I’m your boyfriend now, Nancy.

Pleasant dreams!

It's Sunday, mein mouth-breathing mavens of the monsterous! Time for a visit to the HorrorHouse™! Today's selection, for the pedantic 200 of you out there, isn't strictly a horror film but a sub-genre, a member in a cross-section in your Horror ∩ Science-Fiction Venn diagram: the monster movie. And what an example of the monster movie it is! Featuring the always-breathtaking work of animation legend, Ray Harryhausen, 1957's 20 Million Miles to Earth!

Suspension-of-disbelief helmets strapped on tight? The movie, one of the extremely few horror or science-fiction films based in Italy ("it's sempre New York or Tokyo!"), tells of an alien egg brought back to Earth by the first explorers to Venus. This egg hatches and gives birth to a little monster that in no time at all—spoiler!—becomes a big monster and wrecks havoc in Rome. Aww… did I give something away?

Obviously important to cinema history (MovieSnob never sleeps) is Harryhausen's beautiful stop-motion work, the classic scenes at the Colosseum especially be to noted. One thing TIL that Harryhausen shot in Rome because he wanted to vacation there! Hey, films have been shot for more self-serving reasons.

YouTube Link to the movie…

• https://youtube.com/watch?v=6Fm0LLsB9FM

Google-free links…

• https://yewtu.be/watch?v=6Fm0LLsB9FM
• https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=6Fm0LLsB9FM
• https://iv.melmac.space/watch?v=6Fm0LLsB9FM

So, sorry for the slight deviation in programming…no, no I'm not and you all like deviations anyway! See you next week, my knuckledragging nightcrawlers, here at Mongoose’s Drive-In HorrorHouse™! And remember…Parma spelled backwards is AMRAP!

👍 ⛽

...~~Today~~ Yesterday.

Sue me.

Reminder: the linked article is USA-centric, meaning those of us in the rest of the world may not have the same streaming services available and/or release dates may be different.

Do you all know how much your King Mongoose loves you? I care for all of you defective darlings so much that I sat through this stinker of a film just to tell you, no, warn you to stay away, far away!

The dog of a movie in question is 1958's The Screaming Skull. You know a movie has to suck (and I don't mean blood) if it has to start out offering free funeral services to those who may die of fright in the audience. Oh, please! You could show this to your cardiopathic granny or your nine-year-old niece or nephew and the only fear generated would be that of your guests kicking your shins for showing them this tedious film! Its only real saving grace is that it's just over an hour (01:08:00), "free burial services" sequence included. I can't help question if it had been filmed hoping to be included in one of the anthology shows popular at the time such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents but ultimately rejected. Clumsily edited, dread factor zero, bare minimum production values, mediocre acting, trite script with the "clues" being dribbled as if from an eyedropper.

There's the haunted portrait of the departed wife created by someone from a beginner art class, painted not on canvas but posterboard!—there is a scene where the cursed painting is to be burned on a pyre and it curves under its own weight! There's a screaming skull, yes, but there are actually two—one is a stand-in, I suppose?—and you can see the difference! There's a shot of the titular skull on the staircase and you can see the stick that makes it "leap" from the step! One laughably "ominous" shot of perched birds flying away from their branch…not because of some ghostly force but because someone threw a rock at them clearly visible in the shot!

Run, my children, run away! Watch whatever else is "suggested for you" or next on the playlist! Or better yet, put down your cellphones, go outside and get some fresh air…and maybe some Halloween candy too, while you're at it!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.film/post/1636501

🔗🐒 Hi! I'm the MovieSnob LinkMonkey™! 🔗🐒 Enjoy these Google-free links!

Link 1: A Study of Black and White Filmmaking

Link 2: Film Noir: The Case for Black and White

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Have you ever heard somebody say "I can't watch black and white movies?" I have a problem with this. Not because some of the most important movies are in black and white but because black and white can do just as much—if not more—than color.

Thanks, MovieSnob LinkMonkey™! Have a banana! And thanks to YouTube Channel Now You See It for both these videos succinctly and smartly analyzing the use and history of black and white in cinema.

Regarding the above opening quote (from the linked Film Noir video), an excellent recent example of this, forgive me if I'm repeating myself, is Robert Egger's 2019 The Lighthouse.

MovieSnob Ad Warning: as some YT vids are want to do, the first link contains promotional content (translated: advertising) fortunately at the end of the video (roughly at 00:13:14). Act accordingly.

Cross-posting here because, frankly, this was going to be a [email protected] one-link post pointing only to the second link. As you know how going down rabbitholes can be (or eating just one potato chip), it turned into a [email protected] post. Call yer lawyer. Better yet, watch Link #2 first then, if you like, watch the second more-subject-encompassing Link #1.

What, did you really think you could escape?! No! Today at the Drive-In HorrorHouse™ is the gruesome The Ghoul, from 1933, starring one of the original masters, Boris Karloff!

Not only Karloff's character, Prof. Henry Morlant, refuses to die in this film but the film itself came back from the dead, considered for decades to be lost in time!

Google-free viewing links:

• https://yewtu.be/watch?v=CL7OUXeWPJk
• https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=CL7OUXeWPJk
• https://iv.melmac.space/watch?v=CL7OUXeWPJk

See you next week, my foul followers of the fiendish, here at Mongoose’s Drive-In HorrorHouse™! And remember…Climb walls! Turn blue! Scratch glass! But don’t get caught!

That's a lie…it's a Triple Short! All one-reelers! An estimated 20 minutes for your animation edification!

1) Kobu Tori, 1929, Aoji Chuzo, Yokohama Cinema
From the western shores of the Pacific, the story of Kobutori Jiisan…

…translated directly as "Lump-Taken Old Man" is a Japanese Folktale about an old man who had his lump (or parotid gland tumor) taken or removed by demons after joining a party of demons (oni) celebrating and dancing in the night.

-- from Wikipedia.

2) The Karnival Kid, 1929, Walt Disney, Celebrity Productions
From the opposite eastern Pacific shores of sunny Hollywood, CA, it's none other than Mickey and Minnie Mouse and singing frankfurters! According to user Dut…

It was the first short animation in which Mickey actually spoke and his first spoken words were "Hot Dogs!"

BONUS TRIPLE CROWN LINK:
Evil Mickey attacks Japan, 1934, Komatsuzawa Hajime, J.O. Talkie Manga-bu

Jonathon Crowe of openculture.com says of this one…

…this curious piece of early anti-American propaganda from 1936 that features a phalanx of flying Mickey Mouses…attacking an island filled with…other poorly-rendered cartoon characters [emphasis mine --Mongoose]. All seems lost until they are rescued by figures from Japanese history and legend. During its slide into militarism and its invasion of Asia, Japan argued that it was freeing the continent from the grip of Western colonialism. Of course, many in Korea and China, which received the brunt of Japanese imperialism, would violently disagree with that version of events.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/6231471

One movie from this list I absolutely adore is Psycho Goreman. More funny than scary.

Thanks to @[email protected]!

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/9557664

Netflix decided that video game adaptations are in