Tag Archives: Conan the Barbarian

TCM’s Halloween month: It’s the most wonderful time of the year! (Plus a new Vincent Price documentary!)

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Hopefully you recognize the wonderful Victoria Price, daughter of classic actor Vincent Price, in that shot with me, taken at this summer’s CreepyCon here in Knoxville.

CreepyCon was a lot of fun, but meeting Ms. Price and getting a chance to tell her about the time I met her father was a highlight of the day. That story in a moment.

I’m making special note of the one-and-only Vincent Price in part because a new documentary about him, “Vincent Price: What Keeps Us Alive,” debuts on TCM (Turner Classic Movies) on October 30. In addition to Ms. Price, the doc features interviews with people who knew, worked with and admired Vincent Price like Tim Burton, John Waters, Bill Hader, Alice Cooper, Patton Oswalt and Cassandra Peterson, also known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

The documentary puts a button on TCM’s buildup to what’s one of my top two holidays.

I grew up watching Price’s films and other classic horror and terror movies when I could catch them at drive-in theaters or on late-night TV, years before the era of home video and cable TV. We cherished, as film fans and monster fanatics, the opportunity to see them. It’s a lot easier now thanks to the plethora of horror films online and on streaming.

For a couple of decades, TCM and other movie channels like AMC bridged the gap for us, never more so than in October, when TV and cable programmed a delightful number of horror films, including the work of Price.

When I got to speak with Ms. Price at CreepyCon I got to tell her my favorite of her father’s films which in some ways bracketed the most active years of his career, “House on Haunted Hill” from 1958 – before I was born – and “The Abominable Dr. Phibes” in 1971, when I was still a kid. (Vincent Price died in 1993.)

This year, TCM is doing a lot of Halloween programming and much of it is the kind of material that helps TCM distinguish itself from other channels and streaming services. (Link at the end of this post to a TCM page that went up just today with program highlights.)

A centerpiece of TCM’s October programming is always “Creepy Cinema,” in which TCM host Ben Mankiewicz and guest host Mario Cantone spotlight some fun and often campy films, which this year put the emphasis on campy with films featuring Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Angela Lansbury. But there’s also some films genuinely perfect for the mini-film festival including “The Sentinel” (1977), which my friends and I had a ball with, vintage Hammer horrors and “The Thing From Another World” from 1951, one of my very favorite films and the forerunner of John Carpenter’s classic “The Thing” from 1982.

The last two days of the month, TCM has scheduled, besides the Price documentary, 27 films including the 1979 Frank Langella “Dracula,” 1974’s offbeat “Phantom of the Paradise” and others.

TCM’s programmers seem intent on giving us an experience we can’t get anywhere else. Most of these films we might be able to find elsewhere, but probably not all and we wouldn’t have the great intros and outros of the TCM hosts.

Before the link to the TCM roundup, my Vincent Price story:

In 1982, I was about four years into my gig reviewing movies for the evening paper where I worked. I’d begun in 1978, while I was starting college, and I reviewed films until 1990. By 1990, I had begun covering government, politics and crime and where the three intersected.

But while I was still reviewing movies, I did interviews with directors like John Carpenter and George Romero and went to press junkets, including the 1982 junket for “Conan the Barbarian,” the first film featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Robert E. Howard adventurer.

After a couple of days of interviews in Chicago, I was at O’Hare Airport waiting to fly back home when I spotted, near my gate, Vincent Price sitting by himself across the way.

No one else was around – we were both early for our respective flights – and I walked over to him. He invited me to sit down and I explained, probably in starstruck manner, how much I loved his films and performances.

Although he undoubtedly got recognized all the time – and would soon reach another, modern level of fame with the “rap” on Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” hit – he was kind and gracious. He invited me to sit down and we talked for a half-hour about movies, TV, Chicago and travel. He was so nice and kind.

At CreepyCon a few weeks ago, I told Victoria Price how much I appreciated her father’s reaction and encouragement of this barely-past-college-age fan.

She thanked me and said she would mention my anecdote when she spoke to a crowd later.

I won’t be missing the TCM documentary about Vincent Price, a kind and gracious man. Here’s that TCM link:

https://www.tcm.com/articles/now-playing-newsletter/60298/tcm-does-halloween

The geek years of our lives: 1982

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I’ve noted before in this space that 1977 was a pivotal year for movies. Two words: “Star Wars.”

But just as 1939 is a golden year for movie lovers, 1982 is a golden year for geeks. Maybe never before and maybe never since have so many milestone movies been released in a single year, many of them in the summer months alone.

I was reviewing movies that year — I had begun four years earlier and did it for another eight years, so it was prime moviegoing time for me — and even then I realized we were seeing something special.

As the 30th anniversary of this pivotal year rolls around, the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is holding screenings of many of the movies. I can’t make those showings, but I’ll probably watch a few on disc. In the meantime, here’s my little look back.

“Conan the Barbarian” — The Arnold Schwarzenegger movie was one of the first movies I saw through the press junket process, going to Chicago to see it and interview the cast and filmmakers. But even without that, I recognized the movie for what it was: The rare moment when Hollywood got the sword-and-sorcery genre right. There are some cheesy effects, to be sure. But the world of the pulp barbarian hero came to life.

“The Road Warrior” — I had seen George Miller’s “Mad Max,” the dire action thriller starring Mel Gibson as a cop in a lawless land, but it was small in scope compared to “The Road Warrior.” Like “Conan,” “The Road Warrior” quickly defined its genre. All the elements were in place: A nihilistic hero with a heart; truly menacing bad guys; a varied and fascinating collection of good guys; stunts like movies had never seen before.

“Poltergeist” — This movie, directed by “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” director Tobe Hooper and produced by Steven Spielberg, was like the “Mirror Mirror” universe take on the suburban world given to us a few weeks later when director Spielberg released “E.T.” After decades of old dark house horror movies, the “haunted ranch house” tale told in “Poltergeist” seemed as fresh as could be.

“Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” — While I really enjoyed the J.J. Abrams “Star Trek” reboot from a couple of years ago, the fact remains that Abrams, other moviemakers and all of fandom still believes that Nicholas Meyer’s take on Gene Roddenberry’s classic space opera is the one to emulate. And why not? Meyer brought a sharp military take to the familiar characters, pushed them through their paces in a quick-witted, thrilling plot, injected a ton of humor and tragedy and gave us one of the most heart-pounding climaxes ever. To this day, I remember the “Does Spock really die?” rumors before the movie opened, with fans eagerly anticipating/dreading the answer.

“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” — Sure the ending is marred by one of those “ohmygod he’s dead, no he’s not” resurrections. But time has probably dimmed our recollection of how simultaneously sweet and tart this movie is. The kids were cute but had realistic anti-sibling mean streaks, the mom (Dee Wallace. Sigh.) was a barely-hanging-in-there abandoned woman and E.T. himself was a great creation. It deserved to make a ton of money.

“The Thing” — Man, what a great horror flick. Director John Carpenter was on a roll with “Halloween,” “Escape from New York” and this, making him the most subversive director working and one of the most crowd-pleasing. Think about the endings to those movies for a minute: “Halloween” ended by establishing the boogeyman really existed. “Escape” ended with the protagonist, played by Kurt Russell, deciding “the hell with it” and destroying a tape that could save the world. And “The Thing” ended its cold and nightmarish story with a man versus alien creature showdown — featuring Russell and Keith David — that couldn’t have been more harsh.

The two last movies of the summer of 1982, “Tron” and “Halloween III,” were lesser lights, but how could they not be? “Tron” left enough of an impression to spawn a sequel nearly 30 years later. And “Halloween III” was a noble experiment that ultimately failed. Rather than try to top John Carpenter’s original, the movie’s producers went for a whole new story, about a fiendish plot to sacrifice millions of children with Halloween monster masks. “Three more days to Halloween!” was the earworm TV commercial jingle of the year. I just wish the movie had found an audience.

What a year.