Movies Seen Recently: O Brother, Where Art Thou?, One Million B.C., Night of the Werewolf

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) – Why has it taken me twenty years to get around to seeing this?  Enchanting and engaging, and the Southern accents simply hypnotize.

One Million B.C. (1940) – Proof that “hot chicks falling for douchebags” is a thing so old, it’s prehistoric.  This movie is also the source for the infamous “crocodilosaur vs. tegulizardosaur” animal cruelty footage that found its way into so many other movies. (I guess it’s good that they just reused this footage instead of shooting MORE reptiles forced to fight reptiles, right?)  And what was the point of the modern-day prologue?  Did they think that audiences JUST WOULDN’T GET IT if they started right in on the cavemen and dinosaurs?

Night of the Werewolf (aka El retorno del Hombre Lobo (1981) – It’s really hard to tell from the description of any Paul Naschy werewolf movie whether I’ve seen it before. “Naschy plays a werewolf named Valdemar Daninsky…” Yeah, that helps. Turns out I had seen this one before, under the VHS title “The Craving,” but since that was close to thirty years ago and it was a crummy video transfer, I gave it another go.

Why yes, Naschy DOES play a werewolf named Valdemar Daninsky, since that’s the only name a werewolf can have when played by Paul Naschy.  Condemned to death along with his mistress Elizabeth Bathory, Daninsky goes to the grave penitent and is revived centuries later determined to fight the forces of evil… including the aforementioned Bathory, who is also revived.

The whole third act is literally “running out the clock,” i.e., stalling until the next full moon.  But Naschy does demonstrate that werewolves look bad-ass in black pirate shirts.

Abandoned movies:

Paganini Horror (1989) –  There are two kinds of Luigi Cozzi movies: So bad they’re good (Starcrash), and just plain bad (pretty much everything else, including this one).