100 Yards of Horror!

Illustration by my good and very Sensitive Friend Shawn McManus.
I headed back from the convenience store through the forest. I could see them lurking in the bushes. Who were they? My imagination began to expand. The Mobile, Alabama Leprecaun was descending from his tree and coming after me. Yee-OW! I tried to go faster, but the gout sent pain radiating through my legs. Now they huddled back into the shadows behind the trees. Were they wearing propellor beanies, or did I imagine that? Could it be... yes, no... gremlins? I was piloting a P-40 for Lt. General Chennault and the Flying Tigers, yes, World War II Flying Tigers, that's the ticket, and the gremlins were on the wing, oh my God, no, NOOOOOooooooo! Get a grip, man. Now they emerged from the shadows... and I saw... that they were only children. Kids holding rocks and branches and metal objects. Batteries? They took aim and began throwing. I wanted to run but I could not. I pulled the hood over my head and continued walking as the hurled objects whizzed past. Only 100 more yards to the house. Could I make it? I limped... only ten feet to the door and safety. Hand on doorknob. Home at last!

You no what? "Troubles don't melt like lemon drops! Little Bastards!

Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (onscreen title: Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein) is a 1948 comedy/horror film directed by Charles Barton and starring the comedy team of Abbott and Costello.

This is the first of several films where the comedy duo meets classic characters from Universal's film stable. In the film, they encounter Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, and the Wolf Man. Subsequent films pair the duo with the Mummy, the Keystone Kops, and the Invisible Man. On a TV special in the early 1950s, the comedy duo did a sketch where they interacted with the latest original Universal Studios monster being promoted at the time, the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

The film is considered the swan song for the "Big Three" Universal horror monsters – Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's monster – although it does not appear to fit within the loose continuity of the earlier films.

The film was re-released in 1956 along with Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff.

In 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed this film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

In September 2007, Reader’s Digest selected the movie as one of the top 100 funniest films of all time.

Orson Welles, Man in the Shadow

Man in the Shadow is a 1957 thriller starring Jeff Chandler, Orson Welles, Colleen Miller, Ben Alexander, and John Larch.

The cow town of Spurline is effectively ruled by Virgil Renchler (Orson Welles), owner of the Golden Empire ranch. One night, some of Renchler's hands beat a young laborer, Juan Martín, to death. The newly elected sheriff of Spurline, Ben Sadler (Jeff Chandler), decides to investigate the matter. During his investigation, he must contend with Renchler's henchmen and the fierce opposition of the townspeople, who fear Spurline would be ruined without the Golden Empire's business.

Blue Demon

Jack and his Friends are Back

John Joseph Nicholson' (born April 22, 1937), known as Jack Nicholson, is a three time Academy Award-winning American actor, internationally renowned for his often dark-themed portrayals of neurotic characters. He is widely recognized as being one of the greatest actors of his generation.

He has been nominated for an Academy Award 12 times and has won three times (twice for Best Actor and once as Best Supporting Actor). He is tied with Walter Brennan for most acting wins by a male actor (three), and second to Katharine Hepburn for most acting wins overall (four). He is also one of only two actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting (either lead or supporting) in every decade since the 1960s; the other is Michael Caine. He has won seven Golden Globe Awards, and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2001. In 1994, he became one of the youngest actors to be awarded the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award. He is perhaps best known for his roles in the films Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, As Good as It Gets, Tim Burton's Batman, Rob Reiner's A Few Good Men and Martin Scorsese's The Departed.

James Woods' career has been noted for the intense characters he has chosen, the earliest of which was his portrayal of a sadistic murderer in 1979's The Onion Field. He appeared in an episode of The Rockford Files, playing a son whose parents were murdered and wants James "Jim" Rockford to find the murderer. He was nominated for an Academy Award twice: the first in 1987 for Best Actor in Salvador and again in 1996 for Best Supporting Actor for his acclaimed performance as Byron De La Beckwith in Ghosts of Mississippi. He has also garnered critical praise for his voice work for Hades in Disney's Hercules. His personal favorite of all of his roles, however, is as the domineering gangster Max in Sergio Leone's gangster epic Once Upon A Time In America (1984).

He was briefly considered for the role of The Joker by Tim Burton and Sam Hamm for the Batman film in 1989. Hamm recalls that he and Burton thought, "James Woods would be good and wouldn't need any makeup, which would save a couple of hours' work every morning." The role ended up going to Jack Nicholson.[6] Quentin Tarantino wrote a part in Reservoir Dogs with Woods in mind, but his agent rejected the script without showing it to the actor. When Woods learned of this some time later, he fired the agent. Woods was also considered for the part of Donald Kimball in American Psycho, but he turned it down. The part was given to Willem Dafoe.

James Woods' appeared as himself in the episode of The Simpsons entitled "Homer and Apu" and in an episode of Family Guy entitled "Peter's Got Woods". The high school in Family Guy is also named James Woods High after him. In 2006, Woods starred opposite Cuba Gooding Jr. in the political thriller End Game. Also in 2006, Woods played himself in the premiere episode of Entourage's third season. He also starred in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as Mike Toreno and voiced the falcon in Stuart Little 2.

Woods stars in the new CBS legal drama Shark. Woods plays an infamous Los Angeles defense lawyer who, growing disillusioned, becomes a prosecutor. The Shark pilot episode was directed by Spike Lee.


Willem Dafoe'
After touring with Theatre X for four years in the United States and Europe, he moved to New York City and joined the Performance Group. Dafoe's film career began in 1981, when he was cast in Heaven's Gate, but his role was removed from the film during editing. In the mid 80`s he was cast by famed Director William Friedkin to star in the classic film "To Live And Die In LA" where Willem Dafoe delivers one of his greatest performances ever as the ace counterfeiter Rick Masters. A year later he starred as the leader of a motorcycle gang in The Loveless (and later played a similar role in Streets of Fire), but his first breakthrough film role was as the compassionate Sergeant Elias in Platoon (1986). In 1988 Dafoe starred in another movie set in Vietnam, this time as CID Agent Buck McGriff in Off Limits. He has since become a popular character actor; due to his harsh facial features and crooked smile, he is often typecast as unstable or villainous characters, such as the psychotic Green Goblin in the Spider-Man film series and Barillo in Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Before that, he was briefly considered for the role of The Joker by Tim Burton and Sam Hamm for the Batman film in 1989. Hamm recalls "We thought, 'Well, Willem Dafoe looks just like The Joker.'" The role ended up going to Jack Nicholson.[3] He also played Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). He once remarked "To this day, I can't believe I was so brazen to think I could pull off the Jesus role", though Dafoe received acclaim despite the controversy surrounding the film.

He starred in the erotic drama Body of Evidence with Madonna. In this film, he appeared totally nude, as well as giving Madonna cunnilingus in a famous scene in a carpark. In 1991 Willem Dafoe delivered another outstanding performance in the role as a Manhattan, New York drug dealer in the film "Light Sleeper". This film received very good reviews by both critics and fans alike. Dafoe played peculiar detectives in The Boondock Saints (1999) and in American Psycho (2000). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1986 for Platoon and 2000 for Shadow of the Vampire. After Spider-Man, Dafoe had a rare opportunity to play a heroic film role when he provided the voice of Gill in the animated movie Finding Nemo.

He worked briefly as a model in a 1990 Prada campaign. In 2004, Dafoe lent his likeness and voice for the highly successful James Bond video game Everything or Nothing as villain Nikolai Diavolo. In 2006, he played NYPD detective Stan Aubray on the hunt for a serial killer, the lead in New York-set thriller Anamorph, opposite Scott Speedman and Peter Stormare. In his most recent film he stars alongside Rowan Atkinson in the sequel to 1997's Bean, Mr. Bean's Holiday which was released worldwide 30 March 2007.

Frankenstein (unfinished art)

Boris Karloff-(The Mummy)

The Mummy very closely parallels the studio's classic from the year before, Dracula. Karl Freund, cinematographer for Dracula, was the director of The Mummy and scenes very much resemble each other. Some cast members of Dracula, such as David Manners and Edward Van Sloan, appear in similar roles. Some critics have called The Mummy an instant remake of Dracula, produced so the studio could cash in.

The Mummy was not based on an earlier novel or play, but those familiar with the lesser known works of Arthur Conan Doyle may notice some striking similarities between the film and Doyle's short story "The Ring Of Thoth" (to be found in "The Captain Of The Polestar"). If there is any debt on the part of the film's writers, it has never been acknowledged.

The film used names for the mummy and his wife from history and from word play. The name "Ardath Bey" is a pig Latin rendering of Karloff's often-mimicked pronunciation of his own first name and also an anagram of "death by Ra". Imhotep, the mummy's real name, was the first famous Egyptian architect, living in the Old Kingdom, while Ankhesenamun was the wife of the pharaoh Tutankhamun from the New Kingdom.

Although the Mummy wasn't on screen for more than ten minutes (and for long shots a wrapped dummy appears to have been used), Boris Karloff wore a whole body suit and a highly elaborate eight-hour makeup job for the short time he was on screen.

Boris Karloff was billed as KARLOFF on film posters, dropping his first name for several years during this period when his career was at its height before reverting back to both names by the time Son of Frankenstein was produced.

Santa Claus

Santa

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (original French title, Notre-Dame de Paris) is an 1831 French novel written by Victor Hugo. It is set in 1482 in Paris, in and around the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. The book tells the story of a poor Gypsy girl (La Esmeralda) and a misshapen bell-ringer (Quasimodo) who are both victimized by a corrupt priest (Claude Frollo). The book is largely a work of social criticism

Humphrey Bogart

The man who would tell Ingrid Bergman, "Here's Looking at You, Kid," at the conclusion of Casablanca (1942) was born Humphrey DeForest Bogart in 1899. He would become one of the twentieth century's greatest icons of tough masculinity, a complex blend of "good guy" and "bad guy" at a time when World War II had many Americans re-examining their personal codes of loyalty, honor, and character. Underneath his coarse exterior, Bogart, or simply "Bogie," betrayed an underdog vulnerability and a genuine desire to find the "right" answer in a world that was increasingly chaotic and off-kilter. The star was also well known for his celebrated marriage to co-star Lauren Bacall, whose sultry wit reflected his cynicism but who always drew out his romantic, heroic side.

Although Bogart became known for playing brutish characters from the wrong side of town, he was raised in the world of upper-middle -class New York City. He was eventually expelled from the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and joined the Navy for service during World War I. It was in the war that he suffered an injury which left his lip slightly paralyzed, resulting in the stiff and affected facial gestures which became one of the actor's trademarks.
Bogart began his career on stage in the 1920s and entered Hollywood by playing minor roles a decade later. But when Leslie Howard lobbied for him to co-star in The Petrified Forest (1935), he proved that he was well-suited for gangster or villain characters. He generally played this type until High Sierra (1941) in which he (with the film's screenwriter John Huston) developed a trope of masculinity which was complicated by ambivalence, pragmatism, and complex moral fortitude. Here, Bogart starred as Mad Dog Earle, an ex-convict on the run and destined for his own demise, who lays bare a particular emotional sensitivity through his sympathy for a simpler, gentler Joan Leslie. He continued to develop his star persona through this kind of role in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1941), both of which are considered his watershed films. Though he maintained a turbulent relationship with Warner Brothers, the studio which helped forge his image, Bogart made a comfortable fit with its house style which relied on the gangster genre and films which drew on the topical social problems of the day.

A bit of Frankenstein

Marilyn Manson

The Mummy

Archeologists in recent years have tried to resolve lingering questions over how he died and his precise royal lineage. Several books and documentaries dedicated to the young pharaoh, who is believed to have been the 12th ruler of ancient Egypt's 18th dynasty and ascended to the throne around the age of 8, are popular around the world.
In an effort to try to solve the mysteries, scientists removed Tut's mummy from his tomb and placed it into a portable CT scanner for 15 minutes in 2005 to obtain a three-dimensional image. The scans were the first done on an Egyptian mummy.
The results did rule out that Tut was violently murdered — but stopped short of definitively concluding how he died around 1323 B.C. Experts for the time though suggested that days before dying, Tut badly broke his left thigh, apparently in an accident, that may have caused a fatal infection.
The CT scan also provided the most revealing insight yet into the life of ancient Egypt's most famous king. He was well-fed, healthy, yet slightly built, standing at 5 feet, 6 inches tall at the time of his death. The scan also showed he had the typical overbite characteristic of other kings from his family, large incisor teeth and his lower teeth were slightly misaligned.
The unveiling of Tut's mummy comes amid a frenzy of international publicity for the boy king. A highly publicized museum exhibit traveling the globe drew more than 4 million people during the initial four-city American-leg of the tour. The exhibit will open later this month in London and after it will make a three-city encore tour in the U.S. beginning with the Dallas Museum of Art.

Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac was born on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts. As the author of the infamous novel, On the Road, Kerouac became a leader and a spokesperson for the Beat Movement.

He was educated at Columbia University and the novel, On the Road - a semi-autobiographical tome of prose - exemplified the carefree, Beat lifestyle. The main character in this story hitchhikes across the country with his friend Dean Moriarty (inspired by fellow Beat adventurer, Neal Cassady) and enjoys casual friendships, love affairs and experiences. The non-materialistic lifestyles of the protagonists were embraced by many readers and helped propel Kerouac's status into an almost mythical realm.

He learned English as a second language: his parents were French-Canadian. He also spent some time in the Navy where he was then discharged due to possessing a schizoid personality. Soon after, he became a merchant seaman and then decided on the life of a vagabond, from which he obtained inspiration for his later novels.

His first book was published in 1950 and titled The Town and the City. It is said that Kerouac struggled with conformity and rejected the then contemporary fictional standards. On the Road was written in less than three weeks and demonstrated a fresh style. This new writing was spontaneous and seemed to be at times unedited. It possessed a strange energy that shocked more established writers but only brought Kerouac well-deserved recognition.

Alfred Hitchcock

James Cagney

I've long admired his cocky attitude and herky-jerky movements, the epitome of rough and tumble manhood. Cagney's energetic acting style with staccato delivery and raspy voice became synonymous with the Hollywood "tough guy" role. Will Rogers once said of him, "Every time I see him work, it looks to me like a bunch of firecrackers going off all at once." He was a Warner Brothers mainstay for many years as the studio was setting the standard for crime drama (gangster flicks). He made 38 films for Warners between 1930 and 1941. However, Mr. Cagney was not content to play just one kind of part and proved his versatility by portraying George M. Cohan in the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy, for which he won a well deserved Oscar for his singing and dancing, as well as his acting. He also was a great light comedian in such films as The Strawberry Blonde and The Bride Came C.O.D..


James Francis Cagney, Jr., born on July 17, 1899, was the child of an Irish father and Norwegian mother and was raised on New York's Lower Eastside. He did many odd jobs to support his family. He worked as a waiter, poolroom racker, and even as a female impersonator. He joined the chorus of the Broadway show Pitter-Patter and did a vaudeville tour with Frances, his wife. In the mid 1920's Cagney had begun to play leads on Broadway. He was quite successful in the musical Penny Arcade and was cast in the renamed film version Sinner's Holiday. He was signed to a contract by Warner Brothers and his role as Tom Powers in The Public Enemy made him a star. He went on to star in such classics as Angels With Dirty Faces, The Roaring Twenties, White Heat, Love Me or Leave Me and Man of a Thousand Faces. He directed 1957's Short Cut to Hell. Cagney retired in 1961 after making the farce One, Two, Three. He received the AFI's Life Achievement Award in 1974, was honored by the Kennedy Center in 1980, and in 1984 received the United States government's highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom. His autobiography Cagney on Cagney was published in 1975. He made a big screen comeback in 1981's Ragtime and starred in the small screen movie "Terrible Joe Moran" in 1984. He died of a heart attack on his farm in upstate New York on March 30, 1986. President Ronald Reagan delivered the eulogy at his funeral and said, "America lost one of her finest artists".

Peter Lorre as Mr. Moto

Mr. Moto was a mild-mannered, Japanese detective that was the basis for a series of eight films (1937-39) by Twentieth Century-Fox from the stories of novelist John P. Marquand. Peter Lorre portrays Kentaro Moto (I.A. Moto in Marquand's novels), who was very much unlike Charlie Chan in that he was the master of disguises and physically more active, often using ju-jistsu.

It is seldom clear for whom Moto really works. Perhaps it is the International Police. In the first two films, he refers to himself an importer. When asked if he is a detective in the film Think Fast, Mr. Moto, he replies that it done only as a hobby. On other occasions, Moto claims to be a confidential investigator for the International Association of Importers, a member of the International Police, a college lecturer in criminology, and a managing director of the Dai Nippon Trading Company, which probably serves as a front for his activities with the International Police. However, in The Return of Mr. Moto, it is clear that Moto works for Interpol. In the novels, he is a Japanese agent in the service of the Emperor.

Many of the actors and crew members who were associated with the Charlie Chan series at Twentieth Century-Fox were also involved with the Mr. Moto films. Most notable of the actors and actresses were Thomas Beck, Harold Huber, Erik Rhodes, Virginia Field, Murray Kinnell, and Lionel Atwill. Even Keye Luke, who had already appeared as Number One son Lee Chan in eight films with Warner Oland, reprised his role as Lee Chan in Mr. Moto's Gamble (1938), much of which was salvaged from Charlie Chan at the Ringside, a 1938 movie project that never was completed.


















The following are the eight Mr. Moto films with Peter Lorre:

* Think Fast, Mr. Moto (1937)
* Thank You, Mr. Moto (1937)
* Mr. Moto's Gamble (1937)
* Mr. Moto Takes a Chance (1938)
* Mysterious Mr. Moto (1938)
* Mr. Moto's Last Warning (1939)
* Danger Island (1939)
* Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (1939)