Monday, 16 October 2017

Watching old, old movies part 9

Next batch! Going through this list, and here are my previous entries.

25. House of Usher (1960)
More Vincent Price :3 This is a movie based on the short story by Edgar Allan Poe. I've read the story so I was curious about the movie. Unfortunately I wasn't very impressed with it, but I can see where Crimson Peak garnered some inspiration! Anyway, Mark Damon played a loud, obnoxious manly man who just wouldn't take no for an answer (the kind called douche or asshole in modern society). Granted that Vincent Price played a secretive and slightly insane man, who just couldn't abide Damon's behaviour. And then there was the poor girl caught in the middle. Tbh the only sane person in this whole get-up was the butler. I knew the story from before so I was mostly interested in how they would portray it, but what caught my attention the most was Damon's shiny, shiny, so shiny black hair. If you touch that hair does your hand come away black and slimy? The men both got what was coming for them, when the girl takes her revenge.

26. The Invisible Man (1933)
Based on the story by H.G. Wells (which I haven't read yet). It was Claude Raines breakthrough although his face is only shown briefly at the end. I had a lot of fun with this movie, because the invisible man was delightfully crazy. Yes, he murdered people who he percieved had wronged him, but more than that he was mischievously crazy, and it was a joy to watch an old movie where all the characters aren't all prim and proper. I was really interested to see how they managed to pull off the special effects of making him invisible, but they must've had some really skilled people to clip the film because I couldn't notice any seams at all. Though it was obvious that Raines' voice had been recorded elsewhere and then added to the movie. All in all I liked this movie, it just felt a little bit sped up at times. As if they were hard pressed for time (it's just 71 minutes long!)

27. The Bad Seed (1956)
This movie was odd. It felt like a drama (sometimes even a comedy) not a horror movie. It felt like theatre rather than cinema, even more so because they only used two sets. So basically the story is about this couple who has a perfect little daughter, but accidental death follows her around. Babysitter slipped and fell down the stairs to her death, a classmate drowned, caretaker was burned to death when exelcior packing caught fire in the room he was in... After her mother finds out the truth about her origins she starts to suspect that her daughter is the bad seed, and that all the accidental death was actually caused by her. The daughter eventually confesses to her mother, but the mother is overcome with a need to protect her daughter and becomes her accomplice insofar as she doesn't reveal the truth to anybody. Until the day she cracks, that is. The actress who plays the little daughter is amazing and actually the only actor/character that I like on the whole set (the others feel too exaggerated). But apart from that I'm not a fan of this movie.

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