ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Below are two posts about some famously creepy houses, and one about an LA event that shook up tinsel town.

I double-dog dare you to finb some interesting comments to add to all three threads! If you don't, everybody will thinking you're chicken!
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House of Frankenstein (1944)

The Mad Dr. Brewster strikes again! Here's what I came up after your fine review refreshed my memory (and rebooted my brain).

When you mentioned the irate villages who fear that monsters moving into their neighbor will lower the property values, I suddenly got a mental image of a town meeting in which the citizens formed a volunteer Monster Fighting Squad (sort of like a volunteer fire department).

When a bell is rung in the town square, the MFS reports for duty on the double! Inside their official headquarters they rush past a long rack on the wall and snatch their monster-fighting gear — clubs, racks, hoes, reapers, axes, pitchforks . . . and of course, torches which are all primed and ready to light!

A big map on the wall shows all the known trouble spots in the valley: Frankenstein's laboratory, Dracula's castle, the graveyard where the damn bodies just won't stay dead, etc.

The Chief MFS Coordinator would be standing at the map, pointing to the location where he's already hung on a marker that shows where e trouble is brewing. The MFS lookouts posted in the tall church steeple have reported things like flashing lights in the tower laboratory, horrible screams from the castle, a plethora of overturned gravestones you-know-where.

The torches are lit, the squad assembles in the courtyard, and the order is given.

"Let's go, men! Don't forget to make with those angry shouts! And you guys with the torches — don't bunch up the middle this time and catch people's hear on fire again!"

Yes, indeed . . . I loved to see a Universal horror movie where the folks really got things organized and gave those damn monsters a taste of the own medicine!

So to speak . . .



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House of Dracula (1945)

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I found a nice trivia item for this movie on IMDB.
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Actor Glenn Strange suffered greatly during the shooting of the scene in which the Frankenstein Monster is discovered in quicksand.

After sitting for three hours in the makeup chair each morning, having his makeup applied by Jack P. Pierce, Strange would spend the rest of the day buried in cold liquid mud (which doubled for the quicksand). "Then everybody else went out for lunch," Strange recalled. "By the time they came back, I was so cold, I could barely feel my legs."

Strange's co-star, Lon Chaney Jr., suggested that Strange use alcohol to keep himself warm. Throughout the day, Chaney passed a bottle of whiskey to Strange in between takes. By the end of the day, Strange recalled, he was so drunk he could barely dress himself after removing his monster makeup and costume.
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Ah-HA! So THAT'S why the monster walks like a drunk and never speaks! He's stewed!
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Earthquake (1974)

Captain Spike, I pride myself on being pretty good at winning debates . . . but I'm equally good as admitting when I'm wrong.

My motto is: "If you win, be a good winner — but if you loose, be a good looser. That way, no mater what, your good!"

The trailer below has shown me that I've short-changed this movie . . . both its special effects and it's drama!

However, I certainly never doubted its cast. I'm a Charlton Heston fan, a Lorne Green fan, a George Kennedy fan, an Ava Gardner fan, and a Victoria Principal fan.

I guess my preference for San Andreas (which you disliked for reasons you described quite well in your reply on that thread) is due in part to the passionate artist in me.

Great CGI (which San Andreas offers a banquet of) is nothing less than "moving artwork", which is carefully crafted by skilled artist who agonized over every detail to make the thousands of gorgeous images we see in the movie!

In all fairness, I freely confess that practical special effects — model work in particular — can also create artwork. But with those kinds of FX, the artist has much less control over the result. When it turns out well, there's always an element of luck to it!

Admittedly there's nothing wrong with that. But frankly, the artist gets a bit less credit as a result.

On the flip side of his idea, Disney's Fantastia is pure artwork. Every millimeter is hand crafted!

Naturally, I'm not saying San Andreas is the Fantastia of the new millennium. But it did combine an equal amount of pure art with — to me — a wonderful story about a family who fought to survive a terrible disaster while struggling heroically to get back together!

In short . . . I laughed, I cried, and I cheered when they survived! (Damn, that almost rhymes. I guess I'm a poet, too!)

To be honest, that kind of "heroic rescue" story appeals to me more than a movie in which Marjoe Gortner tries to rape Victoria Principal in the ruins of Los Angeles.

If you should happen to read my short stories and the published novels I've posted here on All Sci-Fi, you'll quickly see that I'm a cockeyed optimist, a guy whose just as corny as Kansas in Autumn!

~ Special thanks to Rodgers and Hammerstein for that line.

____________ Earthquake 1974 Updated Trailer


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)