Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein Bud and Lou as two deliverymen with an oblong package for Frankenstein’s castle. As burlesque and later radio comics, Abbott and Costello found their metier in bizarre patter routines; they never got the hang of the kiddie slapstick Universal assigned to them, and their physical comedy is low, heavy, and graceless. This 1948 effort is probably the last of their watchable films, though it’s a long way from their best. Critics used to complain that their films weren’t plotted; these days, they look like Dickens. With Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., and Glenn Strange. Charles Barton directed. 83 min. (DK) Screening as part of a double feature with The Creature From the Black Lagoon (see separate listing). a Sun 10/29, 2 PM, Portage.
a Sun 10/29, 2 PM, Portage.
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RDawn of the Dead George Romero’s 1979 sequel to Night of the Living Dead is a more accomplished and more knowing film, tapping into two dark and dirty fantasies–wholesale slaughter and wholesale shopping–to create a grisly extravaganza with an acute moral intelligence. The graphic special effects (which sometimes suggest a shotgun Jackson Pollock) are less upsetting than Romero’s way of drawing the audience into the violence. As four survivors of the zombie war barricade themselves inside a suburban shopping mall, our loyalties and human sympathies are made to shift with frightening ease. Romero’s sensibility approaches the Swiftian in its wit, accuracy, excess, and profound misanthropy. 126 min. (DK) TV monitor. a Sat 10/28, 6 PM, Delilah’s, 2771 N. Lincoln, 773-472-2771. F
RFrankenstein Mary Shelley’s modern Prometheus story is altered (giving the monster the brain of a madman) to produce one of the most deservedly famous and chilling horror films of all time (1931). Boris Karloff as the monster and James Whale’s direction (he was to top himself with Bride of Frankenstein four years later) combine to create an effectively frightful mood. Even after all these years, it’s still not all that camp or funny. With Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles, Edward Van Sloan, and Dwight Frye. 70 min. (DD) Screening at Beverly Arts Center as part of a double feature with Bride of Frankenstein (see separate listing).
a Sat 10/28, 3 PM, Chicago Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan, 312-294-3000 or 800-223-7114.
Plan 9 From Outer Space Bela Lugosi died during the making of this low-budget science fiction programmer, but that didn’t faze director Edward Wood: the Lugosi footage, which consists of the actor skulking around a suburban garage, is replayed over and over, to highly surreal effect. Wood is notorious for his 1952 transvestite saga Glen or Glenda? (aka I Changed My Sex), but for my money this 1959 effort is twice as strange and appealing in its undisguised incompetence. J. Hoberman of the Village Voice has made a case for Wood as an unconscious avant-gardist; there’s no denying that his blunders are unusually creative and oddly expressive. With Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Joanna Lee, and, of course, Lyle Talbot. 79 min. (DK) a Fri-Sat 10/27-10/28, midnight, Music Box.
They Live John Carpenter’s 1988 SF action thriller about aliens taking over the earth through the hypnotic use of TV. The explicit anti-Reagan satire–the aliens are developers who regard human beings as cattle, aided by yuppies who are all too willing to cooperate for business reasons–is strangely undercut and confused by a xenophobic treatment of the aliens that also makes them virtual stand-ins for the Vietcong. Carpenter’s wit and storytelling craft make this fun and watchable, although the script takes a number of unfortunate shortcuts, and the possibilities inherent in the movie’s central conceit are explored only cursorily. All in all, an entertaining (if ideologically incoherent) response to the valorization of greed in our midst, with lots of Rambo-esque violence thrown in, as well as an unusually protracted slugfest between ex-wrestler Roddy Piper and costar Keith David. R, 97 min. (JR) DVD projection. a Wed 11/1, 9 PM, Loyola Univ. Damen Hall, 6525 N. Sheridan, 847-845-2427. F
