What I'm Reading: Action Philosophers

Okay, I have one more horror movie to review for the season, but first let's get to a book I recently finished, Action Philosophers, a non-fiction graphic novel providing biographies of forty philosophers, from Ancient Greece to the contemporary world. This book is awfully charming, with cartoony but detailed art from Ryan Dunlavey that adapts itself to each era and location--appearing Chinese for Confucius and Lao Tzu, for instance, or medieval Jewish for Spinoza. The art and dialogue (by writer Fred Van Lente) are clever and fast-paced to the point of hyperactivity, providing a wealth of information but also nearly non-stop humorous references to pop culture, history, other jokes from earlier in the book, even the authors themselves.

I think my favorite philosopher in the book is John Stuart Mill, presented in the style of Peanuts. J.S. Mill is Charlie Brown, with adorable little 19th century sideburns on his bald head, espousing his Utilitarianism to the other skeptical characters. His attempt to teach virtue to Snoopy, who keeps trying to steal the blanket of Jeremy Bentham (in the guise of Linus), is a particular highlight.

And yet, despite the pervading jokiness, the core of the book is serious. This is a real history of philosophy told through a biographic framework, clearly showing how each new era of philosophers have expanded, synthesized, or rejected the work of their predecessors. It starts with the pre-Socratics and ends with Jacques Derrida, and is fairly brilliant at cogently demonstrating in words and pictures even such difficult concepts as the analytic philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

In fact, I'm giving this book one of my coveted Shortcuts to Smartness awards! A Shortcut to Smartness book is one that "so expands your knowledge and understanding in so many areas that it is like a college course in and of itself," and I think that works here. It's graphic novel form would make this readable even for high school students, as it breaks down lots of highly complex ideas to a level that practically anyone could understand. And they would have a lot of fun in learning those ideas, too!

Scary Movies: Creepshow

It's October, and as usual, we're behind on reviewing our horror movies! Okay, this time, we're doing Creepshow, a horror-comedy anthology from 1982. Stephen King wrote the script (and acted in one of the segments!) and George Romero directed it, so we're dealing with horror royalty. How did the movie measure up?

Well, there are five segments, and the quality of them vary widely. The framing story is pretty simple--a kid is reading a horror comic instead of doing his chores, and his dad gets mad at him and throws out the comic. As it sits on top of the trash can outside, we see the cover--it's titled "Creepshow" and it looks like the old EC comics of the 1950s--and the pages fly open. It turns out each of the segments in the movie correspond to a story in the comic. So right away we know these will be in the style of those old comics--horrible things will happen, but only to people who deserve it in such a way that their comeuppance will appear ironically appropriate. And indeed, that's how it goes.

I think the my favorite segment was the fourth--"The Crate." At a wine-and-cheese party, we're introduced to nebbish professor Henry Northrup and his harridan wife, Wilma. Wilma is loud, obnoxious, drinks too much, and puts Henry down at every opportunity. Henry has little fantasies about strangling Wilma but doesn't have the guts. Meanwhile, department head Dexter Stanley gets a call from a custodian at the college about an old crate he found under a stairwell, marked "Antarctic Expedition, 1834." Dr. Stanley is excited about this find and leaves the boring wine-and-cheese party to see about the crate.

In a lab, Dr. Stanley and the custodian open the crate, only for something inside to reach out and grab the custodian, pulling him in and eating him as blood drips out and bones crunch. Truly frightened, Dr. Stanley grabs a grad student and they take the crate back down to the dusty stairwell, but the creature inside, which in a brief glimpse looks something like a really monstrous baboon, escapes, pulling the grad student into a dark corner for a snack.

Dr. Stanley flees to the house of his friend, Henry Northrup, who by now is at home. Dr. Stanley is in a panic but as Henry pieces the story together--voracious monstrous ape-thing on the loose and no way to get it back in its crate--he has an idea. He tells Dr. Stanley he'll take care of things and leaves a note for his wife, who has gone out drinking with the girls. The note reads that Dr. Stanley has made sexual passes at a young co-ed who was so frightened she's hiding in a crate at the college, and could Wilma come and help Henry coax her out? Knowing his wife will never be able to resist the gossipy note, Henry meanwhile prepares his trap, setting up the crate in just the right place and cleaning up all the blood.

Of course when Wilma arrives, Henry tricks her into looking into the crate, way back in a dusty corner, where the hidden baboon-thing attacks her, giving Henry a chance to put the lid back on, and nail and chain it up with both Wilma and monster inside. He takes the crate out to the old quarry where he drops it in the water and returns home to tell Dr. Stanley the story over their weekly chess game. Only, in the cold water back at the quarry, the crate is shaking, and finally the top bursts open, letting the creature escape....

This is tough to review, as "The Crate" and another segment titled "They're Creeping Up on You" were great, while some of the other segments held a lot less interest. The one Stephen King acted in--"The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill"--felt especially pointless. Let's see if we can work this out:


Creepshow (1982)

Story/Plot/Characters-- By necessity, stories have two-dimensional characters--there's simply no time to develop them. However, Stephen King does throw in lots of little details to let you know these are real people with quirks. Dialogue is fairly witty, acting is pretty good (umm, except for Stephen King's segment--good thing he had a day job). Still, while a couple segments are really good, with the black humor really effective, others feel like filler or paint-by-numbers. (2.5 points)
Special Effects--Good stuff from horror special effects savant Tom Savini--rotting corpses, monstrous baboon-things, and in one segment, roaches bursting out of a living human. (1.5 points)
Scariness--Not especially. Segments are generally played for laughs. My daughter watched this with zero problems. More disgusting in parts than scary. (.5 points)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--To an extent. The segment titled "Something to Tide You Over" had the best atmosphere, with its isolated beach house setting, miles from the next property. The final segment, "They're Creeping Up On You," with its thousands of roaches, was genuinely freaky. (1 point)
Total=5.5 points (Okay)

With 5.5 points, Creepshow ends up at the top of the Okay category. That seems about right. Although if the whole movie had been up to the standard of the two best segments, it would've scored a lot higher.

______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)

Best Horror Movies Ever
Alien (1979)=10 points
Dawn of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Excellent
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
Poltergeist (1982)=7.5 points
The Haunting (1963)=7.5 points
Freaks (1932)=7 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Day of the Dead (1985)=6 points
Okay
Creepshow (1982)=5.5 points
The Raven (1963)=5.5 points
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1960)=4.5 points
Alien Resurrection (1997)=4.5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The House of Wax (1953)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points

Scary Movies: The Brain That Wouldn't Die

I've actually got two movies to add to the list this time out. Let's start with The Brain That Wouldn't Die, a movie from 1960 that my daughter and I watched on Friday night, though I've seen it before. It's a definite B-movie: sleazy, freaky, and bizarre. It's one of my favorites.

Dr. Bill Cortner and his father are working to save a patient in an operating room. The patient is about to die on the table, and Bill wants to use an unorthodox technique involving exposing his heart and brain to save him. His father objects, but at the last moment is willing to let Bill have his way if it will save the patient's life. Bill performs the rest of the operation his way and the patient is saved.

In a conversation after the operation, Bill's father warns him that he saved the patient this time, but his unnatural experiments will be dangerous in the long run. Bill waves him off, and one of the nurses, Jan, who is also Bill's fiance, wonders when Bill will finally take her out to his secluded country house. He agrees after she begs to come with him that weekend.

On the long drive to the country house, Bill drives too fast and they crash into a tree. Bill is thrown from the car and when he comes to the car is on fire. He tries to rescue Jan but is unable to, yet is able to retrieve something from the car that he wraps in a cloth. He runs to the country house, where he has a laboratory set up in the basement. The thing he wrapped in the cloth turns out to be Jan's head, and with the aid of his assistant, Kurt, they are able to keep the head alive with lots of tubes and blinking lights and the use of a new serum he's developed.

Jan's head has only 48 hours to live, so Bill needs to find a body to transplant the head onto. He heads off to town in search of one. In the lab, we learn Kurt is missing an arm that Bill has replaced with a foot, and we also discover there is a padlocked closet in the laboratory holding some sort of growling, incredibly strong past experiment of Bill's gone awry. Jan's head wakes up and, though Bill's serum keeps her alive, she is in excruciating pain. The serum also gives Jan psychic powers, so she knows what he's doing.

And what is Bill doing? Um...visiting a local go-go club and later a swimsuit contest, trying to find a beautiful replacement body for Jan. At one point, he's actually cruising the town's streets, searching for women with hot bods who might be suitable. An old flame of his in the audience at the swimsuit contest reminds him of Doris, a mutual female acquaintance of theirs who has a great body, and mentions she works now as a model. Bill heads over to Doris's place, where she is in the middle of a modeling session. Bill realizes she does indeed have the body he wants, and once the photographers have left, he convinces her to come out to his country house for dinner.

When they arrive back at the country house, Bill discovers the experiment in the closet has somehow killed Kurt, and Jan is awake and super-pissed because of the never-ending torment her existence has become. Bill covers up Jan's mouth with tape, Kurt's body with a sheet, and grabs a couple sleeping pills for Doris, still waiting upstairs. When he comes back down with Doris's unconscious body, the experiment breaks down the closet door and turns out to be a giant, hideous monstrosity. He fights with Bill, and during the fight they set the laboratory on fire. The creature kills Bill with a vicious bite to the throat, and flees the house with the sleeping Doris. The credits role with Jan's insane laugh on the soundtrack.

Okay, nobody would say this is a good movie in an objective sense, but in contrast to most B-movies, it keeps things moving. No slow parts, and an endless unfolding of weird and ridiculous plot developments, combined with an unembarrassed boldness in using its cheap but effective special effects, give the audience its money's worth. This movie only rates Okay on our rating scale, but it's a highly entertaining okay.

The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1960)

Story/Plot/Characters-- The script is ludicrous but fast-paced and certainly creative, the characters thin but with believable motivations within the story, the acting bad but not terrible. It's not that it's good, it's that it could've been so much worse. (1.5 points)
Special Effects--Special effects are ultra low-budget but surprisingly well deployed for what they are. (1 point)
Scariness--No. (0 points)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--Oh yes. Some of the weirdest scenes in horror movie history. The secluded country house, the lab with something pounding in the closet in the corner, the insane doctor cruising the streets of the local town to find female bodies for his tasteless experiments. Freaky as can be. (2 points)
Total=4.5 points (Okay)

______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)

Best Horror Movies Ever
Alien (1979)=10 points
Dawn of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Excellent
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
Poltergeist (1982)=7.5 points
The Haunting (1963)=7.5 points
Freaks (1932)=7 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Day of the Dead (1985)=6 points
Okay
The Raven (1963)=5.5 points
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1960)=4.5 points
Alien Resurrection (1997)=4.5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The House of Wax (1953)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points

Scary Movies: Poltergeist

Well, I have a book to review and a movie to review, but since it's October and I don't want to fall behind on the scary movies, let's do that one. The movie this time out is Poltergeist, written and produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Tobe Hooper (of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame). Apparently there was a lot of controversy at the time over who really directed it, though, as Spielberg was highly involved and on set every day.

Poltergeist was the first horror movie I ever saw, at age 8. A lot of kids at school were talking about this one and I really wanted to see it, so one night when it was on HBO, my parents and I watched it together. Did it scare the daylights out of me? Yes! Did it spark a lifelong interest in scary movies that continues to this day? Yep, that too! And did it hold up for an adult viewer? Let's find out.

Poltergeist is a pretty straightforward haunted house story. The Freelings have three kids and live in an idyllic house and neighborhood in a southern California suburb. Their youngest daughter, Carol Anne (5), has started waking up and talking to the static on the TV when Dad passes out after the late show and the channel signs off. She says the TV people talk to her. Weird things start happening around the house--for example, the dining room chairs will rearrange themselves when no one is looking, and the dog is acting like strangers are around. But at first it's not too worrisome, almost fun.

One night a big storm comes up and the old tree outside the house comes alive, attacking the Freeling boy, Robbie (8) in his room. While the family is outside trying to pull Robbie out from the suddenly hungry tree, Carol Anne disappears. They search everywhere, only to discover they can only hear her through the TV's speakers. The TV people have kidnapped her, and apparently taken up residence in the kids' bedroom, where they conduct a 24-hour ghost party, including flying toys, random screams, and a blinding light in the closet. The Freelings contact a paranormal investigative team at the University of California-Irvine who tell them their house is haunted by one or more poltergeists.

Because poltergeist hauntings tend to be short-lived, they really need to get Carol Anne back from whatever realm the ghosts have spirited her off to in a hurry, or she'll be gone forever. The paranormal researchers bring in Tangina Barrons, an exorcist and little person who knows just what to do. Tangina and her method of reaching into the world beyond are really quite clever (you'll need rope, two tennis balls, and a bathtub of warm water...) and form the heart of the movie. I won't say what happens next except to mention that their attempt to get Carol Anne back really, really pisses off the spirit world.

So did the movie hold up? I think so, mostly! Actually, what I didn't realize as a kid is that Poltergeist is really a black comedy. I think a lot of scenes are somewhat tongue in cheek or played for laughs in a way I didn't get as a kid. It's also something of a satire, in which the modern trappings of prosperity--a big house, a customized kitchen, televisions in every room of the house--are shown to be empty materialism. In a metaphorical way, it isn't the ghosts who've kidnapped Carol Anne, it's the Freeling family's unthinking lives of mindless consumption. In the end, when the haunting is revealed to be the fault of a greedy developer who moved the tombstones of a century-old cemetery but left the coffins in the ground underneath his new subdivision, disturbing the sleep of the dead, it represents an American tendency to advance a materialistic suburban life that has little respect for older, more spiritual traditions.


Poltergeist (1982)

Story/Plot/Characters-- Excellent acting, tight script from Spielberg, humor and great pacing. But, somewhat uneven tone, almost as if a horror-minded director and a highly-involved producer were working somewhat at cross-purposes. Loses all subtlety in the final act. (3 points)
Special Effects--Heavy on the special effects, state-of-the-art at the time, feel a bit dated now but still effective. (1.5 points)
Scariness--Some scary parts, including a scene with a toy clown under the bed that will stay with every kid who ever sees this movie. (1.5 points)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--A typical American suburb might not seem likely for an atmospheric movie, but scenes such as a parade of spectres slowly descending the house's curving central staircase, or the kids' closet to the spirit world that seems to stretch on and on, or corpse-filled coffins popping up out of the half-drained pool, prove that suburbs can be the freakiest places of all. (1.5 points)
Total=7.5 points (Excellent)

______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)

Best Horror Movies Ever
Alien (1979)=10 points
Dawn of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Excellent
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
Poltergeist (1982)=7.5 points
The Haunting (1963)=7.5 points
Freaks (1932)=7 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Day of the Dead (1985)=6 points
Okay
The Raven (1963)=5.5 points
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
Alien Resurrection (1997)=4.5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The House of Wax (1953)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points

Scary Movies: Freaks

Yay, it's October, and that means it's time for the annual Bruner Halloween movie festival! Our first movie this year was one I've wanted to see for a long time, Freaks, from 1932. Freaks is famous, indeed notorious, for using actual circus sideshow exhibits from the time in its cast--little people, people suffering from microcephaly (called pinheads in the movie), Siamese twins, people born without legs or arms or both, and many others. It's something that could never be repeated today, making this a movie unique in film history.

The plot of Freaks is fairly straightforward. The freaks are part of a traveling circus where, as a circus barker explains, the freaks live as outsiders and by their own code--"Offend one, and you offend them all!" One of the freaks, the little person, Hans, has fallen in love with the beautiful but normal-sized trapeze artist, Cleopatra, much to the chagrin of his fiance, Frieda. Cleopatra realizes Hans has a crush on her and encourages it, perhaps out of vanity, but when she learns Hans is the heir to a great fortune, she decides to make him really fall in love with her so they'll get married. Then she'll poison him and inherit the money. Cleopatra's lover is the circus strongman, Hercules, who's in on the plot and thinks it's a great joke.

Hans and Cleopatra do get married, and at the wedding feast, the freaks have a little ritual to induct Cleopatra into their circle, when they pass around a huge wine goblet for everyone to sip from communally while they sing a chant. (Gooble gabble gooble gabble We accept her! We accept her!) However, Cleopatra is drunk and takes offense at the presumption that the freaks are accepting her, and causes a big scene. She also kisses Hercules and everyone realizes her love for Hans was a sham.

Cleopatra has poisoned Hans's drink and he falls ill after the wedding. Back at the circus, she dotes on Hans in his sickbed and tries to convince him she didn't mean what she said during her outburst at the wedding, even as she's poisoning his medicine. However, Hans is spitting out his medicine when Cleopatra leaves the room. Meanwhile, the freaks, whose code dictates they must take revenge if one of their own is harmed, wait for their moment.

On a rainy night, when the circus wagons are en route to a new city, one of the wagons overturns and the whole train of wagons must stop. During the confusion, the freaks, armed with knives and cudgels, corner Hercules under one of the wagons and kill him, and carve Cleopatra up, making her into a freak like them. She shows up in the final scene with her tongue cut out, her fingers missing, and her legs amputated, and the show's impresario has put feathers on her and billed her as "The Human Duck."

My daughter pointed out afterwards that this isn't really a horror movie. Indeed, I'd call it a melodrama. The only way it works as a horror movie is if you think the freaks themselves are horrifying, but that just doesn't work. The dapper, well-spoken little person Hans, the friendly and outgoing Half Boy (born without legs), the quite pretty Daisy and Violet (Siamese twins), the sad-eyed and gentle Koo Koo the Dancing Bird (microcephaly), the happily married Human Skeleton and Bearded Lady, and many others--these people are simply not horrifying, so long as you overlook their physical deformities. Indeed, the real freaks are Cleopatra and Hercules, who are beautiful on the outside but deformed morally, and who get what they deserve in the end.

In fact, I'm a little worried that this movie won't score very well on my horror movie rubric, despite being an interesting movie in its own right. Let's see how it goes.


Freaks (1932)

Story/Plot/Characters-- A fascinating premise never to be repeated in film, with highly memorable characters and a well-executed plot, if a bit slow-paced at the beginning. Dialogue not too sparkling, the only real flaw. (3 points)
Special Effects--No real special effects, but none needed--the sideshow freaks are the special effects. (2 points)
Scariness--Simply not scary. (0 points)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--As you'd expect, a movie named Freaks is awfully freaky.  The wedding feast with the chant and the final scene with the freaks hiding in the dark under the wagons as it rains all around are pretty atmospheric. (2 points)
Total=7 points (Excellent)

Well, it turned out to score Excellent according to my system, although just barely. Still, I don't think that truly does justice to this movie, which has been on my mind often in the days since we've watched it. What's really interesting is an accompanying video on the same DVD with short biographies of each of the freaks, even those mostly in the background. The variety of deformities and their lives in circus sideshows or on the margins of society make for fascinating if often sad (but not always!) life stories, in particular the little person Harry Earles (Hans in the movie), who had a substantial movie career from the 1920s to 40s, including as a munchkin in the Wizard of Oz.

Just a note: I've added a category (Best Ever) and slightly recalibrated the rankings, below:


______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)

Best Horror Movies Ever
Alien (1979)=10 points
Dawn of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Excellent
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
The Haunting (1963)=7.5 points
Freaks (1932)=7 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Day of the Dead (1985)=6 points
Okay
The Raven (1963)=5.5 points
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
Alien Resurrection (1997)=4.5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The House of Wax (1953)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points