The Vampire Bat (1933)

The Vampire Bat (1933)

    This week I watched The Vampire Bat. Surprisingly enough, it has virtually no bats  and is a thinly veiled criticism of Nazi Germany.

     To start, the opening credits roll in front of a bat symbol that looks suspiciously like the Bacardi logo. This leads me to believe that everyone involved in the movie was drunk the whole time. It also makes me wonder why Bacardi uses a bat as it's logo. I mean, seriously, what do bats have to do with getting smashed off rum and crying in Gary's bath tube because you saw your ex, Lisa, at the Christmas party and she looked like her life with her new fiance was everything she ever wanted? Answer me that, Bacardi! Answer me!

Lisa, if you're reading this, I can change for you. Just please, answer my texts.

      Anyways . . .  the action takes place in sleepy 1930's Germany. You know . . . the peaceful, innocent Germany that everyone is always reminiscing about. Or at least those bald guys in prison reminisce about.
     One of the first scenes starts with the town burgermeister. In between bites of a jalapeno McDouble, the burgermeister argues with the burgercouncil about the existence of vampires. They actually spend a lot of time debating this topic which kind of explains the original title Twelve Angry Burgermeisters.

Good, now that we've all agreed that Wendy's square burger patties are total bullshit, what are we going to do about all these murders?

    Of course, the burgermeister and various burgerchiefs all turn out to be complete buffoons, and instead of honing in on the real killer they decide to find an easy scapegoat in the village's token retarded kid. 

Just look at him . . . probably plotting his next murder right now.

    So, now we have a bunch of 1930's Germans focusing all their hate and anger towards the person in town who they view as different. They end up chasing the poor kid into a cave outside of town where he falls into a pit and dies. The social commentary here is pretty clear; Germany is batshit insane.

    I will say, that's one of the things I really like about The Vampire Bat; it goes beyond just being a movie about a vampire. That's something I think all good horror movies do. They are about more than just a monster killing people. Godzilla is really about the atomic bomb. Dawn of the Dead is really about consumerism. Nightmare on Elm Street is about how fear makes us conjure up our own monsters. Freddie Vs. Jason was about squeezing those few last dollars out of two dead franchises.

     In the end of the movie, we got a shocking twist. It turns out the friendly handicapped boy wasn't the killer! The Nazi scientist had been the bad guy the whole time! WHOA! Didn't see that one coming! So in the end, the Nazi scientist gets discovered, and the film ends the way all good Nazi stories do; in the basement with a double suicide.

White Zombie (1932)

White Zombie (1932)

     First things first, don't even bother reading this unless you first click on THIS VIDEO and listen to "Thunder Kiss 65."

And, yes Rob Zombie's first band White Zombie takes its name from the 1932 film. Also, as you can clearly see in the video, the 90's were a weird time for Rob.

    In addition to gaining cred from mid-90's, dreadlock-sporting, metal bands, White Zombie has a lot of other stuff going for it. For one, it's widely considered to be the first zombie movie. Some people have made the argument that Frankenstein is the original zombie movie, but those people are wrong, and they probably failed twelve grade English.

Maybe read a book for once in your life before you start bragging about your advanced knowledge of "zombie lore." P.S. While you're doing all this reading you might learn that "knowledge of zombie lore" is about as good a bragging topic as "most Redtube visits."

       And, while we're on the topic of zombie lore, it seems like everyone thinks George Romero invented zombies or something, but actually he's only responsible for westernizing the already existing zombie myths. You could say he did for zombies what Stephanie Meyers did for Vampires.

Except, you know . . . Romero knew how to make a decent movie and he didn't wear magic Mormon underwear or put only white people in his movies.

     But I still stand by what I said about Romero westernizing the zombie myth. You see zombies, like all terrible diseases, originally started in Africa. That's right. Every episode of The Walking Dead is brought to you in part by some African witch doctor who lived hundred if not thousands of years ago.  The zombie myth originated in Africa and was perpetuated by the witch doctors and shamans. When Africans were brought to North, South, and Central America during the slave trade they brought their myths with them, and through them voodoo and zombies came to the Caribbean and later to Hollywood.

We want writer's credit for all seasons of The Walking Dead or a vial of Rick Grimes' tears.

     The original zombies were always servants of a witch doctor or zombie lord. They were more like automatons than brain eaters, and they served their masters unquestioningly. Often they were fresh corpses reanimated to servitude through the use of "zombie powder." It wasn't until the 1960's that Romero made Night of the Living Dead and changed zombies into the modern flesh eating monsters that we recognize today.

    I know what you're probably thinking. You're thinking "Man, I could use an army of mindless automatons to carry out my every command. How do I become one of these 'zombie lord' people?" Well I wish I could tell you, alas I am but a humble blogger . . . for now. But, I will tell you who would know how to become a zombie lord.

Bela Lugosi!

"I vant you to tell me if this lipstick is too much."

    That's the other big thing that White Zombie has going for it; Bela Lugosi. Most famous for his portrayal of Dracula, the man remains a horror movie icon to this day. In fact, The Count from freaking Sesame Street was modeled after Lugosi's Dracula (Although The Count's lust for blood is much more understated.) 

    

   Lugosi plays the zombie lord in White Zombie, and he does it well. If anyone could tell you how to become a zombie lord it would be him. Honestly, I've got nothing but respect for the man; it takes a lot of guts to pursue an acting career with a uni-brow like that, but Bela Lugosi isn't the type of guy to let having a girl's name and seriously F'ed up facial hair stop him from chasing his dreams.

"What do you mean "Bela is a girl's name?" I ought to slap that damn face off your head."

     The take away from all this is that if you're a fan of classic horror films White Zombie ain't too bad. And, if you aren't a fan of classic horror films, why are you even reading this? Get a life, loser and maybe go out and get a job too!

The Monster Walks (1932)

The Monster Walks (1932)

     

Spoilers. There's no monster and very little walking.

    

   The good news is that this week I finally got out of the silent film period. For those of you not up to speed, I'm watching 50 classic horror movies in chronological order, so up until now it's been guys in white face-paint and lipstick pantomiming. 

      The bad news is that my introduction to "talkies" is The Monster Walks. I knew this film was going to be an ordeal when I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes and saw it had 4 out of 10 stars. 

  Bad call, Rotten Tomatoes. Bad Call. That's at least 5 more stars than this movie deserves.

   Here's the premise. A spoiled wasp inherits a bunch of money from her dead father whom everyone agrees was always thoughtful and just. Also he did perform strange experiments on chimps. A fact which, oddly enough, doesn't really come up later in the movie.

He was always a thoughtful and just man . . . I mean, except for when he was performing his experiments . . . dark experiments . . . experiments that twisted the forms of nature into unholy abominations that made you question the existence of God. But you know . . . other than that he was a pretty chill dude. A great guy to grab a beer with.

      So this Dr. Mendele wannabe dies and leaves his fortune to his blonde haired, blue-eyed daughter. The cast is as follows:

    

A Spoiled Wasp Lady

The World's Dumbest Doctor

Some Dude

Two Shifty Germans

Dr. Strangelove

Some Dude 

An Awesome Monkey

...oh, and Will Smith's Grandpa

West Philadelphia born and raised . . . playing comic relief in Jim Crow Era movies is how I spend most of my days.

     If you take a glace at the cast, I think you'll see the first problem with this film; this is clearly supposed to be a sitcom. Just think about the possibilities. However, somewhere along the line someone got confused and tried to make it into a horror/comedy/murder mystery/chimp movie. The end result is that The Monster Walks does all of those things poorly. 

    It should be noted that Will Smith's grandpa and the chimp try pretty hard to save the film, but the rest of the cast drags them down into their B-Movie hell nonetheless.

     The only good that I can possibly see coming out of this movie is that King Kong (1933) comes out a year later. It's almost like the producers of King Kong watched The Monster Walks and thought "What an absolute steaming pile of buffalo shit. Surely someone can make a movie about a killer ape that's better than that." Then the King Kong Producers went out and made a movie that didn't make people lose faith in humanity.

   I can only hope that someone out there digs a pit deep enough to bury every copy of this film and then erects port-a-potties over it.

Toss the DVDs in here boys, right next to the old ET Atari cartridges.