The Terror

A mysterious woman lures a young soldier to the Castle von Leppe. The castle holds many secrets. I'm not sure how else to explain it. The Terror isn't really a plot-heavy movie. Most of the film was shot over a couple of days on the set of The Raven. They didn't have much of a script to work from, so a lot of the movie is just characters walking around the castle. Several directors filmed additional scenes for the movie with Roger Corman tying everything together at the end. Well, I mean, he tried to tie it all together. An attempt was made. We can all agree on that.

Rating: 55%

(Image from Wikipedia)

House of Frankenstein

Dr. Niemann and his hunchbacked assistant Daniel escape from prison with two goals in mind: carry on the work of Dr. Frankenstein and get revenge on everyone who helped put them in jail. To avoid detection, they murder and assume the identities of some travelling showmen who just so happen to have the skeleton of Dracula in their possession. Niemann revives Dracula long enough to kill one of his many enemies but ditches the Count once the law gets on their tail. Soon enough, Niemann and Daniel find and revive the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's monster. From there, Niemann, despite having made various promises to Daniel and the Wolf Man, chooses to spend all of his time working on Frankenstein's monster, which proves to be his own undoing. House of Frankenstein is an interesting but flawed movie. It has the Spider-Man 3 problem where there are too many characters in the movie, many of whom are given short shrift. Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. are very good in their roles but John Carradine is a little miscast as Dracula. Daniel the hunchback, played by J. Carrol Naish, probably gets the best through line in the movie. 

Rating: 63%

(Image from Wikipedia)

The Raven

Instead of trying to adapt Poe's poem, Roger Corman's The Raven is primarily about a trio of squabbling magicians played by Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff. Much like in Tales of Terror, Price and Lorre have great comedic chemistry together. While Karloff is mostly there to lend gravitas to the picture. Hazel Court is lovely as the devious Lenore and a young Jack Nicholson plays Lorre's son Rexford. Despite indulging in many of the same tricks and tropes, The Raven is much more of a straightforward comedy than any of Roger Corman's prior Poe pictures. There are plenty of jokes throughout the movie but the climactic magician's duel at the end of the film goes for broke with big, Looney Tunes energy.

Rating: 62%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Bride of Frankenstein

Bride of Frankenstein is one of those rare sequels that might be better than the original. And that is, by no means, a slight to the original. Bride takes everything that was good about the first film and elevates it. James Whale, the director, never wanted to make a sequel to the original Frankenstein. Universal wanted to cash in on the success of the first film right away, but Whale refused. They made several attempts to get a sequel off the ground without him, but came up short after a number of attempts. It was only after Whale was given a considerable amount of creative freedom that he agreed to direct the film. Jack Pierce, the special effects makeup artist returned as well, improving on the iconic makeup designs he created for the first film. Sadly, censors cut several minutes from the film and the cut footage remains lost. What remains, however, is a stone cold classic.

Rating: 95%

(Image from Wikipedia)

12 Days of Christmas Specials - #3: How the Grinch Stole Christmas

I won't bother with a recap of this particular Christmas special. You know what it's about, don't pretend like you haven't seen it a million times already. One of the reasons I decided to review a bunch of Christmas specials this year was so that I could go back and watch some of the classics that I hadn't seen since I was a kid (and some, including this one, that I'd been avoiding for years.) The main reason that the Grinch landed on my list of specials to cover was because of the narration by Boris Karloff, but what turned out to be even better than that was the animation by Chuck Jones which combined Dr. Seuss' artwork with the classic Looney Tunes style. But honestly though, thank God the thing was only twenty-five minutes long, the endless rhyming lists of Who decorations and instruments drove me nuts.

Rating: 10 Lords-a-Leaping%

(Image from howthegrinchstolechristmas.film.bigbestmovie.com)