Gabe Reviews Horror

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #87: Horror of Dracula (1958) Yippee, another version of Dracula. That's three so far this month, and one more still to go. This one deviates slightly from the novel's story (though most of the deviation comes from swapping names around). It starts with Jonathan Harker arriving at Dracula's castle, posing as a librarian but with the intention of finding and killing the vampire. He ultimately fails (mainly because he stupidly chose not to kill Dracula when he had the chance) and so Dracula takes it upon himself to stalk and terrorize everyone Jonathan held dear. Dr. Van Helsing is on the case, though, and there's a bit of back-and-forth before Dracula's ultimate demise. Needless to say I really didn't care for this film. Not only is this story well-worn territory by this point, it's still incredibly slow and most of the scenes had me checking the clock numerous ...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #86: The Fly (1958) I'd never seen any version of The Fly, but of course I feel like I knew the basic story of it through cultural osmosis. This one is told in a particular way that had me unsure of exactly what was going on (as I'm sure was the intent) but in the end it came out pretty much as I thought it would. I was tempted to detail the entire plot and discuss it with full spoilers, but I don't think that's quite necessary, so I do urge you all to watch this film if you haven't- it's quite good. The Fly's plot is interesting in that a huge chunk (but not all) exists as a flashback, or a story being told. (If the ending were different this could be used as evidence that it's the result of an unreliable narrator; that's not the case but I feel like it could have gone either way.) We start off with the discovery that a scientist, Andre Delambre, has b...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #85: Godzilla (1954) I've never really been a big Godzilla fan; before today, I'd only seen the 1998 Matthew Broderick movie, 2019's Godzilla: King of Monsters, and for some reason 1966's Ebirah: Horror of the Deep (though I swear it was called something like "Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster" but I can't find that title anywhere). I've seen bits and pieces of various movies here and there, so it was nice to go back and see what the first entry was like. Godzilla has a fairly simple premise, padded out with a lot of reactions from the characters: a group of ships are seemingly attacked off the coast of Japan, and after some time and some investigation it's discovered that a giant, radioactive, prehistoric lizard has come from beneath the sea, and it's angry. Some people want to study it, others want to kill it, but it forces humanity's hand as thi...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #84: House of Wax (1953) I saw the 2005 House of Wax movie many years ago, and spent most of the time since assuming that it was a remake of this film. That's not at all the case- the two movies have nothing in common except for the title (and I actually recommend both movies, if you have the time). This is also the first color movie I'm watching this month, which was a welcome detail! (Unfortunately I'm not done with black and white films, as there's still six more of those, including tomorrow's movie.) House of Wax introduces us to Henry Jarrod, a wax sculptor whose passion for the medium outweighs his monetary ambitions. His business partner, Matthew Burke, feels differently and sets the museum and all of Jarrod's work on fire in order to collect insurance money, and Jarrod is assumed to be killed in the fire. But when Burke is killed shortly after by a grotesqu...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #83: Dead of Night (1945) So, one thing I want to preface this review: The audio quality of this film is kind of bad. I had to crank the volume up like 4x higher than usual to understand what anybody was saying since it all sounded kind of fuzzy, and there were still times I had to rewind it to catch something that was said because I didn't understand a transition between scenes. At first I thought this was just an issue with the version I was watching, but I've watched several clips on Youtube (as well as part of a documentary about it, which used some clips from the film) and all of them sounded the same, so I think that's just how the movie is. That being said, audio issues aside, I was kind of amazed at how good this movie was! Dead of Night starts off following Walter Craig, an architect who arrives at a country cottage to discuss a business offer with the owner. As he wa...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #82: The Wolf Man (1941) The Wolf Man is a film about a man, Larry Talbot, who comes home to live with his wealthy father after going off to work halfway across the world. When he arrives there, after peeping on a neighbor, he learns of a local legend about werewolves. He then goes with the peeped neighbor and her friend to see a fortune teller, and the friend gets killed by a wolf. Larry fights and kills the wolf, getting bitten in the process- but the next morning, the dead "wolf" turns out to be a dead man, and Larry's bite has completely healed, leaving behind a pentagram-shaped scar. As the days go on, he keeps noticing strange blanks of time- and more bodies start piling up. Has he become a werewolf, or is he going crazy? I've never seen any of the Wolf Man movies, and this first one wasn't bad, exactly. (It wasn't good either, for the record.) It sets up a...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #81: Bride of Frankenstein (1935) It's no secret that sometimes when a movie gets popular, the sequel gets greenlit long before there's even a script. Looking at the IMDB trivia that absolutely seems to be the case for Bride of Frankenstein, as it was announced over a year before any production began. There's usually something to be said about the quality of a movie when it's created purely because people wanted more and not because there was a story that needed to be told, so I guess keep that in mind if you watch this one. Bride of Frankenstein picks up about five minutes before the end of Frankenstein (1931), right when Henry Frankenstein falls from the windmill after it's set on fire. But where the first film shows Henry being taken home where his father laughs and jokes about how many grandchildren will be coming his way, this movie retcons his father out entirely...