A Nightmare on Franklin Street
Sunday, October 20, 2019 at 3 PM – 8 PM
Tampa Theatre
711 N Franklin St, Tampa, Florida 33602
The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)
1h 1m / Not Rated / Horror
HOSTED BY DR. PAUL BEARER
None of the classic Universal monsters have had a history as meandering and confusing as the Mummy — in this case, specifically Kharis, the second and most memorable of the movie mummies. Bear down for a minute, it’s time for a short history lesson: The Mummy’s Tomb is the first of three direct sequels to 1940’s The Mummy’s Hand, which is itself not specifically a sequel to 1932’s The Mummy — it’s more like a soft reboot, if you’ll excuse the anachronism. So since Hand retreaded so much of the ground that the 1932 original did, The Mummy’s Tomb gets freed up for more mummy action, a more serious tone, a much faster pace and, for the first time, the genius Lon Chaney Jr. under the much-improved mummy makeup. It’s also the first of the Mummy quintology set in the US, with the desiccated Kharis and his followers pursuing Steve Banning (Dick Foran) and his expedition to Massachusetts in a bid to exterminate them and each of their entire bloodlines. That’s kind of the Mummy’s whole thing. It’s a rip-roaring flick even now, and stands apart from other big-studio horror movies of the ‘40s in pure entertainment quotient per minute.
Hosted by Tampa’s own Dr. Paul Bearer. Dr. Paul’s hearse will be outside before the screening, and the gallant ghoul himself will do a meet & greet in the lobby afterward. We’ll be lurking for you!
Young Frankenstein (1974)
1h 48m / PG / Comedy
HOSTED BY DR. PAUL BEARER
In 1974, Mel Brooks got together a bunch of his funniest friends and made a send-up of a film genre that he loved as a kid but that they just weren’t making anymore: the stiff, talky, black & white horror movies of the ‘30s. The result was Young Frankenstein. (As an aside, later the same year he did the exact same thing, except with Westerns instead of monster movies. The result was Blazing Saddles. Pretty solid year.) Nowadays if you gather your comedian friends to have fun and make a hugely profitable movie, they call you Adam Sandler. Back then they called you the king of film parody. And it’s good to be the king.
Young Frankenstein retells the story of a differently-pronounced Dr. Frankenstein (the incomparable Gene Wilder) and his henchmen and hangers-on (Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman) as he creates life (Peter Boyle plays the monster with goofy innocence) and then promptly loses control of it, to the dismay of nearby villagers. In retrospect a surprisingly faithful rendition of the Boris Karloff Frankenstein from 1931, you still shouldn’t come in expecting a serious or … wait, have you never seen it? What are you waiting for? Stop reading this immediately, and go buy as many tickets as you can responsibly afford.
Young Frankenstein also happens to be a personal favorite of Tampa’s own Dr. Paul Bearer, which is precisely why we decided to show it – wrapped in all of the Creature Feature silliness and bad puns Dr. Paul can muster. His signature vintage hearse will be outside before the screening, and the gallant ghoul himself will do a meet & greet in the lobby afterward. We’ll be lurking for you!
