Joe Roberts) has hatched a plan to rob said bank, his team of thieves looking to a crumbling old home, long rumoured to be haunted, as their hidy-hole – preparing for the cops or any other unlucky trespasser, they have booby-trapped the long since abandoned abode while also gathering white sheets to act as ghosts, building on its infamous reputation. After a glue gag that kind of falls flat, Keaton is spotted by the owner with guns in hand (after having chased off the robbers) – it looking like he is the criminal mastermind. . . fleeing, he hopes to find respite in the haunted house.

A Psycho inspired Hammer Horror motion picture (a British film production company based in London, founded in 1934) set in the rural British countryside, 1963's Paranoiac finds a wealthy family in crisis, struck by a long streak of bad luck – parents dying in a plane crash (eleven years ago), eldest brother committing suicide at the age of fifteen (eight years ago), the rest of them struggling to pick up the pieces after these multiple heartbreaking hits. Written by Jimmy Sangster (loosely based upon the 1949 crime novel Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey) and directed by Freddie Francis (two time Oscar winner for Best Cinematography – Sons and Lovers and Glory), the pair builds mystery upon mystery. With Tony Ashby having committed suicide, Simon Ashby (Oliver Reed) is next in line for the fortune. . . an alcoholic – angry, confused, irrational and frustrated, he constantly spends the money that is supposed to remain in trust. The family lawyer, John Kossett (Maurice Denham), has finally developed a backbone, telling the youth that he will get no more money until he comes of age in three weeks.

A tradition that started last year, I decided that I would highlight some of the horror movies that did not meet my strict criteria (a rating of 7.0 or higher). . . as I realized that they are still entertaining films (horror fanatics may enjoy) that do not deserve to be left behind like the weakest link in a group of friends in a slasher flick – and that they are definitely worth a watch (just maybe not several re-watches). As you can imagine, I’ve been powering through a plethora of horror features as we speed towards Halloween, and, instead of posting one massive selection of Missed the Bloody Cut reviews at the end of October, I have decided to break it into two parts.

A horror premise as old as it is entertaining, Elliott Nugent’s 1939 film The Cat and the Canary finds an extended family coming together for the reading of their uncle’s will – ten years to the day of his death. A remake of the 1927 silent classic (the idea came from a 1922 stage play of the same name by John Willard), screenwriters Walter DeLeon and Lynn Starling fuse the narrative with a deft comedic touch, resembling the Abbott and Costello horror features that were soon to come – movies that were magically able to play the horror parts for horror and the comedy parts for comedy. Set in a gothic-style plantation home in the middle of the Bayou, the vines envelop the property, the alligator filled water and lush landscape swallowing the dilapidated mansion that likely once stood out, a grand example of man conquering nature. Somewhat resembling Poe’s House of Usher, the property is managed by a mysterious and menacing housekeeper, Miss Lu (Gale Sondergaard) – it is implied that she was the owner’s mistress, a woman who welcomes (and I use that word loosely), the estate’s lawyer, Mr. Crosby (George Zucco), as well as Cyrus Norman’s only remaining heirs: famed actor Wally Campbell (Bob Hope) – who keeps guessing what will happen before it does thanks to his profession, fetching Joyce Norman (Paulette Goddard), mother and daughter Aunt Susan (Elizabeth Patterson) and Cicily (Nydia Westman), as well as nephews Fred Blythe (John Beal) and Charles Wilder (Douglass Montgomery).

Full disclosure here: the film that I am going to review today is by no means a great movie. . . it is one of those rare pictures that transcends its low budget faults, somehow equating to late-night, cheesy goodness. A cult classic out of 1984, Douglas Cheek’s C.H.U.D. is a sci-fi film parading as a horror film, or is it a horror film parading as a comedy? Opening with a spectacular wide angle shot of a grimy, New York street in the middle of the night, a lady walks her dog, the camera slowly moving in until we only see a sewer grate, the canine and her feet (her shadow covering most of the shot). Dropping something, she reaches to retrieve it. . . and, in an instant, a giant monster-ish hand pops out from the metal cover, pulling both of the nightwalkers into the underground abyss.

Ah, the mysteries of the Black Panther. . . not Wakanda, vibranium, or the ever growing Marvel franchise, but rather, the enigma that is those giant cats that have been rumoured to be part human. First explored in the 1942 classic B horror film Cat People, reviewed here on Filmizon last October, director Paul Schrader remade it in 1982 under the same title, finding his own unique spin on the tale. Starting a little earlier than normal this year, this will be the beginning of a number of horror reviews leading up to Halloween (if you are not a horror fan, fear not, there will still be several non horror related pictures reviewed).