Terror Tales 1940 05
TWO STRONGLY CONTRASTED
NOVELETTES OF UNUSUAL TERROR!
MISTRESS OF THE DARK POOL
by RUSSELL GRAY
TEST-TUBE FRANKENSTEIN
by WAYNE ROBBINS
also
DONALD DALE
CHARLES BOSWELL
1940 is a little late for me to be posting, but it’s got MERMAIDS! Mermaids!
darkinthedark does not claim copyright on these images. If you are the copyright holder and object to their presence here, please contact me and I will remove them.Sometimes movie titles are wrong. For example, a better title for The Fly might have been She Didn’t Like How the Accident Left Him. Or Boris Karloff’s The Mummy might have better been titled After All That, She Still Escaped. Hmmmmm. I can feel a real roll coming on. How about this for the first Alien movie? Only Her Underwear Made the Terror Pause. Seems like a lot of monsters have girl trouble, doesn’t it? I sure know how that feels. Then a better title for House of Dark Shadows would no doubt be: Woman Trouble Again for Barnabas.
Problem #1: Dr. Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall)
Problem #2, Seen Here Being Ignored by Barnabas
The movie very roughly follows the Barnabas Collins book I reviewed not too long ago. Of course, Barnabas originated from the popular gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. Barnabas Collins (played by Jonathan Frid) is awakened by a grave robber, and approaches the Collins family in the guise of a long lost cousin from England. Naturally, before long, all the ladies of the house are fawning over him. For better or for worse, Barnabas falls for a different girl who reminds him of his lost love, Josette (who threw herself off a cliff when she discovered the secret of his curse.)
Most of the characters spend the bulk of the movie unaware that Barnabas is a vampire. The only person who puts two and two together has such an annoying speech affectation that nobody will take him seriously. Dr. Julia Hoffman, however, manages to put the pieces together. Here is her “Aha!” moment:
I see!
It turns out that the good doctor lets her emotions get in the way and devises an antidote to the vampiric cells in the bloodstream of Barnabas Collins. Before long, she is administering shots to Barnabas, who, of course, uses her like a door mat.
Barnabas is in love with Maggie Evans (played by Kathryn Leigh Scott) and the shots the doctor has been giving him allow him to walk around in daylight for the first time in hundreds of years.
Problem #3
Such a cute and seemingly carefree couple. But can Barnabas find true happiness? One would hope so. Now that Barnabas has found his love again, he will stop at nothing to make her his bride. Barnabas is my man. The movie is admittedly kind of a stinker. Netflix doesn’t carry it, and my rat army could only find it in VHS. There are, however, some great atmospheric shots, a lot of bad drama, a dash of fakey medical jargon, some shooting of silver bullets, and a really excellent vampire staking scene.
It just so happens that the folks at The Obscure Hollow have posted some great shots from the movie, and it looks like they got their hands on a better copy of it than I did. So you should go check it out.
Creepy Factor: 2 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 2 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 2 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 4 out of 5
Final result: Truly, the world should have a taste of the Real Thing before Tim Burton and Johnny Depp give Dark Shadows a try.
Wait! Here is where I use my handy vampire classification system on Carmilla.
Ah! I love classifying vampires.
House of Dark Shadows – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) – 1971
Dark Shadows Soap Opera 
Thanks for reading another one of my movie reviews. Hopefully next time I review a nice juicy horror novel with loads of Weird Erotic Tension.
I finally got my hands on some nicer copies of the Alice in Wonderland photos that were released last week. Today is the day of the official Alice 2010 trailer release (although there was already a leak and those of you who can use Google properly will be able to track it down very easily.)
Don’t miss my very own Alice in Wonderland 2010 fan site.
Hi everybody. This is part 2 of my Coraline DVD review. Click here for part 1 of the Coraline DVD review. I finally got my act together to get this review worked out. It meant running a strange errand for a relative of mine in Japan to secure some extra technology, but what can I say? It needed to be done. That Russian mind-control bat espionage team will recover once they get a new mad scientist in, and it’s not really my fault. They attacked me first. As a result, however, I still haven’t had the time to enjoy all of the advanced features on the Blu-Ray Coraline DVD. Luckily I was able to check out the things that I actually cared about:
One of my favorite things about DVDs is that they include deleted scenes. I actually like more deleted scenes than less, so I was a little disappointed with the deleted scenes on the Coraline DVD. There aren’t a whole lot of them. Also, with most of them, you can see why they didn’t make the cut. There is one of them, though, that is really amazing and beautiful, and must have been really painful for them to cut. It’s a bunch of mice that are flat and have been animated to weave around like they’re ribbons. Mice figure heavily into the the plot of Coraline, so it’s obvious why they made a scene like it.
There has been a lot of controversy about the 3D on the Coraline DVDs ever since it was announced that they used an anaglyphic process. One news site even went so far as to declare “CORALINE DVD Will Offer Crappy 3D Experience”. Ever since I read that I’ve wanted to test it for myself. Today I watched several different parts of the movie in two different display formats, and I think using the word “Crappy” is just plain wrong. When the 3D version of Coraline starts, a little window comes up to tell you that you should give your eyes five minutes to adjust. Then the beginning credits begin, and before you know it everything has turned 3D. My friend agreed that the quality was better than we expected. (Don’t look so shocked. I have friends.) Here are some photos. Keep in mind that this is my camera operating under the worst possible conditions. One was shot from an LCD TV in the dark and the other shot from a screen with the image projected from an LCD projector.
As you can see here, there are kind of three separate images superimposed to make the complete image when viewed through the glasses that come with the Coraline DVDs. One image each for the purple and green, and then a third for the colors and shading. Some colors show up really well in the 3D. For example, everyone is flesh colored and that works great. Also Mr. Bobinsky is blue. Red and yellow also show well. It appears like anything white, green, or purple is going to have issues. Things that should be green or purple end up being gray or blue. Things that are white kind of shimmer between purple and green. Once you’ve watched the movie long enough, though, you don’t really notice it. We watched the Blu-Ray version on a 100 inch screen using an ancient home theater projector, in the dark. To be honest, I would expect the quality to be horrific on a small conventional TV in a lit room. However, I would expect the quality to be nice on an LCD HDTV as well.
For us, the Coraline DVD worked well enough in 3D that I think people will probably opt to watch it in 3D at home. It’s kind of fun!
THREE!!!
I don’t have much more to say about the movie. I just wanted to throw this picture in to show how Coraline’s Other Mother says the word three: With STYLE and VERVE. That is what I am talking about. By the way, did mention that the picture quality on the Blu-Ray DVDs is awesome? It is.
Finally, the winners for the Coraline Lenticular Cup giveaway have been chosen. Congratulations to Karen and Angela.
That’s it for tonight. I’m going to spend some time on other things. There are still a couple of days left on my Coraline NECA figurine giveaway, so sign up if you haven’t yet. Don’t forget to check out Coraline Central on Dark in the Dark.
So one of my dark minions got a hold of the Coraline DVD in Blu-Ray format. Unforeseen circumstances have prevented me from playing the DVDs yet, so you can expect a full report soon, but not today, unfortunately. What I can say, however, is the little I’ve seen so far is really cool. I’ve also taken photos of the case and the contents of the Blu-Ray package (which Universal Pictures has also decided to dub a “Collectors Edition” of the Coraline DVD.)
Here is the front of the slipcover for the Coraline DVD.
And the back.
Here’s what you get in the box:
4 pairs of 3D glasses. As you can see, they are the purple and green type of 3D Glasses. I’ve read that with the purple and green 3D process, although there is still a lot of color quality loss, the quality is better than the old fashioned red and green.
A guide to the digital copy of Coraline. This works with a Mac via iTunes or a PC with Windows Media Player. The instructions are given and are pretty basic. There is an authorization code printed on the bottom (I painted over mine in the picture above, but it can be found in the white rectangle at the bottom.)
The set includes two disks. One is the Blu-Ray disk. It contains the Hi-Def version of both the regular-format move and the 3D format movie. It also includes all the special features in Hi-Def (which is cool!) Here is a post where I talk exhaustively about the Coraline DVD Features. Basically, you get: deleted scenes, “The Making of Coraline”, “Voicing the Characters”, “Creepy Coraline”, feature commentary, D-Box Motion, U-Control, and BD-Live. The last three need some explaining.
D-Box – D-Box is motion code included in the movie that will instruct a motion platform how to move and shake the chair you’re sitting in depending on what’s going on in the movie. Check the D-Box website for more details.
U-Control – This is one of those features I never use, but basically it provides extra content on the making of the movie that you can watch while the movie is playing if you want to.
BD-Live - If you have a Blu-Ray DVD player that can use online features, you’ll be able to do things like access extra online content and interact with your friends.
That’s it for tonight. Part two of this review is up. Click here for the rest of the Coraline DVD 3D Review. Don’t forget to check out Coraline Central on Dark in the Dark.
Fhtagn Spoken Here.
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