Horror Flick of the Week: Madhouse (1974)

I'm on a Vincent Price kick lately. It's a bit nostalgia, and a bit surprise when I watch and re-visit and discover his films/shorts. The man really was a multi-faceted individual. Years ago, I even wrote a post about him. After Danny Kaye, Vincent Price is one of my favorite performers and artists of all time. Looking for camp? He's got a catalog. Looking for dark, twisted horror? He's got some of those too. Melodrama? Film Noir? Radio horror or detective schlock? Poetry? Cookbooks? Art critiques? Yep. All of the above. This intro paragraph was just an excuse to talk about how much I love Vincent Price, but I guess I should get to the meat of the post. My featured horror flick of the week, which I feel is an unappreciated but interesting film. It came out towards the later period of his career, and the plot itself is a bit tragic and camp. He had a lot of films in that particular category, but I feel like this one leaned more tragedy than any of the others. Madhouse.

Typically, if you know the vibe of a crazy/revenge plot with Mr. Price (Theatre of Blood, Doctor Phibes, House of Wax, etc.) you know without a shadow of a doubt that the twist is always that Vincent Price is definitely the serial killing maniac. Not so much in Madhouse, and that's part of why I love it. His performance, and the underlying sadness of the whole story. A man committed for the murder of his partner which he may or may not have been responsible for. A mystery. A melodrama. A horror film that actually kept me guessing until the end, and felt like a truly satisfying twilight film of Mr. Price's wonderful career.

If you love Vincent Price, and if you haven't seen Madhouse, please...PLEASE give this one a watch. You will not regret it. (Then give Dragonywyck a shot too, while you're at it. That one rocks too).

Vintage Magazine: Famous Monsters of Filmland #154 (Cover - Pg. 20)

 Browsing through archive.org, I was looking for a good October cooking magazine. Maybe something from the 1950-70s - - when in doubt, if you find the right recipe cards, any month in that era could be scary. The horrors wrought on this world by Jell-O are too numerous to count. Then I saw this, and I couldn't resist George Hamilton's grin. Love at First Bite is and always will be one of my favorite iterations of Dracula.

Vintage Comics: The Beyond #2: The Mystery of Lunablanca & The Ghost who Stole a Body (Cover-Pg. 15)

Coming close to Halloween! 2 more days! So why not journey back to one of the first comic series I shared here, 'The Beyond', and continue on into their 2nd issue? I am still fascinated by the glorious colors in this series, and pleased with how the color correction came out this time around. Yes, I do moderate color correction on these comics sometimes when the yellow balance is too high.

Absolutely adore the villain-esque designs of the Countess Sinestra 'transforming' from a bat into a bat...woman...vampire-thing. I have a feeling if this had ever been adapted to the screen, Barbara Steele would have been ideal for the roles of both women.

As for the second story, the ghost art was absolutely stunning, with much heavier ink lines than we normally see in these comics. Perhaps a little dialog heavy, most of them are, but well worth the read just for the gorgeous panels alone.

5 More Horrific Soundtracks

This Halloween season has been pretty quiet. Oh, there's plenty of screams to wake you up at night, along with those pesky bumps. Then, of course, you've got the cackling witches in your backyard (why they can't get their own damned giant cauldron to chant Shakespeare quotes, I haven't a clue), but where's the music? The carols? The mood-setting tunes? They are, as always, in the movies. Bringing you back around once more for even more epic horror OST's, and here's hoping you have an awesome Halloween.

Oh, by the way, I did finally get around to watching Mephisto Waltz. It was good, but the score was better.

1. Suspiria

It would be a crime to forget Goblin on another one of these OST horror lists, and an absolute tragedy to forget Suspiria. Chilling, beautiful, and packed with atmosphere. There could have been no artists to rival the beauty of the movie and pair so well with Argento's masterpiece than Goblin.

2. Return of the Living Dead

Maybe I'm in a metal mood. A punk mood. An 80s mood. Or, maybe, just maybe--Return of the Living Dead has not only one of the most epic title songs in cinematic history (well, maybe not traditionally epic, but definitely awesome), but it's an arrangement of some of my absolute favorite music artists to boot.

3. Near Dark

Tangerine dream. There's just something about them. Even though synthesizers aren't generally my style, they somehow manage to take the style and create something absolutely beautiful. Another excellent example of a band that paired so well with the atmosphere of the movie, I can't imagine anyone else being quite so perfect.

4. A Nightmare on Elm Street part 3: Dream Warriors

Okay, so why didn't I pick part 1? That's where the original title song came from, isn't it? Yes, however, part 1 didn't have Dokken. Part 3 did. They have a lot more fun with rock in this one than the earlier two did, and it definitely shows in the somewhat 'metal' moments of the better character deaths.

5. 28 Days Later

When this film came out, my mom immediately rushed out to buy the cd. Neither of us had heard anything like it before, or seen a film quite so groundbreaking. Yes, say what you will about 28 Days now, but there's no denying that it transformed the genre of zombie films. I'd say maybe the same way Sam Peckinpah changed westerns. The music is jarring, gritty, and yet--absolutely beautiful, beginning to end.

Book of the Week: The Terrifying Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

Okay, okay, of all the Poe collections...I bet you're wondering why I'm recommending this one in particular for the book of the week, and I'll keep it fairly simple. It's available free on Amazon Kindle, and it's most of the best ones. That, of course, would be: The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Masque of the Red Death, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter, and The Pit and the Pendulum.

Now, there are plenty of other amazing works by the man who I'd go so far as to say was the greatest American author of Gothic literature, not the least of which being 'The Raven', which don't find themselves in the confines of this digital (or paperback) book, but I do think these are an ideal start for a young reader making his or her first foray into spooky classic works. Each of them have found their way onto the silver screen in anthology and feature length incarnations for very good reasons. They're timeless. They're awesome. They're how you should be spending the evening tonight, and if you're an adult...perhaps with a nice glass of wine, though I'd say avoid the sherry. Then again, if it can't be helped, maybe try to obtain your own amontillado...some people aren't too generous with it.

Vintage Comics - Midnight, Issue #1: Bedeviled Puppet, Eternal Struggle, There's a Will and There's a Way (Cover-Pg. 14)

What? I'm alive? You bet your sweet ass I am. And just to let you guys know, when I disappear for several months at a time, I'm probably not dead...undead at best, but I'm sure we all knew something like that was going to happen to me at one point or another. The sacrificial altar in my bedroom and haunted cemetery in the backyard don't help much, really.

In all honesty, I've just been writing a lot of short stories (even completed a few personal novels I will very likely never publish.) The result is of course maybe a little less blog-time, but fear not! October is around the corner, and as always I will be taking part in the horror blog-a-thon as I do every year. So if you've been desperately starved for more vintage comics, possible Hallowholic podcast episodes, trailer compilations, playlists, pretty pictures, and gruesome historical facts...they'll all be flying right at you on October 1st.

Anyway, I thought I'd start up a post this week with a little bit of vintage comics. The first thing that struck me about this one was actually the cover. The richness of the robe against that green backdrop...I can only imagine how incredible this must have looked crisp and new on the shelf.

The first story plays on one of my favorite tropes. Evil dolls/puppets. But...it really does explain every single action. I got the impression the writer for this one hadn't really acquainted himself with the practice of showing rather than telling. It promises something dark, but stops just short as a moral story...sort of...I guess. The second one is again, a moral story. But I did enjoy the little 'twist.' Imagine Final Destination if death pretty much lost in the end, and you get the picture. The third and final story of the entry...could have used more blood, but I doubt they could've gotten away with it at the time. Ultimately, this was one of those 'oh...I promise this is a scary comic' issues, that was really general adventure/moral lessons in disguise.

The cover promised a lot for this comic, and sadly did not deliver, but the art is still worth appreciating on its own.