A good comeback is like a great third act in American lives; it's the triumphant return, the end of the story. James Cagney retired in 1961, then made a triumphant comeback in 1981 with Ragtime. But a good movie never deals with the aftermath of the comeback. Just as often as not, the comeback leads to nothing. Cagney died a few years after the hubbub. Though we all love a good comeback, the following is a list of comebacks that weren't the end of the story, and didn't provide the inspiring coda that they could have.

1. Sylvester Stallone in Cop Land (1997)
Stallone's is one of the most fascinating, dramatic careers in cinema. His fame is so huge that his name and face -- or at least his characters -- are known the world over. He had a fairytale rise to fame with Rocky (1976), complete with tales of writing it in a weekend. He has a lot of charisma, and earned an Oscar nomination for acting. He has directed eight feature films and contributed to the screenplays for nearly twenty. People whisper about how smart and savvy he is behind the scenes.

Happy Halloween from Cinematical! As a special treat, we've put together this gallery of some of the great movie monsters, from Lon Chaney Sr. as the Phantom in the 1925 silent film The Phantom of the Opera, to Lon Chaney Jr. as The Wolfman. We have an array of Dracula's, from Nosferatu (1922 and 1979 versions) to Dracula (Bela Lugosi, Christoper Lee, Frank Langella, and Gary Oldman -- who do you like best?). We have a slew of evil children and evil adults in the mix as well. Tell us who your favorite movie monsters are, and who we missed including in our gallery.

If you missed catching any of our Spooktacular Halloween Coverage, you can catch up with it all right here! And don't forget to let out your own inner monster by entering our fabulous Halloween Costume Contest.

This list was harder than I thought. I honestly thought it would be easy to scrape up a handful of funny horror movies, or scary comedies, or even unintentionally funny, Ed Wood-type movies. But the more I started poking around, the more I discovered a healthy and thriving subgenre, packed with potential classics. This year's hilarious, disturbing Black Sheep is just one example, as well as Fido (which I missed). There were also many shades within this subgenre, ranging from flat-out comedies with supernatural elements (Beetlejuice, The Witches of Eastwick) to horror movies with just a hint of the absurd (The Invisible Man, An American Werewolf in London) to spoofs (Young Frankenstein, Scary Movie) So I stuck with my original impulse and went with the ones that I found the "funniest" that were actual "horror" movies. Oddly enough, most of my choices went -- arbitrarily -- to zombies. I guess vampires and ghosts just aren't as funny.

1. Shaun of the Dead (2004)
I've seen this four or five times now, and I just don't get sick of it. On a purely technical level, it moves beautifully, from the camera setups and tracking shots to the fluid editing. It's so well executed that the jokes are more or less imbedded within the film, rather than jumping out of the film, so that it remains funny each time. Some of the subtler jokes get better each time, such as Ed's "two seconds." What's even more amazing is how well it works as both a character-driven movie and a zombie movie. It's so good, it even earned the seal of approval from the zombie master, George A. Romero (the boys, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, went on to make cameos in Romero's Land of the Dead).

2. Army of Darkness (1992)
The debate rages on around Sam Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy: which one is best? I love them all, and Evil Dead II is my admitted favorite, but this third entry -- at one time entitled "Medieval Dead" -- is definitely the funniest. Bruce Campbell earned himself a lifelong cult following with his deadpan readings of lines like "boom stick," "primitive screwheads," "gimme some sugar, baby," etc. The drawback is that this film is definitely the least scary of the three films, but it does have its share of monsters, gore and creepy Harryhausen-like effects.

Filmmakers dabbled in horror during the silent era, but it wasn't until the 1930s that studios realized how much money was waiting to be made in the genre. The short period between 1931 and 1934 heralded a mini-horror renaissance, highlighted by several potent new stars (Karloff, Lugosi, etc.) and by extraordinary black-and-white cinematography and set design. Two things happened to eventually kill it. Will Hays came in and began regulating morals in Hollywood movies, no longer allowing the more intense factors that made horror films interesting. And producers got greedy and began repeating successful formulas, cranking out increasingly anemic sequels to the dark originals. To be fair, I decided to choose only one film each from the era's two masters, Tod Browning and James Whale, otherwise they could have engulfed the entire list. I regret not being able to include anything by the great cinematographer-turned-director Karl Freund, whose The Mummy (1932) and Mad Love (1935) are key works of the era. I also regret the exclusion of two underrated Bela Lugosi works, White Zombie and Island of Lost Souls (both 1932). That said, let the old-timey scares begin.

1. Vampyr (1932, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Oddly, the best and spookiest film of this era came not from Hollywood, but from a Danish filmmaker working in Germany. Baron Nicholas De Gunzburg helped finance the film and plays the lead role (appearing under the name "Julian West"). A traveler arrives at a quaint chateau and checks in, only to find himself in a world of nightmarish occurrences. The plot has something to do with a vampire preying on women, but the main thrust of the film is its quiet, eerie effects, such as a shadow moving of its own accord, or a man unexpectedly appearing in a corner of a room. It's one of the best films ever to capture a dreamlike state, and indeed it's so intangible and elusive that you might remember things you didn't actually see.

2. The Old Dark House (1932, James Whale)
This is the least known of Whale's four masterful Universal horror films -- the other three are Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) -- but it's my favorite. Whale had a unique sense of humor combining the ghoulish with camp, and this collection of disparate characters forced to spend the night in a creepy house during a storm allowed him to use the full range of his skills; it moves from great quotable dialogue ("have a potato") to moments that are chillingly off-balance. The cast is superb: Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stewart (later in Titanic), Ernest Thesiger, Lilian Bond and Raymond Massey, but Boris Karloff stole the spotlight from them all. As the twisted, mute butler, he impressed everyone as a master of makeup and transformation.

Resurrecting the dead with extraterrestrial ray guns may not be the best method to end nuclear escalation. Such is the only lesson that can be gleaned from 1959 Plan Nine from Outer Space.  Newly colorized by Legend Films, Ed Wood Jr.’s distinctive independent film was celebrated with a re-premiere at San Francisco’s Castro Theater March 11,  2006.

Popularly but incorrectly named as the worst movie ever made, Plan 9 ... has been a punching bag for nearly a half century. This folk-art version of The Day the Earth Stood Still has a daydreamy approach to a science fiction. It concerns a flying saucer attack by fey aliens (one played by an actor who rejoices in the name “Dudley Manlove”) who reanimate three lumbering cadavers: TV host Vampira, whose clutching digits give new meaning to the phrase “spirit fingers”; the massive wrestler Tor Johnson and a decrepit Bela Lugosi, who died during production.  Aspects of the film are legend: Wood’s behind-the-scenes transvestitism, for example. Wood is particularly beloved for his desperate attempt to cover up the death of one of his lead actors.  His solution: hiring a slumming chiropractor named Dr. Tom Mason to play the part of the late Lugosi, simply by having the actor cover his face with an opera cape.   

Just the as easy answer when naming the best movie ever made is Citizen Kane, the easy answer when naming the worst is Plan Nine From Outer Space.  The slander began with Harry and Michael Medved’s 1980 book The Golden Turkey Awards. The brothers  claimed 393 voters elected it “worst film”, when responding to a poll in their earlier book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. In the unrelated if suspiciously similar 2004 documentary, The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made, director Brandon Christopher puts Plan Nine at third worst film.  Moreover, the 2004 film’s narrator, Carlos Larkin, snickers at the cardboard steering wheels in the airplane cabin sequence in Plan 9…just as decades ago, in 1982’s It Came from Hollywood (a forgotten cine-manque documentary) John Candy was crowing “Check out that dime-store shower curtain behind the pilots!” Currently, MST3K’s Mike Nelson, doing a narration on the colorized DVD, tries to squeeze a few more laughs out of Plan Nine's failures of art direction.  


 

When I went back to St. Louis to visit my family over the holidays, I stumbled upon a 20-something 7-11 employee whose forearms featured tattoos of horror legends: Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, and Bela Lugosi all held places of pride. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, we chatted about all the crap that's made these days, and the lack of respect for the movies those men made. I mention that guy at this particular moment because I know he's having a rage-filled morning: Universal is remaking The Wolf Man.

Originally made in 1941 with Lon Chaney, Jr. in the title role (not to mention the supporting talents of A-list names like Claude Raines, Ralph Bellamy, and a dude named Bela), the film is "stylishly-made" and incredibly entertaining, despite its solidly B-movie status. Though the remake will share the original's Victorian England location, but since Universal can't leave well-enough alone, it will also feature new characters and plot elements "that take advantage of cutting-edge visual effects technology." Yippee, CGI!

Wolf Man fan Benicio Del Toro will star and co-produce, and the "new" screenplay is being written by Andrew Kevin Walker.

[via Dark Horizons]

Seventy-five years ago today the film version of Bram Stoker's Dracula starring Bela Lugosi debuted. While my estimation puts the number of Dracula movies made since then at about roughly twenty-seven gajillion, Lugosi's portrayal of the blood-sucking vampire still remains the most recognized. The role brought the Hungarian-born Lugosi much success, and he appeared in several other horror films including The Black Cat (both the 1934 and 1941 versions) and The Wolf Man. Ultimately, his new found fame led to typecasting, and eventually obscurity appearing in a handful of Ed Wood's films. In the quarter of a century that has passed since then, and perhaps thanks to Martin Landau's compassionate portrayal of the actor in Tim Burton's Ed Wood, people today have a more accurate perception of the actor and his contribution to the world of cinema. So yeah, the title reads "Happy Birthday, Dracula," but I'm raising a glass of Type A negative to the great Lugosi, as well. Cheers.