Gonna be hard to top Vanessa Bayer as the emotions vampire!

Last night was the always fantastic Young Frankenstein. As I said earlier in the thread, I saw it long before I ever saw the James Whale films and it colors how I view them. I keep waiting for Kenneth Marrs to turn up. It is amazing to see how many of the classic scenes Mel brooks and Gene Wilder used and then turned on their head. Still, James Whale didn't have Madeline Kahn! Or Marty Feldman!

The Transylvania Station joke is beyond lame, but it still makes me smile.

Next up: Dr Tongue's 3-D House of Stewardesses......

I watched the first three episodes of this and couldn’t keep going. Part of it was because it reminded me too much of The Office, which I couldn’t get into, and part because I just didn’t find it funny at all, even though I really like Matt Berry.

So I've been meaning to watch all the Blind Dead movies again as a group. Lo and behold, IMBD lists a freakin' 35 films, including homages, films inspired by the original series, and fan made films. No way am I gonna try that. I'm sticking to the original four and one official sequel. And maybe one other.

Tombs of the Blind Dead - 1972 - A group of Knights Templar, executed for black magic, return as cannibalistic undead. There are some uninteresting people, including the usual ineffectual cops, but nobody cares about them. This movie is all about the Blind Dead, and they are awesome. Their robes covered in grave dirt, they are desiccated and skeletal, and I love the look. Sure, they're slow as hell, even when riding their undead horses (don't ask, okay?), but they're still threatening, cause these guys are relentless. You can outrun them, but they will just keep coming. There's one sequence where they board a train, and just move through it, car by car, slaughtering everyone they find. And, fittingly, they are not stopped by the end of the film.

Continuity notes - In this version, the Templars are executed by order of the King of Spain. Their bodies are hung from trees as a warning to anyone else thinking about turning to the dark side, where crows peck out their eyes. They apparently can rise from their tombs whenever somebody happens by. Also, a victim of the Templars comes back as a cannibal zombie herself.

Weird trivia note - Apparently, some American distributor decided to cash in on the Planet of the Apes popularity. They took out the Templar bits, and added a voice-over saying that the Blind Dead were undead apes from a pre-human civilization, back for revenge on the humans who replaced them. They retitled it Revenge from Planet Ape. Yeah, the movie business is messed up, sometimes.

Tonight's fare was The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

What; you say it's not a horror movie? It scared the kool-aid out of me, when I was a kid and saw Sinbad fight the skeleton! It's got an evil sorcerer, who raises the dead (Torin Thatcher, who animates the skeleton to kill Sinbad), lots of people coming at you trying to hack you apart, and monsters. Said monsters include: a cyclops (who may or may not be pining for Jean Grey), a fire-breathing watch-dragon (but in the words of Yosemite Sam, "Dragons is so stupid!") and a Roc ("Finally, the Roc has come back to the aerie!"). There is even a baby roc, which some mutinous sailors kill and then try to roast, so we can smell what is cooking the Roc!

It's all Harryhausen fun, with some scary stuff and high adventure, including a scene where Sinbad and Princes Parisa have to swing across a destroyed bridge, over a lava flow, which looks suspiciously like a similar scene in a 1977 film, of some renown.

If that isn't scary enough, you should see some of the acting! Torin Thatcher was always rather over-the-top and Kerwin Matthews is a bit of a plank, but dashing enough for the fights and handsome enough for the Princess. The pint-sized genie is pretty awful with his line deliveries, but he is only a kid. Kathryn Grant, the future Kathryn Crosby, is the Princess and is pleasant enough, but not exactly threatening to take the Oscar race. Harryhausen is the real star, giving life to his creatures via stop motion and optical effects, the first film to be christened Dynamation.

Like I said, the fight with the skeleton spooked me, as a kid, with the grinning skull and the savage and wild sword swings (15th Century Ottoman Turk Kilij swords, not 8th Century double-edged saif or samshir blades, used in the era of the Sinbad legends). That fight ended up being the test drive for the later battle in Jason and the Argonauts, with the field of skeletons raised from the ground, who do battle with the crew of the Argos.

These things are legend, so you can forgive the historical inaccuracies, though not continuity errors, like presenting Sinbad on a dhow, at the beginning, which suddenly turns into a 3-masted, square rigged carrack, in a storm. Somebody goofed, there (or didn't have the right stock footage). You can forgive the European-looking Arabs, though when there is a mutiny and Sinbad kills one of the mutineers, he was the helmsman and he falls across the wheel and sends it spinning, yet the ship never even changes course, let alone suddenly lurch to starboard (the direction the wheel is spun). They also have the ship anchor off an island, to locate the lamp of the genie (left behind by the sorcerer) but still have the sails unfurled, which is going to throw the ship around. I suppose I should be glad that the mutineers don't all sound like Robert Newton.

This is a good one, though my favorite of the Sinbad cycle is The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, with Tom Baker as the evil wizard Koura, John Phillip Law as Sinbad (he at least attempts an Arabic accent and pronounces "Allah" better than Matthews or some of the other actors), and Caroline Munroe's bre...er, Caroline Munro, as the love interest. Good monsters, a great plot and a nice climax. Law was the best of the trio of Matthews, himself and Patrick Wayne (and better than Guy Williams, in Captain Sinbad)

The Ghost Galleon - 1974 - aka Horror of the Zombies, The Blind Dead 3, The Ghost Ship of the Swimming Corpses, and probably more. I think there might be some inverse proportion rule here, where the more titles a movie has, the worse it is.

A series of really unlikely events, involving a publicity stunt, a ruthless businessman, a weatherman who happens to know about the legend of a ghost ship, along with some models, because bikinis, lead to a bunch of people finding an old, creepy ship filled with Blind Dead. Once they finally get on board, there is a creepy atmosphere and some good moments, but it's mostly so damned dragged out that the tension is pissed away. The Templars are supposed to be slow-moving, not the whole movie.

Continuity notes - no mention of the origin. Why are the Templars in coffins on a ship? Why does the weatherman decide that the ship isn't just ghostly, but phases in and out of another dimension? Notably, he does specifically link the Templars to Satan worship; that's been implied but not stated up til now.

I quite like this, although it hardly warrants repeat viewings, I feel. 

The most entertaining part is probably when the patriarch says to the guests, “Have a potato!”

Personal anecdote here: years ago I visited a relative who was living in sheltered accommodation. This was around 6pm in the winter. I buzzed the intercom but the manager didn’t answer. He was usually there. I tried again. Nothing. So I thought I’d check through his office window. Nothing. I returned to the front door - and seemingly out of nowhere, a scowling face appeared at the glass and startled me.

The way it happened reminded me of how Boris Karloff’s butler, Morgan, appeared in a really creepy way after opening the door to the visitors.

(You had to be there to see the funny side, but I thought I’d share it)