Category Archives: Horror

The Curator of Schlock #302: Silent Night, Deadly Night 3

13 Friday Dec 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #302 by Jeff Shuster

Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!

Is that supposed to be funny? The main character is blind!

Is gooseberry pie any good? I have never tried it. In fact, I’ve never seen it sold anywhere. Not even on a restaurant menu. I’m beginning to think that gooseberry pie (and the gooseberry in general) does not exist. It’s what country folk eat in Hollywood movies. Some cigar-chomping producer probably insisted that the gooseberry pie be inserted into movies every now and again in an effort to mislead the public for nefarious purposes. Gooseberry pie is mentioned in tonight’s movie, but it does not, in fact, make an appearance. 

1989’s Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! from director Monte Hellman is the follow-up to Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, which was the follow-up to Silent Night, Deadly Night. The movie begins with a young woman named Laura Anderson (Samantha Scully) being chased down hospital corridors by Ricky Caldwell (Bill Moseley, later of Devil’s Rejects fame). Ricky Caldwell now has a glass scalp with some electronics plugged into it. Through that glass scalp you can see his brain and a pool of blood. Here’s your monster, folks. Someone behind the scenes thought this was a good idea. 

Laura wakes up screaming and we find that she’s actually psychic and that a Dr. Newbury (Richard Beymer) was using her to probe a vegetative Ricky’s mind. It seems that all those bullets did a number on Ricky at the end of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, leaving him at the hands of intense reconstructive surgery at the hands of Dr. Newbury. The good doctor even managed to put Ricky’s brain back together and Laura’s psychic probing is proof that something of Ricky still exists in that living catatonic husk.     

Laura may be a super psychic, but she’s also blind. She asks the receptionist at the hospital if she could keep an eye out for brother who’s picking her up. The receptionist is very rude to her. Laura falls asleep and has a dream where the receptionist’s throat is slit. You see, Laura can see in her dreams and in her visions. Laura’s brother, Chris (Eric Da Re), and his girlfriend, Jerri (Laura Harring), pick her up as she wakes up screaming from her violent vision. Jerri is beautiful. Chris is hairy. Seriously, I thought the guy was wearing a shag carpet under his shirt, but that’s neither her nor there. The three of them are off to visit Grandma’s house many miles away. 

Meanwhile, a drunken Santa Claus roams the hospital halls. He visits Ricky’s room, makes fun of Ricky, calls him a vegetable and what not. Naturally, Ricky wakes up and slaughters him. Then he kills the receptionist just like in Laura’s vision. Then Rocky steals a car and decapitates a gas station attendant. And since Ricky has a psychic link with Laura, he knows where she’s going. Ricky decides to get to Grandma’s before Laura. 

Grandma is busy getting Christmas Eve dinner ready for everyone. There’s a glistening roast turkey in the oven that she bastes in its own juices. I’m sure chestnuts are roasting on the open fire. Oh, and Grandma has apparently made Laura’s favorite: gooseberry pie. (Liar.)

A knock at the door reveals not Laura and brother, but Ricky Caldwell. Grandma welcomes him with open arms, even feeds him. It is Christmas after all. Plus, she didn’t see Ricky’s exposed brain because he cleverly covered it with a cap. 

At this point, I’m almost thinking the movie will turn into Hallmark Christmas movie. The love and good cheer of grandma will reform Ricky’s psychotic heart. But then Grandma gives him a wrapped present. Ricky gets triggered and turns into the mass murdering Santa Claus once again. Grandma isn’t long for this world. Those of you expecting a scene of Chris opening up the oven to grab some turkey only to find Grandma’s seared corpse will be sorely disappointed. You were hoping to see Grandma’s seared corpse?

What is wrong with you?

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #301: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

06 Friday Dec 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #301 by Jeff Shuster

Silent Night, Deadly Nigh Part 2

It’s not the most wonderful time of the year!

When you’re written three hundred blogs about movies, you tend to forget what you’ve covered. For instance, you would think in the six years I’ve been doing this that I would have curated 1984’s Silent Night, Deadly Night from director Charles E. Sellier Jr. at some point. But it looks like I never did. And it’s not streaming on any services, but the sequel is, so we’re moving on ahead. Deal with it. 

1987’s Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 from director Lee Harry is half the movie that Silent Night, Deadly Night is. I mean it’s literally half of Silent Night, Deadly Night cobbled together with scenes from two other movies. That’s what it feels like, a Frankenstein monster of a movie. And I had to sit through it for your reading pleasure, so let’s get this over with. 

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 begins in a mental hospital with a deranged young man named Ricky Caldwell (Robert Brian Wilson) being interviewed by Dr. Harry Bloom, a psychiatrist. Seems that Ricky Caldwell is the younger brother of Billy Chapman, the maniac Santa Claus who got shot to death at the end of the first movie. Didn’t see it? That’s okay since Ricky gives us the highlights of the first movie with flashback scenes that seem to take up half of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2’s running time. Granted, I can’t get enough of the scene of Billy decapitating an eager sledder on Christmas Eve. 

We learn that even though Ricky was an infant at the time, he witnessed the murder of his parents by a gun toting Santa Claus just like his older brother did.

Ricky was raised in the same orphanage as his brother, raised by the same overzealous Mother Superior as his brother. Eventually, a nice Jewish couple adopts Ricky. The hope is their lack of Yuletide cheer won’t trigger Ricky and transform him into a psychotic Santa Claus.

Doesn’t work.

As a teenager, Ricky repeatedly runs over a drunken redneck that was getting too fresh with a date. The woman thanks Ricky and saunters off. It’s odd that a different actor plays the teenage Ricky considering adult Ricky is eighteen-years-old! It’s like they started making a sequel to Silent Night, Deadly Night, abandoned the production, and shoved the footage in the new sequel. 

Now we get flashbacks of adult Ricky murdering a bookie with an umbrella outside of the restaurant he works at. He falls in love with a girl, but gets triggered into murdering more people when she suggests they go to the movies and watch a film about a killer Santa Claus. Ricky kills people in the theater, kills his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend, kills his girlfriend, and starts shooting random people in a suburban neighborhood before getting arrested. 

ater, Ricky murders Dr. Bloom, busts out of the mental hospital, murders a sidewalk Santa, dons the Santa suit, tracks down the abusive Mother Superior, decapitates her, and is shot to death by police just like his older brother. Okay, that was exhausting.

Oh, I just realized. I didn’t review Silent Night, Deadly Night all those years ago. It was Silent Night, Bloody Night, a completely different movie. 

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #300: The Cannibals

29 Friday Nov 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #300 by Jeff Shuster

The Cannibals

What’s eating you?

I said I wasn’t going to cover anymore cannibal movies for Thanksgiving. I had learned my lesson last year with a little French/Belgium production called Raw. But your humble Curator of Schlock must give his readership what they want. I know you want cannibal movies. And this is blog #300. I have to make it count. Jess Franco’s The Cannibals that also went under the title White Cannibal Queen should do the trick. 

The movie begins with an explorer named Professor Jeremy Taylor (Al Cliver), his wife Elisabeth, and his daughter, Lana, taking a boat ride somewhere in South America. I think the country is named Melabi, but nothing showed up in my Google search. Jeremy tells Elisabeth that it may have been a mistake to take his family with him due to rumors of cannibals attacking other boats going down the same river. Naturally, the cannibals show up right after mentioning this. They spear the boat captain and then proceed to devour poor Elisabeth Taylor on sight. That’s Elisabeth Taylor not Elizabeth Taylor, who to my knowledge did not die by getting devoured alive by cannibals. 

Was there a market for this type of movie back in the day? Did people have a fetish for seeing wild tribesmen in grass skirts ripping and choking down the intestines of screaming victims? These scenes go on forever. I didn’t know where the term “gutmuncher” came from. I do now! Professor Taylor is bound and carried to the Cannibal Village. They chop his arm off and eat it in front of him, but don’t manage to finish him off because their Chief proclaims that he found the “White Goddess” on the riverbank. Wouldn’t you know it?  It’s Professor Taylor’s daughter, Lana!

Professor Taylor slinks off as the tribe worships their new deity. Some explorers find him in the forest, but he’s delirious. Professor Taylor spends the next five years in a mental hospital in New York City. He keeps rambling about seeing his wife eaten alive. Finally, he snaps out of it and visits Barbara Shelton, head of the Shelton Foundation, which funded his original expedition. Professor Taylor hopes he’ll get funding for another expedition to rescue his daughter. Barbara and her elderly, wealthy, blue-blooded boyfriend, Charles Fenton, tell him he’s crazy and ask him to leave their penthouse. 

Professor Taylor travels back to … Melabi, trying to no avail to get a guide to take him back into cannibal country. Guess who shows up? Barbara Shelton and Charles Fenton had a change of heart and have decided to fund an entire expedition to help Professor Taylor find his daughter. Fenton says shooting a few cannibals for sport sounds smashing. I think wealthy Americans traveling to exotic locals where violent natives reside always works out well. Just fire off your boomstick. Show them who’s boss!

Of course, to get to the cannibal tribe, they have to travel through a swamp infested with alligators and rattlesnakes. Barbara sprains her ankle and gets a fever. Charles gets lost while having a heart attack. Cannibal Tribesmen start picking off members of the party with poison arrows. Barbara gets abandoned and is eaten alive in slow motion.

Seriously, I don’t get off on this crap.

The “White Goddess” looks on as her husband, the chief, feasts on entrails of poor Barbara. 

I think Professor Taylor has gotten eight people killed in his quest to retrieve his daughter from the Cannibal Tribe. Maybe he just should have left well enough alone. His daughter seemed fine taking on the role of the “White Goddess.” I don’t think anyone thought this through. Maybe it’s best just to stay out of Cannibal Country.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Enjoy your leftovers. 

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Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #297: Terminator 3

01 Friday Nov 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #297 by Jeff Shuster

Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines

It ain’t that bad. 

Terminator: Dark Fate premiers this weekend. I expect it to smash box office records. I see Terminator sequels, spinoffs, and television series in the future. Arnold Schwarzenegger will dance in the limelight once again. Commando II will soon follow. In fact, I’ve got ten large riding on my personal prediction that Terminator: Dark Fate will outdo the opening weekend gross for Joker. That’s a lot of Mai Tais!

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Terminator: Dark Fate is the latest attempt at a proper sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I thought it might be interesting to revisit the first of the sequels, 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines from director Jonathan Mostow. Many critics at that time felt that this movie missed the mark. Roger Ebert felt the movie was “dumbed down for multiplex hordes.”

Well, consider me a member of the horde.

I don’t know if Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is thought-provoking or blah blah blah! What it is is fun. Anyone remember when going to the movies was fun instead of feeling like going to a funeral?

We’ve got an adult John Conner (Nick Stahl) in this one. Sarah Conner died of cancer. The human race escaped Judgment Day. The machines didn’t rise up, but John has stayed off the grid because he didn’t trust that the future was safe. And he was right. The T-X, a new terminator in the form of an attractive blonde woman (Kristanna Loken), shows up to terminate other important soldiers of the human resistance since no records of John Connor exist at that time. One of these future soldiers is a straight-laced veterinarian named Kate Brewster (Claire Danes). She catches John stealing medicine at the animal hospital she works at.

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Meanwhile, Arnold’s Terminator, the T-800, is back. He walks naked into a Male Strip Club into a crowd of appreciative ladies while a stripper on stage takes his clothes off to the tune of The Village People’s “Macho Man.” The T-800 tells the stripper he wants his clothes and the stripper tells him to “Talk to the hand!” The T-800 steals the stripper’s clothes after breaking that hand. Arnold reaches in the jacket for a pair of sred-tinted, star-shaped sunglasses. He removes them and crushes them under his boot. I’m sorry. I laughed at this.

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T-X shows up at the animal hospital. So does the Arnold Terminator. T-X has a gun hidden in her arm that can shoot electricity, flames, and who knows what else. The Arnold Terminator, Kate, and John escape, and we get some explosive chase scenes. Turns out Kate will be John Conner’s second-in-command in the War Against the Machines. She’s also his future wife. Oh, and her father is General Brewster, the man who activates the evil super computer, Skynet. In an effort to stop Judgment Day, John and Kate race to her father’s military installation hoping to prevent him from activating Skynet.

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Too late. In addition to the T-X, they have to deal with Skynet and early models of the drones and land robots we’ve seen in future War Against the Machines. Is Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines as good The Terminator or Terminator 2: Judgment Day?

No.

Is it a thrill ride from start to finish?

Yes.

Is it better than any movie I saw over this past summer?

Yes.

A movie doesn’t have to be perfect. Sometimes a movie can just be fun.

Talk to the hand.

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Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #42: Haunting the Panels

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #42 by Drew Barth

Haunting the Panels

It is the eve of All Hallows Eve! For this, the spookiest time of the year, we have looked at some of the greatest masters of horror comics as well as a new series likely going to maintain chills well into the next decade. But for the end of the month, when the haunts are at their strongest, we can start to look at something new in our comics: a philosophical concept known as hauntology.

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At its core, what Derrida posits in his work Spectres of Marx is this idea that the past exists essentially as a specter. Although the past itself has no physical space, it can still occupy. It has no weight, but its impact can still be felt. For the most part, the past exists as an entity both living and dead, here and not here. The past then haunts the present and future with its existence. This idea has been further extrapolated and expanded upon over the recent decade, namely with Elisabeth Roberts and her hauntological approach to visual images. For Roberts, visual images occupy that same real/unreal space as the specters of the past. This idea can easily be extended to works in comics.

Where hauntology and comics begin to intersect is in the idea of the comic canon—the monolithic idea that what has happened in the past can and should influence all facets of the present and future. In many comic circles, when talking about monthly superhero comics especially, arguments frequently arise regarding what is considered canon. What is something we can ignore and what are the criteria we apply to expel materials from the canon? When looking through the lens of hauntology, the discussion of what can be considered canon becomes more nebulous. If specters of the past haunt what we know of the present, then what has come previously in comic canon exists forever—so long as a story exists for the haunting to occur.

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This idea of haunting occurring so long as the story exists comes into play for much of the mainline heroes of the DC Universe. Simply look at Batman. Every single moment of his life as a vigilante and purveyor of bat-flavored justice is inherently influenced by the specters of Thomas and Martha Wayne. Their shadow, their specter, is something Batman cannot escape. The ripped string of pearls we associate with his mother or his father reaching out to grab the gun of Joe Chill haunt Bruce Wayne’s entire existence. His present and future can never be divorced from those ghosts—his haunting is eternal. The same can be said of Superman and the eternal haunting of the doomed planet Krypton or Renee Montoya and the ghost of Vic Sage. These specters exist for these characters eternally within their canons regardless of editorial and creative changes throughout the decades.

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It is difficult to think of comics without the ghosts it carries. From the canon itself to the endless list of individuals who have contributed words and pictures to the canon, every hand is another specter that stalks through those glossy pages. But as it is now time for Halloween, it’s time to look more through those pages again. The old pages that have yellowed or curled with age are filled to bursting with the spectral memories of the last time they had been read. Bring back those old comics and see how those old specters have come to haunt the comics of the present.

Get excited. Release the ghosts.

drew barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

The Curator of Schlock #296: The Body Snatcher

25 Friday Oct 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #296 by Jeff Shuster

The Body Snatcher

Karloff and Lugosi together again for the last time. 

I didn’t know that being a body snatcher was once an up and coming profession for industrious men living in the early 1800s. It would seem that medical schools at the time were hungry for fresh human cadavers for study and dissection. You could make quite a nice chunk of change by dropping off a recently deceased person to your local biology instructor, no questions asked. I think I missed my calling.

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Tonight’s movie is 1945’s The Body Snatcher from director Robert Wise. It takes place in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1831. A young medical student named Donald Fettes (Russell Wades) is studying at a medical school run by the driven Dr. Wolfe MacFarlane (Henry Daniell). One thing that I find odd about this motion picture is that some of the characters speak with Scottish accents while other speak with proper American accents. Was this a thing back in the old days? I guess if American actors couldn’t fake an accent, they just didn’t bother. Maybe the producers figured if you had enough Scottish accents, you could sneak a couple of American accents in there with no one noticing. Maybe that was the approach taken by Kevin Costner in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.

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Anyway, Donald’s heart bleeds for a young widow and her paraplegic daughter. They beg Dr. Wolfe to operate on the young girl for only he has the skills to restore her mobility by fixing her spine. Dr. Wolfe says he can’t operate on every poor soul that comes to his office. He’d never get any work done. Dr. Wolfe is an instructor after all. It’s his priority to train the next generation of Doctors. Little girls who may never walk again will just have to deal.

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Dr. Wolfe insists on giving his students real human cadavers to work with, but supply is scarce so he employs a nefarious individual by the name of John Gray (Boris Karloff) to procure dead bodies for him. John Gray robs fresh graves and Dr. Wolfe pays him handsomely for it. But John Gray resents Dr. Wolfe, hates the man to the core and wants to see him brought down. While Donald and Dr. Wolfe are getting hammered at the local pub, John Gray shames Dr. Wolfe into doing the surgery on the young girl. When Dr. Wolfe wakes up, he insists that he can’t be held to any promise made while inebriated. Plus, he would need a cadaver to practice spinal surgery on and they’re all out.

Donald frantically searches for John Gray, says he needs a body right away, but John Gray doesn’t want to do anymore grave robbing. It’s too risky. But he tells Donald that he’ll get him a body. Said body ends up being a street singer Donald ran into earlier that evening. She was alive and well then, but John Gray insists he was there when the woman suddenly dropped dead. Naturally, this slippery slope has turned into a free-fall. Robbing graves is one thing, but murder? There’s a point in the movie when Dr. Wolfe’s assistant Joseph (as played by Bela Lugosi) tries blackmailing John Gray only to get the life choked out of him. Some point to this movie as the beginning of the end for Lugosi’s career.

This would be the last time he and Karloff would ever perform together.

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Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #295: Cat People

18 Friday Oct 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #295 by Jeff Shuster

Cat People

Cat People got no reason to live. 

My editor seems to think that Mad Love was first romance movie I covered on my blog. Not true. What about The Love Witch, Someone I Touched, Lola, Fist of the North Star, Day of the Dead: Bloodline, My Bloody Valentine, The Vengeance of She, The Boy Next Door, The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, Nude for Satan, Magic, Unsane, and all those Hallmark Christmas movies with the delightful Lacey Chabert? We love romance here at The Museum of Schlock!

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Speaking of romance, tonight’s motion picture is 1942’s Cat People from director Val Lewton. It’s about a man who falls in love with a woman who owns six cats! The horror! The horror! Run away, good sir! I’m just fooling. The movie starts out in a zoo in Central Park in New York City. A young, Serbian-American woman named Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) is sketching a black panther (the animal not the super hero) when she catches the eye of a man named Oliver Reed (Kent Smith). There’s some banter. Irena invites Oliver back to her place where she tells him a story about a great Serbian King who slaughtered a town full of Satan-worshipping witches and how cats are considered evil in the village she was born in.

CAT PEOPLE (1942)

That’s a bit of an intense conversation for a first date, something that might be considered a red flag in the modern day, but Oliver is undeterred. He asks Irena out to dinner for the following evening. He buys Irena a kitten as a gift in lieu of a bouquet of flowers. That’s odd. Was that a courting custom back in the 1940s? The kitten reacts badly to Irena, hissing at her. They take the kitten back to the pet shop, hoping to exchange it for another pet, but the whole pet shop comes alive with howls and chirps. I guess Irena has a problem with animals. Maybe because she is one!

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Despite this weirdness and the fact that Irena refuses to kiss him, Oliver decides to marry her. I think there’s a legend in Irena’s birth village about the women being cursed to turn into cat people should they ever kiss a man. Worried for Irena’s state of mind (and their marriage not being consummated), Oliver has Irena see a psychiatrist, Dr. Judd (Tom Conway), to get to the bottom of her unsound mind. Oh, and Oliver’s co-worker, Alice Moore (Jane Randoph), confesses her love for Oliver.

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So there you have it. We’ve got a love triangle going on. Who says we’re not romantic here at The Museum of Schlock. I think Oliver gets tired of waiting for Irena to sort her shit out and wants a divorce so he can marry Alice.

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Since Oliver doesn’t want Irena anymore, Dr. Judd makes his move and kisses Irena causing Irena to turn into a black panther. What do you know? Irena was right to fear her village’s curse. Balls.

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Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #40: Another Master of Horror

16 Wednesday Oct 2019

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #40 by Drew Barth

Another Master of Horror

The spooks continue this week with a look at another creator whose work has kept me awake on more than one occasion: Junji Ito. His work has become synonymous with horror manga over the last fifteen years in the US. Through many of his longer works like Gyo, Uzumaki, and the decade-spanning Tomie, Ito has established himself as a pillar of modern horror.

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What makes Ito’s horror stand out among many of his peers is his focus on the mundane. From panel one, we are almost always grounded in the daily lives of our main characters in the real world. But then the twist. It could be something as simple as someone unable to get the smell of fish off of them or noticing a friend’s dad doing something odd in an alley or wanting to paint a woman. As fantastical as many of the horror elements Ito utilizes are, they still have the feeling of being too eerily close to the real world, and that is how his horror can seep in under the skin for a full-body terror.

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There are also interpersonal relationships as a means of driving the story forward. Ito tends to use one as a narrator and one continually in peril or wrapped up in the bizarre occurrences.

When looking at a story like Uzumaki, we have Kirie and Shuichi as the narrative duo. Kirie is the focus of the mysterious obsession of the spiral without having fallen into the obsession herself. Shuichi studies the effects of the spiral obsession and oftentimes will disappear without warning, causing Kirie distress. We feel Kirie’s worry and are thus worried ourselves. This dual-character narrative helps to maintain the uncertainty that fuels our terror by always ensuring at least one character is in danger.

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The influence of Ito’s work is far-reaching: from film and anime adaptions to Hot Topic shirts. He has become one of the most recognizable artists not just in horror, but in graphic narratives in general. With it being so close to Halloween, why not take a chance on something terrifying to get you through the month?

Get excited. Focus on the spiral.

drew barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

The Curator of Schlock #294: Mad Love

11 Friday Oct 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #294 by Jeff Shuster

Mad Love

Old movies are weird. 

 

The Little Debbie Pumpkin Delights brand of cookies is the greatest packaged soft cookie the American chemical confectionary industry has ever produced. I don’t want to hear about Fig Newtons. Give me a break.

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Pumpkin Delights taste like fall and Halloween and all that is right in the world. They are the only cookies I care about right now, and I can’t seem to find any in either chain of grocery stores in my neighborhood. The trials I have to go through just to enjoy the simple things in life.

This week’s movie is 1935’s Mad Love from director Karl Freund. It is not about a man who enjoys the simple things in life. Peter Lorre stars as Dr. Gogol, a gifted doctor residing in Paris, France. Dr. Gogol is obsessed with an actress named Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake) who performs at the Théâtre des Horreurs, a kind of combination wax museum and theater of the grotesque.

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I think Yvonne stars in some play where she’s being tortured on a rack to the audience’s disgust or delight.

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Dr. Gogol decides to meet Yvonne in her dressing room after the show in the hopes of wooing her, but this doesn’t go so well. For starters, Yvonne is married to Stephen Orlac (Colin Clive), a gifted pianist and composer. But there’s a bigger reason why Dr. Gogol stands no chance with Yvonne. She’s a living goddess and Dr. Gogol looks like Kermit the Frog’s deformed brother. And he’s awkward around the Yvonne, even forcing a kiss on her at the wrap party. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Yvonne and Stephen are about to move to England leaving poor Dr. Gogol to obsess over the wax statue of Yvonne he purchased from the museum after her final performance.

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Yes, he purchased a wax statue of Yvonne for his house. That’s a little creepy. He even has his elderly maid dress the statue for him with fine garments he purchases from the best boutiques. His maid is a bit of a drinker and has an angry cockatoo perched on her shoulder, but I’m getting off track. Dr. Gogol refers to his wax statue of Yvonne as Galatea and hopes to will her to life. This is one weird dude. I’m sorry for anyone that knows him.

Stephen Orlac is traveling by train when said train gets into a horrible accident. Stephen’s hands are damaged beyond repair, so there goes his piano-playing career. In fact, a doctor wants to amputate his hands. Yvonne wants a second opinion and remembers that gifted doctor who was obsessed with her. Surely, he can save her husband’s hands. Dr. Gogol attempts a hand transplant operation on Stephen and it works. He doesn’t bother telling Stephen or Yvonne that those aren’t his hands.

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Did I mention that he transplanted the hands of a recently executed murderer with a penchant for knife throwing? This might explain why Stephen’s piano playing skills have waned, but his knife throwing skills have improved. I’m not going to spoil the end of the film, but don’t be expecting Peter Lorre to get the girl. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m on the hunt for some pumpkin flavored cookies.

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Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

 

The Curator of Schlock #293: The Black Cat

04 Friday Oct 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #293 by Jeff Shuster

The Black Cat

Lugosi + Karloff = Total Terror!

It’s October, and you know what that means! Your humble Curator of Schlock will transform into the vile Curator of Schlock! All month long, I will be watching some of the scariest motion pictures Tinsletown ever produced. Tonight’s picture is 1934’s The Black Cat from director Edgar G. Ulmer. It stars Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. This movie is Universal Studios biggest box office success from 1934. It made $236,000. I guess that was a lot back then. The Black Cat is also one of the earliest examples of psychological horror so those of you out there who hate horror movies might like this one.

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The title credits read The BLACK CAT SUGGESTED BY THE IMMORTAL EDGAR ALLEN POE CLASSIC. I remember reading “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe back in the second grade. A substitute had us read the short story, but she regretted it as the story revolves around a man torturing and killing a black cat over and over again. He evens cuts the cat’s eye out. Now see, this is what you give young boys to read if want to get them interested in reading. Not Johnny Tremain.

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This movie has nothing to do with Poe’s “The Black Cat.” It starts out with newlyweds Peter (David Manners) and Joan (Julie Bishop) on a train traveling to Hungary. They’re a good looking, yet boring couple. A mysterious man named Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Bela Lugosi) joins them in their train compartment. He’s a Hungarian psychiatrist fresh out of a fifteen-year stint in a Siberian prison camp after serving in World War I. When Joan falls to sleep in Peter’s arms, Dr. Werdegast reaches out and almost touches her hair. He begs Peter this indulgence as Joan looks like his late wife.

Weird.

They get in some kind of shuttle bus after the train stops, but it gets into an accident. Peter brings an unconscious Joan to the house of an old friend of Dr. Werdegast, Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff). Dr. Werdegast isn’t all that fond of Poelzig as his command resulted in the death of thousands of Austro-Hungarian soldiers to the Russians. Poelzig also told Dr. Werdegast’s beautiful wife that he died in the war. Poelzig then married Dr. Werdegast’s beautiful wife while he was stuck in a Siberian prison. Ouch! Some friend!

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Did I mention that Poelzig is a great Austrian architect? I guess he’s like the Frank Lloyd Wright of Austria. This is a weird house with sliding doors that adjoin each room. So much for privacy. Dr. Werdegast finally confronts Poelzig about his wife only to learn that she died many years ago. Poelzig kept her perfectly preserved in a glass case in his basement. Poelzig’s not lonely, though. He simply married Dr, Werdegast’s hot, young daughter. Dr. Werdegast  wants to shoot Poelzig, but he freezes in fear at a black cat that crosses his path.

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Did I mention that Poelzig is a Satanist? Yeah, he’s got a devil-worshipping cult coming over for a human sacrifice party.  They’ve got those black robes and everything. Who is the human sacrifice? Joan the newlywed, of course.

I’m not going to spoil the ending, but let’s just say it features a man getting skinned alive and a whole lot of dynamite.

Jeffrey Shuster 1

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.