DAILY CALL SHEET: APRIL 18, 2025

 

Dr. Cyclops (1940) A group of notable biological experts travel to the Peruvian jungle only to discover the mad scientist who invited them has bad eyesight and just needed someone to look in his microscope. When the biologists get testy over such a slight, the scientist shrinks them to doll size and chases them into the wild. Revenge is plotted. The story is pretty rote, but the three-strip technicolor and Oscar-nominated special effects are worth the intermittent trudging. Besides, without this, those of us who were kids in the 70's would likely have never gotten Dr. Shrinker, and that would have been a crying shame.

TIL: Jesus said, "The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness." Now, the Lord wasn't condemning the vision impaired. As St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (don't hear that last name too much anymore) explained, "The single eye is the love unfeigned; for when the body is enlightened by it, it sets forth through the medium of the outer members only things which are perfectly correspondent with the inner thoughts. But the evil eye is the pretended love, which is also called hypocrisy, by which the whole body of the man is made darkness."

Vampires (1998) The original bloodsucker Valek is looking for a an ancient relic that would make vampires immune to sunlight. It's a good thing the Catholic Church has been raising Jack Crow since he was a child to be her master slayer of the undead. This barely broke even when it was released and has never been highly regarded but, like many of Carpenter's lesser works, Vampires is aging better than it has any right too. With James Woods leading the cast in a bevy of unhinged performances, it gets by on entertainment value alone.

TIL: In the novel Dracula, Van Helsing acknowledges all of the Vampire Lord's supernatural powers, but notes his greatest asset is mankind's total rejection of religion in favor of secular scientism, the misguided belief that science is the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality. He says, "For in this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be [Dracula's] greatest strength. It would be at once his sheath and his armor, and his weapons to destroy us, his enemies."