Fifty Before ’50: Ten Movies I Will NOT Be Watching This SMM

 by JB

With hundreds of films at my fingertips, which ones will not make the cut this October?

With any luck at all, you, gentle readers, are now thoroughly enmeshed in Scary Movie Month. Oh, look! We can see the finish line of Halloween Night just peeking out from under the horizon. As I survey my Goober Domain from the vaunted viewpoint of my IKEA desk, I notice horror movies on the shelf that sit ignored year after year. WHY do I never get around to watching them? WHEN will I finally get around to watching them? HOW is it that feature films can be actually watched in the home?

WHAT is reality?

I Drink Your Blood (1971)

I can still remember being semi-obsessed with this title when I first read about it in the seminal Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film in 1983. Michael Weldon wrote that book and also published the zine Psychotronic Video; he managed to put out 41 issues of that one-of-a-kind wonder in 18 years. Between Weldon’s zine, Tim Lucas’s mega-magazine Video Watchdog, and Danny Peary’s Cult Movies books, genre films were suddenly getting a lot of attention and “respect.”

I cannot remember where I purchased this Special Edition DVD of the film or the circumstances of that purchase. It is from boutique video label Box Office Spectaculars. It is a numbered limited edition (427/500) that was released in 2002. It contains a postcard signed by co-star Lynn Lowry and a reversible sleeve signed by Lowry, director David Dunston, and co-stars Jack Damon and noted character actor Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury, who plays Horace Bones.

Hmmmm...

Why am I never in the mood to watch this? According to the Wikipedia machine, it involves “reports of an incident in a mountain village in Iran in which a pack of rabid wolves attacked a schoolhouse, infecting people with rabies. Further inspiration came from coverage of the trial of the Manson family.” Sounds like a Scary Movie Month no-brainer. Perhaps it’s my life-long, near-pathological fear of rabies? I will say this film inspired one of my favorite Halloween songs, “I Drink Your Blood, I Eat Your Skin” by the Exotic Ones. (I Drink Your Blood was often paired with Del Tenny’s 1971 I Eat Your Skin on theatrical double bills.) Listen for yourselves:



All The President’s Men (1976)

 
Not a conventional horror film.

Man of a Thousand Faces (1957)

Like many horror and horror-adjacent films, this is a better idea for a movie than a movie. James Cagney stars in this biopic of Lon Chaney and, as tantalizing a notion as that might seem, there are two big problems: the producers deemed Chaney’s real story “not movie friendly,” so they made up a bunch of hooey about Chaney’s first wife. This is NOT what I come to “The Lon Chaney Story" for: warmed-over, mediocre soap opera.

Second, Cagney and Chaney HAD DIFFERENT FACES. (Chaney’s was an elongated oval, Cagney’s a perfect circle.) The filmmakers needed to modify all of Chaney’s famous make-ups for Cagney’s face; they wind up looking like dime-store masks. This is a big problem in a movie about a man famous for his unique and amazing make-up designs. Boo. (That same year, Paramount did the same thing to Buster Keaton with the movie The Buster Keaton Story.)

Masque of the Red Death (1964)

I first saw this during the Music Box Massacre 24-hour horror marathon at the happiest place on Earth. (TRIVIA NOTE: As I write these words, this year’s Massacre, now called “The Music Box of Horrors,” has just ended in Chicago. Hundreds of scary movie lovers are currently heading home, tired and smelly.)

True, Masque of the Red Death is one of the best of the Corman/Poe cycle, BUT... my beloved son saw this just last Friday at the Vista Theater in Hollywood... and I don’t want to be accused of being a copycat.

The Mole People (1956)

I love Universal Horror Films more than anyone else on Earth—but by God, this late entry in the cycle is hard to sit through. We are faced with weak leads John Agar and Hugh Beaumont, back when the Beaver was just a twinkle in his eye; a monster that’s a half-step above a rubber mask; an uninspired script by Laszlo Goric; and pedestrian direction by Virgil Vogel. By this time in the 1950s at Universal, the parade had gone by. Creature from the Black Lagoon had been released a loooooooong three years earlier. NOTE: The Universal disc also includes the MST3K version; maybe I’ll waste 78 minutes on that...

Orgy of the Dead (1965)

Famous nudie-cutie written by Ed Wood on an off day, this film has everything: television psychic Criswell as narrator, Bob and Shirley (William Bates and Pat Barrington) arguing all the way to a cemetery, strippers used to teach moral lessons, plus a Wolf Man and a Mummy! The script is so confusing and the direction is so listless that this is the rare nudie film that 1) turns nudity into something you really don’t want to see and 2) might convince some heterosexuals that they have made the wrong choice in life. Your mileage may vary. My Blu-ray disc from Vinegar Syndrome came with a slipcase!

The Playgirls and the Vampire (1960)

I purchased this at Son of Monsterpalooza a few years back, and though I have always been a fan of what the disc sleeve calls “erotically-minded Italian gothic horror” (also the theme of my wedding day), the disc sits on my shelf gathering erotically-charged dust. Maybe next year...

Screaming Skull (1958)

I remember being perpetually frustrated with this title. Because it was never officially registered for copyright, it fell into the public domain and film fans were treated to physical media versions of the film that were little more than washed-out, cut-up, near-bootleg garbage, sourced from 16mm and transferred to VHS by cinephile squirrels in a hollow tree. It was the worst. Then, Shout Factory put out a dandy-looking Blu-ray in 2017. Problem solved!

Not quite. Because I had suffered for more than twenty years trying to watch this film, the bad juju associated with its former iterations gave me a case of Screaming Skull-o-phobia. I simply could not bring myself to spin the new disc. I was afraid. I was very afraid.

Turns out, I should have been more afraid of the film itself. According to the Wikipedias, the critics rave: “Erick Harper of DVD Verdict [said] the film was ‘of questionable value’ and opined it was ‘a truly awful example of drive-in cinema.’ He believed that the film was not ‘worth the time to watch.’ Leonard Maltin gave the film one and a half stars, calling it ‘dreary.’ [....] Film historian Steven H. Scheuer graded the film one and a half stars, writing ‘Wife is terrorized by unexplainable happenings. Or is it inexplicable? Both describe the film.’ Actress Peggy Webber, who appears in the film, did not like it, stating, ‘it didn't impress me’ and she ‘wanted to throw up’ after watching it."

The Searchers (1956)

Again, NOT a conventional horror film. Why do you keep suggesting it?

The Terror (1963)

A quickie low-budget Roger Corman film that stars Boris Karloff and a young Jack Nicholson. Should be a no-brainer, and yet it sits unwatched. What fateful catalyst will release this disc from its plastic tomb? No living man knows.

What are YOUR "meh, not this year" SMM films? Comment below!