Frozen (2013) The Bugg Wants to Build a Snowman!

Synopsis: When princesses Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell) were children, Elsa endangered her sister’s life with her magical ice powers. Her parents taught her to keep her ability a secret, locked away, but when Anna announces her engagement to a man she’s just met. Elsa loses control and retreats to an ice castle in the mountains leaving the entire area in a deep freeze.

Review: As a 38 year old man with no children, I often put off or don't watch many of these animated features, but I have to admit I enjoyed Frozen immensely. The story takes a springboard from Hans Christian Andersons’ The Snow Queen and diverts it with engaging songs, crisp animation, and thrilling action sequences. The songs are the real highlight with “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” and “Let it Go” building the dramatic moments with “In Summertime” and “Fixer Upper” providing the laughs.

I don't know Veronica Mars from Betty Jupiter, but Kristen Bell was perfectly plucky as Anna. Idina Menzel sells her character’s tortured isolation, and Josh Graf provides good laughs as the snowman Olaf while Firefly and Tucker vs. Dale alum Alan Tudyk gives a good twist on the Prince Charming role. The songs were stuck in my head for hours, and, for once, I wished I had children if only for an excuse to watch it again.

Final Note: Adele Dazeem appears uncredited. Source: John Travolta.

Rating:: 9/10

The LBL 5 Year B-Day Special: Something Wicked This Way Comes (1984)

Horror fans often wonder why we don’t see films that scare us like they did when we were kids, and here’s the rub, we do. They just don’t have the same fright factor anymore. When I was a youngster, I got into horror through one of the more innocent portals into the genre, the Universal monster movies. These were my first impressions of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, and The Phantom of the Opera, and even after watching them on a grainy TV viewing, a low quality VHS, or on a condensed version made for Super 8 film, these movies still gave me the chills. I loved to get the big oversized film books and pour over pictures of creatures like The Golem or Dr. Phibes, scaring myself with their images long before I saw the movie. I've waxed poetic about my youth as a horror fan many times on The Lair, and I won’t take any more time here except to say that these films used to really, really scare me. While Dracula remains my favorite vampire movie and Bela Lugosi’s shining moment, the thought that a bat that turned into Bela might show up in my boudoir now seems ludicrous. Yet there was a time that even though I knew they were movies, I believed.

Christmas Shorts: A Visit to Santa Claus (1963): Who Wants to Visit Creepy Claus?

The whole time I watched Santa interact with the kiddies in today's short, I kept waiting for Chris Hanson to come out from somewhere and with the help of local law enforcement at the North Pole lock up the jolly old elf. This is partially due to the fact that the "elves" are kids in skintight tights, but time and age has worn down the kiddie film to the point where it could be on in the background of a Rob Zombie movie. Here's a couple of screenshots, but it really stands best on it's own. So down below you'll find A Visit to Santa embedded from Archive.org. So check it out and make your holiday a little more creepy.