Werewolves

Nothing is less appetizing than last year's ghoulash. Dracula and Frankenstein were fun the first time--and were still fun in later films, when they met each other, their own progeny, and mates worse than death. But in the '40s and '50s, the customers got bored with movies that cried werewolf, got fascinated with atomic-age monsters like The Blob, The Thing, The Great Green Og, and a colossal purple caterpillar filled with green radioactive goo. In the '60s, the fashion in fright has become eclectic: mad scientists, mole people, teen-aged werewolves and creatures from outer space have all done a bloody good business. And recently the technicians of terror have also produced a peculiar breed of hybrid horrors that mingle maniacs and muscles, gore and giggles, and even set monstrosity to music. Some recent screamieres:

The Masque of the Red Death dusts off a trifling Poe classic and adapts it to fit the collected smirks of Vincent Price. Poe's original described a masked ball at which the vulgar Prince Prospero and all his company succumb when Death appears disguised as a plague victim. In the elegant, elongated movie version, Prospero is a Satanist who scourges the entire 12th century countryside. He tortures peasants, tries to corrupt a village maid, and lets his pet dwarf barbecue a guest. Fortunately, by the time Death gets to the party, most of the nicer people have fled.

Black Sabbath is a three-part demonthology. The Drop of Water tells what happens to a nurse who steals a jewel from a corpse: she is hounded to her doom by a fiendish faucet. The Telephone tells the story of a girl who gets a phone call from a boy friend she sent to the gallows. "I want that beautiful body of yours," he murmurs lustfully, and later he comes to get it. Terrified, she stabs him to death with a kitchen knife, but an instant later the phone rings, and when she answers it the voice of the dead man ironically reassures her: "Don't worry, darling. You can never kill me."

The Wurdalak, longest and scariest episode in the picture, represents that hoary old horror, Boris Karloff, as an East European vampire who carries somebody's head around in a canvas sack, and one dark night, while everybody is sleeping, tears the throat out of his four-year-old grandson. Silly stuff, of course, but it's nice to know that a monster emeritus can somehow manage to eeeeeeeeek out a living.

Comedy of Terrors is a lushly produced little parody of Hollywood scream fare, hopefully labeled a "horroromp." Vincent Price and the late Peter Lorre play a team of New England undertakers. When business is slack, the two wheel off in the hearse to raise the death toll, chew the scenery, and feed each other jokes. But the jokes lack nourishment. Foppishly appraising a coffin, Price sneers: "Nobody in their right mind would be caught dead in that thing." True enough. So Basil Rathbone gets buried alive, while Boris Karloff, in a minor role, eyes his former gloom-mates and a dose of poison with equal distaste. "When I was young," Karloff grumbles, "we knew how to live." They also knew how to die -- back in the days when a tongue in the cheek was soon pickled in brine.

Goliath and the Vampires improbably combines a routine fang film with a beefcake B. Kobrak, the villain, is a vampire who drinks the blood of gorgeous girls from a golden goblet, appears and disappears in a pretty little puff of bright pink smoke, assembles an army of zombies with which to conquer the world. Goliath (Gordon Scott), the hero, is a fellow who has obviously spent more time in Malibu than in Gath. According to a studio release, he stands 6 ft. 3 in., weighs 212 lbs. and sports a 50-in. bust--bigger than Jayne Mansfield's and, strange to say, almost as voluptuously formed. What's more, even though he plays a country boy, Gordon's nails are exquisitely manicured, his teeth are expensively capped, and his wardrobe apparently includes a loincloth by Balenciaga. But he's tougher than he looks. In one scene he puts his fist through a paving stone (well, anyway, it looks like a paving stone) almost a foot thick. In another, he connects with an uppercut and rockets his opponent 30 ft. into the air. In the last reel that nasty old Kobrak turns himself into Goliath's double, and at the climax Gordon beats Gordon to a bloody pulp, rips off his smiling mask, displays the inside of his head. It looks like the inside of a pumpkin.

Pyro glosses over its terror with a sort of Hitchcock-and-bull story photographed in Spain in flamenco hues and laved in bucketfuls of blue butane gas. The film casts Barry Sullivan as a philanderer who becomes a firebug when cast-off Playmate Martha Hyer sends his house up in flame. His wife and daughter dead, Barry survives, a hideously deformed monster with a "carbonized" brain. Crazed, hunted, vowing fiery vengeance, he hides behind a mask that inexplicably looks just like his old self. To keep the movie's audience from straying out for a smoke, there are some stunning pyrotechnics, views of the rugged Spanish landscape and --at last--the ghastly terrain of Sullivan's singed face, done to a turn by a mad makeup artist.

The Curse of the Living Corpse, despite its air of amateur Grand Guignol, unreels with grisly assurance. The plot involves "a homicidal maniac--bent on revenge by the most horrible means possible." Though locked in the family vault, a late and unlamented patriarch seemingly wants to settle his estate heir by heir. One morning the hired girl comes up on the dumb-waiter head first. Head only, in fact. Subsequent victims are cruelly disfigured, dragged behind a horse, stabbed, burned alive, or drowned in the bath. In this orgy of supermarket sadism, the blood looks like Brand X catchup, but there's plenty to splash around.

The Horror of Party Beach, billed as "the first horror monster musical," gets off to a swingin' start with a bunch of teen-agers engaged in puberty rites at the shore. But man, dig that cat out there on the jetty. He's real cool. Looks like a stalk of asparagus with an artichoke heart for a head. Marinated by radioactive waste, maybe. And there's more where he came from. Crazy? Let's dance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When a trio known as the Del-Aires isn't pushing that Big Beat, the big beasts claim several dozen victims. "Sounds like some body big walkin' in the mud," says one terrified chick. Some 20 others come to grief at a slumber party when they leave the front door ajar, expecting the boys from the nearby frat house to stage a raid. Horror's best song: You Are Not a Summer Love.

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