Todd’s Movie Blog

Don’t know that I’m going to watch the Oscars tomorrow night.  Back when  the writer’s strike was on I was interested in seeing how they would work it without a script. Then they brokered a deal to allow the show to be scripted and my interest started flagging.  Now that the strike is over and a cadre a joke writers will be on hand, I’m not really interested in seeing the telecast,  even with John Stewart hosting.

Why?  I guess like many people I’m tired of the overblown production.  What should be a presentation of awards honoring the best in film entertainment for the year, with a few songs thrown in, has become a loooong, and at times tedious,  overproduced and bloated exercise in pompous self congratulation.  Most actors in the running don’t give great performances so much as over the top rantings tailored to specifically snag a nomination.

Besides, everybody already knows who’s going to win.  I’ve never before felt such an atmosphere of the whole thing being a done deal like I have this year.  “I drink your milkshake!”, indeed.

I just got the first DVD of the new Film Crew series.  What’s The Film Crew series?  It’s the new direct to DVD series being done by Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbet of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame.  The DVD follows the format of their old series, a running commentary on a bad film with a few skits inserted throughout the proceedings.

The set up for the show is that The Film Crew has been hired by multimillionaire Bob Honcho to supply commentary tracks for films his company owns.  Their first assignment is Hollywood After Dark (1968), a caper film about an ex-Navy scuba diver who gets talked into pulling a heist while romancing hopeful starlet turned reluctant stripper Rue McClanahan.  Yes, that Rue McClanahan.

The film itself is a jumbled mess of plots that don’t really mesh at the end, perfect MST3K material, and the riffs supplied by Mike, Kevin, and Bill are as hilarious and full of current pop cultural references as ever.  Where it all falls apart is with the skits.  They are a distraction that interrupts the flow of the main part of the DVD, the mocking of the film.  Plus they’re not funny.  Skits like Bill’s Ode to Lunch are cute but that’s about it, and serve little purpose in the DVD.  They made sense in the old show as a way to lead in and out of commercial breaks, which is unnecessary here.  Plus robot puppets are automatically funny, middle age guys in bowling shirt, not so much.

For my money you’re better off going to Mike’s Rifftrax website and downloading commentary’s for much more deserving targets like Phantom Menace (1999) and Daredevil (2003).

Now that the writer’s strike is all but over work can begin again on the new version of Universal’s classic The Wolf Man (2009) starring Benicio Del Toro as the ill-fated victim of a werewolf bite.  I wish Mr. Del Toro all the luck in the world on this venture.  Not that I think he can’t pull it off, I sure his acting will be outstanding, it’s just that out of all the Universal monsters this one has the toughest baggage to overcome.

Why?  Very simple, unlike the other characters from the classic movies, there has only been one Wolf Man.  Dracula had three different portrayals; Bela Lugosi (2 films), Lon Chaney, Jr. (1 film), and John Carradine (2 films).  Frankenstein had four portrayals; Boris Karloff (3 films), Lon Chaney, Jr. (1 film), Bela Lugosi (1 film), and Glenn Strange (3 films).  The Mummy had four portrayals in three different incarnations; Boris Karloff (1 film), Tom Tyler (1 film), Lon Chaney, Jr. (3 films), and stunt man Eddie Parker (1 film) (he also took over most of the more strenuous physical work in Lugosi’s Frankenstein portrayal).  The Invisible Man has had  three different portrayals; Claude Reins (1 film), Vincent Price (2 films if you count his bit part in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)), and Jon Hall (2 films).

But the Wolf Man?  He has had only one actor play him in five films, Lon Chaney, Jr..  This means that over time there has been no dilution of the original character like the other monsters have had.  Which will make it much harder for Del Toro to make the part his own.  Sure there have been other werewolves in film, but none of them have been Larry Talbot, they’ve been other characters and most, like barrel chested Oliver Reed’s Leon Corledo  in Curse of the Werewolf (1961) and David Naughton’s David Kessler in An American Werewolf in London (1981) owe more than just a little bit of their tortured performances to the precident Chaney set in the original The Wolf Man (1941), heck Reed even physically resembled Chaney.  So Mr. Del Toro, here’s hoping audiences will accept your attempt at reinterpreting this beloved icon, I’m rooting for you.