That high pitched whine you hear is either me complaining about our first movie or it's H P Lovecraft spinning in his grave. Howard Lovecraft And The Frozen Kingdom is a 2016 animated movie about an 8 year old H P Lovecraft. It's abysmal. Really, it's so fucking annoying and tedious, all I could do was stare and occasionally swear at the TV screen. The animation is so-so at best, it's pretty low budget, though colorful. Lovecraft's mythos have been so white washed and watered down they're boring. The characters are kind of creepy but not in a Lovecraft kind of way. The screenplay isn't that good, the characters are often annoying when they're talking, then the movie drags along when they aren't. I gave it a 1, out of spite. I see that it scores a 5.6 on the IMDb and about 60% of all the votes are over 5. Unbelievable. If only there were an e-slap app, something to send a resounding slap to the faces of the voters. A physical slap, not a digital slap, the kind of slap that's so hard it makes the slappee shit their pants. Perhaps a series of slaps. Flesh on flesh and their anguished wails are music to my ears.
The Ghoul is a 1933 Boris Karloff movie. It's British and it was filmed at the Lime Grove Studios. Thirty years later that studio became home to the first two seasons of Doctor Who. Built in 1915 Lime Grove went through a major update in 1932, making it one of the best equipped studios of the day. The BBC bought the place in 1949 and by the time Doctor Who moved in, it was out of date and too small.
That's not the only DW connection, one of the writers of the script, Roland Pertwee, is the father of Jon Pertwee, who was the third Doctor. DW had moved out of LG by the time Jon became the Doctor but he shot some links there in 1991 for The Troughton Years video. Three months later the studio closed.
The Ghoul is based on a play by Leonard Hines and Frank King, the adaptation is by Rupert Downing, Roland was joined by John Hastings Turner on the screenplay. T Hayes Hunter is the director. The screenplay is substantially different to the play. They give the mysticism of the play an Egyptian flavor to capitalize on Karloff's recent hit The Mummy.
Boris Karloff plays a man who wants to cheat Death. He's got a fancy magical jewel he's spent most of his fortune on. It's part of an ancient Egyptian secret ritual. His servant steals the jewel and Boris rises from the grave craving his gem. His house is packed with victims, the lawyer, a couple of relatives, one of their friends, a priest and more are in the dead man's way. There's a bit of a body count even though Boris doesn't return from the dead until about 50 minutes into the 80 minute movie. He shambles around and people are running about. The jewel gets passed along a bit but Boris finds it again.
When Boris tries the ritual with the Sphinx statue he gets tricked and dies. There's a bit of a romance between the two cousins and some of the scumbags get theirs in the end. As a movie it's alright, not great, it gets a 5.9 and I gave it a 6. It's more a 5 than a 6 but it is somewhat entertaining for the cast. Ecxept for that annoying woman, she was like a low rent Zasu Pitts. It's the first film role for Ralph Richardson and Cedric Hardwicke is also in the cast.
We watched a British Blu-ray that was nice. I thought I hadn't seen the movie at first but later a few scenes made me think I had. Turns out I bought a 2004 cheapie DVD from Target, it was in the seasonal stuff for Halloween one year, only a buck. The image is not as nice but it's watchable, it's the whole movie, and I already have it. You can also see the movie on YouTube and that's a watchable version too. I put a link to the movie in one of the title above. There's also an MGM DVD available.
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