BITING SATIRE

Check out my Phoenix Magazine review of Arizona Theatre Company's Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors...

...playing at Tempe Center for the Arts through June 7.

LITTLE MORE THAN PUMPKIN, AND LESS THAN KIND

A safe and Happy Halloween to all from Less Hat, Moorhead!

The Wife gave me a Dracula PEZ and Frankenstein Peeps...

On another note: Recently I found this rather badass hornworm in the backyard...

As I escorted him into the alley behind the house, I was startled by how muscular his flexing against my thumb and finger was...

It made me sympathize with poor Ida Lupino, attacked by the giant hornworms in 1976's The Food of the Gods...

A couple of other odds and ends:

I was very saddened to hear that Matthew Perry has passed on. He was possibly the funniest of the Friends, but I also loved him as White House Counsel Joe Quincy, one of the increasingly mythical-seeming "good Republicans" that The West Wing liked to optimistically depict. Nobody could deliver a line like "Sure, we'd never want to compromise the aesthetic integrity of the Steam Pipe Trunk Distribution Venue" with the effortless aplomb of Perry. A real loss.

RIP also to Richard Moll, best known as towering but sweet-natured bailiff Bull on Night Court. He was one of the first celebrities I ever interviewed, for the Erie Times-News back in the early '80s when he was in town for a convention or something. Very nice guy. In his MeTV obit, he's quoted saying that when he was auditioning for Night Court and they asked if he would shave his head for the part, he said "I would shave my legs for the part!" He told me the same story back in the day.

Here's a sample of the Halloween decor at Chez Moorhead...

And finally: Let's go D-backs!

I WANT A NEW BUG

Opening in theaters this weekend:

Renfield--The wild-eyed, insect-gobbling toady to the Vampire Prince became a horror icon in his own right more than ninety years ago, when the great Dwight Frye unleashed his unforgettable giggle in Universal's original Dracula. It's a little surprising that he hasn't been given his own movie vehicle sooner.

But while Nicholas Hoult, who plays the title role in this horror spoof from Universal, briefly gets to do a respectable imitation of Frye's deranged laugh (hrrrr, hrrrr, hrrrrrrr....), he otherwise plays R. M. Renfield without mania, as a modest, mild-mannered, good-hearted fellow. He's also an action hero; munching bugs gives him superhuman strength and martial arts skills and recuperative powers.

His decades of servitude have made him reflective as well; he's come to entertain the possibility that he might just be in a toxic relationship with his boss. He's started attending a support group for people in a similar boat, both to explore his own emotional needs and to scout for victims--the abusers that people at the meetings describe--to serve as food to his convalescing sanguinary master.

The film is set in modern-day New Orleans, where Renfield has brought the charred remains of Dracula after the duo's last tangle with fearless vampire killers. The Count isn't looking well, but he's still able to bully and shame his poor lackey into submission, and he's a little more menacingly intact every time we see him. Then when Renfield comes to the attention of both a local crime family and of a New Orleans cop (Awkwafina) with an angry grudge against the gangsters, he must decide whose priorities he will focus on, Drac's or his own.

Directed by Chris McKay from a script by Ryan Ridley and a story by Robert Kirkman, Renfield is very silly and often heavy-handed. It's extremely gory, but like this February's Cocaine Bear, the gore is played strictly for laughs and lacks any true shock; it's too insubstantial to pack much punch even as a gross-out. The satirical points about modern self-help culture and pop psychology are trenchant enough, but they've pretty much exhausted themselves before the film is half over.

That said, Renfield is colorful, fast-moving and full of comedic invention, and Hoult is charming and easy to root for. Awkwafina pushes pretty hard, as she has in almost all her movies except The Farewell, but she also gets across an honest fury and grief, and when she lets herself connect with Hoult she lightens up agreeably. Shohreh Agdashloo has a gleefully sinister glint in her eyes as the queen of the crime family, Ben Schwartz is properly loath-able as her imbecilic son, and the support group offers some fine character players.

The movie would carry a lot less weight, however, without its other Nick. Growling through a mouth full of pointy teeth, seething with grievance at his reduced circumstances and unable to maintain the air of grand menace he's trying for, Nicholas Cage offers probably the goofiest parody version of Drac since George Hamilton in Love at First Bite back in 1979. Unlike Hamilton's, however, Cage's Count isn't meant to be lovable. Cage sinks his fangs into the role, and taps a rich vein of malignant narcissism.

TRUE WESTWOOD

Check out my reviews, on Phoenix Magazine online, of Lorna Tucker's documentary about Vivienne Westwood, punk-era fashion legend, Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist...

...playing this weekend at FilmBar, and Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation...

...playing everywhere.

COUNT JOHN

RIP to John Gavin, best known as Janet Leigh's poor clueless hardware man boyfriend Sam Loomis in Psycho...

...passed on at 86.

The highlight of his performance here is the shaken way he delivers the line, near the end, "Why was he...dressed like that?" Norman's cross-dressing seems to trouble Sam more than the murders.

Gavin also played the young Julius Caesar in Spartacus, had stolid leads in Imitation of Life and Midnight Lace and Thoroughly Modern Millie, and appeared in the role of Cary Grant in the 1980 TV movie Sophia Loren: Her Own Story. He reportedly came close to playing James Bond in both Diamonds are Forever (losing the part to Sean Connery) and Live and Let Die (losing the part to Roger Moore). Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, he later served as the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico under Ronald Reagan.

But...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...in 1978 I saw Gavin play the title vampire in Count Dracula in summer stock with the Kenley Players in Akron, Ohio...

...opposite Karen Lynn Gorney of Saturday Night Fever, and the great Victor Buono as Van Helsing (as I recall, Buono made the Professor an amateur magician, so he could work a bit of sleight-of-hand into the show). You may well imagine that seeing Buono, a cast member from Psycho and a stage version of Dracula (even if it was Ted Tiller's corny adaptation) all at once made this one of the highlights of my teen years.

So we'll let Gavin's version of the Count serve as this week's honoree. Notice that he's billed as "Direct From Transylvania! In Person! John Gavin as The Sensuous Count Dracula."

PETYR PRINCIPLE

Happy November to all! Check out the latest issue of Phoenix Magazine, now on the stands, for my "Four Corners" column on Valley "fusion" eateries.

With Thor: Ragnarok, directed by the New Zealander Taika Waititi, opening this weekend...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...let's give the nod to Petyr (Ben Fransham), the most forbidding of the vampire roomies in What We Do in the Shadows...

...the horror comedy co-written (with Jemaine Clement), directed by and starring Waititi. This broad, silly mock-documentary was recently recommended to me, and made me laugh a lot.

"Vampires don't chat," said screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, explaining why he didn't write any dialogue for Christopher Lee in 1966's Dracula, Prince of Darkness (Lee claimed that the character had dialogue, but it was so bad he refused to speak it). In What We Do in the Shadows, however, we further learn that "Vampires don't do dishes."

DOG DAY MIDNIGHT

With The Peanuts Movie opening this weekend, check out my list, on The Robot's Voice, of Strange and Nerdy Manifestations of Peanuts. One item…

Monster-of-the-Week: …is this week’s honoree: Frankenbeagle!

I found him on sale, post-Halloween, at PetSmart, and so he came home with me, along with Snoopy-as-a-skeleton and Snoopy-as-Dracula…

…one for each of our Chihuahuas. Here’s Sadie, bonding with her new pal...

EL VAMPIRO

With Halloween a week out, a classic monster seems in order, so…

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s give the nod this week to the 1931 Universal Pictures Dracula...but not, this time, the Dracula of the immortal Bela Lugosi, but rather that of Carlos Villarias…

 …who played the Count in the Spanish-language version of the flick shot on the same sets during the same dates as the Lugosi/Tod Browning version, but on the night shift. While Villarias can’t claim quite the grandeur of Lugosi (who he resembled, so that long shots of Lugosi could economically be used in both versions), he’s still very good, as is the film overall, directed by George Melford.

If you've never seen it, I recommend you get out to the TCM-sponsored double feature of both versions playing at 2 and 7 p.m. October 25 at various multiplexes around the country, including several screens here in the Valley and in Tucson. Details here.

The neck that the Villarias Drac understandably wishes to bite belongs, by the way, to the luscious Lupita Tovar, still alive at well over a hundred, and the grandmother of the screenwriting/directing brothers Chris and Paul Weitz.

COMTE DRACULA

RIP to Louis Jourdan, who embodied Gallic charm—though more than once with a nasty reptilian undercurrent—in films like Letter from an Unknown Woman, Gigi, Can-Can, The Best of Everything, Julie, Octopussy, etc etc. It’s not always remembered that Jourdan, who departed on Valentine’s Day at 93…

Monster-of-the-Week: ...was also one of the better screen Draculas, small screen division in this case, playing the title role in Count Dracula…

…a rousing (and arousing) BBC production that played in the U.S. on Great Performances back in the ‘70s. This version is unusually faithful to Stoker’s novel, even featuring the scene of Drac climbing the wall like Spiderman…

…and along with Jourdan’s subtle, genuinely creepy underplaying as the Count, it also featured one of the best Van Helsings in Frank Finlay, a very sexy Lucy Westenra in Susan Penhaligon, and a superlative Renfield in Scottish actor Jack Shepherd. The guy who plays Texan Quincey Morris overdoes his accent hilariously, and there are some amusingly old-school special effects—indeed, the whole thing has that glaringly lighted shot-on-video look of ‘70s TV—but even so this version can get to you.

COFFIN/KING

We’ve been doing Draculas for the last few weeks so…

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s wrap up this most monsterish month with one of the all-time greats, probably the first supernatural monster of the sound era, the great Be1a Lugosi in the title role of the 1931 Universal version of Dracula.

Happy and Safe Halloween everybody!

HE'S A BALD INFLUENCE

If the Halloween choices at the multiplexes this year don’t quite cut it for you, have no fear. Or rather, be very afraid—on October 25 at 7:30 p.m., Tempe Center for the Arts is offering one of the all-time great monsters of the movies: “Count Orlok,” the first, albeit unauthorized, screen representation of Count Dracula, in F. W. Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece Nosferatu.

The movie’s subtitle—A Symphony of Horror—has particular significance at the Tempe Center’s showing. The film will be accompanied by live music—Brahams, Dvorak, Wagner—performed by the Arizona Pro Arte Ensemble, under the baton of conductor Timothy Verville.

I’ve seen several of these live music/silent movie performances over the years, among them Eisenstein’s Potemkin, Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc and the Bela Lugosi version of Dracula (an early talkie, but made without a musical score). If you’ve never had this experience, I highly recommend it; both the cinematic and the musical sides are enriched. Details here.

And if you’ve never seen Nosferatu, you really need to put that on your movie bucket list as well. This is the rare silent film that still genuinely has the power to spook, or to spook me, at least. The rat-faced, dome-headed, baleful-eyed figure of the vampire Count, played by the unforgettable Max Schreck, is unnerving, more than 80 years after the film was made. I can honestly say that I’ve gotten creeped out, stumbling to the bathroom at three in the morning, imagining that I’d see this bald-pated goblin-Count standing there at the end of the hallway glaring at me.

But since Schreck’s original Count Orlok has already been a Monster-of-the-Week…

Monster-of-the-Week: …this week let’s acknowledge one of the many homages paid to him, in E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire, an uneven but wryly funny horror picture about the making of Nosferatu which suggested that Schreck (an excellent Willem Dafoe) really was a vampire…

BLOOD LISTER

Continuing our Dracula theme from last week…

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s give the nod to Dracula as a superhero, in this short-lived 1966 title from Dell Comics…

He’s just one selection on my Topless Robot list of the “18 Strangest Versions of Dracula.”

VLAD TO THE BONE

With Dracula Untold opening tomorrow…

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s acknowledge another fine Dracula: Jack Palance, who played the Count, quite well, in this 1973 TV-movie version leanly scripted by Richard Matheson and directed by Dan Curtis…

Palance’s high eastern-European cheekbones give him something of a resemblance to the famous portraits of Prince Vlad, aka Vlad the Impaler, aka Vlad Dracula, the vampire prince’s historical namesake…

THE GILL-MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

Happy October everybody!

This past Christmas I was given a wall calendar, now adorning the wall of my office, called Cinema Noir. Along with posters for The Big Sleep, The Killer That Stalked New York and The Third Man, it bafflingly includes posters from The Birds, Citizen Kane, King Kong and the original Dracula.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s a cool calendar full of cool posters for cool movies, and I’ve been enjoying it all year. But…noir? Citizen Kane? King Kong?

October’s selection is…

Monster-of-the-Week: …this poster, featuring this week’s honoree…

…the Gill-Man, in The Creature Walks Among Us, the neglected third chapter of Universal’s Creature of the Black Lagoon trilogy, in which the Gill-Man is surgically altered and becomes, rather poignantly, more human.

I’ve always had a liking for this odd, melancholy little movie, but even so at first glance its inclusion in a Cinema Noir calendar seemed preposterous. But when I thought about it, it probably can make a better case than some of the others. After all, its main plot is a love triangle, and the Gill-Man witnesses, and is framed for, a murder. He may be a primordial abomination from the muck, but in this movie, he’s just a patsy.

DIGITAL IMAGERY

This week...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...the honor goes to this version of Dracula...

...for the obvious reason that he's simply freakin' awesome.

O'DRAC

Happy St. Patty’s Day this Sunday!

In the day’s honor…

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s give the nod to this “Irish Vampire…"

…an 1885 caricature of nationalist leader Charles Parnell for Punch by the great English illustrator (and occasional ugly reactionary) John Tenniel, better known for his Alice in Wonderland drawings.

FOR WHOM THE DELL TOLLS

Today Your Humble Narrator enjoyed an excellent lunch at Haiku Grill with Vince LaRue, an up-and-coming illustrator who’s visiting from Normandy. Here we are just after…

In addition to my idiotic squint, I look like late-vintage Orson Welles.

This week (October 8) would have marked the 93rd birthday of Dead End Kid/Bowery Boy Gabriel Dell, so…

Monster-of-the-Week: …this week let’s give the nod to Count Dracula. That is to say, to Dell’s vinyl version of Count Dracula, from the 1963 spoken-word album Famous Monsters Speak.

Each side of this LP, which was peddled in the back pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland, featured a dramatic monologue, one by the Frankenstein Monster, the other by Drac. The Frankie side doesn’t quite come off, but Dell’s Dracula, speaking Interview With a Vampire-style to a nosy writer who has disturbed his slumber, is memorable (it was scripted, by the way, by Cherney Berg, author of many spoken-word records for kids and son of Gertrude Berg, of radio’s The Goldbergs).

Dell was a comedian and impressionist after his Bowery Boys years, and he hammed his Bela Lugosi voice, which he had already played for laughs on The Steve Allen Show, to the corny hilt on Famous Monsters Speak. It creeped me out pretty good when I heard it at a friend’s house as a kid.

Years later The Wife, having no idea I knew the record, gave me a CD re-release of it. I still listen to it now and then—I just played it last week, to inaugurate October.

A couple more RIPs: To Alex Karras, passed on at 77, who despite his legendary status with the Detroit Lions will for many of us be most fondly remembered as Mongo in Blazing Saddles. I‘ll always disagree with his assertion that “Mongo only pawn in game of life.”

RIP also to Turhan Bey. I was amazed, quite candidly, to learn he was still alive. He was 90; I was amazed he was that young. I always liked him, even when he was sending Kharis the Mummy off to murder somebody.

COUNTESS IN

Last month we honored Mavis, daughter of Dracula in the animated kidflick Hotel Transylvania, opening tomorrow, so…

Monster-of-the-Week: …this week let’s recognize the Count’s original distaff offspring, and unhappy heir to his vampirism, Countess Marya Zaleska, title character of Dracula’s Daughter (1936)…

Memorably played by Gloria Holden in this first sequel to Universal’s 1931 Dracula, the Countess yearns to be free of her sanguinary—and sometimes Sapphic—appetites, but as usual, conversion therapy doesn’t take. This moody, restrained melodrama, directed by Lambert Hillyer, is maybe one of the less popular of the Universal monster pictures, but shouldn’t be overlooked.

RIP to singer Andy Williams, passed on at 84.