Complete with a touching tribute to the recently passed Elisabeth Sladen, the new season’s debut no doubt reaffirmed many fans’ ongoing loyalty to the time-hopping program. Some fans, however, take their fandom very, very seriously. Let’s have a quick look at (and an affectionate, good-natured ribbing towards)  the hazards of becoming addicted to the BBC’s long-running science fiction saga:

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Now, pop by the FM Forum and share your thoughts about the season debut and your own addiction to all things Tardis-related.

Have you caught up with all of Ghouly Irv’s misadventures? (That therapist looks sort of familiar, doesn’t he?) Here’s the complete rundown of past MovieFrightFare installments. The Ghouly One will return!

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The Ghouly One will be picking himself up off the mat to return soon…meanwhile, in between rounds, make sure you’re fully caught up on each and every eerie installment of MovieFrightFare:

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A good low budget zombie film that is certainly not getting the credit it deserves. When it comes to zombie films, I’m all about the blood and guts. The more graphic the better, so the fact that this remains one of my top three favorite zombie movies despite an almost complete lack of blood says something.

Let’s take a look back at Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things!

It’s late at night and egotistical stage director Alan (Alan Ormsby) and his band of abused actors have just landed on an island for a little voodoo ceremony. They make their way through the forest, past the cemetery, and finally stop at a deserted cottage. After breaking in, they begin to make themselves at home. Alan (wearing the most hideous looking pants in the history of film) opens the crate they’ve been lugging and tells them of his plan to summon the dead, who will, of course, then do his bidding. Somehow, I think not.

Heading back to the cemetery, they dig up Orville Dunworth to use as their guinea pig, unaware it’s actually Roy, one of Alan’s friends. Orville has already been removed. Roy and his partner Emerson give them all the scare of their life before Alan gets down to the actual summoning ceremony now that the midnight hour is upon them. As this goes on, Anya (Anya Ormsby) begins to get a bit flaky about the proceedings. The spell is finished and…nothing. Alan rails against Satan for not delivering as the others laugh at him. Little does he know. They take the real Orville back to the cottage for his “coming out” party, starting out with his wedding to Alan. Back at the cemetery, Alan’s spell begins to take effect.

As the fun continues at Orville’s expense, Anya looks out into the darkness and can feel the evil slowly closing in on them as Alan continues to humiliate his little band. Anya knows it’s about to hit the fan, but all Alan can do is continue to belittle her. Anya tells him they have to leave because they won’t forgive us but Alan just has Orville hauled upstairs to the bedroom where they can be alone. Roy and Emerson, left at the cemetery to fill in the graves are attacked as the dead begin to rise up.

(For a low budget film this is really one of the best rising dead scenes I’ve ever seen. Really pretty creepy.)

Tired of his nonsense, the rest of them tell him they’re leaving but are met at the door by a dying Roy and a hoard of the undead. They surround the house and start looking for ways in as the boarding up begins. With nowhere to run, they make a break for the boat and are quickly forced back to the cottage where Alan tries a recalling spell which seems to work.

Cautiously, they again make for the boat only to be attacked and driven back to the cottage where Alan feeds Anya to the ghouls to save his own skin. With nowhere else to go, he locks himself in the bedroom where Orville is patiently waiting for him.

This was one of the earliest of director Bob (Benjamin) Clark’s films. He would also give us Black Christmas, Murder By Decree, and the greatest christmas movie ever…A Christmas Story. Of course, he also gave us two Porky’s movies and Rhinestone but I forgive him just on the strength of Christmas Story. A creepy and well made movie that I certainly enjoyed going back and watching yet again. So take the time to watch and enjoy, Children, and next month we’ll look back to what I consider to be Dario Argento‘s best movie.

Fred Burdsall is an amusement park junkie living with his better half, Allison, and their 4 cats. You can find him in the Center City Borders looking for Doctor Who and zombie books.

PS: You can get the 35th Anniversary DVD release of Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things…right here! The special release includes audio commentary by Alan Ormsby, Jane Daly, and Anya Cronin; a tribute to director Clark; music videos by The Deadthings; the theatrical trailer; and more.

Drop by the FM Forum and share your memories of this cult classic!

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Did you miss the Ghouly One’s tribute to Rick Baker, Monster Maker (and recent Oscar winner)? Here it is.

Don’t forget to cast your votes for FM in the Rondos! (Ghouly Irv wouldn’t mind at all if you contributed a write-in vote in the horror host category…) And stop in at the FM Forum and let Grouchy know what categories of thriller trivia he should be covering next…

And, as always, here’s the full complement of Ghouly fare from the past for your perusal…

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One day while hanging out with my best friend looking for something interesting to film with my Super-8 camera, I’d decided it would be fun to take my Evel Knievel doll (excuse me, action figure) and record the results of setting him ablaze. Certain that just taking a match to him wouldn’t produce the desired conflagration, my friend and I conferred on just what sort of household ingredient we could add to make him more…well, combustible. We decided to tell my father about this project and we figured we were on safe ground if we asked to borrow a can of spray paint. Walking a little nervously down to the seclusion of his basement man cave, we made our request. At which point, he turned to us and deadpanned:

Why not just use kerosene?

Now, my father is a guy who flies his own plane and used to make his own bullets, so maybe that shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise. It was probably a funny double take to witness happening between my friend and I, though, as we stuttered our agreement, nonplussed but trying hard to appear overly mature about it even as our early-teenaged minds raged into overdrive with interior monologue: Oh yeah yeah we’re gonna play with fire!

Dad monitored our irreverent experiment in backyard pyrotechnics, but I must confess the outcome was pretty disappointing—Evel rather laboriously melted instead of exploding into a monster ball o’ flame, his right arm the first thing to slowly, very slowly, drip to the ground. It was less Raiders of the Lost Ark than a would-be masterwork by Len Cella, but it goes a little ways towards explaining why, given the ever-popular if frivolous choice between The Addams Family or The Munsters, I can’t help but put myself firmly in the Addams column.

We’ve been told the secret to your Addams-versus-Munsters preference is partially rooted in class/financial distinctions. We’re told the Addamses, being obscenely rich, are the choice of the similarly well-off (or at least those of the upper-class mindset), while the working-class Munster clan is much more relatable to the blue-collar viewer. Who’s to say how well that theory holds up in general, but I don’t exactly have my own stock ticker in the house, shall we say. I’m more prepared to believe this aspect of the choice rests in how the families think about and deal with their money, or lack thereof.

Money doesn’t really matter so much to the Addamses; Gomez (John Astin) flushes more of his money down the toilet in any given episode that most people see in their lifetimes, and what’s more, he couldn’t care less. But you also get the feeling the acquisition of material wealth wouldn’t be a priority if he didn’t have piles of cash and stock investments to spare. Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne), in contrast, is a bumbing but good-hearted patriarch you recognize in sitcoms from The Honeymooners to The Simpsons. He’s got to hustle for every dollar (I can’t remember if there was ever an episode where Grandpa put his lab skills to use printing money, but you get the impression they’re too honest for that), so you can see how people who have to do likewise in a daily grind would have more respect for and bond more easily with the Munsters.

Next, there’s the central relationship between the couples. Herman and Lily (Yvonne DeCarlo) are the classic American married couple. They enjoy a fully domesticated sense of companionship. Herman’s no Don Juan; he looks like a real doofus in his nightgown, but he has everyman dignity. There’s much impatient bickering over Herman’s many failings and misadventures, but it’s balanced with the kind of sturdy familial loyalty most would envy.

Speaking of envy, though, there’s something to be said about the level of passion we see between Morticia (Carolyn Jones) and Gomez Addams. It’s the great achievement of the series that Morticia is always putting off her “bubula” (“Darling, later”), and while we never set foot in their bedroom (I’m pretty sure of this, but would be eager to be corrected with the specific episode and/or scene) it’s vividly clear that they have a rather, uhm, “active” offscreen relationship.

Your preference here, I suppose, arises from how you’d rather your mate regard you on a daily basis. Do you want her (or him) to keep you on the straight and narrow? Munsters. Would you prefer him or her to exist in a state of daily delusion, happily championing your every misbegotten act of folly as just another demonstration of your misunderstood and ill-appreciated genius? Addams.

Introvert? Check: Addams. You get the impression they would be happy never leaving home, though they’re most gracious when entertaining (“When people come to see ‘em…”). The opening Munsters credits are all about each and every member of the family leaving the house (except housebound Lily, bless ‘er) for the perils and pleasures of the “normal” world. Extrovert? Score: Munsters.

(My Morticia is a major-league extrovert and shares my Addams adoration, so that will have to stand as pataphysical proof that yes, there are indeed exceptions to every rule.)

Then there are the kids. I like Eddie (Butch Patrick) well enough, but I refer you to back to the story at the top. That’s an Addams story, so I observe that my own personal history is reflected much more through the experiences of Pugsley (Ken Weatherwax) and Wednesday (Lisa Loring). I didn’t have a werewolf teddy bear or sleep in a casket; I did, however, spend a good bit of time trying to figure out how I could build my own miniature torture chamber. (Being not too mechanically inclined, I never realized that dream. As I recall, I couldn’t persuade my dad to put the table saw to use for that purpose.)

Grandpa (Al Lewis) or Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan)? They’re equally handy in their own ways, but they’re also frequently irksome problems around the house. Ask me to choose between Grandmama (Blossom Rock) and Marilyn (Beverley Owen, Pat Priest), and I guess my Addams orthodoxy will be sorely tested.

My family did name our first dog Lurch, so I guess that pretty well closes the coffin lid.

George D. Allen produces Ghouly Irv’s MovieFrightFare videos, as well as writing articles for and producing the Movie Irv Reviews programs on the Movies Unlimited blog, MovieFanFare.

Visit the FM Forum and ring in your choice of Addams…or Munsters!

But enough! We are here to praise Rick Baker, not to bury him! I’ll pipe down and let your humble horror host do the talking:

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UPDATED!!! Ghouly Irv is pleased.

Drop by the FM Forum to share your admiration of monster maker Baker! We’ve officially covered every decade of “terror-ific trivia” in previous MovieFrightFare installments…so we’ll be returning with factoids of fear film in another (fun, we think) format soon.

By Fred Burdsall

Fiend Without a Face first started out as a story that appeared in Weird Tales (possibly the best fantasy/horror fiction magazine ever) back in 1930 as “The Thought Monster” by Amelia Reynolds Long. The film’s director, Arthur Crabtree, also gave us Horrors of the Black Museum in 1959.

A lone sentry on patrol hears a crunching, slurping sound in the woods and goes to investigate. A farmer out checking on his cows in the early morning is attacked and the sentry arrives seconds later to find a dead man and no sign of the killer. Official cause of death: Heart Failure. The Air Force wants to do an autopsy but his daughter, Barbara (Kim Parker), won’t allow it and hands the body over to the local authorities.

The Adams farm comes under attack and the old couple die as horribly as Farmer Griselle did. The Air Force get control of the bodies and an autopsy shows they had their brains sucked out of their heads and that the spinal cord is also missing. Major Cummings (Marshall Thompson) checks in on Farmer Griselle’s daughter and ends up in a fight with  Constable Gibbons. Gibbons gets the mayor’s OK to search the woods for the “mad G.I.” and seconds after leaving his house the mayor meets the same fate.

The major encounters Barbara again at the home of Professor Walgate (Kynaston Reeves), where he gets the cold shoulder from her and not much information from Walgate. All the members of the search party return to town except Gibbons. They organize a town meeting with the Major and Gibbons makes his horrific return from the woods. He is now completely insane. Cummings informs Barbara of his suspicions about the professor and while checking around the local cemetery, is locked in a tomb. When he doesn’t return, Barbara calls Captain Chester (Terence Kilburn) and together they rescue him in the nick of time.

The major confronts the professor with his pipe that he found in the tomb and he comes clean about his work on “Thought Materialization” and the creatures it spawned, a creature that looks like a human brain and feeds on intellect but is invisible to the human eye.  The decision is made to shut down the power plant but it’s been vandalized to the point where it can’t.  The professor’s house comes under attack and as the radiation level reaches the danger zone, the creatures begin to materialize. There are hundreds of them all around the house. Convinced that destroying the power plant will take away their source of energy and kill them, the major and professor make a run for it under cover fire but the professor falls victim to his own creation. Once inside, Major Cummings sets the fuse and escapes with seconds to spare before the building is destroyed and the creatures melt away.

Considering the time this was made (1958), the movie was remarkably graphic in its use of gore. Every brain that got shot was shown bubbling black blood and collapsing in on themselves. Shot in England, Canada, and even Germany (the stop motion animation effects) the script itself is fairly standard but the special effects–especially the sound effects–are fantastic work for its time. So do yourself a favor…watch and enjoy the Fiend Without a Face. You’ll be glad you did.

Next month, we’ll find out why Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things!

Well. Now I had a different project to pursue altogether.

Like many devoted movie fans, I have a visceral dislike of the very idea of colorizing black-and-white movies. One can experience frustration with many a compromised way of watching a movie—pan-‘n’-scan, dubbing, commercial interruptions, editing for language and other “objectionable content,” and so on—but few gestures intended to make classic (that is, old) movies “more accessible” to younger generations rankle quite like that of colorization.

But there were a few factors that stood out about these re-issues, enough to make me want to have a look at the results.

First, Harryhausen went on to perform similar work (with what was then termed a “new” process) on three of his own first four films for Columbia Pictures: It Came from Beneath the Sea, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, and 20 Million Miles to Earth. (7th Voyage of Sinbad already being in glorious Technicolor) Harryhausen wasn’t the director of any of these films—an interesting wrinkle that could bring up an entirely separate discussion about the venerable auteur theory and who should “own” the “right” to do with films as they will after their completion—but clearly, those films are most identified by his contributions. While he had no direct involvement with the three earlier films he aimed to transform, he was acquainted with producer Merian C. Cooper’s reported desire to shoot She in color, only to be forced into monochrome by RKO budget cuts, and thus took special care in designing the film’s new look as a tribute to the renowned co-producer of King Kong.

Does this necessarily translate to the “rightness” of colorizing Cooper’s The Most Dangerous Game? Well, no, but that was the film I’d wanted to look at, and, having been moved (ever so slightly) by the notion of Harryhausen attempting to fulfill Cooper’s original vision for She, I could not help but be curious.

Would one of cinema’s greatest effects craftsmen settle for anything less than shockingly brilliant results when it came to…let’s call it “adjusting”…the works of fellow artisans? Could this new colorization technique be something truly special? Would it give the film an entirely new charge, new energy, new life?

The answers to those questions, in my opinion, turn out to be, in order:

Apparently. Not exactly worth writing home about. Yes and no.

So, let’s look at the film once more.

For the uninitiated—if there are any left?—this first adaptation of the Connell story follows the wild and frightening adventure of big-game hunter and author Bob Rainsford (Joel McCrea), who survives a freak shipwreck only to fall into greater danger when he swims ashore to a nearby Caribbean island. There, he makes the acquaintance of Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks), an aristocratic Russian who is also a hunter and admirer of Rainsford’s exploits. Zaroff is oddly energized by Rainsford’s arrival and quickly introduces him to two other guests, also castaways from a previous tragedy at sea: the beautiful Eve (Fay Wray) and her booze-swilling brother, Martin (Robert Armstrong).

Their cocktail-party conversation quickly turns to hunting, and Zaroff tries to entice Rainsford to join him in hunting “the most dangerous game.” Literally overnight, Rainsford discovers (quite gruesomely) that Zaroff is referring to hunting man, and then, we’re whisked into a fast-paced “survival of the fittest” saga with Rainsford and Eve taking to the wilderness as part of Zaroff’s cruel (and non-negotiable) bargain: evade him until dawn, and go free. Fail, they wind up mounted in the sadistic Cossack’s trophy room.

Co-directors Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack (Cooper’s directing partner for the original Kong one year later) deliver a brisk, enthrallingly melodramatic thriller. It’s reasonable to say it suffers from its fair share of creaks today—Banks, decked out in full evening dress (these guys are always ready for company, no matter the hour of day or night), offers a performance of serpentine, satanic villainy, stylized in a manner today easy to brand as “ham.” And, speaking of chewing the scenery, Armstrong clearly had a year to go before his talents were adequately revealed in a Cooper production. His swagger made for the perfect, peerless Carl Denham, but his drunken act here is a bit broad without being terribly unique. McCrea makes for an effective, upright hero, but it’s future scream queen (and Kong leading lady) Wray who perhaps comes off best. Her considerable beauty is well exploited by careful cinematography and strategically flimsy wardrobe, and while there’s not any great depth to her part, Wray’s work feels to me the most contemporary.

So, what’s the verdict on Harryhausen’s colorization?

A mixed reaction from me–but certainly nothing here is so persuasive as to win me over as a convert for the process in general. I can’t speak to what technological advances were made in this “new” colorization technique, but to my eye, it seems to suffer from many of the same liabilities as the “old” techniques. Let’s have a look at a few of the screen captures for more vivid illustrations.

With interior shots, or tightly composed exteriors where we’re dealing with structures like Zaroff’s castle or the dark of a cavern, where the range of color can be strong but naturally limited, the effects can be crisp and not distracting:

In fact, in many sequences and individual shots, it achieves something close to very exciting with Wray. Indeed, the erotic qualities of her performance are brought out with even more strength by way of adding color:

I have little doubt in my mind that the very deliberate lighting here is meant to draw attention towards, rather than cover up, Wray’s plunging neckline, and the eye is pulled even more strongly to the ornamental shadow play:

The sweat of the jungle on her skin feels more vivid, the storytelling more scandalous:

However, the more time we spend in the jungle, the more disappointment comes. Here’s where we get into serious trouble. In the long shots especially (and in the numerous matte shots), the limitations of colorization become very, very clear. When we should be looking at tremendous gradations of hue, we’re instead given huge splotches of barely differentiated greens, browns, or greys.

In the fog, it gets even…well, murkier:

All isn’t lost in the exteriors. Occasionally we do get a striking and pleasing enough image:

Of course, none of the images can be said to “work” as well as they do in the original black-and-white version, because of the simple fact that cinematographer Henry W. Gerrard was lighting for black and white, not for color. Those are two very different activities, and despite what was no doubt a considerable amount of detailed decision-making and thoughtful artistry on the parts of Harryhausen and Legend Films, the transformation here cannot adequately translate Gerrard’s skilled monochrome work into color images of equal potency.

We return, as we must, to the issue of colorizing at all. It’s said (sometimes) to be done in order to make classic filmmaking accessible to younger viewers who would surely be alienated by black-and-white. While even that point is obviously arguable—can anyone claim with any authority at all that it’s “nature” and not “nurture” that determines a youngster’s artistic tastes?—there’s a contrary point to be made that the addition of color only heightens the film’s sense of “age” in other ways.

The actors appear to be largely taken prisoner by way of performance techniques that went out of style quite some time ago in favor of a much greater naturalism. Bringing the film “up to date” in one sense only accents the now-alien nature of their work. Their choices feel older, and odder, than they do when seen through the aesthetics of vintage films in general. Their style of delivery and characterization feels at home in black-and-white.

In full color, not so much.

All that said, I enjoyed romping through The Most Dangerous Game all over again, this time in color. The Legend DVD release has a quick and illuminating interview with Harryhausen where he discusses not the change to color, but the impact and novelty of Max Steiner’s thrilling music score. Apparently, he provides an audio commentary for the set of his own freshly re-hued films, which I’d be curious to hear, especially to learn about what it was in this new process that led him to it and persuaded him of its effectiveness.

What also separates Harryhausen’s project from others of its ilk is, most valuably, the presence of the original release version of the film. This puts it miles above what I would regard as the strange and misguided efforts of certain other filmmakers determined to alter cinema history entirely by transforming films that were great (if perhaps unsatisfying to them) upon release into something they believe closer to their original vision and subsequently doing their best to eliminate access to the pictures audiences saw and loved on their initial exhibition.

There’s no objective truth at play here, of course, just one film fan’s opinion. Dare I say it’s shared by many others who may be less sympathetic to Harryhausen’s efforts and rabidly eager to bark their disapproval?

George D. Allen produces the MovieFrightFare programs hosted here on FM, as well as writing articles for and producing the regular video podcasts for the Movies Unlimited blog, MovieFanFare.

Drop by the Famous Monsters of Filmland Forum and share your thoughts about Harryhausen’s colorization projects! And go catch the latest Ghouly Irv tribute to Boo-tiful Screamers including Fay Wray and others if you missed its original run just the other week!

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Now, visit the Famous Monsters of Filmland Forum and make sure Ghouly Irv knows which boo-tiful screamers he should study up close next time he returns to this always-seductive subject! Below, enjoy the installments of MovieFrightFare you may have missed the first time they stalked across the screen:

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By Fred Burdsall

Back before the dinosaurs died off (sometime around 1968), a little film called Mad Monster Party made its way to my local theater, and like any kid…I had to see it. So, armed with some cash courtesy of my parents, I marched in and was handed a clip-on button that simply read “The Green Slime Are Coming.” I had no idea what that entailed, but if it’s slimy and green…I’m there. It took an agonizing four weeks but one day the marquee read “Saturday at noon..The Green Slime.” This was it, no turning back: Give me the worst chores you got, mom, cause I’m going to see The Green Slime, and I need money.

That being said, let me tell you all about it.

An asteroid is on a collision course with Earth–cue psychedelic late ’60s rock from Richard Delvy and we are on our way. They blast it out of the sky and it falls on Jack Rankin (Robert Horton of Wagon Train fame) to do it. He’s rushed off to Gamma 3, run by his former friend Vince Elliott (Richard Jaeckel). Apparently they had a falling out over Dr. Lisa Benson (played by Luciana Paluzzi, who real nerds know as Fiona Volpe from Thunderball) and an active member of Gamma 3. After quick hellos and some macho posturing, Vince asks to join the team and is welcomed aboard. Guess he didn’t hear the chances of outrunning the blast are next to nothing.

Reaching the asteroid they split into three groups, drilling and planting explosives when they encounter a greenish ooze that forces them to abandon their equipment and head back to the ship on foot. Dr. Halverson (Ted Gunther) is reluctant to leave this discovery behind but time is running out and they have to go. No one notices the green splotch on the leg of one of the spacesuits and off they go, miraculously surviving the blast. Their spacesuits are put into decontamination and this causes the slime to mutate and grow into a one-eyed, multi-tentacled monstrosity that lives on and kills through electricity. (Why do I NOT have a toy of this in my collection? I must be getting old.)

Once it’s discovered, they try to capture it with gas guns and rope…no such luck. Lasers prove even more harmful. Their blood grows into even more of the creatures. How do you kill something that feeds and grows off your weapons? After an attack on the infirmary, they trap one of them in there and watch on the monitor as its blood begins to congeal and form more creatures. Elliott devises a plan that will lure them all to C Block, where the power will be shut off and the monsters hopefully contained. What could possibly go wrong? Well, Doctor Halverson for one decides his research is much too valuable to lose, so he rushes into C Block to retrieve it and gets baked. Elliott opens the block door to save him and this allows the Green Slime to run loose once again.

The decision is made to evacuate and destroy the station but the hatch won’t open. Apparently they are all over the outside of the ship as well and, against orders, Elliott takes a team out to fight them off. Will the ship be able to escape? Can Elliott and Rankin put their differences aside to save the day? Will the earth fall to the Green Slime? One way to find out: Watch and Enjoy The Green Slime. Cue that groovy theme song, baby.

The film was directed by Kinji Fukasaku, who you may know better for his two Battle Royale films. He also shot the Japanese footage for Tora! Tora! Tora! and the fantastic Yakuza film Graveyard of Honor. Well, I can’t believe it’s been a year already but here we are. Hopefully Santa Claus will drop a few boxes of baseball cards under my tree this year. I’m sure he’ll hook me up with some Doctor Who goodies and maybe even figure out a way to get my beloved Cubbies back on track, but in the meantime, everyone have a great holiday–be safe, save me a cookie and Dr. Pepper and we’ll do it all over again next year. Now if you’ll excuse me, the Ghost of Christmas Past just walked in and he wants to show me something, so I gotta go.

By the way….I STILL have the button.