Movies and television have definitely been a strong influence on me and the work I produce. When I was a child, I was often left to the glowing stewardship of my all-night chaperone, and as such, when I wasn't reading or exploring outside, I was an eager audience to old movies and syndicated television of all kinds. Batman, The Green Hornet and The Outer Limits held my interest and devotion in the way most of my peers were captivated by ALF, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or The Wonder Years. I was the kid (then teenager, then adult) setting my alarm clock–or later, my VCR–so I could watch a 3AM showing of The Satan Bug with George Maharis and Richard Basehart on AMC (back when the channel showed movies), or staying up all night during the summer in the late eighties/early nineties to watch serials like The Purple Monster Strikes followed by films like D.O.A. (with Edmond O'Brien, not Dennis Quaid) or Atom Age Vampire. I was one of those kids that would scour the schedule in the weekly TV Guide and make note of what I might want to see and when it was showing, making sure to find a free television set or a blank VHS tape for whatever it might be.
But that's just one facet of what inspires me and helped produce this site, and I don't want this site to be a film review blog. The internet is already a bog of armchair film critics and honestly, I don't think anyone is really all that interested in what I think of what I watch, or like to watch. I wouldn't review a movie to belabor how much I disliked it. Seems like a lot of energy to waste on something that didn't suit my tastes. And to be honest, I don't really care much what people think of the things that make me happy.
Whew, that's a lot of rambling about nothing, especially what I'm not going to post here. All that aside, I want to introduce a film or episode of a television show or old radio program or something over the next 44 days that fits–however tangentially it might seem–the Halloween season.
Since watching the PRC Studio film The Black Raven initiated this novelty project, I suppose it's as good a place as any to start. I won't review the film. If you want to draw a conclusion about it, you can watch it yourself and decide what was good or bad about it. I like it, and I think it's a solid Old Dark House flick that would make a great addition to a Halloween film marathon.
Here are some shots from The Black Raven (1943) starring George Zucco and Glenn Strange:
It's a quick watch, checking in at just sixty-one minutes. George Zucco is the proprietor of an inn called The Black Raven, upstate New York near the Canadian border. He's apparently also a criminal (in the vein of Leslie Charteris's The Saint it seems) who uses the Black Raven moniker. On a particularly stormy night, a small-time hood who worked for a New York bigshot, a bank teller who absconded with $50,000 and the said bigshot's daughter and her fiancee all happen to wind up at Zucco's doorstep, waiting out the storm so they can cross the border to lay low/start a new life/elope. Unfortunately the bigshot himself, a crooked politician with criminal connections or a crook with political connections (I don't really know to be honest), shows up as well. He's quickly done away with and the "whodunnit" wheel starts spinning with The Black Raven playing an oddly benevolent role in the whole affair, making sure the innocent don't fall victim to a moronic sheriff, and the guilty party is captured. Glenn Strange plays Andy, the comic relief sidekick to the Raven. To add a somewhat needless third thread to this whole affair, one of The Raven's old acquaintances in crime shows up, freshly escaped from prison, looking to mete out some revenge on Zucco for letting him take the fall for a past endeavor.
It's got all of the things that I like about a good PRC b-film: plenty of atmosphere and great character actors (Zucco is his usual glibly likable self and Strange delivers some genuinely funny lines).
Should you so wish, it is available to watch for free at archive.org.
No comments:
Post a Comment