The Horror...The Horror...

My first obsession when I was a wee lad way back in the 20th century was horror films. I'd have to say they were possibly my first movie crush, the genre that led me down the path to geekdom. I watched them whenever, wherever, however I could anytime of the day or night. Once my friend Albert and I made his house as dark as we possibly could as we watched HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL in the middle of a bright sunny afternoon. Back then, there were only a handful of TV stations to choose from and I'd always insist on watching channels from the Bay Area because they showed the best stuff. I'd rush home from school since KGO in San Francisco played some choice morsels at four in the after noon. Late at night, KPIX ran their best of the best way after midnight. Antenna reception was questionable especially in the daytime, but I'd brave a couple of hours of snow and static to get my fix. The Sacramento stations just didn't have the programming I craved until the great Bob Wilkins Show came to my rescue when it premiered Saturday nights on KCRA.

Horror films were more accessible on TV, but I craved the movie-going experience. That was a leap to the major leagues as far as I was concerned. Once I was old enough, off I went and I never looked back.

Stockton's Fox California (now the Bob Hope Theater. Yes, really) was the best place possible to see

scary movies, it being the only true movie palace in town. In fact the Fox was like a giant screening room in an old castle, kind of murky, always cold and actually rather spooky. It's where I was able to finally see films from Hammer Studios, producers of the Christopher Lee Dracula series, Peter Cushing Frankensteins and so many more gloriously gory delights. When I saw John Gillings’ PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES, one of the scariest Hammer productions ever, the chilly Fox auditorium was such a perfect atmosphere that I felt like I was right in the picture, a graveyard in gloomy old Cornwall. I spent an entire Saturday-I mean day and night-at a marathon showing of five Edgar Allen Poe adaptations from the Roger Corman days at American International including TALES OF TERROR and TOMB OF LIGEIA. By the middle of the fourth film, THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, I was getting a little woozy, but I toughed it out.

I earned my geek merit badge by entering a Halloween costume contest at the Fox in a vampire get-up I created for myself. With makeup I applied at home, I honestly looked a little like Bat Boy. I headed downtown to the Fox by bus, ignoring the bewildered stares of the other passengers because I was too busy convincing myself of my impending first place finish. What I didn’t count on was that the contest was to be judged by applause and I just didn’t have any friends in the audience. You see, I went by myself as I often did and this had turned into a popularity contest. The winner was a kid with a whole bunch o’ buddies who clapped, hooted and hollered like there was no tomorrow. His costume was a hat.

And how did I rank in the contest? Well, there were crickets in the Fox California that day for I didn't receive a single solitary clap. After the walk of shame off the stage, I headed for the restroom to wash the makeup off my face the best I could. I returned to my seat and wondered why I entered at all. I did so on an impulse without informing anyone of my actions. Sure, I would have reveled in the joy of winning, but I didn't and just moved on. I actually wasn't sad. This was something I found that I had to do for myself so I just went ahead and did it. Ultimately, I was rather proud of lil' ol' me so I sat back and enjoyed the show. After all, it was a horror movie and right then and there, life was good.

Such were the origins of a geek like me.

Christopher Lee, Prince of Darkness

This just in from the "prestigious" British newspaper, The Guardian:

Lord of the Rings star Christopher Lee has been awarded a prestigious BFI Fellowship. The presentation will be made on 19 October at Banqueting House, Whitehall, during the London film festival, the BFI's premier event.

The BFI Fellowship is an award given "to individuals in recognition of their outstanding contribution to film or television". 2012's honorees were actor Helena Bonham Carter and director Tim Burton. In 2011, writer-director David Cronenberg and actor-director Ralph Fiennes were recipients.

Wankers.

First of all, it's SIR Christopher Lee. Second of all...LORD OF THE RINGS star? He also "starred" in 1941. What was Dracula...a footnote?

I have great love for this icon of my youth. Obviously, since I wrote an ode to he, Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood in my book IN THE DARK entitled "The Good, the Bad and the Undead". Since Sir Christopher is receiving his award next week and Halloween is coming up, here is an excerpt from ITD all about the man, the fangs and the cape.

The heroes of my life were all killers.

Oh. I’m sorry. It appears that I’ve upset you. Let me assure you that you have nothing to fear from me. If your hackles have been raised since reading those words, you can go ahead and lower them now…slowly. Don’t make any sudden moves. For God’s sake, get that judgmental look off your face…It really disturbs me…

Aw, relax, would ya? It’s not as if I worshipped at the shrine of Charles Manson, traded baseball cards with The Boston Strangler or harbored a lifelong dream to open up the Ed Gein Culinary Academy.

Hardly.

My heroes were a dapper, debonair government assassin, a monosyllabic bounty hunter who brought ‘em in mostly dead not alive and a bloodsucking Lord of the Undead. To better identify them, you might recognize the names James Bond, The Man with No Name and Count Dracula.

In every one of his movies, the last member of my trifecta started out dead. Okay, okay…UN-dead. (Must we have this conversation? It’s all semantics anyway.) He was, of course, Dracula, the Vampire’s Vampire, embodied by the legendary Christopher Lee.

From the mid-fifties to the early seventies, Lee, along with Peter Cushing, was one of the main stars of Hammer Studios, England’s chief producer of horror films. It was there that Lee recreated a couple of Boris Karloff’s greatest roles, namely the Frankenstein Monster and the Mummy. However, it is the character most closely identified with Bela Lugosi that Lee found his fame as well. His interpretation of the Count was vastly and radically different from his predecessor’s. Physically, Lee was taller and certainly more athletic than Lugosi, so Dracula became more of a swashbuckler, albeit an evil swashbuckler. He would use his cape as an extension of his own body, flowing behind him as he strode away or would wrap it around his long frame like a black shroud. He tossed the Transylvanian accent out the window and instead utilized those stentorian tones of his with complete and absolute authority.

But, in my personal favorite of the Hammer/Dracula series and the first I had ever seen, DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, Lee has no dialogue at all and it is extremely effective. Dracula is virtually silent during the course of the movie, save for the occasional scowling hiss that seemed to come from deep within where his soul used to be. Never before or since has Dracula been portrayed so frighteningly. This was raw, savage evil incarnate, a truly vicious demon from hell. Legend has it that Lee played it in this manner because his dialogue was so trite. It doesn’t matter to me because, as far as I’m concerned, it worked. It made such an impression on me that when Lee spoke in the follow-up film, DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE, I remember being very disappointed in the change.

Lee had help from the Hammer makeup department that outfitted him with a great set of sharp fangs and, best of all, bloodshot contact lenses. He could have been a poster boy for Visine. He was also provided with another set that were solid red indicating that after a night’s feasting, this dude was full.

The movies themselves contributed greatly to his success in the character. Hammer pictures, while low budgeted, benefited from good to excellent production values. The acting was always decent, the stories fairly exciting and the bottom line was, for an assembly line, Hammer put out a very respectable and reliable product. Naturally, what really stirred my juices were the two ingredients I began to crave…good ol’ sex and violence.

My first memories of blood on the big screen, before then almost a taboo, were in Hammer films. These weren’t overdone splatter effects, but for that time, they didn’t hold back much either. A stake through the heart was no longer just hinted at, projected as a shadow on the wall or executed off camera. There it was in all of its gory glory. When the blood flowed in the resurrection scene of Dracula, Prince of Darkness,  director Terrence Fisher made it almost a character itself, perhaps the essence of all that is unholy.

The icing on my boyhood cake was that these Hammer pictures were so damn lusty which, along with the sexuality portrayed in the Bond pictures, meant I was doing A-OK for my age in the sexual awakening department. I was exposed, in both senses of the word, to many a bursting bodice and plunging peasant blouse that revealed enough cleavage to fill both sides of the screen. Several times too was that camera shot of the undraping of a lusciously voluptuous woman tuned away from the camera, revealing only her naked back that outlined her curvaceous female form, making my increasingly horny little mind believe that I had just seen everything!

Since Dracula is one of the great sex symbols of all time, Lee’s version of the Count fit right into this atmosphere.  You knew damn well this guy was getting a lot more action than the monkey bites he was doling out. It has been said that no one could resist the will of Dracula, but it always seemed that Lee’s victims wanted to give up more than their jugulars.

Christopher Lee will always be the perfect Dracula to me. Unfortunately, I feel like I’m betraying a fellow Hungarian by not giving Bela Lugosi his due, but that’s part of the problem I have with him. Bela always came across to me like a creepy uncle, the one the family didn’t talk about much.  Granted, Lee’s Dracula was more of a product of my era and I accept that. There was no getting around that overpowering presence of his when he donned the cape. Lee gave the world’s greatest vampire his unmistakable signature, the distinction of a great actor that makes him totally identifiable with a given character. As Dracula, he dominated the screen to the point of making all else in the film before, after or even during his screen time seem inconsequential, save for him.

 Lee had a bumpy road ahead of him once he left the cape behind. Fortunately, he was able to make a class A horror film, THE WICKER MAN, a sensational picture from director Robin Hardy and screenwriter Anthony Shaffer. From there, he continued on as a villain in a better grade of films like Richard Lester’s THE THREE and FOUR MUSKETEERS where he held his own against Oliver Reed, Charlton Heston and Faye Dunaway. A dream damn near came true for me when Lee played the James Bond villain in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, an unfortunately weak entry in the series. He managed to shine when the movie didn’t. But now, here he is over the age of ninety appearing in some of the biggest movies of recent times time, the Lord of the Rings trilogy (though Peter Jackson callously cut his scenes from the theatrical version of RETURN OF THE KING) and the Star Wars prequels , where George Lucas kept him for all three films even if he had the unfortunate name of Count Dooku. And Lee’s still working. That, my friends, is called longevity.

Once and forever, I live with the memories of these indelible images. Connery, Sean Connery is Bond, James Bond, saving the world once again from a maniacal madman before tumbling off to the sack with another spectacular babe. Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name except Blondie takes a puff off his cheroot after drawing his six-shooter and blowing away a pack of ornery cowpokes with names like Umberto and Giuseppe. Finally, standing on the grand staircase of a cobweb ridden castle is a statuesque aristocrat with crimson eyes, an ebony cape and pointed ivory fangs that glisten in the light of the full moon, for he is Christopher Lee as Dracula, the Prince of Darkness…and it’s supper time…

Copyright 2009 by Scott Cherne

UPDATE 6/11/15: Today we learned that Sir Christopher Lee has passed away at the age of 93. If his movies have taught us anything, he shall return. Until he does, his legacy on screens large and small have made him immortal.

IN THE DARK: A LIFE AND TIME IN A MOVIE THEATER is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. It can be found on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle versions. 

SCOTT CHERNEY'S AMAZON PAGE

Full of Sith

(If you haven't seen Revenge of the Sith yet, be forewarned that this is chock full o' spoilers.If you don't care one way or the other, what are you doing here anyway? Go read Rosie O'Donnell's blog. Maybe there's a sequel to Riding the Bus with My Sister in the works.)

So the Star Wars saga is now complete. Revenge of the Sith, the third and final piece of the big jigsaw puzzle has been set into place, connecting the entire series together.

And the verdict is...

IT DOESN'T SUCK!

Everybody fanboy in the world has been tripping over themselves so that may grovel at the feet of George "Don't call me Toad" Lucas for not screwing this one up too.

"Shank you, Mishter Lucash! Shank you! You've given us all a reashon to live again! We have all been sho disshapointed in the lasht few yearsh. Shtar Trek let ush down....The Matrixsh shequelsh shucked...sho did The Lord of the Ringsh... Oh wait, that didn't shuck. But that was fantashy! Thish ish schinche fichtion! What you have done, George...can I call you George?... Mishter Lucash. Yesshir... What you have done with Shtar Warsh-Chapter Three-Revenge of the Shith is bring it all together and sheamlishly connect it with Shtar Warsh-Chapter Four: A New Hope. That'sh what you given ush...A New Hope. Shank you again for lowering our shtandardsh sho much with the last two moviesh than when you've made a half-way dechent attempt thish time around, it looksh like a freakin' mashterpiece in comparishon! Shank you, Mishter Lucash! Oh, shank you...and may the Forche be with you!"

Look, kiddies, don't be so goddamn grateful to Darth Lucas. Sith had to be good. He owed it to you. He owed it to me. He's owed it anyone who has ever given two figs about Star Wars at all. What he did was make up for lost time and that is the twenty years that passed since Return of the Jedi. It's no secret to anyone that The Phantom Menace was not only atrocious, but a slap right across the pimply face of every fan out there. He himself has admitted that the first two prequels only had about 20% story in each. The rest was all padding...and that padding was out and out pimping of merchandising-toy, games and other piles of future landfill. Over the years one truth has emerged from all of Lucas' raping and pillaging of the young and the young at heart...

George Lucas is NOT a Jedi. He went over to the Dark Side a long time ago in a Bay Area far, far away... Okay. Fine. That's overstating it (No! Really?) He's just such a goddamn disappointment to me.

My anger at Darth Lucas is not directed at the film, which I'll get into later. This all stems from the May 20 interview with Lucas in Entertainment Weekly that preceded the release of the film. I held onto it until after I saw Sith since EW should really be called Spoiler Weekly and I'd rather see the movie first. (I know, I said I have spoilers in this thing too but how much money did you pay to read this? Spoilers in the media equals bad journalism, so there) I guess what infuriates me about Lucas is his total lack of passion for his own creation and how he spits in the face of anyone who cares more he does. He had to "add Hamburger Helper" to fill out the first two movies. This all stems from his "aversion to wordsmithing". Fine. You hate writing so much then why didn't you get some help, Toad? One of the reasons The Empire Strikes Back is generally acknowledged to be the best of the bunch because the screenplay was written by legendary screenwriter Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, no slouch himself. You remember him? He co-wrote Return of the Jedi with you. What's the matter, couldn't afford him? Maybe someone could have helped with some of the more embarrassing moments in the new film too. (Let me also give credit to both Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand who directed the second and third installments as well)
I guess what really just rankles my Bantha is that George was one of the great hopes of my generation. He was a rebel that broke ranks with Hollywood years ago and was going to right the wrongs of a system that was spinning into the dark morass. In days past he championed the future of film with his creation of Industrial Light and Magic and THX soun. He even helped fund some interesting side projects, like co-producing Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha and Paul Schrader's Mishima. Unfortunately, he became part of the very problem himself. Projects were announced and dropped like so much litter so as the story of The Tuskegee Airmen that was eventually made by HBO without Lucas. Movies became less important than the products themselves. He became more of a toymaker than a filmmaker. By setting himself up as king of his own empire, Lucas has found absolute power...and you what they say about that, don't you?

As far as Revenge of the Sith goes, I have to say that I liked it for the most part. It is actually the only one of the prequels I would see again, but that's not to say it's not without its problems.
I will say that is is a good movie...not great. It falls into fourth place behind Jedi, with Empire being number one followed by the first. (NOT CHAPTER 4! I REFUSE TO PLAY THAT GAME!) However, I will say it is the only one in the series that actually engaged me emotionally in a couple of instances, so on that level, it damn near succeeded. I didn't really get into it until about half way through the picture. The first hour reminded me of Clones, technically adept but flat, clumsy and uninvolving. The whole rescue of Palpatine had a been there, done that feeling. More should have been made of the death of Count Dooku, especially how he was killed.
AND ANOTHER THING...
Christopher Lee is one of my boyhood idols and one of the greatest genre actors of all time...Couldn't you give him a more dignified name than Count fucking DOO-KU?
But Lucas gets points for giving Mr. Lee his due in this last movie and not cutting him out like Peter Jackson did in Return of the King. Advantage, Lucas. In your face, Hobbit boy!
Oh, but you lose those points anytime Padame refers to the future Lord Vader as "Annie".

The PG-13 rating seemed to liberate Lucas quite a bit, knowing that if he was going to tell this story right, he'd have to delve deeper into darker territories and eliminate a lot of baggage. Gone thankfully are many of the cutesy elements that have plagued the series since the days of the dreaded Ewoks (though there was still too much R2-D2 for my taste).
More should have been made as well when Anakin kills the kids. That should have been the pivotal moment. He killed children, for Chrissakes. Lucas treated it as though he shot the cat. This horrible act, certain proof that Skywalker had crossed over to the Dark Side, was so glossed over that it seems that Lucas was embarrassed by it all. Maybe he felt it might appear he was taking it out on the younger audience. If Uncle George was so uncomfortable with it, he shouldn't have included it. The final duel on the volcano planet is quite something to behold, concluding with Annakin’s loss of limbs and sizzling on the ground like fajita night at Chili’s. (Except for the fight on the tiny platform in the lava flow which looked like a gag from a Zucker Brothers movie when adversaries in a gunfight shoot at each other from both sides of a small table) This and the final metamorphosis of burn victim into the Dark Lord was worth the price of admission, except for the big "NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!"

A couple of elements I feel lacking:

Maybe, since Anakin killed all those kids, he should have made some reference to his own unborn children and perhaps threatened their existence somehow. Hey, I’m just throwing it out there.

It’s quite telling that all of the breakout characters from the last three films have been the Dark Side (General Grievous and Darth Maul, even the Emperor himself). Everyone of the “good guys” (with the exception of Yoda, better than in the last film, but he is not a new character) are dull as dishwater. No wonder Annakin wanted to cross over. Ewan MacGregor is decent enough as Obi-Wan but I have problems with him. I've wanted to punch his face since Moulin Rouge. Lucas really missed the boat not evening the field with someone along the lines of Han Solo, without being just another “rascal”. Mace Windu could have been that character, kind of a cooler version of a Jedi Master. Who’s cooler than Samuel L. Jackson? This is not to say he should played like Jedi Superfly with a switchblade light saber. He just could have been at the very least a little less stoic and maybe just a little more swashbuckling. Perhaps if he were a little less bland, his eventual death would have meant more than it did.

All this is probably making this space opera more complex than it really should be. Remember the simplicity of the original? Sometimes George went too far and was unable to go far enough to make it wholly satisfactory.

I did like the small touches here and there of things to come, especially the Peter Cushing look-alike toward the end and the too short of a trip to the Wookie planet. Having Chewbacca as a general was a bit gratuitous. I would have bought it more if he was a foot soldier. How did he go from military brass to second banana to a bandit? Did he hit the skids? Maybe Chewie was hitting the pipe. I’m so glad Lucas resisted any urge to have a little smart-ass punk stealing some fruit from a vendor who’d yell “Han Solo! You bring that back!”

Hayden Christensen perhaps he realized "This was it" and had better up his game if he was to make this movie work at all. Those of us that were afraid he would become Darth Whiner can be suitably relieved. Maybe he knew that if he botched it, he'd be victimized the rest of his life by legions of geeks, nerds and fanboys from every corner of the universe. If you can accept the premise that this is the guy who will be Vader, you can see Christensen is at long last credible in the role.

By the end, I found myself actually engaged emotionally a couple of times, something that has never occurred in the other five movies. Through all my cynical veneer toward this whole enterprise, I was into it to the final scene.

As a whole, I can say I walked away satisfied that it's all over now, though I know better after all this time. It ain't over cuz Geoge doesn't know when to leave it the hell alone. He'll release the entire she-bang in 3-D as he's announced but he'll still mess with them. Some day Alec Guinness will be doing backflips and jumping around the room like everybody else. Jabba will probably be on the Atkins diet and we'll see a slimmer version of the Hutin order to promote a healthier lifestyle. Just for fun, Padame could get some breast augmentation. There'll be the TV shows and the novelizations of course and one day, mark my words, there will be another movie. I don't begrudge him controlling his universe however he wants. I just wish he'd quit rewriting history and just move on...and NOT to another Indiana Jones movie. LEAVE THAT ALONE TOO! (That is unless you want to make a geriatric Jones picture since Harrison is aging rapidly even as we speak.)

The thing is, Lucas has regained some goodwill he's lost in the last decade with this what should be the grand finale. He's said that he wants to make a small picture like he did back in college. Maybe he can be a little more like Martin Scorsese, one of his peers and do something about film preservation or help give some filmmakers a boost that really need it in this day and age. We'll just have to see what he does.

To quote another source, George:
With great power comes great responsibility.
Don't fuck it up again.
Oh, and may the Force...well, you know.