The Relic (1997)

Once again, I watch a monster movie made in what would seem to be a more modern time (albeit, over twenty-five years ago), and what strikes me is how much it still adheres to the half-century-old structures and ideas. Opening with a white researcher experiencing something strange among a mysterious indigenous tribe in the Amazon rainforest, and then sending something equally mysterious back home in marked crates, is one of the hoariest old cliches in the book—you could easily see a version of this story made in 1957, the details changed but the spirit intact. The details, ultimately, are the things that make something like The Relic feel like a 1997 movie, planting this classical B-movie plot into the violent, flippant world of an R-rated nineties thriller, with a monster that can be portrayed more “realistically” by Stan Winston Studio’s advanced animatronic puppets and a smattering of nineties CGI rather than a guy in a suit.

The Brainiac (1962)

Beginning here, I’ll be running what I’m going to call “Drive-In Summer”, where we focus on B-movies or films with a B-movie spirit. As part of that, every other week will be a Double Feature, with a second monster movie write-up on Friday. To fully embody the experience, go get a bag of the least healthy popcorn you can find.

The last Mexican creature feature from the sixties we discussed was the delightful Ship of Monsters, and The Brainiac (originally titled El Baron del Terror, or The Baron of Terror) is from around the same time period. It is, however, an altogether different beast—for one, it was actually seen outside its home country thanks to an English dub that was run on television. Interestingly, the producer of the movie, Abel Salazar, also stars as the titular Baroniac of Terror—that would usually be a bad sign, but not so much here. The creative heads of this movie had long and varied careers, but notable for us, Salazar had produced several monster movies, including the vampire flick El Vampiro in1957, while director Chano Urueta had helmed the Frankenstein-esque El Monstruo Resucitado in 1953, all of them considered part of the Golden Age of Mexican horror movies, which was built on homaging the style of classic Universal films of the thirties and forties—that is also quite evident in this movie, from the black-and-white photography to the booming score. Of course, it is made painfully clear at all times that The Brainiac did not have anywhere near the budget of those older movies—everything in this is an obvious studio set, some fairly detailed while others are just an image projected onto the background—but at times it more than makes up for it in strange B-movie energy.

Fiend Without a Face (1958)

Here we are at the 100^th post, surely a milestone worth celebrating—so, how do we do that? Why not a review of the only monster movie I know of that is set around where I live? Surely you are as interested in the subject as I am.

Nowadays (or, at least, the parts of “nowadays” that discounts the past year or so of disruption), my home province of Manitoba is used as the shooting location for a surprising number of films (prominently among them: The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford), including many horror films (they filmed at least one of those direct-to-video Child’s Play sequels here)—and why not? During the fall and winter months, the flat prairie landscape with its sparse wooded patches has a desolate quality that can bring atmosphere to these projects. Of course, none of them ever take place in Manitoba, but have it sub for whatever location they want—and, ironically, the one bit of horror movie history I’ve found that is explicitly set in Manitoba was absolutely not filmed here. That would be fifties B-movie staple Fiend Without a Face, a movie that has had a long life as a piece of out-of-context footage used in montages or clip packages about old Sci-Fi. This is likely because Fiend Without a Face features one of the most grotesque monsters from the fifties monster movie boom, and not because it’s set in Manitoba (which was apparently only because a Canadian location was considered a suitable middle ground between a British or American one.) In any case, this is another example of how these old monster movies could be quite a bit less quaint than their reputations would have you believe.

Brain Damage (1988)

For our third and final Shudder selection, I thought I’d go into something that seemed to more accurately represent the kind of movie that makes most of the service’s offerings—or so I thought. Yes, Brain Damage is a gory horror comedy complete with an ethereal synth soundtrack, but it’s also so odd as to defy any attempt to give it a high concept label—it simply wouldn’t accurately describe the experience here. This is a movie that starts at an eleven and just keeps going from there. It is to eighties horror comedy what Super Inframan is to whatever genre Super Inframan is supposed to be.