The Academy of Monster Picture Arts & Mad Scientists

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on February 10, 2009

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For the sake of full disclosure, I must point out that I’m an Oscar hater. I have no use for the Academy Awards, I don’t follow them, I don’t watch them, I don’t make “Oscar predix,” and I don’t remember from year to year who won what, so don’t ask me. And yet people will ask – people who love the Oscars, who do assemble their annual “Oscar predix” and do watch the laborious, unentertaining five hour juggernaut year after damnable year will invariably turn to me in a senior moment and ask “Who won last year for–” at which point I scream at them, my face beet-red, my hands balled into Hitler fists, “I don’t know and I don’t care” and there may even be a foot stamp in there for punctuation. I think my Academy Award anger goes back to the point at which I realized the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and I didn’t value the same kind of movies. The Academy prefers important movies (CRASH), big movies (BEN HUR) or big movies pretending to be little movies (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE – you liars, you lying liars), while I like monster movies. Oscar hates monsters. So I hate Oscar.

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Every now and then the Academy throws a bone out to the fantasy, sci-fi and horror crowd, and so Fredric March goes home with a statuette for DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1931) and Anthony Hopkins for THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991). Notice the spread on those production years? When I say “every now and then” I’m clearly being euphamistic. No, horror movies generally get the shaft come Oscar time, so that “proper” movies, “important” movies, “real” movies can be rewarded. Here’s a pop quiz for you: name any movie released in 1933. I can think of one right off the top of my head… KING KONG (1933). Give me a minute and I can come up with a few more – THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933) and THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY VIII (1933) – but that’s about it. Point is, KING KONG is really your go-to movie for 1933 but what won for Best Picture the following March? CALVADADE (1933). You remember CAVALCADE, right? With Clive Brook? Remember Clive Brook? Sure you do! Star of CAVALCADE, the Best Picture of 1933. Frank Lloyd took home the Best Director award for CAVALCADE, while Diana Wynyard was nominated for Best Actress and William S. Darling won for Art Direction. What a year for CAVALCADE! Now that you know what an Oscar magnet it was, are you going to track down a copy? No, me neither.

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I’m not trying to be a philistine. I actually like a lot of Academy Award-winning movies and think most of the people who have taken home Oscars are very talented… but I wish the Academy wasn’t so full of itself, so puffed up with importance and so willfully misled about which movies matter and which don’t. Does anybody need to see ORDINARY PEOPLE (1980) again? Or CHARIOTS OF FIRE (1981) or GANDHI (1984) or RAIN MAN (1988)? Wouldn’t you rather watch MYSTERY IN THE WAX MUSEUM (1932) or FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN (1943) ? Okay, even if your answer is no, consider this. Fantasy, science fiction and horror themes were among the first, if not the first, narrative films ever made. The birth of cinema was coincident with the rise of public interest in spiritualism, in seeing and photographing ghosts, in communicating with the dead, in putting to a formal test evidence that there was life of some form after the point of death and so the supernatural was a natural subject for moving pictures. Yet after horror became a going concern as a genre with the success of Universal’s DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN in 1931, Hollywood got all weird about the popularity of dark and fantastic subject matter. After Fredric March accepted his Best Actor award for DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, it would be 60 years before another actor would be so honored for showing the flash of humanity visible through the hairline cracks in the mask of horror. In that time, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains and countless other Hollywood “monster men” had all gone to their graves, unrewarded, and Vincent Price was in his sad but valiant decline. Is Daniel Day Lewis really a better actor than Boris Karloff? (Rhetorical question – the answer is no.) Can’t you totally see Karloff in THERE WILL BE BLOOD? Can’t you just hear him saying “I drink your milkshake… I drink it up!”

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If I ran things, we’d show some respect to our boogeymen and boogeywomen, to our behemoths, leviathans and titans, to our homonculi, our nixies, pixies and sprites, to our deadly mantises, our black scorpions and killer shrews. If I were president of the Academy of Monster Picture Arts and Mad Scientists, I’d sure as shootin’ make sure there were awards for:

Best Performance by an Actor Whose Actual Face is Supposed to be a Mask: Peter Lorre, THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK (1941).

Best Performance by an Actor in a Loincloth for Almost the Entire Picture Who Isn’t Playing Tarzan: Glenn Langan, THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN (1957).

Best Performance by a Woman Who is Really a Snake: Faith Domergue, CULT OF THE COBRA (1955).

Best Actor Who Explodes: John Cassavetes, THE FURY (1978).

Best Performance by an Actor Whose Glowing Touch Can Kill: Boris Karloff, THE INVISIBLE RAY (1935).

Best Performance by an Actor as a Mad Scientist Who was Really Kind of Nuts Anyway: Lionel Atwill in anything.

And if “Best Original Song” can be an Oscar category, why can’t “Best Original Scream”? And the Oscar goes to…

psycho

Hooray for Horrorwood!

17 Comments |

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17 Responses The Academy of Monster Picture Arts & Mad Scientists

Posted By Jeff : February 10, 2009 9:23 pm

I think you might have created a monster with this blog entry. I could make up awards for this all night long like “Lifetime Achievement Award for Best Exploitation Promotion – Mr. William Castle,” “Best Performance by a child actress in a horror film – Sandy Descher in Them!”, “Best Cicada Transformation Scene – The Beast Within,” “Lifetime Achievement Award for Best Director – David Cronenberg (yes, he’s never been nominated!)…But while the Academy has snubbed horror and sci-fi more than any other genre over the years, they have also nominated more in this genre than you’d expect. To name just a few – THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS, DR. CYCLOPS, THE INVISIBLE AGENT, THE SWARM, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, SHANKS, SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE, BEN, some of which I’ll cover on Saturday in my Oscar Oddities.

Posted By rhsmith : February 10, 2009 9:53 pm

I hope you’ll cover probably the strangest nomination for the “Best Music” Academy Award (cue Mantan Moreland’s bugging eyes).

Posted By keelsetter : February 10, 2009 10:39 pm

I’m totally behind you on this R.H.

I do remember thinking, in 1991, when SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, had its Oscar fun; “Yay! The horror genre is coming out of the ghetto!”

But instead of coming out of the ghetto with this new Oscar legitimacy, in the public view, it seemed to merely transmogrify SILENCE OF THE LAMBS from a horror film into a “thriller.” God forbid a horror film be given the gold.

Posted By K. A. Laity : February 10, 2009 11:26 pm

Aren’t you required by law to put “important movie” in scare quotes when you’re using it to refer to Crash? An after school special should never win any kind of award but if the BAFTAs are any indication, well — forget it.

Titanic — multiple Oscars, more than any other film. Yeah, I trust you to choose quality, Hollywood.

They should all get down on their knees and kiss Karloff’s feet.

Posted By Medusa : February 11, 2009 7:44 am

How about one for something I know is one of your favorites?

Best Performance by a Monster in Pants — there are plenty of nominees for this one!

Posted By Robot Monkey : February 11, 2009 10:08 am

I will admit, I still get suckered into all the hoopla and everything that goes with it every year when Oscar rolls around. But I never take it seriously. For one reason: “Shakespeare in Love” beating out “Saving Private Ryan” for Best Picture. Really? REALLY? C’mon…
Ever since then, I’ve realized the best product is not always the winner.

Posted By Patricia : February 11, 2009 11:31 am

I’ve seen “Cavalcade”. I’ll take Kong!

It’s the same way with westerns – no respect.

I’ll admit to slavishly following the Oscars when I was younger. I’m still a nut for Oscar trivia, but actually watch the show? I haven’t in a couple of decades and unless the Academy institutes some sort of name tag policy for the celebrities I’m not likely to.

Posted By Gayle : February 11, 2009 1:30 pm

I enjoyed your comments and would agree that horror movies have been greatly overlooked in the Oscars. My own favorite re-do would be Best Actress for Elsa Lancaster as the female monster in Bride of Frankenstein.

I must gently correct you. “Diana Wynyard for Best Actress” in Cavalcade. Nominated yes, but Katharine Hepburn took home the award that year for Morning Glory.

I have a stubborn conviction that I must really watch Cavalcade one of these years to see just how worthy or unworthy it is.

Posted By rhsmith : February 11, 2009 1:35 pm

See, I told you I’m bad at who won what!

Posted By skizzzziks : February 11, 2009 1:38 pm

“Forrest Gump”, anyone?!

Posted By moirafinnie : February 11, 2009 3:26 pm

I think that there was only one actor you may have neglected mentioning who was one who deserved a special Oscar for using his own precipitous real life disintegration as a harrowing subtext for his roles in several monster movies. He was the sadly neglected, hyper-caffeinated, constantly on the edge of self-destruction, Colin Clive.

Great idea, RHS. If only they’d take your advice and juice up all the boring bits of the Oscar show by awarding these well-deserved statuettes to your choices.

Posted By Richard Harland Smith : February 12, 2009 3:57 pm

Best Performance by a Monster in Pants — there are plenty of nominees for this one!

Don’t make me choose!

Posted By John Maddox Roberts : February 12, 2009 4:39 pm

What about Best Scary Performance By a Painting? My vote:
Ivan Albright’s “Picture of Dorian Grey.”

Posted By Stephen : February 13, 2009 9:51 am

I’ve been to several editions of the Cinefest classic film fest in Syracuse, and let me tell you I’ve seen my fair share of Clive Brook films.

Damned if I can remember any of them though. Now Lionel Stander, his films I can remember (and I’ve seen a lot of those too).

I’m still torn over the Best Performance by a Human/Animal Hybrid…Freaks’ Chicken Lady or Island of Lost Souls’ Panther Girl?

Posted By blubro : February 13, 2009 4:09 pm

[i]“Forrest Gump”, anyone?![/i]

Maybe if mad scientists were mad stupid scientists, sci-fi would get some oscar love…

Posted By Bronxgirl : February 14, 2009 12:52 am

Great long-overdue subject matter.

Best Horror Movie Song: “Faro-li, Faro-la”
(The Song of the New Wine – “for life is short, but death is long!”)from Universal’s 1943 FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN. Poor Larry Talbot can’t even enjoy an evening out without being reminded that he’s the Wolfman.

Best Real Life Name That Goes With The Actor’s Face: Skelton Knaggs

Best Supporting Werewolf: Warner Oland in THE WEREWOLF OF LONDON.

Best Improvision By a Frankenstein Assistant: Dwight Frye as Fritz, on the staircase, adjusting his socks.

Best Fake Latin at a Satanic Mass: Boris Karloff intoning “cum granis salis” in THE BLACK CAT.

Best Tropical White Suit: There are two contenders: Robert Armstrong in SON OF KONG, and Charles Laughton in THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS. You choose.

Posted By William Miller : April 3, 2009 7:38 am

Exactly! There picking the most important, DEEP films, not the best films!

like seriously, do you think CAVALCADE would have won best picture if it was the “best picture” as in most entertaining, or CIMMARON if it was the “best picture” as in most interesting, or if it was a publics choice award.

FACE IT AMPAS! A FILM DOESN’T HAVE TO HAVE A DEEP MEANINGFUL MORAL TO BE WORTHY OF BEST PICTURE!

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