193) The Premature Burial (1962)

"Can you possibly conceive it. The unendurable oppression of the lungs, the stifling fumes of the earth, the rigid embrace of the coffin, the blackness of absolute night and the silence, like an overwhelming sea."

Director

Roger Corman

Cast
Ray Milland - Guy Carrell
Heather Angel - Kate Carrell
Hazel Court - Emily Gault
Alan Napier - Dr. Gideon Gault
Richard Ney - Miles Archer
John Dierkes - Sweeney
Dick Miller - Mole

Roger Corman's third Edgar Allan Poe movie, "The Premature Burial," which follows "House of Usher" (1960) and "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1961), is the first of two Corman movies that star veteran actor Ray Milland.  

Milland also plays Dr. Xavier in Corman's popular sci-fi movie, "X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes" (1963). C'mon...who hasn't heard of it? 

"Premature Burial" is also the first and only one of these Poe movies not to star Vincent Price. Bummer!  

In this movie, Milland plays wealthy aristocrat, Guy Carrell who mopes around his huge estate worrying about being buried alive. It's a fear that consumes his mind like a worm. 

He and his fiancée Emily Gault (Hazel Court) are going to marry soon. Before they do, Guy tells Emily that he, like his father, has a rare disease that can make people appear dead. So, they're relationship is off to a good start as far as communication goes. 

He shows Emily the family crypt and tells her that when was a kid, he swore he could clearly hear his dad screaming from inside his tomb. 

Emily doesn't know what to think about all this. Guy's sister, Katie (Heather Angel), doesn't think he really heard their father from the tomb all those years ago. She thinks it was his all in his mind, fueled by his deep fear of being buried alive. 

Regardless, Emily is eager to marry Guy despite his inordinate fear. 

And so, they do. 

During the wedding reception, Emily plays the tune "Molly Malone" on the piano. For some reason, this drives Guy into some kind of panic, which makes him pass out. 

Afterwards, his fear of being buried alive worsens. Guy's fear pushes him to build his burial vault with various devices to ensure he won't be buried alive. It's even equipped with a poisonous mixture that he can use as a final resort in case the other safety measures fail. 

This fearful fixation has Emily worried. His colleague, Miles Archer (Richard Ney) is also worried about Guy. And Guy is worried about himself.

So, he takes a walk along the moors with Emily where he hears someone whistling "Molly Malone" off in a distance. Terrified, he passes out again.

While he's passed out, he has a nightmare where he's
buried alive in his vault, and none of his preventative measures are working, 

When Guy wakes up and asks Emily if she heard the whistling, Emily insists she didn't hear anything. 

Well, she can't take this incessant fear of his. It's getting out of hand. She gives Guy an ultimatum. Either he gets over this out-of-control fear or she's walking. 

Much to her surprise, it works. 

Guy takes his super safe burial vault apart and comes back down to earth. 

And then Miles has to chime in and encourages Guy to open his father's tomb to see for himself that he was not buried alive. 

It turns out that doing this was a terrible idea. Seeing his father's remains causes Guy to pass out again...and not wake up this time. Do you see where this is going?

Emily's father, Dr. Gideon Gault (Alan Napier) examines Guy, and believes he died from a heart attack.

He can't move or speak, but he isn't dead. They just think he is. The audience can hear his thoughts as he hopes and prays someone figures out he's alive. 

Emily chooses to have Guy buried in the cemetery outside of his estate. 

Guy now finds his worst nightmare coming true. He's able to move his eyes. Since his casket has a window over his face, Guy prays in his head that someone notices his eyes moving as they lower him into his grave. But they don't. 

Shortly after he's buried, grave robbers dig up his body just as he is able to regain mobility. 

Now, back from the dead (figuratively speaking), Guy takes revenge on those who buried him alive. 

Like the previous Poe movies, "The Premature Burial" maintains a grand impressive, elegant,

Ray Milland in "The Premature Burial."

yet low budget Victorian era style, seen in his previous Poe movies that I find entertaining and amusing to watch. Its atmosphere and style remind me of Hammer Horror movies from the U.K. 

This movie comes across drier than it does horrific compared to the Poe movies before it. However, the fear factor picks up midway. Ray Milland is a fantastic actor with a lot of respected titles under his belt. I still miss Vincent Price in this picture. 

Milland plays a sympathetic character wonderfully well. When the horror finally turns on, he doesn't quite hit the frightening mark. He tries, but his performance in the scary half of the movie leans into the side of awkward. He has to carry the horror on his shoulders with his characters consuming fear of being buried alive. Milland has to bring the audience the fear and terror they came to see through his own expressions. And he works it, but doesn't quite make it there for me. 

But I still enjoyed watching this and found it worthwhile and entertaining. 

There's one line that cracked me up. I don't know if it was intended to be funny, but it had me in hysterics. 

In that scene, Emily asks her dad if he's enjoying himself during the wedding reception. 

He replies, "I never enjoy myself. I merely experience greater and lesser degrees of tedium, that's all." 

If I were Emily, I'd be sorry for asking. 

It's worth pointing out that Alan Napier is the same Alan Napier who famously played Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne's butler, in the TV series "Batman."

Despite its mild weaknesses, and slight underperformance, Corman maintains his haunting style with Poe's continuing theme of being buried alive. It's a theme seen in the previous movies, and other Poe tales. Watching "The Premature Burial" makes me anxious to get to his next movie in the series - "Tales of Terror." 

 

192) Hobgoblins (1988)

"The vault... I tried to warn you... those creatures... the vault... I tried... All my work! Thirty years, I have tried to prevent this from happening."

Director

Rick Sloane

Cast
Tom Bartlett - Kevin
Paige Sullivan - Amy
Steven Boggs - Kyle
Kelley Palmer - Daphne
Billy Frank - Nick
Tamara Clatterbuck - Fantazia
Duane Whitaker - Roadrash
Jeffrey Culver - McCreedy
Kevin Kildow - Dennis

Instead of watching the low-budget 1988 alleged "Gremlins" rip-off movie "Hobgoblins" on its own, I watched it on an episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (MST3K). It's episode 907.

If it wasn't for MST3K, who besides a few basement dwellers who rented "Hobgoblins" on a whim from their local video store way back when on their mom's dime, would remember this lousy horror puppet show?

And it is a terrible puppet show. It's also proof that not everything from the 1980s is worth nostalgia. 

With that said, it's a real trip in the realm of lousy garbage movies to watch. It's quite a testament to sloppy movie making and careless writing. It's only thanks to watching "Hobgoblins" on MST3K that I thought to myself, "This is going to be great!" 

I mentioned "Hobgoblins" in my review of the 1987 creature feature, "Munchies" which I posted in 2022. It's a little monster horror film along the caliber of "Gremlins" and "Critters."

The movie begins as a guy named Dennis (Kevin Kildow), a security guard at an abandoned film vault, who goes exploring around the vault. 

He wanders into the vault area and a vivid fantasy falls on him as if enchanted by an otherworldly force. He imagines himself as a rock and roll star. In his mind, the fantasy is actually playing out in front of his eyes. He sees the lights and stage. But he doesn't seem to care that in his fantasy, the seats are empty. I don't know if that's a result of the movie's low budget, or what. 

Anyways, little does Dennis know that the fantasy is induced by a bunch of little creatures called hobgoblins. He doesn't know that he's about to be their next victim. Why they kill people, I really don't know. And honestly, who even cares?

His boss, Mr. McCreedy (Jeffrey Culver), finds Dennis's dead body. Instead of calling police or family, he closes it in the vault where the hobgoblins got him, 

Shortly after, a teenager named Kevin (Tom Bartlett) is hired to replace Dennis at the film vault. While showing him around the place he'll be guarding, Mr. McCreedy tells him never, under any circumstances, to go into a particular wing where the actual vault is. That means the audience knows he's going to go in there sooner or later. 

Kevin's one priority in life is to impress his girlfriend, Amy (Paige Sullivan). That's why he got a job in the first place.

After arriving home from his first day on the job, his pals Daphne (Kelley Palmer) and Kyle (Steven Boggs) are already at his house along with Amy. Spoiler - These are really useless people! 

Daphne is waiting for her boyfriend Nick (Billy Frank) to return any minute from the Army. 

When he arrives, Nick tries to show off by "demonstrating" weapons combat with Kevin using gardening tools. The scene is laughably drawn out, repetitive and completely pointless. But they go at it with gardening tools...for over two minutes! 

When Kevin is beaten by Nick, Amy is completely embarrassed and verbally berates him for losing at garden fighting. Again, it's all stupid. 

Nick's "victory" turns Daphne on, probably because he's failed at everything else in his useless life. Seeing him finally achieve something - anything - is just too mind blowing. So she and Nick hop in the back of his van for some...umm...celebrating. 

Then the movie shifts from this pointless moment to the following night as a burglar tries breaking into the film vault. 

Kevin chases the burglar inside and finds the forbidden vault. He goes in (everyone knew he would) thinking the crook is in there. 

He doesn't know until it's too late that the hobgoblins have been locked inside, and that's what he was really hired to guard. 

As expected, the hobgoblins escape, and some poorly written and non-sensical (in the truest and most literal sense of the term) events ensue.

Of course, the hobgoblins go straight to Kevin's house where his idiot friends are still hanging out. 

The usual gang of idiots try to fight them off. 

They attack Amy, and her imaginative fantasy leads her to a local hang called Club Scum. I can't make this stuff up. All the characters start having their own fantasies. Nick thinks he's back in the Army and starts throwing grenades around. He eventually catches himself on fire, only to return at the end with a few bandages and no burn scars whatsoever. Kyle is pursuing an adult telephone hotline worker who tries to push his car off a cliff with him inside. And Kyle is completely oblivious. Like I said... STUPID PEOPLE!

And the story goes from there. I really don't want to continue laying it out. 

All those classically bad decisions often depicted in horror movies only seem to fit in low-budget movies. This movie can't even get those right.

"Hobgoblins" is like a terrible homemade puppet show put on by immature teenagers with hardly any life experience. They got a hold of someone's dad's camcorder and filmed a movie just for something to do. 

Rather than make some sort of coherent horror movie, they amused themselves by inserting a bunch of titillating things, like babes and rock n' roll, that immature teenagers generally find chuckle at. And then they shared their little movie with all their buddies and high school crushes. Any coherency in "Hobgoblins" is likely accidental.

And the hobgoblins are as puppet-y as ever. They look like Mogwai's from "Gremlins" mixed with the metamorphized Gremlins. Regardless,  I've seen nearly empty milk cartons more frightening and concerning than these puppet-ty hobgoblins. 

The puppets from "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood" were more animated than these things.  

To ensure no one claims the movie is a Gremlins rip off, these creatures are attracted to bright light rather repelled by bright light as Gremlins are. But that doesn't stop them from escaping from a well-lit archive into the night. This minor plot points serves absolutely no purpose to the story. 

When it comes to low budget movies, being low-budget isn't necessarily a bad thing nor does it make a movie bad. In this case, Hobgoblins is hilariously poor quality. It takes its low-budget and just runs with it as though its reputation depends on it.

Hence the entire scene in "Club Scum." It's so on the nose and pointless. 

None of the actors even bother to try. If any of the characters are memorable, it's only thanks to their stupid decisions. 

Call it a gross oversight on the part of the director or just pure laziness. If I was around while "Hobgoblins" was being filmed, and I just wandered into frame, I doubt anyone would care. 

Aside from this movie, director Rick Sloan went on to direct "Hobgoblins 2" - a movie I didn't know existed until just now as I looked into what other movies he directed. 

Sloan also directed other such "cinematic masterpieces" like "Vice Academy," "Vice Academy 2," "Vice Academy 3," "Vice Academy 4," "Vice Academy 5" and I have to... HAVE TO... mention the crown jewel of his film menagerie, "Vice Academy 6." 

Some movies are so bad, they're good. "Hobgoblins" is just bad. There's no charm in it whatsoever. Checking out "Hobgoblins" via "MST3K" is the only way to see it. Watching it with Mike and his robot pals on the "satellite of love" is what I enjoyed most. The movie needed them to make it worthwhile.