The Most Amazingly Bad Horror Films Ever Made

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Poster Design: The Art of Horror

Before you go into a movie theatre, what is usually the first thing you see as you go in? The movie posters lining the walls, which are supposed to attract you inside, of course. In today's world, computers have made graphic design such an easy task, but before you could make art with a few clicks of a mouse, most of these posters were hand-drawn, completely created by the designers from scratch to make beautiful works of art. Since horror is the topic of the month, I'm going to focus on two horror artists in particular: Reynold Brown and Saul Bass.

Saul Bass is probably most famous for the designing of several Hitchcock movie posters including Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho. He also worked on two drama posters for The Man with the Golden Arm and Anatomy of a Murder. Bass did some famous non-horror posters as well, such as the ones for Carmen Jones, Around the World in Eighty Days, The Seven Year Itch and The Big Country. Bass's career spanned forty years and in addition to posters, he also did film title sequences and company logos. Bass worked for such legendary directors as Hitchcock, Kubrick, Sorcsese and Preminger. His posters all have a unique style to them.

Another famous artist who did several horror posters is Reynold Brown. Brown's posters were wide range from different genres, ages, and success levels. Many of his beautifully done posters are b-movies, though the posters themselves are Grade A. His posters include ones done for Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Pit and the Pendulum, House on Haunted Hill, Tarantula, I Was A Teenage Werewolf, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, and The Time Machine. Some of his famous non-horror posters include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Spartacus, Ben-Hur, King of Kinds, How the West Was Won, Mutiny on the Bounty, and The Alamo.

In the past few decades, collecting vintage film memorabilia, especially these posters, has become an incredibly competitive commercial market. Many such

posters are extremely rare and it is common for people to screen printer illegal or unlicensed copies of them to sell. To date, the most expensive movie poster sold on record was the one made for Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which sold to a collector for $690,000. Serious collectors are willing to drop some major cash in order to add to their collection, but that doesn't mean you can't see these beautiful works of art for yourself.

I have found several websites that have excellent online galleries and stores for you to buy posters (both actual and replicas), if any of you are interested. Cinemacom.com has a wonderful collection of beautiful posters that you can view for free in their online galleries.

Cinemasterpieces.com buys, sells, and auctions posters, but you can look at them online for free. The site Hammerhorrorposters.com has several horror posters for you to view, histories of the posters, and is a great resource if you want to know more about the posters or collecting them. Movie posters even have their own awards, the Key Art Awards sponsored by The Hollywood Reporter on the internet is the Internet Movie Poster Awards (IMP Awards) and here you can view several award nominated and revered poster artists.

"When the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright"

Perhaps the most famous werewolf story and certainly the one that has had the most cultural impact on our society in the past sixty years, The Wolf Man is one of those quintessential horror flicks that everyone needs to watch. I could not find the film in its entirity, but a YouTube user has the entire film posted, albeit divided into seven parts. You can watch the movie starting with the first part here.

Released in 1941 by Universal, the film had an all-star cast, including Claude Rains, Bela Lugosi reprising his famous vampiric role, and none other than the great Lon Chaney Jr. in perhaps some of the most famous and tediously applied stage make up ever. Everyone knows the famous quote from the movie, "Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright", as well as the additions to the werewolf lore that than can only be killed by a silver bullet, a silver knife, or a stick with a silver handle.

I will sum up the story of The Wolf Man, since most of you know it already. Larry Talbot (Chaney) returns home after the death of his brother to his home in Wales and reconcile with his father (Claude Rains). While there, he buys a silver staff with a wolf for his sweetheart, Gwen (Evelyn Ankers). The villagers recite the wolf poem several times throughout the course of the movie following Gwen informing Larry of the myth and first recitation of the poem. That night, in an attempt to save Gwen's friend Jenny, Larry kills a wolf but is bitten first. A gypsy fortuneteller living in the woods tells him it was not a wolf but a werewolf and now he will become one too. The animal, she says, was actually her son Bela (Lugosi). Now that the curse has been passed to Larry, he must deal with the supernatural forces taking a hold of him.

The werewolf fur Chaney used in his make up was actually yak hair. A plaster mold was made to keep Chaney's face still as his image was photographed then an outline was drawn on glass in front of the camera. The make up wizard behind the monsters, Jack Pierce, used grease paint, a rubber snout appendage, wigs, and glued layers of the yak hair to create the Wolf Man character. This process was repeated over and over again over a period of ten hours to create an image that only took a few seconds on screen. Seventeen face shots were made and it took six hours to put on Chaney's make up though only three to take it off.

The Wolf Man is in the great pantheon of early horror and creature films, along with such other notable classics as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, King Kong, Godzilla, and The Invisible Man. The website classic-horror.com has done a great review of The Wolf Man, which you can find here, though word of caution, it does contain spoilers. I would highly recommend that you check out this movie when you can make the time since its legacy continues to live on.

"I am Dracula..." And So Much More

Even in today's Hollywood, few stars can say they hold an iconic or cult position in mainstream culture. When you first hear the word "Dracula" or "vampire", most do not think of the hideous creature of Nosferatu. Modern followers of vampire lore think of the suave, well-dressed sophisticate who mixes his lust for blood with an almost romantic aura about himself. The idea of the romantic vampire comes to us not from literature, but from one man who will forever be identified as the creator of the modern vampire ideal: Bela Lugosi. The Lugosi version of the famed vampire has penetrated our culture in the way the way the vampire Dracula's own fangs penetrated his victims. Ironically, Lugosi's Dracula bit no one on camera and left no bite marks on any necks.

Born in what was at the time Austria-Hungary and now Romania, Bela had an unusual rise to stardom. He served in the army during World War I for the Austro-Hungarian army and then branched into Shakespeare on stage and films in Hungary and Germany. He illegally immigrated to the US in 1920 and then legally gained entrance in 1921. He married a San Franciscan socialite only to be divorced three weeks later after an affair with famed silent film flapper and "It" girl, Clara Bow. Bela received his studio contract with MGM after the death of Lon Chaney and had his first commercial success with Dracula.

The original Dracula was billed with the slogan: "The story of the strangest passion the world has ever known". The film itself was released on Valentine's Day of 1931, which some might consider a little ironic for a horror film. Lugosi delivers his lines in the movie with a wonderful accent that portrays the foreignness of the creature in a way no American-born actor could have. So many of his famous phrases such as "Listen to them, the children of the night, what music they make" and "I never drink wine" have become so intertwined with our culture that we know them before many of us even know Lugosi was the famed actor who created the modern version of Dracula. Unfortunately, many people know little of Lugosi past his infamous role as the vampire defeated by Van Helsing.

Accent and appearance type cast Bela into the mysterious European, usually of some sort of supernatural or otherworldly origin. Because of changes in Hollywood, Bela's success wavered and he was soon resigned to doing B-movies and taking roles less than suited to a man of his talents. He delved into drug use and became so obscure, many thought he was already dead. His last major motion picture was Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, where he recreated the role that made him famous. After this, he began doing less and less work in film.

However, Bela's career was reserected by notoriously strange cult director Ed Wood, a major fan of Bela's, hired him to do work in his famous B-movies. In 1959, Bela died of a heart attack in the midst of filming Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space, causing Wood to replace him with a thinner, non-accented lookalike. The brave or mildly curious of you can watch Plan 9 here if you like, though it is often listed among the worst films ever made due to Bela's untimely death and replacement, not to mention Wood's directorial... skills... On request of his wife, Bela was buried wearing his vampire costume, further adding to his legend.

In addition, two other public domain movies of Bela's are available online for those who want to watch as well. The 1932 White Zombie is a great horror film and one of Bela's last "A" pictures. It can be found here. The full length version of the 1939 serial The Phantom Creeps, is more on the B-movie side and you can decide for yourself whether it is good or bad, since opinions tend to vary on this picture. It was featured in Mystery Science Theater 3000, if that gives you any indications about anything at all. Those of you who want to see The Phantom Creeps can view it here. I highly recommend checking out Bela's other films if you have time, good, bad, and ugly, just to get a broad sense of his acting spectrum.

Creating an icon like Bela Lugosi's Dracula is something very few can claim to have done. Our modern image of the vampire comes directly from this character he created and he has influenced more popular culture in America than perhaps he ever intended to. The man was even given his own stamp by the US Postal Service as part of the monster movie collection, a honor few people have ever had. We owe a lot to this Eastern European actor who spawned not only a cult following but a culture.

All Hail the King

In the genre of Creature/Monster movies, perhaps none is more famous than the legendary King Kong.

Everyone knows the classic King Kong story of director Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) hiring an unsuspected Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) to star in his latest exotic feature. Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot), the handsome first mate of the ship Denham has hired suspects Denham is up to something, at the same time falling in love with the beautiful Darrow. When they come to the exotic island, Ann is used as bait to attract the monstrous Kong, and they bring the creature back to New York City. When Kong is put on display to be gaped at and entertain the wealthy citizens of New York, Kong breaks free, taking Darrow, and taking his climactic climb up to the top of the Chrysler Building, the tallest tree in the largest urban jungle of the world. When Kong is shot down, the audience starts to wonder who is more the monster: Kong or modern man. The last line of the film, "It was beauty killed the beast", speaks volumes as to its intent.

Perhaps the old claymation and inconsistency in Kong's size through the course of the film is very prevalent to modern audiences, but we must keep in mind that this is the movie from 1933, before the use of CGI and computer animation as in the recent version of the film by Peter Jackson. An article by AmericanHeritage.com details how King Kong is "the greatest special-effects movie was made with the simplest technology". If you want to know more about the amazing special effects used in this movie to create the monstrous Kong in the same frames as the actors, I would recommend reading this article which fully explores the filmography and effects used to make this movie one of the most memorable ever made.

In modern times, King Kong may not seem as relevant as it once did, especially considering the original audience had members running shrieking from the theatres in the fear that Kong would leap off the screen and abduct them too. Of course, any history of film is incomplete without exploring the effects King Kong had on film both in the time and its evolution to the medium it is today. Without the influence of the effects in King Kong, we would not have the techniques used in Star Wars or Jurrasic Park and creating the creature movie culture, enabling such films as The Blob and Creature from the Black Lagoon.

If you're a big King Kong fan, I recommend going to Kong is King.com, which bills itself as the ultimate Kong fansite, devoting itself to every aspect of the movie. If you're just a buff of creature movies and want to know more about Kong or any of his others monstrous companions, I would go to Silent Movie Monsters, which devotes itself to everything creature. Ultimately, everyone should see King Kong just to have the cultural experience of viewing the 1933 classic. Love it, hate it, or watching it again just for the laughs, Kong manages to remain culturally significant, even seventy years after it first was shown on the silver screen.