There are a few moments in everyone's lives that define them; even set them down the path they are supposed to follow.
Picture, if you will, a six year old girl who wants nothing more than to be hanging out with her older brothers (oh, and maybe she also desperately wants a kitten). Against all odds she convinces them to take her along with their group of friends to the movies (I honestly don't know how this part happened. Did the boys cave to her pleading? Did her mom say "go do something with your sister"? Can anyone lend insight to this?).
What they chose, in their infinite wisdom, was a triple feature of horror films. They told their mother that they were taking her to a Shirkey Temple triple feature. I'm stumped as to how the mother bought this. Did she REALLY think her boys would sit through 6 hours of that precocious little moppet? With their teenage friends??
Seriously, sometimes I think I grew up in the Twilight Zone. Or a sitcom.
Okay, enough Rod Serling.
The truth is I ended up sitting on my brother John's lap the whole time. I was also convinced that Dracula lived in our backyard under the fake fountain. Our mom was PISSED.
So for this post, I'm going to re-watch the films I saw on that fateful day! I thought about trying to make my experience as authentic as possible, but at this stage of our lives, I'm pretty sure I'd be more apt to snap my brother's femur than look adorable sitting in his lap.
So let's just start.
Dracula Has Risen From the Grave - released in 1968
I have a specific memory from each film I saw that day These images have stayed with me for many, many years. My Dracula memory was a dead woman's torso falling out of a church bell upside down; two drips of blood slowly meandering down her neck toward her chin. Imagine my surprise that this shot is actually in this film! Right at the beginning, too!
As an adult, I can tell you - this is a pretty awful movie. I mean, it's a Hammer Film, so you already know that the blood is going to look like bright red food coloring (check!) and there will be a lot of it (check!). I was reading up a bit about the production company. Hammer was kind of ahead of their time in the Gothic Horror movie realm, although it appears that even the internal folks were like "yeesh, these movies have A LOT of violence in them!" What I certainly didn't realize as a 6 year old movie novice (horror or otherwise), is that the acting is TERRIBLE. I'm talking really, really bad. There is a "mute boy" who couldn't look more like he doesn't know how to act without speaking, and the (sort of) hero is a douchey English chap with a decidedly Roger Daltrey look to him. SO 60's. Everyone's makeup is thick with a weird gray shadowing, too, which is disconcerting.
Christopher Lee, of course, plays Drac. He only has about 5 lines in the whole film and there are a LOT of shots of his bloodshot red eyes. I have this issue, too, Drac. It's called Dry Eye. My fantastic optometrist, Dr. Carrie Lee, would suggest you use Refresh drops daily. Seriously, you clearly have a pretty advanced case, dude. Do yourself a favor and don't wear your contacts for so many hours in a row.
I'd try to tell you about the story, but there really wasn't one. There's a Monsignor who's trying to save a village from Dracula but accidentally unearths him. There's a super wimpy priest who ends up being Dracula's new Renfield and naturally the busty barmaid is the first to get bit. Christopher Lee gets to overact heartily in his death scene, so I guess all the elements are there. I was really hoping he'd turn into a bat at some point, but no such luck.
(My drink pairing for this film is a Bloody Mary. Duh!)
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed - released in 1969
6 year old Sue remembers this scene: It's the end. There is a big fire in the house that Frankenstein lives in and the monster and the doctor are fighting. Someone stabs the monster with a butter knife! Ouch! Who knew butter knives were so lethal?? Everyone dies.
Okay. So now I've watched this as an adult for the first time since I was 6. At some point in my teens or early 20's, I realized that what I thought was a butter knife was, in fact, a scalpel. And the actual "scene" is more like 4 or 5 that blended together in my young mind. So our sort-of heroine stabs (non-lethally) the monster about 15 minutes before the end of the film. He is a sensitive monster, of course. We all know that Frankenstein-the-doctor is the actual monster. His creation didn't ASK to be created and in every incarnation of the story he feels pretty gypped by the whole deal. It constantly impresses me that Mary Shelley wrote the original story in the 1816, all because she and her privileged friends were bored one summer. Go Mary! I think she won that contest! Also, it's lauded as the first true science fiction novel. Score one for the females!
Anyway, post stabbing, our monster in this film goes around and talks to his wife and tries to be philosophical and stuff. 6 year old Sue probably only heard "blah blah blah" when the monster was all weepy at his wife about what happened to him. Even at a young age, I bet I was like "Quit your whining, let's move this shit along". Eventually there is a big fire but all the butter knife (scalpel) hullaballoo was way over. Not sure what I was thinking, but I'm gonna cut myself some slack because I was SIX and it was the last 10 minutes of the third movie in a row.
Upon adult viewing, I'll say that this movie was a lot more exciting than Hammer's above Dracula offering. There is a lot of violence in this film, actually, and not the kind you would expect. Peter Cushing plays Baron Frankenstein and he's super fucked up. There is actually a rape scene where he attacks the sort-of heroine.
The Cliff Notes version of this story is the Baron and his science buddy were doing all sorts of awful experiments on people and the buddy went crazy. The Baron essentially kidnaps a young doctor (also with a decidedly 60's Mod look) and his fiance (our sort-of heroine), blackmailing them because they've been dealing illegal drugs (wha?) that the doctor stole from the asylum he works at (um, ok.). The asylum houses the ex-buddy. The Baron transfers the ex-buddy's brain to another body when he dies and hilarity ensues.
This movie is very dark and kind of well written. The acting, again, leaves A LOT to be desired, but Peter Cushing is pretty much awesome. I kept expecting him to give the orders to fire when ready on Alderaan, but maybe that's just me. And, to his credit, it actually appears that he ate a sandwich or two during the 60's, although you could still slice or dice something with those crazy cheekbones. In fact, this was made only a handful of years before Star Wars, so perhaps he did some Weight Watchers or juice cleanses before filming commenced in order to look exactly like a skeleton.
(My drink pairing for this film is a Starbuck's Franken Frappuccino...apparently only available from the 29th thru the 31st. http://www.foodbeast.com/
SHE - released in 1965
Here's another one where my memory seemed so clear but wasn't quite on the mark. The scene I remember is an immortal prince walking thru fire and aging more each time he passes through the flames. Eventually he becomes a skeleton and disintegrates. That's not exactly what happens in this movie (in fact, I'm pretty sure I saw that exact scene in a different movie...maybe a Harryhausen film?). I also remember being excited about this movie because SHE are my initials, so in little kid self absorption I was positive I was gonna like this one! This was the second film of the three, a bit of a breather film. For a long while it seemed pretty innocuous, there's a lot of exposition and a bit of a "love" story. In the end, I tbink this one scared me too, though.
Upon adult viewing, I'd be surprised if 6 year old Sue didn't sleep through most of this movie. There is an interminable amount of time where our hero and his friends cross a desert. Just get there already! It went on for so long that I got dehydrated just watching the film!
It's another In the Hammer oeuvre (although that's a lofty word for what Hammer does); an adaptation of the H. Rider Haggard story. Apparently old H wrote a ton of stuff and hung out with Rudyard Kipling, but is really only known for two stories: SHE and King Solomon's Mines. Judging by this story, I'm guessing H has some issues around women. SHE is really called She Who Must Be Obeyed and honestly she's pretty much a c*nt. Ursula Andress plays SHE in all her gorgeousness and bitchiness. Hammer favorites Petrr Cushing and Christopher Lee are in this as well. Christopher Lee gets another fantasticly over-acted death scene and Peter Cushing gets some nice ironic overshadowing by saying the line "Nothing is gained by fear and terror." SO not the philosophy of Grand Moff Tarkin.
The basic story is that SHE is immortal and searching for her long dead love. She finds the guy's doppelgänger centuries later and hypnotizes him to come to her in the desert. There is also the possibility of treasure, so his war buddies accompany him. Through the desert. For like 15 or 20 minutes of film. Zzzz. The hero is pretty much a douche (a Hammer hero theme) and not only falls for SHE but also messes around with a slave girl. He discovers that SHE killed the original dude in a crime of passion (TOTAL C U Next Tuesday move). The modern douche totally thinks with his dick, so apparently this doesn't concern him too much. He gets caught smooching the slave and so SHE kills the slave and makes him immortal in this crazy fire that becomes magic only once in a great while (she's been alone a LONG time and clearly makes poor choices). She also goes in the fire, but apparently no one told her that going in the fire a second time reverses the immortal effects. Oops. It turn out she is the one who stands in the fire and quickly ages until she's a pile of dust. The modern douche realizes that thinking solely with the little head usually ends up badly and vows to watch the flame until he gets an opportunity to reverse his own immortality.
In the end, it never would have worked anyway. SHE wanted everlasting love and he just wanted to get laid.
(My drink pairing for this film is a Flaming Zombie, because it's alcohol, it's on fire and it's Halloween!)
My takeaways:
#1- A Hammer Film triple feature and a Shirley Temple triple feature could not be more polar opposites.
#2- I forgot to mention, there is a belly dance scene in SHE! Peter Cushing even gets up to dance with the girls!! It's like the Skeleton Dance in Silly Symphonies!
#3- If anyone is ever on Wunderlich Dr in San Jose, will you check and see how Dracula is doing in my old backyard?
xoxo...hashtagSueslife
