Millicent Patrick: The Beauty Who Created the Beast

If there’s one thing Universal Studios is known for, it’s horror films. Universal made its first big mark on the horror genre with 1925’s The Phantom of the Opera and within a few years, they were producing movies featuring some of what are now the most iconic movie monsters of all time. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Bride of Frankenstein, all of them made their marks on film history through Universal Studios. Universal carried on their horror tradition for decades afterward and in 1954, they introduced yet another unforgettable creature to the world, the Gill Man from 1954’s Creature from the Black Lagoon.

The Gill Man is easily in the same league as Frankenstein or Dracula in terms of instant recognizability. Even if you’ve never seen the movie, you’ve inevitably seen the creature elsewhere in the pop culture lexicon. The Creature from the Black Lagoon is one of the most famous examples of the 1950s science fiction/horror genre and the movie’s poster is a masterpiece of poster design. So, who created that unforgettable creature’s design? The movie’s credits would tell you Bud Westmore (of the famed Westmore family) was the man behind the monster, but a woman named Millicent Patrick played a role in the process, too.

To say Millicent Patrick was multi-talented was putting it mildly. Born in 1915 or 1930 (sources vary), Patrick was the daughter of Camille Charles “CC”  Rossi, an architect and engineer who was involved with the construction of William Randolph Hearst’s famed San Simeon estate. As a child, she had a natural gift for music and aspired to become a concert pianist, but later decided to study art at the Chouinard Institute in California. She went on to become an animator at Disney before becoming an actress, acquiring a fairly lengthy resume of un-credited film roles in movies such as We’re Not Married!, Limelight, and Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd.

Patrick hadn’t lost her passion for creating illustrations and drawings, though, and began to parlay her talents as an illustrator into a different aspect of the film industry by becoming a makeup illustrator working under Bud Westmore at Universal Studios. David Schow is quoted in a 2011 article on Tor.com as saying that Patrick’s job was basically to take ideas that had been agreed upon by several people in the makeup department and turn them into one cohesive design.

Prior to working on The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Patrick had been involved with the creature designs for It Came from Outer Space, Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But what, exactly, her involvement was in Creature is a bit muddled. Many sources say that Patrick was really the person responsible for creating the iconic monster and Bud Westmore stole credit away from her, the aforementioned Tor.com article reveals that the truth is likely a little more complicated than that. Robert Skotak, noted special effects artist and science-fiction fan, told Tor that the Gill Man’s design was most realistically a collaborative effort between several members of the Universal makeup department, in which Patrick did play an important role.

When some of the heads at Universal realized they had such a beautiful, talented woman working in their makeup department, they had the idea of sending her out on a publicity tour to promote the release of Creature from the Black Lagoon, billing her as, “The Beauty Who Created the Beast.” You don’t have to have a degree in marketing to see the appeal in that idea. It’s a great hook; the sort of thing the press was bound to love. Bud Westmore, however, did not agree.

While it’s a bit unclear exactly what Patrick’s contributions were to the Gill Man, one thing that is known for sure is that Westmore was not even remotely happy about the studio-organized publicity tour and did actively try to deny Patrick any kind credit. As the head of Universal’s make-up department and a huge fan of garnering publicity in his own name, he naturally wasn’t keen on the idea that another person from his team would be out there detracting attention away from him. Westmore basically threw a fit in the classic studio-era employee style — through a series of angry memos culminating with Westmore vowing to never work with Patrick again.

By all accounts, Patrick was a class act on the press tour; she never personally tried to take sole credit for the Gill Man’s design and gave credit to Bud Westmore whenever the opportunity arose. However, that wasn’t enough to satisfy Westmore and he followed through with his promise to no longer work with her. Once she completed her work on This Island Earth, that was the end of her career in the Universal makeup department. She continued to appear in films and television, typically in uncredited roles, until 1968’s The Pink Jungle. What became of her life after that is a bit of a mystery.

 

The Magician (1926)

Margaret Chauncey (Alice Terry) is a sculptor who is seriously injured when part of a sculpture she’s working on breaks off and falls on her. Since her spine is injured, the surgery necessary to treat her is very sensitive. Luckily, Doctor Arthur Burdon (Ivan Petrovich) is the one who performs the operation on Margaret and he’s well-known for being one of the best surgeons around. As he performs the operation on Margaret, the procedure is observed by several medical students, including Oliver Haddo (Paul Wegener), who has an interest in hypnotism and magic, in addition to medicine. Haddo is on the search for finding a way to create human life.

Margaret’s operation is a big success and Arthur and Margaret fall in love afterward. It isn’t long before they’re engaged. Meanwhile, Haddo uncovers the secret to creating life in a book and it requires a maiden’s blood. Haddo decides that Margaret is the one whose blood he wants to use to conduct his experiments with. He tries following Margaret and Arthur around, trying to get close to her. Even though she doesn’t like him at all, he uses hypnotism to put her under his spell. One day, he comes to see her at home and makes it seem like a statue has come to life. He asks her to come see him the following morning and even though she doesn’t want to go, she isn’t able to stop herself from going.

Just before Margaret and Arthur are to be married, Haddo uses his control over her to force her to marry him instead. He and Margaret’s uncle know she would not go with him on her own, so Arthur tracks them down in Monte Carlo, where Margaret is now quite the gambler under Haddo’s control. She gets in touch with Arthur to let him know she’s not there on her own accord and he helps her escape. But just when they think she is safe, Margaret suddenly disappears one day. Haddo has tracked her down and kidnaps her so he can continue with his experiments.

I wouldn’t call The Magician one of my favorite movies, but it’s another movie I’m surprised I don’t hear mentioned very often. Rex Ingram’s direction is great and John F. Seitz’s cinematography is fantastic. The scene where Haddo makes it appear as if Margaret’s statue has come to life is particularly effective, thanks to both Ingram’s direction and Seitz’s cinematography. Story-wise, The Magician is something of a cross between Frankenstein and I’m going to say The Barbarian, just because it’s the first movie that comes to mind for me when I think of movies about a man going to horrifying lengths to control a woman. Fortunately, The Magician isn’t offensive like The Barbarian and is actually a pretty good movie that deserves to get more credit for being a great example of silent horror. If you see this one on TCM, be sure to set your DVR for it because it’s absolutely worth seeing at least once.

The Phantom Carriage (1921)

It’s New Year’s Eve and Salvation Army sister Edit (Astrid Holm) is lying on her death bed. There’s no hope for her, but the one person she wants to speak with before she passes on is David Holm (Victor Sjostrom), a poor, local drunk who is ringing in the new year by drinking with his friends in a cemetery. He tells his friends a story his friend Georges had told him about how the spirit of the last person to die on New Year’s Eve will spend the next year driving a carriage of death around the world, collecting the souls of those who die that year

When a Salvation Army worker finds David, he refuses to go see Edit, much to his friends’ dismay. His friends try to get him to make him go, but he dies after being hit on the head. David’s spirit is greeted by the spirit of his friend Georges (Tore Svenberg), who is driving the spirit carriage because he was the last one to pass away the previous New Years Eve.

Before taking over Georges’s job of driving the carriage, Georges warns David that driving the carriage is an absolutely horrible duty it is to have. Georges reminds David how he used to be married  father of two children, before Georges had corrupted him with alcohol. Sister Edit had taken a particular interest in reforming David and spent much of the previous year trying to do so. Georges also reminds David how he could sometimes be violent, like when his wife asked him to stay away from the children to prevent them from getting sick and he breaks a door down with an axe.

Being reminded of what’s been going on in his life inspires David to make things right again. He wakes up in the graveyard, just in time to get his life back in order.

Whether you’re looking for a really eerie movie to watch on a fall night leading up to Halloween or for something different to watch on New Year’s Eve, The Phantom Carriage is a great choice. If you want something very atmospheric and creepy, this movie has it in spades.  It’s creepy and atmospheric in a distinct way that only silent movies seem to be able to pull off. The plot may have some things in common with A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life, but The Phantom Carriage is completely unique unto itself. In fact, think of The Phantom Carriage as It’s a Wonderful Life if George Bailey were a total lowlife, if the movie had been produced away from the glossy Hollywood system, and if it lacked the sentimental touch of Frank Capra. The Phantom Carriage manages to be simultaneously familiar (at least when viewed with nearly a century’s worth of films that came out after its release in mind) and distinct.

Pre-Code Essentials: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Plot

Dr. Henry Jekyll (Fredric March) is a very highly respected doctor in London and is extremely dedicated to his patients. He also believes that deep down, every human being has the capability of being both good and evil. When he isn’t tending to his patients, Dr. Jekyll develops a potion that unleashes the ugly, evil side of his personality, which physically manifests as a wolf-like creature named Mr. Hyde.

Acting as Mr. Hyde, he goes down to the tavern where Ivy (Miriam Hopkins) works. He promises to give her anything she needs if she keeps him company. While Dr. Jekyll is extremely kind and had helped Ivy in the past, Mr. Hyde is extremely controlling and abusive. Ivy is absolutely terrified of Mr. Hyde and while he’s gone, Ivy’s landlady suggests that she go see Dr. Jekyll for help with getting away from Mr. Hyde. When Dr. Jekyll realizes how his alter ego has hurt Ivy so, he vows to never take the potion again, but Mr. Hyde begins reappearing without the potion and Mr. Hyde kills Ivy. As Dr. Jekyll, he repents for how his experiments have interfered with God’s will and breaks off his engagement to Muriel Carew (Rose Hobart) as penance, but it isn’t enough to spare Muriel from being exposed to the horrors of Mr. Hyde.

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My Thoughts

Easily one of the finest horror movies ever produced. The Academy Awards have a reputation for snubbing horror and science fiction movies, but even they couldn’t ignore the brilliance of Fredric March’s performance. As great as Fredric March is in it, his makeup is equally incredible. Not only is the make-up he wears as Mr. Hyde truly astonishing, I love how they showed his transition from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. It’s without a doubt one of the greatest makeup jobs ever committed to celluloid.

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The Definitive Pre-Code Moment

Miriam Hopkins’ long, drawn-out striptease.

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Why It’s an Essential Pre-Code

Miriam Hopkins’ striptease after being rescued by Dr. Jekyll is easily one of the most notorious scenes in pre-code history. I think it’s been included in virtually every compilation I’ve ever seen of clips showcasing the sort of things you could get away with during the pre-code era.

Pre-Code Essentials: Frankenstein (1931)

Plot

Young scientist Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) thinks he has stumbled unto the secret for bringing the dead back to life. At night, he and his assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) toil away in an abandoned, secluded building and stealing corpses to experiment on. Frankenstein’s fiancée Elizabeth (Mae Clarke) becomes concerned about his strange behavior and arrives at his secret laboratory just in time to see him successfully bring the Creature (Boris Karloff) to life. It isn’t long before Frankenstein decides the Creature could be potentially dangerous and must be destroyed.

Before he is completely certain the Creature has been killed, Frankenstein leaves to get ready for his wedding. The Creature kills Frankenstein’s assistant and escapes, finding his way to a nearby town. He meets a young girl, Maria (Marilyn Harris), who invites him to float flowers in the lake with her. When he runs out of flowers, he throws Maria in the water, thinking she will float too. When she doesn’t float, the horrified Creature runs away to the house where the wedding is to take place, frightens Elizabeth, and escapes again. When the villagers find out what has happened to Maria, they band together with torches to hunt the monster down. Dr. Frankenstein joins the mob and when the Creature finds him, he drags Frankenstein to an abandoned windmill. The villagers corner him there and burn the windmill down.

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My Thoughts

Frankenstein is my personal favorite of the Universal horror films. It’s an extremely intelligent horror film and it’s interesting to see a horror movie that leaves you sympathizing with the Creature. I really don’t like referring to the Creature as a monster because Dr. Frankenstein is the real monster here. The Creature never asked to be brought back to life, he doesn’t understand what’s going on, and all he can do is react in very primal, visceral ways and nobody around him understands that.

Boris Karloff is absolutely genius as the Creature. Although Frankenstein is not a silent film, Karloff’s performance is a testament to how much an actor can do without actually saying anything. When you take a performance as brilliant as Karloff’s and combine it with that unforgettable makeup by Jack Pierce, you get a truly unforgettable character. The story of Frankenstein has been adapted for the screen many times over the years, but Karloff remains the most famous actor to play the Creature for a very good reason.

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The Definitive Pre-Code Moment

After the creature is first brought to life, Dr. Frankenstein declares, “It’s alive! It’s alive! In the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!”

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Why It’s an Essential Pre-Code

Compared to some other movies turned out during the glorious pre-code era, Frankenstein might seem pretty tame in comparison. Sure, it lacks the gratuitous undressing, gangsters, and innuendo that other pre-codes have in spades, but it’s an excellent example of another big part of the production code: issues surrounding religion. Many censors objected to anything that portrayed religious leaders in an unflattering light (The Miracle Woman and Rain are prime examples of that) or anything that could be seen as blasphemous. Dr. Frankenstein’s desire to play God most certainly fell into the “blasphemous” category, specifically his line about knowing what it feels like to be God. This line was edited out when Frankenstein was re-released after the production codes were being enforced and wasn’t fully restored until several decades later. Note how the concept of playing God is quite explicitly condemned in 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein.

Censors also took issue with the scene where the Creature throws the little girl into the water. Many people thought this scene was too violent and gruesome and cut the part where we see the Creature actually throwing the girl into the water. Personally, I think actually seeing the Creature throw the girl into the water is way less disturbing than to leave it showing the Creature reaching for the girl and letting the imagination run wild.

Thirteen Women (1932)

When a group of sorority sisters all write to the renowned Swami Yogadachi (C. Henry Gordon) for their horoscopes, nothing good comes of it. First June Raskob (Mary Duncan) gets a letter from him saying that her sister May (Harriet Hagman) will die because of something she does.  June and May are trapeze performers and the Swami’s prediction makes June so nervous that she fails to catch May while performing a dangerous stunt. Then there’s Hazel Cousins (Peg Entwistle), who is told she will wind up in prison.  Sure enough, soon after, she murders her husband and finds herself in prison.

When Helen Frye’s (Kay Johnson) horoscope predicts that she will kill herself, she calls up her friend Laura Stanhope (Irene Dunne) for some reassurance.  Laura sees all of these untimely deaths as nothing more than coincidence and invites Helen to come visit.  While on the train, Helen meets Ursula Georgi (Myrna Loy), another one of her former classmates. But what Helen doesn’t know is that all those fatal horoscopes are actually from Ursula, not the Swami. Ursula had wanted to be part of their circle of friends, but was rejected because of her mixed-race heritage. Now that she’s working with the Swami, she’s using the horoscopes and her hypnotic powers to exact her revenge.

After Helen kills herself on the train, Laura starts taking the horoscopes more seriously.  Her horoscope predicted that her son would die of a terrible accident on his upcoming birthday. When her son is mysteriously sent a box of poisoned candy, Helen turns to Sergeant Clive (Ricardo Cortez), who quickly makes the connection between Ursula and the deaths and comes up with a plan to catch her on a train by using Laura as bait.

I was quite pleasantly surprised by Thirteen Women. I didn’t have particularly high expectations for it, but I was impressed by how genuinely tense and scary it was. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Myrna Loy play a villain like that before, but she was quite wonderfully sinister and I loved it. The story is a bit rushed at times.  Seriously, this movie features the fastest police investigation I have ever seen.  But for a movie that’s only a little over an hour long, it could have been a lot more rushed than it was and it’s strong enough in other ways that I have no problem forgiving the unrealistically fast investigation.  This is one movie that deserves to be seen more often.

My biggest complaint about Thirteen Women is that we barely get a chance to see Peg Entwistle. Peg Entwistle is infamous for having committed suicide by jumping off the Hollywood Sign in 1932, but she was first and foremost a very promising stage actress. Bette Davis always cited Peg’s performance as Hedvig in Ibsen’s “The Wild Duck” as being her biggest inspiration to become an actress. Thirteen Women was the one and only film Entwistle made and if you blink, you’ll miss her. It’s too bad that now no one will ever be able to see just how talented she really was. I know I’d love to get a good look at the woman who inspired Bette Davis!

Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)

In 1921, Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill) is an exceptionally gifted wax sculptor living in London.  He runs his own wax museum, but it isn’t particularly successful.  The public wants to see figures of people like Jack the Ripper, not Marie Antoinette, which he considers to be his masterpiece.  Eventually, Ivan’s business partner Joe (Edwin Maxwell) gets fed up with losing money on the museum and burns it down for the insurance money, with Ivan inside at the time.

Ivan survives the fire and twelve years later, he sets up shop in New York to open a new wax museum.  The fire left his hands and legs badly damaged and Ivan has to direct others on how to make the figures. Just before the museum’s grand opening, all of New York is abuzz with news of the suicide of model Joan Gale. At first it looks like a pretty cut and dry suicide case, but when newspaper reporter Florence Dempsey (Glenda Farrell) starts doing a little investigating, she discovers that there’s more to the story.

When Joan’s body disappears from the morgue, officials begin to suspect foul play and the top suspect is George Winton (Gavin Gordon), Joan’s ex-boyfriend. Florence quickly realizes that George is innocent and is determined to find the truth. Florence’s roommate is Charlotte Duncan (Fay Wray), who is engaged to Ralph Burton (Allen Vincent), one of Ivan’s employees. While meeting Charlotte for lunch one day in front of the new wax museum, Florence sneaks inside and notices the new Joan of Arc sculpture bears an uncanny resemblance to Joan Gale. At the same time, Ivan meets Charlotte and is taken by just how much she looks like his beloved Marie Antoinette sculpture. He asks her to pose for him and she agrees.

Florence continues her investigation, and eventually she discovers there is a badly disfigured person working for the museum stealing bodies to be covered with wax and placed in the museum. Of course, the police write her off, but she keeps looking. Meanwhile, Charlotte arrives at the wax museum to meet with Ivan, and things immediately start getting scary. Ivan has no intention of having Charlotte simply pose for him; he plans to kill her and dip her in wax, just like the others. Luckily, Florence shows up just in time to save her friend.

For a long time, Mystery of the Wax Museum was thought to be a lost film.  It finally resurfaced in the late 1960s and it’s a good thing it was found because it’s a darn good movie. It’s an excellent blend of horror and mystery with lots of witty lines. I have so much love for Glenda Farrell in it, but Fay Wray felt a little underutilized. And I’ve really got to acknowledge Ray Romero and Perc Westwood who did some really amazing make-up work here and they weren’t even given on-screen credit for it. All in all, a pretty great movie.

The Devil-Doll (1936)

After spending seventeen years in prison for being wrongfully accused of robbing a bank in Paris, Paul Lavond (Lionel Barrymore) escapes along with Marcel (Henry B. Walthall), a scienist.  The two of them make their way to Marcel’s home where his wife Malita (Rafaela Ottiano) has been carrying on his work.  Marcel’s big mission has been to find a way to shrink human beings down to the size of dolls.  Marcel has good intentions for this idea, but Paul sees it as a way to potentially get revenge on the three people who framed him for that bank robbery.

When they successfully shrink one of Malita’s maids, it turns out the shrunken humans can be manipulated through mind control.  Marcel doesn’t live to enjoy his success, so Paul and Malita go to Paris to carry on his work and so that Paul can carry out his revenge scheme.  By then, news of Paul’s prison break has made the news and there’s a big reward for anyone who can capture him.  Victor (Arthur Hohl), Emil (Robert Greig), and Charles (Pedro de Cordoba), the men who framed Paul, are worried that Paul is out to get them.  To avoid the police, Paul disguises himself as a kind old lady named Madame Mandilip who owns a toy store.

However, the one person in Paris Paul really wants to see is his daughter Lorraine (Maureen O’Sullivan).  He hasn’t seen her in years, but finds out that she hasn’t had an easy life and is very bitter and angry toward her father.  More determined than ever, he sets out to get back at the men really responsible for the robbery.  Disguised as Madame Mandilip, he brings one of the shrunken humans to Victor at the bank, convinces him it’s a doll, and gets him to invest in the dolls.  When Victor stops by the toy store, he gets turned into a doll.  Later, Paul sells a doll to Emil’s wife and manipulates it to steal her jewelery and inject Emil with a drug that leaves him paralyzed.  By then, Charles is so terrified about what might happen to him that he breaks down and confesses to everything.  With the truth finally being made known, the only thing left for Paul to do is make sure Lorraine is all right.

The Devil-Doll is certainly an unusual movie. After all, just how often do you get to watch Lionel Barrymore play an elderly woman?  This movie could have easily been a complete mess, but leave it to Tod Browning to make it work.  The performances are good, it’s got plenty of creepy horror moments, but there’s some real heart to it, too.  It’s one of those movies that you really just have to see.  If you’re a fan of The Unholy Three, The Devil-Doll will probably be right up your alley.

The Uninvited (1944)

Have you ever gone someplace on vacation and wished you could impulsively buy a house and live there?  Well when brother and sister Rick (Ray Milland) and Pamela (Ruth Hussey) Fitzgerald take a vacation on the Devonshire Coast, that’s just what they do.  While walking with their dog one day, the dog starts chasing a squirrel and they lead Rick and Pamela to a beautiful, old, abandoned house.  They take a look around the house and fall in love with the place.  Both of them would love to buy it, and although Rick has some reservations, Pamela insists that they should go through with it ASAP.  They go to see the house’s owner Commander Beach (Donald Crisp) to make an offer on the place, but when they arrive, he isn’t at home.  Instead they meet Stella Meredith (Gail Russell), his granddaughter.  At first, Stella is very friendly with them, but she suddenly turns cold when she finds out why they were there.  The house they want to buy had once belonged to her mother, who died on the property when she was very young.  When Commander comes home again, Stella begs him not to sell the house.  But ultimately, he’s so desperate to be rid of the place since the maintenance is so expensive that he gladly accepts the Fitzgeralds’ very low offer.  Well, that and he believes the house is haunted.

When the Commander mentions that some of the house’s past occupants had complained about the house being haunted, Rick and Pamela aren’t fazed at all.  They’re eager to move in and go back to the house to look around some more.  This time they find a large artist’s studio with a great ocean view that for some reason, Pam thinks is the one ugly room in the house.  Even though Rick thinks it’d be a great space for him to work in, there’s no denying that the room has an eerie chill in there.  Plus they notice their dog refuses to go upstairs for some reason.  The next day, as Rick is getting ready to go back home to get their things, he hears more rumors about the house being haunted from the local store clerk.  Before he leaves town, he runs into Stella, who apologizes for being rude to them before.  Rick has no hard feelings toward Stella, actually he’s attracted to her, and the two of them end up spending the afternoon sailing together.  The two end up becoming friends and before he leaves town, he invites Stella to come by the house to visit Pamela while he’s away.

Rick returns to find that Pamela has done wonderful job of getting the house in shape while he was away.  But that night, Rick and Pamela hear some mysterious sobbing and begin to think that maybe, just maybe, there was some truth to the rumors about the place being haunted.  They start trying to find out more about the history of the place and deduce that it must be haunted by the ghost of Stella’s mother.  The Commander is truly upset by this idea and doesn’t want Stella to have anything to do with the Fitzgeralds, but one night, she sneaks over to their house anyway.  Stella senses a spirit in the house and believes it to be her mother, but while Rick is playing a song for her on the piano, Stella suddenly starts running toward the cliff that her mother had fallen off of.  Rick stops her in time, but Stella has no memory of how she got there.  Before they get back inside, they hear their maid Lizzie screaming about something.  She had seen a mist in the shape of a woman in the studio and when Stella goes to investigate, the room turns suddenly cold and she faints.  They send for Dr. Scott (Alan Napier) to check on her and he spends the rest of the night telling them about how Stella’s father had an affair with a woman named Carmel and Carmel was the one who pushed Stella’s mother off the cliff.

When Dr. Scott says Stella is well enough to leave, they decide that it’s not safe for her to come back.  But knowing that Stella isn’t going to want to stay away from the house, they decide to stage a séance and fix it to make her believe that the ghost of her mother wants her to stay out of the house.  During the séance, Rick and Dr. Scott do their best to make the Ouija board say what they want it to, but a ghost does take over and tells Stella that she should stay.  Not only that, it also becomes clear that there are two ghosts, not one: Stella’s mother and Carmel.  But their séance is interrupted by the Commander who has come to take Stella away.  The next day, Rick starts talking to Lizzie about how they want to know more about the incident between Stella’s mother and Carmel, but all the people directly involved with the incident are now dead.  Lizzie mentions that Miss Holloway, a close friend of Stella’s mother, is still alive and is running a sanitarium.  Rick and Pamela go to see Miss Holloway, but what they don’t know is that the Commander had brought Stella to Miss Holloway’s.  But when they find out, they try to go back for Stella only to find that Stella has been sent back to the Fitzgeralds’.  When they get back home again, they find that one of the ghosts has something important to tell them.

When it comes to horror movies, I tend to go for movies that are creepy and eerie rather than gory so The Uninvited was right up my alley.  I was impressed by how much it seemed like a real ghost story.  This story was something like you would hear on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries or one of the many ghost-related shows the Biography channel plays every Saturday.  But The Uninvited is far superior to any Unsolved Mysteries reenactment.  I loved the acting and the general atmosphere of the movie.  This is a perfect movie to watch on a cool, rainy October night.  It’s a perfect Halloween movie and I’m not sure why it took me this long to get around to seeing it.

It Came from Outer Space (1953) & Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

On Saturday, I had the absolute pleasure of going to a Halloween double feature at The Redford Theater of It Came from Outer Space in 3-D and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.  I can’t think of a better way to spend a rather dreary Saturday afternoon just before Halloween!  The turn-out was excellent, the crowd seemed to be a pretty mixed bag.  There were older people, there were little kids, there were teenagers, some people even came in costume.  It was such a fun crowd to be a part of.  I also hadn’t seen either of the movies, so I was in for two really great treats.