Movie review - "The Terminal Man" (1974) **1/2

 Michael Crichton hoped to direct this adaptation of his novel but Warners decided not to, giving the job to the more experienced Mike Hodges. Hodges is clearly a better director than Crichton - his work is full of style and confidence.

I had read Crichton's original adaptation was not faithful enough so they changed it - this isn't that faithful. It completely downplays the character of the handsome male doctor who tries to chase the killer at a hanger and gets wounded (a memorable sequence). Also the ending bit in the book,  a terrific sequence in the hospital, becomes one where George Segal falls in a grave and the lead lady is never in danger.

Joan Hackett is okay as the physiciatrist - a better part in the book. Segal is excellent - his manic quality works well. Other characters from the book who were vivid - the scientis behind the whole thing who had various ailments, the whiz kid computer nerds - are not here.

It's like an interesting cover version of the novel rather than a faithful adaptation. not as good as the book. 

Book review - "The Terminal Man" (1971) by Michael Crichton

 Crichton's take on Ffrankestein - a computer programmer has turned violent after an accident so they trt to plug a computer into his brain. Lots of research and detail to sell the concept - starts slow then builds up, with a memorable antagonist because he was paranoid anyway. Three memorable set pieces - doctor in shower met by the man, another doctor tracks the man to a deserted hanger, and the final confrontation in the hospital.

Movie review - "Frankenstein" (2025) **1/2

Look, it's fine. I felt as if I'd seen it before. Maybe if I was more into Oscar Isaac. His performance is fine but you see the acting. I would've loved a real nutter in that part. Mia Goth struggles with her words.

When the film gets fantastical - the make up, some revived bodies, blood splattering - it becomes more interesting. 

Key problem - no emotional relationsship you care about. Frankenstein is so odd and eccentric he doesn't have real feelings for his brother or Mia Goth or Chris Walken or the monster. The monster bonds with the blind man but that's about it.

It's made with love but the whole thing is... so. Jacob Elordi is fine. 

Movie review - "House of Dracula" (1945) **1/2 (re-watching)

 A film with plenty of style and charm - the monster, John Carradine, Lon Chaney as the Wolf Man - and some interesting additions like the hunchback assistant.

It's just frustrating what they don't do. I mean, who cares about Onslow Stevens, and why have him just as a random doctor - why not make him Dr Frankenstein, or a relative, or the invisible man. John Carradine or Lugosi should've played this role. I don't like Carradine as Dracula much but admit he's closer to Stoker.

Lionel Atwill is on hand, and Chaney is great. But the Monster is wasted, there's not enough Dracula or Wolfman... and as the film went on it started to annoy me. And I don't like that about these films.

Movie review - "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948) ***** (warning: spoilers)

Some comfort food in difficult times. The lead duo are in good form, the concept of all these women throwing themselves at Costello is hilarious, the house of horrors is solid, I loved the party and the lab.

It's got the handsome production values of a studio picture, the script is well thought out, and all the characters have a purpose even the male juvenile. The female roles actually have some meat on them.

But the true stars are Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney - the latter in particular brings genuine pathos. And Lugosi is so good it's bewildering this didn't kick off more of a comeback.

Movie review - "Silent Rage" (1982) **1/2

Lesser known Chuck Norris film in part because it had a way out element - a killer is brought back from the dead and becomes this unstoppable monster. A modern day Frankenstein's creature.

This actually is very intriguing and I had high hopes for this, especially with a good actor like Ron Silver as one of the doctors. There's some interesting debate over whether the creature should be brought back and Chuck is ideal as the small town sheriff who gets drawn into the action when the creature goes around killing people.

But any complexity is thrown away in the second half when the film becomes about the killer knocking off scientists one my one slasher movie style and Chuck trying to take him down.

Chuck is in good form - love the scene where he beats up a bar of bikers. He has some genuinely emotional scenes, a love scene with his girlfriend and a really moving moment where deputy Stephen Furst dies in his arms.

I just wish they'd done more with the Frankenstein element  - bring in the CIA or whatever. It feels like a waste.

Movie review - "Gothic" (1986) **1/2

This Ken Russell film was box office disappointment but a hit on video, giving his career a second wind. It's got a sexy concept - the famous holiday spent with Percy and Mary Shelley, and Byron - plus some way out visuals, good moments and a strong cast.

I wasn't wild about it, though. I think I prefer a stronger storyline - this felt like a couple of people running around a house where a lot of weird shit was happening.  The boldness and weirdness is great - but a bit more character work and a bit more of a story would've been good.

Gabriel Byrne is ideal as Byron and Julian Sands plays a Ken Russell Shelley very well. I loved seeing a young Tim Spall - his character really suffers, lots of make up jobs! Natasha Richardson is solid as Mary - less fun, but then she's the one sensible character in the film.

Script review - "Young Frankenstein" by Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder (1973)

Not sure what draft this was - its pretty close to the end result from what I can recall. The structure, characters are all the same. There's a bit at the beginning where Frankenstein's other relatives talk about the will - which is intriguing, more The Cat and the Canary type stuff - but we never see them again so it was easily cut. There's more dialogue.

I wasn't a huge fan of this when I first saw it. There's not that many jokes compared to say Flying High. It is done with a lot of affection and respect for the 30s Universal roles. The characters are clearly defined and you can imagine actors being excited to play the parts. The best lines go to Igor - he's got the more obvious gag lines. Some of this is really funny.

Movie review - "Frankenstein's Daughter" (1958) *

The sort of film you want to love because it's old and crappy and is so clearly hoping to make money for as little money as possible. There's John Ashley, at the time an AIP star, though this clearly costs less than that, Harold Lloyd Jnr and some old character actors.

But it's a bad movie. It's sloppy - not exciting, with medicore make up. It keeps changing focus.

The central idea is promising - a girl turns into a monster and goes around tormenting people. That's a good idea, especially as the girl doesn't know she's doing it... it worked a treat in I Was a Teenager Werewolf which I thought this was going to rip off. But then the film throws in a second monster, a scarier one - the real threat. Which is cheating, confusing and pointless - and robs the piece of any real point.

Book review - "From Journey's End to the Dam Busters: The Life of R C Sheriff" by Roland Wales

I became familiar with Sheriff's career after reading his autobiography, No Leading Lady. I can't remember what compelled me to pick it up as I wasn't that familiar with his work, but I enjoyed the book a lot - the tale of a quiet, unassuming insurance clerk who wrote plays in his spare time to help raise funds for his rowing club, who then wrote a play which became a phenomenon, then he went on to become one of the leading writers in Britain.

Maybe "leading writer" is too much in such a literate country but Sheriff had an excellent career. He never repeated the success of Journey's End - who could? - but he compiled a formidable body of work, including plays, screenplays, radio plays and novels. The best known are The Long Sunset, Home at Seven, St Helena, The Four Feathers, The Dam Busters, Quintet.

It was a very accomplished career and Wales has done incredibly well by it with this superb biography. It's affectionate, well-written, extremely well researched; Wales had access to many letters and diary entries of Sheriff. He also goes through as much of the man's writing as possible, including unmade screenplays, giving decent weight to them (so often these things are overlooked).

Sheriff's memoirs were full of blanks - he skipped over his war service for instance, and was hazy about his private life (he was devoted to his mother... as in, really super devoted). This fills in the blanks, tackling Sheriff's family's background, childhood, school days (glorious for Sheriff who loved sport), the boring insurance job, war service (Sheriff saw hard action but not a super large amount and indeed his superiors seemed keen to find ways to avoid having him at the front line; he received a lucky wound in a way which knocked him out of the war but didn't give him long term damage), going back to work, starting writing, developing his craft through the 1920s, writing Journey's End, the challenges of that production (where he met James Whale and Colin Clive), taking off to Oxford for a bit, expanding into screenwriting and novel writing, his experiences in the war (the bulk of which he spent in the USA), slight career wobbles, hitting new peaks in the 1950s, becoming unfashionable in the 1960s.

It was a steady career without giant dips and shows what you can do with a strong work ethic and good temperament. Also, no kids or romantic entanglements. Wales spends a bit of time on this but not too much - he sources a letter from a friend which could be deduced to referring to gay behaviour, discusses the relationship with the mother, acknowledges he preferred to be around men to women... but the proof is inconclusive. I have the feeling he was asexual.

Wales' book rises to the occasion for the big challenges - the background to Journey's End (including the inspirations for the main characters). Heaps of stuff I didn't know, like a proposed sequel to Journey's End, the many unfilmed scripts he did, his professional and personal relationships. I'm not sure that Sheriff was that compelling a person but is career was fascinating and got a fantastic tribe.

Movie review - "It's Alive" (1974) ***1/2

A massive leap for Larry Cohen as a director - it's so much more confident visually than some of his other movies. His handling is assured and confident. It's well written but that's less surprising. This is a simple idea extremely well executed.

I normally associated John P Ryan as the psycho warden in Runaway Train so it was weird to see him as a nice guy family man. His wife is about to have her second wife and Cohen brilliantly exploits one of the all time great fears - that your baby will be born deformed - and gives it a twist: that the baby becomes a killer. It's a primal, strong concept.

Ryan's performance anchors the film well. He's given good support by Sharon Farrell as the wife. Part of me was thinking maybe Cohen should have focused more on the mother - who after all carried the damn thing for nine months and is the mother. But I guess making Ryan the central figure means we can move around more. Farrell secretly hiding the son makes for good conflict with Ryan. Also Ryan's character goes on more of a journey... Farrell's love for the baby is strong and more unconditional, whereas Ryan gets to cover disgust, embarrassment, anger, etc before coming to love and regret. Ryan's final scene with his "son" is very powerful.

Bernard Herrmann did a superb score which helps create a wonderful atmosphere. I felt the lower budget helped - Ryan is walking around alone and isolated in many shots, but it adds to the feeling of desolation and loneliness. The budget does stretch for a decent amount of gun wielding policemen.

Cohen fans will enjoy the Cohen touches, like Ryan impersonating Walter Brennan, and discussing watching Frankenstein films and reading the novel when discussing his son. They'll also like it of course because it's one of his best movies.

Movie review - "Curse of Frankenstein" (1957) *** (another viewing)

This screened on TCM and I can never resist the chance to re-watch Hammer horror. The print wasn't the best - or maybe the colour photography for the first Hammer horror simply wasn't that great. The art direction remains impressive.

I was struck by how inherently inexpensive the film has been constructed - screenwriter Jimmy Sangster was a production manager and used to be able to budget his scripts himself down to the last cent (or pence, rather). Most of the action is two handers or three handers - Robert Urquhart and the young Frankenstein, Urquhart and Cushing, Cushing and Hazel Court, Cushing and Lee, etc. It also mostly takes place indoors

A lot of it is also like a play, or TV play - scenes of people sitting/standing around talking. There are some staircases and entrances and exits to keep it a bit lively and Terence Fisher does an okay job - but it only gets up and moving at certain times. (I think this is budget more than Fisher because in other films such as Dracula - Prince of Darkness things are very cinematic.)

Peter Cushing's performance looks better over the years - intense, glowering, dynamic. Christopher Lee's monster remains spectacularly unimpressive - a very mediocre turn (anyone could have played this, really - no sympathy). Hazel Court is wasted in a nothing part but Valerie Gaunt gets a flashy role as the maid seduced by Frankenstein (Gaunt is fine just not as charismatic or sexy as Court - I wish they'd swapped roles). Urquhart does his best in what is a terrible role really, as Frankenstein's friend, who has to help him, then get offended. (I always struggle with this part in Frankenstein movies - it's better if Frankenstein's assistant is fully committed.)

Movie review - "I, Frankenstein" (2013) *

'"Why should we care?" That's the question that everyone who invested in the movie should have asked before proceeding. I get that it had pedigree - director Stewart Beattie, the writer of Underworld, star Aaron Eckhart - but its such a dull story. It didn't have to be - there is a possible movie in the adventures of Frankenstein's monster after the death of Frankenstein. Sure, you run the risk of it turning into 1954's Long John Silver but there are options there: the search for a mate, the Frankenstein family seeking vengeance, living immortally in a world that considers you an outsider, people wanting to dissect you.

But instead they've come up with some crappy yawn inducing battle between gargoyles and demons over humanity. Why should we care? Why should the monster care? Why should we watch? Humans are barely even seen.

There's some competently staged action but nothing truly memorable. Eckhardt does his best but there are appalling I-am-in-a-Hollywood-blockbuster-and-thus-I-must-act-like-I'm-in-a-high-school-play performances from Miranda Otto, Yvonne Strahovski, Socratis Otto and Jai Courtney - even Bill Nighy isn't very good. It's an embarrassment. 

Book review - "Bride of Frankenstein" by Michael Egremont Ed Philip Riley

Part of Philip Riley's republication of novelisations of various old movie scripts. I've really loved some like The Raven and Masque of the Red Death but found this a drag. I love the movie but reading this I realised the story isn't much - it's a retread of the first movie with Dr Pretorius standing in for Henry Frankenstein, who is a whiny passenger here, pushed along. Frankenstein's wife is a damp squib. There is some touching stuff with the monster and his search for a mate, but the themes are familiar to what we saw in the first movie. It doesn't help that Egremont isn't much of a writer - how he craps on for Pretorius' dialogue.

What makes Bride great is its treatment - Karloff, Clive, Thesinger, Whale's incredible direction. Found this heavy going.

Play review - "Frankenstein" by John Balderstone (1930)

John Balderston had a big success rewriting the play version of Dracula for US audiences but was unable to make lightning strike twice re-doing a less popular version of the Shelley classic. It was an influential though because Robert Florey relied on it when writing his first screenplay of Frankenstein (which became the 1931 film).

It's not a bad play - Balderston was a good dramatist and breaks the action down well. Act One involves creating the creature (here actually called "Frankenstein), at two the creature goes on his rampage, act three Henry Frankenstein gets his comeuppance. There's dull Victor, Henry's rival in love, and duller Dr Waldman who walks around whining "you can't play God" a lot. Still the drama is extracted, there are some jolts like the death of Henry's sister.

Book review - "The Revenge of Frankenstein" (1958) (warning: spoilers)

Another in Bear Manor Media's excellent series of re-printed novelisations, this is a reminder of what a first-rate sequel Jimmy Sangster penned. It picks up right on the end of the first Frankenstein, tracks the action logically and pays due attention to continuity (something definitely not apparent in later entries in the series), really fleshes out the character of Dr Frankenstein, has a strong supporting casting including a devoted supporting doctor Hans, a female lead with a bit of spunk (though it's a shame there's no romance between her and either Frankenstein or Hans) and most of all a completely sympathetic monster - Karl, the hunchback who just wants a normal life. This is what gives the story real heart and emotion.

There are lots of effective moments - Frankenstein's lab of bits and pieces, the inner monologues of Karl - and a very satisfying conclusion, with Hans performing some deft work on his old mentor to keep him going.

Movie review - "House of Horrors" (1946) ***

Rondo Hatton proved so popular as The Creeper in The Pearl of Death that Universal decided to give him his own starring vehicle. Well, technically it's his but the real lead is played by Martin Kosleck. He's the Dr Frankenstein equivalent, a selfish artist who gets so many bad reviews he decides to kill himself; however he comes across the Creeper (his version of the Frankenstein monster), befriends him and uses him to take out art critics.

That's a decent idea for a film, and it's helped by Kosleck's strong performance and Hatton's presence (greatly reduced whenever he has to say dialogue). There's also some colourful support roles with snobbish art critics, wisecracking gal reporters, cops and a macho cheesecake artist who is the leading suspect. Plus solid direction, and spirited work from Virginia Grey as the female lead. Better value than the second Hatton work, The Brute Man.

Movie review - "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein" (1957) ***

Follow up to I was a Teenage Werewolf is actually a very different type of film because it's not told from the point of view of a teenager (here, the monster) but rather the mad doctor Frankenstein character, played by Whit Bissell. On those terms - a late 50s version of a Universal mad doctor movie - this is quite enjoyable: Bissell does some solid, underplayed mad doctor acting which suits its Einsenhower era setting, and there are some cute flourishes like an alligator in the basement and a finale in colour; the monster make up is impressive; there are some choice lines of dialogue ("I know you've a tongue in your head, I sewed it myself") and moments of pure camp (eg Bissell talking about youth being the future then hearing a car accident outside which results in some conveniently dead teenagers).

Gary Conway is a teenage monster and come to think of it an interesting movie could have been made from his point of view - it might have been more typically AIP. Several plot elements were later used in Konga, also by producer Herman Cohen - the mad scientist protagonist, scientist marrying shrewish assistant who is later killed by the creature. Good fun.

Movie review - "Four Sided Triangle" (1953) **1/2

Early sci fi effort from Hammer films, made the same year as Spaceways and a lot more effective - much better made, in part because it has a stronger story. Two boys are in love with the same girl, a childhood friend (years before Pearl Harbour) - the two grow up to become scientists, still in love with the girl, but she prefers one of them... so the other decides to clone her. But then the poor bastard finds out the clone likes his mate too - when they go on honeymoon she tries to kill herself. Instead of trying to find someone new, he decides to wipe the clone's memory, leading to chaos.

Now that's not a bad idea for a science fiction film - indeed, I'm surprised it wasn't used again in the 60s and 70s when the creepy/necrophiliac overtones couldn't have been exploited more. It's very much indebted to Frankenstein, with a bad scientist toying with god and dealing with his tragic creation, climaxing with an operation that involves the monster strapped to a slab and a fire burning down the building. (The first Quatermass owned a debt to that story too.) The big difference here is Frankenstein is schtupping his monster.

It lacks logic - I get why the mad scientist is doing it (for love) but for the girl and his mentor doctor to go along with it pushes credibility.  It's stylishly shot and directed.

A big debit is the cast - Stephen Murray is given a choice role as the tormented Bill, a Frankenstein figure, but he's never allowed to cut loose (or was unable to). John Van Eyssen is a damp squib as his friend (meant to be more charismatic but bugger if I could see it). James Hayter irritates as a kindly pipe smoking doctor who seems to encourage the cloning. The most effective performance came from cult favourite Barbara Payton, notorious good time girl whose career was overshadowed by scandal; she's not a great actress but she's pretty and is clearly trying - she seems like a nice person, which is a bit naff to say, but it's true, and actually helps the movie... she's no cliched femme fetale and her clone character is touching in places.

Movie review - "Doctor Blood's Coffin" (1961) **

A modern day redo of the Frankenstein saga lacks spark. Its in colour but the production values aren't up to the Hammer horrors and Kieron Moore is no Peter Cushing; he's a big lunk of an actor, not really ideal for a mad scientist - dull hero yes, God complex no.

He does his experiments mostly in a Cornish tin mine, meaning this takes place a lot outdoors. Moore goes around killing people for his experiments and is loved by Hazel Court, grieving over the death of her former husband... who is revived by Moore.

There are several problems with this: Moore's miscasting in a role that cries out for a scenery chewing staff; it's set in the present day which lots of scenes outside meaning it lacks atmosphere; the creature doesn't get revived until the very end; there's far too much talk and not enough scenes of Moore being crazy. Hazel Court at least adds some class.