[Month of Horror] The Mummy (1932)/The Bride of Frankenstein

When I restarted this site, I said I wasn’t going to do movie reviews here, that I had another place to do that. Well, I changed my mind.

See, the past two years I’ve done A Month of Horror, a series of daily brief reviews covering Horror movies I watched that day. It’s happened almost long enough to be a fun little tradition, and as bad as this year’s been for me, I need a fun little tradition.

So all this month, little capsule reviews. Unlike the previous years, I’m given each a score based on the system I will go back to using on the Review Site when (when!) I start that back up again. Simply put, each film is judge on a two prong basis: Quality (Terrible, Bad, Meh, Good, Great) and Preference (Hate, Dislike, Meh, Like, Love). Each judgement is represented by a number (0.0 through 2.0) and the two numbers are added together for the final score.

Enough nattering. Here’s the reviews.

THE MUMMY (1932)

I went out to a theater to see this one. Not the most ideal viewing experience, as the sound was wonky. Background sounds and music were louder than the dialogue and sometimes things were hard to understand, especially in the beginning. That’ of course, isn’t the film’s fault, but it’s worth pointing out.

Anyways, this was personally viewed as one of the lesser Universal Monster movies before this rewatch. It’s the romance portion; the love-at-first-site trope is a terrible one. Lazy. Unnecessary, in this case.

This watch, though…

In a nutshell, an ancient mummy is revived after centuries and wants to be reunited with his dearly beloved. Unfortunately that dearly beloved happens to be reborn in the body of a pretty young lady who isn’t quite ready for what passes for marriage among the Undead.

All of this is told at a damn fine pace. There’s plot holes galore here and there, but the acting’s fine, the direction’s pretty great to my inexperienced eye, and really, this ain’t lesser anything.

As for the romance… well, let me summarize that in script form:

FRANK: Damn it, Helen, I’ve known you all of three seconds, but I love you! You remind me of a thousand year old corpse I dug up recently!

HELEN: Oh, Frank, you flatterer you! I think I maybe possibly could eventually–

IMHOTEP: [Enters room] I am Ardeth Bey.

HELEN: A MAH-YUN! [proceeds to stare misty eyes at the three century old corpse.]

Seriously, watch Frank fume at this was hilarious. I’d forgotten there was a quasi love triangle here. Plus, they hung a lampshade on how silly it was for Frank to do this. I gave it a pass.

All in all, it’s a good movie (1.5 points) that I liked (1.5 points).

3 out of 4

THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1932)

One of the trailers that played incessantly in front of these films was for Scream 2, of all things. In it, the characters get into a debate about sequels. One guy says that there where plenty of good sequels, and a girl character snottily asks him to name one.

This is the correct answer.

This is so much better than the original. And the original wasn’t a slouch.

Quick summary, the monster survives his near death experience from the previous film and now is on the look out for someone to be his friend. Meanwhile his creator is being hounded by a former teacher to make more monsters.

While this has it’s problems (an unnecessary prologue, like the first film, for starters) it runs at a nice pace. Most of the male character try their hand at eating the scenery (Ernset Thesiger beats Colin Clive here) and the female leads aren’t too shabby for what little they get. It really has a glorious ending, and does the fine job of making me regret put off a rewatch.

So to do the point thang again, it’s a great movie (2.0) that I loved (2.0)

4 out of 4

[Sister Site] NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! or, How Many Time Am I Gonna Watch This Flick Again?

So.

Was prepping the Review Site to resume service.

Going to dust off Cathy’s Curse. The first review has to be first, right? I’ll just go over the review, change the format, put it up Friday. I can’t Print Screen Blu Rays, so darn, can’t redo the picture. Just going to have to watch my Blu Ray copy after I finish, refresh the memories, that sort of thing.

Only it occurs to me to look the film up on YouTube.

And I watch some of it to refresh my memories of a problem I had. Namely that in the initial incident, where the antagonist gets killed in a fire, you can clearly see a door open behind her.

In watching, I notice something.

The version I had of the movie? Had title cards explaining the action.

This one? Doesn’t.

Worse? So far, it doesn’t look that bad.

Which means…

Which means…

I’m watching Cathy’s Curse, aren’t I? A third time.

God knows what that’ll do to my fragile little mind. Pray for me.

[Site] Blathering As Writing Practice

Every week I need to post something.

It’s to encourage me to write. To make time in my “busy schedule” to write.

There are two problems with this.

Problem number one is that I don’t always think of something to write about. It happens.

I also sometimes think “This would be a good post” while at work, then when I come home wonder what I was thinking. Or the key to what I want to write is gone. Or I no longer have enough time to work on the project.

On the one hand you can’t force something into being. On the other hand, that’s just an excuse not to write.

Instead of doing what I was thinking of, I could write something I hadn’t. Do a stream of conscious thing. Let the words flow. The important thing is that I’m writing, and that the writing flows more or less logically from one point to the next.

That’s what this post is an attempt at doing. Super effective so far.

Problem number two really isn’t a problem. I actually am writing. I’m working on novel notes. Character work, world work, story work. Stuff I should have done years ago. Stuff I’ve been fiddling with for the past two years.

This, however, does nothing for the blog. And I am now paying good money for this blog.

Same holds true for the review site. For over a year I’ve been paying for it, and not once have I posted a review.

Put that aside for now.

All of this is a long winded way of saying I need to do something about it A bit of writing that interests me that I can post on site that I don’t force myself to do. Yet I actually force myself to do. If you can dig it.

An idea I’ve been toying with is doing a sort of review of The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft. Not of the collection, though, but the stories therein, starting with Dagon. They might not be long reviews. They might not be thoughtful. I might even skip some or all of the other tales. But I’ve had some thoughts rereading Old Providence, and maybe that would be worth fiddling with.

Connected to this thought (seriously, there is a link) I’ve been mulling over talking about a revelation I’ve had dealing with The Cask of Amontillado. Over the years this has become one of my favorite of Poe’s works, and I have a thing or two to say about it. Maybe not the most original of things. A fact that has stopped no writer from blathering before.

I have also figured out just why Godzilla keeps coming to shore at Japan. And there’s my little Anime Theory of Godzilla that simply must be aired.

I could, of course, mention the worst short story I’ve ever written. Seriously, knowing it’s existence is such a weight off my chest. Everything after it has been so much better because of it. The only problem here is that to do it justice (ha!) I have to reread it. A task I’m not certain I’m up to.

Oh dear God, is it bad.

As I’m restarting the site, I could revamp or rework some old school series. The Hell… ?! comes to mind on that, though I’ve not hit too many bizarre situations that warrant that title.

Well, except for the plagiarist who, in the process of apologizing for her theft, plagiarized an essay about plagiarism from I believe a magazine dealing with plagiarism. Something that is… Well it’s kinda… The Hell… ?!

And so on and so forth. The ideas are there. And next week I hope to do one of them.

Of course, I could again rattle on as I’m doing now. To be honest this stream of thought experiment hasn’t been a bad thing, all things considered. It just has to be on a subject that isn’t what I might be writing about.

That leaves potential things I might draw as fair game. Or not.

Anyways, see you next Friday. Or sooner. Or later. Whenever I plant myself here and write.

The Obligatory First Post 2.0

Seventeen years and one free blog service ago I started out one of my longest running and (relatively) most successful projects. A blog site.

It was meant to improve my writing. I started it out with a few whimsical words, which I reprint here:

I have literally no idea what I’m going to say here. What do I need a blog for, anyway? What can I offer that millions can’t?

The only possible use I can think of for this thing is improving my writing, and I have NO intention of publishing fiction here. Essays maybe? The occasional review? Pretentiousness all the time, every time!

That’s me.

Maybe this will go with all the other blogs, started then discarded, forgotten amidst the wasteland that is the Internet.

Whatever. Who cares.

Here’s to hoping that something fun develops.

Any one out there?

Thankfully in the seventeen years I’ve been doing this, I’ve improved. I credit the work on this site in that regard, and hope to continue forward.

However, seventeen years is a long time. A lot of… not quality work has be built up. And I’d like to have a place that showcases me at, if not my best, then near to.

Thus I “dumped” over seventeen years of my life, and as of today I’m starting fresh!

I put “dumped” in quotes for two reasons:

  1. I didn’t want to lose the good stuff that I did do, so I marked it all as draft, intending to go through and separate the chaff from the straw. Over two thousand entries. Moved in bulk. Using two different windows. But still. Yikes.
  2. I didn’t want to lose seventeen years of my life, so I backed everything up on a new site called Welltun Cares Archives. You want the warts and all Cullen M. M. Waters, there it is. Right now the site’s kind of rough. I may or may not get back to it.

My intent going forwards is at least once a week post something, new or reclaimed. 500+ words. Fiction, essay, commentary on my art, what have you. No movie reviews, as I have a site for that.

There’s going to be better categories, better tags, and, with a little luck, better writing. ‘Cause even if I’m the best (I’m not) I can always be better.

So, as I said seventeen years ago, here’s to hoping that something fun develops.