Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-02 (Thursday)

On 1/12/2025 1:05 PM, anim8rfsk wrote:

Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:

On 1/3/2025 8:32 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

On 1/3/25 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
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What did you watch?

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What did you watch?
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I watched:
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The Phantom of the Opera (4K disc) - I watched the 1943 classic
Universal Studios version.  When I put the disc in, I was expecting the
1925 black and white, silent version, and was very pleasantly surprised
when this version (filmed in color) played instead. I bought a 4K box
set of the classic Universal horror movies a couple of years ago.  I'm
finally cracking it open to start to watch some of them.  With the
exception of "Dracula" and "Frankenstein," I've never seen any of the
classic Universal horror films.

 Gasp!
 

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Going into this, I was only familiar with the Andrew Lloyd Webber
musical version.  In that version the identity of the phantom is
unknown.  And he's already the Phantom at the start.  In this version
Claude Rains plays a music composer who believes someone is stealing his
work and tries to murder the man.  The man's wife throws acid on his
face to stop him.  So, everyone knows who the Phantom is and his back
story.  He spends the movie trying to help a young woman in the opera
become a star. To my surprise, this version is practically a musical too.
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 The best version of this is Phantom of the Paradise.
 

I saw it once and didn't care for it.  I was tempted to revisit it, but changed my mind.

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The Wolf Man (4K disc) 1943 version of the Universal Studios classic
about a man who is bitten by a werewolf and turns into one himself.  On
the commentary they said the movie was a huge success.  I forget the
names, but when all the money came flowing in, one guy bought his wife a
diamond ring, another got a $50,000 bonus, and another asked for a $25
raise, and to the guy who requested the $25 raise, Universal said, no.
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When I pulled out the box set, I had a general idea of which movies I
planned to watch, but not the order.  My first thought was to go to
Wikipedia, figure out the release order, and watch in that order.  But I
*wanted* to watch Phantom first, so that's what I went with.  Turns out,
Claude Rains stars in this movie too.  And he stars in "The Invisible
Man." Had I known that I would have started with "The Invisible Man" and
watched in release order.  In addition to Claude Rains this movie stars
Lon Chaney Jr. as The Wolf Man and Bela Lugosi as a different werewolf.
I was on the fence, but I decided to hold off on watching "The Invisible
Man" until the reboot's sequel is released. I'm holding off on watching
"Frankenstein" for similar reasons.

 Does the set include the Abbott and Costello movies? Have you ever seen
Young Frankenstein?
 

No Abbott and Costello movies.  I don't think I've ever watched any of their universal monster pairings.  Actually, I'm not sure if I've watched any of their movies all the way through from beginning to end. I think I've only ever seen clips on TV.
The set has: The Mummy, Creature From the Black Lagoon, Phantom of the Opera, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Frakenstein, The Invisible Man, and The Wolf Man.
I have watched Young Frankenstein once or twice.  I did a Frankenstein movie marathon a few years ago but skipped Young Frankenstein (and the original).  I'll be watching the original, and Young Frankenstein along with the other Frankenstein movies in my collection in a few months when the Bride of Frankenstein remake comes out.

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The Wolfman (4K disc) 2010 remake of the 1943 classic starring Bencio
del Toro as the Wolfman and Anthony Hopkins as his father.  I watched
with a new commentary.  The guy doing the commentary talked about how
much of a mess this movie was to make, in particular due to the director
being replaced along with other behind the scenes fighting.
Unfortunately there were often long gaps of silence, I suspect because
much of what he was saying being edited out.  That wouldn't have been
too bad but for whatever reason, they muted the movie audio, so whenever
he was speaking there was just dead silence.
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The Creature From the Black Lagoon (4K disc) 1954 Universal Studios
classic about a group of scientists who go on an expedition to find a
strange fossil and find a living creature instead.  This was just above
background noise with the commentary, but it did generally hold my
interest whenever I looked up to watch.  On the commentary they said the
movie was originally going to be shot in color and 3D, but they crunched
the numbers and realized that they could save $100,000 if they shot it
in 3D black and white instead. They also mentioned they weren't going to
let the elaborate suit they constructed for this movie go to waste, so
they quickly cranked out a sequel.  My box set only includes the 4K
version, but a 3D version is also available too.

 It’s got a lot of fun 3-D shots in it and knowing it’s in 3-D explains the
stuff that they stick right into the camera.

I am extremely annoyed the box set doesn't include the 3D version. There are several different versions of this box set and I think all of them include the 3D version *except* the set I bought.  But it wasn't 100% clear if the 3D version was or wasn't going to be included until I opened it up and looked.
  There are two sequels although

none is nearly as good as this one.
 

I just know the character from "The Monster Squad."  He was probably the weakest / easiest to kill monster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OQqB1bnhBw

Now you are eligible to join my friends Creature Facebook group. :-)
 I had the 8 mm Home movie version when I was a kid and loved it.
 I saw it in 3-D in the theater (unfortunately anaglyph) decades ago as part
of a series of 3-D movies they showed at midnight and if you watched the
first four you got the last one free.

I vaguely remember it came on TV when I was around 10 or so, and everyone said it was in 3D.  They didn't have enough of the anaglyph glasses.  They gave a pair of something but whatever they gave me didn't work and I ended up not watching the movie.
I’m pretty sure there was a

cheerleaders movie, and a couple Andy Warhol movies, and creature, and then
the free movie was the completely unwatchable fantastic invasion of planet
earth. Starring the guy from the mod squad who died recently. it just came
out on Blu-ray. I think but it’s absolutely terrible. When it ended, like
two in the morning the film just ran out and the screen was white and you
could hear the end of the film go flat flat flap across against the
projector. We looked around and there was nobody in the projection booth or
anywhere in the theater that we could find. We finally made sure all the
doors were locked and went out one that locked behind us. couldn’t do
anything about the running projector though.