Dark Shadows: Episode 456

I like this episode where Naomi and Vicky discuss Vicky's killing Gifford as he tried to strangle Daniel in the graveyard. First, Vicky accidentally calls him David, but quickly corrects herself, then Naomi does the same thing. 

I love the hair and costumes used during the 1795 story line. Naomi's dresses are so beautiful. She looks like she's dressed for a ball every day. She's so brave in her confrontations and power struggle with the greedy, scheming Nathan Forbes and in opening Barnabus' coffin that she finds in the tower room, thanks to the cruel Nathan. What mysteries await in the tower!

I can't wait to see karma take care of Forbes!

Being Human (UK) Season 1, Episode 1

Being Human (UK) was ranked the #2 best vampire TV show in an article on metacritic.com so as I had a craving for vampires, I found it on Hulu and watched the first episode. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was listed as #1, but I've already seen all the episodes of Buffy; not recently, but I've seen them. I was tempted to watch them all again because I love that show, but I need to expand my horizons and try new things. 

The first episode of Being Human (UK) is really good and, like The Walking Dead, drew me right in, so I'll definitely watch the remaining 35 episodes. I didn't think it was that scary until I left the room to use the bathroom and expected werewolves and vampires to jump out of the dark corners of the house and accost me on my way by. Obviously, I thought wrong! The most horrific scene was when Annie watched George transform into a werewolf. It seemed so realistic and the expression on her face when the wolf came toward her when she called his name made it even more frightening.

The comedy balances out the horror, sadness and regret that goes along with being dead people trying to live a "normal" human life alongside live humans. George's nervous response to Owen the landlord, and ghost roommate Annie's fiance, when he asked George to explain the noise upstairs was hilarious. The writing and the acting in this show is really good. I hope the rest of the series is just as good as the first episode!

Wayward Pines: Season 1, Episode 1

I'm a little disappointed that this show, as seen on Hulu, isn't about the supernatural. Since I haven't read the books I didn't know what to expect. It seems more like The Village in reverse, in that instead of people choosing to isolate themselves from the real world by making a new society, the new society abducts people into it. Is it where the U.S. government puts used up employees out to pasture?

After showing us the security wall, after Ethan (Matt Dillon) drives around in circles in a failed attempt to leave town, I don't think there's anything supernatural about it, but the story seems like more of a conspiracy situation. The scenery is pretty cool, the cast is good and, of course, there's executive producer M. Night Shyamalan.

One example of cool scenery is the creepy rotting house that Beverly (Juliet Lewis) sends Ethan to where he finds the dead missing secret service agent. The close-up shots of him walking up the dusty, rickety steps and entering as light flows in through the holey roof with his cut-up face and blackened eyes was pretty intense. 

Another cool scene is Ethan coming out of sedation in the old neglected cemetery. It was dusty and leaf strewn and the iron gates were leaning and crooked. It made me think that's how the Collins Mausoleum would have looked if the original 1960s TV show Dark Shadows had had a bigger budget.

I'm a tree lover, so I really enjoy the woodsy scenery, even though in Wayward Pines the normally peaceful place of beauty seems to be turned into a maximum security prison. I might continue watching. What do you think?

Dark Shadows: Angelique Transforms Joshua into a Cat!

Ben and Angelique have a lot of fun in Episode 378 as they put their heads together to keep Jeremiah from leaving town and spoiling Angelique's scheme of having him fall in love with Josette and prevent Josette and Barnabus from marrying.

Ben hates doing Angelique's dirty work because he wants to be loyal to Barnabus and Jeremiah, but when Angelique decides to turn her black magic toward the cruel patriarch, Joshua Collins, Ben is all for it. 

It's funny when they sit in Angelique's room deciding what she will transform Joshua into that will make the family believe he is missing and cause Jeremiah to cancel his travels and stay home to fill in for Joshua at work.Ben wants Joshua to become a jackass so he can force him to clear rocks from the property and whip him to move faster. He'd love to have revenge for all the harsh working conditions Joshua has forced on him in the past. 

Ben laughs and laughs (I love his laugh!) while Angelique admires her handiwork as they look at the clay cat Angelique shaped. At the same time Jeremiah turns from the window while speaking to Joshua to find Joshua has disappeared and there's a strange cat in his place!

If Joshua Collins was my domineering and dictator older brother, I'd be glad to be rid of him myself. Does anyone in the house actually like him?

Lee Van Cleef As Dracula?

Last night I watched a film-noir movie on Hulu called Kansas City Confidential (1952). I watched it because I saw Coleen Gray's obituary the other day that described her as a popular film-noir actress, so I searched her name on Hulu and came up with two movies: Kansas City Confidential and The Phantom Planet (1961). I was hoping for The Leech Woman (1960) but it wasn't an option. I chose Kansas City Confidential because I like film-noir.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a young Lee Van Cleef as one of the main characters and wearing a suit! I'm used to seeing him in westerns, especially the spaghetti western The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966). Seeing him looking all bad-ass and in a suit, I wondered why he had never played Dracula. He would have made a really good Dracula with his piercing eyes and sharp features that would have been quite compatible with vampire teeth! There were so many vampire/Dracula movies made back in his day that one more wouldn't have hurt.

Why not? Coleen Gray would have made a good Mina too!

Nightfall (2010)

Nightfall (2010) is a pretty good documentary about the history of vampire movies. It starts out with some good film clips from the silent era into the 1940s until the present. It explains the basis for the vampire as Vlad the Impaler, and Elizabeth Bathory and, of course, Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. It goes into the Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee as the most original, popular portrayers of Dracula and how the vampire films changed and evolved over the years. 

I think this subject is so vast that 87 minutes isn't long enough to fully cover all of the important vampire films that were produced over the years.

I'm sure there were budget constraints and other issues, but Nightfall would have been better if it were produced as a series or at least as a two-part documentary covering fifty years each.

Beyond Re-Animator (2003)

Dr. Herbert West strikes again! Young Dr. Phillips (Jason Barry), a fan of West's after seeing his work first-hand as a kid, becomes the prison doctor where Dr. West is incarcerated and sets up a lab for him to continue his "experiments." Jeffery Combs is as great as ever with his stiff mad scientist's delivery of one-liners, "she isn't getting any fresher."

But, the performance award for this movie has to go to Elsa Pataky as investigative journalist, Laura Olney. She's hilarious as she jolts back to life in jerky pulses after West convinces Dr. Phillips to inject her with "the serum." A little later after Dr. West injects her with the "nanoplasm" of the sadistic Warden Brando (Simon Andreu) she suffers helplessly as his life forces courses through her body turning her into an out-of-control Jeckyll and Hyde type character as her personality swings between her own whimpering helpless self and that of the evil Brando. 

In the end, Dr. West escapes with his medical bag of re-animating serum to create another bloody, funny sequel.

Dark Shadows: Angelique As A Role Model

In Episode 374, Ben Stokes becomes mute as he attempts to warn Barnabus and Josette of Angelique's plan to prevent their upcoming wedding by using her powers of black magic. He rushes from the room and goes to Angelique ready to tear her apart with his bare hands in anger and frustration. She freezes his hands and smugly tells him that he can never hurt her because she has "too many powers."

Wouldn't it be great to have the power to prevent anyone from hurting you? Wouldn't it be even better if you could control other people like a puppeteer? That's what I thought when I watched Dark Shadows as a kid. I was also a fan of Samantha Stevens from Bewitched and Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie for more materialistic reasons. As a kid I would try to cast my own spells like Angelique, not for evil, just for control. I'd try them on my next door neighbors who I could watch to see if I really had magical powers like Angelique. 

Needless to say, my neighbors were totally oblivious to my "magical" powers, or simply immune. However, I had to sadly admit that I had no supernatural power at all.

Dollman (1991): He's A Living Doll

I have to admire the creativity of Charles Band, the creative mind behind the Full Moon movies. As I mentioned in my post about the movie Demonic Toys, Full Moon Direct has all their great B movies for sale or available to stream on their website. I know great B movies might sound contradictory, but I do love B movies, especially with that 80s flair. And Full Moon Entertainment delivers.

Dollman (also available on Hulu) stars the talented Tim Thomerson as Brick Bardo, a doll-sized Dirty Harry, a cop on his home planet Arturos who blasts away bad guys with his powerful gun, getting suspended from the job along the way. His arch enemy Sprug, a villian who wants to take over the world, is reduced to only a hovering head as Bardo blasts off each remaining body part at each confrontation over the years.

Bardo pursues Sprug into an "energy band" which lands them both in the South Bronx where they meet a psycho gang leader and the woman who is determined to rid crime from the neighborhood. The circumstances that cause Sprug's demise is nasty funny. You have to see it for yourself. 

Admittedly, this movie is more sci-fi/comedy than gothic. Brick Bardo does don a long coat and dark glasses, so I'm stretching it into the catagory, mostly because Full Moon does horror and I'm a big fan of Full Moon and Tim Thomerson. 

The best 80s moment in Dollman is at the beginning when a criminal takes hostages in a laundrymat on Arturos, which is exactly like the United States except all the people are the size of Barbie dolls. The criminal ties a bunch of heavy-set women together threatening to shoot all the "fat ladies."  Ah, the 80s when fat people were fat and scumbags were allowed to say it publicly. The politically correct 90s censored the word fat when it referred to people. Employers and the fashion world continued to discriminate against large people, but the word fat was banned unless the conversation involved meat.

Dark Shadows: Josette Loves Jeremiah

This cobweb is occupied!

"The cobweb of love will trap Josette."  This is part of the evil love spell that Angelique (Lara Parker) uses to set the love affair between Josette (Kathryn Leigh Scott) and Jeremiah (Anthony George) into motion. How deliciously dark that a love initialized with black magic should include a cobweb. Since cobwebs are usually something you need to clear away for purity and clarity, it's so fitting that the false love between Josette and Jeremiah should involve one.

Episode 373 which aired on November 29, 1967. Times and TV sure have changed! I'm thinking Jonathan Frid must have been on vacation for a few days as he's noticeably absent from these episodes. Barnabus is recuperating from his mysterious Angelique-induced illness where he can remain out of the storyline for a while. However, it's now Angelique's time to shine as we learn the extent of her powers as a witch and she puts her new slave, Ben Stokes, to work gathering everything she needs to cast the evil spell that causes Josette and Jeremiah  to become reluctantly irresistible to each other, so much so, that they trample all over their love and respect for Barnabus and helplessly fall together, unable to stay apart no matter how hard they try to resist.  

After Angelique recites "Josette Loves Jeremiah" three times, the spell is cast. Josette and Jeremiah can't stay apart any more than Ben can resist doing Angelique's dirty work.

Dark Shadows: You Shall Be My Slave!

After watching all the Dark Shadows episodes available on Hulu, I resorted to my painfully small personal collection hoping for more. Wouldn't you know the two DVD collections that I own contain episodes already offered on Hulu? I started the collection back when SciFi Channel was showing the series every day and then it was suddenly, without warning, dropped before the entire series was shown. After buying the two collections I never finished collecting as life happened, things got weird and I was distracted with other pressing matters.

After all these decades, Dark Shadows is still one of my favorite shows, probably my all-time favorite. My mother used to watch it on TV and she would let me watch it if the storyline wasn't too gruesome or graphic. I was banned from the show for quite a while as she wielded her parental discretion before that was an official TV/movie thing. Several years ago she did take me to a Dark Shadows Festival in New York which more than made up for, what I believed at the time, her over protective behavior. It was great and even Jonathan Frid attended, and if I'm not mistaken, for the first time.

Anyway, I figured you can't get too much Dark Shadows and decided to watch my collection as a study to determine which episodes I still need to acquire. The first episode in Collection 5 from MPI Home Video is Episode 372 when Victoria Winters is trapped in 1795 and meets Ben Stokes. Ben Stokes is also introduced to Angelique, Josette's humble maid, in this episode, who hints that she might be interested in his body. Confused, yet hopeful, he trusts her when she offers him a drink that might lead to some fun between the sheets. Instead, after enthusiastically guzzling it in one gulp so they can get on with the good stuff, he needs to sit down as the evil potion causes him to feel strange. Angelique smugly explains the cause of his strange sensation: "Your will is my will. You shall do whatever I tell you to do. You shall be my slave!"

Yes, Angelique did want Ben's strong useful body, but not for sex!

Oopsie Daisy! It's Demonic Toys (1992)

Full Moon Entertainment has an array of B movies for sale and streaming on their website, many of which fall into the horror/comedy genre. Back in the early 90s there was a movie rental store near my house that carried them all! Now we can watch most of them on Hulu which is where I've reacquainted myself with Demonic Toys. It stars Tracy Scoggins (The Colbys) as pregnant Officer Judith, the targeted victim of a demon who wants to be born in her baby's body so he can perform demonic deeds from inside a human body. Having to animate dolls to serve as his minions uses all of his energy and his actions are understandably limited. He could do way more damage with his own human body and he'd be able to leave the warehouse where he happens to be trapped. 

Baby Oopsie Daisy is the only one of the toys with language skills and spews some pretty amusing profanity laced lines. Baby Oopsie Daisy is also pretty skilled with weapons while a rabid-looking teddy bear that looks more like a toothy wolf with bear ears is pretty handy with a bat. The other toys mostly just bite their victims to death except for a robot with guns for arms.

The low budget props are just as funny as the animated evil dolls and some of the dialogue. The stop motion animation is really good throughout the movie so we're lucky the demon was trapped in a toy warehouse and not a warehouse full of something less entertaining like pianos.

Frankenhooker vs Re-Animator

Both Frankenhooker (1990) and Re-Animator (1985) are comedy/horror movies having to do with bringing the dead back to life. While Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz), the protagonist in Frankenhooker is obsessed with bringing his dead fiance back to life, Herbert West (Jeffery Combs), the protagonist in Re-Animator is obsessed with improving and perfecting his reanimation serum and will use any undamaged corpse to test it on. 

I thought Frankenhooker was a little more gruesome because of Jeffrey's inventing "killer crack" to lure and kill hookers so he could use their body parts to build his dead fiance, Elizabeth (Patty Mullen), a new body to sew her head onto, since her head is the only undamaged body part he has left of her. At least Herbert didn't create his own corpses to test his serum on.

It was fun to see Louise Lasser as Jeffery's mom and the scene between the two of them in Jeffery's room was so well-written and Lasser's sense of timing was impeccable as usual. However, the funniest scenes were when Frankenhooker escaped and was on the loose in Times Square and muttered the remarks we heard earlier from the dead hookers whose body parts she is inhabiting. The body work she performs on Jeffery at the end after she regains her identity as Elizabeth is pretty humorous as well.  

Even though Frankenhooker was funny and gross, I preferred the humor and creative effects of Re-Animator as Dr. Hill's (David Gale), headless corpse carries his head around in a metal pan and the goofy face of Dr. Halsey ( as Dr. Hill's zombie-with-a-lobotomy slave.

Night Gallery (1971): H. P. Lovecraft's Cool Air

Even sub-freezing temperatures and a strong will can't stop the inevitable decay of human flesh kept alive beyond its expiration date. Dr. Munoz was finally dragged to his death after existing longer than he should have. In Episode 12 of Season 2 of Rod Serling's Night Gallery as seen on Hulu Plus, Serling's teleplay adds a main character not found in H. P. Lovecraft's short story of the same name. Did Serling write the part especially for the talented and lovely Barbara Rush?

Lovecraft's story is told by a man with a heart problem who lives downstairs from the mysterious Dr. Munoz while Serling's narrator is the daughter of one of Dr. Munoz's former colleagues. Writing for television, Serling left out a lot of the gore and creepiness that Lovecraft so skillfully applied to the story. Serling also left out Lovecraft's unflattering description of the Spanish landlady and the other tenants of the boarding house.

It is cool to see and read about problems like keeping a room cold in the summer that we take for granted now. Lovecraft used a gas powered machine filled with ammonia to keep Dr. Munoz cool enough to prevent decomposition while we would simply turn up the AC. However, the failure of the machine and the rising temperature in his room could have occurred just as easily in our time with the AC breaking down. We probably could have a new one installed before the temperature rose to lethal level though depending on how far Dr. Munoz lived from a hardware store or Walmart. 

The episode ends with Barbara Rush screaming in the bathroom as she stands over the dried out corpse of Dr. Munoz in humorous contrast to Lovecraft's gory slimy trail that leads from the bathroom to the couch ending in a puddle of something indescribably horrible.

Once Upon A Time: Welcome to the Dark Side

What a wonderfully topsy turvy Season Finale it was as Emma, the Savior, becomes the Dark One. I'm happy and relieved they're keeping the storyline within the regular characters and not bringing in a group of characters from another story like they did with Peter Pan and the Frozen story lines. I hope they're getting back to the basics that made the first two seasons so compelling.

Isaac Heller's Heroes and Villains was like reincarnation within ones present life. It was almost like the original curse in that none of the characters had any memory of their former lives except for Emma. It's similar to the original Dark Shadows program where a character would time travel or discover alternate dimensions. Isn't magic and the supernatural a wonderful thing!

Now that we know that Merlin is the sorcerer they may be traveling to Camelot or wherever the trail to Merlin leads. I hope that now that Rumpelstiltskin has lost his dark powers he doesn't fade into the background. He's such a complex and mysterious character. It's ironic how he spent the entire season scheming to separate himself and his powers from the dagger without having to give up the dark magic and then has to lose the powers in the end to cure his heart and save his life.

I can't wait to see Season 5!

Morticia Addams, a Goth Classic

In 1964 while Samantha Stevens was keeping her gothic identity a secret and Lily Munster was doting on her Hermie, Morticia Addams (Carolyn Jones) was providing girls with a gothic role model of intelligent, confident, self-possessed womanhood. When I was a kid watching reruns of The Addams Family I remember telling my mother I wanted to be just like Morticia and wear a cool dress like hers. My mother thought I was nuts because the narrowness around the ankles made the dress difficult to walk. I don't think fantasy was my mother's strong suit. 

I loved the peacock chair she had that resembled a throne and made her look like a gothic queen. Her adoring husband Gomez (John Astin) would entertain her with his silly stunts while she knit the never-ending scarf or whatever it was. Then they would fence or tango while Gomez's fiery passion for her would be ignited anew. She was loved and respected by everyone in the house and never had to raise her voice. Only on TV!

I think she may have been the first portrayal of a witch, or witch-like woman, who was pretty and not a wart-nosed cackling hag. Of course, she wasn't evil either. She may have been strange and slightly spooky but she had a kind heart toward her extended family and was gracious to strangers as well.She was everything a young girl could hope for in a role model.

Hulu's Deadbeat

Hulu did a really smart thing in creating the supernatural sitcom Deadbeat. They combined the concepts behind two popular long running TV shows (Ghost Whisperer and Psyche) with the overdone, but somehow popular, fat dumb guy who is always on the brink of homelessness, as the hero. Wait. I guess most of us working class citizens fit that description, at least as far as our marketing culture is concerned. None of us are thin enough or smart enough and how many of us are only one or two paychecks away from homelessness?

Our hero is sweet incompetent drug dependent Kevin Pacalioglu (Tyler Labine), or Pac as his friends call him. He only has one friend, his generous, softhearted, African-American drug dealer Roofy (Brandon T. Jackson) who mostly gives Pac drugs for free while also finding him work. Black guy and white guy best friends helping each other make a living with a lot of well-written humor is where the resemblance to Psyche ends as Pac, unlike Shawn, really does talk to dead people. In fact, he has relaxed and casual conversations with them as though they're two people meeting at a public event where the surprise is always on the ghost's face when they realize Pac can actually see and hear them. 

Yes, Pac can easily see and hear the pleasantly surprised ghosts and helps them tie up their unfinished business in the material world much like Melinda in Ghost Whisperer; however Pac seeks out the ghosts for a small fee (due to his hilarious inability to negotiate) as a service to his clients who want to be rid of the haunting. Melinda, on the other hand, is approached by ghosts because she can see and hear them and help them communicate messages to the living, and not necessarily because they want to leave the material realm and move on to the spirit world, but because Melinda needs them to move on for her own life to return to normal.

I've only seen the first three episodes which, in 22 minutes each, are full of sweetness, silliness and smartly resolved story lines as Pac struggles to pay his rent, repay Roofy and overcome the bully Camomile White (Cat Deeley) who is threatened by Pac's knowledge that her lucrative career as a celebrity medium is a sham as she's a complete fake.

I'm looking forward to seeing the remaining 20 episodes!