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Monster Legacy Collection

Finished my Universal monster movie collection when my Monster Legacy Collection set came in the mail today. What a great set - Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man DVD's, plus the bonus busts of each that came with it. Way cool, there is 5 movies in each collection, 'cept Wolfie which only has 4. The busts are really nice, much larger than I thought and they look really neat. I also got the other three collections - Mummy, Invisible Man and Creature from the Black Lagoon. Paid about the same for these, but no busts. Still, it's nice to have all these sets in my collection. I can remember watching them when I was young and just loving 'em to death.

I went through the whole Mummy collection on the weekend. The original Mummy was cool, but pretty slow going. They used some German technique of holding a scene for an extra long time to make the viewer feel uncomfortable, I forget what the word for it is. Definately not for today's ADD type viewer. Boris Karloff is very good in this one, he's got that look and that voice that'll creep the living fuck out of you.





The second movie [Mummy's Hand] was a lot quicker paced and light-hearted, still lots of fun. The third [Mummy's Tomb] picks up where the second one left off, even having a short recap of what happened in the previous film. All these movies reuse footage from the previous films, then change the story around a bit. Like second movie calls the mummy Karis rather than Im-Ho-Tep [?] and he is revived via Tana leaves rather than the magical scroll. Anyway, Mummy's Tomb was pretty good but not quite as good as Hand. The actors from Hand come back as the same characters 'cept older, you can tell because they're wearing a lot of makeup and their hair is dyed grey. :)

My favourite of this set is the fourth movie [Mummy's Ghost]. It has John Carradine as the priest, and he's the creepiest of the bunch. This movie has a strange, eerie vibe to it and the way it ends is way cool, not the typical ending for movies made during this era.

The last movie [Curse] is easily the worst of the bunch, you can tell the vein was all played out and they were just going through the motions at this point. The way the mummy is slowly trundling towards his victims, and then they just hop in their car and drive away, is both funny and somewhat sad. Hey, this is The Mummy, show some respect, some fear!

Great set, I was very pleased with it and I hope the rest are as good. I started the Invisible Man set a couple days ago, still working on the first movie. Never really watched this one before, but Claude Rains has a wicked voice, lots of fun listening to his evil schemes.

Work work work

What a day. I went to work early to get some leftovers done from Friday and as soon as 8:00am rolled around, people started calling me. And they kept calling me for pretty well the whole day; no breaks, no lunch. It was brutal, and to make matters worse I got this damn cold I picked up on Friday. I'm all sniffly and shit. Oh well, it's over and I got some lasagna in the oven. Mmmm, that will be good.

Friday the 13th The Series

I've been watching this television show lately, it airs just before I go to work, on Scream. What's great is that even if I miss a bit of the show, it re-airs just as I usually get back from work. Cool.

The show ran for three seasons ['87 - '90] and it is very much a precursor to shows like Buffy and the X-Files. The funny thing is, I never watched this show when it first aired for the same reason I never watched Buffy - I thought the movie[s] sucked. This TV series has nothing to do with the movie though, at least plotwise. Frank Mancuso jr. was the creator behind this show and he also made the Friday the 13th movies. There was supposed to be a tie-in with the movie at some point, but it never happened. I guess the title was supposed to draw in the horror fans.

What's great about this show are the plots, very twilight zone type of stuff. And the three leads are very good. [Holy shit did Mickey ever have BIG HAIR in the early episodes, very 80s] Having said that, it is a very low budget show and it shows. Very, very cheezy at times, but that's what makes it so much fun.

I just finished watching the two-parter "The Quilt of Hathor". That's right, the big bad is an ancient, accursed quilt. What could be more harrowing? The plot basically involves this quilt having magical properties that enable a person sleeping under the quilt to kill people through their dreams. The thing is, this quilt is wreaking havoc at a Pennitite colony. [guess they didn't want to get sued by Mennonites] And hilarity ensues. I mean this thing has a big pentagram sewn into it and this Pennitite lady is saying she thought there was something wrong with it. Lol, no shit, why would a religious person buy something like that in the first place? The men have these beards that you can plainly see are pieces of string with hair attached. You should hear the dialogue, it is so funny, all thee and thou, really bad. "Witchcraft in this town? Neeeeeever!" At the end, Ryan is chasing down the town elder who has been using the quilt to kill people. So what does he do? He drops to the floor, wraps the quilt around himself and begins to fall asleep and dream furiously! Has to be one of the funniest things I've ever seen on TV. Then they are both struggling for the quilt and the elder's daughter screams "Let it go!" So Ryan does, and the evil Pennitite goes flying out the third-floor window and does this wicked flip in the air before plunging to his death, clutching the Quilt of Hathor. Just classic.

So yeah, check this one out if you ever get the chance. It did have some interesting people involved. David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan and David Morse [???] all directed episodes. Sarah Polley and Jill Hennessy also make appearances. I really hope they put the whole series out on DVD someday, I'd buy it.