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The Beast with Five Fingers (1946)

Feb 021946

Elderly one-handed pianist Francis Ingram (Victor Francen) gathers his live-in nurse Julie Holden (Andrea King), his roguish friend Conrad Ryler (Robert Alda), his eccentric secretary Hilary Cummins (Peter Lorre), and his lawyer (David Hoffman) to sign a document that later turns out to be his will. Julie secretly plans to leave due to Ingram’s oppressive crush on her which would mess up Hilary’s plans as he needs her to distract Ingram so he can do his astrological research. It also would affect Conrad who has fallen for Julie as well. That night Ingram dies falling down the stairs, which brings Ingram’s greedy relatives (Charles Dingle & John Alvin) to the villa, as well as Commissario Ovidio Castania (J. Carrol Naish). The commissario will have a good deal of work as the next few days bring a murder, mysterious piano music, and Ingram’s hand chopped off of his corpse. Is there a murderer in the house, or has the hand come to life?

The Beast with Five Fingers is both an Old Dark House Mystery and the first of the killer hand films, and I wish it had chosen one of those and stuck with it. I’d have liked to see it as full-on supernatural horror, but horror films were going out of style (only two American ones were made in the following three years), so we were back to the Scooby-Doo subgenre, where everything that seems spooky is really just part of an ingenious (and in most cases an impossible to pull-off) plot. Too bad as Lorre’s dealings with the hand are the best parts of the film.

If it was going to be a grounded Old Dark House Mystery, then it needed wild, eccentric, and fun characters, as well as a mystery that’s hard to figure out. Unfortunately, there are so few characters that there’s no question as to who is doing what. And those characters aren’t very interesting. Conrad is more or less the lead and hero, but he never does anything. He gets a few witty lines and is reasonably charming, but that’s it. Julie is a generic pretty girl written inconsistently, and the relatives are one-dimensional villain types. Lorre does his best to carry the film, but he’s not given enough to work with. The characters aren’t bad, but they lack the depth or chemistry to hold my attention through the non-mystery mystery.

The uneven script was credited to Curt Siodmak, which fits with Siodmak’s uneven writing output for the decade, from the superb The Wolf Man and I Walked With a Zombie to the less successful Son of Dracula and The Ape. The failings can more easily be laid at the feet of Warner Brothers management, which disliked horror and didn’t think a pure horror film was a good investment. After all, only the lower classes like horror. The epilogue, which laughs away the entire picture, was an edict passed down from on high. Director Robert Florey had enough style to pull off a horror-thriller, but was hamstrung by the studio and distanced himself from the finished product saying that all his ideas had been rejected. The only one behind the camera who managed to get top quality work in the film was composer Max Steiner, along with Bach and Brahms. Warners made almost no horror films in the 1940s, and here that inexperience, tied with contempt, sabotaged their project. With the talent involved, it could have been much better.

Classic Horror, Dark House, Horror, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Zombies on Broadway (1945)

Dec 061945

When, as a publicity stunt, Jerry Miles and Mike Streger (Wally Brown & Alan Carney) advertise they will have a real zombie at the opening of the new club, The Zombie Hut, their boss, an ex-gangster (Sheldon Leonard), makes them travel to the island of St. Sebastian to find one. Continue reading »

Classic Horror, Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews, Zombies Tagged with: Three Reels

The Vampire’s Ghost (1945)

Nov 271945

A rash of murders in and around the African village of Bakunda have the natives crying “vampire” and the white folks worried about how this is causing problems on the plantation. Plantation manager Roy Hendrick (Charles Gordon) talks it over with Father Thomas Vance (Emmett Vogan) and his girlfriend Julie Vance (Peggy Stewart), and decides to chat with newcommer and nightclub owner Webb Fallon (John Abbott), who seems to have his finger on the pulse of the seedier side of local society. He does indeed, as he is the vampire, a fact the natives quickly discover. An attack by the natives forces Fallon to mind control Roy, which also brings him closer to Julie.

1940s Poverty Row horror tends to looks horrible and generally copy plot elements from Universal or other earlier Poverty Row pictures. The Vampire’s Ghost is an exception. Made by Republic pictures, whose bread and butter was Westerns, it is a cheap film, but it isn’t ugly. The studios experience with jungle pictures may have helped, but there’s style here, and the result looks better than many of Universal’s monster movies of the time. It’s not only generally well shot and lit, but it has moments where shadows and camera movements carry the suspense; Val Lewton would have been pleased.

The script is also better than I normally expect from Republic, no doubt in part due to co-writer Leigh Brackett. She was one of the greats, a science fiction author who moved into screenwriting, working with William Faulknew and Jules Furthman on The Big Sleep (one of the best screenplays ever written) just a year after this. She’s probably better known now for The Empire Strikes Back. There’s only so much she could do with a 59 minute low budget flick, but what she and less renowned John K. Butler managed to do was something different. Setting a vampire story in modern Africa was unusual, but it is the character of Fallon which makes this memorable. Here we have a world-wearied vampire, who can be easy going and pleasant. He fits in with humans, and while he can be poetic, he generally seems to be just a guy. He’s layered: cursed but in control. Friendly, though he can be petty. Resigned, but hopeful. Abbott rules the screen by underplaying and making Fallon one of my favorite vamps of all time.

Another clever move was to take the heroic pretty-boy out of action for most of the film. Roy is exactly the type of one-note male lead that pulled down so many films during the studio era, but not here. Unable to act, we see him struggling, and failing, as Fallon taunts him.

And The Vampire’s Ghost gets points for how it deals with race. Not exactly enlightened, but by the standards of horror films of the decade (horror comedies were particularly racist), it does amazingly well. The Africans are smarter than Roy and his acquaintances. They posit possible answers, explore them (they don’t just decided Fallon is undead; they examine him and test it), and then take action.

Additionally, the sexy night club dancer doesn’t hurt.

Shot in less than two weeks, and written in around three, The Vampire’s Ghost was never going to be a classic, but it hits above its class and is as good as a Poverty Row horror movie of the ‘40s could be.

Poverty Row, Reviews, Vampires Tagged with: Three Reels

Scarlet Street (1945)

Oct 211945

A sad, emasculated cashier, Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson), falls for Kitty March (Joan Bennett) a younger woman he believes he’s rescued from an attack, which was really just her sleazy, drunk boyfriend (Dan Duryea) slapping her around, as he often does. Thinking he is a rich painter, the two attempt to con him out of his fortune.

Chris is an easy man to understand. He dreamed of being a painter, but he’s an aging salaryman. His wife is a shrew who emasculates him daily. And no one has ever cared about him. His boss is having an affair with a sexy blond thirty years his junior and while Chris doesn’t approve, he does wonder what it would be like to be loved like that. So when a young, beautiful girl shows him attention, she becomes his world.

Kitty’s no slinky, skilled femme fatale; she’s a low-cost street walker who only made $15 when her pimp expected $50 (although the censors would never allow it to be stated that she was a prostitute, so it is only implied). She’s beautiful, but lacks the seduction skills common in Film Noir. Her routine wouldn’t work on anyone who wasn’t desperate. And she has only disdain for Chris. “If he was mean or vicious or would bawl me out, I’d like him better,” she says, cringing at his weakness. She’s lazy, dim, and cruel, but her biggest failing is loving Johnny, who beats her and takes her money. But Johnny isn’t a great force for evil either. He’s a weak, petty little man. He’s an insignificant conman. And that’s the point of Scarlet Street. These aren’t big important people in a larger than life story as you find in The Maltese Falcon. Here, everyone is no one special. They were doomed to sad little lives before they met and the tragedy that followed isn’t all that much worse than what might have happened to them on any other path—perhaps less ordinary, but that’s all. We’re all doomed on Scarlet Street.

The film gains a bit of power from it’s meta-casting. Edward G. Robinson’s was firmly entrenched in cinema history as an over-the-top tough guy. In film after film he was strong and violent, sometimes psychotic. To see him weakly obeying his wife and wearing a floral apron makes Chris more pathetic for the comparison. A particularly nice moment is when he meekly takes a cigar, saying he never smokes such things. Here, just as in his gangster films where he was always chewing on one, a cigar is a symbol of masculinity.

Scarlet Street is a good Noir, but not a great one. It is hard to elevate a nihilistic story about unimportant common people to greatness, and impossible with a production code that demanded a certain kind of ending, and that ending is a weight on the film. Still, solid performances and skilled direction from Fritz Lang make it worth seeing.

The year before, the same director and main cast had made a similar Noir, The Woman in the Window.

Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with: Two & 1/2 Reels

Star in the Night (1945)

Oct 091945

Inn keeper Nick Catapoli (J. Carrol Naish) has lost his faith in humanity and has little use for Christmas. As he repairs his giant, electric, star-shaped sign, and his customers continue their relentless unpleasantness, a pregnant woman and her husband, a mysterious hitchhiker, and three cowboys converge on his inn, and they will change everyone’s way of thinking. 22 min.

The nativity story as written by Charles Dickens (if Dickens had been a ’40s-era American), Star in the Night is the kind of pleasant hokum that you can only get away with during Christmastime. It is sweet and innocent and so obvious that having any working brain cells will get in the way. There are three cowboys who happen to be laden with presents for a child, a star glowing in the East, a filled inn that has a nice shed, and a woman about to give birth. Gee, I wonder what it all means?

Made by Warner Bros while the studio system was strong, Star in the Night has a cast of charming character actors who all have strong personas. J. Carrol Naish, who more often could be spotted in weak horror flicks (The Monster Maker, House of Frankenstein), but also found his way into classics (Captain Blood, Beau Geste), is properly cuddly as the ethnic stereotype who learns the true meaning of Christmas. He’s supported by several actresses whose names you’ve never heard, but if you watch ’30s & ’40s films, you’ll recognize, as well as the always joyful puffball of a man, Dick Elliott (Judge Crothers in 1945’s Christmas in Connecticut).

It’s nice, gentle, family entertainment, although it’s hard to imagine that it deserved its Academy Award for best Two-Reel Short. But really, how many Academy Award winning films are actually the best in their year? Look at the list sometime.

Star in the Night is available on the Christmas in Connecticut DVD. It may not be worth searching out on its own, but it makes a nice opening act for that Christmas favorite.

Christmas Shorts, Christmas Shorts, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Oct 081945

Young, good-looking Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield) wishes that a painting age while he remains unchanged. As Dorian becomes corrupt, the painting takes on not only the look of his progressing age, but of his ever-increasing sin.

The short novel, written by Oscar Wilde, is a story of sin and the dual nature of man and bears more than a passing resemblance to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dorian starts off as a reasonably good man, but a little goading from Lord Henry Wotton (George Sanders) sets him on a path toward depravity. Wotton is the most entertaining character of the film, speaking almost exclusively in Wilde-like witticisms, and Sanders makes it all seem natural.

For a film so expertly crafted with so many good performances, it is surprising to have such a bland lead. Dorian needs to be engaging and seductive with a touch of apparent innocence. Here, he is a non-entity. Yes, his face isn’t supposed to change as he ages, but it would be nice if it altered enough in a scene to show an emotion. Whenever Hurd is missing from a scene, the film hums along, but as soon as he appears, all life is drained from the screen.

Aiding Hurd’s non-performance is the old code censorship which banishes from the film not only the sight of Dorian carrying out his depraved acts, but even a hint at what they might be. When he eventually kills someone, it is clear that is his first murder, so what has he been doing that is so foul before that point? My best guess is that he is gambling, gossiping, and sleeping with women and then not marrying them. Or maybe he’s just boring people to death. Gladys Hallward, a character that is clearly virtuous in all ways, is as cruel to her admirer as Dorian appears to be to his. Is there a lesson there? If so, I’ll bet it was unintended by the filmmakers. Adding to those flaws is a narration which treats the viewers as complete idiots. The b&w cinematography, the color scenes of the portrait, and George Sanders are enough to make The Picture of Dorian Gray worth catching. It should have been better.

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Classic Horror, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

The Spanish Main (1945)

Oct 041945

A Dutch ship is wrecked in the Spanish Main, and its captain (Paul Henreid) is condemned to death and his land grant stolen by Don Juan Alvarado (Walter Slezak). But he escapes, and becomes the pirate The Barracuda. Primarily out for revenge, he captures the ship carrying the red-headed Irish, but supposedly Spanish bride-to-be of Alvarado, Contessa Francesca (Maureen O’Hara).

Mixing Captain Blood with a cheap paperback romance novel, The Spanish Main is a standard good-guy pirate Swashbuckler. With all the expected plot twists, several ship battles, an arrogant maiden who sees the error of her way, a pair of sword duels, and a couple of mass melees, it’s a likeable family picture.

Paul Henreid (Casablanca), in an attempt to change his image from drab lover in dramas to something with box office appeal, suggested the pirate epic, but was turned down by Warner Bros who had better stars for the genre. A fluke in his contract allowed him to take the idea to RKO, who made it into their first, full Technicolor movie.

While Henreid was no competition for Errol Flynn, he makes a surprisingly viable pirate. He displays too much honor, and not enough rogue, but cuts a dashing figure and looks good with a sword in his hand. Maureen O’Hara is beautiful and not to be forgotten, doing the same fiery red-head that she would use in all her sword adventures. Most of the rest of the cast perform their parts adequately, although lacking the panache of Basil Rathbone, Patric Knowles, Eugene Pallette, Alan Hale, or Montagu Love, who filled similar supporting roles in the better Swashbucklers. Walter Slezak is the standout, as a slimy, fat (as the Contessa points out), megalomaniac who steals all his scenes. He reenacts the part he played a year earlier in the comedy The Princess and the Pirate, and so seems to be in a different kind of movie than everyone else.

With the exception of a few sexual innuendos that will be transparent to anyone not searching for them, The Spanish Main offers not only nothing new, but nothing that hasn’t been done better. However, for lighthearted froth, it is entertaining.

Slezak’s other Swashbucklers are the Bob Hope vehicle The Princess and the Pirate (1944), Sinbad the Sailor (1947), and the musical The Pirate (1948).

O’Hara’s other Swashbucklers are The Black Swan (1942) with Tyrone Power, Sinbad the Sailor (1947) with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., At Sword’s Point (1952), where she got a chance to swing a sword as the daughter of a musketeer, and Against All Flags (1952) with Errol Flynn.

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Reviews, Swashbucklers Tagged with: Three Reels

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Sep 261945

It’s not the mystery, or the emotional impact, or the philosophical theme that make this film a pleasure, as it has none of those. It’s the humor. This is a movie to laugh at (not with), and occasionally just to stare at in disbelief.

Important, Important Film Noir, Overrated Films, Reviews

The Jungle Captive (1945)

Jul 101945

Mad-scientist Mr. Stendahl (Otto Kruger), with the help of two excessively dim, young assistants, and the film’s love interests, Don (Phil Brown) & Anne (Amelita Ward), has brought a rabbit back to life, and now wants to try and something more complex: Paula/The Ape Woman (Vicky Lane). His hulking henchman Moloch (Rondo Hatton) steals the body, and soon Paula is back thanks to some of Anne’s blood. With dead bodies stacking up, Detective W.L. Harrigan (Jerome Cowan) is on Stendahl’s trail.

The third and final film in the Jungle Woman series is better than the second, but is also odd. For a film about a were-ape, the creature is hardly in the film, and could have been replaced by any MacGoffin. That’s not how you add a new monster to your roster. Stendahl and Moloch are the villains, and the main characters.

Luckily, those two are entertaining. They are evil with a capital E, and also funny, even if it is dark humor. The picture works off of the two of them chatting. The dialog here is by far the best in the series, which is helpful as the story isn’t much. But it’s a step up from the second entry in that it has a story. Kruger is an actor I always enjoy. He brings that bit extra, a twinkle in his eye as he is very calmly doing terrible things. Hatton (probably best remembered as the Creeper in Sherlock Holmes and The Pearl of Death) suffered from agromegaly, which gave him gigantism, making him an obvious choice for any producer looking for a brute. I’m not sure if Hatton was a good actor, or if his gentle personality just show through, but either way, he is an asset here.

For a change, the detective is good at his job, and I have a real soft spot for Jerome Cowan. He makes me smile.

As for the rest of the cast, they do their job. No attempt was made to find an actress who looked anything like Acquanetta for Paula, and while Lane might be more beautiful, she lacks those eye that pulled me in. But then this Paula is in a trance for the few moments she’s active in the film, so it doesn’t matter much who’s playing her. The two young lovers are there just because most low budget films had such characters, but these two bother me less than many others. Trivia: Phil Brown would finally become famous 32 years later as Uncle Owen in Star Wars.

The Jungle Captive doesn’t feel like a Universal Monster movie, but like a Poverty Row quicky, but a better than average Poverty Row quickey, for what that’s worth.

The previous films were Captive Wild Woman (1943) and Jungle Woman (1944)

Classic Horror, Mad Scientists, Reviews, Werewolves Tagged with: Two Reels

House of Dracula (1944)

May 061945

Count Dracula (John Carradine) and Larry Talbot, aka: The Wolf Man (Lon Chaney) both seek out the great scientist, Dr. Edelman (Onslow Stevens), in order to be cured of their respective curses. Talbot and Edelman find Frankenstein’s Monster (Glenn Strange), which they bring back to Edelman’s laboratory. With three monsters, in the house it is only a matter of time before the fighting begins and villagers are killed.

As soon as I hear that old, Universal Pictures monster music, I’m in another place. There’s something about those melodies, reused many times by 1944, that creates a kick-back-and-have-some-fun world of cool creatures. Of course, by the time House of Dracula came out, that world and the creatures in it were getting pretty shabby. There was still a bit of style left, particularly noticeable in the high-contrast camera work, and Lon Cheney (this time with an out-of-place mustache) could play the guilt-ridden Talbot in his sleep, but the rest had seen much better days.

The plot of this final monster-mash flick (before the era of Abbott and Costello) is cobbled together from previous movies, and there is nothing of interest or emotion to be found in it. The Frankenstein’s Monster is only in the film for a few minutes, and Dracula is no longer the fierce and foreign creature of the night that Lugosi made of him, but an effeminate Southern gentleman. For a film with the three greatest monsters of cinema running about, it has almost no carnage. Only the scientist, who is the film’s good guy, manages to kill anyone. (Frankenstein’s Monster does hit a villager, but the outcome is unclear.)

House of Dracula is the seventh film in Universal’s Frankenstein series, and the fourth in its Wolf Man series, though it ignores a good deal of the previous films. While the title would point to this being a continuation of the Dracula “legend,” there is no connection to the earlier Dracula films, although Carradine did play the Count once before. It is an unnecessary entry if your interest is in the continuing storylines of the monsters (although it’s unfair to make that a criticism of this film as most of the sequels were unnecessary). Only Talbot/The Wolf Man has anything significant happen to him. Strangely, I’m not counting dying as being significant as The Monster had died six times before without any ill effect.

While the three monsters get the billing, the film belongs to the only-slightly-mad scientist. He gets most of the screen time. Onslow Stevens is more than up to the challenge, but with so many storylines, he doesn’t get enough to do. And the less said about his magical, bone-softening mold (that can cure lycanthropy by taking pressure off the brain…), the better.

Fans of the classic monster movies will enjoy House of Dracula, but only because it is a reminder of better films that came before it.

The other films in the Frankenstein series are Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939), Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943), and House of Frankenstein (1944).

The earlier Wolf Man films are: The Wolf Man (1941), Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, and House of Frankenstein.

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Classic Horror, Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews, Vampires, Werewolves Tagged with: Two & 1/2 Reels

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

Mar 081945

Magazine publisher Alexander Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet) arranges for a war hero to stay at his food columnist’s farm in Connecticut during Christmas. The problem is that the columnist, Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck), doesn’t have a farm, or know how to cook.

Quick Review: A combination farce and romance with a little wartime patriotism, Christmas in Connecticut works on every level. While the writing is good (and the directing is superb; the film whips along without a dull moment), it is the cast that makes this a holiday classic. Barbara Stanwyck is at her best, pulling off strong and silly simultaneously. Christmas in Connecticut is blessed with some of the great character actors, including Sydney Greenstreet (The Maltese Falcon), S.Z. Sakall (Casablanca), and Una O’Connor (The Adventures of Robin Hood). With those three, you don’t need anything more than a room for them to speak in.

Christmas, Reviews Tagged with: Five Reels

The House of Fear (1945)

Mar 021945

Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) are sent to Drearcliff manner, situated on a coastal cliff in ever-misty Scotland. There, two member of the “Good Comrades” club have died after receiving an envelop filled with orange pits. The members all live together in an aged house, looked after by housekeeper Mrs. Monteith, and each had taken out an insurance policy naming the surviving members as joint beneficiaries, so it seems likely that one of them is the killer. The bodies have been mutilated according to a curse on the house that those who die will not go to their graves whole.

Whenever I review a film that is primarily seen as a mystery, I feel the need to justify doing so. After all, I don’t review mysteries, but I do review horror. The House of Fear fits into that category, more precisely in the Old Dark House horror category. Pivotally, the setting is an old dark house, with twisting stairs, multiple rooms, large windows, and plenty of ornate objects to cast long shadows. It also has a secret passageway. Then there is a storm, a curse, illegal digging in a graveyard, and a sinister housekeeper who announces who is to die next.

This was a Universal picture, the kings of horror. They’d taken over the franchise from Fox after the first two Holmes Rathbone films, and while their first forays were WWII propaganda spy films—and were the weakest of the series—they eventually found their feet, putting Holmes into several gothic tales. It was an area Universal excelled in. They knew how to set an eerie tone. The literary Holmes stories might be all about logic, but Universal made this one about fog and rain, and as the title says, fear. If their intentions weren’t clear enough, they released it on a double bill with The Mummy’s Curse.

This is my favorite of the 12 Universal films. The mystery is solid, giving viewers enough information to solve it, but making it complicated enough that they probably won’t; it’s claimed to be based on Doyle’s “The Five Orange Pips,” but only in a very general way. The atmosphere is even better, with a nicely creepy vibe through most of it, and a wonderful nightmare-like scene where Watson runs in and out of the house as the storm is raging, frightened that killers are all around him. The sets are beautiful if inexpensive, with the house borrowed from Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943) and the town and graveyard reused from Universal’s Classic Monster films.

Rathbone might not have been at his peek (this was his tenth time in the part and he was tiring of it, though he was very fond of the Universal team and director Roy Neill), but all he needed to do to control a scene was stand there with that profile and speak with his slicing but lyrical voice. It might not be his best performance in the part, but it’s still better than anyone else has managed. The rest of the cast are solid. It has a hole here or there and can’t match the Fox Holmes duo, but for a rainy day film, The House of Fear is perfect.

Dark House, Horror, Reviews Tagged with: Three & 1/2 Reels

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