It’s pretty crummy that Abbott and Costello don’t get to do much with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In fact you have them in a movie with Boris Karloff who doesn’t get to do much to spook them beyond his monster mask, and you have the pair of knuckleheads that almost play second banana in their own movie. In fact, they don’t really show up until twenty minutes in to the movie, and their entrance smacks of sloppiness and lack of ideas. The pair should have memorable introductions, and yet here their characters Tubby and Slim are only in the story by circumstance.
Tag Archives: Adaptation
Seymour, Audrey, and the Price of Obscurity
Real depth can come from the most surprising sources, things which at first glance are commercial grabs, but which, when mined, show greater depth. On the one basic hand, Star Wars is ships in space shooting at each other and guys beating on each other with laser swords. On the other hand, the critical hand that studied at a college, it’s an examination of our yearning for a call to adventure lost in the grit of seventies cinema.
Consider Little Shop of Horrors, one of the movies that came out of the well of nostalgia that is the eighties. Many remember it as a musical. Many remember it as a comedy. Many remember it as a horror flick. Few, if any, read much into it.
Frankenstein’s Army (2013)
I’ve never gone in to a movie wanting to love it so much and come out of it feeling so utterly disappointed. Except maybe “Cabin Fever.” In either case, I wanted to love “Frankenstein’s Army” if only for its interesting tale of a Russian squad going in to battle and finding a madman scientist using soldiers to form his own army of decrepit freaks. Normally I’m a big fan of the found footage sub-genre as well, but once I realized “Frankenstein’s Army” was found footage, it threw me out of the narrative almost immediately. I can see the found footage formula working in the age of digital camera, and digital camcorders, and cell phone videos. I can even see it working in the nineties with VHS camcorders, but to have us believe there’s a found footage movie set during World War II is immensely absurd, and just downright desperate.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)
It’s surprising how quickly “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” becomes a vanity project for director Kenneth Branagh. Rather than a tale of a monster wreaking havoc on his master, the film feels more like Jane Austen co-starring the monster who is kind of a nuisance and then becomes a threat to his creator. I’ve rarely seen Frankenstein movies where the creature is the third banana, but lo and behold Branagh pulls it off in what is more a film about Victor Frankenstein having a lover’s spat with his wife, who discovers her husband has committed some evil selfish acts. To his credit though, Victor Frankenstein is no hero. He’s selfish, self-centered, and has a God complex, but Branagh is very obsessed with chewing the scenery. So much so that he even manages to outdo Robert DeNiro.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)
It’s surprising how quickly “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” becomes a vanity project for director Kenneth Branagh. Rather than a tale of a monster wreaking havoc on his master, the film feels more like Jane Austen co-starring the monster who is kind of a nuisance and then becomes a threat to his creator. I’ve rarely seen Frankenstein movies where the creature is the third banana, but lo and behold Branagh pulls it off in what is more a film about Victor Frankenstein having a lover’s spat with his wife, who discovers her husband has committed some evil selfish acts. To his credit though, Victor Frankenstein is no hero. He’s selfish, self-centered, and has a God complex, but Branagh is very obsessed with chewing the scenery. So much so that he even manages to outdo Robert DeNiro.
Amazing Stories: The Movie (1987)
For many years, I was unaware that “Amazing Stories” was actually a Television series, albeit one that came and went like a lightning bolt. I didn’t discover “Amazing Stories” was first a TV show until the early nineties, and just wanted more fantastic tales of wonder from Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis. Before then “Amazing Stories” was just a really entertaining and incredible anthology film that mixed horror, fantasy, and comedy together in one great package. “Amazing Stories: The Movie” is two segments from the TV show paired together as a movie. There are apparently various versions of “The Movie,” one of which had three segments and was only released internationally. I was lucky that “the movie” I saw played on local TV stations in New York when I was a child, and featured two great segments from the series. So my introduction to Robert Zemeckis began with “Amazing Stories: The Movie.”
Vampirella (1996)
It’s hard to believe almost twenty years ago, the height of superhero movies was “Batman & Robin” with studios not really clamoring to adapt any of the beloved superheroes. It took “Blade” to finally bring some tooth and maturity to the entire sub-genre. One of the more interesting precursors to “Blade” is the dreadfully boring vampire adaptation “Vampirella,” which is a tonally confused take on the pulpy pin up character mostly known for being beautiful and sexy, and not so much for her compelling story lines. “Vampirella” is never sure if it’s campy horror schlock, exploitative vampire softcore, or a stern horror epic. So director Jim Wynorski pretty much lunges for all three on the table, and comes out with this pretty gloomy and dull film.