Look, I know I’ve been badly burned before when it comes to remaking classic horror, and the cinematic road to bringing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the screen has often been paved with both hell and good intentions. More often than not, the monster’s not the only thing that’s been poorly stitched together.
But this time it feels different.
Which I know has likely cursed this entire endeavor, but here we go.
“Hey!” (you say to yourself). “I wonder what Bob has been watching? It’s been since May. Well, dear reader, I can’t leave you unfocused on our Monday work day, so let’s take a look, shall we? And – Gasp! – it’s all current stuff. How about that? And this is all spoiler free.
BALLARD
Michael Connelly writes the Bosch books, which spawned a terrific, gritty, seven season streaming series. HIGHLY recommended watch. Bosch an LAPD homicide detective, underwent a career change, which is the subject of the succeeding series, Bosch: Legacy. That lasted three seasons. All of this stuff has been taken from the novels. In the final episode of Legacy, an LAPD detective named Renee Ballard (also from a Connelly book series) plays a central part. And that’s because she’s the star of her own new series on Prime.
It goes without saying that I have to include Del Toro’s love-letter to kaiju flicks on this list, and this one, being the first in a patchy franchise, ticks all the boxes.
Giant, horrible monsters? Check.
Colossal, clunky robots (loosely speaking)? Check
Citywide destruction? Check.
Ron Perlman? Check and check.
I don’t have kids — and while that decision might be rooted in all sorts of deep psychological selfishness, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that horror movies had at least a tiny role in it. You know what I’m talking about: the blank stares, the sing-song voices in the dark, the slow-motion head tilts, and the uncanny way they just know things no normal human should. From the twin terrors of The Shining, to the pale, whispery menace of The Ring’s Samara, to the pint-sized creeper in The Omen: kids in horror are often less adorable munchkins and more pint-sized portals to pure nightmare fuel. So, when I first heard the premise of Zach Cregger’s upcoming film Weapons, I got a full-body chill and immediately put the release date on my calendar. Because this time, it’s not just one creepy kid.
It’s seventeen of them.
All standing up in the middle of the night.
All walking into the darkness.
All vanishing.
It’s getting hard to remember in this time of home streaming, but in the glory days of Hollywood, the great studios (each of which had a recognizable house style and its own particular areas of cinematic expertise) poured forth a seemingly endless river of movies in every genre you could think of, many of which have seeped so far into our subconscious as to become permanent parts of our collective culture.
Merely to name these studios and genres is to instantly summon iconic images; the MGM musical — Gene Kelly swinging around a streetlamp in the pouring rain, Astaire and Charisse dancing in the dark across a stylized Manhattan park; the John Ford western — John Wayne closing the door on hearth and home to walk alone into the desolate beauty of Monument Valley; the Warner Brothers Gangster picture — Cagney and Robinson and Bogart sneering, snarling, shooting, dying; the Universal monster movie — Karloff and Lugosi slowly stalking their victims, as implacable, as inevitable as death itself; the film noir — darkened big-city streets slick with mist and moral ambiguity; the women’s picture — Davis and Crawford and Stanwyck, selflessly sacrificing themselves for husbands and children unworthy of them, their faces glowing with the glory and agony of unrequited motherhood; the screwball comedy — Claudette Colbert bringing a car to a screeching halt by pulling up her skirt and showing some leg…
There’s something missing from this list, though, isn’t there? You bet there is, and few genres are as rich in indelible moments and images as the science fiction films of the 1950’s.
Good afterevenmorn, Readers! And also watchers, this case.
It’s been a bit of a rough time for me of late and so, deciding that staying home and moping was not going to help me at all, I took myself out on a date. I went to the movies to watch the newest Superman. I loved the movie, but I’m not here to provide an in-depth review, rather, I’d like to reflect on the core of the character of James Gunn’s Superman and how it was, surprisingly, precisely what my heart needed in this moment.
Let me go pour myself a whiskey and settle in.
Okay. I’m good. Let’s go.
“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.”
– Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.
Hard to believe it’s been almost fifteen years since AMC debuted a gritty new western, Hell on Wheels. In November of 2011, Justified had completed two seasons, and suddenly I had two favorite shows. Back then television shows aired weekly, not in multiple episode ‘drops.’ and they weren’t available on-demand. You watched them when they aired or recorded them on your DVR. I would actually sit and watch both those shows every week, ‘live.’
MILD SPOILERS
I’m not gonna blatantly drop stuff, but don’t get mad if you can infer something from this post. The show’s been out there for fifteen years. Go watch it!
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Grizzly (Columbia Pictures, May 16, 1976) and The White Buffalo (United Artists, May 6, 19779)
Following the 1975 movie phenomenon about a hungry fish, a bunch of large animal flicks reared their heads in an effort to take a bite out of the box office.
One of them was Grizzly, a tale as old as time about an 18ft prehistoric bear that develops a taste for campers and rangers. One man tries to warn everyone, is shot down by the authorities, and recruits some specialists to help hunt it down. Yes, Grizzy was indeed compared unfavorably to Jaws, and rightly so, but I still love it.
In a slight deviation from our usual fare, for this list I am simply highlighting my favorite monster movies. So, no first time watches, and I’m not sure how many of these are still free to stream (but I suspect most of them if you are good at exploring). Also there are 21 films in this list, in no particular order, because I’m feeling saucy.
Let’s go!
Let’s get the histrionics out of the way. Yes, I’m choosing this over the 1933 original, but that’s not to say that I don’t love the Merian C. Cooper/Ernest B. Schoedsack/Willis O’Brien classic. For nostalgic reasons, that film will always hold a special place, but for sheer entertainment value, I’m choosing Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ love letter to the monster mashes of old.
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The Curse (Trans World Entertainment, September 11, 1987) and In the Tall Grass (Netflix, October 4, 2019)
Yes, a new watch-a-thon, featuring me, a hopeless procrastinator, plumbing the depths of cinematic misery for your entertainment.
This time around, I will be watching Lovecraftian and Lovecraftian-adjacent films, and as usual they must be films I’ve never seen before (which makes the task trickier and bound for disaster).
If you don’t know anything about Lovecraft’s writings, cosmic horror, the Mythos, or Cthulhu, panic not. Onwards!
Directed by David Keith (no, the other one), The Curse is a slightly faithful adaptation of ‘The Color Out of Space,’ just without any, um, colors.