He went for a little walk!
Uberwald... is based on all the classic horror movies you can remember, most particularly those made by Hammer Films, when no coach could go faster than five miles an hour along a suspiciously familiar road without shedding a wheel, half the population were nubile 18-year-old girls and I swear there was one very large, ornate, floor-standing candlestick that appeared in every movie. In the one-and-sixpenny seats... I must have watched Christopher Lee die in a dozen different ways. I learned that turning into a heap of wind-blown dust need not put a huge crimp in your life plans.
Thus Don'tgonearthe Castle was invented. It has, of course, running water in the moat, a whole slew of things that could be easily converted into religious objects, and a big window facing the sunrise with insecurely fastened curtains. It was clear that Dracula was quite a sporting fellow. It was all a game.
A world away from the Slasher movies, the Hammer movies were, on recollection, quite domesticated, and as stylized as a mummers' play. You knew exactly what you were going to get, including the candlestick. Hammer Horror was set in Uberwald, where blood is bright red and you don't get too much of it...
--From Terry Pratchett's notes to "The Art of Discworld".
Likewise, an added pleasure for fans of early Universal Horror films is the game of Spot the Prop. The Universal Studios equivalent of the large floor-standing candlestick is this one satin-covered eiderdown that the props keeper must have liked a lot. So far it's been seen on Lucy's bed in Dracula and the bed of What's Her Name in The Mummy while she's having flashbacks to ancient Egypt. Other recycled props include an overstuffed tapestry chair and an overstuffed Edward Van Sloan. I suppose the poor guy can't help having a boring voice, but he appears in like five different monster movies, and plays pretty much the same Van Helsing-style character in all of them, and he puts me right to sleep. Oh, well, not all old character actors can be Ernest Thesiger.
Oh, and I watched Mummy last night. It's exactly like Dracula, except with mummies instead of vampires. Oh, and it's better than Dracula, because it has Boris Karloff as an umpteenth-level cleric. I've got a crush on him, now, too. Well, who am I kidding, I had a crush on him in the Frankenstein movies, but I never realized it till this film. It's THE VOICE. Well, it's everything else about him as well, but he has this splendid rumbling voice that makes the floor vibrate when he whispers. Oh dear me. This is a man who can switch from modern-speak into an old-fashioned cadence, like the Hindi-speakers in Kipling, with lots of usage of "thee" and "thou", and not sound silly. This is a man who can walk around in a silly headdress and an ancient Egyptian kilt and still look like a ferocious SOB. Presence? Truckloads of it. He just quietly looms up and pwns everybody else on the screen.
Also, there is a heroine with a little more gumption than the average screaming chick. She's not as cool as Yvonne from Mad Love, but she is funny and spunky and you can reasonably believe that the men would find her attractive beyond the fact that she's hot. This is always a problem for me in movies with one token woman whom all the men adore and the monster carries off. I have a hard time figuring what makes women attractive to men. Quite often, the Scream Chick doesn't have much personality; she's just sexy, end of story, who cares about anything else. This makes the men seem pretty shallow, because the story then revolves around their risking their lives for someone who's kinda one-dimensional.
One of the reasons I liked Mad Love, speaking of which: Yvonne had a lot of charm and character, and the film took care to give her clear motivations for everything she did. It wasn't obtrusive, it was just a lot of little background stuff. I felt that I would have liked her if I'd met her socially. You got to see her talking to her friends, loving her husband, enjoying life, and then trying to hold her marriage together and protect her husband while he was injured and his sanity was heading down the tubes. The film was her story, more than it was the mad doctor's. She had a normal life outside the horrors of the plot, and you could see why her husband loved her and why the doctor was obsessed with her. Things like that are important, and when you see them done right you don't forget them.
On a much shallower front... It's remarkable how little the girl in The Mummy wears, given that it's 1932. This is the dress in which she spends a lot of time. And this is her ancient Egyptian outfit. Hello, Ankh-es-en-Fanservice. I think the Hays Code was invented for movies like this (and the Theater of Horrors in Mad Love).
Dialogue that I liked in The Mummy:
Old professor #1: What does the inscription on the lid say, Professor?
Old professor #2: "Death... Death and eternal punishment to anyone who opens this box. My curse will strike to the Underworld he who breaks the seal, who dares to behold what lies within."
[Miniscule pause]
Eager-beaver graduate student: Well! Let's see what's inside it!
Thus Don'tgonearthe Castle was invented. It has, of course, running water in the moat, a whole slew of things that could be easily converted into religious objects, and a big window facing the sunrise with insecurely fastened curtains. It was clear that Dracula was quite a sporting fellow. It was all a game.
A world away from the Slasher movies, the Hammer movies were, on recollection, quite domesticated, and as stylized as a mummers' play. You knew exactly what you were going to get, including the candlestick. Hammer Horror was set in Uberwald, where blood is bright red and you don't get too much of it...
--From Terry Pratchett's notes to "The Art of Discworld".
Likewise, an added pleasure for fans of early Universal Horror films is the game of Spot the Prop. The Universal Studios equivalent of the large floor-standing candlestick is this one satin-covered eiderdown that the props keeper must have liked a lot. So far it's been seen on Lucy's bed in Dracula and the bed of What's Her Name in The Mummy while she's having flashbacks to ancient Egypt. Other recycled props include an overstuffed tapestry chair and an overstuffed Edward Van Sloan. I suppose the poor guy can't help having a boring voice, but he appears in like five different monster movies, and plays pretty much the same Van Helsing-style character in all of them, and he puts me right to sleep. Oh, well, not all old character actors can be Ernest Thesiger.
Oh, and I watched Mummy last night. It's exactly like Dracula, except with mummies instead of vampires. Oh, and it's better than Dracula, because it has Boris Karloff as an umpteenth-level cleric. I've got a crush on him, now, too. Well, who am I kidding, I had a crush on him in the Frankenstein movies, but I never realized it till this film. It's THE VOICE. Well, it's everything else about him as well, but he has this splendid rumbling voice that makes the floor vibrate when he whispers. Oh dear me. This is a man who can switch from modern-speak into an old-fashioned cadence, like the Hindi-speakers in Kipling, with lots of usage of "thee" and "thou", and not sound silly. This is a man who can walk around in a silly headdress and an ancient Egyptian kilt and still look like a ferocious SOB. Presence? Truckloads of it. He just quietly looms up and pwns everybody else on the screen.
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Also, there is a heroine with a little more gumption than the average screaming chick. She's not as cool as Yvonne from Mad Love, but she is funny and spunky and you can reasonably believe that the men would find her attractive beyond the fact that she's hot. This is always a problem for me in movies with one token woman whom all the men adore and the monster carries off. I have a hard time figuring what makes women attractive to men. Quite often, the Scream Chick doesn't have much personality; she's just sexy, end of story, who cares about anything else. This makes the men seem pretty shallow, because the story then revolves around their risking their lives for someone who's kinda one-dimensional.
One of the reasons I liked Mad Love, speaking of which: Yvonne had a lot of charm and character, and the film took care to give her clear motivations for everything she did. It wasn't obtrusive, it was just a lot of little background stuff. I felt that I would have liked her if I'd met her socially. You got to see her talking to her friends, loving her husband, enjoying life, and then trying to hold her marriage together and protect her husband while he was injured and his sanity was heading down the tubes. The film was her story, more than it was the mad doctor's. She had a normal life outside the horrors of the plot, and you could see why her husband loved her and why the doctor was obsessed with her. Things like that are important, and when you see them done right you don't forget them.
On a much shallower front... It's remarkable how little the girl in The Mummy wears, given that it's 1932. This is the dress in which she spends a lot of time. And this is her ancient Egyptian outfit. Hello, Ankh-es-en-Fanservice. I think the Hays Code was invented for movies like this (and the Theater of Horrors in Mad Love).
Dialogue that I liked in The Mummy:
Old professor #1: What does the inscription on the lid say, Professor?
Old professor #2: "Death... Death and eternal punishment to anyone who opens this box. My curse will strike to the Underworld he who breaks the seal, who dares to behold what lies within."
[Miniscule pause]
Eager-beaver graduate student: Well! Let's see what's inside it!