Welcome to Milwaukee Record’s 66 Days of Halloween countdown! You can find Part I, which covers Days 0-22, HERE. You can find Part III, which covers Days 45-66, HERE.
DAY 33: FOUR THINGS I FORGOT ABOUT THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN
There’s a new take on The Bride Of Frankenstein coming out next spring simply called The Bride! It’s directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, it stars Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale, and it looks like it reimagines The Bride and The Monster as Bonnie and Clyde-esque outlaws. It looks…okay? Kind of TWISTED and EDGY? I dunno. I’ll definitely see it!
The trailer inspired me to revisit the original 1935 Bride Of Frankenstein, which I hadn’t seen in a minute. Or had I seen it at all? It’s one of those movies most of us think we’ve seen even if we’ve never actually sat down and watched it. Well, I watched it. All 75 minutes of it. And here are four things I forgot about it…if I ever knew them at all:
1. It opens with a weird meta scene of Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron talking about the original Frankenstein, and how there’s another story to be told. It’s super goofy and dumb—it includes clips from the first movie!—but at least the actress playing Mary Shelly, Elsa Lanchester, also plays The Bride.
2. It’s way goofier than the original Frankenstein, and it includes a scene where the new mad scientist, Doctor Pretorius, shows off his miniature humans. WEIRD. (Ernest Thesiger, who plays Pretorius, steals the entire 75-minute show.)
3. Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein borrows a lot from Bride, too. The whole blind man in the cabin scene? That’s from Bride, not the original Frankenstein. (Shout-out to Gene Hackman!)
4. The Bride, in all her lightning-haired glory, is in The Bride Of Frankenstein for like, three minutes. And they’re the final three minutes! Seriously: Frankenstein and Pretorius bring her to life, she screams and hisses, and then The Monster blows everything up. Then end! Talk about a star part! I love this movie!
DAY 32: THAT TREE AGAIN
The leaves are a-fallin’! This tree is WAY ahead of the game, and I love it for that.
DAY 31: DRACULA UNLEASHED
In the history of video games, the Sega CD console is an odd duck. It was a bit ahead of its time when it was released in 1991 (1992 in North America), but its reliance on “full-motion video” games with little actual gameplay beyond clicking around to trigger the next scene have made it more of a tech footnote than a beloved retro console. There were plenty of legitimately great games, like Sonic CD and Lunar: The Silver Star, but there were also games like Make My Video: Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch.
I, however, LOVE the Sega CD. And yes, I’ll admit it: I LOVE those crappy “full-motion video” games. Which brings me to one that doesn’t get talked about much: Dracula Unleashed, from 1993. (Don’t worry: I’m absolutely going to do something on Night Trap before these 66 days are up.) It’s stuffed with all the hallmarks of the genre: atrocious acting, surprisingly good music, a perplexing plot, point-and-click gameplay, interminable load times, and TONS of atmosphere. Don’t believe me? Here’s a whole playthrough of the game that I’m totally not going to watch because I want to see if I can finish it myself. Buckle up for “O Fortuna” in glorious CD-ROM sound quality!
DAY 30: ANOTHER HALLOWEEN PLAYLIST SONG
Sharon Van Etten rules. I love Sharon Van Etten. I love her old A.V. Club Undercover performance of “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.” I love her appearance on the new Twin Peaks. I love all of her records. I wish Sharon Van Etten would play Milwaukee so I could finally see…what’s that? Oh, I actually did see Sharon Van Etten live, at an intimate Pabst Theater thing in 2012? Thanks, daily journal I’ve been keeping for nearly 15 years!
So what does Sharon Van Etten have to do with Halloween? Because she put out a new record with her new band, The Attachment Theory, this past February, and the record has a great Halloween-vibes song called “Live Forever.” I love this song. I just added it to my playlist!
DAY 29: RE-ANIMATOR
I recently revisited 1985’s Re-Animator, a Frankenstein-inspired body-horror cult classic that’s loosely based on an H.P. Lovecraft story and that features a decapitated head doing, um, not-great things. It’s a lot of fun (never mind the whole decapitated head scene), and it still plays today. Plus, the score is such a blatant lift of the Psycho score that it’s a miracle a re-animated Bernard Herrmann didn’t sue.
I bring up Re-Animator because The Pabst Theater will host a 40th anniversary screening of the film on Friday, October 3. Oh, and it’ll be followed by a Q&A with Herbert West himself, the great Jeffrey Combs! Oh, and the Q&A will be moderated by…me! I’m excited! Come on out! (And yes, the above photo is of the DVD MENU, baby.)
Assuming it goes well and it isn’t a complete disaster, I’ll post a recap of the event in this countdown. On a COMPLETELY UNRELATED note, here’s a photo of the time I “moderated” a Q&A with The Room‘s Tommy Wiseau! What a story, Matt!
DAY 28: SHRIEKS AND CREAKS
Anyone remember this one? Shrieks And Creaks was a 1988 board game that came with a cassette tape filled with instructions and commands from the game’s master of ceremonies, Sir Simon Shriek. You pressed PLAY on the tape and then went from room to room in an old mansion, picking up keys and inserting them into a little speaker shaped like a tombstone that was hooked up to the tape player. Certain key combinations would trigger the speaker, and Sir Simon Shriek would tell you what to do. Lose a turn, go to another room, that sort of stuff. My friends and I always howled when he said, “Go to the bathroom!”
Anyway, here’s the whole 30-minute tape! Come for Sir Simon, stay for the spooky sound effects and creepy music.
DAY 27: FIRST DAY OF FALL
Happy first day of fall! Here’s a ghoulishly good bumper sticker I spied yesterday! (I like that you can also see leaves and what appears to be an old spider web in the photo, too.) Let’s enjoy the hell out of this wonderful season!
DAY 26: HALLOWEEN PORCH DECORATIONS
A friend recently expressed shock—shock, I tell you!—that people were “already” decorating their houses for Halloween. Did I tell him that decorating in late September seemed completely normal to me, and that I had been counting down the holiday for nearly a month? I did not.
Anyway, last week I had one of those days where I had 8,000 things to do and four hours to do them. But in the midst of the madness I spotted a pretty sweet Halloween porch setup. Nothing fancy, but it made me happy. I hope it makes you happy, too.
DAY 25: DAY OF THE DEAD IN THE DOMES
I’m going to put together a big Halloween event list for the main site at some point, but for now here’s another single event that caught my eye: Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) at the Mitchell Park Domes!
On Friday, October 31 from 6-9 p.m., the Desert Dome will be done up for the big holiday. Students from nearby schools will create traditional offerings in honor of loved ones. There’ll be a Mariachi band. There’s be dancers. There’ll be local food, art, and more. Oh, and it’ll be preceded by a candlelight “Caminata de los Recuerdos” (Walk of Memories) from the Menomonee Valley Urban Ecology Center to the Domes. Neat!
Tickets are $15 for Milwaukee Domes Alliance members and $18 for the general public. Get ’em HERE. And enjoy this photo of me enjoying a PBR in the Desert Dome!
DAY 24: THAT TREE AGAIN
Yep, it’s the same tree from Day 8 and Day 16. I’m keeping tabs on it all season long—every eight days, apparently!
And look at that! It’s already losing leaves!
DAY 23: HORROR COMMENTARY TRACKS
I try not to look on the past with rose colored glasses, but I think it’s safe to say that the DVD era was an absolute heyday for film buffs. Remember when DVDs were loaded with extras? Deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes documentaries and featurettes, interviews, photos, and other random goodies. And, of course, the true film buff’s delight: commentary tracks!
I used to love commentary tracks. Hell, certain moments from certain commentary tracks are just as burned into my brain as the films themselves. (One of the Zucker brothers, in the opening scene of The Naked Gun, where O.J. Simpson’s character is prowling around in a ski cap and gloves: “So is this actual footage of O.J.?”)
Horror commentaries are especially great. There are the LaserDisc-era classics, like “Kurt Russell and John Carpenter laugh their asses off watching The Thing”…
…”Kurt Russell and John Carpenter laugh their asses off watching Big Trouble in Little China”…
…and “Kurt Russell and John Carpenter laugh their asses off watching Escape from New York”…
And there are plenty more! There’s a new-ish YouTube channel called M.B. Archives that has oodles of full-length commentary tracks. Check ’em out! Here’s an especially entertaining and informative one for Evil Dead II: Dead Before Dawn (from which this second part of our Halloween countdown takes its name)!
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