Burke and Hare (2010) -- John Landis
The Hole is Joe Dante's first feature film in eleven years. Burke and Hare is John Landis' first film in twelve. It makes me
sad that men who have made movies this good aren't finding the work/funding for their cinematic projects (these men both shot segments for Twilight Zone: The Movie, notoriously for Landis, unfortunately).
Burke and Hare comes out a bit ahead of The Hole in terms of entertainment. Plain and simple, Landis has the better cast. Simon Pegg, Jennifer Hynes (together again!), Andy Serkis, Bill Bailey, Tom Wilkinson, Tim Curry, Jenny Agutter (the female lead of An American Werewolf in London), Christopher Lee, Ray Harryhausen(!), Stephen Merchant, Hugh Bonneville, and a host of others that I'm certain if you watch enough British television, that you'd be right familiar with. It's the tale of two men who resort to murder to get a physician bodies for his research. Unfortunately, it doesn't get the balance of comedy to horror right and I'm not even sure it tried. There's potential for a terrific dark comedy here, and while Burke and Hare is fun as the dickens, it feels like a missed opportunity and a trifle.
Still, if you dig Landis or the cast, it's totally worth checking out.
I don't know why they used the voiceover guy who does all the wacky kids movie trailers, but whatever...
The Invisible Man (1933) -- James Whale
Somehow, I'd been operating under the delusion that I'd seen this movie before. I even rated it on Netflix (a sacred task held in the utmost esteem by myself. Much self-flagellation followed this discovery. A penance for my sins). I have distinct memories of watching a (non-John Carpenter directed) invisible man movie with Claude Rains, though now I wonder if I'm combining his appearance in The Wolf Man with watching Abbott and Costello Meet The Invisible Man, though it's just as likely that I watched The Invisible Man Returns without knowing.
Be that as it may, The Invisible Man is terrific. I need to re-watch Bride of Frankenstein, but right now it's my favorite of the Universal horror classics. There's lots of action and humor (though Una O'Connor is WAY too much for me. Her wailing and screeching is enough to put me off hearing. She does the same in Whale's Bride of Frankenstein, too), but my favorite aspect is how intelligently people approach the invisible issue. First, Claude Rains has an amazing speech about all of his limitations that actually answers a lot of the silly questions people ask about the idea of an invisible person (what happens when it eats? and such). Then we have the inherent absurdity of what it would be like to pursue an invisible man. Lots of fun (and somewhat intelligent) ideas are tossed out on how to catch him and the police have to sweep across the room with a net to make sure that it's clear. It's all very silly, but stuff that has to be done. That it's done with the utmost sincerity is what makes it great.
This movie is awesome.
Dracula (1931) -- Tod Browning
Where the silliness of The Invisible Man is inherent in the story and not an accidental product of the production, a good 40% of Dracula is ridiculous. Yes, Bela Lugosi is an icon, but dear lord, there are some odd choices. The most glaring is the repeated cuts to spot lights on his eyes. If only done once or twice, it would be effective. Instead, they go to it five or six times, most within a short span of each other. Lugosi's line deliveries are often quite stilted, too. He's so much better in The Wolf Man or even Island of Lost Souls (where he's virtually indistinguishable). He has less to do, but everything feels so much more natural. Van Helsing is another character who I can't take seriously. Interstingly, Edward Van Sloan (who plays Van Helsing) and Lugosi reprised their stage roles. Maybe they didn't adjust their performances quite right for the different medium.
Fortunately, Dracula gets legitimately creepy once in England and the stalkings begin. I found it odd that much of Lucy's role is missing. I don't recall her death and they don't deal with her re-death at the hands of Van Helsing, though they mention that she's been dealt with. There's a disjointed feel to the movie. Allegedly, Browning tore pages out of the script that he felt were unnecessary and was emotionally unfit during production, so that may explain it. Whatever the reason, It's my firm belief that Dracula is the weakest of the Universal movies, even if it massively outsold our Frankenstein screenings. What does the public know?
The Hand (1981) -- Oliver Stone
The first twenty minutes of The Hand are pretty awesome, then it turns into some cliche-ridden story of a marriage falling apart. Michael Caine plays a comic writer/artist who loses his hand while arguing with his wife in the car (an amazing scene). Eventually, she finds an excuse to be away from him for a while and his anger increases and the people at whom he is angry start to die.
It's no great spoiler to tell you that Caine is doing the killing. At no point does The Hand entertain the idea that some supernatural element has caused his severed hand to rise up and kill, an uncontrollable manifestation of his Id. The pattern goes, he likes someone, gets mad at them, they die. There's some fun stylish things going on, but it's really a waste of a cool premise.
Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922) -- Benjamin Christensen
This is an interesting movie. Haxan plays like a documentary at times and like a fiction film about witchcraft at others. There are a LOT of intertitles and a lot of information is given to the audience through them, which makes it feel like a classroom lecture at times. However, and it's hard for me to know for sure if it's intentional, Haxan is subtly hilarious. Part of my struggle is that, while I know snark, irony, and satire existed before the rise of the internet, the use of it here feels very modern. It's almost like the teacher is undercutting his own lecture by design.
Take, for instance, the appearance of the devil. Rarely, possibly never, do we see him without his tongue sticking out and waggling at some woman. There are several times that this devil is scene churning some kind of hellish butter while looking at women. The monks featured in the film use methods to determine witches equally as mystical and absurd as anything a witch might practice and are portrayed in a distinctly more heinous light than anyone practicing witchcraft and a woman they've tortured for information gives the names of people with whom she has petty grievances.
Haxan takes place in distinct but continuing parts. The final part takes place in modern day and should be excised entirely. It's an attempt to bring some modern context into the film, but the audience is intelligent enough that they could do this on their own if they choose. Also, the score is terribly inappropriate which isn't unexpected from a silent film that probably had local piano accompanists trying to fit the mood with their normal cache of songs and probably never had a real score.
Those complaints aside, Haxan is pretty cool. There are several instances of great special effects, but I'll leave you with this description. If it doesn't make you interested, nothing will:
To achieve the scene in which the witches are flying over the roofs of the town,Benjamin Christensen and his cameraman Johan Ankerstjerne photographed a miniature town (with each house about 2 meters in height) on an enormous turntable, which operated manually and took the strength of 20 men to operate. Then, several costumed actors were photographed on broomsticks against a black background. To make the heavy costumes ripple in the "wind" Christiansen brought in an airplane motor. A total of 75 witches were photographed, each individually, and a special optical printer was built by Ankerstjerne to put them together (only about three of four appear on the screen at one time). The construction of a model town was decided upon after test footage proved the original idea of shooting from a movie train was a bad one, as too many modern structures, not to mention telephone poles and wires, were unavoidable. The test footage survives and is superimposed with Christiansen seated in a chair, acting out the part of a witch.
