Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943) – Roy William Neill

I quite liked this entry in the Univeral Monsters series. Lon Chaney Jr. returns as Lawrence Talbot aka The Wolf Man, and Bela Lugosi, whose name gets buried in the starring credits while Chaney gets an ‘and’ plays Frankenstein’s Monster. Apparently, Talbot wasn’t dead. He was buried, draped in wolfsbane to keep him trapped and…

The Mummy’s Tomb (1942) – Harold Young

Working as a direct sequel to The Mummy’s Hand, The Mummy’s Tomb is supposed to take place some thirty years after the previous film as Karis the Mummy (now played by Lon Chaney JR.) is used to hunt down the members of the party that defiled the tomb in the previous film. That means archeologist…

The Mummy’s Hand (1940) – Christy Cabanne

I dig into more Universal monsters this week to the first sequel to The Mummy. Released in 1940, The Mummy’s Hand features Tom Tyler as the Mummy. It’s hard to come down on anyone’s side on this one nowadays. The ‘heroes’ are led by an archeologist, Steve Banning (Dick Foran) who is a snappily-dressed American…

Easy Go (1968) – Micheal Crichton

Easy Go should have been my favourite of Micheal Crichton’s early novels. Written under his John Lange pseudonym while Crichton was still in med-school, the book includes some archaeology, some Egyptology, and the idea of a heist. Barnaby has discovered the possibility of a lost tomb, an undiscovered cache of wealth and a forgotten king….

TAD 2023: The Deep Dark dir. Mathieu Turi

Mathieu Turi delivers a delightful and ominous creature feature with The Deep Dark and the practical effects, and oppressive setting make this one spark, and it’s definitely something the Toronto After Dark crowds are going to love. Amir (Amir El Kacem) arrived to join a mining team in the 1950s. He’s paired with a rough-and-tumble…

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) – Rob Cohen

There is a fun, if not a good movie somewhere in this mess of a mummy film that is my next stop in the mummy chapter of DK Canada’s highly enjoyable Monsters in the Movies book. Unfortunately there are a number of things holding it back, there are some casting changes that affect onscreen chemistry,…

The Ghoul (1933) – T. Hayes Hunter

Horror legend Boris Karloff takes on the zombie genre in the next film in DK Canada’s Monsters in the Movies, although with the introduction of Egyptology into the story, one could make an argument that it could fall into the mummy genre as well. Karloff is Professor Morlant an aging, and dying Egyptologist. He’s been…

Blood and Roses (1960) -Roger Vadim

John Landis’ Monsters in the Movies takes a more sensual turn as I return to the coffee table tome available now from DK Canada. Blood and Roses is a French film with a its own take on the vampire legend. Set on the estate of the Karnsteins, the tale follows a well to do family…

The Mummy (1999) – Stephen Sommers

While the updated version of The Mummy blasts into theatres this summer, the 1999 reboot was on the list of recommendations from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book for follow-up titles to Raiders of the Lost Ark. This version, directed by Stephen Sommers, stars Brendan Fraser, Oded Fehr, Rachel Weisz and Arnold…

Doctor Who (Patrick Troughton) – The Tomb of the Cybermen

  Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis write the first story of Season 5 that features the return of the Cybermen, the introduction of Cybermats and Cybercontrollers and a tense, fun story, in this four-parter which is the first Troughton Doctor Who story that is fully intact. The Tomb of the Cybermen originally aired from 2 September…