The Mummy or “Did I Just See Zita Johann’s Titty?”

I've been on a Universal Monsters kick lately, so last night I was watching Karl Freund's 1932 film The Mummy. I find that the old black and white Universal pictures are some of the best pre-bed-time watching anyone who owns a DVD player can find. (Besides what my wife and I call "Murder Show", A.K.A. anything with the word "forensic" or "case-file" in the title). The Mummy is my least favorite of what most Universal Monster fans consider the "Big Six" (Dracula, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and The Invisible Man). It's a serviceable enough film, albeit a bit of a Dracula rip-off. I find that the film usually lulls me to sleep long before its climax, but this time it really grabbed my attention.

I've seen The Mummy many times, so you may be asking why I was suddenly so interested in this oldie. The reason I suddenly sat up in bed and grabbed the DVD remote from the night stand? I did this because I'm fairly certain that Zita Johann's titty popped out. Zita Johann plays the object of obsession to Boris Karloff's Ardath Bey. During a scene where she is swooning after being revived from a trance by Frank Whemple, her milquetoast pussy of a suitor, she leans over a coffee table and WHAM, out pops a titty. This blew my fucking mind. I'm not sure if I really saw it or not. I kept rewinding it. Did this sort of shit happen in 1932?! Somehow, I think I fooled myself into believing that the "nip-slip" was something my generation created. I guess if Wolf Man has nards, it must be a foregone conclusion that the mummy's girlfriend has nipples.

The Bride of Frankenstein

I absolutely love
James Whale's 1935 film The Bride of Frankenstein! From the opening sequence where Lord Byron and Percy Shelley beg Mary Wollstonecraft to tell more of the story of Frankenstein and his monster to the final showdown between the monster and Dr. Pretorius, The Bride of Frankenstein represents everything I like about the horror genre. It's been over seventy years since the film was released by Universal, and it still hasn't been bested. In the film, Whale turns the original Frankenstein story on its head. The monster speaks and a second mad scientist (Dr. Pretorius) comes onto the monster making scene using what appears to be black magic to create miniature men out of nothing at all. The Bride of Frankenstein is frequently funny, often touching, always fun but never really scary. I'm not sure if it's the age of the film or if it was ever truly horrifying. I know that ten die in the film (cut down from twenty-one by the studio), and that I never once felt that the film felt too violent. This is one of the rare cases where the sequel far surpasses the original and it does this by introducing interesting new characters and situations. Today's filmmakers could stand to learn from this film. Whale outdid his original effort by taking the story wherever his whims decided it should go. He didn't constrain himself to any mythology created by Mary Shelley's novel or the original film. He made something wholly original and entertaining by allowing the story to careen off the rails. Films like this one are what I'm hoping to see out of the modern generation of horror film writers and directors.

Last night I watched a French film titled Frontiers. It was essentially a Texas Chainsaw Massacre/Hostel rehash with subtitles. In the film, a family of cannibalistic neo-Nazis torture and eat a group of young hoodlums who are on the run from the police. It will be released in the US on May 9, 2008. You can wait three weeks for it to be released on DVD. Then you can pop some corn and relive the same torture porn garbage you've been subjected to constantly for the past four years, or you could watch a great film that's probably been right under your nose your entire life. I'm saying that a seventy-three year old film is fresher and more entertaining than a $3 million flashy bloodbath that you're going to see on your new release shelf in the very near future.

The Beginning

Hello. My name is Freddy. I am one of the five hosts of Night of the Living Podcast. I plan to use this space for movie reviews and other fun things. Thanks for joining me, and I hope to see you here again.

In the coming weeks, I will try to write a little bit about myself, my friends, my hometown and the movie industry. This post is really just a test to make sure I set this damned thing up correctly. By the way, I'm not too savvy on this blog stuff, so bear with me.