Horror Film Star Feature #2: Jeffrey Combs

Since the eighties, Jeffrey Combs has been all over TV, in a variety of roles, including different characters on different incarnations of the Star Trek franchise, but horror fans know him more for his work in various genre films of the last thirty years. His best known role, Dr. Herbert West, has stayed with him for three Re-Animator films, the first coming out in 1985, from Charles Band's Empire Pictures, directed by Stuart Gordon.

Herbert West, originally an H. P. Lovecraft creation, is a phenomenal role, played so strangely and perfectly by Combs, a scientist hellbent on resurrecting the dead, acting out quite bizarrely on a regular basis, uncaring how any of his co-workers or associates digest his various eccentricities. Combs does amazing things with these sort of bizarro roles, and played another offbeat character in another Stuart Gordon film, From Beyond, the year after Re-Animator. From Beyond, also based on a Lovecraft story, has Combs playing another scientist, this time attempting to breach another world through a machine called the Resonator. It's just as gruesome as Gordon and Combs' last collaboration, though without nearly as much dark humor.

That humor, and Combs' expert way of using it throughout gory scenes of shock and horror, is part of what keeps Re-Animator fresh in the minds of horror fans years later, and is considered by many to be one of the best examples of the genre.

After Empire folded, Charles Band started up direct-to-video outfit Full Moon, which got a fast start thanks to the popularity of Puppet Master (1989) and its sequels. Combs, who apparently had a good working relationship with Band at Empire, joined for Full Moon for a string of films, including The Pit and the Pendulum (1990), Trancers II (1991), Doctor Mordrid (1992), and the extremely dark (particularly for a Full Moon movie) Castle Freak (1995).

Combs doesn't always play a psycho, but his more demented roles are the fan favorites. He played Herbert West again in Bride of Re-Animator (1989) and Beyond Re-Animator (2003), both of those films directed by Re-Animator producer Brian Yuzna. Combs has played characters based on Lovecraft creations a total of eight times, often with either Stuart Gordon or Brian Yuzna, or both.

Perhaps the most distinct aspect of a Combs performance is his odd speaking style, which is entirely an affectation, and not the manner in which the man speaks when not in front of a camera.

Combs has had roles, large to small, in various genre films since the eighties, and has appeared in studio films such as I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) , The Frighteners (1996), and House On Haunted Hill (1999), as well as a number of low budget features. Check out the complete list on wikipedia or imdb.com.

Charlie Spradling

I was watching Subspecies II (1993) earlier this week, thinking happily to myself about the early 90's, when Full Moon--Charles Band's crazy puppet/doll-obsessed direct-to-video horror company--still put out movies I actually enjoyed. I kept thinking Charlie Spradling should have played the lead. Or the lead's sister, the fledgling vampire. In my mind, it always seems Spradling appeared in more Full Moon movies than just the three she did. That could be due, in part, to her being the Full Moon "Video Zone" merchandise girl, advertising for Full Moon at the end of producer Charles Band's behind-the-scenes program that played after every Full Moon movie in the 90's, thanking the audience for watching and joking around with the puppets from Puppet Master II, while encouraging viewers to call 1-800-MOON, to find out more about Full Moon's fan letter and exciting array of merchandise.

Spradling had a few small roles in notable films of the late eighties and early nineties (The Blob, The Doors, Wild At Heart, Ski School . . . OK, maybe Ski School isn't all that notable--but it does star another great B movie actors of the time, Dean Cameron), but her best appearances were in the Full Moon films.

In Meridian: Kiss of the Beast (1990), Spradling plays an American student traveling in Ireland, who gets involved in an odd situation with her best friend and a monstrous man-beast. It's, uh . . . pretty strange. Charlie has lots of screen time.

In Puppet Master II (1991) Charlie is spared the worst dialogue scenes (those belong to lead actress Elizabeth Maclellan). She ought to have more screen time, but is excellent in her scenes, as a member of a team of paranormal investigators checking up on the mysterious Bodega Bay Inn, site of the demonic goings-on of the original Puppet Master (1989). Puppet Master II may not be great cinema, but it's a fun movie, and one I'm guilty of having seen at least a dozen times. Spradling is the best of the cast in this one, but her co-stars aren't terrible, and the movie's got some pretty good stop-motion animation, a great opening scene in a cemetery, and a creepy dead guy parading around bandaged up like Claude Rains in The Invisible Man (1933).

Bad Channels (1992) has Spradling being shrunken down by aliens, while in the middle of a rockin dance routine, and teleported to a local radio station, where said aliens have set up headquarters. Even stranger than Meridian.

Charlie acted in a number of films in the 90s (To Sleep With a Vampire, Angel of Destruction, Johnny Skidmarks) before retiring from acting in the early 2000's, but for myself and other Full Moon fans, she's most remembered for her work with Full Moon. Upbeat and fun to watch, sure aware of the campiness of much of the material, Charlie Spradling put out some great work in some under-appreciated genre films of the early 90s.

Puppet Master: Axis of Evil - dir. by David DeCoteau (2010)

As a big fan of the Full Moon direct-to-video horror movies of the early nineties, and the Puppet Master films in particular, it's disappointing to say that this newest Puppet Master outing is possibly the worst of the series. And that includes Retro Puppet Master (1999), which is pretty awful (I don't count Puppet Master: the Legacy [2003], and neither should you).

The man behind the camera this time is Full Moon regular David DeCoteau. He's done some decent movies--hell, he directed possibly the best of the Puppet Master films, number III (1991)--but he's also responsible for the aforementioned Retro Puppet Master and . . . well, check out his credits on imdb.com. DeCoteau biography makes no mention of it, but it appears he got his start directing porn under various pseudonyms, before moving into B (and probably C) horror, sci-fi, and comedies.

I haven't seen any of his porn titles, but will go out on a limb here and suggest that the acting in those movies couldn't possibly be worse than what's on display here, in Puppet Master: Axis of Evil. It's hard to say which is worse, the writing or the acting. They complement each other to horrible effect. It's bad, very bad. Even bad for a newer Full Moon movie.

Budget limitations can be blamed for a number of failings littering the Full Moon catalog from the last fifteen years, but there's no excuse for the kind of writing, the kind of dialogue, found in this incredibly boring film. It's shot OK, the anamorphic widescreen is nice, and Richard Band's theme is as awesome as it always is. But the story is ridiculous and unexciting, and there's just about nothing to like about any of the characters.

Our lead villain is a supposed Nazi, though he looks and sounds more like a punk-ass American kid. This, he explains, is his cover. See, he's infiltrating Chinatown in 1939 (which, according to the film, is the year the U.S. got into the war), trying to track down these puppets, you know, the puppets the Nazis were after in Puppet Master III, which, compared to this, looks like it belongs in the National Film Registry. The hero is an intense, righteous bastard, who hates himself for being crippled and thus unable to fight in the war, alongside his courageous (and equally annoying) older brother.

The sets are poorly lit, there are few establishing shots, almost no extras, and no real sense that we're actually in Chinatown. Music plays constantly on the soundtrack--as is often the case with newer Full Moon titles, displaying the director's lack of confidence in his material. There isn't much of note in the way of special fx. No animatronics--unless you count shots pulled from the original Puppet Master (1989). If the writing and acting were better, a decent Puppet Master still probably couldn't be made with the sort of budgets Full Moon works with these days.
Add to that, awful writing and acting, and shoddy direction, and there really isn't much to recommend. The opening credits sequence was kind of cool, I guess.

The movie ends with a cliffhanger--the words "to be continued" don't appear onscreen, but they may as well--and I have zero interest in what comes next.