ADORESIXTYFOUR

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Shocktober 10/31/12

Another Shocktober crawls back in its grave and closes its coffin lid, only to arise again next year.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Of all of the Universal monsters, the Creature from the Black Lagoon has always been my favorite.

Aside from being the coolest looking of the bunch, he also had an organic believability that Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster just didn't. I could believe such an animal existed--and, for however brief a time, I did believe not only that he existed, but that he lived in the lagoon in nearby Humboldt Park. (Well, it was a lagoon, and the water was murky enough to be black...the logic of a 10-year-old.)

The novel pictured above was written for the original movie's premiere in England in 1954 but, for whatever reason, was not published in America until a couple of years ago. It seemed appropriate for the waning days before All Hallow's Eve.

On the Way to Work This Morning

Shocktober 10/30/12

A strange byproduct of the studio system of the golden age of Hollywood was the miscasting of actors in roles they were never meant to play, especially in horror films: Carole Lombard in Supernatural; Humphrey Bogart in The Return of Doctor X; Spencer Tracy in Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde.

These aren't necessarily bad films--each is interesting in its own way--but they're all exceedingly odd as well.

Not quite as odd, though, as Lon Chaney Jr. cast as Count Dracula in Son of Dracula.

The role of Dracula had been played at Universal before with formal menace by Bela Lugosi and would be played later with booming Shakespearian authority by John Carradine, and both were still active at the studio, at least in supporting roles. But they chose to cast Chaney anyway, even though he would rather have played the lead role in the remake of his father's greatest hit, Phantom of the Opera.

Universal's casting of Chaney Jr. as the world's most famous vampire makes a slight bit of sense when you consider that, by this point in his career, he'd already played the Wolf Man, Frankenstein and the Mummy. However, the role required a level of suave sophistication that Chaney simply did not possess.

It's a credit to Director Robert Siodmak (his brother Curt wrote the screenplay) and cinematographer George Robinson that, through mood and clever use of effects and sets, Son of Dracula is a successful horror film in spite of Chaney, not because of him.